News Story not available This story has been published on: 2022-10-24. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This story is no longer available on our site. , , , , . Opalesque Industry Update - Swiss-Asia has unveiled new funds on the fund management platform as it continues to expand in Singapore and Hong Kong. Credence Global Fund To strengthen the funds position in the international investment community, Splendor Capital Management (HK) Ltd has come to an agreement to join forces with Swiss-Asia to deliver institutional grade management and achieve operational excellence for the Credence Global Fund. Its current AUM is USD 150 million, with eight years of audited track record and an annualized performance of +18.9%. Assisted by Head of Trading Iris Huang, Chief Investment Officer Mr. Ruhong Huang will manage the fund using relative value trading, which is the process of identifying and capturing likely changes in the price relationship between related or similar assets in the same or different markets. Mr. Ruhong Huang, Chief Investment Officer at Credence Global says, With this investment strategy, we have achieved stable, absolute rates of return while minimizing the risk of capital loss through relative value commodity and financial trading in and among China, the US and other world markets. Mr. Ruhong Huang has been trading Chinese and international financial and commodity markets for 18 years. His trading life started in the 1990s when China first allowed cash equity and commodity futures trading. Shanti Indiasean Fund Swiss-Asia and French asset management firm Twenty First Capital have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to become the Sub-Investment Manager of the IndiAsean Fund. Wen Zhang-Goldberg has been hired as the Portfolio Manager for the Fund. Zhang-Goldberg started her career in 1996 as a proprietary trader with Banque CPR in Paris and London, specializing in emerging local markets, trading local currency denominated debts, FX and derivatives. After joining Carmignac Gestion in Paris to manage the emerging market equity fund Carmignac Emergents in 2001, she became Head of Emerging Markets, supervising an AUM of 2 billion. Among other distinctions, her fund received the Lipper Fund Award in 2006 and 2008. In early 2008, Zhang-Goldberg took time off from the financial markets to pursue academic research and a PhD degree. Zhang-Goldberg adopts an informed yet opportunistic approach towards managing the fund. Combining top-down and bottom-up analysis, Shanti IndiAsean Fund will look for absolute performance in equities listed in India and ASEAN. Ms. Wen Zhang Goldberg, Portfolio Manager at Shanti IndiAsean Fund says, We will conduct onsite company visits to have a better understanding of the operations, which will also give us first-hand experience of how the countrys economy is really doing. With these information, we will hedge the fund to preserve the capital, in case of severe market corrections. In line with expanding the fund management platform in Singapore and Hong Kong, Swiss-Asia also hosts Cap Intro events in both cities, providing more investor access to rising alternative funds in Asia. Earlier in April, Swiss-Asia hosted the first Cap Intro event in Singapore. This attracted substantial interest, with the event reaching full capacity for accredited and institutional investors. Mr. Steve Knabl, Chief Operating Officer and Managing Partner at Swiss-Asia said, We look forward to growing the Swiss-Asia fund management platform with highly experienced Fund Managers Ruhong and Wen. As investor interests gain momentum across Asia, we will continue to expand our operating platforms to help more independent fund managers achieve investor confidence by offering robust frameworks in hedge funds operations. Global Catheters Market : Industry Size, Growth, Share, Outlook and Forecast 2016-2022 Brisk Insights http://www.briskinsights.com/report/catheters-market http://www.briskinsights.com/category/healthcare-market http://www.briskinsights.com/ According to a recently published report, the Global Catheters Market is expected to grow at the CAGR of 8.7% during 2015-2022 and it is estimated to be $45.7 billion by 2022. The global Catheters market is segmented on the basis of products and geography. The report on global catheters market forecast 2015-2022 provides detailed overview and predictive analysis of the market.Browse Full Report with Toc :The global catheters market is growing at a phenomenal rate because of many reasons such as increasing number geriatric population globally. Also the rising number of life style oriented diseases such as diabetes, Obesity etc. is leading to the growth of the marketSome of the factors hindering the growth of the market are the stringent rules and regulations imposed by the government on the manufacturers, it takes long time for the approval of the devices and this acts as a hurdle for the growth of the industry.Some of the major market players of the industry are Boston scientific Corporation, Abbott Laboratories and Johnson & Johnson. Major players include strategies such as innovations leading to product development with superior quality and aim to acquire worldwide expansion through spreading of distribution networks. Effective R&D processes prior to product launches to control high expenses and collaborations with major companies, comes in the key strategies implemented by market leaders.Browse here for all category Reports :Scope of the report1. Global catheters market by product 2012-2022 ($ billion)1.1. Cardiovascular catheters1.1.1. Electrophysiology catheters1.1.2. Ptca (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) balloon catheters1.1.3. Intravascular ultrasound (ivus) catheters1.1.4. Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (pta balloon) catheters1.1.5. Angiography catheters1.1.6. Pulmonary artery catheters1.2. Neurovascular catheter1.3. Urological catheters1.3.1. Foley catheters1.3.2. Intermittent catheters1.3.3. External catheters1.4. Intravenous catheters market1.4.1. Central venous catheters market1.4.2. Peripheral venous catheter1.5. Specialty catheters market1.5.1. Wound/ surgical drain catheters1.5.2. Oximetry catheters1.5.3. Thermodilution catheters1.5.4. IUI catheters market2. Global Aerogels market regional outlook 2012-2022 ($ billion)2.1. North America2.2. Europe2.3. Asia Pacific2.4. Middle East & Africa2.5. Central & South America2.6. Central & South AmericaCompany Profiles1.1. Arrow International Inc.1.2. Abbott Laboratories1.3. Boston Scientific1.4. Becton Dickinson Inc.1.5. Bard Medicals1.6. B. Braun Melsungen AG1.7. Johnson and Johnson1.8. Medtronic Inc.1.9. Edwards Lifesciences1.10. Rochester Medical Co.1.11. Hollister Inc.1.12. Vascular Solutions1.13. Medrad (Bayer AG)1.14. Coloplast1.15. Smiths Medical1.16. Argon Medical Devices INC1.17. Siemens Medical Devices1.18. Stryker1.19. Goodman Co LTDContact Us :Jennifer SmithOffice 1094109 Vernon HouseFriar LaneNottinghamNG1 6DQPhone : +448081890034 (UK)Email : sales@briskinsights.comWebsite :About Us :Brisk Insights is a global market research firm. Our insightful analysis is focused on developed and emerging markets. We identify trends and forecast markets with a view to aid businesses identify market opportunities optimize strategies.Working in a highly dynamic and multi-dimensional business makes decision making complex. Effective business decisions are a result of the synthesis of market information. Our Research and data analysis is an efficient and cost-effective way of providing robust market analysis and can yield highly valuable intelligence relating to consumers, competitors and markets.Office 1094109 Vernon HouseFriar LaneNottingham Research Delivers Insight into Spains Mining Fiscal Regime: H2 2015 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/517344 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Spains Mining Fiscal Regime: H2 2015 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"DescriptionTimetrics Spanish Fiscal Regime Report outlines the governing bodies, governing laws, permits and tax-related information on four commodities: nickel, copper, gold and lead.SummaryTimetric's fiscal regime report covers Spain, which is a large-scale producer of mineral commodities such as pyrites, copper, lead, zinc, tungsten, uranium, potash, and chloride. The Spanish mining industry is one of the most diversified in Europe, primarily producing industrial minerals and stone.Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at:ScopeThe report outlines governing bodies, governing laws, permit and key fiscal terms which includes corporate income tax, withholding tax, depreciation, loss carry forward and value added tax (VAT).Reasons To BuyGain an overview of Spains mining fiscal regimeKey HighlightsThe Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade proposes and executes government policy on energy, industrial development, tourism and telecommunication, in SpainThe General Department of Mines ensures the development of functions established by royal decree in the field of miningLaw 22/1973 is the main governing law for the Spanish mining industryLaw 6/1977 came into force in 1977. Its main purpose is to promote and develop exploration, research, and mining revenues to ensure the supply of raw materials to Spanish industry.1 Executive Summary2 The Spanish Mining Industry Governing Bodies2.1 Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism (El Ministerio de Industria, Energia y Turismo)2.2 The General Department of Mines (La Subdireccion General de Minas)3 The Spanish Mining Industry Governing Laws3.1 Law 22/1973 of July 213.2 Law 6/1977 Development of Mining4 The Spanish Mining Industry Mining Permits4.1 Exploration permit4.2 Research Permit4.3 Exploitation Permit5 The Spanish Mining Industry Key Fiscal Terms5.1 Corporate Income Tax5.2 Withholding Tax5.3 Depreciation5.4 Loss Carry Forward5.5 Value Added Tax (VAT)Browse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reportsat:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. Nachiket90 Sate Street,Suite 700 Albany,NY 12207 USATel: +1-518-621-2074Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Aerospace & Life Science Testing Certification Market Trends and Forecast 2016 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=9530 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Aerospace and life science testing certification is an extremely important activity in the service industry. Testing and certification helps the manufacturers to meet the quality standards both internally and externally. Testing assures the end user that manufacturers have followed all the rules and regulations and maintained standards while manufacturing. Testing and inspection ensures that the products have met the specific standards. Certification is used to certify that a specific product met the basic standards. These standards are fixed by government and different standardization institutions. Based on application testing and certification market is segmented into aerospace and life science. Aerospace market is further segmented into airframes, rotor systems, avionics, passenger service unit and lightning.Life science market is further subdivided into environment, pharmaceutical, personal care, food and agriculture. Strict regulatory norms are acting as a prime driver for aerospace and life science testing certification market. Aerospace and life science testing certification service is providing more advanced security solution for the industry due to increased use of modern technology and effective communication. Quality of service, reliability and enhanced inspection along with proper safety standards are the key factors on which aerospace and life science testing certification depends. There is a substantial growth security and safety standards in aviation due to some major air crash incident which took place in recent past. The factors responsible for some of these crashes were structural failure or aircrafts which occurred due to faulty avionics, or blades or problem in aircraft engine system. Testing and certification helps to avoid such incidents as the faults are detected while in the testing phase and certification is given only after the aircrafts pass the certification tests.More Information:Asia-Pacific is the most attractive region for aerospace and life science testing certification market. Strict regulatory norms in the Asia-pacific region is mainly driving the aerospace and life science testing certification market as safety standards are being increase in different countries of Asia pacific. In addition, awareness among the end-users is also driving the aerospace and life science testing certification market in this region as consumers have become more cautious about their own safety in every aspect and depends on those equipments which are certified only. Outsourcing of testing and certification services is another factor which is further driving the aerospace and life science testing certification market. Thus increase in productivity and less time consumption without compromising on cost drives the market. Escalating demand for flight safety and enhanced security features in the emerging countries like India and China is also driving the aerospace and life science testing certification market.The North America and Europe market for aerospace and life science testing certification is expected to grow at a steady pace over the forecast period. Steady recovery from the recent economic meltdown is responsible for the growth of business activities and service industry in North America which is driving the market for aerospace and life science testing certification in the region. The aerospace and life science testing certification market in Europe is mainly driven by enhanced security features and strict certification standards. Thus the market is expected to continue its growth at a steady pace over the forecast period. Europe market faced steep challenge in the recent economic meltdown and is recovering at a steady pace which also in turn increased the demand for aerospace and life science testing certification market due to betterment of economic scenario.Some of the key participants in the industry include BSI Group, Bureau Veritas, Dayton T. Brown Inc., Dekra Certification GmbH, ALS Global, Eurofins Scientific, ASTM International, Exova, and Intertek Group PLC among others.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 insights for decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, TMR employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Mr. Sudip. S90 State Street Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Research on Pakistan Power Market 2016 Industry Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Research & Forecast 2030 http://goo.gl/sW3IIZ Pakistan Power Market Outlook to 2030 : Pakistan Power provides an detailed overview of Pakistan Power scenario.This report on Pakistan Power also includes an review of trial numbers as well as their (Pakistan Power) average enrollment in uppermost/top countries which are conducted worldwide.Pakistan Power report also covers disease clinical trials by country (G7 & E7), sponsor type, region, trial, research, review, Size status as well as end points status.Report Pakistan Power also Includes prominent drugs for in-progress trials (Note: based on number of ongoing trials and reviews).Get Sample Copy of Report Here :The report covers detailed analysis and forecast of important market dynamics of Pakistan Power industry including market drivers and restraints. It also evaluates future growth & demand opportunities for its stake holders. The report throws light on upstream and downstream markets of Pakistan Power industry. The report provides detailed analysis of production price, production capacity, production volume, production value, production cost or profit margin and supply & demand analysis/forecast.Scope of Pakistan Power Report:-1. This report includes a snapshot of all over the world clinical trials and reviews landscape on Pakistan Power scenario.2. Report on Pakistan Power also provides high level data related to the Global clinical research by country (G7 & E7), sponsor type, region, trial, review, size status as well as end points status on Pakistan Power scenario3. Report reviews top companies involved in Pakistan Power as well as provides e all trials (Trial title, Phase, Research and Status) pertaining to the company on Pakistan Power scenario.4. This report provides all the unaccomplished trials on Pakistan Power scenario (Withdrawn, Terminated) with reason for unaccomplishment on Pakistan Power.About Us:Chem Report Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: Chem Report StoreEmail: Jessica@ChemicalReportStore.com Global Polymer and Thermoplastic Micro Molding Market to be Valued at US$763.6 Million by 2019 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1498 Thermoplastic micro parts are widely used in optical fibers, packaging, medicines, mechanical parts, etc. Micro molding is the technology used to manufacture these thermoplastic micro parts. The polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market offers products such as thermoplastics, thermosets, and some elastomers commonly utilized in the micro injection molding process to develop micro parts. The parts designed through micro injection molding are less than one millimeter in size and weigh less than one milligram.Global Polymer and Thermoplastic Micro Molding Market Growing at 14.2% CAGR from 2013 to 2019In 2012, the global polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market held a valuation of US$308.0 million and is forecast to be valued at US$763.6 million by 2019. The polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market is expected to grow at a positive CAGR of 14.2% during the period between 2013 and 2019.Get FREE PDF Brochure For More Professional And Technical Insights :The cost-effectiveness of these products has led to a rise in demand from the polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market. The increase in the number of minimally invasive surgeries (MIS) and advanced technologies in the fields of micro optics and micro fluids has further boosted the growth of the polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market. However, regions such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America may not contribute significantly to the growth of the polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market, due to the lack of awareness.Demand from Medical and Healthcare Industry Drives Polymer and Thermoplastic Micro Molding Products MarketThe polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market is segmented depending upon the usage of micro molding products across various industries such as automotive, medical, telecom fiber optics, micro drive systems and control, and others. In 2012, the medical and healthcare industry led the demand from the polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market. 35% of the demand for polymer and thermoplastic micro molded products came from this industry. Due to the rapid growth of micro fluidics technology, this segment of the polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market is expected to grow rapidly from 2013 to 2019.The extensive use of micro molded products in the automotive industry is expected to cross the US$150 million mark by 2019. The rising demand for micro molding products in automotive applications can be attributed to the increase in the manufacture of automobiles throughout the world.In the forecast period, the growth of the polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market in the telecom fiber optics segment will occur at a rapid CAGR of 13.8%, and the micro drive systems and control segment would grow at an even higher CAGR of 14%.North America Dominates Global Polymer and Thermoplastic Micro Molding MarketDue to the high demand for micro molding products across various industries and thanks to its supportive environment for technological advancement, North America dominates the global polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market. In 2012, approximately 44% of the total revenue was contributed by North America.In Europe, Germany alone accounts for almost half of the total polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market owing to its leading position in automobile manufacturing and increasing healthcare expenditure. The polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market in Europe is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13.5% from 2013 to 2019. By 2019, the European polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market is expected to be valued at US$219 million.Japan dominates the global polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market in the Asia Pacific region. The polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period.Key Players in the MarketSome of the prominent players in the global polymer and thermoplastic micro molding market are Accumold, American Precision Products, Makuta Technics, Micromold Inc, Micromolding Solutions, Precimold Inc, Rapidwerks, Rolla AG, Stack Plastics, and Stamm and Sovrin Plastics.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.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700New York Oil and Chemicals Storage Industry in Africa 2016 Market Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Research & Forecast 2022 http://goo.gl/RT8OgX http://goo.gl/kCWkJB Oil and Chemicals Storage in Africa, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company ProfilesSummaryThe report "Oil and Chemicals Storage in Africa Market Outlook" provides in depth analysis on Oil and Chemicals Storage market in Africa with forecasts upto year 2025. This report analyzes the Oil and Chemicals Storage market scenario in Africa (also includes renewable energy, nuclear, conventional thermal and large hydro sources) and includes future outlook upto 2025. The report ( Oil and Chemicals Storage Market in Africa ) highlights installed capacity as well as power generation trends in Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage market from 2001 till year 2025. Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage Market Research Report also provides company snapshots of some of the major Oil and Chemicals Storage market participants.Scope:-The report analyses global renewable power market, global Oil and Chemicals Storage market, Africa power market, Africa renewable power market and Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage market. The scope of the research includes -- Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage market includes a brief introduction on global carbon emissions.Do Enquiry Before Purchasing Here :- Report on global Oil and Chemicals Storage market also provides brief introduction on global primary energy consumption on Oil and Chemicals Storage market scenario.- An review on Africa power market, highlighting installed capacity Oil and Chemicals Storage Market trends, Oil and Chemicals Storage generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources Oil and Chemicals Storage energy scenario.- Report "Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage market" covered for the historical period 2001-2014 and Oil and Chemicals Storage Market forecast in Africa during period 2015-2025.- Oil and Chemicals Storage Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), concentrated solar power (CSP), solar photovoltaic (PV), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Overview of the global Oil and Chemicals Storage market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major Oil and Chemicals Storage countries in 2014 and key owners information of various regions on Oil and Chemicals Storage market scenario.- Oil and Chemicals Storage Power market scenario in Africa and provides detailed Oil and Chemicals Storage market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with Oil and Chemicals Storage forecasts up to 2025.Get Sample Copy of Report Here :Reasons to buy- The report (Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage market) will enhance your decision making capability time sensitive manner.- Oil and Chemicals Storage Africa Market report will help you to identify key growth as well as investment opportunities in Africa Oil and Chemicals Storage renewable power market.- Facilitate decision-making based on deep historic (2001-2014) and forecast data (upto 2025) for Oil and Chemicals Storage market in Africa.- Oil and Chemicals Storage Africa Market report will help you to position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the Oil and Chemicals Storage industrys growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.About Us:QY Market Research 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 Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: QY Market ResearchEmail: sales@qymarketresearch.com High Performance Pigments Market Forecast Report to 2022: Grand View Research, Inc. http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/high-performance-pigments-market http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/high-performance-pigments-market/request www.grandviewresearch.com The global High Performance Pigments Market is expected to reach USD 6.32 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing of automotive coatings demand on account of increasing automobile production particularly in Asia Pacific is expected to remain a key driving factor for the global High Performance Pigments Market.The growth of global personal care industry is also expected to have a positive influence on the market growth. Volatile raw material prices coupled with the high price of these pigments is expected to remain a key challenge for market participants. The market displays high competition among its industry participants which has resulted in companies taking strong measures to reduce manufacturing costs and yet provide superior quality products.Inorganic high performance pigments emerged as the leading product segment with demand share exceeding 60% of the global market in 2014. However, organic high performance pigments are presumed to witness a faster growth rate on account of changing customer buying patterns and favorable regulatory scenario.Browse full research report on Global High Performance Pigments Market:Further key findings from the report suggest: Global High Performance Pigments Market demand was 154.8 kilo tons in 2014 and is expected to reach 233.0 kilo tons by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.2%from 2015 to 2022. Coatings were the leading application segment and accounted for 59.9% of total market volume in 2014. Growth of global automotive coatings industry is expected to drive this segment over the forecast period. It is also expected to witness the highest growth of 5.4% over the forecast period. Developments in the ink jet printing technology are expected to lead high performance pigment demand in the ink industry. Europe dominated the global market with demand share estimated at 31.8% in 2014. Developed markets of North America and Europe have had their dominance in the past. However, the recent economic downturn critically impacted key end-use industry growth in these regions. Recovery of U.S. automotive industry from the economic downturn is expected to re-establish high performance pigment demand in North America. Asia Pacific is expected to witness the highest growth of 6.0% from 2015 to 2022. Increasing automobile production in China, India, Thailand and Indonesia is expected to drive the regional market over the forecast period. The global high performance pigment industry was once recognized by a few multinational corporations. However, the advent of globalization has led new entrants in the industry. Companies have been taking key strategic initiatives to enhance their product portfolio and penetrate the market deeper by targeting applications such as cosmetics, inks, and plastics. Some leading companies in the global market include Sun Chemical, Clariant, BASF, Ferro, Heubach, Sudarshan Chemical Industries Ltd, Merck, Eckart Effect Pigments and Horst Chemicals Zhuhai Co. Ltd.Read detailed report or request for sample of this research report:Grand View Research has segmented the high performance pigments market on the basis of product, application and region:High Performance Pigment Product Outlook (Volume, Kilo Tons, Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) Organic InorganicHigh Performance Pigment Application Outlook (Volume, Kilo Tons, Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) Coatings Plastics Inks Cosmetics OthersHigh Performance Pigment Regional Outlook (Volume, Kilo Tons, Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) North Americao U.S. Europeo Germanyo Franceo UK Asia Pacifico Chinao India Middle East & Africa Central & South Americao BrazilGrand 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, IncWeb: Brain Injury Clinical Trials Review 2016 By Global Market Research Store http://goo.gl/z7Vnpa Brain Injury Global 2016 Clinical Trials Review, H2 provides an detailed overview of Brain Injury scenario.Report includes top line data relating on Brain Injury Global clinical trials scenario.This report on Brain Injury also includes an review of trial numbers as well as their ( Brain Injury ) average enrollment in uppermost/top countries which are conducted worldwide.Brain Injury report also covers disease clinical trials by country (G7 & E7), sponsor type, region, trial status as well as end points status.Report Brain Injury also Includes prominent drugs for in-progress trials (Note: based on number of ongoing trials).Get Free Sample Report :Scope of Brain Injury Report:-1. This report includes a snapshot of worldwide clinical trials landscape on Brain Injury scenario.2. Report on Brain Injury also provides top level data related to the Global clinical trials by country (G7 & E7), sponsor type, region, trial status as well as end points status on Brain Injury scenario3. Report reviews top companies involved in Brain Injury as well as provides enlists all trials (Trial title, Phase, and Status) pertaining to the company on Brain Injury scenario.4. This report provides all the unaccomplished trials on Brain Injury scenario (Withdrawn, Terminated and Suspended) with reason for unaccomplishment on Brain Injury .5. Report on Brain Injury provides enrollment trends for the past five years.6. Report provides latest news for the past three months7. Report Also Includes Top news in past 3 months on Brain Injury clinical trials review scenario.About Us:Market Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: Market Research StoreEmail: sales@marketresearchstore.com Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition Market 2016 Global Industry Analysis available in new report http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-marine-seismic-equipment-acquisition-market-2015.html http://goo.gl/knDzVp Global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition Market 2016The Global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition Market 2016 focuses on global major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, specification, contact information, capacity, product price, profit, capacity, Production, Supply, Sales, cost, revenue and Demand Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth research report on Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition. This report covers every aspect of the global market, starting from the basic market information and advancing further to various significant criteria, based on which, the Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition market is segmented.The report provides key statistics of market and valuable source of guidance and direction for companies. The Global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition 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 Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition market. The market size is estimated in terms of revenue (US$) and production volume in this report.Market predictions along with the statistical nuances presented in the report render an insightful view of the Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition market.To Read Complete Report:The Global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition Industry provides a basic overview of the industry including Definition, Specifications, Classification, Applications, Industry Chain Structure, Industry Regional Overview, Industry Policy Analysis, Structure Analysis, Raw Material Suppliers, Price Analysis, Equipment Suppliers, Price Analysis, Labor Cost, Manufacturing Cost and Other Costs. The Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition market analysis is provided for the international markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.The study Global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition Industry 2016 is a detailed report scrutinizing statistical data related to the global market. This report also presents Global Production, Sales, Revenue, Import, Export and Consumption. Production is separated by regions, technology and applications, equipment, client survey, marketing channels, industry development trend and proposals, Analysis cover upstream raw materials and downstream raw material is also carried out.Furthermore, the factors on which the companies compete in the market have been evaluated in the report. The report offers a close summary of the key segments within the market. The competitive framework of the Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition market in terms of the global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition 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.In conclusion, it is a deep research report on global Marine Seismic Equipment & Acquisition industry.Download Sample Report:Major Points Covered in Table of Contents: Industry Overview Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis Global Production, Supply US Production Supply Sales and Demand Analysis EU Production Supply Sales and Demand Analysis China Production Supply Sales and Demand Analysis Japan production Supply Sales and Demand Analysis Rest of the World Production Supply Sales and Demand Analysis Sales and Revenue Analysis Different Specifications and Applications Analysis Supplier (manufacturer), Distributor, Buyer (customer) Contact Information Manufacturer, Distributor, Downstream Client Companies Data Analysis Conclusion on Industry ResearchAbout 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. 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.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. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@qyresearchgroup.com Global Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Market 2016 - Market Size,Trends and Forecast Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-silicon-carbide-abrasive-adhesive-discs-consumption-2016-53930 http://goo.gl/1Ntkpg Global Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry 2016 Market Analysis Survey Research Growth and Forecast ReportThe report provides a basic overview of Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs industry including definitions, applications and industry chain structure. Global market analysis and Chinese domestic market analysis are provided with a focus on history, developments, trends and competitive landscape of the market. A comparison between the international and Chinese situation is also offered.Global Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry Research Report 2016 also focuses on development policies and plans for the industry as well as a consideration of a cost structure analysis. Capacity production, market share analysis, import and export consumption and price cost production value gross margins are discussed.A key feature of this report is it focus on major industry players, providing an overview, product specification, product capacity, production price and contact information for Global Top15 companies. This enables end users to gain a comprehensive insight into the structure of the international and Chinese Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs industry. Development proposals and the feasibility of new investments are also analyzed. Companies and individuals interested in the structure and value of the Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs industry should consult this report for guidance and direction.Browse Full Report with TOC @Table of ContentsChapter One Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry Overview1.1 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Definition(Product Picture and Specifications)1.2 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Classification and Application1.3 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry Chain Structure1.4 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry Overview1.5 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry History1.6 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry Competitive Landscape1.7 Silicon Carbide Abrasive Adhesive Discs Industry International and Global Development ComparisonGet Free Sample @About Us:MarketResearchStore.com 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 US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Life Insurance In Austria, Key Opportunities and Operator Business Models To 2019 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/536346 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Life Insurance in Austria, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"DescriptionSynopsisTimetrics 'Life Insurance in Austria, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers and challenges in the Austrian life insurance segment.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Austrian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.SummaryTimetrics ' Life Insurance in Austria, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Austrian life insurance segment, including:The Austrian life insurance segments growth prospects by life insurance categoryKey trends, drivers and challenges for the life insurance segmentA comprehensive overview of the Austrian economy and demographicsThe various distribution channels in the Austrian life insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in AustriaDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Austrian insurance industryDownload Detail Report With Complete TOC at:ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the life insurance segment in Austria:It provides historical values for the Austrian life insurance segment for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Austrian life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2019.It analyzes the various distribution channels for life insurance products in Austria.It profiles the top life insurance companies in Austria and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Austrian life insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Austrian life insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the life insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Austrian insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsThe life segment is the second-largest in the Austrian insurance industry and accounted for 35.4% of its gross written premium in 2014.A decline in gross written premium was recorded during 20102013, primarily due to the aftereffects of the global financial crisis of 2009, and changes in the countrys tax structure.Several regulations relating to capital investment in state-aided old-age insurance have been altered to improve the life segments performance.In October, 2015, the FMA passed new regulations to help insurers implement Solvency II standards.Solvency II is the new regulatory framework for insurers and reinsurers in Europe. It is a risk-based capital regime, expected to come into effect in January 2016.The life segments distribution network was led by bancassurance in 2014, followed by direct marketing and brokers.Table of Contents1 Key Facts and Highlights2 Executive Summary3 Introduction3.1 What is this Report About?3.2 Definitions3.3 Methodology4 Economy and Demographics5 Life Insurance Outlook5.1 Key Drivers5.2 Key Trends5.3 Challenges5.4 Life Insurance Growth Prospects by Category5.5 Individual Life Insurance5.5.1 Individual pension insurance5.5.2 Individual endowment insurance5.5.3 Individual term life insurance5.5.4 Other individual life insurance5.6 Group Life Insurance5.6.1 Superannuation insurance5.6.2 Other group life insurance5.7 Life Insurance Growth Prospects by Product Type5.7.1 Individual single-premium insurance5.7.2 Individual non-single-premium insurance5.7.3 Group single-premium insurance5.7.4 Group non-single-premium insurance5.7.5 Total linked insurance business5.7.6 Total non-linked insurance businessBrowse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reportsat:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. Nachiket90 Sate Street,Suite 700 Albany,NY 12207 USATel: +1-518-621-2074Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Reinsurance in Singapore, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 illuminated by New Research Report Published By :MarketResearchReports.biz http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/485566 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz MarketResearchReports.Biz announces addition of new report Reinsurance in Singapore, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 to its database.DescriptionTimetrics 'Reinsurance in Singapore, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers and challenges in the Singaporean reinsurance segment. It provides values for key performance indicators such as written premium, reinsurance ceded and reinsurance accepted during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019).The report also analyses information pertaining to the competitive landscape in the country, gives a comprehensive overview of the Singaporean economy and demographics, and provides detailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Singaporean insurance industry.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise to enable reinsurers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and access profiles of reinsurers operating in the country.SummaryTimetrics 'Reinsurance in Singapore, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Singaporean reinsurance segment, including:The Singaporean reinsurance segments growth prospects by reinsurance ceded from direct insuranceA comprehensive overview of the Singaporean economy and demographicsDetailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Singaporean insurance industryThe competitive landscape in the Singaporean reinsurance segmentScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the reinsurance segment in Singapore:It provides historical values for the Singaporean reinsurance segment for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Singaporean reinsurance segment, and market forecasts to 2019.It provides a detailed analysis of the reinsurance ceded from various direct insurance segments in Singapore, and the reinsurance segment's growth prospects.Download Full Version PDF report at:Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Singaporean reinsurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Singaporean reinsurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Singaporean insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsDuring the review period, Singapores reinsurers were exposed to the impact of natural disasters as a result of their operations in flood-prone countries such as Australia, Japan, Thailand, China and New Zealand.The Singaporean government offers incentives to reinsurers through its OIB scheme, the most widely used tax incentive in the countrys insurance industry.Singaporean insurance companies writing offshore business were left exposed and incurred considerable losses due to these natural disasters, and only recorded moderate growth during the review period.The reinsurance segment is highly competitive, and acts as a hub for international insurance providers. It is the main reinsurance segment of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and is heavily dependent on offshore business.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Norway, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 illuminated by New Research Report Published By :MarketResearchReports.biz http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/487960 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ MarketResearchReports.Biz announces addition of new report Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Norway, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 to its database.DescriptionPersonal Accident and Health Insurance in Norway, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019SynopsisTimetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Norway, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers, challenges in the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Norwegian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.SummaryTimetrics ' Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Norway, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment, including:The Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segments growth prospects by insurance categoryKey trends, drivers and challenges for the personal accident and health insurance segmentA comprehensive overview of the Norwegian economy and demographicsThe various distribution channels in the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the personal accident and health insurance segment in NorwayDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Norwegian insurance industryDownload Full Version PDF report at:ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the personal accident and health insurance segment in Norway:It provides historical values for the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2019.It analyzes the various distribution channels for personal accident and health insurance products in Norway.It profiles the top personal accident and health insurance companies in Norway, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the personal accident and health insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Norwegian insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsThe Norwegian personal accident and health insurance segment grew at a review-period CAGR of 5.6%.The Norwegian personal accident and health segment has experience changes such as an increase in strategic alliances in investment portfolios, and changing customer priorities in terms of distribution.Direct marketing helps to educate potential clients about insurance products, and e-commerce enables insurers to reach younger, more technologically adept customers.The healthcare system is robust and cost-effective, and is funded by taxes; its presence is a challenge for private health insurers.Rises in healthcare expenses, the aging population and life expectancy are expected to support the growth of private health insurance over the forecast period.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Recent Research into Global LED Lights Consumption 2016 just published http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/711011 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Global LED Lights Consumption 2016 Market Research Report provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"DescriptionThe Global LED Lights Consumption 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the LED Lights market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the LED Lights industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Secondly, the report states the global LED Lights market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the LED Lights market analysis is provided for major regions including USA, Europe, China and Japan, and other regions can be added. For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at:Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the LED Lights industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of LED Lights1.1 Definition and Specifications of LED Lights1.1.1 Definition of LED Lights1.1.2 Specifications of LED Lights1.2 Classification of LED Lights1.3 Applications of LED Lights1.4 Industry Chain Structure of LED Lights1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of LED Lights1.5.1 Industry Overview of LED Lights1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of LED Lights1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of LED Lights1.7 Industry News Analysis of LED Lights2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of LED Lights2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of LED Lights2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of LED Lights2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of LED Lights2.4 Other Costs Analysis of LED Lights2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of LED Lights2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of LED LightsBrowse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reportsat:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. Nachiket90 Sate Street,Suite 700 Albany,NY 12207 USATel: +1-518-621-2074Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Global M-Commerce Market 2015 is to grow at a CAGR of 31.6 % by 2022 : Industry Research Report http://goo.gl/clNAfG http://goo.gl/CEUPb2 M-Commerce - Global Market Outlook (2015-2022)Global M-Commerce market is accounted for $155.9 billion in 2015 and is poised to reach $1,067.1 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 31.6% during the forecast period. The major driving factors for M-Commerce market are escalating adoption of smart devices, improved broadband connectivity, cheaper services, etc. M-Commerce service providers are facing challenges in terms of reliance on internet networks, monetization of user base, and severe competition. North America and Europe are estimated to be the biggest markets in terms of revenue, while Asia-Pacific and Middle East are projected to experience amplified market traction, during the forecast period.Request For Report Sample Here:Some of the key players in the global M-Commerce market are Visa, Walmart, The Home Depot, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Lowe's Companies, MasterCard, Ericsson, Gemalto, Mopay, Oxygen8, SAP and PayPal.Devices covered: Smartphones TabletsEnd-Use sectors covered: Retail/Service sector Financial service sector Telecommunication sector IT sector OthersDo Inquiry About This Report Here:Transaction Types covered: Mobile Banking M billing M booking M Retailing M-Wallet OthersRegions covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsAbout Market Research StoreMarket Research Store, we have market research reports from competent publishers. Our Research Specialists have thorough knowledge about offerings from different publishers and different reports on respective industries. They will help you refine search parameters and get desired results at your doorstep. Here you can review the complete range of available reports, review the scope of study and methodology of reports. Apart from the published market research reports, we also provide customized study on any topic to meet the varied requirements of our clients.Whether you are looking for new product trends, competitive analysis or study on existing or emerging markets, Market Research Store has best offerings and expertise to get the critical information for you. You can also choose the option to purchase full reports or sections from the report or only charts or tables.Contact us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442, USAUSA Tel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@marketresearchstore.com Global IT Outsourcing Market 2015 is to grow at a CAGR of 6.2 % by 2022 : Industry Research Report http://goo.gl/EeYdGv http://goo.gl/pPRb2X IT Outsourcing - Global Market Outlook (2015-2022)Global IT Outsourcing Market is accounted for $314.92 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $481.37 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 6.2% during the forecast period. Improved company focus, gaining access to exceptional capabilities and reduced costs are some of the major factors driving the market. Whereas, factors such as loss of control and reduced employee morale are hindering the growth of IT Outsourcing market. New market opportunities and trends with cloud computing and new business models are prompting the IT infrastructure outsourcing services market. Asia pacific and Latin America are expected to witness prospective growth due to expansion by multinationals into these regions.Request For Report Sample Here:Some of the key players in the global IT Outsourcing Market are Infosys, iGate, HCL, Cognizant, CGI, Capgemini, Wipro, Unisys, TCS and ITC Infotech.Security Types covered: Gain sharing Outtasking Co-SourcingEnd Users covered: Small and Medium enterprises Large EnterprisesDo Inquiry About This Report Here:Applications covered: Telecom and IT Retail Manufacturing Healthcare Government and Public Utilities Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) Aerospace, Defense and Intelligence OthersRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsAbout Market Research StoreMarket Research Store, we have market research reports from competent publishers. Our Research Specialists have thorough knowledge about offerings from different publishers and different reports on respective industries. They will help you refine search parameters and get desired results at your doorstep. Here you can review the complete range of available reports, review the scope of study and methodology of reports. Apart from the published market research reports, we also provide customized study on any topic to meet the varied requirements of our clients.Whether you are looking for new product trends, competitive analysis or study on existing or emerging markets, Market Research Store has best offerings and expertise to get the critical information for you. You can also choose the option to purchase full reports or sections from the report or only charts or tables.Contact us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442, USAUSA Tel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@marketresearchstore.com Global Headphone Market 2016-2021: Industry Supply, Demand, Growth and Forecast Report http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-chinese-headphone-market-2016-industry-trends.html http://goo.gl/NTwJbF http://goo.gl/RlvGIA http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/ The report Global and China Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry Starting with a broad overview, the report narrows down to offer an overview of the Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry globally as well as with a specific focus on China. By conducting a check of the current status of the Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry, the report is able to then delve deeper into the various forces that directly and indirectly impact the Market.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 Headphone Market 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 Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry. In order to obtain specific information about the Market 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 Market for Headphone Market 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 Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry in the context of both China and the world, is studied in detail.Request For Sample:Table of ContentChapter One Introduction of Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of Headphone Market 2016-20211.2 Development of Headphone Market 2016-2021 Industry1.3 Status of Headphone Market 2016-2021 IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of Headphone Market 2016-20212.1 Development of Headphone Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of Headphone Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of Headphone Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production InformationFull Report With Toc @:MRS Research group 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@mrsresearchgroup.comWebsite: Global Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021: Industry Supply, Demand, Growth and Forecast Report http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-chinese-metal-base-printed-circuit-board.html http://goo.gl/5fZEW8 http://goo.gl/fXGyoV http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/ The report global and China Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry Starting with a broad overview, the report narrows down to offer an overview of the Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry globally as well as with a specific focus on China. By conducting a check of the current status of the Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry, the report is able to then delve deeper into the various forces that directly and indirectly impact the Market.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 Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 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 Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry. In order to obtain specific information about the Market 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 Market for Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 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 Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry in the context of both China and the world, is studied in detail.Request For Sample:Table of ContentChapter One Introduction of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-20211.2 Development of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Industry1.3 Status of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-20212.1 Development of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of Metal Base Printed Circuit Board (MPCB) Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production InformationFull Report With Toc @:Contact US:MRS Research group 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@mrsresearchgroup.comWebsite: NurnbergMesse Wins Vision Excellence Award www.pool4tool.com Stuttgart | Vienna, April 25, 2016 NurnbergMesse is one of the largest exposition companies in the world, and last week the company was recognized for their outstanding achievements with the POOL4TOOL Vision Excellence Award 2015. Once a year, the solution specialist gives the award to an extraordinary client project. NurnbergMesse has been able to increase the companys transparency and the consistency of their procurement of services with POOL4TOOL.The solution specialist, POOL4TOOL, gave NurnbergMesse the 2015 Vision Excellence Award for their innovation in the procurement of services. The celebratory award ceremony for the successful exhibition company took place at an exclusive event for POOL4TOOL clients in the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. The prize was accepted by Rainer Grol, the Head of the Central Purchasing Department at NurnbergMesse, and Heiko Menn, the Senior Manager and Deputy Department Head. Innovations are the result of vision and positive cooperation with our clients. For this, we would like to say thank you, said Thomas Dieringer, CEO of POOL4TOOL AG as he explained the meaning of the award. The previous winners of the award were the world market leader Grohe and the automotive specialist, HELLA.Transparency and Flexibility in Services ProcurementNurnbergMesse purchases many diverse products, including a wide range of services and construction services in particular. Procuring services is their core business. The demands are distinct and highly individualized, but Central Purchasing is still highly involved because the department handles all of the framework contracts. Planning, however, is still conducted by the buyers themselves. The services that were used did not always correspond with the purchase order. Other exposition companies are also working on optimization issues with the help of web-based solutions, but the holistic approach that NurnbergMesse has taken with POOL4TOOL is unique within this sector.The POOL4TOOL solution will soon solve problems that may arise during the process of ordering services by offering flexibility and support for the specific demands of Services Procurement. Services will no longer be acquired using a paper purchase order and description of the services; this process will now take place in POOL4TOOL. The status of the order can be viewed in the system at any time. This automation and standardization accelerates ordering and invoice processing procedures. The release workflows result in expedited payment releases.Ongoing Change ManagementBefore the implementation of the current tool, NurnbergMesse set up a standard process in the first phase of the project that was then reproduced in the second phase of the project. NurnbergMesse received support during the adjustment period at their organization from the Alengis Consultancy, which develops practice-approved methods and concepts for Procurement. Interdepartmental processes and procedures and concepts for the company-wide roll-out were established and successfully implemented in workshops, together with the project team. 220 employees were trained in a comprehensive program. The change management is ongoing. The processes, role concepts and approval workflows - including the value limit concept - that were theorized are now being put into practice to be evaluated. The challenge was to get the entire company to participate in the transformation process so that they would embrace these changes in the future. Central Purchasing played an important role in convincing the other departments and getting them on board.POOL4TOOL AG is the global market leader for electronic process optimization in "direct procurement", with locations in America and Asia and over 300 clients. The only worldwide All-in-One Supply Collaboration Platform brings together all process from product development through strategic procurement (sourcing), supplier management (SRM), indirect procurement (procurement), Supply Chain Management (SCM) up to Quality Management in one workflow-based solution. POOL4TOOL offers best practices from successful projects with global market leaders from the automotive,engineering and equipment construction, serial production and medical technology branches, as well as a unique supplier network with over 300,000 connected companies. Learn more atPOOL4TOOL AGKathrin KornfeldCorporate CommunicationsAltmannsdorfer Strae 91/191120 Vienna AC Blowing Agent Industry-China Market 2016, Industry Overview, Analysis, Research, Demand, Growth and Trends http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=711001 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=711001 The China AC Blowing Agent Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the AC Blowing Agent industry.The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The AC Blowing Agent market analysis is provided for the China markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and Bill of Materials cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.The report focuses on China major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The AC Blowing Agent industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.With 156 tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.To Download Sample Report With TOC @Table of Content7.10 Weifang Yaxing Chemical7.10.1 Company Profile7.10.2 Product Picture and Specification7.10.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.10.4 Weifang Yaxing Chemical SWOT Analysis8 Price and Gross Margin Analysis8.1 Analysis of Price8.2 Gross Margin Analysis8.3 Price Comparison by Regions8.4 Price Analysis of Different AC Blowing Agent Product Types8.5 Market Share Analysis of Different AC Blowing Agent Price Levels8.6 Gross Margin Analysis of Different AC Blowing Agent Applications9 Marketing Trader or Distributor Analysis of AC Blowing Agent9.1 Marketing Channels Status of AC Blowing Agent9.2 Traders or Distributors of AC Blowing Agent with Contact Information9.3 Ex-work Price, Channel Price and End Buyer Price Analysis of AC Blowing Agent9.4 China Import, Export and Trade Analysis of AC Blowing Agent10 Development Trend of AC Blowing Agent Industry 2016-202110.1 Capacity and Production Overview of AC Blowing Agent 2016-202110.2 Production Market Share by Product Types of AC Blowing Agent 2016-202110.3 Sales and Sales Revenue Overview of AC Blowing Agent 2016-202110.4 China Sales of AC Blowing Agent by Applications 2016-202110.5 Import, Export and Consumption of AC Blowing Agent 2016-202110.6 Cost, Price, Revenue and Gross Margin of AC Blowing Agent 2016-2021To Enquire Regarding This Report @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Industry Trends on "Pea Protein Concentrates Industry-China" : Global Research, Size, Demand, Growth, Shares, Forecast 2016 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=711042 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=711042 The China Pea Protein Concentrates Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Pea Protein Concentrates industry.The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Pea Protein Concentrates market analysis is provided for the China markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and Bill of Materials cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.The report focuses on China major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Pea Protein Concentrates industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.With 142 tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.To Download Sample Report With TOC @Table of Content1 Industry Overview1.1 Definition and Specifications of Pea Protein Concentrates1.2 Classification of Pea Protein Concentrates1.3 Applications of Pea Protein Concentrates1.3.1 Meat Extenders & Analogs1.3.2 Nutritional Supplements1.3.3 Snacks1.3.4 Bakery Products1.3.5 Beverages1.3.6 Others1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Pea Protein Concentrates1.5 Industry Overview of Pea Protein Concentrates1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates1.7 Industry News Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2.1 Bill of Materials (BOM) of Pea Protein Concentrates2.2 BOM Price Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2.4 Depreciation Cost Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Pea Protein Concentrates2.7 China Price, Cost and Gross of Pea Protein Concentrates 2011-2016To Enquire Regarding This Report @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Wings for Autism Michael Saylor, 7, plays with his father Scott, both of Milwaukie, as they wait to board a plane during a Wings for Autism event at Portland International Airport on last year. (Kristyna Wentz-Graff/Staff) Oregon Health & Science University is looking for people with autism for a national registry that aims to accelerate research. The registry is open to anyone diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and their families. The idea is to gather genetic information from 50,000 people to give researchers a big pool of data to help them better understand the condition and find treatments. Researchers have linked about 50 genes to autism but they suspect as many as 300 may be involved in the disorder. They hope to gather information from men and women spanning a range of ages, backgrounds, races, geographic locations and socioeconomic situations. Besides providing genetic information, the participants will get a chance to take part in various studies. They will also be asked for feedback. Sponsored by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, the registry includes 21 sites. OHSU is in charge of signing up people in Oregon, southwest Washington and Hawaii. The University of Washington in Seattle is also involved. For more information, email spark@ohsu.edu or call 503-974-6478. -- Lynne Terry Providence Health & Services is offering free oral, head and neck screening this week for cancer. More than 100,000 people will be diagnosed with oral, head, neck or thyroid cancer this year, according to Providence. Symptoms include a lump or sore that doesn't heal, a persistent sore throat, difficulty swallowing, hoarseness or a change in the voice. Last year, Providence physicians examined more than 350 people. About half were referred for additional follow-ups and 40 needed further neck or head evaluations. Two people needed immediate consultations because they had abnormal growths indicative of cancer. The screenings take about 15 minutes. They include a doctor asking about symptoms and examining the patient's head, check, next, mouth and throat. To get screened, go to Providence Cancer Center, Jill Lamatta Learning Center, , Portland, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Wednesday. -- Lynne Terry McCauliff.JPG Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP) By Jonathan Bernstein Good news for democracy in the United States: Republican Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is restoring voting rights to some 200,000 citizens who were convicted of felonies, served their time and completed parole. While this move is likely to help Democrats (ex-felons in Virginia are disproportionately African-Americans, and black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats), it's wrong to cast it as a partisan move. Virginia did not represent the status quo nationally. It has been one of only 12 states where conviction on a felony strips you of voting rights for a lifetime. It would have been partisan not to restore the right. The default should be that every citizen in a democracy has the right to vote unless particularly strong reasons argue otherwise. "Because it would help one party" is not a strong reason. I oppose removing voting rights even for felons currently serving their sentences. Currently, only Vermont and Maine allow these prisoners to vote. And voting should be easy. Even though the U.S. has a high number of incarcerated people, the idea that this group would constitute a voting bloc with impressive political power is ridiculous. The only reason other than partisanship for not considering felons full citizens is symbolic: that citizenship, and therefore the vote, is reserved only for the best of us, and held only on good behavior. But that argument is hard to accept when it comes to those who have done their time and returned to society. The stronger case is that in a democracy, for better or worse, we are all citizens. So good for Terry McAuliffe for taking this step, whatever his motives. (c) 2016, Bloomberg View Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics. courthouse.JPG A view of the Multnomah County Courthouse in 2014 from the center of Chapman Square in downtown Portland. (Tony Hernandez/Staff) By David Rogers Oregonians will soon be receiving their ballots for the May election, but there is an incredibly important elected official that most voters will have no influence selecting: our county district attorney (DA). From 2004-2014, 78 percent of Oregon district attorney races were uncontested. In other words, nearly eight out of every 10 district attorney elections in Oregon were over before they began. When it comes to district attorney elections, our democracy has atrophied, and the implications for our communities and state are huge. We rely on elections to elevate public conversations around important issues. But with such a high rate of uncontested DA races, Oregon voters aren't able to weigh in with how we are feeling about the state of the criminal justice system. Furthermore, we now have multiple generations of voters who have never in their lifetimes had the opportunity to vote in a district attorney race that mattered. Such a dynamic means most of the public has little understanding of the role of DAs. Arguably, district attorneys are the most powerful people in our criminal justice system. They have the power to decide whether someone gets access to drug treatment or goes to jail. DAs decide whether to keep a young person in the juvenile justice system or push them into the adult system. DAs decide whether to seek the death penalty, and DAs have the most influence on racial disparity within our justice system. There is an atmosphere of inevitability and permanency connected to incumbent district attorneys in Oregon that has locked in the criminal justice status quo, and it is time to shine light on another contributing factor to that dynamic: gubernatorial appointments. Nearly half of all the current DAs were initially appointed to their offices by the governor at the time. Longtime district attorneys often retire early, leaving it to the governor to select the interim DA. The appointment process flies under the radar of the public and allows incumbent DAs to recommend their successor to the governor. Once in office, a sitting district attorney is very likely to be re-elected, so competition is scarce. In a healthy democracy, no elected official should be guaranteed re-election. Appointing interim district attorneys is one of the most important public safety and justice-related roles our governor has. If Oregon is going to successfully address core problems in our justice system, the governor needs to use a framework that identifies and appoints people who are willing and able to modernize and reform criminal justice policies and practices. And there is ample evidence our current policies need reforming. In the past 20 years, Oregon's prison population has doubled and our prison budget has more than quadrupled. Furthermore, Multnomah County just released research that shows severe racial disparity throughout all parts of its criminal justice system, including areas entirely within the DAs' power and discretion. Sadly, these are issues we won't be talking about this election. * David Rogers is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. 1trump.JPG Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pauses while addressing supporters during a campaign event at Crosby High School in Waterbury, Conn., Saturday, April 23, 2016. (The Associated Press) By The Washington Post editorial board Do you remember when Donald Trump crudely mocked the disability of a New York Times reporter, and then lied about having done so? No? That's just as the Republican candidate might hope. Now that he is nearing the Republican nomination, he says he will become more "presidential." After winning the New York primary, he referred to "Senator Cruz" instead of "Lyin' Ted." You can expect multitudes of office-seekers and sycophants to follow Chris Christie's craven path to believing, or pretending to believe, in a presidentialTrump. So it is important to remember. Remember that Trump said that Mexicans crossing the border are rapists, though "some, I assume, are good people." Remember that Trump falsely claimed that thousands of American Muslims had celebrated the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Remember that Trump insulted Carly Fiorina for her appearance: "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?" Remember, now that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has sought to make peace with Trump, that he insinuated that she had asked him a tough question because she was menstruating: "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." Remember that he called her a bimbo, sick, overrated and crazy. Remember that Trump lashed out at Kelly in the first place because she had recited some of the other names he has used for women he disliked: "'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs' and 'disgusting animals.' . . . You once told a contestant on 'Celebrity Apprentice' it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees." Remember that Trump, who never served in the armed forces, said that Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, was "not a war hero." McCain, after being shot down over North Vietnam, endured 51/2 years of torture and solitary confinement as he repeatedly refused offers of liberation unless all of his fellow prisoners would also be freed. "I like people who weren't captured," Trump said. Remember how Trump threatened a Chicago family who donated to a PAC opposing his candidacy: "They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!" Remember that Trump threatened and disparaged not just reporters who angered him but freedom of the press overall with a vow to "open up" the libel laws. Remember that Trump vowed to ban Muslims from entering the country, though he never explained how he would enforce this edict. Remember that Trump promised to round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and deport them, in what would be the largest forced population movement since Pol Pot's genocide of the Cambodian people, though he never explained how he would go about doing so. Remember that he cited "Operation Wetback" as a humane model for such a roundup. Remember that Trump promised to order American soldiers and intelligence officers to torture their prisoners. Remember that Trump, unlike virtually every scientist in the world, is "not a great believer in man-made climate change." Remember Trump's answer when asked whether there are racial disparities in law enforcement: "I've read where there are and I've read where there aren't. I mean, I've read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that." Remember that Trump said he would like to punch a protester in the face. Remember that Trump waxed nostalgic for "the old days," when protesters would be "carried out on stretchers." Remember that Trump said he would consider paying the legal fees for supporters who attacked protesters at his rally. Remember that Trump defended his campaign manager after the campaign manager roughly grabbed a reporter and then denied having touched her and called her "delusional" when she complained. Remember that Trump threatened to "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife to retaliate for an independent PAC ad that angered him. Remember that Trump lied about President Obama's birth certificate. Remember that he lied about Obama planning to admit 200,000 Syrian refugees. Remember that he lied about President George W. Bush trying to silence him because he supposedly opposed the Iraq War. Remember that he lied about the unemployment rate, the cost of building a border wall, the amount he could save by changing Medicare's drug plan and many other things. Remember that Trump vowed to kill the innocent children of suspected terrorists. "Winning is the antidote to a lot of things," Republican National CommitteeChairman Reince Priebus saidearlier this year. As Trump marches toward 1,237 delegates, others will emulate that amoral embrace. So remember. Winning is not an antidote to bigotry, violence, ignorance, insults and lies. (c) 2016, The Washington Post 1flint.JPG In this Feb. 26, 2016 file photo the Flint Water Plant tower is seen in Flint Mich. (The Associated Press) By Leonard Pitts, Jr. Dear white people: As you no doubt know, the water crisis in Flint, Mich., returned to the headlines last week with news that the state attorney general is charging three government officials for their alleged roles in the debacle. It makes this a convenient moment to deal with something that has irked me about the way this disaster is framed. Namely, the fact that people who look like you often get left out of it. Consider some of the headlines: The Racist Roots of Flint's Water Crisis - Huffington Post How A Racist System Has Poisoned The Water in Flint - The Root A Question of Environmental Racism - The New York Times As has been reported repeatedly, Flint is a majority black city with a 41 percent poverty rate, so critics ask if the water would have been so blithely poisoned, and if it would have taken media so long to notice, had the victims been mostly white. It's a sensible question, but whenever I hear it, I engage in a little thought experiment. I try to imagine what happened in Flint happening in Bowie, a city in Maryland where blacks outnumber whites, but the median household income is more than $100,000 a year and the poverty rate is about 3 percent. I can't. Then I try to imagine it happening in Morgantown, West Virginia, where whites outnumber blacks, the median household income is about $32,000 a year, and the poverty rate approaches 40 percent - and I find that I easily can. It helps that Bowie is a few minutes from Washington, D.C., while Morgantown is more than an hour from the nearest city of any size. My point is neither that race carries no weight nor that it had no impact on what happened in Flint. No, my point is only that sometimes, race is more distraction than explanation. Indeed, that's the story of our lives. To be white in America is to have been sold a bill of goods that there exists between you and people of color a gap of morality, behavior, intelligence and fundamental humanity. Forces of money and power have often used that perceived gap to con people like you into acting against their own self-interest. In the Civil War, white men too poor to own slaves died in grotesque numbers to protect the "right" of a few plutocrats to continue that despicable practice. In the Industrial Revolution, white workers agitating for a living wage were kept in line by the threat that their jobs would be given to "Negroes." In the Depression, white families mired in poverty were mollified by signs reading "Whites Only." You have to wonder what would happen if white people - particularly, those of modest means - ever saw that gap for the fiction it is? What if they ever realized you don't need common color to reach common ground? What if all of us were less reflexive in using race as our prism, just because it's handy? You see, for as much as Flint is a story about how we treat people of color, it is also - I would say more so - a story about how we treat the poor, the way we render them invisible. That was also the story of Hurricane Katrina. Remember news media's shock at discovering there were Americans too poor to escape a killer storm? Granted, there is a discussion to be had about how poverty is constructed in this country; the black poverty rate is higher than any other with the exception of Native Americans, and that's no coincidence. But it's equally true that, once you are poor, the array of slights and indignities to which you are subjected is remarkably consistent across that racial gap. That fact should induce you - and all of us - to reconsider the de facto primacy we assign this arbitrary marker of identity. After all, 37 percent of the people in Flint are white. But that's done nothing to make their water clean. Readers can reach Leonard Pitts at lpitts@miamiherald.com (c) 2016 The Miami Herald Vinh.JPG Vietnam's prominent blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh, left, and his assistant Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy stand together during a trial in Hanoi last month. A court in Hanoi sentenced Vinh, a former police officer and a son of a late government minister, to five years in prison for posting anti-state writings. Thuy was given three years in prison on the same charge. (AP Photo) By The Washington Post editorial board Nguyen Huu Vinh is a Vietnamese blogger better known by the name Ahn Ba Sam. He's no radical; he was once a police officer in the Ministry of Public Security in Hanoi, later a private investigator, and is the son of a former Vietnamese government minister who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union. After leaving the police, Vinh started several popular blogs that provided links to articles about social, political, economic and cultural issues in Vietnam, drawing from state media and from activists. The blogs were too much for Vietnam's authoritarian rulers, who control the major news outlets and restrict speech, association and religion. In May 2014, Vinh was detained, along with his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy. They were held in prison throughout last year, without trial, a period when Vietnam was in the final throes of negotiating with the United States over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Then, on March 23, the bloggers were put on trial, accused of "abusing rights to freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the state." Prosecutors said some of the articles on their site had "untruthful and groundless contents" that tarnished the country's image. Vinh was sentenced to five years in prison and his assistant to three years. Both insisted at the one-day trial they were innocent. The presiding judge thought otherwise, and said the articles they had posted "present a one-sided and pessimistic view, causing anxiety and worry, and affecting people's confidence" in the Communist Party and the government, and "go against the interests of the nation." Vietnam has previously prosecuted bloggers and discourages dissent in other ways, too. According to Human Rights Watch, last year at least 45 bloggers and rights activists were beaten by plainclothes agents. Late last year, the state's thugs badly beat up Nguyen Van Dai, a prominent human rights activist and lawyer. He led a workshop on human rights in early December in Nghe An province and was assaulted by plainclothes goons. On Dec. 16 in Hanoi, he was formally arrested and thrown into solitary confinement. His wife, Vu Minh Khanh, told us he has not been allowed visitors or contact with his family. He was told his arrest was for "conducting propaganda against the state." He was fighting for a freer and more open Vietnam. We have been hopeful that Vietnam's inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would nudge its rulers toward greater openness and tolerance, but Khanh said the human rights situation is "dreadful" and growing worse. Even though the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not explicitly about democracy, the United States ought to bring up human rights at every opportunity, to drive home the point that blogging and human rights workshops are consistent with an open and free society. President Obama, due to make his first visit to Vietnam next month, ought to carry the message personally. Vietnam's besieged bloggers and human rights defenders would find it encouraging. (c) 2016, The Washington Post nestle[1].jpg Nestle (File Photo) Nestle in Cascade Locks: A recent letter (April 8) suggests that the proposed Nestle Waters North America (NWNA) plant in Cascade Locks operations and water consumption be based on current environmental conditions. We couldn't agree more. NWNA is also concerned about water sustainability and how conditions affect families, farmers, the environment, consumers and businesses, and we are committed to being a responsible steward of the resources upon which we rely. Our due diligence includes comprehensive hydrogeological studies and ongoing monitoring of the springs and creeks. We've been collecting data on spring and creek flows since 2009. The recent period of low precipitation in Oregon allowed us to further our knowledge (and that of the city of Cascade Locks) about how local water resources respond to varying climatic conditions. If our project proceeds, ongoing monitoring of water resources would guide our water withdrawal decisions. With an average annual precipitation in Cascade Locks of 76 inches, our hydrogeological studies show that the amount of water drawn from the spring for this project would be well within sustainable limits. And, as a customer of Cascade Locks, NWNA will be subject to the same water use restriction placed on all customers of the city should drought conditions require that in the future. NWNA recognizes that community members have questions about the proposed Cascade Locks plant, and we would like to thank the letter's author for her perspective. We agree that sustainable use of water resources is beneficial to both the communities in which we operate as well as our own business. David G. Palais Redding, California Palais is a natural resource manager for Nestle Waters North America Inc. LNG export terminal: Who are the people who stopped a $6 billion liquefied natural gas terminal and over 200 miles of gas pipeline? How did we have the patience to fight LNG projects for 11-and-a-half years? We are a cross-section of America -- mothers, retirees, students and workers at every kind of job. A retired librarian led loud and vigorous rallies, and an energy company veteran explained global fossil fuel trends. A fisherman delivered passionate testimony about how salmon fishing on the Columbia River feeds his kids -- and his soul. A paper artist made sure we had fresh coffee at every meeting and event. A hospital administrator discovered errors and omissions in the small print and footnotes in company documents. A farmer told agency officials how losing land to a gas pipeline would jeopardize his future. We stayed focused on the same shared purpose -- to protect our communities and our children's future. We began as optimists and had moments of doubt. Now, in victory, we emerge once again as optimists, trusting in grass-roots power and ready to do battle with those who would destroy our communities and planet. Perhaps Brett VandenHeuvel, Columbia Riverkeeper's executive director, expressed it best: "This was not an orchestrated campaign. This was a campaign where ideas flowed around kitchen tables and pastures, and where farmers and fishermen stood side by side with climate activists. This was a campaign whose heart and nerves showed the Pacific Northwest that we will prevail, in the end, no matter what." Laurie Caplan Astoria Caplan is co-chair of Columbia Pacific Common Sense. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Helen Mudd and Marcia Stanick of Midland have more than a few things in common. Their sewing journeys both included 4-H, they have both made quilts for their grandchildren and they are members of the Midland Quilters Squared quilt guild. Helen and I met at a quilt class in the early 90s, Stanick said. We took classes locally in Midland and Saginaw. When Mudd was asked to be the featured quilter for this years show, she had one stipulation. Ill do it if Marcia does it with me, she said. As a result, this years Midland Quilters Squared annual show has not one, but two featured quilters. Quilting is my favorite thing, it is very relaxing and enjoyable, Mudd said. I was honored to be asked to be the featured quilter, especially since there are so many talented people (in the guild). Mudd has made a quilt for each of her six grandchildren. Before she made one for her grandson, Nicholas, she asked him what color he would like. He told me green; then he decided to go to University of Michigan, she said, smiling. Talk about looking like a traitor; I had to make a blue one ... I still gave him the green one. Outside of quilting, Mudd spends time creating things that will help others. She makes heart pillows for breast cancer surgery patients at MidMichigan Medical Center, and pillowcases along with stuffed toys for childrens hospitals. She has also made lap robes for cancer centers, assisted living homes and the Aleda E. Lutz VA Medical Center in Saginaw. Stanick and Mudd have known each other for 25 years; it can be said that quilting has been the binding in their friendship. Stanicks mother, who was the 4-H sewing leader, taught her how to sew and she started out with clothing. In the 80s she learned to quilt. I have made a lot of quilts, and given away most of them, she said. Ive made them for all of my grandkids and a few others. For her seven grandchildren, she crafted T-shirt quilts with shirts from various school activities. I have four granddaughters. When they were all 8 to 10, I started teaching them to sew, she said. One of her granddaughters kept up with sewing; her name is Jordan and she is now 22. Jordan makes quilts, and her latest project is creating bags in the style of Vera Bradley, Stanick said. Both ladies say that hardly any time goes by when they are not working on some sort of project. Their ideas may come from displays in quilt stores, a photo in a magazine, or possibly something they noticed during a Shop Hop event through Quilters Squared. We go from quilt shop to quilt shop, Mudd said. We hop and shop. Some of these events have taken them as far as Lansing, and some as far as Traverse City. In addition to Shop Hops, members of the guild can also participate in monthly meetings and take part in classes with featured speakers. We try to have speakers two to three times per year, Stanick said. Jackie Fellows of Shepherd has been a member of Midland Quilters Squared for more than eight years. She said the group meets at 6:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of every month, from September until June at St. Johns Episcopal Church. Fellows serves as secretary of the group, and with the help of members Amy Brokaw and Beverly Hill, she organized this years show. The guild picks a theme for a challenge quilt each year, Fellows said. This time the theme is Rhythm of Life. Quilters chose a song title and made a quilt that depicts their song. Those visiting the show will see different categories of quilts, including the challenge quilt, and wall hangings, table runners, vests and tote bags. The public will vote for awards such as Peoples Choice. Fellows is looking forward to the show. I enjoy meeting the public and hearing comments on the quilts, she said. There will also be a silent auction and a bazaar, which serve as a fundraiser for the guild. While there will be information available at the show about Midland Quilters Squared, Fellows said people can also write to Midlandq2@gmail.com to learn more. Mudd and Stanick will both have their works displayed at the entrance to the show. The show runs from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Friday, April 29 and Saturday, April 30, and from noon until 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 1, at the Midland County Historical Societys Carriage House Hall, 3200 Cook Road, in Midland. The cost is $3 per person. Mudd plans to display one of her favorites at the show, one she calls Bear Family Album. For more about the guild or the annual quilt show, visit Midland Quilters Squared on Facebook, or call Helen Mudd at (989) 631-3708. A new joint venture between Saginaw County Schools and The Greater Michigan Construction Academy will begin for the 2016-17 school year, providing interested district students an early start on apprenticeships into skilled trades. We will be starting with the electrical and carpentry trades and see where the interest is from there, GMCA Director of Education Stephanie Davis said. GMCA has been offering the program in the Midland school district for two years with great success. We are excited to be able to offer this type of training in Saginaw, not only as a classroom environment, but also as a hands-on training opportunity for a variety of trades, Davis said. Those entering the program as juniors will earn two years of the required four year equivalency to become an apprentice in selected skilled trade careers by the time they graduate as seniors. There is no cost to the student. Students will convene at the Mackinaw Center Monday through Friday for two class hours of their regular school day and receive instruction and hands-on training in various disciplines related to skilled trades. As the students move through the skilled trades content, they will receive certification of each level completed. No additional cost will be required from the students to participate. There is opportunity for students who want this type of work, Davis said. The jobs are there the employers definitely need skilled workers. Through this program, students will get a head start on obtaining the skills they need to begin their careers. Students who complete the program will have the opportunity to continue their training through GMCA for full certification credentials. Davis said that demand is so great for young workers to enter skilled trades, some employers will pay to have workers finish their training, as long as they agree to work for them for a period of time. For more information and class descriptions, fees and registration. contact GMCA at (989) 832-8879, email Stephanie Davis at sdavis@gmca.edu or visit www.gmca.edu. The Midland Noon Rotary Club has scholarships available for the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, a leadership camp for high school juniors that will take place June 12 to June 16. Interested candidates must fill out an application and return it to the club no later than May 11 for consideration. This summer at YMCA Camp Timbers, campers and their parents will recognize many timeless traditions and familiar faces as they experience, connect and grow at the summer overnight camp serving the Great Lakes Bay Region. One of these familiar faces is that of the new camp director, Brian Miller. Although new to this leadership position, Miller knows Camp Timbers and the Great Lakes Bay Region. Born in Saginaw, Miller graduated valedictorian from Birch Run High School. His passion for the outdoors and working with youth first led him to Camp Timbers as a cabin counsellor. During this time, he began learning the traditions, trails, and tunes of camp. He and his wife, also a former Camp Timbers counsellor, were married at the camps outdoor chapel in 2010. Today, Miller holds a bachelors degree in education from Central Michigan University and a masters in education from Concordia University. During his time away from Camp Timbers, Miller taught middle school social studies and science for five years and instructed summer Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) camps. Asian-Pacific Americans have fought and served with the United States military for more than a century. That legacy continues today with three Filipino-American Airmen deployed with U.S. Pacific Commands Air Contingent at Clark Air Base, Philippines, where they fulfill a number of roles ranging from medical support to aircrew flight equipment and aircraft maintenance. Knowing I am supporting the mission while working alongside the Philippine military makes me so proud of where I'm from and what I'm doing, said Staff Sgt. Jay Perocho Acasio, an aircrew flight equipment journeyman with the 51st Operations Support Squadron, Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, from Ozamiz City in the Misamis Occidental, Philippines. I've had the opportunity to talk with the Philippine pilots and show them what I do. Seeing how excited and interested they were really made me glad I'm here. Similarly, Tech. Sgt. Kathlyn Hidalgo, an independent duty medical technician with the 25th Fighter Squadron at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, and a Guiguinto, Bulacan, Philippines, native, explains how she draws strength from her heritage while serving at home as a U.S. Airman. It makes me feel so proud to be both an American Airman and a Filipino, she said. To be able to serve the country I hold citizenship in and the country I grew up in at the same time is such an honor. Looking at myself wearing the U.S. Air Force uniform and to be in my home countryI have no words to describe how I feel. Airmen join the U.S. Air Force for a number of reasons, but for these Filipinos, serving in the U.S. armed forces affords them an opportunity for their military commitment to transcend serving a single nation. "Knowing that my service benefits not only the U.S. and Philippines, but the international community, opens my eyes to a broader view of the military, Acasio said. "We have so many diversities serving in the U.S. military and knowing that as a U.S. Airman working with the military of the country I was born init just amazes me." "I have gotten a few questions from Filipino military members about my national background and it makes me proud to say, 'I'm Filipino serving in the U.S. military, he added. This service before self attitude stems from a long line of Filipinos who have served in the U.S. armed forces dating as far back as the War of 1812. While the battlefields have changed, their commitment to service remains the same. I wanted to be a part of the U.S. Air Force, said Senior Airman Nikkie Javier, a precision guided munitions crew chief with the 51st Munitions Squadron at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, and a Norwalk, California, native, whose family moved to the U.S. from the Philippines. Our mission here is very important because were here supporting our Filipino allies. We dont take our allies for granted and instead show the world where we stand, side-by-side, with the Philippines. It makes me proud to be a part of something so great. Both nations benefit from Filipino Airmen serving in the U.S. military, as they are able to translate cultural differences in a way both nationalities can understand. I feel like I am a liaison or bridge for both countries, Hidalgo said. I am able to explain what is going on to my fellow Airmen and, likewise, to the Filipinos. No matter how big or small a country is, we need each others support, and thats really why we are here, supporting our friends and for me, my family too. When asked how she feels about being home, Hidalgo said that for the first time in seven years, Its so good to be home. Just being able to interact with Filipinos on a daily basis isamazing! she added. Hidalgo, Acasio and Javier are here with the newly stood up Air Contingent created at the invitation of the Philippine government, utilizing the Airmen and aircraft already in place at the conclusion of Balikatan. The purpose of the Air Contingent is to help build the capacity of the Philippine Air Force in order to address local and regional security concerns. These three Filipino-American Airmen are serving both countries as a result of the partnership. Ive seen the sacrifices service members make to keep our nations free, Javier said reflecting on her reasons for joining the U.S. Air Force. Im humbled to be here and a part of this mission. The Air Force has given me hope, added Hidalgo. It has given me the motivation to work harder and be betterexcellence in all we do. I mean here I am back in the Philippines and serving at home. No other job can offer this and its exciting to share that hope with my fellow Filipinos. Dear Abby: Thirty-five years ago, my wife was raped in her mother's home when she was a teenager. Eight years ago, my daughter was also raped at the age of 11 in the same home. My mother-in-law blames them both for having been raped. She told them if it did happen, they probably deserved it. I don't understand this. How can someone take the side of the perpetrator and not their own flesh and blood? How can someone who is supposed to be nurturing, loving and caring say such terrible things to her children? I want to call her up and give her a piece of my mind, especially since both of them are passive when it comes to this woman. Can they file a lawsuit against her for mental anguish? Help! I want to help them heal from this tragedy, and I don't know what to do. -- DISTRAUGHT DAD IN TEXAS Dear Distraught: It is not unusual for families to circle the wagons when this kind of sexual assault occurs, or to blame the victim. That is why the damage persists from generation to generation. It's clear that your wife's mother is either in denial or without shame. If the perpetrator isn't in prison or a program for sex offenders, the person you should talk to is a detective in the police force in the city where these sexual assaults happened. If your wife and daughter haven't received counseling for the assaults (and I'm betting they haven't), they should find some now. The victims didn't "deserve" being assaulted. Counseling may help them get in touch with their anger, aim it where it belongs, and finally release it along with their passivity -- which may really be fear of expressing their emotions. Dear Abby: My wife's first husband died of cancer. When we got engaged years later, she decided to keep his last name (partly in regard to her daughters) and add mine to it. She continues to display some photos of him around the house and maintains her plan to be buried with him at their common gravesite. Whoever thinks I must be jealous or resentful about this would be wrong. I haven't experienced a long marriage, raising children or nursing a terminally ill spouse for years. Instead of demanding that my wife "prove her love" by ignoring her history, I prove my love for her -- in part -- by deferring to her choices. Soon after our wedding we learned that I, too, had cancer. My case was treatable and I am now cured, thanks to God in heaven and my wife's tender care. We once knew someone who couldn't bear to think of his wife ever marrying after his death. He pleaded, badgered and practically forced her to vow she wouldn't. So this is my message for men who are jealous about a deceased or hypothetical "rival": That is your own choice and it disgraces you. Grow out of it. Be a man and love your wife while you both live. -- LATECOMER IN PASCO, WASH. Dear Latecomer: Your wife is one lucky woman because she married an intelligent and pragmatic man. I hope you enjoy many more happy, healthy years together. Its certainly not uncommon for a machinery technician to save the day during harvest season, but it is rare for one to literally save a farmers life. DANVERS Toxicology reports may identify the cause of death for a 79-year-old man found dead in rural Danvers, said Tazewell County Coroner James Baldi. The body of James VanHook was found underneath the Rocky Ford Bridge on the Mackinaw River near on County Road 1800 N at about 4 p.m. Saturday. The Illinois State Police, the Tazewell County Sheriffs Department and the Tazewell County Coroners Office is investigating the death. An autopsy was done Sunday, but Baldi said the toxicology results are still pending. The bridge is located about six miles northeast of Danvers. Second body found Another body was found Sunday at Clinton Lake may be that of a missing Champaign woman. The body was recovered about 1:30 p.m. Sunday, according to the Champaign Police Department. An autopsy will be scheduled while officials try to determine if it is that of Ashley Gibson, who was last seen around 5:30 p.m. April 17 in northwest Champaign. Champaign Police spokeswoman LaEisha Meaderds said the investigation into her disappearance is continuing. Following the discovery of the remains, police have transitioned Gibsons disappearance to a death investigation, Meaderds said in a statement on the city's website. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 217-351-4545 or Champaign County Crime Stoppers at 217-373-8477. These stories will be updated. Doctors and mental health experts have turned to books and novels to help teenagers have better mental health. The Reading Well for Young People campaign was created by the Reading Agency, and is aimed to young people who are 13 to 18 years old. The recommended reading list tackles mental health problems that teenagers frequently face as they grow older, including depression, eating disorders, sex, self-harm and low self-esteem, the Guardian listed. Some of the books doctors suggested for teens are Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," Benjamin Zephaniah's "Face" and Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Gaby Clement, who helped assemble the recommended list of books, said fictional novels help teenagers to empathize. As young people relate their personal experiences to the fictional characters' struggles in the books, teenagers can unconsciously catch pieces of advice without the condescension that they normally get from others. Rise of Mental Health Problems Ten to 13 percent of teenagers aged 15 to 16 inflict harm to themselves, according to the Reading Agency. Despite their issues, teenagers reportedly shy away from seeking help from mental health experts. Social media, bullying and stress from school and their own families contribute to teenagers' poor mental health. Young Minds, a charitable organization in the U.K., found that around 850,000 children with ages five to 16 in the country have mental health problems. According to the study, body image, early sexual pressure and the materialist culture have all significantly affected teenagers' mental health. Other Remedies To help combat the problem, a group of researchers in the U.K. from the University of Liverpool used a social technique that provokes positive emotions through a person's pleasant memories. The technique, called social broad-minded affective coping, or BMAC, elicited positive feelings from participants and helped lessen the negativity they are experiencing, the Economic Times reported. In Australia, an e-mental health company made an app that mixes teenagers' love for video games and the more pressing need to curb their mental health predicaments. The app ReachOut Orb engages teenagers into a vibrant and cheerful place corrupted by a villain called the Glitch, who has transformed the interactive world into a desolate domain, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote. ReachOut asked for teenagers' help in creating the app. The company also rolled out a bunch of e-mental health programs like Breathe and Recharge, which helps young men have better sleeping conditions. You can download the app on iTunes. It is also available for download on ReachOut Orb's official website. Being on a college waitlist can be frustrating for thousands of students. Those young people are not accepted or rejected, and are forced to wait until around June to get confirmation from the universities they applied in. Waitlists are not necessarily negative, and sometimes, it's a compliment to your capabilities. Some college may consider you too strong of a candidate based on your school performance, and they feel that you have other offers you will probably accept. So they gave your supposed spot to a student they believe will enroll. If you are being waitlisted and is determined to gain admittance to a college, here are some tips on how to get out of that limbo and eventually study there: 1. Let them know that the college is your top choice. Colleges commonly accept students who are adamant that they want to enroll there. IvyWise founder and CEO Kat Cohen urged students to provide details about why the college is their top pick and how they would give back to the university if they are allowed to study there, NBC News reported. Boston.com advised students to pen a letter addressed to the university admissions office. That letter should indicate why the school is their number one priority and it should also serve as confirmation that they will study in that college if allowed admittance. The letter should exhibit positivity and professionalism. 2. Submit more information. Another tip on how to get out of the waitlist limbo is submitting more information about your abilities to the college you wish to study in. New recommendations, test scores, awards and grades are some of the information you can send to the college you wish to be admitted in. 3. Come up with a backup plan. Depending entirely on your waitlist status can have consequences. The Huffington Post wrote that it's important to take a different college's offer prior to their enrollment deadline. This way, you are certain about attending a college when the academic year rolls out. Once your desired college drops you off the waitlist, it will be bad if you lose the deposit you have already made in your backup college. Students should provide a non-refundable deposit at another college. The entire waitlist bustle will fall in June, with the available spots for waitlisted students to be arranged during that month as well. Boston College announced their deposit deadline. Sorry to bring this up #BC2020, but you have ONE WEEK until the May 1 deposit deadline! We're here if you need us. BC Admission (@BC_Admission) April 24, 2016 If you got off the waitlist limbo, colleges will commonly contact students and their parents via email or a phone call. The disadvantage for students from the waitlist, however, is they only have limited time to assess financial aid offers and decide whether they want to sign up for a college. A student from London has gotten addicted to legal highs -- or a substance similar to drugs albeit permissible -- warns every one of its effects as she experienced it firsthand. Serena Christie revealed that shops and dealers in the U.K. are doing their best to stock a lot of synthetic drugs before the government passes Psychoactive Substances Act to attract everyone to bulk buy. Legal High Shops and Dealers According to Birmingham Mail, Psychoactive Substances Act is about to be passed in London on April 6, but unfortunately, it was moved to a later date. Hence, synthetic drugs can now be freely purchased in news agents and head shops before the new law starts. In fact, legal high online sellers are marketing their products with 20 percent discount on every order reaching worth 100. They are also offering free next day delivery on every purchase valuing 49 and a "buy two, get two" promo. Serena Christie gives advice that shops and dealers' advertisements can be enticing for the youth, which might cause "dangerous drug binges." The proposed cheaper prices and other deals might result to selling more synthetic drugs to many teenagers. Effects Substance Addiction Serena Christie shared she herself falls a victim with synthetic drugs as she becomes addicted to the substance. In fact, synthetic drugs also have its psychological effect as it makes her paranoid and delusional by smoking 20 "synthetic cannabis joints a day" and trying different kinds and brands. Hence, Serena Christie felt she is being followed by the police, spied and believed she is infested by fleas inside her body. The Daily Mail reported she was sent to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and was found to have psychosis, a condition caused by her addiction to synthetic drugs. Is There A Cure For Substance Additction? Serena Christie is now receiving psychiatric treatment and has been moved under the care of her parents, Alison and Denis Christie, in Birmingham. Her guardians tried their best to help her by teaming with mental health groups that gave her medicines to handle her hallucinations. Serena Christie's mother revealed seeing her child undergoing synthetic drugs withdrawal is like torture but, eventually, her hallucinations are gone and she begins to recover. Her parents are now seeing the daughter that they used to know that has been changed by the abuser of synthetic drugs. The family is sharing their story to warn everyone of synthetic drugs, its harmful effects and the dangers it brings. "Just because these drugs are legal, doesn't mean they are safe," Alison Christie said. What do you think of the legal highs or synthetic drugs? Share us your thoughts. Write your comments below. Starting your baby on solid food is an important milestone that can be both exciting and a little daunting. Know the truths from the myths and give your child a nutritious start. More and more studies are pointing out what and what not to do. One moment, peanuts are bad, the next time, they're not. So to help you in figuring out what's a myth and what's not, we debunked most myths that will help you decide what to do in this important transition in your baby's life. Taken from Plum Organics and Parenting, know the truths behind the common myths. Myth: A baby should start at a specific month or age to start eating solid food. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends waiting at least the baby is four months before introducing solid food. Since baby's developments are not all the same, parents should observe the baby's development and not the calendar. It all depends on your baby on when to take the transition to solids. Here are some clues that the baby may be ready: (1) The baby can sit upright on his own; (2) The baby opens his mouth when offered food (3) The baby takes interest when you're eating; (3) The baby knows if he's full, will either lean back or turn away from milk; and (4) The baby reaches out for things and puts them to his mouth. Myth: It's best to avoid highly allergenic food to keep the baby safe. The AAP updated its guidelines in February 2013, saying that highly allergenic foods like peanuts, milk, egg, wheat, soy, fish and shellfish, can be safely offered to most healthy babies between four to six months. This is with the exception of whole milk as babies are not able to break down the protein found in them. The AAP did not find enough evidence to prove that delaying highly allergenic food will prevent allergy development. Myth: Don't offer fruits first to avoid sweet tooth. Contrary to the myth, both fruits and vegetables are good food options. It is more important to offer different food that will give your baby the vitamins and nutrients he needs. It also highly advised to offer iron-rich food as the baby's iron supply may decrease at this time. You may offer iron-fortified cereal, oatmeal or quinoa. Avoid processed cereals and go for the organic ones. There's also no evidence that supports that the order of food introduced during early years will influence food preferences later in life. Again, it is important to let your baby eat rich in vitamins and nutrients he needs. You don't need baby cereal to start your child on solid food. https://t.co/DmLTH3rUxV pic.twitter.com/mPrJPtknZ5 Lifehacker (@lifehacker) April 21, 2016 Aside from these three common myths, there is also one that talks about introducing food one at a time. While this may be logical if you want to watch out for food allergies, it is highly recommended to offer your babies a mixture of new foods so they can develop a sophisticated palate. For more tips on how to start your baby on solids, check out the video below: It was a gruesome massacre in the small locality of Pike County in Ohio, where eight members of a family were killed, including a mother who was shot execution-style beside his 4-day-old child. Up until now, there have been no arrests made by the authorities. CNN reported that members of the Rhoden family were all shot in the head, most of them during their sleep on Friday. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said they are still hunting the killer or killers whom they fear could hurt other family members who survived. "We have a specific family that's been targeted but I don't think there's been a threat to any other members of the community," Reader added. "I've given the family precautionary measures to make. They know we're available." The fatalities were identified by Chillicothe Gazette as Kenneth Rhoden, Hanna Rhoden, Gary Rhoden, Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, Dana Rhoden, Christopher Rhoden Jr., Christopher Rhoden Sr. and Hannah Gilley. There were four identified crime scenes as per the Attorney General's Office. The victims were said to be cousins and brothers-in-law. Authorities said they found seven of the victims inside three residences, two of which were just "within walking distance." The third crime scene is about a mile away while the last is farther at 8 miles where one body was found. It was added in the CNN report that among those who were brutally killed a mother who was shot beside her 4-day-old child. The baby, a 6-month-old child another 3-year-old were not harmed during the killings. Ohio Attorney General Mike Dewine has not discussed any motive for the massacre nor named any suspect. He, however, stressed that other family members should exercise precautionary measures since a murderer may be after them next. "We're advising family members to be very careful and take particular caution," DeWine told CNN. "This is a matter of public safety, especially for the Rhoden family." A captivating parenting artwork depicting verbal abuse in children recently went viral in the internet. The powerful sketch, which showed a mother verbally shouting at her crying child, was drawn by artist Jenna Simon. The Artwork Simon's powerful parenting sketch was shared more than 300,000 times on Facebook. According to ABC News, Jenna Simon reached the concept after seeing a digital imag that had words surrounding a child's head in an anti-abuse campaign online. Simon, however, chose the words that had hurt her or had been hurtful to her as a child and added an adult figure in her illustration. Simon also shared that the drawing was of one of the several artworks she made that had help her cope during her battle against an eating disorder. "I was looking to try to draw something that depicted the fact that just because someone doesn't lay a hand on you, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt," Simon said, as per My Central Oregon. Jenna Simon further explained that a lot of people aren't really aware of the impact their words have on children, leading them to make use of the same words later in life. In addition, Simon explained her parenting artwork aimed to raise awareness about verbal and psychological abuse, especially among children. According to the talented artist, verbal abuse rarely got attention compared to physical abuse. "It doesn't get as nearly as much attention than a kid that comes into school beaten and bruised," Simon added. "When you're dealing with an adult, they can cope." However, things are different when it comes to a child who is getting verbally abused, Jenna Simon argued. Apparently, this makes it difficult for children to have another perspective on the world as they grow older. The Artist Jenna Simon is a 28-year-old actress and artist from Princeton, New Jersey. She is fond of creating graphite pencil drawings. Jenna Simon found art as a force when she was admitted to a hospital due to an eating disorder. Her parenting artwork about verbal abuse was reportedly made a few months back, Yahoo! News notes. Reactions Simon's impressive parenting artwork attracted mixed reactions from social media users. She revealed that for every five positive commentaries, there will be two that would be negative. Simon also believed her parenting artwork stirred up emotions to people who have experienced verbal abuse or who have been guilty of doing the act. As for her future plans, Simon said she'll be using her skills in art to create a therapeutic project to help teens. Verbal And/Or Psychological Abuse Verbal and/or psychological abuse of children is widespread and damaging because it interrupts critical development. It is the most prevalent and destructive type of abuse that's affecting more than 22 million families, TC Palm reveals. So, what do you think about Simon's powerful parenting artwork about verbal abuse? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates. Graduating students at Washington College will no longer have to worry about paying off their student loans as the school has established a new funding program. Dam the Debt aims to help its students become financially-ready after attending school. The initiative is already off to a great start. Dam The Debt Dam the Debt exists to subsidize student loans thanks to its many donors, such as TD Bank, BB&T Bank, Santander Bank and a financial company called Bloom, per Washington Post. This semester, the school president, Sheila C. Bair, announced that Washington College was able to pay off $313,000 worth of debts of its 119 qualified graduating seniors. Not only that, but the program has enough funds from donations for the next four years as well. Bair is working to secure more funding for future graduates, as well as potentially offering grants to senior students via Dam the Debt. We are launching Dam the Debt this week, reducing average graduates federal loans by 10%. And we are just getting started. Full speed ahead! Sheila Bair (@SheilaBair2013) April 18, 2016 Student Loans, A Pressing Issue "Dam the Debt is an initiative like no other I have seen before," said one student, Lily Britt, who is taking business management and French studies at the college, per the press release. "I'm excited that it will relieve some stress from our overall amount of loans," she added and commended the school president for making student loans a priority, as it has been a concern affecting millennials across the U.S. Market Watch reports that the average student loan amounts to $2,726 and its becoming a huge burden for graduates. They cannot get additional loans to buy a new house or car after they finish school and pay off their school debts, thus, student assistance programs like the Dam the Debt does provide huge help. Washington College Dam The Debt Program Lauded Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland has lauded Washington College and Bair for establishing Dam the Debt and cited that college shouldn't be a "financial nightmare" to American families. She even sent out a tweet about it. I applaud Pres Bair's efforts to make college more affordable for @WashColl students through Dam the Debt initiative https://t.co/Gu0QDT4Ai0 Barbara Mikulski (@SenatorBarb) April 19, 2016 Donors also praised the school's program and stated that they are honored to have helped the first batch of graduates ease off their student loans. "We are excited to see its impact continue to grow in the years ahead," said Bloom CEO Chris Costello in the press release. After two decades of searching for answers on the mechanics of diabetes 1, a recent study finally found answers on how it attacks a person's immune system. The fifth target of the disease has been revealed. The study published by Diabetes Journals said that this breakthrough in research could help in treating and addressing the disease. It revealed that the final target of the disease is the tetraspanin-7, the fifth molecule which will make detecting Type 1 diabetes easier. Earlier targets were identified as insulin, Glutamate decarboxylase, IA-2 and Zinc transporter-8, as per BBC. It explained that in this type of diabetes, the immune system destroys the beta cells which produce insulin which keeps sugar levels in the blood on a normal level. Lead researcher Dr. Michael Christie told BBC that they are finally armed with the last element to know the mechanics of such disease. "With this new discovery, we have now finished identifying what the immune system is targeting - we have the complete picture," she added. He also mentioned in a Dhaka Tribune report that his team of researchers remained focus on discovering vital information about diabetes which can help patients fighting the disease. "Once the immune system decides it wants to get rid of something it's very hard to stop, so diabetes has proved to be a difficult disease to prevent," Christie explained. The researcher said that they now have the five major targets of the disease which makes it easier for them to block these targets without compromising the health of a patient. He noted that a treatment for type 1 diabetes can soon be formulated using their recent discovery. Diabetes UK's Dr Emily Burns told BBC that the new study is a great help for medical specialists to prevent type 1 diabetes since they can already understand how immune responses develop and lead to the disease. "We hope that the findings here will be used to improve the identification of those at risk of type 1 diabetes and, in the long term, inform the crucial development of therapies." Kate Middleton and Prince William have been plagued with countless nasty rumors ever since they confirmed their relationship. Now, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge has been drawing flaks for choosing Prince George and Princess Charlotte over Royal duties. Kate Middleton, Prince William chose kids over Royal responsibilities Celeb Dirty Laundry shared how Prince William take his Royal responsibilities seriously. However, the father of Prince George and Princess Charlotte thinks his father duties are more important at present. In a recent interview with Nicholas Witchell of BBC, Prince William divulged that he and Kate Middleton is currently prioritizing their family and not their Royal obligations. Additionally, Prince William encouraged the Royal family to renovate and keep up with the present days to remain relevant to the British kingdom. The said interview happened before the trip of Prince William and Kate Middleton to India and Bhutan. With all his revelations, several followers of the Royal family thinks that the next generation of Royals need a lot of effort in balancing their personal lives and their commitment to the crown and country. "I take my responsibilities very seriously," Prince William revealed. "But it's about finding your own way at the right time and if you're not careful duty can sort of weigh you down an awful lot at a very early age, and I think you've got to develop into the duty role." Prince William also revealed that he is currently planning to step away from his air ambulance pilot duties to clear up his schedule in preparation to being assigned to more Royal obligations. "When the Queen decides she's going to hand down more responsibilities, I'll be the first person to accept them," he added. Kate Middleton, Prince William focus on family to save marriage Meanwhile, some fans are speculating that Prince William's recent interview with Nicholas Witchell is hinting that his marriage with Kate Middleton is hitting the rock bottom. As a matter of fact, Parent Herald previously reported that Prince William and Kate Middleton are currently on the verge of breaking up. Rumor mills have been spreading that Prince William and Kate Middleton are constantly fighting against each other due to their hectic schedules, leaving no enough time for them to bond as a couple. Aside from that, previous reports claimed that Kate Middleton has been very upset with Prince William after learning that he met Jecca Craig during his trip to Kenya. However, up until now, Kate Middleton and Prince William have kept silent on these issues. Hence, fans should take these rumors with a grain of salt until proven true. Do you think it is good for Prince William and Kate Middleton to choose their family over Royal duties? Do you think Kate Middleton and Prince William are heading to a divorce? Share to us your thoughts in the comment section below. Follow me on Twitter @iamheadturner Children who frequently use their smartphones are at a greater risk of being cross-eyed, according to researchers from South Korea. A similar study found that many teenagers in the U.S. are addicted to their mobile phones. Researchers from Chonnam National University Hospital in Seoul examined 12 children between ages 7 and 16. The young participants used their devices for 4 to 8 hours a day and held their phones eight to 12 inches away from their faces. Temporary convergent strabismus, better known as "cross-eyed" is a condition that forces the eyes to focus inwards. Strabismus forces one or both eyes to turn up, down, in or out of the normal range. People suffering from strabismus cannot align both eyes simultaneously under normal circumstances. The condition is rarely diagnosed in South Korea but has now become prevalent, according to Daily Mail. Fortunately, nine of the 12 children were able to reverse the symptoms by discontinuing mobile phone use for two months. Nearly 70 percent of adults in the U.S. have experienced symptoms of digital eye strain, according to a survey by Vision Council. Around 60 percent of the survey respondents claim that they spend at least six hours looking at electronic devices a day. The symptoms are also becoming more apparent in children since kids acquire cellphones at younger ages today. Kids also use digital devices more frequently than ever before, according to Sarah Hinkley, associate professor at Ferris State University Michigan College of Optometry. Hinkley is also the spokeswoman for the American Optometric Association. In a similar study by Baylor University in Texas, researchers found that teenagers spent up to ten hours a day on their mobile phones. The study noted that many teenagers often feel stressed when they do not have access to their phones. The idea of becoming addicted to using smartphone was a realistic possibility, according to James Robert, lead author the study. Some functions such as Instagram and Pinterest have been associated with significant mobile addiction. Researchers have also identified other physical pitfalls to using smartphones in recent years, according to USA Today. Symptoms may include eyestrain, blurry vision, headaches, upper body pain and irritated eyes. While some people can stay on their digital devices without any issues, other people may show symptoms after 10 minutes of use. Researchers of the study recommend limiting smartphone use to 30-minute intervals. Regular meditation can remove 7 years off the brain of a middle-aged person, according to a new study. Researchers found that the combination of intense concentration and relaxation could trigger the growth of new brain cells. The study observed the brains of 50 men and women who practiced meditation and 50 people who did not meditate. The participants who practiced meditation performed traditional meditation for an average of 20 years. The brain scans were analyzed to determine the age of each brain based on its physical condition. Published in the journal Neurolmage, the study revealed that non-meditators' brain age were the same as their actual age. However, brains of people who practiced meditation appeared to have brains seven years younger than their actual age. The difference in age was particularly apparent for older meditators. For every extra year past the age of 50, a person who meditated added an extra year off brain age. The research suggests that meditation is beneficial for the preservation of the brain, according to Christian Gaser, researcher from Jena University Hospital in Germany. The study also suggested that meditation encouraged a slow rate of brain aging, according to Daily Mail. In a similar study, researchers found that the shrinkage of gray matter was less in people who meditated. Less brain matter is associated with lessened cognition function, according to Dr. Florian Kurth of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center. Brian tissue begins to wither when people hit their mid-20s. This could also explain why people tend to become more forgetful as they age. Brain shrinkage has also been linked to Alzheimer's and other memory-robbing conditions. Unfortunately, the study is not clear on how meditation protects the brain. Aside from intense mental processes that trigger the growth of new cells and connections, the chemicals produced by meditation may also offer an effect. Kurth, on the other, explains that meditation reduces stress and protects the brain, according to ABC 7. Meditation techniques also help build up certain parts of brain similar to body building. In addition, Gaser clarifies that those who meditate may lead a healthier lifestyle in general which could explain the results of the study. A Texas elementary school with an offensive name could be renamed after a 2016 U.S. presidential candidate or an infamous German dictator. Austin Independent School District officials recently revealed that the names of GOP front-runner Donald Trump and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler are among the popular choices for the new name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School. Fox 7 News reports that the Austin School Board voted last month to consider renaming Robert E. Lee Elementary, which was named after a Confederate Army general. The move came after hundreds of Texan parents complained that using the name of the late Robert E. Lee was offensive. Donald Trump vs. Adolf Hitler According to the New York Post, Austin Independent School District officials disclosed that "Donald J. Trump Elementary School" is the most popular name suggestion in replacement for Robert E. Lee Elementary School. Out of 240 name submissions, 45 of them suggested that the Texas elementary school should be named after the billionaire real estate mogul. Another notable suggestion for the new name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School is "Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance." The name, coined after the powerful German politician who was ultimately responsible for World War II, received eight nominations. Popular Suggestions Other Than Trump And Hitler Aside from Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, some popular names had emerged from the submissions. The names "Russell Lee Elementary," "Harper Lee Elementary," and "Elisabet Ney Elementary" received 30, 32 and 15 nominations respectively. There were also at least 32 people who suggested that Robert E. Lee Elementary School's name should be retained. Other notable name nominations include "Idiocaracy Elementary," "John Cena Elementary School," "Drew Brees Elementary" and "Bruce Lee Elementary." The school district officials will pick the top three popular suggestions and present them to the Texas capital's school board for review. The final name for Robert E. Lee Elementary School will be decided on May 23. What do you think about these name suggestions? Which name is better? Share your thoughts below. Well, after some tough campaigning, we did it; Harriett Tubman is officially going to replace Andrew Jackson as the new face of the twenty dollar bill! While that totally is an awesome, exciting piece of progress towards the representation of women, black people, abolitionists, and so many more groups throughout America, it does beg a very important question: where is Andrew Jackson going to go after this? Now that hes been booted off the twenty, where are we going to put him? I mean, he cant just not be on anything, hes Andrew Jackson! He caught a bullet in the chest and yet still killed a man in a duel, defending the honor of his wife! (Well, apparently, it was actually more about a horse race.) But he won a decisive victory at the Battle of New Orleans ! So what if the battle happened after the treaty that ended the war was signed, thats not the point. When he was president, he dismantled the Second Bank of America because he felt it favored the wealthy, urban elite; hes like the 1800s Bernie Sanders! I mean, yes, a Bernie Sanders with a diametrically opposed view on minorities than present day one, but his dislike for banks still counts, right? What Im trying to say is Andrew Jackson is too important to be forgotten; now that hes not going to be on money any more, we need to figure out what the perfect way to preserve Old Hickorys visage is so that his legacy can keep living on. Oh, apparently there actually is a statue of him in D.C., right near the White House and everything. Ok. Well, I think maybe another one would be appropriate. The first one is kinda more focused on him being a general, so something commemorating his time as a president would be nice. Something that combines his status as a man of the people with some noteworthy legislation from when he was in office? So maybe we have him amongst the common man, casting them out of their homes because theyre Native Americans and congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 during Jacksons first term. Well. That might not be the best. So maybe we dont need another Statue of him, but whatever, because these days its not about who you embody in bronze, its about what you wear! A great way to get a face out to the masses is emblazon it on a t-shirt with a funny slogan attached. I mean, the jokes write themselves. Like, maybe you have a t-shirt where hes wearing sunglasses and is challenging you, the reader, to a duel? Cause, ya know, Jackson loved to duel all the time). Ha! Yay violence! A mug with a confirmed murderer on it would quickly become my favorite mug, amiright? Best seller right there. Alright, I get it. Maybe Andrew Jacksons history of brawls and fighting shouldnt be glorified, and calling attention to it via tote bags would be kinda confusing and incongruous with the knitting that the tote carries. We can still figure this out, no bad ideas in a brainstorming session. Because his nickname is Old Hickory! Get it!? So we put his face on all sorts of pieces of wood: busts carved from trees felled by flannel-wearing frontiersmen, his famous scowl burned into planks to be mounted onto the walls of log cabins, replica canes sturdy enough to both carry your weight AND beat the life out of a would be assassin (not something Jackson did during an actual attempted assassination, but Im sure he regrets it). Sure, nobody really needs a flammable Andrew Jackson silently judging them from up above, but lets not pull the thread about what we need lest the sweater unravels, right? Tacky tchotchkes befit the dignity of a president, right? Confession time: this was the weakest of my ideas, but no bad ideas in a brainstorming session! Ok, so were going either too negative or too frivolous. Lets dial this in. Yes, Andrew Jackson was a violent racist, but lets not forget that he also played a big role in dismantling the Second Bank of America, fighting against corporate greed for the common man! We can work with this. Who else is fighting the good fight against Wall Street? The Occupy Wall Street movement. We can get Jackson branded tents, Jackson brand blankets, eggs with Jacksons face on them to huck at the Wall Street fat cats! Yeah! And if we buy the eggs wholesale and ship them overseas, then we can minimize the overhead by using Chinese labor to print the faces on the egg, then turn around a sell them at ten bucks a pop Maybe trying to roll out a product line of Andrew Jackson-approved hucking eggs and selling them in Wal-Mart chains across the country is kinda playing into the greed that both Occupy Wall Street and what Jackson fought against. Alright, never mind. There is a classic story where Jackson got a giant block of cheese as a gift and he shared it with the people of D.C. 10,000 people showed up to eat 1,400 pounds of cheese, and thats the kind of tall tale that Oh man, Im looking back at some stuff about the Trail of Tears. Oof. Guys, that was a real black mark on our nations history. Thousands of Cherokee tribes members were forced to out of their ancestral homes and Jackson helped facilitate it. An estimated 4,000 of the 15,000 people who left, died from exhaustion on this trip. The whole Indian Removal Act of 1830 kinda overshadows a humorous anecdote about a dairy product. Kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth about this whole endeavor. At this point, I think these are all this guy really deserves his face on. I mean, people apparently liked him when he was president, but most of the people we have on record from that time were rich white dudes, and the 13th amendment wasnt for another thirty years after his presidency, so I suspect there were plenty of people who would LOVE a chance to piss on his face. In fact, I cant think of a more fitting F-you to a bigot of his magnitude. Ahh, there ya go! Finally, a position worthy of our seventh president! What a perfect way to reward a man who has a grossly misguided relationship with the indigenous people of this country than to give Daniel Snyder the rights to use Andrew Jackson as the new mascot for the Redskins. It kills two indiabirds with one stone; it allows the team to move past the current drama surrounding its offensive logo and name, while still maintaining a legacy intertwined with oppression of Native Americans. Nothing would be a more fitting salute to Andrew Jackson than having his face worn by a bunch of old white men who are just really really wrong about race as they oversee a team of predominately black players who gather together every week just to give each other concussions so that blue collar Americans scream at the resulting head injuries from in the comfort of their own homes. I think that would make Old Hickory proud. Cameron Petti is a Chicago-land native. Hes currently attempting to survive off of freelance theatre work, and hasnt had to eat too much cat food to achieve this goal. Check out how happy and full of life Cameron is on tumblr and twitter. Puerto Ricos in trouble. Its dealing with about $70 billion in debt, which has helped drive the poverty rate to over 40% and sent an increasing number of citizens to the US mainland. If they dont get help from the US to pay off that debtand remember, Puerto Rico is an American territory, its residents are American citizens, and its commonly called the 51st statePuerto Rico might see irrevocable damage. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla literally used the term death spiral to explain whats happening. Its up to Congress to help Puerto Rico relieve its debt, and although a bipartisan bill to help is in the works, theres a well-funded effort to rile up American citizens against helping our Puerto Rican cousins. John Oliver explained the entire situation on last nights Last Week Tonight, and he had a little help: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, stopped by the show to perform a song about the situation. Take a look above to see two pop culture titans combine to raise awareness about an ongoing American crisis that isnt getting enough attention. I was walking to my second period class when my best friend came up to me, and told me that the World Trade Center had collapsed. I assured him such a thing could not possibly have happened because if it had, it would be all over the news, and we would be sent home for the day. When I arrived at the classroom the AV cart was in the middle of the floor and the television was tuned to CNN. We were in 8th grade. A friend of ours lost a relative. That night, my father sat with me as I lay awake in bed, and tried to explain what can only be described as the sheer madness of the world madness that seemed so foreign to a twelve-year-old. September 11th, 2001 helped mold my generation. The veil of our childhood had been pierced by the wickedness of mans hate for his fellow man, and all we could do at the time was watch events unfold shocked, saddened, and confused. Our parents could not shield us. They couldnt even shield themselves. And so they turned their grief and indignation into war. That war eventually touched my small town as it touched many other towns and cities across the nation. Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, a young man in my grade with whom I had gone to high school (but did not know personally), died valiantly defending his post in Ramadi on April 22, 2008. As a result of his actions, and those of a fellow Marine, Jonathan Yale, dozens of Marines and Iraqi civilians were saved. It was as if a curse had been laid on my community. The conflict took on a personal feel as friends and neighbors came together in their outpouring of support and grief. Here was someone barely out of high school, and willing to lay down his life for his country; our political leaders had thrown it away in a war on a nebulous concept: Terror. To me, Jordan was betrayed, and the best of my generation had a target on their backs. The war took thousands of lives, and destabilized an entire region. But over the last decade and change, the country seemed to realize it or so I thought. Today, everywhere I look I see politicians talking about how the United States needs to destroy ISIS. It doesnt matter what party one affiliates with. Everyone seems to be in agreement over one point: We broke the region, and we cant leave until we fix it. But what does fixing it mean? If there is one lesson we should have learned from the war in Iraq, it is to have a plan for after Mission Accomplished. What does the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) post-ISIS look like? Whoever is talking, it always sounds a whole lot like theyre saying were going to war, and were committing for an indefinite period of time. Nobody actually acknowledges this, of course; they try to obscure it with language like, coalition, special operations and trainers, or targeted strikes. In reality, the MENA is a modern Vietnam. In light of everything it has cost us so far the lives and futures of thousands of our bravest young people, the trust and respect of those who return from service only to be denied the benefits and care they deserve, and the many trillions of dollars spent to continue our efforts we have to acknowledge that the situation is a quagmire. The entire we have to fix it argument is predicated on the idea that we can eventually bring stability to the region and maybe not so eventually. Many Americans seem to believe that we can bring a swift end to the chaos. Theres just one overarching problem: We cannot. The people there do not see our involvement as beneficial or even desirable. Data from the Arab Barometer indicates that the more we interfere, the more we are resented. A majority of Egyptians feel that US Intervention justifies armed opposition, while in Iraq negative views of the US are also predominant. In fact, there is not one country surveyed by the Arab Barometer that felt positively about our presence in the region. World War II taught us that isolationism doesnt work ,and diplomacy can fail. That combined with the rise of the Soviet Union, and the prospect of another global conflict, led us to embark on a course aggressive preemption and posturing. It just so happens that the MENA has been the battleground for this conflict for decades. To that end, we armed, trained, and empowered some of the most violent groups, individuals, and regimes there. We even encouraged Jihad to combat the Red Menace. As part of these efforts, we have been trying to impose a political system on the MENA which it has never truly experienced, or organically sought. The political culture there is not so easily changed as our country seems to believe it is. In fact, political culture is not something that can change within a generation, and yet we keep trying to disastrous results. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.- Hawkeye Pierce, M*A*S*H* In our reckless pursuit for global dominance, thousands of innocent people have died (not the least of which are our own troops). For every person killed we risk radicalizing at least another. In 1996, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, went on 60 Minutes to defend years of U.S. imposed sanctions on Iraq an effort meant to punish Saddam Hussein. In the interview, correspondent Leslie Stahl called to the ambassadors attention an alarming statistic; over 500,000 children had died as a result of the sanctions more than were killed in Hiroshima. Was the price worth it? she asked. Without missing a beat, the ambassador bluntly answered in the affirmative. Ms. Albrights response underscores the main reason the United States is viewed so negatively in the MENA: The way we define collateral damage is unacceptable to the people who often find themselves under that umbrella. Today, as popular as tough talk is in the media, and as sadistically violent as the organization is, the individual members of ISIS are human beings. These are people with family, friends, acquaintances and not all of them are true believers. Many are only involved for the paycheck because their only other options are jobs with unlivable wages. This does not excuse the wanton violence carried out in the name of ISIS, but it should inform our response to it. Our leaders, however, purposefully ignore this reality. Dehumanizing our enemies might make it easier to justify exterminating them, but it costs us perspective, and it is not a permanent solution. Just recently the Department of Defense announced it was raising the number of allowable civilian casualties for drone strikes depending on the target. And therein lies the insanity of the whole situation. It is a never-ending cycle of violence; we use the presence of these terrorist groups as a justification for intervention. Then, our intervention alienates people, giving rise to more terrorism and violence against our troops which we then use as justification for further intervention. And all the while military contractors and American companies fueling the effort get paid. As an American, I remember the feeling of vulnerability following the 9/11 attacks; it reminded us, and the rest of the world, that the United States is not immune to attacks at home. However, our response to overthrow two sovereign governments, and entangle ourselves in a never-ending war was the least effective path we could have chosen. I sincerely hope that we are able to learn from our mistake. At this point Im not against the world containing ISIS, but eventually we will have to cut our losses as well as those sustained by the people we claim to want to help. The terror group is now essentially a country with its own GDP and territory. Eliminating it will simply create another vacuum that will then be exploited by politically expedient leaders, seeking to look tough. The fact is, the less involvement the US has, the better both in terms of legitimizing our allies in the region, and silencing their critics who point to our intervention as a reason to justify their cause. In other words, the more we interfere, the more violent the resulting self-determination will be. As an American, I remember the feeling of vulnerability following the 9/11 attacks; it reminded us, and the rest of the world, that the United States is not immune to attacks at home. However, our response to overthrow two sovereign governments, and entangle ourselves in a never-ending war was the least effective path we could have chosen. I sincerely hope that we are able to learn from our mistakes. Nation-building will never work. We must change course. Special thanks to MF for help and guidance on this piece. Thanks, Obama! For once, that phrase hasnt been uttered by a sarcastic conservative pundit. Because, due to the work of our president, the island is finally open to us Yankees, which means were getting PAPA: Hemingway In Cuba, the first Hollywood film shot in Cuba in 50 years, and the first movie based on a true story that is titled like its going to be a sci-fi/fantasy YA franchise! The film stars Giovanni Ribisi as a Miami journalist who begins a relationship with the iconic author during the Cuban Revolution. Shot on location in Havana and inside Ernest Hemingways estate, the film opens on April 29th. In celebration of world peaceand nothing lesswe have three (3) Hemingway-in-Cuba-related prize packs to give away. Trust that by giving these away we arent condoning the patriarchy so much as providing access to books both imbued with and questioning of it. These include: - Mini-posters signed by director Bob Yari and actor Adrian Sparks (who plays Hemingway) - Copy of The Old Man and the Sea (written while in Cuba) - Copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls (written while in Cuba) Winning, unlike serving as the literary figurehead of the death of the masculine ideal, is easy. All you have to do is: 1. Follow @pastemovies on Twitter if you havent already; 2. Tweet @pastemovies and tell us your favorite Hemingway novel; 3. Include the hashtag #Papa. And in the spirit of getting these to you in time for summer reading, well pick winners very soon! Note: Winner must be a U.S. resident. Also, if youre just using Twitter to win free stuff like an all-consuming giveaway vulture, well know. We only want people who will actually read these books. And now some words from our PR sponsors: Directed by the Producer of the Academy Awarding Winner Crash and The Illusionist, PAPA: Hemingway In Cuba is a true story about the relationship between Miami journalist Denne Bart Petitclerc (Giovanni Ribisi) and legendary writer Ernest Hemingway (Adrian Sparks). Set during the Cuban revolution, the film co-stars Joely Richardson and Minka Kelly with a cameo by Hemingways granddaughter, Mariel Hemingway. PAPA: Hemingway In Cuba was shot on location in Havana and inside Hemingways estate, Finca Vigia. It is the first Hollywood film to be shot in Cuba since 1959. Directed by: Bob Yari Written by: Denne Bart Petitclerc Cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Adrian Sparks, Joely Richardson and Minka Kelly Release Date: April 29, 2016 Yesterday we posted a report titled "The Fear of Apple Entering the Connected Car Market has Renault Racing to Beat the Clock," and last week we covered how Apple's secret Titan team in Berlin has been in talks with Magna to be Apple's car manufacturing partner after ending talks with BMW and Daimler. Apple's possible entry into the electric car market continues to ripple through the automotive world with a new BBC interview with Ford's CEO Mark Fields who reveals that they're working on the assumption that Apple's intentions of making a car are real. In fact, that's become a motivator for Ford to stay focused on their next generation vehicle solutions. According to Fields, Apple's possible entry into the car market "provides us with the right motivation to make sure we stay very focused not only on the product but overall on the experience that the customer has interacting with the product and the services that we have." "Staying focused" means launching a new Ford technology business in Palo Alto - the capital of Silicon Valley - working on "autonomous cars" that can drive automatically and teaming up with technology companies to see how the "internet of things" changes how people interact with their vehicles. But just like Daimler's CEO who said that they wouldn't be the Foxconn of car makers for Apple, Mark Fields echoed that sentiment by stating that "Ford is not into the contract manufacturing" commodity base business. Fields later noted in the interview that "The global auto industry will continue to grow and the reason it will grow is you will see the global middle class double in the next 15 years," though," In some cities and congested urban areas, private car use will be increasingly curtailed - such as in Oslo - and even outlawed." For this reason Ford has started a growing bike business, something that I've noticed on a few occasions in the IP world. Here's one such patent that I ran across over the last month. Another one covered a foldable bike that they were working on. Ford entering the smart bike market makes me think back to Apple's revelation of such an invention back in the summer of 2010. We covered that invention in an IP report titled "Apple introduces us the Smart Bike." Whether Apple will keep their patent-pending smart bike invention dormant or is simply saving it for a rainy day is unknown at this time. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. http://www.npr.org/2016/04/24/475473657/idaho-muslims?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=religion I was in Idaho Falls a few weeks ago for a Mormon/Muslim dialogue. My Muslim counterpart for that dialogue was a professor at Idaho State University, in Pocatello, Idaho. I believe that he told me that the majority of the anti-Muslim activity in Pocatello (to the fairly limited extent that any occurs) comes from one particular Evangelical church there a church that is also, in my experience, rather vocally anti-Mormon. (Big surprise!) I think that I remember what he said correctly. And, if I do, I hope that its true. And, if its true, I wish that it had come out in this interview. I would like to think that Mormons, of all people, shouldnt be prone to bigotry and certainly not to hatred against unpopular religious minorities. We do, after all, have a bit of history with that sort of thing. Posted from Amman, Jordan Ive been thinking about doubt a lot lately, and its central importance in the act of faith. Over the years Ive come to believe that if you dont, at one time or another, doubt nearly every aspect of the Christian faith, then you are simply not taking it seriously. Here are a few of my favorite quotes on the essential nature of doubt to the Christian experience: Doubt isnt the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful. Paul Tillich Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving. Frederick Buechner Belief in God does not exempt us from feelings of abandonment by God. Praising God does not inoculate us from doubts about God. Eugene Peterson Surely we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety. John Calvin I do not believe there ever existed a Christian yet, who did not now and then doubt his interest in Jesus. I think, when a man says, I never doubt, it is quite time for us to doubt him. Charles Spurgeon To deny, to believe, and to doubt absolutely this is for man what running is for a horse. Blaise Pascal I think the trouble with me is lack of faith often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. C.S. Lewis Who among us has not experienced insecurity, loss and even doubts on their journey of faith? Weve all experienced this, me too. Pope Francis The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. Madeleine LEngle When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. Brennan Manning One good warning about the downside of doubt, or superficial doubt: We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt. Dallas Willard Gaya: Five days after they were reported kidnapped, Gaya doctor Pankaj Gupta and his wife Shubhra Gupta returned to their home safely on Wednesday, Gaya Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj informed. Refusing to divulge any detail of their sudden disappearance and their safe return, the SSP confirmed the couple were indeed back home with their family members and did not appear to have been harmed by their alleged abductors. Maharaj, however, said that Dr. Gupta and his wife were released by their abductors due to intense pressure from the police. It is not known if any ransom was paid for the release of the missing couple. As reported, the Guptas went missing last Friday during their drive back home from Giridih. Family members lost contact with them somewhere between Barhi Toll Plaza and Gaya on National Highway 2 around 1:00 pm. When the couple failed to return home as expected, Dr. Gupta's brother Neeraj Gupta filed a case of kidnapping with the Barachatti police station in Gaya district. The medical fraternity in Bihar, the Indian Medical Association (IMA), had threatened to launch a state-wide stir if Dr. Gupta and his wife were not recovered immediately. Meanwhile, police remain tight-lipped about the whole affair insisting details of the kidnapping and the subsequent release would be revealed at a later time. ***UPDATE*** Giving details of the release of Gaya doctor Pankaj Gupta and his wife Shubhra Gupta, Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) P. K. Thakur said the couple was released by their abductors based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Denying no ransom was paid, the DGP said that the police traced the kidnappers to Lucknow. "We were focused on this gang led by one Ajay Kumar, age 55, who contested election on the Samajwadi Party ticket in 1991. Kumar, the owner of a post flat in Delhi's Vasant Vihar, is also believed to be involved in at least four high profile kidnappings including one going back to 2003 when he demanded a ransom of Rs. 10 crore," Thakur said. Providing details about the Guptas abduction, the DGP said that at least half a dozen members of the Ajay Kumar gang dressed in police uniform in two separate vehicles ambushed the doctor who was returning to Gaya from Giridih in his Audi. The kidnappers then put red beacons on each car, including the Audi, to give the impression that a VIP was passing. The victims were then brought to a house in Lucknow where they were kept in isolation, the DGP said. The police, based on the information it had, held a stakeout at the criminals' hideout. With the attention of the local as well as national media, the kidnappers, however, decided to free the couple. "On Tuesday night, realizing we were on to them, the kidnappers took the couple to the Lucknow railway station and put them in a train to Gaya. This whole thing was captured on surveillance cameras at the railway station," the DGP said adding as soon as the train left, the police jumped into action and arrested nine members of the gang from their hideout. Police also recovered over two dozen police uniforms of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh police along with several red beacons used by politicians or other VIPs. Patna: Roughly a year after he re-joned the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) amidst much fanfare, Madhepura MP Pappu Yadav on Thursday was kicked out of the party for engaging in anti-party activities and undermining the leadership of party President Lalu Prasad Yadav. RJD General Secretary Ramdeo Bhandari said that Yadav had been expelled from the party for a period of six years for defying party leadership and stoking anti-party feelings designed to harm the party in view of the upcoming state Assembly elections. Justifying the action against the former jail-bird who defeated Janata Dal U President Sharad Yadav in the last Lok Sabha elections with a very comfortable margin, Bhandari said that Pappu Yadav had been hobnobbing with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a party that the RJD President Lalu Prasad Yadav had been fighting for years against its communal approach. The MP from Madhepura, who had been opposed to the removal of Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, was served a show-cause notice two weeks ago explaining why he should not be expelled from the party. "Pappu Yadav did reply to the show-cause notice but his response were not adequate to the satisfaction of the party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav," Bhandari said. It may be recalled that Pappu Yadav was not too thrilled when the RJD President, a few weeks ago, made it abundantly clear that only his family members could occupy the top post in the RJD. Accusing Lalu of turning the party into a family affair, Pappu Yadav had taken it upon himself to criticize the leadership while also slamming the Janata Dal U leaders for removing Manjhi in a very unceremonious fashion. He had also been very critical of Lalu Prasad Yadav for joining hands with Nitish Kumar and other members of the so-called 'Janata Parivar' saying it proved that the former RJD behemoth had lost his charisma to pull votes without using other party leaders as his crutch. An unfazed Pappu Yadav fired back at Lalu saying he was kicked out of the party so as to make room for Lalu's two sons in the party. "This is the only way he can continue his legacy. People like me who are dedicated to the cause of the people of Bihar are a threat to him," he said. Continuing his harangue against Lalu Prasad Yadav, Pappu Yadav said that the RJD chief was in the habit of surrounding himself with sycophants and was not used to hearing truth. "He (Lalu) has a history of silencing those who have any self respect. He got rid of Ranjan Yadav for telling truth to him. Then he managed to eliminate Ram Kripal Yadav by insisting on promoting his own family member. Now that I am being honest and truthful, he throws me out of the party on charges of engaging in anti-party activities," he said. Health care denied to jailed Iranian cleric who championed internet 04/25/16 Source: Radio Zamaneh Jailed Iranian cleric Mohammadreza Nekounam is suffering from health problems, and the special court for the clergy refuses to let him to be hospitalized. Mohammdreza Nekounam The Kaleme website reported on Saturday April 23 that prison food has had an adverse effect on Nekoonam's blood pressure and he is in serious danger of having another stroke, like the one he suffered while he was in solitary confinement in Qom Prison. Doctors have called for special meals to be prepared for the jailed clergyman, but prison authorities have refused to make such accommodations, which according to Kaleme puts him at immediate risk of another stroke. Nekounam was arrested after he reacted to statements by Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi declaring high-speed internet service was "haram" (religiously forbidden). Nekounam responded saying: "While we have been choking the internet and keeping the speed of our internet at the level of a wagon, children even before entering school work with the internet and computers. I say instead of becoming snails, we should jump on this train and go global. Internet is a power. If you can't use it, just leave it and go. This gentleman cannot use the internet and turns around and says it is haram." While Makarrem Shirazi has denied filing any complaints against Nekounam, he was arrested and, in a closed courtroom, was sentenced to five years in jail. Nekounam was released last year after he suffered a stroke but then was rearrested after once again expressing his opinion about the violence used to enforce the Islamic dress code (hijab) in public. He is reportedly being subjected to further pressure through the denial of all privileges such as family visits. Activists plead for prisoner held in notorious Section 8 of Evin Source: Radio Zamaneh One hundred and forty activists have issued a letter expressing concern over the health of political prisoner Amir Amirgholi in Evin Prison and called for his release. Amir Amirgholi The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on Sunday April 24 that Amirgholi is in Section 8 of Evin Prison, which is the "worst section" of the facility, and the signatories refer to it as the "new penal colony" for political prisoners. Amirgholi began a hunger strike on April 11 to protest the "lack of hygiene in prison endangering his health". He has on several occasions demanded to be transferred to the political prisoners' section in compliance with the principle of separation of offences. The signatories have urged the media to focus attention on his situation. Amirghili was arrested in December of 2014 and after 56 day of interrogations in solitary in the Revolutionary Guards section of Evin Prison, he was transferred to Section 8. He has been sentenced to 21 years in jail for "blasphemy, insulting the leader, assembly and collusion against national security, disrupting public order by attending gatherings and propaganda against the regime". Tehran Jails French-Iranian Woman Who Tried To Visit Sick Mother Source: RFE/RL A French-Iranian citizen who left Iran in 2009 after facing espionage charges has been sentenced to six years in jail after she returned to Tehran to visit her critically ill mother. Kaleme, an Iranian opposition website, reported late on April 24 that former French Embassy employee Nazak Afshar was arrested in March upon her arrival at Tehran's international airport. Nazak Afshar The website reported that the 58-year-old Afshar was freed on bail from Tehran's notorious Evin prison after she was formally charged. Iran's judiciary has not commented on her case or made the charges against her public. Several other dual-nationality citizens or expatriates have been arrested upon returning to visit Iran. A spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said on April 24 that four dual-nationality citizens recently have been sentenced for their connections to foreign countries. They include Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, an Iranian graduate student who was studying physics at the University of Texas. She has been sentenced to 10 years in an Iranian prison on charges of having "relations with a hostile country" and receiving "illegitimate funds." Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and Kaleme Republican U.S. Senate candidates Tom Del Beccaro and Duf Sundheim will participate in a forum sponsored by the Lincoln Club of Riverside scheduled for 6 p.m. May 13 at the Victoria Club, 2521 Arroyo Drive in Riverside. Del Beccaro and Sundheim both served as chairman of the California Republican Party. They are seeking the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Barbara Boxer and they are among more than 30 Senate candidates on the ballot in the June 7 primary. Check-in/social hour starts at 5 p.m. The cost is $25 for Lincoln Club members and $35 for non-members. Checks should be payable to the Lincoln Club of Riverside. Reservations are required. To RSVP, contact Sherri Gomez at sherrigomez@gmail.com or 951-689-1910. Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com A Phelan man was arrested Monday, April 25, nine months after authorities say he drove off with a U.S. Forest Service investigator hanging from the car window at a wildfire base camp in Victorville. The investigator fired shots at the man but missed. John Andrew Gocke, 61, a retired San Bernardino County sheriffs captain, was charged Friday with resisting an executive officer, a felony, according to court documents. He faces a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail if convicted. Gocke was arrested in Victorville on Monday and released after posting an unspecified amount of bail, San Bernardino County jail records show. A voice message left for Gocke on Monday seeking comment was not returned. Previously, Gocke has insisted that the Forest Service investigator, Ty Davis, was at fault. The San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office did not review whether Davis gunfire was justified because nobody was hit by bullets, office spokesman Christopher Lee said. The U.S. Forest Service did review the shooting. Spokesman Paul Robbins said Monday he was gathering information on the status of that investigation. The North fire started July 17 off I-15 in the Cajon Pass, overrunning at least 20 vehicles on the freeway whose occupants were forced to run for their lives. Over the next few days, it burned 4,250 acres, seven homes and 16 outbuildings. Davis was at the North fire base camp at the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds on July 20 when he was summoned by camp security to deal with a person described as non-compliant. The subject attempted to flee and dragged the officer along with the fleeing vehicle, according to the Forest Service statement. The officer fired his weapon, striking subjects vehicle numerous times, but no one was injured. In an interview in July, Gocke said he drove through the fairgrounds that day because he was curious about why so much firefighting equipment had gathered. Gocke said he asked someone about the commotion and the contact went drastically wrong. He had a real bad attitude, Gocke said of Davis. He demanded my identification and he told me to get out of the car. I told him I didnt have to do that. Still, he said, he said he showed the officer his badge and identified himself as a retired deputy. It escalated from there, Gocke said. I knew he was wrong. As I tried to drive away, he ran around yelling, Get out of the car. He inserted himself in the drivers window. I had no idea what his intent was. I pushed him off and drove away. Lee, the DAs spokesman, declined to comment on Gockes assertions because of the ongoing investigation. Gocke retired in 2004. His last post was as commander of the Colorado River station in Needles. He was in the news years earlier, when he and other deputies were defendants in a 1988 excessive-force case in which the plaintiffs became known as the Victorville Five. Six deputies including Gocke investigating a report of a loud, all-night party got into a physical confrontation with six Mexican nationals who had been drinking. Deputies said one man pushed an officer and tried to grab two others guns. Unknown to anyone involved in the fracas, a neighbor videotaped the incident, starting a few minutes after it had begun. The tape was one of the first videos ever introduced as evidence in a civil trial involving alleged excessive force by police. The tape showed deputies using fists, batons and choke holds to restrain the men. The five men sought more than $5 million in total damages. A jury awarded a total of $956,000 to three of the men in January 1990. Three months later, in April, a judge reduced the awards to two of the men from $540,000 to $206,000, and from $300,000 to $88,000, saying that the evidence did not support the initial judgments. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Riverside and San Bernardino counties are lacking in Democratic Party superdelegates those able to support the candidate of their choice compared to other parts of California. You can add another superdelegate to Riverside Countys list. Cathedral City Councilman Greg Pettis received a Democratic National Committee appointment through Democratic Municipal Officials, a national organization of mayors, city council members and other local elected leaders. Pettis said he hasnt decided whether hell back former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination. Superdelegates, who include Democratic elected leaders and party officials, make up more than 700 of the 4,765 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which will take place this July in Philadelphia. With the exception of Rep. Norma Torres of Pomona, who is undecided, the regions other superdelegates Reps. Pete Aguilar of Redlands, Raul Ruiz of Palm Desert and Mark Takano of Riverside all back Clinton, who has the support of 513 superdelegates compared to 38 for Sanders, according to The Associated Press. Firefighters contained a brush fire beside Highway 60 East in Moreno Valley on Sunday, April 24. The fire which was reported at 4:42 p.m. west of Nason Street initially blocked all eastbound lanes on the 60. By 7:15 p.m., however, the lanes were no longer blocked. Firefighters at 5:30 p.m. contained the fire to a half-acre of trees and heavy brush, according to a Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department news release. The fire was reported at 4:42 p.m. west of Nason Street, according to a California Highway Patrol incident log. As Metrolink officials prepare for a handful of public meetings this week on fare restructuring, work crews are putting the finishing touches on the long-awaited Perris Valley Line extension. The 24-mile extension to the 91 Line Metrolinks first expansion of service in 22 years will bring Metrolink trains south to the Perris-Menifee border. The line has seen its projected opening date pushed back more than once due to construction delays, but is now expected to launch service as early as May, according to John Standiford, deputy executive director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission. Construction is continuing at a few of the new stations and we are working towards starting service next month, stated Standiford in an email. Beginning Monday, April 25, Metrolink will be conducting eight workshops across Southern California to cull public opinion on service costs. Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson said the input received at these meetings will be presented to the Southern California Regional Rail Authority board at its meeting May 13 in Los Angeles. What we are suggesting our board do is adjust all of the fares throughout our system to be more of a distance-based fare, he said. Inland meetings will be held at the Corona Public Library on Wednesday, April 27, and San Bernardino City Council Chambers on Friday, April 29. Both are scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. The rail authority will also consider the fate of $3 station-to-station pilot program set to expire June 30. One of the issues with that system, said Johnson, is the wide range of distances riders travel on the same ticket. A good example would be on our San Bernardino Line, explained Johnson. It costs $3 to go from Montclair to Claremont, which is 2 miles. It also costs $3 to go from Corona to Fullerton, which is more than 20 miles. Johnson said the workshops will gather feedback to make the fare system more equitable. No matter the fare, a new app has been expanded to allow customers to buy tickets using their mobile devices. The new app launched March 1 for riders of the Inland Empire-Orange County Line. According to Metrolink, it was downloaded 7,000 times in the first month with more than 4,700 tickets sold, about 13 percent of the total sold on the line. It is now available for all Metrolink trips. Johnson said part of the challenge of the mobile app was coordinating with transportation partners such as the Riverside Transit Agency, the Corona Cruiser and Dial-A-Ride that Metrolink riders transfer to. We wanted to roll it out in a phased approach making certain that, one, it works, and two, that its well-received by the community, said Johnson. Contact the writer: 951-368-9682 or tsheridan@pressenterprise.com More than a dozen Inland high school students found their inner bard as they competed in the fourth annual Shakespeare monologue contest Thursday. Organized by Shakespeare in the Vines, the competition, at Carols Restaurant at Baily Vineyard and Winery in Temecula, took on extra meaning as 2016 marks 400 years since Shakespeares death. Competitors will be judged on how well they understand the meaning, language and character of their monologues as well as their skill, in terms of expression and communication, Rob Crisell, an actor and educator with Shakespeare in the Vines, told a packed house. One by one, students took the stage and brought the Bards work to life. Each competitor was tasked with memorizing two contrasting monologues, which together could not exceed 6 minutes. One speech had to be comical and the other serious. At the end of the evening, three judges would reveal their top picks and award the winner with $400, runner-up $200 and the three finalists $50 each. About halfway through the performances, Etiwanda High School senior Madelyn Duran, 18, made her way to the stage, introduced herself and began performing selections from Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet. The tide changed from the audience laughing and smiling to silence and tension as she shifted between the polar opposite monologues. At one point, she stepped off the stage, knelt and looked at the judges as she recited the emotional piece. Afterward, she said she had been a ball of nerves before going on stage. It was really nerve-wracking because everyone before me was so good, Duran said. Im not sure of some of the choices I made during the performance. But, according to the judges, her decisions were up to snuff as she was one of three finalists. But it was Nicole Kearby, a senior at Henry J. Kaiser High School, whose powerful take on monologues from The Winters Tale and As You Like It earned the top prize. I was completely nervous up there. I didnt realize they had just called my name. I was stunned, a beaming Kearby, 18, said moments after learning she won. I was so intimidated by the other amazing performances. And with works by Shakespeare often being challenging to interpret, organizers said the students typically jump right in and surprise people with their level of understanding. I think Shakespeare has a way of bringing out the best in kids, Crisell said. They are surprised at how enjoyable Shakespeare is and get involved in the drama, passion and the love and hate that Shakespeare has to offer. Contact the writer: sschulte@pressenterprise.com, 951-368-9457 The sixteen-year-old charged with a terrorist plot on Anzac Day in Sydney was apparently a part of a police-run terrorism intervention program. The Auburn teen was arrested near his home on Sunday afternoon, and charged with planning a terrorist act. According to the ABC, he had actually been in close contact with police for the past year, after participating in an intensive new intervention program to disengage young people from the hold of IS recruiters. The program is run by AFP, NSW Police and the Victorian Police, and uses mentors, psychologists, religious leaders, teachers and work placements to try and dissuade young people from communicating with, and joing IS. The teen had had communicated with Neil Prakash, a well-known IS recruiter, as well as a terrorism cell of five, and another young boy from Sydney (who has now also been charged). He joined the intervention program after police raided his house last year, and told his parents of his communications. The boys father began accompanying him to mosques that were English-speaking, and pulled him out of school to start an apprenticeship but it didnt seem to help. He was arrested hours after he attempted to purchase a gun via an encrypted app. The messages did not disclose a location, but mentioned April 25. The teens lawyer Zemerai Khatiz said that his communications had been taken out of context: He is a 16-year-old boy who has never been in police custody, or charged or in prison in the past, so it is extremely difficult for him. The family is a very good family. They have been in this country for a very long time. They dont have any criminal ties or any criminal convictions. My client doesnt have any criminal convictions also the family is devastated. Source: 7:30. Photo: ABC News. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Egyptians demonstrate against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Mesaha square in Cairo's Dokki district, Monday, April 25, 2016. Police fired tear gas and birdshot on Monday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators calling on el-Sissi to step down over his government's decision to surrender control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Mostafa Darwish) Election Q&A: Meet the candidates for Emmet County Commission The first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth districts are all contested races on Nov. 8. AstraZeneca has unveiled plans to sequence up to two million genomes in a bid to identify genetic mutations that drive disease. Under a broad initiative designed to embed genomics across its research and development platforms, the Anglo-Swedish drugs giant said it will set up an in-house Centre for Genomics Research tasked with developing a bespoke database containing genome sequences from patient samples alongside associated clinical and drug response data. According to the firm, the move will help deliver novel insights into the biology of diseases, enable the identification of new drug targets, support better selection of patients for clinical trials and allow patients to be matched with the treatments they are most likely to benefit from. The initiative includes new collaborations with US-based Human Longevity, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK, and The Institute for Molecular Medicine, in Finland. Human Longevity will deploy its state-of-the-art machine learning, pattern recognition and other analytical techniques to up to 500,000 DNA samples from AZ, and add around 1 million of its own integrated genomic and health records to the analysis. Elsewhere, AZ will establish a research team that sits within the Sanger Institutes Genome Centre in Cambridge, UK, that will share genomic samples and associated clinical data, plus drug development expertise across core therapy areas. The two parties will identify new targets and biomarkers with potential use in diagnostic tests. The company will also work with The Institute for Molecular Medicine and its partners in Finland and the US to study genes of interest in the Finnish population, which is known to carry a higher than normal frequency of rare variants, the firm said. 'The time is right' With the advent of next generation sequencing and the increased sophistication of data analysis, the time is now right to immerse ourselves fully in the international genomics community through these pioneering collaborations and through the creation of our own genome centre, said Menelas Pangalos, executive vice president, Innovative Medicines & Early Development, AZ. We will leverage information from up to 2 million genome sequences, including over 500,000 from our own clinical trials, to drive drug discovery and development across all our therapeutic areas. Genomics will be fundamental to our laboratory research, our clinical trials and the launch of our medicines for patients. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned that the planned all-out strike by junior doctors this week will seriously risk the safety of many patients depending on the NHS. Under the direction of the British Medical Association, junior doctors are gearing up to hit picket lines on April 26 and 27, including those working in emergency care, marking a first in NHS history. In a letter to Dr Mark Porter, BMA council chair, Hunt has strongly urged a rethink on whether the extreme action is proportionate or appropriate and appealed for an end to the strike which will be deeply worrying for patients, and place enormous additional strain on our NHS at a time of intense pressure. Had the BMA not gone back on its word to negotiate on the principal outstanding issue - Saturday pay - we would have an agreed contract by now and imposition would have been avoided, he wrote, and proposed a new meeting to discuss outstanding issues. In a responding letter, Dr Porter reiterated his sides commitment to reaching a negotiated settlement, but stressed this cannot take place with the threat of imposition hanging over our junior doctors heads. I am now repeating this offer as a way to break the current impasse: if you agree to lift imposition while talks resume, we will immediately call off the industrial action, he stressed. Numerous issues He also rejected the assertion that the only outstanding bone of contention regarding the contract relates to Saturday pay, citing a number of critical issues concerning work-life balance, excessive working hours, improvements in training and crucially, workforce and funding implications for seven day services. The proposed contract is deficient in failing to address these issues properly, hence our concerns for patient care, the long-term future of the NHS and the recruitment and retention of doctors, he said. With no sign of an agreement, the NHS is now preparing itself for the planned industrial action. Operations and procedures due over the two days are being rescheduled, NHS England has stressed that A&E departments will remain open but is asking patients only to attend if it is essential. It has also warned that GPs may experience greater demand than normal over strike period, so contact them early if you need advice or an appointment. Police said Sunday that they were investigating the separate shooting deaths of two men Saturday in North Philadelphia. At 7:30 a.m. Saturday, officers were called to the 1800 block of Sulis Street, where they found a man in his late 30s lying on steps outside a building, shot twice in the chest. He died at the scene. The victim's name has not been released. Police said that they did not know a motive in the shooting and that no arrests have been made. In the second case, about 4:34 p.m. Saturday, police were called to the 2300 block of West Huntingdon Street, where they found a 36-year-old with multiple gunshot wounds inside a green Pontiac Grand Prix. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim's name was not released, pending notification of relatives. Police said they did not know of a motive for the shooting. A suspect in that case was described as a heavy-set, light-complexioned black male, 30-35 years old, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-7, wearing a blue work uniform and a reflective vest. jcastellano@phillynews.com 215-854-4521 @jill_castellano Colin Grant - Island Spring: Nic Court - Hucks 'N Trucks: Nathan Harvey - Spring Trails: Madeira - Hunting for Poncha: Ridin' Paradise: Slippery Sunday: Trail Blaze With The Boys: Daniel Self: Riding in BC: Weird & Revered - FIENDING 4 FUN Mixtape: Thomas Vanderham ACL Recovery: Destination Trail - South Africa: Matt Nordstrom - Odyssey 3015 - Full Segment: Nigel Sylvester - "Go!' 2 - Los Angeles: Kalum Ko - Reel 2016: @colin-grant riding fast and crushing corners on Vancouver Island.Goin' quick down the local. Video: August Nesbitt.Nathan Harvey riding Rio in Kamloops this spring. Video: Max Loukidelis.Madeira is more a little continent than a small island. The trails are varied like the plants and animals.#mtb#paradise#freeride#italy#trailbangerShort video from a sloppy Sunday riding trails. Riders: @Nashworth @Jamesnedkelly @JonowadeThe boys smashing turns in Helderberg.Daniel Self getting out on his Banshee Rune after a solid day of rain.Got bored and decided to make a mix of clips I had laying around. Video: Jalin Kimpton.BMX riding and B-Roll antics from Alberta, California, and Washington D.C. Filmed from June 2015 to March 2016. Stay weird.From the trainer to the trails: Thomas Vanderham's journey to get back on the bike after an ACL surgery this past winter.In this episode of Destination Trail, we follow Hannah Barnes and Miranda Miller as the pair ride the scorched wilderness of Stellenbosch, South Africa. A vast network of trails have existed here since the '90s, but after a massive fire scorched much of the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve in 2015, fresh funding has paved the way for even more singletrack. And today, this lemonade-out-of-lemons approach has rejuvenated existing trails and laid the groundwork for new ones, making the area a true destination for any mountain biker with a love for dusty red earth.Here's Matt delivering the hammers in the ender section for our Odyssey 3015 video.BMX has always been about expressing your point of view. Nigel gives us a true, up close and personal experience of what riding his bike is really like. Last leaving us in New York City, Nigel has finally landed in Los Angeles and fun continues.Contact: kalum@kalumko.com Kalum Ko | Reel 2016 from Kalum Ko on Vimeo. Albee Layer - In Between Giants: Albee set two goals this year, one was to stay healthy through a Jaws year and the other was to land a backside 540. Not sure if either goal went the way it was planned. Regardless it was a winter to remember, and this edit proves that Jaws wasn't the only thing worth surfing on the Valley Isle. ALBEE LAYER // IN BETWEEN GIANTS from TAKE SHELTER PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo. *NSFW* Chapelle's Show - True HollyWood Stories - Prince: RIP.Title Photo by: Eric Palmer To check out videos submitted by fellow Pinkbike members that didn't quite make Movie Mondays here Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON, Pennsylvania (Reuters) For some Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, Tuesdays primary election will be more than just a chance to pick preferred candidates for public office it will be a mini-referendum on the future of the states downtrodden fracking industry. Three candidates on the ballot, including Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and two Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls, want to ban or pause the controversial oil and gas drilling technique, splitting an electorate in parts of the state concerned about both jobs and the environment. A debate over fracking emerged between Sanders and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton over the last month, with Sanders calling for a nationwide ban and Clinton pushing a middle-of-the road approach that would allow it with caveats a stance that has been criticized by more progressive democrats. The outcome of the presidential and senate primaries in a state that now the second biggest natural gas producer in America after Texas may reveal how residents of heavily drilled areas feel about an industry suffering from a decline in oil and gas prices. Everyone is anxious, said Lois Martin, a sales manager at a store in Washington that sells gear, like steel-toe boots and drill-site clothes, to workers in the fracking industry. Everybody is waiting for the elections to be over, she said. The question of a ban on fracking has also emerged as a key issue in the hotly contested race to select a Democrat to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania against the incumbent Republican Pat Toomey. Two candidates, former U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak and John Fetterman, a small town mayor, have called for a moratorium on fracking. The third candidate, Katie McGinty, the former head of the states environmental regulator, has been endorsed by President Barack Obama and Governor Tom Wolf, and is looking for stricter standards on the industry. Now is the moment to really do it, Sestak said about a ban, pointing to a slump in oil and gas prices that has left many drill pads idle. We cant even pump any more gas out because our pipelines are filled. McGinty has called that stance a sound bite, and not a serious proposal. States like New York and Maryland have already passed moratoriums on fracking while they conduct studies into its environmental impacts. Fracking which involves pumping water, sand and chemicals into the ground to free oil and gas reserves from rock formations is responsible for a boom in U.S. oil and gas production over the past decade that has slammed energy company profits and lowered costs for consumers. It has also been implicated in ground water pollution, and a rash of small earthquakes in places like Oklahoma and Ohio, raising concerns about its safety. Opposition to fracking, meanwhile, has risen to an all-time high nationwide of 51 percent, according to a Gallup poll released March 31, from 40 percent a year earlier. WEALTHY OVERNIGHT In many of the most heavily fracked regions of Pennsylvania some residents are not ready for a ban. They are looking for a way to both support the industry while also improving safeguards to protect the environment. Mark Zabilitzky, a farmer with white hair in his early-sixties, said he leased out mineral rights on his property to a natural gas company four years ago in exchange for around $1,000 an acre and a cut of production royalties. But the company has not drilled yet, and Zabilitsky is hoping for a rebound in natural gas prices to make it happen before he retires. I am not too far off of retirement, he said. We thought we would be wealthy overnight. He said he appreciates Sanders devotion to protecting the environment, but thinks fracking can be done safely. David Spigelmyer, president of the Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coalition, said calls for fracking bans by Sanders and the Senate hopefuls posed a risk to mom and pop shops that have provided jobs to our neighbors. We have people that want to take us in a dangerous direction, he said at a meeting of landowners in South Franklin township in Washington county last week. (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Andrew Hay) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print *The following is an opinion column by RMuse* Most Americans are aware that going to college is a pricey proposition, but to get a decent-paying job in the 21st Century taking on some debt for an education is an accepted investment for a financially secure future. However, it is an atrocity that the student debt many Americans took on early in their lives is following them through their retirement and straight to the grave. It is unbelievable, but many of these student debtors are now senior citizens whose Social Security benefits are being garnished to continue to pay the student loans they took out a lifetime ago. This practice is an atrocity for seniors and the disabled who barely subsist on their meager Social Security benefits because they are being plagued by a practice that at one time was forbidden by law; a law Republicans changed. When the original Social Security Act was enacted 80 years ago, it contained a simple provision that prohibited garnishing Social Security benefits for debts owed to the federal government. Republicans hate any provision that protects Americans Social Security benefits as much as they despise Social Security, so in 1996 they enacted a law abolishing that protection like todays Republicans want to abolish Social Security. The number of seniors whose Social Security benefits are being garnished has grown proportionally with the number of students being forced into higher and higher student loan debt to earn an education and provide a financially secure future for themselves and their families. All that came to an abrupt end last week when President Obama acted to put an end to what Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) labeled an appalling practice. The Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Grijalva said, It is appalling that Social Security support for seniors and those with disabilities is being skimmed to feed into an out-of-control student debt machine. These funds are intended to ensure dignity in retirement and to lift individuals out of the depths of poverty. Grijalvas fellow co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) said, The high costs of tuition and student loans leave people of all ages with huge amounts of student debt. Its wrong to garnish the small Social Security checks of older and disabled people in order to pay for their student loans. People should not lose their hard earned benefits in order to pay their student loans. The Administration has the power to stop this practice. It took a few months to be worked out, but the Obama Administration did use its power to put a stop to the appalling practice likely infuriating Republicans who supported the practice they enacted in 1996. It was a small victory in the fight to preserve Social Security and address student debt relief, but it was a victory all the same. The Department of Education announced: A new process to proactively identify and assist federal student loan borrowers with disabilities who may be eligible for loan discharge. This effort was called for by President Obama in his Student Aid Bill of Rights, which details measures to make paying for higher education an easier and fairer experience for millions of Americans. The history of how this abominable practice developed is a typically Republican assault on Americans Social Security. In the 1950s and 1960s young people could get a college education without being buried in debt because community and state college funding was paid for by the government. The thinking that worked marvelously was a simple one; the tax revenue return on the governments investment in education was well worth it; literally well worth it. However, that was unacceptable to Republicans who oppose any spending on education, especially higher education. Therefore, in the late sixties conservative politicians like Republican demigod and California governor Ronald Reagan slashed education spending to the bone and started imposing tuition at Californias state universities and community colleges. Like a lot of Reagans atrocities as California governor, the policy caught on around the nation and higher education steadily became a money-maker for financial institutions. The situation only grew worse as Republicans enacted deeper spending cuts to public higher education while increasing tuition to place more of the cost of education onto students to send them to predatory lending institutions. At least when the students reached retirement age or became disabled, the government and financial institutions were prohibited from garnishing Social Security benefits. All that changed in 1996 when Republicans led by Newt Gingrich changed the law. Subsequently, for the past twenty years Social Security recipients with student loan debt have had their benefits garnished until they died even when they were barely making it. The congressional Democrats appealing to the Obama Administration to change the law were part of a concerted effort by leaders representing the Student Debt Crisis, Social Security Works, Project Springboard, CREDO, and the Campaign for Americas Future. The groups who banded together delivered 375,000 petition signatures and a Congressional letter to the Education Department last October urging an end to Social Security benefit garnishments for student debt. As Representative Ellison remarked, the Administration has the power to stop this practice and since Congressional Republicans are as impotent as they are unwilling to do anything for the people, President Obama stepped in and gave Social Security recipients the relief they deserve as the law was originally enacted. The ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Marcia L. Fudge (D-OH) said that, Garnishing Social Security benefits for student loan debt is a significant blow to our seniors, especially when a growing percentage of older Americans rely on the program as their sole source of income, an essential economic lifeline. Our federal government should not punish Americans for striving for a better opportunity, or supporting children and other family members working hard to pursue their dreams. There is still a monumental amount of work to do to both give relief to Americans drowning in student loan debt and protect Social Security beneficiaries, but in this political environment any victory, no matter how small, is significant and a reason to celebrate. It is noteworthy that once again it was President Obama who did what he was able to do as leader of the Executive branch to offer relief to Social Security recipients, and one can only imagine the level of progress this nation could achieve if there was willingness among Republicans in Congress to actually work for the peoples general welfare. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Sen. Bernie Sanders is turning his political revolution towards a new objective of capturing the post-Obama soul of the Democratic Party. The New York Times reported: Aides to Mr. Sanders have been pressing party officials for a significant role in drafting the platform for the Democratic convention in July, aiming to lock in strong planks on issues like a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, breaking up Wall Street banks and banning natural gas fracking. Amid his unexpectedly strong showing in the Democratic primaries, Mr. Sanders has tapped his two-million-person donor list to raise money for liberal congressional candidates in New York, Nevada and Washington State. And in the waning months of Barack Obamas presidency, Mr. Sanderss allies are testing their muscle against the White House, mounting a public attack on the presidents housing secretary, Julian Castro, over his departments sales of delinquent mortgages to banks and private equity firms. There is a greater goal here, said Representative Raul M. Grijalva of Arizona, a co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who sent a letter to Mr. Castro criticizing the mortgage sales. The contribution of Bernie that will be lasting for us is that we will coalesce around an agenda. If one listened closely to Sen. Sanders language through the majority of the Democratic primary so far, the Sanders campaign has always had the goals of winning the nomination and inspiring a populist movement that takes the government away from the billionaires and special interests and hands it back to the people. The Sanders political revolution has never been just a campaign slogan. Bernie Sanders is out to transform American politics, and his effort to get millions of Americans active and energized wont stop after the campaign for the Democratic primary ends. Sanders understands that after President Obama leaves office, there will be an ideological void within the party. Former Sec. of State Clinton has always seemed more interested in governing and getting things done than waging an ideological crusade, and in a way, Clinton and Sanders could make good partners if she wins the White House. Sanders can use his position in the Senate to advance his agenda while working with Hillary Clinton on issues where they agree with each other and can get things done. It is easy to see Sanders influencing the next bill to increase the minimum wage to be proposed in the Senate, and working on legislation to break up the big banks. The Bernie Sanders political revolution wont end after the California primary. Sen. Sanders has formed a coalition of a new generation of conservatives who are out to win the soul of the Democratic Party. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print A new Suffolk University poll has found that 19% of Republicans say they will support Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. The poll contained some numbers that should terrify Republicans. 40% of Republicans polled said that they would not support the partys nominee if Donald Trump wins. 25% of the anti-Trump Republican vote would consider voting for a third party candidate. 19% of the never Trump Republicans would vote for Hillary Clinton, and 18% would stay home and not vote at all. By gender, 10% of men, and 9% of Republican women would vote for Clinton over Trump. 18% of very likely Republican general election voters would support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. These numbers provide just a hint of the potential devastation that nominating Donald Trump could bring to the Republican Party. If Trumps disapproval ratings continue to climb, it is possible that he could lose half of the Republican electorate. Trump was known by 99% of the voters that were polled, so it is not likely that any kind of image makeover will be effective when he is already universally known. The Republican Party is deeply fractured, and Donald Trump is not the candidate that will bring them together. Trumps unpopularity will cause many Republicans to stay home, which will result in the GOP losing seats in both the House and the Senate. Trump could cost Republicans state legislatures and governors races across the country. Donald Trump is a weapon of mass Republican destruction. The door is open for Hillary Clinton to build a gigantic general election coalition by attracting nearly 20% of Republicans to her campaign. One suspects that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of how bad a Donald Trump nomination will be for the Republican Party. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has shown unprecedented courage in taking on the gun lobby a position no other presidential candidate has taken on. Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, a national figure and advocate for gun control measures who was shot in 2011 following heightened political rhetoric against the Affordable Care Act, has been stumping for Clinton in Pennsylvania and mailers with Giffords endorsing Clinton have been sent out in Connecticut. The Hill reported: Hillary Clinton is accentuating her support for gun control in the run-up to Tuesdays Democratic primary in Connecticut, the site of one of the worst school shootings in American history. The former secretary of State met last week in Hartford, Conn., with the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and has launched ads in the state featuring victims of gun violence. I am here to tell you I will use every single minute of every day, if Im fortunate to be your president, looking for ways to save lives so we can change the gun culture, Clinton said to victims of the Newtown massacre in Hartford on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. Clintons hard push for gun control measures has mostly been discussed as a contrast in a Democratic primary against Senator Bernie Sanders, but Hillary Clintons stance against the gun industry is defining her campaign in a way that signals she will continue this fight through the general if shes nominated. Scott McLean, a political science professor at Quinnipiac University, told the CTPost that this is the only position on which Clinton is to the left of Sanders but it will play better in Connecticut than in most places, Its probably the only position where she appears to be further to the left than Sanders. Its going to play better in Connecticut than it will most places in the country. The Sandy Hook shooting is still a major turning point in politics in Connecticut in favor of gun control. Actually, Clinton was one of the most liberal Senators during her time in that chamber (538 used three metrics to determine this and yep, shes actually always been a liberal) and some might say further left on issues of women and girls rights for her entire career. Additionally, while certainly the tragedy of Sandy Hook means gun control issues are a big deal in Connecticut, Clinton is running on stricter gun controls in the strong hunting state of Pennsylvania as well. She did it in Ohio, as well. Perhaps surprisingly, a majority of the nation has been on the left side of the gun control issue. In January, a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll showed that a supermajority of likely 2016 voters supported President Obamas proposed executive actions on gun control. That could have been a one-off, but it looks more like a trend, with varying numbers. In 2014 a Quinnipiac University National Poll showed that 92 percent of voters, including gun owners and Republicans, supported background checks prior to all gun sales. These polls indicate that a savvy politician who could withstand the relentless NRA lobby hits would consider making this a big deal. Gun control is an issue Clinton brings up repeatedly in debates and on the trail. In January of 2016, she said, More than 33,000 Americans are killed by guns each year. Its time to act. As President, Ill take on the gun lobby and fight for commonsense reforms to keep guns away from terrorists, domestic abusers, and other violent criminalsincluding comprehensive background checks and closing loopholes that allow guns to fall into the wrong hands. Clinton is uniquely positioned to take on the gun lobby, as she is already a known political power who cant be silenced by the bad press bought and paid for by the NRA lobby. The Koch brothers have been spending dark money to damage the Clinton brand for years, and while its taken a toll, shes still here. The American public desperately wants reasonable gun control measures, but the Congress of NRA puppets and those without the power to fight the negative dark money ads thrown at them by the NRA have refused action. On December 3, 2015, Senate Republicans voted to block a measure that would have prevented individuals on the terror watch list from legally buying guns in the United States. Thats where we are right now. Meanwhile many Americans support background checks and closing gun loopholes that allow terrorists to legally buy a gun here. There is only one presidential candidate who has been willing to take on the NRA gun lobby, and that is Hillary Clinton. Critics might suggest shes doing this to stake out a position to the left of Sanders, but that discounts the entire history of Clintons actual work protecting and supporting children and vulnerable people. No matter the attempts to impugn the motive, no one can dispute the political courage it takes to run against the gun lobby. If it comes down to Hillary Clinton v the Gun Lobby, Id bet on Clinton. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is being accused of multiple violations of federal campaign finance law in a new complaint filed with the FEC. A Cruz co-chair was taped violating the law: At a campaign fundraising event, Cruzs co-chair urged donors to give money to an unaffiliated Cruz super PAC. The Cruz campaign also broke the law by placing and publicizing a solicitation table at the Cruz campaign event for the super PAC. Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Crystal K. Perkins said in a statement: Theres no other way to put it: Tea Party Republican Ted Cruzs campaign broke federal election campaign laws. Soliciting donations that exceed federal limits is illegal and that is exactly what Senator Cruzs campaign and his campaigns National Co-Chair reportedly did at a recent campaign event. Senator Cruzs campaign disregarded the law and brazenly asked supporters to give both unlimited contributions and contributions from corporations to a Stand for Truth PAC supporting Senator Cruzs campaign. This is the exact kind of corporate corruption democrats fight against every day. The Texas Democratic Party is calling on the FEC to immediately investigate the full scope of Cruzs violations, seek the maximum financial penalties, and enjoin future violations of the law. The Cruz campaign is also being investigated for an illegal February fundraising letter that may have violated Texas state law. Republicans may want to think twice before they dump Trump for Ted Cruz. Sen. Cruz comes with his own set of skeletons in the closet. Cruz has never been worried about laws or ethics. If the Republican Party dumps Trump for Cruz, they may be swapping one set of headaches for another. Either way, Democrats are the big winners if Trump or Cruz is the Republican nominee. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Governor Terry Branstad (R-IA) says he backs a reasonable proposal to defund Planned Parenthood in Iowa, even though federal money doesnt pay for abortion services due to the Hyde Act and it is already illegal to use Medicaid money for abortion services in Iowa. Speaking about a Iowa House proposal that would bar funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortion service providers, Branstad said he believes the state House has adopted a reasonable proposal, according to the Des Moines Register. I think that is the appropriate way to go, and I respect the legislative processes of working these differences out, said Branstad. On Friday, the Democratic-led state Senate added an amendment to the state House appropriations bill, striking the defunding language. The bill is now headed for a House-Senate conference committee. Republican state Senator David Johnson objected to those who are against womens medical autonomy possibly having to pay electrical utilities at a Planned Parenthood. Johnson argued, It is time for us to understand that taxpayer money going to take innocent lives is just not the right thing to do. You dont need a deep religious fervor. You can do it simply with human logic. If this sounds nuts, its because it is. Think of if anti-war protesters refused to possibly pay any electrical bills of any organization that might support any part of a war even say, 3% even one whose main goal is to avoid war in the first place. Planned Parenthood provides the two things that cut down on unwanted pregnancies: family planning and access to affordable birth control. Eighty percent of Planned Parenthood patients receive services to prevent unintended pregnancy. But Republicans are still legislatively reacting to the debunked Planned Parenthood videos as a justification for imposing their alleged religious views on the country. (I write alleged because it doesnt seem Christian to seek to harm an organization that does good work by using what has already been proven to be a lie and has landed its maker in criminal court, and in fact exonerated Planned Parenthood.) Life News headlined their article about this, Iowa Democrats Kill Effort to Defund Planned Parenthood After It Sells Aborted Baby Parts. Thats a no to logic and facts and a yes to lies and moving the goal posts. Pointing out how ridiculous Republicans are being in their Planned Parenthood witch hunt, an Iowa State Daily editorial board column pointed out, Only 3 percent of everything the organization (Planned Parenthood) does has anything to do with abortions, while 80 percent focuses on preventing unwanted pregnancies. But that doesnt seem to matter to Republicans. Instead, our right-wing legislators would rather remove funding for an organization that seems to make it a priority to prevent the need for abortions. Thats how Republicans roll. Instead of actually solving the problem or addressing it or trying to prevent it from happening, Republicans are totally ignoring reality and facts, while trying to legislatively create a larger need for abortion services. Republicans are pointing their fingers at Planned Parenthood to falsely demonize the organization in an election year, in the way that people who cant be honest about why they are in office are wont to do. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Texans like to talk about seceding from the union and evil President Obama until they need the feds. And when they need the feds, the real President Obama is there to help. So when Governor Greg Abbott requested federal help for four counties in Texas, President Obama stepped up in spite of the years of Texas bragging about their independence. On Monday, President Obama signed declared a major disaster exists in the State of Texas and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area affected by severe storms and flooding during the period of April 17-24, 2016. I would like to thank the President and FEMA for quickly granting Texas request for Individual Assistance following last weeks severe weather, the Texas Republican Governor said. The State of Texas will continue to work with our local and federal partners to aid Texans recovering and rebuilding from flood damages and ensure all those affected receive the assistance they need. Abbott has made a habit of overreacting to President Obamas policies in the past. A prime example of Abbotts inability to deal with reality was his reaction to President Obama pushing for some reasonable gun control measures. Abbott wasnt having that. Abbott tweeted, Obama wants to impose more gun control. My response.#? COME & TAKE IT @NRA According the to statement from the White House, the Presidents action will help individuals in the counties of Fayette, Grimes, Harris, and Parker. So President Obama has done for Texas what Republicans will not do for Flint, Michigan. Compassionate conservatism is dead. Whats left is hyperbolic hysterics who paint a fictional image of President Obama in order to hate him all the more, while refusing to do any work to help suffering people in the city of Flint who are in danger still. But when disaster hits their area, first on their knees to beg for help and expect it? Republicans. The next time a Republican natters on about how they hate the feds, ask them if they hate them so much why they expect and demand help from them. This is part of what a functioning government is meant to do for its people. Sure, government is not perfect. But for Republicans to suggest they should stop doing their jobs, troll government, or destroy it from within is ridiculous. Sadly this is what most of the Republican presidential front-runners are suggesting. President Obama showed Congressional Republicans who are holding up aid for Flint, Michigan how the grown ups do it. They show up and do their jobs no matter how they feel about it. From the White House statement: FEMA said that residents and business owners who sustained losses in the designated counties can begin applying for assistance tomorrow by registering online at http://www.DisasterAssistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-FEMA(3362) or 1-800-462-7585 (TTY) for the hearing and speech impaired. The toll-free telephone numbers will operate from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. (local time) seven days a week until further notice. Portfolio English Edition's premium content is available only for subscribers Learn about the hottest news of the day, along with immediate follow-up analyses and 1000's of exclusive articles with full access to the premium content. Register and apply for a 14 days free trial period. About a decade ago, Mary Thompson left her job as a critical care nurse in northern Minnesota with intentions of retiring in the scenic bluff country of Caledonia. Last week, she was one of 50 nurses across the country recognized as a CDC Childhood Immunization Champion. Quite the turn of events for someone who's tried to retire twice in the last 11 years, right? Thompson, 69, initially joined Houston County Public Health simply to meet people and make new friends. That goal quickly grew in scope as her attention turned from treating life-threatening ailments to preventing them. Thompson's diligent and creative awareness-raising efforts prompted Houston County Public Health Director Mary Marchel to nominate her for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 's annual award. Last Tuesday, two representatives from the Minnesota Department of Health recognized Thompson as Minnesota's immunization champion at a Houston County Board meeting. "It kind of validates that what I've done is appreciated," Thompson said. "I've been a nurse for a long time, over 40 years. Most people who feel good about nursing feel good for the people they've helped. ADVERTISEMENT "If you're doing a good job, it means you're making a difference in people's lives. I feel good intrinsically, but to be recognized by your peers it's always nice to have someone pat you on your back." The numbers back up Houston County's success with childhood immunizations. According to the MDH's most recent numbers, nearly 80 percent of children in the rural county are up to date on their shots. That's one of the highest numbers in the state, often times at least 10 percent higher than other counties. Thompson's taken the typical steps of strengthening local partnerships with schools and clinics to raise awareness about immunization, but she's also blazed a new trail. MDH highlighted her unusual and potentially unique idea of setting up a booth at the county fair where families could check their immunization records while munching on funnel cakes and deep fried pickles. "Mary knows the devastation these diseases can cause and works hard to improve immunization rates for everyone she comes in contact with," Marchel said. "She is an inspiration to everyone she works with and is a true immunization champion." Thompson's career started out on a much different track while working in Bagley and Bemidji but she's quite familiar with creating successful partnerships. For example, she worked "shoulder to shoulder" with other medical experts while treating those afflicted with various illnesses when the Iron Curtain collapsed and people fled west after the Cold War ended in 1991. That commitment to her craft included 15 trips to Russia. "I got to see first-hand what it was like for people without good immunizations," Thompson said. While the recent award recognized Thompson's work with children, the experience in Russia helped her understand the important of immunization for people of all ages. Houston County recently received a MDH grant to help the elderly stay up to date, and she's also created social media accounts in hopes of connecting with Millennials. ADVERTISEMENT As Thompson prepares to retire at the end of the year for real this time she appreciates that her career has come full circle. "Public health is about prevention," Thompson said. "I spent 30 years in the hospital taking care of acute everything. I thought it'd be nice at the end of my career trying to keep people out of the hospital." A Stewartville man who's been a defendant in four different criminal sex cases has pleaded guilty for a second time. Michael Loren Rosolack, 54, entered the plea last week in Olmsted County District Court, where he'd been charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct-victim under 13. Sentencing has been set for June 22. The charge stemmed from an incident in June 2013 in rural Olmsted County. A woman reported to authorities that Rosolack had approached her daughter in an outbuilding where she was reading and began to question her about her body, the report says. The girl told investigators that Rosolack tried to put his hand in her pants and tried to tickle her; Rosolack told the girl if she yelled, he'd hurt her. Rosolack stopped when the girl threatened to scream, the report says, and left. ADVERTISEMENT The guilty plea leaves just one of the four cases unresolved. In it, Rosolack is charged with one count of prostitution-offer to hire an individual under 13, a felony. His first appearance in that case is also set for June 22. It dates from as far back as 2011, when a woman involved in prostitution spoke with Rochester police. The woman said she had concerns about a regular client of hers named "Mike," who worked as an inspector of homes and day cares. According to the criminal complaint, the woman said the client frequently referred to sex with children, claiming that during inspections of day care facilities, he liked to touch the genitals of "little kids." In addition, the woman told investigators, he wanted her to call him a pedophile during their sexual encounters, and asked if she could bring him the underwear of little girls. He also allegedly asked the woman if she'd provide her own granddaughter for him to touch. The witness said the man was tall, had reddish brown hair and was missing a couple of fingers. Five years later, the same investigator was involved in the arrest of a man, identified as Rosolack, who answered an ad for escort services that was placed by a member of the Rochester police street crimes unit. The officer recognized him as the "Mike" mentioned by the witness in 2011. The sting occurred Jan. 13, when Rosolack arranged to meet the "escort" at a Rochester business. The undercover officer asked if Rosolack could pick up condoms, the complaint says, and told him the prices of her services. He responded with a text that said "perfect," and showed up a few minutes later. Court documents reveal he had $160 in cash $10 more than the most expensive price quoted and a condom in his right front pocket. That incident resulted in the third charge, gross misdemeanor patronage of prostitution in a public place. Rosolack pleaded guilty to that charge Feb. 17 and was immediately sentenced to 90 days in jail, stayed for a year, and was ordered to complete a psychological-sexual evaluation and a sex addiction evaluation. ADVERTISEMENT Meanwhile, the investigator was able to find the witness from 2011. She continued to see Rosolack on a regular basis for prostitution, the reports say, and he has continued to ask for sex with young girls. The fourth case against Rosolack was resolved in November, when he was acquitted by a Fillmore County jury of two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. Those charges stemmed from an alleged incident in August 2012 at his residence in Fillmore County. Two girls who were visiting the home claimed Rosolack touched them inappropriately. The man accused of stabbing a 17-year-old Rochester girl multiple times made his first appearance Friday in Olmsted County District Court. Anthony Nolan King White, 29, has been charged with one count of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, two counts of aggravated stalking, one count of stalking to injure another and one count of violation of an order for protection, all felonies. He also faces one count of gross misdemeanor domestic assault. White remains in custody in lieu of $50,000 conditional bail, and is due back in court May 3. The investigation began about 3:45 a.m. April 15, when Rochester police were dispatched to the emergency department of a local hospital for a report of a teenager who'd been admitted with stab wounds to her stomach, back and hand. A woman who brought the girl to the hospital said White and the victim had gotten into an argument at her apartment. The woman went outside about 2:30 a.m. to get something from her vehicle; when she returned, she saw blood on the floor. The witness attempted to help the victim and "saw guts hanging out of her stomach," the complaint says. ADVERTISEMENT The woman took the girl to the hospital. A second woman who was at the apartment said she saw a male whom she didn't identify by name take a knife from a knife block in the kitchen. As she turned away, she heard a female also not identified by name scream, then saw the teenager fall to the floor. A review of the hospital security camera footage shows a vehicle pull up to the emergency room at 3:20 a.m.; a man matching White's description got out of the car, court documents say. When investigators interviewed the victim after her surgery, she said she'd been stabbed by an unknown female in a Rochester park, the reports say. A woman in the hospital room at the time urged the victim to "tell the truth," the complaint says, but the teenager denied White assaulted her. A few days later, a witness came forward with a recording of the victim recounting the assault. In it, the girl can be heard saying "he" stabbed her in the stomach, and that the cut on her hand likely came when she tried to stop "him" from stabbing her. The witness also showed detectives a recent post from the victim's Facebook account, in which she allegedly wrote "Anthony King White is a women abuser." According to court records, White's criminal history reflects a conviction for felony third-degree assault in June. Two men accused of assaulting a woman in a stairwell after a party last fall have been sentenced in the case. Jeylin James Smith, 20, and Akol Liebwel Chadack, 19, both pleaded guilty in December to one count of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony. Smith was sentenced to 60 days in jail and 10 years probation. Olmsted County District Court Judge Joseph Chase ordered Smith to attend sex offender program, complete a psychiatric evaluation/treatment and maintain employment, among other conditions. Smith received a stay of imposition; if he completes all of the conditions during the probationary period, the offense may be reduced on his record from a felony to a misdemeanor. He must serve the 60 days in jail. In exchange for Smith's guilty plea, two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, three counts of third-degree and two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, all felonies, were dismissed, as were four counts of gross misdemeanor fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct. ADVERTISEMENT Chadack was sentenced to 90 days in jail, with credit for five days served, and 10 years probation. Chase ordered Chadack to attend sex offender program, undergo chemical dependency evaluation/treatment, maintain employment and register as a predatory offender, in addition to other conditions. He, too, received a stay of imposition, but must serve the 90-day jail term. In exchange for his guilty plea, two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of second-degree, two counts of third-degree and and two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, all felonies, were dismissed, as were three counts of gross misdemeanor fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct. The investigation began about 9:30 p.m. Nov. 1, when a woman called Rochester police. She told officers that about 90 minutes earlier, Smith and Chadack had come to her home to pick her up for a party. The three went to an apartment complex in southeast Rochester. Chadack went inside the building, then came back and told the woman and Smith to come with him. Once inside, the complaint says, Chadack exposed himself and ordered the victim to perform oral sex on him and Smith. The woman refused several times, but told investigators she felt "trapped and afraid," because both men were bigger and stronger than she is. Chadack allegedly told her if she didn't cooperate, they'd leave her stranded at the apartment. They then forced themselves on her, the complaint says. The men led her to another stairwell, court documents say, and again forced her to perform oral sex on them. The men stopped the assault when three other young men entered the stairwell, the report says. One of the three asked if she was OK; according to the complaint, she told them she'd just been raped. All of the men began to leave the stairwell, but Chadack returned to the building, got the alleged victim, and Smith and Chadack drove her home. ADVERTISEMENT Though the woman was unfamiliar with Rochester, her description led authorities to believe the assault occurred in one of the Meadow Park Apartment buildings. Investigators reviewed surveillance video from the complex, documents say, which corroborated the victim's story. The next day, the woman showed police a text from Smith that read, "Hey im sorry bout last night." Chadack told an investigator he's friends with Smith, but denied knowing the victim, the complaint says, despite having photos of her on his Facebook page. Rochester police are investigating after a pair of men reportedly attempted to rob then assaulted a mother and her son. Shortly after midnight Sunday, officers were sent to a local hospital emergency department, where a 44-year-old woman and her 16-year-old son were being treated. The two were out for a walk, they said, when they were approached in the 1200 block of Harbor Drive Southeast by two men who demanded money. The alleged victims didn't have any, the report says, and were both punched in the face. The first suspect is described as a black male in his mid- to late-20s, 6 feet 1, with a muscular build and Afro-style haircut. He wore a green-and-white striped shirt. The second man is described as black, about 20 years old, 5 feet 8, with a muscular build. He had a short, fade-style haircut and wore a dark sweatshirt, the report says. ALBERT LEA An Austin man remains in custody today after authorities say he ran over a party-goer in a pasture, killing him, then hid in the basement of a house while deputies looked for him. Nathan Paul Brooks, 26, made his first appearance last week in Freeborn County District Court, where he's been charged with one count each of felony criminal vehicular homicide: leaving the scene, and driving after cancellation-inimical to public safety, a gross misdemeanor. His next court date has been set for May 5; Brooks is in custody in lieu of $40,000 conditional bail. The investigation began about 9:15 p.m. April 16, when deputies were sent to a home in rural Freeborn County for a report of a man who'd been run over. It was Alex Tapp, 30, of Austin; he was pronounced dead at the scene. There had been a party and bonfire in the pasture of the property that evening, the report says; several witnesses said Brooks was driving a large SUV around the pasture, "doing donuts," "tearing around" and "four-wheeling." ADVERTISEMENT At least three people reported seeing Brooks after Tapp's body was found; when they called 911 and started CPR, Brooks allegedly said, "I thought I hit the dog." He was no longer in the pasture when first responders arrived. According to court documents, deputies looked in the pasture, near the bonfire and in the nearby home, but couldn't find Brooks. After multiple calls to his cell phone went unanswered, the cell phone provider "pinged" the phone; it was determined the phone was in a seven-mile radius of the property, but the provider couldn't be more specific. Brooks wasn't located that night; the next afternoon, an attorney called law enforcement and said Brooks would turn himself in, which he did. Brooks reportedly told authorities when he was returning to the pasture with more firewood, he ran over something and his "heart just stopped." He said he hoped it was just a log. After parking the SUV near the bonfire, he noticed Tapp wasn't around; Brooks claimed he ran to the area where he'd run over something and found Tapp on the ground, critically injured. Brooks said he alerted others, who called 911 and began CPR, and said he was on the phone with 911 when they were doing CPR. According to the criminal complaint, Brooks said he walked to the house, went into the basement, kept the lights off and sat in the dark. He called his wife to have her come over, then shut off his phone and cried, he told investigators. Brooks denied driving carelessly and denied trying to hide; he said he didn't hear anyone in the house or he would've talked to the deputies, but admitted he didn't speak with law enforcement before going inside. ADVERTISEMENT When a detective told Brooks that deputies had searched the house that night and had spoken with his wife there, Brooks again denied hiding, and said he didn't speak to his wife until 9:30 the next morning. The detective asked Brooks why he'd shut off his phone; according to court records, Brooks denied shutting it off, saying instead that it had died. A review of Brooks' criminal history reveals convictions for DWI in 2009, 2010 and 2014. In addition, his driver's license has been revoked since 2010. Brooks had made a court appearance for the 2014 DWI the day before the fatality occurred. The criminal vehicular homicide charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, a $20,000 fine, or both. Prosecutor in police shooting to enter alcohol program MINNEAPOLIS The prosecutor whose office won a recent conviction in the high-profile case of a Minneapolis police officer who killed an unarmed woman says he will be entering a treatment program for alcohol issues. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman issued a statement Friday saying he was evaluated for alcohol issues and agrees he needs treatment. Hell be entering a program Monday. Freeman announced last week that he was taking a medical leave, but didnt say why. His Friday statement says he has also worked to stabilize his "unacceptably high blood pressure." He says hes determined to reclaim his health and hopes to be back to work in mid-June. ADVERTISEMENT Last month, a jury convicted Mohamed Noor of murder in the 2017 fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia who called 911 to report a possible crime. Minnesota seeks to add Purdue Pharma owners to opioid suit ST. PAUL Minnesotas attorney general is asking a state court for permission to add the owners of drugmaker Purdue Pharma to a lawsuit that seeks to hold the company responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma makes OxyContin and has been the subject of legal action in nearly every state. Attorney General Keith Ellison wants to add eight members of the Sackler family to Minnesotas lawsuit. He says the Sacklers, who own and operate Purdue, were involved in deceptive marketing tactics and strategies to sell more opioids, despite knowing the risks. If a judge approves, Minnesota would become at least the 11th state to take legal action against one or more members of the Sackler family. A family spokeswoman issued a statement denying the allegations, calling the lawsuit a misguided attempt to place blame where it doesnt belong. Man holed up in hotel surrenders to police ADVERTISEMENT BROOKLYN PARK Authorities say a standoff at a Brooklyn Park hotel ended after more than six hours when a man suspected of assaulting his girlfriend surrendered to police. SWAT officers and crisis negotiators were called to the La Quinta Inn early Friday after a woman reported she was being assaulted by her boyfriend and threatened with a gun. Police say the standoff began at 3:30 a.m. and ended when the man was arrested at about 9:50 a.m. Authorities say the woman was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. Police say the 31-year-old suspect was not carry9ing a gun but it was unclear if there were any weapons in the room. The suspect, who has not been formally charged, has previous convictions for drug possession, motor vehicle theft, aggravated robbery, making terroristic threats, drunken driving and burglary. Jail inmate accused of running prostitution ring MORA An inmate at the Kanabec County Jail is charged with running a prostitution ring from his cell. Thirty-eight-year-old Daniel Ellington is charged in Washington County District Court with two counts of sex trafficking and two counts of promotion of prostitution. Prosecutors say Ellington communicated with a prostitute by text and "promoted and profited" from her activities in Woodbury last month. ADVERTISEMENT East Metro Sex Trafficking Task Force director Imran Ali says Ellington was 100 miles away and incarcerated, yet was promoting prostitution and profiting from it. The task force began investigating after a Woodbury detective found an online ad entitled "Blonde Bombshell." The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports Kanabec County Sheriff Brian Smith says Ellington used a jail-issued iPod to text and paid a certain price for each message. Associated Press ST. PAUL Officials in Iowa and Minnesota are exploring a system to allow Iowa residents to buy medical marijuana from their northern neighbor, lawmakers from both states have told The Associated Press. Iowa's Legislature has struggled this year to expand a 2014 law that legalized marijuana oils for patients suffering seizures but left them nowhere to buy it. Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer said Friday an agreement with Minnesota is one option they're now considering. Minnesota's program launched last summer. The novel setup could bring more patients to the two companies in Minnesota that are struggling with low enrollment. But it would also raise some federal concerns. And it could pit Iowa residents with long drives to the closest dispensary in Rochester, Minnesota three hours northeast of Des Moines. RED WING The Minnesota Department of Health has confirmed a norovirus outbreak at the Fiesta Mexicana restaurant in Red Wing. An investigation by MDH's environmental health sanitarians determined that at least 30 people became ill after eating at the restaurant between April 7 and April 9. An investigation was launched after about 50 complaints were received. MDH did not immediately return calls from the Post-Bulletin seeking information, but the Republican-Eagle newspaper reported two main causes for the outbreak. Amy Saupe, a foodborne disease epidemiologist, told the Red Wing paper that employees had returned to work shortly after recovering from an illness, while some employees had handled uncooked food without gloves. MDH staff worked with employees to improve practices, with Saupe crediting the restaurant for taking appropriate measures to halt the outbreak. "The restaurant remains open," Saupe said. "If we thought it wasn't safe, we wouldn't let it open." ADVERTISEMENT The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that norovirus is a "highly contagious virus" that can linger for up to two weeks, causing vomiting and diarrhea that can lead to serious health-related issues related to dehydration. Outbreaks are most commonly found at daycare centers, nursing homes, schools, and cruise ships. "Most of these outbreaks occur in the food service settings like restaurants," CDC reports on its website. "Infected food workers are frequently the source of the outbreaks, often by touching ready-to-eat foods, such as raw fruits and vegetables, with their bare hands before serving them. However, any food served raw or handled after being cooked can get contaminated with norovirus. A guest at the Super 8 Motel in Rochester helped battle a fire that broke out on a third-floor deck at the motel. The Rochester Fire Department responded to a call at the motel in the 1200 block of South Broadway just before 6 p.m. Sunday. When the firefighters arrived, they found a guest of the motel working to extinguish the fire on the deck on the upper floor. The motel occupant had spotted smoke from the parking lot, reported it to the manager then used a chemical fire extinguisher to begin putting the fire out. Upon their arrival, firefighters could see the motel guest working on extinguishing the fire. The firefighters then took over and finished putting out the fire before ensuring it had not spread to other parts of the building. The fire damage to a partition wall on the deck is estimated at $2,500, according to a report by the RFD. There were no injuries reported due to the fire. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Rubbernecking, as practiced when telephone party lines were the norm and those who wanted to be in the know could serendipitously listen to their neighbors converse, was mostly practiced without gossiping intent. The Golden Rule was bent enough to allow Mother and others to listen in when opportunities arose. With a hand cupped over the mouthpiece and a stern command for quiet, she heard a neighbor's daughter on a Costa Rican mission trip talk things over with her mother and listened in as a lover shared soap opera-like secrets with his intended. It was an unspoken but tolerated privacy invasion because most, if not all, line mates indulged. Rubbernecking as defined in the dictionary as a strange curiousness that causes one to crane their neck earned a bumpkin reputation mostly through the writings of social critic H.L. Mencken, who called tourists awed by big city sights "rubberneck rubes." Cellphone conversations monitored by government authorities might be called surveillance, but at its most basic is rubbernecking. ADVERTISEMENT It isn't rubbernecking when a sidewalk conversation is overheard. I called it a happy diversion when two girls who hadn't reached their Sweet 16 years engaged in boisterous sidewalk talk. "Yuck,'' the taller one said. "I'd never kiss a boy who chews tobacco.'' "It's gross,'' said the shorter second one. I didn't interject. Their consensus would have been different had they walked on a sidewalk in France when the gilded Versailles Palace was in full flower. Young and upper-crust women entered the palace wearing refined spring dresses with accessories to match. Accessory essentials included fancy snuff-sniffing boxes that suggested great wealth and the coolest chic. Snuff sniffing was a craze among the elegant; cigarettes were for the poor and unrefined. King Louis XV thought so little of sniffing that he banned it from the royal court. Pope Urban convinced that snuff was a prime example of moral collapse threatened Roman Catholics who used snuff with excommunication and hence eternal damnation. Versailles Palace, which was a symbol of French grandeur then and remains so now, was not a pleasant place in the 18th century. Men and women doused themselves in perfume to substitute for bathing because washing was linked to illness. A contemporary writer remarked after a visit to Versailles that clashing perfumes and poor ventilation caused the place to smell like a pigsty. ADVERTISEMENT Snuff sniffing as refined taste faded at about the same time a British doctor reported that it caused nasal cancer. The French changed their hygiene habits and eventually public bath users were taxed to help pay for Versailles. I held on to the earlier French attitude well into my later youth an unkemptness that caused Mother no small frustration. Dad, who thought playing in the mud and dirt was an indication that I would become a farmer, was more accepting. Mother demanded action via outside intervention. A particularly aggressive sister-in-law led the charge, restraining me with a strong thumb pressed like a vice against an earlobe. Her prisoner probably against applicable Geneva Convention rules was marched to the bathroom where only a window represented a possible escape route. If I failed to adequately rub skin raw, retaliation would come in the form of wanton, wet kisses administered by several women folk. Soap and water exposed a diamond in the dirt. I have since become more accepting of both baths and kisses. Some insist showers and their high-powered heads are far better because less water is used and hence are more environmentally friendly. Experts recommend four-minute showers, but a study that involved 20,000 people found that the average length is eight minutes and hence benefits swing bath's way. The same study found that people in Colombia and Brazil shower more than once a day. Americans, along with the Spanish and French, average less than one daily. Shower-taking came turned out most popular in the survey, but I think they are all wet. After all, Grandson Elliot's plastic toys aren't much use in the shower. Pridefest , the annual event that celebrates and raises awareness of the Rochester gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, is moving out of downtown this year to save money. The July 14-17 event has been moved from the Peace Plaza, where it has been held since 2011, to the Wicked Moose Bar & Grill , 1201 Eastgate Drive SE. That decision was officially decided at Pridefest's Feb. 17 planning meeting but had not yet been announced. Gale Julius, Pridefest's co-chair, confirmed that decision to the Post-Bulletin Saturday and said it was due to costs. "We were offered a free space and couldn't turn it down," Julius said. "We would have liked to have kept it downtown but just couldn't afford the price this year. So to dispel all rumors, we were not kicked out of downtown; the price (of Peace Plaza) went up substantially and was out of our range." Jenna Bowman, executive director of the Rochester Downtown Alliance, which oversees rental of the Peace Plaza, confirmed that the cost to reserve the plaza went up 3 percent this year. RDA also requires an event staff member to be on hand for "safety and security" purposes at a cost of $24 per hour. Those changes were communicated to Pridefest leaders in January and February, at which point they decided to change venues "after we ended the meeting positively," Bowman said. ADVERTISEMENT It's the only event that has relocated because of the fee increase, Bowman said. She said that events at the Peace Plaza drew just 1,600 people when the area expanded in 2008, but more than 100,000 people attended 33 events in 2015. "We hope that current and future events see the Peace Plaza as a welcoming space that is a feasible space to rent," Bowman said. "We will continue to work hard to ensure this occurs." Pridefest was held in Central Park before its move to the Peace Plaza in 2011. The first Pridefest was held in 1998 and was organized in part to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969 , protesting police actions and discrimination against gays. Incognito will headline the block party scheduled for Friday, July 15. A vendor fair is also planned for Sunday, July 17, in the Wicked Moose parking lot. The fair previously was held on downtown sidewalks. Some people are concerned that the change will negatively affect attendance, which topped 1,500 in 2014 when Vangie Castro served as the chairperson. Castro, youth education program manager for the Diversity Council, says her long-term goal has been to make the event the third-largest in the state, in keeping with the city being the third largest in the state. She fears this could be a step backwards. "I think it's great to bring in new partnerships, but personally, I liked the Peace Plaza location because it was central and put Rochester Pridefest in downtown and out in the open," said Castro, who is a Gay Lesbian Community Services board member. Rochester Mayor Ardell Brede echoed Castro's concerns. "I just can't imagine they'll draw the same amount of people," Brede said. "There's something about having that group be a part of the city (rather than) in a private club. I know there were some people who had concerns with having 'that group,' so to speak, in the center of the city, but I'm a little bit disappointed (they won't be there anymore)." ADVERTISEMENT Earth Day might be behind us, but that doesn't mean Rochester's citizens have stopped caring for our environment. Volunteers across Rochester are still cleaning up the city as part of A Litter Bit Better, and 2016 the 10th year of the program is shaping up to make a tidy haul of trash. Plus, there were plenty of trees planted and EarthFest attendees educated as part of the Earth Day celebrations in Rochester. Here are some of the green facts from Earth Day and beyond: 216 More than 200 trees were planted on boulevards along the northwest side of Bandel Road north of 55th Street NW. 230 RNeighbors received help from 230 people to help plant those 216 trees. 500 More than 500 people attended the EarthFest expo on Sunday at the Mayor Civic Center. ADVERTISEMENT 40 There were a total of 40 booths at EarthFest, 36 were vendors of environmental products or services, plus there were informational displays for tiny houses, electric and diesel buses, and the Rochester Public Library's book bike. 12 The expo wasn't all booths. A dozen educational classes covered topics from the Mayo Clinic's green team to how installing solar photovoltaic systems can affect your bottom line. An average of 20 attendees signed up for each learning session. 150 Keynote speaker Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, attracted 150 people to her address on coal and the future of sustainable energy. 50 Mary and Ivan Idso had 50 people attend their open house of the home they are remodeling to become NetZero, meaning the home will have no net energy consumption when completed. 100 An EarthFest Rally & March attracted 100 people, another 40 took part in the EarthFest Pub Crawl. 299 While sign up for A Litter Bit Better is not completed (the event runs through Saturday), so far 299 groups have signed up to clean selected locations in Rochester. That number represents a new high in the history of ALBB. 3,614 The number of individual volunteers who have registered for A Litter Bit Better thus far also represents a new record for the event. 268 A Litter Bit Better volunteers will pick up trash in at least 268 locations around Rochester in 2016. Again, this represents a new record, but those numbers won't be final until Saturday. To learn more or add to these great numbers, go to www.rneighbors.org/litterbitbetter ADVERTISEMENT 14 Number of years Rochester Public Utilities has conducted an Arbor Day celebration. This year's event is 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at Silver Lake Park and includes music, food, activities and free trees. Sources: Rneighbors, Mary Idso, City of Rochester Public Works The United Kingdoms referendum on continued membership in the European Union is set for June 23. Prime Minister Cameron seeks a yes vote and invited President Obama to express his views in support of Britains continued membership. Has President Obama ever persuaded anybody of anything? I dont think so. His performance standing next to Cameron on Friday was classic Obama. It was patronizing. It was threatening. It was offensive. It was disingenuous; it was extremely disingenuous. In Of Churchill and chumps, I posted the video. Reasoned argument just isnt his bag. Charles Moore is the prominent British journalist and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. His Telegraph column responding to Obama captures some of the contradictions: [I]t is reassuring to know that he is a friend of this country. One of his first acts as president was to remove the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, so some of us formed the view that he thought the Anglo-American relationship was no longer all that special. Seven years later, we are being proved wrong. It turns out Mr Obama now thinks it is so special that it authorises him to take part in our electoral process. Oddly enough, this has never happened so publicly before. True, everyone knew that Ronald Reagan wanted Margaret Thatcher to win the general elections of 1983 and 1987, but he kept his help private and did not advise the British how to vote. Never in our democratic history can the leader of a foreign power have climbed so clearly on to our hustings to tell all our citizens what one side 10 Downing Street wanted. Mr Obamas most famous electoral message was Yes, we can. His electoral message to the British people is No, you cant. If we want influence, security, free trade, democracy and the rule of law, we can get these things only by staying in the European Union, he informs us. We cannot contemplate living as his own country so proudly does as a wholly independent state. If we do, we go to the back of the queue in trade, he told the press conference last night. The president has spent most of his time in office neglecting old allies and seeking new ones, being chummier with Iran than Israel and with Castro than Cameron. He belatedly praises the network of alliances and programmes the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods, Nato, the United Nations Security Council which helped create the post-war order, but what he has actually done is to tiptoe away from Nato commitments, hoping that the EU will take up the slack. The question one needs to ask today, with some urgency, is whether that order is still working, and how, exactly, the European Union is assisting it. Moore is just getting warmed up. The whole thing here makes the kind of argument that President Obama himself passed on. A lot of conservatives have expressed shock and disorientation at the revival of enthusiasm for socialism, not to mention the shattering of the consensus for free trade, low taxes, open markets, freedom of expression, and so forth. It is clearand I wrote a long memo about this at AEI about five years ago that I cannot now findthat we all made a major mistake in the early 1990s when the Cold War ended in thinking that the triumph of free markets and liberal democracy was permanent. (Anyone remember The End of History?) Thus I was stunned to stumble across an unpublished lecture of Harry Jaffas from December 1991 which ends thus: The defeat of Communism in the USSR and its satellite empires by no means assures its defeat in the world. Indeed, the release of the West from its conflict with the East emancipates utopian communism at home from the suspicion of its affinity with an external enemy. The struggle for the preservation of western civilization has entered a newand perhaps far more deadly and dangerousphase. In other words, the Cold War never really ended. It just came home, and has by degrees been turning slowly hotter. All of the old impulses that found expression in Marxist formulae have been reborn in the dialectics of critical theory and oppression by patriarchy, etc., instead of capitalism. In the middle of the lecture, Jaffa explains: William Seward is in the news these days. He was the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860 and had the most first ballot votes, but was surpassed in later voting by Abraham Lincoln. This saga is cited as precedent (and there is much other) for denying the nomination to a candidate who comes to the convention with the most delegates. As I have noted, though, there were no primaries in Sewards day his was a case of live by the backroom, die by the backroom. Seward should be in the news for another reason his close relationship with Harriet Tubman. The two were neighbors and friends in Auburn, New York. In fact, Seward sold Tubman the land on which she built her house, which sheltered blacks who had escaped slavery while they settled into life in upstate New York. (We visited both houses in 1998; to my great disappointment, Sewards was closed but we got a tour of Tubmans). Sewards friendship with Tubman was not an accident. He was vehemently anti-slavery, probably the foremost opponent of that hateful institution in the Senate. Indeed, the ill-will he engendered in that capacity was probably a major reason why he couldnt get his delegate count to the required level at the 1860 Republican convention. Seward became Lincolns Secretary of State. Two other convention rivals, Simon Cameron and Salmon Chase, were rewarded with the top job at the War Department and the Treasury Department, respectively. Cameron proved to be incompetent and corrupt. Chase was highly competent, but difficult to deal with. Seward did a great job at State, successfully navigating America through the many diplomatic difficulties and crises associated with the Civil War. In addition, he became Lincolns close confidante. Ironically, given his stature as an anti-slavery man, Seward wanted to proceed more cautiously than Lincoln in dealing with the South on the eve of the Civil War. Perhaps this was because Seward was older than Lincoln and had long been an insider, to use the modern epithet. Once the shooting started, though, Seward was all in with Lincoln. It isnt surprising, then, that the same plot that resulted in Lincolns assassination nearly produced Sewards. The same night Lincoln was shot, the Secretary of State was attacked in his bed, where he was recovering from injuries sustained in an accident. Seward was stabbed multiple times, but a soldier who was guarding and nursing him saved his life. Seward stayed on as Secretary of State for Andrew Johnson and was generally supportive of the new presidents soft approach to dealing with the South, decisions that dont exactly cover Seward with glory. However, it was as Johnsons Secretary of State that Seward pulled of the purchase of Alaska, known at the time as Sewards Folly. It should be apparent from this thumbnail sketch that Sewards contributions to U.S. history far exceed Tubmans. I would argue that they approach Andrew Jacksons, and without the horrible warts. Does this mean that Seward, not Tubman, should be on the Twenty? It does not. No rule requires that places on our currency be awarded based solely on historical significance. The Underground Railroad isnt close to being among Americas most consequential achievements, but its one of our proudest. Tubman isnt among our most consequential figures, but shes one of our most extraordinary and courageous. Her courage wasnt just manifested by the Underground Railroad. According her biographer Kate Clifford Larson, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed military raid when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina black regiment up the Comabahee River, routing Confederate outposts, liberating more than 700 slaves, and destroying stockpiles of cotton, food, and weapons. Accordingly, I look forward to seeing Tubmans image on the Twenty. I like to think Seward too would be happy for his friend. HONOURED: Saidat Sanni, a 22-year old student of the Department of Statistics, emerged overall best student of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso. Vice Chancellor of the institution, Adeniyi Gbadegesin, announced Miss Sanni as the overall best graduating student at the schools 13th Convocation held in Ogbomoso on Friday. Miss Sanni hails from Abeokuta in Ogun State, and came tops after securing a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 4.88 ahead of Olufemi Ige of the Mathematics department, who secured a CGPA of 4.85 in the 2013/2014 session. Miss Sanni was the best student in the 2014/2015 session before emerging the best among the 10,317 graduands, which was a combination of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 academic sets. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, former Nigerian President, honoured by the cities of Antioch and Lathrop in California for promoting peace and democracy in Africa. At the award ceremony held in Antioch, California, on April 23, the Mayor of the city of Antioch, Wade Harper, expressed his admiration for Mr. Jonathan and declared that the city of Antioch, California, was proud of his legacies, especially his act of overseeing free, fair and conclusive elections and leaving the scene when the ovation was loudest. He recommended Mr. Jonathans behaviour to other leaders. Mr. Jonathan was represented by his former aide, Reno Omokri, at the ceremony. APPOINTED: Sebastian Maimako, former Dean of the Faculty of Management Sciences, appointed the Vice Chancellor of the University of Jos. His appointment took effect from April 22, taking over from Heyward Mafuyai, whose tenure expired on April 21. The Principal Assistant Registrar in charge of Information and Publication of the university, Abdullahi Abdullahi, announced the appointment in a statement on Friday. Mr. Maimako had served the university as Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences; Deputy Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences; Deputy Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences; and Head and Acting Head, Department of Management Sciences. The new vice chancellor, a graduate of Management Studies from the University of Jos, started working with the university in 1989 as a Graduate Assistant. ELECTED: Chidi Odinkalu, foremost human rights activist and former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, elected the new president-general of the Unity Schools Old Students Association (USOSA). At an election held in Abuja Saturday, April 23, Mr. Odinkalu won 269 votes, triumphing over his only challenger, Lawrence Wilbert, who garnered 24 votes. Mr. Odinkalu is an alumni of Federal Government College, Okigwe. BIRTHDAY: Seye Kehinde, Publisher of City People turned 51 on Sunday, April 24, 2016. Mr. Kehinde, was born April 24, 1965, to Civil Servants parents from Ishara in Ogun State. He graduated from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science. He also has a post graduate Diploma in Journalism. After his Youth Service at Kwara Polytechnic in Ilorin in 1986, he wrote for Herald from 1987 to 1988. He later worked with The Week, African Concord, and Concord newspapers, before joining some of his friends to found The News. He later left the publication to float City People magazine. His staff took time out on Sunday to celebrate him, writing congratulatory messages on the City Peoples website. WEDDED: Aminu Abubakar, son of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Saturday April 23, wedded his Ghanaian bride, Nana Akyaa, in a lavish ceremony in Accra, Ghana. Atiku himself was absent at the wedding as he was in England delivering a lecture at the London School of Economics. His wife and mother of the groom, Titi, and other family members were in attendance. Just last week, Atiku took to social media to announce Nanas traditional rites, as he became an in-law in Ghana. TRANSITED: Rafiu Bakare Jafojo, first Deputy Governor of Lagos State (1979-1983), on Sunday, April 24, 2016, passed on at age 80. He died after a brief illness in his Lagos home. Mr. Jafojo served as deputy to Lateef Jakande on the return of the country to civil rule in 1979. The late Mr. Jafojo, who was a very vocal politician, was born on December 6, 1935. His parents were the late Pa Bakare Adeyefa Jafojo in Ebute Meta and the late Madam Taiwo (nee Adebunmi) of Ebute Meta, Lagos, but he grew up in Isale Awori, Ikeja. Mr. Jafojo attended Alafia Institute, Ibadan and Christ High School, Ilubinrin, Lagos, where he wrote the West African School Certificate Examination and passed with flying colours. He began his working career in 1959 as a building inspector with the Ikeja Town Planning Authority, but left for England in 1961. In 1978, when the army prepared to return the country to political rule, the late Mr. Jafojo joined the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), whose founder/national leader was the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo. Although his ambition was to be a lawmaker, Mr. Awolowo encouraged him to join the then governorship candidate, Lateef Jakande as running mate. The joint ticket worked. They won the election. Thus on October 1, 1979, Mr. Jafojo, alongside Mr. Jakande was sworn in as the first democratically elected deputy governor of Lagos State. Nwabu Mgbemena, a former Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), at 71. Mr. Mgbemena died of cancer on April 22 in New Jersey, U.S. He was one of the pioneer editors of NAN, where he rose to serve as managing director for two terms from January 1985 to January 1994. He took over as Chief Executive Officer from Olufemi Adefela, who was then the General Manager of the agency. Many people are feared killed in ongoing communal clashes in Cross River State, South-south Nigeria. Fighting is said to have broken out between four communities in Cross River Central Senatorial and Northern Senatorial districts, during the weekend. In the Central Senatorial district, the crisis involved Ebum community in Obubra Local Government Area and Inyima in Yakurr Local Government Area of the state. However, in the Northern Senatorial district, people from Ukpe community fought against their counterparts from Mbagede both in Ogoja Local Government Area. Residents and the police confirmed the multiple clashes were triggered by protracted land disputes. A local who pleaded not to be named for safety reasons told PREMIUM TIMES that Ebum community and neighbouring Inyima are locked in a protracted dispute over a parcel of land. The conflict between Ukpe and Mbagede communities is also said to have lingered for about a decade despite attempts at settlement by traditional rulers from the affected area. The dispute, however, got bloody at the weekend when Mbagede people uprooted yam seedlings which were planted on the disputed parcel of land by Ukpe farmers. The action of the Mbagede people infuriated their Ukpe neighbours, who launched a reprisal attack leading to the death of many villagers from both communities. When contacted, the Cross River State Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, John Elu, confirmed the fighting. He blamed the crises on protracted land disputes among the warring communities. While he could not say how many people were killed in the two clashes, Mr. Elu however, maintained that a joint security operation has been deployed to restore law and order in the affected areas. The visiting U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has expressed hope in the future of the 24 abducted Chibok girls who escaped after they were captured by the extremist Boko Haram sect. Ms. Power, who made the remarks at the American University of Nigeria, Adamawa, expressed optimism that the girls would contribute to Nigerias development in future. The U.S. Envoy particularly commended the management of the American University of Nigeria for welcoming the girls and mentoring them in their studies. Let me say that these girls have so much to offer Nigeria. Having met with some of them, I cannot even imagine what these girls are going to do and the difference they are going to make. They are going to be doctors and engineers and accountants. They are going to help change this country, she said. Ms. Power said the situation would have been worse for the girls, if after their escape, they were again being treated with suspicion, distrust or discriminated against in their communities. She also commended the Adamawa Peace Initiative for bringing together Christians and Muslim leaders in Yola, as a way of promoting peaceful co-existence in their communities. According to her, such interfaith cooperation will defuse tension in the communities. Ms. Power said she and her delegation were in Nigeria to see for the U.S. government the progress so far made by Nigerias ongoing campaigns at combating Boko Haram. We started in Cameroon and we met even with Nigerian refugees in Cameroon, who are pained to come home. They desperately want to return to their communities. We met not only with government officials, but with religious leaders and civil society leaders and of course, students, she added. (NAN) Students across Nigerian universities have condemned the temporary ban placed on the University of Lagos Students Union by the management of the school. The management suspended the union following protests by students against poor welfare conditions in the school. PREMIUM TIMES reported how the protesting students blocked major roads leading into the university, including access to the schools Senate building and the Assembly Hall where Rahman Bello, the Vice Chancellor, was attending an event. Armed police officers were later brought in to disperse the angry students. The university was also shut and students asked to go home. The authorities later said students will sign undertakings to be of be good behaviour before the school is re-opened on May 2. In a statement, the Public Relations Officer of the Students Union, Jumai fabuyi, said students should not sign the undertaking or pay any fee demanded by the management. As the management did not communicate with the UNION at all to deliberate or discuss the students welfare. We would NEVER agree to such, he said. He further queried the sincerity of the university management in asking students to sign the undertaking. Why should we sign a form to be readmitted? Dont you smell a rat? Dont you feel there might be more to the situation than we see? Why is the Union suspended? For staging a peaceful protest? he asked rhetorically. The Press Club of the university, which represents student journalists, had earlier described the actions of the management as undemocratic. Femi Adeniji, the President of the Press Club said in a statement that the managements actions do not address issues raised during the protests. The Nigerian Campus Editors has also asked the university management to amicably resolve its grievances with the student leaders. The editors made their stance known in a statement signed by the national secretary general, Abdulganiy Shehu, a student of the University of Ilorin, and national vice president, Chukwu Daniel, a student of the University of Lagos. We have noticed the sad situation in UNILAG. It is painful that in era of Democracy, the university management wants to ensure that students have no voice even as Democracy gives voice to the voiceless. We call on the university management to give common sense a chance, the campus editors said. Another student leader at the University of Lagos said the suspension of the union would only take its activities underground. Emmanuel Afolabi, the General Secretary of the Students Union said the union would continue its activities silently despite the ban. In his reaction, a student activist from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Bamidele Williams, said the suspension is a slap on students struggle and should not be allowed to stay. Authorities of the University of Lagos announced that students should resume on May 2 after signing the undertaking while examinations start a week later on May 9. Details of how the National Assembly Service Commission nominated Mohammed Sani-Omolori ahead of Ben Efeturi for the position of the acting Clerk to the National Assembly, have emerged. The Commission had last Wednesday picked Mr. Sani-Omolori, currently the Clerk of the House of Representatives, as the next Clerk to the National Assembly. He will succeed Salisu Maikasuwa, who is proceeding on retirement leave on May 14. The Commission said Mr. Sani-Omolori would assume duties on May 13. However, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, who is the Chairman of the National Assembly, has faulted the procedure adopted in choosing the new acting Clerk. He argued in a letter to the chairman of National Assembly Service Commission, Adamu Fika, that Mr. Efeturi should have been considered for the position since he (Efeturi) is currently the deputy clerk. The President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives were informed that Mr. Efeturi was not considered for the appointment because he was not duly appointed as Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly, Mr. Saraki said in the letter signed by his Chief of Staff, Isa Galaudu. On further enquiry, we found he was duly appointed by the National Assembly Service Commission vide Extract from Minutes of its 403rd Meeting held on Friday, 21st November, 2014. But in a memorandum, he submitted to the 440th meeting of the Commission held on April 20, Mr. Fika explained that Mr. Efeturi was not appointed to the position because he would proceed on retirement leave on August 2. He said in conformity with the convention and practices of the service no officer who has less than six months to retire would act in higher office. Mr. Benedict Efeturi, who presently acts as Deputy Clerk to National Assembly, will also proceed on his three months terminal leave on 2nd August, 2016 days before the end of the current Clerks terminal leave, he said. It is neither expedient nor in conformity with convention and practices of the Service for an officer who has less than six months left to retire from service to act in a higher office. Mr. Mohammed Sani-Omolori, the present Clerk of the House of Representatives who therefore remains the next most senior officer in the services of the National Assembly will remain in service till 2021. Meanwhile, there are indications that Mr. Saraki opposition to Mr. Sani-Omoloris appointment was in violation of the Act establishing NASC as amended. According to the Acts, the Commission is not subjected to the direction of any authority or person in considering anybody for appointment. Section 6 (8) of the Act says, In exercising its power to make appointments or exercise disciplinary control over persons, the Commission shall not be subjected to the direction or control of any authority or person. It is not clear if the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, would back the decision of Mr. Saraki to oppose the appointment of Mr. Sani-Omoloris appointment. The senate president had claimed in his letter that he and the speaker were misled and misinformed by Mr. Fika during the appointment process. One of Mr. Dogaras aides, who requested not to be named because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, told this newspaper that the speaker was not in support of the senate president. The aide alleged that although Messrs Efeturi and Sani-Omolori joined the clerk cadre the same day March 25, 2010, the latter was junior in rank and was chosen ahead of him (Sani-Omolori) for the position of deputy clerk. The federal government has accumulated over N2 trillion through the Treasury Single Account (TSA) since the commencement of the policy on September 15, 2015. The minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said this at a town hall meeting held on Monday in Lagos. The policy is meant to consolidate all inflows from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) by way of deposit into commercial banks, traceable into a single account at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This administration has decided to plug all financial loopholes through the Treasury Single Account (TSA), into which over N2 trillion has accrued so far. Funds that ordinarily would have gone into private pockets are now finding their way into the public treasury, to be used for the benefit of all. Also, about 36,000 ghost workers have been discovered and weeded out, saving the government millions of naira, the minister said. The minister also said the capital expenditure of the 2016 budget was increased by 30 per cent. Beyond that, there are six social intervention areas that will directly touch the lives of millions of citizens and lift them out of poverty, he said. Mr. Mohammed noted that 500,000 graduates would be employed and trained as teachers. The minister added that 370,000 non-graduates (artisans, technicians) would be trained and employed, while one million people (farmers, market women, etc) would be granted loans to set up small businesses. He also noted that there would be Conditional Cash Transfer to the most vulnerable people; school feeding targeting 4.5 million school children; as well as bursaries/scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics students. He urged all Nigerians to rise and be part of the war against corruption. All of us must be part of the war. It is not Buharis war. It is not APCs war. It is Nigerias war of survival and defeat will only sentence all of us and our generations yet unborn into perpetual penury. Our nations economy or whatever is left of it, poses a great challenge. For once, we have lost a sizeable chunk of our earnings to the massive crash in the price of oil. Think about this, if you lose 70 per cent of your monthly salary, your life can never be the same again, Mr. Mohammed said. He said oil crashed from over 100 dollars to about 30 dollars a barrel. It (oil) has recently inched up to about 40 dollars per barrel but that is still very low, compared to a high of over 100 dollars per barrel. For a mono-product economy, this is nothing short of disaster, the minister said. (NAN) A former President of the Senate, Ken Nnamani, on Monday frowned at the delay in the passage of the 2016 Budget by the National Assembly and assent by the executive arm of government, asking the latter to be conscientious in resolving the impasse. Mr. Nnamani, who was answering questions from State House correspondents in Abuja, said the two arms of government must find a quick solution to the budget impasse. According to him, time is running out and something must be done urgently to ensure the passage of the budget as quickly as possible. Budget is an area where we practice what we call co-management between the National Assembly and the executive branch of government. Both of them co-manage the economy through the budget. It is a peculiar area, both of them will have to cooperate and collaborate for a proper budget to be passed and once it is passed, it becomes law. So as it stands today the situation is such that the National Assembly has to do what is called introspection. How did we get to where we are now? The year is running out and we are still talking about 2016 budget. Where is the fault from? Wherever it is coming from, both the executive branch and the legislature must find a quick solution to it. It does nobody good to drag it any longer, he added. (NAN) Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has described the death of six medical doctors and one driver in the state, in an accident involving a 13-passenger bus as the lowest point in the history of the State and a monumental loss not only to the people of Ekiti State but to Nigerians. Mr. Fayose then declared three days of mourning in the state Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The governor, who directed that all flags should be flown at half-mast, described the death as an eclipse of professional and intellectual figures, who lost their lives in active service to mankind. Ekiti has lost some of the best trees in its forest of medicine. I am deeply sad. This is one loss too many, he said. In a release issued by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said, Death of seven prominent indigenes of a State in one day and at the same period is a burden too heavy to bear and it is my prayer that God, who is the only giver and taker of live will give Ekiti people the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss. The six doctors, who had an accident a few kilometres to Kaduna on their way to Sokoto to attend a Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) event were Dr Aladesanmi of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ido-Ekiti; Dr Ojo Taiwo of the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH); NMA Secretary, Dr Akinyele Lexy; Dr Ogunseye of the Health Management Board (HMB); EKSUTH Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) President, Dr Olajide; Dr Adeniyi James of the FMC and a driver, Mr Ajibola. The governor urged families, friends and professional colleagues of the deceased, especially members of the NMA, to take solace in God who giveth and taketh when it pleases Him. It is my prayer that tragic incident like this will not be witnessed in Ekiti State again and that God in His infinite mercies will console the families of the deceased. On behalf of my family, Government and people of Ekiti State, I express our heartfelt condolence for the loss of these promising sons of Ekiti and wish their families, friends and professional colleagues the continued support and guidance of the Almighty God, the governor said. President Andrzej Duda has told PAP that in his opinion decision-making in the EU is weak and that this is a problem for Europe today. According to the Polish head of state, the EU lacks solidarity regarding the understanding of the situation of Central European countries trying to catch up with rich western states. The president stressed that today the EU needed more solidarity and decision-making. "The EU is strong because it is built of strong countries but at the same time it is weak when it comes to taking firm decisions. Today the EU should focus on solving the migration crisis," President Duda said, adding that the point was to remove its sources. President Duda said that in his opinion the EU should be a union of nation states which develop economic cooperation, and a union which does not interfere in their sovereignty. The president added that the EU was for him and for the majority of Poles a great value. Asked about the outcome of a Dutch referendum in which most citizens came out against the EU-Ukraine association agreement, the Polish president said it was a piece of bad news for Ukraine and stressed that it was a sign of growing euroscepticism rather than of a negative attitude towards Ukraine. Speaking about NATO and plans to increase the Polish armed forces, the president said the Alliance was obliged to help us but stressed that Poland should have a strong army which could be able to cope with threats. According to the president, a bigger army "is an element of increasing the country's security potential." "The best way to make Poles secure today - especially in the current geopolitical situation - is to cooperate with NATO partners and increase the Alliance's presence in our part of Europe, but (...) I believe it is also necessary in Poland to strengthen the potential of the Polish army," President Duda said. "The alliance is obliged to help us, but we must have our own army which is efficient, strong and well equipped," the president said, adding that work designed to achieve this goal was under way. (PAP) Zygmunt Szendzielarz, one of the Cursed Soldiers, was buried with military honours at the Powazki Military Cemetery on Sunday, 65 years after he had been executed by Poland's communist-era authorities. The Cursed Soldiers were members of the anti-communist resistance movement fighting against Poland's new Russia-backed communist authorities after the end of WW2. Szendzielarz (1910-1951), a Polish army soldier in September 1939, imprisoned by the Soviets after their invasion of Poland, managed to escape from a Soviet prison and in 1940 joined the Polish resistance movement. After the end of WW2, together with a group of soldiers from the Home Army (AK), he continued to fight against the communist authorities. Arrested in 1948, he was sentenced to death in 1950, executed in 1951 and secretly buried in a mass grave. Szendzielarz's remains were found in 2013 at the so called Laczka (little lawn) at Warsaw's Powazki Military cemetery where around 300 anti-communist fighters were buried secretly after most of them had been shot in the head in a Warsaw prison from 1946 to 1955. Their bodies were dumped in unmarked holes in the ground. Some of those mass graves have not been found until today. The remains of over 200 victims buried at Laczka have already been exhumed and 35 have been identified. In the 1990s Szendzielarz was rehabilitated by a court and in 2006 the Sejm (lower house) honoured him with a resolution saying that he "was a symbol of an unyielding struggle for an independent Poland." During a mass preceding the funeral Szendzielarz was posthumously promoted to the rank of colonel. Present at the ceremonies were top state and military officials including President Andrzej Duda and Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who had signed the decision promoting Szendzielarz. "Today, 65 years later, having found Colonel Zygmunt Szendzielarz's remains, remembering the Cursed Soldiers and holding a state funeral, we are bringing back dignity to Poland," the president said during the mass. "A dignity trampled by those who once murdered Zygmunt Szendzielarz," he added. (PAP) ( Read 20395 Times) Udaipur, Eight young bravehearts from across India, including three who sacrificed their lives before reaching their teens, earned the prestigious 15th Ghanshyam Binani Childrens Bravery Award for 2016. The recipients were honoured for their heroism by the Braj Binani Group at an awards ceremony at the Police Gymkhana, Mumbai.The award has been instituted in memory of Late Ghanshyam Binani, founder-chairman of Binani Industries Ltd., and acknowledges an act of bravery and selflessness of boys and girls across India up to the age of 16 who risked their lives to save others who were in danger of losing their own.From among the nominations received from all over India, the recipients in the bravery category are: KamleshPradhan, 7, from Chhattisgarh, the youngest awardee; Lalduhawma, 10, from Mizoram; Amruka Kumar, 16, from Chhattisgarh; and NeelamKaluBote, 12 of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra. Nine-year-old IlmaBano of Faizabad district, Uttar Pradesh was given the Special Category award.Ten-year-old Sheelu, alias Golu, GulnaazBano, 9 and 12-year-old Muskaan, all from Uttar Pradesh, were awarded posthumously.The members of the jury were Ms. MeeranBorwankar, Director Police, Maharashtra State, Ms. Uma Prabhu, Group Editor (education, careers and women), Zee Media Corporation Ltd., Ms. Kalpana Binani,Chairperson, Ghanshyam Binani Foundation, Joey Ghose, MD, Binani Cement and Ms. Bina Verma, CEO, Braj Binani Group.The determination and courage shown by the children is truly inspiring. I am very happy and proud to see all the brave children here said MrsKalpanaBinani, I would like to congratulate the winners and my best wishes to them for the future. May they continue to be brave and may all their dreams come true.The Braj Binani Group needs to commended for acknowledging the efforts of these brave children, said Ms. Borwankar. I believe such awards instill confidence in young children who have learnt things the tough way. It was a challenging task to select the award winners. Neelam and Kamlesh want to join the police force, while Amruka wishes to become a nurse. They need to follow their dreams.It was yet another difficult task to choose the winners, added Mr. Joey Ghose, MD, Binani Cement. Truly, all the nominations that we received were equally significant.Ms. Uma Prabhu, Group Editor (education, careers and women), Zee Media Corporation Ltd., said: I would also like to congratulate the parents for instilling good values in their children. It is with good character that these children have demonstrated humanity with brave hearts.The awards include the bravery category, and the posthumous category that was introduced in 2014. The awards are presented to both male and female candidates both categories.The deserving children from the bravery category were awarded with a cash prize of Rs. 51,000, a Medal of Courage, a Certificate of Recognition and a Citation each. The posthumous awardees received Medal of Courage, Certificate of Recognition and a Citation each.Bravery Category:KamleshPradhan, 7, Chhattisgarh: It was a surprisingly hot day on January 25, 2015 when 7-year-old KamleshPradhan and his friend Shubham felt their throats were parched. Lets cool ourselves with some sweet, refreshing drink, they decided. So off they went to a fruit juice stall near a field outside their village Kanchpur in Chhattisgarh. After gulping a glassful, they felt fresh. It was around 12 noon and the sun was burning right above their head. While on their way back home, Shubham was jumping around in the open field covered with a thick layer of dry grass. In the process, he unknowingly stepped on a mound of hot ash, singeing his feet. As he began to scream with pain, Kamlesh also shouted for help. But no one was around because of the noon heat. So Kamlesh himself put his one foot in the burning ash and pulled Shubham out. However, Shubham had burnt his leg up to his knees and could not walk. Without wasting time, Kamlesh rushed off to his father and other villagers who admitted Shubham to hospital. The whole village was jubilant and acclaimed the courage and presence of mind of Kamlesh.Lalduhawma, 10, Mizoram: It was summer and holiday time for school children. This incident took place on May 4, 2015. With no homework, 10-year-old schoolboy Lalduhawma went out hunting birds with his friends, armed with their home-made catapults. They chose a nearby power station just outside their picturesque village in hilly Mizoram covered with many trees. However, one of his friends accidentally touched the power line and was gripped by the live electric wire. The impact was frightening as the friend howled in pain. On seeing his friends pitiful condition, Lalduhawma quickly fastened his chappal and repeatedly kicked his friend to set him free, risking his own life. After kicking him several times, the young friend was finally freed from the dangerous wire and fell off on the ground. Lalduhawma sent his younger brother to call for help while he himself carried his friend to safety to a national highway nearby. Soon a group of villagers and relatives arrived and took the wounded boy to hospital. The staff at the hospital immediately admitted him and began to treat him for burns. The wounds were so bad that a portion of his skin on the hand was burnt and he was still writhing in pain. The doctors gave him anesthesia and operated on him. After a few hours of rest in the hospital, the boy was discharged. Lalduhawma, the villagers and relatives all expressed gratitude to the doctors and other medical staff for timely treatment of the boy who left the hospital with a smile on his face.Amruka Kumar, 16, Chhattisgarh: On a Sunday morning on July 5, 2015 around 10:30 a.m., as was her habit, Parvati had gone to take a bath at the village well in Khillari, Chhattisgarh. She took along her two-year-old daughter as there was no one else to take care of her at home. While Parvati was bathing, the small baby wandered around the well and suddenly fell into the water. As Parvati finished her bath and got dressed up, she looked around for her daughter when she heard a baby cry. She bent over the wall of the well and was shocked to see her own daughter in the well. Parvati started crying and yelling for help. Hearing her cries, Amruka Kumar, her 16-year-old neighbor who was nearby, came running and jumped into the well to save the baby. The well was 16 feet deep and the water seven feet deep. Amruka had to struggle a lot before she could grab the infant and bring it to safety out of the well. The mother and all those who had gathered around watched nervously. When Amruka handed over the baby to her smiling mother, there were tears of joy. All the villagers of Khillari joined in and shouted with joy and cheered Amruka for her daring, selfless deed. The mother and the crowd thanked Amruka once again before everyone returned to their homes happily.NilamKaluBote, 12, Maharashtra: One afternoon on March 23, 2015 about 1 p.m., NilamKaluBote, a 12-year-old schoolgirl studying in the Std. VI at Manikozar village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, was playing at home with two younger sisters and a brother. There was no school that day and all three were enjoying together. Nilam prepared a special, tasty snack for them all. In spite of the heat outside, it was cool inside the house. The children were getting ready to have their lunch after a game when suddenly, to their utter shock, the house, built of dry leaves and grass, caught fire. They were so frightened they forgot to eat their meals. Staring at the flames for a moment, Nilam quickly picked up her two sisters and brother and ran far away to safety. But before she did, she was also kind enough to rescue the pet goat tied up in the house. By this time the fire had spread to neighbouring houses. All the neighbours were running helter-skelter with fright in all directions. Realizing the dangers of the deadly situation, Nilam quickly rushed ahead to a neighbours home and rescued her before her house was reduced to ashes. Nilamspresence of mind not only saved herself, her sisters and brother, but also her neighbour. The people of Manikozar village still remember the courageous deed and resolute spirit of Nilam with thankfulness.Posthumous Category:Sheelu, alias Golu, 10: Shambhu, Chhotu and his elder brother, 10-year-old Sheelu, alias Golu, loved mangoes, their favourite fruit. One morning on July 18, the three were walking on a road on their way to a mango farm in Mohanlalganj village in Uttar Pradesh. It was a school holiday and they had decided to enjoy the time by relishing their favourite fruit. As they were looking for trees with ripe mangoes, somehow Chhotu slipped and fell into a lake alongside the road. Seeing his younger brother fall into the lake, Golu immediately jumped into the water. However, Shambhu was quick to notice that both Chhotu and Golu were about to drown in the lake. He began to shout for help. Fortunately, a group of villagers who were passing by heard his cry and immediately rushed to the spot and pulled both brothers out of the deep water. But by the time the villagers rushed the boys to hospital, both the young brothers were declared dead on arrival. The villagers were stunned by the double tragedy in which two young lives were lost. Shambhu is unable to get over the death of his two friends but fondly remembers the heroic deed of Golu. Since that tragic incident, wheveverShambhu sees mangoes, it brings tears to his eyes.Joint winners: Late GulnaazBano, Late Muskaan. At a village called Mavai in district Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh a young boy named Mukhtar and four girls -- namely Gulnaaz, Muskaan, Ilma and Seema had gone to nearby fields to graze their goats since the fields were covered with fresh, green grass. While the girls got busy playing games and talking with each other, Mukhtar, too, thought of having fun and went for a swim in a lake near the field. Although an experienced swimmer, Mukhtar suddenly began to drown. Three girls among the four, Gulnaaz, Muskaan and Ilma rushed to the spot and without giving it a second thought, jumped into the lake. But Seema, who stayed behind, saw that all the four were are drowning. She quickly raised an alarm and began to scream for help. Hearing her screams, people from Mavai village rushed to towards the lake, and made an all-out effort to pull them from the deep water. However, they could not save Mukhtar, Muskaan and GulnaazBano. Today, Ilma and Seema live with sad memories of their dear friends. But they have one consolation each one tried to save the other. Low-cost, no-frills grocery store chain Aldi plans new locations in Cape May and southern Ocean counties as the company seeks to expand its national footprint by 25 percent in the next three years. Aldi expects to open in a long-vacant space in a shopping center on Route 9 in Rio Grande, Middle Township in the second half of 2016, said Bob Grammer, Aldi Center Valley Division vice president. Cumberland County Acme to close with two others Acme Markets says it will close three grocery stores, including one in Cumberland County. And Stafford Township gave planning approval for a store on Martin Truex Jr. Boulevard. The only other locations in the Press coverage area are both in Cumberland County: one on South Delsea Drive in Vineland and another on Cornwell Drive in Bridgeton. Aldi operates on a low-cost model designed to reduce needs for manpower, including requiring a 25-cent deposit on shopping carts that is released when the customer returns the cart. Matt Casey, president of Matthew P. Casey and Associates in Clark, Union County, specializes in supermarket and retail real estate research. He said the Aldis model works for multiple reasons. They have a very unique business model and have very limited stock keeping units (SKU) which is basically the number of items in the store, Casey said. Casey said an average Aldi only employs 10 people, and only four of those workers are working at a time. They dont need to do a whole lot of revenue to break even. They have a store in Toms River on Route 37 that does extremely well, Casey said. Think about it: You have a ton of seniors living there on fixed incomes, that business model will be extremely attractive to them. Mary Cole is one of those senior citizens who enjoy the supermarket. Cole, of Laurel Lake in Commercial Township, said she goes to the Vineland Aldi at least once a week because of the prices. Im paying 85 cents for hot dog rolls, $2 for mayonnaise and $1.79 for whole grain bread here, Cole said. Im thankful. They dont have a lot of employees but they get the job done, too. Eddie Roman, 32, of Millville, said he doesnt mind that he has to give a quarter for a cart when he goes shopping. The quarter is to make sure the shopping carts get back where they need to be so they arent taken or left out in the parking lot. Its makes customers accountable, which I think is a good thing, Roman said. Founded by the Albrecht family, the first Aldi store opened in 1961 in Germany. Aldi US has been around for nearly 40 years, according to the companys website. According to the site, more than 90 percent of products are brands found only in Aldi. Bob Grammer, Aldi Center Valley Division vice president, said the two new South Jersey locations are part of Aldis ongoing five-year expansion plan to have a total of 2,000 U.S. stores by 2018. The company currently has about 1,500 in 33 states. In Middle Township, the Aldi will be located in what had been a Stop & Shop that closed in 2007 after ShopRite which has a busy grocery store nearby in Rio Grande bought nine Stop & Shop supermarkets that year, including that one. Thomas Juliano, president of shopping-center owner Delco Development LLC, in Willingboro Township, said in 2014 that the Stop & Shop in Rio Grande was a competitive store before it closed. It did very well. It didn't close for lack of business, he said at the time. Grammer wouldnt specifically say whether Aldi rented or bought the property in Rio Grande, but said the company often leases properties in the Northeast. Most of the time, we join existing retailing communities. We prefer to build and own our stores, but in areas like the Northeast and Southern California, we dont always have that option, so we will lease a retail space. Bonnie Flynn, Stafford Townships community development director, said the store would be 17,825 square feet and have 94 parking spaces. Flynn added that she thinks Stafford isnt necessarily lacking in grocery stores, but said she is impressed with the way Aldi operates. I dont think were lacking. Its kind of interesting, though, the way they do it. Its kind of like a warehouse type with their displays. Their pallets get recycled, and thats a good thing, Flynn said. South Jersey has seen dramatic changes to the grocery store industry in the past five years. Acme Markets purchased former SuperFresh and Pathmark locations in Atlantic, Cape and southern Ocean counties last year from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., which shed many stores in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Contact: 609-272-7258 By PrintWeek Team All eyes are on the Awards Night of the 12th edition of the PrintWeek Awards to be held at the Grand Hyatt (Santacruz East, Mumbai) on 2 Nov... Latest Poll Print and packaging is a huge industry, but it is not seen as heavy manufacturing, nor as cutting-edge technology. What should be the topmost priority? 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. Conviva Partnership provides unparalleled OTT analytics and optimization services to Babcock's Tier One Media Customers FOSTER CITY, California, and LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Conviva, the leader in OTT experience management for the world's top media companies, today announced that Babcock, the UK's leading engineering support services company, has appointed Conviva as it's global channel partner to design and deploy optimized OTT solutions for Babcock's clients, including media companies, broadcasters, and operators. As the trusted media partner to the world's leading broadcasters and content owners, Babcock's Media Services business provides the complete range of fully-managed solutions to deliver channels and content to global audiences across any platform. Conviva brings their decade-long breadth of experience in OTT analytics, optimization and industry data to enrich and improve the engagement of Babcock's customers on a global basis. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160419/356968LOGO As market demand for experience management and engagement metrics continues to grow, Babcock's partnership with Conviva ensures content performs at the highest quality possible, without interruptions and ensures subscriber retention by providing real-time insights into subscriber engagement as well as by providing an optimal viewing experience. Additionally, Conviva brings a 360-degree view of the internet to Babcock's customers with its award winning analytics product, Experience Insights, as well as the ability to optimize on-the-fly in real-time with Conviva Precision, providing unparalleled global viewer intelligence and service optimization. "Babcock works closely with clients to find the solution that is right for them," said Dave Travis, Director of Technology and Products for Babcock's Media Services business. "As OTT continues to become more mainstream with our global publishers, broadcasters, and operators, it was imperative that we chose a partner that has global reach, scale and unparalleled expertise. Conviva, the leader in OTT analytics and experience optimization, was the obvious choice." "Experience equals engagement," says Lisa Loe, vice president, Worldwide Channels, "and, as Babcock's chosen global channel partner, Conviva is thrilled to provide Babcock customers with the business and data insights needed to successfully run their OTT business. We are excited to be able to provide solutions specific to Babcock's AVOD, SVOD and Live event business units as well as to provide support across all OTT experience management opportunities." About Babcock Babcock International Group is the UK's leading engineering support services company, delivering complex and critical projects, both in the UK and overseas. With revenue of circa 4.5 billion in 2015, we support vital assets within a number of industry sectors including defense, emergency services, energy, transport and training. The unparalleled expertise of our 34,000 global employees means that whether designing, building, operating, managing, or maintaining vital assets - Babcock is a partner that can be trusted to deliver. About Conviva Conviva partners with top-tier media companies and premium OTT video broadcasters and operators like HBO, ESPN, and Viacom to deliver optimized viewing experiences that maximize customer engagement. The Conviva Intelligent Control Platform helps providers meet and exceed ever-changing audience expectations for video experience, across a multi-screen viewing environment. Using a unique real-time map of the Internet video delivery ecosystem, the platform provides 360-degree visibility across all users, maximizes picture fidelity, and eliminates playback delays and interruptions. Multi-dimensional reports and analyses of the top-tier OTT market, based on Conviva's tracking of 50 billion streams annually, enable data-driven decisions, supporting successful development of market-leading services. Conviva is based in Silicon Valley, with offices in New York and London. Please visit www.conviva.com and follow us on Twitter @Conviva. Related Links http://www.conviva.com SOURCE Conviva Agreement Moves Chemours Closer to Completing Strategic Review of Chemical Solutions WILMINGTON, Delaware, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chemours Company (Chemours) (NYSE: CC), a global chemistry company with leading market positions in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts and chemical solutions, has signed a definitive agreement to sell the Disinfectants, Oxone and Chlorine Dioxide business lines (Clean and Disinfect Business) of its Chemical Solutions segment to specialty chemicals group LANXESS for $230 million in cash. The company anticipates closing the transaction within the second half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. "Today marks another important step in our five-point transformation plan," said Mark Vergnano, Chemours president and CEO. "This agreement, along with the recent sale of our Beaumont aniline facility, illustrates the significant progress we are making to streamline our portfolio and improve our liquidity position." The Clean and Disinfect Business, with approximately $110 million in combined revenue, is a set of leading oxidation chemistry businesses focused on providing innovative cleaning and disinfection solutions for a wide range of industrial, consumer, animal and human health applications. The product portfolio is organized into three primary categories: Disinfectants, Oxone and Chlorine Dioxide. Chemours will retain the Glycolic Acid business, based in Belle, W.Va., which was historically part of the Clean and Disinfect Business. Barclays Capital Inc. is acting as financial advisor and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is acting as legal adviser to Chemours. About The Chemours Company The Chemours Company (NYSE: CC) helps create a colorful, capable and cleaner world through the power of chemistry. Chemours is a global leader in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts and chemical solutions, providing its customers with solutions in a wide range of industries with market-defining products, application expertise and chemistry-based innovations. Chemours ingredients are found in plastics and coatings, refrigeration and air conditioning, mining and oil refining operations and general industrial manufacturing. Our flagship products include prominent brands such as Teflon, Ti-Pure, Krytox, Viton, Opteon and Nafion. Chemours has approximately 8,000 employees across 35 manufacturing sites serving more than 5,000 customers in North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Chemours is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware and is listed on the NYSE under the symbol CC. For more information please visit chemours.com or follow Chemours on Twitter at @chemours. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements, which often may be identified by their use of words like "plans," "expects," "will," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "anticipates" or other words of similar meaning. It is uncertain whether the transaction announced will be consummated, and if it is completed, what impact it will have on Chemours' results of operations and financial condition. These forward-looking statements address, among other things, the ability of the parties to satisfy the conditions precedent and consummate the anticipated transaction, the timing of consummation of the transaction,the ability of the parties to secure regulatory approvals in a timely manner or on the terms desired or anticipated, the ability to implement the anticipated business plans following closing and achieve anticipated benefits and savings, our anticipated future operating and financial performance, business plans and prospects, transformation plans, resolution of environmental liabilities, litigation and other contingencies, plans to increase profitability, our ability to pay or the amount of any dividend, and target leverage that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are based on certain assumptions and expectations of future events which may not be realized. The matters discussed in these forward-looking statements also are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements, as further described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015. Chemours undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150715/237460LOGO CONTACTS: MEDIA: Janet Smith Global Communications Leader +1.302.773.4508 janet.e.smith@chemours.com Lene Stosic Sr. Communications Manager, EMEA +41.22.719.1622 lene.stosic@chemours.com INVESTORS: Alisha Bellezza Director of Investor Relations +1.302.773.2263 investor@chemours.com Related Links http://www.chemours.com SOURCE The Chemours Company DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global OConnect, China's top O2O cross-border e-commerce service provider will make its first appearance in Middle East market through launching a showroom in Dubai on April 28th, after successfully operated such affairs in Russia and China. Global OConnect is an offline business partner of OSell E-commerce platform. This partnership builds on the mission of linking global retailers and Chinese manufacturers together, and providing them with import and export support on both custom clearance and goods delivery fronts. Global OConnect plays an essential role in this business model through building showrooms overseas where local retailers, after finding products online, are able to see and feel the products of interest with their own eyes and hands before deciding on an order. Kevin Fenn, founder of Global OConnect, is excited about this milestone step the company will take, "We're the bridge between Chinese suppliers and global retailers. Online business is populating the global business sphere. However, people still trust better when they see the goods they will buy. And they'd prefer to be less troubled with all the procedures in trading. Global OConnect is just what they need. We've had success with Russia market and we look forward to continuing the success in Middle East." Global OConnect was established in Chongqing, China in 2015. The business concept is in answer to the demands Chinese businesses have of going abroad. Global OConnect functions as a trade fair but differences to traditional fairs. With Global OConnect, Chinese products are shown every day in a showroom built in overseas cities along the One Belt One Road economic zone; and a warehouse at the back of the showroom to accommodate ordered goods before being shipped. When visitors to Global OConnect showroom walk through each booth, high technology embedded in the exhibition installations will capture data for improving of user experiences. In addition, the company can provide businesses with logistical and financial assistance with its own dedicated logistic teams and system of credit guarantee and payment collection. Global OConnect is strategically targeting at those small and medium businesses as in recent years they've grow to take 80% of total trading volume. Global OConnect's inauguration to Dubai will no doubt bring closer the two economies in regards of trading. China-made products will have a smooth path paved for them to go abroad; while retailers in the United Arab Emirates and the larger Middle East market will have easy access to high quality goods at reasonable prices. SOURCE Global OConnect The deep-water port, located in Jebel Ali, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the world's largest man-made harbour and the largest and busiest port in the Middle East. Under Phase 1, Terminal 4 will add 3.1 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit cargo capacity) by 2018, taking Jebel Ali Port's total capacity to 22.1 million TEU. The port will be equipped with approximately 110 cranes with a total quay length of around 11,000 metres. DP World will further expand Terminal 4's capacity to a total of 7.8 million TEU in line with market demand under Phase 2, adding an additional operational yard with a quay length of 1,000 metres. Haider Musa, CH2M's Project Director, said: "We are delighted to continue to work in partnership with DP World to deliver this latest strategic investment, which marks a further key milestone in the development at Jebel Ali. Our 40 years of knowledge and experience at the port will serve us well in the delivery of this state-of-the-art container terminal." CH2M is currently providing design review and site supervision services for the marine works associated with the Container Terminal 4 project. CH2M is the leading professional services firm delivering sustainable solutions to clients working on the world's most complex challenges. CH2Mers make a positive difference providing consulting, design, engineering and management solutions for vital infrastructure and resources serving diverse public- and private-sector clients. With $5.4 billion in revenue and ~24,000 people, the firm has offices in 50 countries and four business groups: water; environment & nuclear; transportation; and energy & industrial. Known for managing global events such as the Olympic Games, CH2M ranks among Ethisphere's World's Most Ethical Companies; number-one in environmental consulting and programme management by Engineering News-Record; and among sustainability leaders by independent analyst Verdantix. CH2M in 2016 was selected to receive the World Environment Center's Gold Medal Award, and in 2015, received the Stockholm International Water Institute's highest Industry Water Award for pioneering water conservation and reuse technologies. To learn more about the CH2M difference, connect with the firm at www.ch2m.com; linkedin.com/company/ch2m; twitter.com/ch2m; facebook.com/ch2mhill; and search for jobs at ch2m.com/careers. Contact: Raeda Al Sarayreh / Avnish Raichura Phone: + 971 50 557 0105 / +974 3376 5474 E-Mail: raeda.alsarayreh@ch2m.com / avnish.raichura@ch2m.com Related Links http://www.ch2m.com SOURCE CH2M CARDIFF, Wales, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- New technology provides real-time data feedback, recent trial data being analyzed for the system's development Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd., in partnership with Atkins Ltd., have developed a new RFID system that can be added onto an existing UAV or drone to deliver real-time data feedback to engineers on the ground. The new technology was recently tested in a trial for Highways England and Connect Plus beneath a live viaduct on London's M25. Drone Tech Aerospace collaborated with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to obtain all necessary authorization to fly within proximity of a live viaduct. According to the team at Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd., the trial went exceedingly well. "...The results were fantastic. The data from the trial is to be analysed before any further implementations are carried out," said the Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. Team. RFID, or radio-frequency identification, leverages electromagnetic fields to identify and trace tags attached to objects. The trials conducted by Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. were the first RFID trials using drones in the United Kingdom. Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. offers comprehensive aerial services, including robotic design and development, agricultural, photography, and survey solutions. The data from the recent trial is currently being analyzed and will be used in the development of the new aerial RFID technology. More information can be found at http://www.dronetechaerospace.co.uk/. About Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. is an innovative aerial solutions provider, offering aerial photography and videography, industrial inspections, map surveys, crop health surveys, and more. Contact Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. E-mail: Info@DroneTechAerospace.co.uk Website: http://www.DroneTechAerospace.co.uk/ SOURCE Drone Tech Aerospace Ltd. AMSTERDAM, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and solutions, announces the launch of a new journal: Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry. The journal is the latest addition to Elsevier's Current Opinion titles, a portfolio of 18 leading journals in life sciences and related fields. Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry will keep scientists up to date with the expanding volume of information published in their subject. Each volume of the journal will be dedicated to a certain theme in Green and Sustainable Chemistry. Section editors will invite top experts to write short reviews on current advances in their field. The journal was presented at the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference, which took place in Berlin earlier this month, by the conference chairman Professor Dr. Klaus Kummerer (Leuphana Universitat Luneburg, Germany). Dr. Kummerer will co-edit the journal together with Professor Zhimin Liu (Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China). Talking about the new journal, Dr. Kummerer noted: "Green and Sustainable Chemistry is still a young discipline, but knowledge is quickly expanding, and we are seeing a tremendous increase in the number of articles and journals that are dedicated to this new cross-sectorial field of science. Therefore it is increasingly challenging to keep an overview on latest developments. Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry addresses this challenge." Rob van Daalen, Senior Publisher at Elsevier, highlighted the importance of this latest Current Opinion journal: "Elsevier is very active in the sustainability field. Last year, we published the benchmark report Sustainability Science in a Global Landscape, which is a free resource to explore the state of research in sustainability globally that underpins the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many of these goals are related to chemistry, and researchers are increasingly targeting these in their work. Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry will provide an overview of the latest developments by publishing short review articles by top experts in the chemistry fields related to the 17 SDGs." The first issue of Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, scheduled for October 2016, will be a special issue including papers from the plenary speakers of the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference. For more information, visit the homepage of Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry. 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 Media contact Aileen Christensen Marketing Communications Manager Elsevier +31 20 312 2053 a.christensen@elsevier.com SOURCE Elsevier LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- European e-money issuer, Prepaid Financial Services (PFS), has been selected to provide the first product line, a prepaid MasterCard, to customers of innovative Belgian cooperative society, NewB. NewB is aiming to rebuild trust in the financial sector via a more sustainable, ethical and transparent approach where profit is not the main objective. It was founded by 24 NGOs in 2011 and generated more than 50,000 members, including over 138 civil society organisations via crowdfunding techniques. Rabobank, the largest cooperative bank in Europe, is the custodian bank. The NewB prepaid card will be available to customers as both a physical and virtual version, under the GOODPAY label to highlight the feel good factor associated with the card. NewB's core values are clearly manifested in the new card programme: Renewable: the card is made of a renewable material called polylactic acid which comes from non-genetically engineered corn. NewB is also working with ecological partners to give customers an indication of the ecological footprint of consumption based on their spend. Transparent: the intrinsic need to preload the card ensures customers will be better able to manage their day-to-day budget, and the availability of a special 'no name' NewB card means users can protect their privacy where necessary. The user can also deactivate and reactivate their own card and parents can monitor the spending of minors. Socially-conscious: a 5 eurocent donation to charity is made by the card issuer every time the card is used and where no charity is designated, the donation will be made to NewB which is also a co-operative society. Low-cost: the NewB card belongs to the 50% tier of cheapest prepaid bank cards offered in Belgium and is free as long as a minimum of one payment is made per month. Payments and loading the card are free by transfer or standing order. Dirk Coeckelbergh, Managing Director of NewB said: "We chose to work with Prepaid Financial Services because not only do they have a heritage in delivering successful prepaid card programmes across Europe including working directly with other challenger banks, but also their management is extremely business minded, open for ethical evolutions and dares to go beyond traditional boundaries. Noel Moran, CEO of PFS said: "This is banking but not as we know it. There is a huge appetite for more responsible but less commercially-driven organisations in the financial sector which makes it a truly exciting time to be working with a NewB in Belgium and developing the market for prepaid cards. We are delighted to have been selected by NewB and hope to develop further product lines for the bank as their customer base expands in the future." For more information about PFS' payment solutions please visit www.prepaidfinancialservices.com Notes to editors About Prepaid Financial Services: Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) is an award winning payments technology specialist offering a comprehensive range of e-money and banking solutions including e-wallets, physical and virtual prepaid cards and current accounts in the UK and the Eurozone. Authorised and regulated by the FCA in the UK, PFS has passported its e-money license across the SEPA region to enable card issuance throughout the region. Founded in 2008, PFS is now one of the fastest growing issuers in Europe, with programmes live and active in 23 countries with the ability to transact in 20 different currencies. Its products and cutting-edge technology platforms are utilised by governments, local authorities, mobile networking operators, banks and corporates globally. PFS has been listed within the top 25 fastest growing technology companies in the UK by the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 for 3 consecutive years and most recently ranked number 108 in Deloitte's EMEA Technology Fast 500. For more information about PFS's payment solutions please contact sales@prepaidfinancialservices.com SOURCE Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) SUZHOU, China, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GCL System Integration Co., Ltd (GCL System) announced on April 22 that its polycrystalline PV modules received the China Quality Certification Center's ("CQC") "Top Runner" Program level-one energy efficiency certification on April 19. With this, GCL System becomes one of the first companies receiving CQC's "Top Runner" program level-one energy efficiency certification in China. "Top Runner" program is a PV support program introduced by China's National Energy Administration (NEA) in 2015 to facilitate the application of advanced PV technology and upgrading the industry, aiming at encouraging the R & D and promotion of "Top Runner" PV products. In 2015, the program requested that the conversion efficiency of polycrystalline and monocrystalline modules must reach 16.5% and 17% respectively. "Receiving TOP Runner Program level-one certification indicated that the national authorities have recognized the quality of our products," said Mr. Shu Hua, the Chairman of GCL System. "Since the re-constructing and re-listing in last year, GCL System has been focusing on technology development and strict production control. We have achieved a qualitative leap in the field of modules manufacturing by successfully developing a series of high-efficient products including King Kong module, double glass module, 96-cell module and heterojunction module." So far, GCL System has obtained the certifications for its all series of products, including monocrystalline, polycrystalline, cast-mono, double glass, N-type high efficiency and 1500V modules. Meanwhile, the company also received the certificates in various countries, including JET, MCS, TUVUS and CEC. With over 2.5GW shipment in 2015, GCL System has been listed in Global Top 10 PV manufacturers. Passing the test of CQC's Top Runner test marks that products of GCL System have met the global leading level both in performance and quality. About GCL System Integration Co., Ltd GCL System Integration Technology Co. Ltd (002506 Shenzhen Stock) (GCL System) is part of GOLDEN CONCORD Group (GCL) which is an international energy company specializing in clean and sustainable power production. The group, founded in 1990 now employees 20,000 people. GCL supplies 35% total worldwide wafer capacity yield, represents 30% silicon market shares, and owns global assets worth nearly 16 billion USD. Based on a fully-integrated Vertical PV industrial chain capacity operation, GCL System establishes its business foundation on the development of a state-of-the-art solar solutions package which incorporates DESIGN-PRODUCT-SERVICE. SOURCE GCL PUNE, India, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This 58 pages report "Global CRM Software Market with Focus on Cloud Applications (2016-2020)" contains 2 tables and 24 figures with 5 company profiles along with an in-depth analysis of the CRM software market with main focus on cloud-based CRM software or cloud applications. Complete report is available at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/466163.html. Country Coverage of CRM Software Market: North America, Western Europe & ROW Company Coverage of CRM Software Market: Oracle Corporation, Salesforce.com, SAP, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM) & Verint Systems Inc. The CRM software market summarizes country analysis of North America, Western Europe and rest of the world in terms of revenue. North America is the largest market for CRM software. It has the largest share in the overall CRM software market. Western Europe is the second largest market for CRM software. Other regions of the world like Asia Pacific nations have the potential to grow in coming years and will emerge as top players of the CRM software market. A brief description of competitive landscape is also provided in the report. Salesforce is the market leader of CRM software market. Top market players like Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft etc. captured large part of market share. These companies are global leaders of CRM software market. Furthermore, the CRM software market report also profiles key market players such as Salesforce.com, Oracle Corporation, SAP, Verint Systems Inc. and International Business Machine Corporation (IBM) on the basis of attributes such as company overview, recent developments, strategies adopted by the market leaders to ensure growth, sustainability, financial overview and recent developments. CRM software is broadly classified into three categories: On-Premises CRM, Cloud-Based CRM and Open Source CRM. Among these cloud-based CRM is most popular among business organizations now days. Cloud CRM means customer relationship management technology where the CRM software, CRM tools and the organization's data located in the cloud and is delivered to the end-users via the Internet. Order a copy of this CRM software market research report at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=466163. The key factors driving the growth of the market are increasing use of SaaS, customer experience initiatives, adoption of CRM software by medium as well as small organization and increasing usage in multiple industries like hospitals, banks and restaurants etc. CRM software market has shown increasing trends over the past few years. The growth in the market is due to movement of business organizations towards digital marketing, adoption of software in emerging economies like India, development of mobile and social CRM platform etc. The report analyzes the significant trends and potential opportunities in the global CRM software market. The CRM software market report provides detailed description regarding market overview, market sizing and growth, market segmentation, top players of the market and regional breakdown of market as well. The CRM software market report also focuses on the available opportunities for the market and key factors that will be accountable for the growth of the market. Major points from Table of Contents Provided in Global CRM Software Market: 1. Executive Summary 2. CRM Software Market: An Introduction 3. Global CRM Software Market: Sizing and Growth 3.1 Global CRM Software Market by Value: Actual and Forecast 3.2 Global On-Premise CRM Software Market by Value: Actual and Forecast 3.3 CRM Software Market Share by Segment 3.4 Global CRM Software Market Share by Top Players 3.5 Global CRM Software Market Share by Region 4. Global Cloud-Based CRM Software Market: Sizing and Growth 4.1 Cloud-Based CRM Software Market by Value: Actual and Forecast 4.2 Global Cloud Sales Market Share by Top Players 4.3 Global Marketing Cloud Market Share by Top Players 5. Country Analysis 5.1 North America CRM Software Market: Sizing and Growth 5.2 Western Europe CRM Software Market: Sizing and Growth 5.3 ROW CRM Software Market: Sizing and Growth 6. Market Dynamics 7. Competitive Landscape 8. Company Profiles Explore more it & telecommunication market research as well as other newly published reports by Daedal Research at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/publisher/daedal-research-market-research.html. About Us: MarketReportsOnline.com is your one stop market research and industry analysis reports' library providing business data and intelligence information on thousands of micro markets with global as well as regional coverage. Contact Us: Ritesh Tiwari UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India Tel: + 1 888 391 5441 E-mail: sales@marketreportsonline.com SOURCE Market Reports Online KUKA is a leading global player in robot manufacturing. HRG has the support and resources from the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China's top robotics institution. "KUKA robots are famed for precision and control technologies; while the advantage of HRG is in secondary platform development, especially in the application of advanced parameters," said Wang Yang, VP of HRG. "We are devoted to further developing the open type platform which is based on the youBot for the application of robotic products, and we are doing a great job here. This cooperation between the two giants will boost the expansion of the robot market for HRG." As part of the cooperation agreement, HRG will team up with KUKA to develop applications for intelligent factories and logistics facilities. In addition, the pair will jointly carry out education projects in vocational colleges and universities, including introducing advanced teaching modes from Germany and setting up new programs for robotics majors. KUKA's CEO, Mr. Kong Bing, said, "We are very willing to build robotics majors and a certification system that incorporates German features into Chinese vocational education." Regarding recent trends in industrial robotics, Wang said, "The robotics industry has been listed as one of the emerging industries to be developed, based on national strategies. In ten years' time, the robotics industry will be a cluster that is worth trillions of dollars. Training professionals within the industrial robotics industry will meet the needs of further developing the industry." China is now the largest market for robots, and the robotics industry in the country has enjoyed rapid development in recent years. However, the industry still faces a shortage of professional talent in manufacturing and innovation. HRG fills in the gap with its background in industrial robots and focus on robotics education. HRG's Industrial Robots department is devoted to nurturing professionals, developing products for robotics education and academic research, and designing an integrated education system that brings robot training equipment, teaching proposals and software together. The department has developed a range of robotic products that are applicable in industries and improved for education purposes. These products are used in vocational colleges, universities and R&D institutions. So far, the company has produced a series of robots that work in supermarkets or intelligent factories, and trained robots for other companies including KUKA youBot, LBR iiwa, ABB YuMi and Rethink Robotics Baxter. HRG also entered an agreement with ABB Group in January to carry out cooperative projects in industrial robots and robotics education. About HRG HRG, founded in 2014, is one of China's high-tech giants in robotics with a joint investment from Heilongjiang provincial government, Harbin municipal government and HIT. The Group's major businesses include manufacturing of a range of robots and robotic equipment for different industries; it is also a solution and service provider for technology companies. About KUKA Robotics (Shanghai) Established in 2000, KUKA Robotics (Shanghai) is an affiliate company of KUKA Roboter GmbH, the world's leading manufacturer of industrial robots. The company's average production volume of industrial robots reaches 10,000 units every year. SOURCE HIT Robot Group MATTERSBURG, Austria, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- I-New, one of the fastest growing mobile technology services providers expands its Latin America business activities with the launch of new MVNE platform in Mexico. The Austrian based company is already the number one pre-paid MVNO service provider in Latin America. But I-New's next growth generation is already on the way. The company recently launched their first Latin American MVNE platform in Mexico, after having realized similar services already in Europe and Asia Pacific successfully. On board and recently launched on the market is weex, a virtual mobile operator that offers new ways to buy mobile services in Mexico. The weex offering empowers young people to totally customize and control their mobile services use and to benefit from full cost and quota transparency. Customers choose the plan with the right functions for the right amount of time in order to meet the perfect mobile plan based on specific daily needs and usage. weex, was founded by John Cooper and Ricardo Suarez and emerged in 2014 from seed capital support by Coca-Cola Founders platform. The platform represents a new model for supporting innovative start-ups by partnering with experienced entrepreneurs and giving the resources, reach and relationships of its global megabrand. I-New CEO Peter Nussbaumer comments: "The I-New MVNE model allows to aggregate multiple MVNO's to run on the same instance and to support compelling offerings with a maximum of convenience and competitiveness. MVNO has never been that easy. We're very much looking forward to announce new Mexican MVNO customers running their mobile business on our award winning portfolio." About I-New: I-New Unified Mobile Solutions is one of the fastest growing technology solutions providers in the mobile communication industry. The company is specialized in the domain beyond the mobile universe, finding its translation mainly with Virtual Mobile Networks. To conveniently open the telecom world and to naturally link it with the various daily habits of a service subscribers' life has become I-New's enterprise mission and equally clients' success. From offices all across the globe, the company is capable of providing, implementing and running highly competitive products and services with a maximum of smart convenience for a converged mobile ecosystem: The MVNO Collection. I-New is a trusted and proven partner by most demanding and industry leading clients around the globe. By a majority, I-New Unified Mobile Solutions AG is owned by Novomatic AG, an integrated global gaming company with more than 20,000 employees in more than 80 countries. I-New was named 'Best Solution Provider' in 2014 and 2015; and Best MVNE - Enabler of MVNOs in 2016 at the Global MVNO Industry Awards. Contact: I-New Unified Mobile Solutions AG Global Marketing & Corporate Communication Herbert Reinisch +43(680)1241210 marketing@i-new.com http://www.i-new.com SOURCE I-New Unified Mobile Solutions AG MANAMA, Bahrain, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VIVA Bahrain made a global breakthrough by successfully implementing, for the first time commercially, Huawei's triple-beam antenna technology. This innovative technology, delivers approximately 2.7 times the performance of a regular mobile tower and capacity to absorb traffic demand, offering higher quality telecommunications services, whilst enhancing VIVA's customers connectivity at events or locations were data demand is extremely high. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359301 ) VIVA's first successful deployment of Huawei's-designed solution was done during the '2016 F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix' race, where VIVA subscribers enjoyed flawless connectivity to the Kingdom's fastest and widest 4G network. This was the first stage of a full roll out planned of this technology in different locations across Bahrain where installation of new tower sites has limitations. "Jointly with Huawei, we have achieved a great technological breakthrough. We always look for new ways to further enhance our customers' experience and meet their demands for high data volume," said Eng. Ulaiyan Al Wetaid, VIVA Bahrain CEO. "Delivering the Kingdom's fastest 4G LTE network lays at the heart of VIVA and this time we have achieved so by implementing an innovative solution that also provides an environmentally responsible alternative by significantly reducing the need to build new tower sites in Bahrain," he ended. "Both companies worked closely to ensure the successful deployment of Huawei's solution, making VIVA the first operator in the world to use it for commercial purposes. Crowd management and sustaining network performance at these previously unreachable levels is truly a great achievement," said Peng Honghua, President of Huawei's Wireless UMTS Product Line. With this innovative solution, VIVA customers will continue to enjoy uninterrupted voice and data services and an unprecedented telecom experience. SOURCE VIVA Bahrain COMPANY ACTS QUICKLY IN RESPONSE TO HIGH LEAD COUNT CLAIMS RANDOLPH, New Jersey, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- LaRose Industries, LLC., the parent company of Cra-Z-Art, a prime manufacturer and leader in trendy toy, art and stationery products, announced today that the Company has enacted additional safety measures in response to recent claims by the New York State Attorney General's Office of alleged high levels of lead in a part contained in a very small number of its toy items. The items in question passed rigorous testing by a third party laboratory accredited by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission ("CPSC") and were found to have complied with all applicable product safety requirements. Nevertheless, LaRose has already launched its own thorough investigation into the matter with respect to these claims, which the company only learned of last Friday, April 22nd. Additionally, in cooperation with the NY State Attorney General's Office, LaRose has suspended sales of the three products identified and has instructed retailers that sell the products to remove them from store shelves immediately. LaRose will continue to cooperate fully with the NY State Attorney General's Office and also provide all necessary information to the CPSC. "The safety of our products and the welfare of our consumers is our highest priority. All of our items go through stringent testing to ensure they comply with all U.S. product safety requirements," said Nellie Mahabir, President of LaRose. "We take great pride that the Cra-Z-Art name is known for safe, imaginative play for kids. We are acting swiftly to responsibly investigate these claims and take all appropriate action. We remain committed to ensuring that our products continue to be a safe and enjoyable experience for consumers, particularly kids." LaRose contracts with third-party vendors to produce some of their products including the three products identified. As part of its investigation, LaRose is also conducting a review of all of its manufacturing partners to determine if additional procedures need to be put in place to further insure product safety. The affected products are: Shimmer N' Sparkle Cra-Z-Art Cra-Z-Jewelz Gem Creations Ultimate Gem Machine (UPC 884920174504); Shimmer N' Sparkle Cra-Z-Art Cra-Z-Jewelz Gem Creations Gem Charm and Slider Bracelets (UPC 884920174849). My Look Cra-Z-Art Cra-Z-Jewelz Gem Creations Ultimate Gem Machine (UPC 884920174849). For additional information, contact Cra-Z-Art at (800) 598-3800, or visit the company's website at www.cra-z-art.com. About CRA-Z-ART CRA-Z-ART, based in Randolph, NJ, offers original, creative, exciting and trendy activity, toy, art and stationery products. The CRA-Z-ART management team has over 120 years of experience in creating, manufacturing and marketing stationery and activities products. At CRA-Z-ART, we clearly understand the needs of the retailer and the desires of our consumers. We make it a point daily to be - Always creative! To learn more, please visit www.cra-z-art.com. CONTACT: Charlie Zakin, Cra-Z-Art 973-598-3800 x 256 Related Links http://www.cra-z-art.com SOURCE LaRose Industries, LLC Award ceremony marks culmination of weekend of events held in Yerevan bringing together international humanitarians, academics, media experts and former statesmen to celebrate humanity and discuss the world's most pressing humanitarian challenges YEREVAN, Armenia, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 400 people gathered in Yerevan, Armenia over the weekend for a series of events marking the presentation of the inaugural Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. The Aurora Prize was presented to Marguerite Barankitse from Maison Shalom and REMA Hospital in Burundi, who introduced the Fondation du Grand-Duc et de La Grande-Duchesse du Luxembourg, Fondation Jean-Francois Peterbroeck (JFP Foundation) and the Fondation Bridderlech Deelen Luxembourg the organizations she selected as beneficiaries of the $1 million award. "This Prize is consolation for the whole of Burundi's people. Having such an amount of money will go toward helping mothers so that they can get microcredit and feed their children," said Aurora Prize Laureate Marguerite Barankitse. "Being awarded with this Prize also means being able to send a significant amount of children to school, and helping the young people who got injured, mutilated, or who are in hospital in Kigali go back to university. I am very grateful." The Ceremony, which included the music of Serj Tankian and Charles Aznavour, acknowledged the work of the four finalists. Alongside Aurora Prize Laureate Marguerite Barankitse, Dr. Tom Catena of Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Syeda Ghulam Fatima, the General Secretary of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front in Pakistan, and Father Bernard Kinvi, a Catholic priest in Bossemptele in the Central African Republic were also honored. To mark the occasion of the inaugural Aurora Prize, it was confirmed that the three other finalists will be presented with $25,000 from the Aurora Prize co-founders to support the organizations that have inspired their work. Also presented was the newly launched International Center for Journalists Integrity in Journalism Award in partnership with the Aurora Prize. Awarded to journalists dedicated to attracting the world's attention to humanitarian crises, the Award was given to The New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi for her exceptional contribution to exposing crimes against humanity. Earlier in the weekend, representatives from the international humanitarian community joined the Aurora Dialogues, a day-long conference promoting meaningful discussion of the most pressing humanitarian challenges taking place today. Participants included members of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee, such as Former United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani, Human Rights Lawyer and Iran's first female judge, Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi, and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group Gareth Evans. The state of humanitarian issues, the global refugee crisis, the role of women in the humanitarian community, and the role of the media in bringing humanitarian crises to the world's attention were among the subjects discussed. During the Aurora Dialogues, the Humanitarian Index, a specially commissioned study on public perception of top humanitarian issues among 4,600 people in the U.S, U.K, France, Germany, Lebanon, and Iran, was introduced. The survey revealed the extent of the global disconnect between perception and reality of the refugee crisis, exploring respondents' opinions on need and responsibility for international intervention in the face of adversity. The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity was founded by the pioneering global initiative 100 LIVES, launched last year to express gratitude for those who helped Armenians survive the Armenian Genocide a century ago. 100 LIVES honors the human spirit by championing individuals and organizations that demonstrate that same spirit of selflessness to enable others to survive and thrive today. "The simple truth is that all of us here tonight, are the result of someone's act of kindness," said Aurora Prize Selection Committee Co-Chair George Clooney during his remarks to the audience. "We all stand on the shoulders of good people who didn't look away when we were in need. It might have been 101 years ago or it might have been last year. If we are to survive as a people we simply can't look away." Other highlights from the weekend included: A visit by George Clooney, Co-Chair of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee, to United World College (UWC) Dilijan, an international boarding school in Armenia , where he met some of the school's international body of students from 61 different countries. (UWC) Dilijan, an international boarding school in , where he met some of the school's international body of students from 61 different countries. Participation of the Aurora Prize finalists and Selection Committee Members in a memorial ceremony commemorating the Armenian Genocide at the Tsitsernakaberd and a guided tour of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute. Additional information on the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, including the selection process, the four finalists and their championed causes, the inspiration behind the prize, background on the co-founders, and images and videos from this weekend, can be found on the website at www.auroraprize.com. About 100 LIVES 100 LIVES is a new global initiative rooted in the events of the Armenian Genocide, during which 1.5 million Armenians perished. The fortunate few were saved by the courageous and heroic acts of individuals and institutions. A century later, 100 LIVES seeks to express gratitude, to share remarkable stories of survivors and their saviors, and to celebrate the strength of the human spirit. 100 LIVES is an initiative of the IDeA Foundation (Initiatives for Development of Armenia), a charitable foundation committed to promoting socioeconomic development in Armenia through investments in long-term, non-profit projects. About the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity Recipients will be recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, an Aurora Prize Laureate will be honored each year with a US$100,000 grant as well as the unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by nominating organizations that inspired their work for a US$1,000,000 award. The Aurora Prize Selection Committee includes Nobel Laureates Elie Wiesel, Oscar Arias, Shirin Ebadi and Leymah Gbowee; former President of Ireland Mary Robinson; human rights activist Hina Jilani; former Australian Foreign Minister and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group Gareth Evans; President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York Vartan Gregorian; and Academy Award-winning actor and humanitarian George Clooney. The Aurora Prize will be awarded annually on April 24 in Yerevan, Armenia. Further information is available at www.auroraprize.com. General photography and videos for media use: www.AuroraPrizeMedia.com Related Links http://www.auroraprize.com SOURCE Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity Partnership to optimize asset productivity and reliability ROANOKE, Virginia, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Meridium, Inc. (www.meridium.com), the global leader in asset performance management (APM) software and services, today announced that it will deliver to Yara (www.yara.com), the world's largest producer of ammonia, nitrates and NPKs, its Enterprise APM solution as part of Yara's strategy for operational excellence. According to Dr Gilles Raskopf, Yara Head of Productivity, "Yara's production segment has a good track record of continuous operational improvement, and to build on our strengths and further eliminate downtime at our production plants, Yara has elected to extend our partnership with Meridium. Yara firmly believes that sustaining strong operations is the first and best productivity investment, and we work to achieve this by evaluating limitations and reductions every day, listening to and involving operators and removing root causes of losses and bottlenecks. Integration of an APM solution will contribute to reach our goal of improving productivity across all our production sites." According to Bonz Hart, Meridium CEO, "Meridium is very pleased to be expanding our presence in Europe with an industry leader like Yara. Minimizing asset downtime is key to an organisation with globally integrated operations, and a very efficient supply chain operation. We are looking forward to implementing Meridium APM to help Yara achieve their long-term global operational goals." About Yara Yaras knowledge, products and solutions grow farmers', distributors' and industrial customers' businesses profitably and responsibly, while protecting the earth's resources, food and environment. Our fertilizers, crop nutrition programs and technologies increase yields, improve product quality and reduce the environmental impact of agricultural practices. Our industrial and environmental solutions improve air quality by reducing emissions from industry and transportation, and serve as key ingredients in the production of a wide range of goods. We foster a culture that promotes the safety of our employees, contractors and societies. Founded in 1905 to solve emerging famine in Europe, today, Yara has a worldwide presence, with close to 13,000 employees and sales to more than 150 countries. About Meridium Meridium is the global leader in asset performance management (APM) software and services for asset-intensive industries. Meridium increases the availability of assets, improves safety, optimizes cost and lowers risk for our global clients in more than 80 countries with more than 1,200 licensed sites around the world. Through our unique software developed in collaboration with our clients, we predict and prevent asset failures with intelligent asset strategies. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Roanoke, VA (USA), with offices around the world, Meridium is the pioneer of APM and continues to drive innovation, leveraging the data from sensors, devices, systems and smart equipment to minimize unplanned events, incidents and downtime. Media Contacts: Jane Bailey, Meridium +1 540-344-9205 jbailey@meridium.com Rachael Tucker, InkHouse for Meridium +1 508-280-4846 rtucker@inkhouse.com Related Links http://www.meridium.com SOURCE Meridium, Inc. WINTERTHUR, Switzerland, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Noser Engineering AG the Swiss based global information technology consultancy announced today the international Noser Technology Impulse Roadshow series to demonstrate how companies can gain a competitive advantage in challenging industrial environments by implementing innovative business models with the Internet of Things (IoT). (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121203/579904 ) Every day we read about the latest developments, and above all incredible sales estimates, for products and services in the IoT sector. Who has not heard of smart homes, self-organizing supply chains, autonomous drones and smart fitness trackers? And who has not wondered how to implement IoT into their our own products and services? Implementing innovative IoT solutions raises not only complex technical challenges but also strategic questions. "After the hype in 2015, decision-makers are now asking how implementing IoT solutions adds value and how can we profit?" said Geri Moll, CEO Noser Engineering AG. "Strategic considerations and a structured approach are essential. I am pleased that we can give the Swiss industrial work place new impetus with our roadshows and help shape a successful future." "Innovative IoT projects can be challenging, and are often set to fail from the start without a structured approach," said Dr. Michael Eisenring, Business Unit Manager, Embedded Systems, Noser Engineering. "Our 4-step approach balances investment and innovation and helps businesses innovate existing or extended product lines and expand into new business areas with new services." The Noser Technology Impulse Roadshows will feature a keynote presentation from Prof. Dr. Michael Durst, ITONICS GmbH and practical recommendations to strategically implement innovative business models with IoT. The Noser Technology Impulse Roadshows will be held in: Bern, May 23rd, 2016 Lucerne, May 24th, 2016 Zurich Airport, May 25th, 2016 Munich, June 7th, 2016 For more information and to register please visit: http://www.noser.com/nti About Noser Engineering AG: Noser Engineering is a market-leading software engineering provider headquartered in Switzerland. With 170 employees, Noser Engineering has provided tailored solutions for over 30 years to Fortune 500, local, European and multinational companies. Noser Engineering is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (Android), award winning Microsoft ALM consultancy, and recipient of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) "Recognized for Excellence 5 Star" in 2014. Experts in embedded solutions and market leader in Swiss System Testing/QA. Noser Engineering provides IT know-how from consulting and brain sourcing through to solutions and complete projects. Noser Engineering are members of the Noser Group of companies. For more information, please visit: http://www.noser.com. Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Contact: Geri Moll CEO Noser Engineering AG Rudolf-Diesel-Strasse 3 CH-8404 Winterthur +41-52-234-56-36 Direct +41-41-234-56-11 Phone geri.moll@noser.com SOURCE Noser Engineering AG PUNE, India and SANTA CLARA, California, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Strong Growth in H2FY16 Drives Momentum Going Into FY17 Alignment of operations driving four key growth strategies Alliance with IBM to launch specialized Engineering Services for IBM Watson IoT platform Acquisitions and alliances in the year strengthen focus on Enterprise Digital Transformation including IoT (Internet of Things), add significantly to global footprint, and enhance Accelerite product portfolio News Summary: Persistent Systems (BSE & NSE: PERSISTENT), today announced quarterly sales of USD 100.43M and profit after tax of USD 11.99M while its annual sales was USD 351.65M and a profit after tax of USD 45.22M for the financial year ended March 31, 2016. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141106/714346 ) Consolidated Financial Highlights for the Financial Year 2015-16: FY16 FY15 Y-o-Y growth Revenue (USD Million) 351.65 308.54 14.0% EBITDA (USD Million) 63.43 63.68 -0.4% PAT (USD Million) 45.22 47.41 -4.6% Consolidated Financial Highlights for the Quarter ended March 31, 2016: Q4 FY16 Q3 FY16 Q-o-Q growth Revenue (USD Million) 100.43 89.65 12.0% EBITDA (USD Million) 15.93 16.81 -5.3% PAT (USD Million) 11.99 11.73 2.1% Dividend: On March 09, 2016, the Board of Directors approved payment of the 2nd Interim Dividend of INR 3 per Equity Share for the Financial Year 2015-16 by passing a resolution by way of circulation. The Board had earlier approved a 1st interim dividend of INR 5 per Equity Share. The total dividend paid for FY15-16 is INR 8 per share. In view of the two interim dividends, the Board recommended that no final dividend be paid. Dividend payout ratio for the FY16 was 26% Dr. Anand Deshpande, Chairman and Managing Director, Persistent Systems: "Our 25th year has been monumental with significant strategic acquisitions, partnerships and the new alignment of the Company into four key growth business lines - Digital, IBM Alliance, Services and Accelerite. This transformation positions us for our long-term success." Business Highlights from the Quarter: Announcement at IBM Interconnect of our alliance with IBM IoT to launch specialized Engineering Services for IBM Watson IoT platform, a significant addition to our new and ongoing alliances and relationship with IBM. Acquisitions of PRM Cloud Solutions (an Australia -based Salesforce partner and cloud application development firm) and GenWi (a flexible and customizable platform that delivers superior user experience) that continue to build our platform-centric approach to the experiences and Digital business. -based Salesforce partner and cloud application development firm) and GenWi (a flexible and customizable platform that delivers superior user experience) that continue to build our platform-centric approach to the experiences and Digital business. Partnership with ReachNet to Demonstrate Innovative Research Specific Informatics Infrastructure at HIMSS 2016 Conference in Las Vegas . ReachNet was joined by the Biocomplexity Institute at Virginia Tech for a panel on digital and actionable insights in healthcare at the Zinnov Confluence Conference in Santa Clara . . ReachNet was joined by the Biocomplexity Institute at for a panel on digital and actionable insights in healthcare at the Zinnov Confluence Conference in . Persistent is one of only two companies to be recognized by Zinnov Management Consulting in Leadership Zone across all service lines in its inaugural Zinnov Zones for Digital Services report. Anand Deshpande continues to be recognized for his visionary leadership including being recognized as one of Business Today's " India's Best CEOs," being one of the two finalists in the EY India Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 award and being awarded the Lokmat Maharashtrian Business Person of the Year Key Wins during the quarter: Multi-year, multi-million deal to build technology platform for claims transformation for a US based claims management provider Build and support a technology platform for digital transformation of one of the oldest mutual P&C insurers in the US Build platform as a service replacing legacy product for one of the payroll providers in the US Persistent API built on Oracle IDM gaining traction in the market helping major companies in pharma and publishing sector, build enterprise apps faster Accelerite Highlights from the Quarter: The company closed its purchase of Citrix CloudPlatform and CloudPortal Business Manager product lines from Citrix Systems International GMBH, a Swiss subsidiary of Citrix Systems, Inc., and released the newest version of CloudPlatform this month. Announced Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) API Platform About Persistent Systems: Persistent Systems (BSE & NSE: PERSISTENT) builds software that drives the business of our customers; serving software product companies and enterprises with software at the core of their digital transformation. Forward-looking and Cautionary Statements: For risks and uncertainties relating to forward-looking statements, please visit: http://content.persistent.com/Pslweb/forward_looking_cautionary_statement.shtml Media Contacts: Ken Montgomery Persistent Systems Vice President, Global Communications Tel: +1-949-939-5164 Email: Ken_montgomery@persistent.com Hitesh Garg Text100 Tel: +91-9833482728 Email: Hitesh.garg@text100.co.in SOURCE Persistent Systems Singha, also known as Boon Rawd Brewery Co., Ltd., was set up in 1933 as Thailand's first brewer by Piti's great-grandfather. The closely-held family company, had a 68% share of Thailand's beer market in 2015. The company produces beer under the Singha, Leo and Singha Light brands. Singha Beer is also exported to over 50 countries around the world. Singha's property affiliate, Singha Estate PCL, was formed in September 2014 through takeover of a listed property firm and consolidation with Singha's existing property assets, including the Santiburi Beach Resort and Spa, a five-star hotel on Koh Samui, one of Thailand's top tourist destinations. Singha Estate is fast expanding and controls a range of commercial, residential and hotel business, including 26 hotels in the United Kingdom. Singha Estate is listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, or SET, under the trading symbol "S". "We will continue to diversify and beyond Singha Estate we are preparing to spinoff another 8 or 9 other businesses," said Piti, addressing the recent 'Forbes Thailand Forum 2016: The Next Tycoons' seminar. "If we considered to be only in the beer business it would too narrow." In the beer business, Singha will focus on maintaining profit margins, rather than market share, in order to fund diversification, Piti said. In the past five years the number of employees of the group rose from 5,000 to around 20,000. Piti was born in 1979, the second son of Santi Bhirom Bhakdi, the President & CEO of Singha Corp. Santi and family ranked 7th in Forbes list of Thailand's 50 Richest 2015, with a net worth of $2.9 billion. Piti, who goes by the nickname 'Todd', attended high school as Wilbraham & Monson Academy, before studying Industrial Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, both institutions located in Massachusetts, USA. After graduating in 2002, Piti first worked in the US at Wyman-Gordon, a components manufacturer for the aerospace and energy sectors. Piti then came back to Thailand and started moving up the echelons in the family business, successively looking after advertising then marketing at Boon Rawd Trading, before taking his current position. He is also a director at Singha Corp. Besides beer, water and electrolyte drinks, the group has close to a hundred affiliates involved in businesses including hotel and hospitality, food such as Thai jasmine rice and snacks, packaging, restaurant chains, such as Est.33 by Singha, and fashion, under the Singha Life brand, which is now expanding into sport apparel. Singha also supports social and community enterprise through its famed Singha Park in Chiang Rai, a province in Thailand's Northern region. For additional information, please visit: www.boonrawd.co.th Chanyapat P. Tel: +662-659-2000 chanyapat_p@boonrawd.co.th Related Links http://www.boonrawd.co.th SOURCE Singha Corp. GENEVA, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Specifically benefits more than 270,000 people living with HIV in Armenia, Moldova, Morocco and Ukraine The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) and ViiV Healthcare announced an extension of their current licensing agreement today to increase access to dolutegravir (DTG), a promising new antiretroviral, to cover all remaining lower middle-income countries. The amendment to the 2014 licence specifically allows generic medicine distribution in four countries with patents - Armenia, Moldova, Morocco and Ukraine - that were not covered in the initial agreement. MPP sub-licensees can now sell in countries that are home to 94% of people living with HIV in the developing world. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151026/280525LOGO ) The expansion comes on the heels of ViiV Healthcare majority shareholder GlaxoSmithKline's March 31 announcement of its new approach to managing intellectual property based on country economic maturity, and its intention of broadening licensing for countries that fall under the lower middle-income category as defined by the World Bank. As a result, the MPP licence for DTG adult formulations now includes 92 developing countries, including 59 middle-income nations. In addition, countries without patents in force are able to procure generic products from MPP sub-licensees, extending access to many more countries. "This is great news for communities battling the epidemic in lower middle-income nations, specifically for Armenia, Moldova, Morocco and Ukraine where an estimated 270,000 people live with the virus," said Greg Perry, Executive Director of the MPP. "We congratulate ViiV Healthcare, a longtime MPP partner, for taking this key step in expanding our already broad licence." In 2014, ViiV Healthcare granted MPP two non-exclusive licences for DTG: one for the production of the medicine for adults and another for children. Both licences permit generic manufacturers based anywhere in the world to manufacture DTG and to combine the medicine with other drugs to develop fixed-dose combinations (FDCs). To date, nine generic manufacturers have signed MPP sub-licences for DTG and are actively developing the treatment. "ViiV Healthcare has worked with the Medicines Patent Pool for many years and we are pleased to continue our work with the organisation to further improve access to innovative medicines to address the burden of HIV," said Dr. Dominique Limet, CEO of the company. "It is also a great testament to the success we have had working with the MPP that GSK is now looking at expanding this collaboration for access to medicines beyond HIV treatments." DTG is considered a significant advancement in HIV treatment. The medicine does not require boosting and has a good barrier to resistance, and efficacy and tolerability profile at very small doses. Moreover, the medicine can be used for patients that have never taken HIV therapy as well as for many that have developed resistance to their current regimens. The World Health Organization recommended DTG as an alternative first-line treatment for adults in 2015. The DTG licences and amendment build on the MPP and ViiV Healthcare's long-term partnership. In February 2013, ViiV Healthcare granted the MPP a paeadiatric licence for abacavir (ABC), a key WHO-recommended antiretroviral for children, for 121 countries. Supportive Endorsements: "I salute this remarkable advancement," said Philippe Douste-Blazy, Chair of the Executive Board at UNITAID, MPP's funder. "Five years ago when we started the Medicines Patent Pool, it was just a novel concept. Now the organisation is a key player in the global health community in helping speed life-saving medicines such as dolutegravir to low- and middle-income countries. Ensuring these medicines reach the poorest and most vulnerable citizens is our overriding goal." "This announcement comes at an important time for Ukraine, as we seek to ensure access to HIV treatment for those in need, and need access to the best possible medicines at the lowest possible prices. We welcome the inclusion of Ukraine in the licence," said Ihor Perehinets, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Health of Ukraine. "For people living with HIV in Morocco, access to new generation HIV medicines, like DTG, is crucial. DTG has great potential for improving treatment options in middle-income countries given its high effectiveness and low side effects. We welcome this announcement," said Hakima Himmich, President of the Association de lutte contre le sida (ALCS). "This is very good news for Moldova. New medicines with high efficacy and low side effects like dolutegravir can contribute to improving living conditions for people living with HIV. We look forward to working with all stakeholders in Moldova to make sure new and improved treatments become accessible to all people in need as soon as possible," said Alexandr Curasov, Executive Director at the Positive Initiative in Moldova and Communities Delegation Board Member at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "We welcome the expansion of the Medicines Patent Pool licence, as dolutegravir is a promising new treatment. Taking into account the huge demand for treatment in Ukraine and the existing funding gap due to currency devaluation, we stress the urgent need for improving access to patented antiretrovirals like dolutegravir in Ukraine. The All-Ukrainian Network's mission is to ensure access to HIV treatment for all people living with HIV, and this announcement is an important step in that direction," said Dmytro Sherembey, Head of Coordination Council of the All-Ukrainian Network of PLWHA. About the Medicines Patent Pool The Medicines Patent Pool is a United Nations-backed public health organisation working to increase access to HIV, viral hepatitis C and tuberculosis treatments in low- and middle-income countries. Through its innovative business model, the MPP partners with industry, civil society, international organisations, patient groups and other stakeholders to prioritise, forecast and license needed medicines and pool intellectual property to encourage generic manufacture and the development of new formulations. To date, the MPP has signed agreements with six patent holders for twelve HIV antiretrovirals and for one hepatitis C direct-acting antiviral. Its generic partners have distributed more than three billion doses of low-cost medicines to 117 countries. The MPP was founded and remains fully funded by UNITAID. SOURCE Medicines Patent Pool BELGRADE, Serbia, April 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) today won a new electoral mandate to pursue what it terms the European path, and its goals of strengthened democracy and legal reform, claiming 51% of the vote according to preliminary results. If confirmed by the official results, to be announced on April 28, this would mean a renewed SNS majority in the Serbian parliament. Having first been elected to head a majority government in 2014, Mr. Vucic called the early election because he said he needed four more years to enact the deep reforms needed to meet his objective of readiness for EU membership by 2020. During the campaign he called on voters to support Serbia's European path, without abandoning her traditional allies. He also indicated that there will be early steps to restructure his government, including a number of cabinet changes. "This election today is a vote for a future of prosperity," Mr. Vucic told the press as the extent of his party's victory became plain. "We are moving now on a path from stabilization to prosperity. It will not be easy, it will not happen overnight, but I am sure it is possible and achievable and I am committed to lead this path." The Vucic government is credited with taking strong steps against corruption, including institutional reforms of the judicial and law enforcement systems. On the economy, liberalized tax and company formation policies have helped make Serbia more attractive for inward investment, leading this year to a marked rise in its ranking in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business index, from 91st to 59th place. Following six years of contraction, the economy grew 0.8 per cent last year. Meanwhile, unemployment has fallen to 17.3 per cent from a peak of 23.9 per cent in 2012. Over the past two years, 120,000 new jobs were created. "We have no time for celebrations," Mr. Vucic said. "The new government will have a huge responsibility and a lot of work and we would like to form it as soon as possible. We will speak to all those who would like to speak with us, who would like to share our program." About the Serbian Progressive Party Founded in 2008 by a breakaway group from the Serbian Radical Party, the SNS aimed to draw a line under the country's challenging post-war legacy in order to pursue Serbia's ambitious plans towards membership of the European Union. Building on the strength of its partnerships with its neighbours, Serbia under Mr. Vucic's leadership aims to see EU entry by 2020 and position itself as a key political and economic player in Europe. SOURCE Serbian Progressive Party DUMFRIES, Va., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 7 Charming Sisters launches its spring bridal collection, debuting a line of elegant on-trend pieces and statement jewelry perfect for the big day. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359016 With the most popular wedding months in full swing, 7 Charming Sisters delivers a stunning jewelry collection just in time for all the bridal fashionistas looking for the perfect complement to their wedding wear. 7 Charming Sisters has carefully curated a versatile collection that is guaranteed to match the various moods and styles of any bride-to-be. "We were delighted to release our new bridal line," states Paula Welsh, President and CEO of 7 Charming Sisters. "We have created a collection of beautiful jewelry to appeal to any woman looking to accessorize her bridal look." The collection contains a plethora of bridal party sets ranging in various themes. Each of the stylish pieces are made for accessorizing brides of all types from classic antique inspired pieces to soft pastel sets. The jewelry sets also make the perfect gifts for a deserving maid of honor or any member of the bridal party. In addition, the pieces are versatile enough to be worn even after the wedding ends. Fashionistas on a budget can easily style an everyday look with these adaptable pieces. The bridal collection provides different styles of necklaces, earring, and bracelets all at an affordable cost, the sets ranging in price from $35.99 to $75.99. "Our bridal party sets range in style to cater to our diverse clientele. We made sure to include everything from the classic pieces to the fun statement options," continues Welsh. 7 Charming Sisters is fully devoted to bringing fashionable statement jewelry to customers for any formal occasion. The online boutique can spice up anyone's wardrobe with an assortment of specially tailored collections that won't break the bank. With sizzling new looks every few weeks, this brand is a one stop shop to making all women look fabulous. For more information on 7 Charming Sisters please visit http://www.7charmingsisters.com/. For media inquiries, Email or call 1.877.841.7244 About 7 Charming Sisters Established in 2015, 7 Charming Sisters is an online jewelry boutique headquartered in Dumfries, Virginia. The company offers seven distinctive collections of jewelry consisting of necklaces, bracelets, earrings and rings. Founded on the principle of fun, diversity and girly-girl vibe, the company is also dedicated to employing people with disabilities, as well as providing customers with insights into daily life at 7 Charming Sisters. Media Contact: Andrew Matthews Beautiful Planning Marketing & PR: Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle Division (877) 841-7244 Email SOURCE 7 Charming Sisters Related Links http://www.7charmingsisters.com PORTLAND, Ore., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AbSci, a global leader in soluble microbial protein expression has secured $5.1M in Series A financing led by Phoenix Venture Partners (PVP). Funding will accelerate commercialization of AbSci's SoluPro protein expression platform for use in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. AbSci's next generation E. coli expression platform, SoluPro, is capable of producing soluble, active therapeutic proteins at revolutionary high yields. SoluPro's performance across a diverse range of protein products, including those traditionally viewed as difficult to express in E. coli, has demonstrated compelling advantages to its industry partners. Funding will be used to support further development and scale-up of SoluPro for commercial production of insulin and other therapeutic proteins. "AbSci is pleased to welcome PVP to the growing AbSci team," said Sean McClain, Founder and CEO of AbSci. "PVP's team is comprised of successful entrepreneurs, whose values, strategic expertise, and alignment with our business model make them an ideal fit to compliment our efforts." AbSci's technology offers dramatic cost, yield, and manufacturing flexibility improvements to its industrial partners. As the biopharmaceutical industry matures, enhanced manufacturing efficiency is becoming increasingly important both for competitive advantage and enhanced margins, while maintaining affordability to patients. This is especially evident in a commoditized market such as insulin, where the increasing global demand is outstripping production capabilities. AbSci's SoluPro platform not only enables dramatically higher protein yields, but also does so in less time than current processes. Moreover, SoluPro expresses proteins intracellularly while avoiding appreciable formation of protein aggregates, thereby offering the ability to decouple upstream and downstream processes and simplifying or eliminating post processing steps. "AbSci's technology enables greater manufacturing flexibility and dramatically more efficient use of existing manufacturing infrastructure," stated Dr. Zach Jonasson, General Partner at PVP, who will be joining AbSci's Board of Directors. These benefits are of significant value to the Biopharmaceutical industry. PVP is excited to work with AbSci to commercialize its revolutionary expression platform. About AbSci AbSci is a global leader in cutting-edge protein production technologies committed to reducing costs in the biopharmaceutical industry. The company's SoluPro expression platform achieves revolutionary yields of soluble and active protein product across a diverse range of targets. AbSci's unique approach accelerates drug discovery timelines, increases manufacturing efficiencies, and drastically reduces costs for the biopharmaceutical industry. For more information, please visit www.abscibio.com. About Phoenix Venture Partners Phoenix Venture Partners (PVP) is a leading venture capital firm that invests in and partners with entrepreneurs to commercialize breakthrough materials science innovations. PVP's team has a track record of founding, building and investing in successful materials science start-ups. The firm's investment strategy is flexible and predicated on assisting entrepreneurs with customer and supply chain partnerships, business development, as well as strategic and operational support. PVP collaborates with a select set of forward-looking global corporations on business development and innovation interests. PVP is based in Silicon Valley with satellite offices in Singapore and Cambridge, MA. For more information, please visit www.phoenix-vp.com. SOURCE AbSci Related Links http://www.abscibio.com NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC criticized Senator Bernie Sanders for comparing socio-economic conditions in Baltimore to Palestinian communities in the West Bank. "What do the serious issues Baltimore's leadership and population are confronting have to do with daily Palestinian life in the West Bank?" stated AJC CEO David Harris. "Inserting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into unrelated American political discourse serves only one purpose, to encourage those who are narrowly focused on assailing Israel for any shortcomings, failings by the Palestinian Authority," Harris said. "Furthermore, according to CIA statistics, infant mortality in the West Bank, at 13.08 deaths per 1,000 live births, actually compares favorably to most of the developing world," said Harris. "Turkey's rate is 18.87, Brazil's is 18.60, and Iran's is 38.04. The U.S. infant mortality rate, at 5.87, is far from where it should be, behind the United Kingdom, at 4.38, Australia at 4.37, France at 3.28, and Israel at 3.55." Sanders made his remarks during an address in Maryland ahead of Tuesday's primary election. "People don't know this. If you are born in Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods, your life expectancy is almost twenty years shorter than if you are born in a wealthier neighborhood," said Sanders, adding that "two [neighborhoods] have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank in Palestine." In addition, Harris continued, "life expectancy in the West Bank, according to the CIA World Factbook, exceeds that of Egypt and Jordan, not to mention many other countries." AJC is a 501(c)(3) organization that neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office. SOURCE American Jewish Committee Related Links http://www.ajc.org NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC condemned the New York University Graduate Student Organizing Committee's endorsement of a resolution to boycott Israel. The resolution, adopted by the group on the eve of Passover, calls on the university and the student group's parent union, the United Auto Workers International, to divest from Israeli companies. It also calls on NYU to end its education program at Tel Aviv University. "With this grotesquely misguided action, NYU's graduate student union has now joined the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, which, let's be clear, does not seek peace, but instead specifically targets Israel and questions its very right to exist," said Michael Schmidt, Director of AJC's New York Region. "The NYU graduate student union exists, we wished to believe, to improve the working conditions for the university's graduate students, and not to engage in unrelated, anti-Israel political propaganda." In January, the UAW International struck down a similar boycott resolution against Israel that the University of California Student Workers Union, UAW Local 2865, had passed in December 2014. "We look forward to the UAW International taking action to correct this mistake by the NYU graduate student union," said Schmidt. "Moreover, as a NYU spokesman has emphasized, the BDS resolution contravenes the university's longstanding policy opposing boycotts of Israeli academics and institutions." SOURCE American Jewish Committee Related Links http://www.ajc.org NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Angola Capital Investments (ACI), a leading international investment firm headquartered in Angola, announced a donation to Bluoshen specifically to aid in the development of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and malaria vaccines. Funded by ACI affiliate Bluoshen, researchers at the Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA) at the University of Navarra have studied infectious diseases, including HBV and malaria, prevalent in Angola. More than 350 million individuals worldwide are infected with HBV and in Angola 20% of the young male population is infected. In the West African sub-Saharan area, one-fifth of those infected with HBV are also co-infected with the hepatitis D virus (HDV). HBV management is challenging because the current treatment is associated with considerable levels of toxicity. The CIMA research team developed safe and potent approaches to significantly enhance cell immune response in chronic viral infections and neoplastic conditions. "HBV and malaria are global health problems that can be prevented," said Zandre Campos, chairman and CEO of ACI. "We are investing in the development of these vaccines because healthcare is a top priority for me and my firm." According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 3.2 billion people are at risk of contracting malaria. In 2015, sub-Sahara Africa was home to 88% of malaria cases and 90% of malaria deaths. The WHO recommends vector control as the main form of prevention. "While vector control is important, it is not enough. We want to protect people from being infected by mosquitos and that is why it is so important to develop a vaccine," added Campos. Dr. Gloria Gonzalez-Aseguinolaza from CIMA and a team of researchers in New York have worked on the development of a malaria vaccine. They identified a specific gene and protein that when used in a vaccination fight malaria during the liver-stage infection. Malaria develops in two places, the liver or the red blood cells. The findings can be found in the publication: Hafalla JC, Bauza K, J Friesen, Gonzalez-Aseguinolaza G, AV Hill, Matuschewski K. Identification of targets of CD8 T cell responses to malaria liver stages by genome-wide profiling PLoS Pathog epitope. 2013 May; 9 (5): e1003303. About Angola Capital Investments Angola Capital Investments (ACI) is an international investment firm that invests in companies in the healthcare, energy, transportation, hospitality, and real estate sectors throughout Africa. The mission of ACI is to create global value for developing countries in Africa, while contributing to their economic development. About Zandre Campos Zandre de Campos Finda is one of the great, innovative business leaders and global entrepreneurs emerging out of Africa. Currently, he is chairman and CEO of Angola Capital Investments (ACI), an international investment firm headquartered in Angola with holdings throughout Africa and Europe. Prior to founding ACI, Mr. Campos was CEO of Nazaki Oil & Gaz S.A. He has held the positions of CEO of the mobile phone company Movicel Telecommunications and an executive in the office of the president of SONAIR, Air Service S.A., a subsidiary of Sonangol, Angola's state-owned oil company that oversees oil and gas production. He began his career as a legal advisor with Sonangol Holdings. Mr. Campos also sits on the board of Oshen Group S.A. Sphera Bluoshen S.A. is a subsidiary of Oshen Group. Sphera is committed to bringing high-quality healthcare services to nations around the globe with current activities in Angola, Morocco, and Rwanda. Sphera is dedicated to healthcare equality and accessibility. He is also a board member in Boost - Communication & Strategy, S.A. Mr. Campos graduated from Lusiada University, Lisbon, with a degree in Law. Mr. Campos has dedicated his career to helping advance Angola and other developing nations. His work makes him one of the most socially forward and conscientious business leaders of our time. Through his entrepreneurial spirit and diverse business portfolio that is ever-expanding, Mr. Campos is creating thousands of new job opportunities and building stronger communities. SOURCE Angola Capital Investments LOS ANGELES, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As rain, hail, wind and other severe weather continues to pummel the state of Texas during the month of April, Farmers Insurance has deployed additional specially-trained Catastrophe Claims Team members to provide front-line assistance to affected customers. The recent round of severe storms, which brought additional large-sized hail, heavy rain and strong winds, moved through Houston, San Antonio and other communities in southern Texas. In response, Farmers has increased its staff in the area to handle the additional claims that have been received. Customers are urged to use the online filing system when possible to prevent lengthy call times. Farmers Insurance estimates that this latest round of severe storms will ultimately result in more than 30,000 and more than $200M in additional damages. Farmers Insurance encourages customers to continue to monitor the weather and prepare for potential future storms. If a storm is imminent, Farmers advises residents to try to place cars in covered areas, bring in breakable items from outside, especially things like glass table tops, and to remain vigilant for potential tornado watches or warnings. Additional tips are available at: http://www.farmers.com/catastrophe/tornado-and-hurricane-preparation/ or https://www.farmers.com/news/seasonal-smarts/. Farmers customers who suffered damage from the storms should file their claims at www.farmers.com, via the Farmers Insurance Claims app, or by calling the 24-hour claims center. Farmers Claims Contact Center number: 1- 800-435-7764. Foremost and 21st Century customers can also use the 1 800-435-7764 number for immediate assistance. Bristol West customers can call 1-800-274-7865 for immediate assistance. Spanish-language claims assistance is available to Farmers customers by calling: 877-RECLAMO (877-732-5266). About Farmers "Farmers Insurance" and "Farmers" are trade names for a group of affiliated insurers providing insurance for automobiles, homes and small businesses and a wide range of other insurance and financial services and products. Farmers Insurance is proud to serve more than 10 million households with over 19 million individual policies, across all 50 states, through the efforts of more than 48,000 exclusive and independent agents and approximately 21,000 employees. Farmers Insurance Exchange, the largest of the three primary insurance insurers that make up Farmers Insurance, is recognized as one of the largest U.S. companies on the 2015 Fortune 500 list. For more information about Farmers Insurance, visit Farmers.com, Twitter and Instagram, @WeAreFarmers, or Facebook.com/FarmersInsurance. Contact: Media Relations Farmers Insurance (818) 965-0007 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130731/LA56061LOGO SOURCE Farmers Insurance Related Links http://www.farmersinsurance.com ENGLEWOOD, Colo., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Aytu BioScience, Inc. (OTCQX: AYTU), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on commercializing novel products in the field of urology today announced the exclusive licensing of its third commercial-stage urology product in just 11 months, with the execution of a long-term, exclusive license agreement with an affiliate of Acerus Pharmaceuticals Corporation (TSX: ASP) for the U.S. commercial rights to Natesto (testosterone) Nasal Gel. Natesto is the first and only nasal formulation of testosterone approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a replacement therapy for men diagnosed with hypogonadism (low testosterone, or "Low T"). Aytu anticipates further expanding its current urology-centric sales force and initiating its promotion of Natesto into the $2 billion U.S. testosterone replacement market in July 2016. The profile of Natesto is unique among currently marketed testosterone products, offering convenient and simple administration via a nasal gel applicator within seconds, but without the risk of testosterone transference associated with other topical products such as AndroGel and Axiron, which carry "black box" warnings on their product labels. Natesto was approved by the FDA in May 2014 and is protected by multiple Orange Book-listed patents. Josh Disbrow, Chief Executive Officer of Aytu BioScience, stated, "Securing the rights to commercialize Natesto in the United States represents Aytu's most significant transaction to date. This partnership further expands on our strategy to build a complementary portfolio of unique urology assets, and we expect Natesto to be a key value driver for Aytu going forward. Approximately thirteen million men in the U.S. have a form of Low T, and we believe that Natesto has significant potential to satisfy the needs of many men that are not satisfied with current Low T treatment options. We look forward to building a strong and long-lasting relationship with Acerus based on successfully establishing Natesto as an important treatment option in the U.S. Our current sales force is already preparing to engage prescribers given our focus on urologists and the key prescribers of testosterone replacement therapies." Tom Rossi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Acerus, stated, "We are very pleased to announce Aytu as our U.S. commercial partner for Natesto. Management's proven track record of launching and scaling successful commercial operations within the specialty pharmaceutical industry, and the fact that Aytu is focused on building a significant presence in men's health, were instrumental in reaching this decision. We look forward to strengthening our relationship with Aytu in support of the planned U.S. launch of Natesto, and to supporting its growth in this important therapeutic market." Under the terms of the exclusive license, Aytu will pay Acerus a total of $2 million upfront, and will additionally purchase of $2 million of Acerus common stock. Additional payments totaling an aggregate of $6 million payable in fiscal 2017 will also be made. Acerus will also receive a supply price to manufacture the product calculated as a percentage of the U.S. net sales of Natesto, throughout the term of the agreement, which will last until at least February 2024, with the maximum milestone payable upon achievement of $125 million in annual U.S. net sales. About Aytu BioScience, Inc. Aytu BioScience is a commercial-stage specialty pharmaceutical company focused on global commercialization of novel products in the field of urology. Aytu's current portfolio of commercial and late-stage urology products addresses prostate cancer, urinary tract infections, male infertility and male sexual dysfunction, and the company plans to expand into other urological indications for which there are significant medical needs. The company currently markets ProstaScint (capromab pendetide), the only radio-labeled monoclonal antibody that targets prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA), a protein highly expressed by prostate cancer cells. ProstaScint is FDA-approved as an imaging agent for use in both newly diagnosed, high-risk prostate cancer patients and patients with recurrent prostate cancer. Aytu also markets Primsol (trimethoprim hydrochloride) the only FDA-approved trimethoprim-only oral solution for urinary tract infections. Additionally, Aytu markets the CE Marked MiOXSYS System outside the U.S. and is conducting U.S.-based clinical trials, following which the company plans to seek 510k de novo medical device clearance. The MiOXSYS System is a novel, rapid semen analysis system with the potential to become a standard of care in the diagnosis and management of male infertility. MiOXSYS is the only rapid test for assessing oxidative stress in semen and seminal plasma, a leading contributor of idiopathic male infertility. Aytu's strategy is to continue building its portfolio of revenue-generating urology products and late-stage development assets, leveraging its commercial team and expertise to further build those brands within well-established markets. About Acerus Acerus Pharmaceuticals Corporation is a Canadian pharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacture, marketing and distribution of innovative, branded products that improve the patient experience. Acerus markets ESTRACE in Canada, a product indicated for the symptomatic relief of menopausal symptoms. NATESTO, a product utilizing an Acerus licensed nasal gel technology, is the first and only testosterone nasal gel approved in Canada, and available in the United States for replacement therapy in adult males diagnosed with hypogonadism. GYNOFLOR, a product licensed to Acerus in Canada by Medinova AG, is an ultra-low dose vaginal estrogen therapy with the addition of lactobacillus, for the treatment of atrophic vaginitis, certain vaginal infections and to restore a healthy vaginal environment. TEFINA, a 'use as required' nasal testosterone gel, is an Acerus drug development candidate aimed at addressing a significant unmet need for women with female sexual dysfunction. About Natesto Natesto (testosterone) Nasal Gel is an androgen indicated for replacement therapy in adult males for conditions associated with a deficiency or absence of endogenous testosterone: Primary hypogonadism (congenital or acquired): testicular failure due to conditions such as cryptorchidism, bilateral torsion, orchitis, vanishing testis syndrome, orchiectomy, Klinefelter's syndrome, chemotherapy, or toxic damage from alcohol or heavy metals. These men usually have low serum testosterone concentrations and gonadotropins (follicle-stimulating hormone [FSH] and luteinizing hormone [LH]) above the normal range; and Hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (congenital or acquired): gonadotropin or luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) deficiency or pituitary-hypothalamic injury from tumors, trauma, or radiation. These men have low serum testosterone concentrations but have gonadotropins in the normal or low range. Limitations of use: Safety and efficacy of Natesto in men with "age-related hypogonadism" have not been established. Safety and efficacy of Natesto in males <18 years old have not been established. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION FOR NATESTO Natesto is contraindicated in men with carcinoma of the breast or known or suspected prostate cancer and in women who are, or may become, pregnant or who are breastfeeding. Natesto may cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman and serious adverse reactions in nursing infants. Nasal adverse reactions, including nasopharyngitis, rhinorrhea, epistaxis, nasal discomfort, and nasal scabbing, were reported in the clinical trial experience with Natesto. Patients should be instructed to report any nasal symptoms or signs to their healthcare professional. In that circumstance, healthcare professionals should determine whether further evaluation or discontinuation of Natesto is appropriate. Due to lack of clinical data on safety or efficacy, Natesto is not recommended for use in patients with a history of nasal disorders, nasal or sinus surgery, nasal fracture within the previous 6 months or nasal fracture that caused a deviated anterior nasal septum, mucosal inflammatory disorders (e.g., Sjogren's syndrome), and sinus disease. Monitor patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) for worsening of signs and symptoms of BPH. Patients treated with androgens may be at increased risk for prostate cancer. Evaluation of patients for prostate cancer prior to initiating and during treatment with androgens is recommended. Increases in hematocrit, reflective of increases in red blood cell mass, may require discontinuation of Natesto. Venous thromboembolic events, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), have been reported in patients using testosterone products. Patients with signs and symptoms consistent with DVT or PE need evaluation and may require discontinuation of treatment with Natesto. Some postmarketing studies have shown an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) with use of testosterone replacement therapy. Patients should be informed of this possible risk when deciding to use or to continue to use Natesto. Due to lack of controlled studies in women and potential virilizing effects, Natesto is not indicated for use in women. Serious hepatic adverse effects (peliosis hepatis, hepatic neoplasms, cholestatic hepatitis, and jaundice) have been associated with prolonged use of high doses of oral methyltestosterone. Natesto is not known to cause these adverse effects. Nonetheless, patients should be instructed to report any signs or symptoms of hepatic dysfunction (e.g., jaundice). If these occur, promptly discontinue Natesto while the cause is evaluated. Edema, with or without congestive heart failure, may be a serious complication in patients with pre-existing cardiac, renal, or hepatic disease. Administration of exogenous androgens, including Natesto, may lead to azoospermia through suppression of spermatogenesis; gynecomastia; sleep apnea (especially in patients with risk factors such as obesity and chronic lung disease); decreased concentrations of thyroxine-binding globulins; and changes in serum lipid profile. Natesto should be used with caution in cancer patients at risk of hypercalcemia (and associated hypercalciuria). Periodic monitoring of prostate specific antigen (PSA), hematocrit, and lipid concentrations is recommended, as changes may require discontinuation of Natesto. The most common adverse reactions reported by 3% of patients were: PSA increased, headache, rhinorrhea, epistaxis, nasal discomfort, nasopharyngitis, bronchitis, upper respiratory tract infection (URI), sinusitis, and nasal scab. Changes in insulin sensitivity or glycemic control may occur in patients treated with androgens and may necessitate a decrease in the dose of anti-diabetic medication. Changes in anticoagulant activity may be seen with androgens. The concurrent use of testosterone with corticosteroids may result in increased fluid retention and requires monitoring particularly in patients with cardiac, renal, or hepatic disease. Please see full Prescribing Information. For Aytu BioScience Investors & Media: Tiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc. Joshua Drumm, Ph.D.: [email protected]; (212) 375-2664 Janine McCargo: [email protected]; (646) 604-5150 Forward Looking Statement This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, or the Exchange Act. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this presentation, including statements regarding our anticipated future clinical and regulatory events, future financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements are generally written in the future tense and/or are preceded by words such as "may," "will," "should," "forecast," "could," "expect," "suggest," "believe," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," or similar words, or the negatives of such terms or other variations on such terms or comparable terminology. These statements are just predictions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual events or results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, among others: risks related to our planned launch and commercialization of Natesto and the integration of Natesto into our existing operations; our plans for product growth, expansion and acquisition; the anticipated start dates, durations and completion dates, as well as the potential future results, of our ongoing and future clinical trials; risks relating to gaining market acceptance of our products; obtaining reimbursement by third-party payors; the potential future commercialization of our product candidates; the anticipated designs of our future clinical trials; anticipated future regulatory submissions and events; our anticipated future cash position; and future events under our current and potential future collaborations. We also refer you to the risks described in "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of Aytu BioScience, Inc.'s Annual Report on Form 10-K and in the other reports and documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. SOURCE Aytu BioScience, Inc. KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Committed to developing the next generation of thinkers and leaders in modern agriculture as part of its mission of "Science For A Better Life," the Crop Science division of Bayer has announced increased support of the National Agricultural Center & Hall of Fame, commonly known as the Ag Center, through a $150,000 Bayer USA Foundation grant. This three-year grant will help create a new children's exhibit within the Ag Center's Children's Agriculture Science Center. The new exhibit is set to open in 2018. Located in Bonner Springs, Kansas, the mission of the Ag Center is to educate people on the historical and present value of American agriculture and to honor the leadership in agribusiness and academia. Created by a rare federal charter signed in 1960 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Ag Center is largely funded by private and corporate donations, and Bayer is one of the museum's main supporters. "We are so thankful to Bayer for its generous support of the Ag Center through this grant from the Bayer USA Foundation," said Dawn Gabel, executive director of the National Agriculture Center & Hall of Fame. "It is exciting to imagine that a child who will visit this future exhibit could one day become an inductee into our very own Hall of Fame thanks in part to what they learned here about agriculture." Through this new children's exhibit, as well as other educational initiatives like Making Science Make Sense a program advancing science literacy across the United States through hands-on, inquiry-based science learning Bayer seeks to inspire students of all ages to learn more about what makes agriculture not only exciting, but also essential to the future of our planet. Over 900 million people in the world suffer from chronic hunger. When the global population reaches 9 billion by 2050, that number will increase drastically unless farmers can produce at least twice as much food as they do today all while using less water and less land in the face of a changing global climate. To meet the food demands of the future, Bayer is leading efforts to make agriculture better, faster and more efficient by providing farmers with cutting-edge agricultural innovations. These efforts require more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) knowledge than ever before to cultivate safe, healthy crops that will feed the world. High-quality STEM education is necessary to fill the nearly 58,000 jobs open each year in the agriculture industry, and Bayer is committed to supporting programs that instill a lifelong love of STEM in students at an early age. "The National Agricultural Center & Hall of Fame is truly one of our country's greatest treasures, and Bayer is proud to support its mission as part of our own efforts to inspire the next generation of leaders in the agriculture industry," said Paul Nagy, site leader for Kansas City Bayer Crop Science. "In all of our local communities, it is essential that programs and initiatives like this exhibit are available to support parents, teachers and other leaders in providing these sorts of educational opportunities for students of all ages." Bayer is committed to bringing new technology and solutions for agriculture and non-agricultural uses. For questions concerning the availability and use of products, contact a local Bayer representative, or visit Crop Science, a division of Bayer, online at www.cropscience.bayer.us. Visit the Bayer Connect - Social Hub for social media, recent news, blog posts, videos and more from Crop Science, a division of Bayer. Bayer: Science For A Better Life Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture. Its products and services are designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life. At the same time, the Group aims to create value through innovation, growth and high earning power. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development and to its social and ethical responsibilities as a corporate citizen. In fiscal 2015, the Group employed around 117,000 people and had sales of EUR 46.3 billion. Capital expenditures amounted to EUR 2.6 billion, R&D expenses to EUR 4.3 billion. These figures include those for the high-tech polymers business, which was floated on the stock market as an independent company named Covestro on October 6, 2015. For more information, go to www.bayer.com. Bayer USA Foundation The Bayer USA Foundation is an endowed 501(c)(3) entity with a programmatic focus on education and workforce development, and environment and sustainability. The Foundation supports organizations that enhance quality of life, connect diverse groups, ensure preparedness for tomorrow's leaders, and improve communities in which Bayer employees live and work. The Bayer USA Foundation is one of three Bayer foundations worldwide, including the Bayer Science & Education Foundation and the Bayer Cares Foundation. Making Science Make Sense Making Science Make Sense is Bayer's award-winning, company-wide initiative that advances science literacy through hands-on, inquiry-based science education, employee volunteerism and public education. For more information, please visit MakingScienceMakeSense.com. Find more information at www.cropscience.bayer.us. Forward-Looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group or subgroup management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer's public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com . The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140312/NY79226LOGO SOURCE Bayer Corporation Related Links http://www.bayerus.com EAGAN, Minn., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As a mission-driven, not-for-profit organization, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (Blue Cross) supported numerous programs and initiatives in 2015 that helped to build healthier communities statewide. An overview of this work is showcased in Blue Cross' 2015 community report, "Moving Health Forward in the Community." Blue Cross' Community Report showcases how company initiatives and employee dedication to volunteerism supported the health of all Minnesotans throughout the year. "Blue Cross gives back to communities statewide as part of our commitment help all Minnesotans thrive," said Paula Phillippe, senior vice president of human resources and external relations. "Our employees are constantly seeking unique and meaningful ways to support the communities where they live, work and play. This commitment is a cornerstone of Blue Cross' culture." Throughout 2015, Blue Cross' helped move health forward in Minnesota communities in many ways, including: Blue Cross Employees' Philanthropic and Volunteer Efforts Nearly 1,600 employees participated in the company's Volunteer Paid Time Off program, donating more than 16,000 hours of service to Minnesota communities communities More than $1.1 million was raised through the 2015 Community Giving Campaign was raised through the 2015 Community Giving Campaign Combined donations of $33,000 to nonprofits in recognition of 132 Dollars for Doers volunteers (employees who contributed 40 or more hours of their personal time to their favorite nonprofits) for Doers volunteers (employees who contributed 40 or more hours of their personal time to their favorite nonprofits) Nearly $77,000 and more than 4,100 pounds of food donated to the Minnesota FoodShare March Campaign Access to Healthy Food Donating 700 pounds of fresh produce grown on the grounds of Blue Cross facilities grounds to local food shelves in Eagan and Gilbert, Minn. and 8,000 packets of seeds packed by 70 Blue Cross volunteers, enough to support 400 inner-city families to grow their own produce Youth and Education Employees donations of more than 9,500 supplies for backpacks to the Salvation Army in Virginia, Minn. , supporting Iron Range students in need , supporting Iron Range students in need More than 60 employees volunteering as eMentors at schools in the metro area through BestPrep Seniors More than 90 employees refurbished the exterior of two homes owned by seniors through the Metro Paint-A-Thon 19 employees from Blue Cross' Virginia and Aurora, Minn. offices volunteered weekly to deliver Meals on Wheels to local seniors Community 190 employees contributed 1,400 volunteer hour to Habitat for Humanity worksites Hearts and Hands volunteers donated nearly 750 handcrafted items to community members, including chemo hats, baby items and winter hats, mittens and scarves Environment Donating used office equipment to local classrooms and working with vendors to reduce the company's corporate footprint Quality Care The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation awarded $1.2 million to help low-income Minnesotan enroll in state public health programs and navigate the health care system awarded to help low-income Minnesotan enroll in state public health programs and navigate the health care system Countryside Public Health, with support from Blue Plus , tasked a public health nurse to specifically serve the Micronesian/Melanesian community in the Benson area To see all the ways Blue Cross supported the health and wellness of Minnesota communities in 2015, view the full community report, including an interactive snapshot of funding initiatives, at: www.bluecrossmn.com/communityreport. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (bluecrossmn.com), with headquarters in the St. Paul suburb of Eagan, was chartered in 1933 as Minnesota's first health plan and continues to carry out its charter mission today as a health company: to promote a wider, more economical and timely availability of health services for the people of Minnesota. Blue Cross is a not-for-profit, taxable organization. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, headquartered in Chicago. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151020/278636LOGO SOURCE Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Related Links http://www.bluecrossmn.com LIMA, Peru, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Camposol S.A. (the "Company"), announced today that it is extending the Early Tender Date for its previously announced offer to exchange (the "Exchange Offer") any and all of its outstanding 9.875% Senior Notes due 2017 (the "Existing Notes") for 10.50% Senior Secured Notes due 2021 (the "New Notes"), pursuant to the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Company's Exchange Offer Memorandum dated April 11, 2016 (the "Exchange Offer Memorandum"). The Early Tender Date has been extended to midnight, New York City time, on May 6, 2016 (as so extended, the "Extended Early Tender Date"), unless further extended. Except for the establishment of the Extended Early Tender Date, all of the terms and conditions of the Exchange Offer set forth in the Exchange Offer Memorandum remain unchanged. As a result, Eligible Holders who validly tender their Existing Notes on or prior to midnight, New York City time, on the Extended Early Tender Date will receive US$1.00 in principal amount of New Notes for each US$1.00 in principal amount of Existing Notes accepted for exchange. The Company also announced that, as of midnight, New York City time on April 22, 2016, US$125,865,000 principal amount of the Existing Notes, representing 62.93% of the total principal amount of Existing Notes outstanding, had been validly tendered in the Exchange Offer and not withdrawn. Consummation of the Exchange Offer is conditioned upon the valid tender, without subsequent withdrawal, of at least 95% of the aggregate principal amount outstanding of the Existing Notes. Subsequent to confirmation of the Exchange Offer, collateral that will secure the Existing Notes that remain outstanding and the New Notes issued in the Exchange Offer, will be perfected pursuant to the terms of a Peruvian Trust Agreement governed by Peruvian law that will be entered into by the Company and the Peruvian Trustee and Collateral Agent for the benefit of all holders of notes outstanding. The Company will have the right, in its sole discretion, to waive any conditions to the Exchange Offer. The Company will also have the right to terminate or withdraw the Exchange Offer and extend the Extended Early Tender Date and/or the Expiration Date in its sole discretion, subject to applicable law. The Exchange Offer and the New Notes have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). As a result, holders within the United States or who are U.S. persons will be eligible to participate in the Exchange Offer only if they are "qualified institutional buyers" ("QIBs") as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act ("Rule 144A"). Offers and issuances of the New Notes to non U.S. persons outside the United States will be made in offshore transactions in reliance on Regulation S under the Securities Act ("Regulation S"). The Company has engaged D.F. King & Co., Inc. to act as Information and Exchange Agent, in connection with the Exchange Offer. The Exchange Offer is being made only to holders who have properly completed, executed and delivered to the Information and Exchange Agent an eligibility letter or a certification, whereby such holder has represented or will represent to the Company that they are either (i) a "qualified institutional buyer," or "QIB," as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") and under applicable state securities laws; or (ii) a "non-U.S. Person" (as defined in Regulation S under the Securities Act), and if such holder is in any member state of the European Economic Area which has implemented Directive 2003/71/EC (the "Prospectus Directive," which term includes amendments thereto, including Directive 2010/73/EU), a "qualified investor" (as defined in the Prospectus Directive) and, in each case, that it may lawfully participate in the Exchange Offer in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction in which it is located. Informational documents relating to the Exchange Offer, including but not limited to the Exchange Offer Memorandum, will only be distributed to eligible investors who submit the eligibility letter or certification described above. If you would like to submit the eligibility letter or certification, please log into the website www.dfking.com/camposol. Alternatively, please contact the Information and Exchange Agent D.F. King & Co., Inc., Attn: Peter Aymar, at 48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10005, telephone number: (800) 821-2794 (toll-free), (212) 269-5550 (collect) or email [email protected]. Requests for documentation should be directed to the Information and Exchange Agent. Beneficial owners of Existing Notes should carefully read the Exchange Offer Memorandum regarding the relevant procedures and timing to tender their Existing Notes. This announcement must be read in conjunction with the Exchange Offer Memorandum. This press release is neither an offer to purchase nor the solicitation of an offer to sell OR EXCHANGE any of the securities described herein in the United States or in any other jurisdiction where such offer is prohibited, and such securities may not be offered, sold OR EXCHANGED in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration under the Securities Act. THE COMPANY does not intend to register any NEW NOTES in the United States or to conduct a public offering of such securities in any jurisdiction. The exchange offer is made solely pursuant to the EXCHANGE OFFER memorandum dated APRIL 11, 2016. The Exchange Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Exchange Offer Memorandum, and only to such persons and in such jurisdictions as are permitted under applicable law. None of the Company, the Dealer Managers or the Information and Exchange Agent makes any recommendation as to whether holders of Existing Notes should tender Existing Notes or participate in the Exchange Offer. This announcement contains forward-looking statements and information that is necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. No assurance can be given that the transactions described herein will be consummated or as to the terms of any such transactions. The Company assumes no obligation to update or correct the information contained in this announcement. 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 New Notes are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such New Notes 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. About Camposol Camposol is the leading agro industrial company in Peru, the first producer of avocados and soon the first producer of blueberries in the world. It is involved in the harvest, processing and marketing of high quality agricultural products such as avocadoes, asparagus, blueberries, grapes, mangos, tangerines and shrimp; which are exported to Europe, the United States of America and Asia. CAMPOSOL is a vertically integrated company located in Peru, offering fresh and frozen products. It is the third largest employer of the country, with more than 13 thousand workers in high season, and is committed to support sustainable development through social responsibility policies and projects aimed to increase the shared-value for all of its stakeholders. CAMPOSOL was the first Peruvian agro industrial company to present annual audited Sustainability Reports and has achieved the following international certifications: BSCI, Global Gap, IFS, HACCP and BRC among others. To learn more about CAMPOSOL please visit: www.camposol.com.pe. SOURCE Camposol S.A. Related Links http://www.camposol.com.pe DENVER, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- It's no surprise to cannabis retailers that April 20 is the biggest sales holiday in the cannabis industry. Total U.S. cannabis retail sales on April 20, 2016 exceeded $37.5M and saw an almost 30% increase in customer traffic over last year's 4-20 holiday. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359339LOGO MJ Freeway's retail sales data figures are compiled through analysis of 40% of the cannabis retail market. "As the leading provider of cannabis software solutions, MJ Freeway has the largest and most representative retail data in the cannabis industry. We have an unmatched vantage point from which to view trends and changes in the industry," said Jessica Billingsley, MJ Freeway's COO. "This data is a powerful tool for understanding real-time cannabis industry changes and for predicting future trends. Our priority is helping our client partners use data to make smarter, more profitable business decisions, while serving the needs of their patients and consumers." The "4-20" calendar date is widely recognized as a holiday by cannabis enthusiasts sparking events and cannabis-driven tourism. The cannabis industry, which totaled $5.7B in sales in 2015 and is expected to clear $7.1B in 2016 (figures provided by the Arcview Industry Report, 2016), sees the most customer traffic and highest overall sales on April 20. April 20, 2016 by the numbers Individual cannabis licensed retail locations* dispensaries and delivery services sold on average $10,822 in retail sales on April 20 , $6,208 on April 19 , and $5,442 on April 18 . *Note: One physical cannabis retail location may operate with two individual licenses medical and recreational. in retail sales on , on , and on . One physical cannabis retail location may operate with two individual licenses medical and recreational. April 20 alone nets 192% increase in sales compared to annual cannabis retail sales day averages. alone nets 192% increase in sales compared to annual cannabis retail sales day averages. Cannabis retail customer traffic increased by more than 29% on April 20, 2016 compared to April 20, 2015 . compared to . While customer traffic was up, customers spent on average $20 less per transaction on April 20, 2016 versus April 20, 2015 . less per transaction on versus . The state with the total highest average sales per day per retail licensed location for April 20 was Colorado . The state with highest total dollar amount sold on April 20 was California . When equivalized by population, Colorado outsold California in total dollar sales on April 20 by 3 times. Key Take-Aways for Cannabis Operators Stores open later hours and seven days a week surrounding the holiday benefitted more. Shoppers ramp up their holiday purchases up to five days in advance of the holiday. On April 20, 2017 , be prepared with retail staff and inventory to handle a 3.5 times increase in customer traffic and sold inventory. , be prepared with retail staff and inventory to handle a 3.5 times increase in customer traffic and sold inventory. The next big cannabis retail sales holiday is July 4 , which ranks as third highest holiday in total cannabis retail dollar sales following 4-20 and New Year's Eve . "Comparing 2015 to 2016 April 20 sales shows trends for cannabis retailers related to toughening competition and a maturing market," says Jeannette Ward, MJ Freeway's Data & Marketing Director. "Consumer traffic increased in 2016, but retailers used discounts and price incentives to lure customers." Ward points out, "For states, the comparison is telling from a total dollar sales and tax revenue perspective. Even states with a broad and well-utilized medical market like California cannot match the sales traffic and spend of a regulated medical and adult use state like Colorado not even close. April 20 sales results show that states with medical and adult-use cannabis markets win the revenue game." MJ Freeway Consulting Services "Retailers need to be careful to ensure that discounts to drive traffic don't eat unnecessarily into profit margins and that increased traffic is sustained with successful loyalty and rewards programs. We can manage that for our retail partners," says Sue Jensen Director of Solution Services for MJ Freeway. For more information on state-specific retail sales data or for help spotting trends and opportunities using cannabis sales data, please contact MJ Freeway Consulting Services at [email protected] or 888-932-6537 ext 2. Join a webinar presented by MJ Freeway on April 27 reviewing cannabis retail sales data trends and changes by region. Register here for the webinar. About MJ Freeway: MJ Freeway is the industry-leading software solution for cannabis businesses, with clients in 23 states the District of Columbia, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Founded in 2010 by a team of career software and IT professionals, the product suite is designed and built from the ground-up specifically for cannabis businesses. MJ Freeway's tracking software includes patent-pending inventory control and grow management applications to streamline workflow and increase efficiency. MJ Freeway's Leaf Data systems software solution enables governments to track cannabis plants from seed-to-sale and ensure patient, public and product safety. MJ Freeway also offers SuccessMap, a complete suite of professional services for cannabis businesses. For more information, call 888-932-6537 or visit mjfreeway.com. Media Contact: Jeannette Ward 888.932.6537 x754 Email SOURCE MJ Freeway Related Links http://www.mjfreeway.com WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new national poll of America's 18- to 29-year-olds by Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, finds Hillary Clinton the clear front-runner over Donald Trump to win the White House in 2016. Among likely voters, Clinton has 61% of young voters and Trump 25%, with 14% of likely young voters unsure. The IOP's newest poll results its 29th major release since 2000 also shows that a majority of America's 18- to 29-year-olds rejects both socialist and capitalist labels. 42% of young Americans support capitalism, and 33% say they support socialism. A detailed report on the poll's findings is available online at http://bit.ly/IOPSpring16Poll. "Millennials care deeply about their futures and in this election cycle they are laser-focused on issues like access to educational opportunity, women's equality and the economy," said Harvard Institute of Politics Director Maggie Williams. "This survey reflects their passion, their worries and most importantly, a growing awareness that their voices have power." "Young Americans are sending a strong message. They care deeply about the future, but are concerned that the current state of our institutions and our politics are not sufficient to meet our nation's challenges," said Harvard Institute of Politics Polling Director John Della Volpe. "We hope that in the remaining months of the campaign, candidates from both parties work to rebuild the trust that's been eroded and inspire Millennials to not only vote, but engage in civic life." The KnowledgePanel survey of 3,183 18- to 29-year-old U.S. citizens with a margin of error of +/ 2.4 percentage points (95% confidence level) conducted with the Government and Academic Research team of GfK for the IOP between March 18 and April 3 finds: In the Past Year, 18- to 29-Year-Olds Net Preference Nearly Doubled for Democrats to Maintain Control of White House. Young Americans prefer that a Democrat win the White House over a Republican in the 2016 presidential race. More than three in five (61%) prefer that a Democrat win the White House, while 33% prefer a Republican. The divide of 28 points is nearly double what it was in Spring 2015, when the divide was 15 percentage points (55% Democrat; 40% Republican). Among young white voters, Democrats now have a 2-percentage point advantage (-12: Spring 2015), among African American voters, that advantage grows to 78 percentage points (79: Spring 2015) and among Hispanics, the advantage is 55 points (41: Spring 2015). Among Likely Voters, Clinton Leads Trump by 36 Points; Trump Underperforming Among Young Republicans. Among likely voters, Clinton maintains the same 61% that a "generic Democrat" receives, while Donald Trump receives 25%, 8 percentage points lower than the current "generic Republican" White House preference. Among young Democrats, Clinton leads Trump by 78 points (83%: Clinton; 5%: Trump), but among Republicans, Trump leads by only 44 points (57%: Trump; 13%: Clinton). Among Independents, Clinton has a 23-point lead (43%: Clinton; 20%: Trump), with 36% undecided. Clinton leads significantly with both men and women. Among men, it's 47% for Clinton, 29% supporting Trump; and the lead expands among women, with 57% for Clinton and 15% for Trump. Clinton has a narrow 6-point lead among 18- to 29-year-old whites (38%: Clinton; 32%: Trump), but polls into the 70s with both the black and Hispanic communities. Among African Americans, Clinton leads Trump 76% to 5%, and among Hispanics, she has a similar-sized lead at 71% to Trump's 9%. Majority of 18- to 29-Year-Olds Reject Both Socialism and Capitalism. When 18- to 29-year-old young Americans were asked whether or not they support socialism, capitalism, and other political theories and labels, a majority reject both socialism and capitalism. Socialism is supported by 33% of young Americans, while capitalism is supported by 42%. Among those most likely to vote, 41% support socialism and 52% support capitalism. Socialism is typically more supported by 18- to 20-year-olds (41%), Democrats (50%), Clinton voters (54%), Hispanics (38%) and African Americans (39%). Capitalism is more likely to be supported by people who have graduated from college (56%), whites (43%), men (49%), people who live in the South (46%) and the West (45%), and members of the GOP (54%). 15% Believe U.S. Headed in the Right Direction; Nearly Half Say Politics of Today are Not Able to Meet the Nation's Challenges. By a margin of more than 3 to 1, young Americans believe that things in the nation today are "off on the wrong track." 15% believe that things are "generally headed in the right direction," while 47% disagree. An ominous indication for the future, nearly 50% of young Americans agree with the statement "politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing" (16%: disagree; 32%: neither agree nor disagree). Nearly 3-in-5 Believe There's a "Glass Ceiling" Facing Women in America Today; 64% Say Men Have More Advantages. When 18- to 29-year-olds were asked whether a glass ceiling (a barrier to advancement in a profession) exists for women in America today, nearly three in five (59%) indicated yes. Young women are significantly more likely to believe a glass ceiling exists (68%), compared to men (50%). In a related question, 64% of those polled believe that men have more advantages than women in America today and 7% believe that women hold more advantages (27%: treated equally). Those who are either in college (73%), graduate school (74%), or have already graduated from college (68%), are significantly more likely to believe that men have more advantages than women than those who are in a 2-year college (64%) or never attended (59%). In addition, 75% of African Americans believe men have more advantages, compared to 61% for whites and 65% for Hispanics. When we asked Democrats, 76% believe men have more advantages than women, while less than half (48%) of Republicans agree. Despite these findings, 74% of young Americans believe that if Clinton were to lose in November, there will be a woman president in their lifetime (77%: Male; 72%: Female). Sanders is Only Candidate with Net Positive Rating, Trump -20 With GOP. Senator Bernie Sanders is the only one of the five candidates with a net positive favorability rating. 54% of 18- to 29-year-olds rate Sanders favorably and 31% view him unfavorably (+23 favorable: Net). On the other hand, Donald Trump's net favorability rating is -57. Among young Republicans, 37% view him favorably and 57% view him unfavorably (-20 unfavorable: Net). Men and Women Differ on Who Would Improve Women's Lives the Most. When asked which of the five remaining presidential candidates would most improve the lives of women, Clinton leads 29% to 25% compared to Sanders, with 32% undecided. No Republican candidate received more than 5 percentage points (5%: Cruz; 4%: Trump; 2%: Kasich). Analyzing the results among men only, Clinton has an 11-point advantage over Sanders (32%: Clinton; 21%: Sanders). When we analyze the responses of women, identifying the candidate who would most improve women's lives, Sanders edges Clinton (Sanders: 30%; Clinton: 26%). Dim View of U.S. Judicial System Largely Unchanged in Past Year; Less Than Half Have Confidence That People Judged Without Bias. Nearly a majority, 47%, of 18- to 29-year-olds indicate that they have no (16%) or not much (31%) confidence "in the U.S. judicial system's ability to fairly judge people without bias for race and ethnicity." The vote of no confidence rises to 59% among African Americans and 52% among Hispanics, which are both significantly higher than the 42% of whites who feel the same way. The youngest among the group polled had more confidence in the system compared to those who did not attend or are not enrolled in college and those over the age of 21, both of the latter groups are significantly more pessimistic about the judicial system. 59% of 18- to 20-year-olds have confidence in the judicial system, with 38% having little to no confidence. U.S. Military Only Institution That Majority Trust at Least Most of the Time; Congress, Wall Street and Media Levels Below 20%. Whereas trust in the President Obama has increased in each of the last three years and is now at 40%, trust in institutions such as the federal government and Congress remain below 25%, at 23% and 18% respectively. The two institutions tested that receive the lowest levels of trust among 18- to 29-year-olds are Wall Street (11%) and the media (9%). Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to never trust the media (32%: Republicans; 46%: Democrats). 53% of young Americans likely to vote for Trump say they never trust the media, 22 percentage points higher than those who are likely to vote for Hillary Clinton (31%). Obama and Congressional Democrats Receive Highest Approval in 5 Years; 72% Believe President Should Fill SCOTUS Vacancy. Both President Obama and Democrats in Congress have seen their approval ratings increase by 5 percentage points since our last poll was released in Fall 2015. President Obama and Congressional Democrats received the highest approval rating since February 2011. President Obama's approval rating improved in most major subgroups across the board, with the greatest increases on college campuses (61%: Spring 2016; 53%: Feb. 2011) and among African Americans (86%: Spring 2016; 78%: Feb. 2011). 72% of young Americans believe that President Obama should nominate a justice to fill the current vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only 23% say he should not nominate. Among Democrats, 89% say he should nominate and of those, 53% say he should nominate whomever he wants and 36% say he should nominate a consensus pick. 49% of Republicans say he should nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy and of those, 12% say he should nominate whomever he wants and 37% say he should nominate a consensus pick. 7 in 10 Believe They Received a Quality Education; Emphasis on STEM, Smaller Class Sizes, and Increased Teacher Pay Favored. When asked which was the more important education policy, K-12 or higher education, 65% of young Americans respond that K-12 education is a higher priority. When probed further for the most effective ways to improve public education in the U.S., more emphasis on STEM (52%), smaller class sizes (50%), and increasing teacher pay (46%) were identified as the most effective methods to improve the public education system from a list of 7 policy initiatives that also included free Pre-K (35%), tying pay to teacher job performance (34%), increasing school choice (33%), and standardizing curricula across states (32%). In a related question, an overwhelming majority believes they received a quality education through high school (71%). Among those who are more likely than others to believe they received a quality education are people who live in the Northeast (79%), people who have already graduated college (83%), and those who say they will definitely vote (77%). Methodology The goal of the project was to collect 3,000 completed interviews with young Americans between 18- and 29-years old. The main sample data collection took place from March 18 through April 3. A small pretest was conducted prior to the main survey to examine the accuracy of the data and the length of the interview. Five thousand, five hundred and fifty-eight (5,558) KnowledgePanel members were assigned to the study. The cooperation rate was 57 percent which resulted in 3,183 completed interviews included in this report (after data cleaning). One hundred thirty-five (135 ) interviews were conducted in Spanish with the remainder done in English. The web-enabled KnowledgePanel is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel. For those who agree to participate, but do not already have Internet access, GfK provides a laptop and ISP connection at no cost. People who already have computers and Internet service are permitted to participate using their own equipment. Panelists then receive unique log-in information for accessing surveys online, and are sent e-mails throughout each month inviting them to participate in research. More technical information is available at http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/reviewer-info.html and by request to the IOP. Our mission at Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP) is to create the future of politics and public service every day, inspiring undergraduates to lead lives of purpose by committing themselves to the practice of politics and governing, and to public service and the countless opportunities to serve at home and around the world. The IOP was established in 1966 as a memorial to President Kennedy. More information is available online at www.iop.harvard.edu/. GfK is one of the world's largest research companies, with more than 12,000 experts working to discover new insights into the way people live, think and shop, in over 100 markets, every day. GfK is constantly innovating and using the latest technologies and the smartest methodologies to give its clients the clearest understanding of the most important people in the world: their customers. In 2012, GfK's sales amounted to EUR 1.51 billion. To find out more, visit www.gfk.com or follow GfK on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gfk_group. Social Tag: #HarvardIOPPoll SOURCE Harvard's Institute of Politics BILLINGS, Mont., April 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The warnings and alerts can be issued due to circumstances such as terrorist activity, unstable governments, civil wars or on-going threats of crime or violence. Travel warnings may remain in effect for extended periods of time and will not be revoked until the threat has passed. Travel alerts differ from warnings in that they are issued for short-term situations that may arise due to health outbreaks, election seasons that may cause unrest or demonstrations considered to be temporary. U.S. Citizens are encouraged to monitor the government site when considering travel plans and follow a few simple rules such as: always leave your family with your travel itinerary, expect additional security measures, register in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) and in an emergency, follow the instructions of the local authorities. Below is the list of warnings that were renewed for the month of April, 2016. April 1 - Tunisia's Libyan border, including western mountain areas April 5 - Columbia April 7 - Pakistan April 11 - Saudi Arabia April 14 - Central African Republic April 15 - Certain Regions in Mexico April 18 - Chad These areas offer unique threats to U.S. Citizens who are often targeted by local terrorists groups. The threat of muggings to violent crime is a danger for travelers and The U.S. Department of State recommends avoiding travel to these areas if at all possible. When travel cannot be avoided in these locations, travelers are advised to remain on high alert and be aware of dangerous situations. Likely targets include public places where large crowds congregate. Places like sporting events, outdoor festivals, airports and religious institutions can be targeted by suicide bombers hoping to inflict the most damage. Travelers should also avoid rural or urban areas where violent crime is prevalent. It is also advised to choose hotels where strict security measures are in force. The situation in Central African Republic has deteriorated to the point where U.S. Citizens are being urged to leave the country. U.S. Citizens in need of help in any of these regions should contact the U.S. Embassy. If traveling to Mexico, check the State Department website for a list of regions where the danger is highest as the list is continually changing. For more warnings, alerts, updates and information see the U.S. Department of State travel website. Coconut Club Vacations is a value members-only travel club providing members with member benefits which range from access to discounted travel to packages and tours as well as consumer benefits. Photo(s): http://www.prlog.org/12551918 Press release distributed by PRLog SOURCE Coconut Club Vacations Related Links http://www.coconutclubvacations.com HOUSTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The founding shareholder and former chairman and Chief Executive Officer of InterOil Corporation ("InterOil" or the "Company") (NYSE:IOC), Phil Mulacek, and Petroleum Independent & Exploration, LLC (the "Concerned InterOil Shareholders"), announced today that InterOil had finally agreed to comply with its obligations under the Business Corporations Act (Yukon) to permit the shareholders of the Company to vote on the shareholder resolutions that were included in the March 21, 2016 requisition (the "Requisition") of a special meeting of shareholders (the "Special Meeting") made by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and certain other shareholders who collectively own over 7.5% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company. Mr. Mulacek said that in view of the Company's agreement, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders will terminate legal proceedings previously instituted against the Company seeking to require compliance, and the Requisition resolutions will be placed on the agenda of the Company's annual general and special meeting to be held on June 14, 2016 (the "AGM"). "The Concerned InterOil Shareholders appreciate the InterOil Board's decision to finally comply with its legal obligation to allow InterOil's shareholders to express their views on the proposals in the Requisition," Mr. Mulacek said. "We are deeply disappointed, however, that InterOil only reached this decision after more than four weeks of correspondence, notices, meetings and, ultimately, litigation between the parties at a cost of thousands of dollars in legal and other fees and costs on both sides. InterOil first denied that the Requisition had been properly submitted in March 2016, and then opposed the Concerned InterOil Shareholders' action in the Yukon Supreme Court to call a Special Meeting to consider the Requisition matters. This waste of resources could and would have easily been avoided had InterOil simply confirmed to us after the Requisition was submitted that our proposals would be addressed at the AGM." Mr. Mulacek continued, "We will post the pleadings in this case on our website, www.ConcernedInterOilShareholders.com, so that InterOil's shareholders may see for themselves how InterOil's Board and management tried to prevent the Requisition proposals from coming before the shareholders in disregard of basic shareholder rights." Mr. Mulacek noted that in view of InterOil's conduct to date, it was important for the parties to agree in good faith on a fair and equitable set of protocols to govern conduct of the AGM. However, Mr. Mulacek also stated that if InterOil fails on its part to negotiate in good faith so that protocols are agreed in a reasonable period of time, "the Concerned InterOil Shareholders will take any and all steps to secure a fair and transparent meeting process, including again invoking the Supreme Court of Yukon's jurisdiction in these matters." The terminated action was originally filed in the Supreme Court of Yukon, Philippe E. Mulacek, Petitioner, and InterOil Corporation, Respondent (S.C. No. 16-A0002) (the "Yukon Action"). Background On March 21, 2016, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and certain other shareholders delivered the Requisition to the Company, and in the Requisition, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders requested that the Company call the Special Meeting and include several resolutions focused on improving the corporate governance of InterOil (the "Proposals"). The Company did not acknowledge publicly that it had received the Requisition for ten days, until after the Concerned InterOil Shareholders issued a press release on March 31, 2016. On April 1, 2016, InterOil wrote to Mr. Mulacek, proposing to meet to discuss the Proposals. In the interests of avoiding further delay in adopting the Proposals in connection with the Special Meeting, Mr. Mulacek - after consultation with other shareholders - readily agreed to the meeting. The meeting was finally held on April 8, 2016 to accommodate representatives of the Company, only one business day before InterOil was required to call the Special Meeting. By this time, Mr. Mulacek had received significant supportive feedback from numerous InterOil shareholders, and he came prepared to constructively discuss the Proposals with the Company. Much to his disappointment, it quickly became clear that InterOil's representatives had no intention of discussing the Proposals. After requesting Mr. Mulacek to repeat the Proposals, InterOil's representatives vaguely replied that they would consider the Proposals and respond when appropriate. InterOil had until April 11, 2016 to call the Special Meeting, but made no announcement to that effect, nor did it confirm that the Proposals would be included for consideration by InterOil's shareholders at the AGM. After receiving a letter from the Concerned InterOil Shareholders' counsel on April 10, 2016, the Company finally responded with a letter on April 11, 2016, that suggested the Requisition had not been validly delivered (despite being received by the Company), and proposed that all parties "cease all public activities and related shareholder communications in connection with these matters for a period of 15 business days," to facilitate further discussions. On April 12, 2016, fearing further delay or obstruction by InterOil, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders commenced the Yukon Action to call the Special Meeting to protect and ensure that InterOil shareholders have an opportunity to consider the Proposals and hold the Board accountable for the matters related to the Proposals. On April 20, 2016, InterOil wrote a letter to the Concerned InterOil Shareholders agreeing to place all of the Proposals on the agenda for the AGM if the Yukon Action was terminated. At a hearing for the Yukon Action on April 22, 2016, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders notified InterOil and the court that they intended to terminate the Yukon Action. Termination papers will be filed with the court shortly by the parties. Advisors: The Concerned InterOil Shareholders have retained Wildeboer Dellelce LLP and Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP as its legal advisors, and Bayfield Strategy as its strategic communications advisor in connection with this matter. About Phil Mulacek: Mr. Mulacek is the founding shareholder of InterOil and served as chairman, CEO and a director until his retirement from the company in November, 2013. During his tenure at the company, its market capitalization grew from approximately US$10 million (~ US$0.50/share) to over US$4.5 billion (~ US$92.00/share) at his departure. The company also constructed the first petroleum refinery in Papua New Guinea, a 36,000 bpd facility at Napa Napa, with a fully integrated downstream business that contributed to support of the company. Mr. Mulacek led InterOil's discovery of the world-class Elk and Antelope gas fields in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea, with approximately 10 to 15 tcfe of certified hydrocarbon resource, and the nearby Triceratops gas field, with approximately 1 tcfe of certified hydrocarbon resource. These fields have been among the largest onshore discoveries in PNG and Asia recent years. Since retiring from InterOil in 2013, Mr. Mulacek has remained actively involved in the upstream oil and gas industry in Papua New Guinea, the US and elsewhere globally through his affiliated companies with offices in Singapore and branch offices in the United States. He resides in Singapore. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward -- Looking Statements: This press release contains forward--looking statements. All statements contained in this filing that are not clearly historical in nature or that necessarily depend on future events are forward--looking, and the words "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "estimate," "plan," and similar expressions are generally intended to identify forward--looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and currently available information. They are not guarantees of future performance, involve certain risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders do not assume any obligation to update any forward--looking statements contained in this press release. Information Contact: For additional information on this press release and a copy of the Requisition (including the Proposals), please contact the Concerned InterOil Shareholders at +1 (832) 510-7028, or by email at [email protected] Media Contact: Bayfield Strategy, Inc. Riyaz Lalani +1 (416) 907-9365 [email protected] Information in Support of Public Broadcast Solicitation: The Concerned InterOil Shareholders are relying on the exemption under section 9.2(4) of National Instrument 52-102 -- Continuous Disclosure Obligations to make this public broadcast solicitation. The following information is provided in accordance with corporate and securities laws applicable to public broadcast solicitations. This solicitation is being made by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and not by or on behalf of the management of InterOil. The address of InterOil is 163 Penang Road, Winsland House II, #06-02, Singapore, 238463. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders have filed an information circular dated March 31, 2016 (the "Concerned InterOil Shareholders Circular") concerning the Requisition and the Proposals. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders Circular is available on InterOil's company profile on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com and on the Concerned InterOil Shareholders website at http://www.concernedinteroilshareholders.com. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders have also filed a statement of beneficial ownership on Form 13-D (the "Form 13-D"), as amended, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Form 13-D also includes the Requisition as an Exhibit and is available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1221715/000114420416090986/v435587_sc13d.htm and on the Concerned InterOil Shareholders website at http://www.concernedinteroilshareholders.com. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders intend to solicit proxies in support of the Proposals. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders may solicit proxies, by mail, telephone, facsimile, email or other electronic means as well as by newspaper or other media advertising and in person by directors, officers and employees of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders who will not be specifically remunerated therefor. In addition, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders may solicit proxies in reliance upon the public broadcast exemption to the solicitation requirements under applicable Canadian corporate and securities laws, conveyed by way of public broadcast, including press release, speech or publication, and by any other manner permitted under applicable Canadian laws. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders may engage the services of one or more agents and authorize other persons to assist them in soliciting proxies on behalf of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders. At this time, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders have not entered into any agreement pursuant to which an agent has agreed that it will act as proxy agent for the Concerned InterOil Shareholders with respect to a formal solicitation of proxies. All costs incurred for the solicitation will be borne by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders. A registered holder of common shares of InterOil that gives a proxy may revoke it: (a) by completing and signing a valid proxy bearing a later date and returning it in accordance with the instructions contained in the form of proxy to be provided by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders, or as otherwise provided in the proxy circular, once made available to shareholders; (b) by depositing an instrument in writing executed by the shareholder or by the shareholder's attorney authorized in writing, as the case may be: (i) at the registered office of InterOil at any time up to and including the last business day preceding the day of the AGM or the day of any adjournment or postponement of the AGM, or (ii) with the chairman of the AGM prior to its commencement on the day of the AGM or any adjournment or postponement of the AGM; or (c) in any other manner permitted by law. A non--registered holder of common shares of InterOil will be entitled to revoke a form of proxy or voting instruction form given to an intermediary at any time by written notice to the intermediary in accordance with the instructions given to the non--registered holder by its intermediary. It should be noted that revocation of proxies or voting instructions by a non--registered holder can take several days or even longer to complete and, accordingly, any such revocation should be completed well in advance of the deadline prescribed in the form of proxy or voting instruction form to ensure it is given effect in respect of the AGM. Neither the Concerned InterOil Shareholders, nor any directors or officers, or any associates or affiliates of the foregoing, has: (i) any material interest, direct or indirect, in any transaction since the beginning of InterOil's most recently completed financial year or in any proposed transaction that has materially affected or would materially affect InterOil or any of its subsidiaries; or (ii) any material interest, direct or indirect, by way of beneficial ownership of securities or otherwise, in any matter currently known to be acted on at the AGM, other than the Proposals set forth in the Requisition. However, certain of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders are the beneficial holders of minority indirect participation interests in certain of InterOil's petroleum prospecting licenses and petroleum retention licenses in Papua New Guinea under indirect participation agreements with InterOil. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders believe that these indirect participation interests are not material to InterOil but are nevertheless fully aligned and not in conflict with the interests of InterOil's shareholders. SOURCE Petroleum Independent & Exploration, LLC Related Links http://www.ConcernedInterOilShareholders.com AMSTERDAM, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Constellium N.V. (NYSE and Euronext: CSTM) today announced that the Board will nominate Jean-Marc Germain as an Executive Director at the Company's next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to be held in June 2016, with the view to him becoming Chief Executive Officer of the Company in the course of summer 2016. Jean-Marc Germain will succeed Pierre Vareille, who announced in March 2016 his desire to retire as the CEO of the Company. "After conducting an executive search process, the Board is delighted to have Jean-Marc Germain join our Company," stated Richard (Dick) Evans, Chairman of Constellium. "Jean-Marc Germain has a successful long track record in the aluminium industry, both in Europe and in the United States. With this extensive experience, Jean-Marc is uniquely qualified to help us continue to execute Constellium's growth strategy and accelerate its profitable global development." Until Jean-Marc Germain starts assuming his duties, Pierre Vareille will remain in his current role. He will thereafter become an advisor to the Board to facilitate the transition. Jean-Marc Germain is currently (until April 30th, 2016) Chief Executive Officer of Algeco Scotsman, a Baltimore-based leading global business services provider focused on modular space and secure portable storages. Previously, Mr. Germain held numerous leadership positions in the aluminium industry including senior executive roles in operations, sales & marketing, financial planning and strategy with Pechiney, Alcan and Novelis. His last position with Novelis from 2008 to 2012 was as President for North American operations. Earlier in his career he held a number of international positions with Bain & Company and GE Capital. Mr. Germain is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France and a dual French and American citizen. About Constellium Constellium (NYSE and Euronext: CSTM) is a global sector leader that develops innovative, value added aluminium products for a broad scope of markets and applications including aerospace, automotive and packaging. Constellium generated 5.2 billion of revenue in 2015. www.constellium.com Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130624/NY37453LOGO SOURCE Constellium Related Links http://www.constellium.com "The health of the community is up to each of us," noted Gayle Johnson, Director of Community Engagement at Northwest Harvest. "Washington is our home. Our volunteers are committed to their friends and neighbors. Ensuring that everyone has life-saving food and, when they need it, life-saving blood, is evidence of a real commitment to community." "Teaming up with Northwest Harvest was a no-brainer for us," says Larry Shaw, senior program manager for donor and volunteer engagement. "Like Bloodworks, they empower people to aid and strengthen our community. We see this blood drive as the start of a partnership that can improve everyone's health and safety." "The relationship just clicked we both focus on the welfare of our community, and on helping those with a specific and timely need. And we both have offices on First Hill, a neighborhood committed to the health of the community," said Jesse Swingle, Communications Manager. Date: Thursday, April 28 Time: 10am 4pm (Closed 12pm 1pm) Where: Northwest Harvest Kent Warehouse, 22220 68th Ave S, Kent, WA 98032 Visuals: Media is invited to join the organizations in celebrating their new partnership. Visuals include volunteers and staff sorting food in the warehouse and giving blood at the mobile blood bank. Northwest Harvest is Washington's home-grown food bank distributor. Each month, Northwest Harvest provides more than two million nutritious meals and supports a statewide network of more than 380 food banks, meal programs and high-need schools, focusing on stable, nutritious, culturally-sensitive foods critical to body and mind. Throughout its 50 years, Northwest Harvest has grown from a project of local activists to its position today as the leader in fighting hunger in Washington State. For Northwest Harvest, its 50th anniversary is a time for reflection and a call to an ever more efficient, inspiring and impactful future. Bloodworks Northwest: Formerly Puget Sound Blood Center, Bloodworks is backed by more than 70 years of Northwest history and 250,000 donors. A national leader in transfusion medicine, Bloodworks has been chosen to serve more than 90 hospitals in Washington, Oregon and Alaska partnering closely with local hospitals to deliver the highest level of patient care. Patients with traumatic injuries, undergoing surgeries or organ transplantation, or receiving treatment for cancer and blood disorders all depend on our services, expertise, laboratories and research. We are local, nonprofit, independent, volunteer-supported and community-based. For more information, visit bloodworksnw.org. Contact: Jesse Swingle, Communications Manager [email protected] 202.569.8557 (cell) Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160423/359199 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160423/359198LOGO SOURCE Northwest Harvest Related Links http://www.northwestharvest.org CHICAGO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Each year, the Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council (Chicago MSDC) and the Minority Business Enterprise Input Committee (MBEIC) honor individuals in corporate America and the public sector who demonstrate an extraordinary commitment to expanding corporate purchasing from minority companies. This year, Craig Meadors, Vice President, Enterprise Procurement Group, CNA, was named one of the 2016 Outstanding Buyers of the Year by Chicago MSDC and MBEIC. Meadors joins six other recipients from organizations including McDonald's Corporation, United Airlines and the University of Chicago. Craig Meadors, Vice President, Enterprise Procurement Group, CNA "I'm extremely honored to receive such a prestigious award from Chicago MSDC and MBEIC. Diversity is a core value at CNA, and supplier diversity ensures that our supplier base reflects our work environment, community and customer base. This award represents the coordinated efforts of our teams of CNA procurement, vendor management, and IT professionals," said Meadors. "CNA is committed to exploring and acting upon all of the opportunities diversity presents," said Tom Pontarelli, Executive Vice President and Chief Administration Officer, CNA. "Through the work of Craig and CNA's Enterprise Procurement Group, we have established and continue to connect to a broad range of business partners and suppliers. This creates opportunities in the communities where we live and work, allowing us to better serve our customers." Meadors was named a recipient at the MBEIC Sharing Success Awards Reception and Dinner on April 21, 2016, at this year's Chicago Business Opportunity Fair, the nation's longest multi-day conference and trade fair focused on economic empowerment and development of minority business enterprises. The Chicago MSDC is a 501(c)(3) organization and is one of the 24 affiliates of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), a nonprofit corporate membership organization that advances business opportunities for its certified Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American business enterprises and connects them to its corporate members. The mission of Chicago MSDC is to certify, develop, connect and advocate for minority business while creating sustainable and profitable relationships between minority business enterprises and major buying organizations. About CNA Serving businesses and professionals since 1897, CNA is the country's eighth largest commercial insurance writer and the 14th largest property and casualty company. CNA's insurance products include standard commercial lines, specialty lines, surety, marine and other property and casualty coverages. CNA's services include risk management, information services, underwriting, risk control and claims administration. For more information, please visit CNA at www.cna.com. "CNA" is a service mark registered by CNA Financial Corporation with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Certain CNA Financial Corporation subsidiaries use the "CNA" service mark in connection with insurance underwriting and claims activities. Follow CNA (NYSE: CNA) on: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube CONTACT: Brandon Davis, 312-822-5167 / 312-834-6091 Sarah Pang, 312-822-6394 / 312-607-5544 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359651 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130627/NY40132LOGO SOURCE CNA Related Links http://www.cna.com WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The D.C. Bar Nominations Committee is proud to announce candidates for the 2016-2017 board term. The candidates for President-elect are Guy Collier, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, and Patrick McGlone, senior vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer at Ullico Inc. The president-elect serves for one year before becoming president and continues in office a third year as immediate past president. Collier is a past chair of the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Committee and former member of the Bar's Board of Governors. He served on the Health Law Section's first steering committee. Currently, he serves as co-chair of the emeritus board of the Children's Law Center and on the board of trustees of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. In addition, he is past president of the University of Richmond Law School Association. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Richmond School of Law, Collier focuses his practice on transactional and related regulatory issues for health industry clients, as well as corporate compliance issues. McGlone has previously served in numerous capacities for the Bar, including as secretary, as well as on the Regulations/Rules/Board Procedures, Nominations, Publications, and Screening committees. He is currently treasurer of the D.C. Bar Foundation's board of directors, vice president of the Council for Court Excellence, and a fellow of the American Bar Association (ABA). McGlone is a graduate of Fordham College and The George Washington University Law School. At Ullico, he oversees the company's litigation matters, focusing on insurance, commercial and employment law, ERISA, and compliance issues. Video statements by both president-elect candidates can be viewed at www.dcbar.org/elections.cfm. The Nominations Committee also announced the selection of candidates for other Bar positions. Nominated for secretary are David W. Arrojo of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ethics, and Adam M. Chud of Goodwin Procter LLP, for treasurer, the nominees are Shuchi Batra of the U.S. General Services Administration and Megan Lacchini of the Legal Services Corporation. The following are candidates for three year terms on the Bar's Board of Governors: Jessica E. Adler , Law Office of Jessica E. Adler , Law Office of Arturo Caraballo , Arnold & Porter LLP , Arnold & Porter LLP Erica J. Dominitz , Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP , & Stockton LLP Karen E. Evans , The Cochran Firm , The Cochran Firm Theodore A. Howard , Wiley Rein LLP , Wiley Rein LLP Annette K. Kwok , Venable LLP , Venable LLP Richard J. Marks , DLA Piper LLP , DLA Piper LLP Anne M. Scott , Littler Mendelson, P.C. , Littler Mendelson, P.C. Lindsey R. Vaala , Vinson & Elkins LLP , Vinson & Elkins LLP Christopher P. Zubowicz , U.S. Department of Justice. The Nominations Committee also announced the following candidates in the ABA House of Delegates: Wynter P. Allen , Alden Law Group PLLC , Alden Law Group PLLC John (Jack) C. Keeney, Jr , Association of Zoos and Aquariums , Association of Zoos and Aquariums Laura A. Possessky , Gura & Possessky , Gura & Possessky Lucy L. Thomson , Livingston PLLC. Ballots and instructions for voting, by mail or online at dcbar.org/elections.cfm, will be distributed to all active Bar members on April 25. The deadline to vote is May 20. Results of the election will be announced on the Bar's website and during the 2016 Celebration of Leadership, which includes the Bar's Awards Dinner and Annual Meeting, on June 15 at the Mayflower Hotel. About the District of Columbia Bar Established in 1972, the District of Columbia Bar's mission is to enhance access to justice, improve the legal system, and empower lawyers to achieve. With more than 100,000 members, the D.C. Bar is the second largest unified bar in the United States and provides the oversight structure needed to maintain the profession's ethical standards. www.dcbar.org SOURCE District of Columbia Bar Related Links http://www.dcbar.org BURNABY, Canada, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rising Demand for Smartphones, Tablets and Televisions, Coupled With Increasing Usage of POS Units and Digital Signage to Drive China Display Market New Age TechSci Research Logo (PRNewsFoto/New Age TechSci Research) According to TechSci Research report, "China Display Market By Technology, By Type, By End User, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2012-2022", display market in China is projected to register a CAGR of more than 8% during 2016-2022, on account of rising demand for consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, monitors, televisions, etc., coupled with declining prices of displays due to reducing manufacturing costs and technology advancements. In 2015, China had around 540.8 million smartphone users and about 293.6 million tablet users. Over the past few years, display technologies have undergone radical changes and this has also led to an upsurge in adoption of OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode), QDLED (Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode), EPD (Electronic Paper Display), etc. OLED display segment is projected to emerge as the fastest growing market for displays in China during the forecast period. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 ) Browse 23 market data Tables and 34 Figures spread through 120 Pages and in-depth TOC on "China Display Market" http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/china-display-market-by-technology-by-type-conventional-3d-transparent-and-flexible-by-end-user-smartphones-tablets-laptops-and-monitors-televisions-digital-signage-and-others-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2012-2022/649.html Surging demand for digital signage and POS systems on account of flourishing retail industry, rising laptop and tablet sales, booming mobile gaming industry and increasing mobile workforce in enterprises are few factors driving demand for display solutions in China. In 2015, 5-inch plus screen size smartphones contributed around 32% share in China smartphone market. Demand for large screen smartphones in China is projected to witness significant upsurge in the coming years and this is projected to boost China display market through 2022. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., LG Display Co., Ltd., BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., AU Optronics Corporation, Tianma Micro-Electronics Co. Ltd., Truly Semiconductors Limited are few of the leading players operating in China display market. Download Sample Report @ http://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=649 Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report. "Growing demand for energy efficiency in consumer electronics, rising manufacturing of various types of displays due to booming demand for consumer electronics in Southeast Asia, rapid growth in demand for smart wearables, especially smartwatches, fitness bands, etc., are driving display market in China. Though LCD displays dominate China display market, demand for new and innovative display technologies is projected to propel demand for OLED and QDLED technologies, especially from smartphones and televisions end user segments, over the course of next five years.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm. "China Display Market By Technology, By Type, By End User, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2012-2022" has evaluated the future growth potential of China display market and provides statistics and information on market structure, size, share and future growth of China display market. The report is intended to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes emerging trends along with essential drivers, challenges and opportunities in China display market. Browse Related Reports China OLED Market By Type (Displays and Lighting), By Application (Smartphones, Tablets & Notebooks, Televisions Commercial, Residential, Automotive, Industrial and Others), Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021 http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/china-oled-market-by-type-displays-and-lighting-by-application-smartphones-tablets-notebooks-televisions-commercial-residential-automotive-industrial-and-others-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/618.html Global Flexible and Transparent Displays Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020 http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-flexible-and-transparent-displays-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/457.html Global Head-up Display Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020 http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-head-up-display-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/411.html About TechSci Research: TechSci Research is a leading global market research firm publishing premium market research reports. Serving 700 global clients with more than 600 premium market research studies, TechSci Research is serving clients across 11 different industrial verticals. TechSci Research specializes in research based consulting assignments in high growth and emerging markets, leading technologies and niche applications. Our workforce of more than 100 fulltime Analysts and Consultants employing innovative research solutions and tracking global and country specific high growth markets helps TechSci clients to lead rather than follow market trends. Contact Mr. Ken Mathews 708 Third Avenue, Manhattan, NY, New York - 10017 Tel: +1-646-360-1656 Email: [email protected] Connect with us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/TechSciResearch Connect with us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/techsci-research SOURCE TechSci Research PUNE, India, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Emergency Shutdown System Market by Components (Switches, Sensors, Programmable Safety Systems, Safety Valves, Actuators), by Control Method (Pneumatic, Electrical, Fiber optic, Radio Telemetry), by Application, and Region - Global Trend and Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets, the ESD system market is estimated to reach USD 1,816.0 Million by 2022, at a CAGR of 9.1% between 2016 and 2022. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 69 market data Tables and 60 Figures spread through 165 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Emergency Shutdown System Market". http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/emergency-shutdown-system-market-204597309.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Rising demand for safety systems in the oil & gas industry and implementation of regulatory measures by several governments for industrial safety are important factors driving the ESD system market. "The market for programmable safety systems expected to grow at the highest rate between 2016 and 2022" The market for the programmable safety systems is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Programmable safety systems are the backbone of an entire safety system, and highly reliable logic solvers provide both fail-safe and fault-tolerant operations. Programmable safety systems are relatively new and developing rapidly. They are flexible to design modifications, highly efficient, easy to install, highly reliable, and highly secure. These advantages of programmable safety systems have triggered the growth of this component in the ESD system market. "The market for power generation application expected to grow at the highest rate between 2016 and 2022" The market for the power generation application is expected to grow at the highest rate. New techniques reduce the environmental burden of coal-fired power plants and allow higher efficiencies with a better conversion of heat to electrical energy; accordingly, related ESD systems are also expected to change. This rising demand for green energy has resulted into the beginning of new projects for renewable power generation; the market for the power generation application is expected to grow rapidly during the forecast period. "APAC expected to witness a rapid growth during the forecast period" The Emergency Shutdown System Market in APAC is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. With developing industrialization in APAC, increasing industrial and machine safety emphasis by the organizations and influence of multinational companies in adoption of safety systems are driving the demand for ESD systems in the APAC region. This research report categorizes the global emergency shutdown system market based on component, application, and region. This report describes the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges with respect to the emergency shutdown system market. The Porter's five forces analysis has been included in the report with a description of each of its forces and their respective impact on this market. Inquiry Before Buying: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=204597309 The key players in the ESD system market are Rockwell Automation (U.S.), Schneider Electric SE (France), Emerson Electric Company (U.S.), Siemens AG (Germany), Honeywell International, ABB Ltd. (Switzerland), General Electric Company (U.S.), Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Japan), OMRON Corporation (Japan), and HIMA Paul Hildebrandt GmbH (Germany). Browse Related Reports Machine Safety Market by Product (Safety Sensors, PLCS, Controllers, Modules, & Relays, and E-Stop Controls), Implementation, Application (Assembly, Material Handling, Metal Working, Packaging, & Robotics), & Region - Global Trend & Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/machine-safety-market-1188.html Industrial Safety Market by Component (Switches, Sensors, and Programmable Safety Devices), by Product (ESD, F&G, and HIPPS), by Application (Chemical, Oil & Gas, and Power Generation), and by Geography - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2014 - 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/safety-instrumented-system-market-19720540.html About MarketsandMarkets: MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical info graphics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers. We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository. Contact: Mr. Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India Tel: 1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected] Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/electronics-and-semiconductors Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets SOURCE MarketsandMarkets SAN FRANCISCO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants (EPIC), a retail property, casualty insurance brokerage and employee benefits consultant, today announced continued expansion of their operations in the Sacramento Region with the additions of Victoria McKinney and Robin Neer. Both will be based in EPIC's Gold River office, under the leadership of Regional Director of Employee Benefits, Beth Barr. Said Barr, "Victoria and Robin are the foundation of an additional consulting team that will further deepen and expand the exceptional employee benefits consulting being delivered to EPIC clients across the Sacramento Region." In addition to traditional employee benefits brokerage and consulting services, EPIC offers comprehensive specialty consulting, including wellness, benefits technology, communications, compliance, human resources consulting, international benefits, pharmacy, retirement, voluntary benefits and executive benefits. Victoria McKinney joins EPIC as a Team Leader and Employee Benefits Consultant. She is a senior level consultant, with more than 20 years in the industry and a deep understanding of plan design, client account management and contract negotiation strategies. Prior to joining EPIC, McKinney held positions with Sutter Health, TeleNav, Metrotech and CBIZ, where her roles ranged from Senior Benefits Account Manager to Senior Benefits Consultant. McKinney holds a California Health and Life License as well as a Professional Human Resources (PHR) Certification. She is currently in the process of earning the Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS) designation. Robin Neer joins EPIC as an Account Executive, focusing on both large and small group clients. Across her career, Neer has worked as a producer and account manager and blends strong business development skills with a deep understanding of client needs and service delivery excellence. In addition to supporting her own clients, Neer will collaborate with other Sacramento team members on broader client service initiatives. Prior to joining EPIC, Neer was a Senior Employee Benefits Client Consultant and Producer with Arthur J. Gallagher. Before this she held client service positions with Filice Insurance and Farmers Insurance. "We are very pleased to have these two top consultants join our growing team in the Sacramento Region," said John Connell, EPIC's President, Employee Benefits of California. "Victoria and Robin will contribute significantly to expanding EPIC's industry leading support and services, to effectively respond to the evolving needs of our clients." Victoria McKinney can be reached at: EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants Office: 916-358-8017 victoria.mckinney[at]epicbrokers.com Robin Neer can be reached at: EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants Office: 916-358-8016 robin.neer[at]epicbrokers.com About EPIC: EPIC is a unique and innovative retail property & casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm. EPIC has created a values-based, client-focused culture that attracts and retains top talent, fosters employee satisfaction and loyalty and sustains a high level of customer service excellence. EPIC team members have consistently recognized their company as a "Best Place to Work" in multiple regions and as a "Best Place to Work in the Insurance Industry" nationally. EPIC now has more than 850 team members operating from offices across the U.S., providing Property Casualty, Employee Benefits, Specialty Programs and Private Client solutions to more than 13,000 clients. With more than $200 million in revenues, EPIC ranks among the top 20 retail insurance brokers in the United States. Backed by the Carlyle Group, the company continues to expand organically and through strategic acquisitions across the country. Additional information: http://www.epicbrokers.com/. This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com PHOTO: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-0425-robin-neer-300dpi.jpg PHOTO: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-0425-vic-mckinney-300dpi.jpg MEDIA CONTACTS: Dave Hock 650-295-4608 [email protected] Nicole Conley 650-422-3156 [email protected] SOURCE EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants Related Links http://www.epicbrokers.com SEATTLE, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fathom, the pioneer in social impact travel and Carnival Corporation's (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK) 10th and newest brand, returned from its inaugural voyage to its impact destination, the Dominican Republic, on Sunday, April 24. Fathom's inaugural voyage was a major success as hundreds of guests joined Fathom for a unique weeklong journey that left a lasting impact on each of them, as well as an immediate impact on people in need in the Dominican Republic. "Feedback from our guests during the voyage was extremely positive," said Tara Russell, president of Fathom and global impact lead for Carnival Corporation. "This first voyage provided more evidence there is a growing market of guests who want to make a positive, direct impact when traveling. Fathom gave our guests a unique way to leave an impression on a very personal level within the community, as well as have an extraordinarily rewarding experience." Launched in June 2015, Fathom provides the opportunity to travel with like-minded people, become immersed in another culture and work alongside its people to create enduring social impact. What sets Fathom apart is the long-term, systematic partnership approach and unique business model of traveling every other week to the Dominican Republic a combination that creates sustained and lasting impact. "Our brand has been on an incredible journey, from the idea's conception over two years ago through today," said Russell. "We set out to do something special with Fathom by introducing the world to a unique type of travel travel with purpose. I want to personally thank everyone who stood alongside Fathom, and had a hand in getting us to where we are today. Without your support, we would not be where we are today." Making a Sustainable Impact Fathom selected the Dominican Republic as its first impact destination, as it is a country of great beauty and rich culture but also a country with great needs. The average household income is less than $6,000 and more than 3 million Dominicans do not have access to piped water. Yet the country has much potential its natural resources are plentiful, it has a good infrastructure that can allow for positive impact, and its people are motivated to create better lives for them and their families. Impact activities in the Dominican Republic include a wide range of projects focused on economic development, education and the environment. During the inaugural voyage, guests, depending on their individual passions and skills, participated in projects they felt most strongly about, and worked directly alongside local people and Fathom's partner organizations. "We have already accomplished a lot in a short period of time but there is still much to do," added Russell. "While we celebrated and introduced the unique Fathom experience to our guests last week, we are looking forward to taking our guests every other week to the Dominican to continue making a profound and lasting impact for people in the country." Working with its impact partners Entrena and the Instituto Dominicano de Desarrollo Integral, Inc. (IDDI), Fathom and its guests in less than one week's time, made an immediate impact including: Student English Conversation & Learning / Community English Conversation & Learning: Impact: Nearly 650 students and community members benefited from effective foreign language interaction with native English speakers. Why It Matters: English proficiency is the largest driver of employment success in the Dominican Republic economy. Reforestation & Nursery Impact: Planted more than 2,400 trees. Why It Matters: With time, this will lead to more nutrient-rich soil, reduction in soil loss, improved localized air and water quality, an increase in localized biodiversity, and higher agricultural yields. Water Filter Production Impact: Produced 50 water filters. Why It Matters: In the Dominican Republic , more than 3 million residents do not have access to piped water. This access provides a significant reduction in waterborne illness instances, and indirect benefits include better work and school attendance. Cacao and Women's Chocolate Cooperative Impact: Cleaned more than 200 pounds of cacao nibs and wrapped more than 6,000 chocolate bars. Why It Matters: By helping improve production and increase sales, it allows the organization to hire more local women, and provide critical income in a region with limited employment opportunities. Recycled Paper and Crafts Entrepreneurship Impact: Nearly 600 sheets of paper produced. Why It Matters: Guests' support helps provide critical income to the women, and ultimately allows them to expand their business. It also helps overall employee morale. Concrete Floors in Community Homes Impact: Poured concrete floors for two homes directly positively effecting 20 people. Why It Matters: In the homes of poorer communities, the common basic dirt floors are a genuine health risk. The new floors provided a healthier and safer living environment for families. Making Time for Leisure When not participating in social impact projects, Fathom guests experienced fun and memorable recreational, leisure and sightseeing activities in the Dominican Republic. Whether exploring ancient ruins, interacting with the abundant marine life in the clear water, or lounging along the sun-soaked stretches of surf and sand, guests made the most of their experiences in the Dominican Republic. The MV Adonia docked at Carnival Corporation's newest port Amber Cove, located in the Puerto Plata region, where guests had access to select shore excursions. The port offers numerous sea and landside experiences, including several beach getaways, kayak, paddle board and snorkeling tours, ATV-like terracross buggy expeditions, Puerto Plata tours, helicopter rides, fishing trips, horseback riding, deep sea fishing tours and catamaran sailings. Guests discovered that impact travel is far more than a seven-day experience. On the return trip, Fathom helped guests with ways they can stay involved by bringing the knowledge, inspiration and insight back to their home communities. Prices for the seven-day trips to the Dominican Republic start at $974 per person, excluding taxes, fees and port expenses and including all meals on the ship, onboard social impact immersion experiences, three on-shore social impact activities and related supplies. Prices will vary by season. To secure a spot on future sailings, a fully refundable $300 per person deposit is required for all cabin categories and occupancy levels. Final payment is due 90 days prior to departure. To reserve a spot on future sailings, guests may call 1-855-932-8466 or through a travel professional. Learn more at www.Fathom.org. About Fathom Travel to the Dominican Republic Fathom is a different kind of cruise that combines one's love of travel with the desire to make a difference in the world. Fathom is defining a new category of travel, Social Impact Travel. Part of the Carnival Corporation (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK) family, Fathom offers consumers authentic, meaningful travel experiences to enrich the life of travelers and work alongside locals as they tackle community needs in the Dominican Republic. Fathom is unique in that it leverages Carnival Corporation's expertise and scale for a one-of-a-kind business model to create long-term collaboration with its partner countries, allowing for sustained social impact and lasting development. Fathom will serve the sizable and growing market of potential social impact travel consumers approximately one million North Americans in addition to global travelers already pursuing service-oriented travel experiences worldwide. Sailing aboard the MV Adonia, a 704-passenger vessel redeployed from Carnival Corporation's P&O Cruises (UK), Fathom will engage, mobilize, educate and equip travelers on every Dominican Republic trip allowing for rich personal enrichment and thousands of impact activity days per visit and tens of thousands of travelers a year to communities of promise, providing unprecedented scale for impact. About Fathom Travel to Cuba Recently earning U.S. and Cuban government approvals, Fathom will be the first cruise company to sail from the U.S. to Cuba in more than 50 years. Fathom's round-trip culturally immersive cruise itinerary initially will feature experiences in the Cuban port cities of Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago de Cuba, providing travelers the opportunity to enjoy a rich and vibrant culture that until now most U.S. travelers have only seen in photographs. Designed for rich immersion and ease of travel, the Fathom Cuban itinerary offers passengers a comfortable cabin including all the amenities of a modern hotel, plus the luxury of having to unpack only once. Every night, Fathom travelers return to the comforts of the MV Adonia, where they can relax knowing that all the details of getting from location to location in Cuba are handled. For more information about Fathom or to book a voyage, contact your Travel Professional, call Fathom toll-free at 1-855-932-8466 or visit www.Fathom.org. SOURCE Fathom Related Links https://www.fathom.org "H.R. 4967 would help food banks across the nation provide more food to more families by increasing the funding levels for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which provides nutritious American-grown food to low-income households in the U.S. "TEFAP currently provides the Feeding America network of food banks with approximately 20 percent of the total food they distribute. Feeding America will provide more than 3.7 billion meals in 2016. "Most of the food banks in the Feeding America network state that the need for emergency food assistance continues at record levels, despite reported improvements in the economy. "Nearly forty-five million people are currently enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Most SNAP households report that they exhaust all of their SNAP benefit with the first 21 days of any given month. "At a time when food banks in many states across our nation are anticipating increases in the number of people seeking food assistance because at least 500,000 very poor Americans are losing their SNAP benefits, we again thank Congresswoman Lujan-Grisham for introducing this legislation. It will have an immediate, positive and long-term impact on our network of food banks by providing millions of additional meals to the 46 million Americans our network serves every year." About Feeding America Feeding America is a nationwide network of 200 food banks that leads the fight against hunger in the United States. Together, we provide food to more than 46 million people through food pantries and meal programs in communities throughout America. Feeding America also supports programs that improve food security among the people we serve; educates the public about the problem of hunger; and advocates for legislation that protects people from going hungry. Individuals, charities, businesses and government all have a role in ending hunger. Donate. Volunteer. Advocate. Educate. Together we can solve hunger. Visit http://www.feedingamerica.org/. Find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/FeedingAmerica or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/FeedingAmerica. Contact: Ross Fraser Feeding America 312.641.6422 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140711/126271 SOURCE Feeding America Related Links http://www.feedingamerica.org HOLLYWOOD, Fla., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fish Consulting, LLC, a national communications firm specializing in franchise public relations and marketing, announced today it has added FASTSIGNS International, Inc., Fazoli's, My Gym, Stevi B's Pizza Buffet and Sea Tow Foundation to its client roster during the first quarter of 2016. "We're excited to expand our portfolio of clients with these great brands. It's a strong mix of established and emerging concepts seeking to grow their respective businesses," said Lorne Fisher, CFE, CEO/managing partner, Fish Consulting, LLC. "They represent diverse industries and communications needs, and we're looking forward to helping each of them reach and exceed their business goals." FASTSIGNS International, Inc., the leading franchise in signs, graphics and visual communications, enlisted Fish to lead its FASTSIGNS franchise recruitment public relations strategy nationwide, with a focus on lead generation, including the company's co-brand program. Fazoli's, America's largest Italian fast casual chain, has also hired Fish to execute a franchisee recruitment marketing program, which includes digital and content marketing, as well as traditional and social campaigns. The firm is also working with My Gym, a leading fitness center destination for children, to implement all aspects of a grassroots integrated marketing campaign including development of local landing pages, SEO/PPC campaigns, email marketing and local public relations efforts. Stevi B's Pizza Buffet, a leading fast casual pizza buffet serving premium pizza, pasta, salad and dessert, recruited Fish to drive its local, consumer public relations efforts for the concept's limited-time offers in target markets across the country. Lastly, Fish will handle national public relations and social media efforts for the Sea Tow Foundation's Designated Skipper Campaign, which aims to help eliminate boating under the influence and alcohol related accidents on the water while keeping boating fun. In addition, Fish was tasked with strengthening national awareness for the Sea Tow Foundation. Fish recently celebrated its 11th anniversary and has experienced significant growth over the past several years. In 2015, Fish was named for the second consecutive year to the Inc. 5000, Inc. Magazine's ranking of the fastest growing privately held companies in America. Additionally, PRWeek and the South Florida Business Journal have named Fish a "Best Places to Work" in 2014 and 2015, respectively. About Fish Consulting Fish is proud to leverage its experience in franchising to serve some of the industry's leading concepts including The Melting Pot, Dunkin' Donuts, Orangetheory Fitness, The Dwyer Group, Valpak, Massage Heights, AAMCO and Tropical Smoothie Cafe, among others. The agency's support for franchise clients range from brand building, franchisee recruitment and internal communications to crisis communications, cause marketing, local/national media relations and social media management. Fish is based in Hollywood, Fla., with operations in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York and London. For more information call 954-893-9150 or visit www.fish-consulting.com. For additional franchise insights follow Fish on Twitter @fishconsulting or Facebook. Contact: Sloane Fistel [email protected] 954-893-9150 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141205/162649LOGO SOURCE Fish Consulting Related Links http://www.fish-consulting.com ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Fort Sill Apache Industries, LLC (FSAI) announced the opening of offices in Albuquerque, NM. These new offices house one of FSAI's subsidiaries, Apache Homelands, LLC, and will support FSAI's continued growth in the Government and private sectors. "Since our official Federal and State recognition as a native New Mexico tribe, it is extremely important to our people that we continue the process of repatriation to our homeland," said Jeff Haozous, Fort Sill Apache Tribal Chairman. "With close proximity to our aboriginal territory and a wide range of current and potential customers, opening Albuquerque offices will benefit the tribe and our tribal members," added Haozous. Apache Homelands, LLC, is a wholly-owned tribal company, providing clients with a broad range of facility services that include program and project management, property and facilities management, logistics management, shipping/receiving/warehousing, continuous commissioning, and vehicle maintenance/fuel management. Apache Homelands, LLC has applied for the following SBA certifications: Small Disadvantaged Business, 8(a) program participant, and HUBZone firm. Apache Homelands, LLC is managed by John Melton who brings 40 years of Federal contracting experience to the company. Prior to joining the FSAI team, Melton spent five years as an LLC Manager and Program Manager. "I am excited to help FSAI with Federal contracting to provide sustainable revenue to benefit Tribal members in the long term," said John Melton, Apache Homelands, LLC manager. About Fort Sill Apache Industries, LLC: Fort Sill Apache Industries, LLC (FSAI) is a tribally owned holding company whose subsidiary companies provide Government and commercial clients with a diverse range of products and services, including program management, construction, information technology, logistics and facilities services, and technical and administrative support. More information: fortsillapache.com SOURCE Fort Sill Apache Industries Related Links http://www.fortsillapache.com WAYNE, N.J., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fortis Institute in Wayne, NJ, will host its Spring Career Fair Wednesday, May 11, on the sixth floor of the 201 Willowbrook Boulevard building. The campus expects it will host 250-300 attendees during the event, which takes place from 12 until 3 p.m. The career fair will take up the entire sixth floor of the campus building, with 75+ employers on hand to meet and speak with Fortis Institute's student graduates. The event also celebrates Massage Envy's donation of an Oakworks Proluxe electric lift massage table to the Fortis Institute-Wayne Massage Therapy program and on-campus massage clinic. One of the most desirable tables for both therapists and clients, it can be raised or lowered from a foot pedal and is the same massage table as is used by 95 percent of all Massage Envy locations nationwide. The table is valued at approximately $1,400. "Our relationship with area employers is paramount, because many of our graduates go on to nice careers with them," said Campus President Wes Leibig. "We're especially proud of our partnership with Massage Envy Northern New Jersey and the trust they place in us to train many of their great employees." "Our partnership with Fortis Institute has grown significantly in recent years. The school, students and Massage Envy Northern New Jersey all benefit from the mutual support we receive from each other," added Sharon Leyva, Director of Regional School Programs at Massage Envy. "Most gratifying is knowing that we are helping students reach their goal by developing a career that is both successful and rewarding," A longtime supporter of Fortis Institute, Massage Envy will send more than a dozen representatives to the career fair, including Northern New Jersey Vice President of Operations Doreen Ellinwood, Director of Career Services Erin O'Keefe, several managers, and five former Fortis graduates who now are massage therapists with the company. They will talk to current students about the transition from school into the profession. "We are thrilled by the participation and support we have received from Massage Envy and all our employer partners," Leibig said. "We look forward to taking the next steps and doing new things with them as part of our commitment to the communityand Northern New Jersey." The Fortis educational process provides graduates with the tools for establishing professional goals and achieving success in existing and emerging professions. Fortis students are able to select from enhanced course offerings backed by the resources of a strong educational network that is committed to quality education and dedicated to placing students on desired career paths. About Massage Envy Based in Scottsdale, AZ, Massage Envy is a national franchisor and the leading provider of therapeutic massage and skincare services with more than 1,100 locations nationwide, and 42 locations in New Jersey. The company, which has delivered more than 100 million massages and facials since being founded in 2002, was recently ranked No. 1 Best Franchise with an initial investment of $500,001 and up by Forbes. For more information, visit www.MassageEnvy.com. About Fortis Institute-Wayne Fortis Institute in Wayne offers programs in Dental Assisting, Electrical Systems Technician, HVACR, Lab Technician, Massage Therapy, Medical Assisting, Medical Billing / Coding, and Pharmacy Technology. The campus is located on the second floor at 201 Willowbrook Boulevard, Wayne, NJ 07470. For campus-specific information, please call 973-837-1818 or visit www.fortis.edu. About Fortis A post-secondary network of colleges and institutes that engages students in experiential learning and training programs, Fortis delivers focused individual career education experiences: Your Life. Powered by Learning. The Fortis network offers career-based certificate, diploma and degree-granting programs at more than 40 schools in 15 states. Fortis College and Institute campuses prepare students for careers in healthcare, business and technology and various trades. Fortis also offers online learning platforms for many of its programs. Each Fortis campus is accredited by a nationally recognized body. Program offerings and accreditations vary by campus. Fortis is affiliated with the Denver School of Nursing, St. Paul's School of Nursing and All-State Career School. For consumer disclosure information, visit www.fortis.edu to learn more about Fortis educational opportunities. SOURCE Fortis Institute Related Links http://www.fortis.edu Throughout the year, Georgia Power, with the Georgia Power Foundation, Inc., helped nearly 2,000 diverse organizations enrich local communities and the lives of thousands of Georgians by investing more than $17 million in communities and nonprofit organizations statewide. Additionally, 6,000 Georgia Power employees and retirees contributed 160,000 hours in volunteer service an all-time record for the company. "At Georgia Power, we strongly believe that being a citizen wherever we serve is as much a part of our business as delivering safe, reliable and affordable electricity to our 2.5 million customers," said Mike Anderson, senior vice president of Community & Corporate Relations for Georgia Power. "We have an obligation and a shared dedication to make a positive impact in our communities and 2015 was an outstanding year thanks to the efforts of our employees and retirees." The 2015 Citizenship Reports includes 2015 results in five key focus areas; including notes from key community and charitable leaders about the importance of the company's support. Arts & Culture "We appreciate Georgia Power's support in renovating the Miller Theater as the new home of the Symphony Orchestra Augusta. The future impact of this project on our city is immeasurable." Ansley Easterlin, Director of Development, Miller Theater Campaign (www.millerllc.org) Civic & Community "Having Georgia Power as a sponsor for our very first ExpoMujer was like flipping the switch and turning on the light for the advancement of women in our community." Judith Martinez, Co-Founder and Creative Director, YoSoyM (www.yosoym.com) Education "Georgia Power's support means that we can continue to create innovative resources that will enhance the learning experience for teachers and students across the state." Teya Ryan, CEO & President, Georgia Public Broadcasting (www.gpb.org) Environment "Keep Georgia Beautiful is a true public-private partnership and Georgia Power is one of our most important partners. We wouldn't be able to be successful without their support." Sarah Visser, Executive Director, Keep Georgia Beautiful Foundation (www.keepgeorgiabeautiful.org) Health & Human Services "For over 35 years, Georgia Power's support has helped the Shepherd Center become what we are today the nation's largest spinal cord and brain injury hospital." James Shepherd, Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board, Shepherd Center (www.shepherd.org) The full 2015 Georgia Power Citizenship Report is available online at www.georgiapower.com/community. To stay in touch with Georgia Power's work in the community every day, follow @GeorgiaPower and #GAPowerfulService on Twitter. About Georgia Power Georgia Power is the largest subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), one of the nation's largest generators of electricity. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.5 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, 21st century coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower) and Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower). Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359471-INFO Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050216/CLW066LOGO SOURCE Georgia Power Related Links http://www.georgiapower.com Key topics such as health consumerism, foreign investments in the national health sector, health analytics, population health management, vertical integration, and consolidation of providers and payers are the major drivers of change in the Brazilian health sector for the next five years. During the Transformational Health Think Tank taking place in the afternoon from 14h30 to 17h at the Unique Hotel, eminent industry leaders and visionaries of the region along with Frost & Sullivan's global and local team will discuss the impacts of the economic crisis, business shifts and new models that are standing out. "External forces are driving changes in the way healthcare is provided. Players will have to work in a collaborative and coordinated way to accomplish market needs. Representatives of different segments of the health industry will discuss the current scenario in Brazil and the new business models arising that will redefine the rules of competitiveness in the sector," explains Rita Ragazzi, Latin America Healthcare Manager at Frost & Sullivan, who will conduct the Transformational Health Think Tank. The following industry thought leaders will present their insights throughout the event with industry presentations, a case study and interactive panels. Dr. Ana Lisa Siqueira, CEO, Santa Celina Group Dr. Claudio Lottenberg, CEO, Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital Henning von Koss, COO, Hapvida Fabio Scopeta, Latin America Leader, IBM Watson Health Joao Paulo Baptista, President, BBI Financial Esteban Rossi, Vice President & General Manager Latin America, Becton Dickinson To know more about this global conference and/or to participate, please visit www.frost.com/GILBrazil GIL 2016: Brazil is supported by Gold Sponsors: Impartner, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, Unify and Silver Sponsors: Verint and Progress. Next GIL Latin American events: Miami (December 2016), Mexico (April 2017). About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact us: Start the discussion Contact: Francesca Valente, Sr. Marketing & Corporate Communications Executive, LATAM E: [email protected] P: +54 11 4777 5300 http://ww2.frost.com/ Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359425 SOURCE Frost & Sullivan Related Links http://www.frost.com Mike Thomsen, Manager of Computer Operations for LabVantage, said: "We interviewed a number of different providers including some of the biggest names in cloud and managed hosting but they either couldn't give us the variety of models we needed or were too expensive. The team at iomart came prepared to listen, were responsive and were able to work with us." LabVantage now manages a platform utilizing iomart's Public and Hybrid IaaS platform and EMC Avamar cloud backup. The result is better performance for LabVantage teams working across Europe and Asia as well as significantly better time management for the IT team at the company's headquarters in Somerset, New Jersey. Security has also improved. The previous hosting was based on a shared environment which meant virtual machines used by its customers were visible to LabVantage. Stringent procedures and measures were required by LabVantage IT staff to secure customer environments. Now, with the more secure cloud platform provided by iomart, the two are completely separate. As a result LabVantage has extended its relationship with iomart and is reselling iomart's hosting services to its own customers. Marc Kelly, VP Sales for iomart in the U.S., said: "LabVantage came to us at a very late stage in the decision-making process, after many of the top service providers were unable to deliver the scalable and flexible public and hybrid cloud platform they needed. We have gone on to build LabVantage a second cloud offering which allows them to deliver a scalable Infrastructure as a Service platform to their global customer base. To top it off, both the internal and external LabVantage platforms are fully redundant and supported by our flagship backup solution Avamar from EMC." To read the full case study with LabVantage click here With enterprise grade data centers at six locations across the U.S., iomart has a secure, resilient and flexible global infrastructure to support most business requirements. To get in touch with our Florida-based team email [email protected] or call +1-954-880-1680. About iomart in the U.S. iomart Inc. is part of UK cloud company iomart Group PLC (AIM: IOM) which delivers cloud consultancy, facilitation and digital transformation to ISVs, SMBs and enterprises. iomart offers a centrally managed, controlled and completely agnostic set of hybrid, private and public cloud platforms. To find out more about how iomart delivers any cloud your way visit www.iomart.com Contact: Jane Robertson, PR Manager, [email protected], +44(0)141-931-6400 @iomart Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/358937 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121126/579634 SOURCE iomart Related Links http://www.iomart.com Grenada CBI Chairman Mr. David Holukoff and Hon. Alexandra Otway-Noel, Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation & Culture, collaborated with Dr. Aly El Dakroury CEO of CTrustGlobal, to market the Grenada Citizenship by Investment Program at a meeting held in CTrustGlobal Dubai office. Apparently, the global marketing effort executed by the company is being trusted by most of the multi-millionaire Middle Easterners. CTrustGlobal manage different CBI all over the Caribbean Island Countries and well-known in terms of efficiency and accuracy in processing the application which leads to a high standard marketing approach. The ability of the company in sending vast numbers of investors defines its success and stability in every CBI programs. Grenada CBI Team put the biggest trust to CTrustGlobal in advertising and promoting their Citizenship by Investment program to multiply the number of investors for the economic growth in the country. Like any other CBI, this program offers visa-free travel, zero tax in business development and strict due diligence process. But what makes CBI in Grenada differs from other programs is that it offers Chinese Visa waiver, which enables the investors to travel visa-free to China. The career growth in business industry can be easily started in Grenada as it provides US E2 visa opportunity and Chinese Visa Waiver. This will allows business men and their families to travel, relax, study and have business in a wonderful paradise situated in the Eastern Caribbean IslandGrenada. This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. SOURCE CTrustGlobal | Caribbean Trust Immigration Services ESPELKAMP and HANNOVER, Germany, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The HARTING Technology Group perceives the US as a market of the future and is aiming to further expand its business in the United States. The company's position was clearly stated by CEO and General Partner Philip Harting at a press reception kicking off the Hannover Messe, at HARTING's stand (Hall 11 / C13). The HARTING MICA has been installed in Rinspeed's "Etos" concept car for independent emissions and status monitoring. (PRNewsFoto/HARTING KGaA) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160421/358452 ) In this context, HARTING is primarily counting on teaming up with innovative US companies to tackle the complex challenges of digital transformation and to jointly develop compelling customer solutions for Integrated Industry. At the same time, HARTING also intends to expand its existing partnerships over the long term with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), as well as its cooperation (predevelopment partnership) with Texas Instruments (TI). HARTING has found a sound partner in one US carmaker. Together with this customer, HARTING is currently developing the "intelligent connector" (smart Han). In addition to serving as a connection to the power supply for the attached machinery, the connector also enables the monitoring of the power used by all interconnected energy consumers. "This turns the connector into an active component within the power supply concept and means that it plays a significant role in the flexible and optimised operation of the machinery and systems", explained Uwe Graff, Managing Director HARTING Electric, HARTING Electronics and HARTING IT Software Development The use of this "intelligent connector" provides customers with a standardised infrastructure that enables them to flexibly adjust their manufacturing facilities to the needs of the market. The solution offers an additional advantage: existing older machinery can also be made Industrie 4.0-capable by the smart Han. The USA is a clear future market CEO and General Partner Philip Harting emphasized that the US is a growth market for HARTING. "We're not only optimistic in terms of digitisation. The reshoring and modernisation taking place in numerous US industrial companies also offer tremendous opportunities for classic HARTING products and solutions from the Connectivity & Networks area," Harting said. In order to position itself even closer to the US market and its requirements, HARTING will be kicking off manufacturing operations in Silao, Mexico in the near future, producing overmoulded cables and wiring harnesses. "Wherever our customers are, you'll also find HARTING," as Philip Harting stated, referring in this context to the large production plants of numerous carmakers and their suppliers who have manufacturing operations in Mexico. Revenue guidance confirmed Philip Harting expressed his satisfaction with the course of the first half of the 2015/16 business year (October 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016) despite increasingly difficult conditions. "Unfortunately, global uncertainties have not subsided since our annual press conference last December. Still, for the full year we continue to expect single-digit sales growth of under five percent", HARTING said at the event, reiterating his forecast made at the end of 2015. As part of the reception, Philip Harting also introduced Stefan Olding, who has been Managing Director of HARTING Deutschland since the beginning of February this year. Mr. Olding is the successor of Rudiger Prill, who served as Managing Director of HARTING Deutschland for 10 years and continues to remain with the company as a consultant and head of committee work. HARTING MICA in the "Etos" is the highlight at Hannover Messe trade show A highlight at this year's Hannover Messe is the HARTING MICA in the Rinspeed Car "Etos". The HARTING MICA (Modular Industry Computing Architecture), a smart mini industrial computer, performs emissions and condition monitoring for the vehicle. The MICA is a modular platform of open hardware and software that can be adapted quickly and cost efficiently to numerous industrial applications, and was nominated for this year's HERMES AWARD. HARTING is taking the example of Rinspeed AG's "Etos" concept car to demonstrate how open, versatile and exceptional the MICA is. The family owned and managed company is particularly eyeing the target sectors of mobile and stationary machines and plants which can be cost-effectively and efficiently networked and connected to the data Cloud. New solutions for Integrated Industry HARTING is also striving to expand its business with products and solutions for Integrated Industry, as Uwe Graff stressed during the press reception. In this context, Graff once again cited the six major trends within Integrated Industry: modularisation, identification, integration, digitalisation, miniaturisation and customisation. HARTING had clearly identified these trends at Hannover Messe 2015 and offered innovative solutions associated with them. As innovations in the area of modularisation, Graff cited the new Han ES Press termination technology, which is based on a pre-loaded cage clamp. To connect the conductor, the user only has to manually depress an actuator to close the cage clamp. The result is a connection that boasts high tensile strength, is vibration-resistant and reliable. This tool-free, quick connection of wires - paired with a unique jumper technology - enables the integration of functionalities which could previously only be produced using terminals in the switch cabinet. Graff also touched on the Han Docking Frame. The frame is a float-mounted plastic frame in which more than 50 different interfaces from the Han-Modular product range can be integrated. The docking frame can accommodate 2-6 modules that can be arranged according to the user's requirements. Consequently, the new Han Docking Frame offers a technically refined and functional solution that supports the modularisation of electrical installations. Winner of MICA competition chosen at Hannover Messe As part of the press reception at the Hannover Messe trade show, the winners of the MICA competition were also honoured. In collaboration with trade magazine Elektrotechnik, HARTING had hosted the "What are you doing with the MICA?" competition to call for applications to be developed using the MICA Open Computing System. "The numerous entries underscored the range of possible applications with the MICA," Philip Harting said. The two teams from IMMS - Institute for Microelectronic and Mechatronic Systems (Ilmenau) won over the HARTING jury. Among other achievements, within a few short weeks the Ilmenau-based scientists equipped the MICA's free function boards with new hardware for real-time data processing, as well as for wireless communication with sensors for an environmental monitoring application. The firm SALT AND PEPPER (Bremen) submitted a convincing upgradeable "Predictive Maintenance" solution in which vibration sensors can predict machine states and events. The press releases and images are available at: http://www.HARTING.com/en/news/pressfolder/hannover-messe-2016 About HARTING: HARTING Technology Group is one of the world's leading providers of industrial connection technology for the three lifelines of "Power", "Signals" and "Data" and is operating 13 manufacturing locations and branches in 43 countries. Moreover, the company also produces retail checkout systems, electromagnetic actuators for automotive and industrial series use, as well as hardware and software for customers and applications in automation technology, robotics and transportation engineering. In the 2014/15 business year, some 4200 employees generated sales of EUR 567 million. Contact: HARTING Technology Group Detlef Sieverdingbeck General Manager Communication and Public Relations Marienwerderstr. 3 32339 Espelkamp Phone: +49-(0)5772-47-244 Fax: +49-(0)5772-47-400 [email protected] Additional information: http://www.HARTING.com - A picture accompanying this release is available in the AP PhotoExpress feed using ref# PRN672012 SOURCE HARTING KGaA KUKA is a leading global player in robot manufacturing. HRG has the support and resources from the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China's top robotics institution. "KUKA robots are famed for precision and control technologies; while the advantage of HRG is in secondary platform development, especially in the application of advanced parameters," said Wang Yang, VP of HRG. "We are devoted to further developing the open type platform which is based on the youBot for the application of robotic products, and we are doing a great job here. This cooperation between the two giants will boost the expansion of the robot market for HRG." As part of the cooperation agreement, HRG will team up with KUKA to develop applications for intelligent factories and logistics facilities. In addition, the pair will jointly carry out education projects in vocational colleges and universities, including introducing advanced teaching modes from Germany and setting up new programs for robotics majors. KUKA's CEO, Mr. Kong Bing, said, "We are very willing to build robotics majors and a certification system that incorporates German features into Chinese vocational education." Regarding recent trends in industrial robotics, Wang said, "The robotics industry has been listed as one of the emerging industries to be developed, based on national strategies. In ten years' time, the robotics industry will be a cluster that is worth trillions of dollars. Training professionals within the industrial robotics industry will meet the needs of further developing the industry." China is now the largest market for robots, and the robotics industry in the country has enjoyed rapid development in recent years. However, the industry still faces a shortage of professional talent in manufacturing and innovation. HRG fills in the gap with its background in industrial robots and focus on robotics education. HRG's Industrial Robots department is devoted to nurturing professionals, developing products for robotics education and academic research, and designing an integrated education system that brings robot training equipment, teaching proposals and software together. The department has developed a range of robotic products that are applicable in industries and improved for education purposes. These products are used in vocational colleges, universities and R&D institutions. So far, the company has produced a series of robots that work in supermarkets or intelligent factories, and trained robots for other companies including KUKA youBot, LBR iiwa, ABB YuMi and Rethink Robotics Baxter. HRG also entered an agreement with ABB Group in January to carry out cooperative projects in industrial robots and robotics education. About HRG HRG, founded in 2014, is one of China's high-tech giants in robotics with a joint investment from Heilongjiang provincial government, Harbin municipal government and HIT. The Group's major businesses include manufacturing of a range of robots and robotic equipment for different industries; it is also a solution and service provider for technology companies. About KUKA Robotics (Shanghai) Established in 2000, KUKA Robotics (Shanghai) is an affiliate company of KUKA Roboter GmbH, the world's leading manufacturer of industrial robots. The company's average production volume of industrial robots reaches 10,000 units every year. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160424/359266 SOURCE HIT Robot Group MUSCATINE, Iowa, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- HNI Corporation (NYSE: HNI) announces it will webcast its May 10, 2016 Annual Shareholders' Meeting, which will be held at 10:30 a.m. (Central) at the Allsteel headquarters building located at 2210 Second Avenue in Muscatine, Iowa. The webcast can be accessed via a link on the Corporation's website at www.hnicorp.com (under Investors News Releases and Events). Replay of the webcast and related materials will be posted on the Corporation's website following the Annual Shareholders' Meeting. About HNI Corporation HNI Corporation is a NYSE traded company (ticker symbol: HNI) providing products and solutions for the home and workplace environments. HNI Corporation is a leading global office furniture manufacturer and is the nation's leading manufacturer of hearth products. The Corporation's strong brands have leading positions in their markets. More information can be found on the Corporation's website at www.hnicorp.com. For Information Contact: Kurt A. Tjaden, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (563) 272-7400 Jack Herring, Investor Relations Manager (563) 506-9783 SOURCE HNI Corporation Related Links http://www.hnicorp.com MANAMA, Bahrain, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VIVA Bahrain made a global breakthrough by successfully implementing, for the first time commercially, Huawei's triple-beam antenna technology. This innovative technology, delivers approximately 2.7 times the performance of a regular mobile tower and capacity to absorb traffic demand, offering higher quality telecommunications services, whilst enhancing VIVA's customers connectivity at events or locations were data demand is extremely high. Eng. Ulaiyan Al Wetaid, VIVA CEO (PRNewsFoto/VIVA Bahrain) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359301 ) VIVA's first successful deployment of Huawei's-designed solution was done during the '2016 F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix' race, where VIVA subscribers enjoyed flawless connectivity to the Kingdom's fastest and widest 4G network. This was the first stage of a full roll out planned of this technology in different locations across Bahrain where installation of new tower sites has limitations. "Jointly with Huawei, we have achieved a great technological breakthrough. We always look for new ways to further enhance our customers' experience and meet their demands for high data volume," said Eng. Ulaiyan Al Wetaid, VIVA Bahrain CEO. "Delivering the Kingdom's fastest 4G LTE network lays at the heart of VIVA and this time we have achieved so by implementing an innovative solution that also provides an environmentally responsible alternative by significantly reducing the need to build new tower sites in Bahrain," he ended. "Both companies worked closely to ensure the successful deployment of Huawei's solution, making VIVA the first operator in the world to use it for commercial purposes. Crowd management and sustaining network performance at these previously unreachable levels is truly a great achievement," said Peng Honghua, President of Huawei's Wireless UMTS Product Line. With this innovative solution, VIVA customers will continue to enjoy uninterrupted voice and data services and an unprecedented telecom experience. SOURCE VIVA Bahrain At the conference, Mr. Yang shared iQIYI's experience on how to balance the protection of IP rights and innovation in China's online video market. "As China's first online-only video platform providing high definition legal content, iQIYI has long been committed to IP protection. We partner with domestic and international content producers and only stream legal content in order to protect creators' rights," said Mr. Yang. "With several business lines built around IP, including online video, online gaming, literature and e-commerce and our fast growing paid-subscription model, iQIYI is also the beneficiary of the improving IP environment. The ecosystem built around IP will continue to bring great opportunities to the online video industry." In China and markets around the world, Mr. Yang said, digital platforms have become very popular for movie distribution, and have transformed the traditional movie industry by lowering costs and increasing access to premium content. iQIYI owns the industry's largest domestic and Hollywood movie library through partnering with over 300 movie producers and major studios, including Sony, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, BBC Earth, Wanda, Bona and Huayi Brothers. With premium content on its platform, iQIYI reached ten million paid streaming subscribers as of December 1, 2015, doubling in number since June 15, 2015. According to the App Annie 2015 Retrospective Report, iQIYI's app became the top first app by iOS revenue and top fifth by iOS download in China in 2015. WIPO is a self-funded agency of the United Nations focusing on leading the development of a balanced and effective international intellectual property (IP) system that enables innovation and creativity for the benefit of all. Its Conference on the Global Digital Content Market aims to explore the solution between increased access and a sustainable economic value chain in the digital era. About iQIYI Founded in April 2010, iQIYI is one of the largest Internet and mobile video service providers in China. An independently operated subsidiary of Baidu, the world's largest Chinese search engine, iQIYI is focused on providing Chinese users with the best possible online video experience, and has become an industry leader in developing innovative products and technologies. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359286 For media inquiries, please contact: iQIYI Celine Sun [email protected] Foote Group Yajun Zhang [email protected] SOURCE iQIYI COLLEGE PARK, Md., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Jett Foundation, a Massachusetts-based organization committed to finding treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, will present a first-of-its-kind Patient Centered Outcomes report today April 25, 2016 at the Food and Drug Administration's Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drug Advisory Committee in College Park, Maryland. This report details patient and caregiver outcomes of those enrolled in clinical trials of eteplirsen, a potential Duchenne therapy manufactured by Sarepta Therapeutics, and will be included in the sponsor's presentation before the Advisory Committee convened to discuss and review eteplirsen's New Drug Application (NDA.) While the sponsor has donated core presentation time to Jett Foundation for the presentation of this report, the report is the product of an independent study unsolicited by Sarepta. Jett Foundation's Patient Centered Outcomes Report resulted from discussions with high-ranking officials at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and their request to see quantified data that reflects patients' experiences. It also aligns with Section 1137 of the 2012 Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA), which requires the FDA to consider the perspectives of patients during the regulatory process of specific products. "The Patient Centered Outcomes Report demonstrates the meaningfulness of eteplirsen's clinical trial results," said Christine McSherry, Executive Director of Jett Foundation, which conducted the research and developed the report. "It provides the patient perspective on eteplirsen's impact by quantifying collective patients' and caregivers' experiences before beginning therapy and while on drug. It gives clear information on endpoints not included in Sarepta's protocol that are important to patients, detailing how treatment with eteplirsen impacts those unreported endpoints. This data provides additional context to the relative stabilization seen on the 6-minute walk test (6MWT), the primary clinical outcome measure used in study 201/202." Several key findings in this report highlight the limitations of the 6MWT as a clinical trial endpoint for Duchenne. However, the 6MWT is currently the only FDA-recognized clinical endpoint used to measure the rate of decline for Duchenne patients, and the primary clinical endpoint in eteplirsen's study 201/202. The key findings of this report highlight that boys treated with eteplirsen experience: A decrease in or absence of spontaneous falls Universal maintenance of ambulation after recovery from lower limb fractures A decrease, stabilization or smaller increase than would be expected in the use of mobility devices (wheelchairs, scooters, etc.) An unexpected maintenance or increase in the ability to participate in activities of daily living (ADLs) "The results of this report dovetail the strength of eteplirsen's clinical data and reveal the true impact of the therapy on the patients, their families, and their everyday activities," said McSherry. "We hope that the results of this report will inform the panel, the FDA, and the public of what is really important to patients and families affected by Duchenne and how eteplirsen affects those significant aspects of daily life." A complete copy of the report, including Methods and Results, can be found here (LINK). Background on the report: This report provides FDA with quantitative data to evaluate the anecdotal accounts of patients on eteplirsen with input from their caregivers and parents. Interview questions were designed to measure aspects of quality of life valued by patients. The questions and analysis were designed three years after the start of study 201. The report was executed by Christine McSherry, Jenn McNary (Director of Patient Advocacy and Community Outreach at Jett Foundation), and outside consultants, including Mindy Leffler. This study was prepared at the request of the FDA and was not initially developed for the purpose of an advisory committee meeting. It is intended only to further inform scientific data collected and quantified by drug manufacturers. Jett Foundation hopes that it will help the Duchenne community, the FDA, and the PCNS advisory committee better understand the risks and benefits of eteplirsen from the unique perspective of the patients themselves. We at the Jett Foundation also hope our efforts may serve as a model for future patient-centric drug development and benefit-risk assessment efforts. About the Jett Foundation: Since 2001, Jett Foundation, located in Kingston, MA, has worked to find treatments and a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) while improving the lives of those affected by DMD. Over the past decade, Jett Foundation has raised over $15 million dollars for Duchenne research and programs to enhance the lives of those living with Duchenne. The Jett Foundation also provides resources for treatments and adaptive activities, serves as an educational resource, and provides camp opportunities through Camp Promise. The Jett Foundation is a registered charity with 501(c)(3) status from the IRS; all donations are tax deductible. www.jettfoundation.org. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359115LOGO SOURCE Jett Foundation KENNETT SQUARE, Pa., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Exelon Generation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced an agreement to restore American shad and river herring to the East Coast's largest river over the next 50 years. Shad and river herring are returning to their spawning grounds on the Susquehanna River at their lowest numbers since the 1980s. Exelon will improve fish passage facilities at Conowingo Dam and transport up to 100,000 American shad and 100,000 river herring annually to their spawning grounds above all four dams. "With the support of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and consent of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Exelon is pleased to be party to an agreement that takes a significant step toward the Fish and Wildlife Service's goals to restore American shad and river herring populations on the Susquehanna River," said Ron DeGregorio, President, Exelon Power, Senior Vice President, Exelon Generation. "The trap and transport program allows fish to bypass Holtwood, Safe Harbor and York Haven Dams to successfully reach their spawning grounds." Hundreds of thousands of American shad and river herring passed Conowingo Dam in 2001, but that number dwindled to less than 15,000 shad each of the last two years and less than 1,000 herring each year since 2003. The Service, along with other members of the Susquehanna River Anadromous Fish Restoration Cooperative, seeks to restore 2 million shad and 5 million herring above all dams. "This is a victory for everyone who lives or recreates on the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay," said Wendi Weber, Northeast regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "The agreement honors the science-based recommendations developed by the federal and state agencies that manage these resources. Along with upgrades at two upstream dams, we believe hydropower dams should no longer be the most limiting factor for shad on the East Coast's biggest river." Unlike other agreements, the agreement announced today not only requires immediate restoration efforts, it also requires that efforts adapt over 50 years to support a growing fish population. Cutting-edge modeling will be used to upgrade Conowingo's two existing fish lifts to meet fish passage restoration goals. The agreement also reiterates American eel restoration efforts originally outlined in the Muddy Run Pumped Storage Facility license. Eels will be trapped and transported upstream through at least 2030, after which a new structure will support passage. As eels migrate upstream, they distribute freshwater mussels that filter millions of gallons of water daily. Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), now including the Pepco Holdings utilities, is the nation's leading competitive energy provider. Headquartered in Chicago, Exelon does business in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Exelon is one of the largest competitive U.S. power generators, with more than 32,700 megawatts of owned capacity comprising one of the nation's cleanest and lowest-cost power generation fleets. The company's Constellation business unit provides energy products and services to approximately 2 million residential, public sector and business customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100. Exelon's six utilities deliver electricity and natural gas to approximately 10 million customers in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania through its Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd, Delmarva Power, PECO and Pepco subsidiaries. Follow Exelon on Twitter @Exelon. The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals, and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit http://www.fws.gov/northeast/. Connect with our Facebook page, follow our tweets, watch our YouTube Channel and download photos from our Flickr page. SOURCE Exelon Generation HONG KONG and WARSAW, Poland, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bitcoin has proven to be one of the most convenient payment methods in the world, attracting more and more people. The growing demand has inspired Kinguin to expand the payout methods offered to merchants. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160201/328342LOGO ) The Bitcoin payout option allows Merchants to withdraw their funds smoothly and efficiently. Transferring funds to multiple international recipients in single payout batches reduces the cost and processing time of payout methods. "We have noticed a demand from our merchants for paying out with Bitcoin," said Faheem Bakshi, Kinguin's Vice President for Global Expansion. "Having the option to pay out with Bitcoins is a great opportunity to attract more merchants selling digital products on Kinguin. It allows users of Kinguin's platform to buy and sell video games in even more new ways" Since Kinguin partnered with BitPay in October 2015, Kinguin's customers have been able to use Bitcoins to pay for purchases on Kinguin.net. The addition of Bitcoin resulted in a significant number of people choosing the digital currency as their main payment method. Bitcoin's popularity keeps on growing, and Kinguin.net Bitcoin payouts are here to meet that new demand from users. "Bitcoin gives online marketplace businesses a simpler, faster and less expensive way to pay their international sellers," said BitPay's EMEA General Manager Marcel Roelants. "Gaming marketplaces like Kinguin clearly show the advantages of Bitcoin payouts." About Kinguin.net Kinguin.net is one of the most popular marketplaces in the world for digital games, with over over 25,000 products available and more than 3 million satisfied customers. Kinguin provides a vast selection of Triple-A titles and in-game products like CS:GO skins. To learn more about Kinguin please visit http://www.kinguin.net About BitPay With over four years experience in handling Bitcoin payments, BitPay is the first and most experienced Bitcoin payment processor. BitPay allows merchants to accept Bitcoin payments from customers while pricing their products and receiving bank deposit settlements in their local currency. To learn more about BitPay, please visit http://www.bitpay.com Contact information: Pawe Radzimski [email protected] mob. +48-605-60-60-50 SOURCE Kinguin.net PITTSBURGH, April 24, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Reserve a spot now for The Press Club of Western Pennsylvania's 52nd annual Golden Quill Awards presentation, Thursday, May 12, 2016, at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel, 300 W. Station Square Drive, Pittsburgh. Winners of the Golden Quills competition, recognizing professional excellence in written, photographic, illustration, broadcast and online journalism in Western Pennsylvania, will be announced at the event. See the list of finalists at www.westernpapressclub.org. Also that evening, The Press Club will honor Harold Hayes of KDKA-TV with the President's Award. The staffs of The Daily News of McKeesport and The Valley Independent will receive this year's Service to Journalism Award. Jesse Irwin, a rising senior at the University of Pittsburgh, will receive the 2016 Bob Fryer Memorial Scholarship. Kimberly Baston, a junior at Waynesburg University, is the recipient of The Press Club Scholarship. The Golden Quill Awards evening will start at 6 p.m., with a cash bar and reception. Dinner and the awards ceremony will follow at 7 p.m. The premier sponsor of the event is Range Resources. Lead sponsors are Frank, Gale, Bails, Murcko & Pocrass, P.C.; Point Park University School of Communication; PR Newswire; and Trib Total Media. Tickets are $55 each, $550 for a table of 10. You can download an invitation from The Press Club's website, www.westernpapressclub.org. Payment can be made via check or online at www.westernpapressclub.org. For information about reservations for the dinner, contact Ann Hohn at 412-471-9474 or [email protected]. PR Newswire is the official wire of The Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. SOURCE The Press Club of Western Pennsylvania Related Links http://www.westernpapressclub.org ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The McClatchy Company, a leading provider of high-quality news and information, will extend for a fourth year its partnership with The Poynter Institute, an international leader in journalism education. Poynter will work closely with McClatchy leaders to provide customized training that addresses McClatchy's strategic 2016 goals, including a series of in-person leadership training sessions led by Poynter's Butch Ward. The 2016 initiative will be supported by online programs on leadership, video, social media and digital storytelling skills. "We're honored that McClatchy has entrusted Poynter with its vital training needs at such a critical time in the media industry," said Poynter President Tim Franklin. "The fact that McClatchy is extending its work with Poynter is a testament to how seriously the company takes training, and how much it values the quality of our work." "Our work with Poynter has been a crucial part of our journalistic transition on so many fronts," said Anders Gyllenhaal, vice president for news at McClatchy and chair of Poynter's National Advisory Board. "The training has helped us with developing new skills, strengthening traditional ones and reshaping our newsrooms. This has become an important part of how we operate over the past three years of working together. We are delighted to head into our fourth year.'' This custom program is built on the full range of Poynter's teaching expertise. Poynter faculty and industry experts will lead in-person workshops, online seminars and webinars hosted in a special McClatchy training portal on its elearning platform, News University (www.newsu.org). Since the partnership was founded in 2013, there have been about 2,000 enrollments in McClatchy-Poynter programs. More than 20 media companies and journalism organizations have partnered with Poynter in recent months for their training needs. Those partners include Google, Gannett, Gatehouse, Univision, The Associated Press, National Geographic, the Radio Television Digital News Association, the American Society of Business Publication Editors and the Institute of International Education's Fulbright Scholar program. About The Poynter Institute The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and at conferences and organizational sites around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, www.newsu.org, offers the world's largest online journalism curriculum in 7 languages, with more than 400 interactive courses and 330,000 registered users in more than 200 countries. The Institute's website, www.poynter.org, produces 24-hour coverage of news about media, ethics, technology, the business of news and the trends that currently define and redefine journalism news reporting. The world's top journalists and media innovators come to Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians and broadcast producers, and to build public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment and protected discourse that serves democracy and the public good. About The McClatchy Company The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) is a leading news and information provider, offering a wide array of print and digital products in each of the markets it serves. As the third largest newspaper company in the country, McClatchy's operations include 29 daily newspapers, community newspapers, websites, mobile news and advertising, niche publications, direct marketing and direct mail services. The company's largest newspapers include the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Sacramento Bee, The Kansas City Star, The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer and The (Raleigh) News & Observer. Contact: Tina Dyakon Director of Advertising and Marketing The Poynter Institute [email protected] 727-553-4343 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110323/MM70721LOGO SOURCE The Poynter Institute Related Links http://www.poynter.org NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Increasing Prevalence of Chronic Diseases and Growing Patient Population Coupled With New Product Launches to Drive India Medical Imaging Equipment Market Through 2021 According to Pharmaion report, "India Medical Imaging Equipment Market Opportunities, 2011 - 2021", the medical imaging equipment market in India is projected to cross US$ 1.6 billion by 2021. A wide array of factors anticipated to positively influence the country's medical imaging equipment market during forecast period include rising patient population, launch of low cost diagnostic imaging equipment and growing number of hospitals across the country. Moreover, growing awareness regarding early diagnosis of diseases among people and increasing technological advancements is expected to drive the medical imaging equipment market in India over the next five years. Browse 33 Figures spread through 110 Pages and in-depth TOC on "India Medical Imaging Equipment Market" http://www.pharmaion.com/report/india-medical-imaging-equipment-market-opportunities-2011--2021/63.html As per the Institute of Cytology & Preventive Oncology (ICPO), over 700,000 new cancer cases are being registered in the country every year. In addition, oral and lung cavity cancer in males, and breast cancer and cervix cancer in females account for more than 50% of cancer deaths in India. Moreover, in 2015, an estimated 30 million people suffered from heart disease in the country. Due to high mortality associated with chronic conditions, there has been a growing awareness about early diagnosis of these diseases, thereby positively influencing the demand for medical imaging equipment in India. Download Sample Report @ http://www.pharmaion.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=63 Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report. On the basis of type of modality, the medical imaging equipment in India has been categorized into seven broader segments that include Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment, Computed Tomography (CT) Scan, Ultrasound equipment, X-Ray Imaging equipment, Nuclear Imaging equipment, Mammography equipment & Others. Among these categories, MRI equipment dominated India's medical imaging equipment market in 2015, and the segment is anticipated to continue its dominance until 2021. However, in terms of growth, the ultrasound equipment segment is anticipated to outpace MRI equipment during 2016-2021 on account of its low cost as compared to MRI, and its high usage in diagnostic applications as compared to other costly imaging equipment. "With growing adoption of 4D imaging technology, Cloud-based Imaging, and Multimodality Trend, India medical imaging equipment market will continue to exhibit promising growth in the coming years. Moreover, various government initiatives and workshops are being organized across the country towards creating awareness among consumers about latest imaging technologies. These workshops also offer a unified platform to clinicians, researchers, scientists and manufacturers to share their inputs for better medical imaging technique development. All these factors present a positive outlook for medical imaging equipment market in India over the course of next five years." said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with Pharmaion Consultants, a research based global management consulting firm focused on pharma and healthcare industry. "India Medical Imaging Equipment Market Opportunities, 2011 - 2021" has analyzed the potential of medical imaging equipment market in India and provides statistics and information on market sizes, shares and trends. The report intends to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes the emerging trends along with essential drivers and key challenges faced by India medical imaging equipment market. Browse Related Reports Global Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring Market Opportunities, 2010 - 2020 http://www.pharmaion.com/report/global-ambulatory-blood-pressure-monitoring-market-opportunities-2010--2020/20.html Global Diagnostic Testing of STDs Market Opportunities, 2010 - 2020 http://www.pharmaion.com/report/global-diagnostic-testing-of-stds-market-opportunities-2010--2020/24.html United States Cancer Biomarker Market Opportunities, 2011 - 2021 http://www.pharmaion.com/report/united-states-cancer-biomarker-market-opportunities-2011--2021/60.html About Pharmaion: Pharmaion is a research based management consulting firm focused exclusively on Healthcare & Pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaion is committed to assisting customers worldwide with their unique market research needs by providing them with comprehensive, value-added solutions and professional market intelligence services. Pharmaion employs the industry's best-trained Analysts and Consultants, who advise and assist customers in meeting their full service market research and consulting requirements. Contact Mr. Karan Chechi 708 3RD Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY, United State, 10017 Tel: +1 646 862 0089 Email: [email protected] .com Connect with us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/pharmaion Connect with us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/pharmaion SOURCE Pharmaion WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The next generation of U.S. military information systems will be a product of the private sector if the Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA's) plans come to fruition. The agency already is relying on industry for key services and this partnership will grow in the coming years. These insights were among many DISA leaders shared at the AFCEA International Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium held April 20-22. Lt. Gen. Alan R. Lynn, USA, director, Defense Information Systems Agency and commander, Joint Force Headquarters, Department of Defense Information Network, delivered the keynote luncheon address at AFCEA's Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium 2016 in Washington, D.C. Driving this cooperation are some harsh realities. Cyber defense teams find themselves defending against a wider range of adversaries whose malevolent abilities are constantly changing. Mobile communication capabilities are emerging from the consumer market faster than the military can develop them for its own use. In addition, commercial services are replacing military equivalents as tight budgets squeeze defense organizations out of their traditional business models. DISA's director, Gen. Alan R. Lynn, USA, focused on industry's expanded role in future agency activities. "We want the technology industry to partner with us to develop the next generation of military [information technology] services," Gen. Lynn stated. Addressing hundreds of industry representatives at the symposium, Gen. Lynn cited network anomaly detection as one business opportunity. "If you have something that allows us to see anomalies better, we'll plug it into our systems," he said. That is a near-term need; for the mid term, DISA will need software-defined networks, he added. Above all, security measures reign supreme. "If you have novel ideas of how to do encryption, we're all ears," the general said. DISA's efforts to build out the network, which are essential with the looming Internet of Things, will rely on the assured identity and security piece, he allowed. During a pre-conference presentation titled "DISA 102," Tony Montemarano, executive deputy director, DISA, shared his opinion about the growing opportunities for industry. "There's less and less development going on in the department; we have less and less latitude. We need to rely on commercial products, we no longer are in the build-it-from-scratch mode." DISA officials recognize that taking full advantage of what industry has to offer requires changes to its procurement processes. They agreed that a new partnership paradigm would be absolutely necessary if both are to succeed in speeding innovative technologies into the U.S. military. Terry Halvorsen, U.S. Defense Department CIO, explained that the solution to fixing the current disconnect is about more than technology. "Now it's time to have a conversation about culture changecyber culture, tech culture," he emphasized. "The issue is how we in government look at industry and how industry looks at government. The partnership where we understand what industry is doing and industry understands government is a win-win," Halvorsen stated. Government needs to listen to industry more, he allowed, and industry must be dedicated to working in new directions. Additional coverage of the Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium including video and audio recordings is available online. AFCEA International, established in 1946, is a non-profit non-lobbying membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia. Join online. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359665 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130410/DC92618LOGO SOURCE AFCEA International Related Links www.afcea.org Rittenmeyer has an extensive background leading companies to profitable growth and market leadership. He is the retired chairman, president and chief executive officer of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) having successfully sold that company to Hewlett Packard in 2008. Prior to joining Millennium Health's Board, he served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Expert Global Solutions. Previously, he served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Safety-Kleen, Inc., which he led through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and into a successful reorganization. "I am excited about taking on this role at Millennium Health. The company has just completed a successful reorganization and I look forward to guiding the next chapter of responsible growth," said Mr. Rittenmeyer. "I would like to thank Brock for his service and commend his efforts leading the company through the restructuring. I look forward to expanding our business and exceeding the expectations of our customers and ultimately the patients they serve." About Ronald A. Rittenmeyer Ron Rittenmeyer is the retired chairman, president and chief executive officer of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Rittenmeyer also served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Expert Global Solutions, which he led through reorganization. Previously, he served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Safety-Kleen, Inc., which he successfully led through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and into a successful reorganization. Among his other leadership roles, Rittenmeyer was CEO and president of AmeriServe; chairman, Chairman, CEO and president of RailTex, Inc.; president and COO of Ryder TRS, Inc., a truck rental company; president and COO of Merisel; and COO of Burlington Northern Railroad. Rittenmeyer was also with PepsiCo's Frito Lay and PepsiCo's Foods International Divisions for 20 years in senior management roles. Rittenmeyer is currently on the board of directors of American International Group, Inc. (AIG), Tenet Healthcare Corporation, IMS Health Inc. and a director for Avaya Inc., a privately held company. He holds a bachelor's degree in commerce and finance and a master's degree in business. About Millennium Health Millennium Health is a leading health solutions company that aims to get more from medicines by delivering accurate, timely, clinically actionable information to inform treatment decisions. The company believes that everyone has the right to the safest and most effective treatments, and aims to deliver on that idea by providing clinicians and payers with personalized medication intelligence through our comprehensive suite of services including RxAnte's population drug therapy management platforms, Millennium PGTSM and Millennium UDTSM, that can be used to better tailor patient care. More information can be found at www.millenniumhealth.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140830/141707 SOURCE Millennium Health, LLC Related Links http://www.millenniumhealth.com ITASCA, Ill., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mohawk Global Trade Advisors (MGTA), an international trade consulting firm, announces the addition of Adrienne Graddy to its team. Following MGTA's enormous success in the Northeastrequiring it to more than double its staff in the last two yearsthe firm has focused on expanding its presence to neighboring regions. In her new role as Senior Advisor for MGTA, Adrienne will serve the firm's growing Midwestern clientele, providing training, guidance, and expertise on U.S. import-export compliance programs, manuals, and other supply chain enhancing initiatives from the Chicago office of parent company Mohawk Global Logistics. A native to the windy city, Adrienne is a licensed Customs broker and author of numerous trade compliance training programs in use by enterprises across greater Chicago. Her previous experience includes managing the regulatory divisions at several of Chicago's most prominent businesses, including a Fortune 500 company. "Few can match Adrienne's expertise and history of corporate leadership in the Chicago market," says Bev Seif, Vice President & General Manager for MGTA. "I'm couldn't be more thrilled to have someone of her caliber serving our clients in the Midwest," she says. About Mohawk Global Logistics Mohawk Global Logistics, the parent company of Mohawk Global Trade Advisors, is a freight forwarder and Customs broker with offices in Illinois, New York, and Ohio. The company is headquartered in Syracuse, NY. For more information, visit www.mohawkglobal.com. About Mohawk Global Trade Advisors Mohawk Global Trade Advisors (MGTA) provides import-export compliance consulting, assistance with foreign trade zones, C-TPAT certification services, duty drawback programs, and a variety of supply chain solutions to small and medium-sized businesses across the United States. Its team consists of some of the international business community's most sought after speakers on topics such as U.S. Customs audits, export controls, and NAFTA. For more information, visit www.mohawkglobalta.com. Contact: Bev Seif Vice President & General Manager Mohawk Global Trade Advisors (315) 552-5477 [email protected] SOURCE Mohawk Global Trade Advisors Related Links http://www.mohawkglobalta.com STOCKPORT, England, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Honda (% write-offs), Audi (% finance), Land Rover (% stolen and overall) Infographic of key findings in Making Better Used Car Choices, a major new report by vehicle provenance company My Car Check (April 2016) (PRNewsFoto/My Car Check) 46% of vehicles searched in 2015 had at least one warning against them Estimated 3.3 million used cars sold in UK last year had a warning against them Download the full report FREE , including profiles of the top 5 most searched makes - Ford, Vauxhall, VW, BMW and Audi - at: https://www.mycarcheck.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/mycarcheck-vehicle-search-data-insight-report-2015.pdf "Almost half of all vehicles we checked in 2015 had at least one warning against them. How many buyers would have gone ahead with their purchase at the agreed price if they had conducted a provenance check and made themselves aware of these issues?" - Roger Powell, Head of My Car Check Published online on Thursday 21 April 2016, Making Better Used Car Choices is a major new 30-page report by vehicle provenance company My Car Check. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359313-INFO ) Based on My Car Check's 2015 search data, and the results of a February 2016 survey of 649 My Car Check customers, it names the vehicle manufacturers most likely to have write-off, finance and stolen warnings against them, along with a wealth of other statistics on the decisions and dangers facing UK used vehicle buyers. The main findings include: 46% of vehicles searched in 2015 had at least one warning against them Estimated 3.3 million used cars sold in UK last year had a warning against them Top warnings: 1. Plate transfer (48%) 2. Write-off (29%) 3. Finance (13%) The average value of used vehicles searched in 2015 was 7,632 Most searched manufacturers: 1. Ford (12.2%) 2. Vauxhall (10.8%) 3. VW (9.6%) Top models: 1. Fiesta Zetec (9.3%) 2. Mini Cooper (8.5%) 3. Golf GT TDI (6.5%) 48% of My Car Check customers prefer to buy privately, rather than from dealers 48% of My Car Check customers buy a used car every two to three years 96% of My Car Check customers check before buying the vehicle buying the vehicle Make with the highest % of warnings overall: Land Rover (65.75%) Make with the highest % of write-off warnings: Honda (19.43%) Make with the highest % of finance warnings: Audi (11.78%) Make with the highest % of stolen warnings: Land Rover (less than 1%) Head of My Car Check, Roger Powell, said: "Almost half of all vehicles we checked in 2015 had at least one warning against them - an advisory warning, such as a registration plate transfer or colour change, or a serious warning, such as a stolen, finance or write-off alert. Of the 7.2 million used cars sold in the UK last year, how many buyers would have gone ahead with their purchase at the agreed price if they had conducted a provenance check and made themselves aware of these issues? "Buying a car is a big deal. For the price of a few litres of fuel you can access vital facts and figures the seller might not know, or not want to tell you. Our checks frequently save people from making costly used car mistakes. However, it is important to note that 54% of our checks come back clear. More often than not, we give buyers confidence that they're making the right decision. This report, Making Better Used Car Choices, will help more consumers to end up with cars they love." Land Rover Land Rover was the manufacturer with the highest percentage of warnings against it overall, with 65.75% of Land Rover vehicles checked by My Car Check in 2015 having at least one warning against them. Land Rover was also the make most likely to be stolen, with 0.32% of all Land Rovers checked by My Car Check in 2015 showing as stolen on the police register. Gavin Amos, Head of Valuation Services at My Car Check, said: "Land Rover has some of the most desirable vehicles around, so it is no surprise that thieves go after them. Their position isn't helped by the Defender becoming such an icon. This classic model has remained largely unchanged for half a century. The fact that it has just gone out of production has only served to boost its popularity and, in modern terms, Defenders are soft targets for criminals. Land Rover also offers some very attractive new car finance packages, so outstanding finance warnings are another contributory factor to its unwanted position at the top of the warnings table. On the up side, it had by far the lowest write-off percentage of any manufacturer, just 12.05%." Audi Audi had the highest percentage of finance debt warnings of any manufacturer with 11.78% of all Audi vehicles checked in 2015 showing a potential outstanding finance issue. Gavin Amos, Head of Valuation Services at My Car Check, said: "The fact that used Audi vehicles are most likely to have finance debt is a backhanded compliment to their astonishingly successful new car finance packages. Unfortunately, there remains a serious lack of awareness about the risk of buying a second hand car with outstanding finance. Under the increasingly popular Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) agreements, the debt is usually secured against the vehicle, rather than the individual. A quarter of all cars on our roads actually belong to a finance company, not the people who drive them. Selling a vehicle owned by a finance company, sub-hiring, is illegal but very common. Whether the seller knows this or not, the crux for buyers is that the finance company can be within their rights to seize the vehicle back. As a full member of both the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA) and the Motor Asset Registration Service (MARS), our data can be the difference between buying a vehicle completely legally and being left hugely out of pocket with no car to show for it." Honda Although Honda performed better than average in terms of overall warnings (44% of Honda vehicles checked by My Car Check in 2015 had at least one warning against them versus an all manufacturer average of 46%), it had the highest percentage of write-off warnings of any manufacturer, almost 1 in 5 checked (19.43%). Gavin Amos, Head of Valuation Services at My Car Check, said: "Honda's appearance at the top of the write-off table is intriguing because there are two very different factors at play. At one end of the scale you have their sporty variants, such as the Type R Civic and S2000, which appeal to young performance enthusiasts, some of whom can't handle the power. At the other end of the spectrum, you have more sensible models, such as the Jazz, which appeal to older drivers, who can also be higher risk." With information from the police, DVLA, insurers and finance houses, My Car Check holds up to 77 fields of data for every vehicle on UK roads - all points that buyers should be aware of before making an offer. CDL Vehicle Information Services, which owns My Car Check, performs over a million look-ups a day for companies including AutoExpress, CompareTheMarket, Go-Compare, Moneysupermarket, Swiftcover, Tesco and WhatCar?. Notes To Editors Further hi res images are available on request. My Car Check, My MotorCycle Check, MyCarCheck Trade, My Text Check and the My Car Check apps are brands of CDL Vehicle Information Services, owned by CDL Group Holdings Ltd of Stockport, Cheshire. CDL Vehicle Information Services is a member of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), the Consumer Credit Trade Association (CCTA), the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA), the Motor Asset Registration Service (MARS), the National Association of Motor Auctions (NAMA) and the Vehicle Remarketing Association (VRA). For customer service please contact our UK-based call centre on +44(0)330-331-0030. Lines are open 9am-7pm Monday to Friday and 10am-4pm on Saturday. SOURCE My Car Check WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Students in Dallas will have the opportunity to speak with two astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station at 11:15 a.m. EDT Tuesday, April 26. The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. The event will be hosted by the School for the Talented and Gifted at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center. Students from the Cedar Hill, Dallas, DeSoto, Duncanville, Grand Prairie and Lancaster Independent School Districts also will participate. Expedition 47 Flight Engineers Jeff Williams of NASA and Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) will answer questions from the students. Williams launched to the space station on March 18 and is scheduled to return in September. Peake launched on Dec. 15 and will return in June. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas will begin the downlink with a voice check call-up to the station. Rep. Johnson is the first African-American and first female ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Media interested in covering the event should contact Cameron Trimble at [email protected]. The Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center is located at 1201 East 8th Street. This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of the NASA Office of Education's efforts to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning in the United States. Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station through the agency Office of Education's STEM on Station activity provides authentic, live experiences in space exploration, space study and the scientific components of space travel, while introducing the possibilities of life in space. For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv For more information, videos and lesson plans highlighting research on the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov STOW, Ohio, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In further developments of the fast-growing National Medical Marijuana Accreditation Organization (NMMAO), the medical marijuana accreditation company announced today that distinguished healthcare expert Raeanna Lewarne, PharmD, BCPS has joined the Executive Board and the Review Committee. Dr. Lewarne will serve on the NMMAO Review Committee in the initial and ongoing accreditation audit of NMMAO's clientele of state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries. Dr. Lewarne comes to NMMAO with a wealth of clinical and compliance experience in the healthcare industry, most recently having spent the last six years at ProCare Rx where she was the President of the hospice care division. Dr. Lewarne states, "I am delighted to join NMMAO. The accreditation and standardization of medical marijuana dispensaries is just what our nation, states, prescribers, and most importantly patients need. This is a cutting-edge industry that has been highly publicized. Setting forth professional standards on safety and quality for medical marijuana dispensaries, as NMMAO is doing, will only serve to improve our healthcare system." Lewarne comes to NMMAO with a wealth of clinical and compliance experience in the healthcare industry, most recently having spent the last six years at ProCare Rx where she was the President of the hospice care division. Jean M Milford, Founder and CEO of NMMAO said, "Dr. Lewarne's wealth of experience and industry knowledge makes her a key addition to the NMMAO family. We view Raeanna's appointment as a sign of our commitment to continuing as the leading accreditation company specifically focused on legalized medical marijuana dispensaries. We look forward to the key role she will play in providing the Review Committee with her exceptional clinical outlook and experience." About NMMAO The National Medical Marijuana Accreditation Organization, LLC (NMMAO) offers state-licensed dispensaries an opportunity to undergo the nation's first and only accreditation specific to medical marijuana dispensaries. NMMAO was formed in recognition of competing and varying state and pending federal regulations of marijuana dispensaries, and provides a three-year base accreditation. Dispensaries meeting the NMMAO accreditation criteria prove a heightened awareness of general healthcare industry standards and quality measurements through documented policies, procedures, processes, and attestations. Accreditation is both a process and a status and reflects the medical marijuana dispensary's commitment to self-evaluation and external review. For more information regarding NMMAO, to order the NMMAO accreditation continuing education (CE), or to schedule your dispensary's free consultation, visit www.NMMAO.net or call 860-617-0658. This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE National Medical Marijuana Accreditation Organization, LLC (NMMAO) Related Links http://www.NMMAO.net "For the past decade, we have published this annual collection of essays with Campaign ," said Julian Boulding, president & founder of the network one, a London-based organization for independent marketing agencies. "The independent agencies you'll find in this publication all have something radical and innovative to say to the world. They are driven by a passion, a commitment, a readiness to improve and to change, and the energy to grow through their own efforts, rather than primarily through acquisition." Inclusion in the World's Leading Independent Agencies is decided by a joint editorial board of thenetworkone and Campaign. The publication is not a ranking by size, or success in awards festivals; rather, it recognizes the most innovative agencies and provides a series of inspirational articles written by the agency principals judged by the editorial board to be the most creative thought leaders in the marketing communications industry. Nelson Schmidt is the only U.S. agency, and the only one based in all of North America, to be included in the 2016 compendium. "To be recognized at this global scale, among the most innovating independent agencies from Finland to South Africa to Sri Lanka, is an incredible affirmation of the tremendous collaboration between our clients and the bright minds and creative talent at Nelson Schmidt," said Dan Nelson, Jr., president & CEO. "To be the only agency in North America among the recipients of this honor is truly extraordinary. We still must be doing things right in good ol' Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the birthplace of business-to-business marketing and a community with design excellence woven into our DNA." "In evaluating the 2016 candidates, Nelson Schmidt stood out as an agency that does not subscribe to limitations," continued Mr. Boulding. "It's not usual to see a mid-sized agency from Milwaukee, Wisconsin doing such outstanding work with top-quality clients around the globe. They're challenging the norm in our industry, which is what the World's Leading Independent Agencies is all about." To learn more about the Nelson Schmidt, its work and employment opportunities, please visit NelsonSchmidt.com. To read more about the 2016 World's Leading Independent Agencies, visit LeadingIndependents.com. ABOUT NELSON SCHMIDT INC. We Deliver Customers. Nelson Schmidt Inc. is an independent full-service marketing agency with offices in downtown Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin. The agency is one of the World's Leading Independent Agencies in 2016 according to Campaign magazine and thenetworkone, and serves U.S. and international clients within select considered purchase industries. Nelson Schmidt is a member of MAGNET, the Marketing & Advertising Global Network, ANA/BMA and PRSA. For more information visit NelsonSchmidt.com. ABOUT THENETWORKONE Headquartered in London, thenetworkone is the world's leading independent organization for independent agencies. thenetworkone works with more than 800 independent agencies in 106 countries worldwide, "custom building" international agency networks, for marketing clients and their lead agencies. Founded in 2003, thenetworkone hosts "The Indie Summit," the first ever large scale international conference exclusively for Independent Agency Leaders http://www.indiesummit.net, Julian is also a regular speaker at Cannes Lions and other leading creative festivals around the world. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359031 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359051 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359030LOGO SOURCE Nelson Schmidt, Inc. Related Links http://www.nelsonschmidt.com HONG KONG, April 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NetDragon Websoft Inc. ("NetDragon" or "the Company") (Hong Kong Stock Code: 777), a global leader in building Internet communities, and cherrypicks, a global mobile and O2O (online-to-offline) technology innovator and wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, today announced the signing of a stock purchase agreement to acquire a 100% stake in cherrypicks alpha. The integration of cherrypicks alpha's award-winning Augmented Reality (AR) technologies will boost the Company's core Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality (VR/AR) technology portfolio for its online education and gaming businesses. Cherrypicks alpha's smart location sensing platform (starbeacon) will also form the cornerstone for the rollout of SHOPPO, cherrypicks O2O Shopping Community Platform business, in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the terms of the agreement, NetDragon and cherrypicks have agreed to acquire cherrypicks alpha for a combination of US$6.0 million in cash and NetDragon shares, and incentive shares representing up to 24.6% of cherrypicks. In addition, NetDragon also committed to inject additional capital of up to US$12 million into cherrypicks to accelerate its business expansion. Mr. Jason Chiu, CEO of cherrypicks, commented: "Cherrypicks alpha has been investing in the research and development of both its VR/AR and starbeacon technologies for over five years. Our computer vision as well as face recognition, tracking and emotion detection technologies already support many award-winning VR/AR applications such as iButterfly, HSBC's 150 Year Commemorative Bank Note and English Galaxy. We are excited about the opportunities that our proven AR technologies will provide once integrated into NetDragon and the millions of users in China's online education, O2O and gaming communities that they will benefit. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs estimated that the global VR and AR market would grow to an estimated US$80 billion by 2025. Starbeacon, our smart location sensors with Bluetooth and ultrasound for Proximity Detection and Indoor Positioning, is the core technology used to support SHOPPO, our regional shopping loyalty community. We are working diligently to leverage this technology to further develop large scale solutions for shopping malls, airports, retail shops and major venues." Mr. Jason Chiu will retain his position as CEO of cherrypicks alpha's AR unit following the acquisition . Dr. Simon Leung, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of NetDragon, added, "We are extremely excited to bring in cherrypicks alpha's VR/AR technology portfolio under the NetDragon Group so that it can directly support all our business units. In addition, cherrypicks alpha's starbeacon technology ideally positions us to unleash the full potential of cherrypicks' O2O business. NetDragon's recent acquisition of Promethean, a provider of interactive learning technologies with a user base of 1.3 million classrooms globally, also has the potential to deliver cherrypicks alpha AR technology to an enormous audience in the K12 (Kindergarten-to-Grade 12) space." - End - About NetDragon Websoft Inc NetDragon Websoft Inc. (HKSE: 0777) is a global leader in building Internet communities. Established in 1999, NetDragon is a vertically integrated, cutting-edge R&D powerhouse with a highly successful track record which includes the development of flagship MMORPGs such as Eudemons Online and Conquer Online, China's number one online gaming portal, 17173.com, and China's most influential smartphone app store platform, 91 Wireless, which was sold to Baidu in 2013 in what was at the time the largest Internet M&A transaction in China. Being China's pioneer in overseas expansion, NetDragon also directly operates a number of game titles in over 10 languages internationally since 2003. In recent years, NetDragon has emerged as a major player in the global online and mobile learning space as it works to leverage its mobile Internet technologies and operational know-how to develop a game-changing learning ecosystem. For more information, please visit www.netdragon.com. About cherrypicks Established in 2000, cherrypicks is a home-grown technology startup headquartered in Hong Kong and is a wholly owned subsidiary of NetDragon. It is a regional Mobile Technology and Mobile eCommerce leader specializing in building shopping loyalty communities, SHOPPO, and applying leading-edge technologies in Augmented Reality and Proximity Detection and Indoor Positioning. The company has developed popular Online-to-Offline (O2O) mobile platforms such as SHOPPO and iButterfly. Cherrypicks has won over 100 international and local awards of technology and digital marketing, including the IT 'Oscars' World Summit Award Mobile Global Champion and APICTA Winner Awards. The company is also a Harvard case study. Today, cherrypicks is a globally recognized guru in mobile solution innovations highly trusted by numerous long-term, multinational and local corporate clients in banking, insurance, gaming, restaurant, retailing, TV interaction, travel, and transportation. For more information, please visit www.cherrypicks.com. About cherrypicks alpha Cherrypicks alpha is a world-class technology and R&D leader in Augmented Reality (AR) and Proximity Detection and Indoor Positioning (starbeacon). The proven and high quality AR engine provides computer vision as well as face recognition, tracking, emotion detection and retargeting technologies. It has supported many AR applications such as iButterfly, HSBC's 150 Year Commemorative Bank Note and English Galaxy. The starbeacon infrastructure provides SDK and API to support Smart City deployment and solutions to shopping malls, retail shops, airports and large indoor venues for proximity detection, indoor positioning and navigation and big data collection. The starbeacon infrastructure is a differentiation for cherrypicks' regional shopping loyalty community, SHOPPO. Cherrypicks alpha possesses over ten patent applications and technology IPs. For more information, please visit www.cherrypicksalpha.com. For investor enquiries, please contact: Ms. Maggie Zhou Senior Director of Investor Relations, NetDragon Tel: +852 2850 7266 / +86 591 8754 3120 Email: [email protected]; [email protected] For media enquiries, please contact: Mr. Alvin Chan Senior Advisor, NetDragon Tel: +852 2590 5337 Email: [email protected] Christian Arnell; Vivian Wang Christensen Tel: +852 2117 0861 Email: [email protected], [email protected] SOURCE NetDragon Websoft Inc. Related Links http://www.netdragon.com/ Transaction Highlights Strategic US$1.1 billion combination creates a diversified mid-tier base metals company combination creates a diversified mid-tier base metals company Transaction consolidates a 100% ownership of the high grade upper zone of the Timok Copper Project Timok development is underpinned by Nevsun's strong balance sheet and operating cash flow Combined company has significant exploration exposure in two prolific mining districts Significant benefits to both Nevsun and Reservoir shareholders VANCOUVER, April 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Nevsun Resources Ltd. ("Nevsun") (TSX: NSU) (NYSE MKT: NSU) and Reservoir Minerals Inc. ("Reservoir") (TSX Venture: RMC) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine their respective companies. The combination creates a diversified mid-tier base metals company with a cash producing operating asset in Bisha, a high grade open pit copper-zinc mine, and 100% ownership in the upper zone of the Timok Copper Project in Serbia ("Upper Zone"), a high grade copper and gold development project. The combined company will be well funded with Nevsun's existing strong balance sheet and operating cash flow and positioned to deliver value via Nevsun's highly successful development team. Under the terms of the arrangement agreement announced today, Nevsun has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding common shares, and restricted share units of Reservoir on the basis of two (2) common shares and $0.001 in cash for each Reservoir common share pursuant to a Plan of Arrangement under the British Columbia Business Corporations Act for a total value of approximately US$365 million. Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on April 22, 2016, the consideration represents a premium of 35% to Reservoir's 20-day volume weighted average price (VWAP). The transaction will allow both Reservoir and Nevsun shareholders to participate in the ongoing cash flow generation of the Bisha mine, the growth potential of the Timok Copper Project, and significant exploration potential at both Bisha and Timok. Upon completion of the arrangement, current Nevsun shareholders will own approximately 67% of the combined company and current Reservoir shareholders will own the remaining 33%. Concurrently, the two companies have also entered into a funding transaction comprised of a private placement for 19.99% of Reservoir's outstanding common shares and a loan transaction. Nevsun has subscribed for 12,174,928 common shares of Reservoir at a price of C$9.40 per share, for a total subscription price of CAD$114,444,323 (US$90,296,571), increasing Reservoir's total shares outstanding to 60,905,093, and provided an unsecured cash loan of US$44,703,429 to Reservoir. The combined funding transaction provides US$135,000,000 in financing to enable Global Reservoir Mineral (BVI) Inc. ("Global Reservoir"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Reservoir to exercise its right of first offer ("ROFO") in respect of its joint venture with Freeport International Holdings (BVI) Inc. ("Freeport") in the Timok Copper Project. Upon Global Reservoir closing the exercise of the ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% interest in the Upper Zone and a 60.4% interest in the lower zone of the Timok Copper Project ("Lower Zone") under two joint venture agreements with Freeport and will become the operator of the project. Freeport may increase its ownership in the Lower Zone to 54% under the terms of the original Timok JV agreement, with Global Reservoir holding the remaining 46%. Upon completion of the combination, Global Reservoir will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the combined company. "This transaction diversifies Nevsun's asset base, putting our cash balance to work in a strategic and high return investment that will deliver significant value to our shareholders," said Mr. Cliff Davis, Nevsun's President and Chief Executive Officer. "The Upper Zone, with its high grade copper-gold resource and nearby infrastructure in a mining friendly jurisdiction, adds significant growth to Nevsun. With ongoing cash flow generation from our Bisha mine, we have the financial strength and proven technical ability to move the Timok project forward in a timely manner. We look forward to working with all stakeholders and Timok's highly capable partner in bringing the project into production." "This is an excellent outcome for Reservoir and its shareholders, delivering premium value, and most importantly will expedite the development of the Timok Copper-Gold Project to the benefit of all stakeholders," said Dr. Simon Ingram, Reservoir's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Reservoir's Board of Directors determined that this transaction is the best funding alternative for our shareholders to fund the Timok ROFO. Nevsun is a proven mine developer with the technical experience and strong balance sheet to enable Timok development. Reservoir shareholders retain exposure to the development potential of Timok and also gain exposure to the operating Bisha mine's cash flow and additional exploration potential. The combined company will be in a strong position to efficiently advance the Timok project to production." Benefits to Reservoir Shareholders Expedited Development of Timok . The Timok Project will be expedited to production for the benefit of all stakeholders. . The Timok Project will be expedited to production for the benefit of all stakeholders. Premium value . Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on April 22, 2016 , the consideration represents a premium of 124% over the trading price of Reservoir shares on March 2, 2016 , the day prior to receiving notification of the ROFO and a 35% premium to the 20 day VWAP. . Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on , the consideration represents a premium of 124% over the trading price of Reservoir shares on , the day prior to receiving notification of the ROFO and a 35% premium to the 20 day VWAP. Increases long-term exposure in Timok . Through Nevsun's funding of Global Reservoir's ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% stake and operatorship of the Upper Zone. . Through Nevsun's funding of Global Reservoir's ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% stake and operatorship of the Upper Zone. Strong balance sheet and cash generation to fund Timok's growth potential . The transaction offers shareholders exposure to cash generated from the Bisha mine, a high grade mine which generated US$120 million of operating cash flow in 2015, and pro-forma US$300 million in cash to fund development. . The transaction offers shareholders exposure to cash generated from the Bisha mine, a high grade mine which generated of operating cash flow in 2015, and pro-forma in cash to fund development. Strong operating team to advance the Timok project . Nevsun's management team has demonstrated the ability to develop and bring a mining project into production on time and under budget. Nevsun has invested over US$430 million in a three-phase development of the Bisha mine, all on-time and under budget. . Nevsun's management team has demonstrated the ability to develop and bring a mining project into production on time and under budget. Nevsun has invested over in a three-phase development of the Bisha mine, all on-time and under budget. Increased capital market profile. Nevsun's shares are liquid with a strong institutional shareholder base. Completion of the arrangement should result in further increases in trading liquidity and a broader depth of major institutional shareholders. Benefits to Nevsun Shareholders On strategy for diversification . The transaction delivers on the company's stated goal to diversify geographically through a strategic transaction. . The transaction delivers on the company's stated goal to diversify geographically through a strategic transaction. Attractive deployment of capital . The transaction puts Nevsun's cash balance and ongoing cash flow generation capacity to use in an attractive development project with a high projected return. . The transaction puts Nevsun's cash balance and ongoing cash flow generation capacity to use in an attractive development project with a high projected return. High quality asset . The Upper Zone, a high grade copper-gold development project, is in a historic mining jurisdiction with excellent local and regional infrastructure. . The Upper Zone, a high grade copper-gold development project, is in a historic mining jurisdiction with excellent local and regional infrastructure. Increased growth potential. The Upper Zone significantly increases Nevsun's growth profile. In addition, the Lower Zone, a joint venture with Freeport , represents further upside in the potential large-tonnage porphyry style mineralization. The Upper Zone significantly increases Nevsun's growth profile. In addition, the Lower Zone, a joint venture with , represents further upside in the potential large-tonnage porphyry style mineralization. Strategic partner. The combined company forms a strategic long-term partnership with Freeport , a leading copper and gold producer. About the Timok Project Joint Venture The Timok project represents four exploration permits in the highly prospective Timok Magmatic Complex in eastern Serbia, near the world class Bor and Majdenpek mines. The Timok project centres on the Cukaru Peki deposit, which includes the Upper Zone (characterized by massive and semi-massive sulphide mineralization) and the Lower Zone (characterized by porphyry-style mineralization). Refer to Reservoir's April 19, 2016 news release announcing the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Timok JV Project and Cukaru Peki deposit. The Timok project is a joint venture with Freeport governed by a joint venture shareholders agreement. Freeport is currently the Timok Project operator and is fully funding the project. Following exercise of the ROFO, Global Reservoir will be appointed the operator until completion of the combination and until the occurrence of certain events, will advance the development of both the Upper Zone and the Lower Zone in accordance with approved budgets and work programs. Global Reservoir will have the sole right to propose budgets and work programs relating to the Upper Zone and for certain agreed Lower Zone work, and Freeport will have the sole right to propose budgets and work programs relating to the Lower Zone, subject to specified exceptions. Until the delivery of a feasibility study, Global Reservoir will fund 100% of the Upper Zone development costs, as well as US$20 million of agreed Lower Zone work. Global Reservoir and Freeport will fund 28% and 72% of all other Lower Zone development costs, respectively. Additional Transaction Details The directors and management of both Nevsun and Reservoir have entered into agreements pursuant to which they have committed to vote their respective common shares, in favour of the arrangement. In addition, Nevsun, following completion of its subscription for Reservoir common shares will own 19.99% of Reservoir's outstanding common shares. Major shareholders of Nevsun have expressed support for the transaction. The arrangement has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Reservoir and Nevsun. The Boards of both Nevsun and Reservoir have received fairness opinions from independent financial advisors, and recommend their respective shareholders vote in favour of the arrangement. The implementation of the arrangement is subject to certain customary closing conditions, including the approval of two-thirds of the votes cast by Reservoir's common shareholders and option holders at a special meeting, approval by a majority of votes cast by Nevsun shareholders at a special meeting, approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange and court approval. Completion of the arrangement is also conditional on the successful exercise by Global Reservoir of its ROFO in respect of the original Timok joint venture agreement. Post closing, the Nevsun Board will include two directors from Reservoir. The arrangement is expected to close late in the second quarter of 2016. The terms and conditions of the arrangement will be disclosed in a further detail in an information circular to be mailed to Reservoir shareholders in advance of the special meeting of Reservoir common shareholders to approve the arrangement. A copy of the arrangement agreement, the information circular and related documents will be filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities and will be available under Reservoir's profile at www.sedar.com. Advisors Scotia Capital Inc. is acting as financial advisor to Nevsun and has provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Nevsun that the arrangement is fair from a financial point of view to Nevsun shareholders. Stikeman Elliott LLP is acting as legal advisor to Nevsun and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is advising Nevsun with respect to U.S. securities matters. Canaccord Genuity and Natural Resources Global Capital Partners are acting as financial advisor to Reservoir and Canaccord Genuity has provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Reservoir that the arrangement is fair from a financial point of view to Reservoir shareholders. Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP is acting as legal advisor to Reservoir. Conference Call Nevsun and Reservoir will hold an investment community conference call and webcast April 25, 2016 at 6:00 a.m. Vancouver / 9:00 a.m. Toronto, New York / 2:00 p.m. London. Conference call details are as follows: North America: 1 888-231-8191 / 1 866-865-3087 / 1 647 427-7450 UK: 0800 051-7107 (toll free) Other International: +1 647 427-7450 Conference ID: 99383803 To Access Webcast: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1181319&s=1&k=44AC7C99A26A06D9D46D8A84DDC37B5B Please call/log-in 10 to 15 minutes before the conference call starts. A presentation accompanying the conference call will be available from the Nevsun (www.nevsun.com) and Reservoir (www.reservoirminerals.com) websites. The conference call will be available for replay until June 30, 2016, by calling 1 855-859-2056 / +1 778-371-8506 and entering passcode 99383803. About Nevsun Resources Ltd. Nevsun Resources Ltd. is the 60% owner of the high grade Bisha Mine in Eritrea. Bisha has over 9 years of reserve life, generating revenue from both copper and zinc concentrates containing gold and silver by-products. Nevsun has a strong balance sheet with over US$400 million in cash, no debt and pays a peer leading quarterly dividend. Nevsun is well positioned to grow shareholder value through exploration at Bisha and acquisition of additional mining assets. About Reservoir Minerals Inc. Reservoir Minerals Inc. is an international mineral exploration and development company run by an experienced technical and management team, with a portfolio of precious and base metal exploration properties in Europe and Africa. The Company operates an exploration partnership business model to leverage its expertise through to discovery. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and/or forward-looking information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimated," "potential," "possible" and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions or results "will," "may," "could" or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are statements concerning the Nevsun's and Reservoir's current beliefs, plans and expectations about the future including but not limited to the arrangement and related transactions, Nevsun's commercial production, Bisha's future production of copper and related cash flows, and development of the Timok project and related costs. These statements are by their very nature inherently uncertain. The actual achievements of the combined company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation, the risks that: (i) the conditions to completion of the arrangement will not be satisfied, including approval by Reservoir's and Nevsun's shareholders, court approval and successful exercise by Reservoir of the ROFO; (ii) an event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the arrangement agreement will occur; (iii) the retention of employees and other personnel will be adversely affected by uncertainty surrounding the arrangement; (iv) the companies will be unable to successfully integrate their operations following completion of the arrangement; (v) any of the assumptions in the historical resource estimates turn out to be incorrect, incomplete, or flawed in any respect; (vi) the methodologies and models used to prepare the resource and reserve estimates either underestimate or overestimate the resources or reserves due to hidden or unknown conditions, (vii) exploration activities or the mine operations are disrupted or suspended due to acts of god, internal conflicts in the country of Eritrea or Serbia, unforeseen government actions or other events; (viii) operations will be disrupted due to equipment or power failures, uncertainties in the copper minerology, metallurgical recoveries or concentrate grades, or other or other events; (ix) Nevsun is subjected to any hostile takeover or other unsolicited attempts to acquire control of Nevsun; or * are associated with the speculative nature of exploration activities, periodic interruptions to exploration, failure of drilling, processing and mining equipment, the interpretation of drill results and the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, changes to exploration and project plans and parameters and other risks are more fully described in the Nevsun's Annual Information Form for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, which is incorporated herein by reference. Nevsun's and Reservoir's forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, expectations and opinions of management on the date the statements are made, and neither Nevsun nor Reservoir assume any obligation to update such forward-looking statements in the future, except as required by law. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on Nevsun's or Reservoir's forward-looking statements and the forward-looking information presented here. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements and Nevsun's business can be found in Nevsun's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015, which is available on the Company's website (www.nevsun.com), filed under Nevsun's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on EDGAR (www.sec.gov) under cover of Form 40-F. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements related to Reservoir and its business can be found in Reservoir's Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended November 30, 2015, which is available on the Company's website (www.reservoirminerals.com) and filed under Reservoir's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). Neither TSX Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Additional Information This announcement is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to buy nor the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. Nevsun expects that the securities to be offered in the arrangement will be issued in a transaction exempt from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") pursuant to Section 3(a)(10) of the U.S. Securities Act. SOURCE Nevsun Resources Ltd. WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Alliance for Integrity and Reform of 340B (AIR340B) today released a new report from the Berkeley Research Group (BRG) examining hospitals' compliance with the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) charity care requirements. The report, which expands on a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last year, found large numbers of both 340B and non-340B hospitals not complying with key ACA protections for low-income patients. These protections include rules designed to ensure the lowest income patients are not charged excessive amounts for hospital care and are made aware of a hospital's charity care program. The 340B hospitals included in this assessment generally did not have higher rates of compliance with these rules than other nonprofit hospitals despite 340B hospitals receiving additional financial benefits, totaling almost $4 billion in 2015, through access to discounted medicines. "The 340B program was created to provide a safety net for America's most vulnerable patients, so it is concerning to see 340B hospitals falling short of meeting some of the protections created in the ACA for our poorest and most vulnerable citizens. The protections in the ACA are similar to those the 340B grantees are already meeting, begging the question of whether the current 340B eligibility rules for hospitals are targeting true safety net facilities," said Stephanie Silverman, spokesperson for AIR340B. "Reform is needed to ensure needy patients, not hospitals, are the ones benefiting from this important program." Since the implementation of the ACA, hospitals must self-report on five charity-care requirements, including having written charity and emergency care policies, notifying patients of financial assistance policies and limiting charges for patients who qualify for charity care. For this study, BRG assessed compliance rates between 2012 and 2013 at 1,723 340B and non-340B hospitals and found the following: Compliance with the new ACA charity care requirements improved during this time, but non-compliance with several measures still approaches or exceeds 40 percent of the time for both 340B and non-340B hospitals Only 37 percent of 340B hospitals reduced their charges for patients eligible for charity care in 2013 Only 60 percent of 340B hospitals regularly notified patients of potential charity care eligibility before collecting payments in 2013 This report is further evidence that the current rules of the 340B program are not aligned with program's original goals of helping improve access to medications for patients at safety net facilities. "Given the program's original purpose, AIR340B is concerned that 340B hospitals do not have higher compliance with the current charity care requirements as these checks and balances do more to help the needy patients the program was created to help," Silverman said. The Alliance for Integrity and Reform of 340B (AIR 340B) is a coalition of patient advocacy groups, clinical care providers, and biopharmaceutical innovators and distributors dedicated to reforming and strengthening the 340B program to ensure it directly supports access to outpatient prescription medicines for uninsured or vulnerable patients. www.340Breform.org SOURCE Alliance for Integrity and Reform of 340B (AIR340B) Related Links http://www.340Breform.org COLCHESTER, Vt. and NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- When VIP first acquired Nielsen's Beverage Data Network assets last year, both parties indicated their intent to embark on a long-term business relationship to collaboratively deliver best-in-class data collection, reporting and analytic services with end-to-end coverage across all tiers of beverage alcohol distribution. In support of this commitment, Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) announced today the next steps in its strategic alliance with Vermont Information Processing (VIP), the leading supplier of wholesaler depletion data to the alcohol beverage industry. Beginning May 2016, Nielsen's scan data reports will be available within VIP's iDIG analytics and reporting tool. This integrated tool, which is already deployed to over 16,000 users nationwide will provide iDIG users a one-stop view of VIP collected depletion and operational metrics with Nielsen collected and reported point of sale (POS) data for all brands and items in a category across multiple geographic markets and retailers. "The capability to add Nielsen's scan reporting assets into our iDIG tool is a key enhancement and integrates the insights that our industry relies on the most," said Dan Byrnes, president of VIP. "This addition will allow suppliers and distributors to more easily access market- and account-level Nielsen scan data within a tool that they already use to manage their day-to-day business and will provide enhanced opportunities to analyze depletion alongside scan movement." According to Danny Brager, senior vice president of the beverage alcohol practice at Nielsen, "we're excited about the opportunity for our mutual clients to access data critical to their business within a reporting tool that they are already very familiar with." Nielsen is on a path to measure the Total Consumer, and the expanded reach of our insights through this analytic alliance allows more visibility into what the consumer is buying. We are fully committed to the unique needs of the beverage alcohol space with a continued focus on the expansion of retail measurement coverage both off and on premise, enhanced analytics, richer consumer/shopper insights, and participation and contributions of thought leadership to industry trade groups and at various events throughout the year. Nielsen and VIP both have a long history of providing critical services to the beverage alcohol industry. This announcement is the latest result of a shared commitment between Nielsen and VIP to bring new and coordinated capabilities and analytics to its joint customers in the marketplace to drive even greater efficiencies across all three tiers of the industry. About Nielsen Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers Watch and Buy. Nielsen's Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services across all devices where contentvideo, audio and textis consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry's only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen provides its clients with both world-class measurement, as well as analytics that help improve performance. Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries that cover more than 90% of the world's population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com. ABOUT VIP Vermont Information Processing (VIP) is a privately held company that has developed solutions for the three-tier beverage industry since 1973. VIP collects distributor retail-level sales depletions and daily inventory transactions and is fully integrated in the three-tier distribution system. The combination of data collection, analytical reporting, web applications, and mobile applications provides turnkey solutions for brand owners. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324711LOGO SOURCE Nielsen Related Links http://www.nielsen.com "This investment allows Northstar the opportunity to improve a vacant land site and construct an establishment that ensures the health, safety and well-being of senior residents, while making a positive contribution to the community," said Brian Watson, Founder & CEO of Northstar Commercial Partners. The planned 74 total units (58 assisted living and 16 memory care) should be coming online in Spring 2017. Stapleton is an urban redevelopment of the land that is the former Stapleton International Airport and includes over 19,000 residents, 50 parks, and 38 miles of trails. Stapleton is widely considered to be a successful redevelopment project that supports some of the strongest demographics in the State. Watson explained that, "One of the most important factors to a successful senior living community is hiring the right operator. Northstar is pleased to have teamed with Balfour Senior Living, which is one of the most respected regional operators in Colorado and is well known nationally." The Balfour at Riverfront Park community in Downtown Denver is considered one of the premier senior living facilities in the country and has won eight local and national design awards including a Hospitality Design Magazine Award for "Best Design" in the senior living/health care category. The newly-purchased property provides senior residents and their guests proximity to the Stapleton Town Center, anchored by a King Soopers grocery store and the Quebec Square power center with national retailers including: Walmart Supercenter, The Home Depot, McDonald's, Panera Bread, Office Depot, Ross, Sam's Club, and many other retail stores. "The ability to construct a brand new facility near such extensive retail development offers many options to our residents and their visiting family members," Watson continued. "Stapleton creates an ideal living choice for seniors who are able to make use of these amenities." There are two age restricted, independent living communities in close proximity to the property. "The purchase of this Stapleton property has been and will continue to be an exciting prospect as we now work toward the development stage of the premier senior living community, in hopes of providing real value to local residents in need," Watson concluded. In addition to this project, Northstar is in the process of developing several other senior care and medical facilities throughout the United States. About Northstar Commercial Partners Founded in 2000 by Brian Watson, Northstar Commercial Partners is a privately held commercial real estate investment company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Northstar acquires and operates attractive commercial real estate opportunities throughout the nation and orchestrates all aspects of the investment from initial concept through to completion. Northstar has purchased assets from a multitude of Fortune 500 companies including, but not limited to: Shell Oil Co., GE, Columbia House, Ball Corporation, Loomis, Cargill and a national portfolio of real estate from The Benjamin Moore Paint Co., in addition to many individual assets from other owners, lenders and companies. The company specializes in buying vacant or highly distressed assets and placing them back into productivity to create jobs and opportunities for Americans throughout the Country. To learn more about Northstar's positive community impacts, or to contact them to build a strategic partnership for real estate, please visit www.northstarcp.com or www.brianwatson.us CONTACT: Kyle Forti, 1-303-893-9500, [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359399 SOURCE Northstar Commercial Partners Related Links http://www.northstarcp.com WINTERTHUR, Switzerland, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Noser Engineering AG the Swiss based global information technology consultancy announced today the international Noser Technology Impulse Roadshow series to demonstrate how companies can gain a competitive advantage in challenging industrial environments by implementing innovative business models with the Internet of Things (IoT). (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121203/579904 ) Every day we read about the latest developments, and above all incredible sales estimates, for products and services in the IoT sector. Who has not heard of smart homes, self-organizing supply chains, autonomous drones and smart fitness trackers? And who has not wondered how to implement IoT into their our own products and services? Implementing innovative IoT solutions raises not only complex technical challenges but also strategic questions. "After the hype in 2015, decision-makers are now asking how implementing IoT solutions adds value and how can we profit?" said Geri Moll, CEO Noser Engineering AG. "Strategic considerations and a structured approach are essential. I am pleased that we can give the Swiss industrial work place new impetus with our roadshows and help shape a successful future." "Innovative IoT projects can be challenging, and are often set to fail from the start without a structured approach," said Dr. Michael Eisenring, Business Unit Manager, Embedded Systems, Noser Engineering. "Our 4-step approach balances investment and innovation and helps businesses innovate existing or extended product lines and expand into new business areas with new services." The Noser Technology Impulse Roadshows will feature a keynote presentation from Prof. Dr. Michael Durst, ITONICS GmbH and practical recommendations to strategically implement innovative business models with IoT. The Noser Technology Impulse Roadshows will be held in: Bern, May 23rd, 2016 Lucerne, May 24th, 2016 Zurich Airport, May 25th, 2016 Munich, June 7th, 2016 For more information and to register please visit: http://www.noser.com/nti About Noser Engineering AG: Noser Engineering is a market-leading software engineering provider headquartered in Switzerland. With 170 employees, Noser Engineering has provided tailored solutions for over 30 years to Fortune 500, local, European and multinational companies. Noser Engineering is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (Android), award winning Microsoft ALM consultancy, and recipient of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) "Recognized for Excellence 5 Star" in 2014. Experts in embedded solutions and market leader in Swiss System Testing/QA. Noser Engineering provides IT know-how from consulting and brain sourcing through to solutions and complete projects. Noser Engineering are members of the Noser Group of companies. For more information, please visit: http://www.noser.com. Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Contact: Geri Moll CEO Noser Engineering AG Rudolf-Diesel-Strasse 3 CH-8404 Winterthur +41-52-234-56-36 Direct +41-41-234-56-11 Phone [email protected] SOURCE Noser Engineering AG AUSTIN, Texas, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dr. Kathy Wheeler, PhD, RN, APRN, NP-C, FNAP, FAANP, a nurse practitioner and member of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), recently completed a global mission to vaccinate hundreds of children in Ecuador against life-threatening disease. Her colleague, nurse practitioner and AANP member Dr. Deborah Gray, DNP, ANP-BC, FNP-C, led a delegation of undergraduate and graduate students from Old Dominion University to Guatemala, administering vaccines and delivering healthcare services to hundreds of children in need through ChildFund's community partner, Corazon de los Ninos. In addition to the work of these nurse practitioners, 40 AANP members have committed to advocating for global childhood immunizations through a multi-year partnership with the United Nations Foundation's [email protected] campaign. [email protected]e raises awareness and funding to expand access to lifesaving vaccines for children in developing countries. During World Immunization Week (April 24-30), AANP and [email protected] are calling upon policymakers, government organizations, healthcare providers, and citizens to support and advocate for funding for global vaccines. "As a nurse practitioner, I've always known that immunizations are the best way to keep children and families healthy. Working as a nurse practitioner and [email protected] Champion, means I am doing my part to advocate for healthy children and families," said Dr. Wheeler, who is also an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Gray, a lecturer in the ODU Doctor of Nursing Practice Program at the Old Dominion University School of Nursing in Norfolk, Va., said, "Taking my students to Guatemala was an eye-opening experience, for me and them. We left knowing we made a life-changing impact on hundreds of children." Globally, one in five children lacks access to the vaccines they need to survive. "Vaccines are one of the most cost-effective ways to save and improve the lives of children worldwide," said Devi Thomas, Director, UN Foundation's [email protected] campaign. "By encouraging people to learn about, advocate for, and donate to vaccine programs, we can decrease the 1.5 million annual vaccine-preventable childhood deaths that occur globally." [email protected] Champions, including Wheeler, Gray and 38 other AANP members, support the work of the campaign by leading grassroots education, advocacy and fundraising efforts to strengthen access to childhood vaccines worldwide. "Nurse practitioners emphasize disease prevention in our work with patients. We recognize the importance of these life-saving vaccines, especially to children," said Cindy Cooke, DNP, FNP-C, FAANP, president of AANP. "We are so proud of the important work our [email protected] Champions are doing, and we will continue to play a leading role in increasing awareness and administering vaccines to promote immunization efforts at home and abroad." According to [email protected], around the world a child dies every 20 seconds from a disease that can be prevented by a vaccine and funding for global vaccine programs is less than one percent of the total U.S. budget, but this funding helps save 2.5 million lives every year. Here in the U.S., the federal initiative Vaccines For Children provides vaccines at no cost to at-risk children and has successfully increased immunization rates since its inception in 1994. American Association of Nurse Practitioners The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) is the largest professional membership organization for nurse practitioners (NPs) of all specialties. It represents the interests of more than 205,000 NPs, including more than 68,000 individual members and 200 organizations, providing a unified networking platform and advocating for their role as providers of high-quality, cost-effective, comprehensive, patient-centered and personalized health care. The organization provides legislative leadership at the local, state and national levels, advancing health policy; promoting excellence in practice, education and research; and establishing standards that best serve NP patients and other health care consumers. For more information, visit www.aanp.org. To locate a nurse practitioner in your area, visit www.npfinder.com. About [email protected] [email protected], a campaign of the United Nations Foundation, educates, connects and empowers individuals to champion global vaccines as one of the most effective ways to save the lives of children in developing countries. Go to www.ShotAtLife.org to learn more. About the United Nations Foundation The United Nations Foundation, a public charity, was created in 1998 with entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner's historic $1 billion gift to support UN causes and activities. The UN Foundation builds and implements public/private partnerships to address the world's most pressing problems, and works to broaden support for the UN through advocacy and public outreach. Through campaigns and partnerships, the organization connects people, ideas, and resources to help the UN solve global problems. The campaigns reduce child mortality, empower women and girls, create a new energy future, secure peace and human rights, and promote technology innovation to improve health outcomes. These solutions are helping the UN advance the eight global targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). For more information, visit www.unfoundation.org. Media Contacts: Marichelli Hughes or Will Rijksen SevenTwenty Strategies [email protected] [email protected] 202-715-3906 SOURCE American Association of Nurse Practitioners Related Links http://www.aanp.org SACRAMENTO, Calif., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "Overwhelmed" is how Nurse Navigator Jenny Marais describes the experience of patients and caregivers dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Particularly in the first few days and weeks, patients have far more questions than answers. To address this longstanding issue, Marais has recently published "Navigating Your Cancer Journey: A Handbook for Cancer Patients and Caregivers by an Oncology Nurse Navigator." Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/358984 "Empowered, informed patients generally have a better experience and better outcomes," says Marais. "Nurse navigators are sharing information with patients every day, and advocating for patients with their healthcare team. I decided to bring together the most important pieces of wisdom, so patients and caregivers can have a single resource to answer the basic questions about living with cancer. After all, every choice a cancer patient makes, matters" "Navigating Your Cancer Journey" covers all aspects of the cancer experience in an approachable, conversational way. From nutrition to insurance to dealing with life as a cancer survivor, Marais has called upon her own experience as a nurse navigator to create this important and useful handbook. A diagnosis of cancer is virtually unlike any other; cancer patients typically must be in touch with 5 or more different providers, each representing a different specialty. These providers may not even be based in the same facility. This complexity puts cancer patients who are already struggling with a scary disease at a big disadvantage. Patients go home from appointments with lots of paper, but perhaps little understanding. The job of oncology nurse navigators is to coordinate care; empower patients with information and reminders; and give patients and caregivers more peace of mind. "Navigating Your Cancer Journey" has already earned distinction the book won the Dog Ear Publishing Award of Literary Excellence. "The compassion and understanding with which Marais writes feels like a warm, calming hug from a beloved best friend," remarks Angela Wade, Editor at Dog Ear Publishing. "Her obvious and refreshing belief in the power of the patient takes center stage and is solidified through eloquently penned patient stories that bring home the message: YOU are not alone. Marais is a natural born writer whose descriptions gently move the reader from one vivid landscape to another with ease and grace. We sincerely hope she continues to put pen to paper!" About the Author Jenny Marais RN, BN, OCN obtained her Associate of Nursing Degree in South Africa in 1988 at the age of 21. She has years of experience working with cancer patients. She has a Bachelor's of Nursing Degree through a distance learning program from the University of Dundee in Scotland, and is Oncology Nurse Certified in the USA. She has applied her 27-plus years of nursing experience to the world of Oncology nursing, where she shares her insight into the complexity of cancer care in the USA. Contact: Jenny Marais (530) 632-5965 Email SOURCE Jenny Marais BOULDER, Colo., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Club Industry, a Penton brand, will give its 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award to Annbeth Eschbach, founder of Exhale Enterprises Inc., New York City. Eschbach will receive the award on Oct. 13 at the Club Industry Show, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Eschbach is being honored for being a pioneer in the following ways: Founding a wellbeing brand that revolutionized the industry with a new business model that integrates boutique fitness and spa under one roof. Being first to market 14 years ago with a concept that addresses both mind + bodysomething that everyone in the industry today is working so hard to do. Looking beyond the traditional fitness space to expand the exhale brand into the hospitality space with prestigious partners, and thus creating one of the few national lifestyle brands that can play in three industries: spa, fitness and hospitality. Being the first female president of commercial club trade association IHRSA, opening the door for two more female presidents in an industry that is still male dominated. Contributing to the health and wellness industry by working in all segments of the industry: traditional health clubs, corporate fitness, spas, athletic clubs and then mind/body through exhale. "Annbeth is a pioneer who saw the potential to create a new category in the health and wellness space and who had the expertise and drive to build a successful business out of that idea, a particularly difficult accomplishment in the crowded and competitive New York City market where the brand started," said Pamela Kufahl, director of content for Club Industry. "She is a great example to men and women in this male-dominated industry who want to create a business of their own. We are pleased to honor her accomplishments with this award." Each year, Club Industry gives its Lifetime Achievement Award to someone who has positively affected the health and wellness industry or their community. Eschbach is the second woman to receive the award from Club Industry. The first was Judi Sheppard Missett, the founder of Jazzercize, who received the award in 2005. This is the 14th year Club Industry has given the award. In addition to Missett, some of the other past recipients have included Joe Weider of Weider Publishing; Joe Gold, founder of Gold's Gym and World Gym; Dr. Kenneth Cooper, founder of Cooper Aerobics Center and Jack LaLanne, fitness TV personality. Profiles of these recipients and the other eight recipients can be found here. Registration is open for the Club Industry Show, which will be held Oct. 12-14, 2016, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Register on the website, www.clubindustryshow.com\register. About Exhale Exhale Enterprises is a leading lifestyle brand and operator in the spa + fitness industry. Integrating mind body spa and boutique fitness class programs into a boutique setting, exhale was the first concept to shift away from the traditional gym and day spa orientation to a holistic approach to transformation and wellbeing. Today exhale has grown to one of the hottest brands in the wellbeing space with 29 properties in the US and Caribbean, 1300 associates, a dozen proprietary spa programs, 9 branded boutique fitness class programs, and a large engaged guest base. About Annbeth Eschbach Annbeth Eschbach is the founder and chief executive officer of Exhale Enterprises, Inc. She has masterminded the successful growth of a lifestyle brand that owns a unique position in the market and is widely recognized as revolutionizing the industry. Eschbach developed the company's strategic and operating plan, built a seasoned senior team and infrastructure to support growth, and directs exhale's growth and expansion. Before founding exhale, Eschbach spent 12 years at Wellbridge, then the third-largest national spa and club operator, where she directed the company's spa division and held responsibility for the 50-property portfolio's branding and marketing efforts. She served four years as president and COO for the 10-unit chain of Cardio Fitness Centers in New York and Chicago. A graduate from Northwestern University, Eschbach holds a master's degree in business administration from New York University's Stern School of Business. She served as president of the board of directors of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, a trade association for commercial health clubs throughout the world. About Club Industry Show Club Industry Show, produced by Penton, is the premier annual independent fitness industry event focusing on commercial clubs, non-profit fitness facilities, university rec centers, medical wellness centers, corporate wellness facilities and government fitness centers. The combination of unmatched professional development, strategic business solutions and industry networking make Club Industry a must-attend event for the fitness business professional. 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 Tina Beebe Marketing Manager Club Industry 303-998-9372 [email protected] Pamela Kufahl Director of Content Club Industry 913-967-1815 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359307LOGO SOURCE Penton Related Links http://www.penton.com AUSTIN, Texas, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Preston Corp (OTCPK: PSNP) ("Preston Corporation" "PSNP" or the "Company") today is pleased to announce that it has executed a business arrangement and agreement with Western Mine Development LLC ('Western") of Reno NV. Western has a large portfolio of gold production properties and projects focused in the Western United States. Western will, under the terms of the agreement, bring the Company a selection of viable candidates which meet the Company's mandate for royalty investments. These projects are gold companies requiring funding and capital in exchange for long term royalty contracts on producing or near term producing projects. Western will act as an exclusive agent for facilitating the locating, acquisition and development of gold production assets and royalties, to Preston. Western has presented to Preston a candidate for investment on a royalty basis. The project is gold placer project in California with an existing permit for production. The Company expects to have tangible news out to the public in approximately 10 days. The Company believes the project has the potential to deliver under the royalty agreement a 50% return on investment per annum. About Preston Corp (OTCPK: PSNP) Preston Royalty's mission is to develop the Company into a leading financial service provider, specializing in royalty financing for mining operations with the intent to realize large, continuous profits from ongoing economic interest in the production and future production of mining properties. Preston Royalty is gold focused but will create a diversified portfolio of royalties and streams wherever the value can be found regardless of commodity, geography, revenue type or stage of project. Preston Royalty is not an operator and therefore has none of the associated risks or capital requirements of mine operation. Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, scope and type of consulting services provided by PSNP, use of proceeds, future acquisitions, success of projects, growth and strategic plans. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with petroleum exploration and development stage exploration companies. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Preston Corporation - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Andrew Stack President, C.E.O. To find out more about Preston Corporation (OTCPK: PSNP), visit our website at http://www. prestonroyalty.com +1-512-667-6335 [email protected] SOURCE Preston Corp PRINCETON, N.J. and SAN FRANCISCO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Braeburn Pharmaceuticals announced the presentation of health outcomes data based on the results from the Phase 3 clinical trial of Probuphine, a six month subdermal buprenorphine implant, for clinically stable adults with opioid use disorder. The data was presented Friday at the annual meeting of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP). The AMCP is a national professional association of pharmacists, health care practitioners and others who develop and provide clinical, educational and business management services on behalf of more than 200 million Americans covered by a managed pharmacy benefit. "The objective of this analysis was to examine the societal impact of Probuphine when compared to sublingual buprenorphine in clinically stable adults," said Mike Frost, M.D., medical director, Eagleville Hospital. "The potential effects of the buprenorphine implant versus sublingual buprenorphine were modeled with clinical trial data and inputs drawn from the literature using a 5-state Markov model. The modeled results included a 24% reduction in drug-related deaths and an 80% reduction in rehabilitation services utilization. It also predicted a 98% reduction in accidental pediatric exposure to sublingual buprenorphine." "The benefits seen through this model demonstrate the impact of sustained abstinence during treatment," said Walter Ling, professor of psychiatry and director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP), David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA. "An implantable formulation of buprenorphine could present physicians, patients and society with a new option that mitigates some risks associated with sublingual formulations. Patients may have decreased preoccupation with their ritual of taking medication daily, giving them freedom to focus on other parts of their recovery." "As the opioid epidemic continues to grow, patients and physicians are in desperate need for more treatment options like Probuphine," said Behshad Sheldon, president and CEO, Braeburn Pharmaceuticals. "We will continue to study the potential benefits of Probuphine because we understand the value that additional data like this offers in determining how to best treat patients with this chronic brain disease." About Opioid Use Disorder and Buprenorphine Opioid use disorder is a chronic brain disease and one of the fastest growing public health epidemics in America. In the U.S., 2.5 million people struggle with opioid addiction and, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 78 people die each day from the disease. There is a growing body of evidence that opioid addiction is not a choice or a moral failing, but the result of genetic predisposition combined with environmental factors. Nonetheless, individuals struggling with this disease continue to be stigmatized. Research has also shown that opioid use disorder is best treated with a combination of medication and psychosocial support. The majority of individuals with opioid addiction cannot sustain recovery without long-term outpatient medical treatment. Buprenorphine is a partial opioid agonist, which may help individuals to stop opioid use without experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Buprenorphine is currently only available in oral form and must be taken daily. About Probuphine Probuphine is currently undergoing final review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) following a 12 to 5 vote in January by the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee (PDAC) in favor of approving Probuphine. If approved, Probuphine would be the first long-acting, subdermal buprenorphine implant for the maintenance treatment of opioid addiction. The implant was developed using Titan Pharmaceuticals' proprietary platform technology, ProNeura, a non-biodegradable drug delivery implant designed to provide continuous, long-term steady state levels of medication in the blood. It is administered in a subdermal insertion procedure in a physician's office and removed similarly at the end of the treatment period. For more information about Probuphine, please visit www.braeburnpharmaceuticals.com. About Braeburn Pharmaceuticals Braeburn Pharmaceuticals, an Apple Tree Partners company, is a pill-free pharmaceutical company delivering precision medicine in neuroscience. Long-acting therapeutic treatment options can be essential to improving patient outcomes and facilitating recovery in these conditions, which are often complicated by stigma and present significant public health challenges. Braeburn's investigational product pipeline consists of long-acting implantable and injectable therapies for serious neurological and psychiatric disorders, including opioid addiction, pain, and schizophrenia. Candidates include: Probuphine, a six-month buprenorphine implant under review at the FDA for the treatment of opioid addiction; CAM2038, weekly and monthly subcutaneous injection depot formulations of buprenorphine, being investigated in opioid addiction and pain; a risperidone six-month implant being investigated in schizophrenia; and a novel molecule, ATI-9242, for treatment of schizophrenia. More information on Braeburn, can be found at www.braeburnpharmaceuticals.com. Media: Sherry Feldberg or Rachel Gross MSLGROUP Boston 781-684-0770 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150607/221301LOGO SOURCE Braeburn Pharmaceuticals Related Links http://www.braeburnpharmaceuticals.com BOSTON, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Qatar Airways, the world's third largest air cargo operator, has commenced daily cargo service between Logan International Airport (BOS) in Boston and Hamad International Airport (DOH) in Doha. All cargo is being transported on board the Airbus A350, as part of the airline's daily, non-stop passenger service, which launched on March 16th. Boston becomes the airline's 14th cargo destination in the Americas, with freighters operating to six destinations: Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Mexico. "There is a great deal of excitement surrounding our launch of daily passenger service to Boston," said Qatar Airways Chief Officer Cargo, Ulrich Ogiermann. "But we are equally pleased to report on the continued expansion of our cargo service network. Even as we give Boston travellers access to the reigning Airline of the Year, we will also employ this Airbus A350 to facilitate trade and generate new business growth opportunities in Boston and around the world." While the daily A350 service is expected to transport 40 tons of cargo per week to Boston, the outbound flight to Doha will carry an estimated 90 tons per week to Qatar Airways' network of over 150 destinations around the world, via the award-winning Hamad International Airport, in Doha. The majority of exports will be live lobsters, primarily headed to major Asian markets, including Hanoi, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Singapore, Yangon, Hong Kong and Seoul. In order to preserve the highest quality and extend the shelf life of these and other perishable items, Qatar Airways Cargo employs its QR Fresh airfreight service. This innovative solution maintains optimal temperature for perishable products such as fruits, flowers, vegetables, meat, and fish from their origin airport through to their final destination. Qatar Airways served as the global launch partner for the state-of-the-art Airbus A350. Currently, the airline has eight A350s in service, flying to four different continents, including service along their Doha-Philadelphia route. In addition, Qatar Airways has 80 A350s on order with Airbus, as part of the airline's commitment to maintaining the industry's youngest, most advanced fleet. About Qatar Airways Cargo: Qatar Airways Cargo, the world's third largest international cargo carrier, serves more than 50 exclusive freighter destinations worldwide via its state-of-the-art Doha hub and also delivers freight to more than 150 key business and leisure destinations globally on 176 aircraft. The Qatar Airways Cargo fleet now includes eight Airbus 330, eight Boeing 777 freighters and one Boeing 747-400 freighter. At the Paris Airshow 2015, Qatar Airways placed a firm order for four B777 freighters in addition to the four B777 freighters ordered at the Farnborough Airshow 2014. For more information, visit our homepage www.qrcargo.com or Linkedin For further information contact: Qatar Airways Group, Corporate Communications Department Tel: +974 40222072, Fax: +974 40225350 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.qatarairways.com Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150213/175520LOGO SOURCE Qatar Airways Related Links http://www.qatarairways.com BASKING RIDGE, N.J., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey ("RMANJ"), a world-renowned leader in the field of infertility, today released a new Trends in Infertility 2016 Survey and Report, to coincide with National Infertility Awareness Week taking place from April 24-30. The report examines topics in the news including Zika virus as well as trends regarding infertility and assisted reproductive technology (ART) across the U.S. "With nearly 7 million women and men facing infertility, it's evident from our survey and report that more education is needed at an early stage," said Thomas A. Molinaro, MD, MSCE, FACOG of RMANJ's Eatontown office. When it comes to fertility issues, getting the information at the right time is critical and many women are uninformed. RMANJ's Trends in Infertility 2016 Survey and Report revealed that only one quarter (26%) of women have had conversations with their OB/GYNs about their fertility and nearly half (42%) of women who have actually experienced infertility issues reported that their OB/GYN never even started this conversation with them. "Speaking to a reproductive specialist sooner than later can have a big impact on success for many patients. With new fertility breakthroughs and treatment paradigms unfolding, it's important that patients are equipped with the latest information and resources they need to make good decisions about their care," said Richard Scott, MD, FACOG, ALD/HCLD, laboratory director and a founding partner at RMANJ. Our survey showed that respondents knew there is a timeline when dealing with fertility, but 57 percent believed that a woman's biological clock stops at age 44. While this is a common misconception, a woman's fertility peaks in her twenties and declines rapidly in her mid to late thirties. The report also highlighted a major misconception among individuals seeking out fertility care. They are not making the critical distinction between achieving a pregnancy and having a healthy full term delivery. Respondents reported pregnancy rates (35%) as being more important than delivery rates (22%). The goal of fertility treatment should be a happy, healthy baby and patients should always look for delivery rates and reference organizations such as the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) who publishes these rates annually. Another point uncovered in the survey was that 80 percent of respondents (n=800) still believe the transfer of multiple embryos during IVF is required to maximize chance for success. Data published in 2013, reported a 61 percent singleton delivery rate, a lower preterm delivery rate, lower miscarriage and higher birth weight when comprehensive chromosome screening was used in conjunction with single embryo transfer to select the single best embryo for IVF transfer. Our survey also revealed that respondents are aware of current trends in reproduction. Regarding Zika virus, which is driving headlines around the world, 40 percent of respondents are delaying pregnancy for fear of the impact Zika virus will have. With more media attention to advances in assisted reproductive technology, a majority of respondents, if using IVF, were willing to have embryos genetically tested. "RMANJ's Trends in Infertility 2016 Survey and Report takes a step at understanding how and where conversations around fertility are taking place and highlights where education is needed for individuals to make informed decisions about their family planning," said Barbara Collura, President/CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. The survey was conducted among 1,000 nationally representative U.S. adults ages 18-40 between March 4 and March 11, 2016, using an email invitation and an online survey. Quotas were set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of U.S. adults ages 18-40. The full report and infographic RMANJ published depicting the survey results can be found here. ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE ASSOCIATES OF NEW JERSEY The experts at RMANJ offer IVF delivery rates of 63.2% percent in women under 35 (n=886) and well above the US average*. Since 1999, they have helped bring nearly 40,000 babies to loving families. RMANJ has 22 physicians and nine locations in New Jersey: Basking Ridge, Eatontown, Englewood, Freehold, Hamilton, Morristown, Short Hills, Somerset, West Orange, and a new 10th location in Marlton, NJ opening in July 2016. For more information, please call 973-656-2089 or visit www.rmanj.com. RMANJ pioneered and successfully implemented a cutting-edge technology known as Select Comprehensive Chromosome Screening (SelectCCS) to more accurately detect healthy embryos that has led to successful pregnancies and ultimately healthy babies. SelectCCS is owned and operated by the Foundation for Embryonic Competence (www.feclabs.org), and offers advanced embryo selection with extreme accuracy by detecting and avoiding use of embryos with chromosomal abnormalities prior to transfer and pregnancy. *SART 2014; Cumulative Outcome per Intended Retrieval; Preliminary Chance of Live Birth per Cycle. Please note: A comparison of clinic success rates may not be meaningful because a patient's medical characteristics, treatment approaches and entrance criteria for assisted reproductive technology (ART) may vary from clinic to clinic. Visit www.sart.org to learn more. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151110/285995LOGO SOURCE Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey (RMANJ) Related Links http://www.rmanj.com DUBLIN, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Google Glass startup Augmedix Inc. today revealed a USD 17 million strategic investment from five major healthcare systems. Augmedix will receive investments from U.S. healthcare systems including Sutter Health, Dignity Health, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), TriHealth Inc., plus an unnamed fifth investor. This strategic investment round will enable Augmedix to upscale its Google Glass-powered service and provide it to hospitals, health systems and private clinics across the United States. The electronic medical record / electronic health record market in the U.S. is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 6.53% by 2019, according to a report available from Research and Markets. This strong and stable market will provide plenty of opportunity for Augmedix to further expand its services. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO ) To use Augmedix's services, a doctor simply puts on Google Glass and engages the patient. The patient's electronic health records are accessed and updated in real-time using commands, verbal notes and a remote scribe. The service increases doctor productivity by 30%, is HIPAA-compliant and works with all electronic health records. The global patient portal market is expected to reach a value of USD 2.74 billion by 2020, as forecast in a recent report. The success of Augmedix's service could result in a greater market value, especially if the technology is adopted by health systems in other parts of the world. Another market likely to be influenced by Augmedix's success is the smart augmented reality glasses market, of which Google Glass is a participant. Shipments of augmented reality glasses are expected to surpass 12 million units during the 2015-2020 period, but additional units could be required if Augmedix's service becomes common practice in the U.S. health system. For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the E-Healthcare section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NQQJ. Source: http://www.augmedix.com/press-release-25-04-2016/ About Research and Markets Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Celent, a global research and advisory firm for the financial services industry, announced the winners of its Tenth Model Insurer Awards at its annual Innovation & Insight Day conference held at the Museum of American Finance in New York City on April 13, 2016. Every year, Celent recognizes the effective use of technology by insurers through their implementation of IT programs that epitomize best practices for technology projects in five categories across multiple business functions. This year, Sagicor Life Insurance Company (Sagicor) was recognized by Celent as a 2016 Model Insurer in the Digital and OmniChannel Technologies category for its straight through business processing. Sagicor was recognized for its development and implementation of Accelewriting. Accelewriting is a comprehensive automated new business technology that integrates the product Illustration and eApplication with automated underwriting. Once the illustration has been completed, inputted client and product data automatically populates the majority of the eApplication. The Agent completes the remaining portion of the eApplication and then clicks on the submit button. Accelewriting eliminates the need for an Agent to meet face-to-face with the client, the tele-interview and traditional underwriting requirements such as paramed exams, attending physician's statements and bodily fluid tests. Instead, Accelewriting relies on a robust rules engine utilizing predictive analytic tools and databases in order to provide a final underwriting decision into one of multiple risk classes in as little as one to two minutes. In the near future, Accelewriting will include eDelivery of the policy, completing the entire process end-to-end. Currently, there are three products available through Accelewriting; Sagicor's Sage Term, Sage No Lapse Universal Life and Sage Whole Life. Benefits realized through the implementation of Accelewriting include a substantial increase in the growth of policy submissions for Sagicor without the corresponding increase in additional new business or underwriting staff. Additionally, Sagicor's Agents and Customers benefit from the combination of available higher face amounts, pricing for multiple risk classes and a modern, convenient way to obtain life insurance coverage. Accelewriting provides a quick decision 24/7 to Agents and Customers and replicates getting "the best answer, from the best underwriter, on their best day". Accelewriting continues to gain popularity with Agents and provides a strong value proposition for Sagicor. "The Model Insurer Awards recognize how insurers are using technology to change the face of the industry," said Colleen Risk, Senior Insurance Analyst for Celent. "These insurers should serve as an inspiration to others looking for strong examples of best practice implementation that will have a truly meaningful impact on business results and the industry overall. The entry from Sagicor Life Insurance Company clearly demonstrated this." About Sagicor Sagicor Life Insurance Company ("Sagicor") is a full-service life insurance company that helps clients make wise financial decisions today, to ensure they're protected tomorrow. Sagicor is licensed in 45 State and the District of Columbia and rated "A-" (Excellent) by A.M. Best Company (4th best out of 16 possible ratings). Sagicor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sagicor Financial Corporation, one of the oldest insurance groups in the Americans, with operations in 22 countries mainly in the United States, Central America and the Caribbean. Sagicor is committed to offering customers world-class service with integrity and value. About Celent Celent is a research and advisory firm dedicated to helping financial institutions formulate comprehensive business and technology strategies. Celent publishes reports identifying trends and best practices in financial services technology and conducts consulting engagements for financial institutions looking to use technology to enhance existing business processes or launch new business strategies. With a team of international based analysts. Celent is uniquely positioned to offer strategic advice and market insights on a global basis. Celent is a member of the Oliver Wyman Group, which is part of Marsh & McLennan Companies. For more information about Sagicor Life Insurance Company, visit www.SagicorLifeUSA.com SAGICOR (U.S.) CONTACT INFORMATION James P. Burke (Jim) VP, Corporate Communications (813) 287-1602 extension 6213 [email protected] SOURCE Sagicor Life Insurance Company Related Links http://www.SagicorLifeUSA.com WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Jonathan A. Mason, Sr., International President of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., announced today Sammie L. Walthour has been named International Executive Director of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. "Sammie has a proven track record of successful business leadership," said Mason. "He is a conscientious member of our organization who will be committed to the strategic growth of our 102 years old community service organization. I look forward to working side by side with him as we continue to transform Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc." he added. In his new position, Walthour will oversee the day-to-day operations of the Washington-based fraternity. He will be responsible for providing executive level leadership and management to ensure that the mission and core values of the fraternity are consistently implemented. He will also collaborate with the executive management team to develop and implement plans for the operational infrastructure of systems, processes and personnel designed to accommodate the growth objectives of the fraternity. Walthour has over 24 years of leadership experience in governmental agencies including The Florida Sterling Council, American Society for Quality and National Association of Counties. In his most recent position, he was founding and managing director of the Gadson Group Consultants, LLC, a senior management executive and consultancy - a transformer of underperforming agencies into high performing, sustainable organizations. "The prospect of assisting, facilitating, and supporting the advancement of the principles of Phi Beta Sigma in the role of International Executive Director, is humbling, and I consider it a high honor," remarked Walthour. "I look forward to advancing the rich legacy of the position," he affirmed. About Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. is an international organization comprised of college and professional men, predominantly of African American origin, open from its inception to men of all race, religion, class and national origin. The Fraternity holds as its motto, "Culture for Service and Service for Humanity". With over 175,000 alumni and collegiate members, located in more than 500 chapters throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, the organization, which was established in 1914 on Howard University, has its international headquarters in Washington, DC. It conducts national programs in the areas of Education, Social Action and Bigger & Better Business, a youth mentorship program of Sigma Beta Clubs for young men from 8 to 18, and a Sigma Wellness program in partnership with the American Cancer Society, the March of Dimes and national Centre for Disease Control. To learn more visit www.phibetasigma1914.org Ron Carter (323) 864-7092 - Cell (626) 345-1413 - Off [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. Related Links http://www.phibetasigma1914.org SAN JOSE, Calif., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sanmina Corporation ("Sanmina" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: SANM), a leading integrated manufacturing solutions company, today reported financial results for the second fiscal quarter ended April 2, 2016. Second Quarter Fiscal 2016 Summary Revenue of $1.61 billion GAAP operating margin of 3.8 percent GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.39 Non-GAAP (1) operating margin of 4.1 percent Non-GAAP(1) diluted earnings per share of $0.63 Revenue for the second quarter was $1.61 billion, compared to $1.53 billion in the prior quarter and $1.53 billion for the same period of fiscal 2015. GAAP operating income in the second quarter was $61.1 million or 3.8 percent of revenue, compared to $49.7 million or 3.3 percent of revenue in the second quarter fiscal 2015. GAAP net income in the second quarter was $30.4 million, compared to $14.7 million for the same period a year ago. GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.39, compared to $0.17 in the second quarter of fiscal 2015. Non-GAAP operating income in the second quarter was $65.4 million or 4.1 percent of revenue, compared to $56.6 million or 3.7 percent of revenue in the second quarter fiscal 2015. Non-GAAP net income in the second quarter was $49.3 million, compared to $43.4 million in the same period a year ago. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.63, compared to $0.50 for the same period a year ago. "Solid execution coupled with growth in the majority of our market segments drove improvements in our results for the second quarter. Revenue was up sequentially and year over year, and we achieved our highest earnings per share in over ten years," stated Jure Sola, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sanmina Corporation. "Strong cash generation provides us flexibility to continue to invest in technologies and businesses that further enhance our differentiation in the market and provide industry leading value to our customers. As we further diversify our business, we remain confident our financial results will continue to improve," concluded Sola. Balance Sheet Summary Ending cash and cash equivalents were $407.3 million Cash flow from operations was $142.6 million Repurchased 4.0 million common shares for $74.7 million Inventory turns were 6.5x Cash cycle days were 44.6 days Third Quarter Fiscal 2016 Outlook The following forecast is for the third fiscal quarter ending July 2, 2016. These statements are forward-looking and actual results may differ materially. Revenue between $1.625 billion to $1.675 billion Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share between $0.61 to $0.65 Upcoming Investor and Analyst Day Sanmina will host an Investor and Analyst Day on Thursday, May 26, 2016 in New York. The event will begin at 9:00 a.m. ET and conclude at approximately 1:00 p.m. ET. Jure Sola, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, along with members of the management team will provide a closer look into the Company. Financial analysts and institutional investors who are interested in attending the event should contact Paige Bombino at (408) 964-3610 or email [email protected]. For other interested parties, a simultaneous webcast of the event will be available on the company website at www.sanmina.com, in the investor relations section. Company Conference Call Information Sanmina will hold a conference call regarding financial results for the second quarter fiscal 2016 on Monday, April 25, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. ET (2:00 p.m. PT). The access numbers are: domestic 877-273-6760 and international 706-634-6605. The conference will also be broadcast live over the Internet. You can log on to the live webcast at www.sanmina.com. Additional information in the form of a slide presentation is available by logging onto Sanmina's website at www.sanmina.com. A replay of the conference call will be available for 48-hours. The access numbers are: domestic 855-859-2056 and international 404-537-3406, access code is 92300896. (1)In the commentary set forth above and/or in the financial statements included in this earnings release, we present the following non-GAAP financial measures: operating income, operating margin, net income and diluted earnings per share. In computing each of these non-GAAP financial measures, we exclude charges or gains relating to: stock-based compensation expenses, restructuring costs (including employee severance and benefits costs and charges related to excess facilities and assets), acquisition and integration costs (consisting of costs associated with the acquisition and integration of acquired businesses into our operations), impairment charges for goodwill and other assets, amortization expense and other infrequent or unusual items (including charges associated with distressed customers, litigation settlements, gains and losses on sales of assets and redemptions of debt, discrete tax events and deferred tax changes), to the extent material or which we consider to be of a non-operational nature in the applicable period. See Schedule 1 below for more information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, including the economic substance behind each exclusion, the manner in which management uses non-GAAP measures to conduct and evaluate the business, the material limitations associated with using such measures and the manner in which management compensates for such limitations. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP results contained in this release to their most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in the financial statements contained in this release. Sanmina provides its third quarter fiscal 2016 outlook for earnings per share only on a non-GAAP basis due to the inherent uncertainties associated with forecasting the timing and amount of acquisitions, restructuring activities, asset impairments and other unusual and infrequent items. About Sanmina Sanmina Corporation is a leading integrated manufacturing solutions provider serving the fastest-growing segments of the global Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) market. Recognized as a technology leader, Sanmina provides end-to-end manufacturing solutions, delivering superior quality and support to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) primarily in the communications networks, storage, industrial, defense, medical, energy and industries that include embedded computing technologies such as, point of sale devices, casino gaming and automotive. Sanmina has facilities strategically located in key regions throughout the world. More information regarding the company is available at http://www.sanmina.com. Sanmina Safe Harbor Statement Certain statements contained in this press release, including the Company's outlook for the third quarter fiscal 2016 and expectations for continued improvement in its financial results, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in these statements as a result of a number of factors, including adverse changes to the key markets we target; credit problems experienced by our customers; risks arising from our international operations; competition that could cause us to lose sales; consolidation among our customers and suppliers that could adversely affect our business; and the other factors set forth in the Company's annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The Company is under no obligation to (and expressly disclaims any such obligation to) update or alter any of the forward-looking statements made in this earnings release, the conference call or the Investor Relations section of our website whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless otherwise required by law. Sanmina Corporation Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (in thousands) (GAAP) April 2, October 3, 2016 2015 (Unaudited) ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 407,319 $ 412,253 Accounts receivable, net 998,600 936,952 Inventories 922,704 918,728 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 64,313 55,047 Total current assets 2,392,936 2,322,980 Property, plant and equipment, net 611,799 590,844 Deferred tax assets 476,009 497,605 Other 117,590 81,835 Total assets $ 3,598,334 $ 3,493,264 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 1,104,187 $ 1,035,323 Accrued liabilities 134,670 111,416 Accrued payroll and related benefits 119,964 120,402 Short-term debt 136,430 113,416 Total current liabilities 1,495,251 1,380,557 Long-term liabilities: Long-term debt 437,566 423,949 Other 170,423 168,287 Total long-term liabilities 607,989 592,236 Stockholders' equity 1,495,094 1,520,471 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 3,598,334 $ 3,493,264 Sanmina Corporation Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (in thousands, except per share amounts) (GAAP) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended April 2, March 28, April 2, March 28, 2016 2015 2016 2015 Net sales $ 1,611,174 $ 1,527,530 $ 3,145,888 $ 3,198,692 Cost of sales 1,474,462 1,412,267 2,885,538 2,957,083 Gross profit 136,712 115,263 260,350 241,609 Operating expenses: Selling, general and administrative 63,494 57,023 121,187 116,441 Research and development 9,997 7,559 19,644 15,628 Amortization of intangible assets 918 425 1,610 850 Restructuring costs 1,204 1,740 1,757 4,740 Asset impairments - - 1,000 1,954 Gain on sales of long-lived assets - (1,136) - (1,136) Total operating expenses 75,613 65,611 145,198 138,477 Operating income 61,099 49,652 115,152 103,132 Interest income 159 265 307 554 Interest expense (6,353) (6,197) (12,231) (12,634) Other income (expense), net 489 (365) 271 (1,893) Interest and other, net (5,705) (6,297) (11,653) (13,973) Income before income taxes 55,394 43,355 103,499 89,159 Provision for income taxes 25,033 28,607 46,000 51,755 Net income $ 30,361 $ 14,748 $ 57,499 $ 37,404 Basic income per share $ 0.40 $ 0.18 $ 0.75 $ 0.45 Diluted income per share $ 0.39 $ 0.17 $ 0.72 $ 0.43 Weighted-average shares used in computing per share amounts: Basic 75,477 82,977 76,605 82,762 Diluted 78,525 86,897 79,740 86,797 Sanmina Corporation Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Measures (in thousands, except per share amounts) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended April 2, Jan. 2, March 28, April 2, March 28, 2016 2016 2015 2016 2015 GAAP Operating Income $ 61,099 $ 54,053 $ 49,652 $ 115,152 $ 103,132 GAAP operating margin 3.8% 3.5% 3.3% 3.7% 3.2% Adjustments Stock compensation expense (1) 8,485 4,052 5,488 12,537 11,205 Amortization of intangible assets 2,120 1,360 885 3,480 1,920 Reversal of contingent consideration accrual (2) (7,558) - - (7,558) - Distressed customer charges (3) - - - - 3,102 Restructuring costs 1,204 553 1,740 1,757 4,740 Gain on sales of long-lived assets - - (1,196) - (1,196) Asset impairments - 1,000 - 1,000 1,954 Non-GAAP Operating Income $ 65,350 $ 61,018 $ 56,569 $ 126,368 $ 124,857 Non-GAAP operating margin 4.1% 4.0% 3.7% 4.0% 3.9% GAAP Net Income $ 30,361 $ 27,138 $ 14,748 $ 57,499 $ 37,404 Adjustments: Operating income adjustments (see above) 4,251 6,965 6,917 11,216 21,725 Loss on extinguishment of debt (4) - - - - 2,913 Bargain purchase gain (5) (1,642) - - (1,642) - Litigation settlements (6) - - - - (273) Deferred and non-recurring tax adjustments 16,332 12,707 21,698 29,039 34,726 Non-GAAP Net Income $ 49,302 $ 46,810 $ 43,363 $ 96,112 $ 96,495 GAAP Net Income Per Share: Basic $ 0.40 $ 0.35 $ 0.18 $ 0.75 $ 0.45 Diluted $ 0.39 $ 0.33 $ 0.17 $ 0.72 $ 0.43 Non-GAAP Net Income Per Share: Basic $ 0.65 $ 0.60 $ 0.52 $ 1.25 $ 1.17 Diluted $ 0.63 $ 0.58 $ 0.50 $ 1.21 $ 1.11 Weighted-average shares used in computing per share amounts: Basic 75,477 77,921 82,977 76,605 82,762 Diluted 78,525 81,205 86,897 79,740 86,797 (1) Stock compensation expense was as follows: Three Months Ended Six Months Ended April 2, Jan. 2, March 28, April 2, March 28, 2016 2016 2015 2016 2015 Cost of sales $ 1,932 $ 1,405 $ 1,491 $ 3,337 $ 3,067 Selling, general and administrative 6,422 2,566 3,959 8,988 8,062 Research and development 131 81 38 212 76 Total $ 8,485 $ 4,052 $ 5,488 $ 12,537 $ 11,205 (2) Represents a reduction in an accrual for contingent consideration related to an acquisition completed in a previous period. (3) Relates to inventory and bad debt reserves associated with distressed customers. (4) Represents a loss, including write-off of unamortized debt issuance costs, on debt redeemed, repurchased or otherwise extinguished prior to maturity. (5) Represents a bargain purchase gain recorded in connection with an acquisition. (6) Represents cash received in connection with certain litigation settlements. Schedule 1 The commentary and financial information above includes non-GAAP measures of operating income, operating margin, net income and earnings per share. Management excludes from these measures stock-based compensation, restructuring, acquisition and integration expenses, impairment charges, amortization charges and other infrequent items, to the extent material or which we consider to be of a non-operational nature in the applicable period, and as more fully described below. Management excludes these items principally because such charges are not directly related to the Company's ongoing core business operations. We use such non-GAAP measures in order to (1) make more meaningful period-to-period comparisons of Company's operations, both internally and externally, (2) guide management in assessing the performance of the business, internally allocating resources and making decisions in furtherance of Company's strategic plan, (3) provide investors with a better understanding of how management plans and measures the business and (4) provide investors with a better understanding of the ongoing, core business. The material limitations to management's approach include the fact that the charges and expenses excluded are nonetheless charges required to be recognized under GAAP. Management compensates for these limitations primarily by using GAAP results to obtain a complete picture of the Company's performance and by including a reconciliation of non-GAAP results back to GAAP in its earnings releases. Additional information regarding the economic substance of each exclusion, management's use of the resultant non-GAAP measures, the material limitations of management's approach and management's methods for compensating for such limitations is provided below. Stock-based Compensation Expense, which consists of non-cash charges for the estimated fair value of stock options and unvested restricted stock units granted to employees, is excluded in order to permit more meaningful period-to-period comparisons of the Company's results since the Company grants different amounts and value of stock options in each quarter. In addition, given the fact that competitors grant different amounts and types of equity award and may use different option valuation assumptions, excluding stock-based compensation permits more accurate comparisons of the Company's core results with those of its competitors. Restructuring, Acquisition and Integration Expenses, which consist of severance, lease termination, exit costs and other charges primarily related to closing and consolidating manufacturing facilities and those associated with the acquisition and integration of acquired businesses, are excluded because such charges (1) can be driven by the timing of acquisitions which are difficult to predict, (2) are not directly related to ongoing business results and (3) do not reflect expected future operating expenses. In addition, given the fact that the Company's competitors complete acquisitions and adopt restructuring plans at different times and in different amounts than the Company, excluding these charges permits more accurate comparisons of the Company's core results with those of its competitors. Items excluded by the Company may be different from those excluded by the Company's competitors and restructuring and integration expenses include both cash and non-cash expenses. Cash expenses reduce the Company's liquidity. Therefore, management also reviews GAAP results including these amounts. Impairment Charges, which consist of non-cash charges, are excluded because such charges are non-recurring and do not reduce the Company's liquidity. In addition, given the fact that the Company's competitors may record impairment charges at different times, excluding these charges permits more accurate comparisons of the Company's core results with those of its competitors. Amortization Charges, which consist of non-cash charges impacted by the timing and magnitude of acquisitions of businesses or assets, are also excluded because such charges do not reduce the Company's liquidity. In addition, such charges can be driven by the timing of acquisitions, which is difficult to predict. Excluding these charges permits more accurate comparisons of the Company's core results with those of its competitors because the Company's competitors complete acquisitions at different times and for different amounts than the Company. Other Items, which consist of other infrequent or unusual items (including charges associated with distressed customers, litigation settlements, gains and losses on sales of assets and redemptions of debt, discrete tax events and deferred tax changes), to the extent material or non-operational in nature, are excluded because such items are typically non-recurring, difficult to predict or not directly related to the Company's ongoing core operations. However, items excluded by the Company may be different from those excluded by the Company's competitors. In addition, these expenses include both cash and non-cash expenses. Cash expenses reduce the Company's liquidity. Management compensates for these limitations by reviewing GAAP results including these amounts. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110707/SF30965LOGO SOURCE Sanmina Corporation Related Links http://www.sanmina.com WEINHEIM, Germany, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Equipped with magnetic properties or electric conductivity, seals in the future will be expected to monitor their own wear, measure forces and perform other functions. Freudenberg Sealing Technologies is investigating smart materials that can take seals beyond their actual task of preventing material transfer. Seals are mostly made of elastomers, commonly known as rubber. In its pure form, rubber cannot process signals. But in many cases, signal processing could be an advantage, since seals are often found in central locations in machines and are vital for their functioning. For this reason, researchers at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies are investigating materials that make it possible to use seals as sensors or even actuators, while at the same time not losing sight of the seal's original task. One solution involves integrating a sensor or a microchip into the seal. This makes it possible to equip a seal with intelligence. But the approach has its limits since an integrated component is a foreign body that cannot be allowed to impair the seal's function. As a result, the developers at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies have turned their attention to approaches where the intelligence comes from the material itself. For example, by incorporating special fillers in the elastomer that help impart additional properties (such as magnetism) to the seal, which can even act as a permanent magnet. Another approach is to integrate conductive filler material into the elastomer mixture. In either case, it is crucial for the filler to combine its magnetic or electrical characteristics with high elasticity, good setting behavior, a high tolerance for temperature fluctuations, and good media resistance so it doesn't impair the actual sealing function. The advantage of additional functions can quickly outweigh the added manufacturing costs if the entire value chain is considered. A seal could recognize how worn it is, for instance. This self-monitoring is also known as "condition monitoring." One example: a rod seal composed of a conductive elastomer and an insulating outer layer. The outer layer is the sealing lip in the seal. When an electrical circuit connects the rod and the housing wall, electricity can become a measurable variable. As the rod seal moves back and forth, the sealing lip abrades. If the conductive base material reaches the surface, the electrical circuit between the rod and the housing closes a condition that an LED could signal. Operating costs can be optimized with these kinds of relatively simple solutions. It becomes possible to employ a seal over its entire lifespan since it would not be replaced too soon and the operator avoids the costs associated with the leak damage that may occur when a seal is removed too late. Smart seals make it possible to incorporate functions that go far beyond pure self-monitoring. For example, Freudenberg Sealing Technologies is researching a variety of dynamic sealing elements such as diaphragms, which serve as movement or force sensors, as well as intelligent U-rings, which can indicate the absolute position of pistons and cylinders in construction equipment. This is possible with so-called di-electric elastomers. The approach involves constructing a diaphragm like a sandwich. The two outer layers consist of an electrically conductive elastomer, while the inner layer is made of an electrically insulating elastomer. In physical terms, this creates a capacitor. When the diaphragm moves, both the surface and the distance between the capacitor plates change, which results in a change in capacity. This makes it possible to measure the force acting on a diaphragm. The effect also works in reverse. The elastomer is pressed together if you actively apply a voltage to di-electric elastomers. If you don't just use a single "sandwich" but an entire stack consisting of numerous layers, the elastomer structure could take over the function of a valve. When the electric current is activated, the entire stack is pressed together and the valve opens. When current is no longer applied, the elastomer layers return to a "relaxed" state. Adjustments to the valve could be made on a continuously variable basis. The energy demands are low because the electric current is only needed during the execution of the function. Even if sealing elements of this type are still far from series production, they demonstrate the potential of the technology. The areas of application for smart seals are multifaceted. One advantage is that they can be used in any conceivable medium because their base material is geared to the particular application. But researchers are not just focusing on modified base materials but intelligent coating systems as well. For example, thermochrome coatings designed for temperature measurements can be used at precisely the point where a seal is thermally stressed, for example, in an engine's interior. This is particularly an advantage in places where no conventional sensor could ever be used. In this way, the design of the seal and the selection of its material can be even better adapted to particular applications. Material researchers at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies now want to further develop smart seals in application-oriented customer projects. About Freudenberg Sealing Technologies Freudenberg Sealing Technologies is a leading supplier, development and service partner serving customers in a wide variety of industries, including the automotive industry, civil aviation, mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, the food and pharmaceutical industries, and the agricultural and construction machinery industries. In 2014, Freudenberg Sealing Technologies achieved a turnover of more than EUR 2 billion, and had around 15,000 employees on the payroll. The company belongs to the Freudenberg Group which, with its business areas Seals and Vibration Control Technology, Nonwovens and Filtration, Household Products, and Specialities and Others, generated sales of more than EUR 7 billion in 2014 with approximately 40,000 employees in around 60 countries. SOURCE Freudenberg Sealing Technologies Related Links http://www.fst.com From May 10-11 in Boston, Exponential Manufacturing will bring together 400 of the world's top thinkers and doers to engage in dynamic and forward-looking discussions on the exponential technologies that are breaking down barriers and enabling an incredible DIY movement of makers. Never before has mass manufacturing power been in the hands of individuals and it has created a seismic shift in the way we make, sell, distribute and buy goods. With its growing tech industry, Boston has become an innovation hub for a booming startup scene, and an ideal setting for this event. Join some of the biggest names in the industry as they dive into hot trend topics such as large-scale fabrication in space, synthetic biology, digital fabrication, nanotechnology, big data, and smart sensors and networks. Alongside emcees Peter Diamandis and Salim Ismail, Deloitte's John Hagel will discuss how to handle these major industry shifts, Neil Jacobstein will focus on R&D powered by AI and machine learning, and Other Machine Company's CEO Danielle Applestone will share their learnings from the world of rapid prototyping. These prolific innovators will be joined by Ray Kurzweil (Google), David Roberts (HaloDrop, 1QBit), Marcus Shingles (XPRIZE), Kevin Nolan (GE), Deborah Wince-Smith (Council on Competitiveness), among others. At Exponential Manufacturing you can expect to: Explore the way business accelerates innovation, automates it and deals with the intellectual property issues associated with DIY during "Abundance in the Exponential Era," "The Future of Additive Manufacturing," and "Robotics." Understand how emerging manufacturing techniques will change the world as we know it and push humanity beyond known limits with "Visions from a Near Future," "The Future of Employment," and "Extra-Terrestrial Manufacturing." Experience live demos from MegaBots, GE FirstBuild, TULiP ( MIT innovation lab spinoff) providing a sneak peak at the innovations driving the economies of tomorrow. Exponential Manufacturing is part of the series of Exponential Conferences hosted by Singularity University. The 2016 series also includes: Exponential Finance, Singularity Global Summit and Exponential Medicine. Events are oriented towards early adopters, innovators, forward-thinking entrepreneurs, corporate executives and investors. Exponential Manufacturing is produced with generous support from Deloitte and Caterpillar Platinum Partner of the Singularity University Conference Series and Gold Partner General Electric. Registration, full speaker lineup and working agenda are available at: www.exponential.singularityu.org/manufacturing Press inquiries? Ask questions or register here: www.exponential.singularityu.org/manufacturing/press/ About Singularity University Singularity University is a California benefit corporation with a mission to educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies towards solving humanity's grand challenges. Together with a highly engaged alumni community in over 90 countries, SU is committed to creating positive and sustainable global impact via three core areas: Education, Innovation and Community. Headquartered at NASA's Research Park in the heart of the Silicon Valley, it was founded in 2008 by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. For more information, visit: SingularityU.org. Join us on Facebook and Twitter @SingularityU. Video - http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/Exponential_Manufacturing.mp4 SOURCE Singularity University FREMONT, Calif., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a leading business process services company, announced today its plans to participate in the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) Investor Conference on May 5, 2016 at the Convene Meeting Center in New York. Kevin Murai, President and Chief Executive Officer of SYNNEX Corporation and Chairman of the GTDC is scheduled to participate in the CEO panel: "Digital-Era Drivers and High Fliers" discussion at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on May 5, 2016. Mr. Murai's portion of the panel presentation will be archived on the Investor Relations page of the SYNNEX Corporation website at http://ir.synnex.com. About SYNNEX Corporation SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a Fortune 500 corporation, is a leading business process services company, optimizing supply chains and providing outsourced services focused on customer relationship management. SYNNEX distributes a broad range of information technology systems and products, and also provides systems design and integration solutions. Concentrix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation, offers a portfolio of strategic solutions and end-to-end business services around customer engagement strategy, process optimization, technology innovation, front and back-office automation and business transformation to clients in ten identified industry verticals. Founded in 1980, SYNNEX Corporation operates in 26 countries around the world. Additional information about SYNNEX may be found online at www.synnex.com . Statements in this release that are forward-looking involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual results in future periods to be materially different from any future performance that may be suggested in this release. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release. Copyright 2016 SYNNEX Corporation. All rights reserved. SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo, CONCENTRIX and all other SYNNEX company, product and services names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of SYNNEX Corporation. SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo and CONCENTRIX Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. Other names and marks are the property of their respective owners. SNX-F SOURCE SYNNEX Corporation Related Links http://www.synnex.com MINNETONKA, Minn., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Table Trac, Inc. (OTCQB: TBTC) announced their approval by the Colorado Gaming Commission. The Associated equipment license from the Colorado Gaming Commission will allow Table Trac to distribute its CasinoTrac management system and associated products to commercial casino operators throughout the state. Chad Hoehne, President, CTO and founder of Table Trac, Inc., said, "I want to personally thank the Commission for their professionalism and attention to detail throughout the approval process. Strong commissions make strong gaming markets, and the operators and people of Colorado are well served by their Commission." Chief Executive Officer, Brian Hinchley, went on to add, "I speak for the entire Table Trac team when I say how delighted we are to be licensed in Colorado. Around the world, casinos have gravitated to the CasinoTrac Management System because of our innovations, competitive pricing, and commitment to customer service. We look forward to supplying the Colorado commercial casinos with an alternative that allows them to be more competitive and more profitable." About Table Trac, Inc. Founded in 1995, Table Trac, Inc. designs, develops and sells casino information and management systems. The company has systems installed in North, South, and Central America, as well as the Caribbean. More information is available at http://www.tabletrac.com/. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve numerous risks and uncertainties. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including those set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information: Brian Hinchley Table Trac, Inc. 952-548-8877 SOURCE Table Trac, Inc. Related Links http://www.tabletrac.com The Mountain and OHT began their partnership with the launch of a co-branded College Collection, in 2015. The immediate success of the College Collection led to the creation of a new, unique line of apparel called The Hero Collection. The Hero Collection features bold designs that pay tribute to the brave men and women who selflessly defend our country. A portion of the each shirt sale is donated directly to Operation Hat Trick . Operation Hat Trick generates awareness and support for the recovery of wounded service members and veterans. OHT pursues these goals through the sale of OHT branded merchandise, proceeds of which are distributed to select organizations that support OHT's mission, such as: The Travis Mills Foundation Semper Fi Fund Project Sanctuary Homes for Our Troops MacV Veterans Alliance Veterans Count "I am honored and proud to have worked with The Mountain on the Hero Collection. It is an important collection of artistic pieces that tell the story of those who valiantly serve our country. I don't know when I've been more excited about the launch of something so special. I know it will be a huge success," says OHT Founder and President, Dot Sheehan. The Mountain is your premier source for quality hand-dyed apparel and has a long history of giving back. "Both The Mountain and OHT have roots in New Hampshire, and as such is a natural partnership. OHT is an organization that we are proud to support," says The Mountain's Director of Marketing, Colleen Manzi. To view The Hero Collection, or to purchase a t-shirt and support OHT, visit www.themountain.com. Wholesale customers who are interested in carrying The Hero Collection please visit wholesale.themountain.com. Contact: Amanda Schillinger, 1-877-686-8337 ext. 304, [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359371 SOURCE The Mountain Related Links http://www.themountain.com OSAKA, Japan, April 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd., based in Osaka, and the TOMODACHI Initiative, led by Irene Hirano Inouye, President of the U.S.-Japan Council, which invests in next-generation leaders in the U.S. and Japan, will hold the second TOMODACHI Daiwa House Student Leadership Conference in Dallas, Texas, on April 8-10, 2016. Thirty-four Japanese and U.S. university students have been selected to partake in the three-day program which is designed to mentor and nurture future leaders. Logo - http://prw.kyodonews.jp/prwfile/release/M000427/201604119673/_prw_OI1fl_y9jg4g1w.jpg Daiwa House is a strategic partner of the TOMODACHI Initiative, a public-private partnership between the U.S.-Japan Council and the U.S. Embassy in Japan that invests in the next generation of Japanese and American leaders. The company is helping to sponsor the initiative as a part of its corporate social responsibility activities. The student leadership conference is the second in a series being offered by Daiwa House and TOMODACHI from 2015. The theme for the first conference, which was held in the Silicon Valley, California, in April 2015, focused on entrepreneurship and innovation. The theme of this second conference is "U.S.-Japan Relations in the South: Transforming Communities for the Future." Thomas Schieffer, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, will be the keynote speaker. He will share his experiences as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan and his perspectives on the relationship between the U.S. and Japan in the past, present and future. The program will also include panel discussions where students can learn about building a global career, study the history of Texas and Arkansas, and find out about the local communities in these two states. In addition, they will have the opportunity to further deepen their understanding about U.S.-Japan relations. The goal of these discussions is for students to experience a positive change. The students chosen for the program underwent a rigorous selection process. They were selected from students, including Japanese exchange students, currently enrolled in a college or university in Texas and Arkansas, and who have a profound interest in U.S.-Japan relations. The objective of the program is to offer students an opportunity to obtain the skills required to be an active next-generation leader. It also aims to give students a chance to learn from and network with young professionals and industry leaders in the community. 2nd TOMODACHI Daiwa House Student Leadership Conference Date: April 8-10, 2016 Participants: 34 university students from the states of Texas and Arkansas (including 17 Japanese exchange students) Location: Highland Dallas Hotel, Dallas, Texas Content: The conference theme is "U.S.-Japan Relations in the South Transforming Communities for the Future." The objective is to offer students who are keenly interested in U.S.-Japan relations the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the topic and to learn about career-building, while also having the chance to network with leaders in a variety of sectors. Eligibility: University students who demonstrate an interest and passion for global issues, particularly concerning U.S.-Japan relations; and an interest in networking with other students and professionals, and career-building. Website: http://usjapantomodachi.org/programs-activities/tomodachi-student-leadership-conference-supported-by-daiwa-house/ 1st TOMODACHI Daiwa House Student Leadership Conference The first conference was held in the Silicon Valley, California, on April 10-12, 2015. Thirty U.S. and Japanese university students participated. Masato Watanabe, the Consul General of the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, and John V. Roos, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, were invited as keynote speakers to discuss their experiences and leadership in the front lines of U.S.-Japan diplomacy. The students also participated in communication workshops where they learned effective entrepreneurship and leadership skills. Photo - http://prw.kyodonews.jp/prwfile/release/M000427/201604119673/_prw_OI2fl_cz44Xt68.jpg About the TOMODACHI Initiative The TOMODACHI Initiative is a public-private partnership between the U.S.-Japan Council and the U.S. Embassy in Japan. It was born out of support for Japan's recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake and invests in the next generation of Japanese and American leaders through educational and cultural exchanges as well as leadership programs. The initiative seeks to foster a "TOMODACHI generation" of young U.S. and Japanese leaders who are committed to and engaged in strengthening U.S.-Japan relations, appreciate each other's countries and cultures, and possess the global skills and mindsets needed to contribute to and thrive in a more cooperative, prosperous, and secure world. TOMODACHI Initiative website: http://tomodachi.org/ SOURCE Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd. Respondents to this year's survey philanthropists from four continents, each with more than $5 million in investable assets seek to affect permanent change through their charitable giving. They are focused on creating sustainable outcomes for the organizations benefiting from philanthropy, and are dedicated to using new and innovative ways to accomplish those goals. "Philanthropy and charitable giving are consistently ranked as one of the most important aspects of a client's legacy," said Pierre Ramadier, senior executive vice president and head of the Wealth Management Group at Bank of the West. "In the United States, almost 40 percent of philanthropists plan to leave at least a third of their wealth to charity, an encouraging sign that many Americans are driven to leave the world a better place than it was when they arrived." The Mindset of the American Philanthropist American philanthropists were most motivated by personal experience with the cause at hand (43%) rather than through sense of duty, desire to give back or faith. Almost all countries were focused on "health" as the top area of philanthropic giving (United States at 60%), while Asia as a region chose "environment." Respondents in the United States were more likely to give to local causes (24%) and they saw the best form of charitable collaboration as working with other individual philanthropists (48%), rather than partnering with philanthropic organizations, as is the case in Europe and Asia. More than two in three American philanthropists stand out for their commitment to eradicating societal problems, such as disease (68%). Key Global Findings "Creating Lasting Change" The interviews with philanthropists around the world conducted through the survey illustrate how they strive to make a lasting impact. Some key global findings include: Philanthropists aim high. They seek to build a sustainable program, creating or funding an organization that provides ongoing assistance (70%). They seek to build a sustainable program, creating or funding an organization that provides ongoing assistance (70%). Advisors are necessary to achieve sustainable growth. A majority of philanthropists (61%) believe that advisors are necessary to achieve sustainable results, compared to just 16 percent who say they are not. A majority of philanthropists (61%) believe that advisors are necessary to achieve sustainable results, compared to just 16 percent who say they are not. Sustainable outcomes are not possible without a continuous money flow. Securing steady, ongoing funding is the favored method of financing projects (70%). Securing steady, ongoing funding is the favored method of financing projects (70%). Philanthropy is often an integral part of life. For half of respondents, investments, business activities and lifestyle are aligned with their philanthropic giving. For half of respondents, investments, business activities and lifestyle are aligned with their philanthropic giving. Working with one other philanthropic organization is by far the surest way to achieve a sustainable outcome (54%). The extremes either collaborating with multiple entities (17%) or going solo (26%) are seen as less effective. Philanthropic Trends of Tomorrow Philanthropy is transforming fast, keeping pace with global change. New ways of approaching a cause, generating funding and measuring the results are emerging almost daily. Interviews point to the following future trends: Quantitative approach The corporate approach to managing philanthropy is taking root as data and analytics are becoming more widespread in the world of philanthropy. Through quantitative analysis, philanthropists can assess potential outcomes before grant giving, as well as measure program results. The corporate approach to managing philanthropy is taking root as data and analytics are becoming more widespread in the world of philanthropy. Through quantitative analysis, philanthropists can assess potential outcomes before grant giving, as well as measure program results. Philanthropists are beginning to look more like start-up entrepreneurs As many technology entrepreneurs are switching to philanthropy earlier in their lives, they inject charitable giving with new technologies and the "coolness" factor that entices younger generations to follow their lead. As many technology entrepreneurs are switching to philanthropy earlier in their lives, they inject charitable giving with new technologies and the "coolness" factor that entices younger generations to follow their lead. New ways to fund New ways to raise money, like crowd funding, online auctions, or social media campaigns, have emerged. New ways to raise money, like crowd funding, online auctions, or social media campaigns, have emerged. Impact investing has a bright future Impact investing investing in which achieving social good is as important as financial returns is the most promising approach for creating sustainable outcomes. "We work with our clients every day to help them find imaginative ways to leave a positive mark on their communities and the world at large whether they are making impact investments, funding startups that focus on socially-responsible endeavors, or finding new ways to work with other like-minded philanthropists," concluded Ramadier. BNP Paribas Individual Philanthropy Index Methodology The Individual Philanthropy Index measures and reflects the commitment of philanthropists in four regions Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. The Index is derived from a survey of 457 high net worth individuals in the four regions, each with investable assets valued at $5 million or more, and was conducted by Forbes Insights in 2015, between October and December. This is the fourth edition of the BNP Paribas Individual Philanthropy Index. Interviews were also conducted with philanthropists from around the world to illustrate how they try to ensure they will make a lasting change in terms of creating impact on the ground as well as the longevity of their charitable organization. Bank of the West is committed to providing resources to help high net worth individuals and small business owners succeed by spotlighting industry trends and offering wealth management expertise. To see the breadth of content to help with personal finance and wealth needs, visit the Bank of the West blog Your Wealth channel at blog.bankofthewest.com, where you can learn more about wealth management solutions, and download the latest paper on how wealthy small business owners in any industry can plan for succession. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and information. About Bank of the West Wealth Management Group: Bank of the West Wealth Management provides wealth planning, investment management*, personal banking, philanthropy, and trust services. The group is part of BNP Paribas' global wealth management business of more than 6,300 professionals in 30 countries worldwide with more than $10 billion** in assets under management in the United States and 327 billion ($356 billion) in assets under management globally as of December 31, 2015. About Bank of the West: Bank of the West is a regional financial services company chartered in California and headquartered in San Francisco with $75.7 billion in assets as of December 31, 2015. Founded in 1874, Bank of the West provides a wide range of personal, commercial, wealth management and international banking services through more than 600 offices in 22 states and digital channels. Bank of the West is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, which has a presence in 75 countries with 185,000 employees. https://twitter.com/bankofthewest https://www.facebook.com/BankoftheWest/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bank-of-the-west http://blog.bankofthewest.com/ *Securities and variable annuities are offered through BancWest Investment Services, a registered broker/dealer, Member FINRA/SIPC, and SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Financial Advisors are Registered Representatives of BancWest Investment Services. Fixed annuities/insurance products are offered through BancWest Insurance Agency in California, (License #0C52321), through BancWest Insurance Agency in Utah and through BancWest Investment Services, Inc. in AZ, CO, IA, ID, KS, MN, MO, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, WA, WI, WY, HI, GUAM and CNMI. Advisory Services are offered through BancWest Investment Services, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Bank of the West and its various affiliates and subsidiaries are not tax or legal advisors. BancWest Investment Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of the West and a part of the Wealth Management Group. BancWest Holding Inc. is the holding company for Bank of the West. BancWest Holding Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of BNP Paribas. **Assets under management refers to assets under administration, management, advisement, and on deposit, including assets with our affiliate BancWest Investment Services ("BancWest") as of December 31, 2015. Deposit and loan products offered by Bank of the West, Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender. In South Dakota, Bank of the West operates under the name Bank of the West California. Bank of the West Wealth Management offers products and services through Bank of the West and its various affiliates and subsidiaries. Investment and Insurance products: NOT FDIC INSURED NOT BANK GUARANTEED MAY LOSE VALUE NOT A DEPOSIT NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359000-INFO Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120328/SF78222LOGO-b SOURCE Bank of the West Related Links http://www.bankofthewest.com BOSTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) and a coalition of sanctuaries and chimpanzee experts, filed suit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) in response to its Thursday (April 21) decision to grant Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Yerkes) a permit to export eight endangered chimpanzees (Yerkes' 8) -- Abby, Agatha, Elvira, Faye, Fritz, Lucas, Tara and Georgia -- to Wingham Wildlife Park (Wingham), an unaccredited commercial zoo in Kent, England. FWS's decision is the first of its kind since it granted a petition by NEAVS and others in June, 2015 to afford captive members of the chimpanzee species the full protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). At that announcement, FWS Director Dan Ashe said the failure to treat captive members of the species as "endangered" for decades was a "mistake" and fostered a culture that treated chimpanzees as a "commodity." FWS's recent decision to allow Yerkes to export chimpanzees to England to be on exhibition for profit continues to treat these endangered animals as a commercial "commodity," and is at odds with 27,000+ public comments, the overwhelming majority opposed to the permit, including the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the British & Irish Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, the European Endangered Species Programme, and several African chimpanzee conservation groups, many of whom stood to potentially receive money from Yerkes/Wingham if they had agreed to support the export. The global groundswell of prominent chimpanzee, sanctuary and conservation experts to stop the transfer, includes Dr. Richard Wrangham, Harvard University and Founder of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, who warned FWS that: "If USFW[S] responds to the very important achievement of treating chimpanzees as an endangered species by allowing Yerkes to offload its chimpanzees to a commercial zoo, the system will be undermined." He further explained transfer of the chimps: "would carry grave risks for the survival of chimpanzees and other great apes in the wild [because it would] open the door to similar transfers of apes caught in the wild, being sent to zoos around the world in exchange for a cash transfer." Dr. Richard Leakey, Chairman, Kenya Wildlife Service and United Nations Great Apes Survival Partnership Ambassador strenuously objected, particularly when: "There are currently over 50 chimpanzees already in Europe awaiting space in proper facilities.... and these eight chimpanzees have already been offered permanent asylum in American sanctuaries." Shipping chimpanzees who have endured research use and confinement to be on commercial exhibition at Wingham, which boasts 250,000 visitors a year, is in flagrant contrast to Director Ashe's June 2015 announcement that captive chimpanzees will be afforded, "the highest levels of protections as an endangered species." Wingham has no history of housing chimpanzees, is not part of a chimpanzee species survival program, and is not accredited by any European zoological association. Those working to oppose the export are particularly concerned because Wingham admitted it intends to breed these chimpanzees, but Wingham is not a member of the chimpanzee European Endangered Species Programme, which opposes the export on many grounds. However, baby animals -- especially chimpanzees -- are a valuable draw for Wingham, which stands to make millions of dollars from exhibiting the chimpanzees and their offspring. Breeding any species outside of a regulated species program is a major cause of surplus animals worldwide. Many are euthanized or dumped at substandard facilities. Europe already has dozens of so-called "surplus" chimpanzees in need of placement. The FWS decision is particularly perplexing when five U.S. sanctuaries have made clear their willingness to accept the Yerkes' 8 that would not only allow them to avoid the trauma of a transcontinental transfer, but also mean they could live out their lives for themselves, in a setting that would allow their natural behaviors with their friends and family. The sanctuaries include: Center for Great Apes (Florida); Primate Rescue Center (Kentucky); Chimp Haven (Louisiana); Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest (Washington) -- all of which are U.S. Department of Agriculture licensed, Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries accredited and North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance members. Project Chimps, a new sanctuary in the state of Georgia, will also certainly accept these eight chimpanzees. FWS previously granted Yerkes an export permit in November 2015, but retracted it in response to a lawsuit filed by NEAVS and its coalition. FWS's original decision was premised on Yerkes'/Wingham's promise to provide funding to the Kibale Chimpanzee Project and the Wildlife Conservation Society, in exchange for being allowed to export the chimpanzees. When both organizations refused to be used as leverage, FWS suggested that Yerkes/Wingham donate money to a group that concentrates on women's health and human population in Africa. FWS's new decision relies on that arrangement. In response to FWS's new decision, Theodora Capaldo, NEAVS' CEO, stated, "Rather than heed the advice of conservationists that this export will set a dangerous precedent by informing the world that the U.S. sanctions commercial use of endangered species in exchange for promises of money to third parties, FWS is facilitating private entities' commercial interests in exploiting endangered species." As succinctly stated by April Truitt, Director of Primate Rescue Center, "These animals have suffered enough. They deserve to go to sanctuary." FWS is required to wait 10-days before issuing the permit. NEAVS et al. are represented in the case by Katherine Meyer, of the Washington, D.C. public interest law firm, Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks LLP. Contact: Nancy Finn, Director of Communications (o) 617 523 6020 (c) 781-258-5813 SOURCE NEAVS Related Links http://neavs.org LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) was named the Best Outsourcing Provider to the Sell Side at Waters Technology's Fourth Annual Sell Side Technology Awards, which recognize excellence among third-party technology vendors serving the sell side of the financial services industry. Broadridge provides a leading post-trade processing platform for global banks and broker-dealers. Its securities processing solutions facilitate the automation of straight-through-processing operations, enabling financial institutions to efficiently and cost-effectively consolidate their books and records, gather and service assets under management, manage risk, and focus on their core businesses. The winners, announced at an event on April 21 in New York, are determined by four sell-side CIOs and consultants and four of Waters Technology's senior staff members. "Broadridge is honored to receive this recognition from Waters Technology and the esteemed industry judges," said Michael Alexander, president, Wealth and Capital Markets Solutions at Broadridge. "This award underscores our commitment to helping our clients accelerate growth and deliver real business value by reducing their operational burden. Our post-trade processing capabilities enable clients to streamline operations across asset classes, markets and business entities globally, and transform their operating models to gain operational and cost efficiencies." Broadridge's platform is a global market solution, clearing and settling in over 70 countries. Its multi-currency solutions support real-time trading of equity, fixed income, mutual fund, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivative securities in established and emerging markets. Broadridge technology supports post-trade processing for 60 percent of all U.S. fixed income trading volumes, including 16 of the 22 U.S. primary dealers. In the last year, Broadridge was also named "Best Managed Service for Reference Data" for the third consecutive year from Inside Reference Data; "Best Post-Trade Technology" at HFM European Technology Awards; and was recognized as "Best-of-Breed" for Sell-Side Risk Technology in the 2016 Chartis RiskTech Quadrant for Sell-Side Risk Management Technology Report. 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 in North America, and processes on average $5 trillion in equity and fixed income trades per day. Broadridge employs approximately 7,400 full-time associates in 14 countries. For more information about Broadridge, please visit www.broadridge.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110920/MM71626LOGO SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. Related Links http://www.broadridge.com "Today's veterans volunteered to serve in the military," said Spencer Kympton, president of The Mission Continues. "Upon transition from military service, many are looking to serve again. When we help them find ways to contribute here at home, everyone benefits. Thanks to funding provided by Wounded Warrior Project, our services are expanding, giving many veterans the chance to reconnect with the meaning and purpose they found in the military, making our communities become better places to live, and giving our kids the chance to see what it takes to make a country stronger on the inside." WWP's commitment to fund The Mission Continues builds on the idea of putting the injured veteran's needs first and turning our past VSO competitors into allies by establishing relationships with organizations like Team Rubicon ($9 million) and America's Warrior Partnership, Inc. ($11.5 million), which are designed to dramatically improve services being provided to injured veterans and their families. Through funding provided by WWP, The Mission Continues has been able to establish 30 service platoons in 2014, and 31 in 2015. Service platoons are teams of veteran and civilian volunteers that mobilize together to solve a specific challenge in their community. Over 6,400 platoon members participated in more than 280 service projects in 36 cities nationwide. By the end of 2016, a total of 70 service platoons will be operating thanks to the support of WWP's continued funding. WWP's direct investment in other VSOs allows these exceptional organizations to operate in underserved areas, fulfill a need outside the scope of WWP's direct programs and services, or enhance existing WWP programs with services or support that amplifies our existing work. All organizations that receive funding from WWP must serve WWP Alumni, injured veterans, caregivers, and families at no cost and are expected to provide regular, detailed reporting of their programs' impact. "We understand that no single organization will solve complex societal challenges alone," said Ned Breslin, executive vice president of Partnerships and Programmatic Investments at WWP. "Together, we have a much stronger chance of transforming communities and supporting injured veterans by combining skills and resources. This is precisely what we are doing by funding The Mission Continues." Between 2012 and 2015, WWP devoted nearly $11 million to more than 90 organizations that share the WWP vision of fostering the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation's history. This funding has allowed more than 95,000 wounded veterans, 6,500 family support members, and 3,900 children across the country to access life-changing programs and services. To learn more, visit: https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/grants/grant-recipients.aspx. About Wounded Warrior Project The mission of Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) is to honor and empower Wounded Warriors. The purpose of WWP is to raise awareness and to enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members, to help injured servicemen and women aid and assist each other, and to provide unique, direct programs and services to meet their needs, free of charge. WWP is a national, nonpartisan organization headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. To get involved and learn more, visit woundedwarriorproject.org. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160424/359235 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160424/359236 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160424/359237 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160405/351619LOGO SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project Related Links http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org Participants should dial in to (877) 201-0168, Conference ID# 81001748 or access the live webcast at ir.xogroupinc.com. Ten minutes before the call is scheduled to begin please dial in or access the live webcast on the investor relations area of the Company's website, accessible at http://ir.xogroupinc.com . Following completion of the call, a recorded replay will be available on the Company's investor relations website. Upcoming Conference Schedule XO Group Inc. management is scheduled to present and meet with institutional investors at the following conferences: May 12th - Jefferies 2016 Technology Conference, Miami, FL - Jefferies 2016 Technology Conference, May 26th - B. Riley & Co. 17th Annual Investor Conference, Los Angeles, CA About XO Group Inc. Our mission is to help people navigate and truly enjoy life's biggest moments together. Our multi-platform brands guide couples through transformative life stages - from getting married, to moving in together, to having a baby - and include The Knot (#1 wedding marketplace and planning resource), The Bump (a leading pregnancy and parenting brand), and The Nest (the hip guide for newlywed couples). The Company is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: XOXO) and is headquartered in New York City. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140805/133477 SOURCE XO Group Inc. Related Links http://xogroupinc.com NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Z Capital Partners, L.L.C. ("Z Capital Partners"), the private equity management arm of Z Capital Group, L.L.C., a leading global alternative investment manager focused on opportunistic, value-oriented private equity and credit funds, today announced that it has acquired Twin-Star International, Inc. ("Twin-Star" or the "Company"), the premier designer and manufacturer of electric fireplaces and home furnishings. Headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida, Twin-Star designs, manufactures and markets a broad line of decorative electric fireplaces, heaters, home furnishings and consumer electronics. With a track record of cutting-edge innovation, exceptional product quality and outstanding customer service, the Company has achieved the leading market position in the growing electric fireplace category and is the primary supplier to many retailers across North America. Twin-Star's energy-efficient products are purposefully designed to provide a more economical and environmentally cleaner alternative to traditional wood- and gas-burning fire places and to safely and efficiently heat commercial and residential areas. "As the market leader in the electrical heating and furniture industry, Twin-Star is well-positioned for continued growth and success, and we are excited to welcome the Company into the Z Capital family," said James Zenni, President and Chief Executive Officer of Z Capital. Twin-Star maintains a world-class dedicated supply chain infrastructure in Southern China that provides the Company with a distinct competitive advantage and enables it to consistently ensure the highest quality sourcing, manufacturing and distribution. In addition, Twin-Star prides itself on delivering the safest products in its industry and is at the forefront in innovation with patent-pending fire prevention technology. Safer Plug and Safer Sensor, which are designed to prevent the overheating of electrical products and electrical fires, are integrated into brands like Duraflame, ClassicFlame and PowerHeat. Twin-Star has award-winning designs and has received 19 Platinum awards since 2006 from Awards for Design Excellence. Z Capital plans to leverage its financial strength and expertise to expand Twin-Star's established retail platform into additional channels, including homebuilding, hotels and lodging and commercial markets, as well into new geographies. As Z Capital expands Twin-Star's reach, it will continue to benefit from leveraging the existing dedicated supply chain infrastructure to ensure quality control. Peter Harper, Twin-Star's Co-President and Chief Financial Officer, Marc Sculler, its Co-President, and Andy Bandremer, its Executive Vice President, will continue to oversee daily operations of the Company. "We look forward to working with the Twin-Star team to expand the reach of the Company's best-in-class brands," added Mr. Zenni. "With Twin-Star's dedicated supply chain and track record of outstanding innovation, we are excited about the opportunity to drive growth and enter new markets while continuing to advance cutting-edge technological developments." "We are excited to be part of the Z Capital family," said Mr. Harper. "Z Capital's financial strength, acumen and operational expertise will help Twin-Star continue to enhance and expand our product offerings and better serve our customers while further elevating the outstanding Twin-Star brand." "Z Capital shares Twin-Star's customer-centric approach and commitment to product quality and innovation," said Mr. Sculler. "Z Capital's extensive support will continue to augment and accelerate Twin-Star's market-leading product innovation in both current and new product categories." About Twin-Star Established in 1996, Twin-Star International, Inc. of Delray Beach, FL., is an award-winning manufacturer of home furnishings, stoves, heaters and consumer electronics, combining the latest trends with function and style to create unique products that enhance the lives of their customers. Twin-Star's in-house designers and engineers keep a finger on the pulse of the latest trends and consumer demands, offering the most comprehensive and diversified product lines available. Twin-Star believes it is essential to have product lines that reflect the advanced thinking our designers have considered and executed, providing our customers with quality products and innovative designs. Twin-Star has significant world-renowned brands: ClassicFlame, Duraflame, ChimneyFree, ClassicFlame Pro, Bell'O, Bell'O Digital, PowerHeat, and Safer Socket. For more information, please visit www.twinstarhome.com. About Z Capital Partners Z Capital Partners, L.L.C. is the private equity management arm of Z Capital Group, L.L.C (together with its subsidiaries, "Z Capital"), a leading global alternative investment manager with approximately $2.3 billion of regulatory assets under management with offices in New York, NY; Lake Forest, IL; and Zurich, Switzerland. Z Capital manages opportunistic, value-oriented private equity and credit funds. Its investors include prominent global sovereign wealth funds, endowments, pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, family offices, and other institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. For more information, please visit www.zcap.net. Contact Jonathan Keehner / Aura Reinhard Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher 212-355-4449 SOURCE Z Capital Partners, L.L.C. Related Links http://www.zcap.net Tehran, April 23 : Iran will sell 32 tonnes of heavy water produced in its Arak Reactor to the US, a senior official said on Saturday. Senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) and a US company have signed an agreement on Friday to sell the heavy water. Araqchi said this on the sidelines of a joint commission meeting between Iran and the P5+1 group, namely Britain, China, France, Russia, the US, and Germany, Xinhua reported. The agreement, signed following three months of negotiations, is worth $8.6 million and will be delivered to the US next week, according to the report. The transaction of the heavy water is a part of the nuclear agreement signed last July between Iran and the P5+1 group. Iran has also agreed to ship its supply of enriched uranium to Russia. Dhaka, April 23 : Bangladeshi police suspect the involvement of Islamist radicals in the murder of a university teacher who was hacked to death on Saturday morning. Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, who taught English at the Rajshahi University, was attacked by two unidentified motorcyclists near his residence, bdnews24.com quoted police as saying. "Professor Rezaul (Siddiquee) has been killed in the same way that the bloggers and online activists were slain. That leads to the suspicion that this might be the handiwork of radicals," Rajshahi police chief Shamsudduin said. The police said Siddiquee was attacked while he was on his way to catch a bus for the university campus. Siddiquee used to write and was involved with several cultural organisations. No one, including his family members, were aware of threats that the English professor may have received recently. The motive behind his murder was yet to be ascertained. The recent killings of bloggers and online activists as well as foreigners were pulled off in a similar manner - using sharp weapons and targeting the head or neck. Islamic State (IS) reportedly claimed the killings of the two foreigners - Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella in Dhaka and Japanese national Kunio Hoshi in the northern district of Rangpur. Al-Qaeda militant group in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has reportedly claimed the murder of bloggers. Security officials, however, said local Islamist radicals were behind the murders and that messages from IS and AQIS were to cover the trial and confuse investigations. Two years ago, another Rajshahi University teacher Shafiul Islam was similarly murdered. Though his murder was claimed by Islamist radicals police later ruled it out saying it was related to a personal rivalry. There have also been attacks on members of religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. United Nations, April 25 : The UN Security Council on Sunday "strongly" condemned on Saturday's firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile by North Korea. "This incident constituted yet another serious violation by the DPRK of United Nations Security Council resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013) and 2270 (2016)," the Security Council said in a statement issued to the press here. "The members of the Security Council emphasized that the DPRK's development and testing of new ballistic missile capabilities, even if launches are failures, is clearly prohibited by these resolutions." Pyongyang announced it has conducted a successful underwater test-fire of strategic submarine ballistic missile and the country' s top leader Kim Jong Un guided the test-fire, the official news agency KCNA reported Sunday. The test-fire aimed to "confirm the stability of the underwater ballistic launching system in the maximum depth of waters, flying kinetic feature under the vertical flight system of the ballistic missile powered by the newly developed high-power solid fuel engine, the reliability of the phased heat separation and the working accuracy of nuclear detonating device of the warhead." Islamabad, April 25 : Pakistan NatioAnal Assembly's Standing CoAAmAAAmittee on Foreign Affairs will be briefed on Monday on "activities of India's intelligence agency in Pakistan", a media report said. Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz is likely to brief the committee, headed by Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, on the issue during an in-camera meeting, Dawn reported. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had briefed the Senate Defence Committee earlier this month and Senate last week on the issue, the daily said. The Inter-Services Public Relations released on March 29 a "confessional video statement of the arrested Indian spy" in which he had admitted to fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi. In his confessional statement, the RAW agent had stated that his mission in Pakistan was to hold meetings with Baloch insurgents and carry out subversive activities, the daily added. London, April 25 : Fancy a device -- dubbed "Rolls Royce of smartphones -- thatwill set you back by nearly $10,000 (over Rs.66 lakh)? The "most advanced mobile device with highest privacy settings" is not being built in the US or China but in a quite corner in Israel. Called "Solarin," the high-end smartphone is set to be rolled out May-end by Sirin Labs, a Tel Aviv-based startup that recently raised $72 million to make what it bills as the "Rolls-Royce of smartphones", technology website venturebeat.com reported. According to Sirin Labs, it was to "create the most advanced mobile device that combined the highest privacy settings, operated faster than any other phone, built with the best materials from around the world." The company's first smartphone may be launched at a dedicated retail store in London - "the natural home of the Sirin Labs' customer," according to the company. The luxury smartphone is not new. In 2006, Nokia launched a $310,000 "Signature Cobra" device in 2006 and the $5,000 "Constellation" smartphone in 2011. In 2012, Nokia dropped luxury-phone brand maker Vertu. After leaving Nokia, Vertu brought its first Android device "Vertu Ti" to market. According to media reports, the smartphone was priced at a whopping Rs.6,49,990 in India. It has dual-core 1.7GHz processor along with 1GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. According to Vertu, its smartphones have 184 individual parts. The body is made by Grade 5 titanium, and has a set of Bang & Olufsen stereo speakers. The sapphire crystal renders the screen virtually scratch-proof and it is tested to be four times stronger than other smartphones in terms of impact resistance, it had claimed. Vertu was later acquired from Swedish private equity group EQT by a consortium of Chinese investors. According to Sirin Labs, its high-end device will first go on sale on its e-commerce site and the firm plans to open additional retail stores across Europe, North America and Asia soon. Kozhikode (Kerala), April 25 : Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Monday hit back at CPI-M politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan who has alleged that there is a secret tie-up between the Congress-led UDF and the BJP-RSS in Kerala for the upcoming assembly polls. Addressing reporters here, Chandy, who is touring the northern districts of the state as part of the election campaign, said the Congress has never ever tied up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, while the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has done so. "I am surprised that Vijayan is making baseless allegations about this, and who does not know that it's being done purposefully to appease the minority community (Muslims) to get a few votes," said Chandy. Elaborating on the tie-up that the CPI-M in Kerala had with the erstwhile Jana Sangh, Chandy said "Soon after the lifting of Emergency in 1977, we saw that Vijayan contested the assembly polls and so did K.G. Marar, the Jana Sangh leader". "They shared the stage together and a tie-up was there between the two parties. They said they joined hands because of the Emergency, but the elections were held after lifting of the Emergency, so that does not hold good to substantiate their tie-up. And instead they are blaming us," said Chandy. Chandy pointed out that during the Bihar assembly polls last year, the CPI-M had played truant. "The CPI-M has a blind opposition to (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi; otherwise they would have joined the grand alliance in Bihar. Instead they contested separately, and it helped the BJP to win an additional 11 seats," said Chandy. "Vijayan should now come clear on his allegations that I had talks with the BJP/RSS," said Chandy. In Kerala the principle poll battle is between the traditional rivals - the UDF and the CPI-M led LDF, while the BJP is yet to open its account in the 140-member Kerala assembly. During the 2011 assembly polls, the BJP finished second in just three constituencies while it was pushed to a distant third in more than 100 constituencies. With the BJP increasing its vote share gradually over the years from single digit in the 2006 assembly polls to double digits in the last local body elections, the traditional rival fronts are yet to come to terms on which among them is going to benefit. State BJP president, Kummanem Rajasekheran on Monday lashed out at both fronts and said the CPI-M and Congress are playing a double game to fool the people. "In West Bengal the Congress and CPI-M are hand in glove, while they are here to fool the people. They fight each other in the open but on the sly they join hands together to see that they defeat the BJP here," said Rajasekheran in a press release. New Delhi, April 25 : A mobile application to facilitate daily maintenance of government schools in Delhi was launched on Monday at the Thyagaraj Stadium here by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia. The mobile app will be used by school estate managers to file complaints and inspection reports on the day-to-day maintenance of school infrastructure. "The app will be available with each estate manager who will conduct school inspection daily before 9 a.m. and report problems, if any, to the person concerned. They will then file the Action Taken Report via the mobile app to the directorate of education and the education minister by 11 a.m. everyday," Atishi Marlena, advisor to the education minister, said. She said the app will be made available to the public after three months to enable them keep track of schools on real-time basis. The estate managers are appointed by school principals for the upkeep of the school infrastructure like buildings, sanitation, safety and security. The Delhi government cleared the proposal to hire estate managers after the principals complained that they were not able to focus on educational matters due to duties of school maintenance as well. "A school principal is supposed to provide academic leadership but he was pre-occupied with other works. Therefore, the government felt that the principals needed to be freed of daily upkeep and maintenance work and gave them the powers to hire estate managers on their own," Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, said. He clarified that the principals would be finally responsible for the maintenance of school infrastructure. Estate managers have been appointed in 650 schools so far and whereas the remaining schools will be covered in the next two to three months. Some estate managers were using the app for the last five weeks on a trial basis, during which 7,320 complaints ranging from sanitation to daily maintenance were resolved. The mobile app has been developed for free by a Bangalore-based IT company, Mindtree. Meanwhile, Arvind Kejriwal reiterated his government's commitment to bring government schools on par with private ones. Mumbai, April 25 : The Bombay High Court on Monday granted anticipatory bail to actor-producer Rahul Raj Singh, accused of abetting the suicide of his girlfriend, television actress Pratyusha Banerjee. Justice Mridula Bhatkar also heard a three-and-half minute audio clip of the last telephonic conversation between Rahul Raj and Pratyusha, an hour before she hanged herself at her suburban home on April 1. Granting anticipatory bail, Justice Bhatkar observed that there was no prima facie evidence to show that the accused "instigated or intended" the suicide. She was hearing an application filed by Rahul Raj seeking pre-arrest bail after the sessions court rejected his plea. The court directed Rahul Raj to appear three times a week for two weeks at the Bangur Nagar police station, which is investigating the case. Justice Bhatkar further observed that from witness statements, it was clear that harassment and disputes existed between them -- Rahul Raj and Pratyusha -- but there was nothing prima facie on record to show abetment. She said harassment or dispute could be a reason for a person to dislike the other person and take steps to end his/her life, but for proving the abetment, there should be evidence to show instigation, provocation and intention. The court ruled that after perusing all the facts in the case, police could investigate it without any custodial interrogation of the accused (Rahul Raj). Arguing for pre-arrest bail, Rahul Raj's lawyer Abaad Ponda said both he and Pratyusha were happy with each other and had partied together the night before she committed suicide. That day (April 1) around 3.30 p.m., Rahul Raj had gone out to get lunch. Pratyusha called him at 3.43 p.m. and he rebuked her for drinking during the day, and said he would return home soon. He also cited the autopsy report which indicates that Pratyusha committed suicide. Famed for her role of the adult Anandi in tele-serial "Balika Vadhu", Pratyusha was found hanging in her Goregaon flat by Rahul Raj on the evening of April 1. Two days later, following a complaint by her parents, Rahul Raj was charged with abetment to suicide and other charges by police. New Delhi, April 25 : Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday met representatives from industries related to defence, and discussed the concept of 'strategic partners' as decided by the government, an official said. The meeting was "very positive" and representatives from the industry were explained the concept of strategic partners, said the defence ministry official. "The view of the representatives from the industries was heard, and it was felt that there is a need to have more meetings," the official said. Such meetings will be held over the next 45 days, and the defence minister will attend all of them. "Once the meetings are done with, a final action plan will be prepared," said the official who did not want to be named. The representatives included those from industrial chambers CII, Ficci, Assocham, PHD Chambers of Commerce and also from small and medium enterprises. The meeting comes after reservations were expressed over the concept which calls for identifying one or two partners in key defence manufacturing fields. After a report from the Dhirendra Singh committee that suggested finding strategic partners for high-end defence production, a task force was constituted by the defence ministry under former DRDO chief V.K. Aatre. The committee's report has been submitted, and it has categorised the sectors into two groups. The first group includes aircraft, helicopters, aero engines, submarines, warships, guns, including artillery guns, and armoured vehicles including tanks, and it has been suggested that only one partner should be finalised for these. The second group includes metallic material and alloys, non-metallic material, including composites and polymers, and ammunition including smart ammunition, for which the Task Force said two partners can be identified. New Delhi, April 25 : The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the city government to hold a meeting within a week with representatives of app-based taxi aggregators Ola and Uber to ascertain if they were interested in getting licence from the government. The Delhi government informed the court through an affidavit that "the alleged unlicensed aggregators, Ola and Uber, are operating illegally as their applications for licence were rejected by the transport department (on June 28, 2015)". Justice J.R. Midha asked the Delhi government to also include in the meeting another public transport service provider which offers autorickshaw service through an app called 'Jugnoo'. The court was hearing a plea filed by Magic Sewa Pvt. Ltd., a radio taxi service operator, alleging that Ola and Uber were overcharging and arbitrarily applying surge rates during the odd-even traffic scheme. It claimed that Ola and Uber were rampantly flouting the government's notification fixing the fares of economy taxis at Rs.12.5 per km, as they were actually charging Rs.40-50 per km in the name of surge pricing. The court sought a status report from the government on the meeting by May 10. New Delhi, April 25 : Parliament on Monday passed a bill amending the gurdwara act, paving the way to bar Sehajdhari or unbaptised Sikhs from voting in elections to the community's religious bodies, including the powerful SGPC, with the Lok Sabha's nod to the measure after a heated debate. "SGPC office-bearers and members have been demanding that those who are not Sikhs should not be given the voting rights (in elections to elect members of the board and committees constituted under the 1925 act). The SPGC general assembly in 2001 passed a resolution on the issue," Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in the Lok Sabha after the debate involving Akali Dal, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party members. The Sikh Gurdwara (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was approved unanimously after Congress members, mostly from Punjab, did not press for amendments. It had been passed by the Rajya Sabha on March 16. In Monday's debate, Congress and AAP members alleged the law's passage will further increase the control of the Akali leadership on the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee, called the "mini-parliament" of the Sikhs. Terming it partisan, Congress' Ravneet Singh Bittu said the "Sikh Gurdwaras Act should now be renamed as the Badal Gurdwara Act". In response, Akali members told the Congress not to play politics on a sensitive matter. Responding to members' concerns, Rajnath Singh said the bill was necessitated following a Punjab and Haryana High Court directive and requested the members to pass the bill unanimously, like the Rajya Sabha. During the discussion, acrimonious scenes were repeatedly witnessed as Akali members, led by Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, exchanged heated words with Congress and AAP members. "This is a bill about the Sikhs," she said, adding: "It is for the Sikhs to decide who should vote for their gurdwaras and who should not. If anybody has an objection, I do not think non-Sikhs are in a position that they should decide who is a Sikh and who is not." She was repeatedly countered by Congress members, including Jalandhar MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary, who said the Akali leadership had maintained a "monopolistic" control over the SGPC, and the bill will deprive over 70 lakh people, who also believe in Sikhism, from participating in its management. He was supported by AAP's Bhagwant Mann, member from Sangrur, who argued with Harsimrat Badal more than once, saying he vehemently opposed the bill which will only tighten Akali Dal's as also the Badal family's control over the Sikh body. "Inhone theka le rakha hai dharam ka, gurdware ka (They have usurped the right to speak on Sikh religious matters)," said Mann, who also clashed with Akali Dal's Prem Singh Chandumajra. At one point, Biju Janata Dal's Tathagatha Satpathy stood up in support of the bill but hastened to add that any attempt being made to create exclusivity and divisions among communities was unwarranted. Terming Harsimrat Badal a valiant debater, he said: "I am surrendering before her", leading to the house erupting in laughter, while Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy did his best more than once to cool tempers. The amendment comes after a government notification on October 8, 2003, seeking to bar Sehajdhari Sikhs from voting in SGPC and gurdwara management committee elections as allowed to them in a 1944 exception, was quashed on December 201, 2011 by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which said that only parliament is competent to decide on the act's amendment. Following Sikhism but without being 'Amritdharis' or baptised or refraining from cutting their hair and trimming their beards, Sehajdhari Sikhs are those born in Sikh, Hindu or families professing other religions, but follow the Guru Granth Sahib's teachings, can perform ceremonies according to Sikh rites, do not consume tobacco or halal meat, and have not been excommunicated for religious transgressions. Hyderabad, April 25 : Indo-UK Institute of Healthcare (IUIH) has come forward to set up 1,000-bed multi-speciality hospital here, it was announced on Monday. A delegation from IUIH led by its chairman Mike Parker called on Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who assured all help from the government to set up the hospital, according to a statement from the chief minister's office. This will be one of the 11 institutes of health planned by IUIH, a consortium of Indian and British promoters. Rao assured of allocating land near Outer Ring Road (ORR) for the facility. An MoU for the project will be signed after identifying the land. The hospital will be set up with foreign direct investment and it will have the world-class infrastructure. The delegation included UIH CEO Ajay Ranjan and British Deputy High Commissioner in India, Mike Nithavriankais. Last year, Healthcare UK, a joint initiative of the Department of Health (DH), UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and NHS England, had announced supporting Indo-UK Healthcare, a consortium of UK and India-based promoters to develop a chain of 11 Indo-UK Institutes of Health across India. This was announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Britain in November last year. An agreement was also signed on the occasion to set up first institute in New Chandigarh. These institutes are expected to bring 1 billion pounds investment into India's healthcare system, accompanied by strategic clinical and training partnerships with Britain's finest NHS organisation, universities and private sector companies. New Delhi, April 25 : India's oil imports from the volatile Middle East region rose to 59 percent in the first 11 months of the last fiscal, reversing a previous decline, parliament was told on Monday. Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told the Lok Sabha in a written reply that India imported 109.09 million tonnes (MT) of crude from 10 countries in the Middle East between April 2015 and February 2016, which was 59.22 percent of the total oil imports during the period. In fiscal 2014-15, India had imported 109.88 MT, or 58 percent, of its total oil need of 189.44 MT, from the Middle East. The increase was mainly on account of the rise in imports from Iraq, which saw the biggest jump from around 24.5 MT in each of the past three years, to 32.97 MT during April-February 2015-16. Pradhan said Saudi Arabia continues to remain India's principal crude oil supplier, selling 37.10 MT in April-February period of the last financial year, which was an increase over the 35 MT supplied in 2014-15. Iran supplied 10.58 MT of oil in the first 11 months of 2015-16, as against 10.95 million tonnes in entire 2014-15. The minister also said Africa overtook South America to become the second biggest source of crude oil supplies during the period in question, supplying 35.69 million tonnes of oil, over the 28.10 MT imported from South America. In 2014-15 Africa had supplied 33.05 MT. Pradhan also informed parliament that India imported nearly all of its 8.16 million tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supplies during the April-February of last fiscal from the Middle East. Qatar was the largest supplier with 3.163 MT, followed by Saudi Arabia (2.24 MT), the UAE (1.49 MT) and Kuwait (848,000 tonnes). Mysuru, April 25 : Wodeyar dynasty's adopted prince Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja will soon tie the knot with his fiancee Trishika Kumari Singh, daughter of the Dungarpur royal family of Harshavardhan Singh and Maheshri Kumari of Rajasthan. "The wedding will be solemnised on June 27 at the Amba Vilas Palace in the city as per the Hindu tradition in the presence of elders and relatives from both royal families," a palace official told IANS here on Monday. Yaduveer, 23, was adopted by mother-queen Pramoda Devi, widow of Srikanta Datta Wodeyar, the last scion of the dynasty, on February 23, 2015. He was crowned as the 27th prince of Mysuru on May 28, 2015 in the palace, about 150 km from Bengaluru. An arts graduate from Massachusetts University in Boston, Yaduveer was engaged to Trishkika on his return from the US late last year. "The marriage ceremonies will be conducted at the kalyana mantap in the palace, where the Wodeyar family weddings and other auspicious events like Yaduveer's adoption and coronation were held last year," the official said. Pramoda Devi fixed the date and auspicious time for tying the knot in consultation with 'rajgurus' and palace priests. A grand reception will also be held in the palace a day after the wedding on May 28. Yaduveer is the grandson of princess Gayathri Devi, eldest sister of Srikantadatta and eldest daughter of the last maharaja (king) Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar. The Wodeyar dynasty ruled the erstwhile Mysuru kingdom for over seven centuries from 1399 to 1950. Mumbai, April 25 : Actress Radhika Apte, who is working with superstar Rajinikanth in the Tamil film "Kabali", said that he is very inspiring and that there is no one else like him. "Who wouldn't enjoy working with Rajinikanth? I enjoyed a lot. I think it was one of the best experiences of my life, because it was Rajini sir. It was very inspiring, he's such a wonderful man, there is no one like him," said Radhika about her experiences at the trailer launch of her film "Phobia". She declined to answer if she was doing any action in the film. In "Kabali", directed by Pa. Ranjith, Rajinikanth reportedly plays a character based on a real-life don and Radhika plays his wife. The final schedule was shot in Malaysia recently. "Malaysia shoot was very good, there was a lot of heat, shooting is over and dubbing is going on. It will release soon," she added. In her Hindi film "Phobia", she plays an agoraphobic, a person who has a phobia of open spaces, and doesn't want to step out of the house. But certain incidences in the house make her want to leave the house, making her battle with the phobia. About the psychological thriller, she said: "It was one of the most difficult films to do, there was a lot of research that went into it. It is an actually disorder, it has its own symptoms, it is biological. Panic attack comes like how someone develops fever. You can't do anything about it, because it naturally comes to you. "I think there is a very thin balance when you're trying to say a few things and also when we had to make it gripping and edgy. It used to be lots of discussions on the sets everyday. We shot it in a very few days, so it was very hectic. Emotionally and physically it was stressful, but I had a great time playing it." The film is directed by "Ragini MMS" director Pawan Kirpalani. Tehran, April 26 : The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) was in talks with the Russian officials to sell parts of its heavy water to its northern neighbour, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari announced here on Monday. According to the decisions made by the AEOI, Iran will sell 70 metric tons, out of its existing 200 metric tons of heavy water reserves, in the international market, Jaber Ansari said. This has been recognized in the nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers, he said, adding that Iran's presence in the international markets pertaining to heavy water transactions is part of the country's plan for peaceful use of atomic technology. Iran had already made technical negotiations with the United States and reached an agreement for selling its heavy water and is currently engaged in the same negotiations with the Russians, the spokesman said. On Saturday, senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi confirmed that the AEOI and a US company have signed an agreement to sell 32 metric tons of heavy water produced in its Arak Reactor to the American side. The agreement, signed following three months of negotiations, was worth $8.6 million and would be delivered to the American side in the following week, Araqchi said on the sidelines of a joint commission meeting between Iran and the P5+1 group, namely Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany. The transaction of the heavy water was a part of the nuclear agreement signed last July between Iran and the P5+1 group. Iran has also agreed to ship its supply of enriched uranium to Russia. Ottawa, April 26 : Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday condemned heinous killing of Canadian John Ridsdel after he was held hostage for more than six months in the Philippines. "This was an act of cold-blooded murder, and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Justin Trudeau said a statement issued via his office. Trudeau is currently visiting Alberta, Canada, Xinhua reported. Trudeau said the Canadian government will work with the Philippine government to bring those responsible to justice. He also offered deepest condolences to the family and friends of Ridsdel. Ridsdel, 68, was the former chief operating officer of mining company TVI Resource Development Philippines Inc., a subsidiary of Canada's TVI Pacific. He was captured along with three other people, including a Filipino woman, by gunmen in September 2015 from a marina on southern Samal Island. The kidnappers reportedly demanded 300 million pesos (some 6 million U.S dollars) for each of the foreign hostages, who were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungle-clad province where the militants are believed to be holding several hostages. Apart from Ridsdel, three other hostages included Robert Hall, a fellow Canadian, held by the Abu Sayyaf militants, who had issued a ransom deadline that lapsed earlier Monday morning. There's no immediate news about the other three being held hostage. Bucharest, April 26 : Two F-22 Raptor fighters of the US Air Force arrived on Monday at an air base near the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania. The first presence in Romania of these fifth-generation fighter aircraft, within Operation Atlantic Resolve, comes as part of NATO' s collective security and regional stability, local media reported. "F-22 planes will be here only today, but will remain in Europe for a few months," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the U.S. 3rd Air Force commander, said during a press conference at the air base. The presence of F-22 fighters in Romania shows the level of strategic partnership reached between the two countries, as well as the measures established to raise operational capacity of NATO air forces, said General Nicolae Ciuca, Romania's Chief of General Staff. Istation: 2016 BESSIE Award Winner Istation is honored to be recognized as one of the best education software options available Today, the ComputED Gazette awarded Istation, a comprehensive e-learning program, three Best Educational Software Awards (BESSIE). The program was chosen as the winner for Early Learning Reading, Early Elementary Reading Skills, and Multi-Level Reading Skills. Istation is honored to be recognized as one of the best education software options available, said Richard Collins, Istation Chairman and CEO. We are committed to educational excellence and work diligently to improve the Istation product year after year. We are proud of Istation Reading and its ability to help all students from pre-K to 12th grade achieve academic growth, and we thank the ComputED Gazette for each of these three awards. Now in their 22nd year, the ComputED Gazettes Best Educational Software Awards target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that provide parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence. Submissions are judged on academic content, technical merit, subject approach and system management. A ComputED Gazette review of Istation states, Complying with state standards as well as Common Core, Istation uses a computer-adaptive test and ISIP (Istations Indicators of Progress) to deliver content tailored to each individual students skill level in the four critical domains of reading: Word Analysis, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. Building on those skills, Istation provides three tiers of instruction and does so with engaging, compelling content and lots of guided practice in a format even struggling readers and ELL students will find appealing. The review continues, Teachers will like the available resources which include directed lessons, bibliographies for each lesson, online interactive books and, best of all, student scores and placements which are completed immediately, freeing up more time for actual teaching. If improving reading skills is in your wheelhouse, youll want to take a look at Istation. Istation also received two BESSIE awards in 2015, one for Early Elementary Reading and another for Upper Elementary Advanced Reading. About Istation Istation is an award-winning comprehensive e-learning program used by more than four million students across the world. Known for its accurate assessments, engaging curriculum and trusted teacher tools, Istation helps students in prekindergarten through 12th grade achieve academic growth. Istations computer-adaptive assessments (known as ISIP) immediately place students on personalized instructional paths unique to their needs. An animated, game-like interface effectively engages students so that they dont even know theyre being evaluated. Along with its highly interactive digital curriculum, Istation provides teachers with access to thousands of lessons perfect for instructing small groups or an entire class. Comprehensive progress reports are also immediately available for educators, administrators and parents. Istation offers its ISIP assessment in Early Reading, Advanced Reading, Reading en Espanol and Math. Istation instruction is available in Reading, Reading en Espanol and Math. Students can also use their Istation subscriptions at home. Since its founding in 1998, Dallas-based Istation has seen tremendous growth. The companys animated program is now helping students in 44 states and four countries learn and grow. About The ComputED Gazette The ComputED Gazette is a valuable educational resource, having served the online community for over 21 years. Our directors are educators who have provided the finest computer education to children and adults in the North San Diego area. The Gazette is proud sponsor of two national awards: The Best Educational Software Awards (BESSIES) in the spring and the Education Software Review Awards (EDDIES) in the summer. Additions to our website are the expanded Reviews section and the Awards Showcase, where selected award-winning entries are reviewed by our staff writers. Specialty Technical Consultants Specialty Technical Publishers (STP) and Specialty Technical Consultants (STC) announce the availability of the newly updated International Audit Protocol Consortium (IAPC) EHS audit protocol for New Zealand. Leading companies around the world use IAPC EHS audit protocols to understand the scope of their EHS regulatory obligations and rapidly collect, share, archive, and export audit findings in a cost effective manner. IAPC EHS Audit Protocols are now prepared by STC in partnership with STP and continue to focus on those national (plus, in some cases, regional or provincial) EHS requirements that have site-specific application for manufacturing operations. As a leading EHS management consulting firm with a global network of experienced EHS teaming partners, STC has in depth knowledge and technical expertise of local/regional EHS requirements. STP and STC maintain leading-edge EHS audit protocols for more than 30 jurisdictions. The protocol documents are written in English and are available on CD-ROM in MS Word, Adobe Acrobat and Excel formats, as well as through STPs web-based portal or can be integrated into an existing company platform. Using the protocols custom templates and advanced functionality features, auditors can easily track audit findings and manage data over time to improve compliance, risk management and safety performance. In addition, STPs formatting is compatible with leading risk management and sustainability platform providers. Highlights of selected legislation covered in the newly updated protocol include: The "WorkSafe New Zealand Act 2013" established a new agency to regulate workplace health and safety, called WorkSafe New Zealand (WorkSafe), which began operations on 16 December 2013. WorkSafe took over workplace health and safety roles previously assigned to the Department of Labour and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The new "Health and Safety at Work Act 2015" came into effect on 4 April 2016, and repeals and replaces the "Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992." The new law is part of a reform package aimed at reducing the number of serious work-related injuries and deaths in New Zealand by at least 25 percent by 2020. The new "Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016" became effective 4 April 2016. These rules were adopted to implement the new "Health and Safety at Work Act 2015" and outline additional duties on persons conducting a business or undertaking related to managing risks, monitoring in the workplace, and specific duties related to young persons in the workplace. Parts of the "Health & Safety in Employment Regulations 1995" have been repealed and replaced with obligations under the new "Health and Safety at Work Act" and the "Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations." The "Health and Safety in Employment (Asbestos) Regulations 1998" were revoked and have been replaced by the "Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016" effective 4 April 2016. These regulations are based on corresponding provisions in "Australias Model Work Health and Safety Regulations" and impose additional duties on persons conducting a business or undertaking in relation to work involving asbestos (including work on sites containing asbestos-contaminated soil). The regulation includes requirements for asbestos removal, air monitoring, asbestos-related work, and licensing of asbestos removalists and asbestos assessors. The "Radiation Safety Act 2016," enacted 7 March 2016 and effective 7 March 2017, will repeal and replace the "Radiation Protection Act 1965" and will also repeal the "Radiation Protection Regulations 1982" on the effective date. The Act introduces a new licensing requirement for people or organizations that have control or management of radiation sources and outlines high level fundamental requirements that every person or organization dealing with a radiation source must meet. The "Noxious Substances Regulations 1954" were repealed by the "Health and Safety at Work Act 2015." The "Machinery Act 1950" was repealed by the "Health and Safety at Work Act 2015." Portions of the "Health and Safety in Employment (Pressure Equipment, Cranes, and Passenger Ropeways) Regulations 1999" were amended by the "Health and Safety at Work Act 2015." These regulations establish requirements for controllers of the equipment, and for employees, designers, manufacturers, and suppliers. Portions of the "Gas Act 1992," which provides for the regulation, supply, and use of gas in New Zealand, were amended by the "Health and Safety at Work Act 2015." Amendments have been made to the "Hazardous Substances (Exempt Laboratories) Regulations" regarding the handling of sodium fluoroacetate. New rules require any laboratory that holds sodium fluoroacetate to provide information to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), ensure that any sodium fluoroacetate held in the laboratory is secured, and meet notification and certification requirements for any import of sodium fluoroacetate. The new "Health and Safety at Work (Major Hazard Facilities) Regulations 2016" come into force on 4 April 2016 and deal with matters relating to the health and safety of people involved in the operation of, and local communities located near, major hazard facilities. These regulations apply to a facility or proposed facility where specified hazardous substances are present or likely to be present in a quantity that is equal to or exceeds the lower threshold quantity. The categories and names of specified hazardous substances, and the threshold quantities, are set out in Schedule 2 of these regulations. There are 2 categories of major hazard facilities under these regulations: lower tier major hazard facilities and upper tier major hazard facilities. WorkSafe New Zealand (WorkSafe) designates major hazard facilities into either of the 2 categories. For more information on all International EHS audit protocols offered by STP and STC, click here. About Specialty Technical Publishers Specialty Technical Publishers produces technical resource guides covering environmental, health & safety, transportation, accounting, business practices, standards and law, offering comprehensive guidance on key compliance and regulatory issues. STP is a division of Glacier Media Inc., a Canadian information communications company that provides primary and essential information in print, electronic and online media. Glaciers Business and Professional Information Group publishes directories,technical manuals, research and development materials, medical education, electronic databases, investment information and specialty websites. About Specialty Technical Consultants Specialty Technical Consultants, Inc. (STC) is a specialized management consulting working to enhance environmental health and safety (EHS) performance. Through it's consulting services, STC partners with clients to strengthen management systems design and implementation, and identifies needs and implements solutions to meet business objectives. Services provided include: EHS compliance support; risk assessment; EHS auditing; corporate responsibility and sustainability; EHS management systems development and implementation; EHS regulatory information tools; and EHS training. STC is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Womens Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and the Supplier Clearinghouse for the California Public Utilities Commission, and as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program. Babes for Bernie Wristbands are the craze! what better way to show support of your favorite candidate than by "wearing the vote" at CampaignWristbands.com! The 2016 Presidential election is coming down to the wire. CampaignWristbands.com has launched its 2016 Presidential Candidate gear featuring Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz wristbands, patches, and lapel pins. The company is helping voters show support for their favorite presidential candidate by letting them "wear the vote" with political gear! The non-partisan site currently offers genuine silicone campaign wristbands supporting Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz. These wristbands have captured the attention of voters all over the U.S. Currently, the most popular wristband is the hot pink "Babes for Bernie" wristband. The "Feel the Burn" wristbands and patches come in at a close second. Ted Cruz gear includes wristbands and lapel pins in a variety of colors, featuring his campaign slogan Reigniting the Promise of America. The company ships within 1-3 weeks of purchase. About CampaignWristbands.com CampaignWristbands.com has been making custom wristbands, patches, lapel pin and more for years. Since 2004, the company has made over 25 million wristbands. Both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates, including Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina, have been represented through the companys gear and merchandise. To avoid allergic reactions, genuine 100% silicone is used for all wristbands. Embroidered patches are 100% thread, LaserCut, with an adhesive back, which sticks to most garments. Lapel pins are high quality semi-cloisonne with a soft, rubber butterfly clutch to secure hats, shirts, jackets, bags and more. CampaignWristbands.com encourages voters to jump on, support their favorite candidate and Wear the Vote. May the best candidate win! Penn Investment Advisors, Inc. Having these enhanced resources at our disposal enables us to bring our financial planning knowledge to even more clients, helping them to plan for a secure financial future. The Pennsylvania-based investment management company Eagleview Advisors, Inc. announced today that it now will be known as Penn Investment Advisors, Inc., a subsidiary of Penn Community Bank. With $1.8 billion in assets and 22 branch locations, Penn Community Bank is Bucks Countys leading independent, mutual financial organization. It was formed by the unification of First Savings Bank of Perkasie and First Federal of Bucks County, local mutual banks that had served Bucks County for a collective 225 years. Eagleview Advisors had been a subsidiary of First Savings. The formation of Penn Community Bank offers Penn Investment Advisors, Inc. robust advantages, including a more visible brand, additional resources, and twice as many locations in which financial advisors can meet with clients. Having these enhanced resources at our disposal enables us to bring our financial planning knowledge to even more clients, helping them to plan for a secure financial future, said Christian M. Wagner, president of Penn Investment Advisors, Inc. We represent our clients, not one specific investment company, and this independence enables us to deliver objective, unbiased, transparent advice that enables each client to build a unique roadmap to reach their financial goals. Financial planning and investment guidance is an important part of long-term financial success, said Penn Community Bank President and CEO Jeane M. Coyle. Penn Investment Advisors offers the expert financial advice that people need, delivered in a convenient, approachable manner by people whose only focus is on their clients financial success. Penn Investment Advisors hallmark of service is to use its experience and knowledge of the worlds financial markets to find exactly the right investment products for each client. Its advisors offer one-on-one guidance and planning to each client, regardless of portfolio size, as well as a wide range of tools and resources to help clients achieve their financial goals. Based at Penn Community Banks headquarters in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Penn Investment Advisors prides itself on flexible client service that meets the demands of todays busy clients. Advisors are available to meet with clients by appointment at any of the banks 22 branch locations throughout Bucks County or at other locations that suit the clients schedule. About Penn Investment Advisors, Inc. A subsidiary of Penn Community Bank, Penn Investment Advisors, Inc. is a Bucks County-based management investment group. We are committed to one mission: helping our clients reach their long-term financial goals, including wealth management, retirement planning, and saving for a college education. As independent advisors, we represent the client, not an investment product or company, which allows us to offer unbiased, transparent, one-on-one financial planning advice with the clients best interests as the sole focus. For more information, visit penncommunitybank.com/home/investments. Penn Investment Advisors, Inc. (hereinafter Penn Investments) is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All written content presented herein is for information purposes only. No client or prospective client should assume that any information presented serves as the receipt of, or a substitute for, personalized individual advice from Penn Investments, which can be provided only through a formal advisory relationship. Please contact us at 1-800-626-1027 or visit http://www.penncommunitybank.com/home/investments. Investment products are not a deposit, are not FDIC-insured, are not insured by any federal government agency, are not guaranteed by the bank, and may go down in value. SearchSpring today announced the official launch of their new Relevancy Platform. The team has spent the last two years developing this new platform with the focus on optimizing the customer journey and dynamically delivering products and content for pure-play and omni-channel retailers. The Relevancy Platform utilizes predictive intelligence and machine learning technology to deliver the most relevant shopping experience across all devices and platforms, and is generating average increases in conversion of over 20%. We spent months researching and understanding the needs of our 500+ customers, along with the shift in customer behavior and expectations of a 1:1 relevant experience. What we ultimately developed was an enterprise level platform that met the growing needs of marketers, merchandisers and ecommerce teams across B2C and B2B retail organizations. explained Trevor Legwinski, a past Retail Omni-Channel Executive and current CRO of SearchSpring. SearchSprings new Relevancy Platform is centered around three pillars integral to ecommerce success: relevancy, merchandising and insights. Relevancy As the ecommerce industry matures, shoppers are coming to expect more engaging, tailored experiences that highlight products and content theyre likely to enjoy. SearchSprings offerings focus heavily on delivering the most relevant shopping experiences possible to make visits more rewarding for shoppers, and increase conversions and repeat rates for merchants. SearchSprings Relevancy Suite of products leverage the machine learning capabilities of their proprietary IntelliSuggest engine to display relevant products and content across the customer journey. This suite includes solutions for site search, autocomplete, category navigation, product recommendations and more. The result is a fluid front-end customer experience, that is optimized for conversion across all device types, and which can be easily implemented via AJAX or API. "The new Relevancy Platform uses the IntelliSuggest engine to display relevant products and content to shoppers regardless of where they are on the site. The new machine learning algorithm in the engine goes above and beyond the average ecommerce site search and navigation solutions by intelligently leveraging a larger data set than most solutions. Our customers have seen measurable results across a series of metrics including AOV, conversion, engagement and RPV, said Gareth Dismore, CEO of SearchSpring. Merchandising Years of customer feedback and research led SearchSpring to the conclusion that there were two primary use-case scenarios when it came to ecommerce merchandising. While some retailers wanted an intelligent algorithm that allowed for a hands-off approach, others wanted a balance of intelligence and control that would allow them to tailor results based on their businesss needs. Each of our customers is unique. While many of our customers trust our intelligence to power their results, which frees up internal marketing and ecommerce resources to focus on other areas of the business, others want more control and have specific visual merchandising and specific profit or other metrics they want control over. The Merchandising Suite provides them the freedom to do both. explained Dismore. The Merchandising Suite therefore empowers merchants who fall into both categories. It provides merchandising and marketing teams with intuitive tools to visually merchandise products to meet brand guidelines, create landing pages and assign banners to ensure marketing continuity, and also enables merchants to apply custom business rules to meet margin, profit, and other brand specific objectives. These options give merchants controls that enable them to follow fast fashion trends, and increase their profits by driving high-margin products or house brands to the top of on-site search results, autocomplete, category pages, and more. Insights Retailers commonly utilize third-party analytics solutions which track user behavior and identify performance trends. Although powerful, these solutions often overwhelm merchants with mountains of available data. In contrast, SearchSprings Insights Suite promises to do the heavy lifting for merchants by surfacing the wealth of behavior and performance data that is uncovered by the Relevancy Platform to help merchandisers, marketers, buyers and executives make informed business decisions. Insights goes beyond the basic keyword and traffic reports that are commonplace in other search and navigation solutions. In addition to these basic reports, it showcases return on investment by product, search, navigation, and more. The Insights Suite also provides visibility into product data, allowing merchants to understand how their products are performing, and providing valuable data about the popularity of items based on their color, size, and other attributes. SearchSprings Insights Suite is action-oriented and provides a button within each report that allows merchants to take immediate action to improve conversion. The Insights Suite supports merchants with the data thats necessary to make key business decisions and develop a strategy. Servicing hundreds of clients over the last decade has allowed us to identify the key metrics that are important to merchants. This was an important factor in the design of the new Insights Suite. It surfaces actionable data, and provides an immediate path to the solution. This has resulted in our clients finding opportunities that are generating immediate growth, said Trevor Legwinski, SearchSprings Chief Revenue Officer. The new Relevancy Platform is currently in use by hundreds of retailers, across fifteen major ecommerce platforms including NetSuite, Magento, Hybris and many others. Explore the platform today at http://www.searchspring.com. About SearchSpring SearchSpring is passionate about developing products and services that enhance the experience of online shoppers across the customer journey, and drive quantitative results for merchants. Over 500 B2B and B2C customers across a variety of retail categories trust SearchSpring as partners in their business. They offer knowledgeable support, and unique industry-leading innovations. Their Relevancy Platform delivers tangible and meaningful results to merchants, while also providing powerful merchandising tools and actionable insights. "Couch & Associates is already supporting billions in revenue, so we are preparing to support additional revenue requirements by hiring experts like Mike MacFarlane Mike Couch, Managing Partner comments. As Couch & Associates expands its scope of service offerings for large revenue businesses, the Marketing Technical Agency has brought on Mike MacFarlane as a Management Consultant to join their growing team. MacFarlane is well-known in the marketing technology field for his many years of experience working with Eloqua, Oracle, as well as in many large revenue businesses across North America. MacFarlane is returning to the Toronto agency, Couch & Associates (C&A) excited at the direction the agency is moving towards. Having stayed in touch with the team, he heard where the leadership teams emphasis of hyper-focusing on the unique needs of large revenue businesses. As his passion is to take a holistic approach to marketing strategy (which includes embracing all the modalities of marketing), he jumped at the opportunity to work with the team again. Mike Couch, Managing Partner of C&A comments, In this industry (Marketing Technology) there have been many shifts that have taken place in the last 5 years. Our team has refocused over the last two years in order to keep up with the demands of large revenue businesses. To support our customers, we have added team members that can support Change Management, Data Science, and Predictive Analysis. Customers are increasingly asking about challenges that are quite complex. Mike MacFarlane is exactly the right kind of thinker that our customers need to solve problems like working with big data that is moving from the millions in size into the billions and trillions. While many agencies are focusing on adding logos, C&A is focusing on solving complex business problems. Sure we will probably always be known for our technical prowess in the industry, but more importantly, the team weve developed has garnered a reputation for providing incredible service. We want to be the go-to marketing partners for all large revenue businesses, government agencies, and large fin-tech and technology firms. C&A is already supporting billions in revenue, so we are preparing to support additional revenue requirements Couch observed. MacFarlane, who has followed C&A closely since his time at Oracle, adds, Couch & Associates have continued to impress me with the depth of service and knowledge they are able to provide to companies who are looking to raise their marketing game. This is a group of some of the brightest talent in the marketing technology industry and I feel like Im joining back at exactly the right time. For more information on Couch & Associates, visit couch.associates Gretchen W. McClain Salt Lake Community College graduates May 6, at 9:30 a.m., will hear from Gretchen W. McClain for the 2016 Commencement keynote address at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. McClain is an accomplished business leader who thrives on energizing organizations and building businesses by enhancing innovation and developing exceptional leadership talent. With more than 25 years of global experience in both Fortune 500 corporations and government service, including serving as founding CEO of an S&P 500 global water technology company, Xylem Inc., and NASAs Chief Director of the International Space Station, McClain brings extensive business, developmental, strategic and technical expertise. Her distinctive leadership approach focuses on helping companies break down internal barriers to identify new ways to create value and integrate technologies, enabling organizations to unlock growth and gain critical competitive advantage. McClain serves as a Board of Director for three publicly traded companies: AMETEK, Inc., a $4 billion leading global engineering and manufacturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices; Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, a $5.3 billion leading provider of management consulting, technology and engineering services to Fortune 500 corporations, governments and not-for-profits globally; and Boart Longyear Limited, a leader in innovative drilling services, drilling equipment, and performance tooling for the mining and drilling companies globally. Previously, McClain served in numerous senior executive positions in both the government and industry starting from a systems engineer. As the founding President and CEO of Xylem, an S&P 500 company and global water technology company with revenues of $3.8 billion, she oversaw the successful creation and spin-off of the company from ITT Corporation. At ITT, she served as President of ITT Fluid Motion and Control, a $4.5 billion diversified leading manufacturing company of highly engineered technology and equipment, where she led the organization to double-digit revenue growth. Prior to ITT, McClain held a number of executive positions at Honeywell Aerospace (formerly AlliedSignal), including Vice President and General Manager of the Business, General Aviation, and Helicopters Electronics Systems Division and Chief Technology Officer of Aerospace Engines and Systems. Earlier in her career, McClain spent nine years with NASA, including serving as Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Development, the top management position responsible for NASAs International Space Station (ISS). She graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and received the Universitys prestigious Founders Award in 2015. McClain was inducted into the Utah Technology Council Hall of Fame and is the first woman to receive this honor. Salt Lake Community College is an accredited, student-focused, comprehensive community college meeting the diverse needs of the Salt Lake community. Home to more than 60,000 students each year, the College is Utahs leading provider of workforce development programs. SLCC is also the largest supplier of transfer students to Utahs four-year institutions and a perennial Top 10 college nationally for total associate degrees awarded. The College is the sole provider of applied technology courses in the Salt Lake area, with multiple locations, an eCampus, and nearly 1,000 continuing education sites located throughout the Salt Lake Valley. Personal attention from an excellent faculty is paramount at the College, which maintains an average class size of 20. Botticelli Foods, a leading provider of authentic Mediterranean olive oil and Italian specialty foods, and Cooking with Nonna, a Cooking Show featuring Grandmothers preparing Authentic Italian dishes, announced a strategic marketing partnership today. Botticelli Foods brings 50 years of success in the olive oil & fine Italian food sector. It is Botticellis corporate mission to provide the absolute highest quality of authentic Italian cuisine to the American consumer. Cooking with Nonna was established with the aim of preserving the oldest Italian cuisine traditions held dearly by Nonnas from every region of Italy. The show provides a forum for grandmothers to document their special recipes with the traditional way of preparing their favorite regional dishes. Fans of Cooking with Nonna have fallen in love with the host, Rossella Rago, who is as charming as she is talented. Botticelli Foods is excited working closely with the Cooking with Nonna Show to promote their authentic Italian products. Salvatore Asaro, the CEO and President of Botticelli Foods, explained: I am ecstatic about our new partnership. Incorporating our products within Nonnas traditional recipes allows us to offer the ultimate authenticity of Italian cuisine. Cooking with Nonna looked to Botticelli as a strategic and complementary partner to help bring their products to targeted audiences. Vito Rago, Executive Producer for Cooking with Nonna, said: Over the years we have developed a large base of devoted followers. Botticelli offers the highest quality in authentic Italian products. What a great chance for us to promote their products to our fan base and vice versa. The synergy between our companies drew us together and in this case-- Everyone, especially our fans, win! ### About Botticelli Foods Based in Hauppauge, NY with facilities also in Italy, Botticelli Foods has grown from a small olive oil company, to a large manufacturer and distributor of Mediterranean & Italian products for some of the largest supermarket and specialty store chains in the country. Botticelli Olive Oil is made from only the finest, ripe olives grown in the sun-drenched, rich soils of the Mediterranean terrain. Other items in the product line include home-made style Pasta Sauce made from only 100% Italian Tomatoes, artisan Pasta, gourmet Vinegar, Antipasto, Tomatoes, Fire Roasted Sweet Peppers and more. For additional information: Salvatore Asaro, President Botticelli Foods http://www.BotticelliFoods.com sasaro(at)botticelli-foods(dot)com 631-543-7000 About Cooking with Nonna Cooking with Nonna, is based in New Jersey and hosted by Rossella Rago. Rossella invites viewers to experience the heritage and origin of classic Italian favorites from the ultimate culinary gurus: Italian grandmothers. While they demonstrate recipes from famous family dishes, viewers will journey to these Italian regions, learning the history behind each recipe. For additional information: Vito Rago, Executive Producer Cooking with Nonna http://www.CookingwithNonna.com VR(at)cookingwithnonna(dot)com 973-263-4558 KreativElement, an Omaha-based marketing firm, and Social Media Contractors (SMC), an Omaha-based content marketing and social media management firm, today announced a merger of the two companies. Having joined forces with SMC, KreativElement will now offer a full range of digital solutions. SMC brings to the table a team of experienced social media professionals who work with clients in a variety of industries in locations ranging from Silicon Valley to New York City. KreativElement has worked with hundreds of companies across the Midwest and has expertise in professional videography and photography, graphic design, website development, and WordPress web designwithout the agency pricing. SMCs team of writers, social engagement managers, editors, and data analysts will join KreativElements team of professional videographers, content producers, photographers, copywriters, and designers to form an experienced, capable team. This merger more than doubles the size of KreativElement and will enable the company to serve as a full-service digital firm for clients across a wide variety of industries, verticals, and areas of expertise. I see this merger as one huge opportunity for everyone involved. I anticipate some fantastic creativity and energy in the office, and that will undoubtedly translate to our client work, said Erin Eppenbaugh, Director of Visual Media and Production at KreativElement. Courtney McGann, Social Media and Copywriting Manager at KreativElement, agreed, adding that with this merger, well have the numbers, talent, and experience to shake things up in Omahas marketing scene. I have every confidence this merger will be a powerful, positive move for our clients, as well. Kris Kluver, Founder of SMC, is equally excited about the merger. As the original founder of SMC I am tremendously excited about this merger, he said. Well be able to offer an even higher level of client support, and for the SMC team, the culture looks like a perfect fit. John Darwin, Managing Editor at SMC, added that this is a huge step forward for both organizations. The KreativElement team is incredibly talented and Im really looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish together through this merger. KreativElement has experienced great growth over the last couple of years while diversifying our services, said James Duran, Managing Partner of KreativElement. This merger allows us to accelerate that growth and the depth of service we can provide to our clients, as well as the additional services we can offer to all of SMCs client base. This is really a win-win for both companies, the collective teams, and most importantly, the clients we all serve. About KreativElement KreativElement is an Omaha-based marketing firm focused on helping small- to medium-sized businesses define their business objectives and reach their goals. KreativElement has served as the outsourced marketing firm for hundreds of companies across the Midwest with videography, photography, SEO, copywriting, social media management, website development, branding, and design services. For more information, visit http://www.kreativelement.com. About Social Media Contractors Social Media Contractors, LLC (SMC) is a content marketing and social media management firm serving clients from Silicon Valley to New York City. Built around focused strategy, premium content, and daily management, SMC helps organizations adapt and engage in todays ever-evolving landscape. Quality people. Quality communication. Thats what SMC is about. For more information, visit http://www.socialmediacontractors.com. Life safety solutions, such as Code Alert Wander Management, blend high-technology with home-like aesthetics to improve resident safety and satisfaction. Brookdale is leading the way in Rewiring Aging, and RFT is the quintessential partner in helping them do that with our innovative wireless safety and security solutions. --Steve Varga, RF Technologies Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President RF Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of safety and security solutions for senior living and healthcare, has been selected by Brookdale Senior Living as a preferred technology partner as part of a multi-year agreement. Andrew Smith, Brookdales Director of Strategy and Innovation, said, With safety tech rapidly evolving, we are moving to enhance our residents experience by standardizing operations in this arena and emphasizing security-related innovation. This program is part of Brookdales Rewiring Aging initiative, a broad effort to examine how technology can enrich all areas of seniors lives. RF Technologies and Brookdale have already worked together for nearly two decades to provide 20 million hours of security to Brookdale residents across the country. Innovating safety and security in senior living together With 28 years of experience and numerous product firsts in senior living, RF Technologies (RFT) remains future-focused through ongoing technology advancements. Glenn Jonas, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, states, At RF Technologies the most valuable thing we earn is trust. We are immensely pleased in having again earned Brookdales confidence resulting in the award of this contract and the continued opportunity to enhance senior living together. Steve Varga, RF Technologies Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, adds, Brookdale is leading the way in Rewiring Aging, and RFT is the quintessential partner in helping them do that with our innovative wireless safety and security solutions. Accelerating best practices with wireless technology Wireless technologies can deliver improved safety and mobility, enriching the lives of senior living residents. Today, with RFTs advanced technology, Brookdale residents can have peace of mind knowing their call will be received and they can be located anywhere in the community. As RF Technologies further enhances the range of its locating technology, senior living residents can be located quickly and accurately at extended ranges. RFTs Code Alert software platform has evolved to include smartphone and web accessibility, along with the seamless management of nurse call and wander management systems. These advancements, combined with leading-edge data analytics, further enhance staff efficiency and responsiveness. About RF Technologies RF Technologies protects our most vulnerable family members at over 10,000 senior living and healthcare facilities nationwide. Life safety solutions such as Code Alert Wander Management, Quick Response Wireless Nurse Call and Safe Place Infant Security blend high-technology with home-like aesthetics to improve resident safety and satisfaction, while innovations, such as RFT Cares smartphone application, improve caregiver coordination and efficiency. Backed by over 28 years of experience in senior living, RF Technologies solutions are UL-certified to meet todays life safety standards, and can be integrated with other systems for an improved total cost of ownership. For more information visit http://www.rft.com. About Brookdale Brookdale Senior Living Inc. is the leading operator of senior living communities throughout the United States. The Company is committed to providing senior living solutions primarily within properties that are designed, purpose-built and operated to provide high quality service, care and living accommodations for residents. Currently Brookdale operates independent living, assisted living, and dementia-care communities and continuing care retirement centers, with approximately 1,123 communities in 47 states and the ability to serve over 108,000 residents. Through its ancillary services program, the Company also offers a range of outpatient therapy, home health, personalized living and hospice services. http://www.brookdale.com [These partnerships] ensure that early care professionals in the region, especially students, can have the option to pursue the necessary training that will lead them to obtain a Child Development Associate." The Council for Professional Recognition (The Council) announces three new regional business partnerships with Educational First Steps (EFS), Parents and Children Together (PACT), and Highlands Community Charter School to encourage students from each respective entity to obtain Child Development Associate Credentials through their educational programs. Our CDA Credential represents the crossroad where education and knowledge meet, says Valora Washington, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Council for Professional Recognition. We are excited about the partnerships with Educational First Steps, PACT and Highlands Community Charter School, since they ensure that early care professionals in the region, especially students, can have the option to pursue the necessary training that will lead them to obtain a Child Development Associate. The partnership between the Council and Educational First Steps in Texas, which will offer a CDA course in the Dallas and Ft. Worth locations, provides a CDA course as an extension to the professional development career training for CDA candidates. Their goal is to enhance and improve participants knowledge of child development and motivate them towards continuing their education in the field of early care and education. At each site, staff with graduate degrees in early childhood education will administer the CDA course and help candidates navigate through the process of obtaining Child Development Associate Credentials. The Council and Parents and Children Together (PACT) will promote PACTs continuous professional development efforts towards their early childhood education program in Hawaii. PACT is in the process of developing a Career Technical Education (CTE) program with two career tracks: Either for students to be able to start their own home child care facility, or to have them obtain Child Development Associates so they can work in an early education setting. In this regard, PACT wishes to have the same type of partnership that other CTE high schools have, as the lack of child care is viewed as an obstacle to their student success in school.They also see that many of their students may find a rewarding career by becoming a credentialed Child Development Associate professional in the field of early care in their communities. Through the partnership with Highlands Community Charter School in Sacramento, CA, the Councils mission is to facilitate the CDA Credential process for the schools early childhood education professionals. This initiative supports Highlands Community Charter Schools continuous professional development career program in early childhood education. The school is developing a Career Technical Education (CTE) program that will allow students to either start their own family child care facilities, and/or to have them become certified Child Development Associates so they can work in a preschool or other early education setting. # # # ABOUT THE COUNCIL FOR PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION AND ITS THREE PARTNERS The Council for Professional Recognition (The Council) promotes improved performance and recognition of professionals in the early childhood education of children from birth to 5 years of age. The Council works to ensure all professional early childhood educators and caregivers meet the developmental, emotional, and education needs of our nations youngest children. The Council recognizes and credentials professionals who work in all types of early care and education programs Head Start, pre-K, infant-toddler, family child care, and home visitor programs. Educational First Steps mission is to increase the availability of quality early childhood education for economically disadvantaged children. They are a non-profit organization that shows caregivers of at-risk children how to create high-quality early learning environments. Since 1990, Educational First Steps equipped the people who care for children in poverty in preschools, daycare centers and homes with proven tools and techniques that transform caregiving into teaching. Founded in 1968, Parents and Children Together (PACT) is one of Hawaii's leading non-profit organizations providing a wide array of innovative and educational social services. PACT helps families identify, address and successfully resolve challenges through its 15 statewide program in the areas of early childhood education, domestic violence prevention and treatment, child abuse & neglect prevention and treatment, positive youth development, community and economic development, and mental health support. Highlands Community Charter Schools provide education for students seeking to obtain high school diplomas, along with elective courses leading to a Certificate of Completion in one of the Career and Technical Education courses. This entity assists students to become competent, confident, productive, and adaptable, with the skills and attitudes to enable them to successfully contribute to society. Highlands Community Charter Schools provide a learning environment that values and promotes risk taking, compassion, tolerance, self-awareness, and the courage to stand up for ones convictions. NeoGraft Hair Restoration A full head of hair can provide you with a renewed sense of confidence, both personally and professionally. We are excited to add NeoGraft to the comprehensive list of surgical and non-surgical solutions we offer our patients. Holcomb Kreithen Plastic Surgery and MedSpa, PLLC (Holcomb Kreithen or HKPS or the Practice), a leading plastic surgery practice in Florida, is pleased to announce that it has added NeoGraft, the state-of-the-art solution for hair loss for men and women, to its advanced plastic surgery practice. NeoGraft is the most innovative approach to hair restoration available today without the trauma and downtime of traditional hair transplantation, and is a safe and minimally-invasive procedure. HKPS has also added NeoLTS, a non-invasive light treatment that can be used with NeoGraft to quicken healing and promote hair growth. The Practice has also added PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) treatments to help stimulate hair follicles and promote a healthier scalp. PRP supports hair growth in both men and women with thinning, non-transplanted hair or in combination with post- hair restoration procedures. Approximately 50 million men and approximately 30 million women suffer from male/female pattern baldness or thinning hair. But according to practice co-founder J. David Holcomb, M.D., Many potential patients shy away from traditional hair replacement approaches because of unsatisfactory results, slow recovery time, the loss of feeling at the incision site, the linear scar on the back of the head, or the amount of post-operative pain involved. HKPS co-founder Joshua Kreithen, M.D., states, A full head of hair can provide you with a renewed sense of confidence, both personally and professionally. We are excited to add NeoGraft to the comprehensive list of surgical and non-surgical solutions we offer our patients. NeoGraft uses a game-changing approach to overcome these drawbacks. Most importantly, it can provide results that are long-lasting and natural-looking. This is because NeoGraft utilizes a technique called follicular unit extraction (FUE), in which natural groups of up to four hair follicles at a time are taken from an area of healthy hair (usually the back of the head), and strategically placed where the patient's hair is missing or thinning. This technique produces results that look more natural compared to traditional procedures. FUE also makes NeoGraft the least invasive transplantation procedure for hair restoration. No stitches or staples are used, so patients experience little to no discomfort. There is no unsightly linear scar and little to no numbness at the site the hair is harvested. Recovery time is quick, with few restrictions on normal daily activities. Many patients are able to go back to work the next day. NeoGraft is flexible for any hair style of the patients choice, whether short or long. The doctors of HKPS will be conducting free seminars on NeoGraft, with the next one scheduled for Tuesday, May 3 at 6:00 PM at their medical practice located in beautiful downtown Sarasota, Florida. To register for a seminar or to get more information, please call 941-365-8679. About Holcomb Kreithen Plastic Surgery and MedSpa Located in beautiful downtown Sarasota, Holcomb Kreithen Plastic Surgery and MedSpa offers a comprehensive range of aesthetic surgical and non-surgical treatments that enhance the lives of men and women. The founding physicians of the practice include J. David Holcomb, M.D. (Facial Plastic and Cosmetic Laser Surgeon) and Joshua Kreithen, M.D. (Breast and Body Contouring Specialist). Holcomb Kreithen Plastic Surgery and MedSpa is renowned for its expertise in facial plastic surgery, plastic surgery of the breasts and body, cosmetic laser surgery, non-surgical aesthetics and medical skin care. The AAAASF-accredited facility includes a private outpatient ambulatory surgical center. With its advanced laser center, the MedSpa offers numerous options for skin rejuvenation and minimally-invasive and non-surgical contouring of the face and body. The Holcomb Kreithen Plastic Surgery and MedSpa staff is comprised of an extraordinary group of professionals whose primary goal is to safely empower individuals to reach their full potential. They are committed to treating patients and each other with kindness, compassion and dignity at all times. For more information, visit http://www.sarasota-medspa.com. Contact customercare(at)sarasota-med.com Boston International Film Festival wrapped up the 14th Annual Festival showing over 75 films from over 60 countries spread over 5 days at 3 prestigious locations including the AMC Loews Theater, The Paramount Theater and the B-theater. This festival presented a multi-cultural event to the diverse audience of Boston, who related to films of their origin, as well as discovered the experiences of others from around the world as they watched short independent films and feature films produced by creative teams from all over the world. Foundations TV rates this festival as a top class event that celebrates the art of film making, and offers an opportunity to filmmakers to share their unique visions. Patrick Jerome, the Founder and President of Boston International film Festival said, "The Boston International Film Festival strives to exhibit the worlds most artistic, creative and independent films in a festive environment. Our greatest hope is that through the films the audience is inspired and encouraged to embrace all the worlds cultural diversity and work towards a more understanding, and peaceful world." Martin Walsh, Mayor of Boston, welcomed the Annual Festival back to the city of Boston. In his welcome note he said that he is excited to see how this annual gathering adds distinct cultural value to our community. Mayor Walsh added, "Our city has a keen appreciation for the arts, especially film-making, as demonstrated by numerous cinematic outlets and strong university programs. Bostonians take pride in their citys world-famous architecture, historic neighborhoods and rich diversity, which all have been featured in films ranging from independent screenings to Hollywood Blockbusters." He then congratulated all the individuals and organizations that have made this event possible and sent his best wishes for this rewarding and memorable event. Patrick Jerome, at the closing party acknowledged the hard work and dedication of all the team members and staff of the festival without whom, this event could not have been so successful. He also acknowledged and appreciated the role of supporting organizations including Liquid Art House among others and The Foundations TV as the media partners. Gauri Chandna, Founder of The Foundations TV said, "It is always such a pleasure to partner with Boston International Film Festival. The diversity that it celebrates creates a joyous platform for all to benefit from. It is a privilege to work with Patrick, and host the RED CARPET interviews of amazing artists who share glimpses of their personal journey of film making. These are some great stories that we enjoy sharing on our channel with the wider online audience. We look forward to this festival each year." In a special welcome note Governor Charles Baker welcomed all those attending the festival to the 14th annual Boston International Film Festival. "There is no better setting to celebrate than here in Massachusetts, home to centuries of a rich and diverse artistic culture. The Boston International Film Festival celebrates those artists who, through the power of cinema, capture our imagination to make us laugh and cry, think and change." For the listing of all winners, please visit http://thefoundations.tv/boston-international-film-festival-winners/ Mitch Hoppenworth, SVP Compliance Having been the Chief Compliance Officer for a Fortune 500 company and building a compliance management program in a highly regulated environment, I know the day-to-day pressures our clients face." Mindcrest Inc., a leading legal services firm, is pleased to welcome Mitch Hoppenworth, a strategic leader skilled in compliance risk identification and mitigation. Coming from the financial services industry, he has experience with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. We are excited to welcome Mitch to the team, says CEO and Founder, Ganesh Natarajan. Many of our clients are in heavily regulated industries, including the life science and financial service industries. The compliance risks these companies face seem to increase every day. Hoppenworth will lead Mindcrest in pairing the right compliance solutions to their clients needs. Having been the Chief Compliance Officer for a Fortune 500 company and building a compliance management program in a highly regulated environment, I know the day-to-day pressures our clients face, shares Hoppenworth. Chief compliance and risk officers have challenging jobs. Assuring board of directors that risks are properly identified and effectively mitigated. Demonstrating return on investment of compliance resources and the additional value for the company when so much of what the GRC team does requires investing in resources. Thats where Mindcrest comes in. We strictly govern our programs and provide transparency throughout the engagement with robust reporting. Mindcrest is headquartered in Chicago, IL with a large delivery center in Pune, India. Hoppenworth is based in the Chicago office and has been with the company since February. About Mindcrest Since its founding in 2001, Mindcrest has been committed to providing best-in-class legal services to our corporate and law firm clients. We have combined the best of technology with a specialized workforce and our proprietary processes to assist our clients in meeting their obligations. Our mission at Mindcrest is to be the trusted partner to our clients by providing innovative solutions and services that transform the legal services industry. Global corporations and law firms have relied on Mindcrest for 15 years to provide advanced support in the areas of contracts lifecycle management, compliance, legal analytics and litigation support. Mindcrest is ISO 27001 certified. Mindcrest has been consistently recognized as a leader in legal process outsourcing by Frost and Sullivan, The Black Book of Outsourcing, International Association for Outsourcing Professionals, Chambers Global and India Business Law Journal. For more information, please visit http://www.mindcrest.com or call +312 467 9744. We have to be efficient in this field, so we will be glad to use experience of Dataexport. I am sure they are going to give us opportunity increase number of advertising partners and to provide our customers with even better service. Truck1 is one of the leading European online listing services for used trucks and commercial vehicles. Truck1 offers its advertisement services to vehicle manufacturers, professional dealers and private traders. The project was started in 2003 as a specialized platform for international truck trade. Today Truck1.eu has several offices across Europe, and around 100.000 listings of used trucks for sale offered in 21 language versions all over the world and auditory of 1.5 million visits per month. The international online market collaborates with large European dealers such as Ritchie Brothers Auctioneers, Veho Trucks, Plustech AS, and Schmitz Cargobull. Truck1 customers get a number of services, simplifying the process of buying/selling trucks, delivery vans, semi-trailers, and heavy construction vehicles such as wheel loaders and cranes. Dataexport is a young company based in the Eastern Europe. The main focus is conversion of databases into different data formats and transfer of these data to different advertising partners. The company has developed efficient software allowing truck sellers to manage their vehicles online with ease. The company possesses several very efficient technologies and the perspectives are very promising. The acquisition provides Truck1 with additional tools to manage customer vehicles, to translate ads to different languages with very good quality and to transfer the ads to advertising partners. So from now on any Truck1 customer - dealer of commercial vehicles - benefits from additional services complimentary included in the standard package, managing tasks related to import and export of customer vehicles. The details of this acquisition are not disclosed, but Truck1 representative Alexandras Marchulenis has made the following comment about the deal: "Nowadays there are many different advertising options on the market for truck and equipment dealers, each offering its own specialization and buyer auditory. To have more channels to reach buyers, dealers have to use several advertising partners at a time. This is where questions of high quality data transfer between different websites get so actual. We have to be efficient in this field, so we will be glad to use the experience of Dataexport. I am sure they are going to give us the opportunity to increase our number of advertising partners and to provide our customers with even better service, which allows us to be more competitive and have even better presence on the market. With acquiring Dataexport, Truck1 acquires young brains, crucial for keeping up with modern technology." Chris Genovese, Sanborn Map Company; George Oros, chief of staff for County Executive Rob Astorino; Kevin J. Plunkett, deputy county executive of Westchester County; Steven Caspi, Caspi Development We are pleased to mark the buildings anniversary milestone by recognizing the impact it has made, both in our local community and beyond. Caspi Development, a leader in residential and commercial real estate ownership, management and development, recently marked the 110th anniversary of the Sanborn Map Building, located at 629 Fifth Avenue in Pelham, with a celebration honoring the buildings historical significance and role in Westchesters business community. The celebration included a special proclamation from Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino declaring April 20, 2016 as Sanborn Map Building Day. For all of us who live and work in Westchester County, we hold a special sense of pride in acknowledging those places of historical significance in our community that add to our cultural diversity and quality of life, said Deputy County Executive Kevin J. Plunkett, who shared the proclamation on behalf of County Executive Astorino. As the entire Westchester community gathers to celebrate the 110th Anniversary of the Sanborn Map Building and the 150th Anniversary of the Sanborn Map Company, its dedicated staff is truly deserving of our appreciation for their extraordinary service to the community and unwavering commitment to the preservation of its history. The Sanborn Map Building was completed in 1906 by the Sanborn Map Company, one of the oldest and largest map companies in the United States, who still occupies a major portion of the buildings first floor. The buildings traditional facade, adorned with unique, century old relief sculptures of ancient mapmakers, serves as a visual reminder of its impressive history. During World War II, the Sanborn Map Building played a large role in Americas war efforts and was under constant surveillance by the FBI due to the highly classified Allied invasion maps housed there. Steven Caspi, president of Caspi Development, remarked, The Sanborn Map Building is a classic, inside and out, with a great deal of history between its walls. Many businesses have grown up here over the years and we are proud that buildings the very first occupant, the Sanborn Map Company, remains one of our tenants today. We are pleased to mark the buildings anniversary milestone by recognizing the impact it has made, both in our local community and beyond. Village of Pelham Mayor Michael J. Volpe and Chris Genovese, General Manager of Sanborn Map Company, Inc., were also featured speakers at the celebration, which honored the history of the building and the significance of the Sanborn Map Company being a part of the Pelham business community for over 100 years. The Sanborn Map Building is located in the heart of Westchester County in Pelhams upscale residential area with close proximity to downtown restaurants, shops and banks. The building is directly off the Hutchinson River Parkway with easy access to all major thoroughfares. The Metro North train station, located three blocks away, offers access to New York City in only 30 minutes. The Sanborn Map Building currently has approximately 7,000 square feet of available space. Professional tenants interested in relocating to the Sanborn Map Building can contact Caspi Development at (914) 694-8300. For more information visit http://www.sanbornmapbldg.com. About Caspi Development, LLC Caspi Development has been a leader in ownership, management and development of residential and commercial real estate for more than 40 years. Based in Purchase, NY, the company is known for its diversity and ability to respond to market conditions and capitalize on opportunities. Over the last few years, the company has acquired through joint venture approximately 1,600 apartments in New York City. Most recent Caspi Development projects include 135 Bowery on the Lower East Side, 456 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, a 100 room 5 star luxury hotel and 30,000 feet of restaurants and amenities, and 161 Bowery, a 25,000 foot office building built out for high end boutique tech tenants. Caspi owns and manages several million square feet of multifamily, office and hotel in and around the New York metropolitan area. David & Dorothy Eiglarsh join Keller Williams Legacy in Weston I joined Keller Williams Realty because I saw great opportunity in being a part of this talented network of real estate agents David & Dorothy Eiglarsh, one of the countrys top-producing real estate teams, is merging their independently owned Eiglarsh Realty with the Keller Williams Realty Legacy Market Center. Were excited to welcome David and Dorothy Eiglarsh to the Keller Williams family, said Eric Ubiera, Team Leader of Keller Williams Legacy. At Keller Williams we believe in succeeding through people and having David & Dorothy on our team is a huge win for us. Although David started part-time in real estate, in 1993 he joined his mother, Dorothy as a full time partner. After many successful years at Coldwell Banker, Dorothy and David joined RE/MAX in 1999 where they enjoyed their continued success before branching out on their own in 2008 when they founded their own brokerage, Eiglarsh Realty in Weston. The Eiglarsh Real Estate Team sells over $60 million in real estate each year, or about 200 properties per year which represents a home sold every day and a half. Ranking them among the top 1/4 of 1% of real estate agents nationally! Keller Williams has made an impact on the real estate industry. In 2015 Training Magazine named the company as the No. 1 training organization across all industries in the world. I joined Keller Williams Realty because I saw great opportunity in being a part of this talented network of real estate agents, said Eiglarsh. I noticed many well-respected, top-producing agents were making the move to Keller Williams and that piqued my interest. I wanted to take my business to the next level and knew joining Keller Williams was logical next step. We are off to an amazing start this year, says Natascha Tello, Keller Williams Legacys Operating Partner & Broker. We are very excited to be the company of choice for top agents and their teams in Weston The Keller Williams Legacy Market Center, located at 1625 N. Commerce Pkwy #105, Weston FL 33326 was established in 2002 and relaunched in 2015 under new ownership. It has 195 associates. Keller Williams Legacy is outperforming the local market by 77.3% in Listings Taken Volume and outperforming the market by Listings Sold by 18.7%. To learn more about Keller Williams Realty, call Eric Ubiera at 954-882.8762 or visit http://www.kwweston.com. About Keller Williams Realty, Inc. Austin-Texas based Keller Williams Realty, Inc. is the largest real estate franchise by agent count in the world with 700 offices and 136,000 associates across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. In 2015, Training Magazine named Keller Williams the No. 1 training organization across all industries in the world. Since 1983, Keller Williams has grown exponentially and continues to cultivate an agent-centric, education-based, technology-driven culture that rewards agents as stakeholders. The company also provides specialized agents in luxury homes, commercial and farm and ranch properties. Decor Aid's Vignette at Housing Works 12th Annual Design on a Dime Benefit in New York "We are honored to be selected for such a prestigious event and to be in the company of such talented designers, Decor Aid co-founders Sean Juneja and Markus Weber Decor Aid was selected among the top designers to participate in Housing Works 12th annual Design on a Dime benefit in New York. Each designer creates a room vignette that features new furniture, art, and accessories. All of the items are donated, and then everything goes on sale during two public shopping days, where items are sold for up to 80 percent off retail pricing. The three-day event helps raise national awareness and funds for the fight to end the AIDS epidemic. As seen in this Video, there was a frenzy to get furniture selected by Decor Aid. Proceeds will benefit Housing Works' Hull Street Residence, a housing development project that will transform a vacant 6,000-square-foot lot into a beautiful and safe home for 28 single, formerly homeless adults living with HIV/AIDS. Decor Aid created a modern home theater that blends high style with the hottest new consumer technology, like Sony's soon-to-be-released Portable Ultra Short Throw Projector and Sage by Hughes' home automation system. The jewel tone-inspired space also merges bold and delicate design elements, like black leather Morgan Clayhall armchairs and a whimsical Pierre Frey fabric on the Avery Boardman sofa. "We are honored to be selected for such a prestigious event and to be in the company of such talented designers, Decor Aid co-founder Sean Juneja said. Adds co-founder Markus Weber, We are excited to support an organization that has done so much for individuals living with HIV/AIDS and we couldnt have done it without the incredible donations from generous companies like Pierre Frey, Promemoria, Avery Boardman/Carlyle, Sony, Stark, Phillip Jeffries, Morgan Clayhall, Edition Modern, Cocobolo Design, Tappan, Candelabra, Snowe, Bungalow 5, Owen & Fred, and artists such as Benjamin Russell. About Decor Aid Decor Aid was founded by Sean Juneja and Markus Weber in 2014 to make high-quality interior design effortless and accessible. The in-house, full-time team of seasoned interior designers were selected from the Nations top firms, and they can take on projects that range from an apartment room refresh to a complete estate renovation. Pricing is transparent and exclusive trade discounts are passed along to clients. The New York City based firm now has offices in London, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston and Philadelphia. RoadVantage has been first to market with several F&I products, and weve worked hard to build a culture of innovation. With this latest announcement, RoadVantage has brought an integrated GPS solution to both dealers and consumers. RoadVantage, the fastest-growing provider of F&I programs for the automotive industry, today announced a new GPS anti-theft tracking system to provide greater security and safety for both auto dealers and their customers. RoadVantage is the first F&I provider to offer a GPS System coupled with a vehicle theft protection benefit. The RoadVantage GPS Anti-Theft System benefits both dealers and their customers, said Garret Lacour, CEO of RoadVantage. It provides dynamic inventory management for dealerships while opening up new profit opportunities. When sold with a vehicle, benefits are passed along to customers, who can then track their vehicles in real time. The boundary, speeding and low battery alerts are invaluable family safety features not only for theft protection and recovery, but also for families with new drivers. In addition to immediate vehicle location and speed in real time, the RoadVantage GPS Anti-Theft System provides boundary, speeding and low battery alerts. In the event of a theft, the GPS 24/7 support team works directly with police to provide the vehicles location, enabling a quicker recovery. The GPS Anti-Theft System also includes a vehicle theft benefit, making it the first F&I product of its kind on the market. Dealers can use the RoadVantage GPS System for dynamic inventory management through 24/7 vehicle location and multi-lot geo fences. Through instant location and multi-lot boundary alerts, floor plan audit times are dramatically reduced. If theft occurs, dealers can provide the police with the exact location of the stolen vehicle. The RoadVantage GPS Anti-Theft System also offers an online customer login that can be embedded in the dealers website, strengthening customer retention. RoadVantage has been first to market with several F&I products, and weve worked hard to build a culture of innovation, said Lacour. With this latest announcement, RoadVantage has brought an integrated GPS solution to both dealers and consumers. About RoadVantage RoadVantage is led by F&I industry veterans focused on one goal: building the best automotive aftermarket ancillary product company, from the ground up. The RoadVantage team leverages new technology and a streamlined approach to develop truly innovative products that offer the highest level of customer experience driving value and profit for all stakeholders, and setting a new industry standard in the process. RoadVantage (http://www.roadvantage.com) offers a full portfolio of ancillary products through certified agents and is headquartered in Austin, TX with regional offices in Boston, MA; Dallas, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Miami and St. Augustine, FL. Contact: Melissa Anderson Vice President of Marketing RoadVantage Ph: (855) 955-7623 http://www.roadvantage.com melissa(at)roadvantage(dot)com For more information, please visit http://www.roadvantage.com. Ellenville, in Ulster County, is a beautiful village situated at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, two hours north of NYC and an hour and a half from Albany, NY. It is well positioned to reach nearly 1/3 of the U.S. population and 2/3 of Canadas population within a days drive. Ellenville has an educated workforce (80% with a high school degree or higher) and an affordable workforce. It is also home to a community airport and is 45 minutes from Stewart International Airport. The Ellenville area has a tradition of thriving manufacturing and tourism, and is poised for revitalization. With the launch of the Ellenville Million Economic Development Fund, Ulster County has established an innovative program to encourage the renewal of this region, said County Executive Hein. This fund is designed to defray engineering costs and other necessary infrastructure expenses associated with potential new development. It provides cash incentives for job creation with a maximum award amount of $50,000 per project. The Ulster County Economic Development Alliance is currently accepting applications from business owners interested in relocating, expanding or starting a new business in the Village of Ellenville or the Town of Wawarsing. Specifically, this soft landing fund is available to businesses in most industry sectors that are making a capital investment including at least one of the following: purchase of a building; building construction, including architectural or engineering fees; rehabilitation and remodeling; infrastructure updates; machinery or equipment; or other expenses with prior approval. In addition to a capital investment, at least 5 new jobs that had not existed previously in Ulster County must be created. I commend County Executive Hein for his vision in creating the Ellenville Million and his overwhelming support of our community, stated Julie Cohen Lonstein, Esq., Chair of the Ulster County Economic Development Alliance. Ellenville has been and continues to be a wonderful place to raise my family, operate my business and call home. I encourage every business owner and developer to come and see what we have to offer, and to use the Economic Development Fund to help you get established here. The Ellenville Million program was designed by County Executive Hein to enhance the economic prosperity of the Village of Ellenville and the Town of Wawarsing based on recommendations of the Ellenville Million Committee. County Executive Hein further stated, This plan is designed to assist in what I hope is a prosperous and bright future for the Ellenville and Wawarsing area and all their residents. The Economic Development Fund Rules and Application can be found on the Ulster County website at: http://ulstercountyny.gov/economic-development/ulster-county-economic-development-alliance/ellenville-million Philip Karter, Esq. Tax controversy and tax litigation attorney Phil Karter, a shareholder with national law firm Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Aughtry, will co-present at the 2016 Audits & Appeals Seminar East organized by the Tax Executives Institute. Karter will join Chamberlain Hrdlicka colleague Larry A. Campagna in presenting a session entitled Managing Interview Requests the Good, Bad & Ugly. Moderated by Colleen C. Brown, of Barrick Gold Corporation, it will run from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 14. This is the third consecutive year in which Karter has acted as a presenter during the TEI seminar, which is designed to meet the tax controversy needs of the in-house professional community. To learn more or to register, visit TEIs website. An experienced tax controversy attorney, Karter has litigated federal tax cases in the United States District Courts, the United States Tax Court and the United States Court of Federal Claims and has argued in the United States Court of Appeals in multiple circuits. His range of trial experience, which includes dozens of jury and non-jury cases tried to judgment, encompasses a wide variety of complex and high-profile matters involving federal income, estate and gift, and excise tax issues. That experience has been acknowledged by several leading ranking publications, including Chambers USA, which routinely lists Karter among its leading nationwide tax controversy lawyers and the Legal 500 U.S., also for tax controversy. A shareholder in the Philadelphia office of Chamberlain Hrdlicka, Karter earned a bachelors degree from Emory University, a law degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Law, and an LL.M. degree in taxation from New York University School of Law. About Chamberlain Hrdlicka Chamberlain Hrdlicka is a diversified business law firm with offices in Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and San Antonio. The firm represents both public and private companies as well as individuals and family-owned businesses across the nation. In addition to its nationally recognized tax planning and tax controversy practice, the firm represents clients in appellate law, bankruptcy, restructuring, reorganization and creditor rights, construction law, corporate, securities & finance, employee benefits and executive compensation, employment law, energy and maritime, government and regulatory matters , immigration, insurance, intellectual property, international, labor and employment litigation, real estate and white collar criminal defense. Move Management, Inc., the global mobility administrative arm of Graebel Relocation held its 4th Annual Move Management Partner Summit at the companys world headquarters in Colorado. 70 Executives from the global relocation industry attended the two-day educational and networking event. An awards ceremony honored 13 of the Graebel Move Management suppliers and individuals for their exemplary dedication to superior customer service. Customer Choice Awards: Household Goods: Graebel Van Lines Auto: Montway Auto Transport Excellence in Customer Service Award: Samantha Rosania, MSS, Inc. Driver of the Year Award: Omar Abraham, Graebel Van Lines Quality Partner Auto Award: Montway Auto Transport Quality Partner Household Goods Award: 1st place: Berger, agent of Allied Van Lines 2nd place: Paxton Van Lines, agent of Atlas Van Lines 3rd place: NOR-CAL Moving Services, agent of Allied Van Lines Quality Partner Household Goods Awards >200 moves: 1st place: Budd Van Lines 2nd place: Hilldrup Moving & Storage, agent of United Van Lines 3rd place: Graebel Van Lines Sales Partner Awards: Top Sales Representative: Jason Vargas, Beltmann Relocation Group, agent of North American Van Lines Top Sales Agent: Armstrong Relocation, agent of United Van Lines About Graebel Companies, Inc. Founded in 1950, Graebel Companies is a privately-held global organization that administers employee and commercial office relocation, mobility management, workplace and consultative services for the Global 100, Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies located around the globe. On-the-ground services are managed on six continents by in-region staff members. The world headquarters is located in Aurora, Colorado USA, with centers throughout the Americas, the Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions. Known for its industry-first innovations, Graebel holds numerous quality and security credentials, and has earned accolades from clients and from within in its industry for best-in-practice performance, market intelligence research and corporate social responsibility initiatives across the globe. To learn more visit: http://www.graebel.com # # # Photos Available Upon Request Health Payment Systems, Inc. (HPS) has been awarded a 2016 Top Workplaces honor by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Top Workplaces lists are based solely on the results of an employee feedback survey administered by WorkplaceDynamics, LLC, a leading research firm that specializes in organizational health and workplace improvement. Several aspects of workplace culture were measured, including Alignment, Execution and Connection, just to name a few. "We're honored that HPS employees see the company as a place to build a rewarding, fulfilling career," said Terry Rowinski, COO of Health Payment Systems. "We're on a mission to transform the healthcare billing experience and our employees are fully aligned and energized by that mission. We have an extremely talented pool of employees, and their dedication to the customer experience allows HPS to be an industry leader. However, its their commitment to the community and each other that makes HPS a top workplace. The Top Workplaces award is not a popularity contest. And oftentimes, people assume its all about fancy perks and benefits says Doug Claffey, CEO of WorkplaceDynamics. But to be a Top Workplace, organizations must meet strict standards for organizational health. And who better to ask about work life than the people who live the culture every day the employees. Time and time again, research has proven that whats most important to employees is a strong belief in where the organization is headed, how its going to get there, and the feeling that everyone is in it together. Claffey adds, Without this sense of connection, an organization doesnt have a shot at being named a Top Workplace. About HPS Health Payment Systems (HPS) is a privately-held healthcare technology and services organization offering solutions to enhance the consumer healthcare billing and payments experience, while driving value to healthcare providers, health insurance companies and employers. Its patented solutions enable one statement, one payment and one place to call, making HPS the clear solution to healthcare confusion. HPS is led by CEO and President Jay Fulkerson, and to date has processed over $1 billion in claims. It is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. About WorkplaceDynamics, LLC Headquartered in Exton, PA, WorkplaceDynamics specializes in employee feedback surveys and workplace improvement. This year alone, more than two million employees in over 6,000 organizations will participate in the Top Workplaces campaign a program it conducts in partnership with more than 40 prestigious media partners across the United States. Workplace Dynamics also provides consulting services to improve employee engagement and organizational health. WorkplaceDynamics is a founding B Corporation member, a coalition of organizations that are leading a global movement to redefine success in business by offering a positive vision of a better way to do business. Dr. Mimi Guarneri's focus to educate and advance integrative health and medicine into mainstream healthcare and academic institutions is the core of her national and global work with organizations, healthcare systems and private providers. Mimi Guarneri, MD, FACC, ABIHM, will be honored with the Lights of LightBridge Award on May 6, 2016, in Old Poway Park from 6:30 8 PM for her leadership in inspiring the development of Integrative Medicine therapies into LightBridge Hospice programs. Internationally-renowned, Dr. Guarneri is president of the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine (AIHM) and founder of Guarneri Integrative Health, Inc. at Pacific Pearl La Jolla, San Diego, CA. LightBridge should be honored, said Dr. Guarneri. They provide exceptional programs in San Diego bringing Integrative Therapies to hospice patients to alleviate pain and suffering. The LightBridge Integrative Therapy program includes Healing Touch, aromatherapy, pet therapy and music therapy that is customized for hospice patients to ease anxiety, diminish pain and enhance sleep, among other benefits. A true visionary in integrative therapies and cardiology, Dr. Guarneri is most deserving of this award, said Jill Mendlen, Chairman of the LightBridge Hospice Community Foundation. As part of LightBridges steadfast commitment to excellence, the clinical leadership team attended Dr. Guarneris program on Integrative Medicine. As a result, Dr. Guarneris program has become the cornerstone of our Integrative Therapies, which are funded by our Foundation." Dr. Guarneri is a highly sought-after presenter and collaborator who is board-certified in cardiovascular disease, internal medicine, nuclear medicine and integrative holistic medicine. Her focus to educate and advance integrative health and medicine into mainstream healthcare and academic institutions is the core of her national and global work with organizations, healthcare systems and private providers. Dr. Guarneri's leadership has elevated the visibility of the San Diego region to the forefront of the evolving US healthcare paradigm by cultivating interprofessional collaborations, education and research for Integrative Medicine. She founded and was medical director of Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in San Diego for 15 years. In 2014, she founded Guarneri Integrative Health, Inc. at Pacific Pearl La Jolla, CA, where she is medical director and practices Integrative Cardiology. She helped create and continues to guide several national Integrative Medicine-based conferences in San Diego that draw thousands of healthcare providers from across the US and globally. These conferences include the Natural Supplements Conference, Integrative & Holistic Nursing Conference and AIHM Annual Conference. In addition to co-founding and leading the AIHM, Dr. Guarneri is the past president of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine (ABIHM) and serves as senior advisor to the Atlantic Health System for the Chambers Center for Well Being and Integrative Medicine. She currently serves on the founding board of the American Board Physician Specialties in Integrative Medicine, and is a clinical associate professor at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The Lights of LightBridge event is hosted by the LightBridge Hospice Community Foundation. All proceeds benefit the foundation, a non-profit organization that funds programs that provide therapeutic non-medical interventions for hospice patients and their loved ones. For event information and tickets, call 858-458-2992 or email abby(at)lbhcf(dot)org. About Guarneri Integrative Health, Inc. and Pacific Pearl La Jolla: Pacific Pearl La Jolla is an integrative health and wellness center in La Jolla, California, providing patient care through Guarneri Integrative Health, Inc., along with consulting services, a wellness shop and providing education and research supported by a fully-equipped video studio and learning center for lectures, classes, webinars, conferences and events. Mimi Guarneri, MD, FACC, ABIHM leads a team of experts in conventional, natural and integrative medicine, where cutting-edge conventional medicine combines with the best of global healing traditions, and patient care is personalized, preventive and proactive. Website: http://www.pacificpearllajolla.com For more information: Jeannette Bondurant, PR Coordinator, Guarneri Integrative Health, Inc. 858-459-6919 https://www.facebook.com/PacificPearlLaJolla/ LightBridge Hospice Community Foundation: http://lbhcf.org/ AIHM: https://www.aihm.org/ The incidence of dog bites that cause injury or death is on the rise. Yet, many lawyers are confounded regarding how to litigate them successfully. Its very complex, said David Zagoria, founder and partner, Zagoria Law. Zagoria Law, an Atlanta-based law firm specializing in personal injury cases, today announced that founder and partner David Zagoria will be a presenter at the 2016 Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (GTLA) Annual Convention and Gala April 28-29 at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta. Zagoria will speak about his specialty, dog bite cases, as part of the Liability Program section of conference on April 29 at 9 a.m. The incidence of dog bites that cause injury or death is on the rise. Yet, many lawyers are confounded regarding how to litigate them successfully. Its very complex, said Zagoria. The dogs behavior, the location of the incident and even the attitude and experiences of nearby residents can all play a role in the outcome. Even in situations in which the animal owner has clear liability, numerous factors can reduce or even eliminate the possibility of a large award. The GTLA Annual Convention offers attorneys cutting edge legal education for up to 14 hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit. The eight education tracks offered during the GTLA Annual Convention are products liability, new plaintiff lawyers, motor vehicle cases, advanced evidence, premises liability, media training, trucking and practice and trial technology. In addition, attendees may participate in networking and social events including a Presidents Gala on Friday evening. About GTLA Since 1956, GTLA has worked tirelessly to ensure that everyday citizens, Georgia families and small businesses are never deprived of their constitutional guarantee of access to true justice. The Mission of GTLA is simple: We are dedicated to protecting the Constitutional promise of justice for all by guaranteeing the right to trial by jury, preserving an independent judiciary, and providing access to the courts for all Georgians. For more information, please visit http://www.GTLA.org. About Zagoria Law Zagoria Law is an Atlanta-based personal injury law firm dedicated to providing unyielding representation to our clients. Founder David Zagoria has more than 15 years of experience as a prosecutor and trial attorney litigating injury cases in State and Federal Courts throughout Georgia. Our focus on personal injury cases, specifically dog bites and serious injury related vehicle accidents, enables us to provide unparalleled service and dedication to our clients from the very beginning of their case until the end. For more information, please visit http://www.lawzagoria.com. Contact (Press Only): Angela McMahon Michael Mackenzie Communications 404.543.9636 angelam(at)michaelmackenzie(dot)com We thank The United Methodist Church for this contribution and their relentless efforts in the fight against malaria. Donations from Imagine No Malaria to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2015 were more than double that of combined donations in the previous four years, according to the annual report issued by the Global Fund to The United Methodist Church. Thats thanks to the generosity of United Methodists. According to the report, The United Methodist Church is one of the most significant non-government donors to the Global Fund and is unique within the global community of faith-based organizations. Today on World Malaria Day, we are thankful for the headway thats been made against this deadly disease and we reaffirm our commitment to reducing the burden of malaria, said Bishop Thomas Bickerton, chair of the Global Health Initiative. Thanks to all partners involved in the global fight against malaria, great progress has been made in the last 15 years, states the report. New methods of testing, the widespread distribution of insecticide-treated nets and the introduction of Artemisinin-based combination therapies have led to a 48 percent drop in malaria deaths between 2000 and 2014. In 2010, the Global Fund and the people of The United Methodist Church joined forces in the fight against malaria through the denominations Imagine No Malaria campaign, which aims to raise $75 million to address the impact of malaria in Africa through prevention, treatment, communication and education. We thank The United Methodist Church for this contribution and their relentless efforts in the fight against malaria, said Dr. Mark Dybul, executive director of the Global Fund. This is the largest contribution ever received from a faith-based organization and its extremely encouraging to see partners of all sectors coming together to eliminate malaria. The United Methodist Churchs infrastructure in Africa, including a network of hospitals and clinics, combined with the scope and resources of the Global Fund, has enabled us to forge a powerful partnership that achieves far more than would be possible alone, said Bickerton. Funds raised by the Imagine No Malaria campaign benefiting the Global Fund have contributed to life-saving malaria programs in nine African countries particularly affected by the disease. These countries are Angola, Cote dIvoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Key results achieved by the Global Fund in these countries from mid-2014 to mid-2015 include distributing 59.4 million bed nets (a 40 percent increase over the previous year), treating 18.7 million malaria cases, spraying 1.5 million houses, providing 5.1 million community outreach prevention services, and delivering 67,000 episodes of training for community workers. The United Methodist Church has pledged up to $28 million through the Imagine No Malaria campaign to the Global Fund to help those in need enjoy a malaria-free life. So far, the people of The United Methodist Church have contributed $20,085,817 to the Global Fund, with more than half of that amount donated last year alone. A check for $9.6 million was presented to the Global Fund this past April to mark World Malaria Day 2015, the single largest contribution to the fund made by a faith organization. The contribution was used in Angola, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda, along with additional funds from the Global Fund for a total of $42,985,839 in these countries. An additional $1,924,0911 has been remitted to the Global Fund in 2016. The United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and its Global Health unit provide support for the denominations large network of hospitals and clinics across Africa, which also receive funding through Imagine No Malaria. About Imagine No Malaria Imagine No Malaria is an extraordinary ministry of the people of The United Methodist Church, putting faith into action to end preventable deaths from malaria in Africa, especially the death of a child or a mother. With a comprehensive approach to fighting this killer disease, Imagine No Malaria empowers the people of Africa to improve health infrastructure and achieve a sustainable victory over malaria. United Methodist Communications Office of Public Information Umcpresscenter.org As the second quarter begins, Converge Consulting is excited to share its continued growth. After surpassing sales and client satisfaction goals in the first-quarter, the second-quarter is off to a solid start. Converge is delighted to add a full-time digital web designer to the Philadelphia office. Colleen Foley joins the Converge team from The Wharton School, where she worked for the past four years. Foley is a board member at Girls on the Run in Philadelphia, a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of American Institute of Graphic Arts and previously spent time at Comcast as an Interactive Producer of Advanced Media. When I saw the job posting for a Digital Graphic Designer at Converge Consulting, I knew I had found the next creative challenge that I wanted to pursue, Foley said. Im excited to join the team and the opportunity to further my passion for higher education marketing. Foley will work closely with our client delivery teams to redesign websites, develop digital advertising creative and assist with internal marketing efforts. Converge wanted a designer that understands the challenges of working at a university, and approaches design for user experience first, as well as understanding the audience internally and externally. Converge continues to work with top ranked business schools across the world and as the team grows, want to give its clients top notch talent that understands translating brand stories of business schools to the web. Colleens experience opens up opportunities to take our products to the next level, said Josh Irons, Vice President of Strategy and Development. She understands the higher education market and will bring an insiders perspective to our strategy. As the Philadelphia team grows Converge found it necessary to upgrade the office due to faster than anticipated expansion. The modern open office space gives Converge access to state of the art conference rooms, a fully stocked kitchen and lounges, and private call rooms. This collaborative work environment gives Converge the ability to attract the a talented workforce that wants to live and work in the city. In the second quarter, Converge will hire a content strategist and digital strategist positions available in both the Cedar Rapids headquarters and Philadelphia office. Converge Consulting is a digital agency for higher education with offices in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Denver, Colorado and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Converge uses whats new and next in inbound marketing, website design, content strategy, search engine optimization, digital advertising and web analytics to positively impact student recruitment and alumni engagement for colleges and universities around the world. The National Insurance Restoration Council (NIRC) welcomes Olneya Restoration Group as Platinum Preferred Contractor. The NIRC provides residential and commercial property owners a network of vetted industry professionals throughout the nation and improves the restoration industry through a high standard of ethics and professional conduct. Olneya Restoration Group is a leading roofing and restoration contractor based in Florida, Illinois, and Missouri. Olneya Restoration Group is one of only 3% of contractors in the United States to meet the stringent qualifications to be designated a GAF MasterElite Contractor. With an outstanding A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, Olneya Restoration Group was also ranked 608 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies in America. Olneya Restoration Group is the holder of numerous renowned awards and certifications including a Gold Stevie Award for Sales and Customer Service, GAF Consumer Protection Excellence Award and GAF Customer Service Excellence Award. CEO and founder Crystal Anderson is part of the esteemed SBM Top Women Business Owners elite club. We focus on providing our customers with only the best quality work and creating long-lasting, trusting relationships with our clients. It is an honor that our hard work is recognized by the NIRC, a leading advocacy organization dedicated to improving the industry standard nationwide. Were excited to grow with the vetted NIRC member network, says Crystal Anderson, CEO and founder of Olneya Restoration Group. The NIRC is a self-regulated entity that sets the bar for industry standards nationwide. The NIRC works with the Department of Insurance (DOI). The NIRC ensures that customers receive the top qualified contractors that suit their construction needs. The NIRC also provides property owners with tips and educational tools, providing educational tools about the insurance restoration process. Olneya Restoration Group is a prominent leader in the industry, committed to high standards of excellence, standards, and holds some of the most esteemed accreditations in the industry. Were proud to have Olneya in our vetted network, says Joe Radcliff, CEO of the National Insurance Restoration Council. About the National Insurance Restoration Council Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, the National Insurance Restoration Council (NIRC) is a non-profit organization devoted to protecting and educating property owners and restoration contractors when dealing with insurance claims. The NIRC acts as the principal advocate for improved legislation and case law to protect consumers and contractors when dealing with insurance claims throughout the nation. The NIRC serves the common interest of insurance restoration contractors and protects consumers from unethical contractors. Vetted and certified NIRC certified contractors adhere to a strict code of professional conduct, educate property owners about the insurance restoration process, and give back to communities in storm damaged areas. NIRC certified contractors go through an extensive background check to become members of the Diamond Standard code of business. The NIRC as a self-regulated entity and cooperates with the Department of Insurance (DOI) and other regulatory authorities throughout the United States to improve the ethics of the industry through education and high standards. Learn more at http://www.NIRC4Change.org. About Olneya Restoration Group Olneya Restoration Group provides post-disaster construction, reconstruction & restoration services to property owners throughout Florida, Illinois, and Missouri. We specialize in structural repairs, reconstruction, and replacement to roofing, siding, windows, gutters, and screened porches. Olneya Restorations HAAG certified roof inspectors personally meet with property owners and insurance adjusters onsite and manage all storm related repairs with quality, speed, and efficiency. Olneya Restoration Group is proud to hold an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and is honored to be a GAF Slate Crafter, Training Excellence Award winner, a Certified Green Roofer through GAF, and a Platinum Preferred Contractor with the National Insurance Restoration Council (NIRC). Learn more at http://www.Olneya.com. Media Inquiries: Vera Anderson Elev8 Consulting Group Ph: 386.243.5388 Web: http://www.elev8cg.com ### CarAutoCovers (CarAutoCovers.com), an online portal designed to help shoppers find the highest-quality car covers on the market at the lowest prices possible, announced it has now begun manufacturing car covers for 2017 cars, trucks and SUVs in the U.S. CarAutoCovers representatives say this is a major piece of news because the world will be a very different place in just a year and a half, what with a new president in the White House, Fast and the Furious 8 in theaters and a new crop of vehicles that should see the market well into the next decade. While most of the automotive news for 2017 is shrouded in spy photos for most models, there are already a number of new cars that buyers are lining up for and CarAutoCovers is preparing for that. Our staff is about helping folks find the best car cover available on the market for their particular automobile, states a CarAutoCovers senior company spokesperson. Were drivers too, and we understand it can be a painstaking process when searching for upgrades or replacements after all, a vehicle is an important part of our lives, as well as a major investment, and finding the right accessories can sometimes be a challenge. Our goal is to make it simple for our customers to find the best car cover that suits their vehicle, so were very excited to offer car covers for 2017 cars, trucks and SUVs. Founded in New York City just over a decade ago but now boasting three warehouses around North America, CarAutoCovers completes the research on perfect-fit covers and has developed relationships with some of the most reputable manufacturers in the industry. The companys website was designed to exude user-friendly operating characteristics so customers can quickly find the car cover theyre searching for, with elements that enable simple navigation. Further, a Price Match Guarantee and Easy Returns policy ensure customers know they are being taken care of by CarAutoCovers representatives, two business practices set to continue as the car covers for 2017 models hit inventory shelves. From bird droppings and harsh sun rays to dirt, sap and snow, an automobiles paint job is always at risk from elements seen and unseen, and without the proper protection in place, that exterior is left vulnerable to the fading, scratches and dings that these nuisances create. As the 2017 car, truck and SUV models begin rolling out, CarAutoCovers will be offering a solid investment in a solution form-fitted to the specific 2017 makes and models for the ultimate in protection. Representatives of CarAutoCovers regularly explain the benefits of using automotive covers to their customers, citing the way a vehicle can keep that showroom shine even if the vehicle is parked in a garage with regular use of a properly-fitted cover. One of the first elements car owners should be attempting to repel, say CarAutoCovers reps, is ultraviolet rays, which can be devastating on a cars finish; to this end, a specially-fitted car cover protects the paint from fading and cross-linking while providing UV protection for the interior as well. Dust and dirt protection is also an essential function of a car cover, as these particles can trap moisture and ultimately promote premature rusting the particles are also abrasive, contrary to popular belief, and scratches by dust and dirt inevitably dulls and destroys a cars finish. CarAutoCovers' website will be regularly updated as the car covers for 2017 are introduced. About CarAutoCovers The goal for the staff at CarAutoCovers is to provide the highest-quality car covers on the market at the lowest price possible, and being the direct manufacturer allows the company to offer its car covers at wholesale prices without compromising on quality. Whats more, being updated on the latest technology helps CarAutoCovers to continuously improve on the quality of its fabrics. CarAutoCovers can be reached by calling (800) 288-5844. For more information, visit http://www.CarAutoCovers.com or email info(at)CarAutoCovers(dot)com. On Tuesday, April 19, 2016, Pathbuilders graduated 75 women from the 20152016 Achieva class. Achieva is one of Pathbuilders four cross-company programs designed to develop high-performing women who aim to build an executive presence and excel as high-impact leaders within their organizations. Tuesdays event marked the close of this year-long mentoring and leadership development program. Over the year, program participants engaged in unique one-on-one mentoring relationships with senior executives in the Atlanta area, participated in monthly educational workshops and connected in monthly peer group sessions with other participants in the program. The graduation featured an executive panel who discussed various approaches to and examples of creating and driving a high-performing culture. Panelists included Andre Anderson, Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Pat Falotico, Chief Executive Officer of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership; Meredith Hodges, Vice President of Human Resources and External Affairs at Gas South, LLC; and Guido Sacchi, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Global Payments, Inc. Together, they tied together concepts from the year-long program and inspired the audience of mentees, mentors and the mentees managers to continue to grow as leaders. Another highlight of graduation each year is the recognition and celebration of the Outstanding Mentee and Mentor of the Year. Each year, there are those mentees and mentors who go above and beyond to make Achieva an even more enriching experience for their partners. Pathbuilders recognized Sigrid Stropnik, Finance Director at The Coca-Cola Company as the Outstanding Mentee of the Year. Stropnik was recognized for her commitment to the program and how she leveraged program learnings to contribute to her organization at a higher level. Also recognized is an outstanding mentor who goes above and beyond and helps his/her mentee accomplish her identified goals, finds unique ways to challenge his/her mentee or helps the mentee overcome a particularly challenging hurdle. The amazing group of mentors all positively impact their mentees both personally and professionally, developing them to be better leaders. This years Outstanding Mentor of the Year is Jill Ratliff, Executive Vice President of Human Resources for Assurant Specialty Property. I received so much practical guidance, insight and wisdom from my mentor Jill, said Bronagh Lavery, Director, Content Strategy Business Design at Intercontinental Hotels Group and Ratliffs mentee. Her guidance helped me reach my full potential both professionally and personally. The Pathbuilders series of progressive professional development programs includes: Insignia: Entry-level women establishing credibility, developing self-awareness, learning to set priorities and gaining insight into how the business works. Percepta: Emerging leaders learning to think broadly, manage others and make conscious choices driving their careers and achieving exceptional business results. Achieva: Mid-level managers with the potential to be senior leaders learning to navigate politics, building executive presence and moving the companys most critical initiatives forward. Inspiria: Senior executives positioning themselves to have maximum impact envisioning and creating cultures where others seek and achieve extraordinary success. Participants in the 20152016 Achieva program are from the following companies: 22squared Inc. Arnall Golden Gregory LLP Assurant Solutions, Inc. Atlanta Community Food Bank Autotrader, Inc. Cancer Treatment Centers of America Cisco Systems, Inc. Coca-Cola Enterprises Colonial Pipeline Company Cotiviti Cox Communications Equifax, Inc. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Genuine Parts Company Georgia Power Company Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. Hire Dynamics Holder Construction Company HomeTeam Pest Defense, Inc. iHealth Technologies InterContinental Hotels Group Imerys Invesco Kimberly-Clark Corporation KPMG LLP Manhattan Associates, Inc. McKesson Corporation Oglethorpe Power Corporation Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Post Properties, Inc. Primerica, Inc. Rollins, Inc. Solvay Specialty Polymers USA LLC Southern Nuclear Operating Company SWM International Technology Association of Georgia The Coca-Cola Company Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. Verizon Wireless YKK Corporation of America Zep Inc. About Pathbuilders Inc. Pathbuilders transforms top talent into high-impact leaders who move business forward. Through customized programming, Pathbuilders leverages a model that effectively combines mentoring, educational workshops and interactive peer exchange to accelerate the career growth of individuals and directly contribute to the bottom-line success of client organizations. Pathbuilders has worked with nearly 4,000 professionals from more than 400 client organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, colleges and universities, and government agencies. More information can be found at http://www.Pathbuilders.com on LinkedIn and Twitter @Pathbuilders. Daniela King Finalist on NBC Today Show's Next Big Thing Seal is about more than safeguarding your sandals or even shielding your Chanel footwear; its about making a statement and preserving your style, regardless of the weather. Past News Releases RSS As one of nine working-mom competitors who balance the responsibilities of running a small business and raising a family, Daniela pitched her big idea, protective shoe covers for women and children, to TODAYs panel which included Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, TODAY contributor Jill Martin and QVC executive Doug Howe. This TV segment was featured on NBC at 8:30 am (ET) on Wednesday, April 20, 2016. Thanks to all of the positive attention from this recent TV appearance, SEAL has already signed a deal with several prominent retailers. Perhaps TV time is all it takes to get noticed! Who knew a flash flood would morph into a product that will take the world by storm? Daniela did. After a sudden rainstorm in 2013 left this busy mom clomping through a flooded parking lot, wearing plastic bags on her feet to keep her shoes from getting soaked, the idea for SEAL was born. Bringing her background in design to bear, Daniela quickly devised a flexible, lightweight, portable shoe cover that looks chic and stays dry. And because this Miami native and mother of two brings the same passion and dedication to business as she does to everything else, she never doubted that SEAL would be a huge success! "SEAL is about more than safeguarding your sandals or even shielding your Chanel footwear; its about making a statement and preserving your style, regardless of the weather," explains inventor and founder Daniela King. "The perfect combination of fashion, function and portability makes SEAL a practical, must-have accessory for everyday life. With SEAL youll always be prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws your way!" By folding up into a compact portable self-carryall, SEAL offers a convenient, lightweight protective barrier that keeps rain, sleet and snow off your real shoes, banishing permanent weatherproof footwear to the back of your closet for good. SEAL is also available for kids in many fun colors and decorative styles! So stay tuned: SEAL is about to be big news and this mom is bound to become a mogul maybe even in time for Mothers Day! ABOUT SEAL ([http://www.sealshoecovers.com) : SEAL puts innovative thinking on your feet. A breathable water-resistant outer shell repels water, mud and snow to keep your footwear clean and dry. Designed with ease-of-use and functionality in mind; these patented shoe protectors easily accommodate any style of footwear while making a statement and preserving your fashion style. Featuring a breakthrough design that allows SEAL to collapse into a portable self-pouch, Seal shoe covers also boast a waterproof zipper and malleable soles tested to withstand pressure from even high stiletto heels. Designed for anyone who has ever wished they could fold up their thick, suffocating rainy-day footwear the minute the skies clear, SEAL offer an easy, affordable solution and its great for kids as well! Contact: Seal Shoe Covers at 877-323-7325 or visit their website at: [http://www.sealshoecovers.com. SEAL is interested in hearing from potential customers, channel partners, resellers or sales agents. ISA International Sign Expo 2016 closes with attendance topping 20,044making it the largest ISA Sign Expo in a decade and the largest ever in Orlando. The 200,000-square foot tradeshow floor sold out in February with nearly 600 exhibitors. The energy on the tradeshow floor was palpable, said Lori Anderson, ISA president and CEO. Exhibitors reported that sales were outstanding. Both of those are an indication of the positive outlook that attendees hold for the sign and graphics industry. ISA Sign Expo alternates between Orlando and Las Vegas, with the West Coast show typically slightly larger. However, ISA Sign Expo 2016 ranks as the second largest event in ISA history. ISA Sign Expo annually brings together the breadth of the sign and graphics industry, ranging from neon and LEDs to print and soft signage. Throughout the event, attendees learned more about the products, innovations and ideas to help them expand and grow their businesses. Highlights from 2016 include: Two popular Game Changers events, in which attendees learned about the coming workforce changes. In all, 2,531 seats were sold to ISA Sign Expo education sessions. A well-attended Dynamic Digital Day, in which sign and graphics professionals learned more about the opportunities in dynamic digital signage. The second group of ISA Elite, which brings up-and-coming sign and graphics professionals to network and learn more about the industry. The first ISA Innovation Awards, designed to honor the new products that a panel of judges deemed most groundbreaking. The first ISA Rocks: THE Industry Party, which allowed attendees an opportunity to enjoy a night of fun networking at B.B. Kings. The party was so successful and attendance so strong that the event was extended an extra hour. Co-locations with attendees to Rolands ImagiNATION and Signaramas annual convention. ISA Sign Expo 2017 will be April 19-22 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. ISA announced last week that the event will co-locate with CPP (Collaboration in Packaging Production). Registration will open this fall at http://www.signexpo.org. About ISA The International Sign Association (ISA) represents manufacturers, suppliers, and users of on-premise signs and sign products from the United States and 60 countries around the world. ISA and its Affiliated Associations work to support, promote, and improve the worldwide sign and visual communications industry, which employs more than 200,000 American workers and has an economic impact of $37.5 billion. About ISA International Sign Expo ISA International Sign Expo is the on-premise sign and visual communication industrys largest expo. Held each spring, the event features the latest products that showcase the breadth of the sign and visual communications industry along with education and networking events. The event has been named to the Trade Show News Networks List of Top 250 Trade Shows and ranked in the Top 100 Largest Events by Trade Show Executive three consecutive years. Learn more at http://www.signexpo.org. Company showcases enhanced Kofax TotalAgility platform and Perceptive Content; contributes thought leadership to expert panel keynote and roundtable sessions. News Facts Lexmark International, Inc., a global technology leader, will take part in the AIIM 2016 Conference to be held from Tuesday, April 26 through Thursday, April 28 in New Orleans. Hosted by AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management), the conference focuses on helping organizations optimize their business content to meet todays largest business challenges including automation, governance and insight. This years AIIM Conference theme is Digital Transformation in Action. Lexmark experts will be in booth #12 to share details on recently announced enhancements to the Kofax TotalAgility platform that are ideally suited for buyers driving digital transformation initiatives and business operations, from inbound information capture through outbound customer communications. Company representatives will also offer insight into the companys flagship ECM product, Perceptive Content, which allows users to control the entire lifecycle of documents, digital images, video and other forms of content whether on premises or in the cloud. David Caldeira, Lexmark senior vice president, product marketing and solutions, will join futurist Thornton May and a group of industry experts on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 4:30 p.m. for the Industry Insights 2020 Expert Panel: Consumerization + Simplification = Digital Transformation. The group will discuss what it means to streamline business processes beyond the firewall to seamlessly connect organizations and customers in the digital world. Scott Craig, Lexmark vice president, product marketing, will facilitate the Insight Engines: Enhanced Customer Insight, in Real-Time roundtable on Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 11:40 a.m. This interactive, practical problem-solving session will explore insight engine-focused use cases, and examine the technology and integration required to gain a better understanding of customers both within and outside the organization. Supporting Resources Digital Transformation Means Change: Creating Digital Agility You Cant Lose What You Dont Have About Lexmark Lexmark (NYSE: LXK) creates enterprise software, hardware and services that remove the inefficiencies of information silos and disconnected processes, connecting people to the information they need at the moment they need it. Open the possibilities at http://www.Lexmark.com. Lexmark, the Lexmark logo, Open the possibilities, Kofax TotalAgility and Perceptive Content are trademarks of Lexmark International, Inc., registered in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Phnom-Penh, Cambodia Tom has fallen for this historic and welcoming city, where his Social Security check more than covers him for everything he needsincluding a central apartment with a balcony, great food, and regular adventures throughout Southeast Asia Opportunity often lies in that space between the publics somewhat negative perception about a place and the much more positive reality on the ground, says Jennifer Stevens, Executive Editor of International Living. Cambodia is a place where that misperception has created opportunity for adventuresome retirees like San Diego-native Tom Richter, 57. Tom was already living in paradise when he decided to move to Phnom Penh, Cambodias capital. A corporate sales executive, hed decided that Central America was his best option for an early and affordable retirement. So he moved to the Costa Rican countryside where he could enjoy retirement on a Social Security income. Costa Rica has plenty to offer retirees, but Tom had a son who lived and worked abroad as wellin Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I came to Cambodia to be closer to my son, who had built up a new life for himself here with a thriving business, Tom says. But then I discovered that Cambodia was just as interesting a country as Costa Rica. Since his arrival, Tom has fallen for this historic and welcoming city, where his Social Security check more than covers him for everything he needsincluding a central apartment with a balcony, great food, and regular adventures throughout Southeast Asia. My check from Social Security comes to just over $1,000 per month. But in Phnom Penh thats a sizable amount, considering the average local salary is around $150 to $200 per month. Cambodia is my new home, but I love traveling and exploring the other countries in the region, Tom says. There are plenty of reliable, low-cost airlines, which let me book flights in advance for as little as $20 per trip. By booking months ahead of time, I get the best promotional prices on flights as well as hotels. Ive been to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam in the last 12 months alone. Tom says hes had no trouble with visas because the Cambodian visa system is one of the simplest and least-bureaucratic in the world. A one-month standard visa can be obtained on arrival at the airport for just $25 and two passport photos. This visa can then be extended at the Immigration office or through a travel agent. For $285 and a simple application form, an expat can automatically apply for and be granted a one-year visa extension. This visa also allows the holder to make unlimited entries through Cambodian immigration and border control. And the love part? After being divorced for more than a decade, Tom didnt expect to find love again. But after living in Phnom Penh for 18 months, Cupids arrow struck when he met Monique, a French expat. They met through friends, and as Tom puts it, We just fell in love with each other from the first meeting. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be spending my retirement in a tropical country like Cambodia, with such a relaxed lifestyle, or that I would have a good woman by my side, as well as having my son nearby. This country has made me feel 15 years younger, compared with living in the States. I made the right decision coming here, and I know it. The full report on Toms expenses, medical care options, and other particulars of retiring in Phnom Penh, Cambodia can be read here: "Enjoy a Relaxed and Comfortable Lifestyle on Your Social Security in Cambodia." Editor's Note: Members of the media have full permission to reproduce the article linked above once credit is given to InternationalLiving.com. Media Contact: For information about InternationalLiving.com content republishing, available source material or to book an interview for radio, TV or print with one of our experts, contact Associate Editor Carol Barron, 772-678-0287 (US), CBarron(at)InternationalLiving(dot)com or visit the Media Center. For automatic updates on the most current stories, follow International Living Media on Twitter. For 35 years, InternationalLiving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 correspondents traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment. As a middle school teacher the author Joan Van Blarcom has observed the many problems that children faced upon entering middle school. No Big Deal (published by AuthorHouse) encompasses most of these problems and lends for a conversation with teachers, parents and their children to make their first few weeks in middle school easier. No Big Deal is a book to open up the conversation with ones child/children who are ready to enter into middle school. This puts the issues they will encounter out in the open to be introduced and discussed before problems occur. It is designed to show students that it is no big deal when one starts on ones journey into middle school. It is an easy tool for parents and teachers who are trying to take the fear out of a really wonderful time in a childs life. It is the perfect book for teachers and parents to take the fear out of beginning middle school. It is perfect to give ones child or students peace of mind on their journey to a good education. No Big Deal By Joan Van Blarcom Softcover | 8.5x8.5 in | 30 pages | ISBN 9781504985673 E-Book | 30 pages | ISBN 9781504985680 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble About the Author Joan Van Blarcom began her career as a first-grade teacher in Willingboro, New Jersey. She later became a Title 1 teacher for the Pennsbury School District in Yardley, Pennsylvania. When the school system changed from junior high schools to middle Schools, she became an eighth-grade reading teacher. She and her husband retired in 2000 and moved to Las Vegas, where she taught English for Nevada State College and the College of Southern Nevada. AuthorHouse, an Author Solutions, Inc. self-publishing imprint, is a leading provider of book publishing, marketing, and bookselling services for authors around the globe and offers the industrys only suite of Hollywood book-to-film services. Committed to providing the highest level of customer service, AuthorHouse assigns each author personal publishing and marketing consultants who provide guidance throughout the process. Headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, AuthorHouse celebrated 15 years of service to authors in Sept. 2011.For more information or to publish a book visit authorhouse.com or call 1-888-519-5121. For the latest, follow @authorhouse on Twitter. Hanley Wood, the premier information, media, event, and strategic marketing services company serving the residential, commercial design and construction industries is pleased to announce the launch of an annual, education-focused awards program-The Studio Prize. "Studio courses are vital incubators of architectural ideas and talent," said Ned Cramer, editorial director of ARCHITECT. "The Studio Prize is designed to foster exchange between the academy and the profession, students and practitioners." The Studio Prize Awards will recognize some of the most thoughtful, innovative, and ethical studio courses at accredited architecture schools from across the nation. The competition is designed to celebrate excellence in studio curricula and in the student work that results, with the goal of disseminating best practices and honoring innovative teachers and students. Multiple entries from each university are being encouraged, and all submissions must be in the context of a professional Bachelor of Architecture or Master of Architecture program from the current academic year. A distinguished jury will examine each studio's project brief, research, and representative student work. The winners will be featured this fall in ARCHITECT, in print, online, and via social media. This year, the program's exclusive sponsor, Sloan, has generously made available $20,000 in prize money, which the jury will award at its discretion to students whose work appears in the submissions for winning studio courses. There will be an additional, $5,000 purse granted as part of the Studio Prize's Sloan Award, identified at the jury's discretion, which recognizes studios that focus on sustainability or water conservation. The entry deadline is June 17, 2016. For more details and eligibility requirements for the 1st Annual Studio Prize Awards, visit http://www.studioprize.com. For more information on Sloan as well as the educational resources and technical tools provided to help architects get the job done, visit http://www.sloan.com. About Sloan Sloan is the world's leading manufacturer of commercial plumbing systems and has been in operation since 1906. Headquartered in Franklin Park, Illinois, the is at the forefront of the green building movement and provides sustainable restroom solutions by manufacturing water-efficient products such as flushometers, electronic faucets, and soap dispensing systems, sink systems and vitreous china fixtures for commercial, industrial and institutional markets worldwide. Follow Sloan on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/SloanValveCompany, on Twitter at sloan-valve-company and on YouTube at SloanValveCompany About Hanley Wood Hanley Wood is the premier company serving the information, media, and marketing needs of the residential, commercial design and construction industry. Utilizing the largest analytics and editorially driven Construction Industry Database, the company provides business intelligence and data-driven services. The company produces award-winning media, high-profile executive events, and strategic marketing solutions. To learn more, visit http://www.hanleywood.com Contact: Irina Woelfle IWPR Group (772) 231-7532 irina(at)iwprgroup(dot)com With at least one community bank in every congressional district, our industry is in Washington to work with policymakers on behalf of smarter, sounder banking policies that encourage greater economic growth in local communities nationwide. Community bankers from across the nation will be swarming Capitol Hill this week for this years Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) Washington Policy Summit, which runs through Wednesday. Attendees are bringing the message of the nations more than 6,000 community banks and the countless customers and communities they serve to members of Congress and regulators. Community bankers will meet with policymakers to discuss key issues affecting community banks and local economies, including regulatory relief, data security, taxpayer subsidies for credit unions and the Farm Credit System, and crop insurance. In addition to meeting with their policymakers, community bankers will hear remarks from Senate Banking Committee member Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and University of Virginia Center for Politics founder Larry Sabato. Attendees also will meet with the directors of key regulatory agencies, including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray. Community banks are proud to make more than half of the nations small-business loans and 90 percent of its agricultural loans, but regulatory burdens are hampering our ability to create jobs and meet the needs of Main Street customers, said ICBA Chairman Rebeca Romero Rainey, chairman and CEO of Centinel Bank of Taos, N.M. With at least one community bank in every congressional district, our industry is in Washington to work with policymakers on behalf of smarter, sounder banking policies that encourage greater economic growth in local communities nationwide. In meetings with Congress, community bankers will advocate: tiered and proportionate regulation under ICBAs Plan for Prosperity regulatory relief platform, including via the CLEAR Relief Act (S. 812/H.R. 1233), CLEAR Relief Plus Act (S. 927), Community Bank Access to Capital Act (H.R. 1523), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Examination and Reporting Threshold Act (S. 482/H.R. 4099), and key provisions of the Financial Regulatory Improvement Act (S. 1484), national data-security and data-breach-notification standards for all payments system participants, including retailers, under the Data Security Act (S.961/H.R. 2205), an end to the unwarranted taxpayer-funded subsidies for credit unions and the Farm Credit System, and the preservation of the nations successful public-private crop insurance program. For a full list of ICBAs policy priorities and more information about community banks, visit http://www.icba.org. About ICBA The Independent Community Bankers of America, the nations voice for more than 6,000 community banks of all sizes and charter types, is dedicated exclusively to representing the interests of the community banking industry and its membership through effective advocacy, best-in-class education and high-quality products and services. For more information, visit http://www.icba.org. Health workers at Africares MAPS-C facilities in Nigerias Akwa Ibom and Rivers states will receive Fios Deki Reader to help them more accurately diagnose malaria and record results. Its like turning on a light for every positive malaria test and getting a malaria map of Nigeria. Then we would be able to direct resources where they are most needed to eliminate this disease. Dr. Orode Doherty, Africare Africare, the oldest and largest African-American led non-profit committed to advancing development in Africa, is joining forces with Fio Corporation, a Canadian technology company, to introduce automated malaria testing and real-time reporting in Nigerias Akwa Ibom and Rivers states. Launched on World Malaria Day, this collaboration introduces Fios integrated diagnostic and data technology into frontline malaria services provided through an existing Africare program supported by ExxonMobil: Malaria Prevention in ExxonMobil Supplier Communities (MAPS-C). Nearly 30 percent of all malaria infections happen in Nigeria, said Africare's President and CEO, Robert L. Mallett. Any step we take forward to advance malaria control in this country can go a long way to advance the global fight against the disease. We are excited to be taking this step with Fio today to improve malaria detection and surveillance in our MAPS-C program. Thirty health facilities currently offer on-the-spot malaria testing and treatment services to rural communities in Akwa Ibom and Rivers states through the MAPS-C program. Health workers at these facilities will receive Fios intelligent mobile diagnostic device, called the Deki Reader, to help them more accurately diagnose malaria and record results. Program managers will be able to log on to the Fionet web portal to review real-time reports automatically generated from diagnostic data and other valuable information that health workers capture while carrying out their routine activities. When program managers see reports generated from the data these devices capture, they know theyre seeing an accurate reflection of whats actually happening on the ground, said Dr. Santiago Ferro, Fios Vice President of Clinical Affairs. Improving healthcare delivery and data in this way has had a transformative impact for programs in other countries tackling various health challenges. We look forward to helping Africare accelerate the fight against malaria here in Nigeria. Fios technology provides a glimpse into what we can achieve, said Africare Country Director Dr. Orode Doherty. Its like turning on a light for every positive malaria test and getting a malaria map of Nigeria. Then we would be able to direct resources where they are most needed to eliminate this disease. All data that health workers capture with Deki Readers at MAPS-C facilities will be available through the Fionet web portal to authorized personnel at the ministry of health and other stakeholders involved in eliminating malaria in Nigeria. Early and accurate diagnosis is the critical first step to successfully treating individual patients for malaria and effectively tracking and controlling the disease among populations as a whole, said Africare Malaria Programme Director, Dr. Patrick Adah. If we want to put an end to malaria in this country we have to start with improving how we identify and respond to whats happening at the local level. Fio support staff have already started building local capacity among a team of Africare-led Master Trainers to teach health workers and program managers how to integrate Deki Readers and the Fionet web portal into MAPS-C operations. A stakeholders meeting will be coordinated within a few months to review preliminary findings from the rollout of Deki Reader and Fionet technology and to explore next steps for scaling up the partnership between Africare and Fio beyond Nigerias Akwa Ibom and Rivers states. About Africare Africare is a leading non-governmental organization (NGO) committed to addressing African development and policy issues by working in partnership with African people to build sustainable, healthy and productive communities. About Fio Fio is a global healthcare technology company headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Fio works with a diverse range of public and private organizations around the world to strengthen healthcare delivery and management, with commercial operations currently in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Built on the first integrated platform to guide services, interconnect technologies, and deliver actionable insight, Fios products and services address quality, connectivity and data challenges in todays increasingly decentralised healthcare landscape. The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry Young adult author Julie Berry will visit Waterford School on Monday, April 25, to present to students about her recent new release. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the historical research behind the novel and have a copy signed. The Passion of Dolssa, published by Viking Childrens Books, is a sweeping historical thriller set during 13th Century southern France. Berry, who now lives in the Los Angeles area, visits Waterford as part of a three-day visit to Utah, with events at The Kings English in Salt Lake City on Tuesday evening and at The Provo Library on Wednesday evening. The Passion of Dolssa has been called a transcendent reading experience by Nancy Werlin, New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award honoree. Jennifer Donnelly, bestselling author, says the novel is powerful and heartbreaking. Julie Berry writes the past as if she lived it. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying, Berry again delivers an utterly original and instantly engrossing story. The Horn Book in another starred review called it irresistibly compelling, and the Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books, in yet another starred review, called it a skillfully crafted and tenderly told story of faith and friendship tested. Altogether The Passion of Dolssa has netted five starred reviews, with Kirkus also praising it as an immersive and mesmerizing read. It has been chosen as a Junior Library Guild selection, and will be published internationally in Australia. The Passion of Dolssa paints a dangerous triangle of characters: Dolssa, a mystic; Botille, a peasant; and Lucien, an inquisitor. Dolssa, the mystic, is convicted as a heretic for refusing to deny her visions, but she manages to escape her execution, and flees as a fugitive across southern France, hunted at every step by Lucien, the inquisitor determined to watch her burn. Botille finds Dolssa half-dead by a riverside, and, moved by compassion, nurses her back to health. She hides Dolssa from the obsessed inquisitor, but his interrogations of unsupecting peasants only tighten his noose and draw him closer to his prey. Botille slowly realizes that her act of kindness implicates her in heresy, too; her choice to help someone in need could cost her her life, and the lives of her family and everyone in their little village who has come to believe in Dolssas goodness. The Passion of Dolssa is Berrys 9th title, and it follows the 2014 Roaring Brook release of her widely praised farcical middle grade mystery, The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, recipient of an ALA Odyssey Honor, as well as the 2013 Viking release of her highly acclaimed YA novel, All the Truth Thats In Me. All the Truth received many accolades including: Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book for 2013, 2014 Edgar Award nomination, a Carnegie Medal shortlisting, Australias Silver Inky prize, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Top Ten title designation, a Junior Library Guild selection, a School Library Journal Best Book of 2013 mention, a Horn Book Fanfare 2013 title designation, and a 2014 TAYSHAS Top Ten pick. The authors previous titles include The Amaranth Enchantment (Bloomsburv 2009), Secondhand Charm (Bloomsbury, 2010), and the Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys series (Penguin Books, 2010-11). Julie Berry holds a BS from Rensselaer in communication and an MFA from Vermont College in writing for children and young adults. For more information, visit http://www.julieberrybooks.com. Today is World Penguin Day, and in honor of these species, aquariums and zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) are raising awareness to help the future of this beloved species. AZA-accredited aquariums and zoos work not only for the penguins in their care, but also actively participate in efforts to help save them in the wild and to contribute to the scientific understanding of these species, said Kris Vehrs, Interim President and CEO of AZA. Currently, all 18 of the worlds penguin species are legally protected from hunting and egg collection, but they continue to face threats. In particular, African penguins have seen a large decrease in population size and are listed as Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Natures (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. In the last 100 years, African penguin breeding pairs, which numbered almost one million at the beginning of the 20th century, have dropped to approximately 25,000 a 97 percent decrease. Reasons for this decline include oil spills; a loss of nest burrow sites due to historical harvest of penguin droppings in breeding colonies; and a reduction in prey due to commercial fishing. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 30 AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums took part in or supporting field conservation projects benefitting African penguins. During those five years, the AZA community invested almost a half million dollars in African penguin conservation. AZA-accredited aquariums and zoos frequently provide financial support to field conservation partners such as Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), which provides high-quality rehabilitation and veterinary services to African penguins and other seabirds in need. SANCCOB also has a strong focus on raising awareness about endangered seabirds through conservation education programs and research projects, many of which have an AZA-accredited member as a collaborator. Additionally, AZA aquariums and zoos, and other like-minded organizations, are collaborating through a bold effort focused on saving species from extinction and restoring them in their natural ranges. AZA SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction combines the power of engaging 183 million annual AZA-accredited aquarium and zoo visitors with the collective expertise of these facilities and their conservation partners to save signature species, including the African penguin. SAFE also provides a unique platform for AZA-accredited aquariums and zoos to increase the impact of their field conservation efforts and conservation contributions. World Penguin Day is the perfect day for people to get involved. While the number of African penguins has drastically declined, the good news is that by taking conservation actions, we can still make a difference in saving these species. However, we cant do this alone, and we hope that others who care deeply about penguins--and the other species connected to their ecosystemwill join us in helping them, said Vehrs. To help make a difference on World Penguin Day and every day, the public is encouraged to: Buy sustainable seafood. Check out Seafood Watch for sustainable food selections. Participate in local beach clean-ups. Show penguin love! 20% of the purchase price of this Alex and Ani Penguin Charm Bangle is donated to AZA to support conservation efforts. Learn more about penguins and what your local AZA-accredited aquarium or zoo are doing to help them. Share messages about African penguins on social media to help raise awareness. For more information about AZA SAFE and how to help African penguins and other species, please visit: http://azaanimals.org/savingspecies/. About AZA Founded in 1924, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and aquariums in the areas of conservation, animal welfare, education, science, and recreation. AZA is the accrediting body for the top zoos and aquariums in the United States and eight other countries. Look for the AZA accreditation logo whenever you visit a zoo or aquarium as your assurance that you are supporting a facility dedicated to providing excellent care for animals, a great experience for you, and a better future for all living things. The AZA is a leader in saving species and your link to helping animals all over the world. To learn more, visit http://www.aza.org. About SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction combines the power of zoo and aquarium visitors with the resources and collective expertise of AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums and partners to save animals from extinction. Together we are working on saving the most vulnerable wildlife species from extinction and protecting them for future generations. To learn more, visit AZAsavingspecies.org. Journal of Doctoral Nursing Practice Our new title fully conveys to readers our dedication to delivering articles that are at the forefront of the DNP field. Springer Publishing Company, a leading publisher of nursing and social science books and journals, announced that its renowned journal on the practice of doctoral nursing, currently known as Clinical Scholars Review, will become Journal of Doctoral Nursing Practice. The new title reflects the journals mission to support the advancement of the doctoral practice of nursing, joining its publishers acclaimed DNP books and its successful online DNP curriculum planning guide . Said Editor-in-chief and Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs for Columbia Nursing, Stephen Ferrara: For 8 years, our journal has been one of the first places DNPs look for the information vital to delivering the highest standards of clinical care, from the latest outcomes-based research to discussions of legal issues and beyond. Our new title fully conveys to readers our dedication to delivering articles that are at the forefront of the DNP field. The Journal of Doctoral Nursing Practice is a biannual, peer-reviewed publication focused on presenting articles that demonstrate clinical excellence in the application of evidence-based practice of doctoral nursing. Articles submitted for consideration discuss clinical practice and patient care; case studies; practice issues, including management, scope of practice, and reimbursement; ethical dilemmas, legal issues, and business practices; and innovative methods of teaching and evaluating advanced practice and profiling the scholarly nature of the clinical practice of nursing. It comprises one of many esteemed nursing journals from Springer Publishing, including Creative Nursing, Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, and Neonatal Network. The first issue is available online. Download the free sample of the issue at bit.ly/SpringerJDNP_Sample. For more information or to order the journal, see http://www.springerpub.com/jdnp. About Springer Publishing Company A pioneer in health care and social science publishing for 65 years, Springer Publishing Company is known as an innovative publisher in the fields of nursing, social work, psychology, counseling, public health, health administration, gerontology, and, under the Demos Medical imprint, clinical medicine including neurology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, oncology, pathology, and cardiology. The company has won numerous awards, including the American Library Association (ALA) Choice Awards, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) PROSE Awards, and the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) Book of the Year Awards, and publishes 150 quality titles annually, all available as eBooks, in addition to 21 journals, mobile apps, and digital products. Springer Publishing Company, a privately held company of The Mannheim Trust, is passionate about providing the best professional books, textbooks, guides, and reference works to professionals, instructors, and students. For more information, visit http://www.springerpub.com. IIUSA is proud to once again host the EB-5 industry in Washington, D.C. for grassroots advocacy, advanced education and business development opportunities On Wednesday April 20th, Invest in the USA (IIUSA), the national not-for-profit industry trade association for the EB-5 Regional Center Program (the Program), held its 11th Annual General Membership Meeting (AGM) in Washington, D.C. The membership meeting kicked off the 9th Annual EB-5 Advocacy Conference, the longest running EB-5 conference attended by international investment and economic development professionals around the world. IIUSA is proud to once again host the EB-5 industry in Washington, D.C. for grassroots advocacy, advanced education and business development opportunities, said IIUSA President K. David Andersson. This Annual General Meeting provides our members with opportunities to engage in policy development, select new leaders and to develop and refine organizations priorities. I look forward to working with the newly elected leaders of IIUSA in the year ahead. The IIUSA membership elected one new officer and three new directors to the board. Stephen Strnisha, CEO of Cleveland International Fund, was chosen as the new Secretary-Treasurer, while Daniel J. Healy, CEO, Civitas Capital Group, Charles Foster, Chairman, Foster Global LLP and Kyle Walker, Managing Partner, Green Card Fund, LLC were elected to the board of directors. In addition, Robert G. Honts, CEO, Texas Lone Star Enterprises, accepted the honorary position of Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus. The membership meeting also featured an interactive policy review & ratification session, committee report adoption and annual budget ratification. Members also had the opportunity to participate in focus groups and IIUSA committee meetings. After the AGM, IIUSA hosted its 9th Annual EB-5 Advocacy Conference at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, DC - a hotel completed in 2014 with the help of EB-5 investment. The EB-5 Program emerged as a much-needed foreign direct investment into the U.S. since the financial crisis in 2008, growing by over 1,200% from a few hundred million dollars then to over a billion dollars per quarter in 2015. Founded in 2005, IIUSA is the national not-for-profit trade association for the EB-5 Regional Center industry with a mission of advocacy, education, industry development, and research. The organization represents more than 270 Regional Centers and 190 associated members. IIUSAs members are engines of economic growth and job creation, accounting for over 95 percent of capital flowing through the Program. Learn more at IIUSA.org. WHG | Pizza Hut | Camp Heartland We are happy to continue our support of an organization dedicated to improving the lives of children, youth and their families." Wisconsin Hospitality Group, operator of 74 Pizza Hut restaurants in the state of Wisconsin, is launching its annual five-week Share Your Heart campaign on April 24th throughout all of its restaurants. The campaign has raised more than $900,000 for Camp Heartland during the last 15 years and this years effort is expected to push total donations beyond one million dollars. Proceeds raised will support Camp Heartland programs and operations, which provides children afflicted with HIV/AIDS the ability to enjoy an exciting and progressive summer camp experience. Last year, our local Pizza Hut locations raised more than $68,000 for Camp Heartland. The funds were used to provide the camp state-of-the-art kitchen equipment. Camp Heartland, operated by One Heartland is a national nonprofit whose mission is to serve children and youth ages 7-15 infected or directly affected by HIV/AIDS. The organization operates one-week camps which provide these children a welcomed relief from the rigors of everyday life. Through shared experience, psychological support and countless activities, campers experience strides in their personal and social development. We are happy to continue our support of an organization dedicated to improving the lives of children, youth and their families, said Mark Dillon, President and CEO of Wisconsin Hospitality Group. Pizza Hut has always been committed to encouraging and strengthening our communities and we are honored to support Camp Heartland again this year. All Wisconsin Hospitality Group Pizza Hut locations participate in the Share Your Heart campaign. The funds are raised through the sale of $1 paper hearts. In addition to fundraising efforts in the restaurants, employees also organize initiatives in their communities in an effort to raise additional money to support the cause. We are incredibly grateful for the support our partners at Wisconsin Hospitality Group have given us over the years, says Camp Heartland Executive Director Patrick Kindler. Its not every organization that dedicates so much time and effort to doing good on behalf of communities in need. We are proud to have had Wisconsin Hospitality Group Pizza Huts partner with us for the last 15 years heres to 15 more. Wisconsin Hospitality Group, a local restaurant franchise group, and its two restaurant brands, Pizza Hut and Applebee's, through the generosity of its guests and the hard work and charitable efforts of its team members, have raised more than $2.4 million for local charities in the past 15 years. To learn more about our other fundraising campaigns, go to whgcares.org Wisconsin Hospitality Group has become the largest Wisconsin-based food service franchise company in the state; they own and operate 110 restaurants across Wisconsin. Headquarters located in Waukesha, WHG operates 36 Applebees Grill & Bar restaurants and 74 Pizza Hut Restaurants, all committed to guest satisfaction and community support. Camp Heartland provides a place of complete acceptance and freedom from social isolation. Through shared experience, psychosocial support and a lot of fun, campers experience leaps in personal growth and social development. Learn more at http://www.oneheartland.org/camps-and-programs/camp-heartland. Media Contacts: Denise Harris Director of Marketing Pizza Hut Hospitality Group Denise(dot)Harris(at)whgroup(dot)com 262-751-5595 Patrick Kindler Executive Director One Heartland patrick(at)oneheartland(dot)org; 651.245.7448 Timez Attack, by Big Brainz Big Brainz is the great equalizer for our students, enabling them to become completely fluent, while simultaneously freeing up instruction time. Imagine Learning, a nationally recognized developer of language and literacy software for elementary students, announces that its newest math-facts product, Big Brainz, will factor strongly into summer school programs throughout the country. To this end, Imagine Learning will offer a free trial of Big Brainz to qualifying educators who use the software during summer school 2016. Big Brainz is a math-fact fluency software solution geared toward elementary students who struggle with basic math literacy. Following a pre-assessment, students move quickly through a game-based learning activity that monitors skill mastery and repeats facts until students recall them automatically. Too many students still arent fluent in basic math facts by the time they need to solve more challenging math problems, explains Clay Christenson, Big Brainz National Partnership Manager at Imagine Learning. But what if those same kids could be fluent before the school year begins? By using Big Brainz in a summer-school setting, students will still have complete recall of those facts by the time teachers introduce new mathematical concepts. A recent Hawaiian case study reinforces Christensons assertion. In Eleele Elementary School, third graders averaged 60% multiplication-fact fluency prior to using Big Brainz. After students were tested in fifth grade, they averaged 92% fluency in multiplication facts. Big Brainz activities achieve similar results regardless of mathematical operation, allowing students to easily achieve single-digit addition and subtraction fluency by the end of second grade, followed by multiplication- and division fluency by the end of third grade. Fred L. Rose, principal of Eleele Elementary, notes that (Big Brainz) is the great equalizer for our students, enabling all of them to become completely fluent, while simultaneously freeing up instruction time and making (that time) more effective. Educators who use Big Brainz report that the software enables them to teach higher order mathematical concepts with confidence, knowing that every child has established a critical foundation in math-fact automaticity. What a great opportunity for kids, says Trevor Allred, Director of Marketing at Imagine Learning. To actually enjoy working on math fluencyeven during the summeris a real game changer. Parents should be warned that kids will want to spend even more time this summer on math! About Imagine Learning Imagine Learning delivers award-winning language and literacy solutions for elementary students, revolutionizing the way children learn to read. Students and teachers love Imagine Learning, Imagine Learning Espanol, and Big Brainz math-fact automaticity products because they are research-based, data driven, instructionally differentiated, and incredibly fun to use. The Imagine Learning family is dedicated to changing lives and opening doors of opportunity for kids. For more information, please visit http://www.imaginelearning.com. One organization will win $100,000but everyone will walk away with powerful new knowledge. The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University has announced a call to U.S.-based nonprofits to apply for the 2016 Drucker Prize, which comes with a cash award of $100,000. The prize application is now available on the Drucker Institute website (http://www.druckerinstitute.com/drucker-prize). The submission deadline is July 1, 2016, at 5pm Pacific Time. The announcement marks a bold new direction for the program, which for the previous 24 years was called the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation. As in the past, the judges will look for organizations that meet Druckers definition of innovationchange that creates a new dimension of performance; are highly effective; and have made a difference in the lives of the people they serve. But in a new twist, the judges will also consider how much promise that applicants show to further leverage the discipline of innovation. To that end, the Drucker Prize has been turned into a resource-rich learning platformone that blends the timeless wisdom of Peter Drucker with the thinking of some of todays brightest management minds. The Drucker Prize learning platform has been designed as a teaching tool, providing those organizations that apply with some of Peter Druckers key insights on innovation and effectiveness, said Zach First, the executive director of the Drucker Institute. One organization will win $100,000but everyone will walk away with powerful new knowledge. Hailed by BusinessWeek magazine as the man who invented management, Peter Drucker not only consulted for major corporations; he also advised the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and countless other social-sector organizations large and small. He called the nonprofit America's most distinctive institution. The 2015 first-place Drucker Award winner was Kids v. Cancer, recognized for its innovative work in creating a program that expedites therapies for rare pediatric diseases. The Drucker Institute last year received 655 applications from nonprofits in 45 states and the District of Columbia. If you have questions about the application or prize process, please contact DruckerPrize(at)druckerinstitute(dot)com. About the Drucker Institute The Drucker Institute is a social enterprise based at Claremont Graduate University. Our mission is strengthening organizations to strengthen society. Our programmingfor the corporate, nonprofit and public sectorsis built on a foundation of YESTERDAY/TODAY/MONDAY* Yesterday refers to the fact that our work is grounded in Peter Druckers timeless wisdom. Today speaks to the urgency that we know organizational leaders feel to successfully meet their greatest challenges and opportunities. And Monday points to our proven ability to help executives move quickly from ideas to action to results, just as Drucker urged his own consulting clients: Dont tell me you had a wonderful meeting with me. Tell me what youre going to do on Monday thats different. For more, visit druckerinstitute.com. About Claremont Graduate University Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is one of the top graduate schools in the United States. Our five academic schools conduct leading-edge research and award masters and doctoral degrees in 22 disciplines. Because the worlds problems are not simple or easily defined, diverse faculty and students research and study across the traditional discipline boundaries to create new and practical solutions for the major problems plaguing our world. A Southern California-based graduate school devoted entirely to graduate research and study, CGU boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio. MediHerbs new product formula Nevaton Forte contains active ingredients that work to nourish the nervous system. Nevaton Forte replaces Nevaton with an even better formula, and is available in a smaller tablet size for better patient compliance. Standard Process Inc. now offers Nevaton Forte from herbal supplement manufacturer MediHerb. Holistic health care professionals have a long history of using herbs to nurture the nervous system. Nevaton Forte provides herbal support for nerves, energy and mood. The new product formula contains the highly researched herb saffron, which has been used traditionally to help restore balance during temporary mood swings.* MediHerbs Nevaton herbal supplement has been a long-time favorite of practitioners to help patients deal with the daily pressures of life, said Kerry Bone, MediHerb co-founder and director of research and development. Nevaton Forte replaces Nevaton with an even better formula, and is available in a smaller tablet size for better patient compliance.* The blend of herbs in Nevaton Forte offers major nervous system support. It is a powerful combination of active ingredients and phytochemicals found in saffron stigma, St. Johns wort, schisandra berries and skullcap. The St. Johns wort component of this tablet is standardized to contain 375 mcg per tablet of hypericins to ensure optimal strength and quality.* Nevaton Forte can help to: Calm the nerves and restore balance in temporary mood swings Support healthy nervous system response Encourage balance between the body and mind Ease the effects of occasional stress* Adults of any age dealing with temporary stress and mood swings may benefit from this well-balanced herbal supplement.* Offered in a 40-tablet bottle size, Nevaton Forte is available through healthcare professionals. Standard Process is the exclusive United States distributor for MediHerb products. For more information about Nevaton Forte and additional therapies from MediHerb, visit mediherb.com. *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. About Standard Process Inc. For more than 85 years, Standard Process has been the visionary leader in whole food nutrient solutions. Headquartered in Palmyra, Wis., Standard Process offers more than 300 high-quality supplements with whole food ingredients through three product lines: Standard Process and Standard Process Veterinary Formulas supplements, and MediHerb herbal supplements. The products are available exclusively through health care professionals. Dedicated to the whole food philosophy of founder Dr. Royal Lee, Standard Process goal is to ensure that its nutritional supplements deliver the complex nutrients as nature intended. To accomplish this, Standard Process grows the majority of its raw plant ingredients on company-owned, organically certified farmland. The company uses state-of-the-art manufacturing processes to retain vital nutrients within each ingredient and employs high quality control standards, including adhering to the Food and Drug Administrations good manufacturing practice requirements. Standard Process employs more than 370 people. The company is a recipient of the Platinum Well Workplace Award from the Wellness Councils of America and has distinguished itself as a leader and innovator in workplace promotion. In 2014, Standard Process launched Cultivate by Standard Process, a business that delivers scalable wellness solutions to impact individual employees and the overall company using onsite chiropractic as a central component of the program. Standard Process is also distinguished as an exemplary environmental citizen. The company is a Tier I participant in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Green Tier program, which recognizes companies with strong environmental compliance records. For additional information about Standard Process, visit standardprocess.com. About MediHerb Australian-based herbal supplement manufacturer MediHerb provides a wide range of herbal products in liquid extracts and tablets, which meet pharmaceutical good manufacturing practice (GMPs) code. MediHerbs commitment to quality is evident in every aspect of the business, from the sourcing of herbs through to unique manufacturing processes that have revolutionized the herbal products industry. MediHerb has a unique research and development department with scientists who are internationally regarded as phytochemical experts, and have published numerous papers in respected peer-reviewed journals. MediHerb, co-founded in 1986 by Associate Professor Kerry Bone, is available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. MediHerb products are sold exclusively in the United States through Standard Process Inc. Leading CRM Solutions Recently, 10 Best CRM released a new monthly award to honor the best CRM solutions in the industry. 10 Best CRM gave Base CRM the leading CRM solutions award for the month of April 2016. Base CRM is a seasoned CRM solution that has been around for several years, which is why it has emerged as one of the best CRM solutions in the industry. Based in Mountain View, California, it is often thought to be a handy sales device that can assist businesses with the expansion process. Base CRM can be convenient for businesses, regardless of their exact sizes. It is often used for big businesses, small businesses and businesses that are medium-sized. Various highlights that are connected to this popular CRM solution are sales management, sales forecasting, lead tracking, email intelligence and sales intelligence. Hubspot is 10 Best CRM's second-place winner for the month. Hubspot is a leading CRM solution that was created in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is just outside of Boston. This streamlined program makes it simple for businesses to successfully integrate their snail mail, email, telephone and social media communication practices. It is also a helpful CRM program for businesses that would like to minimize data entry tasks. This CRM solution can be useful for businesses that need in-depth marketing and communication help. It can also be useful for businesses that like to carefully assess customer patterns. The CRM solution, lastly, provides users with the luxury of endless data storage. Third on the list of providers of top CRM solutions is Veeva of Pleasanton, California, which caters to all different kinds of businesses. Businesses that are part of the research and healthcare services field regularly depend on Veeva's CRM solutions, for example. Other types of businesses regularly do, as well. Some of the specialties that are offered by Veeva are in-depth administrator training, community help and detailed support. While Veeva originated in the San Francisco region, it has offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 10 Best CRM also talked about the accomplishments of several other CRM solutions. These CRM solutions include San Francisco's amoCRM; Cupertino, California's Sugar CRM; Austin, Texas' Buzzstream; Chandler, Arizona's Infusionsoft; Irvine, California's Sage; and Sunnyvale, California's Agile CRM. For more information about 10 Best CRM, visit http://www.10bestcrm.com. National College for DUI Defense Dean Leonard R. Stamm, along with Regent Donald Ramsell and Jeff Green, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National College for DUI Defense and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in three cases on February 11, 2016. Dean Leonard R. Stamm, along with Regent Donald Ramsell and Jeff Green, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National College for DUI Defense and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in these three cases on February 11, 2016. The issue in the case is whether a state may make it a crime to refuse a warrantless breath test, or put differently to exercise ones constitutional right to require the state to comply with the Fourth Amendment. The case will turn on whether an officer is required to get a warrant before compelling someone to submit to a breath test. The argument seemed to be going against the drivers until Justice Breyer pointed out that with modern technology it is possible for an officer to get a warrant on the way to the police station. He cited to the NCDD and NACDL brief and asked: How long? What it says in the NACDL brief is that in Wyoming it takes five minutes and in Montana it takes 15 minutes. How long in North Dakota? He also asked: Because I see I see the breath part is the part that sort of now gets me. If youre taking them to the police station anyway to do the breath test, and it just requires a phone call to get the warrant, whats the problem? Justice Kagan asked: The Chief Justices opinion, even that said and this was with respect to a blood test. But the Chief Justices opinion said, look, if theres 20 minutes between the time that youre stopped and the time that we can get you to a hospital to get a blood draw, and you can get a warrant in that 20 minutes, then yes, you have to go get a warrant in that 20 minutes. So at the very least, why wouldnt that be the case? You know, if if youre if all of these things I mean, I have to say when I originally thought about this case, I had in my mind roadside stops. But in all of these cases youre actually driving these people to a station house. So why cant you get a at least what the Chief Justice said in McNeely, which is, okay, if you can get a warrant within that time, you have to get a warrant within that time. Justice Sotomayor asked: Why? You change the law. I mean, you know, its as if you want us to create an exception to the Fourth Amendment, and a very drastic one, to give someone the right to say yea or nay without a warrant, but we dont permit people to say yea or nay when a warrant is present. If they dont comply theyre charged with obstruction, and there will be consequences to obstruction. Justice Kennedy asked: Youre asking for an extraordinary exception here. Youre asking for us to make it a crime to exercise what many people think of as a constitutional right. There is some circularity there. And you could point to no case which allows that. So we have to show that there is exceptions there is a necessity for the exception, and youre just not answering the question about whether or not, in the wake of our recent decisions over the last three or four years, warrants have been expedited in many cases and why; and if they have been, why that isnt an answer to your argument. A decision is likely by the end of June. ABOUT THE NATIONAL COLLEGE FOR DUI DEFENSE: With over 2300 members, the National College for DUI Defense is the largest organization of DUI defense attorneys in the world. Through its educational programs the College trains lawyers to represent persons accused of drunk driving. NCDD's members have extensive experience litigating issues regarding breath blood and urine tests for alcohol and other drugs. NCDD has appeared as amicus curiae in several drunk driving cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. UPCOMING EVENTS: May 9-14, 2016 Serious Science for Serious Lawyers: The Second Annual NCDD Advanced Course on Blood Analysis and Trial Advocacy, Denver Colorado July 20-23 2016 NCDD Summer Session held on the property of the Harvard Law School Looking for a DUI or DWI Lawyer? Click here Interested in becoming a member of the National College for DUI Defense? Click here Dr. Ken Reed and Reed Migraine Treatment Center's Partner Physicians I have my life restored. I'm now in control of my headaches. Reed Migraine Centers will host a patient information seminar on advanced neurostimulation migraine treatments in Dallas, TX on April 28th at 6:30pm. The seminar follows Dr. Ken Reeds appearances on Fox & Friends and The Doctors Show. We have seen remarkable results with the Reed Procedure for migraine treatment, Dr. Reed says. Many patients with debilitating migraine headaches who did not respond to other migraine treatments or therapies now enjoy long-term relief from their migraine pain. Success rates of over 80% have been documented in the literature. In 1999 Dr. Reed introduced Occipital Nerve Stimulation as a treatment method for chronic headache and forever changed the world of headache medicine, as ONS is now offered around the world. His subsequent research report on Combined Neurostimulation for Migraine received the International Headache Societys 2009 Cephalalgia Award as the best original research submission to the journal that year. Dr. Bob Bulger, a Reed Migraine partner physician and world-leading specialist will speak at the seminar. We are very pleased that our initial research has now been independently confirmed, explains Dr. Bulger. Indeed, there are now over 90 peer-reviewed reports by researchers from such leading institutions as the Mayo Clinic, Duke University Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School hospitals that have documented successful application of implantable neurostimulation for chronic migraine. Nearly 36 million Americans suffer from chronic migraine pain. Chronic migraines can take a devastating toll on a persons life, Dr. Bulger explains. Often people cant work, they cant enjoy quality time with their families or friends, and they become isolated and depressed. I hope migraine suffers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will attend this seminar to learn more about the Reed Procedure and how it is literally changing lives. The April 28th seminar will be held at 6:30 pm at the Forest Park Medical Center, 11990 N Central Expy, Dallas, TX 75243. Individuals interested in attending can register for the free seminar at (866) 457-3915. About Reed Migraine Centers: Reed Migraine Centers partners with the most respected pain management physicians in the world to provide individuals who suffer from chronic migraine headaches with access to the most effective pain control treatments available. Reed Migraine Centers offers advanced treatments and minimally invasive procedures, including the International Headache Societys Cephalalgia Award winning Reed Procedure to help migraine suffers enjoy a better quality of life. The partner physicians of Reed Migraine Centers continue to engage in pioneering pain management research to find new and more effective ways to control chronic migraine headaches and someday end migraine pain. To learn more about Reed Migraine Center visit http://www.ReedMigraine.com. About Neuro Stim Technologies: Neuro Stim Technologies is a marketing agency specializing in raising the awareness of innovative technologies and advanced procedures that improve the quality of life of those that suffer from chronic pain. Neuro Stim partners with top facilities to provide increased access for migraine patients. EDMO Staff and Elizabeth Elected Officials in attendance at the 2015 showcase event. This showcase is an opportunity to present a taste not only of our diverse restaurant offerings, but it also brings together in one location each sector that makes Elizabeth so special and culturally unique. April 25, 2016 Due to the forecasted inclement weather,the Elizabeth Destination Marketing Organization [EDMO] will postponetheir May 4th, Travel Rally Day. The rescheduled rain-date is set for Wednesday, May 25th, 2016. Originally the event was organized as part of National Travel and Tourism Week (May 1-7), to voice support for the industry and its impact on Elizabeth, New Jerseys economy and the lives of its citizens and visitors. New Jerseys newest tourist destination, Elizabeth, NJ will offer tastings of its best cultural cuisine and displays of its historic attractions during an elegant Cocktail Reception at Sunset. This event is part of the 33rd annual National Travel and Tourism Week (May 1-7), which unites communities across America each year to celebrate what travel means to American jobs, economic growth and personal well-being. Travel and tourism is one of Americas largest employers, ranking in the top 10 in 49 states and the District of Columbia. In Union County, 23,104 workers hold travel- and tourism-related jobs, which are supported by business and leisure traveler spending that totals 7.8% of the countys total share of total employment. In 2015, tourism direct sales in Union County generated $1.334 billion dollars (a 3.8% growth from 2014), that of which Union County contributed to $177 million dollars, which equals 3.7% of N.J. states tourism tax. This event, presented by EDMO, is exclusively for service industry staff and friends, by invitation only. It will run from 6:30-10:30 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Park. The event site will be completely transformed, with an elegant ambiance under the stars and iconic American flags at the Elizabeth waterfront. A revised city tourism mobile app and new historical tourist video will be debuted that evening. The event is expected to attract as many as 400 hotel/service industry personnelincluding multiple city-, county- and state-elected officials. EDMO works to provide hotel guests with a memorable local experience during their stay in Elizabeth, N.J. while working to drive new group tour business to the area. The new tourism initiative integrates area hotel staff and guests with Elizabeth experiences: historical sites, cafes, restaurants and nightlife venues. By giving the hospitality service industry staff an opportunity to experience some of the wonders of Elizabeth, they will be better able to refer and encourage hotel guests to experience these special options. The citys new tourism bureau, EDMO, attracts visitors to Elizabeth franchised hotels by promoting all the rich American Revolutionary history, diverse cultural cuisine, trending nightlife and high-end outlet shopping the city has to offer. (Find out more at http://www.goelizabethnj.com). EDMO shows tourists and the hospitality industry all the things that make Elizabeth a memorable place to visit, said Jennifer Costa, the organizations director. This showcase is an opportunity to present a taste not only of our diverse restaurant offerings, but it also brings together in one location each sector that makes Elizabeth so special and culturally unique. Under the leadership of the Elizabeth Destination Marketing Organization, multiple entities from the history, hospitality, retail and restaurant sectors are working together to promote the new tourism sector of Elizabeth. As this effort attracts new visitors, it aids in the economic development of the city of Elizabeth. Across Elizabeth, N.J., travel employs a prosperous and diverse workforce from airline and hotel employees to restaurant, attraction and retail works and supports related sectors such as construction, manufacturing and finance. We are celebrating what travel means to Elizabeth, Costa said. The travel and hospitality industry brings jobs and economic development. More tourism means more growth and greater prosperity for all of Elizabeth. For more information or to write about the event, please immediately contact the Elizabeth Destination Marketing Organization, 456 North Broad Street, Elizabeth, N.J. 07208, at info(at)goelizabethnj(dot)com or (908) 355-9797. WHAT: Elizabeth, N.J. Travel Rally Day | City of Elizabeth Showcase WHEN: Wednesday, May 25, 2016 WHERE: Veterans Memorial Park, (Front Street & Elizabeth Avenue) at the Elizabeth Waterfront If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. News World news Greece and Creditors Negotiated ADMIE Split from the Public Power Corporation The agreement between the ministry and the creditors provides for the immediate launch of the process separating the grid operator from PPC just after Parliament ratifies a bill replacing an older law that provided for the sale of 66 percent of ADMIE AUTHOR: publics.bg ADMIE Negotiations between the Energy Ministry and the representatives of the countrys creditors made significant progress this week with the drafting of a particularly tight timetable that foresees the completion of a complicated plan for splitting the Independent Power Transmission Operator (ADMIE) from Public Power Corporation (PPC). It is not yet clear whether the final agreement includes a provision contained in the original draft regarding the alternative of a 100 percent sale of ADMIE in the case that the above plan is not achieved, Ekathimerini reported. The agreement between the ministry and the creditors provides for the immediate launch of the process separating the grid operator from PPC just after Parliament ratifies a bill replacing an older law that provided for the sale of 66 percent of ADMIE. It is reminded that the new bill dictates the sale of a 49 percent stake of ADMIE to the private sector (29 percent to a strategic investor and 20 percent floated on the Greek stock market), while the remaining 51 percent will be passed on from PPC to the state. The bill is also set to regulate all issues pertaining to the compensation that PPC will receive for the sale of the 51 percent stake in ADMIE to the state. A Queens bookstore gets one step closer to opening; a Virginia Books-A-Million preps its new location; and a Canadian indie is planning a big birthday celebration. Queens Bookshop Launches Kickstarter Campaign: Within the first two days, Vina Castillo, Natalie Noboa, and Holly Nikodem have raised nearly $5,000 toward their goal of $70,000 to open a second general indie bookstore in Queens, N.Y. They decided to open a store following the closing of two Barnes & Noble bookstores in Queens. Modern Times Faces More Financial Woes: The 45-year-old San Francisco bookstore collective, which has struggled in recent years with high rent, could have to move for a fifth time or close. Although the store qualified for assistance as a legacy business through the citys Invest in Neighborhoods partnership, it has not made a difference in Modern Timess troubled financial outlook. 2nd & Charles to Open Second Richmond Store: No date has been set yet for the next used bookstore from Books-A-Million, a 36,125 sq. ft. store in Tuckernuck Square, formerly home to a Babies R Us. Type Books Turns 10: The Toronto indie is celebrating its first decade on Saturday (Apr. 30) with 20 local authors on Canadas Authors for Indies Day. Bindings Bookstore to Close at End of Month: After five and a half years, owner Carolyn Wicker announced over the weekend that she is closing the Albion, N.Y., new and used bookstore on April 30. Kings Christian Bookstore Closing in Boone: After eight years, Randy and Jill King are closing their Iowa Bookstore. They plan to sell some books to long-time customers from their home. Scott Bess Download Photo WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Scott Bess, currently president and chief operating officer of Goodwill Education Initiatives in Indianapolis, will become the first head of school for Purdue Polytechnic High School, which is to open in August 2017 in downtown Indianapolis. The Polytechnic High School, a STEM-focused school designed to provide a bridge for inner-city students and others to succeed in high school and to be admitted directly to Purdue University, received its charter from the city of Indianapolis in December after Purdue President Mitch Daniels announced in June the universitys intention to create the new institution. We are out to bring a totally new kind of educational opportunity to IPS students and to build a pipeline that brings many of them to Purdue, Daniels said. Scott Bess is absolutely made to order for making this vision real. Bess, who will officially begin his new duties on July 5, said, I am incredibly honored to be selected as the first head of school for Purdue Polytechnic High School. I would like to thank the leaders of Purdue and the board of the Purdue Polytechnic High School for creating the vision of an innovative school offering opportunities for students that are not present today. Starting a new school is always a challenge, but partnering with a world-class institution raises the bar for what is possible. Maureen Weber, the high schools board chair, said Bess will bring great experience and knowledge to the position. We are thrilled to have a leader of Scotts caliber as we launch the Purdue Polytechnic High School, Weber said. Scott has had great success helping to grow Goodwill Education Initiatives, and we know the high school will flourish in his hands. Among Besss early goals will be to work with Brooke Huntington, assistant dean for K-12 outreach for Purdue Polytechnic Institute, on future collaboration with Indianapolis Public Schools. Purdue Polytechnic Institute is one of 10 academic colleges at Purdues West Lafayette campus. Bess and Huntington will meet with the IPS board on Tuesday (April 26) to discuss the vision for the Purdue Polytechnic High School and how it could become an IPS Innovation Network School partner, a collaboration that would allow both the school and the district to benefit from the expertise and services that each organization offers. Bess comes to Purdue after 16 years with Goodwill Industries, first as chief information officer and, since 2004, as president and chief operating officer of Goodwill Education Initiatives, which under his leadership grew from a single school with 117 students to a school network with more than 3,000 students. He received his bachelors degree in mathematics education from Purdue and a masters in teaching from Marian University. I am fortunate beyond belief to have worked for an outstanding organization like Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana and Goodwill Education Initiatives, Bess said. And I look forward to continuing to be able to create educational opportunities that make a real difference in the lives of students in Central Indiana. The school board of directors anticipates announcing a downtown Indianapolis location for the high school in the next few months, and it will enroll its first students, beginning with 150 ninth-graders, in fall 2017. The curriculum for the innovation-focused charter school will mirror the transformed Purdue Polytechnic Institute on the West Lafayette campus and will serve as a pipeline to the institute. The school in downtown Indianapolis could also serve as a springboard to eventually allow for expansion into other Indiana cities where Purdue Polytechnic Institute offers Purdue degree programs. Purdue Polytechnic Dean Gary Bertoline said Purdue faculty, primarily from the institute, will contribute to developing the high schools curriculum and teaching methods. Our success will depend on the great developmental work of our Purdue faculty, blending K-12 and postsecondary education with an infusion of industry leadership and partnerships to provide our students with groundbreaking opportunities, he said. Planning for the school has been in the works for more than a year under the direction of a steering committee composed of leaders from Purdue, the city of Indianapolis, USA Funds and EmployIndy. USA Funds has provided a $500,000 planning grant, administered by EmployIndy, for the schools start-up. How it will work Purdue Polytechnic Indianapolis High School will have open enrollment for a technology-based curriculum in which the first two years will encompass problem- and project-based learning focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics with a connection among those subjects and real-world challenges. Students entering 11th grade will select a specific pathway to master skills, earn college credit and gain industry credentials while learning in the high school classroom, at Purdues West Lafayette campus and in the workplace. In the 12th grade, students will complete an internship in their chosen pathway. As part of the program, Purdue also will provide programs that help students transition from high school to college and college-level courses. Additional information is available online at https://polytechnic.purdue.edu/indianapolis-high-school. Sources: Mitch Daniels, president@purdue.edu Gary Bertoline, bertolig@purdue.edu Brooke Huntington, bhunting@purdue.edu Scott Bess, 317-490-7265,sbess@purdue.edu The Kane County State's Attorney's Office said Saturday that 39-year-old Ralphael J. Robinson of Aurora is charged with one count of criminal sexual assault and one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. They say the abuse occurred at Kingdom Church in North Aurora on Monday, and that Robinson knew the victim. Robinson surrendered to police on Friday, after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He appeared in court Saturday morning and is being held at the Kane County jail on $100,000 bail. It wasn't clear late Saturday whether Robinson has an attorney who could comment on the charges on his behalf. COAL VALLEY -- Village officials said Wednesday that they would like the public to share views on upcoming water projects estimated to cost more than $5 million. Mayor Emil Maslanka said aging and neglected infrastructure of the water system makes upgrades necessary and that projects should not be put off any longer. Trustees applied for a 20-year loan through the Illinois EPA at 1.86 percent, projecting they will pay about $53,000 per year in interest. Last month Mayor Maslanka reported EPA officials told him the loan application has gone through compliance and field office reviews, and is under a permit review. "If we get confirmation that we qualify for this loan, we need to post some kind of public information meeting. I want to make extra effort to get some more involvement. As a board, we should have a work session to look at the proposed infrastructure. We need more resident input," trustee Dale Keppy said. Trustee Michael Bartels agreed, saying he hears concerns from residents every day regarding the proposed projects and their cost. "I would also like to get more public input. If residents don't show (up), then they're not concerned," he said. "I've been involved with construction projects for 15 years. When you have a project of this magnitude - of $5 million - you generally have a public gathering. You post the projects on a board to show what is involved with each one." "How do you get these people to a meeting? They don't understand what's going on," trustee Dick Stone added. Trustees suggested residents could be notified of meetings by sending notices in the water bills, the village newsletter, or by promoting the village website. Mr. Keppy said the village owes it to taxpayers to notify them of meetings. Assistant village administrator Penny Woods said space is very limited on water bills. Resident Don Pearson, who said he has a background in marketing, said village officials should promote the website as much as they do the village newsletter. He also suggested advertising meetings through yard signs. "I think you should have some public presentation on the water project. The biggest concern is running water to the communities that haven't signed up for it," Mr. Stone said. Some of the proposed projects include: Construction of a new water tower at well No. 4 in the Oakwood area; replacement of several water mains throughout the village; and water main connections to the Timber Ridge and Buysee housing additions. Coal Valley has had ongoing problems with water main breaks in recent years, resulting in boil orders. "Here's my concern. The people who usually show up are the negative ones, not the ones who support a project," Mayor Maslanka said. Trump, the Republican front-runner, lashed out at what he called collusion by desperate rivals, intensifying his attacks on the GOP presidential nomination system on the eve of Tuesday's round of primary elections in the Northeast. "If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island.. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude." "It shows how pathetic they are," he said of his Republican rivals. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland hold primaries Tuesday along with Rhode Island. Cruz, a Texas senator, and Kasich, the Ohio governor, announced the terms of an unprecedented agreement late Sunday night to coordinate primary strategies in three of the 15 remaining primary states. Kasich will step back in the May 3 Indiana contest to let Cruz bid without interference for voters who don't like Trump. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in subsequent contests in Oregon and New Mexico. The arrangement does not address Tuesday's primaries, where Trump is expected to add to his already hefty delegate lead. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to keep him from amassing enough delegates to seal his nomination and avoid a contested national convention in July. Ignoring the Northeast on Monday, Cruz insisted, "We are at a fundamental fork in the road," as he campaigned in Indiana. "It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump," the fiery conservative told reporters. "That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice." The plan carries risks especially as Trump bashes a "rigged" nomination system. Some would-be Cruz supporters in Indiana agreed with Trump's criticism. "That's kind of sneaky," said Joe Conder, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer from Scottsville, who is deciding between Cruz and Trump. "It's more about politics than getting things done." Kasich sent mixed messages as he addressed the pact for the first time while campaigning in Philadelphia. Asked what Indiana voters should do next week, the Ohio governor urged them to vote for him. "I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me," Kasich said just 13 hours after promising to give Cruz "a clear path" in Indiana. He said he had simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana. Trump is the only Republican candidate who can clinch the GOP presidential nomination before his party's national convention. Yet his path is narrow. The front-runner needs to win at least four of the five Northeastern states on Tuesday. He enters the day with 845 delegates, 392 short of the 1,237 needed to represent his party in the general election in November. Eliminated from reaching that total in the primaries, Cruz and Kasich can only hope to block Trump from reaching a majority and a first-round convention victory and thus force a contested convention where delegates could select a different nominee. "It is now abundantly clear that nobody is getting to 1,237," Cruz declared Monday. "We are headed to a contested convention. And at a contested convention, Donald Trump is in real trouble." Trump was also the target on the Democratic side as Hillary Clinton eyed Tuesday primary victories she hoped would all but seal her victory over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The former secretary of state ignored Sanders as she campaigned in Delaware, assailing Trump as being out of touch with average Americans. "If you want to be president of the United States, you've got to get familiar with the United States," Clinton said. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of." "It wasn't just somebody sitting pots in the window," Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told The Columbus Dispatch. The victims all members of an extended family were fatally shot in the head, including a young mother whose newborn baby was sleeping beside her Friday morning. That baby, another infant and a toddler were spared. The victims were remembered on Monday as loyal and caring people. More than a dozen counselors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school to help friends and neighbors handle their grief. Dana Rhoden, who was killed along with her three children, her ex-husband, and three other relatives, "always wanted what was best for her kids," Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said Monday. The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr., was a 16-year-old freshman at Piketon High School, which has just 530 students. "He was the first one that if he thought that someone wasn't being treated fairly or felt like someone wasn't being treated appropriately, he would speak up about it," Burkitt said. The teen's siblings 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden also had attended the school. All eight autopsies have been completed, and while authorities have released no details about a motive, the Attorney General's office did confirm Monday that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook. Junk, the prosecutor, did not immediately respond to multiple requests from The Associated Press for comment. At a news conference on Sunday, Attorney General Mike DeWine called the killings "a sophisticated operation," and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said citizens should assume that those responsible are armed and dangerous. Extensive marijuana-growing operations are not uncommon in sparsely populated rural southern Ohio, an economically distressed corner of Appalachia. Two of the four homes that became crime scenes Friday are within walking distance of each other along a remote, winding road leading into wooded hills from a rural highway. The others are nearby. Piketon about 60 miles south of Columbus and 90 miles west of Cincinnati is in Pike County, which is home to just 28,000 people and has an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent, considerably higher than Ohio's rate of 5.1. A main employer is a shuttered Cold War-era uranium plant whose cleanup provides hundreds of local jobs. More than 22,000 marijuana plants were seized in Pike County in 2010, and while authorities made no arrests, they said they found two abandoned camps where Mexican nationals apparently stayed. In 2012, another 1,200 plants were seized in Pike County in an operation connected to a Mexican drug cartel, the Attorney General's office said. Seizures continued in 2013 and 2014 in the county. The victims have been identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month old son with "Frankie" was unharmed. DeWine said the state's crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint, and that five search warrants have been executed. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, and a Cincinnati-area businessman offered a $25,000 reward for details leading to those responsible. For any aspiring entrepreneurs, Basson said to make sure you have a product or idea that retailers want to sell and consumers want to buy. 1 hour ago On time-performance, which is defined in the Netherlands as an arrival within three minutes of schedule, reached 89.5%, well above the minimum benchmark of 87% defined in the ministry's contract with Prorail. The report shows that the majority of delays are caused by external factors, with this category accounting for more than half of delay minutes. A concerning trend is the continuing increase in the number of suicides on the Dutch rail network. Despite efforts by Prorail and other organisations to improve prevention measures, the number of suicides increased from 192 in 2014 to 223 last year. Since 2008 the number of suicides has increased by an average of 5% per year. Measures implemented by Prorail include lineside fencing, improved lighting, and promoting the 113 telephone helpline. The effectiveness of these measures will be evaluated next year. Following Japanese practice, Prorail plans also to install blue lighting in stations and on platforms, which has been found to have calming effects on passengers. News of Prorail's improving performance comes as the government considers a major reorganisation of the rail sector, which could include making the infrastructure manager a department or agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure. Overcrowding The results for the country's largest train operator Netherlands Railways (NS) are less positive, with performance in decline as ridership surges. Passenger numbers increased 3.2% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2016 and overcrowding has become a particular issue, especially in the Randstad area around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, with passengers frequently left standing on platforms. Following the Fyra parliamentary investigation and daily problems in operations, an external consultant was appointed by the ministry in December 2015, and this report has now been completed and sent to Dijksma and the Dutch Parliament. The report commends NS for adopting a 'pit-stop' strategy to improve rolling stock availability by allocating capacity at two Nedtrain depots for unplanned maintenance. Four drivers are available round-the-clock to move trains to and from these depots. However, NS has failed to find rolling stock abroad to cover its short-term fleet requirements until new trains are delivered. Operating new bus services parallel to overcrowded train services between Amsterdam Sloterdijk and Castricum has proved ineffective, with an average of two passengers per bus, despite incentives for passengers to switch. The situation is expected to ease from the end of 2016, when new Stadler EMUs enter service. However, issues with overcrowding are considered to go well beyond NS and the railway as a whole, and the government is looking at a variety of options to reduce the burden on the system. Stakeholders are being asked to co-operate to encourage travel outside peak periods and Dijksma has already contacted the secretary of state to the Ministry of Education about changing the starting time for lessons at schools and universities. A commission to develop plans has been established for this. NS is also encouraging its own staff to work outside normal office hours. Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) has issued the call for nominations for 2016 Woman of the Year and Woman to Watch honourees. The awards will be presented at the Touchstones Luncheon on 19 September in New York during the WICT Leadership Conference, held in conjunction with the cable industry's Diversity Week.The Woman of the Year Award is bestowed on a woman who has made significant contributions throughout her career to her company and the overall cable telecommunications industry. She is a proven leader and asset who shows great resolve to help others along their path.The Woman to Watch Award honours a woman who shows tremendous promise for transforming the industry through her professional accomplishments. She has already demonstrated exemplary leadership skills in her company and a strong dedication to the industry. WICT will select one honouree each from a programmer and operator category."We are proud to recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of our industry leaders through WICT's Woman of the Year and Woman to Watch awards," said WICT president and CEO Maria Brennan. "The honourees are exemplary role models, contributing significant talent and stewardship to advance their companies and better the industry." By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy unless you have disabled them. You can change your cookie settings at any time but parts of our site will not function correctly without them. [Close] We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on the website. The purposes of using cookies are defined in the Privacy Policy of RAPSI If you agree to continue using cookies, please click the "Confirm" button. If you do not agree, you can change your browser settings. Russian national gets 5 years in prison for terrorist recruitment MOSCOW, April 25 (RAPSI) A court in Perm has sentenced a local resident to 5 years in prison for recruiting people for Jabhat al-Nusra, an international terrorist organization banned in Russia, the Federal Security Services regional department reported on Monday. According to the statement, Russian national Gayradjon Tazhibayev has abetted residents of the Perm region to participate in fighting against government forces in Syria. A criminal case on facilitating a terrorist activity has been launched against him. According to the UN, over 200,000 people have died in Syria since an armed conflict flared up there in March 2011. Government forces are fighting a number of militant groups. The most active of them are from the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. 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. There has been a lot of parsing of yesterday's reputed snub of President Obama by King Salman of Saudi Arabia. It certainly was a snub. In 2009 the late King Abdullah greeted Obama off the plane during the US President's first to the Kingdom; yesterday King Salman sent the Governor of Riyadh to welcome the US President while he received his Gulf counterparts a few hundred metres down the runway. The reasons for the snub are pretty obvious too. Saudi impatience with Obama personally has grown exponentially. They blame him for an assortment of failings, real and imagined: abandoning the Mubarak regime in Egypt in 2011; failing to hold his his red-line against Bashar al-Assad in 2012; and cozying up to the Iranians with a nuclear deal in 2015. For Obama, sharp-eyed about US interests and unsentimental about US allies, the snub will have mattered very little. But if the Saudi leadership thinks, as it apparently does, that it can simply wait for Obama's successor to resume normal service then they are in for a nasty surprise. The truth is that, with or without Obama, the fabric of interests that once tied the two countries together has been fraying for some time now. Certainly personalities do matter, especially in a country like Saudi Arabia, run more like a family business than a state. The Saudi royal family's close ties to the Bush family in the US, for example, certainly helped to hold some of threads of the relationship together. But absent these personal ties, interests are brought into sharper focus. The US needs less Saudi oil. It no longer bases much of its regional military forces in the country. And in recent years the answer to the question of whether Saudi Arabia is more of an asset or a liability in the fight against terrorism is much more finely poised. Americans are asking more questions about Saudi Arabia's role in promoting extremism by exporting its intolerant brand of Islam. Congressional legislation that would allow 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi state in US courts is just one manifestation of this. Some of the questions that are raised about the Saudi state's support for extremism are unfair, but others aren't. Either way, for a country that is more comfortable wielding its influence in the US through quiet lobbying, it is going to be a struggle to answer these more public charges. None of this means that the US-Saudi relationship is going to disintegrate. There are still strong and mutually beneficial military, intelligence and economic strands to the relationship. But to pull these back into a tighter weave will require some re-thinking of US-Saudi ties. It would be easy, for example, for a future US president to reassure the Saudis by being more receptive to the Kingdom's external security fears and more overtly supportive of its regional military adventures and proxy wars. But this would do neither the US, nor the region, nor frankly Saudi Arabia, any good. It would be much better to return to the economic origins of the US-Saudi relationship. In 1933 Saudi Arabia granted a historic oil concession to Standard Oil of California (SOCAL, later to become Chevron). The fact that the grant was to an American company, rather than one from the Middle East's colonial powers, France and Great Britain, was highly significant at the time. According to one account, possibly apocryphal, Saudi officials told the SOCAL representative that despite his company's inexperience in the region, it's nationality had been a distinct advantage: 'Your country...(has) no imperial designs. And besides, you are so far away'. Things have certainly changed, but the company that emerged from this American economic venture in Saudi Arabia, Aramco, was central to the transformation of the Kingdom from a sleepy, impoverished exporter of dates to the world's most important energy producer. Aramco's importance, however, was not just in the oil riches that it unearthed. It helped to diversify the Saudi economy by creating new industries. Saudis that trained at Aramco have gone on to be some of the Kingdom's most effective administrators and officials, not least the current Saudi Oil Minister who started his career as an Aramco trainee. As I noted in a recent post, today the Saudi leadership's main challenge is not its battle for regional supremacy with the Iran, but the struggle to diversify its economy away from a dependence on oil income. Indeed, the race to reform their respective economies will be far more consequential for Riyadh and Tehran's battle for regional influence than anything that happens in Syria or Yemen. This is relevant to both the ability of Saudi Arabia to spread its largesse regionally as well as to its internal stability. According to one estimate, for example, unless the Saudis can create at least 4.5 million new jobs by 2030 the unemployment rate could creep to 20%. But this also matters to the US. Helping the Saudi leadership ensure that Saudi youth are gainfully employed and have a stronger base of technical skills will do more to undercut religious extremism in the Kingdom than any demands from Washington that Riyadh change the curriculum of its religious education. Ironically, one of the ideas that the Saudi leadership has floated as a part of its economic reform effort is the partial privatisation of Aramco. But there is a lot more the US government, global institutions and the private sector could do to help the Saudis increase the role of the private sector in the national economy and reduce the pressure on state finances. The trick to sustaining and reviving the US-Saudi relationship will be weaving a new fabric of interests based on economic cooperation and reform. Given the Saudi leadership's antipathy to Obama this may need to wait for his successor. But it will also depend on the willingness of that successor to look beyond the recent past of US-Saudi relations into its deeper economic origins. Georgia's defense minister spoke candidly about her expectations for the July 2016 NATO summit and about the security vacuum in Eastern Europe. The notion of a Europe whole and united hardly got a look-in at this year's Globsec forum of foreign and security policy experts in Bratislava. Yet becoming part of the Euro-Atlantic structures of NATO and the EU is key to Georgia's future direction and stability. Since 2012, when the Georgian Dream coalition defeated the party led by then president Mikheil Saakashvili, reforms have lost their momentum, stagnation has set in, and corruption and nepotism have been on the rise, according to a new report by the Center for Eastern Studies. There are disagreements too about Georgia's relations with Russia. None of the above has made things easier for Tinatin Khidasheli, who was appointed Georgian defense minister nearly a year ago. In an interview on April 16, she spoke candidly about Georgia's expectations for the July 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw, the security vacuum in the region, and relations with Russia. I began by asking her about the summit. Judy Dempsey: What does Georgia expect from the NATO summit in Warsaw? Tinatin Khidasheli: Of course we would like to become a member of NATO. Georgia has been a loyal partner and a reliable partner, and at the same time the security and defense sector has been undergoing considerable transformation. So I think these three things-loyalty, reliability, and transformation-correspond to NATO's standards. JD: We heard here at Globsec that no NATO member has a veto over any country joining the alliance. Do you really believe that? TK: I want to believe it. I also want to believe that aspiring members will be judged on their own merits and not necessarily as parts of a package deal for a group of countries. JD: That's not the reality. Within NATO, aren't there are several big member states that don't want to offer Georgia membership-or even a Membership Action Plan, which would put the country on a firm path to joining the alliance? They see Georgia's security through the prism of Russia. They don't want to antagonize Russia. TK: Yes. That is so. But we have a completely different vision of things, which is obvious. We want others to see Georgia as an opportunity rather than as a threat to anybody's security. JD: In what way? TK: The outcome of the NATO summit in Bucharest [in 2008] proved that if there had been more courage, the August war [in which Russia attacked Georgia in 2008] could have been avoided. JD: In other words, Georgia should have been offered a Membership Action Plan, which could have deterred Russia-but instead, Berlin and Paris opposed granting Georgia that status? TK: And something else. Georgia presents an opportunity for another reason. In today's difficult world, many values are being challenged. Georgia stands out as a showcase to prove that values matter. And Georgia is a country that can prove it can do the necessary reforms, prove its patience, prove it can perform well, and prove it can transform its entire system according to the standards of the EU and NATO. If you carry out that transformation of your own country for yourself, then the next logical step will come, and the experience will serve as an example for other countries that it is worth trying despite the difficulties. JD: A logical step it should be, but it probably won't be. Since you refer to the region, let's look at the security vacuum that exists in Georgia and Ukraine, to name just two countries. Would Georgia's membership in NATO enhance the security of the region? TK: Yes, definitely it would enhance the security of the region. But more importantly, it would enhance the democratic process in the region, which is no less important than security in today's world. JD: It would presumably also send a signal to Russia. TK: It would send a signal to everybody. A positive signal in this case. We always say-and we mean it-that Georgia's membership in NATO and the EU would not be aimed against anyone. It would have its own value. It would serve its own cause, namely that this country is destined to be a member of the European family. It would also show that countries are evaluated on their own merits. [Members of NATO and the EU] have benefited by having safer people and more developed societies. JD: Maybe the idea of a Europe whole and free has gone off the radar screens of most EU and NATO countries. How do you deal with this? TK: When the new government was elected in Georgia in 2012, from day one we said, "strategic patience." JD: What does that amount to in terms of substance? TK: That's our policy on security. We don't want anyone to stop Georgia anymore. The sacrifices of the 2008 war were high for a small country. Georgia lost lives, and it lost territory. There is an ongoing effective occupation of 20 percent of the country. On top of that, the war stopped the development of the entire country. Our economic growth was much higher before the war. It took quite a while before we regained that momentum. Our integration process was on the up, then it stopped because of the war. The war even killed the country's optimism to a certain extent. When a country is on the up, people become more enthusiastic. More optimistic, naturally. They invest more and work more because they have a feeling that there is stability and that they can work as normal human beings. And then when the war happens, everything stops. No one knows what is going to happen. JD: And now, eight years on? TK: We have regained this confidence, this self-confidence as a state. When the new government came to power, we said we were not going to allow that to happen again. JD: Which is why NATO membership is so important to you? TK: NATO membership is not the only answer to our problems, but it is a substantial one. It's also about how we behave. How responsible we are. How we work strategically to secure the country from the immediate threats that it is facing. And obviously, we need much bigger support than we have today. JD: There'll always be countries in NATO that would say that Georgia can't join because it does not have territorial integrity. TK: Of course. But no one ever asked that question when West Germany joined NATO [in 1955], when Germany was divided in two and there were occupying forces standing on the other side of the Berlin Wall. If someone is looking for an excuse-and it is just an excuse and not a real concern-then we need to respond to that excuse. The worsening state of the Russian economy is under increasing scrutiny, as are divinations of its meaning for the Russian regime. Most prognostications stop short of issuing a verdict on the future of the Russian state should its economy plunge even further. Despite a state of affairs that would alarm a truly Western-style economy, the Russian economy continues to function, and even shows short spikes of growth in the face of the broad sanctions imposed on Russia. While arguments in favor of Russian stability in the face of continued economic instability are probably correct, many analysts in the former Soviet Union are nonetheless ringing alarm bells as the Russian economic outlook continues to darken, without any significant rebound or restructuring of an economy whose health depends on the price of oil. Ukrainian daily Obozrevatel.ua published an analysis that concentrates on Russian so-called mono-cities. These are single-industry towns with one dominant employer, usually an industrial plant or a factory that depended on state orders in Soviet days and continues to depend on Moscow today. "What is particularly frightening," reads the analysis, "and may cause a collapse in such company towns, is a difficult post-Soviet legacy, where, after 30 years from the beginning of perestroika under (former President Mikhail) Gorbachev, nothing was done. Such towns will simply stop functioning, as happened in Pikalevo in the Leningrad region in 2008. Back then, Putin put out the fires singlehandedly, having arrived there by helicopter, calling on (industrialist and state enterprise manager) Oleg Deripaska, forcing him to sign a document on the resumption of production at known loss-making enterprises." Similar situations, and the plight of towns such as Tver, where Carriage Works industries stopped all production for two months in 2015 and the Kremlin had to buy off protest leaders, are also noted in the analysis. A key point: "In such single-industry towns, unlike in Europe and the United States, Russian labor mobility tends to be zero. People cannot change their place of residence, and people will start losing their jobs because their companies will stop paying and go bankrupt. "People will not have the means for existence, which may lead to chaos in the regions, and may perhaps result in secession of regions and acts of separatism." The analysis points out that this can happen in regions that are "difficult to suspect of disloyalty to Moscow, such as Bashkortostan, a rich region with the Bashneft oil company; or Tatarstan, a wealthy region home to the Tatneft oil company. "Such regions may determine that with potential chaos across Russia, why should they pay into the federal budget, that black hole,' with the money going to Crimea, Donbass, or for the maintenance of Chechnya and (its President) Ramzan Kadyrov." This line of thinking is often cited as the reason that the Soviet Union broke apart. Many in the Russian government, including then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin, thought back in the pivotal years of 1990-1991 that the Russian Soviet Republic was feeding other regions of the Soviet Union that could not sustain themselves economically. Yeltsin's push to get Russia out of the Soviet Union was partially motivated by such economic indicators, among other complex factors. "Once such acts of separatism start," continues the Obozrevatel.ua analysis, "Putin will send his security forces to restore order. Previously, no one knew that the National Guard would be created, and it was thought earlier that Putin would likely send FSB troops, army, and airborne units in such a scenario, and there would be bloodshed. But now it is clear why he is creating the National Guard with a purported strength of 400,000 troops. ... All this can lead to civil war." Naive forecasts by the IMF on the health of the Russian economy, the analysis maintains, failed to take into account what might happen if some 250 out of the 320 Russian single-industry towns see economic activity grind to a halt. Dire predictions are not just limited to Russia -- across the United States, many small and even mid-sized cities and towns have been hit hard by the plunging fortunes of coal-producing plants, causing widespread unemployment and carrying significant social implications, such as departure of younger generations. In the 1970s and 1980s, the American Rust Belt suffered through a massive economic realignment, when numerous steel mills and industrial plants were shuttered, leaving workers and their families to fend for themselves. Though such economic changes did not produce violent social upheavals, Russia stands to learn from the American experience of managing major economic changes that affect the treasury, the workforce, and state stability. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/25/2016 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. Cesar Millan has proposed to his girlfriend Jahira Dar.The former star revealed the big engagement news on Instagram Monday with a cute post-proposal picture."I'm so happy!!! She said yes!!! I always knew that I wanted someone to share my life with who was sweet, adventurous, honest, and loving, but I got more than that! She is beautiful inside and out, extremely supportive of my entire family and me" Millan, who currently stars on Cesar 911, captioned the image.The self-taught dog behaviorist felt the need to add, "AND SHE LOVES DOGS."Millan, 46, proposed on March 24 in Greece during a romantic, impromptu trip to Europe, People reported . Millan asked her to marry him while having dinner at the top of Mount Lycabettus in Athens as they overlooked the Acropolis and a violinist played behind them."After six amazing years together, I am so happy I asked her to be my wife. Thankfully, she said 'yes!'" the self-taught dog behaviorist told People. "My pack is complete!"The couple began their romantic relationship in August 2010, just two months after Millan's wife of 16 years, Ilusion Millan, filed for divorce. Millan and Ilusion have two sons together Andre Millan and Calvin Millan."Jahira came into my life at just the right time," Millan said."She was instrumental in helping me rebuild my life and my family after my divorce and break from the television show. She is compassionate, gentle, instinctual, spiritual, intelligent, fun, strong, adventurous and loving. She embodies the principles that I prize the most -- honesty, integrity and loyalty. On top of all of that, she loves dogs and mother nature just as much as I do."A wedding date for the pair has yet to be announced.aired on the National Geographic Channel and its Nat Geo Wild sister network from 2004 to 2012. Cesar 911 debuted on Nat Geo Wild in 2014. Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. A crowd of hundreds packed themselves into the 40 Watt Club on Saturday night for the annual Boybutante Ball, which broke records in the amount of money raised and the speed at which the drag show sold out. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn attends a press conference to present the post-synodal apostolic exhortation ' Amoris Laetitia ' (The Joy of Love), at the Vatican, Friday, April 8, 2016. Pope Francis has insisted that individual conscience be the guiding principle for Catholics negotiating the complexities of sex, marriage and family life in a major document released Friday that repudiates the centrality of black and white rules for the faithful. In the 256-page document "The Joy of Love," released Friday, Francis makes no change in church doctrine. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) SHARE By NICOLE WINFIELD and RACHEL ZOLL, Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) a In a sweeping document on family life that opened a door to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Pope Francis insisted Friday that church doctrine cannot be the final word in answering tricky moral questions and that Catholics must be guided by their own informed consciences. Francis didn't create a churchwide admission to Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics as some progressives had wanted. But in the document "The Joy of Love," he suggested that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis in what could become a significant development in church practice. The pope also strongly upheld the church's opposition to same-sex marriage. The 256-page document, two years in the making and the product of an unprecedented canvassing of ordinary Catholics and senior churchmen, is a plea from Francis' heart for the church to stop hectoring Catholics about how to live their lives and instead find the redeeming value in their imperfect relationships. "I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion," he wrote. "But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness." The document is cleverly worded: Francis selectively cited his predecessors, making clear he is working within their tradition but omitting the sometimes harsh, definitive language that is an anathema to his mercy over moral priorities. He cited himself repeatedly, making some of his most significant points in strategically placed footnotes, rather than the text itself. "It's the classic case of an organic development of doctrine," said Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna who presented the document at a Vatican news conference. "There is innovation and continuity. There are true novelties in this document, but no ruptures." Gay Catholics were highly critical, saying Francis had failed them. The document offered nothing significant beyond existing church teaching that gays are not to be discriminated against and are to be welcomed into the church with respect and dignity. It repeated the church's position that same-sex unions can in no way be equivalent to marriage between a man and woman. "He has ignored submissions and appeals by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics," said British gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell. "Gentler words do not assuage Vatican opposition to gay equality." On thorny issues such as contraception, Francis stressed that a couple's individual conscience educated in church teaching a and not just dogmatic rules imposed on them across the board from above a must guide their decisions and the church's pastoral practice. "We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them," he said. He insisted the church's aim is to reintegrate and welcome all its members. He called for a new language to help Catholic families cope with today's problems. And he said pastors must take into account mitigating factors a fear, ignorance, habits and duress a in counseling Catholics who fail to live up to the ideal. "It can no longer simply be said that all those in any irregular situations are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace," he wrote. Even those in an "objective situation of sin" can be in a state of grace, and can even be more pleasing to God by trying to improve, he said. Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, a Francis appointee, said the pope was telling Catholics they should cultivate their consciences "with the light of the Gospel" as their guide. "He's recovering something that we may have lost sight of," Cupich said at a news conference in his archdiocese. The document's release marks the culmination of a divisive consultation of ordinary Catholics and the church hierarchy that Francis initiated in hopes of understanding the modern problems facing Catholic families and providing them with better pastoral care. The most controversial issue that arose in two meetings, or synods, of bishops was whether Francis would loosen the Vatican's strict opposition to letting Catholics who divorce and remarry receive Communion. Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics receive an annulment, or a church decree that their first marriage was invalid, they are committing adultery and cannot receive the sacrament. Conservatives had insisted the rules were fixed and there was no way around Christ's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Liberals had sought wiggle room to balance doctrine with mercy and look at each couple on a case-by-case basis, creating a path to reconciliation that could lead to them eventually receiving the sacraments. Francis took a unilateral step last year and changed church law to make it easier to get an annulment. On Friday, he said the rigorous response proposed by the conservatives was inconsistent with Jesus' message of mercy. "By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God," he said. "Let us remember that a small step in the midst of great human limitations can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties." Francis didn't explicitly endorse the "penitential path" of bringing such civilly remarried Catholics to Communion that was advocated by leading progressives such as Cardinal Walter Kasper. But he repeated what the synod had endorsed of the need for pastors to help individual Catholics over the course of spiritual direction to ascertain what God is asking of them. And he went further by explicitly linking such discussions of conscience with access to the sacraments. In a footnote, Francis cited his previous document "The Joy of the Gospel" in saying that confession should not be a "torture chamber," and that the Eucharist "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak." The Rev. James Bretzke, a Boston College theologian, said the document will give cover to and empower those priests and bishops who want to apply a broader understanding of the confidential discussions between priests and divorced and civilly remarried Catholics a a concept known as the "internal forum solution." "He does not outlaw that, whereas John Paul II specifically outlawed (it)," he said. Still, Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press, an English-language publisher of the writings of retired Pope Benedict XVI, said Francis' emphasis on conscience "doesn't mean this is a free pass to do whatever you want." He said the document tries to navigate the difficult path of upholding church teaching while allowing the civilly remarried to participate in the life of the church. "It's a very tricky thing," Brumley said. Such recourse to the use of a "well-formed conscience" and the internal forum in negotiating moral issues is not new by any means. But it has been de-emphasized by the past two popes. "This is not about a reform of rules. It's about reform of the church," Cupich said. In many ways, the document is most significant for what it doesn't say. While Francis frequently cited John Paul, whose papacy was characterized by a hard-line insistence on doctrine and sexual morals, he did so selectively. Francis referenced certain parts of John Paul's 1981 "Familius Consortio," which until Friday was the guiding Vatican document on family life, but he omitted any reference to its most divisive paragraph 84, which explicitly forbids the sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried. In fact, Francis went further than mere omission and effectively rejected John Paul's suggestion in that document for people in civil second marriages to live as brother and sister, abstaining from sex so they can still receive the sacraments. In a footnote, Francis said many people offered such a solution by the church "point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of children suffer." Similarly, in discussing the need for "responsible parenthood" and regulating the number of children, Francis made no mention of the church's opposition to artificial contraception. He squarely rejected abortion as "horrendous" and he cited the 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae," which deals with the issue. But Francis made no mention of the "unlawful birth control methods" cited and rejected in "Humanae Vitae." Instead, he focused on the need for couples in their conscience to make responsible decisions about their family size. Francis made a single reference to church-sanctioned family planning method of abstaining from sex during a woman's fertile time. He said only that such practices are to be "promoted" a not that other methods are forbidden a and he insisted on the need for children to receive sex education, albeit without focusing on "safe sex." The document devoted an entire chapter to love and sex in marriage a at times explicitly. Schoenborn acknowledged that Francis dared address such issues even though bishops and cardinals in two separate synods essentially ignored the question. Schoenborn suggested the celibacy of the synod fathers was perhaps responsible for the omission in synod documents. ___ This story has been corrected to show the divisive paragraph of John Paul's 1981 document on the family is paragraph 84, not 83. ___ Zoll reported from New York. UPDATE: One northbound lane of I-5 open after big rig crash near Lakehead A crash north of Lakehead has forced officials to close all northbound lanes of traffic on Interstate 5. SHARE Two weeks after negotiating a 10.5 percent pay hike, the union that represents California State University faculty helped lead an effort to kill legislation that might have helped some students graduate within four years. As if CSU's abysmally low graduation rates are acceptable, the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday rejected Senate Bill 1450 by Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, to provide incentives to graduate on time. Glazer's bill failed to receive the requisite votes when Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Connie Leyva, D-Chino, voted against it, and Bill Monning, D-Carmel, and Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, didn't vote. Fewer than 20 percent of CSU students graduate in four years. Sacramento State's rate is 9 percent. At Fresno and Stanislaus State, 16 percent of students graduate in four years. San Luis Obispo is top among CSU campuses, with 47 percent of students getting their degrees in that time. To provide incentives to students, Glazer, a former California State University trustee, proposed guaranteeing students that their tuition would be frozen and that they would receive priority registration for classes. In exchange, they'd have to complete 30 units per academic year and maintain good grades. The California Faculty Association warned of "unintended consequences," saying the bill "could disproportionately advantage those students already close to graduating in four years at the expense of other students." Pan explained his "no" vote by saying he worried that if CSU were to freeze tuition for some students, others might pay more. Many CSU students don't graduate in four years because they need remediation or work full time. They should receive help, too. But freshmen who arrive prepared and are able to attend classes full time should not be prevented from graduating in four years because classes are unavailable. If more students graduate in four years, CSU could admit more qualified students. During professors' negotiations leading up to the pay package, students demonstrated in support of the faculty. We don't begrudge Cal State professors a raise. Their pay was stagnant for years. But the faculty has a responsibility to help fix the broken system, even if it means agreeing to teach some classes they don't want to teach, or perhaps take on extra classes. On Wednesday, however, the professors' union and Senate Education Committee members turned their collective backs on students they ought to be serving. The Sacramento Bee Two people were killed and three others were wounded as they sat on a porch in West Englewood late Sunday among 20 people shot in Chicago over 13 hours, police said. They were with a group of people in the 2000 block of West 68th Place, attending a party for someone recently released from jail, according to a law enforcement source, citing preliminary information. About 11:10 p.m., someone fired shots from a vacant lot across Damen Avenue, hitting five people, the source said. Two men were pronounced dead on the scene: a 38-year-old man hit in the head and 26-year-old man shot in the chest. Their bodies were taken to hospitals. A 27-year-old man was shot in the back and went to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Another 27-year-old man was shot in the left leg and went to St. Bernard Hospital. A 24-year-old woman was shot in the leg and went to Stroger Hospital. All their conditions were stabilized, officials said. In other shootings since early Sunday afternoon: A 25-year-old man was shot dead in the 3600 block of West Schubert Avenue at 6:23 p.m. Sunday, said Officer Kevin Quaid, a police spokesman. Police responded to a call about gunfire and discovered the man unresponsive on the sidewalk, Quaid said. The man was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Advertisement Chicago police investigate where a man was found fatally shot in the Logan Square neighborhood April 24, 2016. (Dan Hinkel / Chicago Tribune) He was identified as Justin T. Bowman of the 3900 block of West Diversey Avenue, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. According to court records, Bowman was granted parole Jan. 26 on a robbery conviction. At 1:45 a.m. Monday, two men were grazed by bullets in the Avalon Park neighborhood. A 31-year-old man and a 28-year-old man were in the 8200 block of South Kimbark Avenue when they were both grazed in the back. The 31-year-old took himself to South Shore Hospital, and the 28-year-old was taken to Stroger Hospital. Both their conditions were stabilized. At 1:10 a.m., a 15-year-old boy was shot in West Rogers Park. He was in the 2300 block of West Granville Avenue when someone on the other side of the street fired shots, hitting him in the right leg. He went to St. Francis Hospital, and his condition was stabilized. At 10:30 p.m. Sunday, a 28-year-old man was shot in the 7300 block of South Sangamon Street in Englewood. He was shot in the right ankle and went to Stroger Hospital. His condition was stabilized. He was being uncooperative with investigators, police said. At 10:20 p.m., a 55-year-old man was shot in South Chicago. He was driving south in the 8900 block of South Escanaba Avenue when he noticed a group of people nearby on the street. One of them walked up and fired shots, hitting him in the right arm. He went to Mount Sinai Hospital, and his condition was stabilized. At 8:40 p.m., a 32-year-old man was shot in the North Kenwood neighborhood in the 4300 block of South Berkeley Avenue, Quaid said. The man was standing on the porch when someone came out of a nearby alley and fired shots before fleeing in a light-colored sedan, Quaid said. The victim was shot in the back and in the right leg and was taken in serious condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. At 8:30 p.m., a 17-year-old girl was shot in Lawndale. She was in the 1600 block of South Springfield Avenue when she was wounded in the right shoulder. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition. At 8:20 p.m., a 20-year-old man was shot in East Garfield Park. He was in the 100 block of North Central Park Avenue when he was wounded in the left arm. Information was not immediately available about where he was treated or his condition. In the West Pullman neighborhood, a 23-year-old woman was shot and another woman injured at 7:35 p.m. in the 11800 block of South Emerald Avenue, Quaid said. Two women were standing near a car when someone fired shots from a dark-colored sedan that was driving past them, Quaid said. The 23-year-old woman was shot in the left leg and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where her condition was stabilized. Another woman, 21, was bleeding from an unknown injury. She was also taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where her condition was not immediately known, Quaid said. At 7:30 p.m., a 36-year-old woman was shot in the Bush neighborhood. She was in the 8400 block of South Buffalo Avenue when someone came out from a gangway and fired shots, hitting her in the back. She was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition. At 6:30 p.m., a 37-year-old man was grazed by a bullet in the Fernwood neighborhood, police said. He was in the 10000 block of South Princeton Avenue when he was grazed in the head. He took himself to MetroSouth Medical Center and was listed in good condition. At 5:15 p.m., an 18-year-old man was shot in Gresham, police said. He was shot in the leg in the 8700 block of South Racine Avenue and took himself to Little Company of Mary Hospital. He was listed in good condition. On a warm spring day that saw many of Chicago's parks packed with families, a 39-year-old woman was shot in Humboldt Park. Advertisement A male at the park had an altercation earlier in the day with a male offender who later returned and fired shots into a group of people, hitting the woman who was not the intended target, said Officer Ana Pacheco, a police spokeswoman. (This paragraph has been updated with corrected information that the woman was not the target.) The woman was wounded in the right leg in the park, near 3000 W. Luis Munoz Marin Drive, about 5 p.m., and her condition was stabilized at Stroger Hospital, Quaid said. The shooter fled in a vehicle, but police did not release a description. About 12:45 p.m., a 28-year-old man was shot in Lawndale. He drove himself to Mount Sinai Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg. He told investigators he had been shot in the 1300 block of South Christiana Avenue when two teens walked up to his vehicle and fired shots. IMAGE: A PSU bank. Image published only for representation purposes. 'These are only passing clouds. The banking industry is a century-old industry and this is not the first time it is going through such a crisis.' 'When the economy revives, those companies in the infrastructure fields will also get revived.' 'After all, a lot of money has gone into creating assets like power projects and roads, so you can't say money has been wasted.' S Chandrasekharan, is a retired executive director of UCO Bank and a former general manager, Indian Overseas Bank. Chandrasekharan, below, left, spoke to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com In the early nineties, the banking sector in India went through tough times. As a former banker, how do you compare it with the situation right now? Is it grave now? I would say the situation is the same. At that time also, non-performing assets was very chronic; it is the same now also. The difference today is that the NPAs are from core sectora like infrastructure, power, coal etc while the NPAs in the nineties were trade accounts. But the NPAs in the core sector today happened due to external factors. Was it right on the part of the Reserve Bank of India to suddenly ask all the banks to declare the NPAs? Some bankers say that some good accounts also became NPAs because of the RBI's decision. Do you feel so? If the accounts were good, they would not have become NPAs. What the RBI says is, because of the consortium arrangement, there are many accounts of the same borrower in various banks and he was paying interest wherever he was getting additional facilities. So, in the bank he was paying the interest, it became a standard asset while in another it was an NPA. The RBI found this dichotomy unacceptable and as a regulator, it wanted all the banks to declare such accounts as NPA even if it was an NPA in only one bank. That is the reason why some banks are saying that the account was doing well with me, but I am forced to declare it as NPA. Some bankers are of the opinion that these are long-term projects and they became sick because of the global economic slow down. But you have to call a spade a spade at some point of time. Only if you put them under the NPA, the banks would be able to restructure or start a recovery process. Recovery is possible only if the borrower is not in a position to repay at all. The RBI wants the banks to segregate an account of performing asset from a non-performing asset. Yes, one of the major reasons why most of the projects got stuck was due to coal. After the coal scam, the entire mining scenario got stuck. Nobody was given licences and those who were excavating stopped excavation. Coal became dearer and imports became costlier after the rupee was devalued. Now slowly the state governments have started giving licences. Maybe in another year or two, there will be a revival of the coal industry. With the revival of the coal industry, the power sector also will perform well. Once the power sector picks up, work in infrastructure will start which will give a boost to the steel sector. It is another matter that all over the world, the steel industry is in the doldrums. Even if you have declared all those accounts as NPA in these sectors, a revival may change their fortunes and the accounts can become performing accounts. Yes, one school of thought is that at least in infrastructure, there should have come up with a different rule to make accounts as NPA as the factors are external. Is this the only reason why so many public sectors went into the red all of a sudden? It is one of the major reasons. Each bank takes its time to declare an asset as NPA depending upon their balance sheet. They generally don't declare the entire thing as a bad asset. Because of the RBI's decision, they have to declare now, but this will go on only till March 2017. Not beyond that. The difference is that instead declaring a bad account in five years, it has been done in one year. So the reason for many banks showing red in the December quarter is mainly because the RBI has asked the banks to declare their NPAs. RBI representatives were on the board of all banks. Who is responsible for the NPAs and bad loans? There are two types of NPAs. One is of fraudulent types and another due to external factors like the units that are affected by the slowdown in the economy. The truth is, the majority of NPAs come in the second category. There is a kind of herd mentality in banks. When liquidity was very good and funds were available, many of the industries must have approached many banks. What happens is when bank X and Y are giving money saying the account is very good, Bank Z also thinks why I should not give loans to those projects? This herd mentality happens not only in public sector banks, but in private sector banks too. They also gave loans to all those projects. Yes, the Reserve Bank members were also there on the board and they were all aware too. There was no problem when things were going well, but only when all the external factors like the mining, power and steel industry slowed down, the projects which were once described as good suddenly became bad loans. Because of this, maybe some of the borrowers would have diverted the money to some other projects like trade or real estate. Now, real estate is also in the doldrums. Now, the RBI says if the money is not utilised for the purpose for which the loan was taken, the diversion has been described as fraudulent. You cannot blame the board or the RBI members for this as things were going well when the loan was sanctioned. Reports say wilful defaulters owe banks Rs 4 lakh crore. Vijay Mallya owes Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion). How did banks go on lending to these defaulters? Like I said earlier, if the money is not utilised for the purpose for which it is lent, he is called a wilful defaulter as per the new rule. When there was multiple banking and consortium, when a loan was given from one bank for an infra project and the borrower used it to buy property, he becomes a wilful defaulter. He becomes a wilful defaulter not in the beginning, but only at a later stage. Maybe there are rare cases of lending money to a defaulter even if the unit becomes an NPA. It is only few and far between. I don't think banks generally give money to an account that has been declared as NPA. There is panic in the Indian economy right now because of so many PSBs going red. Is this panic warranted? It is not a panic situation and there is no need to press the panic button. When the economy revives, those companies that are in the infrastructure fields will also get revived. After all, a lot of money has gone into creating assets like power projects have started and roads have been laid, so you can't say money has been wasted. It is better to wait for the revival of the economy so that the projects, which are already started, take off again. In the nineties also, most of the banks were in red and the government had to rescue many banks. I don't think it's a very bad situation now. Because public sector banks cannot go to the market for money, the government has to come forward to recapitalise them. The government has now put in Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in three banks. Will the government pumping in money solve the problem? It will solve to some extent. There is a deadline from the RBI to solve the problem of NPAs within March 2017. Once that disclosure takes place, you need money for provisioning. The money, which is given, now will help in two ways. One is, it will improve the loan book. No bank can take the decision that they cannot lend from tomorrow. Without lending, a bank cannot survive, as lending is the prime activity and responsibility of any bank. When the income generation improves, it will take care of further previsioning. So capital inflow is needed and it should continue. So the government pumping in money will definitely help the banks. There is also criticism that the RBI is trying to implement norms like Basel 3 in India. Some bankers say that Indian banking industry is not ready for such norms, which are practiced in Western countries. Do you agree? Basel 3 is given to the regulator to regulate the banks. So many countries all over the world have not used these norms and even the RBI can think of tweaking the norms for India. What is the solution to the current crisis? Is it only the revival of the core sector that can revive the banking sector too? The major solution is the revival of the economy through infrastructure, mining power, coal, etc. Is downsizing or mergers an answer? Mergers, acquisitions and downsizing are nothing but adding to the balance sheet. It can only reduce the overheads; it will not help reduce the NPAs. You will not answer any of the problems in the banking sector by doing so. The government, I think, is thinking of reducing its stake from 51 per cent. For that valuation has to go up. For the valuation to go up, profitability of the bank has to go up. Do you feel the RBI should have waited for the economy to revive and then asked the banks to declare the NPAs? Some economists and some bankers also say this. But it seems the government agrees with what the RBI did. Otherwise, they would have come up with a statement. I think the government is confident that the economy will revive. Just look at the amount of money they are going to pump in the infrastructure sector. Once infrastructure revives, all these problems will get solved. What is your feeling about the crisis as a former banker? These are only passing clouds. The banking industry is a century-old industry and this is not the first time it is going through such a crisis. Reports say the monsoon is going to be good this year. That will revive the agricultural sector. With that, demand and supply will improve. Once the wheel starts moving, it is only a matter of time for the situation to change. That's why I feel there is no need to press any panic button. The past few weeks have been rough for both Ola and Uber companies, dodging fire from almost all corners. After the Delhi government on Saturday told the high court cab aggregators Ola and Uber were operating "illegally" and assured action was being taken by its transport department, sources in these companies said that they would only apply for licence after the government comes out with its proposed cab aggregator scheme. The past few weeks have been rough for both companies, dodging fire from almost all corners. From the Karnataka government putting a cap on their 'surge' pricing to the Delhi chief minister banning it completely and impounding vehicles on the platform, the two companies have been left gasping. The Delhi government wanted these two aggregators to register under its radio taxi scheme, which these companies have not agreed to. They have categorically said they would wait for the state transport ministry to come out with the cab aggregator scheme. "We agree that at present we are unlicensed but this is because we are waiting for the city government to come out with new scheme. Why should we register under the radio taxi scheme, which is clearly not our business or operation model? We have been in touch with the government and expressed this," said a senior executive at Uber. The Union transport ministry had earlier said it would bring out a cab aggregator scheme which state governments could follow. However, nothing has happened. With 'surge' pricing down, both Ola and Uber are pushing customers to use their car-pooling services. Since the government banned surge pricing, the waiting time for their cabs has gone up to almost 40 minutes from an average of five minutes. "Given the restrictions on car usage, we've seen a record number of requests for rides over the past few days, and we've added an unprecedented number of cars to meet that increased demand. Usually when the demand for Uber spikes, prices increase - just as air fares go up when demand for flights is high. By paying drivers more at the busiest times, Uber can ensure passengers always get a ride within minutes. While surge pricing is off in Delhi during the odd-even scheme phase, we'd ask you to bear with us if your car takes longer than usual. And, when you do need to get around the city, please use uberPOOL wherever possible," Uber said in an e-mail to customers soon after the senior management met the Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and transport minister Gopal Rai. Till now, the state transport department has impounded as many as 75 vehicles belonging to both aggregators, even after the two companies had stopped surge pricing on their platform. "We do not know why they are impounding the vehicles. We have stopped the surge but the transport department is giving us reasons like the drivers do not have a licence and other requisite permissions. We will look at each challan and then approach the authorities," said one of the cab aggregators. In Karnataka too, things have not been smooth for these operators. While Ola and Uber will now register with the transport department under the Karnataka On-demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rules, 2016, the companies have a host of other concerns. The companies have issues around rules such as the compulsory fixing of a digital meter, giving a hard copy of the bill, mentioning in big letters - taxi - and the cap on surge pricing. The Karnataka Transport Department has said complaints of charging rate higher than Rs 19.5 will result in action against the aggregator. "The licence can be suspended for a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of six months if it is found to have violated any rule, or if the complainant's claim is found to be true. A criminal complaint filed against the company or an employee," the department said. Railways, rural infrastructure, urban rejuvenation, solar and transmission and distribution of electricity are the new priorities, says Vinayak Chatterjee. Policy springtime in New Delhi in late February reveals the governments thinking on various aspects of the economy, including shifts in priorities. Between the Economic Survey, the Rail Budget and the Union Budget, and vibrant discussions and commentaries around them, the revision in emphasis on various areas is clearly identifiable. So, what are the priority areas in the infrastructure sector? The emphasis is on railways, rural infrastructure, urban rejuvenation, solar power and electricity transmission and distribution. The recent Union budgetary outlays (see table alongside) reflect these priorities. While the roads sector retains its prima donna position, the step up in allocations in the other areas reveals the governments intention to push sectors largely neglected in the past. In this context of resetting priorities, seven related observations are in order: One, the government is serious about its mantra of public expenditure-led investment in infra to kick-start the economy. Even in a fiscal-deficit challenged situation, the finance minister has proposed a 23 per cent increase in outlay this year, over and above the 27 per cent increase last year. Two, budgetary allocation is being leveraged many times over by off-budgetary funding. The National Investment and Infra Fund epitomises this new line of thinking. Even individual ministries are being encouraged to increasingly see budgetary support as seed funding. So, the railways sector is set to raise capital from the Life Insurance Corporation of India and the World Bank. The roads ministry wants to securitise tolls and garner substantive funding under the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) scheme. Japanese loans are funding the bullet train project. And so on. Three, the railways is poised to be a big investment driver with its own Five-Year Plan that envisages a capital outlay of Rs 8.56 lakh crore. This is Rs 1.71 crore per annum. Assuming a thumb rule of Rs 7 crore per km as the cost of road construction, this is equivalent to constructing about 24,000 km of roads per year vis-a-vis the road construction target for 2016-17 of 10,000 km. This shows the dramatic impact railway investments will soon have on the economy. Four, rural infrastructure is clearly a much needed political-economic thrust. Not only does Bharat account for the bulk of vote banks, but the current state of despair in rural India does indeed necessitate a major thrust in this area. If well implemented, the combination of rural roads, rural electrification, irrigation and rural housing could be the winner that the National Democratic Alliance government is looking for. Five, urban infrastructure has a smaller budgetary outlay than rural infrastructure. But here the smart city model relies largely on private investments to be garnered by the newly-formed special purpose vehicles. It is still of great political significance, as the smart city dream offered during the 2014 elections certainly charmed the urban youth. Six, the budgetary outlay on the power sector does not truly reflect the extent of importance being given here, as the bulk of the funding is from outside the Union Budget. The massive resetting of discom finances under Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojna (UDAY) is largely being managed by bond placements. The 100 per cent electrification of villages and revamping of urban distribution networks is being done through funding from the Power Grid Corporation of India, REC Power Distribution Company, Power Finance Corporation, et al. But without doubt, the emphasis has shifted from adding coal-based thermal generating plants to revamping the nations transmission and distribution networks. And the 2021 target of 100,000 Mw of solar power has been widely publicised and is getting much traction. Finally, viewed against these priority allocations, the outlays for ports and airports seem embarrassingly small. They will probably have to wait till the next cycle of priorities is crafted; or if the revival of the public-private partnership cycle lifts, investments in their respective areas. But for the foreseeable future, roads, railways, rural, urban, solar and transmission and distribution will dominate the agenda. And these should be challenging enough till 2019. The author is chairman, Feedback Infra. NHAI to pull plug on Rs 3,000-crore ventures for poor show The government has decided to terminate three highway projects worth Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) because of poor performance by contractors. "We have decided to terminate three projects," said Raghav Chandra, chairman of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on the sidelines of the 24th annual general meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in India. The contracts to be terminated are for the Rs 410-crore (Rs 4.10 billion) Rohtak-Jind project in Haryana, the Rs 1,021-crore (Rs 1021 billion) Haridwar-Dehradun project in Uttarakhand and the Rs 1,650-crore (Rs 16.5 billion) Ranchi-Jamshedpur project in Jharkhand. The Haryana project was awarded to Vijai Infrastructure on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model. It began work in October 2013. NHAI suspects diversion of funds in this project. The Uttarakhand project was awarded to a joint venture of the Era Group and Russian company OJSC-SIBMOST on the annuity model. Work began in November 2011. NHAI found the companies were unable to bring in the necessary funds in the stipulated period. The Jharkhand project, in which work began in December 2012, was awarded to Madhucon Projects on the annuity model. NHAI suspects diversion of funds in this project as well. These three projects are part of 19 that were stuck for various reasons. In January, Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met developers and bankers to get them moving. "We have given more time to a few other concessionaires (developers). I don't want to name them yet. We will take a decision on their projects soon," Chandra said. The government will soon hold another meeting to review the fate of the remaining 16 stuck highway projects. Contractors have been removed and blacklisted by NHAI earlier too. The reasons ranged from missing the deadline for financial closure and construction delays. In his address, the NHAI chairman said while American companies have worked with the government as a consultant on many road projects, none have shown any interest in bidding for such projects. Talking about the troubles faced by public-private partnership projects, he said private projects developers were still interested in undertaking highway contracts through this route. While more projects could also meet the same fate, more business for private sector players could come in with Chandra saying the NHAI was currently scouting for a consultant for Rs 12,000-crore (Rs 120 billion) project to develop a 235-km Outer Ring Road of Andhra Pradesh's new capital Amravati. It would be an eight-lane expressway. He also said developing expressways was going to be a priority sector for the NHAI. Besides Amravati Outer Ring Road expressway, the NHAI was working on Lucknow-Kanpur, Delhi-Jaipur,Vadodara-Mumbai expressway projects as well. "For Vadodara-Mumbai project, the detailed project report has been prepared and the auction is going to happen any time soon. For Bangalore-Chennai expressway, 50 per cent of the land acquisition is already over," Chandra said. The company claims it is in India for the long haul -- unlike French chain Carrefour, which exited the country in 2014. American giant Walmart wants policy clarity for the entire retail sector before expanding its India business, as its keen to become the leader in both physical and online spaces. The $482-billion group, which operates chains of hypermarkets, discount department stores and grocery stores, has its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, US. It entered India in 2006, with the aim of tapping the promising consumer market through multi-brand retail. But, till now, policy restrictions have been a hurdle. E-commerce is another focus area for the company, which aims to grow internationally in it. But, Walmart has encountered regulatory hurdles there, too, as foreign investment is not permitted in this segment in India. At present, it operates only in the cash-and-carry space with 21 stores in nine states, of which the last one was opened in Agra in August last year. But, the company claims it is in India for the long haul -- unlike French chain Carrefour, which exited the country in 2014. Krish Iyer, president and chief executive officer, Walmart India, told Business Standard, For us, India is a long-term commitment. We are continuously growing our cash-and-carry business to serve our members, including kiranas (local retail stores), O&Is (offices and institutions) and HoReCa (hotels, restaurants and caterers). Sources, however, said the American giant had kept its expansion plans on hold because of ambiguities in policy. At a time when Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba is planning a direct entry into India, Walmart is unlikely to be happy with only a small share in the $600-billion (about Rs 40 lakh crore) retail sector in the country, said sources. The Chinese group -- a rival of Walmart -- recently announced that its gross merchandise volume, the sum of the value of goods sold on a platform, was $463.6 billion. It claimed it had surpassed Walmarts numbers, though it is yet to announce its last quarter result. In 2015, Walmart recorded revenue of $482 billion; its Chinese challenger could touch $490 billion by the end of the financial year 2015-16, claim analysts. Asked if Walmart was planning to go slow in India, Iyer said the retail chain plans to open 49 more such stores by 2020, and was well on track to meet the target. He also cited the National Democratic Alliance governments focus on ease of doing business as an encouraging step, when asked if policy ambiguity was a hurdle for the expansion plans of the company. We are encouraged by a positive and supportive environment in the country, said Iyer, adding the Make in India initiative was a comprehensive and unprecedented overhaul of dated processes and policies. It represents a complete change of the government. He also discussed the minimum government, maximum governance initiative and described the decision to allow 100 per cent foreign direct investment in marketing of food products produced in India as very progressive. Iyer emphasised that Walmarts plans in India are all on track. Walmart has signed MoUs with Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana, and our team is working on identifying sites all over India. "Asked about the number of stores Walmart plans to open in India in 2016, Iyer said: We are currently building a pipeline and we have signed term-sheets for stores in various cities around the country. "It takes about 30 months to open a store. He added: We look at the Indian market with a long-term commitment. So, is Walmart planning to enter e-commerce through the marketplace model, followed by Amazon India, Flipkart and Snapdeal, among others?At present, we dont have any plans to start a marketplace. We continue to study the developments in the regulatory space in this area, said Iyer. On plans for multi-brand retail, the one category that Walmart had aimed to be a market leader in right from the beginning, Iyer said, India is a long-term commitment for Walmart and we are continuously growing our B2B cash-and-carry business in the country. He added the group continues to study the developments in the regulatory space and at present there are no plans on multi-brand front. "The preceding United Progressive Alliance government had permitted 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail in 2012, with the condition that each state would decide whether or not to have foreign stores and that 30 per cent of sourcing must be done from India. The current National Democratic Alliancce government is opposed to any FDI in multi-brand, because of the fears of local retailers that many thousand jobs may be lost if foreign chains such as Walmart were to enter. But, the government has not made any change in the multi-brand rules on paper yet. The only international chain operating multi-brand stores in India is UKs Tesco, in a tie-up with Tata groups Trent. THE JOURNEY SO FAR. . . Since entering India in 2006, Walmart has opened 21 cash-and-carry stores in nine states: 2007 Formed a joint venture with the Bharti group to run cash-and-carry business and give back-end support to Bhartis retail 2009 First Walmart-Bharti outlet, Best Price Modern Wholesale, opened in Amritsar 2013 Joint venture between Walmart and Bharti called off 2015 After a gap of 4 years, the group opens a store in Agra in August Expansion freeze and internal probe to check if its unit had flouted anti-bribery laws 2016 India investment is about Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) 'I have learnt that gender discrimination obliterates when you succeed and overcome credibility and perception hurdles' India wasn't ready for a woman brewmaster in the 1970s when Kiran Mazumdar returned from Australia with a degree in brewing. No one was willing to take the risk of hiring a woman, not even United Breweries, where her father, Rasendra Mazumdar, had worked for 27 years. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw's is a story that would have turned out very differently had she not met Leslie Auchincloss, then the owner of Ireland's Biocon Biochemicals. She joined him for a trial period of one year. Thirty-seven years later, she is still anchored to the biopharmaceutical company as its chairman and managing director. In her book, Mythbreaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech, Seema Singh traces Biocon's story in the country and how she has become poster woman of biotechnology. In an e-mail interview, Mazumdar-Shaw talks to Nikita Puri about Mythbreaker. Excerpts: If you hadn't agreed to Leslie Auchincloss's proposal to join Biocon, where would you be? I would have been a brewer in Scotland! I was heading to take up a job that I had been offered in Inverness in Scotland when I had that fateful meeting with Leslie Auchinclos which changed my life's course. Mythbreaker talks about a blatant gender discrimination that existed when you came back from Australia with a degree in brewing. How have things changed since then? I have learnt that gender discrimination obliterates when you succeed and overcome credibility and perception hurdles. The moment I established that I was profitable and could infuse confidence in my employees, the banks stopped treating me as a gender risk. When you started out, very few knew what biotech could offer. Has the reaction of bureaucrats and investors changed over the years? We are still a risk-averse country. Most bureaucrats and banks don't like to back new business ideas. In recent times, though, the start-up frenzy has changed some of this. But this is a herd-like mentality as they only back e-tailing and not life science ventures based on genomics et cetera. In your opinion, what are some of Biocon's greatest achievements? Being a pioneer in enzyme technology was a big achievement. We now see ourselves as a diabetes company making big global impact in insulin therapy. We are also recognised globally as an immuno-oncology company, providing affordable access to complex and expensive biopharmaceuticals across the world. Our IPO in 2004 saw us make a billion-dollar debut as India's first biotech stock on the Indian bourses, which we repeated when we listed the country's first research services company, Syngene, in 2015. Keeping in mind the Make in India rhetoric, what are some of the challenges that biotech faces in the current ecosystem? Inadequate infrastructure is the biggest impediment. Unre-liable power supply, poor roads and logistics adds to the issue. The book also refers to your struggles with clinical trials in India. How have things progressed on that front? Also, in hindsight, would you have handled some clinical trial cases differently? We are now seeing light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Owing to late Ranjit Roy Chaudhury, and now the Indian Council of Medical Research under the leadership of Soumya Swaminathan, there is a renewed hope that clinical trials will resume. I guess my learning about regulatory strategies is much better now, and I may have designed many clinical trials differently - for example, oral insulin. (Historically, researchers have tried to develop oral insulin since the early 1920s but have failed consistently, shares Mythbreaker. In the book, Singh delves into how Mazumdar-Shaw adopted a high-risk approach towards oral insulin, with Nobex Corporation and GlaxoSmithKline also thrown into the mix.) Apart from promoting innovation and contributing to cancer research, you are head of Bangalore Political Action Committee. What are the causes you personally espouse? All of the above. The right to healthcare is something I deeply believe in. I also believe that we as a community must come together to solve many of our problems, be it garbage, traffic, water, education or health. Given that this book is an independent effort and not commissioned by a publisher, what prompted you to give so much of your time to the author? Seema Singh convinced me that the Indian biotech story needed to be chronicled in a readable format, which she felt could be done through my own journey of building Biocon. I have always been impressed with the way Seema has written on biotech issues as a journalist; she researches before she writes, which very few people do today. Photograph: Reuters Many industrial units are facing huge water shortage The Maharashtra government, faced with drought conditions in large parts of the state, might compel the use of recycled water by industrial units. Industries minister Subhash Desai told this newspaper, "The industries department has initiated a study in this regard, for industries around big cities like Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli and those in industrial estates set up by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC). Sewage water can be recycled.'' Water scarcity would be an issue in the future, too, he said. Recycled water would be the best option. Fertilider units, for example, need water to run boilers. They can use recycled water instead of natural water, he said. A scheme can be developed on the lines of common effluent treatment plants, with participation of MIDC. It could be developed on a public-private participation model. There are about 230 industrial estates run by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, having 100,000 units. Many of these are presently facing a big shortage for their water need. For those in MIDC-run estates, said the minister, digging of borewells would be permitted. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters While the Taj remains popular amongst celebrity guests, many ordinary foreign visitors are skipping it The Taj Mahal, the eternal monument of love, remains a must visit attraction for celebrity guests to India, the latest high-profile visitors being the British royal couple, William and Kate. Over the last couple of months, however, ordinary foreign tourists have been giving Agra a miss. To arrest the decline in foreigners visiting the monument, tour operators are demanding an off-season discount on entry fee, more flights to Agra and better infrastructure in the city. Earlier this month, the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) wrote to the government recommending, among other things, a 50 per cent reduction in entry fees at Archeological Survey of India (ASI) monuments for the period April 1-September 30. This is a low season for foreign tourist arrivals and such a move will encourage great movement into the off-season period. While the IATO letter was not specific to issues concerning Taj Mahal, an IATO member said declining number of foreign tourists at Taj Mahal is an indicator of the state of inbound tourism in India. The entrance fee at Taj Mahal for a foreign tourist was hiked to Rs 1000 from Rs 750 starting April 1. The fee is levied by two agencies - ASI and Agra Development Authority. A further hike in the entrance fee has been proposed. In his written reply to Rajya Sabha in March, minister of state for culture and tourism Mahesh Sharma acknowledged that number of foreign visitors to Taj Mahal declined to 0.64 million in 2014 from 0.69 million in 2013 and 0.74 million in 2012. The minister said no market study has been done to pinpoint the reasons for fall in footfalls of foreign tourists. However, some of the factors determining international tourist arrivals in any tourist destination including the Taj Mahal are prevailing travel trends, economies of tourism source markets, connectivity, availability of reasonably priced accommodation, good tourism infrastructure et cetera. Some operators believe that reducing entrance fees at monuments alone will not suffice, and will not be a big incentive for foreign tourists to come to India. Entrance fees are a very small component of the total tour cost, they pointed out. We have been writing to the government to improve infrastructure and provide better air connectivity to Agra. Earlier, foreign tourists used to stay overnight in Agra but now most only come for a few hours. We find some foreign tourists visiting only the Taj Mahal and, skipping Fatehpur Sikri and Agra fort because of high entrance fees, said Sunil Gupta, former president of the Tourism Guild of Agra. Photograph: Reuters Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's decision to cut arbitrage may ensure that the standards of purity of the refined gold in the Indian market meet the global benchmark The 278-km-long road between Delhi and Nainital in Uttarakhand is not only used by thousands of tourists but also by hundreds of gold refiners. In the past three years, Uttarakhand has emerged as India's gold refining capital. The number of firms in this business in the state has grown five times in this period, almost doubling their refining capacity to 1,587 tonnes by the end of 2015. Yet, as the government launched its ambitious gold monetisation scheme last year to mop up idle deposits stored with the public and religious institutions through banks, it found that most of these companies lacked the ability to process gold at the level of purity required. "It is necessary to put order in the gold refining business," a top revenue department official said. In this direction, Budget 2016-17 clipped a tax arbitrage these units enjoyed as an area-based incentive. At the same time, the finance ministry has also cut a parallel benefit for larger units located elsewhere, including a joint venture of state-run MMTC and Switzerland-based PAMP. However, prospects of the industry, which is supposed to provide assaying and refining support to banks, are looking difficult. This may force the government to tweak parts of its tax proposals on gold in the Budget. Gold refining units flocked to Uttarakhand from 2011-12. Till then, despite having the largest gold reserves among the public, India had little refining capacity for extracting usable gold from raw or semi-processed stock, also known as gold Dore. Instead of doing this, people filled up on imported refined gold. The UPA government scrambled to remedy this. It offered a liberal area-based tax break to set up refining units. While it imposed a stiff import duty of 10 per cent on finished gold or bullion, it offered a countervailing duty of eight per cent set off on processing of gold Dore, giving a margin of two per cent for "manufacturing" gold. From just four units in 2012, the number of units jumped to 21 by 2015 in the excise-free zone of Rudrapur in the state. During the same period, the number of units in the rest of the country rose to only nine from two. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley this year corrected this anomaly by reducing the arbitrage to 1.25 per cent from the existing two per cent. Moreover, in line with the government's plan to phase out these exemptions, he has decided no new units or their additional capacity will get the benefit from now. According to Sudeesh Nambiath, lead analyst (precious metals) at Thomson Reuters, the minister's move is clearly aimed at consolidation of the business to ensure that the standards of purity of the refined gold in the Indian market meet the benchmark of London Bullion Market Association. "For banks, meeting this benchmark is necessary to ensure that high-value customers, including temple trusts, deposit their gold with them as part of the gold monetisation scheme," he said. For instance, a major Indian public sector bank discovered a horror story in its stock of gold bullion processed domestically. Instead of the 99.95 per cent purity level demanded from each piece, one consignment sent for refining to one of these units had purity level of 99.945 - a difference good enough to shave off a few lakh rupees per bar. The largest refiners for gold in the global market as of now are Turkey and Switzerland. But that picture is changing. Bengaluru-headquartered Rajesh Exports, which tied up with Switzerland's Valcambi, is now the owner of the world's largest gold refinery. It also has a presence in Uttarakhand. Jaitley, to draw parity, has also increased the excise duty on gold refineries in the rest of the country to 9.5 per cent from the existing 9 per cent. At a stroke, the margins for these refineries have come down to only 0.5 per cent (10 per cent import duty minus 9.5 excise). So even though the tax difference between the excise-free zones and excise-paying zones has been whittled, the margins for the latter have become too thin to keep the units running. MMTC apparently has been sitting on a large unprocessed consignment of close to 10 tonnes since March. Nambiath says it is difficult to foresee if the changed cost dynamics would lead to consolidation of units beyond Uttarakhand. The case for it in the state is relatively easy. For instance, other than Rajesh Exports, there are hardly any firms with refining capacity of above one tonne. Many others are seasonal and have depended on paying premium to sellers from their tax margins to survive, instead of buying Dore at discount. They are likely to shut shop soon. But as the demand for assayed gold rises, banks could find that the number of units able to provide commensurate quality beyond the hill state has also tapered off. Changing scenario A major Indian public sector bank discovered a horror story in its stock of gold bullion processed domestically Instead of the 99.95 per cent purity level demanded from each piece, one consignment sent for refining to one of these units had a purity level of 99.945 - a difference good enough to shave off a few lakh rupees per bar The largest refiners for gold in the global market as of now are Turkey and Switzerland Bengaluru-headquartered Rajesh Exports, which tied up with Switzerland's Valcambi, is now the owner of the world's largest gold refinery Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters Significantly, reveals Rajeev Sharma, the MEA was not even consulted on the Dolkun Isa issue. The hashtag #ModiBowsToChina started trending on Twitter from Monday afternoon hours after the world discovered the Narendra Modi government's embarrassing u-turn cancelling the visa to Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa, left. By early Monday evening, it became the top trending item and over 23,000 tweets showing the groundswell of people's anger at the way the Modi government had kow-towed to China. A government led by the leader who as the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate had hauled the then United Progressive Alliance government over the coals on its China policy and had said the only way to deal with China was to show 'red eyes' to the Chinese! The Modi government has shot itself in the foot by its u-turn over the Isa visa issue. A key government official told me on Monday afternoon that the entire Isa Saga was the baby of Intelligence Bureau Director Dineshwar Sharma, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's blue-eyed boy. Significantly, the ministry of external affairs was not even consulted. This is as bizarre as bizarre can be. What had started with a bang when last week the Modi government had taken on China in an unprecedented manner by playing the Uyghur card has now ended with a whimper with the Modi government finally ending up eating crow! Clearly, the Chinese have pressured the Modi government as is evident by Isa's statement the full text of which is given below: 'As the Executive Committee Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress, I express my disappointment on Indian authorities' cancellation of my visa to attend the annual Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference taking place in Dharamsala, India, from April 30 to May 1.' 'This conference remains a vital forum through which ethnic and religious communities in China related areas, as well as statesmen, scholars and activists are able to meet openly to discuss and exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities.' 'India had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press. Following numerous reports, Indian authorities then proceeded to rescind the visa on April 23. I recognise and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regrets (sic) that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy.' 'This is not the first time that I have had faced difficulties in my international travels to advocate Uyghur rights. In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratisation in Asia, to which I was an invited guest. China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular.' 'I also reject any comparison or association to China's recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader, Mazood Azhar.' 'Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimise my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights. China's clear abuse of Interpol's Red Notice issuance is also concerning.' 'Historically speaking, the Uyghur community has maintained friendly ties with the Indian people. The Indian government hosted our late leader Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Uyghur refugees after they fled China in 1949.' 'Finally, I would like to thank the Indian people for their determined solidarity and commitment to rights activists like myself who wish to continue to develop and support dialogue among peoples of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. I remain disappointed with the final decision, but I am hopeful that positive steps may be taken to maintain India's relationship with the Uyghur community.' 'I therefore wish the conference success and hope that meaningful dialogue will take place between those who have the privileged of participating the upcoming conference.' After the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team episode -- when an Inter Services Intelligence officer was allowed to visit the terror-hit Pathankot airbase -- this is the second time in a month when a key foreign policy move by the Modi government has triggered controversy and evoked public condemnation, if one goes by the reactions on social media. The twin episodes signify that the Modi government is losing the plot and quickly losing the perception war. In the Dolkun Isa case, the issuance of a visa defied logic in the first place as it came when Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Doval were in China and engaged in serious discussions with their Chinese interlocutors. Even if one were to agree that ministry of home affairs officials erred in not realising that Interpol had issued a red corner notice against Dolkun Isa as China maintained, the Modi government could have still saved itself eventual embarrassment by making a u-turn on the Isa visa issue. This u-turn could have been avoided without provoking the Chinese. The best course for the Modi government would have been to allow Uyghur leaders, including Dolkun Isa, to travel to India to attend the inter-ethnic conference in Dharamsala and projecting their trip purely as a personal visit to pay obeisance to the Dalai Lama as all of them venerate the Tibetan spiritual leader. Further, the Uyghur leaders should have been told not to make any political statements. Obviously, the Uyghur leaders would not have been allowed to meet any Indian ministers or officials. This way, India would have still sent China a strong message. The Indian case to the Chinese would have been this: India is a democracy which respects individual freedom; and yet the Indian government has ensured that the Uyghurs don't make any political statements or indulge in any political activity. In fact, the MEA had prepared itself for this kind of scenario, but it was kept out of the loop. This controversy will dog the Modi government for a long time. Rajeev Sharma is an independent journalist and strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha IMAGE: Kanak Mani Dixit, third from left, with other citizens at Kathmandu's Patan Square. Photograph: Aseem Chhabra. Aseem Chhabra on his friend, firebrand Nepali journalist Kanak Mani Dixit, who was arrested last week. Aseem, who has known Dixit for 35 years, believes the charges are trumped up. I arrived in New York City in the fall of 1981. In my jet-lagged state I came directly from the airport to International House -- a student dorm near Columbia University. There I met a beautiful young woman who I mistook to be from India. She was manning the front desk at I-House and she corrected me by saying she was from Nepal. I think I made a flippant, politically incorrect, remark, 'Well, it's the same thing!' For that remark, the young woman -- who now runs a major school in Kathmandu -- has never forgiven me even though we laugh about it now. Her name was Shanta Dixit and soon after I met her equally charming young husband, Kanak Mani Dixit, who at that time was a student at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Kanak went on to become one of Nepal's leading journalists, a fearless man who has encountered a lot of challenges in his life and career. But through it all he has loved his country and its people. Last Friday, I woke up to the news that Kanak had been arrested on trumped up charges. Having known Kanak for 35 years, his passions and his commitment to the establishment of democracy in Nepal, I know for sure that the charges against him are false and politically motivated. Kanak has openly criticised the appointment of a former monarchist to head the country's Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority. His arrest on a Friday, when he could not apply for bail, was clearly a case of political vendetta. In the last year Kanak has written extensively against the blockade of essential goods to Nepal. And he has again and again accused India for initiating the blockade. Kanak and his supporters believe that these writings have made him unpopular in some official circles in India. This weekend, a signature campaign started through Change.org demanding that Kanak should be released. And a group of journalists, professors and artists from South Asia and around the world issued a statement calling for Kanak's release. Right now Kanak's health is big concern for those who love him. Shanta posted on Facebook that after his arrest on Friday he was taken to hospital where his blood pressure was 210/90. His son Eelum -- a film student in California -- told me on Sunday that his father was still in the ICU with high blood pressure. *** Life was a lot simpler in the early 1980s. A group of friends would often gather in Kanak and Shanta's tiny married students' apartment. We would cook desi meals and then have long night sessions of singing Bollywood songs. In the early 1980s songs from Yash Chopra's Silsila were very popular. But I remember my Nepali friends also loved songs from Kabhi Kabhie. It was with Kanak's support that I joined Columbia University's Journalism School. And through his vision, I developed a sense of the South Asian identity. For the first time I understood that while we were similar, a Nepali identity was unique and different than what it means to be Indian. (A few years ago I organised a conversation between Kanak and the Pakistani journalist Beena Sarwar at Columbia University where he again emphasised the need for a South Asian unity. Perhaps, he said, we should all refer to each other as desis, thereby finding a common ground, a connection.) When Kanak and Shanta moved out of I-House, they rented a lovely apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, overlooking the magnificent George Washington Bridge. Again we would meet on weekends to cook food. And it was with the Dixits that I first went on a long walk on the G W Bridge, over the vast Hudson River, from the Manhattan side all the way to New Jersey. After a few years when Kanak worked with the United Nations, he and Shanta moved back to Nepal. His South Asian monthly publication -- Himal -- was launched around that time. Later, Kanak was also involved in starting a South Asian documentary festival in Kathmandu. We stayed connected. Kanak and Shanta would often visit New York, and there were picnics in Central Park with all their friends. Then in August 2001, Kanak's friends from around the world connected via email over a disturbing news. Kanak had gone hiking in the mountains of Nepal. And then he was missing. After an extensive search a team in a helicopter spotted Kanak hanging from the rocks. He survived the hiking accident, despite a serious spinal cord injury. Once he was up and about, Kanak showed everyone that he could take actions and initiatives. He established the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Nepal. And a few years ago he and Shanta went on an 1,800 km journey from Agra to Peshawar, along the Grand Trunk Road, to raise funds for the centre and also to bring awareness about spinal cord injuries in India and Pakistan. Last December I made a short trip to Nepal for a journalist friend's wedding in Pokhara. And before I headed for the wedding I spent a couple of days in Kathmandu with the Dixits. Nepal was struggling with the double challenge -- the after affects of the devastating earthquake of April 25, 2015, followed by the blockade that had resulted in shortages of fuel and other essential goods. And Kanak was very concerned about the state of his country. One afternoon Kanak took me for a walk in the historic Patan Square area. After looking at the damage to several of the structures, we walked at the back of the square. There I witnessed all the restoration work that was being done to small objects. Workers were painstakingly cleaning small statues with water and toothbrushes. Kanak, who was part of the organisation to preserve Nepal's heritage, took pride in this work. Later as we walked out, Kanak told me that a lot of Kathmandu's senior citizens would come and sit along one of the Patan Square buildings. And then he mentioned that he had always wanted to get a picture taken at that spot. So Kanak went and sat in the middle of a group of old men and I took his picture. He smiled for the picture, proud of the city that he loved, and facing the glorious late afternoon December sun. I hope to see that same smiling face when Kanak is out of prison soon. News / Africa by Staff Reporter Mtshengiseni Gcwensa a Maskandi musician in South Africa popularly known as Indidane was loved by thousands of fans, respected for his humility and his respect for other people, but according to the book, Indidane Inkosi Kamaskandi, the star was hiding a dark secret.It is claimed that Indidane was a hitman who killed for money.The author of the book, former journalist Eric Ngobe, alleges that maskandi artist, Gcwensa, better known by his stage name of Indidane, told him all his secrets before his death last year."He asked me to write the book and to reveal those secrets - but only after his death because he would get into trouble if the truth came out while he was still alive," said Ngobe.Ngobe claimed when Indidane first arrived in a Joburg hostel he needed money. So he allegedly took a job as a hitman because he needed the money.That was before he started performing maskandi music with his late friend Mgqumeni "Ibhova Likadikadika" Khumalo."Maskandi music rescued him from being a hitman as he became popular and sold many records. He also won many awards," said Ngobe.He said the book contains many secrets, including the matter that made his former best friend Mgqumeni his enemy, and the disease that finally claimed his life last year."I cannot reveal everything but the book will tell all."Indidane wanted the people to know everything after his death," said Ngobe, who said Indidane asked him to write the book because he was a traditional writer at a newspaper.Indidane's family spokesman, Velo Bhengu, told Daily Sun that they knew that Indidane had chosen Ngobe to write about his secrets."The family knows every shocking secret that is written in the book," he said.The book will be officially launched next Sunday at a Maskandi festival in Indidane's home town of eMsinga in KwaMajozi Village.Entrance will be free.Indidane died in July last year after suffering complications from TB. More than 50 000 people from different provinces attended his funeral.He has won at least 18 awards as a Maskandi artist. The somewhat intimidating Chief Minister of Gujarat Anandiben Patel talks to Aditi Phadnis about the politics of the Patel agitation in her state, how her government is working to enable entrepreneurship and the saas-bahu power dynamic. When Narendra Modi resigned as chief minister of Gujarat and Anandiben Patel was elected by the Bharatiya Janata Legislature Party as its leader, Modi said Gujarat was in safe hands. I know she looks a bit strict, he said, introducing his successor, I know she doesnt smile much. But under her leadership, Gujarat will march ahead after me. It is true that Anandiben appears at first glance to be forbidding, dour and grim; but only until you hear her laugh. If something amuses her, she smiles and then utterly spontaneously, the laugh turns into a gurgling giggle. There are many in her party -- including members of the Patel clan who are agitating for anamat (reservation) -- who consider her unfriendly. She says: Those who stick to rules always appear unfriendly to people who come for personal favours. I should be judged for my work, not by the look on my face. The tea served at Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi where we meet is robust -- somewhat excessively so for my timid palate. I take a sip as I sit across the first woman chief minister of Gujarat. The beverage is abandoned, left to form an unappetising beige skin on the surface, as Patel talks about the challenges in her job. The agitation for reservations by a caste that is relatively better off in Gujarat confronted her within months of becoming chief minister. She is a bit shifty talking about the Hardik Patel-led agitation and the governments response to it: negotiations are still on, so could I please be judicious in what I write? Many are coming to her from the Patel community to say the agitation has shamed the caste, she says. On the other hand, it is also true that with 95 per cent marks, a Patel child is unlikely to get into a government medical college and can be required to pay Rs 5 lakh or more to become a doctor while a Dalit child even with 87 per cent marks gets free education. So I asked them: you want to be classified as Dalit? Or as an Other Backward Class? The community was not clear. It will all be sorted out. You will see, she says confidently. Sorted out? But Hardik Patel is in jail on charges of sedition, I ask. She looks at me unblinkingly. I did not put him there. The court did, she says and smiles chillingly. I get the feeling Hardik is unlikely to be released anytime soon. I could be wrong. Anandiben is clear about what needs to be fixed in Gujarat: the status of women. Although the BJP has evinced no particular view on the matter, she says unequivocally that all women must be allowed entry into all temples. Not letting them in is ridiculous. She says she comes from a state that practises a particularly severe ghunghat (veil). When she became a teacher and later, a political activist, she refused to observe it and was panned for being too forward. She didnt care. Today, when she goes to villages, she makes it a point to ensure that women are on the stage, especially those in positions of leadership. I went to a village that had elected a woman as its head. But sitting next to me on stage was a young man. I asked him who the head was. He said, It is my auntie. I demanded the auntie come forward. She came on stage, I made him get up and she sat on the chair. By the end of the function, she had pushed her veil back and was answering questions quite confidently. It must be hard living in the shadow of such big leaders as Modi and Amit Shah. A person is called a leader if he encourages development. When I take Narendra Modis name, there is applause. I feel a great sense of pride. So what is her USP? Social change, she answers promptly. My leaders have never stopped me from going ahead. But my priority is to bring about a change in the way people think. In our state, people tend to spend a lot of money on marriages. I have not only made it my mission but have also enforced it on my family -- you should spend as little as possible on weddings. Child marriage is another bane of the Gujarati society. When her brother died and the family made preparations to get his son married at 20, she warned that she would go on a hunger strike if that happened. The family didnt take her seriously. She wrote a letter to the police, which arrived when the marriage was about to be performed. My family did not speak to me for five years, she said. Whether the marriage is of a son or a daughter, people have been reduced to penury, forced to sell land. She recalls that when her daughter got married (to the son of Ishwarbhai Patel, one of Gujarats leading social reformers) she insisted that not more than five people attend from the grooms and brides side. Behind her back, her husband had made plans for a grand wedding. When she got to hear of this, she went early morning to Ishwarbhai Patels home and persuaded him and his wife that no more than five people would attend the wedding. It is customary for uncles of the bride to give huge amounts of cash to the couple. All they were permitted to give was Rs 100 -- she would not countenance anything more than that. They had brought money in sacks, she says. This brings us to the sensitive issue of her daughter Anars involvement in a land allocation scandal. The Opposition claimed that prime land was given to Anar Patel at a price below market value. Anandiben insists there was no scandal: Wild World Resorts signed a memorandum of understanding in 2007 when the Vibrant Gujarat event was on. The cost of the land is calculated according to circle orjantri rates. No one person but a committee decides the cost based on several parameters. The land changed hands thrice -- finally only to be declared an eco-sensitive zone. This means now the value of the land is zero. Only at one stage was her daughter associated with the company. I hint at other bad odours wafting from the state. Anandiben is dismissive. We are doing so much that somebody will always complain. Take the Centres Start-Up India mission. The Gujarat government is enabling entrepreneurship by paying 50 per cent of the rent for a workshop for those who want to start business in the state. This means 50 per cent of the capital cost. The Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation is erecting multi-storeyed buildings on vacant industrial plots to enable start-ups, especially those run by young women. I could go on. As minister for primary education from 1998 to 2007, Anandiben restructured the system of transfer, posting and appointment of teachers, nearly ending the transfer-posting industry in primary schools and doing away with rent-seeking. This period saw the girl child dropout rate falling -- it was two per cent in 2013, plummeting from 37 per cent in 2001. I catch her looking surreptitiously at her watch and save my questions for another day. But I cant resist asking her how she views the saas-bahu power dynamic. She is thoughtful: If there is a feeling that either the mother-in-law or the daughter-in-law has had to compromise excessively, there is conflict. On that wise note, we part. IMAGE: Chinese President Xi Jinping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House, New Delhi, September 2014. Photograph: Press Information Bureau 'It needed political courage on the part of the prime minister to make such an intervention at the present juncture when the hawkish opinion rules the roost in the Indian foreign-policy discourses in our media, and, unfortunately, the sane voices have largely fallen silent,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar. The government has done just the right thing to review the decision to grant a visa to an Uighur activist whom China has branded a 'terrorist.' Had it been otherwise, there would have been serious negative fallouts on the relationship with China. All one can say at this point (before more details are known) would be that there has been a political decision, conceivably at the highest level, to supersede the foreign and security policy establishment's earlier move to issue an 'electronic visa' to the Uighur fugitive Dolkun Isa, living in exile in Germany. The optics of this development are not going to be good for Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, because our hawks had just opened the champagne bottle to celebrate the high probability of a nasty India-China spat breaking out anytime in the coming days or weeks when they realise they were holding an empty bottle. Understandably, they are livid with anger and frustration and will fulminate. The right thing to do is to ignore them and leave them to come to terms with their misery. These very same hawks living in ivory towers have always opposed the normalisation of India-China (and India-Pakistan) relations. What is it they want? War with China and/or Pakistan? The decision to grant a visa to the Uighur separatist was a serious mistake for the following reasons: It would have been an unwarranted provocation to China, since it signified an interference in that country's internal affairs; India had nothing to gain out of letting a Uighur terrorist to visit India; India is not seeking confrontation with China; India should do, no matter what it takes, to preserve the peace and tranquility on the disputed border with China; At a time when the spectre of famine is haunting us with well over 300 million Indians demanding urgent relief from the drought conditions, the national priority is clear, and the country and the government need to be focused; A good foreign policy is always an offshoot of its national priorities, and the hawks who demand a confrontation with China are indulging in infantile behaviour that is completely out of touch with the stark realities in the country; India is highly unlikely to get any support or encouragement from the international community by promoting Uighur separatism; The US is at the moment hosting a delegation of legislators and Communist party officials from Tibet, which only goes to underscore that, to put it mildly, the hawks in India are yesterday's men, living in a fool's paradise, and hopelessly out of touch with the realities of international politics; It does not behove a mature country to handle its most consequential relationship on the world arena without a medium and long perspective. If Modi hadn't ordered a reversal of the earlier decision, the India-China relationship would have entered a period of uncertainty. Once derailed, the normalisation process will take years to revive. Is that in the country's interests? The visits last week by Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to China appear to have gone off well. Doval was received at a very high level, underscoring China's interest in moving forward in the cooperation with India. Our objective should be to carry forward these positive impulses. Modi is likely to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on two occasions during the rest of this year. India should avail of the window of opportunity to give new momentum to economic cooperation. China is a unique -- and irreplaceable partner -- for India's development. Creating a climate conducive to the fostering of trade and investment from China should be the main focus of India's diplomacy in the near term. The peace and tranquillity on the border provides the necessary platform for sustained economic diplomacy. All indications are that this has also been Modi's intention. In the ultimate analysis, it is imperative that India conducts a multi-vector, non-aligned, foreign policy. The current international situation demands it. Any weakening of any major template of foreign policy, such as the ties with China, will deprive India of optimal capacity to navigate its way in the prevailing world order. To be sure, Modi realises this. Hence, the intervention to ensure that India-China differences are properly handled. It needed political courage on the part of the prime minister to make such an intervention at the present juncture when the hawkish opinion rules the roost in the Indian foreign-policy discourses in our media, and, unfortunately, the sane voices -- voices of reason and moderation -- have largely fallen silent. 'The innate fascism of the RSS is overshadowing Modi's development programme,' argues Amulya Ganguli. Just as the Communists believed in 1947-1948 that India had not attained 'real' Independence -- yeh azadi jhooti hai -- the RSS today believes that the Jana Gana Mana is not the real national anthem. In its view, that honour should go to Vande Mataram. The first signs that the Sangh Parivar wanted a second look at the Jana Gana Mana was when Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh -- who presided over the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister -- proposed his own version of Rabindranath Tagore's song in which the word 'adhinayaka' was sought to be replaced by 'mangal gaye' since the existing word, according to him, referred to King George V. The same point was made more recently by the Parivar's in-house gadfly, Subramanian Swamy. Although the composition of the song coincided with the Coronation Durbar in New Delhi in 1911, Tagore later said that the 'great charioteer of human destiny' -- hay chira sarathi -- 'cannot, by any means, be fifth or sixth, or any George.' If dislike for the 'Angrezi shashak' (English ruler), to quote Kalyan Singh, is the reason for the objections of the RSS and the BJP to the national anthem, Vande Mataram cannot pass muster either because it occurs in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Anand Math in the context of welcoming the English since they were expected to put an end to Muslim rule. The RSS may be pleased with this particular fallout of the advent of the English, but it cannot ignore the background of the paean to Mother India. It is another matter that the exultation over the termination of what came to be known in history books as the Muslim period was subsequently forgotten (or overlooked) and the exhilarating lyrics and tune of Vande Mataram came to symbolise nationalism per se for the freedom fighters. But the past cannot be conveniently brushed aside to suit a present purpose. Another aspect of 'Angrezi shashan' which the saffron brotherhood finds unacceptable is the Constitution, which, as is known, is modelled on the Government of India Act of 1935. Therefore, the saffronites want to get rid of this Macaulayan legacy and replace it by something indigenous. Not surprisingly, one of the first acts of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was to set up a commission to rewrite the Constitution. It is possible that Vajpayee took the step unwillingly, only to get the Hindutva hawks off his back, and only after the government assured the commission's chairman, Justice M N Venkatachaliah, that no changes in the basic structure of the Constitution was contemplated. Since, in the end, the Constitution was left untouched, the unsuccessful attempt to tinker with it by the saffron camp can be said to be of little importance. But the significance of its intervention lies in revealing the mindset of those who are dissatisfied with the present scheme of thing and want a drastic change. This radical impulse can be gauged from the suggestions which were submitted by the RSS to the commission. Their central point was the setting up of a Guru Sabha for 'Bharat.' All the three 'estates' of modern governance -- the legislature, the executive and the judiciary -- were expected to function under the Guru Sabha, which would have overriding powers. In effect, it would be like the Iranian Guardians Council, comprising theologians appointed by the country's supreme leader, who is a cleric, and six others nominated by the judiciary. According to the RSS 'theologians', the Guru Sabha will not be a body elected on the basis of universal adult franchise, but by a restricted electorate comprising teachers of schools, colleges and universities. When the proposal was made, the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Hyderabad Central University had not hit the headlines as they have done now. It is unlikely, therefore, that the RSS will stand by its earlier proposal at present. But the object of this exercise of dismantling the Constitution is obvious -- the RSS wants the transfer of power away from voters to a group of 'teachers' -- of shakhas, vidya bhavans, sishu mandirs, et al -- which the Nagpur patriarchs think they will be able to control. Apart from a tendency to create a problem where none exists, there is an element of elitism in the suggestion to negate the concept of universal franchise. Yet, it is this system of allowing everyone to vote which saved India from the Emergency in 1977 when the would-be dictators were thrown out. If a restricted electorate comprising, say, the educated middle class had been the masters of the country's destiny, the self-serving rulers would have remained in place because the trains ran on time, the standard justification for authoritarianism. Having interpreted the BJP's assumption of power at the Centre as a licence to implement a pro-Hindu agenda, the RSS is pushing ahead with great enthusiasm with a spokesman even equating its trademark saffron flag -- bhagwa dhwaj -- with the Tricolour. Taken together with attempts to force everyone to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai -- a Gujarat college has told applicants that they will not be admitted unless they write the slogan on their forms -- the innate fascism of the RSS is overshadowing Modi's development programme. Amulya Ganguli is a writer on current affairs. IMAGE: Members of the RSS take part in a Dussehra celebration in Ahmedabad. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters 'Growing up in Karnataka, in a middle class and forward caste background, Ambedkar did not enter our consciousness at all, I realised.' 'The 'exclusion' of sections of our society was not only physical; it was comprehensive in the sense that all aspects of their lives including the life of an exceptional intellectual and stalwart had been under-understood by people of my class, I thought,' says Ambassador B S Prakash. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com The cascading coverage about Babasaheb has ended. For a few days around April 14, the 125th birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar, I became anxious. Wherever I turned and whatever I read, his name was dominant. Speeches, statues, television discussions, seminars. Every person affiliated to some colour from saffron, to Tiranga, to red, black, or green seemed to speak his name and claim his legacy. So why should I become nervous, you ask me. Before you become indignant or rise up in rage, I better hasten to clarify that it is not for reasons you may be thinking. It is for something quite different! You see, I consider myself an educated person. Apart from a post-graduate degree and the stamp of UPSC approval that gave me entry into the foreign service, I have served the government, if not the country, for 40 years, retiring after representing India in some countries. And yet, why was I hitherto so ignorant about Bhim Rao and the role played by him in so many diverse areas? Many others, who I had not suspected of either erudition or deep reflection -- Rahul Gandhi, for instance at one end, and my local municipal counsellor Guptaji at the other -- seemed to know so much more about Ambedkar. Others swore that their conscience was awakened after reading him; yet others attributed their fame or success to him. To add to my confusion, his name was being invoked in complex electoral calculations. The mathematics of some of the caste equations just defeated me, never having been good at that subject. His prescience about the nature of the State of Pakistan was also being discussed in a seminar and after having spent decades as an Indian diplomat, I was not even aware that Ambedkar had written a book on the subject, before that country even came into being! Pray, why was I so unread or under informed, I asked myself and had a moment of angst. Two or three things, I did know. He was the key figure who gave us our Constitution. His unmatched scholarship on the making of other constitutions, his legal acumen and prodigious hard work had made him the best qualified for drafting the new Constitution. Gandhi himself had suggested his name and Ambedkar had delivered an outstanding document that has withstood the test of time, notwithstanding numerous efforts to tamper with it, unfortunately, sometimes successfully. This I knew, first, when I studied for the UPSC examination and later, when I saw the excellent Samvidhan, the Shyam Benegal documentary on the making of our Constitution on Rajya Sabha TV. Second, I knew that he had done decisive work for the weaker and oppressed sections of our society, particularly Dalits. He had been hailed as the emancipator of Dalits, but everyone also acknowledged that this emancipation was far from fully realised. I must admit that my knowledge of this issue was getting a bit hazy in recent years. While I understood and empathised with the justification for reservations for those who had suffered centuries of being 'untouchables,' let alone speak of deprivation in education, employment or status, I sensed that issues had become a bit cloudy. Why was the clamour by every section to become 'backward'? What was the difficult dynamics in the battle between OBCs and Dalits? How did the 'creamy layer' manage to stay below, instead of rising to the surface? I sensed that some of this terminology was not due to Ambedkar and that his core message was about justice and removal of inequality, and not about perpetuating the caste wars. I was not sure why many of his adherents or opponents seemed to believe that a 'burning issue' meant burning buses. I knew a little bit more. That he had given up Hinduism and had turned Buddhist. But here too, I was a bit unsure when I saw photographs of devotees in Buddhist robes 'worshipping' his photograph or statue. Had not Buddha preached against idolatry or for that matter adulation of a person as the saviour? Had Babasaheb himself not cautioned against such hero worship? I must also admit that I was puzzled about this aspect of Ambedkar everyday as I entered Noida from Delhi and saw Mayawati's architectural tribute to him -- giant statues of Babasaheb with his finger raised to admonish or exhort us. I was not sure which. But this was the extent of my knowledge and trying to catch up with what was being said, I felt that it was hopelessly limited. Compared to what I had absorbed about Gandhi or Nehru, my awareness of Ambedkar's life and thought was woefully inadequate. Why had I not been taught about his trenchant criticism of the structure of Hindu society, his call to tear down 'Manu aur Jativada,' his analysis of the abiding and inherent inequality in our history, of his uneasiness with Gandhi and differences with Nehru? What made us miss out learning about the role played by Ambedkar as the 'slayer of all Gods' as Pratap Bhanu Mehta had put it forcefully? Considering myself as fairly well schooled, how come that I had not read a single essay, let alone a book by him? Was it my fault or a result of my circumstances, I wondered. Growing up in Karnataka, in a middle class and forward caste background, Ambedkar did not enter our consciousness at all, I realised. The 'exclusion' of sections of our society was not only physical; it was comprehensive in the sense that all aspects of their lives including the life of an exceptional intellectual and stalwart had been under-understood by people of my class, I thought. Thanks for staying with me, as I have honestly explained my solipsistic concerns. From noble intentions and honest regrets, to current realities. To assuage my conscience, I began to follow what others were saying. Soon I realised that we had turned this important moment into the ritual obeisance in which we excel on any janma jayanti. My bewilderment was, however, complete, as I read the comment below by Mayawati, who herself can justifiably claim to have realised at least one of Babasaheb's goals -- of 'empowerment.' Mayawati was criticising Rahul Gandhi's oratory about Ambedkar. Rahul, the ultimate innocent in most matters political or social, had apparently compared Rohith Vemula, the Dalit Hyderabad student who had committed suicide, to Ambedkar. Mayawati was understandably indignant. 'Comparing Vemula to Babasaheb is like comparing Rahul Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru,' she fumed. Touche! But she does not stop there. 'If he is to be compared at all, it should be to Nelson Mandela or Kanshi Ram,' she declared. Don't believe me? Please Google for yourself. Ambassador B S Prakash is a former Ambassador and a long standing Rediff columnist. Failure to deliver on governance, corruption allegations, preoccupation with Lok Sabha and gram panchayat polls and factionalism have weakened Siddaramaiah's government in Karnataka. This may well hand the BJP a chance to make a comeback in the state, says Raghu Krishnan. Thirteen Congress legislators from Bengaluru, five of whom are ministers in Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's Cabinet; full Congress control of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the city's corporation... and yet, when thousands of poorly paid garment workers hit the streets in Bengaluru last week protesting the Centre's new employment provident fund norms, Siddaramaiah's government was caught unawares. Only after protesters turned violent on the second day did the government wake up, but it was too late. The National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre had begun dousing the fire -- amending the PF norms that held back the money of such workers till 58, and finally, withdrawing the move. This week's episode widened the growing gap between promise and delivery of governance by the Congress government in the last three years. The electorate voted Siddaramaiah, a backward class leader, to power on the promise of good governance. The previous Bharatiya Janata Party regime was riddled with corruption that forced its chief minister, B S Yeddyurappa, to quit after the Lokayukta named him for illegally denotifiying land in state capital Bengaluru. Yeddyurappa, who has been named the state BJP chief to lead the party in the next assembly elections in 2018, was discharged by the Karnataka high court on technical grounds. "This government is an absolute failure," says Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member from Karnataka in the Rajya Sabha. "It has had zero impact on governance in the last three years. There is enough empirical evidence that none of the promises made by Siddaramaiah and his party members has been implemented." Siddaramaiah, a leader who was hand-picked by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, has got entangled in scandals. He had to hand over an expensive, diamond-studded Hublot watch that he had worn to the state treasury after the Opposition accused him of corruption. Controversy has dogged his family members too. A juicy tender was bagged by Matrix Imaging Solutions Limited -- a company where Yathindra Siddaramaiah, the chief minister's son, is a director -- to set up a pathology laboratory in a government-owned super-speciality hospital. Then, land worth Rs 150 crore in Bengaluru was allocated to a firm owned by his son's friend in contravention of the rules. Factionalism continues in the state, with Siddaramaiah almost becoming isolated and unable to rein in senior ministers such as D K Shiva Kumar, K J George and G Parameshwar as well as failing to remove non-performers such as Shamanur Shivashankarappa and Ambareesh to make way for younger leaders. Siddaramaiah has been putting off a Cabinet reshuffle, in the works for over a year. Infrastructure woes continue in Bengaluru, the capital city that generates nearly 70 per cent of the state's revenues. Karnataka is the only state in south India to have power outages: the state has failed to sign agreements to buy power to meet its needs. The performance on tackling drought, which has hit 136 of the 174 taluks in the state, has been abysmal. Weakening powers of the Lok Ayukta -- an institution that Karnataka built and which was hailed across the country -- has led to discontent in civic society. "It is almost laissez faire. The CM has institutionalised corruption and every MLA and minister is on his own," says Chandrasekhar. Since the 1980s, Karnataka has never returned a ruling party to power, with incumbent governments losing out due to non-performance. With the current government's performance, this record is likely to continue. State leaders admit that there have been governance lapses, but they have blamed it on a preoccupation with elections -- from Lok Sabha to gram panchayats. "In the last three years, there were irritants -- various elections. Now that is over and we have full two years to showcase our performance," says Dinesh Gundu Rao, a senior minister in Siddaramaiah's Cabinet. The lacklustre performance of the government is an opportunity for the BJP, which is trying to make a comeback in the state. By naming Yeddyurappa, a Lingayat and mass leader who has Prime Minister Narendra Modi's backing, as state party chief, it is beginning to beat the war drums two years ahead of the elections. Among the first to respond to agitators in the Bengaluru violence, which prompted the Centre to withdraw the PF note, was Union minister and BJP Lok Sabha member from the city Ananth Kumar. Both Kumar and Yeddyurappa, otherwise arch rivals in the party, were reaching out to the protesters saying they would address the workers' needs, even as the government was scrambling to be on top of the situation. "It is clear to the BJP. They are looking at the 2018 elections; they see an opportunity because of the failure of the Congress," says Chandrasekhar. "Yeddyurappa is a strong leader and vote-catcher. It is a political calculation by the BJP to lead the party in the next elections." Image: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Photograph: File Photo / PTI Photo In a rare praise, Union Minister Maneka Gandhi has asked officials in Uttar Pradesh to emulate her estranged sister-in-law and Congress President Sonia Gandhi to check corruption. The Union minister for women and child development, who represents Pilibhit in Lok Sabha, cited the example during a meeting with officials of the vigilance and monitoring committee in the district on Sunday when an official alleged about corruption in the Basic Shiksha Adhikari's office. It was alleged that certain schools, which had taken recognition for junior standard classes, were running classes for higher standards as well. Maneka then asked BSA Ambrish Kumar Yadav to remove all the clerks in the department but he replied that he did not have the authority to do so. At this, Maneka said, "I have heard that one person, claiming to be a relative of Sonia Gandhi, had opened a shop and asked people to come to him for works...so what did Sonia Gandhi do? She put up an advertisement in newspapers asking people not to go to him and instead go to officials of the department". "I want you to do the same. Put out an advertisement that those who want recognition should directly come to you. Put up a notice in your office, too. We will order a vigilance inquiry on the babus," she told the official. India has cancelled the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently buckling under pressure from China. We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa, a home ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday without elaborating further. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress, who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by the United States-based Initiatives for China. Cancellation of the visa is a U-turn on Indias part after having issued the visa to Isa only last week. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation. He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side, he said. Indias decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking Indias bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the United Nations. Chinas unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. However, Isas name does not figure in the list of wanted people published by the Interpol. According to the Interpol charter, if the requesting country wishes, the international organisation does not put up the name of the wanted person in its website. Image: Dolkun Isa, a Uighur leader, has been accused of terror activities in the remote Xinjiang region of China. Photograph: David Lague/Reuters Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya on Monday said the decision to rusticate them from the varsity was "unacceptable" and termed as "farce" the inquiry by a high-level committee even as the students' union threatened a countrywide campaign on the matter. In his reaction, JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 by the varsity administration, said the punitive action handed down on the basis of a "farcical" probe was "simply unacceptable" and that the Union rejects it. "The JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee!" Kanhaiya tweeted. Terming the decision against them as "unacceptable", Anirban and Umar alleged the authority's action amounted to a "witch-hunt" under the "diktats" of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. "The JNU administration declares its allegiance to the RSS, once again! After allowing police to enter campus to unleash the worst repression...now the JNU admin has come down with its own list of punishments. "A farce is what this inquiry has been from day one, made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar (JNU VC) that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS," Umar posted on Facebook. He said HyderabadCentralUniversity's deceased Dalit student Rohith Vemula was their "inspiration", urging the students for a "fight back". JNUSU vice president Shehla Rashid Shora said, "We will launch a countrywide campaign to expose this governments anti-student, anti-Dalit character." Shehla said the action against the students was based on "sheer vendetta and a biased inquiry" and "one-sided" statements from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad members. "The VC is taking directions from the Central govt. He should have acted first as an academician and then as an RSS loyalist. Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," she said. The JNU on Monday slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on JNUSU president Kumar and rusticated PhD scholars Umar and Anirban for varying duration in connection with the controversial February 9 event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had triggered widespread outrage and protests. Based on the findings of a committee, Umar has been rusticated for one semester and slapped with a fine of Rs 20,000, Anirban has been rusticated till July 15. IMAGE: Umar Khalid The Delhi government on Monday alleged in a court that some of the video footage of the February 9 protests at JNU campus aired by three TV news channels were doctored and sought their prosecution. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass, after hearing the submissions of the Delhi Government's counsel, fixed the matter for consideration on the complaint on May 26. "I am posting the matter for consideration on May 26," the magistrate said. Senior advocate N Hariharan, who appeared for the Delhi government, said the channels reported about clash between students groups at the JNU and showed footage of the incident which happened at the university campus on February 9. He said the video was inaudible so the channels had showed a bubble on the screen with an alleged text Pakistan Zindabad and the the anchor/reporter suggested that such anti-national slogans were being shouted by the JNU students which would not be tolerated by the country. These programmes were also uploaded on the websites of these channels on YouTube, he said. He argued that a CD of these footage was send to forensic science laboratory and the experts have opined that all these bubbles were insertions and tapes were tampered with. "Because of this we saw violence across the country and in this court complex also. You had seen it. Post violence incidents were also seen," the counsel said. Hariharan, who was accompanied with battery of lawyers, sought the prosecution of the three channels, their editors and anchors for the alleged offences under various sections including 415 (cheating), 465 (punishment for forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code and provisions of the Information and Technology Act. The Delhi government sought examination of its complaint under Section 200 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It has made 12 respondents as parties in the matter, including three news channels, their editors-in-chief, directors and anchors. The plea, which was filed through SDM of Vasant Vihar Sunil Dutt Sharma, also annexed list of witnesses which they sought to examine in support of the complaint. The hearing saw heated exchanges between the counsel for the Aam Aadmi Party government and advocate Vijay Aggarwal who appeared for one of the channels. The government's counsel objected to the intervention of Aggarwal saying his client was a proposed accused and he had no locus to appear in the matter at this stage. However, the channel's counsel said he was addressing the court and urged the magistrate to give him a hearing. Meanwhile, the counsel moved two separate pleas on behalf of one of the three channels, seeking to stay the proceedings of this complaint as the investigation on a first information report registered on February 11 in the JNU protest at Vasant Kunj North police station was pending. The other plea sought prosecution of unknown persons who were part of filing the government's complaint for allegedly making false claim in the court. Hariharan read out a portion of the complaint that said, "The accused knowingly and with malicious intent have caused damage and/or injury to the students of JNU and to the JNU institution and have disrupted communal harmony, public tranquility and security in Delhi by transmitting a forged/ fabricated/ doctored/ altered video(s). These video(s) are forged/ fabricated/ altered in material form. "It is evident that the doctoring, use, dissemination and broadcast of these videos was deliberate and intentional and the accused persons thus created false document(s). They have used the false documents as genuine. The accused persons are therefore liable for prosecution under Sections 465(punishment for forgery) and 471 (using as genuine forged document or electronic record) of the IPC." IMAGE: JNU students protest against the police crackdown and the arrest of the students union president in this picture taken on February 16. Photograph: PTI 'She will recognise the talent of the Indian-American community.' Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC. IMAGE: US Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton with supporters at a campaign rally in Bridgeport, Connecticut, US. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters United States Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's national campaign chairman John Podesta has strongly indicated that if Clinton is elected President, it is a virtual no-brainer that Indian Americans will occupy senior administration positions, including in her cabinet. Podesta -- the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and erstwhile senior adviser to President Barack Obama who keynoted the launch of the Indian American for Hillary Clinton campaign at Montgomery College, Germantown campus, Maryland -- said that leading this pack of Indian American appointees in a Hillary administration could be her long-time friend and confidante, Neera Tanden and Richard Rahul Verma, the current US Ambassador to India. When asked about possible Indian-American appointments in a Hillary administration, Tanden laughed and said, "I will leave that to John as chair of the campaign to answer." To that, Podesta said, "I can think of at least one person you've already spoken with, whom I'd like to see in a future Democratic administration." Earlier Podesta had said, "The one person we don't have with us for Indian Americans for Hillary Clinton, who was with the secretary (of state) in 2008. But I know he is with us in spirit, probably voting in absentia is Ambassador Rich Verma." Podesta said he was sure that Verma would be one of the most supportive Indian Americans for Hillary Clinton, although, at this time, as a diplomat he could not profess public support during a political campaign. Both Podesta and Tanden recalled that in every position Hillary has ever had -- First Lady, running for Senate, Senator, Secretary of State -- she always had Indian Americans with her. "Obviously, I am an Indian American and I didn't have any connections, my family didn't have any connections, (but) she takes what I would say are the best and brightest from everywhere and you see that in every job she has ever held," Tanden said. "She will recognise the talent of the Indian-American community because she's already done that in the past and she really recognises the incredible diversity," Tanden added. If Hillary becomes President, Podesta said US-India relations would soar to unprecedented heights. "As secretary of state, she tried to develop a strong relationship between the US and India and spent time with her Indian counterparts and with the foreign minister and the prime minister," Podesta pointed out. "Hillary actually helped to lay the foundation, which I had the ability to work on when I was at the White House working for President Obama and to deepen the relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She also tried to get an outcome in the Paris (Climate Change) negotiations that respected the development position of India but made the future to be one of an ambitious goal of providing more clean energy globally and to deal with the challenge of climate change," Podesta said. Whether it was security or defence relationships, Podesta noted she (Hillary) had developed strong relations with "Indian friends" and she would take that forward as President Obama has done. The most tangible transformation of ties between Washington and New Delhi, Podesta reminded his audience, took off in the wake of President Bill Clinton's historic trip to India in March 2000. Hillary, Podesta reiterated, would certainly follow in that tradition and try to ensure that the US has a strong economic and strategic relationship with India. Earlier, in his remarks, Podesta, who is of Italian descent, lauded the founders of the Indian Americans for Hillary Clinton campaign. Devang Shah, one of the key protagonists behind Indian Americans for Hillary Clinton, along with Dr Rajan Natarajan, former deputy secretary of state for external affairs in the Maryland state administration, thanked Podesta and said, "You value us, you respect us, and we deeply appreciate that." Both in his keynote speech and in his interaction with journalists, Podesta slammed Republican front-runner Donald Trump for his xenophobia, Islamophobia and for fomenting fear and hatred and causing divisions among the American population. Podesta also criticised Trump for mocking Indian call centre workers at his campaign rally in Delaware. "He (Trump) never surprises me, because he always reaches new lows with almost every day. But Trump mocking Indian workers was just typical of his disrespect that he's shown to groups across the spectrum," Podesta said. "And, as I have said, he is running a campaign of bigotry, of division, and that's quite dangerous for the country when you are thinking about the fact that we need friends, we need allies, we need to project American values across the country," Podesta added. Podesta conceded that Trump's offensive and controversial statements will help Hillary win the US Presidential election. "Trump with his bigoted and vile anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim remarks was motivating a very big, broad, diverse, coalition," Podesta predicted, "that's going to move onto victory in November and then into the White House in January when Clinton is elected America's first-ever woman President." News / International by Thulani Nkala ZAPU BELFAST took to the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the 18th of April to protest the so called Independence Day. While other movements and the majority of Zimbabweans protested all over the country and the world, ZAPU Europe gathered at Belfast City Hall and held a protest/toyi toyi whereby ZAPU shared the plight of the stolen revolution in Zimbabwe with the international community.ZAPU was challenging the illegal farm invasions, the $15 billion corruption scandal, the abduction of political activists and civilians, continuous human rights abuses and the sham independence that we have had for the past 36 years.The toyi-toyi was vibrant and attracted passers-by, opposition parties and others who came to support, enquire and observe. It was all noise and the drums banged as the comrades burst out in song and the banners came out. ZAPU slogans resonated all over the city hall and the yellow Tshirts illuminated the streets as photographers helped themselves to photos.After the singing of protest and revolutionary songs, speeches were made. First came up, the ZAPU Europe Vice Chairman, Arthur Molife, who touched on a few issues affecting the party and country as a whole. Mr A Molife spoke on the importance of embedding the youth into the new ZAPU set up, and emphasised the importance of laying strong foundations and building bridges so that when the youth take over the party they have something tangible to push the party forward. He also mentioned the tribalism which was caused by ZANU to divide the country.Then came the radical and outspoken Europe Youth Front Vice Chairman Cde Cakes who spoke deeply on the history that brought about the independence of our country. Cakes spoke on a revolution betrayed and challenged the ZANU government that brought about Gukurahundi, destroyed the economy and dignity of the country and suppressed the will of the people. He said young people had to stand up and be counted.Soon after took to the floor the interim chairperson of ZAPU Belfast, Cde Cosmas, another young commander who spoke very briefly, touched profoundly on the importance of being united in Belfast and keeping the ZAPU flag flying high. Finally stepped up Cde Sipho Sibanda who spoke on behalf of ZAWU ( The women's wing of ZAPU). Sipho Sibanda, as she was closing the speeches, thanked all the comrades who made it happen and also thanked the guests from various political movements and groups who had come to show support. Part of those were Zunde and other political movements from across Europe. Sipho Sibanda focused her speech on the role of the women within ZAPU and Zimbabwe. She spoke on the empowerment of women in ZAPU and encourage all women to draw inspiration from the ZAWU of yesterday and the revolutionary women of the past, who dared and challenged the smith regime until the country was taken. The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet on Tuesday during which the issues dogging the bilateral ties including the Pathankot terror strike will be discussed. Primarily, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will be in New Delhi on a day-long visit to attend the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process. An announcement to this effect was made in Islamabad. On the sidelines of the meet, Chaudhry will hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar to review the status of bilateral ties and Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, which is stagnant. According to sources, the focus of the talks would be on the investigation into the Pathankot terror strike and a possible visit by a National Investigation Agency team to Pakistan in this connection. This will be the first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the foreign ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had an informal brief interaction during a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meeting in Nepal in March this year. The efforts to resume CBD at the foreign secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot Airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. The meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basits recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side, which maintained that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed. Announcing Chaudhrys visit, the Pakistan Foreign Office, in a statement in Islamabad had said, Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan, it added. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. Image: Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, right, shakes hands with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyan Jaishankar during the latter's visit to Islamabad. Photograph: Faisal Mahmood/Reuters Taking a dig at Narendra Modi for his poll campaign in West Bengal and Assam, the Shiv Sena on Monday said the prime minister should have taken out time to visit drought-hit Marathwada as well. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing a rally during his election campaign for West Bengal Assembly election at Kharagpur. Photograph: PTI Photo "Modi has become a global leader now and he is going across the world as the prime minister of India. People of this country are reeling under drought and are dying of hunger and thirst. The feeling among the people is that he should stay in the country and worry for the people," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana said. "India needs to be saved to save our global leadership," it said. It would have been good if Modi had taken out time to spend two days in Marathwada, which is reeling under a severe drought, the Sena said. "Modi is campaigning for elections in West Bengal and Assam. But people of Marathwada will not forget that he did not hear their cries," it said. Attacking the government, the ruling alliance partner said that the Bharatiya Janata Party needs to introspect as to who is responsible for the "making" of Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU Students' Union leader. Kanhaiya had hit the headlines after being arrested on charges of sedition in the aftermath of an event on the JNU campus during which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised. The JNU student leader had recently come down heavily on the Modi dispensation, terming it a "government of selfies and jumlas" as he pushed for enactment of a law to prevent caste-based prejudice in educational institutions. The Sena also reminded Modi that the promises he made before elections, like bringing 'acche din' in the country, getting black money back and generating two crore jobs every year, have not been fulfilled as yet. Meanwhile, Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Monday blamed the Centre for not handling the crisis in Marathwada well. "It did not handle the situation well, this is our view," Raut said outside Parliament when asked how the Centre was handling the drought situation. Taking an indirect dig at the PM, he said, "My appeal to the PM is please visit Marathwada to see the situation there. You travel the world over and you are a world leader. You are holding rallies in West Bengal and Assam; come to Marathwada also once." Defending the decision to cancel the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Monday said the leader of World Uyghur Congress had applied for the travel document in a wrong category, leading to the cancellation of the visa. He (Dolkun Isa) had given wrong information on why he wanted to visit India. The e-visa application said he wanted to come as a tourist though he was coming here to attend a conference and that is why we had to cancel his visa, the Union minister of state for home told reporters. Rijiju was reacting to question on why India has cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa, a leader of WUC, who lives in Germany and was invited for the conference being organised by United States-based Initiatives for China. Rijiju, who handles the visa issue in the home ministry, said Isa should have applied for conference visa rather than applying for tourist visa. But he applied for e-visa by giving wrong information, Rijiju said. The minister said India would have to arrest Isa if he visits here as an Interpol red corner notice is pending against him. Beijing had expressed its unhappiness over issuing the Indian visa to Isa. News / Local by Ngqwele Dube VOLUNTARY auctions are set to be launched in Bulawayo on Friday, according to property owners of attached properties the leeway to at least determine the value of their properties.Sunday News reported that most auctions especially for goods attached as part of a debt have all along been auctioned at values determined by the parties seeking to recoup their money with owners not having a say.This has resulted in some of the properties being sold below market value as long as those owed recover their money. Bulawayo Real Estate director Mike Nekati said there was a worrying trend where people were losing their properties for a song after they are attached over debts.He said, however, in a voluntary auction system, owners of properties are more in control of the selling price as they set the reserve price and are at liberty to reject the highest bidder allowing the property to roll over to the next auction."We have had a good response from companies and individuals coming forward to register the sale of commercial, residential and farming properties in and around Bulawayo. We are looking forward to a good launch on Friday and those interested can contact us for further details," said Nekati.He said the voluntary auctions will provide a win-win situation for a person in trouble and the one trying to recover his or her money through the sale of property adding it was almost similar to livestock sale auctions.Nekati said his company was planning to conduct the auctions every Friday until the end of the year.The biting economic situation has seen a large number of individuals and companies having their properties, movable and immovable, auctioned and other parties seek to recover debts. Cartels have also been formed that resulted in the goods going for a song."We believe the voluntary auctions will assist people evaluate the market prices because there seems to be some disparity between buyers and sellers' expectations on valuing. Forces of supply and demand will dictate the price hence everyone will have a clear idea on the current market values. You see a four-roomed house in Nkulumane having different valuations with some putting it at $20 000 while some say it's $15 000 with others pegging it at $12 000 so there is a need for people to be on the same page when it comes to valuations," said Nekati.The Affirmative Action Group has been fighting to stop auctions as property is being undervalued, leading to the collapse of businesses.Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko recently described as "criminal" the wave of business property auctions in Bulawayo and other parts of the country, saying this was a deliberate ploy to frustrate economic growth. Dozens of companies including State enterprises such as the Cold Storage Company (CSC) and Hwange Colliery Company Limited have lost properties and equipment through auctions over debts to various creditors. Some of the affected companies have suffered total collapse, with surviving ones struggling to keep afloat. Lobby groups and unions have partly blamed the development for loss of jobs as they urged adoption of a moratorium to protect company assets. 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. Burundians continuing to flee the country one year after crisis began Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Burundians continuing to flee the country one year after crisis began, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571db82d4.html [accessed 24 October 2022] One year after the Burundi crisis began, almost 260,000 people have fled to nearby countries and thousands more could join them over the rest of the year unless a political solution is found and a descent into civil war averted. People continue to arrive in neighbouring countries, albeit in smaller numbers in recent weeks as it becomes harder to cross borders. Many asylum seekers or new arrivals report human rights abuses in Burundi, including torture, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, intimidation, forced recruitment by militia, killings and extortion. To date, 259,132 people have fled the country, and we are planning our humanitarian response based on a figure of some 330,000 refugees by year's end. Continuing international support is needed to help ease the tension and encourage an inclusive dialogue. With mass returns not currently expected soon, UNHCR will in the coming year put greater emphasis on education for children and youth, and encourage refugees to become self-sufficient at a time when budget shortfalls are leading to cuts in some assistance. UNHCR is seeking almost US$175.1 million for its Burundi crisis operations this year, but has received only US$47.8 million to date, or some 27 per cent. This means we are struggling to provide even the basics such as shelter, household items and latrines. The provision of services such as specialized counselling, care for the disabled and elderly, protection of the environment and even primary health care may also fall by the way side. Meanwhile, the worsening economic conditions inside Burundi could exacerbate the situation, fuelling further displacement and making return conditions less favourable. Most of the refugees and thousands of internally displaced will probably not return home under present conditions. But for those in Tanzania (135,941 refugees), Rwanda (76,404), Democratic Republic of the Congo (22,204) and Uganda (24,583), conditions in exile are tough and a large influx would make their lives even more challenging. These countries continue to generously accept people, despite space restrictions and capacity problems. But they will need increased international support to host more people. We urge host countries to keep their doors open and donors to continue and step up support for the refugee response. In Burundi, the situation one year on is tense and marked by sporadic violence, which has killed more than 400 people since last year. People continue to cross from the provinces of Ruyigi, Muyinga, Kirundo, Rutana, Makamba, Rumonge, Bujumbura and Kibitoke to neighbouring countries, but there are also small numbers of people returning spontaneously. At least 25,000 people have fled to safer areas in Makamba, Rutana and Kirundo, but freedom of movement is becoming harder. TANZANIA Tanzania, which hosts the largest number of Burundian refugees, has been admitting an average 130 people a day. The bulk of the newly arrived Burundian refugees (more than 71,000) are living in the overcrowded Nyarugusu camp, which is now one of the largest refugee camps in the world with 140,540 refugees. Conditions are very difficult and UNHCR has put a priority on decongesting the camp. The rest live in Nduta and Mtendeli camps, which were reopened to ease congestion in Nyarugusu. But Nduta has reached its 55,000 capacity and from next week new arrivals will be taken to Mtendeli. Management of the environment is a key issue in Tanzania, with deforestation in and around the refugee camps a concern for UNHCR. The government has asked us to stop using wooden poles to erect shelters and to distribute fuel-efficient stoves. RWANDA In Rwanda, new arrivals continue to be registered at a rate of around 130 per week. More and more urban refugees are approaching UNHCR to move to Mahama camp, in Eastern province, after spending the last of their savings to keep alive. This adds to the urgent need to construct more shelters in the camp, which is home to nearly 48,500 refugees-nearly half of whom are children. UGANDA In Uganda, the rate of new arrivals has been relatively stable in recent weeks, averaging between 150-250 week (25-35 a day) in April. Last week saw 167 Burundian refugees arrive at the Nakivale settlement in the southwest of the country. Refugees report difficulties crossing borders, especially without papers. DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO The number of Burundian refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has steadily increased. About 900 refugees were registered in each of the first three months of the year. They included newly arrived Burundians and those who have been in the country for a while. Most are staying at the Lusenda camp, which now hosts more than 16,000 refugees and has a capacity for 18,000. Other refugees are staying with host families in straitened circumstances. To improve conditions, UNHCR has this year built more shelters and health facilities and upgraded the water system. Supporting peaceful coexistence between refugees and the host community is a priority. Access to jobs improving for Syrian refugees in Jordan Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Access to jobs improving for Syrian refugees in Jordan, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dc4994.html [accessed 24 October 2022] UNHCR welcomes a series of recent measures by the Government of Jordan that could significantly ease the way for Syrian refugees to find legal employment, going a long way to help them become more self-sufficient. This could see up to 78,000 Syrians able to work legally in Jordan in the short term and thousands more in the coming years. The most recent of these new measures, launched earlier this month, is a 90-day grace-period that allows employers in the informal sector to freely obtain work permits for Syrian refugees, regularizing their employment. This potentially puts Syrian refugees on the same footing as migrant workers who are allowed to work in jobs such as construction, agriculture, the service industry, food and beverages, wholesale and some factories. The temporary waiver of fees (which range between US$170 to US$1,270 depending on the sector) is an important reprieve: Many Syrian refugees have been sinking into poverty as the war at home drags on, increasing the risk that they would work illegally. For employers of Syrians, the new grace period also allows them to legalize workers and avoid steep fines of between US$280 and US$2,100 which were imposed previously and have seen the closure of some 70 businesses to date. Since the beginning of March, Jordanian authorities have also allowed Syrian refugees to use UNHCR-issued asylum-seeker cards and Jordanian Ministry of Interior identity cards to obtain work permits. Previously, the only way to do so was using a passport and proof of legal entry into the country. As most Syrian refugees lack passports and proof of legal entry status, many were precluded from having jobs. Authorities have now removed that requirement, paving the way for thousands more Syrians to be legally employed. UNHCR has long been advocating for more support to Jordan and other key refugee hosting countries, including better access to development funds and low interest loans. And, a major factor in supporting Jordan's new measures, is the World Bank's commitment to provide Jordan with near zero per cent loans of US$300-500 million tied to indicators like the granting of work permits to Syrian refugees. These efforts to increase livelihood opportunities for Syrian refugees also follow February's London conference on the Syria crisis. This focused on the dire need to increase access to work and education opportunities for Syrians, including through boosting partnerships with the private sector to allow refugees and local communities to share in economic progress. UNHCR is also playing a part in improving access to labour for refugees, and earlier this month launched a pilot project to help 2,000 Syrians get jobs in the export garment sector, as a partner of the 'Better Work Jordan' programme run by the International Labour Organisation. We are also running weekly job fairs for Syrian refugees in community centres close to the relevant industrial zones, including in Irbid and Zarqa. The first refugees are expected to start work in garment factories next week. We believe the combined effort of these various initiatives will go a long way to help Syrian refugees become more sufficient and bring economic benefits to Jordan, which has felt the macro-economic consequences of a region in flux and the heavy cost of fighting in Syria. As the Syrian crisis drags on, there is an urgent need to improve conditions and stability for the increasingly aid-dependent refugees. Over 640,000 Syrian refugees are registered with UNHCR in Jordan, with more than 85 per cent living outside of camps. A recent study showed nine out of 10 Syrians living outside camps live below the Jordanian poverty line of JOD68 (US$87) per capita per month. South Sudan refugee outflow continues, UNHCR reports severe funding shortfall Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), South Sudan refugee outflow continues, UNHCR reports severe funding shortfall, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dc4d44.html [accessed 24 October 2022] In South Sudan a combination of new fighting in previously peaceful areas, food insecurity in Northern Bahr El Ghazal and Warrap States, and severe humanitarian funding shortages continues to cause a sharp worsening of the situation for many civilians. Recent fighting between government and opposition forces in Western Bahr al Ghazal has displaced more than 96,000 people to Wau town, in the north-west of the country. All neighbouring countries are now reporting rising refugee inflows. With the Regional Refugee Response Plan funded at just 8 per cent, many life-saving services are threatened. UNHCR is extremely concerned. Sudan An estimated 52,000 South Sudanese have fled into Sudan since late January, exceeding planning projections for 2016. At present they are mainly in East and South Darfur and West Kordofan. UNHCR non-food item distributions by truck in East Darfur are expected to begin on Wednesday and distributions have already taken place to all new arrivals in South Darfur and to some of the new population in West Kordofan. The World Food Programme has been distributing 1-month food rations to new arrivals in East and South Darfur, and is prepared to begin distributions in West Kordofan pending security clearance from authorities. Together with partner agencies a three-month response plan has been prepared to accommodate an additional 120,000 new arrivals before June. Uganda Uganda has seen a sharp increase in refugee arrivals from South Sudan since January, sometimes as many as 800 individuals per day. In all, 28,000 South Sudanese - 86 per cent of them women and children - have sought refuge in Uganda. The site where the South Sudanese refugees are sheltered, Maaji III in the north-west of the country, is nearing capacity and basic life-saving services and other services are severely stretched. Ethiopia Ethiopia, which hosts some 285,000 South Sudanese refugees, is seeing a recent - albeit more modest - increase in arrivals after a long period in which there were very few new refugees. Since 5 April, more than 300 new arrivals have been registered by at the Okugo refugee camp in the Gambella region. Most of the new arrivals, including dozens of unaccompanied and separated children, said they fled intra-ethnic clashes in Pochalla in the eastern part of South Sudan, and trekked in the jungle for several days before reaching Okugo. This recent spike in the rate of arrival from South Sudan followed a long lull with an average daily arrival rate of less than one for the past two months. UNHCR and partners have been providing basic assistance including corn soya blend to children, plastic sheets, mosquito nets, blankets, sleeping mats and water jerry cans at the camp. Democratic Republic of the Congo While fighting has subsided in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan since February, some 12,000 people crossed into Democratic Republic of the Congo and sought shelter in the north-eastern province of Haut-Uele in the past few months. The local communities have been welcoming of the refugees, and many of those who came at the end of 2015 have found shelter with local families. But capacities are stretched, and thousands of the more recent arrivals have settled in very precarious conditions. Strong rains on 14 April destroyed the makeshift shelters of refugees at a spontaneous site in the small town of Doruma, leaving them without a place to live. The area is difficult to access and there are few humanitarian organisations present. Central African Republic The conflict in Western Equatoria has also forced thousands of South Sudanese from Source Yubu and Ezo to cross the border and to seek asylum in the Central African Republic. As of 11 April, UNHCR had registered 10,454 South Sudanese refugees in the town of Bambouti, located in a difficult-to-reach area in the easternmost part of the Central African Republic. The new arrivals in Bambouti greatly outnumber the host community, estimated at around 950 inhabitants, putting a severe strain on resources. Many refugees are suffering from malaria, waterborne diseases and malnutrition. Access to potable water, food, healthcare, sanitation and shelter is urgently needed for the entire population. UNHCR led an inter-agency mission to Bambouti last month to assess the needs of the refugees, and organized a 12-truck convoy transporting food, medicine and emergency relief items, including blankets, kitchen sets and mosquito nets, which arrived on 7 April. Given that access to Bambouti from Bangui is difficult, UNHCR is currently exploring other options to provide urgently needed assistance, either by air or by road from Uganda. Kenya UNHCR's Kakuma Operation in north-eastern Kenya has recorded a steady increase in new arrivals from South Sudan, rising from an average of 100 people a month at the start of this year to 350 people a week over the past two months. So far, Kakuma camp hosts some 4,185 new South Sudanese refugees received in the year, the majority of whom are children and women, mostly from Eastern Equatoria, Upper Nile and Jonglei States, in the east of the country. They cite insecurity, intense famine and the high cost of living as the reasons for their flight. 2.3 million people have had to flee their homes since violence broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, 678,000 of these across borders as refugees and 1.69 million displaced inside the country. UNHCR begins the relocation of Mozambican asylum-seekers to Luwani camp, Malawi Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 15 April 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR begins the relocation of Mozambican asylum-seekers to Luwani camp, Malawi, 15 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dcc87a.html [accessed 24 October 2022] In southern Malawi, a major UNHCR-run relocation operation involving some 10,000 Mozambican asylum-seekers and aimed at improving the conditions in which they are living began earlier this morning. A first group of 81 asylum-seekers left Nsanje district on two buses to make the 320-km journey to Luwani in the country's southeast. On arrival, they will stay at a transit centre for up to two days until they are provided with a plot of land, food, shelter materials and household items. Last month, the Government of Malawi authorised UNHCR to relocate the Mozambican asylum-seekers to a former camp at Luwani that has been re-opened for this purpose. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has partnered with the UN Refugee Agency to provide logistical support. The majority of the Mozambican asylum-seekers, nearly 10,000, have till now been living in overcrowded conditions in an area about 100-kilometres south of the capital Lilongwe. Most are in the village of Kapise, close to the border with Mozambique), where heavy rains are at present making roads impassable. For this reason, UNHCR and the Government of Malawi agreed that the transfer to Luwani would begin first with families located in the district of Nsanje. With end of the rain, the condition of the road to Kapise is expected to improve enough so that the relocations from there can begin next week. Relocation of the 800 asylum seekers from nearby Ckiwawa will then follow. Last week, UNHCR conducted a rapid assessment in Ntcheu, Dedza and Nsanje districts to determine the situation of new Mozambican arrivals. In Nsanje, we have registered asylum-seekers and provided them with food and other aid. Another assessment will be done in Chikwawa in the coming days during which more asylum-seekers will be registered for the relocation to Luwani. UNHCR has over the past three weeks conducted intention surveys in all the transit centres. A majority of the Mozambican asylum-seekers have expressed willingness to be relocated to Luwani. A few families in Kapise prefer not to relocate. UNHCR will continue to provide them with information on Luwani, where there is more land and better access to services. The relocation will be conducted in a phased manner over a period of 6 to 8 weeks, with about 200 - 500 asylum-seekers scheduled to be relocated during the first convoy from Kapise. After this, convoys will be moving every other day. Since last December, Malawi has seen an increase in new arrivals from Mozambique, peaking at more than 250 people per day in early March. The numbers have since decreased significantly, but those who have managed to cross have informed UNHCR that they are turning to alternate routes due to increased military presence along the border. UNHCR calls upon all actors to respect the right to seek asylum. Luwani camp previously hosted Mozambican refugees during the 1977-1992 civil war and was finally closed in 2007. It has more than 160 hectares of land. Asylum-seekers will have better facilities and services there, including health, education, water, protection and will be involved in self-reliance activities like agriculture. UNHCR, together with various partners, including UNICEF, WFP, IOM, UN Women, MSF, Plan International, Accion Contra el Hambre-Spain, Plan International, Oxfam, World Vision, Norwegian Church Aid, and Participatory Rural Development Organisation (PRDO) are providing essential services in Kapise, including water and sanitation, food, shelter and health care, and psycho-social support. This assistance by UNHCR and partners will continue in Luwani. Malawi already hosts some 25,000 refugees and asylum-seekers mostly from the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa in Dzaleka camp located some 35kms from Lilongwe. This camp is already stretched to capacity, with severely limited resources to assist refugees. Baby Steps on the Long Road to Justice for Atrocities in Syria Publisher Amnesty International Author Neil Sammonds Publication Date 11 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Baby Steps on the Long Road to Justice for Atrocities in Syria, 11 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dd68f4.html [accessed 24 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 negotiations set to recommence in Geneva on April 11, 2016 and the recent reduction of hostilities in Syria may represent important steps towards a peaceful solution to more than five years of turmoil. Few would not welcome the guns falling silent once and for all and for an end to the suffering of civilians. With war crimes, crimes against humanity and other abuses being committed with impunity in Syria it is essential that justice, truth and reparation form a key part of any agreement. Those who ordered, carried out or allowed such crimes to happen must be brought to justice. Yet this crucial pillar is not on the agenda in Geneva and risks being sacrificed in the interests of political expediency. The absence of a tribunal in Syria capable of tackling the justice deficit is patently clear. The judicial system in Syria is mostly subservient to the political authorities and the security and intelligence agencies. Over the last five years, tens of thousands of civilians have been detained without trial, often forcibly disappeared. Thousands have died in custody. Failure to Address Impunity The gravity and scale of abuse and impunity in Syria became evident within the first few months of the crisis. Yet the UN Security Council has abjectly failed to refer the situation in Syria for investigation by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite repeated calls by international organizations, at least 65 states and the UN's own Secretary General. An ICC investigation would have sent a powerful warning to commanders ordering war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Security Council could also have established an ad hoc international criminal tribunal, as it did with the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia; at the moment this remains a remote possibility. Another option would be to establish an internationalised criminal court for Syria, as occurred for Sierra Leone and Cambodia. It is hard to imagine that such a court could be established and be effective without the consent of the Syrian government-which is currently inconceivable. Alternatively, a neighbouring country might consent to a tribunal being set up on its own territory, but this too remains an elusive prospect particularly as many of Syria's neighbours have themselves been directly involved in the conflict. These obstacles mean that the only realistic avenue to address impunity at this time is for national authorities of other countries to exercise universal or other extraterritorial jurisdiction over crimes under international law-including crimes against humanity and war crimes. The flow of people out of Syria presents fresh opportunities to gather evidence of abuses from victims and witnesses and to investigate and prosecute suspected perpetrators. These include people seeking refuge or participating in business or negotiations. Amnesty International firmly holds that anyone who has sought refuge from the conflict in Syria should be granted sanctuary. Countries have both the right and the obligation to carry out investigations into allegations that individuals under their jurisdiction may have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity or other serious human rights abuses. In the event of such suspects having diplomatic or other privileged status, checks should be carried out into whether such status may grant immunity and under what, if any, circumstances that status may be removed and by whom. Civil society organizations and others should be vigilant and well-informed as to which legal organizations and individuals may be best able to advise and potentially file criminal complaints. Opportunities for international justice may come at short notice and require preparedness to act promptly and decisively. First Steps to Confront Atrocities At least 166 countries are able to exercise universal jurisdiction over at least one crime under international law-usually war crimes-regardless of the nationality of the suspect or of the victim. In recent months countries including Germany, Sweden and France, have opened such investigations into suspected international crimes in Syria. In January 2016 there were reports that a Syrian man was arrested in Germany on suspicion of war crimes relating to the kidnapping in Syria of a UN observer. In Sweden, a Syrian asylum-seeker appeared in court accused of war crimes committed in Syria. In France, a Syrian asylum-seeker is being investigated for his alleged involvement in torture and killing of government opponents. Just last month a Syrian asylum-seeker inSweden had criminal charges filed against him regarding his suspected involvement in the killing of captured government soldiers. States whose nationals have travelled to Syria to fight should also investigate any allegations of crimes under international law and, where sufficient admissible evidence exists and laws provide, seek to prosecute them before their national courts. States that have ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance have an express obligation to exercise jurisdiction over those crimes allegedly committed by their nationals abroad. Sweden and Germany are also actively investigating returnees from the conflict in Syria and in December 2015, Sweden sentenced two of its nationals to life imprisonment for their role in killings by the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS). These moves by the international community are small but deeply significant steps in the right direction. The crimes they relate to and the individuals affected are greatly eclipsed, however, by the colossal scale of the violations and impunity in Syria. There are some misgivings that suspected perpetrators on the government side, whose forces are responsible for the overwhelming majority of serious violations in Syria, are less likely to travel outside the country. But that may well change. And states with the capacity and commitment to undertake investigations and trials should make sure that they are prepared to act quickly. As it stands, the enormity of the injustice and impunity reigning in Syria dictates that the road to justice, truth and reparation has to start somewhere and as such, any opportunities that arise must be seized and built upon. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Myanmar: Students' release must pave way for an end to repression Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 8 April 2016 Related Document(s) New Expression Meets Old Repression: Ending the Cycle of Political Arrests and Imprisonment in Myanmar Cite as Amnesty International, Myanmar: Students' release must pave way for an end to repression, 8 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dd6fb4.html [accessed 24 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 release of dozens of student protesters in Myanmar is a step forward for human rights that should pave the way for the new government to release all remaining prisoners of conscience and amend or repeal all laws that fuel arbitrary arrests, Amnesty International said. The Tharawaddy Court in Myanmar today dropped charges against scores of students facing jail for largely peaceful protests in March 2015. The move came after the new government announced on 7 April that it would work to release all prisoners of conscience as soon as possible. "Today's release of most of the student protesters is a huge step forward for human rights in Myanmar, and we are delighted that these men and women will walk free. It sends a strong message about the new government's intention to end the cycle of political arrest and detention in Myanmar. We are now looking forward to the release of all other prisoners of conscience - including those students who are facing charges in other courts. The new government must ensure that no prisoner of conscience is left in jail," said Laura Haigh, Amnesty International's Myanmar Researcher. "Of course, a prisoner release is only a first step - the NLD must also reform the country's repressive legal framework, which has for too long been used to clamp down on dissent. As long as these laws remain on the books, human rights defenders and activists will remain at risk of being jailed simply for expressing their opinions. Thankfully, the NLD has acknowledged the need to repeal and amend repressive laws, and we are looking forward to seeing the government following up on this. "The new administration must also aim to ensure support and rehabilitation for those released in today's amnesty, along with the many others before them who were unjustly imprisoned." Background At least five student leaders who are facing charges in other courts remain in detention while they wait for the charges to be dropped. They are Phyoe Phyoe Aung, James (aka Lin Htet Naing), Nandar Sitt Aung, Kyaw Ko Ko and Myint Thwe Thit. On 24 March 2016, Amnesty International published a report on political imprisonment in Myanmar which highlighted the worrying erosion of newly found freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly in the country since the start of 2014. Since then, hundreds of people have been arrested, charged, arbitrarily detained or imprisoned in politically motivated cases. They include student protesters, political activists, media workers, human rights defenders and, in particular, land and labour activists. The report highlights how authorities have used both old and new laws to silence dissent, and how the use of these laws has been supported by a range of other tactics to keep human rights defenders and activists in detention or in prison for lengthy periods of time, creating a climate of fear among human rights defenders and other activists in the country. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Iranian man to be imminently executed denied the right to appeal Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Iranian man to be imminently executed denied the right to appeal, 7 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dd7d04.html [accessed 24 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 scheduled execution of a 36-year-old man convicted on drug offences tomorrow, Saturday 9 April, demonstrates the Iranian authorities' utter disregard for the right to life and their determination to continue with a staggering execution spree that saw nearly 1000 people put to death last year, said Amnesty International. Family members of Rashid Kouhi received a call from prison authorities yesterday informing them that they should go to Rasht's Lakan Prison in Gilan Province, Northern Iran, to have a final meeting with him today before his execution tomorrow. "The imminent execution of Rashid Kouhi days after Iran was revealed to be the world's second highest executioner in 2015 in Amnesty International's annual death penalty report, highlights the authorities' determination to maintain their horrifying rate of executions," said Said Boumedouha, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director. "The Iranian authorities must halt the execution of Rashid Kouhi immediately. The use of the death penalty for drug-related offences is a blatant violation of international human rights law. Instead of stepping up their rampant execution spree the Iranian authorities must take steps to abolish this ultimate cruel and inhuman punishment." At least 977 people were executed in Iran in 2015 - the vast majority of which were for drug-related offences. These offences do not meet the threshold of "most serious crimes", interpreted by international human rights bodies, as crimes involving international killing, for which the death penalty is permitted under international human rights law. Rashid Kouhi was arrested at a checkpoint in Roudbar, Gilan province on 24 August 2011. The officers who stopped him conducted a search of his bag where they found 800 grams of crystal meth. He was a student at the time. He was tried and sentenced to death following a grossly unfair trial by a Revolutionary Court in Roudbar in February 2012. The court's verdict, which has been reviewed by Amnesty International, is less than a page long and does not contain adequate reasoning. He did not have access to a lawyer during questioning and met a state appointed lawyer for the first time during his trial. He was held in Roudbar for two years before being taken to Lakan Prison in Rasht. Rashid Kouhi was denied the right to appeal his death sentence. This was because under Article 32 of the Anti-Narcotics Law, all death sentences passed for drug related offences were subject to confirmation either by the Head of the Supreme Court or the Prosecutor General, who were entitled to revise or quash the sentence if they found it contravened Islamic law or that the judge was not competent. However, a new Code of Criminal Procedure entered into force in June 2015, revoking this article and restoring the right to appeal for individuals sentenced to death for drug-related offences. Despite this, Amnesty International understands that Rashid Kouhi has not received adequate legal assistance in order to submit an Application for Retrial (E'ade dadresi) to Iran's Supreme Court on this basis. Rashid Kouhi requests for clemency have been rejected. "It is appalling that Rashid Kouhi has been denied the right to an appeal which is a fundamental element of the right to a fair trial. The Iranian authorities must urgently halt his execution and give him a chance to appeal his death sentence in a fair trial without recourse to the death penalty. Failing to do so will be an irreversible injustice," said Said Boumedouha. Background The UN Human Rights Committee has stated that a death sentence passed after an unfair proceeding violates both the right to life and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Iran's Anti-Narcotics Law stipulates mandatory death sentences for a range of drug-related offences, including trafficking more than 5kg of narcotics derived from opium or more than 30g of heroin, morphine, cocaine or their chemical derivatives. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Greece: Refugees detained in dire conditions amid rush to implement EU-Turkey deal Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Greece: Refugees detained in dire conditions amid rush to implement EU-Turkey deal, 7 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dd8624.html [accessed 24 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. Thousands of refugees and migrants are being held arbitrarily in appalling conditions amid growing uncertainty, fear and despair over their fate under the new EU-Turkey refugee deal, Amnesty International said, after obtaining access to two highly restricted detention centres on the Greek islands of Lesvos and Chios. On 5 and 6 April, an Amnesty International research team were granted access to two closed detention centres, Moria on Lesvos and VIAL on Chios. A total of around 4,200 people are currently detained at the two sites. Most arrived on the Greek islands after the EU-Turkey deal took effect on 20 March. Some of them have been detained for a fortnight or more. Amnesty International's team interviewed 89 refugees and migrants on Lesvos and Chios. In the detention centres, Amnesty International saw or spoke to a large number of vulnerable people including mothers with babies, small children and people with disabilities, trauma and serious illnesses. "On the edge of Europe, refugees are trapped with no light at the end of the tunnel. A setup that is so flawed, rushed and ill-prepared is ripe for mistakes, trampling the rights and well-being of some of the most vulnerable people," said Gauri van Gulik, Deputy Director for Europe at Amnesty International. "People detained on Lesvos and Chios have virtually no access to legal aid, limited access to services and support, and hardly any information about their current status or possible fate. The fear and desperation are palpable." From reception to detention "I escaped Syria to avoid jail, but now I am in prison," a Syrian man in his late 20s told Amnesty International inside Moria detention centre. The decision to move from open reception centres to closed detention camps to hold those who cross the Aegean from Turkey has resulted in thousands of people being arbitrarily detained, in some cases for weeks, while they await news on their asylum applications and future. In Moria detention centre on Lesvos, Greek army and police exercise strict control over who goes in and out. The camp, which now houses around 3,150 people, is closed off from the outside world by several layers of fencing topped with barbed wire. In VIAL detention centre on Chios, which is built around an abandoned aluminium factory, access is also tightly controlled. Security concerns linger following fierce clashes that broke out between different nationalities inside the camp overnight on 1 April, prompting more than 400 refugees and migrants to escape. The majority of those who fled are now sleeping rough in and around the main port in downtown Chios. There is little security and scant access to basic services there. Only two of the refugees and migrants Amnesty International spoke to were able to show their detention orders based on their individual circumstances. Automatic, group-based detention is by definition arbitrary and therefore unlawful. Vulnerable groups The automatic detention of all those currently arriving on the Greek islands has led to a failure to take the special circumstances and needs of particular asylum-seekers into account. These include torture victims, families with very young children and babies, women travelling alone with children, people with disabilities or in need of immediate health care, pregnant women, and people in need of psychological care. Children should never be placed in immigration detention. Amnesty International saw and spoke to many such individuals in both Moria and VIAL who were in detention even though they clearly should not have been. Authorities in Moria told Amnesty International that the identification of those with particular vulnerabilities is a priority and a group of 50-100 has already been released to open centres, but a large number remain inside. Just some of those Amnesty International observed or spoke with in Moria were a small baby with complications after an attack in Syria, heavily pregnant women, people who are unable to walk, and a young girl with a developmental disability. The first family the organization spoke to in VIAL had arrived on 19 March and included a six-year-old Syrian-Palestinian girl whose mother told us the girl had sustained a serious back injury when a roof partially collapsed on her after a bombing. She showed us her swollen back and medical records from Syria. "No asylum seeker should be automatically detained, and these detention centres on Lesvos and Chios are not in any way fit for purpose for the many young children, people with disabilities, or people with urgent medical needs we've met. They must be released immediately," said Gauri van Gulik. Conditions and access to services Key issues people complained about in both Moria and VIAL were the poor quality of food, lack of blankets and privacy, and inadequate access to appropriate medical care. Many refugees spoke about the lack of access to doctors or other medical staff in both centres. This was especially acute for vulnerable groups in need of highly specialized medical assistance. An Iraqi family in a small tent with insufficient blankets told Amnesty International how, since arriving in the past week, they have struggled to get help for their eight-year-old daughter who was diagnosed with a hip bone infection in Iraq which is worsening and requires urgent treatment. They showed Amnesty International a medical file which they brought twice to a doctor since their arrival but were turned away. The first time, they were told there was no interpreter and the second time they were simply refused access. "She's always in pain," said the mother. In Moria, only three doctors are typically available to provide medical care for 3,150 people, while at VIAL, teams providing medical care said onsite health services are only available during limited hours, and there are shortages of medicines and other supplies. Access to food is also restricted. For example, three mothers traveling alone with babies and young children who share a container in VIAL broke down in tears when they described their exasperation at not being able to get the right kind of food or even sufficient milk for their children. Overcrowding in Moria has also meant there is simply not enough space to house the 3,150 people inside - around 1,000 over capacity. Amnesty International observed at least 70 flimsy tents clustered against the perimeter fence and other areas within the camp, where many families and vulnerable people sleep, sometimes five or more to a tiny tent. With people still arriving on the Greek islands in significant numbers, this situation will only deteriorate. In VIAL, which was just about at capacity with around 1,200 people, several families were packed into tight quarters in fenced-off containers of either 30 or 40 square metres. They have very little outdoor space where they can move freely. Many people complained about a shortage of blankets, with two or more family members often having to share a single thin blanket during what are still cold nights. One extended family of eight people from Syria, including a heavily pregnant woman, her four-year-old son who cannot walk and her ailing father who uses a wheelchair, said that they spent their first two nights in Moria sleeping out in the elements with just two blankets between them. They now share several tents as the formal rooms are full beyond capacity. Asylum process dysfunction After the EU-Turkey deal, Greece modified its asylum application process in a law adopted on 1 April. It was evident that the system is not yet up and running, due to a lack of resources and clear guidelines. Fear and uncertainty around the kick-off of the EU-Turkey deal triggered a spike in asylum applications. According to the authorities, since 20 March the vast majority out of the 3,150 detained in Moria had expressed their will to apply for asylum while more than 830 people had applied in Chios. The promised increases in capacity to process these claims, including asylum officers from other EU countries, have yet to arrive in sufficient numbers, resulting in a growing backlog. On 6 April the asylum service official who is the lone case worker at VIAL told Amnesty International the surge in applications is beyond his capacity to process. Out of 833 that had been filed he had processed only 10 - slightly over 1% - one of which was successful. While these cases were still processed under the old Greek asylum process, they indicate the extent of the current staffing shortfalls. The rushed implementation of the EU-Turkey deal has contributed to glaring failures in the registration and processing of new arrivals. One important issue that all refugees raised with Amnesty International was that they did not receive sufficient information about what the asylum process will entail. This lack of information is even more urgent given that they are detained throughout their application. Many have received no or incomplete documentation of their registration. For example, a Syrian woman said she and her family signed several documents despite not having an interpreter present, and were not provided with copies. "I don't need food - I need to know what is happening," she told Amnesty International. Many people described being registered late despite having arrived before the 20 March cut-off. A different Syrian woman who arrived with her family on 19 March was told that they could not register because "the system was not working". She showed Amnesty International her arrival wristband dated 19 March. Even though they arrived before the entry into force of the EU-Turkey deal, they were actually registered on 21 March and detained. At least three other people demonstrated the same thing. 'Safe' third country rule As the asylum service official in VIAL explained, the new Greek asylum system will have two steps. The first is to assess whether the transit country (Turkey in this case) can be considered a safe third country for that person. Only if it is found not to be, will the applicant's case be considered on its merits. The official told Amnesty International that it will be up to the individual case workers to determine if Turkey will be deemed a safe third country for people who apply for asylum in Greece. When Amnesty International visited VIAL, there were no clear instructions yet regarding what criteria and information will be considered in this process. With legal aid scarce and inaccessible to the vast majority, and asylum procedures expected to be rushed, it is likely that thousands of asylum seekers will be returned to Turkey despite it being manifestly unsafe for them. Several refugees described their fear of being sent back to Turkey. A young, pregnant Syrian woman showed the researchers bruises on her arm where she claims that Turkish border police beat her with a baton; her husband had similar bruises on his leg. They said they were sent back to Syria and when they crossed into Turkey again on 14 March, the Turkish border police shot at them but they managed to escape. "Europe is turning what should be a path to protection into a nightmare of barbed wire, insecurity and crippling anxiety over the prospect of being sent back to Turkey,'' said Gauri van Gulik. "Serious and immediate steps must be taken to address the glaring gaps we've documented in Lesvos and Chios. They show that in addition to Turkey not being safe for refugees at the moment, there are also serious flaws on the Greek side of the EU-Turkey deal. Until both are fully resolved, no further returns should take place." Recommendations The Greek and EU authorities must immediately halt mass returns until the following are effectively guaranteed: Detention is used as a measure of last resort, with alternatives to detention considered All decisions to detain must be based on a detailed and individualised assessment of the necessity to detain in line with a legitimate purpose. All detainees must be given the opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of their detention with access to legal aid Access to asylum procedures must be realistic and effective, including that timeframes for lodging supporting materials are appropriate for someone in detention, and access to legal and linguistic assistance should be made available Capacity to process claims must be increased significantly Asylum seekers in detention are provided with accurate legal information about the asylum process and their rights Conditions in detention must be humane and dignified All children should be immediately released from detention The special circumstances and needs of particular asylum-seekers must be taken into account, including victims of trauma or torture, children, women, older people, and asylum-seekers with disabilities Develop clear and rights-compliant guidelines on how the safe third country rule will be applied. Ensure the individual circumstances as well as up to date, independent information on the treatment and status of asylum seekers in Turkey are fully taken into account Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Malawi: Murder of baby with albinism highlights failure to protect vulnerable group Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 15 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Malawi: Murder of baby with albinism highlights failure to protect vulnerable group, 15 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dd9b94.html [accessed 24 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 horrific murder of a two-year-old girl with albinism highlights the failure by the Malawi's authorities to adequately protect this vulnerable group, said Amnesty International following the discovery of her skull, teeth and the clothes she was wearing in Balantha Hill in Kasungu district. The child, Whitney Chilumpha,had been missing since being abducted from her home whilst sleeping beside her mother in Chiziya village, Kasungu district, on 3 April. She is the twelfth person with albinism known to have been killed in Malawi since December 2014. "The murder of this innocent child is part of a deeply disturbing pattern of disappearances and killings of people with albinism in Malawi where body parts are sold for use in witchcraft," said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Southern Africa. "The Malawian authorities have failed to protect the vulnerable group and this latest horrific incident should galvanise them into action. Not only must the perpetrators of this crime be brought to justice, but people with albinism must be offered effective protection. Authorities must put a stop to these barbaric killings." Background Police have confirmed in a statement that they are keeping the father of the child and another man in custody in connection with the "criminal act". At least 12 people with albinism are known to have been killed in Malawi since December 2014. Five others have been abducted during the same period and have not been found. Amnesty International believes that the figures could be higher. In 2015 alone, 45 other crimes against people with albinism, including attempted abductions and opening up of graves in search of bones of dead people with albinism, were reported. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International South Sudan: Government must end arbitrary detentions by the intelligence agency Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 15 April 2016 Related Document(s) Denied Protection Of The Law: National Security Service Detention In Juba Cite as Amnesty International, South Sudan: Government must end arbitrary detentions by the intelligence agency, 15 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571dda014.html [accessed 24 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 South Sudanese government must end arbitrary detentions by the intelligence agency under which dozens of men are being held in squalid conditions without charge or trial sometimes for months on end, said Amnesty International days before opposition leader Riek Machar is due to return to the capital Juba as part of a peace deal requiring the parties to the conflict to form a national unity government. Amnesty International has compiled a list of 35 men arbitrarily detained by the National Security Service (NSS) at its headquarters in the Jebel neighbourhood of Juba. Some of the detainees have been held for close to two years, without access to lawyers and with very limited access to their families and the outside world. The list, published as part of a briefing Denied protection of the law: National Security Service detention in Juba, South Sudan, includes a former state governor, a 65-year-old university professor, a Ugandan aid worker and a journalist employed by UN-run Radio Miraya. "These detainees lack access to adequate food, medical care and sanitary facilities. NSS have also beaten detainees, particularly in the days following their initial arrest," said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. "Regardless of whether the unity government comes to pass, the authorities must ensure an end to these dark days of prolonged arbitrary detentions that violate both the South Sudanese Transitional Constitution and international law." Amnesty International believes there are other detainees in the NSS headquarters and that these 35 men represent only a small fraction of those currently under arbitrary detention due to their perceived political leanings. "These detainees and others held without charge must immediately be released, or charged with a recognizable offence before a competent civilian court," said Sarah Jackson. "The government should also initiate prompt, effective and impartial investigations into NSS detention practices and limit the agency's activities to intelligence gathering and analysis." Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Crimea: Ban on ethnic Crimean Tatar assembly aimed at snuffing out dissent Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 13 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Crimea: Ban on ethnic Crimean Tatar assembly aimed at snuffing out dissent, 13 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571ddb5e4.html [accessed 24 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. Today's decision to suspend the Mejlis, a representative body of ethnic CrimeanTatars in Crimea, demolishes one of the few remaining rights of a minority that Russia must protect instead of persecute, said Amnesty International. The decision - announced by the de facto prosecutor of Crimea, Natalia Poklonskaya - signals a new wave of repression against Crimean Tatar people. It comes after increased attacks to the rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine two years ago. "Anyone associated with the Mejlis could now face serious charges of extremism as a result of this ban, which is aimed at snuffing out the few remaining voices of dissent in Crimea," said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia. "The decision to suspend the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and ban all its activities under Russia's anti-extremism legislation is a repugnant punitive step denying members of the Crimean Tatar community the right to freedom of association." The de facto authorities have increasingly targeted those who oppose the annexation of Crimea or are suspected of being pro-Ukrainian in the days before and after Russia's formal takeover on 18 March 2014. Most of the vocal critics have left the peninsula, including two Crimean Tatar leaders who have been barred from returning. Earlier the de facto Prosecutor of Crimea asked the Supreme Court of Crimea to suspend the Mejlis as an extremist organization. Central to the Prosecutor's arguments for the requested ban are statements made by exiled Mejlis leader Refat Chubarov, who refuses to recognize the legality of the Russian annexation of Crimea and is calling for an economic and energy blockade of the peninsula from mainland Ukraine. "The suspension of the Mejlis makes the fate of those members of the Crimean Tatar community who have remained in Crimea even bleaker as they are now at even greater risk of intimidation, harassment and criminal prosecution," said Denis Krivosheev. Ethnic Tartars have borne the brunt of Russia's clampdown in the region. On 3 March 2014, pro-Russian paramilitaries abducted Reshat Ametov whose mutilated body was found 12 days later. Since then Amnesty International has documented the suspected enforced disappearance of at least six Crimean Tatars on the peninsula. While families of the missing have received assurances from the de facto authorities that the disappearances would be effectively investigated, there have been no signs of any genuine inquiries. "Sadly, today's decision to suspend the Mejlis is only the latest step in a long line of reprisals against the Crimean Tatar community," said Denis Krivosheev. "The rights of the Mejlis to continue to exist and represent the community must be reinstated, and the rights to freedom of association and expression fully respected in Crimea." Since the late 1980s, Crimean Tatars begun the painstaking process of re-establishing themselves in the peninsula, four decades after their entire population had been deported to remote parts of the then Soviet Union. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Chibok two years on: Remembering all Boko Haram's victims Publisher Amnesty International Author Salil Shetty Publication Date 13 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Chibok two years on: Remembering all Boko Haram's victims, 13 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571ddc564.html [accessed 24 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. In September 2014, a 19-year-old woman whom I will call Aisha was celebrating a friend's wedding in a small village in north-eastern Nigeria when Boko Haram attacked. The fighters killed the groom and many of the male guests. They abducted Aisha, along with other women, including her sister and the bride. They were taken to a Boko Haram camp in Gulak, Adamawa State, home to about 100 other abducted girls. Over the three months she was held captive, Aisha was raped repeatedly, sometimes by groups of up to six fighters. She was taught to use firearms, detonate bombs and attack villages. She was sent on "operations", including an attack on her own village. She says she did not kill anyone herself - but she met women and girls who told her that they had. Stories like Aisha's do not make for easy reading. Hers is just one of many told to Amnesty International researchers in the two years since more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted from a secondary school in the town of Chibok, Borno State. The fate of the schoolgirls made headlines around the world. But those girls, still missing, are sadly only a small proportion of those abducted by Boko Haram in recent years. Thousands of women and girls have been abducted by the armed group. Men and boys have also been taken at gunpoint and systematically executed or forced to join the fighters. Amnesty International's research found that abducted girls were taken directly to Boko Haram's camps in remote communities or to makeshift transit camps. From these transit camps Boko Haram moved them to houses in towns and villages and indoctrinated them with their ideology in preparation for marriage. The suffering of these abducted women and girls, some of whom were forced not only to marry fighters but also to become fighters themselves, is beyond comprehension. Over the course of the past few years, there have been notable successes by the combined forces from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Benin and Niger that have given Nigerians some hope, although there are also concerns about the potential for human rights abuses by these forces. In addition, the support from the international community since President Buhari's election as President provides an opportunity for Nigeria to protect civilians in the northeast. But there is a huge amount to be done. The abducted must be found and returned and President Buhari should spare no effort in using all lawful means to protect civilians from Boko Haram attacks. But he has to ensure that there is no repeat of the extra-judicial killings and human rights violations committed by the Nigerian military in the past in its fight against Boko Haram. The authorities must also urgently ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need, particularly to more than a million people forced to flee their homes. The conflict in the northeast has created religious tensions, and the Muhammadu Buhari government will, therefore, have to act swiftly to prevent a lasting legacy of distrust between some Muslim and Christian communities, especially in areas ravaged by Boko Haram attacks. An important element of the post-conflict reconciliation process will be a thorough, impartial and independent investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity. So far the Nigerian government has not taken adequate steps to investigate crimes committed by both sides of the conflict. This is another challenge that Mr. Buhari must address with utmost urgency. Nigerians and the world are expecting to see if his commitment that the "government will investigate all human rights violations, including by the military" - will soon be translated into concrete action. But if the International Criminal Court, which has already launched a preliminary examination, determines that Nigeria is unable or unwilling to investigate these crimes or bring suspects to justice, it may decide to initiate a full investigation. It is vital that the government ensures that bodies are disinterred from mass graves, that victims and witnesses are given the opportunity to give evidence and that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Only then will the pattern of impunity that has plagued Nigeria be broken. Two years after their abduction, the Chibok girls have come to symbolize all the innocent people whose lives have been destroyed by Boko Haram. There is still hope that the Chibok schoolgirls may one day be reunited with their families. Aisha eventually made it home. She escaped in January 2015, fleeing through the bush in the dead of night. During her time in captivity she saw more than 50 people killed by Boko Haram, including her sister. They were buried in shallow graves and the smell of their rotting corpses hung heavy in the air. Aisha walked for three days until she reached a village where she was given shelter for two days, a change of clothes and 500 naira ($2.50). She then set off again, for another five days, until she reached her home. When she got there she discovered that her father had died soon after she and her sister had been abducted. The local doctor had put his death down to a coronary thrombosis brought on by high blood pressure. Others believed that no medical language was needed: Aisha's father died of a broken heart. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International News / Local by Vusumuzi Dube BELEAGUERED Milton High School head William Ncube and his deputy Nosizi Muleya have been transferred with a mini handover-takeover ceremony being conducted by Government officials at the school on Wednesday.Sunday News reported that officials from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education said the head has been transferred to Magwegwe High School swapping with Similo Ncube who was heading the school. Muleya has been replaced by Malusi Mazibuko who was the deputy head at Gifford High School. She was transferred to deputise at Ihlathi High School in Tshabalala. Mazibuko was the caretaker head when the two were initially suspended.William Ncube and Muleya were initially suspended in October last year after an audit exposed alleged financial rot at the school. They allegedly swindled the institution of more than$10 000 and routinely flouted sound governance procedures.Their disciplinary hearings were held on 18 January and due to the expiry of their three months suspension they had been back in office since 25 January pending the outcome of proceedings.In the latest developments, a Sunday News crew observed a delegation from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and the Civil Service Commission overseeing the handover-takeover. The crew were, however, barred from entering the school.Primary and Secondary Education Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango without giving details confirmed the transfers."Our officers were in Bulawayo to effect the recommendations from the disciplinary hearings, contact the provincial education office for details," she said.Contacted for comment, Bulawayo provincial education director Dan Moyo declined to comment saying this was an internal confidential matter."You people why don't you want to leave this issue alone. Some things are sensitive and confidential please just let it go," said Moyo.Officials said the ministry which had earlier recommended that the two be demoted later felt that the two must just be transferred within the province.According to a letter dated 23 October outlining the charges against Ncube and signed by the district education officer, Jane Ndebele, the ministry charged him with misconduct.Ncube was accused of authorising the construction of a boom gate, guardroom and painting of a classroom at a total cost of $2 912 without holding finance committee meetings or following procurement procedures. He was also alleged to have authorised the installation of blinds and curtains at the school hall at a total cost of $3 245 without following procurement procedures.He was also accused of sending an unreasonable number of people, seven, to collect a kombi in Beitbridge thereby unnecessarily prejudicing the school of $310. The school head was also accused of receiving management incentives of $350 after incentives had been banned.Ncube was further alleged to have also asked for an interest free loan of $2 150 from the SDA account for a chess competition in Durban in November 2014 and re-imbursed the money in February this year although terms and conditions for the loan were not spelt out.The charge sheet shows that Ncube, in addition to the loan, also asked for an additional $300 pocket money and $73 for health insurance from the same account to do Nash business which was an unfair charge to the school.Charges against his deputy Muleya were not clear but sources said she was suspended by Ncube prior to receiving his own suspension letter from the ministry. Why IU lost to Rutgers: Hoosiers blow early lead, drop 5th straight Indiana scored two touchdowns on its first two possessions but didn't score another in a 24-17 loss to Rutgers on Saturday News / Local by Fairness Moyana ZIMBABWE Power Company (ZPC) board members on Friday toured coal supplying companies in Hwange to assess the miners' preparedness towards meeting supply as the country gears for increased power consumption in winter.Speaking after touring Hwange Colliery Company Limited, Makomo Resources, Chilota and Coal Brick Mine, ZPC board chairman Engineer Stanley Kazhanje said the visit was to get an appreciation of how the companies were preparing for winter."The purpose of our visit is to meet our coal suppliers and to see the preparations that are being made for the winter programme in terms of supply of coal as well as to appreciate the problems they are having in terms of their mining. We also wanted to see their preparations to meet our Stage 3 expansion programme for Hwange 7 and 8," said Eng Kazhanje.Sunday News reported that ZPC is producing a total of 973 megawatts from its Kariba, Munyati, Harare and Hwange power stations while 400MW are imports. Bulawayo power station is currently not generating due to a technical fault.Hwange Colliery Company and Makomo Resources are the major suppliers of coal to ZPC feeding more than 200 000 tonnes per month.HCCL managing director Thomas Makore said his company will continue supplying ZPC with coal and was ready to increase supplies once production increases."We have maintained our supply figure and we can supply more though, yes we have been unable to increase our supply because of the technical challenges we are facing with our own equipment. We are, however, seized with addressing that and we are confident that once sorted we should be able to ramp up. But what we need is working capital as mining is a high cost business so we need to ensure that we buy all the production inputs so that we are able to perform," he said. 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. TEENAGERS AND RELATIONSHIPS The Texas Family Institute, 100 Chestnut St., Suite 101, will offer a class to help teenagers have healthier relationships. The six-hour class, Romeo and Juliet in the 21st Century: Living to Tell the Tale, will be offered in two parts from 1-4 p.m. May 7 and May 14. Cost is $75; payment plans are available. To register, call 325-676-8963. Texas Family Institute is a nonprofit therapy group. Fees can be on a sliding scale. INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE WEEKEND Texas Star Trading Co., 174 Cypress St., will celebrate Independent Bookstore Weekend with book signings and other in-store promotions Friday and Saturday. All books will be discounted on both days. Glen Sample Ely, of Fort Worth, author of The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858-1861 will be featured from 4:30-5:30 p.m. Friday Abilene author and businessman Glynn Ray will sign copies of his debut novel, The Man Who Loved North Wind, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Christian historical romance novelist Karen Witemeyer, of Abilene, will sign With This Ring? and her other books from 1-2:30 p.m. Saturday. Glenn Dromgoole, co-owner of Texas Star Trading Co., will sign More Civility, Please and his other books from 3-4:30 p.m. Saturday. For more information, or to reserve copies, call 325-672-9696. JEWELS OF THE BALL The Womens Symphony League of Austin has issued an invitation to college-age women from across the state to participate as visiting jewels at its 62nd annual Jewel Ball on Sept. 24 at the Palmer Events Center in Austin. Many activities are planned. Fundraising fees apply. For more information, go to www.wslaustin.org. HONORING GIRLS OF THE MONTH The Abilene Womans Club, 3425 S. 14th St., will honor the Girls of the Month for March, April and May at its Friday luncheon. The girls are chosen by their schools for their attitudes, accomplishments and contributions to their respective schools Clack, Craig, Madison and Mann middle schools and Wylie Junior High School. Cost for the luncheon is $15. To make reservations, call Marilyn Patterson at 325-698-1768 by Wednesday. In our fast-paced world, it seems as if almost everyone feels overwhelmed. A colleague, Alice Henneman of the University of Nebraska Extension, recently addressed this issue in an article in which she compares the human body to a computer. This analogy may help you step back and examine your life from a different perspective. I chose to share this article in hopes that we can all benefit from her troubleshooting tips by treating our bodies much like we would our computers: If your body were a computer, would it be receiving lots of error messages? Is it beginning to run slower and take longer to start? Heres a checklist to help optimize your performance and prevent crashing. Are you trying to run too many programs at the same time? If youre operating less efficiently because there are too many activities making demands on your system, shut down some programs. Some examples include: If time is tight, rather than make a special company dinner from scratch, invite people for a potluck meal. No time to work out AND fix your hair afterward ... get a new hairstyle or cover your hair with some type of interesting headgear. Who knows ... you might start a whole new product line. You actually may accomplish more if you dont try to accomplish several things at the same time. Researchers, including Earl Miller, Picower professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are finding that multitasking can be less efficient than doing one task at a time, especially if the tasks are complex. Consider scheduling tasks for separate times, for example: Alternate cooking days with workout days. Cook ahead on cooking days, freeing up time on your workout days. Plan a casserole or stew that can cook while you do yoga or take a walk. If you do multitask, combine tasks that dont demand as much input from your system with more complex tasks. Here are two possible examples: Work out on a treadmill while watching TV. Listen to music while cooking. Is your anti-virus software up-to-date and running? If youre susceptible to every bug that comes around, its time to check if youre eating right, getting enough sleep, being physically active and reducing stress. The cost and time for repairs may be greater than the amount needed for prevention. Is your battery dangerously low? Recharge your battery before it loses power completely. Habit No. 7 in Stephen Coveys The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is sharpen the saw. Covey tells the story of a woodcutter whose productivity decreased after sawing for several days straight. Each day his saw became duller and duller. Covey advocates a balanced program for self-renewal in these four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual. Recharge by eating healthy; getting some physical activity; making meaningful connections with others; stimulating your mind; and devoting time to your spiritual renewal through such means as time spent in nature, music, prayer or service. Are you bogged down by unneeded files and programs? Remove anything from your life that isnt needed and slows your overall performance. For example: Do you still belong to a club or organization that no longer meets your needs or interests? The time youre giving this activity is taking time from something else. Move on. Do you need to hit escape, undo or delete? Your computer offers several options if you change your mind about a decision. Offer yourself that same choice with your life. You may have a reputation for always saying yes to a request for help, regardless of how busy you are. The next time, say something such as one of the following examples. Its not necessary to elaborate or give an explanation. Im sorry but Im not available that night or I have another commitment for that time. I cant help you right now, but I could (in a half-hour, next week, next month ...). I can only help you for an hour, and then I have to leave. Leave after an hour ... even if its just to go to the bathroom if youre at your office. I cant do that right now, but I could ... (name a less time-consuming task). Time to reboot. Now, that youve finished troubleshooting your personal system, consider making some changes. Then, reboot your body and enjoy the benefits. Incidents reported by the Abilene Police Department. Possession of Marijuana, 2100 block of Merchant Street, Saturday. Police responding to a criminal trespass complaint, searched the trespasser and detected the odor of marijuana. Looking in his car, they saw an infant in a car seat and a baggie of marijuana in the drivers door pocket. The trespasser advised he wanted the infant given to the woman who filed the complaint. She changed her mind about the trespass complaint eventually but in the end he was taken to Taylor County Jail for the drug possession. Shoplifting, 900 block of North Judge Ely Boulevard, Saturday. A man drew attention when he was observed with scrunchies keeping the bottom of his pants to his ankles. He tried to walk out of the store with 35 items of makeup worth about $350 stuffed down his pants. Having 17 previous theft convictions, the charge was elevated to state jail felony theft and he was taken to Taylor County Jail. Aggravated robbery with a gun, possession of a controlled substance, evading arrest, 2400 block of Industrial Blvd., Saturday. A man used a gun to rob a Taco Bell store on South Danville Drive, then left with a bag of money. Police caught up with him and after his arrest found 0.7 grams of cocaine, 2.6 grams of Xanax and the money. After his arrest, the man also admitted to stealing two firearms from a south-side business earlier in the week. Criminal trespass, 1600 block of State Highway 351, Saturday. A man reportedly stole a box of wine worth $5.94 and was trespassing as he did so. The man was cited for theft but left via ambulance due to health problems. The business wants to press charges for the theft and trespassing, and the investigation continues regarding the latter charge. Public Intoxication, possession of a controlled substance, 4000 block of Danville Drive, Sunday. Officers responded to a call of a driver asleep behind the wheel of his pickup at a fast food drive-thru. A small bag with two Hydrocodone pills were recovered from his pocket. He was arrested and taken to Taylor County Jail. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... News / Local by Stephen Jakes A man from Matsheumhlope in Bulawayo is in trouble after he connived with other two colleagues who are still at large to commit fraud involving a house worth $25 000.Qhawe Quintin Ndlovu (35) was not asked to plead to the fraud charge when he appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Sithembiso Ncube.The court heard that on August 4 2014 Ndlovu connived with Witz Moyo, Tinotenda Moyo who are still at large and another who purported to be KRZYSTOF Moyo and hatched a plan to sell stand number 144 Matsheumhlope in Bulawayo which did not belong to them.Ndlovu met with the complainant whose names are not revealed who was in need of a residential stand. Ndlovu misrepresented that stand number 144 Matsheumhlope was up for sale for $25 000.The accused acting in connivance with the other mentioned who are still at large then forged the national identity card for KRZYSTOF Moyo with a non existing national registration number 08-634419Y 39 which they presented it to the complainant purporting as if they were the rightful owners of stand number 144.The complainant was made to view the stand and by means of misrepresentation the complainant paid a total of $25 000 in installments through the NMB bank account which belonged to Ndlovu.The complainant discovered the offence when when they failed to effect the change of ownership and complete the capital Gains process with Zimbabwe Revenue Authority as the documents used were forged and the stand was never for sale.. A report made to the police led to Ndlovu's arrest. China's biggest oilfield is suffering huge losses as the government seeks to avoid layoffs despite prices that have dropped below production costs. On April 8, the official Xinhua news agency reported that the Daqing oilfield in northern Heilongjiang province lost over 5 billion yuan (U.S. $769 million) in the first two months of the year. In spite of the costs, production in the first quarter held steady at year-earlier levels of 9.28 million tons (755,800 barrels per day), according to PetroChina, the listed subsidiary of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC). Output has been declining for years at Daqing, China's mainstay oil resource, which has fueled the economy for over six decades. Annual production of 50 million metric tons (1 million barrels per day) lasted 27 years until 2003 before slipping to the 40-million-ton range, the official English-language China Daily and Global Times said. In December 2014, PetroChina announced plans to cut output by 1.5 million tons and scale back production at the depleted field to 32 million tons by 2020. But even at lower levels, production at Daqing with enhanced recovery methods is proving uneconomic. Production costs stand at U.S. $45 (292 yuan) per barrel, said Jiang Wanchun, Communist Party secretary of the oilfield, according to The Wall Street Journal. China's average production cost is $40 (260 yuan) per barrel, China Daily said. With benchmark oil prices falling below $45 since early December, Daqing has been losing money on every barrel it pumps. Prices dipped below U.S. $28 (182 yuan) per barrel in February before staging a partial recovery. Even after international prices approached the $45 range last week, the prospects for profits at Daqing appeared marginal at best. Mixed signals In February, China's second-ranked producer Sinopec announced it would suspend operations at four small oilfields in eastern Shandong province due to the price slump, but bigger shutdowns do not seem to be an option for Daqing. Jiang reportedly complained about the losses to President Xi Jinping during China's annual legislative sessions in March but was told that further cuts and layoffs would not be approved. "Today's economic restructuring cannot come at the cost of workers' well-being," said Xi, as quoted by Heilongjiang's official newspaper. "We must guarantee the incomes and treatment of the front-line employees," he said. The insistence came as a mixed signal for China's oil capital after Xi visited the northeast last July and told officials that the field was over-producing in a down market. Operating so many oil rigs was "a waste of electricity," Xi said, according to Japan's Nikkei Asian Review. The contradictions from Xi may be signs that both Daqing and China are stuck between bad choices. Unless oil prices rise substantially, continued production at the faltering field is likely to be costly. But the government fears that production cuts and layoffs will allow social instability risks to get out of hand. Nikkei estimates that one-tenth of Daqing's 2.7 million residents are employed at the oilfield. About 300,000 people depend on the field, including current workers, retirees and their families, the party-affiliated Global Times said. Contrary to reform The government's policy of producing unprofitably flies in the face of its reform pronouncements. "It seems that there is no immediate plan to aggressively restructure the national oil companies and lay off workers," said Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at the National University of Singapore. By publicizing their losses, Daqing officials may be making a pitch for government subsidies, similar those paid to oil companies in previous years when they were forced to sell fuel at a loss due to government-set rates. The government has gradually adjusted its controls over fuel pricing to more closely reflect market forces. But it continues to subsidize the companies, Andrews-Speed said, citing reported combined payments of some 4.8 billion yuan (U.S. $738 million) to CNPC and Sinopec in the first nine months of last year. Higher oil prices are not necessarily welcome, either, at a time when China is facing economic pressures. China already depends on imports for 60.6 percent of its total oil consumption, CNPC's Economics & Technology Research Institute estimates. Higher prices could exert a greater economic drag. The Daqing dilemma is also likely to be seen as a sign that the government is not really serious about reforming its other bloated state-owned enterprises (SOEs). That concern has figured largely in recent warnings from international bond rating agencies that China may face a downgrade of its sovereign debt later this year. Growing concern While the government publicized its SOE reform plans at the March legislative sessions, it has only talked about idling 1.8 million workers in the steel and coal industries so far. In March, Moody's Investors Service voiced concern that the government's target of 6.5-percent average annual economic growth through 2020 "may slow planned reforms, including those related to SOEs." Loss-making production at Daqing may serve the growth agenda, but it will do little for debt problems or SOE reform concerns. It will also add to burdens on PetroChina, which recorded a 66.9-percent plunge in profits last year to 35.5 billion yuan (U.S. $5.4 billion), its worst performance since 1999. The profit squeeze underscores a basic problem for China's producers. The country's domestic production costs are relatively high, largely due to difficult geological conditions. Sinopec needs crude prices of at least U.S. $60 (390 yuan) per barrel to break even on its oil production operations, the South China Morning Post said. The company offset its losses on oil and gas production with profits from refining and chemicals last year. The government took steps to support profits in January by announcing it would not reduce retail fuel prices when international crude costs fell below U.S. $40 per barrel, allowing the companies to pocket the difference. Decisions on Daqing could also affect national security, since even with lower production, the field accounts for more than one-sixth of China's domestic oil output at last year's rate of 4.3 million barrels per day. If China were to end loss-making production, it would only increase its reliance on oil imports, making it even more determined to project its naval power in disputed waters of the South China Sea. But greater reliance on overseas oil investment may also incur political costs. A controversial open letter to Xi from "loyal Communist Party members" in March raised objections to policies on both SOEs and investment under the government's twin plans to promote foreign trade, known as the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and "21st Century Maritime Silk Road." The government's policies have already led to "large numbers of layoffs at state-owned firms," while the Belt and Road initiatives had "put a huge amount of foreign exchange reserves into chaotic countries and regions with no return," the unidentified authors said. Future Forum Director Ou Virak is shown during an interview with RFA in this undated file photo. The ruling Cambodian Peoples Party on Monday sued a prominent NGO leader and critic of the government for telling RFAs Khmer Service that the party was using a sex scandal to pressure a rival political figure. CPP spokesman Sok Ey San told RFAs Khmer Service that the CPP decided to sue Future Forum Director Ou Virak for defamation because he told RFA: The ruling partys strategy is to put pressure on Kem Sokha and his finances. The suit was filed soon after Prime Minister Hun Sen posted a message in his Facebook page saying: The CPP has sued Future Forum Ou Virak to Phnom Penh Court. In his post, Hun Sen said the lawsuit seeks compensation of 400 million riel (U.S. $100,000) Kem Sokha is deputy leader of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, and he is embroiled in a sex scandal over an affair he allegedly had with Khem Chandaraty, 25, who is better known by her nickname Srey Mom. Earlier this month prosecutors told local media that Khem Chandaraty admitted that it was her voice on recordings calling Kem Sokha her lover. The recordings were posted on her Facebook page which she said was hacked. In reference to the scandal Ou Virak told RFA the ruling partys strategy is to pressure Kem Sokha and his finances. Sok Ey San said the comment has damaged the CPPs reputation. The CPP wasnt behind the scandal but he accused us of framing Kem Sokha to generate a scandal, he said. He deflected criticism that the alleged mistress case is another example of Hun Sen and the CPP attempting to pressure a government critic into silence. This is a not a freedom of expression issue. We are suing those who defame us, he said. The CPP has assigned me as a main person to sue Ou Virak. The CPP will sue anyone who defames the party, he added. Ou Virak said he is disappointed about the lawsuit, but was unapologetic in his criticism, saying the government is using the scandal to deflect peoples attention from issues like global warming and the drought that really effect Cambodians lives. I am sad. Politicians should take pity on the people and the country, he said. I stand by my comment. "Lawsuits against Kem Sokha, opposition party and activists are part of the CPPs strategy, he said. This can lead the CPP to suffer a decline it its popularity. Koul Panha, director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, said that the government shouldnt take legal actions against the leaders of nongovernmental organizations because it affects the democratic process in the country. This is not a democratic country when we take actions against criticism or prosecute them, he said. The ruling party must learn how to forgive. Reported for RFA's Khmer Service by Thai Vuthy and Huot Vuthy. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Brooks Boliek. Authorities in the Chinese capital have prevented diplomats from France, Germany, Canada, and Switzerland as well as a representative from the European Union from visiting award-winning eviction activist Ni Yulan, who has been under house arrest with no food at her Beijing home since April 13. The group of diplomats were turned away by police after they showed up at her rented home in the hope of bringing her food, Ni, who is confined to a wheelchair, told RFA on Monday. "Some foreign diplomats tried to bring me some food, and they also wanted to get a doctor to come and take a look at me," Ni said. "But when they got here on Saturday afternoon, they were stopped by six plainclothes officers, who wouldn't let them in," she said. Ni, 54, who was recently prevented from traveling to the United States to receive a State Department 2016 Woman of Courage Award, said she is in failing health and urgently needs food. "I have been under house arrest for a long time now, and I haven't seen the sun," Ni said. "I don't have anything to eat, and the police won't let me seek medical attention." "They won't let a doctor come and visit me here, either." The diplomats had given the food to Ni's husband after enquiring after her health, Ni said. Harassed by authorities The veteran activist, who has since offered legal assistance to others fighting eviction from their homes, says she and her husband Dong Jiqin have been hounded by the authorities since their release from prison in 2014. "They say that the rooms we have rented are illegal, although we are paying a high rent for them," Ni said. "We have paid 14 months' rent up front, at a rate of 2,400 yuan/month." "The police have already forced us to leave our rented accommodation many times, by contacting our letting agent," she said. "They told me they plan to come back on Friday and make sure that we leave." "The police told us that this is within the jurisdiction of the Guangqiao district police station," she said. Ni said the harassment hasn't stopped since she and Dong protested their original eviction. "To this day, we have had no resolution of our forced eviction complaint from the government, nor any response," she said. The Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, said the attempted visit was politically motivated. "This was exceeding their brief as diplomats, and as such constituted a collective political act," the paper said in an opinion article published in Chinese on Monday. The paper has also accused Ni of falsifying claims to legal qualifications. Ni has been repeatedly targeted for her activism on behalf of the most vulnerable in Chinese society. In April 2012, she was sentenced to a two-year prison term following her conviction on charges of "fraud" and "causing a disturbance" by the Xicheng District Peoples Court in Beijing. The sentence was later reduced by two months. Dong, a former schoolteacher, was also convicted of creating a disturbance and was handed a two-year term. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Lin Jing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. News / National by Leonard Ncube THE cancellation of teachers' vacation leave by the government a few months ago is expected to take centre stage at the Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta) 35th Annual National Conference which starts here Wednesday. Close to 300 Zimta members and teachers' organisations from the Sadc region are expected to attend the conference which ends on Saturday.Zimta chief executive officer Sifiso Ndlovu said they were waiting for judgment on the matter which will be discussed alongside other challenges facing civil servants such as arbitrary collective bargaining mechanisms."We're waiting for judgment by three judges after we presented the matter to court. People are coming to discuss the issue alongside other conditions of service. It will be an opener for the discussions," said Ndlovu in an interview.He accused the Civil Service Commission of abandoning its role as the facilitator and misguiding itself as an administrative agent. "CSC is no longer playing its role. They've gone out of their way. They should leave provision of education to the responsible ministries and concentrate on issues to do with conditions."We're saying we also want to discuss the issue of Labour Law in Zimbabwe which must promote collective bargaining." Zimta has engaged labour lawyers to discuss the cancellation of vacation leave.The Conference also seeks to discuss, the post 2015 global development agenda, with particular focus on Sustainable Development Goal number 4 which seeks to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all."It will run under the theme "Equitable Quality Education a Public Human Right Good for Sustainable Societies". The government recently said it was not obliged to consult anyone when taking measures on civil servants' conditions of service and has discretion to withdraw vacation leave and reset it for another time.It said any civil servant aggrieved by lawful directives should follow the "grievance procedure" as provided for by the CSC regulations. Last term, 2,000 teachers wanted to go on vacation leave which meant the government had to engage a similar number of relief educators at a cost of $2.5 million for the three months the substantive teachers would have been away.The rest of the civil service, outside the education sector, don't bring any financial burden to government if they go on vacation leave because they are not replaced. Authorities in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin have jailed a citizen journalist for nearly five years on public order charges after she reported on the self-immolation of a petitioner on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, her lawyer said on Monday. Wang Jing was initially detained in March 2014 by Beijing police after she posted reports and photos of a self-immolation protest on the first day of China's annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC). While the judges ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict her at her July trial, they stopped short of finding her not guilty, Last week, the Chuanying District People's Court found Wang guilty of a new charge of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," handing down a jail term of four years and 10-months, her lawyer Li Jinglin told RFA. According to the indictment issued by the Chuanying District People's Procuratorate, Wang was accused of filing reports to the Sichuan-based rights website Tianwang, as well as photos on Tencent Weibo and overseas websites after she witnessed a self-immolation protest on Beijing's Tiananmen Square on March 5, 2014. Wang was also accused of giving phone interviews to a number of overseas media, including Boxun and Radio France International, which were picked up by "more than 70" news organizations, the prosecution said. Trouble in cyberspace According to the indictment, Wang's reporting had "caused trouble in cyberspace, attracting the attention of other Internet users and inciting them to an angry mood, and causing serious disruption to public order. Wang pleaded not guilty to the charges, which Li said were based on tenuous evidence. "There is no way we can be sure [those reports] were sent by Wang Jing, and such content doesn't constitute a crime under Chinese law anyway," Li said following Wang's April 20 trial. "I argued in court that ... even if Wang did send those items, if they were posted on overseas websites, then surely they would have disturbed public order in the countries where they were posted?" "We're not the policemen of the Pacific Ocean, that we have jurisdiction over its farthest shores, I told them." Wang's trial came as President Xi Jinping told local governments that they should do more to help petitioners -- ordinary people with long-running grievances against the ruling Chinese Communist Party. But it also comes as the government seeks to limit the damage done by revelations in the Panama Papers leak, which revealed details of the offshore holdings of some relatives of high-ranking Chinese officials. Wang had a long history of helping petitioners defend their rights and expose official corruption, according to Tianwang website founder Huang Qi, "Their main aim here is to suppress and crack down on citizen journalists, who are at the front line of activism and the civil rights movement in China," Huang said. "They also want to stop even more people getting involved in exposing official corruption and the movement of officials' wealth [offshore]," he added. "They want to prevent any of the fallout from the Panama Papers from reaching mainland China." Wang's retrial was politically motivated, Huang said. Someone behind the scenes "There is someone operating behind the scenes of this judgment," Huang said, adding that there are currently 12 Tianwang citizen journalists in detention, with a four more out on bail. "The Chinese government should release Wang Jing and all the other citizen journalists immediately," he said. "Any suppression merely results in unwavering calls for freedom of the press from the general public." Wang was present on March 5, 2014 when a woman set fire to herself in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the opening day of the NPC. Wang told RFA at the time that she saw police and a water truck rush in to extinguish the flames on the woman, sending a plume of smoke into the sky near Tiananmen Gate on the north side of the square. She said police snatched her cell phone after she began recording video on it. Other eyewitnesses said that the person covered in foam was a woman in her forties, and that a group of police officers had appeared very soon after she caught fire and put out the blaze, before taking the woman away. The fate of the woman remains unknown, and Wang was detained soon after the incident. Wang's lawyers have previously told RFA she has been repeatedly tortured while in detention, causing her existing medical problems to worsen sharply. Her relatives have also expressed concern for her health. The ruling Chinese Communist Party has passed a number of restrictive security laws in recent months that further limit freedom of expression in the name of protecting "national security," Amnesty International said in its annual human rights report in February. A proposed Foreign NGO Management Law, if enacted in the form presented for public consultation in May, would "severely restrict the rights to freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression,"the group said in its State of the World 2015 report. Several hundred people were detained and questioned under the new laws last year, including more than 300 human rights lawyers, saidcitizen journalist and rights website founder Liu Feiyue Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Hard pressed by shortages of funds needed for government-ordered building projects, authorities in one North Korean province have set up checkpoints along major roads and are stopping and fining car owners for real and invented infractions, sources say. The move by officials in the isolated, U.N.-sanctioned states North Hamgyong province is apparently aimed at completing work on unfinished buildings in time for the ruling Korean Workers Party convention in May, sources in the province told RFAs Korean Service. The building of several child-care facilities in North Hamgyong is now almost finished, but reconstruction of the May 10th Lanam Coal Mine Machinery Factory still shows unsatisfactory progress, one source in North Hamgyong said. To raise money for the work, police have now set up roadblocks about 500 meters apart along major roads in the province and are stopping cars to inspect their operating condition and external appearance, one source in North Hamgyong said. Once youve been stopped, you cant go through without paying something, he said, adding that police at one checkpoint routinely levy fines of 5,000 won [U.S. $47 at official rate, $0.59 at black market rate] for each cited violation. Drivers are now preparing bribes ahead of time to give the police so that they are allowed to pass through, he said. Residents are afraid to go out due to this indiscriminate crackdown, he said. The police department is just eating our money. Building workers also stopped Dozens of drivers are now being stopped and fined in North Hamgyongs Chongjin city, with 30 guard posts set up between the provinces Ranam and Sinam districts alone, a second source in North Hamgyong said. Even drivers being sent to work on the building sites have been stopped, with the money taken from them in fines being used to support the construction work, he said. Drivers are saying that authorities are doing all this to support state-ordered construction in time for the upcoming Korean Workers Party Congress, he said. About three thousand delegates are expected to attend the national party convention, the seventh to be held since the birth of the reclusive, one-party state after World War II. Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Jackie Yoo. Written in English by Richard Finney. Myanmar lawmakers have taken up the cause of farmers and villagers in two areas of the country where they lost land to huge government-backed projects, as the new political administration works on resolving a backlog of social and political problems. Thant Zin Tun, a National League for Democracy (NLD) party deputy in the lower house, said Monday that he would ask the Naypyidaw Council chairman for amnesty for land-grab victims who are awaiting trial and who have already been sentenced for their involvement in protests. The previous military junta, which ruled Myanmar for a half-century, confiscated farmland to build the planned administrative capital Naypyidaw about 10 years ago, but undercompensated farmers or paid them no money at all. Some were jailed after they protested the move and demanded fair compensation. About 50 farmers are still behind bars, while nearly 500 others are now on trial, Thant Zin Tun said. We will work for these farmers to get their lands back or to receive the compensation to which they are entitled, Thant Zin Tun told reporters at a court in Naypyidaw after he met with farmers who were standing trial. We will also submit our proposals [to parliament] to drop the charges against the farmers and free the ones who have already been sentenced, said the lawmaker who represents Dekkhinathiri, one of eight townships in the Naypyidaw Union Territory, an administrative division in central Myanmar that includes the administrative capital. The new NLD government under President Htin Kyaw and State Counselor Aung San Sauu Kyi has released nearly 200 political prisoners, activists and students this month, fulfilling one of the goals of their pro-democracy administration. The current government has been releasing political prisoners, Thant Zin Tun said. These farmers were not charged or sentenced under political charges, but they are related to politics. They had been working on their lands for generations to survive, and they didnt receive proper compensation when their lands were confiscated, he said. Some didnt even receive any compensation. Letpadaung copper mine In a related development, two members of parliament from northwestern Myanmars Sagaing region pledged on Monday to work on behalf of protesting villagers who have lost farmland to the Chinese-operated Letpadaung copper mine project. Thein Naing, a lawmaker from Sagaing region and Win Thein Zaw, a lawmaker who represents Salingyi township held a meeting on Monday with residents of from seven villages in Letpadaung during the first visit for both to the area. The members of parliament [MPs] met local people from seven villages who discussed their problems concerning the Letpadaung copper mine project, said Ashin Arlawka, a Buddhist abbot from the regions Sete village. The MPs promised the local people that they will do their best for them, he said. The large mine project operated by Chinas Wanbao Mining Copper Ltd. Company and Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. (UMEHL), a Myanmar army-owned conglomerate, in the town of Letpadaung in Sagaing region has come under fire by local farmers who have long protested the companys land takeovers in the area. Wanbao spokesman Dong Yunfei told RFAs Myanmar Service in February that the company would begin copper production in May, a month after the NLD came to power. The party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who also is minister of foreign affairs and the Presidents Office, began its administration on April 1. The mine is one of several Chinese-operated megaprojects under way in the Southeast Asian nation that have come under fire from locals because of expropriated land and environmental damage. Parliamentary inquiry Aung San Suu Kyi had led a parliamentary inquiry commission on the Letpadaung project, calling for more transparency in its land appropriation process and for police riot-control training in the wake of a violent raid on protesters at the mine site in 2012. In 2014, she accused the government of former President Thein Sein of ignoring the commissions recommendations to improve conditions at the mine, saying these had sparked clashes that December between police and farmers trying to prevent Wanbao employees from fencing off land for the project. The incident left one farmer dead and dozens injured. In response to continued protests, Wanbao canvassed local villages in 2014 and 2015 and met with farmers one-on-one to try to resolve the issue, Dong Yunfei said. Since coming to power, the NLD government has not made any public statements about letting Wanbao begin operations at the Letpadaung copper mine. Reported by Win Ko Ko Latt and San San Tin for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. In a bid to reverse decades of environmental damage caused by indiscriminate Chinese logging, Tibetan monks in Sichuans Dege county are planting thousands of trees on the hillsides surrounding their monastery. The effort now under way at Dzogchen monastery in the Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture began on April 18 and has pulled in support from around the wider Tibetan community, a resident of the area told RFAs Tibetan Service. Tenzin Lungtok Rinpoche, the senior lama at Dzogchen, has begun a campaign of tree planting at local sites, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. This is a grass-roots-level initiative to combat global climate change and protect the environment, RFAs source said, adding that monks and staff from the monastery, together with members of the local Tibetan community, are now planting over 15,000 trees on the hills around Dzogchen. The move comes after more than 30 years of Chinese logging in the once heavily-forested Tibetan region of Kham left mountainsides stripped bare and vulnerable to soil erosion and floods, Australia-based expert on Tibets environment Gabriel Lafitte told RFA. China, on taking control of Tibetan areas in the 1950s, saw the great forests of Kham as a free resource to be exploited, with not even the cost of cutting roads, Lafitte said. The simpler alternative was to clearfell entire slopes from the bottom right up to the ridge line, simply rolling the tree trunks into the rivers below to be collected well downstream where they entered the lowlands of Sichuan. For three decades, from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, logging continued uninterrupted, until the entire region was stripped, Lafitte said. Concerned over flooding, Chinese authorities banned further logging in 1998, and timber cutters were redeployed as planters, said Lafitte. [But] in practice, little was done in the slow and careful work needed for reforestation, Lafitte said. Though seeds were sometimes dropped from airplanes in an attempt to restore forest cover, this was a method with very limited success, especially on steep slopes, he said. Reported by Lhuboom for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English with additional reporting by Richard Finney. A man walks among dead fish lying on a beach in Quang Trach district in the central coastal province of Quang Binh near the Formosa steel plant that is under attack for industrial pollution, April 20, 2016. Vietnamese authorities are investigating a Taiwanese steel company in connection with a massive fish kill that is threatening the local seafood industry, according to media reports. Huge numbers of fish have washed ashore in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue provinces. The dead fish that have been washing up on beaches along the country's central coast include rare species that live far offshore in deep water. The kill-off is apparently caused by industrial effluent, and state-run media coverage says the government is focusing on a mile-long waste water pipeline that runs from a multi-million-dollar steel plant in Ha Tinh owned by Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa. The mass fish deaths are due to serious pollution, Vien a retired history teacher in Ky Anh district of Ha Tinh province told RFAs Vietnamese Service. There was no pollution before. Everything is ruined now. The peace in this countryside has been disrupted. A fisherman named Sot from Hai Lang in Quang Tri province told RFA that local leaders were telling their people to avoid eating fish, and that even the fisherman worried about the catch. The fish were washed onshore, but the government has not found the cause, he said. The village chairman told us not to eat fish because it is dangerous. We cant go fishing because we cant sell fish anymore. Even if we can sell it we dont want to because it is wrong. A tour bus operator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the growing fear of seafood to RFA. Because of the fish deaths, people dont want to eat fish, and the fishermen dont go fishing anymore, he said. The fish kill puts Vietnams traditional fishing industry in conflict with the countrys push to become an industrial power. Last year, the country earned $6.6 billion from seafood exports. In 2012 Vietnam earned an estimated $5 billion from steel exports. Central Ha Tinh province is home to a sprawling economic zone which houses numerous industrial plants, including a multi-billion dollar steel plant run by Formosa. A company official this week said local communities need to consider whether they value marine life or foreign investment in the area more, AFP reported. "You cannot have both," Chou Chun Fan, Formosa Ha Tinh's external relations manager told state-run VTC14 television channel, speaking in Vietnamese, according to the AFP report. "(You) need to choose whether to catch fish and shrimp or to build a state-of-the-art steel mill," he said, according to a video of the interview posted online. The report also said that Formosa had imported some 300 tons of toxic chemicals to clean the waste-water pipeline, a shipment the Vietnam Environment Administration said it was not informed of. The report did not say whether the chemicals had been used. Tuoitnews reported that the company was notified that the Ministry of Industry and Trade will inspect the plant on Tuesday. Reported by RFA Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Brooks Boliek. Armenian authorities said on April 26 that they have identified the main suspect in a bus explosion in Yerevan that killed two people. Armenia's Investigative Committee said a SIM card found at the scene of the April 25 blast belonged to an Armenian who had served time in prison and that they found explosives and detonators at his home in a search. They did not name the suspect and his whereabouts are unknown, but officials said it is possible the suspect was one of the two people killed in the blast. Identification of one of the bodies, which is said to have been disfigured beyond recognition, is now under way using DNA analysis. Meanwhile, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian has ordered police to tighten security after the massive blast in Yerevan, which killed two passengers and wounded seven others. Armenias Emergency Situations Ministry said the explosion occurred at nearly 10 p.m. local time on April 25 on Halabian Street, a residential area near the city center. National police chief Vladimir Gasparian said earlier that the blast occurred on or under a second-row bus seat and that investigators were trying to identify a passenger thought to have been sitting there. Meanwhile, investigators have "fully rejected" the possibility that the explosion was a terrorist act and said the suspect had a "grudge" against his relatives and may have been transporting the explosive device when it detonated. An AFP correspondent at the scene reported that the bus was gutted by the blast, which blew out the windows of nearby houses. In a statement on the incident issued shortly after midnight, Sarkisians press secretary, Vladimir Hakobian, said the Health Ministry was "taking necessary measures to provide medical assistance to the wounded persons," it added. "We call on the public to refrain from spreading unverified information." Two of the passengers, boys aged 14 and 15, suffered particularly serious wounds and underwent urgent surgery in a Yerevan hospital. Doctors there said their lives were not at risk. With reporting by AFP and Reuters The BBC has issued a rare defense of an upcoming documentary about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, accusing British media of distorting its report about a tragedy that killed 298 passengers and crew in July 2014. A report by Britain's Sunday Express tabloid "misrepresented" the BBC program, which offers a "balanced" look at competing theories, the broadcaster said. Experts interviewed for the film describe as "unlikely" a theory put forward by Moscow and pro-Kremlin media -- and rejected by Dutch investigators -- that blames Ukrainian military aircraft for the crash, the BBC said.News of the documentary -- titled Who Shot Down MH17? -- rippled through Russia on April 24 after the Sunday Express published a story about the film on its website that said the program "will present new evidence that a Ukrainian fighter jet may have shot down the aircraft." Kremlin loyalists have long pushed this theory in public, although investigators from the Dutch Safety Board concluded in their official report in October 2015 that the plane was brought down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired from an area that was mostly controlled by Russian-backed separatists at the time. While the hourlong documentary is only slated to air on May 3, it ignited an online maelstrom, with Kremlin critics accusing the BBC of providing a platform for Russian conspiracy theories aimed at muddying the waters about Russia's alleged role in the downing of the plane. The midsummer tragedy was met with shock among the European public and contributed to the political climate for further sanctions against Russia's government over its seizure of Crimea and alleged fueling of armed separatism in eastern Ukraine. Pro-Kremlin media outlets framed the BBC film as a straightforward rejection of the version of events broadly accepted by Western governments: that Russia-backed separatists shot the passenger jet down, mostly likely thinking it was a Ukrainian military plane. A headline in Russia's national Komsomolskaya Pravda daily read, "BBC Film: Malaysian Boeing Shot Down By Ukrainian Jets." Aleksei Pushkov, head of the State Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an April 24 tweet that the film could "bring the truth about the downed Boeing closer.""The false masks are starting to come off," wrote Pushkov, a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Pushkov's hopes for the film, however, may be misplaced. "Contrary to their headline, experts in fact tell the program it was unlikely a Ukrainian fighter jet could have shot down MH17, as they cannot fly at such high altitudes," the BBC said in its April 25 statement."This impartial documentary takes a balanced view in reporting the competing theories surrounding the fate of MH17, including evidence for and against those involving Russia, Ukraine, and the CIA," it added. Purported evidence of CIA involvement in the incident includes an alleged "intercepted" phone call between two men that Komsomolskaya Pravda identified as "CIA agents" and which drew widespread ridicule for being an obvious ruse. The BBC said in its statement that the film, part of a series titled The Conspiracy Files, "also examines in detail the findings of the official Dutch inquiry into the incident, which provide compelling evidence that the plane was brought down by a powerful ground-to-air missile."The network's defense did not appease all critics of the program, including former world chess champion and current Kremlin foe Garry Kasparov. MINSK -- The top U.S. diplomat in Belarus, Scott Rauland, and Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimer Makey said on April 25 that their countries are ready to discuss the possible return of their ambassadors. Makey told reporters in Minsk that "there is readiness from both sides for a full normalization of our relations." He said the United States and Belarus "must not look at each other through guns' crosshairs, but must talk, have an open dialogue." Rauland expressed hope that the return of the ambassadors would be a theme for discussions with the Belarusian Foreign Ministry later in 2016. Belarus recalled its ambassador from Washington in 2008 and insisted that the U.S. ambassador must leave Minsk. That move came after the U.S. imposed sanctions against Belarusian oil giant Belneftekhim following tensions between Minsk and the West. Associated Press reporters who visited the edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Belarus say that milk from a dairy farm there contains levels of radioactive isotopes at least 10 times higher than the countrys food safety limits. The finding comes on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in neighboring Ukraine. The milk was tested by the AP reporters after it was offered to them by dairy farmer Nikolai Chubenok, whose land is about 45 kilometers north of the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear plant. Chubenok said his herd of 50 dairy cows produces milk for the local factory of Milkavita. Milkavita produces Parmesan cheese that is sold primarily in Russia. Milkavita officials said the AP-commissioned laboratory finding was impossible. They insisted their own tests show that traces of radioactive isotopes in their milk supply are well below safety limits. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said on April 25 that cleaning up the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident has been a major and pressing task for his government for 30 years. Based on reporting by AP So now Russia has a human rights commissioner who says human rights are a Western tool to blackmail and threaten Russia. Now Russia has a human rights commissioner who once proposed legislation criminalizing "assaults against morality." Now Russia has a human rights commissioner who proposed confiscating the property of the families of suspected terrorists. Now Russia has a human rights commissioner who wanted to rename the Interior Ministry after the infamous Soviet-era VChK. To say that Tatyana Moskalkova has a rather creative take on human rights would be somewhat charitable. In her first interview after being confirmed as the Kremlin's point person on human rights, Moskalkova said one of her primary tasks will be protecting the rights of Russians living abroad. And in case you were wondering what she had in mind, as a State Duma deputy, Moskalkova was known for collecting information about the alleged rights abuses against ethnic Russians by the Ukrainian authorities. The post of human rights commissioner has long been seen as window dressing. It was a decoration to create the illusion that the Kremlin actually cared about its citizens' rights. In the past, Russia has had very earnest and capable human rights commissioners -- people like Vladimir Lukin and Ella Pamfilova. But the regime very rarely -- if ever -- heeded any of their advice. Moskalkova's voice, on the other hand, is very likely to be heard. And that is probably not a good thing at all. Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page. News / National by Lloyd Gumbo Zanu-PF President and First Secretary Mugabe has appointed a National Disciplinary Appeals Committee (NDAC) to consider appeals from cadres aggrieved by either their suspension or expulsion as overseen by the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC).About 30 Zanu-PF cadres have since lodged appeals with the party's secretary for Administration, Ignatius Chombo.Said Party spokesman Simon Khaya-Moyo: "I don't know about the composition of the appeals committee, but like I have always said, modalities are being worked out by the secretary for Administration. I know there are changes that are going to happen but don't have them yet."Chombo yesterday confirmed the developments, saying Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, who was the chairperson of the NDC, would take charge of the NDAC with members drawn from the Central Committee while the secretary for Legal Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, would now chair the NDC."Yes, we have received appeals but I can't tell you how many they are off the cuff because I am away. They are more than two dozen."The majority of the appeals that have been received want the National Disciplinary Appeals Committee of the Central Committee to forgive them for what they did. They are saying despite their current punishment, they have remained loyal to the party and now want to enjoy full benefits as members," he said."Others are also complaining that the penalties imposed on them are too high compared to the crimes committed. So they want a review of that. Because of this, President Mugabe has set up a committee to look at these issues."While Chombo said he could not recall the names of people who had appealed, it is understood the majority are those who were suspended for allegedly aligning themselves to sacked former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her cabal which sought to unseat President Mugabe.Among those said to have lodged appeals are former Politburo members, Cdes Webster Shamu and Nicholas Goche.The two have not joined Dr Mujuru who has since formed a political party, Zimbabwe People First.Former secretary for Administration in the Women's League, Esphinah Nhari, who got a 3-year suspension for chanting a slogan "Down with G40", has also lodged an appeal.Shamu declined to comment yesterday, referring all questions to Khaya Moyo."There is a party spokesperson who speaks on behalf of the party. I cannot be seen to be commenting on party issues. I am a party member, so I follow party rules," said Shamu.Nhari was quoted in the media recently as saying she was one of the first party cadres to appeal against her suspension.Chombo said he could not remember the composition of the appeals committee although he indicated that VP Mphoko would chair it while Chinamasa takes over as NDC chairperson.The revolutionary party resolved at its Politburo meeting earlier this month to appoint a tribunal of the Central Committee to consider all appeals against suspension or dismissals of party members.That meeting questioned the credibility of the NDC as some officials in the committee brought cases as complainants while at the same time adjudicating over the same without giving the alleged culprits an opportunity to defend themselves.Sources told The Herald that this was brought to the attention of President Mugabe at the last Politburo meeting where he was "taken aback by the revelation".Insiders said President Mugabe then ordered that disciplinary cases be held in a fair manner, forcing the Politburo to form an appeals committee drawn from the Central Committee as enshrined in the party constitution.The war veterans raised the same concerns about the NDC, a day after the Politburo, during their meeting with President Mugabe.The NDC was composed of VP Mphoko as chairperson, national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere, secretary for Legal Affairs, Chinamasa, Women's League Secretary, Dr Grace Mugabe and Youth Affairs secretary, Pupurai Togarepi.It is however understood Dr Mugabe rarely attended the disciplinary cases as she was represented by her deputy, Eunice Sandi Moyo.Chinamasa last week told The Herald the NDC would have nothing to do with the appeals as the matter was now under the purview of the Central Committee."The decision was that a tribunal be set up to consider the appeals to the Central Committee by all members who are not happy with the decisions of the NDC," said Chinamasa."The NDC will have no role in those appeals because it will be its decisions being appealed against. I am not sure if the tribunal has been set up already since I was away. That was the decision of the party. I am also not aware of who has appealed because it's outside the NDC," said Chinamasa. Russias RIA news agency quoted an Iranian Foreign Ministry official on April 25 as saying that Tehran is conducting talks with Russia about sales of heavy water. Heavy water is a not radioactive, but it can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear weapons, as well as for nuclear energy. Under the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran, the United States, and five other world powers, Tehran is responsible for reducing its stock of heavy water. The nuclear accord allows Iran to use heavy water in its modified Arak nuclear reactor. But it must either sell, dilute, or under certain conditions dispose of any excess supply of heavy water and enriched uranium. The U.S. State Department announced on April 22 that the United States would buy 32 tons of heavy water from Iran in an $8.6 million purchase designed to help Tehran meet its obligations under the nuclear pact. Based on reporting by Reuters, RIA, and BBC A French-Iranian citizen who left Iran in 2009 after facing espionage charges has been sentenced to six years in jail but was released on bail. Kaleme, an Iranian opposition website, reported late on April 24 that former French Embassy employee Nazak Afshar was arrested in March upon her arrival at Tehrans international airport. The website reported that the 58-year-old Afshar was freed on bail from Tehrans notorious Evin prison after she was formally charged. Irans judiciary has not commented on her case or made the charges against her public. Several other dual-nationality citizens or expatriates have been arrested upon returning to visit Iran. A spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said on April 24 that four dual-nationality citizens had recently been sentenced for their connections to foreign countries. Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and Kaleme BISHKEK -- Kyrgyzstan's Supreme Court says it is ready to revise its ruling against jailed human rights defender Azimjan Askarov. The Supreme Court's chairwoman, Ainash Tokbaeva, said on April 25 that its decision in December 2011 to uphold Askarov's conviction by a lower court must be revised in order to comply with a call from the UN Commission on Human Rights. The UN body said on April 21 that authorities in Bishkek should release Askarov from prison after the rights activist complained that charges against him were politically motivated. Askarov, a Kyrgyz national of Uzbek origin, is serving a life sentence on charges that he was an organizer behind deadly clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz citizens in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010. He also was convicted of involvement in the murder of a policeman who was killed during the violence. More than 450 people, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, were killed in the clashes. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. U.S. President Barack Obama has called on Europe to uphold its political unity and strengthen its contribution to the continent's collective defense. "The entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe," Obama said in a landmark speech on transatlantic unity in the German city of Hannover on April 25. Obama's impassioned plea for European unity came days after he spoke forcefully in London against the United Kingdom exiting the European Union in what's been dubbed a "Brexit.". The possibility of Britain leaving the EU after a June referendum, the threat posed by terrorism, and an ongoing refugee crisis have tested European unity. "This is a defining moment, and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe," Obama said. "If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue," he said. Obama contrasted the prosperity of today with the wars and hardship of the last century, saying that the strong ties between Europe and the United States are even more important amid today's fast global integration. Obama enumerated the recent achievements of EU-U.S. cooperation, mentioning "pulling the global economy back from the brink of depression," the deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program, and the climate-change agreement reached in Paris last December, which he called "the most ambitious deal in history to fight climate change." Obama also urged European NATO members to contribute their full share to the alliance, saying that "Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defense." He said he will insist at a July NATO summit in Warsaw that all members of the alliance must take responsibility for security. Obama also called on European leaders to keep sanctions in place on Russia over its role in the war in eastern Ukraine until Moscow implements its obligations under the Minsk agreement. "We must not allow borders to be redrawn by brute force in the 21st century. So we should keep helping Ukraine with its reforms to improve its economy, consolidate its democracy, and modernize its forces to protect its independence," Obama said. He underlined that NATO has to bolster its "front-line allies in Poland, in Romania, and in the Baltic states" while also meeting "the threat of its southern flank," urging members of the alliance to increase their defense capacities. "That's why every NATO member should be contributing its full share of 2 percent of GDP towards our common security -- something that doesn't always happen," he added. Germany, Obama's host country and Europe's economic powerhouse, has been frequently criticized for spending well below the target on defense capabilities. Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against the extremist group Islamic State. He said the United States would send up to 250 more special-forces military trainers to Syria to help rebels fight IS, which he called "the most urgent threat to our nations." Obama also cited a need for balance between security and privacy, touching one of the sore spots in the relationship between Germany and the United States. Documents disclosed in 2013 by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden embarrassed the Obama administration, revealing that even German Chancellor Angela Merkel's own telephone conversations had been tapped by the U.S. side. Obama said that while surveillance programs remain an effective weapon in the fight against terrorism, he acted to reform such programs to ensure they are "upholding our values like privacy." "By the way, we include the privacy of people outside of the United States. We care about Europeans' privacy, not just Americans' privacy," he added. Obama also credited Merkel, who was sitting in the audience, for welcoming refugees. Obama said that Merkel, who has been facing criticism from other EU members for her stance and has seen the support for her Christian Democratic Union slip to its lowest levels in years, "demonstrated real political and moral leadership" in accepting more than 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery. "What's happening with respect to her position on refugees here, in Europe -- she's on the right side of history on this," Obama told the audience. He decried an "us-versus-them" mentality that breeds animosity toward immigrants, Muslims, and others. Obama's speech came as some German officials and commentators have claimed that his administration has done little to help Merkel as Europe struggles with its biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Obama confirmed in Hannover that the United States would take in 10,000 Syrians this year. Obama and Merkel later met with Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss the fight against IS in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee crisis. With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and dpa Pakistani police have arrested six people suspected of being involved in the killing of a Sikh official. Authorities also are denying a Pakistani Taliban claim of responsibility for the April 22 murder of Sardar Suran Singh, saying they think a rival politician within the Sikh community hired assassins to carrying out the killing. Singh, a provincial adviser on minority affairs in Pakistans northwestern Pakhtunkhwa Province, was shot dead on April 22 as he was heading to his home. Azad Khan, police chief of the Malakand District where the shooting took place, said on April 25 that rival Sikh politician Baldev Kumar was among those in police custody. Khan said Kumar is suspected of paying about $10,000 to have Singh killed. Based on reporting by AP and Dawn At least 23 people have died and dozens of others have become sick in central Pakistan after eating sweets that police suspect were tainted with pesticides. Pakistani officials say the wave of deaths began when Umar Hayat, a resident of the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab Province, bought baked sweets on April 17 to distribute to friends and family after the birth of his grandson. Ten people who ate the sweets died the same day. By April 25, authorities said 13 more people who became ill had died in hospitals and another 52 were still being treated. The dead include the newborn boys father and seven of his uncles. A senior police official in the area, Rameez Bukhari, said three people have been arrested in the case -- two brothers who run the bakery and a worker there. Authorities suspect the worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix. Based on reporting by AFP and Dawn A court in the Russian city of Perm has sentenced a local resident to five years in jail on extremism charges. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on April 25 that Gairatzhon Tazhibaev was sentenced after being found guilty of recruiting fighters for Islamic militants in Syria. According to the FSB, Tazhibaev had persuaded several local Muslims to join an organization called Jebhat an-Nusra, which is branded as extremist and banned in Russia. The FSB says Tazhibaev also tried to organize their trip to Syria in 2015. The group's voyage to Syria was stopped by the FSB in June when Tazhibaev was arrested. Russian officials have said that at least 5,000 nationals of Russia and other former Soviet republics have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State militants. Based on reporting by Kommersant and Interfax Uzbek President Islam Karimov has arrived in the Russian capital at the start of a two-day official visit. Talks in Moscow between Karimov and Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 26 are expected to focus on ways to boost bilateral ties as well as regional and global issues, according to the Kremlin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two presidents had an "informal" meeting and posed for official photographs ahead of a dinner on April 25. The Russian president's official website said Karimov's visit was taking place "at Vladimir Putin's invitation." Karimov has been in power since before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Uzbekistan gained independence from Moscow. He rules Uzbekistan with an iron fist, tolerating little if any dissent. A recent U.S. State Department report accused Uzbek security forces of the "torture and abuse of detainees." Amnesty International recently accused Moscow of "lending a helping hand" to torture in Uzbekistan by aiding in the forcible returns of hundreds of Uzbek nationals from Russia. Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS Russian firebrand politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky made his name with crackpot, bellicose, and often offensive statements. But are his ideas really so eccentric in the current Russian context? Since the early 1990s, the man dubbed the "clown prince" of Russian politics has gained a solid reputation for flying trial balloons on the Kremlin's behalf. Here are some of Zhirinovsky's seemingly outrageous proposals that have since become remarkably close to Russian reality. The Baltic states have long been one of Zhirinovsky's favorite targets. He has urged Russia to build giant fans to blow radioactive waste over the Baltics, called for a Russian invasion, and last year suggested conducting local referendums on the return of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the Russian fold. He voiced confidence that Balts would opt for joining Russia, arguing that Moscow had "abandoned" the three countries by recognizing their sovereignty in 1991. "They never wanted to live in independent states; they were and wanted to remain citizens of the U.S.S.R.," he said. His tirades took a more ominous tinge when the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office, at the request of a lawmaker from the ruling party, subsequently examined the legality of the U.S.S.R. State Council's recognition of the sovereignty of the Baltic states and came to the conclusion that it was "defective." Zhirinovsky has since predicted that Russian flags will fly over Kyiv, Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn as soon as 2016. Against that backdrop, Russia in 2015 sentenced Estonian security officer Eston Kohver to 15 years in jail on charges of espionage and illegally crossing the border. Tallinn has insisted Kohver was abducted in his home country and dragged into Russia (and an initial joint investigation hinted at the same). After protracted negotiations, Kohver was eventually exchanged for jailed Russian spy Aleksei Dressen. And earlier this month, Russian jets buzzed a U.S. destroyer conducting military exercises within international waters in the Baltic Sea in what Washington described as a "simulated attack." In April 2014, soon after an armed conflict pitting Ukrainian forces against Russia-backed separatists erupted in eastern Ukraine, Zhirinovsky addressed the State Duma in military fatigues and denounced the new Western-leaning government in Kyiv as a "junta." Four months later, he urged Putin to take resolute action in eastern Ukraine and "wipe out" Poland and the Baltic states if the West retaliated. Although Russia has denied sending troops into eastern Ukraine (while acknowledging well after the fact that it deployed the "little green men" who occupied Crimea ahead of the peninsula's forced annexation), NATO has repeatedly accused Moscow of training, arming, and fighting alongside the separatists. According to the United Nations, the conflict in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 9,100 people and injured some 21,000 others. Zhirinovsky once said that he dreamed of a day when Russian soldiers could "wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean." His dream is now one step closer to becoming reality. In March, Russia's Pacific Fleet sent a naval group on an unofficial visit to five different countries, effectively restoring long-distance naval voyages. The fleet's spokesman, Roman Martov, said the purpose of the mission was to "ensure naval presence and demonstrate the flag in the Pacific and Indian Oceans." As a candidate in the 2008 presidential election, Zhirinovsky pledged to shut Russia's borders as soon as he became head of state. "If you think that these are the actions of a police state, be my guest," he roared. "I promise that I will take these actions." While at the time the remarks were dismissed as another of his eccentric rants, his pledge can now be seen as a troubling harbinger of Russia's current isolationist drive. Russia has since banned Western food imports, barred holidaymakers from booking package tours to Turkey -- one of the most popular tourist destinations among Russian tourists -- and prohibited Federal Security Service (FSB) employees, debtors, police officers, firefighters, and other categories of citizen from leaving the country. Last fall, a prominent lawmaker announced that Russia was considering reintroducing Soviet-style exit visas for all Russians wishing to travel abroad. The lawmaker quickly retracted his statements, saying he had been misunderstood. But rumors continue to swirl that the authorities are mulling ways to control the ability of Russians to travel. When bird flu spread around the planet in 2006, sparking worldwide panic, Zhirinovsky came up with a simple solution to end the epidemic: Send troops "from Sochi to Crimea" to shoot all the birds dead. "This little song of theirs has to be broken," he said, adding, "This is not a joke!" Eight years later, Moscow did indeed dispatch soldiers to Crimea. Their agenda, however, did not include birds. The Ukrainian peninsula was forcibly seized by Russia and a deepening crackdown is under way to silence critics in Crimea denouncing their peninsula's illegal takeover. An official vote tally from Serbias April 24 general election has confirmed that incumbent pro-European Union parties have won a landslide victory. But the results also show pro-Russian nationalists are returning to parliament for the first time since 2012. With 96 percent of the ballots counted, the state electoral commission said the Progressive Party of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic had won 48 percent. Vucics Socialist coalition partner got 11 percent of the vote. Two right-wing parties lagged far behind -- the Radical Party with 8 percent and DSS-Dveri with 5 percent. But both of those parties won enough votes to have deputies in Serbias 250-seat parliament. Three pro-Western opposition parties -- the Democrats, the Social Democrats, and the new reformist party Dosta Je Bilo (It's Enough) -- were each hovering slightly above the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in parliament. With reporting by RFE/RLs Balkan Service, AP, Reuters, AFP, dpa, and B-92 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 ON MY MIND Russia's media landscape is probably about to get a lot more barren. If the Kremlin manages to wrestle RBK from Mikhail Prokhorov -- and let's face it, is there anything that can stop it? -- then Russia will lose one of its last solid, independent media outlets. We've seen this movie before. We saw it with NTV during Vladimir Putin's first months in the Kremlin. We've seen it more recently with Lenta.ru and with RIA-Novosti. And we've seen constant pressure on Dozhd-TV and Ekho Moskvy. And now, we're apparently about to see it with RBK. The Kremlin used to allow independent media outlets to exist as something of a safety valve. But now, the regime apparently doesn't even want them around for that. IN THE NEWS Six members of a single family were killed in the village of Ivashevka in the Samara region. Uzbek President Islam Karimov arrives in Moscow for a two-day visit today. U.S. President Barack Obama says he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agree that Western sanctions against Russia should remain in place until Moscow fulfills the Minsk cease-fire agreement. Nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky marks his 70th birthday today. WHAT I'M READING Russia's New Human Rights Commissioner Russia's new human rights commissioner, Tatiana Moskalkova, has a rather creative take on human rights. In her first interview after being confirmed by the State Duma, Moskalkova said one of her main priorities would be defending the rights of Russians abroad. Dmitry Rogozin's Money In a new report, The Offshore Patriot, Transparency International shines the light on Dmitry Rogozin's business dealings. U.S. Lawmakers Want To Get Tough With Russia The U.S. House of Representatives' Armed Services Committee meets this week to mark up the defense budget. According to a report in The Hill, lawmakers look to get tough on Russia. "At the top of lawmakers' measures against Russia in the National Defense Authorization Act is the European Reassurance Initiative, which is designed to provide aid to the militaries of European allies worried about Moscow's moves. The bill would authorize $3.4 billion for the initiative, the same amount the administration requested and quadruple what the initiative got this year. The bill also supports the National Commission on the Future of the Armys recommendation to permanently station an armored brigade combat team in Europe, staffers said this week. The Army already plans to send one brigade, but on a continuous rotation. A permanently stationed brigade, supporters say, would be a stronger deterrence. The bill would also authorize $150 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which would help train and equip that country's military. Prokhorov In The Crosshairs? As Vladimir Putin was holding his live call-in program on April 14, the FSB raided the offices of the Oneksim Group, a holding company owned by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. The move was widely interpreted as an effort to pressure one of Russia's last remaining independent media outlets, RBK, which is owned by Prokhorov. Last week, RBK's Editor in Chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya left her post to go on "study leave." And over the past weekend, reports appeared in the media that Prokhorov was preparing to sell RBK. Prokhorov is denying those reports, but the story is developing. The Khodorkovsky Case According to Russian media reports, Interpol is asking Moscow for information on allegations that exiled oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was involved in the assassination of the mayor of Nefteyugansk in the 1990s. Western Journalists Deported Two Western journalists have reportedly been deported or denied entry into Russia in the past week. According to Kommersant, Nizhny Novgorod's migration service deported a British journalist who they said violated the terms of his visa. An Austrian journalist who was helping train Russian reporters wrote on Twitter that he was denied entry into Russia last week. Sean Guillory's Letter To The Russian elite. After appearing on The Power Vertical Podcast last week, Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies posted a "letter to the Russian elite" on his blog. Uzbek President Islam Karimov is due to arrive in the Russian capital on April 25 at the start of a two-day official visit. Talks in Moscow between Karimov and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to focus on ways to boost bilateral ties as well as regional and global issues, according to the Kremlin. Karimov has been in power since before the Central Asian nation gained independence from Moscow in the 1991 Soviet breakup. He rules Uzbekistan with an iron fist, tolerating little if any dissent. A recent U.S. State Department report accused Uzbek security forces of torture and abuse of detainees. Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS 12 A Syrian boy who was evacuated with others from two rebel-besieged towns in northwestern Idlib Province is seen standing inside a hospital that was struck by an explosion on the outskirts of the Sayeda Zeinab district, south of Damascus. (Reuters/Omar Sanadiki) News / National by Staff reporter Zanu-PF claims that next month's "million men" march being organised by its youth league is meant to show solidarity with President Robert Mugabe even though organisers have said it was targeted at Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.The youths intend to stage a demonstration in the capital, Harare, in May which Mnangagwa's allies fear was targeted at the Midlands godfather.This comes as Mnangagwa is under the cosh from Zanu-PF's ambitious young Turks who accuse him of seeking to stampede the 92-year-old leader out of power.But Simon Khaya Moyo yesterday said while the party backed the controversial march, it was not meant to embarrass any of the party's leadership."To say the march is an anti-VP' demonstration is not only misleading but also thoroughly mischievous," Khaya Moyo said."From the Zanu-PF point of view, the youth demonstration is not against any leader of the party but in solidarity with the president for his excellent leadership qualities that he has exhibited over the years and we certainly support such a noble cause."Any other insinuations must therefore be dismissed with the contempt that they deserve because Zanu-PF is for unity and our motto is unity, freedom and peace and we live by that."The Zanu-PF information chief spoke as the party's youth league reported that war veterans and some party bigwigs aligned to the embattled vice president were attempting to sabotage the march.Manicaland Zanu-PF deputy secretary for information and publicity, Passionate Dandajena, revealed in an interview with the Daily News last Friday that Team Lacoste ex-combatants were working hard to derail the march."Our efforts to fundraise for the march are being frustrated by a group of war veterans led by Comrade (war veterans' leader Christopher) Mutsvangwa."But we will not be derailed and will achieve our mission in spite of their opposition," Dandajena said. St. Marks Episcopal Church, founded within a year of the end of the Civil War, celebrated its 150th anniversary Sunday with a call to continue to meet challenges to faithfulness, diversity and inclusiveness yet to come. Some of those challenges we cant even predict or imagine now, Bishop Susan E. Goff, suffragan of the Diocese of Virginia, told the congregation. But just as the founders of St. Marks could not have imagined a racially integrated congregation, the parish must keep going to the edges to open the arms of the church wider and wider, she said. Your DNA was established in a time of great challenge as Richmond was being rebuilt, she said. From the start, the congregation has faced those hard challenges, she said. In 1967, St. Marks was the first Episcopal church in Richmond to integrate, welcoming parishioners from Osgood Memorial Episcopal Church into the congregation when they were displaced by the building of the Downtown Expressway. In the 1980s, St. Marks help found the Richmond AIDS Ministry, and it was among the first Episcopal churches in the nation to perform wedding ceremonies for all couples, she said. Addressing issues about diversity will continue this week, Goff said, as the diocese begins discussions on what needs to be done to bring about the full inclusion of transgender people in church schools and summer camps. St. Marks was founded in 1866, originally as a mission church of St. Jamess, and met for the first 50 years in Jackson Ward. In 1922, St. Marks moved to its current home on the Boulevard, a Georgian Revival-style church with a gleaming steeple near the Virginia Historical Society. About 225 people attended the 150th celebration service, which was followed by a reception in the parish hall. It was a homecoming for Philip and Susan Webb, who were married at the church 50 years ago this past Saturday. Its just as beautiful as it has always been, said Susan Webb, who grew up in the church. The couple were members until about 30 years ago, when they moved to Hanover County. Goff noted that the parishioners chose not to have a huge blowout party. Instead, the church is engaging with the community, looking at the dark side, the shadow side of your history and focusing on racial reconciliation, she said. Youre connected and youre down-to-earth as youre looking to the 151st and beyond. St. Marks rector, the Rev. J. David Niemeyer, said the church plans workshops on countering racism and a reading program to help inner-city third-graders. When integration was begun in the 1960s, this church was divided because there were those who were not prepared. That was a dark moment, he said, because some parishioners left the church. Goff described the church as transformed and transforming. A former Chesterfield County tax preparer and unsuccessful clerk of court candidate in 2014 was sentenced to two years in prison Monday for wire fraud, tax fraud and theft of government property. David Wayne Schneider pleaded guilty in January to the charges stemming from a scheme in which he and unspecified others filed at least 129 fraudulent tax returns claiming $515,104 in tax benefits over a five-year period. Schneider admitted that in tax years 2010 and 2011 he claimed he had no taxable income when he had more than $100,000 in gambling winnings in each year. He also admitted wrongfully receiving disability and Medicare benefits. He lived a nice lifestyle because of his fraud. He has numerous luxury cars and lives in a home valued at $338,100, prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. In all, he defrauded the government out of $836,167 to which he was not entitled and must pay back in restitution. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer, who allowed Schneider to report to authorities on May 23 to begin his prison term. Im sorry for what Ive done. Ive made a great mistake, Schneider told Spencer shortly before he was sentenced. Schneider unsuccessfully ran for clerk of the Chesterfield County Circuit Court in 2014, running as an independent and finishing a distant third in a four-person race. He owned a bail bonding company last year, but it was unclear if he remains in the business. Schneiders lawyer, John A. March, told Spencer that his client was trying to sell two homes and other assets to help make restitution. Spencer said Schneider had led an otherwise exemplary life. But the judge told him before sentencing, You cannot engage in fraud and deception at this level and just walk away from it. A Massachusetts man is facing charges after an Uber driver was assaulted Sunday on Interstate 95. Maxwell A. Sweeney, 22, of Mansfield, Mass., is charged with one count of strangling another causing wounding or injury and one count of vandalism to a vehicle. According to Virginia State Police, the Uber driver picked up two passengers in the 1900 block of West Main Street in Richmond. As the vehicle was traveling on I-95 near mile marker 56 in Chesterfield County shortly after 6 p.m., the driver was told to return to Richmond for another fare. As the vehicle was headed back to Richmond, one of the passengers in the back seat reached up and began choking the driver, police said. The driver was able to safely pull onto the shoulder, at which point the suspect ran away. The other passenger remained at the scene. The driver did not need medical treatment, but there were signs of an assault, police said. STAUNTON The nations only all-female corps of cadets has marked its 20th anniversary. The Virginia Womens Institute for Leadership at Mary Baldwin College celebrated the milestone Friday with a parade, reception and military ball. The program started with 42 cadets. Since then, 379 women have graduated from the institute, attaining leadership positions in all branches of the U.S. armed forces as well as in the public and private sectors. News / National by Staff reporter President Robert Mugabe has returned home from New York where he was invited for the signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change by the United Nations Secretary General Ban ki Moon and to attend the High Level Thematic Meeting on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Mugabe who was accompanied by the Minister of Environment, Water and Climate Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri and Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, was received on arrival by the two vice presidents Cdes Phelekezela Mphoko and Emmerson Mnangagwa, Minister of State for Harare Metropolitan province Miriam Chikukwa, cabinet ministers Dr Sydney Sekeramayi, Kembo Mohadi, Chris Mushowe and Joram Gumbo and service chiefs.In New York, President Mugabe addressed the General Assembly on SDGs saying while Zimbabwe is making its own efforts to mobilise home resources, developed countries should also play their part in helping the developing world to attain the goals.Minister Mumbengegwi felt that Zimbabwe was highly honoured when the President was asked to co-chair the meeting on sustainable development.Besides participating in the High Level Meeting on SDGs, the President was part of the large turnout of heads of state and government who signed the Paris Agreement on climate change, where Zimbabwe has already taken steps towards the implementation of climate change through the various measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions, the use of solar and other forms of renewable energy and establishment of irrigation schemes on the many dams that exist in the country.President Mugabe's participation at the United Nations forums and other international platforms are a source of attraction to many as it is often viewed as the voice of the voiceless for many in the developing world and the oppressed. CHRISTIANSBURG The former assistant director of Montgomery County Social Services pleaded guilty to felony embezzlement Monday for using a county credit card to pay for $200,000 worth of personal purchases. The credit card was intended to be used to help needy families. Pamela Elaine Basham, 43, spent public funds on extravagant things like iPads, child toys, vacuums, home decor items, video games, GPS devices and groceries, county Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Jessica Preston told Judge Robert Turk Monday. The prosecutor said investigators have found purchase orders dating back to 2005 for items that were supposed to go to families Social Services helped, but never did. Basham initially denied the allegations to police, saying she had items she bought for work sent to her home out of convenience, according to Preston. The Christiansburg woman eventually admitted she had purchased items on the county credit card and requested a gift receipt so she could later return them to buy things for herself. The prosecutors summary of the evidence included a long list of items Basham was accused of buying with the county credit card, including a camera she bought shortly before going on a cruise, three iPad Minis and 13 unaccounted for car seats. When the discrepancies were discovered and Basham was put on suspension from work in April 2015, Preston said Basham tried to return several items including three replacement iPad Minis she had purchased to the departments office. Police searched Basham's home in May 2015 and seized several items they were looking for, including two trash cans, a baby gate and a door mat. Basham's last day of employment at the organization was April 30, Social Services Director Larry Lindsey has said. Basham was originally charged with 12 counts of felony embezzlement, but prosecutors dropped six counts on Monday. Basham hardly spoke at all during Monday's hearing, answering Turk's questions with yes and no responses. and pleaded guilty to the remaining charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 120 years in prison. There was no deal attached to her plea, so Turk will determine her sentence at a scheduled July 11 hearing. Preston also told Turk prosecutors intend to seek restitution payments for all the stolen items, including those represented by the charges dropped on Monday. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday blasted Gov. Terry McAuliffes order restoring voting rights for 206,000 felons, calling it an example of crooked politics that could tilt the race in Virginia. Trump referenced Fridays sweeping executive action by McAuliffe, a Democrat, during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. Theyre giving 200,000 people that have been convicted of heinous crimes, horrible crimes, the worst crimes, the right to vote, Trump said. Because you know what? They know theyre going to vote Democrat. And that could be the swing. Thats how disgusting and dishonest our political system is. McAuliffe has said his order will allow ex-offenders to fully rejoin society and end a harsh voting restriction that has roots in racial discrimination against African-Americans. The order applies to violent and nonviolent felons. Its difficult to gauge how many of the 206,000 might vote, because the order applies to those who have not applied to have their rights restored and to ex-offenders who may have moved out of the state. Recent polling showed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, a close McAuliffe ally, beating Trump 44 percent to 35 percent in Virginia. Clinton praised McAuliffe on Twitter Friday, saying the governor is continuing to break down barriers to voting. On Monday, Trump called Virginia a very close state. I would win Virginia. I have a lot of employees, a tremendous amount of property in Virginia, said Trump, who owns a winery in Albemarle County and a golf course in Loudoun County. Trump donated $25,000 to McAuliffes 2009 campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Later that year he donated the same amount to Gov. Bob McDonnell, the GOP nominee for governor. Trump narrowly won Virginias Republican primary on March 1 over Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has since dropped out of the race. As in other states, Trump hasnt done as well in the behind-the-scenes jockeying for delegates to the partys national convention. Thirteen of the states 49 delegates will be chosen at this weekends state convention at James Madison University in Harrisonburg. The Washington Post has reported that Trump is planning to attend the event to woo delegates in person, but the state party has not confirmed that Trump will be involved. In a Twitter message Monday afternoon, the university said there had been no contact between the university and the Trump campaign. Editorial: McAuliffe's vigilante justice on felon voting rights Gov. Terry McAuliffes order restoring the voting rights of more than 200,000 felons is the Schapiro: McAuliffe uses executive power to paint Virginia blue McAuliffe's surprise announcement has Republicans seeing red - not just the partisan color-code variety - and is certain to make Virginia's already-bitter politics more so. Earlier this year a delegation of Virginia business leaders traveled to Cuba to explore the potential for commerce there, now that the Obama administration has eased relations between the two countries. At one point, Cuban officials tried to reassure them by vowing that foreign investment could not be expropriated except for reasons of public or social interest. Some reassurance. But having your money, plants or equipment stolen at gunpoint is not the only peril facing American companies in the Castro Brothers island paradise. Just ask Carnival Cruise Lines. The company recently, and wisely, made a hasty retreat from its announced policy of not allowing Cuban-Americans to take cruises to Cuba. We are not making this up. The company blamed the Cuban government, which restricts how and whether Cuban-Americans can visit. Carnival was just following orders, you see. Whats more, Cuba does not recognize the American nationality of Cuban-Americans who were either born in Cuba or born to Cuban emigres. In fact, the U.S. government warns such individuals that they will be treated solely as Cuban citizens and may be subject to a range of restrictions and obligations, including military service. In some instances, Cuba has even refused to allow such dual-nationals to return to the U.S. Cubas reprehensible treatment of its own political dissidents is well-known. So is its treatment of gays and lesbians, who at one time were routinely sent to labor camps for the crime of being gay. That is no longer the case today, and the Cuban regime has tried to reinvent itself as a paradise of gay liberation. That false front is one its critics view, correctly, as little more than pinkwashing. Its jarring to watch the American business community boycott North Carolina over that states new law regarding LGBT individuals while racing to see who can open up shop in Cuba, where discrimination is even worse. News / Regional by Leonard Ncube A 37-year-old Zimbabwean living illegally in Botswana has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a Motswana in a drunken argument over money. According to Botswana paper The Voice, Lungisani Ndlovu, is from Kezi in Matabeleland South.Ndlovu was charged with one count of unlawful wounding after he pleaded guilty to knifing Otsile Mangadi, 29, three times on the thigh, when he appeared before magistrate Thebeetsile Christian Mulalu.In his appeal for bail, Ndlovu said his house in Bluetown is unoccupied and pleaded with the court to release him so that he can hand over his property to a friend.However, Mulalu ruled against him and remanded him in custody to today for sentencing. Prosecuting, Meshack Mothusi urged the court to deny Ndlovu bail saying that he was an obvious flight risk."He entered Botswana illegally through an undesignated point near Siyiya and our fear is that he might do the same and return to his native country before the finalisation of this matter," said Mothusi.The prosecutor said the crime took place on April 4 at a drinking spot in Francistown's Riverside North. "The two men had been drinking together but started arguing about money that Ndlovu claimed the victim owed him," said the prosecutor.It is alleged Ndlovu reacted to Mangadi's refusal to acknowledge the debt by stabbing him three times in the right thigh. Ndlovu had been staying in the country illegally for almost a year. Details about how much Ndlovu was owed were not stated in court. Like that of many Americans, my understanding of transgender people has been limited. I knew they existed, but none were included in my circle of friends. Today is different. My journey in understanding the world of transgender men and women is much further along that it was few a years ago, but it is an ongoing process. Matters of sexuality and gender identity can be complicated, but as a society that continues to educate itself, we have made great advances in understanding issues that at one time scared us. When a baby is born, the child is deemed male or female depending on what sex organs are present. Gender identity, connecting with the feelings of identifying as male or female, is typically set by age three. Most of us identify in accordance with the sex organs we have, but some people do not. Thus begins the life of a transgender person. Last spring I had dinner with a family I had recently met. The son was a young man any parents would be proud to call theirs. He was smart, bright, outgoing, funny, and headed to college. It was twenty minutes into the conversation when I realized he was transgender. Few social issues have caused such heated conversations as those of transgender rights, with most discussion being about what restrooms transgender people should use. So, in writing this column, I reached out to my dinner companions, Xander Chapman, his mother Michelle, and Xanders friend, Taylor Bennett. Here we go again. I had met Taylor several times before but it was only during our conversation about this column that I realized she was transgender and I realized it only because she told me. Neither Xander nor Taylor would face harm by using the restrooms in which they feel comfortable. Xander has the look of the all-American guy and Taylor is as much a young woman as any I know. Actually, the harm they would face is if they used bathrooms that some activists and legislators claim they should. If Xander used a public ladies room, assuredly someone would call the police. The people who face the most risk are folks who do not pass. Regardless of appearances, trans people should be able to use the restroom that feels most comfortable to them. Both Xander and Taylor knew at early ages that they were different, and so did their parents. When Michelles child acted much more like a boy than a girl, she accepted the fact that her child was a lesbian. It was years later that the family learned the youth was actually transgender. As a middle-school child, Xander had been fighting depression for years. Being a butch dyke in a rural high school was painful. The bullying was unrelenting and coming home in tears every day, talking of wanting to die, had become more than Michelle and her husband could bear. So for a year, Michelle home-schooled her child. Finally the depression became so severe that a psychiatric clinic was thought of as the only solution. It was there that Xander met a transgender man. They told me about themselves and what a transgender man was. I was so intrigued and the more I learned, the more I knew that was me. Soon afterwards, Xander called his mother and said, Throw out all the dresses and bring me some man deodorant. Since accepting himself as transgender, Xander s life has become much more manageable although the on-going battles have not ended. As transgender woman Kerri Abrams told me, the morning after her final surgery her doctor asked how she was feeling. I told her I felt the same as I had always felt, that I felt like a woman. I was and always had been a woman. The bathroom issue has caused bad legislation to be introduced in several states, including Virginia. And those bad bills are based on a lack of understanding. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit recently ruled in favor of the U.S. Education Departments position that transgender students should have access to bathrooms that match their gender identities rather than being forced to use bathrooms that match their biological sex. Those who claim that transgender people and their families make these life-altering decisions on a whim have not done their homework. Those accusations are reckless and endanger the lives of all children, not just those who are transgender. While many transgender issues are complicated, the basic knowledge is not. We no more choose our gender identities that we choose our skin colors, and we decided years ago that separate restrooms based on race were immoral. We have the responsibility to make sound and just decisions based on fact and knowledge, not scare tactics that have no base of truth. Science is starting to shed some light on the curiously continuous cycle of moral outrages. One week, its students protesting the use of Woodrow Wilsons name. The next, its Icelanders hurling yogurt at the parliament building. Then the social media world is aflame over the way Southwest Airlines employees forced a young man to leave a plane after he spoke on a cell phone in Arabic. And just last summer (but many outrages ago), comedian Jimmy Kimmel cried outraged tears over the shooting of a lion named Cecil. There are big mysteries here. Why are some people more prone than others to express moral outrage? Why are people set off by different triggers? Why is one animal killing or tax shelter a travesty and another business as usual? Psychologists say it all starts to make sense if you think of outrage as a form of display. Expressing it advertises a persons views and allegiances to potential allies. And the more popular a victims cause, the less risky it is to join in displaying your umbrage. *** In an attempt to test this display hypothesis, a group of psychologists from Yale created an outrage-provoking situation in the lab. One of two players was randomly handed some money and allowed to share it with the other player or not. The interesting part was the behavior of a third party, who acted as a bystander. The bystander, if outraged enough by the tightwad behavior of one of the players, could inflict punishment in the form of a fine. The bystander would gain no part of this fine and in fact would have to pay to inflict it and yet about 30 percent of the bystanders found it worth the cost. The punishers ended up profiting in the end, thanks to a subsequent game geared to measure trust. There, other players placed more trust in those who had inflicted fines on the tightwads. The psychologists published their findings last month in the journal Nature. They also popularized the display idea in a New York Times opinion piece, using it to explain an infamous incident involving a woman who provoked massive online attacks by tweeting a bad joke about race and AIDS. Whether or not they were conscious of it, these attackers were most likely advertising to their Twitter audiences that they were not racist. Not too surprisingly, this display itself offended various people for various reasons some who defended the original tweeter, others who wanted to demonstrate that they were sooooooo anti-racist that they found the detractors displays of anti-racism quite inadequate. And so we get the first round of meta-outrage. Psychologist Jillian Jordan, who led the Yale experiment, said she wasnt trying to suggest that people were faking outrage for the purpose of looking good. She believes people genuinely feel the outrage. The point was to explain the urge to share it so ostentatiously. *** In real-world cases, most people unconsciously tally costs and benefits, said Harvard psychologist Max Krasnow. There is a cost to outrage, in terms of social risk. The cost shrinks when there are more and more people expressing it in solidarity. If youre the only person lobbing yogurt at the Icelandic Parliament, you might well get arrested. But if youre part of a teeming mob, your collective display of outrage can lead to the ousting of the prime minister. Why do some incidents provoke almost universal outrage and others set off only those in certain age groups or of particular political leanings? One of the most universal sources of outrage is stealing or hoarding resources, said psychologist Eric Pederson. The theory is that this is ingrained in humans because our ancestors foraging cultures survived by sharing; if Joe helped himself to what others hunted and gathered, but then did not share his good fortune when he found berries or killed a wildebeest, hed get in deep trouble. Humanitys deeply rooted antipathy for cheaters helps explain the outrage over the alleged tax-evaders revealed by the Panama Papers. But in other cases, said psychologist Robert Boyd, the definition of whats outrageous is dictated by less objectively obvious cultural norms. Humans are wired to pick up cultural rules and norms, and to aim outrage at violators, he said. Cultural norms vary by political leanings, geography, and other factors. Often theres a large generation gap. Harvards Krasnow said it all comes back to the fact that displays are aimed at potential allies. An outraged person may have no personal tie to a given issue, but outrage can signal sympathy with those who do. This can be quite noble and selfless, not entirely self-serving; the two blur together in ways that allow human civilization to work to the extent that it does. Are people outrage-impaired if they didnt rail against the Cecil shooting, the bad AIDS joke, or Southwest Airlines? Not necessarily. In the case of the woman who told the bad AIDS joke, some of her detractors were later accused of bullying; they may have demonstrated heartlessness rather than sympathy. Its a complicated game were playing, Krasnow said, and sometimes the best strategy is to say nothing. It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search? Search for: Search A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. COVID-19 drove a dramatic increase in the number of women who died from pregnancy or childbirth complications in the U.S. last year, a crisis that has disproportionately claimed Black and Hispanic women as victims. A government report released Wednesday lays out grim trends across the country for expectant mothers and their newborn babies. It finds that pregnancy-related deaths have spiked nearly 80 percent since 2018, with COVID-19 being a factor in a quarter of the 1,178 deaths reported last year. The percentage of preterm and low birthweight babies also went up last year, after holding steady for years. And more pregnant or postpartum women are reporting symptoms of depression. It was a gorgeous day at Hidden Valley Middle School as the Eagles hosted Central Academy and Cave Spring Middle for the last track and field meet of the regular season on April 20. Athletes who qualified for the postseason will compete at the annual Cosmopolitan Invitational meet at William Fleming from April 28-30. For photos of the meet, see the photo gallery, or for a different view, click here. Opinion / Columnist In as much as MDC-T is aware of their constitutional right to demonstrate, they should also be quite cognisant of the dangers and effects that are brought about by political violence.Reading through an article in a local daily press, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of MDC-T boasts that he can't be stopped from his mass demonstrations. Yes, lawfully, Tsvangirai cannot be stopped but he has to show maturity and responsibility when handling such demonstrations. Most people will agree with me that it is lawful to demonstrate, but those demonstrations must be done peaceful.The fact that most MDC-T demonstrations end up into chaos is totally unacceptable. The recent demonstration that was held in Harare by that opposition party exposes the true inner picture of the MDC-T. It was reported in the media that a security guard was hospitalized after he was attacked by some of the MDC-T supporters. In that case, whoever struck that security guard within MDC-T, generally committed a crime. Therefore, police officers should be encouraged to arrest all those found guilty of such acts of political violence.Such cases of political violence should not be tolerated as they infringe in other people's freedom. The MDC-T should be reminded that not all people are MDC-T supporters; hence their mass protests should not affect other people's business.If these demonstrations block off the public highway, then they ceases to be peaceful. Surely, blocking traffic in the Central Business District (CBD) for close to an hour is also violating other people's rights of movement. Imagine how business was disturbed for an hour in the CBD. It is unfortunate that when MDC-T plans their mass demonstrations, they ignore the other side of non-MDC-T supporters but only think of themselves alone.Truthfully, it is not fair for MDC-T to disturb other people's business. It was reported that vendors who operates in the CBD were also disrupted because of that mass demonstration. Serious public disorder, damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community are some of the offences which can lead to arrest of these offenders.Zimbabwe is a peace loving country; therefore the peace that we have been enjoying since the country attained its independence should continue to exist.Consequently, MDC-T should be urged to abide by the rules and regulations of mass demonstrations to avoid future banning of the protests. It would be pointless for Tsvangirai and his cronies to held mass protests whilst on the other hand they will be putting other people's lives and businesses at risk.Before MDC-T holds its mass protests, Tsvangirai went to University of Zimbabwe (UZ) where he was inciting students to revolt against the government. Incitement is not a gate pass for one to win an election. Over the years, Tsvangirai has been inciting workers, vendors and other minority groups to rebel against the ruling government. However, people are not zombies; they are active participants who are aware of Tsvangirai's foolish antics.Tsvangirai has no solutions to the challenges that are currently bedeviling the nation. At one point Tsvangirai rightly noted that he has no solutions. As an opposition leader, Tsvangirai should have alternative solutions essential for improving the living standards of the people of Zimbabwe.How can Tsvangirai expect to win any election, if he has no solutions? As it stands, people are tired of Tsvangirai's campaigning strategies. The little number of people who marched on Tsvangirai's demonstration tells it that people are no longer interested in him.Even Tendai Biti, the leader of People's Democratic Party also lambasted Tsvangirai's demonstration describing it as a high sounding but useless political statement which does not improve people's lives. Bedford County Board of Supervisors Work session and regular meeting When: 5 p.m. Monday work session and 7 p.m. regular meeting Where: Bedford County Administration Office, 122 E. Main St., Bedford On the agenda: Visit www.co.bedford.va.us for details. Rocky Mount Town Council When: 7 p.m. Monday Where: Rocky Mount Municipal Building, 345 Donald Ave. On the agenda: Public hearing on proposed budget and tax rates for fiscal year 2017. Salem City Council Regular meeting When: 7:30 p.m. Monday Where: City Hall, 114 N. Broad St., Salem On the agenda: Members of the council will consider an ordinance revising the intergovernmental agreement to include Botetourt County in the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission. For more information, visit www.salemva.gov. Botetourt County Board of Supervisors Regular meeting and budget and tax rate public hearing When: 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday Where: 2 p.m. meeting, Rooms 226-228, Greenfield Education and Training Center, 57 S. Center Drive, Daleville; 7 p.m. public hearing, Lord Botetourt High School. On the agenda: Visit www.botetourtva.gov for details. Roanoke County Board of Supervisors Regular meeting, work session and public hearing When: 3 p.m. Tuesday Where: Roanoke County Administration Center, 5204 Bernard Drive S.W. On the agenda: Supervisors will vote on the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority budget for the next fiscal year and hold a public hearing on Apex Towers, which is requesting a special-use permit to build a cell tower. For more information, visit www.roanokecountyva.gov. Franklin County Board of Supervisors When: 6 p.m. Tuesday Where: Franklin County Government Center, 1255 Franklin St., Rocky Mount On the agenda: Adoption of the fiscal year 2016-17 county budget. Roanoke School Board Work session When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday Where: Central administration office, 40 Douglass Ave. N.W. On the agenda: Visit rcps.info for details. Roanoke County School Board Regular meeting When: 7 p.m. Thursday Where: School administration office, 5937 Cove Road On the agenda: For more information, visit www.rcs.k12.va.us. Opinion / Columnist I was relieved at the news that one of the secessionist group leaders, Fidelis Ncube, better known by his pseudonym and bogus title "General Nandinandi" unceremoniously resigned after the Mthwakazi cause failed to take off. But wait a minute! There is another renegade who remains a serious national security threat and his name is Paul Siwela.He is not new in the politics of separation and division. He was the founding member of Zapu Federal Party and Imbovane Yamahlabezulu a Ndebele name which means weevils. Both of these orgs were instruments of tribalism and separation. All former members of these groups, just like Nandinandi, have abandoned the Mthwakazi agenda and joined Zimbabwe political parties.I'm talking about house hold names like Lovemore Moyo, Qubani Moyo, Gordon Moyo, Sindiso Mazibisa and George Mkwanazi just to name a few. Siwela is the only one who remains stuck in the stagnant Mthwakazi agenda and refuses to be led by a Shona person.Where is runaway political criminal, Paul Siwela? What is he doing? Well it will very unwise to believe that such a bitter man who has spent time behind bars has totally abandoned his notoriety.Paul Siwela skipped the country running away from a court case. He, John Gazi and Charles Thomas were charged with treason. The trio was accused of plotting to topple President Mugabe after they found red handed distributing flyers that called for secession of Matabeleland from the rest of the country. He continues to post disturbing inflammatory posts on his face book wall from his hiding hall.In one of his controversial FB posts he wrote: "we are ready to hoist our new flag, unveil new coat of arms and national anthem as we prepare to lead the new independent state. We will assemble a 30 000 strong defense force that would include the ground force and 10 percent of that being the air force, 10 000 Matabeleland police force and 3000 Correctional service"You are not dreaming! The chief tribalist, Paul Siwela is creating a state within a state. This does not sound like a frightened fugitive in hiding it sounds more like a serious anarchist who is busy plotting to cause chaos in the country.Paul Siwela is leading a misguided group of Ndebeles which calls for Zimbabwe to be sliced into two equal pieces based on tribal lines. Gukuahundi is used as a trump card by these divisive elements. Surprisingly both gukurahundi and the so called Mthwakazi state are proven myths, but the lies spread by Paul Siwela and his little known side kick Israel Dube are slowly but surely gaining traction in Matabeleland. This is evidenced by young people in Matabeleland forming tribal groups to chase Shona teachers out of Matabeleland schools.According to our new constitution, Zimbabwe is a unitary state and secession is illegal. Justice fugitives like Paul Siwela should be kept in check. He has a potential to throw the country into political instability.Paul Siwela is a bitter rebel wihout a cause. The misplaced Mthwakazi agenda must not be allowed to see light of the day in our diverse unitary state. One Zimbabwe one country!The last time I checked, Ngome in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa where the likes of Siwela originate, was still a forest and unoccupied. Instead of causing strife and political instability in Zimbabwe they should go back and till that land.Concerned ZimbabweanTendai ChinembiriContact: tchimbs44@gmail.com Opinion / Columnist The greatest threat to this nation's very survival today is the worsening economic meltdown. It is a great pity that President Mugabe failed to address this threat during his last meeting with the war vets. The fact that someone like Secretary for War Veterans, Walter Tapfumaneyi, should think the greatest threat to the nation is from Grace Mugabe and her G40 faction being disrespectful of war vets shows how many of these war vets continues to live in their own make-believe world!"President Robert Mugabe "skillfully managed" a potentially volatile situation by meeting the country's former freedom fighters three weeks ago averting State capture, a senior government official has said," Bulawayo24 reported."Secretary for War Veterans Walter Asher Tapfumaneyi yesterday said that Mugabe's meeting with war veterans pre-empted "an untenable situation" following threats to the country's military establishment by a youthful faction within Zanu-PF. Without mentioning anyone by name, Tapfumaneyi said youthful members of the governing Zanu-PF party were attempting to discredit the military and war veterans."The greatest threat the nation is facing today is the serious economic meltdown which has seen unemployment soar to 90% plus, forced millions of our people in a life of abject poverty and despair, the country's health and education services have all but collapsed, etc. The economic hardships brought on by the economic meltdown has spared no one, most of the war vets demanded the meeting with President Mugabe to demand answers to their worsening economic situation.The factional fighting in Zanu PF is being fuelled the economic reality that the national cake has shrunk considerably when the appetites of the ruling elite has grown in leaps and bounces. Only a few can have a piece of the cake and those who get nothing face abject poverty like the rest of us. It is no wonder therefore that the factional wars in the party have been fierce.At the heart of the country's economic and political problems is the worsening economic meltdown and the situation is unsustainable and it is posing a serious threat to the stability and even survival of the nation.In the Zanu PF factional wars the G40 members have questioned the war vets' flaunting of their liberation war credentials to justified why they must continue to be granted privileges in the party. Without wanting to be dragged into the party's dirty dog-eat-dog fights one has to question Tapfumaneyi's poor judgement in comparing this trivial matter to the national crisis!If the "state capture" was averted because the war vets told President Mugabe they are the "stockholders" of Zimbabwe then the Secretary Tapfumaneyi is not only concerted but down right stupid. Whilst the nation owe a great debt of gratitude to all those who contributed in the war of independence, especially to those on the coal face of the struggle; the demand that the people give up their freedoms and basic rights including the right to free and fair elections in payment for the debt is a price no nation in its right mind will ever accept!The present arrangement where Zanu PF members and war vets have taken onto themselves the power to deny the rest of the population a meaningful vote and even the right to life is totally unacceptable. War vets have the one vote each same as everyone else; what they do not have the right to veto the democratic will of the people.The nation has failed to remove President Mugabe and Zanu PF from office in the past regardless of the people's democratic wish to do so because the regime has failed to hold free and fair elections. In the last 20 years the war vets have played a very prominent role in denying the people the free vote; this must stop forthwith!Forget Secretary Tapfumaneyi's misplace ego, the greatest threat to the nation today is the worsening economic situation and not G40 members question his right to a veto in party and national elections. We need to address the economic meltdown as a matter of great urgency and the only sure way to address it is for the nation to have free, fair and credible elections.It is not the continued rule by Zanu PF or the continued exercise of the veto power by war vets that is at issue here; it is the very survival of the nation. We are not going to risk the very survival of this great nation to gratify the insatiable greed for power and wealth of some tyrant or to tickle the misplace ego of egocentric fool. East Coast Talents is celebrating a recent milestone by one of its clients. Adult performer Amara Romani's first on-screen gangbang is featured in My Sisters First Gangbang from Digital Sin. Ive always thought about getting wrecked by multiple cocks. Digital Sin made me a very happy girl on this shoot. When I got the call from my agent I was more excited than nervous so I knew it was going to be a good time, Romani said. The pretty, slender brunette entered the industry less than a year ago and has been racking up box covers and scene credits for multiple high-profile companies. For booking inquires visit East Coast Talents online at EastCoastTalents.com. Follow Romani on Twitter @xxxamara. A WOMAN in her 90s was rescued by firefighters after a blaze in her sheltered accommodation. South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service was called to Blenheim Court, Markfield Drive, Flanderwell, at 8.35pm on Saturday. A crew from Rotherham station came away from the incident at 9.30pm and a fire service spokesman said it was caused by smoking material. A Blenheim Court representative said the woman was unharmed. Arsonists also torched two cars over the weekend. A Vauxhall people carrier was torched on Lodge Lane, Dinnington at 8.20am on Saturday morning. A crew from Aston station was at the scene for 45 minutes. An Audi Q7 parked on East Avenue in Wombwell was also deliberately set on fire on Monday morning. A crew from Dearne station was at the scene for ten minutes. The month of March began with the Union Budget 2016-17 being a damp squib as many areas in the gem & jewellery sector have not been addressed, including the 1% excise duty levy on jewellery. The Indian gem & jewellery industry was unhappy as many key issues that were put before the government was completely ignored. Some of the positives was the Inclusion of Separate HS Code (Harmonised Systems Code) for Lab grown diamonds and a separate one for the Natural Diamonds; Special Notified Zone (SNZ); proposal to reduce the rate of Corporate Tax from 30% to 25% and others were welcomed by the industry. Trading in the diamond market was rather slow during the month, with overseas demand not showing much promise. The demand from the Indian domestic market was also slow as the jewelers strike continued across the country. While there was steady demand from US, demand from Far East and Europe continued to be slow. Indian cutting & polishing centres improved their manufacturing levels, which indicated the increase in rough imports last month. Jewellery demand was also slow from overseas markets. Media reports mentioned that Indian diamond market has witnessed certain categories of polished diamond prices increase 4-5 per cent, amid shortage of goods. While demand from the US market is quite strong, exports of polished goods from India is expected to increase in the coming months. Though China slowdown has affected demand from the country, the Chinese market has also opened on a strong note after the New Years holiday. The Far East is gradually showing a renewed interest in diamonds as well, so on the whole it is expected that 2016 will be a comparatively better year for diamond companies. However, some section of the industry feel it is too early to say that the Indian diamond is picking up, as it is just improving a little on the manufacturing front. A sense of relief came over the industry from the February statistics that was announced by the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council of India (GJEPC) which indicated that after registering many months of declining exports, Indias cut & polished diamond exports for February 2016 amounted to $2.33 bn as against $2.29 bn in Feb 15, a rise of 2 percent. The Indian diamond industry, which has been severely hit for many months due to the global slowdown in the consuming markets, is slowly showing signs of revival. Rough imports recorded an increase of 37 percent to $1.54 bn for Feb 16 as against $1.12 bn in Feb 15. Rough exports showed an increase of 49 percent, registering $130.79 mn for Feb 16 as against $87.78 mn for Feb 15. For the month of Feb 16, cut & polished diamonds imported declined by 45.2 percent, recording about $222.1 mn as against $405.3 mn in Feb 15. During the month, the only celebration was GJEPC presented the India Gem & Jewellery Awards (IGJA) 2015 in Jaipurs Exhibition & Convention Centre. A total of 32 nomination awards and 5 felicitation awards were given away at GJEPC-IGJA 2015. A number of prominent industry leaders were present at a glittering event, including officials from the Government of Rajasthan and GJEPC's top representatives. In its attempt to strengthen the industry, GJEPC is constantly making attempts to bring the global diamond leaders including mining companies to work together for mutual benefit. A delegation from De Beers led by CEO Phillipe Mellier had detailed discussions with a team of senior GJEPC functionaries led by Chairman Praveenshankar Pandya when the former visited the offices of the GJEPC at the Bharat Diamond Bourse complex on 2 March. Besides offering GJEPCs support, other issues discussed by Pandya were related to pricing of rough diamonds and the need to control rough supplies; the need to ensure fixed supply on regular basis to the SMEs by selling in smaller lots; interaction with the banks to promote financing of the industry and the need to conduct generic promotions. In another move, GJEPC and BDB hosted a delegation from the Korean Diamond Exchange (KDE) on 5 Mar, and discussed steps to boost bilateral ties. The Indian cutting & polishing centres are known to be tech-friendly, in the sense that they are ready to absorb the newest technologies with great interest. Not surprising then that STPL, one of Indias leading diamond processing technology providers based in Surat, has been awarded the prestigious India Design Mark (i-Mark) award for its flagship product Lazer Nxt - a widely acclaimed machine for diamond processing. The Awards were distributed at a gala function held at J. N. Tata Auditorium, Bengaluru, on 4th March, 2016. This is STPLs second consecutive i-Mark award. Mining industry too has seen renewed interest in India in recent times. Vedanta Limited, a global diversified natural resource company, won the nations first-ever gold mining lease auctioned by the Chhattisgarh government. The gold mine at Baghmara, about 140 km north-east of Raipur, is one of the oldest explored deposit of the precious metal in Central India. An estimated reserve found during the initial prospecting for gold in the region, that spreads over 607 hectares, is 2700 kg. In another mining news, the erstwhile closed Bharat Gold Mines Ltd (BGML) will soon be acquired by the State government in Karnataka (Southern India) from the Central government of India. Karnataka will acquire the BGML assets through its own mining company, Hutti Gold Mines. A joint venture will then be formed with a private company called JMJ Minerals, comprising former BGML workers, which will provide the administrative, financial and technological support required to take up shallow mining at KGF. The Centre has also agreed to waive about $255 mn liabilities that BGML is facing. The Rio Tinto diamond mining project in India, as of now, remains in limbo. The recent terrorist attack in Brussels had the Indian diamond industry shaken, as many innocent lives were lost and several people injured. While GJEPC expressed its solidarity with the Belgium citizens especially diamond industry of Belgium, Prime Minister Modi met with the huge diaspora of Indian diamond fraternity which is settled in Belgium and operates out of their offices based there. The Indian Governments Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS), which was launch on November 5 last year, has still not seen much progress. The Indian Bullion and Jewellers Association (IBJA), has also proposed a scheme where jewellers can act as a collection and purity testing centers; and mobilise idle gold which can be used productively. IBJA had proposed to open 1000 such centers across country. But, the outcome of this will be known in the coming months. The strike of the Indian jewellers against imposition of excise duty on jewellery in the recent Union Budget was just chaotic, with confusion galore. But Arun Jaitley, Finance minister, Government of India (GOI) has offered to walk the extra mile to ensure that small traders were not harassed, but made it clear that luxury items cannot go untaxed. However, the strike by gold traders over the imposition of 1% excise has actually helped the government as imports of the metal are expected to be cut sharply in March from a year earlier, keeping the current account deficit (CAD) under control. The strike has also brought down the premium on gold. Indias CAD is likely to narrow to 0.7% of GDP in the current financial year from 1.3% in FY15 owing to lower commodity prices. Another step taken by the government, empowers it to make hallmarking of gold and silver mandatory and provides for jail up to two years and fine up to 10 times of the goods' value in case of violation related to misuse of standards. The Parliament, on 8 Mar, passed a bill to replace the 30 year- old Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act. For some, life goes on strike or no strike. The Indian jewellery chain, Kalyan Jewellers announced its foray into Qatar. Kalyan has been steadily expanding its presence in the GCC region since it launched its international operations. In two years the company has opened over 40 showrooms in India and the GCC region. Kalyan Jewellers is also slated to achieve a milestone of 100 showrooms by the first half of the year. The online jeweller Bluestone is set to raise $30mn to fund an expansion plan but will not go in for brick n mortar stores. The company feels that giving customers the option of trying out the jewellery at home rather than open stores is better. With Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) at $ 45.10 million, the jewellery portal is now getting ready to raise US $30 million from its existing and new investors. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished Tanzania said the Arusha Gem Fair earned $3.9 million from the sale of gemstones last year despite the global economic challenges. Arusha urban district commissioner Fadhili Nkulu who was the guest of honour at the fair told dealers and buyers that tanzanite accounted for about 80 percent of the total sales recorded. The remainder was shared by other minerals, gems, and jewellery. The revenue realised was not far from what was recorded in 2013 when the fair raised $4.3 million from sales of gemstones. Meanwhile Nkulu said Tanzania would go ahead with its plans to construct the long awaited mineral trading center in Arusha, which would provide reliable local markets for diamonds, gemstones and gold. The building complex would be built by the Ministry of Energy and Minerals in partnership with the Arusha International Conference Center (AICC). It would have helicopter pads, banking and insurance institutions, mineral cutting and polishing factories, auction centers and exhibition halls. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, from Arusha, Tanzania, Rough&Polished Zimbabwes mines ministry is said to have inked a new deal with the Diamond Mining Company paving way for the Lebanese-owned company to resume operations in Marange. Mines minister Walter Chidhakwa said DMC had agreed to cede 50 percent of its shares to Harare. We went into discussions and had an agreement to take over 50% of the company. We signed the agreement and the mining team is on site. In fact they have been mining for the past one-and-half weeks, he was quoted as saying by a local daily, News Day. Chidhakwa said DMC had not resisted governments decision to cancel diamond companies licences unlike other miners who approached the court to set aside the directive. The southern African country recently ordered mining companies in Marange to seize operations citing the expiry of their mining licences and refusal to form part of the newly established Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC). The latest development was shocking as Harare had vowed to merge diamond operations in the country and Marange in particular. Just last week the mines minister said that ZCDC was set to take over the Russian partly-owned DTZ-OZGEOs diamond claims in Charleswood, Chimanimani. He said the company would compensate DTZ-OZGEO for all the machinery and equipment after evaluation. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, from Arusha, Tanzania, Rough&Polished LOS ANGELES, CA Award winning performer Angela White has released her 100th scene on AngelaWhite.com. Reaching 100 updates on AngelaWhite.com is a real milestone, so I decided to make it a big one: my first gangbang. The gangbang was first released on Angela Vol. 2, which was my biggest movie to date," White said. The gangbang is now available to AngelaWhite.com members to stream or download in a number of formats, including full HD, and is accompanied with previously unreleased photos. White wrote on her site about the update, "Thank you so much for accompanying me on this incredible sexual journey. I generally avoid using the f word, but this is, by far, my favourite scene. And it might actually be the greatest thing Ive ever done for myself. This gangbang is my own fantasy fulfilled, on my own terms. As the director and producer, I was in control of everything from the location, wardrobe, and makeup to the cast, acts performed, and their intensity. The experience went beyond my expectations to become one of the highlights of my life. To some that may sound like hyperbole, but I can honestly say that I have never felt more powerful or more confident than I did after my gangbang. Our society shies away from acknowledging the ways in which sexual experience can be a form of catharsis and validation, and my gangbang was a continuation of an artistic practice of self-discovery, self-creation, and perpetual becoming. In terms of the acts performed, I never anticipated that I could do double vaginal, double anal, or triple penetration. I truly didnt believe that we had achieved those things until I watched the footage for myself. But to reduce this update to the spectacle of those moments misses the beauty of this scene. Knowing that I had no reason to be scared allowed me to embrace my fear. Knowing that I could stop the action at any moment made me yearn for it to never end. Knowing that I had complete control enabled me to completely lose control." AngelaWhite.com features exclusive content produced and directed by White. The site contains a mixture of solo, girl/girl and boy/girl content, including Whites first anal, interracial, and double penetration scenes. Producing and directing my own scenes allows me to truly explore my sexuality on my own terms, White explains. I also do regular live webcam shows through my site, which is a great way for me to interact with my members and get their feedback about the site and my scenes. 2016 is going to be another big year for AngelaWhite.com, and Im looking forward to wowing fans with the next 100 updates! The 2016 Kimberley Process (KP) Chair issued a communication informing all KP Participants and Observers that the Central African Republic region of Berberati in the southwest of the country has been declared a "Compliant Zone" as per the requirements of the Administrative Decision and Operational Framework for Resumption of Exports of Rough Diamonds from the Central African Republic (CAR). The KP Monitoring Team for CAR is currently in the process of agreeing with the country's KP Authority on a schedule for the team's monthly inspections of export shipments from Berberati. Anticipating these developments, the European Commission has adopted the Regulation in order to allow the EU to accept any possible imports from the Berberati. The letter also states that the largest diamond buying house in the country (Sodiam) has agreed to continue their operations despite their earlier announcement declaring they intended to close. No schedule for monthly export shipments from Berberati has been established yet, AWDC reported. Alex Shishlo, Editor of the Rough&Polished European Bureau in Brussels Tanzanite Experience said the ban on exports of rough tanzanite stones larger than 5 carats has helped the jewellery-making company boost its revenues.Company sales supervisor Theresa Kalaghe told Rough & Polished on the sidelines of the just ended Arusha Gem Fair, in Tanzania that although they were benefitting from the ban, government should promote lapidary joins to fend off smuggling.When you export rough tanzanite, you dont get much, but when you cut it you add value and beauty, so automatically your revenue becomes higher, she said.The government should maintain the ban and put more lapidary joins to cut the stones in the country because if you ban the rough tanzanite without enough places for cutting and polishing the gemstones, that will open doors for the smuggling of tanzanite.Tanzania introduced the ban late 2010 in a bid to promote value addition on its gemstones as well as frustrate smuggling.The ban was felt as far as Asia as most factories that were depended on the countrys gemstones were left in the cold.Smuggling of tanzanite had been taking place through Kenya, she said.Meanwhile, a marketing manager with Mainland Gemstone, Idd Kawamba, told Rough & Polished that the ban should be lifted as the country does not have enough places to cut and polish the gemstones.The ban on big rough gemstones is a challenge to us [dealers], he said.We (Tanzanians) are not the real users of the gemstones, the users are out there. Even if we keep the stones locally and make jewellery no one can afford now, maybe the locals will be in a position to buy a $5 million ring after some years. Its a problem for us if the exportation rules remain stringent.He also said that the previous dominance of TanzaniteOne on the tanzanite market made it difficult for small players to stay afloat.They dominated the market with their own prices, but right now its a different story, as there is some business for us, said Kawamba.Richland Resources was forced to give up a 50 percent stake in TanzaniteOne to government through its investment vehicle, Stamico despite initial resistance.Richland eventually exited the tanzanite business in Tanzania citing governments failure to stop illegal mining around its blocks by neighbouring small-scale miners. Israel Diamond Exchange (IDE) President Yoram Dvash has spoken about the potential of marketing diamonds on eBay during a seminar to provide eBay course graduates with extra tools for marketing diamonds on the global sales site. eBay, which has sales of $100 billion a year, is cooperating with the Israel Diamond Exchange, and that is unprecedented in the world. Our collaboration with eBay is bearing fruit, explains Dvash, adding that the IDE will launch a new and unique additional Internet marketing venture for exchange members. He added: "We are in continuous touch with eBay and talk nearly every week. It's no secret that there are issues that we struggle with, but I see the difficulties from close up and am aware of them. However, it takes time for the eBay system to make changes and adapt the site for exchange members. But what is important for us is that the system has detected the diamond sector as potentially a very large industry and I am optimistic about the future." Business Division Manager at eBay Israel Elad Goldenberg added: It's not a minor thing to see the cooperation of a traditional industry with eBay in this manner. Yoram wondered whether to share this model with other countries, which is something that eBay is examining. As a result of the collaboration with the exchange, and understanding the needs of the members, we went to United States and asked to make changes. We know it's not perfect, and we are in contact with Yoram Dvash, and Director-General Eli Avidar in order to give you solutions. Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow Gemstone dealers in Tanzania have refuted claims that they are involved in the smuggling of precious minerals. Smuggling of gemstones had been rife in the East African country with the acting commissioner of minerals Ally Namaje saying tanzanite gemstones worth $1.3 million were seized while being smuggled out of the country last year. An auction of the seized gemstones and minerals ended Thursday morning on the sidelines of the Arusha Gem Fair with government expecting revenue not less than $1 million. A dealer told Rough & Polished on condition of anonymity on the sidelines of the annual Arusha Gem Fair that most of the dealers were law abiding business people. There has been a lot of negative publicty against us for the past few months, the press had been going after us, he said. There is no dealer who is smuggling, I think the government has to come out and support uswhen am asked what I do I just say I am a farmer or something, I cant tell anyone that am gemstone dealer because people think we are smugglers." We are not smugglers, we are licenced and taxpayers, he says. The dealer said it was impossible to smuggle gemstones without the border control officials or security knowing. The people who are tasked to protect our borders are the ones who should be held responsible, not us, he said. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, from Arusha, Tanzania, Rough&Polished The first-ever association representing the lab grown diamond companies now has members from across eight countries, says a press note from the organization. The International Grown Diamond Association (IGDA), an industry-wide association formed by diamond growers, lab-grown diamond distributors, suppliers, retailers and technical experts. Numined Diamonds, Fair Trade Jewellery Co., The Gold Concept Jewelry and Design, Caraxy, M. Geller, Schubach Enterprises, D.NEA and DM Gems India are now IGDA members. Patron Member and secretary general, Richard Garard who is also the CEO of the Microwave Enterprises, (US) said, We are very pleased to welcome new members to our association. With nearly 20 lab-grown diamond companies registered as IGDA members, we now have lab-grown diamond companies from the US, China, Singapore, India, Philippines, Russia, Canada and Hong Kong which truly makes us an international industry platform. We will continue to work with all our members and ensure that precise & technically correct information about lab-grown diamonds is available to both, trade and consumers. According to the press note, such lab-grown diamond producers and IGDA members as IIa Technologies, Microwave Enterprises, Washington Diamonds, New Diamond Technology, Scio Diamond, Golcondia, Pure Grown Diamonds, Polished Diamond Company, Diamond Foundry, MiaDonna & Company and Chatham Created Gems & Diamonds will be instrumental in their contribution to support the lab-grown diamond industry and IGDA initiatives. IGDA intends to represent the lab-grown diamond industry, promote lab-grown diamonds as a new choice and educate about various qualities and applications of lab-grown diamonds. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished Diamond prices will need 1.5-2 years to recover CEO of ALROSA 25 april 2016 News (FINMARKET.RU) After rough diamond prices dropped by 15% in 2015, they will need 1.5-2 years to bounce back, in the opinion of Andrey Zharkov, head of ALROSA. "We expect the market to stabilize in 2016, but in any case prices will require a year and a half or two years to recover," he said in an interview to Yakutiya24, a news agency of Yakutia. Diamond miners posted higher sales in the first quarter of this year, reflecting the transition of the market to a restocking phase. ALROSA earned at least $ 1.3 billion in diamond sales revenue in January-March of 2016 (vs. $ 1.1 billion in the previous year). In April, the Russian company lowered prices (by 1-2%) in its trading session with long-term customers for the first time since September. De Beers also improved performance in January, February and April (missing out a sight in March), but the companys CEO Philippe Mellier warned that the market was entering the period of seasonal weakening. Andrey Zharkov noted that amid falling demand in the market in 2015 ALROSAs sales system under long-term contracts, which guarantees stable supplies for the company and its customers protecting them against price volatility, reaffirmed its effectiveness. In 2015, 66% of the companys rough sales were carried out within the frames of such contracts. During 2015, the number of long-term customers of ALROSA went up to 54 from 47, including those awarded first-time long-term contracts for the supply of industrial diamonds. Andrey Zharkov said, that ALROSA may revise its output forecast for the current year from 39 to 37 million carats as a reaction to the difficult situation in the market. The sanctions against Russia have not affected ALROSA directly, the president of the company said, reminding that market players from Belgium, the world's major diamond hub, lobbied to reject such measures in regard to the Russian diamond miner. When the situation in Ukraine escalated, people working at the diamond exchange in Antwerp, which houses offices of diamond traders, jewelers and retailers, were nervous more than anyone else. As far as we know, Belgian officials even appealed to the European Commission asking not to touch the diamond sector in the event of extension of sanctions against Russia. After all, ALROSA accounts for one quarter of rough supplies to Antwerp. This is why the existing sanctions do not affect our company, as well as the Russian diamond industry as a whole, in a direct way, Andrey Zharkov said. We have free access to finance in the European and American banks, as well as free access to all capital markets. In this regard, our hands are not tied, he said. According to Andrey Zharkov, ALROSA reduced its loan portfolio by more than $ 400 million in 2015. In the second half of this year, ALROSA intends to refinance $ 500-600 million of the debt maturing in 2017 ($ 1.09 billion). For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser On April 22, federal, state and local officials celebrated the start of construction of Sound Transit's East Link light-rail extension connecting Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue and Redmond's Overlake area and Microsoft campus. The 14-mile light-rail extension approved by voters in 2008 will provide 24-minute trips from downtown Bellevue to Westlake Station in downtown Seattle. Today, we begin connecting the east and west sides of Lake Washington with high-capacity light raila project that will revolutionize travel to and from the Eastside, said Sound Transit Board Chair and King County Executive Dow Constantine. East Link will provide a quick, reliable trip from downtown Bellevue to downtown Seattle, delivering mass transit that will transform our region. For a long time, weve been working hard to build and expand a world class transit system in the Puget Sound region and for the first time today, we are pulling Links reach across Lake Washington to the Eastside with this groundbreaking, said U.S. Sen. Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) Voters have consistently shown they want less congestion, more accessible transit and greener transportation by supporting new light rail investmentsand I will keep working every day over in the other Washington to make sure our state is getting the resources it needs to do that. Funding for the $3.7-billion project is provided in part by a $1.3-billion Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan from the U.S. Department of Transportation. East Link is a great example of the important regional projects the federal government is investing in to make critical improvements to the nations transportation system, said U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. By 2030, East Link is projected to carry about 50,000 riders each weekday with stations in Seattle, Mercer Island, South Bellevue, downtown Bellevue and the Bel-Red and Overlake areas. By 2030, the regions light-rail system is expected to carry more than 280,000 riders each weekday. The East Link budget includes a $100-million in-kind contribution from the city of Bellevue toward the downtown tunnel, a $33-million contribution from Microsoft to fund a bike/pedestrian bridge over SR 520 at the Overlake Transit Center Station and a $10-million contribution from the city of Redmond towards a pedestrian/bike bridge over SR 520 at the Overlake Village Station. The new bridges create a direct connection to the Microsoft campus and other businesses on the north side of SR 520. Bringing light rail to Bellevue and Redmond will help people across our region live more productive lives, not only by helping them commute faster but by strengthening the regions economy and our global competitiveness, said Sound Transit Board Member and Redmond Mayor John Marchione. The future of light rail on the Eastside becomes real today. Contractors have begun preparing the site just south of downtown Bellevue near East Main Street and Northeast 112th Street for the tunnel portal where trains will transition from the surface to a 1/3-mile-long tunnel under downtown before reemerging to the surface near Northeast Sixth Street. East Links 10 stations are scheduled to open in 2023 as part of more than 30 miles of light-rail extensions connecting population and employment centers in the region. Links South 200th extension is scheduled to open later this year, followed by the extension to Northgate in 2021. In addition to East Link, other segments scheduled to open in 2023 include expansions north to Lynnwood and south to Kent/Des Moines. Bob Diamond's investment vehicle Atlas Merchant Capital has teamed up with US private equity group Carlyle Group (CG) to prepare a joint bid for Barclays PLC's (BARC.L,BCS) stake in Barclays Africa Group, according to media report, citing people familiar with the situation. Diamond and Carlyle have yet to make a formal approach to Barclays for the assets and bid preparations, first reported by Sky, are at an early stage, the people added. Mr. Diamond, who served as chief executive of Barclays PLC, will use New York-based Atlas Merchant Capital to jointly fundraise with Carlyle, the people said. Last month, Barclays announced its intention to sell down its 62.3 percent stake in African , Barclays Africa Group Limited over the coming two to three years. The sell down will be to a level that permits the firm to deconsolidate it from an accounting and regulatory perspective, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals if and as required. A spokesman for Barclays PLC refused to comment. Carlyle Group and Mr. Diamond didn't immediately respond to calls for comment. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News HOLLYWOOD, Calif.Adult indie filmmaker Tarantino XXX recently attended a special double feature screening of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguezs grindhouse films Planet Terror and Death Proof at the New Beverly Cinema. In between the movies, the legendary director/actor got up on stage and personally thanked everyone for coming. The whole evening left Tarantino XXX mesmerized. It was then that Tarantino XXX had an epiphany: he decided he wanted Quentin to collaborate with him and help him finish his Hateful 8 parody entitled The Hatemen 8. The first scene shot for The Hatemen 8 features Lily Cade as Ruth The Hangwoman and Lotus Lain as Django Freewoman, and introduces Audrey Noir as The Slave Girl. Written and directed by Tarantino XXX, the plot establishes an alternate world where the Old West meets World War II, lesbians rule the world, men are abolished, and slavery is allowed. Eight lesbian strangers are trapped inside a cabin in the mountains during a blizzard. With nothing to do for a very long time, the ladies must figure out a way to keep themselves entertained until help arrives or the snow melts. Will they survive? Will more lesbians join them? Only those who see the finished product will know. Ive idolized Quentin since I was 14 and saw Pulp Fiction in the theater, stated Tarantino XXX. He was the reason I started making movies. Quentin knows of me and even asked a friend about me. I sent him some of my movies, and I hope hes watched them. I am issuing Quentin a challenge to help me complete The Hatemen 8, continued Tarantino XXX. And not only do I want him to bring his moviemaking magic to my set, but I also want to screen it at the New Beverly Cinema, which he owns. Tarantino XXX will be entertaining his fans and members of his site with one scene from The Hatemen 8. On May 2, the scene will be available exclusively on his newly redesigned site, TarantinoXXX.com/. The NSFW trailer can be viewed on his site and the SFW version can be viewed on YouTube. Cabinet office is set to release final Japan leading economic indicators for February at 1:00 am ET Monday. The preliminary reading for leading index was 99.8 in February. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 124.97 against the euro, 160.42 against the pound, 113.79 the Swiss franc and 111.18 against the U.S. dollar. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Forex News Dutch package delivery company TNT Express NV (TNTEF, TNTEY), which is being acquired by U.S. peer FedEx Corp. (FDX), reported Monday that its firs-quarter net loss attributable to equity holders of the parent was 14 million euros, narrower than last year's loss of 19 million euros. Operating loss was 1 million euros, compared to loss of 11 million euros last year. This result included one-off charges of 10 million euros, of which 4 million euros related to the FedEx offer. Adjusted operating income was 9 million euros, an improvement of 8 million euros from last year. Reported revenues of 1.587 billion euros declined 2.2 percent from 1.622 billion euros last year, negatively impacted by fewer working days. Underlying revenue growth, adjusted for currency effects, lower fuel surcharges and working-day effect, was 4.2%. Looking ahead, TNT reiterated its outlook agenda and guidance for 2018/19, as presented during the capital day on February 18. The company expects to achieve structural improvements from 2016 onwards and to see the full benefit of the Outlook strategy from 2018/2019. TNT expects continued economic volatility in some markets outside Europe, especially in Brazil. TNT anticipates restructuring charges of about 30 million euros in the second quarter. The company further said that closing of the FedEx Offer to acquire TNT is anticipated in the first half of calendar year 2016. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Crude oil futures inched lower Monday morning after a furious rally last week. Traders are convinced that oil has set a bottom after hitting 13-year lows near $26 in February. Even with Iran's oil coming back to market following years of sanctions, it is likely that diminished output from the U.S. will alleviate the global supply glut. WTI crude oil for June was down 31 cents at $43.41 a barrel, having touched a yearly high near $45 on Friday. Prices were up 8 percent last week. A weaker dollar has also lifted oil prices. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Market Analysis Saudi aggression, hirelings continue breaching UN-backed ceasefire SANA'A, April 25 (Saba) - The Saudi-led coalition has continued to fly intensively on the skies of many provinces, including Sana'a, Taiz, Mareb, Sa'ada, Mahweet, Lahj, Hajjah, Shabwa, Hodeida, Jawf. A military official said the Riyadh's hirelings targeted the army and popular committees' sites in areas of Beer Basha, al-Khalel in Khadir district, in Jahmaliyah, Klabah, al-Salal and 40 Street in al-Dhamgah district in Taiz with light and medium weapons. Moreover, the Riyadh's hirelings pounded the army and popular committees sites in al-Shabakah area, al-Ghawi Mount and al-Ain Mount, al-Jurf Mount, al-Shuqairah valley, Hasanat area with mortars in al-Waze'yah district of Taiz, according to the official. The army and popular committees sites were also targeted by the mercenaries in Nehm district of Sana'a province. In Mareb province, the hirelings bombarded the army and popular committees sites in al-Mashjah, Hilan Mount, al-Rabiah in Serwah district with medium and heavy weapons. The Saudi fighter jets dropped flare bombs on different areas of Razeh district in Sa'ada, he said. The hirelings pounded also areas in al-Ghail and al-Moton districts and targeted sites of the army and popular committees Aibar valley in Jawf with light weapons. The official pointed out that the Saudi aggression flied on Bajel district in coinciding with the a demonstration took to the street denouncing the continuation of the Saudi aggression against the country. The army and popular committees sites were pounded by the mercenaries in Usailan in district Shabwah with mortars. The hirelings targeted different areas in al-Zaher district of Baidha, while they targeted the army and popular committees sites in Murais area in Damt district of Dalea with light weapons. The army and popular committees sites were attacked by the Riyadh's hirelings in Karesh district in Lahj. The army and popular burnt a tanker loaded with weapons during the military clashes with Saudi mercenaries in Souk al-Rabou'a [souk of Wednesday] in the same district. HA/AF Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [25/April/2016] HOLLYWOOD, Calif.Kat Dior joined the adult industry in 2013, filming about a dozen scenes for such companies as Evil Angel, Jules Jordan Video, Digital Sin and Lethal Hardcore before taking a leave of absence for a couple of years. But now the performer has decided to team with Jonathan Morgan and Andre Madness, the co-founders of Nexxxt Level Talent Agency, for this new phase of her career. Morgan and Madness bring a combined 40-plus years of experience, which was a big factor in Dior's decision to join the agency. Stepping into a new phase of her life, the performer said, "I am so thrilled to be teaming up with Nexxxt Level. Jonathan and Andre have the resources, enthusiasm and professionalism that I crave from an agent. I can't wait to start this journey with my new Nexxxt Level family. Stay tuned, you are going to be seeing a lot more of me and my wonder holes." Morgan has said Dior "is a ton of sexual dynamite packed in a small frame." "Both Andre and I were very impressed by Kats goals and outlooks when it comes to the adult world and feel that we would be a great support team for Kat as she continues her journey to porn fame and fortune," he said. Madness added, Kat has an energy that is truly infectious and we look forward in helping her show as many porn fans and directors alike. To book Dior, visit Nexxxt Level's website. TORONTO, CanadaSwan Vibes, part of Canadian-based BMS Enterprises, attended the ADC Expo in Shanghai, China, earlier this month and proved to be a major player at the event with a large display of its best-sellers as well as new designs set to release in the coming months. ADC Expo showcases prominent Western and Chinese companies in the same venue and brings together the best products leading the way in style, technology and quality. In the Swan booth, company reps showed off everything from the original award-winning Swan Collection, Adore by Swan, Swan Special Edition, Swan Wand and Mini Swan Wand and the brand-new Swan Squeeze. As an indication of the incredible reception Swan has received in the region, the largest internet retailer in China with sales exceeding RMB 500 million (approximately $77 million USD) has picked up the Swan Collection for sale on their website following discussions at the show. Acting to further solidify Swans success, recent store visits by Swan representatives to current carriers of the brand in the market have indicated huge sales numbers on a continuing basis for each customer. For more information, visit SwanVibes.com. 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 ... I give my consent to Sakshi Post to be in touch with me via email for the purpose of event marketing and corporate communications. Privacy Policy Here's what the new Docking State Office Building could look like Today is a special day for us to reflect on the freedoms we enjoy as people who live in the Pacific. It is Anzac Day - a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand that commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations and the contribution and suffering of all those who have served in wars and conflict. Observed on 25 April each year, Anzac Day was originally to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (A.N.Z.A.C.) who fought at Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. However nowadays it is also a time when men and women who served in more recent war zones are also included and honoured. Anzac Day is also observed in the Pacific in the Cook Islands, Niue, Pitcairn Islands, and Tonga, and in Papua New Guinea. So what has this got to do with Samoa and Samoans? Although this commemorative day is no longer a public holiday, the fact remains that a considerable number of Samoans also fought and served alongside the Australians, New Zealanders and Pacific island neighbours to preserve our freedoms. It is also a fact that some of the brave men and women who travelled across the seas, many for the first time, did not return but were killed on foreign soil. Others who were lucky, had experiences that possibly stayed with them for the rest of their lives. Some of us are descendants of those brave volunteers. It is now 100 years since World War 1 which lasted from 1914-1918 and last year, as well as special celebrations for the centenary, our young people in Samoa were encouraged to research, learn and write about war in general and World War 1 in particular. Many who participated in the essay writing competition organised and sponsored by the New Zealand High Commission had never thought very deeply about war and the impact it has on people and places. This year, the sacrifices made will again be remembered with a Dawn Parade and Service and a chance for war veterans, their families and friends to reflect on those who didnt return to their homes and their families. Young people throughout the Pacific region, who have studied history, have in recent years shown increased interest in war through their attendance at Dawn Parades in Australia, New Zealand and some of the Pacific islands. It has provided an opportunity for our upcoming leaders to calculate the cost of war in terms of lives, land and the fate of generations of the future. So today on Anzac Day, we can show our appreciation to our ancestors who in some cases sacrificed their lives by donating some money for a poppy a symbol of peace and remembrance. According to a World War 1 article: In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were ripped open as World War One raged through Europes heart. Once the conflict was over, the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields. The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts. The donation you give today for a poppy will be used by the Returned & Services Association of Samoa (R.S.A.) Inc to support activities to ensure the men and women who went to war for us all, are honoured. Dear Editor, Reading on Dr. G.F.H a.k.a. Tama Samoa, letter to Editor on 12th April 2016 Contradictions faced by many Muslims draws my attention to Imam Mustenser Qamars surprising letter to Editor A Muslim in Samoa writes -08th April 2016. And if I had not came across Imam Sulaiman now renamed Mario Joseph after rebirths recorded testimony on Changing Track program with Cristina Casado refer link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUXd4qW9mg, I would have followed his hostile lead. Such a judgemental attitude if I may add, poor Jesus will find himself jobless on his return as Tama Samoa has done it all for him, lol! And if you ask me what shall we do then Ill say I rather have an ecumenical approach as Mario Joseph shared in his recorded testimony as above. A sure sign of power with media on its positive side, dont you agree? Secondly, I wish to second Jacey Frettons congratulating comments on to Editor-in-Chief with his/her piece Congratulations, Gatoaitele Sano Malifa! -17th April 2016 regarding the loto nuu notion. I know our Prime Minisster friend jokingly refer to our media forum as the faitatala forum most of the time, but Im certain he is a fan of us with our positive faitatala instead of the opposite. How so you may ask? Then I wonder whether you had recently received any more of the old days death threat note you freely shared regarding some c**** incidence incomparable to the ones we freely discussed nowadays? Also feel Mataafa Keni Lesas puzzling intellect shared in his recent editorials and wish to encourage the poor soul to remain hopeful, urging him to stay focussed try more on the positive side of his school of thought and with much confidence that our nation needs our journalism professions positive attitude enlightening and preparing us all for a great deal of work aligning in our present and future endeavours. Anyhow, following on from my last piece E leai se laau e falala fua! -11th April 2016 is this one a le o le malamalama o lona uiga o le savili e alaai ona falala le laau! Starting with our countrys constitution preamble specific on the first three sentences stated; (i) IN THE HOLY NAME OF GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, THE EVER LOVING, (ii) WHEREAS sovereignty over the Universe belongs to the Omnipresent God alone,,, and (iii) WHEREAS ,,,declared that Samoa should be an Independent State based on Christian principles and Samoan custom and tradition. Not sure about you but to me the appearance of the True (TRINITY) God -our forefathers wishes for us to see clearly, is fairly muddled as our constitution currently stands. Reminds me of genius Albert Einstein and his correcting comments onto his professor that the darkness and cold only appear to exist when both light and heat respectively, are absent? Hence plenty of room for the Muslims and any other sects whom had their faith based on Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah (God the Father) alone to have their mystified missionarys set foot in our midst, as if we need them? Not that we are of any bad group of people in the likes of the ISIS and that we dont want anything to do with them. But I rather be certain; first, that we be firmed on our spiritual calling as people of this Sacred SAMOA, land on earth and second, that we are certain and confidence of our purpose. Telling these limit minded Yahweh/Allah/ Jehovah sects to please be open minded and see our God -to his totality, the way our forefathers wished us and them all to see when they are in our midst, dont you think? Saying so makes me certain that once our Parliamentarian sets our county -men and womens, mindset right on this TRINITY God by having it clearly stated in our countrys constitution preamble then I would confidently re mention that famous saying by Apostle Paul, who would dare to confront us!? Perhaps Article 11 Freedom of Religion can be left, as it is. But we need to make sure our people understand the true essence of Freedom as a divine and free given gift for us by God. And believe it or not, it comes with only one condition that we are to freely choose HIM instead of anything else. Now if you ask me then all I need to say is that this God of ours is one heck of a jealous God, lol! Pretty sure he would not mind if we may choose to stay idle and comfortable in our already comfort zone, (like within the so many Christian sects we have in our midst now a days and it is fairly sad to note that most of their peers are living a comfortable life by vaguely proclaim the name of our dear God in vain. Saying so reminds me one of Mataafa KLs recent views with regards wonder whether our PM and his cabinet being the Cesar figure now a days would consider any relevant taxation, e.g. basket of boiled eggs and couple of cooked pigs and goats every month for their cabinet meeting -fai atu ai foi, lol!) but I doubt very much that is what he wishes for us to be. Now come on, you are not asking me of which Christian sect we all need to belong, or are you? Well, if so then I refer you back to Gatoloai Sano Malifas Editorial I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the street, Pope Francis -10th April 2016 the one I presume Jacey Fretton was referring to? Also learned Rev. Opapo would have dedicated poor Toaipuapuaga to the Carmelites convent -or was it the Catholic Church, if she had not married already. Wonder how much more he needs to learn before following Marios lead -whom refuses to be referred to as a slave, for currently him and there many other sects are all labelled protestant? And say you still need more then I recommend Mario Joseph recorded interview mentioned above. I know its a fairly long interview -34:20 minutes long to be exact, but wish to draw your attention on to minute 21-26, there he perfectly stated that we need the Catholicism to be certain. Dont worry about those few limit minded priest in our midst, for even Jesus Christ trying efforts while on earth he failed on Judas Iscariot. Thats why it was so necessary for them to establish a church for themselves. Dont be mislead by that claim we dont need a church to be saved for that is of a proud mans claim definitely not of our dear God who ordered his son to establish one. With its (-His Mystical Body i.e. Church) main intention was to have all of us his observance human race included in it and to grow into his Holiness at all stage either in this life or that of the ever lasting one. May you have a blessed week, Samoa. Atalii fanau le au a le loomatua Taufusi The Ministry of Health has again called a press conference that was scheduled for last week to respond to concerns about a potentially deadly disease in the country. On Thursday the Ministry called a press conference around 4pm and 20 minutes before that time the meeting was cancelled until Friday. It was again cancelled on Friday until further notice. There was no explanation provided about the cancelation. Contacted for an explanation, the secretary for the Director of Health, Leausa Take Naseri said she was unaware of why the meeting with the media was called off. When asked if Leausa was available for comments, she said he wasnt. The media was alerted about warnings of the deadly disease spread through urine of infected animals in a public notice signed by M.O.H. Acting Chief Executive Officer, Frances Brebner. The Ministry of Health wishes to warn the public of an infectious disease spread through the urine of infected animals which carry these bacteria, it read. These animals include pigs, cats, dogs and rodents such as rats. The disease may lead to death. According to the Ministry, humans can become infected through contact with water, soil or food contaminated with the urine of infected animals. It is advised that the public take preventive measures to minimize the risks of becoming infected by; Keeping all food and water for consumption covered securely to prevent risks of contamination. Ensuring that protective clothing, gloves and foot ware are always worn by those exposed to risks of infection through contaminated water or soil. Washing hands with soap and water before preparing food and after working outside. Ensuring that all drinking water is boiled. Avoiding swimming in rivers or areas where recent flooding has occurred. Ensuring proper rubbish and waste water disposal to avoid rat and other rodent infestations. In a previous interview, Dr. Saine Vaai confirmed that there are already cases where people have been diagnosed with the disease. She declined to give any further details adding that the Ministry would call a press conference to explain more. A hotelier has raised concerns and his disappointment in the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) for releasing a public notice about an unnamed disease. The owner of the Millenia Hotel, Tuala Oli Ah Him, said he is worried about how the M.O.H. could come out just like that and publicise such an unfounded statement. It took them five days before they could come up with a name for this disease and to me I consider this an ambush act on the private sector especially on the tourism industry that our economy of Samoa relies on. My worry is that the whole world is watching and it seems like after they took five days to come up with a name, the picture that they are painting is that there is an epidemic or a pandemic brewing in Samoa; meaning that it looks like theres a totally new disease and it really affects the tourism. Tuala said he has tourists emailing him asking what is going on in Samoa. According to him someone needs to be held accountable for the damage that has already been caused by publicising such notice. My concern is my 100 plus staff members and also the 6,000 people employed under the tourism industry including those at the flea market that was recently burned down and now they are all burned again with such statement from the M.O.H. threatening their livelihoods with these unfounded statements, he said. I think that some sort of discipline should be in place or the M.O.H. should be accountable because there is a Tourism Development Act 2012, Clause 38, Sub clause 3a that states: It is an offence and a person is liable for conviction if they publicise any information that is false and may harm the reputation of Samoa as a tourist destination. If found guilty, its either imprisonment or $5,000tala fine. Clause 38 Preservation of the reputation of the destination The Authority (STA) may take such action as is necessary to preserve the reputation of Samoa as a tourist destination by Sub clause 1: (a)exercising lawful controls over the publication of false or out of date information by any means, or such information which is prejudicial to a public perception of Samoa (b)otherwise publishing information to correct any fact, matter or detail which the Authority considers to be false or misleading; or (c)doing any other act or thing which may preserve the reputation of Samoa as a tourism destination when necessary Sub clause 3: Any person who: Publishes or causes to be published by any means, any information or claim that is false and which is intended or may have the tendency to cause harm to the reputation of Samoa as a tourist destination; or Refuses to retract such false information or to publish a correction concerning the information when required to do so by the Authority; or Fails to retract the information or to publish a correction in the manner required by the Authority Commits an offence and shall be liable upon conviction to a fine not less than 50 penalty units or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three (3) months or both As a matter of fact Im not even sure if its a real disease or its just a madeup disease but the damage is already done, its all over Facebook and Social Media. He went on to say that with all his years spent in other countries he has never come across a country that would publicise a health warning in this manner. I think the health department especially the minister should look really carefully at these public notices, he said. The only people who are benefiting from this are TV1 and its shareholders but our country is not; we are losing out. Its not just the hotels that are affected by this but the flea market, fish market, fruit market, the taxi drivers at the airport waiting for the planes and which turn up empty because people are not coming because of this sort of publicity. Also Id like to humbly ask the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister to please have a look at these issues. To some people it might not mean anything but as a business owner who is concerned about the economy of Samoa and prospect of its people, I know it will affect the economy especially now we rely on tourism. Tuala also said that this is not the first time the Ministry of Health has come up with such notices, because they did it with the ZIKA Virus as well. An epidemic means a local disease but pandemic means its going global and its brewing in Samoa and that is the picture that the M.O.H. has put across, he said. [And] they are also saying that it comes from urine of affected dogs, cats, and rodent but they are forgetting about chickens; luckily fish dont have legs or they wouldve been included too. I am not attacking anybody Im just simply speaking from what I see and how affected our country is because of this. Its lucky that the World Health Organisation is not on the plane already to come and quarantine Samoa and stop everybody from coming in and going out as if this was an Ebola breakout. Im not sure whose attention the M.O.H. is trying to get. Maybe they are trying to get the attention of W.H.O. or someone but theyve got be really careful the next time they do such things. And next time theres a flu outbreak dont go to the media but go to through the Village Councils to inform the villages but dont tell the whole world that we have people who have got the flu. Im speaking from the heart and not for publicity. He went on to say that with the government sector they get paid no matter what but the private sector depend on their own efforts to get paid. There are two sectors in Samoa the government sector and the private sector, the government sector they are not worried because rain or shine they still get paid but for us here in the private sector, rain or shine it depends on our work if we get paid, he said. So they must be careful when they act as they have done because it will affect us here on this side. [And] also I would like the people of the world to disregard the statement made by our Ministry of Health and please come to Samoa. We are located in the centre of the Pacific and we are isolated from all the trouble of the world and we are clean, we are green and we are friendly people so come to Samoa and enjoy your stay. A concerned father has turned to the media to voice a complaint about when the National University of Samoa (N.U.S) conduct some of their Commerce courses. According to the father, most degree and diploma level Commerce courses, are only offered at night because the majority of the students (along with the part time lecturers, he is told) are employed elsewhere during the day. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the father feels this is not fair on his daughter and it is a safety risk for some students, particularly females. Some of the part time lecturers along with 70% of the students work during the day, they have their own cars and enough money; these courses are ideal for them, he said. (But) what about the students who live far away, the students whose families dont have cars, the ones who struggle with tuition fees let alone extra transport costs? It costs about 20 tala from the university to my house, but what option do we have? There are no buses running at that time and many families dont have cars. I give my daughter money for her lunch and then on top of that I give her money for a taxi, thats a lot of money going out every week because of these night courses. My question is, is N.U.S. a night school because I thought only overseas universities had night schools but the difference is, that they have campus accommodation, he said. This is a university full of educated professors, Im sure if they put all those big brains together they would be able to come up with a better solution. In the meantime we will continue as it is because I dont think anything will change, but I want to announce that this is not right. According to the father, some of the students have lodged complaints but to no avail. My daughter told me that some of the younger students complained to their lecturer. The lecturer then approached the Administration Office about the complaints and was told that they do not have enough money to employ more lecturers during the day, he said. I understand that the working people also have the right to pursue an education but they can afford to do so, they have cars; this to me is a serious issue and the university has to do something about it. Other than the side costs, the father is also very concerned about the students safety. It isnt safe; its dark and girls are out looking for a taxi in a country full of dangerous men, he said. My daughter is sometimes scared to take taxis because some men cannot be trusted, we would ring up a taxi we know and he would go pick her up which is an inconvenience for the driver. I wait on the balcony worried for my daughters safety every night. During the day she would have her classes and then waits around until her last class which is late at night then she taxis home afterwards. Do they expect some children to walk home late at night if they have no other option? Its a big risk to their safety and if they got hurt then the university wouldnt do anything about it. Its as if they are saying that if these students want a degree then they have to first risk their safety because they cant afford any safer options. Some of the boys offer my daughter a ride but Im sure they have devious intentions. My daughters safety is too precious for me not to be paranoid. The father is left with no other option than to go along with how it is. Attempts to contact N.U.S. for a comment were unsuccessful. Faataua Le Ola launched its official outreach programme during a press conference at the Faataua Le Ola office in Matafele yesterday. Spearheading the programme is Director, Papalii Caroline Ah Chong, who spoke about their intentions. Today we would like to put out to the nation the fact that we are kicking off our initial outreach for the whole of Samoa and we would like to make it known that we will be starting this outreach programme on the first of May out in the district of Aleipata, she said. The point of this whole outreach programme is to reach out to our people and to get the message out there that we should always value life. As we all know there has been a rising number of completed suicides in Samoa over the last few years and so Faataua Le Ola wont rest until this decreases. Part of our work is to get that message out that people should value their lives and if you are in trouble, if theres anything happening within you personally then please feel free to reach out to us. If you feel that you cannot reach out to your pastor, parents or friends then just know that we will always be here for you. Everyone has a phone in Samoa so just give us a call if you need someone to talk to and we will be there for you. For Aleipata, Faataua le Ola has invited all denominations. Our focus is on the youth, we are hoping there will be various youth groups performing on that day in accordance to our theme Life is Beautiful. We will be covering the three factors that our organization is all about; the body, the mind and the spirits. We will have talks, qualified counselors, reverends, as well as youth performances. Annie Grace will also be staging a concert in front of the Government Building on Saturday evening and she will be out there speaking about her experience through life, as well as her beautiful music. Those in the other island can rest assured because we will also bring our programme over to Savaii. According to Papalii, the groups outreach will be putting as much effort as possible to give people the understanding of how precious life is. We want to promote life as it should be, something beautiful, happy, fulfilling and a promising future for our youth, she said. We want to focus on all the positive things of life, lets not look at the dark side but rather we should embrace the positive. Especially here in Samoa, having said that, as adults we have problems too. No matter the age just give us a call and we will have qualified counselors on the phone ready to take you through. They will help you sort out your life, sort out your feelings, sort out your thoughts and I promise you that you will put that phone down or walk away from this office feeling 90-100% better. It is so important for a person to be able to talk to someone and to share what is inside of them, dont bottle up your problems and come to us or reach out to someone, dont be ashamed. Everything is 100% confidential which means that no information will be available for anyone; we are only here to help. If you are having suicidal thoughts or if you know anyone who is, Faataua le Ola urges the public to call them on their free lifeline at 8-005-433 which remains in operation 24/7 or visit their office on the ground floor of the John Wesley Building. As I am regrettably unable to accept the invitation to attend the official opening of the re-developed Sheraton Aggie Greys Hotel* in Apia this weekend, I thought the next best thing would be to share some memories of that venerable institution as I first came to know it in 1951, and of incomparable Aggie and her family, and the one and very only Fred Fairman. I had met Aggie and Fred Fairman in the private bar of the Commercial Hotel in Aucklands Shortland Street, the favoured watering hole of many from Samoa during their triennial three-month holidays which were the vogue in those pre-air-travel days, and the Union Company ships Matua and later Tofua the only way to get to and from Apia. But my next catch-up with Aggie in Apia Harbour in late September 1951 was more inglorious: coming down the gangway of the Matua to board Aggies open 40-footer, a former U.S. Navy steel personal launch, that ferried passengers from ship to shore, I slipped halfway down and slid the rest of the way on my muli to land at Aggies feet in her boat. As editor of the weekly Samoa Bulletin, then Samoas only newspaper, Aggies Hotel on the banks of the Vaisigano River, soon became a regular source of news, as then Tasman Empire Airways (TEAL) now Air New Zealand - launched in December 1951 its Coral Route, described accurately by Wikipedia thus: It became the only air route into Tahiti, with Americans and others from Northern Hemisphere flying by land planes into Nadi in Fiji, making the short hop across to Suva to join the flying boat at Laucala Bay, for its fortnightly flight along the Coral Route, leaving on a Thursday morning for Samoa, alighting on the Satapuala lagoon about 2 p.m. Passengers were driven by cab through Samoan coastal villages to Apia, where they enjoyed respite and dinner at Aggie Greys hotel until 2 a.m. when they were driven back out to Satapuala for a pre-dawn take-off to the Akaiami lagoon at Aitutaki where they went ashore for breakfast and an optional swim until mid-morning takeoff for Papeete, timed to ensure that arrival was after the end of the siesta period at 2 p.m. After launching ashore and completing Customs, passengers had to wait a further hour while their luggage was sprayed against horticultural pests, a time usually spent by the majority across the road from the Customs house at Quinns Bar. In all, a 30-hour leisurely introduction to life in the South Seas which made the Coral Route a legendary travel experience. Aggies Hotel thus became a temporary stopover for many newsworthy celebrities heading for fabled Tahiti, many of whom later returned for longer stays in Samoa. It also forged a close personal link between Aggie and the top brass and crews of TEAL (later Air New Zealand), typified by the airline making a special despatch of 80 red roses many years later when Aggie celebrated her 80th birthday. Speaking of birthdays, reminds me that, in 1957, with her 60th birthday approaching, Aggie called me down to ask: Terry, I want you to print me a special invitation for my 60th, something light and out of the ordinary. These were the days of letterpress printing, and nothing in the way of the imaging tools available in this computer and offset printing age. It had to be in words, so the invitation read: Mrs Agnes Grey wishes to advise that, after 20 years of being 39, she has decided to turn 40. It worked, and the party was memorable. By 1951, Aggie and her hotel were already legendary, ranking alongside Fijis Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva, as the two pre-eminent accommodation hotels in the South Pacific. But whereas the GPH was noted for its formality and grandeur (and it was as pleasant and efficient as it was grandiose) Aggies was loved for its laid back Samoan friendly faaaloalo, where every guest was greeted and treated as aiga, and enjoyed service that was as efficient as the smiles were always wide. The fame established by Aggies Hotel during World War II has never been better described than by James Michener in Esquire magazine, March 1951 in an article entitled Siva tonight. It began: At mid-afternoon the radioman would send the following message from far out in the Pacific: ETA FALEOLO 0320 ZEBRA XXX FOURTEEN AGGIE XXX STIKE NAIGS XXX SIVA HARMONY XXX. To old South Pacific hands this message needs no translation. It is immortal. Michener went on to explain the first phrases signalled arrival at Faleolo at 3.20 a.m. GMT (4 p.m. Samoa time). STIKE NAIGS meant steak and eggs pronounced New Zealand style.The meals were served on a cool, wickered verandah by two dumply little girls, masters of American slang SIVA, of course, meant that the pilots wanted Aggie to throw one of her memorable siva-sivasAggie did the best siva. Kicking off her shoes she would step into the middle of the floor and start the slow rhythmic dance.The siva at Aggies usually lasted until about one in the morning. Fortified by a little whiskey and lots of Australian beer, a siva in Apia was a wonderful thing. HARMONY.meant the prettiest girl in Samoa.famous in the South Pacific; a fair Polynesian, slim, flashing eyes, tall, soft-spoken and witty. When I showed Aggie the Michener article, she told me Harmonys real name, and told me how talented and graceful she was as a siva and Tahitian dancer. She has lived in New Zealand for many years. In 1976, as part of its bi-centenary celebrations, the U.S. government arranged for American celebrities to visit most countries on Earth. For New Zealand, that visitor was James Michener. It so happened that Aggie was also in Auckland at the time, and I had the privilege of arranging a reunion meeting between the two in what is now the Pullman Hotel in Waterloo Quadrant. One outcome was that Michener confirmed to me something that Aggie had denied for years that, she was NOT the lady on whom the character Bloody Mary (of South Pacific musical fame) was based, a myth started in Canada and which always annoyed Aggie. I always felt blessed to be one of those papalagi taken under Aggies all-embracing wing, and became close to her family. Before I came to Samoa, I was involved in forming the Marist Softball Club in Auckland at the same time as Aggies elder son, Edward (Ted to us here) was one of the founding spirits of the Saints Softball Club. Once in Apia, I was privileged to be among the select group of older Apia personalities who were always at Aggies house about 11 a.m. on a Saturday for a beer or three and a catch-up on local gossip. When Alan returned from school in New Zealand, he soon set up regular Wednesday late afternoon volleyball matches in the backyard of the hotel, about where the pool would later be sited. Alan went on to become a talented first five-eighth for Ulalei, and later, with the title Laauli, a powerhouse in the administration of Samoan rugby. I can remember daughter Maureen coming home for a prolonged spell from Australia, and causing many male hearts to flutter with coquettish ways that led us to dub her, the barefoot contessa. Older daughter, Pele was to live in Apia for a term with her husband, Cam Turner, when he was appointed manager of Radio 2AP. Later, some years after our respective returns to Wellington, Cam and Pele were to honour me by asking me to be godfather to their son Brian; possibly because earlier, Aggie had honoured my family by being godmother to our son Paul, born in Apia in 1955. The few of us left who were part of the film, Return to Paradise remember how much of an influence was Aggie behind the scenes: her hotel was the accommodation and management base for the entire film crew, and she personally supervised, day by day, the catering unit on location in Lefaga. Reflecting on Aggies during my time in Apia, I cant forget the influence of her loyal companion, Fred Fairman, not just a Mr Fixit with an inexhaustible range of technical skills, but a man of quiet wit and a heart of pure gold. Whether it was building the white wooden launch that replaced the steel 40-footer to ferry passengers out to the ships at anchor, or fixing whatever needed to be fixed around the hotel, his hobby in my time was completely refurbishing and selling to village churches decrepit old foot pedal organs that he located in New Zealand and shipped back to Apia. Many a church choir was to sing to one of Fred Fairmans restored organs. After seven-year spells in Wellington and Napier, we shifted back to Aucklands North Shore, not far from Fairfax Avenue, Northcote, where Aggie owned a home. This led to an annual resumption of our associations. Id get a phone call to my home in Milford: Terry, its Aggie. Im here. There was no mistaking the message: get in your car and come round. When they were in Auckland, Aggie and Fred Fairman were frequent visitors to our place, and if there was a party, I always managed to persuade Aggie to perform a siva. Her personality made such an impression on your youngest daughter Sarah (now on stage as Hera) that when Hera graduated from Te Toi Whakaari, the national drama school in Wellington, and had to write and perform a monologue, she chose to base it on Aggie. The way Hera brought Aggie to life, in speech, walk and siva dancing (the latter after expert tutelage from Moira Macdonald Walker) brought me to tears. In the 90s and early noughties, I stayed a couple of times at Aggies Hotel, and was surprised at how little the essence and magic of the place had changed. Sure, there were new wings and bungalows, and pool where once we played volleyball, and the huge and brilliant fale in which we dined and fiafia-ed Wednesday nights; but the unmatchable Samoan guest-centred ambience remained, and the spirit of Aggie was everywhere. In the Beach Road-front shop, and around the hotel there was Marina, Alans wife exerting the same constant, caring, focused attention to detail as her mother-in-law; and in the background, quiet, almost shy, was Alan making absolutely sure everything worked exactly as it should. And Alan, in turn has passed on this legacy to his son Fred, and the ever-watchful eye of his sister Tania. All of this was washed away on the dreadful December day in 2012 when Cyclone Evan unleashed its fury on Samoa, and caused the peaceful Vaisigano River to become a raging flood that ravaged all of the ground floor buildings of Aggies Hotel, and rendered it unfit for purpose. The only consolation has been the involvement of the international hotel chain Sheraton Group in the rebuilding of Aggies. The introduction of the marketing clout of Sheraton with its worldwide connections, and its reputation as a hotelier of quality will greatly enhance the appeal not just of Aggies Apia Hotel and the resort at Mulifanua, but also the attractiveness of Samoa as a tourist destination. But I have a final word of advice to Sheraton: never, ever, forget that what you are operating in Samoa is Sheraton Aggie Greys, and, especially at the Vaisigano end of Beach Road, her name, her legend, and her legacy of incomparable Samoan hospitality and faaaloalo is what will draw people to this handsome new property, again and again. *The re-opening of the Aggie Greys Hotel as Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel is this Friday, with the start scheduled for 4.30pm. Samoa might not recognise ANZAC with a public holiday but that did not diminish the meaning of the day for a huge crowd who braved an early morning start yesterday on Beach Road. The ANZAC Parade and Dawn Service on Beach Road was well attended by families, friends and colleagues of the men who fought at Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The day is also used to honour the Samoan men who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations. The Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi and the Masiofo, Her Highness Filifilia Tamasese were present. They along with Acting Prime Minister, Lautafi Fio Purcell, presented wreaths during the ceremony. Acting Prime Minister Lautafi said the parade and the service is the very least Samoa could do to honour the men and women who gave so much. Many of whom made the supreme sacrifice and unselfishly gave their lives to defend the freedom and a way of life that we enjoy today, he said. It is the time to again remind ourselves of the ultimate sacrifice that we will remember to this day and encourages services and action of succeeding generations to secure peace for our community and the world. As we commemorate ANZAC this year we remember that many parts of the world are still plagued by localised war and conflicts. Some of these conflicts have the potential of putting security of the wider world at risk. There is therefore a world collective responsibility to try and resolve these conflicts and bring peace to people who have suffered long from the ravages of war. Some say that ANZAC commemorations glorify war, but Im sure every veteran will be the first to say that their greatest wish and prayer is that their children and their country may never have to witness the horrors of war. The countries represented this morning all contribute and participate in the efforts either under the flag of the United Nations or through originally supported deployments to resolve conflicts and maintain peace around the world. He went on to say that Samoa have too been in the forces of different nations in various features of conflicts and will be remembered with great humbleness the sacrifices and the services they gave. Our own police force continues to serve in risky missions in different parts of the world including the pacific and we shall continue to contribute as much as possible to this important work as an ongoing national commitment, he said. I wish on this occasion the celebration of ANZAC Day to also express our deep appreciation to the defence forces of Australia and New Zealand for their immediate help during Samoas times of help and need. While Samoa has suffered from internal conflict of war we have not been spared the devastation of natural disasters. Just two days ago we were preparing as a nation to bear the brunt of yet another natural disaster in Cyclone Amos and fortunately with what can only be described as a miracle we were spared the devastation and only suffered very minor damages. So again we extend our gratitude to the defence forces of the countries New Zealand and Australia and to the military personnel of all other nations who have helped Samoa in the past. Finally our commemoration of ANZAC isnt only a day of remembrance but for a renewal of our prayers and hopes that the leaders of the world will show common sense and help so peace for all mankind will be achieved and will prevail. The pen truly is mightier than the sword, and what better way to commemorate the fallen heroes of ANZAC than to pen a tribute in their honour. As Samoa joined the commemoration of ANZAC yesterday, the winners of the ANZAC Essay writing competition were congratulated at the Office of the New Zealand High Commission in Apia. The winner of the competition was Aunoa Uele from Samoa College. The writer will be representing Samoa this September at the Somme Commemorations in France; joining other winners from Cook Islands, Tonga and Niue. The two runners up were Romario Pose from Samoa College, who wrote a letter and Layton Lolo of L.D.S College, who penned a poem. Today the 25th of April 2016 marks the 101st anniversary of the commencement of World War I, said New Zealand High Commissioner, Jackie Frizelle. This war was meant to be the war to end all wars, but history shows it was not meant to be as so with another war to follow, it is also one hundred years since the first ANZAC day ceremony was held. A day of mourning for the loss of so many good men at Gallipoli as well as a day of thanksgiving for those who survived. It is important that we all remember the horror of war, the sacrifices made, and those who did not return. For the competition to commemorate the fallen, the sacrifice and the victorious, senior students were asked to write a 1,000 word essay, poem or letter on the sacrifices by Samoans and allied servicemen and women during the First World war and what it meant to them. The three winners that we are recognizing this afternoon were judged in expressing the theme best, Ms. Frizelle said. All three of these students touched the mind, heart and soul with their ideas and observations; I really enjoyed reading their work which left me inspired by the thoughtful and talented leaders that are developing in Samoa. Ms. Frizelle added: I also want to give light to the invaluable assistance of Marj Moore and Samoa Observer; Silafau Dr. Sina Vaai of the National University of Samoa who continued to cultivate the art of creative writing here in Samoa. The essays were all marked independently and blind which means we took off the students names to ensure absolute fairness. Ms. Uele said her inspiration was her mother. I was really inspired by my mom and also the study centre which was established at Malua with the aim of encouraging kids to practice writing, she said. I also want to thank all my teachers in Samoa College who pushed us to do more writing so that we may improve academically. Winning the competition came as a shock to the young writer. I am overwhelmed, I didnt expect to win anything and when I joined this competition I was just doing it for the love of writing, she said. A message for young writers out there is when it comes to writing theres no secret, practice makes perfect." "Just keep going and you will gradually improve. 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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 Ellen Pyles covers for the Post portrayed images of everyday life and featured women she described as the unaffected, natural American type. Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join Ellen Pyle is proof that illustrating can be like riding a bicycle. A student at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, one of the top art schools in the country, she studied with famed illustrator Howard Pyle. There she also met her teachers brother, Walter Pyle, who would later become her husband. Showing promise even as a first-year student in 1895, Pyle published her first of many illustrations. She went on to find success illustrating childrens books and magazine articles, but in 1905 chose to give up her career to focus on motherhood. Reflecting on this in a 1928 Post interview, she said, Probably people vary a great deal, but I found that when there was a young baby in the family it was not practical for me to spend all day in the studio. One or the other had to take second place. But when her husband Walter died in 1919, Pyle needed to support her four children and so turned back to art. The Saturday Evening Post was the first magazine to accept her work, and by the end of her career, she had illustrated a total of 40 Post covers. Her children and neighbors often modeled for her paintings that portray traditional American life. Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today The girl I am most interested in painting is the unaffected natural American type, Pyle said in her 1928 interview with the Post, the girl that likes to coast and skate in winter, who often goes without her hat, and who gets a thrill out of tramping over country roads in the fall. This girl definitely fits the bill. This cover is a great example of Pyles use of brilliant color and loose, broad brushstroke-style. Art certainly ran in the Pyle family. Ellen Pyles daughter Katie modeled for this cover, and her two oldest children, Walter Jr. and Ellen, became artists themselves, and her youngest, Caroline, married into the Wyeth family of artists. The grays surrounding this pair shadow the scene but the bright colors of the fruits and vegetables in the basket offer promise of a warm home-cooked meal. The most interesting thing about this cover isnt the woman driving a convertible in the snow, but the child whos glancing back at us wondering the exact same thing. Reprinted on the Post in 2007, this cover prompted reader Sara Chatzidakis to write us with some background on the image. It turned out the little Post girls were Chatzidakis mother and aunt, who modeled the scene for their neighbor, Ellen Pyle. One of Pyles covers of everyday life, its the details that make this piece stand out. You can see the disappointment on the mans face as he looks back at the tire after reading the sign 5 Miles to Macs Garage. Looking at those diagonal lines going across the page, this will be one wet trip. Pyle tried to hide her signature in her paintings, making them the same color as the work itself so they blended into the background. Her signature here appears in the right-hand corner and matches the grass. Frances Tipton Hunter was one of the most nationally recognized artists in Post history, depicting childhood in a style similar to Norman Rockwell. Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join One of Frances Tipton Hunters earliest memories is of herself at age 3 drawing over her grandmothers wallpaper. Losing her mother at the age of 6, Hunter and her brother moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to live with an aunt and uncle. Education was an important part of Hunters artistic life; she attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts and the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, graduating from both institutes with honors. While still a student, Hunter began to illustrate childrens fashions for department stores. The success allowed Hunter to move to New York where she continued her illustration career. Along with her work in the Post, Hunter illustrated fashion catalogs and advertisements for childrens clothing as well as illustrating for other publications including Colliers, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies Home Journal. Her subjects were most often children with cherubic features. Hunter tried to capture the happiness and innocence of youth, inspired by memories with her mother. Hunters work made her one of the most well-known artists of the 20th century, with paper dolls and picture books of her work being sold. With a style similar to Norman Rockwell, Hunter captured the ideal American childhood. Along with her18 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, Hunters drawings were nationally recognized from the 1920s to the 1950s. In her first Post cover, Hunter put her best foot forward with this adorable couple. Hunter never had children of her own, so used her work to create adorable flashes of childhood innocence. Post editors came up with this cover idea of a boy not wanting new long-johns, and Hunter loved it. For inspiration, Hunter waited in a department store waiting for the right mother/son pair to sketch. This young man wasted no time taking over his sisters playhouse. With the dolls strewn across the ground, a Keep Out sign on the door, and his toy gun loaded, he will defend his new headquarters. This little girl is trying to impress her mother; her blonde curls match the womans in the chair. But her hands give away her nerves as they flap by her sides. A quick glance may give the impression of an angelic childrens choir. Closer inspection will reveal a black eye and a bandaged head and fingers on the two boys up front. Most kids grow about 2 inches each year, so this mother likely has a lot of work ahead of her. In this cover, Hunter depicted adolescence. You can see the math problems the young man should be paying attention to floating in the background. While the adults behind these kids concern themselves with more important matters, these kids dont care. Their mission is simply to enjoy a ride on the trolley. One woman, two rings, and Arianne must choose between rich world-traveling engineer Armand or hometown beat reporter Joe. Will she choose love or money? Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join Joe pulled at the starched collar of his white shirt as he stepped up on the porch and then straightened his tie before ringing the doorbell. He wiped perspiration from the side of his face before nervously patting the right pocket of his gray suit coat, feeling the box inside. The door opened and Ariannes Aunt Lucy gave him a look of surprise, followed by a quick smile. I thought you were Armand, she admitted shyly and opened the door wider for him. Armand? Armands back? Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today Joe tried to keep his face from revealing the stab of fear gripping his heart. Aunt Lucy stepped back to allow him in, a forced smile on her face. No! Not today, of all days. Joe followed Aunt Lucys full figure into the living room, where she waved at the sofas and told him to make himself at home. She smiled and said something about a pot on the stove and left him there, standing in the empty room with the three dark blue sofas and Persian rugs, Audubon prints on the walls, sunlight streaming through the Venetian blinds. Joe closed his eyes. Today, a date hed etched into his mind, was to be unforgettable June 9, 1901. The day hed ask Arianne to marry him. He patted the ring box again and noticed his hand shaking. So he sat on the nearest sofa and looked up at the lone ceiling fan as it vainly pushed the warm air around in the stuffy room. Joe, 24, stood 5 foot 6, skinny with dark brown hair parted down the center and dark brown eyes. He wore his best suit today, navy blue with new black shoes. Hed stopped for a shoe-shine boy as he left his apartment on Camp Street, just down from newspaper row where he worked at The Eagle. Making sure his shoes remained dust free, hed climbed aboard the uptown streetcar, passing the finer New Orleans estates along St. Charles Avenue before getting off at Felicity Street and walking the three blocks to the newly built Queen Anne house where Arianne lived with her aunt and uncle. He felt his stomach twisting into a giant knot and leaned back on the sofa, closing his eyes, trying his best to calm himself. He couldnt stop the word fate from stinging him, like an angry bee. He believed it was fate that drew him and Arianne together for that first meeting at the library when they nearly collided, she in search of Henry Wadsworth Longfellows Song of Hiawatha, him in search of Jack Londons The Son of the Wolf. Both embarrassed at their clumsiness, their eyes talking far more intently than their whispered apologies. Ariannes green eyes seemed to shine that afternoon with emerald brilliance, and her red lips looked ripe and luscious, a vision hed never forget. Fate again, that very night as he saw her across the room at the Overton soiree. She smiled so warmly when she saw him approaching. Fate revisited two days later, when he canvassed her neighborhood, trying to gather information on the early-morning burglar the police had finally caught. When Arianne answered her door and her eyes widened, she let out a little laugh, put a hand on her hip and asked if hed like a cup of coffee. Fate. Today was the day hed ask for her hand. Armand picked today to step back into her life, and there was nothing Joe could do about it. He let out a long breath and felt himself calming. There was nothing he could do about it. He jumped at the sound of the doorbell and stood quickly, then he sat back down before Aunt Lucy saw him. He crossed his legs and tried to act unconcerned as Aunt Lucy shuffled to the door and let out a little squeal. And then Armand was there beneath the archway leading into the living room. He stood erect and tall, wearing a light gray, almost silver, linen suit with a crimson cravat, a bouquet of red roses in his right hand. Aunt Lucy was speaking in her sing-song voice, how gorgeous were the roses, how nice Armand looked, how tanned and fit. # When Aunt Lucy shuffled out of the room, Armand noticed he wasnt alone. The smallish young man sitting on the sofa looked familiar, but Armand couldnt place the face. The man stood and extended his hand. Armand switched the roses to his left hand and stepped toward him. You probably dont remember me, the man said, but I was three grades behind you at St. Vincents. Joe Gort. The handshake was firm but not overly. It didnt take a genius to figure why Joe was there, and Armand felt his heartbeat rising. Of course Arianne would attract other men. He just didnt figure one would be here, now. I think I remember you, Armand said, stepping back. What are you doing these days? Joe wasnt a bad-looking fella and was probably wearing his best. Just like me, thought Armand. Im a reporter, Joe said. I work the police beat at The Eagle. A working-class man. A somewhat honorable profession. Armand did not want to brag, but as the minutes ticked by, keeping time with the ceiling fan, second after nervous second, Armand found himself telling his story, egged on by the curious reporter inside Joe. Its been a year, almost exactly, since I left, Armand said. Where in South America? Joe was sitting now, Armand still standing and holding the roses. Bolivia. I helped build two bridges. Armand the engineer was genuinely proud of his work in Bolivia. Financed by the tin mines, his group of Americans had bridged the Beni River and a narrow, deep gorge alongside Mount Illampu. He had left New Orleans, a new Tulane graduate with no prospects here, not wealthy enough yet to ask the girl he loved to marry him, and had returned a successful engineer with offers for continued advances in Chile and Argentina and an offer from Egypt cabled to him on the boat. Armand Sebastian 27, blond hair bleached even lighter by the strong South American sun, skin bronzed, had grown a light moustache hed carefully combed with a small moustache comb. The light sounds of footsteps brought Joe back to his feet and turned Armand around as Arianne stepped into the archway. She stood with her arms by her side, her bright green eyes moving from man to man. Armands vision suddenly blurred. His memory of her beauty paled in comparison to her real beauty. In a simple white dress, lightweight cotton, commonly worn by so many New Orleans women during stifling summers, Arianne seemed to glow. Maybe it was the sunlight streaming from behind her. Ariannes figure stood outlined through the dress, still hidden by the fabric but showing her natural curves, down the length of her long legs. Her reddish-brown hair lay in long curls past her shoulders, as if recently windblown by a breeze that would have been sorely welcomed by the men. Arianne, two weeks from her 20th birthday, stood 5 feet 2 inches and would enter her junior year at Sophie Newcomb College next semester. # Joe was certain the others could hear the thundering of his heart. It struck him deeply when he saw Ariannes lower lip quiver for a moment. She was nervous, and he felt hed already lost as her gaze moved from him back to Armand and lingered. Armand and Arianne. How many times hed heard of this pairing from just about everyone? It was always spoken in the past tense by Ariannes friends, with a hint of regret. Hed met Arianne on the rebound, his buddies at the paper constantly reminded him, calling him the luckiest bastard around. And as Arianne moved slowly toward Armand, whod extended the roses to her, he remembered running the names through his mind. Why on Earth would Arianne marry a Joe Gort to become Arianne Gort, when she could have Armand Sebastian, becoming Arianne Sebastian. Gort, what a silly name. Joes father used to try to dress it up: It is actually the name of a lovely Irish village near Galway Bay. Joe felt his throat tighten, thinking about his old man, who would have absolutely adored Arianne if he was still around. Looking at his feet, Joe felt that old, familiar feeling of a street urchin watching fine ladies and their gentlemen walking along the street. Black Irish. The Gorts were Black Irish, his mother used to tell him. Shanty Irish that mated with the Spaniards from the Great Armada. The ones that escaped the Bloody British and crashed their ships along the Irish coast, to be taken in by fellow Catholics. It was just teasing from his red-headed Irish mother. She loved his fathers dark good looks, but Joe was born with darker skin than his father, nearly olive, and the kids along Constance Street called him dago. Armand Sebastian, in his tall, silver-linen whiteness was no dago, even with bronze skin. Joe watched them standing next to one another, Armand looking down at Ariannes face as she turned and looked at Joe and suddenly it was there, the lovelight in her eyes as she stared at him. It wasnt a flicker. It hadnt gone away. But was it for Armand? Arianne took the roses and moved to a vase and put them inside, carefully arranging them, and Joe heard Armand speaking, something about Paris. engineers from all over the globe are going. The World Exposition is the greatest light show ever created, after the sun of course. Millions of electric lights. Magnificent effects. The Hall of Illusions is the wonder of the new century. Armand turned momentarily to Joe and said, It must be all over your paper since April. And Joe could see perspiration on his face now. The nerves were contagious. Joe felt himself nod, but it was another article that came to mind, Stephen Crane dying of tuberculosis in Germany on the fifth of June. It wasnt Cranes American masterpiece The Red Badge of Courage that had touched Joe. It was his Maggie: A Girl of the Streets with its realistic view of slum life that had moved Joe. Why Crane came to mind puzzled him for a moment as he remembered how the great writer was shipwrecked in 96 and spent four days adrift, impairing his health for the rest of his life. Crane died at 28. Maybe that was it. Life was too short and the woman he loved was standing with her old love. A greater man than he. # When Arianne turned back from the roses she saw the blue velvet ring box in Armands hand. She gasped and wished she hadnt. He slowly opened it to reveal a dazzling diamond so large it did not appear real. Come to Paris with me, Armand said, his voice almost breaking. Ill never love any woman as Ive loved you. Marry me and Ill never leave you again. Ill give you the world. She did not look at his face. She stared at the chiseled diamond and remembered the love theyd shared, the long nights talking, long walks holding hands, the gentle kisses, the warm hugging, the sound of her heart beating in her ears. And then she remembered the pain when hed left, all flustered, when life wasnt going his way and there was no prospect for work here and no way to support her if they married. Hed stormed away to seek his fortune. But hed written no letters. Hed left her alone. Hed just gone away until the telegram this morning and now this. Shed dreamt of him returning to her, what she would feel when she saw his face again. But the sudden emotion in her breast wasnt the same feeling, wasnt the love hed abandoned. Arianne looked into Armands eyes, the window to a mans soul, and stared into them as their hearts continued their frantic beating, as the ceiling fan kept spinning above and people milled outside along the street, and the streetcar continued its clacking up and down St. Charles Avenue and Joe Gort sitting not 10 feet away. She knew the answer wasnt in Armands eyes. It didnt matter how much he loved her. What mattered beat in her heart. # Joe sank back on the sofa and closed his eyes. He had to get away, away from the sweet, sickly smell of the roses, which always reminded him of funerals. His funeral this time. He tried to catch his breath and took a long minute to struggle through his natural inferiority to steel himself. Fight for her! I love her. I love her. And I wont sulk away. He stood up and opened his eyes and nearly ran into Arianne. She stood before him, and their eyes did the talking, as they had that first time in the library and for so many days and nights since. Her lovely face seemed to glow, her eyes glimmering, a smile slowly rising on those sculptured, red lips. He realized he had his ring box in his hand and tried to put it back into his coat pocket, but Ariannes hand was suddenly on his and gently pulling his hand up. She opened the box and looked at the ring. It wasnt even a full carat, and Joe had 20 more payments to make on it, but the gold was as 24-karat as the gold of Armands ring. But Arianne didnt see it, didnt care about carat size. She could barely see the ring through her tears. She wiped her eyes with her free hand and looked into Joes brown velvet eyes. You will marry me? It was Ariannes voice, thick with emotion. Joe could only nod. The words were caught in his throat. Arianne took in a deep breath and said in a quivering voice, Im going to marry Mister Joseph Devin Gort. She reached up and brushed a strand of Joes dark hair. My little Irishman. A broad, quivering smile on her face now. Armand felt a stab in his heart. Once again he was amazed at her beautys power of inflicting pain. Hed lost her. Arianne and Joe sat on the sofa, facing each other, and Joe slipped the ring on her finger and told her, I love you so much. I adore you. Ill always Arianne put her fingers on his lips to stop his talking, then pulled her hand away, tilted her face to the side and leaned forward, pursing her lips. They closed their eyes as their lips touched and for a breath-taking moment, the world melted away. Jurong, Singapore -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- Experts agree, when traveling to a foreign city, knowledge is power. Banks in Singapore is an information packed new website that offers readers a valuable resource concerning the breathtakingly unique city a list of banks Singapore and Singapore cash machines, which removes the headache from locating either of these vital necessities. All on a completely free to use and easy to navigate website. "We saw a real need to provide this kind of resource after hearing about some mishaps travelers have experienced trying to find a bank or ATM machine in the country," commented a spokesperson from Banks in Singapore. "We are making every effort to keep the site as up to date as possible." According to the site master, a list of Singapore Insurance companies is also featured. Early users of the site have given it two thumbs up. Chris C., from London, recently said, "I was in Singapore for work and needed to visit a bank associated with my own home bank. Banks in Singapore answered my question in minutes and the problem as solved very simply and without stress. Five stars." For more information be sure to visit http://www.bankssingapore.com Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- Description Non-Life Insurance in Mexico, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 Synopsis Timetrics 'Non-Life Insurance in Mexico, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Mexican non-life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Mexican insurance industry with its regional counterparts. View Full Report at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/495294 It provides values for key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019). The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Mexican economy and demographics, explains the various types of natural hazard and their impact on the Mexican insurance industry, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country. The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure. Summary Timetrics 'Non-Life Insurance in Mexico, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Mexican non-life insurance segment, including: The Mexican non-life insurance segments detailed outlook by product category A comprehensive overview of the Mexican economy and demographics A comparison of the Mexican insurance industry with its regional counterparts Detailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Mexican insurance industry Details of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in Mexico Details of regulatory policy applicable to the Mexican insurance industry Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/495297 Scope This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the non-life insurance segment in Mexico: It provides historical values for the Mexican non-life insurance segment for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period. It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Mexican non-life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2019. It profiles the top non-life insurance companies in Mexico, and outlines the key regulations affecting them. Reasons To Buy Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Mexican non-life insurance segment, and each category within it. Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Mexican non-life insurance segment. Assess the competitive dynamics in the non-life insurance segment. Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories. Gain insights into key regulations governing the Mexican insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future. Key Highlights Motor insurance was the largest category in the non-life segment in terms of gross written premium, and accounted for 50.2% in 2014. The non-life insurance industry grew at a review-period compound annual growth rate of 9.5% in terms of gross written premium. Property insurance accounted for 37.7% of the segments gross written premium in 2014. The non-life segment accounted for 37.4% of the industry's gross written premium in 2014. Browse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reports at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries. Contact: Mr. Nachiket 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 USA Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- Description Synopsis Timetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Egypt, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers, challenges in the Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segment. It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019). The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Egyptian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country. View Full Report at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/496413 The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure. Summary Timetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Egypt, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segment, including: The Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segments growth prospects by insurance category Key trends, drivers and challenges for the personal accident and health insurance segment A comprehensive overview of the Egyptian economy and demographics Details of the competitive landscape in the personal accident and health insurance segment in Egypt Details of regulatory policy applicable to the Egyptian insurance industry Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/496413 Scope This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the personal accident and health insurance segment in Egypt: It provides historical values for the Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segment for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period. It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2019. It profiles the top personal accident and health insurance companies in Egypt, and outlines the key regulations affecting them. Reasons To Buy Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segment, and each category within it. Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Egyptian personal accident and health insurance segment. Assess the competitive dynamics in the personal accident and health insurance segment. Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories. Gain insights into key regulations governing the Egyptian insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future. Key Highlights Egypts personal accident and health insurance penetration rate as a percentage of GDP stood at 0.083% in 2014. Poverty rates and diseases such as Hepatitis C, hypertension, diabetes and cancer led to a demand for advanced healthcare services. In September 2015, the Egyptian Health Ministry announced a draft law for a comprehensive health insurance system for all citizens. Prior to this, on September 18, 2014, the government passed a bill to include farmers and agricultural workers in its health insurance plan. The personal accident categorys direct written premium recorded an annual growth of 26.8% in 2014, which was higher than previous year at 8.3% in 2013. This was due to rising awareness among citizens with regards to road traffic accidents. Browse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reports at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries. Contact: Mr. Nachiket 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 USA Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Goffstown, NH -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- When it comes to spindle repair, there are many components that need to be examined before servicing the machinery. SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC has over 13 years of experience and specializes in spindle repairs for all types of machines. The company carries every product that clients need to fix their devices. The vast selection of parts is a primary reason why SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC is an industry leader in the Northeastern region of America. Contamination is the main reason for spindle bearing failures. To avoid contamination, the spindle repair company has partnered up with Garlock to provide a seal that delivers permanent bearing protection. This product protects spindles again humidity ingress and eliminates coolant ingestion. Garlock also requires zero maintenance and had no speed limitations. SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC also provides multi-axis milling heads to give clients high-quality precision to increase your machine's overall capabilities. Another crucial component involved in spindle repairs is the lubrication system. Properly lubricating your machine tool spindle is essential to high-quality performance. Lubrication can directly improve productivity and reliability. SPS Spindle Service & Parts, LLC also supplies, repairs, and installs high frequency drives for high-speed electric motors. The company also stocks the smaller components that make a large difference. Whether customers need precision machine tool bearings, double row roller bearings, or any other type of bearings, SPS Spindle Service & Parts, LLC can assist. Interested parties are encouraged to visit http://www.spsspindle.com or call 800-892-6258 to get a complete product listing. About SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC Providing high-quality spindle repair services, SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC offers new spindles and spindle products on their website, which assist with increasing machine tool performance while decreasing downtime. The company takes an active role in helping build their surrounding community, participating in helping advance the regional and national trade associations. The company is headquartered in Goffstown, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit http://www.spsspindle.com/. Goffstown, NH -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- From horizontal machine center spindles to surface grinders, SPS Spindle Parts & Services, LLC handles it all. The company provides a one-stop shop to all customers who are looking to rebuild their machines in a timely and cost-efficient manner. The SPS Spindle Parts & Services, LLC facility is continuously upgraded to ensure that equipment will be fixed with state-of-the-art machinery and technology. All of the technicians are extensively trained to provide customers a high-quality job every time. The business' ongoing training for their staff keeps them ahead of the curve when it comes to new mechanisms in the spindle industry. The company has been in business for over 13 years. They separate themselves from the other repair shops by offering service to almost any spindle on the market. Boring Mills, Cylindrical Grinders, Vertical Machining Centers, and Center-less Grinders are all amongst the massive list of devices that they are familiar with. Additionally, SPS Spindle Parts & Services, LLC handles parts for precision spindles, including single row roller ball bearings, deep groove ball bearings, steel & ceramic ball bearings. The company also provides support long after the sales process is complete. From selection to service, this company has it all. SPS Spindle Parts & Services, LLC handles repairs, and they also offer brand new spindles for sale on their website. All prices are competitive, which has proven to be a large reason for the company's high customer retention. Interested parties are encouraged to visit http://www.spsspindle.com or call 800-892-6258 for more information. About SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC Providing high-quality spindle repair services, SPS Spindle Parts & Service, LLC offers new spindles and spindle products on their website, which assist with increasing machine tool performance while decreasing downtime. The company takes an active role in helping build their surrounding community, participating in helping advance the regional and national trade associations. The company is headquartered in Goffstown, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit http://www.spsspindle.com/. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- Description Swedens Mining Fiscal Regime: H2 2015 Synopsis Timetrics Swedish Fiscal Regime outlines the governing bodies, governing laws, licenses, rights and obligations, and tax-related information on seven commodities: iron ore, copper, lead, nickel, zinc gold and silver. View Full Report at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/495312 Summary Timetric's mining fiscal regime covers Sweden, which possesses substantial iron ore deposits and other diversified natural resources, including copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver and tungsten. Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/495312 Scope The report outlines the governing bodies, governing laws, licenses, rights and obligations, and key fiscal terms which includes corporate income tax, fees, capital gains tax, withholding tax, real estate tax, depreciation, loss carry forward and value added tax. Reasons To Buy To gain an overview of the Sweden's mining fiscal regime Key Highlights The Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) is an agency that deals with issues related to soil bedrock and groundwater The Mining Inspectorate of Sweden is responsible for the administration of mineral resources in the country The Minerals Act (1991:45) is the governing act that deals with exploration and exploitation of deposits in Sweden Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary 2 The Swedish Mining Industry Governing Bodies 2.1 Geological Survey of Sweden (Sveriges Geologiska Undersokning) 2.1.1 Mining Inspectorate of Sweden (Bergsstaten) 3 The Swedish Mining Industry Governing Law 3.1 Minerals Act (1991:45) 3.1.1 Exploration Permits 3.1.2 Area 3.1.3 Pre-requisites 3.1.4 Validity of permit 3.1.5 Transfer, relinquishment and revocation 3.2 Exploitation Concession 3.2.1 Area 3.2.2 Pre-requisites 3.2.3 Validity 3.2.4 Transfer, relinquishment and revocation 4 The Swedish Mining Industry Rights and Obligations 4.1 Rights 4.2 Obligations Browse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reports at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries. Contact: Mr. Nachiket 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 USA Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Tallahassee, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic. Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date. Tallahassee Florida G3-Development.co Online Media Expert Announces a Fresh Start with 10% off their Website Building for Local Google+ Followers By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions. Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines. In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users. In 2008, Bruce Clay said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. He opined that it would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because its rank would potentially be different for each user and each search. In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results. Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results. In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice, however Google implemented a new system which punishes sites whose content is not unique. In April 2012, Google launched the Google Penguin update the goal of which was to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine. About G3 Development G3 Development is set out to proactively serve the business community by providing solutions in entrepreneurialism, business development, social media and venture capitalism. To provide leadership in establishing strength with our client's international businesses, being built on a foundation of innovation, advocacy, technology and business integrity http://www.g3-development.co/ 877-229-9183 Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2016 -- Description The Insurance Industry in Namibia, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 Synopsis Timetrics 'The Insurance Industry in Namibia, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers and challenges in the Namibian insurance industry. View Full Report at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/500400 It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019). The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Namibian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country. The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure. Summary Timetrics 'The Insurance Industry in Namibia, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Namibian insurance industry, including: The Namibian insurance industry's growth prospects by segment and category A comprehensive overview of Namibian economy and demographics The detailed competitive landscape in the Namibian insurance industry The various distribution channels in the Namibian insurance industry Detailed regulatory policies of the Namibian insurance industry Analysis of natural hazards in Namibian insurance industry Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/500400 Scope This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the insurance industry in Namibia: It provides historical values for the Namibian insurance industry for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period. It offers a detailed analysis of the key segments in the Namibian insurance industry, along with market forecasts until 2019. It covers an exhaustive list of parameters, including written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions. It analyzes the various distribution channels in Namibia. It profiles the top insurance companies in Namibia and outlines the key regulations affecting them. Reasons To Buy Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Namibian insurance industry and each segment and category within it. Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Namibian insurance industry. Assess the competitive dynamics in the Namibian insurance industry. Identify the growth opportunities and market dynamics in key segments. Gain insights into key regulations governing the Namibian insurance industry and their impact on companies and the industry's future. Key Highlights The Namibian insurance industry grew at a review-period CAGR of 13.6%. The life insurance segment accounted for 55.4% of the industry's gross written premium in 2014. The non-life segment accounted for 24.9% of the industry's gross written premium in 2014. The Namibian insurance industry had 16 life and 12 non-life insurers in 2014. The reinsurance segment had one state-owned reinsurer Namibian National Reinsurance Corporation Ltd and several foreign insurers. Browse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reports at: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries. Contact: Mr. Nachiket 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 USA Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz A new reef system has been found at the mouth of the Amazon River by an international group of researchers from Brazil and the United States. The team, led by Dr. Rodrigo Moura from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, reported their discovery on April 22 in the journal Science Advances. As large rivers empty into the worlds oceans in areas known as plumes, they typically create gaps in the reef distribution along the tropical shelves something that makes finding a reef in the Amazon plume an unexpected discovery, the scientists explained. The Amazon River plume is an area where freshwater from the river mixes with the salty Atlantic Ocean. It affects a broad area of the tropical North Atlantic Ocean in terms of salinity, pH, light penetration and sedimentation, conditions that usually correlate to a major gap in Western Atlantic reefs. Our expedition into the Brazil Exclusive Economic Zone was primarily focused on sampling the mouth of the Amazon, said co-author Dr. Patricia Yager from the University of Georgia. But Dr. Moura had an article from the 1970s that mentioned catching reef fish along the continental shelf and said he wanted to try to locate these reefs. The scientists used multibeam acoustic sampling of the ocean bottom to find the reef and then dredged up samples to confirm the discovery. We brought up the most amazing and colorful animals I had ever seen on an expedition, Dr. Yager said. The Amazon plume and its effects on the global carbon budget converged with the discovery of the reef system to provide scientists a wider view of the reef community, its variation and changes. Microorganisms thriving in the dark waters beneath the river plume may provide the trophic connection between the river and the reef. Our paper is not just about the reef itself, but about how the reef community changes as you travel north along the shelf break, in response to how much light it gets seasonally by the movement of the plume, Dr. Yager said. In the far south, it gets more light exposure, so many of the animals are more typical reef corals and things that photosynthesize for food. But as you move north, many of those become less abundant, and the reef transitions to sponges and other reef builders that are likely growing on the food that the river plume delivers. So the two systems are intricately linked. _____ Rodrigo L. Moura et al. 2016. An extensive reef system at the Amazon River mouth. Science Advances, vol. 2, no. 4, e1501252; doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501252 The virus that causes Zika fever can be transmitted through sexual contact long after initial infection as it survives for weeks in semen, according to research undertaken in Brazil. A paper published this month in Clinical Infectious Diseases found nine cases of sexual transmission of Zika virus. The initial infections were acquired by men who travelled to regions where Zika is circulating. They then passed it to their partners, who could not have contracted the disease any other way. The virus was identified in the individuals through molecular biological tests. One man still had the virus in his semen 62 days after the onset of symptoms. It indicates a much larger infectious period during which the virus could be transmitted. Jose Moreira, National Institute of Infectious Diseases Evandro Chagas It indicates a much larger infectious period during which the virus could be transmitted than the time it is active in the bloodstream, which is usually no longer than seven days, says lead author Jose Moreira, a researcher at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases Evandro Chagas, a unit of Brazilian public health institution the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. He says the virus may be surviving in some kind of viral reservoir: a hidden region of the body that immune cells cannot reach. The cases of sexual transmission of the virus were from men to women after they had unprotected vaginal sex, although there is evidence that the virus can also be transmitted by unprotected anal sex between men, the researchers say. Moreira adds that mosquitoes are still the main driver of transmission and that it is not yet possible to say whether the babies of women who contracted the virus through sexual transmission are more prone to develop malformations than those bitten by infected mosquitoes. Last month, the World Health Organization said there was no longer any doubt that the Zika virus causes babies to be born with microcephaly: abnormally small heads with associated brain damage. Earlier this month, a group of Brazilian researchers demonstrated the harmful effects of Zika virus on human brain cells. In a study published in Science on 10 April, they infected neurosphere cultures of brain cells with the Zika virus isolated from a Brazilian patient. The virus killed most of the neurospheres and left the few survivors small and misshapen. The affected neurospheres degraded within six days, whereas those originating from uninfected cells developed normally, says coauthor Stevens Rehen. The infected cells grew to less than half their normal size, the researchers found. Our results indicate the virus preferentially kills developing brain cells, Rehen explains. Humans have often been told that they carry the DNA of the Neanderthals; this suggests that at some point they have interbred. However, that is no longer the case today, as a new study suggests that today's humans have less or don't have the Neanderthal Y-chromosomes. Scientists would want to find out why. Experts have found that the Y chromosome could have been the major factor in setting the two lineages apart by creating conditions that might often lead to miscarriages if or when the two got together. Recent findings show that Neanderthals who lived in Europe and Asia may have already died out about 40,000 years ago. According to modernreaders.com, there is about 2 percent of all non-African genomes in modern humans that are associated to Neanderthals, which implies that interbreeding attempts worked out alright. But this study still suspect that male offspring had more challenges to deal with compared to female offspring because they are the first one to undergo the in-depth research. In 2010, scientists first sequenced the Neanderthal genome. It revealed that Neanderthals once interbred with modern human ancestors. The last major part of the Neanderthal genome that experts have yet to analyze was the Y chromosome. In modern humans and Neanderthals, the Y chromosomes determine if the sex of the individual is male. Now, researchers have completed the analysis of a Neanderthal Y chromosome. They concentrated on a Neanderthal male found in El Sidron, Spain. All in all, it was found that the differences between the Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes suggest that these lineages spread almost 590,000 years ago which is consistent with the past research. "We should pay attention to the potential role of immune incompatibilities in population isolation," study lead author Fernando Mendez, a population geneticist at Stanford University, told Live Science. Methuselah, the official world's oldest known living tree, is about 4,847 years old. It is a Great Basin bristlecone pine tree that grows in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California. The exact location of the tree is not publicly disclosed as well as no picture of it is shared for its protection. According to New York Times, the officials did not impart any picture of Methuselah because they fear that visitors can trace its exact location. This is to safeguard the oldest tree from any harassment such as visitors carving their names in the bark of the tree or recklessly cutting the tree. This happened before way back in 1964. Prometheus, the former oldest tree, which was 4,900 years old, was cut down in 1964 in the Great Basin Natural Park in Nevada. Why would you cut down the oldest tree? Donald R. Currey is a graduate student who studied the effects of climate change on diminishing glaciers by assessing their impact on the size of the rings of old pine trees. He explained then that the coring of a tree did not work, so he cut Prometheus down with the aid of some foresters. His drill bit stuck in the tree, according to some foresters. Then, Currey and the foresters cut the tree down to remove his tool. After counting its rings, he then realized that he had slain the oldest tree in the world. Edmund Schulman, a scientist and a dendrochronologist of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, computed the age of Methuselah in 1957. He seized few samples from the tree with a tool called increment borer and then matched up the ring patterns from every sample, according to Matthew Salzer, a research associate at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. They took samples from various parts of the tree to have an estimate of the age of the tree. The researchers also discovered that another bristlecone pine tree might supersede Methuselah. Some organizations said that the tree is about 5,065 years old. On the other hand, the existence and the age of the tree could not be confirmed by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive and the forester. They are still investigating the tree, according to Debra Schweizer, the spokeswoman for Inyo National Forest. Bristlecone pine's trunk starts to die on its 1,000th birthday. Methuselah could last a few hundred more years, yet it is quite a life. "Methuselah" is named after a biblical figure, who lived up to 969 years old. Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970. It aims to encourage people to be more environmentally friendly. Most people all around the world support Earth Day, including celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Miley Cyrus and Emma Watson. Besides this host of celebrities, people who study the outer space would not miss celebrating the planet Earth. These are the fearless astronauts. This Earth Day 2016, the current and former astronauts celebrated the planet earth via social media. There were many images taken from space shared through Twitter and other social networks. Get a glimpse of them and be amazed of how beautiful the planet earth is. 5,440 orbits around the world on my #YearInSpace. Here's one of them for you. Happy #EarthDay!https://t.co/3sHD9oSWjl Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) April 22, 2016 #EarthDay a good time to reflect on the beauty of our planet https://t.co/vvcNIfgMKh pic.twitter.com/yPZIKTofKX Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) April 22, 2016 Happy #EarthDay - one of my favorites, view from a side window on the @Space_Station in 2014 looking south to Baja. pic.twitter.com/7lTV9LW1g5 Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) April 22, 2016 Near to far; ISS, Earth, moon, zodiacal light, stars of the Milky Way. Happy #EarthDay! pic.twitter.com/hzS4gNcwFd Dan Burbank (@AstroCoastie) April 22, 2016 Mike Massimino also tweeted an encouraging message to all people. "Earth is beautiful, awe-inspiring and our home. Let's respect and protect it." Telegraph stated five facts about the Earth Day. First, there were 20 million people who participated the first Earth day in 1970. Second, in 2008, Disney introduced the Disneynature, which is a channel dedicated to environmental documentaries, prior to celebrating Earth Day. Third, the organizers cannot remember the name or date for the day came from. Fourth, it is foretold that there were 1 billion people all around the world involved with Earth day 2016. Fifth, Earth Day 2016 has its own flag that features a photo of the planet Earth taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the moon. Meanwhile, the CNN states the reasons why the planet earth is not really doomed. On April 22, 2016, the world leaders of 175 countries signed the Paris agreement on climate change. Their objective is to fight the warming of the planet Earth. Solar energy is used by many countries nowadays, which stops people from using the dirty fuels such as natural gas, coal and oil, which damage the planet. Electrical cars are also invented and becoming popular. The invention may lead to the eradication of the emissions. A new project aims to relocate about 80 rhinoceroses from South Africa to the safari parks in Australia to prevent them from being hunted to extinction. It is named the Australian Rhino Project. There were about 1,300 rhinos that were killed illegally in Africa in 2015, according to Reuters. The poaching of rhinos is increasing due to the demand from Vietnam and China wherein they use the rhino horn in traditional medicine. They believe that the rhino horn can cure the range of ailments from cancer to colds. Conservationists said that approximately they sell it for about $65,000 per kilogram. The goal of the project together with the South Africa's Elephants, Rhinos and People (ERP) is to create an "insurance population." If in case the project is effective, they would relocate more rhinos to safe places such as in Florida and Texas. Wouter van Hoven, the ERP Director said that it is easier for the poachers to hunt rhinos in Africa rather than in Australia and America. "It's not that we want to get the rhinos out of Africa but we need to put some rhinos into a safe deposit box." Save the Rhino, a conservation organization, states that 5,940 African rhinos were killed since 2008, according to Science Alert. The number keeps rising and the group wants this illegal activity to stop. Rhinoceros mean "nose horn." It is also called rhino. It is one of the five extant species in the family of Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species come from Africa and the other three to Southern Asia. The rhino horns are being sold in the black market and cost as much as gold. The horns of rhinos are made of keratin, which is a protein that fashions the fingernails and hair. The people pulverize the rhino horn. They believe that the dust can be used for therapeutic purposes. Japanese scientists from the University of Tokyo developed a super-flexible electronic skin that is made from organic electronics, which are composed of carbon-based polymers. This ultra-thin material can simulate the flexibility of the human skin. The study was issued in Science Advances, according to Washington Post. The "e-skins" could be used for many purposes, from monitoring vital signs to making wearable electronics. It could allow the hospitals to examine the vital signs of the patients. It can also turn the smartwatch visible onto your palm or wherever you want them. Imagine having skin that could light up like a neon sign? https://t.co/pkM1jkOMrn NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 19, 2016 Takao Someya, one of the authors of the study and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Tokyo, said that functionalizing the skin may swap the smartphone in the future. She said that if you carry an iPhone, it is a bulky device. On the other hand, in "e-skin," you don't need to carry anything and you can receive information anywhere and anytime. The researchers used the same process like the way organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays but these generally degrade in the air. These are often manufactured for TVs and smartphones. On the other hand, the organic electronics, which e-skin is made of does not degrade when exposed to air. The researchers also created a protective coating that can shelter the electronic components from the air, according to LiveScience. They called the protective coating a passivation layer. It keeps out oxygen and water vapor enough to keep a light working for few days. They made organic polymer light-emitting modes (PLEDs) in three colors such as blue, green and red. The lights will turn on and off when it is hit by electrical pulses. As you can see in the video below, there are seven red bars that shape into letters and numbers, like having a calculator on your hand. Someya said that the e-skin they developed can be directly laminated on the surface of the skin. This allows to electronically functionalizing the skin. FLORENCE, S.C. A coalition of South Carolina nursing organizations has named the states top 100 nurses, designating them Palmetto Gold. Five of those nurses are from Carolinas Hospital System. Those five nurses are Neva Lawson, surgical services; Calperta Green, 9th floor; Ashley Hudson, education; James Rand, 8th floor; and Brandon Hooks, director of orthopaedic services, neurosurgery and joint care center. Palmetto Gold is the premier statewide nurse recognition program that salutes registered nurses for exceptional nursing practice and commitment to the profession. Nominations are received from nursing employers and peers from a variety of nursing education and health care facilities across the state. One hundred nurses are selected from the nominations received, and they are honored during a formal gala with a specially designed Palmetto Gold pin and certificate. We are proud to honor these five exemplary nurses who symbolize the true spirit of nursing, said Costa Cockfield, chief nursing officer. Admired among their colleagues, these honorees embody the essential qualities of a nurse. Their commitment to providing high-quality and compassionate care consistently exceeds our patients expectations, bringing honor to Carolinas Hospital System and to the health care profession. Net proceeds from the gala are used to endow scholarships for students in state-approved registered nursing programs in South Carolina, thereby continuing the legacy of excellence in nursing practice for South Carolina citizens. The Palmetto Gold Scholarships will be managed by the South Carolina Nurses Foundation, a 501-C 3 organization, whose mission is to promote high standards of health care by ensuring the advancement of the nursing profession through awards, grants and scholarships. James Taylors most recent album Before this World debuted at #1 in 2015. Ive been listening to him my whole life, along with almost everyone I grew up with, but I had never seen him live until Saturday night when he played at UTCs McKenzie arena to a near-capacity crowd. This new album is a good listen. It feels mellower and broader than some of his earlier work, orchestral in arrangement but understated. The fiddle, flugelhorn, 3 cellists including Yo-Yo Ma, steel guitar and Taylors own distinctive finger picking style make up its broad landscape. My two favorite cuts are the last two, Far Afghanistan and his remake of Robert Tannahills traditional favorite, Wild Mountain Thyme. Taylor's life has been an open book, read out in the public, played over the radio with chapters told in his distinctive storytelling fashion about recovery from heroin addiction, treatment for psychiatric disorders and the pitfalls of learning too much too fast. His relaxed and contemplative nature were an easy read tonight as he talked back to the audience, spoke about how much he enjoyed visiting Chattanooga, and made jokes in his self-deprecating way. It might be time to go back and listen again to the other albums. James Taylor rode the back of a rocket in the form of the Beatles Apple Record label, where Paul McCartney and George Harrison were guest musicians on one of his first recordings, Carolina on my Mind. He was the first non-British artist signed to their label. Taylor's life is distinctive and relatable. Love found and lost, a near fatal motorcycle accident, battles with personal demons and now with hindsight, hes still able to pour that out into haunting music that sounds distinctly James Taylor with a voice seemingly unchanged by time. ~Fil Manley filmanley@gmail.com ['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close, almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought. -James Taylor The deal, expected to be completed by September 2016, will see AET, subsidiary of MISC, control 100% stake in Paramount Tankers, which owns a fleet of six aframax tankers. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. We are continually looking for opportunities to ensure sustainable growth in our business and to own/operate modern tonnage which serves our customer needs globally, said Rajalingam Subramaniam, president and ceo of AET. Acquiring the Paramount joint venture in its entirety allows us to own and operate all six vessels on our own. We are the commercial managers for the vessels and have commenced taking over the technical management, he added. ABC News(NEW YORK) -- The campaigns for Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced in statements Sunday night that each candidate will cede states in the 2016 presidential race to one another in an effort to stop GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement that "to ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead." Kasich's campaign manager John Weaver wrote in a memo that, "We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana." Officials in both the Cruz and Kasich campaigns told ABC News that the campaigns coordinated on the decisions announced Sunday night. Trump tweeted Sunday night after the two announcements, "Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!" Cruz leads Kasich in national polls but both men have been trying to be the sole beneficiary of the anti-Trump vote. Cruz has previously called Kasich a "spoiler" who has been "mathematically eliminated" from the race. Last week, Cruz told Glenn Beck that Kasich was "running to be Trump's vice president." Kasich has called Cruz "Senator Smear." Asked during an interview that aired on CNN on March 20, whether he and Cruz could team up to stop Trump, Kasich replied, "I don't see how." When pressed, he added, "Look, we always talk ... if somebody wants to call and discuss things." The decision for the campaigns to cede states to one another follows Cruz's loss in New York, which made it mathematically impossible for him to clinch the nomination based on pledged delegates. Cruz, currently in the midst of a bus tour through Indiana, called the Hoosier state "pivotal" and a "battleground." "And the state of Indiana has a national platform right now, the eyes of the country are all on the Hoosier state. We are facing a choice. Do we want to be behind a campaign that is based on yelling and screaming and cursing and insulting anyone you see? Or do we want to come together behind a positive, optimistic, forward looking conservative campaign with real policy solutions to the problems facing this country?" Cruz said at a rally in Terre Haute, Indiana on Sunday. Kasich campaign manager Weaver said that New Mexico and Oregon were appealing to their campaign because, they "are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Gov. Kasich is performing well." He said the campaign expected "independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns." Weaver added that Kasich's campaign expected to "to compete with both the Trump and Cruz campaigns in the remaining primary states." A spokesman for John Kasich, Chris Schrimpf, told ABC News Sunday night that Kasich was no longer going to hold any public events in Indiana on Tuesday, when he was next scheduled to be in the state. His campaign had planned to hold a town hall and primary night party in the Indianapolis area on Tuesday. Kasich is scheduled to hold two town hall meeting-style events in Oregon on Thursday. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Average retail gasoline prices in Chattanooga have risen 2.2 cents per gallon in the past week, averaging $1.92 per gallon on Sunday, according to GasBuddy's daily survey of 170 gas outlets in Chattanooga. This compares with the national average that has increased 2.4 cents per gallon in the last week to $2.14 per gallon, according to gasoline price website GasBuddy.com. Including the change in gas prices in Chattanooga during the past week, prices Sunday were 40.8 cents per gallon lower than the same day one year ago and are 1.2 cents per gallon lower than a month ago. The national average has increased 10.7 cents per gallon during the last month and stands 38.8 cents per gallon lower than this day one year ago. The national average has increased 10.7 cents per gallon during the last month and stands 38.8 cents per gallon lower than this day one year ago. According to GasBuddy historical data, gasoline prices on April 25 in Chattanooga have ranged widely over the last five years: $2.33 in 2015, $3.54 in 2014, $3.23 in 2013, $3.66 in 2012 and $3.67 in 2011. Areas nearby Chattanooga and their current gas price climate: Knoxville- $1.94, up 2.2 cents per gallon from last week's $1.91. State of Tennessee- $1.95, up 2.6 cents per gallon from last week's $1.92. Huntsville- $1.92, up 1.4 cents per gallon from last week's $1.90. The oil markets this past week shrugged off OPECs inability to reach an agreement for production freezes at the highly-touted meeting in Doha, Qatar. West Texas Intermediate crude futures responded to a brighter demand picture that perked prices up to $43.73 per barrel for Fridays close. Leading the demand surge has been gasoline, where the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows year-to-date demand to be up 3.4% from last year and up 7.4% from 2014 according to their product supplied demand indicator, said Will Speer, a Houston-based senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. Unsurprisingly, this has impacted retail gasoline prices, causing 43 of the 50 states to raise prices from a week ago. Low prices have ignited the early demand surge this year, and the surge is expected to continue into the summer, where demand hits its peak for the year." POE BATS FOR ALL-OUT DEVELOPMENT IN MINDANAO Independent presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe said efforts to achieve lasting peace in Mindanao should be supplemented with all-out development and genuine progress. While Poe supports all-out war against terror groups, she said the national government must invest in infrastructure projects, health programs, and livelihood opportunities to benefit Mindanao's 22 million people. "All-out war sa mga nagbabanta sa atin pero dapat all-out development din," Poe said in response to a question by a Muslim mother whose family was among those displaced by the peace and order situation in the region. "Importante rin na pangalagaan natin ang imprastruktura, sapagkat kung konektado kayo sa isa't isa, mas madaling mababantayan ang mga teritoryo natin sa Mindanao," the senator said. Alongside security issues, Poe said agriculture was one sector that the government should help if it wants to bring development to the remote areas of Mindanao. "'Yung ating tagtuyot sa Mindanao--halimbawa na lang, Region 12 yata, South Cotabato--halos lagpas P200-bilyon ang ibinibigay sa atin [ng] kanilang mga agricultural products, pero pagdating sa tulong sa El Nino, P9-million lang ang ibinibigay natin sa napakalaking budget na inilaan para dito. Makikita mo talagang kulang ang suporta sa Mindanao," she said. Poe's "Gobyernong may Puso" will allocate one-third of the national budget or P1 trillion to Mindanao to fasttrack development in the region, which has 11 of the 20 poorest provinces in the Philippines. Another P300 billion will be allotted to help the agriculture sector, which comprises 60 percent of the poorest Filipinos, Poe said. Press Release April 25, 2016 GUINGONA: SENATE TO CONTINUE SEARCH FOR MISSING $17 MILLION THE Senate Blue Ribbon Committee probe on the $81-M money laundering scheme is set to resume on the 12th of May 2016, Thursday to reconcile conflicting testimonies among the parties involved and to get more details on where all the stolen money went, given that $17 million in cash remains unaccounted for. According to Blue Ribbon Chairman and Senator Teofisto "TG" Guingona III, the Senate inquiry is far from over as additional hearings are still needed to help the committee finish its recommendations for improvements to existing banking and anti-money laundering laws. The reelectionist senator also said his committee still needs to ferret out the whole truth and to get a clearer and more accurate picture of how $81 million in stolen funds were brought into the country and laundered here, and where all the money went after. Guingona noted that the committee's 7th public hearing was set back by the failure of the lawyers of key witnesses Kim Wong, Maia Deguito and PhilRem to promptly submit their respective waivers on the disclosure of their phone records. "During the April 19 hearing, these three parties, Wong, Deguito, and PhilRem, have given the committee their verbal consent to look into their phone records between February 5 and 13. But as of today, none of their lawyers have submitted waivers allowing Globe to furnish us with these information," Guingona stated. Guingona's committee has summoned the phone records in question following the conflicting statements of Wong, Deguito, and the Bautista couple of PhilRem on who called whom during the deliveries of laundered stolen funds. The parties have given conflicting testimonies at the Senate, particularly on $17 million in cash that PhilRem claimed to have delivered to Chinese national Weikang Xu at Solaire casino in the presence of Wong, but which Wong claimed to have never received. "We are still waiting to have the waivers and the phone records. By the time we resume the probe, we would have already compared who is telling the truth," Guingona maintained. Testimonies and pieces of evidence presented during the Senate hearings can be used by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) in filing criminal suits against those involved in the laundering scheme, as well as in civil forfeiture cases for the recovery of the stolen funds and their return to Bangladesh. The next session is also set to hear the statement of PhilRem's accountant, who has already resigned according to PhilRem president Salud Bautista. The accountant has been asked to appear after the April 12 hearing but remained incognito until the April 19 hearing was suspended. "The committee also expects PhilRem to have produced their accountant by then. Otherwise, they will be cited for contempt," Guingona warned. To date, the Blue Ribbon committee has traced how most of the $81 million came into the country on February 5, 2016 and how large amounts have been disbursed to casinos using numerous bank accounts, including allegedly fictitious accounts. However, the committee has yet to determine who received and kept about $17 million delivered by PhilRem in cash. Press Release April 25, 2016 POLITICAL RIVALS IN ORMOC, LEYTE FIND COMMON GROUND TO SUPPORT BONGBONG MARCOS FOR VP Local LP candidates also for Marcos Political rivals in Ormoc City have found a common ground in the Vice Presidential race as they crossed party lines to express their support to their "kababayan", Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. The 2016 elections in the 4th district of Leyte which includes Ormoc City is a fight between two husband and wife teams, the Codilla couple and the Gomez couple. But when Marcos brought his Unity Caravan to Ormoc City Sunday to consolidate in his family's hometown of Leyte, both couples, in separate meetings, pledged their full support to the Senator. Reelectionist Ormoc City Mayor Edward Codilla is running against actor Richard Gomez while Codilla's wife, Violy, is running against Gomez's wife, incumbent Leyte Rep. Lucy Torres Gomez. During his courtesy call to Codilla, Marcos was openly endorsed by the incumbent Mayor saying he is crossing party lines for the Vice Presidency of Senator Marcos. Codilla is a member of the United People's Coalition. In a separate meeting with Gomez, who is a member of the Nationalist People's Coalition, Marcos also got the former's support saying he and his wife, who is a member of the ruling Liberal Party, have always been a supporter of the Senator. Rep. Torres Gomez was, however, not present during the meeting as her flight back to Ormoc was delayed. Marcos, for his part, said he was humbled by the endorsements acknowledging that it is a big boost to his campaign during the homestretch. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party candidates in Maasin City, Leyte also pledged their support to Marcos during the "2nd Barangay Day Celebration 2016" held in the city last Sunday. LP's Gubernatorial candidate Damian Mercado, Congressional candidate Roger Mercado, Mayoralty candidate Lito Mercado, and Vice Mayoralty candidate Malone Samaco all referred to Marcos as the next Vice President. As a gesture of support, Rep. Mercado led members of his LP ticket in raising his hand. Marcos then thanked the LP local candidates for their support and warm welcome saying they have shown the kind of unity he is espousing all throughout the campaign. "Bukod sa ikinakampanya ko ang aking kandidatura para Bise Presidente, ikinakampanya ko rin ang kilusan para sa pagkakaisa ng sambayanang Pilipino upang sama-sama natin mapaganda ang buhay ng bawat Pilipino," Marcos concluded. San Franciscos Mission District these days is a political battleground, a dining destination, a cultural flash point and was the subject of a recent academic walking tour for geographers from at least five nations. The theme was gentrification, that hard-to-define but symbolically charged buzzword. As with any organized outing, certain sights were pointed out and certain points were made. But in a setting like this, with a topic like this, the real takeaway was the difficulty of weaving a neighborhoods diverse strands into an all-encompassing yarn. Put another way: City Hall debates tend to be simplistic. Real cities are not. The history of the neighborhood is a history of churning and change, Rachel Brahinsky, an urban affairs professor at the University of San Francisco, told the two dozen trekkers in town for last months annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. But theres a qualitative difference between now and the kinds of change that happened before. That was the case made by Brahinsky and the tours two other organizers, Alex Tarr of Rice University and John Stehlin of UC Berkeley: The ongoing hyper-prosperity within the tech sector of the economy threaten(s) the erasure of Latina/o, working class, bohemian and queer communities, to quote the description for the sold-out tour on the conference website. Connor Radnovich/The Chronicle The first stop was the 24th Street BART plaza, where a faded 1975 mural by Michael Rios shows the system resting on the backs of angry-looking figures a reminder that BART was conceived not to serve the inner-city neighborhood but for commuters to come into San Francisco to go to work, Brahinsky said, as well as evidence that activists have talked about gentrification since the 1970s. World famous We then strolled east to Balmy Alley with its expressive spill of political murals, many from the mid-1980s and on Central American themes. Theyre known around the world: Our tour shared the block with a group whose leader was speaking French as he gestured at details. Every time Ive been here with people, a European tour has been here as well, commented Stehlin, a lecturer at Cal on what is known as human geography, to emphasize the attention given to life beyond earth sciences. The leaders of the tour know the irony all too well: Celebrating a neighborhoods indigenous culture can put said neighborhood on the map, which can then accelerate said cultures displacement. Its an underlying contradiction, admitted Brahinsky, a former Bay Guardian reporter who now chairs USFs masters program in urban and public affairs. The charm is both what draws (progressive) people to live here, and what real estate brokers use to sell the place. Another contradiction is that any exploration of the Mission as a case study in gentrification glosses over how the place came to be, and the tangled strands still exist. Irish American area Into the 1950s, the Mission was known as a blue-collar, largely Irish American enclave. Although Mexican immigrants had arrived in large numbers by the 1930s, the large-scale shift of demographics and character is a product of more recent times after the prior generations of residents moved to the suburbs and new waves of residents from South and Central America flowed in. As for subsequent subcultures, a big part of the appeal of the Mission in the 1970s and 80s was that it was relatively inexpensive, with apartments to choose from and storefronts to fill. Even into the 1990s, there were spaces for the subcultures with more time than money, in Stehlins terms. Such as Valencia Street, which was where you found the neighborhoods auto repair shops and gas stations. Just around the corner on 19th Street, the 2014 closing of the Lexington Club signaled the demise of what Stehlin called the last very visible vestige of the lesbian Mission District. It had opened in 1997. In other words, the year before Delfina began its run on 18th Street. Two years after the Slanted Door (now at the Ferry Building) debuted on Valencia. What is remembered today as the era of anything goes also is when todays urban-chic scene was taking root. Another thing that strikes anyone walking down 24th Street or Mission Street is that for all the signs of overheated wealth a new workout spot near the intersection of the two bills itself on its website as embodying the tension between artistic innovation and gentrification the Latino cultures are still strong. This includes the obvious taco stands and panaderias but also markets selling Donald Trump pinatas, or shops with signs proclaiming, I ride with the Nietos, in reference to the fatal 2014 shooting of Alex Nieto, a 27-year-old security guard, by four police officers in Bernal Heights Park. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Culture remains So much more (of the Latino Mission) is left than anybody acknowledges, one of the tour leaders, Tarr, said as we neared its end. He also discussed how, inevitably, the measure of the way that things should be is defined by how they were when you arrived: When I moved here in the 90s, it was perfect for me as a white kid to live with friends in an apartment on an alley. None of this changes the reality of what has happened to the Mission in the current boom. Where earlier immigrants filled a void, the current wave of immigrants is defined by people with the income to live anywhere they want. Thats a profound shift with troubling implications. Its also the latest twist in an ongoing tale rather than an unprecedented moment no matter what ideologues on either side of the political spectrum might say. Place is a weekly column by John King, The San Francisco Chronicles urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate PROVIDENCE, R.I. In an extraordinary move, Donald Trumps Republican rivals announced plans late Sunday to coordinate primary strategies in upcoming states to deprive the GOP front-runner of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Ted Cruz and John Kasich issued near-simultaneous statements outlining an agreement that may be unprecedented in modern American politics. The Kasich campaign will give Cruz a clear path in Indiana. In return, the Cruz campaign will clear the path for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans, Cruzs campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement explaining the new plans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation. Added Kasichs chief strategist, John Weaver, Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee. The arrangement marks a sharp reversal for Cruzs team, which aggressively opposed the idea of a coordinated anti-Trump effort as recently as last week. Yet it underscores a bleak reality for the billionaire businessmans Republican foes: Time is running out to stop him. The announcement came less than 48 hours before voting begins across five Northeastern states where the New York billionaire is poised to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. Trump campaigned Sunday in Maryland, which will vote Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Trump responded on Twitter shortly before midnight: Wow, just announced that Lyin Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly denounced the GOPs presidential nominating system as rigged. That criticism is likely to intensify in the coming days. Even before the plan was announced, Cruz all but abandoned the Northeastern states in favor of Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Both Cruz and Kasich had cast the state as a critical turning point. Under the terms of the new agreement, however, Kasich will allow Cruz take on Trump without interference. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Republicans who loathe Donald Trump seem to have a new motto: Love the one youre with, even if its Ted Cruz. Actually, its less about love and more about settling. Republicans are slowly coalescing around Cruz, united by their fear of Trump gaining the GOP nomination and then not only losing the election but also scaring voters away from other Republicans on the ticket. For some Republicans, the dilemma is best expressed by conservative commentator Michael Medved, who said Wednesday on MSNBC, Early on, I said a choice between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump was a choice between a heart attack and cancer. But the cancer aspect of Ted Cruz has been healing. People need to pay attention to the changes in the Cruz campaign, Medved said. Ted Cruz is a plausible candidate. Donald Trump is a sure loser, dead man walking. I dont think the Republican Party will choose suicide. Improved opinion Bleak as that sounds, its progress. Or at least its a lot more positive than the way South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, himself a failed GOP White House candidate, described the choice between Cruz and Trump in January: If youre a Republican and your choices are Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in the general election, its the difference between being poisoned or shot. Youre still dead. Graham has since endorsed Cruz. Even in Wisconsin, where Cruz won 48 percent of the vote Tuesday to Trumps 35 percent, the dominant victory was less about an outpouring of affection for Cruz. As the conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action, which funded a lot of negative Trump advertising there, tweeted: The Clubs Wisconsin message was simple: Vote for @tedcruz If you want to stop @realDonaldTrump Thank you #WIPrimaryvoters! It wasnt a rush to embrace Cruz, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. After Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker dropped out of the race last fall, few public officials embraced Cruz, Franklin said. First, many went to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, then to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio after Bush went down. ERIC THAYER/NYT It wasnt until the last couple of weeks that Wisconsin party leaders, including Walker, gravitated toward Cruz, Franklin said. Voters followed. By election day (Cruzs) favorability improved, Franklin said. But it took awhile to get there. There was a lot of concern about the effect of Trump at the top of the ticket. Among those who could be affected by an anti-Trump turnout in November is Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, who trails in the polls to former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. However, Republicans who believe Cruz would be better than Trump at preserving GOP fortunes in Washington, D.C., should beware. Little comfort Hes not worse. Hes only marginally better, said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report who analyzes Senate races nationally. While Duffy believes that Republicans are coalescing around Cruz, she said it should not make GOP senators facing close races feel much safer. If Im (GOP Sen.) Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, shes like, Really, are these my choices? None of these choices help her, Duffy said. Indeed, Cruz could turn out to be a problematic general election candidate as well, said David Wasserman, also an analyst with Cook. Voters arent as familiar with Ted Cruz as they are with Donald Trump, so theres a lot of canvas left for the Democrats to paint in of him. The same concerns exist in California. The states June 7 primary, where the nations largest cache of delegates (172) is up for grabs, will be pivotal in determining whether Trump can win enough delegates to secure the nomination before the national convention in July. If he doesnt, then there will likely be a bruising convention floor fight that decreases Trumps chances of gaining the partys nomination. While Trump still holds the lead in California polls, people are coalescing around Cruz not necessarily because they agree with him but because they think hes a principled conservative who is not going to embarrass the party, said Harmeet Dhillon, vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party. Provocative statements Trumps bungled response to a question about abortion last week only reinforced suspicions among the partys core conservatives that Trump isnt conservative enough for them. Plus, his recent statements about cutting back U.S. involvement in NATO and his willingness to use nuclear weapons frightened others. A majority of GOP voters in Wisconsin said they were scared or concerned about what Trump would do as president, according to exit polls. Cruz is consistent on the issues because his positions are based on a conservative philosophy, Cruz spokesman Ron Nehring said. Donald Trump has had as many as four positions on an issue in a single day because he has no principles whatsoever. Still, as Dhillon said, Cruz is viewed as very conservative on many issues. Hes not going to go turn you off if youre a Republican, but is he going to get a lot of crossover votes? The third Republican remaining, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, does best in head-to-head matchups with Democrats, but he has yet to win a primary outside of his home state of Ohio. So while the #NeverTrump movement coalesces around Cruz, many even those supporting Cruz, like Graham, his fellow senator expect that gathering to be slow. Cruz doesnt have a lot of pals on Capitol Hill to lead the charge, and few elected officials around Capitol Hill have endorsed him. While Cruzs popularity among voters has been slow to grow, it has an even longer way to go among his peers. As Graham once said, if someone killed Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli 28 Glorious Color Photos Of Ladies Sunbathing On The South Shore In The 1940s Charles Cushman was an amateur photographer who got into color photography in 1938, long before it became popular. He left behind an archive of 14,500 Kodachrome slides from his travels around the world, and many from Chicago where he made his home for decades. He seemed to particularly enjoy shooting the local flora, circus acts that rolled into town and ladies sunbathing on South Shore beaches. During the summers of the 1940s, Cushman would head out to Jackson Park, Promontory Point and other South Shore beached and shoot women (all photogenic, young and well-dressed) catching some rays along Lake Michigan. It's a treat seeing those 1940s bathing suit fashions, like bikinis, which had only recently become popular. There are also some pretty swanky-looking turbans, one hulu skirt and some victory rolls. Cushman was born in Poseyville, Indiana in 1896, and he attended Indiana University, which now hosts his archives. He later moved to Chicago, where he enlisted in the Navy, worked for the railroad and other private companies, including Montgomery Ward and LaSalle Extension University in Chicago. Cushman died in 1972, and his photos nearly ended up in the trash heap until a photo researcher saved them, NPR says. Little is known of him, according to his brief university bio: "It is known that Charles enjoyed attending the opera and the theater, and presenting shows of his slide collection. After moving to San Francisco sometime in the 1950s he would enjoy having a five o'clock drink while overlooking the ocean." Related: 35 Vibrant Color Photos Of Chicagoans In The 1940s Eight Americans died, and 53 lives were left hanging in the balance. The Chronicles front page from April 25, 1980, covers the planned rescue of hostages in Iran that ended in death when a U.S. plane and helicopter collided over a remote Iranian desert. Shock, bewilderment, confusion. Those were the reactions of hostages relatives, as well as official and unofficial Washington, early this morning as they groped to learn more details of the aborted rescue attempt in Iran that left eight Americans dead, the story on The Chronicles front page read. The front page features a huge two-line headline above The Chronicle nameplate and another below: 8 Americans Die in Iran Operation. Theres a news story about the crash, one about reactions from hostages families and another about the political landscape. The editors also chose to include the full text of the official announcement from President Jimmy Carter: The president accepts full responsibility for the decision to attempt the rescue, a section read. The nation is deeply grateful to the brave men who were preparing to rescue the hostages. Further down the page, a story not related to Iran covers a Cuban exodus. Key West, Fla. With go-to-hell defiance for both Washington and Havana, the refugee boatlift from Fidel Castros Cuba continued to wash into this tropical port yesterday, the Washington Post story read. The two-day total is more than 1,300 refugees, and there are thousands more reportedly waiting in Cuba for vessels to bring them here. Still, the story that captivated the country that day and for many to come was the Iran hostage crisis. In San Diego, Dorothea Morefield, whose husband is a hostage, said: We had so hoped the entire situation would end without any death. Now we have eight dead and they are just as important as the hostages. We just hope it doesnt lead to anything worse. See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspaper's history. More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond. Chronicle Covers is a yearlong project highlighting one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken, art director Danielle Mollette-Parks, producer Michelle Devera and editorial assistant Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim ORourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke (Click to enlarge) This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Francisco has a starring role in the sharing economy, but its also a center of scofflaw behavior by marquee members such as ride-hailing leader Uber and home rental powerhouse Airbnb. The two highly valued firms based here are running afoul of prosecutors and city ordinances in important ways. The results show that so-called disruptive ideas come with drawbacks that require serious enforcement, not a blissful attitude about freewheeling innovation. Uber will pay the district attorneys here and in Los Angeles up to $25 million for misleading the riding public about background checks on drivers. The screening wasnt any tougher than that imposed on regular taxi drivers, according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon. A similar lawsuit and outcome involving Lyft, another ride-hailing pioneer, ended with a $500,000 fine in 2014. Gascon added another point. The fine tells startups in particular, that in the quest to quickly obtain market share, laws designed to protect consumers cannot be ignored. Thats a message that should be ringing in the corporate ears of Airbnb, the major home-sharing platform. It pledged to work more closely with San Francisco rental authorities, a promise that undercut a ballot measure invoking tough restrictions on short-term rentals last year. Last week it took another step by investigating illegal hotel operations and hosts with multiple listings. But flaws remain. A fledgling city office set up to monitor short-term rentals is barely keeping up with the sprawling business. A city audit found that a quarter of entire-home rentals may violate a 90-day limit on the practice. Only 20 percent of Airbnb hosts have registered with the city as required. So far the tax collector cant come up with a number on taxes paid by home-share landlords. These gaps may be expected with a new city bureaucracy charged with record keeping and enforcement. But it calls for more accountability and clarity from a growing industry thats accommodating a drop in available housing and neglect of city zoning laws. Airbnb and its cohorts need to deliver on pledges to cooperate with the city or face stricter measures to control a business that is troubling San Francisco. Uber drivers will remain independent contractors, not employees, and receive up to $100 million under a settlement reached with the company in two class-action suits brought by drivers in California and Massachusetts. Under the terms of the settlement, Uber will also be required to create a clear policy for deactivating drivers and give them an opportunity to appeal it. (Previously, drivers had complained that the company could deactivate them without good cause.) The company has also said it will work with drivers to create drivers associations in both states. The settlement is a win for Uber and a mixed bag for the drivers. Uber gets two big benefits from the settlement. The first benefit is that the suits are over. By avoiding potentially grueling trials, Uber is now free to focus on its bright future. The company currently operates in more than 400 cities around the world. This year its planning expansions as far-flung as the Chinese provinces and sub-Saharan Africa. Also on its docket: preparations for a long-awaited public stock offering. The other big benefit, provided that U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen lets the settlement stand, will be allowing Uber to continue employing drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. The threatened change in classification would have granted drivers more protections and benefits and cost Uber a lot of money. The company said that a reclassification would devastate its business model. Some, though not all, of Ubers drivers are less likely to be thrilled with that part of the settlement. Still, the payout is a recognition that Ubers drivers havent always gotten a fair shake from the company. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick admitted as much in an April 21 post on Medium, writing that as Uber has grown over 450,000 drivers use the app each month here in the U.S. we havent always done a good job working with drivers. Acknowledging some of drivers major concerns with clearer and fairer policies on deactivation and tipping will help. (Uber will, and should, also make it clear to riders that tips arent included in the cost of their fare.) But these are the kinds of concerns that no company should be forced to acknowledge because of a court settlement. Impatient as Uber is to take over the world, paying attention to the people who make that possible will save it a lot of money in the long run. The company should take those new drivers associations seriously. The Uber settlement leaves the status of contract workers unsettled, so a group of drivers in another state could try their chances. They very well might. Many investors and entrepreneurs are concerned about the unsettled status of contract workers in the on-demand industry, and state legislators are too. State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, wrote a bill this session that would have allowed contract workers to organize. The bill didnt survive, but the concern about worker classification isnt going away. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Dusks light cast a refracted glow across the water. As we nestled our boat into a cove at Shasta Lake, it was difficult to believe this was the same place as just four months earlier. The surface was a mirror. Pines and fresh-budded oaks reflected across emerald water. Deep in the cove, high water flooded willows that had grown for years on barren lakebed. The slopes were coated with fresh grass. The air was filled with the calls of songbirds. Bob Simms, one of Shastas old angling masters, cast out his line, and then with a smile, turned and said: Can you believe how pretty this is? Ive been coming to this lake for 50 years, and when its this pretty, it makes me wish I had another 50 years. Shasta has received 61 inches of rain this season, which has raised the lake level 143 feet since December (its 92 percent full and at 109 percent of normal for this time of year). Since the lake isnt expected to reach its peak levels until late May, the Bureau of Reclamation is releasing water to make sure it doesnt fill too quickly. During the annual April 1 snow survey, a station at the 7,900-foot level on Mount Shasta measured a 129-inch snowpack (123 percent of normal). As that snow melts, it will release more water down the rivers and into the lake. That means Shasta Lake, even with releases to points south, is guaranteed to stay over 90 percent for at least the next two months. That is a game-changer for recreation. Shasta will again be California's No. 1 recreation lake this summer, offering an eye-popping array of features: 370 miles of shoreline, 1,200 campsites, 11 marinas, 21 boat ramps, more than a dozen resorts, 400 houseboat rentals and for the anglers 22 species of fish. The old master This past week, Simms joined the Stienstra Navy in my boat as we launched one evening for a two-day trip to explore the lake arms and fish a few coves for bass. As he scanned across the lake, the sight made him glow. Look at all that water! Many people who love the outdoors might feel as if they know Bob as their personal friend from his radio show on KFBK in Sacramento. He has done three hours every Saturday morning for 26 years. He has also fished and camped at hundreds of lakes and streams. Of all of them, when Shasta is full, it is my favorite, Simms said. It has everything: the beauty, great fishing, the boat-in camping, the different types of scenery, the wildlife, the history of the area. You can experience all of that at the same time. Just like the lake, all the water rejuvenated Simms. When Im back in a cove, with flooded willows and a shoreline with fresh green grass, its difficult for a lake to look better or to find better fishing spots, he said between casts. We fished two four-hour periods on back-to-back days and caught and released roughly 60 to 70 bass; we kept five for dinner, the sweetest tasting fish anywhere. The biggest fish were an 18-inch bass and a 13-inch crappie, and most of the fish were 12- to 14-inch spotted bass. Every place weve fished, weve had bites and often caught bass, Simms said at one point. Thats amazing. Where else could that happen? Everything we tried worked. Jigs or grubs, best in salt-and-pepper, rigged on quarter-ounce darthead jigs with 3/0 hooks, worked the best. Even if you catch 20 or 30, it just doesnt get old. Its so gratifying that I dont want to leave, Simms said. Top recreation lake When the winter started, the water level was so low that Shasta with its reddish, iron-based soils showing on steep, exposed lakebeds somewhat resembled the Grand Canyon. In early fall, with dry, hot weather, temperature often in the 100s, it was more like a dust bowl. The low water devastated the businesses of marina operators, houseboat rentals and lodging services. Then it started to rain. Many people from the Bay Area and Sacramento region have yet to see the transformation. The sight of all that water is head-shakingly beautiful, amplified by the recent lime-green budding of oak trees, along with blooming lupine, poppies, dogwoods and redbud. We measured the surface water temperature at 63 degrees and still in the mid-50s about 10 to 15 feet deep. That means the spring-to-summer transition has just started. In the past week, many campgrounds opened for the year. There are also four boat-in campgrounds, and with high water and no long walk up the bank anymore, these are again highly desirable. If you own a boat, you can also search out hidden flats and create your own boat-in site. The rejuvenation is amazing. Giant Shasta is back. Tom Stienstra is The Chronicles outdoor writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @StienstraTom If you go Cabins and cottages: Sugarloaf at (530) 238-2448, http://shastacabins.com; Tsasdi at (530) 238-2575, www.tsasdiresort.us; Lakeshore at (530) 238-2003, www.shastacamping.com; Antlers at (530) 238-2553, www.shastalakevacations.com; Lakehead at (530) 238-8540, www.lakeheadcampgroundandrv.com; Silverthorn at (530) 275-1571, https://silverthornresort.com; Salt Creek at (530) 238-2161, www.saltcreekresort.com; Shasta Lake RV at (530) 238-2370, www.shastarv.com. Houseboats: Shasta Marina, (530) 238-2284, https://shastalake.net; Holiday Harbor (530) 283-2383, http://lakeshasta.com; Silverthorn (530) 275-1571, https://silverthornresort.com; Jones Valley (530) 275-7950, http://houseboats.com; Antlers (530) 238-2553, www.shastalakevacations.com; Bridge Bay (530) 275-3021, www.bridgebayhouseboats.com. Camping: 27 campgrounds with 1,200 campsites; for Forest Service sites, (530) 275-1589, www.fs.usda.gov/stnf. All camps detailed in Moon California Camping. Boat ramps: Antlers, Bailey Cove, Centimudi, Hirz Bay, Jones Valley, Packers Bay, Sugarloaf; several others at private marinas; most with $10 to $12 fees. Boaters/mussels: No mussel inspection required; boaters urged to conduct their own inspection and make sure boat and trailer are clean, dry and free of all weeds. Fishing: Phils Propeller, (530) 275-4939. Info: Shasta Lake Visitor Information Center, U.S. Forest Service, (530) 275-1589, www.fs.usda.gov/stnf; Shasta Lake Info, www.shastalake.com. Sucker-bet prediction for Tuesdays primaries in Pennsylvania and four other states: Most young voters think north of 60 percent will support Sen. Bernie Sanders. Again. Sanders even won 65 percent of the youth vote last week in New York while still getting crushed by 16 points. Heres one reason young people consistently feel the Bern: Hillary Clinton talks to them like theyre 8 years old. Listen to what Clinton said recently on Meet the Press when asked to respond to accusations the Sanders campaign had made about her campaign violating donation rules. I feel sorry sometimes, for the young people who, you know, believe this they dont do their own research, Clinton said. Im glad that we now can point to reliable, independent analysis that says, no, its just not true. Thats insulting. Shes insinuating that those young voters are too immature to know any better, that theyre gobbling up whatever Sanders says because they havent figured out the Google yet. Income from speeches Heres another reason that Millennial voters the people who, if they have student loans, are carrying an average $41,286 in debt think shes tone deaf. When asked at a CNN town hall back in February why she accepted $675,000 from Goldman Sachs to speak at their events, Clinton said, Thats what they offered. But she didnt have to accept it. Bill and Hillary Clinton have made $125 million on the speaker circuit since he left the White House in 2001. It doesnt exactly help her street cred on the income inequality issue. The good news for Clinton is that the Beltway media will forget the Goldman Sachs speeches if she wins the nomination, because her Republican opponents wont bring it up. Sen. Ted Cruzs wife worked at Goldman, Ohio Gov. John Kasich used to work on Wall Street, and Donald Trump ... well, you know. But young voters wont forget her answer. If Clinton dominates Tuesdays primaries Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island the Democrats who started the whispering campaign for Sanders to bow out after his loss in New York are going to pick up a bullhorn. If and when Sanders stands down, Clinton is going to have to figure out how to win over his youngest supporters. Theyre a major key to her chances of winning the presidency. This will be the first presidential election where the electorates portion of Millennial voters (30 percent) is projected to be almost the same as that of Clintons fellow Baby Boomers. Voters younger than 30 were key to President Obamas 2012 victory. If more than half of the young voters had supported Republican Mitt Romney or not voted in swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania, those states would have gone to Romney, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Winning them over will be tough for Clinton, because even if young voters dont do their own research, theres one thing that the generation of digital natives can suss out easily: authenticity. And many Democrats of all ages dont think Clinton is being her true self. Roughly 6 in 10 New York Democrats the people who elected Clinton twice to the U.S. Senate found her trustworthy; 8 in 10 felt Sanders was, according to exit polls. Full Flop on marriage Ayer Roca, a 25-year-old Sanders supporter from San Francisco, turned to the senator from Vermont because of Clintons position on same-sex marriage. Clinton, along with every other candidate running for the White House in 2008, including Obama, opposed gay nuptials at that time. When she ran for Senate in 2000, she said marriage should be between a man and a woman. Largely because she was the nations chief diplomat, she said little about the hot topic of marriage equality (though she did address other LGBT issues) until leaving the State Department in 2013, when she announced in a video distributed by the Human Rights Campaign that she had switched her position. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, she said the same position taken by several other Democrats who were then exploring White House runs. She totally flip-flopped, Roca told me at a recent Sanders event in Oakland. The nonpartisan fact-checkers at PolitiFact agreed that on same-sex marriage we give Clinton a Full Flop. Bernie is just more consistent on all kinds of stuff, said Roca, whose age group overwhelmingly supports same-sex marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. For the record, Sanders had come out in favor of same-sex marriage four years earlier. Sanders consistency But that reflects how the two are perceived differently. Its not like Clinton is losing the youth vote again to some young fresh new face, as she did to Obama in 2008. Bernie Sanders is 74 years old, regularly lampooned as just this side of a ranting lunatic by Larry David on Saturday Night Live and has been serving in Congress longer (25 years) than supporters like Roca have been sentient beings. But a lot of young people say they like Sanders because he seems authentic. Or at least consistent. His stump speech about how the wealthiest people in the country control its politics is something hes been saying for four decades. With Clinton baked in the media/partisan GOP spotlight for 25 years, opinions of her are fully formed. Thats true except for young voters. They grew up knowing her just as the wealthy senator, presidential candidate and secretary of state married to a former president. They dont know about the person who was at the forefront of a generation of ceiling-shattering women. If Clinton wins the nomination, she has to start telling her story to a generation of young voters while looking them in the eye as adults. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Body Found In Lake Michigan Near Buckingham Fountain Early Monday By Rachel Cromidas in News on Apr 25, 2016 1:42PM Buckingham Fountain, via Stephanie Barto/Flickr Authorities found a dead body in Lake Michigan early Monday morning, not far from Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. The body was found around 6:30 a.m. near 500 S. Lake Shore Drive, according to the Chicago Fire Department, and the person, whose gender was not identified, was pronounced dead. Chicago police marine unit making recovery on lakefront CFD returning to quarters Chicago Fire Media (@CFDMedia) April 25, 2016 [H/T Tribune] Robert Reich has been friends with Hillary Clinton for half a century. He marched with her in civil rights demonstrations when they were in college. Reichs fellow Rhodes Scholar, Bill Clinton, called him one of my best friends and appointed him to what Reich calls my dream job, secretary of labor. So given all that personal and professional history with the Clintons, it is telling that the UC Berkeley professor has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. Being besties, apparently, has its limits. And that limit is the question of how the nation should deal with the dangerously wide income inequality gap blamed for killing the middle class. For the past three decades, Reich has been a leader in sounding the alarm that the wealthiest Americans have a choke hold on the nations political and financial systems. (Check out Reichs engaging documentary Inequality for All. ) Few wanted to listen when he was in the Cabinet because the economy had improved during Clintons term. While Bill Clinton was sympathetic to the issue, Reich said his administration never addressed the economic underpinnings that widened income inequality. It was one of the reasons he left the administration after Clintons first term. After his departure, the White House helped kill Glass-Steagall, a 1933 law that had required commercial banks to separate their banking and investment activities. Many see its demise as a starting point for the 2008 financial meltdown and Great Recession. Yes, Reich said, Hillary Clinton was her husbands top (unofficial) adviser. But no, Reich didnt know how much she had to do with his economic policies or with killing Glass-Steagall. At this point, he said, its more important that candidate Hillary Clinton has said she doesnt want to bring it back and Sanders does. Given everything that Ive stood for over the years, it would have been bizarre for me not to support Bernie Sanders, Reich said. Bernie Sanders exemplifies everything that Ive been fighting for. Reich, whose opinion column appears in The Chronicles Sunday Insight section, says his endorsement of Sanders is not about Clinton. At least, not personally. I have enormous respect for Hillary Clinton. If she wins (the Democratic nomination), I would work my heart out for her, Reich told me. And he wasnt saying it in that smarmy way where Beltway types call someone a great American as a backhanded insult. Shes the best-qualified person in the field to be president in our current system, but thats precisely the problem, Reich said. The system we have doesnt work now. Its corrupted by big money. He said Sanders has the passion and the authenticity to take on Wall Street and the elites that control the system. Does Clinton? I frankly dont know, Reich said. And thats part of her problem with voters. If she is the nominee, the only way to get that Sanders type of enthusiasm is for her to do what Bernie has done and thats be part of a movement. The reason Bernie is popular is not because of Bernie, Reich said. Its not because of Bernies charisma or good looks or charm or sense of humor. Its because he is channeling a movement that has grown over the years and is gaining force in America. Clinton clearly has an enthusiasm problem. Look no further than the latest California Field Poll, which came out Friday. A little over a year ago, Clinton led Sanders by 63 points among the likely Democratic primary voters surveyed; now she leads him by six. In January, she held an 18-point lead among Latinos; now its seven. While 61 percent of Clinton supporters think favorably of Sanders, only half of his backers think positively about Clinton. More ominous is that more California registered voters of all parties view Clinton unfavorably (48 percent) than favorably (47 percent.) Thats a big red flag in deep-blue California, where Clinton has raised upward of $24 million and defeated then-Sen. Barack Obama in the states 2008 primary. A couple of years ago, Reich offered Clinton several ideas on how to harness the energy of the income-inequality issue. Some she has backed (independent analysts say her tax plan would soak the 1 percent of the richest Americans for an average of $78,000 more); some shes half-embraced (she supported raising New Yorks minimum wage to $15 an hour, but not the federal wage); and some shes blown off (reinstating Glass-Steagall). But Reich hasnt spoken to Hillary Clinton in at least a year. He and Bill Clinton, his one-time bestie, are no longer in touch. We dont really travel in the same circles. But he still considers both to be friends. Does he think they hold a grudge against him for endorsing Sanders? Or, for that matter, for endorsing Obama for entirely different reasons back in 2008? Or for calling them out for not being up to taking on the top issue facing the country? I have no idea, Reich said. Theyre politicians. If they hold grudges, they hold them for political reasons. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Editors note Each Monday, senior political writer Joe Garofoli will break down national, state and local political issues of the day in this column. If youre a Donald Trump supporter in California, what is more worrisome to you: that the candidate just hired his state director last week, less than two months before the nations largest states primary puts 172 delegates up for grabs, or that the new director has never met Trump? No, we havent met, Tim Clark said 24 hours after taking the gig. He caught the Trump campaigns attention after writing a March 3 opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee where he compared Trump to Teddy Roosevelt, saying, Conservatives want someone who will knock some heads and stop the madness in Washington. Clark also wrote: Yes, Trump has a track record of abrasiveness, of knocking heads and brazenly firing people. ... In normal election times, these might be liabilities. But, in the eyes of conservatives, Trump has the right qualifications to be president at this time in history. Only in the 2016 presidential demolition derby can you refer to someone as abrasive and then be hired sight unseen to run that campaign in the nations most populous state. And so the GOP presidential reality show, California edition, begins. Seasoned operative At first blush, Clarks late hiring smells like the West Coast version of the improvisational, cult-of-personality campaign that Trump has been running and winning with elsewhere. Hes ahead in California polls, too. While Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs campaign has been busy for months recruiting and vetting three delegates and alternates that every California congressional district gets in the GOP primary, the campaigns of Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have been well, lets just say theyre not as far along. But Clark is a well-respected Sacramento political operative who has run statewide campaigns over the past two decades, including for Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, a rising star in the California GOP. Hes thrifty and sharp, too. Last year, Clark spent only $200,000 to help John Moorlach win an Orange County state Senate seat over an opponent who spent roughly four times that much. Whats initially jarring is that Clark is as relentlessly sunny and positive as Trump is apocalyptic. During our conversation Clark didnt rip anybody as a loser, a liar or low-energy. But he does share Trumps penchant for thinking and talking big. Crazy big. My directive is clear, Clark said. There are 53 congressional districts in the state. I have to deliver a comprehensive plan to deliver (all of Californias) 172 delegates. Ive looked at it, and Ive analyzed it, Clark said. And I think its an achievable bar. Connecting online To put that into perspective, sweeping California would mean that Trump would have to win the Republican primary popular vote in both Rep. Nancy Pelosis San Francisco district and Rep. Barbara Lees Oakland district. Good luck with that. Some Republicans who live here would be run out of Bakersfield as socialists. Most statewide campaigns would be happy to get 200 volunteers, Clark told me. We could have 10,000. Where are these people? Clark said Trumps people are on Facebook. Theyve been commiserating communicating for months, a loose network of online Trump fan clubs, some openly talking on social media, some chatting in tightly monitored chat rooms. Theyve just been waiting for someone to stitch them together and, in many cases, to show them how to register as Republicans before the May 23 deadline. The Facebook user is the motor in California, Clark said. Its become the new direct mail. This hasnt been door to door, its been computer to computer. This is the kind of movement that if you just give it a little organization, its going to take off. And thats what Im going to help ramp up quickly. The online Trump world is full of people like Diana Verba, a 54-year-old stay-at-home mom who lives in Roseville (Placer County) with her husband. Theyre not the prototypical Trump backers blue-collar white guys who feel that trade deals shipped their jobs overseas. Were successful people. We have a good life, Verba said. Something clicked for her after Trump proposed temporarily banning Muslims from the United States after the San Bernardino attacks. She found like-minded spirits online. Since February, she has connected with 11,000 Trump fans on Facebook, and thats only in my network, she said. Now shes a volunteer online organizer for a network of Trump groups organized from Bakersfield north to Roseville. Getting those online friends to show up in the real world has been a challenge. Ten showed up for an event in Old Sacramento. That was better than the voter registration rally on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento two people showed up. From Internet to action Translating online connections into offline action is going to be the challenge for Trump organizers like Clark and Verba over the next few weeks. But Verba has a bigger political challenge inside her own house. Her 25-year-old daughter, who backs Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, isnt speaking to her. Were not speaking, Verba said. Well, Im speaking to her, but shes not speaking to me. Its because of Trump. As much as she hates him, I love him. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Californians will witness a rare political moment Monday: Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate candidates debating on the same stage at the same time. <> At 6 p.m., two Democratic and three Republican Senate candidates will meet for a 90-minute debate at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Co-sponsored by The Chronicle and KCRA-TV in Sacramento, it is one of only two multiparty primary debates scheduled before Californias June 7 primary and the only one that will be televised live across the state and streamed digitally. It will be carried by KNTV in the Bay Area, KSBW in Salinas-Monterey and KGTV in San Diego and shown on a tape-delayed basis Monday night on KCOP in Los Angeles. It will also be streamed live at SFChronicle.com. Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz and KCRAs Edie Lambert will moderate. The dual-party debate is a byproduct of an unusual occurrence, an open U.S. Senate seat Sen. Barbara Boxer is not seeking a fifth term and Californias top-two primary system, in which the top two vote-getters in the primary election advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. The campaigns hope that Mondays debate and a surge in voter registration in California in the first part of 2016 will jump-start interest in a race that has been overshadowed by the high-profile presidential campaign. Interest in the race has been so tepid that a Field Poll survey of likely primary voters this month found that 48 percent were undecided. Roughly 3 in every 4 respondents had no opinion of the three top Republicans, and none of the GOP candidates pulled more than 5 percent support. And thats not even all of them. There are 34 candidates on the ballot to replace Boxer 12 Republicans, seven Democrats and 15 third-party candidates. Welcome to what Senate races are like around the country for the most part there just isnt a lot of interest because everybody is focused on the presidential race, said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report who analyzes Senate races nationally. Cook predicts the outcome will be solidly Democratic, as two Democrats state Attorney General Kamala Harris, with 27 percent support in the Field Poll, and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Whittier (Los Angeles County), with 14 percent support, are far ahead of their Republican challengers businessman Ron Unz and former California Republican Party chairmen Duf Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro. But renewed interest may be on the way, thanks largely to the presidential campaign. There have been 850,000 new voter registrations between Jan. 1 and March 31, twice as many as during the same time period in the 2012 presidential race, according to a study by Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc. and the owner of Redistricting Partners, a Sacramento political strategy and research company. This year we are seeing a doubling of registration growth among Latinos, and a more than 150 percent increase for some young voters and a near-tripling for Democrats, Mitchell wrote in Capitol Weekly. Here are some things to watch for during Mondays debate: Will all fire be directed at Harris? With such a large lead, and nearly half of the electorate undecided, Harris is expected to absorb a lot of the attacks. Yet, as the only person onstage to be elected twice statewide by California voters, look for her to try to remain above the fray. She just has to play the role of the front-runner and by and large try to take the high road as much as she can, said Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book. He managed business executive Al Checchi in the 1998 gubernatorial primary, one of the last times when Republicans and Democrats shared a primary debate stage in a major statewide election. Hello, my name is WHAM! The challenge for the Republicans in the debate is that few voters know them. Their dilemma: Do they spend their time introducing themselves to voters or do they rip into the front-runners to show GOP voters that they can stand toe-to-toe with the leaders. They might think that the way to show theyre the best Republican is to beat up the Democrat, Sragow said. While roughly 28 percent of California voters are registered Republicans, they comprise a larger share of the primary electorate, often around 46 percent. Said Target Book co-editor Tony Quinn, there are too many Republicans in this primary for anyone to make the runoff. Theyre going to split the vote. Will Unz talk about more than one issue? Unz, a wealthy Palo Alto tech entrepreneur, has made no secret that hes running for Senate mainly to inform people about a measure on the November ballot to repeal much of 1998s Proposition 227, an initiative he sponsored and bankrolled that banned bilingual education in California public schools. So what does he talk about for the other 85 minutes Monday? Will Sanchez go left or right? Sanchez is in the trickiest spot. Does she try to pull to the left to appeal to the wave of new young Democrats who have registered or, with an eye to the November election, does she tack to the right to appeal to Republican voters who might not have a fellow party member on the ballot after June 7? Loretta is by nature very scrappy, Sragow said. She could easily try to appeal to and Im using this loosely the Bernie (Sanders) wing of the party. Trade: A third rail? Both Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders have won over a lot of primary voters by talking about how trade deals have sent many blue collar jobs overseas. Trade issues are a tough one for Democrats, given that unions generally hate free-trade deals, but President Obama and other top Democrats have backed them. And while Republicans ordinarily favor free trade, do they dare risk alienating Trump supporters in California who may be shopping for a Senate candidate? Dont leave the room during the immigration questions: This could the highlight of the night. Harris and Sanchez, like most Democrats, favor a pathway to citizenship for those in the United States without legal status. Sundheim supports a path to legal status, a relative rarity for Republicans. Del Beccaro has a more mainline conservative opinion and opposes a pathway. And for Unz, he must hope to wring every moment out of this question. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli DETROIT - The As recalled right-handed reliever Andrew Triggs, who was claimed on waivers from Baltimore during spring training, in order to boost a bullpen that was overtaxed in Toronto over the weekend. Out went left-hander Eric Surkamp, who was among those to blame for the overworked relief staff after working 4 2/3 innings on Sunday. File Photo Two San Francisco police officers were transported to the hospital Sunday evening after a driver ran a red light and hit their car, authorities said. The officers suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to Police Department spokesman Carlos Manfredi. One had a head injury and the other had chest pain. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Bay Areas baby-blue shared bikes, confined so far to San Francisco, San Jose and the Peninsula, are preparing to roll into the East Bay this year. The first 34 station sites and 350 bikes will be sprinkled over a swath that extends through the centers of Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland in the first phase of a three-part Bay Area Bike Share expansion that will eventually bring 117 stations and 1,500 bikes to the East Bay. Motivate, the company operating the bike share program for regional transportation officials, plans to announce the station locations Monday. They were chosen after dozens of meetings and surveys of East Bay residents. In the end, more than 5,000 sites were suggested. Bay Area Bike Share started in 2013, introducing the region to an idea that has become popular in cities across the country, including New York, Chicago and Washington. Under the bike share model, pedalers can purchase annual permits or short-term passes that allow them an unlimited number of 30-minute rides. The program now has 700 bikes in San Francisco, San Jose, Redwood City, Palo Alto and Mountain View. Most are in San Francisco, and almost entirely in the citys central core: Union Square, the Financial District and Civic Center. East Bay eager for program Folks in the East Bay have been clamoring to join the program since the light-blue bikes hit the roads. Since the launch of Bay Area Bike Share in 2013, weve heard a strong desire from the community to bring bike share to the East Bay, said Emily Stapleton, the programs general manager. Residents already are looking forward to the chance for more two-wheel travel. Emily Anderson, 50, a photographer from Berkeley, was excited to hear that the bike-share kiosks were heading to the East Bay. She hopes it will change the flow of traffic and encourage more people to ride by providing an alternative to buying and maintaining their own bicycles. I dont actually own a car anymore; I just bike everywhere, she said. Its a no-brainer to make more bikes available to people out here. I like that idea a lot Roxanne Brian, 32, of Richmond, likes to explore the East Bay on foot. She doesnt own a bike of her own, but said she might try the bike-share option when it becomes available. Oh, I like that idea a lot, she said. Making more bikes available opens up the roads, its better for the air, cuts down on pollution and car traffic. The bikes will be docked at stations with automated kiosks where riders can pick them up or drop them off. By the end of the year, the bikes should be available at 21 stations in Oakland, 10 in Berkeley and three in Emeryville. The initial network will reach from Shattuck Avenue and Hearst Street in Berkeley to the north to Jack London Square in Oakland to the south. To the west, a station will open at 40th and Horton streets in Emeryville, and to the east at College and Ashby avenues in Berkeley. In Berkeley, stations will be placed east and south of the Cal campus, mostly downtown. Theyll be clustered around Telegraph Avenue in Oakland as well as downtown and west of Lake Merritt. In the first year of our expansion, were planning to connect the key commercial corridors in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville to provide residents, workers and visitors in these thriving cities with a new and accessible option to travel in and between them, Stapleton said. Two more rounds of expansion are planned in the East Bay by 2018, bringing a total of 70 stations to Oakland, 37 to Berkeley and 10 to Emeryville. The system generally expands outward in concentric circles so that people have a variety of locations they can ride to within a half hour. The move into the East Bay is part of a big Bike Share expansion that will increase the system from its current 700 bikes to more than 7,000. About 4,500 will be located in San Francisco. Last month, the program announced 72 new locations South of Market, in the Mission District and in Duboce Triangle. Chronicle staff writer Marissa Lang contributed to this report. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan Bike Share maps Prospective pedalers can view maps showing proposed locations for Bay Area Bike Share stations in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville, and offer comments, at a series of displays in the East Bay: Oakland Main Library, 125 14th St., April 26-May 9 during normal library hours. Asian Library, 388 Ninth St., April 26-May 9 during normal library hours. Temescal Branch Library, 5205 Telegraph Ave., May 3, 4-6 p.m. Berkeley Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St., April 26-May 9 during normal library hours. Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave., April 26-May 9 during normal library hours. Emeryville Town Hall, 1333 Park Ave., April 26-May 11 during normal business hours. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Traffic backed up at darkened signals, people sat stranded in elevators, a BART station was temporarily shut down, and hundreds of hungry Berkeley High students roamed Shattuck Avenue in search of lunch after a major power failure hit Berkeley and surrounding cities Monday morning. The blackout cut power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses, causing minor havoc and moderate inconvenience for about 3 hours before electricity was restored in the early afternoon, officials said. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spokeswoman Abby Figueroa said an estimated 43,000 customers in Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Richmond and San Pablo lost power at 9:35 a.m. By 12:52 p.m., the company said, PG&E had restored power to all of those customers. The cause of the blackout was under investigation, but crews were looking into an equipment failure that caused a small fire at the El Cerrito substation a blaze the El Cerrito Fire Department quickly extinguished. The blackout knocked out power not only to businesses but to many traffic signals, which either went dark or defaulted to flashing red lights. Traffic backed up on many thoroughfares, and at Ninth Street and University, the lack of working lights apparently contributed to a collision between two cars. One of the biggest impacts was to BART, which shut down its Downtown Berkeley Station because the lack of power left the station dark and the ticket machines and fare gates inoperable. AC Transit buses shuttled riders to downtown Berkeley from the Ashby and North Berkeley stations. By 11:45 a.m., the station was reopened after BART brought in a portable generator and parked it along Shattuck Avenue outside the station. UC Berkeley and five Berkeley city schools were impacted by the blackout, PG&E said. Just after noon, Berkeley High students converged on Shattuck Avenue in a futile search for businesses serving lunch. They roamed in large groups, finding few open businesses. I just want to eat, one student said as he strolled past yet another closed restaurant. Im so hungry. Others found themselves stranded by the blackout. Albert Buchanan, a UPS delivery worker, said he was stuck in an elevator at an office building in Berkeley for an hour and a half during the blackout, from 9:20 to 10:50 a.m., before firefighters helped get him out. You have to be patient, he said as he scurried to catch up on his deliveries. You just have to wait. What else can you do? Hamed Aleaziz and Michael Cabanatuan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com, mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz, @ctuan This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Its unclear how many of those touring the four-level home in the Oakland hills Sunday had the intent or the $2.6 million to buy the place or were looky-loos, wanting to see where a California governor brushed his teeth or a more famous first dog slept. But whoever buys it will be the second owner of a 4,200-square-foot house with sweeping views, right after the first owners, Gov. Jerry Brown, Anne Gust Brown and their corgi, Sutter Brown. On Sunday, potential buyers and inquisitive folks flocked to a three-hour open house that offered an inside peek at the governors Oakland digs. Ive been very curious about this house, said Tripp Borstel as he stood on the spa-level deck, which is accessed by metal roll-up doors. Its a one-of-a-kind property, and fitting for a one-of-a-kind governor once nicknamed Moonbeam. While Borstel is looking to buy a home, he noted that Browns house is probably out of his price range. The three-bedroom house, with an automated dumbwaiter, has an Asian aesthetic, with wood floors, wood ceiling beams and an open floor plan on each level. There are four full bathrooms and two half baths. The master bedroom, which takes up one floor, has two walk-in closets, a sitting room and a spacious bathroom, where presumably the governor brushed his teeth. The house, at 7257 Skyline Blvd., is listed for $2,595,000 and offers privacy and serenity, with undeveloped lots on both sides, according to the listing agent, Robin Dustan. You can be on your deck and the neighbors wont be like, Oh, hi! Neighbor Dave Nock decided to take a break from the Warriors game Sunday afternoon to tour the house about a mile down the road from his home. I used to see the governor here walking his dog, Nock said. Its kind of nice to know I live on the same street as the governor. That wont be the case much longer. Brown and his wife are selling the home, which they bought in 2006 for $2.4 million during the politicians second term as the citys mayor. He kept the place as a second home even after he left for Sacramento to serve first as attorney general and then governor. He has been an Oakland resident since the mid-1990s and mounted his political comeback in the city, campaigning on a promise to revitalize the downtown area and lure new residents to the city. He previously lived near Jack London Square in a loft. Brown and his wife, with Sutter Brown, recently moved into the 15-bedroom Governors Mansion in downtown Sacramento and reportedly have no plans to retire in Oakland once Browns current term expires in 2018. Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker The Gannett Co. has offered to acquire the Tribune Publishing Co., which owns newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, for about $815 million including the assumption of debt. Gannetts proposal, disclosed Monday, is for $12.25 a share in cash a premium of 63 percent to the companys closing stock price Friday. According to a letter disclosed by Gannett, Tribune Publishing was unwilling to engage in discussions about a takeover. In a separate statement, however, Tribune Publishing said it had hired advisers to review the proposal. Tribune Publishing was spun off from Tribune Co., now called Tribune Media, owner and operator of 42 broadcast stations, in August 2014 and saddled with about $350 million in debt. Since then, its stock has tumbled as Tribune Publishings newspapers, like many print publications, have struggled with declining circulation and dwindling advertising revenue. Michael Ferro, a Chicago entrepreneur, acquired a stake worth $44 million at the time in Tribune Publishing in early February through his Merrick Ventures. Less than three weeks later, Jack Griffin was replaced as chief executive by Justin C. Dearborn, a close associate of Ferros and the former chief executive of Merge, which was acquired by IBM. Soon after, Tribune Publishing announced it was combining the role of editor and publisher across its portfolio of newspapers, a decision that raised eyebrows in the media world. The recent upheaval at Tribune Publishing is the latest the company has faced. Soon after the real estate tycoon Sam Zell bought the companys predecessor for $8.2 billion in 2007, it filed for bankruptcy, with $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion. The culture at the company had turned poisonous, and Tribune Tower, once a symbol of a great media company, became a place where executives used sexual innuendo and profane invective. In recent years, the Los Angeles Times has become a flash point for disagreement between Tribune Publishing and its California newspapers. Austin Beutner, the Times publisher, was ousted last fall after only a year in the position because company executives viewed his ambitious plan to dominate California journalism as defiant and a threat to their centralized strategy. The newsroom has been reduced by job cuts. Philanthropist Eli Broad has long sought to buy the paper, but his moves have been spurned. In a further sign of discontent between Tribune Publishing and its California newspapers in addition to the Los Angeles Times, the company also owns the San Diego Union-Tribune the two entities have sparred over financial projections. More recently, Tribune Publishing failed in its bid for Freedom Communications, which owns the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, after the Justice Department objected to the deal. A one-day labor strike by faculty at City College of San Francisco is set for Wednesday, the first day disabled students, veterans, and other high-risk students are supposed to register for fall classes and discuss special service options with counselors. But the 50 or so counselors needed to help those students at 15 sites around the city will instead be on the picket line or unwilling to cross it. So the priority, in-person registration for those students is canceled. We dont take this lightly. But its gotten to the point where (the colleges) bad-faith bargaining has gotten so bad that you need to take action, said Tim Killikelly, president of the union of 1,500 instructors, librarians and counselors who are demanding higher wages. Its the faculty who are negotiating in bad faith, said interim Chancellor Susan Lamb. Were trying to build enrollment back, and here we have a strike on the first day of registration, she said, noting that faculty are walking off the job before a neutral fact-finding team has had a chance to evaluate the situation and make recommendations a process just getting under way. The dispute is over salary: Faculty and administrators agree that full-time instructors at City College earn less than those at most other community colleges. A 2015 salary survey shows that its most experienced faculty without a doctorate earn just under $92,000 a year less than similar instructors earn at 67 of Californias 72 college districts. The least-experienced full-time faculty at City College earn $56,498 a year less than those at 60 districts. The faculty want a raise of 4 percent a year for three years, on top of cost-of-living increases and restoration of earlier cuts. They say the college is offering only short-term bonuses, not ongoing increases. College administrators say they are offering a 9 percent raise over two years, which would cost $25 million. They say the facultys plan would cost $35 million. Their proposal bankrupts the college in three years, Lamb said. Accreditation troubles Thats flatly not true, Killikelly countered, and suggested the college is hoarding money it could use for raises 18.5 percent of City Colleges budgeted expenses are being held in a reserve fund for emergencies, says a fiscal review released this month by the states independent Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team. Yet the fiscal team reports that City College needs the hefty reserve because its long-term financial status is precarious. Four years ago, City College learned that its accreditation was in jeopardy over problems with fiscal management, governance and student services. Although the college has repaired many of its fiscal practices, the team says, the persistent threat to its accreditation has, ironically, led to financial troubles of a different kind. Students have fled City College by the thousands. The school has hemorrhaged at least 10,000 full-time students since 2012, costing $4,700 each. Although California has given City College millions of dollars in stabilization funding, the law authorizing that cash sunsets in 2017 and is not expected to be renewed. This year, City College got an extra $44 million. Next year it will get $25 million. Then nothing. Nobody wants a strike The college remains accredited, but the final determination is due in February. Without accreditation, City College would be forced to shut down. If it survives, college officials say it could take a decade to win back students to previous levels. College officials cite these dangers as reasons for not offering higher raises. And theyve been cutting about 400 classes a year 5 percent while trying to add popular police and fire training to attract more students. Union President Killikelly calls the approach doom and gloom and said administrators need to stop it. None of us completely knows what will happen, he said. Rafael Mandelman, president of the colleges Board of Trustees, said hes torn on the issue. Nobody wants a strike, he said. But I support the right of labor to strike. Sometimes its the only way they say they can be heard. But if we do something that raises our faculty salaries more aggressively than what our administration is recommending, then Id have to be confident that we can pay the bills going forward. Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov Tamir Rice's Family Will Get $6 Million From The City Of Cleveland By Mae Rice in News on Apr 25, 2016 6:19PM The city of Cleveland has reached a $6 million settlement with the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer in November of 2014. Rice was shot while playing with a non-lethal airsoft gun in a local park. The settlementannounced Monday by the U.S. District Court in Clevelandrequires the city to pay $3 million this year, and another $3 million in 2017. The city has not admitted wrongdoing in this case. The bulk of the settlement money$5.5 millionwill go to Rice's estate, according to the LA Times. Another $250,000 will go to his mother, Samaria Rice. The settlement is the conclusion of a wrongful death suit filed against the city of Cleveland by Rice's family and his estate. The suit alleged that city officials mishandled the 911 call about Rice, and that the police officers behaved recklessly on the scene. The 911 operator who took the call about Rice failed to pass on to police that the caller suspected Rice's gun was fake; when he arrived on the scene, rookie cop Tim Loehmann opened fire n Rice within two seconds. Back in December, a grand jury declined to press charges against the two police officers involved in Rice's death: Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback. Related No Charges For Cleveland Cops Who Killed 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Four Must-Read Stories In The Wake Of The Tamir Rice Verdict This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BERLIN Small, but poisonous and often effective: One of Germanys main history museums is exhibiting racist and anti-Semitic stickers spanning more than a century in a show that comes as the country worries about racism amid the migrant crisis. The show at the German Historical Museum, tiled Sticky Messages, features some 600 stickers and replicas, racist and antiracist, from 1880 to the present day. Among the earliest exhibits are a mock train ticket from 1893 offering Jews a trip to Jerusalem, one way and a Jewish groups 1900 sticker proclaiming that anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. The exhibition includes a wide range of anti-Jewish stickers from before and during the Nazi era, carrying messages such as Jews out and You have bought from Jews! We are watching. There are also some illegal flyers from the Nazi era, one saying Down with Hitler. The show also features images from Germanys brief colonial era and moves on to the present with stickers proffering slogans such as refugees not welcome and Bratwurst, not kebab. Alongside anti-immigrant, antimosque and outright far-right messages, ranging from a crudely made race mixing is genocide sticker to slickly produced extremist party material, there are stickers proclaiming a Nazi-free zone and that all people are foreigners, almost everywhere. The show considers stickers role as harbingers of violence. Its about marking territories as being occupied by a particular political culture, its about intimidation when stickers against refugee homes are put up, that is sometimes immediately before attacks on the homes, curator Isabel Enzenbach said. A fantasy of a homogenous Germany links older anti-Semitic pieces such as the mock train ticket with contemporary racist messages such as fake one-way plane tickets made by a far-right party, she said. Museum head Alexander Koch said the subject matter is alarmingly up-to-date, given current concerns about racism. The stickers are inglorious signs of the polarization of a society, and inglorious signs of a society that uses anonymity to spread certain ideas, he said. The exhibition opens to the public Wednesday, after an opening ceremony Tuesday being attended by the leader of Germanys main Jewish group, and runs through July 31. 1 Prom attack: An 18-year-old gunman opened fire outside a high school prom in Antigo, Wis., wounding two students before a police officer who was in the parking lot fatally shot him, authorities said Sunday. The attack happened late Saturday at Antigo High School, said Eric Roller, the chief of police in the town 150 miles north of Milwaukee. Roller said the gunman identified as Jakob Wagner shot the two students as they exited the building. Roller did not discuss a possible motive for the attack. The female victim was treated and released, and the male victim had surgery for injuries that werent life-threatening, police said. 2 Agents shot: Three federal agents suffered non-life-threatening injuries after being shot late Saturday while trying to make an arrest at a motel in Topeka, Kan., authorities said. The agents from the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service descended on the Country Club Motel and were trying to locate Orlando Collins, 28, a robbery suspect. Authorities say gunshots were exchanged with the agents. WIBW-TV reported the FBI said a body was found inside the motel room where Collins was believed to be, but they have not identified it. During the shooting, a fire started in the room and spread to the entire motel. Authorities described it as a total loss. WASHINGTON States should make it easier for convicted felons to obtain state-issued identification after they get out of prison, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Monday in announcing a set of measures designed to help smooth the return to society for the hundreds of thousands of inmates released each year. The announcement is part of a broader movement to undo criminal justice policies that have meted out exceptionally long sentences for drug offenders, caused prison populations to balloon and, advocates say, created unnecessary barriers for ex-convicts looking to rebuild their lives. It amplifies an ongoing Justice Department push to rethink harsh drug sentences and to ensure alternatives to prison for certain nonviolent defendants, an effort known as Smart on Crime. Sean Gallup/Getty Images CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER STATION, Ukraine (AP) Thirty years after the world's worst nuclear accident, the Chernobyl power plant is surrounded by both desolation and clangorous activity, the sense of a ruined past and a difficult future. The plant is derelict. After the No. 4 reactor exploded in the early-morning hours of April 26, 1986, its other reactors were gradually taken out of service and the sprawling complex hasn't produced a watt of electricity since 2000. Just a few hundred meters (yards) away from the hulk, hundreds of workers labor to construct a vast and remarkable structure that is to be the first step in removing the tons of radioactive waste that remain. The 2-billion-euro ($2.3 billion) New Safe Confinement project, funded by international donations and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is a race against time though, unsettlingly, how much time can't be known. After the explosion and the fire that spewed a cloud of fallout over much of northern Europe, Soviet workers constructed a so-called sarcophagus over the reactor building, a concrete and steel structure aimed at keeping waste from escaping into the atmosphere. Story and 360 photos continue below slideshow The rush-job construction, completed in just five months, was designed to last only about 30 years and has shown signs of serious deterioration. Post from RICOH THETA. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA Sean Gallup/Getty Images When the new structure, which resembles a 30-story Quonset hut, is finished, it is to be slowly moved on rails over the sarcophagus and reactor building. After that, robotic machinery inside the structure will begin dismantling the sarcophagus and the destroyed reactor and gather up the wastes to be transported to a nearby storage facility. Under current plans, that process is expected to begin in 2017. "The arch is now at its full height, full width and full length 108 meters (354 feet) tall, 250 meters wide and 150 meters long. It will act as a safe confinement over the No. 4 reactor, and it's planned to last 100 years ... to give Ukraine a chance to dismantle the No. 4 reactor and make it safe forever," said David Driscoll, director of safety for the French consortium Novarka that is building the shelter. Not far away from the shelter project, the growl of heavy vehicles and the clatter of construction tools fade in the silence enveloping the ghost town of Pripyat. Post from RICOH THETA. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA Sean Gallup/Getty Images Four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the power plant, Pripyat was built for the plant's workers. Opened in 1970, it was a model of the Soviet ideal orderly blocks of soaring apartment towers, the focal point a large plaza flanked by a sizeable hotel and the Energetik Palace of Culture. The 50,000 people who once lived there were hastily evacuated after the explosion; today the only human sounds are the tourist groups who come to marvel at the baleful remains, including a rusting Ferris wheel that was to start taking paying customers a few days after the blast. After the disaster, authorities established the so-called Zone of Alienation around the plant a 2,600-square-kilometer (1,000-sq. mile) tract where no one is supposed to live. But life of a sort continues in the village of Chernobyl, where workers who maintain and monitor the plant live on a short-term basis, often two weeks on and then two weeks away to minimize their exposure to the fallout that poisoned the soil. And a few hundred people who were evacuated from the zone eventually trickled back, more attached to their homes than concerned about radiation. Post from RICOH THETA. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA Sean Gallup/Getty Images If the desolation of the Chernobyl area is dramatically visible, the suffering of people affected by the accident is often near-invisible. About 600,000 people were conscripted into becoming "liquidators," those who labored to put out the fire sometimes able to work for only a minute before having to flee the radiation or move contaminated vehicles to a dumping ground or otherwise clean up. The liquidators still alive 30 years later suffer widespread health problems. A Ukrainian Health Ministry report suggested only about 5 percent of them could be considered truly healthy. Post from RICOH THETA. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA Sean Gallup/Getty Images But the dimensions of what happened to their health because of the Chernobyl blast are elusive. The Chernobyl Forum report headed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 said the radiation-related deaths among the 600,000 liquidators was likely to be about 4,000. The U.N. health agency has said more than 9,000 would die of radiation-related cancer and some groups, including Greenpeace, have put the numbers 10 times higher. The mental effects are clearly troubling decades later. "Many of those who took part, especially in the first months and days, got radiation doses incompatible with life," former liquidator Oleksandr Zhyzhchenko told The Associated Press. "The liquidation . well, local residents, those who lived in Pripyat, called this tragedy with one short word: War." ___ Svetlana Kozlenko in Kiev, and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story. Two Key Players In Flint's Water Crisis Died Last Week By Mae Rice in News on Apr 25, 2016 4:01PM Two people connected to the Flint water crisis recently died within a week of each otherone in a homicide, the other due to unknown causes. Last Tuesday, one of the first women to file a lawsuit in relation to the Flint water crisis was found shot to death in a Flint townhouse along with another woman. On April 16, the Saturday before her body was found, a foreman at Flint's Water Treatment Plant, 43-year-old Matthew McFarland, was found dead in his Otter Lake home; his autopsy was inconclusive. Sasha Avonna Bell, 19, was found fatally shot in the 2600 block of Ridgecrest Drive at the Ridgecrest Village Townhouses along with Sacorya Renee Reed, also 19. An unharmed one-year-old was found in the townhouse; police declined to confirm whether the child was Bell's son. On Saturday, The Flint Journal reported that 18-year-old Malek Emmanuel Thornton had been charged with both murders. Specifically, he has been charged and arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of open murder and felony firearm, according to police. Bell was one of the first to file a lawsuit alleging a childher one-year-old sonhad been lead poisoned by Flint's water supply. Her suit named six companies and three past and current government employees responsible for water safety in Flint. Bell's case will continue, her attorney Corey M. Stern told the Flint Journal. Her son will be assigned a representative. Flint's Water Treatment Plant foreman, McFarland, died "suddenly," according to his obituary, and though the Flint Journal reported there were no indications of foul play, his cause of death was unknown as of Thursday. Officials were awaiting toxicology reports. According to ABC, McFarland had been questioned by officials investigating Flint's water crisis. Several reports have connected Bell and McFarland's deaths and suggested that taken together, they are "suspicious" (the Daily Mail) or constitute an effort to cover up the water crisis (Natural News). Flint's water crisis first made national news in December, when the city declared a state of emergency due to local children's lead levels. (Lead-tainted water, like the water in Flint, has especially severe long-term effects on children.) The first criminal charges related to the crisis rolled out last week, and Michigan's Attorney General, Bill Schuette, tweeted that the charges were "just the beginning." We've reached out to Flint police to see if they have further information on McFarland's cause of death, and will update this post if we hear back. "We (human beings) began as animals, gradually transformed ourselves into the gods of the planet earth, and very soon we may pass this mastery to a complete different lifeform, artificial intelligence (AI) and even disappear completely," said Yuval Harari, author of an international bestseller, in Beijing on April 23. Yuval Harari speaks at the "Daji," China's TED-like talk show, initiated by the CITIC Publishing Group on this year's World Reading Day on April 23. [Photo provided to China.org.cn] Dr. Harari, an Israeli professor of history and author of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," made the remarks during the "Daji," China's TED-like talk show, initiated by the CITIC Publishing Group during this year's World Reading Day. The Israeli historian began this argument while citing the historic five-game match between World Go Champion Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, Google's computer program, which brought worldwide attention to the power of artificial intelligence. He forecasted that we may witness AI's emergence and domination in the decades to come. "It (AlphaGo) has no conscious or feelings; when it played, it did not feel anxious and while it won, it did not feel joy," said Dr. Harari who is frightened by a situation in which intelligence and consciousness may separate with AI conquering the world. He cited driving as an example, saying that as companies like Google and Tesla all developing AI that can outperform humans in operating vehicles, people may finally free themselves from these actions as the computer programs drive more efficiently, safely and cheaply in a highly-connected system of artificial intelligence that renders accidents and traffic jams a thing of the past. "People will lose their jobs, as drivers, teachers of drivers and traffic police," he suggested. Other jobs like doctors may also be replaced by artificial intelligence with technical breakthroughs, Dr. Harari revealed in his speech while citing the example "Dr. Waston", IBM's computer program, which is set to not only diagnose diseases and recommend treatment, but also read our emotions and feelings by observing various movements in our face, or by following our heart beat, heart rate and blood pressure. "So, even in the field of emotional intelligence, AI may also soon outperform human beings," Harari said, asserting that humans, capable of physical and cognitive skills, may be rendered useless in the face of these man-made programs. While the industrial revolution of the 19th century created a new massive class called the "proletariat," or working class, the rise of AI in the 21st Century may again result in the creation of an un-working class as computers excel in both physical and mental capabilities. During the talk show which featured four lectures by Dr. Harari, he also dwelled on topics including the cognitive revolution and big data. Other speakers on the Daji inauguration talk show included Wang Xiaochuan, CEO of Sogou, Li Miao, professor at Zhongshan University, Annabelle Yu Long, CEO of Bertelsmann China Corporate Center, Tu Zipei, former vice president of Alibaba, and Chen Jiaying, the renowned philosopher. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. Getty Images / / Police in Fremont are searching for a driver of a Jeep with large tires, who drove off after fatally hitting a 52-year-old woman as she walked along Fremont Boulevard late Saturday night, officials said Sunday. The driver was behind the wheel of a 2007 to 2016 light-colored two-door Jeep Wrangler, police said after reviewing security video from the scene. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Police: Calif. boy who vanished was living with teacher for years A man in his 40s was killed in a stabbing early Monday in San Franciscos Tenderloin, authorities said. The victim collapsed on the sidewalk near a mini market at the corner of Eddy and Larkin streets around 2:20 a.m., San Francisco police officials said. The overnight clerk at a nearby hotel, who asked not to be identified, said he called police after several people ran inside to report the stabbing. But he said he had not heard any commotion before the attack. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene from an apparent knife wound to the neck. Investigators closed the intersection for several hours while they processed the crime scene, which included a trail of blood leading from two blood-smeared vehicles on Larkin. No suspect was identified or arrested. The name of the victim was not immediately released, pending family notification, the city medical examiners office said. The killing was the 15th this year in San Francisco and came four days after 39-year-old Kito Fields was found dead from stab wounds at Larkin and McAllister streets. That homicide, which was three blocks from the scene of Mondays killing, remains unsolved. Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky A delegation comprising 18 companies from China met with South African businessmen in Johannesburg on Sunday in a bid to clinch business deals. The delegation showcased what they can produce and invited the South African companies to partner with them, said Wu Kunte, who led the delegation. "What we are trying to do is to further strengthen the trade relations between China and South Africa, Kunte said, adding that they decided to come to South Africa to seek opportunities in the country. "We are here to explore business opportunities and promote bilateral trade between South Africans and Chinese. We want local people to access cheaper but durable Chinese goods," he said. Chris van Biljon, CEO of Ekurhuleni Business Initiative in Johannesburg, said that they are ready to work with the Chinese to promote trade relations to a higher level. He said, "I would like to thank the Chinese for bringing opportunities to Johannesburg. I invite the South Africans to talk with the Chinese and collaborate. This paves a way for the small and medium scale enterprises to start and grow. The reason is to enhance economic cooperation between South Africa and China. Let us all go out all the way and even to go to China for more opportunities." The China-Southern Africa Trade Expo (CSATEC) will launch an exhibition centre in Johannesburg in June 2016 where 280 Chinese companies would showcase what they can produce. The first expo would be held in November 2016. South African businessman, Rofhiwa Malima, told Xinhua that Sunday's manufacturing Indaba (meeting) was very informative. He said he would like to open an electronic shop and was looking forward to partnering with a Chinese company. "The manufacturing Indaba was an eye opener. As a young and upcoming entrepreneur it is good for us to be exposed to such opportunities. I loved the advancement in technology shown by these Chinese. I hope to partner them in future when I have set up my company," Malima said. The organiser of the meeting, Thulie Mncusini from Buy Fast/NF Online, told Xinhua the show was insightful. She stated that it is their hope that South Africans and the Chinese companies will clinch deals to benefit from their cooperation. Wu Shoakeng, the president of CSATEC said the exhibition centre would present a platform for the South Africans to have access to the Chinese products. He stated that they would like to see more cultural and economic cooperation. Police in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou are hunting the boss of a wealth management company who disappeared with about a billion yuan (US$153 million) of investors' money. Investors in Wangzhou Fortune have been reporting problems with the company's cash flow since April 18. More than 20,000 people have invested a total of about 2.2 billion yuan in the company, which has dozens of branches in major Chinese cities, Hangzhou police told Xinhua on Sunday. The conglomerate Wangzhou Group, parent of Wangzhou Fortune, confirmed its chairman Yang Weiguo's disappearance on Thursday. Wangzhou Group also closed its shopping mall in Hangzhou after the scandal emerged. To repay investors, Wangzhou Group will retrieve about a billion yuan after receiving principal and interest payments from its lending. It will try to cover the 1.2 billion yuan gap by selling properties, according to a statement from the company. Wangzhou Group has more than 200 subsidiaries in commerce, automobiles, health and wealth management, including Wangzhou Fortune. It employs some 7,000 people in 70 cities. Volkswagen AG is optimistic that its positive sales trend from the two previous quarters will continue in China, the world's biggest auto market, its China chief Jochem Heizmann said yesterday. Volkswagen also plans to invest 4 billion euros (US$4.5 billion) in connection with its joint venture partners in China this year, while the expansion of its share of the sport-utility vehicle and new energy vehicle markets will be a focus over the next several years, Heizmann said ahead of the Beijing auto show, which begins today. VW has lagged in China's SUV boom with relatively few locally produced models, but it plans to change that with launches of 10 locally made VW-, Audi- and Skoda-badged SUV models in the years ahead. "There is an SUV offensive on the way," Heizmann said. "It will begin this year with a B segment SUV," he added, declining to give details on which joint venture or brand would produce that model. B segment refers to small cars. VW sees that 2 million NEVs will be sold in the overall Chinese market by 2020, in line with the government's target, with the German automaker selling a few hundred thousand. Heizmann also said the automaker is prepared for any recalls in China on any diesel-related issues, referring to the so-called dieselgate scandal in which it was discovered last year that the VW modified its cars to cheat emissions tests. VW has been in talks with regulators globally on how to make amends, although in China the issue only affected roughly 2,000 cars. Fallout from the scandal contributed to VW narrowly losing its crown as the top foreign automaker in China to General Motors Co in 2015, according to data from the China Automobile Makers Association. VW's China sales fell 3.4 percent last year to 3.5 million units. You are here: Home A bullet train running on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Nov. 24, 2015 . [Photo/Xinhua] China Railway Cooperation (CRC) is carrying out feasibility studies for high-speed lines on the 2,200 km Chennai-New Delhi route, Zhao Guotang, vice general engineer of the CRC, said on Saturday. The proposed Chennai-New Delhi corridor could be the second-largest in the world, after the 2,298 km Beijing-Guangzhou line, which was launched three years ago. China has now the world's biggest high speed railway network which stands at a stunning 19,000 km -- longer than all of world's high-speed lines put together. With successful experience in the domestic market and advanced technologies, the CRC starts to look for more opportunities in the overseas markets, including India, Malaysia, Singapore and so on. India has tied up with Japan for the country's first high speed railway line which will connect Mumbai and Ahmedabad after Tokyo offered easy loan terms to the South Asian country. China may not offer such easy loan terms but its expertise and technology are compatible with that of India, Zhao said. While China made 10,000 km of high speed tracks in the past decade, Japan made only 350 km, Zhao said, adding that China is capable of building high speed railways faster and better. You are here: Home Chinese President Xi Jinping encouraged the country's aerospace scientists and engineers to usher in a new chapter in aerospace development on Sunday, the first China Space Day. In an instruction to the occasion, Xi asked space scientists and engineers to "seize the strategic opportunity and keep innovating to make a greater contribution to the country's overall growth and the welfare of mankind." He also saluted all those who have contributed to China's aerospace development during the past six decades. "Becoming an aerospace power has always been a dream we've been striving for," Xi said. The space day was designated to mark the launch of China's first satellite on April 24, 1970. "In establishing the China Space Day, we are commemorating history, passing on the spirit, and galvanizing popular enthusiasm for science, exploration of the unknown and innovation, particularly among young people," Xi said. In a separate instruction, Premier Li Keqiang also called for advancement of space science and technology and their practical application. He also said he wants China's aerospace agencies to foster more innovative talents. Religious leaders and scholars in China have voiced support for the government's stance on religions outlined by President Xi Jinping at a top-level conference. Monks participate in dharma debates in the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, capital city of Tibet autonomous region. [Photo by Palden Nyima/China Daily] Religious communities were advised to retain their independence and self-management by the president in his speech at the two-day National Work Conference on Religions that ended on Saturday in Beijing. There are believers from nearly all the world's major religions in China, although nonbelievers comprise the majority of the population. Mu Zhongjian, a professor of religious studies at Renmin University of China, describes China as a "United Nations of all religions". At the conference, Xi said China is determined to protect its harmonious social relations among believers of various faiths. It also aims to protect believers and nonbelievers from attempted infiltration by external forces and from extremist ideas. "We should guide and educate the religious circle and followers with socialist core values, and guide religious people with the ideas of unity, progress, peace and tolerance," he said. At the same time, no religion can interfere with the administrative, judicial and educational functions of the State, the president said, adding that the State must uphold the rule of law when overseeing religious affairs that have a bearing on State or public interests. Guo Chengzhen, vice-president of the Islamic Association of China, said the national religious conference provided a comprehensive guideline on religions' role in Chinese society. "Localization for different religions has been discussed in the past, but until the conference, people were not quite clear how this should proceed." Father Paul Lei Shiyin, the bishop of Leshan diocese in Sichuan province, under the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, said the conference had promised to provide the necessary support to various religious groups. As a result, the Catholic Church in China now stands a better chance of overcoming the difficulties it faces, such as a shortage of clergy and being able to better serve society. Cao Nanlai, an associate professor of religious studies at Renmin University of China, said the idea of localization is a very inclusive term and may provide enough room for different religions to develop their own innovative practices in China. "A highlight of the conference was the government's confidence that religious canons and practicesno matter what they arecan be made to serve social harmony and progress, and can work with the core values of the modern China." Mu, the Renmin University professor, explaining the philosophical root of China's religious policies, said there are different versions of atheism. The atheism practiced in China not only allows, but respects, religious faiths on the individual level. It is an atheism that is based on equality and inclusiveness, Mu said. Debris of a house remain in the floor after an earthquake in Quito, Ecuador, on April 16, 2016. The number of victims of the earthquake that struck off the coast of Ecuador on Saturday has increased to 41, local media reported, citing Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas. [Xinhua/Str] A 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which jolted Ecuador on April 16 (local time), has killed 525 people, leaving 2,658 injured and 231 still missing. With water and electricity being cut off in the disaster-stricken areas, along with the hot and humid climate, it is highly possible that infectious diseases like Zika and dengue fever will break out in the small Latin American nation. The government says the earthquake, the strongest one since 1949, has cost the country US$3 billion in economic losses and that reconstruction could take years. Clearly, it has devastated this developing country with a land area of 256,000 square kilometers and a GDP of US$98.93 billion. During this hard time, China quickly reached out to help. Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a message of condolences to his Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa on the second day of the deadly disaster. The Red Cross Society of China also announced it would provide US$100,000 in cash for emergency assistance to its counterpart as the Chinese government is accelerating the drafting of a humanitarian assistance plan. China also pledged to provide satellite pictures to the country for relief efforts, according to a spokesperson with China's Foreign Ministry. Ecuador officials appreciated the quick response made by the Chinese government, the first to have delivered humanitarian assistance to them. Chinese enterprises in Ecuador also sent helping hands to those in need, especially those in the hardest hit areas like Provincia de Manabi. Rescue equipment such as excavators, lift trucks and cranes were quickly sent there along with on-the-spot professional instructions. Moreover, Chinese businesses rushed to repair the disrupted telecommunications services within 15 minutes after the deadly quake. Some Chinese employees working in the country also donated their blood voluntarily, and provided medical equipment, drugs, candles and subsistence for the local community. A week before the earthquake, the Chinese-built Coca Codo Sinclair hydropower station was officially put into use in Ecuador. The station withstood the devastating earthquake and is providing consistent energy for disaster relief efforts, saving countless lives. The country's Public Security Command and Control Center, which was also built by Chinese companies, played a vital role during the rescue efforts as it received over 5000 SOSs after the deadly earthquake. The strategic partnership between the two countries, which was forged in 2015, has been consolidated in the relief process. The Chinese government and its people are trying to soothe the disaster-hit country with generous contributions and loving hearts. The author is an observer of international issues. The article was translated by Guo Yiming. Its unabridged version was published in Chinese. Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree The Xanadu of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a myth but the actual city (now Beijing), built by the great Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in the 13th century, was created by artists from Nepal. It was no accident, Anil Chitrakar an engineer who now consults broadly on Nepals history and myth tells me over a cup of spicy masala chai. In 1257, the Kathmandu Valley was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake. The most famous artist to emerge during the reconstruction of the palaces, temples and pagodas was a Newar architect named Araniko (Newars are the traditional ethnic group of the Kathmandu Valley). Though he was just 13 when the earthquake occurred, his name became legendary; and when Kublai Khan set out to construct his great capital, he summoned Araniko. Araniko showed, nearly eight centuries ago, how a sort of artistic phoenix can emerge from the rubble of a natural disaster. It was a lesson I was grateful to learn and to see in action during my current visit to Nepal. For someone who has lived in Nepal on and off for 36 years, visiting Kathmandu today is a sobering experience. One year ago on April 25, 2015 a 7.9 magnitude quake shook the country to its core. Scores of World Heritage monuments, ancient shrines and private homes were destroyed within minutes. Even today, the rubble left by the disaster is plain to see. And the pace of rebuilding has been painfully slow. But to a forward-thinking Nepali like Chitrakar, the earthquake was not an unmitigated tragedy. The need to rebuild, he says with enthusiasm, has inspired (and necessitated) a resurgence in traditional arts. When heritage falls, art rises, he says. For the next five years, a tourist visiting Kathmandu will witness something wonderful and unusual: the reconstruction of a historic city. * * * The Kathmandu Valley was once a closely knit collection of kingdoms the largest were Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan. Chitrakar and I met in Patan, long the center of Nepals stone carving and lost-wax casting traditions. His family name, Chitrakar, places him in the painters guild (one of 64 such guilds), though his family moved to photography and engineering three generations ago. There are three kinds of heritage we must restore and protect, Chitrakar explains, leading me from our shaded coffee shop near the old Patan gate into the narrow streets. Ice-cream vendors share the road with motorcycles, and the shops are filled with detailed copper statues of Hindu and Buddhist deities. Street dogs lounge near mounds of freshly molded bricks. There is our tangible heritage, like monuments, murals and statues; our intangible heritage, including the dances and festivals that are the lifeblood of our culture and our natural heritage, like the mountains and watershed. And if we dont take care of the natural heritage, he adds, the tangible is of no use. Both the tangible and intangible heritages, of course, rely on the skills of local artisans. After many of our religious dances, says Chitrakar, the lokta paper masks representing the gods and goddesses are burned which means they have to be made again the next year. And that, he laughs, is called sustainability. Just as we dont want to lose a single season of rice planting, we dont want to miss one season of masked dance. But not all artworks are created to be destroyed. During one of my early visits to Nepal, in 1983, I was captivated by the paubhas: devotional Newar paintings (better known in their Tibetan avatar, thangkas). Since the earthquake, the need for skilled painters has blossomed. We duck into a nearby courtyard, climb a flight of steps and shed our shoes. Inside a sunlit apartment, Lok Chitrakar (no relation) shows me the exquisite paintings that he is creating to replace damaged artworks including the murals at Shantipur, one of the Kathmandu Valleys most mysterious temples. Before the 2015 earthquake, the walls of Shantipurs inner sanctum were illustrated with tales of the Nagas, a race of sacred snake gods that inhabited the Kathmandu Valley when it was an inland sea. Lok Chitrakar is a gifted painter, and his subjects are not only visually vibrant, but also essential to the spiritual life of Kathmandu Valley. What impressed me as much as his work, though, was his impact. In his studio, I was introduced to an 18-year-old painter named Anita Shrestha. Before the earthquake, Shrestha was trying to flee Nepal to find work as a domestic servant in the Maldives. Now she is one of Lok Chitrakars paid assistants. * * * In a small cement room lit by bare hanging bulbs, the report of mallets on metal is deafening. The workers a few men squatting on the floor, shaping sheets of copper stop as Anil Chitrakar and I enter. As my eyes adjust to the scene, I make out the shape of a hand, a knee, a torso, a face. These elements will be fitted together into a Buddha, to replace one of the many devotional images damaged or destroyed by the earthquake. This Buddha looks rough; but when finished it will appear flawless and serene. Master sculptor Binod Shakya presses his palms together in a gesture of greeting. Shakyas workshop specializes in an art form called repousee: an incredibly refined technique in which metal is shaped into high relief by hammering on the reverse side. Though a traveler sees countless examples of repousee all over the Kathmandu Valley, the fact that there are still artists who can actually do this confounds me. While Nepals lost-wax metal casting and fine woodwork look agonizingly difficult, repousee seems impossible like trying to paint Da Vincis Last Supper with a roller bush. * * * To the traveler, Nepal is as fascinating as ever. Personally, I love seeing the old durbar (palace) squares in a state of activity and renovation, the local architects and artisans now heirs to Aranikos genius. There are issues, of course. Its one thing to restore temples, pagodas and other high-profile World Heritage Sites. But when I ask my Nepali friends to tell me their countrys most urgent need, they all say the same thing: homes. Tens of thousands of dwellings, all over Nepal, were leveled by last springs quakes. Uncounted people remain homeless or in thrown-together shelters. Those with personal resources are kneading mortar with their bare feet, climbing bamboo scaffolding and rebuilding brick by brick. It will take immediate action by Nepals bumbling government which long ago promised cash grants and loans to anyone who lost their home to start the real work of rebuilding. In the Kathmandu Valley, though, the gold ring is still tourism. All over the sister cities Patan, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu itself talented local architects are restoring damaged buildings, many still adorned with intricate carved lattice windows and beams. In the process, some old ways are surviving while others are being discarded. Jitendra Shrestha (no relation to Anita) didnt study architecture or engineering; he just designs homes with good common sense. I build homes, not houses, he told me, standing in the open courtyard of a newly renovated but generations-old apartment building. I try to discard unwelcoming traditions. In the old days, your caste determined how high up in a house you were invited. Low-caste people, for example, would never be allowed into cooking or dining areas. In these flats, said Shrestha, people enter directly into the kitchen its an end to discrimination. Shrestha works with the buildings owner, Prakash Dhakwa, who is renovating 48 apartments. Some are being rented long-term, but many are available to adventurous travelers who like their own digs. How do they find him? Dhakwa opens his laptop, and shows me. I get 80 percent of my bookings, he says, through Airbnb. Having first visited Nepal when a trunk call to the United States took two hours to place and cost $8 a minute, its a shocking marker of our newly global community. Many things about Nepal, though, still havent changed or very little, at least, Internet or earthquakes be damned. One of the hardest-hit destinations in the Kathmandu Valley is the best-preserved: the village of Bhaktapur. Once and still a mecca for woodcarvers and potters, its a great place to experience Nepals hallucinatory festivals. On the evening of April 13, for example, the Nepali New Year Bisket Jatra was celebrated in ancient style. I watched as a huge wooden chariot was built, and doused with the blood of sacrificed chickens. The rickety vehicle was pulled through the narrow streets, by crowds of men tugging thick woven ropes. The ritual is a giddy, terrible thing to witness, and seems a long way from the 21st century. When the cart reached one of Bhaktapurs main squares, a towering pole symbolizing a mythic lingam (or divine phallus) was pulled to the ground by an ecstatic crowd. At that very moment yet another tremor, epicenter Burma, shook the Kathmandu Valley not strong, but enough to remind everyone where they stood. It was also a reminder that the tectonic heritage of Nepal which sits right on the border of the Indian and Eurasian plates is the foundation of its three others. Undeniably, geology is Nepals fourth heritage. In Nepal, we have a major earthquake about once every 100 years. And that, concludes Chitrakar, is what guarantees the arts will survive. Jeff Greenwald is a Berkeley author and founder of travel watchdog group Ethical Traveler. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com Learn more Nepals hard-working NGOs still need the support of the world community. Contributions to the following projects will provide direct help to victims most in need. Please visit their websites, and determine which projects align best with your values. (Note: Organizations are listed alphabetically, not in order of merit.) Camp Hope / My Dream Village: www.gofundme.com/letshelpcamphope Nepal Seeds: www.nepalseeds.org Nepal Villagers Earthquake Fund: www.gofundme.com/nepalvillagers Possible Health: www.possiblehealth.org Tevel bTzedek: www.tevelbtzedek.org We Help Nepal: www.wehelpnepal.org Mercy Corps: www.mercycorps.org/countries/nepal Yeti Foundation: www.yetifoundation.org KABUL After courting Pakistan for more than a year, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan changed course Monday and warned that he would lodge a complaint with the U.N. Security Council if Pakistan refuses to take military action against Taliban leaders operating from its soil to wage an increasingly deadly insurgency across Afghanistan. Ghani has tried to persuade Pakistans leadership, particularly its powerful military, to bring the insurgent leaders to the negotiating table. But an increase in Taliban violence, including a brutal attack last week in the heart of Kabul that killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 300, has forced the Afghan president to effectively end the negotiations, which have been a cornerstone effort of his troubled time in office. CAIRO Police fired tear gas and birdshot on Monday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators calling on President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to step down over his governments decision to surrender control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. The violence in Mesaha square in Cairos Dokki district took place as thousands of police and soldiers were deployed Monday across the Egyptian capital ahead of the planned demonstrations over the islands, a thorny issue that already has sparked the largest protests since el-Sissi assumed power nearly two years ago. After the arrest of dozens of activists and journalists in recent days, riot police backed by armored vehicles on Monday took up positions in Cairos Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypts 2011 uprising, They also deployed on the ring road, downtown and at a square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013. Many of the protest organizers gathering points were sealed off by police, including the doctors and journalists unions in central Cairo. Pedestrians near the Press Syndicate were stopped by police, who asked for IDs and about their destination before turning many of them away. Minivans loaded with plainclothes policemen were also deployed in likely flash points. Fearing another round of unrest after years of turmoil, many city residents and shopkeepers were hostile toward the protesters on Monday. However, a group of about 500 protesters led by prominent activists managed to gather at the mostly residential Mesaha square. Their chants of leave, leave directed at el-Sissi, echoed across the square, along with bread, freedom, the islands are Egyptian. Police in riot gear arrived 10 minutes later and immediately fired tear gas and birdshot. The protesters fled and later regrouped in nearby streets. From their apartments balconies, the squares pro-el-Sissi residents shouted traitors at the protesters below and pelted them with water. Giving up our land is the final straw, said one protester, 16-year-old Youssef el-Agouza. He (el-Sissi) has crossed all lines. The military said in a video released late Sunday that troops were deployed to protect vital and important installations and deal with anyone who tries to harm the peoples interests or attempt to ruin their happiness on Sinai Liberation Day, a national holiday marking the completion of Israels withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982. Egyptian warplanes roared over Cairo to mark Mondays anniversary, but the military kept a low profile on the ground except for areas near military headquarters and the presidential palace. The Interior Ministry said police were out in force to protect peaceful citizens who wish to celebrate. 1 Syria fighting: Air strikes and shelling pounded Aleppo for a third straight day Sunday, killing two young siblings and at least 24 others in Syrias largest city and former commercial capital. The northern city has been bitterly contested between insurgents and government forces since 2012. Opposition groups control the eastern part of the city but have come under intense strain as the government has choked off most routes to the area. U.N.-mediated peace talks in Geneva have been undermined by the violence, with the Saudi-backed opposition delegation suspending its formal participation last week. The government delegation is nonetheless set to meet Monday with U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura. 2 Missing students: A report by an outside group of experts says there is evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said Sunday that a study of 17 of the approximately 110 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings. One suspect said he was nearly asphyxiated and another had been slapped on the ears so hard his eardrums broke. The Mexican government recently released documents suggesting investigations had been opened against police and military personnel, but has refused to say if any have been arrested or charged. The 43 students have not been heard from since they were taken by local police in September 2014 in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state. AERZEN, Germany President Obama will send an additional 250 military personnel to Syria to help local forces fighting the Islamic State group, increasing to 300 the number of U.S. forces battling extremists in the war-torn country, administration officials confirmed Sunday. Obama is expected to announce his decision Monday during a speech in Hannover, Germany, at the close of a weeklong trip, where the Islamic State group was a focus of his meetings with world leaders in Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and Germany. The move will significantly increase the U.S. presence in Syria and comes a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of a similar number of troops to Iraq, where Islamic State militants also control territory. About 50 U.S. special operations forces are already operating in Syria. Most of the additional 250 personnel will also be special operations forces, largely Army Green Berets. The group will also include an unknown number of medical and logistical troops to provide them with support. Senior U.S. officials have been touting the success of the forces in Syria, including their ability to generate critical intelligence that gives the U.S.-led coalition a better view of what is happening on the ground, including efforts to target insurgents. In a sign of Obamas reluctance to use of force, Mondays announcement will cap a trip during which the president advocated diplomacy over military intervention. Asked last week whether he planned to increase special operations forces in Syria, Obama did not answer directly. But he said hed had discussions with an adviser about options should a fragile cease-fire break down. None of the options are good, he said in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. It has been my view consistently that we have to get a political solution inside of Syria and that all the external actors involved have to be committed to that as well as the actors inside of Syria. ... The sooner we can end fighting and resolve this in a political fashion, the better. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 STEPHEN CROWLEY/NYT Show More Show Less 2 of 3 ASTA KNOTH/AFP/Getty Images Show More Show Less 3 of 3 HANNOVER, Germany Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up momentum in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own. Obamas announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the presidents professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden. LEVEQUE, Haiti The three friends had spent the day stocking up on food in the Haitian capital when they left for their village, setting off on the 20-mile trip home by foot because the minibuses known as tap-taps werent running after a bridge collapse. Their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch along the route. They had been beaten, stabbed and burned, and relatives who identified them in a morgue said their tongues were cut out in an apparent act of ritualistic savagery. The womens family and friends suspect they were targeted because they were deaf in a country where experts say a pervasive stigma isolates people with disabilities such as deafness and can spark superstitions leading to horrific cruelty. Disabled women and girls are particularly vulnerable. Due to cultural prejudices and the weakness of the justice system, past crimes against disabled citizens have been largely ignored. But the slayings of Jesula Gelin, Vanessa Previl and Monique Vincent have galvanized Haitians with disabilities and prompted rare public protests by their advocacy groups. Outrage is particularly acute in the village of Leveque, where the women lived in a community of 168 homes established by U.S. religious organizations for deaf people displaced by the 2010 earthquake. Gelins husband, Micheler Castor, now struggles there to raise their six children alone. I cant understand it, Castor, also deaf, said in sign language of his 29-year-old wifes killing. She served the Lord and was a good wife and mother. Advocates for the disabled in Haiti say they hope what happened can chip away at the obstacles to justice and social inclusion faced by these most vulnerable citizens of the hemispheres poorest nation. Around the globe, treatment of the disabled varies widely from country to country, but discrimination and barriers to inclusion are commonplace. Those problems are most severe in the developing world, where the World Health Organization says 80 percent of disabled people live. This case is very important. The disabled have made advances in Haiti, but theres still far, far too much stigma and impunity, said Michel Pean, a blind activist who was Haitis first secretary of state for the integration of disabled people. With pressure from that government agency, police have arrested three members of a family suspected of murdering the deaf women. Investigators say two women and a man are in custody, while the two men who are the main suspects are still being sought. We wont rest until we get them all, said Jentullon Joel, police commander in Cabaret, where the women were killed in a cinderblock house off the main road. The three women often prayed together, sold rice and popcorn in their community and regularly went to Port-au-Prince to buy supplies. Gelin and her two unmarried neighbors, both in their 20s, might have stayed overnight in the capital if they had known the bridge was out. But as darkness fell, they tried walking home instead. Advocates estimate that roughly 10 percent of Haitis population, or about 1 million people, have some disability. Flash A total of 35 people were killed on Sunday in U.S.-led coalition air strikes and clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State (IS) militants in the western province of Anbar, a provincial security source said. At least 17 IS militants were killed and five of their vehicles destroyed when international warplanes bombarded IS positions in Albu Ali al-Jasim in north of the provincial capital Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Separately, six soldiers were killed and eight others wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car into a military base in Roufa area in northeast of the militant-seized town of Garma in east of the flashpoint city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source said. The suicide bombing was followed by an attack of dozens of IS militants on the military base, sparking heavy clashes with the troops which resulted in the killing of 12 extremist militants, the source said, adding that international warplanes took part in the battle, bombed the attackers and destroyed a vehicle carrying heavy machine gun. Last December, the troops recovered Ramadi, the provincial capital of the country's largest province of Anbar. Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary units have been battling IS militants for re-control of large territories in northern and western Iraq that was seized by the IS since June 2014. President Dubroy keynote speaker for Kingsborough Community College's Commencement April 25, 2016 Dr. Tashni-Ann Dubroy, Shaw University president and Kingsborough Community College class of 2000 alumna, will join more than 3,500 expected graduates and guests at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at Kingsborough Community College where she will deliver the keynote address to the graduating class of 2016 during the Colleges 51st Commencement Exercises. Dr. Dubroy, originally from Jamaica, West Indies, began her collegiate career at Kingsborough Community College where she earned an Associate of Science degree, celebrating this educational accomplishment as Valedictorian of the Class of 2000. Dr. Dubroy who was elected as President of Shaw University in North Carolina in June 2015 following a nationwide search, most recently served as Shaws Special Assistant to the President for Process Optimization, and Department Chair and Associate Professor of Chemistry in Shaws Natural Sciences and Mathematics Department. At her appointment, Dr. Dubroy was Shaw Universitys third alumnus, its third woman, and the second youngest to serve as President in the institutions 151-year history. Dr. Dubroy began her career as a Research Scientist at BASF, and was quickly recruited to the position of Global Technology Analyst where she conducted Process Optimization within BASFs Polyolefin Catalysis market segment, serving as the liaison between the business and manufacturing entities. Following a two-year tenure in that role, she then served as Chemical Procurement Manager managing a strategic sourcing budget of $35 million. She graduated summa cum laude from Shaw with a B.S in Chemistry. She earned her Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from North Carolina State University in 2007, and an MBA in Marketing from Rutgers University in 2010. Dr. Dubroy is a member of the American Chemical Society and was nominated for membership in Sigma Xi, the Distinguished Chemical Society. She has served as a Principal Investigator and Research Mentor to 22 undergraduate students at Shaw University, two of whom were selected to present at the National Science Foundation as part of the application process for phase II funding of a $20 million Spintronics grant at North Carolina State University. More than 90 percent of her mentees are employed in their fields of study, or are enrolled in graduate school. In 2012, the United Negro College Fund National Alumni Council presented Dr. Dubroy with an Outstanding Young Alumni award for her service to Shaw University, and in 2014, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni in Science Diversity award by North Carolina State University. Dr. Dubroy who has also co-founded Tea and Honey Blends, a hair care company that manufactures and retails natural hair care products, and is also co-owner of a hair salon, mentors women in science via her non-profit organization, Brilliant & Beautiful Foundation. She was recognized by Cosmopolitan magazine, as a Fun, Fearless Female making waves in the science community. Dr. Dubroy has been featured in Money magazine and Bloombergs BusinessWeek in recognition of the success of her entrepreneurial upstart that was borne out of her tenure at Rutgers Business School. She and her business partner have been honored by the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers for their work as entrepreneurial leaders and 21st century visionaries, and as New Chemists on the Block. She has received fellowship awards from the United Negro College Fund, National Science Foundation, and the National Organization for Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. Dr. Dubroy is published in various scientific journals including the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. She mentors Shaw and North Carolina State University students, and many high school students she meets in her role as a Shaw University Professor and through her foundation. Each summer, the foundation hosts a SMART Scholars Workshop at North Carolina State Universitys Friday Institute where 100 middle school girls are exposed to the sciences by way of making and marketing personal care products to a team of judges. At the national level, Dr. Dubroy frequently lectures to young girls at all age levels in the scientific community about pursuing their dreams and approaching the sciences fearlessly. Her company is the sponsor of many science competitions that foster childrens interest in the sciences. She has partnered with the Tiger Woods Foundation, the Girl Scouts and with North Carolinas MSEN Program to bring hands-on science activities to young girls both locally and nationally. Flash The United States President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended a free trade agreement under negotiations between the U.S. and European Union on Sunday, saying the agreement will benefit the economy on both sides of the Atlantic. In a joint press conference in the northern German city of Hanover, Obama said it is "indisputable" that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will make both the EU and U.S. economy stronger and more competitive compared to other regions of the world. "The United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the TTIP," he said after holding talks with Merkel in his final visit to Germany as the U.S. President. "It is very helpful to allow our economy in Europe to grow, It's important for the German economy, it's important for the European economy," said Merkel, adding that both the EU and U.S. have an interest to speed up negotiations which was launched in July 2013. A new round of talks over the agreement is scheduled to start in the U.S. next week. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people protested in Hanover streets against the agreement. A recent survey found that public support for the agreement dropped sharply in both Germany and the U.S. in recent years. Concerns of the opponents include declines in consumer and labour protection, environment standards as well as the secrecy of the negotiations. Obama said differences between the two sides are narrowing and he's confident that the agreement will be completed finally although he cannot anticipate that the deal will be ratified by the end of this year. Flash An idea of setting up "safe zone" inside Syria is unpractical as it requires "big military commitment", said the United States President Barack Obama in Germany on Sunday. U.S. President Barack Obama (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a press conference in Hannover, Germany, April 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that Germany is seeking to create "safe zones" in Syria to protect refugees fleeing wars. In a joint press conference with Merkel in the northern German city of Hanover on Sunday, Obama said the U.S. government had reviewed such kind of proposals "multiple times", but found them difficult to implement. "It's a very practical issue about how you do it," Obama said after talking to Merkel in his final visit to Germany as the U.S. President, "Sadly, it is very difficult to see how would it operate short of going to militarily take over a big chunk of that country. That requires big military commitment." Obama raised questions including "who's going to put a bunch of ground troops inside Syria, how do you let people in, who do you let in and how is it monitored". He added that the best way to protect the Syrians is to put political process on track and create an inclusive government. Merkel said in the same press conference that safe zones in Syria are areas where particular obligations apply for all different parties in order to protect refugees and where humanitarian access can be guaranteed. But she emphasized that the creation of safe zones is "not about influencing the matter from the outside", it needs to come out of political talks in Geneva instead. Obama arrived in Hanover at noon on Sunday for the last stop of a six-day visit to three nations. He will jointly launch with Merkel the Hannover Messe, the world's biggest industrial trade fair with the U.S. as the partner country this year. Flash In the outskirts of Nairobi along Limuru road, an upcoming mall that is under construction is an architectural beauty that will automatically raise Kiambu County's ratings once complete. Chinese engineer Zhang Qingchun (2nd L) works with his Kenyan colleagues at a constructing site of the Mombassa West Station under a standard gauge railway (SGR) project, in Mombassa, Kenya, on April 9, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Its appearance is reason enough for tourists to troop in to have a piece of it. The mall, which is conveniently perched right at the heart of Runda, has brought both poor and rich together for a course. James Gitau, 27, a school dropout from Gachie village in Kiambu County, is one of the young men who will go into history as having played part in giving Kenya such a prestigious mall. Gitau is the first born in a family of six and having lost his dad when he was 17, he assumed his role as the head of his family. He was forced to drop out of school to give his other siblings a chance as his mother, a city council worker in Kiambu Municipal Council, could not raise enough money to keep all of them in school. "My mum was struggling a lot, so I had to drop out of school to help her. At least I had a chance to go up to form three. If I didn't do what I did may be my sisters and brothers wouldn't be in school, I thank God just about that time, this project kicked off and I was lucky I got a chance as a worker," he says. The mall, which will be known as Two Rivers Mall is estimated to cost close to 15.1 billion shillings (about 150 million U.S. dollars) and will be built in phases by Aviation Industry Corporation of China (Avic), which is the main contractor. Avic is among other Chinese companies that have given Kenyan youth a chance to rewrite their life stories. Ngure Njoroge, 32, also from Gachie in Kiambu County says he is still alive, thanks to this project. "I had engaged in lots of bad things before due to job scarcity but I thank God now I have a clean job. I don't have to steal or engage in dubious businesses. I was informed about the Two Rivers Mall by my friend who sells chapatis and tea to the casual labourers. She told me to go try my luck and I got a job," he told Xinhua. Ngure and Gitau's stories are proof that Chinese firms operating in Kenya hire more locals compared to foreigners in contrast to popular belief that the opposite is true. In its Policy Research Working paper titled "Deal or no Deal; Strictly Business for China in Kenya?" the World Bank says China ranked fifth job creator through her foreign direct investments in Kenya. "Contrary to the popular belief that Chinese companies only hire Chinese workers, 93 percent of companies report hiring Kenyan employees; private enterprises are more likely to hire locals than state enterprises," says the report. "In addition, larger firms are more likely to hire Kenyans than smaller firms. Of the companies surveyed, Kenyans represent 78 percent of full-time and 95 percent of part-time employees," the report says. Kenya currently hosts around 400 Chinese firms spread across every sector. The firms have an average of 360 local employees with 70 percent hired on part time while the rest on full time. Those in the services sector hire 71 percent full-time employees, but the manufacturing and construction sectors hire only three percent full-time employees. Ninety percent of manufacturing employees are local, and 82 percent of service sector employees are local. In February 2014, the Sino-African Centre of Excellence (SACE) foundation launched the Business Perception Index (BPI) survey to learn the views and experiences of Chinese companies in Kenya. China constructed 905.5 km of road in 2006 and invested 227 billion shillings (about 2.2 billion dollars) to rehabilitate the Nairobi-Mombasa road. Many Chinese firms have been pre-qualified by the government to develop 2,000 km of road in various counties, according to the World Bank report. China Road and Bridge Corporation is building a 609 km section of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) linking Nairobi and Mombasa for 3.6 billion dollars, and the China Communication Construction company is building three berths at the port on Lamu Island for 467 million dollars. The SGR has employed thousands of Kenyan youth who had been jobless, giving them a fresh chance in life. Apart from those directly employed by the Chinese companies, many more Kenyans and especially women who sell food to the labourers have benefited. "I earn approximately 600 shillings (about 6 dollars) per day from selling tea, porridge and mandazis to the labourers. We feel very good whenever such projects kick off because we know we cannot sleep hungry," says Grace Odhiambo, one of the women who have benefited from the Two Rivers Mall project. UNITED NATIONS: India and France have launched a programme with $1 trillion potential to help developing countries harness fully their solar resources for a clean energy future to meet the "biggest challenge humanity has ever faced". Power Minister Piyush Goyal and French Environment Minister Segolene Royal announced on Friday the solar finance programme that aims to lower the cost of finance and facilitate the flow of more than $1 trillion investment to members of the International Solar Alliance (ISA). A second programme they launched at the ISA meeting held during the signing ceremonies for the Paris Climate Change Agreement here aims to make available solar technology for farmers. The meeting was attended by representatives of over 25 countries including the US, Brazil, Bangladesh and Nigeria. Goyal said the ISA initiatives were in "response to probably the world's largest challenge humanity has ever faced". Beyond providing clean energy and dealing with climate change, the harnessing of solar energy was also about energy security, he said. Royal said: "I would like to emphasise the cooperation we have had with India, which is exceptional." "We will have to leverage our energies on (building solar) infrastructure," she said. The ISA member nations can count on France and India to scale up the programmes for the "energy of the future", she added. Goyal said he was confident that the programmes will ensure flow of affordable finance for solar projects and serve the interests of the farming communities in the ISA member countries. Explaining the benefits of solar-rich nations collaborating through the ISA, he said it would provide benefits of scale leading to reduction in prices; promotion of collaboration in research and development; and wider deployment of solar technologies. The ISA is about "all of us working toward a shared vision, a shared goal to take the solar initiative forward", he said. The ISA, which was launched at the Paris Climate Change Summit last year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande, seeks to empower solar-rich countries located between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn, many of which have at least 300 days of sunshine, and share common challenges and opportunities. During Hollande's visit to India in January, the two leaders laid the foundation stone for the ISA headquarters in Gurgaon. Read Also: Reliance Buys Iranian Oil After 6-Year Hiatus E-Filing Startup Cleartax Hires Top Flipkart Talent NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries has bought crude oil from Iran after a 6-year break and is looking to strike a long-term fixed quantity deal, post lifting of sanctions. RIL, which operates the worlds biggest refining complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat, is looking at quickly ramping up purchases to the earlier levels of about 5 million tonnes a year. "Re-established relationship with Iran, sourced crude oil post lifting of sanctions," the company said in an investor presentation after reporting 2015-16 earnings. Bowing to international pressure to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme, RIL in January 2009 had stopped exporting gasoline or petrol to Iran. And from February 2010, it stopped buying crude oil from the West Asian nation. RIL, which has substantial investments in US shale gas projects, besides being a big supplier of fuel, shelved its business with Iran over fears of being sanctioned. With sanctions on Iran ending in January this year, RIL has re-established its ties with the country. Its joint CFO V Srikanth, in a press briefing in Mumbai on Friday, said the company is engaged in talks with Iran for bigger supplies, including a term or annual fixed quantity contract. "We have had engagements with Iran before the sanctions and they have grades of crude that are attractive to us," he added. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) and Essar Oil Ltd are the main buyers of Iranian oil in India, importing between them about 10 million tonnes a year. Besides, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) is looking at doubling imports from Iran to 4 mt this year. Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) too may pick up small quantities this year. Soon after, Iran reached a deal with western nations on curbing its nuclear programme in exchange of lifting of sanctions in July last year, a top RIL official had stated that RIL would look again at starting petrol and diesel exports to the Persian Gulf nation. Nearly 63 pr cent of the oil products from RILs refining complex at Jamnagar, with a total capacity of 62 million tonnes, are currently exported. RIL ships petrol to the Middle East, the US, South-East Asia and Australia while diesel is exported to Europe, Africa, South East Asia, the investor presentation said. "Successfully placed product into key markets of Turkey, East Africa and Australia," it said. Domestically, it has operationalised 950 out of the 1,400 petrol pumps it has. "Achieved highest retail outlet throughput of about 240 kilolitre per month in March 2016 compared to all key competitors," the presentation said. Read Also: E-Filing Startup Cleartax Hires Top Flipkart Talent India Will Need 'Unparalleled' $1 Trillion In Energy Investments By 2030: Minister Piyush Goyal You are here: Home Flash Two Islamic State (IS) militants were killed on Sunday after the U.S.-led coalition forces launched an airstrike in eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, a military statement said on Monday. "Acting upon intelligence reports, the coalition forces conducted an airstrike against an IS position in Achin District on Sunday, killing two IS militants," the statement issued by the Afghan Special Operations Forces Operational Coordination Command said. The mountainous Achin District has been the scene of heavy clashes between IS militants and security forces backed by pro-government local militiamen over the past couple of months. The militant group has yet to make comments. Also on Sunday, the Afghan Special Operation Forces detained two Taliban insurgents' members in Afghan capital of Kabul, the statement added without providing details. NEW DELHI: Claiming to have the largest number of smart cities in Europe, Italy is keen to partner with India in its own initiative for 100 of them over the next 20 years with an investment requirement of over $1.2 trillion, a senior diplomat here has said. "Italy can be a strong partner for smart cities in terms of design and technology. We are very attentive and focussed on India's smart cities," Francesco Pensabene, Italian Trade Commissioner and Director of its trade promotion office here, told IANS in an interview. "We offer a strong partnership for India for its smart cities. Italian companies can majorly contribute in terms of design and technology for the smart cities," Pensabene said, adding the services can range from consultancy to actual building of infrastructure. The trade commissioner said his country has launched a two-year campaign this year -- "Italy: The Extraordinary Commonplace -- to explore new business avenues for Italian companies and that the Indian smart city project figures high on the priority list. "Smart cities can be instrumental in promoting our exports of furnishing, technology, etc., to India. It is a wonderful programme," he said, even as his office circulated a paper on the project for Italian companies. As per this paper, the Mediterranean country has 30 smart cities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the development of 100 smart cities across India in 2015, with proposed initial allocation of 48,000 crore over five years. The first batch of 20 smart cities are expected to be launched by June 25 this year. A number of countries, including Japan, the United States, Canada, Germany and France, have already entered into various partnerships for the development of India's mission. Italy now is looking at partnering for the smart cities to boost its exports to India, that stood at $3.6 billion in calendar year 2015, growing by 10.4 percent when compared to 2014. "The slogan for our export promotion campaign is 'building business partnership'. We are looking at a win-win situation for both, constituting of joint programmes and cooperation in all the sectors," Pensabene said. "Industrial machinery constitues as much as 40-50 percent of our exports to India. We are happy about the Indian government's Make in India programme. In fact, we are amongst the top exporters of marble and leather machinery to India.," the trade commissioner said. "We are looking at increase in exports of agricultural machinery, textiles and pharma as well." The total annual trade between India and Italy stands at $8.2 billion with the Italian deficit at $720 million. The Italian trade promotion office here is also focussing on promoting the food and wine exports to India, which has seen a growth of 27 percent in the last four years. "Italy contributes as much as 80 percent to India's pasta imports, 30 percent to its olive oil imports and 10 percent to its wine imports," he said. Read Also: Reliance Buys Iranian Oil After 6-Year Hiatus E-Filing Startup Cleartax Hires Top Flipkart Talent LONDON: Britains annual rich list unveiled today has a distinctly Indian flavour with two India-born brothers - Reuben and the Hinduja - grabbing the top two slots as some of the UKs super-rich suffered the worst hammering of their fortunes following the steel industry crisis. Mumbai-born tycoons David and Simon Reuben have topped The Sunday Times Rich List 2016 with a fortune of 13.1 billion pounds, followed by the Hinduja brothers at 13 billion pounds. The Reubens were born in India to a wealthy Iraqi-Jewish family before moving to Britain in the 1950s and made their fortune in metals and property. This year they have increased their fortune by 3.4 billion pounds to jump to the top slot from last years fifth position. Their mouthwatering collection of London property includes Millbank Tower, the John Lewis Partnership HQ in Victoria and shops in Sloane Street. The list goes on. They own London Oxford Airport and London Heliport and were a leading investor in Metro Bank, which floated last month at 1.6 billion pounds," the newspaper notes. "Famously wary of debt, David, 77, and Simon, 74, keep a large proportion of their wealth in liquid assets, such as cash and bonds, and cautiously value their properties at cost. "Overseas property and a metals operation add 300 million pounds, while the hidden value in their London portfolio and their Global Switch stake take the Reubens, who live in Switzerland, to 13.1 billion pounds," it adds. Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, who head the Hinduja Group, hold on to their second rank from last year with an unchanged fortune. "The old War Office in Londons Whitehall was bought for 300 million pounds by the Hinduja family in March on a 250- year lease. They plan to turn it into a hotel worth 1 billion," it noted. However, another Indian tycoon did not have a similarly fruitful year with Lakshmi N Mittals steel empire taking a hit from the global industry crisis and losing nearly three- quarters of his wealth. The 65-year-old ArcelorMittal chief held the top slot on the list back in 2008 with a whopping 27.7 billion pounds, which is now down to just 7.12 billion this year. He slips to 11th on the list from 7th last year. "The guys at the top who are feeling the pain this year are often hit by a cocktail of plunging stock markets, low oil prices and the crisis in the steel industry ? sometimes by all three," said Robert Watts, compiler of the 2016 list. NRI steel tycoon Lord Swraj Paul and family are also among those hit by the steel crisis, with their fortune registering a 66 per cent drop to 740 million pounds, to be ranked 154th this year compared to 44th in 2015. Read Also: 'Modi Is Working Towards Poverty Elimination' "Concern Over India's Nuke Liability Law Still Remains" NEW DELHI: An emotional CJI T S Thakur today lamented "inaction" by the Executive to increase the number of judges from the present 21,000 to 40,000 to handle the "avalanche" of litigations even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured him of his government's resolve in finding a solution jointly with the judiciary. "...And therefore, it is not only in the name of a litigant or people languishing in jails but also in the name of development of the country, its progress that I beseech you to rise to the occasion and realise that it is not enough to criticise. You cannot shift the entire burden on the judiciary," the Chief Justice of India said in a choking voice. Addressing the inaugural session of Joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts, Justice Thakur said that since 1987, when the Law Commission had recommended increase in the number of judges from then 10 judges per 10 lakh people to 50, "nothing has moved". "Then comes inaction by the government as the increase (in the strength of judges) does not take place," he said. He said following the Law Commission's recommendation, the Supreme Court in 2002 had also supported increasing the strength of the judiciary. A Parliamentary Department Related Standing Committee on Law then headed by Pranab Mukherjee had also recommended taking the judge to people ratio to 50 from 10. As of today, the judge to people ratio stands at 15 judges to 10 lakh people which is way less than as compared to the US, Australia, the UK and Canada. "In 1987, the requirement was 40,000 judges. From 1987 till now, we have added 25 crore in terms of population. We have grown into one of the fastest growing economies of the world, we are inviting foreign direct investment into the country, we want people to come and make in India, we want people to come and invest in India. "Those whom we are inviting are also concerned about the ability of the judicial system in the country to deal with cases and disputes that arise out of such investments. Efficacy of the judicial system is so vitally connected with the development," he said, referring to Modi government's 'Make in India' and 'Ease of doing business' campaigns Modi, who was not slated to speak as per the schedule of the programme circulated by the Law Ministry, said if constitutional barriers do not create any problems, then top ministers and senior Supreme Court judges can sit together in a closed room to find a solution to the issue. The Prime Minister also said that it is the responsibility of all to ensure that the common man continues to have faith in the judiciary and his government will fulfil the responsibility and will not falter in helping to make the common man's life easier. "Jab jaago tab savera" (better late than never)," Modi said, referring to the issues flagged by Justice Thakur. "I can understand his pain as a lot of time has lapsed since 1987. Whatever has been the compulsions, but its better to be late than never. We will do better in the future. Let us see how to move forward by reducing the burden of the past," he said. Justice Thakur said from a munsif to a Supreme Court judge, the average disposal in India is 2,600 cases per annum as compared to 81 cases per annum in the United States. He also asked the state Chief Ministers present at the event to increase the cadre strength of the lower judiciary. While lauding the new law to create commercial divisions in the high courts and the commercial courts at the lower level, the CJI said the new courts need separate infrastructure and new judges. He said without proper infrastructure and environment, such courts will not serve the purpose as dealing with cases that require a different handling. "Old wine in a new bottle will not serve the purpose," he said, adding that an "emotional appeal" made by him "may work" in getting the government take note of the problems being faced by the judiciary. Read Also: Modi Government Sets Up Panel, Kickstarts Plan To Double Farmer Income In 6 Years 7 Indians Among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People List AMETHI (UP): Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani today said execution of central schemes here will be monitored through the Narendra Modi application by two designated groups which will be directly connected to the PMs office. "Government wants that the benefits of its schemes should reach the common man. For it, implementation of the schemes is necessary and for this help of Narendra Modi application will be taken," Irani said while addressing a gathering here. She said two groups have been formed in Amethi, represented by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha, for the purpose. "In the first group five and in the other 14 persons will be directly connected to PM office and will keep and eye on developmental schemes and send related pictures," she said and also met youths selected for these groups. The Narendra Modi application brings latest information, instant updates and helps those who use it to contribute towards various tasks. It enables a person to receive messages and emails directly from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Irani said she will ensure coverage of 50,000 women under PM Suraksha Bima Yojna and pay the first installment for it. The minister also said that she would bear the education expenses of children of journalist Karun Mishra, who was killed in Sultanpur last month. Read Also: PM Assures Emotional CJI Of Govt Support In Increasing Judge Strength Modi Government Sets Up Panel, Kickstarts Plan To Double Farmer Income In 6 Years BENGALURU: While thinking of adventures, something that strikes everybodys mind is paragliding, parasailing, water sports, trekking and the like. But have you ever wondered of an adventure that you can experience whilst relaxing in your hotel room? Yes, underwater hotels that gives a different experience from the room itself. These hotels offer a two in one package - relaxation and the freedom to watch natures aquatic beauty at the same time. Here are some of the undersea hotels that one should visit once their lifetime, as reported by Laura Gavin for Skyscanner. The Manta Resort, Pemba Island, Zanzibar Housed in the magical island of Pemba, this resort has individual rooms submerged under the sea. One can reach the island from Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. The individual room also has a deck on top where the guests can sunbath under the open skies. Adding to this, one can dive in to the serene sea to enjoy the beauty of the coral reefs surrounding the entire island. Read Also: 10 Incredible Hotels to Explore In Lifetime Top 10 Selling Cars in India WASHINGTON: Republican presidential front- runner Donald Trump has said that he prefers to run against Democratic leader Hillary Clinton in the elections and not against Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders despite that he is giving a tough time to the former secretary of state. "Now Bernie's over, I guess. It's over for Bernie. I don't want to run against Bernie," Trump told his supporters in Pennsylvania, where the Republican presidential primary is scheduled to be held on April 26. "I want to run against crooked Hillary Clinton. We are going to beat her so badly. Is there anyone more crooked than this woman?" Trump said, as he appeared to be confident of bagging the party's presidential nomination despite being quite far away from the necessary 1237 delegates to get this. However, he praised Sanders for his tough fight against Clinton. "(Sanders) said she suffers from bad judgement and she said - now I don't know, I think she's qualified, I guess. But that doesn't mean she's good," he said. "He said she's not qualified to be president. Now what he meant is because her judgement is so bad- so Bernie Sanders, not me, said she's not qualified. So now I'm going to say: She's not qualified, OK?" Trump said. "We have all of the mistakes Hillary made as secretary of state. We have a mess. The war in Iraq has been devastating. We have probably spent USD 4 trillion in the Middle East," the Republican front runner said in his speech. Meanwhile, the former Republican presidential candidate and Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich said that Trump is a presumptive nominee and urged party leaders to unite behind him. The Republican National Committee (RNC) leadership continued to its meeting in Florida over the various laws related to the convention. Trump personally did not attend the meeting, but was represented by his close aides. The other two presidential candidates, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, appeared before the RNC. At his Pennsylvania rally last evening, Trump refused to go by the advice of his aides who asked him to wait so as to let a large crowd waiting outside to come inside the venue. "So I am supposed to wait a half an hour because there are thousands of people outside trying to get in. I can't do that to you, so we are going to come on right now," he said off-stage. "I've never done that before. I've never introduced myself. They didn't quite say it right the first time. We have thousands of people outside. They're going to pour in, they're filling up the floor. Let's start a little bit early. To hell with this," said Trump, who has 845 delegates to his kitty. His nearest primary rival Senator Ted Cruz from Texas has 559 and the Ohio Governor John Kasich 148. The next round of primary elections are scheduled in the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island. Trump needs to win big in these states to ensure that he gets the necessary 1237 votes to become the party's nominee before the Cleveland convention in July. Read Also: Hillary Clinton's Super-PAC Raises $11 Million In March 'Trump Aims For 1,400 Delegates Before Convention' Source: PTI HANOVER: U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended a free trade agreement under negotiations between the U.S. and European Union on Sunday, saying the agreement will benefit the economy on both sides of the Atlantic. In a joint press conference in the northern German city of Hanover, Obama said it is "indisputable" that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will make both the EU and U.S. economy stronger and more competitive compared to other regions of the world. "The United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the TTIP," he said after holding talks with Merkel in his final visit to Germany as the U.S. President. "It is very helpful to allow our economy in Europe to grow, It' s important for the German economy, it's important for the European economy," said Merkel, adding that both the EU and U.S. have an interest to speed up negotiations which was launched in July 2013. A new round of talks over the agreement is scheduled to start in the U.S. next week. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people protested in Hanover streets against the agreement. A recent survey found that public support for the agreement dropped sharply in both Germany and the U.S. in recent years. Concerns of the opponents include declines in consumer and labour protection, environment standards as well as the secrecy of the negotiations. Obama said differences between the two sides are narrowing and he's confident that the agreement will be completed finally although he cannot anticipate that the deal will be ratified by the end of this year. Read Also: Obama Sharpens Brexit Warning As Leaves For Germany Republican System Is 'Crooked' and 'Rigged': Donald Trump 'Indian Pharma Market Growing At Over 2 Lakh Crore' NEW DELHI: India's pharmaceutical industry, with a market size of over 2 lakh crore, ranks third in volume and 13th in value across the globe, it was announced on Sunday. "The pharmaceutical industry ranks 3rd in volume and 13th in value across the globe and has a market size of 2,52,000 crore as in 2016," the Jaipur-based IIHMR University, which is also a WHO collaborating centre for district and primary healthcare, said in a release here at the end of a national symposium it organised. "The industry is likely to create over 1.30 lakh jobs in 2016 itself," university president S.D.Gupta said in the statement. It cited the India Skills Report to say that 21.05 percent of candidates for management positions in 2016 will be hired in the pharma and healthcare sectors. According to industry chamber CII, India has around 300 large and 8,000 small and medium scale pharma units at present with over 20,000 manufacturers in both the organised and unorganised segments. "The India pharma industry has 77 percent formulation manufacturers and 23 percent bulk drug manufacturers with 169 FDA (US) approved plants and 153 EDQM (European directorate for Quality (EU) approved facilities at present," the statement said. "There is a rise in the need for vaccines due to an increase in the sedentary lifestyle giving a rise to chronic lifestyle diseases, which will become dominant in the next 5-10 years," it added. It further cited India Skills Report 2016 to say that across India, the percentage increase in hiring numbers for pharma and healthcare have been 25 percent and above. "According to 'Makeinindia.com', the Indian market is the world's 6th largest pharma market and will be the 3rd largest market by 2020. The generics market is expected to grow to $26.1 billion by 2016 from $11.3 billion in 2011. Read Also: Reliance Buys Iranian Oil After 6-Year Hiatus E-Filing Startup Cleartax Hires Top Flipkart Talent Source: IANS WASHINGTON: Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump today said his party's nomination system is so "crooked" and "rigged" that people like him cannot run for elections and "defend" the nation against countries like China, Vietnam and India. It (system) is a rigged, crooked system thats designed so that the bosses can pick whoever they want, and that people like me cant run, and cant defend you against foreign nonsense, and cant defend you against China and Japan and Mexico and Vietnam and India, and every single country you can name, because we lose with every we lose believe me, with every deal we do, Donald Trump told his supporters in Maryland. This was Trumps first public rally after his impressive victory in New York primary. He is leading the delegate count in the Republican party, but still far away from the 1237 delegate needed to become the partys presidential nominee. Trump said he is on his way to win the partys nominee and get the necessary number of delegates. An internal campaign memo said yesterday that they expect to have 1400 delegate before the July Cleveland convention. Read Also: I Want To Run Against Hillary: Trump 'Trump Aims For 1,400 Delegates Before Convention' Source: PTI STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Laolu Senbanjo, a Nigerian visual artist who was recently featured in Stapleton's CANVAS Institute, has been touched by Beyonce. Or rather, Queen Bey has been touched by Laolu -- the artist's body painting work was on display in the recording artist's explosive visual album "LEMONADE," which debuted on HBO and Tidal platforms Sunday night. The album, which has the Bey hive a'buzzin' with its infidelity-hinting limericks, also includes powerful imagery of black womanhood, spirituality, pain and anger. Senbanjo's trademark African body paint appears to encapsulate many of those messages on the face of Beyonce herself and the other artists in the video. So how did this Brooklyn-based artist who, not one month ago was the featured in the Victory Boulevard gallery, come to play such a crucial role in this generation's most talked-about music video? Senbanjo, who has also contributed his work to Nike, spoke to OkayAfrica.com about the visual album and his work with Beyonce -- a project that has been pretty much top secret up till the very moment it debuted. I got a call from management about a video shoot. They gave me an idea it was going to be Beyonce's video shoot, but it was top secret, that kind of thing. So I couldn't tell anybody. They told me like two weeks before. I was gonna go there in like two weeks. And all of a sudden they called back and said "Uh, two weeks is too long. We need you right now." And I had to travel to New Orleans, where it was happening. It was crazy because I couldn't say no. If Queen B wants you... It was so unreal. I just left everything I was doing. I had projects I was working on. And I just left them halfway and told everyone that something came up and I had to leave. So everybody said "What's a matter with you?" And I said "You're going to understand later, but I can't say anything right now." So I got on a plane and went to New Orleans. Didn't know what to expect. I got the schedules, call sheets, the timings, who I'm working with, who I'm supposed to see. Everything was very detailed, the names, everything." And, sorry but a girl's gotta know -- what was it like to meet Beyonce? Senbanjo described the surreal moment when the cultural icon called out to him by name for a conversation about his art. "I tried so hard not to be starstruck. She came to me and she said hi, and she said she wanted to thank me for coming, she knows it was short notice, and she's really grateful I could make it. In my mind I was like "Really? You're thanking me? I should be thanking you for this incredible opportunity to work with you." She told me a lot about my art, which is kind of crazy that she checked out everything I've been doing." Senbanjo was brought on to do the body painting for the Sacred Art of the Ori, a tradition that appeared in the visual album as a "connection between the artist and the music," he said. He emphasized the power of the body painting, especially in the context of someone in power pulling it into the mainstream. "People say funny things about me painting on women," he said in the interview. "It's about empowerment. It's not about nudity, it's not about objectifying. It's about equality. It's about speaking up for people who are not being talked about in the workplace. It's also about relationships." Well, Staten Island, you saw it here first. Read the full interview here. Here's a video of Senbanjo doing the same Sacred Art of the Ori in Staten Island: STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A man originally arrested in connection with the stabbing of a Meiers Corners woman has pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal possession of a controlled substance, while all other charges in the incident have been dismissed. Tystfyr Butler, 25, of Mariners Harbor, who was apprehended shortly after the stabbing on April 6, was originally charged with second- and third-degree assault, third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, according to court documents. Officers found Butler in possession of drugs, including heroin. Butler has pleaded guilty to the drug charge, while other pending charges were dismissed. "After careful evaluation of witness accounts and available evidence, Mr. Butler was charged and pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a controlled substance. He will serve 60 days. Other charges were dismissed and sealed," according to a spokesman for District Attorney Michael E. McMahon. In an interview with the Advance, stabbing victim Elizabeth Sepulveda, 41, described the attack in front of her Bradley Avenue home -- which placed her in the hospital and has led to her family searching for a new place to live. A second suspect, Anthony Johnson, 29, of Port Richmond, was arrested and charged with gang assault and third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. His next court date is in May. NYPD-graduation.JPG Many SILive readers seem to agree that police officers deserve more money for the job they do. (AP Photo) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When prompted about NYPD pay, readers had lots to say. With cops still hopeful for a new contact with New York City, we asked folks on Friday morning how much police officers in the five boroughs should be paid. As expected, dozens of suggestions -- including some specific numeric figures -- were made. Cops in the police academy make approximately $45,000. In less than six years, their total salary could near $92,000, according to the NYPD Recruit website. Below is a snapshot of what readers said, first on SILive, then the Advance Facebook page: "The highest we can give them," says Minimum starting pay of $60,000, suggests Pay them on salary, writes "They have it made in the shade," according to "Today's salary is a joke," said Below is a sample of comments made on our Facebook page about the issue. A majority of responses indicated NYPD officers definitely deserve more, but not everyone was on board: "Extremely underpaid," writes Top pay of $160,000, recommends Danny O'Connell STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In an almost three-hour service at Holy Trinity-St.Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church on Victory Boulevard off of Richmond Avenue in Bulls Head many people gathered inside to celebrate Palm Sunday. The day is in remembrance of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem after he had performed the miracle of resurrecting Lazarus from the dead. When the people of Jesus' time heard what he had done, they went to him to honor and praise him. During the service, the Divine Liturgy is said, including the blessing and distribution of woven palm crosses in baskets placed on a table in front of an icon of Jesus. The mass then commences. "It's a good and nice service," one man who attended said, who wished to remain anonymous. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Retired Surrogate Charles D'Arrigo's life was remembered as "a remarkable story of love" for his wife, his family, the law, his community and country. D'Arrigo, 88, a respected jurist whose career spanned more than 40 years, died April 19 in his Emerson Hill home. His funeral was Monday, with a morning mass in Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church, West Brighton, followed by interment in Moravian Cemetery, New Dorp. "His is a remarkable story of love,'' said Monsignor Peter Finn, pastor of Blessed Sacrament, and celebrant of the mass, who addressed his homily to D'Arrigo's family, friends, members of the legal community and judicial circuit. Monsignor Finn recalled how the family called him to the house to pray the Rosary around D'Arrigo's bedside the night before he died. "She wouldn't leave; wouldn't sit down. She had to be there," Monsignor Finn said, looking out at Norma, D'Arrigo's high-school sweetheart and wife of 67 years. "She kissed him good night, he closed his eyes and slipped away." "He was the love of her life, and she his," said family friend, retired Queens Surrogate Louis Laurino, who delivered the eulogy. He recalled how the couple met while both were students at Curtis High School. The courtship would continue over the next five years, through his three-and-a-half year stint in the Army. They were married in 1949. Laurino spoke of D'Arrigo's unfailing support for his wife's community and charity endeavors through the years, and of how much he loved his community. "He had no intention of ever leaving Staten Island," Laurino said. Current Surrogate Robert Gigante noted that D'Arrigo was the fourth of only six Surrogates in the borough's history. D'Arrigo served as Surrogate Judge of Richmond County from 1981 to 1999, when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. Among his duties as Surrogate, performing adoptions was his greatest joy. He particularly loved meeting parents who would show him pictures of children with whom they were "united in my chambers." When Gigante took the bench as Surrogate, he recalled how D'Arrigo took him aside to remind him that presiding over family adoptions would be one of his most important responsibilities. "He said there are very few things you will do that will last forever, but adoptions are the one thing you can say will last forever." HONOR GUARD OF JUDGES, COURT OFFICERS Laurino and Gigante were part of an honor guard of more than a dozen judges -- a who's who of the Staten Island judicial circuit past and present -- each garbed in their judicial robes, as tradition dictates -- who processed into the church together as a sign of respect for their late colleague and the D'Arrigo family. D'Arrigo's children, Charles Jr., Sherilyn D'Arrigo Swords and Janice D'Arrigo Van Stolk, each spoke about their dad as a devoted family man and father, who instilled in his children the values of truth, justice, fairness and compassion. He also doted on his three grandchildren, Cristin Swords, Cornelis Adriaan Pieter (Case) and Claire Elizabeth Eve Van Stolk. Members of the New York State Uniformed Court Officers ceremonial unit, in full dress garb, escorted the family in and out of the church. The officers removed the American flag covering the casket, folded it and presented it to Norma D'Arrigo, as a lone bagpiper skirled "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." As the family moved to greet mourners, a uniformed Court Officer played a solo of "America the Beautiful" on saxophone. A global coalition mapping and motivating decarbonization Posted on 25 April 2016 by Guest Author Diplomats, business leaders, World Bank staff, and strategic partners gather just before the inaugural High-Level Assembly of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition. Photograph: Joseph Robertson Would it surprise you to learn that governments, oil companies, NGOs and major investors are coming together to mapand to motivatethe decarbonization of the global economy? The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) is a policy-focused alliance of national and subnational governments, intergovernmental agencies, businesses and institutional investors, nonprofits and stakeholder networks. It was launched on the first day of the Paris climate negotiations, and its mission is simple: to collaborate across borders, across sectors, sharing information, know-how and capacity, to build the most economically efficient tools for decarbonization into every nations climate plan as soon as possible. UN Secretary General and Cote dIvoire Prime Minister join senior diplomats, business leaders and NGO leaders during first governing Assembly of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition. Photograph: Joseph Robertson The Paris Agreement calls for non-state support for national climate action. The 17th Sustainable Development Goal is devoted to partnerships that build capacity and speed implementation. At the CPLC table, all of the partners are peers, and this takes the project well beyond the the conventions of global governance: honest and capable support for success is the shared focus, so governments and leading businesses work with intellectuals and policy advocates, to ensure no good thinking is left off the menu. Asked why he sees this multi-sectoral collaboration as so crucial to success in combating climate change, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Putting a price on carbon pollution will cut emissions, improve peoples health, and spur new investments in clean technology, adding that success will have a clear impact on our efforts to end extreme poverty in the world in 15 years. When Ethiopias Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn joined the Carbon Pricing Panel last fall, he said his nation wanted to ensure it followed the most cost-effective route to leadership in the 21st century clean economy. Last week, he said he aims to build a climate-resilient green middle-income economy. Ethiopia will also produce recommendations on the role and possible forms of carbon pricing policies in Ethiopia, which might also be applicable to similar low-income developing countries. On Friday, April 15, the CPLC held its first ever High-Level Assembly, a governance meeting bringing together leading diplomats, heads of government, and executive representation of all Coalition partners. Segolene Royal, Minster of Environment for France, and Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Royal DSM, co-chaired the Assembly. They were joined by Dr. Kim, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurri?a, and Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan of Cote dIvoire. In her opening remarks to the inaugural governing Assembly, Minister Royal called for carbon pricing that is high enough, significant enough to have a clear and rapid impact on various behaviors, namely on investment choices. Royal, who is now also President of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Climate Convention, added that This is the key element of the Paris Agreement. Segolene Royal, Minister of Environment for France, co-chairs the Assembly. Photograph: World Bank Group Specifically, Article 4 of the Paris Agreement calls on all nations to promote environmental integrity, transparency, accuracy, completeness, comparability and consistency, and ensure the avoidance of double counting in designing policy strategies that track, limit or eliminate carbon pollution. Article 6 outlines ways to transition market mechanisms developed under the Kyoto Protocol into a sharing of responsibility for climate action across borders, in fulfillment of new national climate action commitments. As a venue to share policy aims, build new collaborative strategies, and work toward ensuring best practices are made available to all policy-makers, the CPLC has a real chance to ensure effective, efficient, and equitable strategies are part of every nations climate action agenda. Some approaches focus on covering one or more sectors of the economypower generation, transport, agriculture. Others prioritize rewarding early actors while limiting emissions overall. But a simple fee applied to carbon-emitting fuels at the source with revenues recycled back into the economy can cover all sectors while adding day to day economic value at the human scale. Click here to read the rest By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent. Agree ACT BOOK OF THE YEAR Nominations for the $10,000 ACT Book of the Year Award are now open for ACT-based fiction, poetry and non-fiction writers who published between January 1 and December 31, 2015. Nominations for the ACT Book of the Year Award will close at 5pm, on June 1 2016. See: arts.act.gov.au. Jennifer Rayner is an advisor to the Australian Labor Party and the author of Generation Less: How Australia is Cheating the Young. Credit:HILARY WARDHAUGH PHOTOGRAPHY ACU POETRY PRIZE Entries for the 2016 Australian Catholic University (ACU) Prize for Poetry are now open. The first prize is $7000. The ACU Prize for Poetry will be awarded for outstanding poetry with the theme Loving Kindness, and will be presented on September 1. Australian residents are eligible to enter. Entries must be unpublished, must not have won any other competition, and must not be under consideration by any publisher, literary journal or for any other prize. Entries will be open until June 6. See: acu.edu.au. Uncle Vanya. By Anton Chekhov. Adapted by David Mamet from a literal translation by Vlada Chernomordik. Directed by Geoffrey Borny. Canberra Repertory Society. Theatre 3. April 28-May 14. canberrarep.org.au. Geoffrey Borny is a big fan of Anton Chekhov. He's published an ebook on the Russian playwright, Interpreting Chekhov, and has both acted in and directed his works: "He's a playwright I love." From left, Alice Ferguson, Sam Hannan-Morrow, Neil McLeod and Yanina Clifton in Uncle Vanya at Theatre 3. Credit:Helen Drum Borny is in the director's chair for the upcoming Canberra Rep production of Uncle Vanya. He's using a modern adaptation by the American writer David Mamet "he's a theatre man; he knows what works in the theatre". Uncle Vanya premiered in 1899 and was a more successful reworking of Chekhov's earlier play The Wood Demon, which had been produced 10 years earlier. The CSIRO will explore innovative technology, finance and governance models to effectively incorporate affordable housing options into the planned redevelopment of its Ginninderra Field Station. About 30 experts from universities, social service groups, charities, and banks joined a think tank event on affordable housing options for the 700-hectare site earlier this month, advising the research organisation to use technology to reduce the cost of living on the site and to incorporate place-making and a master plan to manage affordable housing. ACT Shelter boss Travis Gilbert and CSIRO general manager for business and infrastructure services Mark Wallis at the CSIRO Ginninderra Field Station site. Credit:Jay Cronan CSIRO general manager for business and infrastructure services Mark Wallis said the event heard a range of opinions from government, corporate and charity perspectives, including about how best to help low income earners and casual and contract employees find suitable housing in Canberra. "What came out of the discussion was that we need to deliver affordable housing that best meets the needs of people who need those options, including innovative financing and governance options. A security guard was allegedly assaulted after telling a patron to leave the popular Groovin' the Moo festival in Canberra on Sunday. Police arrested two festival-goers, one for the assault, and another for "intoxication and disorderly behaviour". Crowds at the Groovin' The Moo Canberra. Credit:Jamila Toderas They also made five drug seizures in a sellout crowd of roughly 15,000 people. In a statement on Monday, police described the overall behaviour of crowds as "satisfactory", and said event organisers were well-prepared, making the event a safe and enjoyable one. Sydney Airport, which has been growing international traffic at a rapid rate, has completed a $US900 million ($1.17 billion) bond raising to reduce its drawn bank debt and for general corporate purposes. The bond raising, flagged by The Australian Financial Review's Street Talk column earlier this month, was done in the United States over the weekend with help from bookrunners JPMorgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, ANZ and ScotiaBank. Sydney Airport's bonds are rated Baa2 by Moody's. Credit:Tamara Dean The 10-year bonds were given a provisional rating of Baa2 by Moody's and priced with a coupon of 3.625 per cent, according to Bloomberg. That compares with the 3.375 per cent coupon on $US500 million of 10-year bonds issued by the airport operator a year ago. As of its full-year results in February, Sydney Airport had an $86 million undrawn bank facility maturing this year, a $545 million drawn bank debt facility maturing in 2017 and $736 million of various debt facilities maturing in 2018. Superannuation experts say the government should backflip on plans to scrap a tax rebate for low-income earners if it is serious about making the super system fairer and not just about raising revenue. The word "fairness" has loomed large in Treasurer Scott Morrison's commentary on potential changes to super policy in next week's federal budget. Superannuation industry experts are hopeful the 2016 federal budget will dump plans to scrap an important tax rebate for low-income earners from 2017. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer "These [superannuation] arrangements need to be fairer, they need to be targeted and they need to be fit for purpose," Mr Morrison said on the sidelines of the Australian Christian Lobby's annual conference in Sydney over the Anzac Day long weekend. He refused to be drawn on a widely reported "leak" that the May 3 budget would include a crackdown on super tax breaks for those in the highest income tax bracket. Gannett's proposal, disclosed on Monday, is for $US12.25 a share in cash - a premium of 63 per cent to the company's closing stock price Friday. Tribune Publishing's shares closed at $US7.52 on April 22. The Gannett Co has offered to acquire the Tribune Publishing Co, which owns newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, for about $US815 million ($1.06 billion) including the assumption of debt. Tribune Publishing was spun off from Tribune Co, now called Tribune Media, owner and operator of 42 broadcast stations, in August 2014 and saddled with about $US350 million in debt. Since then, its stock has tumbled as Tribune Publishing's newspapers, like many print publications, have struggled with declining circulation and dwindling print advertising revenue. Michael Ferro, a Chicago entrepreneur, acquired a stake worth $US44 million at the time in Tribune Publishing in early February through his Merrick Ventures. Less than three weeks later, Jack Griffin was replaced as chief executive by Justin C. Dearborn, a close associate of Mr Ferro's and the former chief executive of Merge, which was acquired by IBM. Soon after, Tribune Publishing announced it was combining the role of editor and publisher across its portfolio of newspapers, a decision that raised eyebrows in the media world. The recent upheaval at Tribune Publishing is the latest the company has faced. Soon after the real estate tycoon Sam Zell bought the company's predecessor for $US8.2 billion in 2007, it filed for bankruptcy, with $US7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $US13 billion. The culture at the company had turned poisonous, and Tribune Tower, once a symbol of a great media company, became a place where executives used sexual innuendo and profane invective. In recent years, The Los Angeles Times has become a flashpoint for disagreement between Tribune Publishing and its California newspapers. Austin Beutner, The Times' publisher, was ousted last fall after only a year in the position because company executives viewed his ambitious plan to dominate California journalism as defiant and a threat to their centralised strategy. The newsroom has been reduced by job cuts. The philanthropist Eli Broad has long sought to buy the paper, but his moves have been spurned. In a further sign of discontent between Tribune Publishing and its California newspapers - in addition to The Los Angeles Times, the company also owns The San Diego Union-Tribune - the two entities have sparred over financial projections. If ever there was a political opportunity to start the rebalancing of Australia's labour market, this is it. If Australia once again wants to have an unemployment rate down to 4 per cent or less, as happened in 2007 under the Coalition's labour market reform, then this is the year to make a start. Minister for Employment Michaelia Cash says that the government will not lurch to the right when it announces its policy for the July election. But no one is suggesting anything radical. It's hard enough to get the Coalition to talk about reform, let alone actually engage in real reform. At least it's likely Cash will do better than Abbott's infamous "dead, buried and cremated" workplace policy in 2010. But that's not saying much. The promise not to lurch to the right is vacuous. It means nothing unless it means the government is going to do very little. If it means that individual agreements were too right-wing (whatever that means), then the 1.5 million Australians who used individual agreement were mistaken. The evidence is to the contrary. The use of individual agreements was one factor in the huge lift in living standards for all Australians as the resource sector used individual agreements to take advantage of demand for Australia's resources sector in China. This was especially true for Western Australia and it would be news to that state if individual agreements were anything other than a great success. For nearly 1300 days my father was tortured and starved and saw death up close. He witnessed an Australian soldier's road-side execution with a Samurai sword and once saw a Gurkha behead a Japanese officer with his kukri. My father was a survivor of the Burma Railway and these were just some of the horrors that stayed with him until his death. Most adult Australians have heard of the Burma Railway. It is the 415-km railway linking Bangkok and Rangoon built in 1943 for the Empire of Japan by slave labour that included more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war. Remberance crosses bearing poppies sit among the original railway sleepers, rail pegs and track at the site of the infamous World War II Burma Railroad. Credit:Kate Geraghty The railway is an episode covered in histories, in documentaries and Hollywood dramas. From Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai to David Bowie's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, many people of drinking age have some understanding of Singapore's fall 74 years ago, and the 3 years servitude Australian gunners endured on the Death Railway. Each Anzac Day the 8th Division still get cheers from the crowds, although their numbers are now sparse. Indeed, the Burma Railway is the timber of Richard Flanagan's 2014 Booker and PM's Literary Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a love story traversing this terrain. Paul Andersen The Gap (Qld) It is simply astounding to hear Malcolm Turnbull's scaremongering about Labor's plan to limit negative gearing to new houses. Months ago I thought this would be a great idea to get some useful revenue plus help the ever-present housing problem. It now seems that we are stuck for life with negative gearing because our brave politicians preach that the slightest change to this anti-conservative move will bring about a housing crisis. Mr Turnbull, you and your colleagues should be ashamed of yourselves. Jim Banks Pottsville Beach It is great to see Malcolm Turnbull take a leaf out of Tony Abbott's book and confirm a policy on housing affordability that can be articulated with a three-word slogan: "Choose rich parents". Guy Curtis Bull Creek (WA) Negative gearing, negative spin. Jack Ray Cheltenham Courage and suffering have their feet in reality Bolstered by his "credentials" as a descendant of a RAF serviceman and anti-fascist granny, Scott Colvin ("Stop spinning the sad Anzac thread", April 25) joins a long line of those whose misguided view of Anzac Day is framed as "celebrating the extravagant loss of Anzac life". As a member of a military family of five generations, I can assure Scott that this is not a celebration, it's a day of remembrance, a day to acknowledge the waste of lives in all wars and the sacrifices made by those at home and those doing their duty abroad, knowing they faced death. Scott suggests we "remove the centrality of the Anzac myth from the Australian psyche". However, there is nothing mythical about the terrible losses, nor the mateship and bravery displayed on battlegrounds both past and present, and we must remember them. Lest we forget. Rose Cunningham Yarravel No Scott Colvin, Your article wasn't treason, it was honest, beyond jingoism. Having read accounts of the period and gleaned through the hyperbole, the honest, unwoven accounts of the Anzacs came from the men themselves. Interviewed in their 90s and asked the big question, given a second chance, would they enlist again? To a man they all gave a similar answer, "no, silliest thing I'd ever done". Wise old men, but at one time, by admission, foolish boys. Remember the generation and the times. Poor education, a new nation bereft of stories, and a squabble brewing between Europe's aristocratic classes. Best left alone. Not for us! A fresh, militant nationalism doomed us to play out the Anzac Olympics. Sacrilegious words in contempt of heroic idealism? No way. Mark the words of wise old men, the truth, not jingoism, lies here. "Silliest thing I'd ever done." Warren Tindall Bellingen Our system incites pork barrel politics Tim Dick has put his finger on it ("Roll out the pork barrel one more time", April 25). The single-member electoral district system must go, the sooner the better. It took the New Zealanders a royal commission in 1986 to change but either major party here can simply adopt it now as the electoral system of the immediate future. The toxic, unstable, adversarial political culture of the country will change. And, as Dick so clearly reveals, pork barrelling will end. But that is not all, folks. We will see a diversity of interests and views represented in our parliaments. The best proportional representation system is the Open Party List, not Hare-Clark. The Open Party List is widely used in other countries. What it means is that the voters' task is to select a preferred party and a preferred candidate with just one mark: easy, efficient, economical and highly democratic. Voting will become a pleasure, not a duty. Klaas Woldring Pearl Beach If the people of Indi re-elect Cathy McGowan to Parliament, I will donate some money to Wangaratta Hospital. Paddy Lonergan Schofields Roman poet Virgil's famous line was "Mirabile dictu" or "Wonderful to relate". Sophie Mirabella's memoirs (in extended retirement?) can be "Mirabella Dictu", subtitled "What Sophie Said", to record past interventions and showing no loss of form. Colin Booth Narrabeen Ideas rich in possibility Another brilliant article by Ross Gittins ("World ruled by ideas or by interests?", April 25). Imagine living in a society not an economy. Imagine our economy being judged on how affordable housing is, how well we support the disadvantaged, the quality and accessibility of health services and education, the fair and equitable distribution of taxation and wealth. If I was Australia's prime minister (or better still, head of state), Gittins would be my finance minister. Karen Richards Miranda Our borders in dispute One of our closest neighbours, East Timor, has one of the world's lowest per capita GDPs. Nearly half of its population is under 14 years old. Our national security keystone is stable and prosperous neighbours. Belittling with espionage was bad enough. Where is our conscience in delaying the resolution of our maritime border issues? Heidi Tamlyn Gordon Stamp of approval If the NSW Treasurer does introduce a stamp duty/land tax surcharge on residential property purchases by foreign buyers, it might just decrease the number of disgruntled locals sick of being outbid by foreign investors ("Stamp duty change remains on the table," April 25). Some of the latter then leave their property vacant, doing nothing to ease the rental market for those unable to buy. Stephanie Edwards Wollstonecraft Srebrenica haunts Germany and Turkey are reportedly pushing for the creation of civilian safe zones in Syria to stem the flow of refugees to Europe ("Merkel pushes for safe zones", April 25). It's a good idea in theory, but protection of such safe zones will be vital. The world does not want to see a repeat of Srebrenica. Stephanie Edwards Wollstonecraft Banking on the cheats Things go off the rails badly when we deal with people who can't be trusted ("Universities to enforce strict new measures", April 25). By far the biggest number of cheats at universities are in the studies of business and the next three by a large margin are accounting, management and marketing. It's therefore no wonder the world was brought to the brink of disaster with the global financial crisis and that we have need for an inquiry into the financial industry. Brenton White Mosman How the wheels turn The unfair restrictions imposed on cyclists at Waterloo Green are absurd ("Conflicting signs: 'There's tremendous collision potential'", April 25). When the state silver is being sold for billions, money enough to widen the path, build another or even a bike tunnel must exist. Instead, the Department of Family and Community Services has sparked a turf war with the City of Sydney and cyclists. And war it is, as I discovered when riding through the Green one night last week. Unaware of the new restrictions, I was viciously verbally abused by one local pedestrian for riding my bike. He hoped I would get "run over by a car". Where was the publicity? Where was the consultation with cyclists? Signs, erected years ago, still indicate we can ride through the Green, as does the official Sydney Cycleway map. Yet we have been ambushed by clumsy and underhanded tactics. Imagine the outrage if the department cut the M5 in half. Yet, post-destruction of the College Street cycleway, the snail-pace construction of the cycleway network and after huge fine increases, again the NSW government and bureaucracy dismiss cyclists and ignore the benefits, not only to individuals but also to society, of bike riding. Daniel Fleming Surry Hills Stepping up for students Sue Morgan's letter (April 25) is a great distillation of the cultural changes that have taken place in our society and their effect on our teachers' ability to develop the three Rs in all students to the level of "community expectations". Society's delegation of the teaching of many of life's skills to our teachers is its responsibility, not that of our teachers. Until we accept this and provide the required funding where it is most required (Gonski) don't expect any improvement soon. Stephen Dunn Bonnells Bay What about George W's Saudi stance? Perhaps George Fishman (Letters, April 25) would also consider George W. Bush a "closet Muslim and Arab sympathiser" based on his lack of interest in pursuing the Saudi government over its citizens' involvement in the September 11 attacks. Steve Birdsall Mona Vale George Fishman suggests that President Obama's threat to veto any attempt by the US Congress to implicate the Saudis in the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers justifies the belief by many in the US that he is a closet Muslim and an Arab sympathiser. What I can't understand is what is so bad about being a Muslim (closet or otherwise), or an Arab sympathiser? Gay O'Connor Manly Disgraced was electrifying I am shocked to read Jason Blake's review of Disgraced ("Smart and crisp, but lacking punch", April 25). To say it lacked punch is the opposite of my experience. I was on the edge of my seat throughout - it was electrifying. The cast were superb - especially Sachin Joab whom Blake found wanting. Did we see the same play? I felt privileged to be attending such an incisive, competent, exciting production. I attended with a friend. Her experience was as mine. The world's two greatest powers are competing for military dominance of the western Pacific Ocean and the contest is about to intensify. The US and China are each jockeying for advantage as they anticipate a quickening in a struggle that "has the potential to escalate into one of the deadliest conflicts of our time, if not history", according to Malaysia's Defence Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein. An important ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague is expected in the weeks ahead. It will rule on a claim by a US ally, the Philippines, to sovereignty over reefs that are also claimed by China. Most experts expect the ruling, due by the end of June, will favour the Philippines. Beijing has warned it will not recognise the court's jurisdiction. The South China Morning Post reported on Monday that, if the court ruled against it, Beijing would accelerate plans to build an artificial island around one of the reefs at the heart of the dispute, Scarborough Shoal. The shoal is 230kilometres from the Philippines coast and 1020kilometres from China's. China recently put fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles on another island a few hundred kilometres away, Woody Island. The President of China Xi Jinping is reported to be planning to travel there soon. The plan, seen in its entirety, is just the thin edge of a wedge that will see parking for hundreds of cars and a train, all designed to deliver more people to Bondi. Sydney is blessed with a pearl necklace of glorious beaches from Palm Beach to Maroubra. Why not work to share visitors with other beaches instead of dumping them all in Bondi? Waverley Council is deeply divided. John Wakefield, its most senior Labor councillor, has described the mayor as "pig-headed, arrogant and vindictive". Neighbouring mayor, Woollahra's Toni Zeltzer, is deeply worried about the pro-development stance of Betts' council. Betts' relationships with some of the biggest developers and financial interests in the east are deeply worrying. Betts is tipped to become the mayor of an amalgamated Eastern Suburbs that will see her rival the power and influence of Clover Moore at the City of Sydney. If so, she will be even further removed from the Bondi Beach community she professes to serve. Under her stewardship it has taken more than two years to build a toilet block at the north end of the beach and parkland returfing has alienated beachgoers this entire summer. In her hands, a $38 million upgrade of the Pavilion is likely to see it closed to the public for years only to eventually be taken over by commercial interests that will simply duplicate other businesses already struggling in Campbell Parade, Hall Street and the surrounding precinct. Sally Betts has been on council for the past 20 years. During her reign, Waverley Council has neglected the Pavilion and allowed it to reach its present state of neglect. Imagine spending 10 per cent of that $38 million investment to actually foster the living arts and artists in Bondi. Working out of their home in the Pavilion, a team of creative artists, writers, filmmakers and designers could make Bondi the creative hub and exciting urban environment that we would all aspire to live in. Now that could make even Linnell change his tune. Before the volunteers climbed the 240 steps to the top of the church, which is nearly 600 metres high, researchers took samples of their saliva and measured levels of cortisol, a hormone which is produced in response to stress. After viewing the fresco, the volunteers' cortisol levels were found to have drastically fallen, suggesting viewing the art had a soothing effect. The Basilica of Vicoforte, near the town of Cuneo, has the largest elliptical cupola in the world and is a place of pilgrimage for Catholics. A group of 100 volunteers were led up to the cupola of a vast basilica in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, where they spent two hours admiring the cherubs and bearded prophets of an 18th-century fresco. Enjoying great art is not just uplifting for the soul but beneficial to the health, an experiment conducted in Italy has found. "On average, we found cortisol levels dropped by 60 per cent and more than 90 per cent of the participants said they felt much better at the end of the experience," Enzo Grossi, a professor of health and culture at IULM University in Milan, told La Repubblica newspaper. "The idea of art as therapy is not new. But this is the first time that the beneficial effect of art on health has been measured." The cupola's fresco was completed in 1752 by Mattia Bortoloni, a Rococo painter, and Felice Biella, a Milanese artist. The volunteers in the Piedmont experiment were aged between 19 and 81, a mix of male and female and with different educational levels. The impact of Renaissance art was famously documented by the 19th century French author Stendhal, who wrote of feeling overwhelmed by the masterpieces he saw in Florence in 1817. The experience of giddiness, a rapid heartbeat, fainting, discomfort and even hallucinations while gazing at exquisite art was termed "Stendhal Syndrome". "As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce (the basilica where Michelangelo and Machiavelli are buried), I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart; the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground," Stendhal recorded in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. Giuseppe Bertini, a neuroscientist at Verona University, cautioned that the drop in cortisol levels was not necessarily connected to the time the volunteers spent contemplating the splendours of the cupola. "Cortisol levels vary during the day. They peak in the early morning and then they begin to fall. Since three hours passed before the first measuring of saliva and the second, it's normal that there would be a drop in levels, regardless of what the people had done in the meantime," he said. "There have been lots of studies on the relationship between cortisol and well-being while people listen to music or practise yoga or do physical exercise. It is probable that looking at the beauty of the art did have an effect, but the result should not be seen in isolation." Recent history has repeatedly proven that the position of Australia's prime minister is more of a placeholder than a secure gig. Perhaps that's why the role of Malcolm Turnbull will be played by two actors during the upcoming season of I Can't Even... at Malthouse Theatre. Louise Siversen and Rhys Muldoon take on the role of Malcolm Turnbull (centre) in the Malthouse Theatre production of I Can't Even... The work by playwright Ross Mueller is an imagined political speech by the current PM in which we're made privy to the thoughts going through his "tangled mind" in the lead-up to the imminent election. The role will be played by Rhys Muldoon and Louise Siversen on alternating nights, so while you don't get to directly vote for your prime minister, you at least have some choice as to who you watch playing him. No contemporary playwright creates a greater buzz than Englishman Jez Butterworth. Mark Rylance took London and New York by storm in his Jerusalem and in 2014 New York went crazy when Hugh Jackman did The River. Now The River is being done at Red Stitch, with Dion Mills and Ngaire Dawn Fair, who shone like a goddess in Annie Baker's The Flick, and Christina O'Neil as The Woman. Ngaire Dawn Fair and Dion Mills, actors in Red Stitch's production The River. Credit:Simon Schluter The Man, the Woman, the Other Woman, it sounds pretty archetypal and abstracted, doesn't it? Well, yes, The River is one of those plays that leads you into dark and private spaces, spaces which are wrestled with and competed for and are dazzling for an instant or two in their ambiguities and revelations. A man catches fish, and guts fish, and cooks fish. A woman disappears, and comes back, and says she has told him lies, not least about how much she knows about fish. How does she relate to the other woman who has a distinct voice and a different kind of presence but equally shadowed? She, her three colleagues and Faulkner are back home. The two child recovery agents are still in detention. Michael Usher greets colleague Tara Brown at the beginning of a 60 Minutes interview on Lebanon. Credit:Channel Nine It might have been so much worse. The TV crew could have been convicted of kidnapping, then left to rot in a Beirut prison. Sally Faulkner, who has returned to Australia without the two children she tried to retrieve from Lebanon, seen here with estranged husband Ali Elamine. Faulkner's estranged mother-in-law could have been more seriously hurt while being manhandled during the raid. Ali Elamine, Faulkner's soon-to-be ex-husband, was supposedly tipped off about her arrival in Lebanon. Apparently, he knew of her intention to bring their children back to Australia. What if he had assigned armed bodyguards to protect them? Tara Brown and sacked producer Stephen Rice on their return to Sydney, after being released from a Lebanese jail. Credit:Getty Images Not to mention that in Lebanon, it is illegal to go around snatching kids from bus stops. In their culture, they call it "kidnapping". It's a strange custom they observe. Whether or not Sally Faulkner had full custody under Australian law is not the point. It's perfectly legitimate for 60 Minutes to report on the growing problem of international custody disputes. To use Faulkner as a case study. To focus on her (entirely understandable) anguish. This does not mean that anything goes. Last week, Fairfax Media revealed Channel Nine transferred almost $70,000 to the "child recovery" agency Faulkner used. Whether Nine wired the money "accidentally" thinking it was Faulkner's account it does appear that someone got paid. If Nine's money funded the operation, directly or indirectly, Brown's argument doesn't hold water. She can't claim the 60 Minutes crew were just journalists "doing our job". They crossed the line from observers to participants. Very active participants. Their goal was not only to re-unite a mother with her children. They wanted dramatic footage of a raid, to boost their ratings. To be the heroes of their own story. Of course, journalists often influence the things they report on. Merely asking a question can change the outcome. If I probe a TV network about a bullied staffer, for instance, their manager might get fired. Journalists can also break laws without doing anything ethically wrong. The ABC's Linton Besser and Louie Eroglu were detained, then thrown out of Malaysia, after trying to probe the Prime Minister about a corruption scandal. To draw comparisons between this, and the 60 Minutes crew, is mischievous. The Malaysian authorities used their laws to intimidate reporters asking legitimate questions. The Lebanese authorities used their laws to detain foreigners who barged in and grabbed two children off the street. What, exactly, is unreasonable about that? The Lebanese police could have opened fire. An armed civilian might have tried to save the day. The children themselves could been hurt or killed. As I've said before, Ms Faulkner's distress is understandable. Did she exhaust every other option, though, before going down this path? And would 60 Minutes have paid her a large sum just for an interview? Or did they want her to spend her fee on a "child recovery" operation? The 60 Minutes crew might scoff at all this. But if their plan was so great, how did they all wind up in jail, in the centre of a global media storm and a major international diplomatic incident? Tara Brown is a Walkley Award winner. I've commended her previously as a superb reporter and tough interviewer. She should have known better. On Sunday night, at the start of the program, Usher said: "There's one thing we want to state very clearly from the outset. We made mistakes." He did not spell out those mistakes, explaining that an internal review was under way. It would be wise for Nine to recognise that the public is not actually divided over this scandal. He's our newest TV star and is on his way to big things - who knows, maybe one day even a Logie? Here comes Lyle! With a very rare second appearance on Q&A in as many months, there are obviously big things in store in 2016 for breakout star Lyle Shelton - the rugged, super-sin-sniffing wizard for the Australian Christian Lobby. Industry insiders are tipping he's on track to become the most popular spirit-friendly feature on late-night TV since Doris Stokes brought the voices in her head to The Don Lane Show in the 1970s. They're big shoes to fill. But TV insiders insist Q&A favourite Shelton could even be in line for his own show, especially if producers decide his boy-next-door fundamentalist charm deserves even more airtime than the Monday night flagship program can provide. Watch this space! The CSIRO will split its climate science into two, creating a special unit based in Hobart but leaving in doubt the future of at least 50 climate researchers. A new CSIRO Climate Science Centre, foreshadowed by Fairfax Media, will coordinate the work of 40 scientists carved out of existing CSIRO teams, and also tap into work by the Bureau of Meteorology and universities. However, a separate email sent to staff on Tuesday morning shows the Oceans and Atmosphere division which houses the main climate modelling and monitoring units will shed about 75 of its 140 staff. A bout of partisanship has tainted Anzac Day after sacked Turnbull minister Stuart Robert seemingly linked the negative gearing tax write-off to the commemoration, prompting Labor to accuse him of playing politics with military sacrifice. Mr Robert, a former veterans' affairs minister, asserted on Twitter that "there are more defence force personnel who use negative gearing than surgeons, judges, anaesthetists and psychiatrists combined". He issued an apology and deleted the original tweet three hours later: "Apologies for negative gearing tweet, It was intended for yesterday with the images I posted. I didn't even think to re-read it before post." A new "support unit" established inside the Department of Agriculture to advise Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce on issues outside his portfolio has been mocked as "political training wheels" by Labor. An internal departmental alert obtained by Fairfax Media announces the formation of the "Deputy Prime Minister Support Unit". "In his role the Deputy Prime Minister is expected to respond to issues beyond the agriculture and water resources portfolio. For example, he may be asked about immigration or transport which do not fall within our department's area of responsibility, but he will nevertheless provide an answer," the memo states. "The Deputy Prime Minister Support Unit's role is to assist Minister Joyce by looking at the 'big picture' and forming strategic links within the department and across government to respond to whole-of-government policy issues and broader government initiatives. In practical terms, it will review submissions, prepare or contribute to briefs, organise correspondence and provide input to talking points." An Australian citizen faces being extradited overseas to serve time in a Bosnian jail, despite a federal judge raising concerns the prisoner could be again bashed by other inmates on religious grounds. Rasim Traljesic last year told a Melbourne magistrate he had been regularly assaulted by other inmates while serving time in a jail in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007. Rasim Traljesic faces being sent back to jail in his homeland, despite concerns he could face a repeat of the prison bashings he suffered before he fled overseas. Traljesic told the court that he had been targeted because he was a Muslim man married to a Christian woman and had daughter with a Christian name. Prison authorities, Traljesic said, did not do anything other than tell him to "look after himself". Malcolm Turnbull, attending his first Anzac Day National Ceremony as prime minister, was not the only debutante at Monday's grand occasion. It was also the first of these ceremonies for Bill. He was making his debut as the occasion's indispensable Riderless Horse. We interviewed Bill (and his handler Captain Mike Fitzgerald) both before Bill's debut and then after it as the star steed was led off the stage and out of its first taste of limelight. 'Bill' The riderless horse marches past Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during the ANZAC Day national service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Monday 25 April 2016. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen Credit:Alex Ellinghausen. Back to this noble beast in a moment but first to our theme of what an exciting, theatrical, bazaar-like spectacle Anzac Parade presents in the hour before the Veterans March struts forth. Thousands of folk many of them colourfully uniformed and bemedalled teeme and gathered along the several hundred metres of the parade, nattering excitedly and putting final touches to their sprucings up. Different bands with very diverse sounds rehearsed and then broke into ditties meant to get everyone within earshot into a marching, toe-tapping mood. Canberra public servants used lollies and chocolates to quietly protest the Abbott government's attacks on the Human Rights Commission during explosive Senate committee hearings last year. Commissioner Gillian Triggs has revealed how she and her staff, denied meal breaks during the lengthy hearings, were quietly fed with sweets and chocolates by sympathetic public servants who tried to distance themselves from the attacks. Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Professor Triggs has also used her interview with The Saturday Paper to hit back at some of the politicians involved in attacking her office as bullies and cowards who were guilty of disgraceful conduct. The main street of Queanbeyan was awash with people paying tribute to Australia's military service at Monday's Anzac Day march. While numbers didn't beat last year's records, Monday's 101st Anzac Day anniversary saw upwards of 1000 Queanbeyan residents turn out to the march. Anzac Day parade in Queanbeyan. Credit:Amanda Copp Queanbeyan Police Supervisor Sergeant Paul Batista said crowd behaviour was "excellent." "Good numbers, they're slightly down from last year but that's to be expected, because last year was the hundredth anniversary," he said. Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has rejected an urgent request to stop work on a section of Sydney's $2.1 billion light rail project where tens of thousands of Aboriginal artefacts have been unearthed. Three weeks ago a number of Aboriginal elders and heritage experts appealed to the Environment Minister to make a stop-work order at the site. They wanted him to use powers under section 9 of the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act 1984 to protect the site's indigenous heritage. However, Mr Hunt has decided against ordering a halt because he is not satisfied that it is a significant Aboriginal area and under serious and immediate threat of desecration. "In this case I am unable to make a declaration under section 9 of the Act as I am not satisfied that the area specified ... is a significant Aboriginal area, as defined," he wrote in a letter to NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge, who made the request for a halt to work on behalf of the elders and heritage experts. A navy officer has been bashed by a group of men on a train in Sydney's south-west while returning home from an Anzac Day service on Monday. The 24-year-old, who was in full uniform, approached a group of men, who were drinking alcohol and harassing commuters, about 2.45pm. After asking that they stop drinking and curb their behaviour, the officer was punched in the nose by one of the men as he left the train at Glenfield. The officer suffered a bloody nose but did not require any treatment. The state government has quietly delayed a key plank of its 2014 reforms to combat alcohol-fuelled violence, a change the Deputy Premier Troy Grant announced to a dinner of the hospitality industry lobby. The "risk-based licensing system", opposed by many Sydney bars, would hit venues with up to $20,000 in additional fees if they incur infringement notices or are the site of violent incidents. Larger venues and those in "riskier" areas would also face fee hikes. Mr Grant's office initially tried to deny that the delay had been announced to the Australian Hotels Association function. The scheme was originally announced by then-Premier Barry O'Farrell for introduction in 2014 as part of a range of measures to combat alcohol-fuelled violence, including the controversial "lockout" legislation. This start date was later changed to 2016. The Menomonie City Council voted to begin dredging Wolske Bay this summer. The dredging of the bay, located on the west side of Lake Menomin, is scheduled to begin in July and last roughly two months. The council approved the low bid of $140,000 from Veit & Co. of Rogers, Minn. by a 9-1 vote on Monday. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has give approval for the dredging, which will aim to get the water depth to about 8 feet in the northern part of Wolske Bay. Alderman Andrew Mercil voted against the dredging, saying that he believes its a waste of taxpayer money and it wont stop phosphorous and nitrogen from entering the water system. I think there are better ways in which to spend $140,000, Mercil said. This is a perfect area, because its naturally filling in over time, to be a wetland. ... This is the perfect opportunity to introduce a stormwater pond and reintroduce a wetland area that will help filter any stormwater runoff coming from north Menomonie. Mayor Randy Knaack said that the DNR wont allow the area to be filled in as a wetland. Mercil also said that the problem goes beyond Lake Menomin. We sit at the bottom of the second-largest watershed in the state of Wisconsin, and everything from up north is coming into this lake, Mercil said. No matter how many holes we dig, its not going to stop all these nutrients from coming into the lake and feeding these algae blooms. Knaack hopes that the dredging will encourage some of the northern towns to take action, ultimately cleaning up the water by the time it reaches Menomonie. It can teach the folks in Chetek and Elk River that, hey, if this has worked for Menomonie, maybe we should take a look at our bays, Knaack said. We can look at this as a platform and say, we did it, so can you. ... When the water from up north flows down to us, we need it cleaner. ... Lets dredge Wolske Bay, lets show them what weve done and lets get those folks on board to do the same thing. When that water comes down to us, everybody will be happier. Alderman Hector Cruz said he has voted against dredging in the past, but views the current proposal as a compromise and a positive investment. I think we really struggle as a council in terms of whats worth investing money in, Cruz said. I think we have to move forward. ... I think its a compromise that maybe will make a difference in keeping the water flow at the appropriate level and the water level at the appropriate level. If approved by the DNR, a solar powered circulation pump will also be placed in Wolske Bay to help water circulation. The council unanimously voted to put $44,325 towards a pump in the southern portion of Wolske Bay. The pump brings water from the center of the lake upward and circulates it with the intent of preventing algae mats by keeping water moving and bringing cooler water to the top of the lake. City attorney retires Monday was the final council meeting for city attorney Ken Schofield, who served the city in that capacity for 39 years. Ive had some really hard meetings, but this is the toughest for me, Schofield said of retiring after 750 city council meetings. Its meant a lot to me to be city attorney. It defined me. Schofield came to Menomonie in April 1977 and considers it his home. I have a hometown, its Cleveland, Ohio, but my home is Menomonie, Schofield said. It has been, it is and it will continue to be. Im proud to be from Menomonie and Im equally proud to have been given the opportunity to represent this city for the last 39 years and one week. He also believes in the work the city has done during his tenure. My observation in working with city staff over the last nearly four decades has proven to me that the citizens have been fortunate, blessed even, to have such incredibly, talented, caring and trustworthy public servants who work tirelessly without hidden agendas for the betterment of the city and its citizens, Schofield said. Knaack thanked Schofield for his work. Its been such a privilege and an honor to work with such a fine gentleman, Knaack said. Dennis Kropp, who served as mayor for 12 years prior to Knaack, was also on hand to wish Schofield a happy retirement. The council will have the opportunity to appoint a new city attorney at the May 2 meeting. Temporary beer license The council approved the temporary beer license for the Menomonie Airfest and AutoRama scheduled for June 25. The proceeds from the event will go to the Menomonie Sunrise Rotary Club, the events host. The country, he said, was reeling. "It couldn't believe that something of this magnitude could happen in Australia. I thought, I have this huge majority, we have elected a new government and we have to do something." The Prime Minister and his wife Janette in 1996 at a Canberra service to pray for the victims and families of the Port Arthur tragedy. Credit:Mike Bowers He flew to Tasmania, with Labor leader Kim Beazley and Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot to attend services and lay a wreath at Port Arthur. He met with the traumatised emergency workers who had to deal with the shattered bodies of the 23 wounded. But front of mind for Howard was how to prevent such a tragedy ever again. About 700,000 guns were handed in to Australia's buyback nearly 20 years ago. Credit:Dean Sewell What followed was a concerted effort led from the top to ban the importation and sale of automatic and semi-automatic weapons in Australia. Breaking the gun culture Gun laws are primarily a state matter. The federal government has control only over importation, which meant Mr Howard had to convince all the states and territories to embrace consistent laws which he would propose. The 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre should remind Australians that gun laws matter. Credit:Cathryn Tremain "I thought if ever we were going to do something dramatic and lasting to change Australia's gun laws to prevent the emergence of a more alien gun culture in our country, this was the time to do it," he said. The federal government worked with the states to buy back the banned weapons and any weapons people no longer wanted, with nearly 700,000 handed in. For its part, the Federal government increased the Medicare levy to pay for "buyback". Bipartisan approach: Prime Minister John Howard, Opposition leader Kim Beazley and Democrats' leader Cheryl Kernot lay a wreath at the cafe at Port Arthur on May 1, 1996. Credit:Palani Mohan New consistent laws on licensing and storage of legal weapons were introduced by all the states. People who needed guns for their livelihood had to be licensed and their weapons registered and guns needed to be stored in a locked cupboard, unloaded. Within days of the Port Arthur massacre, the police ministers met in Canberra, at a meeting hosted by the then Attorney-General, Daryl Williams. The Sydney Morning Herald's front page for May 1, 1996. At Port Arthur, Martin Bryant had killed more than 30 people and continued to fire at police but snipers were not authorised to take him out. Credit:SMH "It was difficult for my National Party colleagues. It was particularly difficult for the National Party leader in Queensland, Rob Borbidge. There was resistance in Western Australia, I think as much on states' rights' grounds as on anything else," he said. "Daryl had a meeting with the police ministers and then he brought them all round to my office. I had made a point of being in Canberra that day, in reserve, so to speak. I thought it might be necessary to talk to the police ministers, and I did," Howard said. As Prime Minister, he was the person who had to sell the reforms to the public, and in rural Australia there was deep anger that their gun ownership would be curtailed because of a madman in Tasmania. After receiving death threats just before he spoke at a rally at Sale in rural Victoria, Howard's advisers recommended he don a bullet proof vest before he spoke. It was a decision he said he regretted as he did not feel unsafe. Soon television screens were filled with pictures of huge piles of weapons being dismantled and crushed. "I don't believe we were on the cusp of going down the American path," Howard said. "But I do think the gun laws have had the practical value of reducing the mass slaughters. There were 13 before the new laws; and if you define such an event as five or more victims, there have been none since. "Surveys indicate it had a big impact on male youth suicide. I believe we have prevented a lot of death of people who would once grab hold of a rifle. "The simple reality is it is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than it is with a knife or a hammer or something else. I also think the community believes this is something of a demonstration to the rest of the world and that they might follow our lead." The international response For his part in making Australia safer, Mr Howard has been personally vilified by the National Rifle Association, the powerful US gun lobby. In the current presidential campaign the NRA is again running ads claiming that Australia's laws mean taking away people's guns and making gun ownership a crime - without distinguishing between the ban on semi-automatic weapons and rights to still own guns responsibly. As prime minister, Mr Howard had brief discussions with then President George Bush and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, but said their experiences and the US's history made the discussion a difficult one. Asked what he would say to the current presidential hopefuls, Mr Howard said he would simply explain what he had done, and the results. "I would not presume to lecture the American candidates. I would just point out that we are a safer country, and I would say I understand what a terrible burden gun deaths are on black America. Black males make up 6 per cent of the US population, yet they comprise 46 per cent of gun related homicide," he said. "Americans will often say to me there are so many guns in circulation the only way the good guys can protect themselves is to also have a gun. Now I think that is a stupid argument myself." Mr Howard estimates that the gun buyback in Australia was the equivalent of taking 30 to 40 million guns out of circulation in the US. Twenty years on Twenty years on Mr Howard said his gun laws have stood the test of time. "You might argue that laws allowing hunting in national parks [in NSW] have slightly watered things down but not to a significant degree. The police think there are too many handguns. That's a matter for state governments," he said. He also queried whether an amnesty to allow handguns to be handed in would have much effect, given that most of the illegal weapons are in the hands of criminal gangs. But there are pressures. A 2012 Crime Commission report, which was not publicly released but was quoted by then police minister, Jason Clare, found there were 2.75 million registered guns in Australia held by 730,000 licence holders. She is of Asian appearance, has no tattoos or birthmarks, was probably dumped off the rocks after being killed and taken there, and wouldn't have been in the water for more than two days. But there isn't much else known about the woman whose naked body was found with stab wounds to her neck in the well-known blowhole adjacent to the notorious Snapper Point fishing spot on the Central Coast on Sunday morning. Homicide detectives believe there was a degree of "stealth" in taking her into the Lake Munmorah State Conservation Area and thrown into the sea, quite probably not far from where she was found floating face down, the Newcastle Herald reports. There is a theory she may have been dumped elsewhere and floated into the blowhole, but investigators suspect her body was discarded nearby. "I know of two wheelchairs and two marching," said Bert Jourdain, 92. "Other than that I'm not quite sure." Anzac Day started in Sydney with reflections of the Western Front. Addressing the pre-dawn service at Martin Place, Major General Peter "Gus" Gilmore, recalled the journey made by Australian troops in 1916. Having fought at Gallipoli the year before, in 1916 they were making their way to northern France. "The monotonous rattle of the rail tracks must have served some distraction," said Major General Gilmore, "as they travelled north through the glorious French countryside 100 years ago today." A drone industry body has slammed the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's changes to drone regulations, calling it a risk to public safety. Australian Certified UAV Operators (ACUO), which represents commercial unmanned aircraft system operators in Australia, has slammed CASA for relaxing small drone regulations, expected to come into effect late September. A consumer-model drone with a camera attached. The change in regulations will see the requirement for an operator's certificate and remote pilot licence dropped if the drone aircraft is less than two kilograms. "We believe that because the standard operating conditions have been changed, it makes a less safe operating environment for aviation and public safety," ACUO secretary Brad Mason said. But the owners of the bar took the decision in the Queensland CIvil and Administrative Tribunal, winning their challenge. Saccharomyces Pty Ltd originally had their application for a hotel licence refused by the Commissioner for Liquor and Gaming as the commissioner felt the bar, Saccharomyces Beer Cafe in Fish Lane, did not meet the requirements for that type of licence. The commissioner specifically felt the bar's function room was not large enough to hold some sorts of functions but QCAT member Michelle Howard found the interpretation of the Liquor Act did not specify the size of functions required to be eligible for a hotel licence. In her findings Ms Howard said the imposition that a function room must have a capacity to seat a particular number of persons or have a minimum room area specification would be inconsistent with the flexibility intended by the Liquor Act to promote optimum development of the tourist, liquor and hospitality sectors. The commissioner also argued that the function room was not of optimum quality but Ms Howard disagreed, suggesting the small, causal-style function room was suitable for the modestly sized boutique premises. The difference between the hotel licence and the bar licence means that Saccharomyces Beer Cafe will be able to sell liquor for consumption both on and off the premises. The venue specialises in boutique craft beers in a space that has a capacity of holding about 90 patrons. The bar licence only allows up to 60 patrons at any one time. A woman has told Jetstar to "retrain its staff" after she was allegedly asked to cover up while pumping breast milk on a flight to Townsville. Natalie Jane Sawyer said she was on a Jetstar flight from Brisbane to Townsville at 6am on Monday morning and had been pumping breast milk when she said a Jetstar flight crew member politely asked her to "cover up". "i (sic) was asked by one of your flight crew if i had a cover to cover myself up because people would be coming down the aisle to go to the bathroom," Ms Sawyer said on Jetstar's Facebook page. "I had a pumping bra on so no part of my boobs could be seen and a shirt covering my pumps. Arriving in blackness at the Shrine of Remembrance for his first dawn service, Peter Theisz was taken aback by the quiet. As a crowd of thousands slowly and blindly moved up the hill toward the Shrine in the hour before dawn on Monday, Theisz was struck by the silence. "So quiet, everyone was so quiet," he said. Later, as the sun came up and stretched warm light over the Shrine as he and his daughter, Holly, looked on, Theisz felt he was part of a "special, very moving" moment. Three Melbourne Girls Grammar students caught with drugs at their school formal have avoided criminal charges. Instead the trio, aged 17 and 18 years old, were issued with formal cautions by Victoria Police. Female students at Kambrya College were allegedly asked to stop wearing short skirts a day after the school was named on a global porn-sharing website. Credit:Gabriele Charotte The teenagers were kicked out of the Year 12 formal at an Albert Park function venue on April 15 after they were busted with drugs, reportedly including ecstasy. The school later moved to expel one of the students, and suspend two others, after an investigation confirmed venue security found the students with "illicit substances". Jacqueline McKenzie was found as a toddler, lying malnourished and sick with tuberculosis, alone on a rubbish tip in Bien Hoa about 1969. The Vietnamese-born Australian was rescued as an orphan by Australian nurses who served at Bien Hoa Hospital. Betty Lockwood, Jacqueline McKenzie, Helen Taplin and Dorothy Angell. Credit:Chris Hopkins She relays the story while sitting next to three women, in a shady spot near the Anzac Day march.The three women were civilian nurses at that same Bien Hoa Hospital. Detectives have charged an 18-year-old man who they claim assaulted a woman, then rammed a police car in a stolen Audi in Perth's eastern suburbs on Sunday. Between 6.15pm and 6.35pm, the man went to a home on Market Street, in a stolen vehicle, in possession of an "edged weapon", WA Police spokesman Mick Slaughter said, who could not reveal further details of the weapon. The Quattro was undriveable following the smash but the accused tried anyway, according to police. Credit:Graeme Powell, ABC News There, he confronted a woman he knew and their argument allegedly ended in him assaulting her and fleeing in a stolen silver Audi Quattro, leaving her with a serious head injury. Police later saw the Quattro along Lord Street, Bassendean, but the driver accelerated away, leading them through Bassendean and Morley before finally ramming their car when cornered in a Morley cul-de-sac. On Thursday, staff and parents of students at Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District received a letter from Jeffrey Holmes, Superintendent about active shooter swatting calls taking place at multiple school districts across the state. Swatting calls are hoax reports of threats made to police which insight panic. Police say similar types of false threats have occurred at multiple schools across the state Thursday. These threats included 911 calls to police across the state claiming that schools had an active shooter. Kananaskis, Alberta: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder." John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. On Saturday night, police arrived at her summer home in Turkey and took her in for questioning for insulting Mr Erdogan, a crime that carries a four-year prison term. Umar was released from custody on Sunday, she said on Twitter, but was barred from leaving. Ebru Umar, a Dutch journalist, wrote a column last week critical of the President and his government's growing crackdown on freedom of expression. She later took to Twitter, criticising supporters of Mr Erdogan and using a profanity. She is the latest of a growing list of journalists, academics, cartoonists and others nearly 2000 cases have been filed in Turkish courts who have faced the Turkish justice system for insulting Mr Erdogan. Ms Umar was detained just as European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, were wrapping up a visit to Turkey to highlight progress in a pact between the European Union and Turkey over the migrant crisis. Called a megalomaniac dictator: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Credit:AP Turkey's clampdown on the media has increasingly become intertwined with Europe's attempts to co-operate with Turkey on the migrant issue. European leaders, especially Dr Merkel, are facing criticism that they are betraying European values in a bid to win over Mr Erdogan. Turkey has seemed to extend its crackdown beyond its borders. For instance, Dr Merkel was highly criticised in her own country for allowing a case to proceed against a German comedian who had read a profanity-laced, satirical poem about Mr Erdogan on television. Turkey filed a formal complaint under a rarely used German law that prohibits the insulting of foreign leaders. Late on Friday, Dr Merkel reacted for the first time to criticism of how she had handled the affair. She defended her decision to allow further investigation by prosecutors but said she regretted saying she shared the view of the Turkish authorities that the poem was offensive. Bangkok: Chinese diplomatic pressure has forced a formal split in the Association of South-East Asian Nations over how the 10-member group responds to Beijing's claim to almost all of the South China Sea. The announcement by China's foreign ministry that it has reached a four-point consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos follows a flurry of Chinese moves that appear aimed at pre-empting a ruling expected within weeks by a United Nations-backed tribunal on Beijing's claims in the flashpoint waters expected within weeks. An aerial view of a Taiwan-controlled island in the South China Sea. Credit:AP ASEAN has for years been trying to negotiate a legally binding code of conduct with China to prevent conflict over competing claims by the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam to the strategic and resource-rich waterways. On Monday Cruz was screaming from the rafters - "John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump." Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz in Columbus, Indiana, a state John Kasich won't campaign in. Credit:Michael Conroy Not bloody likely, was the Kasich response. They "ought to vote for me", he said of the Indiana voters, causing a lot of head shaking as he muttered: "I don't see this as any big deal." Will he feel the squeeze? Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump . Credit:AP And there are other caveats. For starters, these two desperados might have left their run too late. It sure made sense when the Kasich camp and party luminaries like 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney suggested such collusion a month ago close to a dozen primaries have been conducted since, but Cruz wouldn't have a bar of it. Ohio Governor John Kasich is well behind Trump and Cruz in the delegate count and is playing for a contested convention. Credit:AP More importantly, coming out of a staggering win in his home state New York last week, Trump has renewed momentum and is expected to emerge from Tuesday's five primaries with his frontrunner's credentials further enhanced. By contrast, Cruz was a wipeout in New York and his predicted poor showing in Tuesday's votes is further casting him as a loser and causing GOP moneymen and strategists to wonder if he has the staying power and broad appeal for a presidential contest. Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz in Columbus, Indiana. Credit:AP Also, are the voters listening? As The Washington Post's Philip Bump puts it: "as the Republican Party has learned repeatedly [through the primaries], voters are impressively immune to the whims of party poobahs. [This Cruz-Kasich deal] could be another few strands of spaghetti, clinging tenuously to the wall for a brief instant; but then, like so many strands before them, dropping to the ground impotent." And then there was the Trump reaction a mix of his typical bombast with a cunning line that is playing well among GOP voters. Here's a taste "Senator Cruz has done very poorly and after his New York performance, which was a total disaster, he is in free fall approximately 80 per cent of the Republican Party is against himKasich has won only one state out of 41 [that have voted to date]. "Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are. "Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged." Indiana has been on the minds of most analysts, as the make-or-break state that would become Cruz's last stand. If the Texas senator does well there on May 3, he might stall Trump's momentum before the convention. A problem in Indiana is that, for a whole lot of reasons, it's a poorly polled state. A Fox News poll on Friday gave Trump an eight point lead over Cruz 41-33; but the number-crunching site FiveThirtyEight calculates that Cruz has a slight advantage. Winning by just a single point would give Trump all of Indiana's winner-takes-all 57 delegates and, in the view of some analysts, might firewall the nomination for him. But with Kasich effectively asking his supporters in Indiana, 19 per cent in one poll and 16 in another, to vote for Cruz, the Texas senator could come out on top and be 57 delegates richer. But on Monday, analyst Ron Faucheux went another week down the track to Nebraska, which votes on May 10. Allowing for all the tea-leaf reading by which pollsters allocate likely delegate wins in other contests, Faucheux writes in The Hill: "Nebraska is critical because it's winner-takes all [delegates]. Should Trump lose Nebraska, he'd need to make up that 36-delegate shortfall which he technically could dobut that wouldn't be easy to accomplish. "If Trump loses Nebraska he'd have a total of 1201, [which would be] 36 short of what he needs for a first-ballot nomination [at the convention] He doesn't have a lot of room for error." In the various Democratic races on Tuesday, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton is a few points or a country mile ahead of her dogged rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Aden: Yemeni and Emirati soldiers have seized Yemen's port city of Mukalla from al-Qaeda fighters, depriving the group of the seaport that enabled it to amass a fortune in the country's year-old war. Around 2000 troops advanced into Mukalla, local officials and residents said, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city. A girl carrying her sister stands in a Sanaa street begging for money following a protest against Saudi-led airstrikes by Shiite rebels, known as Houthis. Credit:AP There was little fighting after a mostly Gulf Arab alliance and Yemeni forces moved through the suburbs, with militants appearing to leave peacefully. PHILIPSBURG:--- The House of Parliament will sit in a Central Committee meeting on April 26. The Minister of Justice will be present for the session. The Central Committee meeting reconvenes on Tuesday at 2.00 pm in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelminastraat #1 in Philipsburg. The agenda points are 1. Status of insurance coverage for police officers and their families and other related and affected issues and 2. Approval composition delegation and provisions for IPKO in The Hague, May 31-June 3, 2016. This Central Committee meeting was requested by Members of Parliament (MPs) MP T.E. Leonard, MP Leona Marlin-Romeo and MP F.A. Meyers. Members of the public are invited to the House of Parliament to attend parliamentary deliberations. The House of Parliament is located across from the Court House in Philipsburg. The parliamentary session will be carried live on St. Maarten Cable TV Channel 120, via Pearl Radio FM 98.1, the audio via the Internet www.pearlfmradio.com and via www.sxmparliament.org. Akanda Releases New Version of OpenStack Astara at OpenStack Summit Austin AUSTIN, TX (Marketwired) 04/24/16 , the major contributor to OpenStack Astara, today announced its new Mitaka release for open source network orchestration and virtualization at the OpenStack Summit in Austin. The Mitaka release for OpenStack Astara is now available for immediate . OpenStack Astara is the industrys leading solution for open source network orchestration and virtualization. A vendor-agnostic network solution, Astara does not require an SDN controller and radically simplifies OpenStack network deployments. Today, Astara supports more than 2,000 customers with thousands of virtual machines (VMs) at DreamHost, a web and cloud hosting provider in Los Angeles. DreamHost helped develop the mother code for Astara and replaced VMware NSX with the Astara open source platform. An official OpenStack project since September 2015, Astara has more than 40 core contributors from the OpenStack community. Astara is also in trials today with some of the worlds largest service providers and enterprises. In Austin, several sessions will review the new OpenStack Astara release. More details about the Astara sessions and its new capabilities are . The new Astara release allows OpenStack operators to cut the cord with over-the-top network functions. For the first time, OpenStack operators can bring their own network function to any Layer 2 network. Simply put, cloud operators can use the network they have and choose the network function they want. No more vendor lock-in. Astara takes network availability to new heights with Active/Active software appliances. These advanced features double network capacity, eliminate idle resources, and introduce higher levels of reliability and scalability for Layer 3 services, such as routing, load-balancing, and application performance management. : The Mitaka release of Astara makes it easier for customers to secure hybrid cloud and IOT infrastructures with IPV6 virtual private networks (VPNs). For example, Astara can now support up to 16 million IPV6 VPNs over VXLAN. IPV6 VPNs are a lightweight alternative to more expensive MPLS-based VPNs, which cant be decoupled from network hardware without significant vendor support. Many network experts consider IPV6 VPNs to be foundational for hybrid cloud and IOT use cases. OpenStack Astara is leading the over-the-top (OTT) revolution in network infrastructure, said Robert Haim, a principal analyst with ACG Research. In the same way that Netflix decouples video delivery from dedicated broadcast and cable networks, OpenStack Astara abstracts network functions from routers and switches. This is part of a massive substitution movement towards open hardware and open software for cloud operators, introducing new OTT approaches to the $20B+ network hardware market. The Mitaka release of OpenStack Astara introduces web-scale to virtualized network services, said Henrik Rosendahl, CEO of Akanda. Its all about software defined hardware choices; new features that allows cloud operators to scale up and out, and radically simple OpenStack Neutron deployment. Were also excited about new services such as IPV6 VPNs, which are elemental for hybrid cloud and IOT applications. Many companies and groups contributed to the Mitaka release of OpenStack Astara. They include Arista, Comcast, Cumulus Networks, Dell, DreamHost, EasyStack, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HPE, Intel, the Linux Foundation, Mirantis, the MEF, NEC, NGINX, RackSpace, Red Hat and many others. Astara Demo: Project Astara Wiki: Akanda Blog: Twitter: LinkedIn: Akanda is the major contributor to OpenStack Astara, an open software project focused on network orchestration and virtualization. Akanda was started by the same DreamHost team that developed an OpenStack storage platform called Ceph (now part of RedHat). Today, Akanda provides development resources for OpenStack Astara. It also provides commercial support and services for OpenStack Astara. For more information, visit and follow Astara is an open source network orchestration platform built by OpenStack operators for real OpenStack clouds. An official OpenStack project, Astara is changing the future of networking by delivering an open, extensible, and cost effective platform for enterprises and service providers to virtualize their networks. Astara is layer 2 agnostic and powers network virtualization for DreamCompute, the OpenStack-based public cloud offered by DreamHost. Brand Networks Expands Advertising Automation to All Major Social Channels BOSTON, MA (Marketwired) 04/25/16 Brand Networks, the award-winning provider of software and services that simplify social, today announced the expansion of its Optimize Now advertising automation technology, extending its capabilities beyond Facebook to Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Media buyers using Optimize Now can more than double advertising performance in half the time it would take without it. Optimize Now, part of the Brand Networks Platform, is a proprietary campaign management algorithm that automatically optimizes ads to improve campaign performance with fewer manual updates. The Optimize Now algorithm makes bid adjustments on the fly, shifting settings and budgets based on near real-time performance analysis, saving significant time and money. Brand Networks Platform users can launch these auto-optimized campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter immediately, with support for Pinterest and LinkedIn expected later this year. After adopting Optimize Now, Brand Networks customers have reported impressive campaign results and significant time and cost savings, such as: 30-40X more ad engagement 40-50X more website clicks 50-80% lower cost-per impression 50-75% less time spent manually managing campaigns Despite advances brought on by programmatic media delivery, the processes of media optimization have remained overwhelmingly manual, said Jamie Tedford, founder and CEO of Brand Networks. The work of optimizing a campaign never sleeps, and neither do many dedicated media buyers. By applying several years of past media buying data, Optimize Nows advanced algorithm automates the processes that deliver the most efficient optimization of ads against specific objectives. The result? Happy media buyers. Happier clients. Checking ads constantly to ensure theyre being delivered, spending on pace, and performing as desired is time consuming and costly. In these scenarios, Optimize Now is the perfect solution, offering optimization toward multiple objectives and ad types. With Optimize Now, advertisers on the Brand Networks Platform can rest easy knowing algorithms will be doing that repetitive analytical work for them automatically, day and night, freeing up the time of media buyers, and allowing them to focus on other high-impact activities. Using Brand Networks Optimize Now product across channels has given us better efficiency and performance across our social campaigns, said Jen Young, Senior Manager of Content & Social at Domain Group. We began using the technology on Facebook, and it helped us reach a larger audience while reducing costs dramatically. Weve seen 30X more engagement and 46X more link clicks, with 70% lower cost on both. Were now using Optimize Now on Twitter and scaling our ad spend as we witness better returns there as well, added Ms. Young. In our first month, we grew our advertising spend by 74% while reducing our cost per link click by up to 58%. Optimize Now has given us the ability to scale our social campaigns to deliver better ROI. In our first month of Twitter advertising with Optimize Now, our cost per follower dropped by up to 65%. That was exciting but we see even more potential here, said Rebecca Newton, Head of Digital at Australia-based Crown Resorts. Optimize Now allows our account team at Brand Networks to focus on big-picture performance improvement. It lets them spend more time planning and strategizing, and less time making minor adjustments after our ads launch. We believe this will translate to more performance gains and an even deeper partnership. The automation technology available through the Brand Networks Platform is giving Twitter advertisers an opportunity to meet their objectives by improving campaign performance and efficiency, said Isaac Irvin, Account Executive at Twitter Australia. Brand Networks Simplifies Social. The company delivers award-winning social media advertising software and services to hundreds of enterprise customers, including half of the Fortune 100 and 17 of AdAges 25 Most Advertised Brands. The Brand Networks Platform uses personalization data and powerful automation technologies to help marketers optimize their media investments across the social web. Media buyers can reduce campaign management time by 75% while increasing their return on advertising spend across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Brand Networks was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Boston with offices in San Francisco, New York City, Rochester, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Sydney, and Mexico City. For more information, please visit bn.co. Palerra Delivers Most Comprehensive CASB Support for Identity Management Providers With Detective, Predictive, Preventative, and Remedial Cloud Security Coverage SANTA CLARA, CA (Marketwired) 04/25/16 , the leader in cloud security automation, today announced expanded support for identity management with the release of integration for both Ping Identity and Microsoft, as well as any SAML-compliant Identity Management provider. This follows a previously announced integration with Okta. Palerra now provides the most comprehensive support for identity management providers among Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), with detective, predictive, preventative, and remedial coverage. The Palerra LORIC platform also leverages IDaaS data to enhance behavior and threat analytics, providing customers with granular insight into anomalies and faster remedial response times. Identity as a Service (IDaaS) and CASB are similar to an integrated home security system, where the lock to the house on the outside is the IDaaS, and the surveillance inside the house is a CASB. This holistic approach provides security inside out from the innermost infrastructure layer to the top external layer where applications reside, said Adina Simu, VP of products for Palerra. IDaaS is an integral component of a cloud security architecture, making it possible to dramatically simplify cloud security, and enabling customers to have a complete view of security and monitoring for cloud applications. We are setting the standard for identity management among CASBs with the broadest support for authentication and identity management standards including LDAP, SAML, OAuth, and more. Palerra LORIC leverages user repositories as well as audit and activity logs from the IDaaS providers to generate granular analytics and precise user information, which provides better derivative outputs when coupled with Palerra User Behavior Analytics (UBA) capabilities. This results in surgical threat analytics, faster and more accurate responses to behavioral anomalies, and precise early warning indicators of cloud risk. Integration with IDaaS also enables Palerra LORIC to programmatically use APIs to conduct remedial and preventative actions, like blocking suspicious users or forcing session termination, creating a closed-loop security lifecycle and full protection in the cloud. In addition, Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality eliminates the need to create separate Palerra LORIC specific accounts in applications, reducing cost and simplifying maintenance. Whether CASBs provide built-in integration to leading cloud IDaaS providers, or provide integrated IDaaS capabilities, they provide value according to Neil MacDonald, VP, distinguished analyst and Gartner fellow emeritus and Craig Lawson, Research VP. Neil and Craig wrote that, In both cases, the value added by a CASB is to apply additional context at the time of access and during the use of cloud services to make adaptive access decisions that can reduce the likelihood of unauthorized access to one of your accounts. This capability is especially critical for privileged accounts, such as administrative accounts of the cloud service. Examples include blocking access to a cloud service from an unmanaged or unhealthy device, blocking access from specific regions of the world or providing risk-based authentication capabilities.(1) Palerra integrations with Okta, Ping Identity and Microsoft Azure Active Directory are available immediately. For more information, visit: To learn more about Palerra LORIC: Visit us online at Join the conversation on Twitter at See how LORIC can help you monitor your Cloud Applications. Request a Free Trial at (1) Gartner How to Evaluate and Operate a Cloud Access Security Broker by Neil MacDonald, Craig Lawson, December 8, 2015. Palerra helps organizations protect their business-critical cloud infrastructure and data with Palerra LORIC, the industry-leading solution for cloud security automation. Palerra is the only Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) that provides visibility and security across the entire security lifecycle from infrastructure to applications, enabling organizations to realize the full promise of the cloud. Leading enterprises including BMC Software, Jefferies, and VMware leverage LORIC for continuous monitoring and security of their cloud applications. Palerra is a privately held company funded by Norwest Venture Partners, Wing Venture Capital, and August Capital, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. For more information, visit . Kristina Lanpheir Kulesa Faul for Palerra 831-251-9120 Germanys SysEleven Selects Midokura for Network Virtualization AUSTIN, TX (Marketwired) 04/25/16 , the global innovator in software network virtualization, today announced that Berlin-based managed hosting and public cloud provider has selected its award-winning technology as the network virtualization overlay of choice and the default networking technology for the SysEleven Infrastructure Stack. The company recently rebuilt its managed hosting platform based on OpenStack. The move to Midokura and OpenStack enables SysEleven to continue to innovate, while meeting the German governments strict data sovereignty and IT security requirements. SysEleven selected Midokura technology due to its ability to help the provider easily manage application workloads, along with its proven performance in the SysEleven Infrastructure Stack, which supports a bandwidth of up to 100 gigabytes per second. The SysEleven heritage came from delivering complex web applications supporting media and television advertising for the European market, said Marc Korthaus, CEO of SysEleven. Because we maintain and operate the entire application stack for our customers, we have to ensure that all components in our SysEleven Stack are both robust and distributed. Midokura Enterprise MidoNet met all our requirements and offered the ideal network virtualization overlay solution as we continue to deliver on the promise of high-availability and consistency to our customers. Midokuras technology offers an intelligent, software-based network abstraction layer between the hosts and the physical network, by decoupling the IaaS cloud from the network hardware. In turn, operators can build isolated networks in software to overlay the existing hardware-based network infrastructure. Midokuras of its core MidoNet technology is quickly gaining in popularity among organizations of all sizes in more than 120 countries. Similar to SysEleven, the founders of Midokura have deep backgrounds in building complex online applications for Amazon, said Adam Johnson, vice president of business at Midokura. Adding SysEleven to our customer roster and being included into the SysEleven Stack is an affirmation that our Midokura Enterprise MidoNet has the robustness to support the most heavily trafficked networks in web applications being built today. Midokura technology continues to see adoption by the worlds most cutting-edge enterprises. To learn more about MEM and to register for a free trial, visit: . To learn more about open source MidoNet, go to: . Midokuras award-winning tech selected as network virtualization overlay of choice by Germanys @syseleven Founded in 2010, Midokura was an early global leader in network virtualization. The companys pedigree includes Amazon, Cisco, Google and VMware. With its Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) solution, Midokura offers the industry a complete overlay technology that integrates with cloud platforms, such as OpenStack. Now gaining awareness in 122 countries, the source code for MidoNet is freely available at . MidoNet delivers the first truly open, vendor-agnostic network virtualization solution available to the OpenStack community. Midokura is a contributing member of the OpenStack Networking (Neutron) Project, Open Platform for NFV Project and the Kuryr Project. Midokura has offices in San Francisco, Tokyo and Barcelona, and is on the web at . Follow us on Twitter: . SysEleven was founded in 2007 in the heart of Berlin, before CEO Marc Korthaus founded the online magazine macnews.de. The platform had a strong demand for high performance and scalability, especially during keynotes by Apples Steve Jobs. As no company provided the services and technology macnews.de required, SysEleven was founded and jumped right into the hosting business to meet these challenges. SysEleven now has 75 employees, and supports customers from various industries in achieving their digital strategies (including e-Commerce, streaming, etc.). The companys new flagship product, SysEleven Stack, is available in beta, with general availability at the end of calendar second quarter 2016. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Lila Razzaqui Kulesa Faul, Inc. for Midokura 408-396-1350 Hendric Rusch Head of Marketing, SysEleven +49 030 233 2012 18 BLOOMER Garrett Deetz didnt necessarily want to change. He was, to put it bluntly, a troublemaker. After moving out of his parents house at 16, quitting school and hanging around with who he would later call the wrong people, Deetz found himself on the wrong side of the law on more than one occasion. Eventually his extracurricular mischief caught up with him in the form of a felony charge. He was presented with two choices, and wasnt particularly happy with either of them. They said I could go to the Challenge Academy and change my life around and get my diploma, Deetz recalled. Or I could go to jail. The Wisconsin Challenge Academy is a special program designed to work with at-risk teens and refocus them toward bettering themselves through life choices and education. With the promise that his charges would be dropped if he chose the academy, Deetz chose the lesser of two perceived evils. He would soon be a Challenge Academy cadet at Fort McCoy, near Sparta. It was five and a half months of physical training, extensive class work and a total reformation of Deetzs outlook on life. With the help of the academy, he completed his GED and currently works on a farm near Bloomer. Hes saving up money to go to college in the future. Having gone from a life that appeared to have no future to one bursting at the seams with opportunities, Deetz is Bloomer High Schools recipient of Chippewa Valley Newspapers 2016 Extra Effort award. Rough awakening Theres a reason the Challenge Academy takes place on a military base. The boot camp mentality exists as a form of enforcing discipline something that many of the cadets have lacked prior to joining the program. Deetz was among those who didnt display discipline as a student. But now he found himself in a position where he could no longer get away with it. It was just hard going there, he said. It was like a quasi-military lifestyle; having to say sir every five seconds. We didnt get to talk to anybody in our group for the first two weeks. It was pretty horrible at first. Not getting along with other classmates was one of the primary reasons Deetz quit going to classes at Bloomer. He ran into similar problems in his early weeks in the program, reverting to his usual course of action when finding himself in an uncomfortable situation and trying to back out of it. Its a group of 30 guys together that dont know each other, he said. It got bad once in a while. I actually walked out one time and went AWOL. I was gone three minutes and I came back in and got in trouble. It was the first lesson. Many more were soon to follow. Encourage change What Deetz lacked in formal education he made up for with perception. He adapted quickly as he knew that the best way to get through the experience was to do what he was told. As time passed, Deetz began seeing things differently. He became committed to getting as much out of the program as he could. He started making friends, working harder when it came to exercise and taking rigorous notes in class. As his focus changed, the lessons taught by the instructors started to sink in with greater consistency. It wasnt long before Deetz was truly comfortable again in a learning environment. I learned a lot, he said. Like how to be mature in settings where you need to be mature. I respect authority now. I dont do anything illegal anymore. I learned how to work. I paid pretty much all my bills off. They teach you everything all the way down to doing your laundry. I learned a lot from there and it changed me, definitely. It wasnt a change he expected to see in himself, but he stood proud among his peers when he graduated on Dec. 15. It was definitely a day Ill never forget, he said. Taken to heart Deetz enjoys working on the farm. He admits that his old self would have probably quit the job by now. But a key lesson he learned through the academy was how to stay motivated. His eyes are set on a bigger goal than the farm, and hes willing to take the necessary steps to get there. Deetz plans to attend Chippewa Valley Technical College in the future to study IT networking. Hes now saving up money for school something that even a few months ago hed never see himself doing. Its complicated, but it works, Deetz said of the academy. I came out of there and there are so many opportunities for me. His connections to the academy remain close. He recently went back and visited some friends who are still enrolled and keeps in touch with others who attended with him. For a decision made to avoid jail time, it ended up being a pretty significant one. And it just so happened to work out. I didnt really care about my life back then, Deetz said. Now I do. Solar Novus Today Has Been Integrated With Novus Light Technologies Today Visit Novus Light Technologies Today to see all the cutting-edge stories and products that you have come to enjoy on Solar Novus Today. In addition, you will find more information on related light-based technologies. Get the latest solar and renewable energy news delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Green Technologies newsletter CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR GREEN TECHNOLOGIES NEWSLETTER Wisconsin's right-to-work law will remain blocked under a decision issued Monday by a Dane County judge. Circuit Court Judge William Foust denied the state Department of Justice's request to stay his order deeming the law unconstitutional, arguing the harm to unions who must represent non-dues-paying employees outweighs the harm to those employees who will be required to pay dues for representation. "We are disappointed our motion for stay in the right-to-work case was denied in Dane County Circuit Court and plan to seek a stay in the Court of Appeals, where we feel confident this law will be upheld," said Attorney General Brad Schimel in a statement. Gov. Scott Walker signed the right-to-work bill into law on March 9, 2015, making Wisconsin the 25th state to enact right-to-work legislation. His signature came just a little more than two weeks after the bill was introduced and passed on a fast track. Right-to-work laws prevent businesses from entering contracts with unions requiring all workers to pay union fees, not just those represented by the union. Opponents say it drives down wages and weakens workers' rights, while supporters say it will bolster the state's economy, attract jobs to Wisconsin and strengthen workplace freedom. Machinists Local Lodge 1061, United Steelworkers District 2 and the Wisconsin AFL-CIO filed a lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin last year, the day after Walker signed the bill into law. "We are pleased with Judge Fousts decision stating clearly again that Right to Work is unconstitutional in the state of Wisconsin," said Wisconsin AFL-CIO president Phil Neuenfeldt in a statement. "Rather than respecting the constitution, Gov. Walker and Attorney General Brad Schimel are trying every legal maneuver in the book to advance their own partisan agenda and deny workers their right to a meaningful union." The unions argued that the law results in an unconstitutional taking of their property without just compensation and that enforcing the law would cause them irreparable harm. The unions' argument hinges on a concept called "duty of fair representation." Under federal labor law, if a union is the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group, it is required to represent all employees in a workplace, whether or not they belong to the union. Under state statutes, employers may not bargain with a minority union, meaning that all legal collective bargaining in the state must be done with a union that represents a majority of employees as an exclusive representative. Without right-to-work, in addition to the dues paid by members, nonmembers are charged a "fair share" fee for the benefits they may reap from union representation. Unions say that creates a "free rider" problem, while right-to-work proponents say the law gives workers the freedom to work somewhere without being subjected to payments or pressured to join a union. The unions argued that the law violates the takings clause of the state Constitution: "The property of no person shall be taken for public use without just compensation therefor." Their argument is that the law transfers property from unions to nonmembers to a degree that will cause irreparable injury to the organizations. The Wisconsin unions' argument is similar to one made by unions suing against Indiana's right-to-work law a few years ago. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled against that argument, upholding the law. Indiana's law was also upheld by a U.S. Appeals Court. Letters: My teachers mean a lot to me. Why are they paid so little? Democratic former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold on Monday released a menu of budget fixes he says would help restore the country's fiscal health through spending cuts, government and tax reform and reducing partisan gridlock. The list includes suggestions ranging from broad to very specific. They're not intended to be implemented all together, Feingold said, but he believes many of them could be enacted with bipartisan support. "This is really what the work of representing the people of Wisconsin should be about," Feingold said in an interview. Feingold, who has been touring the state's 72 counties as he campaigns against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, said people should be responsible for how their tax dollars are used. "That involves actually making the hard choices, rolling up your sleeves, identifying the places where there's waste," Feingold said, arguing that Johnson talks about the national deficit but doesn't offer solutions. Under Feingold's plan, the federal government would move to a biennial budgeting model like the one used in Wisconsin. A two-year model eliminates the opportunity for special interests to hold up the budgeting process every year, Feingold said. The plan also calls for eliminating automatic pay raises for members of Congress and for reducing the number of White House political appointees. Congress has the ability to block pay raises and has done so since 2009, but Feingold said the burden should be on lawmakers if they want a raise in pay. Other Feingold proposals include eliminating tax breaks that disproportionately benefit gas and oil companies, replacing the Joint Strike Fighter program with purchases of existing F-16s and F/A-18s, limiting corporate inversions, producing fewer ballistic missile submarines for the Navy, implementing the so-called "Buffett Rule" and opting to not retrofit the Abrams tank. Some of those ideas would likely face resistance, Feingold said, but he argued most of it will come from special interests. "This involves making hard choices this involves fighting the fight," Feingold said. "That's the approach I know how to do. Thats what I did when I was in the Senate." A spokesman for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Feingold's plan. Senator Feingold is desperately hoping Wisconsin voters forgot about his 18-year record in Washington, including 270 different votes in favor of higher taxes, $10 trillion in higher debt, and broken campaign promises made to Wisconsin voters, said Pat Garrett, spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, in a statement. "Feingold is another hypocritical Washington politician, too far out of touch with Wisconsin values to be trusted on this important issue. Feingold leads Johnson, 47 percent to 42 percent, according to a Marquette University Law School poll released late last month. Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city. Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea Artist's illustration showing the planned Stratolaunch system, which will launch satellites using a rocket carried into the sky by a giant airplane. Vulcan Aerospace continues to assemble the world's largest aircraft at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, but its builders are remaining mum about the Stratolaunch project's biggest mystery: What rocket will the air-launch system carry aloft to place satellites into orbit? At the 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs earlier this month, Stratolaunch Executive Director Chuck Beames said he could not talk about the launch vehicle strategy yet, but he promised a series of announcements over the next year about the program and the company's "NextSpace" vision. "At Vulcan Aerospace, my team has spent the last 12 months focused on refining our vision of NextSpace and, of course, making significant progress on our Stratolaunch air-launch platform," Beames wrote in a blog post on the Vulcan Aerospace website. [See images of the giant Stratolaunch plane] Company officials said they expect to begin commercial operations within four years. Paul Allen's Stratolaunch Systems plans to use a giant carrier aircraft to air-launch rockets to Earth orbit. See how the Stratolaunch spaceflight system will work in this infographic (Image credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Contributor) "Stratolaunch is making good progress, and remains on target to meet our long-term goal of being fully in service by end of decade," said Steve Lombardi, manager of corporate communications for Vulcan Inc. "I don't have anything more specific to share now, but we'll have more news in the near future." The Stratolaunch carrier plane looks a lot like Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo; both are dual-fuselage aircraft with space for a launch vehicle in between. The main difference between the two is size: the Stratolaunch mothership will have a 385-foot (117 meters) wingspan, weigh as much as 1.2 million lbs. (544,000 kilograms) without the rocket, and be powered by six 747 engines. (For comparison, the wingspan of WhiteKnightTwo, which carries Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo into the sky, is 141 feet, or 41 m.) Stratolaunch was announced in December 2011 as a collaboration between Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan, who had teamed up to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize with SpaceShipOne in 2004. Partners in the company included Vulcan, Scaled Composites, Dynetics and SpaceX. Since that announcement, the company has suffered several delays in building the medium-class launch vehicle. SpaceX, which was adapting Falcon 9 technology for air launches, withdrew from the program in 2012. "SpaceX was a partner, and like a lot of partnerships, it was just determined that it was best we went our separate ways different ambitions," Beames told Spaceflight Insider in 2015. "We were interested in their engines, but Elon and his team, they're about going to Mars, and we're just in a different place, and so I think it was a parting of the ways that was amicable." Stratolaunch then contracted out its rocket work to Orbital Sciences Corp. (now Orbital ATK). The company also contracted with Aerojet Rocketdyne for six RL10C-1 rocket engines with an option for six more for use in the launch vehicle's third stage. The agreement with Orbital ended without the production of a launch vehicle, with Beames saying the rocket was not economical. Stratolaunch officials said they were reassessing the project in light of the shift in the market recently toward smaller satellites. In 2015, Beames said that Stratolaunch was examining more than 70 launch vehicles for use with the Stratolaunch aircraft. He indicated that the company might use multiple launch vehicles to serve different payload classes. Beames said the company would announce its launch vehicle strategy in fall 2015, but that time came and went with no announcement. Stratolaunch has long-term plans to launch crewed spacecraft. Sierra Nevada Corp. has designed a scaled-down version of its Dream Chaser space plane that would be launched aboard a rocket from the carrier aircraft. However, that vehicle was designed for Orbital's launch vehicle, which did not go forward. Beames said in 2015 that work on accommodating Dream Chaser had been put on hold due to uncertainty over the launch vehicle to be used in the program. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Optimization Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should? Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools. Selmayr's announcement, reported by SPIEGEL on Friday, comes at a particularly sensitive time. The European Commission in Brussels is currently seeking to avoid any actions that could generate negative coverage in the UK and have an unfavorable impact on the referendum vote on EU membership, scheduled to take place there on June 23. For example, the next regularly scheduled summit of heads of state and government from the 28 EU member states was supposed to take place on the same day but has now been postponed until June 30. EU legal proceedings over a British law are the last thing Prime Minister David Cameron, and others who want to see the UK stay in the union, need at the moment. On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's reactor Nr. 4 exploded, quickly becoming the most devastating nuclear accident in history. Many of the images stemming from that day have become iconic: the destroyed reactor, little more than a smoking hole after the blast; the convoys that evacuated more than 200,000 people from the danger zone; the wolves, European bison and wild horses that roam freely through the abandoned villages 30 years after the disaster; older residents who refused to leave, living off of half-legal, irradiated potatoes, even though the entire area within a 30 kilometer (19 mile) radius of the nuclear reactor is officially off-limits. But there is another Chernobyl that doesn't make it into the headlines quite as often. This Chernobyl is a favored "dark tourism" destination, celebrated on websites such as Atlas Obscura. It is a brand of tourism that attracts people with nightmare destinations rather than dreamy beaches. Hiroshima, Verdun, Gettysburg, Pompeii -- places of horror, pain and sadness. Some people refer to it as "disaster porn." "Hi, my name is Alexei and I'm your DJ for the day," Alexander Rybak says into his microphone. He's a tour guide, but prefers to be referred to as an "Explorer." "Congratulations, you will be visiting the craziest place on earth today!" Everyone on the bus laughs. They have all paid more than $100 in Kiev for the visit to Chernobyl, located about 115 kilometers (80 miles) north of the Ukrainian capital. Dark humor will be the order of the day and becomes something of a lingua franca among the Ukrainians, Germans, Argentinians and Americans on the tour. After a two-hour drive, the bus passes the checkpoint at the entrance to the exclusion zone. Soldiers examine the travel documents of the tourists behind signs warning of elevated radiation. Chernobyl is widely viewed as a post-apocalyptic place, synonymous with death by radiation. It would be hard for a place to have a worse reputation. Which helps explain why tourism is booming here: In 2015, the administrators of the Chernobyl exclusion zone registered 16,386 visitors from 84 countries. "There isn't just one Chernobyl," says Alexei, the Explorer. "Everyone sees what he wants to see." He has accompanied fully 500 tour groups to the zone and says that many were quiet and awed while others pounded vodka and turned it into a party. As a child, he and his family were resettled out of the zone and he went on to study English and literature. His favorite book about Chernobyl? "I don't need any books about the zone," he says. "It's part of my family history." Alexei wears a mischievous smile and a paramilitary-esque uniform. Behind him, a hundred-meter high antenna stretches into the sky. The Soviet army used the facility as part of an early-warning system to detect missile launches in the US. On maps, the military base was labeled "former pioneer camp" in an effort to keep it secret. The First-Ever National Conference on Christian Grandparenting Contact: Diane Fowler, 630-373-9510, dianef@legacycoalition.net STREAMWOOD, Ill., April 25, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- On November 15-17, 2016, the very first national conference on Christian grandparenting, The Legacy Grandparenting Summit, will be held at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, the Legacy Coalition announced today. The Legacy Coalition is a newly formed ministry envisioned by national leaders in children's, youth, and family ministries which focuses on equipping Christian grandparents to be intentional disciplers of their grandchildren. Founder, Larry Fowler, has been joined by ministry veterans Wayne Rice, Steve and Valerie Bell, Dr. John Trent, Dr. Ken Canfield, and others in launching this new ministry. Fowler explains, "While the 30 million-plus Christian grandparents in America have incredible potential to influence their grandchildren, the grandparent-grandchild relationship is ignored and under-resourced by churches and the Christian community at large. We, the Legacy Coalition, believe it is time for a change." Wayne Rice, regarded by many as one of the fathers of youth ministry, has come on as the director of conferencing for the Legacy Coalition. Rice realized, " Not once in thirty years did I ever talk about the influence of grandparents." The first-ever conference of its kind, the Legacy Grandparenting Summit, is designed to set a new course. Featuring an impressive lineup of over thirty speakers including respected authors and pastors like Chuck Swindoll, Gary Chapman, Josh McDowell, Michelle Anthony, Tim Kimmel, and Crawford Loritts, the conference will focus on encouraging and equipping church leaders to give attention to this huge army of potential disciplers. Fowler went on to say, "We want grandparents to have a renewed vision. The wisdom and seasoned perspective of grandparents makes them natural influencers. Yet this potential for spiritual impact goes unrecognized in churches and in the Christian community at large. The barriers to an effective relationship between a grandparent and a grandchild are overlooked and not addressed. Grandparents don't know what tools are available for them to use with their grandchildren." In light of this vacuum of encouragement, The Legacy Coalition believes it is time for a national movement that re-engages those in the second half of life with a vision reaching their grandchildren For more information go to legacygrandparentingsummit.com. To learn about the Legacy Coalition, go to grandparentingmatters.org. For interviews contact Diane Fowler (630-373-9510) or dianef@legacycoalition.net. For more information email info@legacycoalition.net. The Legacy Coalition is a faith-based ministry. To partner financially, go to grandparentingmatters.org/#donate. SPIEGEL ONLINE : But the truth is that it is not seen as a potential win-win in our countries. When you look at the US and Germany, TTIP is extremely unpopular in both our societies. Many people worry that standards in areas like labor and health will be eroded. In Hanover, thousands of people are protesting on the streets against the agreement. What is your message to the protesters? Pritzker: I think we have to educate people about the benefits of trade. Trade is a job creator. Together, through a trade agreement like TTIP, the US and the EU can create the highest standards in the world on labor and the environment, for example. There is so much opportunity. A lot of frustration today, I think, is not because of trade. It is because we have this rapid change economically, geopolitically and technologically, and we have to help our people adapt. We have to help our populations deal with the fact that we live in a globalized world and that digitization is here to stay, for example. SPIEGEL ONLINE : Do you think that the German government needs to do a little more to promote the benefits of the agreement? Pritzker: All of us have to. And frankly, I think it's really incumbent upon the German government and Germany industry, the same way it's incumbent on the US government and US industry to explain to our peoples the benefits that we already realize by trading together and the opportunity that is created by TTIP. I don't think we've done a good enough job of that. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Many Europeans are frustrated by the lack of transparency in the negotiations. Can you understand that frustration? Pritzker: In the United States, we consult consistently with our Congress, the people's elected representatives, to craft our proposals and discuss the negotiations. Members of Congress see every text before we table it in the negotiation. We also consult with a number of stakeholders who are on our advisory committees to make sure we are not negotiating in a vacuum. Our advisory committees comprise nearly 600 private citizens, including representatives of companies, labor unions, environmental organizations and consumer groups. Getting to an agreement that will be a win for both sides requires a certain amount of discretion. In a trade negotiation, we must balance transparency, a principle the United States holds dear, with the confidentiality necessary for negotiators to share information and have frank conversations that are essential to concluding trade agreements. SPIEGEL ONLINE : There's a lot of skepticism in Berlin over whether TTIP negotiations can actually be completed by the end of 2016. Do you still expect a final agreement before next year? And what will your government do to lead to a successful end to the talks? Pritzker: US Trade Representative Michael Froman and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom are working very hard to achieve that very ambitious goal. They have set out timelines, deadlines and meetings so they can meet this objective. That is doable because there are a lot of benefits for both the EU and the US. At the end of the day, though, it is going to require that we deal with the challenging issues. SPIEGEL ONLINE : One of the most challenging issues is dispute settlement -- the private arbitration tribunals where investors could sue if they felt disadvantaged. The European Commission has instead proposed the idea of an investor court with independent judges to make the system more transparent and objective. Is that a plan that your administration can agree to? Pritzker: With respect to our basic objectives for investment rules in TTIP, we and the EU are on exactly the same page. We both believe in the importance of strong rules and dispute resolution procedures to protect investors, and we both believe in the importance of writing these rules and procedures in a way that protects public interests and safeguards against abuse. We have only just begun to discuss the EU's proposal on investment. I think it is fair to say that we have some questions about the details, particularly in light of our own very successful experience managing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) cases. But I am confident that we will be able to come to an outcome that achieves our shared objective of protecting investment while safeguarding the public interest. TFA Chief Executive George Dunn said; The opinion of the Tenant Farmers Association is that without a credible plan for what a post-EU Britain would look like, it cannot advocate a vote to leave the EU. However, we have promised our members that we will keep this under review as new information becomes available in advance of the Referendum. Sadly, whilst there has been significant amounts of rhetoric, soundbites, claim and counterclaim from both sides of the campaign this has provided rather more heat than light. The TFA has therefore decided to publish a draft, post-EU agricultural policy for consultation to assist the debate and in the hope that there will be a better level of analysis of the impact on UK agriculture of either a vote to cease to be or remain a member of the EU, said Mr Dunn. As I travel around the country, many farmers in their heart of hearts would like to see Britain leave the EU. They find it attractive to consider a future of self-determination, of clear policies which would deliver a vibrant and prosperous agricultural industry, resilient against volatility and proudly supported by our own Government. However, they simply do not trust that British politicians would ever deliver such a vision and are therefore more likely to vote to remain within the EU. Perhaps the choice to leave would be made easier if they knew that this would also lead to a change in Government to deliver a pre-agreed agricultural policy for Britain. However this is not on offer, said Mr Dunn. Tested through the French co-operative Evolutions (formerly Sersia) sire programme, they are being used in France and globally, particularly in grazing systems where high milk quality and protein percentages are important. Halias Isy is a genomically tested sire with top milk yields and the ability to improve fat and protein percentages. This sire has the ideal characteristics for using in grazing systems with the ability to sire average sized cows of 53 inches, good legs, feet, frames and strength, and with calving ease traits. Isy has the BB Kappa Casein gene seen in many Normande sires that can help to increase cheese yields. Genos second new sire, Aubray, is a daughter-proven sire with 95% reliability. His daughters are deep bodied and slightly shorter than the breed average, but with good frames. The prestigious accolade is in recognition of the dealerships outstanding achievements in sales performance and the delivery of exceptional customer service throughout the past 12 months. New Holland UK and Ireland Managing Director Andrew Watson said: The broad reach of our network means that our customers are never more than 25 miles away from a New Holland dealer. Our dealers range from small to large, with some relatively new, and some family-run businesses that are almost a century old. Our common objective regardless of size, location or age is to provide the best possible products to support the market and our valued customers. Lloyd Ltd celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2014 and has grown considerably over the past five decades. Founded in Carlisle in 1964 as a tractor dealership, Lloyd Ltd has retained its reputation as a family-run business with local roots, while expanding its operations to a total of seven branches across the North of England and South of Scotland. The company is a main dealer for New Holland and supplies a full range of new and used equipment and machinery to support industry sectors covering agriculture, groundcare, construction and materials handling. Many teenage summers are spent scooping ice cream, manning a cash register or stacking clothes at the mall. Even some of the most successful business people started out in part-time menial labor. According to Business Insider, BuzzFeed CEO Jon Steinberg scooped ice cream, was a camp counselor assistant, worked in retail, and chopped vegetables for a catering business before making it big. Billionaire Richard Branson's first businesses were breeding budgerigar birds and growing Christmas trees. And, as they say, celebrities are just like us too. Huffington Post says before they were famous, Brad Pitt worked at a fast food restaurant, Madonna was a cashier at a Dunkin' Donuts and Sandra Bullock was a waitress. But we want to know where your first local job was in southwestern Connecticut. So far, we know our readers have worked at Dunkin' Donuts, Stop & Shop and the Danbury Mall. We've also taken a trip down memory lane with some summer job spots that no longer exist like Frances' in Trumbull, Bradlees, Arrow Restaurant in Westport and CompUSA. Let us know in the comments where your first job was and in what year, and we will add your job to the slideshow. Bonus points if you send a photo via Twitter or Facebook! As horrible as they seemed at the time, these summer jobs can be really helpful in future business. Business insider reports that Jacki Zehner, CEO of Women Moving Millions, learned a lot working at concession stand. "First, I learned how to deal with pressure. At 14 years old, serving customers is stressful, but this stress was exceedingly magnified when the lines were long and the service was expected to be fast. During those 15 minutes we hustled and the energy was high. I discovered that I loved this feeling, and I would challenge myself to be the fastest server at the concession. A decade later, when I was being interviewed for a job on the trading floor of Goldman Sachs, I realized that the atmosphere felt strangely familiar," she told Business Insider. A new report that identifies the most distinctive cause of injury death for each state, compared to national rates, has some findings that might be expected: Seven states in Appalachia and the Southwest, for example, had unintentional firearms deaths roughly two to four times the national rate. Those states have high gun ownership rates and lack safe-storage laws. Three states Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska had as their most distinctive injury motor vehicle crashes involving passengers. Four safety provisions primary seat-belt laws, mandatory key ignition locks for drunk drivers, booster seats and nighttime driving restrictions for teens are absent in Montana, while South Dakota and Nebraska have only one each. Connecticut had as its most distinctive cause of injury death unintentional suffocation the only state with that outlier cause. The states rate was 1.3 times, or 30 percent higher than, the national average, according to the report in the journal Injury Prevention, led by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The report analyzed data from 2004-2013 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify one type of injury death for each state that was disproportionately popular with a rate that was the largest multiple of the U.S. rate. While the report does not point to factors responsible for Connecticuts relatively high suffocation rate, child health advocates say they suspect unsafe sleeping conditions among infants, which led to a public health alert by the states Office of the Child Advocate in 2014 and other action, may be one factor. SIDS deaths Between 2002 and 2010, there were 211 infant deaths in Connecticut classified as due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or other undetermined causes, with at least 140 of those cases associated with unsafe sleep environments, such as infants in bed with adults, older children, or adult pillows and other large items, according to a report by the Child Advocate. In 2013 alone, 18 infants who died of SIDS or undetermined causes were found to have risk factors associated with their sleep environments. Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said accidental asphyxiation from unsafe sleep practices remains a concern, with the state continuing to see 17 to 23 deaths per year of infants. It remains definitely a high-priority issue, she said. Its still the leading cause of death of healthy infants in Connecticut - higher than child abuse. Eagan said the state has made strides to better educate parents about safe sleeping passing legislation in 2015 that requires hospitals to disseminate materials to new parents about safe sleep practices. Also, the state Department of Children and Families for the past several years has instructed workers to counsel parents about safe sleep and distributes Pack N Play cribs to households lacking adequate sleeping arrangements. Eagan said state agencies have been working recently to more broadly disseminate information on the issue through a variety of organizations. A 2015 Fact Sheet by the Childrens Safety Network National Injury and Violence Prevention Resource Center lists suffocation as the leading cause of injury deaths of children ages 1-4 in Connecticut from 2008-2012. Suffocation also is listed as the fourth-highest cause of death among Connecticut children ages 5 to 9. Sara Heins, lead author of the national injury study, said the suffocation rates cited in the report represent not just infants, but people of all ages. She noted that not all suffocation deaths are caused by unsafe sleeping, and that not all infant sleep deaths are classified as suffocation. Heins said that most states have laws designed to reduce the risk of sudden, unexpected infant deaths, through training, raising public awareness and reporting. Many are more stringent than Connecticuts 2015 law. Drug poisoning The injury study also calculates the most frequent injury death for each state, based on CDC data counts. In Connecticut and 28 other states, the most frequent cause is unintentional drug poisoning, or overdose. In four states Alaska, Arkansas, Utah and Wyoming suicide by firearm is the most frequent cause. Heins and colleagues noted that while the distinctive injury rates are, by definition, high compared to the national average, they might actually account for a small number of fatalities. The most frequent distinctive cause of injury death among all states was unintentional death by firearm. Five states clustered in the West California, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah had rates of legal intervention deaths when police kill someone, or officers are killed in the line of duty up to 3.5 times higher than the U.S. average. For Maine, Rhode Island and eight other states, suicide by falls, drowning and other means was the category with the largest multiple of the national rate. Rural states in the Midwest and West tended to have higher rates of vehicle, machinery and natural/environmental injury deaths. Heins said she hoped the findings would help policymakers identify injuries that, while not the most burdensome, may warrant special prevention efforts. In states where injuries are distinctive due to differences in policy or culture, the results could be a useful tool for advocates who could assert, Not only is this injury a problem, it is a problem that we as a state are distinctively bad at addressing, she said. This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (www.c-hit.org). GREENWICH Greenwich resident Joe Kaliko has worn many hats in his life, from attorney to member of the Cos Cob Fire Police Patrol. Now hes taking on a new position. The Connecticut General Assembly has confirmed Kalikos appointment by Gov. Dannel Malloy to be a member of the Connecticut Medical Examining Board. The 21-person board, which is made up of 14 medical professionals and seven laypeople, is responsible for handling complaints against physicians made to the state Department of Health. If a doctor cuts off the wrong limb then you have a malpractice case, but you also can make a complaint with the Department of Public Health, Kaliko said. The purpose of this board is to protect the public that consumes medical services in the state of Connecticut. This is very important work and you have to take this extremely seriously. The board deals with doctors accused of breaking the law, committing medical errors or violating professional ethics codes. It has the power to levy fines, suspend or revoke medical licenses, and make doctors take additional training or submit to supervision of their work. Kalikos nomination received unanimous support in the Legislature. State Rep. Fred Camillo, R-151st, a longtime friend of Kalikos and co-founder with him of The Needs Clearing House charity, called Kaliko a town and state treasure. Joe has impacted many lives in his various roles in both town and state government, Camillo said. (He) always leaves any organization or entity he is a part of a much better and stronger place than he found it. In his new role, he will again be an advocate for all of our citizens as public health affects us all. The board, which meets monthly in Hartford, relies on evidence it hears, including recommendations by Health Department investigators, when adjudicating cases. Its like being a judge, Kaliko said. You have evidence thats presented to you and you have to check peoples credibility and evaluate their claims like you would in a court. Our job is to hold a full and fair hearing but our ultimate responsibility remains to the public and to make sure bad doctors arent able to practice anymore. Kaliko has served many roles within the Malloy administration after first working as part of the governors transition team when he took office in 2011. But that work, including in areas like economic development and the state lottery, has never given Kaliko the chance he has now. This is an opportunity to serve the public directly, Kaliko said. This is work that is going to have a direct impact and its very important. Im honored to have the chance to do this. Kalikos first meeting is on May 17. More information about the board is available at http://1.usa.gov/1BprEpi. kborsuk@scni.com home Tech Sony Xperia C6 release date, specs rumors: New device will come out better than its competitors Sony is making a lot of buzz lately and rumors are circulating about the company's plan to develop a new smartphone that will target the mid-range market. According to the reports, the new handset will be called Xperia C6. A report from Christian Daily suggests that leaked images of the rumored device have already hit several tech media publication on the internet. The images show a smartphone with a 6-inch display, which is said to carry a high-definition technology. It looks to be sporting thin bezels around the screen to make sure users get the best viewing experience. Although there is no report that could suggest that the device will have 2k capabilities, many tech observers believe that the new device will surely have the latest Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine. Rumor has it that the new Sony Xperia C6 will surprise consumers as it will also boast an LED flash on its selfie camera, which is quite similar to the current iPhone 6s from Apple. According to reports the latest device will be an upgraded version of Xperia C5 Ultra. It will boast a 13MP front-facing shooter, with sensor technology for better capture at any condition. According to Nashville Chatters, the specs under the hood will be headed by Helio P10 processor, along with 2GB of RAM. Rumor has it that the device will also boast a 16GB internal storage capacity, in which users can expand using a microSD card. Nonetheless, these specs and features have yet to be confirmed by Sony. As of the moment, it is better that fans take these pieces of information with a grain of salt until the company decides to make an official announcement. Meanwhile, Sony is still trying their best to come up with a good product that can compete with the leading manufacturers in the market today. The Xperia Z5 is supposed to be the company's high-end model; however, it failed to compete with Samsung and Apple. STAMFORD A Hartford man was charged over the weekend with holding his ex-girlfriend against her will, pulling out clumps of her hair and raping the woman in her Stamford home. Lt. Diedrich Hohn said the 41-year-old victim in the case had fled New York City and came to Stamford looking to sever ties from her former boyfriend Yimi Silvestri, 29, who had allegedly beaten her in the past. But Silvestri figured out where she lived and began calling her, Hohn said. Then on Saturday night at about 10:30, Silvestri showed up at the womans house. When he got through the door, the two began to argue and, police say Silvestri began beating her. The womans five-year old and teenage children were in the home at the time of the attack, along with a babysitter who was helping to care for the elder child, who has special needs, police said. At that point, things settled down for a little while, and then he forces her to go upstairs where he basically rapes her, in the hallway and bedroom numerous times during the night, Hohn said. Through the night, Hohn said Silvestri held his former girlfriend against her will and she was unable to call 911. When Silvestri got up to go to the bathroom on Sunday morning, the woman ran frantically downstairs and told the babysitter to call police. When police arrived, Silvestri appeared to be telling his former girlfriend not to say anything. But the responding officer, Ryan McAllister, separated the two and put Silvestri in handcuffs. The woman told police what happened the night before and Silvestri was charged with first-degree sexual assault, risk of injury to a child, unlawful restraint, interfering with a 911 call, threatening and second-degree assault. The woman was sent to Stamford Hospital and treated for the sexual assault as well as has having tufts of her hair ripped off the back of her head by Silvestri, who tried to strangle her with the womans own dreadlocks, Hohn said. Police found blood spatters from the first assault in the kitchen and also collected evidence of the sexual assault in the bedroom, Hohn said. Silvestri was held over the weekend in lieu of a $500,000 court appearance bond and was arraigned on the charges Monday. Judge Auden Grogins issued a full protective order against Silvestri, prohibiting him from contacting the woman again. She has been very cooperative, Hohn said of the victim. And we are doing everything in our power to protect her as much as we can. jnickerson@scni.com; Tinder has an image problem it cant simply swipe away. The popular app is often viewed as a shameless hookup tool, not as a benevolent, respectable conduit through which deep, lasting human matches are made, as co-founder Sean Rad has long tried to spin it. Now, in his latest move, it appears the controversial CEO is positioning Tinder as a vehicle for female empowerment. Rad recently awarded a University of Nebraska Omaha junior a $20,000 full-year scholarship after she was threatened to be booted from her sorority, Chi Omega. The grounds for her near-expulsion: donning a shirt displaying the sororitys letters in her Tinder profile pic. Related: Tinder's Sean Rad: Be Real, Be Vulnerable and Confide in Your Co-Workers The student, Shannon Workman, was told by Chi Omegas executive committee that her Tinder photo breached its Human Dignity code. They just dont think that Chi Omega should be involved with that site, she told Buzzfeed, of the committee members who initiated the process to revoke her membership. They informed Workman of their plans to penalize her during an emergency meeting, which she cut short by walking out in protest. She did, however, take down the profile photo in question. News of Workmans looming dismissal, which also prompted her to resign, presented Tinder with a so-called probortunity, an opportunity born of a problem. In this case, a prime branding probortunity. Speaking up on behalf of a user who took part in a sorority is on-brand for Tinder, as its deeply rooted in the Greek system, Sean Rad told Entrepreneur this morning. Sorority and fraternity members were our earliest adopters and that demographic is still one of our most active user groups today, Rad said, pointing out that Tinder was launched at the University of Southern California through the Greek system. When we found out what Shannon was going through, we wanted to help and turn the experience into a positive one. Related: What You Can Learn From 'Glamour's' Brand-Tarnishing Amy Schumer 'Plus Size' Gaffe Rad also noted that this is the first time Tinder has offered a scholarship to anyone. We have paid interns at Tinder, but its the first time we reached out to someone whose story inspired us and asked them to be part of the team, he said. [Workmans] actions showed a depth of leadership and courage that is admirable and something we value as part of our company culture. We always want to stand up for our users who stand up for us. Whatever you do, college kids, dont stop Netflix and chilling via Tinder, just because the viral app has a bad rap. On top of offering to pay for Workmans entire senior year, Rad went a step further. He offered the student a paid internship at Tinders trendy West Hollywood, Calif., headquarters. She is considering both offers, but has yet to make up her mind. In the meantime, she sounds an awful lot like an ideal brand ambassador. I do stand up for Tinder because I dont think theres anything wrong with it, she told Buzzfeed. Some people use it for hookups but I dont, and a lot of great things happen through Tinder. Related: Tinder Co-Founder Sean Rad on the Hot Dating App's Viral Success David Gerzof Richard, branding expert and founder and president of Boston-based tech PR firm BIGfish Communications, said Rads scholarship offer is a branding homerun. This is a brilliant, heads-up move by Tinder, he told Entrepreneur. The company has taken a lemon of a situation experienced by one of its users and turned it into lemonade for both that customer and the Tinder brand. Better yet, Gerzof Richard, also a marketing professor at Emerson College, said, is the flurry of press Rads strategy quickly stirred up. The main message conveyed through that coverage being: Tinder is a good guy. Tinder has your back. He also said that a PR campaign that attracts such overwhelmingly positive coverage would typically be extremely expensive, but it only cost Tinder a years scholarship and a paid internship at Tinder. Everyone came out a winner in this situation. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved STAMFORD A New York man accused of strangling his former boss and holding her at gunpoint in a Shippan office in 2009 has accepted a deal that will get him out of jail in about a year. Joel DOrt, 34, whose conviction on burglary and kidnapping charges was overturned in 2014 by the state Supreme Court, was sentenced Friday to seven and a half years in jail after pleading guilty to first-degree burglary. DOrt, a former information technology employee of XL Capital, has been jailed since his arrest in October 2009 and will be eligible for parole next April. It was a long road to get to what ultimately was an appropriate sentence, said DOrts attorney, Joseph Jaumann. Assistant States Attorney Michelle Manning was pleased DOrt finally accepted responsibility for the incident. Hopefully, the victim and everyone at XL Capital can move on with their lives, she said. During the trial, the victim testified DOrt came into the office and asked for his job back on Oct. 2, 2009. When the woman refused and told him she was calling security, DOrt ripped the phone from her hands, pulled out a semiautomatic gun, racked the slide back and pointed it at her, according to court documents. DOrt then began to strangle the woman when she tried to escape, court documents state. The woman managed to get away and police were called. Police found DOrt nearby at his former residence and discovered the gun loaded with blanks hidden in a drop ceiling at the office building. DOrt was convicted in November 2010 of first-degree burglary and first-degree kidnapping and sentenced to 10 years in jail. But four years later, the state Supreme Court reversed the conviction on the grounds that trial Judge William Wenzel wrongly denied DOrts request for a competency examination without conducting an adequate inquiry into his state of mind just before trial. The request for an examination into DOrts understanding of the charges and his ability to assist in his own defense came from his former attorney, Stephan Seeger. Seeger told Wenzel he was not sure DOrt was mentally competent to stand trial. Several months earlier, DOrt had a similar examination and was found competent. But Wenzell allowed the trial to move forward, saying Seeger did not provide enough information to prevent the start of the trial, which was scheduled to begin the next day. DOrt was later found to be competent after the conviction was reversed. DOrt will also serve five and a half years of special parole following his release from jail. jnickerson@scni.com; W hether its force-feeding hip hop artist Mos Def in Guantanamo-style conditions or getting broadcaster Bill Oddie chucked out of the HSBC tower, the Dont Panic bunch like to cause a stir. The business, built on handing out packs stuffed with fliers and condoms to clubbers, is now largely a creative content agency in the truest sense of the overused term actually conjuring up original ideas, carried out in audacious fashion. Its sweaty paws are clamped firmly around the zeitgeist. Clients range from corporates (Adidas, Spotify) to broadcasters (Channel 4, MTV) and charities (Save the Children, Greenpeace). Its campaigns have included the eye-catching Everything is Not Awesome video with Greenpeace, in which Lego figures were seen drowning in oil in the Arctic in a protest against the toy brands tie-up with Shell. The latter went viral and triggered the end of the firms 50-year partnership. Latterly, a video for the National Autistic Society, which shows what the condition is like to live with, has raked in 49 million views. The agency deliberately tailors videos for trending topics, measuring its performance on social media shares. It helps brands tackle ad blocking and fake online views by creating marketing with editorial quality. As well as producing videos for big names for the past three years, the company has hung on to its legacy as a publisher, with its online magazine arm. Co-founder and Croydon native Joe Wade says: It gives us the edge on a lot of other agencies who are doing what they think might work, where we can test it on a live audience. Dont Panic is even going against the grain and launching a print fanzine. Wade looks the part, sporting a sharp haircut and sunglasses when we meet up the road from Dont Panic HQ at Shoreditch House, where he recently put on a The Wire quiz featuring the shows cast. A youthful Wade came back from teaching in Japan at the turn of the millennium to work on the business with friends, initially promoting club nights in Brixton and Brighton and then handing out their trademark brown promo packs. Mark Whiteway joined 11 years ago, running its Ibiza arm and spearheading its transition into an agency. In those chaotic early days, they were even paid in absinthe to promote Hills, a producer of the tipple. Their reward went straight into the water-cooler. Advertising and media were a bit more crazed then, Wade smirks. You used to be able to give out lighters and beer. I remember going to Aberdeen on a Saturday night with a truckload of NMEs in a bag with Rizlas and Carling, opening the doors and getting swarmed. I had to drive off at high speed! Along the way, he even rejected a couple of posters from a novice Banksy before publishing the secretive graffiti superstar. It was at this point Dont Panic established its distinctive voice. By bundling information on Greenpeaces and Unicefs causes into marketing for more hedonistic endeavours, an edgy tone was subtly built. The cheeky, corporate-bashing vibe stretches through the Oddie video (he hit the headlines for the spoof, Bankerwatch, filmed in the City) to their Bafta-winning BBC Three series The Revolution Will Be Televised. Wade & Co even padlocked the doors of restaurant Nobu and put up a Gone fishing for bluefin tuna sign. But deriving laughs, and crucially clicks, at others expense is a dangerous game. We did come unstuck. We were still a bit rough round the edges and did this terrible poster called the Tramp Olympics, with events like w***ing for coins, Wade laughs, embarrassed. We had Shelter and Crisis information in the packs and they understandably werent happy. We learned we always have to satirise upwards, making fun of the powerful, not picking on the weak. He now encourages sometimes reticent brands to be daring the more creative risk you take, the more free media you receive. The firm has become adept at PR and was nearly acquired twice last year, with one approach from a large PR agency. Wade and Whiteway wanted to sell a minority stake, their suitors were after the whole company. The duo declined. Im lucky to have a business partner with the same outlook as me, who is not afraid of exploring new areas, all the while pushing the same boundaries we began testing with those little brown packs at the very start, says Whiteway. Theres plenty ahead for the pair. Wade hopes to open an office in the US, ramp up in-house production and compete with advertisings big guns. He also claims to have hit on the formula for the Mad Men of the Periscope age. Instead of slapping TV ads on YouTube, which doesnt work, you test it online then plan your TV buying around that, says Wade. This revolution could be televised. T he City would flourish outside the European Union, unshackled by the constant drift towards regulation from Brussels, according to a paper due to be published this week by the so-called Gang of Eight of leading Brexiteer economists. Economists led by Margaret Thatchers former adviser Patrick Minford are publishing a paper on Thursday aimed at countering the Treasurys pro-EU research pamphlet last week. The team, including Gerard Lyons economic adviser to Boris Johnson, Roger Bootle of Capital Economics and Ryan Bourne, head of public policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs are frustrated at how the Vote Leave campaign has failed to tackle the Governments economic arguments adequately. The Evening Standard has seen Lyons paper on the impact on the City, which suggests the regulatory environment for UK financial services will only get worse if the UK stays in the EU. It cites the EUs bank bonus tax, the financial transactions tax and the ban on short-selling as examples of how the UK has witnessed a declining ability to influence the regulatory environment for the financial sector. It points out that, while there was a concerted political effort in the EU to allow euro clearing the process of administrating euro-denominated trades to continue in London last year, remaining in the EU does not resolve the issue. In the future, it is likely that the eurozone will centralise further, ensuring that the European Court of Justice will have to decide again in the future on areas of contention. Lyons adds: At the time of the sterling-euro debate, the fear was that if the UK did not join the euro, then London would lose out to one of its perceived rivals of Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Paris. Now, it is hard to imagine any of these being seen seriously as a rival to the City. He points out that global finance has concentrated ever more on London, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong. Lyons says those who say London would suffer from losing its passporting rights which allow UK-based banks to trade anywhere in the EU without having a local presence are over-exaggerating the impact. Many firms based here already have local offices and the bulk of activity will still take place in London, he writes. Post Brexit, he claims, the City could regain its traditional role of influencing standards bodies that would rule it like the Financial Stability Board, the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure and the International Organisation of Securities Commissions. It argues London would continue to thrive with innovations as it has in the recent past such as specialising in Islamic finance, sovereign wealth, the offshore Chinese currency market, carbon markets and dispute resolution. Finally, he points out that Londons high levels of expertise in financial services and the 2.2 million people who work in the industry across the UK, meant it would still attract more global business here. The Britain Stronger In Europe campaign group countered that the so-called Group of Eight economists leader Patrick Minford does not support a stronger UK and pointed out that he had previously argued for the running down of the UK car industry and admitted jobs would leave the UK if we left the EU. F ew who observed the sale of BHS by Sir Philip Green just over a year ago thought it would end well. If the King of the High Street couldnt revive an unloved brand struggling to define its niche in the cut-throat world of clothing, what chance a little-known band of investors led by Dominic Chappell, who has twice been declared bankrupt? Rag trade veteran Sir Philip is known for his sharp attention to detail and persuasive negotiating skills. Chappell is famed for neither. BHS needed more than the rub of a genies lamp to guarantee its future. Less well-loved than Woolworths, which crashed eight years ago after similarly passing its sell-by date, the chain required fewer stores, more customers, better-value goods and a slick web presence if it stood a chance against funkier competition. That takes heavy investment, and the pockets of Chappell and co were nowhere near deep enough. Two questions linger today as 11,000 staff fear for their jobs. Could Sir Philip have found a better home for BHS? And how much should he be required to contribute towards the costs associated with its demise? Such a retreat from a failing asset has parallels. In 2007, Sir Richard Branson sold Virgin Megastores for a nominal sum. Fifteen months later, the chain, which was rebranded Zavvi, had gone into administration with the loss of more than 1500 jobs. That time around, Virgin insisted on a name change as part of the buyout, which may have helped to put some distance between the two parties. More importantly, there was no giant pension deficit at issue. It may be that no one could have saved BHS workers from the chop in the long run. But helping to plug the 571 million funding gap in the pension scheme would soften the blow of collapse as pensioners are switched into the Pension Protection Fund. Sir Philip, who was richly rewarded during 15 years of stewardship, clearly feels some responsibility or else he wouldnt have already offered 80 million, which the Pensions Regulator has so far failed to accept. Anyone reading todays extensive coverage might conclude the regulator has been gifted a high-profile opportunity to show it means business in taking owners and previous owners to task on behalf of staff and former staff. It is surely preferable for both sides to strike a more generous deal. Brexit blow for the ad industry The damage that would be inflicted on the financial services industry is regularly cited by those who believe Brexit would be devastating for Londons economy. The European banks would head home and the American lenders would be forced onto the Continent instead of passporting their services in from the Square Mile, Remainers worry. It is not just the bankers who believe they have much to lose. Senior figures in advertising, another industry for which London has become the European capital, voiced their concerns to me at Lambeth Palace last week, when Google sponsored a dinner to mark Advertising Week Europe. Advertising has long struggled to promote itself as an economic driver but it is getting its act together. Official figures show that in 2014 advertising exports were worth 4.1 billion more than the insurance or construction sectors according to the Advertising Association. The proportion of pan-European accounts managed from London has soared. Not only does the capital house the best creative talent but, because of social media, some campaigns are effectively borderless. Erecting borders would not stop UK advertising spending from passing the 20 billion mark this year. But all the evidence I have seen suggests it would curb investment in another sector where London leads. Lawyers would be a good boardroom fit The Rolling Stones exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery was thick with captains of industry for Christopher Sauls leaving bash from Slaughter and May. His exit after 39 years at the blue-chip City law firm including the last eight spent as senior partner had some guests speculating why lawyers remain in such limited demand to become non-executive directors, compared to accountants and seasoned chief executives and finance directors. Theories run that they are not sufficiently numerate, lack commercial nous, fail to take big decisions and would only duplicate what the general counsel has to say. All of which sounds like bunkum, and discounts the fact that candidates such as Saul and his successor Stephen Cooke have the experience of running multimillion-pound businesses. In fact, if the key skill of a seasoned corporate lawyer is to set out the risks that lie ahead, one or two more might have been handy in the boardrooms of those FTSE 100 companies currently under fire for agreeing questionable pay packages. K urt Geiger owner Cinven is poised to return to the hotel bookings market after emerging as front-runner to buy Tuis Hotelbeds Group website. The private equity firm, formerly owner of Spanish booking site Amadeus, is understood to have beaten rivals to land Hotelbeds. The company is similar to Amadeus in offering reservation services to the travel industry. Tui, Europes largest travel operator and the owner of Thomson, put the division up for sale last year. It offers about 72,000 beds around the world that can be booked by airlines and travel agents. The deal is the latest move by Tui boss Friedrich Joussen to exit the online booking market. Last year, he sold LateRooms.com to Indian firm Cox & Kings in a bid to focus more on hotels and cruise ships. The sale could raise more than 1 billion (780 million) for the group. Cinven and Tui declined to comment. B all and Rexam will each sell about a quarter of their fizzy-pop can manufacturing plants to an Irish rival for nearly $3.5 billion (2.4 billion) to appease regulators concerned about their proposed merger. Twelve plants in Europe, eight in the US and two manufacturing sites in Brazil will be offloaded to Irelands Ardagh Group, led by Dublin financier Paul Coulson, for $3.2 billion in cash. It will also take on $210 million of debt. Research sites and offices in Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, the US and in Chester in the north of England are also part of the sale. Ardagh has issued a $2.8 billion bond to finance the deal. Ardagh does not make fizzy drink cans and will adapt the site to make its traditional metal containers used for tinned food. It leaves Ball-Rexam, which unveiled its merger in February last year, with 75 manufacturing plants across the world, including Rexams existing Luton location and Tongwell engineering centre. The European Commission had demanded the two firms sell off sites because of fears they would have a near-monopoly on the manufacture of cans. T he streets were deathly quiet and the snow was falling heavily outside. It was well past midnight and I was sitting with a friend towards the back of a small, nondescript bar in downtown Minneapolis. We were both wearing garish purple paisley shirts, complete with outsized collars. There was only a handful of other customers some chatting quietly, some readying themselves to head out into the blistering cold. We sipped our beers a little self-consciously not really knowing what to expect. A Minnesotan friend had told us that hed heard a rumour that Prince would turn up unannounced at some point at that bar to perform one of his late- night impromptu gigs. I was already a big Prince fan so the prospect of listening to him in a small Midwest bar with only a handful of other people was thrilling. Yet, by 1am, there was still no sign of the Purple One so we decided to head off through the Arctic night back to our student rooms (I was doing a one-year postgraduate stint at the University of Minnesota). The following day our friend told us that the rumour had been correct Prince had turned up at the bar about 20 minutes after wed left and had played one new track after the next (this was the winter of 1989/1990 at the height of his most prolific success). Spike Lee Throws Block Party to Celebrate Prince Just over a quarter of a century later, early in 2014, I was ushered into the Koko Club in Camden by my police protection team to see Prince in concert. Following an appearance on Channel 4s Last Leg, I discovered that Adam Hills, the shows superb host, was also a devotee of Prince. Hed got hold of some tickets and invited me along. It was the most uplifting escape from my day job as Deputy Prime Minister I could have wished for. I might have looked considerably older and wearier than I did 27 years earlier but Prince looked as agelessly waif-like as ever. Clad in what looked like full-length shimmering gold pyjamas, he opened with a blasting rendition of Purple Rain before hopping from one instrument to the next in one of the most bewitching stage performances Ive ever seen. Musical tastes usually evolve with time. The music you love as a child invariably seems too simple by the time youre an adolescent. The music you love as a teenager invariably seems a bit pretentious by the time youre an adult. And so on. So how come Princes musical spell was as beguiling to me as a grizzled politician as it was when I was a fresh- faced student? As I hollered with delight in Camden last year, I did so with all the feverish excitement I felt waiting to see Prince two decades and a half earlier. Theres the music, obviously. Im no music critic so I cant add much to all that has been said and written about his unique, eclectic style. Like all geniuses, he kept things so simple sparse beats, clean melodies which disguised the convention-shattering originality of much of what he wrote. Everyone has their favourite Prince song Id probably vote for Sign O the Times as mine (its refrain Some say a man aint happy, truly, Until a man truly dies resonates eerily right now). There was also something faintly dangerous, almost illicit, about his demeanour. The filthy lyrics, explicit and ambivalent at the same time. Religion and sex unsettlingly mixed together. The elusive androgyny, like Bowie, and the shape-shifting reinvention of his stage persona too. He was an eruption of eccentricity and flair in a part of America known for its slightly dour, God-fearing manners. Minneapolis has a sensible, Scandinavian feel about it no wonder given the huge numbers of Norwegians who emigrated to the Midwest at the turn of the last century. Prince was utterly devoted to the city and the city loved him back in return yet his contempt for convention stood in stark contrast to the low-church conformity of the area. 'He confounded the assumption that we have a right to know everything about everyone. We dont' And then there was the sheer mystery of the man. Sure, sometimes his zeal for privacy could reach zany extremes he once agreed to do a BBC interview on the condition that he wouldnt speak and his face would be fully covered (a tactic I wish I could have deployed on occasion in the past five years). Paisley Park, his home and recording hub, was shrouded in secrecy. Already his death and a stash of previously unheard tracks are the subject of rumour, conjecture and mystery. Reading his obituaries over the past few days, Ive learned more about his early life, his marriages and his habits than I ever knew when he was alive or cared to know. And maybe thats the most important lesson Prince leaves behind: we live in an age of instant communication, an intrusive press, censorious social media and a million and one outlets for people to gawp at the rich, powerful and famous. Prince wanted his music to speak for itself. He challenged the conventions of the music industry and disobeyed every single commercial and PR stricture around. He even sold one album for free with copies of the Mail on Sunday without telling his record label. Prince - In pictures 1 /34 Prince - In pictures Purple Rain Prince performing in 1984 Rex First UK Show Prince performing his first UK Show at The Lyceum in London in 1981 Rex Prince among men Prince onstage during the 2015 American Music Awards in Los Angeles Kevin Winter/Getty Images Super Bowl Show Prince performs during the Super Bowl Half-Time show in 2007 Evan Agostini/Getty Images Brit Awards Prince with backing bad 3rdeyegirl - Donna Grantis, Hannah Ford and Ida Neilsen - with James Corden at The Brit Awards in 2014 Rex Married man Prince and his wife Manuela Testolini backstage at the 35th Annual NAACP Image Awards held at the Universal Amphitheatre in 2004 Frank Micelotta/Getty Images Prince with his wife Mayte as they arrives at the De Beer and Versace "Diamonds are forever" charity fashion event in 1999 AFP/Getty Images Festival performance Prince performs during the second day of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2008 Chris Pizzello/AP Under a cherry moon Prince starring in a scene from the film 'Under the cherry moon' (1986) Sensational singer Prince performing on stage Ebet Roberts/Redferns Flamboyant fashion Prince at the Radio 1 Awards in 1986 Rex At The Grammy Awards Musician Prince as he presents the winner for Record of the Year during the 55th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images 21 Nights Prince announces his '21 Nights in London' gigs at a press conference at the Hospital on May 8, 2007 in London Claire Greenway/Getty Images Dynamic duet Singer Mary J. Blige (L) and recording artist Prince perform onstage during the 2012 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 22, 2012 Christopher Polk/Getty Images American Idol Musician Prince performs onstage during the American Idol Season 5 Finale in 2006 Vince Bucci/Getty Images Funk and soul Prince performs during the halftime show at the Super Bowl XLI football game at Dolphin Stadium in Miami IN 2007 Chris O'Meara/AP Young Prince Prince in 1987 Rex Prince with his band The New Power Generation Rex MTV Moves Prince at tHe MTV Awards in 1994, Monaco Rex On the big stage Musician Prince performing at Wembley Arena in August 14, 1986 in London David Corio/Michael Ochs Archives Music world rocked: Prince in concert at Madison Square Garden, New York Breaking new sounds Prince performs live at the Fabulous Forum on February 19, 1985 in Inglewood, California Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Sexy cool Prince in concert at Paradiso, Amserdam, Netherlands in 1981 Rex Paradiso found again Prince in concert at Paradiso, Amserdam in 2013 Rocking the look American musician Prince in concert at Earl's Court, London on 15th June 1992 Dave Benett Prince uncovered Prince performing bare chested in 1984 Rex Like David Bowie, he was a control freak about his image and his music. But it was control for a purpose to retain his own integrity and as much privacy and freedom from intrusion as is possible in the age of 24-hour news. He confounded the assumption that we have a right to know everything about everyone. We dont. A little mystery and a breathtakingly versatile gift for music made Prince the unforgettable phenomenon that he was. O n September 12 1933, a young man was crossing the road near Russell Square in Bloomsbury. His name was Leo Szilard, and he was no ordinary pedestrian he was a world-class physicist, whod been forced to flee Nazi Germany and move to London because he was Jewish. As Szilard crossed the road, he saw the traffic lights change, and was struck by a brainwave. His epiphany was to do with how a nuclear reaction might take place, and might require very little radioactive material, meaning that it could be feasible to create a nuclear bomb. This calculation sparked while crossing a London street flew in the face of accepted wisdom at the time, which was that a nuclear bomb would be practically impossible. It led directly to the Allies developing the atomic bomb, and changed the course of 20th- century history. The reason I mention this story is that it tells us something very important about London. It shows how our city is open to new arrivals like Szilard, and why those advocating Brexit have such a difficult task in persuading a majority of Londons entrepreneurs that quitting the EU is the right thing to do. I spend my days surrounded by creative and technology entrepreneurs, and its striking how few of them are considering voting Leave in the upcoming referendum. After all, EU institutions are deeply flawed in all kinds of ways. They waste vast amounts of money, theyre profoundly untransparent and unaccountable, and their regulations hit small businesses especially hard. But for the entrepreneurs in London I talk to, all this is outweighed by the fact that the EU means that they can work with the brightest and best from across the continent the Leo Szilards of today, if you will. President Obamas visit last week attracted a lot of consternation from the Brexiteers, who felt that he was interfering in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation. It goes without saying that Obamas intervention was not entirely altruistic it is plainly in the interests of the US that the UK moderates anti-Americanism in Europe, and that we also help ensure that the EU does not introduce yet more counter-productive policies that might further hamper economic growth. However, in practical terms, Obamas strong argument in favour of Remain will have made it even more difficult to persuade Londons entrepreneurs to vote for Brexit. When youre trying to expect a company, economic uncertainty can be a killer, which is why entrepreneurs are often risk-averse when it comes to politics. You see this in attitudes to the EU referendum and Obamas contention that the UK would be at the back of the queue for a US trade deal has only added to the risk of instability that leaving the EU might cause. Against the backdrop of this risk, and with the tangible benefit of access to Europes labour market so clearly felt, its understandable that Londons entrepreneurs are largely unwilling to rock the boat. Unlike Leo Szilard, talented Europeans today arent fleeing the Nazis, but they are escaping high unemployment and stifling statism across much of the eurozone, and theyll always be welcome in our city. Thats not just good news for the new arrivals its great for Londons small businesses too. Long may it continue. P lans are under way for a huge Hollywood-themed, Disneyland-style attraction close to London, which has been in the offing since 2012. It could cost up to 2 billion and might be bigger than the Olympic Park. But its prospective launch date has been pushed back following an accounting error. Rumours are rife and facts sparse, but heres what we know so far... It will be in Kent. The resort will sit on the Swanscombe Peninsula between Gravesend and Dartford in Kent. That would mean it was under an hours drive from central London, and around half that by train. It will be pretty big. The parks site is likely to be a whopping 388 acres, with some reports suggesting it could occupy as much as 872 acres. For comparison, the Olympic Park in Stratford is 560 acres. However, this is still small compared to Disneyland Paris, which occupies 4,800 acres. It will be Hollywood-themed. The proposed parks owners have already signed a licensing deal with Hollywood studio Paramount Pictures. It will feature a water park. In fact, early plans have suggested the resort might be home to Europes largest indoor water park. Thats in addition to rollercoasters, theatres, cinemas, restaurants, music venues and hotels. It will cost a fortune. A pricetag of 2 billion has been suggested, and the company behind it has a track record of big spending. The majority owner is Kuwaiti European Holdings, owned by the Al-Humaidi family, whose assets include Ebbsfleet United FC in Kent. Its hoping to be popular. The organisers are hoping for lots of visitors, with estimates suggesting the resort could attract up to 50,000 tourists a day. It will be good for the area. Views on the development are likely to be divided in the local area, but Sevenoaks District Council has suggested it could create as many as 27,000 jobs half within the park itself and half in the wider area. Its due to open in 2021. It was originally due to launch in 2018, but following an accounting error thats been pushed back. It still needs varying forms of planning approval before it gets the final go-ahead, though. 50 free things to do in London 1 /66 50 free things to do in London A Cockroach Tour at the Science Museum Get a bug's eye view of the human race with the Science Museum's Cockroach Tour. Step into their shells (literally) and explore how science and technology are influencing our climate. Every Saturday and Sunday at 2pm and 4pm. sciencemuseum.org.uk Columbia Road Flower Market Come rain or shine, this East End institution peddles its colourful flora every Sunday from 8am-3ish. You'll get the best bargains as it starts to warm down. Check out the adjacent galleries, coffee shops and boutiques which open up at the weekend too. columbiaroad.info Getty Climb up Big Ben Did you know you can wear yourself out climbing up all 334 steps of Big Ben to hear the Great Bell chime the hour up-close? As well as taking in stunning views across London, you can also explore behind the clock faces. Guided tours only at 9am, 11am and 2pm every Monday-Friday. Book ahead. parliament.uk Getty In-store gigs at Rough Trade East Brick Lane's independent record shop hosts regular free gigs from the likes of Kendrick Lamar (pictured), Gabrielle Aplin and Foals. Wristbands are given out one hour before kick-off. roughtrade.com Getty Kerb Street Food Markets Making cities taste better one street food market at a time, Kerb are the ultimate foodie guerillas. Find them at King's Cross (Tuesday-Friday), the Gherkin (Thursday) & UCL (last Wednesday of every month). Feast with London's best traders including Mother Flipper burgers and the Meringue Girls (pictured). kerbfood.com (Picture: David Loftus) Hackney City Farm Give your kids a dose of the countryside in the concrete jungle at one of London's city farms. Our favourite is Hackney City Farm, which is packed with donkeys, pigs and chickens. Open from 10am4.30pm every day except Monday. hackneycityfarm.co.uk Play table tennis at PING Tables at Earl's Court hangout PING are free on a first come, first served basis. Don't miss tournament Tuesday. Games of Beer Pong are positively encouraged. weloveping.com Alfie's Antiques Market A hidden gem full of gems, this Marylebone market is an indoor haven for antiques, vintage, collectables and 20th Century design. Open 10am-6pm Tuesday to Saturday. alfiesantiques.com Gigs and club nights at the Social This central London bar has been going for 15 years. Theres a great range of weekly club nights with a mixture of resident and guest DJs spinning the tunes from house and disco to funk and hip-hop, plus showcases of some of the best new bands around. thesocial.com Lunchtime concerts at St-Martin-in-the-Fields Every Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 1pm you can listen to tomorrow's classical music stars, from pianists to choirs, play and sing for free at this beautiful church on the edge of Trafalgar Square. No ticket required. stmartin-in-the-fields.org Nike Training Club You can register for these free womens exercise classes via Facebook around two weeks in advance. Theres yoga, running and general fitness training sessions held in a mixture of indoor and outdoor locations including Clapham Common, Victoria Park and the exercise space in the Nike Town shop. facebook.com/NikeTrainingClubUK Walk the Tamsin Trail in Richmond Park Walk, run or cycle around the seven mile perimeter of London's largest royal park and try to spot a herd of Red Fallow deer (pictured). Don't worry - there are plenty of tea stops along the way. royalparks.org.uk Popcorn at Heaven One of London's biggest weekday club nights, Popcorn is one for hedonists who like to dance to house, hip hop and even cheese for seven hours on a Monday night. Just grab a wristband from G-A-Y Bar in Soho for free entry. popcorn-heaven.com The Queen's House at Greenwich Designed by Inigo Jones in 1616, this Italian Renaissance-style mansion marked a departure from Tudor architecture and houses a fine art collection of maritime paintings. Open Daily 10am-5pm. rmg.co.uk Guided tours of Tate Modern Tate Modern is spectacular to look at just from the outside (approach from the Millennium Bridge for the best view) and you can also join a free tour lasting 45 minutes and led by in-house experts, at 11am, 12pm, 2pm & 3pm. No booking required unless for a group of more than 10. tate.org.uk Karaoke at Paradise by Way of Kensal Green Think you've got the X-factor? Hire the private karaoke room (which takes up to 25 guests) for no fee every Monday and Tuesday. Boy George (pictured) has had a go. There's even a button to press to order booze. Call 020 8969 0098 to book. theparadise.co.uk Friday Night Skate Can you hold your own on rollerskates? Join a marshalled street skate (bladers welcome) which meets at Wellington Arch in Hyde Park at 8pm every Friday. Weather dependent. lfns.co.uk Evensong at Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey is always open to those who wish to worship. Come for the evensong service to hear the dulcet tones of the Abbey choir. Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday at 5pm or Saturday & Sunday at 3pm. westminster-abbey.org Meditate at Inner Space Those who need some respite from the grind of life can drop in to Inner Space for free lunchtime and evening meditation and positive thinking classes. innerspace.org.uk Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace Everyone should watch the Queen's Guardsmen in action at least once in their life. The changing of the guard takes place at 11.30am on odd days (2, 4, 6 etc) throughout the month. royal.gov.uk Ain't Nothing But The Blues Bar This Soho stalwart claims to serve up the best blues on this side of the pond seven nights a week. From Sunday to Thursday, entry is free all sweet night long and it's free before 8.30pm on Friday and Saturday. aintnothingbut.co.uk Watch a trial at the Old Bailey Anyone can attend the public galleries of London's premier criminal court the Old Bailey to watch trials in session. Be warned, you can't take in bags, cameras or mobile phones and there's no cloakroom. Open Monday to Friday, 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm. cityoflondon.gov.uk Rex Features New Act Night at the Comedy Cafe Theatre Forget big arenas and ticket prices to match, this night in Shoreditch is where many a comedy star, including Jimmy Carr and Mickey Flanagan, cut their teeth. Every Wednesday at 7.45pm. comedycafetheatre.co.uk Natural History Museum Volcanoes, dinosaurs and a full-sized blue whale skeleton are just some of the wonders of the Natural History Museum. nhm.ac.uk NHM The Curve Gallery at the Barbican Centre The Curve is always hosting exciting installations that carry no charge but might come with queues, such as Random International's Rain Room (pictured). barbican.org.uk Gigs at Birthdays This mini bar/club has staged many a free gig, including an impromptu one from Bloc Party (pictured) that prompted massive queues. Make sure you refuel upstairs first. birthdaysdalston.com Ceremony of the Keys This 700-year-old ceremony is the nightly locking up of the Tower gates. Its a popular event and for dates in 2014 youll need to apply in writing, but online bookings are being taken for January 2015 onwards. hrp.org.uk Piano recitals at Bar Nightjar Recently voted the world's second best bar for its stupendous cocktails, this Old Street speakeasy also does a fine line in live music. Most nights there's a charge, but entrance to Piano Tuesdays is on the house. barnightjar.com Whitechapel Gallery Around since 1901, the Whitechapel Gallery can be counted on for pioneering new talent in contemporary art - think Rothko and Frieda Kahlo. The best part? Admission to exhibitions is free. whitechapelgallery.org Turner Collection at Tate Britain The Clore Gallery at Tate Britain boasts the world's largest collection of Turner paintings. Over 300 oil paintings, sketches and watercolours chart his development from boyhood to mature master and elevator of landscape art. tate.org.uk Turner, Joseph Mallord William 1775-1851, Norham Castle, Sunrise c.1845 (Tate) Portobello Road Antiques Market Yes you will have to wade through SLR-wielding tourists, but wandering up the two-mile Portobello Road is still a good day out: roam antiques stalls, stock up on bargain bowls of fruit and veg, and explore the fashion market. Open every Saturday from 9am-10am. portobellomarket.org Rex Features Backpacks, trails & workshops at the V&A Borrow a backpack for your mini art fiends (suitable for 5-12 years) and embark on hands-on activities, jigsaws, stories, puzzles and games to be enjoyed in and around the V&A. No need to book, available every day from the Sackler Centre. vam.ac.uk Victoria and Albert Museum, London Mediatheque at BFI Southbank Like old movies? The BFI has a ready-to-watch archive of nearly 3000 films and TV series. Simply log on at a viewing station and get reacquainted with old classics from London Town (pictured) to Ab Fab. bfi.org.uk Courtesy of BFI Mediatheque The Alibi Dalston hotspot The Alibi is always free entry. Don't miss the dive bar's film (Monday) and karaoke (Tuesday) nights . thealibilondon.co.uk Lunchtime recitals at The Royal Opera House The ROH holds regular lunchtime recitals where you can catch rising orchestral and choral stars. Seats can be reserved online nine days before the concert and always go fast. They also run free backstage tours for nosey parkers. roh.org.uk Peter Mackertich courtesy of the Royal Opera House Good gym 'Do good, get fit' is the mantra at play here. Join this group of runners and and you'll be sent on community-helping missions such as visiting the elderly. Everyone wins. goodgym.org Angel Comedy On most Saturday nights the likes of Tony Law (pictured) will tickle your ribs for free from 8pm. angelcomedy.co.uk The Wellcome Collection One for curious cats, this free gallery is all about medicine, life and art through the ages. Make the most of the library, cafe and temporary collections such as Death: A Self-Portrait (pictured). Don't miss their uber-popular Thursday night events. wellcomecollection.org Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Lunchtime music at the Royal Festival Hall Find a seat in the Clore Ballroom and simply listen. You'll be treated to jazz, folk and world music from rising stars and established ensembles. Every Friday southbankcentre.co.uk Parliament Hill The view from here is one you need to see and will revive even the most world-weary Londoner, especially on a clear day. And there's a lido nearby for brave swimmers. cityoflondon.gov.uk The Wallace Collection A treasure trove in a historic townhouse setting, the Wallace Collection allows you to gawp at old masters, vintage armour, porcelain and furniture. Open to art buffs seven days a week, 10am-5pm. wallacecollection.org Be in the BBC audience Get your 15 minutes of fame and apply for tickets to be in the audience of a BBC TV show. These guys are entranced by Question Time... bbc.co.uk Friday nights at Catch Every Friday is free at this Kingsland Road bar and club. Expect anything from live bands to Nineties dance, indie and hip hop. thecatchbar.com Speakers' Corner Speeches and debates have been taking place at the north-east end of Hyde Park since the 1800s. Stop by to hear wide-ranging views on a huge variety of topics. Or why not rock up and give a speech yourself? royalparks.org.uk Pic: Alex Lentati British Museum Not only is it a rather stunning piece of architecture, the British Museum is also an archive of fantastic art and artefacts from all over the world, including the Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles. Find anything from African textiles to a virtual autopsy of an Egyptian mummy. Open daily 10am-5pm. britishmuseum.org Trustees of the British Museum Borough Market Rain or shine, Borough Market is a great place to refuel after a walk down the river, with hog roasts, lamb burgers and many other culinary delights. A real London institution. Full market open Wednesday-Saturday. boroughmarket.com Lectures at LSE LSE puts on regular public lectures and everyone is welcome. Expect star speakers - past guests include Kofi Annan (pictured), Bill Clinton and Mervyn King. lse.ac.uk LSE / Nigel Stead Broadway Market Sandwiched between London Fields and the Regent's Canal, this old Hackney market is now a hipster hunting ground. Get on your fixie and munch on the trendiest galettes, store up on fresh veg and have a mooch around the vintage clothes stalls. It's easy to while away a day at the cafes which spill on to Broadway. Open on Saturdays 9am-5pm. broadwaymarlet.co.uk Eric Huang Flickr CC World music and exhibitions at Rich Mix East London's premier cultural centre, Rich Mix hosts open mic spoken word nights, exhibitions, acoustic music (with free cake!) in its bar. richmix.org.uk Museum of London 450,000 years of London history are on display in the permanent galleries at the museums City and Docklands locations and you can even browse a number of collections online. museumoflondon.org.uk Follow Ben Norum on Twitter @BenNorum Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout A ctor Philip Jackson has criticised philistine council organisers of the Ealing Jazz Festival over cuts to the much-loved summer event. Jackson, who played Chief Inspector Japp in long-running ITV series Poirot, said a decision to reduce the festival part of the wider Ealing Summer Festival programme from a five-day event to two had created bad feeling among residents and jazz fans. The 67-year-old, who is married to actress Sally Baxter, said: Culture is an important part of our lives but it seems like that is not the viewpoint of the council. I live in Hanwell and there is no cinema, no theatre its not seen as important. Its terrible. This is another attack on the cultural offerings of west London. And it all seems to be about saving money, which is missing the point. Its like that famous Oscar Wilde quote A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Reduced: the Ealing Jazz Festival has been cut from five days to two / Gregory Wrona / Alamy Stock Photo Campaigners say they were informed in December about the cut to the length of the festival, which is run by external firm The Event Umbrella (TEU). They say the council wrote to co-founder and then artistic director Dick Esmond saying he would not be needed as the event in Walpole Park would only take place on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 July. Previously, there were also concerts on weekdays. Musician Andrew Butcher, who is leading the campaign against the cuts, said axing the weekdays would not save money as the site will be built by then. He added: I am not sure whether we will get something this year, but we want it to be restored to its former glory at some point in the future. Festivals in London this summer 1 /28 Festivals in London this summer Wembley Stadium June 5 to Sept 10, Wembley Stadium, wembleystadium.com Two epic shows from older legends bracket this summers stadium gig offerings, with Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band blasting off on June 5, and piano man Billy Joel wrapping up as autumn approaches. In between, there are two R&B superstars in the shape of Rihanna on June 24 and Beyonce on July 2-3. But even they cant outdo Coldplay, wholl play for four nights between June 15-19. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Anheuser-Busch British Summer Time July 1-10, Hyde Park, W1, bst-hydepark.com These six all-day shows in central London are the best opportunity to see music giants here this summer. Two classic albums will be aired in full when Carole King makes a rare appearance plays Tapestry on July 3, then Stevie Wonder plays Songs in the Key of Life on July 10. Theres also a pop day with Take That on July 9, hip hop from Kendrick Lamar, who appears alongside Florence + the Machine on July 2, folk rock from Mumford & Sons on July 8 and something edgier with Massive Attack on July 1. Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images Wireless July 8-10, Finsbury Park, N4, wirelessfestival.co.uk Former Hyde Park weekender Wireless is back in north London for its 11th event. Each of the three days offers a broad mix of sounds the kids love, with the stadium house of Calvin Harris and Eighties pop of The 1975 on July 8, bulldozing dance from Chase & Status and smooth hip hop from J Cole on July 9, then rowdy grime from the Boy Better Know crew and tropical house from Kygo on July 10. Field Day June 11-12, Victoria Park, E3, fielddayfestivals.com Hackneys Field Day this year, which is marking the occasion with exclusive headline sets from two Mercury Prize winners: electro-soul man James Blake and PJ Harvey, who will play songs from her powerful new album The Hope Six Demolition Project. The rest of the bill is a hipsters dream, with bigger names such as Roots Manuva and Air joined by Gold Panda, Parquet Courts and Meilyr Jones. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Somerset House Summer Series July 7-17, Somerset House, WC2, somersethouse.org.uk When it isnt set up as a top ice-skating spot, the neoclassical courtyard by the Thames is an impressive place to watch hot bands. This year they include lively Aussie jazz-funk act Hiatus Kaiyote on July 7 and French electro-swing group Caravan Palace on July 14. Among the solo acts are the returning Laura Mvula on July 10, indie rocker Courtney Barnett on July 13 and the current holder of the Mercury Prize, Benjamin Clementine, on July 9. Lorne Thomson/Redferns Citadel July 17, Victoria Park, E3, citadelfestival.com The blasted heath that remains after the Lovebox Festival will become more civilised on the Sunday, when this sibling of Oxfordshires posh Wilderness Festival takes over. Therell be fancy street food, talks and pop-up theatre from the Old Vic. The music is sophisticated fare too, with Iceland dream-makers Sigur Ros, Canadian electronica man Caribou and soul star Lianne La Havas all playing. Samir Hussein/Redferns On Blackheath Sept 10-11, Blackheath, SE3, onblackheath.com A John Lewis sponsorship should ensure that this relative newcomer appeals to the middle classes with its chefs stage and posh food village. The music will suit indie fans mature enough to know their way around an avocado. Primal Scream and Belle and Sebastian top the bill, with Hot Chip and James playing high up too. Theres also a stage run by Heavenly Recordings for more esoteric fare. Hampton Court Palace Festival June 8-23, Hampton Court Palace, hamptoncourtpalacefestival.com These fancy events, which seem to exist purely so Jools Holland (June 10) and Van Morrison (June 14) have a reason to get out of the house every summer, allow you to picnic in the grounds of Cardinal Wolseys Tudor pied-a-terre before watching soul belter Anastacia (June 9), Dutch jazz lady Caro Emerald (June 17) and three concerts from Sir Tom Jones (June 8, 15, 16). Live at Chelsea June 17-19, Royal Hospital Chelsea, SW3, liveatchelsea.com Now in its second year, this series not only offers the opportunity to buy the ultimate picnic hampers (with the Gordon Ramsay Group keeping your sarnies free of ants) but also a chance to eat Michelin-starred food inside the Royal Hospital Chelseas state apartments. After that kind of spread, heading into the grounds to watch Wet Wet Wet (June 18) or Simply Red (June 19) might be a bit of a letdown. Mauricio Santana/Getty Images Greenwich Music Time July 5-10, Old Royal Naval College, SE10, greenwichmusictime.co.uk With Canary Wharf glittering over the water behind the main stage and the grand Naval College just next door, this is a pleasant spot to watch mainstream acts including veteran voice Seal on July 6, blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa on July 7 and big-selling Swedes Roxette on July 8. Jamie Cullum wraps things up with some fast-fingered piano work on July 10. Kew the Music July 12-17, Kew Gardens, kew.org A stage in front of the glass Temperate House in Kew Gardens cant afford to risk any heavy metal bands, so instead there are tasteful offerings from Simply Red (July 12), Will Young (July 13) and, of course, Jools Holland (July 15). Long-running ABBA tribute act Bjorn Again should liven things up a bit and shake a few leaves from the trees on July 14. Jo Hale/Redferns We Are FSTVL May 28-29, Damyns Hall Aerodrome, Upminster, wearefstvl.com The first major London festival offers more dance music than you can shake a glowstick at, across 14 stages in an airfield. Big names include regular party starter Fatboy Slim, Swedish giant Steve Angello and drum-and-bass dons DJ Fresh and Sigma. The rejuvenated Craig David will also be in attendance with his TS5 concept. Paul Underhill South West Four Aug 27-28, Clapham Common, SW4, southwestfour.com The bank holiday weekend will feel significantly livelier on Clapham Common, where an A-Z of DJs from Above & Beyond to Yotto (okay, A-Y) will keep the party going non-stop. Less serious clubbers will appreciate the presence of chart-friendly names such as Rudimental, Dizzee Rascal and The Chemical Brothers. Other live acts include Boys Noize, Nero and Netsky. Ollie Millington/Redferns via Getty Images Lovebox Victoria Park, E3, loveboxfestival.com Lovebox has been a more eclectic affair in the past, but these days its mix of hip hop and dance music seems to cater best to a severely up-for-it crowd who are as likely to be found dancing around the taco truck as the main stage. Madonna producer Diplo appears twice, in solo guise and with his band Major Lazer, theres rap from Run the Jewels, grime from Stormzy and a legend in the form of George Clinton. The biggest draw, however, ought to be the chance to see the reformed LCD Soundsystem. Richard Johnson Meltdown June 10-19, Southbank Centre, SE1, southbankcentre.co.uk Elbow frontman and beloved radio host Guy Garvey is in the prestigious curators hotseat for the latest Meltdown season on the Southbank. His band wont be playing but hell do a solo set on June 17. Other notable names plucked from his little black book include Laura Marling (June 18), Richard Hawley (June 16) and a rare reformation gig from short-lived Texan band Lift to Experience (June 10). Lorne Thomson/Redferns Stone Free June 18-19, O2 Arena, SE10, theo2.co.uk The classic rock crowd will take over the O2 for a weekend in June, with theatrical rocker Alice Cooper and prog man Rick Wakeman topping the bill. Relative youngsters The Darkness and Blackberry Smoke will also be engaging in heavy riffing, plus therell be film screenings, artists in conversation and a vinyl fair. AFP/Getty Images Visions Aug 6, London Fields, E8, visionsfestival.com Now in its fourth year, Visions sprawls across multiple hip Hackney venues including Oval Space, the Moth Club, the Laundry and St Johns Church. Wanderers should stumble upon performers including Scottish rap trio Young Fathers, the severely heavy Lightning Bolt and powerful singer-songwriter Anna Calvi. Camden Rocks June 4, Camden High Street, NW1, camdenrocksfestival.com More than 200 bands for 35 sounds fair enough, especially when they include indie favourites The Cribs, Carl Barat of The Libertines other band The Jackals, folk hero Billy Bragg and Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols. Dozens of lesser names will rumble along Camden High Street in esteemed venues including the Electric Ballroom, the Barfly and Dingwalls. Danny Payne/REX/Shutterstock FOLD June 24-26, Fulham Palace, SW6, foldfestival.com It stands for Freak Out Lets Dance, which is what people have been doing in the vicinity of Nile Rodgers band Chic for many years. Because hes in charge of this one, Chic will play every night, joined by different acts each time, including Labrinth and Alison Moyet (June 24), Beck (June 25) and John Newman (June 26). Nile Rodgers Productions Caught by the River Thames Aug 6-7, Fulham Palace, SW6, caughtbytheriver.net Caught by the River, a nature website made by music-lovers, branches out into the real world with a new festival appropriately situated right by the Thames. Following smaller events in Cardigan and Hebden Bridge, this one is more ambitious, promising to bridge the previously unspanned gap between mind-bending psychedelic rock n roll shows and Springwatch. Performers include Low, Super Furry Animals and Beth Orton. Jeff Barclay/Music Pics/REX House of Common Aug 29, Clapham Common, SW4 , madness.co.uk A Madness gig by another name, this is the latest guise for the Nutty Boys enjoyable all-dayers. Theres a strong reggae feel to this one, with legendary DJ David Rodigan and Jamaican giants Lee Scratch Perry and Toots and the Maytals providing the build-up to Suggs and co. Julian Finney/Getty Images A council spokesman said: The council is being forced to significantly reduce the subsidy for the Ealing Summer Festival events from 122,000 to 72,000 across all the festivals. Rather than compromise on quality, we have focused the jazz programme to one weekend which has always proven the most popular, with 70 per cent of visitors coming on those days last year. Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout T he family of a student stabbed to death near the home of mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan today called for an end to the silence around the epidemic of murders plaguing our young men. Lewis Elwin, 20, a trainee electrician at Merton College, was knifed in the back by a gang who ambushed him in Tooting and he died at the scene. His mother Sandra Elwin, 52, had dropped him off an hour before receiving a call to say he was dead. Today, the family said: We pray that this doesnt happen to your son, your brother, your family. But if our community continues to stay silent then Lewiss senseless murder would have been for nothing. Now is the time to come together and unite in our fight against knife crime and the epidemic of murders plaguing our young men. Mr Elwin collapsed in Thrale Road at 3.47pm on Monday. He was seen on Penwortham Road, but could have been stabbed in Moyser Road. Crimestoppers today offered a 10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction, left anonymously on 0800 555 111 or online at crimestoppers-uk.org A married private equity lawyer was today accused in court of a drunken romp with a female QC. Graeme Stening, 51, was allegedly seen with the other lawyer by commuters outside Waterloo Station. He has denied outraging public decency and said he will vigorously contest the claim. Stening, who lives in a 2 million house in Surrey with his wife Sian, is the senior in-house lawyer at Doughty Hanson & Co. He did not attend Camberwell magistrates court for todays hearing. The incident allegedly took place on August 20 last year. Stening was charged with outraging public decency and appeared in court for the first time last September, when he pleaded not guilty. His trial was put back to June 23. P olice are hunting for two men after a teenage girl was allegedly raped near to a playground in a north London park. The victim, aged in her mid-teens, was attacked on Ducketts Common, near to Turnpike Lane Tube station, at about 9pm on Saturday, March 12, police said. Officers want to speak to two young men in connection with the investigation. Police said both men are described as black, of large build, and aged about 18 years, The first man, who had Afro style hair, wore a black coat zipped up to his chin, dark trousers and black trainers. The second man wore a puffa jacket, possibly with a Nike logo on the front, a hoodie, dark trousers and dark hat, with a black motorbike-style scarf with white stitching over his face. Detectives from the Met Polices Sexual Offences Exploitation and Child Abuse Command are investigating. Anyone with information is asked to contact detectives on 020 8217 7448 or 07342 080948 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. T wo men who fought with knives in front of horrified travellers at a south London tram stop have been jailed for a total of 19 years. Tevin Nzita-Seke and Jermayne Williams pulled out their weapons during a fight at the Blackhorse Lane stop in Croydon at 4.30pm on February 25 last year. People watched in terror as the 20-year-olds slashed at one another with their blades, while one person had to duck out of the way when a knife was swung towards them. After the fight, Williams, of Coniston Road, Croydon, fled the scene leaving Nzita-Seke lying on the floor with five stab wounds to his arm and neck. People gave the man first aid before he was taken to hospital, emerging five days later after treatment. Both men were convicted after a trial at Blackfriars Crown Court. Nzita-Seke, of Enfield, was sentenced to seven years for attempted GBH, three years for possession of an offensive weapon and two years for affray. Wounded: Tevin Nzita-Seke was stabbed five times / British Transport Police Williams was sentenced to 12 years for GBH with intent, four years for possession of an offensive weapon and three years for affray. Speaking after the sentencing, Detective Constable Marie Jeffery from British Transport Police said: I am pleased that these dangerous men have been taken off the streets. They fought with knives in broad daylight at a busy tram stop with no regard for the safety of those innocent members of the public in the area. Thankfully violent crime like this is rare on the transport network and I would like to reassure the public we are continuing to work hard to ensure that stays the case. Neither Nzita-Seke or Williams have shown any remorse for their actions. They have been given lengthy sentences and I hope they will use their time behind bars to reflect on the seriousness of their actions. A 57-year-old woman has died after she was hit by a rubbish truck in north west London this morning. The pedestrian was hit by the vehicle in Abbey Road, Park Royal, at about 8.45am and died from extensive head injuries at the scene, despite frantic attempts to save her by an ambulance crew. One woman who saw the aftermath of the crash said she saw a body lying between a skip lorry and another vehicle. She said: "It was quite gruesome, but basically I saw a body lying between two lorries. "By the time I saw it, it had been cordoned off." She added: "There are lorries around on this road, it's quite a busy industrial area." Following the crash, which happened at the junction with Eldon Way, the driver of the lorry stopped but has not been arrested, police say. A spokesman for the Met Police said the woman's next of kin had been informed, but she has not yet been formally identified. Detectives from the Collision Investigation Unit based in Alperton are appealing for witnesses to the accident. Anyone who saw what happened can call police on 020 8991 9555. M ore than 125,000 people have been warned their operations and appointments are to be cancelled due to the latest strike action by junior doctors. NHS England said 112,856 outpatient appointments and 12,711 planned operations are set to be postponed as medics start two days of walkouts from 8am tomorrow. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt called for last-ditch talks with the British Medical Association today in an effort to avert the strike. Thousands of junior doctors are set to go on strike from 8am to 5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is the first time a strike by junior doctors will affect emergency care. In a letter to BMA chairman Mark Porter, Mr Hunt said: The extreme action planned will be deeply worrying for patients and place enormous additional strain on our NHS at a time of intense pressure. "I therefore appeal to you one final time to call off strike action that will see doctors withdraw potentially life-saving care, and to meet with me on Monday to discuss a better way forward." The BMA said it would call off the strike action if Mr Hunt dropped plans to impose a new contract on junior doctors. But Mr Hunt said it was impossible to meet the demand without creating unacceptable disruption for the NHS. Mr Porter reiterated calls on Sunday for Mr Hunt to withdraw the imposed contract. He said: For the sake of clarity, we must, once again, reject your assertion that the only outstanding issue in dispute relates to Saturday pay. "Your own letter recognises a number of critical issues concerning work-life balance, excessive working hours, improvements in training and crucially, workforce and funding implications for seven day services. The proposed contract is deficient in failing to address these issues properly, hence our concerns for patient care, the long-term future of the NHS and the recruitment and retention of doctors. A group of cross-party MPs urged Mr Hunt on Sunday to test the contract in a few trusts instead of across England in a bid to avert the strike. However, the Health Secretary dismissed the suggestion, branding it as political opportunism. I ron Man star Robert Downey Jr gave young patients a dose of Hollywood on a visit to Great Ormond Street Hospital. The actor dropped by the central London paediatric centre's cancer ward ahead of the European premiere of Captain America: Civil War in London on Tuesday. He spent Monday afternoon visiting patients and their families including seven-year-old Ethan Miller, who suffers from the rare blood disease ITP as well as type 1 diabetes. His father Lee said: "Ethan has been in and out of hospital a lot in the past three years. He watches the films all the time and virtually lives in his Iron Man costume. Star visit: Downey Jr also met seven-year-old Michael, from Edmonton "Ethan was over the moon to meet his hero and it has really helped to lift his spirits." The actor holds one-year-old Charlie Dawson, from Essex, during his visit to a cancer ward The two posed together in the hospital chapel, with Ethan wearing his Iron Man costume. Downey has played Tony Stark - otherwise known as Iron Man - since 2008. Great Ormond Street is one of the world's leading children's units, treating young patients with rare, complex and life-threatening conditions. The visit was organised by Disney officials, who have worked with the hospital's charity since 2008, raising more than 10 million for the unit's redevelopment. Give to Gosh reaches 3 million pounds The Evening Standard recently helped to raise more than 3.5 million for the hospital as part of its Give to GOSH appeal which ended in February. Additional reporting by PA P olice chiefs are investigating counter measures amid the threat posed by drones straying ito restricted London air space. It comes as Met officers probe what was believed to be Britains first unmanned aerial vehicle strike against a plane, which was on a landing approach to Heathrow airport. Scotland Yard said an object believed to be a drone hit the front of a British Airways Airbus A320 last Sunday lunchtime above Richmond Park. There were 132 passengers and five crew on board the flight approaching from Geneva, which was at 1,700ft - the legal maximum height for UK drones is 400ft. All you need to know to fly a drone BA said the plane landed safely and was cleared by engineers for its next flight. Transport minister Robert Goodwill played down the incident, telling Parliament on Thursday it could have been a plastic bag, but Scotland Yard told the Standard on Friday that officers still believed the object was a drone. Last year, remote controlled drones had near misses at Heathrow, City, Gatwick and Stansted. Heathrow refused requests for an interview on its anti-drone measures, referring enquiries to the police. Asked about how it was securing Londons skies, the National Police Chiefs Council would not reveal specific details about counter measures being tested, only they were working with partners to better understand the threat posed by drones and to develop an appropriate technical response. "Trying to work out what a standard test for a drone strike is going to be more challenging" The Government has already undertaken trials of counter-UAV systems, including one using military-grade technology deployed in Afghanistan that downs unmanned aerial vehicles with a death ray jamming its radio signals. The Anti-UAV Defence System is collaboration between three British companies, costs under a million pounds and participated in government counter-drone tech trials last summer. It tracks heat from a drones battery pack, zooms in using a powerful camera and can down it by blocking the signal from up to six miles away, before tracing the owner. Mark Radford, chief executive of one of the trio of firms, Blighter Surveillance Systems, said: It allows us effectively to take control of that drone to control whether we force a crash landing or return it home to the take off site so the police or security forces can intercept the operator. One of the scenarios is use at airports and in urban areas. Hunting eagles and net-firing bazookas have even been mooted as possible solutions for knocking out rogue UAVs. Drone manufacturer DJI has developed geo-fencing software that blocks its UAVs from buzzing into sensitive airspace, such as airports and prisons. Sussex Police, which runs Gatwick airports security, have their own squadron of Aeryon SkyRanger quadcopters that fly up to 400ft high. Inspector Mark Callaghan, drones spokesman for Sussex Police, said their UAVs help support aviation security around the airport confines, assisting patrols to secure the perimeter, but do not knock out drones straying into Gatwicks airspace. Plane manufacturers are also being challenged to calculate what will happen if a drone is sucked into a jet engine because of the evolving shapes and weights of UAVs, a leading aerospace engineer said. Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said: Civil aircraft are tested for bird strikes, they have a requirement that when a certain sized bird, if ingested into engines or the bird hit the air frame, its not catastrophic. The problem is trying to work out what a standard test for a drone strike is going to be more challenging. He added: Already some drone manufacturers instal geo-fencing, a software programme using its GPS navigation system which says basically says you cant fly in restricted areas. Even if the person tried to fly there the thing wouldnt take off or would bounce back off the imaginary wall. A police officer was today hailed a hero after leaping into a canal to rescue an unconscious man lying face down in the water. PC Nick Azzopardi was on a patrol near Camden Lock when he dived into the Grand Union Canal before dragging the man to safety. The officer, based in Kentish Town, was told the man had fallen in to the stretch of canal popular with tourists and drinkers at 6.30pm yesterday. He pulled the victim, aged in his 20s, to the side where he could be helped out on to the towpath. The man is believed to have suffered a seizure before falling into the canal but police said he is now expected to make a full recovery in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. PC Azzopardi was also rushed to hospital by ambulance where he is being treated for hypothermia with his family by his bedside. Inspector Matt Casey of Camden Police said: PC Azzopardi showed courage and bravery to deal with this incident in a decisive manner - behaviour we expect from Met officers. If it wasnt for his quick actions, this incident could have had much more serious consequences. This once again highlights the dangers police officers face on a daily basis as they carry out their duties. L ondon was today accused of falling far short in its efforts to help Syrian refugees as it emerged that only 43 have been resettled in the capital under an official scheme. Government figures show that 1,337 refugees have been given a new home in Britain under a Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement scheme since it was set up in early 2014. But statistics obtained by the charity Citizens UK show that only 43 just over three per cent have been resettled in London. Only four of the capitals boroughs have taken part in the scheme so far. The charity today warned that the capitals performance was disappointing and said that the low number failed to reflect the publics desire to help. George Gabriel, of Citizens UK, said: Its clear that there are serious challenges to resettling refugees in London, but the idea that one of the worlds greatest cities is going to play next to no role in responding to the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War is clearly unacceptable. Todays figures, obtained by the charity via the Freedom of Information Act, show that Camden has taken 24 refugees under the resettlement scheme while Islington has given homes to 10. Barnet, with six refugees, and Kingston, which has received three, are the others which have participated so far. Lambeth and Ealing have both agreed to take part, but have yet to resettle any refugees. Mr Gabriel said his charity believed each borough should take at least 10 refugee families a year and that City Hall should appoint a new deputy mayor for integration and citizenship to ensure the capital played its part. Peter Hill, Bishop of Barking, backed the call, adding: Londoners want to respond to this historic crisis. Ministers originally predicted that several hundred Syrians would be resettled under the scheme over three years. But David Cameron announced a major expansion last September, pledging to raise the number of refugees helped to 20,000. Boroughs which have confirmed via the Freedom of Information Act that they have not taken any refugees so far include Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Haringey. Other boroughs failed to reply but the charity says that information from the 15 refugee welcome groups set up in the capital to assist Syrians have confirmed that no other local authority, apart from Camden, Islington, Barnet and Kingston, has accepted anyone under the resettlement scheme. Citizens UK calculates that London should take 2,600 of the 20,000 refugees due to be resettled in this country over the next five years. The Home Office said the scheme was voluntary and that individual councils were responsible for deciding how many refugees could be resettled in each area. T he V&A has come under fire for banning sketching in some areas of the museum. The decision was made to ban artists and their sketchbooks due to "loan restrictions" on some of its most popular temporary exhibitions. Signs warn visitors there is to be "no photography or sketching" at the entrance to museum's latest exhibition Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, which charts the history of undergarments from the 18th century to the present day. However, the move has not gone down well amongst art fans. On Twitter, Susanna Round wrote: "This is shocking. Drawing is an essential mode of looking. @v_and_a should support this engagement, even if its inconvenient." While Rachel Barbaresi said: "This is so surprising and disappointing.". And Rob Fiehn posted: "Is this a late April Fools? How has any artist learnt from past other than through study and facsimile?" Stuart Petch added: "Is that a joke? an art piece? Ban sketching? Surely not? Losing their way if art can't be engaged with." The V&A has previously banned sketching in its exhibitions to ease crowd control, including the blockbusting 2013 David Bowie temporary exhibition. The museum still allows sketching in all of its permanent collections. Emmajane Avery, Director of Learning and Visitor Experience at the V&A said: "The V&A has always actively encouraged sketching, and always will, and it is one of the great joys of visiting the museum to stumble across people drawing objects from the collection in our seven miles of permanent galleries. "We also allow sketching in temporary exhibitions where loan conditions allow - as was the case in Constable and Fabric of India, and is the case now in the current Paul Strand show. "On occasion, lender restrictions mean sketching is not permitted, but we do what we can to keep this to a minimum." T he organiser of Wireless today hit back at killjoys who have launched a legal bid to block this summers festival. Melvin Benn accused campaigners of hijacking problems that marred last summers festival which saw hundreds of gatecrashers storm the perimeter fence to call for a blanket ban on large-scale events in Finsbury Park. The Friends of Finsbury Park have raised more than 8,000 to fund a High Court challenge to Julys three-day urban music bash, with acts including Calvin Harris, Kygo, Chase and Status, Jess Glynne, and Lady Leshurr. They claim the festival, which attracts 50,000 revellers a day, has grown too big and leads to a third of the park being fenced off for three weeks at the height of summer. The campaigners are seeking a court date for a judicial review before Wireless starts, or will apply for an injunction to stop it going ahead if a court date cannot be set in advance. Wireless festival mob Mr Benn, chief executive of organiser Festival Republic, said: This is one of the capitals biggest cultural events which helps make London the greatest city on Earth. "For an unelected group to try and stop it is hugely disappointing. They are trying to hijack the negative publicity from last years event to push through legal action for their own agenda which would lead to no festivals ever being allowed in the park. TODO: define component type apester The campaigners will not be successful. "They should save their money and work with us to ensure we put on the best possible festival we can for everyone this year. David Lammy has described the impact of the festival on the park as 'heartbreaking' / Friends of Finsbury Park Mr Benn, who has previously run Glastonbury, Reading and Latitude, announced plans to increase security at this weeks Finsbury Park event which he admitted was inadequate last year. Former police superintendents with experience of dealing with demonstrations will manage security teams around the perimeter. Last year the fence was targeted after ticketless visitors saw it was understaffed. Footage emerged of a crowd of gatecrashers storming in while a lone police officer tried to hold them off. At least eight people were arrested over the course of the weekend. Tom Palin, chairman of Friends of Finsbury Park and a former music producer who worked with the Spice Girls, said: The security improvements do not make a difference. Last years Wireless attracted crowds too big for the park, causing massive disruption, damage, noise and anti-social behaviour in surrounding streets. Stars like Rihanna have performed at the festival in previous years / Rex "We are not against the festival, just the size and scale, which we say is unlawful. We are not trying to stop people having fun, just to limit the size of a festival that wrecks the park for everyone else at its most popular time of the year. Haringey council argues events such as Wireless helped pay for 400,000 of improvements to parks last year. A spokesman said the unacceptable scenes last year involved a minority of festival goers and the council was working closely with local people, police and organisers to ensure Wireless takes place safely". G eorge Osborne today faced a growing public family revolt over Britain remaining in the EU. His aunt, Jennifer Little, spoke out in favour of Brexit just days after his uncle, James Osborne, called for Britain to quit the union. Jennifers husband Antony, who founded the Osborne & Little wallpaper company with the Chancellors father, Sir Peter Osborne, in the Sixties, also urged Britain to vote Leave. Speaking to the Standard, Mrs Little said: My husband and I are very fond of George but we totally disagree with him on Brexit. She bluntly dismissed one of the central claims in the Governments 14-page booklet on why Britain should remain in the EU that if it quits, food prices could rise. Its ludicrous. I dont believe it, she said of the statement. The pamphlet, which was sent to 26 million households and cost the Treasury more than 9 million, also argues we control our own borders in Britain. It highlights David Camerons deal to restrict immigration by making the benefits system less of a draw for EU citizens. Warning: George Osborne's aunt says she disagrees with him on Brexit / PA But Mrs Little, 77, rejected this, saying: No, we dont have control of our borders and the level of migration is definitely way too high. While the Chancellors aunt is very enthusiastic towards him, she also has a soft spot for the Mayor of London. I love Boris, she said. Today, with the Leave campaign knocked onto the backfoot by Barack Obamas intervention in the debate: Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith defended Mr Johnson after he described Mr Obama as part-Kenyan, though he admitted the Mayors comment may have been clumsy. Mr Johnson accused the Prime Minister of achieving two thirds of diddly squat in talks with Brussels for a deal. Justice Secretary Michael Gove said the UK faces a migration free for all, with countries including Turkey seeking to join the EU. Mrs Little, who lives with her husband in Chelsea, spoke out after her brother James, 70, who used to run Aspinalls casino in Mayfair, told the Standard last week he believed he was the only member of the family backing Brexit. Antony Little, 73, added: No matter the struggle. We are better off being free. A source close to the Chancellor said he was very fond of Jennifer and Antony. But as in many families, they dont agree on politics, he added. George simply doesnt think he [Mr Little] is right that the huge economic costs for working families a 4,300 hit to national wealth for every household is a price worth paying. T he bustle of an East End market in a Labour stronghold might not be the first place you would expect to find Green voters. Touring Queens Market near West Hams stadium, however, mayoral candidate Sian Berry found plenty of dissent among traders furious at damp-riddled ceilings, crippling council rent rises and poor cleaning. She joined Green London Assembly candidates in Newham, a Labour stronghold and one of Londons most culturally diverse boroughs, to launch manifesto policies aimed at black and minority ethnic Londoners. Ms Berry, a Camden councillor fighting her second mayoral election, is upbeat despite the chill and a YouGov survey for the Standard last week that put the Greens at six per cent of first-choice votes, one point behind Ukip. Looking for support: with Irfan Abbas and Esther Obiri-Darko, Green candidate for Wandsworth and Merton / Lucy Young She said: I enjoy campaigning. One of the things about Zac [Goldsmith] is I think he doesnt look like hes enjoying this he looks like, Can this be over, please? Ms Berry tells traders on Saturday afternoon she is pledging more support for small businesses run by Londoners from ethnic minorities, including a less prejudiced public bank. She also wants 40 per cent of Met police from culturally diverse backgrounds. A number of traders at Queens Market, which began in 1904, have been hit with rent rises of up to 50 per cent. At Nazia Mumtazs family-run textiles kiosk, she points to patches of damp on the ceiling. Ms Mumtaz, a 30-year-old photographer, helps with the business established 12 years ago by her Pakistan-born parents. She said: Its lovely to be here, theres a lot of nationalities, but lovely wont make us money. The problem is this markets dying slowly and surely. It reeks, theres damp coming through the ceiling, its run down, the footfall has shrunk to 25 per cent, but the council want a rent review. In the market for votes: with deputy leader of the Green Party Shahrar Ali / Lucy Young Ms Berry tells Ms Mumtaz: What we dont want is for it to be regenerated and redeveloped into the flats and shops you see on the high street. Fruit seller Eddie Stockwell, a 35-year market veteran, said: Weve always been a multicultural market, we all get on fine, thats not an issue. The problem is (the council) dont put enough effort into our market. If you go to Stratford, see what facilities theyve got because the spotlight is on the Olympic Park. Ms Berry urges Mr Stockwell, 60, to give us a look but he replies: I just aint got a lot of faith in any of them. Ramiz Sajid is discussing the election with his world food shop staff Irfan Abbas, 34, and Adnan Akram, 35. Mr Sajid, 20, said: Sadiq Khans been here a couple of times. They all sound good before the election, then once people have voted, its a different story, no one seems to listen they seem to change once theyve been elected. B ristol residents are complaining of a strong stench of vinegar in the streets due to a scheme to use the chip shop favourite as weed killer. The council is using vinegar in a year-long trial in Cotham to eliminate unwanted plants as an alternative to the chemical glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer. But environmental campaigners say the condiment will do little to stop weeds from sprouting across the city, while residents now also have to deal with a potent pong. The Pesticide Safe Bristol Alliance (PSBA) described the use of vinegar as a bizarre choice with safer, modern alternatives available to kill weeds. Harriet Williams, from PSBA, said: "The only true trial involved here will be that endured by local residents, as they face a year of weeds growing upon streets and pavements, and the smell of vinegar in unexpected places." Gillian Douglas, from Bristol City Council, said: "This trial of Glyphosate-free weed treatments is still in its early stages, having been implemented in response to widespread public concern about the use of Glyphosate as a weed killer. "We are sorry to hear that some residents are concerned about the use of vinegar and we will monitor feedback throughout the trial." Earlier this month MEPs voted for a ban on glyphosate being used by the public. A daredevil scientist who dives with sharks is to collect an award from the Queen for his firms pioneering work developing life-saving treatments. Molecular biologist Yen Choo, 45, invented a technique to turn stem cells into replacement human cells to treat 70 different diseases, including many cancers and diabetes. His experiments expose umbilical cord cells to more than ten thousand combinations of drugs at once to find ways of regenerating human tissues. Biotech firm Plasticell, which he founded in 2002, was recognised by the Queen as one of Britains brightest businesses on her 90th birthday. In July, Dr Choo, of Chelsea, will receive the 2016 Queens Award for Enterprise in Innovation at Buckingham Palace. Now in their 50th year, the awards recognise businesses that excel in exporting, social or environmental good works, or innovation. When not in the lab, Cambridge graduate Dr Choo enjoys diving with sharks. He said: Having a cage between you and the shark is kind of cheating, so I have done it without cages in South Africa, the Caribbean, the Red Sea and Malaysia. There are no safety measures. You just get in the strong currents they like and the big ones have a good look at you but are quite relaxed and respectful. In some ways it is similar to science. What you are doing is just observing and I spend a lot of time at work looking at cells and molecules. "And both swimming with sharks and starting a biotech company require an appetite for risk as there are so many ways that a firm can fail on the science and finance fronts. Dr Choo, who is half Greek and half Singaporean, said he was delighted that Plasticell, which employs 14 people, is being honoured. In all, 249 business received awards, 92 of them for innovation. T he narrow streets of Nepals capital, Kathmandu, are once again bustling with tourists this spring. Trekkers and climbers are thronging to the country to explore the spell-binding peaks of the Himalayas. Tourist district shops are hives of activity, and visitors are greeted with the warmth and hospitality for which Nepal is rightly renowned. It is a far cry from the scenes of devastation which followed the earthquake that hit the country on this day last year, killing almost 9,000 people. Roland Hunter, managing director of Tooting-based trekking firm The Mountain Company, puts on dozens of trips to the Himalayas every year. He said: The streets of Kathmandu are again thronged with travellers, trekkers and mountaineers tourism has bounced back strongly. Locals, too, are optimistic about the countrys tourist industry now that a four-month trade blockade imposed by India has been lifted. Ali Jamil, a 50-year-old shopkeeper from Kathmandu, said: Tourists are coming from everywhere; from London, the USA all over the world. We lost everything but Kathmandu is back, and people will keep coming back. Although there are reminders in Kathmandu of the devastation caused by last years earthquake, trekking areas appear largely unaffected. TODO: define component type brightcove Pasang Appa Sherpa, who runs a lodge in the Everest region, said: Tourists come here to see Mount Everest, and return for the people. "The futures very bright. The Nepalese are now united in their wishes for the future. First, they hope for a stable government in place of the ineffective coalition which struggles to run the country. Second and most importantly for Nepals immediate future they want tourists to continue to enjoy its cities and the Himalayan peaks where communities so heavily rely on seasonal hikers and climbers. Robin de Peyer was visiting Nepal courtesy of trekking firm The Mountain Company and Jet Airways. D onald Trumps presidential rivals have revealed that they are ganging up on the billionaire to stop him becoming the Republican candidate. In two co-ordinated statements, Ted Cruz and John Kasich said they would work tactically together in elections for the good of the party. Mr Cruz, a Texas senator, will focus all of his resources in Indiana while Mr Kasich, the governor of Ohio, will pile into Oregon and New Mexico. The unlikely alliance is an acknowledgement that the only way they can stop Mr Trump is by plotting against him. The frontrunners response came swiftly when he wrote on Twitter: Wow, just announced that Lyin Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! Mr Trump now has 845 of the delegates who choose the Republican presidential nominee, Mr Cruz has 559 and Mr Kasich has 148. A candidate must have 1,237 delegates by the time the Republican National Convention is held in July to automatically win the nomination. Should nobody have that number there would be a complicated series of votes in which delegates can back a candidate other than their first-round choice. Mr Cruz and Mr Kasich feel that if this were to happen they could talk delegates around to voting for them instead of Mr Trump. Five states Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut will hold their primaries tomorrow and Mr Trump is expected to win comfortably, but his rivals are looking ahead to Indiana in particular, which is a winner-takes-all state. Last night Mr Cruzs campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement: To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead. Shortly afterwards John Weaver, a strategist for Mr Kasich, put out a statement which said: Keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaigns resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana. Mr Trumps insurgent campaign has rocked the Republican party thanks to his controversial comments on immigration, women and attacks on other countries. It has also spawned a Never Trump movement among moderate Republicans who are determined to deny him the nomination. Both Mr Trump and Mr Cruz were dealt a blow after one of the Republican partys biggest donors said Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton might make a better US president than either of them. In an interview with ABC News, billionaire Charles Koch described policies put forward by them as reminiscent of Nazi Germany, monstrous and frightening. Mr Koch was talking about Mr Trumps proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the US and to create a register, and Mr Cruzs promise to carpet bomb areas of the Middle East controlled by Islamic State. W ith populations of African elephants declining alarmingly in many areas because of poaching, habitat loss and conflict with expanding human populations, Botswana has become one of Africas most important sanctuaries in the battle to conserve the species. The country harbours the worlds largest elephant population, representing about 40 per cent of all those left in Africa. The future conservation of savanna elephants will largely depend upon how they fare in their remaining strongholds. The people of Botswana recognise they are custodians of an important global heritage. The decision to destroy ivory stockpiles aims to deter consumer demand, the illegal trade in tusks and elephant poaching. Its effectiveness is a matter for each country to determine for itself. Since 1989, some African countries have destroyed about 150 tonnes of ivory, with 25 destruction events in 17 countries. Despite this, 20,000 elephants a year are still being killed annually. In Botswana, we do not destroy ivory because we have told communities that there is value in conserving elephants for eco-tourism and emphasising that the value of a live elephant should be upheld at all costs. Burning ivory would demonstrate to them that the animal has no value. We prefer not to burn elephant tusks or rhino horns or any other wildlife product which can be used to show to the wider world the value of nature and the importance of conservation. Botswana is looking at new ways to preserve our commitment to elephants and our people. In 2014 we unveiled a unique elephant sculpture made of ivory in the arrivals hall at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport. It serves as a reminder to people who pass through this building each day that conservation of this iconic species is our collective responsibility. Complemented with a conservation awareness message, we are saying that one live elephant is worth so much more than all the art made of ivory. The statue is a lasting memorial to raise local, national and global awareness of the devastating impact of illegal ivory and the determination of Botswana and the global community to put an end to it. No one profited from this contraband. We intend to deliver this conservation message in a similar manner with other ivory, using the products from animals that have died naturally or were slaughtered by poachers. It is critical that we develop strong symbolic messages and increase efforts to save elephants on all levels starting locally, with the communities that co-exist with the creatures, and continuing globally, with the countries where demand for ivory is highest. Botswanas accomplishment stems from political will brought about through transparency, coupled with successful programmes within communities, zero tolerance towards poaching and sustainable management of the countrys natural resources. Being custodians of globally endangered species comes with tremendous responsibility. It also requires budgetary empowerment to deploy even more sophisticated and innovative methods and equipment than those used by poachers. Its success needs to be supported by donor organisations and states. Botswana will go to the Giants Club Summit in Nanyuki, Kenya, this month to represent its commitment to finding solutions that ensure the longevity and sustainability of Africas wild elephant population. For us, burning an elephants tusks is like putting the final nail in the coffin of a once magnificent animal. We believe we should preserve and protect whatever remains of these creatures as a reminder of how mankinds greed leads to the extinction of our planets flora and fauna. We cannot burn the shame associated with this and hope it will disappear in smoke therefore we will not attend the ivory burn event that will follow the summit. @SpaceForGiants T he forthcoming Absolutely Fabulous movie will feature a host of famous faces, it has been confirmed. Producers have officially announced a list of 60 stars set to make a cameo in the eagerly-anticipated new film. While the likes of Kate Moss and Emma Bunton had previously been spotted shooting scenes, they have now been officially added to the cast list. Squeezing in appearances from A-listers to reality stars, the roll-call of celebrities includes Joan Collins, Lara Stone, Rylan Clark, Jerry Hall and Jamie Laing. TODO: define component type brightcove A number of British musicians including Tinie Tempah, Ella Eyre and Foxes will also pop up in the feature film. Other stars include Perez Hilton, Suki Waterhouse, Sadie Frost and Jean Paul Gaultier. Much-loved characters Patsy and Eddie, played by Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, are reuniting for the first ever big screen version of the BBC sitcom. The hotly anticipated film adaptation has been a long time in the pipeline. It will follow the Champagne swilling duo as they flee to the French Riviera after being blamed for a "major incident at an uber fashionable launch party". Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie will be released in cinemas on July 1. M ichaela Coel, creator of series Chewing Gum, has urged more women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds to get behind the camera as she was named breakthrough talent of 2016 by Bafta. The writer and actress, 29, was honoured for her acclaimed show about life on a London estate, in which she plays Tracey Gordon. It was adapted from her one-woman play, Chewing Gum Dreams. Coel, who grew up on estates in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, has also written for the National Theatre and the Royal Court. Collecting the breakthrough talent honour at last nights Bafta Television Craft Awards, she said: I guess Id probably take this time to urge anyone from an ethnic minority background, women, people deemed as otherwise disabled, to get behind the camera, not just in front of it. To start writing the stories if you want them to be told. Best TV dramas 2016 1 /38 Best TV dramas 2016 The Missing The addictive and twisty second series of the BBC's crime anthology series BBC/New Pictures/Robert Viglasky Dark Angel Joanne Froggatt stared as Victorian mass murderer Mary Ann Cotton in this ITV drama ITV Close to the Enemy Stephen Poliakoff's post-war drama thriller BBC/Little Island Pictures Ordinary Lies The BBC anthology drama returns with more twisted tales BBC/Red Productions/Adrian Rogers The Night Of Riz Ahmed stars in HBO's critically acclaimed crime mini-series HBO Cold Feet The classic ITV comedy-drama returns - and it's just as good as it ever was ITV Victoria ITV have given Poldark some stiff competition with this period drama about a young Queen Victoria ITV Poldark The BBC's hit drama returns with more brooding, and less naked scything BBC/Robert Viglasky One of Us The BBC kept everyone guessing with this claustrophobic four-part whodunit Ripper Street The fan-favourite Victorian police drama returned for Series 4 BBC/Tiger Aspect 2016/Bernard Walsh The Secret Agent Toby Jones led the cast in the BBC's Joseph Conrad adaptation BBC/World Productions/Mark Mainz/Matt Burlem The Living and the Dead The BBC's gothic romance debuted in full on iPlayer BBC Preacher AMC's adaptation of Garth Ennis' cult comic book is available week-by-week on Amazon Prime Amazon / AMC Versailles A raunchy royal romp around the court of King Louis XIV, spicing up Wednesdays on BBC Two Canal +/ BBC Locked Up The Spanish prison drama came to the UK thanks to Channel 4's Walter Presents series Channel 4 / Global Series Peaky Blinders The Birmingham-set gangster thriller was more popular than ever in its third series BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd/Tiger Aspect/Robert Viglasky The A Word The BBC gave us a nuanced and emotional take on autism BBC/Fifty Fathoms Marcella Anna Friel stars in ITV's British take on the Scandi-noir thriller ITV Grantchester James Norton is back as the crime-solving vicar ITV / Lovely Day Stag The comedy-thriller from the team behind The Wrong Mans is both hilarious and chilling BBC/Des Willie/Hal Shinnie/Matt Burlem Vinyl Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger present a glossy drama about the Seventies music industry HBO American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson Cuba Gooding Jr leads an all-star cast in a dramatic re-telling of the 'trial of century' BBC/Fox Happy Valley Sarah Lancashire returned as Sgt Catherine Cawood for a second series of the gritty crime thriller BBC/Red Productions/Ben Blackall The X Files Mulder and Scully return for a brand new set of mysteries War and Peace The BBC's epic adaptation of the Russian literary classic BBC/Mitch Jenkins Call the Midwife The BBC period drama moved into the Sixties for Series 5 BBC/Neal Street Productions/Sophie Mutevelian Dickensian Charles Dickens' most famous characters collide in this historical soap BBC Jericho ITV's British western set in the wilds of Yorkshire Silent Witness The hugely popular detective drama returns for a 19th series In an interview with the Standard, she said of Chewing Gum: I dont write with this thing in the back of my head about carrying the weight of young black women on my shoulders. Black isnt something I became after a car crash that Ive been dealing with ever since. Id like the colour of my skin to not be a factor in my life at all. Director Shane Meadows was also honoured, for his Channel 4 series This Is England. Collecting his prize at the ceremony, held at The Brewery in the City, he said: When I first started I was an egomaniac. I thought I was really special and I couldnt do any wrong. And I made a really bad film at one stage and I realised that without the support of the incredible teams that were behind me costume, make-up, set design, editing I realised during the course of making This Is England that having an incredible team is what changes a film or TV series from being working to being a summer holiday. The Bafta Television Craft Awards honour those working behind the cameras. The main TV awards are due to take place on May 8. T om Hanks caused a stir on the South Bank as he arrived for the premiere of new film Hologram For The King. The A-lister certainly brightened up a dreary Monday for passers-by as he headed down to the BFI Southbank for the screening of his latest film. Looking as cheerful as ever, despite the wet weather, the Oscar-winning star spent time chatting to fans who had been waiting to catch a glimpse of him. Hanks was joined on the red carpet by co-stars Sarita Choudhury, Megan Maczko and Sidse Babett Knudsen, who had been promoting the film in Berlin on Sunday. Meet and greet: Tom Hanks chats to fans / Dave Benett The US star also chatted to friend Mariella Frostrup on the red carpet as she arrived at the screening. Tom Hanks at Hologram for The King premiere in London In the new film, directed by Tom Tykwer and based on the novel by Dave Eggers, Hanks plays a failed businessman who travels to Saudi Aradia in a bid to recoup his losses. A Hologram For The King - Trailer The light-hearted drama follows Hanks character as he pitches an idea to a wealthy monarch. Speaking about working with Hanks, Eggers recently said: Tom is such an earnest, hard-working guy, you just want to trust him. He saw a movie with more potential for hope and sweetness it comes from his very optimistic view of life. I n just over a week, Londoners will have their say on who the capitals next mayor will be and theres a lot to consider. Here to help is London Live with daily politics show London Votes going through the ins and outs of the parties, the policies, and possibilities that the election provides. On Monday April 25, host Daisy McAndrew is welcoming one of the key candidates into the studio for a grilling over his plans: Zac Goldsmith. The Conservative politician is hoping hell win voters around, but McAndrew has some tough questions in store including asking him about the fact that just a few years ago he said running for mayor would be a suicide mission. Can he explain how things have changed for him in the intervening time, and what his plans for London would be if he were to be elected? Also due to be discussed in the latest episode is an issue that affects every Londoner the housing crisis. London Votes wil take a look at the different candidates plans to tackle the thorny issue, and ask where much-needed affordable housing could be built in the city. Zac Goldsmith mayoral policies explained Stay tuned to keep yourself as informed as possible ahead of the big day. London Live, 6pm Lincoln Childrens Zoo officials say they are investigating how a 2-year-old girl was bitten Sunday by a large cat-like animal at the zoo. Zoo spokesman Ryan Gross said the child was bitten by a fossa, a cat-like mammal considered a top predator in Madagascar. It is comparable to a medium-sized dog. A Lincoln rescue squad was dispatched to the zoo around 3:30 p.m. and the child was taken to a hospital. We are not aware of the extent of the injury (to the girl), only that the parent chose to have the ambulance come to the zoo rather than driving to the hospital, he said. The fossas medical records and immunizations were all up to date, Gross said. We sent all information to the hospital for them to evaluate what needed to be done. Gross said the zoos lone fossa did not escape from its habitat and the child was not inside the habitat when bitten. He said the girls mother spoke to zoo officials briefly after the injury occurred. The mother indicated that she and her daughter may have entered an area they were not supposed to, Gross said. After the girl was bitten, Gross said, we secured the animal inside and are investigating if any further safety precautions are necessary. The zoo, situated near South 27th and A Streets, did not shut down Sunday. Gross said it was operating as normal Monday. The zoo may release more information about the incident after officials complete the investigation. The seven-acre zoo has more than 400 animals. The Childrens Zoo website says the fossa may look like a cat, but is related to the mongoose. Fossas eat lemurs, lizards, birds and rodents. It is the only carnivore whose diet consists mainly of primates. Fossas can climb up and down trees head first using semi-retractable claws. This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. 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Total investment for the furnace, which is set to help the plant produce next-generation steel products, is 49 million. Monday, 25 April 2016 23:08:20 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Argentinian crude steel production in March declined 26.1 percent, year-on-year, and 6.2 percent, month-on-month, to 317,700 mt, according to data released on Monday by the nations steel chamber, CAA. According to CAA, Argentina s crude steel output in Q1 totaled 986,000 mt, 17.3 percent down, year-on-year. The local steel association said hot rolled finished steel production in March diminished 6.9 percent, year-on-year, but rose 58.3 percent, month-on-month, totaling 368,600 mt. As for Q1, hot rolled finished steel output fell 15.1 percent, year-on-year, to 939,300 mt. Argentina s cold rolled flat steel production in the third month of the year declined 7.1 percent, year-on-year, but rose 8.6 percent, month-on-month, reaching 125,300 mt. Accumulated cold rolled flat steel output in Q1 totaled 362,700 mt, 7.1 percent up, year-on-year. CAA said the local steel industry faces a complex scenario in the short term, which doesnt show signs of improvement. In the financial year 2020-21, Australia s earnings from resources and energy exports are forecast to reach $208 billion, with a year-on-year increase of three percent predicted for each year up to FY 2010-21, while the value of Australia s iron ore exports is forecast to reach $72 billion in FY 2020-21, with a year-on-year increase of 4.4 percent foreseen for each intervening year, according to a report by the Australian Government Department of Industry and Science. On the other hand, the Australian Government Department of Industry and Science said that in early 2016 iron ore prices briefly rebounded to $61/mt, but, because of the increasing global supply coupled with lower demand from Chinas steel sector, the Australian governments iron ore price is forecast to decrease to an average of $45/mt by the end of 2016. At current prices, a number of high-cost producers - mostly outside of Australia - are making large losses on each metric ton of iron ore produced. A sustained period of lower prices over the projection period is expected to result in the closure of high-cost capacity as the financial losses of these companies begin to accumulate. Monday, 25 April 2016 23:09:14 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo The Chilean government has applied a definite, ad-valorem safeguarding duty of 38.9 percent over the imports of wire rod , following a recent recommendation of the nations price distortion commission, CNDP. The decision, which was published Friday at the nations official gazette, Diario Oficial, exempt the duty for wire rod imports coming from Canada, Mexico and Peru, as these countries dont have a representative share in Chile s total wire rod imports. CHQ wire rod imports are excluded from the decision as well, the Chilean government said. The products subject to the definite 38.9 percent ad-valorem tariff currently fall under the following Customs Tariff Statistics Position Numbers: 7213.2000, 7213.9110, 7213.9120, 7213.9190, 7227.1000, 7227.2000 and 7227.9000. Monday, 25 April 2016 17:59:27 (GMT+3) | Istanbul The Turkish Steel Exporters Association (CIB) has stated that, during a meeting on the global steel industry and its effects on the US steel sector held by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) on April 12-13, US steel producers stated their complaints about the global overcapacity caused by China and its impact on the domestic steel industry, while they also made complaints against Turkey . Commenting on the accusations that Turkish producers receive subsidies from their government and that Turkey also has an overcapacity issue, CIB chairman Namk Ekinci stressed that the Turkish steel industry is growing with its own capital and does not receives subsidies. Mr. Ekinci also criticized the statements that the excess capacity in Turkey , South Korea and India threatens the US steel industry by saying that it may be true for South Korea and India, whereas, due to challenging conditions in the global steel industry, Turkey has reduced its steel production. Mr. Ekinci also emphasized that Turkey s steel consumption is higher than its steel production. In the first three months of the current year, Georgia 's total external trade turnover with Turkey, which is the top trading partner of the country, amounted to $341.8 million, including exports worth $49.9 million, up 22.6 percent, and imports worth $291.8 million, decreasing nine percent, both on year-on-year basis, according to the data provided by the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat). Monday, 25 April 2016 16:29:59 (GMT+3) | Istanbul According to the data released by the Japan Ship Exporters' Association (JSEA), Japanese new ship export orders in March increased by 100.13 percent on tonnage basis compared to February, rising to 11 ships, up from seven ships recorded in February, totaling 779,500 gross tons, consisting of four bulk carriers. In March last year, Japan 's new ship export orders had totaled 30 ships amounting to 1.52 million gross tons. In the first three months of this year, Japanese shipbuilders received new export orders for a total of 21 ships with an aggregate of 1.28 million gross tons, down 61.4 percent year on year. On the other hand, in March this year Japan delivered 40 ships for export, totaling 1.8 million gross tons, rising from 26 ships totaling 1.2 million gross tons recorded in February. In March 2015, Japan 's new ship deliveries for export had totaled 33 ships with 1.45 million gross tons. Lingyuan Steel sees increased operating revenue in Q1 Monday, 25 April 2016 10:16:39 (GMT+3) | Shanghai Liaoning Province-based Chinese steel producer Lingyuan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd (Lingyuan Steel) has announced in its quarterly report that it registered an operating revenue of RMB 2.4 billion ($0.37 billion) for the first quarter of the current year, up 3.09 percent year on year, with a net loss of RMB 131 million ($20.15 million) compared to the net loss of RMB 151 million recorded in the same period of 2015. Similar articles Monday, 25 April 2016 13:36:19 (GMT+3) | Istanbul According to the monthly sectoral confidence survey released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), the confidence index* for the construction sector in Turkey , which stood at 81.4 points in March this year, increased by 0.1 percent month on month in April to 81.5 points. According to the indices based on individual questions asked of Turkish construction sector enterprise executives who own private businesses with 10 or more employees, in April this year the confidence index for construction activities recorded in the latest three months, which stood at 99 points in March, increased by 1.8 percent to 100.7 points. In April, the current overall order books sub-index decreased by 1.5 percent to 64 points, while the sub-index for total employment expectations over the next three months moved up by 1.3 percent to 99 points, both compared to the previous month. Meanwhile, in April of the current year, executives' expectations for sales prices in the next three months fell by 4.4 percent month on month to 102.4 points. * Sectoral confidence index values range between zero and 200. When the index is above 100 it indicates an optimistic outlook about the current and the future period of the sector, when it is below 100 it points to a pessimistic outlook. Monday, 25 April 2016 20:55:51 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo A source from an exporter told SteelOrbis that from May 2 the company will export wire rod of the mesh grade at $520/mt, FOB conditions, against $485/mt today, ascribing the increase to setting the price in line with international prices. The Brazilian exports of mesh grade wire rod are usually destined to Latin American countries, including a few sales by the local producers to their subsidiaries abroad, at prices not necessarily linked to market conditions. In March, the product was exported in average at $419/mt, FOB conditions, with price deals probably closed in January, in a range of $356/mt to $477/mt FOB. In the Brazilian domestic market, mesh grade wire rod will be sold from May 2 at the equivalent to BRL 3,244/mt, CFR, full taxes conditions, equivalent to $670/mt, FOB no taxes included. 1 USD = BRL 3.55 (April 25) Monday, 25 April 2016 11:39:09 (GMT+3) | Istanbul SteelOrbis has been informed that Turkish producer Icdas' 12-32 mm rebar prices in Turkey's Marmara region are now at TRY 1,432/mt ($503/mt) + VAT ex-works, while its rebar prices in Biga, Canakkale in northwestern Turkey are at TRY 1,415/mt ($497/mt) + VAT ex-works. The mill's list prices have moved up by TRY 34/mt + VAT as compared to its previous price list issued on April 21, while due to currency fluctuations prices have increased by $7/mt on US dollar basis. $1 = TRY 2.85 Monday, 25 April 2016 17:06:04 (GMT+3) | Istanbul Prices of ex-Australia iron ore of 62 percent Fe content for delivery to China s Qingdao port, which moved in the range of $59.5-70/mt CFR last week, have decreased by $0.5/mt since last Friday, starting the current week at $65-65.5/mt CFR China . As of April 18, inventory of iron ore at 33 major Chinese ports amounted to 92.62 million mt, down 1.70 million mt or 1.8 percent compared to the inventory level recorded on April 11, as announced by China 's Xinhua News Agency. According to Credit Suisse, by the end of 2016 and from 2017 through to 2019 iron ore prices are expected to be back at $40/mt. Meanwhile, Macquarie's iron ore outlook is for iron ore prices to drop to $52/mt in the second and third quarters of this year, followed by a further drop to $48/mt in the fourth quarter. After bottoming at $45/mt next year, the commodity will rebound to $60/mt in 2021, Macquarie said. On the other hand, Citibank expects prices for steel and iron ore to fall in the second half and tips iron ore to average at $45/mt this year. The bank said it expects an average iron ore price of $39/mt during 2017 and $38/mt in 2018. Also, Tom Price, analyst at Morgan Stanley, has stated that it is difficult to make a case for iron ore remaining above $60/mt, adding that prices will eventually fall back to $45-55/mt because of the ongoing expansion of seaborne supply. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Group has stated that the upward trend of steel commodity prices seen this year is not sustainable since iron ore prices are expected to drop to $35/mt by the year-end. Mackinac Island The weather has been up and down this past week. We had some very nice days, and other were cold,... Outdoors This Week in the Eastern U.P. I know its fall, but, for some reason, the white stuff has started falling already and frost is covering my... West Mackinac Thats all folks, the fall fashion show is over and Mother Natures winter wardrobe is waiting in the wings. In... Air Forces Chief of Staff General Laurian Anastasof says fighters were scrambled four times this year and no Russian aircraft came close ti Romania's air space. Anastasof explained on Monday that Russian aircraft that advance more than 100 km from Crimean coast could become worrying to the NATO. "The distances of these flights is generally over 100 km. The distance from here to Crimea is 380 km, and if a Russian aircraft takes off from a Crimean base right now and moves 100 km away from the Crimean coast, it already becomes a worrisome flight to the Alliance. At 20 miles outside the national information area, the NATO procedure compels us to scramble our aircraft. It happened four times this year. I repeat, no Russian aircraft has come close to the national airspace," General Anastasof said at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in the southeastern county of Constanta. There were situations, he said, when near the national airspace there were flights of the Russian Federation that have prompted the Campia Turzii or Mihail Kogalniceanu air base to scramble their aircraft. "The airspace was, is and will always be defended by the Romanian Air Forces with air means or surface-to-air missiles," the general added. Agerpres The new National Catalog of Human Drug Prices (CANAMED) will be published this week, Health Minister Patriciu Achimas-Cadariu told the Chamber of Deputies on Monday, during the Government Question Time weekly debate. He was invited at the Parliament to debate the cancer patients' access to diagnostic and treatment. He admitted "deficiencies" in the national oncology programme and mentioned Tamoxifen, a drug produced by Unifarm, will be introduced in the forthcoming CANAMED, but other problems could occur. As regards radiotherapy, he mentioned that he has personally participated in the latest videoconference with the World Bank on this topic, as several relevant committees had overlapping authorities. According to Achimas-Cadariu, Romania is the latest European country to draft a comprehensive integrated plan for cancer control; it is based on the national healthcare strategy and on European regulations, and since it has proved useful, it was used as a model for other medical branches, he asserted. Agerpres JEFFERSON CITY With their job of crafting a state budget completed, lawmakers enter the final three weeks of the annual session with more than a dozen major issues in legislative limbo. From a controversial anti-gay marriage proposal to a bid to raise the gasoline tax, the list of hot-button topics is expected to keep legislators busy until they leave town on May 13. The Republican-led House and Senate cleared the decks for the stretch-run toward adjournment by sending Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon a $27 billion spending blueprint on Thursday. Before heading home for the weekend, Senate Majority Floor Leader Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, said the Senate remains on track to act on the same trio of issues he highlighted as priorities when the session began in January. They include good government legislation, a voter identification law and changes to civil justice laws. Were still working toward those goals, Kehoe said. Looming above those topics, however, is a proposed voter referendum that would shield some businesses that deny services for same-sex weddings. The fight over Senate Joint Resolution 39 has been intense, with major businesses calling on the Legislature to drop the effort or drastically alter it. A scheduled vote in a committee stalled last week. House Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, said he doesnt believe the influence of big business is making much of a dent in the support or opposition of the plan. I dont think the lobbying has changed peoples perspective on this issue, Richardson said. I think youre seeing across the country a very serious conversation about how people deal with this question of religious liberty. Rep. Ron Hicks, R-St. Peters, a member of the House Emerging Issues Committee, said Friday hell support the measure, but he has concerns. Are we going to lose a bunch of business because of it or are we going to bounce back? he said. Because sometimes the state has to take a stand on the issues. Because weve taken a stand on Medicaid expansion, Obamacare, abortion, Common Core this is just another one. Hicks said the delayed vote was caused by an expected tie and one member who requested more time to evaluate the proposal. Hicks declined to say which of the 12 committee members were on the fence. With it being at a tie, if they wouldve brought the bill up, the measure wouldve failed, Hicks said. All three Democrats on the committee oppose the proposal. Rep. Anne Zerr, R-St. Charles, who also sits on the panel, said Saturday she was still deciding how she would vote. Rep. Caleb Rowden, a Republican who is running for a Columbia-based state Senate seat, could not be reached on Friday. Meanwhile, a proposal to ask voters to raise the states gas tax by 5.9 cents per gallon also faces a steep climb in the House. A tax increase of any kind is going to be very, very difficult, Richardson said. A plan to ban lawmakers from accepting freebies from lobbyists has run into turbulence in the Senate, where Sen. Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, is pushing for a $40 cap on gifts instead of the outright ban approved earlier in the House. Other issues on the GOP agenda include election-year staples like abortion, guns and reining in the influence of labor unions. Lawmakers also are trying to start a prescription drug monitoring program, which supporters say is an essential tool in combating opioid addiction. The program could help doctors and pharmacists determine if addicts are visiting multiple doctors to get prescriptions. Opponents like Republican Sen. Rob Schaaf, a St. Joseph doctor, say the program would be an invasion of privacy. Kehoe acknowledged it could become a lengthy debate. There are passionate feelings on both sides, Kehoe said. The to-do list doesnt end there. St. Louis Zoo officials are trying to win approval of a plan to allow surrounding counties to add a sales tax to help fund the operation. Additional reforms of the municipal court system are still being debated. And, Ameren and other utilities attempting to convince lawmakers to change how electric rates are set. In addition, Richardson sounded hopeful the state could move to become in compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring juvenile murderers being sentenced to life without parole. It is a priority, Richardson said. St. Charles County supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have failed to convince a state GOP panel to support their challenge of a countywide caucus won April 9 by backers of Ted Cruz and their allies. A state party spokesman, Jonathon Prouty, said the credentials committee for the upcoming GOP state convention also recommended rejection of challenges of caucuses lost by Trump forces the same day in Missouri River and Maryland Heights townships in St. Louis County. The committee on Saturday held hearings on the challenges. Prouty said the final decision on the challenges will be made by the state convention next month and Congressional district conventions next Saturday. Prouty said the credentials panel also recommended against supporting a Cruz backer's challenge of the St. Louis city caucus that picked a pro-Trump slate. The state and district conventions will pick the 52 Missouri delegates who will attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The caucuses selected people to take part in the state and district conventions. On the first ballot at the national convention, the Missouri delegates must vote for a candidate based on results of the state's March 15 presidential primary - 37 for Trump and 15 for Cruz. But if no one achieves a first-ballot nomination, delegates can then vote for anyone they wish on later ballots. Each of the challenges involved accusations of violations of party rules. CLAYTON The St. Louis County chapter of the NAACP is asking County Executive Steve Stenger to appoint an independent committee to investigate the circumstances that led to widespread irregularities in the April 5 municipal election. As Americas oldest and largest civil rights organization, we were extremely disappointed to see voters stripped of their constitutional rights, chapter president Esther Haywood wrote to Stenger in a letter dated Sunday. Ballot shortages and other issues obstructed voting for municipal government offices, ballot referendums and school board seats in more than 60 precincts countywide on April 5. Voters were disenfranchised in multiple ways, Haywood said in requesting the formation of a bipartisan group to investigate and provide recommendations to improve the voting process in St. Louis County. The letter also raised questions about the two-week suspension that the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners last week imposed on lead Elections Director Eric Fey. Haywood noted that ballot shortages and other problems with the November 2014 general election prompted the dismissal of former state Sen. Rita Heard Days, Feys predecessor. Days is African-American; Fey is white. Director Fey simply being issued a two-week suspension without pay is not adequate, in light of the termination of former Director Rita Heard Days for an offense that was significantly less serious, Haywood said. Similar questions about a double standard in the treatment of Fey and Days were raised by Missouri House members at a hearing in Jefferson City two weeks ago. Democratic Elections Director Fey and Republican Director Gary Fuhr have attributed the problems this month to miscommunication between state and county electoral software programs; a short turnaround between the March 15 Missouri presidential primary and the April 5 municipal election; and systemic failure at the county level. Fuhr last week tendered his resignation at the board meeting that brought about the suspension of his counterpart, Fey. Stenger, in a statement issued Monday morning, said the responsibility for investigating the circumstances surrounding the election falls not on the county but on the office of Secretary of State Jason Kander. Kander, through his offices Election Integrity Unit, announced an inquiry into the election before the polls closed April 5. Stenger in his statement said, I have spoken to (Kander) several times regarding this matter. His is the proper office for this investigation, and I fully support his efforts. As he has since April 5, Stenger again noted that while the county funds the election authority and the cost of elections, it has no jurisdiction over management or day-to-day operations at election headquarters. In regard to the problems that plagued the April 5 ballots in St. Louis County, no one was more upset than I was, Stenger said. However, I have no authority over the county Elections Commission. The state of Missouri has sole jurisdiction over this body. Oversight of the election authority is provided by four commission members, appointed by the governor. The commissioners choose two directors one representing each party to run the elections office. The directors are then responsible for hiring a staff that is equally divided by party affiliation. Haywood acknowledged that the county has no role beyond funding the election mechanism. She additionally recognized that a county with 90 municipalities, 432 polling places and 323 ballot styles presents a unique challenge to election officials. At the same time, Haywood said, this situation can no longer by used as an excuse for major blunders. In addition to the Election Integrity Unit investigation, leaders of the House Task Force on Election Procedures and House Special Committee on Urban Affairs have indicated they have more questions about what occurred on April 5 and how it can be prevented. And the County Council has scheduled a May 10 hearing to hear from voters, candidates and election officials on the matter. A growing group of black owners of child-care centers in the St. Louis area say Missouri regulators are unfairly taking harsh actions against their businesses, even as white-owned facilities with similar violations are getting a pass. The group, called the Missouri Minority Daycare Association, was formed this year. Representatives asked the St. Louis NAACP to testify on their behalf last week in Jefferson City in a hearing held by the House Urban Issues Committee. They want a new approach to inspections, citations and discipline, as opposed to what one advocate called, a slash-and-burn attitude on the part of regulators. We are going to become extremely aggressive and take this issue very seriously, said St. Louis NAACP president Adolphus Pruitt to the committee. Pruitt said regulators are threatening the survival of established child-care providers in African-American neighborhoods who play a critical role in supporting the growth and development of young children, especially those children that make up the underserved populations which we represent. The committees chairman, Rep. Courtney Curtis, D-Ferguson, said he has heard numerous complaints from minority child-care owners in and around his district. He said newer child-care facilities in the suburbs seem to be having fewer problems with regulators than many older black-owned urban day-care facilities. At the hearing, officials with the Department of Social Services and the Department of Health and Senior Services did not directly address the allegations of racial bias, nor could they speak to specific examples brought up by speakers during the hearing. But they said the state followed prescribed criteria and does not take lightly actions that could close a facility. We know disruption of childrens lives can have a difficult impact on them. We take the decision to not reinstate very seriously, said Cindy Burks, an administrator with the Childrens Division who oversees child-care subsidy contracts with child cares statewide. Comparing sanctions Pruitt said unfair treatment of minority-owned facilities is pervasive, and he presented the committee with a packet comparing violations and disciplinary outcomes in African-American owned child cares versus those in nonminority owned child cares. Pruitt said the analysis, though not comprehensive, indicated state inspectors were much harsher in their sanctions against certain black-owned businesses caring for African-American children. A Post-Dispatch review of state documents found some apparent inaccuracies in the NAACP analysis. In one case a sanction against a black-owned child care was less severe than the NAACP document indicated, while a sanction against a white-owned day care was more severe than reported. However, the analysis seems to point to examples where white-owned facilities received lesser sanctions on similar violations. In November, ABC Daycare and Learning Centers of Lake Saint Louis was given a permanent letter of censure by regulators after a child went missing from the centers playground for a few minutes and was found outside by a driver passing by on Technology Drive. The center was ordered to give extra training to staff and was placed under closer supervision. In contrast, African-American operated Daruby Early Learning Center in Cool Valley was placed on licensing probation a more severe sanction after inadvertently leaving a 3-year-old at a nearby elementary school in 2013. The child was returned to the center by a public school employee, state records show. Pruitt said all of the African-American owned day cares encountered more severe disciplinary actions than at the Webster Child Care Center, where 7-month-old Owen Haber died in 2014. The state moved toward placing the center on probation after regulators reported the child was placed in a crib for a nap with a weighted blanket without consent of the infants parents. Subsidy contracts The Department of Social Services Childrens Division also came under scrutiny during the hearing for its handling of subsidy contracts with minority-owned day cares. The contracts determine which centers are eligible to serve children whose parents qualify for state child-care assistance. Pruitt noted minority-owned child cares in lower income areas rely on the subsidies far more than nonminority day cares in the suburbs. And yet, he said, when the state finds an issue, the providers dont have recourse to challenge the issue. Some providers who testified last week said the state often takes more than a month to respond to phone calls and emails. Burks, of the Childrens Division, said she would look into the reported delays, but said workers are instructed to reply in a timely manner. Burks said a staff of three and a state attorney make a team decision when deciding whether to terminate a subsidy contract. The factors include a centers history of health and safety issues, questionable business practices and overall program integrity, she said. One member of the Urban Issues committee described that criteria as subjective. When Im in business and Im dealing with something, I need some guidelines to follow. I need to know what procedures and processes, and what is my remedy for appeal, said Rep. Karla May, D-St. Louis. If its subjective, that leads to individual biases, and I dont like individual biases, so I need everything in writing. Sheria Taylor of Hazelwood Child Development Center and also a founder of the Missouri Minority Childcare Association said Thursday her day care got no early warning the state was terminating its subsidy contract, leaving 114 children in the lurch. Taylor said the trouble began when state officials learned that the Hazlewood centers then-director and board member, Alkesha Anderson, had been previously charged with theft for falsely claiming $13,000 in state subsidy reimbursements while working at a different child care center in Berkeley. Taylor said the state canceled her centers subsidy contract because of its affiliation with Anderson even though Taylor said there was no wrongdoing at the Hazelwood center. Taylor said even after she removed Anderson from the board and as director, the state had not restored the subsidy contract. For now, the center is dipping into its savings to stay open, Taylor said. The parents we serve are majority low income. And not having secure and safe child care will result in a trickle-down effect of problems, she said. Sophisticated marijuana operations were found at the rural homes where eight family members were killed in Ohio last week, authorities said. The Ohio attorney general, Mike DeWine, announced at a news conference Sunday that the murders were "a preplanned execution of eight individuals." Authorities would not say publicly if they thought the killings were drug-related, but an official with knowledge of the case told CNN "This operation was not for personal use; it was for something much bigger than that. It was a very sophisticated operation." The killings happened in the rural town of Piketon, about 2,000 residents 90 miles east of Cincinnati. The eight victims ranged in age from 16 to 44; all were shot in the head before dawn on Friday as they slept. The killers targeted the Rhoden family, law enforcement officials said, although they gave no specific reason. The victims were identified as Hannah Gilley, 20; Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16; Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, 20; Dana Rhoden, 37; Gary Rhoden, 38; Hanna Rhoden, 19; and Kenneth Rhoden, 44. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE 100 ends higher; Mordaunt makes UK PM tilt Friday, October 21, 2022 - 17:22 The pound regained some poise on Friday afternoon but remained in precarious territory, after falling below the $1.11 mark in afternoon trade. The pound was quoted at $1.1203 at the close on Friday, down versus $1.1294 at the London equities close on Thursday. It hit an intraday low of $1.1063 not long after midday. Sterling was hurt by continued political uncertainty. Speculation about who will join Penny Mordaunt in throwing their hats in the ring in the race for Number 10 continues. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, one-time neighbours at Number 10 and 11 Downing Street - but now bitter rivals - have pockets of support from Tory MPs. Adding to the pressure on sterling, disappointing UK retail sales data showed a bigger-than-expected decline in September, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. Retail sales fell 6.9% annually in September, with the decline accelerating from a 5.6% fall in August. It also was worse than FXStreet-cited market consensus, which had expected a fall of just 5%. The pound had initially found some support on Thursday after Liz Truss called an end to her disastrous tenure as prime minister - poking above $1.13 - but has since been dragged lower. The FTSE 100 index closed up 25.82 points, or 0.4%, at 6,969.73 - closing out the week up 1.6%. The FTSE 250 lost 182.38 points, or 1.1%, at 17,206.55, but still managed to gain 1.0% this week, and the AIM All-Share ended down 1.04 points, or 0.1% at 785.40 - but advanced 0.8% over the past five days. The Cboe UK 100 closed up 0.4% at 696.31, the Cboe UK 250 ended down 1.0% at 14,694.15, and the Cboe Small Companies lost 0.3% at 12,240.46. In European equities on Friday, the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.9%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt gave back 0.3%. The Tories have begun to declare their allegiances in the party's second leadership contest of the year as speculation mounts over who will seek to replace Truss at the helm of the party. Supporters of Johnson are backing the former prime minister to make an extraordinary political comeback, while ex-chancellor Sunak and Commons Leader Mordaunt also have the public support of several MPs. Mordaunt become the first to declare her candidacy, with a pledge to re-unite the bitterly divided party. The leader of the House who finished third in the last leadership election said she had been encouraged by the support she had received from fellow Conservative MPs. There has also been no declaration yet from Sunak, who did not answer questions from reporters as he left his home on Friday morning. Whoever does win will face an immediate test, choosing whether to go ahead with the planned Halloween statement setting out how the government intends to get the public finances back on track, Downing Street has said. Work is continuing in Whitehall, led by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, in preparation for the medium-term fiscal plan to be announced on October 31 along with an updated set of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. However, a Number 10 spokeswoman said it would be up to Liz Truss's successor to decide whether to proceed with that approach and with the same timetable. In London, blue chip miners helped push FTSE 100 higher. Glencore gained 3.6%, Anglo American 3.1%, Antofagasta 2.7%, and Rio Tinto added 1.6%. Retailers, however, were showing weakness after the disappointing UK retail sales data. A profit warning from Adidas did nothing to help the mood either. JD Sports closed down 6.1%, Frasers 4.0%, Burberry 2.2%, and Next shed 2.9%. On Thursday, Adidas lowered annual guidance as it struggles with "deteriorating traffic" in China and high inventory levels. The sports apparel maker said it has needed to turn to "higher clearance activity" to try and shift stock. It lost 9.0% in Frankfurt. Deliveroo gained 3.6%. The London-based online food delivery service said gross transaction values rose 8.3% annually in the third quarter to 1.70 billion from 1.57 billion, though orders fell by 1.1% to 72.8 million from 73.6 million. Deliveroo said the decline in orders was due to a difficult consumer environment. With economic data on Friday showing that UK consumer confidence remains near record lows, this seems unlikely to change anytime soon. InterContinental Hotels gave back 2.2% but reported strong revenue growth in the third quarter to September 30, saying that high global employment levels are boosting occupancy levels. Revenue per available room, or RevPAR, rose 28% year-on-year and now exceeds its pre-pandemic level, being up 2.7% on the third quarter of 2019. In the third quarter of 2022, the average daily rate increased by 13% compared to a year ago and was up 11% on 2019. Chief Financial Officer & Head of Strategy Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson will leave the company in six months time to become CFO of Flutter Entertainment in the first half of 2023. IHG has started the process of finding a new CFO. The euro stood at $0.9802 Friday evening, down against $0.9822 at the close on Thursday. Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP148.03, compared to JP149.77 late Thursday. The yen was staging a fightback after the open on Wall Street, after nearly hitting JP152 during the Asia session. Stocks in New York opened higher on Friday, with the DJIA up 1.1%, the S&P 500 index up 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.6% higher. Brent oil was quoted at $92.84 a barrel late Friday, down from $93.29 late Thursday. Gold was quoted at $1,643.70 an ounce Friday, up against $1,641.90 from Thursday. In the international economics events calendar next week, Monday will be dominated by a slew of composite PMIs, with Japan overnight followed by Germany, eurozone and the UK in the morning then the US in the afternoon. A quiet Tuesday will be headlined by a US house price index. On Wednesday, there is Chinese GDP, retail sales and industrial production overnight, then on Thursday attention will be on the European Central Bank interest rate decision at 1315 BST. Friday will be headlined by a Bank of Japan rate decision. In the local corporate calendar on Monday, there are half-year results from Dr Martens, while education publishing firm Pearson will issue a third quarter update. Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Each Saturday and Sunday well post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief verdict on a single cigar of buy, hold, or sell. Black Label Trading is a new company with a skull-and-bone pirate theme and six debut blends. Redemption, the blend I smoked, is a Nicaraguan puro with a Habano wrapper that comes in two sizes: Robusto (5 x 54) and Gordo (6 x 60). A first in my experience, the large band on the sample I smoked seemed to be a final production band, but it also had the phrase pre-release sample across the top. The cigar sported lots of deep, dark flavors, yet it keeps a medium-bodied profile with woody notes. I expected an ass-kicker, but got a balanced cigar. Without knowing the MSRP, I think this is a cigar with some real potential. Im looking forward to trying more from Black Label Trading. Verdict = Buy. Patrick S photo credit: Stogie Guys CONTROVERSIAL plans to introduce pay-and-display parking charges at Stratfords park and ride facility at Bishopton will come into force in June. The plans are part of a scheme to amalgamate the park and ride car park with the adjacent car park at Stratford Parkway railway station. But users of the park and ride bus service will still face a 1.10 fee for each single trip and 2 for each return trip into town. The charges, being put forward by Warwickshire County Council, will be: 3 before 8.59am to midnight and 1 after 9am to midnight- 6 for overnight parking before 8.59am to midnight next day and 4 after 9am to midnight the next day 11.50 for a weekly season ticket that includes the cost of a park and ride return bus ticket for one person 39.50 for a monthly season ticket with a similar concession on a park and ride return bus ticket for one person 99 for a quarterly season ticket, with the park and ride bus concession for one person 349 for an annual season ticket, also with the park and ride bus concession for one person None of the charges will apply to blue badge holders or to electric vehicles plugged into charging points. The charges came under immediate attack this week. Stratforward, the Stratford Business Improvement District (BID), is concerned about the imposition of charges. A spokeswoman told the Herald: Whilst Stratforward remains sympathetic to the funding cuts borne by Warwickshire County Council, we would find it difficult to be positive about any increase in parking costs to our BID member businesses that might adversely affect their staff or diminish their footfall. The park and ride scheme is something that we wholeheartedly support as an affordable and convenient way for people who work and visit Stratford to access the town and we would hope that affordability for the end user would be protected above all else. Cllr Peter Moorse (Lib Dem, Hathaway), the Lib Dem leader on the council, said: The cost of parking at the station coupled with a shortage of parking for businesses in Timothys Bridge Road is causing major problems for residents, with drivers preferring to park for free in Bishopton Lane and St Peters Way. Were trying to get double yellow lines in Bishopton Lane to stop the parking by the canal bridge and an overflow car park for businesses in Timothys Bridge Road. The last thing we need is any action by the county council to drive more people away from the parking at the station and the park and ride. Cllr Moorse said that, so far as Bishopton Lane was concerned, public consultation had taken place about double yellow lines to prevent dangerous parking along this lane at the canal bridge end. During the consultation there were objections, which meant that the scheme would now have to go to the county councils portfolio holder for a decision. If approved the scheme should be implemented in the summer. He said the Lib Dems had put down a question for this Mondays full meeting of Stratford District Council asking what progress had been made by the authority in looking into the practicality, costs and legal implications of using council-owned land in Timothys Bridge Road for car-parking purposes. A spokesman for Warwickshire County Council said: The changes are necessary in the light of reduced funding available to local government. The county council has to make savings and consequently has needed to review the services it provides in order to deliver these. The park and ride service was identified as a service where savings could be delivered." The spokesman added: A detailed appraisal of the Stratford facility has been undertaken with the assistance of Atkins Transport Consultants with the objective of reducing the subsidy which the park and ride operation currently requires. A number of options have been reviewed which looked at different models of operation and closure of the site. The outcome of this review was presented to the county councils cabinet and members agreed an option that will deliver substantial savings whilst maintaining the core park and ride service offer. The option agreed by cabinet included the amalgamation of the park and ride car park and Stratford Parkway rail station car park. Therefore, from June 2016, both car parks will be amalgamated and will operate on a pay and display basis. This will reduce the administrative burden with regards to the previous token system that was used in the park and ride car park. In addition the move to a pay and display system will enable those people who wish to just park in the car park, and not use the bus, to do so if they wish without the need to obtain a token to exit the car park. The spokesman said the revised tariff would represent a reduction in charges for rail station users. Whilst the parking charge represents a new charge for park and ride customers, bus fares will remain the same and have not increased since 2013, said the spokesman. Concessionary pass holders will continue to travel for free on the bus after 9am and valid blue badge holders will be exempt from any parking charges. Christine Fell, a volunteer for Shakespeare Birthplace Trust who lives in Warwick, said: If Im only going to go into town for a couple of hours, then it will be cheaper for me to park at the Rec or Marina, or even Bridgefoot, as the first hour is free there. If everyone does that though there will be gridlock in the town more so than there is already. Daily users of the park and ride Judy Ottley and Sandra Wyatt, of Stratford, said they may not continue to use the service. Sandra said: Im not happy at all about the new charges. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Send your views to: news@stratford-herald.com or call 01789 412819 Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) announced a proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Tribune Publishing Company (NYSE: TPUB) for $12.25 in cash per Tribune share. The total value of the proposal is approximately $815 million, including the assumption of certain Tribune liabilities, which include approximately $390 million of debt outstanding as of December 31, 2015. Gannetts all cash proposal would provide Tribune stockholders a 63% premium to the closing stock price of Tribune on April 22, 2016, a 58% premium to the volume weighted average trading price over the past 90 days, and a multiple of 5.6x Tribunes estimated 2016 EBITDA, based on consensus research estimates. The $12.25 per share offer price also represents a significant premium to the $8.50 share price at which Tribune recently issued common shares and provides immediate and certain cash value to Tribune stockholders. The Gannett Board unanimously believes that the acquisition of Tribune would deliver substantial strategic and financial benefits for the combined company, and we are pleased to offer Tribune stockholders a significant and compelling premium and immediate cash value for their investment, said John Jeffry Louis, Chairman of the Gannett Board of Directors. A combination with Tribune would rapidly advance Gannetts strategy to grow the USA TODAY NETWORK, the largest local to national network of journalists in the country, to include more local markets and new platforms, which we believe will benefit readers and result in significant and sustained value creation for Gannett stockholders. Robert J. Dickey, president and chief executive officer of Gannett, said, We believe Tribune shares the new Gannetts unwavering commitment to journalistic excellence and delivering superior content on all platforms. In this respect, the proposed combination of Gannett and Tribune would bring together two highly complementary organizations with a shared goal of providing trusted, premium content for the readers and communities we serve. We are confident that a combined Gannett and Tribune would add value for stakeholders of both companies as we work together to foster deep and vital connections among the members of our communities, provide excellent solutions for our business partners and drive value for our stockholders. Mr. Dickey continued, The combined company would also benefit greatly from the combined experience and expertise of Tribunes talented employees and our own valued team members. The combined organization would offer Tribune employees a broad range of advancement opportunities within a larger organization with the financial strength to meet the industry challenges we all face. We are confident that as an even stronger organization, we would have an enhanced ability to empower our employees to do their best work, and maintain the same high journalistic standards and integrity for which each organization is known. Gannett believes that there are compelling strategic and financial benefits for a combination of the two companies, including: Gannetts $12.25 per share all-cash proposal provides Tribune stockholders a significant premium and immediate and certain value by eliminating the risk associated with Tribune continuing to operate on a standalone basis in an increasingly uncertain time for the industry. The proposed transaction is expected to deliver substantial synergies of approximately $50 million annually, subject to due diligence, that are anticipated to drive compelling near- and long-term growth and value creation at the combined company. As one company, Gannett and Tribune would have the financial stability to continue maintaining journalistic excellence, independence, high standards and integrity for years to come. Gannett can quickly consummate a transaction without any financing condition and has been advised that the proposed combination will not impact the tax-free treatment of Tribunes recent spin-off transaction. Below is the text of the letter that was sent on April 25, 2016 to Tribunes Board of Directors: April 25, 2016 VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL Mr. Justin C. Dearborn, Chief Executive Officer & Director Tribune Publishing Company 435 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 Re: Tribune Publishing Company Dear Mr. Dearborn: We are disappointed by the response we received from you in your letter of April 22, 2016 regarding our proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Tribune Publishing Company (Tribune) for an all-cash purchase price of $12.25 per share, and Tribunes continued refusal to begin constructive discussions with us. We believe our proposal, which we first made in my letter to your Board dated April 12, 2016 and reiterated in several phone discussions with Michael Ferro and you since, is highly compelling for Tribunes stockholders and represents substantial value and immediate liquidity for them. I want to remind you that Gannetts $12.25 per share offer price represents a 63% premium to Fridays closing stock price of Tribune, a 58% premium to the volume weighted average trading price over the past 90 days, and a multiple of 5.6x (including estimated pension and post-retirement benefits payable) your 2016 EBITDA estimate based on consensus research. The $12.25 per share offer price also represents a significant premium to the $8.50 share price at which Tribune recently issued common shares. With our capability to commit to a deal without financing contingencies, we believe that Gannett is uniquely positioned to offer this level of premium to your stockholders and to quickly evaluate and finalize this transaction, allowing your stockholders to receive immediate and certain value. As expressed previously, we believe the financial and strategic logic of a combination of our two companies is clear. The challenges for our industry in the digital age continue. Tribune has itself faced numerous challenges and leadership changes over the last few years. We believe Gannett is uniquely willing and able to propel Tribune into the position of strength that will allow its beloved and historic publications and other assets to survive and thrive in this challenging environment. By combining, we would create a company with the financial stability and flexibility equipped to preserve journalistic integrity, high standards and excellence for years to come. We would be able to both empower our journalists and facilitate the creation of exceptional content while delivering stockholder value. Given the opportunity to benefit from the significant premium and near-term liquidity, we are confident that Tribunes stockholders will embrace our offer. As we have indicated previously, we would prefer to negotiate a transaction with Tribune, but we have determined that making your stockholders aware of our all-cash proposal is necessary, given Tribunes attempts to delay constructive engagement. This matter is of the highest priority to us, and we continue to be ready to dedicate significant resources to completing due diligence and negotiating a transaction on an expedited basis. We have been working closely with our financial advisors at Methuselah Advisors and our legal advisors at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and have completed an extensive analysis of the proposed transaction based on publicly available information. As well, we are confident that the regulatory approvals necessary to consummate the proposed transaction will be obtained. This proposal, which is unanimously supported by our Board, is a non-binding expression of our current views, which remains, among other things, subject to satisfactory completion of due diligence, the negotiation, execution and delivery of a mutually satisfactory definitive merger agreement, approval of the definitive agreement by your and our Boards of Directors, approval of the transaction by your stockholders, and receipt of customary regulatory approvals. Given the substantial value represented by our offer and the other compelling benefits of a combination of Gannett and Tribune, we are confident that Tribunes non-management stockholders will support our proposal. Continuing to refuse to engage in a dialogue with us will only serve to delay the ability of your stockholders to receive the value represented by our all-cash offer. We therefore are prepared to consider all alternatives to complete this transaction. In the meantime, we remain eager to meet with you and your team as soon as possible to progress the transaction. Sincerely, GANNETT CO., INC. /s/ Robert Dickey Robert Dickey President and CEO cc: Board of Directors, Tribune Publishing Company, c/o Julie K. Xanders, Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary Methuselah Advisors is acting as the exclusive financial advisor and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is serving as legal counsel. Genuine Parts Company (NYSE: GPC) announced that its Board of Directors elected Paul D. Donahue to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective May 1, 2016. Mr. Donahue, 59, has served as President of the Company since 2012 and was also President of the U.S. Automotive Parts Group from 2009 to 2015. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of Genuine Parts Company from 2007 to 2009 and President and Chief Operating Officer of S. P. Richards Company from 2003 to 2007. Prior to joining the Company in 2003, Mr. Donahue was President of Newell Rubbermaid's Sanford North American division. Tom Gallagher, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, will continue in his position as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mr. Gallagher stated, "We are extremely pleased to name Paul as only the fifth CEO in the 88 year history of Genuine Parts Company. Paul is a proven executive and has demonstrated exceptional leadership capabilities in his 13 years with us. His deep knowledge and understanding of the Company as well as his vast industry experience make him the right person to successfully lead our Company into the future." AUSTIN, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 04/24/16 -- Akanda, the major contributor to OpenStack Astara, today announced its new Mitaka release for open source network orchestration and virtualization at the OpenStack Summit in Austin. The Mitaka release for OpenStack Astara is now available for immediate download. OpenStack Astara is the industry's leading solution for open source network orchestration and virtualization. A vendor-agnostic network solution, Astara does not require an SDN controller and radically simplifies OpenStack network deployments. Today, Astara supports more than 2,000 customers with thousands of virtual machines (VMs) at DreamHost, a web and cloud hosting provider in Los Angeles. DreamHost helped develop the mother code for Astara and replaced VMware NSX with the Astara open source platform. An official OpenStack project since September 2015, Astara has more than 40 core contributors from the OpenStack community. Astara is also in trials today with some of the world's largest service providers and enterprises. In Austin, several sessions will review the new OpenStack Astara release. More details about the Astara sessions and its new capabilities are here. What's new in OpenStack Astara? Over-the-Top Network Functions: The new Astara release allows OpenStack operators to cut the cord with over-the-top network functions. For the first time, OpenStack operators can bring their own network function to any Layer 2 network. Simply put, cloud operators can use the network they have and choose the network function they want. No more vendor lock-in. Advanced Features for High Network Availability: Astara takes network availability to new heights with Active/Active software appliances. These advanced features double network capacity, eliminate idle resources, and introduce higher levels of reliability and scalability for Layer 3 services, such as routing, load-balancing, and application performance management. Lightweight IPV6 VPNaaS: The Mitaka release of Astara makes it easier for customers to secure hybrid cloud and IOT infrastructures with IPV6 virtual private networks (VPNs). For example, Astara can now support up to 16 million IPV6 VPNs over VXLAN. IPV6 VPNs are a lightweight alternative to more expensive MPLS-based VPNs, which can't be decoupled from network hardware without significant vendor support. Many network experts consider IPV6 VPNs to be foundational for hybrid cloud and IOT use cases. "OpenStack Astara is leading the over-the-top (OTT) revolution in network infrastructure," said Robert Haim, a principal analyst with ACG Research. "In the same way that Netflix decouples video delivery from dedicated broadcast and cable networks, OpenStack Astara abstracts network functions from routers and switches. This is part of a massive substitution movement towards open hardware and open software for cloud operators, introducing new OTT approaches to the $20B+ network hardware market." "The Mitaka release of OpenStack Astara introduces web-scale to virtualized network services," said Henrik Rosendahl, CEO of Akanda. "It's all about software defined hardware choices; new features that allows cloud operators to scale up and out, and radically simple OpenStack Neutron deployment. We're also excited about new services such as IPV6 VPNs, which are elemental for hybrid cloud and IOT applications." Many companies and groups contributed to the Mitaka release of OpenStack Astara. They include Arista, Comcast, Cumulus Networks, Dell, DreamHost, EasyStack, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HPE, Intel, the Linux Foundation, Mirantis, the MEF, NEC, NGINX, RackSpace, Red Hat and many others. Supporting OpenStack Astara Resources Astara Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvZgBFz9yjQ Project Astara Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Astara Akanda Blog: http://akanda.io/blog/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/akandaio LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akanda-inc About Akanda Akanda is the major contributor to OpenStack Astara, an open software project focused on network orchestration and virtualization. Akanda was started by the same DreamHost team that developed an OpenStack storage platform called Ceph (now part of RedHat). Today, Akanda provides development resources for OpenStack Astara. It also provides commercial support and services for OpenStack Astara. For more information, visit akanda.io and follow @akandaio About Astara Astara is an open source network orchestration platform built by OpenStack operators for real OpenStack clouds. An official OpenStack project, Astara is changing the future of networking by delivering an open, extensible, and cost effective platform for enterprises and service providers to virtualize their networks. Astara is layer 2 agnostic and powers network virtualization for DreamCompute, the OpenStack-based public cloud offered by DreamHost. Source: Akanda HOUSTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The founding shareholder and former chairman and Chief Executive Officer of InterOil Corporation ("InterOil" or the "Company") (NYSE: IOC), Phil Mulacek, and Petroleum Independent & Exploration, LLC (the "Concerned InterOil Shareholders"), announced today that InterOil had finally agreed to comply with its obligations under the Business Corporations Act (Yukon) to permit the shareholders of the Company to vote on the shareholder resolutions that were included in the March 21, 2016 requisition (the "Requisition") of a special meeting of shareholders (the "Special Meeting") made by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and certain other shareholders who collectively own over 7.5% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company. Mr. Mulacek said that in view of the Company's agreement, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders will terminate legal proceedings previously instituted against the Company seeking to require compliance, and the Requisition resolutions will be placed on the agenda of the Company's annual general and special meeting to be held on June 14, 2016 (the "AGM"). "The Concerned InterOil Shareholders appreciate the InterOil Board's decision to finally comply with its legal obligation to allow InterOil's shareholders to express their views on the proposals in the Requisition," Mr. Mulacek said. "We are deeply disappointed, however, that InterOil only reached this decision after more than four weeks of correspondence, notices, meetings and, ultimately, litigation between the parties at a cost of thousands of dollars in legal and other fees and costs on both sides. InterOil first denied that the Requisition had been properly submitted in March 2016, and then opposed the Concerned InterOil Shareholders' action in the Yukon Supreme Court to call a Special Meeting to consider the Requisition matters. This waste of resources could and would have easily been avoided had InterOil simply confirmed to us after the Requisition was submitted that our proposals would be addressed at the AGM." Mr. Mulacek continued, "We will post the pleadings in this case on our website, www.ConcernedInterOilShareholders.com, so that InterOil's shareholders may see for themselves how InterOil's Board and management tried to prevent the Requisition proposals from coming before the shareholders in disregard of basic shareholder rights." Mr. Mulacek noted that in view of InterOil's conduct to date, it was important for the parties to agree in good faith on a fair and equitable set of protocols to govern conduct of the AGM. However, Mr. Mulacek also stated that if InterOil fails on its part to negotiate in good faith so that protocols are agreed in a reasonable period of time, "the Concerned InterOil Shareholders will take any and all steps to secure a fair and transparent meeting process, including again invoking the Supreme Court of Yukon's jurisdiction in these matters." The terminated action was originally filed in the Supreme Court of Yukon, Philippe E. Mulacek, Petitioner, and InterOil Corporation, Respondent (S.C. No. 16-A0002) (the "Yukon Action"). Background On March 21, 2016, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and certain other shareholders delivered the Requisition to the Company, and in the Requisition, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders requested that the Company call the Special Meeting and include several resolutions focused on improving the corporate governance of InterOil (the "Proposals"). The Company did not acknowledge publicly that it had received the Requisition for ten days, until after the Concerned InterOil Shareholders issued a press release on March 31, 2016. On April 1, 2016, InterOil wrote to Mr. Mulacek, proposing to meet to discuss the Proposals. In the interests of avoiding further delay in adopting the Proposals in connection with the Special Meeting, Mr. Mulacek - after consultation with other shareholders - readily agreed to the meeting. The meeting was finally held on April 8, 2016 to accommodate representatives of the Company, only one business day before InterOil was required to call the Special Meeting. By this time, Mr. Mulacek had received significant supportive feedback from numerous InterOil shareholders, and he came prepared to constructively discuss the Proposals with the Company. Much to his disappointment, it quickly became clear that InterOil's representatives had no intention of discussing the Proposals. After requesting Mr. Mulacek to repeat the Proposals, InterOil's representatives vaguely replied that they would consider the Proposals and respond when appropriate. InterOil had until April 11, 2016 to call the Special Meeting, but made no announcement to that effect, nor did it confirm that the Proposals would be included for consideration by InterOil's shareholders at the AGM. After receiving a letter from the Concerned InterOil Shareholders' counsel on April 10, 2016, the Company finally responded with a letter on April 11, 2016, that suggested the Requisition had not been validly delivered (despite being received by the Company), and proposed that all parties "cease all public activities and related shareholder communications in connection with these matters for a period of 15 business days," to facilitate further discussions. On April 12, 2016, fearing further delay or obstruction by InterOil, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders commenced the Yukon Action to call the Special Meeting to protect and ensure that InterOil shareholders have an opportunity to consider the Proposals and hold the Board accountable for the matters related to the Proposals. On April 20, 2016, InterOil wrote a letter to the Concerned InterOil Shareholders agreeing to place all of the Proposals on the agenda for the AGM if the Yukon Action was terminated. At a hearing for the Yukon Action on April 22, 2016, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders notified InterOil and the court that they intended to terminate the Yukon Action. Termination papers will be filed with the court shortly by the parties. Advisors: The Concerned InterOil Shareholders have retained Wildeboer Dellelce LLP and Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP as its legal advisors, and Bayfield Strategy as its strategic communications advisor in connection with this matter. About Phil Mulacek: Mr. Mulacek is the founding shareholder of InterOil and served as chairman, CEO and a director until his retirement from the company in November, 2013. During his tenure at the company, its market capitalization grew from approximately US$10 million (~ US$0.50/share) to over US$4.5 billion (~ US$92.00/share) at his departure. The company also constructed the first petroleum refinery in Papua New Guinea, a 36,000 bpd facility at Napa Napa, with a fully integrated downstream business that contributed to support of the company. Mr. Mulacek led InterOil's discovery of the world-class Elk and Antelope gas fields in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea, with approximately 10 to 15 tcfe of certified hydrocarbon resource, and the nearby Triceratops gas field, with approximately 1 tcfe of certified hydrocarbon resource. These fields have been among the largest onshore discoveries in PNG and Asia recent years. Since retiring from InterOil in 2013, Mr. Mulacek has remained actively involved in the upstream oil and gas industry in Papua New Guinea, the US and elsewhere globally through his affiliated companies with offices in Singapore and branch offices in the United States. He resides in Singapore. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward -- Looking Statements: This press release contains forward--looking statements. All statements contained in this filing that are not clearly historical in nature or that necessarily depend on future events are forward--looking, and the words "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "estimate," "plan," and similar expressions are generally intended to identify forward--looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and currently available information. They are not guarantees of future performance, involve certain risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders do not assume any obligation to update any forward--looking statements contained in this press release. Information Contact: For additional information on this press release and a copy of the Requisition (including the Proposals), please contact the Concerned InterOil Shareholders at +1 (832) 510-7028, or by email at [email protected] Media Contact: Bayfield Strategy, Inc. Riyaz Lalani +1 (416) 907-9365 [email protected] Information in Support of Public Broadcast Solicitation: The Concerned InterOil Shareholders are relying on the exemption under section 9.2(4) of National Instrument 52-102 -- Continuous Disclosure Obligations to make this public broadcast solicitation. The following information is provided in accordance with corporate and securities laws applicable to public broadcast solicitations. This solicitation is being made by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders and not by or on behalf of the management of InterOil. The address of InterOil is 163 Penang Road, Winsland House II, #06-02, Singapore, 238463. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders have filed an information circular dated March 31, 2016 (the "Concerned InterOil Shareholders Circular") concerning the Requisition and the Proposals. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders Circular is available on InterOil's company profile on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com and on the Concerned InterOil Shareholders website at http://www.concernedinteroilshareholders.com. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders have also filed a statement of beneficial ownership on Form 13-D (the "Form 13-D"), as amended, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Form 13-D also includes the Requisition as an Exhibit and is available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1221715/000114420416090986/v435587_sc13d.htm and on the Concerned InterOil Shareholders website at http://www.concernedinteroilshareholders.com. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders intend to solicit proxies in support of the Proposals. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders may solicit proxies, by mail, telephone, facsimile, email or other electronic means as well as by newspaper or other media advertising and in person by directors, officers and employees of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders who will not be specifically remunerated therefor. In addition, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders may solicit proxies in reliance upon the public broadcast exemption to the solicitation requirements under applicable Canadian corporate and securities laws, conveyed by way of public broadcast, including press release, speech or publication, and by any other manner permitted under applicable Canadian laws. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders may engage the services of one or more agents and authorize other persons to assist them in soliciting proxies on behalf of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders. At this time, the Concerned InterOil Shareholders have not entered into any agreement pursuant to which an agent has agreed that it will act as proxy agent for the Concerned InterOil Shareholders with respect to a formal solicitation of proxies. All costs incurred for the solicitation will be borne by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders. A registered holder of common shares of InterOil that gives a proxy may revoke it: (a) by completing and signing a valid proxy bearing a later date and returning it in accordance with the instructions contained in the form of proxy to be provided by the Concerned InterOil Shareholders, or as otherwise provided in the proxy circular, once made available to shareholders; (b) by depositing an instrument in writing executed by the shareholder or by the shareholder's attorney authorized in writing, as the case may be: (i) at the registered office of InterOil at any time up to and including the last business day preceding the day of the AGM or the day of any adjournment or postponement of the AGM, or (ii) with the chairman of the AGM prior to its commencement on the day of the AGM or any adjournment or postponement of the AGM; or (c) in any other manner permitted by law. A non--registered holder of common shares of InterOil will be entitled to revoke a form of proxy or voting instruction form given to an intermediary at any time by written notice to the intermediary in accordance with the instructions given to the non--registered holder by its intermediary. It should be noted that revocation of proxies or voting instructions by a non--registered holder can take several days or even longer to complete and, accordingly, any such revocation should be completed well in advance of the deadline prescribed in the form of proxy or voting instruction form to ensure it is given effect in respect of the AGM. Neither the Concerned InterOil Shareholders, nor any directors or officers, or any associates or affiliates of the foregoing, has: (i) any material interest, direct or indirect, in any transaction since the beginning of InterOil's most recently completed financial year or in any proposed transaction that has materially affected or would materially affect InterOil or any of its subsidiaries; or (ii) any material interest, direct or indirect, by way of beneficial ownership of securities or otherwise, in any matter currently known to be acted on at the AGM, other than the Proposals set forth in the Requisition. However, certain of the Concerned InterOil Shareholders are the beneficial holders of minority indirect participation interests in certain of InterOil's petroleum prospecting licenses and petroleum retention licenses in Papua New Guinea under indirect participation agreements with InterOil. The Concerned InterOil Shareholders believe that these indirect participation interests are not material to InterOil but are nevertheless fully aligned and not in conflict with the interests of InterOil's shareholders. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/concerned-interoil-shareholders-achieve-full-compliance-of-interoil-with-requisition-300256569.html SOURCE Petroleum Independent & Exploration, LLC WASHINGTON, April 24, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Jett Foundation, a Kingston Massachusetts-based Duchenne patient advocacy organization, is pleased to announce that Governor Charlie Baker will be sending his Deputy Chief of Staff, Carlo Basile to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee Meeting on April 25. The Committee, which will meet in College Park, Maryland, has been convened to evaluate eteplirsen, a potential Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapy manufactured by Sarepta Therapeutics of Cambridge. Basile's nine-year old son suffers from Duchenne. "Duchenne is a deadly, pediatric disease with no FDA approved treatment. Massachusetts families affected by Duchenne deserve access to safe and effective therapies for this horrible disease, and we look forward to seeing real progress for families soon," Governor Baker said. "I have asked Carlo to attend to demonstrate my administration's strong support for the Duchenne Community as they share their powerful stories with the agency." "We are very pleased to have Carlo join us on Monday," said Christine McSherry, Founder and Executive Director of The Jett Foundation, a Massachusetts based non-profit organization. "The FDA must consider the severity of Duchenne when evaluating new drug applications for safe, and potentially efficacious therapies for Duchenne, a 100 percent fatal rare disease. We hope that the FDA will quickly complete its review and grant accelerated approval to this potential life-saving therapy." Sarepta Therapeutics is seeking Accelerated Approval for eteplirsen based on a validated clinical endpoint from a small trial of 12 patients, representative of the rarity of the disease and its mutations. Patients and families affected by Duchenne believe that eteplirsen's data is strong and that the 12 boys in Sarepta's 4.5-year trial are benefitting from treatment. Ten of the boys are still walking and the disease, overall, is far less progressed in these boys than the natural history of Duchenne would predict. None of the 130 plus patients exposed to eteplirsen through the original 12-patient trial and subsequent confirmatory and safety trials, have experienced any adverse events from the drug. On February 24, 2016, 38 Duchenne researchers and clinicians sent a letter to FDA in support of eteplirsen's data. The clinicians who signed that letter have collectively treated 5,000 Duchenne patients over the course of 15 years. Their scientific and medical evaluation of eteplirsen's data led them to conclude that the most scientifically robust and ethical way forward was for the FDA to grant eteplirsen accelerated approval and follow up with confirmatory trials to ensure efficacy. On April 16, 2016, 24 Members of the United States Senate, including Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), sent a letter to FDA urging the agency to use accelerated approval and to take the patient perspective into consideration when reviewing drugs to treat Duchenne. On February 18, 2016, 109 Members of of the United States House of Representatives, including Representatives Keating, Lynch, Capuano, Tsongas, and McGovern sent a letter to FDA expressing similar sentiments. "I look forward to joining researchers, scientists and Duchenne families in Maryland this week," said Basile. "I share their hope that the FDA will act quickly to approve a safe and effective treatment for Duchenne, and I am proud and grateful to be representing Governor Baker and all Massachusetts Duchenne families at this important meeting." About Duchenne muscular dystrophy: Duchenne is a progressive neuromuscular disorder that causes a loss of motor, pulmonary, and cardiac function, and premature death. It is the most common lethal pediatric genetic disorder, and it affects every 1 in 3,500 live male births and some females. Duchenne is caused by the body's inability to create dystrophin, a large protein found in muscle cells. Duchenne has no FDA approved treatment or cure and is 100% fatal. Children with Duchenne are born normal and decline over time, usually losing their ability to walk around the age of 12 and succumbing to the disease in their early to mid-twenties. About the Jett Foundation: Since 2001, Jett Foundation, located in Kingston, MA, has worked to find treatments and a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) while improving the lives of those affected by DMD. Over the past decade, Jett Foundation has raised over $15 million for Duchenne research and programs to enhance the lives of those living with Duchenne. The Jett Foundation also provides resources for treatments and adaptive activities, serves as an educational resource, and provides camp opportunities through Camp Promise. The Jett Foundation is a registered charity with 501(c)(3) status from the IRS; all donations are tax deductible. www.jettfoundation.org. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359115LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/massachusetts-governor-sending-top-aide-to-support-duchenne-drug-approval-300256526.html SOURCE Jett Foundation AUBURN HILLS, Mich., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge program to visit Center Line, Michigan, April 30-May 1 and May 14-15 Defensive-driving program geared to educate teenage drivers behind the wheel Events mark third and fourth visits by program to the Metro Detroit area Teens between ages of 15-19 with learner's or driver's license and at least 30 hours of driving experience eligible to participate Parents can register their teen driver for one of eight complimentary Metro Detroit classes at www.mopar.com/road-ready/register The Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge teen safe-driving program is returning to the Metro Detroit area for a pair of two-day events scheduled for April 30-May 1 and May 14-15 in Center Line, Michigan. The spring stops follow two completely full visits to the Center Line location in 2015 by the complimentary advanced driver's training program. Parents can register their teens for the Center Line events at www.mopar.com/road-ready/register. Sponsored by the FCA Foundation and supported by Mopar and Dodge, the Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge program is dedicated to training and educating teenage drivers between the ages of 15-19 with a learner's or driver's license and at least 30 hours of driving experience. Classes are complimentary to registered teens and their parents or guardians. A $99 refundable registration deposit (plus processing fees) is required to secure a spot and is returned after the session. "Parents in the Metro Detroit area have especially embraced the Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge program and its mission to teach teen drivers valuable defensive driving skills," said Pietro Gorlier, Head of Parts and Service (Mopar), FCA Global. "With the help of our friends at the NHRA Motorsports Museum and B.R.A.K.E.S., we're excited to bring another round of events to Center Line to educate even more teens so they can safely learn valuable defensive-driving skills in a controlled environment." "The Dodge brand wants all drivers to experience that visceral feeling that makes them fall in love with driving, and that includes making sure they feel comfortable in all situations," said Tim Kuniskis, Head of Passenger Car Brands Dodge, SRT, Chrysler and FIAT, FCA North America. "The Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge program gives new teen drivers additional opportunities to learn skills and gain valuable experience behind the wheel." Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge was developed in collaboration with the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Motorsports Museum and B.R.A.K.E.S. (Be Responsible And Keep Everyone Safe), two nationally recognized non-profit 501(c)3 organizations that share similar missions of promoting the importance of safe and responsible driving. Participants benefit from a proven curriculum and high-caliber instructors provided by the B.R.A.K.E.S. organization, with both classroom education and hands-on training with a 3:1 student-to-instructor ratio. Each teen's participation in the training program includes a companion experience for a parent or adult guardian who also will actively take part. Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge sessions will provide a brief classroom review of core driving topics, including proper seat positioning, hand positioning and basic vehicle dynamics. Advanced behind-the-wheel training will then be provided to teens, with on-track course sessions including accident avoidance (slalom), distraction, panic stop and wet skid pad. Each session provides four hours of valuable instruction. Slots are filling up fast for the Metro Detroit events, but parents can still register their teens at www.mopar.com/road-ready/register. Morning sessions run from 8 a.m. until noon, with an afternoon session from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Once all eight available sessions are fully registered, a wait list will be established for spots that open up due to cancellation and for parents interested in signing up their teens for any possible future visits by the program to the Detroit area. In addition to earlier visits in 2016 to Indiana and New Jersey and the two upcoming Center Line events, the program will also make a stop in Bradenton, Florida, May 21-22. Mopar Road Ready Powered by Dodge, now in its second year, expects to have impacted more than 1,500 additional young drivers and their parents. About the FCA FoundationSince 1953, the FCA Foundation, the charitable arm of FCA US LLC, has invested more than $500 million in charitable organizations and initiatives that help empower people and build strong, viable communities. The FCA Foundation invests in programs that generate meaningful and measurable societal impacts in the following areas: Education programs that inspire young minds, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); programs that inspire young minds, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); Military programs that support financial and basic needs of military service members, veterans and their families; programs that support financial and basic needs of military service members, veterans and their families; Multicultural/Diversity programs that promote inclusion and opportunity for diverse populations; and programs that promote inclusion and opportunity for diverse populations; and Youth Development programs that help young people develop the skills and leadership qualities to succeed in school, at work and in life. Additionally, FCA US seeks opportunities to support communities through its Motor Citizens volunteer program. This innovative program enables FCA US salaried employees to use 18 hours of paid time each year to be an Engine for Change by investing their time and talents in community service projects. About Dodge BrandThe Dodge brand is America's mainstream performance brand. With the purification of the brand and consolidation with SRT, Dodge is getting back to its performance roots with every single model it offers. The Dodge and SRT brands offer a complete lineup of performance vehicles that stand out within their own segments. Dodge is the "mainstream performance" brand and SRT is positioned as the "ultimate performance" halo of the Dodge brand, together creating a complete and balanced performance brand with one vision and one voice. From muscle cars to compact cars, minivans, crossovers and full-size SUVs, the Dodge brand's full lineup of 2016 models deliver best-in-class horsepower, class-exclusive technology, unmatched capability and a slew of cool features, such as LED headlamps, Dodge signature racetrack tail lamps, dual exhaust, 8.4-inch touchscreen infotainment centers and 7-inch thin-film transistor (TFT) customizable gauge clusters, to name a few. For the 2016 model year, customers will be able to drive the new 2016 Dodge Charger and Challenger, as well as the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and Charger SRT Hellcat. The Dodge brand lineup also includes the Dodge Dart, Durango, Grand Caravan and Journey, including the Crossroad model, and its flagship, the Dodge Viper. About Mopar BrandMopar (a simple contraction of the words MOtor and PARts) was trademarked in 1937 with the launch of an antifreeze product, but it truly made its mark in the 1960s during the muscle-car era. From Mopar Performance Parts to enhance speed and handling for both road and racing use, the brand soon expanded to include technical service and customer support. Today, Mopar is FCA's service, parts and customer-care brand and distributes more than 500,000 parts and accessories in over 150 markets around the world. With more than 50 parts distribution centers and 27 customer-contact hubs globally, Mopar integrates service, parts and customer-care operations in order to enhance dealer and customer support worldwide. Mopar is the source for genuine parts and accessories for FCA brands. Mopar parts are engineered together with the same teams that create factory-authorized specifications for FCA vehicles. This offers a direct connection that no other aftermarket parts company can provide. A complete list of Mopar accessories and performance parts is available at www.mopar.com. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359017 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mopar-road-ready-powered-by-dodge-teen-safe-driving-program-returns-to-metro-detroit-300256449.html SOURCE FCA US LLC Perth, AUSTRALIA (PRWEB) April 25, 2016 DBS IT Australia has long been offering its expertise to numerous businesses across many different industries. The SharePoint development, Managed IT Support Service Company and Custom Software Development company in Perth has recently announced that it will now be offering its services to the manufacturing industry in Australia. The Australian manufacturing Index is currently at the highest it's been since 2010, and is experiencing its eighth consecutive month of growth. This is partly due to the weaker Australian dollar and more competitive export markets. Innes Willox, chief executive at Ai Group, said that exports, new orders, sales and production have all lifted, consolidating the gains that were made in the second half of last year. As confidence is building in the sector, Mr Willox also said that businesses are giving higher priority to domestic activities both along their supply chains and internally. While this is good news for the industry, especially during the current economic climate, big challenges continue to remain since the manufacturing industry is also vulnerable to poor domestic policy changes and international turbulence. Many businesses are also being negatively impacted since with the lower dollar comes higher costs of imported inputs. And all is not well for the global manufacturing sector, as activity levels across the industry basically stalled last month. The huge decline in currencies in emerging markets is helping provide a temporary boost to prices, however since Australia is greatly dependent on international trends, the industry may be in for a rough patch. SharePoint Development in Perth and throughout Australia represents an opportunity for businesses within the manufacturing industry to centralise data, keep employees productive, improve organisation and make it easier to find important documents. This means that key processes are improved and streamlined, software is customised depending on the needs of each individual business, and employees can spend less time focused on tasks which can be automated, freeing the up for more important tasks. DBS IT Australia is the place to go for businesses looking for an experienced SharePoint developer in Perth. The company has a reputation for customer service, and provides individual, unique solutions to each client, depending on their needs. With the release of SharePoint Server 2016 this year, there's now even more reason for businesses to see how SharePoint can improve their processes and save them both time and money. And with the manufacturing industry in flux, now is the time for many businesses to focus on improving backend systems so they will be operating at peak efficiency and ready to weather the storm. When asked about this new development, a spokesperson from DBS IT Australia said: "In this day and age, businesses should be focused on data loss prevention and security. SharePoint can represent huge savings for businesses in the manufacturing industry that are using third-party products for their backups, and many people are unaware of just how efficient their businesses can run with SharePoint." If you're looking for the best IT Managed Services in Perth Australia, contact DBS IT Australia today to see how their experienced team of developers can help. Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/04/prweb13341881.htm SOFIA (Reuters) - Two workers were killed on Monday in an explosion at Bulgaria's biggest weapons maker, Arsenal, in the center of the country, the interior ministry said. "The blast occurred at 10.20 am local time (0720 GMT) in a warehouse for handling explosives and other material," said Nikola Nikolov, head of the ministry's fire safety unit, adding that two people had died. Police initially said the blast, in the town of Kazanluk, 230 km (144 miles) east of the capital Sofia, triggered a fire that was quickly put out. But Nikolov said there was no fire and no danger of any further explosions. It was too early to say what the reason was for the explosion, he said. There have been several other accidents in the arms industry in the Black Sea state. In 2014, a series of powerful blasts at a Bulgarian explosives plant killed 15 employees in the village of Gorni Lom, some 145 km (90 miles) northwest of Sofia. (Reporting by Angel Krasimirov and Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Richard Balmforth) Canada's Heritage Minister Melanie Joly speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, December 9, 2015. REUTERS/Chris Wattie TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Liberal government is prepared to overhaul the country's laws governing broadcasting, media and cultural industries to support local content, Heritage Minister Melanie Joly told the Globe and Mail in a report on Saturday, announcing a new policy direction in what she called a broken system. Canada's broadcast regulator has long had requirements for networks to carry certain amounts of local content. But it cut that quota drastically last year under the Conservative government, after the industry was shaken up by the arrivals of online media services such as the streaming site Netflix. Joly told the Globe she was willing to change laws such as the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act and modify the mandates of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broadcast regulator and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp public media organization. She added the government would also create new laws or agencies, as needed. Joly's Canadian Heritage federal department on Saturday announced a public consultation on how to support and promote Canadian content in the current digital climate. The department said in a statement it has made available a pre-consultation questionnaire on media consumption habits and expectations that will be open until May 20. The department said Joly will lead the next phase, which will begin in the summer, though it did not give further details. Canadian Heritage did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Joly told the Globe she will start acting on the consultation's feedback in 2017, when she will also prepare a new cultural export strategy with International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland. Last year the government eliminated its 55 percent requirement for local shows on over-the-air TV, with the CTRC saying the protections were no longer relevant in a world of abundance and choice. The regulator's decision is not expected to take effect until 2017. Netflix arrived in Canada in late 2010 and does not have to ensure a quota of Canadian content, which are usually less popular than those from the United States. It and similar services have shaken up the industry by offering more choices than traditional subscription TV services. (Reporting by Ethan Lou in Toronto; Editing by David Gregorio) People inspect the site of a car bomb on the outskirts of the Sayeda Zeinab district south of Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 25, 2016. REUTERS/SANA/Handout via Reuters BEIRUT (Reuters) - A car bomb in a district south of Damascus killed at least six people and possibly many more on Monday, according to Islamic State militants who claimed responsibility for the attack. The ultra-hardline Sunni group's attack near a Syrian army checkpoint had killed or injured 48 people, a news agency close to the militants said. Lebanese group Hezbollah's Al Manar television reported the blast was at an army checkpoint and put the death toll at eight. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said eight people had been killed and the toll was expected to rise because of the number of people with serious injuries. State media said the bombing was on the outskirts of Sayeda Zeinab, home to Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine. The area has already been hit by two bomb attacks this year. Multiple explosions in February killed scores of people in one of the bloodiest attacks in that area in Syria's five-year conflict, and an Islamic State suicide attack there less than a month earlier killed 70 people. Syrian government negotiator Bashar Ja'afari said Monday's blast "that four terrorists carried out" had hit a hospital, killing some patients evacuated last week from two rebel-besieged towns in the northwestern province of Idlib. Separately, rebel shelling of government-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 18 people, the Observatory said. Syrian aerial bombing has killed dozens of civilians in Aleppo's residential area of Bustan al Qasr and areas under the control of rebels in the last few days, it said. The government says it is planning a campaign to take areas of Aleppo under rebel control and to cut off their only remaining route into the city. (Reporting by John Davison, Tom Perry and Suleiman al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Louise Ireland) Agus Martowardojo, Indonesia's Central Bank Governor, attends a press conference at the bank's headquarters in Jakarta November 17, 2015.REUTERS/Darren Whiteside JAKARTA (Reuters) - A tax amnesty program planned by Indonesia's government could potentially attract home 560 trillion rupiah ($42.38 billion) of assets stashed offshore, the central bank governor told a parliamentary commission on Monday. The amnesty program could also increase the government's tax revenue by 45.7 trillion rupiah, Governor Agus Martowardojo told the commission overseeing finance. "The tax amnesty is part of an overhaul of the tax system. Therefore, it should lead to an improvement of people's welfare," he said. (Reporting by Hidayat Setiaji; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Richard Borsuk) People inspect damage at a site hit by Saudi-led air strikes in the al Qaeda-held port of Mukalla city in southern Yemen April 24, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN (Reuters) - Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focused their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10. The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move toward peace. In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants. Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other. DEATHS A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. "It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighboring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week. The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the U.N. Security Council's request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move toward peace. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Kuwait; Writing by Noah Browning and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Aucklanders came in their droves to attend the Anzac commemorations at the museum. An uncharacteristically balmy morning saw two Auckland Dawn Services attract thousands. Led by Auckland Mayor Len Brown, thousands paid their respects at Auckland War Memorial Museum's service to New Zealand's more-than 30,000 war dead. Tears welled several times during the solemn service as speeches were punctuated by bugle, pipe and verse. SIMON MAUDE / FAIRFAX NZ Sisters Storm, left, Ashleigh and Leigh Hanmaha proudly watched their father, a padre and army reservist parade. As Auckland's dwindling number of World War II veterans, family, friends, soldiers and other veterans marched off, those watching reflected on the service. Sisters Storm, Ashleigh and Leigh Haumaha felt proud to watch their army reservist father and chaplain take part in the parade. The Haumaha family rose at 3.30am to make the trip from Hamilton. SIMON MAUDE / FAIRFAX NZ Veterans, family and friends march out from Auckland War Memorial Museum's Dawn Service. Attending Dawn Services was an annual rite for the Haumaha family, "we're here to remember the lost ones", Leigh said. Aucklander Chris Hawkins attended, honouring his long-dead Maori Battalion grandfather William Hawkins. Originally from Wairoa in Hawkes Bay, Hawkins wore his grand dad's medals for the first time: his father Parau used to wear them to the ceremonies. SIMON MAUDE / FAIRFAX NZ Chris Williams wears grandfather and Maori Battalion veteran William Hawkins' medals. This was Hawkins' first Dawn Service without his father Parau, who died at Christmas time. "I never met my grand dad, I can only go by the stories I was told, he was a real character, a family man, strict and stern but always fair." Metres away from Hawkins on the other side of the memorial cenotaph, New Zealand Army Afghanistan veterans Lance Corporals John Henry and Don Hayward quietly reflected. SIMON MAUDE / FAIRFAX NZ Former New Zealand Army and Afghanistan veterans, Lance Corporals John Henry, left and Don Hayward with Auckland Mayor Len Brown. Henry, who served in the infantry for nine years, said he found the Dawn Service "emotional at times". Reluctant to talk about his Afghan service, Henry said he was there to "honour those that have come and gone". Hayward attended with his young step-son and partner. SIMON MAUDE / FAIRFAX NZ Nick Fazaherley, left, with fellow West Auckland scouts. "It was more about bringing the young fella down here, we normally do the Dawn Service in Whangarei." Both Hayward and Henry planned on reuniting with old army buddies later in the day. "On days like this you always catch up with someone you know," Hayward said. SIMON MAUDE / FAIRFAX NZ Auckland War Memorial Museum. Scout group West West Rovers had their work cut out for Anzac Day. After attending the Dawn Service the group of West Auckland scout leaders were fanning out across the city helping with other events. Rover scout Nick Fazaherley said last year his group marched onto the memorial square. "It's a different experience, when you're in the parade. You're caught up in what you're doing, but today, you're more in the moment watching." PETER MEECHAM/stuff.co.nz ANZAC commemorations at NZ's largest war grave cemetery West Auckland remembers. A crowd of thousands at times broke into spontaneous applause as elderly war veterans made their appearance at Glen Eden's Waikumete Cemetery. Fairfax videographer Peter Meecham said it was a "nice touch" by the respectful crowd. PETER MEECHAM / FAIRFAX NZ Derek Mihaere, left, with son Diamond holding a picture of Derek's father, former Maori Battalion soldier Henry. Since 1972 Derek has come to Waikumete cemetery to pay his respects. A sizeable contingent of serving and ex-servicemen paraded with ceremonially dressed police, fire and emergency services. Meecham encountered father and son Derek and Diamond Mihaere carrying a portrait of Derek's father Henry. Derek has been coming to Waikumete every ANZAC Day since 1972 when Henry died. LAWRENCE SMITH / FAIRFAX NZ A creative but anonymous type spent ANZAC Day's early hours planting this poppy tribute in Ponsonby's Western Park. Henry fought in North Africa with the Maori Battalion and survived years as a prisoner of war after being captured by Rommel's Afrika Korps. At the Anzac dawn parade at Feilding's cenotaph, from left, Major Aaron Couchman wears medals from his recent service in Afghanistan, Christine Couchman wears her father's World War I medals, Brennan Couchman wears his great grandfather's World War II medals and Warrant Officer One Stewart Couchman wears medals from his service in Vietnam and Malaya. For a Feilding-based family steeped in military traditions, Anzac Day was a poignant reminder of the places they have been and wars they have seen. This Anzac Day, Christine Couchman had her family home. She and three generations of Couchman men attended the Feilding dawn parade with four generations of war medals hanging over their hearts. Medals from World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War and Afghanistan conflict lined their breast pockets. For her, Anzac Day was a special day. "It's special and especially important to remember those in war and those that have come home." Her father, Harry Hickling, had fought at the Western Front in WWI. He was a British soldier who went on to survive the war, move to Australia, and later reside in New Zealand. Her husband, Stewart Couchman, is a Vietnam War veteran. He was a warrant officer class one and also fought in Malaya. His father, Alfred Couchman, had fought in Italy and Egypt during WWII. Stewart Couchman said commemorating Anzac Day was poignant for his family. It was also nice to take time to remember and respect his colleagues and friends he had served with over the years. "It is emotional. It's an emotional day for many." Their son, Major Aaron Couchman, currently serves in the New Zealand Army and has fought in conflicts around the world, including in Afghanistan. Anzac Day was about commemorating the soldiers who fought in the world wars. But it was also important to acknowledge the current work of members of the army. "It's about the people who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and other conflicts around the world. They're people who have served their country too. " His son, Brennan Couchman, 13, stood side by side with his parents and grandparents, all adorned with alternating faded bronze and gleaming silver medals. Brennan said Anzac Day meant a lot to his family and it was "pretty cool" to stand beside them at the dawn service and reflect on the places where his family had fought. He wore his great grandfather's WWI medals and said it was great to be a part of the Anzac Day commemorations. "It's remembering and respecting the people who served for our country." The Palmerston North Boys' High student said he had thought about following in his family's footsteps and taking up arms as a soldier, but he also liked the idea of a career in music. The Couchman family were among hundreds of people clad in poppy-pinned coats who gathered around Feilding's cenotaph. Feilding RSA president Barrie Law welcomed the crowds of men, women and children to sing hymns, lay wreaths and poppies and to remember all those who sacrificed their lives in war. Family, friends and community members gathered outside for the blessing. Local kaumatua donned gas masks and went inside to bless each room. After a 26-hour seige that Porirua will not soon forget, the family of gunman Pita Tekira have apologised to the community for the anguish he put everyone through before he took his own life. "All we could do was pray and hope things would turn out positively. But as it was, they didn't," uncle Rikki Tekira said. "[Pita] had a good heart ... we didn't expect this result." MAARTEN HOLL/FAIRFAX NZ Pita Tekira's uncle Rikki Tekira, outside 13A Kokiri Cres where his nephew died after a police standoff. By Sunday, the air of tension over Kokiri Cres had lifted and local kaumatua had blessed the house where Pita Tekira, 29, shot police dog Gazza on Friday morning. READ MORE * Homes at the centre of Porirua siege blessed * Porirua seige: How the quiet standoff ended * Tales from the front line * RECAP: Porirua siege as it happened * Shot police dog honoured for bravery They had also removed any bad spirits from the house up the road where Tekira fled to and kept armed police at bay for more than a day. Stuff.co.nz The police negotiation with Pita Tekira during a siege in Porirua was caught on camera. A clearer picture of the events that played out during that standoff emerged on Sunday, including video of a negotiation between Tekira and a police officer who tried to get him to give up his gun in exchange for cigarettes. Tekira endured gas canisters being fired into his stronghold, and responded angrily when a police robot entered the house about midnight on Friday. But by 11.45am on Saturday, Police had confirmed a man thought to be Tekira was found dead inside the house. Autopsy results are yet to be released, but he is believed to have shot himself. NZ POLICE Pita Tekira is believed to have been in Porirua to visit his ex-partner. His body was removed from the house about 5pm on Saturday. "He must have really had it in his mind he wasn't going to be captured and taken by the authorities," Rikki Tekira said. "We're very saddened ... I feel for his mother, she's done her best to raise him." MAARTEN HOLL/Fairfax NZ Police finish their scene examination at Kokiri Cres where Pita Tekira, 29, died after a stand-off with police. Rikki Tekira said his nephew was the only son of his brother Robert, who died when Pita was about seven. He had been raised by his mother, who lived in the Hawke's Bay town of Waipukurau. But he was also was very close to his grandmother. Pita Tekira's body would be taken to Omahu, near Hastings, where his father was also buried, once his body had been released by the coroner, Rikki Tekira said. ROSS GIBLIN/FAIRFAX NZ The body of Pita Tekira was removed from 13A Kokiri Cres by a hearse about 5pm on Saturday. He acknowledged that his nephew's actions affected a lot of families, and forced many people to evacuate their homes and seek shelter at a local marae. He hoped over the next few days, and following the blessing of the two houses involved, people would be able to adapt and adjust back into normal life. More members of Tekira's family were at the scene of the seige on Sunday to pray and comfort each other. KEVIN STENT/FAIRFAX NZ The fatal shooting of police dog Gazza sparked the siege in Porirua on Friday. The three kaumatua who blessed the houses had to don large gas masks before going inside the property where Tekira's body was found, as it was still contaminated by the gas police used. A prayer was said inside the house where Tekira was found was to get rid of any bad spirits remaining, Senior Constable Michael Tahere said. "Something bad's happened at that house so we need to say a prayer ... it just helps them with their spirituality." FAIRFAX NZ Armed police leave the site of the Porirua siege. The woman who lived at the house where Gazza was shot also requested a cleansing be carried out, he said. "Because the house was covered in blood from the dog, she just wanted her house blessed." Police have finished examining both properties. An officer who was injured after jumping from a second-storey window when Gazza was shot is still in a stable condition in hospital. On Sunday morning, despite the calm, sunny weather and sound of neighbours laughing, those living on Kokiri Cres were still coming to terms with what happened. One of those residents, Lucretia Meremere, was at home when the drama started to unfold. She heard gunshots and called her daughter, Jo Repia-Meremere, to tell her not to drive back into Kokiri Cres. But she was too late, and Repia-Meremere drove into the street to see Tekira running past her, carrying a gun that was pointed in her direction. "He was chasing after the police and pointed his gun at them." A group of police officers were yelling at a crowd that had gathered on the street, saying "get inside and stay indoors". Tekira appeared upset, but did not say anything before he ran into the house where he would later be found dead, Meremere said. MORE DETAILS EMERGE OF GUNMAN'S MOTIVE Plenty of questions still remain as to why Pita Tekira ended up in an armed standoff with police, but his uncle believed he was in Porirua to see his child. Police had gone to Kokiri Cres on Friday morning to execute a search warrant, after Tekira cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet in Hawke's Bay on April 1. He was facing 11 dishonesty, driving and violent offending charges. Lucretia Meremere did not know Tekira, but said she understood he had been at his ex-partner's house, across the road from the house where he ended up hiding out. Tekira had apparently come to the street to see his ex-partner, who had been living by herself after she left him in Hawke's Bay, she said. PORIRUA SIEGE TIMELINE Friday, April 1 Tekira cuts off his monitoring bracelet and leaves bail address in Waipukurau, Hawke's Bay. Thursday, April 7 Police appeal for sightings of Tekira, saying he could be in Wellington, Hutt Valley, Porirua or Hawke's Bay. Friday, April 22 9.45am: Three police officers, including Constable Josh Robertson and his dog Gazza, execute a search warrant at 26 Kokiri Cres. It is believed they were armed, with more armed officers nearby. Another person was reportedly in the house at the time. 10am: Gazza is shot dead, two officers carry his body from the house. A third jumps from a second-storey window to escape and is injured. Residents returning to their street find it cordoned off. 10.05am (approx): Tekira runs down the street waving a firearm at police and a bystander. He runs into 13A Kokiri Cres. 10.30am: Street put into lockdown; local retailers are told to close shops, nearby schools and daycare centres close. 11.15am: Police announce they are searching for Tekira. 11.30am: Tekira is believed to still be in 13A, but police say he could be in the wider Porirua area. More police dogs and armed police arrive, Westpac rescue helicopter lands, injured officer taken to hospital. 1pm: Residents evacuated from Kokiri Cres. 1.42pm: Police negotiations continue with Tekira, who asks for cigarettes and a phone. 2.30pm: Wellington Police District Commander Superintendent Sam Hoyle confirms Gazza died at the scene. 5pm: Residents told they can go to Horouta Marae for the night. 6.30pm: Police deliver a hot meal to Tekira. 10pm-12am: The first round of gas canisters are fired into the house some time between 10pm and midnight. Tekira does not respond 'verbally or visually'. Saturday, April 23 12am (approx): A police robot is deployed, Tekira responds angrily. 3am-6am: More "loud bangs" are heard. Police say these were gas canisters being fired, not gun shots. 7.30am: More gas fired into the house. Tekira is not seen or heard from. 9.30am: Talk of the gunman being dead surfaces; armed police start to pack up. 11.30am: More police leave the scene, say a statement will be issued "very soon". 11.45am: Police confirm a man has been found dead in the house; while no firm ID yet, all believe it to be Tekira. Late afternoon: Residents start returning home. Police examine 13A and 26 Kokiri Cres. Sunday, April 24 The street and affected houses are blessed by local kaumatua. Rikki Tekira, outside the house where his nephew Pita Tekira died after a stand-off with police, who were urging him to give himself up. Pita Rangi Tekira became a quiet little boy after he lost his father. His mother and grandmother raised the only child in Hawke's Bay, near Omahu Marae, the same spot where the 29-year-old's family hope to bury him this week. It is believed Tekira took his own life sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, bringing Porirua's 26-hour siege to an end. NZ POLICE Pita Tekira, 29, died after a 26-hour siege in Porirua which also cost the life of a police dog and put an officer in hospital. The siege also cost the life of police dog Gazza and resulted in a policeman being injured after he leapt out of a second-storey window. READ MORE: * Uncle apologises on behalf of Tekira family * Homes at the centre of Porirua siege blessed * Porirua seige: How the quiet standoff ended * Tales from the front line The gunman, wanted for ditching his electronic monitoring bracelet and going on the run, had holed himself up in Kokiri Cres amid the stand-off with police. MAARTEN HOLL/FAIRFAX NZ Family and friends of gunman Pita Tekira gather in Porirua's Kokiri Cres on Sunday to pray and comfort each other. Rikki Tekira, Pita's uncle, said he had not known his nephew well during his adulthood. But he recalled him as a seven-year-old losing his father, Robert Tekira, to cancer. "At the time he was taken he was just like any other child. He was playful and became a quiet child. MAARTEN HOLL/FAIRFAX NZ Kaumatua had to wear gas masks before they could enter the Kokiri Cres property where Tekira was found dead to bless each room. "That was a huge piece of his life gone without his father. His father was very well-respected." The last time Rikki Tekira saw his nephew was about three weeks ago. He had asked his uncle to lend him petrol money to travel to Wellington. Tekira said he had not known his nephew was facing active criminal charges, for dishonesty, violence and driving offending, and lent him the money. It was only when his wife later told him she had seen police had put out a "wanted" alert for his nephew that he realised he was in trouble. "I was a little bit bewildered when I realised he had gone off." Tekira said he had repeatedly tried to call Pita, but did not hear from him again. He believed his nephew had a young child in Porirua and that was why he had been visiting. He did not know if his nephew was involved in any gangs, but had noticed his "anti-law" tattoos: "I sort of knew he got in trouble with the police". "I guess when you mix with a crowd that does things unlawfully you happen [upon] that path. "You can't run from the law without paying the consequences. You are responsible for the things that you do." His mother had now lost her husband and her only child, and was currently taking care of her own unwell mother, Tekira said. "She's very saddened. As a family we know she did her best to raise up their son and I said to her... she did a wonderful job as a mother... I know at the end of the day the choices he made were his." Tekira had already expressed the family's condolences to Constable Josh Robertson's police dog Gazza, and wanted to wish the injured officer a speedy recovery too. "I just wanted to pass our regards to him." The family was trying to move forward, Tekira said. "Part of that is coming in and making peace with the community and preparing for Pita's tangi." Tekira's autopsy would be carried out on Tuesday, then the coroner would release his body to the family. A police spokeswoman said planning for a memorial service for Gazza was also underway. Thousands turn out for the Dawn Service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington. When dawn broke in Wellington on Anzac Day, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was covered in poppies left by the people who attended the early service in Wellington. The Wellington pre-dawn was still and quiet, with not a cloud in the sky. The sun only peeked above the hills at the end of the dawn service, which added to the solemnity of the 100th commemorations of Anzac Day. What does Anzac Day mean to you? Share your stories, photos and videos. Contribute Thousands turned up at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park, much fewer than last year's record 40,000, but still a large enough crowd to pack out the grass areas and stand united to remember those who had served New Zealand in all of the wars since our country began. Royal New Zealand Air Force Chaplain Class 2 Anthony Hawes welcomed everyone to the service, including Prime Minister John Key, Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, and Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae. "A hundred years ago, there was a call for a national day of mourning and it was answered," he said. NZDF Thousands gather at Pukeahu park for the Anzac Day dawn service. "And now here we are still gathering 100 years later." The Governor-General said that New Zealanders would be turning out to services all around the country because of the importance of remembering those who had served the country in all wars. The dawn service was one of the most sacred commemorations in New Zealand because that was when the Anzac troops landed in Gallipoli, he said. NZDF Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae speaks to the service about the importance of Anzac Day. Tribute was also paid to those who had welcomed refugees from war-torn countries to peaceful New Zealand. "Our hope is that there will be a time when war and conflict are consigned to history. "And while this may seem a lofty aspiration, surely it is incumbent on us to pursue it. MONIQUE FORD/FAIRFAX NZ Current serviceman in the Anzac Day parade in Wellington. "We imagine the hardships and horrors of war suffered by our forebears... We commit to a better, safer world for our children and our children's children." The Ode was read in Maori by Warrant Officer Jack Rudolph and in English by retired Lieutenant Colonel Ron Turner. The Last Post and Reveille echoed off the hills, and the large crowd gave a resounding response to the words from Laurence Binyon's poem "We will remember them". AMY JACKMAN/FAIRFAX NZ Dawn in Wellington from the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Jesse Garlick and Rosy Herstell, both 23, left their flat on Cuba St and headed to the park at about 3am to get a front row seat on Anzac Square. They were snuggled up in sleeping bags and had a thermos of tea and lots of snacks to get them through the hours until the 5.30am service. Herstell said many members of her family had served in different wars and she had never missed an Anzac Day. NZDF A poppy being placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Wellington Bob Peters is a veteran of four services the merchant navy, army, navy and air force and his family have served the country for more than 100 years. "They've all served from the South African war to the First World War, to the Second World War, to Vietnam and onwards," he said. "I like that someone from their family is here [at the service] for them." He served in the four services simply because he wanted to and said he loved every minute. "It's the comradeship with the people themselves. You go through a lot of learning curves and it wakes you up a bit and forces you to do things that are well out of your comfort zone. "Achieving those little things for yourself with those people, that's what really makes it worthwhile." Current serviceman Corporal Maaka McKinney, who has been in the army for 24 years, said Anzac Day was as important today as it was 100 years ago. "It's the foundation of what our country is today. As time goes by it's important that we keep doing it," he said. "It's important that the youth of today learn about what Anzac is, what our grandparents and great-grandparents did in the First and Second World War, and also understand what we are doing today." Take a walk in the park and catch the Bard in action View(s): As the world commemorates the 400th death anniversary of William Shakespeare, one of the leading theatre groups in the country, The Workshop Players, will present Shakespeare in the Park, a popular concept that makes Shakespeares performances accessible to theatre lovers from all walks of life. Founded in the USA as a New York Shakespeare Festival, it has gained recognition and popularity in many parts of the world. The Workshop Players will be performing three plays that feature in the O level, A Level and University curricula. Jerome L. de Silva, the Artistic Director of The Workshop Players said he hoped to see it grow into an annual event. The Bard enjoys immense appreciation in Sri Lanka, with Shakespeares work being studied in schools and universities, increased participation at the annual inter-school Shakespeare Drama Competition, and amateur theatre groups and schools producing public performances of Shakespeares plays. Endorsing this effort, Tanya Warnakulasuriya, Arts Manager/Programmes of the British Council said, The British Council Arts programme is committed to making the Arts accessible to everyone. So, having The Workshop Players as our new Artists-in Residence and supporting them to produce Sri Lankas first ever Shakespeare in the Park, is a perfect partnership for us. This is exactly how Shakespeares plays should be experienced. The three plays selected for the festival include A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello. While they are currently studied as texts by students of English literature, they also provide a range of genres and styles to entertain audiences. A Midsummer Nights Dream, directed by Amayaa Wijesinghe, Lehan Thomas, Leyanvi Mirando and Tanika Fernando, will be staged on April 28 and 29. The Merchant of Venice, directed by Javin Thomas, goes on the boards on May 7 and 8, while Othello, directed by Jerome L. de Silva and Nadishka Aloysius will be performed on May 14 and 15. The cast comprises experienced actors and actresses from The Workshop Players. The plays begin at 7 p.m. and all are welcome. Entrance is free. Cargills Ceylon PLC & Cargills Magic will be supporting this project, along with the British Council. Reverend John Hebenton wants the public to attend St Georges Anglican Church service this Friday, which will commemorate the Battle of Gate Pa. Photo: Tracy Hardy. This Friday, April 29, Tauranga residents are invited to attend a memorial service at St Georges Anglican Church to honour all those who fought and died in the Battle of Gate Pa. The service will start at 4pm this Friday, which is when exactly 152 years ago British forces began their march up Pukehinahina. An account of the battle will be read out followed by a time of silent reflection with images playing. And at 4.30pm the church bell will be rung 60 times to remember the 60 men who lost their lives on both sides of the battle. Reverend John Hebenton says St Georges Anglican Church was built on the battlesite about 116 years ago as a memorial to those involved and the descendants of those on the British side of the campaign. But today the church wants to honour all those who sacrificed their lives in the battle. Because St Georges Church sits on the battle-site we feel a sense of responsibility for holding the story of both sides of the battle and the aftermath with integrity, and to offer ways the people can hear about, engage with and reflect upon these stories and what they mean for us living in Tauranga Moana. We are very aware of the significance of this battle and the Battle of Te Ranga and how they contribute to the founding of our city and one way to let others know is by telling the story. For example, the church bell, which came from the HMS Archeron submarine, which commemorates the naval officers and men who lost their lives in the battle. John says two years ago on the 150th year since the Battle of Gate Pa a huge commemoration attracted thousands but last year the very worthy 1915 Gallipoli landings took centre-stage. So this year the Anglican Parish of Gate Pa and the Tauranga Moana Anglican Maori Mission hope to attract more people on April 29. It continues to be our hope that the commemorations of 2014 would be the beginning of some ongoing events for the people of this city to engage with the story of the New Zealand Land Wars and our colonial past and how these shape present day New Zealand society. Because the cost and consequences of the battle for nga iwi o Tauranga Moana were huge so we need to remember the battle but also work out a way to build our future together. Ngai Tamarawaho kaumatua Peri Kohu says he is interested in keeping the battles story in the public a bit more it so it becomes part of who we are, than the way its been treated in the past. I think the upcoming service is an important event of the ongoing action around the commemoration of the battle. Its about education; its about keeping it in focus in the public. John hopes the churchs simple service, offered as a contribution to the ongoing commemoration, may encourage other groups to offer events as well. We will finish our service on April 29 with prayers/karakia for the future of our city. Everyone is welcome to attend the memorial service at St Georges Anglican Church, Gate Pa, this Friday, April 29, from 4pm. A new online system will streamline property transactions and make it easier to link property information held across central and local government, says Land Information Minister Louise Upston. Every day, kiwis buy and sell homes, subdivide land and build new houses. Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) processes more than 3.5 million transactions and property information searches a year, says Ms Upston. A three-year-old boy has been flown to hospital after he was found floating on the surface of a hot pool. The Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter was dispatched to Okauia Springs, near Matamata, at 2pm yesterday. Looking at their reflection is a form of torture for those affected by dysmorphophobia. Their excessive concern about imperceptible defects drives them to the limit and some even consider committing suicide because they think they are so unattractive Every day I look at myself in the mirror and it is as if I were a different person. Some days I think I look OK and I can look at myself without worrying. Other days I cant stop looking, in case I spot something else thats wrong. And often I cant bear to look at all. Rebeca is 18 years old and is speaking about her experience at a visible forum in the hope that it will help her. She says her head is going to explode and you can see that the uncontrollable anguish from which she is suffering is strangling her, little by little. She suffers from dysmorphophobia, or BDD, a condition which means that she cannot see herself as she really is. Between one and two per cent of the worlds population are believed to be in the same situation. These are people who worry excessively, much more than usual, about a body defect which they believe they have, explains Miguel Gutierrez, president of the Spanish Psychiatry Society. They torture themselves by criticising imperfections which may or may not be real, but which, even if they do exist, are barely noticeable to others, adds psychologist Carlos A. Almenara. The World Health Organisation classifies BDD as a mental disorder, although it is difficult to diagnose. Often, the person hides the problem, says Miguel. They may complain about their nose or their teeth, but they rarely tell anyone about the things they dont do as a result of this problem. I avoid any contact with reflective surfaces, including metal spoons. Im terrified of my own shadow. Alvaro doesnt hold back on details when he is talking about his problem on the internet. But fighting the mirror is only one small manifestation; there are others which are much more serious: no longer dressing in a certain way, going to certain places, mixing with certain groups of people... The disorder affects their whole world, explains the president of the Spanish Psychiatry Society. When you are convinced that you look so awful, you exclude yourself socially. It is what is known as phobic social behaviour. Andres, who is 26, has thought about committing suicide on several occasions. Today, for about 15 minutes, I considered killing myself, he says, on the internet. Thoughts of suicide are relatively common among these patients, say experts, although doing it is another matter. Such thoughts occur when the degree of suffering and feeling of despair are very great. Normally, they are combined with other things, says Karmele Salaberria, a professor at the Pyschology Faculty at the University of the Basque Country. Andres has been battling depression for months; this is another problem which is not uncommon in these groups, who also suffer from anxiety and psychological stress. It is normal in our society for people to worry about how they look. The National Association of Perfumery and Cosmetics, Stanpa, calculates that each one of us spends 135 euros a year on products ranging from colognes to creams, shampoos to other toiletries. This sector creates 36,000 jobs directly and 200,000 indirectly. In 2014, it generated 6,400 million euros. The body and everything related to it has become a business, explains Karmele Salaberria, who is also the author of one of the few studies to have been carried out into BBD in Spain. She published it in 1999, with her colleagues Mercedes Borda, Pedro J. Amor and Enrique Echeburua, and says the situation today is still very similar. The report also looks at another, better-known, phenomenon, bigorexia or muscle dysmorphia, (excessive preoccupation with sculpting the body in the gym). But is it so bad to want to look good? You have to distinguish between a normal interest in appearance and the problem of intense thoughts which produce emotional illness and makes someone obsessive. We are talking about something that is dysfunctional, a lack of adaptation, she explains. Karmele warns of something more: in our society today it is increasingly important to seem more than you really are. The media, the cinema, social networks do not reinforce the message that it is important to be a good person, to be honourable, to treat people with respect. Instead they want people to be younger, taller, more intelligent, more brilliant... The population in general needs to be educated about health and, especially, mental health. The ABC of health can help us to prevent many problems and to identify them early on, says researcher Carlos Almenara. Danny Bowman, a 21-year-old British man who is famous for being the first ever selfie addict, spent up to ten hours a day taking photos of himself and posting them on social networking sites. I used to stay up until the early hours, doing it, he says. He was obsessed about appearing to be perfect, entertaining, charming.... and the negative comments left him devastated. He even abandoned his studies. One day, his mother, Penny, found him half asleep beside a pack of sleeping pills. He had tried to commit suicide. He was saved twice: once through having his stomach pumped, and again because the doctors told him he was suffering from a mental disorder and it could be treated. The family and social environment play an important role in helping people with BDD. It is often they who take the sufferer to the doctor. Early diagnosis offers a better chance of reversing the disorder, especially in young people. However, the first specialist people go to may not be the one they need. Mariola Bonillo is a psychologist in Madrid and one of her patients consulted her after undergoing cosmetic surgery three times and realising that it hadnt made her feel any better. This is not uncommon. Surgeons try to make these patients see that they do not have the defect they believe they have and that surgery isnt necessary, but they often react angrily. Its best not to operate, because theyre never happy, says surgeon Luis Vecilla. Every year I see two or three cases and try to avoid operating on them. And then what happens? They go to someone else, they keep asking for different operations and they even subject the doctors to a form of emotional blackmail, he says. Dr Gema Esteban was in Malaga this week to give a lecture, which was organised by SUR, on uncommon illnesses Gema Esteban, with writer Pablo Aranda, at the SUR lecture on Tuesday. :: FRANCIS SILVA The delegate in Andalucia of the Spanish Federation of Rare Illnesses (FEDER) and coordinator of the Spanish clinical group of Wolfram Syndrome, Gema Esteban, has just spoken at a conference on Rare illnesses: the resources available, which was organised by SUR and which took place at La Termica in Malaga. Dr Esteban has spent her career researching rare illnesses and is an expert on Wolfram Syndrome, which is sometimes known as DIDMOAD, from diabetes insipidus, diabetes mellitus, optic atrophy, and deafness. As well as that, she is a GP in Garrucha (Almeria), organises workshops on rare illnesses and trains other professionals in the subject. In this interview, she says the time it takes to diagnose a rare illness needs to be shorter. Some patients are having to wait up to ten years before their diagnosis is confirmed. What is Wolfram Syndrome? It is an extremely rare condition, which affects about one in every 770,000 people. In Spain, as far as we know, there 45 people are suffering from it at present. Children with this condition appear to be born healthy, but gradually they suffer from diabetes, lose their sight and their hearing, cant control their bladder, etc. It is a multisystemic degenerative disease which normally affects the sensory organs. Can anything be done to relieve the symptoms? The diagnosis needs to be made as early as possible, so we can try to control the illness and stop it progressing so quickly. What exactly is a rare illness, and how many are there? We know of about 8,000, and those affect about 500,000 people in Andalucia, or 17 per cent of the population. Apart from the fact that they are so uncommon, they all share certain characteristics such as, for example, delays in diagnosis, disorientation, physical and psychological effects and, in general, an early death. Rare illnesses are considered to be pathologies which occur in fewer than five cases per 10,000 inhabitants and seriously affect quality of life. I suppose there is a great deal we dont know about this type of illness, because it is so uncommon? It is essential to speed up the diagnosis of these illnesses, because patients can sometimes wait from five to ten years. The sooner they are detected, the better they can be controlled and the fewer complications arise. Within the rare illnesses, which ones are the best known? Haemophilia, cystic fibrosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), are some. In my work as a GP, I have three patients with ALS. Is FEDER doing anything to stop these patients being invisible? I have belonged to FEDER since it began. It was created so that the patients had a voice and could speak up for themselves to the authorities and anyone else. What happens is that the view of the administration differs from that of the patients. It works very slowly, and time passes without us seeing any progress. What role do the families of people with rare illnesses play? This is something I also spoke about at the conference. Family support is very important. The mother of one patient once told me that she wished the doctors would give them some type of training in how to tell people that a child has a rare illness. What must not happen is for a doctor, straight after a birth, to tell a mother that her baby is suffering from something and will die in such-and-such a time. You have to bear in mind the shock for anyone who is given this type of information. You have to become involved with the families and empathise with them. Is enough research being done into rare illnesses? There are very good researchers in Spain, but the field of research is suffering quite badly as a result of the economic crisis and the cutbacks. Since 2009, funding has been significantly reduced. Researchers feel discouraged, and many projects are blocked. Thats why it is so important for the public health authorities to become involved in rare illnesses. No private company is going to be interested in carrying out research on a drug which may only benefit 40 people in the country. It wouldnt be profitable for them. So, more public money is needed. Between 80,000 and 90,000 patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation have swapped Sintrom and Warfarin for new anticoagulant drugs, which are an improved and more convenient method of treatment An artery of the human body :: S. R. One of the best-known medications in recent decades has been Sintrom. As Dr Jose Maria Lobos says, Nearly everyone has a relative or friend or knows somebody who is taking Sintrom. This is a cousin to the other famous anticoagulant Warfarin. For many years, these have been the only two options available for patients requiring treatment to slow blood clotting, but now a new generation of drugs are starting to be produced as an alternative to the classic products, and they are based on vitamin K agents. The arrival of these new anti-coagulant drugs has been quite revolutionary, not only for the patients but also for professionals in the sector. As a result, experts decided to study the existing situation and see how it affects doctors in different regions of Spain. This was the start of Proyecto Agora, an initiative carried out by the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC) and the Spanish Cardiology Association in collaboration with Pfizer. The study began three years ago and shows that there are some major differences between the different regions. Services for patients who need anticoagulants have developed in a very dispersed manner. For example, in primary care in the region of Madrid, a programme has been developed and 90 per cent of patients of this type are looked after at their local health centre, explains Dr Lobos, who is the coordinator of the working group on cardiovascular illnesses at semFYC. But we have other regions, such as Murcia and the Canary Islands, where the service hardly exists, he says. In some, such as Andalucia and Cantabria, only four out of ten patients receive these drugs. The study continued by looking at the management model used for the patients, which in one third of the regions is based on services provided by haematology departments at different hospitals. The report also shows that in seven regions, doctors at health centres are unable to prescribe this medication; only cardiologists or haematologists can do so. Proyecto Agora is calling for the so-called visa which is needed to acquire this medication to be eradicated and a more flexible system to be introduced to standardise the service across the country and guarantee that patients have access to the treatment in as short a time as possible. Cardiologists are hoping that the new anticoagulant drugs will be available at all levels in the near future, after years during which there has been little change. In the medical profession, we have been waiting for an advance in this type of cardiovascular research for a long time. Researchers have been working for 20 years on new oral anticoagulants which will result in fewer problems for patients than, for example, Sintrom, explains Dr Lobos. This leap forward will not only benefit patients, but doctors as well. Sintrom has been an unusual form of treatment because the patients have to be monitored so closely. Every 30 to 40 days they have to have a blood coagulation test, he says. Another peculiarity is that there is no standard dose of Sintrom; the dosage even varies in the individual, throughout the time they take this drug. More time The new type of prescription will free up more time for doctors. You save time if you dont have to monitor patients every month, says Dr Lobos, who adds that it means patients will also be freed from the slavery of having to go every 30 to 40 days to have their blood coagulation levels checked. The new drugs will also reduce the number of bad patients, as it is estimated that four out of every ten do not control their condition properly. Those would be priority patients for the new oral anticoagulants, says Dr Lobos. Patients should be responsible for their own health. They should follow their doctors advice 100 per cent. When patients are committed to looking after their health, this can avoid medical complications which can arise because people are not following their doctors recommendations, or because they have bad lifestyle habits, says Luciano Arochena, who is the president of the Spanish Federation of Associations of Anticoagulant Patients. In Spain, experts calculate that only 10 to 15 per cent of the more than 800,000 patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation have access to the new drugs. Those who have had to undergo surgery to have a valve replaced will have to continue with the traditional types of medication. In many cases, they are doing well and dont need any changes to be made. They live a perfectly normal life within certain parameters, says Dr Lobos. Marbella looks unlikely to get a Primark store after a court sentence rules that the town council was right to refuse planning permission twice The high street giant will not be opening a store in Marbella. :: REUTERS Primark will not be arriving in Marbella for the time being after La Canada shopping centre lost a legal battle against the town council which twice refused planning permission for the store. A court in Malaga ruled in favour of the council this week and rejected the appeal presented by the company that owns La Canada, General de Galerias Comerciales. They immediately announced that they would be appealing against the latest decision. The conflict goes back to 2014 when General de Galerias Comerciales started proceedings to open Primark in La Canada. The store required more space than was available so the shopping centre was forced to create a mezzanine floor to add 2,000 square metres and work to build another 121 square metres on the top floor. To do this the company requested planning permission from the council, which was refused on the grounds that the shopping centre was already at maximum capacity. The council alleged that the towns planning regulations (PGOU) in 2010 considered the land that La Canada is situated on to be non-established urban land and as such, does not allow for expansion. In their appeal against this initial refusal, General de Galerias Comerciales presented a sentence in their favour from the Supreme Court ruling that La Canada land is established urban land and therefore allows more space. However, this sentence is not definitive since a company with development interests in the area appealed against it and both sides currently await a final decision from the Supreme Court. Marbella council rejected the appeal and General de Galerias Comerciales took the matter to court. Last Monday, the judge ruled in favour of the council and states that planning permission cannot be given. The sentence is based on the fact that the 2010 PGOU where La Canada appears with a building capacity of nearly 129,000 square metres was declared null and void last November. According to the judge, La Canada planning is now ruled by the 1986 PGOU, which considers the shopping centre land as un-programmed urban land with expansion for residential use. Planning permission for commercial use cannot therefore be given. General de Galerias Comerciales announced their appeal based on the Supreme Court sentence and are confident that they will get the licence within a few months. Syracuse, N.Y. The long-vacant former NYNEX building near Syracuse City Hall would be redeveloped into a mix of commercial space and apartments under plans filed by its owner. Carnegie Management Inc., which is owned by real estate investor Isaac Jacobowitz, of Brooklyn, has applied to the city for site plan approval to renovate the 10-story office building at 300 E. Washington St. The project would consist of 120,000 square feet of commercial space on the building's first three floors, 132 apartments on its upper floors and a complete replacement of the building's exterior facade, according to the plans. The basement would contain a 109-space parking garage. The first floor would contain a fitness center for tenants. Carnegie said the building would be redeveloped in two phases. The first would include renovations to the basement, a roof and penthouse addition, mechanical improvements, and the new facade. Build-out of commercial tenant space, apartments and amenities would occur in the second phase. Marty Spitzer, chief operations manager for Carnegie Management, said in an emailed response to an inquiry from syracuse.com that the company plans to begin the first phase as soon as the city approves its plans. He said the first phase would take less than a year to complete and that the entire project would take approximately three years to finish. Built in the 1970s by New York Telephone Co., the 311,356-square-foot building has been vacant since the company's successor, NYNEX, moved out in 1995. Jacobowitz bought the building in 2006 for $3.5 million. City officials have been eager to see the building redeveloped and tried to seize it from Jacobs for $2 million in back taxes and late fees in 2013. They planned to sell it for $595,000 to local developer Peter Muserlian, who proposed a $20 million redevelopment that consisted of 68 apartments and 92,000 square feet of office and retail space. Jacobowitz successfully fought the city off by having 300 Washington St. LLC, a real estate entity he created and which owns the building, file bankruptcy. Under a settlement reached with the administration of Mayor Stephanie Miner in July 2015, Jacobs agreed to pay the city $700,000 to settle the tax bill and to commence a redevelopment of the building within a year. Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148 New hope for troubled 10-story Syracuse building, vacant for 20 years NYC fraud ring.jpg Stanley Pierr-Paul, (top, left) Raekwon Notaras, (top, right) Chynamarie Vanenburg (bottom, left) and Daeveon Brown (bottom, right) are all from the New York City area. The allegedly used cloned credit cards to buy gift cards in Central New York, police said. (Provided photos) DEWITT, N.Y. -- DeWitt police uncovered a fraud ring from New York City that was manufacturing cloned credit cards and purchasing gift cards in Central New York, said DeWitt police Chief James C. Hildmann. Four New York City area residents were charged Saturday in DeWitt, police said. DeWitt police were called to the Tops Market, which is located at 620 Nottingham Road, at about 11:30 a.m. to respond to a forgery complaint. The manager called 911 to report that two males attempted to buy gift cards using fraudulent or cloned credit cards, police said. The same subjects allegedly did it earlier in the morning at the same store, returned for second time, and then fled the store when questioned by employees, police said. While responding to the other DeWitt Tops Market located at the corner of East Genesee Street and Jamesville Road, an officer identified and stopped the suspect vehicle described from the Nottingham Road call. The vehicle was occupied by two individuals later identified as Raekwon Notaras and Stanley Pierr-Paul, police said. Further investigation revealed that these subjects were allegedly part of an organized fraud group from New York City that were staying at the Red Carpet Inn located at 2914 Brewerton Road in Mattydale. A search warrant was approved and executed at the hotel rooms rented to the suspects, which revealed two other accomplices - later identified as Chynamarie Vanenburg and Daeveon Brown. During the search, DeWitt investigators recovered a laptop with card making software, two encoding devices, an embossing machine, and dozens of blank cards and cloned cards that are all used to create counterfeit credit cards with stolen account numbers. Police believe that the group has been in the Syracuse area since about April 17 and primarily hit Tops Markets. Raekwon Notaras, 21, of Jamaica, was charged with four counts of felony criminal possession of forgery devices, two counts felony second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and one count of fifth-degree conspiracy, a misdemeanor, police said. Stanley Pierr-Paul, 20, of Ozone Park, was charged with one count of second-degree felony criminal possession of a forged instrument and one count of fifth-degree conspiracy, a misdemeanor. Chynamarie Vanenburg, 17, of Brooklyn, was charged with 24 counts of felony second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, four counts felony criminal possession of forgery devices and one count of conspiracy, a misdemeanor. Daeveon Brown, 17, of Bronx, was charged with four counts of felony criminal possession of forgery devices and fifth-degree conspiracy, a misdemeanor. jeffrey kelley.JPG Jeffrey J. Kelley was shot by Syracuse police officers March 22, 2016, as he was threatening suicide, police say. (Syracuse Police Department) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A man Syracuse police shot last month admitted today that he fled from federal agents at the U.S.-Canada border three months earlier when they tried to inspect his vehicle. Jeffrey Kelley, 32, of Syracuse, pleaded guilty to high-speed flight from an immigration check point and failure to present his vehicle for inspection. Kelley was driving a Jeep 4x4 from Canada into the U.S. on Dec. 19 when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer stopped him at the immigration checkpoint in Alexandria Bay, according to court papers. Kelley refused the officer's request to lower the rear passenger side window so the officer could look in the back seat, court papers said. The officer told Kelley to turn off the engine and hand over the keys, and Kelley refused, the papers said. The officer went to get a "stop stick" to place under the car's tire when Kelley sped off, toward Interstate-81, the papers said. Another federal agent pursued Kelley but did not catch him, the papers said. Federal agents charged Kelley three months later, after his confrontation with Syracuse police. He faces at least five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he's sentenced Aug. 25. In March, Syracuse police officers shot Kelley when he charged at them with a knife outside his apartment, Syracuse police said. The officers feared for their lives, Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler said. One officer shot Kelley in the right leg with a beanbag shot, Fowler said. Another officer shot Kelley in the right hand with a bullet, he said. Kelley struggled with officers after being shot, but was eventually taken into custody, Fowler said. Contact John O'Brien anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-2187 2011-04-12-dn-lake3.JPG Onondaga Chief Jake Edwards, an Onondaga chief, walks along Onondaga Lake in an area called Murphy's Island. County legislators voted in 2011 to give the land to the nation, but may be changing its mind. (Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com) Syracuse, N.Y. -- Onondaga County officials never bothered to notify the Onondaga Nation this month that they were about to break their 2011 promise to give the nation a piece of land on Onondaga Lake, the nation's attorney said. Joe Heath said he learned about the reversal less than two days before the county Legislature's Environmental Protection Committee approved it. The resolution approved April 13 says the lake should remain 100 percent public forever. "This should have entailed sitting down with nation leaders and saying this is what we're thinking and this is what we think it means relative to the 2011 resolution," Heath said. "That has not happened." Murphy's Island is a 36-acre parcel along the Onondaga Lake that sits behind Destiny USA. Onondaga County voted in 2011 to transfer the land to the Onondaga Nation, but is now backing off that promise. Heath says he has asked for a meeting with County Executive Joanie Mahoney, who in 2012 said she supported the transfer. Mahoney's spokesman, Marty Skahen, referred questions to the county's Director of the Environment, Travis Glazier. Glazier said Mahoney plans to meet with the nation this week. The county legislature voted in July 2011 to transfer Murphy's Island to the Onondaga Nation, after the polluted piece of property was cleaned up. That 2011 resolution said the nation would use the land for cultural purposes, including ceremonies, hunting, fishing and harvesting of food and medicinal plants. In 2012, Mahoney said she was working through the legal process to transfer the land to the Onondaga Nation. "This is something I would very much like to do, and I'm glad the Legislature has endorsed this," Mahoney said at an event sponsored by the Onondaga Historical Association. Earlier this month, however, Glazier came to the legislature's Environmental Protection Committee meeting asking the legislature to keep all county-owned land along the lake "in the public domain in perpetuity." Glazier called the 2011 vote an "anomaly" in the county's long-standing desire to keep every inch of the shoreline open to the public. The resolution approved this month, Glazier said, "is really a commitment by the county to keep the property within the public domain in perpetuity and to ensure public access is made available moving forward." Heath said the county is rushing through the new policy without proper discussion. He said he had asked the environment committee to delay voting, but was rebuffed. "What is the rush here for that kind of resolution?" Heath asked. "Why not give it a little time?" The full Legislature plans to vote on the resolution next week. Glazier said the county has to move forward with its plans to increase public access along the lake, including completion of the bike trail around the entire perimeter of the lake. That trail would cross Murphy's Island. "We're at a pivotal point now with clean of Onondaga Lake, with shorelines becoming freed up," he said. The resolution approved by the environment committee also asks Honeywell and New York state to make public the land they own along the lake. Representatives for both Honeywell and the state Department of Transportation were noncommittal. Contact Glenn Coin: Email | Twitter | Google + | (315) 470-3251 2013-05-08-dl-council4.JPG Syracuse Councilor-at-large Jean Kessner at a council meeting in a file photo from May 8, 2013. David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com (David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A city councilor said Monday she will soon introduce legislation that would make it illegal for Syracuse landlords to refuse to rent to poor people with housing vouchers. Syracuse Councilor-at-Large Jean Kessner said she has not drafted the amendment yet, although council's agenda for its 1 p.m. meeting includes a proposal to make it illegal to refuse to rent housing to a person because of their "source of income." "We're putting it out for public input," Kessner said. "Before I draft legislation and say here's what the legislation is." It's currently legal for landlords to discriminate against people who would pay their rent using Section 8 vouchers from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Craigslist.com, some landlords advertise that they will not rent apartments to tenants on public assistance or with Section 8. "Sorry No Section 8 or PA," read one ad for a property called a "beautiful historic mansion" at 2215 James St. PA stands for public assistance. "$700 / 2br - 1000ft2 - two bedroom, no public assistance and no sec 8" reads an ad for another near Oak Street and Hawley Avenue. There are nearly 5,800 low-income families with the Section 8 vouchers in Onondaga County. Most live in poor neighborhoods of Syracuse because there are few low-income apartments that accept Section 8 vouchers in the suburbs. "The goal is that we have a lot of reports of people not being able to find good housing," Kessner said. "We have reports from the fair housing council that people who need a place to live, who have Section 8 funding, can't find a place to live." Councilors are expected to talk with representatives of CNY Fair Housing, a group that advocates against housing discrimination, at a study session April 27. "I believe we can get something done," Kessner said. Kessner said she would like to see the Onondaga County Legislature also consider passing a law so that landlords in the suburbs could not discriminate against poor people on Section 8. Buffalo passed such a similar law in 2006 that bans discrimination against tenants based on their source of income. Suffolk and Nassau counties also ban the practice. Contact Mike McAndrew anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3016 SHARE Bill Thompson, Vero Beach Letter: Drift toward liberalism? Maybe you haven't noticed In today's political turmoil we hear much about a candidate's position as being "liberal," "moderate" or "conservative." Such labels seem to help us in making our decision as to whom we give our support. I, too, held fast to such concepts until an experience I had while teaching at an upstate New York college. As chairman of the Arts & Convocations Committee, it was my responsibility to develop a series of speakers to come to our campus. It was my intention to select a broad spectrum of such so as to introduce our students to a range of opinions. Having already been visited by Barry Goldwater, there followed Norman Thomas, who was best known for having been a six-term presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. The year was 1958, and Thomas had given up his bid for the presidency. I had always wondered just what had prompted his withdrawal, and so I asked as we drove together to meet his plane after having spoken on campus: "Mr. Thomas, I have sometimes wondered what prompted you to give up your bid for president." Pausing, he said, "To tell the truth, everything I wished for this country that the Socialist Party could offer has already been accomplished, and so I no longer have any need to continue." The voice of liberal politics had just spoken; he was no longer needed to be the standard-bearer for socialism in this country since we had already moved sufficiently in that direction. Jason "Jay" Hiler SHARE By Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm INDIAN RIVER COUNTY The second man charged with a homicide at a Hampton Inn two years ago has arrived at the Indian River County Jail, completing his extradition from New Jersey, according to records. The Indian River County Sheriff's Office booked Jason Hiler, 26, of Newton, New Jersey, into the county jail Sunday on a third-degree murder charge. He and co-defendant Javon Roberts, 22, of Sanford were being held in lieu of $500,000 bail. The Sheriff's Office on April 5 announced the third-degree murder charges in the July 27, 2014, shooting death of Kevin Howe, 30, of Vero Beach. Detectives have not specified a motive in the case. Howe and his girlfriend had booked a room late July 26, 2014, at the hotel in the 9300 block of 19th Lane. She told detectives she was sleeping when she woke up and saw two other men in the room about 3 a.m. She woke up again about 6:35 a.m. to the sound of a gunshot and the two visitors exiting the room, the warrant affidavit states. Howe had been shot in the head, the Sheriff's Office said. Detective said they used cellphone records, fingerprints and DNA evidence to tie Hiler, who previously lived in Deland, and Roberts to the crime scene. Hiler's DNA was found on a Styrofoam cup, while Roberts' fingerprints were discovered on a vodka bottle. Weeks before the shooting, Hiler purchased a round-trip flight from Sanford to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to visit family and his ex-girlfriend in New Jersey, the affidavit states. Hiler took the flight on July 31, 2014 the day Howe died from his injuries but did not use the return flight ticket, investigators said. Hiler denied to the detectives he had ever visited Vero Beach. That's despite cell tower records placing his phone in Vero Beach on the day of the shooting, detectives said. SHARE Gail Novotny, 24, Delray Beach; warrant for amended violation of probation, third degree grand theft, criminal use of personal I.D. information, possession of a stolen credit/debit card. Julia Sipek, 37, 1500 block of Southeast Cove Road, Stuart; warrants for dealing in stolen property, giving false information to a pawnbroker. Jordan Small, 36, 5400 block of Southeast 50th Avenue, Stuart; warrants for dealing in stolen property, giving false information to a pawnbroker. Gaspar Manuel, 26, 14000 block of Southeast Lee Avenue, Indiantown; unlawful sexual activity with certain minors. Sherry Pang, 30, Delray Beach; warrant for violation of probation, possession of alprazolam, possession of buprenorphine. Cary Landa, 29, Boynton Beach; warrants for failure to appear, possession with intent to sell heroin, possession of alprazolam. George Zackey, 69, 5400 block of Southeast Running Oak Circle, Stuart; warrant for grand theft. Carlos Deornelas, 28, West Palm Beach; warrant for violation of probation, illegal possession of a credit card. Martinez Marcelo, 53, 2500 block of Southwest Tommy Clements Street, Indiantown; warrant for violation of probation, felony charge. Nathan Anderson, 32, 3600 block of Northwest Mediterranean Lane, Jensen Beach; out-of-county warrant, St. Lucie County, robbery. Robert Taylor Jr., 31, 1000 block of Northwest 16th Place, Jensen Beach; aggravated battery on a pregnant woman. Erin Pozner, 37, 4400 block of Northeast Ocean Boulevard, Jensen Beach; scheme to defraud. Marcos Nolasco-Ramirez, 21, 700 block of 19th Street, Vero Beach; unlawful possession a similitude of an I.D. card. Carlos Flores, 35, 11500 block of Southwest Kanner Highway, Indiantown; battery on an officer; resisting arrest with violence. Cynthia Jackson, 53, 2700 block of Southwest Ann Arbor Road, Port St. Lucie; aggravated battery. Danielle Heine, 32, 3300 block of Southeast Evergreen Avenue, Stuart; warrant for violation of probation, delivery, sale or manufacture of opium, delivery, sale or sale of heroin. Arrested in St. Lucie County. SHARE Juan Arechavaleta, 47, West Palm Beach; out-of-county warrant, Martin County, grand theft. Brandon Scarpati, 23, 1800 block of South U.S. 1, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender. Anthony Peterson, 28, 1000 block of Texas Court, Fort Pierce; battery on an officer. Deborah Caserta, 47, 1800 block of Southwest Diamond Street, Port St. Lucie; resisting an officer with violence; destroying, tampering with or fabricating evidence; possession of cocaine. Neil Basarich, 65, 4900 block of Myrtle Drive, Fort Pierce; fraud impersonation of law enforcement officer. Darryl Franco, 28, 3200 block of West Lake Drive, Fort Pierce; out-of-county warrant, Broward County, for violation of probation, battery (domestic strangulation) Ashley Mcelroy, 32, 1900 block of Southeast Ancora Court, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, battery on an officer/firefighter/EMS. Tysean Afflick, 29, Bronx, N.Y.; warrants for grand theft, criminal use of personal I.D. information. David Betten, 34, 2600 block of Southwest Cameo Boulevard, Port St. Lucie; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense. Tyler Whalen, 29, Cincinatti, Ohio; destroying, tampering with or fabricating evidence; possession of a controlled substance (xanax) without a prescription. Danielle Heine, 32, 3300 block of Southeast Evergreen Avenue, Stuart; warrant for violation of probation, delivery, sale or manufacture of opium, delivery, sale or sale of heroin. Javard Drayton, 27, 300 block of Essex Drive, Fort Pierce; fleeing/attempting to elude an officer. Leonard Papania, 21, 190 block of Southeast Crosspoint Drive, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, burglary of an occupied dwelling, grand theft, burglary of a dwelling, burglary of a conveyance. Heather Herrick, 39, 500 block of Northwest Waverly Circle, Port St. Lucie; warrant for grand theft. Santavian Smith, 27, 800 block of North 25th Street, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender. Paul Flurry, 21, 500 block of Southeast Tanner Avenue, Port St. Lucie; resisting an officer with violence; battery on an officer. Adrian Patrick, 36, 3100 block of Avenue Q, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, battery on an officer. Brian Alexander, 25, Tallahassee; warrant for robbery. Albert Burns, 32, Orlando; possession of a controlled substance (Ecstacy) without a prescription. Joseph Cherry, 21, 300 block of Southeast Tranquilla Avenue, Port St. Lucie; possession of cocaine. Craig Bousley, 44, 300 block of Fernandina Street, Fort Pierce; warrants for burglary of a structure, grand theft. Felicia Gautier, 53, 4400 block of Southwest Jaunt Road, Port St. Lucie; warrants for possession of oxycodone, possession of carisoprodol, possession of morphine. Kyeshawne Speed, 19, 1200 block of North 17th Street, Fort pierce; possession of cocaine with intent to sell, manufacture, deliver; possession of cocaine. Roy Ollis, 27, 1000 block of Southwest Aurelia Avenue, Port St. Lucie; out-of-county warrants, Pasco County, lewd or lascivious battery, video voyeurism, possession, control or intentional viewing of child pornography. Kimberly Guastalli, 37, 4200 block of Southwest Tumble Street, Port St. Lucie; warrant for conspiracy to traffic MDMA. Michael Moore, 30, no address; warrants for sexual battery on a child under 12 by perpetrator 18 or older, lewd or lascivious molestation by offender over 18 on victim under 12. Antwaun Johnson, 30, Fort Lauderdale; warrant for petty theft. Kelvin Barnes, 31, 3200 block of South U.S. 1, Fort Pierce; warrant for aggravated battery on a pregnant woman. Derek Wagner, 27, 900 block of King Orange Avenue, Fort Pierce; warrants for dealing in stolen property, giving false information to a pawnbroker. Braxton Crenshaw, 18, 3500 block of Sloan Road, Fort Pierce; burglary of a dwelling, structure or conveyance while armed; larceny/grand theft; carrying a concealed weapon firearm. Cynthia Jackson, 53, 2700 block of Southwest Ann Arbor Road, Port St. Lucie; aggravated battery. Arrested in Martin County. By Elliott Jones of TCPalm FORT PIERCE ? A man who law enforcement officials say they shot in self-defense as he drove toward them at night was hospitalized in critical condition on Friday, clinging to life, an official said. A passenger in his pickup said Fort Pierce resident John Donald Austgen, 47, who has a lengthy history of arrests, didn't want to go back to prison, according to sheriff's officials. His arrest record in St. Lucie County dates to the 1980s. His most recent felony convictions were of a high-speed fleeing and eluding and assault on a public safety officer in 2005. In 2004, he was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident and aggravated battery, according to the State Attorney's Office and court records. Through the years, he had drug charges and a number of traffic offenses and violations of probation, state reports show. On Wednesday, Austgen was shot by undercover Fort Pierce Police Officer Keith Holmes and St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office Detective Keith Pearson following an automobile chase from the scene of an alleged drug deal on the streets about 7:45 p.m. Sheriff's officials said the case is under investigation and they aren't commenting beyond a news release issued Thursday afternoon. Austgen's father, who lives in Fort Pierce, refused comment on Friday. Law enforcement officials haven't released the name of Austgen's passenger, whom the officials quoted as saying that Austgen did not want to go back to prison. He was released from Lake Correctional Institute on May 6, 2011, after serving five years for assaulting a law enforcement officer, according to Florida Department of Corrections records. The woman said Austgen didn't heed her requests to stop his black pickup, according to the news release. A special anti-crime law enforcement task force apparently stumbled upon Austgen at Avenue G and North 23rd Street as they witnessed what appeared to be a hand-to-hand drug deal to a motorist in a black pickup. According to police, it was the same vehicle that sped away from them a week ago. When officials approached on Wednesday, a man on foot fled and the truck driver sped away ? followed by investigators. Along the way, according to the reports, Austgen's truck hit patrol cars and drove in circles in the dark in the glare of headlights. The law enforcement officer fired an undisclosed number of shots in self-defense outside Dan McCarty Middle School at Virginia Avenue and 13th Street, officials said. "He drove directly at officers and deputies who were out of their cars and fired at the suspect in self-defense," said Sheriff Ken J. Mascara. Austgen is in Lawnwood Regional Medical Center in Fort Pierce. Scott Redfield, who has been teaching Zumba classes since late 2008, leads a class at the 14th Avenue Dance Studio. "It's amazing," said Redfield, who teaches 16 classes a week at the studio and an additional 29 at various other locations in Indian River and St. Lucie counties. "We keep growing (in numbers)." SHARE By Keona Gardner of TCPalm 17,705: 2000 Population 15,220: 2010 Population -2,485: Population change -14: Population percent change 11: 2000 Square miles 11: 2010 Square miles 1,599: 2000 Population per square mile 1,331: 2010 Population per square mile 14,880: Population 18 and up 2000 12,806: Population 18 and up 2010 84: Percent population 18 and up 2000 84.1: Percent population 18 and up 2010 -2,074: Population change 18 and up -13.9: Population percent change 18 and up 2,825: Population under 18 2000 0: Population percent under 18 2000 2,414: Population under 18 2010 15.9: Population percent under 18 2010 -411: population change under 18 2000 -14.6: Population percent change (Under 1800) 10,286: Housing units 2000 10,258: Housing units 2010 -28: Change housing units -0.3: Percent change housing units 1,770: Vacant 2000 17.2: Percent vacant 2000 2,753: Vacant 2010 26.8: Percent vacant 2010 983: Change vacancies 9.6: Percent change vacancies VERO BEACH ? Some people are not surprised the city has lost population in the past 10 years. But close to a 2,500-person decline is somewhat unnerving. "It's the economy and the home foreclosures," Vero Beach Planning Director Tim McGarry said. The 2010 Census figures show 2,485 residents, or 14 percent of the population, left the coastal city, dropping its population from 17,705 in 2000 to 15,220 in 2010. Mayor Jay Kramer questions how low the numbers fell, because the city's seasonal residents ? those who have homes elsewhere ? weren't included in the official count. However, like in 2010 seasonal residents were not calculated in 2000. "It's really hard to measure the city's population because we have a transient population," Kramer said. City officials plan to contest the 2010 Census vacant housing units tally for the city as a way to boost the population count, McGarry said. "If they didn't count the (housing) units, then they didn't count the people in the housing units," McGarry said. The city saw a 9.6 percent increase in vacant housing units from 1,770 in 2000 to 2,753 in 2010, records show. McGarry said the city lost a few housing units from hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, but most have been rebuilt. He suspects the vacant housing units should be closer to 1,800. Census spokesman Robert Bernstein said final Census numbers, the same as in 2000 Census, doesn't included seasonal residents because it was not their permanent address. "We count and group people by where they live as of April 1, 2010," Bernstein said. "If they don't live there, then they aren't included in a city's total population count." While excluding seasonal residents would account for some of the population decline, that's not the sole reason for the decrease. In general, cities experience a population decline after a loss of a major employer or layoffs from major employers and residents leave the area to search for a job or better paying job, said Stan Smith, director of the University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research. In the previous decade, the city saw employment losses from aircraft maker Piper Aircraft Inc. and the construction industry. The city's unemployment rate in 2000 was 5.1 percent, but that increased to 14 percent by 2010, according to Florida unemployment records. Also, with the housing burst, residents could have left a higher-priced home inside the city limits for a more affordable one outside the city limits, Smith said. Nationally, about 16.4 percent of people who moved in the last decade did so for employment purposes ? either to find a better paying job or to get a job, the Census reports.The unincorporated area of Vero Beach south increased by 13 percent from 20,362 in 2000 to 23,092 in 2010. Meanwhile, Vero Beach's population loss could have been worse if not for an increase in racial minority groups. Though whites still consist of the majority of residents, the city has 3,301 fewer white residents than it did in the 2000 Census. That decrease would have dropped the city below 15,000 residents had there not been significant gains in racial minority groups ? mostly Hispanics ? records show. The number of Hispanic residents grew by 609 from 1,025 in 2000 to 1,634 in 2010. Shifts in the city's racial makeup is affected by birth rates for various racial groups. Fertility rates are higher among Hispanic and black women than their white counterparts, which could then account for some increases in minority population in Vero Beach, Smith said. Despite the drop in population, the city remains a great place in the county for businesses, new business owner Scott Redfield said. In 2008, Redfield and his wife Sandra began leasing space from the 14th Avenue Dance Studio to start Zumba fitness dance classes. Then, they had less than a handful of classes. Now, they offer more than a dozen classes. He attributes his business growth to being centrally located in downtown and doesn't feel any affect of the city's population decline. "The first thing you hear in real estate is location, location, location," he said. The city's loss of residents also hasn't affected business at Artistic First Florist at the corner of State Road 60 and U.S. 1. Owner Bill House said the flowers shop's location on two main roads helps as the roadways are used by city and non-city residents. "We probably have the greatest location because everybody sees us," he said. White 16,418: White 2000 13,316: White 2010 92.7: Percent white 2000 87.49: Percent white 2010 -3,102: Change white 2010 -18.9: Percent change white Black 606: Black 2000 733: Black 2010 3.4: Percent black 2000 4.8: Percent black 2010 127: Change black 21: Percent change black American Indian 35: American Indian 2000 44: American Indian 2010 0.2: Percent American Indian 2000 0.3: Percent American Indian 2010 9: Change American Indian 25.7: Percent change American Indian Asian 219: Asian 2000 280: Asian 2010 1.2: Percent Asian 2000 1.8: Percent Asian 2010 61: Change Asian 27.9: Percent change Asian Pacific Islander 5: Pacific Islander 2000 14: Pacific Islander 2010 0: Percent Pacific Islander 2000 0.1: Percent Pacific Islander 2010 9: Change Pacific Islander 180: Percent change Pacific Islander Other 247: Other 2000 566: Other 2010 1.4: Percent other 2000 3.7: Percent other 2010 319: Change other 129.2: Percent change other Two or more races 175: Two or more 2000 267: Two or more 2010 1: Percent two or more 2000 1.8: Percent Two or more 2010 92: Change two or more 52.6: Percent change two or more Hispanic (all races) 1,025: Hispanic 2000 1,634: Hispanic 2010 5.8: Percent Hispanic 2000 10.7: Percent Hispanic 2010 609: Change Hispanic 59.4: Percent change Hispanic Non-Hispanic white 15,695: Non-Hispanic white 2000 12,394: Non-Hispanic white 2010 88.7: Percent non-Hispanic white 2000 81.4: Percent non-Hispanic white 2010 -3,301: Change non-Hispanic white -21: Percent change non-Hispanic white SHARE cover By Jerusha Stewart The inaugural Vero Beach Wine + Film Festival is four days of wine, films and fun, June 9-12 including screening of more than 35 independent films in venues across the community, dinners and receptions that pair wine with epicurean delights, a master sommelier, and filmmakers of all ages. The Vero Beach Wine + Film Festival is the only one of its kind in the U.S. outside of California. We have been welcomed with open arms by businesses -- from restaurants to retailers, art galleries to theaters -- to establish a strong foundation from which to grow and bring visitors to our area every summer. The Vero Beach Wine + Film Festival was founded by Jerusha Stewart and Susan Keller Horn, with proceeds benefiting Suncoast Mental Health, which serves children across the Treasure Coast dealing with a range of emotional, mental and behavioral issues. In case you have never attended a wine and film festival, here's a guide on How to Fest: Top 10 Tips to Sip! See! Savor the Experience! (See page 35 for venue locations and specific films.) 1. Festival Passes The best way to enjoy VBWFF is to buy a pass. Each pass grants admission to films and events. Some special events are exclusive to certain pass levels with limited availability. Purchase your passes now at www.vbwff.com/tickets or Riverside Theatre. 2. Will Call Festival Passes will be available for pickup at Riverside Theatre the week of the festival. Please allow enough time before your screening to pick up your tickets. 3. Festival Beneficiary 100% of the net proceeds benefit Suncoast Mental Health Center. Purchase passes now at vbwff.com/support. 4. Festival Venues VBWFF takes place at 10 different Vero Beach venues, some within walking distance of each other. Our main screening venues are the Heritage Center in downtown, Riverside Theatre and the Vero Beach Museum of Art. 5. Festival Films VBWFF will screen over 40 independent short, feature, and documentary films. Visit vbwff.com/films to view movie trailers and make your film selections before the festival weekend begins. 6. Festival Wine Tastings Enjoy wine tastings with friends before most film screenings. Bottles of wine will also be available for purchase at Riverside Theatre and select venues. 7. Filmmaker Q&As At VBWFF we've invited the filmmakers to attend and conduct a Q&A after their film. This is your opportunity to hear how their vision made it on to the big screen. 8. Festival Accommodations Coming in from out of town? Book accommodations now with our hotel partners, as rooms fill quickly. Visit our "Plan Your Stay" page at vbwff.com. 9. Festival Volunteers Volunteers help make the festival possible by donating their time so please be patient, and don't forget to thank them for their efforts. Join our team at volunteers@vbwff.com or call 772-217-3786 10. Fest with Friends Come with friends and enjoy a full-bodied weekend of cinema, chianti and community! Sip, See & Savor the Experience at Inaugural Wine + Film Festival Pull a cork, raise a fork and join us for the "Vino Veritas Vintner" Dinners kicking off the Vero Beach Wine + Film Festival on Thursday, June 9. Chefs Scott Varricchio of Citrus Grillhouse and Armando Galeas of Gloria Estefan's Costa d'Este will lead teams creating narrated gourmet experiences along with Chef Josie Smith Malave, two-time Bravo TV Top Chef Contestant. "Cinema Uncorked!" Opening Night Bash. Wine, dine, mix & mingle at Riverside Theatre on Friday, June 10th, featuring an award-winning film and a spectacular wine, food and celebrity experience Honorary Festival Chair George Taber, author and Time magazine journalist, hosts the 40th anniversary celebration of the "Judgment of Paris," the epic 1976 blind wine tasting where America bested French winemakers! Taste Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, the winning white and watch "Bottle Shock", the comedy-drama based on the competition. Beth Ann Dahan, Director of Vela Wines and lecturer at Boston University's School of Hospitality and Metropolitan College leads Vela Wines: A Tasting of an Unexpected Journey. Enjoy fine wines while savoring the experience in each and every drop with the woman behind the wine. The Costa d'Cinema Grand Tasting with Brahm Callahan, Master Sommelier. Take a tour of the world of ultimate wine appreciation, tempting your palate with boutique wines along with a screening of "Somm." "Burgundy & Brews" play host to our one of a kind "Open-air" night market & film screening on Saturday night. Come create your own personal pairings of food and wine and critic the day's films with friends. Start your Sunday at the "Bubbly Brunch" at Osceola Bistro with our signature sparkling cocktail. The eye opening brunch menu woos the early morning set for food & film double feature. Serious foodies frequent Chef Chris Bierley's establishment for his locally sourced cuisine. It all ends with the Fete Finale! Come to the big bash at local favorite, Blue Star Wine Bar. Award-winning Chef Kitty Wagner will tempt our taste buds with her signature creations. SHARE By Dr. Bob Brugnoli, MHA of Indian River County Mental Health America initiated its first Mental Health Month campaign in 1949, back when it was still named the Mental Health Association. Since that time, Mental Health America and its affiliates across the country including the Mental Health Association in Indian River County have led the observance of May as Mental Health Month by attempting to reach as many people as possible through the media and events. The focus of Mental Health Month in 1949 was to raise awareness about the crises that were affecting millions of veterans, returned from the war. Lack of effective care was impacting both them and their families. It appears to be deja vu all over again, as we are witnessing another generation of soldiers returning home and many are experiencing long waits to get needed care. Last year the focus of the month was on B4Stage4, which calls for early, effective intervention and treatment for mental health conditions. We have all heard of how important it is to treat cancer early at Stage 1 or 2, before it gets to Stage 4. Do we wait before treating pain that may be a symptom of cancer, excessive fatigue or thirst that may be associated with diabetes, or high blood pressure and arrhythmias that may be associated with heart disease until these conditions worsen? Of course not! So B4Stage4 directly challenges the myth arising from shame or denial that people should ignore their mental health concerns, and wait for or hope their symptoms clear up without intervention. Moreover, it stresses the danger of believing that mental illness should only be treated when someone begins to have suicidal thoughts, or begins forming a plan to harm themselves or others. This year we will continue B4Stage 4 but expand on what that actually means. The focus will be on bringing out, into the open, how it feels to live with mental illness and then acting on that information to become healthy and advocate for oneself. It means giving voice to one's sadness and anxieties, while also focusing on overcoming obstacles and believing goals are attainable. It is about empowering people to take an active role in their recovery from mental illness. Did you know that 25 percent of adults experience mental illness in a given year and half of Americans will meet the criteria of a diagnosable mental health disorder sometime in their lives? It's time for mental health conditions to be treated early and effectively in this country to ensure as high a quality of life as possible, for as long as possible. Individuals in need of care and agencies providing mental health services need to share, as a community, what life is like dealing with mental health concerns and what is being done to cope. Telling people how life with mental illness feels helps builds support among family and friends. It promotes recovery. Hearing those stories can can help people understand what they are going through, themselves and if what they are going through may be a symptom of a mental health problem. It may also help them overcome their resistance to getting the help that they need. Use the mental health screening tools available on the Mental Health America website at www.mhascreening.org to determine whether you are experiencing symptoms of a serious mental health condition that may require intervention. Go to the Mental Health Association in IRC's website www.mhairc.org for tips on how to cope with your mental health issues. Our Facebook page can be found at Mental Health Association in Indian River County. Getting started on the road to recovery is hard. Think of something in your life you want to improve and figure out a first step to take in the right direction. Track gratitude and your accomplishments with a journal. Show love and caring to someone. Relationships are a key to a happy life. Take adequate time to decompress from your most stressful days. But most importantly, don't isolate, give up hope of a better future, or give in to alcohol or drug usage to solve your problems. If your attempts to help yourself are not working for you, make an appointment with a mental health provider or stop by the Mental Health Association's walk-in clinic for a free mental health screening. It's okay to get help! Dr. Bob Brugnoli is the executive director of the Mental Health Association in Indian River County. He holds a Ph.D. in the dual specialization areas of Clinical and School Psychology and is licensed to practice as a psychologist in the State of Florida. Photos provided Martin Johnson Heade's 'Orchids and Hummingbirds,' 1875-83 SHARE Martin Johnson Heade's 'Salt Marshes, Newburyport, Mass.,' 1866-76. Heade painted more than 200 salt marshes. No two are alike. Martin Johnson Heade's 'Magnolia Grandiflora,' 1885-95, is on display at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. Martin Johnson Heade's 'The Approaching Storm,' 1861-62 By L.L. Angell, The Newsweekly "Nature Illuminated," currently on exhibit at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, gives visitors an opportunity to see many of the finest works by Martin Johnson Heade. The prolific American painter is best known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes and depictions of tropical hummingbirds, as well as orchids, magnolias and other still lifes. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, which houses the world's largest collection of Heade's work, supplied the paintings. The exhibition is being held in honor of the Vero Beach Museum's 30th anniversary. "The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, loaned us some of their most important works by Martin Johnson Heade and his contemporaries paintings that are normally on view in their permanent collection galleries," said Jay Williams, curator for Vero Beach Museum of Arts. The show includes Heade's earliest portraits, painted when his career was beginning in the late 1830s, to the magnolia still lifes painted in his last years, which were spent in St. Augustine, from 1880 until his death in 1904. In his notes for the exhibition, Williams writes, "Heade created evocative marsh scenes and powerful canvases of dramatic thunderstorms at sea that established him as a major landscape artist." That would have been enough for his peers, many of whom were members of the Hudson River School. This mid-19th-century school of landscape painting featured artists who painted the Hudson River Valley in romantic fashion. Among them was Frederic Church. Later, Heade and Church would share a studio Space in Manhattan. Church inspired Heade to travel to Central and South America where he produced "delicate flower still lifes and exquisite studies of South American hummingbirds," according to Williams. Still relevant When Heade combined these jewel-like hummingbirds hovering in the jungle beside tropical orchids, he created something unique a still life combining birds and flowers in the out of doors. Today, Heade is recognized as a master Luminist one who uses light and shadow to set a mood in a painting. But several things distinguish Heade from his peers, making him particularly relevant today. Interest in his work is experiencing a renaissance. Long lost or neglected works are selling for top prices. In 1999, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston paid $1.25 million for Heade's, "Magnolias on a Gold Velvet Cloth." For years, the painting covered a hole in the wall of an Indiana home. Its owners had no idea of its value and its existence was unknown to art experts. Since then, a number of lucrative sales have taken place. Discoveries In St. Augustine, the lifelong bachelor married and bought a house. He painted floor-to-ceiling Florida scenes for his patron Henry Flagler, who hung them in his Ponce de Leon Hotel there. Heade also painted many small still lifes of flowers: magnolias, lotus and Cherokee roses, which tourists bought. Later, those paintings made their way to garage sales and flea markets where they were sold for next to nothing, only to be recently rediscovered. Not only does this show feature what Williams calls, "the creme de la creme of Heade's work," but it hangs his paintings alongside those of his contemporaries, allowing the viewer to compare Heade's paintings with the other artists' more mainstream work. "We asked the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and the curator Karen E. Quinn to do this so that visitors to the gallery would better understand Heade's unique place in the history of American art," says Williams. Comparisons sake Washington Allston's "Rising of a Thunderstorm at Sea," painted in 1804, is a scene of a building storm. A whaling vessel is safe on the horizon, while a smaller boat desperately tries to return to the ship as the waves suck it backward. The painting portrays a looming calamity. Compare this with Heade's "The Approaching Storm" of 1861-62. Here is a bay beneath a blackening sky. The water is blackened too, with an eerily illuminated shoreline and rhythmic white-edged waves. The unusual tone suggests something more sinister than a storm. Is it a foreshadowing of the Civil War looming on the horizon? Critics take both sides of this question. Simplicity William Sharp's large still life, "Fruit and Flower Piece," of 1848 is a mass of flowers gathered in an ornate vase. Two arrangements of fruit flank the flowers in a style reminiscent of the Dutch Masters. Heade's 1872 painting "Vase with Mixed Flowers" could scarcely be further from this. Striving for simplicity, Heade's bouquet in a simple vase showed the flowers' true beauty much more naturally. Or check out Albert Bierstadt's monumental 1867 landscape "Lake Tahoe." Here Bierstadt has framed the largest alpine lake in North America. Compare this monument of the West with Heade's quiet paintings of New England's haystacks and marshes. Marsh lover Heade painted some 200 marshes with haystacks. What fascinated him was the changing light and shadow, the sinuous lines of the marsh water meandering through the grass. Heade fell in love with a part of nature few people even notice. "No two are alike. You can have a row and they're all different. Here's one where the rain is starting. Here, the sun is coming out. He was fascinated by the changeability of weather on the marshes. He was very much an experimenter, always trying something new," says Quinn who came to the VBMA for the show's opening on Feb. 6. She hopes visitors will take their time when they see this show. "Give yourself time to sink into these paintings," she advises. "Nature Illuminated" will be at the Vero Beach Museum till June 5. For more information go to www.verobeachmuseum.org or call 772-231-0707. Unsurprisingly for a man who is seemingly so averse to using a comb, Boris Johnson has wound himself up in a knot of deceit and lies with the Brexit campaign. His arguments, often based solely on economic and security grounds, are disingenuous, and neglect the important factors of science, culture, and education. To hear the Brexit campaign call pro- EU leaflets propaganda is hypocritical, given their opportunistic approach. Before discussing the importance of the EU to science and culture, it is worth dismantling the rotten core upon which the Leave campaign is built. Leave leaders claim that Brexit would divert 350m a week into the NHS. The figure itself is wrong, since, even after rebate reductions, it barely reaches 161m. This is a drop in the quickly haemorrhaging blood-bag of the NHS. Hypocritically, Johnson has often asserted his belief in a fee-paying NHS. Dont be fooled they dont have your best interests at heart. The arguments to remain go beyond economic grounds. While it is true that if 10% of workers in the City lost their jobs, the government would lose around 3bn in employment taxes, the strongest reasons to remain lie elsewhere. The EU provides the frame for the continued fight against rare diseases, with the CTR enabling access to over 500 million patients. As students, it is easy to forget the cultural and economic benefits of remaining in the EU. Our ability to study abroad, beyond enabling the consumption of yards of German beer and delicious Danish pastries, is proven to benefit future employment and awareness of other cultures. Similarly, the 125,000 students currently studying in Britain could fall by up to 50%, removing cultural exchange, numerous economic benefits, and leading to a destructive isolationism. We must highlight these neglected arguments for remaining in Europe, say no to the ugly, reactionary boyband that is Johnson, Galloway, and Farage, and work hard to achieve a Europe to be proud of. Apple has hired Chris Porritt, Tesla Motors former vice president of vehicle engineering, to work on special projects, according to news reports published Tuesday. Porritt, who left Tesla last year, will take charge of Apples electric car initiative, Project Titan, according to Electrek, which first reported the hire. He reportedly was given the purposefully vague title of special projects group PD administrator. Apple is said to have a group of about 20 engineers, designers and other specialists working on Project Titan, its top-secret car program in Germany. Engineering Prowess Porritts hire wouldnt mark the first time Apple attracted someone from Tesla. The company last year recruited Jamie Carlson, a senior engineer on Teslas Autopilot self-driving program. The autopilot program, currently offered as an upgrade for Tesla drivers, allows the car to change lanes, manage speed and parallel park without human intervention. Apple is a Tesla graveyard, where former employees wind up when they are no longer needed or wanted by Tesla, CEO Elon Musk famously quipped last year. Before joining Tesla in 2013, Porritt worked as chief engineer at Aston Martin, which he joined in 1997. At Aston Martin, his group was responsible for the architecture of the VH Platform vehicles, including the DB9 and he V12 Vantage. Porritt is credited with establishing Aston Martins vehicle engineering team. He was chief engineer of its One-77 supercar, which at one point was considered the fastest car in the world. In his first job, at Land Rover, Porritt rose from college intern to principal engineer in the vehicle dynamics unit. Shifting Into High Gear Hiring a senior person away from Tesla, which has been the center of the universe for new vehicle technology as of late, is a major achievement and demonstrates how serious Apple is about competing in this segment, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research. However, we are in the early days of the electric vehicle and likely two or more decades away from autonomous vehicles for consumers, he told the E-Commerce Times, even though many, like Elon Musk, have much more aggressive predictions for autonomous vehicles. There are a couple of ways to understand Apple move, noted Praveen Chandrasekar, mobility service manager at Frost & Sullivan. It could be a move to replace Steve Zadesky, who was apparently in a big role at the rumored Project Titan and left recently, he told the E-Commerce Times. Zadesky, a 16-year Apple employee, reportedly left the company for personal reasons. The second could be that Apple needs the expertise of someone like Chris, who comes from Aston Martin and worked on the Model S and X at Tesla, to finalize a body style and segment for its EV, Chandrasekar suggested. Porritts Aston Martin background could mean Apple is taking a premium route with its rumored electric vehicle, speculated. The hire, while significant, will not cause an immediate shakeup in the electric car space because the next big move in the industry will be the rollout of the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt and Tesla Model 3 vehicles, he said. These two products, we believe, will lay the groundwork for mass-market stylish and technology-heavy EVs, said Chandrasekar. Apple might join this group and make an affordable product or take the usual Apple route and enter the market with a high-end product and then look at commodity. Electric Isnt All That Apple is not likely to confine its ambitions to the electric vehicle space, however, maintained Tirias McGregor. Electric vehicles arent the ultimate vehicle technology, he explained. Electric vehicles still require the generation of electricity and require batteries that use rare materials and are not very recyclable. I think the Toyota CEO was correct when he said that hybrid vehicles will be the best solution for the near future, but Im still hoping for hydrogen or some other technology that is greener. In any case, the end goal is not an electric vehicle, McGregor said. The end goal is an autonomous vehicle, which the entire auto industry and major tech companies like Google and Apple are striving to achieve. Facebook last week announced that it had rolled out group calling worldwide in its Messenger app. Members engaged in a group conversation can tap the phone icon on their screen to initiate a group call. They can manage individual participants on the next screen. Members of a group who miss the initial call can tap the phone icon in the group chat to join the call while its in progress. The feature allows up to 50 participants and is available only in the latest version of Messenger. Move Over, Phone Carriers The announcement likely will cause concern among telecommunications companies because if you consider that social medias a form of asynchronous communication, then Facebook is the largest telecom on the planet, with about 1.3 billion subscribers, observed Michael Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. Now add synchronous communications that is, communications in real time and Facebooks beginning to come into focus as the next paradigm of communications: async and sync combined, he told TechNewsWorld. This could be a game changer. Messaging appsViber andLine already offer group calling for up to 200 people. However, Facebook is different its a social media site with a huge following that now offers direct communication to groups of people, Jude said. Viber and Line are much smaller pools of people and dont have the rich social media capabilities that Facebook does. The calling feature is in software, so if Facebook sees a need to expand the scope of the service, they could probably do it by flipping a switch, he noted. Facebook stands to gain a substantial portion of the millennial telecom business, Jude suggested. Further, the company launched a beta of its Messenger Platform with bots and its Send/Receive API, as well as bots for the Messenger Platform. How those features will play into group calling remains to be seen. Killing Off Telcos Facebooks move highlights the threat that new technologies pose to telecom companies. As we move farther and farther from traditional PBXs and wired phone lines to VoIP services, many of which are either very cheap or free, telecom companies are going to lose this revenue, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. Theyve had plenty of warning, he told TechNewsWorld. This is just another one of those services that will make it easier for small companies and individuals to cut their phone cord. Facebookbegan offering VoIP in 2013. A year later, it fully rolled out audio calls and had 10 percent of the global VoIP phone call market. Facebook is a much bigger threat than chat apps because far more people are likely to try and like it, due to its visibility, Enderle said. Facebook Messenger has more than 900 million monthly active users. The overall trend is making traditional telephones obsolete, Enderle said. This is just another indicator that trend is reaching critical mass, putting traditional telecom services increasingly on death watch. Wireless carriers wont be hit as hard, because data charges apply to calls made through Facebook and other apps, unless WiFi is used. What About Video? Skype in February began supporting group video calls on iOS and Android for up to 25 people,ooVoo lets users make free high-quality video calls to groups of up to 12 people on any device, andTango supports video calls to groups of up to 50 people. Facebook reportedly is working on a group video calling feature, but video introduces some issues associated with bandwidth, both in the network and on the end device, Frosts Jude pointed out. Still, he said, I expect Facebook will do something like that eventually. Every time the PC is dead topic comes up, an old Monty Python movie comes to mind, and Ill bet you can guess which one. PCs are on almost every desk, and the installed base is measured not in the hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands it is measured in the hundred millions. Brian Krzanich, Intels latest CEO, last week announced a massive layoff tied to the companys missing its quarterly numbers, and once again the alarm sounded. Was the PC is dead, or was Intels miss just another new-CEO mistake? (There have been a lot of those of late.) It is becoming really clear to me that there definitely needs to be a class for new CEOs that covers the fundamentals at least but what Im finding incredibly annoying is that the industry responsible for analytics and artificial intelligence doesnt seem to be very good at doing causal analysis. I dont think the PC is dead today any more than I did six months ago, but I am becoming concerned that a lot of folks who depend on the PC appear to be doing a damn good job trying to kill it, because they simply dont want do what needs to be done. By the way, as a side note, Im suddenly seeing a ton of interest in AMDs coming Zen platform, making Krzanich AMDs favorite Intel CEO ever. Ill go further into that and then conclude with my product of the week: an interesting new Chromebook from Acer that aggressively uses Gorilla Glass to create something unique and interesting. The Revolving Door of Causes Over the last few years, Ive watched people point to Windows Vista, the iPad and Windows 8 as the cause of PC sales declines. Windows Vista was replaced by Windows 7, and it didnt really fix the problem. Tablet sales are declining faster than PC sales are declining, and Windows 8 has been replaced by Windows 10, and that didnt fix the problem. Windows 7 and Windows 10 both were well received. So let me suggest that all of these supposed causes are BS. Think about it. If you are sick and your doctor says the cause is gluten and you cut out gluten but are still sick, and then your doctor says it is sugar so you cut out sugar and are still sick, and then your doctor says it is processed meat and you quit eating that but are still sick then maybe it is time for a new doctor who can do more than make random guesses as to what the problem is. So why is the PC in decline? Why PC Sales Are in Decline When the Windows/DOS PC first came to market, it cost a lot and people tended to keep it for around eight years. Then there was a huge push to massively reduce its cost, coupled with a critical need for more performance, and for about a decade we had both rapid market expansion and rapid churn even though it was incredibly painful to move from an old PC to a new PC. The only company that understood that the pain was stupid was Apple. Windows users were trained to accept that getting a new PC was a pain in the butt rather than fun, and they treated it like something to be avoided. Even in companies like Intel, which builds this stuff, it wasnt at all for uncommon employees to turn down a new PC, because they simply didnt have the time to deal with the pain of the migration. That was drilled in over and over again. Once Windows XP came out, people were sick of getting new PCs, and the developed market started to reach saturation. That meant not only that there were there fewer people who didnt have PCs, but also that there was an increasing number of folks who didnt want to replace the ones they had. Oh, and even though migrations got a lot easier after Windows Vista, a huge part of the market was stuck on Windows XP. So I think the heart of the problem is that for a decade, the PC industry taught people to avoid new PCs like the plague, and it did a great job saturating the market, which is why PCs are stalled. Whats my proof point? If you look at the latest Gartner and IDC numbers, youll see that the stats for Apple and Dell are nearly identical and flat, which suggests a stable-state replacement market. Given that XP stabilized in the market around 2005 and the numbers reflect 2015, we are now operating in a saturated market in which the replacement cycle is averaging eight to 10 years. I should point out that this is pretty close to where the TV market was at the beginning of the last decade a saturated market with an eight-to-10 year replacement cycle. How to Fix It The way the TV folks increased market demand was first by convincing us we all needed flat- screen HD TVs. Then they convinced us we needed 3D TVs, and now they are selling us on 4K TVs, driving a replacement cycle that appears to be closer to four years than 10. By the way, 8K TVs are coming, so they arent done yet. The TV industry isnt just bringing out new technology it is doing a decent job convincing us we want it. It did kind of burn the market with 3D, which has slowed the 4K adoption cycle significantly but it seems to have learned its lesson, and we do have an increasing pool of 4K content. The industry makes that happen with a status-focused argument. Much like it was when color broke out, tied to Walt Disneys Wonderful World of Color, it became a critical status symbol to have a color set. Kids actually were the big driver back then, because everyone went to a kids house that had color, and the other parents tended to look like deadbeats. Cars still move largely on status. They are good for a decade but people buy new ones, maintaining churn, because a new car signifies success. The auto market almost died in the 70s, when the industry seemed to forget that. Now one of the product lines that is selling very well is the Microsoft Surface, and the fact that Apple had to respond with a honking big iPad Pro showcases how successful the Surface has been. The Surface products look good, are very well marketed, and convey status (particularly the Surface Book). Now, think back. Have you seen an ad for a TV that made you want to buy the TV? How about a car or a smartphone? OK, now when was the last time you saw an ad for a PC? If you did, it was likely a Surface, and there is a pretty good chance you wanted it. How about any other PCs? So, TV companies advertise TVs and move them. Car companies advertise cars and move them. Phone companies advertise smartphones and move them. PC companies mostly dont advertise their PCs aggressively and certainly dont connect them to status and the conclusion is that PCs are dead? How about 2-in-1s, you ask? The issue is they seem to provide a feature that folks dont want to use. The vast majority of buyers use them just as notebooks, not tablets, much like the vast majority of iPad users use iPads as tablets and not notebooks. For 2-in-1s to work, the industry needs to address the fact that folks dont use them as tablets (or at least you dont see folks, not even the executives of the firms that make them, using them as tablets). Wrapping Up There is an old (and really cruel, come to think if it) joke about researchers and a frog. They start with the frog having four legs and they cut off one at a time finding the frog drops a foot of jumping range for every leg removed until the last. When the last leg is removed and frog doesnt jump, they conclude the frog has gone deaf. That joke used to be a lot funnier. The tech industry is much like those researchers. They can see what causes products to move all around them. They can see, even in their own companies, why people arent getting new PCs. They have seen other industries fix problems like this. They just ignore all of that and come to a completely orthogonal conclusion that folks dont want PCs anymore, even as they look around and see PCs on every desk around them. Acer clearly missed the whole PC is dead thing, and it appeard to get that you actually need to not only create products people can get excited about but also market them. Its latest launch is worth watching. A number of the products caught my eye: the tablet for older folks who really dont like learning technology (we all likely have folks like this in our families); the MacBook Air-like product for half the price; and the kick-ass VR-ready gaming notebook and small tower, which had me drooling slightly. However, I found the Chromebook with the Gorilla Glass cover most interesting though I kind of wondered why Acer didnt offer this in a regular notebook. Acer Chromebook 14 forWork Chromebooks havent been selling outside of education, but as I mentioned above status seems to work across industries, and the idea of having your own protected image on the cover of a notebook likely has merit. Chromebooks are a lot like netbooks in that they imply a lack of personal wealth, but if you can turn the product into something people will be proud of, by attaching a picture or a logo to the cover that wont degrade with time, there is a chance that you could turn a negative into a positive. Granted, the concept actually might work better on a notebook. Acer stood up in the face of this PC is dead nonsense and launched a bunch of compelling PCs, and it even talked about working on what comes next. Id give the title to Acer itself, if I could but instead Ive chosen its interesting Gorilla Glass Chromebook as my product of the week. Fujitsu has announced that it has received a Global VMware Partner Innovation Award in the Strategic Alliance Partner of the Year category. The company also received both an APJ VMware Partner Innovation Award and an EMEA Partner Innovation Award in the Strategic Alliance Partner of the Year category. Furthermore, Fujitsu Oceania received the APJ VMware Partner Innovation Award in the Service Provider Partner of the Year category. Receiving these awards reflects the companys efforts to build local capabilities and strengthening its regional working relationship with VMware. Fujitsu was recognized at the VMware Partner Leadership Summit 2016, held in Scottsdale, Arizona. We value and appreciate the achievements accomplished by our partners in 2015, said Ross Brown, senior vice president, Worldwide Partners and Alliances, VMware. We congratulate Fujitsu on winning a Global VMware Partner Innovation Award, two APJ VMware Partner Innovation Awards, and an EMEA VMware Partner Innovation Award, and we look forward to our continued collaboration. This recognition underscores the importance that Fujitsu places on our strategic partnerships these partnerships enable us to deliver IT as a service to our customers, no matter what the required level, said Uwe Neumeier, Vice President and Head of Data Center, EMEIA Product Business, Fujitsu. Fujitsu has worked with VMware to create an end-to-end set of offerings for our customers and partners, from private to public cloud and to the data center. Recipients of a Global VMware Partner Innovation Award were acknowledged in 19 categories for their excellence in performance and distinctive achievements during 2015. @ Technuter.com News Service IRCTC has entered into an exclusive partnership with Simpli5d Technologies, a leading digital advertising and audience Intelligence company to enhance their security and boost advertising revenues. Captcha, a security tool used to differentiate between humans and other malicious programs, was until now offered as distorted letters but this is all set to change. Now with this partnership, IRCTC would be using innovative image based NLPCaptcha by Simpli5d Technologies. Senior official from IRCTC, said, At IRCTC, security and user experience are the most critical concern for us and at the same time we look for new avenues of revenue other than the core business of ticketing. NLPCaptcha fits in beautifully into all this it provides better security, enhanced user experience and an altogether new stream of advertising revenues for IRCTC. We look forward to a long term and mutually beneficial partnership with Simpli5d Technologies. IRCTC, which has a massive reach, accounts for more than 1 million e-commerce transactions per day. More than 100 million captchas are solved on the platform every month and all these will be replaced by NLPCaptcha, a patent pending technology to monetise captchas by Simpli5d Technologies. These Captchas will carry messages from leading brands in the country. This presents a unique opportunity for the brands to engage with the unique and premium audience of IRCTC. This exclusive partnership gives Simpli5d Technologies sole monetization rights for the entire Captcha inventory on the ticketing website. Amit Mittal, Founder and CEO at Simpli5d Technologies, said, This partnership with IRCTC is a huge milestone for us. On an average 125 million captchas are solved on IRCTC every month and this gives us a reach of more than 50 mn unique audience. Effectively we will be reaching out to every person in India who does an online transaction and we are sure that our advertisers would love it. This is a win-win situation for everyone. We are committed to continue delivering the best results for our advertisers as well as for IRCTC. Delighted to have leading advertisers like Lava, Airtel, Pepsi, Dabur etc. already on board says Sidharth Oswal, co-founder at Simpli5d Technologies. Simpli5d Technologies is backed by YourNest Angel Fund, Dheeraj Jain of Redcliffe Capital and Udaan Angel Partners. NLPCaptcha has been adopted by hundreds of websites and advertisers across India, Europe and South East Asia. The key USP for advertisers is its ability to provide guaranteed attention of the end user and a brand recall which is as high as 229% more than traditional banners (as per a study done by Effective Measure, an independent market research company). It delivers significant cost saving for advertisers, with figures as impressive as 85% as verified by Sizmek, a global ad serving and validation platform. @ Technuter.com News Service New images and information regarding The Witcher 3's second and final piece of DLC, Blood and Wine, have been revealed. As well as showing more screenshots of the Southern France-style area of Toussaint, CD Projekt Red has announced that a new faction will be added to everyone's favorite card battling mini-game, Gwent. Damian Monnier, one of the studio's senior gameplay designers, announced during a PAX East panel that the number of Gwent decks will increase from four to five with the introduction of the Skellige set. Four cards from the new deck were revealed during the panel. These included the mushroom card which can transform berserkers into bears, a Madman Lugos hero card, the Draken card, and the "golden cock," which Monnier said is based on a creature from Norse Mythology. At one point during the Q&A session, a fan asked if CD Projekt Red would ever consider releasing Gwent as a standalone title for mobile devices - a seemingly perfect platform for the card game. The developer proceeded to ask the audience if they thought it was a good idea. The cheers of the crowd were recorded, and the video will now be shown to bosses at company HQ in Poland in the hope it will prove how successful Gwent for mobile would be. More information about the upcoming $19.99 DLC will be released soon. CD Projekt Red has said Blood and Wine's area will "rival the size of those [areas] found in the base game," and the story will take around 20 hours to complete. Rumors suggest that it will be released on June 7. With impeachment looming and with her popularity dipping in her native Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff may be trying to change the tide by gathering international support. Representatives from more than 150 countries met in a UN Assembly in New York on April 22 to pass the much awaited climate change agreement, but Rousseff took the time to appeal to her colleagues as she's about to be removed from her position. "The grave moment Brazil is undergoing. Despite this, I must say that Brazil is a great nation, with a society that was able to defeat authoritarianism and build a vibrant democracy. Our people are hard-working and have great esteem for freedom. I have no doubt they will be able to prevent any setback," she reminded her colleagues while speaking in the podium. The once-popular president of the Workers' Party is currently embroiled in a series of economic and political upheavals. Brazil is currently experiencing one of the worst recessions in its history with companies such as Deutsche Bank threatening massive job cuts. She has also figured herself in a bribery scandal involving Petrobras, the oil company owned by the state, although this accusation isn't the basis of her impeachment. Various protests against her government and for her ouster had been held, culminating in more than two-thirds of the 513-member Chamber of Deputies or Lower House voting for her impeachment last April 17. Rousseff, who had initially decided not to attend the UN Conference, has vowed to fight the process, which she described as a coup plot, with "all my strength. I am willing to fight to ensure that Brazil does not become a country where democratic rule is broken," she addressed a group of reporters in the ambassador's residence. Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo has already expressed disappointment over the impeachment, calling it illegal and unconstitutional. Rousseff's supporters and other political analysts were also doubtful of the motive behind the impeachment. Many of the Lower House members including the speaker have been involved in corruption charges. Two deputies are in New York to counter her claims including dismissing the coup accusation as the "military is in the barrack" and that when she returns to Brazil, she'll remain its president. Nevertheless, her impeachment forges on, with the Senate expecting to convene in May to vote in simple majority. If the impeachment trial happens, the president will be suspended for 180 days with Vice President Michel Temer, whom she has called a traitor, acting as president. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. More than 10 bidders made it to the list of first-round bids on Yahoo's core business, with offers ranging from $4 billion to $8 billion, Bloomberg reported on April 22. The report said the initial bidders will go through elimination to determine the most plausible bids, possibly narrowing down the bidders to seven. The chosen seven will then be given access to internal documents to check out the financial health of the company and the viability of investing in it. According to the report, the first-round bid list included front-runner Verizon, TPG, YP Holdings, a consortium of investors led by Vista Equity Partners and Bain Capital, and two unnamed "strategic firms." More than 40 bidders were earlier reported to be interested in Yahoo, but the bidding ended with a much shorter list. In an earnings call with analysts April 21, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that her team is moving swiftly to examine the offers "in a way that we believe will yield enhanced value." Some of the higher bids were offered by companies that haven't had the time to talk more extensively with Yahoo, Bloomberg's source said. That is why the bidders are meeting with the Yahoo team to get a better sense of the details of their offer. Rakuten, for example, never spoke a word to Yahoo but reportedly offered a bid earlier this week, according to a Business Insider report. Not Interested SoftBank, the Yahoo Japan majority owner who could have been a likely bidder, reportedly isn't interested in bidding for the core business of Yahoo. It has, however, held talks with Verizon on the fate of Yahoo's 35 percent ownership of Yahoo Japan. The talks could lead to any of two possibilities Softbank can buy back the stake or Verizon gets to acquire it, Bloomberg's sources said. Verizon is making efforts to get the nod of Yahoo to continue the conversations with Softbank, the sources added. Graceful Exit When asked for more details on the progress of the bidding process, Mayer refused to share more, saying, "In order to protect the integrity of the process, we are not going to comment further on things like timing and/or particular offers." With her hands full until a winning bid is decided, Mayer needs to quickly put together a fair and valuable deal to ward off any destabilizing attempts activist investor Starboard Value may be brewing and, more importantly, to ensure herself a graceful exit. Photo: Eirik Solheim | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered airlines to urgently fix the engines on their Boeing 787 Dreamliners because of an icing problem. This problem could cause a specific model of General Electric engine to shut down in flight. The safety mandate concerns about 176 Dreamliners at 29 airlines, amounting to 44 percent of the worldwide fleet. The airlines flying the most advanced 787 Dreamliners were ordered to modify or replace at least one GEnx-1B PIP2 engine with older models. The FAA said that the modifications would prevent ice from accumulating on fan blades in engines. It recommends at least one engine on all affected 787 Dreamliners to be replaced or repaired within five months. In the United States, the mandate affects only 43 planes operated by airlines but other countries are also ordered to comply. The FAA's airworthiness directive (AD) followed a recent incident wherein an engine on a passenger jet failed in midair. One of the two engines on a Japan Airlines (JAL) 787 shut down in mid-flight and couldn't be restarted. The jet traveling from Vancouver to Tokyo carried 166 passengers was about 90 miles from Tokyo's Narita airport when one of its engines failed. The pilots were able to use the alternative engine, an older version of the same model that was not vulnerable to ice buildup. The companies are given 150 days to comply to the mandate and pilots will be advised on preventing engine icing when they're in high altitudes. "Recognizing the urgency of this safety issue, this AD represents a compressed schedule to rework a large number of airplanes located around the world," the FAA said. "Both specialized tooling and trained personnel are required on-site to perform the rework at various maintenance facilities around the world. To complete the work, 29 airlines will need to reallocate 176 airplanes from revenue service to maintenance in order to conduct the (on-wing) rework," it added. In 2013, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board opened a safety inquiry after reports of fuel leaks and an electrical wiring problem on Boeing 787 Dreamliners. The FAA also grounded all 787 airliners because of a potential fire hazard with the battery system. In 2015, Boeing discovered a bug in the 787 Dreamliner's software that could lead to a sudden loss of all power in the aircraft at 35,000 feet. Photo: Tomoaki Inaba | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. China has been the forerunner when it comes to the latest technology and electric cars may be one of them. Chinese carmakers are set to demonstrate their progress the development of self-driving vehicles at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, offering a snapshot of the emerging trends in the world's largest auto market. In 2015, China even grabbed first place for developing electric car models, a race led by the United States and Europe, but the country is coming up fast with a regulatory structure. This could make the country lead the race with autonomous cars heading toward its highways and streets. In the next three to five years, China could provide a draft road map for having high-way-ready and self-driving cars. These cars are expected to be seen on the streets by 2025 and the plan could be revealed this year, an automotive engineering professor said. Li Keqiang from Tsinghua University, said the plan is backed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The plan will contain technical standards like common language for cars in order for them to communicate with each other and the infrastructures around them. It will also contain regulatory guidelines. China has been faced with an air pollution crisis since carbon emissions have been setting record high levels in the past months. One way to curb this crisis is to develop self-driving cars that do not emit harmful gases. In 2015, the country has set a new record for electric models with about 247,000 zero-emissions cars sold, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said. Only 1 percent of cars are electric, and officials said that owning electric cars might be the solution to the air pollution problem. "China is perhaps the one place in the world where the automobile industry can achieve the economy of scale needed to bring down costs," Jean-Francois Belorgey, an expert with consultancy EY, said. The Chinese government provides subsidies to buyers up to about $8,500 for each car. Electric cars are exempted from traffic restrictions in major cities. Critics believe that even if China has progressed in developing electric cars, these automobiles will never be completely green since they're powered by electricity that is produced in carbon-intensive ways. Ben Scott, an expert in electric cars, said that it could never deal with the greenhouse effect, but it addresses the issue of the concentration of particles. Photo: Peter Dowley | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A massive sinkhole appeared in the middle of a San Francisco street after a sewer line beneath it suddenly broke, according to city officials. San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) spokesman Charles Sheehan said that city crew responded to reports that a portion of Sacramento Street in the Pacific Heights neighborhood had collapsed Thursday afternoon, leaving a 22 feet long and 17 feet wide hole in its wake. He said that after investigating the situation, they discovered that an 18-inch sewer main located beneath the street ruptured and caused large amounts of water to burst out. This gradually eroded the soil that was supporting the road above and made it more vulnerable to collapse. While it is still unsure what exactly caused the break of the sewer line, the city government has already begun to replace hundreds of miles of old pipelines around San Francisco. The project is expected to continue in the next few years and cost about $1.2 billion to finish. Funding for the sewer line replacement will come from water ratepayers. The PUC will be able to accomplish its goal by increasing the length of the pipelines it fixes every year. This means its workers will need to bring the average replaced pipeline length from 6 miles per year to 15 miles. Despite the formation of the giant sinkhole, Sheehan said that there were no damages to any of the private properties along Sacramento Street. There was also no interruption to water or sewer services in the area. City crews had also repaired the damage to the sewer line and poured concrete on the massive depression in the ground. Sacramento Street was reopened to traffic by Saturday afternoon. On Saturday, the state-run news network China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasted footage of an actual sinkhole opening up in a busy road. The video shows an officer trying to divert traffic away from a crack on the street mere minutes before the ground finally collapses. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. An experimental solar-powered plane flying around the globe has landed in California on April 24 after almost three days of nonstop journeying across the Pacific. Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Swiss psychiatrist and explorer Bertrand Piccard, touched down in Mountain View at 3 a.m. EST. It took off from Hawaii on April 21, after being stalled on Oahu island for nearly 10 months. The milestone saw the solar aircraft with a Boeing 747s wingspan, but approximating the weight of an SUV flying over the Golden Gate Bridge and into the San Francisco Bay. Its a new era. Its not science fiction. Its today, the pilot told CNN after the voyage, emphasizing that clean technologies can get the job done. Shortly before the on-schedule landing, co-pilot and Swiss engineer Andre Borschberg said the technology proves to be reliable. It wasnt a walk in the park for the pilots, who completed a three-day flight across the Pacifics great expanse with only 20 minutes of sleep every time inside the small cockpit. There was no heat or air conditioning inside, and they had to constantly touch base with the control center in Monaco. According to Piccard, the flight was marked by a lot of health checks, including interviews, navigation control and communications. The pilot revealed using self-hypnosis to keep his energy up and used gloves and heating pads in his shoes for warmth. The solar-driven plane travels at around the same speed as a car, with the Hawaii to California leg deemed the riskiest due to the absence of emergency landing sites taking a bit more than 6 hours to finish. The two pilots take turns flying it as it took off from Abu Dhabi in the UAE back in March 2015, and as it traveled through Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. Nobodys done this before, Gregory Blatt, Solar Impulse managing director, said about flying the solar plane, which requires almost-perfect conditions because it is the sun that determines the flight schedule and conditions. The planes wings are packed with 17,000 solar cells that run the propellers and charge batteries. Stored energy fuels the aircraft at night. The achievements of Solar Impulse 2, however, are not without a number of setbacks. In July 2015, it was forced to stay in Hawaii given its battery systems heat damage coming from its Japan trip. When it also first tried to fly from Nanjing in China to Hawaii, it had to divert to Japan no thanks to a damaged wing and unfriendly weather. The solar plane project, which has Google as its sponsor, is estimated to be worth more than $100 million. It was born in 2002 to demonstrate advances in renewable energy and innovations relating to use of clean technologies. Commercial solar-powered air travel is currently impeded by weather limitations, slow travel time and the aircrafts weight constraint, but in 20 years, it could already be routine given the prevalence of engines using the suns energy by that time, envisioned Piccard. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Its still more than a year before a total solar eclipse takes place, but hotels situated in prime viewing spots in the West are already booking up. The Great American Eclipse, the first total solar eclipse to conquer American skies, will occur Aug. 21 next year the next one wont happen until April 2024. It will be the first since 1979 to be witnessed over the lower 48 states, unlike Alaskas in 1990 and Hawaiis in 1991. For the first time since 1918, too, the moons shadow will sweep across the nation from one coast to another in a 167-mile coverage at the largest point. Tourists have started booking hotel rooms across the United States to vie for the best view within the path of totality, or the track that the moons shadow will travel across the planet. And small-town America is leading the spectacle. For instance, Giant City State Park, a remote Depression-era park in southern Illinois, will experience the longest duration of the total solar eclipse from start to finish. Weve been getting calls from around the world, said Giant City Lodge manager Michael Kelly, calling the eclipse the biggest thing since Bill Clinton's presidency and Neil Diamonds stay. NASA is mapping a live webcast from Carbondale, Illinois. Areas along the path of totality, too, have made specific plans: Wyomings biggest hotels and guide services will provide eclipse-based tours throughout the Yellowstone Park area. Madras in Oregon claims the best odds for good weather and is planning a festival. Carbondale, Illinois, will create city-wide events and eclipse-oriented activities for visitors. Nashville, Tennessee, will serve as the biggest city under total eclipse, although Hopkinsville in Kentucky will boast the greatest degree of eclipse anywhere, meaning it will be total for a longer time. The largest hotel in Casper, Wyoming will host a national astronomy convention dubbed Astrocon2017, which will gather more than 240 amateur astronomy groups in the Astronomical League. North Platte, Nebraska on Interstate 80 is getting positioned as a safe, accessible viewing location in the Nebraska Sandhills area. St. Louis in Perry County, Missouri, will host the gathering of the sun, moon and Mississippi River. The eclipse, depending on ones location (see its interactive map), will remain total for less than half a minute to as long as 2 minutes and 41 seconds. Amateur astronomer Lowell Lyon said it will get darker and darker, with temperature dropping and wildlife suddenly becoming hush. All of a sudden boom! it suddenly gets dark, he explained. A solar eclipse takes place when the moon gets between Earth and the sun, casting a shadow over the planet. A total solar eclipse back in 1860 first shed light on this rare sighting, giving scientists the first documented look at a coronal mass ejection, a massive burst of gas and magnetic field from the suns corona set off into the solar wind. It is always advised to never look at the sun directly without proper protective eye gear such as solar glasses and this is true whether theres an eclipse or none. Photo: Rowan McLaughlin | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. All Whovians know that, no matter how fun and amazing the chemistry is between The Doctor and his companion, all good things come to an end. However, that only means that new good things can begin. Rose Tyler is stuck in another dimension with the human version of the Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones chose a quiet life, Donna Noble's memories of The Doctor were locked away for her own safety, Captain Jack Harkness ran Torchwood, Amy and Rory were sent to a time-locked era by weeping angels, Clara Oswin-Oswald, also known as "The Impossible Girl" faced the Raven and her death in an alley run by Ashildr aka "Me," and River Song spent her last night with The Doctor. Now, it is time for the Doctor to confuse a new companion, and on April 23, BBC revealed who it will be. After much hype for the big reveal, BBC finally revealed Pearl Mackie as the next person who will board the TARDIS long term. Not only that, BBC also released a special two-minute teaser of Mackie's character, Bill, caught in a dangerous situation with The Doctor in which Daleks are involved. The short clip did not specify if Bill is human or a human-like alien, but then again, humans are just as weird looking in Doctor Who. Remember The Face of Boe, who turned out to be Captain Jack Harkness? How about Lady Cassandra, the last pure human whose intentions - and physical appearance - you can just see through? The video clip mostly shows Peter Capaldi's Doctor running away from the Daleks with Bill - who has a lot of questions about Daleks - and their short conversation alone, our inner Whovian is already excited to watch the two in action. Mackie is a talented London theater actress and she is currently performing in the West End production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I'm so excited to be the next companion on Doctor Who! Can't wait to join the family! Thank you for all the lovely messages! Pearl Mackie (@Pearlie_mack) April 23, 2016 "It is a genuine delight to welcome Pearl Mackie to Doctor Who. A fine, fine actress with a wonderful zest and charm, she's a refreshing addition to the Tardis and will bring a universe of exciting new possibilities to The Doctor's adventures," Capaldi said. The only no-so-delightful thing about the video is when the Twelfth Doctor mentioned that they both had to return to the future, which is 2017, because we all know that is exactly when Doctor Who will return to television screens instead of Autumn 2016. Watch the revelation video below. Introducing Pearl Mackie as Bill, the #NewCompanion! Welcome to Team #DoctorWho, Pearl!https://t.co/jQpVqxU4tX Doctor Who BBCA (@DoctorWho_BBCA) April 23, 2016 Yes, Bill, we wondered about those Dalek plungers, too, but we suppose plungers played a big role in the life of Davros before he created Daleks. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Enhanced health for trees may soon be within reach as experts found a 200-year-old tree named "Betty" may hold the key to fighting ash dieback disease. The tree, which was found in Norwich, UK, is said to be the first native ash tree that exhibited strong resistance to the fungal disease. The finding encourages experts to entertain the possibility of using selective breeding to grow trees that are less vulnerable to ash dieback disease. The Analysis Researchers from scientist group Nornex performed a genetic investigation of 182 affected ash trees in Denmark. The government-supported group then developed three genetic markers to help them anticipate which of the trees are most likely to be mildly and strongly tolerant. In Ashwellthorpe Wood, one of Norfolk's remaining ancient woodlands, experts found that many trees were infected with the fungal disease. However, there were those that remained healthy, only exhibiting low levels of infection. One of the exceptions in the list of severely infected trees is an old tree, which the team named Betty. Betty stood out because it showed high tolerance despite being located near infected trees. Moving On To The Next Step Aside from identifying Betty, the scientists also found out that the three genetic markers seem to be more common in British ash trees than in several other nations. The reason for this has not yet been clearly established, but it is notable enough to include in future tree development endeavors. Now, researchers are looking at determining more trees that are less likely to be infected so they can breed a resistant variety that may also get pass through the disease. Growing Healthier Trees The work paves the way for dealing with ash dieback disease more effectively and for guaranteeing that Britain's ash trees stay strong amid pests and infections in the future. Ultimately, it leads to a more exciting development in growing healthier trees. "I believe that we have generated the fundamentals required to select and potentially to breed trees with enhanced tolerance to the disease," says Nornex coordinator Allan Downie. Downie explains that resistance in this context does not mean eradicating the actual fungus. What the team probably have discovered are genetic elements and profiles that are associated with allowing ash trees to live with it and impede development of the pathogen. About Ash Dieback Ash dieback is a fungal disease that has caused tree damage in Scandinavia and is threatening to affect about 80 million ash trees in Britain. Among the signs and symptoms of the disease include leaf loss, bark lesions and crown dieback. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. KFC began investigation after a BBC undercover inspection revealed that one of the fast food chain's UK branches has feces bacteria on ice. The restaurant said it was highly disappointed and had launched a probe. The news came after BBC's Rip Off Britain program looked into the food hygiene of different branches of numerous popular takeaway restaurants and coffee joints. One of the experts who studied the data from the investigations said the bacteria found on the KFC ice may cause illness to anyone who consumes it. KFC Branch Closed As per the BBC program, the KFC branch where the feces bacteria were detected had closed its doors temporarily. This is to conduct a thorough clean-up after it rated zero in a hygiene scale weeks prior to the collections of the sample. KFC is now performing a retraining project with all members of the team about the protocols for touch point cleaning and strategies. The company stresses that it takes hygiene and food safety very seriously. Findings Of The BBC Investigation "We found high levels of bacteria in the ice," says Dr. Margarita Gomez Escalada, who examined the results. She adds that the positive fecal coliform test signifies that bacteria from feces may be present either in the ice or from the water, which was used to make the ice. Escalada examined the sample at the Leeds Beckett University. How Did The Experts Investigate? Covert scientists went to different restaurants to see the overall hygiene being practiced in the dining joints. Among the restaurants they visited include Costa in Loughborough, Chicken Cottage in Hampstead, Cafe Nero in Bath, Wimpy in Basildon and KFC at Martineau Place, Birmingham. The scientists asked for a cup of tap water with ice as this can well indicate the hygienic protocols behind the counter. Majority of the samples had very low or non-hazardous amounts of bacteria during the testing. KFC sure has lots of followers all around the world, including a 21-year-old UK woman who ate at the restaurant every single day for three years. Rapid investigations about the matter is therefore crucial to the restaurant's reputation. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. SIRIN LABS, a British-Israeli start-up, has managed to raise a whopping $72 million in funding from private investors so that it can bring the "Rolls-Royce of smartphones" to consumers. Dubbed the "Solarin," the robust Android-powered handset from the company is an amalgamation of basic smartphone and military features. Founded in 2013, SIRIN LABS is the brainchild of Kenges Rakishev (a Kazakh entrepreneur), Tal Cohen (ex McKinsey consultant) and Moshe Hogeg (Israeli venture capitalist and brains behind Mobli and Yo). It currently boasts 100 employees, out of which 75 percent are based in Sirin Labs' R&D base in Tel Aviv, Israel. The remaining employees are located across London, U.S., Switzerland and Sweden. The team hopes to perfectly combine expertise on design and security in order to get a good chunk of the secure phone market. On Monday, the start-up revealed that it had successfully raised $72 million in private funds for launching the Solarin smartphone. The pumping of the new capital comes courtesy of Renren, a Chinese social networking platform, which joins the seed investment funders Singulariteam (owned by Hogeg) and Rakishev. "Tel Aviv is a high-tech epicentre built around internet security, anti-virus software and cyber-defence technologies, and Sweden is a nucleus for some of the best telecomms engineers, designers and computer scientists in the world," Hogeg said. "(Our) smartphone . . . brings the most advanced technology available - even if it is not commercially available - and combining it with almost military-grade security," said Hogeg, SIRIN LABS' co-founder and president. Hogeg also shed some light on the mysterious smartphone's future and disclosed that the Solarin would debut in May. The company will also be launching a retail store next month in London. The Android smartphone will be sold worldwide through SIRIN LABS' online portal. The start-up also has plans of opening more stores spread across North America, Europe and Asia by end 2016. An exact date for the Solarin's launch is not known; however, it is expected to be end May and not May 17 as previously assumed. For those wondering how the Solarin would be priced, the handset will cost you a pretty penny as Hogeg has let on that it will retail around the $10,000 to $15,000 mark. The co-founder is optimistic that several executives in Europe and the U.S. will gravitate towards the smartphone and shell out the money because of the privacy settings it will bring. In Hogeg's opinion, paying a high price for the Solarin to stay secure would be viewed as a better alternative to compromising privacy and data if one's phone is hacked. While the Solarin will run on the Android OS, it will also be based on unnamed technology which is at least two to three years ahead of its time. Whether the Solarin will be able to carve a niche for itself - despite the steep price point - when it launches next month remains to be seen. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Since the endangered Australian quolls often die by preying on toxic cane toads, they are being trained to avoid them, scientists have revealed. The invasive species of cane toads, now more than 200 million in number, cause significant decline in Australia's native predators. To save the remaining native cats, the government initiated a program that would train the quolls to become "toad smart" and refrain from consuming the toads. The repopulation program, which will last for three years, will release 30 trained quolls in the southern Kakadu's Mary River district. To teach the furry marsupials to avoid the toads, they were constantly exposed to food mixed with nauseous chemicals and toad skins. The said project is a follow-up to a 2010 experiment that showed that toad-smart female quolls have survived, reproduced, and their offspring have also learned to avoid eating toads. As a result, the quoll population increased by up to five times. The scientists are enthusiastic that the program would contribute to conservation of Australia's small mammals. Sally Barnes, director of the National Parks, said the program can only be done once because the new generation can learn to avoid the toads from their parents. The research showed that toad smart quolls can be re-established after an invasion of toxic cane toads. Threatened Species Commissioner Gregory Andrews said the Aus$750,000 (US$585,000) project also aims to build the marsupial population in Kakadu as feral cats are also threatening the quoll population. "Quolls are an iconic carnivorous Australian marsupial and an incredibly important part of our ecosystem," Andrews said. "By teaching the quolls not to eat cane toads and making Kakadu safe for them from feral cats, we can ensure their survival in this important world heritage-listed area." This is not the first time Australian scientists have found ways to conserve their native marsupials, as their number continues to decline in recent years. In October 2015, a team of scientists have found that systematically killing koalas help curb the spread of chlamydia to other marsupials. A past study also identified Dusky antechinus engage in mating sessions that eventually kill them. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. China-based OEM Xiaomi is on course to unleash its latest smartphone offering, the Xiaomi Mi Max, which is poised to debut on May 10. This is no rumor and the information pertaining to the Mi Max's release comes straight from the horse's mouth as Xiaomi confirmed the phablet's release date in a post on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging site. On April 25, Xiaomi officially revealed that it would be unveiling the Mi Max on May 10 at the Beijing National Convention Center. The company also disclosed that tickets for the event will be going on sale from April 27 and are priced at 199 yuan (approximately $30) each. Earlier on April 24, we reported that Xiaomi shared an image of the upcoming Mi Max phablet in the MIUI forum. The picture showed off the mammoth device peeking out from a jeans pocket. Rumors have been rife that the Mi Max from Xiaomi will sport a colossal 6.4-inch display. The image shared by Xiaomi puts to rest all doubts that despite is massive size, the behemoth will slip easily into one's pocket. While the company did not shed any light on the screen size of the Mi Max, the fact that the handset fit easily in the pocket suggests that the phablet's screen size will be between the 5.7-inch screen size of the Mi Note Pro and the 7.9-inch Mi Pad 2 - an assertion also made by Xiaomi. A GFXBench listing of the phablet pointed to a 6.4-inch QHD screen with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. The Mi Max would be powered by a hexa-core Snapdragon 650 processor and house 2 GB of RAM, as well 16 GB of on-board storage. The benchmark listing also hinted at a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel selfie camera. The device will potentially come pre-loaded with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Earlier in April, the alleged front glass panel of the phablet leaked online, revealing its massive 6.4-inch screen. There are also rumors that the Mi Max will tout a fingerprint scanner and house a 64-bit quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor, not the Snapdragon 650 as reported by us. Xiaomi has confirmed that it will not be having its trademark Mi branding on the phablet's front panel, a departure from the designs of past models. With May 10 a couple of weeks away, we will soon learn what surprises Xiaomi has in store for us. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. To put an end to overdose deaths, Victoria, Australia will allot $30 million to crackdown prescription shopping, the state government has announced. The alarming number of deaths due to prescription drug overdoses necessitates a real-time monitoring system that physicians, hospitals and pharmacies can use to help identify patients who go prescription shopping. The monitoring system would give 1,900 general physicians, 1,300 pharmaceuticals and 200 hospitals access important patient data prior to prescribing and dispensing medicines that are prone to abuse. From 2009 to 2015, Victoria recorded (PDF) 376 overdose deaths every year, with about 80 percent due to prescription drugs. In 2015 alone, as much as 330 Victorians died from drug overdoses. The monitoring system would include Schedule 8 drugs such as oxycodone and morphine. "Real-time prescription monitoring will help put a system in place that can help us see where people are doctor shopping, or pharmacy shopping, and clearly developing addictive behaviors towards these sorts of medicines," said Health Minister Jill Hennessy. Hennessy said that, in recent years, abuse of prescription drugs continues to increase because it is overlooked. She added that deaths due to overdose of prescription drugs outnumber deaths due to road accidents - something that the government should worry about. With such a system in place, it would be easier to alert other physicians and pharmacies. Patients who abuse prescription drugs can be denied scripts and instead given support to deal with their addiction. Challenges Ahead Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation President Alex Wodak supports the project, but expressed concerns that with such a system in place, many of prescription drug dependents would turn to illicit drugs. "That's my view of what's likely to happen, and while I support it, I think it's going to achieve less than people hoped," said Wodak. Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association head Sam Biondo said that the system, while long overdue, is still a welcome move. He added that the soaring number of deaths due to prescription drug overdose highlights the need for such an initiative. Biondo added that for this system to effectively work, additional funding should also be allotted to the drug treatment sector, as it would receive an influx of referrals. In the U.S., it was recently revealed in a Leapfrog survey that a hospital software, also known as the computerized physician order entry (CPOE), designed to control prescription drug abuse fail to raise appropriate red flags because the majority of hospitals does not implement it. This should serve as a lesson for the Victorian government - having a system in place is one thing, but accurately implementing it is another. Each and every health department must realize the need to address the problem on prescription drugs. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Intel made bold steps towards diversity-oriented teams in its company, but some insiders are unhappy with the gender and ethnicity inclusion policies. Brian Krzanich, the Intel CEO, told Rev. Jesse Jackson that there's "been a bit of a backlash within the company," and the senior leadership team of the OEM even faced some threats. Krzanich made the statement during the PUSHTech 2020 conference that took place on Friday, April 22, in San Francisco. The leader of Intel mentioned that due to the inclusion policies, some of his employees perceived being a white male as an endangered position. "We've even had a few threats [...] on some of our leadership team around our position on diversity and inclusion," he notes. Intel's CEO reminds everyone in the company that the process is not based on exclusion. In other words, the HR will not bring in Hispanics or African-Americans or women so that other categories (read: white males) are pushed aside. This simply means that the current employees will keep their jobs but will have more diverse colleagues than before. Krzanich's explains that what the inclusion process aims to do is, in fact, making minorities and women "part of the whole environment." Should you be curious what types of threats reached the higher echelons of Intel, read on. "Any time you undertake a big initiative it's [...] an ongoing process toward change and evolution. [...] Words can mean many things," a spokesperson says. Intel boosted its underrepresented minority population by 30 percent during the last year. When looking at the extent of the whole company, the percentage reaches 12 percent. Krzanich points out that his company topped its hiring goals for women and marginalized minority groups by as much as 43.3 percent during the last 12 months. Intel intends to include details such as gender and race in its upcoming diversity report, so that figures can speak for themselves. The CEO mentions that the company plans to publish the data into public space, and there are good reasons for it. "I almost hope there are gaps [...] because it's a problem I can fix," he affirms. He adds that he always looks at problems from an engineer's point of view, meaning that engineering the solution to such a challenge is totally possible and even enjoyable for those that are solution-oriented. It is not the first time when Intel works toward inclusiveness. Krzanich used his stage time at the 2015 Consumer Electronics show to let the media know that Intel wants to invest $300 million in promoting workforce diversity. He pointed out that bringing in diversity in the tech environment has the potential to shape the future of the industry. In the initiative, Intel signed partnerships with universities and black colleges that have a significant number of African-American students, alongside NGOs such as CODE2040. Krzanich also addressed the so-called "pipeline problem," a complaint of the tech industry that there are very few minority women candidates ready to take certain senior jobs. He pointed out that by sending out "a diverse team" to recruit talent in diverse colleges, building a strong pipeline becomes easy. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. It was the Monday Night Raw after WrestleMania 32, when Bray Wyatt and his Wyatt Family ambushed the League of Nations, leaving them sprawled out in the squared circle. That laid the groundwork for a feud to spark between the two factions, with WWE even pairing Roman Reigns and The New Face of Fear to take on the League of Nations' Sheamus and Alberto Del Rio on Raw a week later. But when Bray suffered a calf injury two weeks ago, those plans were instantly scrapped, leaving WWE to book the League of Nations in some patchwork matches, including teaming with The Miz to go up against Cesaro and The New Day last week on Raw. Now, according to a WhatCulture.com report, the League of Nations is no more, disbanding as a faction as we know it to be. While on the Spanish leg of WWE's 2016 European tour, Del Rio confirmed the fork in the road for the League of Nations, including himself, Sheamus and Rusev. They will each go their own way, adding that Bray's injury cemented the decision. Del Rio added that the group has had trouble with chemistry issues and that Wyatt's injury left them without a story line to move the faction forward, thus forcing the decision. The fallout of the League of Nations being broken up is how WWE will re-introduce each Superstar back into the singles story lines, putting them in situations where they can still generate heat. Now, more than ever, it's going to be a challenge, especially considering Shane McMahon's presence has paved the way for an influx of NXT talent to make their debuts on Raw. Perhaps that's just it, though. Early on, the company might want to consider putting Sheamus, Rusev or Del Rio up against an Apollo Crews, Baron Corbin or Finn Balor if he winds up appearing on WWE's flagship program. Of the three, though, would Sheamus, Rusev or Del Rio get closest to being main event-level Superstars once again moving forward? There's probably not enough room for all three, but one could do it. We'd like to think that one would be Sheamus, but don't count Rusev nor Del Rio out, either. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Now Plan A Fishing Trip Using BassForcast Fishing App! | TechTree.com BassForecast, a mobile app specifically designed to determine the best days for amateur bass anglers to go fishing, has announced their launch in the App Store. The app conveniently provides all searchable, location-specific, relevant data, in real-time-to anyone planning a fishing trip - whether at work, on the go or at home. Unlike other fishing apps or using solunar tables alone, BassForecast is the only app that takes into account how water temperature affects bass feeding patterns, which translate to determining the optimal time for fishing. Additionally, the proprietary algorithm, powered by data from AccuWeather, combines historical weather data, future weather predictions and real-time conditions to provide the BassForecast Rating (BFR). The BFR lets fishermen know how active bass will be on any given day based on the science of bass feeding behaviour. Based on in-depth research of largemouth bass feeding behavior, by fishery biologists, and the environmental conditions that affect it, the BFR is a combination of location, the time-lag-effect of past air temperature on water temperature, barometric pressure changes, complete solunar data and other relevant weather factors that have been scientifically proven to affect bass. The BFR is calculated for the location of choice for 10 days in advance and provides alerts when a good day is identified. BassForecast's partnership with AccuWeather allows users to leverage the superior accuracy of AccuWeather to track the BFR for all their favorite fishing locations, while the BassForecast Rating dynamically updates with changing weather conditions. BassForecast is the brainchild of Mike Mehlmann, an avid bass fisherman and self-proclaimed "bass science geek" from Texas. Used to looking at many different sources for past weather data, solunar tables, moon phase charts, weather forecasts and more, he finally became fed up with how long it took to select good fishing days using traditional methods. After struggling to find weather apps that worked well for fishing, he decided to create his own. Months of research into fishery biologists' data and reports led to his creation of a bass fishing algorithm and the BassForecast Rating was born. BassForecast will be available to download for free on iOS devices on the App Store with the Android version through Google Play coming in June. TAGS: Mobile App, Accuweather, Fishing Apps Man develops a printer which can print 3D concrete castles In August 2014, Andrey Rudenko of Minnesota had managed to garner lot of media attention for designing and printing the worlds first 3D printed castle. The miniature castle that was printed in Rudenkos backyard just proved that it is only a matter of time before 3D printing became a mainstream method of construction. It has almost been two years since then when he first thought of designing a 3D printer that was capable of constructing homes. His vision of a 3D printer was that of a light, portable and stable machine. To start with, Rudenko built a small 3D printer that used plastic for its main material. He then started carrying out trials on expanding the printer and using variants of cement mixes. Layering cement was a very difficult task- it required extensive tuning of the printer on a programming level, as well as using accurate quantities for the cement mix. However, it was no easy task for Rudenko when he tested the printer. He faced a lot of problems such as the clogging of the extruder clogging. He further discovered that the printer can print much more than 50cm a day as he originally thought. He was able to adjust the machine so that it prints almost perfect layers. He also toyed around with different heights and widths of the cement layers. While his current standard is 10 millimetres in height by 30 millimetres in width, there are several other options that are available with just the click of a button. Finally, Rudenkos two year long journey paid off with him finishing the worlds first 3D Printed Concrete Castle and making it stand on its feet. Rudenko depended on his own resources, as he wanted to start the 3D printing of the castle model early. While there were people who were sceptical about this projects progress, Rudenko, on the other hand, got lots of invaluable input and support from individuals of the RepRap community. Currently, Rudenko is in the process of redesigning the printer based on the lessons learnt and to ensure that the upgraded printer is ready for the new project. His goal is to print 24 hours a day until the project is finished. He also has plans to print the structure in one piece. In addition, he has also found a way to print a roof; however, the material that he would be printing with can be used only in warmer climates for now. Rudenkos next project is that of a real full-scale liveable house. If any individual or company is interested in owning the first house of this type built with the newest 3D technology and ready to provide abundant funds to completely cover the project and all its expenses, can contact [email protected] for any questions, suggestions, and offers. Also, interested architects, designers, and software engineers experienced in 3D tools who wish to collaborate with Rudenko can contact him at the aforementioned email address. Finally, his website www.totalkustom.com is also live. People can drop in suggestions or updates on the 3D printing progress, as well as can be used as a posting wall for new ideas and findings. Anonymous DDoS City of Denver website to protest against police firing kills Damon The online hacktivist group, Anonymous is yet after the police in United States. This time they brought down the city of Denver website after the police firing allegedly killed a man. Members of the New World Hacking (NWH), one of Anonymous affiliates conducted a series of powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the city of Denvers website (denvergov.org) last Friday afternoon, forcing the site to go offline for the rest of the day. The attacks continued the next day as well when they assaulted the Bank of Denver (thebankofdenver.com). The attacks were carried by the NWH out to protest against the police shooting in which 39-year-old Dion Avila Damon was allegedly killed inside his parked car near the Denver Art Museum on April 12, 2016. Damon had just dropped off his wife and child, when a police SWAT team pulled from behind and tried to serve a warrant for his arrest. However, the suspect was shot at least seven times through the front windshield with his wife and child nearby. Damon was pronounced dead at the scene. Denver police chief in a press conference after the shooting said Damon was a suspect in a robbery case and that investigators did not conclude if Damon fired at the police or that he had a gun. Shots were fired as soon as police officers got out their vehicles, reported Unicorn Riot reporters from Denver. In an interview with Fox News, Damons wife said that her husband dropped her off to pay a traffic fine at the local courthouse and that she told cops that her husband was unarmed when police arrived. In an exclusive conversation with two of the NWH attackers (Sad Prophet and SinfulHazeCE) behind this attack, HackRead told that: We see how Denver police dont care so if they dont care about killing and innocent; we dont care about continuous attacks on Denver. Further, depending on the response from Denver police department, the attackers also hinted at a database leak within a week or so. However, Fox news reported that police is investigating an officer-involved in the shooting. For those unfamiliar, the NWH is the same group who claimed responsibility for shutting down Xbox online service, BBC news servers, HSBC UKs online banking, the official website for Donald Trumps election campaign, Salt Lake city Police and airport websites. Apples Find My iPad tool leads Thai police to notorious gang hideout; Technology: 1, Gangsters: 0 The Find my iPhone also possesses an option for users to locate their iPad in case it gets stolen or misplaced but a torrent of recent events did not just lead to the tablet being found, but the iPad also assisted authorities in locating a local gang hideout. This is not the first time where the feature has brought criminals to justice. The security feature allowed authorities to save the day on different occasions. Earlier this year, authorities were able to locate a kidnapped teen, and around a couple of years back, the exact same feature was used to retrieve items that were worth $350,000. Now, local reports have said that someone who had their iPad forcibly stolen were able to retrieve it but in addition to this, the local police were able to strike gold as they were able to apprehend criminals of a local notorious gang called Ma Diaw. While the police were able to arrest one member of the gang, the remaining made their escape by jumping through the window and swim in the river in order to make their escape successful. However, the progress of the escape was suddenly cut off as a manhunt suddenly started and the police were able to capture the remaining members of the gang that were located in the hideout. It goes without saying that technology has once again aided the authorities in nabbing criminals, indicating that future and improved applications of such security features will obviously come in handy in eliminating the criminal element from the neighborhood. Thaivisa Court says police cant peek at your smartphone screen leave alone searching it, without a warrant The Supreme Court in a key decision back in 2014 had ultimately concluded that police when making an arrest would require a warrant to search someones smartphone. The case in question, Riley v. California, was a major privacy victory. Now, its being deduced by a federal court in Illinois that even opening a smartphone to have a look at the screen would be considered as a search and needs a warrant. The Illinois case involves a sting operation that ensnared Demontae Bell, an alleged drug dealer charged for illegally possessing an AK-47 assault rifle. While questioning Bell, an officer testified that he pulled out a seized flip phone and opened it, disclosing a picture of the rifle, which Bell had set as his home screens wallpaper. This was then used as a base for a warrant to search Bells phone for metadata about when and where the photo was clicked. The officer stated that he had opened the phone so that he could turn off the phone. However, the judge ruled last Wednesday that police have no right to open a suspects phone and look at the screen without first getting a warrant, even if it means to just switch off, as the Riley case clearly stated by doing so is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Officer Sinks opening of Bells cell phone exceeded a cursory inspection because he exposed to view concealed portions of the objecti.e., the screen, wrote Judge James E. Shahid. [B]ecause Officer Sinks had to manipulate the phone to view the picture on the screen, that picture was by definition not in plain view. This implies that police would not be allowed to turn on the screen of the phone and look for convicting notifications or messages without a search warrant, even if your device is not locked with a passcode. However, the Supreme Court did say there are exigent circumstances for allowing warrantless searches, which includes stopping destruction of evidence (avoiding the phone from getting a remote wiping command) and forthcoming fears to officer safety (for instance, to check if theres a razor blade buried in the phones case). Yet neither the governments response, nor the warrant affidavit, asserted that the officer in this case opened Bells cell phone out of concern for officer safety or preservation of evidence, Judge Shahid wrote. Thus, The search of Bells cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. On the other hand, the judge refused Bells motion to suppress proof from the illegal search, stating that based on other testimony given about Bells illegal rifle, the photo would have ultimately been discovered. Source: Motherboard It is very surprising to know that a handful of women were bold enough to step into the world of hacking and make their presence felt a field where the art of writing computer code and manipulating computer hardware is always considered to be traditionally dominated by males. It remains an evolving, multi-billion dollar industry as some hackers are often blamed for causing irreparable damage while others are simultaneously credited for some of the biggest breakthroughs in technology. No matter what a hacker may be, they are known for their resourcefulness and their knowledge of complexity theory. The female hackers listed below have been credited with some of the biggest breakthroughs that changed the perception of hacking. Lets have a look at some of the most beautiful and notorious female hackers and the impact they have on the world. Best Female Hacker In The World 1. Adeanna Cooke Modeling and hacking have nothing in common. A former Playboy model, Cooke is famous for her ethical hacking skills and is a self-trained hacker. One day, Cooke came across an unauthorized website with nude pictures of her on it, which were illegally posted by her long-time partner to make money. Thats when she decided to take matters into her own hands and hacked into the account herself to take the entire stolen photos down. After finding success in her attempts, Cooke also used her hacking gift to help out other models in similar situations. This is probably why she is also known as the Hacker Fairy to other troubled women being taken advantage of on the Internet. 2. Xiao Tian Tian formed the renowned female hacking group called China Girl Security Team, as she felt that there was no other outlet for teenage girls like her in the male-dominated world of hacking. Her group has now ties with some of the most notorious hacking organizations in the world and has become one of the largest Chinese-based hacking groups of all time. As with most well-known and outspoken groups of this nature, Tian and the rest of Chinas Girl Security Team continue to receive attention from national and international police organizations due to their activities. 3. Anna Chapman Chapman is a Russian female hacker who was residing in New York City when she was arrested, along with nine others in 2010. She was accused of working for the Illegals Program spy ring under the Russian Federations external intelligence agency. Chapman pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. Attorney General and was deported to Russia, as part of a prisoner swap. She also lost her U.S. citizenship. 4. Kristina Svechinskaya One of the most popular names in the world of hacking, Svechinskaya is a Russian money mule hacker. A student of the New York University, she was accused of a plot to defraud several British and U.S. banks of sizeable sums and use of false passports. Specializing in the use of Zeus Trojan horses, she hacked servers of thousands of bank accounts most within the United States, and then created a series of fake accounts through both Bank of America and Wachovia, which received $35,000 of money theft. Some authorities estimate that she stole $3 million in as little as a few months. Svechinskaya was dubbed the worlds sexiest computer hacker for her raunchy but casual appearance. 5. Ying Cracker Cracker is an educator from Shanghai that offends white people every time she says her full name if they think shes correcting them. She teaches people the basics of how to start hacking; things like changing your IP address or wiping Office passwords. She is an expert in hacking software writing and charges good money for courses on simple and for high-end hacking tools. Cracker also charges between 500-5000 Yuan per class for helping other people crack software. 6. Kim Vanvaeck While many of the top female hackers in the world are known for their legal work within the security sector, Gigabyte is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Gigabyte was born and brought up in Belgium and her real name is Kim Vanvaeck. She is believed to have been the sole creator or primary creator of a number of high-end viruses including Coconut-A, Sahay-A, and Sharp-A that are meant not to steal sensitive information but to destroy them. 7. Joanna Rutkowska Rutkowska is a Polish ethical hacker who specializes in developing software and tools to counter hackers in the world. So, shes kind of a protector of the common man against machines, Terminator-style. She describes herself as an Operating Systems Security officer. She is best known for demonstrating the vulnerabilities in Windows Vista at the 2006 DefCon conference. An elite hacker, she has launched her own security services start-up called Invisible Things Labs. 8. Raven Adler Adler was the first woman hacker to be ever-present at the DefCons hacker conference. She continues to design hack-detecting systems, test and audit hacking detector systems for large federal agencies. She now works as a senior security consultant for a number of companies and continues to give lectures and regularly publish her work in industry magazines. She also works with several federal firms and aids them in protecting their online databases. 9. Jude Milhon Milhon was a hacker and author best known under the pseudonym St. Jude. She started her career as a computer programmer in 1967 only to later form a hacking group known as Cypherpunks. She was also a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Throughout her life, she wrote several books as well as contributed to a number of magazines within both the hacking industry and the computer programming industry. During her lifetime, she pushed against those who believed hacking was nothing more than a criminal act. She passed away in 2003 due to cancer. 10. Natasha Grigori Grigori started her career as a hacker in the 1980s but she did not receive fame until the early 1990s with a bulletin-board website for amateur programmers and hackers. With this site, she helped others share, release, and hack various forms of software. However, in the late 1990s, she founded antichildporn.org, also known as ACPO and Anti-Child Porn Organization, and started working against child-pornography. This website has become one of the biggest campaigners against online child pornography and countless hackers utilize techniques learned from Grigori to help law enforcement agencies find and prosecute distributors. Unfortunately, Grigori died of severe illness in November 2005, but ACPO has been left behind as a viable and effective organization that continues to operate today. Who is the No 1 female hacker in the world? Xiao Tian is considered to be one of the best female hackers in the world. Conclusion So these were some of the top most famous female hackers in the world. Do let us know of any girl hacker you know about that is worth mentioning in the list. A 40 anos de Malvinas "Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo. Should you be heading to Capri this summer, you might consider sailing out of Salerno for a change, if only to experience the citys new ferry terminal by Zaha Hadid the first building to be completed following her unexpected death at the end of March. As with all of Hadids buildings, its derived from a confident series of fluid lines. But the terminal, unlike some of the more recent work, is of a delightfully human scale. The practice won the competition to build the new departure point in 2000. But a combination of Italian contractors, EU bureaucracy, shifts in local government and more besides has insured that the projects delivery was long and drawn out. Still, its finally opened, and with the blessing of Prime Minister Renzi, who visited the building on Sunday after a visit to Naples. We would have loved to have Zaha there, and to hear her critique, said architect Paola Cattarin who joined Zaha Hadids studio in 1999 and has worked on the project since the beginning. Im sure she would have had plenty to say. Instead we missed her very much. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded an unprecedented number of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in a fiscal year. | Read More Increasing demand on the back of an expanding middle class and growing awareness of services will drive growth in Thailands insurance sector, though short-term prospects may be muted by a cooling of the economy. Strong potential for growth in Thailands insurance sector stems from low rates of insurance penetration, which is 4.1% for life insurance and 1.7% for non-life insurance, according to the Thai General Insurance Association (TGIA). Bright spot for Thailands insurance sector Penetration rates have stayed low, even though the market has a relatively high number of players; some 57 insurers operate in the non-life segment, 90% of which are local. The 10 leading companies account for more than 60% of total market share, with five players comprising roughly 45%. In the life segment, meanwhile, 24 operators are members of the Thai Life Assurance Association, with a slightly higher foreign presence. The number of insurers could fall if local market regulator Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) follows through with a proposal to further enforce its capital adequacy ratios, already the fourth highest among ASEAN countries. An increase in risk-based capital requirements could see some smaller operators subject to mergers or acquisitions by larger companies, or face difficulties competing in the market. Favourable demographics and Demand on the rise A Fitch Ratings report released at the end of last year found that the medium- to long-term prospects for the Thai insurance sector were strong, supported by increasing demand for coverage from an ageing population and rising levels of household wealth. Favourable demographics and the sectors distribution platform provide a solid foundation for life insurers, while companies in the non-life segment will likely see steady expansion in the medium and long term, although expansion this year could be muted due to a slowing of economic growth, Fitch said. Thailands GDP expanded by 2.5% last year, coming in below the governments revised 2015 forecast of 3.9%. With the World Bank expecting growth of around 2% in 2016, there could be less enthusiasm for life insurance and other non-compulsory services if disposable incomes flatten. Changing demographics will become increasingly important to bolster premiums in the insurance sector, according to Kheedhej Anansiriprapha, executive director of the TGIA. The insurance sector will have to adapt to Thailands ageing population to move forward, he told OBG. Seniors accounted for about 14.2% of the national population in 2015 and are expected to reach 25.1% by 2023. The greying population should not only drive the expansion of life policies but also increase prospects for health and medical insurance. Higher life expectancy in Thailand could also prompt more citizens to take out coverage, spurring growth in premiums. A number of underwriters, such as state-owned Dhipaya Insurance and private firm Muang Thai Life Assurance, have opted to set up branches in Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos or have indicated an interest in extending their operations beyond their home market. In addition to obtaining a licence to operate with a local partner in the Cambodian market, Muang Thai has formed a joint venture to establish a presence in Vietnam and opened a representative office in Myanmar. Allianz Ayudhya is also looking further afield towards Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. The firm has already formed a joint venture with the Ministry of Finance in Laos and aims to enter the Cambodian and Myanmar markets in the near future. Much of this overseas expansion is linked to growing bancassurance ties in the domestic industry, according to Kheedhej. Insurers expand to neighbouring countries often in tandem with their associated banks, he told OBG. Dhipaya Insurance has followed Krung Thai Bank into Laos and Myanmar, while Bangkok Insurance is tied to Bangkok Bank and Muang Thai Insurance to Kasikornbank. Source: Solid prospects in Thailands insurance sector | Thailand 2016 | Oxford Business Group Thailand Government officials today discussed plans for advancing Thailands climate policy through membership in the World Bank Groups Partnership for Market Readiness, a global alliance of more than 30 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption in developing countries. Established in 2011 by the World Bank, the Partnership for Market Readiness (PMR) is a grant-based, global partnership that provides support and funding for technical and institutional capacity development and piloting of new and innovative market-based instruments in order to scale up climate change mitigation efforts. The Thailand Partnership for Market Readiness project will assist the Government of Thailand in its ongoing effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. World Bank assistance will help inform policy decisions to develop market-based instruments, which will put a price on carbon, and has shown to be cost effective in reducing greenhouse gases emission in various countries. The World Bank provided Thailand with a grant of US$3 million on February 16, 2016 to fund government policy activities in support of meeting climate targets. The World Bank is very pleased to help Thailand meet its national carbon emission reduction target, saidUlrich Zachau, World Bank Country Director for Southeast Asia. The Partnership for Market Readiness is a platform designed to specifically help countries develop and establish marked based mechanisms for emission reduction, which will be important in addressing climate change, both in Thailand and globally. Thailand was the 22nd largest CO 2 emitter in the world and 5th largest in the East Asia and Pacific region. Over the last decade, the energy sector has been the most important source of greenhouse gas emissions in Thailand, and it will contribute to 76 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 if the country continues to take a business-as-usual approach. The World Bank Groups support is critical to starting the process of introducing carbon pricing and other innovative instruments in Thailand, saidPrasertsuk Chamornmarn, Executive Director, Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization.Thailands climate policy will benefit from the World Banks technical expertise and country experiences as well as facilitating stakeholders consultations and international cooperation. At the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21, held in Paris, France, Thailand announced its intention to adapt a low-carbon growth path as part of the countrys emission reduction target, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2030. Source: Thailand Joins World Bank Climate Change Alliance; Country to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions with Policy Help from the Partnership for Market Readiness The Ministry of Finance recently rejected a demand from Samsung Electronics for a 50 percent tax reduction for three more years for its two plants in the provinces of Thai Nguyen and Bac Ninh. The two received special incentives -- no income tax for the first four years of operations and 50 percent tax for the next nine. The Thai Nguyen facility has a 10 percent tax discount for the following 30 years, while for the Bac Ninh plant, the discount will be for life. The corporate income tax rate in Vietnam is 25 percent. The ministry ruled that the demand is not in line with the countrys laws. The Korean company is the largest foreign investor with over $12.6 billion in registered capital, and could increase its investment to $20 billion by 2017 if things go smoothly, according to a government report. Vietnam seems to be more wary about offering incentives to foreign investors after a lot of criticism that it has been too generous. Nguyen Quang Thai, general secretary of the Vietnam Economic Science Association, said the ministry is right to reject the demand: With the budget being tight, we should not offer tax breaks for too long. In fact, the incentives offered to potential investors are too generous and foreign companies are treated better than domestic ones, he said. Foreign-backed firms are exempt from corporate tax and have occupied thousands of square meters of free land in industrial parks for years. On the other hand, local firms find it hard to get even 100 square meters for their plants. Economist Nguyen Ngoc Son concurred saying there is no reason to comply with demands that are not in line with the laws. Special incentives might help Vietnam attract more FDI, but also threaten the fair competition between foreign and local private companies, he said. The rejection shows that Vietnam wants fair competition in the market more than FDI, he said. Bui Kien Thanh, another economist, said: No country offers incentives to foreign investors like Vietnam. We should cut overly-generous incentives." "Foreign investors should have been offered specific incentives based on what they can bring to the country, such as jobs and value-added products. Many provinces now compete to attract FDI by offering incentives without considering whether or not the projects are actually useful, he said. Renowned economist Pham Chi Lan said investment incentives should be offered more selectively since it is a very expensive strategy, and recklessly offering incentives would affect the tax system and the governments revenues. We should review which sectors need foreign investors and which could function with local firms operating with appropriate incentives. Nguyen Mai, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Enterprises, said, It is quite normal for foreign investors to ask for incentives; Vietnam can accept or reject their demand. But there is a wrong perception that foreign investors would crush local private firms if we do not carefully consider incentives, he said. Local private firms can develop in a competitive environment. The local market has many segments and foreign and local firms can participate in different segments, he pointed out. Streamlining administrative procedures, improving infrastructure and reducing corruption would better serve Vietnam in attracting foreign investment than tax breaks, he said. Tax incentives enhance but do not substitute competitiveness, according to many foreign investors, he added. Gaurav Gupta, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham) in Vietnam, said corruption and a murky legal system continue to bemuse American businesses in Vietnam. Initial interest from potential foreign investors often does not materialize due to continued problems with corruption, human resource constraints, and the country's overly complicated, restricted, and unclear licensing and regulatory environment, he said. Selection Mai said Vietnam could attract many foreign investors seeking to take advantage of free trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This recent free trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries has renewed US investors' interest in Vietnam, but any hope of a significant increase in their investment would depend on reforms to improve the countrys business environment, according to analysts and officials. Many US giants like Nike and Mast Industries plan to move a major part of their manufacturing operations to Vietnam, the Foreign Investment Agency said, pointing out that some like tech behemoths like Microsoft and Intel have already made the move here from China, where labor costs have shot up. Besides major companies in key sectors like oil and gas and aviation, small and medium US firms in manufacturing and light industries are also interested in investing in Vietnam, according to the agency. Around 57 percent of US companies operating in Southeast Asia consider Vietnam the most attractive investment destination, it said, citing a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. Economists said the situation allows Vietnam to cherry-pick good FDI projects. Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh said Vietnam would carefully select FDI projects to ensure they benefit the country. Many cities and provinces have tried to attract FDI at any cost without a careful assessment of projects, resulting in many of them becoming delayed due to the poor financial strength of investors or causing pollution. Vinh recently instructed Quang Ninh Province to reject a Hong Kong-invested dying project because of pollution concerns. The plant, if licensed, would have operated without a waste treatment system, he said. Vietnam's foreign direct investment inflows topped US$4.02 billion in the first three months, more than twice the figure for the same period last year, according to the Foreign Investment Agency. South Korea was the top investor, accounting for more than a fifth of the investment. Vietnam's coffee exports could fall 25 percent in 2016 to their lowest in a decade at 1 million tons (16.67 million 60-kg bags), hit by drought, lower yields from old trees and increased output from domestic roasters, a senior industry official said. Tighter supply from Vietnam, the world's largest producer of robusta beans, coupled with concerns over lower output in Brazil and Colombia, could boost global coffee prices. ICE July robustas settled up $13, or 0.8 percent, at $1,578 per ton on Wednesday. The contract has gained around 3 percent so far this year. "Coffee processing in the country serving a higher number of coffee shops, plus more newly registered roasting businesses, will bring down the country's coffee bean exports," said Luong Van Tu, chairman of the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association. He added that local consumption now accounted for 10 percent of Vietnam's output, up from 5 percent in 2006, when the Southeast Asian nation exported 981,000 tons of coffee. Apart from domestic roasters, foreign firms including Nestle have established processing facilities in Vietnam. Nestle alone buys up to a quarter of Vietnam's coffee. Farmers in the Central Highlands coffee belt have been hit by the widening impact of the worst drought in three decades brought on by the El Nino weather pattern. The October 2016/September 2017 coffee crop could drop 30 percent if the drought intensifies in the Central Highlands during April, Tu told Reuters. The region produces 80 percent of the country's coffee. Output from the key growing province of Daklak is expected to drop 30 percent. Tu said lower yields from old trees, which account for 35 percent of Vietnam's 650,000 hectares of coffee, will contribute to the decline in output. Dryness brought on by El Nino could also cut supply from Colombia in the second half of 2016, the International Coffee Organization said in its March report. "Drought is also affecting supply expectations in Vietnam and (the state of) Espirito Santo in Brazil, which could lend support to robusta prices in the near future," the report said. But BMI Research, a Fitch Group company, has forecast higher 2016/2017 output in Vietnam, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia and Mexico despite concerns over El Nino. A rhino is seen after it was dehorned in an effort to deter the poaching of one of the world's endangered species, at a farm outside Klerksdorp, in the north west province, South Africa, in this February 24, 2016 file photo. Wildlife groups plan to relocate 80 rhinoceros from South Africa to Australia in a bid to prevent them being hunted to extinction, one of the project's leaders said on Friday. Poaching is on the rise in Africa, driven by demand from China and Vietnam where rhino horn, used in traditional medicine, can sell for around $65,000 per kilogram, according to estimates by conservationists. Around 1,300 rhino were killed illegally in Africa last year. The Australian Rhino Project and South Africa's Elephants, Rhinos and People (ERP) plan to begin relocating the animals this year to establish an "insurance population". If the project is successful, more rhinos could be flown to other "safe havens" in Texas and Florida. "Poachers will go where it is easy to poach. It is easier to poach rhinos in Africa than in Australia or America," ERP Director Wouter van Hoven told Reuters. "It's not that we want to get the rhinos out of Africa but we need to put some rhinos into a safe deposit box." The rhinos will be repatriated to their natural African habitat once the population numbers have grown and levels of demand for animal horn falls, the groups said. Conservationists and private game reserve owners have criticized the South African government for not doing enough to protect rhinos from powerful poaching and smuggling syndicates. South Africa, home to around 80 percent of the world's rhino, decided this week not to push for an end to a global ban on buying and selling rhino horn. Animal reserve owners say a legal trade could help save the rhinos by using the proceeds for conservation. "Now that the green light has been given to the criminals to continue poaching ... the rhinos are going to be much worse off," Chairman of the Private Rhino Owner's Association Pelham Jones said. Rhinoceros' horns grow back if cut from a living animal, but the process has been criticized by animal rights groups and opponents of legalizing the trade say it would legitimize and encourage the use of material from endangered animals. Five suspects arrested in Ho Chi Minh City on Monday for falsifying papers and trafficking women. Photo: Mai Tram Police in Ho Chi Minh City Monday arrested five people, including two Chinese men who had come to find brides, on trafficking charges. The Chinese, Jiang Xuhua, 41, and Wu Kuaifa, 31, had reportedly entered the country in March to look for wives with the help of three Vietnamese middlemen. They had each paid the agents VND120 million after selecting their brides. The mediators reportedly pay a third of the money to the families of the brides, farmers in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho. The five were caught red-handed while transacting the payment at a hotel in Binh Tan District, the police said, adding that the brokers had also forged identity papers for the brides to enter China. One of the brokers, Nguyen Thi Hong Anh, 29 was herself a victim in 2012 after being sold to her Chinese husband by a woman called Nguyen Thi Banh, 61. Anh then became Banhs accomplice, finding Chinese men looking for Vietnamese wives. Investigations are continuing. Six men and a woman have been arrested in Lao Cai Province for selling female students to China. Photo credit: VnExpress Police in the northern province of Lao Cai have arrested six men and a woman for allegedly tricking local students to China in an attempt to sell them as wives. Initial investigation found that the suspects, between 19 and 31 years old, brought the victims to a Chinese man, who would then sell them to other Chinese men looking for wives, local media reported. Some of the girls were approached on Facebook. The group allegedly pretended to have affection for the victims and, after winning their trust, tricked them into traveling to China. Police said nine high school and college students were sold for nearly VND400 million (US$18,000) from April 2014. Lao Cai Police started investigating the case after some of the victims escaped and managed to come home with the help of Chinese police. The arrests were made early this month. Officers from both sides are still looking for the male dealer, believed to be in China. Locals gather in front of a house in Hanoi where an explosion kills 1, injuring 2 on Friday evening. Photo credit: VnExpress The explosion that killed a man in Hanoi on Friday was caused by a home-made bomb, police said today. The city police, who have cordoned off Thong Phong Alley for investigation, said the bomb might have been planned to go off at the house No. 23 at dinner time to cause heavy casualty. Three people were in the house when the bomb exploded at 6.50 pm. One of them, Pham Thi Phuong, 38, who was in the kitchen on the first floor, suffered multiple injuries but doctors at Xanh Pon Hospital said her condition is stable. The two others, who were Phuong's parents, on the second floor were unharmed but shocked. The blast threw a passer-by into a bamboo grove about 5 meters away. The man, identified as Nguyen Dong Dang, 60, died immediately. Another man, Nguyen Anh Lam, 19, who was riding near the house, had an arm injury. "I just passed that house when suddenly I was thrown off my bike after a big explosion," he said. "It was chaotic, smoke was everywhere, my clothes were torn off." A photo taken on the first floor of house No. 23, Thong Phong Alley, this morning The police said a family of six live in the house. The three people who were not at home at the time of the explosion were Phuong's brother Pham Gia Hai, 43, his wife Le Thai Ha. Phuong's mother Le Thi Thinh said after the blast, she and her husband went down to the first floor and saw Phuong's face covered in blood. Ha said she was taking her son home from school at that time. The police suspected that the bombing might be an act of revenge against a family member. Neighbors said they saw two strangers in front of the house a few minutes before the bomb went off. Investigation is on-going A group of scientists has proposed building a network of between five and seven dams on the Red River to store and supply water for Vietnam's northern region. The group is studying water shortages in the region and believes that water dams can help the provinces survive dry seasons, which have become very intense the past few years. Unlike hydropower dams whose main task is to generate power, these dams will regulate water flows, especially during the dry season, Tien Phong newspaper quoted Tran Dinh Hoa, deputy director of the Vietnam Academy of Water Resources, as saying. Hoa is leading the group of scientists, whose Red River Delta study is expected to be completed in 2018. We are still in the first phase of research and will organize many seminars with experts to discuss sustainable management of water resources to deal with climate change, he said. The group has proposed five to seven dams downstream of the Hoa Binh Hydropower Dam. Hoa said around 5 trillion liters of water is discharged for power generation in Vietnam every year. "But the agriculture sector only harnesses 20 percent of the amount while the rest is sent straight into the sea, he said. The Red River originates in Chinas Yunnan Province and flows 1,149 kilometers into the Beibu Gulf in Vietnams East Sea. The 510-kilometer section in Vietnam flows through many cities and provinces, including Hanoi. Many sections of the Red River often dried out during dry seasons in the past decade. Pham Thi Bau with her mother at their house in Quang Nam Province. Photos: Tien Hung/VnExpress Pham Thi Bau no longer remembered the way to her house. It had been a long time. She decided to travel to the town market hoping someone would recognize her. And many did. Though it was 22 years since she had been trafficked to China. In April 1994, then 30 years old, she left her home in Quang Nam Province for Hue to sell flowers. She never returned. On her way back home her bus broke down and left passengers at a street cafe while it was being repaired. It was around 3 p.m. I was sitting and having a drink with other passengers. Suddenly a woman came and tapped my shoulder, online newspaper VnExpress quoted her as saying. I don't know what really happened but it felt like I was hypnotized. I followed that woman to catch a bus to the north. I fell asleep during the journey, and when I woke up, I was told we were in Guangxi, China. Bau, then married with two sons in Quang Nam, said there were around 10 other Vietnamese women with her, and they were all told to wait for Chinese men to come and buy them as wives. Many groups of men came over to check us out. They would choose and pay money to a woman. We were like goods. All were very scared at the idea of being bought, but also of running away since they had no money and could not speak the local language. I am lucky Bau was bought after ten days for 2,000 yuan, or more than US$300. Her new husband, Yang Jianfeng, took her on a motorbike and traveled half a day to his home in a remote area in Guangxi. He and his two siblings lived together after losing their parents as children. He was poor and did not have a regular job. No Chinese woman wanted to be his wife and so he decided to save money to buy one from Vietnam. Bau said he had so little choice that he accepted her though she was 11 years older. The family cooked a meal to mark her arrival. Li Me You at the police station in the southern province of Binh Duong. Photo: Do Truong The chairman of a Taiwanese shoe company based in the southern province of Binh Duong died on Saturday, five days after a knife attack by his Chinese subordinate over a dispute at work. The family of Chen Ming Hsiung, chairman of Kingmaker Company, was taking him to his hometown in Taiwan but he succumbed to the serious injuries on the way, local media reported on Sunday. Hsiung, 63, was rushed to Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, near Binh Duong, in a coma on April 12 after being attacked by Li Me You, 45, the companys warehouse manager. A quarrel occurred after Hsiung reportedly questioned You, a Chinese national, over shoes missing from the warehouse. You reportedly whipped out a knife and attacked the Taiwanese boss, leaving several injuries in his head. A file photo shows the site where Li Me You attacking Kingmaker chairman Chen Ming Hsiung and two others on April 12, 2016. The Chinese man also stabbed chief accountant Liu Su Ching, 63, and maintenance technician Chang Tao Chen, 58, as these two men tried to stop the attack. The two Taiwanese victims are now recovering after being treated at Cho Ray Hospital. You has been arrested pending an i nvestigation. Kingmaker Company, located in Binh Duongs Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park, is still operating as usual with 10,000 workers. Three women stand trial in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau on March 30, 2016 for trafficking another woman to China. Photo: Nguyen Long/Thanh Nien A court in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau on Wednesday sentenced three women to five to six years in prison for trafficking a female victim to China last year. Nguyen Thi Hien, 31, together with her accomplices Nguyen Thi Hai, 42, and Vu Thi Kim Loan, 48, were found guilty of human trafficking. According to the indictment, Hien married a Chinese man in 2012 and then moved to China, where she met another Vietnamese woman Vo Thi Hong Lien, who is still at large. In April 2015, Hien asked Lien to find her Vietnamese women to sell them to Chinese men who were looking for wives. She offered to pay Lien VND30 million (US$1,300) for every woman she successfully trafficked to China. Her two accomplices in Vietnam managed to find Hien a 32-year-old woman in Ba Ria-Vung Tau. At the end of April, Hien returned to Vietnam to meet the woman. She offered to pay her VND5 million ($221) in advance, promising another VND30 million after she married a Chinese man. On May 7, they left Vietnam for China by road. But the woman later changed her mind after meeting the man and asked to be brought home. Hien demanded VND35 million from the victim to set her free. Since she could not pay the money, the victim pretended to agree to the marriage deal and was allowed to return to Vietnam to pick up her child, prosecutors said. Dead fish discharged at Phu Loc Market in Thua Thien-Hue Province because people don't buy fish due to mass fish deaths along the central coast. Photo credit: Phi Long/Lao Dong Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung has instructed relevant authorities to cooperate with international organizations to identify the cause of mass fish deaths along the central coast in the last two weeks. Many international organizations have the equipment, [we] can also learn from their experience, he said at a meeting in Ha Tinh Province Sunday. Huge numbers of fish have washed ashore in Ha Tinh and several neighboring provinces like Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue, apparently killed by industrial effluents. Suspicion has centered on Taiwanese firm Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Company (FHS), a major firm in the Vung Ang Economic Zone, after it admitted a large sewage pipe going out into the sea belongs to it though it has claimed the wastewater it discharges is fully treated. At the meeting, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Vu Van Tam said his ministry and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment are still trying to find out what is killing the fish. The substance killing fish could be biological, chemical or anything else. It can also be toxic substances like cyanide. Dung admitted that official agencies have been slow in taking action, but exonerated them partly by saying this is the first time such large numbers of fish have been found dead. Any individual, organization or enterprise found causing the incident will be severely penalized handled. No one will be let off. He also instructed local authorities to support fishermen in the affected areas since fish consumption has plummeted. Meanwhile, the Vietnam Environment Administration found that Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel cleaned its sewage pipes using toxic chemicals without informing authorities as required. Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying that a company spokesperson claimed all sewage cleaning substances had been treated before being discharged into the sea. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said that the company is permitted to discharge treated wastewater through the pipe. The drainage system is legal. The problem is what and how they [FHS] discharged, deputy environment minister Vo Tuan Nhan said. The Ha Tinh Department of Natural Resources and Environment has the task of monitoring the wastewater discharge. But Nhan admitted to not knowing if the agency had installed a remote system to obtain random wastewater samples from the sewage system. Cao Huu Nguyen, the police chief of Dong Nai Province's Nhon Trach District, apologizes to Nguyen Thi Anh Ngoc on April 24, 2016. Photo credit: Tuoi Tre Police and prosecutors in the southern province of Dong Nai on Sunday apologized to a local woman who had exposed illegal sand mining activities but ended up getting arrested for resisting officers. Dong Nai police said Nguyen Thi Anh Ngoc, 34, was released on Friday and that they had dropped the case against her. This all came after Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc ordered the police to review the case, following media reports that the whistleblower was unfairly arrested. In September last year, Ngoc, who owned a shrimp farm on Thi Vai River in Nhon Trach District, repeatedly reported to Phuoc An police about the rampant illegal sand mining from the river. Police allegedly did not take any action. On September 5, she called the police again informing that a company was extracting sand on the river. Three hours later, some officers came to the site. The officers promised to file a report but only after pulling ashore some of the sand-transporting boats. Ngoc reportedly asked them to make the report right away with her as a witness, fearing the case could be ignored again. The police said Ngoc was overacting and that it was not her responsibility. Ngoc reportedly screamed and yelled at the police. On February 26 and 27, four rangers of Long Thanh Forests Management Board in Nhon Trach District came to Ngocs shrimp farm. They damaged her hut, claiming it was built illegally. Ngoc filed a complaint to local police, accusing the rangers of attacking her after she exposed the illegal sand mining. On April 19, local police summoned her for questioning. Soon after she came, she was arrested and taken to Nhon Trach District's police station. Nhon Trach police said she would be detained for resisting officers on duty." Ngoc was detained for four days. Police in the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong on Tuesday arrested a man for allegedly abetting bribery in a corruption case that he himself had exposed. Tran Minh Loi, 48, known by many in his province as an active whistle-blower, will be detained for three months pending investigation. Colonel Truong Ngoc Lep, deputy police chief of Dak Nong, said Loi will be investigated for his role as "an accomplice" of some gamblers who bribed some police officers in exchange for their release. On January 15, police in Dak Mil District reportedly arrested six people for gambling. After the gamblers were taken to a police station, Lanh Thanh Binh, an officer of Dak Mil Police, allegedly suggested that the gamblers would be released if they agreed to give him and two other officers some money. One of the gamblers told his family about the solicitation. His family then informed Loi of the case. Loi reportedly advised them to have a meeting with Binh. They secretly recorded and filmed the meeting, where the officer received VND60 million (US$2,682). With the evidence, Loi filed complaints against three officers. The trio was arrested afterwards. But some members of the gamblers families were also arrested after that on charges of giving bribes. Thanh Nien cannot immediately confirm the exact timeline of the arrests. Local media outlets appeared surprised when Loi was arrested this week. The man was widely known in his neighborhood as an active whistle-blower. For the last few years, he has collected evidence of corruption by provincial government officials and police. Thanks to his work, dozens of police officers were disciplined and one was arrested for taking bribes. Loi had a Facebook page, where he uploaded video clips as evidence. He wrote on the page: Fighting corruption is not the responsibility of any single person. On the occasion of the launch of new terminal at Cat Bi International Airport, Vietjet will put three new domestic routes into operation to better connect Hai Phong with Phu Quoc, Da Lat and Buon Ma Thuot. The airline will also offer 15,000 promotional tickets with price only from US$0, which will be available for booking on April 26th , 27th and 28th from 12h to 14h daily. The travel period will be from May 12th , 2016 to October 29th , 2016 for Hai Phong Phu Quoc, from May 20th , 2016 to October 29th , 2016 for Hai Phong Da Lat and from June 2nd , 2016 to October 29th , 2016 for Hai Phong Buon Ma Thuot (excluding holidays). Tickets can be booked at www.vietjetair.com (also compatible with smartphones at https://m.vietjetair.com) or at www.facebook.com/vietjetvietnam (just click the Booking tab). Payment can be easily made with debit and credit cards of Visa, MasterCard, JCB, and American Express and ATM cards issued by 24 Vietnamese banks with Internet banking. The Hai Phong Phu Quoc route will be operated from May 12th , 2016 with four round flights per week on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Its flight time per leg is around 2 hours 5 minutes. The flight takes off in Hai Phong at 9h45 and arrives in Phu Quoc at 11h50. The return flight departs at 12h25 and lands at 14h30. The Hai Phong Da Lat route will be operated from May 20th , 2016 with three round flights per week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Its flight time per leg is around 1 hour 45 minutes. The flight takes off in Hai Phong at 10h25 and arrives in Da Lat at 12h10. The return flight departs at 12h45 and lands at 14h30. The Hai Phong Buon Me Thuot route will be operated from June 2nd , 2016 with four round flights per week on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Its flight time per leg is around 1 hour 40 minutes. The flight takes off in Hai Phong at 15h45 and arrives in Buon Me Thuot at 17h25. The return flight departs at 18h and lands at 19h40. With its non-stop developing fleet of modern aircraft, passengers will experience the full suite of Vietjets high-quality services, including SkyBoss as well as opportunities to win economical fares and special surprises from the airlines promotional campaigns. U.S. President Barack Obama gestures as he makes a speach during the opening ceremony of the Hannover Messe in Hanover, Germany April 24, 2016 U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to send an additional 250 special forces troops to Syria to provide support to local allies that have made gains against Islamic State militants, a White House adviser said on Monday. "We've seen across parts of northern and eastern Syria progress as ISIL has been pushed out of some strongholds," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters in Hanover. "We want to accelerate that progress and we believe the commitment of additional U.S. special forces can play a critical role," Rhodes said, making clear that the new forces were not meant to serve in a ground combat role. Indonesia's chief security affairs minister Luhut Pandjaitan speaks to of local government and security officials in Serang, Banten province west of Jakarta February 29, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Indonesia fears piracy on a shipping route along its sea border with the Philippines could reach Somalian levels and has told vessels to avoid danger areas, officials said on Thursday, after a spate of kidnappings. Analysts say the route carries $40 billion worth of cargo each year. It is taken by fully laden supertankers from the Indian Ocean that cannot use the crowded Malacca Strait. Concerns over maritime attacks by suspected Islamist militants are disrupting the coal trade, with at least two Indonesian coal ports suspending shipments to the Philippines. Up to 18 Indonesians and Malaysians have been kidnapped in three attacks on tugboats in Philippine waters by groups suspected of ties to the Abu Sayyaf militant network. Abu Sayyaf, which has posted videos on social media pledging allegiance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, has demanded 50 million pesos ($1.1 million) to free the Indonesian crew. "We don't want to see this become a new Somalia," Indonesian chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters, referring to the southern Philippine waters of the Sulu Sea, where the abductions took place. Piracy near Somalia's coast has subsided in the last few years, mainly due to shipping firms hiring private security details and the presence of international warships. The foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines will meet in Jakarta to discuss the possibility of joint patrols, Pandjaitan said. He said the armed forces chiefs of the three countries would hold talks in Jakarta on May 3. The Indonesian Navy has instructed all commercial vessels "to avoid piracy-prone waters around the southern Philippines", a spokesman for the Indonesian military said. The navy is increasing patrols around Indonesia's borders with Malaysia and the Philippines "to prevent acts of piracy and hijacking", Tatang Sulaiman told Reuters. The Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre has also warned ships sailing in the Celebes Sea and northeast of the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo to stay clear of suspicious small vessels. COAL TRADE HIT Two Indonesian coal ports have blocked departures of ships for the Philippines and more suspensions are expected, said Pandu Sjahrir, chairman of the Indonesian Coal Mining Association, and a director of Jakarta-listed coal producer Toba Bara Sejahtera. Toba had suspended all shipments to the Philippines, Sjahrir said. Other companies had canceled shipments "from both sides", he added. Indonesian state-owned coal miner Bukit Asam said it was diverting Philippine coal shipments to Hong Kong for the next three months. The company ships less than a million tonnes to the Philippines per year, Bukit Asam corporate secretary Joko Pramono told Reuters. One company with a fleet of 40 dry cargo ships saw a silver lining, however. "If Indonesia bans tugs and barges from exporting coal then it will have to travel in larger cargo ships, of 32,000 to 64,000 tonnes," said Khalid Hashim, managing director of Bangkok-listed Precious Shipping. "All this would of course be beneficial for shippers like us." Indonesia, the world's largest thermal coal exporter, supplies 70 percent of the Philippines' coal import needs, which Indonesian data shows stood at about 15 million tonnes, worth around $800 million, last year. Philippine coal importers, however, said they could import coal from other countries including Australia, South Africa and Russia and source more locally if Indonesian shipments dried up. Indonesian President Joko Widodo gestures during an interview with Reuters at the presidential palace in Jakarta, Indonesia February 10, 2016. Indonesia will set up a crisis center, headed by President Joko Widodo, to handle security situations involving its citizens overseas, a senior minister said on Monday, following recent abductions of Indonesian sailors in Philippine waters. The center will include senior ministers and military and police chiefs and will be designed to respond quickly to situations that could have a "strategic impact", chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters. "We hope this will be (operational) as soon as possible," he said. Since coming to power in 2014, Widodo has placed maritime security for the Indonesian archipelago high on his government's agenda. Indonesia has voiced fears that a surge in piracy in the waters between Indonesia and the Philippines could reach Somalian levels and has told vessels to avoid danger areas. Up to 18 Indonesians and Malaysians have been kidnapped in three attacks in recent weeks on tugboats in Philippine waters by groups suspected of ties to the Abu Sayyaf militant network. Abu Sayyaf, which has posted videos on social media pledging allegiance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, has demanded 50 million pesos ($1.1 million) to free the hostages, but the Indonesian government has said it does not intend to pay the ransom. An Iron Dome launcher fires an interceptor rocket in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod July 9, 2014. More than four-fifths of the U.S. Senate have signed a letter urging President Barack Obama to quickly reach an agreement on a new defense aid package for Israel worth more than the current $3 billion per year. Eight-three of the 100 senators signed the letter, led by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons. Senator Ted Cruz, a 2016 presidential candidate, was one of the 51 Republicans on board. The Senate's Democratic White House hopeful, Bernie Sanders, was not among the 32 Democrats. "In light of Israel's dramatically rising defense challenges, we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge," said the letter, which was seen by Reuters. It did not provide a figure for the suggested aid. Israel wants $4 billion to $4.5 billion in aid in a new agreement to replace the current memorandum of understanding, or MOU, which expires in 2018. U.S. officials have given lower target figures of about $3.7 billion. They hope for a new agreement before Obama leaves office in January. The funding is intended to boost Israel's military and allow it to maintain a technological advantage over its Arab neighbors. The letter said the Senate also intends to consider increased U.S. funding for cooperative missile defense programs, similar to increases in the past several years. Obama has asked for $150 million for such programs, but lawmakers are believed to be willing to send Israel hundreds of millions for programs like its Iron Dome air defense system and David's Sling medium- and long-range defense system. A reported air strike by governement forces hit the rebel-held neighbourhood of Sakhur in Aleppo on April 24, 2016 on a third day of renewed deadly violence in the battered city Regime and rebel bombardment killed 26 civilians on Sunday in Syria's second city Aleppo as US President Barack Obama urged the conflict's warring parties to "reinstate" a troubled ceasefire. Eight weeks into the declared truce between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebels, violence has escalated around Aleppo, with dozens killed by government air strikes and rebel rockets. The surge in fighting and stalled peace talks in Geneva have dimmed hopes that the ceasefire would lay the groundwork for finally resolving Syria's devastating five-year conflict. On Sunday, Obama said he had spoken to his Russian counterpart -- a key Assad ally -- to try to shore up the truce. "I spoke to President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities," he told reporters in Germany. An EU spokesperson, in a statement, also urged the US and Russia as brokers of the ceasefire "to bring the maximum influence to bear in order to end these breaches of the agreement". After at least 27 reported civilian deaths in regime bombardment across Syria on Saturday, a fresh barrage of air strikes hit Aleppo around midday Sunday. Twelve civilians died after a strike hit an open-air fruit and vegetable market, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. An AFP photographer saw a man in a bright-blue cap carrying a shell-shocked, bleeding and barefoot young boy. 'Attack on Geneva process' Emergency responders, known as White Helmets, told AFP they were "exhausted" by the past three days of bombing in Aleppo city. "We're back to working 24-hour shifts after we started working shorter hours because of the truce," one volunteer said. According to the Observatory, four more civilians died Sunday in strikes on other opposition neighbourhoods. In Aleppo's western government-held parts, 10 civilians including a woman and two children were killed early Sunday by rebel rocket fire, the Observatory said. A regime air strike on the Salhin district also damaged the main water main, cutting off the city's supplies, local authorities said. While officials have yet to declare the ceasefire dead, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the escalating violence in Aleppo and elsewhere meant it had effectively collapsed. Peace negotiations due to run in Geneva until Wednesday have faltered after Syria's main opposition group last week suspended its official participation in the talks. The High Negotiations Committee walked away in frustration at the devastating humanitarian situation on the ground. "The Assad regime's bombing offensive is not only a brutal attack on Syrians, but an attack on the Geneva process that is the only possible pathway to peace," HNC spokesman Salem al-Meslet said on Sunday in an emailed statement. The truce was part of the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 with widespread anti-Assad protests. It has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has killed 270,000 people and drawn in regional and world powers. Ground troops 'a mistake' In an interview with the BBC aired Sunday, Obama warned Western governments should not send troops to topple Assad's regime. "Syria has been a heartbreaking situation of enormous complexity, and I don't think there are any simple solutions," he said in London. "It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime." He urged all parties "to sit down at the table and try to broker a transition". Obama first urged Assad to step down in August 2011 but has resisted calls by critics to use American military force to end the Syrian regime's rule. Washington did, however, launch air strikes in mid-2014 against the Islamic State group after it seized large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq. IS has suffered several major defeats in Syria's north at the hands of the Kurdish People's Protection Forces (YPG) and allied groups. But in the northeastern city of Qamishli this week, Kurdish militia turned their weapons on Syrian government forces in rare fighting between the two sides. The clashes began Wednesday with a scuffle at a checkpoint and, according to Kurdish security forces, have killed 17 civilians, 10 Kurdish fighters and 31 regime troops and allied militiamen. Kurdish security forces said they had also arrested 102 members of pro-regime forces. After several days of mediation, regime officials and Kurdish representatives agreed Sunday to swap an unspecified number of prisoners and maintain a local truce. Kurds will keep the positions they seized during the clashes, including a prison, the source said. People inspect damage at a site hit by Saudi-led air strikes in the al Qaeda-held port of Mukalla city in southern Yemen April 24, 2016. Yemeni government forces and their allies killed more than 800 al Qaeda fighters when they advanced into the port city of Mukalla, the Saudi-led pro-government coalition said. Yemeni and Emirati soldiers seized the seaport on Sunday, depriving the group of the stronghold that has enabled it to amass a fortune during the country's civil war. "In its first hours, the operation resulted in killing more than 800 members of al Qaeda and a number of their leaders while the rest fled," the coalition said in a statement carried by Saudi state news agency SPA late on Sunday. Local Yemeni officials and residents said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city. They also said they had witnessed little fighting during the offensive. (L-R) Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi King Salman, and Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stand together after Saudi Arabia's cabinet agrees to implement a broad reform plan known as Vision 2030 in Riyadh, April 25, 2016. The powerful young prince overseeing Saudi Arabia's economy unveiled ambitious plans on Monday aimed at ending the kingdom's "addiction" to oil and transforming it into a global investment power. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Riyadh would raise the capital of its public investment fund to 7 trillion riyals ($2 trillion) from 600 billion riyals ($160 billion) and would sell up to five percent of shares in state oil giant Aramco. The plans announced by Prince Mohammed also included changes that would alter the social structure of the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom by pushing for women to have a bigger economic role and by offering an improved status to resident expatriates. "We have developed a case of oil addiction in Saudi Arabia," Prince Mohammed said in a televised interview with al-Arabiya news channel, owned by the Al Saud ruling family, adding that Riyadh needed to cut its dependence on revenue from crude. Even before oil prices started to plunge in 2014, economists and political analysts had long regarded Saudi Arabia's fiscal policy and economic structure as being unsustainable, but reduced income from energy sales has made reform more urgent. At the center of the "Vision 2030" reforms is the restructuring of its Public Investment Fund (PIF), which Prince Mohammed said would become a hub for Saudi investment abroad, partly by raising money through selling shares in Aramco. "We restructured the fund. We included new assets in the fund, Aramco and other assets, and we fixed the problems of the current assets that the public investment fund owns, both in terms of companies and other projects," he said. "Initial data say the fund will have control over more than 10 percent of global investment capacity." The part privatization of Aramco was also central to the plans, and Prince Mohammed said it would be transformed into an energy company that he valued at more than $2 trillion, and that up to 5 percent of it would be listed on the stock market. So big is the state oil company because of its rights to the kingdom's crude reserves, that selling even 1 percent of its value would create the biggest initial public offering (IPO) on earth, he said. He said other Aramco subsidiary companies would also be listed along with other publicly held companies, and added that one major benefit of privatization was that it would increase transparency and help limit corruption. Ambitious targets Since the prince was appointed to oversee Saudi long-term planning through the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, Riyadh's focus on reform has grown far more urgent and far more acute. The 31-year-old has enjoyed a dizzyingly rapid rise since his father became king 15 months ago, from being little known outside the ruling Al Saud family to become the driving force of Saudi plans to prepare for a future after oil. The government ran a deficit of 367 billion riyals ($98 billion) or 15 per cent of gross domestic product in 2015, officials said, and this year's budget plan aimed to cut that to 326 billion riyals ($87 billion). His economic team has already announced efforts to curb wasteful government spending, to diversify revenue streams by introducing sales tax and privatizing state assets, and to make reforms in the education sector. Such was the speculation among Saudis over the details of the plan that hashtags associated with it were the top two trending on Twitter on Monday in the country with the highest rate of social media use in the Middle East. But ambitious targets, such as raising the private sector share in the economy to 60 percent from 40 percent, reducing unemployment to 7.6 percent from 11 percent and growing non-oil income to 1 trillion riyals ($267 billion) from 163 billion riyals ($44 billion) were not explained further. Plans Some Saudis said they had hoped for more detail on crucial issues such as education reform. There were no further details of plans to increase revenue from tax or of any changes to the political structure of the absolute monarchy. "For me as a Saudi, I am concerned by the education transformation plan," said a Saudi entrepreneur. "If it is not at the top of the list, why not?" However, the plan also envisaged increasing women's participation in the workforce, something that has already been growing quickly over the past five years, to 30 percent from 22 percent. A green card system would also be launched within five years to enable expatriate Arabs and Muslims to live and work long-term in the country, Prince Mohammed said, in a major shift for the insular kingdom. But the focus was on economic restructuring to help reduce oil dependence. "I think by 2020, if oil stops we can survive," Prince Mohammed said. "We need it, we need it, but I think in 2020 we can live without oil." Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy May 21, 2015. A top U.S. official on Thursday said China's land reclamation and militarization in the disputed South China Sea was raising tensions and serious questions about its intention. On a visit to Vietnam, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington would continue to play a constructive role in supporting its regional allies but was not looking to set up bases for its troops. "United States and Vietnam are sharing interest in maintaining peace and stability in the region, so is China," Blinken said in a speech at a Hanoi university. "But its massive land reclamation projects in the South China Sea and the increasing militarization of these outposts fuels regional tension and raises serious questions about China's intention," Blinken said. Blinken also called on China, and all nations, to respect an upcoming decision by an international arbitration court in a case brought by the Philippines that could dent China's claim to nine-tenths of the South China Sea. Similar comments by Hugo Swire, British minister of state responsible for East Asia, angered China earlier this week. Beijing claims virtually all of the South China Sea and rejects the court's authority in the case, which numerous experts believe will go in favor of the Philippines, potentially raising tensions in the strategic waterway. "The United States will defend our national interests and support our allies and partners in the region," said Blinken. "We are not looking for bases but we will continue to sail, to fly, to operate anywhere that international law allows." More than $5 trillion of world trade is shipped through the South China Sea every year. Apart from China's territorial claims there, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have rival claims. He helps ensure that the legend of the Lone Pine so significant during Anzac Day commemorations lives on around the globe. As the general manager of the ACT government-run Yarralumla Nursery, Mr Ware oversees one of the longest-running and most historically significant propagation programs in Australia and possibly the world. Not only does he feel emotional as he reflects on the men who sacrificed their lives in the trenches of Gallipoli, but his workload increases. Lone pine seeds. Credit:Graham Tidy The Lone Pine itself is a 20 metre Aleppo pine that stands strong in the lush grounds of the Australian War Memorial. The tree is named after the scene of an August 1915 Australian battle during the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. The Turks had cut down all but one of the trees on the ridge to cover their trenches, and at least three Australian soldiers are known to have picked up one of the scattered pine cones to bring home. Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith, whose brother was killed in the battle for the Lone Pine Ridge, sent several cones home to his mother in Inverell, NSW. She kept the cone for 13 years, until 1928, when she grew two seedlings, one of which she presented to the town of Inverell, and the other to the Department of the Interior in Canberra. Commemoration of the Anzac memory may have peaked in 2015, and though the number of people who turned out on Monday was fewer, their presence was no less significant. Anzac Parade drew thousands for motivations both universal and personal. To honour, remember and thank the fallen and those who currently serve. Or good friends, killed. Joe Kroger says Anzac Day means a great deal to him, having both served in the navy and air crew and lost good friends to war in Vietnam. Credit:Jamila Toderas Brian Moorcroft joined the Air Force in 1985, and served all over the world, including Cambodia as a member of the United Nations peacekeeping force. NSW police say a Canberra man who went missing after leaving for a weekend fishing trip near the Snowy Mountains has been found "safe and well". Nathan McInnes, 34, was found near Cooma at about 8pm on Monday night after he was due to return from his trip to Lake Eucumbene in Adaminaby on Sunday. Nathan McInnes is believed to have gone missing near Cooma after not returning from his weekend fishing trip to Adaminaby, near the Snowy Mountains Mr McInnes left home on Friday and told his wife at about 1pm on Sunday that he was driving home. After failing to come home that night, a friend drove to Adaminaby to search the areas he usually visited but did not find him. Richmond's Alex Rance is facing a two-match ban for his crude hit on Melbourne forward Jack Watts. The AFL match review panel reviewed the first eight matches of the round on Monday and laid 28 charges, with Rance and Port Adelaide's Jackson Trengove the only players facing suspension. North Melbourne's Ben Cunnington attracted some criticism after he appeared to drop his knees into Gary Ablett's back during the Roos' win over Gold Coast - he can accept a $1000 fine for rough conduct with an early plea. Rance dropped his forearm into the back of Watts' head late in the Tigers' 33-point loss to the Demons at the MCG. The directors of Primary Health Care would have been robbed of a relaxed Anzac Day long weekend following its chief executive Peter Gregg being placed more squarely in the frame for alleged illegal behaviour during Senate committee hearings on Friday. It is hard to imagine that Primary Health Care's board is not investigating contingency plans for succession in the event Gregg is charged with offences for which is he is currently allegedly being investigated. Friday's statement by a former Leighton executive, Stephen Sasse, to the Senate supported earlier speculation that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission was going to charge Gregg with false accounting offences committed when he was the chief financial officer of Leighton. The move intensifies the pressure on Gregg and the board of Primary Health Care, who can only be waiting for the axe to fall. Airly, the start-up offering an all you can fly service between Sydney and Melbourne for $2550 a month, says it has signed up nearly enough potential members to launch. However, the start date has been delayed beyond this quarter because Airly has yet to complete a capital raising of a few million dollars or secure an aircraft operator for the flights. "We are probably aiming for the third quarter of the calendar year for the first flight," co-founder Luke Hampshire said. "We are about to cap off our launch number which is a great sign. Sales isn't an issue. It is just a long process getting the required funding." Airly is in talks with domestic and overseas investors about taking a minority stake in the company. Mr Hampshire said term sheets were being worked on, with hopes of finalising funding within the next month. It is both very human and very Australian to have a treasure before us and not know what to do with it, or not even know it's a treasure. That's the situation I have been in until lately, when idly having visited arid Lake Mungo a few times, I got involved in the question of who is this Mungo Man? It is more than 40 years since, on an afternoon following rainfall, a geologist named Jim Bowler saw a glinting forehead emerging from the crescent shaped sand dunes of the ancient sediments of Lake Mungo, northwest of Balranald, in NSW. It was the skull of Mungo Man, who lived 42,000 years ago on that shoreline. Illustration: Andrew Dyson Four years earlier, in 1969, and only 400 metres away, Bowler had found the part-cremated bones of a young woman, Mungo Lady. She would turn out to be the oldest part cremation/burial of homo sapiens ever found to that time, and she immediately blew out the estimate of how long humans had occupied Australia. It may be that the death of the young woman came before that of Mungo Man by up to 2000 years. But both had been buried with ritual, and the different rituals of their burials were utterly unexpected at that time the earliest evidence of human burial rites on earth. When Malcolm Turnbull seized the prime ministership several months ago, he encouraged expectations he would lift the quality of political and policy debate in Australia. He would, he indicated, move away from the sloganeering and negativity of the man he replaced, Tony Abbott, and lead a mature and sophisticated national discussion based on ideas and evidence. He risks becoming a disappointment as a head of government. Notwithstanding abundant evidence negative gearing of investment in property is fundamentally flawed policy, Mr Turnbull and his Treasurer, Scott Morrison, have in recent days ruled out any changes to a tax law that distorts the market, effectively using taxpayers' money to subsidise speculative investment in property, making it harder for first-home buyers mainly young families to own a home. Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison appear disingenuous. These are the very lawmakers who said all options would be considered as they put together a fair and flexible set of policies to help Australia move from being driven by mining investment to a broader and more modern economy. Only a few months ago, Mr Morrison himself acknowledged the government wanted to curb "excesses" in negative gearing including the number of properties that could be funded in this way and the amount of money that could be deducted. Negative gearing allows people to deduct from their taxable income any losses made on property investment, and operates in tandem with a capital gains tax deduction on property and so fuels demand for property, artificially inflating prices. It is inequitable and a poor use of taxpayers' funds which is why there are so few other such generous schemes anywhere else in the world. There will be no more child prostitutes, or mistresses. No, we haven't woken to some moralising new society these are the latest changes to the style guide of the United States news agency Associated Press. Media style guides help shape the language we perceive to be neutral and clear. Associated Press is considered an authority on dispassionate reporting guidelines. When prejudice or inaccuracy infects its style guide and threatens its credibility, it's time to act. That's what people did recently. The term "king hit" is being replaced by "coward punch". Credit:Joe Benke A campaign hosted by the website Change.org, the "no such thing" campaign, petitioned the AP style guide editor to abolish the term "child prostitute" and replace it with words that improved clarity: "survivors and victims of rape". What the campaign has shown is that banning words is far less effective than making the persuasive case for better words. We can preserve freedom of expression and avoid censorship by making society kinder through guidance on language, rather than a heavy-handed call to ban words altogether. Calling out inaccuracies and stigmatising prejudices, then suggesting alternatives, is more effective and easier for people to support. A few good men needed for Next Wave show Nat Randall's entry in this year's Next Wave festival is as ambitious as it is strange: 'cinematic performance experiment' The Second Woman will have Randall acting out a short scene inspired by the 1977 John Cassavetes film Opening Night, on repeat, for 24 hours straight. The Second Woman with Nat Randall. While Randall may seem to be caught in a time loop, however, she'll be playing and replaying the sequence opposite a changing cast of 100 men of all ages, backgrounds and presumably acting ability. In the lead-up to the event on May 20, Randall has put out a call for interested males who might be intrigued enough to sign up for the experience, which will last a total of around 20 minutes and takes place at ACMI in Fed Square. There's even a $50 honorarium for your time. The writer-producer of an upcoming film about Port Arthur massacre killer Martin Bryant has copped a lashing on The Project, with co-host Waleed Aly accusing him of stoking conspiracy theories. Paul Moder appeared on the program ahead of the 20th anniversary of the massacre on Thursday, amid a wave of criticism from Port Arthur survivors and the families of victims staunchly opposed to the film. The producer of 2003 horror thriller Razor Eaters had previously told Fairfax Media that the film will be an "in-depth character study of Martin Bryant from youth to the massacre". Moder plans to cast an "internationally renowned" actor as Bryant, who remains in prison for murdering 35 people and wounding 23 others. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to announce on Tuesday who will win the $50 billion bid to build Australia's next fleet of submarines, as the formal election campaign approaches. Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) and French firm DCNS are thought to be the frontrunners following reporting one-time frontrunner Japan had been eliminated from the contest. The prime minister will reveal who has won the lucrative tender for the next fleet of submarines on Tuesday. Credit:Department of Defence A cabinet source confirmed to Fairfax Media that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was due to make the announcement on Tuesday, in Adelaide. The decision will mark Mr Turnbull's most significant departure from the Abbott-era to date. Mr Abbott favoured giving the contract to the Japanese, which was also widely believed to be the choice of the United States, as a hedge against China. The important thing, he said, was not to get "defensive" while necessary changes are hammered out. Having weathered the introduction of the GST, Australians were ready for another round of tax reform, he told a University of Melbourne conference in 2005. Malcolm Turnbull had only been an MP for a matter of months when he turned his mind to a fairer, broader tax system. "There is an appetite in the community for a second round of substantial tax reform," he told the conference. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Treasurer Scott Morrison and local member David Coleman visited Kim and Julian Mignacca and daughter Addison on Sunday to talk about negative gearing. Credit:Michele Mossop "There is no need to be defensive. Reform should be debated and modelled. It may be that in the final analysis the conclusion is that the only reforms practically available are incremental ones; but we will never know unless we have an open and lively debate." In a paper he co-authored on the tax system in the same year, Turnbull described negative gearing as "very generous compared to many other countries" but also warned that "given the dependence of our economy on the building sector, the consequences of a change to negative gearing could be very severe". There were echoes, of course, in the words of the new Wentworth MP in 2005 and the new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who emerged victorious from the party room in September 2015. With requests for dates, frequent compliments, and the odd cheesy chat-up line, trying your hand at online dating can be a quick-fire way to boost your confidence. However, not all potential suitors are made equal, as one woman discovered during a recent dabble with Tinder. Takara Allen, a mixed-race makeup artist from Australia, was told by a Tinder match: "You'd look so much prettier if you were whiter!" Credit:Takara Allen/Instagram Takara Allen, a mixed-race makeup artist from Australia, had matched with a man on the app, and had been on a date with him. A tearaway group of WWI descendants banned from marching with their battalion banners in the official Anzac Day parade, held an alternative march and service on Monday. Told by march organisers that they would not be permitted to accompany their descendant's battalion banners down St Kilda Road, the rebel group opted to withdraw their banners and instead hold a small service at the "Cobbers" statue, on the corner of Domain and St Kilda Roads. WWI descendants held an alternative march and service at the Shrine. Credit:Bridie Smith Around 110 people marched from the Shrine to "Cobbers", a bronze memorial which depicts Lieutenant Simon Fraser of the 58th Battalion carrying a wounded soldier from no-mans land in the aftermath of the July 1916 Battle of Fromelles, in northern France. Victoria has amassed a $9 billion war chest to help pay for a big-spending infrastructure, health and education agenda ahead of the 2018 state election. Booming revenues from Melbourne's indefatigable property market, population growth, rising employment and a GST windfall have tipped billions of dollars of extra revenue into the Andrews government's coffers. Labor's second budget, to be delivered on Wednesday, will predict a $2.9 billion surplus next financial year. That represents a massive $1.4 billion upgrade from Treasury's last estimate for 2016-17, made less than six months ago. But the state's finances are expected to remain strong in the lead-up to the November 2018 election and beyond, with a $1.8 billion surplus expected for 2017-18, rising to $2.1 billion 2018-19 and $2.5 billion in 2019-20. Maureen Hepburn has a good reason for attending the Anzac Day parade in Perth every year - her 86-year-old husband is always marching. "It's wonderful to remember people who have served after all this time," she said. Colin Hepburn fought in the Korean War and kept his grandson and 10-year-old great-grandson by his side during the parade, while Ms Hepburn watched on as the rain poured down heavily at times. Sydney couple, Bill and Nicole, are visiting Perth with their children, four-year-old Madison and almost two-year-old Ethan. That would mark a big change. Since large quantities of oil were discovered in the then-nascent Saudi kingdom in 1938, the oil industry has come to dominate the country's economy. Revenue from the industry earned the Saudi government billions and enabled the ruling royal family to offer generous benefits to Saudi citizens. In recent years, the oil industry had accounted for an estimated 90 per cent of the government's income. The plan, known as Vision 2030, was announced Monday by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the fast-rising 31-year-old said to be at the helm of Saudi Arabia's plans to modernise its economy. In an interview with al-Arabiya news channel conducted in his palace in Riyadh, Prince Mohammed said that under the plan, the country will exist "without any dependence on oil" by 2020 and would soon be a "global player" on the world investment stage. Washington: Saudi Arabia is a country near-synonymous with the oil industry, but now the kingdom is moving to end what it calls its "addiction to oil" with a new plan. However, as oil prices plunged from $US100 ($129) a barrel in 2014 to less than half that amount in 2015, the kingdom's coffers have been hit badly. Last year, the country ran a deficit of $US98 billion, about 15 per cent of its gross domestic product. There are widespread fears that without reining in its profligate spending, Saudi Arabia risked financial disaster. A report from the International Monetary Fund released in October warned that the government could run out of money within five years. US President Barack Obama with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in Riyadh. Credit:AP Perhaps the most immediate action under the Vision 2030 plan, which was approved by the Saudi cabinet on Monday, will be the sale of shares of the state-owned oil giant Aramco. Although less than 5 per cent of the shares will be sold, the size of Aramco - Prince Mohammed says the company would be valued at up to $US2.5 trillion - means that it is already being described as the largest IPO in history. Some of the money earned from this sale would be used to help create a $US2 trillion sovereign wealth fund that would invest abroad. In his interview with al-Arabiya, Prince Mohammed also suggested that the IPO would serve to open up Aramco - and, by extension, the insular Saudi economy - to scrutiny. "People in the past used to be upset that Aramco's files and data are not announced, [or that they were] unclear and not transparent," he said, adding that if Aramco is listed on the market, it will have to publish data every quarter. A number of other changes to the Saudi economy also have been outlined in the Vision 2030 plan. The Saudi visa system would be restructured to offer a "green card" for Muslim and Arab foreign workers so they can live in the country for the long term. Efforts would be made to increase female participation in the work force. Saudi Arabia will attempt to build up its domestic arms industry in an apparent bid to prevent the defence sector from sending so much money overseas. Additionally, the country is planning to put more money into its tourism industry, with plans to build the world's largest Islamic museum. Dhaka: Suspected Islamist militants have hacked to death a leading gay rights activist and a friend in an apartment in the Bangladeshi capital, the latest in a series of attacks on liberal activists. Monday's killings took place two days after a university professor was slain in similar fashion in an attack claimed by the Islamic State. Five or six assailants went to the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Bangladesh's first and only magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people, Roopbann, and attacked him and a friend with sharp weapons, Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sordar said. London: The United States has opened a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing the military's 6-year-old Cyber Command for the first time to mount computer-network attacks that are now being used alongside more traditional weapons. The effort reflects President Barack Obama's desire to bring many of the secret US cyberweapons that had been aimed elsewhere, notably at Iran, into the fight against the Islamic State - which has proved effective in using modern communications and encryption to recruit and carry out operations. The National Security Agency, which specialises in electronic surveillance, has for years listened intensely to the militants of the Islamic State, and those reports are often part of the president's daily intelligence briefing. But the NSA's military counterpart, Cyber Command, was focused largely on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - where cyberattacks on the United States most frequently originate - and had run virtually no operations against what has become the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world. Along with other cases involving Australian residents, it also prompts questions over the bona fides of China's much-vaunted Fox Hunt and Sky Net operations, which was relaunched for the year last week. An Interpol notice for Melbourne grandmother Zhou Shiqin who was one of China's most wanted, until she returned home to clear her name. She will now be prosecuted. Credit:Interpol The case underlines the pervasive pressure tactics employed by Chinese authorities outside the bounds of bilateral law enforcement cooperation in its zealous pursuit of what it says are corrupt officials and international fugitives who have absconded overseas , including Australia. Beijing: A Melbourne grandmother wanted by Beijing for corruption has quietly returned to the Chinese mainland to cooperate with police despite protesting her innocence. Accused of embezzling millions of yuan from a state-owned railway authority more than a decade ago, the decision by Zhou Shiqin, 64, to place herself voluntarily at the mercy of China's opaque judicial system stems from the pressure she has been under since authorities published her Interpol red notice prominently on state media outlets a year ago, announcing her on a list of the Communist Party's top 100 wanted criminals worldwide. Chinese President Xi Jinping is displayed on a big screen as Chinese battle tanks parade below. Credit:AP "We did think at first it would be dangerous for her to return," Ms Zhou's lawyer Ma Hean told Fairfax Media on Monday. "But she can't let it go. The psychological pressure on her is extraordinary." While Australia is moving to ratify a long-dormant extradition treaty with China, it is understood there has been no pressure from Australian law enforcement agencies for Ms Zhou to cooperate with Chinese police. Despite repeated offers to provide a cache of documents which Ms Zhou says exonerates her of any wrongdoing, Chinese authorities have insisted she return in person before moving her case forward. Ms Zhou arrived by plane in the north-eastern city of Dalian on Thursday. Channel Nine will air another segment on Sally Faulkner and the Beirut child snatch operation but the content has yet to be determined, a spokeswoman has confirmed. The confirmation came after Fairfax Media queried the accuracy of claims reportedly posted by Ms Faulkner on social media that Nine would be doing a 90-minute special on the case on May 4. "Tonight on 60 Minutes a quick mention of the home coming from this week. Then on Wednesday 4th of May is a 90-minute special about what really happened," said the post reportedly published on the Brisbane mother's Facebook page on Sunday. EDMONTON, April 25, 2016 AutoCanada Inc. announced today that it has entered into a financing arrangement with PPH Holdings Inc. a corporation wholly owned and controlled by Mr. Patrick Priestner. AutoCanada will provide a participatory loan to PPH. These funds will be used by PPH to fund the purchase of 60% of Southview Acura. AutoCanada's anticipated return will be approximately equal to 60% of the net income of Southview Acura. The transaction was reviewed and approved by AutoCanada's independent members of the Board of Directors. "The Company is pleased to have the opportunity to provide financing to Mr. Priestner in respect to his purchase of such a strong brand in an Acura dealership. This is a financing opportunity which provides long-term shareholder value to AutoCanada," stated Mr. Steven Landry, CEO of AutoCanada. About AutoCanada AutoCanada is one of Canada's largest multi-location automobile dealership groups, currently operating 53 franchised dealerships, comprised of 60 franchises, in eight provinces and has over 3,700 employees. AutoCanada currently sells Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, FIAT, Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, Cadillac, Infiniti, Nissan, Hyundai, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Audi, Volkswagen, Kia, BMW and MINI branded vehicles. In 2015, our dealerships sold approximately 62,800 vehicles and processed approximately 848,000 service and collision repair orders in our 912 service bays during that time. How Will Autonomous Vehicles Impact Car Rental? ST. LOUIS - April 25, 2016: In the not-too-distant future, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car customers may be renting vehicles that drive themselves. That will be one of the key points offered by Enterprise Holdings' Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Greg Stubblefield at this week's panel discussion on "The Future of Land Use in a Region of Driverless Cars." Enterprise Holdings is the world's largest car rental company, as measured by revenue, fleet and employees. The April 28th panel discussion hosted by the Urban Land Institute of St. Louis will address both the benefits and concerns associated with automated vehicle technologies. Other participants include: Ezra Kramer , AICP, Parking Consultant, Walker Parking Consultants; , AICP, Parking Consultant, Walker Parking Consultants; John Nations , President and CEO, Bi-State Development Agency of the Missouri-Illinois District (Metro Transit); and, , President and CEO, Bi-State Development Agency of the Missouri-Illinois District (Metro Transit); and, Susan Zielinski , Managing Director, SMART (Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research and Transportation) at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, one of the leading centers of autonomous vehicle research in the country. "The U.S. car rental industry may very well be one of the early adopters of autonomous vehicles," says Stubblefield, who also participated in the 2015 Global Business Travel Association's (GBTA) "Differentiating Brands in a Sharing Economy" panel discussion. He also was a keynote speaker at the 2015 Phocuswright travel innovation summit in Hollywood, Florida. Chris Brown, editor of Auto Rental News magazine, agrees. "Autonomous vehicles will still need to be managed fleeted, de-fleeted, maintained and moved and car rental companies are poised to do that, as they already run the largest fleets in U.S. and even the world," he says. Every year, Auto Rental News magazine charts the U.S. car rental market, ranking companies by revenue, fleet size and number of locations. "The footprint of the industry stretches from coast to coast, and includes both airport and what we call the home-city market," Brown explains. "The fact is, the autonomous vehicle model most likely will be well suited for a pay-as-you-go system, especially on the local level. And this plays into car rental's strengths of customer interface and management for the long term." Enterprise has been delivering transportation alternatives right where people live and work since 1957. Forty years later, Enterprise trademarked the term Virtual Car, after recognizing the strength and energy of local service, whether it is for an hour, a day, a week or longer. Today, the Enterprise Holdings network with more than 6,200 fully staffed neighborhood and airport branch offices is located within 15 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population. "Consider that we average almost a million car rentals per week in the U.S.," Stubblefield states. "We know many drivers first experience new automotive technologies in rental vehicles and there's no reason to think it will be any different with autonomous technology. So, while potential liability issues obviously still need to be evaluated, our industry can quickly and efficiently introduce new autonomous vehicles to millions of consumers in cities and towns of all sizes." "What's Ahead for Urban Mobility?" The size, flexibility and accessibility of Enterprise Holdings' U.S. fleet and network make the company an integral part of the nation's transportation value chain. As a result, Enterprise Holdings is in a particularly knowledgeable position to contribute to public-policy discussions about local transportation infrastructure. For example, in 2013 the Wharton Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) published a special report titled "Next Stop, Innovation: What's Ahead for Urban Mobility?" Enterprise Holdings also participated in a 2014 SXSW Eco panel discussion on the role that public and private transportation providers play in meeting demands for sustainable mobility in urban markets. More recently, in 2015, Enterprise Holdings presented at universities and industry conferences about sustainable business practices and urban mobility. Through participation in the Sustainability Speaker Series at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Enterprise Holdings shared how it is implementing corporate sustainability into the Enterprise Rent-A-Car brand and throughout its fleet. And in a panel during the Disrupting Mobility Summit at the MIT Media Lab, Enterprise Holdings created awareness about the importance of creating access to transportation options in local communities. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. The world took a collective sigh of relief in the last days of 2015, when countries came together to adopt the historic Paris agreement on climate change. The international treaty was a much-needed victory for multilateralism, and surprised many with its more-ambitious-than-expected agreement to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C. The next step in bringing the agreement into effect happens in New York on Friday 22 April, with leaders and dignitaries from more than 150 countries attending a high-level ceremony at the United Nations to officially sign it. The New York event will be an important barometer of political momentum leading into the implementation phase one that requires domestic climate policies to be drawn up, as well as further international negotiations. It comes a week after scientists took a significant step to assist with the process. On April 13 in Nairobi, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed to prepare a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This will provide scientific guidance on the level of ambition and action needed to implement the Paris agreement. Why the ceremony? The signing ceremony in New York sets in motion the formal, legal processes required for the Paris Agreement to enter into force, so that it can become legally binding under international law. Although the agreement was adopted on December 12 2015 in Paris, it has not yet entered into force. This will happen automatically 30 days after it has both been ratified by at least 55 countries, and by countries representing at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Both conditions of this threshold have to be met before the agreement is legally binding. So, contrary to some concerns after Paris, the world does not have to wait until 2020 for the agreement to enter into force. It could happen as early as this year. Signing vs ratification When a country signs the agreement, it is obliged to refrain from acts that would defeat its object and purpose. The next step, ratification, signifies intent to be legally bound by the terms of the treaty. The decision on timing for ratification by each country will largely be determined by domestic political circumstances and legislative requirements for international agreements. Those countries that have already completed their domestic processes for international agreements can choose to sign and ratify on the same day in New York. Who is going to sign and ratify in New York? It is perhaps no surprise that the countries which are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and who championed the need for high ambition in Paris will be first out of the gate to ratify in New York. Thirteen Small Island Developing States (SIDS) from the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific have signalled their intent to sign and ratify in New York: Barbados, Belize, Fiji, Grenada, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Seychelles and Tuvalu. While these countries make up about a quarter of the 55 countries needed, they only account for 0.02% of the emissions that count towards the required 55% global emissions total. Bringing the big emitters on board China and the United States have recently jointly announced their intentions to sign in New York and to take the necessary domestic steps to formally join the agreement by ratifying it later this year. Given that they make up nearly 40% of the agreed set of global emissions for entry into force, that will go a significant way to meeting the 55% threshold. We can expect more announcements of intended ratification schedules on 22 April. Canada (1.95%) has signalled its intent to ratify this year and there are early signs for many others. Unfortunately the European Union, long a leader on climate change, seems unlikely to be amongst the first movers due to internal political difficulties, including the intransigence of the Polish government. The double threshold means that even if all of the SIDS and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) ratified, accounting for more than 75 countries but only around 4% of global emissions, the agreement would not enter into force until countries with a further 51% of global emissions also ratified. Consequently, many more of the large emitters will need to ratify to ensure that the Paris agreement enters into force. This was a key design feature it means a small number of major emitters cannot force a binding agreement on the rest of the world, and a large number of smaller countries cannot force a binding agreement on the major emitters. The 55% threshold was set in order to ensure that it would be hard for a blocking coalition to form a group of countries whose failure to ratify could ensure that an emissions threshold could not be met in practice. A number much above 60% of global emissions could indeed have led to such a situation. The countries that appear likely to ratify this year, including China, the USA, Canada, many SIDS and LDCs, members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum along with several Latin American and African countries around 90 in all still fall about 5-6% short of the 55% emissions threshold. It will take one more large emitter, such as the Russian Federation (7.53%), or two such as India (4.10%) and Japan (3.79%) to get the agreement over the line. The intent of these countries is not yet known. Why is early action important? The Paris agreement may be ambitious, but it will only be as good as its implementation. That will depend on the political momentum gained in Paris being maintained. Early entry into force for the treaty would be a powerful signal in this direction. We know from the Climate Action Tracker analyses that the present commitments are far from adequate. If all countries fully implement the national emission reduction targets brought to the climate negotiations last year, we are still on track for temperature increases of around 2.7C. Worse, we also know that current policies adopted by countries are insufficient to meet these targets and are heading to around 3.6C of global warming. With average global annual temperature increase tipping over 1C above pre-industrial levels for the first time last year, it is clear that action to reduce emissions has never been more urgent. We are already seeing more evidence this year: increases in the monthly global averages of February and March 2016 far exceeded 1C, record coral reef bleaching, heatwaves, and unprecedented early melting of the Greenland ice sheet this northern spring. Early entry into force will unlock the legally binding rights and obligations for parties to the agreement. These go beyond just obligations aimed at delivering emissions reductions through countries Nationally Determined Contributions to the critical issues of, for example, adaptation, climate finance, loss and damage, and transparency in reporting on and reviewing action and support. The events in New York this week symbolise the collective realisation that rapid, transformative action is required to decarbonise the global economy by 2050. Climate science tells us that action must increase significantly within the next decade if we are to rein in the devastating impacts of climate change, which the most vulnerable countries are already acutely experiencing. >> BACK TO THE NEWSLETTER: Click here to read other articles from this weeks newsletter Originally published on The Conversation JCB donates machine to help with Ecuador relief effort STAFFORDSHIRE-based excavator manufacturer has donated one of its famous machines to help with rescue and clear-up operations in Ecuador following the massive earthquake in the country. JCB is supplying the versatile 3CX backhoe loader to the provincial council of Manabi through its Ecuadorian dealer Automekano. The machine will be put to work shortly in the provinces Pedernales Canton, where more than 90% of homes have been destroyed by the earthquake. Santiago Vasconez, managing director of Automekano, said: Padernales was very close to the epicentre. Many people are feared to have lost their lives and many thousands have been left homeless by the destruction. There is a desperate need for equipment to help relief efforts. JCB Chairman Lord Bamford said: This was a very powerful earthquake with catastrophic consequences. I hope our donation can play a small part in the clear up and rebuilding work that needs to be done in Manabi to help those people whose lives have been turned upside down. The 7.8 magnitude quake is thought to have claimed the lives of at least 570 people and injured more than 7,000. It has been reported that 25,000 people remain in shelters as a consequence of the disaster. JCB has a history of helping countries affected by major natural disasters and has in recent years made equipment available to support relief and rebuilding efforts after earthquakes in Nepal, Indonesia, Chile, Pakistan and Haiti, and in the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A 23-year-old Winnipeg man was transported by STARS air ambulance to Winnipegs Health Sciences Centre after a single vehicle rollover on the Trans-Canada Highway early Monday morning. Emergency crews responded to the report of the crash which occurred at Road 39E, just east of the turnoff to Paradise Village. Police said in a release that it appears the driver of the vehicle fell asleep, which resulted in the truck being driven into the median ditch and rolling several times. Police said the injured man, a passenger in the vehicle, is reported to be in stable condition with critical injuries. The driver of the vehicle and a female passenger, both from the Kenora area, sustained minor injuries and went to Ste Anne Hospital for observation. Alcohol was not a factor in the collision, police said. Grace stood barefoot with one hand on the garage door and the other forlornly sinking through air. The car clock read 2:03 a.m. Id worked late on five mergers that month, and she correctly didnt believe my department had six going. When I shut the Bentleys driver door, her pleading stopped at once as if shed been unplugged. I eased out of the driveway, shifted into drive and rode off with one guilty eye on my rearview mirror until she disappeared. I could only imagine where she thought I was going: a Midtown hotel with insufficiently starched sheets and a hired girl who wore an excessive amount of lipstick; an Atlantic City casino where I could rub elbows with grandmothers playing penny slots under rotting-pumpkin-colored light. Instead of strolling seamlessly from car to underground elevator to my secured office, I planned to drag myself past the sort of people whod eye my black diamond cufflinks and alligator wingtips with hostile knowledge until I disappeared inside the Hermes corporate office to design Graces Christmas gift. When I wondered aloud at the time the CFO asked me to come by, he reiterated the one-time-only nature of his offer. The Bentleys wheel felt like a snakeskin coat under my hands; exotic and rarely worn. Since it was Jeffreys night off, the Bentley and I drove alone past vibrant estates, cookie cutter cul-de-sacs and working class towns full of houses covered in worn pastel paint. I descended into the Lincoln Tunnel and crossed Eleventh Avenue. The sidewalk was a quarter full with people who paid a hair more rent than the average New Yorker to pretend they were me. Streetlights cheapened their off-brand polos and coats. I turned my heat up a notch and celebrated the distance between them and my classical music soundtracked moving fortress. A traffic lights perfect timing let me look up at my law office while stopped. The forty-fifth floor lights that meant my team of associates had wisely decided to work through the night warmed my soul. I made two lefts and entered the underground parking garage I used on the rare occasions when I drove myself into the city for work. Severin, the garage attendant said. Id never bothered to learn his name, so I simply nodded in response. Going into work? No. Im going to buy a gift for my wife. Didnt know you were one of them Black Friday people. He accepted my car keys with a jaunty swing of his left hand. Im not. Well, you are picking something up for your wife right this minute. I have to go. Instead of becoming angry at the garage attendants words I perfected my walk. I straightened my feet and back and shaved at least ten years off my stride. A good blink or two later I found the exit staircase and descended it with the grace of a falcon. Just because hed rather wait in line to descend upon a discount store instead of working his assigned shift didnt mean he had to project his need for sloth on others. Fifth Avenue fell upon me, its holiday windows filled with obscene amounts of tinsel, wreaths, mistletoe, reindeer and mannequins in red outfits. Halal meat vendors fluorescent cooking lights added bluish tones to tourists faces. Other tourists held street pretzels at angles that highlighted their resemblance to emaciated arms. But the people waiting in line at big-box stores provided the real terror. Their parkas inflated them into multicolored imitations of the turkey our chef removed from the oven just after six p.m. Thanksgiving evening. Their proximity sent periodic tremors through my hands. If Grace knew I was walking past these people, shed repeat all the stories the women in her dressage group told about poor people who ate the rich, with their drooling and their haphazard biting and their lazy habit of leaving unchewed hunks of us on the sidewalk. The day after Grace and her dressage friends went to Midtown to view Saks Thanksgiving themed windows, the police found a jawless man in tuxedo and tails with his feet atop a pound of broken glass on Saks sidewalk and his head between two rows of stuffed, sequined turkeys and cornucopia-colored mens suits. The note tacked to his chest said If you cant join them, eat them. In addition to jawless men, Graces dressage friends also feared Bat Boy, a rumored half-boy, half-bat creature that supposedly flew into peoples homes at night in search of bran flakes. Yet I touched my jaw reassuringly as I passed the people waiting in line for Black Friday sales. Three doors down from Hermes roughly five hundred people stood in line outside a store called H&M. A hundred people stood next to them on the sidewalk, unaware that New York City custom doesnt allow two lines outside a building. It was a shame that the city allowed even one line. Many people should be kept from view. The left hand of the last person in the H&M line finished a series of frantic gestures and swung out from the sidewalk at me. I leapt into the gutter to pass the hand before the traffic arrived. Though I avoided the cars, the hand touched my jacket and whipped up a round of static that tasted like pain. Watch out, I barked at the hands owner, one of nine or ten men dwarfed by an undulating horde of women. You fuckin watch out, he said. How dare you touch me, I said. Fuck off, asshole, he said. I stepped back into the gutter and glared at the man and the twenty people in front of him that suddenly needed to glare at me too. A green light thrust a new round of cars at me. I leapt from gutter to sidewalk and continued my walk north. I clasped my hands together to still them. For a second I only heard the low swoosh of traffic and the footsteps of people who did not encumber my personal space. I approached Hermes confident that Id only need fifteen minutes to survive the inevitable office tour, design Graces handbag and leave. The interlopers waiting outside the retail store entrance wore better clothes and shoes than the H&M crowd, but there were still fourteen of them where there should have been none. Private appointments are private. They are not scheduled alongside group tours. I walked past the tourists to the unmarked side door and gave its knob a turn. The brass sprang back against my hand instead of giving underneath my grip. I knocked politely. The security guards left hand pressed the door open a crack. I lifted my hand to catch the door on its outward arc but when I pulled it to me, it stopped. The security guard cleared his throat. Only then did I see his gloved right hand clasping the door seam to keep it away from me. Im sorry sir, he said. The offices are closed. You are welcome to join the people waiting out front. But theyre waiting for the retail store to open. I have an appointment with the CFO. Everyone in line has an appointment, sir. I looked down the line. Fourteen faces met mine. I took in their thousand dollar haircuts, understated cufflinks, fresh manicures and pinched, reddened faces, unaccustomed to wind. But what the guard asked me to believe remained unbelievable, and so I did not believe it. These people cant possibly all know He isnt here yet. He wouldnt have told fifteen people to wait outside. He had a last minute obligation. And more of you decided to come by than he anticipated. These people I stopped, swallowed, sighed. The guard waited. They wouldnt we wouldnt I dont wait in line. Im sure he will be here soon. Why would he have me wait in line? The guard shrugged. I looked at him in a manner meant to will more of an answer than that out of him, but he just tipped the edges of his face up into something less than a smile. I havent waited in line since I turned twenty-eight. Its Black Friday sir. Plenty of people have to wait in line for things today. I have a private appointment. So do I, said several voices behind me. Im sorry sir, the guard said. I put a little pressure on the door and a hair more on his hand. He gave an inch. I only needed five or six more to get past him. The guard pushed the door back against me. Before I knew it we were scuffling with my left fist aimed into the door and my right into his shoulder. I pushed him until he leaned back and forth and made my push a hit. My fist went into and then through his shoulder and halfway to the floor before I picked myself up, brushed the offending fist off on my pants and apologized for the person who punched the security guard. Whoever that person was. Certainly not me. I smiled. The security guards face became a hunk of decaying meat: red and gray and indifferent. He will be here soon, he said. I stepped back from the door to stand a bit in front of the first woman in line, because I did not qualify for the line. But she tapped me on the shoulder twice and the security guard ordered me behind everyone else and I decided to avoid spending my morning in battle. The people in line gaped at me with bovine eyes and I imitated them and laughed. I walked past the first six people in line on my way to my car. It would be good to return to the heated barrier of the Bentley, far from these people and their lines. I passed the eighth person waiting. If I arrived at my car in ten minutes it would mean I had no gift. I could buy Grace something else, but nothing came to mind. I could come up with a gift idea and send Jeffrey out to purchase it. But if I waited until the last minute and the last minute coincided with one of Jeffreys days off, Id have to march through the cold again in search of an equally original item. The only acceptable Christmas gift for the woman who has everything is an item her friends cant find. I passed the eleventh person in line. The cold didnt feel as cold as it did when I turned away from the guard. I could survive the ten minutes it would take for the CFO to appear and clear up this misunderstanding. I chose a spot slightly behind the last person in line, a woman shivering in a trenchcoat lined in Burberry plaid. The fifteen of us displayed order and decorum, even as we took turns challenging the guards errant decision to strand us outside. The animals at H&M huddled in packs with their desperate breath fouling up the sidewalk, yapping and shouting. Order and decorum briefly sustained me. I finished reading my new email and surfing the Internet in eight minutes and thought of the last time someone forced me to wait in line. On my twenty-eighth birthday my broker double-booked his first appointment slot. I took an unreasonably crowded train into the city only to find his office closed and a woman standing outside. The two of us waited fifteen minutes before he deigned to blacken his door. I waited another thirty for him to eject the woman. I then entered his office, ordered him to sell off ten percent of my shares in the company stock my dad gave me for my twenty-seventh birthday, waited until he executed the transaction and fired him. His mouth formed a jagged o the second I uttered the proper words. I happily pictured an onion cut so haphazardly that a line chef flung it into a garbage can with relish. The womans Burberry trenchcoated shoulders shook. I looked up into the sort of thin-flaked snow that floats back up before falling down. The H&M line grew longer and louder, from a conversation to a steady din I could hear over the traffic. A layer of snow formed on top of my coat. I kept myself warm by thinking about the security guards inevitable termination. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and mentally willed the back of the H&M line to snake around in a circle instead of creeping towards me. It did not obey. When I could smell the hot dog grease on the last H&M person in line I returned to the corporate office door and signaled for the security guard. Twenty minutes hadnt changed his attitude one whit. He uttered the same damn Im sorry. I mentioned the CEOs name, stood back, and waited for those syllables to work. The guard signaled for me to wait and disappeared upstairs. I brushed snow off my shoulders and out of my collar and smiled three times at the woman at the head of the line. Oddly my smile did not entice her to smile back. I looked into the street hoping to clear my head by watching traffic, but staring at reams of people who were actually making progress towards their destinations sent my shoulders inching up toward my neck. In four weeks Id be rewarded for my efforts with this years watch wrapped in the same shiny red paper as usual, with my name engraved under the face in the font Grace liked. Maybe instead of a silver face, shed spring for gold. Back when I thought designing her handbag would only require a brief trip into the city I congratulated myself on selecting the sort of original, superior, easily attainable gift that would inspire her to be more creative with her future selections. Instead the traffic roared in my ear and the corporate office door remained closed and I thought furtively of gift certificates. The noise outside H&M went from din to rabid crowd at sporting event level. Three people marched by carrying protest signs. An inflatable rat appeared in the foot of space between H&M crowd and curb. Individual shouts cleared the wall of noise. The woman at the front of the Hermes line stared, then glared, then aimed pity at me. I wiped the fear off my face and applied a mask of contentedness instead. When I was in law school and we werent allowed to sell enough of my familys company stock to afford Christmas trip plane fare, Grace cooked elaborate meals from whatever was on sale at the grocery store. Wed put on red clothing and gorge ourselves on food and wine and pretend the brick wall our apartment faced was Central Park, which wed only seen in Woody Allen movies. One frigid year she found the last thirteen dollar duck tucked behind a row of bloody chickens. We spent half of its five hour roasting time tucked under the industrial weight quilt on our bed having sex through the openings in our long underwear. The timer went off and we sprang up, spent and flushed, to eat perfectly crispy duck with homemade spring rolls, hoisin sauce, and two entire bottles of four dollar Cabernet Sauvignon. After I joined the firm neither of us ever looked at sale groceries again. I made partner. We hired a chef. Two days after I unwrapped the second Christmas watch I pretended I had to work late on a merger and took the train to Chinatown, where I stuffed myself full of someone elses crispy duck, closed my eyes mid-meal and failed to pull that quilt over my head. The H&M crowd developed a collective sway like a heartbeat, out towards the curb and the rat and back in towards the stores front windows. I squinted hard enough to make out the word union on the posters and rolled my eyes at the workers who thought raising their pay by a quarter an hour or whatever anyone might win for retail employees would magically make them a more empowered people. It would be good to get inside, away from the snow and the crowd and the traffic and the general sense of desperation poisoning the street. I would decline the cup of water usually proffered at meetings like this in favor of a hot drink. In the second the door swung open I swallowed the first mouthful of the coffee I knew Id find upstairs and its warmth traveled through every inch of my body. Im sorry sir, the guard said. Hes not in yet either. The H&M crowd went deafeningly loud. The Hermes line emitted stronger glares. The traffic sped up and cast a wave of slush over the sidewalk and on my coat. I was cold and wet like a dogs nose. When is he coming in? Just a second, sir. I will find that out for you. I could not do it. I could not go back and wait in line. Someone from the H&M line would touch me with hands that smelled like Indian food or fried fish or fat people sweat. I would fucking have a breakdown on the sidewalk. If Id chosen to cheat on Grace rather than buy her a handbag, Id be in a warm, private hotel room that would have taken me mere seconds to book with a girl who wouldnt make me wait. He will be in shortly. The guards face was impassive. A guard could not defeat me. I knew what was required in situations like this: an equal measure of impassivity. Im going to wait for him in his office, I said. I wedged my other forearm in the door. The guard met my forearm with his. Our scuffle took us from the door frame to the floor. I tasted salt, metal. Hands grabbed my back and hauled me upright, where I looked into the eyes of the man Id come to meet. Severin? he said. I nodded. Are you beating up my security guard? Luckily no one is expected to answer rhetorical questions. I beefed up my smile a bit. I cleared my throat. I would lay out the mornings events and he would fire the security guard and Id come in and wed get to work. I opened my mouth and took a step inside. He held up his right hand with its fingers splayed and its palm facing straight out in a stop formation as if something were wrong. Im afraid Ill have to ask you to leave, he said. In my head it was Christmas morning. Grace unwrapped her custom Birkin bag. She handed it to me and I took a ten-second long deep breath into its rich leather. Look, I said. We can talk about this upstairs over coffee. I think you misheard me. I need you to leave. Graces bag took on fire-orange trim and dissolved into fire itself, orange and red licks that made me stronger, angrier, ready to survive this. You asked me to come by and And now youre no longer welcome. My wifes going to love the bag That you buy her off the Internet. He said my name again. My feet slipped. Snow filled my collar and melted down my neck. I tried to grip the door for support, but he pushed me out. My feet flew away from me. I caught myself on the sidewalk with my hands and stood back up. The fire took over my throat. I could not speak. Dont make me call the police, he said. When I turned into the snow it hit me with one giant wet lash to the face. I gave myself the power to turn it on him, to shower his overcoat with that mix of snow and filth New York City injects into snow immediately upon its fall to turn it gray. But the snow did not listen and I heard his uncowed voice behind me. Im so sorry about this, he said to the guard. I smiled at everyone in line. They did not smile back. In my head they were trapped under several feet of the snow pouring down on us, their hands working frantically to carve out breathing holes, their feet kicking madly at nothing. My normal, sensible self would have taken the long way around the block to avoid approaching the kind of gathering that could devolve into a riot at any second. The new me dared the H&M freaks to cross a six-foot two inch well-groomed ball of rage. I elbowed my way between the crowd and the protest en route to my car. Fucking unions, I said to myself. What did you say? I turned around to face the abnormally ruddy, bowling-ball shaped man standing closest to the rat. I said fuck unions. At first I thought the wet glob that landed in the center of my face was a particularly heavy clump of snow. But when the man smirked I wiped the spit from my nose. The titters behind me morphed into full-blown laughter. Inside I shook, horrified that my face held a mouthful of the sort of working-class germs meant to confuse my immune system, germs that knew rats and dirt and factory smoke and all the other pollutants and carcinogens prevalent in the sorts of neighborhoods that produced people like him. But shaking is not the proper response to a slight of that sort. I joined my fist with his nose. He went flying into the street with bad timing. The traffic light had just sent two lanes of cars downtown. Those cars had just begun to accelerate. He landed on top of one cars hood and slammed into a space in the middle of the street which forced three other cars to hit each other to avoid him. A circle of people formed around the crash site, prepared to do nothing more helpful than gawk. I savored the melee until someones errantly positioned toe dropped me face down onto the sidewalk and another persons foot dug into my side. Someone screamed. Someone else shouted. A third person leaned into my ear and said Fuck unions, huh? In a few minutes Id collect myself and kick the people who kicked me. In another half hour the police would appear and haul me away instead of correctly detaining my assailants. In a day Grace would post my bail and drag me out to the Bentley with her right fist simultaneously clutching my jacket and shoving my back forward. When I looked into the angry slash in her eyes I hated the Christmas watch she hadnt given me yet. Before all that I lay on the sidewalk licking my blood away. For a second the pain outweighed the cold and I sat inside the Hermes corporate offices looking over sketches for Graces handbag. Then I remembered that Id failed to make it inside and returned to the Hermes line to shiver and sulk. I opened my eyes, surprised to see that the back of the womans Burberry trench coat had become a cheap parka obstructed view full of my assailants yellowish teeth and the letters H and M. Several of them leaned in, presumably to bite me. My mind flashed that disembodied jaw at me in a jaws version of full color; a dirty white that bone and snow agree on. By C. Eugene Emery Jr. and Linda Qiu Billionaire conservative activist Charles Koch isnt thrilled about the Republican presidential candidates, using words like monstrous and frightening to describe policy ideas from frontrunners Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday. Youre role models, and youre terrible role models, Koch of the candidates on ABCs This Week. SoI dont know how we could support em. Its possible, Koch said, that he could support Hillary Clinton over one of the Republicans. We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way, he said. But on some of the Republican candidatesbefore we could support them, wed have to believe their actions will be quite different than the rhetoric weve heard so far. Clintons lead in the Democratic primary and the awkward ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia dominated NBCs Meet the Press. Former U.S. senator Bob Graham (D-FL) said the White House will decide by June whether to release sealed pages of a congressional report that explore links between Saudi Arabia and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Graham, who co-chaired the 9/11 congressional inquiry, has long advocated that the pages be made public, and he made the case again to host Chuck Todd. For years Saudi Arabia, an American ally in the Middle East, has vigorously denied any connection to the hijackers. To me, the most important unanswered question of 9/11 is did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported? Graham said. I think its implausible to think that people who couldnt speak English, had never been in the United States before, as a group were not well-educated could have done that. So who was the most likely entity to have provided them that support? And I think all the evidence points to Saudi Arabia. We know that Saudi Arabia started al Qaeda. It was a creation of Saudi Arabia. Grahams phrasing could leave people believing the Saudi government itself created the terrorist organization. The truth is fuzzier, so his statement rates Half True. Al Qaeda was started in an effort, largely backed by Saudi Arabia, to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The government did not, strictly speaking, create the organization. It was the product of jihadists wanting to continue the fight after the Soviets left, using the funds of Saudi backers to do it. It prospered because of donations from Saudi interests, including groups tied to the government. The Saudis deserve significant responsibility for its existence. When we heard back from Graham, he directed us to a 2003 Wall Street Journal article that reported how some wealthy Saudi families were among the first financial supporters of Osama bin Laden. However, as the article notes, that support came as bin Laden was transitioning away from fighting the Soviets. The families involved have denied funding the al Qaeda-involved terrorist attacks. Osama bin Ladens personal wealth mattered tremendously when the group was formed in 1988, Daniel Byman, research director at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, told PunditFact. In a way this wealth was Saudi in that his family was a Saudi family, but its different than the Saudi state or Saudi organizations. Over time, Byman said, bin Laden lost his money, and a network of wealthy donors from largely Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, supplied al Qaedas funding. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said there was so much support from individual Saudis and organizations that directed money from the Saudi government that Grahams statement is just a bit under-nuanced. Its clear you had government money that went through these charities, he said. And while you could talk about lack of oversight for these charities, which used to be the line the government used, mere lack of oversight doesnt fully explain the governments position. Sanders: The poor dont vote Todd pressed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders about how much longer he will stay in the race with his chance to win the Democratic primary growing more dim, thanks in part to poor voters at the core of his campaign message. So 17 of the 25 states with the highest levels of income inequality have held primaries. Sixteen of those 17 states have been won by Hillary Clinton, not by you, Todd said. Why? Sanderss response was simple: Poor people dont vote. I mean, thats just a fact. Thats a sad reality of American society, he said. Sanders continued, But in America today, the last election in 2014, 80 percent of poor people did not vote. The data shows that weve done slightly better at getting out the vote among low-income people than what Sanders suggests, but not by much. His statement rates Mostly True. Sanderss policy director, Warren Gunnels, showed us a report by the left-leaning policy and advocacy group Demos, which used data from the Census Bureau. The report found roughly 75 percent of people in the lowest income bracket, meaning they earned less than $10,000, did not vote in the midterm elections. However, theres a catch: While an annual income of less than $10,000 is undoubtedly poor, the poverty threshold in 2014 also includes family incomes above $10,000. So we broadened the focus to annual incomes under $30,000, which had a turnout rate of 31.5 percent. Put another way, 68.5 percent of poor people didnt vote in 2014, about 10 percentage points less than what Sanders said. For many poor Americans, the act of voting is one more thing they cannot afford. They cant afford to take time off from work to vote. They are dealing with more major problems like trying to find the next paycheck. They are just more stressed than those who are more well-off, said Zoltan Hajnal, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. Politics seem like a more distant phenomenon and less pressing for them because there so many other things that they have to deal with. PunditFact deputy editor Katie Sanders contributed to this report. Read full versions of these fact-checks at PunditFact.com. If Robert Ludlum and Bertolt Brecht ever collaborated on a plotline, they might have come up with something like The Browder Effect, which aired on April 13 on Rossiya-1 as a two-hour documentary and follow-up discussion. In this paranoid rendering, Alexey Navalny, the leader of Russias decimated opposition, is an agent of either the CIA or MI6 (or maybe both, its never explained) who was recruited in 2006 by William Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Fund and a onetime apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin who had turned into a prominent Kremlin gadfly. Browder, in this rendering, was himself recruited by MI6 in 1995. Lets stop right there for a moment and consider the network thats putting this out: Rossiya-1, a Russian state television channel, previously has claimed that an Israeli jet shot down MH17, the civilian airliner blasted out of the sky over Ukraine in 2014, and that Syrian rebels staged a chemical weapons attack in Damascus in 2013. In both cases, the preponderance of evidence actually showed Kremlin clients, Ukraine rebels, and Bashar al-Assad, were responsible for the crimes. Now back to intrigues around The Browder Effect: In the mid-2000s (this is a fact) Browders tax attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a $230 million tax fraud perpetrated by mobbed-up state officials using hijacked Hermitage Fund subsidiaries; he was then framed for tax evasion, arrested, and tortured to death in a Moscow jail in 2009. Browder has spent the last seven years trying to bring Magnitskys assailants to justice (another fact) or at least stop them from spending their ill-gotten gains in the West. He won legislative sanctions in the U.S. and elsewhere to bar their travel and freeze any assets they might keep in American and European jurisdictions. Since this is a problem for Putin and his cronies, they have addressed it the way they almost always do when they want to refute facts: by calling it a CIA plot. As usual, CIA documents written in hilariously bad English are proffered to portray Putins enemies as hirelings of Western security services. But whats so interesting about the broadcast of The Browder Effect is that a key source lending ostensible credibility to the allegations is named as Andrew Fulton, a former high-ranking MI6 spy once implicated in a plot to assassinate Slobodan Milosevic. His opinion was presented on air as that of an independent analyst who verifies the authenticity of these dubious documents. In fact, email correspondence leaked online and independently verified by The Daily Beast by a source who asked to remain anonymous shows that Fulton has been working as a private investigator for Andrey Pavlov, the lawyer for the alleged Russian mafia types accused of committing the crimes the television channel is trying to pin on U.S. and British intelligence. Evidence unearthed by Magnitsky and other subsequent investigators points to a transnational crime syndicate headed by an ex-convict, Dmitry Klyuev, as the gang behind the Hermitage tax fraud and its violent coverup. Browder has alleged that Klyuevs payroll includes past and present officials from Russias interior and tax ministries, as well as compromised judges, and officers of the FSB, Russias domestic security service which grew out of the KGB. In 2012, the United States passed legislation named for the dead tax attorney that cited the Magnitsky List of implicated state officials. Until the Ukraine and Syria crises, even during the so-called reset period, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act constituted the Putin governments single biggest grievance with Washington. More diplomatic energy was spent by Moscow on efforts to block or penalize passage of the bill than on any other part of bilateral relations with the United States. Russia, for instance, passed its own counter-Magnitsky suite of sanctions on U.S. officials and imposed a notorious ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans. But the core of the Putin strategy was to shift the blame completely. The Kremlin accused Browder of orchestrating both the tax fraud and Magnitskys murder (even though the Kremlin also made the obviously contradictory claim that the attorney died tragically of a heart attack). In The Browder Effect, Browder is depicted as no longer just a cynical accomplice to a crime against the Russian people, but now a shadowy agent of Cold War-style intrigue, and it would seem to be the CIA, rather than Russian authorities, that somehow denied Magnitsky life-saving medical treatment in prison. Of course, this stands in marked contrast to what Russias own Presidential Council on Human Rights concluded. But the Rossiya-1 documentary is not bothered by such details. The human-rights group wrote that Magnitskys requests for the routine physicians visit were denied; medications delivered by Magnitskys mother were not accepted or even sent to another cell. These and many other facts discovered by the public inquiry suggest not only the negligence of medical personnel of the Butyrka prison, but criminal failure to provide aid to the detainee, i.e., violation of the right to life. According to Rossiya-1, Browder, codenamed Solomon, has been working for MI6 since 1995. In 2006, he supposedly recruited Navalny, codenamed Freedom, and proceeded to disburse upwards of $1.5 million to him. With that slush fund, Navalny was supposed to engage in minority shareholder activism to expose graft in state-owned companies such as the energy giant Gazprom. Navalny also was supposed to focus on Russian officials such as General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika. He has a vast family fortune which Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation suggested, in a December YouTube video expose that went viral, was obtained through illegal means. Some of Browders CIA/MI6 payments to his Russian pointman (naturally) got funneled through the Moscow Helsinki Group, a Soviet-era human-rights monitor. Like many conspiracy theories, this one seeks to wrap all of Putins enemies into one neatly bound package. But Rossiya-1s evidence rests on supposedly leaked documents, featuring ostensible CIA and MI6 emails and intercepted Skype conversations between Browder and Navalny. Most of these are produced in English-language snippets that read like Borat trying to use Google Translate. Dear Mr. Browder! Navalny is said to respond when Browder introduces himself on Skype. Good afternoon. I am glad to meet you, even in this way. I am pleased with your attention, but do not really understand why you need me, and how we can cooperate. Browder also asks Navalny to call him William, whereas anyone who has ever spoken to him, such as your humble correspondent, or looked at the book cover for his memoir Red Notice, knows that Browder goes by Bill. An email address belonging to the hedge fund manager is also listed in one screen-captured email as law@hermitagefund.com. That account bounced back for me when I tried it. Perhaps no inconsistency is as imaginative, however, as having Valerie Plame named as one of the case officers handling Solomon and Freedom as of 2009, even though she famously resigned from the CIA in 2007 after her cover was blown by the Bush administrationas she herself reminded the Twitter-sphere when she caught sight of her name floating around in connection with this affair. Navalny says he plans to sue Rossiya-1 for defamation. In an emailed statement, Browder called the film crazy and the claims against him so outlandish as to not merit a response. However, his campaign, Justice for Sergei Magnitsky, issued a rebuttal (full disclosure: I am an uncompensated advisory board member on the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Inter-Parliamentary Group), documenting all the instances in which the dead lawyer requested medical care from prison authorities, only to be ignored. The campaign also noted that the journalist responsible for the documentary was Evgeniy Popov, who works for Rossiya-1, and has been sanctioned by Ukraine for his role in the disinformation campaign about the war in Ukraine. Earlier in April, Evgeniy Popov traveled to London to obtain video footage of William Browders office there. Police had to be called in because of the disruption he caused. So where did these alleged spy docs come from? The master leaker is identified on Rossiya-1 as Sergei Sokolov, the former chief security guard for Boris Berezovsky, the onetime billionaire Russian oligarch who bankrupted himself in exile in England and who is believed to have committed suicide in 2013. A year later, Sokolov says, he obtained the CIA documents from CIA servers in Ukraine that he says he managed to smuggle out of the country during the 2014 revolution there. If, for the sake of argument, we say these documents were not complete fabrications in a fantasist broadcast, then how would Sokolov know they were genuine products of the Central Intelligence Agency? Thats where Fulton comes on stage. So that you understand, Sokolov says about an hour into the Rossiya-1 panel discussion following The Browder Effect documentary, We have a forensic study that was performed for me by an agency headed by Andrew Fulton. He is a well-known British specialist who for a long time headed the analytical department of MI6. This person, more professionally than you or me, knows how documents are written. I have a written study report signed personally by him that the documents are authentic. Andrew Fulton is a British ex-diplomat as well as the former chairman of the Scottish Conservatives. His role as an operative for the British Secret Intelligence Service has been reported in the U.K. press for years. It was confirmed in 2000 when he lost his job as coordinator of Glasgow Universitys Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit, which covered the prosecution of Libyan terror suspects accused in the infamous 1988 bombing on Pan Am 103. Fulton was dismissed following investigations into his MI6 career, according to the Scottish weekly newspaper, The Sunday Herald. But by then Fulton had long since retired from government service. In his MI6 days, Fulton reportedly had been posted in East Berlin, Saigon, and New York. He had served as head of station in Washington, D.C., and at the peak of his career he was the sixth-most powerful official in the organization, according to The Herald. In 1992, the paper reported, Fulton became the security officer who headed up European operations: He was one of the MI6 chiefs handed the plans to kill Serb President Slobodan Milosevic. Fulton currently chairs GPW & Co., a private investigations firm based in London. Unmentioned by Sokolov or any other media outlets covering The Browder Effect is the fact that GPW & Co. also has been subcontracted by the American white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton on behalf of its client Andrey Pavlov. Pavlov is none other than the lawyer of the Klyuev Group. He has spent a small fortune in the United Kingdom waging a PR counteroffensive against accusations made by Browder against him, mainly to keep his name off any impending Magnitsky legislation in Europe. So far, hes had little success: a nonbinding European parliamentary resolution, urging the EUs Council of Ministerthe policy-making body in Brusselsto sanction Klyuev Group members including Pavlov, was passed in April 2014. Email correspondence between Pavlov and Debevoise, which was leaked on the Internet and which The Daily Beast has seen, contains a letter of engagement between GPW and the London office of the U.S. law firm. It is dated Sept. 26, 2014, and signed by Andrew Wordsworth, a founding partner of GPW. We will need to conduct an in-depth investigation of the schemes, the legal proceedings surrounding [the allegations made against Pavlov] and the involvement and makeup of the so-called Klyuev Organised Criminal Group, of which your client is accused of being a part, Wordsworth writes. He further explains that he will oversee the Pavlov investigation while also drawing on the experience of my Partners and Chairman Andrew Fulton. GPWs retainer was 50,000, or $71,000 at todays exchange rate. The Daily Beast tried by phone and email to contact Debevoise barrister Robin Loof, to whom the GPW engagement letter was addressed. He was unavailable for comment. Nor did Rossiya-1 respond to questions related to Fultons putative enlistment in The Browder Effect or whether Andrey Pavlovs business relationship with him was known to the television channel beforehand. To date, Fulton has not publicly acknowledged any role whatsoever in vetting or confirming Sokolovs documents, nor has Fulton made it clear whether this was in conjunction with his compensated work on behalf of Pavlov. When reached for comment by The Daily Beast via email, he replied: Thank you very much for your questions. It is not our policy to comment on speculation regarding the identity of our clients, or our projects. Im sorry not to be more helpful. By Sara al-Qaher BAGHDAD Its a sign of the times, locals say. Baghdad students used to dress up in all kinds of funny costumes for graduation parties. But now the dress-up trend is toward horror shows, gore, and fake beheadings. The Baghdad man staggered onto the scene, covered in blood and carrying a knife. He began to scream. Then all of a sudden, hearing the start of a nationalist pop tune, he began to dance excitedly. Thrashing about next to him was another apparently bleeding man who appeared to have lost both of his hands. This was not a bizarre scene from a suicide bombing where victims have become hysterical. It was a graduation party at one of the University of Baghdads colleges where dressing up in Halloween-style costumes has become something of a tradition. In the past students used to wear different costumes, dressing up as historical figures or cartoons. But recently blood and gore has been a more popular choice, along with military looks. Even the female students join in. In the past they used to either be frightened, or pretend to be frightened, of the ghoulish outfits. But now theyre no longer scared and happy to participate. Hussein Faris is the man in the bloody shroud dancing with his knife. Im doing this to entertain people, the engineering student explained, before admitting he was also wearing the costume to attract the attention of female students. But as he spoke, he became more somber; one cannot wear costumes like this in Iraq without thinking darker thoughts. I am also wearing this as an expression of my anger as many of my friends and colleagues have died in the past few years in bombings and terrorist acts and they too were wrapped in shrouds. Students also make videos of the parties. One of the most popular ones on Facebook at the moment shows students from an agricultural college dressed as sheep. The sheep dance around and then are mock-beheaded by another dancer with a large knife. At Al Rafidain College, a private Baghdad university, similar parties were taking place. A student wearing a mask that made it look as though he had lost an eye also had on a morgue nurses uniform; he was carrying scissors. He ran through the room while other students pursued him, so they could take pictures with him. I only wore this for fun, to draw attention and to take some funny pictures, Ahmad Kamel, the eyeless morgue attendant, told NIQASH. But it is also a part of painful reality, he added. I saw a nurse dressed like this when I went to receive the body of my brother from the morgue. Another student came up with an ingenious costume that looks like he is carrying his own head in a box after he was beheaded with a sword. I wanted my costume to be unique, explained the man, who wanted to remain anonymous. But I also wanted to draw attention to the cruelty that was done in Iraq between 2006 and 2007 [when beheadings were more common in Baghdad]. Baghdads students also paid homage to the local military, as a way to express support for both the Iraqi army and the Shiite Muslim volunteer militias fighting the extremist group known as the Islamic State. Most of the students from the computer studies faculty at Mustansiriya University, one of the citys most prestigious educational institutions, wore military uniforms at their graduation party. Im wearing this to express my support for the army, the volunteer militias and all of the security services of the country, that have been fighting for their lives, Sajid Ali explained. Ali said that he and his friends had all decided together to wear military outfits. The fact that these young people are dressing up in bloody shrouds and in military uniforms is simply a reflection of everyday life in Iraq, says Mohammed al-Dulaimi, a professor of sociology at the University of Baghdad. The fact that more graduation parties are featuring scenes of horror and ugliness have two main causes, al-Dulaimi told NIQASH. Firstly the fact that these scenes are always in the Iraqi media and they are repeated continuously. So they become part of the popular culture and young people remember them. The other reason is that, whether they are aware or not, the students use dressing up like this as an outlet to express their feelings, their fears of violence, and their own potential to do violence, the sociologist suggests. This article is adapted from one that originally appeared on the website Niqash. Rachel Roy kicked the Beyhive. What transpired was worse than the end of My Girl. Lets back up a few steps. On Saturday night, Beyonce premiered her surreal, stunning visual poem Lemonade, a Malick-esque cinematic companion piece to her album of the same name. Equal parts vein-opening confession, Black Lives Matter manifesto, and celebration of black womanhood, the film piqued tabloid theorists interest with its myriad references to Queen Beys marital strife. On the track Anger, she stalks about a parking lot screaming, If you try this shit again, youre gon lose your wife, before spiking her wedding ring at the camera. In Apathy, she starts things off with a mock eulogy for her marriage (Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks), before dropping a cryptic clue about the identity of the other woman: He better call Becky with the good hair.So, hours after Lemonade dropped, the fashion designer Rachel Roy posted the following photo to Instagram along with the caption: Good hair dont care, but we will take good lighting, for selfies, or self truths, always. live in the light #nodramaqueens. The Beyhive, Beyonces rabid Internet fan base, went full Sasha Fierce, filling Roys comments and @ mentions with nasty threats, hacking her Wikipedia page, and, after she deleted the post and made her Instagram page private, going after her daughter. They even accidentally targeted the cooking show host Rachael Ray, mistaking her for Rachel Roy. After hours of online vitriol, Roy posted the following message: While Roy did bring some of this backlash on herself by posting the image/caption in question, the punishment did not fit the alleged crime. All this rabid speculation, of course, began in earnest when security footage emerged in May 2014 of Beyonces sister, Solange, going Street Fighter on Jay in an elevator as a nonplussed Bey looked on. The incident occurred following a Met Gala after-party wherein the Sisters Knowles reportedly confronted Roy over her chummy relationship with Jay Z. Solange was defending Beyonce in the elevator because Solange finds Jays friendship with Rachel to be WAY too close for comfort and it makes Solange very uncomfortable, a source told Hollywood Life. Beyonce also confronted Rachel and said, Dont talk to my sister like that, after [Rachel] confronted Solange. Roy has since been painted as the thirsty side chick scamming on Beyonces manshe was Ali Larter in Obsessedwhile Jay Z was the tempted, happily married husband, reduced to a meme-ified punchline. You heard that right: A semi-successful, stunning fashionista was the predator, not the powerful music mogul who not only has a history of questionable behavior, but is also benefitting financially from this entire soap opera, with Lemonade available exclusively via his streaming service, Tidal. And the disproportionate Roy-bashing seems even more absurd when you consider she is the ex-wife of Damon Dash, Jay Zs former best friend/business partner turned enemy, and that this is not the first time the two have been involved in a bizarre love triangle. Harlem native Damon Dame Dash and Brooklyns Shawn Jay Z Carter met in 1994, when they were introduced by DJ Clark Kent. Dash was the entrepreneur, while Jay, a former drug dealer turned rapper, was the talent. In 1996, after the major labels passed on Jay Zs debut album, Reasonable Doubt, the two friendsalong with Kareem Biggs Burkestarted the label Roc-A-Fella Records in order to release it. Soon after, they started the successful clothing line Rocawear. Things were relatively peachy on the Roc-A-Fella front until 1999, when both Jay Z and Dash began pursuing the 20-year-old R&B artist Aaliyah. I was going at her, and Jay was going at her. He knew her before I did, Dash told Hip-Hop Motivation. It was just a situation where Aaliyah was the type of girl that would give you a shot. She didnt care what people thought or whatever. So, shell date you and be your friend. You might end up in the friend zone. A lot of times, thats what happened. You werent just going to hit that. At least in my experience. Somebody may have had a different experience at a different time in her life. Dash won Aaliyahs affections over Jay Z, and the pair began dating in late 1999, but he says there was a bit of apprehension over the fact that Jay Z had initially pursued her. We developed a real friendship before [dating], but there was always apprehension because other people would try to get at her first, he said. So I had to, but then it was just like, Fuck it. The two dated until Aaliyahs tragic death in a plane crash on Aug. 25, 2001. Dash later said that while they werent formally engaged, theyd discussed plans to marry. One year after Aaliyahs passing, in 2002, rumors began circulating of a growing rift between Dash and Jay. Dash had signed his childhood pal Camron to Roc-A-Fellamuch to Jays chagrinand attempted to install him in an executive post at the label, a move that was blocked by Jay. Furthermore, since Jay was planning his retirement after The Black Album, Dash was plotting his own future, rounding up a stable of artists hed discovered. At a certain point, I got ready to depend on my other artists, Dash later told New York magazine. I started putting together an armyKanye, Camron, Beanie, the Diplomats. I figured Jay gave me time to prepare. By 2004, Def Jam had offered to purchase Roc-A-Fella Records and install Jay as its CEO. According to New York, Jay invited Dash out to dinner at Da Silvano to break the news. Dash begged him to not take the name Roc-A-Fella, while Jay offered to give up everythingthe new post at Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella Recordsif he could have the masters back of Reasonable Doubt. Dash declined, and after Jay, Dash, and Biggs sold their 50 percent stake in Roc-A-Fella to Def Jam, giving the label complete ownership, Jay reclaimed his masters, kicked his two pals to the curb, and assumed the position of CEO. He said, Its business, Dash explained to New York. But we were always supposed to be about more than business, Jay especiallyI did everything I possibly could so that he didnt have to raise his voice. He just had to whisper something in my ear and Id take care of it. The people I fought with to make money for him, Lyor Cohen and Kevin LilesDef Jam execshes made friends with. He hangs out with Puff now. Its like if your brother leaves you. Camron and his hip-hop collective the Diplomats left The Roc for Warner Brothers, while the bulk of the artists on Roc-A-Fella stayed on with Jay Z over Dashincluding Dash discovery Kanye West. West later explained why he sided with Jay Z over Dash in a 2013 interview with Power 105.1s The Breakfast Club. The problem was with Dame his truth was more accurate and more closer to what mine was, but his technique was harsh for me as a young kid and stuff, said West. I felt like a little bit more pressure. And Jay Z was a nice guy. And also I felt like I had that truth that Dame has in him. We the same. Me and Cam, me and Dame, we the same. But I wanted to learn this technique that Jay got of actually being likable So, Jay Z know how to move in a room full of vultures. You know what Im saying? As his little brother, I needed to learn that technique because I got something that God want me to give the world. Dash started his own imprint, Dame Dash Music Group, but it folded shortly thereafter, and he never regained his former glory. Around this time, in 2005, he married Rachel Roy, a former creative director at Rocawear whowith Dashs helphad launched an eponymous fashion line. They had two daughters before splitting in 2009, and in April of last year, their custody battle came to an end less than a year after the Met Ball incident. Dash has lost sole and physical custody of his two daughters, 15-year-old Ava Dash and 6-year-old Tallulah Dash, to ex-wife Roy, reported E! News, whod obtained the court documents. The fashion designer also successfully obtained a three-year restraining order against her ex, which also includes an order of protection for her daughters. While Jays remained relatively mum about the state of his relationship with Dash, the latter has opened up about it quite a bit over the years, claiming Jay betrayed the company and even alleging he was tied to informants. Their beef will, of course, forever be immortalized on the remix of Kanye Wests Diamonds Are Forever. In it, Jay raps, I took the name, I take the blame, later adding, Im not a businessman / Im a business, man / So let me handle my business, damn! Did Donald Trumpand the heated debate and emotions his 2016 candidacy has elicitedultimately cause the downfall of Hollywoods exclusive, secretive organization of committed political conservatives? Friends of Abean invite-only fellowship of the film industrys Republicans and right-wingers both famous and nothas announced it is dissolving as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, ditching the tax-exempt status it once fought for. The groups surprise move Thursday, news of which was broken Thursday by The Guardians Los Angeles-based correspondent Rory Carroll, immediately sparked rumors that bitter divisions within FOA over Trumps presidential candidacy had led to the nonprofits shutdown. The announcement by the Friends of Abe fueled speculation that infighting over Donald Trumps candidacy had drained commitment, The Guardian reported. On Thursday, the organizations executive director, Jeremy Boreing, announced in an FOA-wide email: Effective immediately, we are going to begin to wind down the 501 c 3 organization, bring the Sustaining Membership dues to an end, and do away with the costly infrastructure and the abespal.com website. People just dont feel as much of a need to show up for every speaker or bar night, and fewer people pay the dues that help us maintain that large infrastructure, he continued. We will still get together for drinks and speakers, but we may reassess how we approach those events logistically. In short, FOA will return to its roots. It will be a passion project, like it was in the beginning. Near the conclusion of the announcement, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Beast, it vows in bold: Well still be a private organization that protects the names of our members at all costs. The degree to which members held Trumps polarizing presidential bid responsible varied. I think Donald Trump has everything to do with it. I dont think he caused the dissolution of FOA, but relationships have defiantly become more tense, Dave Berg, a former co-producer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, told TheWrap. Powerful Hollywood conservative group whose secret members include Clint Eastwood and Jon Voight forced to disband due to constant infighting over Donald Trump, the British tabloid Daily Mail declared. It is true that within FOA membershipwhich stands at upward of 2,000 Hollywood industry conservativesthere was a split. The majority of members leaned heavily toward GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, and some FOA members saw promoting his candidacy as their mission to help stop Trump. But a pro-Trump faction was growing. Ann Coulter, for instance, has been actively lobbying Hollywood stars and insiders behind-the-scenes to get on the Trump train. However, it is likely that the causes of FOAs sudden return to its roots are far more mundane than the alleged Trump-fueled civil strife that has dominated so much of the reporting on the fellowships recent changes. Eight FOA members who spoke to The Daily Beast over the weekend were baffled that by the rumors of Trump-related implosion. Trump as the primary cause is bullshit, one Friend told The Daily Beast. My view is that the organization had gotten too bloated. Every great institution needs a reformation now and again My guess is high-profile events continue to happen, but constant meetings, formality, [and] duesare over because theres no longer much demand for them. Whatever political discussion or arguments, there was never any violent disagreement or turmoil about that that would have threatened the life of the organization, another member insisted. It wasnt the kind of thing where people got together and got nasty and fought [like that] about politics. On Friday, Boreing gave his blunt explanation for the reorganization. Think about it, he told The Hollywood Reporter. We ask a donor for $800,000 and they say, What do you guys do? Well, we get together and drink beer. Whos a part of it? Oh, youd be impressed, but I cant tell you. Obviously, thats a silly thing for us to pursue. One of the founders of this Hollywood-Republican fellowship was especially eager to push back against the Trump rumors. Categorically, unequivocally, there has been no infighting between the Donald Trump and the Cruz [fans], Oscar-nominated writer-producer, and FOA founding member Lionel Chetwynd told The Daily Beast. We have never had a controversial meeting where weve had people [viciously] confront each other like that. Look, Im a Cruz guy. One of the high-profile members and big stars of our group is a Trump guy, and I have dinner with him most Fridays! Chetwynd continued by drawing an analogy to the Spanish Civil War. Were on the same side of the war, he said, referring to the Cruz and Trump supporters in FOA. Look, one of the books many of us have read is George Orwells Homage to Catalonia. And one one thing were never going to do is that. When the Stalinists eat alive the Trotskyists. [Friends of Abe] will not give in to that sort of infighting. Chetwynd also accused The Guardian and its correspondent of bias and twisting his words. Its not journalism; its a kind of wishful thinking one can expect from a newspaper like The Guardian, a newspaper so leftist, so left-wing, that it [has columnists who] embrace Jeremy Corbyn, he said. This month, The Guardians Carroll had reported that Chetwynd had told him that the Republican primary had caused a civil war in slow motion within Hollywoods conservative inner circle. Chetwynd told The Daily Beast that this quote was ripped from its original context, and that he never meant to say FOA was embroiled in a civil, Trump-shaped war. The civil war I was talking about was about the country at large, he said. I wasnt referring to Cruz and Trump, or Hollywood, I was talking about the insurgency vs. the elites, which is happening in both parties today. Carroll, for his part, is standing by his reporting. [Lionel] was delighted with that story when it first came out, Carroll told The Daily Beast. He never challenged the quote thenHe was very effusive in the way that story came out [at the time]. When I had a conversation with him one month ago, it was clearly in the context of Hollywood conservatives. The Guardian reporter also emphasized that his articles noted that some members have been speculating that the Trump division may have been part of this entire restructuring. Im not saying they broke up because of Trumpand Im not claiming that, he continued. But I am quoting some members who think that may be a reasonI would hope and think that is blindingly obvious to people who read [my] stories. This is merely the latest chapter in the saga of Friends of Abe, which has been making national headlines for years now as a private social club for the politically active right-of-center trapped in the vast Democratic stronghold of liberal Hollywood. FOA has been described as a stealth right-wing group that is influential in conservative circles and which operates under the same PR rules as Fight Club. High-profile Friends include Gary Sinise, Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Clint Eastwood, and the Trump-endorsing Jon Voight. The group has hosted exclusive gatherings and dinners that have included events at which the Republican presidential candidates and politicians (Trump, Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Dick Cheney, the list goes on) have spoken. In early 2014, Cruz swung through Los Angeles to discuss what he called the Obama administrations McCarthyite actions against FOA. And as Friends of Abe sheds its nonprofit imagewhich it has enjoyed for more than two yearsit enters its next stage. Top FOA brass are still putting together plans for the fellowships way forward. In the meantime, set to take place soon, two members confirm, is the next new-members lunch, where prospective members are invited by current Friends to dine and shoot the breeze about the usual: politics, culture, and Tinseltown. Poor, poor Donald Trump, that dumb, fake Republican. Hes just not in on the jokethat conservatives really dont mean what they bitch about all the time, whether theyre talking abortion, immigration, or reducing spending. Thats why his surprisingly successful insurgency is such an existential threat to the Grand Old Party. Precisely because hes trying to pass, hes going overboard and again and again and unmasking the massive contradictions and utter phoniness of conservative Republican ideology. Hence, the flap he caused a week or so ago about abortion. If the Democrats are The Party of Death (as National Reviews Ramesh Ponnuru once argued, at book-length), then we all know the Republicans are The Party of Life. Specifically, they are anti-abortion under all or nearly all circumstances, because abortion is murder, right? So when MSNBCs Chris Matthews asked Trump whether women should be punished for having abortions once Republicans succeed in prohibiting infanticide, the billionaire sensibly replied, There has to be some form of punishment. From the response by pro-lifers, youd think Trump had, I dont know, stuck with his extreme pro-choice positions circa 1999, when he endorsed even late-term abortions. The Federalists Mollie Hemingway, who does indeed believe abortion is murder, found no fewer than 4 Reasons Donald Trumps Abortion Answer Was a Betrayal of Pro-Lifers. Among other reasons, Hemingway quoted Charles Camosy, who argues that Women, like their prenatal children, are victims of our horrific abortion policy. Elsewhere, pro-lifers explained that the women who choose to terminate their pregnancieseven or especially the 89 percent who have abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancyare the second victims of abortion. Thats more than a little odd to most of us, who assume that women who elect to have abortions think they are the primary beneficiaries of the procedure. Trump, you fool, where did you ever get the self-evidently logical idea that calling abortion murder means that the women who demand abortions in any way, shape, or form should be punished? Worse still, you forced pro-lifers to publicly acknowledge what they usually only say amongst themselves: that women really dont have moral agency when it comes to this form of murder. Like the juvenile delinquents in West Side Story, women are depraved on account of theyre deprived. Then theres immigration, which conservative Republicans say is becoming a stand-in for conservatism in the same way that abortion once was. About five minutes after Ronald Reagan granted amnesty (that is, legal status of varying degrees) to 3 million illegals back in 1986 by enthusiastically signing The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), conservatives have been bitching and moaning about immigration in general and especially illegal immigration. Amnesty=Suicide is the purest distillation of this apocalyptic point of view that is widespread on the right. What part of illegal dont you understand, amigo? Here again, Trump is just trying too hard, like Gatsby wearing his silly suits and throwing his over-the-top parties. From the very start of his campaign, The Donald not only denounced immigrants, thereby gaining the attention of embittered, low-wage workers and presentable GOP heavyweights alike, he went his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls one better and finished their nativist thoughts by saying he was going to deport 12 million illegals and their 4 million kids (most of whom are actually U.S. citizens). Theyve got to go! he told Chuck Todd on his own private jet. Theyve got to go! Even as Ted Cruz supporters claim that Trump filched the wall idea from the Texas senator, Cruz is more recently downplaying whether he will actually really send illegals packing and instead talking more vaguely about simply controlling the border. And with good reason. According to Pew Research, deporting illegals is wildly unpopular. Indeed, only one-quarter of Republicans favor such a plan, while 56 percent favor some path to legal status. While theres no question that theres a chunk of angry voters showing up at Republican primaries (and haunting the halls of Congress), entrance and exit polls actually show that immigration is rarely among the top concerns for GOP voters, even in nativist strongholds such as Iowa. The more you talk about forcibly resettling 12 million people, the more plain it becomes that the GOP and conservatives would create an authoritarian state to root out and dispatch those sons of bitches who cut our grass, grill our chicken, and clean our hotels. Ah, Donaldlike Ziggywill you ever win? It seems unlikely, because he hasnt grokked the simple truth that Republicans like to complain about government waste and incompetence and spending, but the last thing they really want to do is change anything. Back when conservative Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, after all, they kicked out the jams on domestic and military spending without a second thought. When it comes to national defense in particular, Trump has made the understandable rookie mistake of accepting the conservative axiom that government spends too much on everything. So, for instance, when he questions how much the United States still spends on NATO, his harshest critics come not from the internationalist left but from the militaristic right. Not only is the Cold War alliance obsolete, Trump says, but its a money pit for taxpayers. We are protecting European countries, he told a Wisconsin audience, giving them military protection and other things, and theyre ripping off the United States. Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out. You can understand Trumps frustration: Like a good conservative, he attacks Europeans as the cheese-eating surrender monkeys conservatives have long called them and goes after good, old-fashioned government inefficiency. And hes still treated as a pariah. Whats a guy to do? Well, he might have taken a page from supposed budget-hawk Ted Cruz and talked a good game about cutting spending but then just call for unrestrained spending when it comes to defense. Indeed, Cruz has pushed for jacking defense spending by an extra $2.6 trillion over eight years! Thats conservative penny-pinching, Donaldget with the program. Trumps frustration is the nations insight, however. Every time he follows longstanding Republican logic to its reductio ad absurdumremember when he suggested outsourcing the fight against ISIS to Russia, or called for bringing back Bush-era waterboarding?he forces conservatives to reveal that they dont really mean what theyve been saying for years now. For thatand for showing that even a billionaire can possibly become the president of the United Stateshe deserves our thanks, if not our votes. While the civil war on the Republican side of the aisle is garnering the most attention this cycle, the bayonets are out in the Democratic Party, tooparticularly in the Maryland primary. When the states voters come out on Tuesday to choose between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, theyll also be making a choice about who will replace the longest-serving female member of Congress in United States history, Sen. Barbara Mikulski. Unlike the routine tug of war Democrats get into every four years over whether to be more like Denmark or more like the status quo, the Senate battle between Reps. Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen is a slugfest dripping with accusations of sexism and racism. See, Van Hollens a white boy. That was evident when I followed him as he went on an awkward tour of Baltimores black barbershops on Saturday. Wearing a wrinkled sport coat from the car trip hed obviously taken that morning from the predominantly white suburbs of Washington, the seven-term congressman stood out like, well, a clunky white politician pandering for votes in gritty Northeast Baltimore. He popped in and out of local barbershops and nail salons on iconic Monument Street, as he avoided crushed beer cans under foot and passed within inches of a dead rat that still seemed to be clawing at the sky. The Senate candidatewho is moderate, or at least an establishment deal maker, and by most accounts has had to tack left in the primary, like Clinton, on issues like trade policywas most at ease when discussing Maryland sports. Thats a dangerous hat to wear around here, Van Hollen adlibbed when introduced to an older African-American man rocking a Carolina Panthers cap. But Van Hollen wasnt running the show on Saturday. His surrogates were. Hes a good brother, the leader of the adventure, Mark Hunter, reassured a young female who was dubious of the politician trying to run up on her weekend errands. Then Hunter threw his first uppercut toward Van Hollens opponent, Donna Edwards: Who else you seen in the neighborhood? Hunters a tall, bald yet youthful black man who runs a commercial cleaning business. He also seemed to know everyone on the block. And he wasnt afraid to take a page from the playbook of old Maryland machine politics, as he gave a business card (and a job offer) to one voter who said he was fed up with politicians like Van Hollen coming to Baltimore and promising to bring jobs with them. When Baltimore burned last year after Freddie Grays murder at the hands of police, the city gave a collective middle finger to establishment politicians. Ironically, or sadly, now the debate over who will represent B-more, or Charm City, in the U.S. Senate is revolving around who is more establishment. Van Hollen, like Clinton, is more establishment than his opponent. But the angry youth who burned and looted parts of an already beleaguered Baltimore arent likely to sway this election. The establishment seems to be running the joint. I want somebody that can bring the bacon home, the Majority Whip of the Maryland House of Delegates, Talmadge Branch, told The Daily Beast. In a maroon sport coat and a short, tight ponytail, the energetic and confident black man was about as opposite of the soft-spoken (when not on cable news ), even sheepish, Van Hollen as you can get, yet he supports him vigorously. Branch served with the candidate in the state House before mostly white voters sent Van Hollen to represent them in Washington. He maintains the state needs cash flow from Washington, and that Van Hollen knows how to slow-cook that particular bacon. Thats what keeps the economy here in Maryland flowing, having elected officials that can deliver. Van Hollen knows this too. After running the campaign arm for House Democratsthe Democratic Congressional Campaign Committeehe was elevated to being one of the main attack dogs for the party. With the formidable numbers wonk Paul Ryan serving as Budget Committee Chairman for the GOP, Nancy Pelosi tapped Van Hollen to be the top Democrat on the committee, making him the partys de facto spokesman on numbers and values. Even as his opponent has accused him of being in bed with the Washington establishment and too willing to cave on Democratic, i.e. progressive, values, like trade policy and the social safety net, Van Hollen maintained hes proud of his record of compromising (or, as some say, deal making) in D.C. Youre talking about two members of Congress who are runningright? Been here a long time. So this isnt an insider/outsider sort of thing, Van Hollen tried to reassure The Daily Beast outside an abandoned laundromat. People are hungering for solutions, theyre not looking for sound bites and theyre also looking for people with a record of working with others, building coalitions to actually get things done. That other member of the House trying to attain new and highly coveted Senate digs is Donna Edwardsa five-term congresswoman who is an African American. Her unspoken pitch to voters is that shes, well, black. Black power, yelled a female voice over the loudspeakers at a get-out-the-vote event for Edwards at Baltimores historically black Coppin State University late Saturday afternoon. Edwards shook hands at the sparsely attended event and seemed blissfully unaware that the young, wannabe hip-hop artist from the #BlackLivesMatter vein of the political spectrum was raging against the Democratic machine that Edwards is a part of. Edwards is also proudly running as a female. Her single-mother narrative has netted her some $2.4 million from the pro-woman group Emilys List (though after this contest many Democrats are calling it an anti-man group). For the progressive Edwards, race and gender are key to the race and shes shocked the Democratic establishment hasnt rallied around her and the identity politics she embodies. What Im surprised about is that there are Democrats who are calling into question whether we should have the most diverse and inclusionary representation in the United Senate, and I thought that was a no-brainer for Democrats, Edwards told The Daily Beast. The congresswoman, who represents the most affluent African-American population in the nation, from the suburbs of D.C., seems perplexed the Democratic Party establishment seems to be stacking the deck for Van Hollen in the race to replace Mikulski. The five-term senator was a feisty pioneer and the first female elected to the upper chamber of Congress without an appointment or riding the coattails of a deceased husband or father. I thought that for us, as Democrats, we say were a party of diversity and inclusion, we believe that its important for all voices to be at the table, a visibly annoyed Edwards said. Im making a very compelling argument that, all things being equal, we know that they are not equal and its time to have the voice of an African-American woman who is highly qualified to be in the United Sates Senate. When The Daily Beast inquired about the purported sexist and racial contours of Van Hollens campaign, she demurred. Thats what surrogates are for. According to one of the four (out of 46!) members of the Congressional Black Caucus to endorse Edwards, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), sexist, racistthe nexus of racism and sexism, up to and including internalized racism have defined the race. Moore, a member of the Democratic establishment in her own right, is burning bridges with her Edwardss endorsement. Shes also hitting the pavement for her friend. She served under Van Hollen as a member of the Budget Committee. Hes been handed his portfoliothats put him in the position to appear to be qualifiedhes a golden child of Maryland, Moore said at the get-out-the-vote event at Coppin as loud hip-hop bass washed over us. Moore is a Hillary Clinton backer, but she contends Edwards is more in line with Bernie Sanderss progressive message. Donna, yes, carries that message, of inequality. She is a staunch supporter of Social Securityshes not going to be negotiating it away, Moore said while adding that Van Hollen would allegedly rip that social safety net away if presented with the right deal. While many voters in Maryland will surely agree with Emilys List and vote a straight Hillary-Edwards ticket, many others think Hillary and Van Hollen are cut from the same clothtwo white insiders from white, and predominantly male, Washington circles. I think they support the big corporations, they dont look out for the little people, Wendy Foy told The Daily Beast. Shes a resident of west Baltimore, where Freddie Gray was raised. They dont look out for the little people, Foy said of Van Hollen and Clinton. Were the ones that vote for them. Were the ones that put them in office and once theyre there they forget about us. I pay close attention when I hear a candidate talk about bringing down the system or starting a revolution. People of Soviet/Russian origin take these phrases seriously, having seen more than our share of national upheaval. But I understand that in America these violent statements are mostly just rhetoric, especially considering that America hasnt had a president who wasnt a Democrat or a Republican since Millard Fillmore, the last Whig, left office in 1853. As the Whig Party collapsed, many of its members refused to join the newly formed Republican Party and became part of the xenophobic Know-Nothing movement. We might see this situation reenacted this year as Donald Trumps know-nothing candidacy threatens to destroy the GOP. Trumps passionate supportershe doesnt have any lukewarm oneslike to boast about their candidates policy ignorance and how he doesnt follow the rules. Hes not a politician, they say, and he doesnt sound or act like one. This can be an advantage in a campaign, of course. Nearly every candidate in history has tried to exploit the unpopularity of Washington by running as an outsider, even sitting members of Congress and incumbent vice presidents. Trump is a true interloper, never having held elected office, but it remains to be seen if a non-politician would actually be any good at performing the duties of a most political job. Shaking things up simply for the sake of doing so can break the good along with the bad. And while it makes for good copy to keep repeating, as Trump has, that the system is broken, it will take a surgeons scalpel to repair it, not a barbarians bludgeon. (Please note that this is a metaphor, not an attempt to recall Dr. Carson.) Even an actual barbarian, Conan himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, found he had a lot of learning on the job and compromising to do when he became the Governator of California. An American president learning on the job in todays increasingly chaotic global security environment would be more apocalyptic than any of Schwarzeneggers movies. The system is broken chorus from the Trump camp has risen in volume as he has encountered resistance from the Republican establishment and others who realized that Trump is sure to be crushed by Hillary Clinton in the general election and that if he does somehow become president, it would be an unparalleled catastrophe. Better late than never, I suppose. Trump is also meeting resistance from complex GOP primary rules and simple math. Its obvious that Trump is very good at dividing, but he hasnt quite figured out addition. He has to reach 1,237 delegates to claim the nomination outright and its not at all clear he can make it with 15 primaries left. For a self-proclaimed winner, Trump whines an awful lot about the technicalities and regulations he claims are thwarting his march to victory. Leading Fox commentator Bill OReilly recently added his potent voice to the debate, saying that it would be unfair for Trump to be discarded at the GOP convention if he has more delegates than anyone else1,237 or not. Championing Trump and the high ratings his general election candidacy would no doubt bring the cable networks is one thing. Publicly calling for ignoring the rules is something very different. The backroom deals OReilly and Trump are so alarmed about are openly part of the system. And while it would be odd for the GOP to look beyond the three remaining candidates, 1,237 is important for a reason. Plus, its strange to talk about Trumps majority when hes only achieved a result better than 50 percent once in any primary, that of his home state of New York. OReilly considers himself something of a historian, with a series of books dedicated to great figures, all titled the same way: Killing Lincoln, Killing Reagan, etc. He should know that the blame for so many of Americas arcane electoral rules falls on the Founding Fathers, who wanted to build safeguards into the finely-tuned republic they were creating. They understood that a complex political jungle was better than the political desert of a monarch or dictator. As for the distasteful wheeling and dealing among political insider, in smoke-filled rooms far from the eyes of voters and the media, they also played a big role in the early days of the GOP. In perhaps the most critical election in American history, a prestigious and well-connected Senator and former governor of New York came in with the best chances in a crowded Republican field. William Seward got 37% on the first ballot, far more than the 22% of his nearest rival. But deals were made in the dark of night, cabinet positions were offered and accepted, and lo and behold, on the third corrected ballot the GOP delegates selected a persuasive outsider from the West: Abraham Lincoln. When I retired from professional chess to join the anti-Putin pro-democracy movement in 2005, I was often asked how my chess experience would help me in what was laughably called Russian politics. Not at all, I answered. In chess we have fixed rules and uncertain results. In elections in Putins Russia, its exactly the opposite. As Putin steadily dismantled Russian democracy, keeping sham elections in place while making them meaningless, I often had cause to remember a line that the Spanish political philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote nearly 90 years ago: The health of democracies depends on a wretched technical detailelectoral procedure. All the rest is secondary. If the electoral system is transparent and functioning properly, if the rules are clear and enforced, nearly everything elseideological extremes, media and advertising, corporatism and populismis bearable. Trumps assault on the system is a politically convenient assault on democracy. Unfortunately, it is also a popular message in this year of insurgent candidates on both sides of the political spectrum. Purely negative messages usually dont win out in American elections, but this year is not normal. Trumps own campaign now says that his dictatorial rhetoric was an act, as if a candidate cynically employing bigotry and extremist rhetoric for political gain should be reassuring. Trumps followers would have us believe that the only people welcome in America are those who came over on the Mayflower in 1620. This is ironic considering that during the voyage from England to the New World, the men on that ship wrote the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. They knew that rules mattered, something Trump and his supporters seem all too eager to ignore today. Puerto Rico is in crisis. Last month, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose parents came to New York from Puerto Rico before he was born, visited Congress to plead with them to pass legislation that would help the territory restructure its $72 billion debt. We have a humanitarian crisis on our hands, Miranda, who created the Broadway hit Hamilton said in his address. We face a financial crisis that triples anything youve experienced in the United States. It is a solvable, fixable crisis, and what we really need is help from Congress. What we need is the ability to restructure and get Puerto Rico out of the hole its in. Then he offered members of Congress tickets to his perpetually sold-out show if it would help encourage them to act. I know a guy, he joked. Wow, that is incredible, John Oliver said during his deep dive into the Puerto Rican crisis on Last Week Tonight. Im amazed he can even get tickets. It is easier for a meerkat to get into Harvard Law School than it is to get into that show. Oliver, clearly a fan of HamiltonIts so fucking good!dedicated the majority of his show Sunday night to explaining how and why the U.S. federal government is ultimately to blame for Puerto Ricos problems. Because Puerto Rico is a territory and not a state, there are several loopholes in U.S. law that have led directly to its current situation. For one, Puerto Rican bonds were deemed triple tax exempt, making them incredibly appealing for Wall Street, but ultimately terrible for Puerto Rico. You might even own Puerto Rican bonds and not even know it, Oliver said, due to sketchy laws about how the bonds are labeled. In addition, unlike states, Puerto Rico does not have the ability to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy in order to restructure its debt, due to a mysterious provision in an unrelated 1984 bill. If you are massively in debt and cant declare bankruptcy, you are stuck, Oliver said. The good news here is, Congress is now considering a bipartisan bill that would give Puerto Rico some breathing room to negotiate with creditors, Oliver said. While the details are still being worked out, he added, This could be a real help to Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, there is a misinformation campaign underway to convince voters that a so-called bail out would be financially disastrous. The point is, 3.5 million Americans are facing a dire crisis right now, and the clock is ticking, Oliver added, urging viewers to start treating Puerto Rico like an island of American citizens whose fate is interwoven with ours. There are certainly better voices than mine to speak on behalf of Puerto Rico, Oliver offered, which brings us back to Lin-Manuel Miranda. To end the show, Oliver welcomed the man himself to the stage to perform an entirely new rap song directed squarely at those in power about his commonwealth, with not a lot of wealth, a not quite nation. Hoping to God John Olivers comical dissertation resonates with the Congress that got us in this situation, Miranda rapped. Along with suicidal tax incentive declarations, Yeah well pay your bonds first, close the hospital, fuck the patients. This is an island, 100 miles across. A hurricane is coming and were running up a loss. Paul Ryan, Ill come sing Hamilton at your house, Ill do-si-do with Pelosi, Ill wear my Hamilton blouse, he added, growing more impassioned. Our citizens are suffering, stop the bleeding, stop the loss. Help Puerto Rico, its just 100 miles across! The fashion eco-system needs and feeds on luxury brands. To see how deep its dependence runs, leaf through the opening pages of the April issue of American Vogue. Eliminating cosmetics and jewelry brands, youll find, in order, expensive (between $175,000 and $200,000 per page, according to the magazines rate card), sometimes multi-page ads from Ralph Lauren, Dior, Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent, Celine, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, DKNY, and La Perla. Now, look at that another way. Of those front-of-book advertisers, only the publicly traded Michael Kors and privately held Chanel are stand-alone brands and independent operations. La Perla belongs to a Luxembourg-based private investment firm that also owns modeling agencies. Dior, Celine, Fendi, Marc Jacobs, and DKNY are all units of the publicly-traded Louis Vuitton-Moet Hennessey (aka LVMH) group. Bottega Veneta, Gucci, and Saint Laurent belong to the LVMH rival Kering. Ralph Lauren and Prada are the name brands that sit atop other competing so-called luxury groups that trade on public markets. Polo Ralph Lauren now owns 13 distinct clothing brands, including Club Monaco, as well as other businesses (one of which serves yummy hamburgers). Though its divested its Jil Sander and Helmut Lang units, publicly-traded Prada still owns the footwear brands Churchs and Car Shoe, as well as 80 percent of the Milanese pastry shop Angelo Marchesi. And by the time I hit Vogues Table of Contents (on page 46, in case you were wondering), Id still not hit ads from the publicly-traded competitors Richemont (owner of Chloe, Alaia, and lots of watch brands), Hermes International, or Burberry Group, the fashion brands that rounded out a 2015 Ernst & Young list of the worlds top luxury concerns. So many big, well-known names. So many ads. But what the fashion magazines and blogs that depend on them as babies do mothers milk dont tell you is this: They are all in so much trouble. This month, Burberry shares fell after the company reported falling revenues and issued a warning to investors that the outlook for near-term profits and revenues was checkered at best. It blamed currency gyrations and political problems in China. A few days earlier, LVMH reported an anemic 4 percent growth in first-quarter revenue, and flat sales in its fashion and leather goods divisions, saying terrorist attacks in Paris had hurt handbag sales. Storm warnings first issued from Prada in February; Bloomberg headlined a story on the company with the scary phrase, Growth Evaporates. In fact, things were worse than that, and this month, Prada reported a 26.6 percent drop in its annual profits. Kerings Gucci also posted a bigger than expected drop in first-quarter sales, Yahoo reported this month, which it blamed on a transition period as its flagship brand works to regain momentum under a new creative and management duo. And even Hermes, maker of staid classics that stand apart from the sturm und drang of fashion, has warned that 2016 is a complicated year. Outwardly, luxury purveyors are putting the prettiest face possible on their fraying frock fortunes. On Friday, Kerings chief financial officer, Jean-Marc Duplaix, kept a stiff upper lip, telling analysts on a conference calls that a first-quarter drop in sales of 7.6 percent at its Bottega Veneta brand was caused by strong headwinds: declining European tourism, sluggish sales in Asia, and the strength of the American greenback. A week earlier, Burberrys CFO issued similar excuses for its shrinking revenues and sinking stock price: As WWD reported, the external environment continues to be challenging for luxury goods players. Certainly, our terrifying world and roller-coaster currencies are part of the problem. But the big brands are using those big issues to paper over an internal rot that runs much deeper and threatens to gum up the works in the machine the manufactures and sells the status signifiers so many once craved like junkies do a fix. Its no coincidence that designer heads are rolling all over fashions fields: Alexander Wang has ankled Balenciaga, Hedi Slimane said sayonara to Saint Laurent, and Raf Simons walked away from his Dior. Ennio and Carlo Capasa sold and exited Costume National. Alber Elbaz was canned by Lanvin. Most recently, Francisco Costa and Italo Zucchelli left Calvin Klein. And inevitably, there are the rumors of more disruptive departures: Will Phoebe Philo file out of Celine? Will Karl Lagerfeld step down after 33 years at Chanel? Despite fashions prideful embrace of novelty, none of this is new. Fashion memories are short, but Marc Jacobss 2013 departure from Louis Vuitton after 13 years as its designer was an earlier omen of how brutally unsentimental his business had become, and long before that, in 2008, Donna Karan was effectively sidelined by LVMH, which had bought her eponymous company for more than $600 million in 2001. Though Karan was allowed to save face and retain the title of lead designer, fashion insiders whispered that shed been banned from the design studio. Her official retirement in 2015 also marked the end of her signature line. Its likely that in the year since, her wealth has been more of a salve than her continuing role as an advisor to DKNY, the last remaining shred of her once glorious empire. At least Karan doesnt have to worry about the fashion calendar anymore. Thats another straw man argument fashion is having with itself. Some brands have decided that shows for buyers and press held months in advance of clothes arriving in stores are obsolete and the solution is Show today, Sell tomorrow. Most of those brands sell basics, though, or else they are vertically integrated companies that control the process from factory to retail, obviating the need for long lead times to source fabrics and yarns, refine patterns, produce samples to show buyers, gauge the market and manufacture accordingly. Designers who already produce multiple lines, one atop the next, are apoplectic over that idea. Says one who asks not to be identified in order to stay in favor with the bean-counters, You cant do a small show for the press and a big show for the public four months later. Youll have already moved on creatively. And if youre any good, youll hate the old stuff. The public may not realize it yet, but its lost its passion for prevailing fashion. People dont care anymore, that designer continues. But what about that giant Givenchy show on the Hudson last year? Didnt people love it? Sure, as spectacle, she continues. But I heard it cost $10 million. They wouldnt like it so much if they understood theyre paying for it every time they buy overpriced goods. People perceive theyre not getting value for their money, so theyve stopped buying the stuff, agrees Dana Thomas, whose decade-old book Deluxe first predicted luxury fashions fall. Thomas charges fashion brands with over-expansion. Customers are sick of seeing the same stores on every street corner. Theyve saturated the market to the point that luxury feels common. Thats the antithesis of everything these brands are based on. People want something nobody has. Whats cool is what nobody else has heard of. Louis Vuitton is now as common as Samsonite. If youre pulling a Vuitton roller case through an airport, youre not living the Vuitton life. Making matters worse, any longtime luxury customer will tell you, quality has gone down while prices have skyrocketed. A basic Vuitton weekend bag, Thomas says, has more than doubled in price in the years since Deluxe was published. And certainly, my income hasnt doubled, she adds. Luxury brands have alienated the luxury customer, says Cameron Silver, founder of Decades, the posh Los Angeles vintage clothing store, whos watched as bloggers and celebrities who either borrow or get clothes free have replaced paying customers in the hearts, minds, and front rows of fashions nabobs. Runway clothes are made for magazines or loans, Silver continues. Customers are low on the totem pole and theyre starting to rebel. It started in the mid-90s with the red carpet and celebrities. Who wants to pay $250,000 for a couture dress theyve seen loaned to some actress six months earlier? The same goes for ready-to-wear, which, thanks to the Internet, is also now instantly over-exposed. By the time its in stores, it looks tired, says Silver. If it ever reaches stores at all. Most runway pieces never get produced. Theyre marketing exercises. The legacy brands arent in the fashion business anymore. Theyre selling handbags and lipstick. The quirkiness of luxury, the artisanal experience, has largely been lost. The good news is that the digital culture thats killing fashion-as-we-know-it could, perversely, prove fashions salvation. Alongside the paid bloggers and pampered celebrities flogging $3,000 branded goods on Instagram are just plain folks taking selfies of themselves in outfits that reflect individual creativity, not the needs of vampire corporations sucking quarterly profits from purses and perfume bottles. Luxury fashion may be walking dead but self-expression through dress wont die with it. Hans Christian Anderson had that right. The procession will go on. On Tuesday Hillary Clinton is expected to rack up more primary wins, bringing her even closer to making history as the first woman to secure the Democratic nomination for president. But another upcoming primary serves as a powerful reminder of the gulf that still exists between Hillary Clinton and other female candidates who are not named Clinton, not married to a former president, and not white. Donna Edwards, a black Congresswoman in Maryland, is locked in a tight Senate race with fellow Congressman Chris Van Hollen. Much of the Democratic and political establishment have been shocked by Edwardss ability to make the racewell, a real race. Politico labeled Van Hollen the Democratic golden boy, and apparently Edwardss rise has troubled some powerbrokers fearful she is a less viable general election candidate. (Polling indicates Van Hollen, who is white, fares better with white voters.) But of course this is part of a larger problem, namely that black women are rarely viewed as viable candidates in statewide or U.S. Senate races. To date, there has been just one African-American female U.S. senator, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served from 1993 to 1999. There have been no African-American female governors. The irony of course is that black women often play key roles in electing others to these offices. As Cornell Belcher, a prominent pollster who has worked for the Democratic National Committee, once told me in an interview for my book Party Crashing, If there werent for church-going black women, the Democratic Party would be in a lot of trouble. Hes right. Black women consistently have higher turnout rates than black men, and black voters saved Democrats from disaster in the 1998 midterm elections following the Lewinsky scandal. In 2008 and 2012 black women had a higher turnout rate than any other group of voters. So why does it seem so hard for the same party to elect some of the women it relies on to win as leaders in their own right? Well, one troubling reason is best summarized by Hillary Clintons own candidacy. Though America prides itself on not being a monarchy like our cousins across the pond, the truth is political dynasties are alive and well here. Not only are they alive and well, they are particularly noteworthy in their impact on women candidates. As New York magazine wrote last year: In 2008, about a quarter of the women in Congress or in a governors office had an immediate family relation who ran for state or national-level office. For the women who had made it into the Senate before 2008, that proportion was 56 percent. The article went on to note that up until the 1970s, 35 of the 95 women who had served in Congress had stepped into the shoes of their deceased husbands. Ultimately though the piece celebrated the positive benefits dynasties allegedly have on the representation of women in halls of power. But of course it overlooked one of the major downsides: namely, the women who are subsequently excluded as a result. Since most of our presidents, governors, and senators to date have been white, that means there is an extremely small pool of women of color who have the opportunity to begin their political careers with the kind of advantages Hillary Clinton did. This is not to say Clinton is not qualified for the presidency. But it is to say that the path for her to get there was easier than it would be for a woman who didnt have a former president as a spouse and all of the social, financial, and intellectual capital that entails. The fact that some political watchers are already touting a potential candidacy of Chelsea Clinton should not be cause for celebration among Clinton supporters, or frankly anyone. In America such legacy championing should be cause for embarrassment, or at the very least, cause for some head scratching and head shaking at the realization that more than 200 years after breaking free from one monarchy, America has simply managed to create its own political royal families. And just like the ones overseas, they tend not to reflect the diversity of the people they represent. When Hillary Clinton ultimately clinches the Democratic nomination, she will owe her win to black women who carried her to victory as the Sanders campaign chipped away at her support among white voters in state after state. So if she wants to show real gratitude, instead of saying Thank you, she should find qualified black women who want to run for office, and adopt thempolitically speaking. She should give them her Rolodex, headline their fundraisers, and loan them her husband on the campaign trail. After all, Chelsea Clinton doesnt need any more social capital to get ahead. But the next Carol Moseley Braun does. A love-scorned Wisconsin teen arrived at his alma maters prom stag, armed, and dressed to kill. It was around 11 p.m. and Antigo High Schools Saturday-night prom was winding down when excited students dolled up in gowns and tuxes were met by an 18-year-old former band member named Jakob Wagner, who arrived clad in camo pants and a red shirt. He was glimpsed wielding a high-powered rifle with an extended clip before he sprayed bullets and struck two studentsa boy and girlbefore a patrolling Antigo policeman fired back and took him out, authorities confirmed. [Wagner] had just pulled up and got out [of his car] and that was it, a parent of a prom-goer, who requested anonymity, told us. He had a lot of bullets and if he hadnt gotten shot there would be a lot more injured or dead even. According to the source, a female student allegedly dumped Wagner three weeks ago. They broke up so close to prom that she didnt decide to go, the source said. The source added that Wagner knew the unidentified boy he shot. Its unclear if he knew the injured girl. But the source suspects the boy wasnt the sole target and noted that the farming town is so closely knit that Wagner was surely acquainted with many of the students. I think he was just trying to get there and shoot his way in, the source said. He was going for as many people as he could. The lone shooter had broken out of routinely posting selfies on Facebook and had proudly shared photos of himself with his girlfriend beginning back in August 2015 and into January of this year. At that point, the photos returned to selfies. A band member who skipped prom confirmed the name of Wagners ex-girlfriend and said she towered over Wagners short height. A lot of people think he did this because his girlfriend broke up with him, the student, who also wished to remain anonymous, told The Daily Beast. The couple had allegedly called it quits once before. He was kind of controlling of her and she tried to break it off but then they were back together again, the parent of the prom-goer said. Attempts to reach the student and her relatives were unsuccessful. An honor roll student (PDF), Wagner had graduated the previous year but rather than go on to college, he stayed local and helped out as an assistant for an art class and also served as the right-hand man to the schools band leader, Mark Dewey. (Emails to Dewey were not immediately returned Sunday.) I heard him do the machine that makes beats for music and thats about all he did, the parental source said. He basically did that one machine and that was about it. You could tell he was basically there for the girl. The source, whose child knows Wagners ex-girlfriend, said she is beside herself with agony over the shooting. The source noted that Wagner was very introverted. You could say Hi to him and and he wouldnt say anything. When the shots rang out, students were corralled into a corner of the building and held there for several hours, the Wausau Daily Herald reported. We heard there was a situation, but I thought it was some kind of drug bust, Antigo junior Nikita Deep told the paper. Then they flipped the lights and then about 12 officers came in and are armored. We were all frightened. Wagner was apparently spirited to a local hospital but passed away after life-saving measures were applied, according to a police release. Meanwhile, the injured female student was treated and released while the male student remained hospitalized and had to get surgery for a gunshot wound to his leg at Aspirus Langlade Hospital, the police stated. The statement went on to say that the efforts by the policeman to fire back prevented further injuries and possible casualties. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker lauded law enforcements lethal force on Twitter: We praise the Antigo Police Departments response which undoubtedly saved lives. Our prayers to the students, families & community of Antigo. On Monday, traumatized students will be able to get counseling and have time to grieve, according to the school districts official website. In the aftermath of the prom shooting, many of the pupils and community members have come together in solidarity, adopting a seal featuring the schools aviary mascot with the message: Love and prayers for AHS Antigo Pride. The investigation was handed over to The Wisconsin Department of Justices Division of Criminal Investigation because the fatal shooting involved an Antigo cop, according to the Wausau Daily Herald, which cited a spokesman. Before the shooting spree, Wagner seemed to take pride in his band playing. He took selfies of himself in full Antigo Cardinal regalia as well as snaps of the schools brick facade. His relatives applauded him during one performance of Celtic Twilight back in October 2014. Jakob, We could hear youre great deep sound blasting from the jazz band wrote Carol Wagner, a woman who is related to the shooter. Requests for comment from Wagners mother and his grandparents were not immediately returned. A next-door neighbor told The Daily Beast that Wagners single mom had been accepting visits from concerned locals bringing food for her. She was apparently inconsolable about her sons death, but also praised the fact that so few were injured in the shooting. She said Im just so grateful nobody else was hurt badly, the neighbor, Timothy Homp, said. My heart is breaking for her and for her and her familys hurting. Homp remembered waving to Wagner only days ago and saw him perform music at local parks. He was a talented musician, Homp, whose son graduated with Wagner, said. He really wanted to do something with music and he was very artistic and would play a lot of eclectic stuff. His son, who is away at college, is floored. Hes just so shocked as are we, Homp said. Homp added that the churches in town were overflowing with grief and lots of prayers. These things are covered by grace out here, he said of the close-knit roots of the small farming hamlet three hours north of Milwaukee. Even if its in this case someone that has been killed and others that could have died I think there is still a forgiving nature to it. On Facebook, many students and members of the local community have changed their profile pictures to a somber image featuring the schools mascot. Love and Prayers For AHS, the caption reads. And some of the young survivors made it home and announced on social media they were safe. One of them was Ryan McCarthy, who posted a message to concerned pals: Just wanted to let my friends know I made it home safe tonight. Thoughts are with the families of those who were injured in the shooting tonight. When McCarthy welcomed the chorus of well-wishers knowing hed made it home safe and sound, he turned his gratitude to the selfless police officer: Yea. Luckily there was an officer in the parking lot and was able to stop the shooter before he made it into the school. Happened right as prom ended last night. When pet store owner Abbie McClain discovered Girl Scout cookie money, a laptop, and an exotic bushbaby monkey named Gooey went missing from her Oregon shop, she assumed a thief had broken in and stolen the goods. But the truth, authorities say, was worse. According to police, McClains husband Nathan used the stolen money to fund a session with a sex worker, and offered the woman the exotic animal as a tip. The McClains co-owned Zany Zoo Pets, a pet store and educational petting zoo in Eugene, Oregon. The store takes its petting zoo mission to heart, selling puppies and kittens alongside exotics like so-called bushbabies, a small, African primate also known as a galago. Adored across the Internet for their soft fur and massive eyes, bushbabies are coveted but difficult-to-obtain pets, illegal to own without a permit in Oregon. This Oregon agricultural law became central to the investigation two weeks after Abbie McClain reported the March 1 burglary at Zany Zoo. During a search of a local hotel on March 17, Eugene police found an out-of-town sex worker living in a room with an unlicensed bushbaby, a criminal offense. In the state of Oregon, it is prohibited to possess an exotic animal without a license issued by the State Department of Agriculture, police said in a statement. The woman was cooperative, and provided a statement to detectives, along with the exotic animal. In her statement, the woman told police that she had received the bushbaby as as a tip for her services, and identified petstore owner Nathan McClain as the john whod given her the exotic animal. Police did not disclose the value of the stolen Girl Scout cookie money or laptop. But even offered as a tip, Gooey the bushbaby was likely worth more than the other stolen goods, combined. Bushbabies, currently listed as Sold Out on Zany Zoos website, sell for approximately $3,000 from most online breeders. The next most expensive animals available at Zany Zoo are Joey and Sam, a pair of bonded parrots being sold together with their shared enclosure for $2,000. Gooey was likely the shops most expensive animal, making his theft and regifting to a prostitute a kind of double-betrayal for Abbie McClain. When Abbie heard about Nates possible wrongdoing, she immediately began getting his name off the business and banking accounts, Zany Zoo wrote in an April 22 Facebook post. Abbie and her kids are suffering right now through this tragedy and trying to figure out the best course of action. Thank you to those of you that understand this and are supporting Abbie. Nathan McClain is currently under arrest at the nearby Lane County Jail, awaiting trial on prostitution charges. Police did not disclose whether the sex worker will be charged for prostitution, or how she planned to care for a bushbaby, which requires an extensive enclosure and frequent social interaction, in her hotel room. Bushbabies exhibit significant stress when transported and relocatedgenerally, they do not do well in captivity, the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance reports. Bushbabies are social animals that live in complex family groups in the wild and they do not survive as well solitary pets. Gooey is currently safe in custody at a nearby animal sanctuary until the USDA issues a new license for Zany Zoo Pet Store, police say, after which he will likely be sold to a new owner. Please respect that the real victim here is Nathans family, Zany Zoo wrote on its Facebook page. Keep any negative comments off the Zany Zoo page as it is no longer affiliated with Nathan McClain. Authorities in Russia say a woman stole money given to her for dream homes and donated it to the Church of Scientology. Ekaterina Zaborskikh allegedly stole 130 million rubles ($2 million) between 2012 and 2014 by selling Russians them apartments that were never built by her construction company, an indictment in St. Petersburg alleged last week, as reported by Komsomolskaya Pravda. Part of that money was funnelled to her church, prosecutors say. Posters advertising the developments promised clients affordable castles in green neighborhoods by Zaborskikhs construction company, Olimp, according to the paper. Instead, the would-be buildings are still holes in the ground. Websites advertising the Olimp projects now warn potential buyers that they will no longer be built, as the company has ceased its operations. (The companys website is down.) In 2014, a woman identified only as Anna told NTV that she had paid 2.5 million rubles for an apartment and was told that construction would start imminently. The project was then frozen, and she eventually found out that the company had never gotten approvals for the construction. At the time, an attorney for Olimp, the construction company, said that his client had not yet been charged. Prosecutors say Zaborskikh gave the cash into the Moscow Church of Scientology disguised as donations. The St. Petersburg branch of the church was raided in 2014 over large-scale theft allegations. A local newspaper reported at the time that Zaborskikh was the main subject of the investigation. In January 2015, authorities raided the Moscow church to analyze financial documents. Detectives in Saint Petersburg found that some of the stolen funds had been transferred to the account of this religious organization in Moscow, a spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs told the channel Rossiya. The suspect is a member of this organization. The investigation does not exclude possible involvement in this crime on the part of officials and coordinators of this religious organization. But church officials denied involvement with the scheme. This search was related to a business located in St. Petersburg, Natalya Alekseeva, a public relations director for the Moscow church, told the channel Rossiya. This matter has no connection with the Church of Scientology in Moscow. The raid, however, was only the start of Scientologys problems in Russia. A Moscow court banned the church in November over its American trademark of its name. The representatives of the Church of Scientology themselves have created many legal conflicts by restricting the religious freedom through the use of trademarks, Russias Ministry of Justice said, according to RT. So it turns out a commercial partnership was spreading the religion, while religion can only be spread by religious organizations. But not to be deterred, the Church vowed to appeal and said its trademarks were no different from those appearing on copies of the Bible or the Quran. The European Court of Human Rights has, in fact, ruled in favor of Scientology several times. This is the only Church of Scientology in Russia, attorneys told RT. If it is liquidated, the countrys scientologists would not be able to confess in Russia, because the priest would not be protected by the seal of confession. Ted Cruz has been accused of telling a lie or two to win an election, but Cruz and his campaign are now pushing a line with Republicans that is actually true: Cruz would probably be less awful for Republicans on the ballot than Donald Trump if they select him as their nominee. Thats not exactly the argument Cruz made to RNC members at their spring meeting this week, but its close. Although Cruz cant win the 1,237 delegates he needs for the nomination before the RNC convention in July, hes pitching potential delegates on two pointsthat hed have a better chance of beating Hillary Clinton in November, and that in the meantime, he will help, not hurt, other Republicans up for election in 2016. At both the spring meeting, and at statewide conventions around the country, the Cruz operation has been appealing to the very real anxiety of rank-and-file Republicans who worry that Trump could spell disaster for the party in November, despite his dominance in the GOP primary so far. Key among GOP concerns are Trumps historically high disapproval ratings among women, young people and minorities, his unwillingness (so far) to raise traditional campaign funds, and his murky and ever-changing policy positions. I do believe there are some Republicans that feel strongly that theyre not sure where Donald Trump actually stands, said Eric Tanenblatt, a longtime Republican fundraiser who supported Jeb Bush this cycle. There have been certain issues that have caused conservatives to question whether Trump is truly a conservative. I dont think anyone questions Ted Cruzs conservative bona fides. Tanenblatt also pointed to Trumps controversial past statements as something many Republicans dont want to deal with in their nominee. We have had the experience in the past where weve had a candidate who created problems for other candidates around the country with some of the things theyve said, Tanenblatt said. If you have a candidate who is running for president and they say something that is not aligned with the conservative views of others running in the party, it could have an impact. Another longtime Republican put it more bluntly. Trump is a wildcard and nobody wants their future tied to a wildcard, said a Republican consultant working with several statewide campaigns in 2016. Although Trump has argued that he would turn out millions of new voters for Republicans, no recent polls today show that happening. The most glaring sign of trouble for Republican delegates weighing support for Trump or Cruz at a potentially contested convention are multiple polls that not only show Trump losing to Hillary Clinton in key states, but potentially hurting other Republicans on the ticket in the process. The Elway Poll in Washington State showed a -36 point effect for anyone on the ballot who endorsed Trump, including the states four Republican House members. Cruzs -24 point effect was bad, but at least better than Trumps. In North Carolina, the latest PPP poll shows Clinton narrowly beating both Trump and Cruz. But of much more concern to North Carolina Republicans is the fact that 48 percent of voters say theyd be less likely to vote for incumbent Sen. Richard Burr if he endorses Trump, compared to 22 percent who said theyd be more likely to support Burr. The PPP polling memo calls the 26-point hit a good early indicator of the trouble Trump poses for his party, and notes that Cruz has an 11-point edge over Trump among Republicans. Burr is one of seven GOP senators up for re-election this year in states that Barack Obama won in 2008, 2012 or both. In state after state, Trump fares the same or worse than Cruz in a race against Clinton. In Wisconsin, where Sen. Ron Johnson has been trailing former Sen. Russ Feingold, the latest Wisconsin Poll shows Trump losing to Clinton 46-34, but Cruz keeping the race to a one-point margin (PDF). In Arizona, where Sen. John McCain is locked in a dead heat for his Senate seat against Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, the latest Merrill poll shows Trump tied with Clinton, but Cruz ahead by six (PDF). Even in conservative states like Utah, where a Democrat hasnt won since LBJ in 1964, Trump would lose by two points to Hillary Clinton, while Cruz would win by 28, according to the most recent Deseret News poll. Chris Karpowitz, co-director of Brigham Young Universitys Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, told the Deseret News the Trump numbers should be seen as a canary in a coal mine for Republicans, Any matchup in which Democrats are competitive in the state of Utah is shocking. While some Republicans are divided over the choice between running with Trump or Cruz, Democratic operatives see them both as equally enticing opponents to run against in November. I think there is a case to be made that Ted Cruz is a marginally better candidate than Donald Trump all around, but the bar is extremely low, said Justin Barasky, communications director for Priorities USA, the main super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. If Donald Trump is a 1 out of 10, Ted Cruz is a 1.5 out of 10. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The biggest hole in Cruzs argument for his own electability is the fact that while its true that he would be less of a risk than Trump for Republicans, the same polls that show Cruzs relative strength over Trump also show Ohio Gov. John Kasich as more electable than both of them in a race against Clinton. Unlike Cruz and Trump, who are now projected to narrowly lose Ohio in the general, Kasich would win by 17. He would also win New Hampshire, while where Cruz and Trump both have a 21 percent approval rating with general election voters. And therein lies the fundamental problem for the Republican Party. The man with the most Republican votes for president could kill the party in November, while the one poised to do best in November has been mostly rejected by his own party. Somewhere in the middle is an argument for Ted Cruz to be the Republican nominee in 2016. His campaign is reminding Republicans that hes conservative, hell raise money for them, he wont embarrass them in the press, and at least hell win Utah. At the moment, Donald Trump cant promise any of those things. With an already tenuous ceasefire in Syria on the brink of collapse, U.S. officials are concerned that rebel groups could make a new push to acquire shoulder-fired missiles, which could then fall into the hands of ISIS and threaten U.S. and coalition aircraft. The lightweight missiles, which are easy to use and transport, also could cross Syrias borders and threaten civilian aircraft in Jordan and in Egypt, where ISIS is expanding its presence, three officials said. ISIS claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian jetliner over the Sinai last November. While U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the group had brought down the plane with a crude bomb, the attack demonstrated ISIS interest in targeting civilian aviation. The missiles, known as man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADs, have introduced an unpredictable and hard-to-defend element to the battlefield. U.S. officials have long resisted arming the rebels with MANPADs, fearing theyll be obtained by Islamic militants in a country where the U.S. has little ability to control the flow of weapons. The CIA believes rebels have obtained a small number of MANPADs, but some fear the prospect of Russian resurrecting its air campaign against Assads opponents will push desperate rebels to look for MANPADs anywhere they can find themincluding the black market. There is definitively concern about it, one defense official told The Daily Beast of the ISIS potential to acquire the weapons, either from Syrian regime stockpiles or rebel groups that have been weakened by Russian airstrikes. If they were to be introduced, there is a real worry that ISIS would target the coalition and eventually target civilian aircraft. Gulf countries, led by Saudi Arabia, have pushed for giving more MANPADs to the rebels, arguing that they would reduce the efficacy of the Syrian and Russian air forces. In general, the Russians have targeted rebel forces trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, rather than focusing their fire on ISIS. Calls to further arm the rebels quieted once the cessation of hostilities took effect two weeks ago and Russian airstrikes against rebel forces decreased. Now, with the ceasefire collapsing, U.S. officials said theyre concerned rebels will try to acquire more MANPADs through the black market. Or worse, coalition partners in the Gulf could try to help arm the rebels, fraying tensions between the U.S. and its allies in the region. Either the coalition or the rebels could get frustrated and reach out to other channels, a second defense official explained. Officials have long been concerned about the proliferation of the weapons in Syria. The place is awash in MANPADs, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told reporters in Washington on Monday. Clapper said that an active procurement network, as well as a black market were responsible for many of the weapons that have ended up in the country. Syria is indeed a hotbed of illicit MANPADS activity and has been for several years now, Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher with the Small Arms Survey, which tracks the movement and use of the weapons, told The Daily Beast. We have identified eight different models of MANPADs in Syria since 2012, including recent-generation systems not previously seen outside of government control. Some of these MANPADS are significantly more capable than the missiles most commonly found on the black market. Most of the weapons in Syria are of Russian, Chinese, or Soviet design, the group reports. Schroeder said current evidence shows that armed groups are getting the weapons from domestic sources, including looted Syrian government depots, as well as from external sources. Determining precisely where the MANPADs have come from has been difficult, though, because rebels or others along the supply chain have painted over markings on the launch tubes, which is what researchers use to trace the illicit weapons, Schroeder said. The danger that some of the MANPADS currently in Syria could end up in other countries is very real, Schroeder said. Most MANPADS are about 5 feet long and weigh less than 50 poundssmall enough to fit in a small boat, the bed of a pickup truck, or even the backseat of a car. Preventing their movement across borders in a place like Syria is nearly impossible. As of 2011, the U.S. government had identified 40 civilian aircraft struck by MANPADs, causing 28 crashes and more than 800 deaths, according to the Small Arms Survey. So far, U.S. officials believe only a handful of MANPADs have been used in Syria. The Small Arms Survey says more than 1 million of the systems have been produced since the late 1960s, by manufacturers in more than two dozen countries. Video footage featuring stockpiles of multiple launch tubes reveals that anti-government forces have acquired at least dozens of MANPADS, but existing data sources do not permit extrapolation beyond this rough minimum estimate, the group said in a 2014 report. But even the relatively small number used in Syria have had a significant effect. In the last month alone, Syrian opposition forces have brought down two Syrian warplanes, in attacks that the Syrian army blamed on MANPADs. The Syrian government air campaign, while deadly, has been smaller than Russias and used mostly helicopters and cluster bombs. But in the early years of the war, the rebels were able to bring down Syrian aircraft, even if just occasionally, which gave a huge morale boost to the forces fighting Assad. The most commonly used MANPAD in Syria is the Chinese-developed FN-6, which first appeared in the country in 2013 when a Syrian Air Force M-18 was shot down near Aleppo. The Free Syrian Army also has used the FN-6 to bring down regime helicopters. As many as 250 U.S. Special Operations Forces and support staff are headed to Syria to increase support for local forces that are battling the self-proclaimed Islamic State, a defense official told The Daily Beast. And they probably wont be the last. The additional forces, which will increase the U.S presence in Syria fivefold, will begin arriving in the next two weeks and be a part of a slow build-up, the official said. The U.S. troops are the latest to be deployed in a war that started with Obama administration officials promising there would be no boots on the ground but that now is seeing routine, incremental increases in troop deployments. This is the second deployment announcement in as many weeks, and officials at the Pentagon concede more will likely be deployed as the battles gear up to reclaim Mosul and Raqqa, ISISs de facto capitals in Iraq and Syria, respectively. This is the plan until this doesnt work and then we put more in, one defense official said, reflecting increasing skepticism that the U.S. will not be pulled further into the war. Critics worry that the troop increases arent enough to defeat ISIS, but rather an attempt to contain the terror group with a minimum amount of U.S. military commitment. The mission is the same. The resources have been wholly inadequate. And we are still nowhere what we need to complete the mission, said Christopher Harmer, a naval analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. To defeat ISIS in Raqqa and Mosul, there needs to be a ground force that has integrated close air support on request, along with integrated electronic and human intelligence enabling time sensitive strikes. None of the U.S. allies are remotely capable of doing us. The additional troops will also be put in charge of recruiting more Arab fighters, the official noted. Kurdish fighters have been among the most effective forces on the ground so far, but U.S. officials are reluctant to retake key Syrian cities without an Arab force in the lead. Kurdish fighters have been the most effective on the ground to date, but Kurdish officials have also said they dont want to take the lead on an upcoming battle to retake Raqqa. The additional troops on the ground also will help the U.S. to collect more intelligence, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told reporters at a breakfast in Washington on Monday. Any time you get eyes and ears on the ground, thats a good thing, Clapper said. But the administrations top intelligence official would not predict whether adding more ground forces would change the trajectory of the war or hasten ISISs defeat. The special forces headed to Syria are tasked with coordinating with Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed group made up largely of Kurds, as they push west toward Raqqa. The Syrian forces have taken back several areas from ISIS in recent weeks, prompting the U.S. ramp up its own troop presence in order to take advantage of that momentum. The U.S. troops are not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back, President Obama said Monday in Germany, using an alternative acronym for the terror group. The troops are part of a two-part Pentagon plan that had been sitting at the White House for weeks and was only recently approved. Last week, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the U.S. military would be sending an additional 217 troops to Iraq. Defense officials have signed off on sending a unit of troops deployed with HIMARs, or M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, already assigned to the region, the defense official said, as part of that ramp-up of forces. The remaining troops will be made up of an additional group of Army advisers that will arrive from the United States. A small number of Navy personnel will be deployed, the official said. The first known example of U.S. troops sending troops to the frontlines against ISIS was when 200 Marines arrived in the city of Makhmour, home to an Iraqi base is 70 miles south of Mosul. The Marines helped Iraqi forces make small advances toward Mosul on April 7, moving alongside their Iraqi counterparts. The U.S. didnt announce the deployment of those troops until one of them, Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin, was killed March 19, days after arriving there. With additional reporting by Shane Harris. Heres a little royal admission. When Prince Harry was born, I knitted a pair of booties with the assistance of my nanny (lots of assistanceI was 10) and sent them to Buckingham Palace. A few weeks later, I received a lovely letter of thanks, and an assurance from a courtier that Prince Harry loved the booties, as did Diana, and that he would basically be wearing them 24 hours a day. Even at the age of 10, I knew this to be a wonderful, generous, royal lie. I couldnt help but think of that courteous letter when reading about the optimistic legal case being launched by Christine Kendall, a bridal designer who works at a small studio in rural England. She is suing British fashion house Alexander McQueenKates favefor breach of copyright, claiming that Kate Middletons wedding dress was ripped off from one of her ideas that she posted in to the palace. Ms Kendalls justification for this legal action appears to come, at least in part, from the fact that she sent a picture of a dress to the Duchess several months before the wedding and received, like me, a letter of gratitude in return from the office of Prince William and Prince Harry. This appears to be the basis of Kendalls claim, which she has been promoting for some time now. In 2013, for example, she made a YouTube video in which she invited viewers to discover why she believed that without my sketches, the royal wedding dress would not have looked as it did. The video includes footage of the aforementioned letter which says, Miss Catherine Middleton has asked me to write and thank you so much for your letter of 18th November enclosing bridal gown designs. Miss Middleton was most interested to see your work and very much appreciated you taking the trouble to write. Should she wish to see more of your designs I will of course be in touch. Whilst to most of us that would seem like a particularly elegant edition of dont call us, well call you, in her video Kendall claims that this means her designs had been appreciated and accepted by Catherine. (A spokesman for the Duchess told The Sunday Times, incidentally, that she had never seen Kendalls sketches, which means that the note saying she loved the pictures must have been a dirty lie! This may also mean Prince Harry never wore my hand-knitted booties! Can you believe it?) Although few of us would regard such a note as a cast-iron commission, Kendall was apparently fired with creative enthusiasm and confidence, and ploughed ahead at full steam, creating a mock-up of her dress on 18 November 2010. History does not relate whether Kendall sent further letters, photographs or drawings to the palace. However, when the royal wedding took place at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011, she spotted alleged similarities between her sketches and Sarah Burtons final design. Her solicitor, Humna Nadim of Manchester firm Kuits, said, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph, Proceedings have been issued because our client is certain that her companys design was unfairly taken and copied. The claim is not against the Duchess and there is no allegation of wrongdoing against the palace. A spokesman for McQueen told WWD that the house is utterly baffled by the legal claim. Christine Kendall first approached us, at Alexander McQueen, almost four years ago, when we were clear with her that any suggestion Sarah Burtons design of the royal wedding dress was copied from her designs was nonsense. Sarah Burton never saw any of Ms. Kendalls designs or sketches and did not know of Ms. Kendall before Ms. Kendall got in touch with ussome 13 months after the wedding. We do not know why Ms. Kendall has raised this again, but there are no ifs, buts or maybes here: This claim is ridiculous. Perched on a hard orange seat high above the dirt floor of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center, waiting for the Harrisburg Trump rally to start, Pastor Joseph Moussa told me Donald Trump gives him hope, in part, because he reminds him of Assad. Yes, that AssadBashar al-Assadthe one whose army is accused of killing upwards of a quarter-million Syrians. In some important ways, Moussa said, Trump and Assad sound similar. And he likes it. Besides appreciating Trumps plainspokenness and apparent invulnerability to pressure from lobbyists, Moussa and other Syrian-American Christians living in Pennsylvania like Trump for a unique reason: They think he will do the least to undermine Assadand, by extension, the most to protect their fellow Christians back in Syria. Mr. Trump, he is the only candidate that ever said, I am an evangelical and I am proud of it, and I am gonna protect the Christians, he said. Like any other ethnic group, Pennsylvanias Syrian-American community isnt a monolith. And describing it in sweeping terms is as foolish as it is uninformative. But conversations with numerous Syrian-American leaders in the Keystone State indicate that Trump may find many devoted supporters among their numbers. Many of these Christians fervently back Bashar al-Assad, as they feel he treats Syrias Christians fairly and is their best protection against spreading Islamist extremism in the region. So they like Trump, as they feel hes their best hope for limiting Western intervention on behalf of the rebels seeking to take down Assad. To an extent, they see Trump and Assad as two of a kind when it comes to protecting the regions Christians. Christians in Syria have long called for the U.S. government to oppose anti-Assad efforts. Leading Syrian Christians came to Washington in January 2014 to lobby in Assads defense, as Time magazine detailed, arguing that he protected their community from radicalized Islamists. They didnt quite push for America to aid Assad, but rather argued against any U.S. support for rebels. At the time, some powerful American Christian leaders backed them up. Tony Perkins, who heads the socially conservative Family Research Council, argued against U.S. military intervention back in September 2013, saying it would endanger Syrias Christians. The National Journal reported that Rev. Michael Neuroth of the United Church of Christ and Gradye Parsons, then the highest elected officer of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., also shared Perkinss concerns. The vast majority of the Syrian civil wars victims are Muslims, including countless innocent civilians and children. But Christians there also face great peril. Anti-Assad fighters allied with al Qaeda and the Islamic State have bombed churches and driven Christians from their homes. Assad, in contrast, gave Christians privileged treatment and even made one his ambassador to France, as PBS has detailed. Joseph Moussa, who leads Arab Christian Evangelical churches in York and Harrisburg, told me his first cousin was recently found dead by his relatives in Syria. ISIS fighters had kidnapped him, along with co-workers. They let the Sunni Muslims they kidnapped survive, Moussa said, but they killed the Alawites and Christianshis cousin among them. He told me his family back in Damascus buried his cousin on the same day we talked before the Trump rally. For Moussa, Trumps campaign promise to protect Christians sounds very personal. Other candidates talk about their faith, Moussa said. But only Trump promises to actively protect Christiansjust like Assad. Many Christians in Syria fear that the weaker Assad becomes, the worse things will be for them. And many Syrian-Americans in Pennsylvania share that fear. Theyve protested U.S. intervention with signs that read PEACE LOVE DIGNITY SYRIA. Our site once dubbed Allentown Assadville, USA. And Assadville loves Trump. The majority of them are [pro] Trump, said Ayoub Jarrouj, a Syrian-American Christian who heads the Allentown-based Syrian Arab American Charity and who backs Hillary Clinton. To some Syrian evangelicals, even if theyre not actively backing Trump, hes seen as a better choice than the former secretary of state. Anthony Sabbagh, who pastors the St. George Orthodox Church in Allentown, said he himself supports Bernie Sanders, as do many in his congregation. They see Sanders and Trump as being equally acceptable on foreign policy questions, Sabbagh said. And if its Trump vs. Clinton in November, he added, he will definitely vote Trump. Thats because he believes Trump will limit U.S. involvement in Syria. I think they do not want Syria to progressthey want to bring it down, he said of the Obama administrations view of the nation. They brought Iraq down. They did in Vietnam. Tell me a country that America went to they didnt leave it in shambles. Sabbagh said he hopes Assad stays in powerand he believes a President Trump would keep him there. Leave us alone, we will care for ourselves, he said of the country. We would like [Assad] to stay because for Christians, he is our protection. Ghias Moussa, a Christian who immigrated from Syria and who heads the New Jersey and New York chapters of the Syrian American Forum (and is a relative of Joseph Moussa), also backs both Trump and Assad. He lives in New Jersey and has close ties to Pennsylvanias Syrian-American communityand he said the Syrian-Americans he interacts with share his views. You can see that day by day the whole Syrian community is moving towards Mr. Trump, he said. Hes been gathering big support. We are hoping that Trump is going to have a big win in Pennsylvania because of the Syrian community. All of them are galvanized around what Trump is saying. Given Trumps commanding lead in the RealClearPolitics average, he may not need the Syrian-American vote in the April 26 Republican primary there. Still, they have more clout there than in most other states; Boston.com found that the Keystone State has the third-highest number of Syrian-Americans per capita of any state. And City-Data.com reports that the Allentown suburb of Hokendauqua (pop. 3,378) has the highest percentage of Syrian-born residents of any American town or city with a population of more than 500 people. Rep. Charlie Dent, who represents much of the Lehigh Valley (and has endorsed John Kasich), estimates that his district has one of the highestif not the highestconcentrations of Syrian-Americans in the country. He noted that theyre predominantly Christian. When a lot of Americans hear discussions about Syria, they maybe have a perception of ISIS and radical islamists, when in fact, the Syrians in my community are Christian and secular and fiercely opposed to radical Islam, Dent said. Many of my Syrian Christian constituents tend to be more sympathetic to the [Assad] regime, added Dent, who called for Assad to step down in 2011. And there have been pro-Assad rallies in my district over the last few years. From 2014 to 2015, about 112 Syrian refugees moved to Pennsylvania, according to PennLive.com. While some Syrian Christians welcomed the refugeeswho are predominantly Muslimothers suggested terrorists could have infiltrated their ranks. Jarroujs group worked to help some refugee families adjust to life in Pennsylvania. Even though there are a lot of Christian that hate them, I want them to know that a lot of Christians love them, that we dont look at them as Muslimwe look at them as Syrian, and they are welcome, he said. Sabbagh also called for members of his flock to welcome the refugees, and for the state to accept more of them. You have to take chances in life, and this is one of the chances you take, he said last November. But other Christians urge caution. Joseph Moussa told The Daily Beast that he worries refugees coming here could have terrorist sympathizers in their midst. And he said he appreciates that Trump shares that concern. I agree and I support Mr. Trump [a] hundred percent, he said, of the candidates proposed ban on Muslim immigration. America always has opened its doors for people that are hurt, but were not working with people that are hurt onlywere working with people that are militant, and they really want to hurt us. We need to be wise how we vet these people, and to make sure we got the right people inside America. He said that a hundred percent of the Arab Christians he preaches to share that view. I believe hes a person that knows that to have someone like Assad to fight terrorism is more important than bringing down Assad and having the country turn to be a terrorist country in the hands of the militants, he said. One Syrian-American leader in Pennsylvania who didnt want to discuss the matter on the record said the antipathy between Muslims and Christians in Syria still exists in some corners here in the United States. So some Syrian-American Christians wouldnt be troubled whatsoever by Trumps call for a moratorium on Muslim immigration. Besides appreciating Trumps non-interventionist foreign policy views, Syrian-American Christians said they believe Trump will be neutral on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (many also back Sanders because they believe he would handle it similarly). I think the man is reasonable and open-minded, Sabbagh said, and I think the Palestinians are a people like any other people and they have rights also like any other people. Sabbagh added that this makes for a sharp contrast between Trump and Cruz. He doesnt care for the Palestinians, Sabbagh said of Cruz. He doesnt care but for only one thing: himself. And also he puts his cards on the table: He is for Israel 100 percent. Whatever Israel dictates to him, that is what hes going to do. Though evangelical Christians in the United States tend to be adamantly pro-Israel, their fellow Christians in the Middle East are much more conflicted. Ross Douthat wrote that Arab Christian feelings on Israel range from the complicated to the hostile. Its a long story, but Christians from Syria feel quite differently about Israel than Christians from Alabama do. And many of those Arab Christians are openly hostile to Cruz. In 2014, the Texan made headlinessome fawning and others iratewhen he addressed a group of Middle Eastern Christians in Washington, D.C. The senator drew boos by telling attendees that Israel was their best ally and that he would not support them if they didnt stand with Israel. Since then, the perception that Cruz cares more for Israel than for Arab Christians has persisted among American Christians with roots in the Middle East. They were our patriarchs visiting the capital, said Sabbagh. He insulted everybody, he insulted them without any respect. That, we never forgot either, that you keep in mind. Because he has no wisdom whatsoever, even in talking to his guests in his own home the way he did it, I mean, thats disgraceful as a human being. No one could stand Cruz, he added. I dont think he will have one vote from us, not even one. Joseph Moussa said Cruz shouldnt have been surprised by the frigid reception. When you only stand on one side, period, justify that side, regardless of what wrong that side has done, theyre going to boo him, he said. Thousands of Christian families in Israel or in other countries, they have been hurt by the policy and the politics of the United States. We need to stand with Israel, but we need also not to allow Israel to be aggressive and taking the right of the innocent people. The first word he tells us is, the Israelis are better than you, said Ghias Moussa. And we tell him, were not talking about the Israelis. Were Americans. We want you to be a good conservative president or senator in America. These Syrian Christians think Trump would much better fit the bill. Moussa said that when Arab Christians ask him who to back, hes unequivocal. When they ask mebecause many of them are new immigrants and they dont know much the politics in America, so they come to the pastors and take the pastors opinionI usually tell them that Mr. Trump is a person that we believe is gonna bring back America to be a great nation and is going to deal with the issues of the world in general, he said. For Moussa, voting Trump is easy. The only hope, I think, for us is to see Trump go to the White House, he said. And honestly, Im not gonna vote if its not gonna be for him. We make it too comfrotable here for illegal immigrants The only way to slow down or stop illegal immigration into this country is to make illegal immigrants have less happiness and/or money here than in their home country. This never will happen because liberal politicians, liberal judges and the people who hire the illegal immigrants will not allow it to happen. Illegal immigrants will continue coming in droves. THOMAS D. CUMMINGS Somerville Why is the city refusing help for longtime Bryan resident It has been more than a month since the plight of Alice Martinez was brought to the attention of the Bryan City Council, yet her home still is slated to be demolished pending an appeals process. Despite her many attempts to reach out to the Community Development Services committee for aid and the community's many calls for action from city officials, no progress has been made toward helping Alice repair and maintain her home. Alice, an elderly woman who has lived in Bryan for decades, wants nothing more than to continue living in her small home adjacent to historic Downtown Bryan. The city has done an excellent job allocating resources to help small business owners refurbish and construction new buildings along Main Street with help from the Community Development Block Grant. This same grant also supposedly is available to low-income residents to repair or reconstruct dilapidated homes so they may remain in the community and continue enriching their neighborhoods, as Alice does for hers. So why has the city repeatedly denied Alice, who meets the requirements, federal Community Development Block Grant funding to rebuild her home? If the city wants to see the full economic and cultural impact of rehabilitating Downtown Bryan, then it must also prioritize helping residents like Alice stay in their homes. Without a robust and diverse community in the surrounding neighborhoods, Downtown Bryan runs the risk of becoming another culturally empty icon of gentrification. If you agree, I urge you to call City Engineer Greg Cox and the City Manager Kean Register to tell them you support rebuilding or rehabbing Alice Martinez's home with Community Development Block Grant funding. ALEXANDRIA SEHON College Station Myth 1: Current genome editing technologies are not error prone BIO's exposition is belied by the evidence. If CRISPR were already precise, accurate and specific there would, for example, be no publications in prominent scientific journals titled "Improving CRISPR-Cas nuclease specificity using truncated guide RNAs". And these would not begin by describing how ordinary CRISPR "can induce mutations at sites that differ by as many as five nucleotides from the intended target", i.e. CRISPR may act at unknown sites in the genome where it is not wanted (Fu et al., 2014). Thus CRISPR itself will need tweaking before it can be useful for safe commercial products, and that is the first error of the tweaking argument. So far, it is technically not possible to make a single (and only a single) genetic change to a genome using CRISPR and be sure one has done so (Fichtner et al., 2014). As Fichtner noted "in mammalian systems Cas9 causes a high degree of off-target effects". And at least until modified versions come into use, this will limit the safety, and hopefully limit the application, of CRISPR and related biotechnologies. There is, furthermore, no guarantee that more precise versions of CRISPR are even biologically possible. Technically therefore, precision is a myth: no form of genome editing can do what is currently being claimed. Myth 2: Precision equals control The second key error of CRISPR boosters is to assume that even if we had complete precision, this would allow control over the consequences for the resulting organism. Suppose, as a non-Chinese speaker, I were to precisely remove from a Chinese text one character, one line, or one page. I would have 100% precision, but zero control over the change in meaning. Precision, therefore, is only as useful as the understanding that underlies it, and surely no DNA biologist would propose we understand DNA - or else why are we studying it? A classic example of how DNA can still reveal unexpected functions decades after discovery is the CaMV 35S promoter, a DNA sequence used in commercialised GMO plants for almost twenty years. The CaMV 35S DNA is described in every application for commercial use as a simple DNA 'promoter' (an 'on' switch for gene expression). In 1999, however, the CaMV 35S 'promoter' was found to encode a recombinational hostpot (Kohli et al., 1999). In 2011 it was found to produce massive quantities of small RNAs. These RNAs probably function as decoys to neutralise the plant immune system (Blevins et al., 2011). One year later still, regulators found it to contain an overlapping viral gene whose functions are still being elucidated (Podevin and du Jardin 2012). Will we ever know enough about any DNA sequence to accurately describe changing it as 'editing'? Myth 3: DNA functions are modular and changes are predictable The third error of CRISPR advocates is to imply that changes to gene functions can be presumed to be discrete and constrained. The concept of the precise editing of a genome leading to a precise biological outcome depends heavily on the conception that genes give rise to simple outputs. This is the genetic paradigm taught in schools. It is also the paradigm presented to the public and that even plays a large role in the thinking of molecular genetic researchers. However, a defined, discrete or simple pathway from gene to trait probably never exists. Most gene function is mediated murkily through highly complex biochemical and other networks that depend on many conditional factors, such as the presence of other genes and their variants, on the environment, on the age of the organism, on chance, and so forth. Geneticists and molecular biologists, however, since the time of Gregor Mendel, have striven to find or create artificial experimental systems in which environmental or any other sources of variation are minimised so as not to distract from the more 'important' business of genetic discovery. But by discarding organisms or traits that do not follow their expectations, geneticists and molecular biologists have built themselves a circular argument in favour of a naive deterministic account of gene function. Their paradigm habitually downplays the enormous complexities by which information passes (in both directions) between organisms and their genomes. It has created an immense and mostly unexamined bias in the default public understanding of genes and DNA. This is not my argument. It belongs to Richard Lewontin of Harvard University, probably the most famous geneticist of our time. The benefits of naive genetic determinism to the architects of the genome-industrial complex are very great. Since it pretty much requires that organisms be seen as robots being operated by mini-dictators (rather than, for example, as systems with emergent properties) and those genes as having effects that are narrow and clearly defined rather than being diffuse and unpredictable, it simplifies their sales pitch and frames risk assessment as unnecessary. The problem comes to a head, however, when this narrow conceptualisation of genetics is applied to the real world and situations that have not been, as it were, set up in advance. In the case of the "Super-muscly" pigs reported by Nature, strength is not their only feature. They must also have more skin to cover their bodies and stronger bones to carry themselves. They also, apparently, have difficulty giving birth; and if they were ever released into the wild, they would presumably have to eat more. Thus a supposedly simple genetic tweak can have wide effects on the organism throughout its lifecycle. Nature also revealed that 30 of the 32 two pigs died prematurely and only one animal was still considered healthy at the time the study authors were interviewed. So much for precision. The never ending story Why is this discussion of precision important? Because for the last seventy years all chemical and biological technologies, from genetic engineering to pesticides, have been built on a myth of precision and specificity. They have all been adopted under the pretense that they would function without side effects or unexpected complications. Yet the extraordinary disasters and repercussions of DDT, leaded paint, agent orange, atrazine, C8, asbestos, chlordane, PCBs, and so on, when all is said and done, have been stories of the steady unraveling of a founding myth of precision and specificity. Nevertheless, with the help of industry propagandists, their friends in the media, even the United Nations, we are once again being preached the gospel of precision. But no matter how you look at it, precision is a fable and should be treated as such. The issues of CRISPR and other related new 'genome editing' biotechnologies are the subject of intense activity behind the scenes. The US Department of Agriculture has just explained that it will not be regulating organisms whose genomes have been edited since it doesn't consider them to be GMOs at all. The EU was about to call them GMOs but the US has caused them to blink, meanwhile the US is in the process of revisiting its GMO regulatory environment entirely. Will future safety regulations of GMOs be based on a schoolboy version of genetics and an interpretation of genome editing crafted in a corporate public relations department? If history is any guide it will. Dr Jonathan R. Latham is editor of Independent Science News. This article was originally published by Independent Science News under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Its creation was supported by The Bioscience Resource Project. References In Designing Regenerative Cultures, I explore a wide range of such questions along with many solutions and answers as transient means to ask even better questions. More and more people are becoming aware that all our individual and collective actions and inactions are in fact interventions and do shape our collective future. This insight can motivate people to assume conscious responsibility for their role as change agents in the transition towards diverse regenerative cultures. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? Transformative innovation and design In the face of multiple converging crises, mere sustainability is no longer enough. Too much damage has already been done. We need to restore ecosystem and community health, and create regenerative systems that allow us to face uncertainty creatively. To do this we need to go beyond 'sustaining innovation' and 'disruptive innovation' - as described by Clayton Christensen in 1997 - and effectively engage in transformative innovation. Any proposed innovations should be evaluated based on its potential capacity to serve as a stepping-stone towards regenerative cultures. Transformative innovation requires integrative whole systems thinking. We can innovate win-win-win solutions and design for systemic synergy. To do so, we need to understand the interconnected nature of the converging crises and respond with an integrative and participatory approach to this complexity. If we pay attention to the appropriate scale, we can create solutions where the individual, the community and the ecosystem benefit. The word resilience has become very fashionable, yet not many people have bothered to dive deeply into the rich understanding that 40 years of studying change and transformation in ecosystems has provided us with. Resilience research offers important insights for the co-creation of regenerative cultures. We can design for transformative resilience to keep our options open and anticipate the unexpected. To do this, we need to value diversity, adaptability, redundance at multiple scales, and pay attention to the qualities of relationships and information flow. Transformative resilience is our individual and collective ability to anticipate possible futures and to maintain our health and integrity while we adapt and transform in response to the continuously changing socio-ecological systems we participate in. Over the last 20 years, our understanding of the role of design in the transition ahead has expanded drastically. Design is the way our worldview and value systems express themselves in our material culture, through the artefacts, systems and processes we create. Past design decisions - like the buildings and cities we inhabit - in turn shape our worldview and value systems. Design is a conversation through which different perspectives are integrated into culturally creative action. Clearly, there are limits to the extent that we can design regenerative cultures. All complex dynamic systems - our communities and cultures included - are fundamentally unpredictable and controllable. We have to learn to see design and emergence of unpredictable novelty as two faces of the same coin. This will help us to design with humility and careful attention to systemic feedback. Design as nature! The false dichotomy between nature and culture is the root causes of many of the converging crises we are facing. Applying the lessons of eco-literacy and engaging in nature inspire innovation and design (biomimicry) drastically improves our capacity to meet human needs while re-designing the human presence on Earth. We can do more than simply learn from nature: we are capable of designing as nature: maintaining ecosystems integrity, nurturing systemic health, and strengthening the planetary live support system we depend upon! We are already designing as nature. There are inspiring examples ranging in scale from green chemistry, product design, sustainable architecture, community design, industrial ecology, to urban and regional planning. Building on the work of pioneers like John T. Lyle and William McDonough, the architect Bill Reed and his colleagues at the Regenesis Group have created a framework for regenerative design that transcends and includes green, sustainable and restorative approaches as stepping stones on our learning journey towards a regenerative human impact on Earth. Here is a short video explaining this framework for shifting our mental models: Let me give you just a few examples how we are already applying systemic biomimicry and an understanding of nutrient, energy and material cycles in mature ecosystems to the redesign of our impact on the rest of nature. The World Future Council and Herbert Girardet called for a transition from 'petropolis' to 'ecopolis' through the creation of regenerative cities. Allan Savory's work on holistic land management and holistic planned grazing offers tested methodologies for regenerating degraded grasslands and prairies. These techniques are part of the toolbox of regenerative organic agriculture. This approach to the production of food and key resources for regional bio-economies also offers an effective way to slow down climate change and eventually return to pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The same techniques also regenerate soil fertility and aquifers through storing the carbon underground in the form of organic matter and root-mass. This short video - from one of John Liu's inspiring documentaries on large scale ecosystems regeneration - shows how China regenerated 8.6 million acres of heavily degraded land on the Loess Plateau in only 10 years. Regenerative intentions and practices are spreading into all walks of life. Just in the last three years, we have started important culturally creative conversations about the transition to regenerative enterprise, regenerative capitalism, and a regenerative society. Designing Regenerative Cultures We are capable of aligning ourselves as evolutionary activists and culture change agents with the regenerative principles that have guided life's evolution to increasing diversity, integration, and cooperation. "Life creates conditions conducive to Life!" stated Janine Benyus. In the end it comes down to asking ourselves: Will we continue to strive to out-compete each other and in the process unravel the thread that all life depends upon? Or, will we learn to collaborate in safeguarding Earth's life-support systems through transformative innovation and regenerative design? Will we co-create vibrant regenerative cultures and thriving communities for all? Choosing the path of regeneration and cooperation will create a greater level of wellbeing, health, happiness and equality for everyone and all life; and in the process of co-creating a better future together, our lives will be more meaningful, fulfilling, creative and fun. That is the promise to those ready to join the Re-Generation! If we choose to, we can generate collaborative abundance for all. The first step is to pause and ask: What if we choose collaboration and regeneration over exploitation and degeneration? What if we choose to thrive together, rather than compete against? In the words of R. Buckminster Fuller "To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone." Daniel Christian Wahl is an educator, activist and consultant, specialized in whole systems design and transformative innovation for regenerative cultures. A member of the International Futures Forum, a fellow of the RSA, and a Findhorn Foundation fellow, he has co-authored all four dimensions (social, ecological, economic, worldview) of Gaia Education's UNESCO recognized on-line curriculum in Design for Sustainability. Book: Designing Regenerative Cultures is published by Triarchy Press, 2016. Loure grew up in the Simanjiro plains, where his family and others in the community led a peaceful semi-nomadic life. In 1970, the Tanzanian government sealed off part of their village land to create Tarangire National Park and forcefully evicted those residing within the park boundaries. He believes that this land belongs to the indigenous communities, but as is the situation for many other peoples around the world, this was not recognised as a legal right in the modern nation state. He says he is now suspicious of any piece of land being set aside for organisations purely involved in what is referred to as conservation: "I'm really worried about it. In my experience, not one piece of land has been given back to us after it was grabbed in the name of conservation." He says that the Maasai idea of conservation is a better approach, as it incorporates people. Their cultural practice depends on three main pillars of the pastoralists: land and natural resources, livestock and people. "The conservation that we want is coexisting with our livestock: animals together with people in a way that has benefits for entire communities. Any conservation that does not have a human face, we are reluctant to support." The modern Maasai How has the life of the Maasai changed during his lifetime? Loure himself is an educated man with degrees in management and administration. While higher education is not yet the norm in his community, an increasing number has some form of education today. Loure believes this to be an important part of their development alongside the more modern urban communities. "Things are changing. We are now encouraging our local communities to take their kids to school. For although we need to preserve our culture, they need to have a formal education to make sure that we know what is going on in the world, so we can compete." And in order to compete, knowledge of economics is key. "Before, the cattle of the Maasai was for food and prestige, and now we want to also make sure that the cattle can be sold to pay hospital bills, buying food, and other economic needs for the community." A modern man with strong bonds to tradition A modern man in many ways, Loure lives a modest lifestyle when he stays in his village, the place he calls home. They cook using firewood and water is sourced from smaller rivers or dams. Their houses are made from wood, grass and mud and typically have only two rooms. "I'm educated and I work for this organisation. But when I am at home, we live in a very traditional fashion", he says, and gives me the recipe of a "delicious" porridge made from grains from the market and milk from the local cattle. He welcomes some aspects of the modern world, but it does have its complications. Once the children are educated they sometimes leave the community for a more modern life in the city. "We can't prevent that, but this is the main weakness of education. Once you are educated there are no guarantees that you will remain in your original home. "So we are now trying to work on the tradition, customs and taboos, to make sure that we nurture our kids, so that whenever they get an education, they come back as teachers at our local school, or doctors in our local hospital or involved in the development." Loure has become an inspiration for how the Maasai can combine the new and the old. "I've become a model in my village and people are now learning a lot from me because I have cattle and I live in the village. So they have started to realise that the combination of both education and culture can really be possible." The picture of him among his goats is not just a pose. They are his herd which he leads to their pastures and takes care of himself, at the weekends, when he is not working. "I love it and I have a big passion for my goats and cows. They are almost like pets to me." The communal lifestyle The 4,300 people in his village have a strong sense of community. There is an area for schools and other training centres, smaller shops and traders. He says it is in the interest of the entire village to look after them: "Ninety percent of the land is owned by the community and everybody is the watchdog of those areas to make sure that no one can come and misuse that land, for it belongs to all of us." This arrangement prevents individuals from selling off the land for commercial use, for no one person has the right to make such decision. The Maasai are traditionally a semi-nomadic people. Apart from cattle rearing, the community gets a minor revenue stream from a small amount of tourism and a carbon credit scheme. Loure says it is important for the community to source all their income sustainably. When asked how they go about ensuring sustainable grazing in practice, he says mobility is the key strategy to sustainable livestock herding. "We make an annual calendar for how we are going to use the land for the coming year, and we then make sure that everyone understands it." The calendar shows exactly when, where and how to move the herds between the different areas. "This is because when you move, you allow grass to grow back in one particular area. You also avoid soil erosion, because if too many cattle are grazing in one point it will affect the soil and the grass." He says that although marginalised, in some ways the Maasai are in a good position, because Tanzania needs them. "Tourism comes to this country for two main things: apart from nature and wildlife they also come because of the Maasai culture. This puts us in a position where we feel that our culture is unique and very strong, and we are very proud." This, he adds, can be used as leverage for his work. "We are trying to use our tourism and connect this to advocacy programmes for pastoralists." Inspiring other indigenous peoples fight for communal rights As successful as he has been, Loure's work does not end with his community. Others face similar threats and his organisation, along with national and international partners, is now looking to replicate the CCRO model throughout Tanzania, with communal grazing lands of nearly 700,000 acres slated for titling in the next year or two. Loure says it will be tough, as they lack both human and financial resources. Yet his drive, passion and determination are far from depleted. "The plan is to work as hard as we can to secure land rights for all the 76 communities in the northern part of the country, but we still have a long way to go." Perhaps his work can set a precedent for land rights for other indigenous communities, or at the very least inspire new avenues of advocacy. As one of the Goldman Prize winners this year, Loure is about to set off on a 10-day tour of San Francisco and Washington as we speak. There, he will attend an awards ceremony, presentations, news conferences and meetings with political, public policy and environmental leaders. He is thrilled about the trip and hopes to be able to exchange ideas with other campaigners: "I think it is a good opportunity for me to meet a lot of people and try to share our good practice on the ground at home, and really to try to influence different indigenous peoples in the world to deal with issues of land grabbing, and to make sure that they understand that conservation can't only be done with protected areas, but also on a community level." Sophie Morlin-Yron is a freelance journalist based in London. For more examples of her work, visit her website. Also on The Ecologist The Goldman Environmental Prize supports individuals struggling to win environmental victories against the odds and inspires ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the world. The Goldman Environmental Prize was created in 1989 by civic leaders and philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his wife, Rhoda H. Goldman. Winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals. "Cataracts in birds is a problem", Mousseau said. "A death sentence." Mental retardation has been found among children exposed to radiation in utero. Mousseau and colleagues discovered the same pattern in the birds they studied. "Birds already have small brains, so a smaller brain size is a definite disadvantage", he said. Almost 40% of male birds examined were sterile There were also just fewer animals in general. "There were many fewer mammals, birds and insects in areas of higher radiation", Mousseau said. And they had their hunch as to why. He and his colleagues extracted sperm from the male birds they caught and were shocked to find that "up to 40% of male birds in the radiologically hottest areas were sterile." The birds' sperm were either deformed or dead. None would be able to reproduce. The discovery, he said, was "not at all surprising. These are the levels of radiation known to influence reproduction. At the same time, there is no safe level of radiation below which there aren't detectable effects." Fewer birds have already been observed in the contaminated areas around Fukushima, said Mousseau. "Although it's too early to assess the long term impact on abundance and diversity around Fukushima, there are very few butterflies and many birds have declined in the more contaminated areas. If abundance is compressed, biodiversity will follow." Five years into the still on-going Fukushima disaster, Mousseau's research continues to uncover "a dramatic reduction in the number of birds and numbers of species in areas of high radiation", he said. At least in that region, Japan could be headed toward a Silent Spring. No doubt that Fukushima and Chernobyl are causing genetic damage The consequences of radiation exposure, says Mousseau, "will have a tremendous impact on the quality of life of these animals, and the length of quality of life. It need not necessarily be cancers", that cause these damages he said. "There is no doubt that the levels of radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima generate genetic damage." A study by Mousseau et al. that did get some attention, most notably from the Smithsonian Institution, found disturbing changes in the decomposition of organic matter in the Chernobyl Zone. Fungi and other microorganisms are decomposing at half the usual rate. Trees fall but rot unusually slowly. Leaf matter piles up without much decay, creating a tinder-box risk in the event of forest fires, several of which have occurred in the Zone. "There is an accumulation of highly radioactive organic matter" in these areas, Mousseau said. All of this could be lofted into the air during a forest fire and redistributed as radiological contamination elsewhere, he points out. Indeed, a map in an April 2006 edition of National Geographic Magazine, shows that this has already happened, expanding the Chernobyl Zone from its original 30km radius. "High-altitude winds swept radioactive smoke and ash across a wider area, which scientists traced from soil levels of cesium 137, a long-lived isotope," read the map's caption. Major forest fires in the Chernobyl Zone in 2010 and 2015 have likely worsened the situation. While the radiation spread by Chernobyl fell mostly on land, where it is easier to study the medical effects on humans and animals, the initial Fukushima radioactive plume blew mainly out to sea. And since 2011 when the accident began, further dumping of radioactive water into the Pacific has occurred. A responsibility to protect the environment and wildlife, not just man This has led to speculation - and some unscientific and alarmist rumors - that sea life in the Pacific is collapsing due to the Fukushima radiation. "Catastrophic marine events started 40-50 years ago", Mousseau points out. "Bird populations in the Pacific were in decline long before Fukushima." One important cause, says Mousseau, is "plastics in the environment that are consumed by marine animals which were in downward spirals long before the Fukushima accident." Marine population decline has likely also been "compounded by climate change", he says. Indeed, Mousseau, who grew up on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, remembers the local harbor encrusted with star fish when he was a child. Recently, when he took his son there, he found none. Fukushima cannot necessarily be blamed, as some would wish, but the compounding and potentially synergistic effect of radiation in the Pacific could still be taking its toll, Mousseau avowed. "We don't know how different environmental stresses interact with each other", he said. "They could be synergistic and related. There is almost no research on this even in the Pacific off Fukushima - virtually nothing on the biological consequences in really contaminated areas." With "little real science" to rely on, Mousseau says, "we will never know" just how much marine damage the Fukushima disaster may do. He finds the continued lack of other independent animal studies in radioactive zones frustrating. "We have a responsibility to protect the environment and wildlife, not just man", he said. It may be expensive and difficult to conduct these kinds of studies, but, says Mousseau, "that is not an excuse." Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a Takoma Park, MD environmental advocacy group. The paper: 'Highly reduced mass loss rates and increased litter layer in radioactively contaminated areas' is by Timothy A. Mousseau, Gennadi Milinevsky, Jane Kenney-Hunt & Anders Pape Mller, and is published in Global Change Ecology. Full version as PDF. Nuclear fall-out, like carbon dioxide and other climate-changing greenhouse gases, does not respect national borders. On 26th April 1986 an explosion at the Chernobyl power plant, in Ukraine but only a few kilometres from the southern border of Belarus, sent clouds of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. It's estimated that as much as 70% of the fall-out from what rates as the world's worst nuclear accident fell on Belarus, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Now, 30 years later, Belarus itself is going nuclear - building its own huge 2,400 MW nuclear power plant at Ostrovets in the north-west of the country, close to the border with Lithuania. The first power unit at Ostrovets is due to start operations in late 2018. More than 6,000 people are working at the kilometre-square site, building cooling towers and giant containment vessels which will enclose the nuclear reactor at the heart of the plant. Nina Rybik, who was born in the southern Belarus village of Ulusy, a few kilometres from the Chernobyl plant, remembers the time before the accident well. And through a strange twist of fate, she now finds herself working equally close to the new plant at Ostrovets. Her mother died a few years ago; her father lives with her. "My children and I had already moved away from the area, but my parents had to leave soon after the explosion, and could not go back there to live", she recalls. "Now we are allowed to go there only once a year, to visit our ancestors' graves. Our old house is falling down, our lands are useless now. It is all so sad." 'Going critical' in 2018 Nuclear power enthusiasts say building plants like Ostrovets is a safe way of securing energy supplies without causing a further build-up of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Vladimir Gorin, deputy chief engineer at the plant, told one of the first media groups to visit that, while the reactor at Chernobyl had no outer containment shell, Ostrovets will have a double wall made of thick steel and concrete. Officials say the whole containment structure will be further secured by large quantities of iron bands. "Our design and construction methods are among the safest in the world", said Gorin. "We follow all international standards and checks at every stage of building. We are proud to have such a plant in Belarus." But opponents insist that no matter how strict the safety regulations, catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl are always possible. They also say the whole issue of storing nuclear waste - radioactive for generations - has still not been tackled, and that the costs of nuclear power are spiralling out of control. Raenisha Williams of Rocky Mount was crowned Miss Pigg River 2016 at the pageant recently at the Pigg River Community Center. She also received awards for creative expression and casual wear. Williams is the daughter of Audrey Patterson of Rocky Mount and Elvira Ring of Waynesboro. She is a senior at Franklin County High School and plans to attend Radford University to become a nurse. Leah Cardwell of Roanoke was selected as Miss Pre-Teen Pigg River. Cardwell also received awards in creative expression, casual wear and self photogenic. She is the daughter of Claire Cardwell. Jayla Bond of Roanoke was named Petite Miss Pigg River. Bond also received awards for creative expression, casual wear and self photogenic. She is the daughter of Carla Edmonds. Little Miss Pigg River is Aerianna Payne, daughter of Randy and Renea Payne of Roanoke. Payne also received awards in creative expression and casual wear. Beautiful Baby Miss Pigg River is Asiyah Tucker, daughter of Odessa Tucker of Roanoke. The theme of this years pageant was Spring Fling Fun. It is our mission to build self-esteem, character, confidence and leadership, said Luci Cobbs Thomas, pageant coordinator. Helping young women and young girls grow to their full potential is our way of making a positive difference in the world. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dream. The pageant showcases girls from Franklin, Henry and Roanoke counties. This years pageant consisted of 12 contestants who were judged for their charm, poise and talent exemplified in the categories of creative expression, casual wear and self photogenic, Thomas said. Other winners in each division include: Miss Pigg River: First runner-up and self photogenic, Kazia Crump, daughter of Tasha Crump and Charles Tinsley of Rocky Mount. Petite Miss Pigg River: First runner-up, MyJera Wright, daughter of Mekia Hodges of Roanoke. Little Miss Pigg River: First runner-up and self photogenic, Aniyah Holland, daughter of Shanel Sayles and Travis Holland of Roanoke; second runner-up, Jaylah Tyree, daughter of Crystal Tyree of Rocky Mount. Prizes for the winners of the pageant include scholarships, crowns, sashes and more. The winner of the Miss division will also receive an in-kind scholarship of $250 from Patrick Henry Community College and a 90-day free membership to the Franklin County Family YMCA. Were very proud of our girls and we look forward to the continued support from family, friends and the Pigg River Community Committee, Thomas said. Miss Pigg River 2015 was Tatiyanna Harper of Rocky Mount, the daughter of Nelson Harper and Terry Trotter. As the Virginia Department of Educations investigation into Franklin Countys special education programs enters its seventh month, parents say theyre frustrated with the pace and curious about what state officials have found. The investigation was prompted by a binder full of complaints that a group of parents shared with Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin. The education department told the school district in September it planned investigate and interviewed parents and staff last fall. Virginia Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle said Thursday the investigation is in its final stages and a report would be issued soon, possibly "within the next few weeks." A number of factors have contributed to the length of the investigation, Pyle said. There were delays caused by weather and the need for education department staff to assist legislators during the General Assembly session. State special education staff have been involved in crafting new regulations regarding schools' use of seclusion and restraints at the request of the Board of Education, and that also caused delays, he said. Pyle said he appreciated parents' patience. "There's just a number of factors that have resulted in this taking longer than any of us would want it to take," Pyle said. "We're certainly aware that there's a lot of interest in this and folks are eager to see what the department has found. We certainly want to publish the report, and we're very close." Parents said they thought the investigation would move more quickly and wished the education department would share more about how the investigation is progressing. Tiffany Miller, a parent who was interviewed by investigators, said that if the education department was overwhelmed by the response it received from parents and needed more time to complete the investigation, she would like them to just say so. We are concerned because time is ticking, she said. Another year has come and gone. Miller said she worries the education departments investigation will be another dead end. Talking with investigators was just one of many steps Millers family has taken. Theyve also addressed the school board, paid for an independent educational evaluation, hired an attorney and filed a formal complaint. Nothing that we do gets us anywhere, so were pretty much to the point of thinking that its just best to privately pay for services ourselves than to fight the schools to provide services, she said. At first, Miller said, the investigation gave her hope. But now, thats fading. I was very excited when I found out that the Department of Education was investigating Franklin County schools but now with the lack of communication and the amount of time, I dont feel like anything will be done. Robin Mays, an advocate and parent who pulled her daughter out of the school system several years ago, said many parents have expressed concern about whether the report will yield any changes, and that its difficult to keep parents encouraged. Many of the parents who spoke to investigators have been frustrated with the school system for years, Mays said, and that frustration peaked around mid-March when they hadnt heard anything about the investigation. She said theyre starting to look at what the next steps might be, perhaps on a federal level, in the event that this investigation doesnt satisfy their childrens needs. But Mays said she still hopes that things will change for the better as a result of the investigation. We dont expect miracles, but we would like to at least see a little effort, she said. Another parent, Dawn Rorrer, said she decided to wait on going through the process of filing a formal complaint because shed hoped the investigation would improve the situation. Now that the school year has almost gone by, Rorrer said, shes realized that might have been a bad idea. Theres a yearlong window for parents to report potential special education policy violations. Some of the incidents Rorrers daughter experienced are outside of that window now, meaning the time has passed for her to file a complaint and have the incidents investigated individually. We cant file complaints anymore because January was our year up, so thats where the frustration is, she said. In addition to their frustrations with the state, parents continue to be upset with the school district because they believe administrators do not want to hear their concerns. They thought theyd have an opportunity to share issues with county Superintendent Mark Church earlier this month at a meeting advertised by the district as an opportunity for Church to gather input from the community on issues concerning our schools, including the characteristics desired in a new high school principal, according to a post on the districts Facebook page thats since been removed. At the meeting though, Church ran through a number of topics he would not talk about: Know that I am not able to discuss personnel issues, any ongoing investigation, any correspondence that I may or may not have had with my school board. He then asked parents who wanted to share concerns that were not related to the hiring of a new principal at the high school to write their concerns down and submit them. Church said he would follow up on the concerns if necessary. A handful of parents came to the meeting with the intention of raising concerns about special education, and also other topics like bullying. Since conversation was limited, the meeting wrapped up quickly. It was slated to begin at 6 p.m. and was over by 6:06 p.m. Church did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Writer Sara Gregory contributed to this report. SHARE By Laura Acchiardo, laura.acchiardo@thegleaner.com At the Henderson City Commission meeting on Tuesday night, commissioners will hear a report on a zoning amendment for indoor shooting or firing ranges. City commissioners meet at 5:30 p.m. in the third floor assembly room at the municipal center, 222 First St. The city's zoning ordinances do not address indoor ranges or other indoor recreational uses. City Manager Russell Sights will recommend the Henderson City-County Planning Commission review ordinances and amend zoning classifications to address indoor ranges. He will recommend to allow and indoor shooting range as a conditional use granted by the Board of Zoning Adjustment. If the issue is taken before the planning commission, they will prepare an amendment and hold a public hearing. In other business: Agency Funding Requests: City commission will hold a public hearing to receive comments regarding possible funding of outside organizations and agencies for the fiscal year ending July 1. The Agency Funding Ad Hoc Committee reviewed funding requests considering the financial need of each organization, the public service the organization provides and how much those services would cost the city if the organization didn't exist. All agencies have an opportunity to appeal the recommendations of the committee. Agencies have been notified of the appeal opportunity and have until noon on Tuesday to appeal. Municipal Aid: City commissioners will consider approving a Municipal Aid Cooperative Agreement between the city of Owensboro, Daviess County and the city of Henderson. The cooperative would be for emergencies and disasters where each participating party will provide mutual aid and assistance to other parties. The agreement for the coordination of, communications for, training for, response to and standby for planned events and emergency responses within Kentucky. War Memorial: Ken Christopher representing the Henderson War Memorial Foundation will request a renewal of city funding. The foundation plans to erect a bronze statue of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, a Henderson native who was commander-in-chief of the Navy's Pacific Fleet when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The requested amount of $20,000 had previously been allotted to the Kimmel Statue Project, but funds had not been accessed because planning had not been completed. Trick-or-treat, walk Ed Stone's Haunted Halls and more this week in SE Iowa Your guide to getting off the couch and out the door this week in Southeast Iowa. Lil Kim says she may be pregnant, but she is not going to be any less hardcore, even if her If reports are to be believed, all is not well between Prince William and Prince Harry. Even now. Following the Faster loading time (lower bounce rates from) A faster loading ensures that your site visitors don't leave your site when it starts to load for too long. Guaranteed dedicated resources Bandwidth, memory, CPU power, storage of up to 200 GB SSD Storage, NVMe. Privacy and control (server admin) You will get total control over digital assets, databases, customer information, and files with no ovhcloud control panel. Easier scalability You will able to increase your resources as often as you want easily. Dedicated IP address Our VPS services will ensure that you get IPv4 and IPv6 for a reasonable fee. 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Clinton projected herself as an extension of President Barack Obama during an afternoon rally at the University of Bridgeport, where the former secretary of state pledged to defend the Affordable Care Act and carry the torch on gun control reform. The Democratic frontrunner is zeroing-in on the cities where polling shows Clinton enjoys decisive advantage over Bernie Sanders among black and Latino voters ahead of Tuesdays presidential primary in the state. Im going to do everything I can to make sure Americas best years are ahead of us, Clinton told more than 1,000 supporters in the universitys gym. You should feel that your country has your back. Clinton riffered Sanders early and often, with pledges to support the $15 hourly minimum wage and to stand up for Main Street interests just hours before her populist rival was scheduled to rally supporters on the New Haven Green. For goodness sakes, lets raise the minimum wage, Clinton said. I will work to hold Wall Street and anybody else accountable. From Bridgeport, Clinton will make her way to Stamford for a private fundraiser at the Loading Dock, where more than 300 supporters are expected, including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn. The Clintons are hoping the third time will be the charm in contested primaries in the state where they met at Yale Law students. In 2008, Hillary Clinton lost Connecticut to Barack Obama. In 1992, the state favored Jerry Brown over Bill Clinton. The Clinton legacy from Bill has really been a proponent for the minority community, said Mikyle Vaughn, a University of Bridgeport graduate from West Haven. In Bridgeport, Clinton was joined by U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, as well as state Rep. Charlie Stallworth, D-Bridgeport. Conspicuously absent from list of scheduled speakers was Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, a Democrat who applauded Clinton from a perch on a media riser. Ganim was spotted Saturday backstage at a city rally for Trump, where the mayor greeted the Republican presidential frontrunner. Ganim and Trump go way back to when the two partnered on a casino development that was foiled on Bridgeports waterfront two decades ago. Ganim attended Trumps wedding to Melania Trump. NORWALK Young African-Americans stoop to carry luggage for well-dressed white passengers of a Mississippi River steamboat that lies docked in the background. The scene is from Mark Twains 1883 book Life on the Mississippi. The image, titled Steamboat Days on the Mississippi, was created by local artist Justin C. Gruelle in 1937 under the Depression-era Works Progress Administration and hangs on a second-floor wall of Norwalk City Hall in 2016. For some, the image of Old Dixie doesnt belong in the halls of local democracy 153 years after black slaves were declared free under the Emancipation Proclamation. My office and the mayors office received complaints about the mural, said Adam D. Bovilsky, the citys director of human relations and fair rent. From time to time, over a number of years, every once and a while someone might comment on the mural, but the current complaints that came in were from folks who really wanted to see a change and not just discuss the matter. Bovilsky, in an email to those whove indicated an interested in the mural, wrote that Mayor Harry W. Rilling has referred the matter to the Norwalk Human Relations Commission for an advisory opinion. The commission has scheduled a public hearing on the mural for April 28 at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall in a room to be announced as the date nears. Members of the public are invited to attend and will be permitted to provide brief statements to the Commission regarding the mural, Bovilsky wrote. Written submissions will be accepted up to the date of the hearing. Meanwhile, City Hall visitors have been invited to think about Steamboat Days on the Mississippi as they view the mural. Interpretive fliers placed inside a rack alongside the mural ask viewers a number of questions: What do you see in this illustration of one of Mark Twains books, Life on the Mississippi? What is the setting? How are the people depicted? How is the scene organized? What draws your attention? Describe your reaction to this work of art. Why might this painting be offensive to some members of our community? The flier includes a section titled The Story Behind the Painting. Twains book, it explains, was based on a series of articles that he wrote for Atlantic magazine between January and July 1875. The stories described his experiences as an apprentice steamboat pilot on Southern trade in the late 1850s before Civil War. According to Professor Stephen Railton, Twains narrative was rooted in nostalgia for the riverboats days of glory and almost completely ignores the role slavery played in steamboating. Bovilsky is withholding his assessment of the mural until the commission weighs in. In cases like this, we have a lot of different, competing interests, but I dont want to publicly comment too widely prior to the commission rendering its advisory opinion, Bovilsky said. NORWALK A Cheshire man with an extensive criminal history dating back to 2007 found himself in police custody once again after he allegedly became combative with officers following a one-vehicle accident in which he was reportedly the driver. Police said that on Saturday, April 23 at 6:30 a.m. they were called to the area of West Rocks Road and Wenbos Gate, where a motor vehicle had reportedly crashed into a tree. The driver of the vehicle, identified by police as 33-year-old Kevin Crosley, who lists his address as the Cheshire Correctional Institution, reportedly told police that he didnt know how the accident occurred. Police said that Crosley did not have the proper vehicle and licensing paperwork. When EMS personnel arrived on scene, police said that Crosley became agitated and combative. He allegedly failed to comply with officers commands and attempted to re-enter his car. Police said that he began to fight with officers and was taken to the ground and handcuffed. Crosley was charged with interfering with an officer, driving with no insurance, failure to drive in proper lane, failure to carry registration/insurance card, and operating a motor vehicle with registration/license suspended or revoked. He was issued a $2,500 bond and given a court date of May 3. This alleged incident is not the first time that Crosley has been charged with interfering with an officer, according to Connecticut Judicial Branch records. He pleaded guilty to that charge in 2007 and was sentenced to six months in jail. On October, 3, 2012 he pleaded guilty to interfering with an officer, assault on a public safety officer and second-degree assault in a July 2011 arrest. He was sentenced to six months in jail on those charges. In Crosleys latest conviction, he pleaded guilty to interfering with a police officer and possession of narcotics in an October 2014 arrest. He was sentenced to 15 months of jail on March 16, 2015. In addition to the current charges, Crosley has pending charges in Norwalk Superior Court. He was charged on March 3, 2016 with possession of a controlled substance, possession of narcotics within 1,500 feet of a school, sale of certain illegal drugs and possession of less than one-half ounce of marijuana. STAMFORD Firefighters extinguished a house fire on Webb Avenue in the Cove section of the city on Sunday. No one was injured and the owner was not home when the fire was reported, Stamford Deputy Fire Chief Eric Lorenz said. WILTON When Wilton finally welcomed a Syrian refugee family of six into its borders back in March, it had appeared like all the hard work had been done. The emigrating family had undergone extensive vetting by the U.S. government, the Wilton Interfaith Action Committee (Wi-ACT) had been trained scrupulously for months by the Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) and Wilton volunteers had put into place living and working arrangements in preparation for the familys arrival. Yet a month after the family landed at JFK International airport, residents are still putting forth their best efforts to support the family. Wilton philanthropists David and Tair Hollander are using the prestige of their company, Dampits International, Inc., to rope in some of Connecticuts finest musicians for a benefit concert to bolster the funds for the newly relocated family. For a special event like this, I think that music is what we need to raise the money that this family needs, said Suzanne Sahlin, who will be playing the viola alongside her husband Gunnar Sahlin on the cello. Music is a universal language that anyone can hear and understand, which is particularly fitting for this event. David Hollander pointed to the success of the Stop Hunger Now charity concert, which was held earlier in the year, as the reason why he chose to hold another concert to benefit the Syrian family. Music speaks to the heart, and music like this makes us more empathetic and more feeling, so Id argue that its the perfect way to raise money for this family, said David Hollander. David Hollander, who is a noted pianist himself, will appear along with the Sahlins and renowned violinists Nina Crothers and Corinne Metter to combine their talents in recreating Antonin Dvoaks Piano Quintet and Johannes Brahms E Flat Viola Sonata. As for his choice of compositions, David Hollander said that home played an important role in their growth as artists for renowned composers Dvoak and Brahms, therefore these pieces mesh perfectly with the underlying purpose of the concert. When Dvoak came to the United States and played his New World Symphony, everyone loved him and they begged him to stay. But, he desperately wanted to go home again. It was so important for him to always go home again to Bohemia, said David Hollander. Then theres Brahms, whose upbringing in the so-called Hamburg slums is said to have affected him so deeply that he never had the feeling like he had a home, which in turn informed his music. It is their complicated relationships with the idea of what home is that makes the music of Brahms and Dvoak perfectly applicable to the situation of the Syrian refugee family. Not only will the concert provide food for the familys soul, but it could also go a long way towards providing an actual means of sustenance for the family. Wi-ACT Treasurer Don Weber estimated that previous charity concerts like this one have raised anywhere from several hundreds of dollars all the way up to a couple thousand dollars. Regardless of how much money is raised, Weber said that the efforts will be much appreciated. Its really important to have the community involved in this, and at every turn, the community has proven itself up to the challenge, said Weber. The concert is set to take place this Sunday, April 24 at the St. Matthews Episcopal Church. The event will begin at 3 p.m., and will last for roughly two hours. Tickets cost $10, and they can be bought at the door. Further donations will be accepted at the event as well. All proceeds will go directly to supporting Wiltons newest Syrian refugee family. Rolland F. Spath, 88, of Grand Island, died on Thursday, April 21, 2016. To honor Rollands wishes, cremation has taken place. A memorial service and inurnment will be at a later date with military honors provided by the U.S. Army and Grand Island Veterans Honor Guard. All Faiths Funeral Home is serving the family. Rolland was born Oct. 3, 1927, at Plainview to Ferdinand and Frances (Schmidt) Spath. He grew up in Gordon, was baptized at the Methodist Church in Gordon and graduated with the Gordon High School Class of 1945. He entered the U.S. Army on Feb. 13, 1946, and was honorably discharged Sept. 1, 1947. Following his discharge, Rolland graduated from Grand Island Business College with a business degree. He was then employed with American Crystal Sugar Co. in Grand Island and for a time he worked at the Ordnance Plant. Rolland was united in marriage to Jacqueline Whitt on July 8, 1950. Rolland also worked union jobs as a construction carpenter and he was a member of the Carpenters Union. Over the years the couple made their home in Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and back to Grand Island. Rolland loved to go to the racetracks and was the owner and trainer of Mystery Miss, who won her first race at Ak-Sar-Ben. Those left to cherish his memory include his wife, Jacqueline; sisters, Doris Bieck of Giltner and Judy Topham of Princeton, Ill.; sisters-in-law, Dixie White of Grand Island and Nikki (Dale) Brunz of Escondido, Calif.; and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents; brother, Loren Spath; and sisters, Helen Bell and Jill Cameron. Memorials are suggested to the family to be designated at a later date. Online condolences may be left at www.giallfaiths.com. The lucky citizens of Grand Island are the proud owners of a golden goose that produces the many eggs of gold that are required for a progressive, growing community to continue to enjoy on that particular path. On occasion this goose needs to be fed, and May 10 is feeding day. So the good people of Grand Island have a choice to make feed the goose or chop its head off. Feeding the goose, voting for the food and beverage tax will ensure that many more eggs of gold will be forthcoming. Chop the head off, voting against the food and beverage tax, means no more eggs of gold, and of course this goose ceases to exist and there will be a lot less fun and games for the good citizens of Grand Island to enjoy. Your choice feed or chop as for me, I will be feeding the goose. In 2013 Pixar Animation Studios produced a 3D computer-animated comedy titled Monsters University. The release of this commercially and critically successful movie by Walt Disney Pictures was accompanied by a website (monstersuniversity.com). Although obviously fake, that website contained all the typical features of a higher education institution, including links to Academics, Admission, Campus Life, etc. It was the perfect parody of the typical website of a college or university. Last month the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had arrested numerous people on charges that they had recruited students through the promise of fraudulently obtained visas. This was done thanks to a sting operation in which federal agents created a completely fake university under the name University of Northern New Jersey. Some of the federal agents posed as representatives of this bogus university to trap scam recruiters. Among the most daring features of this operation was to have the secretary of higher education of New Jersey to recognize the university and have it accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges. Knowing that most people get information about colleges and universities through the internet, the feds set up an elaborate social-media presence, including an extensive website whose links were taken down once the sting operation was announced. They also set up the typical features you would expect from a university: a mascot the badgers, a Latin motto, Humanus, Scientia, Integritas, a Facebook page whose chat was led by its made-up president Dr. Steven Brunetti, pictures portraying happy students, images of the campus Dunkin Donuts coffee shop and even personal announcements about the death of a relative of a Prof. Turgeson, passing along the condolences he (or she) received. Obviously the feds had some sense of humor by naming the mascot the badgers, by including the word Integritas (integrity) in their motto, and by naming one of their professors as Prof. Turgeson, (derived from Furd Tug, an insult referring to a person who excessively tugs on turds). On the website was an invitation to prospective students to enroll or talk to fraudulent recruiters. There was even information on how to become a recruiter for the university. This sting operation led to the arrest of 21 people on charges of conspiring to provide more than 1,000 foreign students fraudulently obtained foreign worker and student visas through this fake university. This bogus institution was used as a cover to entice recruiters who took kickbacks for enrolling foreign nationals there, which is a form of visa fraud, and harboring them for profit, both federal felonies. In a different operation five years ago, the feds raided what was called Tri-Valley University for cashing tuition checks and admitting foreign students on visas, but not requiring class attendance. This leads us to another example of a fake university: Trump University. It was established in 2005 by the current Republican frontrunner and has been widely mentioned by Trump challengers and the media because it faces fraud lawsuits from former students and the New York Attorney General. According to documents filed by the plaintiffs, students were told (falsely) that the faculty had been hand picked by Trump himself. They were pressed into paying $35,000 for future three-day retreats that promised to offer an inside look at Trumps business techniques. Yet, the seminar had nothing to do with any original course materials (most were lifted from other sources on the internet) nor provided business start-up support to the students. University personnel did, according to the complaints, only continue to try to lure the students into buying more seminars. Complaints like this prompted New Yorks attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, to sue Trumps for-profit company in 2013, asserting it had intentionally misled over 5,000 students into paying up to $35,000 each for seminars and mentorship programs. Because Trump University did not qualify for federal financial aid, students paid their tuition out of their own pockets. "Trump University" was renamed the "Trump Entrepreneur Initiative" following a court ruling that declared it an unlicensed educational institution, and finally went out of business. Trump himself faces two class-action civil lawsuits in California related to the fake school. Unfortunately, there is a long history of institutions in this country pretending to be universities, but that are actually training schools for very few and narrow fields, mostly in business. At some point even corporations began naming their training schools as universities, as is the case with Burger King University. The problem here is several-fold. One is that the use of the term university is largely unregulated and even when regulation exists state or federal authorities only step in when formal complaints of fraud are filed. Another is that the term university gives a sense of respectability and, therefore, can be abused. In most countries the term can only be used after approval from the government following strict rules. Finally, because of the possibilities offered by the internet, anyone can make a university appear to be real or much better than it actually is. The solution to this complex problem has to come from several fronts. One is for both state and federal officials to take a more proactive role in overseeing any institution that calls itself a university or college. In general, no new legislation is needed given that fraud and consumer protection statutes are already on the books. As mentioned in this very column a few weeks ago, the feds have failed at providing easy-to-access, strict measurements of the effectiveness of institutions of higher education. Still, that should not prevent them from being more hands-on in pointing out bogus schools from real ones. Finally, the general public should become aware of these scams by educating themselves not to rely upon slick websites that can be deceiving, but to check out their promises with sources associated with real colleges and universities who will be able to smell a rat in academic disguise. Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. is a writer and college professor with leadership experience in higher education. He can be contacted through his website at: http://www.aromerojr.net. The relocation of the Prairie Farms headquarters from Carlinville to Edwardsville took an important step Tuesday. At the recent City Council meeting, Edwardsville aldermen approved the expansion of the enterprise zone to accommodate the move of Prairie Farms. Prairie Farms has expressed interest in moving to Edwardsville, and one of the prerequisites is having the enterprise zone available, City Economic Development Director Walt Williams said. The new $9 million, three-story headquarters would be located in the Edwardsville Corporate Center, located to the east of Interstate 55. Scott Credit Union and Hortica Insurance are currently located there. An additional 6.410 acres is being sought for the move in the original Gateway Enterprise Zone. Its a really small amount, Williams said. Once the move is complete, there will be the creation of 90 to 100 professional jobs, according to Williams. Prairie Farms represents over 700 farm families and is one of the largest farmer-owned dairy cooperatives in the Midwest. Annual sales near $3 billion for the company that employs 5,700 and has 36 manufacturing plants. Prairie Farms was founded in 1938. Pontoon Beach and Madison County have already approved the resolutions for the expansion. The project is estimated to take 18 months. In other business, the aldermen approved a $6,000 tourism fund request for the upcoming Edwardsville Art Fair. The Art Fair will take place Sept. 23-25 in City Park. If the weather is bad, it will be housed inside the Edwardsville High School gymnasium. Last year, there were 68 artists, including several high schools, for the event. Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Illinois were all represented. There were 32 hotel room nights generated, according to the application. Those numbers are expected to rise this year. They are expecting over 100 artists and more overnight stays, Alderman Art Risavy said. Based on those numbers and the expectations, we thought the additional amount was in line. The Edwardsville Art Fair was approved for a $5,000 tourism fund request last year. Details from the burglary charges of two Missouri men for the alleged January robbery of Hudson Jewelers have emerged. In an affidavit by Edwardsville Police Det. Jacob Germann, the events leading up to the charges for Wayne M. Collins, 21, and Alex D. Taylor, 18, are provided. Germann filed a search warrant for Taylors HTC cell phone. On Jan. 6, a smash and grab robbery occurred at approximately 6:15 a.m. at Hudson Jewelers in Edwardsville Crossing. Only jewelry was taken during the robbery, according to Police Chief Jay Keeven. Collins and Taylor were charged by the Madison County States Attorney with one count each of alleged burglary on Jan. 21. According to Germanns affidavit, St. Louis County Police Det. Danny Keim contacted him about a robbery on Jan. 4 at a cell phone store. One of the stolen cell phones was sold at St. Louis Mills Mall in Hazelwood, Mo. Surveillance images from the kiosk showed two males, and one was identified as the unmasked male from the Hudson Jewelers robbery. The other used his ID to complete the sale of the cell phone, and he was later identified as Taylor. Further images showed the two leaving the mall in a black GMC Yukon. On Jan. 15, Florissant Police Det. Tony Mocca contacted Germann that Talor was in custody and a bag of jewelry was found. Taylor allegedly claimed the jewelry was obtained from Collins. In an interview with William D. Harlston, who was taken into custody by Florissant Police with Taylor, Germann said he identified both Taylor and Collins through the images from Hudson Jewelers. He also recalled a conversation with Taylor and Collins about the robbery, according to police. Taylor denied his involvement and said he had never been to Edwardsville. Germann confirmed one of the three cell phone numbers Taylor gave was his, and phone records can track the movements. A man police described as a transient has been charged with disturbing the peace and criminal trespass to private property for an incident that happened Sunday evening near Livingston. Deputies arrested 40-year-old James F. Lopes after he reportedly became verbally aggressive with people on the parking lot of a business and refused to leave, Madison County Sheriff John Lakin said at a Monday afternoon news conference at the jail. Lakin said that over the weekend Lopes had been moving quite freely around several communities, including Edwardsville, Collinsville and Troy. He was approaching small children, Lakin said. There have been no reports of him touching anyone, but he has been making inappropriate comments to young children. Hundreds of posts on Facebook and other social media helped law enforcement track Lopes's whereabouts the last several days. States Attorney Tom Gibbons praised those who became involved on social media. Active and engaged citizens are one of the very best tools that we in law enforcement against individuals that are operating in the community and causing alarm and concern, he said. This is a great example of how people who are engaged and willing to speak up can really get that information out to us very quickly. So far the charges against Lopes are misdemeanors though its possible they may be upgraded to felonies as the investigation unfolds. We are asking anyone who had any contact with this individual that was inappropriate or alarming to report them to their law enforcement, Gibbons said. Based on information he has received, Gibbons said he has a reasonable belief that Lopes may suffer from a severe mental illness. He will be seeking an evaluation to determine Lopes mental fitness. Lakin said that Lopes was born in South Carolina. Gibbons said he had no idea why Lopes showed up in the area recently. Lopes has no convictions on his record in Madison or St. Clair counties. He is being held without bond at the Madison County Jail. Lopes had been living in Oregon two years ago when a judge dismissed charges against him after he was accused of touching the waist of an 8-year-old girl and suggesting she pull down her shorts in a park in Portland, according a March 25, 2014 article in the Oregonian. A county judge acted less than a week after the Oregon Supreme Court said in a landmark ruling that the judge had erred when he ordered Lopes to be forced to take antipsychotic medications in an effort to make him competent for trial. The Oregonian story noted that Lopes had been held in jail or at the state mental hospital for more that 1 1/2 years. At the time, prosecutors in Oregon said they thought Lopes posed a threat to himself and others, according to the article. On Monday, Gibbons mentioned the case briefly during the press conference at the jail. Hes certainly been accused in the past, but theres no conviction on his record for that case, he said. That gives us a great deal of concern about his motivation. Well certainly be looking into that. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A total of 549 District 7 kindergarten students visited the Glen Oaks Equestrian Center in Glen Carbon on April 6 for the districts annual Barnyard Day experience. Presented through a collaboration of District 7s National FFA Organization and the kindergarten teachers, the event provides an educational field trip about agriculture for the kindergartners and also provides the FFA students with valuable experiences in their agriculture field of study. Dr. Tara Wells, District 7 Director of Elementary Education, explained during the last Edwardsville District 7 Board of Education general meeting that this year marked the ninth year for the annual Barnyard Day event. It began in 2008 as a project sponsored by District 7s national FFA organization - this year there are 73 FFA members between EHS, Liberty and Lincoln Middle schools, Wells said. Wells noted that students from 24 kindergarten classrooms in every District 7 primary building including Glen Carbon, Goshen, Hamel, Leclaire, Midway and Nelson elementary schools participated in this event. John Davin, EHS Agriculture Teacher and sponsor of the districts FFA organization, then elaborated on the inception of Barnyard Day, pointing out that his wife, a kindergarten teacher, encouraged him originally to develop a hands-on experience for students to learn about where their food comes from. The FFA students then organized the annual Barnyard Day. During the day-long event, kindergarten students enjoyed a walk through the barn where they were able to learn and interact with live animals. The kindergartners gathered around large enclosures that held some of their favorite barnyard animals and asked questions of the high school FFA students, many whom were displaying their own livestock. Two of the high schools FFA members, Monique Garrett, next years FFA reporter, and Mara Swapp, the current FFA president, talked further about the FFA members role during Barnyard Day. Garrett explained that the focus of the event was to teach the kindergartners how to care for the animals, how to feed them, how to find health-care for them, where their food comes from and the importance of every animal on the farm. FFA members are responsible for the care, health, and grooming of their personal livestock in order to prepare their animals for this event, Swapp noted. Students must prepare and practice their comments in advance of the event, and they present their information over 24 times throughout the course of the day, answering a variety of questions from the kindergarten students. To help us prepare, Mr. Davin actually came around pretending to be a kindergarten student to help us make our presentations interactive and fun for the students, Swapp added. This provides excellent practice for the public speaking requirements of the National FFA competitions and convention. Goshen Elementary kindergarten teacher Jennifer Desse explained that Barnyard Day also supports the kindergarten curriculum and provides a safe educational environment for young children to learn about agriculture in a way that they might not otherwise be able to experience. It supports our curriculum in many different ways across language arts, speaking and listening, science, health, social studies and even in math - measurement and data, comparing and contrasting, estimation - are all covered when the students are listening to the presentation and making comparisons, contrasting animal weight with their own weight, and other items like that are discussed, Desse said. Its a one-of-a-kind, hands-on learning experience. As kindergarten students walked through Glen Oaks Equestrian Center, they were able to observe, touch and ask questions about the livestock on hand. This year children were able to experience chickens, ducks, horses, a turkey, rabbit, calf, pig, goat, herding dog and an alpaca, Desse added. Barnyard Day is a highlight of the kindergarten school year, and students will be talking about this experience for weeks to come. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Adam Schwarz (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 Jakarta is again abuzz with rumors of an imminent Cabinet reshuffle, and investors and political observers are busily trying to extract meaning from the smallest of details. In an environment where shifting priorities and contradicting policies often make it difficult to determine the broader policy direction, Cabinet reshuffles can be moments of clarity. Who sits where when the music stops provides important clues to investors about future policy direction. The over-arching question on investors minds is whether President Joko Jokowi Widodos upcoming reshuffle will energize and embolden his nascent economic reform drive or rather signal that reform fatigue has set in. More particularly, eyes are keenly focused on the fate of the handful of ministers seen as the strongest proponents of economic reform. For a country still on fragile economic ground, the stakes are high. Jokowis last reshuffle took place in August 2015, and marked the start of the most ambitious economic reform program seen in Indonesia since the late 1980s and early 1990. Nine months in and 11 deregulation and economic stimulus packages later, the President has started delivering on a long overdue reform agenda aimed at removing or reducing the voluminous regulatory and licensing barriers to doing business in Indonesia. For much of the decade preceding Jokowis assumption of power in October 2014, an economic growth model overly reliant on rising commodity prices and a middle-class consumption boom undermined policymakers commitment to the hard reforms needed to keep the industrial and manufacturing sectors competitive. Economic ministries steadily lost ground to line ministries focused on protecting local interests. A raft of economic nationalist policies reduced import competition raised barriers to foreign workers, and created policy instability and investor confusion. The impact that these policies had on the underlying health of Indonesias economy became plainly and painfully clear once global commodity prices dropped and Chinas growth began to slow. Ten months into his term, Jokowi, according to his close advisors, concluded that his ambitions of ramping up GDP growth rates and addressing the countrys massive infrastructure deficit werent likely to amount to much without a frontal assault on the competition-thwarting regulatory quagmire Indonesia had sunk into in recent years. Over the past few months, Jokowi and his reformist ministers have shifted the countrys economic rhetoric to emphasize the critical need to enhance Indonesian productivity and competitiveness. They have resuscitated dormant talks on regional trade agreements abroad, and adopted a softer-touch, more market-realistic approach to regulation at home. The President has also made encouraging strides in bringing transparency and good governance to Indonesias extractives sector, which for decades has been firmly in the grip of vested interests. Since coming into office, one of Jokowis main priorities has been delivering on his campaign promise to disrupt the oil and gas mafia, courageously flushing into open the corrupt practices that have historically plagued the sector. Similarly, his focus on strengthening Indonesias maritime sovereignty has led to some much needed shock therapy being applied to the deeply entrenched and costly problem of illegal fishing. While the presidents deregulation drive has been enthusiastically received by the investor community, it is only nine months old and the momentum behind it is far from unstoppable. Unsurprisingly, the presidents reforms have attracted resistance from established political and business interests, many of which have benefitted handsomely from Indonesias recent bout of protectionism. Members of the old-guard have started to turn up the pressure on the President, calling for him to remove the more reformist-minded ministers and appoint more political party figures to the Cabinet. To heed these calls would risk jeopardizing investor confidence in Jokowis commitment to bureaucratic reform and anticorruption two principles at the heart of his campaign platform and potentially slow Indonesias economic recovery. The deregulation packages released so far by the new administration are only a drop in the proverbial ocean of problematic regulations. The President himself has identified 42,000 regulations at the central government level and 3,000 more at the regional government level that need to be adjusted or eliminated, and has said continuing the deregulation drive will remain a top priority for the remainder of his term. Beyond regulatory reform, much more needs to be done to put Indonesia on a sustainable, high-growth trajectory. Reforming a wayward judiciary, bringing more transparency and efficiency to lumbering, loss-making state-owned enterprises, and comprehensively modernizing the land-licensing system are just three examples. To effectively address these are other pressing challenges, Jokowi will need more reformers in his Cabinet, not less. *** The writer is CEO of Asia Group Advisors, a Singapore-based strategy and communications advisory firm, and author of A Nation in Waiting: Indonesias Search for Stability. --------------- We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin T. Nirarta Samadhi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 Rain began to fall last Oct. 26, putting out most of the forest and peatland fires. The Environment and Forestry Ministry has reported that 2.6 million hectares of land were burned between Feb. 1, 2015 and Oct. 28, 2015, with emissions reaching 1,100 million tons of CO2 equivalent. In the Forest Reference Emission Level ( FREL ) document, the ministry also revealed that Indonesia emitted 593 million tons of CO2 equivalent from 1990 to 2013. This figure was estimated based on deforestation, forest degradation and peat decomposition in forested areas. This figure, however, does not take into account the fires across forests and peatlands. Hence, the emissions produced in 23 years were much lower than those produced by fires in 2015 alone. Indonesia has used various references for developing its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution ( INDC ), one of which was the FREL document. However, due to time and technical constraints, the emissions data on forests and land fires were not included in the INDCs emissions calculation. Considering the high emissions produced by the fires, the INDC clearly requires a revision. But can the INDC be revised? If so, when? What are some other items that need to be reviewed? How can we assess the substance of the INDC with regard to last years Paris Agreement on climate change? Article 3 of the Paris Agreement emphasizes that the INDC structure is universal for all countries. This suggests that not only does the agreement embrace countries to commit to emission reductions, but it also has reinforced the global emissions trajectory in the long run, unlike previous climate-related agreements that never did so. For instance, Indonesia had vowed in 2009 to cut emissions by 26 percent from business-as-usual levels by 2020, but the country did not elaborate on what should be done after 2020. Other agreements also reported that reviews were conducted to meet the reduction target, but no explanation was provided on how the review was conducted. The Paris Agreement set a target to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius on pre-industrial levels. It also calls for a strengthening of efforts to limit the temperature increase further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Additionally, all countries agreed to aim for net-zero emissions post 2050. In order to meet this long-term target, countries are required to submit their Nationally Determined Contribution ( NDC ) every five years post-2020 and set more ambitious goals for every submission. Another important point is the establishment of global stock-take, a strong process for countries to regularly assess their climate actions implementation. This process is enabled by the accounting and measuring, reporting and verification ( MRV ) scheme that has been synchronized globally. All of these points distinguish the Paris Agreement and give it a promise to meet the global emission reduction target. Countries have agreed to review and increase their climate actions every five years. Apart from submitting NDCs every five years, Article 14 of the agreement states that countries should assess their climate actions implementation and take stock every five years. The first global stock-taking will be in 2023, but countries have agreed to begin the process in 2018 to review their emissions reduction and to inform their 2020 NDCs. The global stock-taking on Indonesia would definitely take into account the 2015 forest and peatland fires, which have not been addressed in the INDC; thus this will present challenges. Therefore, what Indonesia needs to do is to recount its reference emissions level carefully and transparently while redrafting stronger climate action plans. Indonesia needs to develop a solid MRV scheme to be synchronized with the global MRV scheme, as currently it doesnt have one. Financing adaptation to climate change has become part of low-carbon sustainable development, and climate risks will grow as a norm in the program and budgeting scheme of international funding organizations. Thanks to this, Indonesia could speed up improved governance on the utilization of forests, land and other resources. Such improvements would include increasing the productivity of smallholder oil palm farmers, utilizing forests for indigenous people and restoring peatland. But is Indonesias climate fund management institution ready to support this? The existing agency, the Indonesia Climate Change Trust Fund ( ICCTF ), has yet to show any capability to fund climate action plans massively. While the Finance Ministry will establish a funding agency for REDD+ ( Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks ), it is not clear when it will be established, and most importantly, it still needs to prove its capability. Another positive sign of financing adaptation comes from the energy sector. Shortly after the Paris Agreement was announced, stock prices of companies in the renewable energy sector jumped. This was a sign that financial institutions have begun to shift to a low-carbon and sustainable development. However, is Indonesia ready to adapt by reviewing the 35,000 MW electricity program currently dominated by high-emitting power plants? Adaptation plans in energy must be accelerated and strengthened to create incentives for more affordable renewable energy-based technology. The climate agreement provides sufficient time for Indonesia to prepare a solid foundation for the implementation of the NDC in 2020. Indonesian leaders should take advantage of the opportunities and the spirit of global collaboration to meet its emission reduction goals. *** The writer is the director of World Resources Institute Indonesia. The opinion expressed is personal. --------------- We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Shin Ji-hye (The Korea Herald/Asia News Network) Mon, April 25, 2016 A team from Seoul National University is set to unveil a newer and more advanced version of its autonomous car Snuber later this year, joining a global race to develop self-driving cars. Snuber is an app-based self-driving taxi that was unveiled in November and has since been used by college students as a ride-hailing service within the campus -- while also being used as a prototype for its upgraded version. Snuber has already driven more than 2,000 kilometers on the campus without an accident. We plan to unveil more upgraded version of the driverless car in the second half of this year, Seo Seung-woo, professor of Seoul National Universitys department of electrical and computer engineering, said in an interview with The Korea Herald at his office. He is also a director at the Intelligent Vehicle IT Research Center. The self-driving taxi is currently able to perform multiple tasks, such as cutting in, overtaking a car and pulling over to the shoulder in case of an emergency. It also went through a driving test on a snow-covered path in December when there was heavy snowfall in Seoul. Despite bad visibility due to the snow, Snuber was able to drive at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour, avoiding buses and cars coming from the opposite side and pedestrians crossing at the crosswalk, according to the professor. Snuber might be the first driverless car globally to undergo tests in such weather conditions considering that Googles self-driving car is normally tested out in Californias mild weather, he said. His team is currently testing Snuber at level three, but it aims to roll out a fully self-driving car, level four, in the market in five years. The vital technology for level four is artificial technology that would allow the car to think and make flexible decisions like humans do, he said. This is so tricky and the most challenging element. Lets say, a car is programmed to never violate traffic rules such as crossing the center line or stop line. The inflexible decisions can cause traffic congestion or read-end collisions, he said, adding, That said, if the car is programmed to flexibly violate traffic rules, that may also lead to car accidents. In order to reduce the dilemma, the self-driving cars should be programmed with an enormous amount of data so it can make more flexible decisions, he said. In terms of big data, Google has so far been greatly ahead of other automakers, having logged more than 3.8 million kilometers in the past six years. Seo expected Snuber would also gain more data soon by driving on highways and regular roads outside the campus as the nations traffic rules are expected to be revised this year. Hegemony in the future automotive industry is expected to shift from automakers with hardware capacity to artificial intelligence capacity, he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 ASEAN airline companies should establish a regional association to protect and ensure the safety aspects of the industry ahead of ASEAN open sky policy, Air Asia CEO Tony Fernandes has said. Tony called for an integrated institution in ASEAN to ensure the cross-border aviation safety regulation, formed either by government or ASEAN airline companies. I think there should be one integrated institution on aviation safety, he said during the 33rd anniversary of The Jakarta Post on Monday in Jakarta. The multilateral agreement is aimed at uniting ASEAN skies into a single aviation market and should liberalize the rules regarding customs and cargo to increase the flow of goods and people in the region. Indonesia has already confirmed that they will join the pact by issuing a presidential regulation last week. The scariest part is the non-tariff barrier as it will make competition increasingly tough. Regulators have to ensure the safety of the passengers and, at the same time, protect the players, Tony said. Currently there is no association of ASEAN airlines except for flag carrier airlines such as Garuda Indonesia and Malaysia Airlines. The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA), headquartered in Kuala Lumpur with 16 members, does not include low cost carriers such as Air Asia. I have talked with Tony during the discussion. The creation of an ASEAN airlines association is a good idea. It is not a cartel but a way to protect the common interests among the countries and its airlines, Garuda Indonesia President Director Arif Wibowo told thejakartapost.com. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 The airline industry expects the Southeast Asian market to become ever more important in the near future with the implementation of the ASEAN open-skies policy and economic integration, an airline executive has said. ASEANs open-skies policy removes tariffs and carriers are free to operate across the ASEAN market, Air Asia CEO Tony Fernandes said. Intra-ASEAN travel will create huge revenues for airlines as was the case in the European market. There are problems in Europe as well, bureaucracy, social systems, but every economic union has created great wealth for the countries involved, Fernandes said on Monday during a discussion staged as part of the 33rd-anniversary celebration of The Jakarta Post. Fernandez said 879 million travelers within the EU, 106 million from Europes top-six countries, contributed EUR91 billion to the GDP of the member countries. There is not much difference between ASEAN and the EU, in terms of population, Fernandes asserted. The EUs population is 508 million, served by 4,350 planes, compared with 1,600 planes in ASEAN, it is expected Europe will have 8,010 planes by 2032 and there will be 3,490 in Southeast Asia, he said. Fernandes predicted that there would be 95,000 pilots and 101,000 technicians by 2034. Garuda Indonesia expected tight competition among the regions flag carriers in the ASEAN market, with perhaps a narrower gap between full-flight services and the low-cost services in ASEAN.(dan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 The integration of ASEAN ought to be more thoroughly explained to the people of Southeast Asia in order to speed up the creation of a single-market with the potential to be as large as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), said an economist at the 33th anniversary of The Jakarta Post. Marie Elka Pangestu, an economist at University of Indonesia, who served as trade minister during the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono era, emphasized the importance of boosting regional trade in Southeast Asia as a new engine of growth amid Chinas slowdown and weakening commodity prices. We need to view ASEAN as a single market, with a total GDP of US$2.7 trillion, comprising 7 percent of world exports, and growing consumers. Right now, of the total trade value of ASEAN, 24 percent of it comes from intra-ASEAN trade, she said on Monday in Jakarta. Moreover, the regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) must be promoted more aggressively as it could signal a new era of economic cooperation. RCEP will comprise about 50 percent of the world population and 30 percent of world trade. It is almost the same with the TPP. she said. Unfortunately, according to Mari, the connectivity of ASEAN is not a part of the general consciousness of ASEAN society. Most people in Indonesia do not know about the ASEAN Economic Community. In the universities, there are no subjects dealing with ASEANs integration. In 2011, there was a presidential instruction on the issue, but later political conditions confused the issue, she said. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has successfully reduced the poverty rate among its member countries, an expert has claimed. Ong Keng Yong, executive deputy chairman of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) Singapore, commended ASEAN's efforts in poverty management during a speech at The Jakarta Posts 33rd anniversary event on Monday. The event, which gathered prominent figures from across the region for a seminar titled "Global Challenges and Regional Solutions: Engaging Stakeholders," discussed issues specifically faced by ASEAN member nations, especially in relation to the growing interconnectedness of the region since the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. "No matter how you look at it, we have done something quite important in eradicating poverty," Yong said of the region's developments. He explained that the ASEAN 6, which refers to the six original members of the Association - Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - had reduced poverty in a significant way. Meanwhile, he added, within the ASEAN 4 - Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam - the improvement rates were even greater. "People are still hungry, but people are not dying of hunger," Yong said. Many people now earn more money and no longer live below the global poverty line, which is set a US$1.25 per day by the World Bank. Further, in its path to the ASEAN 2025 Vision, Yong believes the region will continue to progress in eradicating poverty. In terms of womens development and the protection of children and other vulnerable groups, ASEAN society has also seen progress, he added. Along with the reduction of poverty and the empowerment of women, Yong expressed the hope that healthcare and the protection of children would also be tackled. On this note, he emphasized the importance of leadership in ASEAN to encourage well-rounded development. Yong criticized Indonesia's past leadership, which he called weak. As the biggest country in the region, it is important for Indonesia to come ahead, he continued, and said that any distraction to the country could potentially weaken its neighbors. (dan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Markus Makur (The Jakarta Post) Ruteng, East Nusa Tenggara Mon, April 25, 2016 Indonesians must reduce their use of plastic bags to help save the Earth, a Catholic priest has said. Rev.Peter C.Aman, director of the Justice Peace Integrity and Creation (JPIC) from the Indonesian Franciscan Order, said all Indonesians, especially those living in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), should begin to use bags made from natural materials. Citing an example, Peter said NTT residents had long used mbere and roka, traditional bags made from natural materials that reflected their respect for nature. Im calling on all leaders to campaign the use of natural materials. Roka is a basket made from plaited bamboo while mbere is a bag made from plaited pandan leaves, said Peter. He was speaking in a seminar held to commemorate Earth Day at Ranaka Hall in Manggarai, Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, on Friday. Peter, who is also a lecturer at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta, also highlighted the importance of ensuring the fulfillment of peoples access to clean water as their basic and universal right. I think weve never heard people staging a thirsty strike -- only hunger strike. This is because humans cannot live without drinking water, said Rev.Aman. He further said, Weve seen wars to compete for and win oil resources. In the future, there will be wars to fight for water resources. Lets maintain and protect water springs and forests by carrying out tree replanting activities. Citing Pope Francis in his encyclical, Peter said the Earth was the sister, mother and the womb of a mother. If we want to make peace with God, we also should make peace with nature He has created, he said. The Franciscan priest called for the implementation of ecological education at schools, starting from early childhood education to university level. Eco pedagogic should have been implemented in our education institutions. We should learn from education in Germany. School children are taught early on to love trees, said Rev.Aman. Manggarai Regent Deno Kamelus said the Manggarai administration would focus its development in the next five years on environment conservation, as stipulated in its regional mid-term development plan. Planting trees in water springs and dry land as well as mangroves to prevent abrasion in coastal areas would be intensified. I call on all private institutions to participate in conserving the Earth for the sustainability of human beings and other God creatures, said Peter. Speaking in the same event, Manggarai Environment Agency head Silvianus Hadir said his administration was striving to tackle waste problems in the regency. Garbage was one of main problems Ruteng residents were currently facing. The number of Ruteng residents has grown to 72,000 people in 2016, raising the volume of garbage thrown by people every day, said Silvianus. The volume of garbage produced in Ruteng reaches 185 cubic meters every day. In Ruteng, garbage is the common problem. Thus, we should continue to campaign the use of bags made from natural materials, he said. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Steve Peoples and Ken Thomas (Associated Press) Providence, Rhode Island Mon, April 25, 2016 Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump surged Sunday toward another round of pivotal presidential primaries as their party leaders faced new questions about internal divisions that could complicate their nominees' general election chances. Republican front-runner Donald Trump looked ahead to Tuesday's contests in five northeastern states where he's poised to do well and to a foreign policy speech later in the week. His main rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, abandoned the states voting Tuesday and instead campaigned in Indiana, which votes May 3. On the Democratic side, underdog Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, faced thousands of supporters in Rhode Island, looking to the smallest state in the US for momentum even as he appeared to soften his attacks on Clinton. "If Secretary Clinton is the nominee and we're not giving this thing up, we're going all the way to California but if she is the nominee, I would hope that she puts together the strongest progressive agenda," Sanders said on ABC TV's "This Week" before courting voters in Rhode Island's capital city of Providence. Clinton hoped Tuesday's contests in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and Delaware would mark a turning point in her quest for the Democratic nomination. Victories in four or five states would all but cripple Sanders' White House bid. The former secretary of state went to two Philadelphia church services attended largely by African-Americans ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania, Tuesday's top delegate prize. She declined to attack her Democratic rival by name in the morning appearance and a subsequent stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, focusing on the Republican candidates. Clinton charged that rhetoric from Trump and Ted Cruz is "not only offensive, it's dangerous." "The people who run for office on the tea party or whatever else and say they will never compromise, they are basically denying the fundamental tenets of democracy," Clinton said. Clinton, emerging stronger after a triumph in last week's New York primary, stood to effectively lock up the nomination on Tuesday. The five states together offer 384 delegates, and Clinton was expected to win most of them, putting her closer to gaining the trove that would put her closer to security the 2,238 delegates needed to secure the nomination at the Democratic national convention in July. With 172 delegates at stake Tuesday on the Republican side, Trump could take a significant step toward his party's delegate majority with the dominant performance that many polls predict. His rivals, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have been mathematically eliminated from earning the necessary 1,237 delegates and are instead trying to block Trump from the majority to force a contested national convention in July in which delegates would be free to turn from Trump to other candidates after the first ballot. Cruz made no mention of Tuesday's elections as he campaigned Sunday afternoon in Indiana, targeting Trump's brash tone instead. "We're facing a choice. Do we want to be behind a campaign that is based on yelling, screaming and cursing and insulting?" Cruz asked. Trump was set to campaign in Maryland Sunday as a senior adviser charged that Cruz is "going to lose all five states and probably finish third in most of them" on Tuesday. The adviser, Paul Manafort, said the billionaire businessman's campaign, not the candidate, was evolving as the general election neared, an attempt to clarify his recent comments to the Republican National Committee that Trump has been "playing a part" onstage and would soon start to display "more depth ... the real person," in new settings. That includes working with such Washington stalwarts as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even as Trump casts himself as the ultimate outsider. "What we're trying to do right now is work with the Mitch McConnells" on party business, Manafort said on "Fox News Sunday." "We have to work with these people," he said. "What I was tasked to do this past week, including going to the RNC meeting, was to (convey) that the campaign cares about them and we will run some traditional elections." Meanwhile, both parties acknowledge deep intra-party divisions as the general election season approaches. "It's pretty split," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said of his party, noting that he's aware that some Republicans are calling for a third-party bid to challenge Trump in the general election. While Priebus said such a challenge was "a nothing burger," any third-party bid or write-in campaign could doom the Republicans in November. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz downplayed tensions between Sanders and Clinton, whose rivalry has become increasingly nasty in recent weeks. "Regardless of the intensity of what's played out here...we are going to be unified," she declared. ___ Peoples reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Philadelphia, Laurie Kellman in Washington and Brian Slodysko in Terre Haute, Indiana, contributed to this report. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (thejakartapost.com) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 The US Department of States third annual Fishackathon began on Saturday to mark Earth Day weekend in 40 cities, including in Jakarta. Organized by the Secretarys Office of Global Partnerships, Fishackathon is a public-private partnership that brings together the US government with the private sector and civil society to answer Secretary Kerrys call in saving the worlds ocean. The event calls on coders, designers, and science enthusiasts from all around the world to come together to create new applications and tools to address issues in sustainable fishing. Fishackathon was first organized in June 2014 around Secretary Kerrys inaugural Our Ocean conference. It has continued as a lead-up event to subsequent Our Ocean conferences, including the 2016 conference in September. In 2014, Fishackathon brought together coders at aquariums and tech hubs in five domestic cities. Last year, the second annual Fishackathon took place in 12 cities around the world, including Jakarta. This year, the event has expanded to 40 cities on six continents, as well as a virtual hackathon. The Jakarta event is organized by Tone, and telecommunications company XL is also hosting and sponsoring the event for the second year. Other sponsors include Conservation International, Intel, and Indmira. Protection of our oceans cannot be achieved by government action alone. Governments, the private sector, civil society, academia and ordinary citizens must all do their part, the US Embassys Deputy Chief of Mission, Brian McFeeters, said in the opening ceremony in Jakarta on Saturday. Experts from MDPI, Reefcheck, Conservation International, Tone, Intel and Indmira supported the event. A global panel of mobile and fisheries experts will review the winning solution from each site and select grand prize winners, which will be announced on World Oceans Day on June 8. One team will receive a US$10,000 cash prize, provided by Virgin, and one teams creation will be further independently developed through a US government contractor. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ganug Nugroho Adi (The Jakarta Post) Surakarta, Central Java Mon, April 25, 2016 The Surakarta administration has been urged to disband the Radya Pustaka Museum committee and replace it with a modern management model. The Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry said the use of a committee in the management of a museum was out of date and it was not compatible with the current museum management standards. The current management model of the Radya Pustaka Museum, which is handled by a committee, can no longer be implemented. This model must be replaced. The museum should be run by a regional technical implementing unit [UPTD] so that the local administration is directly responsible for the management of the museum, said the ministrys cultural preservation, conservation and museum affairs head, Harry Widianto, during his visit to Radya Pustaka last week. Harry said the Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry would immediately disburse Rp 2 billion (US$151,429.20) to revitalize the management of the Radya Pustaka Museum. He said the government had a duty to look after museums, including those that belonged to the central government, local administrations, communities or individuals. Surakarta Culture and Tourism Agency (Disbudpar) head Enny Tyasni Suzana promised that she would soon conduct a study on the possible establishment of a UPTD to replace the Radya Pustaka Museum committee. With an UPTD, she said, funding disbursement for Radya Pustaka would be easier and the management of the museum could be more professional. Enny explained that the UPTD would apply a standardized museum management system, which involved museum and cultural preservation experts. It is expected that a UPTD Plus can be established this year. We use Plus to show that Radya Pustaka will get special attention. We will discuss it later with the Surakarta Legislative Council, said Enny. Culture preserve A visitor examines exhibits in the Radya Pustaka Museum in Surakarta, Central Java, recently. (thejakartapost.com/Ganug Nugroho Adi) Separately, Surakarta Mayor FX Hadi Rudy Rudyatmo said the Surakarta administration was preparing the establishment of an institution that would handle the management of the Radya Pustaka Museum and the Keris (Dagger) Museum. The administration was still considering whether the two museums would be handled by an UPTD or a Regional Public Service Agency (BULD). So, the Radya Pustaka Museum and the Keris Museum will be managed under one institution, either a UPTD or BULD. We are now looking at the legal basis for the financing of those institutions. We hope the museum budget can be included in the revised city budget [APBD] this year, said Rudy. The mayor added that no matter what institutional model was chosen, all Radya Pustaka committee members would be still involved in the management of the museum. Hopefully, we can make a decision about it in July, so in August, we can draft a policy. The Keris Museum will be inaugurated in October. So we still have time, said Rudy. Radya Pustaka Museum committee chairman Purnomo Subagyo said it did not matter to him which institution managed the museum. He said Radya Pustaka needed professional management, which involved experts on museum affairs and cultural preservation. We will accept whatever the decision is. We just want the government to pay attention to our cultural preservation, including Radya Pustaka. If through the establishment of an UPTD the museums management and financing is better, why not? said Purnomo. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Pablo Gorondi (Associated Press) Budapest Mon, April 25, 2016 Hungary's constitution bans "Islamization" because the document aims to protect Hungarian language and culture, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Monday. Orban also said the constitution forces the government to oppose any kind of mass migration that would endanger those principles. "To be clear and unequivocal, I can say that Islamization is constitutionally banned in Hungary," Orban said in parliament at an event celebrating the fifth anniversary of Hungary's new constitution, now known as the Basic Law. Orban was quoting from the National Avowal, the Basic Law's preamble, which details the country's commitment "to promoting and safeguarding our heritage, our unique language, Hungarian culture" and the protection of "the living conditions of future generations." Hungary maintains that the migrant issue is a matter of national sovereignty. "We have the right to choose whom we want and don't want to live with," Orban said. Hungary has built razor-wire fences on its southern borders to stop migrants from passing through to other European nations. Orban has said he wants "zero" migrants in the East European nation. Before the fences, nearly 400,000 migrants entered Hungary in 2015 on their way to richer nations in Western Europe. Hungary has sued the EU at the European Court of Justice to avoid having to take part in an EU plan to resettle migrants. The government is also organizing a national referendum over the EU quotas, meant to rally political support for its anti-immigrant position. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 Despite their large numbers of students, Indonesian universities lag behind in scientific publications compared with other countries in Southeast Asia. Weak English-writing skills are identified as one of the causal factors of the poor quality of the countrys scientific publications. Based on scientific journal citations by Google Scholar in 2015, the University of Gadjah Mada ranks first among Indonesian universities with the highest number of scientific publications, amounting to 16,809 citations. The Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and the University of Indonesia (UI) rank second and third with 13,651 and 10,612 citations respectively. However, these figures are still far behind other Southeast Asian universities. Thailand's Chulalongkorn University and Mahidol University recorded 40,030 and 36,948 citations respectively. Two Malaysian universities, namely Universiti Sains Malaysia and the University of Malaya, recorded 89,405 and 67,971 citations respectively. Singapore ranks top, in which the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University recorded 419,702 and 198,105 citations respectively. "We have always make an excuse for the situation, blaming a 'lack of English-writing ability' as the main reason. Actually, the problem is much more complicated. A lack of experience in publishing scientific journals is one of the problems," Indonesian Science Academy (AIPI) chairman Sangkot Marzuki told thejakartapost.com in a recent interview. Marzuki further said English was important in writing scientific journals; however, students must make themselves accustomed to elaborating ideas and expressing them through writing. English-writing ability is not the biggest obstacle. Just take a look at the Thai people. Their English ability is about the same as ours but they can do better quality research work, said Marzuki. When he was asked whether Indonesia needed to create fully English-speaking postgraduate institutions such as in other Asian countries, Marzuki said the option was not viable. "It might be a better option but it would likely clash with the issue of nationality. So, instead we need to focus our attention on making our students accustomed to publishing their work in scientific journals. Like in the Netherlands, you need to publish at least three or four papers in international journals before you can submit for a PhD defense," he said. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung, West Java Mon, April 25, 2016 It was not an easy thing to release Tomtom, a female Javan Gibbon locally known as Owa Jawa, to her natural habitat because she had been living under human care since she was a baby. It took around three years for caregivers at the Javanese Primates Rehabilitation Center in Bandung regency, West Java, to cultivate Tomtoms wildlife character and survival capacity in her natural habitat. The centers caregiver, Sigit Ibrahim, said Tomtom was an Owa Jawa confiscated by the West Java Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) from her owner during a raid three years ago. Since she was newly born, Tomtom was accustomed to seeing and eating human food. When we first received her, she could walk like a human while in fact, Owa Java is a primate that depends on its arms to swing from tree to tree. They live in trees, said Sigit after Tomtoms release to her natural habitat in the Gunung Tilu Nature Preserve in Bandung regency last Thursday. Tomtom was rehabilitated at the center partly to reinvigorate her natural character. As a wildlife species, Tomtom needs to interact with her community. Recovering her ability to survive in her natural habitat was among the challenges Sigit and his friends from the Aspinall Foundation Indonesia program, which manages the rehabilitation center, had to deal with. Prior to the release, Sigit and his friends built a 36 square-meter cage on the border of the nature preserve. In the cage, Tomtom had to adjust to her new environment. Although she still received food from her keeper, most of the food was natural food from the forest. We chose a banyan tree [to position the cage] because its branches are strong enough for Tomtom to swing. The fruits are also a food source, said Sigit. It was not the first time for the rehabilitation center to release primates back to their natural habitat. Sigit said his institution, which was headquartered in the UK, had released primates to their natural habitat on six occasions since 2014. The primates, comprising Owa Jawa and Java Leaf Monkeys, also known as Javan Surili, were released into the mountains surrounded by tea plantations and farming land belonging to state-owned forestry company Perhutani. Tomtom, however, was released into the Gambung Block area in the Gunung Tilu Nature Preserve. A veterinarian team checked Tomtoms physical condition to ensure that she was free from infectious diseases before the release. The primate, widely known for its monogamous character, was also able to make social contact with other similar species. She is now accustomed to eating natural foods and she is already alert to predators, said Sigit. Gunung Tilu Nature Preserve head Didi Rustandi said the diversity of animal species in the 8,000 hectare conservation area was still well maintained. Based on monitoring results from camera trap recordings, leopards could still be found in the area. Gunung Tilu is not only the natural habitat for Owa Jawa and Surili. It also holds mouse-deer, wild boars and Javan Lutung. The release ran smoothly because it involved local communities and school students from Gunung Tilus surrounding areas. We hope the local community will help conserve this nature preserve because we have only four staff members. This is not enough to conserve an 8,000 hectare area, said Didi. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kim Tong-Hyung (Associated Press) Seoul, South Korea Mon, April 25, 2016 North Korea said Sunday that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a "dagger of destruction." South Korea couldn't immediately confirm the claim of success in what marks Pyongyang's latest effort to expand its military might in face of pressure by its neighbors and Washington. Hours before the announcement, South Korean military officials said the North fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast. The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectile traveled about 30 kilometers (19 miles) Saturday evening. That's a much shorter than the typical distance of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which can fly at least 300 kilometers (186 miles). A successful test from a submarine would be a worrying development because mastering the ability to fire missiles from submerged vessels would make it harder for outsiders to detect what North Korea is doing before it launches, giving it the potential to surprise its enemies. While South Korean experts say it's unlikely that North Korea currently possesses an operational submarine that can fire multiple missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on such technology. In a typical example of overblown rhetoric, the North's Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un observed from a test facility as the ballistic missile surged from a submarine and spewed out a "massive stream of flames" as it soared into the sky. It said the missile met all technical thresholds. The KCNA report said that after the test Kim declared that the North now has another strong nuclear strike method and also the ability to stick a "dagger of destruction" into the heads of its enemies, South Korea and the United States, at any time. The KCNA report didn't say when or where the recent test-firing took place. South Korean officials said the launch on Saturday took place near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems. The North last test-launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Dec. 25, but that test was seen as failure, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The North first claimed of a successful submarine-launched missile test in May last year. US Strategic Command, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, said its "systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan." A statement from Strategic Command added that the missile launch "did not pose a threat to North America." US military forces "remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security," it said. The US State Department said that in response to Saturday's launch, it was limiting the travel of North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his delegation to UN functions in New York, where they are attending a UN meeting on sustainable development. The US noted "launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions." "We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further destabilize the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and international obligations," said State Department spokesman John Kirby. The UN Security Council issued a press statement that "strongly condemned" the firing of the submarine-launched ballistic missile, saying it constitutes "yet another serious violation" of council resolutions. The Security Council members reiterated that North Korea should "refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, including to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program." North Korea has recently sent a barrage of missiles and artillery shells into the sea amid ongoing annual military drills between the United States and South Korea. Pyongyang says the drills are a preparation for an invasion of the North. The firings also come as the North expresses anger about toughened international sanctions over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. North Korea's belligerence may also be linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement leader Kim Jong Un's grip on power. Promoting military accomplishments could be an attempt to overshadow a lack of economic achievements ahead of the Workers' Party congress, the first since 1980. ___ Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25 2016 Indonesia and Greece have paved the way for defense cooperation, as Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu has met the Greece Ambassador to Indonesia, Georgios Dogoritis. Both countries are now working on their assessments of cooperation. Indonesian Defense Ministry spokesperson Brig. Gen. Djundan Eko Bintoro said that the cooperation would focus on maritime defense and the navies in both countries. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 A new crisis center being created to address national and international security issues will reportedly be piloted by the President and thus not lead to inefficient "multi-pilot" governance of national security. Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Panjaitan says the crisis center will be an organizational framework allowing an immediate response to every critical situation. The decision-making process for incidents such as kidnappings, deadly virus outbreaks, natural disasters and border disputes will be faster thanks to the new center, he claimed. "There is only one pilot here. The decision-making will be under the direct orders of the President," Luhut said as quoted by Antara news agency on Monday, rebutting suggestions that the new body would create multi-pilot governance for addressing national security issues. The organization will comprise the office of the coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister, the Defense Ministry, the Indonesian Military (TNI) commander, the National Police chief and other ministries, Luhut explained. Non-permanent members, he added, would include ministries related to particular issues in the spotlight. The plan comes on the heels of 14 Indonesian sailors being held hostage by the Abu Sayyaf militant group in the southern Philippines following the hijacking of their Indonesian-flagged vessels this month and last. According to Luhut, the idea of establishing a crisis center has been around since he was still active in the military, but the plan was suspended. It was the President who ordered the formation of crisis center after the idea was brought up two weeks ago. (afr/ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 The Jakarta administration will focus on the implementation of electronic road pricing (ERP) and providing sufficient public transportation for Jakarta commuters before officially expanding the ban on motorcycles using the capital's thoroughfares. The city will conduct the tender for the ERP this year and aims to kick off the the program, which will see vehicles being charged for using Jakarta's roads, by next year, Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama said on Monday. The city administration is also currently working to increase the number of public buses operating under city-owned PT Transjakarta, including extending the service to the capital's satellite cities. Ahok denied reports that his administration would expand the ban on motorcycles using the city's main roads from Jl Sudirman through to the Senayan area on May 1. The city initially banned motorcycles using Hotel Indonesia Traffic Circle from Jl. MH Thamrin to Jl. Merdeka Barat in Central Jakarta last year. No more motorcycle bans will be implemented just yet, Ahok said. The rumors of the ban might have been instigated by people opposed to the motorcycle ban, especially as the issue was raised near the upcoming Labor day on May 1, he added. Separately, the head of traffic engineering at Jakartas Transportation Agency, Priyanto, said the ban on motorcycles using Jl. Sudirman was only a discourse as part of the evaluation of the month-long suspension of the three-in-one car-pooling policy. The city administration will have further discussions with other stakeholders on the suspension of the policy, the final decision on which will be made on May 8. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Eric Tamaldge (Associated Press) New York Mon, April 25, 2016 A day after North Korea's foreign minister told The Associated Press that his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea, President Barack Obama said Sunday that Washington isn't taking the proposal seriously and Pyongyang would "have to do better than that." North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, interviewed Saturday by the AP, also defended his country's right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that Pyongyang won't be cowed by international sanctions. And for those waiting for the North's regime to collapse, he had this to say: Don't hold your breath. "Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests," he said in his first interview Saturday with a Western news organization. Obama dismissed North Korea's latest overture at a news conference Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover, Germany. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities," Obama said. "What we've said consistently ... is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then we'll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. But that's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that." Obama also said that until North Korea does better, as he put it, the US will continue to "emphasize our work with the Republic of Korea and Japan and our missile defense mechanisms to ensure that we're keeping the American people safe and we're keeping our allies safe." Ri's interview with the AP came just hours after North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in its latest show of defiance as this year's US-South Korea exercises wind down. He referred to the launch in the context of current tensions caused by the military exercises. "The escalation of this military exercise level has reached its top level. And I think it's not bad as the other side is going for the climax why not us, too, to that level as well?" The US State Department said that in response to Saturday's launch, it was limiting the travel of Ri and his delegation to UN functions in New York, where they are attending a UN meeting on sustainable development. The US noted "launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions." In his interview with the AP, Ri held firm to Pyongyang's longstanding position that the US drove his country to develop nuclear weapons as an act of self-defense. At the same time, he suggested that suspending the military exercises with Seoul could open the door to talks and reduced tensions. "If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well," he said, speaking in Korean through an interpreter. "It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise." DPRK is an abbreviation for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Ri, who spoke calmly and in measured words, a contrast to the often bombastic verbiage used by the North's media, claimed the North's proposal was "very logical." He granted the interview in the country's diplomatic mission to the United Nations. He spoke beneath portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il, North Korea's two previous leaders the grandfather and father of current leader Kim Jong Un. If the exercises are halted "for some period, for some years," he added, "new opportunities may arise for the two countries and for the whole entire world as well." It is extremely rare for top North Korean officials to give interviews to foreign media, and particularly with Western news organizations. Ri's proposal, which he said he hoped U.S. policymakers would heed, may well fall on deaf ears. North Korea, which sees the US-South Korean exercises as a rehearsal for invasion, has floated similar proposals to Washington in the past, but the US has insisted the North give up its nuclear weapons program first before any negotiations. The result has been a stalemate that Ri said has put the peninsula at the crossroads of a thermonuclear war. In Seoul, South Korea's Foreign Ministry released a statement Sunday that called the North's proposal "not worth considering." The ministry noted that the North's suggestion is nothing new, and said that the comment was just part of its maneuvering to wiggle out of the difficult situation created by stronger international sanctions. In response to Ri's remarks, a US State Department official defended the military exercises as demonstrating the US commitment to its alliance with the South and said they enhance the combat readiness, flexibility and capabilities of the alliance. "We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions and rhetoric that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations," said Katina Adams, a spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. Sanctions, Ri said, won't sway the North. "If they believe they can actually frustrate us with sanctions, they are totally mistaken," he said. "The more pressure you put on to something, the more emotionally you react to stand up against it. And this is important for the American policymakers to be aware of." Ri said the possibility of conflict has increased significantly this year because the exercises have taken on what Pyongyang sees as a more aggressive and threatening tone including training to conduct precision "decapitation" strikes on North Korea's leadership. This year's exercises are the biggest ever, involving about 300,000 troops. Washington and Seoul say they beefed up the maneuvers after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, in January, which also brought a new round of tough sanctions by the UN down on Pyongyang's head. The exercises are set to continue through the end of the month. Pyongyang, meanwhile, has responded with a series of missile launches and statements in its media that the country has developed its long-range ballistic missile and nuclear warhead technologies to the point that they now present a credible deterrent and could even be used against targets on the US mainland, though not all foreign analysts accept that claim. In the interview, Ri stated that the United States has used its power to get other countries to join in pressure on North Korea. "A country as small as the DPRK cannot actually be a threat to the U.S. or to the world," he told the AP. "How great would it be if the world were to say to the United States and the American government not to conduct any more military exercises in the Korean Peninsula ... But there is not a single country that says this to the US." "These big countries alone or together are telling us that we should calm down," he said. "For us this is like a sentence, that we should accept our death and refuse our right to sovereignty." ___ Associated Press writers Kathleen Hennessey in London and Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Palu, Central Sulawesi Mon, April 25, 2016 A member of the terrorist East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) group has been shot dead in a shootout in Poso regency, Central Sulawesi, as militants left their hideout in search of food, a top police official said on Monday. Central Sulawesi police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriadi said police had yet to identify the dead gunman, but from photographic evidence believed him to be one of the group's Chinese Uighur members. The body was taken to the Bhayangkara Police Hospital in the provincial capital Palu for identification. According to reports, the shoot-out took place after joint police and military troops, grouped under Operation Tinombala, pursued four alleged MIT partisans looking for food in Pantangolemba village, Poso Pesisir Selatan subdistrict, on Saturday. Local farmers reported to security personnel that they had heard gunshots from the west of the village. Operation Tinombala personnel then ordered villagers to vacate the area before advancing in search of the militants. Shots were exchanged before the unidentified four men fled into the forest. As the soldiers continued to sweep the area in search of the four gunmen on Sunday, they found a dead body in the forest, as well as evidence including a pipe bomb, a small backpack containing supplies and a cleaver. With the most recent death, Santoso's group is now thought to be down to 25 people. The group originally numbered six Chinese Uighurs , two of whom were killed in a shoot-out last month. An alleged MIT member named Irfan Maulan aka Akil turned himself in to the security authorities on Friday, claiming that hunger and exhaustion had forced him to surrender. (afr/rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ciaran Giles (Associated Press) Madrid Mon, April 25, 2016 Spain's king began talks with political party leaders Monday in a final bid to break a four-month deadlock in finding a candidate capable of forming a government and avoiding a new election. King Felipe VI first met with Pedro Quevedo of the small New Canarias group. He will finish the two days of meetings Tuesday when he holds talks with the leaders of the four most voted parties, ending with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Spain's Dec. 20 election ended the country's traditional two-party system with strong showings for two new parties. But no party won a majority of seats in the 350-seat Parliament and since then none of them have been able to muster enough support to form a government. By law, if no government is in place by May 2 the king will dissolve Parliament and another election will be held June 26. Polls suggest new elections are unlikely to break the stalemate with no party forecast to obtain a majority. Thus, fresh elections could mean more months of political paralysis as parties again attempt to reach a deal. Rajoy's conservative Popular Party came in first in the December vote with 123 seats but lost the majority it held since 2011. Rajoy later told the king he wasn't in a position to be a candidate for premier as he lacked sufficient outside support. The king then called on Pedro Sanchez of the second-placed Socialists, with 90 seats, to try. Sanchez struck a deal with centrist newcomer Ciudadanos, which has 40 seats, but was unable to convince the new far-left Podemos party, which controls 69 seats, to join him or allow him to govern by abstaining from a confidence vote. Sanchez lost two parliamentary confidence votes last month. Rajoy insists his party should head a government and wants Sanchez to support an unprecedented coalition of the country's first and second parties. The Socialists, however, reject any pact with Rajoy. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 25, 2016 As ASEAN moves forward to a more integrated and cohesive economy, there is a need to also prioritize political and security issues in the agenda of each member country, experts and officials said in a seminar held by The Jakarta Post on Monday. Various stakeholders dug deep into the challenges faced by Southeast Asian countries as the region enters the ASEAN Economic Community in a seminar titled "Global Challenges and Regional Solutions: Engaging Stakeholders". The integration is part of a continued process of community building, Secretary General of ASEAN Le Luong Minh said. He lauded the conference as a good opportunity to present discussions on how to ensure growth and prosperity. "It will also narrow the development gap and address issues faced within each country that could also affect the region," he said in his opening remarks. The official formation of the ASEAN Economic Community on 31 December 2015 marked a critical milestone for Southeast Asia, bringing together 10 markets with a population of 600 million people and total GDP of over US$ 2.4 trillion, making it the seventh largest in the world. The conference was held by The Jakarta Post as part of the news outlet's 33rd anniversary celebration on Monday. In the day-long seminar publisher Jusuf Wanandi welcomed participants from all across the region who had gathered in Indonesia's capital. Together with the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, The Jakarta Post convened together stakeholders including business leaders, opinion formers and chief editors of the region's leading media outlets to consider challenges in the single trading area and the role that needs to be played by the stakeholders upon whom these developments will ultimately impact. Meanwhile, former Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda urged each member country to also place a priority on political and security measures and not simply the economic agenda. He cited rising tensions in the South China Sea regarding overlapping territorial claims and also nuclear tensions in the neighboring Korean Peninsula as some examples of the region's sensitive issues. "Countries have to be more accepting of placing politics and security on their agenda," Hassan said while addressing the over 300-strong audience in the ballroom of the Dharmawangsa Hotel in Jakarta. There was also a need for reform in overcoming the mental blocks in prioritizing the aforementioned issues, he continued, specifically pointing to the Asean Regional Forum and East Asian Summit as some of the platforms that could address the challenges. Aside from the economic area, the pillars of the ASEAN Economic Community also encompass political-security as well as socio-cultural areas considering the importance of ASEAN, former minister of tourism and the creative economy Mari Elka Pangestu said in her opening speech. Moreover, it was also important to raise the quality of human resources in each country to be able to face rising competition, she added. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jim Gomez (Associated Press) Manila, Philippines Tue, April 26, 2016 Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered Monday night in the southern Philippines belongs to one of two Canadians taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September. Trudeau identified the victim as John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta and said his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this "heinous act." Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel's head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief Supt. Junpikar Sitin said. Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of three men two Canadians and a Norwegian they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday (0800 GMT). Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming Abu Sayyaf militants, who have been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. "This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate," Amin said by telephone. Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees, also including a Filipino woman who was kidnapped with them, as the Abu Sayyaf's deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said. The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos ($6.5 million) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands. The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month. "Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue," the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III. About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said. In militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant positioned a long knife on Ridsdel's neck. Two black flags hung in the backdrop of lush foliage. In Canada, Ridsdel was remembered as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship. "He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way," said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist who grew up with him in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. Thurston said Ridsdel is survived by two adult daughters from a former marriage. The abductions highlight the long-running security problems hounding the southern Philippines, a region with bountiful resources that also suffers from poverty, lawlessness and decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies. The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south. It has been weakened by more than a decade of Philippine offensives but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization. Associated Press Writer Charmaine Noronha in Toronto contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Phnom Penh Mon, April 25, 2016 Cambodia's ruling party has filed a complaint charging a prominent social commentator with criminal defamation for saying the party was manipulating a sex scandal involving an opposition leader. The complaint filed Monday by the spokesman of the Cambodian People's Party charged that Ou Virak, who heads the Future Forum think tank, made a false allegation that damaged the party's honor. Virak's comments several days ago to the US-backed Radio Free Asia referred to a complicated series of events that began two months ago when taped phone calls of Kem Sokha, deputy leader of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, speaking with at least two women were posted on the Internet. Their contents seemed to indicate Sokha was having an adulterous affair. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Beijing Mon, April 25, 2016 Chinese President Xi Jinping says that China must be on guard against nefarious religious influences from abroad. His comments over the weekend follow a tightening of religious space that has seen bans on the wearing of veils and beards in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang and the removal of church crosses in eastern China. "We must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means and prevent ideological infringement by extremists," Xi said at a Beijing conference on religions attended by top leaders, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. He said that religious groups must submit to the leadership of the ruling, and officially atheist, Communist Party, and stressed: "In no way should religions interfere with government administration, judiciary and education." Authorities in eastern Zhejiang province have over the past two years torn down church crosses and other outward symbols of the Christian faith, saying they violated building codes. Critics say that's a sign of how the rapid growth of Christian groups, at the same time as contacts between Chinese churches and overseas supporters have grown, has made the Communist Party nervous. China's leaders are also concerned about violence in the far western region of Xinjiang, and say many Uighurs are crossing borders to fight with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria with the intention of returning to carry out attacks in China. Activists representing the Muslim Uighur group say much of the violence is fueled by economic disenfranchisement and restrictions on Uighurs' religious and cultural practices. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Petaling Jaya, Malaysia Mon, April 25, 2016 The new online divorce application system implemented by Perak, Malaysia is expected to put an end to the backlog of cases at the states syariah courts. Malaysian Muslim Lawyers Association president Datuk Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar said the MySolve system was beneficial to Muslim couples who were seeking to separate mutually from one another. The online system is not meant to encourage divorce but to make it easier for couples who do not have any dispute regarding their separation, he said. The application can be viewed at http://mysolve.perak.my/ and also available on Android devices. Zainul Rijal said the objective of the app was to allow electronic registration for divorce applications instead of filing it manually over the counter. The court will respond in three days to set a date. The parties involved must come on the fixed date with completed documents. After the case is filed, it will be mentioned in front of a registrar and brought before the Syarie judge straight away. The case can be settled on the same day, he said, adding that the association welcomed the innovation. However, it was not determined whether the system would be applicable for existing cases, which could have helped reduce the backlog of cases. What I can say is that future cases will be speedily settled and justice will be available to the parties, especially women. They can focus on their future needs and also other claims like mutaah [conciliatory gift], nafkah [alimony], matrimonial property, eddah [the ex-wifes maintenance for three months from the date of their divorce] and custody of children, Zainul Rijal added. Muslim Consumers Association Malaysia chief activist Datuk Nadzim Johan, however, expressed concern over the possibility of abuse due to its easy availability. I feel that the culture of our new generation is that they easily move towards divorce. There are many aspects you must consider in a marriage institution. It would be best to encourage them to get the best advice for their relationship to determine if it could be saved instead of facilitating divorce, he added. Nadzim said although the system was created with good intentions, it could be used as an easy way out by Muslim couples. If the marriage doesnt work, of course you want to find a way out but we must educate Muslims to be patient when facing problems, he said. To date, 34 couples have used the system. Registration fee for each divorce application using MySolve system is fixed at RM50 (US$12.8). Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Hanoi Mon, April 25, 2016 The newly elected president of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachit, is visiting Vietnam to boost ties between the communist neighbors. Vorachit told his Vietnamese host, General-Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, that it was a great honor to visit Vietnam on his first overseas trip to meet Vietnam's leaders who are "extremely close and trustworthy friends" of Laos. Trong, who was elected to a second five-year term in January, said Vorachit's visit will boost bilateral relations between two of the world's last remaining communist countries. The 78-year-old Bounnhang Vorachit was elected president of the single-party state last week after he was appointed leader of the country's Communist Party at its five-year Congress in January. Laos, a poor, landlocked country with a population of just 7 million, will have a higher-than-usual profile this year because it is its turn to hold the annual chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as the organization grapples with territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Vorachit will meet Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during his three-day visit. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) Koronadal City, Philippines Mon, April 25, 2016 Drought-hit farmers, who have been staging a protest against the alleged government inaction on their plight since Friday here, have agreed to return home after officials gave them 2,000 sacks of rice on Monday. We will terminate our rally [Monday] but the farmers will stay overnight here and will go home [Tuesday], Joselito Roxas of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) told reporters. The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Central Mindanao turned over the rice to the farmers around 4:30 p.m. as police authorities backed away farther from the picket line. We are happy with this even if our demand for 15,000 bags was not granted, at least this initial aid will help us, Roxas said, adding that each rally participant would bring home a sack of rice. While Roxas was elated that rice had arrived, he said that the delivery from the DSWD only proved that the government had rice stock after all. It was a puzzle, he said, why farmers had to stage a protest first before aid was given. We consider this as our victory, Roxas said, following a dialogue with representatives from the DSWD, Department of Agriculture and the South Cotabato provincial crisis management. DA also promised to extend us fertilizers and other farm inputs and will be distributed in the farmers communities in the coming days, Roxas added. He said the protest was also peaceful and that they were thankful that no violent dispersal took place. During the unloading of the bags of rice from at least three hauler trucks, the farmers were orderly. They were visibly overjoyed. From a distance, police personnel watched. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Mon, April 25, 2016 This is a weekly look at the latest key developments in the South China Sea, home to several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region. Tensions in the South China Sea are rising, pitting China against smaller and weaker neighbors that all lay claim to islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters rich in fish and potential gas and oil reserves. China's recent construction of artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago, complete with airstrips and radar stations, and US patrols challenging Beijing's vast territorial claims, have caused concern that the strategically important waters could become a flashpoint. A look at some of the most recent key developments: CHINA DEFENDS MILITARY PLANE LANDING China says the United States is overblowing a humanitarian emergency mission that involved one of its military planes landing on an artificial island which also happens to be one of three recently built military outposts with long runways. The Y-8 transport aircraft made a trip to Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys to evacuate three injured construction workers, according to the Ministry of Defense. State Department spokesman John Kirby questioned the need for a military aircraft, citing concern that China keeps militarizing the disputed region. He said that the injured workers were involved in infrastructure improvements of a military nature. "One could argue that it's just another sign that the Chinese are willing to keep militarizing the effort in general," he told reporters. China's Defense Ministry said it was completely within the mission of the People's Liberation Army to rescue people and carry out construction activities and deployment of defense facilities on related islets and reefs in the Nansha Islands, the Chinese name for the Spratlys. A Chinese Coast Guard boat approaches Filipino fishermen near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, Dec. 24, 2015. Filipino fishermen said they've seen more Chinese coast guard ships than usual around the contested Scarborough Shoal. (AP/Renato Etac) FISHERMEN REPORT MORE CHINESE SHIPS; US FLIES FIRST MISSION FROM PHILIPPINES Filipino fishermen say they've seen more Chinese coast guard ships than usual around the contested Scarborough Shoal, which China effectively took over in 2013 after a tense standoff with Philippine vessels. Although fishermen have been complaining they're being driven away by Chinese ships, the Philippine Defense Department said it could not confirm an increase in Chinese presence at the shoal, 145 miles (230 kilometers) from Luzon island. Meantime, the US Air Force flew its first mission over the Scarborough area as part of a new Air Contingent force stationed in the Philippines. It involved four A-10C Thunderbolt jets and two Sikorsky HH-60 helicopters. The mission: establishing air and maritime "domain awareness" and "assuring all nations have access to air and sea domains throughout the region in accordance with international law," according to a US military statement. Free navigation "is extremely important, international economics depends on it free trade depends on our ability to move goods," said Col. Larry Card, commander of the Air Contingent, part of the stepped-up US assistance to its Philippine ally. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stands with Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after a meeting in Moscow, Russia, April 18.(AP/Ivan Sekretarev) RUSSIA, SOME ASEAN NATIONS BACKS CHINA; BRITAIN STANDS BY US As China and other claimants await the ruling of a UN tribunal on a case filed by the Philippines that challenges Beijing's vast territorial claims, world and regional players are lining up behind one side or the other. China has refused to take part in the proceedings at the UN Court of Arbitration, and it's not clear how the ruling can be enforced. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Moscow, says Russia is against any interference from third parties a reference to the US " or any attempts to internationalize these disputes." Russia repeated China's position that "only parties can resolve their dispute through direct talks." Britain, on the other hand, says it will stand alongside the US in supporting the ruling. Hugo Swire, British minister of state for the Foreign Office, told a Washington think tank that growing tensions in the South China Sea are driven by China's assertive actions. He said any ruling by the court should be binding on both parties. In Southeast Asia, which is broadly divided between pro- and anti-China blocs, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing had reached consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos its traditional allies on the South China Sea issue. The four countries say territorial disputes are not an issue between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and should be resolved by parties directly. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said earlier that the case filed by the Philippines is an attempt to deny China's sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and "an abuse of international law." President Barack Obama (right) is greeted by Commander of the US Pacific Command Adm. Harry Harris after arriving at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Dec. 19, 2015. The Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Harry Harris has denied reports of a disconnect with the White House in strategy over the South China Sea. (AP/Evan Vucci) US ADMIRAL DENIES RIFT WITH THE WHITE HOUSE The Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Harry Harris has denied reports of a disconnect with the White House in strategy over the South China Sea. Navy Times reported on a gag order issued to military commanders for making comments over the South China Sea in the run-up to the nuclear summit in Washington that included China. Harris said in a statement that "any suggestion that the White House has sought to 'tamp down' on my talking about my concerns is patently wrong." He said that during recent congressional testimony and press engagements in Washington, "I was very public and candid about my concerns regarding many issues in the Indo-Asia-Pacific to include the fact that China's militarization of the South China Sea is problematic." LAST WORD "The United States and Vietnam share the interest in maintaining peace and stability in the region. So do China. But its massive land reclamation project in the South China Sea and increasing militarization of these outposts fuel regional tension and raise serious questions about China's intentions." U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on a visit to Hanoi. ___ Associated Press writers Hrvoje Hranjski in Bangkok, Christopher Bodeen in Beijing, Minh V. Tran in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Dubai, United Arab Emirates Mon, April 25, 2016 Dubai will soon have a one-stop destination for families whose tastes run from Spider-Man to velociraptors to the Powerpuff Girls. Local developer Ilyas and Mustafa Galadari Group said Sunday its new 1.5 million square-foot (139,355 square meter) indoor amusement park on the city's desert outskirts will open on August 15. The final steps of construction work are seen at the IMG Worlds of Adventure complex in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, April 24, 2016.(AP/Kamran Jebreili) The $1 billion IMG Worlds of Adventure park includes one section centered on Marvel Comics and another branded by Cartoon Network. Another zone is dedicated to dinosaurs and features a roller coaster to whisk thrill-seekers outside and back into the air-conditioned complex. Dubai is increasingly looking to amusement parks to cement its standing as a tourist haven. Another company is building a massive complex elsewhere in the 2020 World Expo host city that will include Legoland and Six Flags parks. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Vatican City Mon, April 25, 2016 Pope Francis has told teenagers happiness can't be downloaded like a cellphone app. Francis used the reference to connect to faithful aged 13-16 who are converging on Rome for a Holy Year weekend for teenagers. During his homily Sunday in St. Peter's Square, he told a crowd of 100,000 that "happiness has no price" and is "not an app that you can download on your phones, nor will the latest update bring you freedom and grandeur in love." A day earlier, in a video message to the teens' rally in a Rome stadium, Francis likened being out of contact with God through lack of love to being where there's no cellphone reception. After Mass, dozens of white-robed priests surrounded Francis, many snapping selfies with him. Community Board 3 tomorrow night is likely to take a stronger position than that of local elected officials in calling for the return of Rivington House to the Lower East Side as a health care facility. On April 7, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Council member Margaret Chin, along with CB3 Chairperson Gigi Li, held a news conference outside the former nursing home to demand compensation for the loss of Rivington House (press release). The city lifted a deed restriction, enabling the Allure Group to sell the property to luxury condo developers, profiting $72 million. At last weeks executive committee meeting, Li said a new resolution was being proposed to drive home the point that its too early for talk of compensating the community for the loss of Rivington House. We should not give up on reversing the deed change so easily, she told other board members. A draft resolution to be considered by the full board tomorrow night reads, in part, CB3 is adamant that the sale of the deed restriction be reversed and the complete deed restriction for Rivington House be reinstated and now calls on Mayor de Blasio to return Rivington House to its use as a skilled nursing facility. On Jan. 27, Community Board 3 sent the mayor a resolution strongly criticizing the deed reversal, which had first been reported by The Lo-Down on Dec. 18. The resolution was apparently not read by anyone in the mayors office, at least not anyone in authority. The mayor has said he did not learn about the issue until March, when Comptroller Scott Stringer launched an investigation. At the news conference earlier this month, Brewer said shed like to see the deed restriction reinstated. But the emphasis was on compensation. The city needs to invest in this community to replace a vital resource that has been lost, said Brewer, referencing the loss of more than 200 nursing home beds. The new resolution states, the City did not respond to CB3 in our attempts to save Rivington House as a nursing home which has now impacted the communitys ability to provide long-term affordable and skilled nursing care to its most vulnerable residents. In addition to returning the property to the community, the board is calling on the city to keep a stop work order in place at the building until all investigations are complete. One group advocating for a stronger resolution has been GOLES. Good Old Lower East Side. It is urging local City Council representatives to demand the reinstatement of the deed restrictions. Council member Ben Kallos, chairperson of the Governmental Operations Committee, will be holding a hearing on the Rivington House matter in early May. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services is under fire for approving the deed change. Politics in Chinatown is often hotly contested. But on Friday at a senior center across from Columbus Park, only the giant woks were too hot to handle. State Sen. Daniel Squadron and City Council member Margaret Chin faced on in a cooking competition. The top chefs for the day came to the Chinese-American Planning Councils community center at 70 Mulberry St. to help celebrate the restoration of gas service after an eight month outage. The elected officials made chicken with celery and then seniors and staff members got to compare the results. It was a draw, although Chin volunteered that Squadron had gone a little heavy on the salt. According to a report over the weekend in the New York Post, high-ranking officials in the de Blasio administration were frantically trying to reinstate the Rivington House deed restriction in late February. There have been shifting stories from the administration about when the mayors office learned that the deed had been changed. The decision from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services in November allowed the Allure group to sell the former AIDS hospice to luxury condo developers for $116 million. Mayor de Blasio said he only learned about it when the citys comptroller launched an investigation of the matter (that was on March 7). The New York Times reported earlier this month that Anthony Shorris, first deputy mayor, had begun looking into the deed change in late February. Now the Post chimes in with new details that suggest another high-ranking official had been dealing with the situation: On Feb. 24, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glens chief of staff frantically offered a $16.1 million refund to The Allure Group In return for the refund, Allure was told, the city sought a long-term care facility or affordable housing, according to a source close to the negotiations and evidence reviewed by The Post. Those two options were what the Mayors Office wants, James Patchett, chief of staff to Glen, told Allures rep, the source said But a crestfallen Patchett who blamed a bungling city agency for the whole mess was told it was too late; the sale had already gone through. An increasingly desperate Patchett persisted, calling the situation an important issue to us and saying he would highly encourage Allure to change the outcome, the source said. Allure purchased the building, 45 Rivington St., from VillageCare in February of 2015 for $28 million. According to the Post, Allure balked at paying $16 million to change the deed, which required the building to be used as a not-for-profit health care facility. De Blasio has said Allure promised to continue operating the Lower East Side nursing home. Now a source tells the Post that Allure made it clear to city officials it could not afford to keep the center open after paying the $16 million. The administration, says the tabloid, was intent on collecting its fee from the company: The city Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which handled the negotiations, was determined to get all it could. In fact, DCAS was so anxious to get the cash that in January 2015 it urged Village Care, the former owner of the nursing home, to expeditiously submit documents to complete the deed deal. Assistant DCAS Commissioner Randal Fong wrote a Jan. 9, 2015, letter, obtained by The Post, to Emma DeVito, the CEO of the nonprofit Village Care, which ran the AIDS facility. It said: Please confirm in writing that you agree to the value to remove the restrictions. Just in case you were having trouble drawing your own conclusions from the Post story, a separate editorial today spells it out: On Sunday, The Posts Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein caught Mayor de Blasio himself in a lie How could word of the coming public-relations nightmare not make it back to de Blasio? Unless his minions are simply afraid to bring him bad news, the mayor lied about when he learned of the mess. The Daily News reports this morning that the State Attorney General had no idea Allure was pushing the city for the deed change. The AG approved the sale from VillageCare to Allure. The Attorney Generals office did not approve either the lifting of the deed restriction, or the subsequent sale to a for-profit developer, explained spokesman Matt Mittenthal. The AG is one of five entities investigating the Rivington House matter. Racist City Employees Are on Notice, and 9 Other Greater Cincinnati News Stories You May Have Missed This Week Catch up on local government, politics, sports, celeb sightings and Halloween fun. At this years NUS Annual Conference, the outgoing NUS President called the organisation the worlds largest democratic student gathering. Given that she was elected by a few hundred delegates, who were in turn elected by a tiny proportion of their elected student bodies, it is difficult to understand how she could make such a claim. Malia Bouattia, newly elected NUS President The NUS Annual Conference is about as democratic and narrow minded as the National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The NUS does not care about democracy or ensuring that every students voice is heard, they are only interested in furthering the warped ideology of its leaders. The Conference also further demonstrated just how out of touch the NUS has become. This year the delegates called to ban social media apps because some people were using them to say hurtful things. More disturbingly were the calls from some delegates to scrap Holocaust Memorial Day, as it is not inclusive. To top it all off, the delegates this year elected Malia Bouattia as their President a woman who refused to condemn ISIS, but is more than happy to brand the University of Birmingham a Zionist outpost. The fact that the NUS is now led by somebody who has expressed anti-Semitic views should come as no surprise. For the past few years, the NUS has been led by a coterie of out of touch, illiberal individuals who regard anyone who does not agree with them as a bigot. For example, in a bizarre move several months ago, the LGBT officer for the NUS, Fran Cowling, refused to attend a panel debate at Canterbury Christ Church University as Peter Tatchell was also going a man whom she believes to be an enemy of the LGBT community. Peter Tatchell (fourth from left) with members of the Gay Liberation Front at London School of Economics So, what caused Fran Cowling to cast such aspersions upon Peter Tatchells character? It must surely have been unsparingly vile and bigoted to have deserved such odium from the LGBT officer of the NUS? Actually, the reason why Miss Cowling launched such a defamatory attack on Peter Tatchell was because he signed a letter. Tatchell, along with 130 others, signed a letter warning about a worrying pattern of intimidation and silencing of individuals whose views are deemed transphobic. As a result of the incident, Tatchell and one of his cosignatories Cambridge Classics Professor, Mary Beard were subjects of a vitriolic twitter attack. Supporters of Miss Cowling and others within the anti-free speech movement called Professor Beard an unrepentant bigot, and Tatchell a parasite. Miss Cowling has refused to debate with Tatchell as she disagrees with some of his views, but to debate with somebody who agrees with you about absolutely everything is not really a debate more like a smug, self-satisfied rant. I suspect that Miss Cowling does not care for reasoned, grown up discussion; she is part of a powerful and petulant clique who crush free speech and brand anyone who does not agree with them a bigot. They are so disconnected from the real world that they genuinely believe anybody from outside their inward-looking bubble is dangerous and must be silenced. Fran Cowlings refusal to share a platform with Peter Tatchell perfectly illustrates the view of some student union leaders that if you support free speech on campus, and do not share the views of the NUS elite, then you must be a bigot. Peter Tatchell is just the latest victim feminist Germaine Greer was recently accused of being a misogynist and banned from attending an event at Cardiff University by student union leaders. Tatchell and Greer in many ways the parents (or possibly grandparents) of the identity politics revolution on which the NUS base most of its actions, now find themselves the victims of it. Despite their contributions to the movement, Tatchell and Greer are now accused of betraying it and of standing in the way of progress, for simply questioning the actions of the student union leaders. Welcome to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is the NUS. The organisation and student union leaders are supposed to represent the views of all the students on their campus and in the entire country; however, they are increasingly run by apparatchiks determined to promote their own views and squander their students money in order to further their own agenda. We have seen student unions cancel debates on abortion and ban certain magazines and songs. They also adopt certain stances on various issues such as abortion or the conflict between Israel and Palestine. These are contentious issues, and student unions should recognise that their students have different views on such topics. The most recent example of this was the attempt of the student union at Oxford to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College because some students found it to be offensive. Student leaders squandered the money of the students who they claimed to represent in an ill-conceived attempt to rewrite history. The students who spoke out, calling it an attempt to airbrush history by defacing an historic building, were accused of supporting colonialism. Furthermore, in a disturbingly Orwellian move, there have been suggestions by the Student Union at the LSE that the Free Speech Society should be banned. Student union leaders claim to represent all students but they operate in an environment with all the cultic fervour and diversity of thought of a Nuremberg Rally. They have stifled and crushed free speech and, rather than engage in reasoned debate, simply ban speakers with whom they disagree. These student union leaders use the money that they receive from students to promote and enforce their own opinions. Its time for students to leave the NUS and to establish a truly democratic organisation that actually represents the issues and concerns of its students, instead of a body that only represents the views of a tiny left-wing clique. The NUS is out of touch and irrelevant: its time to ditch it. Its that time again! Time to launch our next Student Travel Writer competition. As with our first ever competition last year weve assembled another crack team of judges who know the world of travel inside out. These are the people that will be judging you work this year: Ella Buchan Freelance Travel Journalist Ella is a freelance travel writer who flits between Paso Robles in California and the equally glamorous Penge in southeast London. Formerly acting travel editor of the Daily Star and lifestyle/travel editor on the Express and Daily Star websites, her travels usually involve wildlife, adventure, food and having a glass in her hand at all times. Jamie Tabberer Travel Editor @ Gay Star News Jamie is the Travel Editor of Gay Star News, an LGBTI news and features website with over 3 million readers a month, and a social media following of 800,000. During his career, Jamie has visited destinations as diverse as San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Mauritius, Athens and Bangkok to undertake travel stories. Travis Levius London Editor @ The Daily Meal Travis is the London Editor for The Daily Meal and also covers travel & lifestyle for the likes of Yahoo!, MSN, A Luxury Travel Blog, and Elite Daily. Hes also a renowned international photographer, with clients and credits such as Oscar de la Renta, Tiffany & Co., America Online, and Red Bull. He is currently writing his first book about making world travel happen at any background or budget. www.MisterLevius.com More at Ramy Salameh PR Manager - KTO - London Ramy Salameh is an International travel PR specialist and an award-winning travel journalist. An accomplished PR professional with many years experience and expertise within the travel arena, he continues to deliver media coverage for Korea Tourism Organisation as their PR Manager, whilst maintaining and developing the destinations growing appeal . Wheres that year gone?! In 2015 we launched our first ever Student Travel Writer competition, and it was awesome. Runner-up Daniel Lee has just finished his trip to South Korea and Japan, and the overall winner Shona Jackson will soon embark on her trip to New Zealand not bad, hey? We are again looking to reward the next generation of travel writers, and are launching the competition for a second year. HERE The contest will be judged by industry insiders and travel writing experts (find out who they are), and your work will have the attention of travel mags, tourism boards and other travel professionals. find out more here. If you win youll get a place on a 12-day trip around Cambodia - So, how will it work? The competition will run in the following way: April to July 2016 - Open Submissions: Student writers can submit their travel content to The National Student website, to make their way onto the shortlist of five finalists. HERE. Entries must original pieces and be flagged with the line This is a Student Travel Writer competition entry at the bottom of submitted entries. 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Montreal-based Bombardiers Chairman Pierre Beaudoin held talks with officials from the Qeshm Free Zone during a recent visit to Tehran, a spokesman for the district at the southern end of the Persian Gulf said by telephone. The manufacturer confirmed that discussions in Iran are under way. Bombardier makes a variety of aircraft models, spanning turboprops through regional jets to the C Series narrow-body designed to compete with mid-sized planes from Boeing and Airbus Group. Airbus has already secured a 118-jet, $27 billion (U.S.) sale to Iran, while Boeing started talks earlier this month. Weve had continued discussions theyre exploratory discussions with a number of people there, Bombardier spokeswoman Marianella de la Barrera said of Iran. She added that the company has identified significant opportunities in the region with regards to the commercial aviation sector. Planemakers are targeting Iran as the country seeks to renew its aging aircraft fleet and modernize archaic infrastructure following Januarys lifting of economic sanctions imposed over Middle Eastern countrys nuclear program. Qeshm Free Zone officials have held talks with several companies but are keen to strike a deal with Bombardier in the next two months, the spokesman said. The Canadian company, which reckons Iran will need about 300 planes over the next decade, declined to comment on the topics or aircraft models discussed. Iran Air may remain a sales prospect despite the Airbus purchase, with chairman Farhad Parvaresh saying after that deal that the carrier would need at least 20 regional jets and that Bombardier had made a presentation. Bombardier is still seeking a large breakthrough order for is new C Series, which promises significant operating savings over decades-old narrow-body designs by Boeing and Airbus but has not yet proven itself in airline service. Earlier this month there were reports that Delta Air Lines is close to signing a deal for as many as 75 C Series aircraft. Read more about: SHARE: NEW YORKNewspaper publisher Gannett is offering to buy Tribune Publishing Co. for approximately $388.3 million (U.S.). Gannett Co. is offering $12.25 in cash for each Tribune share. Thats a 63 per cent premium to Tribunes Friday closing price of $7.52. The companies put the deals total value at about $815 million, which includes about $390 million of outstanding debt. Gannett, which is based in McLean, Va., owns USA Today and other newspapers. Tribunes properties include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. Bloomberg news reports Gannett first made an approach for Tribune on April 12, and was refused, the company said. For the owners of daily newspapers, buying competitors and slashing costs has become a way to buy time while figuring out how to make more money online. That was the logic behind the recent failed attempt by Tribune to buy two Southern California newspapers. Last year, the industry saw the most deals for the largest amount of money since the 2008 financial crisis, with 70 daily newspapers being sold for a combined $827 million, according to mergers-and-acquisitions adviser Dirks, Van Essen & Murray. Gannett Co. bought 15 dailies, including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Tribune snapped up the San Diego Union-Tribune; and Warren Buffetts newspaper chain acquired the Free LanceStar in Fredericksburg, Virginia. For better or worse, Gannett is doubling down on newspapers, said Paul Sweeney, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, in an email. The industry fundamentals remain brutal, yet Gannett apparently sees value in getting bigger. Gannetts approach comes amid changes in leadership and strategy at Tribune, led by new non-executive chairman Michael Ferro, who acquired a 16.6 per cent stake in the company in February. Less than a month after his investment, Tribune ousted chief executive Jack Griffin. That followed the firing in September of Los Angeles Times Publisher Austin Beutner after little more than a year on the job. The publisher has combined the roles of editor and publisher across its portfolio of newspapers. Its flagship paper, the Chicago Tribune, is implementing a metred paywall, meaning readers could access up to 10 articles a month online before being asked to pay for a subscription. Both companies have been struggling with declining circulation and ad revenue. Newspaper ad spending is expected to plunge 75 per cent to $12 billion in 2016 from 2005s $49 billion peak, according to Magna Global. Print has been steadily losing share to digital ads and the future looks bleak, with a projected $5 billion in newspaper ads for 2019, Geetha Ranganathan, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, wrote in a recent research note. This emphasizes the need for a viable digital strategy in circulation and ads, she wrote. SHARE: Lawyers for Urbancorp, one of Canadas largest real estate developers, appeared in an Israeli court Monday for a hearing called to discuss the companys filing for bankruptcy restructuring there and in Toronto, according to local reports. The Israeli hearing came as its bonds were halted on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Urbancorp raised the equivalent of $60 million in Israel five months ago, according to Haaretz newspaper. Toronto developer Brad Lamb whose company filed a lawsuit over unpaid commissions said he is owed in the seven figures and hasnt seen a situation like it since the early 1990s. Urbancorps projects included in the bankruptcy filing include Downsview Park, St. Clair Village, Lawrence, Mallow, Patricia and its management company. It added two projects Monday: Bridle Path and Woodbine developments. Tarion, Ontarios warranty corporation, issued a statement saying the warranties it provides are still in effect. It can cover up to $40,000 on a deposit for a freehold unit, a single-family home or townhouse, said spokesperson Melissa Yollick. Tarion revoked Urbancorps registration on 17 projects about a month ago, most of which are being appealed by the company. Weve had over 100 buyers call in, Yollick told the Star Monday. The concerns are that the homeowners want to get their homes. Calls to Urbancorp went unanswered Monday. Lawyer Ted Charney, who represented buyers in cancelled Urbancorp developments, said consumers stand to lose their deposits since theyre not required to be held in trusts. They can lose their deposit and they can lose their interest in that project because the project will be cancelled, he said. Thats what theyre facing after waiting for years for their house to be built. But Lamb says there could be insurance on the buyers deposits that could pay what Tarion doesnt cover. Its the contractors and real estate agents whose commissions havent been paid that stand to lose the most, he says. Theres no way to sugar coat this; its not good for the industry or anyone in the industry, Lamb said. Meanwhile, Mattamy Homes has been in talks with Urbancorp to buy some of its properties, according to an emailed statement from spokesperson Brent Carey. We will be sending a letter to Downsview Park customers to explain the situation and reassure them that that the notice of Urbancorps proposal under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act in no way affects the purchase, construction or delivery of their home at Downsview Park, which is being built by Mattamy Homes, the statement read. -With files from Tess Kalinowski and Bloomberg Read more about: SHARE: LAVAL, QUE.Valeant Pharmaceuticals has turned to a drug industry veteran with more than three decades of experience to overhaul the embattled company and restore investor confidence. Joseph Papa, who was chairman and CEO of Irish drug company Perrigo, is expected to join Valeant early next month as chairman and chief executive, the Quebec-based firm said Monday. We have an opportunity to move forward with a renewed focus on operating with integrity across all areas of the business and providing customers with safe and affordable products that improve their lives, he said in a statement. Papa, 60, had been CEO of Perrigo since 2006 and chairman since 2007. He resigned on Sunday. His appointment comes at a critical time for Valeant. The company announced last month that chief executive Michael Pearson was leaving after eight years at the helm. He is scheduled to testify to a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday about drug pricing. Once one of Canadas most valuable companies following years of acquisitions, Valeant has seen its shares plunge amid controversies over soaring drug costs and its relationship with U.S. mail-order pharmacy Philidor. Valeant chairman Robert Ingram said Papa has experience in leading companies through times of transition. In addition, fostering an ethical culture and creating opportunities for professional development have always been high priorities for Joe, and we look forward to Joes arrival at Valeant, Ingram said. Neil Maruoka of Canaccord Genuity said hes hopeful that Papa will bring much-needed stability at the top following Pearsons tumultuous tenure. We expect that the addition of Mr. Papa is likely to bring an entirely different tone to the organization with less of an emphasis of growth through acquisition and more of a focus on solidifying the base businesses and rebuilding relationships, he wrote in a report. Vicki Bryan, an analyst with corporate bond research company Gimme Credit, said she has doubts about the quality of Valeants products and its operating performance potential even under new management. While Perrigo and Valeant have both grown through acquisitions and keeping a lid on research and development costs, she said in a note to clients that Perrigo has maintained comparatively low debt and its financial numbers are transparent without questionable acquisition-related charges, Before joining Perrigo, Papa was chairman and chief executive of the pharmaceutical and technologies services segment of Cardinal Health Inc. He also served as president and chief operating officer of Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. Valeant said earlier this year that it had to restate its financial results for 2014 and 2015 after discovering that about $58 million (U.S.) of sales were recognized at the wrong time. It hopes to submit its restated financial statements for 2015 to regulators by Friday. SHARE: If youre looking for clues on how to safely diversify your RRSP, the countrys biggest pension funds can help. Youll find that most of them have a big portion of their holdings outside the country, in contrast to many Canadians, who are largely homebodies. The big players are world travellers because diversification reduces risk and increases returns. It hedges against the situation of the past year, when the sell-off in energy and mining stocks hurt more in Canada than elsewhere. And to be honest, in the scheme of things Canadas financial market is tiny. The value of stocks traded on Canadian exchanges is 2.9 per cent of the total global value, according to a 2015 ranking by Merrill Lynch. The Canada Pension Plan has 38 per cent of its assets in the United States. Canada is next on its list, at 24 per cent, followed by Europe. (CPPs Canadian stock holdings are 7.3 per of its holdings.) Does your portfolio look like that? In a slow-growth world, emerging markets such China, India, Mexico and Latin America are one place of hope. To be sure, there are all kinds of added risk in these places. Theres political risk think Brazils presidential impeachment brawl and financial risk like Chinas debt overhang. Laws and regulations may not work, may not be transparent or may change on a whim. But theres also big potential here, which was explored in a recent conference by emerging market specialist Excel Funds. Here are some tidbits from that event: China is graduating 750,000 engineers a year and has 60 million small businesses. China is moving toward high-end manufacturing (robots, aviation and aerospace) and a consumer-led economy. Underused factories and high debt are a worry, but growth should still average 5 to 6 per cent this year. In Canada, we may see 1.7 per cent. In 2015, the value of Chinese online shopping was double that of online shopping in the U.S., and it is growing at 30 per cent a year. E-commerce giants Alibaba and Tencent are in the global top 10. Alibabas market value is six times that of eBay. Web portal Tencent launched a Chinese version of Whatsapp three years ago. The mobile instant messenger called WeChat has 610 million users. These developments are just the beginning, said Richard Pan, an Excel sub-advisor with China Asset Management Co. India, the worlds largest democracy, is growing at 7.5 per cent a year. Mahesh Patil of Birla SunLife Asset Management, an Indian advisor to Excel, said India is a decade behind China in road, rail and telecom investments, and planning to catch up. Indias young population two-thirds of Indians are under 35 means that by 2050, the country will make up 40 per cent of global middle-class consumption. While the potential seems dazzling, the common denominator in questions from the floor was about risk. How do you know what youre buying? Can you trust company financial statements? Will laws and regulations be impartial and enforced? Have your say The speakers assured the audience that they are doing their homework. Thats what they do for a living. So what should you do? The safest way to invest in these markets is still through Canadian and American multinationals. They have the relationships and expertise to navigate potentially volatile conditions. If you think a growing Mexican middle class means more lending for mortgages and credit card purchases, Scotiabank, our most international bank, may be worth a look. It has 600 branches in Mexico and is one of Latin Americas biggest lenders. If you think Chinas middle class will travel more and thats good news for airlines, Montreals CAE will likely benefit. That firm is the world leader in pilot training. If you believe more disposable income means more meals out, McDonalds could do well. It already gets 16 per cent of its sales in Asia. Another way to invest is through emerging market Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which come in a wide variety of countries and sectors. Mutual fund companies like Excel offer funds in all these areas, too. If youre thinking about investing in emerging markets, talk to your advisor about the pros and cons. Christine Tan, Excels chief investment officer, says older, conservative investors might put 5 per cent of their money into emerging markets. Someone in their 20s and 30s might want to double that. It all depends on your horizon, she said. Even if emerging markets arent for you, diversification is a good idea. It hedges against events like the commodity rout, and takes advantage of differences in economic growth. For the patient, it can deliver a big long run reward. More columns by Adam Mayers Adam Mayers writes about investing and personal finance on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach him at amayers@thestar.ca Worlds largest stock markets By market capitalization of shares traded 1. United States: 52% 2. Japan: 8% 3.U.K: 7% 4. France: 3.4% 5. Switzerland: 3.3% 7. Canada 2.9% Source: Merrill Lynch, 2015 SHARE: NEW YORKA monumental painting by Georgia OKeeffe that can be viewed horizontally or vertically is coming to auction and it could bring up to $12 million (U.S.) ($15.2 million Canadian dollars). Lake George Reflection, created in 1921-1922, will be offered at Christies New York on May 19. Measuring 5 feet (1.5 metres) by 3 feet (90 centimetres), it was inspired by OKeeffes visits to Alfred Stieglitzs family compound on the upstate New York lake. She married the celebrated photographer in 1924. Horizontally, its a landscape of rolling hills reflected in a body of water. Vertically, it becomes abstract, more reminiscent of her iconic flower paintings. OKeeffe herself hung it vertically when it was first exhibited in a New York gallery in 1923. Apart from its sale at auction in the 1990s, it hasnt been seen publicly since the 1923 exhibition. The current OKeeffe auction record is $44.4 million (U.S.). SHARE: Back in 1914, Charles Trick Currelly, the Royal Ontario Museums founding director and the force that drove it into being, opened his brand-new institution with a very important personal imperative intact: That the ROM be on a streetcar line, so it could be reached by anyone and everyone, regardless of their social or economic status. From its very beginning, the ROM has been a museum of the people, and public access has been an embedded notion of its mission for just as long. But with a collection of more than 6 million objects, not to mention a depth and breadth of research spanning the entire world, how much access has really ever been possible? Think of it this way: At any given time, the ROM has on display across its 40 gallery spaces some 35,000 objects around one-half per cent of its total holdings. And thats after the 2007 Crystal expansion, which increased gallery space by 100,000 square feet. So whats an encyclopedic institution to do? Go where theres room: Online. Over the next five years, the ROM is making huge efforts to make its vast collection truly public. Enter Mark Keating, the museums first-ever chief information officer. Keating, who arrived about six months ago, has been attending to the nuts and bolts server infrastructure upgrades, building a new, robust wireless network but the virtual collection is his baby, and public access in the truest sense is his reason for being. Thats what I was brought in to do, he says, matter-of-factly. To put a window on it, and to make it public. The museum wont say what it expects the initiative to cost, but it will not be small. Within a year, the ROM will establish five full-time photography studios it currently has one and hire full-time staff to man them. And thats just the raw material of the project, which will then be catalogued, processed and enhanced with value-added extras like video interviews with curators to make it more user-friendly than a massive database. The ROM, which is at the very beginning of its own process, is a little late to the party. The idea of the open-content museum where collections are digitized and made available to the public with no restrictions, online seems rooted in a 2009 TED conference address by Tim Berners-Lee, credited as the creator of the World Wide Web. At the conference, Berners-Lee made an appeal for museums to embrace the idea of being public institutions in a holistic manner that only the digital realm could enable. Open your collections completely, online, he implored, so that they might be used by other people to do wonderful things, in ways they never could have imagined. Then, he started a rallying chant that the audience quickly joined: Raw data now, raw data now. Opening a digital window on the museums vast holdings can have several effects: It can add bottomless depth to the museum experience, as the visitor can reference countless objects when faced with just one, or open the valve on a breadth of information providing context a physical gallery cant. For those physically unable to come to the museum, period, like shut-ins or those suffering from severe illness, the virtual museum becomes their portal to a rich, unimagined universe. Over the past several years, museums all over the world have heard the call. As long ago as 2011, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam started making its collection available; it now has some 200,000 images on its site ready and waiting to be used by anyone, for any reason. It was the first domino, and spurred many others: Shortly afterwards, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington followed suit. Now, there are more than 50 major museums in North America alone with significant portions of their collection available online. In Canada, the ROM is the first to attempt anything even remotely this scale. The sheer size of its collection dictates the enormity of the endeavour; compare, say, to the Art Gallery of Ontario, whose entire collection tops out around 90,000. The collection itself not withstanding, the ROM also has hundreds of thousands of old photographs that it will be digitizing as well. But the ROM wont wait to break the million-mark before it starts to open its digital doors. Once we start, were just going to make it available, Keating says. Because thats when you can start to have some fun with it. What kind of fun? Anything from experiences in a gallery where a viewer can unlock the story behind an object through the ROMs mobile app, to simply opening a virtual door to the museums vaults. Lets say youre really interested in a certain kind of pistol thats on display, Keating says. We might have dozens of them in the back of the house, so by the time were through, youll be able to see all of them. Objects on display arent just objects anymore theyre doorways into the museums holdings. For now, the path inside runs through the photography studio of Brian Boyle, the ROMs chief photographer and a 40-year veteran of the museum. On the museums lower level, Boyle has been diligently capturing the collection, piece by piece, for months. Theres a lot of weight on these shoulders, Keating laughs, nodding to Boyle. But its about time, right Brian? Boyle agrees. Its bloody well about time, he says. Its exciting. Its really exciting. Shortly, the effort will grow by leaps and bounds: With five studios running full time in the near future, Keating sets a goal of 2021 for the museum to have 1.5 million objects online. If that sounds like a far cry from 6 million, consider: The ROM has thousands of specimens of various birds, bugs and other creatures, and not every single one needs to be digitized. You can only shoot so many salamanders, Keating laughs, but then turns serious. If Im a researcher in, say, Australia, I want to see all the different specimens of salamanders. Its important to me. And well get to that point. But at this point, really its the simple fact that this collection belongs to the public, and the onus is on us to get that out there. Collecting is expensive, and it represents an enormous amount of consideration and thought. To have it all sitting in storage just doesnt make sense. SHARE: The girl-squad life is pretty carefree. Impromptu brunch date? On it. Early morning yoga sesh? Natch. Staying out til 3 in the morning at your neighbourhoods trendiest bar? Uhh, obviously. And then it happens: People start having babies. Before kids, we were thinking about what the hot new restaurant was to go to, what bar we would go to, whose birthday it was, who was having an awesome cottage weekend, says Etobicoke mother of one Danielle Bablich, 31, whose son Leo is just over 6 months old. Now its all about meeting around nap schedules, being in bed by 9. Whether youre a new mom or a kid-free friend watching (slightly horrified) from the sidelines, the arrival of little ones in a friend circle can really shake things up. In Canada, the average age for women having their first kid is 28.5 years old, meaning many female friends are experiencing big changes in their friend groups around that time. All of a sudden, some women are thrust into their new, all-consuming role as moms navigating the world of public breastfeeding and toddler temper tantrums. Others the kid-free crowd are often filled with mixed emotions as their newly tethered friends enter a world of sleepless nights and smelly bodily fluids. For both sides, it can be a trying time for friendships. I think our entire social life does kind of change, says Bablichs friend Whitney Finegan, 32, who doesnt have kids but is still feeling the lifestyle shift thanks to her mom friends. Youre not focused on the shopping, drinking, partying, the new bars. Youre thinking about what type of restaurant you can have an early dinner at. One British survey found the average number of close friends for people with no children is 4.7, but this drops as people have kids, going down to just 3.5 friends for people with three children. Another survey of moms and dads from Child found only 54 per cent of women felt satisfied with their friendships after having kids a drop from 69 per cent before babies hit the scene. The reason, it seems, is a lack of time. Women spent 14 hours each week with their friends before having children, but only five hours after. (Yikes.) In the first few months of being a mom, women are developing a new identity, says Avital Norman Nathman, editor of The Good Mother Myth: Redefining Motherhood to Fit Reality. Theyre taking on the roles of mother and caregiver, meaning their identity as a friend is changing, too. That process can leave both sides new moms and their kid-free friends frustrated, Nathman says. For Bablichs friend group, the arrival of babies was a one-two punch. Larissa Gaudet, 34, was one of the first women in the group to have a kid, with her son Jamieson arriving just five days before 31-year-old Jenna Laskos daughter Frankie in 2011 a situation which actually helped the two childhood friends reconnect while shaking up their broader friend group. On a spring afternoon, the group of thirty-something women whove known each other for over a decade and all attended the same Etobicoke high school are hanging out at Bablichs home in Etobicoke while a couple of kids are running around and gleefully munching on gourmet doughnuts. These sorts of hangouts, the women say, have replaced bar nights and shopping trips. It was way more carefree before, says Gaudet. A poop explosion at a restaurant, she says, highlighted just how much things had changed. Jamieson was a toddler when the mess happened a few years ago while Gaudet was out with a friend who doesnt have kids. There was no change table in the bathroom. I was using paper towels, and I was like this is over. I have to go home right now, she recalls with a laugh. Her friend was a little shell-shocked, Gaudet adds. I dont think she knew what to do. Poop problems aside, motherhood in general throws a wrench in friendships. But as conversations turn from Tinder dates to diaper changes and quick coffee catch-ups replace late-night dinners, experts say friends without kids need to be sensitive to how much a new moms life has changed overnight while moms need to make effort to keep old friendships strong. Find ways to support new moms Dont make demands on (a new mom) that she might not be able to keep, says Irene Levine, psychologist and author of Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend. Even scheduling phone calls can be tricky with a newborn or busy school-aged child, she notes. Its also not worth planning any big getaways, adds Nathman. If your friend is a new mom and isnt comfortable being out overnight because maybe shes breastfeeding respect that. Conversations are so key to figure out whats doable, which might mean swapping restaurant dinner dates for wine nights at a moms home once the kids are in bed whatever works. Keep in touch with kid-free friends For new moms, compromising is key, which might mean lots of advance planning and leaving the kids with a partner or babysitter for a few hours. After having a baby, Nathman recommends starting small, squeezing in short visits with friends like meeting for a quick pedicure. Then maybe next time, youll go for a pedicure and a drink. Ease back in, just like you would with any activity post-birth fitness, sex, anything. Its also worth keeping in mind that childless friends wont want to hear about a little ones potty training adventures 24/7 or spend every hangout with kids in tow. (They also dont want to be pressured into having kids of their own, and could be dealing with private fertility issues so its best to butt out.) Really, its all about balance, Nathman says. If you want to be out there with your friends having fun, sometimes its OK to bring your baby with you and thats totally fine. In those moments, those friends will have to grin and bear it, she says. As long as youre also able to have fun without your child. The importance of friendship Friendship expert Shasta Nelson, CEO of female friendship matching website GirlFriendCircles.com, says its important to have time away from your kids. One of her friends would leave her baby one night a week with her husband, just two months after giving birth, she recalls. To this day this child is now around 7 or 8 years old that child has grown up watching her mom value friendship and go out for girls night . . . youre not hurting your child by modelling friendship. However you make it work, Bablich agrees its worth it to keep your girl squad going strong. Its a mental-health thing for a mom, meeting friends, she says. Its about remembering who you were before you had a kid, because it can be all-consuming having a baby. Mom confessions Moms across the country spill on how their #squads changed when kids hit the scene. Genevieve Yarn, 32, mother of one in Calgary, AB We were one of the first people in our friend group to have a baby, so no one really knew what to expect. One of the first times I brought my newborn son around my friends was on New Years Eve in December 2014. I was desperate for a normal night out, like the olden days (a.k.a.: before baby.) I put on a brave face and breastfed my son in the midst of the party, covered, and I think I spooked quite a few of my male friends. Surprisingly, my son handled the party well, sleeping through everyone shouting the midnight countdown. I was jealous watching my friends be so carefree. But even though I felt a bit more like an outsider than before, I had a great time. Bindi Patel, 35, mother of one in Pickering I was one of the last to have a child in our friend circle. However, all my friends who had children before made having children seem so hard. Phone conversations disappeared, text messages took days (and sometimes weeks) and meeting up became the thing of the past! I noticed that once the kids reached 6, for some miraculous reason, all my friends came back out of the woodwork and starting living again. Maybe age has something to do with it, or wanting to have a child after 11 years of marriage, but my life could not be more complete. Bobbi-Jo Gardiner, 36, mother of two in St. Thomas My eldest son was approximately 6 months old around the time he was starting solid foods. We were at an event to celebrate a grand reopening and, needless to say, I was the only one with a kid. My son was being a bit fussy, so I was bouncing him around trying to soothe him when he projectile vomited all over me, the wall, the floor and anywhere else you could imagine. I was mortified. To this day, my friend will not let me forget this incident and the permanent stain in the concrete floor. Natalie Bell, 40, mother of three in Winnipeg, Man. We are a blended family, and Michal came into the girls lives when they were 10 and six. Many of my existing group of friends had kids too. However, because the kids were older, they were more self-sufficient and, not long afterwards, big sister started taking care of little sister which resulted in not needing a sitter! We dated each other more often, and we saw our friends frequently. Fast-forward four years later to when I became pregnant with our little man, things definitely changed. You start to gravitate toward those who are in the same boat as you, and to those thinking about being in the same boat as you. Lisa Anketell, 33, mother of one in Toronto I have been very fortunate to have close, supportive friends surround me my whole life, but when I had a baby things certainly changed. Many of my friends focused on the fun aspect of how sweet it must be to have a baby without having a strong sense of all the difficulties I was having. My friends were, and continue to be, my No. 1 support system and I really needed them to be around for the hard stuff, too. Many of my friends also wanted me to come out and stay out late as they thought a break is what I needed . . . but I what I really needed and wanted most was for someone to come over early evening, cook me dinner and watch my child while I caught up on sleep. Raj Thandhi, 35, mother of two in Surrey, BC Even though my kids are older now, my friend circle is pretty much all moms. I know theyll understand the struggles of motherhood and be there when I need to share a challenge. I remember this one time, me and four girlfriends had spent weeks planning a night out. After finally figuring out a day when everyone could get a sitter, one of my girlfriends sent us a group email saying how she would much rather watch TV and go to bed early. She was so desperate for a night off that she was bailing on us! After a quick round of emails we all admitted that we felt the same way, and we ended up cancelling the whole night. Laura Wilson, 32, mother of two in Toronto It was a complete change in my life when I became a mom. Just getting out the door was difficult. I thought Id still have a sense of me and Id be able to be flexible in my life, but I wasnt, unfortunately. Im still friends with people that I have a strong relationship with, that Ive known for a long time and get me, but Im definitely not as close to them as I am with my new mom friends or friends who have kids now. I just think weve gone on different paths. Maureen Dennis, 38, mother of four in Caledon When I had my first, I was the only one with a baby in a very not-used-to-kids group of friends. It was music industry, film and TV people. Our little guy got to go to a lot of places where you normally wouldnt think to take a baby. It was a new and challenging experience; I didnt have a lot of other supportive moms saying, This is normal, I understand, or Let me help you. But friends are so important. The best approach to being a new parent is finding that sense of community. Reach out to somebody and say, Hey, would you like to grab a coffee or go for a walk after? You need to make that effort. Carolyn Bechard, 30, mother of three in Vancouver, B.C. We were one of the first among our friends and family to have kids. Although everyone was excited for us, it was a bit of a struggle getting them to understand that we couldnt be as free with our plans as they could. Going to a sit-down restaurant for an hour or two is a painful experience, and we cant stay out at parties until 10 p.m. because the kids have to go to bed. Ive been told that we should be more flexible from people who have no understanding of what its like to have such young children that is frustrating! Kid-friendly spots Sure, a night club or trendy brunch spot might not be the ideal place to hang out with a baby in tow but you probably dont want to resort to fast food either. We rounded up some other parent-approved, kid-friendly spots across Toronto. The Daughter Address: 1588 Dupont St. Website:http://farmhousehospitality.tumblr.com/ On Friday Family Nights, kids eat free from 5 to 7 p.m. at this Junction Triangle restaurant with a casual farm-style dinner menu. The ACE Address: 231A Roncesvalles Ave. Website:http://www.theacetoronto.com/ Quality comfort food is on deck at this Roncesvalles diner, which also features a kids menu with mac n cheese, fried chicken and more. Yumei Sushi Address: 2116F Queen St. East Website:http://www.yumeisushi.ca/ This popular Beaches sushi spot offers cosy curtained booths and crayon-coloured menus on display. McSorleys Wonderful Saloon and Grill Address: 1544 Bayview Ave. Website: http://www.mcsorleys.ca/ This laid-back neighbourhood pub features breakfast kids options and hangs childrens drawings on the wall. Lazy Daisys Cafe Address: 1515 Gerrard St. East Website: http://www.lazydaisyscafe.ca/ Parents say this cosy east-end cafe is welcoming to parents and makes room for strollers plus theres a kids section at the back. Bam! Breakfast & Bistro Address: 1970 Queen St. East Website:https://www.facebook.com/Bam-Breakfast-Bistro-469829506487794 This colourful family restaurant is a perfect Beaches brunch spot for kids of all ages, particularly if theyre big comic book fans. SHARE: After Angelina Jolies 2013 op-ed about her preventative double mastectomy went viral, it spawned the so-called Angelina Jolie effect influencing a rise in the invasive procedure. Now, a new study highlights just how much media coverage of celebrities may be influencing women with breast cancer to choose a double mastectomy and it goes way beyond Jolies New York Times column. People underestimate the impact of celebrity news reports on medical knowledge, says study author Dr. Michael Sabel, chief of surgical oncology and a breast cancer surgeon at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Sabels research analyzed more than 720 articles from major American publications covering celebrity breast cancer diagnoses and treatments between 2000 to 2012. During that time, 17 celebrities disclosed their diagnosis and treatment plans. (Jolie wasnt included in the study, since she didnt actually have breast cancer, but rather opted for a preventative double mastectomy given her higher risk of breast cancer thanks to an inherited BRCA1 gene mutation.) The study, published in the Annals of Surgical Oncology in April, found the type of surgical treatment used on a celebrity was mentioned more often if it was a double mastectomy and 60 per cent of stories about celebs going that route for treatment didnt mention anything about their genetics, family history or risk of breast cancer. During the 12-year study span, the number of women with breast cancer who underwent double mastectomy at the University of Michigan rose nearly fivefold. Sabel is careful to point out celebrity stories might not directly be causing this spike, and could be just one of many reasons behind rising double mastectomy rates such as the availability of genetic testing in the early 2000s. Still, he says celebrity media coverage is likely influencing womens decisions. Were finding that a lot of patients are coming in with their minds already made up. It also began earlier than the Angelina Jolie effect, Sabel says. There was a clear rise in double mastectomies prior to her 2013 op-ed, tied to media coverage of celebrities like Christina Applegate, who announced she had breast cancer, and the BRCA breast cancer gene, back in 2008 and underwent a double mastectomy for treatment. While media coverage of these celebrity decisions usually has a positive tone, Sabel says theres a lack of evidence showing double mastectomies decrease the risk of cancer recurrence or improve survival rates, compared to other less-invasive treatment options. Its important patients understand their options, he says. Canadian health policy expert Timothy Caulfield, who debunked health myths perpetuated by celebrities in his book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong about Everything, praised Sabels study. It really speaks to the power of celebrity culture, he notes. The rich and famous can make a difference when the messaging is simple, he adds things like wearing a seatbelt or quitting smoking. Sabel agrees, noting the positive impact of Jolies piece for raising awareness about genetic testing. Similarly, colonoscopy rates went up after Katie Couric underwent the test on the Today Show. But choosing a breast cancer treatment based on a celebrity story? Thats a different ball game. When its a complicated topic like that, we should avoid using celebrities as a template, as a source of advice, Caulfield says. The bottom line, Sabel says, is patients should educate themselves and explore various sources of information. But remember breast cancer treatment is very specific to the patient, he adds. Go in to see the surgeon with an open mind ... you want to select the appropriate treatment for you. Read more about: SHARE: There were few images more jarring than that of Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett slopping through the muck around a ramshackle water pumping station in a red shawl, red socks and red rubber duck shoes during a recent visit to the Pikangikum First Nation. The reserve is home to 2,700 people and located in northern Ontario, next to a patch of pristine boreal forest that Canada hopes will be recognized as UNESCO World Heritage site. Yet for the last 15 years, Pikangikums leaders have been begging anyone who will listen for help. Help for running water and indoor plumbing to replace the water stations and outhouses; help to upgrade its diesel-powered generating system or, better yet, to get hooked up to the electricity grid; help for a new school to replace the old one, which was built for 300 students and houses more than double that figure. The community first requested funding for a new water system in 1999, more than 16 years ago. In 2007, then-Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice announced a $46-million infrastructure program, including a water system, a new school and a modern electricity system in Pikangikum. But nothing had happened by 2011, when the water system broke down, prompting a state of emergency. The chief at the time, Gordon Peters, wrote a desperate letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that described sewage lagoons and a string of 16 suicides in his community between 2006 and 2009 that prompted an inquiry by the Ontario coroner. We are living in fourth-world conditions in a first-world state, read the letter, dated Oct. 12, 2011. Things only got worse in Pikangikum. In January 2012, the school was temporarily closed after mould was discovered. Then, in November of that same year, the generators failed, leading to power outages in minus-20 temperatures and another state of emergency declaration. That declaration prompted emergency funding for blankets, gas heaters and repairs to the generators, according to news reports at the time. But the emergency was never lifted. It remains in place to this day more than four years later as one of 28 ongoing emergencies on First Nations reserves in Ontario. Pikangikums chief and council declined interview requests, but allowed the Star to review a selection of the appeals, presentations and pleading letters it had sent to federal bureaucrats, aboriginal affairs ministers and even former prime minister Stephen Harper over the last decade. If you see first-hand how bad the situation is, Pikangikum believes, in spite of what has gone on in the past, that you will have no choice but to do the right thing, former chief Peter Quill wrote to then-Aboriginal Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl in July 2009. It is inconceivable that what is happening in Pikangikum can be tolerated in modern-day Canada. That was followed by a letter to the prime minister in July 2012, expressing shock that, five years after the $46-million infrastructure promise, not a dime had been delivered. It warned: The consequences of not acting can be measured in human lives. The next month, the federal government pledged to start work on a new school, but the other essential infrastructure promises water, sewage and electricity went unfulfilled. Despite numerous clear commitments from six ministers of the Department of Indian Affairs, I have met with Indian Affairs staff twice this year and I have been told, Sorry, there is no money, then-chief Paddy Peters wrote in another letter to the prime minister, this time in 2015. The next time that Pikangikum made the news, it was because of a tragedy. In March of this year, a house fire killed six adults and three young children aged four, two and eight months. The traumatic deaths were met with condemnation and condolences, but no specific promises of cash. At the time, Bennett said that money in the recent federal budget was meant to improve on-reserve housing and that Pikangikums plight was a high priority for the government. The government said it is working to get the community connected to the electrical grid, which it believes is a first step toward alleviating other problems. Connection to the provincial grid is critical for the First Nation to be able to expand its infrastructure, help to alleviate overcrowding in homes, develop water and wastewater servicing in the community and contribute to the well-being of the First Nations residents, a spokesperson said in a statement. SHARE: In the summer of 2014, four members of the Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation took their own lives. Three of them were sisters, the youngest of whom was 12 years old. The reserve that is home to 450 people in northwestern Ontario was devastated. The bands elected council and staff were also grieving the deaths, while working to arrange the logistics of the funerals and providing support for its members. They organized a healing walk through the reserve and along the Trans-Canada Highway to bring people together. After, there was to be a reminder that services and support were there for those who were struggling. But as the walk drew to a close and people began arriving back on the reserve, word spread that an 18-year-old boy had just killed himself. His death set off a rash of suicide attempts, as many as five a day, as well as a spike in alcohol and drug consumption, said Onigaming Chief Kathy Kishiqueb. We were just totally overwhelmed, so council and I called a state of emergency, she said. The state of emergency declaration is one tool available to First Nations communities in crisis, just as it is for any Canadian municipality. Whether the cause is a natural disaster, infrastructure failure or health problem, the declaration is meant to trigger an urgent response from the federal and provincial governments to bring the ordeal to an end. Scroll down to see a list of all the First Nation state of emergencies in effect right now. But a Star investigation has found that the government responses when First Nations reserves declare an emergency are often inadequate. Chiefs, band council members and native advocacy groups who have experience with these situations said the government assistance often lacks both money and resources to bring the emergencies to an end. The investigation also found that states of emergency on reserves frequently linger, unresolved, for years. Through this whole process I was very, very shocked, actually, said Kishiqueb. I really thought that the federal government would be there to help us To my surprise we didnt get any resources. Based on data the Star obtained from the federal and provincial governments, the situation appears to be worst on reserves in Ontario. In Canadas largest province, there are 28 active states of emergency as well as 10 more that were declared since 2014 but have been lifted. The situation for First Nations in other provinces is less clear. There have been fewer incidences of First Nations in other provinces declaring a state of emergency. But some provinces also have laws dictating that a state of emergency must end after a set period of time. In Manitoba, for example, a state of emergency automatically expires after 30 days. In Alberta and British Columbia, the declaration lapses after seven days unless it is renewed. There may, also, be additional health-related emergencies on reserves across Canada that are not accounted for in the Stars compilation because of what appears to be a jurisdictional black hole. The provinces that could not provide the requested information said it is tracked or should be tracked by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. That federal department referred inquiries about First Nations health emergencies to Health Canada. A spokesperson for Health Canada said the information must be obtained from local or provincial health authorities. *** In Ontario, the longest ongoing state of emergency dates back six years. On June 1, 2010, the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council, which includes the remote James Bay community of Attawapiskat, declared an emergency over what it said was a youth-suicide epidemic. The council is demanding funding for a public inquiry before it will rescind the declaration. It was also in Attawapiskat, which is home to 2,000 people, that the most recent state of emergency was declared on April 9, 2016. It was called after what Chief Bruce Shisheesh described as a string of 100 people who had tried to kill themselves since last September 30 in the month of March alone. Although Attawapiskats suffering has garnered so much national attention in recent years, there are many more communities where the conditions are just as grim, including: Pikangikum First Nation, 200 kilometres north of Kenora, Ont., which has been under a state of emergency since a power-system failure in November 2012. Bearskin Lake First Nation, 400 kilometres north of Sioux Lookout, Ont., which declared an emergency in December 2015 over its finances, after a series of deaths, followed by the suicide of a 10-year-old girl, cost the band $100,000 in funeral expenses and travel costs for band members. Neskantaga First Nation, 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont., which declared a state of emergency in April 2013 after seven sudden deaths, including four suicides, and another 20 suicide attempts. The Attawapiskat situation is no different than my community, said Chief Connie Gray-McKay, of the Mishkeegogamang First Nation, which is 200 kilometres northeast of Sioux Lookout, Ont. In February 2014, a house fire Gray-McKay said was thought to have been caused by a wood stove killed four people. It was the breaking point for a community that has lost 26 people to house fires in 30 years, including a 30-year-old father who was killed in a blaze in November 2015. The emergency declaration prompted conference calls with federal and provincial officials. Counsellors were flown in and stayed for about a month. There was some money to clear the heavy snowfall. An inspector arrived to check the safety of wood stoves. Gray-McKay said that despite safety issues, wood stoves are the dominant heating source in a place where heating fuel can run up to $1,000 a tank. Eventually that kind of support stops, so theres no continuity of care for people to have ongoing counselling services and counsellors are not cheap, said Gray-McKay. In the two years since, crime, child-welfare cases and drug and alcohol consumption have spiked, the chief said. Thats in addition to the existing issues of overcrowding and unemployment. Also, four community members have gone missing, including a 26-year-old mother of three young children. Gray-McKay said that she received an email about six months ago from officials at Emergency Management Ontario asking for the second time to lift the state of emergency. She refused. For me to lift the state of emergency, I would have to know that I have some permanent services or at least some continuity of service when it comes to mental health and having people that know how to deal with people who have unresolved grief, post-traumatic stress and people who have complicated mental-health issues, she said. *** Numerous indigenous leaders complained that the federal and provincial governments take a reactive approach to crisis rather than trying to address the systemic issues at the heart of the problem. In 2013, the federal Auditor General scolded Ottawa for $448 million for emergency management on reserves in the four fiscal years from 2009-10 to 2012-13, but only $4 million on prevention and mitigation measures. Since declaring an emergency, Kishiqueb, from the Onigaming First Nation, said that she applied for funding for a prescription-drug-abuse program to deal with addiction to painkillers like Oxycontin. The funding was denied. Kishiqueb said she, too, has been asked on several occasions to rescind Onigamings emergency declarations by Emergency Management Ontario. She has refused. Im just not prepared to do that. Its according to their definition and according to their policies. Those reasons are not even closely related to what the real issues are on the ground in the community. Theres just such a complete disconnect, Kishiqueb said. New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus, whose Timmins-James Bay riding includes the Attawapiskat reserve, said governments see the emergency declarations as a black eye and are more motivated to get it lifted than to provide a lasting solution. The reason we are in states of emergency is because proactive work is not done with the supporting agencies that could be there to help, he said. We get the band-aid and the officials leave and the crisis continues on a low boil until it blows up again. Sol Mamakwa, a health adviser with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, an organization that represents First Nations in northern Ontario, said the emergency responses from government do not begin to deal with the causes of something like a youth-suicide epidemic. Our communities have been in crisis for a number of years. Its just that the dire straits of the status quo are construed as normal and acceptable. For a long time, it has been unknown to the province and to the rest of Canada. I think that status quo is not acceptable anymore, he said. Though the majority of active, ongoing states of emergencies involve reserves in Northern Ontario that are members of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which acts as advocates for its members, Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler said it is entirely up to the elected council of a First Nation to make an emergency declaration. Fiddler said that emergency declarations can be an effective way of obtaining the publics attention and some urgent government assistance. Theres usually immediate help that comes to deal with whatever the immediate crisis may be, but in terms of an ongoing supports or solutions for the things that led to that emergency, theyre usually left unaddressed, he said. Fiddler could offer no explanations as to why conditions among First Nations in Ontario seem so much worse than those in other provinces. But the grim portrait is reflected in Health Canadas national registry of First Nations communities that are dealing with drinking-water advisories. Of the 89 affected First Nations on that list, 43 are from Ontario; 18 are from Saskatchewan; 14 are from Alberta; eight are from Manitoba; five are from Atlantic Canada; and one is in Quebec. Ontarios Aboriginal Affairs Minister, David Zimmer, issued a written statement to the Star, saying that responsibility for conditions on reserves falls to the federal government, although the province plays a role in the emergency response. Unfortunately, the previous federal government was unwilling to work with us on these important issues, the statement said, referring to the Conservative government led by former prime minister Stephen Harper. We are encouraged to now work with a new federal government that has already made strong commitments to improve the lives of indigenous peoples in Canada. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett, who visited Attawapiskat, Neskantaga and Pikangikum first nations recently, said in a written statement that her department takes state of emergency declarations with the utmost seriousness. Our department is committed to ensuring there is immediate action by INAC in collaboration with the appropriate departments, as well as our provincial and territorial partners when an emergency is declared, Bennetts statement said. Beyond the immediate situation, we remain dedicated to working in genuine partnership to address the inexcusable social and economic gaps that exist in many indigenous communities. *** First Nations states of emergency in Canada Alberta No active states of emergency Resolved State of Emergency Location: Blood Tribe First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: June 17, 2014 Location: Blood Tribe First Nation Reason: Drug use and abuse Date: March 4, 2015 Location: Bigstone Cree First Nation Reason: Wildfire Date: May 27, 2015 Location: Tallcree First Nation Reason: Wildfire Date: July 7, 2015 *** British Columbia No active states of emergency Resolved states of emergency: Location: Tseshaht First NationReason: Severe wind and rain storm Date: December 2014 *** Manitoba Active states of emergency Location: Cross Lake First Nation Reason: Multiple suicide attempts Date: March 2016 *** New Brunswick No active states of emergency *** Newfoundland and Labrador No active states of emergency No states of emergency declared since 2014 *** Northwest Territories No active states of emergency No states of emergency declared since 2014 *** Nova Scotia No active states of emergency No states of emergency declared since 2014 *** Nunavut Active states of emergency Resolved states of emergency Location: Pond Inlet Reason: Breakdown of community sewage trucks Date: Feb. 11, 2015 Location: Pangnirtung Reason: Power outages due to fire Date: April 2, 2015 *** Ontario Active states of emergency Location: Mushkegowuk Tribal Council Reason: Mental health crisis Date: June 1, 2010 Location: Constance Lake First Nation Reason: Failure of the water treatment facility Date: July 28, 2010 Location: Mushkegowuk Tribal Council Reason: Poor housing conditions Date: Oct. 29, 2011 Location: Attawapiskat First Nation Reason: Poor housing conditions Date: Nov. 12, 2011 Location: Independent First Nations Alliance Reason: Lack of withdrawal management support Date: Feb. 23, 2012 Location: Pikangikum First Nation Reason: Power and telephone outage Date: Nov. 25, 2012 Location: Neskantaga First Nation Reason: Mental health crisis Date: April 17, 2013 Location: Attawapiskat First Nation Reason: Flooding and sewage back up Date: April 30, 2013 Location: Constance Lake First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: May 2, 2013 Location: Batchewana First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: Sept. 12, 2013 Location: Sandy Lake First Nation Reason: Housing crisis Date: Oct. 11, 2013 Location: Slate Falls First Nation Reason: Human health concern Date: Nov. 13, 2013 Location: Mishkeego-gamang First Nation Reason: Mental health crisis Date: March 3, 2014 Location: Neskantaga First Nation Reason: Loss of water supply Date: April 2014 Location: Gull Bay First Nation Reason: Critical infrastructure failure Date: May 3, 2014 Location: Kashechewan First Nation Reason: Spring flood Date: May 10, 2014 Location: Couchiching First Nation Reason: Flooding damage to homes and infrastructure. Date: June 12, 2014 Location: Seine River First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: June 21, 2014 Location: Nigigoonisiminikaaning First Nation Reason: Threat of floods from the Rainy River water system Date: June 21, 2014 Location: Poplar Hill First Nation Reason: Lack of sustainable power from the diesel generating system Date: Sept. 3, 2014 Location: Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation Reason: Mental health crisis Date: Oct. 30, 2014 Location: Attawapiskat First Nation Reason: Human health crisis Date: Dec. 1, 2014 Location: Peawanuck First Nation Reason: Threat of flooding Date: May 13, 2015 Location: Dokis First Nation Reason: Diesel fuel spill contaminating the water plant system Date: June 8, 2015 Location: Grassy Narrows First Nation Reason: Contaminated drinking water Date: Aug. 25, 2015 Location: Bearskin Lake First Nation Reason: Mental health and crisis management difficulties Date: Dec. 23, 2015 Location: Northwest Angle No. 33 First Nation Reason: Water contamination Date: Feb. 17, 2016 Location: Attawapiskat First Nation Reason: Multiple suicide attempts Date: April 9, 2016 Resolved states of emergency Location: Wawakapewin First Nation Reason: Loss of water supply Date: March 2014 Location: Chippewas of Nawash First Nation Reason: Water treatment plant failure Date: June 6, 2014 Location: Mitaajigamiing First Nation Reason: Potential flooding which would impact water treatment plant Date: June 18, 2014 Location: Wabaseemoong First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: June 24, 2014 Location: Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation Reason: Environmental contamination Date: April 2015 Location: Constance Lake First Nation Reason: Seasonal flooding causing water and sewer back up in homes Date: April 16, 2015 Location: Fort Albany and Kashechewan First Nation Reason: Potential floods due to spring ice break up Date: April 27, 2015 Location: Shoal Lake #40 First Nation Reason: Loss of communitys ferry Date: May 6, 2015 Location: Mattagami First Nation Reason: Power loss due to ice storm Date: Dec. 13, 2015 Location: Lake Helen First Nation Reason: Bridge closure Date: Jan. 10, 2016 *** Quebec No active states of emergency No states of emergency declared since 2014 *** Saskatchewan No active states of emergency Resolved states of emergency Location: Lac La Ronge First Nation Reason: Wildfire Date: June 6, 2015 Location: Lac La Ronge First Nation Reason: Wildfire Date: June 25, 2015 Location: Clearwater River Dene Nation Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: Birch Narrows Dene Nation Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: Little Red River Reserve Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: Wahpeton Dakota Nation Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: Canoe Lake First Nation Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: La Plonge First Nations Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: English River (Patuanak) First Natio Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: South End First Nation Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: Deschambault Lake (Kimosom Pwatinahk) Reason: Wildfire, smoke and air-quality issues Date: 2015 Location: James Smith Cree Nation Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Stanley Mission Indian Band Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Star Blanket Cree Nation Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Ochapowace First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Kawacatoose First Nation IR #88 Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Peepeekisis IR #81 Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Little Black Bear Reserve Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Muskowekwan First Nation #85 Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Cowessess FN #73 Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Sakimay First Nation #74 Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 Location: Carry the Kettle First Nation Reason: Flooding Date: 2014 *** Yukon No active states of emergency No states of emergency declared since 2014 About the data: The information contained in this list is based on information obtained from provincial, territorial and federal governments. The Star requested details on all active states of emergency declared on First Nations reserves, as well as details on all states of emergency on reserves that were called between January 2014 and the present and have since been lifted. Some provinces have laws by which states of emergency automatically expire after a set period of time. In Alberta and British Columbia, for example, a state of emergency expires after seven days. In Manitoba, it expires automatically after 30 days. There may be additional health emergencies that are not recorded in this data. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada officials said that Health Canada is responsible for information on First Nations health emergencies. Health Canada officials said that local and provincial governments keep that information. With the exception of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, provinces referred the Stars inquiries back to the federal government. Sources: Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada; Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services; Alberta Indigenous Relations; Secretariat aux affaires autochtones du Quebec; Saskatchewan Government Relations; Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness; Yukon Department of Community Services, Northwest Territories Municipal and Community Affairs; Nunavut Emergency Management SHARE: OTTAWAIt was barely a decade ago, but much of the emotional debate on both sides of the border over Canadas participation in a North American missile defence program seems already forgotten. It was an issue that pivoted on matters of Canadian sovereignty, bilateral relations and the weaponization of space, but for the prime minister of the day, Paul Martin, the decision to stay out of the American program was really about the toxicity of the U.S. president of the day, George W. Bush. Will things be different in 2017? The debate over continental ballistic missile defence is back for an encore. Almost from the moment Martin snubbed Bushs overtures, defence officials in this country have been working to get the question back on the agenda. Now Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has tossed out ballistic missile defence as something he wants Canadians to pronounce on as part of a review of defence policy. A public consultation paper from the defence department says given the increase in the number of countries with access to ballistic missile technology and their potential to reach North America, this threat is expected to endure and grow more sophisticated in the coming decades. Is it time to revisit the 2005 decision, the paper asks, and would it provide greater Canadian security and better continental co-operation? This is not the Trudeau government blue-skying, although a spokesperson for Sajjan says the minister is merely open to a public discussion on the issue. Almost two years ago, a Senate committee recommended Canadian participation in a North American missile defence program. It had the unanimous backing of both Liberal and Conservative senators, but the Conservative government of Stephen Harper did not move on the recommendations. The U.S. has a long list of missile defence partners, a list that includes the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Italy. But this is an American program and it is operated by U.S. military personnel in its Pacific, Japanese and European command. Canada backs the NATO missile defence program, but has resisted U.S. entreaties for continental co-operation. The Canadian concern is no different than Washingtons concern it is the unstable and unsettling North Korean leadership and its military capabilities. But the political equation on this continent is much different than 2005. Then, Bush was neck-deep in a mess in Iraq. Martin had a minority. The two countries were dealing with the fallout of the Chretien governments decision to stay out of Iraq and Bush had already cancelled one trip to Canada after members of the Liberal caucus broke an unspoken agreement that if Ottawa stayed out of Bushs coalition, they would at least keep their mouths shut about the American foray. When Bush finally visited Ottawa, the two sides had also agreed Bush would not publicly raise the question of missile defence. He promptly broke that agreement, and he was accused of trying to bully Martin (denied by Ottawa) into joining the agreement. The atmosphere could not have been more poisonous and two months after bidding Bush adieu at Uplands Airport, Martin formally decided against Canadian participation. There is hope that we could have a better debate and understanding of the issue this time around, says David Perry, senior defence analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. The view of the Obama government is drastically different here than was the perception of the Bush administration then. There are practical questions the cost, the lack of a credible threat against Canada, and questions over the efficiency of the American plan which has cost Washington $100 billion over the past 10 years. There is also the overarching question of whether we should be allowing our security to be dictated out of Washington. But there is little or no prospect this could get done before Obama leaves office and, again, political considerations will weigh heavy. A Democrat in the White House will be much easier for Justin Trudeau to deal with on questions such as these, but a Republican Donald Trump or Ted Cruz will be a wild card. Both Cruz and Trump have said they would rein in the bloated Pentagon budget, but Cruz has also said he would acquire 12 ballistic missile-launching submarines. Trumps views havent been clearly laid out. More crucially, Trudeau cannot be expected to embrace a military plan backed by either Republican. Anything that smacks of a surrender of Canadian sovereignty to Trump would not fly here. And the military advisers may find themselves again buffeted by the heavy weather of political reality. Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca Twitter:@nutgraf1 Read more about: SHARE: OTTAWAThey had come to reinvent the wheel one their Canadian predecessors had played a significant role in shaping some six decades earlier. The closed-door meeting at Global Affairs Canada on Jan. 29, 2016, was a brainstorming session on a topic that, at one time, would have been inconceivable in Canadian government circles: how Canada could make a meaningful contribution to international peacekeeping. The day-long session brought together representatives from Canadas renamed foreign ministry, leading diplomats, academics and former United Nations peacekeeping officials. The agenda, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press, asked a number of questions about Canadas return to the peacekeeping fold. The participants tackled a range of issues from the militarys capability to take on peacekeeping missions and how they would fit Canadas broader foreign policy interests to how to incorporate women and where to deploy. It was one of the first steps toward transforming a Liberal foreign policy campaign promise into a reality one that had to confront the fact that Canada had been out of the peacekeeping business for more than a decade, focused instead on war-fighting in the post 9-11 era. This exercise will serve to lay the ground for establishing the criteria for engagement in specific missions or initiatives, said the document, which asked far more questions than it answered. What are the respective strengths, weaknesses and implications of adopting these priorities, both for our peace operations engagement and for activities across government? The participants discussed some of the underlying criteria for future missions, including the responsibility to protect civilians, preventing violent extremism and whether unspecified geographic priorities should be the deciding factor. They also looked at gaps in the militarys capability and how Canadas capabilities need to be updated and improved to be more responsive to UN needs. Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion acknowledged that a lot of work lay ahead before Canada could return to the world of peacekeeping. We need to be very selective, Dion said in a recent interview. We need to have a clear view about where we will be the most effective in co-operation with others. We will not act in isolation about peacekeeping. He also made clear that Canada will have to filter the requests of its allies, now that the government has publicized its intention to return to peacekeeping. The requests come from everywhere, Dion said. From the French, from the British, from the U.S. everybody has an idea about what Canada should do. Theyre not cheap, he added: If we add all these requests, I think the minister of finance will have a tough time. Transition documents prepared for the incoming Liberal government last fall showed that Canada had 31 military personnel and 85 police officers assigned to UN peace operations, which ranked the country 68th among the 124 countries that contribute. Canada is the ninth financial contributor to UN peacekeeping operations with an annual contribution of about $240 million U.S. Canada deployed more than 3,000 personnel on operations in the mid-1990s. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he doesnt envision Canada deploying large numbers of soldiers on the ground in future UN missions, and will instead contribute high-level experts engineers and medical experts, as well as leveraging its French speakers. Walter Dorn, a professor at the Canadian Forces Staff College in Kingston who has studied the decline of Canadas contribution to UN peacekeeping, disagreed, saying Canada could increase its contribution 10-fold, to 300, without much trouble. You cant get the top leadership positions if youre not going to make substantial contributions to the missions, Dorn said. I think we need to show we can put boots on the ground. The dynamics of peace support operations have changed dramatically since former external affairs minister Lester Pearson, backed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower proposed the first UN peacekeeping mission in 1956 to help defuse the Suez Crisis. That earned Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize a year later. The January meeting in Ottawa looked at how Canada can make a constructive contribution to the UNs conflict prevention, mediation and post-reconstruction efforts. There are plenty of opportunities for Canada to make contributions to missions in francophone countries, such as the Central African Republic, Mali and Haiti, Dorn said. Canada is one of Haitis largest aid donors having contributed $1.6 billion in development and humanitarian assistance since 2006. The country has faced political instability for months. Brazil is looking for new peacekeeping partners in Haiti, Dorn noted. Its in our backyard, and we have the francophone component which can help a lot. SHARE: Health Minister Eric Hoskins asked the Ontario Medical Association on Monday to return to negotiations on a new fee schedule for doctors, with a goal of reaching a deal by June 30. There have been no negotiations with the OMA, which represents 34,000 physicians and medical students, since the doctors walked away from the table in January 2015, Hoskins said in a letter to OMA president Dr. Mike Toth. After a year of negotiations in good faith and another year of operating without an agreement, I am once again urging you to return to the negotiating table so that together we can find a solution to this impasse, he wrote. The two sides have been at loggerheads since the province imposed some fee cuts on doctors last year, and the OMA responded by launching a court challenge of the governments unilateral action. Hoskins wants the negotiations to resume within 10 days, and repeated his offer to consider the OMAs request for binding arbitration to resolve the fee dispute. This is a significant request given that the vast majority of physicians in Canada do not have such arbitration rights and several provinces are actively moving away from this model of negotiation, wrote Hoskins. Nevertheless, as you have known for many months, I am prepared to discuss mediation/arbitration as part of formal negotiations. There is an imbalance of income between some specialists in the million-dollar-plus club and the vast majority of physicians, including our family doctors, added Hoskins. I believe that technological advances in care delivery have permitted many of these high-billing specialists to increase their annual billings to heights that are clearly out of balance with what other physicians earn, he wrote. This is not only unfair to the vast majority of physicians, it hurts patients as it impairs our shared ability to predict and responsibly manage the funds that Ontarians have entrusted to us to build a stronger health care system. The OMA did not immediately respond Monday to Hoskins letter. It followed a protest Saturday by hundreds of physicians outside the legislature which was organized by the group Concerned Ontario Doctors. They complained about Liberal underfunding, with some sporting signs reading care not cuts. Hoskins had angered some doctors last Friday by announcing that more than 500 Ontario physicians billed over $1 million last year, with one ophthalmologist billing $6.6 million, but he did not disclose any of their names. Premier Kathleen Wynne said Monday that the government was not trying to embarrass doctors by releasing those numbers. It was an attempt to articulate what the challenge is, she said. There are procedures that have changed over time, that used to take hours and now take a short period of time, but the fee schedules have not kept pace. The province budgets more than $11 billion annually for physician compensation, but has to find hundreds of millions more at the end of each year because there is no cap on doctors billings, added Wynne. We need to make sure the money is allocated in a way that is fair and predictable and that reflects the technology that has changed over time, she said. The fundamental reality is that the fee schedule has not kept pace with changes in technology. Read more about: SHARE: It took three sudden deaths, four suicides and 20 suicide attempts for the Neskantaga First Nation to declare a state of emergency three years ago. The community says that it will take much more than what the government has offered so far to end the crisis 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. Desperation hardly begins to describe the situation in the community that is home to 400 members. It has the shameful distinction of being the First Nations reserve with the longest-running boil water advisory. The warning was issued by Health Canada on Feb. 1, 1995. But the community reached the cracking point that led to the emergency declaration on April 17, 2013, when a 19-year-old boy killed himself while others were gathered for the burial of another young man who had died a week earlier. The community experienced an emotional collapse. The federal and provincial governments responded by bringing in psychologists and counsellors to help deal with the grief and to treat others deemed to be at risk of taking their own lives, according to Neskantagas current chief, Wayne Moonias. The assistance was very limited, he said. We had to basically fight for whatever resources we were able to get. At the time, the chief and band council managed to secure several thousand dollars from the Ontario government for a program to take at-risk youth out on the land to teach them survival skills as well as their history and culture, Moonias said. The problem is it was just a one-time thing. There isnt any sustainable effort to ensure that those programs continue. Theres a thinking that once we put money in there, everythings going to be all right. Thats not how it works in our community. Despite the communitys best efforts, the problems continued. Eight months into the state of emergency, Duane Moonias, the 29-year-old son of Neskantagas then-chief, Peter Moonias, took his life. The young man was a musician and youth leader, but also a mental health worker on the reserve. He had been having relationship troubles and had started drinking too much, said his brother, Kelvin Moonias. The death sent another shock through the reserve. He was somebody that was outgoing and socializing in the community and then the next day he took his own life, Wayne Moonias said. I dont have any words to describe how I felt when I found him and when I tried taking him to the nursing station. Four months after that, in April 2014, 16-year-old Alyssa Moonias killed herself. She was the granddaughter of Peter Moonias. She was Kelvin Moonias daughter. Alyssa was an aspiring photographer who hoped to move to Toronto after high school and attend OCAD University. After the April 2013 state of emergency declaration, an organization arrived in Neskantaga to help organize an art and music festival that exhibited the work of young artists from the community both on the reserve and later in art galleries in southern Ontario. Alyssa was part of the program. My dream is to become a professional photographer and I have hope that I can achieve it. I believe in myself, she wrote in an online biography for the art program. I want to able to tell people that I achieved my dreams and I want to be a good role model. Alyssas father said he was confident that his daughter would not succumb to the scourge of suicide, but death was all around her. Alyssas best friend was among the suicide deaths that sparked Neskantagas state of emergency declaration. Duane Moonias was Alyssas uncle, but also a mentor and source of advice for the girl. I guess she couldnt handle the loss, Kelvin Moonias said. Despite several requests from government officials over the last three years to consider lifting the state of emergency in Neskantaga, Chief Wayne Moonias said he has refused because the underlying conditions that contributed to the problem have not changed. The federal government has promised $411,180 to fund the design of a new water treatment plant, but funding will not be available until next years budget. Neskantagas chief said the total project could cost upwards of $7 million, though the federal government said the final cost of construction is speculative. Though the funding commitment is a potential breakthrough for the community, Wayne Moonias said there are still suicide attempts in the community. Just after Christmas, a 14-year-old girl killed herself. Imagine if youre living in a two-bedroom house with four or three other families and unable to sleep in your own room. Imagine if youre not able to secure employment. Imagine if you dont have drinking water along with the tragic losses that youve experienced, Wayne Moonias said. Thats what some of our families and youth and community members are facing. SHARE: Notley's pleas to federal cabinet on pipelines and EI make no immediate headway KANANASKIS, ALTA.Alberta Premier Rachel Notleys pleas to the federal cabinet to give the province a pipeline and enrich employment insurance seem to be gaining little traction. Notley met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau privately on Sunday and then addressed about half the cabinet at the beginning of a three-day retreat in Kananaskis, Alta. But on Monday morning, even as ministers said the meeting with Notley was productive, there were no signs that anything was changing for the Ottawa-Alberta relationship. Transport Minister Marc Garneau held firm on the federal governments commitment to institute a crude oil tanker ban on B.C.s north coast that threatens the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. I have been tasked with implementing a formal moratorium and were working on that, said Garneau. But he would not say if the ban would be temporary or permanent. Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr was also noncommittal on Notleys requests. He said ministers learned more from her about the tough economic times in the province and the need for market access. It was very useful, and I was very glad my colleagues had the opportunity to hear directly from the premier of Alberta, said Carr. Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi said cabinet is keenly aware of the challenges Alberta is facing and the need to get resources to market. But he made no promises. We need to get the right price for the resources that we have, and that were getting those resources to the international market, but we need to do it in a way thats sustainable, that achieves the goal of economic growth as well as environmental sustainability, said Sohi. Notley said last night that the meeting was an opportunity to educate and to emphasize the link between the provinces and Canadas economy. I made the case again that Albertas economic health really is linked to Canadas economic health, said Notley. She said she emphasized the provinces new climate change policies to cabinet while advocating for more pipeline support. You know, two Conservative governments both at a federal level and at a provincial level came together to fail on the issue of getting a pipeline approved because they paired that with a refusal to deal with climate change, and a refusal to deal with the fact that people distrusted the process that was in place, she said. Indeed, one of the first things the Trudeau government did upon taking office was to highlight the new climate change commitments made by Alberta and trumpet the new working relationship with the province. Notley said the interests of Alberta were well-served at the Sunday meeting despite not securing any firm commitments on employment insurance or pipeline support. The retreat wraps up midday Tuesday. This is the second cabinet retreat Trudeau has held. The first, at a seaside resort in New Brunswick in January, cost almost $150,000 and the price tag for this one is likely to be similar. But Trudeau said its important for him and his ministers to get out of the Ottawa bubble. One of the things we talked about a lot during the . . . election campaign was the need to get out and be strong voices for our communities in Ottawa, he said after strolling through a chilly rain with his ministers shortly after arriving at the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis, a spectacular resort nestled in the Rocky Mountains about 80 kilometres west of Calgary. And that requires us, MPs and ministers, to be engaged on the ground, connecting with people and thats exactly what were doing. Read more about: SHARE: Bombardier is again saying it will step up production on Torontos new streetcars after renewed criticism over its failed promises to deliver them. But efforts to significantly accelerate manufacturing mean the company expects to deliver only 16 new streetcars this year, the Montreal-based manufacturer said in a statement Monday. Thats well below what Bombardier promised earlier this year, leaving city officials including Mayor John Tory completely dismayed. I think their performance has been woeful on this contract to date, TTC CEO Andy Byford told reporters at city hall. Its about time Bombardier owned this problem. There are only 17 new, low-floor accessible streetcars in operation so far, three of them delivered since January. Bombardier is therefore promising only 13 additional vehicles by years end which averages out to fewer than two per month. The previous schedule promised at least four new vehicles each month starting in April, for a total of 54 by the end of this year. And it is far fewer than the number on the original schedule, which would have had 73 streetcars on the tracks by the end of last year. The new schedule not the first to promise ramped-up production comes after Byford said last week hes still frustrated about blown deadlines. Bombardier recently appointed a new president for transportation in the Americas, Benoit Brossoit, who has given his go-ahead to a plan for added capacity to accelerate the pace of delivery of the TTC (light rail vehicle) project. The company says it will use a second manufacturing plant in La Pocatiere, Que., along with an additional assembly line in an unspecified location to help with production that is currently being completed in Thunder Bay. Previously, problems with the sizing of parts for the streetcars frames shipped from Bombardiers Mexican plant were holding up assembly. A spokesperson said Monday dimensional issues with some parts and sub-assemblies remain an issue and that the La Pocatiere site already has a track record of producing properly fitting components on time for the Toronto cars. Asked whether theyre doing enough to prevent further delays, spokesperson Marc-Andre Lefebvre said: What Bombardier is implementing today is bringing online the full force of our integrated manufacturing model. The company says it remains committed to its promise of delivering all 204 streetcars ordered by the end of 2019. Bombardier Transportation is taking decisive action to ensure deliveries of streetcars to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and its riders, said a statement from the company. Bombardier acknowledges the disappointment of the TTC with regards to delivery of this project so far, but is still committed as ever to support its customer in the full delivery of this order. The city is pursuing a legal claim for $51 million or 5 per cent of the total $1.25 billion order after Bombardier missed the first contracted deadline. On Monday, Tory said he is completely dismayed by the update. It is no way to do business, he said. It is causing great harm to the city . . . Its frustrating. What more can we do? We are the customer here who signed the contract; were paying on time, were doing everything were supposed to, and I really think the questions have to be asked of Bombardier. Byford told a news conference that he pushed Bombardier officials to come up with a solution during an uncomfortable meeting last week and asked for a public explanation. TTC chair Councillor Josh Colle, flanking Byford on Monday, said the company has taken encouraging steps to increase production to meet the end-date of the contract. But he said Bombardier should do whatever it takes to meet the deadlines. At this point, I think Bombardier owes the City of Toronto an apology, he said. The riders and the customers have been very loyal and patient. The city, who has invested a great deal with them, has done that all in good faith and continues to be disappointed. Responding to Colles comments, Lefebvre said: As weve said many times, Bombardier regrets that its performance on this project has been disappointing to the TTC and its riders and we apologize for it. The delays have forced the TTC to continue refurbishing aging streetcars to keep operating at the current capacity costs included in the legal claim against Bombardier. Byford said its not clear what the revised schedule means for those costs, but that the city is consulting with lawyers on its options. The current contract limits the citys legal claims for damages to $51 million. - A STRING OF BROKEN PROMISES April 2009: Bombardier wins bid to build 204 streetcars. August 2014: First streetcars to arrive are put in service on the 510 Spadina route. Full delivery is promised by the end of 2019 December 2014: Only three streetcars are in operation after a prolonged strike and manufacturing flaws, while the contract promised 43 delivered by that time. February 2015: A revised schedule promises 30 streetcars in Toronto by the end of the year, enough to convert the 510 Spadina, 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst routes. June 2015: TTC CEO Andy Byford says delivery issues are on track towards resolution, with just six streetcars in operation when 50 should have been delivered. July 2015: TTC officials say they will make legal claims against failed delivery as per the contract, while Bombardier recommits to all streetcars being sent by 2019. October 2015: Ten streetcars are in service, at a point when 20 were expected. A revised schedule promises only 16 by the end of the year. Bombardier promises to produce one car every five days in 2016. March 2016: Bombardier promises four streetcars will be delivered every month starting in April under a new revised schedule, and 54 by the end of the year. April 2016: An amended schedule promises ramped-up production, but reduces the 2016 promise to just 16 streetcars delivered by years end. With files from David Rider Moving targets 73: Streetcars originally slated to be in operation by the end of 2015 17: New streetcars actually in operation 54: New streetcars supposed to be running by the end of 2016, according to Bombardiers March update 30: Total streetcars now supposed to be delivered by the end of 2016 204: New streetcars supposed to be delivered by the end of 2019 Read more about: SHARE: The Crown will not appeal Jian Ghomeshis acquittals on four counts of sexual assault and one of choking to overcome resistance, the Ministry of the Attorney General confirmed Monday, the final day an appeal could be filed. After a review of the judges decision and the legal aspects of this case, the Crown has concluded that there is no legal basis upon which to appeal the acquittals, says the emailed statement from ministry spokesperson Brendan Crawley. The Crowns right of appeal from an acquittal is limited to errors of law and does not include errors relating to factual matters. The statement continues: This was clearly a difficult case for everyone involved. We have full confidence in the job that our Crown prosecutors do in court every day, as well as all our justice sector partners. Ghomeshi, 48, was found not guilty on all counts by Ontario Court Justice William Horkins last month in a scathing ruling that found the three complainants lacked credibility and reliability. After the ruling, the first complainant to testify, Linda Redgrave, joined Lucy DeCoutere in waiving the publication ban on her identity. Redgrave said she lifted the publication ban so she could advocate for sexual assault survivors in particular the need for a better explanation to be provided of the legal process, the role of the Crown and the importance of a statement to the police. Ghomeshi was initially charged with seven counts of sexual assault and one of choking to overcome resistance. The Crown dropped two charges of sexual assault before the trial after finding no reasonable prospect of conviction. In one of those cases, the charges were dropped after the complainant showed the Crown a chain of friendly emails between Ghomeshi and her after the alleged sexual assault. Several women who shared with the Star allegations of being sexually abused by Ghomeshi have not gone to the police. Ghomeshi is to face a second trial on the remaining sexual assault charge in June that allegedly occurred at work rather than at Ghomeshis home or in an intimate situation. The trial relates to an alleged incident in 2008 when Ghomeshi was host of the CBC radio show Q. According to an account of the incident, there may be a witness to the alleged sexual assault. The complainants identity is protected by a publication ban. Ghomeshi was fired from the CBC in October 2014 after top executives saw graphic evidence of Ghomeshi causing physical harm to a woman. A report commissioned by the CBC shortly afterwards documented the intimidating, humiliating, hostile or offensive work environment caused by Ghomeshis behaviour. With files from Kevin Donovan and Star staff Read more about: SHARE: Toronto police have released photos and surveillance video of a suspect in four bank robberies in Toronto and York Region. On Jan. 15, police say the man entered a bank near The West Mall and Bloor St. W., wearing sunglasses, a shirt, a scarf and a hood. He handed over a note to the bank teller that said he was armed, and made a demand for money. He then fled the bank with cash. On Feb. 13, a man entered a bank near Bloor St. W. and Windmere Ave. wearing a similar disguise. He also threatened a teller with a note saying he was armed, demanded money, and fled with cash. Investigators believe the same man is also responsible for bank robberies in King City on Feb. 18, and in Vaughan on March 4. He is described as white, in his 30s, five-foot-five to five-foot-8 with a thin build and a slight moustache. SHARE: An Uber driver is in hospital after getting hit by a stray bullet outside a bar in the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood early Monday morning. Police were called to Dundas St. W. and Euclid Ave., just west of Bathurst St., around 12:30 a.m. after a fight started outside a bar and gunfire erupted. Investigators say the Uber driver was shot through the window of his car while making a U-turn, and the bullet grazed his arm. His injuries are non-life threatening. There is no information yet on a suspect or suspects. Dundas St. W. is closed in the area for the police investigation. Police are canvassing the area for witnesses and ask anyone with information to contact them at 416-808-1400. Read more about: SHARE: A Toronto publication called anti-Semitic, xenophobic and racist by its critics is now at the centre of a human rights complaint filed against Canada Post and the Government of Canada. Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman registered a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission on Friday, arguing that, by delivering copies of Your Ward News, the federal mail service has violated anti-discrimination sections of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Canada Post and the Government of Canada are regularly and knowingly delivering misogynist, racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and homophobic hate propaganda into Toronto-area homes, Warman wrote in the complaint. Your Ward News, delivered to homes free, describes itself as an anti-Marxist publication. Its articles and illustrations frequently depict Jewish, Muslim and LGBTQ-related caricatures; one cover image from last year depicted a postal carrier with glowing red eyes and Orthodox Jewish garb spitting and yelling about the Holocaust as a bagel falls from his hand. On the same cover, another image showed two lawyers with large noses, speaking in Yiddish slang. One recipient of the paper told the Star last year that the illustrations amount to demonizing Jewish people; owner and publisher Leroy St. Germaine said they were simply not politically correct and not intended to denigrate Jews as a group. I thought it was funny as hell, he said last year. In response to the new challenge launched by Warman, St. Germaine said last week in an email to the Star that (this) human rights complaint is a nuisance action launched by the enemies of free speech. We have broken no laws, which is the reason why the enemies of free speech are not coming directly after us, instead starting a proxy battle with Canada Post and the federal government. In May 2015, the Toronto Police hate crimes unit investigated Your Ward News after a Beaches resident complained about receiving it in the mail. The investigation was closed after police concluded that the newspaper did not constitute a hate crime. Warman wrote to Public Services and Procurements Minister Judy Foote and Canada Post president and CEO Deepak Chopra on March 2, asking them to end Canada Posts delivery of Your Ward News. He received an emailed response from Canada Post vice-president, general counsel and corporate secretary John West, who wrote that Canada Post is greatly troubled by the content of the newspaper in question, but that it is not open to Canada Post to censor the mail. West added that it was up to the courts to determine specific limits on free speech. So although we would not knowingly deliver mail that is illegal, Canada Post does not have the right to refuse a mail item because it, or any of its employees, objects to the items content, West wrote. Warman was unsatisfied by the response. The government has a duty to suppress material like Your Ward News, not distribute it, he told the Star. Its quite clear that it meets all of the usual criteria that the human rights tribunal has identified as constituting hate propaganda, he said. On Friday afternoon, Canada Post said in a written statement that it take(s) this matter very seriously. We will consider the contents once we have had a chance to review the formal complaint. Warman filed his human rights complaint single-handedly, but said he has the support of a coalition of Your Ward News opponents, including former Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber, political consultant and writer Warren Kinsella and his wife, former political staffer Lisa Kinsella. (A recent issue of Your Ward News called Warren Kinsella Satans Little Helper.) The coalition comes from a broad range of political backgrounds, but they are united by their opposition to the racist, anti-Semitic publication, Lisa Kinsella told the Star. We want Your Ward News out of our mailboxes, she said. A spokesperson for the Canadian Human Rights Commission said the body could not comment on ongoing complaints, but added that typically a complaint is either resolved by the complainant on their own or investigated by the commission. If the commission sees fit, a complaint will be taken to a human rights tribunal, which decides whether an act of discrimination has taken place. In 2015, owner and publisher St. Germaine told the Star that Your Ward News had a circulation of 50,000. Last week, he claimed it was 300,000. SHARE: Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente has again been accused of plagiarism and the newspapers editor-in-chief has apologized, saying her work fell short of the papers standards. In a recent blog post, Ottawa-based artist Carol Wainio drew attention to Wentes April 23 column for lifting an unattributed phrase from a piece by American scientist Jesse Ausubel. It also criticized Wente for leading with a similar anecdote about bears, paraphrasing two of his other observations without direct attribution and paraphrasing from a different article without linking to or citing the original author. Wente did not immediately reply to a request for comment from the Star. The online version of her column has been updated to include attribution, a link to the other article not previously cited and an editors note that apologizes to Ausubel. When contacted by the Star, David Walmsley, the Globes editor-in-chief, and Sylvia Stead, the papers public editor, referred to the public editors recently posted column on the Globes website. This work fell short of our standards, something that we apologize for. It shouldnt have happened and the opinion team will be working with Peggy to ensure this cannot happen again, said Walmsleys statement in the column. Included in the column was a line that said Wente deeply regrets these mistakes. Stead noted in her column that the Globe would publish a correction and apology in the print edition of Tuesdays paper regarding Wentes April 23 column. Stead also said the paper would publish a correction and apology for Wentes March 12 column, in which she used a phrase from a Slate authors work without attribution. Contacted by the Star, Ausubel responded by email. A lot of the column is not derived from my work. The link allows people to trace what is, he wrote. The blog post seems to come from someone who had a prior dislike of Ms. Wente and continues to dislike her. Walmsley and Stead did not respond to requests to clarify what exactly will be done to make sure such a situation does not happen again or whether there would be a broader review of Wentes work. Its not the first time the veteran columnist has been accused of plagiarism. When Wainio raised concerns about a Wente columns similarities to other sources back in 2012, then editor-in-chief John Stackhouse eventually admitted the the journalism in this instance did not meet the standards of The Globe and Mail. Wainio elaborated on her recent concerns in an email to the Star. Ive not followed Ms. Wentes writing with any regularity over the last few years and was surprised to find further attribution issues so easily, she wrote, adding there is a history of many similar attribution problems not adequately addressed by the newspaper, which I think go beyond whether an individual author feels theyve been properly credited. Wainio said that in her view methods like these undermine confidence in journalism. My concerns are with public discourse, and Ive simply asked whether certain standards are being consistently applied by one of the major newspapers in Canada, she added. Ann Rauhala, an associate professor at Ryersons school of journalism, said it seems from the Globes rapid and fairly firm response that people at the paper are taking the incident very seriously. The reaction that I hear in the sort of broader journalistic community is, oh no, not again, followed by a variation of Gee, how is it that she still has a job as a columnist? Rauhala said. It damages everybodys credibility when somebody with such a privileged position and such an enviable platform appears not to play by the rules, she added. Rauhala said it was really interesting that the Globes public editor reproduced part of the papers code of conduct in her responding column and that Walmsley said the incident should not have happened. But she still has questions. What does that mean: working with Peggy to ensure this cannot happen again? I think people are wondering, Rauhala said, adding that part of the column has provoked some raised eyebrows and smiles among people she knows who care about journalism. I would love to know how this happens, she added. SHARE: Theres a lot more to Sweden than Ikea and meatballs. Just asks one of the thousands of Swedish telephone ambassadors whove signed up to drop everything and sing their countrys praises at the sound of a phone ringing. Claiming to be the worlds first country with its own phone number, the Swedish Tourist Association recently launched the Swedish Number, +46-771-793-336, a single phone line that connects international callers to random Swedish volunteers who are ready and willing to talk about anything at all. In the beginning lots of people just called just to see if it worked, said Jenny Engstrom, one of about 30,000 volunteers who have downloaded a mobile app that puts them on calling list for the next two months. A girl from South Korea called me and asked Are you a robot? No, I said, Im not a robot, Im real. The phone line is meant to mark the 250th anniversary of Swedens abolishment of censorship and to educate foreigners about the country and its culture. Engstrom, who works for the tourist association and was celebrating her sons confirmation when she picked up the phone, said the phone line has been an amazing success, with more than 100,000 incoming calls from around the world. The 46-year-old said over the past two weeks she has spoken with more than 30 people about all sorts of topics, including a tomato farmer from Illinois who gave her advice on growing vegetables and a girl from Holland who asked about the party scene in Stockholm. I even got a call from a mom on a small island in the South Pacific who was sitting with her 8-year-old son doing homework about Scandinavia, she said. He asked me about wild animals and what do kids do after school in Sweden. Upon dialing the number (Canadian callers must dial 011 before the number international rates apply) an automated voice will answer saying, Calling Sweden. You will soon be connected to a random Swede, somewhere in Sweden. According to Engstom, nobody tells the ambassadors what to say or how to answer meaning callers get an authentic opinion from regular Swedes rather than a sanitized sales pitch from a marketing agency. She admits this could lead to problems with negative views of the country, but added thats not really a concern. People who have bad thoughts can go to Toronto and talk to you in a bar or on a bus and tell you what they dont like anyways, she said. Engstrom said the call line has proven so popular that celebrities are lining up to be ambassadors. The countrys prime minister even took calls for a few hours, but the bulk of people picking up are still everyday Swedes. Emil Nilsson was walking his father-in-laws poodle when he answered the phone. The 30-year-old had only signed up a few days before and said he was a little nervous to answer his first call. When asked what someone should do to experience Swedish culture his response was simple, Eat meatballs. But not every answer was as easy. Asked to describe his country, Nilsson said Sweden was nice, sometimes even too nice, like Canada. Lots of foreigners are coming to Sweden, immigrants, so its kind of good and kind of bad, he added. Were too nice that we cant stand up for our own country sometimes. After the brief immigration discussion it was back to popular topics like what tourists should bring when they visit Nilsson suggested a fishing rod. If the calls are anything to go by, Swedes truly are hooked on fishing. Eddie Andersson, 20, said its one of his favourite things to do. I live on an island and me and my friends are always out fishing, swimming and doing stuff with boats, he said. Its really nice. The calls are meant to be a two-way conversation, and both Nilsson and Andersson wasted no time in asking where the best fishing in Canada could be found. While they were eager to talk about Sweden, all of the ambassadors the Star spoke to admitted they knew little or nothing about Toronto besides the existence of the Maple Leafs raising the idea that maybe the city should get a phone number of its own. If it does, Engstrom did raise a note of caution. The one thing is when people call it could be evening in their country and morning in yours so its kind of weird to talk to drunk people, she said. But its not bad, its fun and theyre often happy. An easy call The Star called up three random Swedes and talked about their country, what its like to get calls from strangers and, of course, meatballs. Eddie Andersson Anderson was in the middle of playing video games when he answered the phone. He said he had only signed up to be a telephone ambassador a few days ago and was excited to get his first call. I thought it was a cool idea, he said. The 20-year-old said all visitors to Sweden should try fishing or, at the very least, sample some of the Swedens seaborne delicacies. Most people say eat meatballs, but I prefer all of the fish, my favourite is mackerel. Jenny Engstrom Engstrom had just finished a big lunch celebrating her sons confirmation when she answered the phone. The 46-year-old works for the Swedish Tourist Association, the group that came up with the idea for a national phone line. The cool thing is that normal Swedish people can tell the world what they like about Sweden, or dont like perhaps, she said. No one is telling you what to say or how to answer. Emil Nilsson Nilsson was walking his father in laws whiny poodle when he picked up the phone. If you come to Sweden bring your fishing rod, he said, describing his country as very nice and the home of special Swedish meatballs. The 30-year-old said his girlfriend convinced him to join the calling list a few days ago. Its really fun to talk with people and share the history of Sweden. SHARE: Premier Kathleen Wynne says she still has no timeframe for the release of the Special Investigations Unit report into the death of Andrew Loku at the hands of Toronto police, as calls grow louder for it to come out now. Speaking just days after 10 families of people killed by police and a number of prominent Ontarians told the Star that all of the police watchdogs reports must be made public, Wynne told reporters Monday, Ive directed my folks to get on this right away to meet with legal and privacy experts. Lokus family, too, is calling for the release of the secret report, so we can turn the light on exactly what happened, said Lokus uncle, Senos Timon. Two top privacy experts the current and former Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario have publicly said the reports can be released. Current commissioner Brian Beamish has told the Star that the name of a police officer involved in an SIU investigation may be disclosed along with other information associated with a completed investigation in circumstances of significant public interest for the purposes of fostering accountability and public confidence in police services, and ensuring transparency in its operations. His predecessor, Ann Cavoukian, has a similar stance. People have a right to know what has transpired and the facts that have been documented in the report produced on this controversy, she told the Star in an interview. The public deserves to know more, as they are allowed to do in other provinces such as British Columbia. Release the report, or face the consequences of the appearance of a cover-up. Loku, a 45-year-old father of five from South Sudan, was shot dead in his apartment building hallway last July by a Toronto police officer. The SIU, the civilian agency that investigates incidents of death, serious injury and alleged sexual assault involving police, said Loku was advancing on police with a hammer, and cleared the officer of any criminal wrongdoing. His death and the outcome of the SIU investigation sparked outrage: Black Lives Matter Toronto camped outside Toronto police headquarters for weeks to protest, ultimately helping to prompt a coroners inquest into the circumstances of Lokus death and a Toronto City Council motion urging the province to review the SIU. Lokus family, spread out across Canada and South Sudan, believe they should not be in the dark about the final moments of their relatives life. Timon, Lokus uncle, told the Star from Saskatoon that he requested the directors report the very same night he was told no charges would be laid, stressing the need for a written explanation of the decision. He told the watchdog it would be easier to pass along the news to Lokus wife and five children in South Sudan if he had it in writing. But I was told no, youre not going to get a copy of the report, Timon said in an interview shortly after the SIU decision was released. We dont know exactly how the SIU got to this conclusion We have strong feelings that not all the information was taken into consideration. Timon says he is confused about what really happened to his nephew right before he was killed. When he was in Toronto for Lokus funeral, Timon said he spoke to eyewitnesses who saw Loku before the shooting, who said he had calmed down and was not violent. Those witnesses, Robin Hicks and Reg Lamontagne, told the Star that by the time police arrived on scene, Loku did not pose a threat. Im not 100 per cent that (the SIU) actually got all of the information from the eyewitnesses that were in the building, Timon said. Wynne reiterated Monday that the government is still looking at what information in the Loku report can be released. I obviously am not in any way interested in putting anyone at risk. We need to make sure that the privacy concerns and safety concerns are considered, but they are being considered, said Wynne. Were moving as quickly as we can. I dont have a timeframe, but I can tell you that those meetings are happening right now. Under current legislation, the SIU director is required to submit his final report solely to the Attorney General. The government has always kept those reports secret, maintaining they contain personal information. The only information the public receives about a completed investigation is through a news release issued by the SIU. Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur admitted last Monday that she had not read the Loku report nearly a month after it had been submitted to her office only to say the following day that she had now read it and was willing to work with the SIU on releasing it. Both opposition parties at Queens Park are now urging the release of all SIU reports. But just because the government has committed to releasing the Loku document at some point doesnt mean other SIU reviews will be made public any time soon. Wynne and Meilleur have said they want to wait until an upcoming review of police oversight agencies is completed before deciding whether all reports should be put into the public realm. This despite the fact that the recommendation from the 1989 Task Force on Race Relations and Policing which directly led to the creation of the SIU in 1990 envisioned that the police oversight agency would communicate its findings from an investigation to the public. (The team) would be required to convey its findings to the public and, when warranted, lay criminal charges within 30 days of commencing the investigation, says the task forces report. The Police Services Act, enacted a year after the task force submitted its report, makes no mention of the SIU having to report to the public. A number of notable Ontarians have joined those calls for more transparency, including a former police chief, an ex-Toronto mayor, and the former head of the Toronto Police Services Board. Its an absolute necessity because there must somehow be confidence restored in the way the SIU works and what it finds, said Stephen Lewis, former UN ambassador and Ontario NDP leader. Read more about: SHARE: When a citizen is killed, hurt, or alleges sexual assault by a police officer, the Special Investigations Unit collects evidence, drafts a report, and seals it up. That report, containing testimony and evidence used to determine whether charges should be laid, is sent only to Ontarios Attorney General. Since the SIU cleared police in Andrew Lokus death, demands for the release of the secret report from that investigation and all others by the SIU have come from inside and outside Queens Park. Premier Kathleen Wynne has now vowed it is a question of when, not if, the Loku report will be released, and senior government officials say work is underway to change how the reports are handled going forward. We asked prominent Ontarians if they think these reports should be made public. Here is what they said: Bill Closs, former Kingston Police chief who has reviewed more than 1,000 investigations for the Office of the Independent Police Review Director Where an SIU investigative report does not result in criminal charges the report should be released. Generally the courts, judges and the SIU, almost always give police the benefit of the doubt when the officer takes a citizens life or seriously injures them. The power to kill should at least be balanced with the transparency of a public investigative report. The release of the subject officers name should only be withheld when there is evidence that it is necessary for the protection of the officer, their family or to protect police undercover operations. Unfortunately, I am of the opinion that while the Ontario government may go through the PR motion of appearing to seek transparency, they will ultimately cause little change in an effort to keep peace with police unions. Ann Cavoukian, former information and privacy commissioner of Ontario There is no question that openness and transparency engenders greater trust, and that is exactly what is in short supply these days, especially with law enforcement agencies. Why shouldnt they publish SIU investigation reports? What I learned in my three terms was that you cant hold government institutions accountable without much-needed transparency. Otherwise, no one will believe them, particularly in cases such as this, where a police officer who shot and killed someone, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing. Ive never forgotten the words of former Attorney General Ian Scott: We do not, and never will, accept the proposition that the business of the public, is none of the publics business. Stephen Lewis, former UN ambassador and Ontario NDP leader Its an absolute necessity because there must somehow be confidence restored in the way the SIU works and what it finds. I did the report on race relations in Ontario in 1992, thats 24 years ago now, and I had a whole section on the SIU and on the lack of public trust. It mirrors exactly what were hearing today from minority communities. There was the same sense that you couldnt trust the SIU, that you didnt know how the SIU reached its findings, you didnt know anything about the competence of the investigators. It was all sheathed in secrecy. That means for a quarter of a century virtually nothing has changed. The only way you can restore public confidence over all those years is to get those reports made public. Anthony Moustacalis, president of the Criminal Lawyers Association The important and oft ignored privacy rights of individuals must yield in favour of open review of these state actors where state sanctioned force is concerned. Publishing the investigative results, which are morally owned by the public, results in discourse and improved policy. Some exceptions may apply, such as protecting trial interests or preventing prejudice of other related investigations. But these interests can be safeguarded by limited editing or delay, and then only where absolutely necessary. Police have a very demanding job, but ultimately confidence is only enhanced by openness and information produced in a timely way. Civilized society demands no less. Gary Pieters, immediate past-president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations To better serve the public interest, publication of all SIU reports is a must. As a community member of the Directors Resource Committee of the Ontario Special Investigations Unit, I am aware that there is a complexity of processes and factors that could be a hindrance to the SIU, resulting in it falling short of its counterparts, such as the Independent Investigations Unit in British Columbia, which publishes all its report. The issues of strengthening and enhancing the independence, jurisdiction, power and autonomy of the SIU, is at the heart of reforming civilian oversight of policing in Ontario. Currently the SIU reports to the Ministry of the Attorney General. In B.C., accountability is to the legislature. Such reform is needed in Ontario, and would be a necessary shift to ensure independence, transparency and greater accountability. Fred Kaustinen, executive director of the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards Generally speaking, yes. And I can say that on behalf of our association . . . More transparency is a good thing, including on what basis did the SIU clear the subject officer? The only caveat is, in such disclosures, privacy issues need to be considered. In this case, it involves the unusual taking of life. There are unusual circumstances. I think the main thing is, what should be disclosed is, what were the grounds for the decision? We just dont know. Are these people cleared because theres a lack of co-operation from the witness officers, or are they cleared because theres compelling proof that deadly use of force was justified? Theres a big difference between the two ends. John Sewell, former Toronto mayor and co-ordinator of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition I have no problem with all SIU investigations being made public. But I think the mandate of the SIU is incorrect. It should not just be limited to investigating possible criminal activity by the police. It would be much more helpful to have a body such as the SIU investigate whether what police did was reasonable and how a bad outcome come be prevented in the future. That way the police (and the public) could learn from what happened in the past. Olivia Chow, former Toronto city councillor and NDP MP Yes. What is there to hide? If the ministers not afraid of anything or SIU or the people that cleared another officer, then whats there to be afraid of? In order for the police board to hold the chief accountable the report needs to be made public, or when the SIU writes to the chief and says, We believe you should do XYZ to make the officer or your force better, that is not public either. And the police service board, because they have no information, cant really hold the chief accountable. Police accountability is the cornerstone of democracy and civilian control. And you cant have democracy if theres no public information. Its hard to involve the public, and be democratic, if you dont know what happened. Dr. Kwame McKenzie, CEO of the Wellesley Institute I like the idea of more openness. I would like to think that increased openness would help develop the populations trust in the police. When things are done behind closed doors the impression is there is something to hide, even if there is not. The police are a public body that we all pay for. We give individuals a special dispensation to carry and use guns. That changes their relationship to us, they are not like other workers or people and some would argue the changed relationship gives us the permission to request greater levels of information and demand oversight. We should be able to understand the reasons for an SIU decision like any other process. It is not that we want to try someone in public, but we do need to be able to understand what is being done in our name. Paul Copeland, criminal lawyer, member of the Order of Canada, and life bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada I think they should publish the reports. I have some reservations as to whether they should publish the names of the officers involved, but the background and the reasoning should certainly be available to the public. Its important for public policy and public awareness. There are two very different versions of what happened (in the Loku case). There isnt much on the officers version of what happened. The civilians who were there, have a very different view of what happened than what the SIU concluded, and its important that the public have a knowledge that the SIU is either carrying out is responsibilities appropriately or it isnt carrying out its responsibilities appropriately. Sukanya Pillay, executive director and general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association We favour the release of SIU reports as a means of ensuring accountability and furthering public trust trust is also essential for effective policing. In a democracy police enjoy powers including the powers to carry arms and use them this power is based on trust and requires accountability whenever an individual is killed in course of police action. We realize there may some circumstances where some names are not released but the reasons not to prosecute or take further action should be disclosed. If they dont release it, there should be a legislative requirement to appear before a judge and demonstrate why the release should not take place. Howard Morton, former SIU director and Crown attorney Once received by the Attorney General, SIU reports where no criminal charges are laid should be made public, subject to any redaction which the AG believes is necessary in the interests of the administration of justice. The AG would be accountable in the legislature for any such redactions. Community trust and confidence in the police is approaching crisis levels; a large measure of which can be attributed to widespread belief that the police are not accountable under the current SIU model. Distrust in the SIU itself is fast-growing based partly on the lack transparency demonstrated by the unit. While release of the investigation report and its results will not likely satisfy those seeking criminal charges, it would make known, and subject to scrutiny, the evidence and conclusions of the director. Gordon Cressy, former Toronto city councillor The answer would be yes. I think in transparency people have the right to know. Why would you investigate if youre not going to share the information with the public? It just seems common sense to me. I think people are shining a light on it now, and I think once you shine a light on things, people start to say, That makes sense. To me its just common sense. Its a bit like carding. Things become common sense. Michael Thompson, city councillor for Ward 37 (Scarborough Centre) and former vice-chair of the police services board The answer is yes and the reason why, I think, is to ensure there is absolute transparency. The notion that the SIU operates within a secret form is not really conducive to what I think is democracy and the feeling that the public is aware as to the work that they do. Im not suggesting they do anything thats untoward, Im just suggesting that I think an open transparent SIU would actually be in the best interest of the public. Additionally if there are privacy matters and so one that needs to be protected, I think that can be done and still allow the public that level of confidence to ensure that the SIU is operating for the greater good of the public. Steve Lurie, executive director of Canadian Mental Health Association-Toronto Overall we support the need for transparency in these issues. But we need to be mindful that when the death of somebody with mental illness occurs, its important to get all the facts out. The SIU report, even if it is made public, wont necessarily be the full story. It will only be an investigation based on how did the police act given the mandate of the SIU and what the SIU is able to determine, based on looking at police actions. Its important to recognize that even with increased SIU transparency, the ability of the coroner to call an inquest is still an important thing that needs to happen. Its not an either or, its probably a both and situation. Where the public purpose is having transparency about when somebody with a mental illness is shot by police, what happens and how can it be avoided in the future. Thats the key question. Alok Mukherjee, former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board A bare-bones, high level report of an investigation will do little to restore public confidence in an agency which is fundamentally flawed due to a highly restrictive mandate. Problems with SIUs mandate are symbolic of the larger malaise that afflicts the entire disciplinary system for police officers: it is archaic, unaccountable, secretive, inefficient, time consuming and hugely expensive. This is the time, as we consider changes to the Police Services Act. It is time to stop pandering to police interests, and do the right thing. Requiring a mealy mouthed public report from the SIU will achieve nothing. Mary Anne Chambers, former Ontario cabinet minister and Scarborough East MPP My thinking is that public agencies do bear what they might sometimes consider to be a burden of accountability and transparency. While special circumstances might require the protection of the personal privacy of individuals, steps can usually be taken to achieve that without compromising the duties of accountability and transparency. The publics trust of how public agencies perform their duties will lead to greater confidence in and stronger support for these agencies. With files from Star staff Read more about: SHARE: After promising to make progressive changes to policing in Peel, the board that oversees Canadas third largest municipal police force has fired the man who influenced many of its decisions for 25 years. People like (the Star) challenged us to be progressive, we just want to go in different directions, police board chair Amrik Ahluwalia said Monday, following the termination of Fred Biros employment by a board vote on Friday. Biro had served as executive director of the Peel Police Services Board since 1991. Police critics have told the Star that he had become instrumental in charting the course for the force, one that Ahluwalia pledged to change when he was elected chair in January. We want to serve the people in a different way. We appreciate the service Mr. Biro has given to the board for more than 20 years. We just want to go in a different direction, Ahluwalia said. Reached at his Mississauga home, Biro declined to comment. The move could mean more headaches for Peel Police Chief Jennifer Evans, who was supported by Biro on issues such as the controversial practice of street checks, also known as carding. Evans has faced fierce criticism for her pro-carding stance, as calls have mounted from the community to have the board exert its control on this issue. The Peel police service has been plagued over the past decade by controversies concerning racial profiling incidents, police misconduct and officers who have misled the courts, according to judges. Some issues: Data obtained by the Star in August under a freedom of information request showed that only 13 per cent of uniformed officers were visible minorities in 2010, while 60 per cent of Brampton and Mississauga residents were visible minorities. In 2012, Superior Court Justice Deena Baltman slammed Peel drug squad officers for an illegal search and committing perjury, en masse in a drug case. The forces internal affairs bureau faced heavy criticism. After a yearlong fight to obtain internal disciplinary records, in September the Star reported on the behaviour of some of the roughly 60 Peel officers disciplined for misconduct since 2010, such as sexual harassment. After being overlooked for a promotion in 2013, Staff Sgt. Baljiwan (B.J.) Sandhu testified to the Human Rights Tribunal in November about alleged systemic discrimination he faced over almost 25 years in the force. The force is challenging Sandhus claims. When Ahluwalia, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie and Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey indicated they were ready to ban street checks, Biro advised them at a police board meeting in September that Crombies motion might not be allowed because police boards are not permitted to make operational decisions. The point is contentious; legal experts have argued that carding is a policy matter, not an operational one. The board, after a vote on the issue, instead requested that Evans suspend the practice, but she refused to comply. An email from Biro to Evans and board members obtained through a freedom of information request sent days before the 2015 board meeting where Crombie and Jeffrey first confronted the chief about the forces carding practices, included a newspaper article praising carding as an invaluable source of intelligence for police. The Star later analyzed data from 159,303 Peel police carding entries from 2009 to 2014, which showed that black individuals were more than three times as likely to be stopped and carded as whites. The province stepped in earlier this year and introduced new regulations to govern the practice of police carding. Ahluwalia was elected chair in January by fellow members of the board, amid calls for fundamental changes to the force. Ahluwalia promised, on the day he gave an emotional speech as the new chair, that he would fight to make the force more progressive. This most recent decision, I believe, reflects the new direction our board is headed towards in an effort to better reflect the needs of our changing community, Jeffrey said Monday, when asked about the decision to remove Biro. The composition of the Police Services Board itself has been evolving since the 2014 election and has been systematically moving in a new direction. The board also parted ways with its manager, Lea Steenhoek, in the same move. Crombie echoed the views of her board colleagues, saying the move mark a shift for Peel police. We thank them for their many years of public service, but the board decided it wanted to go in a different direction. SHARE: DAKAR, SENEGALA new case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia, the World Health Organization said Friday, a setback for the country which had been declared free from Ebola transmissions in January. Investigations are underway into the new case that has emerged in Liberia, WHO said on Twitter. The West African country was declared free from transmission on Jan. 14. Liberia was first declared free of the disease in May, but new cases emerged two times forcing officials there to restart the clock each time. WHO on Friday reiterated that Ebola is no longer an international health emergency, but said flare-ups, at decreasing frequency, are expected. Flare-ups have also occurred in Sierra Leone and in Guinea, though health authorities say those are not linked to the original chain of transmission. Guineas flare-up on March 17 came months after the outbreak was declared over there and hours after Sierra Leone announced the end of the recent flare-up of the virus there. The WHO said on Friday there have been eight cases of Ebola and seven deaths in Guinea since late February. The most recent case, an 11-year-old girl, is being treated at an Ebola care facility in Nzerekore, and is in stable condition, it said. Six of the deceased are from three generations of the same extended family in the village of Koropara, it said. The deadliest Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,300 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea since December 2013. There are currently no known cases in Sierra Leone. SHARE: U.S. President Barack Obama will send an additional 250 military personnel to Syria to help local forces fight Daesh (also referred to as ISIS or ISIL), increasing to 300 the number of U.S. forces battling extremists in the war-torn country, administration officials confirmed Sunday. Obama was expected to announce his decision Monday during a speech in Hannover, Germany, at the close of a weeklong trip, where Daesh was a focus of his meetings with world leaders in Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and Germany. The move will significantly increase the U.S. presence in Syria and comes a week after Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of a similar number of troops to Iraq, where Daesh militants also control territory. About 50 U.S. special operations forces are already operating in Syria. Most of the additional 250 personnel will also be special operations forces, largely Army Green Berets. The group will also include an unknown number of medical and logistical troops to provide them with support. Senior U.S. officials have been touting the success of the forces in Syria, including their ability to generate critical intelligence that gives the U.S.-led coalition a better view of what is happening on the ground, including efforts to target insurgents. In a sign of Obamas reluctance to use of force, Mondays announcement will cap a trip during which the president advocated diplomacy over military intervention. Asked last week whether he planned to increase special operations forces in Syria, Obama did not answer directly. But he said hed had discussions with an adviser about options should a fragile ceasefire break down. None of the options are good, he said in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. It has been my view consistently that we have to get a political solution inside of Syria and that all the external actors involved have to be committed to that as well as the actors inside of Syria. ... The sooner we can end fighting and resolve this in a political fashion, the better. Obama has said he remains opposed to large-scale U.S. military intervention in either Iraq or Syria. But he has incrementally deepened U.S. involvement in both countries. The increase of U.S. troops in Syria has been discussed for weeks, including rumblings last week when Carter announced sending an additional 217 U.S. troops to Iraq, the first major increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in nearly a year. Eight Apache helicopters were also being sent to Iraq for the first time to help fight Daesh there. Both moves were carried out to help Iraqi forces as they prepare to retake the key northern city of Mosul. The deployment brought the total authorized troop total to just over 4,000. Obama re-entered Iraq in June 2014 with an initial contingent of 170 soldiers serving Iraqi forces as advisers in June 2014, in response to Daeshs seizure of much of the northern and western part of the country. Obamas decision on Syria was first reported Sunday by The Wall Street Journal. Read more about: SHARE: You can ascribe any number of trigger warnings to Mondays gruesome news involving two Canadian hostages in the Philippines. A deadline arrived. A ransom did not. And thus did the militants of Abu Sayyaf make real the threat to behead expat Calgarian John Ridsdel in a manner so repugnant as to be unworthy of repeating here. A trigger of devastation for his many friends and family, including none other than former Ontario premier Bob Rae, who knew Ridsdel, 68, since college. When the news broke, a deeply anguished Rae disclosed his months of ultimately fruitless involvement in back-channel efforts to negotiate freedom for his friend. A trigger of deepening dread for the well-being of fellow Canadian captive Robert Hall, 50, who remains in the grip of the Jihadist group, alongside a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman. All were snatched up last September in an audacious raid from a holiday resort in the southern Philippine island of Samal. Random hostages, by all accounts. And a trigger of memory, we cant help but think, to the very different story that played out seven years ago, when two Canadian diplomats in nearly identical distress Robert Fowler and his assistant, Louis Guay were released after five months in the captivity of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Canadian policy then was, as it is now, seemingly carved in stone no ransom for terror. Former prime minister Stephen Harper was explicit about it in the case of Fowler and Guay. His government, he insisted, did not pay. Two years later, the question of how Fowler and Guay gained freedom popped up unexpectedly in the massive trove of classified U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. The note in question described how a senior Libyan official vented frustration at his U.S. counterpart in Tripoli, remarking that Al Qaeda was drawing strength from the flow of cash for hostages, including the two Canadian officials who were recently released in return for a ransom payment. And then, two years later, in May of 2013, we learned the price $1.1 million that was paid for the release of Fowler and Guay. It was embedded in an astonishing letter obtained by The Associated Press, in which Al Qaeda rebukes a senior operative for blatant inadequacy, including trading the high-value Canadian hostages for so meagre a price, rather than walking alongside us in the plan we outlined. We have long known that the stone many countries carve their no-ransom policies upon is surprisingly elastic. Third parties, conveniently, can enable indirect cash flows in such a way that all tracks are covered. France, to the great consternation of Washington, has, by many accounts, played the hostage game to near-perfection. But that is likely of zero comfort to Harpers successor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who faced the cameras Monday, expressing outrage over an act of cold-blooded murder and vowing to pursue those responsible. Whatever negotiating space (if any) existed when two Canadians were alive seems smaller now. Its a tough spot for the prime minister. Obviously, he cannot publicly disavow government policy over this one event, as horrible as it is. The argument has long been that if you pay a ransom you incentivize future kidnappings, said Arjun Chowdhury, a University of British Columbia political scientist. My understanding is that even the U.S. has negotiated to release some captives on occasion, despite the rhetoric about lines in the sand. But in this context, it becomes very difficult because the feelers from intelligence and diplomatic channels would already have already been tried. Will Plowright, a PhD candidate in conflict management at UBC, agrees: At this point, attempting the back channel facilitating a ransom payment but hiding it from the public is extremely high risk. I wouldnt say hopeless, there is always hope. The best thing is to continue pursuing contact and working with allies in the region, especially the Philippines, which knows the terrain and players better than anyone. This particular armed group, Abu Sayyaf, has been doing this for a long time. Sometimes they get paid, sometimes not. Who is Abu Sayyaf? Assassins. Kidnappers. Bombers. Extortionists. Separatists. Occupants of the murky space between crime and ideology. Jihadists, yes. But Jihadists who aspire not to global domination but to fistfuls of cash, ostensibly in service of a violent campaign for a breakaway Muslim state in the predominantly Catholic Philippines. Welcome to the violent world of Abu Sayyaf, the hyper-local terror group centred in and around the southeastern Philippine Islands of Jolo and Basilan that traces its roots to the early 1990s and is responsible for Mondays horrific beheading of Canadian hostage James Ridsdel. Abu Sayyaf fighters are thought to number in the hundreds, a tiny guerrilla army compared to the thousands of Daesh militants holding sway across parts of Iraq and Syria. Should Canada have paid the ransom? Some countries pay ransom. Some dont. And that difference raises a haunting counterfactual: Would John Ridsdel be alive today if he were French? Still in the grip of Abu Sayyaf Amid grief for slain Canadian hostage John Ridsdel, Ottawas attention remains focused on his fellow Canadian captive Robert Hall, 50, who was seized in the same raid on a holiday resort in the southern Philippine island of Samal last September. Hall was last seen 10 days ago in a dire Abu Sayyaf ransom video, speaking directly to the camera as militants brandish guns and hold a knife to his throat, demanding cash payment of 300 million Philippine pesos ($8.3 million). My specific appeal is to the Canadian government, who I know has the capacity to get us out of here, Hall said under obvious duress. Im wondering what theyre waiting for. To pay or not to pay The controversial issue of ransom payment flares often but was especially intense two years ago when four French journalists walked free from Syria after being held for months by Daesh militants. The French government denied any such payment, but reports in Le Monde and Agence France-Presse suggested otherwise, suggesting money had covertly changed hands. Other investigations, including a New York Times probe of high-profile hostage takings, pointed to France as the single largest source for an estimated $125 (U.S.) million in payments to terrorist groups since 2008. The U.S. and U.K., in particularly, have sharply opposed the practice, demanding anti-ransom consensus. Amanda Lindhout Canadian journalist Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan endured a 15-month ordeal after their August, 2008, kidnapping in war-torn Somalia. Their families lobbied their respective (and reluctant) governments for more than a year to help meet a $2.5-million ransom demand. Eventually the families turned to the U.K. security firm AKE, which employed murky back channels to deliver what a reported $600,000 payment to secure their release. A subsequent RCMP criminal probe lasted years, ultimately leading to the 2015 arrest of a Somali man, Ali Omar Ader, who stands accused of playing a key role in negotiating on behalf of their captors. Cash for pirates November, 2009, saw the release of a Spanish tuna trawler and its crew of 36 after a month-long ordeal in the Indian Ocean at the hands of Somali pirates. The trade-off: a cash payment in the range of $4 million, according to the Somali captors. Then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero declined to directly address the question of ransom, saying, the government did what it had to do, it worked within the law in co-operation with the ships owner and the family members of the crew. Christian Peacemakers in Iraq Military action to free hostages often ends in failure and sometimes with the death of the captives themselves. But this was dramatically not the case on March 23, 2006, when a team of British, Canadian, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers successfully freed three humanitarian aid workers in Iraq, including James Loney of Toronto and former Montrealer Harmeet Singh Sooden. The Canadians, part of a Christian Peacemakers Team, held hostage for four months by the previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigade, lived to tell the story. A fourth hostage, U.S. citizen Tom Fox, didnt make it. His body was discovered earlier in the month in Baghdad. SHARE: CAIROThousands of police and soldiers were deployed Monday across the Egyptian capital ahead of planned demonstrations against the governments transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, a thorny issue which has already sparked the largest protests since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi assumed power nearly two years ago. Following the arrest of dozens of activists and journalists in recent days, riot police backed by armoured vehicles on Monday took up positions in Cairos Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypts 2011 uprising, They also deployed on the ring road, downtown and at a square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013. Many of the protest organizers gathering points were sealed off by police, including the doctors and journalists unions in central Cairo. Pedestrians near the Press Syndicate were stopped by police, who asked for IDs and about their destination before turning many of them away. Minivans loaded with plain clothes policemen were also deployed in the likely flashpoints. In the poor district of Nahya, in Cairos twin city of Giza, the sheer number of deployed policemen and fear of arrest prevented protesters from even gathering forcing them to trickle out of the area in small groups in the hope of assembling elsewhere, according to protesters speaking to an Associated Press reporter in the area. The protesters spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The military said in a video released late Sunday that troops were deployed to protect vital and important installations and deal with anyone who tries to harm the peoples interests or attempt to ruin their happiness on Sinai Liberation Day, a national holiday marking the completion of Israels withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982. Egyptian warplanes roared over Cairo to mark Mondays anniversary, but the military kept a low profile on the ground except for areas near military headquarters and the presidential palace. The Interior Ministry said police were out in force to protect peaceful citizens who wish to celebrate. Several dozen people waving Egyptian flags celebrated with music and dancing in the upscale district of Mohandiseen. El-Sissi on Sunday urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from the forces of evil, an apparent reference to the planned protests. Mondays planned demonstrations would be the second wave of protests this month against the decision to give up control of the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. On April 15, about 2,000 people protested in downtown Cairo over the islands. That protest was the largest against el-Sissi since he assumed office in 2014, nearly a year after leading the military ouster of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypts first freely elected leader. Chants of leave, and the people want to bring down the regime rang out in the downtown area on that day, hearkening back to the 2011 uprising that forced autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in power. As was the case for the April 15 demonstrations, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Morsi hails, has called on its supporters to take part in Mondays demonstrations. The group has been banned and is declared a terror group by authorities and the participation of its followers on Monday will increase the potential for violence. Authorities have detained dozens of activists in recent days, with the arrests continuing until just hours before the planned demonstrations. Freedom for the Brave, an activist group, says nearly 100 people have been arrested since last week. On Monday, at least three journalists were arrested downtown, according to Khaled el-Balshy, a member of the Press Syndicates board. Two of the three journalists were released several hours later. Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, off the southern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairos protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them. The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multi-billion-dollar package of aid and investment to Egypt, fuelling charges that the islands were sold off. Egypt needs the truth revealed to its people: Through dialogue, not suppression, with documents, evidence and maps, not security raids and random detentions, prominent columnist Abdullah el-Sinnawy wrote in Mondays edition of the Al-Shorouk daily. Its difficult to resolve a crisis like this one through the fist of security, no matter how tough it is. El-Sissi insists that Egypt has not surrendered an inch of its territory and has demanded that people stop talking about the issue. But the Egyptian leader has also faced mounting criticism about other matters, including the ailing economy and the abduction, torture and killing of an Italian graduate student in Cairo earlier this year. That incident has poisoned relations with Italy, one of el-Sissis staunchest EU supporters and Egypts biggest European trade partner. Egyptian authorities have denied any involvement in the students killing. Read more about: SHARE: John Ridsdel, a Canadian killed by hostage-takers in the Philippines, was remembered Monday as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship. He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way, said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist who grew up with him in Yorkton, Sask. Ridsdel was one of four tourists including Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman who were kidnapped last September from a marina resort on southern Samal Island by Abu Sayyaf militants. Read more about John Ridsdel here. The Islamic militants had threatened to kill one of the male hostages if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday local time 3 a.m. ET. Police said Monday that the head of a Caucasian male was recovered in the southern Philippines and Canadian government officials confirmed the victim was Ridsdel, 68. Thurston said Ridsdel is survived by two adult daughters from a former marriage. Both went on to achieve PhDs. Saskatoon resident Don Kossick got to know Ridsdel in the 1970s, when Ridsdel was working in Regina. Kossick led a letter-writing and Facebook campaign calling on the Canadian government to help Ridsdel and Hall. He was just a really warm, gracious person with a really nice smile. I remember that very well. He was just really open. We were young in those days, so we talked about a lot things. John was really bright, he was on top of issues, and it was really nice being around him. Thurston, who for a time shared a house in Calgary with his friend, also recalled Ridsdels questing, probing intelligence put to good use during a stint as a reporter for CBC. Whenever he chose to apply his stunning mind to anything, you knew it was going to be very well explored and also brought into eloquent terms that explained it in such ways that it became available to everyone. Thurston remembers long, penetrating conversations with his friend, who could seemingly speak with insight about anything and was concerned with social justice. In terms of taking a stand on something, John was one of those people. Thurston, a retired theatre professional and educator, said Ridsdel had environmentalist friends and didnt fit any kind of little slot of a mining executive. He addressed all the concerns of the levels of the (mining) role. He also made certain that all voices that came to him were heard. That was his nature. There wasnt any draw from the holster and blast things out until you get it correct. Thurston said his friend was marked by the compassion and respect with which he treated those around him. The most important thing about John is that he applied what I like to apply: If you can listen as carefully as you speak and speak as carefully as you listen, then that changes a lot of things. Former Ontario premier Bob Rae, who first met Ridsdel in 1966, remembered him as an adventurous, gregarious man. He showed great courage and dignity throughout his ordeal in captivity, and had the loving support of his wonderful family, Rae said in a Facebook post. What has happened is an unspeakable atrocity, and is a reminder to all Canadians about the brutal reality of our ongoing battle with extremist terrorism. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall posted his condolences on Facebook. His life was taken away in a brutal act of murder by those with diametrically opposed values to the ones we hold, he said. It is hard to believe this could happen to someone who was raised in Yorkton. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the cold-blooded murder of Ridsdel. Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage takers and this unnecessary death, Trudeau said in a hastily assembled appearance before the media in the midst of a cabinet retreat. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage. On behalf of all Canadians, he also expressed his deepest condolences to Ridsdels family and friends. They have endured a terrible ordeal and this is a devastating moment for all of them. SHARE: Earlier in April, Davao City Mayor and Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Digong Duterte made headlines for a horrifying joke he made at a campaign rally. While referencing a 36-year-old Australian lay minister named Jacqueline Hamill, who was held hostage, raped, had her throat slashed and was shot in 1989, he said, I was angry because she was raped, thats one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste. And yes, he was referring to himself. Still, his polling numbers continue to rise. Heres the full text that was widely condemned, translated by Rappler: All the women were raped so during the first assault, because they retreated, the bodies they used as a cover, one of them was the corpse of the Australian woman layminister. Tsk, this is a problem. When the bodies were brought out, they were wrapped. I looked at her face, son of a bitch, she looks like a beautiful American actress. Son of a bitch, what a waste. What came to mind was, they raped her, they lined up. I was angry because she was raped, thats one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste. Twitter users expressed a range of feelings, from shock to anger to disgust. Disgusting, many different users tweeted. The hashtag #RapeIsNotAJoke cropped up on Twitter as a result. Several tweets: Duterte reaps international condemnation as news of his rape joke spreads. He deserves it because #RapeIsNotAJoke Someone who cannot control his mouth cannot control a country. #RapeIsNotAJoke Wow, Trump wouldnt even say something like that, one commenter tweeted. And I thought Trump was a sleeze, another tweeted. Sounds like something Donald Trump would say, yet another tweeted. Think he ranks right up there with Trump, finally another tweeted. Even though the video went viral across the Internet, Dutertes polling numbers have only continued to increase. According to Business World, Duterte commanded 33 per cent of the vote during polling from April 18 to 20, a six-point rise from the 27 per cent he posted from March 20 to April 2. In fact, many supporters have commandeered #RapeIsNotaJoke in support; tweets included: Yes, I agree that #RapeIsNotAJoke no matter what you say about Duterte it wont change our minds. He apologized, thats fair enough. I agree that #RapeIsNotAJoke thats irrefutable. He already apologized. But voting for Roxas or Binay is a bigger joke. The second most popular candidate is Sen. Grace Poe, who polls at 24 per cent. Dutertes comment about Hamill is far from the only controversial statement hes made. He proudly refers to himself as a womanizer, and is open about having three girlfriends, according to CNN Philippines. He has claimed he will execute 100,000 criminals according to Kicker Daily News. He has insulted disabled people and, when ambassadors from the United States and Australia warned him about joking about rape, he said they can go ahead and sever diplomatic ties, Business World reported. But University of Santo Tomas political science professor Edmund S. Tayao told Business World that, despite these comments, Duterte connects easily with the common people because he talks like an ordinary individual. The mayor, then, either draws people more to him or away from him because his personality is not moderate. Its in this way that the Trump comparison might be apt. Dutertes spokesman said the numbers prove the country wants a new kind of president. This only affirms the strong clamour of our people for genuine change, Duterte spokesman Peter Tiu Lavina told Business World. Duterte has become a rallying symbol for all classespoor, middle and richlong fed up with trapos messing up our country, referring to slang for dishonest politicians. We shall make use of the support of our people as inspiration to ensure their victory. The election for president of the Philippines is May 9. Read more about: SHARE: Most of the material is as well-guarded as library books. Joe Cirincione president of the Ploughshares Fund, on radioactive substances used in medicine and industry Under a wintry sun in January 2010, a group of young people vaulted a sagging chain link fence in the Belgian countryside and walked toward a group of low, domed buildings, like a scout troop on an outing. But they were the Bombspotters: peace activists whose goal was to get into hardened shelters storing some of the last Cold War nuclear weapons in Europe. They wanted to highlight the insecurity of the deadliest weapons on Earth. That the group reached the secure area near the buildings unchallenged and returned a few months later to enter one of the shelters before being arrested sent a chill through experts. The possibility that poor security could lead to nuclear terrorism was raised earlier this month by a global summit, which cited a terrorist group like Daesh. In last couple of years weve seen terrorists who are as motivated by a nihilist ideology as Al Qaeda, who seem to be more capable, hold more territory and have more financial resources, people and expertise than Al Qaeda ever had, says William Tobey of the Harvard Kennedy School, a former senior U.S. official on nuclear policy. If you look at the equation for measuring risk of nuclear terrorism, its equal to terrorist capabilities times motivation, minus efforts to counter them, he adds. Tobey, who co-wrote a report titled Preventing Nuclear Terrorism, released earlier this month by Harvards Belfer Center, said the equation is now tipping to the dark side. Although dozens of countries have improved nuclear security since 2010, says the Washington-based monitoring group the Nuclear Threat Initiative serious problems remain. They include physical protection, control and accounting of nuclear material, preventing insider threats, security during transport, response capabilities and cybersecurity of nuclear facilities. Furthermore, it says, there is also a trend toward increasing stockpiles of weapons-usable nuclear materials in countries including Japan, Pakistan and the Netherlands. And the global system for securing dangerous radiological materials has significant gaps. The weaknesses raise the spectre of four kinds of nuclear terrorism: A hijacked nuclear weapon The most apocalyptic scenario is also the most unlikely. The possibility of a terrorist gang making off with a nuclear weapon is limited but not zero, says Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Study in Monterey, Calif. Belgium the site of a recent Daesh attack is one of five countries that harbour some of the 180 tactical nuclear weapons stationed in and near Europe by the United States during the Cold War. The others are the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey. In Belgium, says Lewis, a non-proliferation expert, all the relevant security officials say that the security is terrible. Since the Bombspotters forays into the Kleine Brogel airbase, more sinister developments have come to light. Recently, investigators of last Novembers attack by Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) on hParis found surveillance footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official in a suspects apartment a warning that the group may have nuclear ambitions. The solution to the insecurity of Belgium-based nuclear weapons, Lewis argues, is for Washington to consolidate the European nuclear bombs at two U.S. airbases where they would be better secured. They could do it at the stroke of a pen. But they dont want to admit there is a problem, because of the political cost. A homegrown nuke Less than eight kilograms of plutonium or 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium are sufficient to make a nuclear bomb, says the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute. But these materials circulate in civilian nuclear commerce by the ton. With extremism as well as worldwide trafficking networks increasing, former Soviet nuclear facilities vulnerable to corruption, and inadequate protection of many Western facilities, obtaining the material is feasible. The most stressful test of security would be an outside group aided by an insider, says Tobey. Even effective screening (of nuclear employees) may not work because radicalization can happen quite quickly. Experts say it would take less than a year for terrorists to engineer a Hiroshima-style bomb which killed about 140,000 people. A dirty bomb Unlike homemade weapons built from a nuclear bomb blueprint, the dirty bomb would take far less risk, money, effort and expertise. The source of the material isnt rare or isolated, says Joe Cirincione, the president of the Washington-based Ploughshares Fund. Its factories, companies making radio isotopes for medical uses and others. Most of the material is as well-guarded as library books. A dirty bomb works by exploding relatively small amounts of radioactive substances over limited areas: 50 grams of cesium in a (five-kilogram) satchel of dynamite could irradiate tens of square blocks of a city, Cirincione says. The radioactive cloud would send nuclear fallout over roads and buildings, where it would cling. Inhaling the stuff would increase the risk of cancer. Its like contaminating a building with asbestos, he adds. People wouldnt die immediately, but the danger is there. Whole areas of cities would be shut down, destroying the economy as well as public health. Attacking a nuclear plant A massive radioactivity release from a power plant could contaminate hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, including food and water supplies for entire countries. The Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters are still unresolved, and in Russia an accidental explosion of nuclear waste in 1957 at the Mayak plant in southern Siberia made it the worlds most highly contaminated area. Worldwide, there are 444 nuclear power plants operating in 30 countries and 243 smaller nuclear reactors, says Allison Macfarlane, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in The Conversation. Although the U.S. boosted its nuclear security after 9/11, she adds, Europe is lagging. Protesters have broken into power plants in Sweden and France. In Belgium, two employees of the Doel nuclear power station left to fight in Syria. In 2014, an unknown saboteur tampered with a turbines lubricant, causing the Belgian plant to shut down for five months. Nuclear reactors are built to withstand attack, says Cirincione. But they could be severely damaged by a 9/11-style jumbo jet crash, or blasts from a series of truck bombs. Cyber attacks are also a worrying possibility, as shown by the 2010 Stuxnet attack on computers at Irans Nantaz nuclear facility, reportedly an American-Israeli operation. Whatever the scenario, the first step toward preventing nuclear terrorism is acknowledging the problem. Theres a lot of denial about nuclear terrorism, says Cirincione. Because it has never happened people assume it never will. So many of us who are always warning about it seem like Cassandras. But Cassandras curse was not that she was wrong its just that nobody believed her. Nuclear numbers 2,000 Tons of weapons-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium stored in 25 countries around the world 3.2 Tons of non-weapons-grade nuclear material stored around the world 30 Countries, out of 57, that have eliminated weapons-usable material from their territory 85 Percentage of weapons-usable material that is defined as military, and not subject to international security guidelines $500M Amount earmarked by the U.S. for international nuclear security in 2016, a decline of $300 million since 2012 $1 trillion Estimated spending on a U.S. modernization plan for nuclear defences over the next 30 years Sources: European Leadership Network, Harvard Project on Managing the Atom, Nuclear Threat Initiative, The New York Times Read more about: SHARE: LONDONThe United States has opened a new line of combat against Daesh directing the militarys six-year-old Cyber Command for the first time to mount computer-network attacks that are now being used alongside more traditional weapons. The effort reflects President Barack Obamas desire to bring many of the secret U.S. cyber weapons that had been aimed elsewhere, notably at Iran, into the fight against Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL which has proved effective in using modern communications and encryption to recruit and carry out operations. The U.S. National Security Agency, which specializes in electronic surveillance, has for years listened intensely to the militants of Daesh, and those reports are often part of the presidents daily intelligence briefing. But the NSAs military counterpart, Cyber Command, was focused largely on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea where cyberattacks on the United States most frequently originate and had run virtually no operations against what has become the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world. The goal of the new campaign is to disrupt the ability of Daesh to spread its message, attract new adherents, circulate orders from commanders and carry out day-to-day functions, like paying its fighters. A benefit of the Obama administrations exceedingly rare public discussion of the campaign, officials said, is to rattle Daesh commanders, who have begun to realize that sophisticated hacking efforts are manipulating their data. Potential recruits might also be deterred if they come to worry about the security of their communications with the militant group. We are dropping cyber bombs, U.S. deputy secretary of defence Robert O. Work said. We have never done that before. The campaign has been conducted by a small number of national mission teams, newly created cyber units loosely modelled on Special Operations forces. While officials declined to discuss the details of their operations, interviews with more than a half-dozen senior and midlevel officials indicate that the effort has begun with a series of implants in the militants networks to learn the online habits of commanders. Now, the plan is to imitate them or to alter their messages, with the aim of redirecting militants to areas more vulnerable to attack by U.S. drones or local ground forces. In other cases, officials said, the U.S. may complement operations to bomb warehouses full of cash by using cyberattacks to interrupt electronic transfers and misdirect payments. The fact that the Obama administration is beginning to talk of its use of the new weapons is a dramatic change. As recently as four years ago, it would not publicly admit to developing offensive cyber weapons or confirm its role in any attacks on computer networks. That is partly because cyberattacks inside another nation raise major questions over invasion of sovereignty. But in the case of Daesh, officials say a decision was made that a bit of boasting might degrade the enemys trust in its communications, jumbling and even deterring some actions. Our cyber operations are disrupting their command-and-control and communications, Obama said this month, emerging from a meeting at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on countering Daesh. In an interview this month in Colorado Springs, Colo., where she talked to Air Force Academy cadets, Obamas national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, said the fight against Daesh had to be thought of as a multi-point war and that computers were just another weapon in the arsenal. It should not be taken out of proportion it is not the only tool, she said when asked about Works cyber bombs comment. In fact, some of Works colleagues acknowledged that they had winced when he used the term, because government lawyers have gone to extraordinary lengths to narrowly limit cyberattacks to highly precise operations with as little collateral damage as possible. But Rice said Daesh had uniquely utilized cyberspace to recruit, to communicate over encrypted apps and to co-ordinate its operations from Syria to Europe. Rice would not comment on reports from officials in the Pentagon that Obama had asked quite pointedly in the fall why the arsenal of cyber weapons that had been developed at a cost of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars was not being utilized in the fight against the terrorist group. The NSA has spent years penetrating foreign networks the Chinese military, Russian submarine communications, Internet traffic and other targets placing thousands of implants in those networks to allow it to listen in. But those implants can be used to manipulate data or to shut a network down. That frequently leads to a battle between the NSA civilians who know that to make use of an implant is to blow its cover and the military operators who want to strike back. NSA officials complained that once the implants were used to attack, Daesh militants would stop the use of a communications channel and perhaps start one that was harder to find, penetrate or de-encrypt. Its a delicate balance, Rice said. We still have to keep our eye on the Russia-China state-sponsored activity, but this was a new mission, one where we have to balance the collection equities against the disruption equities. Read more about: SHARE: Twelve senior Ontario health-care executives have hired a prominent Toronto lawyer to represent them in talks with the provincial government over the future of their jobs. The move comes as Health Minister Eric Hoskins prepares to introduce legislation in May to dramatically reform the health-care system, including the proposed scrapping of the 14 Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) that oversee the home- and community-care sector across the province. Brian Grosman, one of the most experienced employment lawyers in Canada, has been retained by 12 chief executive officers of the 14 CCACs to make appropriate arrangements to meet the individual needs of these CEOs, whose jobs may be eliminated as part of the coming reforms. In a letter to deputy health minister Bob Bell dated Jan. 27, Grosman wrote that his clients have instructed him to enter into confidential discussions with the health ministry and that the CEOs require predictability in their own personal situations in order to be fully focused on the priorities required for change. He said that 2016 will be a challenging year requiring steady, experienced leadership. That leadership and commitment should be directed at implementing change rather than on personal concerns about potential career vulnerability as a result of such change. Grosman has also written to at least one CCAC board chair informing them that he has been retained by their CEO because of the employment implications during a period of transition and thereafter. A health ministry spokesman said it would be inappropriate to comment on any personnel or pending legal matters. Late last year, Hoskins unveiled a plan called Patients First that would see the scrapping of the CCACs and the transfer of much of their role to the provinces 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) that oversee regional health planning. The proposed reforms could affect thousands of CCAC employees, most of whom will see their jobs fall under the LHINs and some of whose jobs may be eliminated altogether. While the CCAC CEOs are supposed to be working with Queens Park to ensure a smooth transition for both their own employees and the hundreds of thousands of patients they serve each year, the 12 CEOs have hired Grosman to work only on their behalf. Hoskins had hoped to launch the reforms by February, but stiff opposition from some key players in the home-care sector, including the CCAC CEOs, has resulted in him delaying the introduction of the necessary legislation until next May at the earliest. In an interview, Grosman said he was retained individually and as a group by the 12 CEOs, adding he did not have their approval to reveal their names. He said he has had one discussion with health ministry officials since his letter, adding the talks will be a long process. CCAC executives have come under sharp criticism in the last several years after the Toronto Star revealed their skyrocketing salaries and whopping pay raises. In some cases, CCAC bosses got raises topping $65,000 a year, with salaries over $300,000. Others got pay raises of more than 50 per cent over three years. At the same time, though, the CEOs were ordering their staff to trim patient services such as the number of visits by front-line workers in order to meet their budgets. Ontario spends more than $2.5 billion a year on home- and community-care. In recent years, the CCAC executives have hired expensive lobbyists and public relations experts to promote their agencies. Now 12 of them have hired a lawyer to serve their own cause. POSTSCRIPT: Last week I wrote detailing how top CCAC executives and managers received huge pay raises in 2015 some up to 15 per cent and more while hundreds of front-line health professionals in the home-care sector were being told at the end of March that their wages in 2016 will be frozen for the 10 straight year. I asked why the Ontario health ministry was seemingly turning a blind eye while CCAC bosses continually gave big raises to their own staff managers, most of whom make well over $100,000 a year, while effectively forcing a 10-year wage freeze on workers earning as little as $35,000 a year. In response to the column, Health Minister Eric Hoskins has stepped in and sent a stern letter to all CCAC board chairs and CEOs telling them that now when the future of the entire home-care section is under review that CCACs are not to enhance compensation or entitlements for non-union and management staff in any way, including wages, benefits, bonuses and termination provisions. While we move together through a period of proposed change, the ministry must ensure that the current compensation and benefit provisions are maintained, he wrote. Bob Hepburns column appears Sunday. bhepburn@thestar.ca Read more about: SHARE: I dont know if Mordechai Ronen is familiar with the philosophy of the late Emil Fackenheim, famed University of Toronto professor. But he seems to have absorbed Fackenheims most cited dictum that after the Holocaust Jews are commanded to survive in order to deprive Hitler of a posthumous victory. Hitlers aim was to erase the Jews from the face of the Earth. The fact that they exist, indeed flourish, today is evidence that he has failed. The memoir Ronen wrote with Steve Paikin, host of The Agenda on TVO, is called I Am a Victor. He survived the Holocaust; the victory is his, not Hitlers. In the late 1990s he and his son Moshe accompanied Prime Minister Jean Chretien on a visit to Auschwitz, the notorious German death camp in Poland, where Ronen had been an inmate. At one point Chretien asked him how he felt. He replied: I came here more than 50 years ago with my family in a cattle car and my parents and sisters were murdered here Now, I return in the company of my prime minister, in a limousine, with my son whos the head of the Canadian Jewish community. I feel like a victor. Hence the title of his book. Fackenheim was an ardent Zionist, convinced that the existence of the State of Israel is a guarantee that Hitler wouldnt get his victory. In 1948, three years after being liberated from Auschwitz and days after Israels Declaration of Independence, the 16-year-old Mordechai arrived in the land under very dramatic circumstances. He came with his two brothers, who also survived, and was by then a member of a radical Zionist group, later to be incorporated in Likud, the political party of Israels Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Mordechai Ronen spent 18 years as a professional soldier in the Israel Defence Forces. Afterwards, together with his wife and their two sons, he came to Montreal to visit one of his brothers who had immigrated to Canada earlier. They stayed. The Ronen family retained their Zionist commitment while living in Canada. They settled in Toronto where they fused their love of Israel with boundless enthusiasm for their new country. Ronens is a story of survival and gratitude because he was spared the gas chambers, was privileged to raise a family, to serve the Jewish people and the Jewish state, and to live in Canada. His is a kind-of religious testimonial but not a work of theology. Most exponents of the Jewish religion are reticent about forgiving God for what had befallen their people. Instead, they often ask or imply: Where was God at Auschwitz? How could a good God allow the slaughter of millions? But this survivor is first and foremost thankful: In spite of it all, I still believe in God. I still believe his looking out for me enabled me to survive the Holocaust. For that, I shall always be grateful, as long as I have breath left in me. Scholars often remind us that memoirs, not least Holocaust memoirs, moving as they are, are poor sources when it comes to establishing historic events. But they are invaluable and often inspirational for those who come after them and want to sense what it must have been like to start life again, despite the suffering and the losses. Ronens book is of that ilk. Early in May Jews will mark Yom Hashoa, a day devoted to prayer and reflection on what happened during the Holocaust. They will again try to remember without denying God and, perhaps even more important, try to make sure that what happened then never happens again to any people. Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus of Torontos Holy Blossom Temple. His column appears every other week. SHARE: The minute refugees have a face and a name, something human happens, and people invariably respond with decency, tolerance, and generosity. So commented refugee advocate Mary Jo Leddy in the 2001 CBC News documentary A Street Called Wanda, which profiled Romero House in Torontos West End, a place of welcome where refugees from around the world are invited to live with, rather than simply be served by, the Romero House team. Although originally viewed with skepticism, fear, and outright hostility by some of its neighbours, Romero House today has been embraced and enlivened by the residents of Wanda Road and beyond. Their annual block party has become an established and cherished community event, organized largely by neighbours and attracting hundreds from across the city. For many in the area, Romero House is now the defining and most endearing aspect of their hood. As those at Romero House note, it takes a neighbourhood to welcome refugees. And 2016 marks the 25th year that Romero House has been welcoming the stranger to Canada. Thanks to Romero House, over 1000 refugees fleeing torture, war, and political and cultural persecution around the globe have found a safe place to land and live. Countless other walk-ins to the Romero Centre have received help accessing education, finding a lawyer, obtaining clothing and furniture, and connecting with a bevy of social services and amenities, such as a kids club, a womans group, retreats, and Romero Houses summer camp. In a recent conversation, Leddy, Romero House founder, celebrated spiritual writer and adjunct professor at Regis College, said that since the film, the welcome of refugees has just deepened. This fall, for example, with Romero residents unable to find affordable housing in the city, Leddy and the Romero crew once again turned to their neighbours for help. In response, eight households have now opened their doors to refugees, embedding Romero House even more profoundly into the community. In addition to compassionate and concerned neighbours, the Canadian landscape itself has unfurled a psychic and spiritual welcome mat for the refugee community. Very early on, Leddy recalls, we had the idea of a summer holiday. After organizing several camping trips up to northern Ontarios Manitoulin Island, Leddy and others at Romero noticed that the outdoor experience seemed to help folks feel Canadian. What happened up north was that the refugees felt they could belong here. No border check points, no immigration officers. All of that was gone, Leddy recalls, and it was just the land. They always come back from camp feeling Canadian. For Romero House Director Jenn McIntyre, while the community and geographical welcome the refugees is transformative and deeply healing, it will never erase the deep wounds experienced by the refugees. Lost loved ones are never found, and the scars of torture never fully fade. And families remain apart. McIntyre notes that one community member has been separated from her husband for more than 20 years, and he is still being barred from entering the country. The suffering is real, she comments, and it lingers. Romero House is committed to pushing for families to be reunited much faster than they are right now. At Romero House, she avers, the mother separated from her six children is not merely a news story, but our friend, our neighbour and our loved one. When she cries, we cry. For Jack Costello, a Jesuit priest and longstanding spiritual sojourner with Romero House, walking and crying with refugees is an example of the mercy which emanates from the communitys namesake, Archbishop Oscar Romero. Felled by an assassins bullet while saying Mass in 1980, Romero had been a courageous spokesman for the impoverished and brutalized people of El Salvador, publicly condemning the torture, massacres, and ruthless suppression of dissent that pockmarked his country. For Costello, the witness of Oscar Romero is in keeping with the Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis, for whom justice is the orderly practice of mercy. To celebrate its silver anniversary, Romero House will hold a party with live music, dancing, and international foods at Torontos Lula Lounge on April 27. It is an anniversary, and an inspiring journey of compassion, well worth celebrating, Stephen Bede Scharper, former editor of Orbis Books, teaches environment and anthropology and the University of Toronto. Stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca SHARE: Its been available in France since 1988, Britain since 1991 and the United States since 2000. Now 28 years after it first appeared on the market, mifepristone better known as the abortion pill RU-486 will be available in Canada in July under the brand name Mifegymiso. This is cause for celebration among the 100,000 women who choose an abortion each year in Canada. They will finally have an option other than a surgical abortion with a medication that is already available in 61 countries and is so safe and effective that the World Health Organization includes it in its Model List of Essential Medicines. The pill will give Canadian women easier access to abortions. They will not have to travel long distances to hospitals or clinics to have one performed surgically and the procedure will not be delayed because of waiting lists. Still, womens health advocates and Canadian pharmacists say Health Canadas restrictive policies on how the drug is to be distributed, while common to other countries where it is available, could make it more difficult than necessary for women to access the pill. That must be changed. As it stands now, the drug will be available only directly from doctors who may not choose to carry it for many reasons, including that it means they have to stock it, charge for it and take a course before they can prescribe it. That, says Sandeep Prasad of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, will restrict access to the drug in rural and remote areas where both physicians and abortion services are scarce. Australia grappled with a similar situation when it approved the drug in 2012. It found doctors were reluctant to prescribe the medication, leaving it to established abortion clinics which were few and far between. Women now can use a telephone service that refers them to local labs for blood tests and an ultrasound. A doctor gets the results in a phone consultation and if the treatment is approved, the drug is sent out by mail. A mail system is also being tried out in four U.S. states. There are other ways to make it easier for women to access the drug, including allowing midwives and nurse practitioners to prescribe it and pharmacists to dispense it. Millions of women around the world have taken the pill safely so it seems unnecessarily cautious for Health Canada to insist that only doctors can dispense it. There have been enough roadblocks to getting this medication into the hands of Canadian women. Health Canada should review its restrictions and make it easier for women to access Mifegymiso. SHARE: Re Why cant they come to Canada, April 22 Hurrah for Catherine Porters column. A Unifor sponsor group I co-chair is still awaiting the familys arrival. Canadas initial response to the Syrian crisis was a shining example of whats possible when theres the political will. Now we need to spur a lasting legacy. We need faster processing times for all refugees and to expedite landed status for long-time refugees and migrants, and to ease immigration for those without wealth or elite credentials. We also need a national infrastructure that supports decent housing for new refugees, families in Attawapiskat, Toronto Community Housing and others. Laurell Ritchie, Toronto Read more about: SHARE: Re: Unions and families call for asbestos ban, April 23 Unions and families call for asbestos ban, April 23 My wifes parents, Hilda Munk Burtin and Will Burtin, both died of the asbestos-related disease, mesothelioma. In common with many designers in the 1930s they used asbestos paper because it stayed white for years. At the time of Hildas death in 1960, the link to asbestos exposure had not been established. That link was subsequently confirmed by Dr. Irving Selikoff, who named the disease. Dr. Selikoff was on the faculty at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, where Hilda Burtin died. Eleven years later Will Burtin was admitted to the same hospital, where he also died, of mesothelioma. Given the medical history connecting the two cases, Dr. Selikoff reviewed Hilda Munks file and confirmed that she, too, had died of mesothelioma. Your story told me something I had not known: despite the fact that Canadian asbestos mines are closed, asbestos products are still being imported. Its likely that our air is full of asbestos particles thrown up from brake pads. Madness! Robert Fripp, Toronto Cancer Ontario says new cases of asbestos-related cancers keep showing up. Thatd be no surprise to Wilhelm Hueper who wrote in 1942, about asbestos carcinoma, that isolated cases may represent the first warning of large numbers of similar tumors of undeniable occupational derivation. Pioneer Quebec occupational hygiene physician Dr. Delphis Brochu reported in 1891 to Quebecs Prime Minister that commercial asbestos preparation was a quite recent industry. His attention to illness symptoms had already been drawn to this industry from facts in his own practice and from other physicians. Brochu wrote that after studying the various operations of this industry I have become convinced that in reality there are dangers connected with it, which are unsuspected by the employers or by the work people themselves, and that it should be classed among the most unhealthy industries. Brochu recommended mechanical dust mitigation and other processes promoting healthiness over often intolerable respirators. In 2014 the Dictionary of Canadian Biography added Brochu to its pages. A 1918 U.S. Department of Labor publication stated that in American and Canadian life insurance companies, asbestos workers are generally declined on account of the assumed health-injurious conditions of the industry. Hueper in 1946 said the continued occurrence of occupational cancers represented a challenge to the social conscience of human society, because industrial cancers may be compared with a biologic bomb having a delayed time fuse. Another writer on occupational cancer in 1948 turned Huepers prescient phrase into biological time bomb. Shea Hoffmitz, Hamilton SHARE: Re: Staggering numbers, April 23 Staggering numbers, April 23 Besides questioning the timing of this article during the current provincial contract negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association, I wish to make the following comments. First, the media and government focus on outliers and gross OHIP billings distorts the reality of physician compensation. Although there may be 500 physicians that billed OHIP more than $1 million each, these physicians represent less than 2 per cent of the 28,000 physicians in Ontario. As stated, the average gross OHIP billings for physicians in Ontario in 2013-14 was $367,722. Physicians, however, are not employees of the government like teachers, police officers and civil servants, who receive a salary together with a pension and benefit package. Most physicians are self-employed independent business people who have to pay for practice overhead, which can amount to between 20 and 60 per cent of gross billings. The average Ontario physician incurs practice overhead costs of approximately $150,000 to cover such items as salaries, office space, equipment, utilities and professional fees. Physicians then must purchase the benefits most employees receive on top of their salaries as well as set aside funds for their retirement. These pension and fringe benefits are estimated to be worth between 20 and 25 per cent of salary to salaried employees. Second, if public disclosure of physician billings together with the identity of the physician is desired, it is only fair that the compensation and identity of other independent contractors billing the province be disclosed. This would include lawyers who bill the Ontario Legal Aid Plan and those myriad consultants contracted for services by the various provincial ministries a group that I strongly suspect would include those consultants who have publicly called for accountability and transparency in physician compensation. Third, any discussion of physician compensation and transparency should include medical residents physicians completing specialty training who are the backbone of patient care in Ontario hospitals. Hospitals would have to close their doors without residents but these physicians are conveniently ignored by the province in any discussion of physician compensation. Currently, there are approximately 4,000 residents in Ontario. These physicians work between 70 and 90 hours a week and occasionally over 100. The average Ontario resident works 80 hours a week including 24 hour in-hospital shifts. Most residencies are from two to five years but may extend to as long as nine years if sub-specialty training is pursued. Approximately, 25 per cent of these physicians have or are also pursuing masters and doctoral degrees. Prior to a recent arbitration decision, resident compensation had been frozen by the Ontario government for two years and was one of the lowest in Canada. The salary for these physicians ranged from $51,065 in year one of residency to $71,995 in year five. These physicians, therefore, are working on average for $13 and $19 an hour respectively in a province where the general minimum wage is $11. If we believe the public should have more information on the way physicians are compensated in Ontario, they deserve the total picture and that includes how resident physicians are compensated. Greg Sheehan, Mississauga SHARE: Bret began working with TheStreet in May 2013 and has had a range of duties in that time. He writes articles based on technical analysis, covering any asset that has a chart. That doesnt mean he ignores the fundamentals, as they are a part of the process as well. In that regard, he has a preference toward growth stocks, companies with strong moats, and dividend stocks. Before the technical analysis work, he covered the auto industry, mainly focused on EVs and autonomous driving. He also previously wrote the short stories that accompanied TheStreets in-house videos. Before TheStreet, he worked at Benzinga. While this involved some forms of writing, it was mostly spent building out the companys Benzinga Pro product, while highlighting large option flows in the equity markets. While attending Central Michigan University, he began working in financial media through the Seeking Alpha platform. The combination has helped lead him down a path involving the stock market and writing. Send Bret an email here. Montreal, CA (H4T1V6) Today Cloudy early with partial sunshine expected late. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 64F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight A few clouds from time to time. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2012, file photo Bob Graham speaks in Gainesville, Fla.. The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. Graham and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. Graham says an Obama administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents, a disclosure that comes at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. (AP Photo/Phil Sandlin, File) Recover your password. A password will be e-mailed to you. Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat CPI(M) patriarch and former West Bengal Chief Minister Budhhadeb Bhattacharjee is all set to share dais with Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at an election rally in Kolkata on Wednesday. The Congress leader will visit the state for the last leg of his campaigning for the remaining two phases of the Assembly polls for 75 seats to be held on April 30 and May 5. A CPI(M) leader confirmed that both the leaders would address the rally from the same stage. "Yes. Both the leaders would share dais. They would show a joint strength of alliance," he said in Kolkata. Interestingly the two leaders will share dais after CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat leaves Kolkata. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee addresses a public meeting in Kolkata | AFP However, it was not clear whether politburo member Surya Kanta Mishra will also share the dais with Rahul at Park Circus. Buddhadeb, considered to be party's tallest leader in the state, is not a politburo member but a permanent invitee in the central committee. The rally in Park Circus will be in support of Bhawanipore candidate of Congress Deepa Dasmunshi and CPI(M) candidates Satarup Ghosh in Kashba and Sujan Chakraborty in Jadavpur. Congress leader Somen Mitra was elated when he said: " It's a great news. Both the leaders should come together. According to sources, CPI(M) calculates that a good show in remaining two phases of the polls could lead the Congress-left alliance near to win. So there could be no inhibition. Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry will hold talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar here on Tuesday, on the margins a global conference on Afghanistan. It will be the first meeting between the two after the January Pathankot terror attack derailed the India-Pakistan bilateral dialogue. A Pakistan High Commission spokesperson here confirmed Chaudhry's day-long trip for the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process meeting. The Pakistan delegation will "also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting". While the spokesperson was silent about talks between Chaudhry and Jaishankar, an informed source said that the the two foreign secretaries were likely to meet. Chaudhry "will have bilateral meetings with other delegations, including Jaishankar", the source said. The meeting will be the first contact between the two countries at the foreign secretary level after the January 2 attack on the IAF base at Pathankot killed seven Indian security personnel. India blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) for the attack. The meeting comes after the two sides recently declared that they were in contact to hold a meeting of their foreign secretaries, who will draw up the modalities for holding a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. The development comes after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit created a flutter when he said here that the peace talks between Islamabad and New Delhi have been "suspended". The Afghanistan conference in Delhi follows the 5th Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Islamabad to attend the conference that adopted the Islamabad declaration for enhanced regional cooperation to countering security threats. In the light of protest by China, India has withdrawn the visa that it had granted to Germany-based rebel Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa. According to media reports, the home ministry has confirmed the news that Dolkun's visa has been withdrawn without giving reasons behind the governments U-turn. The latest developments comes couple of days after Dolkun was granted the visa by India to take part in the conference being organised by the US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Uyghurs and many other Chinese dissidents in exile are expected to attend and discuss democratic transformation in China. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying, expressing displeasure over India's move, had said, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." Following China's protest, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup on Friday said, We have seen the media reports and External Affairs Ministry is trying to ascertain the facts." India granting the visa to Dolkun was seen as a retaliatory move after China thwarted India's bid to blacklist Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar at the United Nations. Azhar was the mastermind behind the deadly terrorist attack at a defence air base in Punjab's Pathankot earlier this year. Defending its position on the JeM chief issue, China had said that Azhar doesn't meet the criteria to be designated as a terrorist by the UN. "Any listing would have to meet the requirements for blacklisting, Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN Liu Jieyi had told reporters. "We always deal with the listing issue (banning militant groups and their leaders) under the UN Security Council committee established under resolution 1267 based on facts and relevant rules of procedures in an objective and just manner," he added. (With inputs from PTI) Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday fined student leader Kanhaiya Kumar Rs 10,000 and rusticated Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for a semester in connection with an on-campus event organised on February 9, where anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. The three of them had been arrested, charged with sedition and sent to Tihar Jail, but are out on bail since last month. The action against the students came after a high level inquiry committee found merit in the allegations. The committee also took action against 14 other students, including Mujeeb Gattoo, who were was present during the February 29 event. A fine of Rs 10,000 has been imposed on Kanhaiya. Umar and Anirban have been rusticated for one semester each while Gattoo has been rusticated for two semesters, a senior university official was quoted as saying. Kanhaiya was arrested on February 12, three days after the controversial event and around 10 days later, Umar and Anirban resurfaced on the varsity campus before surrendering to police, reports said. The incident on the JNU campus on 9 February 2016 involving some students to hold 'Poetry Reading' event on the theme 'A Country without a Post Office' did not have the approval of the administration and as it was alleged later some participants in the event indulged in objectionable sloganeering, the university reportedly said in a statement. Both Kanhaiya and Umar had argued before a Delhi court that they never raised any anti-national slogans and claimed that video footages showing them raising these slogans were "false and doctored". Even as India's U-turn in granting visa to Uighur leader Dolkun Isa, whom China has long branded a terrorist, draws rebuke from several quarters, foreign policy experts believe it has served its purposeof sending a strong message to China. Some political supporters of the Narendra Modi government saw the initial grant of the visa as a response to China putting on hold India's request to blacklist Masood Azhar, the head of Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, at the United Nations. However, on Monday the Centre, without citing any reason, withdrew the visa, provoking criticism from the opposition that it had buckled to pressure from Beijing. "Modi's latest foreign policy disaster on China can be termed a Himalayan blunder," said Sanjay Jha, a spokesman of the main opposition Congress party. But there are others, who believe that India has made its stand on blacklisting Masood clear to China, without losing any ground. India has not lost anything, Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, was quoted as saying in a report. He says had India allowed Isa to attend a conference in Dharamasala, it would have emboldened other countries to invite Chinese rebel leaders, and the whole thing would have spelled trouble for Beijing's interests. Isa is the executive chairman of Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, a leading ethnic Uighur group that advocates democracy and human rights. China blames unrest that has killed hundreds of people in its far western province of Xinjiang on Islamist militants looking to establish an independent state for the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. Exiles and rights groups say the Xinjiang unrest is more a reaction to repressive government policies than organised by any cohesive militant group. With Reuters inputs A warship sails in South China Sea during a Chinese navy drill in South China Sea, July 28, 2015. [Photo/CFP] Washington deservedly received a warning and reminder from Beijing about the dangers of saber-rattling, after US warplanes conducted what the United States called a freedom of overflight operation near China's Huangyan Islands. This seems a weird claim since planes of all countries pass through the airspace without any trouble. The same is true of the US' so-called freedom of navigation operations. The US military appears obsessed with something that is simply not an issue. But what is happening, and may come up next, in the South China Sea goes far beyond jurisprudential common sense as well as divergent readings of international law. It is because of geopolitical calculations rather than international justice that Washington is rushing to the forefront of the maritime disputes with Beijing. It is dusting off its long-neglected military alliance with the Philippines. It is seeking closer military relationships with India and Vietnam. It is dragging the Japanese military into the South China Sea. Despite all the ear-pleasing diplomatic rhetoric from Washington, about not choosing sides, about peace and negotiated solutions, the hawkish Pentagon is making it increasingly clear that it will not give up until real trouble emerges in the South China Sea. The China-US standoff is going beyond the exchange of verbal swords, and is increasingly taking the form of hostile, though as yet by-and-large restrained, military encounters. Beijing's aspiration for a new-type major-country relationship is a blessing for all peace-minded countries and peoples. But it takes two to tango. In the South China Sea, at least at this moment, the US does not want to dance with China. Washington may not acknowledge it, but the two countries' militaries appear to be on a collision course. Which is why Beijing must be prepared. However, things are not yet irreparable. As long as Beijing considers the South China Sea a core national interest, as long as it prioritize development at home, as long as it remains committed to sustaining a peaceful environment for domestic development, as long as it aspires to become a different kind of big power, it should avail itself of every possibility to avoid military solutions to territorial disputes. The consensuses Foreign Minister Wang Yi has achieved in his visits to Brunei, Cambodia and the Laos are laudable diplomatic attempts that help set the stage for broader consultations. Since real solutions rest ultimately on agreements between China and claimant countries, Beijing should work harder to seek breakthroughs through one-on-one negotiations. A meeting was held on Thursday morning 13 Nissan with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in response to the urgent request made by Kosel Rav Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz Shlita. Rabbi Rabinowitz is seeking to prevent the Birchas Kohanos which is scheduled for the first day of chol hamoed Pesach in the ezras noshim of the Kosel. Participants in the meeting including State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, Rabbi Rabinowitz, Ministry of Religious Services Director-General Oded Flus, police commanders in charge of the Kosel and attorney Erez Malul, who represented the position of the Ministry of Religious Services and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. The position of Rabbi Rabinowitz and Religious Services Ministry was presented, explaining the Birchas Kohanos does not fit in to the minhag hamakom in addition to Rabbi Rabinowitz explaining there is no religious significance to the ceremony performed by women and even if one wishes to do it, it has never taken place at the Kosel. Therefore, they feel holding the ceremony would be a violation of regulations governing protecting holy sites, articles 1a and 2a. As such, it was decided that the event would be prohibited in line with the regulations for Jewish holy sites. Minister of Religious Services David Azoulai explained I instructed persons in the ministry as how to act in the matter and with Siyata Dishmaya, BH we managed to defeat this as the event was canceled by Attorney General Mandelblit. In light of the ruling, if the Women of the Wall decide to ignore the ruling and go ahead with the ceremony, Kosel security personnel will have the right to have them removed. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) The forecast for today, Sunday 16 Nissan, the first day of Chol Hamoed Pesach calls for partially cloudy skies and a bit warmer than seasonable temperatures, climbing to 28C (84F) in the capital. The forecast for Monday calls for 27 (81) but Tuesday will be significantly hotter, climbing to 32 (91). The temperature will then drop to seasonable weather for Wednesday 23 (75), Thursday 23.8 (74) and Friday 24 (76). On Shabbos and Sunday, the, the last day yomtov and Shabbos isru chag temperatures in Jerusalem are forecasted to be 27 (82) and 29 (85) respectively. EMS organizations remind holiday campers and hikers to set out with copious amounts of water, a hat for shade and sun block and to remain cognizant of the heat and the need to constantly drink water even if one is not thirsty. Published on the first day Chol Hamoed Pesach from Yerushalayim. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) After a successful attack on corruption in New Yorks state government, the hard-charging federal prosecutor in Manhattan appears to have set his sights on New York City. Over the past few weeks, a series of loosely related public corruption investigations coordinated by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara have spilled into public view, with targets including high-ranking New York Police Department officials, the union representing city jail guards, and the political fundraising activities of several people with ties to New York Citys mayor. Already an embarrassment to the nations largest police department, it remains unclear whether the widening probes could do damage to City Hall. So far, nine police officials, including four deputy chiefs, have been transferred or stripped of their guns and badges as internal affairs detectives and FBI agents examine whether officers accepted gifts and trips from businessmen in exchange for police escorts, special parking privileges and other favors. And in recent weeks, the evolving probe has turned to campaign financing practices that have long been scrutinized by good government groups. An animal welfare group that has been lobbying Mayor Bill de Blasio to ban carriage horses from city streets confirmed Friday that it had received a subpoena from federal prosecutors seeking documents related to its fundraising efforts for a nonprofit group created to advance the mayors policy agenda. After a criminal referral to prosecutors from the state Board of Elections office, other subpoenas sought records related to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations solicited by the mayors campaign that were rerouted to upstate Democrats running for the state Senate. Separately, federal agents operated a wiretap that captured the conversations of two businessmen who were friends with two top police officials and served on de Blasios inaugural committee in 2013 and contributed to his campaign, two law enforcement officials said. Investigators want to know whether they have been offered any official favors in exchange for donations, according to the officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to discuss an ongoing case. De Blasio, a Democrat, has not been accused of any specific wrongdoing and his campaign organization has said it operated within the laws. His campaign lawyer, Laurence Laufer, on Sunday wrote a letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, to the Board of Elections, accusing the group of selective, politically-motivated enforcement and leaking confidential investigative material to the media. The developments have created the perception that a city that was thought to have rid itself of everyday corruption might be slipping back into the bad old days. If you can find a corrupt mayor of New York City, holy moly, thats a big prize, said Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School. Several parts of the multifaceted probe had their origins in an FBI investigation of suspicious financial transactions involving a Harlem liquor store. Campaign financing wasnt on FBI agents minds in 2013 when they were alerted to a series of large transfers and deposits in multiple bank accounts held by a small wholesale liquor business in Harlem, the law enforcement officials said. Ultimately, investigators concluded that a Harlem restaurant owner was using the accounts to run a $12 million Ponzi scheme, in which the two businessmen were investors. The investigators continued to scrutinize the finances of the businessmen, who have donated tens of thousands of dollars to the mayors campaign and advocacy efforts. Authorities also learned that the pair had cultivated a relationship with Norman Seabrook, the powerful head of the 9,000-member jail guard union, and Phillip Banks III, formerly the top-ranking uniformed officer at the police department. The men all visited Israel together in 2014. A federal subpoena issued to the union last year and reviewed by the AP has sought records detailing the flow of funds from Seabrooks union into a company controlled by one of the men, JSR Capital, and into other businesses. A lawyer for Banks declined to comment. Wiretaps in that probe led to a broader examination of the cozy relationship between high-ranking police and the citys Orthodox Jewish community, the officials said. In a related case, a member of a neighborhood patrol in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn was caught in a wiretapped conversation bragging that he had used connections in the NYPD to get over 150 gun licenses for people without required background checks, according to court papers charging him last week with bribery and conspiracy. Bharara, the federal prosecutor, has been mum on the details of the investigations, but vowed in a recent speech to continue his efforts, in both state and city government. Executive offices in government, he said, are far from immune from a creeping show-me-the-money culture that has been pervading New York for some time now. (AP) North Korea said Sunday that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a dagger of destruction. South Korea couldnt immediately confirm the claim of success in what marks Pyongyangs latest effort to expand its military might in face of pressure by its neighbors and Washington. Hours before the announcement, South Korean military officials said the North fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast. The Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectile traveled about 30 kilometers (19 miles) Saturday evening. Thats a much shorter than the typical distance of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which can fly at least 300 kilometers (186 miles). A successful test from a submarine would be a worrying development because mastering the ability to fire missiles from submerged vessels would make it harder for outsiders to detect what North Korea is doing before it launches, giving it the potential to surprise its enemies. While South Korean experts say its unlikely that North Korea currently possesses an operational submarine that can fire multiple missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on such technology. In a typical example of overblown rhetoric, the Norths Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un observed from a test facility as the ballistic missile surged from a submarine and spewed out a massive stream of flames as it soared into the sky. It said the missile met all technical thresholds. The KCNA report said that after the test Kim declared that the North now has another strong nuclear strike method and also the ability to stick a dagger of destruction into the heads of its enemies, South Korea and the United States, at any time. The KCNA report didnt say when or where the recent test-firing took place. South Korean officials said the launch on Saturday took place near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems. The North last test-launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Dec. 25, but that test was seen as failure, the Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The North first claimed of a successful submarine-launched missile test in May last year. U.S. Strategic Command, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, said its systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan. A statement from Strategic Command added that the missile launch did not pose a threat to North America. U.S. military forces remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security, it said. The U.S. State Department said that in response to Saturdays launch, it was limiting the travel of North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his delegation to U.N. functions in New York, where they are attending a U.N. meeting on sustainable development. The U.S. noted launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further destabilize the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and international obligations, said State Department spokesman John Kirby. The U.N. Security Council issued a press statement that strongly condemned the firing of the submarine-launched ballistic missile, saying it constitutes yet another serious violation of council resolutions. The Security Council members reiterated that North Korea should refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, including to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program. North Korea has recently sent a barrage of missiles and artillery shells into the sea amid ongoing annual military drills between the United States and South Korea. Pyongyang says the drills are a preparation for an invasion of the North. The firings also come as the North expresses anger about toughened international sanctions over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. North Koreas belligerence may also be linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement leader Kim Jong Uns grip on power. Promoting military accomplishments could be an attempt to overshadow a lack of economic achievements ahead of the Workers Party congress, the first since 1980. (AP) Rabbi Eliezer Berland, who spend Pesach seder behind bars in a Johannesburg jail released a message to his followers. I have been targeted by the State of Israel. The Government of Israel has a tendency to target rabbonim. I have been marked [by police] improperly. The Johannesburg court last week decided the rabbi would remain behind bars in the coming month during which time he will be turned over to Israel which has filed for his extradition. Chasidim of the Rbbi Berland are planning a protest outside the South African Embassy on Abba Hillel Street in Tel Aviv on Monday, the second day of Chol hamoed Pesach. According to chassidim, buses from around Israel will be bringing followers to the embassy at 7:00AM. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) The Senates leading Republican voices on national security are assembling an indictment of Donald Trumps worldview by soliciting rebuttals from U.S. military leaders that challenge the accuracy and legality of the GOP presidential front-runners most provocative foreign policy positions. Over the past few months, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, two of Trumps sharpest GOP critics, have used their posts on Senate the Armed Services Committee to fact-check Trumps claims. Without mentioning the bombastic billionaires name, theyve asked senior officers who testify before the committee about waterboarding extremists, the consequences of targeting terrorists families, and whether NATO and Americas other key alliances have become obsolete. Connecting the threads over weeks of hearings would produce a record of remarks that could be strung together and used by opponents of the presidential candidate. To demonstrate his fitness to be commander in chief, Trump is planning to tone down his brash personality and deliver a foreign affairs address on Wednesday the first in a series of policy speeches. He also is planning a separate speech on the military, telling The Associated Press in a recent interview that people may be surprised by how well Ill handle matters relative to the military. Omitting Trumps name from the conversation allows the generals and admirals questioned by the senators to stay apolitical and out of the 2016 presidential campaign. But its obvious that McCain, the committees chairman, and Graham, who waged an unsuccessful bid for his partys White House nomination, are asking about positions Trump has staked out that have rattled the Republican Party and unnerved U.S. allies. Aides to the senators said theres no coordination or strategy between the two. But McCain and Graham are close friends and foreign policy hawks. Its not unusual to see them together on the floor of the Senate, hammering the Obama administration over the Iran nuclear deal, the civil war in Syria or troop levels in Afghanistan. Graham also wrote the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford. Without citing Trumps name, he inquired about the billionaires pledge, if elected, to bring back the use of waterboarding which causes the sensation of drowning and worse against captured militants. Congress has outlawed waterboarding along with other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump also said he would order the military to kill family members of militants who threaten the U.S., a position he has since retreated from after being heavily criticized. Dunford responded to Graham last week in a carefully worded letter that said violating the laws of war diminish the support of the American people and the populace of Democratic states, including allies who might otherwise support or participate in coalition operations. Graham, a retired Air Force lawyer, has called Trumps foreign policy gibberish and ill-conceived. Graham half-heartedly endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for president because Cruz is not completely crazy. McCain, an ex-Navy fighter pilot and the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, hasnt wavered from his position that he will support the Republican nominee. But hes bristled over what hes called Trumps uninformed and dangerous statements on national security issues. Examples of McCains and Grahams fact-checking approach were on display this past week. On April 19, when the Army general selected to lead U.S. forces in South Korea testified before the committee, McCain seized the opportunity to undermine Trumps suggestion that the U.S. withdraw its forces from the South because Seoul isnt paying enough to cover the cost of the American military presence. Isnt it the fact that it costs us less to have troops stationed in Korea than in the United States, given the contribution the Republic of Korea makes? McCain asked Gen. Vincent Brooks. Yes, Brooks said, telling McCain the South Koreans pay half, or $808 million annually, of the U.S. presence there. Brooks added that the South Koreans are footing the bill for more than 90 percent of a $10.8 billion project to build a base where U.S. troops will be stationed. Two days later, Trumps claim that NATO is irrelevant and ill-suited to fight terrorism came under the microscope. As president, Trump has said he would force member nations to increase their contributions, even if that risked breaking up the 28-country alliance. Responding to a series of questions from Graham, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, picked to be the top American commander in Europe, assured the committee of NATOs critical importance to the U.S. Breaking up the alliance, Scaparrotti warned, would benefit Russia, the Islamic State group and even the Taliban in Afghanistan. The issue of torture is personal to McCain, who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for more than five years and badly abused by his captors. During a committee hearing in February, McCain asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if he agreed that information gained through waterboarding and other methods of torture came at too high a cost for the United States. I do, said Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general. Isnt it the fact that this is - American values are such that just no matter what the enemy does, that we maintain a higher standard of behavior? And when we violate that, as we did with Abu Ghraib, that the consequences are severe? said McCain, referring to the prison scandal in Iraq. Yes, sir, Clapper responded. (AP) So, it turns out you dont have to be nominated to become the Republican presidential nominee. Seriously. At least for now. Thats one rules oddity that became clear last week as the 168 members of the Republican National Committee and top party functionaries met in beachside splendor to discuss the GOPs messy search for a consensus presidential candidate. Three months from now, the 2,472 delegates to the partys nominating convention in Cleveland will have to decide whether to recast that or other bylaws that will help decide who becomes GOP standard-bearer in the November elections. Some impressions from last weeks RNC meetings: I HEREBY NOMINATE In a background briefing for reporters, GOP officials shed light on a curious anomaly. Under current rules, the party conducts an initial roll call to formally place in nomination those vying to become the GOP presidential candidate. But you dont have to be among the competitors nominated to receive delegates votes when the convention holds its next ballot or ballots to choose the partys actual nominee. Of the GOPs existing 42 rules, the most discussed is 40(b). It says that to be among those nominated, candidates must submit certificates showing support by a majority of delegates from at least eight states. Yet the aides also noted that theres another rule 16(a)(2). It says that during voting to select a final nominee, the votes of delegates required by their states to support a specific candidate must be tallied for that person. GOP officials said that is true even if that candidate failed to be formally nominated in the initial roll call. Unbound delegates 150 to 200 in the first ballot, many more in later ballots can also vote for whoever they want, whether that contender has been formally nominated or not. Does this open the door for an outsider candidate elbowing aside frontrunners Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and capturing the nomination? Perhaps. Why does the GOP have rule 40(b) at all? It was approved at the 2012 convention, controlled by that years candidate, Mitt Romney. The rule was aimed at preventing supporters of rival Ron Paul from sapping up valuable television time with a raucous nominating speech, a potential embarrassment to the front-runner. ___ WILL THE RULES CHANGE IN CLEVELAND? Yes, and reshaping those conflicting nominating rules is one likely example. The RNC will recommend rules changes just before the summer convention begins, but those are only suggestions. The rules in Cleveland will be whatever the delegates vote to approve. Since most delegates will be committed to Trump and Cruz, those men will also have a major say in shaping the convention bylaws as their campaigns and others jockey for advantage. Trump has repeatedly accused RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and other party leaders of running a nominating process with rigged rules. Since many party leaders consider Trump and Cruz likely losers in November, many grassroots Republicans as well as backers of Trump and Cruz suspect that leaders hope to allow a white knight candidate to ride away with the nomination. For that scenario, a chief object of suspicion remains House Speaker Paul Ryan, a longtime friend of fellow Wisconsinite Priebus, despite Ryans assertion that he wont accept the nomination. Sensitive to that skepticism, party officials have repeatedly said they wont recommend any changes that would expose them to charges that they favor somebody. But at the same time, they admit changes are coming. As Sean Cairncross, the partys chief operating officer, said in a video shown Friday to RNC members, Theres no reason why the rules that governed Romneys delegates should be used to govern you. ___ WHAT CHANGES DO THE CANDIDATES WANT? If you were Trump or Cruz, you might love new rules that prevent the white knight scenario by making fresh nominations impossible. You might also want to free up delegates for former candidates like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ben Carson to support you, instead of sticking with the candidate that state laws or party rules bind them to support. Republicans say operatives for Trump, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another hopeful, are working at state conventions to win allies on the national conventions rules committee. That committee has 112 members, two delegates from each state and territory chosen by each states delegation. They just want friendly voices on that committee, said Steve Duprey, an RNC member from New Hampshire. But theres a danger in pushing too hard and alienating GOP voters. Youve got to play by the rules or its going to be all-out war, said Dave Agema, the RNC committeeman from Michigan. If they try anything, the perception will be, Youre trying to change something for someone.' With conservatives like Agema up in arms over potential rules changes by the GOP establishment, that puts the presidential campaigns in an awkward position when it comes to speaking openly about any rules changes they might want. Hence, cautious statements. We trust the delegates, Jeff Roe, Cruzs campaign manager, told a reporter last week when asked about the rules changes hed like. (AP) Police on erev Pesach arrested a number of people involved in an effort to shecht a korban Pesach as is done annually in the Old City of Yerushalayim. Police explain the men were taken into custody because their actions were provocative and likely to spark a violent Arab response. The activists involved appear to be members of the Right to Return to Har Habayis organization. The police statement to the media reads The Jerusalem police works to provide balance, in order to enable all three faiths to exercise their freedom of religion with the guarantee of personal safety and security and also expects that public to act with tolerance and mutual respect during this time period. Officials from the Return to the Temple Mount organization expressed outrage and are calling on Am Yisrael to visit Har Habayis in large numbers during Pesach. The organizations leader, Refael Morris, was indicted on Sunday. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) In his latest attack against Israel, PA (Palestinian Authority) leader Abu Mazen accuses Israel of destroying the environment. He told the UN General Assembly which convened on Friday, erev Pesach, during which time the Paris Agreement was signed. Abu Mazen used the forum to accuse Israel and the settlements of destroying the climate in Palestine. He called on the General Assembly to help bring an end to the occupation. Abu Mazen preferred to use the international forum to once again enlist the international community in his battle against Israel. Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon was quick to condemn the PA, explaining that instead of spreading hate, the PA leader should concentrate on halting PA terror. This climate summit is supposed to be a demonstration of global unity for the sake of the future of our planet, he added. Unfortunately, President Abbas chose to exploit this international stage to mislead the international community. In a related matter, the PAs participation in the event was significant since it signals the UN views the PA as a nation and it was the first time it was permitted to take part in a treaty signing ceremony. In 2012 the UN granted the PA nonmember observer status. However, it is pointed out that the participation of the PA will place the US in a bind since there is a law that bars funding any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood. In fact, 21 Republican Senators have sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry stating this prohibits American participation in funding the global climate fund. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Police on erev Pesach during the late morning hours received a domestic violence call in Ramat Beit Shemesh. A woman phoned to report her husband was assaulting her. When police arrived, they learned the husband had already fled the area. while they were dealing with the call hundreds of chareidim gathered outside the home and turned over their police vehicle. Police called for backup and they distanced the crowd. A police official released a statement condemning the actions of community residence as police were summoned to help one of their neighbors. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) In an extraordinary move, Donald Trumps Republican rivals late Sunday announced plans to coordinate primary strategies in upcoming states to deprive the GOP front-runner of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Ted Cruz and John Kasich issued near-simultaneous statements outlining an agreement that may be unprecedented in modern American politics. The Kasich campaign will give Cruz a clear path in Indiana. In return, the Cruz campaign will clear the path for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. The arrangement does not address the five Northeastern state set to vote on Tuesday, where Trump is expected to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. Kasich and Cruz had already retreated to Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to halt the former reality television stars unlikely rise. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans, Cruzs campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement explaining the new plans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation. Added Kasichs chief strategist, John Weaver, Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee. The announcement marks a sharp reversal for Cruzs team, which aggressively opposed coordinating anti-Trump efforts with Kasich as recently as late last week. And it only applies to Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico three of the 15 states remaining on the Republican primary calendar. Yet the development underscores a bleak reality for the billionaire businessmans Republican foes: Time is running out to stop him. Trump responded on Twitter shortly before midnight: Wow, just announced that Lyin Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! The announcement came less than 48 hours before voting begins across five Northeastern states where the New York billionaire leads in many polls. Trump campaigned Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Speaking to several thousand people in an airplane hangar in Hagerstown, Maryland, Sunday evening, Trump stressed repeatedly that he expects to win the 1,237 delegates needed in the first round of voting to stave off a contested convention. I only care about the first. Were not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth, said Trump. As Kasich backs out of Indiana, Cruz promised to not compete in primary contests in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. We will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Gov. Kasich is performing well, Weaver said. As recently as three days ago Kasichs campaign announced investments in Indiana, including the opening of two offices and the creation of a campaign leadership team. His campaign on Sunday night canceled a town hall and gathering in Indianapolis scheduled to watch the results of Tuesdays primaries. Like Cruzs campaign, Kasichs campaign encouraged allied super PACs and other outside groups to honor the commitments. In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly denounced the GOPs presidential nominating system as rigged. That criticism is likely to intensify in the coming days. There was far less drama on the Democratic side Sunday. Underdog Bernie Sanders rallied thousands of voters in two New England states, seeking momentum even as he offered mixed signals on how hard he would push his differences with front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator largely steered clear of Clinton at a Rhode Island park, but hours later ramped up his critique before more than 14,000 supporters in New Haven, Connecticut. Sanders reiterated his call for Clinton to release transcripts of lucrative Wall Street speeches she delivered after leaving the State Department in early 2013. This campaign, unlike Secretary Clintons, has not raised $15 million from Wall Street and millions more from other special interests, he said as the crowd booed at the mention of Clintons name. Clinton eyed victories in four or five of Tuesdays contests, which would all but cripple Sanders White House bid. The former secretary of state went to two Philadelphia church services attended largely by African-Americans ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania, Tuesdays top delegate prize. She declined to attack her Democratic rival by name in the morning appearance and a subsequent stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, focusing on the GOP candidates. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz downplayed tensions between Sanders and Clinton, whose rivalry has become increasingly nasty in recent weeks. Regardless of the intensity of whats played out here we are going to be unified, she declared. (AP) This story begins with a lawsuit that was filed by Chareidim who RL left the path of a Torah-observant life and decided to sue the State of Israel for failing to see to it that they get a proper education an education that permits them to earn a livelihood. The approximately 50 people filed a lawsuit claiming their schools did not teach them core subjects and as a result, today they must get an education before they are capable of joining the workforce. In its response to the lawsuit the state denied culpability, explaining that parents all have an option to select the school they wish to send their children too, including chareidim, and their parents could have just as easily placed them into schools that taught mathematics, science and English. The state maintains it sees to providing a classroom seat for all students to permit them to study and acquire an education, and in this case, the onus falls on the parents, not the Ministry of Education or other state agency. In its response the state told the court that it wishes to file a lawsuit against the parents of the plaintiffs for placing the children into schools that did not provide them with an education as they stipulate in the lawsuit. The Out for Change NGO ( ) https://www.facebook.com/yozimleshinuy/ is fighting to permit them and others like them to enter programs to complete their bagrut matriculation exams. The NGO feels the states response is simply shrugging off [the matter] which is partially based on speculation and conjecture. The NGO feels that the state failed in its responsibility to compel the parents to place them in a school that complies with state education standards rather than sitting back and permitting parents to place them into schools that fail to meet these standards. Some of the plaintiffs were former talmidim in Mir LTzeirim, Ohr Elchanan and Merkaz LChinuch Atzmai. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Israels Counterterrorism Bureau says the suicide bombing attack in Istanbul that claimed the lives of three Israelis was not targeting the Israelis specifically. Officials have announced the attacker was targeting tourists to Turkey and not specifically Israelis as many believe to have been the case. In March 2016 the Turkish media reported that the terrorist did indeed follow the Israeli group from the time it left the hotel. However, the Counterterrorism Bureau has released an official statement contradicting this and other similar reports. In a travel advisory the Israelis released a number of weeks ago, the Counterterrorism Bureau stated there are high concrete threats regarding travel to a number of areas, including Turkey. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Is it time to take a second look at Seeing Machines? Based on a disconnect between its share price (down 12 per cent in the year to date) and operational performance, the answer is definitely yes. Please dont take this as encouragement to buy, Im merely going to walk you through the fundamentals of a business that is well funded and at a long-awaited inflexion point. The problem is nobody seems to be taking a great deal of notice. The last set of results were key. Included in the statement was a section detailing plans for the companys driver monitoring systems (DMS), which is able to work out whether the person behind the wheel is awake and alert. Big Brother: In new semi-autonomous vehicles, Seeing Machines driver monitoring systems monitors whether the driver is ready and able to take the controls at any given point in the journey It revealed that Seeing Machines now has customers queuing around the block to use its set-up in the first generation of semi-autonomous vehicles. At the last count, 16 companies had hooked up with Seeing Machines, whose speciality is eye tracking and facial recognition. The big brand companies are already in bed with a firm called Mobileye. I say a firm, Mobileye is valued at $9billion on minimal revenues. Its market worth is derived from the fact that it has the go-to collision avoidance technology that watches and maps the road ahead. In other words it keeps the vehicle safe and between the white lines. The Seeing Machines technology is essentially a Mobileye-style system that looks into the cab rather than out to the road. And in new semi-autonomous vehicles Seeing Machines DMS monitors whether the driver is ready and able to take the controls at any given point in the journey. The DMS could be deployed in the same numbers as the Mobileye device. And like its forward-facing peer it is integral to the future of semi-autonomous cars and is being used by major manufacturers yet Seeing Machines is worth $71million in London and Mobileye is valued at $9billion in New York. As the Americans would say: go figure. Lets take another look at the annual results statement issued a month ago and zone in on the section outlining the future of the DMS. In that, Seeing Machines says it has hired Silicon Valley-based Woodside Capital to assess the options for the technology. A very strong option is to hive off the DMS technology into a separate company. It is understood there is interest from at least one world-leading American auto-maker, which is ready to come in as a cornerstone investor in this new entity. SEEING MACHINES AT A GLANCE AIM ticker: SEE Value: 48million Current price: 4.5p Year high: 5.88p Low: 3.63p At the same time a raft of household-name technology companies are vying to get their name on the shareholder register too - along with a large Chinese auto firm and an Asian components manufacturer. Im spit-balling here, but an initial valuation of $80-100million isnt out of the question for the DMS business. And that certainly isnt being picked up in the market capitalisation of Seeing Machines (remember it stands at $71million currently). Now analysts reckon the stock is being held back by a perception it will tap the market for funds as is the wont of small technology firms. But, this is unlikely given the cash Seeing Machines currently has on the balance sheet, or will be paid over coming years as part of a deal it has with Caterpillar for its driver fatigue monitoring systems. At the last count it could call on $35million, with around half of that figure in payments staged over the next four years. And thats before it generates any further revenues from the driver fatigue business, or deals in the automotive industry. One reason for the falling share price can be traced to Australia, where the Seeing Machines eye-tracking technology was first developed. We are told by market makers here in the UK that one of the Aussie superannuation funds may be selling down a 6-7 per cent stock position. There are no regulatory filings to back up this assertion, but it would appear to have the ring of truth. Monday April 25th, 2016 with Trish and Ka Ray Harris joins us in the studio about his album release, lots of new music then after 8 am its the Ottawa City Ceilidh Fischer to host community coffees across Nebraska WASHINGTON U.S. Senator Deb Fischer will hold several community coffees across Nebraska on Tuesday, May 3 and Wednesday, May 4, 2016. These community coffees serve as convenient opportunities for local Nebraskans to hear updates on Senator Fischers work and speak with her in a more informal setting. Members of the media are welcome to attend. Fischers May community coffees will take place in the following areas: North Platte, Kearney, Hastings, Geneva, and Crete. Schedyule: Tuesday, May 3: North Platte - Espresso Shop, 419 North Dewey, 10:30 a.m. 11:30 a.m. (Central Time) Kearney - Ramada Inn, 301 2nd Avenue 5 to 6 p.m. *NOTE: The event will take place in the breakfast area behind the front desk. Wednesday, May 4: Hastings - Blue Moon Coffee Co., 635 West 2nd Street, 9 to 10 a.m.. Geneva - VFW Post 7102, 1018 G Street, 12-1 p.m. Crete - Elles on Main, 1103 Main Ave., 3:30 p.m. 4:30 p.m. At my last town hall meeting in Bellevue, we had a robust discussion about the challenges facing America. A big surprise came afterward. A constituent told me he had received the invitation to the meeting that same day. Although the invitation had been sent in a timely manner, most people in the community saw it when they returned home from workafter the event. I found the whole thing quite embarrassing. Fortunately, through social media, email, and other forms of communication, a reasonable crowd attended the town hall. However, a similar problem occurred to a friend of mine, who stopped me to tell me about his own event, complaining that his invitations had never been received even though they had been mailed well in advance. I hear stories like this over and over again. For the most part, my encounters with the United States Postal Service (USPS) in Nebraska, on my personal time or through my office, have been quite good. I have always found persons with the post office eager to help, professional, and kind. Unfortunately, something has gone wrong with the process of late. Prescription drugs are late, bill payments are late, and personal correspondence is late. One person told me about the delay in receiving their heart medication, forcing them to seek pharmacy help until their mail-order prescription arrives. The complaints keep coming. The disruption is real, along with the long term negative impact on the USPS. I suspect the root cause of the problem has been the consolidation of mail processing in Omaha. Several local plants have closed. Even a letter going across Lincoln now has to go through Omaha first. According to postal delivery standards, first class letters, packages, and bulk mail dropped off in the communities of Lincoln, Norfolk, Columbus, Bellevue, and Nebraska City should be delivered in two to three days. In some cases, it is taking five to ten days. There are similar delays with first class mail in Platte and Madison counties as well. Years of declining mail volume likely triggered the changes that caused these disruptions. While I shared my concerns with the Omaha processing facility in 2015, the situation has not improved, despite a subsequent letter to the Postmaster General in Washington. I have requested that the USPS Inspector General intervene and analyze the problems with the mail system in Nebraska. The goal is not to play the typical Washington blame game but to fix troubling mail mishaps. Not conforming to delivery standards could make the USPS less competitive, further reducing the customer base of the postal service. You deserve the highest level of service and my hope is to help the post office retain the reputation it has earned. The USPS has been under financial stress for many years due to a variety of factors. Tension exists between the necessary movement toward efficiency and consolidation, the declining use of services, and the constitutional dictate that the USPS deliver mail across the country. One problem for us is that rural communities can become the easiest target for post office closure. But in many of these places, post offices are not only hubs to send and receive mailthey are reinforcement centers of American society. The USPS has enacted some reforms, for example embedding post offices in retail structures. Rethinking government with an entrepreneurial spirit aimed at facilitating social vibrancy could help post offices co-join with other community services. By consolidating processing plants in Omaha to cut costs, the postal services reputation has suffered through a deteriorating service model. Until this year, I rarely received complaints about the mail. Nebraskans value the postal service, and the postal service personnel I know reflect a genuine professionalism and spirit of public service. However, our state deserves a postal service undiminished by utility considerations that damage mail delivery standards. Since post offices are often centers of American community life, there is a balance between retaining the connection to community while enhancing operating efficiencies. Write me a letter and tell me what you think! Congressman Jeff Fortenberry represents Nebraska's 1st District. COLUMBUS One man is in critical condition after a two-vehicle accident. At 10:08 p.m. Sunday, the Platte County Sheriffs Office responded to an accident at the intersection of East 29th Avenue and U.S. Highway 30. According to a press release, a 2007 Toyota 4Runner driven by Michael R. Emerson, 49, of Clarkson, was traveling east on the highway and attempting to turn north at East 29th Avenue. As Emerson was making the turn, a westbound 2008 Ford F-150 driven by Travis L. Bauer, 27, of Duncan, struck the vehicle nearly head-on. Emerson was transported by Columbus Rescue to Columbus Community Hospital and later taken by medical helicopter to Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln in critical condition. One of the passengers in Bauers vehicle was treated for minor injuries and released from CCH and a second passenger from that vehicle was treated at the scene. Bauer did not receive medical treatment. Seat belts were not used by all occupants. Airbags were deployed in both vehicles. Roads were wet from precipitation, but weather is not believed to have been a factor in the accident. The sheriffs office is investigating further to determine if alcohol was a factor in the crash. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Madina Toure Democratic and Republican lawmakers from Queens, upstate New York and Long Island came together for a private historic meeting in downtown Flushing last week. The office of state Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing), who participated in the meeting, initially sent out a media advisory about the event, held at Mudan Banquet Hall at 136-17 39th Ave. April 14, the day before the event. But the morning of the event, his office said the meeting would no longer be open to the public or to the media. I think people were just a little bit hesitant to publicly talk about some of the issues and they felt more comfortable openly talking about it in a private setting, Kim said. People tend to be less honest about some of the issues when they know its being recorded so we ultimately decided it was best to have them come in, talk to some of our local constituents. Participants who were scheduled to attend included state Assemblymen Brian Kolb, the Republican Partys minority leader; Marcos Crespos, chairman of the Hispanic and Puerto Rican Task Force; Jeffrion Aubry (D-Corona), speaker pro tem; and Francisco Moya (D-Jackson Heights), chairman of the Commission on Science and Technology. Other Republican members from upstate New York and Long Island; Peter Tu, executive director of the Flushing Chinese Business Association; and Minsum Kim of the Korean American Association of Greater New York were also scheduled to participate. Crespos and Aubry were not able to attend the meeting, according to Kim. The assemblyman said the participants first went to a public school in Jackson Heights to meet with students who were immigrants and learn about the struggles they faced. The group then went to Citi Field for a tour of the stadium. The group also visited parts of the Bronx. One topic discussed at the Flushing meeting were the challenges that small business owners face, especially mom-and-pop stores, and how they are being priced out of New York City. Other areas of concern included former Police Officer Peter Liang, who was recently sentenced to five years of probation in the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley. Kim said he spoke about the need for the criminal justice system to be reformed and that the African-American and Asian communities have been pitted against one another. Kim said that in New York City, advancing the Dream Act legislation allowing undocumented students who graduated from high schools here to apply for college financial aid has been a big priority and in upstate New York the hardships farmers face has been an issue. He believes lawmakers meeting regularly to discuss problems and visit one anothers communities would help everyone understand what is happening in other areas. I think these discussions will lead to incremental change in the way that people understand each other, Kim said. I dont expect any immediate change overnight but we will take a series of these events and meetings. As Democrats in New York City, we also plan on going upstate and visiting their communities as well. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Patrick Donachie Mark Podwal is a Queens-based dermatologist, who has worked as an artist for the New York Times Op-Ed page and has served on the faculty of the New York University School of Medicine as a clinical associate professor of dermatology. He is also an alumnus of Queens College, and for the next two months his work will be featured at the schools Godwin-Ternbach Museum in a new exhibition that investigates the insidious presence of anti-Semitism in Europes past. The Terezin Portfolio details moments and periods of anti-Semitism in European history prior to the horrors of the Holocaust. According to Queens Colleges statement announcing the exhibition, the portfolio prints resemble pages in a book, and Podwal pairs each image with a selection of a verse from the Book of Psalms. In addition to Podwals prints, the exhibition will include images, letters and documents from moments in history like the Inquisition and the Holocaust. The pieces are from the collections of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library and the Godwin-Ternbach. Works from the portfolio first appeared at the Terezin Ghetto Museum in the Czech Republic in 2014, and the exhibition will also include a documentary film about Podwals creative process, according to the Queens College statement. The humiliations, persecutions, and massacres of Jews by Nazi Germany all had their precedence in the Middle Ages, including ghettos, distinct clothing, slaughters, and exiles in Europe, Podwal said in the statement. In comparison with the magnitude of the Holocaust, these earlier sufferings tend to be forgotten. Podwal is currently in Europe, but he noted the differences between when The Terezin Portfolio was presented in America vs. international venues. What is unique for this exhibition in New York compared to its European audiences is that although we fought and defeated Nazi Germany our land was not a World War II battlefield, he wrote in an e-mail. What amazes me is how little the current American generation knows about the Second World War, which ended only 71 years ago. The Terezin Portfolio will be featured at the museum through June 4, and the school has also scheduled several events and screenings in conjunction with the exhibition. On May 2, the museum will be screening Oren Jacobys My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes detailing the stories of Italians who risked their lives to protect Jewish citizens after the Nazis occupied Italy in 1943. On May 5, Naila al Atrash, a Syrian film and theater director, will speak about the current Syrian refugee crisis. The talk will be followed by an artistic recitation of work penned by Syrian refugees that will be performed by Queens College students. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Patrick Donachie Hundreds turned out for a benefit Sunday afternoon that raised money for victims of the earthquake that hit Ecuador April 16. The event, which was held at La Boom Restaurant in Woodside, raised more than $10,000 for UNICEF to assist quake survivors. Whatever we raise, Queens is going to send that message of hope, that were going to put our little grain of salt in to help our Ecuadorian brothers and sisters, said state Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst). The other day it was Ecuador, but tomorrow it could be any other country. The death toll from the earthquake has exceeded 650 people and some 16,600 people were injured. Several people in the audience at the benefit said they had friends and family who still had loved ones missing in Ecuador. The earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and it demolished nearly 7,000 buildings. On Sunday, 20 members of LIUNA Local 78 flew out of New York City to Ecuador to assist in recovery efforts. Local 78 represents employees who specialize in asbestos, lead and hazardous waste removal and were going to work with the Ecuadorian government in helping with any dangerous materials in the air that had been released by the quake. U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would do whatever he could to advance a controversial trade deal with the European Union in his last eight months in office, but warned that time was running short. Obama has pushed to complete two trade agreements before his term ends on Jan. 20 with Pacific nations and with the EU but has run into a growing swell of populist concerns about the impact on jobs, consumer protections and the environment. "Time is not on our side," he conceded to business leaders at the Hanover Messe, a massive industrial trade fair. "If we don\t complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe would mean this agreement won\t be finished for quite some time." Obama is in Germany to promote the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but the issue was overshadowed by discussions on the crises in Syria, Ukraine and Libya when the two leaders met. On Monday, they are set to hold talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on some of the same issues. But first, they had dinner in a 17th century palace with chief executives of some of the largest U.S. and German companies such as Microsoft, Dow, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, BASF, Bayer and Siemens. Also at the dinner was Matthias Muller, CEO of Volkswagen, whose company has admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in the United States, a scandal that involves 11 million vehicles worldwide. Obama normally does not sit through lengthy opening ceremonies. But in a sign of the political capital he is spending on trade and his affection for Merkel he took a front row seat for an unusual interpretative dance performance featuring robots, futuristic music and acrobatic break-dancing. The day before Obama arrived, thousands of protesters holding placards with slogans like "Stop TTIP" marched to express their opposition to the deal, and his motorcade whizzed past a few more as he drove through the north German city. Obama acknowledged his message about the benefits of trade has not broken though. "The benefits oftentimes are diffuse, whereas a particular plant or business that feels its been hurt by outside competition feels it very acutely," he told reporters. Obama said he hoped the deal, which supporters say could boost economies on each side of the Atlantic by $100 billion, would be agreed this year. But final ratification will take more time. The Trans Pacific Partnership is first in the queue for the U.S. Congress, which is not clamoring to hold a final vote. Obama said that could change after the Democratic and Republican parties make their final selections of candidates this summer. "When we\re in the heat of campaigns, people naturally are going to worry more about whats lost than whats gained with respect to trade agreements," he said. Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign tour where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as important not only for the economy but also to defeat Islamic State militants and counter Russian intervention in Syria and Ukraine. "Strong growth in Europe is particularly important given the array of pressing challenges whether it\s security, defense, migration or refugees," Obama said. Obama came to Germany from London where he urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union in a closely-watched June referendum or face being at "the back of the queue" as a non-EU member hoping for a new trade deal with the U.S. Earlier in the week, he met with Gulf leaders in Riyadh to try to allay fears that Washington had become less committed to their security, especially after the nuclear deal with Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia. Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. Merkel urged the parties participating in troubled peace talks in Geneva to agree to humanitarian zones where fleeing Syrians could feel safe from bombardment. She and Obama made clear that they did not favor the creation of classic "safe zones" which would need to be protected by foreign forces. Both leaders expressed concerns about ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine and said sanctions imposed against Russia following its 2014 intervention there, could not be eased if the situation on the ground did not improve. Ties between Washington and Berlin reached a low point three years ago following revelations of widespread surveillance of German citizens, including the bugging of Merkel\s mobile phone, by the U.S. National Security Agency. But in recent years, the two Cold War allies have patched things up. Obama praised Merkel for her "steady leadership" and handling of Europe\s refugee crisis, saying her decision last year to welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany had put her "on the right side of history". He joked that Merkel, who lacks his easy-going charm, had a "really good sense of humor" even if it wasn\t always on public display, drawing chuckles from the 61-year-old chancellor. Merkel refused to be drawn when asked whether she was concerned that she might soon have to work with Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, who has labeled her refugee policies "insane". She said only that she was watching the American election campaign "with interest". SOURCE: REUTERS Guatemala has deployed 3,000 troops to its disputed border with Belize following a shooting incident that killed a Guatemalan teen, Defense Minister Williams Mansilla said. "It is a preventive measure, it is not a declaration of war," Mansilla told AFP by telephone from northern Guatemala, where he was overseeing the deployment. The United States expressed concerned over the sudden spike in tensions between the two Central American nations. The State Department issued a statement to "urge calm and restraint by both sides." Guatemala has made claims over more than half of Belize\s territory dating back 150 years to when its small neighbor was a British colony known as British Honduras. Tensions between the two have long been simmering despite agreement to try to resolve the territorial dispute in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) following separate referendums. They ratcheted up dramatically on Wednesday, when a shooting incident occurred that each country said happened on its side of the border. According to Guatemala, a Belize patrol shot and killed a 13-year-old Guatemalan boy walking home from field labor, and wounded his father and brother. Belize rejected that version and said one of its patrols came under fire from Guatemalan civilians and responded in "justifiable self-defense." Each side accuses the other of a preceding series of other acts of violence, and fears are rising over the militarization along the border. The State Department said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports of the boy\s death. It expressed condolences to his family. "We urge calm and restraint by both sides, and we call for a full investigation of the facts surrounding this tragedy," the statement said. Belize\s Prime Minister Dean Barrow, in a recorded audio message, said he met with Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales on the margin of a UN meeting in New York to complain that the Guatemalan measures "escalate tension to an utterly unacceptable degree." Barrow said both agreed "there is an immediate need to de-escalate tensions." He added that an "impartial" investigation into the shooting by the Organization of American States (OAS) was being carried out. Belize was also asking the US to send forensic experts to help recreate the circumstances of the shooting incident, he said. Although Belize became independent in 1981, Guatemala did not recognize it for another decade because of its territorial claims, prompting Britain to keep a small military presence in its former colony as a deterrent until five years ago. Guatemala and Belize have issued separate statements accusing the other of a number of violent acts against its forces or citizens in the border area in the past two decades. The heightened border dispute is the first foreign policy challenge for Morales, a former TV comedian who became Guatemala\s leader in January after pulling off a surprise victory in an election to replace his predecessor felled by a corruption scandal. In a recorded address to the nation Thursday, Morales accused Belize of "cowardice" over the killing, saying Guatemalan forces would assert "strict protection for the sovereignty" of the shared border river. The OAS and Britain both voiced concern over the rising tensions and urged the two neighbors to leave the dispute in the ICJ\s hands. Britain\s minister of state for Latin American affairs, Hugo Swire, appealed for "moderation" from both nations and said the ICJ was "the best path" to settle the dispute. SOURCE: AFP 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. SHARE TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, was the guest speaker at the Wichita Falls Rotary Club meeting at Luby's Thursday. Thornberry provided an update from Washington and spoke on topics such as cybersecurity, global threats and defense spending. Thornberry is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. By Staff Reports U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, has been selected again by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the recipient of its Spirit of Enterprise Award for his pro-jobs and pro-growth efforts during the 114th Congress. The congressman will be presented the award at a luncheon May 4 hosted by the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce & Industry at the Wichita Falls Country Club at 11:30 a.m. The event is sponsored by First Bank and Higginbotham Insurance and Financial Services. I am honored to receive the Spirit of Enterprise Award, but it is the enthusiasm and hard work of business owners and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce that keep America moving and should be recognized, Thornberry said in a statement. I am looking forward to meeting with Chamber members to discuss the issues they are facing today. Chamber board President and Times Record News President Dwayne Bivona will present the award to Thornberry. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, The chambers prestigious Spirit of Enterprise award is given annually to members of Congress based on rankings it gives for key business votes outlined in its yearly publication, How They Voted. This is the 28th year that the U.S. Chamber has formally honored the accomplishments of this select group of members of Congress. The chambers designated key votes are recorded floor votes on issues established as priorities by the chamber, on which the chamber informs Congress of its position on prior to the vote. Senators and House members who support the chambers position on at least 70 percent of these key votes receive the Spirit of Enterprise award. Thornberry and Texas Rep. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, and Wichita County Judge Woody Gossom will provide updates regarding their respective levels of government. Call 940-723-2741 or send an email to info@wichitafallschamber.com to make a reservation. Cost is $30 for chamber members, and $35 for nonmembers. Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Tony Moore, owner of Rocking M Ranch Distillery, talks with two people in the distillery's sample room Saturday morning. Moore began selling a limited, one-time run of his wheat whiskey Saturday. SHARE Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Rocking M Ranch Distillery's three products that are currently bottled and sold Lemon Drop (from left) and Apple Pie sipping shines, and Deer Creek Reserve wheat whiskey sit on barrels near the end of the tour of the distillery. The two Mason jars show the change in the color of the whiskey, which starts out clear, after it has aged in the barrels for two weeks (second from right) and 10 weeks (far right). Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Brad Moore (right) answers questions about the distilling process used by Rocking M Ranch Distillery during a tour of their facility on Saturday. The distillery began selling its Deer Creek Reserve wheat whiskey, a limited, one-time run with only 740 bottles produced, which is believed to be the first ever barrel-aged whiskey to be made legally in Clay County, Texas. The distillery is expecting a bourbon whiskey to be ready by the end of August. Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Bottles of Rocking M Ranch Distillery's three products that are currently being sold sit on the bar in the distillery's tasting room Saturday morning. The Deer Creek Reserve wheat whiskey (right) is a limited, one-time run with only 740 bottles produced. The distillery is expecting a bourbon whiskey to be ready by the end of August. Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Bottles of Rocking M Ranch Distillery's Deer Creek Reserve wheat whiskey sit ready for sale on Saturday in the distillery's tasting room. Owner Tony Moore said this will be a one-time run of the wheat whiskey and only 740 bottles were made of it. The distillery is expecting a bourbon whiskey to be ready by the end of August. By Patrick Johnston, patrick.johnston@timesrecordnews.com The day has finally come that Tony Moore and his family have been looking forward to since they began this adventure nearly four years ago. After his welding business took a huge hit in 2009 when CertainTeed shut down and took away about 75 percent of his workload, Moore approached his wife, Debbie, about getting into the whiskey business. "I told my wife I wanted two things: I wanted something the economy don't affect and I want to make something at home but be able to sell it someplace else, so I don't have to move away from here," Moore said. Moore and his family did much of the construction on a distillery and tasting room themselves on their property in Henrietta and began the distilling process on a variety of products. "With the release of today's whiskey, I can finally see over the horizon now," Moore said. The wheat whiskey, which was released Saturday after being aged for a little over a year, ended up being a single run with only 740 bottles produced. "This is a wheat whiskey that we tried, and we liked it but decided to focus on our bourbon," Moore said. "So, this is a short, one-time run of our whiskey. It's an exceptional wheat whiskey, but we decided to focus on our bourbon." Moore said that, according to government records, it is the first barrel-aged whiskey to ever be made legally in Clay County, Texas. They decided to make the first 100 bottles of the whiskey commemorative of that fact by signing and numbering them. "The No. 1 bottle will stay here at the distillery forever and probably never be opened," Moore said. To help the Moores financially get to the aged whiskeys being ready for sale, Rocking M Ranch Distillery has also been selling flavored moonshines. "The moonshine has been really good. We ship it all over the state, and we're sold all over Texas now," Moore said. "We have a Lemon Drop, an Apple Pie and, within just a short time, we'll have a coconut coming out. We're just waiting on the label approval from the federal government." The distillery's moonshines, labeled as "Texas Sipping Shines," are quicker to produce because they don't have to be aged in a barrel first to get their flavor or color. "No matter what you're making gin, tequila, bourbon, no matter what it is it's going to be clear and clean and look just like water when it comes out of the still. Only the guy making it knows what it is," Moore said. "It gets all of its color and most of its flavor what we give it." For the moonshines, Moore said they use concentrated juices to give them the flavor and a bit of color. The whiskey and bourbon, though, are aged in a white oak barrel, in which they get all of their flavor and caramel color. Moore said it's the temperature of the barrel the liquor is stored in that matters more than how long it is stored. "Whiskey ages through temperature change, not through time," he said. "Time has nothing to do with how whiskey ages." As the temperature warms up, the wood expands and the whiskey seeps into the pores. As the temperature cools back down, the wood contracts, and the whiskey is squeezed back out of the wood. "We age whiskey faster in Texas than they do in Kentucky and the Northern states," Moore said. "The reason why is we age 12 months out of the year. We can snow one day and be 85 degrees the next. "In the Northern states, they get cold in November, December, January and February all through there it's too cold for there to age, so their process shuts down for three or four months. That lets us pick up three or four months a year on them." Even though the process works faster in Texas, Moore said it still wasn't fast enough for some of his customers. "We've had people calling us for this wheat whiskey since we put it in a barrel," he said. "They've been asking, 'Is it ready? Is it ready? Is it ready?'" Once it was finally time to bottle it, Moore struggled with what proof to cut the whiskey down to for bottling. "We started at around 95 proof and worked our way down all the way to 80 proof," he said. "We studied and tasted and tasted and tasted. The hardest part about that is learn to taste and spit it out, otherwise it all tastes really good by the end of the day." After trial and error, the optimum proof for taste and drinking was found to be 86 proof. "It's a very good, very exceptional whiskey," Moore said. "I wish we'd have made more of it, but at the time it just wasn't the direction we wanted to go. Now that it's finished and tastes so good, I wished I had a barn full of these barrels, but we don't." However, he's focused on the bourbon, which has been aging for almost two years, and he has a feeling it will be just as popular when it's ready to be bottled near the end of August. "We have people literally all over the state and in other states that are contacting us about when our bourbon will be ready and coming out," Moore said. He said the bourbon whiskey is getting close but needs a few more months before it's completely ready. "On our bourbon, we could be selling it now, but it's just not ready," Moore said. "Another three months through the hot part of the summer, and it's going to be perfect. It will be a true premium bourbon whiskey." He said there are times he has doubts about if he made the right choice, especially as the expenses add up and the aged whiskeys still aren't ready to be sold. "But, the best part of it is when you start to get down, you can come out here and open a couple of these barrels up and taste it," Moore said. "Then you know what you're doing, and you know why you're doing it." Moore said he never dreamed he would have gotten into the whiskey business, but the journey has been rewarding nonetheless. "No, and my mama never thought I'd be selling whiskey either," Moore said while laughing. "But, it's been a fun trip and a good deal. We don't do this because we're drunks. It's a business." Now, the small-town businessman from Henrietta is hoping to see his labor of love turn into a global business with people sipping his bourbon made and aged in Texas from a bottle purchased in Europe. "You know we may never amount to nothing. But, there's a good chance we're going to amount to something good," Moore said. "And, 10 years from now, if you have one of the first 100 bottles, it could be worth something." For more information about the Rocking M Ranch Distillery or to book a private tour, visit their Facebook page or website www.rockingmranchdistillery.com. Contributed photo Felled trees and other debris have blocked the flow of water from Gilbert Creek into the Red River near Burkburnett. SHARE TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Gilbert Creek flows under I-44 just south of Burkburnett. Several areas along the waterway are becoming clogged with debris and fallen trees from upstream. With enough blockage, heavy rains can back up and cause flooding. TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Gilbert Creek looking east at I-44 south of Burkburnett. Some areas of the creek are becoming congested with large amounts of fallen trees, tree branches, driftwood and other debris that washes into waterways during heavy rains. Wichita County commissioners are looking for solutions to clearing out the clogs and to determine who is responsible for the work it would take. TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Tree branches, other vegetation and debris clog Buffalo creek along a fence line at FM 367. Wichita County commissioners are trying to determine who is responsible when area creeks become congested and threaten to flood area property. Related Coverage Daylight showing between Wichita County logjam By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News Area creeks clogged by felled trees and other debris are causing a headache for Wichita County commissioners, they say, and a jurisdictional conflict now has made matters worse. At the heart of the problem is Gilbert Creek, which flows south of Burkburnett and empties into the Red River, and Buffalo Creek, which runs on the south side of Iowa Park into the Wichita River. A record-setting drought ended last year, but not before killing a massive number of trees and sending them downstream into the creeks, where they became caught at choke points and now block the flow of water, said Wichita County Commissioner Jeff Watts. "If a bunch of logs float down from 20 miles away, it creates a heck of a mess," Watts said. If the "impactions" aren't addressed, he said, Gilbert Creek could flood and make Interstate 44 impassable. Buffalo Creek's rising waters could flood Farm-to-Market 368 and put homes south of Iowa Park in flood danger. But in trying to clear out the creeks, commissioners have encountered a sort of jurisdictional logjam. Though the state owns rivers from bank to bank, the creeks butt up against private property. Watts said he hasn't been able to get a straight answer from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality whose responsibility it is to clear out the waterways. "What we are trying to obtain is direction and help from the state of Texas. Through our knowledge right now, that help does not exist," Watts said. "When I called TCEQ, they were at a loss as to what to tell me. They said if I feel like there is an illegal impaction on Buffalo Creek, that they would come and assist." But for the clog to qualify as illegal, it would need to be the result of an intentional impaction of the waterway, which doesn't appear to be the case. All evidence points to nature causing the problem, not private landowners, Watts said. What's more, the county could be fined by the state for failing to clear the creeks. A TCEQ spokesman told a reporter on Monday that creek blockage issues can be "a little complicated," and that the agency has jurisdiction "if the circumstances are right." No further information was provided by the TCEQ as of Monday afternoon. With the assistance of landowners, the county could clear the creeks for between $20,000 and $50,000, Watts said. But he and other county officials first want to see what help the state will offer. "If the county has to be involved to mitigate flooding, we will involve ourselves to that extent. But we want to make sure we understand who is the gatekeeper on keeping our creeks flowing," Watts said. Lauren Roberts/Times Record News Service men and women hold the flags representing the 50 states during the Veterans Day Parade Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015, on Scott Street. SHARE David P. Meany, MSgt, USAF, Burkburnett I urge you to support S. 271, Retired Pay Restoration Act of 2015, introduced by Sen. Harry Reid. Military members who serve our nation for a full career often suffer disabling health care conditions that can impact their employability and quality of life. As a member of the Air Force Sergeants Association, which represents all current and former Air Force members, I feel that these retired Veterans should receive their full compensation of retirement and disability pay- no matter the disability rating. Please do all you can do to help pass this legislation. Those who serve this nation and are impacted by that arduous service deserve no less. Actor George Clooney presented a $1.1 million award on the 101st anniversary of a massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks to a Burundi woman who offered sanctuary to thousands of orphans in the middle of a civil war there. An Amsterdam native was one of four people worldwide being considered for the new award recognizing exceptional humanitarian efforts. Albany Michael Hickey, an insurance underwriter credited with discovering a toxic chemical in the Hoosick Falls water system two years ago, filed a federal class-action lawsuit this week against Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics and Honeywell International, which both operated manufacturing plants that are a focus of the contamination. Hickey, 37, filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and his 5-year-old son. In an interview Thursday, Hickey said he worries about any future health effects that could be attributed to their years of consuming water that was tainted with the man-made chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Albany is one of several lawsuits file this year seeking class-action status on behalf of current and former Hoosick Falls residents, including some who allege they may have suffered serious health effects that could be linked to PFOA exposure. Hickey emerged as a folk hero in this tight-knit community last December when his role in detecting and alerting village leaders about the dangerous chemical was revealed in a Times Union story. For more than a year, Hickey said he met resistance from municipal leaders when he urged them to take more urgent action to warn the public that laboratory sampling showed elevated levels of PFOA in the public drinking-water supply. "The first step was to get the water fixed as a whole, and now it's to look at other things," Hickey said. "The most important thing for me is the medical monitoring for my son." Hickey began researching contaminants in the village water two years ago because he was concerned about what he believed was a high rate of cancer in the community. His father, John, died of kidney cancer in 2013 after working for decades at the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant on McCaffrey Street, which has been the focus of water contamination in the village. The factory is about 300 yards from the underground wells that supply water to the village. The class-action lawsuits all seek to compel the companies, if they are found responsible for the pollution, to pay the cost of long-term medical monitoring for people exposed to the PFOA. The lawsuits also seek unspecified damages for health problems and declining property values in and around the village. Three law firms from Rochester, New York City and Philadelphia filed the complaint on behalf of Hickey, who would become the lead plaintiff in the litigation if it gains class-action status. Hickey's complaint says the companies should have known that "the release of PFOA-containing waste into the environment was potentially hazardous to human health." The lawsuits against Saint-Gobain and Honeywell are mounting as the pollution problems in Hoosick Falls have also triggered additional environmental investigations that found PFOA contamination in water systems in nearby Petersburgh and also southern Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In 2006, the EPA reached an agreement with DuPont and other manufacturers to stop producing or using PFOA, although DuPont continued producing PFOA because the agreement did not call for the end of production of the chemical until 2015. The EPA settlement with DuPont came less than a year after DuPont agreed to pay $10.25 million in civil penalties to settle the complaint brought by the EPA regarding the company's PFOA pollution in the Midwest. At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty ever obtained by the EPA under federal environmental statutes. In January 2009, the EPA set its advisory for short-term exposure to PFOA at no more than 400 parts per trillion Last month, the agency set a long-term exposure limit of 100 ppt that applies to regular residential water use. Some of the levels of PFOA detected in Hoosick Falls' water system, as well as private wells in the village and town of Hoosick, have exceeded 400 ppt. PFOA is used to make non-stick and other household and commercial products that are heat-resistant and repel grease and water. Saint-Gobain and many other companies began phasing out their use of the chemical more than 10 years ago as scientific studies raised concerns about its effects on humans and the environment. blyons@timesunion.com 518-454-5547 @brendan_lyonstu San Francisco Jurors who threaten to derail trials by researching them on Google or posting comments about them on Twitter are often dismissed with nothing more than a tongue-lashing from a judge. But that may soon change in California. Legislation supported by state court officials would authorize judges in some counties to fine jurors up to $1,500 for social media and Internet use violations, which have led to mistrials and overturned convictions around the country. As jurors and judges have become more technology savvy in recent years, the perils of jurors playing around with their smartphones have become a mounting concern, particularly in technology-rich California. A 2011 state law made improper electronic or wireless communication or research by a juror punishable by contempt. It isn't clear how many times juror social media use has affected trials, but anecdotal evidence proves it happens. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hanover, Germany President Barack Obama said on Sunday that he was confident the United States and the European Union would succeed in negotiating a new trans-Atlantic trade deal by the end of the year, saying the benefits of such an agreement were "indisputable." Obama said images of plants moving overseas and jobs lost created a narrative about trade agreements that "drives, understandably, a lot of suspicion" in places like the United States and Germany. But, he added, well-designed trade deals can have greater benefits. "It is indisputable that it has made our economy stronger," he said. "It has made sure that our businesses are the most competitive in the world." Obama's comments came as he stood next to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany during a news conference in Hanover as they prepared to preside over the opening here of the world's largest industrial trade fair. The president's visit to Germany was intended to bolster negotiators seeking to wrap up a trans-Atlantic trade agreement between the United States and the EU, an accord that Merkel supports but that is highly unpopular in her country. Merkel is among Obama's closest and most trusted counterparts, and the president is eager to support her during difficult political times. Merkel has struggled in recent months to confront a surge of migrants and a weakening economy. The chancellor greeted the president at the Schloss Herrenhausen, the former summer residence of the Royal House of Hanover. They stood in front of a line of German troops in gray overcoats and green berets as the national anthems for the two nations played before returning inside for a private meeting. Obama said he hoped the trade negotiations could be completed before he leaves office. "I don't anticipate that we will be able to complete ratification of a deal by the end of this year, but I do anticipate that we will have completed the agreement," he said. Once negotiations are finished, he said, "people will be able to see exactly why this will be good for our two countries." Earlier, his commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, told an audience of 350 business leaders that "we have a rapidly closing window to make progress." "We must ask ourselves: What is the cost of delay?" she said. "Now is the time for U.S.-German leadership." She also noted that Europe and the U.S. needed to keep working hard to preserve digital freedom while also heeding privacy concerns. "If done wrong," she warned, "we put at risk the thriving multibillion-dollar trans-Atlantic manufacturing economy." Yet when it comes to the U.S., Germans often veer between admiration and scorn. Rarely was that more clear than in the contrasting ways that two groups prepared to greet Obama here this weekend. Undeterred by the scandal caused by Volkswagen's deceit about emissions from its diesel vehicles in the U.S., Germany's export-driven businesses showed off their wares in eager anticipation of the trade fair's opening on Sunday and the first visit to this city by a sitting U.S. president. Obama is set to help open the fair. Obama kindled goodwill with an unusually glowing appraisal of Merkel, telling Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild, that he was proud to call her a friend. In particular, he praised Merkel's "real political and moral leadership" in welcoming more than 1 million migrants last year. None of that impressed the tens of thousands of protesters who gathered in Hanover's Opera Square on Saturday. Their goal, as proclaimed in hundreds of banners and chants, was to topple the trade deal, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Abidjan, Ivory Coast Papa Wemba, a musician known around the world as the king of Congolese rumba, has died following a collapse on stage during a concert, officials said. He was 66. Culture Minister Baudouin Banza Mukalay confirmed the musician's deathSaturday, calling it a "great loss for the country and all of Africa." Footage from the concert in Ivory Coast shows his fellow performers rushing to his side as he collapsed in front of thousands of fans. He was taken to a nearby clinic, but couldn't be resuscitated. The cause of death wasn't immediately known. "He was a self-made man, a role model for Congolese youth," Mukalay said. The musician, whose real name was Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba, rose to fame in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa during the 1970s with the band Zaiko Langa Langa, whose guitar-based fusion of Latin and African dance styles inspired a generation of African musicians. With a new band, Viva La Musica, Wemba moved to Paris in the 1980s and helped popularize Congolese music beyond Africa. He toured in the 1990s with British rock star Peter Gabriel and appears on his "Secret World Live" album. Wemba also was a pioneer of the "sapeur" youth culture marked by its dedication to extravagant fashions. The young men are known for wearing stylish suits and fedora hats, standing out in stark contrast in countries where poverty is endemic. In 2003, Wemba spent more than three months in jail after French and Belgian authorities accused him of helping Congolese immigrants illegally obtain visas by passing them off as musicians working with him on European shows. Wemba, who later received a suspended sentence, maintained that others had done so using his name. Wemba had appeared to be in good health just days earlier when he met with journalists at the beginning of the music festival. Fans across Abidjan were mourning news of his death Sunday. "My sadness is great I wonder how such a wonderful artist can die before such a large audience," said Mariam Cisse, 32, who lives in Anoumabo where the festival was being held. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Schenectady Deborah Fowler has big dreams of one day opening a home for female survivors of labor and sex trafficking and a business where the women can earn money working in a safe environment. But for now the grandmother from Galway spends three days a week in a nondescript building on Van Vranken Avenue in Schenectady that houses an arts and crafts thrift shop called Her Treasure Box. The store is part of her effort to raise awareness about human trafficking and raise funds to support the cause. It opened in March. Fowler is executive director of a nonprofit group called Eyes Wide Open NENY (Northeastern New York) Inc. She sees the arts as a powerful healing tool for women who have been exploited. More Information How to help Website: http://eyeswideopen neny.org E-mail: Reach Deborah Fowler at dfowler@eyeswideopenneny.org Phone: 937-3976. See More Collapse "Sometimes a woman is not going to be able to sit and talk about what happened to her for a long time, but if you're in the midst of creating something, it will come out in your artwork or while you're doing it in a group, and it will start to evolve and lead to healing," said Fowler, 58. She said when she realized the scope of the problem her "eyes got wide open, and that is what I want: to open the eyes of others, and I also want the girls to have their eyes open that there is hope." In 2010, Fowler, a homemaker, was living in Kuwait with her husband while he worked at power plants for General Electric. While bonding with women during quilting, Fowler recalled a woman came by soliciting donations. They later went out for coffee and the woman told Fowler about an underground shelter that helps runaway maids forced to work in terrible conditions after being lured from Nepal with promises of making more money than they could in their homeland. The mother of three who has nine grandchildren visited the shelter and interacted with the exploited girls and women. Fowler conceded learning about the plight of the maids and the labor trafficking made her angry. "Part of me was feeling like this is ridiculous, I'm a fairly educated person, I listen to the news, I read newspapers, how come I don't know about this?" she remembers. In 2012, she returned home to Galway in Saratoga County, and started telling family and friends and anyone else who would listen about labor trafficking. Fowler said the average age of the girls being exploited and enslaved is 14 years old. She wrote a book, "Fragrance in the Desert," about human trafficking and her time in Kuwait, which allowed her to spread the word through speaking engagements and book signings. She recalled one particularly disturbing story of a Nepalese woman in her 50s who, while working for a family with three young boys, was repeatedly raped by them one weekend while their parents were away on vacation. "Their viewpoint was that she was just a thing, an object, she wasn't a person, she wasn't somebody who loved and took care of them," added Fowler. To add insult to injury, she said the boys' parents didn't believe the women and beat her for lying. In the United States, sex trafficking where pimps buy and sell women for prostitution is a big problem. "It's here in our neighborhoods, it's everywhere and it's so hidden," said Fowler, adding the internet has made it easier. "It's like ordering up a pizza, you call this number and tell this guy you want somebody that night, and they'll drop them off," added Fowler. At first, Fowler and her friends were hawking donated items at flea markets and garage sales to generate funds to build a shelter for female survivors of sex and labor trafficking. The Schenectady store, which the owner has allowed the organization to use rent-free for the first six months, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. About a dozen volunteers do everything from pricing sale items to teaching art therapy. Starting in May, the store will also be open Wednesdays. Fowler said they have repeat customers and sometimes people walking or driving by stop in to ask questions. "I want them to know we care about women, we care about who they are, and that there's love and life here," said Fowler. The proceeds will go toward the construction of the long-term care facility, which Fowler hopes to model after Thistle Farms in Nashville, "a community of women who have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction," according to its website. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. Fowler hopes to convert one of the huge Victorian homes in Schenectady into the first facility and maybe open other similar residences in other parts of the Capital Region. She said Eyes Wide Open NENY has offered to provide art therapy for women at Safe Inc. and the YWCA in Schenectady. Sister Michele Morek with UNANIMA International, a United Nations-based non-governmental organization (http://www.unanima-international.org), said labor trafficking involving Chinese workers being bused from downstate to places upstate including Albany is a major problem and the work of organized crime. Authorities are looking into whether the 2014 murder of a Guilderland family of four has any connections to labor trafficking and Chinese organized crime. The issue of undocumented workers has arisen in the case of the Guilderland homicides of Chinese immigrant Jin Chen, 39, his wife, Hai Yan Li, 38, and their two young sons, Anthony, 10, and 7-year-old Eddy at their home at 1846 Western Ave. The Times Union has reported that Chen allegedly handled large amounts of off-the-books cash which flowed through undocumented Chinese restaurant workers. The Albany County District Attorney's Office has said much of the sex trafficking locally involves prostitution in hotels on Wolf Road by the exchange of Interstate 90 and the Northway where women being transported from New York City to Boston may stop in Albany. Morek said often labor and sex trafficking overlap. "If you look at the United States and Europe, the predominate form of trafficking is sex trafficking but if you look at Asia and Africa, the predominate kind of trafficking is labor trafficking," said Morek. She said mass migration and the large-scale displacement of people and organized crime networks getting involved in human trafficking could exacerbate the problem. Morek said New York "has some of the best trafficking laws anywhere, certainly in the United States." She said, however, that the record of prosecuting suspected traffickers is not good. "I think education is the answer and the media has a role to play in that," added Morek. Fowler said it's going to take a massive effort to combat human trafficking. "It's big, it makes money, it's mean, it's nasty, it's corrupt, it's violent, but guess what we can be bigger," she said. "We can be bigger if we work together and every single person has something they can do to bring the awareness." pnelson@timesunion.com 518-454-5347 @apaulnelson This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate "Would you like to designate a caregiver?" Since Saturday, hospital patients in New York must be asked that question or something like it, in keeping with a new law intended to improve their care after they get home. Choosing a caregiver prompts hospital staff to teach the designee how to tend to the patient once he or she gets home, as required by the state's new CARE Act, signed into law last year. Menands resident Geneva Conway, 84, is among those cheering the act's implementation. She recalled caring for her parents after hospital visits about 15 years ago, when she was nearly 70 and they were in their 90s. "I was overwhelmed, and I didn't know where to go to get what I needed," Conway said. An estimated 4.1 million New Yorkers provide unpaid care to adults with conditions that limit their daily activities, according to AARP. The lobby for older Americans pushed for passage of the CARE Act (which stands for Caregiver Advise, Record, Enable). New York is now one of 24 states to have such a law on the books. "The majority of all long-term care in New York is done by family caregivers, and this further acknowledges the important role they play in our health system," said Bill Ferris, state legislative representative for AARP New York. Designating a caregiver is different from naming a health proxy, who can make decisions for a patient unable to do so. Proxies need not be involved in a patient's care to make the decisions about what medical professionals do. The designated caregiver, on the other hand, needs to be both involved and on site, said Erin LaBarge, performance improvement specialist at St. Peter's Health Partners, which includes four hospitals in Albany and Troy. Once named, caregivers at St. Peter's health system will be included in discussions about patients' conditions during their hospital stays, LaBarge said. Caregivers might be asked to watch a video or sit through instructions from a hospital staffer. Patients' needs will determine which professional provides the training, LaBarge said. If a patient is going home with an oxygen tank, a respiratory therapist may demonstrate how to use it. If a patient with limited mobility will need assistance, a physical therapist might show the caregiver safe methods of support. Instructions will be reinforced when the patient leaves the hospital, LaBarge said. New to the hospitals' discharge routines will be the distribution of task lists to each caregiver. Also new are documentation rules that require hospitals to keep track of all training provided. Hospital representatives say the law codifies processes already in place. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. "It's similar to what we've done before, but more formalized and structured," LaBarge said. Many caregivers nonetheless feel uncertain about the tasks they perform. An AARP study found two-thirds of caregivers who took care of a patient's wounds found it hard to do. Half of those who needed to operate a mechanical apparatus ventilators, feeding tubes or home dialysis equipment, for instance found it difficult. Nearly one- fourth who managed patients' medicines felt training would be helpful. "Caregiving is exhausting," said Danielle Valenti, a 31-year-old Troy woman who cared for a mother with Huntington's disease two years ago. "It's probably one of the scariest things you can experience." She called the law a "great first step" to recognizing the support that caregivers need. chughes@timesunion.com 518-454-5417 @hughesclaire This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Lake George It seems highly unlikely that the owner of a Lake George tour boat and the families of 20 victims who drowned when the vessel capsized more than a decade ago will ever see restitution from a jailed Caribbean accountant who helped run a fake insurance scam. It's been nearly five years since Malchus Irvin Boncamper stood before a federal judge in Houston to plead guilty in the crime, which left the Ethan Allen's owner without insurance to protect against lawsuits after the deadly 2005 incident dumped predominantly elderly passengers into the lake. The accountant admitted conspiring to launder premiums from a scheme that sold fake liability insurance policies over the course of more than 10 years to the Ethan Allen and other businesses throughout the U.S. As part of the sentence, the court was to determine how much restitution would be due from Boncamper and his criminal associates to compensate victims. But since Boncamper started serving an eight-year prison sentence, no restitution to the Ethan Allen victims has come from him or the other four men convicted with him. A delayed bombshell dropped this month, when Boncamper made international headlines for being part of a Panamanian-based law firm that crafted a global money-laundering and tax evasion scheme that is popularly known as the Panama papers. That firm, called Mossack Fonseca, used Boncamper as a phantom director on at least 30 shadowy shell companies created by the firm to help wealthy clients hide cash and other assets. Mossack Fonseca tried to change dates on those records to diminish Boncamper's involvement after he got caught up publicly in the insurance scam. That reporting was based on a yearlong investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations. The report contains revelations of involvement by dozens of political leaders, celebrities, CIA operatives, and criminals, including Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the president of China. Ownership of a shell corporation created by the law firm to hold Icelandic bank bonds forced Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to step aside within days. Last week, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, head of the Southern District of New York, wrote to ICIJ that his office had "opened a criminal investigation regarding matters to which the Panama Papers are relevant." Bharara has risen to prominence for his prosecutions and convictions of former state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former state Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos. "Our inability to regain restitution in this has been very frustrating," said Mark Schachner, a Glens Falls attorney who represented Ethan Allen owner James Quirk. "We put in a claim for any restitution that may become available but we did not attach a dollar figure to it." Quirk was stung by a fake $2 million liability insurance policy, sold online out of Florida by a firm based in Texas, and that was propped up by fake European assets crafted by Boncamper at his office on St. Kitts, a tiny island about 200 miles east of Puerto Rico. Once it became clear in 2006 that the marine insurance was a fraud, Quirk had to mortgage property to settle lawsuits from victims' families to keep his business afloat. The business is still operating. Victims' families got a confidential settlement from Quirk, but have seen no restitution from Boncamper or the other convicted insurance scammers, said Latham attorney James Hacker, who represented the families. "This was one of the saddest, most complicated cases that I have ever handled in 30 years," said Hacker. "The only reason that this scam came to light was the magnitude of this disaster." Nearly a decade later, tour boat operators like Quirk still have to be careful when shopping for marine liability insurance. State lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass proposed laws to regulate such insurance and set standards on it. Ron Klug, a spokesman for the state Department of Financial Services, said: "Consumers and business owners should exercise caution when purchasing insurance coverage from an unknown individual or business by verifying whether the broker and insurer is licensed by checking the DFS website, and should contact DFS if they suspect an insurance offer may not be legitimate. He added that the state "has no jurisdiction over tour boat operators." During his August 2012 sentencing before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in Houston, Boncamper threw himself on the mercy of the court, citing his six children and claiming that "acts of this nature will not be repeated." But his lawyer, Joseph Gibson, admitted to the court that Boncamper was "a willing cat's paw in trying to get his hands on some money in the gray areas of worldwide commerce. He was open for business, and he was given the opportunity to get in on the inside, he thought, on some scam and he jumped at it, but not knowing that his co-conspirators, being unkind to him, didn't cut him in on the cake, they gave him the crumbs." According to the government's February 2011 indictment against Boncamper, he ran a business that formed shell companies, including insurers. He also created fake financial statements and audits for those statements to make the companies appear legitimate and to have the financial backing to pay claims. But Boncamper was part of a conspiracy that created "shell companies with or no assets in places such as Belize, Nicaragua, St. Kitts, Nevins and the Bahamas for the purpose of offering insurance and re-insurance for customers in the U.S.," according to the indictment. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. In 1995, Texas insurance regulators banned Boncamper from selling unauthorized insurance in that state, the indictment stated. Boncamper then began working with a Dallas resident, Robert Steve Mills, to create shell corporations in St. Kitts that Mills then used to sell insurance in Texas and elsewhere. Between 2001 and 2005, Boncamper, Mills and their associates used wire transfers to move more than $2.5 million in fraudulent insurance premiums to countries including Nicaragua, according to the indictment. Mills spent "large portions of the insurance money on his own personal expenses, including at casinos," according to the indictment. Among those premiums were $3,100 sent in May 2005 by Quirk's company for the renewal insurance on the Ethan Allen, as well as his Lake George restaurant, the King Neptune's. After the Ethan Allen sank, Quirk tried to collect on the insurance, only to be told his tour boat was covered only for accidents on land, not on water. In a 2006 email to one of his associates, Mills said he was fighting a "long battle" with Quirk's company over the insurance issue, and ended the note by writing, "I am going to jump in the shower, hope I drown and save everyone the misery." As federal and state investigators being looking into the matter and the scheme began to unravel, Mills started hiding from federal officials and spoke about moving to a country like the Philippines "that had no extradition treaty with U.S." By November 2009, a federal grand jury in Houston was hearing the case, and subpoenaed Mills' daughter, who had briefly worked for him. He allegedly told her to lie about it. On Dec. 2, 2009, the day his daughter was to testify, Mills flew from Miami to Managua, Nicaragua, where he lived during 2010 and returned to the U.S. "only when he thought the statute of limitations for fraud had expired." Mills was arrested when he returned to the states, and in February 2011, a federal grand jury in Houston indicted Mills, Boncamper, and three other suspects in the case. After Boncamper admitted the scheme, Mills pleaded guilty to money laundering in July 2012. In April 2013, Mills was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution to his victims a repayment that also seems unlikely to ever materialize. bnearing@timesunion.com 518-454-5094 @Bnearing10 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Public servants working in town, city and county government throughout the Capital Region remain predominantly white even though the area's minority population has more than doubled over the past two decades. Of the 9,142 full-time employees in the region's 15 largest local governments, 8,224 are white, 698 are black and 136 are Hispanic, according to a Times Union analysis. The workforce is 90 percent white compared to the general population that is 79 percent white. Clifton Park and Rotterdam do not employ a single black or Hispanic worker. "This is eye opening because we thought that things were getting better but these numbers are disappointing," said Dina Refki, executive director of the Center for Women in Government and Civil Society at the University at Albany's Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy. "It is quite disturbing and shatters a popular sentiment that government occupations tend to equalize and level the playing field for women and minorities," Refki said. The fact that local government does not reflect the people who live in the community has many consequences. It means minorities are not entering stable public sector jobs that have historically been a pathway to the middle class for growing communities like the Irish, Italians and in some regions, African-Americans. It means few, if any, black or Hispanic leaders are in the room when major policy and budget decisions are made. Only 40 senior leadership jobs in the Capital Region are held by black or Hispanic employees, which represents 6 percent of the policy-level positions like department head, superintendent and deputy director. The Times Union analyzed data on race, gender and salary levels that local governments submit to the federal government. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires governments with 100 full-time employees or more to file the information every other year in a document called an EEO-4. The Times Union requested EEO-4s from 15 of the Capital Region's largest towns, cities and counties and compiled them into a database of more than 3,000 records providing a detailed snapshot of the local government employees between June 2014 and June 2015. Our analysis compared the workforce each community's 2010-2014 Census population estimates, which includes children and unemployed residents, to assess whether the government workforce looks like the people it represents. The disparities grow larger when you delve deeper into the numbers. The highest paid employees are almost exclusively white 97 percent. Only 3 percent of the positions that pay $70,000 or higher are held by black or Hispanic employees. Women occupy 17 percent of the high-paying jobs. A closer look at the jobs held by minorities shows that nearly one-third hold service-maintenance jobs, traditionally low-paying jobs. While police and fire departments often get the spotlight for diversity problems and the data shows little improvement there the lack of minorities pervades the entire government workforce. Even when the public safety jobs are removed from the equation, blacks and Hispanics still only occupy 3 percent of the highest paying jobs. In comparison, the federal workforce is 28 percent black or Hispanic, which almost exactly matches the 29 percent of the U.S. population that is black or Hispanic. The state workforce is 22 percent black or Hispanic, although they make up one-third of the state's population. Last month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched an Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion to accelerate the hiring of minorities in state government. The cities The analysis showed that minorities in Schenectady, Troy and Albany were significantly underrepresented in their city halls. In Schenectady, blacks and Hispanics are 31 percent of the population but make up 9 percent of city workers. "I don't think anybody really understands how beneficial people of different cultures and different races and different religions and different genders are to the operation and decision-making of government," said Hector Ramirez, a businessman who chairs Schenectady's Affirmative Action Advisory Board. "When you have different perspectives you come up with much better answers." The advisory board recently presented the city with a bleak report on the city's efforts to include minorities in government. Ramirez said diversity is not valued in Capital Region government. As evidence, he highlighted two job listings for Schenectady County probation officers. One post requires the candidate to speak Spanish, the other does not, but the salaries are the same. "You are saying 'I need it but I don't value it enough to pay more for it,' " said Ramirez, who noted that agencies in other regions pay bilingual officers more. Ramirez said he believes the under-representation of minorities is driven by implicit bias subconscious attitudes that push managers to hire people with whom they are comfortable, people who look like themselves. "Unless diversity is perceived as something critical to the success of the operation, it is looked upon as nice but I can still do the job without it," Ramirez said. Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy said he reactivated the Affirmative Action Advisory Council to show the city's commitment to diversity. McCarthy said the city is considering several initiatives to find more minority job candidates from hiring an in-house affirmative action officer to creating a media campaign to encourage people to take the exams needed for public sector jobs. The city has hired 530 employees since 2011 when McCarthy took office and 27 percent were minorities, according to the city. "It's very important and we've laid the groundwork," McCarthy said. Local governments in the Albany area have an extra challenge attracting job candidates because they compete with nearby private, state and federal jobs that often pay better. Still, minority hiring is rising in Albany. Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan attributed some of the success to a residency rule adopted in 2015 that requires new hires to either live in the city or commit to moving to the city within six months of their employment. Blacks and Hispanics represent 38 percent of the city's residents and 21 percent of the city's workforce. The city hired 54 new employees in fiscal year 2015, according to its EEO-4. Those hires included three black police officers and, overall, 44 percent of the new hires were black or Hispanic. "I think that is a statistic that speaks for itself," Sheehan said. The Albany Fire Department's latest class of new firefighters included the first woman to join the department in 18 years. But the 22-member class was exclusively white. Sheehan said she sent a letter to the local civil service commission asking for recommendations that would result in more minority candidates for the police and fire department. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. Those two departments account for three-fourths of the city's payroll and are the major factors in the city's minority and wage gap. "It all goes back to police and fire," Sheehan said. "If you don't have diversity in those jobs, you are not going to have diversity in your wages as well." The suburbs While the racial gap was highest in the region's cities, the analysis showed suburban governments employ very few minorities from 0 to 3 percent of each town's workforce. It could be argued that those numbers merely reflect the demographics of the suburbs, which range from 4 percent to 9 percent minority. But local governments should be compared to the county population, Sheehan said. In Albany County, for example, blacks and Hispanics represent 17 percent of the population but minorities make up less than 2 percent of the workforce in Colonie, Bethlehem and Guilderland. "This is the Capital Region and we need to ensure that African-Americans and minorities and newly arrived people recognize that opportunities across municipal boundaries should exist for them," Sheehan said. Colonie has little turnover, but out of the 28 newest employees hired after the period analyzed five were black or Hispanic, said town spokeswoman Sara Wiest. The new hires include three Hispanic police officers, in addition to three female officers. "The latest numbers do have some positive motion," Wiest said. Clifton Park is not required to submit an EEO-4 to the federal government because the town falls below the 100-employee minimum, but town officials voluntarily provided the information to the Times Union. Town Supervisor Phil Barrett said the data captured a period of time where no minorities were employed by the town, but said there have been minority employees in the past. Barrett and several municipal leaders said constraints of the civil service list contribute to the diversity issue. "It's been a long, long time since there was somebody on the (Clifton Park) list representative of a minority population," said Barrett, who has been with the town for 16 years. "I don't know if it's ever happened." The ship may be slowly turning, according to the data. In order to gain ground, governments need to hire minorities at a higher rate than the region's 14 percent minority benchmark, like Albany's latest round of hires that was 44 percent minority. All together, the 15 local governments hired 666 new employees, 76 percent were white and 23 percent were black or Hispanic a good bit above the 14 percent mark. Just three of the minority employees were hired for senior leadership positions. ccrowley@timesunion.com 518-454-5348 @townstu >http://facebook.com/cathleenFcrowley> Danielle Ferrari contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate THE ISSUE: Earlier plans to hold public hearings on the Hoosick Falls water crisis are on hold. THE STAKES: The process could help the state to better respond to water pollution everywhere.Public hearings conducted by legislative bodies can be valuable steps in developing public policy, or political "gotchas" that target public agencies or both. More Information To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com or at http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion See More Collapse Merely calling for hearings can prod government officials to take action. That may have been the case in February when some senior members of the state Assembly Democratic majority called for hearings on the state's response to the discovery that public drinking water in Hoosick Falls was contaminated with the chemical PFOA, a suspected carcinogen. Unfortunately, the Democrats have since backed away from any hearings. So the Republican Assembly member who represents Hoosick Falls says he may just hold hearings of his own. In February, a joint statement by Manhattan Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, who chairs the health committee, and Assemblyman Steve Englebright of Long Island, who chairs the environmental conservation committee, urged that hearings examine the Cuomo administration's handling of the Hoosick Falls situation. At the time, residents of the Rensselaer County village were using bottled water for drinking and cooking; many were in a panic over possible long-term health after having drank the water there for years. But Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's spokesman says no hearings are planned at this time. A finger-pointing hearing isn't useful, the speaker's aide said, as opposed to a public education program about water quality testing. In recent weeks, the state has made significant progress protecting Hoosick Falls residents by installing filtration systems. Tests show the filtered water is safe to drink, though many households still await filters. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. The controversy over Hoosick Falls water erupted after the Times Union published a series of stories in December about the contamination. But village officials and the state had been made aware of the unsafe levels of PFOA more than a year before. Some critics say Gov. Andrew Cuomo should have taken decisive action earlier. Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, a Republican from Schaghticoke, is faulting his house's leaders for backing away from the idea of hearings, suggesting they were pressured by the governor's office, a notion that a spokesman for the governor denies. Mr. McLaughlin says he may conduct his own hearing. And he's right about this much: Hearings now could shed light on what took authorities so long to declare the public health emergency, and they could be useful in determining whether administrative procedures laws need to change, to speed and streamline responses to future such situations. But a one-man show, which is what a hearing by a minority Assembly member would be, seems less a search for good public policy than a ploy for good public relations. Speaker Heastie ought to instead call formal hearings, and give state agencies and outside experts a chance to testify. It's not just for the people of Rensselaer County, but for all New Yorkers, that we must know more, before the next drinking water crisis is upon us. Here are a few of the things we learned from New York's primary on Tuesday: We Learned to like Hillary again: It has not been smooth sailing for Hillary Clinton. Mistakes of her making (emails, Goldman Sachs speeches) and phony but persistent criticism (Benghazi, emails) resulted in a grim and defensive campaign, with an undercurrent of distrust even in her base. That all disappeared in New York. She connected with voters like when she was a U.S. senator. She looked and sounded on her game. She sidestepped things that could have been damaging. Not a surprise in one way. She was a very good senator, she paid attention to regular folks as well as the political class, and she got things done. The net result is a renewed glow to her candidacy that will be felt elsewhere. We learned the difference between a movement and a campaign: Bernie Sanders continues to do well, even when he loses. As unlikely as it is that a rumpled, aging, Jewish, Vermont Socialist can attract votes, he does. That's because he recognized that he's the vehicle for much larger fears and hopes. Just like Occupy Wall Street, he speaks like a visionary and people are genuinely inspired. Just like Occupy Wall Street, his practical impact diminishes when he's campaigning outside of the movement. Win or lose, he has defined the politics of the Democratic Party in 2016. Clinton needs to, and will, listen. We learned that the Republican Party is irrevocably split: The Republican electorate in New York is the party of Donald Trump and Carl Paladino by a slim margin. Non-believers will have no place. Nelson Rockefeller's party is now the party of Mexican walls, guns and tax cuts for the rich. That simply will not attract a majority in a general election. Gov. Andrew Cuomo can coast to victory in 2018, with lots of Republicans voting for him. We learned the state Senate will have more Democrats than Republicans, without making a difference: Trump's presence, plus Democrat Todd Kaminsky's narrow victory for former Sen. Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos' seat on Long Island, make it harder for the GOP to hold every incumbent. This does not mean, however, that the GOP will lose effective control of the Senate. There's little prospect of the mainstream Democrats and Independent Democratic Conference coming together in 2017 and taking over, as their party enrollment would entitle them. These folks need to have their heads knocked together and Cuomo, the state's official head-knocker, won't do it. We learned voters care more about bread-and-butter issues than about ethics reform: The two special elections in the Legislature reflected a focus on school aid, the role of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and ethnic politics, not a voter revolt after the corruption convictions of Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Albany should be able to do both things, but, again, voters seek out pols who will help them deal with the problems of daily life. Best of all, we learned democracy is alive and well: These were real campaigns, with effective candidates sparring about things voters cared about. Congratulations to the Donald, Hillary and Kaminsky, to the also-rans, and to the voters. Richard Brodsky is a fellow at the Demos think tank in New York City and at the Wagner School at New York University. [April 25, 2016] Bosch, Bosch Community Fund award $270,000 to Michigan State University programs Bosch and the Bosch Community Fund have continued their support of Michigan State University (MSU) with $200,000 in grants for the university's Engineering CoRe (Cornerstone and Residential) Experience, which is designed to engage first-year engineering students in experiential learning opportunities, inside and outside of the classroom. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006188/en/ Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon cuts a ribbon in the redesigned fourth-floor lobby of East Wilson Hall, which is part of the MSU Engineering CoRe Experience. Leo Kempel, MSU Engineering Dean, left, Paul Thomas, Robert Bosch LLC, second from left, and CoRe Director S. Patrick Walton, right, look on after the announcement of a total donation of $270,000 from Bosch and the Bosch Community Fund on Friday, April 22, in East Lansing, Mich. (Photo: Business Wire) Bosch's corporate human resources department provided $70,000, while the Bosch Community Fund awarded a $130,000 grant. In addition, the Bosch Community Fund provided a $70,000 grant to support the university's STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Success program to develop high school students' foundational math skills before entering undergraduate programs. "Since 2012, our collaboration with MSU has focused on promoting innovation and fostering an environment where students will stay engaged in STEM disciplines," said Max Straub, CFO and executive vice president for Robert Bosch, LLC, and chair of the Bosch Community Fund. "The CoRe Experience and STEM Success programs impact students at various stages in their academic pursuits, which we hope will spark interest in pursuing STEM careers." CoRe Experience Part of MSU's College of Engineering, CoRe integrates first-year engineering academics with an engineering living-learning community to support the academic, professional and personal growth of first-year engineering students. Bosch's $200,000 contribution will support CoRe as it engages more than 1,700 students in hands-on design projects to discover how to function in a collaborative, team-based, diverse setting and show the importance of engineering as well as the positive impact engineers have on a society. MSU Engineering Dean Leo Kempel said contributions by Robert Bosch LLC and the Bosch Community Fund to invest in early STEM programs are both insightful and needed. "This strong partnership helps high schools and MSU focus on fundamental readiness for college-bound and first-year students who have an interest in engineering or other STEM professions," Kempel said. "We are grateful that our corporate partners are willing to invest in supporting these early engineering students as they begin their paths to careers as engineers." "To succeed in engineering, students must both make the grade in the classroom and choose to apply their skills, knowledge and effort to solve the important problems of today and tomorrow," explained CoRe director S. Patrick Walton. "Support and participation from Bosch, a global and innovative company, only increases CoRe's opportunities to engage early engineering studnts in experiences that will shape their educations and, ultimately, their careers." STEM Success In 2014, the MSU Department of Mathematics launched its STEM Success program to help students who don't receive the pre-college math and science education needed to pursue undergraduate STEM-related degrees. Eligible students can enroll in two courses, the Math Bridge Program and Explorations of Chemistry, to help with the transition from high school to MSU entry-level courses. The Bosch Community Fund grant will support STEM Success efforts in Detroit Public Schools, Farmington Public Schools and Plymouth/Canton Community Schools. "Preparing students to enter STEM careers is a critical component to ensure we have a qualified future workforce. And it's never too early to start the preparations," said Pavel Sikorskii, senior teaching specialist and co-director of undergraduate studies in MSU's Department of Mathematics. "It's reassuring to see companies such as Bosch show an interest and be active in reaching out and engaging students. By working together, we can combine all our resources to encourage the pursuit of STEM careers." The renewed partnership was celebrated on Friday, April 22, when officials from MSU and Bosch dedicated the redesigned fourth-floor lobby in East Wilson Hall. About the Bosch Community Fund The Bosch Community Fund, a U.S.-based foundation established in September 2011, awards more than $3.5 million annually in grants to various 501(c)(3) organizations and educational institutions. The BCF focuses primarily on the enrichment of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education and the advancement of environmental sustainability initiatives. About Bosch Having established a regional presence in 1906 in North America, the Bosch Group employs some 28,700 associates in more than 100 locations, as of April 1, 2015. In 2014, Bosch generated consolidated sales of $11.3 billion in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. For more information, visit www.boschusa.com, www.bosch.com.mx and www.bosch.ca. The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 375,000 associates worldwide (as of December 31, 2015). According to preliminary figures, the company generated sales of more than $77 billion (70 billion euros) in 2015. Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 440 subsidiaries and regional companies in some 60 countries. If its sales and service partners are included, then Bosch is represented in roughly 150 countries. This worldwide development, manufacturing, and sales network is the foundation for further growth. In 2015, Bosch applied for some 5,400 patents worldwide. The Bosch Group's strategic objective is to deliver innovations for a connected life. Bosch improves quality of life worldwide with products and services that are innovative and spark enthusiasm. In short, Bosch creates technology that is "Invented for life." Additional information is available online at www.bosch.com, www.bosch-press.com and twitter.com/BoschPresse. About the Michigan State University College of Engineering The Michigan State University College of Engineering has nine academic programs serving more than 5,000 undergraduate and 600 graduate students. Since 2006, the college's annual research expenditures have risen to $50 million with a focus on innovation in automotive, composite materials, energy, health care technologies, pavement preservation, and security. The college is the home of two new academic departments -- the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering. A new $60 million Bio Engineering Facility will open in 2016 for shared interdisciplinary research. Additional information is available online at: www.egr.msu.edu. About the Michigan State University College of Natural Science The Michigan State University College of Natural Science promotes excellence in research, teaching, and public service across the biological, physical, and mathematical sciences. The college is home to 29 departments and programs and averages $28 million in research expenditures annually while providing world-class educational opportunities to more than 5,000 undergraduate majors and nearly 1,000 graduate students. There are approximately 325 faculty and staff associated with NatSci and more than 45,000 living alumni worldwide. Additional information is available online at: www.NatSci.msu.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006188/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Manatt Strengthens Consumer Protection Bench in New York Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, announced today that Richard P. Lawson has joined the New York City office as a partner in the Consumer Protection practice group. Appointed by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2011, Lawson previously served as director of the Consumer Protection Division in the Florida Office of the Attorney General. As director of the Florida Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division, Lawson handled matters pertaining to deceptive advertising, fraudulent financial practices and travel-related scams, often including complex digital and financial matters. Under Lawson's guidance, the Florida Consumer Protection Division secured over $450 million in judgments and settlements and was awarded the Federal Trade Commission's first-of-its-kind "Partner Award" for its joint efforts with the agency. "Florida is a known watchdog in the area of consumer protection, aggressively pursuing regulatory enforcement and regularly working with the FTC (News - Alert) to crack down on deceptive practices in the state," said Linda Goldstein, chair of the firm's Advertising, Marketing and Media practice. "As the leader of the state's consumer protection office, Richard is well-respected and will be a valuable asset to our clients, particularly in the areas of financial services, direct response marketing, elemarketing and negative option marketing, all of which have been a hotbed of enforcement action in Florida. Richard's unique experience in combating Internet-related fraud will be of particular value to all of our clients engaged in digital and social media marketing. We're excited to welcome Richard to the firm." Lawson has extensive experience with government enforcement, having served as an assistant state attorney and assistant district attorney prior to his role as director of Consumer Protection in the Florida Office of the Attorney General. At Manatt, his practice will concentrate on regulatory enforcement defense and marketing- and media-related investigations, counseling and litigation. He will provide strategic counsel and defense to clients across the country facing single-state, multistate and FTC regulatory investigations and enforcement actions. "With an exceptional reputation in a number of areas that are continuously on state AGs' radar, including consumer financial services, healthcare, advertising and digital media, Manatt is a progressive leader who is at the forefront of industry issues," said Lawson. "Through the firm's significant legal, business and regulatory capabilities, firm professionals have a long track record of anticipating potential issues and successfully developing creative solutions that minimize clients' exposure to investigations or litigation. I look forward to working closely with this talented group and leveraging my government enforcement experience to benefit clients." Manatt's Consumer Protection practice defends clients across industries in their response to highly sensitive civil investigative demands and other inquiries from the FTC and state attorneys general. The team has an excellent record of resolving such actions amicably, by either convincing the Commission that enforcement proceedings should not be initiated or negotiating favorable settlements on clients' behalf. When investigations are unavoidable or litigation is necessary, Manatt utilizes its nationally recognized litigation platform to vigorously defend client interests. Lawson earned his B.A. from the University of Florida and his J.D. from Florida State University College of Law. About Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, is one of the nation's leading law and consulting firms, with offices strategically located in California (Los Angeles, Orange (News - Alert) County, Palo Alto, San Francisco and Sacramento), New York (New York City and Albany) and Washington, D.C. The firm represents a sophisticated client base-including Fortune 500, middle-market and emerging companies-across a range of practice areas and industry sectors. For more information, visit www.manatt.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005258/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Sekai Inc. Opens the Private Jet Sharing Site "Jet freely" Sekai Inc. (CEO: Kazuhiro Kobayashi) has opened the private jet sharing site "Jet freely". "Jet freely" collects information about the specification, location and usage of private jets around the world and makes it viewable collectively on the platform. This enables jet users around the world to compare and consider their choices according to their needs, allowing them more options such as taking empty leg flights at a reasonable price. Service name: Jet freely Web site: http://jet-freely.com/en Area covered: Whole world including Europe, North America and Asia [ Company Information ] Sekai Inc. Established in January 2012. Business alliance with JIG-SAW Listed on "Mothers" Stock Exchange, code no. 3914) in 2015. The number of the users of their Real Estate portal site in China, HK, Taiwan is over 55,000 (as of Mar. 2016). In March 2015, Sekai also tied up with the largest Taiwanese Financial Information Portal Site called "cnYES" to provide Japanese Real Estate Information for more than one million investors in Greater China including Taiwan. Press Release Sekai Inc. business alliance with JIG-SAW https://www.atpress.ne.jp/news/80465 Website: Sekai Inc. http://sekai-go.jp/?lang=en Facebook (News - Alert) https://www.facebook.com/jetfreely.jp/ View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005398/en/ [April 25, 2016] Soha Hassoun to Receive Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award Soha Hassoun, Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University and a past general chair of the Design Automation Conference (DAC), has been selected as the recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Achievement Award for 2016. An accomplished academic and researcher, Dr. Hassoun also has held executive and leadership positions in conferences and workshops for computer-aided design, design automation, logic synthesis, timing issues in the specification and synthesis of digital systems, and bio-design automation. In addition to providing a role model for female students in graduate and undergraduate engineering, Dr. Hassoun has given back to her professional community by acting as a mentor and advisor; working with students transitioning to graduate school; and speaking on improving the graduate school environment for female students, working the 80/20 rule for success, and helping women understand what defines future leaders and ideal hires. Professor Hassoun created impactful and enduring educational and research programs for the EDA community including: the PhD Forum at DAC, now in its 19th year; the Design Automation Summer School, now in its 6th iteration; the CADathlon at ICCAD, now in its 16th year; the Designer Track at DAC, now in its 8th year; and the Work in Progress session at DAC, now in its 4th year. These programs have reconfigured the international educational landscape in EDA and significantly enhanced the creation of a coherent and connected research community. Dr. Hassoun was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, and several awards from ACM/SIGDA for her service, including the Distinguished Service Award in 2000 and 2007 as well as the 2002 Technical Leadership Award. She has held leadership positions for such conferences and workshops as DAC, ICCAD, IWLS, and TAU. Dr. Hassoun was ICCAD Technical Program Chair in 2005, ICCAD Vice Chair in 2006, ICCAD Chair in 2007, DAC Technical Program Co-Chair in 2011 and 2012, DAC Vice Chair in 2013, and DAC Chair in 2014. Dr. Hassoun co-founded the International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation in 2009. She was an associate editor of the IEEE (News - Alert) Transactions on Computer-Aided Design and of the IEEE Design and Test magazine. She was nominated to the Defense Science Study Group, affiliated with DARPA's Institute for Defense Analyses. Dr. Hassoun served on the IEEE Council on Design Automation and was director of educational activities for ACM's Special Interest Group on Design Automation for several years. She is a fellow of Tau Beta Pi, a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and a member of Eta Kappa Nu. "Members of the DAC Executive Committee [EC] have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Hassoun as she served on the EC in various capacities since 2011," said Ann Steffra Mutscher, Editor, Semiconductor Engineering and chairperson of Women in Electronic Design. "In 2013, she was recognized by the Electronic Design Automation Consortium as one of 33 luminaries in the field of electronic design automation. It is a pleasure to present her with the Marie Pistilli award in recognition of her service to DAC and the other communities of which she is a member, and for her contribution to research, technology, and the education of engineers in such a wide variety of fields." About Soha Hassoun Dr. Hassoun is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University. Dr. Hassoun holds secondary appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and also in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Tufts. She received her BSEE degree from South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD; her Master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; and her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Dr. Hassoun was an integrated circuit designer with the Microprocessor Design Group, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hudson, MA, from 1988 until 1991, and worked as a consultant at IBM Research Labs in Austin, and to several EDA companies, including IKOS Systems (now with Mentor Graphics (News - Alert)) and Carbon Design Systems (now with ARM). Her current research interests include developing algorithmic solutions to facilitate designing integrated circuits, and understanding the impact of new technologies such as double-gate devices, carbon nanotubes, and 3-D integration on design. Additional research includes computational methods for systems biology and metabolic engineering, including pathway analysis, modularity, pathway synthesis, and predictive modeling of biochemical networks. About the Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award Women have made important contributions and strides in the EDA industry for over 20 years. To recognize those who have dedicated time and effort toward these achievements, the DAC Executive Committee presents an annual award to honor an individual who has made significant contributions to help women advance in the field of EDA technology. The award is named for DAC's former organizer Marie Pistilli, who worked hard to further the advancement of women in engineering and who passed away in November 2015. The Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award will be presented to Dr. Hassoun during the 53rd Design Automation Conference (DAC) General Session Awards presentation, Monday, June 6, 2016 at the Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX. For a list of previous recipients of the Award visit https://dac.com/content/women-electronic-design. About DAC The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems and for electronic design automation (EDA). Members of a diverse worldwide community from more than 1,000 organizations attend each year, represented by system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives, and researchers and academicians from leading universities. Close to 60 technical sessions selected by a committee of electronic design experts offer information on recent developments and trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and technologies. A highlight of DAC is its exhibition and suite area, with approximately 200 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon, intellectual property (IP) and design services providers. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is supported by ACM's Special Interest Group on Design. Design Automation Conference acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006477/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Technavio Announces Top Five Vendors in the Global Naval Radar Systems Market from 2016 to 2020 Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global naval radar systems market report. This research report also lists five other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. Competitive vendor landscape End-users in naval radar systems are shifting their focus from quantity to quality. High-performance radars have been a growing requirement for modern naval forces. There is also an increased emphasis on cost-effective operations. Maintaining a balance between cost and quality while providing an upgrade and retrofit solutions to meet modern naval needs can pose a significant challenge for vendors. In addition, amid negative economic conditions in Europe and defense budget cuts in the US, companies are facing high levels of uncertainty in the market. However, there has been a growing interest in emerging markets in APAC and the Middle East. Western naval forces seek sophisticated and modernized radar systems for improved surveillance. "Meanwhile, developing countries in APAC and the Middle East are also strengthening their fleet of vessels with modern systems and capabilities. The existing major players in the market should identify the evolving trends and market shifts, and should adapt to accommodate them for long-term success and survival in the market," says Abhay Singh, a lead analyst at Technavio for defense sector. Request sample report: http://goo.gl/876akj Top five naval radar systems market vendors Finmeccanica Finmeccanica was established in 1948 and is headquartered in Rome, Italy. It engages in defense, aerospace, and security businesses globally. Finmeccanica primarily through its subsidiary, Selex, engages in the provision of naval combat systems for global naval forces for the past 40 years. Its naval combat management systems include ATHENA combat management system, multifunctional AESA radars, long-range radars, electro-optical (E/O) surveillance systems, low probability of intercept (LPI (News - Alert)) navigation radars, precision approach radars, and naval communication systems. Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin was established in 1995 and is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, US. It engages in th R&D, production, and supply of advanced technology systems, products, and services to global defense and aerospace industries. Lockheed Martin (News - Alert) has been engaged in the development and enhancement of surface electronic warfare technology for the US Navy since 2008. In 2009, the company was awarded development contract of Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block 2 and was the first SEWIP was delivered in 2013. In the same year, it secured the low-rate initial production contract for SEWIP Block 2 from the US Navy. In 2014, the UN Navy awarded Lockheed Martin an additional contract for the SEWIP Block 2 production systems. Northrop Grumman (News - Alert) Northrop Grumman was established in 1939 and is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, US. It provides systems, products, and solutions focusing on aerospace, electronics, information systems, and technical services to the government and commercial customers across the globe. The company also provides shipboard radar surveillance systems for navigation and maritime applications. The company, through its business division, Sperry Marine, provides navigation solutions to the global defense and commercial maritime industries. Its navigation portfolio includes radars, compass systems, speed logs, steering systems, integrated bridge, and control systems. Raytheon (News - Alert) Raytheon was established in 1922 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, US. The company provides its solutions to the defense and other government markets across the world. Raytheon manufactures and supplies a comprehensive array of radar systems and technologies for a diverse range application in both military and civil aviation industries. Its product portfolio includes land-based surveillance and search radars, upgraded early warning radars, transportable radars, missile defense radars, high-definition radars, and airborne radars. Thales (News - Alert) Group Thales Group was established in 1893 and is headquartered in Paris, France. The company provides solutions primarily to the aerospace and defense industries globally. Thales Group develops and supplies naval surveillance systems that include multifunction radars, 3D medium- and long-range radars, air and surface surveillance radars, and infrared search and track (IRST) systems. The company also developed an integrated mast houses radar systems, namely I-Mast 400, for the Royal Netherlands Navy's four offshore patrol vessels. The I-Mast 400 comprises an integrated mast house radar, communication antennas, optronics mission sensors, and IFF antennas in one single structure. Browse Related Reports: Global Naval Combat Systems Market 2016-2020 Global Military Radar Systems Market 2015-2019 Global Radar Systems and Technology Market 2016-2020 Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact [email protected] with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005551/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] TravelCenters of America Expands Food and Beverage Offering at Eloy, Arizona TravelCenters of America LLC (TravelCenters), operator of the TA and Petro Stopping Centers travel center brands, has announced the opening of a new Sbarro restaurant located at I-10 Exit 203 (2949 North Toltec Rd.), in Eloy, Arizona. The new Sbarro will proudly serve their widely known Italian favorites like XL New York style and Sicilian pizzas, stromboli and baked ziti. Guests can also choose delicious side options like freshly baked garlic or pepperoni breadsticks and side salads that are made fresh daily. The restaurant has seating for 64 people, a staff of 18 employees, and is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Saturday. The TA Eloy Sbarro is the third Sbarro restaurant operated by TA, and its first in Arizona. About TravelCenters of America LLC TA offers diesel and gasoline fueling, restaurants, truck repair facilities, convenience stores and other services in 43 states and in Canada. Since opening its first restaurant in 1967, The TA Restaurant Group includes more than 780 quick ervice, full service restaurants and other food outlets, including ten proprietary restaurant brands. For more information about TA and the TA Restaurant Group, please visit www.ta-petro.com. About Sbarro Since it first opened its doors as an Italian Salumeria in 1956, Sbarro has brought New York style pizza and other Italian favorites like pasta and stromboli to guests at more than 800 eateries across 33 countries. An award-winning franchise organization, the brand is best known for selling their original XL New York style pizza by the slice featuring dough that is made in-house daily, freshly chopped vegetables and 100% whole milk mozzarella cheese. Sbarro is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information or to find the nearest location, visit www.sbarro.com. You can also find Sbarro at www.facebook.com/sbarro, @Sbarro on Twitter (News - Alert) and @SbarroOfficial on Instagram. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006252/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 24, 2016] BD Collaborates with Sight Diagnostics to Introduce Parasight Malaria Detection Device in India NEW DELHI, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) today announced a collaboration with Sight Diagnostics Ltd. (SightDX), to introduce the Parasight Malaria Detection Platform in India. Through this agreement BD will market the Parasight Platform in the Indian diagnostics market, adding to BD's extensive infectious disease diagnostics portfolio. The collaboration will represent the first malaria diagnostics offering from BD. Varun Khanna, managing director, BD India and South Asia said, "Our collaboration with Sight Diagnostics is aligned with our purpose of advancing the world of health by bringing technology solutions for malaria diagnosis to India. I am confident that this strategic collaboration equips us better than ever before in disease diagnostics and will catalyse BD's role in reducing the global malaria burden." The SightDX Parasight Malaria Detection Platform uses ground-breaking computer vision technology to analyse blood samples for malarial parasites. The state-of-the-art technology combines innovative software algorithms, specialized optics, and a new sample preparation method, allowing patient samples to be prepared quickly, easily and reliably. The instrument automatically analyses the sample and provides a diagnostic result within only four minutes. The device also provides information on the species of the infecting malarial parasites and provides information that may be used by clinicians to aid in determining the severity of the illness. The diagnostic information is displayed on the instrument's screen and integrates into the facility's lab information management system. The Parasight Malaria Detection Platform has undergone field testing at a number of Indian and international laboratories, during which it demonstrated a high degree of sensitivity and specificity even at very low levels of infection[i]. Yossi Pollak, CEO of SightDX said, "We are excited that Sight Diagnostics and BD are joining forces in the fight against malaria. Our collaboration with BD provides us with an established and experienced partner in the field of infectious disease, and together we can better serve the Indian healthcare market." The SightDX Parasight Malaria Detection Platform will be BD's first step into the Indian malaria diagnostics market. BD currently markets a wide variety of diagnostic systems in India with numerous offerings in the area of sepsis (blood culture systems), tuberculosis, pathogen identification, and blood cell morphology (flow cytometry systems). Neeraj Raghuvanshi, business director of Diagnostic Systems at BD added, "Working with Sight Diagnostics now gives us the unique opportunity to closely address the clinical needs of improving the quality of malarial diagnosis in India. In partnership with Sight Diagnostics, we would be able to play a definitive role in early and accurate diagnosis of malaria in India which has been long affected by this tropical disease." In 2013, approximately 880,000 cases of malaria were reported in India with over 128 million tests performed[ii]. The Parasight Malaria Detection Platform will be marketed in pathology labs and hospitals across India. The technology could also have an application in blood banks, where malaria testing is mandatory on all blood donations. About BD BD is a global medical technology company that is advancing the world of health by improving medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care. BD leads in patient and health care worker safety and the technologies that enable medical research and clinical laboratories. The company provides innovative solutions that help advance medical research and genomics, enhance the diagnosis of infectious disease and cancer, improve medication management, promote infection prevention, equip surgical and interventional procedures, optimize respiratory care and support the management of diabetes. The company partners with organizations around the world to address some of the most challenging global health issues. BD has more than 45,000 associates across 50 countries who work in close collaboration with customers and partners to help enhance outcomes, lower health care delivery costs, increase efficiencies, improve health care safety and expand access to health. For more information on BD, please visit http://www.bd.com. About Sight Diagnostics Sight Diagnostics has developed a ground-breaking platform for blood analysis and infectious disease diagnostics based on its innovations in Computer Vision technology. Sight Diagnostics' platform builds on breakthroughs in sample preparation, biological staining, machine-vision algorithms, and clinical instrumentation, to provide a complete diagnostic solution that is suitable for point-of-care use. Sight Diagnostics' first product, the Parasight Malaria Detection Platform, identifies, enumerates, and speciates malarial parasites more accurately than currently used diagnostic methods. In the future, the technology will detect additional pathogens and blood anomalies. For more information, please visit http://www.sightdx.com i Based on clinical studies conducted at Apollo Hospital, Chennai, Indian during 2015, and Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya, in 2016 ii WHO Malaria Report 2014 For more information, please contact: Josh Turner Media Relations [email protected] Mobile: +972-54-949-6526 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 24, 2016] Development Dialogues for the Next 3 Billion - Sankalp Global Summit 2016 MUMBAI, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 1,000 Global Delegates Convene in Mumbai for the Summit From April 20-22, 2016 The Sankalp Global Summit, an Intellecap initiative, is among the world's largest convening platforms for development dialogues with entrepreneurs, impact investors, corporates and governments. The 2016 edition of the Summit engaged stakeholders from across the entrepreneurial ecosystem to debate, deliberate and discuss 'Innovations for the Next 3 Billion'. The Summit provided a platform for focussed conversations and collaboration, some interesting outcomes are: More corporates to engage in developing comprehensive models of working with social businesses Mainstream investment houses considering impact investing as an important stream and engaging more with high risk businesses that need patient capital Ensuring social enterprises direct their energies in last mile implementation and using effective technology to deliver greater relevance to projects that matter Identifying ways to drive social good and maximizing public sector impact The Summit enabled high-quality innovations rather than 'me-too' ideas. It assessed the ecosystem's appetite to handle and support innovations. The conversations also differentiated between inventions and innovations. Mr. Amitabh Shrivastava, CEO, CSIR Tech Pvt. Ltd. said, "It is not just about 'Make in India' but about making the best in India." At the summit, large corporates like the Tata Group played a role in supporting innovators achieve scale and quality was also highlighted. The Sankalp Summit also tackled many tough issues like ventures for the disabled, investing in women businesses and the impact of social risk on businesses. The other tracks at the Summit clustered around championing innovations in financing, disruptive SME financing innovations, technology-led financial inclusion models, scaling sector-led innovative business models, finding the next unicorn in education, accelerating impact and investments in innovative sanitation business models, scaling of healthcare innovations, creating a supportive policy framework and building and regional innovation and knowledge corridor, engaging with innovators and experts from across South Asia, Southeast Asia, EU and Africa to cross-pollinting replicable and scalable ideas across regions. With over 30 interactive sessions, the Summit discussed case studies, spoke on scenarios and breakthrough innovations in last mile delivery for corporates and financial institutions. In the words of Sankalp Forum, Director, Aparajita Agrawal, "The Summit helped us drive the conversations on - collaborations forward - what will it take to scale innovations and enterprises that can solve some of the tough challenges for the next 3 billion of the world's low-income population - with support from corporates, policymakers, funders and entrepreneurs. The fact that we had partners asking us to take Sankalp Forum to Europe, America, Vietnam and Sri Lanka is a testament to the fact that we are building a powerful engine for creating impact in key markets." The fireside chat between Kiran Karnik, KRS Jamwal and Amitabh Shrivastava shed light on how better policies coupled with planned intent can help cross the last mile to deliver impact in a relevant manner. New initiatives launched at the Summit included; corporate collaboration for impact facility with USAID, Innovation Labs, Start up Wave for virtual incubation and TRIBE-Online transaction platform from the Intellecap and Aavishkaar group. The Summit also launched insightful reports like the Rockefeller and Institute for Transformative Technologies (ITT) effort called Achieving Universal Electrification in India were released to the audience with a perspective on how to use the power of advanced technology to address the world's most pressing problem. The summit also celebrated impact innovators and provided a platform to the 16 shortlisted high potential enterprises who work in the low-income markets. The 4 winners for the Sankalp Awards were handpicked by a jury of eminent business and impact leaders. Another awards category was, The Sankalp Global Innovation Challenge, to recognise global innovations with a focus on technology and development and 10 shortlisted innovators were given a platform to showcase their ideas. Swasti Agro and Bio Products whose innovative program BioAvert helps in prevention of a variety of crop diseases thereby ensuring food security were selected by USAID to participate at the prestigious GES Summit being led by President Obama in the Silicon Valley in June 2016. About Intellecap: Intellecap is a pioneer in providing innovative business solutions that help build and scale profitable and sustainable enterprises dedicated to social and environmental change. Founded in 2002, the Aavishkaar and Intellecap Group have directed US $ 600 million of capital to entrepreneurs working on such challenging problems sustainably through equity funds, venture debt vehicle, microfinance lending or investment banking intermediation. Intellecap provides a broad range of consulting, research and investment banking services, to multilateral agencies, development finance institutions, social enterprises, corporations, investors, policy makers and donors. Select clients include the Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, GIZ, DFID, Hindustan Unilever, International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. For more details please visit, http://www.intellecap.com About Sankalp Forum: Sankalp Forum, an Intellecap Initiative, aims to influence the global inclusive development discourse through its work with entrepreneurs, impact investors and inclusive businesses in developing markets. Keeping entrepreneurs and the social impact that they create at its core, Sankalp engages governments, corporations, influential platforms like the G8 and G20, media and civil society to drive a paradigm shift in inclusive development approaches. Sankalp's Global Summit, held in India annually, brings together over a 1000 of these engaged stakeholders from around the world to discuss, debate and create a roadmap for development. The Forum expanded to Africa in 2013, and to Southeast Asia in 2015. Since its inception in 2009, it has connected over 400 enterprises to investors and funders, and built an engaged community of over 25,000 worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.sankalpforum.com Media Contact: Disha Sanghavi [email protected] +91-9902604558 The PRactice [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Babcock International Group Chooses Conviva as Global Channel Partner Conviva Partnership provides unparalleled OTT analytics and optimization services to Babcock's Tier One Media Customers FOSTER CITY, California, and LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Conviva, the leader in OTT experience management for the world's top media companies, today announced that Babcock, the UK's leading engineering support services company, has appointed Conviva as it's global channel partner to design and deploy optimized OTT solutions for Babcock's clients, including media companies, broadcasters, and operators. As the trusted media partner to the world's leading broadcasters and content owners, Babcock's Media Services business provides the complete range of fully-managed solutions to deliver channels and content to global audiences across any platform. Conviva brings their decade-long breadth of experience in OTT analytics, optimization and industry data to enrich and improve the engagement of Babcock's customers on a global basis. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160419/356968LOGO As market demand for experience management and engagement metrics continues to grow, Babcock's partnership with Conviva ensures content performs at the highest quality possible, without interruptions and ensures subscriber retention by providing real-time insights into subscriber engagement as well as by providing an optimal viewing experience. Additionally, Convivabrings a 360-degree view of the internet to Babcock's customers with its award winning analytics product, Experience Insights, as well as the ability to optimize on-the-fly in real-time with Conviva Precision, providing unparalleled global viewer intelligence and service optimization. "Babcock works closely with clients to find the solution that is right for them," said Dave Travis, Director of Technology and Products for Babcock's Media Services business. "As OTT continues to become more mainstream with our global publishers, broadcasters, and operators, it was imperative that we chose a partner that has global reach, scale and unparalleled expertise. Conviva, the leader in OTT analytics and experience optimization, was the obvious choice." "Experience equals engagement," says Lisa Loe, vice president, Worldwide Channels, "and, as Babcock's chosen global channel partner, Conviva is thrilled to provide Babcock customers with the business and data insights needed to successfully run their OTT business. We are excited to be able to provide solutions specific to Babcock's AVOD, SVOD and Live event business units as well as to provide support across all OTT experience management opportunities." About Babcock Babcock International Group is the UK's leading engineering support services company, delivering complex and critical projects, both in the UK and overseas. With revenue of circa 4.5 billion in 2015, we support vital assets within a number of industry sectors including defense, emergency services, energy, transport and training. The unparalleled expertise of our 34,000 global employees means that whether designing, building, operating, managing, or maintaining vital assets - Babcock is a partner that can be trusted to deliver. About Conviva Conviva partners with top-tier media companies and premium OTT video broadcasters and operators like HBO, ESPN, and Viacom to deliver optimized viewing experiences that maximize customer engagement. The Conviva Intelligent Control Platform helps providers meet and exceed ever-changing audience expectations for video experience, across a multi-screen viewing environment. Using a unique real-time map of the Internet video delivery ecosystem, the platform provides 360-degree visibility across all users, maximizes picture fidelity, and eliminates playback delays and interruptions. Multi-dimensional reports and analyses of the top-tier OTT market, based on Conviva's tracking of 50 billion streams annually, enable data-driven decisions, supporting successful development of market-leading services. Conviva is based in Silicon Valley, with offices in New York and London. Please visit www.conviva.com and follow us on Twitter @Conviva. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Noser Engineering AG to Host Noser Technology Impulse Roadshow Series - Implementing Innovative Business Models with the Internet of Things (IoT) WINTERTHUR, Switzerland, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Noser Engineering AG the Swiss based global information technology consultancy announced today the international Noser Technology Impulse Roadshow series to demonstrate how companies can gain a competitive advantage in challenging industrial environments by implementing innovative business models with the Internet of Things (IoT). (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121203/579904 ) Every day we read about the latest developments, and above all incredible sales estimates, for products and services in the IoT sector. Who has not heard of smart homes, self-organizing supply chains, autonomous drones and smart fitness trackers? And who has not wondered how to implement IoT into their our own products and services? Implementing innovative IoT solutions raises not only complex technical challenges but also strategic questions. "After the hype in 2015, decision-makers are now asking how implementing IoT solutions adds value and how can we profit?" said Geri Moll, CEO Noser Engineering AG. "Strategic considerations and a structured approach are essential. I am pleased that we can give the Swiss industrial work place new impetus with our roadshows and help shape a successful future." "Innovative IoT projects can be challenging, and are often set to fail from the start without a structured approah," said Dr. Michael Eisenring, Business Unit Manager, Embedded Systems, Noser Engineering. "Our 4-step approach balances investment and innovation and helps businesses innovate existing or extended product lines and expand into new business areas with new services." The Noser Technology Impulse Roadshows will feature a keynote presentation from Prof. Dr. Michael Durst, ITONICS GmbH and practical recommendations to strategically implement innovative business models with IoT. The Noser Technology Impulse Roadshows will be held in: Bern, May 23rd, 2016 Lucerne, May 24th, 2016 Zurich Airport, May 25th, 2016 Munich, June 7th, 2016 For more information and to register please visit: http://www.noser.com/nti About Noser Engineering AG: Noser Engineering is a market-leading software engineering provider headquartered in Switzerland. With 170 employees, Noser Engineering has provided tailored solutions for over 30 years to Fortune 500, local, European and multinational companies. Noser Engineering is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (Android), award winning Microsoft ALM consultancy, and recipient of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) "Recognized for Excellence 5 Star" in 2014. Experts in embedded solutions and market leader in Swiss System Testing/QA. Noser Engineering provides IT know-how from consulting and brain sourcing through to solutions and complete projects. Noser Engineering are members of the Noser Group of companies. For more information, please visit: http://www.noser.com. Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Contact: Geri Moll CEO Noser Engineering AG Rudolf-Diesel-Strasse 3 CH-8404 Winterthur +41-52-234-56-36 Direct +41-41-234-56-11 Phone [email protected] SOURCE Noser Engineering AG [April 25, 2016] Zhaopin Publishes 2015 China University Students' Employability Survey Report BEIJING, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Zhaopin Limited (NYSE: ZPIN) ("Zhaopin" or the "Company"), a leading career platform in China focused on connecting users with relevant job opportunities throughout their career lifecycle, today released its 2015 China University Students' Employability Survey Report ("the Report") based on results obtained from the Company's first sitting of the National Employability Test (NET) from August to October 2015. Approximately 300,000 graduates from 17 cities across China took the NET. The NET program is designed to help graduates develop a better understanding of their overall potential including an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, and their skills, independent of their matriculating institution. It provides employers with a baseline measure to evaluate participating graduates as the test assesses and focuses on the intrinsic talents of graduates including general knowledge, behavioral metrics, motivation and career expectations. The general knowledge section covers math, language comprehension, logic and data analysis; the behavioral metrics section covers creativity, responsibility, emotional competence, sociability and collaborative abilities; and the motivation and career expectations section assesses 14 metrics including salary and welfare, workload, upwards mobility, training, fairness and equitability, and relationships with colleagues. A copy of the full report in Chinese can be obtained at http://net.zhaopin.com/html/young/three.html. An English language summary is below. NET assesses students on a 100 point system, with 100 representing the highest score possible. 1. Graduating students from higher level universities or scientific institutions exhibit a better understanding of general knowledge. Graduates of scientific research institutions scored highest in the general knowledge section, follow by graduates of, Project 985[1] universities, Project 211[2] universities (excluding Project 985 universities), and other universities and colleges. General knowledge scores were broadly in line with the overall academic level of these institutions. [1] Project 985 is a project that was first announced by CPC General Secretary and Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the 100th anniversary of Peking University in May 1998 to promote the development and reputation of the Chinese higher education system by founding world-class universities in the 21st century. [2] Project 211 is a project of National Key Universities and colleges initiated in 1995 by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, with the intent of raising the research standards of high-level universities and cultivating strategies for socio-economic development. General knowledge Scores: Math Language Comprehension Logic Data Analysis Scientific research institutions 72 75 87 77 Project 985 universities 67 79 77 73 Project 211 universities (excluding project 985 universities) 66 71 75 62 Other universities 54 58 59 53 Colleges 49 47 50 51 2. From a geographic perspective, graduates from Central and Eastern China scored higher in the general knowledge section. Graduates from Northeast and Southwest China had the lowest average general knowledge scores. Graduates from China's Northwest scored higher in the behavioral metrics while graduates from the Southwest scored lowest. Geographic distribution of general knowledge scores Math Language Comprehension Logical Deduction Data Analysis North China 59 64 65 57 East China 60 65 66 61 South China 54 69 62 59 Central China 61 66 66 57 Northeast China 49 52 54 50 Northwest China 55 64 65 59 Southwest China 53 53 56 52 Geographic distribution of behavioral metrics scores Sociability Emotional Competence Creativity Collaborative abilities Responsibility North China 58 58 57 58 59 East China 57 57 57 57 58 South China 54 54 55 56 56 Central China 55 57 56 56 57 Northeast China 55 55 55 54 54 Northwest China 58 60 61 59 60 Southwest China 52 52 52 53 51 3. Graduates aren't as mature and sophisticated as experienced employees in terms of career expectations. When considering a job opportunity, graduates tend to focus more on upwards mobility, training, relationships with colleagues, fairness and equitability and applying their talents, while experienced employees focused more on their individual achievements, promotion opportunities, recognition, support from superiors and salary and welfare.When compared to experienced employees, graduates idealized their expectations for personal development and a fair and friendly working environment rather than focus on their achievements, recognition and material rewards. Graduates and experienced employee's job expectations Top five job expectations ranked in order of importance Graduates Experienced employees 1 Promotions Achievements 2 Relationships with colleagues Promotions 3 Training Recognition 4 Fairness and equitability Support from superiors 5 Applying talents Salary and welfare 4. When assessing jobs in tier 1 cities, graduates cared more about career development opportunities than job stability. Relationships with colleagues and promotions were the most important factors that graduates consider when looking at job opportunities, regardless of what city they are looking in. Recognition, job stability and leadership were the least important factors considered by graduates. Job stability was not an important factor as tier 1 cities offer plenty of job opportunities for graduates. Career development opportunities were valued the most. Graduates feel that if employers can provide them with proper training to help them excel in their jobs, they will become more dedicated and loyal. As China's economy transitions, jobs in SMEs and emerging industries in top-tier cities are expected to become increasingly popular for graduates. Graduate's job expectations in different cities Top and bottom three job expectations ranked in order of importance Tier 1 Cities Tier 2 Cities Tier 3 Cities Tier 4 Cities Tier 5 Cities Tier 5 Cities and Below Top 1 Promotion Relationships with colleagues Relationships with colleagues Relationships with colleagues Relationships with colleagues Relationships with colleagues Top 2 Training Promotion Promotion Fairness and equitability Fairness and equitability Promotion Top 3 Relationship with colleagues Training Fairness and equitability Applying talents Applying talents Training Bottom 1 Recognition Recognition Leadership Leadership Salary and Welfare Recognition Bottom 2 Job stability Leadership Recognition Recognition Recognition Leadership Bottom 3 Leadership Salary and Welfare Salary and Welfare Salary and Welfare Leadership Salary and Welfare 5. Approximately 60% of graduates chose jobs in tier 2 cities According to survey results, approximately 60% of graduates chose jobs in tier 2 cities while 30% of them chose jobs in tier 1 cities. Graduates with hukous[3] in tier 1 and tier 2 cities preferred to work in the city where they hold a hukou. Graduates with hukous in lower tier cities preferred to work in tier 2 cities. [3] A hukou is a household registration required by law in mainland China. Graduates' preference in choosing which city to work in Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3 Tier 4 Tier 5 Below Tier 5 31.0% 59.8% 4.0% 1.9% 0.4% 3.0% Graduate's preference in choosing which city to work in based on hukou Preferred city of employment Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3 Tier 4 Tier 5 Other Hukou Tier 1 96.8% 2.1% 0.6% 0.1% 0.0% 0.3% Tier 2 11.4% 87.5% 0.3% 0.1% 0.1% 0.6% Tier 3 41.1% 35.3% 19.8% 0.2% 0.0% 3.6% Tier 4 40.3% 48.2% 1.7% 7.8% 0.1% 1.8% Tier 5 18.8% 66.1% 5.0% 0.2% 7.9% 1.9% Other 36.1% 47.9% 4.9% 1.2% 0.3% 9.6% 6. There is a mismatch between graduate's job expectations and their abilities and personalities. According to survey results, over 70% of graduates fail to realize that their capabilities and personalities do not match their professional aspirations, while over 40% of them lack a clear vision of their future career and life. Percentage of graduating students whose desired job was in line with their abilities and personalities Desired job Not matched Matched Supportive (eg. HR, Finance) 22.9% 77.1% Technical 22.0% 78.0% Research and Development 38.7% 61.3% Management Trainee 26.1% 73.9% Sales 27.9% 72.1% About Zhaopin Limited Zhaopin is a leading career platform in China, focusing on connecting users with relevant job opportunities throughout their career lifecycle. The Company's zhaopin.com website is the most popular career platform in China as measured by average daily unique visitors in each of the 12 months ended December 31, 2015, number of registered users as of December 31, 2015 and number of unique customers for the three months ended December 31, 2015. The Company's over 109.7 million registered users include diverse and educated job seekers who are at various stages of their careers and are in demand by employers as a result of the general shortage of skilled and educated workers in China. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, approximately 25.6 million job postings[4] were placed on Zhaopin's platform by 418,423 unique customers including multinational corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises and state-owned entities. The quality and quantity of Zhaopin's users and the resumes in the Company's database attract an increasing number of customers. This in turn leads to more users turning to Zhaopin as their primary recruitment and career- related services provider, creating strong network effects and significant entry barriers for potential competitors. For more information, please visit http://www.zhaopin.com. [4] Zhaopin calculates the number of job postings by counting the number of newly placed job postings during each respective period. Job postings that were placed prior to a specified period - even if available during such period - are not counted as job postings for such period. Any particular job posting placed on the Company's website may include more than one job opening or position. Safe Harbor Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements made under the "safe harbor" provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "confident" and similar statements. Zhaopin may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its reports filed with or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Any statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Zhaopin's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements that involve factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such factors and risks include, but not limited to the following: Zhaopin's goals and strategies; its future business development, financial condition and results of operations; its ability to retain and grow its user and customer base for its online career platform; the growth of, and trends in, the markets for its services in China; the demand for and market acceptance of its brand and services; competition in its industry in China; its ability to maintain the network infrastructure necessary to operate its website and mobile applications; relevant government policies and regulations relating to the corporate structure, business and industry; and its ability to protect its users' information and adequately address privacy concerns. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties or factors is included in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release is current as of the date of the press release, and Zhaopin does not undertake any obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. For more information, please contact: Zhaopin Limited Daisy Wang Investor Relations [email protected] Christensen In China Mr. Christian Arnell Phone: +86-10- 5900-1548 E-mail: [email protected] In US Ms. Linda Bergkamp Phone: +1-480-614-3004 Email: [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zhaopin-publishes-2015-china-university-students-employability-survey-report-300256603.html SOURCE Zhaopin Limited [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Nigerias Video Surveillance Market Is Projected to Grow at a CAGR of 5.3% During 2016-22 - Research and Markets Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Nigeria Video Surveillance Market (2016-2022)" report to their offering. Nigeria has emerged as one of the key growing countries in Sub-Sahara region. Increasing investments, government initiatives and surging spending have improved the economic conditions of the country. However, the country is affected by increasing terrorist activities and crime rates. To check these, deployment of electronic security systems primarily video surveillance systems is witnessed especially in Lagos and Abuja. In Nigeria's video surveillance market, analog video surveillance systems have captured key share of the market pie. However, a shift towards IP video surveillance systems is anticipated through the forecast period. Amongst all verticals, government & transportation vertical has generated majority of the market revenues. Industrial & manufacturing vertical is another key emerging vertical, wherein oil & gas sector is the leading contributing segment. <> The report thoroughly covers video surveillance market by types, components, verticals and regions. The report provides an unbiased and detailed analysis of the on-going trends, opportunities/high growth areas, market drivers which would help the stakeholders to decide and align their market strategies according to the current and future market dynamics. The report provides the detailed analysis of the following market segments: Video Surveillance Type Verticals Regions Key Topics Covered: 1 Executive Summary 2 Introduction 3 Global Video Surveillance Market Overview 4 Nigeria Video Surveillance Market Overview 5 Nigeria Video Surveillance Market Dynamics 6 Nigeria Video Surveillance Market Opportunities and Trends 7 Nigeria Analog Video Surveillance Market Overview 8 Nigeria IP Video Surveillance (News - Alert) Market Overview 9 Nigeria Video Surveillance Software Market Overview 10 Nigeria Video Surveillance Vertical Market Overview 11 Nigeria Video Surveillance Market Overview, By Region 12 Competitive Landscape 13 Company Profiles 14 Key Strategic Pointers Companies Mentioned: Avigilon Corporation Axis Communications (News - Alert) Bosch Security Systems, Inc. Hangzhou Hik-Vision Digital Technology Co. Ltd. Hanwha Techwin Co. Ltd. Pelco by Schneider Electric Vivotek Inc. ZTE (News - Alert) Corporation For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gh95p5/nigeria_video View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005629/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Internationally renowned Hip-Hop recording artist Flo Rida To Speak at the 2016 Samsung Developer Conference About His New Mobile Street Racing App WELLINGTON, Fla., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- International Multi-Platinum Hip-Hop artist, Flo Rida, will introduce his new mobile app 'SPEED GODS', a joint venture between Flo Rida, IM3 Gaming and in conjunction with D3M Licensing Group. The conference will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on April 27th and 28th. In addition to talking about his new Android app, Flo Rida, will be taking questions from the audience in an 'Ask Me Anything' session. "I'm honored that Samsung has invited me to their annual conference," said the artist. 'SPEED GODS' was a labor of passion, and I'm excited to be able to introduce it at such a prestigious event." "Obviously, Flo Rida has international appeal but it was his understanding of the mobile gaming space that made this partnership make sense", said Chris McMillian, CEO of IM3 Gaming. Flo Rida and Chris McMillian were put in contact with Samsung from licensing partner D3M Licensing Group, LLC, whose CEO, Marlo Gold, echoed similar enthusiasm about the artists' presence at SDC. 'SPEED GODS' transports players into a world of fast cars and even faster cities. The app offers players a glimpse of Flo Rida's love for cars with his passion for art. The cars in this title are underscored with highly creative paint jobs, race through eccentric cities and feature Flo's chart topping tunes - all set against the backdrop of an exciting game that takes over your senses. This fast paced game is set to be the artist's largest scale release to date. The 2016 Samsung Developer Conference will provide a glimpse into the future product innovatons from Samsung and its partners. It is designed for developers, creators and builders who can gain access to industry experts and technical workshops in a wide variety of categories. Flo Rida, is known for releasing a string of hits, such as his 2008 breakout single "Low", which was number one for 10 weeks in the United States and broke the record for digital download sales at the time of its release. Flo Rida has sold over 95 million digital singles worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists. His catalog includes the international hit singles "Right Round", "Club Can't Handle Me", "Good Feeling", "Wild Ones", "Whistle", "I Cry", "G.D.F.R." and "My House", and has just released "Hello Friday" , which is already climbing the charts. Samsung Developer Conference can be found at www.samsungdevelopers.com/sdc2016. Samsung Contact: Jacqueline Cao Media Contacts: For D3M Licensing Group, LLC Marlo Gold [email protected] 561-602-8683 For IM3 Gaming Jessica Mortime [email protected] 703-485-8996 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/internationally-renowned-hip-hop-recording-artist-flo-rida-to-speak-at-the-2016-samsung-developer-conference-about-his-new-mobile-street-racing-app-300256652.html SOURCE D3M Licensing Group [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Merkel and Obama Visit ifm's Trade Fair Stand HANOVER, Germany, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The American President, Barack Obama, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, have visited the exhibition stand of the ifm group of companies at the Hannover Messe today. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359387 ) During their opening tour, the President of this year's partner country, the USA, and the German Chancellor enquired about the medium-sized company's strategic orientation. "We develop today modern sensors, systems and software that communicate with each other according the principles of Industry 4.0 and that trigger and control processes", explained Michael Marhofer, Chairman of the ifm Group. As a "hidden champion", the ifm group of companies is today considered as one of the world market leaders in its industry. Very early, the company also made progress at an international level. Chancellor Merkel and President Obama as well as the other delegation members were particularly interested in the new 3D camera systems for quick identification of 3D scenes and automatic object recognition and in ifm's activities inthe Hannover Messe Partner Country, the USA. Mrs Merkel and Mr Obama tested a 3D camera developed by the ifm subsidiary pmdtechnologies by means of which they could dive into virtual reality. "It's a brave new world." said Mr Obama after a successful handshake with Mrs Merkel in virtual space. Since 1984, the ifm Group has been active on the US market and has had a subsidiary there since 1987. In 1987, major investments went into this subsidiary, and a development and production site was built up to meet the specific requirements of the US market. Presently, the US market makes up 20% of the ifm Group's total turnover. Despite the strong international focus, 75% of all products are still produced at six locations in the Lake Constance region in Germany. Today, the family-owned company, which was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Essen, has about 5,500 employees and attains a turnover of 720 million. - Cross reference: Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) and http://www.presseportal.de/nr/69579/ - About the ifm group of companies Pioneering and innovative automation technology is the main field of activity of the ifm group of companies. Founded in 1969, the company with headquarters in Essen develops, manufactures and distributes sensors, controllers and systems for industrial automation worldwide. Today the second generation family-run company with about 5,500 employees in more than 70 countries is one of the global leaders in this industry. ifm combines internationality and innovative strength with the flexibility and close customer contact of a successful medium-sized company. For text / pictures please go to: http://www.ifm.com/ifmgb/web/presse_infos.htm Contact ifm electronic gmbh Friedrichstr. 1 45128 Essen http://www.ifm.com Phone: +49-0201 / 24-22-0 Fax: +49-0201 / 24-22-1200 E-mail: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Sheetz Convenience Stores Cries Over Spilled MilkShakez CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sheetz Convenience Stores is releasing a new TV spot in support of their hand-made, made-to-order MilkShakez. The spot, "Ugly Cry," begins broadcasting April 20 in select markets across PA, NC, and WV. Created by Tattoo Projects, the 30-second commercial is sure to have you tearing up with laughter. Sheetz, the 500-store convenience chain, serves made-to-order food and drinks across the Eastern United States. Tattoo Projects, the Charlotte-based award-winning advertising agency, has a ten-year AOR relationship with the 60-year old, family owned chain. Together, they create bold, daring creative, pushing the envelope with every new ad campaign. Sheetz is rolling out new, hand-made and made-to-order MilkShakez just in time for summer. The brand prioritizes variety, customization, and serving customers 24/7. As such, the MilkShakez will be fully customizable, hand-made-to-order, and available at any time of day. Sheetz wanted all of these qualities to come across in a way their consumers could relate to. "Sheetz is excellent at understanding and connecting with their target, Millennials," says Buffy McCoy Kelly, President and Creative Director of Tattoo Projects. "For an agency like Tattoo, who strives to make a mark with every piece of communication, Sheetz is the ideal client. Their vision, focus, and decisiveness allow us to confidently pursue deep, meaningful connections." Sheet Consumer Insightz, an internal research department, played a vital role in the beginning stages of concept development. Research revealed widespread nostalgic feelings for milkshakes. Taking this insight and combining it with the Sheetz brand humor, Tattoo Projects flipped this deep, emotional connection upside down. Literally. The end result is a funny and provocative take on over-the-top emotions for Sheetz over-the-top delicious MilkShakez. "It's exactly the kind of work we expect from Tattoo," says Tammy Dunkley, Sheetz Manager of Brand Communications and Advertising. "We have complete faith in Tattoo's understanding of our customers, and that trust results in truly exception creative communications. The moment we heard it, the whole Sheetz team knew it was perfect for our brand, no question about it." "Ugly Cry" begins broadcasting April 20 in select markets across PA, NC, and WV. Billboards, digital video, digital radio, and animated banner ads round out this latest campaign from Sheetz and Tattoo Projects. About Sheetz, Inc. Established in 1952 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Sheetz, Inc. is one of America's fastest growing family-owned and operated convenience store chains, with more than $6.9 billion in revenue and more than 16,000 employees. The company operates over 500 store locations throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina. Sheetz provides an award-winning menu of MTO sandwiches and salads, which are ordered through unique touch-screen order point terminals. All Sheetz convenience stores are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For more information, visit www.sheetz.com or follow us on Twitter (@sheetz), Facebook (www.facebook.com/sheetz) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/sheetz). About Tattoo Projects Tattoo Projects, founded in 2006, is a creative marketing studio located in the historic Cotton Mill building in uptown Charlotte. Tattoo is home to international award-winning talent, including creative directors, art directors, writers, and production staff. The group's portfolio consists of creative marketing for clients who include Hoover vacuums/ TTI Floorcare International, Sheetz Convenience Stores, UNC Charlotte, Cozi.com, Dale Earnhardt Foundation, John Deere, Switzerland's Valais Water and Frey Chocolate. Tattoo is known for creating daring work that gets noticed and leaves indelible impressions, hence the name. More about Tattoo at: www.tattooprojects.com, www.facebook.com/tattooadvertising, Twitter: @TattooProjects TATTOO PROJECTS CONTACT INFO: Buffy McCoy Kelly 704-900-7150 [email protected] Spot: "Ugly Cry" CREDITS Client: Sheetz Director of Brand Strategy: Ryan Sheetz Brand Manager: Tammy Dunkley Agency: Tattoo Projects Creative Director: Rudy Banny Creative Director: Buffy McCoy Kelly Senior Copywriter: Liam Soren Art Director: Rudy Banny Art Director: Liam Soren Account Executive: Katie Czyzewicz Director of Production: William Boyer Production Company - MKFILMS / Tattoo Projects Headquarters, Chicago, IL. Director - Rudy Banny Director - Darren Weninger Producer- Rachel Waters Broadcast Agency Producer: William Boyer Edit - William Boyer Post Producer - William Boyer Color - Gabriel Kaunitz Sound Mix - Bare Knuckles Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tka95TDbWuQ To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sheetz-convenience-stores-cries-over-spilled-milkshakez-300256698.html SOURCE Tattoo Projects [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] CRTC releases 2015 financial results for Canadian radio stations Radio revenues have remained stable over the last five years OTTAWA and GATINEAU, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today released statistical and financial information for commercial radio stations in Canada, as well as those operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). A total of 704 commercial radio stations offered a variety of programming to Canadians during the broadcast year ending August 31, 2015. These stations employed over 9,500 people (down 3.4% from 2014), and supported established and emerging Canadian artists through, notably, financial contributions to funds dedicated to Canadian content development, as well as to a large variety of local initiatives, charities and events. Total revenues for commercial radio stations were $1.6 billion in 2015, down 0.7% (-$11.6 million) compared to 2014. The bulk of commercial radio revenues came from local and national advertising, which amounted to $1.58 billion in 2015. Advertising revenues for the radio sector have remained relatively stable since 2011. In the past year, commercial stations have decreased their expenditures by $14.2 million for a total of $1.3 billion. As a result, profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) increased from $298.2 million to $303.4 million, resulting in a slight increase in the PBIT margin, which went from 18.5% to 18.9%. The 23 third-language radio stations operating across the country generated $46.7 million in revenues in 2015, up 1.5% from 2014. Ethnic radio services' total revenues have recorded an average 1.3% growth per year since 2011, while French- and English-language services have reported declines of 0.1% and 0.3% a year, on average, over that period. The 2015 broadcast year marked the second year during which the CBC could sell advertising on its Ici Musique and CBC Radio 2 services. Advertising revenues totaled $1.4 million, up 27.2% from 2014. Nonetheless, total revenues for CBC's stations decreased by 3.9% to $276.5 million in 2015 as parliamentary appropriations allocated to the public broadcaster's radio services declined by 3.4% from the previous year. Each year, the CRTC compiles financial data on the Canadian broadcasting industry, including these radio financial summaries. In an effort to increase Canadian's access to relevant information, this year's publication includes statistical and financial information of 14 additional radio markets, three of which are in the Atlantic provinces, four in Ontario, six in the Prairies and one in British Columbia. This brings to 29 the total number of radio markets for which the Commission releases financial data. The CRTC will be releasing the 2015 financial results for local television stations, specialty, pay, pay-per-view and video-on-demand television services, and television service providers in the coming months. Following the publication of these reports, the CRTC will issue its annual Communications Monitoring Report. These annual reports allow Canadians to stay informed about the state of Canada's communications industry, while assisting them with their participation in the CRTC's public consultations. Quick facts AM and FM radio Revenues from the sale of local advertising decreased by 2.2% from $1.09 billion in 2014 to $1.07 billion in 2015, while national advertising sales increased by 2.3% from $497.4 million to $508.8 million . in 2014 to in 2015, while national advertising sales increased by 2.3% from to . Total expenses in the commercial radio sector were $1.3 billion in 2015, reporting a 1.1% decrease relative to 2014. in 2015, reporting a 1.1% decrease relative to 2014. Despite the year-over-year decrease, total expenses remained almost unchanged from 2011. Programming expenditures increased by $30.5 million over the past 5 years, offsetting most of the declines in non-programming expenses. over the past 5 years, offsetting most of the declines in non-programming expenses. The average PBIT margin has remained in the 18-20% range for the last five years. FM Radio The addition of 13 new FM radio stations in 2015 brought the number of stations operating on the FM band to 580. M stations generated revenues of $1.317 billion in 2015, down $6.7 million from the previous year. in 2015, down from the previous year. Revenues for English-language FM radio stations decreased slightly by 0.3% from $1.043 billion in 2014 to $1.040 billion in 2015. in 2014 to in 2015. Revenues for French-language FM stations decreased by 1.8%, from $259.2 million in 2014 to $254.7 million in 2015. in 2014 to in 2015. Revenues for ethnic FM stations increased by 2.1% for a total of $21.8 million . . AM Radio There were 124 AM stations in Canada in 2015. Total revenues for AM radio stations decreased by 1.7%, from $291 million in 2014 to $286 million in 2015. Statistics are provided for a total of 29 radio markets, including 14 markets that were added to this year's publication: Grande Prairie , Kelowna , Kingston , Lethbridge , Medicine Hat , Moncton , Peterborough , Red Deer , Regina , Saint John , Saskatoon , St. John's , Sudbury and Timmins . , , , , , , , , , , , , and . Radio services in Ontario and the Prairies accounted for 63% of the total revenues generated in the commercial radio industry. and the Prairies accounted for 63% of the total revenues generated in the commercial radio industry. Advertising revenues, which accounted for 98% of total revenues in 2015, were down in the Atlantic provinces (-1.4%), Quebec (-2.2%), Ontario (-0.6%) and British Columbia and the Territories (-1.1%). They were unchanged in the Prairies provinces. (-2.2%), (-0.6%) and and the Territories (-1.1%). They were unchanged in the Prairies provinces. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio services CBC radio services operating under the Ici Musique and Radio 2 brands generated $1.4 million in advertising sales. in advertising sales. Total revenues for the 69 radio services operated by CBC decreased by 3.9%, to $276.5 million in 2015 as a result of a $10.4 million decline in parliamentary appropriations. in 2015 as a result of a decline in parliamentary appropriations. Expenses incurred by the public broadcaster's stations amounted to $261.9 million in 2015, a decrease of 4.7% from the previous year. Related links Commercial radio Statistical and Financial Summaries 2011-2015 Commercial Radio Highlights Summary for the Calgary market Summary for the Edmonton market Summary for the Grande Prairie market Summary for the Halifax market Summary for the Hamilton market Summary for the Kelowna market Summary for the Kingston market Summary for the Kitchener/Waterloo market Summary for the Lethbridge market Summary for the London market Summary for the Medicine Hat market Summary for the Moncton market Summary for the Montreal market Summary for the Ottawa-Gatineau market Summary for the Peterborough market Summary for the Quebec City market Summary for the Red Deer market Summary for the Regina market Summary for the Saint-John market Summary for the Saskatoon market Summary for the St. John's market Summary for the St. Catharines/Niagara market Summary for the Sudbury market Summary for the Timmins market Summary for the Toronto market Summary for the Vancouver market Summary for the Victoria market Summaries for the Windsor and Oshawa markets Summary for the Winnipeg market Ask a question or make a complaint Stay Connected Follow us on Twitter @CRTCeng Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/crtceng SOURCE Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission [April 25, 2016] Automotive Head-up Display (HUD) Market Worth 1.33 Billion USD by 2021 PUNE, India, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Automotive Head-up Display (HUD) Market by HUD type (Windshield & Combiner), Application (Premium, Luxury & Mid Segment Cars) and by Geography (Asia-Oceania, Europe, North America & RoW) - Industry Trends and Forecast to 2021", The global market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 21.67%, to reach a market size of USD 1.33 Billion by 2021. The base year for the study is 2015, and the forecast period is 2016 to 2021. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 90 market data Tables and 42 Figures spread through 125 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Automotive Head-up Display (HUD) Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-head-up-display-market-11272971.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The Automotive Head up Display Market is primarily driven by stringent safety norms and the increasing global demand for convenience and comfort. The demand for premium and luxury passenger cars is set to grow at a high rate during the forecast period, particularly in emerging economies. For instance, despite the restrictive 2016 budget in India, the market size is projected to reach twice the current volume by 2020. German auto brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are expected to dominate the Indian luxury car market. The North American and European regions impose stringent emission and safety regulations. Various automakers are incorporating active and passive safety systems to comply with these norms and to reduce the possibility of accidents. Safety features in a car currently drive consumer buying behaviour around the world. The head up display decreases distraction while driving, and therefore acts as an important safety feature. Thus, growing safety awareness will likely spur the demand for automotive head up displays. Make an Inquiry: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=11272971 Combiner projected head up display: Gaining traction in mid-segment passenger cars The combiner projected head up display is essentialy a compact version of the windshield projected head up display. The former requires less installation space than the windshield projected head up display. In a combiner projected head up display, the information is displayed on a small, translucent screen mounted on the dashboard of the vehicle. The Asia-Pacific combiner projected Head up Display Market is projected to register the highest growth, followed by the North American market, by 2021. Currently, combiner projected head up displays, which are supplied by Robert Bosch GmbH, Continental AG, and Visteon Corporation, are available in vehicle models from Peugeot, Mini, and Mazda. Growth in the luxury and premium car segments: Key driver of the windshield projected Head up Display Market The windshield projected head up display is an advanced technology that is offered as a standard feature in some luxury cars and an optional feature in various other segments. The North American windshield projected Head Up Display Market is estimated to record the largest market size, and is projected to grow from 502.9 thousand units in 2016 to 1,745 thousand units by 2021. Europe is estimated to constitute the second-largest market, followed by Asia-Pacific. Tier-1 suppliers such as Continental AG, Nippon Seiki Co. Ltd., and Denso Corporation are focusing on cost reduction to enable this feature to be incorporated in lower priced models. The report covers all the major players in the Automotive Head up Display Market, including companies such as Nippon Seiki (Germany), Continental AG (Germany), Denso Corporation (Japan), Delphi Automotive PLC (U.K.), and Visteon Corporation (U.S.). It analyzes the Automotive Head up Display Market, in terms of volume ('000 units) and value (USD million). It explains the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the market on the basis of region, application, and head up display type from 2016 to 2021. Browse related reports: Automotive Interior Components/Accessories Market by Product (Cockpit Module, Seat, Door Panels, Infotainment System, Lighting & Headliner), Application (Passenger Car, LCV & HCV) and by Region - Global Forecasts & Analysis to 2019 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-interior-components-market-10199544.html Air Conditioning Market by Technology (Manual/Semi-Automatic and Automatic), Component (Compressor, Evaporator, Drier/Receiver, and Condenser, Vehicle Type (PC, LCV, HCV, Off-Highway and Locomotive), and by Region - Global Trend and Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/air-conditioning-market-119713356.html About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers. We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository. Contact: Mr. Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India 1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected] Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://mnmblog.org/market-research/automotive-transportation Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets SOURCE MarketsandMarkets [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Rock Oak Capital Partners Leads $1.1 Million Seed Round Funding Startup Software Company ROCKFORD, Ill., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rock Oak Capital Partners LLC led the $1.1 million seed funding round for AkitaBox, a startup whose software automates maintenance, planning and inspections in building management. AkitaBox is based in Madison, and is a recent graduate of the gener8tor accelerator programthe most successful startup accelerator in Wisconsin and named the 14th most successful program in the country by Seed Accelerator Rankings Project. Rock Oak Capital Partners is the investment vehicle of Practice Velocity, a medical software and services company based in Machesney Park. "We're excited to support another technology company that's being built from the ground up, much like the Practice Velocity urgent care software company we founded a decade ago," said David Stern, MD, CEO of Practice Velocity and Senior Partner with Rock Oak Capital Partners. "Todd and his team saw a need for more effective and efficient building management, and he figured out a way to develop software that fills the void in the market. We believe AkitaBox is going to be a big success." Founded in August 2015, AkitaBox sells to building operators in healthcare, property management, and education. Building managers use the software to reduce manual data entry and optimize maintenance and capital planning. "Building operators waste a large mjority of their day looking for information, responding to emails or manually entering data into complicated software programs," said Todd Hoffmaster, Co-founder and CEO of AkitaBox. "AkitaBox automates these workflows, making the outdated process four times faster. This helps building managers prevent problems before they occur to ultimately save money in building operations." Over the past six months, AkitaBox's customer base has grown to include a number of nationally recognized brands including University of Wisconsin Health and Aramark. AkitaBox will use the seed funding to fuel continued sales growth and to enhance its product offering. "There are a lot of rooftops out there. Our mission is to fundamentally improve the way buildings we live and work in are managed," Hoffmaster said. Rock Oak Capital Partners learned about AkitaBox from Stateline Angels, a group that provides investment capital to vetted early-stage companies with leading-edge technology in the Illinois-Wisconsin region. About Practice Velocity Practice Velocity provides award-winning medical software and services designed to improve efficiency, support delivery of quality care for urgent care centers, occupational medicine clinics, primary care physicians, and outpatient specialty providers. Practice Velocity has software installations in more than 1,200 clinics in all 50 states. For more information, visit www.practicevelocity.com or call 888-357-4209. About Rock Oak Capital Partners Rock Oak Capital Partners is a new merchant bank focusing on early-round investments in technology and healthcare. Learn more at www.rockoakcapital.net. About AkitaBox AkitaBox is a SaaS application for proactive building management. AkitaBox saves building owners time and money by providing information for maintenance and capital planning that reduces reactive building management. AkitaBox is a Wisconsin C-Corp headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.akitabox.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rock-oak-capital-partners-leads-11-million-seed-round-funding-startup-software-company-300256762.html SOURCE Practice Velocity [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Kingdee and Kinco Jointly Release Smart Factory Solution in Hannover HANNOVER, Germany, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kingdee Group and Kinco Automation jointly released smart factory solution at Hannover Messe 2016. This is a blockbuster debut of the innovations of "Made in China 2025" at the world's top industrial exhibition stage, the program proposed the idea that "a cutting edge smart factory can also be built in a downtown area," which sparked heated debate in the exhibition. The core values of the smart factory solution are shown as follows: Super Transparent Management Model: Customer communication can be achieved through e-commerce platform, with the application of big data and online design PLM, the factory can better understand and serve customers. Super Flexible Production Mode: People, equipment and systems are connected in the whole process, different cell combinations are satisfied according to the needs of different orders, with the automatic supply of materials, the whole system has super flexible operating capacity. Super-intelligent Operation Mode: With the wide application automation of and robots, it can meet the diversified needs of customers, and provide correct quantity of materials at correct time and correct place. Different from the smart factory solutions released by foreign manufacturers, the smart factory solution proposed by Kingdee and Kinco is a response to China's "supply-side reform," it studies the practical problems of domestic manufacturers, and aims at solving the problems of Chinese SMEs, such as high manufacturing costs, structuralsurplus, low automation and low digital levels. Compared with other solutions for equipment automation and equipment connectivity, it is a targeted design with wider application scope. The Chairman of Kinco Automation Tang Dong said, "Helping enterprises to build cutting edge smart factory in the downtown area is the common goal of Kingdee and Kinco, the proposed solution will significantly optimize production cycle, inventory turnover and human resource utilization, and provide small and medium-sized manufacturers with "real money" and value. The founder of Kingdee Mr. Xu Shaochun said that the cooperation with Kinco's founder Tang Dong began with rowing. They often rowed together and discussed the mission of entrepreneurs: Why do Chinese people go overseas to buy a toilet lid and rice cooker? How to quickly upgrade "Made in China"? The smart factory solution proposed by the two companies will help small and medium-sized manufacturers to become "super transparent, super flexible and super smart," and the program will be launched at cost-effective price to help the Chinese manufacturing industry to create super value. After Hannover Messe, Kingdee and Kinco will cooperate to hold a smart factory solution tour exhibition in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing and Wuhan and other major cities, enabling users to experience cutting edge smart factory in downtown area. About Kingdee Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, Kingdee International Software Group Company Limited ("Kingdee International" or "Group"; stock code: 00268.HK) was founded in 1993. With the aim of "enabling data drivers to succeed", Kingdee strives to be "the most trustworthy big data service provider", takes "honesty and benevolence" as core values, adheres to the business philosophy of "customer comes first; small, beautiful and fast products and services", and provides software products and cloud services for more than 6 million enterprises, hospitals, government departments and organizations around the world, and more than 60 million users. It has been ranked as "No.1 market share of ERP solution for SME" for 11 consecutive years, its Cloud Products have ranked No.1 in the China Mobile office market. About Kinco Kinco Automation is one of the leading suppliers of machine automation solutions in China. We focus on the development, production and selling of industrial automation products and total solutions. We help machine builders in Turkey, India, Italy, Germany, etc. to make machines and equipment which are better and more affordable. Media Inquiries: Kingdee International Software Group Brand Department Qiu Jiaqi Tel: +86-755-8659-5866 E-mail: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] RedBird LED and Brisbane Materials Technology Demonstrate Cardinal High Bay Light Fixture with over 195 Lumens per Watt enabled by XeroCoat Anti-Reflective Coating Technology SAN DIEGO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RedBird LED and Brisbane Materials Technology (BMT) have collaborated to demonstrate one of the highest efficiency luminaires ever introduced. The RedBird LED Cardinal products have consistently been on the leading edge of luminous efficiency as ranked by the DesignLights Consortium. RedBird LED now continues that great tradition with the release of their Next Generation Cardinal High Bay series with luminous efficiencies greater than 190 Lumens Per Watt (LPW), assisted by Brisbane Materials Technology's XeroCoat Anti-Reflective Coating (ARC) technology. XeroCoat ARC is a low cost, high performance coating that reduces Fresnel reflections that arise due to the refractive index mismatch between the protective plastic lens cover and air. The coating is a quarter wavelength porous silica layer applied by spray coating to both sides of a luminaire's cover lens. By reducing these reflective losses, the XeroCoat ARC provides a significant increase in light transmission and improves lumen output. For example, the application of the ARC onto the Cardinal High Bay provided an increase of lumen output from 45,500 lumens to 48,300 lumens, and luminaire efficiency increase from 188 LPW to 199 LPW. The color rendering index (CRI) of the luminaire with the Xerocoat ARC also increased from 82.3 to 84. "The benefits of the XeroCoat anti-reflective coating are clearly demonstrated in these results," stated RedBird LED CEO Jonathan Eppstein. "Our Cardinal High Bay series can jump ahead significantly on the LED luminous efficiency curve simply by employing Brisbane Materials' ARC. This advancement in luminaire efficiency will allow RedBird to provide our customers with some of the most competitive and efficient commercial lighting on the market. The only other way to achieve this level of system through-put with today's components would be to build our fixtures with no protective lens at all over the LEDs, a design option we do not feel is appropriate for a quality High Bay luminaire." "We are pleased to work with RedBird LED to demonstrate the effectiveness of our anti-reflective oatings," commented Brisbane Materials' CEO Gary Wiseman. "Our XeroCoat ARC provides our customers with an easy and cost-effective way to improve the performance of their products." BMT's XeroCoat ARC is extremely durable and has a wide-range of applications in commercial, outdoor and directional lighting. The room-temperature spray deposition process allows for coating over a wide range of optical components and materials including most types of LED lenses and luminaire covers. RedBird LED will be displaying the Next Generation Cardinal High Bay with the Brisbane Materials XeroCoat AR coating technology at LightFair 2016 at Booth #6426. For additional information about the XeroCoat AR coating contact: Ron Miller, VP Sales, Brisbane Materials: email, phone at 6023213187, or visit www.brismat.com For additional information about RedBird LED products visit www.redbirdled.com About Brisbane Materials Technology: Brisbane Materials Technology is a specialty materials company focusing on creating innovative materials solutions in lighting, solar power and other applications. Based in Brisbane, Australia, and Silicon Valley, we have patented technologies for creating high performance optical coatings, including low-cost, wide-area anti-reflective coatings (ARCs) of porous silica and other materials, made at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Brisbane Materials patented technology creates a high-performance, inorganic layer from a liquid precursor at room temperature. The coating is chemically bonded to the glass or plastic surface for optimum durability and lifetime. Brisbane Materials ARCs are the highest performing and most cost effective solutions available today for the lighting and solar markets. About RedBird LED: RedBird LED was founded in 2006 as an engineering company, RedBird Technologies, Inc. doing custom electro-optical design and machine vision projects for commercial clients. The founder, Jonathan Eppstein, has advanced degrees in both electrical engineering and applied mathematics. He is also the inventor on more than 220 issued and pending US and international patents covering inventions related to LED Lighting technology, design and manufacturing processes, LED/Laser Distance Measurement, Non-Invasive Optical Measurement of Analytes in Humans, Transdermal Drug Delivery, LED Retrofit Systems, Thermal Management of LEDs in a Compact Fixture and High Efficiency Optical Systems for LED Fixtures. This press release contains forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of factors, including the risk that actual performance will vary from expectations; the risk we may be unable to manufacture these new products with sufficiently low cost to offer them at competitive prices or with acceptable margins; the risk we may encounter delays or other difficulties in ramping up production of our new products; customer acceptance of our new products; the rapid development of new technology and competing products that may impair demand or render the products obsolete. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/redbird-led-and-brisbane-materials-technology-demonstrate-cardinal-high-bay-light-fixture-with-over-195-lumens-per-watt-enabled-by-xerocoat-anti-reflective-coating-technology-300256844.html SOURCE Brisbane Materials Technology [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] SYNNEX Participating in the GTDC Investor Conference FREMONT, Calif., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a leading business process services company, announced today its plans to participate in the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) Investor Conference on May 5, 2016 at the Convene Meeting Center in New York. Kevin Murai, President and Chief Executive Officer of SYNNEX Corporation and Chairman of the GTDC is scheduled to participate in the CEO panel: "Digital-Era Drivers and High Fliers" discussion at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on May 5, 2016. Mr. Murai's portion of the panel presentation will be archived on the Investor Relations page of the SYNNEX Corporation website at http://ir.synnex.com. About SYNNEX Corporation SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a Fortune 500 corporation, is a leading business process services company, optimizing supply chains and providingoutsourced services focused on customer relationship management. SYNNEX distributes a broad range of information technology systems and products, and also provides systems design and integration solutions. Concentrix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation, offers a portfolio of strategic solutions and end-to-end business services around customer engagement strategy, process optimization, technology innovation, front and back-office automation and business transformation to clients in ten identified industry verticals. Founded in 1980, SYNNEX Corporation operates in 26 countries around the world. Additional information about SYNNEX may be found online at www.synnex.com . Statements in this release that are forward-looking involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual results in future periods to be materially different from any future performance that may be suggested in this release. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release. Copyright 2016 SYNNEX Corporation. All rights reserved. SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo, CONCENTRIX and all other SYNNEX company, product and services names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of SYNNEX Corporation. SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo and CONCENTRIX Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. Other names and marks are the property of their respective owners. SNX-F To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/synnex-participating-in-the-gtdc-investor-conference-300256851.html SOURCE SYNNEX Corporation [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Nolte Vs. Ridgeway in a vicious debate over . . . Nobody cares. Still theshow among middle-class white politicos out in the stix provides a teaching moment about low rent politicos on their last stop in public service. TKC politico warning . . . During his salad says as an elected official, Mr. Nolte was one of the most strident anti-immigration crackdown activists in Missouri which took him all the way the heights of Clay County government and this latest kerfuffle. You decide . . . Growing Tensions at Clay County Courthouse - The Northland News AND WE'RE BACK (!!!) Another HORRIBLE Kansas City Group-Think Idea To Kill Traffic Naming The Kansas City Dead Deadly Double Shooting Weekend Golden Ghetto "Breastaurant" FAIL Broke-ass Kansas City Lunch Time for the noon hour as Alison Tyler seyz she'sand we can't really argue with her contention as she challenges the typical stereotypes of body images in the otherwise horrible pr0n industry.Also, she inspires a quick peek at these Kansas City mainstream media links:And this is thefor right now . . . ORGANIZERS AREN'T BEING HONEST WITH PROTESTERS: WINNING THE SO-CALLED FAIR WAGE FIGHT ALSO INVOLVES GETTING A LOT OF PEOPLE FIRED!!! LIKE IT OR NOT OUR BLOG COMMUNITY HAS PREDICTED THIS CONSEQUENCE OF THE SO-CALLED FAIR WAGE STRUGGLE!!! Our blog community respects the rights of workers and we've always believed that grabbing wildly for as much cash as possible is the American way . . .But let's be realistic . . .Here's another example:And so . . .And what's worse is the cruel reality that there simply no future in working low end fast food jobs . . . So many advocates would be far better off searching for other gigs.You decide . . . A new Jason Bourne movie, aptly titled, Jason Bourne is all of three months away, but Universal has still yet to reveal the plot, according to blogs.indiewire.com which reports the following: Sure, the studio has released a trailer, some TV spots and it was even presented at CinemaCon this past week, but all we really know so far that Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) surfaces again nearly 10 years later for reasons unknown and the plot line will borrow elements learned from Wikileaks and the Edward Snowden hacking scandals. But really, this is all we know so far. But they are literally ripping plot points from the headlines and the strife that is troubling the world. That riot that you see in the first trailer where Jason Bourne is spotted by the American government? Thats Bourne at an austerity mob scene in Greece Its the kind of action sequence you can only see in a Bourne movie, returning director Paul Greengrass told EW recently. It marries action with a really intense, emotionally truthful next chapter in the Jason Bourne story. Is Jason Bourne feeling the Bern and getting out there to protest European sovereign-debt crises and income equality? Well, EW did reveal some new details. Essentially, its former CIA agent Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who inadvertently leads the government to Bourne Life out in the cold isnt working for either of them, Damon told the magazine. Nicky uses the riot for cover to meet with him, but she gets followed, and that sets the plot in motion. And new trailer for Jason Bourne has just dropped so perhaps well learn a little more. Written by Damon, Greengrass and longtime Bourne editor Christopher Rouse, this fifth installment of the series co-stars returning franchise characters played by Joan Allen, Julia Stiles and Scott Shepherd (its unclear if David Strathairn is coming back) and introduces new antagonists and CIA agents played by Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Riz Ahmed and Vincent Cassel. Jason Bourne opens in theaters on July 29th. Watch the new trailer below. 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 institutions quartet returned to Athens on Saturday, with the negotiations restarting on Sunday and the Greek government expecting an agreement by Tuesday. The government is confident that the creditors will accept its proposal which includes 5.4 billion euros worth of measures. The Greek government is confident on reaching an agreement based on the certainty of an emergency Eurogroup meeting on Thursday. Government sources however have clarified that there is no chance of a new bill being tabled to be voted upon this week. It remains to be seen whether the contingency measures required by Greece's creditors will be adopted in the form of a list of measures or a stability mechanism, that will be activated if and whether fiscal targets are missed. Government sources also noted that the Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem is balancing between the list and mechanism. 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 need for Greece to return to sustainable growth was one of the issues discussed between U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hanover on Sunday. The two state leaders met at an international industrial exposition in the German city and discussed crucial issues, including the refugee crisis and Greeces bailout. According to the UPI news agency, the U.S. President stressed to the German Chancellor the need for Europe and the International Monetary Fund to cooperate with the Greek government for Athens to find a way to return to sustainable growth in the euro zone, noting that development is especially important for both the U.S. and global economy. The U.S. President also praised the German Chancellor for handling the refugee crisis, since, as he noted Merkel is on the right side of history. International issues Other international issues discussed by the two leaders were Syria, Russia and the Islamic State. The two leaders agreed that the security zones in Syria for immigrants are a good idea, but their views differed as to the steps to be taken to implement them. About Russia and the separatists supported in Ukraine, "it is clear that they violated any condition imposed by the Minsk agreement," said Obama. "Rather than withdraw from eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continue to operate there, training separatists and helping to coordinate the attacks." Regarding the Islamic State, Obama said that Germany and the US remain united in their commitment to destroy the "barbarous organization". He said he thanked Merkel for its strong support as a member of the international coalition that operates in Iraq. Discussions between the two leaders also focused on global security issues. These included "a commitment to train Afghan security forces and support a sovereign, secure and united Afghanistan." RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Tourexpi, turizm haberleri, Reiseburos, tourism news, noticias de turismo, Tourismus Nachrichten, , travel tourism news, international tourism news, Urlaub, urlaub in der turkei, , holidays in Turkey, , global tourism news, dunya turizm, dunya turizm haberleri, Seyahat Acentas, This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+, at a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Global OConnect, China's top O2O cross-border e-commerce service provider will make its first appearance in Middle East market through launching a showroom in Dubai on April 28. Global OConnect is an offline business partner of OSell E-commerce platform. This partnership builds on the mission of linking global retailers and Chinese manufacturers together, and providing them with import and export support on both custom clearance and goods delivery fronts. Global OConnect plays an essential role in this business model through building showrooms overseas where local retailers, after finding products online, are able to see and feel the products of interest with their own eyes and hands before deciding on an order. Kevin Fenn, founder of Global OConnect, said: "We're the bridge between Chinese suppliers and global retailers. Online business is populating the global business sphere. However, people still trust better when they see the goods they will buy. And they'd prefer to be less troubled with all the procedures in trading. Global OConnect is just what they need. We've had success with Russia market and we look forward to continuing the success in Middle East." Global OConnect functions as a trade fair but differences to traditional fairs. With Global OConnect, Chinese products are shown every day in a showroom built in overseas cities along the One Belt One Road economic zone; and a warehouse at the back of the showroom to accommodate ordered goods before being shipped. When visitors to Global OConnect showroom walk through each booth, high technology embedded in the exhibition installations will capture data for improving of user experiences. In addition, the company can provide businesses with logistical and financial assistance with its own dedicated logistic teams and system of credit guarantee and payment collection. Global OConnect's inauguration to Dubai will bring closer the two economies in regards of trading. China-made products will have a smooth path paved for them to go abroad; while retailers in the United Arab Emirates and the larger Middle East market will have easy access to high quality goods at reasonable prices, a statement said. TradeArabia News Service Bahrains Tamkeen and the UK-based Mowgli Foundation have concluded a four-day Kickstart workshop which successfully matched 15 Bahraini entrepreneurs with 15 trained mentors. The workshop was the first milestone of the Mowgli Mentoring Experience programme (MME), a year-long mentoring relationship designed to empower entrepreneurs and develop their personal and business capabilities. Tamkeen chief executive, Dr Ebrahim Mohamed Janahi commented: Tamkeen works on supporting Bahrainis across all stages of development. As part of this, its important that Bahraini entrepreneurs are given the right guidance and support along their development journey to be able to realise their goals and objectives. Through our partnership with Mowgli, which comes as part of Tamkeens advisory services, a group of Bahraini businesses will be able to receive long-term mentorship support from industry veterans and experts. Mowgli CEO Kathleen Bury, said: "Our programmes are designed to train and prepare mentors on how to effectively mentor their matched entrepreneurs as well as others. The matching process is conducted in a manner that enables each entrepreneur to be matched with the right mentor for them, to enable a solid and trust based mentoring relationship to be formed. It is truly an art and not a science." True mentoring is the key to empowering entrepreneurs. They do not need to be alone when facing the challenges associated with establishing or growing a business; having an objective support structure in the form of a trained mentor can keep them on the right track towards achieving their goals, support them in scenario planning and making sound decisions and continuously developing themselves on both personal and professional fronts, she added. A structured, facilitated and supervised 12-month mentoring relationship between each entrepreneur and mentor now begins with various events, connection and impact data collection points to monitor and evaluate Mowglis 3 areas of impact: economic, business and personal. This partnership comes as one of the first initiatives that are part of Tamkeens Advisory Services, a platform that Tamkeen launched to achieve the best possible results. The platform provides advisory and consultancy services to businesses, job-seekers and employees through a team of experts and industry veterans. This comes alongside the financial, operational and training support that Tamkeen provides to Bahraini businesses and individuals. Tamkeen is a semi-government organisation in Bahrain established with the task of making the private sector as the key driver of sustainable economic development. The Mowgli Foundation is an international UK headquartered award-winning mentoring organisation that works with international and local governments, financial institutions, philanthropists and corporates globally to provide mentoring programs that empower entrepreneurs to drive economic growth and strengthen leadership. TradeArabia News Service A consignment of pipes shipped from Omans Sohar Port and Freezone (Sohar) was discharged at the Iranian port of Bandar Lingheh yesterday, further strengthening maritime trade ties between the two countries, a report said. At the same time, a shipment of gypsum bound for Sohar Port was loaded in the first commercial maritime exchange recorded between the two countries at Bandar Lingheh, added the Oman Daily Observer report. Mahmud Sabiree, director general of ports and shipping affairs at Bandar Lingheh, said that the maiden trade exchange was the culmination of consultations between the two countries. Around 1,300 metric tonnes of pipes shipped in from Sohar Port were discharged during the maiden call. On the return leg, the vessel is set to load around 20,000 metric tonnes of gypsum for discharge at Sohar Port, it said. Sabiree said that a team of officials from the sultanate, headed by a senior economic affairs official, were on hand to witness the call. On the sidelines, both sides had also discussed avenues for boosting bilateral relations. The Omani side underlined the potential for exports of Iranian mineral commodities to Oman for processing and value addition. Bandar Lingheh is located around 240 km west of Bandar Abbas, the centre of Hormuzgan province. In this regard, the meeting also pointed to Bandar Linghehs relative proximity to ports in Dubai and Sharjah port in the UAE, added the report. More than 100 Omani firms representing various industries recently participated in the Omani Products Exhibition (Opex) 2016, which was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Opex is a series of large-scale, international trade shows designed specifically to renew and revitalise the promotion of Oman-made goods overseas. Led by the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ithraa and the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates (PEIE), the Opex Organising Committee met recently at Ithraa to review the recent event held in Ethiopia, said a statement. The committee thanked the participating companies as well as Dr Salem ben Nasser Al Ismaily, chairman, Ithraa; Dr Ali bin Masoud Al Sunaidy, Minster of Commerce and Industry; Said Saleh Said Al Kiyumi, president, Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Hilal bin Hamad Al Hasani, CEO of PEIE for their significant help and support in taking the Opex initiative forward. Over the past two years, Opex shows have been held in Jeddah, Riyadh, Dubai, Doha and more recently in Addis Ababa. Feedback received by the organising Committee clearly suggests the shows are paying dividends and helping change the way Omani non-oil exporters conduct business. As a result, more Omani firms are trading internationally, it said. Nasima Al Balushi, director general of export development, said: We are passionate about encouraging more businesses to get a foothold in international markets. Growing our economy requires looking beyond our borders. Promoting and communicating the importance of non-oil exports, in my view, is key to Omans long-term economic future. The committee is thrilled with the success Opex has enjoyed and we look forward to developing the initiative and taking it to more cities in key markets, she added. TradeArabia News Service Global investors are expected to pull $538 billion out of China's slowing economy in 2016, the Institute of International Finance estimated on Monday, although the pace of outflows has dropped. That number would be down a fifth from the $674 billion pulled out last year, the industry association said, but could accelerate again if fears of a "disorderly" drop in the yuan re-emerge. - Reuters Indonesia's governor to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) said on Monday that oil at $45 a barrel was "not bad" and that there would be no urgency to freeze output if crude remained at that price. Despite failure to reach a deal to curb oil output and support prices at an April 17 meeting of Opec and non-Opec producers, crude prices have maintained a general upward trend since hitting a 12-year trough in mid-January. Front-month Brent crude was trading at $44.75 per barrel at 0752 GMT, down 36 cents, or 0.8 percent, from its last settlement as traders took profits after three weeks of gains. "The price is $45, which is not so bad," Widhyawan Prawiraatmadja told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy event in Abu Dhabi. "If it stays that way, there's no need to freeze output. There's no urgency." Prawiraatmadja said an oil price of $50 to $60 was "probably ideal, but still relatively cheap". The Southeast Asian nation, which rejoined Opec as its 13th member in December last year, needs $50 crude to sustain its oil and gas industry. "Perhaps the more ideal situation is if Opec can actually engage non-Opec to come into some kind of agreement while also pushing (the global) economy to grow," he said. IRAN Prawiraatmadja said nothing had yet been signed on a deal for Indonesia to import liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Iran, noting that some impediments remained such as being able to pay for the products. While sanctions imposed on Iran due to its nuclear programme were lifted in January, separate sanctions imposed by the US on financial transactions remain in place, hampering attempts to do business with the Islamic Republic. "It's not quite a deal yet - the understanding is you can make it happen once you are able to execute it. "The difficulty is the transaction, as it's not always easy to get the banks to do it." Prawiraatmadja declined to comment on the quantities of LPG Indonesia would import, except to say the country would take "whatever they have, provided that it is at better terms than with other sources". Indonesia's Opec governor said on March 7 that a deal was imminent for importing Iranian condensate and LPG, but not for crude as Iran's sour oil grades were not compatible with its refineries' need for sweet crude. - Reuters Iran is conducting talks with Russia about sales of heavy water, Russia's RIA news agency quoted an Iranian foreign ministry official as saying on Monday. Heavy water is a component of making nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. It is not radioactive. Under last year's landmark nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and five other world powers, Tehran is responsible for reducing its stock of heavy water, which it can sell, dilute or dispose of, under conditions. Reuters GE Oil & Gas has entered into a first-of-its-kind agreement with the Iraqi Ministry of Oil to enhance the operational efficiency of all the ministrys assets. GE Oil & Gas will strengthen the performance of the nations energy sector by providing advanced equipment, technology upgrades, and maintenance of the ministrys fleet and ensuring knowledge transfer, skills development and local jobs. It also envisages the setting up of the countrys first Monitoring & Diagnostics Center that will leverage GEs digital solutions. The 24/7 centre will take Big Data from sensors embedded in the ministrys equipment and, with advanced software analytics, will offer web-based solutions that enable predictive maintenance, reduced downtime and overall improved operational efficiency, the release added. GE will also help the ministry come up with an end-to-end solution to reduce gas flaring in Iraq oil fields and use it for power generation. This solution could translate into more than 200 megawatts per site and recovery of several thousand barrels per day of liquefied petroleum gas. In addition, GE Oil & Gas will partner with the Ministry of Oil to develop financing structures for its projects by tapping into its international knowledge and expertise in supporting major Oil & Gas projects around the world. Underlining the commitment of GE Oil & Gas to localization, the agreement will work to create additional jobs for Iraqis, and build national human capital through advanced technical training and knowledge transfer. This builds on GE Oil & Gas existing capabilities in terms of people employed, shops, repair and services. Underlining its commitment to job creation and localization, GE has hired more than 200 Iraqi employees in the country over the past five years. The partnership agreement was signed at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil at a ceremony attended by Fayadh Hassan Nima, deputy minister of Oil; Rami Qasem, president and chief executive, GE Oil & Gas, Middle East, North Africa and Turkey; Aziz Koleilat, president and chief executive, GE Iraq as well as other senior dignitaries and officials. Nima said: The oil and gas sector serves as the backbone of the national economy and we are committed to strengthening it by leveraging the latest technologies. The Framework Agreement with GE Oil & Gas is planned to bring transformational growth to the industry by enhancing the operational efficiency of all our assets and boosting productivity. Qasem added: In addition to scaling up the efficiency and productivity of the existing assets of the Ministry, the agreement also marks the first application of our advanced Digital solutions, flare gas solutions and financing. These are all landmark initiatives we are proud to drive forward with our Iraqi partners. The agreement is a strong demonstration of our focus on creating new jobs for Iraqis and to accelerate localization initiatives. TradeArabia News Service The prestigious Italian string quartet Quartetto di Venezia is holding a concert in the UAE capital to celebrate the opening of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. Quartetto di Venezia will perform at Abu Dhabi Theatre, Corniche Breakwater, on April 26 as a guest of Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) and The Embassy of Italy to the UAE. The Quartet has been invited to the emirate as Italy is this years Guest of Honour at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The concert is also supported by the Abu Dhabi Classics international concert season, which runs until May and attracts leading classical music performers from across the world to perform in the emirate during its annual nine month season. With Andrea Vio (violin), Alberto Battiston (violin), Giancarlo Di Vacri (viola) and Angelo Zanin (cello), the quartet will treat the audience to a rich repertoire from Puccini, Verdi and Beethoven. The Quartet is renowned for its distinctive precision and passion, the inherited qualities of two basic schools of quartet interpretation: The Quartetto Italiano under the guidance of Piero Farulli and the Mid-European School of the Vegh Quartet. In addition to their appearances throughout Italy, the Quartet has toured extensively all over the world. The 26th edition of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair will be held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, from April 27 to May 3 at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. The Book Fair will highlight its Personality of the Year, the Arabic-Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd, through a dedicated pavilion while Italy will also be celebrated through an integrated programme that consists of cultural and professional events and kids activities. Italy will also feature in the Show Kitchen and the Illustrators Corner and shed light on the Emirati-Italian cultural dialogue. The concert begins at 8.30 pm with free entry. - TradeArabia News Service The Gulf Flight Safety Council (GFSC), a regional not-for-profit group of aviation organisations dedicated to promoting the improvement of safety in the GCC region, is holding its first meeting of 2016 in Bahrain. The meeting is jointly sponsored by Gulf Air, the kingdoms national carrier, Bahrain Airport Company (BAC) and Gulf Aviation Academy (GAA). The event, which began on April 24, will run till April 25 at the Gulf Aviation Academy. Comprising different sessions focused on remotely-piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) flights, safety operations, cabin safety, general issues and incidents related to regional airlines, this years event will see representatives from Bahrain Airport Company (BAC), Gulf Aviation Academy (GAA), Gulf Air, Bahrains Civil Aviation Affairs (CAA) and Ministry of Interior (MOI). Airlines from the region, including Gulf Air, Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, Saudi Airlines, Oman Air and Flydubai will also participate in the proceedings. The council meets twice yearly in April and October to promote safety improvement initiatives and hosts an annual safety summit each year in December. The Gulf Flight Safety Council (GFSC) was formed early 2000 when a small group of individuals sought to establish a focus for Gulf regional flight safety issues. From those humble beginnings the GFSC has grown into a diverse organisation consisting of members from all over the region and around the world, including manufacturers, regulators, air traffic service providers, business jet and VVIP operators, airlines and cargo operators and many more. The GFSC is based in Dubai and continues to grow and support its members in the area of safety. - TradeArabia News Service HMH Hospitality Management Holdings has signed the management agreement for a new hotel in the sultanate and announced plans to have six hotels in Oman by 2020. The agreement for Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel follows in quick succession of the opening of Coral Muscat Hotel & Apartments by the group. At the Arabian Travel Market 2016 (ATM) today, Laurent A Voivenel, CEO of HMH, said: Oman is a key development market for HMH in keeping with our strategy to prioritize expansion in GCC and we are proud to debut our brands in the country with two exceptional properties. The hospitality industry in Oman is witnessing remarkable growth at the moment and we are eager to capitalise on the favourable market conditions. HMH is well-positioned in the region and equipped with the most advanced technology and we are confident both Coral Muscat Hotel & Apartments and Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel will add tremendous value to our growing presence in Oman while strengthening our international portfolio, he said. Focusing on the mid-market sector in response to the demand from budget-conscious travellers, HMH has outlined an ambitious expansion strategy to grow its footprint in Oman. Laurent stressed: Oman saw inbound tourism numbers rise by an average of 7.4 per cent per annum in the last decade and is targeting 12 million visitors annually by 2020 which is fueling the demand for quality mid-market hotels. Omans Ministry of Tourism has forecasted hotel room capacity to expand at an annual growth rate of 5.3 per cent over the next four years while tourism is expected to contribute 5 per cent to the countrys GDP by 2020. These figures are indicative of the growing appeal of Oman among global travellers and presents an enormous opportunity for HMH. Our aim to have six hotels in Oman by 2020 while multiplying by four our total inventory of keys. Coral Muscat Hotel & Apartments welcomed its first guests earlier this month. The deluxe four-star property is conveniently located in Qurum, merely 20 minutes-drive away from Muscat International Airport and enjoys close proximity to diplomatic and commercial city centre. It is part of a shopping arcade and multiplex and features 88 beautifully furnished apartments including 23 one-bedroom apartments, 20 one-bedroom deluxe apartments and 45 two-bedroom apartments. On site are an international all-day-dining restaurant, pool deck and lounge, terrace lounge, superb meeting venues for small to medium sized conferences as well as excellent leisure and fitness facilities such as a fully-equipped gymnasium, aerobics room and swimming pool. Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel is expected to open its doors by first quarter of 2018 and is strategically located in Muwaleh, in close proximity to Muscat International Airport, major business hubs, industrial areas and government institutions. Featuring 132 guestrooms, the hotel will complement Al Muzn Mall and will offer a host of services and facilities tailored to the needs of modern business and leisure travellers. From fine quality dining, to a fully equipped business center and recreational facilities, Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel will provide all. Some of its key features include: multi-cuisine restaurant with room service, business centre services, conference facilities, basement car parking, free wireless high-speed Internet, rooftop swimming pool and spa facilities. At ATM, HMH is located at stand HC0420 in Sheikh Saeed Arena, the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. TradeArabia News Service InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is expecting to record more than 40 per cent growth across the Middle East in the next three to five years, with 25 new hotels in the pipeline. Currently, the group operates 78 hotels in GCC, Levant, and Egypt alone, following a well-rounded 2015, when it added five new hotels to its books, including the worlds largest Holiday Inn in Saudi Arabia with 5,154 rooms. The company is placing a special focus on midmarket hotels, with many GCC States addressing the lack of affordable options for low-budget and family travelers. Dubai, in particular, is seeking to triple its annual tourism income to $82billion by the time the Expo rolls around in 2020 a huge increase of affordable leisure and business offerings will be needed to address the inevitable influx of visitors. With around 9,658 rooms in the pipeline, we are in a good position to support the commercial and tourism industries across the region, specifically at midmarket level, which is a key area of focus for GCC countries, said Pascal Gauvin, chief operating officer, India, Middle East & Africa, IHG. We predict growth of more than 40 per cent in the next three to five years, cementing our stature as one of the leading hospitality groups in the region. As well as our leisure offerings, we continue to place great emphasis on our business properties. Traditionally, Abu Dhabi and Dubai have been very attractive locations for business travelers, due to the cities commercial hubs and tourism features. As a result, our Mice business has been one of our strongest segments, and we will continue to build on this for the mid to long term outlook for the region, in tandem with our drive towards IHG Business Rewards, he added. Of the 25 properties on the horizon, 11 are in development in the UAE: three InterContinental, three Crowne Plaza, one Holiday Inn, two Staybridge Suites, and two Hotel Indigo hotels. Saudi Arabia has the second largest pipeline, with one InterContinental, one Crowne Plaza, three Staybridge Suites and one Hotel Indigo. IHG is committed to the kingdom, following the call from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities to attract 45.3 million tourists a year by 2020. In 2013, just 14 million visitors arrived in Saudi Arabia, but with plans to develop 50,000 additional hotel rooms and 74,000 new furnished apartments, IHG believes it can contribute to its positive growth. With 23,300 rooms already in operation across nine countries in the Middle East, IHG says one of its key pillars of success is its IHG Rewards Club, and has reiterated an effort to continue improving its loyalty programme. Our loyal members contribute up to 40 per cent of our bookings, and are certainly our most valued customers. Of our bookings, 60 per cent stem from our business customers 20 per cent of which are Mice customers, said James Britchford, vice president of sales and marketing, India, Middle East & Africa at InterContinental Hotels Group. We always look forward to welcoming new members to our loyalty programme, and will continue to ensure its as valuable and rewarding as possible. We have developed one of the leading mobile bookings apps, produced a website that supports 13 languages, including Arabic and created a loyal global community of 92 million Rewards Club members. Research suggested just a five per cent increase in customer loyalty can result in a 25 to 85 per cent increase in profit. IHG has committed to building on its current rewards program by focusing on customers most important demand; the perfect balance of inclusivity and individuality. The group revealed that members are four times more likely to post online reviews and six times more likely to book through a direct IHG channel. Moreover, they account for a third of all Middle East, Africa and Asia room revenues. Last year, the group launched IHG Business Rewards, its global bookings programme offering rewards on all qualified business bookings for guest rooms, meeting rooms, and events. IHG currently has 78 hotels operating across five of the companys brands in the Middle East region, including InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, and Staybridge Suites with a further 25 in the development pipeline. - TradeArabia News Service Oman Air has reaffirmed its commitment to passenger safety with the provision of additional refresher training for key staff. Working in partnership with Zurich-based aviation security specialists Checkport Switzerland, Oman Airs Security Department has delivered Security Aircraft Search training for 36 personnel drawn from across the airlines international network. Participants will then cascade the relevant techniques and information to other operational crew. The training involved theoretical and practical syllabuses which combined classroom-based sessions and practical training conducted onboard Oman Airs aircraft. It aimed to provide Oman Airs security personnel with the knowledge and skills they need to conduct fast and efficient aircraft searches in line with international standards. The classroom-based sessions covered a range of issues which have a direct impact on the roles of airline security experts, search procedures, communications between search teams and their leaders, instant emergency response, professional documentation and quality control measures. The on-site exercise took place at Muscat International Airport. Prior to search exercises being carried out, it included group familiarisation of the entirety of aircraft interiors, reminders of the importance of instant emergency response, leadership and the allocation of individual role. The results of the searches were then analysed during a post-exercise briefing, before a summary of the course content was provided to delegates. Commenting on the course, Lt Col Ali Bin Abdulla Al Harthy, vice president security at Oman Air, said: Oman Air is in agreement with Checkport for security training on annual basis depending on Oman Airs request. The field of the training varies in accordance to Oman Airs requirement within the Aviation Security discipline We intend to acquire further trainings for our team on various aspects of security throughout this venture with Checkport. There are similar security trainings conducted for the team along with various stakeholders. Whilst the measures detailed during the training are already in place in stations throughout Oman Airs network, the airline is committed to ensuring that policies and procedures relating to safety remain current and are regularly updated. - TradeArabia News Service Qatar Airways group chief executive Akbar Al Baker today hosted a press conference on the first day of the Arabian Travel Market to announce the opening of a luxurious new lounge in Dubai International Airport. He also revelaed an exciting array of new destinations that will be launched this year. Speaking on the occasion of the event, Al Baker said: The Qatar Airways customer experience has been the cornerstone of our business from day one; it is the driver behind our success and a key point of difference amongst our peers in the industry. By continuing to evolve the experience we offer to our customers we stay ahead of the curve, whether we do so by introducing the newest aircraft to our fleet, collaborating with Airbus to develop the next generation of aircraft, introducing new destinations, improving our on-ground offering with exclusive lounges, in the air with wi-fi and through our product with totally unique designs. Qatar Airways as a brand represents innovation and evolution in the industry, and we are proud to be the flag-bearers of change. Set to officially open on April 28, the Qatar Airways Dubai Premium Lounge is located in Dubai International Airport, on Concourse D. Available to Qatar Airways First and Business Class passengers and Privilege Club Platinum, Gold and Silver members, the Dubai Premium Lounge is a modern and sophisticated space where travellers can relax and rejuvenate before their journey. The lounge is decorated with artistic Arabic calligraphy, Mediterranean-style tiles and calming water fountains, featuring private family areas, shower facilities, spacious seating areas and an international cuisine buffet. Visitors to Arabian Travel Market can visit Qatar Airways at its exhibition stand, ME1530 in Hall 2.The stand offers the signature elements all travel and tourism professionals want to see and experience, such as the Business Class and First Class seat displays, as well as new features including an interactive global route network display and a holographic A350 model controlled through with swipe or gesture technology. The airlines latest brand campaign theme Going Places Together is reflected in the redesign and activities, with the focus on bringing travellers closer together. - TradeArabia News Service Egypt netted just $500 million in tourism revenue in the first quarter of 2016, down from $1.5 billion a year earlier, a tourism ministry adviser told Reuters, highlighting the country's struggle to kickstart a key dollar-earning industry. Egypt's tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy and critical source of hard currency, has been struggling to rebound after the political and economic upheaval triggered by the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. Tourism revenue has also taken a heavy hit since a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board in what President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi called an act of terrorism. Islamic State said it planted a bomb on board. More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011. In the first quarter of 2016 just 1.2 million tourists travelled to Egypt, down from 2.2 million a year earlier, said economic adviser to the ministry of tourism Adla Ragab. Egypt aims to attract 12 million tourists by the end of 2017 through a plan that includes increasing the presence of national carrier EgyptAir abroad, tourism minister Yehia Rashed said in a recent interview with Reuters. "Many European airlines have halted flights to Sharm El Sheikh. It's too early to say what the long-term impact of the Russian plane crash will be," said an analyst at hotel industry consultants STR. The torture of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, whose body was dumped on the side of a road in February, has also damaged Egypt's image abroad. Egyptian intelligence and police sources told Reuters the police had custody of Regeni at some point before he died, but Egyptian officials have strongly denied any involvement in Regeni's death, saying he was never in their custody. The Regeni case has brought allegations of widespread police brutality in Egypt under sharper focus. - Reuters Qatar Airways is in advanced negotiations to buy a 49 percent stake in Italian airline Meridiana, but a deal is dependent on restructuring and job cuts, the CEO of Qatar Airways said. The Middle East carrier is also considering taking a 25-49 percent stake in Morocco's Royal Air Maroc, although it was focused on the possible Meridiana acquisition for now, said chief executive Akbar Al-Baker. Qatar Airways holds a 10 percent stake in British Airways parent IAG and has been open to making further investments to help expand its reach. Meridiana, which offers flights to and from the island of Sardinia and other destinations in Italy and abroad, is under a government-sponsored restructuring plan to help turn it round. "Partnering with Meridiana would only make Meridiana prosper, grow and actually increase the working population of Meridiana," Baker told reporters. "But for the initial period there will be some pain on the part of employees," he added. He did not comment on the potential cost of a stake in Meridiana which is owned by the Aga Khan, a tycoon and spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims. The airline was asking labour unions to agree to 900 job cuts -- nearly half its workforce -- as part of a planned partnership with Qatar Airways, a person involved in the talks told Reuters in February. Al-Baker said Qatar was talking to both the staff and the unions about a deal, adding that if it reached an "amicable settlement" on the restructuring of the company it would partner with the airline. "We have to decide either yes or no by the end of June," he said. The potential value of the deal was not announced. Al-Baker said Qatar Airways' resources were already stretched by one potential acquisition, so the airline would wait for the Meridiana deal to conclude before examining Royal Air Maroc. Talks had yet to start between Qatar Airways and Royal Air Maroc, but "there is an understanding between the two governments that Royal Air Maroc needs help and Qatar Airways' help would be very welcome," said Al-Baker. - Reuters Its clear that these laws are designed to both justify and rationalize the hate some cisgender heterosexual people have against non-heteronormative American citizens. Even the Federal government has issued a statement acknowledging this reality. In a April 18th letter, The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote: The United States Commission on Civil Rights strongly condemns recent state laws passed, and proposals being considered, under the guise of so-called religious liberty which target members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community for discrimination. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory recently signed into law H.B. 2, legislation blocking local governments from passing anti-discrimination rules that grant protections to gay and transgender persons. The law also repeals existing municipal anti-discrimination laws which protected LGBT people from bias in housing and employment. Critically, the new legislation also forces transgender people to utilize public bathrooms and changing facilities based on the sex issued on their birth certificates, and not according to their gender identities. This jeopardizes not only the dignity, but also the actual physical safety, of transgender people whose appearances may not match societal expectations of the sex specified on their identification documents. In Mississippi, Governor Phil Bryant recently signed HB 1523 into law. The new statute is far-reaching and allows people with religious objections to deny wedding services to same-sex couples. It also clears the way for employers to cite religion in determining workplace policies on dress code, grooming and bathroom access. The physical safety concerns for transgender people are the same as in North Carolina. The laws enacted in North Carolina and Mississippi are not isolated, but are part of a larger, alarming trend to limit the civil rights of a class of people using religious beliefs as the excuse. Show more of the Commission statement Show less of the Commission statement The Commissions Chairman, Martin R. Castro went on to state, Religious freedom is an important foundation of our nation. However, in the past, religious liberty has been used to block racial integration and anti-discrimination laws. Those past efforts failed and this new attempt to revive an old evasive tactic should be rejected as well. The North Carolina and Mississippi laws, and similar legislation proposed in other states, perverts the meaning of religious liberty and perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, marginalizes the transgender and gay community and has no place in our society. On the very next day, April 19th, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Virginia school policy of segregating same-gendered trans and cis students, in this case, trans and cis boys, violates Title IX rights under the Education Amendments Act of 1972. In laying out the facts of the case, the Court noted that all was well for the teen trans boy until anti-LGBT groups like the Liberty Council began concern trolling, casting the presence of a trans youth as a danger to cis youth: Before beginning his sophomore year, [the trans boy] and his mother told school officials that [the trans boy] was a boy. The officials were supportive and took steps to ensure that he would be treated as a boy by teachers and staff. Later, at [the trans boys] request, school officials allowed [the trans boy] to use the boys restroom. [The trans boy] used this restroom without incident for about seven weeks. [The trans boy] use of the boys restroom, however, excited the interest of others in the community, some of whom contacted the Gloucester County School Board (the Board) seeking to bar [the trans boy] from continuing to use the boys restroom. Board Member Carla B. Hook (Hook) added an item to the agenda for the November 11, 2014 board meeting titled Discussion of Use of Restrooms/Locker Room Facilities. Hook proposed the following resolution: It shall be the practice of the GCPS to provide male and female restroom and locker room facilities in its schools, and the use of said facilities shall be limited to the corresponding biological genders, and students with gender identity issues shall be provided an alternative appropriate private facility. At the November 11, 2014 meeting twenty-seven people spoke during the Citizens Comment Period, a majority of whom supported Hooks proposed resolution. Many of the speakers displayed hostility to [the trans boy], including by referring pointedly to him as a young lady. Others claimed that permitting [the trans boy] to use the boys restroom would violate the privacy of other students and would lead to sexual assault in restrooms. One commenter suggested that if the proposed policy were not adopted, non-transgender boys would come to school wearing dresses in order to gain access to the girls restrooms. [The trans boy] and his parents spoke against the proposed policy. Ultimately, the Board postponed a vote on the policy until its next meeting on December 9, 2014. At the December 9 meeting, approximately thirty-seven people spoke during the Citizens Comment Period. Again, most of those who spoke were in favor of the proposed resolution. Some speakers threatened to vote the Board members out of office if the Board members voted against the proposed policy. Speakers again referred to [the trans boy] as a girl or young lady. One speaker called G.G. a freak and compared him to a person who thinks he is a dog and wants to urinate on fire hydrants. Following this second comment period, the Board voted 6-1 to adopt the proposed policy, thereby barring [the trans boy] from using the boys restroom at school. Show more of this legal ruling Show less of this legal ruling The court then considered the separate-but-equal bathroom segregation plan heteronormative activists often assert as being their generous compromise: forcing transgender people to use unisex restrooms away from cisgender people. Being required to use the separate restrooms sets him apart from his peers, and serves as a daily reminder that the school views him as different. [The trans boy] further alleges that, because of this stigma and exclusion, his social transition is undermined and he experiences severe and persistent emotional and social harms. [The trans boy] avoids using the restroom while at school and has, as a result of this avoidance, developed multiple urinary tract infections. The Virginia policy produced the effect heteronormative activists sought: the social ostracization of non-heteronormative people. The trans boy was forced to withdraw from his school and was forced to fight a very public and brutal fight in order to return as a social equal to his cisgender peers. On the same day that the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of trans equality, Samantha Bee released a scathing yet comical video exposing the hypocrisy, hate, and misogyny that drove Tennessees attempt to pass a North Carolina-style bathroom bill: Bee noted that the legislator behind Tennessees attempt to pass a North Carolina-styled anti-trans bill was exposed as a sexual predator. Ironically, this is not the first time it turned out that those promoting anti-trans policy citing their concern for the safety of women were later found to be sexual predators themselves. In Houston, leaked documents show that a minister-leader in the campaign to overturn Houstons trans-inclusive non-discrimination policy, Kendall Baker, was in-fact fired from his job for sexually harassing women. Barker made a point of claiming that equality would mean that trans people would sexually harass women and children in the restroom. When speaking against equality, Baker asked, I say to you, what if I came into the bathroom while you were sitting on the toilet? Wouldnt you feel uncomfortable? As it turns out, the organizer of the anti-equality movement in Houston, Dave Welch raised funds to help Baker escape the consequences of harassing women. Regarding the talking point that bathroom bills are needed to keep women and girls safe from sexual predators in drag, more than 250 anti-rape groups published an open letter asserting, Those who are pushing [anti-trans bathroom bills] have claimed that these proposals are necessary for public safety and to prevent sexual violence against women and children. As rape crisis centers, shelters, and other service providers who work each and every day to meet the needs of all survivors and reduce sexual assault and domestic violence throughout society, we speak from experience and expertise when we state that these claims are false. Moreover, it was recently revealed that the same group that targeted the Virginia trans boy forcing him to battle a vicious and public Title IX fight the Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate group the Liberty Council was the source of the recent wave of bathroom bills. As if to punctuate the animus behind the 2016 wave of so-called bathroom bills, Tracy Murphree, a Texas Republican Denton county sheriff candidate proudly announced his intent to beat trans people saying, All I can say is this: If my little girl is in a public womens restroom and a man, regardless of how he may identify, goes into the bathroom, he will then identify as a John Doe until he wakes up in whatever hospital he may be taken to. Your identity does not trump my little girls safety. I identify as an overprotective father that loves his kids and would do anything to protect them. These comments follow violent comments made by the South Carolina Republican sheriff of Spartanburg County, Chuck Wright, who said that hed whip transgender people who use public restrooms. Speaking of transgender women, who he referred to as men, Wright said, Im gonna whip your tail if you go in there with my wife while shes trying to use the bathroom, or my granddaughter. Understandably, the UK issued a travel advisory warning British citizens about anti-LGBT laws passed in Mississippi and South Carolina saying, LGBT travellers may be affected by legislation passed recently in the states of North Carolina and Mississippi. Before travelling please read our general travel advice for the LGBT community. The British government cautioned its citizens, youre more likely to experience difficulties in rural areas so its best to exercise discretion. The warning continued, some hotels, especially in rural areas, wont accept bookings from same-sex couples check before you go. Britten advised that should LGBT citizens feel unsafe, they should go to their British embassy, [o]ur embassy staff will help you if you run into problems overseas, especially if you feel that you cant approach the local police. Azores Airlines is offered a special Discover the Azores airfare of just $501 round-trip, including tax, from Boston to the Azores non-stop this fall. The special fare is for travel from Boston Logan to the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores, and is valid for travel from September 16, 2016 to December 16, 2016. (TRAVPR.COM) USA - April 24th, 2016 - BOSTON, MA. Azores Airlines is offered a special Discover the Azores airfare of just $501 round-trip, including tax, from Boston to the Azores non-stop this fall. The special fare is for travel from Boston Logan to the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores, and is valid for travel from September 16, 2016 to December 16, 2016. To qualify, tickets much be purchased between May 3 and 16, 2016. The Azores are just a 4-hour flight away. From Logan International Airport in Boston, Azores Airlines offers 4 weekly direct flights to Sao Miguel, the main island in the Azores archipelago. Connecting flights to Madeira, Lisbon and Porto are available from Ponta Delgada, the Azores main city on Sao Miguel. The sapphire blue and emerald green lakes, fertile prairies, volcanic cones and craters, colorful hydrangeas and azaleas, 15th century churches and majestic manor houses make the Azores unlike anywhere else on earth. The dramatic islands have a year-round mild climate (between 58F and 71F). Azores Airlines is part of the SATA Group, which connects the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal, with the world. For more information and reservations, contact Azores Airlines at 800-762-9995, www.AzoresAirlines.pt. ### Cox & Kings Ltd, the leading holidays and education travel group with operations in 22 countries across continents paves way to Korea with its two most comprehensive packages which is inexpensive & incredible. (TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - April 25th, 2016 - Mumbai, 23rd March 2016: Cox & Kings Ltd, the leading holidays and education travel group with operations in 22 countries across continents paves way to Korea with its two most comprehensive packages which is inexpensive & incredible. Korea showcases the medley of modernity & tradition which should find a way on your 'must-visit' list. Grab the opportunity of going to Seoul, Korea with Cox & Kings for a remarkable 79,000/- only, inclusive airfare! Each of the inclusions in the package is meticulously selected maintaining a complete and exclusive experience. Sit back & decide what kind of experience you want to go for, as Cox & Kings has all kinds in its itineraries. If you wish to travel back in time and do not disconnect the strings with the modern world as well, select Korea Escapades where you visit the enchanting Jeju Island and also beautiful Seoul. See the Cheonjiyeon waterfall on Jeju Island, the name of this waterfall literally means sky connects the land. The view of this fall in no way is different than what it means. If you have not got enough of the nature here, head to Manjanggul Cave to witness the magical lava cave which is one of the finest lava tunnels in the world. The temperature inside is pleasant to make you feel comfortable and cozy. Take a pleasure ride in Seogwipo pleasure boat to enjoy the dazzling scenery around Seogwipo Port in Jeju. Add Seoul to your trip to get more of the excitement of Korea. Embark on the journey to explore and get mesmerized with a string of royal palaces and temples in Seoul. Gyeongbok Palace, Changdeok Palace and Jogyesa Temple will give you the peace that you ever searched for in your busy life. As the feeling of belonging to dynasties sinks in, it is time for you to go feel modern again. Head to sit at the bank of the urban wonder, Cheonggyecheon Stream and listen to the sound of water and see the lights within the stream. Your journey doesnt end here; move on to see the National Folk Museum, Bukchon Hanok Village, N Seoul tower and shop at Insadong Antique Shopping Street. Give a chance to yourself; let the imaginations now turn reality with Cox & Kings Seoul Free & Easy (5 Days) Visit: Seoul 79,000/- (Ex Mumbai) Korea Escapades (7 Days) Visit: Seoul & Jeju Island 1, 19,000/- (Ex Mumbai) Call 1800 209 0400, 98675 65599 or SMS KOREA to 5757513 to book your trip to Korea. ABOUT COX & KINGS LTD: (BSE: 533144 | NSE: COX&KINGS) Cox & Kings Ltd. (CKL) is one of the longest established travel companies in the world since 1758. Headquartered in India, it is the leading holidays and education travel group with operations in 22 countries across 4 continents. Over the last three decades, CKL has transformed itself into a diversified, multinational travel conglomerate with a focus on the new-age global consumer. CKL operate key verticals; Leisure, Education and Hybrid Hotels. Leisure - India is best known by the ubiquitous Cox & Kings brand in India, where we are an integrated travel enterprise, offering the best and widest range of travel options to individuals, groups and businesses in the fastest growing major economy in the world. We have a total of 160 offices, including franchisees spread across India. ### Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : HMH HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT HOLDINGS CONSOLIDATES PRESENCE IN OMAN Industry: Hotels HMH Hospitality Management Holdings has announced in quick succession the signing of management (TRAVPR.COM) UAE - April 25th, 2016 - HMH Hospitality Management Holdings has announced in quick succession the signing of management agreement for Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel followed by the opening of Coral Muscat Hotel & Apartments. Speaking at the Arabian Travel Market 2016 today, Laurent A. Voivenel, CEO of HMH stated, Oman is a key development market for HMH in keeping with our strategy to prioritize expansion in GCC and we are proud to debut our brands in the country with two exceptional properties. The hospitality industry in Oman is witnessing remarkable growth at the moment and we are eager to capitalize on the favourable market conditions. HMH is well-positioned in the region and equipped with the most advanced technology and we are confident both Coral Muscat Hotel & Apartments and Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel will add tremendous value to our growing presence in Oman while strengthening our international portfolio. Focusing on the mid-market sector in response to the demand from budget-conscious travellers, HMH has outlined an ambitious expansion strategy to grow its footprint in Oman. Laurent stressed, Oman saw inbound tourism numbers rise by an average of 7.4% per annum in the last decade and is targeting 12 million visitors annually by 2020 which is fueling the demand for quality mid-market hotels. Oman Ministry of Tourism has forecasted hotel room capacity to expand at an annual growth rate of 5.3% over the next four years while tourism is expected to contribute 5% to the countrys GDP by 2020. These figures are indicative of growing appeal of Oman among global travelers and presents an enormous opportunity for HMH.Our aim to have six hotels in Oman by 2020 while multiplying by four our total inventory of keys. Coral Muscat Hotel & Apartments welcomed its first guests earlier this month. The deluxe 4-star property is conveniently located in Qurum merely 20 minutes-drive away from Muscat International Airport and enjoys close proximity to diplomatic and commercial city centre. It is part of a shopping arcade and multiplex and features 88 beautifully furnished apartments including 23 one-bedroom apartments, 20 one-bedroom deluxe apartments and 45 two-bedroom apartments. On site are an international all-day-dining restaurant, pool deck and lounge, terrace lounge, superb meeting venues for small to medium sized conferences as well as excellent leisure and fitness facilities such as a fully-equipped gymnasium, aerobics room and swimming pool. Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel is expected to open its doors by first quarter of 2018 and is strategically located in Muwaleh, in close proximity to Muscat International Airport, major business hubs, industrial areas and government institutions. Featuring 132 guestrooms, the hotel will complement Al Muzn Mall and will offer a host of services and facilities tailored to the needs of modern business and leisure travellers. From fine quality dining, to a fully equipped business center and recreational facilities, Corp Muscat Al Muzn Hotel will provide all. Some of its key features include: multi-cuisine restaurant with room service, business centre services, conference facilities, basement car parking, free wireless high-speed Internet, rooftop swimming pool and spa facilities. Visit HMH on stand HC0420 in Sheikh Saeed Arena at Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. About HMH Founded in 2003 in Dubai, HMH Hospitality Management Holdings is a fully-integrated hotel management company that prides itself on being one of the pioneers among local groups from the region. It provides hotel owners and developers a broad spectrum of comprehensive management solutions with five distinct, yet complementary, hotel brands catering to varied market segments from budget to luxury. These include The Ajman Palace Hotel, Coral Hotels & Resorts, Corp Hotels, EWA Hotel Apartments and ECOS Hotels. Through its dynamic operation and strategic expansion in the Middle East and North Africa, HMH has been successful in unlocking a world of opportunities while creating value for its stakeholders, associates, staff members and customers. Its existing portfolio features superb properties located in some of the most desirable destinations across the MENA region, as well as a healthy pipeline of hotels under development. For more information about HMH please visit http://www.hmhhotelgroup.com or https://www.hmhhotelgroup.com/subscribenow For media contact: Hina Bakht Vice President MPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction) Mob: +971 50 697 5146 Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.com http://www.mpj-pr.com ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release : CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Hina Bakht Company: Marketing Pro Junction Phone: +971 50 6975146 Email: pressrelease@mpj-pr.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS It's as if Chris Knight left for a weekend camping trip, but didn't come home for a quarter-century. In 1986, a young man named Christopher Knight drove his car into the Maine forest until it ran out of gas. He abandoned it, keys left on the console, and walked for weeks until he found a perfect place to build a campsite. There he lived for the next 27 years, subsisting off food, clothes, and books stolen from nearby cottages, and uttering only a single word (hi) to a hiker he encountered by accident. He never told his family where he was. Knights life is the bizarre yet fascinating subject of Michael Finkels latest book, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (Knopf, 2017). The book opens with Knights dramatic capture one late winter night in 2013, after police and local residents ramped up their search for the elusive North Pond hermit. Knight was caught in the act of raiding a summer camp pantry and tossed in jail for seven months before his fate was decided. Finkel, a journalist from western Montana, was fascinated by Knights story. They shared a common love of the wilderness. He corresponded with Knight by handwritten letter a number of times before making an unannounced visit to the jail. Over the next several months, Knight agreed to speak with Finkel about his years in the forest, resulting in the publication of this book. Several facts are astonishing. Knight never lit a fire during all those years for fear that smoke would betray his whereabouts. This meant that, in the middle of winter, he never slept for more than a few hours, but would wake himself and pace the perimeter of his camp to keep warm. Nor would Knight ever leave his camp if there were any risk of leaving a footprint, which meant he went nowhere during the snowy season, unless a blizzard was imminent. He walked without a trace, stepping on rocks and roots, always under cover of night, preferably in a downpour. For years, he broke into cottages with cleverness and precision. He was not a vandal, but carefully replaced deadbolts and windows whenever possible, reattaching empty propane tanks where hed stolen a full one or tossing pine needles over a canoe hed borrowed. He told Finkel that he hated stealing and readily confessed to more than a thousand counts of theft when captured. He became something of a legend in the area. People knew they were being robbed, but reactions were mixed, since no vandalism occurred, nor were many valuables taken, unless deemed useful by Knight, such as a TV, watches, and car batteries. Some residents felt he should do no jail time, while others were furious, saying he'd robbed them of their peace of mind for decades. The most confounding part of the story is why a young man would do such a thing willingly reject human company for more than a quarter century for no obvious reason. This question is never answered satisfactorily in the book, quite possibly because Knight cant really explain it himself. From a New York Times review of the book: "Finkel, to whom Knight gave stunning access while in jail especially for a hermit also does a fine job conveying the idiosyncrasies of his subjects character. He was awkward and blunt, yet almost formal in his diction. He brimmed with persnickety literary opinions. He avoided looking at peoples faces 'theres too much information there' which may have contributed to the states three possible diagnoses for him: Aspergers syndrome, depression or schizoid personality disorder." "The Stranger in the Woods" is a quick and entertaining read, fleshed out with interesting observations about other famous historical hermits, the age-old attraction of solitude, and the effect of the wilderness on the human psyche; but mostly, its just enormously entertaining. For anyone who has ever camped, or snow-shoed through a frigid forest in January, Knights feat takes on even greater meaning. That anyone could do that, voluntarily, for so many years, is wondrous and baffling. Tribune News Service Amritsar, April 25 The scheduled meeting of the district administration, Municipal Corporation and other officials with Chief Secretary Sarvesh Kaushal over the vision document of the Smart City and HRIDAY projects scheduled to be held today was cancelled as the latter could not come here due to some administrative reasons. Deputy Commissioner Varun Roojam said no fresh date had been given for the meeting. Amritsar, after being ousted in the first phase of the Smart City list, started the process of preparing a new vision document to be sent to the Union Ministry of Urban Development to claim place in the second phase of the Smart City mission, beginning in April. In the first phase, under the Heritage Development and Augmentation Yojna (HRIDAY), the Central Government would release Rs 60 crore for development works. The Deputy Commissioner said the Detail Project Report for HRIDAY was being prepared. A total of 23 sites were shortlisted for being developed under the HRIDAY scheme. These included the development of various roads leading to the Golden Temple and Durgiana Temple, restoration of the historic Ram Bagh (summer palace of Maharaja Ranjit Singh), Maharaja Ranjit Singh Panorama and the Challih Khuh, among others. He said while detailed project reports of a number of heritage sites were being prepared, development of several others was underway. Jalandhar, April 25 The body of the Shahkot-based youth, who was shot dead in the Philippines on April 17, was cremated yesterday by his family. Vijay Kumar, who was into money-lending business, was said to be going on his motorbike on the morning of April 17 for the recovery of some money when he was shot dead by three unidentified motorcyclists. His body was brought to his home at Dhurkot Mohala in Shahkot on Sunday morning. Vijay had migrated to the Philippines 11 years ago. He had settled in Bayawan city for long after getting married to a Philippines girl. Notably, many Punjabi youths have been killed in the Philippines in the past couple of years. Sources say handsome profits in the money-lending business push many Punjabi youths into this business, which puts their lives to risk.TNS Simran Sodhi Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 25 In a major development, sources in the government on Monday confirmed that Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will visit India tomorrow to attend the Heart of Asia regional conference, where he will also hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart. This will be the first meeting between the two Foreign Secretaries after bilateral talks were derailed following the Pathankot terror attack in January this year. India has alleged that the attacks emanated from Pakistan and that the Jaish-e-Mohammand (JeM) is behind the attacks. Tomorrows meeting assumes greater significance as India would be raising the issue of the Pathankot attack and that of JeM leader Masood Azar with the Pakistan Foreign Secretary, the sources said. Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of AsiaIstanbul Process, which was established in 2011 as a platform to discuss regional issues including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, a Foreign Office statement said. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. The conference had adopted a forward-looking Islamabad Declaration entitled Emphasising Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity. With PTI inputs KV Prasad Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 24 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday pitched for water conservation through a mass movement and stressed on accent of his government on quality education while saluting peoples wisdom in responding to appeals that made one crore citizens forgo subsidy on cooking gas in the country. Addressing the people in the 19th edition of Mann ki Baat today, the Prime Minister said time has come when the country should pay heed to quality of education as against the accent on enrollment. Acknowledging that lot of work on expansion of educational network has been done till now, he said: Now we have to focus on quality education. From Saksharata Abhiyan (literacy campaign), we have to make good education our priority. Until now the stress remained on outlay, now we have to focus on outcome. He said for the first time the government freed 10 public and private universities from budgetary support, challenging them to think what these institutions would do to be a top-ranked university. Indian universities too can and should compete internationally to become such a university, he said adding that at the same time, skill development was required. Referring to a number of youth organisations like the NCC, NSS, Scouts and Guides, Red Cross, Nehru Yuvak Kendras, he said, these should plan their activities in a coordinated manner so that youth power could be harnesses to undertake specific projects like water conservation this season or work against open defecation. Responding to a suggestion from a caller Mona Karnwal from Bijnore, Modi also asked her to leave suggestion on the NarendraModi App on what is the best solution to energies activities of these youth organisations. Referring to the success of one crore people voluntarily giving up subsidy on cooking gas, he said, 80 per cent of the people took the trouble of going to the distributor and submit in writing rather than adopting the easy way of using an App etc. The move, he said, showed policy and economy planners a new way since it was always a case of competing politics of greater subsidies as against allocation of scare resources. Appealing to the political class, he said trust people and give them a programme to respond. It is this trust that made government do away with interviews for lower posts. The Prime Minister also said while news of good monsoon brings relief, people should also work to conserve water, adopt alternate crop and technology to make judicious use of water and save it to recharge water tables in the country. Similarly, he said, people have to work to make the Clean Ganga campaign a success while outlining measures taken by the Centre in collaboration with States be it UP or Uttarakhand and cities like Varanasi, Allahabad and Kanpur to check pollutants being discharged into the river. The Prime Minister also highlighted the 10-day special Gram Uday to Bharat Uday drive that concludes today, which raised level of awareness of various programmes of the Centre to improve to lot of rural India. Kumbh Mela or Simhasth at Ujjain, he said, is an opportunity for tourism departments to showcase the diversity while taking pride in the efficient management of an event of such magnitude. Responding to another caller, Ravi, he agreed that good news should also figure in everyday life. He said at least one newspaper has promised to carry on its front page every Monday only positive news and said some television news channels were also doing it now. He asked people to post such positive news on the Transforming India website for greater good. Rajmeet Singh Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 24 With the US-based Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) moving court demanding his arrest upon his arrival in Toronto, Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh today cancelled his tour of Canada. But he will continue with his engagements in the US before returning to India. I will fight back the baseless case filed by Gurpatwant Singh Pannu in a Toronto court. My Canada-based supporters are moving the higher court. But by the time the case is decided, it will be too late, said Capt Amarinder. The PPCC chief accused the Sikhs for Justice for playing into the hands of the Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Aam Aadmi Party. Slamming the Sikh organisation, he alleged it was trying to abuse a well-meaning and well-intentioned law aimed at protecting and safeguarding the rights of Canadian citizens across the world. He urged the Canadian authorities to ensure that the law was not misused by the SFJ whose anti-India credentials were only too well known. He suggested that the Government of India should take up the issue of Indian leaders being summoned by courts in Canada with the Canadian Government. He rejected the allegations levelled against him that there were instances of Canadian citizens having been tortured during his tenure as Punjab CM between 2002 and 2007 and that police officials allegedly involved in such incidents had been promoted by him. Presuming, for the sake of argument, that such incidents did take place, why did it take someone more than 10 years to file a complaint and why was the complaint not made when I visited Canada in 2004 as Punjab CM? Capt asked SFJ office-bearers. Charanjit Singh Teja Tribune News Service Ludhiana, April 24 Gulzar Singh Ranike, Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries, had a tough time during his visit to the fish mela at Punjab Agricultural University here today. In his inaugural address, the minister highlighted the governments initiatives to promote fishery in the state and asked the farmers that he was available to listen to their problems anytime. A farmer stood up and asked: You have to listen right now as no one will allow us to meet with you after this lecture. Tell us why mining department officials intervene when a farmer digs a fish pond in his fields? Ranike asked department officials to note down the issue and assured the farmer that he would talk to the mining officials. Meanwhile, another farmer said banks were not ready to give loans for fishery ponds to landless and marginal farmers. Another farmer Gurvinder Singh from Kahan Singh Wala village in Ferozpur alleged that how would fish survive when the government gave power supply for only one hour a day? Some Akali activists and officials opposed the charge. Ranike too claimed that Punjab was a power-surplus state. But some more farmers supported Gurvinder Singhs claim. The minister later admitted that due to the ongoing harvest session there was a problem on some lines for tube-wells. Another farmer Amarpal Singh of Faridkot then blamed the government for loss of ripe wheat crop due to fire incidents. Such incidents took place due to loose wires dangling above the fields. It is the failure of the government and the PSPCL. The fish farmers, on the other hand, are suffering as snapping of power supply leaves ponds dry, he said. The famers also alleged that they had to offer bribe to officials and employees of various department to dig fish ponds. Stay away from media The minister finally ended his address and asked the officials to note down the problems being faced by the farmers. Ranike reportedly advised the farmers not to discuss their issues with the mediapersons as they did not have any solution. Ranike said: We gave opportunity to farmers to speak so that we could get their feedback. We have noted down their problems and I have assured them that all issues will be addressed soon. Hanover, April 25 US President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for European unity in the face of rising populism and scepticism today, warning this was a defining moment for the continent. A strong and united Europe is a necessity for the world, Obama said in the German city of Hanover, in a landmark speech that carried the tone of a blunt challenge to friends. Visiting a region reeling from a migration crisis, economic stagnation and facing the prospect of Britain abandoning the European Union, Obama warned that "progress is not inevitable". Contrasting the prosperity of Europe today with the wars and hardship of the last century, Obama called on Europeans reject the "us-versus-them" politics that has fuelled the rise of the far right in countries from Poland to France. "Perhaps you need an outsider, somebody who is not European, to remind you of the magnitude of what you have achieved," he said, a day after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in a presidential vote in Austria. Hours before he and Chancellor Angela Merkel were to hold talks with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy, Obama painted today's Europeans as heirs to the popular movements that ended the Cold War. And he also recalled the devastating consequences of "intolerance and extreme nationalism" that drenched Europe in blood during the 20th century. In the last century, just twice in 30 years, the forces of empire and intolerance and extreme nationalism consumed this continent and cities like this one were largely reduced to rubble, Obama said. Tens of millions of men and women and children were killed. As rightwing populism gains ground in parts of the continent in response to growing Islamic radicalism, he urged Europe to remain open. I want you to remember that our countries are stronger, they're more secure and more successful when we integrate people of all backgrounds and faiths, and make them feel as one. And that includes our fellow citizens who are Muslim, he said. On a visit to Britain ahead of his arrival in Germany, the US Ppresident had also waded into an increasingly-bitter debate over the UK's membership in the European Union, urging Britons to vote against leaving the bloc in a June referendum. AFP Brussels: The Maalbeek metro station in Brussels hit by a suicide attack last month that killed 16 people reopened to passengers on Monday. Suicide bomber Khalid El-Bakraoui blew himself up at the station on March 22, an hour after two other bombers killed 16 other people at Brussels airport. Along the platform, hand-written notes on the station wall expressed condolences for those killed on March 22. AFP 2 persons hacked to death in Bangladesh Dhaka: Two persons, including a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, were brutally murdered in a flat here by unidentified killers who entered the building impersonating as courier officials, the latest in a series of brutal attacks on bloggers and intellectuals in Bangladesh. Julhash Mannan, a cousin of Moni, and his friend Tanay were murdered at the flat in capital's Kalabagan. PTI Official count confirms big win for Serbia's pro-EU PM Belgrade: Serbia's pro-EU Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a landslide victory in general elections, the electoral commission confirmed on Monday after nearly all ballots were counted. Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party won 48.25 per cent of the vote which would give him 131 MPs in the 250-seat parliament, down from the 158 won in the last election. AFP Washington, April 25 Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich have said they will coordinate with each other in an effort to stop frontrunner Donald Trump from becoming the party nominee which the real estate tycoon dismissed as an act of desperation. Texas senator Cruz and Ohio governor Kasich issued statements that they would not compete with each other in several states to try and stop Trump from securing the necessary 1,237 delegates before the Cleveland convention in July which they hope would make it a contested convention and thus open up their paths to the White House. To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead, Cruzs campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement. Kasichs campaign also issued a similar statement. Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner- takes-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland, said John Weaver, chief strategist for Kasich for America. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaigns resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana, he said. In turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well, Weaver said. As of yesterday Trump had 845 delegates to Cruzs 559. A candidate needs to have at least 1,237 delegates to earn the Republican presidential nomination. However both Cruz and Kasichs campaigns asserted it is only they who are best suitable to get the partys nomination. Donald Trump doesnt have the support of a majority of Republicans not even close, but he currently does have almost half the delegates because hes benefited from the existing primary system. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee, Weaver said. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation, Roe said. Trump reacted on Twitter as he slammed both Cruz and Kasich, describing their alliance as an act of desperation. Wow, just announced that Lyin Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!, Trump said. Lyin Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad!, he tweeted. PTI Hanover, April 25 President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of US ground troops in Syria since the civil war there began, saying he would dispatch 250 Special Forces soldiers to help local militia to build on successes against Islamic State. The new deployment increases US forces in Syria six-fold to about 300. While the total US ground force is still small by comparison to other American deployments, defence experts said it could help shift the momentum in Syria by giving more Syrian fighters on the ground access to US close air support. Announcing the decision in Germany at the end of a six-day foreign tour, Obama said the move followed on victories over Islamic State that clawed back territory from the hard-line Sunni Islamist group. The US military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but the campaign's effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years. Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria last year, which has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the US. Reuters Wabash National showed off a 33-foot-pup, one of the size/weight proposals debated in Washington last year, at the Technology & Maintenance Councils 2014 annual meeting. Photo: Tom Berg After five years of presenting an official united front on the issue of truck sizes and weights, American Trucking Associations and the Truckload Carriers Association are going their separate ways. During its recent convention in Las Vegas, TCA officially changed its policy to endorse the current five-axle, 80,000-pound federal weight limit. Since 2011, TCA and ATA had been united in endorsing two different options to increase current truck size/weight regulations: a five-axle, 88,000-pound weight limit or six-axle, 97,000-pound limit. At that time, ATA and the Coalition for Transportation Productivity had been lobbying for a limit of 97,000 pounds on a new six-axle configuration. Truckload carriers, however, did not like the plan because it would mean investing in new equipment and likely would not mean increased revenue to offset that expense. The two groups forged the dual-option compromise in order to present a united front to government officials. That has changed following heated truck size and weight battles on Capitol Hill last year. According to its website, the group amended its size and weight policy on March 6 to read, TCA supports a policy of no increase in truck weight, however as an association, we will continue to examine components of increasing productivity as they arise. When asked to comment, American Trucking Associations provided the following statement: "ATA's policy supports safely improving the size and weight of large trucks. However, ATA is not currently pursuing any change in federal policy. ATA's policy stance comes from direction we've received from our Executive and Strategic Action Committees, and was made well before TCA's board narrowly voted to change its policy." Highway bill battle Last year, as Congress worked to pass a long-overdue highway bill, the issue of truck sizes and weights was a controversial one on Capitol Hill. ATA added a new wrinkle by lobbying, not for heavier trucks, but for longer ones, supporting a provision to allow twin 33-foot trailers in the less-than-truckload sector, pushed by FedEx Chairman Frederick Smith. TCA was one of the groups that lobbied against it, contending that allowing twin 33-foot trailers would require carriers currently operating single 51- to 53-foot trailers to rapidly switch over to the twin 33-foot configuration in order to remain competitive on a basis of volume per load. It also cited concerns about driver safety, the driver shortage, truck parking, increased operating costs and loss of resale value of single trailers which would suddenly become obsolete. It was a battle illustrating how diverse and divided the trucking industry is. In addition to TCA, against the measure were 13 truckload and two LTL carriers, who wrote a letter opposing it; the state trucking associations of Arizona, Louisiana and Mississippi; The Trucking Alliance (a coalition of trucking businesses that lobbies for safety improvements); and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Trucking stakeholders in favor of allowing the nationwide running of twin 33s included the American Trucking Associations and the Coalition for Efficient & Responsible Trucking, a nonprofit organized by leading less-than-truckload carriers. But the twin-33s weren't the only lobbying effort going on for truck size and weights. At the same time, the Coalition for Transportation Productivity was pushing for the 97,000-pound/six axle configuration. A 91,000-pound version was introduced by Wisconsin Rep. Reid Ribble as the Safe, Flexible, and Efficient (SAFE) Trucking Act, which was supported by the National Private Truck Council. However, none of these measures survived the lobbying against them. Changing of the guard The diverging positions come at the same time as changes in leadership at TCA and ATA. TCA has had three different presidents in less than two years. Longtime TCA head Chris Burruss resigned suddenly in June 2014, and his replacement, Brad Bentley, was there less than a year. The current TCA president, John Lyboldt, has been in the position since late 2015. Meanwhile, ATA is searching for a new leader after Bill Graves, who has been the groups president since 2003, announced during last years annual Management Conference & Exhibition that he would step down at the end of 2016. Kevin Burch, president of Ohio-based truckload carrier Jet Express and incoming ATA chairman, is also a former chairman of TCA. He told Truckinginfo.com with a bit of a rueful laugh that his reputation as a bridge-builder is likely going to come in handy. He takes over this October at a time when ATA will be bringing in a new leader and we also will have a new presidential administration. There are many members of TCA that are members of ATA and vice versa, he said in an interview. Were a diversified group [at ATA]. Weve got reefers and flatbeds, less-than-truckload and truckload, union and non union... Im for the best interests of the industry. While saying he respects the current feeling at TCA, I am in favor of productivity, and I think as we move forward in the industry weve got to be aware of some of the options. Meanwhile, there seems to be little concrete scientific evidence for policymakers to turn to in making these decisions, at least according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Earlier this month, the DOT finally released a long-awaited study on truck sizes and weights to Congress, almost four years after it was mandated to do so by the MAP-21 highway bill, reporting that it needed more information before it could make any recommendations about changing federal weight laws. CAIRO Egypts president urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from the forces of evil on Sunday, a day before planned demonstrations against his policies, including the transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. In a widely televised speech, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi insisted on the need for stability in the Arab worlds most populous country, saying that attempts to degrade it wont be successful if Egypt stands united. We must protect these institutions because these mean the state, he said. I am reiterating to the Egyptian people this is the responsibility of all of us, for us to protect this security and stability. Earlier this month, thousands marched against el-Sissis policies in the largest demonstrations since he assumed office in 2014. The protests featured slogans such as leave, and down with the regime, used in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak. The protesters, including politicians and activists, called for more demonstrations on Monday, a national holiday that commemorates the withdrawal of the last Israeli troops from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 under the Camp David peace agreement. The armed forces will deploy at vital sites Monday to prevent saboteurs from taking advantage of these protests, Egypts military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir said Sunday. El-Sissis comments raise the possibility of large-scale counter-demonstrations that could turn violent, in addition to a potentially harsh police crackdown especially if the demonstrators attempt to reach the heavily policed Tahrir Square. Protests are essentially banned in Egypt under laws passed after el-Sissi led the military overthrow of his elected but divisive Islamist predecessor, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013. A petition titled Egypt is not for sale, which calls for a reversal of the decision on the islands and supports the protests, was signed by more than 300 Egyptian novelists, lawyers and activists, and several calls have been made on social media for Mondays demonstrations to converge on Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 2011 revolt against Mubarak. The Muslim Brotherhood said in a Sunday statement it supports the protests and is calling on people to join them. Since Friday, security troops have been out in force, with armored personnel carriers stationed at key traffic areas, while security agents have rounded up dozens of activists, journalists, and lawyers from their homes and cafes in downtown Cairo. Two Interior Ministry spokesmen did not respond to repeated telephone calls seeking comment. Also Sunday, Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar met with officials to review preparations to confront any attempts to break the law, the ministry said in a statement. It quoted Abdel-Ghaffar as saying that the security apparatus would be ready to address any action that could disturb public security with the utmost firmness and decisiveness, urging citizens to ignore calls to create chaos and drive a wedge between the people and police. The protests earlier this month were pegged to anger over el-Sissis decision to transfer sovereignty of the two islands to Saudi Arabia in a deal concluded in secret and announced during a visit by Saudi King Salman. Many infuriated Egyptians accused the government of trading land for aid and investment from the oil-rich kingdom. The government insists the two islands, Tiran and Sanafir, always belonged to Saudi Arabia but were placed under Egyptian protection in 1950 because Riyadh feared they would be attacked by Israel. COLUMBUS, Ohio The slayings of eight family members in rural southern Ohio was a pre-planned execution, authorities said Sunday, telling residents they are safe but to arm themselves if theyre fearful. The Friday killings at four homes near Piketon was a sophisticated operation, Attorney General Mike DeWine said at a news conference in the small community that has been on edge since seven adults and one teenage boy were found shot in the head. Authorities remained tight-lipped Sunday about details of the investigation, any suspects or motives for the crime. They said they found marijuana operations at three of the crime scenes, but didnt say if the deaths were linked to pot. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said that in his 20 years in law enforcement, he never interacted with the Rhoden family in a criminal nature. He said it was clear the family was targeted, however, and hes told the victims relatives to arm themselves. Reader said he didnt believe safety was an issue for others, but he said If you are fearful, arm yourself. Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed between 50 and 60 people in hopes of finding leads, and a team of 38 people is combing wooded areas around the shooting scenes to ensure no evidence was missed, authorities said. DeWine said the states crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint, and five search warrants have been executed. Autopsies were expected to be completed Monday. This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened, said Reader, noting most victims were targeted while they were sleeping. The victims were identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence Frankie Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. Hanna Rhoden was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was 4- or 5-days old. The newborn, Hannah Gilleys 6-month-old baby, and one other small child were not hurt. Since the slayings, authorities have refused to discuss many details of the crime, a potential motive, weapons, or the search for the assailant or assailants. We dont know whether it was one or more people involved in this, DeWine said. Maggie Owens, a cook at the towns Riverside Restaurant, said shes counts herself among those who feel theyre on eggshells. I know a lot of people are just scared, Owens, 39, said in a phone interview on Sunday. You dont hear about stuff like that around here. She said her son was friends with the younger Christopher Rhoden. She described Dana Rhoden as a woman with a heart of gold who gave her clothes and money when her home burned down last year. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, whove set up a number for people to call as police seek information about the crimes. A Cincinnati-area businessman also put up a $25,000 reward for details leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. Robin Waddell, who owns the Big Bear Lake Family Resort just south of Piketon, said Christopher Rhoden often did work for him as a carpenter and helped out with his excavation business. He said Rhoden was a nice guy whose kids sometimes visited him while he was working. Its a large family, Waddell said. Theres a lot of them and theyve been in this community for generations. So this is affecting a lot of people. Kendra Jordan, 20, said she often worked nights at a nursing home with Hanna Rhoden and described her as outgoing, funny and always smiling. If you were having a bad day, shed be the first one to come up to you to question you about what was going on, Jordan said. She was amazing. The exact timing of the shootings remains unclear. Authorities got the first 911 call shortly before 8 a.m. Friday; the second came several hours later from another location. Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway. The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away. Todd Beekman, who owns an outdoors shop a few miles from the crime scenes, said at least one customer came in to stock up on ammunition after hearing about the shootings. But Beekman and others hanging out there midday Saturday said they werent concerned for their own safety because its an area where residents know and look out for each other. The word spread pretty fast, as it does in any rural area, Beekman said. Everybodys kind of their own brothers keeper down here. Two men were hospitalized after being shot early Monday. Officers responded to a reported shooting in the 300 block of West 48th Street North about 12:30 a.m. and found a man who had been shot. Sgt. Clay Asbill said the bullet grazed the man's head, and he was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. Investigators found shell casings of different calibers in the street. Shortly later, police were alerted after another man arrived at a hospital in a private vehicle with a gunshot wound to the leg. "At that time, we didn't know if they were related or not," Asbill said. "Both guys weren't really talking to us." Police spokesman Leland Ashley said later in the day that investigators were still working to determine whether the two men were shot during the same incident. On Saturday night, a woman was shot in the leg at a house on the same street. That shooting occurred at a family party, with several children in attendance. Police said a man in the front yard of a nearby house opened fire at the party, striking the woman. She was hospitalized in stable condition, and the shooter eluded police. "There's always the possibility they could be related," Ashley said. "Investigators are looking at all angles." 11:08 a.m., April 25, 2016--The Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN) invites any University of Delaware student interested in joining its ambassador program for the 201617 academic year to submit an application by 5 p.m., Friday, May 6. Prospective members may download an application from the groups webpage. The DENIN Ambassadors, now in their fifth year, are a small group of specially selected volunteers from across campus who assist DENIN in reaching out to students. Members of the DENIN Ambassadors serve as: A focus group, providing input to DENIN staff about what students are interested in and concerned about. Event planners, carrying out events for students that further the educational objectives of DENIN. Promoters, assisting in promoting DENIN events, especially to the student population. Activists, helping to create a sustainable campus by communicating scientific information effectively. Were looking for people from any major who are passionate about promoting environmental awareness and have some innovative ideas about how we can involve more students in meaningful environmental activities, says senior Marisa Andreazza, one of the groups current co-chairs. She notes that students who join the group may remain members until their graduation if they choose. Questions and completed application forms should be addressed to Andreazza at mandreaz@udel.edu. 11:11 a.m., April 25, 2016--Send Silence Packing a nationally recognized public education exhibit of 1,100 backpacks, representing the number of students who die by suicide every year will be on display on the University of Delawares Central Green from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday, May 2. Send Silence Packing is a traveling outdoor exhibit presented by Active Minds Inc., the leading national nonprofit organization working to engage students in changing the conversation about mental health. UD, which has an Active Minds chapter, is the last stop on the spring tour of 11 colleges and universities, which began at Auburn University on March 31. At each Send Silence Packing location, the 1,100 backpacks are displayed in a high-traffic area such as the campus quad where the exhibit becomes a visual and powerful testament to the number of lives lost to suicide each year. Attached to many of the backpacks are photographs and personal stories of students who died by suicide. Passersby are invited to walk among the backpacks to see the photographs and read the stories. The Send Silence Packing exhibit also includes signs and resources to encourage help seeking, to connect students to mental health resources, and to inspire action for suicide prevention. Active Minds staff, student representatives and counselors also are on hand to provide information and resources. Active Minds was established in 2003 by Alison Malmon, then a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, after tragically losing her only brother, 22-year-old Brian Malmon, to suicide. Active Minds dedicates all of our time to raising awareness about mental health, says Malmon, now the executive director of Active Minds Inc. Students, she notes, often say stigma is the major reason why they do not seek the help they need. Send Silence Packing, one of our most visual and powerful programs, encourages everyone to seek help for themselves or a friend as soon as it is needed, she says. Send Silence Packing was first unveiled in 2008 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with a keynote speech by Patrick Kennedy. Since then, more than 320,000 people in 100 cities throughout the country have experienced Send Silence Packing. Program evaluation data reveals the impact of the exhibit most visitors leave Send Silence Packing wanting to learn more about mental health; the majority tell three or more people about the exhibit; and many reach out to a friend in need or seek help for themselves as a result of viewing it. Active Minds continues to collect backpacks in honor of loved ones. Those who have been impacted by suicide can send their story to Active Minds at this website. For anyone thinking about suicide or worried about a friend in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text BRAVE to the Crisis Text Line (741-741). For resources on how to "Be a Friend" for someone with mental illness, visit this site. Students practice soldering at one of the Youth Entrepreneurship Summit's interactive workshops. Dozens of teams pitched ideas for this year's Diamond Challenge. First place winners in the business venture rack, Team Retracta-ball Pump, with their winnings and the competition judges. Team Do it for Bunica is interviewed after their first place Diamond Challenge win. Team Do it for Bunica wins a prize package worth more than $10,000 at this year's 2016 Diamond Challenge for High School Entrepreneurs. 4:23 p.m., April 25, 2016--Four high school students from Moldova won a prize package worth more than $10,000 at this years 2016 Diamond Challenge for High School Entrepreneurs at the University of Delaware, and they plan to use their winnings to create a business that addresses three critical social problems in their home country. Lyudmila Zgurean, Vladlen Grecu, Daniela Tihon and Victoria Bradescu were inspired to create Do it for Bunica (bunica means grandmother in Romanian) after Bradescus grandmother was bedridden due to a car accident. Like over one million Moldovans who work outside of the country, Bradescus parents were unable to physically help their bunica around her home. And many Moldovan families share this struggle: As the countrys elderly population grows, migrant workers send back over $2 billion per year to their families, but cannot provide in-person help. Furthermore, Moldovan youth unemployment is 58.8 percent, Grecu said. Of the 50 youth we interviewed, 90 percent said they needed to find a flexible work schedule in order to make extra money. We thought of a brilliant solution that connects all three of these groups: the elderly, migrant workers and unemployed youth, in order to solve these problems, added another team member. The solution? An online platform in which migrant workers from Moldova can find and pay local youth helpers to assist their elderly parents with household chores. The group described the platform as similar to AirBnb, but instead of finding apartments, clients find local youth helpers. The team, who wore their national costume to the challenge to represent their home country, said they were excited to use their winnings to build and launch their website. During this years Diamond Challenge, more than 1,000 high school students from around the globe worked together in teams to conceive and pitch ideas for new business concepts and social ventures. The challenge, a signature part of the Paul and Linda McConnell Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative led by the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware, saw submissions from students representing 22 countries and 16 states this year. The challenges final round took place at the Horn Programs Youth Entrepreneurship Summit (YES!), during which over 300 students participated in interactive workshops and heard from influential entrepreneurs. Katlyn Grasso, founder and CEO of GenHERation, a female empowerment network for young women, appeared as the keynote speaker. When I say entrepreneurship, whats the first word that pops into your head? Grasso asked the audience at the beginning of her speech. The audience called out words like independent, innovation, ideas and risk as Grasso agreed. A definition I use to encapsulate all of that is that entrepreneurship is executing a vision in the face of uncertainty, Grosso said. Entrepreneurs are incurable optimists. Grasso, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business, is also a recipient of a 2015 Impact Grant from NBC Universal. Other winners of the Diamond Challenge included, in the social venture track: 2nd Place Fresquiticos by Diego Uribe and Nicole Birkner. 3rd Place MentourU by Michael Chan and Emily Yu. In the business concept track: 1st Place Retracta-ball pump by Gabriel Werner and Nathan Wagener. 2nd Place Polar Solis by Philip Lee, Rostam Reifschneider and Julian Davis. 3rd Place Notifica by Aditya Ganapathi and David Hou. Youth Entrepreneurship Summit workshops Some of the summits highlights included workshops on topics ranging from the importance of coding to how to brand oneself and ones business. Several participants attended the following break out workshops: Educators Roundtable on the Innovative Classroom led by Dan Freeman and Julie Frieswyk was held for educators, administrators and parents who were interested in improving the state of entrepreneurial thinking among high school students. Data Science: Americas Most Wanted Skillset led by Ryan Swartz focused on learning about data science and how both start-up and big name companies use it to their advantage. During Startup Story, Shelby Newsome shared her story to inspire and teach other entrepreneurial young people. Yes! You CanCome Up with LOTS of Ideas was held by Tony Middlebrooks to provide techniques and tools for students to tap into creativity. The participants were taught how to see differently and enhance their creativity to be applied to future entrepreneurial activities. The Process Is the Inspiration was led by Rich Roat and followed how his childhood fascination with drawing led to creating fonts that help the world communicate. The Art and Science of Social Recommendations led by Susan Frech showed how marketers design a brand experience. Learn to Code, Change the World led by Trevor Geise explored how learning to code can open up opportunities and give someone the ability to solve big problems while pursuing their passions. Icebergs: What You Think a Job Is vs. What It Really Is was held by Zach Philips, who told stories of real-life scenarios in the software startup and filmmaking industries. Be a Maker: Intro to Soldering featured Jessica Taylor teaching participants a fundamental skill needed to experiment with electronics: hands-on soldering. Finding Your First Customers by Benjamin Rapkin introduced Lean Startup methodology in the context of finding early adopters and minimizing risk. Building Your Personal and Professional Brand led by Jill Gugino Pante helped participants develop and build their brands and discussed how to create and manage perceptions. The Horn Program will host another session of exciting entrepreneurial pitches at tonights Innovation Showcase, which will feature the final round of the Hen Hatch competition. 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 create, deliver and capture value from new ideas and thrive in our 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). Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on April 26 will take part in the commemorative events on the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, the presidential press service reports. On Tuesday, April 26, 2016, the President of Ukraine will take part in the events dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster (the city of Chornobyl, Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, reads the report. iy The Ukrainian government has simplified the procedure for the supply of medicines by international organizations to Ukraine. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said this on Monday during his online address to Ukrainians, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. The process of medicines supplies worth 61 million has already begun, Groysman said. According to the prime minister, last week the government managed to unblock the issue regarding the supplies of medicines for patients with cancer to Ukraine by international organizations. In addition, the government adopted a decision to ease the procedure on supplying medicines from Europe and the United States and other developed countries. "Earlier, everything had been blocked and corrupt. I hope that Parliament will approve a relevant law in order to solve this issue, the prime minister said. Experts from Singapore will come to Ukraine to share their experience of efficient port business development. This agreement was achieved at a meeting of Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan and Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to Ukraine Simon Tensing De Cruz, the ministrys press service reports. "Taking into account Singapore's world experience of developing port facilities and the organization of large-scale transit freight traffic, Volodymyr Omelyan called on the Ambassador to organize a visit of experts of Singapores port industry to Ukraine to share experience and explore the best practices of the Singaporean side in developing efficient port facilities. Mr. Simon de Cruz confirmed his readiness for active cooperation, the statement says. Furthermore, representatives of the two countries exchanged views on improving the legislative basis between Ukraine and Singapore in the areas of maritime merchant shipping and air traffic. iy The lawyer of Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko, Mark Feygin, says he doubts that illegally convicted Savchenko will return from Russia to Ukraine soon. He wrote this on Twitter. I would like to share with the Ukrainian President his optimism regarding weeks left before the release of Savchenko, but gut feeling tells me the opposite, Feygin noted. As reported, President Petro Poroshenko said he hopes that Nadiya Savchenko will return to Ukraine within the next several weeks. iy The law on the state service will come into effect in Ukraine on May 1, and thus qualitative changes in this sphere will begin. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said this on Monday morning in his online address to the Ukrainians, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "Form May 1, we will start forming the real professional state service in Ukraine, Groysman said. According to him, this law would make the state service in Ukraine better and more professional. Furthermore, the Prime Minister noted that some people in the country were trying to persuade the authorities to halt the coming into force of this law, and consequently the implementation of reforms in this sphere. But this wont take place, because the law will become effective on May 1, Groysman said. iy Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says that theoretically the European Union could not approve the decision on granting the visa-free regime to Ukraine, but his recent talks with EU leaders give no grounds for doubts about a positive resolution on the issue. The Ukrainian President said this in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. Could there be a step backwards? Theoretically, it could happen that the [EU] Council does not approve [the decision on the visa-free regime], but in the last two weeks I have been involved in high-profile diplomatic activity - I have had talks with the European Commission President, the President of the European Council, the leaders of the European countries, and they all have appealed to the European Parliament; [President of the European Parliament] Martin Schulz has already said that we will do everything possible to speed up the adoption of this decision by the European Parliament, he is sure of victory, President Poroshenko said. He also recalled yesterdays statement made by the country partners of Ukraine calling on the Council of the European Union to grant a visa-free regime to Ukraine. At present I see no threats that the visa-free regime will not be granted to Ukraine. In the second half of 2016, Ukrainians should have the possibility to travel to the European Union on their biometric passports, the president stressed. iy Ukraine is strategically important for the new order in Europe that was set after the collapse of the USSR. Former Polish Vice Prime Minister Leszek Balcerowicz said this in a post on Facebook. "I accepted the offer of President Poroshenko to become his advisor as I am deeply convinced that Ukraine is strategically important for the new order in Europe that was set after collapse of the USSR. Ukraine's success is fundamentally important for Europe, especially for Poland and other countries in the region," he wrote. Leszek Balcerowicz, who also served as the Vice Prime Minister and the Finance Minister of Poland in 1989-1991, 1997-2000 and National Bank of Poland governor in 2000-2007, was appointed the representative of the President in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the co-chair of the group of strategic advisors to support reforms in Ukraine. Former Vice Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Slovak Republic Ivan Miklos will lead the group of advisors to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and will be the second co-chair of the group of strategic advisors. ol Russian aggression in Ukraine is threatening Europe and the progress made since the end of the Cold War. This was stated by U.S. President Barack Obama during a meeting with European leaders in Hanover, Sky News reports. "Russian aggression has flagrantly violated the sovereignty and territory of an independent European nation - Ukraine, and this is of concern to our allies in Eastern Europe, threatening our vision of Europe that is whole, free and peaceful, and it seems to threaten the progress that has been made since the end of the Cold War," Obama said. The U.S. President is paying an official visit to Germany as part of his six-day trip to Europe. ol U.S. Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will arrive in Ukraine on 25 April. Media note released by U.S. State Department states, Ukrinform reports. On April 25, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will travel from Hannover, Germany, to Kyiv, Ukraine, to meet with senior Ukrainian government officials, political party leaders, Rada members, and civil society representatives. Also during her visit a number of bilateral and regional issues will be discussed, including priorities for reforms and implementation of the Minsk agreements. tl Jagat Lama and his wife Dawa Sangmo take a break from rebuilding their earthquake levelled home in Baramchi Village, Nepal. UNHCR/D. Das Shrestha BARAMCHI VILLAGE, Nepal In this rubble-strewn hamlet perched on the edge of a hill in north-east Nepal, a constant hammering on corrugated iron sheets breaks the calm as 40-year-old Jagat Lama fixes a roof over his newly built home. "I'm planning to move into the new house before this monsoon," said the father of two, who is among thousands in Nepal still remaking their lives a year after a deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck. When the earth shunted violently back and forth around noon local time on April 25, 2015, Jagat and his wife, Dawa Sangmo, were planting maize in the field a kilometre from the village. When they rushed back home, they were horrified by what they found. "My two-storey house was gone. There was so much panic. People were shouting, crying and running. I could hardly see beyond a few metres as a cloud of dust covered the entire village and the hill," said Jagat. "In a matter of a few seconds, my beautiful village looked as if it had been bombed." About 8,500 people were killed by the quake and more than half a million homes were demolished, most of them in rural areas like Baramachi Village that were cut off from emergency or medical care. Just as Nepalis were starting to recover in May, a second major quake struck killing a further 153 people. In the months that followed, homeless families faced tough challenges. These included heavy monsoon rains which drench the country from June through August as well as shortages of essentials like food and medicines due to protest blockades on the Indian border. Then, the harsh Himalayan winter set in. In the first few nights after their house rattled down, Jagat and his family slept in the forest on a mattress stuffed with brush and straw. They subsequently moved to an open terraced field near their collapsed home, where they spent three months sleeping under plastic sheeting provided by UNHCR. Following the earthquake, the UN Refugee Agency distributed 42,000 tarpaulins to nearly 210,000 displaced people. Additional aid included 8,000 solar lamps, 5,000 blankets, 450 shelter roof kits and 175 temporary schools. "With our own supply of tarps and solar lights already in country, UNHCR was a first responder in several earthquake-affected districts," said Craig Sanders, UNHCR's representative in Nepal, recalling the relief operation that ramped up to help families like Jagat's to start rebuilding. "As relief efforts scaled up, we switched gears to focus on using innovative techniques in the reconstruction of homes and schools using locally-resourced materials. Despite the logistical challenges, difficult terrain and widespread devastation, we were able to reach some communities with much-needed support." In the weeks after the disaster, Jagat was among the quake homeless who received shelter roof-kits from UNHCR. As he prepares to move back home, he says he is "very happy. I wouldn't have been able to build such a nice house without the support" from UNHCR. He has taken a loan of Rs.50,000 (US$475) to put windows and doors in his new house. He hopes to repay the loan by working in a neighbor's field and laboring for other people rebuilding their homes. "The aftershocks still continue and we are always scared," he says. "Moving to my new house will be such a relief and I am really looking forward to it." MONDAY, April 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- A woman's pelvic structure keeps adapting over her lifetime -- first widening to accommodate childbirth, then later narrowing, a new study suggests. The researchers said their findings challenge the idea that a woman's pelvis is set in stone. Some scientists have proposed that the female pelvis was "programmed by evolution for childbirth," explained lead researcher Marcia Ponce de Leon. At the same time, it was thought that the male pelvis may change its developmental course starting around puberty, in response to rising testosterone levels. "Our study shows the contrary," said Ponce de Leon, a researcher at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland. The male pelvis, she explained, seems to take on a genetically determined path in its development. Meanwhile, the female pelvis adapts over a lifetime -- possibly in response to estrogen. The researchers based their findings on CT scans from 275 people of all ages. Overall, they found that early in life, the pelvis develops similarly in girls and boys. Then around the age of 10, the sexes go off in distinct directions. By age 25, a woman's pelvic bone structures have changed to provide a wide birth canal. And the differences between the male and female pelvis are most marked between the ages of 25 and 30 -- the time of peak fertility, Ponce de Leon noted. But things start to shift again around age 40, the study found. At that point, the female pelvis takes on a more "male" trajectory, which causes the birth canal to gradually narrow. The findings were published April 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's not clear what the pattern these researchers discovered means for the average woman -- including whether it can complicate childbirth for an older woman, said Dr. John De Lancey, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. A woman in her 40s still has a decidedly "female" pelvis, explained De Lancey, who was not involved in the study. And, "if you look at the pelvis of an 80-year-old," he added, "you can absolutely tell if it's female or male." Still, De Lancey said, the findings add to researchers' understanding of an "unbelievable" process: how women are able to push out a 7.5-pound, big-headed baby. "Humans have a very difficult childbirth compared with other animals," De Lancey said. Obstructed labor is a common problem, he said, and it's still a major cause of complications and death among women and newborns in developing countries. According to one longstanding theory -- called the obstetrical dilemma hypothesis -- the human female pelvis is basically a "compromise." Human newborns have large brains, and a wide pelvis would make it easier to give birth. However, a narrow pelvis may be more efficient for walking and running upright. So, the theory goes, women are left with a pelvic structure that's less than ideal for either. Ponce de Leon and her team suggest a different theory: The female pelvis keeps adapting over time to "changing obstetric needs." The timing of those shifts -- near puberty and the transition toward menopause -- suggest that estrogen is steering female pelvic development, according to Ponce de Leon's team. De Lancey said it's "likely" hormones play a role. But, he added, this study does not actually prove that. It's obvious why the female pelvis would shift to a wider birth canal after puberty, but it's not clear why it begins to narrow when a woman is in her 40s. "Our hypothesis is that the pelvis changes its shape 'on demand,' according to changing functions," Ponce de Leon said. Later in life, she speculated, the smaller birth canal might give women greater stability in the pelvis and more support for their abdominal and pelvic organs. One past study, the researchers said, found a correlation between the dimensions of a woman's pelvis and her risk of pelvic floor disorders -- where the muscles and soft tissues that support the pelvic organs weaken. That can result in incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse, a condition in which the uterus, bladder or bowel protrude down into the vagina. However, De Lancey said that in his own research, he's found no evidence that women with prolapse have "pelvic dimensions" that differ from other women's. According to Ponce de Leon, her team's findings could eventually prove useful in managing difficult childbirth. "Our study proposes a hormonal, environment-sensitive mechanism for the developmental plasticity of the female pelvis," she said. "Further investigation of this mechanism might help one day to alleviate the problem of obstructed labor." More information The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more on labor and delivery. University of Phoenix parent company, Apollo Education Group, reported a decrease in enrollment, which leads to the 19 percent fall of its net revenues. After the university laid off 470 workers - most of which are in Arizona, Apollo Education Group urges investors to invest $1.1 billion capital; $9.50 per share. Continuing the work with fewer staffs, the University of Phoenix still apply its 5-year plan of reshaping the school. President Timothy P. Slottow said that he wanted to make sure students have transformative experience with an improved technology and new approach in learning; albeit uncertain future, AZ Central reported. As for the disappointing loss of money, the Apollo Education Group executives warn the buyout stating that it could lead to risks as some buyers are not affiliated with the Group. The quest of finding buyers, however, has been conducted since last month after Apollo Education reported its fortune fall down and the urgency to find buyers. The report highlights the timeline of the struggling company's interest that declines from time to time. England's Schroders PLC is against the proposed bid since it is considered undervalue. According to the Bloomberg, Schroders outlined that the price tag of $9.50 per share is not a deal. Schroders, which owns 13 percent of the group A-listed shares, has voted against the bid from private equity firms. Sending a letter of opposition, manager Andrew Lyddon, wrote to top 10 shareholders regarding the disagreement although he refused to state what is considered a fair value to Apollo Education Group bidding. In his letter, Lyddon encourages the A-listers to oppose the deal and stating that pricing is vital. The Apollo Education Group receives bid from Najafi Companies and Vistria Group, marking $9 per share due to its declining performance. After an announcement made in January on alternative approaches, the stock fell lower than $7. Omar Everleny Perez has been dismissed as an economist from the University of Havana for unauthorized sharing of information to the US. The dismissal comes after the historic visit of US President Barack Obama to Cuba last month. The Guardian reports that Perez has been fired from his position at the Center for Studies of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana several weeks ago after Obama's visit. The dismissal by center director Humberto Blanco was prompted by Perez allegedly having a conversation with foreigners, including North Americans about the internal workings of the university. Perez reportedly has been previously warned about unauthorized conversations with foreigners. In his dismissal letter, his actions were described as "negligent" and "irresponsible" and his continuing unauthorized activities led to his firing. Additionally, he was also accused of getting payments for a South Korean economy study. Although an appeal has been made, Perez claims that the dismissal was also partly due to what he wrote about Cuba's economic reforms and the government's pace on enacting it, Daily Business Review reports. Raul Castro re-elected as first secretary of Cubas Communist Party https://t.co/06Z6e0YUQR #RaulCastro Economy Lead (@EconomyLead) April 20, 2016 The outlet notes that Cubans, especially those with influence, who speak about Raul Castro and the government, somehow lose their jobs. Some of the noted personalities who lost their jobs in the last several years include political scientist Esteban Morales, sociologist Roberto Zurbano and director Juan Carlos Cremata. Morales was removed from the Communist party for criticizing corruption. Zurbano discussed racism in Cuba in an editorial piece that made it to the New York Times. Cremata was hindered from letting a play about a powerful king dying be in production in the country. According to Miami Herald, the Cuban Congress voted to not push for reform. Castro will remain president of Cuba for five additional years. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. The University of Central Florida captures the Alamo Cup at UTSAs National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition The winners of the 2016 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition with the Alamo Cup. Share this Story (April 25, 2016) -- A team of bright young cybersecurity students from the University of Central Florida (UCF) won the Alamo Cup at the 2016 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC), the nations largest cybersecurity competition for college students. Brigham Young University and DePaul University placed second and third, respectively, at the competitions finals, held April 22-24 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio. UCFs team advanced from one of 10 regional competitions to compete against groups of other cybersecurity students. Competitors were tasked with running and protecting a small business network designed by UTSA personnel, while facing simulated attacks. Roughly half of each teams score was based on the teams ability to keep critical network services up and running. The other half was based on each team's ability to support and respond to business tasks. Throughout the competition, a team of industry professionals attacked each competitors network, hoping to disrupt their businesses and steal sensitive data. Seven other teams competed in this weekends national competition including Dakota State University, University of Alaska at Anchorage, University of Tulsa, Northeastern University, Columbia Basin College, Cal Poly Pomona and Liberty University. The NCCDC was founded in 2005 by the UTSA Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS), with the mission of developing a pipeline for talented college students interested in pursuing cybersecurity careers. The event has been so successful at developing promising opportunities for students that the CIAS now has an important rule: Job offers must wait until the competition is over. By Joanna Carver Public Affairs Specialist ---------------------------- Learn more about The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. Learn more about the UTSA Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security. Learn more about cybersecurity at UTSA. Connect online at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and UTSA Today. UTSA will participate at OpenStack Open Source Cloud Community April 25-29 UTSA students at the UTSA Open Cloud Institute. Share this Story (April 25, 2016) -- With attendees from more than 50 countries, the OpenStack open source cloud community is gathering in Austin, April 25-29 to share how the cloud computing has transformed their businesses and institutions. More than 7,000 participants are expected to attend. UTSA will be well-represented by members of the Open Cloud Institute (OCI), the Colleges of Engineering and Sciences and the Office for Research: Mauli Agrawal, VP for Research; Bernard Arulanandam, AVP for Research Support; Rajendra Boppana, Chair, Computer Science; JoAnn Browning, Dean, College of Engineering; Harry Millwater, Associate Dean, College of Engineering; Paul Rad, Chief Research Officer, OCI; and Jeff Prevost, Chief Research Officer, OCI. The Open Cloud Institute will be leading the Open Science Cloud initiatives at the Austin summit. Research fellows and staff from the Open Cloud Institute will also be operating an onsite booth funded by the National Science Foundation and the Chameleon Cloud research grant, highlighting two key UTSA cloud research initiatives. NSF Jetstream Project: In January 2015, UTSA and partner Indiana University received a $6.6 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to build cloud-based advanced computing systems for the science and engineering community. Chameleon Cloud: Back in September 2014, UTSA, along with its partners institutions The University of Chicago, The Ohio State University, Northwestern University, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin received a $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to create a cloud-computing testbed that allows researchers develop and experiment with new cloud architectures and applications. The NSFCloud project, based at the University of Chicago and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (UT-Austin), supports the design, deployment and initial operation of Chameleon, a large-scale testbed consisting of 650 cloud nodes and five petabytes of storage. Both projects will be featured at the Open Cloud Institutes booth and lounge area, which includes live demonstrations and slide presentations. There will be a demonstration of the cloud e-lab certification platform focusing on cloud workforce development one of the OCIs sustainability pillars running on Chameleon. Scientific Working Group In response to the demands of the research community, the OpenStack Foundation has set up a Scientific Working Group that will have its inaugural meeting at the summit. The program also includes several panels sessions and networking opportunities for academics, researchers, scientists and research computing professionals to discuss a wide range of topics. UTSA faculty and research partners will also participate in panel discussions. One of the most anticipated panel discussion of the summit, UTSAs Paul Rad will present along with science cloud directors from CERN (Switzerland), NeCTAR (Australia), and Cambridge University (UK). They represent the largest community-driven clouds for collaborative research on the planet, responsible for a quarter million cores worldwide. This panel will bring key academic cloud stakeholders to focus on the requirements of this community, and next steps. Cloud computing represents one of the most significant shifts in information technology many of us are likely to see in our lifetimes. The massive scale and global availability of cloud-based services have spawned an entirely new generation of services that for practical purposes had been well out of reach for individual institutions and researchers. In effect, this necessary sharing of services has the consequence of bringing researchers previously working in isolated islands of activity into close proximity to one another and opening the doors to new levels of interaction and collaboration, said Paul Rad, Chief Research Officer at UTSAs Open Cloud Institute. ---------------------------- Learn more about the UTSA Open Cloud Institute. Connect online at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and UTSA Today. All the latest Uttoxeter news Story Saved You can find this story in My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Page Content The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point will launch the first comprehensive capital campaign in its 122-year history with an evening gala Saturday, April 30. The event launches the campaigns public phase. Friends and alumni may register at https://give.uwsp.edu/gala. The campaign will be headed by an alumnus and president of the UW-Stevens Point Foundation Board. Lon Roberts, Wisconsins Secretary of the Department of Financial Institutions, is a 1970 graduate of UW-Stevens Point. He has served with the Ruder Ware law firm in Wausau for 43 years, and as its president for 11 years. He is also the former chair of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board. Roberts and his wife, Mary, also a UW System graduate, are strong advocates of higher education and are committed to numerous philanthropic activities throughout Central Wisconsin. We could not be more pleased to do something that we believe will help ensure UW-Stevens Point will remain a strong, vibrant partner for all of Central Wisconsin and our entire home state, educating students whose impact on the world will start right here, said Roberts. We know that any success weve had in our lives traces right back to the university. So it was an easy decision to give back by chairing the campaign. Having someone of Lons stature, integrity, and professional accomplishments heading our first comprehensive campaign is a tremendous asset, said Chancellor Bernie Patterson. He and Mary have been leaders in Central Wisconsin for years. Its natural that they would step up to this challenge. They have demonstrated their commitment to UW-Stevens Point as few have. A key component in Pattersons plans for ensuring the future of UW-Stevens Point, the campaign has been in a quiet phase since July 1, 2013. During that time, a series of leadership gifts have been made including the establishment of the first four endowed chairs in university history: two in the College of Natural Resources and one each for the College of Professional Studies and the College of Letters and Science. Patterson said the campaign is seeking partners who wish to connect their philanthropic passions with the universitys strategic objectives, creating scholarship endowments, initiatives for new programs and support for existing endeavors. The goal is to bolster student success while helping UW-Stevens Point remain a regional asset that promotes thriving communities throughout the area. Page Content Take UW-Stevens Point summer classes to stay on track Taking summer classes is a great way for students to get ahead, catch up or simply stay on track for a timely graduation, said Greg Summers, vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. Many students report that they especially enjoy the smaller classes and the informal atmosphere of summer courses. Various sessions are offered: Three-week session, May 31-June 13 Eight-week session, June 20-Aug. 12 Four-week session, June 20-July 15 Four-week session, July 18-Aug. 10 Summer session classes are open to current UW-Stevens Point students as well members of the community and students at other universities. Information on summer session and course offerings is at www.uwsp.edu/summer Study abroad opportunities are also offered in the summer. Students have several options for short-term trips to Europe, Asia, Africa and Central America. See www.uwsp.edu/studyabroad for more information. Earn your degree faster by taking advantage of summer session courses at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point beginning Tuesday, May 31. UW Representatives Visit Gillette, Plan to Return Representatives of the University of Wyoming last week made the first of what are expected to be several trips to Gillette to offer individualized support to current or prospective students affected by layoffs in the energy industry in northeast Wyoming. UW team members in Gillette were Director of Financial Aid Kathleen Bobbitt, Center for Advising and Career Services Director Richard Miller, Associate Director of Admissions Rob Dennis, and Meredith Asay and Alyson Hagy, special advisers to the president. The team was supported by Outreach School Academic Coordinator Dawn Keisel, who is permanently assigned to the Northern Wyoming Community College District and has an office on the Gillette College campus. UW currently has 300 students from Gillette and about 300 more from other communities in northeast Wyoming. More than 200 students from Campbell County High School and other high schools in the region have been admitted for next year, and nearly 100 students annually transfer to UW from Gillette College and Sheridan College. Many others take UW courses through the universitys Outreach School. We want students to have the information they need to make plans for their education, Hagy says. Students and families faced with economic change may need real-time financial aid advice and advising about UWs academic programs, the admissions process and how to transfer to UW from a community college. A handful of prospective and current students stopped by the UW Regional Center at Gillette College to meet with the universitys team the afternoon of April 19 and the morning of April 20. While in Gillette, UWs representatives also visited with the Campbell County Commission, Gillette city officials and local legislators. One of the messages we received was that our presence in Gillette likely will be more important later on, when the end of severance packages, federal unemployment benefits and other issues will have people thinking about higher education options, Hagy says. We plan to return two or three more times, and to partner with Gillette College to meet any needs the university can fill. Keisel remains available at the UW Regional Center, 300 W. Sinclair St. in Gillette, to assist current and prospective students. The office is open from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and the phone number is (307) 686-0044. Hagy may be contacted at (307) 766-5404 during regular business hours or at Alyson.Hagy@uwyo.edu. Incoming UW President Laurie Nichols, who takes office at UW May 16, is scheduled to speak at the spring commencement ceremony at Gillette College Friday, May 13. She will then return to Gillette on May 24 to meet with the county commissioners, other local officials, industry representatives and other members of the community. Its part of her plan to spend a day or two of each week of her first months in office traveling around the state to meet with citizens, community college and public school leaders, legislators, alumni, media and others. What Is the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway? The HGTV Dream Home Giveaway is an annual sweepstakes from the Scripps Network's Home and Garden Television channel, which has run since 1997. Every year, HGTV uses a series of HGTV Dream Home television specials to showcase a gorgeous new home that their experts have built, then give it away. Dream Home winners receive prize packages including the house, cash, a car, and more totaling between one and three million dollars! Since its 1997 conception, the HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes has since grown into one of America's biggest and most popular giveaways. How many people usually enter? The number has risen every year so far. In 1998, 2.5 million entries were received, but the 2016 HGTV Dream Home winner's name was chosen from among 127 million entries! How to Enter and Win the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway: If you want to know when the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway starts, look for an announcement toward the end of each year. Rules can change from year to year, but here are some tips on how it usually works. Typically, entry is open to residents of the United States. To enter, you have to be at least 21 years. You're allowed to enter the Dream House sweepstakes every day, and in some years you can rack up extra entries for activities like referring friends, entering through partner websites, and other methods. Be sure to check each year for changes to these giveaway rules. You can also enter the HGTVDream Home giveaway by mail, and unlike entering online, you can enter as often as you want through the postal service. Although it's alluring to think that you can get so many more entries by mail (some websites have even reported this as a loophole to be manipulated), check out should I enter sweepstakes online and by mail for the pros and cons. If you'd like to enter by mail, I'd suggest setting a budget first. Decorating your envelopes might not be a bad idea, either. In their blog post about the 2016 Winner Drawing, HGTV showcased several of the beautifully decorated envelopes they received. No word on whether one of them was the winner, though! If you're curious about the winner selection process, and how HGTV fairly selects a winner from among millions and millions of entries sent online and by mail, check out How HGTV Selects Winners. How will you know if you've won? HGTV typically surprises their winners with an "ambush". They recruit friends and family to help set up a surprise announcement, and film the winners' reactions. How the HGTV Dream Home Is Built: HGTV's experts scour America for the right setting for each year's Dream Home. Previous year's homes have included beach getaways like the 2016 Dream Home in Merritt Island, Florida, a luxurious farmhouse in Sonoma, California, a mountain retreat in Stowe, Vermont, and many other dream locations. After the location is chosen, construction begins. From 1997 through 2015, HGTV built a brand-new Dream Home. In 2016, they broke the mold by doing a total makeover of a pre-existing house. Either way, HGTV's experts create a home that any family would dream of owning, and document each step of the way. They show the construction on television and by free videos on their website, inspiring viewers to make similar upgrades in their own homes. Once the home is constructed, they bring in expert interior and exterior designers to make that year's HGTV Dream Home even more gorgeous. In order to design each year's home in a way that respects and pays homage to its surroundings, HGTV uses locally-sourced materials, local artisans, and local vegetation in its landscaping. And when the house is completely done, HGTV just gives it away. What Do Dream Home Sweepstakes Winners Receive? Each year's HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes winner receives the home itself, all of the artwork and furnishings inside the home, a big cash prize, and a new vehicle. Sometimes, additional prizes, like a doggie dream homefor pets or a new boat for waterfront properties, are also included. The total prize value routinely reaches $2 million or more. In some years, the winner is giving the option of choosing a cash prize instead of taking possession of the Dream Home itself. If the winner chooses this option, they receive the associated prizes like the vehicles, cash, and furnishings, but HGTV retains the rights to the house. Usually, they sell the home to a private bidder. Take Note: Even If You Win the Dream Home, You Probably Won't Live In It For many people who dream of winning the HGTV Dream Home, finding out that you probably won't be taking up residence in its luxurious halls is a disappointment. Why don't Dream Home winners live in their homes? While the tasteful design and luxurious details make it tempting to try to move in, most Dream Homes are impractical for a family to actually live in. Many of the homes are too large for most families, with high utility and other costs. But more to the point for most people, the taxes on a prize worth over a million dollars can be crushing. See Could Taxes Spell the End of the Dream for HGTV Winners? for more information. In the past, some people have criticized HGTV for giving away a home most winners can't afford to keep. However, HGTV and its parent company, the Scripps Network, gives away several homes each year, many of which are more affordable. For more information, see Why Doesn't HGTV Give Away a More Affordable Dream Home? But even if you can't keep the home itself, it's absolutely still worth trying to win. For one example, read my interview with 2005 winner Don Cruz, who had to sell his home but had a blast in the time he owned it, and made lifelong friends. If you accept that you'll need to sell the house or take a cash option, you'll walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes, plus a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Tour Previous HGTV Dream Homes: Want to know what the big deal about the HGTV Dream Homes is and why so many people want to win one of these amazing homes? Here are photo tours of many of the beautiful homes that have been given away so far: Current Sweepstakes from HGTV and Its Partners: STAR FILE PHOTO SHARE By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star A candidate forum featuring candidates for the 1st District seat on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors is scheduled next week in Ventura. Four-term incumbent Steve Bennett and challenger David Grau, both of Ventura, are running for the seat in the June 7 primary election. The forum is scheduled from 7:45 to 9 a.m. May 5 at the Ventura Improv Co., 34 N. Palm St. The event, sponsored by the Ventura Chamber of Commerce, is free but registration is required. Chamber officials ask that those attending register by May 4 at www.venturachamber.com/candidate. The 1st District includes the Ventura area, the Ojai Valley, RiverPark, northwest Oxnard and coastal communities at Mussel Shoals, La Conchita and Solimar and Faria beaches. Two seats on the board, which oversees the county government, are contested. The other one lies in the 3rd District, where incumbent Kathy Long is not seeking re-election. Most of the populated portion of that district lies in Camarillo, Port Hueneme and the Santa Paula-Fillmore area. The 3rd District race has drawn seven candidates, making it unlikely anyone will win the majority vote in the primary and sending the race to a runoff in November between the top two finishers. Winners of both seats will start their four-year terms in January. Supervisor John Zaragoza is seeking another term to represent the Oxnard-based 5th District but is unopposed. MANNY ARAUJO/THE STAR Bouquets of flowers were found Saturday at a roadside memorial for Nadya Unger, who died when a motorcycle crashed into a train Thursday near Las Posas Road and Fifth Street. SHARE MEGAN DISKIN/THE STAR Customers brought flowers and cards to Bark, Bath & Beyond, the Camarillo business of Nadya Unger, who died Thursday when a motorcycle slammed into a train south of Camarillo. MEGAN DISKIN/THE STAR A stuffed animal and potted desert plant were found Saturday at the site where Nadya Unger died Thursday when a motorcycle slammed into a train south of Camarillo. MEGAN DISKIN/THE STAR Bouquets of flowers were found Saturday at a roadside memorial for Nadya Unger, who died when a motorcycle crashed into a train Thursday near Las Posas Road and Fifth Street. MEGAN DISKIN/THE STAR Rocco Miller (left) and Sarah Klinker have been taking care of Nadya Unger's business, Bark, Bath & Beyond, on Verdugo Way in Camarillo. By Megan Diskin of the Ventura County Star Bouquets on Saturday adorned the site where a 23-year-old Camarillo motorcycle passenger died as the vehicle slammed into a train. Tied to a utility pole with the yellow tape that blocked the area after Thursday's crash, they were joined by a stuffed animal and a potted desert plant left just below the railroad tracks where Nadya Unger's body was found. Authorities said Garrett Vongunten, 26, of Camarillo, was operating the motorcycle when it crashed into a Metrolink train about 6 p.m. Thursday at Las Posas Road and Fifth Street just south of Camarillo. He was taken to Ventura County Medical Center with major injuries and later arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs. Hunter Dobson, 20, was at the roadside memorial Saturday morning with Unger's younger sister and their close friend. He later said Unger was the sister he never had. "She really inspired me to be the person I am today," he said of Unger, who owned a Camarillo dog-grooming business known as Bark, Bath & Beyond. "She instilled that hardworking attitude in me," Dobson said, adding that he didn't have a lot of motivation until he met Unger. Since Unger's death, her friends Rocco Miller and Sarah Klinker have been taking care of her business on Verdugo Way. They said Unger had recently started dating Vongunten, and the crash occurred while the two were on a regular Thursday night motorcycle ride. "She always wanted a motorcycle. I hate to say it, but she went out doing something that she loved," Miller said. "She loved going on rides with Garrett." Klinker, 29, was told by a friend who went to the hospital that Vongunten, a former Marine, lost part of his leg and shattered his pelvis in the crash. He was in a medically induced coma but was expected to survive, she said. Unger's business opened last spring, and Miller, 26, has been working there since October. They had met when Unger came to Waggin Tails Dog Grooming in Moorpark looking for a job. "I gave her a job at a salon in Moorpark, and she told me, 'In two years, I'm going to have my own,' " Miller said. "And she was right." Unger only worked at the Moorpark salon for about six months before quitting to take a crash course in pet grooming so she could learn the trade more quickly, Miller said of the ambitious friend who eventually hired her. Klinker joined Unger's business on Saturday so she could help keep it afloat while Unger's family sorts out what do with the venture. Customers visited the pet salon Saturday, bringing flowers and cards. Among them was Mary Gillette, who was in tears as she walked in with a vase of flowers affixed with a picture of her dog. "She's just one of those people that made Camarillo feel like home, like a small town," Gillette said. Miller said a county firefighter also stopped by with flowers. "He said, 'We see this stuff every day, but it's not always someone you know when you get there,' " Miller said. Klinker said Unger's passion to connect with people and her community made her a success. But the adventurous entrepreneur had been thinking about selling the business so she could travel, Klinker said, although she wanted it to stay with someone she knew. "We're actually at this point considering purchasing it," if that is what the family wants, Klinker said. They'd like to turn it into a nonprofit and make donations to animal organizations in Arizona and California in honor of their friend. Staff writer Manny Araujo contributed to this report. SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Chef Neftali Duran will present "Hecho a Mano: A Food History of Indigenous Innovation" on Friday at the Indigenous Knowledge Conference in Oxnard. By Claudia Boyd-Barrett / Special to The Star As a native of the Oaxaca region of Mexico, Neftali Duran comes from a gastronomic culture so rich it helped inspire UNESCO recognition of Mexican cuisine as intangible cultural heritage. Yet when Duran moved to West Los Angeles in 1997 and began learning to be a chef, his introduction to professional cooking was through American and European dishes. That got him thinking about his own gastronomic culture and history, sparking a personal journal into rediscovering his indigenous Oaxacan roots. Today, Duran is an ambassador for Oaxacan food. Hes been named Native American chef of the year by the Smithsonian and was a featured speaker at the institutions 2015 Food History weekend. IF YOU GO What: Indigenous Knowledge Conference When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday Where: Oxnard College Performing Arts Center, 8000 S. Rose Ave., Oxnard. Cost: $80, including breakfast and lunch. Information, registration: Contact the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) at micop@mixteco.org or 483-1166, or visit mixteco.org. On Friday, Duran will speak about the history and evolution of indigenous and Oaxacan food at the 2016 indigenous Knowledge Conference in Oxnard. Aimed at educators, health workers, social service providers and anyone interested in indigenous culture, the conference runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Oxnard College Performing Arts Center. Oaxaca, or Mesoamerica in general its what I like to call the Mesopotamia of the Americas, said Duran, who is traveling from his current home in Massachusetts to attend the conference. Its where agriculture originates and spread north and south and eventually to Europe and other continents Recognizing the depth of the history is something I like to talk about. Now in its fourth year, the conference is organized by the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, or MICOP, a nonprofit group dedicated to empowering indigenous Mexicans in Ventura County. An estimated 20,000 indigenous Mexicans living in the county, many of them farmworkers. The conference includes workshops on indigenous languages, immigration law, farmworker labor rights and mental health. In addition to Duran, who will speak at the end of the conference, the event features UCLA professor Luz Maria de la Torre Amaguana, a native of Ecuador, who will speak about the worldview of indigenous women. Bilingual interpretation in English and Spanish will be provided. Its been really popular; every year its grown. Weve been really thrilled by how many people come and just the nice response we get, Margaret Sawyer, MICOPs development director, said of the conference. We do it to raise awareness about the indigenous immigrant community, to encourage agencies to think about how each community can be better reached through their programs, and also to share best practices among different partners. Indigenous Mexicans have their own languages and customs that are different from those of other immigrants from Mexico. That can lead to cultural and linguistic isolation after they arrive in Ventura County. Many of the indigenous people in the county are Mixtecos, although some are from other indigenous groups. MICOP Executive Director Arcenio Lopez said the situation for indigenous people in the county has improved over the past few years, much as a result of his organizations efforts. The community and social service agencies are more aware of the particular needs of the Mixteco population, and the public health system is providing Mixtecos with access to interpreters in their language. However, more still needs to be done, he said, particularly when it comes to recognizing the variety of indigenous people in the county, including Zapotecs and Purepechas. There is still a lot of room to grow in terms of really understanding the great diversity of the indigenous population in Ventura County, he said. SHARE STOCK PHOTO Oxnard Police. By Staff Reports Police were looking for a man in connection with a robbery Sunday at an Oxnard cellular store, officials said. Oxnard police said the man entered the business about 8:20 p.m. in the 2100 block of Channel Island Boulevard and demanded money. Witnesses did not see a gun but said the man pretended to have one by putting his hand underneath his shirt in the shape of a gun, authorities stated. The man fled the scene and got away with an undisclosed amount of cash, officials said. Police said they were reviewing security footage from the robbery. STAR FILE PHOTO The Todd Road Jail near Santa Paula. SHARE By Mike Harris of the Ventura County Star The California Board of State and Community Corrections has authorized the remaining funding to build a $61 million medical and mental health facility at the Todd Road Jail near Santa Paula. The board in November granted Ventura County a partial award of $25.6 million for the planned 64-bed unit. The board this month awarded Ventura County the remaining $29.4 million after San Francisco County relinquished its conditional funding because its Board of Supervisors balked at using the money for a detention facility. "Ventura County now has full funding of $55,137,000," corrections board spokeswoman Tracie Cone said Monday. A Ventura County match of $6 million completes the project's funding. The facility will ease crowding and improve treatment of inmates with psychiatric and medical conditions, officials said. Ventura County Sheriff's Cmdr. Ron Nelson, who oversees the jail, said he was pleased with the full funding award. "We're very excited about the opportunity to build this facility," he said. Ventura County Executive Officer Mike Powers also was pleased, saying the additional $29.4 million award "reflects the quality of the project." "The sheriff (Geoff Dean) and his team put a lot of thought into this," Powers said. "And to have it focus on medical and mental health services was exactly the right need. I think that the fact that it received such a favorable scoring validates that." Before ground can be broken, the facility must be approved by the state Public Works Board. Construction isn't expected to begin for about two years, Nelson said. "We'll be going through the design process first, working with an architect, and then the approval process," he said. Construction is "probably a couple years down the road." Once it begins, the county will start receiving the state funding, said Magi Work, the corrections board's deputy director. "We don't just give Ventura County a check for $55 million," she said. "We begin reimbursing them once they get into construction." The state funding is from the lease-revenue bond financing program, which was established in Gov. Jerry Brown's 2014-15 budget and Senate Bill 863, the Adult Local Criminal Justice Facility Financing legislation. The legislation calls for the expansion of programming and treatment space, as well as re-entry program space and mental health and treatment space. Ventura County must now go through an extensive process in an attempt to get the project approved by the state Public Works Board, Work said. "The county must come up with the scope of the project, the schedule, and a three-page cost estimate of the project," she said. "And their CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) and due diligence status have to be completed. And then we go on to schematic documents submittal and design development submittal." She said she doesn't expect construction to begin for at least 18 months. "We give the counties up to 18 months to get established," she said. "And then it could take another year or two to start construction. It just really depends on that county. That county could get into construction within 18 months if they're ready." SHARE While court decisions on teacher unions and tenure and political battles over Common Core and charter schools may be grabbing California's educational headlines, there's a growing movement in our public schools that might be under your radar. It shouldn't be, because it is changing one of education's most important functions preparing students for careers. The state created the California Career Pathways Trust in 2014 to boost career technical education, and Ventura County was fortunate enough to be among a dozen recipients of the program's initial grants. More grants followed, and we're glad to see the career-education momentum continue this month with the agreement to create a new career center in Moorpark. When the recession hit California in 2007, one of the casualties was vocational education, including cuts in funding for some Regional Occupational Programs, commonly known as ROP. We believed those were bad cuts, affecting students seeking job skills outside of increasingly expensive college. Now, after economic recovery, the state is spending more than $1.5 billion over five years on programs Career Pathways Trust and California Career Technical Education Incentive Grants that encourage partnerships between K-12 schools, community colleges and businesses to help get students ready for careers. A consortium of Ventura County school districts received $13.2 million in the first round of funding, $10.2 million in the second and $5.7 million in the third, just last month. The group VC Innovates includes the Ventura County Community College District, county Office of Education and nine local K-12 school districts. It hopes to serve more than 35,000 students. The goal is to prepare students for high-demand local jobs in sectors like information technology, health science, robotics, agriculture and energy. Classes are offered at middle, adult and high schools; community colleges; and the county Career Education Center. The business community provides mentors, internships, job shadowing and other help. Through streamlined "career pathways," students can begin studying in high school for careers and move seamlessly into community college and then on to a university if they like, proponents say. A host of current or planned programs are getting help from VC Innovates, including a Ventura College-Moorpark College effort where students learn to make biomedical devices, the bioscience academy at Foothill Technology High School in Ventura and a diesel technology program at Ventura College. The latest project is the conversion of the former Moorpark Community High School to a career education center for the east county. The Moorpark Unified School District board this month approved a five-year deal with the county Office of Education to turn the campus into an east county hub for career and technical education for high school students, and possibly an adult education school later. It will offer technology, medical, hospitality, engineering and other classes for existing career pathways at high schools. Students living in the east county won't have to travel to the Career Education Center in Camarillo anymore to take those classes. California Career Pathways has some potential hitches. The state's big investment is one-time money, keeping the programs going when the grants run out could be expensive, and matching the career pathways to constantly changing job markets won't be easy. But in Ventura County at least, it will be hard to stop the momentum the educational and business community are building together to provide a skilled workforce for the 21st century. TROY HARVEY/THE STARAn Oxnard Police officer stands in an ally near the corner of Fourth Street and South H Street in Oxnard Tuesday afternoon. Officers responded to the area after they received a 911 call about a man with a gun in the street. Oxnard, Ca., Aug. 14, 2012 SHARE By Staff Reports Oxnard police are looking for a gunman who they say shot and wounded a doughnut shop employee during a robbery Sunday morning. The incident took place about 2:13 a.m. at Oxnard Donuts, 2510 Saviers Road. Police said, the suspect, described as a Hispanic male, 27-32 years old, 58, 200 pounds, fled with an undisclosed amount of cash. The shooting victim was taken to a hospital and is expected to recover. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Scott Coe at 805-385-7796. Those who wish to remain anonymous can call the violent crimes hotline, 805-982-7070 or Ventura County Crime Stoppers, 800-222-8477. Tips can also be submitted via text or email at http://www.venturacountycrimestoppers.org/contactus.aspx. Saturday night French Montana joined Cash Cash for a special edition of Make that Cash Cash Las Vegas at Marquee Nightclub in The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (Pictured: French Montana and Cash Cash Photo credit: Tony Tran). Photo credit: Tony Tran. Bringing together two genres of music, Cash Cash started out the night with an array of EDM hits before French Montana joined the DJ trio on-stage to delight club-goers with a blowout performance. Photo credit: Tony Tran. Spotted in the crowd at Marquee were band members of the a cappella group Pentatonix. On Saturday, June 25, LAX Nightclub in Luxor Hotel and Casino will welcome the GRAMMY Award-nominated group Jagged Edge as they host their album release party. The foursome will join Las Vegas clubgoers to celebrate the launch of their seventh studio album, The Remedy. Best known for their collective, love hit melodies, Lets Get Married, Baby and Love On You, the group will dedicate the night to their latest success as they party at the mega-club. The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, The Strips unique, 2,995-room luxury resort, proudly participated in the inaugural Los Angeles Food & Wine, October 13 October 15. Combining style and accessibility, the resort presented a unique festival experience with The Slice, an unexpected way to introduce guests to The Cosmopolitan experience. This two-story mobile haven featured the signature design of The Cosmopolitan and emulated the essence of the resorts luxury rooms. Guests received art from the Art-o-mat, a recycled cigarette machine which vends original pieces of art, paged through an eclectic collection of Phaidon books and sipped on signature cocktails and as well as premium espressos from Illy. Festival-goers were also treated to a vibrant performance by Train during Saturdays LEXUS Live on the Plaza event from atop The Slices second story roof deck. Visitors of The Slice included Adrienne Maloof from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Top Chef alums Antonia Lofaso (Black Market Liquor Bar) and Casey Thompson (Brownstone), Chris Cosentino (Incanto), David Myers (Comme Ca), Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys), Kyle Richards from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Michael Mina (Michael Mina), Scott Conant (Scarpetta), Wolfgang Puck (Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air), Bai Ling (actress) and Questlove from The Roots. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh said at last weeks conference on Enhancing the comprehensive Asia-Europe Partnership in the 21st century in Hanoi that, At this point in time, the world continues to witness profound changes that give rise to new issues and challenges to multilateral forums and mechanisms, including the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The world economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution coming to the fore, new mind-sets, policies, and practices are taking shape in ways that foster green, sustainable, and innovative development and closely link development to economic growth, he added. Minh went on to say that amidst observable trends in the democratisation of international relations and the strong growth of partnerships and next-generation free trade agreements, global challenges are growing more complex. Major threats include increasing poverty and the development gap, climate change, natural disasters, salinization, population ageing, urbanisation, and the water-energy-food nexus. These issues cannot be dealt with by any individual country or region alone. "Addressing them is both an imperative need and an impetus for stronger co-operation to ensure sustainable development in each member country on the two continents. This undoubtedly requires ASEM members to enhance connectivity," he noted. At the event, which attracted 150 domestic and international delegates, ASEM members also reviewed the bodys 20 years of development, assessed major changes in Asia and Europe, and identified opportunities and obstacles for the future. The attendees talked of ASEMs direction in the next decade, new approaches to people-to-people interactions, and explored how best to strengthen ASEMs main pillars of co-operation, which include politics and economics alike. According to Minh, Vietnams engagement as a founding member of ASEM in 1996 marked a major step in implementing the countrys policies of expansion, diversification of relations, and international economic integration. ASEM is of great importance to Vietnams reform, development, and far-reaching international integration. Vietnams most notable contribution was hosting the fifth ASEM Summit in 2004 and the ministers meetings in the fields of economics, information technology, external affairs, education, and labour from 2001-2012. Minh said that Vietnam has led the way, carrying out a number of ASEM initiatives, adding that the country proposed 21 initiatives and co-sponsored 24 others in various fields, such as food security, natural disaster prevention, and climate change adaptation. Currently, ASEM is home to 19 of Vietnams 25 strategic and comprehensive partners, making up 70 per cent of its FDI and international trade, and 80 per cent of international tourists visiting Vietnam. Additionally, 14 of the 16 free trade agreements (FTAs) signed or under negotiation by Vietnam are with ASEM partners. This enables Vietnam to become a crucial link in the large economic integration network of 60 partners, 47 of whom are ASEM members. On average, nine children drowned every day last year Most recently, two young children and a teenager tragically drowned in Son Tinh and Ba To districts in the central province of Quang Ngai. The day previous, the nation was saddened by the news that nine sixth grade schoolboys drowned while they were swimming in a section of the Tra Khuc River, also in the same province. According to Colonel Vo Van Duong, deputy head of the Quang Ngai Public Security Department, the lack of swimming skills and information about the section of the river which they jumped into was the main cause of this incident. The situation was so serious that Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had called on the Ministry of Education and Training and peoples committees of cities and provinces nationwide to strengthen the management of students and children, to organise safe summer activities, and enhance swimming lessons for students. Statistics from the Ministry of Health revealed that on average, nine children died from drowning every day last year in Vietnam. Drowning is one of the main causes of child fatalities in the country. Tran Thanh Binh, former principal of the School Design Institution under the Ministry of Training and Education, said that the issue of children falling accidentally in water was not a new one but remained a concern for all of society. According to Binh, most drowning cases were caused by children playing in water when they do not know how to swim, or, even when they do know, falling into deep or dangerous water. Binh said many project developers had created water holes when implementing their constructions, and as they were left without coverings, these were essentially traps for children. Binh also said that project owners were not entirely obeying building regulations and that parents, especially in remote areas, have not been paying adequate attention to their children. In some areas there is a shortage of playgrounds for children, and when regulations in construction are not seriously obeyed, this serves as a warning for schools and parents, as awareness of the issue is the foremost concern, Binh said. In a report from 2012 named Evidence for a newly recognised cause of child mortality in low and middle income countries in Asia, UNICEF stated that even though drowning was a leading killer of children across parts of Asia, highly effective and cost-efficient programmes to reduce such drowning deaths were not being sufficiently embraced. The report examined Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand and was conducted by The Alliance for Safe Children in collaboration with UNICEFs Office of Research. It found that in these countries one in every four child deaths were due to drowning more than the number who die from measles, polio, whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, and tuberculosis combined. In Vietnam, drowning occurs at about the same rate as other causes of death until the age of five, at which point drowning rates begin to increase. The research stated that the cost of drowning prevention among children is no more expensive than intervention measures for these diseases. The report found that the vast majority of drowning deaths were preventable. They tend to occur within 20 metres of the home and are the result of unsupervised children wandering off and falling into local water hazards. It found that drowning death rates in Vietnam among children attending village creches were reduced by more than 80 per cent as a direct result of having adequate supervision. However, the drowning rate in children four years and older who had participated in swimming and safe rescue training were reduced by more than 90 per cent. It indicated that success in child drowning prevention required multi-sector collaboration and was critical in building the community and the governmental capacity to implement and monitor drowning prevention programmes. Trinh Thi Oanh In the next five years this field of business is going to grow even more and so will its influence. Vietnamese contact centres are going to serve not only the domestic market but also reach out to the international market. The growth of retail has been the main driver of this growth. The retail markets potential World analysts have said that after Vietnam joins the TPP, retailers will not immediately be able to approach the Vietnamese market and change it. Still, foreign investors are showing increasing interest in the Vietnamese retail market and are taking steps to prepare set up here. The reason is that Vietnam holds a lot of potential with its 90 million-strong population, of which young people account for 60 per cent, and that modern retail is only accounting for 25 per cent of total retail revenue. According to the General Statistics Office, the retail revenue in 2015 was VND2,470 trillion ($111 billion), up 10.6 per cent on-year. However, modern retail, namely supermarkets and malls, only accounted for 25 per cent of all this. The percentage is a lot lower compared to that in other countries in the region, such as the Phillippines (33 per cent), Thailand (34 per cent), China (51 per cent), Malaysia (60 per cent), and Singapore (90 per cent). This unexploited potential, coupled with the numerous trade agreements Vietnam signed is going to lure many big retailers to the market. Japanese Aeon, South Korean Lotte Mart, French Auchan, Walmart from the US, and Thai Central Group and Berli Jucker Co.s entrance and mergers and acquisitions in Vietnam in the recent years are a demonstration of this markets appeal. Big retailers in Vietnam At the moment, Aeon has three shopping centres in Vietnam and shows no signs of stopping. The Japanese company plans to have 20 shopping centres in Vietnam by 2020, making a total revenue of VND18 trillion ($807 million). Aeon knows that Vietnamese consumers are very fond of Japanese goods, so it strives to ensure that Japanese goods account for one third of the total goods on sale in its shopping centres, while Vietnamese goods and goods from other countries each account for one third. With this formula, Aeons shopping centres attract 30,000 visitors each week day and 70,000 each day of the weekends. This is a success that many retailers in Vietnam envy. In 2015, Thai retailer Berli Jucker (BJC) became the owner of all Metro supermarkets in Vietnam at the publicly-announced price of $710 million. BJC also has shown interest in buying 30 supermarkets of the Big C brand, put on sale by their current owner French Groupe Casino. This not only shows BJCs high expectations for the retail and distribution market in Vietnam, but the companys hope to lead the market. With the participation of big brands with big investment plans, the Vietnamese retail market is going to become more exciting, and competition among retailers is going to be increasingly fierce. Then, whichever brand is able to create trust and bring to customers the perfect shopping experience is going to gain their loyalty. The importance of contact centres for retailers To compete, besides ensuring product quality, a retailer cannot ignore customer services. The mind-set of Vietnamese consumers has changed in the past decade. They no longer want only high quality products. Because living standards have risen and the internet has brought about a revolution in communication, they demand more in terms of customer services, service culture, and added value from spending money on a product. Therefore, when entering the Vietnamese market, retailers have to pay more attention to customer care as well as to standardising and professionalising customer touch-points. Online interaction is a very popular trend among young customers. In order to create the perfect shopping experience and increase the number of loyal customers at a low cost, one of the effective tools is setting up a contact centre. In the past ten years, the Vietnamese contact centre outsourcing industry has seen impressive growth. At the moment, some companies are providing high quality contact centre services on par with companies in traditional outsourcing markets, such as India, the US, or the Philippines. Hoa Sao Group, in collaboration with contact centre software solution provider Vocalcom, has been providing services for its numerous partners not only in Vietnam but also around the world. The multi-channel contact centre service provided by Hoa Sao, where brands can approach and show care for customers across all channels, including voice, web chat, SMS, and social networking, is a great tool for retailers to strengthen their competitiveness. By building a professional contact centre while saving costs through outsourcing, along with having a customer-oriented business strategy, brands will find it easier to seek new customers as well as retain existing ones. By Trinh Thi Oanh - Deputy general director of Hoa Sao Group Descendants of the Sun tells the story of the love between Yoo Shi Jin (played by Song Joong Ki), leader of a UN peacekeeping force, and Kang Mo Yeon (played by Song Hye Kyo), a surgeon volunteering for an NGO as they work together in the war-torn country of Uruk. Since its first episode aired in South Korea by the end of February, the series has been praised by millennials for its charming actors, attractive storyline and drop-dead gorgeous romance scenes. Thailands Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has been quoted by several newspapers as complimenting Descendants of the Sun on its spirit of patriotism and virtue for ones country, and encouraging Thai people to watch it. Thirty-three countries have bought the movies copyright from its original broadcaster KBS and will soon broadcast it - including Ho Chi Minh Citys channel HTV2. However, some dont think the drama should be shown in Viet Nam. Tran Quang Thi, a journalist, objected to the show, citing all the pain and losses South Korean soldiers caused to the Vietnamese people in south-central Vietnamese provinces during the American War. If one Korean soldier was killed, the others would shoot the entire village where they thought the soldier was killed, he wrote on his personal Facebook account. Mass shootings and bombings, rapes, splitting children into two... the darkest part of the war made its presence known in every place South Korean soldiers set foot on. He said he was not forbidding people to watch the series. But if one day a series that promotes the image of the South Korean army appears on our city television, I will have only one word: shame! he wrote. His post was shared nearly 90,000 times and received a lot of praise. A comment by Facebook user Lang My read: When I was little - and that was before 1975 - stories about South Korean soldiers always freaked me out." I know we should leave the past behind and head toward the future, but it doesnt mean we should deny or refuse to acknowledge what happened," he said. In the context of the drama being widespread amongst Vietnamese youth, many people from the older generation said youth should be aware of the South Korean armys crimes while watching it. However, many who watched the drama online said it had nothing to do with the Viet Nam War. The Korean soldiers in it belong to the UN peacekeeping force, said Tran Thu Hien, 23, of Ha Noi. To criticise their image would be to overcomplicate the issue, because it is just a trend that will soon fade. Thuy Tu, a 24-year-old advertising agent in HCM City, said the series helped her understand the qualities of a good citizen, as well as love and responsibility for ones community, ones self and ones profession. Watching it makes me yearn to devote my skills and knowledge to serve the community, she said. I admire the filmmakers and actors, for they have been able to turn the difficult subjects of patriotism and social responsibility into something inspiring for the youth. A large number of young people watched the drama just because of its attractive actors and storyline, and wouldnt have thought of the historical aspects, said Vo Pham Que My, 24, of HCM City. "Even if we do judge the drama from a political perspective, I dont think we should be too critical," she said. "The war is over." Answering interview questions from Viet Nam News, the director of HTV2 said, We received ten of thousands of comments on social media every day from viewers. Reading them, we see a positive sign that young people have realised Descendants of the Suns key message, which is the desire of the new generation to lead a meaningful life. They are doing their best to develop a lifestyle of selfless devotion to their community and loved ones. He said the drama had broken records in viewership ratings in South Korea and received more than 2 billion views in Asia - reasons that HTV2 decided to bring it to Viet Nam. The series is expected to officially premiere on HTV2 by the end of April, he said. As a communications major who has taken media analysis courses, I think theres a lot to take into consideration when it comes to analysing a media product. When the movie Fifty Shades of Grey (50 Sac Thai) first came out in Viet Nams theatres, the idea of a movie laden with violent sex scenes being widely promoted in my country bugged me. The feminist texts I read in college came back to me, and I wondered if young people who have never heard of the concepts of "rape culture" and "consent" would be able to tell the differences between consensual violent sex (BDSM) the movies main theme and rape. As a result, I became averse to the fact that thousands of young adults rushed to cinemas to watch the movie before equipping themselves with a certain understanding about the subject they were about to get exposed to. As for Descendants of the Sun, I understand This position, knowing more about a media production than what appears on the screen, as well as the urge to share such knowledge with the community. However, having taken a look at the drama myself, on the one hand, I agree with the millennials that it is not related to the American War. I also agree that whats past is past, and the wounds of the past should be left to heal instead of slashed open again by the next generation. On the other hand, as English writer Aldous Huxley wrote in his book The Art of Seeing: "The more you know, the more you see." I appreciate every bit of extra knowledge and background information around an issue, even if they are not directly related. In this case, it is to be aware of what my country had been through without using it to judge a cultural product. At the end of the day, isnt it healthy for the younger generation to keep an open mind, be a sponge, absorb everything and see what we can make of it? Nhat Le beach - photo source internet According to Pham Ha, co-founder of Emperor Cruises, this problem will severely affect the number of tourists coming to the central area this summer. I have a friend in Quang Binh province. He has just told me that there have been no guests on Nhat Le beach for the the last 10 days, even though it is one of the most beautiful beaches in Vietnam, Ha told VIR. If this problem persists, tourism in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua ThienHue provinces will bear the consequences. Ha suggested that tourists go further to Nha Trang Khanh Hoa, where the beach is not affected. Since early April, thousands of succumbed fish were found floating in the coastal areas of the central provinces. Vo Huu Duat, a local fish farmer from Ky An town in Ha Tinh, said that his 500 kilogrammes of fish died. I was not able to save a single one of them, he said. Another fish farmer, Nguyen Thai Thao, shared that over 4,000kg of her fish started dying on April 21 following a rising tide. We will suffer heavy losses if we keep our operations under these circumstances, Thao commented. According to the report from the local departments of Agriculture and Rural Development, the mass dying of fishstock was caused by polluted seawater, the phosphate content and pH level of which were both higher than permitted. The central part of Vietnam, including Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua ThienHue, is famous for its beautiful beaches, such as Nhat Le, Gia Dang, Cua Tung, and Cua Viet. In 2015, Quang Binh and Thua Thien-Hue welcomed five and 3.1 million domestic and international tourists, respectively. That number for Quang Tri and Ha Tinh provinces was 1.6 million each. Themed Vietnamese Enterprises The engine of economic development, the first meeting between Prime Minister Phuc and the private sector is scheduled for April 29, just three weeks after his election. This conference was billed as a priority at Phucs first working meeting with the new cabinet earlier this month, indicating the new leaders commitment to clearing a path for the robust development of the private sector. In a statement about the upcoming event, the government affirmed that as businesses are the engines of economic development, the government would create favourable conditions for startups and promote business expansion in terms of both quantity and quality. In addition, the conference would require authorities at all levels to come up with practical solutions to remove hurdles. To prepare for the meeting, the prime minister asked ministries and local authorities to report the difficulties and proposals received by businesses from all sectors and regions, so that the government could begin the arduous task of formulating solutions. Ultimately, the Ministry of Planning and Investment will be responsible for compiling the reports for submission to the Government Office. Importantly, business leaders in the private sector have been encouraged by the prime minister to raise their voices. The prime minister asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) to invite 300 private enterprises, 50 foreign-owned companies, and 20 business associations, including the American, European, Japanese, and Korean chambers of commerce, to attend the event. The VCCI will represent domestic businesses and will recommend proposals to improve their operations. Relevant authorities from all sectors and provinces have also been instructed to respond to the businesses proposals. The chairmen of the Hanoi and the Ho Chi Minh municipal peoples committees are due to sign an agreement with the VCCI, with a view to offering an optimum business climate. In another move to tackle Vietnams outstanding issues, Phuc attended a meeting to promote investment and tourism in central Quang Tri province, one of the poorest localities in Vietnam. As business circles play a critical role in economic development, we must create favourable conditions for investors, emphasised the prime minister, adding that the Vietnamese government aims to place the country in the top four ASEAN nations in terms of the most favourable business environment. This target was set down in 2015 under Resolution 19/NQ-CP, which impelled all authorities to meet deadlines on the simplification of administrative procedures. Adam Sitkoff - Executive director of AmCham Hanoi The American business community is encouraged that the new Vietnamese prime minister is focusing on business issues so quickly after taking office. This is important, as Vietnam faces some challenging reforms and upcoming changes in many laws. As a major investor here and as the top buyer of Vietnamese goods, American companies have a great interest in Vietnams continued success. At the April 29 meeting, we will tell Prime Minister Phuc that the business climate can best be helped by actions that increase productivity and reduce the costs and risks of doing business in Vietnam. We believe that the new government can best ensure growth by maintaining macro-economic and political stability, building world-class infrastructure, intensifying its efforts to upgrade workforce skills, and improving the ease of doing business here including addressing areas where inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and unfair practices persist. AmCham will also encourage the prime minister to make further efforts to improve governance and transparency, change the behaviour of state-owned enterprises, strengthen intellectual property rights, and ensure that legislation enables and facilitates rather than restricts business opportunities for our members. US President Barack Obama (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wave as they stand on a balcony after a welcoming ceremony upon arrival at the Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover, where they meet for bilateral talks. (KAI PFAFFENBACH/POOL/AFP) HANOVER, Germany: US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a joint pitch on Sunday (Apr 24) for deeper transatlantic trade in the face of mounting opposition, vowing to complete a vast US-EU trade pact that could spur much-needed economic growth. After talks in the northern town of Hanover where tens of thousands marched Saturday against the planned deal, Obama said the world's largest trade pact could be finalised by the end of the year. "Angela and I agree that the United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations," Obama said. "I don't anticipate that we will be able to have completed ratification of a deal by the end of the year, but I do anticipate that we can have completed the agreement." Both sides hope the pact will provide a shot in the arm to Western economies that are still struggling to erode the devastating effects of the global financial crisis. "As you see other markets like China beginning to develop and Asia beginning to develop and Africa growing fast, we have to make sure our businesses can compete." Merkel echoed that sentiment, saying the deal was "extremely helpful to allow our economy in Europe to grow". "It is good for the German economy, it is good for the European economy," she said. But Obama acknowledged there was popular opposition. "People are unsettled by globalisation," he said. "People visibly see a plant moving and jobs lost and the narrative develops that this is weakening rather than strengthening the position of ordinary people and ordinary workers. The benefits often times are diffused." Ahead of the meeting there was a sign of the significant hurdles that remain. Merkel's Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned the deal "will fail" if the United States refused to make concessions in "buy American" clauses. 'RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY' Merkel and Obama also discussed world crises including Syria and Libya. On Syria, Obama defended his decision not to impose a safe zone that could help stem flows of migrants and refugees into Europe that have hurt Merkel politically. "Sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country." But he rushed to Merkel's defence over the refugee crisis, saying she was on "the right side of history". Obama's trip - perhaps his last official visit to Germany before leaving office in January - coincides with the Hanover Messe, a large trade fair that demonstrates German industrial prowess. It follows stops in Saudi Arabia and Britain, where Obama plunged headlong into the debate over membership of the European Union. Obama pitched in on the side of Prime Minister David Cameron, arguing that Britain would be lose influence and trade opportunities if citizens vote to leave the EU in a June referendum. SOUL MATES During his seven years in the Oval Office, the Democrat US president and the conservative German chancellor have grown closer and Obama sees her, among European leaders at least, as first among equals. Aides describe a meeting of minds, two leaders who take a cerebral and analytical approach to politics. "I have valued chancellor Merkel's thinking and perspective on a whole range of global issues throughout my presidency," Obama said. "You have been a trusted partner throughout my entire presidency, longer than any world leader, and I value your judgement." Merkel echoed his sentiment at their joint press conference. "What you see is friendly, close, trusting cooperation that I am very pleased with, also because it helps solve international problems." ROCKY ROAD The pair will have dinner later on Sunday, and Obama will wrap up his visit Monday with a keynote speech designed to frame his vision of transatlantic relations and a meeting with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. Despite the diplomatic niceties, the relationship between Obama and Merkel has had its rocky moments. Merkel has backed austerity as the remedy to European sovereign debt crises, while Obama came down firmly in favour of short-term spending to buy time and a way out of the economic downturn. US-German relations hit a low when it emerged that the US government had been tapping Merkel's phone. But officials point to the Ukraine conflict as a turning point that helped both leaders begin to work in tandem. The cafe owner has his happy ending. But is it not too much that the PM himself had to be involved in a case of this magnitude? It is a timely directive by the PM. And this is a big issue, because it happened right when the government resolved to improve the business environment. If the government does not address this issue or does not address it in the new spirit, they will lose the peoples trust. If the case goes to court and the owner is declared not guilty or sentenced to house arrest, people and the business community will lose faith in a business environment that is risky and where they are so easily criminalised. I think the PM should get familiar with the business community and their specific difficulties. If the government wants companies to drive development, it has to be a partner of the business community, ready to support them instead of leaving them to fend for themselves. I believe that the PMs directive is supported by the people and companies because it conveys the message that the government is ready to realise its reform plan and facilitate the operation of companies. Now is the time to build trust through concrete actions. As one of the people involved in the drafting of regulations that would eliminate the crime of conducting business illegally in the Law on Enterprises, how do you view this incident? This incident can be considered the poster example of the difficulty in implementing the progressive features of the Constitution, the Law on Enterprises, and the Law on Investment. Because doing business is a right of the people, the laws has to ensure that it is unhampered. In this sense, people have the right to do business and then notify authorised government agencies. If they are slow to give notice, they should not be prosecuted. Government agencies should follow this spirit when interacting with companies. They should start investigations only to make the latter comply with the laws at their own will, and should instruct them to do so, instead of trying to find as many violations as possible to punish them. They have to view people and businesses as partners instead of subjects. This is the modern, humane way to govern. Only when such governance is achieved will the government be able to gain the trust of the people and businesses in reform policies and the leadership. On April 29, the PM is going to meet with the business community for the first time in his term. Will companies bring up similar grievances? If there are, I think companies will turn to the PM instead of going to the relevant government agencies, as stipulated by regulations. I think the PM wants to hear the truth, wants to hear about the difficulties of the people and businesses, to know how they feel and know for real what the business environment is like. Of course, companies will have to choose typical examples and the PM will solve the problems in groups. But I believe this is the chance for the PM to share the business communitys difficulties. Leaders of the Peoples Procuracy in Binh Chanh District on Sunday morning granted Nguyen Van Tan, owner of the Xin Chao! (Hello!) coffee shop, the decision to stop all legal proceedings against him, under the directions of Prosecutor General of the Supreme People's Procuracy Le Minh Tri on Saturday. Following a conversation with judicial bodies in Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Chanh District, along with assessments based on the case file, the Supreme People's Procuracy considered all charges against Tan unreasonable as he was not guilty of conducting business illegally, as accused. Prosecutor General Tri also ordered local authorities to publicly apologize to the cafe owner and compensate him for any damage. Le Thanh Tong, deputy chief of the Peoples Procuracy in District 6, and Ho Van Son, procurator at the equivalent institution in Binh Chanh District, who partook in the legal proceedings, have been temporarily suspended from work. In a brief interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, an official at the Supreme People's Procuracy affirmed that the close of the case was based on a legal basis and was not influenced by public pressure. A representative (R) of the Peoples Procuracy in Binh Chanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, hands Nguyen Van Tan the decision to stop all legal charges against him on April 24, 2016. Photo: Tuoi Tre Lieutenant General Le Dong Phong, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Police, asserted that the officers who filed the wrongful case against the coffee shop owner would be disciplined next week. There were many questionable aspects regarding the charges, Lt. Gen. Phong stated, adding that the police unit in Binh Chanh District was hasty and conservative when initiating the legal procedures. We will review the responsibilities of those individuals concerned and specify any wrongdoing, based on which penalties will be imposed, the police chief elaborated. Police officers haste has triggered fierce opposition from the public, damaging the image of the municipal police force, he said, adding that officials will convene a meeting to reach a final conclusion on punishment for those involved. Inspection has been ordered to be carried out of the investigations of all police units in the southern city to prevent similar misconduct, according to Lt. Gen. Phong. Other measures will also be applied to improve the qualifications of law enforcers in the city and to establish a police force with proper expertise and dedication, the police official concluded. Lieutenant General Le Dong Phong, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Police. Photo: Tuoi Tre On August 8, 2015, Tan opened his coffee shop in Binh Chanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, with a business license scheduled to be granted on August 19 and a food safety certificate on September 29. Just a month into the opening, the cafe selling breakfast, lunch and coffee was inspected by officers from the police station opposite twice for lacking such documents, leading to them probing the case against Tan on September 25. On March 11, 2016, the districts procuracy issued an indictment against Tan for conducting business illegally. The case has largely attracted media attention and triggered public outrage, as the police station was so active in seeking an indictment against the cafe owner. Tan was then prosecuted by the districts procuracy. "Conducting business illegally" will no longer be criminalized when Vietnam's new penal code comes into effect in July 2016. Citi supporting Vietnam in connecting the global dots Vietnam is considered by US group Citi as an attractive market. Ramachandran A.S., Citi country officer, talked to VIRs Linh Le about the groups efforts to utilise its global experience in the Southeast Asian nation, and its priorities moving forward. Radisson Hotel Group spearheading hospitality growth in Asia-Pacific With travel restrictions easing, air traffic increasing, and leisure and business travel bookings on the rise, Radisson Hotel Group is optimistic about the outlook for the hospitality industry in Asia-Pacific. Secrets of the most special securities company in Vietnam Techcom Securities (TCBS) leadership, with cutting-edge vision and execution muscle, has changed the course of the company over the last nine years since Nguyen Xuan Minh became chairman of the Board of Directors. VIRs Tuan Khanh sat together with Minh and talked about his path, vision, and success story. Promoting gender equality & enhancing women's economic empowerment Vietnarn's national strategy on gender equality for the 2021-2030 period sets a target that by 2025, 60 per cent of state management ageneies and local governments at all levels will have female key leaders. OPPO has accused FPT Trading of violating its distribution rights for the sale of its branded phones Photo: Le Toan The dispute broke out last week between the two telecommunications retailers when OPPO Vietnam, which is the sole authorised distributor of Chinas OPPO smart phones in Vietnam, discovered that its contracted agents were selling phones distributed by FPT Trading. OPPO Vietnam immediately informed its agents that the direct distribution of FPT Trading phones seriously violated OPPO Vietnams right to use the brand name. The monopoly rights on distribution are worth fighting over, it seems, as the sales of mobiles in the local market are nothing short of colossal. Shortly after OPPOs introduction in 2013, the brand became very popular in Vietnam thanks to its broad network of selling agents. OPPO Vietnam was even ranked second in terms of mobile market share in a report by market research group GfK. We will repurchase all devices previously distributed by FPT Trading, and pay each agent an extra VND2 million ($91.7), said OPPO Vietnams general director Do Quang Kha. Kha stressed that the move to repurchase the phones and re-stablise the market was critical, as the price gap between phones provided by the two distributors was significant. FPT Tradings mobiles were sold to users at around VND1 million ($45.9) lower than the price offered at OPPO Vietnams sales agents. In a hurried move, OPPO Vietnam announced that it would not provide any guarantee services on the FPT Trading mobiles sold, but later modified its position, offering customers OPPO Vietnam phones in exchange for the FPT Trading ones they had purchased. Crucially, these phones would then come under company warranty. OPPO Vietnam sales agents were warned that they would breach their employment contracts if they continued to sell phones from FPT Trading. The company has insisted that it will sweep out all presence of its rival FPT Trading from its distribution system, which it has put great effort into developing. In an ironic twist to this story, OPPO Vietnams sales agents include the two largest mobile retailers (in terms of market share), thegioididong.com and FPT Shop, which is under FPT Retail. In response to accusations that FPT Trading violated OPPO Vietnams distribution rights, FPT Tradings managing director Nguyen Quang Minh told VIR, We always act in accordance with the legal regulations of the country. More recently, FPT Trading announced that its agents and sellers would deal more carefully with products at its warranty centres regardless of OPPO Vietnams policy. The warranty services provided by FPT Trading is no less favourable than OPPO Vietnams. However, it has not proved favourable to end-buyers. It seemed to me that FPT Trading was trying to enjoy the fruit of OPPO Vietnams labour. Also, it matters to me where my OPPO phones will be guaranteed, and I think OPPO Vietnams centres have a better understanding of this brands product, said Do Quang Thai, a shopper in Hanois Tay Ho district. Big shot Hanoi buyers are looking to spread the wealth to the provinces A range of real estate projects have been introduced to Hanois market from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Danang and Nha Trang. The projects include The Charm, Sunrise City, Ocean Villas, Hyatt Regency, Olalani, Fusion Alya, Azura and Blooming Park. Talking with VIR at a recent road show to introduce Sunrise City, located in Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, Novaland Joint Stock Company marketing deputy director Huynh Du An said many units were sold to Hanoians and those from northern provinces. Meanwhile, a range of other central and southern projects have been rushing into Hanoi. Setia Becamex launched Binh Duong provinces Ecolakes My Phuoc in the capital late last week, a week before TD Group introduced the Costa Nha Trang to Hanoians. This week Singapores Guoco Lands Canary, located at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Binh Duong province, will be unveiled to northern customers. Bringing Ecolakes My Phuoc to Hanois market is one of our key marketing strategies. Hanoians are paying more attention to higher standards of living and are interested in ecological housing, said Khoo Teck Chong, general director of Setia Becamex. VIR was told that for many projects in the central and southern parts, roughly 70 per cent of customers were from Hanoi and other northern provinces. Matthew Koziora, sales director of VinaCapital - developer of the Azura in Danang, said the first 60 units, out of 225, were launched in Hanoi recently. Out of the 40 units sold, 90 per cent of the buyers had come from Hanoi. Hanoi has, according to Koziora, proven itself to be a key market for most new projects in Vietnam, given the demographics of these immediate catchments. While condominium offerings will always be available in Hanoi due to previous pent-up demands, we can see that not all projects will enjoy a healthy sell-through, as was seen 12 months ago. We do see, however, given the price differentials between house and land packages in Hanoi versus Ho Chi Minh City, that this market will be better received in the current marketplace and over the next six months as opposed to condominium project offerings at this time, Koziora said Ngo Huu Truong, managing director of a real estate agency in Ho Chi Minh City, said many customers from Hanoi and Haiphong had come to Ho Chi Minh City to find out information about new projects there. Demand is real and many projects investors have realised this trend and they are coming to Hanoi to promote their projects, Truong said. He also said the jury was still out on how effective the promotions were. I think that these developers [who bring their projects to Hanoi] have at least seen their target to raise their image and brand names in northern customers, Truong said. This picture released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Apr 24, 2016 shows the underwater test-fire of a strategic submarine ballistic missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (AFP/KCNA) UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council joined an international chorus condemning North Korea on Sunday (Apr 24) for firing what the hermit state claims was a successful submarine-launched ballistic missile. The North's state-run KCNA news agency said Saturday's test - which it said was personally monitored by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un - confirmed the reliability of the country's underwater launching system. Kim hailed the test as an "eye-opening success," state media said, and crowed that Pyongyang has the ability to strike Seoul and the United States at will. The UN Security Council condemned the test as a "serious" violation of past resolutions approved by the international body to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear weapons drive. "Such ballistic missile activities contribute to (North Korea's) development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and increase tension in the region and beyond," the UN Council statement added. It urged Pyongyang to "refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions." Washington and London denounced the SLBM test as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, with US President Barack Obama urging China to increase pressure on Pyongyang after another this latest in a series of "provocative" weapons tests. "North Korea continues to engage in continuous provocative behavior," Obama said in Germany, where he is wrapping up a three-nation tour that also included Saudi Arabia and Britain. "We have cultivated cooperation with the Chinese to put pressure on North Korea, although it is not where we would completely like it to be," the US leader said. The launch came amid growing concern that Pyongyang is preparing a fifth nuclear test, but was followed hours later by a North Korean offer to impose a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing if the United States suspends annual military drills with South Korea. Still images shown on state television showed Kim monitoring the test through binoculars and meeting the crew and scientists shortly thereafter. "This eye-opening success constitutes one more precious gift the defense scientists and technicians are presenting to the great leaders and the party," KCNA quoted Kim as saying. South Korea's defense ministry said the missile, fired from a submarine in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), flew around 19 miles (30 kilometers) and that the test showed "certain technological progress" in the North's SLBM capability. "It is believed ... that the North would be able to deploy the SLBM weapon within three to four years, or even sooner if it dedicates all its resources on the project," ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told reporters. NUCLEAR TEST OFFER Pictures showed the missile, with "The North Star" emblazoned on it, soaring out of the water and into the sky, trailed by a massive plume of smoke. State TV also showed what it claimed were underwater images of the missile being ejected from the submarine, using key "cold launch" technology. North Korea has been pushing to acquire an SLBM capability that would take its nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack. The isolated country has conducted a number of what it says have been successful SLBM tests, but experts previously questioned the claims, suggesting Pyongyang had carried out little more than "pop-up" tests from a submerged platform. This latest purported launch comes as the North gears up for a rare and much-hyped ruling party congress early next month - the first in 36 years - at which Kim is expected to take credit for pushing the country's nuclear and missile weapons program to new heights. In an interview with the Associated Press in New York, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-Yong said Pyongyang would be willing to halt further tests if Washington announced an end to annual joint military exercises with Seoul. South Korea dismissed the proposal and warned it would seek further sanctions for the SLBM test it called an "open provocation." "We strongly urge the North to ... stop making a ridiculous attempt to link our regular joint military drills, which are defensive in nature, with a nuclear test that is banned under UN Security Council resolution," the foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday. The annual drills always raise tensions on the Korean peninsula, with the North condemning them as provocative rehearsals for invasion. Pyongyang made the same offer in January of last year - a deal flatly rejected by the United States. Photo by Los Angeles Times Owner Lourdes Perez teaches a dance move during practice at the Spotlight Dance Studio on April 14, 2016 in Cudahy, Calif. She speaks almost entirely in Spanish, while most of her students, though Latino, speak English. Photo by Atlanta Journal-Constitution Several protesters were arrested when they clashed with police near a white power rally in Georgias Stone Mountain Park on Saturday. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has demanded neighboring Pakistan evict fugitive Taliban leaders from its soil and hand them over to Kabul for trial. In a hard-hitting speech to a rare joint session of parliament Monday, Ghani said Pakistani leaders promised they would use force against Taliban leaders who refuse to end the war and join Afghan peace talks. He went on to assert that insurgent leaders continue to use their centers in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta for directing violence in Afghanistan. It is our exception that if Pakistan is unable to take action against them as per its commitments to the four-nation group, then they should be handed over to our Islamic courts so they are tried and punished for their crimes, Ghani said. He was referring to a so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group, comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, which has been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban since the beginning of this year. Taliban refusal At the end of February, the four-way dialogue announced that an initial round of Afghan peace talks would be hosted by Pakistan in early March. But the Taliban, in a last-minute announcement, refused to attend and instead launched its annual spring offensive in Afghanistan. Today, I want to make it clear that we do not expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the peace talks, Ghani said, attracting a huge applause from the lawmakers. The Afghan leader made the speech a week after a Taliban bomb and gun assault in Kabul killed nearly 70 people and wounded about 350 others. The insurgent group claimed responsibility, saying it was part of its spring offensive. The deadly raid outraged Afghans and prompted demands for Ghani to abandon the policy of engaging in peace talks with the Taliban and instead step up military operations against the insurgents. Afghan officials alleged the militant Haqqani network, based in Pakistan, plotted last week's assault in Kabul with the help of the neighboring country's intelligence agency. Islamabad has rejected the allegation. Speech to legislators In Monday's speech, Ghani did not completely rule out talks with those Taliban groups who denounce violence and cut ties to terrorist groups. "The (Taliban) faction involved in death and destruction in Afghanistan is being guided by its slave-like leadership in Peshawar and Quetta who enjoy inflicting bloodshed and destruction on the people of Afghanistan. They do not possess welfare and prosperity plans for Afghans nor do they worry about respecting their wishes and needs," he said. U.S. officials have previously criticized Pakistan for allowing the Taliban to operate inside their borders. We have consistently expressed our concerns at the highest level of the government of Pakistan about their continued tolerance for Afghan Taliban groups such as the Haqqani network operating from Pakistani soil, U.S State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters Friday. Trudeau said Washington again pressed Islamabad after the Kabul attack to follow up on its expressed commitment not to discriminate between terror groups regardless of their agenda or affiliation by undertaking concrete action against the Haqqanis. The Taliban was quick to react to Ghani's Monday speech. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected as fraudulent and fictitious Ghani's assertions. "The (Afghan) nation is not blind, people understand who the slave is and who works as mercenaries for the interest of others," he said. Mujahid added the Taliban will not end its jihad until "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan is ended and an "Islamic system" is implemented in the country. A group of Taliban negotiators has arrived in Pakistan from the Islamist insurgency's political office in Qatar for "exploratory" meetings with authorities in Islamabad, diplomatic sources confirmed Monday to VOA. The visit of the three-member Taliban delegation is part of efforts that Pakistan is "cautiously" making to facilitate resumption of Afghan peace and reconciliation talks, the sources said. The dramatic development happened on a day when Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani, in a speech to the national parliament, blamed Pakistan for not preventing fugitive Taliban leaders from using its soil to plot insurgent violence in Afghanistan. The Taliban delegation includes Shahabuddin Dilawar, Jan Muhammad Madni and Mullah Abbas Akhund. But when contacted by VOA, a Taliban spokesman said he was unaware whether its delegation traveled to Pakistan. Test waters Sources described the visit of Taliban negotiators as a "step to test waters" in the wake of past experiences when efforts to start Afghan peace process faltered even before talks could open. The Taliban maintains an office in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and it is authorized by its chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, to conduct political talks. The arrival Monday in Islamabad of U.S. Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Jonathan Carpenter gave credence to reports that key stakeholders have stepped up efforts toward restarting peace talks, despite widespread anger and growing demands for Ghani to abandon his policy of engaging the Taliban in such negotiations. U.S. officials were not available to comment on the purpose of Carpenter's visit. Chinese diplomatic sources told VOA "we are not part of" the "exploratory" discussions with the Taliban. Previous efforts Pakistan, Afghanistan, the U.S. and China launched a four-way dialogue process earlier this year to arrange Afghan reconciliation talks. In his speech to the parliament Monday, Ghani said his government will talk to Taliban members who are ready to denounce violence and cut ties to terrorists, but he said those negotiations will be held within the Afghan constitution. Pakistan hosted the first direct talks between Taliban and Afghan government officials last July, the first such interaction since the Islamist group was ousted from power in 2001 and launched insurgent attacks against U.S.-led international and Afghan forces. But the process came to a halt a few weeks later when it was revealed that Taliban founder and its first leader, Mullah Omar, had died two years ago. The insurgency's Qatar-based political office did not attend those discussions. Afghan officials maintain that the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services-Intelligence (ISI), covertly supports the Taliban and the Haqqani network of militants fighting alongside the insurgency, charges Islamabad rejects as baseless. Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen killed more than 800 al-Qaida fighters on Sunday in a single attack on a southeastern town held by the militant group for the past year, according to the coalition command. The death toll claimed by the coalition could not be independently verified. The official Saudi Press Agency said Monday Yemeni fighters backed by Arab coalition air forces launched an offensive on the al-Qaida stronghold in the port city of Mukalla. Military sources told the French news agency AFP the coalition forces entered Mukalla and were met by no resistance from al-Qaida militants who withdrew west. The source also said an oil terminal was recaptured during the offensive. Several al-Qaida leaders were among those dead, and all militants who were not killed in the attack fled, the coalition command said in a statement. The military action came as part of an international effort to support the Yemeni government and to exert influence over the Yemeni cities that are under the control of al-Qaida, the statement said. The coalition also said it hopes to allow intensifying humanitarian relief efforts in those cities and alleviate suffering of the brotherly people of Yemen. It is not known whether any civilians were killed during the fighting. Austria's anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party won the first round of the presidential election, gathering more than 35 percent of the vote and leaving five rivals far behind, including nominees of the ruling governing coalition. Norbert Hofer, who ran on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform, won 36.4 percent of the vote and will face off against an independent, former member of the Green Party Alexander van der Bellen, in next month's run-off election. It was the best result the Freedom Party has seen in a national election, its campaign focused primarily on the impact of the migrant crisis and the 100,000 asylum seekers that have arrived in Austria since last summer. Both candidates from the ruling coalition, center-left Social Democrat Rudolph Hundstorfer and centrist People's Party nominee Andreas Khol, each received about 11 percent of the vote. Incumbent President Heinz Fischer, a 77-year-old Social Democrat, was barred by law from seeking a third six-year term. Around 70 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the election, which was about a 20 percent increase over turnout six years ago when Fischer was elected to his second term. On the site of a long-idle dairy farm, leaders of a local mosque hope to build a final resting place for about 500 Muslim families - to the dismay of many residents of this quaint town in central Massachusetts. In arguments cemetery developers and activists decry as thinly veiled bigotry, neighbors say they fear burial practices could contaminate groundwater because Muslims traditionally do not embalm bodies and bury their dead without coffins. They also cite concerns about noise, vandalism and increased traffic on the narrow road where the cemetery would be built. One resident said he worried he would have to put up with "crazy music" like the Islamic call to prayer. Similar sentiments have been expressed by people in communities around the country where Muslim cemeteries have been proposed, including Farmervsille, Texas; Walpole, Massachusetts; Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and Farmington, Minnesota. In some cases, opponents have succeeded in defeating the new cemetery projects, while in others, Muslim groups have appealed and judges have cleared the way. In Farmersville, near Dallas, some residents were openly hostile during meetings on a proposal to build a Muslim cemetery on a 35-acre site just outside the city. Farmersville is not far from Garland, where police fatally shot two Islamic State followers last year after they opened fire outside a cartoon contest lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. "People don't trust Muslims. Their goal is to populate the United States and take it over," Barbara Ashcraft said during a meeting in August. "You're not welcome here!" another man yelled, according to news accounts. City leaders were so bombarded with complaints that they published an informational guide on the city's website, assuring residents that there is "no training facility planned for this site ... no terrorist activity associated with this site ... no plans for a mosque at this site." Diane Piwko, a Farmersville resident and business owner, said she worries the cemetery - proposed for prime property overlooking a lake - won't be maintained and will become an eyesore at the entrance to the city. "I am not basing any of my decision on why I'm against the cemetery on religion," she said. "I base it on bad business practices." Muslim leaders have been taken aback by the level of resistance. "We were absolutely flabbergasted, to be honest, to see that kind of opposition," said Ismail Fenni, a representative of Al-Marhama Islamic Burial, which wants to build a cemetery in Walpole, south of Boston. "All we're trying to establish is a place for a final resting place for the loved ones of the Muslim community members," he said. "No other activity is going to be happening in a cemetery except what is customary for a cemetery." There are relatively few dedicated Muslim cemeteries around the country, so many Muslim communities use sections of other cemeteries to bury their dead. In Dudley, the proposal from the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester has been met with angry comments at local meetings. "You want a Muslim cemetery? Fine. Put it in your backyard, not mine," Daniel Grazulis said during a zoning meeting in February, drawing a round of applause. Jason Talerman, a lawyer for the Islamic Society, said he believes the opposition is rooted in Islamophobia. "They like to say it under the guise of, 'Oh, we're just trying to protect our water supply,' but it's thinly veiled," he said. Desiree Moninski, who lives across the street from the site, once farmed by her grandparents, said she and other opponents have legitimate concerns that have nothing to do with Islam. "I grew up here. It's farmland, and I'd like to see it stay that way," she said. "A lot of people moved here because it's peaceful and quiet. I just don't want a cemetery here, period. Any kind of cemetery. It doesn't matter what kind." In January, a Minnesota judge overturned a local board's denial of a permit for a cemetery near Farmington. In his written ruling, Judge David Knutson called the denial "arbitrary and capricious." The judge said the proposal was rejected despite a "lack of any justification based on the health, safety and general welfare of the local residents." In West Pennsboro Township, Pennsylvania, a local board rejected a plan for a cemetery proposed last year by the Bosniak Islamic Cultural Center of Carlisle. A judge quickly overturned that ruling. Douglas Cwienk, a hydrogeologist who testified for the Muslim group proposing the Pennsylvania cemetery, said that Muslim burial practices are unlikely to contaminate wells or groundwater, and that not embalming is better for local groundwater in most cases. (Jewish tradition also prohibits embalming.) In Dudley, Muslim leaders have agreed to bury bodies in coffins or concrete vaults to appease residents on contamination concerns. Muslim families in the area currently bury their dead in a cemetery in Enfield, Connecticut - about 60 miles away. Amjad Bhatti, president of the Islamic Society, said some of the comments have hurt because he considers the U.S. his home after moving from Pakistan 20 years ago and raising his family here. "They belong to this land now," he said. "This is our country." Days of violence engulfed Baltimore, Maryland one year ago. The outbreak of unrest was sparked in part by the death of Freddie Gray, a young African American who suffered fatal injuries while being transported in a police vehicle. Six Baltimore officers face charges resulting from his death and are awaiting trial. A year later, efforts are underway to improve strained relations between police and young people in the city. The wrongful arrest and death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray exposed what many Baltimore residents called a long-history of deadly police encounters with young African Americans. A year later, Baltimore Schools Acting Police Chief Akil Hamm takes part in a classroom session about creating mutual respect. "So if you have heard of customer service when you go into a store. Have you ever been to Chick-fil-a Restaurant ? When you go in there they are nice they are courteous. That's what we are trying to do with our police officers. So we are providing different training to help us better deal with young people because let's just be honest there are a lot of issues in our city, there is a lot of violence," said Hamm. Hamm and other mentors meet with students as part of a program aimed at improving community relations. "They might get some more respect but we don't get any loyalty from them [the police], said one student. No loyalty, that's a good point, no integrity," said a teacher. Students offered suggestions on how they think the police can do a better job. "Train better because if you run into somebody such as myself who knows what he is doing it is automatically going to turn into deadly force because they are not going to be able to hold me down, said one student. "There are a lot of young brothers that look like you that have bad interactions with the police, noted Hamm. Hamm is teaching young people how to survive encounters with the police. ""It doesn't really make sense to keep going back and forth with them (the police officer) because you want to survive that stop and be able to make that complaint," said Hamm. Some students also dramatized how they were treated by police. Other young people find it hard to trust the police because of how they were treated. Many students are leery of the police because of incidents such as the 2016 school confrontation described by a female student. "He [the police officer] twisted my arm behind my back and threw me," she recalled. "They think just because they want you in the office for fighting they are going to grab you and drag you out the class and beat you up on the way to the office," added a male student. "When we [police officers] come into a situation, we want to defuse it we don't want to inflame it. So if you [young people] are already upset it is not going to do any good to come in and make the situation worse," said Hamm. Hamm hopes more dialogue will lay a stronger foundation to build better relations between the police and the community they are sworn to protect. The International Criminal Court says it is opening a preliminary probe into the violence that erupted last year in Burundi. International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda says the probe is not an investigation and offered no timeline of how long it will last. But in a statement announcing her decision Monday, she said she has been closely tracking the uptick of violence in the central African nation that has been a member of the Hague-based court since 2004. My office has reviewed communications and reports about killings, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence as well as cases of enforced disappearances. Because all these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC, I have decided to open a preliminary examination into the situation in Burundi since April 2015, Bensouda said. Burundis political crisis was triggered last year when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a disputed third term. Bensouda said at least 430 people have been killed, 3,400 have been arrested and more than 230,000 Burundians have fled the country. Human Rights Watch International Justice Advocacy Director Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner welcomed the ICC announcement, but said it is only a first step. We hope the announcement that it is opening a preliminary investigation in Burundi is really a wake-up call to those who commit or order these crimes to be committed that there will not be impunity anymore for grave human rights violations, Mattioli-Zeltner said. The United Nations last week accused Burundis security services of torturing and illegally detaining several hundred people this year. Last month, the European Union suspended aid to the Burundian government over the political crisis. On Monday, a high-ranking general and his wife were reportedly killed while dropping their daughter off at school. General Athanase Kararuza, an adviser to Burundi's vice president, was killed along with his wife and one of his bodyguards in the capital, Bujumbura, Monday. A military official said Kararuza's daughter was injured in the attack, which took place outside of her school. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack against the general, who had served with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic. Ban's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said, "All such acts of violence serve no purpose other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi. The secretary-general urges that a rigorous and prompt investigation of these events is undertaken." No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Violence between supporters of President Pierre Nkurunziza and his opponents began in April 2015 when the president announced he would run for what many viewed as an unconstitutional third term. Tit-for-tat attacks have taken place since then against politicians, civil society leaders and army officials. VOA's Megan Duzor contributed to this report Cameroon's government is working to stop the trafficking of young women to the Middle East. The government says hundreds of women and girls have been lured to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the past five years. Several students stand at the entrance to the University of Yaounde. They read posters advertising jobs in Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. The ads promise monthly salaries of up to $700. "If I work for a year, I will be able to save 3.6 million francs so I am ready to sacrifice five years before I return to create a business back here," said Carole Yemngang, a 19-year-old student. "Why should I continue with my studies when thousands of others graduate and are never recruited?" VOA called the number listed on a poster offering jobs of sales agents, nurses and teachers. "Everybody who comes will never regret because the opportunities are good The man declined to give his name. VOA went to the address he indicated but was told the company had moved. Police said the phone number belongs to a Cameroonian under investigation as a middle man for traffickers. Many of the women go to Kuwait, like 30-year-old Pauline Manyi. She says her father had died and she was looking for a better life, an adventure. She says she was told Arabs needed translators from the English to the French and vice versa. Instead she says her passport was taken and she was sold to a family where she was raped and forced to do housework. Another woman, 24-year-old Kebam Eucharia, just returned to Cameroon in April. She says her family had borrowed money to send her to Kuwait to work but she was sold to a man at the airport when she arrived. I had no rest, working round the clock," ssaid Eucharia. "I will finish work around 3 o'clock in the night. There is no food. Then the next morning, they come and wake me up at six o'clock. They say yela, get up. Start your work. The only thing they give you as food is one of their bread and a small cup of tea. That is it for the whole day. Both women escaped and made it to the embassy of the Central African Republic in Kuwait City to phone their families. In April, Cameroon appointed its first ever ambassador to Kuwait and Qatar and announced that it will soon open its own embassy in Kuwait City. Families of trafficked women told VOA they hope the diplomatic presence will make it easier to intervene. Lawmakers and journalists brought the matter up with a Kuwaiti parliamentary delegation that visited Yaounde in March. The delegation said they would investigate but that it was not the purpose of their visit. Cameroonian airport authorities now screen women and girls heading to the Middle East. Francisca Awah is president of the Association Against Human Trafficking. "Since they have blocked the girls from going to Kuwait from all international airports in Cameroon, they pass through Nigeria to go to Kuwait. So that is the new means. They are still going and most of them go there to be prostitutes," Awah said. Awah and other survivors give talks at schools and universities warning of the dangers of trafficking. They told their stories on state radio and television April 21st. The next day, VOA returned to the university to find that the posters advertising jobs in the Middle East had been pulled down. Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has confirmed the beheading of a Canadian taken hostage in the southern Philippines last year and held for a $21 million ransom by al-Qaida-linked militants. Trudeau, speaking Monday, voiced outrage at the killing of retiree John Ridsdel, calling it an "unnecessary death ... an act of cold-blooded murder." Ridsdel was one of two Canadian nationals seized along with a Norwegian resort manager in September at a marina on the southern island of Mindanao. Weeks later, Abu Sayyaf gunmen released a video of their hostages, demanding $21 million each for their release. The captives were seen on camera begging for their lives. The most recent video showed Ridsdel saying he would be killed April 25 if the ransom were not paid. Trudeau's comments came hours after police on Jolo island an Abu Sayyaf stronghold said two unidentified people on a motorbike dropped a severed head wrapped in plastic near a government facility. There was no word on the fate of the remaining hostages. On April 8, government forces seeking to free hostages engaged Abu Sayyaf militants in an hours-long firefight in nearby Basilan province. A military statement said 18 soldiers were killed and more than 50 others wounded in the battle, along with at least five militants. There was no word at that time about the hostages, and it was not clear whether Ridsdel was among them. Abu Sayyaf a splinter group of the now-disbanded Moro Islamic Front was founded in 1991 with funding from al-Qaida. It has been designated a terrorist group by the United Nations, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The United Arab Emirates, Britain and the United States also have classified Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization. Its current leader, Isnilon Totoni Hapilon, swore allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014. China has drawn attention in recent months for its high profile anti-espionage campaign that has included two criminal cases and several public warnings about the dangers of foreign spies. Last week the Chinese government sentenced a computer technician, Huang Yu, to death for aiding foreign spies. The trial came just months after China announced the prosecution of another man, a Canadian who had run a cafe along Chinas border with North Korea, for spying and stealing state secrets. But the sentencing of Huang coincided with Chinas first ever National Security Education Day. Huang, who worked for a technical firm specializing in encryption, was paid more than $700,000 between 2002 and 2011 to pass classified information to an unspecified foreign country, according to CCTV. His mother and brother-in-law were also punished for aiding him. Warned others Huang appeared on CCTV and warned people in China that they if they are spying for foreign forces, they should turn themselves in. "It's better for your family and for you," he said. William Nee, China researcher for Amnesty International, said Huangs sentencing, and Chinas campaign against espionage, are likely to spur xenophobia. To launch it in a big national education campaign, in which they also say that this type of spy is not just like in James Bond films, but these spies could be all around you," Nee said. "You know the CCTV video plays very eerie music, and its intended to in some ways stir up a feeling of awareness, but also suspicion about other people, and about foreigners and contact with foreigners." Last week China also distributed a 16-page comic strip detailing the fictional relationship between a Western red-headed scholar, David, and a Chinese woman, Xiao Li, on public bulletin boards. After treating her to gifts of flowers, dinners and walks in a park, David asks Xiao to hand over classified documents that he said would help him with his academic research. After Xiao does so, she is arrested by authorities, and learns that David was a spy. Campaigns Beijing, and some Chinese analysts, said such campaigns against espionage are necessary. It has legitimacy to safeguard national secrets. If Chinese citizens release these secrets without authorization, then that would undermine Chinas national security, and any responsible government should be concerned," said Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University. But Eva Pils, a legal scholar at Kings College London, said the comic strip and reporting on espionage cases by state news media builds a rationale for Chinas clampdown on NGOs, the press and social media. I think it helps the government explain the need for ramping up overall state security efforts, that have also included a lot of ramped up repression of civil society, Pils said. China debuted a new anti-spy hotline last year, after introducing a new security law aimed at foreign spies and Chinese citizens who help them. Humanitarian agencies are warning the fight to free Mosul from Islamic State control could have a huge impact on the civilian population caught in the crossfire. If you have the high levels of destruction that we saw in Ramadi, theres going to be a massive humanitarian impact, Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told VOA. Between 300,000 to 1.2 million people could be displaced by the fighting, Grande said. If their homes are destroyed, they are going to be displaced for months and months on end. If there is infestation of booby traps and complex IEDs, add more months to it, she said. Ramadi was wrested from IS control in December. Large portions of city were flattened by rockets, mortars and airstrikes. The rest was booby trapped with improvised explosive devices, making it difficult for families trying to go home. It was booby-trapped with some of the most complex IEDs we have ever seen anywhere, and the whole town is infested, and is infested in a way that is unpredictable, Grande said. Ramadis hidden bombs have killed more than 80 people trying to return, and injured more. The worry is the same could happen in Fallujah, Hawijah or on a much larger scale in Mosul. The cost of war According to website Defense One, the State Department has awarded the Tennessee-based firm Janus Global Operations a 12-month, $5 million contract to do initial training and to survey unexploded bombs, abandoned explosives and IEDs in Ramadi and the citys water station. Iraq is shuddering under the weight of this brutal war, as well as economic and political crises and the earlier massive displacement of its people. The human toll is visible everywhere: entire families crowded into bare, cement brick rooms covered in blue tarps, or crammed into run-down hotels or unfinished buildings. Their food comes from soup kitchens or from boxes marked with the logos of humanitarian agencies. Many have lost their homes, their properties, their entire communities. One-third of Iraqis affected Iraq is one of the largest, most volatile humanitarian crisis in the world, Grande said. In the past year, 1 million people have been displaced, bringing the total to 3.5 million. That number is expected to rise as the campaign against Islamic State intensifies. If you look at the percentage of the population that has been impacted directly by ISIL, we are talking about nearly a third of all Iraqis have had to pay some kind of price, she said. Analysts agree there is plenty of blame to go around for adding to the crisis: U.S. strategic mistakes during its occupation of Iraq, a corrupt and sectarian Iraqi government and rising political instability, ethnic and tribal divisions, and regional powers fighting proxy wars on Iraqi soil. The say those factors are also what will make it difficult to stitch Iraq back up, even if the largely Sunni-based IS extremists are defeated. Delicate process Sectarian and ideological suspicions run deep in the country and divide cities, communities, and various armed groups. We have to be frank that in cases where families have stayed under ISIS control, there is deep suspicion about their motivations for doing that by families who left, Grande said. The issue of how you reconcile those groups, of how you prevent retaliation, on either side, is absolutely huge. Compensation will play a large role in bringing communities back together, she said, adding that there are about 1,000 small communities in Iraq in which some kind of community-level adjudication and compensation will have to take place. Grande said effective reconciliation will need leadership at the top political level and at the community level. But it can be a fragile process. But it can be a fragile process. For example, in Yathrib, a community 45 kilometers north of Baghdad in the so-called Sunni Triangle, a compensation package was agreed on after months of negotiations. But at the last minute, one of the leaders removed his approval and the whole package collapsed, stalling the return of families to that area for months. Families and tribes and communities [must] find ways of mending their fences, and coexisting, and living together as they did before. It's a tough process, but it's crucial, she said. The cost of war, the cost of peace According to the U.S. Department of Defense, as of March 31, 2016, the total cost of military operations related to ISIL since U.S.-led operations started on August 8, 2014, is $7 billion, with an average daily cost of $11.6 million. By comparison, the overall humanitarian funding to Iraq in 2014-2016 is reported at $2.34 billion, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Iraq. For Grande, those numbers need to be recalibrated. I think it's important to consider rebalancing international engagement, so that it is not simply the international community supporting the military side of things, but that we are also supporting the humanitarian operation, the stabilization operation, she said. Egypt celebrated the 34th anniversary of Israels handover of the Sinai peninsula Monday, amid pro-government celebrations and smaller anti-government protests over a decision to return two small Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Egyptian Air Force planes flew over Cairo in formation to celebrate Israels 1982 return of the Sinai peninsula, as stipulated by the 1979 U.S.-brokered Camp David peace accords. Scores of pro-government demonstrators turned out in various locations in Cairo to celebrate what Egyptian media refer to as Sinai Liberation Day. Security forces were on alert in key locations, guarding bridges, government offices and Cairos iconic Tahrir Square. A number of opposition groups, including the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, had called for large anti-government demonstrations to protest the governments proposed return of two small islands in the Red Sea, off the coast of the Sinais large resort town of Sharm el Sheikh. Al Jazeera TV (Arabic), which the Egyptian government alleges is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, showed grainy video of a small protest in Giza, which was reportedly dispersed with tear gas. Al Jazeera also showed video of a protest in the Giza district of Dokki against the return of the islands. Several hundred people appeared to have turned out, chanting slogans against the handover. Small protests were also reported in Egypts second largest city of Alexandria, and in Damanhour, north of Cairo. Elephant poachers killed three rangers in Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba wildlife park and wounded two other people including the Swedish park manager, environmental officials said. One of the rangers was found dead near the site of the Saturday attack, said African Parks, which manages the UNESCO world heritage site. U.S. forces in the area evacuated the others, but two of them died of their injuries a day later at a military base in neighboring Central African Republic, the organization added. The survivors were in a stable condition. "Rangers put their lives on the line each and every day, and are under real siege in Garamba protecting elephants from heavily incentivized and militarized poaching gangs," African Parks chief executive Peter Fearnhead said in a statement. Armed poachers killed three Congolese soldiers and five guards from the state wildlife authority in three separate incidents in Garamba in 2015. Africa's elephant population is estimated to have dwindled by 60 percent over the past decade, and around 30,000 elephants are poached each year largely to supply ivory to Asian countries, say campaigners. The biting cold of the winter wind has been tempered by spring, but among the thousands trapped in limbo on the Greek border, it is the rumors that now swirl through Idomeni camp. "They say that maybe the border will open at the end of this month, but it's just people talking," said Qusay Lubani, one of around 12,000 people living in the sprawling, makeshift camp by the village of Idomeni. "People are always talking about such things here," he added, "and it's because people are despairing in this situation." It has been well over a month since Macedonia closed the door on refugees arriving from Greece. Since then, Idomeni has seen desperate efforts to cross the border repelled by tear gas and protests. And as hopes dim, frustration grows. Cut off "The camp feels like a jail to me," said Lubani, a Palestinian Syrian, who arrived in Idomeni two months ago with the dream of travelling to Norway with his wife, Salwa. "We're stuck here and no one is talking to us. We need something to change." Before the Macedonian border restricted the flow of people and finally sought to cut it off altogether, Idomeni was a brief stopping point for refugees traveling through the Balkans into the rest of Europe. But following the closure, many decided to wait it out, and despite the efforts of non-government organizations and volunteers, conditions are poor for those who remain. Syrians make up the majority of those living here, but Kurds, Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis are among the nationalities braving sub-standard conditions. A few families have managed to take up residence in the cabins of a few old trains rotting on the railway line that is now blocked by riot-ready police vans. Many others, like Mahmoud Ammar, have set up camp between the tracks. Ammar told VOA that his son, a civilian, died under barrel bombs of the Syrian Army. A diabetic with poor eyesight and with a family of eight to care for, Ammar struggles to keep his vital shots of insulin cold enough to prevent them from spoiling. "I cannot move from here" he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "There's no money left and I don't know what to do." Waiting for news Like Ammar, many refugees are resigned to waiting for good news that may never come. They hope, against the odds, that Europe's rapidly shifting policies will shift once again, this time in their favor. Emmanuel Massart, a field coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres working in Idomeni, told VOA that conditions in the camp are "far below acceptable international standards." But much of the growing frustration comes from not knowing what will happen next. "They don't have any information on when and if the border will open or not," he said. Earlier this month, efforts by a few refugees to cross the border were met with tear gas and rubber bullets from Macedonian police. Since then, the death of a Kurdish man fatally injured by a police truck thought to have been an accident sparked protests. Meanwhile, fights between small numbers of refugees from different ethnic groups, often prompted by arguments over food, continue to be a problem. And as pressure builds within Idomeni, so do efforts by the Greek government to move the 50,000-plus refugees trapped within the country's borders into official camps. "Since the clashes with the Macedonian police, they [Greek authorities] have started controlling everything I bring in my truck from the level of gas to everything else," said Stefano Vallin, who runs a small organization bringing food and clothes into the camp. "There's more tension than even a week ago, and it feels like the strategy for a military camp," he said. Not put off But while some are resigned to waiting, others are taking matters into their own hands. Lubani sees little to be gained from moving to a state-run camp, but has not yet tried to cross the border. However, with widespread reports of smugglers operating within Idomeni, more and more people he knows are attempting the journey. PHOTOS: Images of Life for Refugees in Idomeni Photo Gallery: Frustration Builds Among Refugees Trapped at Macedonian Border On the Greek border with Macedonia, 12,000 refugees continue to wait. Since the route through to the rest of Europe was closed last month, the makeshift camp at Idomeni has seen desperate efforts to cross the border repelled by tear gas and protests. But while those here wait, their frustration grows. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email to a Friend Some who had spent all their money on making it to Greece, he says, were relying on the GPS on their phones to guide them, or heading for the Albanian border. "They [the Macedonian authorities] don't understand," he explained. "We don't want to live in Macedonia, we just want to pass." This Sunday, there were reports that more had made it through, while Lubani told VOA that those who had failed once would likely try again. For Massert, the situation in Idomeni is symbolic of a far bigger problem the shortsighted approach of the European community. "EU politicians have made this crisis," he said. "What we've seen so far is that policy is just being used as a deterrence, with the goal being to put barriers in the way of refugees. "It's inhuman and it's not working." Haiti's repeatedly postponed presidential election may not happen until October, President Jocelerme Privert said on Sunday, as street protests erupted on the day the impoverished Caribbean nation missed an agreed date for a run-off vote. Speaking to reporters as Haiti missed the deadline, Privert suggested the country should now choose its next president at the same time as an Oct. 30 deadline for a senate election. "Does the country have the financial means to organize two elections?" he responded when reporters asked about the likely date for the vote. Although the April 24 deadline for the election was widely seen as unrealistic, thousands of protesters took to the streets on Sunday to demand the chance to cast their votes. Haiti has been in political turmoil since a first-round presidential vote in October was questioned by losing candidates. Authorities have missed four deadlines for the run-off and are now setting up a team to evaluate allegations of fraud in the October results. Hundreds of women brick-kiln workers from India's Punjab state have come together in a rare gathering to demand equal pay and better accommodation, as the country's often invisible women laborers become increasingly vocal in their fight for rights. More than a thousand workers, most belonging to India's so-called lower castes and tribes, met in the city of Bathinda last week in perhaps the first such gathering in the country. "The women workers in brick kilns are invisible -- they are not recognized as workers, they don't get paid for their work, and they have no rights or benefits," said Gangambika Sekhar, an advocate with Volunteers for Social Justice, that organized the event. "We wanted to send a message to the government: 'you say there are no women workers in the state's brick kilns. Well, here they are'," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Unknown number of workers There are no official figures for the number of people employed to cut, shape and bake clay-fired bricks, mostly by hand, in tens of thousands of brick kilns in India. According to the Center for Science and Environment, at least 10 million people work in these kilns. Exploitation of workers, many of them poor migrants from other states, is common as brickmaking is largely unregulated, experts say. Most of the workers are illiterate, paid a pittance, and held in debt bondage. The wealthy state of Punjab is home to more than 600,000 workers in brick kilns, by some estimates. About half are women, who are not included in the kiln's records and are not paid a separate wage from their husbands. Many of the women workers are sexually abused, and conditions for pregnant women are particularly bad, as they do not have access to medical facilities, and are forced to work well into their pregnancy, activists say. "Women are enslaved by the patriarchal system, they are enslaved by the caste system, and they are enslaved by the minimum wage, which is such a pittance that they are forced to live in abject conditions," said Manjit Singh, a retired professor of sociology at Panjab University. Better conditions A signature campaign was launched last week in Bathinda to appeal to President Pranab Mukherjee for better conditions for the state's women brick-kiln workers. Activists are also trying to organize the women into unions, similar to efforts in Maharashtra state. There are signs that women workers elsewhere are heeding the call to unionise and fight for their rights. Last week, protests in the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu by garment workers, mostly women, forced the government to scrap a controversial proposal to change the rule on pension withdrawals. "Women workers from teachers to textile workers and daily-wage workers are so desperate, they are demanding their rights," Singh said. "They are learning the benefits of a collective voice, and of coming out on the streets and protesting, rather than doing so within the confines of their workplace. We will see more of this," he said. India has revoked a tourist visa extended to a German-based, exiled Chinese dissident leader to attend a conference to be held later this week at the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile in northern India. Officials in New Delhi did not give a reason for withdrawing the visa given to Uighur activist, Dolkun Isa, but it is believed to be due to pressure from Beijing. Isa, branded as a terrorist by Beijing, is chairman of the World Uighur Conference, which advocates human rights and democracy. Uighurs are an ethnic minority community from China's western Xinjiang region and have a long history of discord with Beijing. Responding last week to the visa issued Isa, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said, Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." 'Tit for tat' New Delhis permission to the Uighur leader to travel to India had been described by the Indian media as tit-for-tat diplomacy. India has been upset with Beijing for blocking its bid at the U.N. to name the chief of Pakistan-based militant group Masood Azhar of Jaish-e Mohammad, as a terrorist and sees it as an example of China siding with Pakistan. The visa to Isa was also seen as a signal that Prime Minister Narendra Modis government is prepared to take a more assertive stand with China. India's move to revoke the visa has come under criticism, with Sanjay Jha, a spokesman for for Indias main opposition Congress party, calling it a Himalayan blunder. Disappointed In a statement, Isa, who lives in Germany, said he was disappointed by the Indian governments withdrawal of the visa, which he said was done on April 23. I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself," the statement added, "and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy." The conference in Dharamsala has been organized by the U.S.-based Initiatives for China and is expected to be attended by Uighurs, Tibetans and other exiles. Iran has threatened legal action against the United States if $2 billion in frozen funds are diverted to compensate American families of people killed by Tehran-sponsored terrorism. "We hold the U.S. government responsible for protecting our (frozen) funds," said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. "If our funds are illegally accessed, we will surely claim damages from the American government at an appropriate time." Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 2012 law concerning the distribution of the funds. The court's ruling directly affects more than 1,300 relatives of victims, some who have been seeking compensation for more than 30 years. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told VOA's Persian Service that the court's ruling is consistent with international norms and conventions. "The U.S. law is indeed at the edge of international practice," he said. "Courts have increasingly gotten involved in what were thought to be 'politically off-bounds' areas. This is not universally practiced, but the U.S. law is not unique." The ruling awards damages to the relatives of 241 Marines killed in a 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut, 19 U.S. military troops killed in the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia, and other attacks. Iran, which is linked to the militant group Hezbollah, denies any involvement in the attacks and has said it had no role in the deadly events in the Lebanese capital. Polls showing a clear victory for Austria's anti-immigrant Freedom Party after a first round of elections Sunday could mean Europe's migrant issue is driving voters across the continent to support less liberal politicians, according to analysts. The pattern became evident in eastern Europe last year, when images of tens of thousands of migrants transiting through Hungary helped right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban consolidate his support. In October, promises of a more assertive approach to the European Union and its calls for each member state to absorb thousands of migrants helped catapult the nationalist Law and Justice Partys Beata Szydlo to victory in Poland. In western Europe, analysts saw the prospects of a right-wing accession to power as more unlikely since, until now, most had been third-party forces that challenged but failed to supplant establishment parties. Analysts see developments in Austria as a warning sign. Results showed the Freedom Partys Norbert Hofer taking a clear lead, leaving the two mainstream parties, that have dominated for years, with insufficient votes to run in a runoff election next month. Hofer will face off with an independent candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, formerly with the Austrian Green Party and seen as pro-migrant. The election results in Austria could be a first indication of what analysts like Dana Allin recently described as a swing away from the international liberal order in Europe. Im not sure how far the swing is going to go but there are worrying signs, said Allin, a foreign policy expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London research institution. I dont know if I believe that were moving in the direction of illiberalism, but the liberal order is fragile, he said. The campaigning in Austria has been dominated by economic issues like taxes and pension reform, but the influx of tens of thousands of migrants last year has been a big factor for voters who see the establishment parties as not handling the migrant crisis effectively. When trains loaded with Syrian refugees pulled into Viennas main train station last year, scores of Austrians welcomed them with coffee, snacks and applause. Sentiments gradually changed, as people saw the numbers swell and negative reports about how some of the migrants behaved. People have seen the absolute numbers that have exceeded initial expectations, Alan Mendoza, head of the Henry Jackson Society, a London research organization, told VOA. Peoples goodwill has evaporated, he said. Those sentiments were fueled by scenes of men, including some migrants, groping women during New Years Eve festivities in neighboring Germany. In Vienna, police chief Gerhard Pursti caused outrage among Austrian womens advocates when he warned, Women should in general not go out on the streets at night alone to protect themselves from sexual assault. Critics accused authorities of failing to protect citizens. Now, at the polls, people have had to turn to extreme solutions to vent their frustrations, said Mendoza, who sees the vote not necessarily as a turning point but a warning sign to establishment parties across Europe. The migration issue already has sparked challenges against the established political order in places like France, the Netherlands and Sweden. Austrias case is of special concern, Mendoza notes, because of its history. Austrians often say they were the first victims of the Nazis, but they were also the first collaborators. The effort to prevent billionaire Donald Trump from becoming the Republican Party's nominee for U.S. president took a new step late Sunday as his two chief rivals openly detailed their plan to work against the front-runner in three states. Since winning the February 9 New Hampshire primary, Trump has led the Republican race as candidates try to take over the White House when President Barack Obama's term ends early next year. But Trump's ascendant campaign, written off early as something that would quickly fade, has made many in the party uncomfortable both because of his controversial statements on immigration and foreign policy and questions about how wedded he is to the party and its positions. With less than three months before the Republican convention in Cleveland, Trump sits as the only candidate with a mathematical chance of reaching the majority 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. That has not stopped Texas Senator Ted Cruz or Ohio Governor John Kasich from continuing their campaigns. They have repeatedly cast Trump as dangerous for the party and said that if he is chosen, then the Democratic candidate likely former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would easily win the November general election. On Sunday they announced their plan to keep Trump from hitting the 1,237 mark. Divide and conquer Within a span of 15 minutes, the Kasich and Cruz campaigns released statements saying Kasich will step aside and leave the May 3 primary in the Midwestern state of Indiana to Cruz. Indiana has increasingly appeared as the key in knowing whether the bid to stop Trump will succeed. It has 57 delegates, 30 of which will go to the overall winner in the state. The rest will be divided up based on the winner in each congressional district. A collection of polls from last week put Trump ahead in Indiana with about 39 percent support, compared to 33 percent for Cruz and 19 percent for Kasich. If the Cruz-Kasich plan goes as planned, Cruz could cruise to a win and deny Trump an important batch of delegates. The Cruz campaign said the agreement with Kasich is about ensuring the Republican nominee is someone who can unite the party. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or [Vermont Senator Bernie] Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation," Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said. Trump has repeatedly criticized the Republican Party as being unfair to him throughout the campaign. He called the effort by Cruz and Kasich "sad" and said they have to use collusion to keep their presidential bids going. "Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race), it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and in our political system, Trump said. In return for not competing hard in Indiana, Kasich is getting a pledge that Cruz will similarly step aside and not campaign in the Western states of Oregon and New Mexico. Oregon has 28 delegates at stake May 17, while New Mexico and its 24 delegates are up for grabs on June 7. Game plan "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee," the Kasich campaign said. "We believe that will be John Kasich, who is the only candidate who can defeat Secretary Clinton and preserve our GOP majority in the Congress." Both the Cruz and Kasich campaigns said they will compete hard in every other remaining state. If Trump fails to reach a majority in the first round of voting at the convention, then delegates are free to cast their vote differently on subsequent ballots, meaning even Kasich, who trails far behind in delegates, could have a chance at the nomination. Polling on potential general election matchups suggests that if the November vote were to happen today, Republicans would be better off with either Cruz or Kasich. Major polls have Clinton beating Trump by about 10 points and Cruz by about two points, but losing to Kasich by eight points. Sanders, who has his own tough battle in trying to erase Clinton's big delegate lead, beats all three Republicans in the polls, with the margin closest against Kasich. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has condemned the murder of Bangladeshi gay rights activist Xulhaz Mannan, who was an employee of the U.S. embassy in Dhaka. Kerry said in a statement late Monday: "We are profoundly saddened by the loss of one of our own in such a senseless act of violence." He also said Xulhaz "embodied the spirit of the people of Bangladesh and the pride with which they guard their traditions of tolerance, peace, and diversity." USAID official Mannan, who also worked as a protocol officer in the U.S. embassy in Dhaka, was at his home with his friend, Mehboob Rabbi Tanoy, when five attackers arrived, disguised as couriers and pounced on them with machetes. Mannan, 35, who was the editor of the countrys only gay and transgender magazine Roopban, and fellow gay rights activist and theater worker, Tanoy, 26, died on the spot. Although police have not identified the attackers, commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Asaduzzaman Mia said it was a case of target killing. We have collected important evidence from the spot. We shall be able to identify the killers soon before they are arrested. Some militants might have been behind todays killings, Mia said Monday. A security guard and a police officer- who tried to catch the assailants - were wounded in machete attacks. Several witnesses told police that the assailants shouted Allahu Akbar (God is great) while fleeing, and the killings resembled the murders of several secular bloggers and activists in Bangladesh over the past few years. Earlier this month, Mannan said he had been receiving online death threats from Islamists opposed to his rights activities. Opposition Blamed In Bangladesh, where more than 90 percent of the countrys 160 million population is Muslim, several Islamist groups have long resorted to protests and agitation over issues they say threaten Islam. They have called for the execution of atheist bloggers, and since 2013, five bloggers and one publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh. Police blame Ansarullah Bangla Team, a local hardline Islamist group, for the killings. However, Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for the murders of an Italian aid worker, a Japanese farming expert, two Shi'ite people and a muezzin of a Shi'ite mosque late last year. IS also claimed responsibility for the February killing of a Hindu priest, the murder of a law student earlier this month in Dhaka, and Saturdays hacking death of a university professor in northwest Bangladesh. However, no group has claimed responsibility for the killings of Mannan and Tanoy. Bangladeshi authorities say IS has no foothold in Bangladesh and that local militant groups, supported by opposition parties, are behind the crimes. Soon after Mondays killings, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that Mannan and Tanoy were the latest victims of a conspiracy to destabilize the country. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami is engineering such secret killings to destabilize the country, Hasina said. The BNP is led by Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister. Rights Group Expresses Shock Amnesty Internationals South Asia director Champa Patel said Mondays killings "underscore the appalling lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country." There have been four deplorable killings so far this month alone. It is shocking that no one has been held to account for these horrific attacks, and that almost no protection has been given to threatened members of civil society, Patel said in a statement. USAIDs administrator Gayle Smith said the agency has lost one of our own, as she condemned the murder. She described Mannan as the kind of person willing to fight for what he believed in; someone ready to stand up for his own rights and the rights of others. The U.S. State Department said, "We are outraged" by the killings, and Marcia Bernicat, U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, said she is devastated by the brutal murder of Mannan and Tanoy. "Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the U.S. Embassy. He was a dear friend, the ambassador said in a statement. Nearly 15 years after terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a farm field in Pennsylvania, 28 pages detailing foreign support for the attackers could soon be made public. Only a select group of U.S. officials have read the highly classified document, which has been locked in a secure area of the U.S. Capitol building since a joint congressional committee crafted it in 2002. Bills in both the Senate and House of Representatives and people who helped write it are calling for its release. Despite its classified status, those familiar with the chapter have made enough allusions to its connections with Saudi Arabia for people to wonder about what exact link the document may suggest. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was a part of the joint committee, said Sunday during an interview on NBC's Meet The Press the pages should be released to end debate over what they contain and let the American public make up its own mind about the contents. When asked if the release would have a high-level negative impact, Graham said yes. Saudi citizens He said whether the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens, had any outside help is the most important outstanding question related to the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. "I think it's implausible to think that people who couldn't speak English, had never been in the United States before, as a group were not well-educated, could have done that," he said. "So who was the most likely entity to have provided them that support? And I think that all of the evidence points to Saudi Arabia." Former President George W. Bush ordered the 28 pages to be classified and not included in the 828-page congressional report that was released to the public. His successor, Barack Obama, has ordered his intelligence team to review the chapter, and Graham said he hopes the text will be made available when a decision is made by June. Last week, Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said he expects "there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information." But Rhodes did not speak to the timing and cautioned that the work of the joint congressional commission and the subsequent 9/11 Commission have given a "definitive statement" determining that Saudi Arabia did not have an intent to support al-Qaida. Obama visit U.S.-Saudi relations have come under heightened focus with Obama's visit there last week and his public criticism that the kingdom is not doing enough to address terrorism in its own region. Another member of the congressional commission, former Representative Tim Roemer, said last week that the group "did not exonerate the Saudis," and that the pages should be declassified. "The Saudis won't relish the renewed spotlight, and it could strain relations with a valued ally with whom we have sometimes experienced a turbulent partnership," Roemer wrote in RealClearPolitics. "But we have more to fear from secrecy and conspiracy theories than pursuing transparency and truth, and the 9/11 families deserve to have the fullest possible record available from past investigations." The 9/11 Commission Report, which was published in 2004, calls Saudi Arabia a "problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism." In addition to citing a cooperation failure among U.S. security agencies, the report notes a failure in U.S.-Saudi cooperation in sharing intelligence information or disrupting al-Qaida's finances. 9/11 hijackers It also offers varied explanations as to why so many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. The report said Ramzi Binalshibh, a Guantanamo Bay detainee described as the "coordinator" of the attacks, explained the choice of the hijackers as a deliberate message to the Saudi government about its relationship with the United States. But the next paragraph cites 9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Shaikh Mohammed denying that theory. Instead, Mohammed says the number of Saudis involved in the attacks was a reflection of the high percentage of recruits in al-Qaida training camps who came from Saudi Arabia. Niger's security forces have arrested more than 100 people in the Sahara desert who were trying to illegally cross the country's northern border into neighboring Algeria, security sources said Monday. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the arrests, which took place Saturday, concerned 122 women and children found in a single truck. Local media said 150 people had been arrested. An estimated 100,000 people passed through Agadez last year, a city in the center of the West African state and a major hub for sub-Saharan migrants aiming to reach North Africa and Europe. Authorities believe more will come through this year. A security official said the truck had bypassed Assamaka, the final desert checkpoint in Niger before the border with Algeria, and was found by a customs patrol car. "The patrol immobilized the truck, discovered the migrants on board and gave the alert," said the official. Giussepe Loprete, IOM's mission head in Niger, said the migrants had been returned to Agadez on Sunday, where they were staying at an IOM center before the organization would facilitate their returns to their areas of origin. "All these people ignore the dangers that loom over them, like the breakdown of a truck in such a vast desert and the exhaustion of their reserves," Loprete said. Nepal has begun reconstruction of ancient key temples and monuments, including a UNESCO heritage site, that were damaged in a massive earthquake quake one year ago. Nepali officials say it will take years to fully restore the South Asian country's architectural heritage and rebuild 600,000 homes destroyed in the magnitude-7.8 quake that upended roads in the country and turned mountain villages into rubble. Memorial services for the nearly 9,000 who died in the earthquake were held Sunday, alongside demonstrations against the slow pace of the Nepalese recovery. International donors have pledged $4.1 billion toward Nepal's recovery, but only $1.3 billion has been sent to the country, with the government blamed for taking months to set up the National Reconstruction Authority. In a statement released by the White House Monday, National Security Council spokesperson Ned Prince expressed condolences for the lives lost in the quake and acknowledged that "much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead." "We are humbled by those who risked their lives to save others, including the six United States Marines who perished in Nepal while providing relief to Nepalis in need," he said. In Nepal, protesters chanted "Government, where is reconstruction?" as they tried to force their way into government offices. "Open the gates of the government." "We are hoping that the government's priorities and perspectives on reconstruction will soon be clear so that we can help people to rebuild and get their lives back on track as quickly as possible," one Red Cross official in Nepal said. The Red Cross says four million people are living in shelters. Homeless survivors have been promised about $2,000 in aid, but only several hundred have received the first $500 installment. Tibetans remain displaced According to reports by VOA's Tibetan Service, Tibetan villages along Nepal's border, which were also destroyed by that same quake, have yet to be rebuilt, and many of an estimated 100,000 internally displaced Tibetans remains without homes to return to. On Friday, Tibet Radio, a Chinese official Tibetan language news service, indicated most relocated Tibetans still remain in Shigatse, Tibet's westernmost prefecture-level city. The state newscaster also said Pema Trinlay, vice party secretary of Tibetan Autonomous Region, recently visited the displaced Tibetans and told them that quake reconstruction is a top priority in 2016. It is not clear whether the construction will focus on rebuilding damaged homes or simply moving displaced Tibetans into newly towns, as Beijing has done before. Thirty years after the meltdown of a flawed Soviet reactor in Ukraine and five years since the disaster at Japan's tsunami-swamped Fukushima-1 plant, the global nuclear power industry remains in flux. The heavily charged debate about whether it is safe, effective and economical to split atoms to generate electricity shows no sign of decay. We see a viable market out there emerging, particularly with the carbon constraints that everybody is facing. But its also more competitive than its ever been, said J. Scott Peterson, vice president for communications at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Ten nuclear reactors were connected to grids last year while two one each in Germany and Britain were closed. At present, about 400 reactors in 31 countries are online. More than 60 reactors are under construction in 15 countries although that is a relative state as some completion has been delayed for decades for some due to policy debates, cost overruns or other construction delays. Fukushima After the Fukushima disaster with an ongoing cleanup that could take a century and cost hundreds of billions of dollars nuclear was off the Japanese grid for nearly two years until two reactors restarted in August and October. Japan, which depends on imports for about 90 percent of its primary energy needs, now has two dozen reactors in the process of restart approvals and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has insisted his country cannot do without nuclear power. Surveys, however, show that the majority of Japanese now oppose restarting nuclear plants. Nuclear in Japan is becoming a shipwreck, said Tetsunari Iida, executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies. No one can make decisions about it and no one can take responsibility for it. There have been nearly 30 lawsuits and requests for temporary injunctions to suspend operations at 14 nuclear power plants since the Fukushima accident, according to activists. The reality is that nuclear will never be a major source of energy for Japan again, said Kendra Ulrich, a senior energy campaigner for Greenpeace, who is based in Tokyo. Shutting down Due to the costs of maintaining and retrofitting aging reactors, Ulrich added, already some utilities are saying 'we're not going to restart.' Decommissioning old plants has spawned an industry of its own. Disposal of waste and other operations related to decommissioning will be worth $200 billion by 2030, according to the French water and waste giant Veolia, which has acquired Kurion, a California-based company involved in the Fukushima cleanup. Enthusiasm for nuclear power suffered its first big blow at the end of March in 1979 when a virtually new 900 Mwe (megawatt electric output) commercial reactor in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania partially melted down, although there were no demonstrable health implications. It created an angst within the public around nuclear energy technology that we eventually recovered from, the NEI's Peterson explained. And it created a new awareness among U.S. operators for training of reactors operators and the fact that we had to have constant vigilance for reactor operators. Three Mile Island Many Americans may be surprised to know that the Three Mile Island plant site of the worst nuclear accident in the United States -- continues to run a single 800 MWe reactor and is one of the country's best-performing units. The United States with 100 nuclear units in operation produces nearly a third of the world's total atomic energy and relies on nuclear for about one fifth of the country's energy production. But its existing plants are being challenged economically and several have been retired. Fewer than 10 new plants are expected to come online by 2030. That also has contributed to the United States no longer being the dominant player in the global nuclear market. We have significant competition from the Russians, from the South Koreans which have won recent bids with their technology and even from the Chinese who are starting to get into the export market, said Peterson, with the nuclear industry lobbying group in Washington. What is happening in China is a mixed blessing, said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. China is fast coming up the learning curve and becoming a significant rival or competitor to the Western vendors in the coming years, Nakano explained to VOA. On the other hand without the robust expansion of a nuclear power generation program in China and perhaps by Chinese vendors globally nuclear as a source of electricity may not have a bright future. At home, Chinas ambitious domestic plant construction projects are not without controversy. Environmentalists in Hong Kong are expressing concern that a pair of 1,750 MWe nuclear reactors under construction in Taishan, 130 kilometers away, are based on a French design shown to have structural flaws. Green energy Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands and Spain representing nearly half of the world's population now generate more electricity from non-hydro renewables than from nuclear power. Nations which already do not have any nuclear infrastructure will find its not economically an easy endeavor, according to CSIS Nakano. Initiating a nuclear energy program goes beyond establishing a reactor and acquiring a fuel source. Nakano points out that creating the regulatory framework, training skilled personnel and dealing with spent nuclear fuel the latter a challenge still confronting the United States takes a lot of time and money. If you are serious about this industry and you want to be an exporter of this technology then you not only have to export the technology, but you have to export the regulatory regime and you have to export the safety culture, said Peterson. But critics say safety has long been compromised by regulatory capture when an industry has too much sway over its purported overseers. It's the condition that created the Fukushima disaster, said Ulrich. Another issue still confronting the industry is concern that countries acquiring fissile materials for civilian power plants will divert them for military purposes. India, for example, has not established a complete and verifiable separation of its civilian and military nuclear programs, according to a discussion paper authored by Kalman Robert and John Carlson at the Belfer Centers Project on Managing the Atom. Nuclear proponents like to point out that the world has enough uranium to keep atomic power going for another couple of centuries and that utilizing it cuts reliance on pollution-causing fossil fuels and foreign energy sources. Its opponents dismiss nuclear as a viable option for addressing climate change. Climate change is an immediate threat and nuclear takes an incredibly long time to build the average construction time (for a new plant) is just under ten years, Ulrich told VOA. The industry has also been beset by its promises of innovation not delivering results. Innovations So-called Generation III reactor designs meant to be safer, simpler and cheaper, and touted in the 1990s have not lived up to claims. Promises of further innovation continue to be made. Right now, for instance, theres an outspoken lobby making the case for Small Modular Reactors an idea which is readily badged as Generation IV but actually goes back to the 1960s, according to the independent 2015 World Nuclear Industry Status Report. We expect the license submissions of small reactor designs to begin this December, nuclear industry proponent Peterson told VOA. We have utilities looking at sites to build them. The NEI predicts that between 2020 and 2025 these first small reactors will begin to penetrate the commercial market. But others are skeptical. The track record of the industry is absolutely abysmal when it comes to creating new designs that are implemented quickly, Greenpeace's Ulrich said. They're trying to re-sell the public on a myth that they've been trying to sell for decades. Despite assurances that future generation reactors will be more efficient and safer, the industry three decades after the worlds worst nuclear accident still finds itself on the defensive on the safety issue. At least in the U.S. mind Chernobyl couldnt happen here just because of the technology differences and the way our plants are built, said Peterson, noting the Soviet-era technology even at that time was considered far inferior to the Western technology. Contributing to the apprehension is that experts still cannot agree on the ultimate human toll from the Chernobyl meltdowns. Dozens of emergency workers died from the radiation effects and the World Heath Organization, decades ago, predicted Chernobyl would cause 4,000 additional cancer deaths. But a Greenpeace-commissioned study put the eventual toll at 93,000. Nuclear energys proponents counter that our conventional energy sources are far more lethal, citing data showing coal killing 4,000 times more people per unit of energy produced than nuclear. Energy density Another comparative factor is what is called energy density. Wind turbines have a power density of one watt per square meter. To be equal to the output of a pair of typical reactors sitting on 100 hectares, one would need 2,000 square kilometers covered with windmills, about the size of the island nation of Mauritius. Japan could meet its total annual demand of 200 gigawatts if just 1 percent of its land area was covered with photo-voltaic cells, according to alternative energy evangelist Iida. And the wind could provide nine times that capacity in the island nation, where traditional natural resources are scarce. Both solar and wind must be the substantial mix to replace fossil fuels and nuclear in Japan, said Iida. Like the nuclear proponents, those touting green energy contend innovation is just around the corner that will allow their preferred choice for electricity generation to become the most efficient and affordable method. President Barack Obama is ordering a significant increase in the number of U.S. Special Operations Forces in Syria and is urging European nations to ramp up their contributions to the coalition fighting Islamic State. Speaking at an industrial trade fair Monday in Hannover, Germany, Obama says up to 250 additional personnel will join a team of about 50 U.S. troops in Syria. Their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL [Islamic State] out of key areas, Obama said. Earlier this month, the United States announced the deployment of an additional 200 troops and several Apache attack helicopters to Iraq, where they will help government forces there take back IS-held territory. The additional U.S. troops will not be leading the fight on the ground, Obama pointed out, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back. WATCH: Obama on more US troops in Syria Europe urged to step up In remarks directed at the people of Europe, Obama called on Americas European partners to step up their efforts for our collective security. These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens so we need to do everything in our power to stop them, he argued. None of us can solve this problem by ourselves. Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO can still do more, he said. Obama also stressed the importance of a strong, prosperous and united Europe. A united Europe, once the dream of a few, remains the hope of the many and the necessity for us all, he told a large audience. Talks with European leaders After his remarks, Obama met with his counterparts from Germany, Britain, France and Italy. The leaders discussed a broad strange of issues, including the agenda for a NATO summit that will be held in Warsaw in July. The agenda included talks on ways the United States, Europe and NATO partners can increase cooperation to combat Islamic State, confront a migration crisis in Europe, and Russian aggression in Ukraine. "The leaders agreed that the implications of irregular migration to Europe posed a severe challenge that needed to be addressed in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, reflecting the values that Europe and the United States share: this implies ongoing NATO and EU activities as well as efforts to tackle the root causes of flight and migration," a White House statement said after the talks. On Syria, it said the leaders "shared the growing concern that the increasing violations of the agreed cessation of hostilities by the regime and the continued obstruction of humanitarian access undermine efforts to bring relief to the Syrian people." The leaders also welcomed continued progress by the U.S. -led coalition that has been fighting Islamic State, according to the White House. Earlier, Obama toured the Hannover Messe fair grounds along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The event is known as worlds largest industrial technology fair. Obama touted U.S. innovation and called for more international cooperation on trade and commerce. Thousands of police and soldiers were deployed Monday across the Egyptian capital ahead of planned demonstrations against the government's transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, a thorny issue which has already sparked the largest protests since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi assumed power nearly two years ago. Following the arrest of dozens of activists and journalists in recent days, riot police backed by armored vehicles on Monday took up positions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt's 2011 uprising, They also deployed on the ring road, downtown and at a square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013. Many of the protest organizers' gathering points were sealed off by police, including the doctors' and journalists' unions in central Cairo. Pedestrians near the Press Syndicate were stopped by police, who asked for IDs and about their destination before turning many of them away. Minivans loaded with plainclothes policemen were also deployed in the likely flashpoints. In the poor district of Nahya, in Cairo's twin city of Giza, the sheer number of deployed policemen and fear of arrest prevented protesters from even gathering forcing them to trickle out of the area in small groups in the hope of assembling elsewhere, according to protesters speaking to an Associated Press reporter in the area. The protesters spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The military said in a video released late Sunday that troops were deployed to protect "vital and important installations" and deal with anyone who tries to "harm the people's interests or attempt to ruin their happiness" on Sinai Liberation Day, a national holiday marking the completion of Israel's withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982. Egyptian warplanes roared over Cairo to mark Monday's anniversary, but the military kept a low profile on the ground except for areas near military headquarters and the presidential palace. The Interior Ministry said police were out in force to protect "peaceful" citizens who wish to celebrate. Several dozen people waving Egyptian flags celebrated with music and dancing in the upscale district of Mohandiseen. El-Sissi on Sunday urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from the "forces of evil," an apparent reference to the planned protests. Monday's planned demonstrations would be the second wave of protests this month against the decision to give up control of the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. On April 15, about 2,000 people protested in downtown Cairo over the islands. That protest was the largest against el-Sissi since he assumed office in 2014, nearly a year after leading the military ouster of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader. Chants of "leave," and "the people want to bring down the regime" rang out in the downtown area on that day, harkening back to the 2011 uprising that forced autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in power. As was the case for the April 15 demonstrations, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Morsi hails, has called on its supporters to take part in Monday's demonstrations. The group has been banned and is declared a terror group by authorities and the participation of its followers on Monday will increase the potential for violence. Authorities have detained dozens of activists in recent days, with the arrests continuing until just hours before the planned demonstrations. Freedom for the Brave, an activist group, says nearly 100 people have been arrested since last week. On Monday, at least three journalists were arrested downtown, according to Khaled el-Balshy, a member of the Press Syndicate's board. Two of the three journalists were released several hours later. Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, off the southern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo's protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them. The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multi-billion-dollar package of aid and investment to Egypt, fueling charges that the islands were sold off. "Egypt needs the truth revealed to its people: Through dialogue, not suppression, with documents, evidence and maps, not security raids and random detentions," prominent columnist Abdullah el-Sinnawy wrote in Monday's edition of the Al-Shorouk daily. "It's difficult to resolve a crisis like this one through the fist of security, no matter how tough it is." El-Sissi insists that Egypt has not surrendered an "inch" of its territory and has demanded that people stop talking about the issue. But the Egyptian leader has also faced mounting criticism about other matters, including the ailing economy and the abduction, torture and killing of an Italian graduate student in Cairo earlier this year. That incident has poisoned relations with Italy, one of el-Sissi's staunchest EU supporters and Egypt's biggest European trade partner. Egyptian authorities have denied any involvement in the student's killing. Millennials lack confidence in the U.S. justice system and distrust the mainstream media, according to a recent Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) poll published on Monday. Nearly 47 percent of the 3,183 interviewed indicated they have no or not much confidence in the justice systems ability to judge people without bias for race and ethnicity. Young Americans ages 18-29 were surveyed between March 18 and April 3. Broken down by race, a majority of African Americans (59 percent) and Hispanics (52 percent) said they are not confident the U.S. judicial system judges without bias. Among whites the figure is 42 percent. These results come after the White House announced on Friday that 53 police departments across the United States have committed to an initiative designed to make local policing more transparent. The White House had said the commitments "represent concrete steps toward building trust" in local communities between citizens and police, and are indicative of a larger shift in the culture of community policing. Harvard IOP polling director John Della Volpe said millennials are deeply concerned about the very nature of the way we are organized as a country, and they want to be treated fairly. Sonya Jacobs, student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, said poll organizers decided to add questions about the U.S. justice system after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement - a national movement of street protests that began after the 2012 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida during a street altercation with a mixed race Hispanic man. Young Americans also distrust the mainstream media. Only 2 percent of those polled trust the media "all of the time" and 7 percent "most of the time." When compared to other areas of government, the U.S. military got the highest level of trust among millennials with 51 percent agreeing the military often does the right thing. Less than half of millenials have a high level of trust for President Obama and the U.S. Supreme Court, with Obama at 40 percent and the high court at 39 percent. Only 18 percent of millennials trust Congress all or most of the time. The polls margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. Foreign policy almost always takes a back seat to domestic concerns during the U.S. presidential campaign season. Candidates rarely win over any voters in diners in New Hampshire or town hall events in Iowa touting their plans for economic investment and security frameworks in Africa. In 1999, then-candidate George W. Bush went so far as to declare Africa irrelevant to U.S. foreign policy during his first presidential run. But even if a voter never changed a ballot based on U.S. policy in Africa, surrogates from all five presidential campaigns gathered Thursday to discuss those issues on Capitol Hill, providing an unusual glimpse into the thinking behind the future leader of the United States. The gathering organized by the Africa-America Institute also brought together former assistant secretaries of state for African affairs with other speakers who had varied credentials qualifying them to speak about the continent. I can be very fast about Senator [Ted] Cruzs Africa policy, because he doesnt have one. Hes been busy with other things. Texas takes a lot of time all by itself, said Michael Ledeen, a Foundation for Defense of Democracies scholar described as an adviser to the Ted Cruz presidential campaign. While Africa has taken on a position of greater importance in U.S. policy during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, the reality is that the continent has rarely been a source of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans. J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, who served as an Africa policy adviser on the presidential campaigns of John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, said any administration would have to confront the demographics of change in Africa. By 2050, 1 in 4 workers around the world will be African and they will more than likely be working in some of the fastest-growing economies worldwide. Economic views To many of the campaign surrogates, Africa appeared to be a proxy for the candidates own views on economic issues. Wala Blegay, a Liberian-American and Washington attorney who is an adviser to the Bernie Sanders campaign, said the Sanders campaigns belief in economic justice extended to Africa, where U.S. policy should not just be about crisis. Its truly about investing in Africa and not treating Africa as a place to throw money. Economic development and strong business ties would be something to look for in a Trump White House, said J.D. Gordon, a former Department of Defense spokesman who described himself as a foreign policy adviser with the Donald Trump campaign. Gordon said he did not speak directly for Trump but could share some of his worldviews and how Trumps familiarity with deal-making could apply to Africa. Bipartisan agreement Two former assistant secretaries of state for African affairs representing the John Kasich and Hillary Clinton campaigns found areas for bipartisan agreement. Ambassador Herman Jay Cohen, who described himself as representing the views of Republican Kasich, praised President Barack Obamas Feed the Future, a program that boosts African agricultural development. Africa cannot only feed itself. It can feed others, Cohen said. Michelle Gavin, an adviser to the Clinton campaign, agreed, while calling for a deepening regionalization that would increase inter-African trade. The bipartisan spirit over economic development in Africa did not extend to the discussion of how to deal with terrorism on the continent. Leeden said Cruz wants to challenge the Obama administrations reluctance to use the phrase radical Islamic terrorism. Speaking for Kasich, Cohen called African Muslims tolerant and said the problem of Islamic terrorism on the continent was related to "Arabic-speaking peoples. Cohen blamed Wahhabi influence from Saudi Arabia. Surprise to observers The assertion appeared to surprise many of the observers in the room, and its one Pham said could occur when Africa is perceived as a single entity rather than a complex gathering of countries and cultures. Theres no denying that Islamist or jihadist terrorism is particularly challenging because of the relative weak capacity of many governments to deal with the challenge, he said. But to ascribe that to merely one ethnic group or another or one linguistic group or another is vastly oversimplifying a complex continent. Clintons surrogate noted that her campaign sees Africas diversity as a source of one of its great strengths and recognized the thriving democracies, including the Muslim democracies. That perspective may increasingly come to guide U.S. policy in Africa during the next administration. Weve really come to recognize Africa as increasingly important strategically and economically to the United States, said Pham, and that reality is going to be there irrespective of whether its a Republican or Democratic administration. African elephants are the largest land animals on Earth, weighing as much as six tons, and measuring up to 7.5 meters long. But despite their size, they find humans to be their greatest threat: Tens of thousands of these animals are killed every year for their ivory tusks. Researcher Lucy King, head of the human-elephant coexistence program at Kenya-based conservation group Save the Elephants, said poaching is devastating animal populations across Africa. But another major concern is human-wildlife conflict. When elephants raid crops, it causes financial loss to the farmers and potential harm to the elephants. 'Increasing exponentially' The population in Africa is increasing exponentially, and the land space for elephants and other large game is shrinking exponentially, King said. Corridors are being blocked, infrastructure development is coming up, and so I believe the next big challenge for elephants is going to be conflict. "And that interface between farmers and elephants is the one were working on, and we feel we can do something with," she said. So she did. King learned that when elephants heard the distinctive sound of bees, they rounded up their herd and quickly moved away. Local farmers attested that despite the elephants thick skin, bees could still sting around their eyes and disturb their ears, causing them to shy away when they heard buzzing. And the Elephants and Bees Project was born. King and her team work near in the Taita-Taveta area of Kenya, near Tsavo East National Park, where theyve helped 22 farmers build and maintain beehive fences, consisting of between 10 and 21 hives, depending on the size of the farmers plot, plus dummy hives to help spread out the bee concentration. Deterrent The hives are strung along the periphery of a farmers crops to deter the elephants from crop raiding. The team monitors each farmers hives carefully, taking notes on each one and also working with the farmers to determine the elephants movements in the area. King says a beehive fence features a critical difference from an electric fence. Electric fencing provides a shock to the body, but its static. So the elephants can learn, 'If I touch that, its going to hurt.' But they can test it, they can put their bodies against it, they can push their feet on the posts, and eventually they can work out, one quick shove and the fence will go down, King said. But the fence doesnt chase them afterwards. Local farmer Charity Mwangome, who built her fence in 2012, believes the research buzz. It helps a lot because if the elephants come in and they see the fence, they stop and dont come into the farm. They instead go around," Mwangome said. But the beehive fence, which King said has about an 80 percent success rate, doesnt just help with keeping out the elephants. It also provides farmers with another means to generate income, through honey production. WATCH: Video clip of elephants Boost to income And for farmers who make on average $300 per year, less than a dollar a day, the 30 to 50 percent income boost makes a big difference. Research center coordinator Matthew Rudolph said the biggest problem is just keeping up with consumer demand for the honey, which he and other staff members process at its center here. People pick it up as soon as it is jarred, Rudolph said. And it goes fast, Rudolph and King said. The center typically harvests the honey twice a year -- in January and May -- and produces about 500 jars. However, requests worldwide far exceed the production, the researchers said. King said the priority is to first supply local markets so word about the beehive fences will spread. An open-source manual for constructing a beehive fence can be found on the groups website. King said she has received comments from people in at least 11 African and Asian countries who have used the plans to build their own beehives, adapting them to local conditions. Poaching issue Although this project helps combat human-wildlife conflict, poaching remains the No. 1 threat to elephants. Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta will host this months Giants Club Summit, which will bring dignitaries together at Mount Kenya to find solutions to combat the crisis. Organizers expect presidents from four African countries -- Botswana, Gabon, Kenya and Uganda -- and their representatives to attend the event, to be held Thursday through Saturday. The event will conclude in Nairobi Saturday with the destruction of 105 tons of seized ivory to prevent its economic use. PHOTO GALLERY: Related Elephant and Bee Project photos Saudi Arabia has unveiled a long-term plan that could result in its most significant economic change in decades by proposing a shift away from oil, the country's most valuable asset. The economic reform plan is part of an effort to revive Saudi Arabia's economy, which has been hard hit by sharp drops in crude oil prices, forcing the world's largest exporter of crude to find new sources of income. The reforms are intended to eliminate housing and unemployment issues and ensure the most needy citizens get water and energy subsidies. The plan will focus on privatizations, subsidy cuts, the sale of five percent of oil giant Saudi Aramco and the creation of a $2 trillion fund to develop cities. The plan, named "Saudi Vision 2030," was approved Monday by the Saudi Cabinet. "I think by 2020, if oil stops, we can survive," said Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a nationally televised interview. Implementation of the plan may not come without challenges. In a country where 70 percent of revenues come from oil, the Saudi government has for decades spent enormous amounts of money on its citizens without requiring them to pay taxes. Saudi Arabia's plans follow other long-term economic reform plans announced by neighboring Persian Gulf countries, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Serbia's pro-European Union prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, has won a landslide victory in general elections, the country's electoral commission confirmed Monday. With nearly all the votes counted, Vucic's Progressive Party won 48 percent of the vote. The allied Socialists who have been ruling in a coalition for the past four years took an additional 11 percent. The ultra-nationalist pro-Russian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, who was recently acquitted of war crimes charges in The Hague, was in third place with 8 percent. Four other parties also reached the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament. "I think this is a historic result, to win more votes in absolute terms, to win in relative numbers, in percentages, more votes than two years ago when we launched very difficult reforms," said Vucic. "I think it is an extraordinary result." Vucic called the elections two years early, seeking a new mandate to enact tough economic and political reforms demanded by the EU in exchange for moving forward with the regional grouping's membership process. "Serbia will continue its European journey. We will try to accelerate it. As I said, we will make no compromise there, just as we will zealously continue guarding our traditional friendship and ties with the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China and many other countries." Vucic's critics accused him of calling the vote now to avoid public discontent that many predict will occur when those reforms fully impact daily life in the Balkan country of 7.1 million residents. The family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy whose fatal shooting in 2014 by a white Cleveland, Ohio, police officer sparked national outrage and unrest, will receive a $6 million settlement. Family attorney Subodh Chandra said the settlement "is nothing to celebrate, because a 12-year-old boy lost his life." The suit alleged police acted recklessly when officer Timothy Loehmann shot Rice within two seconds of arriving at the scene in a car. The Rice family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Cleveland and the police officers and other personnel involved in the response to a 911 phone call from a man near a recreation center. The caller reported a man, "probably a juvenile, was pointing a weapon at people that was probably fake." Police were only given a report of a male with a weapon. Rice had a plastic Airsoft gun that shoots nonlethal plastic pellets. In an order filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, the city does not admit to any wrongdoing. Loehmann and the other officers had asked the court to drop the lawsuit. Loehmann's lawyer maintained his client is burdened with having to live with the shooting. During the investigation, it was revealed Loehmann had resigned from another Ohio police department after displaying "loss of composure" during gun-training exercises. Rice's shooting death is one of several fatal shootings of African Americans by white police officers in recent years that have sparked protests across the United States. Thailand plans to sell the remaining 11.4 million tons of rice in government stockpiles within two months, the country's rice management board said on Monday, starting next week. The world's second-biggest rice exporter after India has been reducing stocks left over after the end of a rice-buying scheme under the previous, civilian government. The military government which took control following a May 2014 coup has auctioned off 5.05 million tons of rice worth $1.53 billion through several tenders since taking power. Some traders were skeptical about the government's ability to sell off remaining stocks in just two months. The government had previously said it aimed to clear the stockpile by the end of 2017. "Auctions will start next week, with one million tons of rice for each lot. We aim to auction it all off within two months," said commerce ministry permanent secretary Chutima Bunyapraphasara, who is also secretary of the rice management board. Chutima said the remaining rice stocks were worth over 100 billion baht ($2.85 billion). Supachai Vorraapinyaporn, president of Tanasan Rice Group, Thailand's third largest rice exporter, said the government's target of offloading the rice within two months was not possible. "This is a million percent impossible, considering that previous auctions were monthly, and only around 400,000 tons," said Supachai. "Perhaps they meant two years, not two months," he added. Thailand has about 100,000 tons of what the commerce ministry has called "good grade" rice in state warehouses. The remaining stocks include 7.5 million tons of "substandard" rice for human consumption, 1.5 million tons of rice earmarked for industrial use, and 2.4 million tons of spoiled rice. U.S. billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, ridiculed his two rivals' joint effort to derail his campaign Monday, calling it a "horrible act of desperation." Trump's challengers, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, announced a plan late Sunday to try to deny the brash Trump, who has never held elective office, from winning the nomination on the first ballot at the party's July national convention, in hopes convention delegates will pick them on a subsequent ballot. Kasich said he would stop campaigning in the midwestern state of Indiana, where Republicans vote in a nominating contest May 3, to give Cruz a better shot of winning there against Trump. Meanwhile, Cruz agreed to halt his efforts in two western states, Oregon, which votes May 17, and New Mexico, with voting on June 7, to give Kasich more room to fight Trump for convention delegates in those states. Both Cruz and Kasich said they would continue to campaign against each other and Trump in other states. Trump derided the Cruz-Kasich effort, saying, "It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination." 'Act of desperation' He said the two candidates' coordination to block him "would often be illegal" in corporate transactions."This horrible act of desperation from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail," he said. Cruz said going head to head against Trump in Indiana, a conservative state with both rural expanses and industrial centers, will help voters there decide and also is "good for the country to have a clear and direct choice." Kasich gave a mixed message about the coordination with Cruz, saying he would not spend "resources" in Indiana, but still called for people there to vote for him. Watch video report from VOA's Zlatica Hoke: The Cruz-Kasich strategy signals a marked shift for Cruz, who has previously rejected overtures to join with Kasich to try to block Trump. The New York developer holds a commanding lead in convention delegates over both of his challengers, but is not yet assured of winning a majority of convention delegates before the quadrennial gathering starts. Cruz has repeatedly called for Kasich to drop out, saying he was a spoiler in the race, winning votes and a handful of delegates that were denying Cruz a chance for a head-to-head faceoff with Trump. Race for delegates Cruz, a conservative agitator against both Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington, has acknowledged that he cannot win the nomination on the first ballot, but says Trump, a one-time television reality show host, also won't reach the majority of 1,237 convention delegates needed to claim the nomination on the first round of voting. As its stands now, Trump has 845 pledged delegates on the first ballot, Cruz 559, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race a month ago, 171, and Kasich 148. Trump, if he does well in the 15 remaining state nominating contests, could reach the 1,237 figure. He swept to victory in his home state of New York last week and is a heavy favorite over Cruz and Kasich in all five primaries scheduled Tuesday in five northeastern states, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Trump leads pre-primary polls U.S. political analysts view the vote in Indiana, a conservative state with both rural expanses and industrial centers, as another crucial step in deciding the outcome of the Republican nomination race. Pre-election surveys show Trump with a single-digit percentage lead over Cruz, but the outcome could tip with Kasich's withdrawal from the state, assuming his supporters don't stay home and actually switch their votes to Cruz rather than Trump. Trump scoffed at both the Cruz and Kasich campaigns, saying that about 80 percent of the Republican voters have rejected Cruz and noting that Kasich has only won in Ohio, the Midwestern state he governs, while losing dozens of other contests. Democratic front-runner The eventual Republican nominee is likely to face the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the November national election to pick a successor to President Barack Obama, who leaves office in January. Clinton, seeking to become the first female U.S. president, holds a significant lead in Democratic convention delegates over her sole challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but has yet to seize a majority to claim the party's nomination. Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, is favored in the Tuesday voting in all five states. The United States pledged $10 million to aid those affected by the fallout of the Chernobyl disaster, as Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of what is described as the world's worst nuclear accident. An April 26, 1986, explosion at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor forced the evacuation 350,000 residents working and living in the surrounding area. State Department spokesperson John Kirby said Monday the funds will "help ensure the safety of future generations who live in the affected area." The pledge comes on top of more than $400 million the United States has committed to the international effort to help Ukraine restore the site of the accident to an environmentally safe and secure condition. About 40 nations have contributed to the $2.3 billion New Safe Confinement project, which is building a long-term shelter over the building containing Chernobyl's destroyed reactor. Once the structure is in place, work will begin to remove the reactor and the lava-like radioactive waste. The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31, but thousands more people have died of radiation-related illnesses such as cancer. The total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate. A Turkey-based American journalist says he was denied re-entry at Istanbul Ataturk Airport on Monday and is returning to the United States. David Lepeska is one of several foreign journalists who have been recently detained, denied entry or expelled from Turkey as the government cracks down on critical media and dissenting voices raising concerns in a country once seen as a model of Muslim democracy and which aspires to EU membership. "I've been given no reason for the entry ban, or confirmation that this status is lasting or permanent," Lepeska, who has written for Foreign Affairs and Al Jazeera America, told The Associated Press. Lepeska arrived in Turkey from Italy on Sunday evening after a family vacation. On arrival, he was informed that there was an entry ban on his visa and that he would need to wait for clearance from Ankara to re-enter the country. After nearly 20 hours of waiting, Lepeska said, he decided such clearance "probably wasn't forthcoming" and booked a flight to Chicago as he is a native of the area. On his Instagram account, he wrote, "This is not the last I will see of you, Turkey." There was no immediate comment from Turkey's Interior or Foreign Ministries on his situation. The U.S. Consulate in Istanbul declined to comment on the case. Lepeska said he wasn't accredited as a journalist in Turkey because he had a valid foreign mission visa in his capacity as editor for The World Bank. The organization confirmed he worked in Istanbul as a "part-time editor consultant" at the International Finance Cooperation, a member of The World Bank Group. The World Bank said it was aware of the incident, but "not aware of the reason." The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called on Turkish authorities to allow Lepeska to enter Turkey without delay. The government should "stop obstructing him and other international journalists from reporting in the country," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "A Turkey that aspires to membership in the European Union and for global recognition as a reliable partner has no business banning foreign journalists," she added. Meanwhile, a Turkish court ruled Monday that a well-known journalist should pay a fine of about $10,500 for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his son Bilal, and several businessmen. The court found Cumhuriyet chief editor Can Dundar guilty of "insulting public figures" over remarks he made in August 2014, when Erdogan was prime minister, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The journalist, however, was acquitted of charges of "breaching confidentiality" over his reporting on a December 2013 graft probe. Dundar, along with Cumhuriyet Ankara representative Erdem Gul, is facing separate charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization. The pair could face life imprisonment if found guilty of revealing state secrets over a report on alleged government arms-smuggling to Syrian rebels. The additional 250 U.S. special operations troops heading to Syria in the coming days will be a "force multiplier," meeting with local fighters and providing expertise to Syrians willing to take on Islamic State, according to the Pentagon. "This is as much about introductions and connections and seeing what we can do to support those forces, some of whom we don't know yet," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters Monday. "That's what the main task of these additional forces will be." President Barack Obama announced earlier in the day that the new personnel would join a team of about 50 U.S. troops already advising local fighters in Syria. "These new forces will expand those efforts and build on what's been working," Cook said. "They will not be engaged in direct combat. They will not be on the frontlines." The Pentagon said advising in Syria would be on a more basic level than the latest logistical and weapons support being provided to Iraqi security forces. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced last week that the U.S. was sending about 200 additional U.S. forces, along with Apache attack helicopters and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, to help Iraqi security forces in the fight to retake Mosul from Islamic State. "I don't think we're talking about bringing these weapons capabilities to Syrian forces," Cook said, adding that the U.S. special operations forces would carry out activities such as helping local forces with "air support for their engagements." Who, where? Cook said U.S. forces will be reaching out particularly to Syrian Arab fighters, whom he deemed "critically important" to the fight to retake Islamic State's hub, Raqqah. Some critics have feared that Syrian Kurds, who have made sweeping gains against Islamic State in northern Syria, are less motivated to retake the predominantly Arab city. The Pentagon would not disclose where U.S. special forces would operate in Syria, but Cook tried to dissuade fears of potential attacks on American forces by Russian forces also operating in the volatile country. "In the past, we have identified a particular geographic area where we asked Russia not to strike," Cook said, adding that the U.S. would take "every step" necessary to ensure the safety of American forces. The United States is set to take a back seat in peace negotiations between the government of South Sudan and rebel leaders following failures on both sides to fulfill an agreement to form a transitional government. On Saturday, the government denied landing permission for a plane carrying opposition leader Riek Machar because the rebel leader made an arbitrary demand to bring with him more weapons and troops than the two sides had previously agreed upon, U.S. Department of State spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Sunday. Given the actions by both sides to prevent or delay his return, it is now time for the parties to assume primary responsibility for facilitating the return of Riek Machar to Juba to form the [transitional government] and to demonstrate that they are genuinely committed to peace, Kirby said. Moving forward, the scope of U.S. involvement in helping South Sudan confront security and economic issues will depend on the parties demonstrating commitment to work together to implement the agreement, he added. In August, South Sudan President Salva Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal that would unite the two sides to run a national government with Machar serving as the vice president. He had previously served as vice president before Kiir accused him of plotting a coup in December 2013. The accusations launched a civil war in the country that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than two million people from their homes. Machar fled the country when the war broke out, but was set to return April 18 after the two signed the peace deal. He missed that deadline and several more. Machar is now scheduled to return to Juba Monday - the third time in a week he has been scheduled to return - but U.S. special envoy to South Sudan Donald Booth warned that the country could face increased sanctions from the United Nations if the two sides do not fulfill their agreement. "They are definitely on notice," he said. "The entire world is expecting them to live up to their word and to implement the agreement that they signed last August." The U.N. Security Council will meet Tuesday to discuss the crisis and potential repercussions. The United States has urged the Vietnamese government to release all political prisoners and cease its harassment of civil society activists. Officials made the appeal ahead of President Barack Obamas first visit to Vietnam in May. The promotion of human rights remains a crucial part of U.S. foreign policy and is a key aspect of our ongoing dialogue within the U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive partnership, said State Department spokesman John Kirby Monday, as the U.S. and Vietnam held the 20th session of their Human Rights Dialogue in Washington. The Dialogue has covered a wide range of human rights issues, including the importance of continued progress on legal reform efforts, rule of law, freedom of expression and assembly, religious freedom, labor rights, disability rights, LGBT rights, multilateral cooperation, as well as individual cases of concern, according to the State Department. The U.S. had expressed deep concerns over the case of Nguyen Van Dai, a human rights lawyer who was arrested by authorities in mid-December of 2015. The arrest came as he was preparing to meet European Union delegates who were in Hanoi for EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue. Speaking on Nguyens case last December, the State Department urged Vietnamese authorities to ensure its actions were consistent with its international obligations and called on Hanoi to release unconditionally all prisoners of conscience. Another high-profile case is the trial of blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh (also known as Anh Ba Sam), who was sentenced to five years in prison last month for what authorities called abusing rights to freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the state. The State Department raised several concerns about Vietnam in its 2015 Country Report for Human Rights Practices. These problems included severe government restrictions of citizens political rights, particularly their right to change their government through free and fair elections; limits on citizens civil liberties, including freedom of assembly, association, and expression; and inadequate protection of citizens due process rights, including protection against arbitrary detention. While newspapers and TV stations still face censorship and legal restrictions in Vietnam, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted progress in Hanois human rights practices, including commitments to bring domestic laws into synch with international human rights obligations. Blinken applauded Vietnams ratification of the Convention against Torture and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as allowing independent trade unions for the first time in modern history, in a speech at a Hanoi university last Thursday. He also commended the Vietnamese governments efforts to consult with a range of local religious and civil society stakeholders during the drafting of a new religion law, which the U.S. hopes will protect the rights of people of different faiths. Zimbabwes Health Development Fund appears to be playing a critical role in reducing the countrys maternal mortality rate and improving the general situation in the health sector. Representatives of donor agencies, who are contributing money towards the fund, recently visited some of the projects which include Maphisa Hospital in Matabeleland South province. According to Health Minister Dr. David Parirenyatwa, Zimbabwes maternal mortality rate remains high, but interventions such as the establishment of maternity waiting homes at various health facilities in rural areas is helping in bringing it down. Dr. Parirenyatwa, who was leading a delegation of ambassadors and representatives of some European Union countries in Zimbabwe, said the Health Transition Fund - now known as the Health Development Fund has gone a long way in reviving the countrys health sector. The Health Development Fund is a continuation of the Health Transition Fund, a multi-donor fund which started in 2012 when Zimbabwe had an inclusive government to avert the crisis in a health sector. Members of the European Union are the major donors with the United Nations Childrens Fund and the United Nations Population Fund being implementing partners. Through the fund, the maternity waiting home at Maphisa District Hospital in Matabeleland South province was among 10 such facilities that were renovated and refurbished in the region, out of a total of 119 facilities that received similar assistance across the country. The maternity waiting home accommodates an average of 40 expecting mothers at any given time. Dr. Parirenyatwa said the provision of maize meal, beans and kapenta fish to the expecting mothers, under the United Nations Population Funds Integrated Support Program, also ensures that both mothers and unborn children are properly nourished. A new VIAC centre for the screening and testing of cervical cancer, was also recently established at Maphisa, making it the seventh site in the province to have such a facility. With the hospital catering for a population of nearly 100,000 people, Dr. Parirenyatwa said the establishment of the centre would help bring a much-needed service closer to the people. While applauding government for stemming the crisis in the health sector, European Union ambassador Phillipe Van Damme, who was part of the tour, said maternal health is one of the most critical indicators in a countrys health delivery system, adding that it is important for government and stakeholders to ensure that the mortality rate continues to decrease. Chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio on health, Dr. Ruth Labode, agreed that the health fund has gone a long way in reducing Zimbabwes maternal mortality rate, as some women now have access to health in remote parts of the country. But fellow legislator Thabitha Khumalo, who until recently was the vice president of the Inter Parliamentary Union advisory group on HIV/AIDS, said the support from the health fund still leaves a lot to be desired. At the same time, Dr. Parirenyatwa said government is in consultation with donors as well as doctors and nurses to work out new salary perks for health workers. He was responding to a question from Studio 7 on the sidelines of the tour on what government is doing to stop strikes by doctors and nurses. One of the seven thematic areas of the Health Development Fund is human resources for health under which training and incentives for health workers are funded. The Ministry of Health has previously been under fire for channeling incentives under the fund only to senior officials in the ministry and not to health workers as expected. Some farmers have welcomed the signing of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change saying this could assist them in planning agricultural activities if government implements some of the recommendations contained in the document. One hundred and seventy five countries, including Zimbabwe, signed the agreement said to be a turning point in tackling global gas emissions. Matabeleland South farmer, Themba Dlodlo, is among farmers who say Zimbabwe is likely to benefit from efforts being made to stop global warming. "Its important for government to prioritize climate change as this will help us to plan for the next planting season as weather patterns are now continually changing," said Dlodlo. He added that unpreparedness on the part of government could spell disaster for the country's food security. "We are part of the international community and we need secure food resources through agriculture so therefore we need to know how climate change will affect productivity on our farms and prepare for challenges that may be encountered due to climate change, said Dlodlo. Although some opposition party leaders castigated President Robert Mugabe's attendance of the signing ceremony in New York saying he did this at the expense of more pressing issues like crippling hunger in Zimbabwe, some farmers say it is important for the head of state to stay abreast of all the latest developments in climate change so that the country can prepare for the upcoming crop seasons. The Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai says it wont allow Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere to parcel out 1,500 stands to Zanu PF youth in a land deal involving suspected Chinese investors. Party spokesman Obert Gutu said Kasukuwere could be violating some sections of the Urban Councils Act and the Constitution of Zimbabwe if he implements his plans. This we are not going to accept. As the MDC we will take appropriate measures. We will go to the courts, we will go to the High Court to ensure that the constitution of the land is not only obeyed, but is also seen to be obeyed and respected, Gutu said. The party also issued a statement saying the comprehensive Bill of Rights in the new Constitution not only makes housing for all a basic right, but also clearly forbids discrimination of any kind. We in the MDC are now putting Kasukuwere on notice that gone are the days in which he could trample on peoples rights with impunity. It is ironic that the gentleman purports to be studying law but seems to be missing his lectures, read part of the statement, signed by MDC-Ts shadow Minister for Local Government Jameson Timba. The opposition party said it will be filing a formal complaint with the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission to seek Kasukuweres censure and a binding pledge that he will allocate housing land on a non-partisan basis to all Zimbabwean youth without regard to color, tribe, religion, and or political affiliation. Zimbabwes premier trade showcase kicks off in Bulawayo on Tuesday with observers predicting yet another subdued edition due to unrelenting economic decline. Once a major event on the countrys annual business calendar, some observers say, the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) has diminished to a pale shadow thats only attracting small-scale businesses. And nothing will change this year, said businessman Bulisani Ncube, who failed to showcase his enterprise because of the poor state of the economy. Most of the exhibitors are those that are in the services sector ... small micro-lenders banks and hotels will be there. But manufacturing is depressed, Ncube added. Zimbabwes isolation by the West over charges of human rights violations and electoral fraud have also played a role in precluding foreign investment. And the contentious Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Act has not helped any matters. But President Robert Mugabe said last week that his government had helped revive a lot of companies and claimed - controversially - the economy was on the rebound. We wonder which economy Mugabe was talking about, said opposition MDC-T lawmaker, Abednico Bhebhe. The fact of the matter is that the economy is a mess and really the trade fair is a waste of time. There is nothing here that businesspeople from other countries are looking forward to." Zimbabwe joined the international community on Monday in commemorating World Malaria Day. Experts say malaria is a major health problem in Zimbabwe with 50% of the population at risk, although its epidemiology varies in the different regions of the country, ranging from year-round transmission in the lowland areas to epidemic-prone areas in the highlands. Dr. Trymore Sithole, a Zimbabwean medical student based in Algeria, told VOA Studio 7 that local people, including youth, play an important role in contributing in the fight towards ending malaria. Education is the most appropriate approach, if people get the information then people are going to be aware, if people are going to be aware, then we are going to be aware of not to get the disease. Why cant we get the youth into poems, and dramas, sending flyers and spreading information, like the way we create awareness for HIV? 400,000 MALARIA CASES The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are more than 400,000 malaria cases among all age groups each year in Zimbabwe. Sithole said there is an increase of mortality deaths in rural areas due to inaccessibility to hospitals. The provision of medication and how to curb this disease especially in rural areas is questionable like people in the rural areas cannot get the kind of treatment like those in the city. People in the rural areas dont have access (health centers). One hospital can be a hundred of kilometers away. It comes back to the infrastructure of the health system; you dont have enough hospitals, dont have enough medical personal and dont have enough medication so you wont treat enough people So that is why people die in the rural areas ... Sithole noted that Zimbabwean youth are not getting adequate information about malaria. Its just ignorance. People are not taking malaria seriously, people think its a mild disease, which it is a mild because its a hundred percent preventable and hundred percent treatable. He suggested various ways of preventing malaria. Getting rid of mosquito breeding areas. Use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and indoor residual spraying, use of mosquito coils and repellents, covering yourself. (The) Drug prophylaxis can also be used, especially for people travelling to endemic areas, pregnant women and children. Since malaria is preventable and curable, the most effective approach to ending this disease is education. If people know about it and take measures to combat it, it will be very easy to get rid of this killer disease. Raising awareness in communities, schools and churches is a very good start. PRESIDENT'S MALARIA INITIATIVE According to the Presidents Malaria Initiative, a United States initiative, Zimbabwes malaria program receives support from some donors, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund). The United States Agency for International Development provided targeted support to Zimbabwes National Malaria Control Program through an emergency round of indoor residual spraying in 2009 and in 2011 with a procurement of malaria commodities. Prior to 2011, other malaria donors included the United Nations Childrens Fund, the United Kingdom Department for International Development, and the European Commission. Zimbabwe is expected to get at least $14,5 million from the Presidents Malaria Initiative this year with funds to be channeled towards various programs including the provision of insecticide-treated nets, conducting indoor residual spraying, and several others. GLOBAL OUTLOOK Within the next four years, six nations in African regions where malaria is most prominent could be free of the disease, the World Health Organization, said in a report published Monday to mark World Malaria Day. The "Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030", approved by the WHO last year, hoped to see an end to local transmission of malaria in at least 10 countries by 2020, but now the WHO estimates that 21 countries could achieve that goal, including six in Africa. "Since the year 2000, malaria mortality rates have declined by 60% globally. In the WHO African Region, malaria mortality rates fell by 66% among all age groups and by 71% among children under 5 years," the WHO said in a statement accompanying the report. The six countries in Africa that could be rid of malaria by 2020 are Algeria, Botswana, Cape Verde, Comoros, South Africa and Swaziland. WHO says malaria infection rates are falling thanks to the use of insecticide-treated bed-nets, regular bug spraying inside dwellings and rapid diagnostic testing, though these techniques are becoming less effective as time goes on. "The efficacy of the tools that secured the gains against malaria in the early years of this century is now threatened," the WHO said. "Mosquito resistance to insecticides used in nets and indoor residual spraying is growing. So too is parasite resistance to a component of one of the most powerful antimalarial medicines." 3.2 BILLION PEOPLE AT RISK While the outlook is promising, the group cautioned that nearly half of the world's population around 3.2 billion people are still at risk of contracting malaria. Just last year, 214 million new cases of malaria were reported in 95 countries. More than 400,000 people died from the disease. The report says 9 out of ten deaths from malaria in 2015 came from sub-Saharan Africa. Moving forward, the WHO said new technologies will need to be developed to deal with the disease and the fight will require strong political commitment and financing from governments. "Reaching the goals of the "Global Technical Strategy" will require a steep increase in global and domestic funding - from $2.5 billion today to an estimated $8.7 billion annually by 2030," it said. We accept many different kinds of announcements. Just click on the button below and submit a form. Go to forms Ex-President Hosni Moubarak was convicted of embezzlement, and for his part in the repression of demonstrators. However, these facts, which were unanimously accepted at the time, have never been clearly established. An extremely conservative society managed by the military, Egypt has suffered a period of upheaval over the last five years, and is still not yet completely healed. We can approach these events from three different directions, although none of them is entirely satisfying - For the Western governments and their Press, any military regime is bad by definition, and so what we witnessed in Egypt was seen as a struggle between the partisans of the regime and the democrats. The problems with this interpretation are as follows - on the one hand, the Egyptian military is republican, and, on the other, it enjoys far greater public support than the democrats. For the defenders of the Law, Mohamed Morsi was proclaimed the legally elected President by 17% of the electorate. However, his legitimacy should have been questioned when 33 million Egyptians called for his destitution. It also transpired, with supporting evidence, that the Electoral Commission had not respected the citizens vote in 2012. This being the case, it is impossible to qualify his removal as a coup detat. For the Egyptians themselves, these events are the extension of the struggle between nationalists and islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood, which had attempted on several occasions to grab power, after the assassinations of the Prime Ministers in 1945 and 1948, and that of the President in 1981, finally managed to do so with the help of the United States and fraudulent elections. However, today, the champion of the nationalists is selling the country to the Saudis. The resignation of Hosni Moubarak (11th February 2011) In 2011, popular demonstrations were organised by Washington, which had already deployed a cohort of NGOs implicated in the colour revolutions and coordinated by Gene Sharps team [1]. This was the beginning of the Arab Spring. The White House sent to Cairo a CIA heavyweight (incidentally Nicolas Sarkozys father-in-law [2]), ambassador Frank Wisner. After having pretended to support Hosni Moubarak, he advised him to resign. Conscious of his incapacity to re-establish order, Moubarak abandoned the idea of passing on the reins of power to his youngest son Gamal, and left his function to the profit of his vice-president. That was the Lotus Revolution. The country then sank into disorder. First of all, the representatives of the NGOs were arrested for having financed the regime change for the sum of 48 million dollars. They were then freed with a group of people who had taken refuge in the United States embassy, and discreetly exfiltrated by a special CIA plane [3]. Washington supported the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi. During his electoral campaign, Youssef al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhoods preacher and spiritual advisor to the Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera, came to explain on Tahir Square that it was no longer urgent to fight for the recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, but to scour society of homosexuals. At the end of the polls, where participation was no more than 35%, and in which he was supported by only 17% of the electorate, Morsi was declared the elected winner. However, in a letter which would later be made public, the President of the Electoral Commission wrote that he had not based his decision on the results of the polls, but had particularly wanted to avoid announcing the victory of General Ahmed Shafiq who had been for a short period Hosni Moubaraks Prime Minister since such an announcement might be perceived by the Muslim Brotherhood as a signal for the start of civil war [4]. The United States, who had manipulated the whole operation, congratulated the double national Egypt/US Morsi for his democratic election - a deceitful description which was immediately adopted by all the other states. Overseas, there was praise for the normalisation of Egypt, which had finally managed to obtain its first civil government after having been ruled by the military for 5,000 years. The Presidency of Mohamed Morsi (30th June 2012 - 3rd July 2013) Once in power, Mohammed Morsi installed a falsely religious dictatorship. He infiltrated the administration with members of the Brotherhood and rehabilitated those who had been convicted of terrorism. He received and publicly congratulated the assassins of ex-President Anouar el-Sadat, and nominated the man responsible for the Luxor massacre as governor of that district [5]. He persecuted the democrats who had demonstrated against certain aspects of Hosni Moubaraks politics (but not for his resignation). He supported a vast campaign of pogroms by the Muslim Brotherhood against Christians, and covered their exactions - lynching, the plunder and destruction of archbishoprics, the burning of churches. Simultaneously, he privatised the major businesses and announced the possible sale of the Suez Canal to Qatar, which was then sponsoring the Brotherhood. On at least four occasions, from his Presidential palace, he telephoned Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was one of the assassins of Anouar el-Sadat before becoming the world leader of Al-Qaida [6]. . During this period, a group of jihadists, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, was organising itself in the Sinai. Without any intervention by the Egyptian army, these islamists multiplied their attacks against the gas pipeline linking Egypt to Israel and Jordan. President Morsi sent an official delegation to meet the Caliph of Daesh, Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood like himself. But the two parties were unable to come to terms, since each leader demanded the allegiance of the other. Finally, President Morsi ordered the army to prepare to attack the Syrian Arab Republic in order to help the Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood. That proved to be one decision too many. The Egyptian army, which had fused with the Syrian army from 1958 to 1961, considered that the order to attack Syria undermined Gamal Abdel Nassers dream of Arab unity. It therefore turned to the civil society. The Egyptian society is known for its docility in the face of power and its sudden massive outbursts. It did not react to the first decisions of President Morsi, nor even to the murder of Christians, but then suddenly rose en masse. A vast coalition, uniting all of the political formations from left and right, including the Salafists, rose up against the Brotherhood. In response to the call of the army, this coalition organised the greatest demonstration in History to appeal to the military to overthrow the dictator Mohamed Morsi and force the Brothhood to leave. For five days, overflowing like the Nile, 33 million Egyptians voted with their feet against the Brotherhood. Waiting prudently so that the United States would be unable to save their protege, the loyalist army marched against Morsi (an ex-collaborator of the Pentagon who still enjoys access to US military secrets) as soon as the offices emptied for the long weekend of the US national holiday. The Muslim Brotherhood attempted to hold on to power, and violently opposed the army. For a month, the streets of Cairo were the theatre of terrible confrontations. A provisional government was set up, elections were planned, while the Western powers, Qatar and Turkey, according to the logic of the alleged democratic election of Morsi, denounced a military coup detat . Finally, General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who led the operation for the restoration of the institutions, was elected with 96% of the votes, while al-Jazeera called for his assassination. For 5 days, 33 million Egyptians demonstrated to ask the army to overthrow President Mohamed Morsi. The restoration of the institutions by Abdel Fatah al-Sissi Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sissi was the Director of Military Intelligence under President Moubarak, then Minister for Defence under President Morsi. At first, he restored order and social peace. He freed political prisoners. He apologised to the Christians for the persecutions that they had suffered, and ordered the re-construction of chuches which had been burned. He gave Saudi Arabia documents which proved that Mohamed Morsi had been preparing a coup detat in Riyadh in order to place the Muslim Brotherhood in power. The kingdom reacted by forbidding the Brotherhood on their land and also by covering Egypt with gifts. In this way, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi had found a sponsor to feed his people despite a ruined economy. In order to satisfy the Saudis, Marshal al-Sissi sent his army to participate in the war in Yemen. At first, the Egyptian contingent served above all to control the coast-lines, but Egyptian public opinion quickly learned that the command of the operation had been sub-contracted by Riyadh to the Israeli army. Discreetly, the Egyptian soldiers withdrew without the news ever being officially announced. Simultaneously, in the Sinai, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis ceased its attacks on Israeli interests and turned its weapons against the Egyptian state. It made contact with Daesh in Syria and recognised its authority. Thus it created the province of Sinai (Wilayat Sayna) within the Caliphate. During this time, with the help of China, President al-Sissi ordered the extension doubling the capacity of the Suez Canal, although it has not been completely exploited. The aim was to prepare Egypt for the development of the new Silk Road and the transit of the gigantic Chinese production to Europe. Then came a dramatic turn of events - in the summer of 2015, the Italian company ENI declared that it had discovered huge oil deposits at Zohr, in Egyptian territorial waters, which could allow Cairo to exploit the equivalent of 5.5 billion barrels of oil. But things turned ugly. The Muslim Brotherthood, relying on the support of Daesh in the Sinai, assassinated several senior civil servants and magistrates. The army allowed itself to be drawn into a spiral of violence, while President al-Sissi seized the opportunity to order the arrest of both nationalists and democrats. Progressively, confusion took over - the government defended the national interest, but persecuted the civil leaders who were supporting its intial objective. At this point, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, ex-spokesman for Nasser and an icon for the nationalists, publicly declared that the moment had come for President al-Sissi to - publicly denounce the butchery still on-going in Yemen ; go to Damascus to offer his support to President Bachar el-Assad against the Muslim Brotherhood ; and to seek rapprochement with Iran in order to guarantee the stability of the region. Three pieces of advice which presume distancing Egypt from Saudi Arabia. At 87 years old, Heikal died suddenly without Marshal al-Sissi having answered him. The islands of Tiran and Sanafir On the 11th April 2016, king Salmane of Saudi Arabia was on a visit to Cairo, when he announced investments in Egypt to the tune of a colossal 25 billion dollars. To everyones surprise, the President announced that by way of thanks, he had offered the king the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, in the context of an agreement concerning the delimitation of maritime frontiers. These two islands, which guard the entrance to the Red Sea, had once been the source of dispute between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They were occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War. Since it had no desire to participate in the conflict, Saudi Arabia renounced its claim and handed the islands to Egypt rather than being obliged to defend them. Later, with the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt at Camp David, Tel-Aviv and Cairo internationalised the exit of the Red Sea, and Tsahal finally evacuated Tiran and Sanafir. The two islands should be integrated into a vast project for the construction of a bridge linking Saudi Arabia to Egypt over the Gulf of Aqaba. For the Egyptians, Tiran and Sanafir constitute territory which had been recognised as theirs by the Convention of London in 1840, and which they had regained, after many vicissitudes, because of Riyadhs cowardice during the war against Israel. It is therefore inconceivable to offer them to the Saudis, even for several billion dollars. For the last week, there have been a series of demonstrations demanding a referendum on this assignment of land. They are above all a platform for the nationalists, who are wondering who President al-Sissi really is. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Justice, Beverly McLachlin, acknowledges it. Furthermore, she recently stated that Canada tried to commit a cultural genocide against the indigenous people and has developed a policy of excluding them and destroying their culture. At the beginning of June, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the CVRC using the French acronym) published a report on the case, gathering testimonies from 6,750 survivors and former employees of these educational centres for the aboriginal population. It is drafting a hundred proposals for different levels of government. One recommendation calls for the Canadian authorities to adopt in full the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People as the basis for new relations with these communities. The problem is that Canada, together with the United States, Australia and New Zealand are reluctant to adopt this document, using the excuse that they only support it as an aspiration and not a binding obligation. According to the CVRC Report, the Canadian Government implemented this policy of cultural genocide because it would like to rid itself of its legal and financial obligations to aboriginal people and to take control of their lands, their natural resources and to appropriate the rights of these people. This panel was set up in 2009, tasked with exploring the history and legacy of the native schools. However, according to the newspaper, the Globe and Mail, the process encountered several challenges, notably confrontations with the federal government to obtain documents as well as replacing members of the Commission. According to Judge Murray Sinclair, who is chairing this working group, the number of children that died is barely an estimate; it is likely that there are many more victims in these schools established in the nineteenth century. We think that we will not be able to reveal the exact number of deceased because the official registers on the issue are very imprecise, Sinclair pointed out to the CBC programme, Power and Politics. This judge, the first indigenous judge from the province of Manitoba, indicated that between 24% and 42% of aboriginals that attended these native schools died there or shortly after they graduated or dropped out of school. Estimates made prior to the CRVC report consider that 4 million aboriginal children that died in these institutions. But some members of the panel have warned that the final fate of the other 46,000 children that remain anonymous is still under investigation A previous CRVC report revealed accounts that some victims were buried in anonymous graves adjoining centres and in walls, because the government did not want to send the corpses home, and, in many cases, their fathers never knew the real cause of death. Schools of this kind stopped functioning from 1883, under the direction of the government and the Church. Their aim was to educate the children recruited, in Western social usages and customs. The last ones that were shut down in 1996 were Saint Michaels Indian Residential School and Gordon Indian Residential School, both in Saskatchewan. Other parallel studies indicate that at least 150,000 aboriginal children remained locked up for years in these centres where they were forced to work for 10-12 hours. The aim was civilize them under the slogan: kill the Indian in the child through torture, sociological and physical abuse. These students were boarded against their will and the will of their families. Many fathers were aware of the crimes committed at the schools but they could not refuse giving their children up because to do so, risked the imposition of harsh criminal sanctions. According to McLachlin, national laws for example outlawed Aboriginal religious and social traditions in the residential institutions, where children were separated from their parents; they were prohibited from speaking in their native tongue, and were compelled into Christian religious practices and subject to sexual abuse. Two years ago, the former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin used the qualification genocide to describe the mistreatment in these Native Schools when he testified before the CVRC. In a recent article in the newspaper, The Globe and Mail, reference was made to a number of federal government programmes that led to forcing a change in the customs and traditions of the aboriginal population. This was under the pretext of assimilating them and led to cultural genocide. Most children died on account of serious malnutrition or other types of illnesses. Some students that were there in the 1940s and 1950s were subject to scientific experiments depriving them of basic nutrition and dental care. Such programmes were sponsored by Canadian federal authorities and also by the US government. The reports of these abuses is another example of the plight of this segment of Canadian society; for aboriginals make up about 4% of the countrys population yet, for example, makes up almost 24% of the prison population. First published December 11, 2013 In the first line of the funeral ceremony for Nelson Mandela, who is a symbol of the struggle against apartheid, will be the US President, two former US Presidents and the Prime Minister of Great Britain in other words, representatives of the States that lent the greatest support to the apartheid regime, notably when Reagan was president (and Mandelas anti-apartheid organization was defined as a terrorist organization) and Thatcher was in government. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, expresses today his extraordinary sadness for the death of the hero of the struggle against apartheid; yet in 1989, when Mandela was still in prison, and Cameron was a rising star in the Conservative Party, he made a trip to South Africa, organized and financed by the company Strategy Network International, a powerful lobby opposed to sanctions against the apartheid regime. The Democrat Bill Clinton will go to South Africa to mourn the death of a true friend; yet when he was president, he found every way of preventing Mandela (who became president of South Africa in 1994) from going to Libya when it was still under embargo in 1997, and from inviting Gaddafi to South Africa in 1999. This was Mandelas response: No country can claim to be the worlds policeman and no state can dictate to another state what to do. Those who were friends of our enemies yesterday have the audacity to tell me not to go to visit my brother Gaddafi; they want to make us turn our backs on Libya that helped us achieve democracy. The Republican George Bush, who will go to South Africa to mourn the death of Mandela a great freedom fighter; yet when he was president, he was the architect of Africa Commando, a military and political instrument to capture anew Africa. The Democrat, President Barack Obama, who at the funeral ceremony will repeat I cannot imagine my life without the example set by Mandela. This is the same person who waged war destroying Libya Libya, that helped Mandela in his toughest times and empowered the African Commando to bring as many countries as possible into Washingtons orbit, making leverage of African military elites (that the Pentagon recruits with the offer of training, arms and dollars). Hillary Clinton will also attend Mandelas funeral as Secretary of State and aspiring President. She was particularly active in promoting economic growth in Africa. Just like Cameron, Merkel and others, she has visited several African countries, including South Africa, accompanied by executives of the biggest multinationals. Those that will grab half of Nigerias oil, for more than 30 billion dollars per year, leaving more than half of Nigerians below the poverty threshold. Those that will grab fertile land in Africa, driving out entire communities, resulting in growing poverty and hunger. The French President Francois Hollande, who hoisted flags at half-mast, a symbol of grief, before leaving for South Africa honoured Mandela at a meeting of 40 African leaders that was held at Paris. At that meeting, he announced that, in addition to sending other troops to Africa, France will fit out 20 000 African soldiers per year. Thus the colonial troops are reborn. These and other greats leaders of the West will be at Mandelas funeral, exhibiting to the world their personal sadness for the disappearance of a man who dedicated his life to the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. While they seek to import to Africa, a new colonialism and a new great apartheid. Jerrod Carmichael left a March afternoons table read in Los Angeles for his NBC comedy, The Carmichael Show, feeling like The Blues, an episode focused on depression, wasnt quite living up to its name. The next morning in the shower, he realized a way in: Cynthia, mother to the Carmichael clan, would be crying in the shows opening scene. Carmichael, the shows co-creator, star, and executive producer, jotted the idea down on the dry-erase board he keeps hanging in his shower, and texted showrunner Danielle Sanchez-Witzel as soon as he left the bathroom. At a run-through a few days later for the episode, which aired Sunday night, network and studio executives watched Emmy winner Loretta Devine, who plays Cynthia, weep as she ironed clothes. They looked uncertainly to producers: But will people still laugh? Full disclosure: The network was nervous about it, even in editing, Carmichael said, explaining the hesitation to open a comedy with such a dramatic moment. But it was the thing I cared about most in the episode. I refuse to do the episode any other way. And they respect that. I think the general audience can handle it and theyre not afraid of real emotion. Television has been more afraid of giving it to them than theyve been hesitant to receive it. Indeed, regular viewers of The Carmichael Show know its throwback-yet-contemporary appeal lies in the way it smoothly navigates topical issues from the perspective of a tight-knit black family. This season alone, the show has tackled death, Islamophobia, abortion, gentrification, and Bill Cosby. In future episodes, the Carmichaels will confront their feelings about social media and the presidential election. The Carmichael Show family includes Carmichael as the son, Jerrod, and David Alan Grier and Devine as his mother and father, Cynthia and Joe; Lil Rel Howery plays Jerrods brother, Bobby; Amber Stevens West is Jerrods girlfriend, Maxine; and Tiffany Haddish plays Nekeisha, Bobbys ex-wife. The show is Carmichaels second attempt at developing a sitcom for NBC. The first centered on a group of young friends, but it lacked the stand-up comedians piercing point of view, according to Carmichael co-creator Nick Stoller, who cast Carmichael in Neighbors and later offered to work with him on a new pilot. From the start, Stoller believed the show should center on a family because of the unique way parents and children can challenge each other. Ive been interested for a long time in a show that talked about current events and social issues, like All in the Family and a lot of the sitcoms of the 70s, Stoller said. Basically, thats been entirely occupied by The Daily Show, which does a very good job, but theres a different thing that happens when you have characters you identify with talking about stuff. Jerrod and I have a similar worldview, where there is both cynicism and idealism. The goal, Carmichael says, is to be as honest as possible every week. Whatever were doing, he explained, Im always moving closer toward that truth. The road to the truth is a long and grueling one, lined with many revisions. Vulture spent a week behind the scenes of The Carmichael Show observing the writing and production behind The Blues to see how they got there. Before the Script: Working-Class Depression Carmichael Show co-creator and writer Willie Hunter wrote The Blues, which was inspired by his own struggle with depression. Photo: Jonathan Snyder There are seven full-time male writers and three full-time female writers on staff at The Carmichael Show, including co-creators Willie Hunter and Ari Katcher. The room they work in is your typical writers workshop, littered with toys (bobble heads, Play-Doh, a Rubiks Cube) and snacks (barbecue hot Funyuns, cheddar-sour-cream Ruffles, and orange Cuties), the walls plastered with dry-erase boards. Before stories are broken and outlined, the writers, three of whom are black, talk about their personal lives, interests, and whats currently happening in the news and popular culture. Last fall, Hunter shared with the group that he had started therapy to deal with his life-long depression. Growing up in Heflin, Alabama, in a community that doesnt acknowledge mental-health issues, the 29-year-old said he had learned you just suck it up and you move on. When I started talking about it openly, I realized everyone had gone through it or could relate, said Hunter, who is one of Carmichaels best friends. But why are we all so secretive about it? Danielle thought it would make for a great episode. All of us in the room broke it down, and I got assigned the script. It was therapeutic for me to write it. Like Hunter, Carmichael, 29, grew up in the South, in a culture that tends to deny ailments like depression. For most of his life, Carmichael says, he wouldnt have even thought of therapy to solve a problem, and while hes more open to it now, hed rather use his art to work out any issues. Im not really a therapy guy, but Ive seen people deal with these real mental issues, he explained. I tried it once after I moved to L.A. just to see what all my friends were talking about. I like to figure things out for myself, but if anything ever becomes overwhelming, absolutely Id try it. Hunter and Carmichaels differing perspectives on therapy helped them arrive at the views expressed in the episode, which explores how the Carmichaels were raised in an environment where its taboo to treat depression as a legitimate problem. As Cynthia puts it in The Blues: Working-class people dont get depression. Depression is a luxury of wealth and free time. With older generations especially, theres such a stigma attached to it, said Katcher. I remember I grew up across the street from this kid who in hindsight clearly was really depressed. His parents called him Grumpy. It was a joke in the house. Cold Open: The Tears By the time the cast gathered for the table read on March 11, the script had gone through three rewrites. In an early version of the opening presented to the actors, network, and studio executives, the family returns from the mall to find Cynthia smoking in the bathroom. When you first get the script, it gives you an idea of what the overall piece is going to be, said Devine of receiving the first lines for her character, which would eventually change. You then have to memorize four or five scripts, really, because sometimes passages stay in, but in different positions. Something about Cynthias smoking was bothering everyone. Using the cigarettes had some positive metaphors for us, but it was making things too confusing, Sanchez-Witzel said. Is she trying to quit smoking, or is she suffering from depression? That evening, as the rest of the writers worked late into the night on other sections of the script, Carmichael and Katcher retreated to Carmichaels house to try to crack the cold open. It just wasnt clicking, said Katcher, who is also a close friend of Carmichaels. Then Saturday he called me early in the morning and was like, Shes crying! Any time its anti-comedy, thats a challenge we like. Hunter admits the idea made him nervous. My name was on the script. I didnt want to be the guy that ruined the show, he said. But then I thought about our funeral episode. In season twos third episode, The Funeral, Joes abusive father passes away. David had a very serious moment, and we fell in love with that realness. We want to do that with every episode. In their first attempt to incorporate the tears, Cynthia breaks down while baking Jerrods favorite pie, and the family grows concerned. But the setup didnt resonate the way writers hoped. The pies didnt have a purpose, so that fell off, Carmichael said. The writers worked until nearly 3 a.m. looking for a better entry point. (Carmichael, it should be noted, says hes good with three hours of sleep a night. Im really into REM cycles, he said. It could all be placebo, mind you, but if its an interval of 90 minutes, Im great.) When the writers call it a night is when Devines work begins. She likes to wake up in the middle of the night when the revisions are emailed out. I read it and panic, trying to figure out whats new that I have to learn. I want to make sure Im on top of it and its not on top of me, she explained. You have to make your choice of how you want to deliver it and how you want things to land. So I usually get up and work on it for like an hour, and then I get to sleep. When I get to work, Im clear on what I want to bring to it so when the director makes his choices, I can either fight for mine or go with his. In this draft, Cynthia is crying while she irons a blouse in the kitchen, while the rest of the family waits in the living room to go to Sears for a family portrait. (Unlike baking a pie, the blouse is what Cynthia will be wearing for the portrait, so it works in seamlessly with the rest of the episode.) The plot kicks into motion when Maxine walks into the kitchen to find Cynthia crying. The cast rehearses a scene in front of 20th Century Fox Television and NBC executives. Photo: Jonathan Snyder At the March 15 run-through with studio and network execs, the producers liked Devines performance. But as compelling as she was, executives werent convinced a serious opening was the best way to go, Sanchez-Witzel tells the writers afterward when they retreat to their office. Get them the fuck off our backs, Carmichael replies matter-of-factly as the group hashes out next steps, then catching himself. Im sorry. Thats how I respond to notes. It may be we dont see eye to eye on starting this so dark, Sanchez-Witzel says, but I think it works. I dont even want to pretend were shooting an [alternative], Carmichael continues. Its the most important part of the episode. Sanchez-Witzel considers this for a moment. Weve got to make sure we land the funny [moment] right after, she says. Once Maxine discovers her in tears, Cynthia has to pull it together and be super fun in the living room with the rest of the family. The next day, Carmichael isnt worried about it. Loretta can cry and make you laugh in the next second, he says, while there are still tears. The writers will continue trying to hit that funny note well into tape night. Act One: Jerrods Point of View What does Jerrod think? This is the toughest question the writers, including Carmichael, face every week. Theres Character Jerrod and Real-Life Jerrod, and the two are not always of one mind. When it came to the question of therapy, things got as complicated as Carmichaels own opinions on the subject. In early versions of the script, Character Jerrod is dismissive about whether his mother needs therapy. Going to therapy seems kinda weak, he says. Something about it seems like youre admitting defeat. In a later revision, Joe joins their conversation as the foil, and while Jerrod is still not fully committed to the idea, either, he eventually agrees with his girlfriend, Maxine, that Cynthia needs professional help. Something felt off to the writers, so Carmichael took that section to his office to work it out with Katcher. This usually involves a lot of pacing around and being weird, Carmichael said. Sometimes well write something and then write the opposite until we get it. You think about whats honest, what works, what fits. Sometimes we dont write anything for like nine hours, Katcher added. We jot little things down, but we dont start writing till like 11 p.m. Its not healthy at all. We were wondering why we were having such a tough time writing for Maxine and Jerrod in that moment. When Sanchez-Witzel joined them, they realized why: It was because there was no conflict. It was just a boring scene until Joe came in. On the show, Jerrods opinions have veered a lot from his upbringing, so it made more sense that in this case, he would agree with Maxine who is a therapist from the beginning, Sanchez-Witzel concluded. In the final version, Joe never agrees with Jerrod and Maxine, but he doesnt stand in the way of Cynthia making her own choice. As for Real-Life Jerrod, his own views are more in line with Character Jerrod than they used to be. I dont have a girlfriend, but I have grown from where I was seven or eight years ago where I would have been more cold and dismissive of going to therapy. Like anything, you have ignorance when you lack experience and perspective, he explained. So the evolution of what youre seeing in the script is getting closer to my truth now. Its Maxine in the series, but in my real life, it was my move to Los Angeles. I think everybody needs some form of therapy. Maybe its not the traditional couch and note pad. I have artistic outlets; some people have that healthy relationship where they can be completely themselves and open. We try to track that same realization in the show. Act Two: Wendys Im a grown woman and I dont know what I like at Wendys! Cynthias hilarious emotional breakthrough an existential crisis about what to order at Wendys didnt come easy. In subtle ways, Cynthias explanation for her blues was coming across as too self-aware. In the draft where she bakes pies, Cynthia uses them to explain her dilemma: So what is this pie, Maxine? Is it my world? Sheltering, feeding my family. Is this pie my whole purpose in life as a wife and a mother? Because if it is, I have no idea where I am in it. In the version at the run-through, Cynthia says: Sometimes Im lost in my family! Do I not have my own identity? There I am in the center of this picture surrounded by a needy family in matching outfits and I just disappear. The networks biggest note is that this is feeling a little general for Cynthia, Sanchez-Witzel tells the writers, back at the room. Sure, a woman could say that, but would Cynthia Carmichael? We need this language to be more real to what her life has been like lately. As the writers plunged deeper into Cynthias psyche, co-producer Aeysha Carr told a story of the time her mother became frustrated at a drive-through because she never ordered her own meals and instead ate her childrens leftovers. Carmichael really responded to the idea. A lot of moms take care of their families through a menu, through food. Its 90 percent of the reason were at the parents house so much were just always eating, he said. Its such an important part of our lives and relating it to that gives it a real strong connection. Moms can lose themselves in their families, especially moms that are as wonderful as Cynthia, Sanchez-Witzel added. Devine thought using Wendys was a brilliant way for Cynthia to express what shed been keeping inside, and decided to pack it with as much emotion as possible. But during rehearsals, executives grew concerned the show was taking too sad a turn again, and Devine was asked to perform it with a lighter touch. I thought that was the joke, and when you put the emotion on top of it, it was even funnier, Devine said. But they said they were getting too sad for her, and I was like, Okay, I dont know. I thought it touched on the way women really feel but dont get a chance to say aloud. I wanted women to say, Whoa, Jesus, thats it. The network really didnt need to worry about depressing viewers. Joes heavy reaction to Cynthias revelation sold the whole bit: This is the saddest thing I ever heard in my life, he booms in the final script. This woman just said she dont know how to order from Wendys! You know, you really cant go wrong with anything on that value menu, baby. Meanwhile, Cynthias big exit, when she leaves for Wendys to order everything on that menu until I figure out what Cynthia likes to eat, is a victory for both the Carmichael matriarch and the writers. That was a big swing, and were never sure how its going to land until we see the actors perform it, Sanchez-Witzel said. It really felt like what Cynthia meant there at the end was that shes going to look out for herself and take care of herself. We were very happy with that. The Tag: The Therapy Session In this deleted scene, Joe (David Alan Grier) disguises himself as Breaking Bads Heisenberg to avoid being recognized at Cynthias therapists office. Photo: Jonathan Snyder Even the last minute of a sitcom can go through several iterations. Known as the tag, its designed to give viewers one last laugh. In one version, Jerrod goes home flustered and takes up smoking after his mother confesses she had once miscarried a girl and thought her soul ended up in Jerrods body, explaining why his hands are so small and why hes bad at sports. In another draft which was actually taped Joe accompanies Cynthia to the therapists office disguised as Heisenberg from Breaking Bad so no one will recognize him. Cynthia, meanwhile, is so happy to be getting things off her chest that she cant stop blabbing about smoking through her pregnancies. In the end, the Heisenberg bit is removed, but viewers get a snippet of Cynthias therapy session. Carmichael felt the longer version detracted from the strength of the episode. It was funny, but sometimes if something is too silly and I will write silly things Im like, Eh, Im good, Carmichael said. I like real things. I like things that have tension. Her pouring her heart out was the most tension we could have, so why would we cut away from that? Tape Night: March 17, 2016 The Carmichael Show is taped twice in the same night in front of two different audiences. For the early show at 4 p.m., the cast runs through the entire episode even if the actors havent quite mastered their lines, the dialogue is rough, or scenes have holes. During the 7 p.m. show, they slow it down, experimenting with new lines and doing different takes of various scenes so they have options in the editing room. Because it takes about four hours all told, the audience is fed (Subway sandwiches this time) and a warm-up guy leads them through games and karaoke of popular TV theme songs. The four oclocks almost like a dress rehearsal, said Devine. Once we get through that, were pretty sure we can nail anything. Often there are changes that come between the two shows, and thats when it really gets hectic. During season ones Prayer episode, for example, the writers rewrote almost the entire final scene in the hour between the two tapings, Sanchez-Witzel said. Its normally not as drastic as that, though new jokes usually emerge, and moments may be cut or added. You have to learn not to get too precious about things because sometimes whats funny on the page is not funny onstage, she said. Or the reverse happens and an actor spins something we didnt think was a joke and its like, Oh, it is a joke, were so smart! On this night, Sanchez-Witzel triumphantly announces before the start of the second taping, No new pages! Its a relief for the actors, but that doesnt mean there wont be in-the-moment tweaks. Carmichael, who takes part in both coming up with new jokes and performing them, finds that last-minute back-and-forth energizing. Its always fun to switch things up, to find stuff on the spot, to give the audience a fresh experience, Carmichael said. Its really fun when the cast finds something in the moment and when a mistake turns into something great. Sometimes you have to see beyond it and know when something is funny, even if the first audience didnt necessarily laugh. Ive been doing stand-up a number of years, and Im used to trusting myself. When the cameras roll, Devine begins crying quietly. The first run of the cold open goes smoothly, but the writers huddle to punch up some moments. Maxines exit line from the living room isnt working for them. As written, Joe asks her to grab a stepladder so he can practice doing a pyramid pose with his sons for the family portrait, and she replies: Yeah, because thats what this situation needs. Something to make it more dangerous. The writers ask Stevens West to try out a new line This will be fun! I was head cheerleader, so I can be on top and give Grier a new punch line: Your mom aint gonna let her be on top. The audience cracks up, and this version makes the final edit. Mindful that they need the ending of the cold open to be as uplifting as possible, the writers brainstorm new lines during the 7 p.m. taping for Cynthia and Maxine, who catches Cynthia crying in the kitchen. In the shooting script, Cynthia, worried that Maxine will tell the family, says, Youre giving me snitch vibes right now, Maxine. Now, who do you think theyre going to believe if you try to tell them I was crying? Me, the mother who gave them life? Or you, the new girl? Loretta Devine and Amber Stevens West rehearse the cold open, when Maxine finds Cynthia crying alone in the kitchen. Photo: Jonathan Snyder The writers, feeling they could improve on this exchange, came up with a new one on the spot: Cynthia: You know what, Maxine? Im getting a snitch vibe from you. You know what happens to snitches? Maxine: Get stitches? Cynthia: No, they get dead! Cynthia then swings the kitchen door open and yells Picture time! with a big smile on her face. The audience howls over the new lines. Thats great! Sanchez-Witzel says to other producers. Devine nailed it, hitting the funny note theyd been seeking. Another tweak is made in a later kitchen scene, when Jerrod and Joe discuss whether Cynthia needs professional help. Joe argues that feeling a little sadness can be healthy: Its like what Jennifer Lawrence said in American Hustle. Every perfumes gotta have a little whiff of death in it. The producers want to try something else. Variations of an Amy Winehouse joke, uttered by different characters in revisions throughout the week, makes its way back in. Joe goes again: Theres nothing wrong with being sad sometimes. Look at Amy Winehouse. Beautiful music! Jerrod responds: Shes dead. And I want Mom to be okay. This makes it into the final cut. Its always good to have that extra stuff in your head to layer the story and fill it out, Sanchez-Witzel said. The show wraps, and Carmichael steps center stage to thank the audience. The next day is the table read for an upcoming episode, Facebook Friends, the Carmichaels take on social media: Joe joins Facebook and is proud of how quickly he amasses 54 friends; Cynthia gets jealous. For Facebook Friends, as with The Blues, the goal for Carmichael remains challenging in its simplicity: Its really important with this show that I do not lie artistically. Cosby. Photo: Getty Images Though Bill Cosby tried to put a stop to his criminal case because of what he called a decade-old deal not to prosecute him, his appeal was rejected by a Pennsylvania appeals court, and the trial will proceed. Cosby is on trial over a 2004 encounter with a then-Temple University employee. The woman says Cosby drugged and molested her at his home, but Cosby says it was consensual. Former prosecutor Bruce Castor had promised he would never prosecute Cosby, and urged him to testify. It was the release of that testimony last year that led a new prosecutor to arrest him. Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images Its been four decades since Robert De Niros troubled loner Travis Bickle looked into a mirror and uttered one of the most enduring pieces of dialogue in film history but as the legendary actor revealed last week during the Tribeca Film Festival, the line is fresh as ever in his mind. Every day for 40 years 40 fuckin years at least one of you has come up to me and said, You talkin to me? Now lets say it together! quipped De Niro to the audience as he and his TFF co-founder Jane Rosenthal introduced a special 40th anniversary screening of Taxi Driver at the Beacon Theatre on Thursday night. Afterward, De Niro reunited with director Martin Scorsese, co-stars Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd and Harvey Keitel, screenwriter Paul Schrader, and producer Michael Phillips for an onstage chat moderated by the director of the New York Film Festival, Kent Jones. They talked about everything from how they came up with Bickles mohawk to Fosters fear of hot pants and Keitels improvisations with a pimp. Then Vulture, a signature sponsor of TFF, typed it all up for you. Kent Jones: The first time I ever saw this movie was on my first date with my high-school girlfriend when I was 15. Anyway, it was the first of many times. But I have to say that as dangerous as it made New York look, it also made us want to come here, because we thought there was something that awesome and powerful to come out of this: We need to be there. And there were a lot of other people who felt the same many people in the audience Im sure. I guess the best place to start is with the writer, Paul Schrader. Now Paul, I just want to correct an impression that the script is based on Arthur Bremmers diaries. Not true, right? The man who shot George Wallace? Paul Schrader: I knew about Bremmer. The diaries hadnt been published yet. Jones: Yet. Schrader: And the fact that the diaries came out, I was surprised there were so many moments of synchronicity between his diaries and the film we had made. Jones: I think that you were talking about your approach to Taxi Driver, and you quoted from another film that you wrote, Yakuza, where you said, When someone goes nuts in Japan, they shut the blinds and kill themselves. But when someone goes nuts in America, they open a window and shoot somebody else. Schrader: Well I think and time is limited as there are a lot of people here but I just want to say something as precisely as possible, which is that this script began in the best possible way because it began as self-therapy. There was a person who I was afraid of who I was afraid I was becoming and that was this taxi driver. And I felt that if I wrote about it, I could distance him from me. And so it worked. And it does show that art has therapeutic power. But the beauty of it is as it migrated through director, cast and studio release, etc., it still retained that original purpose. That pertinent power I think, still after 40 years, is still imbued in the film. Jones: Now what was the order in which it was read? Marty, did you read it first before Bob, and then Michael? Schrader: I think Michael Michael Phillips: Actually, Brian De Palma was living next door to me, and Paul was writing a journalistic piece on Brian and showed Brian the script and Brian said, Its not for me, but maybe it would be something I would like, and it was. So that was the next step. I read it and I thought I was looking into a naked soul. I had never seen anything like this, but it was a long journey. That was 1972. Martin Scorsese: And then I was given the script by Brian, but I hadnt made Mean Streets yet and we were in the process of beginning to make it, I think. And he introduced me to Paul and it took until I think Michael and [late co-producer] Julia [Phillips], it took a while for you guys to I kept saying, I wanna do this, I wanna do this, but I had nothing I could show you. Phillips: Yes, but then we saw a rough cut of Mean Streets and Paul had said, you gotta go see this. And it wasnt yet released. And we knew I mean, halfway through I knew that you were our guy. And I had never seen in Johnny Boy such an unpredictable, riveting character. This was our team. But they werent yet bankable because they were sort of unknown. Schrader: And a lot of this has to do with Julia Michaels wife who is no longer with us who was a real forceful person and had a contact with [former Columbia Pictures head] David Begelman, and thats really how this thing started to come together. Phillips: It really came together because the talent had stuck with the package until it became a bargain. And at one point, after Bobby had won his Oscar for Godfather II and Marty was already recognized as a star director, they hung in there at bargain-basement prices, and we did this film very cheaply. David Begelman saw a bargain and he knew it. Jones: Marty, what was it that you saw in the script that drew you to it? Scorsese: Well I, how should I put this? What I saw and cant articulate, it just had to be done. Thats all. I think Bob and I, we never really spoke about meaning or theory of any kind. Robert De Niro: Never had long existential discussions about it. Scorsese: Exactly. Pauls really the one who expresses it, I think. I just had a kind of determination to make it, and as I said earlier, it was a film that I didnt think anybody would really see. It was just a film that was made out of a passion of the situation, who we were really at the time. Jones: And about how the city was at the time? Scorsese: Yeah, and the city. Schrader: Bob and Marty and I never really talked much about the script because we knew this guy. We all knew this guy. And thats where serendipity comes in, where three young men at a certain point in their lives sort of sync up and share a common sort of pathology and see it. So sometimes you get lucky. Jones: Bob, you had an idea for a movie that was similar in nature at the time? De Niro: Well, when I was younger, I had something in mind, something similar in some ways. Basically a guy who was isolated, alone and kind of like the Travis character, which I never really fully realized. But when I read it, I identified with it, as I think we all did, even though Martys from right in the heart of New York and Im from the heart of New York, not far from each other in Manhattan. [We] just identified with the character. And we all, everybody felt very, very good about the whole project and that was it. Jones: Theres some of Paul in the way you played the character? De Niro: Yeah, you know things, even little stuff kind of like how many shoes you had, some boots I took, that jacket. [To Paul] By the way, where is that jacket? Schrader: The jacket is at the Harry Ransom Center. The books are there, too. So they are there for the public, they havent been sold or anything. Bob gave all his stuff to the University of Texas at Austin and suggested I do the same. But one part of me is not gonna do that, because he and Steven Spielberg are going to take over the whole building. Jones: And Bob, in preparation for the role, you drove a cab for a little bit, right? De Niro: I did. I was doing 1900 in Italy and Marty and I met at Cannes while he was there. We just met up there and worked on the script. And I had been working on it over there before, because when I got to New York I had like two weeks before we were ready to shoot. So as soon as I got back, I started driving a cab, and I thought Id go for at least 10 days or something, but I drove as much as I could at that period before we had to start. Jones: Is it true that somebody got in your cab and said, Hey, arent you the guy that won the Oscar? De Niro: Marty said that. I dont know. I dont remember. Scorsese: You told me that a guy got in the car and noticed that it was your name on the drivers license, and he said, My God, he just won an Oscar. Is it that hard to get a job? De Niro: I said, Yeah, Im still on the unemployment line. Jones: Jodie, you were really surprised to get this script offered to you, right? Jodie Foster: Yeah, I had just done Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore and so we knew each other. I had seen Mean Streets a thousand times, and was a big fan of the cinema of the day, early 70s movies. My mom took me to the movie theater and took me to see European films, and I think she wanted for me in some ways to have a meaningful career and have a part like this. And I just sort of showed up. Jones: Were you afraid that your friends were going to make fun of you? Foster: Just the hot pants. The hot pants and the dumb hat and the sunglasses. That was the first day that, I believe it was Ruth Morley, the costume designer, the first day I cried. Then I was absolutely mortified. Jones: And then you had to do a four-hour interview with a psychiatrist? Foster: The Board of Education didnt want to give me a work permit. Every time a young actor has to do a movie, they have to get a work permit. They said no, I couldnt have one, and we hired a lawyer and they decided to determine whether I was psychologically sane enough to play the part, and I guess I passed! Jones: Congratulations. Cybill, I read something very interesting that you had said you were in three amazing movies kind of almost back to back: The Last Picture Show, Heartbreak Kid, and Taxi Driver. Working with Elaine May, you learned a lot about improvisation? Cybill Shepherd: I didnt know what improvisation was. She said, Okay, lets improvise, and I went, Whats that? But I did learn. And I want to mention David Begelman, who did me a great favor, who said you cant do Taxi Driver and this other film. And I said, No problem. Taxi Driver. Jones: Good decision. Did the improv come in handy working on this? Shepherd: Well, yes, absolutely. Thats how we found the lines. It was Mr. De Niro and I. We improvised and I think, Marty, you had a 16-mm black-and-white camera? Scorsese: Video. Shepherd: Yeah, video. And you wrote the lines based on some of our improvisations. Scorsese: Yeah, based on some of those. Yes, exactly. It was at the St. Regis. Shepherd: Yeah, nice hotel. Scorsese: Yeah. Dali was still living there. Salvador Dali, yes, he was sitting in the lobby [twirls his mustache like Dali]. Watch out. Amazing! Jones: You didnt want to give him a bit part? Scorsese: No, it wasnt that kind of a movie. Jones: Different kind of New York. Schrader: And also with Cybill, Marty and I had been talking about who this girl is, and I said, Shes like Cybill Shepherd, and theres no way she would do this. And then I heard from [talent agent] Sue Mengers and she said, I hear youre looking for a Cybilllike actress. I said, Yeah, we are! And she said, Well, what about Cybill? I said, She would never do this, and Sue said, Well, ask her to play that part! Shepherd: Well, this was definitely a very important film for me and I wouldve given my right arm to do it. And Im so honored to be here tonight. Theres so much talent on this stage, and to have this great opportunity to have this great film be honored, and I just want to thank you. Jones: Now, there is a fair amount of improv in the movie, correct? Scorsese: The script was very structured and rigorous. Schrader: It was primarily Albert [Brooks]. Something Scorsese does thats very smart is when you have an uninteresting role, cast a comic. And this one really was a boring role that I had written, so Marty puts Albert in there. Scorsese: I offered it to Harvey. But he told me earlier, and [looking at Harvey] I forgot I offered you that part. And he said, I wanna do the pimp. Jones: The pimp, yeah. Harvey Keitel: Thank you, Paul. Jones: Harvey, you worked with a real pimp, correct? Keitel: Does the statute of limitations apply here? Well, Ill just say how I met Marty, and then Ill pass the mic. Marty was casting a student film at NYU. Perhaps it was the first 35-mm film ever made in the country. And after a number of auditions there must have been a hundred actors that showed up at first it came down to three of us, all out-of-work actors auditioning for a movie that didnt pay any money that was going to shoot on weekends. So I show up at NYU at nighttime, its dark in there, and I walk in and some fella says to me, Okay, walk down the hall and you see where that lights coming from the room? I said, Yeah. He says, Okay, now just walk in there and wait. So Im waiting my turn to audition, the last audition for the part. There are three auditions. So I walk into the room and the lights on. The whole school was dark. I just walk in the room and theres a lamp, like at a police station, shining and you walk in and theres a guy sitting behind a desk and he goes, Sit the fuck down! I said, What? and he said, Sit the fuck down. I said, Excuse me, but who are you? He said, Sit the fuck down, and I said, Go fuck yourself! I stand up and all of a sudden I hear a voice shouting from the back of the room, Harvey, no, stop! Stop! Wait! Wait! Its an improvisation! I said, Marty, excuse me, but you know it would be a good idea when youre doing an improvisation to let your actors know. So, youre a genius! Jones: You dont want to tell the pimp story? Scorsese: Tell them about the pimp! [At this point, a man in audience yells, Tell us about the pimp!] Keitel: Oh, you guys! Theres nothing to say much about it. Theres a lot to say. One funny thing to say about it I was looking to meet a pimp cause I didnt know what to do about being a pimp. Not that I wasnt a lowlife myself, but so I was doing a Broadway show at the time, and a lot of the girls would hang out around Tenth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, and I went over to one of the girls one night and my names on the marquee and all that, so I went up to her and I said, Excuse me, but Im Harvey Keitel and heres my name on the poster there and Im doing a movie, and Im beginning to explain to her about playing the pimp in Taxi Driver. I said, Im looking for someone to help me understand what its like to be a pimp, and Im talking and Im talking and Im talking. And she doesnt say a word. I said, Can you help me out? She looks at me and she goes, No ones gonna talk to you. So I sulked away, you know, and then I met a pimp. Someone said he was a former pimp, and I dont know what that means, but we improvised a couple of weeks together, me and this fellow, and he taught me what it was like to play the role of a pimp, and I played the girl. And he taught me what the pimp would do, and then Id play the pimp and we had a good business together! It went something like that, and Marty wanted those scenes in the movie so we put them in the movie to begin with. The dance with Jodie and all that. Scorsese: I think in terms of improv, though, the key one was with Bob and the mirror. Paul, I remember we asked him to say something in the mirror and so we called you. Schrader: Yeah, I mean it was not scripted. The script just said, Travis looks at the mirror, plays like a cowboy, takes out the gun and talks to himself. And so Bob said, Well, what does he say? And I said, Its just like when youre a kid and you got that little holster and the cap gun and youre standing there and you go, Whoa! Just like that. And so he took it from there. Jones: But where did you find in Taxi Driver the drummer, Gene Palma? Scorsese: Gene Palma and Chick Webb and all that. That was just a guy on Columbus Circle. Thats all. Those are things that we sort of put into the picture. [Cinematographer] Michael [Chapman] and I were pretty much, Look at this guy and another fella. I had to find a place in the editing for em. Yeah. Jones: Who for years was a fixture in New York. Hed turn up in places as the Taxi Driver drummer. And then Steven Prince was the gun dealer. So it was a hot summer, right? Scorsese: The weather was, I mean, at that time the only person that had trouble was you [De Niro], I think. What with all the makeup and also the mohawk thing. So we would just hang out in the streets, and it was Michael and I. Well, the problem was the heat in the city at the time and enormous amounts of rainstorms, thunderstorms that kept pushing us back in scheduling and that sort of thing. And there were lots of problems with the studio on that. But the city was wonderful at the time, I thought. Everybody told me it was dying and it was a terrible city and I just, thats where I grew up in. I grew up downtown on Elizabeth Street. I didnt see much of a difference. I mean, yeah, Eighth Avenue between 52nd and 42nd street, we wouldnt want to hang around too long at night doing that scene, I can tell you. Phillips: You forgot these were all condemned buildings and gangs we were assiduously avoiding. Scorsese: Oh, thats right, yes. But seriously, its part of being in the city at night in the summer where you can feel it in the film, Michael Chapmans photography. You can get a sense of, you can taste the humidity and a sense of the kind of anger and violence that was emanating from the streets themselves. It was crazy. The rainstorms were really bad, though. I finally just started shooting in them, because I couldnt match anything. Remember in the scene with the apple pie in the luncheonette? I didnt want to shoot against the wall. I wanted to shoot out the window with Bob and Cybill, because you had all of Columbus Circle out there and you had all of this going on but nothing matched. It would start raining and raining and so we had a big confrontation with the studio, but we finally pulled through on that, because I felt the city was so much of a character and we had to fight tooth and nail to get that, I remember. Schrader: Dont really believe him. Scorsese has never cared about whether things matched [laughs]. Scorsese: Thats true! Thats true! Jones: Marty, technically, can you just talk about how you got the overhead shot at the end? You put a hole in the ceiling. Scorsese: Well, we were in this condemned building, right? On 88th and Columbus? Phillips: That was down on 13th, right? Scorsese: Well, the exterior was down on 13th and the hallway was 89th street and Columbus. And Jodies room was on Columbus Ave. on 88th Street, I believe, or 89th. The building was somehow condemned, but were shooting a movie in there. I dont know what happened. And the next day we started, I remember Michael, because it was in the script that it was an overhead tracking, they said, How do you want to get it? I said, Well have to cut through the ceiling, which is what they did and it took about three months, do you remember? And when it came time to shoot it, the teacher, or what is it? The child-labor law person Foster: Did they cause you trouble? Scorsese: Well, they said you only have 20 minutes. Foster: So sorry. Scorsese: And so were trying everything. Oh please, oh please! And 20 minutes, we had and like a year building up to it. And I said, Please, just an extra shot. But we got it, I think, in two takes. Foster: Sometimes thats all it takes. Scorsese: Thats all it takes. It was so funny. Jones [to Foster]: And you were kind of freaked out by the blood? Foster: Freaked out? No, it was fantastic. I remember [makeup artist] Dick Smith there with all the big wonderful gallons of Karo syrup and things floating around in them, and all the guys would teach me what they were doing while watching Bobby put on his headpiece, you know, the prosthetic mohawk. It was fascinating. And people have always asked all of us how frightening that scene was and how frightening it was to shoot, but mostly it was kind of fun. Jones: But the mohawk, that was a special forces thing, right? De Niro: Speaking about the whole shootout at the end, its funny when you do those kind of terrible, gruesome scenes, everybody kind of jokes. And that made me think about people who are in those types of situations for real, probably have no choice but to joke about it. And thats kind of what we were doing as we remember in that setting because its just so gruesome that, you know, you make jokes about it. Even though it wasnt real, it was real enough for us in any case. But the mohawk was something that Marty and I came up with. A friend of his who was in special forces at that time who would do HALO diving into Cambodia or Laos or whatever, and he showed us a picture of he and his outfit and a couple guys had mohawks or at least one or two of them did, as I remember. Scorsese: Yes. De Niro: And we said, Thats great. Lets use that. Lets try and do it. And so then it was about how we could do it, as I was about to do The Last Tycoon after, and my hair was all bushy and everything. So I remember Marty and I had to kind of resolve it and we met at Gallaghers Steakhouse I dont know if you remember it, Marty but we had a talk and we decided to get Dick Smith to do a test and Dick did a test and it worked. Scorsese: I remember I was in the other room and I had fallen asleep while he was working on the headpiece or whatever it is, the mohawk, and I had just dozed off for a moment, and then I felt a tap on my shoulder and I opened my eyes, and you were there with this thing and it was terrifying! Jones: I just want to talk a little bit about Bernard Hermann and this incredible score. You said that when you approached him for the first time, he said, I hear brass. Scorsese: I met him through Brian De Palma again. He was doing the score for his film Obsession. Jones: Which Paul also wrote. Scorsese: And so I got his phone number, and I was in Amsterdam but giving him a call in London, and I said, Id like you to take a look at this script. Its a film called Taxi Driver, and he said, I dont do films about cabbies. But then he said, Okay, meet me in London, and so we met. And he read the script and he said he liked the fact the character used peach brandy in the cereal. [Imitating Hermanns gruff voice]: So thats interesting. Thats interesting. Michael, you know him, you made the deal, right? Phillips: He was impossible to wrangle. I remember he kept quitting the film. He arrived at the airport. He had been in self-exile in England for a decade, came back and went straight to the return counter to buy a ticket to have him brought back, and then on the recording stage, there was a gooseneck lamp that he kept hitting with his baton, but he blamed the lamp and he quit and threw his baton into the orchestra. But we recorded for two days and he died at the end of the second day, that evening. And I remember the first time you had to change one of his cues on the dubbing stage, you were a little scared. We were all scared of Bernie and thats the truth. Scorsese: I spent some time with him in London, and we talked about the scores he did for Welles and Hitchcock, even the Sinbad films, and so we became friendly with him. But he did tell me that he saw it all, he heard it all in brass, very strong. And the way I envisioned the film and I had drawn all the pictures, if you remember, because we were under so much pressure, was I imagined it to a Van Morrison T.B. Sheets, a kind of bluesy creeping through the streets at night kind of thing. Schrader: I was very surprised when I first heard this thing about Bernard Hermann because Marty was a needle-drop addict and all of Mean Streets had all been needle drops, and so I figured thats what wed do on Taxi Driver. You know, all these needle drops. And then one day he says, What do you think of Bernard Hermann? I was flabbergasted. It was inspiration. Scorsese: You know, the thing about it, Paul, was that this term needle drops is something about music being heard, because thats how I grew up with all the music around me from different places, different windows, whether it was opera or jazz or swing or rock and roll. So thats the way I saw everything on Mean Streets and even Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore. But Travis doesnt listen to anything. He doesnt listen to any music. And I said, The only person that could do something that could express what hes suffering is Bernard Hermann. Schrader: You told me a story that you wanted Jackson Browne in there. There were two cues we were talking about. One was Jackson Browne and the other was Barry White. And Bernard Hermann says the only person who does music in a Bernard Hermann film is Bernard Hermann. And you won the battle over Jackson Browne. But the Barry White we ended up with Harvey dancing to Bernard Hermanns Barry White. Scorsese: Oh, thats right! Bernard Hermann did the music. And you wrote the lyrics? Wow, I didnt remember it. Yeah, the Jackson Browne Late for the Sky. Yeah. Jones: And its an interesting story about the last moment at the end of the movie with the sting. Scorsese: Uh, yeah, when Travis looks in the mirror in the cab and then looks back, he thinks he sees something. I was there with Bernard Hermann and the orchestra and I said, I just need some kind of a sound there. He said, You mean a sting. And I said, Yeah, I guess thats what I mean. And he said, Okay, and he got the xylophone player and he hit the xylophone a number of times and he played it back. And I said, Its still, I mean, thats right but it needs something special. And he said, Play it backwards. And walked out. And that was the last time I saw him. Jones: So you guys had serious doubts about whether or not people were going to go see this movie. You knew that you wanted to make the movie. Scorsese: As I said, for me it was almost like and for Bob, too, he was working with Kazan, he was working with Bertolucci, and I mean Francis, Godfather this was just something we had to do and then we move on with our lives. That was the idea. And Paul was starting to direct soon. You were doing Blue Collar with Harvey, about to do that with Richard Pryor, all these pictures, so everybody said, So yeah, lets get this done for Gods sakes. Come on, we gotta do it. And I couldnt believe, and I was saying earlier [to Schrader], you called me the day it opened and said, Take a look and see the line around the corner, at the Coronet Theater. Schrader: I had been up late the night before it was those times and I had overslept and I was at the Sherry and I couldnt get a cab and I ran all the way across town to the Baronet, and I got there and there was a huge line outside the theater to the one theater, first show. And I said, Oh my God, somethings gone wrong. Theyve closed the theater, and I went up to the woman, and I said What happened? What happened? And she said theyre getting ready to start the movie. And I said, Well, why are all these people out here? She said, Theyre for the next show. And I walked up into the theater. It was the very first screening in New York and the cab pulled out of the steam, and it says Taxi Driver, and the audience applauds. The film had never been projected before. It was some kind of New York groundswell that just, you know, was there. Scorsese: Incredible. I had no idea. Amazing. Jones: And you had an interesting experience at Cannes with the film, right? Scorsese: At Cannes, Jodie was there, Michael, Julia, I think no she wasnt there Bob and me. And Harvey, you werent there at Cannes for this? Keitel: I was the only guy in a brown suit. Scorsese: Oh, thats all right. Keitel: I didnt have a tuxedo. Scorsese: But the jury was Costa-Gavras and Sergio Leone Jones: Tennessee Williams. Scorsese: Well, Tennessee Williams was the president of the jury. And Ill tell you, we did our work for two or three days. We did interviews, we did press conferences, and then an article came out they had a thing there and I dont know if they still do this kind of a little booklet or flyer that goes out each day about the festival and the headline was Tennessee Williams does not like hates Taxi Driver. Said it was far too violent. So we just did our work and went home. However, before we did, Leone and Costa-Gavras gave us a dinner at a restaurant called LOasis, or Oasis. Foster: I think [former agent turned producer] Harry Ufland gave it. He was there too because I saw him pay for it and that was the end of Harry Ufland at ICM. Scorsese: Really? Foster: He charged it to the company. Scorsese: Thats right, you were with Harry. Harry was my first agent for like 20 years. And Marion Billings was there, and she said they liked the film, etc. Foster: And Pauline Kael, I think, maybe. Scorsese: I think she was there, was she? Foster: I think so. Schrader: I mean the film had already come out in the U.S., so it had been reviewed and Cannes was May, so it was already a success. In fact, it was unlikely it would be shown at Cannes. Today they probably wouldnt even bother showing in America until then if it opened in February and you had to wait until May. Scorsese: But at the dinner, I dont recall Costa and Sergio talking about, Were going to make sure this film is going to win something. We just talked about cinema, their films, and Once Upon a Time in the West and that sort of thing. That was it, and then we went home. And I think, Michael, you stayed? Phillips: Yeah, you went home. And then we, to our surprise, found out we won, and so I went to accept the award and, to my shock, when they announced Taxi Driver had won, half the audience cheered and half the audience had booed. Jones: Well, okay, but the movie gets the last laugh. And thats why were all here tonight. So thank you all for coming. This interview has been edited and condensed. Before we begin, lets have a show of hands: Who was actually hoping theyd get some Howard Lyman closure before The Good Wife wrapped up? I cant actually see your hands (feel free to insert the joke of your choice about last weeks NSA story line), but mine certainly isnt raised. But here we are, at Howard and Jackies wedding reception! Alicias apartment initially seemed like an odd spot for the reception, but when you look at it as a sweet bit of passive aggression that Jackie might have hurled her way, it makes more sense. To be fair, there is something collegial and fun about having so many different recurring characters in the same room together. Its an extended version of that scene in The Simpsons opening credits where Homer drives past the people of Springfield in lightning succession. The gangs all here: Howard, Jackie, Peter, a solid contingent of senior citizens, Diane and her husband, Alicias brother and mother and, of course, the kids. Theres something a little disingenuous about the shows sudden desire to remind us that oh, right Alicia has children. Weve only seen Zach once or twice this season, and his most recent appearance was months ago. And despite the fact that Grace lives in Alicias apartment (and that Makenzie Vega is still technically a series regular), weve barely seen her either. Perhaps shes been driven to sleepovers with friends now that Alicia and Jason treat the house like their own private sex pad? Regardless of how tacked on it feels, Zachs story line is a linchpin of the episode: Hes engaged to his RA, hes leaving college, and hes moving to France. I laughed out loud when Peter asked what hed do for work and Zach responded, Ive thought about writing, because nothing cracks me up more than a 19-year-old white dude who is convinced hes a typewriter ribbon away from becoming Ernest Hemingway. Incidentally, his girlfriend is also pretty obnoxious, but she lays down a pretty solid Huma Abedin reference, so I suppose shes good enough to go to France with Zach, especially because it turns out I have zero investment in his future. Bye, guys! Speaking of complicated family dynamics, theres even one last Jackie and Veronica spat, and it ends with Veronica inadvertently letting it slip that Peter and Alicia are getting divorced. Zach and Grace are a little indignant but not particularly surprised, and despite Peters matter-of-fact tone as he tells Alicia which attorney they should hire, he seems legitimately sad throughout. Hes particularly heartbroken at the end of the episode, as he and Alicia sit on the end of her bed, staring at the television as they bleakly toast their divorce. Peters not the only one with complicated feelings about the divorce. At the beginning of the episode, things dont look so great for Alicia and Jason. She says she wants him; he says she shouldnt be getting divorced for him. To give you a little context, all of this happened just after the shows opening montage of empty furniture in Alicias apartment, which is just about as heavy-handed as the footage sequence of Alicia hoisting an actual cross (made out of flowers, but STILL) and hefting it into her apartment. Her plea to Jason isnt any less overwrought or on-the-nose. Everything comes to an end! Theres no better moment than now! But Jason leaves anyway, with not much more said. Although Im interested in Alicia and Jasons relationship, I dont love how much it drives the story line, the extent to which the shows writers are trying to eke symbolism out of it, or the prospect that Alicias Good Wife journey will culminate with her getting a new boyfriend. Thats a serious concern, because by episodes end, Jason and Alicia are back on, sort of. She forgives him for weirdly having given her a parcel of land on Mars (it was supposed to be a joke), and he explains why hed said it would be a mistake for him to get divorced for her. Its a pretty classic Im a lone wolf! defense, but it feels at least a little sincere. The speech ends with him saying, I want you, too, but I cant be stuck, and her saying that hes given her a lot to think about. Its not exactly the end of Notting Hill, but its not the end of Titanic either. (I may have watched both Notting Hill and Titanic this week.) Well see what happens next week. Oh, also: Mike Tascionis dog is sick, so Diane is Peters lawyer now. Meanwhile, Eli wants Jason back on Peters case, and asks him to find evidence that proves Peter is guilty, which is presumably the investigative version of reverse psychology. Jason visits some familiar faces and places from the shows early years, and its a very tidy way to both make callbacks and move Peters story forward at the same time. The trouble with watching Jason dive into the evidence is I dont really care whether Peters guilty. I already assume he is, and Im not invested enough to hope he stays out of prison. But I definitely want to know what happens to him, and I understand why the show cant fast-forward to the end of the story. Jason learns that Peter did some questionable things around the evidence in the Locke case questioning all the evidence and even vetoing some of it. The lab tech is particularly adamant that Peter sabotaged the case, but later, Peter is able to explain his actions. He was at the crime scene because the case was going to be his O.J., and he wanted to get ahead of it. He suggests that the lab tech had a vendetta against him, which Jason corroborates. It does have an actual ring of truth to it although there are some indicators that this could be trouble for Dianes husband, Kurt, and I do not like the sound of that one bit. The whole mess leads Cary to lawyer up, after the prosecutor visited by Jason warns him that he might be held up as a scapegoat. It might just be an intimidation factor, but after Cary hires Louis Canning, Canning calls Alicia and says she could be implicated too, so she should turn Peter in. Alicia responds by hanging up and turning off the television, which seems like what I would do if someone told me that damning testimony could lead me to be falsely imprisoned. So, all in all, a pretty fun party! The moment that stood out most in the episode (aside from when Jackie almost verbatim said, Good-bye forever! to Alicia) is one that passes by in an instant. Just after she arrived at the party, Diane shows Alicia a piece of letterhead that reads, Lockhart, Florrick, and Associates. She explains that its just branding David Lees not going anywhere, but hes placated by the fact that his stake and earnings wont change but it feels like more than semantics. The Alicia we met seven years ago had barely even practiced law. Now, shes a managing partner of one of the largest female-helmed firms in the United States. Thats more than good. Thats great. From Waitress, at the Brooks Atkinson. Photo: Joan Marcus A lot of the preview press for the new Broadway musical Waitress, which opened tonight at the Brooks Atkinson, concerned its groundbreakingly all-female creative team: Sara Bareilles (songs), Jessie Nelson (book), Lorin Latarro (choreography), and Diane Paulus (direction). Even if this seemed to ignore the three men among the shows four topline designers not to mention earlier breakthrough work by the likes of Elizabeth Swados it struck me as an impressive marker for the improving state of gender equity in the theater. But I didnt expect it to signify anything further. Feminism does not suggest or hope that women can tell womens stories better than men can, or for that matter that there is such a thing as a womens story. Only that everyone should get a piece of the pie. And yet Waitress is clearly, passionately, and for the most part delightfully a feminist musical. Not because its plot passes the Bechdel Test; it doesnt. The stories of each of the three servers at Joes Pie Diner in fact hinge on their romantic entanglements with men. Jenna, the quiet one, is a gifted baker trapped in a loveless, semiviolent marriage. Becky, the feisty one, is on the prowl for distraction from her aged, bedridden husband. And Dawn, the ditz, is trying to perfect an online-dating profile that will attract a man as interested as she is in rare turtles and Revolutionary War reenactment. Despite the need to feed all of these plots with plenty of incident and song, what the show most successfully dramatizes is the way the women support one another in between. Early on, when Jenna suspects that a drunken night with her husband is the source of her morning nausea, Becky and Dawn force her into the diners bathroom to take a pregnancy test. The Negative is probably the first pee on a stick song in the history of musical theater. Later, when Jenna has her first contraction the test turned out positive the shows focus expands beautifully, as various women in the ensemble appear in the background, experiencing and vocalizing the same fear and astonishment. But the creative teams success at portraying the communality of womens experience comes at a price. Elements that were quirky and captivating in the source material Adrienne Shellys 2007 movie, starring Keri Russell turn outlandish and a little icky when musical-comedy-ized. Songs, by their nature unnaturalistic, will do that. Jennas affair with her adorable obstetrician, a plot turn that seems quietly inevitable when depicted on film, acquires a glaze of random kookiness when turned into ballads and charm numbers onstage, and clashes disturbingly with the threat of domestic violence. Likewise the theme of Jennas baking, formerly a leitmotif, now becomes a heavy one, kneaded ad nauseam from the shows first words (Sugar, butter, flour) to its final images. It may not help that the proscenium is lined with gigantic rotating display cases of pies, and that small glass jars of key lime, apple, and Oreo are sold (for $10 each) at intermission. The current Broadway rule book apparently includes a chapter on brand discipline. Still, Bareilles, a pop star whose hits are strongly rooted in the storytelling-blues tradition, manages better than almost any recent crossover songwriter to find clever, charming hooks that tie her character- and scene-defining numbers to story particulars. The opener, Whats Inside, suggests the overarching pie imagery but also the musicals theme of self-discovery. The charm song, introducing the unlikely romance of Jenna and Dr. Pomatter, makes a natural connection between infatuation and mouth-feel: It Only Takes a Taste. Even the specialty numbers, typically wan in shows written by Broadway neophytes, work well here. Never Ever Getting Rid of Me, a song for the odd little man who answers Dawns ad, is a showstopper for quirky Christopher Fitzgerald. Oddly, its only in the ballads that Bareilless pop background betrays her; the melodies are lovely but the construction wobbles and the lyrics revert to vague. (Come out of hiding, Im right here beside you / And Ill stay there as long as you let me.) It is the great fortune of Waitress, though, that most of these songs are sung by Jessie Mueller as Jenna, confirming her status as a Broadway star of the first order. Shes a vocal chameleon, sounding almost as much like Bareilles here as she sounded like Carole King in Beautiful, but its her intelligence and her way of specifying sadness in the crannies of her voice that make the sometimes generic material riveting. And not just in the songs. Her concept of Jenna as a woman trapped less by her marriage than by her own fatalism as if women had no choice but to be forever faithful to their mistakes is a moving wonder throughout. The production both supports and fights this idea. The support comes largely from Keala Settle as Becky, giving an unsentimental performance just at the border between musical comedy and something much harsher. (The huge-voiced Settle is not afraid of throwing some stink eye.) Also underlining the complexity and size of the issues are the bold vocal arrangements by Nadia DiGiallonardo. On the other side of the genre split, Drew Gehling brings screwball charm and good hair to the could-be-disastrous role of Dr. Pomatter. But however much these performances bridge or straddle the gap, theres still something subtly awkward about the distance between the material and its Broadway incarnation. That Jenna, who at first does not want a baby, might choose an abortion is only half-mentioned the actual wording in the script is abor as if audience pre-testing (Waitress tried out at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts) had identified a sore spot. The ending, wanting to avoid a statement that could be construed as either anti-romance or anti-independence, finds the three women with precisely 1.5 men among them. In her staging, Paulus also splits the difference. The overbusy mise en scene of previous projects such as Pippin and Finding Neverland, which often seemed motivated by a desperate need for distraction, is applied to about half of the material here. But the other half, particularly in Muellers scenes and songs, is more subtly shaped and stronger for it, as if Paulus finally had something to trust. Waitress can still be an uncomfortable genre mix: domestic-violence drama and workplace rom-com. Thats in the source material, and the musicalization exaggerates it. What I certainly didnt expect, though, is that the musicalization could also help to justify the mismatch. As the story rushed toward its multiple conclusions a typical Broadway problem the creative team was unable to solve I began to understand that for these characters, life itself is an uncomfortable genre mix. Seeing that and sharing it is the start of their mastering it. Perhaps it really did take an all-female creative team to understand how such a story could be true, and how it could sing. If so, well, hand me a slice of that humble pie. Waitress is at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Its morning in America, and no one knows who the president is. Selina Meyer, who is technically still president but has no idea if she can remain president, because the election is a tie, because of course it is, begins this tortured day by addressing a conflicted populace. As she swears that she is in barefaced awe of the majesty of our democratic system, we see the tattered dregs of last nights would-be party, ripped posters with her face on them in the trash, like a frat basement on a Sunday. Selina points out that the electoral college is a somewhat arcane institution that many scholars say we should do away with, but until those scholars get to it, this is the system we have. In this system: Selina won the popular vote! But thats it. For now. When the cameras shut off, Selina the real Selina, who speaks in magnificent streams of profanity and has nothing but disdain for the citizens she ostensibly dreams of serving tells her staff that she forgot to thank the voters for making our country look like a high-school Spanish club. Didnt those founding fuckers ever hear of an odd number? A little previously, on Veep for the rusty among you: Selinas former lieutenant, Amy, had a bit of an epic meltdown, but she is both a sucker and stuck in a ride-or-die situation, so she finds herself back in Selinas inner circle, as if pulled there by a gravitational force she can neither see nor control. Gary is right where we left him, where he will likely remain forever. Mike and Wendy are adopting a baby from China. Sue is, as ever, cooler than everyone and defeating Mike in a Fitbit contest without even leaving her desk. Kent might be beating both of them; hes already counting his steps in his head. Bill Erickson is going to be indicted and is as welcome here as a swastika-shaped shit in a synagogue, Ben says. Tom James is going rogue. Dan is desperate, just, like, in general, but also professionally. Catherine is filming everything for her thesis. (I had that thing last semester where I was tired all the time. I love that Catherine is also terrible. Apples and trees, kids.) As for the election: Senator OBriens lead is less than half a percent, which, as far as Nevada is concerned Ne-vah-duh? Ne-vaaaah-duh? No one knows, actually allows for a possible recount. Win Nevada, win the presidency! Who can we count on in this time of electoral crisis? RICHARD. Richard did his doctorate on recount procedures in the West. Well, he has two doctorates. One is in veterinary medicine, which was my fallback. Amy is stunned because this secret genius used to get her coffee. As it turns out, that menial labor was much harder, because you have so many different moods. This leads to a phenomenal switcheroo: Jonah is now working for Richard. Richard handles this adjustment with grace and ease. Jonah handles it by misremembering Harry Potter: He rises up and kills all the Muggles. Selina gives an impressively vacuous speech about how #blessed she is, and her mountain of a pimple becomes a volcano and basically explodes on live television. It is the pimple Angela Chase feared she had. It is like the stress pimple Ben gets on his butt. It cries out for medical attention and, in the interim, a parody Twitter account for POTUS: Pimple of the United States. Oh also, the DOW is crashing because of the tie. While Gary blotches sorry, I mean botches, it just slipped out that way Selinas skincare regimen, Amy comes up with a real two-birds-one-stone idea: Appoint an economy czar, which seems like something, and make Tom James that czar. Tom thinks he can weasel his way out of that one It is a huge honor, but I have to balance that against my need not to do it, but Selina just announces publicly that hes doing it, which is very savvy on her part. Besides, Tom wanted to be treasury secretary! I dont see how this is any different from that, says Selina, which suggests that in the alternate America of Veep, there is no Hamilton. Sidebar: Theres been a mudslide in Idaho, but Idaho didnt back Selina. So forget a state of emergency, Idaho! Selina declares a state of go-fuck-yourself. Im not spending money to scrape mud off a bunch of dirt roads [] Dont you think that mudslides are the funniest kind of natural disasters? I didnt before but kind of? I get where shes coming from. I mean, any natural disaster thats also a T.G.I. Fridays dessert is a little funny, right? Or I might just be a terrible person, verdict to come. Obviously Amy wants back in on the insanity, but she can only admit it to herself when Selina floats the idea of hiring a grown-ass woman who voluntarily goes by Candi to run Nevada. (Shes still under 30, Amy clarifies. She looks older.) Amy recruits Dan to her cause; he has just been fired, sort of to his face but really over text, for being as useless to me as a 40-year-old woman. Ooof. Selina is also hosting a symposium on race, which, what do you know, features a panel of white people! This crescendo at the end of the episode is Veep at its finest, as no less than three different jokes come together in the span of 30 seconds: Mike, trying to get in the flight of stairs he needs to be a better FitBitter than Sue, accidentally opens a door attached to an alarm; Selina summons Sue to the panel so at least one person of color will be present; Sue bursts in just as the security team descends, and is mistakenly accused of causing the breach; Bill Erickson, already on the way out, gets arrested and blamed for everything. If only there were a way to hold him responsible for Selinas stress pimple, which Gary is currently attempting to heal by applying a secret family recipe and blowing on Selinas face for five full minutes. And a few other things Bens first line of the episode is a real keeper: Two great Greek contributions to society: democracy and getting fucked up the ass. (Selinas reply: Ive tried both, and theyre way overrated. Like jazz.) Ben assures Selina that her massive pimple is hardly noticeable, like our Hispanic voter turnout. The only thing Catherine ever finished was an entire ice-cream cake. Selina, mother of the year. Very intrigued by Clea DuVall as the newest member of Selinas Secret Service detail. How many abortions does a pro-lifer have to pressure his mistress into before the people turn on him? Selina, to Tom: I LBJed you. Im the LBJ queen and you are Sargent Suck-It Shriver. Life gives you Yemen, youve gotta make Yemenade. Insult of the episode: Amy ripping apart Candice-call-me-Candi: If she does that with her own goddamn name, how is she supposed to handle a recount?! (Also, later, her exchange with Candi is perfection: Its Candi, with an I. Amy with a Y, which is correct. Runner-up: Selina asking her beloved daughter: Catherine, why is that your hair? Compliment of the episode: Did anyone compliment anyone in this fine premiere? I guess the closest thing is Gary asking Candi if her dress is a size two. Jonah shall henceforth be known as: Richards assistant. :-/ The success of the Greater Waco Advanced Manufacturing Academy has attracted industry leaders in McLennan County construction fields hoping to raise the number of qualified workers on their sites. Scott Bland, the president of the Heart of Texas Builders Association, said key positions on construction sites such as plumbers, air-conditioner technicians and electricians are grossly understaffed because of the qualifications now needed to work in the industry. Companies are having to hire people with no background and train them. Its just a nightmare. Youre starting from zero, he said. Bland is working with Waco Independent School District to install a general construction curriculum at GWAMA for the 2017-18 school year in an attempt to give students a leg up in the industry. Students would be eligible for apprenticeships upon graduation as they work on further certifications, Bland said. Brandon Cope, director of Greater Waco Academies, said the district is doing a feasibility study to see if the construction addition would benefit the area. The study is looking at local job opportunities for students after graduation, potential salaries and costs for running the program, he said. Were determining, first of all, what is the program going to look like? What would be required from the district to get the program running? What kind of interest is there from the student perspective? Cope said. Cope said if the program is approved, the district would like to begin the construction track with 100 students, which would give incoming students more flexibility since GWAMAs welding track is nearly at capacity. GWAMAs enrollment is at 150 students, and also includes robotics and machinist students. GWAMA isnt the only industry academy gaining attention. Students are flocking to the new Greater Waco Advanced Health Care Academy, with at least 400 applications submitted for its second year. Enrollment sits at 75 students, but Cope said he isnt sure what the upcoming enrollment will be until districts finalize whether they can send their students. Waco ISD Superintendent Bonny Cain said she is thrilled with the student interest and how industries are coming to the district as a way to meet employment needs. Its been a dream come true, she said. Not just for Waco ISD (or) for the community, but for the idea that the community and the district are working so closely and so successfully together. Bland said he would like the construction curriculum to be a basic overview of what is required in all building sites, so students can specialize in what they enjoy after graduation. Bland said he plans to present it to the board of trustees in August and, if the new branch is approved, he will spend the next year promoting the new track. Families have been conditioned to think that four-year degrees are the only way someone can become successful and they dont look at the potential the construction industry provides, Bland said. Any profession that doesnt involve getting a college degree, I think parents have a natural inclination to frown upon because we were taught when we were going to school that you had to go to college, he said. Students and parents need to understand that with the correct certifications, students can earn between $35,000 and $50,000 annually, he said. I havent seen anything where these kids coming out with certifications are making less than $35,000 to $38,000 a year, Bland said. To get somebody with those advanced certifications, theyre just not there. Were desperate for them. A Mexia man was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday after pleading guilty in the 2013 traffic deaths of an 85-year-old woman and her 61-year-old daughter. Erick Osval Escobedo-Contreras, 24, pleaded guilty to two counts of intoxication manslaughter in the October 2013 traffic deaths of Virginia Olivarez, of Mexia, and her mother, Mary Jordan, of Buffalo. The women were killed in a head-on collision on U.S. Highway 84 about 20 miles east of Waco. Department of Public Safety officials said Jordan was a passenger in a 2013 Hyundai Elantra driven by Olivarez when a 2005 Ford Taurus driven by Escobedo-Contreras veered into the westbound lane and struck the Elantra head-on. Olivarez died at the scene, and Jordan died later at a Waco hospital. Escobedo-Contreras and his passenger, Jose Perez, 18, were treated at a Waco hospital. Court records indicate Escobedo-Contreras blood-alcohol level was 0.092, above the legal limit of 0.08. Escobedo-Contreras attorney, Josh Tetens, declined comment Monday about the guilty pleas. Escobedo-Contreras, who also has an immigration hold on him, must serve at least half of his sentence before he can seek parole. HERSHEY Its a wish fit for a princess. A Lebanon girl is getting the trip of a lifetime after spending much of hers in and out of hospitals. This trip simply hasnt been possible for the past several years. But now, thanks to volunteers and donations, the Richardson family is packing their bags to ready a trip to Disney when their daughter is well enough to make the trip. At 6 years old, Maya Richardson likes what youd expect her to like. She and her older sister always have adored princesses, as most little girls probably do, Mayas mother, Jamie, said Saturday. Saturday at Hersheys Chocolate World, dressed in her Frozen shirt, Maya was treated like one. A cartoon Hersheys Kiss talked specifically to her at the beginning of a movie in the 4D Mystery theater, and she picked out the cupcake of her choice. Im just going to get the smores, she said, grinning. She just is a bundle of joy and lots of energy, said Sherrie Davis, a wish granter with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. But this isnt the kind of treatment shes used to. Right before Maya was 2 years old, Jamie said, she was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis. That disorder causes tumors on nerve tissue. She also has an optic nerve glioma, which is basically a brain tumor on both of her eyes and into her brain, Jamie said. Thats why this day was all about her. It was the day Make-A-Wish gave her the itinerary. She knew right away, when we went to do the first wish visit with her, she knew immediately this is where she wanted to go, Davis said. They granted her a wish to Disney World, Jamie said. Where the princesses live. And even the water park, Maya said excitedly. Maya has been undergoing medical treatment for almost five years, Jamie said, so it has really never been a possibility for us. Her chemotherapy treatments have become less frequent: she used to go every week. Now its once a month. Her family hopes shell be done with them by August. We just kind of have to keep soldiering on in what we do, Jamie said. Davis said one of the reasons they presented her with the itinerary at Chocolate World is because she always takes Hersheys chocolate to the childrens hospital in Philadelphia for all the patients, nurses and doctors when she goes for treatment. By: Paul Harrop Cool, sunny, and calm Sun n Fun is considered the first major airshow of the year, and 2016 is one for the record books. From April 5-10, aviators from all over the globe descended on Central Florida. The Lakeland, Fla. event ran a few weeks earlier than usual and most regular attendees noted the unusually temperate weather. Daytime highs hovered in the low 70s, much cooler than the show has a reputation for being. Ride the Lighting (II) Warbirds of all vintage were a major part of the festivities. The Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II roared into the festival on Thursday. The latest-generation multirole aircraft didnt disappoint those who came to see the latest in military might. Joined by the F-22 Raptor on the ramp, the airplane made its first appearance at Sun n Fun. Piloted by Capt. Daniel Jinks Haley, 32, the jet was popular on social media from the show. Haley flew the Joint Strike Fighter from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., home of the 58th Fighter Squadron. Not just static The thousands in attendance watched the airshows, led each day by P-51 Mustang Crazy Horse II flown by famed pilot Lee Lauderback. The solo aerobatic performance ushered in each show with a familiar sound, provided by the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. While not as extreme as some of the following performances, the elegance of Lauderbacks precise piloting set the stage for each airshow, and set a high bar for anyone who dared follow. Crazy Horse II made headlines early in the week, when Lauderback arrived to Lakeland Linder Regional Airport with a special guest in the back seat. Taylor Avery is a senior at the Central Florida Aerospace Academy. CFAA is an aviation high school on the Sun n Fun grounds. Avery, 18, is an Air Foce ROTC Cadet and on track to become a military pilot after he graduates from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where he is planning to start this autumn. Hes already a Private Pilot. His upward mobility within the world of aviation is due to his high marks in the academic world. Averys hard work earned him a flight in the Mustang from its base at Stallion 51 Corp.s headquarters at Kissimmee Gateway Airport. For the young pilot, the Mustang was a lot to take in. This airplane is amazing I usually fly around in a little Cherokee, to get into this machine, its just amazing, said Avery after his flight. Honoring those who came before As young pilots like Avery looked forward to their planned military careers, Sun n Fun honored veterans of all wars with special recognition. The Commemorative Air Force tent on the flightline was site of a photograph of service veterans in attendance. Noted aviation photographer Kevin Hong posed several dozen veterans and active duty personnel in front of the CAFs P-51D Mustang Red Nose. Two World War II veterans were in attendance. Col. George Hardy flew Mustangs and later B-29 Superfortress bombers as a Tuskegee Airman. He was joined by Col. Bill Brake, a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot who flew 23 missions over Europe while serving with the United States Army Air Corps. A ruse and a ride Col. Brake was excited to see the CAF Gulf Coast Wings B-17 Texas Raiders on display at the show. Brake wanted to walk around the airplane, to remember his time in the left seat so many decades before. Photographer Hong, who is member of the wing, had other plans. Brake and Hardy were chauffeured out to the ramp, where a big surprise was in store for the old bomber pilot. Brake told Hong in front of a gathered crowd of volunteers, media, and warbird fans that he wanted to go up and touch the four-engined plane. You want to touch it? Hong asked, leading him on. Well, weve got something better for you, he paused. Whats that, asked a curious Brake. How about you fly in it with us today? Brake was ecstatic. A video of the exchange, documented on the CAF facebook page, has been shared more than 640 times as of publication. Something old, but brand new. For Cols. Brake and Hardy, flying in a warbird was something they remembered well from their youth. However, riding in the back of a B-17 was something neither had ever experienced. After a safety briefing from the ground crew, the men were seated aft of the window gunners position for a flight around the Orlampa area. The pair was full of smiles the entire flight. Hong, a crew member on the flight had hoped to help each of the vets to the cockpit in flight, but the bouncy, Florida, air made it too risky. Neither of the nonagenarians seemed to mind. The big bomber landed and taxied up to a crowd of fans and media. Several United States Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk pilots were there to speak to the WWII aviators, who shared their perspective freely. Ive learned two things said Brake as he was exiting the aircraft. The B-17 can still take it, and man it was windy for the gunners in the back! For Col. Hardy, receiving the warm reception helped bring his aviation experience full circle. He remembered the challenge of being among the Tuskegee Airmen as a young African American in the 1940s. He had escorted B-17s over Europe during his time as a fighter pilot, but had never ridden in one. The experience brought the sacrifice of the machines young crews to mind. You have to imagine these young people, 18, 19, 20 years old getting into these machines and flying for hours it really was a sacrifice, said Hardy. He hopes the airplane can share that history with generations to come. If you dont remember your history, you might have to repeat it, he added. Final Count According to Bill Fischer, Executive Director of the Experimental Aircraft Associations Warbirds of America, there were 143 registered warbirds in attendance at Sun n Fun. Fischer said that is about average for the show. In addition to the bomber and the Mustangs, there were several dozen trainers and multiple Corsairs on display. Jet warbirds were also well represented at the event. - Paul Harrop is an aviation television personality for AOPA. His work can be seen weekly on AOPA Live This Week, and on FlyBy: Powered by AOPA. Follow Paul on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. WarbirdsNews wishes to thank Paul Harrop for his marvelous article, and Kevin Hong for his equally beautiful images be sure to check them out on the links provided! Ali Hobson and Staff Sgt. Joshua Hobson, traveled from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, April 22, to tell their story of surviving sexual assault to the Warren Community. The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response office hosted a Survivors Speak Breakfast in the Chadwell Dining Facility to show how sexual assault can damage someones life and how a lack of a support system can add to the harm. Warrens SAPR office works to ensure all survivors have a support system in place for whenever they feel they need it. Help-line services are available 24/7 and are always monitored by a trained and certified victim advocate or a member of the SAPR office, said Jill Randal, 90th Missile Wing Sexual Assault Response Coordinator. We highly encore anyone to call not only with reports, but also questions. Its a tool not only for survivors of sexual assault, but also for Airmen, supervisors and family members. Editors note: If you have a question or need to talk to the F.E. Warren AFB SARC, a representative can be reached at 307-773-7272. With people buzzing over the possibility of contested presidential conventions on both ballots, the turnout for Tuesdays Pennsylvania primary elections are expected to be huge. Frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are trying to secure delegates to become their respective partys clear nominees. Supporters of Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are hoping to throw wrenches into those outcomes, a clear motivating factor in getting lots of voters to the polls. I think turnout has been higher on the Republican side in a lot of the states so far, said Sarah Niebler, assistant professor in the department of political science at Dickinson College. Its breaking turnout records. I wouldnt be surprised if it was higher here than in years past, driven by whats going on the top of the ticket. Having a competitive race could drive turnout higher than weve seen. There are 158,094 registered voters in Cumberland County. They can all vote for ballot measures and constitutional amendments. But only those registered for a party are eligible to vote in the party elections. Of those registered voters, 81,403 are registered Republicans and 52,031 are registered Democrats. I do anticipate turnout will be higher than 2012, maybe higher than 2008, said Penny Brown, director of elections and voter registration for Cumberland County. I believe in 2012, it was about 38 percent turnout for the primary, and I would expect it to be higher than that, but I dont know how much higher. In 2008, 30,083 Democrats turned out in Cumberland County, with just over half of them, 52.7 percent, voting for Clinton. Only 23,210 turned out on the Republican side, as John McCain already had the nomination sewn up. Brown said there have been quite a few party registration changes for this election. It was possible to do it online, which has made the process easier than it was eight years ago. This included people filing changes of address as well. Brown said more people have switched or registered themselves newly as Republicans than as Democrats, reflecting the huge interest in the Republican race, where Donald Trump is the frontrunner. Of course, with the large expected turnout could come long waits at the polls. Brown recommends avoiding the rush in the morning, when many people vote on their way to work, or evening, when they stop at the polls on the way home. She says the best times to go will be mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when most people are at work or school. Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools: Portfolio Monitoring Top Stock Lists Premium Reports Stock Screeners Live News Feed Premium Support Free for your first month. A Middlesex Township woman faces multiple felony counts of statutory sexual assault after police say she sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy on multiple occasions and supplied alcohol and drugs from her home to children as young as 10 years old. Leah Rose Freeland, 25, was charged Thursday with six felony counts each of statutory sexual assault and corruption of minors, five misdemeanor counts of furnishing alcohol to minors and two misdemeanor counts of sale of a controlled substance. Freeland operated a party house out of her home, where she allowed youth as young as 10 years old to drink alcohol, and on multiple occasions she had sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy, according to an affidavit of probable cause signed by Middlesex Township Police. Police were alerted to Freeland on Feb. 25, following a call to the Pennsylvania child abuse prevention hotline, Childline, police said. The call indicated that Freeland had been supplying the 15-year-old boy with alcohol several times a week and that she had sexually assaulted him, according to police. An interview with the boy revealed that he had started going to Freelands home earlier in February, on multiple occasions been given alcohol and drugs including Klonapin that was prescribed to Freeland for depression and been sexually assaulted by Freeland five to six times, according to the affidavit. Interviews with five other juvenile girls, ranging from 10 to 13 years old, found that Freeland had given alcohol to them as well, and on at least one occasion Freeland supplied Klonapin to an 11-year-old girl, police said. Freeland was arrested Thursday and is currently being held in Cumberland County Prison in lieu of $20,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. May 2 in front of Magisterial District Judge Elizabeth Beckley. Everest Re Group, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States, Bermuda, and internationally. The company operates through Reinsurance Operations and Insurance Operations segments. The Reinsurance Operations segment writes property and casualty reinsurance; and specialty lines of business through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies in the United States, Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Insurance Operations segment writes property and casualty insurance directly, as well as through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents in Bermuda, Canada, Europe, South America, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The company also provides treaty and facultative reinsurance products; admitted and non-admitted insurance products; and property and casualty reinsurance and insurance coverages, including marine, aviation, surety, errors and omissions liability, directors' and officers' liability, medical malpractice, mortgage reinsurance, other specialty lines, accident and health, and workers' compensation products. In addition, it offers commercial property and casualty insurance products through wholesale and retail brokers, surplus lines brokers, and program administrators. Everest Re Group, Ltd. was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda. The national Work for the Dole program is facing criticism for failing to protect the safety of volunteer workers and not helping many find work suited to their skills. Australian Unemployed Workers' Union president Owen Bennett is urging the abolition of the Work for the Dole scheme and has launched a petition on Change.Org raising safety concerns. Owen Bennett, founder of the Australian Unemployed Workers' Union. Credit:Jason South The campaign follows the death last week of 18-year-old Josh Park-Fing, who fell from a trailer towed by a tractor while he was on the Work for the Dole program in Toowoomba. Mr Bennett said his organisation has received a number of reports of cases where the safety of workers in the program has been threatened. He said workers with chronic injuries had been forced to engage in strenuous work to avoid losing their Centrelink benefits. The last quarter of a century has seen an explosion in prime ministerial engagement with Anzac Day. Prime ministers have displaced the RSL as the custodians of the legend, acting as Anzac entrepreneurs promoting an Anzac image to an Australian public hungry to memorialise Australia's war history or successive governments' versions of that history. This is not to suggest that the Australian public has been duped by politicians. Prime ministers are sincere nationalists, whether we agree with their versions of Australian identity or not. A citizen can choose to engage with or reject an array of national identities, in much the same way a consumer can choose a product in the marketplace. The Anzac tradition may be more actively encouraged than others, just as some products in the marketplace are more aggressively promoted or monopolised. Anzac Day image: more than a brown slouch hat. Credit:JOHN DONEGAN Since 1990 prime ministers have regularly renovated Anzac in line with their pet political projects. Such shifts have not always been successful and there are boundaries to Anzac Day that cannot be violated. Prime ministers have been disciplined to respect the positive values and themes of the Anzac tradition; service, sacrifice, honour, unity, sacredness and remembrance, all centred on the sanctified actions of the Anglo-Celtic and masculine soldiers who fought at Gallipoli. Upper Allen Township Police said the South Central Task Force is coordinating an emergency drill for local emergency responders Wednesday afternoon through the evening at Mechanicsburg Area School District's Kindergarten Academy. Police said the drill will take place from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Police said they are reporting the drill in order to minimize public alarm when police, fire and EMS units converge in the vicinity of the academy. Police note this is not a public event and "strongly discourage" residents from spectating. A few years ago, when I was the London Telegraph's obituaries editor, people would worry on my behalf. "What are you going to do when all the military heroes have died?" they asked, concerned that somehow we would run out of candidates worthy of gracing the page. As 2016's apparently ceaseless catalogue of celebrity deaths has shown, however, the obit writers have never been busier. David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood and Prince among many other famous names have all died in the first few months of this year, each death producing a very public outpouring of grief on social media. That hubbub is part of the explanation for the grim perception that 2016 is proving particularly fatal fans are able to broadcast their mourning, so no one is left oblivious of their hero's demise. But the second part of the answer is that many more celebrities are dying than normal. And that is because there simply are more celebrities. Many, many more. The postwar rise of television and popular music has created a huge, unprecedented cadre of familiar faces. Now they are hitting their 60s and 70s the age when death, having long been statistically remote, shuffles closer. Our definition of celebrity has broadened too. You may not have heard of the American Joanie Laurer until last week. You may not have heard of her now. But, under the moniker Chyna, she was known and loved by huge numbers of wrestling fans (and, er, aficionados of a certain genre of erotic film). Channel Nine's 60 Minutes has issued an extraordinary mea culpa over its role in the bungled recovery attempt of Sally Faulkner's two children from Lebanon. In a segment airing at the beginning of Sunday's program, host Michael Usher said: "There's one thing we want to state very clearly from the outset. We made mistakes." Usher said there was an internal review under way at Channel Nine into the "editorial approval of this story and the actions of our crew in Beirut". "Our role in reporting Sally's desperate efforts to be reunited with Lahela and Noah are now the subject of a lot of soul searching here at Channel Nine," he said. Mark Scott in August, 2015. Credit:Louie Douvis It's clear that there was a commitment for no cuts to the ABC. Within a year or two, we had $250 million of cuts that we needed to find. That's self-evident. I think the government admitted itself that it had broken that promise. We have a new funding proposal in now that will fund the ABC for the next three years, and we have made strong submissions about that. We are hopeful that we will get a good funding outcome. New ABC boss Michelle Guthrie, who must navigate internal upheaval over the impact of the digital revolution, was reminded of Aunty's strengths by Four Corners. Credit:Paul Wright If that funding is not granted, how many jobs might be lost? How many programs might be axed? I'm not going to speculate on that. But we have put a bid in the money that's expiring this time does include 10 per cent of our news budget. If we didn't get that money, clearly jobs would go. And there would be a programming impact. In Abbott's time as prime minister, did he respect the independence of the ABC with questions like, "Who's side are you on here?" I welcome a debate around the ABC. Tony Abbott was cranky at the ABC from time to time, and he's not the first politician to do that. He's not the first first prime minister to do that. By and large, there has been a good respect of the independence of the ABC in my time here. But that's not to say there won't be robust debate about performance. That's okay. I made it very clear whose side I believe the ABC was on. We're on Australia's side. But if you're going to use sporting metaphors, you've got to understand that on a team, different people play different roles. The role the ABC plays in the team is to be independent. To be fair-minded. It's to tell Australian stories and host Australian conversations. At times, it will be critical of the government of the day or put voices to air that are critical of the government of the day. That's what a public broadcaster has always done, and that's the role we play on the team. Were you surprised the Zaky Mallah incident became an enduring and intense saga over three weeks? Yes, I was. I thought it was worthy of a day's discussion. I was amazed that it went on for three weeks. I never really understood why some people kept wanting to prosecute it over and over again. But these things happen from time to time these media feeding frenzies. Q&A does a really good job in a very difficult environment. It's got a lot of moving parts: it's live to air, a different panel every week, a studio audience that's asking questions. None of our programming is perfect at all times. But I did think it was an extraordinary level of scrutiny around that particular incident and that particular issue. Your competitors particularly News Corporation argue it's unfair for the ABC to compete in digital journalism when commercial mastheads are struggling to stay afloat. Is that a fair criticism? No. And it's not a criticism that stands up under scrutiny. If you look at the newspaper market in the United States, where public broadcasting is relatively weak, newspapers in the US have been [hit] harder than in any other English-language market. The problem isn't that a public broadcaster exists. There are hundreds of millions of other websites out there, many of which provide news and information services, which are free of charge. If you are an audience member, you have so many free websites available, it's very hard to get people to pay for any one of them. If you're an advertiser, you have so many more choices available than you had a decade ago. It's hard to keep them in traditional media outlets. The ABC is taking no advertising dollars from traditional newspapers. We are taking no subscription dollars from traditional newspapers. You could take the ABC away and our competitors wouldn't notice a difference in the revenues that they take in. The people who would notice a difference would be our audiences who like our quality and distinctive journalism. Three perpetual criticisms: the ABC is too left-wing, it's elite, and it's out of touch with ordinary Australians. Why are those three things, in particular, constant grievances? They are regular refrains from a handful of people. But if you look at the research we do the Newspoll research we do every year it says that 80 per cent-plus of the public believe that we are fair, balanced and impartial. By far, we score higher in those categories than any other media outlet. We score far higher than the media outlets that make the criticisms. The public don't see it. In the last decade, we have done a good job in putting a range of voices and perspectives to air. One of the things we do here is that we host the conversation. On Q&A or Insiders or The Drum, or on local radio all around the country, you're always getting a range of views and perspectives; the voices of the audience. All of which leads to a spirited debate and a spirited conversation Whilst I get some complaints from the right, I also get some complaints from the left saying, 'We do we keeping putting the IPA [conservative think-tank Institute of Public Affairs] on air?' Because we want a plurality of views and debate around contentious issues. We constantly need to be vigilant as to whether we are talking about things that are relevant to Australians; that we're broad enough, that we're inclusive enough. But we're conscious of that. We do research on it. We have briefings for our staff. We review and audit our programs. And I think, by and large, we do a good job. And the public think we do a good job 85 per cent of the public believe that we provide a valuable service, and that's a very strong and consistently high approval rating. There will be loud critics. And some of these critics, frankly part of their schtick, part of what they do is they attack some institutions. We are one of those institutions. In a way, I think some of that criticism is set-piece theatrics. I'm not sure it's always constructive and well-meaning criticism. I think sometimes people are just going through the motions. When you say "regular refrains from a handful of people": are we talking about a continuing campaign from some elements from News Corp? No News Corp columnist has ever got into trouble for attacking the public broadcaster. We have on the record comments made by Sir Keith Murdoch, attacking the ABC in the 1930s. It's a consistent refrain through the generations. It's not just about the ABC; they're just as outspoken about the BBC. Some News Corp columnists are very critical about anyone who they believe gets in the way of News Corporation. And that's fine. That's their job. I don't think we take that personally. But I think it needs to be seen for what it is. ABC's on-air teams, especially on local radio, still tend to be male-dominated. Is that reflective of merit? We've continued to look at that, and review that. One of the things we are keen to do is push for diversity; diversity and talent on air. If you look at the changes we've made, we've got Clare Bowditch, whose now joined us at 774 in Melbourne, Wendy Harmer in Sydney, Patricia Karvelas is doing drive for Radio National, Christine Anu is on air in Sydney as well. Whenever a vacancy emerges we think very carefully about the mix of our staff, and wanting to be diverse. We do far, far better than the commercial networks. We've come quite a long way. We've still got a way to go yet. The mooted merging of SBS and ABC: is there a risk that it starts with the merging of spectrum and back office operations, but it ends with ABC effectively swallowing SBS? No, no. My expectation would be under any scenario that SBS television and SBS radio remain. I think there's a strong argument for them to be distinctive. I suspect they could be more distinctive. I've never proposed a view that one would swallow another. By working more closely together and servicing the audiences side-by-side, rather than as competing public broadcasters, audiences could be served better, in a more efficient way. What might the Seven, Nine and Ten networks look like in 10 years? There is no doubt they will be under more financial pressure, given the state of global competition that's flooding in on them. I would hope though that even if their licence fees get reduced, there is still a responsibility for them to provide quality Australian content. I don't think it is a great result for the Australian people if the ABC is the only home of Australian drama, factual content, news and current affairs and you just have wall-to-wall reality franchises on the commercial networks. Fairfax and News Corp: what's in store for them? We're still no closer to finding those viable and sustainable futures for independent media organisations that have their origins in print. I saw a research paper today that said that 75 per cent of new digital revenues are going to Facebook and Google. It remains a very hard and very demanding business. It's hard to see any traditional media organisation in the world that has commercially tapped into deep, ongoing media revenues, linked to their content, that replaced the revenues that have gone missing. The work continues, frankly, for News Corp and for Fairfax. Digital audiences are booming. But your traditional TV and radio audiences are still huge. Is there are a risk that if you divert too many resources to digital, you neglect your biggest and most loyal ABC audiences? That is the essential challenge, frankly. Still, the majority of our audiences the vast majority are watching and listening to radio and television, according to the schedule, that exists today. But the change is on. The movement to personalise viewing outside the schedule is on. You've got to keep servicing your audiences with great content, whilst being ready for the shift that we can all see that's coming. The greater risk is to wait until the audience has moved. Because if the audience has moved, and you're not there waiting for them, they'll have moved to someone else. That's why we've been front-footed, around driving things like iView, and our radio app, and our commitment to podcasting and streaming. You've got to do both. Fundamentally, the thing that will keep the audience with you is the content ... The Katering Show is setting record audiences for us on iView ... there is a demographic, particularly younger audiences, who are finding The Katering Show on iView, who would never have found it if we had scheduled it as part of regular television. The challenge is to do both. That's what I think we've done pretty well. Some reporters say they've become slaves to the News24 beast; they've scarified in-depth reporting to churn out constant updates. You launched this channel with no extra funding. Did this mean you had to stretch resources? That's a good question but I don't accept the criticism. We did recruit more staff for News24. We made savings, particularly from our television production model, and invested those in that new television channel. It was unreasonable to expect our audiences to wait until 7 o'clock to see a television news bulletin. But News24 doesn't just service four million viewers every week. It's providing an engine room of content, and video content, for our news websites. I think the real test of that criticism is: if the focus is on News24, have our traditional programs of investigative journalism declined? I think they clearly haven't. ABC has changed profoundly in the last 10 years. How much resistance did you get in [getting staff to accept those changes]? One of the great surprises to me was the support and the engagement of staff in the change process. Once staff got a sense that as a leadership team, and a chief executive, I was confident in the future of the ABC, and confident in our ability to provide digital leadership, then our staff really came along for the ride. That's not to say that, at times, they won't have disagreed with the decision. We've had to make some really tough decisions here, driven by budget cuts and by other changes. But I think by and large, the support of the staff has been tremendous. The staff: they're the ones that really give the difference to the ABC. Ten years ago, you were 43, with no experience in broadcasting. What made you hungry for this job? I'd grown up watching the ABC, and listening to the ABC. I understood the important role that it played in the lives of millions of Australians. In my time at Fairfax, I had begun to see just how profound the impact of a digital revolution would be. I didn't expect that I would get it ... I was a bit surprised that I [did]. At no stage, early on, did I understand just how big the challenges were; how profound the changes would be that would impact on us. And how rewarding the experience would be. When I started out [digital] just meant "improve the websites". No one had anticipated smartphones or tablets or social media. Or the impact of fast broadband or streaming services, global competition all these things really weren't on the radar 10 years ago. But they've profoundly changed the nature of the organisation, audiences, and the media marketplace. What are you most proud of? We have really made bold steps to be a public broadcaster in the digital era. I'm very pleased we have now created opportunities for our audiences to watch, listen and read our content: any time, any place, anywhere. More channels, iView, podcasting. But as significant as that has been, [I'm more proud of] our continuing commitment to high-quality content. Australian drama and Australian story-telling, Australian culture and independent journalism. You can have iView but unless you've got great content to put on iView, it's somewhat meaningless. You can have News24, but unless it's being filled by the best news service in the country, people aren't going to watch it. Four million people watch News24 each week; iView sets record traffic figures each month. In the last few years, drama like Redfern Now and The Secret River, documentaries like The Killing Season and Hitting Home and the tremendous work that Triple J does. Another example is Four Corners, on air for 50 years. You could say that Four Corners has never been better. It has won the top journalism prize, the Gold Walkley, for three of the last four years. Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison has defended the right of a Christian commentator to make controversial statements concerning homosexuality, which have included likening the advancement of gay rights to the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany. "I respect everybody's opinions, I just hope and wish others would do the same," he said, after speaking at the Australian Christian Lobby conference. "I have always respected everybody else's faith and always sought to respect everybody else's view." Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison at the Australian Christian Lobby Conference. Credit:James Brickwood The ACL has been criticised for inviting conservative American commentator Eric Metaxas as keynote speaker at Saturday's event in Sydney. The author and radio host has drawn parallels between the current push for equality and the Church failing to stand up to the Nazi party. He is also a supporter of gay conversion therapy and claims "normalising" homosexuality is an attempt to break down all sexual boundaries. Surgery is failing to remedy back pain and is increasingly being used to treat other causes including depression and social isolation, medical researchers have warned. A disproportionately high number of spinal fusions are being performed in private hospitals in response to the unrealistic expectations of patients with lower back pain. Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia to be published on Tuesday, Associate Professors Leigh Atkinson, from Wesley Pain and Spine Centre in Brisbane, and Andrew Zacest, from Royal Adelaide Hospital, warn patients often wrongly expect a surgical solution to their back pain. Professor Atkinson said busy surgeons were often willing to perform an operation, despite growing evidence showing it often fails to cure back pain. A 16-year-old boy was in the advanced stages of planning a terrorism attack on Sydney's Anzac Day commemorations, police say. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said the boy was arrested by counter terrorism police near his Auburn home on Sunday afternoon. Addressing the media after the Dawn Service in Sydney, Mr Scipione said police were unsure which Anzac Day event was to be targeted in the attack. But he said the threat related to Sydney and was at the stage where counter terrorism officers had to act and act quickly. The rain held off for tens of thousands of people who turned out for the Anzac Day service at Kings Park on Monday morning. The numbers may have been down from the 70,000 strong crowd attending last year's service but some 40,000 made the pilgrimage to mark the 101st anniversary of the landing of Gallipoli. Wing Commander Peter Kershaw said that time did not dim the memory of events like Gallipoli. "The way our Anzacs bore the brunt of the fight at Gallipoli stirred in Australians everywhere a new feeling of camaraderie, a feeling that matched the way in which the rest of the world began to look at Australia as a nation of formidable character," he said. London: Bookmakers' odds have shifted sharply towards Britain voting to remain in the European Union in the June referendum, a move in sentiment also reflected by the pound rising on Monday to a near a six-week high against the euro. Both moves followed a high profile intervention by US President Barack Obama in the EU debate, but supporters of leaving the EU warned the "In" camp not to celebrate too early. Against the odds: one of the leaders of the 'Leave' campaign, Boris Johnson. Credit:Getty Images Mr Obama said Britain would find itself "in the back of the queue" for a trade deal with the United States if it voted to quit the EU on June 23, and said it would be safer, more prosperous and more influential if it stayed in. And on Sunday he learned from former Australian deputy PM Tim Fischer that Churchill had visited. The arrival of King George V at General Sir John Monash's Headquarters at Bertangles in 1918. Credit:Australian War Memorial It made him very proud, he said. "This is important to us." Previously his family's strongest connection to the Great War was through his great-grandfather who was "quite crazy", he said: 40 years old in 1918 when he took a regiment of Algerian 'Zouaves' infantry to the frontline at Villers-Bretonneux and never came back, making M de Clermont Tonnerre's grandfather an orphan age 12. Sir Peter Cosgrove and his wife speak to Monsieur de Clermont-Tonnerre at Chateau Bertangles. Credit:Nick Miller Before that, the house was best known as being next door to the first burial site of German flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, the 'Red Baron' who was shot down north-east of Amiens. M de Clermony-Tonnerre has written a book about the Red Baron's demise he concluded he was shot from the ground in an area occupied by Australian soldiers "it is possibly quite certain" an Australian took down the infamous opponent. But he doesn't approve of the Australians granting posthumous honours to their defeated enemy he regarded Richthofen as a "predator". The war inspired his family to take up flight as a pastime his grandmother was the first woman to fly across the Sahara. Governor-general Peter Cosgrove spent Anzac Day eve honouring the memory of Bertangles' former resident and Australia's greatest general, John Monash. On Sunday he was guest of honour at a lunch there, hosted by Mr Brady and attended by Mr Fischer, French dignitaries, senior Australian armed forces officers and cyclist Cadel Evans. Mr Fischer predicted that in the next few years, as the centenaries of the battles of the Western Front come, the Chateau de Bertangles would become "bigger than Gallipoli" in Australia's war remembrance. Sir Peter said he would like to see if it was possible to open up the house to more Australian visitors at the moment the grounds are sometimes open to tourists but the interior is only publicly available for receptions and weddings. "It could provide a counterpoint to those endless acres of headstones," Sir Peter said. "The black and white photographs (of Monash at Bertangles) are pretty poignant but in the end it's a two-dimensional image of a moment frozen in time." Monash's tactics at Le Hamel which he conceived at Bertangles - are still taught at military schools in Australia and at the Pentagon, historian Sir Christopher Clark, another guest at the lunch, said. He had a genuinely brilliant tactical mind. In a speech at the lunch, Sir Peter said it was a privilege to be at the chateau. "It's a place that has witnessed so much," he said. John Monash was Australia's greatest general, a man of huge intellect, resolve and humility. "His life was not always smooth sailing he felt the sting of alienation that came from being different and growing up in the very conservative Australia of the late 1800s. "Setbacks on the ridges and in the gullies of Gallipoli led him to a period of introspection and self-doubt. He felt he was unfit, he felt that the confused demands of that campaign found him wanting, he was not used ever to being thought of as a failure. "But the obstacles he faced helped make him the man and the success he would become." A sense of his "ordinary human imperfections" made him even more determined, Sir Peter said. "He lived and worked here and within these walls, in this room, the Australian attacks of 1918 indelibly written in the war history of the period were conceived and planned and executed." He added: "It's in our minds that great affairs need great spaces" but the scale of Monash's achievements demanded a room three times as big as Bertangles' corner dining room. He quoted an unnamed Australian solider, who reassured local French people as he marched towards Villers-Bretonneux "finis retreat, Australians ici". Punxsutawney may have a groundhog named Phil, but the Bixlers Hardware Store in Carlisle had a specially tagged trout. Local historian Paul Hoch remembered how the fish on display every March in the store window was the most reliable herald of the approaching spring. It was a long tradition of the downtown business to release the fish into the Yellow Breeches Creek just before the opening day of trout season in Pennsylvania, Hoch wrote in a 1975 column published in The Sentinel. Although no records have been kept, well over 200 fish have been released and about three-fourths of them caught and returned for prizes, the column reads. The building at 2 E. High St. served many functions before it became the hardware store and, most recently, part of the east wing of the new county courthouse. The three-story building represents the changing shape of fortune in the downtown center. The Square in Carlisle was deeded by Thomas Penn for public use and laid out in 1751, according to an historic resource survey form on file with the Cumberland County Historical Society. The southeast corner of the Square was set aside for an open air market and other commercial activity. The first owner of this lot was Stephen Duncan who purchased the property in 1772. The first building was a stone house that became the site of The Sign of the Golden Lamb, a tavern operated by Nicholas Uhlerick, the survey form reads. Jacob Zug bought the property in 1835 the same year he was elected to the office of county commissioner. Zug owned several properties in Carlisle which he rented to businesses, private citizens and tavern keepers. He was so well known that portion of the Square became Zugs corner. Sometime between 1835 and 1863, the stone building was replaced by the three-story brick structure that exists there today. An early rendition of the current building can be seen in the background of the sketch The Shelling of Carlisle artist Thomas Nast did for Harpers Weekly shortly after the 1863 Confederate invasion. Zug died in 1877 leaving the ownership of his property to his heirs. A public sale was held on Dec. 14, 1907, in front of the Old Courthouse on the Square during which the East High Street property was sold to J.P. Bixler for $20,000. The Bixler family owned the building until 1984 when it was seized by the county commissioners to be demolished for an addition to the new courthouse. The building was saved due to the efforts of the Carlisle Preservation Alliance. The hardware store first opened in 1846 and was still operating when Paul Hoch wrote his newspaper column in 1975. Prior to that, the first floor of the building at 2 E. High St. was occupied by John Millers Cheap Store. The second floor housed a stock exchange where price quotations on railroads and commodities were posted on a large blackboard. The third floor once housed the studio of A.A. Line whose photography chronicled Carlisle life at the turn of the century. The building is now part of the east wing of the new courthouse. The first floor houses the adult probation department, the second floor houses human resources and the third floor accommodates court reporters. Hanover: US President Barack Obama has piled praise on German Chancellor Angela Merkel for being "on the right side of history" with her open-door stance on refugees. In effusive remarks on what might be his last trip to Germany as President, Mr Obama lauded his "friend and partner" for her "remarkable endurance." He singled out her refusal to close the border in response to Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II, which has come at a political price. "Perhaps because she once lived behind a wall herself, Angela understands the aspirations of those who have been denied their freedom and who seek a better life," Mr Obama said alongside Mrs Merkel, who grew up in communist-ruled East Germany, at a news conference in the German city of Hanover. "I know that politics around this issue can be difficult, in all of our countries." Mr Obama's support will bolster the German leader, whose popularity is weighed down at home because of the influx. Even as the flow of migrants into Germany has slowed after about 1 million asylum seekers arrived in 2015, Mrs Merkel's Christian Democratic Union suffered electoral losses in three German states in March, beleaguered by criticism from some members of her own bloc and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party. Dear Editor: I have come to believe the Democratic Party is out to destroy the country as we have known it. What Santa Anna failed to accomplish in the early 1800s in Texas, the Democratic Party plans on reversing today. By allowing the continuous flow of illegal immigrants to cross our unsecured border and give the violent ones a place of refuge in sanctuary cities, the Democratic Party, among other things, is set on selling out om our country for future votes. It makes no difference if at the state or federal level, the goal is the same. Stick to Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals, raise taxes, and blame your failures on the previous administration. Under President Obama, more has been done to derail any sense of truth, justice and morality than any recent administrations. The left has hijacked the party to where an elected representative checks his or her morals at the door and trades their soul for the party's ideology. Recently only two Democratic senators voted against the nuclear arms deal with Iraq and 34 voted with the President to support this deal without knowing the details. Just like Nancy Pelosi stated, we have to pass the ACA to see what is in it, so to with the Iraq arms deal. This time what we and the world will get has dire consequences. Secondly, 177 Democratic house members voted against "The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act" in support of infanticide. The Democratic Party today is not the party of old. I believe it's time for the silent majority to rise up, vote in these coming Presidential elections and put this run away party out of business. Robert Schlusser Carlisle The WCO Integrity Sub-Committee (ISC) held its 15th Session on 13-15 April 2016 at the WCO headquarters in Brussels. About 140 delegates representing WCO Member administrations and stakeholder organizations participated in discussions that ensued after a warm welcome by the Chairperson, Mrs. Sigfriur Gunnlaugsdottir from Iceland Customs. On the first day, a session of the Capacity Building Committee and the Integrity sub-Committee was held. The purpose was to present and discuss horizontal issues, in particular strategic human resource management in order to promote integrity. The Director of Capacity Building indicated that the WCO had prepared a high level paper for the G20 Anti-corruption Working Group on its approach to tackling corruption in Customs and his vision for the future. In this context he informed the ISC that the WCO would be participating in the OECD Integrity Forum at a high level. The ISC agenda featured presentations on lifestyle audits, sound rotation policies and communication as practical measures to enhance the image of Customs and ensure greater compliance. The WCO presented the recent work carried out in the field of fragile states by the Research Unit and highlighted the difficult conditions in which Customs officers had to carry out their duties. It also provided the ISC with an update on the latest activities undertaken by the WCO in the area of integrity development since the 14th Session of ISC, including on its cooperation with the G20 Anti-corruption working group. During a joint session between the ISC and Academia, researchers and practitioners presented their work on how data and technology could have a positive impact on integrity enhancement but how it could be negatively perceived by the public. WCO Members took the opportunity of those three days to have frank discussions and share their views on the issue of integrity in Customs. Mrs. Sigfriur GUNNLAUGSDOTTIR of Iceland Customs was re-elected as the Chairperson of the ISC. Mr. Narrainen SOOPAYAH from Mauritius Revenue Authority was elected Vice-Chair of the ISC 24 April: National Panchayati Raj Diwas Published: April 25, 2016 Every year April 24 is being observed as National Panchayati Raj (PR) Diwas across India. Significance of the day: It marks the passing of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992 that came into force with effect from 24 April 1993. Significance of Amendment Act: It had led a defining moment in the history of India which helped in decentralization of political power to the grassroots level. In turn it had led to institutionalization of Panchayati Raj (PR) through the village, Intermediate and District level Panchayats. Every year on this day Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj organises National Conference to commemorate the National Panchayati Raj Diwas. Best performing Gram Panchayats are conferred with Rashtriya Gaurav Gram Sabha Purskar by the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj. Month: Current Affairs - April, 2016 Topics: Days and Events National National Panchayati Raj Diwas Latest E-Books : , By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 25, 2016 | 10:44 AM | PADUCAH, KY A check for over $20,000 was presented to the Community Kitchen in Paducah on behalf of the Empty Bowls Project of Paducah. Michael Terra is one of the organizers of the annual project and says he's always happy when he gets to hand over money to a group in need. "There aren't many times in the year when I get to write a $20,500 check and sign my own name to it. So it was my pleasure on behalf of all the people in our community to donate that amount to the Community Kitchen on behalf of the Empty Bowls Project for this year," said Terra. Terra says the money raised by the people of Paducah who participated in the Empty Bowls Project is certainly going to a good cause. The Community Kitchen in Paducah is a nonprofit organization that serves more than 70,000 meals annually throughout the Paducah area. They also provide shower and laundry services free of charge, and the building is a warming center during winter cold snaps. Bridge deck work at two different locations in Graves County start this week Mineral Area Council on the Arts held a K-12 Student Art Show on Saturday in the field house on the Park Hills campus of Mineral Area College. Students from Arcadia Valley, Bismarck, Central, Clearwater, Farmington, Fredericktown, Kingston, North County, Potosi, St. Joseph, Ste. Genevieve, Sunrise R-IX, Valley R6, West County, as well as home-schooled students participated in the show. Art students from kindergarten through high school lined the field house with their artwork. The annual show is a cooperative effort between the arts council and area art instructors. Instructors select the artwork from their students according to grade and media used. Oils, watercolor, print-making, sculpture and photography are just a few of the media represented at the show. This years displays included everything from a man made out of duct tape, portraits made from yarn, books designed to come to life, a large wooden turkey and many ceramic designs. Farmington Middle School student Aleasia Ryan received Best of Show 3-D for a sculpture, and North County High School student Anna Cox received Best of Show 2-D for a color drawing. This years awards of excellence went to Heidi Self from Arcadia Valley Elementary in the category of grades 3-4; Clayton Queen from Valley R-6 in the category of grades 5-6; Kayla Orth from Bismarck representing grades 7-8; Kaitlyn Abt from Ste. Genevieve High School in the grades 9-10 category; and Madison Reichert from Arcadia Valley High School representing grades 11-12. The Missouri Arts Council gave a special thank you to the participating artists, teachers, Mineral Area College, Heimburger Construction who sponsored the event and all the volunteers who helped throughout the week. Loading... Planning permission has been granted to Shakespeare North for a proposed theatre and education hub to be built in Knowsley, North West England. The 19 million pound building will house a 350-seat theatre and will be the core of a new International University College, the first of its kind to focus on Shakespearean performance practice. Building work is expected to commence later this year. The Shakespeare North Playhouse will be the only replica in the world of English architect Inigo Jones' indoor Jacobean Court Theatre. It will be built to designs drawn by Jones in 1629. George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, recently announced a five million pound pledge to support the proposal. Knowsley Council will also contribute six million pounds to the project, as well as providing the land and the building that will be converted into student accommodation. Shakespeare North will continue to fundraise. Peter Scott, Chair of Trustees, Shakespeare North Trust, said: "The creation of an historic theatre and a unique university college in Shakespeare North will commemorate the deep connection between our greatest cultural icon and an area of the country, Knowsley, that played an important role in forging his career. Shakespeare North aims to make Knowsley once again a place where actors, writers, students and young people will be able to study and practice the plays of Shakespeare." Loading... Ivo van Hove is the hottest of hot directors, thanks to his vivid re-imaginings of A View From the Bridge and Antigone, not to mention his brush with David Bowie in bringing Lazarus to the stage. Kings of War sees the brilliant Belgian and his Toneelgroep Amsterdam returning to the Shakespearean terrain they trod so successfully with the Roman Tragedies, a six-hour journey from Coriolanus to Antony. Here the mash up lasts only four and a half hours (nearly five on press night), and encompasses Henry V to Richard III with a fiercely truncated Henry VI parts one, two and three in between. The intelligence on display is never less than staggering, but Van Hove's decision to concentrate only on the exercise of power sometimes feels reductive rather than truly insightful. I was always intrigued, but rarely engaged. What's unmistakable is the sheer rigour of his rethinking. The evening opens with a photograph of Prince George and a photographic count-down of British monarchs back to Henry V, who we first see via the huge video screen that dominates Jan Versweyveld's bunker-like setting prematurely picking up his father's crown in a white corridor that stretches around the rear of the stage. As the action progresses both video and that corridor have an increasing role to play, revealing things that have been hidden murders, the fears of soldiers before battle, dead bodies, political machinations, even a flock of sheep. What we see on screen is always revealing and often startling; Henry V's Harfleur call to arms is a nasty bit of wartime propaganda; Margaret and Suffolk kiss hungrily; Richard III is haunted by the ghostly images of his victims; blood spurts from arms and dead eyes are milky. Just as the staging emphasises the most brutal aspects of the plays (and points their meaning with labels such as "diplomatic incident" and "endgame") so the language makes them seem unfamiliar. They are performed in guttural Dutch and retranslated in surtitles, shorn of poetry (no "gentlemen in England now a bed", and just a "winter of discontent" without any glory in the summer) which has the effect of flattening the personalities in the plays. Henry V suffers from the transposition; he becomes a bureaucratic manipulator in a grey suit, uncharismatic and rather dull, who only comes alive in a courtship scene, staged as if at a restaurant table, where he can't speak without knocking something over. In a fast romp through Henry VI, the king is seen as a hopeless cry baby, and murder is routine, rapid and vile. (The performances are uniformly excellent, but I particularly loved Janni Goslinga as the unhinged Margaret.) The most satisfying section is Richard III, partly thanks to an astonishing central performance by Hans Kesting, not at all a comic villain, but a quietly psychotic killer, still as a spider at the centre of his dark web, so in love with himself that he spends a lot of time checking his reflection in a full-length mirror. By the close, he is capering like a horse around an empty stage, an unforgettable image of the corruption of power. Kings of War runs at the Barbican until 1 May 2016. Fresh from scoring in Leicesters emphatic 4-0 win against Swansea on Sunday afternoon, winger Riyad Mahrez (as expected) picked up the main prize of the night at a swanky PFA bash at the swanky Grosvenor House in swanky London. The Algerian has racked up 17 goals and 11 assists in the Premier League this season and has been a key force behind the Foxes unheralded title tilt. Mahrez beat fellow nominees and team-mates Jamie Vardy and NGolo Kante, along with Harry Kane, Mesut Ozil and Dimitri Payet to the award which is rather well-deserved. Hes also the first African player to bag the prize. Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli picked up the young Player of Year gong after a wonderful debut season in the Premier League. The England youngster came out on top ahead of team-mate Harry Kane, Jack Butland, Philippe Coutinho, Romelu Lukaka and Ross Barkley. Earlier in the day, Spurs let slip Allis success in their matchday programme for Monday nights game against West Brom. Ooops Dele Alli voted PFA Young Player of the Year according to this leaked Tottenham programme for tomorrow . pic.twitter.com/RuZu9BCyeG Secret Footballer (@TSF) April 24, 2016 Manchester Citys attacking midfielder Izzy Christiansen was named womens Player of the Year while Sunderland striker Beth Mead won the the womens young Player of the Year prize. Why werent Pies invited, eh?! Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opera has never shied away from the grittier shadows of life. Nor has Manitoba Opera, with recent productions dealing with torture, incest, murder and desperate political prisoners still so tragically relevant today. The companys brave and bold choice to end its 43rd season with Carlisle Floyds Of Mice and Men, based on John Steinbecks classic novella, is the latest in that canon. The roughly 145-minute production stage directed by Winnipeg-born Michael Cavanagh and performed in English (with surtitles) opened Saturday night with two more performances slated this week. The verismo operas renowned, 89-year-old South Carolina-born composer/librettist attended the weekend performance. Regarded as one of Americas greatest living opera composers, Floyd is best known for his 1953 opera Susannah, and has created musical scores and librettos for 12 staged works, including his latest, Prince of Players, which received its Houston Grand Opera premiere in March. He took a bow and received a standing ovation from the audience of 1,700 on Saturday night. DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS From left, Michael Robert Hendrick (Lennie), Nikki Einfeld (Curley's wife) and Gregory Dahl (George) in Of Mice and Men. Maestro Tyrone Paterson superbly led the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra through Floyds through-composed, all-American score infused with the spirit of Copland, Barber and Bernstein. The MO show co-produced with Utah Symphony and Utah Opera, Cleveland Opera and Vancouver Opera also featured effective sets by Vicki Davis lit by Scott Henderson and costumes by Susan Memmott Allred. The cast navigated the treacherous raked stage with nerves of steel, especially Winnipeg soprano Nikki Einfeld, who performs in heels. Set during the Great Depression, Steinbecks 1937 tale (later morphed into a play and film) tells of two migrant workers whose dream of owning a piece of their own land stretches further than the eye can see. George Milton takes care of the childlike Lennie Small, described in todays kinder, gentler terms as a person labelled with an intellectual disability, whose penchant for stroking soft things rabbits, puppy dogs, baby mice literally to death becomes his fatal flaw when it comes to the ranch bosss wifes silken hair. Like shucking an ear of corn, Floyd has stripped Steinbecks text to its essence, adding his own poetic licence to his operatic version, which premiered in 1970. If there is one reason to see this show, it must surely be Michael Robert Hendricks deeply compassionate portrayal of the hulking Lennie. In his MO debut, the American tenor perfectly balanced his characters emotional vulnerability with volatile, brute strength. It would be so easy to fall prey to mere stereotypes, but Hendrick was wholly believable without ever becoming disingenuous. He also nailed all of Floyds wide, dissonant leaps that melt into lyricism as he sang of living off the fat of the land, projecting both heartbreak and eternal hope. DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Of Mice and Men at the Centennial Concert Hall. Einfelds attention-starved, aspiring Hollywood starlet is simply named Curleys Wife. Her slinky, nuanced portrayal brought prismatic colour to her tarty role, her wheedling the lusty chorus of ranch hands for sex made the bunkhouse hotter than a July heatwave. Her well-controlled, flexible soprano voice impressed as she artfully shaded her dynamics on razor-thin, uppermost notes. Former Winnipegger Gregory Dahl also delivered a strong performance as George, with his robust baritone matching Hendricks vocals note for note. His Act I solo, in which he described how his life would be so simple by itself created soulful, introspective counterpoint, and when he sang, One day soon, during his duet with Lennie, he gave voice to the dreams of an era. The always rock-solid character bass-baritone Peter Strummer as Candy and veteran bass-baritone David Watson as Slim provide substantive backbone, with Strummers furry sidekick, the well-trained pooch Cailean, inspiring audible oohs and ahs from the crowd. Peter John (PJ) Buchans melodious tenor rang out as the harmonica-playing balladeer, despite his role not being particularly well-integrated. Also making his MO premiere, American tenor Joel Sorensen plays the sadistic Curley as an explosive powder keg ready to blow. However, had we been shown more emotional undertow and layering with his characterization, his whip-cracking fury would have been more potent by comparison. Less is often much more, and the brief moments during Act II in which he (almost) becomes pulled in by his wifes seductive ways provided critical subtext albeit all too fleeting. Relationships are paramount in opera, and too often these rang hollow. The librettos pacing is somewhat challenging, and at times the opera teeters toward melodrama. The perennial adage in theatre, Dont tell me, show me, holds particularly true, with the narratives relatively scant action only diluting the dramatic tension and overall forward thrust. Ironically, the opening scene, in which police sirens wail, and blinding searchlights penetrate the darkness, is more powerfully urgent than the shows climax, in which George ultimately pumps a bullet into Lennies head as an act of mercy. Strangely, Curleys rabid lynch mob falls mostly silent when they should be reaching a fevered pitch during the finale. Photo credit: Robert Tinker Cutline here for this pic on as many lines as yu need Still, Steinbecks timeless classic is ultimately a tale of dreams that never grows old. Kudos to MO for ending its season not with more typical, safer operatic grand spectacle, but by peering intimately into the hearts of those who once held or continue to hold their own wistful longings for home. holly.harris@shaw.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. EDMONTON Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci has received some bad news on the first day of a trip to meet with investors and credit-rating agencies. Ceci is in Toronto and it was during one of those meetings that Moodys Investor Services downgraded Albertas credit rating to double-A1 from triple-A. Moodys cited the Alberta governments growing and unconstrained debt burden and extended timeline to get its books back in the black. Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci gives a third-quarter fiscal update in Edmonton on Wednesday, February 24, 2016. Ceci is taking the province's latest budget on a get-to-know you visit with investors and credit-rating agencies.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken It also said the outlook for growth is subdued. As well, the province forecasts oil prices to be higher than what Moodys is predicting. Ceci says hes disappointed with the downgrade, but the province is committed to getting costs under control and Alberta is still a great place to do business. The provinces bond holders have long priced the effect of volatile resource revenue into the market, Ceci said in a release Monday. The yield on Alberta 10-year notes in May 2015 was 2.37 per cent, while today it is 2.38 per cent. This fiscal year, we expect to spend 2.4 per cent of our budget revenue on debt servicing. By comparison, British Columbia will spend 5.5 per cent and Ontario is expecting to spend nine per cent of its budget revenue on interest charges. Ceci also has meetings planned in New York later this week. A day after the April 14 budget, credit-rating agency DBRS downgraded the provinces rating a notch to double-A from triple-A over the NDP governments debt levels. The budget includes a $10.4-billion deficit this year and forecasts the province will face a $58-billion overall debt within three years. Derek Fildebrandt, finance critic for the Opposition Wildrose, says Cecis travels will do nothing to restore Albertas credit rating. He says that will only come once the government has a clear plan to control spending and balance the budget. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO The Globe and Mail has apologized for columns written by Margaret Wente that the newspaper said failed to properly attribute prose. This work fell short of our standards, something that we apologize for, said editor-in-chief David Walmsley, quoted in a column about the latest such allegations against Wente by the papers public editor, Sylvia Stead. It shouldnt have happened and the Opinion team will be working with Peggy to ensure this cannot happen again. A post by Ottawa blogger Carol Wainio over the weekend pointed out similarities between Wentes column in the Globe on Saturday about global greening and a piece by an American academic at Rockefeller University in New Jersey. Wainio said the introduction of Wentes column was similar to Jesse Ausubels The Return of Nature, and that both pieces contained the line: Agriculture has always been the greatest destroyer of nature. Wainio said the prose was Ausubels and Wente failed to attribute it to him. Wainio also said Wente failed to properly credit other information in her column as stemming from original research by Maywa Montenegro, a food systems researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Buzzfeed also reported Sunday that there was prose in a March 12 column penned by Wente a muscle that can be exercised to exhaustion that appeared in a Slate piece a week earlier. It was not attributed to the Slate writer, Daniel Engber. Wente did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. But Stead addressed the allegations in a column on Monday entitled: Prose Must Be Attributed. She said the pieces would be corrected online and that separate corrections would be published in the paper on Tuesday. Stead wrote that Wente deeply regrets these mistakes. Wainio, a visual artist, has previously raised alarm bells about Wentes work. Wente was disciplined four years ago over similar allegations first made by Wainio. The papers editor at the time, John Stackhouse, called a column she wrote three years earlier unacceptable. In response to those allegations, Wente admitted shed been extremely careless to inadvertently copy a sentence from a column in the Ottawa Citizen. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A rash of store closings over the last 18 months has pushed Winnipegs retail vacancy rate to its highest level in more than 15 years. A new commercial market report by Winnipegs Stevenson Advisors Ltd. says the overall rate at the end of 2015 was 6.0 per cent. Royal LePage Dynamic Real Estates Wayne Johnson, author of the Johnson Report on commercial vacancy rates, pegs the rate slightly lower, at 5.8 per cent. He said thats the highest its been since 1999, when it was 6.1 per cent, and nearly 11/2 percentage points higher than it was at the end of 2014, when it was 4.4 per cent. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Aaron DeGroot says while online shopping has changed the landscape of the retail market, some niche markets are still expanding. While the rate is at a level not seen in 16 years, Johnson said its important to keep things in perspective. If you told the office market they had a 5.8 per cent vacancy they would say, Hallelujah! Thats the best weve been in years, he said. So you kind of dont want to dump all over the retail guys and say, Oh, look at this! A crisis! Its still really good. It just isnt as good as the smoking-hot its been for more than a decade or a decade-and-a-half. Stevenson Advisors vice-president Aaron DeGroot agreed, saying; Its still a healthy market. DeGroot and Cheryl Mazur, general manager of one of the citys largest regional shopping malls St. Vital Centre also predicted most of the vacant retail space eventually will be filled. Its just going to take a little longer than it did 10 or 15 years ago, when Canadas retail industry was going through a growth spurt as a wave of new U.S.-based retailers entered the market and existing players responded by adding new stores in a bid to protect or grow their market share. St. Vital Centre, like most of the other local malls and retail power centres, has seen its vacancy rate rise in the wake of the recent spate of store closings by such retail chains as Target, Smart Set, Mexx, Future Shop and Jacob. It currently has more than a half a dozen vacant storefronts and an overall vacancy rate of 3.0 per cent. Mazur isnt hitting the panic button. She said the malls sales are still growing in spite of the vacancies, and theres still plenty of interest from prospective new tenants. We got a lot on the go. But its all in the negotiation stage, so nothing is quite signed yet. Im hoping that sooner, rather than later, well be able to announce that a few different things are happening. Mazur also noted this isnt the time of year when most retailers are looking to open new stores. They like to wait until just before the start of the back-to-school shopping season, so theyll spend the spring and much of the summer negotiating their leases and getting their new stores ready for a late-summer opening. The mall also wants to make sure it has the right tenant for the right space, she added. For example, it wouldnt put a cellphone store in the former West 49 space next to Victoria Secret. That needs to be filled with another fashion retailer, and the mall is currently in talks with one. DeGroot said while the growth of online shopping is forcing traditional bricks-and-mortar stores to make some painful adjustments, it doesnt mean all retail development has ground to a halt. Certain retail niches are still expanding and opening new stores. Examples he gave were service-oriented retailers such as Tim Hortons, and bargain-oriented retailers such as Dollarama and the $200-million Outlet Collection at Winnipeg factory outlet mall, which is under construction in the Outlets of Seasons retail/office/residential development on the northwest corner of Kenaston Boulevard and Sterling Lyon Parkway. The outlets concept we know thats going to work, DeGroot said. So I think what were seeing is a bit of a cool-down from a general, overall retail perspective. But when you start to dig down into the niche markets of retail, there are still a lot of strengths from industry to industry. He also said while new retail development is occurring, most developers are taking a more cautious approach. Unlike in the early 2000s, when they would sign up one or two anchor tenants and then start building, most are now waiting until they have a good number of tenants locked up before breaking ground. Retail is a different animal today that it was at the start of the 2000s, and Winnipeg is no exception. I think its going to be a long time before we see any developers coming in and building anything on spec and without a ton of groundwork being done beforehand. Know of any newsworthy or interesting trends or developments in the local office, retail or industrial real estate sectors? Let real estate reporter Murray McNeill know at the email address below, or at 204-697-7254. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO The Liberal government dismissed a call Monday by Ontarios opposition parties for a non-partisan process to tighten political fundraising rules, and instead asked for their input on draft legislation. Premier Kathleen Wynne has promised legislation next month to ban corporate and union donations to political parties, lower individual contribution limits and regulate third-party advertising. There will also be new spending and donation limits for leadership campaigns and candidate nomination contests. Wynne wants the bill to be in effect by Jan. 1, 2017. Government house leader Yasir Naqvi wrote the Progressive Conservatives, New Democrats and Green Party of Ontario on Monday asking for a meeting to discuss the substantive ideas they want to see in the draft bill. The recent attention that has been paid to political fundraising by all parties has understandably fuelled cynicism among the constituents we serve, he wrote. I see no better way to help restore the publics trust than by coming together to do the job they elected us to do. The leaders of the three opposition parties held a rare joint news conference last week to call for an independent process on campaign finance rules, and dont want to be in the position of reacting to legislation drawn up by the governing Liberals. NDP house leader Gilles Bisson said Monday that he shares Naqvis desire to restore the publics trust which he claimed was broken following revelations that your government appears to have abused the rules by creating ministerial fundraising quotas and how to it chose to award government contracts. Bisson warned Naqvi that the Liberals closed and partisan process on campaign finance reform will do little to rebuild trust. By allowing one political party to draft the legislation behind closed doors and then conduct consultations in which that same political party has an absolute veto over any changes, damages the credibility of any reforms, he said. Naqvis letter also set out timelines for the bill, with four weeks of public hearings this summer on first reading, plus another round of hearings in the fall after the bill is amended for second reading. The option of referring a bill to committee after first reading would enable members to examine the principle of a bill, and to propose amendments that may dramatically alter its scope, wrote Naqvi. We would also be giving the public a rare opportunity to provide input on what the policy itself should be. Naqvi also said Ontarios chief electoral officer, Greg Essensa, would be called on the first day of hearings, but the opposition parties say Essensa should lead the process to reform the fundraising rules, not simply appear before a committee. After meeting recently with the opposition leaders, Wynne complained that they ignored the basic questions and instead wanted to talk only about the process, which she said would delay implementation of changes that all parties agree they want. The Conservatives still want a public inquiry into fundraising quotas of up to $500,000 that were imposed on Liberal cabinet ministers, accusing them of soliciting donations from companies looking to get government contracts. Wynne has cancelled all private fundraising dinners and receptions, and said cabinet ministers will no longer try to raise money from companies lobbying their ministry for business. Follow @CPnewsboy on Twitter Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Green party Leader Elizabeth May has won a ringing endorsement from her party members in an online leadership review vote. The party says May earned the support of 93.6 per cent of those who voted in the yes-or-no leadership review questionnaire. The Green party says it now has more than 20,000 members and that the 5,324 people who voted in the leadership review mark an all-time high participation rate for the month-long exercise. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, speaks to speaks to media after finding out she's been re-elected during election night at the Victoria Conference Centre in Victoria, B.C., Monday, October 19, 2015.May has won a ringing endorsement from her party members in an online leadership review vote.The party says May earned the support of 93.6 per cent of those who voted in the yes-or-no leadership review questionnaire. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito Both the partys membership numbers overall and the leadership vote totals have doubled since the last review in 2011. May, who represents the British Columbia riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, was the lone Green MP elected in the October 2015 election, when the party collected 3.4 per cent of the popular vote across the country. In a release, May says shes humbled by the strong endorsement. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Cities and provinces with new, shovel-ready infrastructure projects will be eligible for funding under the first phase of the Liberal infrastructure program, but only if the work is completed within the next three years. Thats the message in letters which federal Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi sent to his provincial counterparts last week. Project costs for transit and waste-water and water-treatment projects will be eligible retroactive to April 1, so work can begin immediately, Sohi wrote. Infrastructure and Communities Minister Amarjeet Sohi is seen as he tours the future site of the Tremblay station, part of the light rail transit project in Ottawa, Wednesday January 13, 2016.Cities and provinces with new, shovel-ready infrastructure projects will be eligible for funding under the first phase of the Liberal infrastructure program, but only if the work is completed within the next three years.That's the message in letters which Sohi sent to his provincial counterparts last week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld The first phase of the Liberals promised 10-year infrastructure plan wraps up in 2019 just as the country heads to the polls in a federal election and is mostly focused on repairing aging roads, pipes and transit systems across the country. It is also designed to lay the foundation for the second and more lucrative phase of the Liberal plan by covering planning costs for larger projects. There is money for design, there is money for planning and there is money for doing small projects if they are ready to move ahead with them, Sohi told reporters at the Liberal cabinet retreat in Kananaskis, Alta. There are big challenges related to not doing the rehabilitation and the repairs that are necessary and for Phase 2 we have already started consultations with (cities) and thats where we will have the opportunities to support transformative projects. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities says there are many projects that could be eligible, from transit stations in Vancouver to waste-water treatment systems in Victoria and St. Johns that are among 106 systems that need upgrades in the next four years at an estimated cost of $3.5 billion. Money cant go to municipal projects without funding agreements between the federal and provincial governments. What these letters today do is that they set the framework and gives clarity for provinces and territories from the federal government for those negotiations and discussions to occur, said FCM president Raymond Louie. The Liberals pledged in the budget, flowing from a campaign promise, to double infrastructure spending over the next 10 years to bring the overall federal investment to $120 billion. The first two years of the new infrastructure program has $6.6 billion for provinces and cities, not including money promised to First Nations infrastructure or to universities. The Liberals also promised changes to the governments existing marquee infrastructure program, known as the New Building Canada Fund, to quickly move about $8.7 billion remaining from the provincial and territorial stream of that fund to cities and provinces. The Liberals want the remaining money allocated to projects within the next two years. The government is expanding eligibility under the fund, including work on small-scale highways and roads in provinces like Prince Edward Island that previously didnt qualify because they werent big enough in scope or impact. The federal government is also going to fund eligible project costs for ferry systems that provinces like B.C. wanted included in the fund. NDP infrastructure critic Matthew Dube said problems with the design of the fund could still cause problems for cities and provinces, even though the government relaxed eligibility criteria. Does that mean the stated goals would actually be accomplished? I dont think so, Dube said. We really needed to build a new infrastructure program from the ground up that would actually take into account what the provinces and territories and municipalities and all the communities involved have said are the problems. Sohis letters also show the government will cover up to half the cost of disaster-mitigation projects, including those that would fight floods in provinces like Alberta and Manitoba, and any projects delivered as a public-private partnership, known as a P3. The government has removed the requirement for communities to always look for a private-sector partner on projects, but hasnt abandoned the idea: In a speech last week at a conference on public-private partnerships, Sohi said the government believes some projects are best suited to a P3, citing the new Champlain Bridge in Montreal and the Gordie Howe International Bridge in Windsor, Ont. With files from Joan Bryden Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 24/04/2016 (2374 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The Liberals are facing calls to reopen a new peacekeeping training centre three years after the demise of Canadas former school, The Canadian Press has learned. The new centre would be located in Kingston, Ont., near the Canadian Forces base and military college, but would be a civilian-led operation, essentially a revitalization of the Pearson Centre, which was shuttered in 2013. The proposal comes from the Canadian non-governmental organization Canadem, a contractor that has established a reputation for staffing United Nations missions with civilian experts in security reform, election monitoring and building democratic institutions. Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion answers a question during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. Dion acknowledged that a lot of work lay ahead before Canada could return to the world of peacekeeping. One of the Liberal governments major foreign policy planks is to return the country to UN peacekeeping missions after Canadas contribution dwindled to an all-time low of a few dozen. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a UN audience recently that Canada would be recommitting itself to peacekeeping as part of its bid to win a temporary seat on the world bodys Security Council in 2020. But the capacity of Canadas military to conduct peacekeeping operations has largely disappeared after a decade of war-fighting in Afghanistan, a recent report suggests, amplifying the need for a new training centre. Many of the senior command recognize their need to re-invigorate their training for UN peace operations and recognize the advantages of drawing upon civilian trainers, said Paul LaRose-Edwards, Canadems executive director. LaRose-Edwards said his agency maintains a list of experts who can fill that void. Weve got thousands of individuals on our roster who are out in the field with current knowledge of UN and UN field operations. The Pearson Centre in Cornwallis, N.S., was closed in 2013, after its government funding dried up. Its demise came after the Canadian Forces refocused itself on the Afghan war in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Pearson Centre was funded by both the Defence and Foreign Affairs departments, and it could easily be reconstituted with a modest budget in the $10- to $20-million range, said Walter Dorn, a professor at the Canadian Forces Staff College in Kingston. Dorn, who has traced the decline of Canadas contribution to UN peacekeeping, said it makes sense to have civilians and military in close proximity in a new training centre because both groups have lessons to learn from the other. This would really help us regain the expertise because we could bring Canadians up to date, said Dorn, one of the countrys leading peacekeeping academics. Weve lost a whole generation of officers and soldiers have not been participating in peace operations. LaRose-Edwards said civilians have a lot to learn from the military, such as mine awareness and personal protection. Meanwhile, military personnel would benefit from training that civilians would receive on how UN operations actually work. The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre was founded in the mid-1990s, and became a leading international training centre on the topic. It was named for former external affairs minister Lester Pearson, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for proposing the first UN mission in 1956. With the backing of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, Pearson proposed the force to help defuse the Suez Crisis. In the 1990s, Canada had upwards of 3,300 peacekeepers deployed on UN missions in the 1990s. As of October, Canada had 31 military personnel and 85 police officers deployed with five UN operations, according to a transition report prepared for the incoming Trudeau government that was obtained under Access to Information. Canadas internal training capacity also dwindled in the post-9/11 era, but its civilian trainers stayed active over the last decade exporting the countrys know how. LaRose-Edwards said it was Canadem that helped the German government set up its own international civilian peacekeeping training centre, called ZIF, which has now become a major training agency since its inception in 2002. Now ZIF is so far ahead of us, said LaRose-Edwards. Canada has really, in many ways, gone backwards, not kept up and is probably one of the few western countries that does not have a civilian training agency for field operations. Chantal Gagnon, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion, said the department has made no firm decisions and is still exploring options on how to deliver on the renewed peacekeeping commitment, including possible new training initiatives. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Manitobas doctor-turned-politician in the federal Liberal caucus says he has no reservations about voting in favour of a bill that legalizes physician-assisted suicide for patients suffering from an incurable illness. Doug Eyolfson, the Liberal MP for Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley, told the Free Press Monday the legislation introduced April 14 by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, is a good start to address this tough topic. I will vote for it absolutely, said Eyolfson. As a physician I think there are people who should have that choice. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Dr. Doug Eyolfson, MP for Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley. Bill C-14 allows for competent adults who are suffering from an illness or disability where death is reasonably foreseeable to request assistance to die from a doctor or nurse practitioner. There are several safeguards including that the request be in writing, witnessed by independent people, and that two independent doctors or nurse practitioners review the case and agree the patient meets the criteria. Eyolfson worked as an emergency room doctor for 17 years in Winnipeg before being elected to the House of Commons last fall. He said in the emergency department he never came across a patient who expressed a desire for help to die but he has colleagues who have. Eyolfson did have concerns with some of the recommendations from the all-party committee that looked at this issue earlier this year, including that the right to die be extended to mature minors and those suffering from mental illnesses. If there is someone with depression who is asking to die, well you need to treat depression, said Eyolfson. The legislation is not the end of the discussion on the matter, he said. The government is trying to meet a deadline of June 6, when the Supreme Court decision which lifted the blanket ban on assisted suicide takes effect. Wilson-Raybould has said the government will further study issues raised by the committee. Eyolfson will be joined in voting for the legislation by a majority of Manitoba Liberals. Manitobas two ministers, Jim Carr and MaryAnn Mihychuk, will be required to vote for the bill, as are all members of cabinet. Four of the other five Manitoba Liberals also intend to vote for the bill. Ive watched too many family members suffer through long, protracted, incurable diseases where assisted dying would have been beneficial and it would have been asked for, said Saint Boniface Saint Vital MP Dan Vandal Vandal said residents of his riding is conflicted on the legislation, noting the high number of Catholics in the area. But he said people need to remember not passing the legislation does not mean assisted dying remains illegal in all forms. The Supreme Court last year ruled it was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to entirely ban the practice and said competent adults suffering from a grievous and irremediable illness or disability should have the right to ask for help to die. If the bill doesnt pass, as of June 6, there will be an allowance for assisted dying but without any of the regulations or safeguards included with this legislation. Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid and Winnipeg North MP Kevin Lamoureux both told the Free Press they will support the bill. However Winnipeg Centre MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette will not. He did not respond to a request to speak to the Free Press Monday but he recently told APTN he will vote against the bill because of his spiritual beliefs. He is also concerend there are mixed messages being sent to indigenous youth on reserves such as Pimicikimak Cree Nation in Manitoba and Attawapiskat First Nation in Ontario, where the number of young people committing suicide or attempting to, has led to a state of emergency. Lamoureux said hes hopeful the legislation will pass in time for the June 6 deadline but said that largely depends on the co-operation of other parties and the Senate. The House of Commons will resume debate on the bill May 2. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Ottawa will spend at least $178 million over the next five years on public transit and water-treatment infrastructure projects in Manitoba, but the finer details of where the money will be spent wont be worked out until after the new provincial government settles into office. Federal Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi wrote to premier-designate Brian Pallister last Friday to outline some of the infrastructure programs unveiled in the recent federal budget. That includes a $3.4-billion Public Transit Infrastructure Fund and a $2-billion Clean Water Wastewater Fund. Manitobas share of those will be $82.8 million and $95.3 million respectively, to cover as much as 50 per cent of the costs of eligible projects. Winnipeg is likely to be the recipient of the lions share of both programs, but the work on those priorities cant begin until Pallister and his new cabinet are sworn in next week. Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press FILES Infrastructure and Communities Minister Amarjeet Sohi Pallister pledged his government would spend at least $1 billion a year on infrastructure, and said he will simplify the application process for municipalities. A spokeswoman for Pallister said he couldnt comment on the Sohi letter because he hadnt yet received it. Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said last week his first priority for a meeting with Pallister will be to discuss infrastructure. The city is in the midst of two major upgrades to its south and north end waste water treatment plants, which together have a price tag of nearly $1 billion. Ottawa has already put up $42 million for the south end plant, which is 15 per cent complete. The north end plant is only about one per cent complete. At $569 million, it is the more expensive of the two projects and thus far Ottawa hasnt agreed to contribute anything toward it. The people of Winkler, Morden and the RM of Stanley are also anxious to get federal cash to build new treatment plants in their fast-growing cities, but an application that went in last July has been sitting with the province and not yet forwarded to Ottawa for approval. A spokeswoman for the Canada-Manitoba Infrastructure Secretariat said she couldnt provide numbers or details of other projects applied for through federal programs to date, while the government was in its transition process. The clean water program funding is to be doled out over the next five years while any projects that qualify for public transit funds have to be completed within three years. That effectively rules out Winnipeg using any of it to build the next stage of bus rapid transit. Phase two, extending the southwest corridor to the University of Manitoba, is already funded by the three levels of government through a public-private partnership (P3). The city hasnt yet decided which of the remaining lines will be the next priority. The new federal cash could possibly be used to work on the plan for the next line, since design and planning for future public transit expansions is one of the four criteria for the public transit fund. Improving existing transit infrastructure, improving system efficiency and management are the other three criteria. A spokeswoman for Winnipeg Transit would not provide a list of other infrastructure desires by the citys bus operator, saying more details of the program were required first. Sohi also discussed changes to the existing Building Canada Fund and says he wants to commit the remaining money by the end of March 2018. The program was initiated by the previous Conservative government in 2014 and was to have been doled out over a decade. Manitoba was allocated $420.4 million for larger-scale projects prioritized by the provincial government and another $46.7 million for projects in small communities of fewer than 100,000 people. More than 75 per cent of the provincial projects fund is still to be allocated in Manitoba, however the majority of the small-communities fund has been spent already. There is about $10 million left in that fund. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 24/04/2016 (2374 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. With tens of thousands of Yazidis persecuted by Islamic State terrorists and forced from their homes in Iraq, members of the religious minority had little to celebrate during their new year April 20. For Yazidi children in a Turkish refugee camp waiting to come to Winnipeg, it was a special day in which they had eggs to colour. They fashioned one with a Canadian flag. To adherents of the ancient religion, the year is 6766. For seven families sponsored by Winnipegs Operation Ezra, its the year they hope to come to Canada. SUBMITTED PHOTO Left is Madleen Majid Dakheel, age five, and on the right is Roz Khudher Naso, age seven, who drew the Canadian Flag on her egg for Yazidi new year. The girls in Midyat Camp in Turkey are waiting to come to Winnipeg. We are hopeful that it will be soon, said Winnipegs Nafiya Naso, who has relatives languishing in two Turkish refugee camps. Naso said the Yazidi new year, known as Ser Sal, which means head of the year, is celebrated on a Wednesday in April known as Red Wednesday. It commemorates the day that Tawsi Melek, the Peacock Angel and a supreme Yazidi deity, first came to Earth to restore calm and spread his peacock colours throughout the world, she said. The new year celebration includes colouring eggs to represent the rainbow of colours with which Tawsi Melek blessed the world, said Naso. Traditionally, women will place blood-red flowers and shells of the coloured eggs above the doors of the Yazidis so that Tawsi Melek can recognize their homes. In a Turkish refugee camp where people survive mostly on rations of dry goods, getting eggs to boil and decorate for Yazidi new year was a treat, said Naso who received photos from relatives in the camps on the special occasion. One of the little girls (Roz Khudher Naso, age 7) drew the Canadian flag on one of her eggs, said Naso. She expects two of the seven families sponsored by the fundraising effort Operation Ezra led by Winnipegs Jewish community will arrive in Canada any day. In the mean time, the situation in the camps worsen as Turkey receives more refugees whove been turned back from Greece. SUBMITTED PHOTO Roz Khudher Naso, 7, drew a Canadian flag on her egg for Yazidis new year. It makes it so much harder because they have little to share and water is limited and food is limited, Naso said. Naso, who has a family of her own in Winnipeg, said she is especially concerned about the Yazidi children who havent been able to attend school since August 2014. These kids do nothing all day, she said. They sleep and wake up. Naso said Canadian immigration officials have assured the Winnipeg sponsors that the Yazidis file hasnt been forgotten. Were very hopeful it will happen we will see our first two families very soon. With an estimated 200 Yazidis, Winnipeg is home to one of the largest communities of the religious minority in Canada. Naso said theyre ready for the arrival of more families. SUBMITTED PHOTO UNHCR camp run by Turkish guards - home to Yazidi refugees waiting to come to Winnipeg The response from the Jewish community and other communities involved with Operation Ezra has just been amazing, Naso said. She said a business owner donated space in a warehouse where theyre storing furniture and household goods for the Yazidi families. We have the volunteers lined up. All we need is the families now. carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. BRANDON Sixty-five years later, Michael Czuboka still recalls many details from a pivotal battle during the Korean War. I remember it vividly, the Winnipeg resident said. There were 700 of us and maybe 10,000 or 20,000 Chinese. The Battle of Kapyong took place in South Korea at the end of April 1951 and is considered one of Canadas most significant military engagements. SUPPLIED Michael Czuboka in South Korea in 1951. Czuboka, a private with the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry, was 19 years old during the weeklong battle. We were very lucky to get out of there because we were surrounded by the Chinese army for a couple days, he said. We had our supplies dropped to us by parachute from the American air force. One of Czubokas most prominent memories during the battle was an evening ambush that saw 500 Chinese soldiers descend upon his mortar platoon. The attacking troops didnt realize the Canadian platoon was also armed with six 50-calibre machine-guns, and Czuboka said the Chinese offensive was decimated. I think that was a major factor (in the battle) because after that they must have thought, This was a well-armed enemy, and their attacks slowed down to some extent after that, he said. Czuboka enlisted shortly after graduating from high school in Brandon. His older brother had served in the Second World War Czuboka was only 14 when that war ended and the young man was eager to embark on an adventure he felt he had missed previously. We wanted to go to Korea to help the Korean people but it was also something exciting that we were going to do, he said. The excitement of being overseas came down to earth after his first experience on the front lines in South Korea. There was something like 100 black American soldiers, and they had all been bayonetted and shot, and they were naked, Czuboka said, adding he didnt eat for several days after witnessing the battleground. I did get over it eventually, but it was rather devastating to see on the first occasion. Czuboka has been back to South Korea on three occasions and said the gratitude of the countrys residents is apparent. The veteran said its important for Canadians to remember the forgotten war and honour important moments such as the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Kapyong. Its been called the forgotten war because it didnt happen in Canada. It didnt really affect that many people except those who were there, Czuboka said. Its very significant because we saved South Korea from becoming a totalitarian communist dictatorship like North Korea is now. Czuboka has penned a novel based on his experiences during the Korean War entitled Manifest Destiny. Brandon Sun Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. One of the planks of PC Leader Brian Pallisters platform was to scrap the per-vote subsidy for political parties. The idea of the subsidy is unpopular with voters many citizens mistakenly believe that this is the only form of subsidy political parties receive, and the PCs, rather than enlighten anyone, chose to promote this myth. What is really at issue here is that the Tories are proposing to eliminate a relative small subsidy for political parties, undermining their opponents, while continuing to collect millions of dollars in subsidies themselves. The policy is actually part of a long tradition of governments using high-minded-sounding campaign-finance reform as a way to tip the scales in their own favour. Karl Rove famously did so in Texas in the 1980s, when he used campaign finance to undermine the Democrats and elect George W. Bush governor of that state for the the first time. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Election signs along Mountain Ave. at Kildarroch St. during the 2016 election campaign. The per-vote subsidy costs about $600,000 for all political parties put together, less than the $700,000 the PCs received as a government rebate after the 2011 election. The NDP also accepted the campaign rebate, while turning down the per-vote subsidy. That was just for the general election, but the rebate applies in each constituency as well. For example, according to Elections Manitoba, when Brian Pallister won a Fort Whyte byelection in 2012, his campaign spent $32,215.06, and received a government reimbursement of $16,107.54, or 50 per cent. But donors to Pallisters campaign also received tax credits from the government, up to 75 per cent. If you give $400 to a political party or candidate, you get back $300. In the Fort Whyte campaign, Pallisters donors gave $15,893, and would have received $10,876 in tax rebates nearly a 70 per cent taxpayer subsidy. Add together the donation and spending rebates and Pallisters $32,315.06 campaign was supported with $26,861 in public money or 83 per cent of the cost. The total amount of money paid out over the years easily exceeds $20 million, and the major beneficiaries are the PCs and the NDP. Your taxes are already going to support a political party you never voted for. So, are the Tories proposing to eliminate any of this subsidy? No. In fact, parties who fail to get 10 per cent of the vote arent eligible for a rebate. No one bothers to ask why, but the goal of this arbitrary number is clearly to discourage independents and smaller parties from running, and to undermine their finances. Subsidies, it would appear, are for winners only. The per-vote subsidy that will be scrapped is based on votes earned. The subsidy that the Conservatives will keep is based on money raised and spent. Which is more important to reward in a democracy? Votes or money? The per-vote subsidy was introduced for several reasons. First, it is to replace funds lost due to the ban on corporate and union donations, which was itself an effort to reduce the influence, real or perceived, of special interests. Parties have to earn the subsidy through votes from citizens, not by having special treatment for donors. People donate to political parties for many reasons. They may donate because they believe in a cause, because they believe in a person or candidate, or they may donate to whoever they think will win, or to ensure an opponent loses. But, especially between elections, people will give more to a party in power because it is the party in power. Some may have a problem with the per-vote subsidy because it supports the work of political parties between elections. This ignores two critical realities. One is that political parties out of power need to keep working between elections on policy and organization, which are both essential to both campaigns and democracy. John Woods / The Canadian Press Premier-designate Brian Pallister campaigned on a promise to eliminate per-vote subsidies. The other is that parties with MLAs in government have budgets in the millions of dollars not just for staff, printing, ads, mailings and so on that dwarf the budgets of political parties, all funded by the public. The fundamental basis of democracy is one person, one vote, not one dollar, one vote. The per-vote subsidy, which is being scrapped, is more closely aligned with democratic principles than the one the PCs intend to keep. These other subsidies suggest that money, and not votes, is what creates democratic legitimacy, when the opposite is true. There is one simple solution, which is to allow people who want to have their taxes support political campaigns check a box on their tax return to let it happen, and leave it unchecked to decline. This is what the United States has done to provide public funding for elections since the 1960s. This is an obvious solution that is fair to taxpayers and better for democracy. Dougald Lamont is a Liberal communications consultant. He ran for the Manitoba Liberal leadership in 2013. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has been called NAFTA on steroids, is a harbinger of invasive and human rights-violating times. Called a trade agreement, it actually has very little to do with trade it is more concerned with expanding the rights of corporations. We are concerned about TPP for many reasons, but at the core of it is this deal was created mostly by corporate investors, behind closed doors, to protect themselves from regulations that protect people and the planet. What we foresee with this agreement are increased drug costs, a global race to the bottom in wages, increased exploitation of temporary foreign workers, reduced health and environmental protections and indigenous sovereignty, a carbon-intensive economy, and undermined community and government efforts to buy local. One major concern is this agreement was signed by the former Harper government before the 2015 federal election with very little consultation with the public. The current Liberal government also signed it but has not ratified the agreement. A decision will need to be made by 2018. This deal was written largely by U.S. corporate investors. For us, this is like Canadian sheep being herded by an American herder. This is a push by U.S. corporate investors to make us more like the United States. The winners are clearly corporate investors. The losers? Everybody else. A study from Tufts University in Medford, Mass., predicts the loss of 58,000 jobs with TPP. One ridiculous part of this agreement is the investor-state dispute-settlement provisions. ISDS would allow corporations to sue the government if it takes a stand that favours people and communities, acts compassionately and responsibly on climate change and says no to oil and gas projects. This is happening with the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. with TransCanada suing the Obama administration for US$15 billion because it rejected the pipeline. In the 1980s, the majority of people opposed NAFTA. Then-prime minister Brian Mulroney went ahead with the deal, and its legacy remains with us. Lets learn from our mistakes and instead of siding with corporations, lets instead side with global humanity, workers, farmers and the planet. We face the overlapping crises of climate change, economic inequality and racism. What we need right now is not a trade deal that drags us further along this path but sound public policy. Whats inspiring is there is a growing global movement opposing the TPP, from indigenous communities in New Zealand to protesters in Tokyo to the belly of the beast of corporate power in the U.S. NAFTA was a nuisance, but the TPP is a monster that needs to be reigned in. The choice is clear: Canada must reject the TPP and must not ratify it. Hazim Ismail is an organizer with No One is Illegal in Winnipeg Treaty 1 territory. Leena Hasan is an activist with the Council of Canadians. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Two off-duty Winnipeg police officers were in an early morning collision March 12. Their vehicle crashed into a parked car on a residential street. One of the officers was taken to hospital by ambulance. Both vehicles were badly damaged, as was a nearby fire hydrant. The Independent Investigations Unit of Manitoba was created less than a year ago to look into cases such as this, where police are involved in serious incidents requiring review of their conduct. But the agency had to hand this case off to RCMP in Saskatchewan, and the reason highlights a concern critics repeatedly raised when the unit was created: the IIU hires both former and current Winnipeg police officers. One of the officers involved in the March 12 crash is the son of an IIU investigator who is a former member of the force, Free Press columnist Gordon Sinclair was told. That put the agency in a real, not theoretical, conflict, and it simply could not take on the case. Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba director Zane Tessler A lot of questions have been raised about the incident, and answers are in short supply. Had the driver been drinking? Why was the less seriously injured officer transported home by the police? Equally troubling is the fact the IIU was apprised of the issue five days after the fact by law, a serious incident involving an officer is supposed to be referred immediately or as soon as practicable. When the IIU was first established, a lot of people had trouble with the fact it was permitted to hire former police officers and to borrow cops currently on the job. That runs counter to the express purpose of the IIU: to get cops out of the business of investigating cops, a practice that reeks of conflict and tests public confidence. The IIU was created following the 2005 death of Crystal Taman, who was killed when a truck driven by an off-duty WPS officer plowed into her car at a stoplight. The officer was driving home from an all-night drinking party with co-workers following a shift. The investigation at the scene was bungled and then further complicated by the actions of the WPS conducting a review of its own officers. An inquiry later found evidence of misconduct and shoddy police work. Now, less than a year into its operation, the IIU has been tripped up in this instance by the fact it employs a former WPS officer. In fact, all its investigators are former officers, most from the RCMP, and the unit is in the process of seconding a WPS member. That will heighten, not lessen, potential conflicts for the IIU. At the start, it was believed it might be necessary for IIU director Zane Tessler, a former Crown attorney and defence lawyer, to round out his investigative team with seasoned former officers. But it seems the unit favours relying heavily on former or current officers rather than looking to recruit civilians trained in investigative work or criminal inquiry. That default hiring practice pushed Ms. Tamans husband, Robert, to resign in protest from the Manitoba Police Commission last week after learning on Facebook of the WPS secondment. Mr. Taman has other concerns. The IIU should be as open as possible so it is seen to be acting in the public interest. Yet, Manitobans know nothing about the investigators themselves. Their names and backgrounds are not listed on the IIU website. The IIU has a singular purpose: to dispassionately investigate cases involving a police officer, where death or serious injury has occurred or where a cop may have broken a law. Its involvement is to ensure officers themselves are not above the law. In order to fulfil its mandate, the IIU needs to be clear of the perception of conflict. Hiring former officers is not helping the integrity of the IIU. Mr. Tessler needs to work harder to hire civilians to investigate police who fall under public suspicion. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Did you know 2016 marks the 125th anniversary of Ukrainians in Canada? The first wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada began in 1891. Encouraged by reports from fellow countrymen and by advertisements from the Government of Canada, most left the old country in search of land, opportunity and freedom. Most hailed from Western Ukraine and settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta as farmers. Others found work as labourers in cities such as Winnipeg. A few were intellectuals and clergy. Herald To mark the 125th anniversary of Ukrainian immigration to Canada, the province has proclaimed 2016 the Year of Manitobas Ukrainian Canadian Cultural Heritage. Pictured here are dancers from Transconas Zavirukha Ukrainian Dance School. The first wave was halted by the onset of the First World War. The spirit of the Ukrainian pioneers prepared the way for the waves of immigration which followed. Their foresight, endurance and faith laid the foundation for the great strides and accomplishments of succeeding generations. During the inter-war period, a second wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada occurred. As with the first wave, most hailed from Western Ukraine. Most found work as labourers in Quebec and Ontario in Canadian frontier industries such as mining and forestry. Some settled on the prairies or in Ontario as farmers. Others found work as labourers in cities such as Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. The third wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada came following the Second World War. Most immigrants had been displaced from their homeland and most found work as labourers in cities such as Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. From the 1950s through until the 1980s, Ukrainian immigration to Canada was limited to a trickle. Since 1991, though, there has been a fourth wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. That was the year Ukraine celebrated its independence and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian Canadians have made and continue to make remarkable contributions to Canada. Indeed, the Ukrainian Canadian experience is a part of our shared heritage as Canadians. To mark the 125th anniversary, the province has proclaimed 2016 the Year of Manitobas Ukrainian Canadian Cultural Heritage. Darlene Litchie is a community correspondent for Transcona. A confrontation with two deputies resulted in Winona County Sheriff Ron Ganrude petitioning the court to revoke a Dresbach mans concealed carry firearm permit. Ganrude issued the permit to William Thomas Underhill, 68, January 31 after Underhill successfully completed the statutory requirements for carrying a concealed firearm in public. Less than six weeks later, Underhill was embroiled in an angry verbal confrontation with two Winona County Sheriffs deputies at the Minnesota Department of Transportation shop in Dresbach. According to documents filed in Winona District Court, Underhill had arranged to meet March 11 with deputies investigating a violation of a Domestic Abuse No-contact Order. Underhill was not the subject of the investigation. The petition states that Underhill appeared to be very angry as he pulled into the parkinglot, scowling and looking intently at the deputies squad cars. Exiting his vehicle Underhill marched toward the two squad cars, teeth clenched, muscle tone rigid. Whats up? he demanded, then proceeded to complain about a phone call investigators made to the suspect in the case, assuming an aggressive posture toward the second deputy, leaning forward with his chest out, shoulders back, the petition reads. Twice, Underhill was told to keep his hands out of his pockets. At one point the first deputy asked Underhill if he had come intending to fight with the officers. Underhill reacted by asking the deputy if he wanted to fight, to which the deputy responded, Absolutely not, the petition states. Asked if the suspect was at his house, Underhill turned and walked back toward his vehicle calling the two deputies a couple of f*****g dandies adding a final f*** you before he drove off. Throughout the confrontation, Underhill had a gun in his pocket and had his hand on his gun and cell phone, the petition states. In a later phone call the the chief deputy, Underhill said that he felt the deputies were looking to kill someone that day. He said he was a Vietnam veteran and that the two deputies were punks who needed to learn how to treat people, the document states. The chief deputy stated he felt Underhills tone was on the verge of threatening the two deputies and that Underhill was attempting to intimidate the sheriffs department in how it dealt with Underhill and the suspect in the case. As a result of this incident and prior knowledge, the sheriffs office believes that there exists substantial likelihood that Underhill would be a danger to self or public if authorized to carry a pistol under permit and requests that the court revoke his permit. Court action is required for revocation. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for June 2. HANNOVER, Germany President Barack Obama mounted a strong defense of international trade deals Sunday in the face of domestic and foreign opposition, saying its indisputable that such agreements strengthen the economy and make U.S. businesses more competitive worldwide. But he acknowledged that the clock is ticking on his faltering trade agenda. Obama, on a farewell visit to Germany as president, is trying to light a fire under stalled talks about a trans-Atlantic trade deal, a massive pact that would rewrite the rules for the billions in trade and investment between the European Union and the U.S. At a press conference, a trade show and a private dinner with chief executives, Obama tried to counter public skepticism about the unfinished deal with Europe, while also brushing off opposition from the 2016 presidential candidates to a pending Asia-Pacific trade pact. Despite all that, Obama said, the majority of people still favor trade. They still recognize, on balance, that its a good idea. If you look at the benefits to the United States or to Germany of free trade around the world, it is indisputable that it has made our economies stronger, Obama said. The president said he was confident negotiations on the trans-Atlantic trade deal could be completed by the end of year, with ratification to follow. And he said that once the U.S. presidential primary season is over and politics settle down, the trans-Pacific pact, awaiting ratification, can start moving forward in Congress. Obama is pushing to conclude negotiations on the European deal before he leaves office, so that next president can pick that up rapidly and get that done, he told the BBC in an interview broadcast Sunday. But its not certain that the next president would pick up where Obama leaves off on trade. The trans-Atlantic pact has not been a top issue in the campaign to choose Obamas successor. And both leading candidates Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump oppose the Asia-Pacific trade pact for its potential impact on American jobs and wages. Obama isnt alone in facing opposition on trade. His host and partner on the daylong campaign, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also is under pressure from critics who claim the trans-Atlantic deal would erode environmental standards and consumer protections. Thousands of people took to the streets in Hannover to protest the trade deal on the eve of Obamas arrival. Throughout the day, Obama and Merkel stressed their alignment on trade, as well as other matters. At a press conference, Obama made a strong public show of support for her handling of the migrant issue, saying she was on the right side of history on this. Her decision to allow the resettlement in Germany of thousands fleeing violence in Syria and other Mideast conflict zones has created an angry domestic backlash. Merkel recently helped European countries reach a deal with Turkey to ease the flow, but she and the other leaders are now under pressure to revisit it. Obama said Merkel was giving voice, I think, to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them. But Obama would not go so far as to back her support for establishing a safe zone in Syrian territory, saying that would be difficult to put in place. As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country, he said. And that requires a big military commitment. Empty barrels make the most noise! Mom So, youre gonna tell your kids about politics! I take that to mean your politics. What are you gonna tell a child? Ya gonna tell em how American politics differs from, say, Mexico? Does it really differ? Maybe tell em how others vote for the wrong people or keep them in office, for no good reason? Are kids interested in our miserable shams, or might they have more interesting do-do in mind? All the same, right? If political talk is malarkey, is what we hear tempered by what politicians (pols) do? How do we know what they do? Does doing or saying make the difference? If doing impresses, is a pol different than say a religious preacher? Is that easy to explain to a child? What excites about Ted Cruz the fact he is not Donald Trump, his looks, what? What do our perceptions say about our politics generally? What if Ted Cruz isnt your favorite manure spreader! You gonna tell your kids? How? Would this comment beg questions, Pols wearing huge belt buckles with nasal faked southern twang from Texas are un-kewl? Besides, isnt the Cruz dude still a Canadian (an asset), but really just another Texas hustler, even if he bought a Texas house? Isnt that a bit much for a kid? How do one explain not liking his eyebrows and feigned sincerity that seems to have gathered more than a few DC enemies? Or is it easier to say, I just dont like him? Of course, explaining the popularity of Mr. Bombast The Donald Trump might be interesting! You gonna tell little kids that Trump is doing to Republicans what Republicans have been doing to others for decades? Now, that might interest a kid! Rants against a selfish Republican establishment, including the RNCs whines, are fun adult listening. Reince Priebus? Please! Sounds preppy to me! Kids might smile! Names often indicate easy targets! If, for example, Trump has made obvious what we all knew, that the people who sing fiscal responsibility and fear-monger just about anything really are not much different than liberals, except they are unabashedly selfish people. Kids buy that? Forgetaboutit! Mr. Bombast is just another empty political barrel! But, Mom, there are so many empty barrels! Still, dont stay home! Remember the actor and the spoiled decider. Explain that pair to the kids and explain what they wrought. Doesnt all that mean anyone can do it if they have the money and the mouth? Hillary, an emerging liberal winner, is also as baggage-laden as politicians can be. How does one explain her uncomfortable stage presence, or that it might reveal phony incitements? Hillary was best when she turned the tables on the Republican committee House members out to axe her, in trumped-up (no wordplay intended) Benghazi hearings. It would be easier to explain her Muumuu fashion wardrobe. Kids all love moo! Some parents push their politics and religion, but what says youre right? I know my way may not end up being the right way, but I also know doing the same thing and expecting change is wacko! So, whatever happens due to different choices will not be the same-ol! The Donald and Bernie antithesis will bring change. How that change will deal with the pressures of fast-rising population pressures remains to be seen, but welcome change it is. Explain that, while you are at it! A Daily News contributor recently commented: Kids would rather talk about poop than politics, which to some adults is the same thing! Telling! And that barrel is full! MINNEAPOLIS (TNS) When Kao Kalia Yang was just a tiny girl, her father used to put her on his shoulders and walk around their neighborhood in the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand, where she was born. As they walked, he talked. My father pointed out the world to me, she said. He told me stories about creatures like tigers that could not enter the camp, drew landscapes I had never known. After many years, the Yangs moved to America and settled in St. Paul. The family grew. No longer a farmer, Yangs father now had an overnight job in a factory, a job that damaged his health and ground him down. But he continued to tell her stories. Yang said recently over a cup of steamed vanilla milk in a St. Paul coffee shop. So when she decided to focus her second book on him, those stories were already a part of her. The Song Poet, to be published in May, is a memoir of her fathers life. It comes eight years after publication of her first book, the hugely popular The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, a top seller for Coffee House Press and the only book ever to win two Minnesota Book Awards. In that first book, I was trying to wrap my head around my history, Yang said. It is my grandmothers story. But with The Song Poet, I was writing my fathers story. When she told her father about the new book, his response was typically humble: He said, Nobody wants to read a book about a man like me. Yang remembers when she first became aware of her father as a figure outside the family, a man with his own identity as an artist. November 1989. The Yang family was at St. Paul Civic Center for the Hmong New Year celebration everyone dressed up, her mother in a beaded sweater, her father dignified in his black Mens Wearhouse suit, 8-year-old Kalia furtively checking her poufed bangs, which she had sprayed stiff with her mothers hair spray. And then she heard voices calling her fathers name: Bee Yang! Bee Yang! Her father was persuaded up onto the stage, accepted a microphone. When my father began to sing, I watched him as a stranger would, Yang wrote. The song was a cry for a New Year that once was a time for rest after the bountiful harvest. ... People started weeping. Bee Yang had been a song poet the keeper of Hmong history since age 12, composing and singing poems about life, history, politics, family and love. He sang about the Vietnam War and the way the Hmong people were pressed into helping the American soldiers. He sang about the Americans departure and how the Communists spilled into the mountains of Laos, searching for Hmong to capture and kill. He sang about how he and his family and thousands of others fled into the jungles to hide, eventually making their way across the Mekong River to Thailand, where they were penned in refugee camps for years. When I began singing song poetry I discovered I could share our stories of hurt and sorrow, of missing and despair, of anger and betrayal, he said in The Song Poet. At the Civic Center on that November day, little Kalia watched and listened. There were words that I wanted to say but did not know how, she wrote. I didnt tell my father that Id finally listened and found meaning in his songs. ... I did not want to tell my father that his song had shook my heart. The grounding of family After graduating from Carleton College, Yang went on to earn an MFA in creative nonfiction at Columbia University. I decided I wanted to write about the things that matter, she said, and for her, that was family. Yang, who is now 35, lives in St. Paul with her husband, Aaron Hokanson, their three children, her younger sister and her younger brother. Hmong families are traditionally very large, and very close. With the Hmong history, which is such a difficult history, weve always depended on each other for survival, she explained. She feels this in her own life, every day. When she gave birth to twin sons last fall and died in the maternity ward her heart stopped, doctors rushed in it was her mothers voice calling her name over and over that brought her back. Her younger sister stepped in, unasked, to help care for the babies while Yang recovered. When Yangs little brother wanted to attend school in St. Paul instead of in Andover, where he lived, she and her husband took him in. Their mother missed him so much that she moved in, for a while, with Yangs sister nearby. I think in this country, so many young people are looking for what matters, Yang said. I feel so needed all the time, and I feel how much I need them, and I think that grounds me as a person, and it grounds my writing. Pushed onto a larger stage Yang carried the story of her father inside her for many years before her husband told her she needed to stop doing public speaking, stop teaching, just sit down and write. It took her two months to produce a draft, which she sent to Coffee House Press. Publisher Chris Fischbach accepted it, and Yang spent a year revising. But when she sent it back to him, he didnt respond. And I said, Chris, dont you like it? And he said, Come and meet with me. She worried that he had changed his mind. Instead, he told her that he thought her work would play well on a larger stage. Coffee House is a small nonprofit press, and, I realized that we could only do so much for her, Fischbach said in an interview. Shes a wonderful writer and a wonderful performer. Shes got a lot to say, especially in regards to the immigrant experience, and that should be told as widely as possible. Fischbach sent an e-mail to literary agent Bill Clegg, who agreed to represent Yang. Five New York publishers were interested in the book, Clegg said, and in the end it came down to Scribner or Metropolitan Books. Yang talked to editors at both houses, and chose Metropolitan. In the St. Paul coffee shop, as Yang tells these stories, all around her is the clatter of dishes, the hissing of milk being steamed, the scrape of chairs pushed back on the hardwood floor. She doesnt look around. She is focused and intense. She repeats an earlier thought: My father said, Nobody wants to read a book about a man like me. Yang pressed her hand to her chest and leaned earnestly over the table. Fortunately, I have a stubborn heart. His is the voice I hear when I think of my home, Kao Kalia Yang, about her father, Bee Yang YEREVAN, Armenia Actor George Clooney presented a $1.1 million award on the 101st anniversary of a massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks to a Burundi woman who offered sanctuary to thousands of orphans in the middle of a civil war there. The killing of more than 200 Armenian intellectuals on April 24, 1915 is regarded as the start of the massacre that is widely viewed by historians as the first genocide of the 20th century in which they estimate 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered. Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, vehemently rejects that the deaths constitute genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. Clooney presented the first Aurora Prize, an award recognizing an individuals work to advance humanitarian causes, to Marguerite Barankitse, who saved thousands of lives and cared for orphans and refugees amid the Burundi civil war. Armenian philanthropists selected her for the award. Clooney has been a prominent voice in favor of countries recognizing the killings as genocide, which the U.S. hasnt done. Before he presented the award, Clooney reminded the audience that Adolf Hitler once reportedly said: Who remembers Armenia? Clooney said: The whole world. By recognizing Marguerite Barankitses courage, commitment and sacrifice, I am hopeful that she can also inspire each one of us to think about what we can do to stand up on behalf of those whose rights are abused and are in most need of our solidarity or support, Clooney said. President Barack Obama declined on Friday to refer to the 1915 massacre as genocide, breaking a key campaign promise as his presidency nears an end. Obama called the massacre the first mass atrocity of the 20th century and a tragedy that mustnt be repeated. Clooney, along with Armenian leaders and international dignitaries, earlier on Sunday attended a service at a hilltop memorial in the capital, Yerevan, led by Armenian church leader Catholicos Karekin II to commemorate the massacre victims. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a message commemorating Armenians who died in 1915, without making any reference to the massacre. In a statement that was read during a ceremony at an Armenian church in Istanbul, Erdogan said he welcomed the commemoration to share the grief endured by the Ottoman Armenians, as well as to honor their memories. Erdogan criticized efforts to politicize history through a bitter rhetoric of hate and enmity and strive to alienate the two neighboring nations. You know what I really resent? I resent it when someone tells me I should vote for, or support, or give a pass to someone because it will be a historic moment. Dont get me wrong. Im as much a sucker for a grand and melodramatic gesture as anyone. This past weekend, I took my nephew to see the updated version of The Jungle Book, and I was reduced to sobs when the animals of the jungle all banded together to defend Mowgli. Heck, I still get a lump in my throat during that scene in Spartacus when all the other slaves rise up to protect Kirk Douglas from crucifixion by saying, one after the other, I am Spartacus. (It does lose something, unfortunately, when they get to Tony Curtis, who emotes in perfect Brooklynese, I yam Spottackus.) All of this is to say that I am not insensitive to inspirational symbolism. Back in 2008, we were told that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for hope, change and a balancing of the playing field. The idea of electing the first black president was an intoxicating prospect for many, which is exactly why so many voted for the first-term senator from Illinois. That would be the case with Hillary Clinton, who is this years flavor of historic. As in 2008, we are faced with the possibility of finally putting a woman in the Oval Office. (No jokes about Monica Lewinsky, here, in case you were getting ready to make one.) There is something equally momentous about saying, Madame President, as there was about saying, Mr. First Black President. Just because I happen to be a conservative who shrinks in horror from the limiting label of feminist, I would still be delighted to see a woman head our government. Many other countries, including some actual democracies, have placed females in positions of supreme authority. My favorite was the United Kingdoms Margaret Thatcher, but Israels Golda Meir comes in a very close second, tied with Germanys Angela Merkel for my affections. The list continues with Indira Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Corazon Aquino and, of course, Benazir Bhutto, who, if youve been paying attention, was the prime minister of a Muslim country. (Yes, they assassinated her, just as the Sikhs killed Gandhi, the Burmese imprisoned Suu Kyi and the Filipinos murdered Aquinos husband. But at least they had some real moments of glory mixed in with the tragedy.) So yes, it would be wonderful to have a woman take the oath of office in January. Not necessarily this January, but some January at some indefinite date in the future. However, the idea that the gender of a candidate is an overriding factor in deciding whether shes qualified, just as the idea that the race of a candidate should be given more weight than, say, his educational pedigree, strikes me as ignorant. In fact, it stinks. Gender is a very poor barometer of how someone is going to vote, and it is insulting to believe that women vote in a bloc, just as it is insulting to suggest that all African-Americans support affirmative action or that all Latinos are in favor of immigration reform. Clinton is fueling her campaign with that combustible gasoline that threatens to burn down (not Bern down) the patriarchy. She dismisses her critics as misogynists, even though shes very skillful about not using that precise word. She simply talks about how important it is to empower women. Except shes not talking to women like me. Clinton would love to disconnect the wires on my control panel to make me and other critics completely inoperative. Thats why this idea that we need to support her because of her gender is offensive. Why should I vote for someone who looks like me when she represents everything I reject? Grand, dramatic gestures are great when Tony Curtis makes them, but not at the polls. There may be reasons to vote for Clinton, although I certainly cant figure out what they are. I love and respect some people who have openly pledged their support to her. But gender should be relevant in the calculus. There are many women who have portfolios as impressive (Elizabeth Warren on one end, Condoleezza Rice on the other) but who dont have her baggage. And Im not talking Fendi. Authorities say a Cazenovia man burglarized a Sauk County church this winter and pawned the stolen items. The Sauk County District Attorneys Office has charged 20-year-old Tayt M. Rasmussen with felony burglary and misdemeanor theft, alleging he broke into the Holy Family Catholic Church in La Valle. According to the criminal complaint, a Sauk County Sheriffs Department deputy was dispatched to the church Jan. 16. At the scene, a representative of the church told the deputy that an Apple iPod, a sound system control panel, a wired microphone, and an amp monitored speaker had been stolen. The complaint states that this month, while a detective was reviewing records from the Leads Online pawn database, he found one of the stolen items with a matching serial number. Investigators located other items through the database, and later followed up with Rasmussen. The complaint states that Rasmussen took responsibility for the burglary, saying he had recently been kicked out of his home and had no money. He allegedly told an officer he knew about the equipment because he had attended the church in the past. The plan, Rasmussen allegedly told the officer, was to sell the equipment to a friend that performs as a DJ. However, he later opted to pawn the items. Rassmussen said he got into the church through an unlocked door, the complaint states. Rasmussen has been released on a $1,000 signature bond and is due to appear in court May 25. JUNEAU | A 70-year-old Fox Lake man is facing multiple felony charges resulting from a 2014 traffic crash that led to the death of an 9-year-old Lindenhurst, Illinois, boy and severely injured two adults. Lee Henricksen is charged with felony homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle and two felony counts of reckless driving, cause great bodily harm. If convicted of all charges he faces up to 17 years in prison and $45,000 in fines. On Aug. 15, 2014, a semi truck, Honda Insight and Dodge Intrepid were involved in a crash at the intersection of Highway A and Burns Road in the town of Beaver Dam. Acccording to the criminal complaint, the Dodge County Sheriffs Department crash reconstructionist determined that the driver of the semi truck, identified as Henricksen, failed to stop or brake for the Honda who was stopped at the intersection of Highway A and Indian Hills Trail waiting for a northbound vehicle to pass so it could make a left turn. Henricksens semi truck struck the Honda and pushed it into oncoming traffic where it was struck by the Dodge Intrepid. According to the criminal complaint, the sheriffs crash team determined that Henricksen was not paying attention to the roadway and was exceeding the posted speed limit at the time of the crash. Officers estimated his speed between 58 and 70 mph when the posted speed limit is 45 mph. The driver of the Honda, identified as Judith Haddad, 45, of Lindenhurst, Illinois, told officers that her 8-year-old son, Ilan Hurtado, was trapped in the backseat and unresponsive. Officers located a pulse on the son but noticed it was very weak. Both Haddad and her son were extricated from the vehicle taken by Flight For Life to UW Hospital in Madison. The driver of the Dodge, identified as Jennifer Polenska, 31, Waupun, told officers that she was driving north on Highway A and saw the black Honda stopped at the intersection of Highway A and Indian Hills Trail. She allegedly said that a semi truck struck the back end of the black Honda which was pushed into her lane of traffic. Polenska said she then struck the black Honda although she tried to avoid the vehicle. Polenska identified the operator of the semi truck as Henricksen. Officers interviewed Henricksen who said that he did not see the vehicle in front of him and rear ended the black Honda. He said that the Honda then swung into oncoming traffic, striking the Dodge Intrepid head on. While being interviewed, Henricksen allegedly said, I have been driving for 35 years. I never did anything or hurt anybody. Henricksen was uninjured in the crash and voluntarily submitted to a blood draw following the accident at Beaver Dam Community Hospital. No alcohol or drugs were detected in Henrickens blood. On Aug. 19 the 9-year-old child who was trapped in the Honda during the accident was pronounced dead at UW Hospital in Madison. An autopsy was conducted and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the brain which caused swelling. Haddad suffered multiple fractures including a pelvis fracture, broken ribs, and broken lower vertebrae. According to the criminal complaint, she currently remains in a rehabilitation facility in Chicago for the injuries sustained in the crash. Polenska suffered a broken right ankle, a broken left arm, damaged tendons in the right knee, and contusions and abrasions over her body. Henricksen will make his initial appearance in court on May 9 at 9 a.m. MAYVILLE | Amber and Alan Schraufnagel, founders of the Open Door Coffeehouse, a non-profit and community resources center, have spent the past year planning events and hosting seminars to better their community. Now, the couple is planning a different type of event: a benefit to raise money for Alans medical bills. Alan was born with a heart defect and when he was 10-months old he had open heart surgery to repair the defect. Amber explained that everyone who receives that heart surgery has the condition that Alan suffers from now called tetralogy of fallot. This defect essentially means that Alan has a hole in the lower chamber of his heart. Amber said about 20 percent of people who have the condition have to have it repaired. This year he noticed there was something physically different, Amber said. In February, Alan saw his cardiologist and learned that it was time. The cardiologist said that it was time and he is not just going to have a repair. He is going to have his valve completely replaced. So it is open heart surgery. Alan will have his heart valve completely replaced with a cows valve. Alan, who grew up on a farm, joked, Now I can literally say you can take the boy out of the farm, but you cant take the farm out of the boy. Despite Amber and Alans positive attitude, the financial burden of Alans open heart surgery has been difficult for the couple. With evaluating our insurance situation, we knew that we had a $10,000 deductible that was not even close to being met, Amber said. There is a very high success rate, but what is very hard is the recovery. The doctors have told Alan to expect six to eight weeks off from work to recover from the surgery. Since he works for a small company, there is no short term disability available. When we figured out what the deductible is going to look like, added medical costs on to that, him being down and out and me working, needing additional babysitting time plus his time off, we are looking at $15,000 to $20,000, Amber said. We are doing everything we can to plan for that, but when you only get a couple of months notice it can be challenging. So their families helped them create a plan. Amber said, My mom and my brother came up with the idea to have a benefit at a gun club and do trap shooting because he loves trap shooting and hunting so lets do something that he really enjoys. The Horicon Gun Club, W5612 Prospect Road, will host a benefit on May 7 from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. called Healing a Broken Heart. Amber said that the name has a two-fold purpose. For us the purpose of it is because physically he is having this broken heart fixed, but also as believers and Christians we feel that our broken heart is always being healed and God is always working in it. So our perspective is that God is doing two things, He is healing him physically and we are always working on our hearts in a spiritual aspect as well, Amber said. The event will kick off with a three-hour motorcycle tour, led by Matt Kolb, a musician and member of Bikers for Christ. The tour is expected to start at 11 a.m. There will also be open trap shooting from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Horicon Gun Club. For $20, participants will get 50 birds and 50 percent of all of the profits will go straight to the Schraufnagel family. Starting at 4 p.m. the family will serve two creative food dishes. A Mexican plate will be offered with chips and salsa donated by Don Ramon in Mayville. A Filipino plate will also be offered as Ambers family is Filipino. It will be an opportunity for people to eat food they cant normally get around here, she said. Three local bands will be playing throughout the evening including Justin Regner, Matt Kolb and a cover band called Yesterday. There will also be a silent auction. People have been doing really amazing things, Amber said. Alan said that this has been a very humbling experience. I just keep thinking about all of the people we dont even know that have supported us. There are people out there with way bigger issues than what I have going on and to see people we dont even know step out and support us like this, thats awesome. There are still a lot of good people out there. Alan said he has been struggling with how to tell his two children, a 4-year-old and 2-year-old, about the surgery. Alan said, One of the things I have been struggling with is that every little kid sees their dad as superman. And for the kids to see me as vulnerable and not being superman is difficult. Amber responded saying, They are going to see you come back stronger. You are a positive person and this is a time where we can shape their perception of life. We could take this as a negative thing or we can say that the doctors are going to put a Band-Aid on your heart and daddy might be lying down and sleepy for a while but we are just going to help him. Alan responded, When it is all said and done I will be superman. April 4, 9:04 a.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident with no injuries on Highway 60 and West James Street in the city of Columbus. April 5, 6:25 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident with injuries on Highway 151 in the town of York. April 10, 10:27 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department was dispatched and cancelled while en route. April 13, 8:44 a.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident with injuries on Highway 151 in the city of Columbus. April 14, 8:16 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department was dispatched and cancelled while en route. April 16, 10:58 a.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a grass fire on Highway K in the town of Columbus. April 17, 11:59 a.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to vehicle fire on Park Avenue in the city of Columbus. April 18, 1:15 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to assist the Reeseville Fire Department for a large grass fire. Items are listed under the day of the event only, running as space permits prior to the event. To submit items, call 745-3511, email jcutsforth@capitalnewspapers.com or visit www.portagedailyregister.com. Include name and phone number. Today Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door 4. Bring childs immunization record. Call the Flu Vaccination Hotline at 608-742-9735 for information about flu vaccine. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information. Mothers Day Vendor Open House, 4 to 8 p.m. Dinos Restaurant, upstairs meeting room, New Pinery Road, Portage. Mothers Day items, cash and carry table, snacks and refreshments. Vendors include Tupperware, Party Lite, 31 Bags, Tastefully Simple and Norwax. For information, call Eva at 608-408-0471. Portage Sharing Supper, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Bartels Middle School, Portage. Food and conversation. Kids Corner for young people to do a craft and hear a story, as well as informational tables for adults. All welcome. Culvers Cares Night fundraiser for Navigating Autism, 5 p.m. Culvers, New Pinery Road, Portage. Come out and enjoy dinner with a portion of the proceeds going to help Navigating Autism. Second Harvest mobile food pantry, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. St. Marys Catholic Church, 318 S. Main St., Pardeeville. Do not line up before 3 p.m. Bring boxes, bags, wagons, etc., to carry food. Seniors Bowling Social, 1 p.m. Tollys Alleys, East Wisconsin Street, Portage. Cost is $6 and includes three games of bowling and shoe rental. Euchre card party, 6:30 p.m. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, W8267 Highway 33 East, Portage. Public welcome. Contact: Cloe, 429-2363. Zumba Toning, 8:30 a.m. VFW Hall, West Collins St., Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Zumba Toning, 6 p.m. Harrisville. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Zumba Gold, 6:30 p.m. Angie W. Cox Public Library, Pardeeville. Session runs Mondays through May 23. $20 session fee or $5 drop ins are always welcome. For more information, contact Deb at DJMACK00001@yahoo.com. This event is not sponsored or endorsed by the Angie W. Cox Public Library. Tuesday Fundraiser for the Montello Middle School and High School Robotics Team, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Montello High School. The robotics club will have a brat and hot dog fry to help generate funds for next years teams. The new competition video will be revealed and the teams will demonstrate Spunky Monkey, Junk Yard and a claw bot. After they have demonstrated the robots, attendees will have a chance to drive the robots and try to make some points. Open Euchre, 6:30 p.m. Sajs on Main, Pardeeville. For information, call 429-3409. Portage Public Library offers adult coloring, 4 to 5 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Open to adults age 18 and older. Coloring sheets and colored pencils provided. Runs every other Tuesday. Portage Family Skate Park Public Meeting, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Gerstenkorn Administration Building, 305 E. Slifer St., Portage. All interested people are welcome to attend. If the Portage Schools are closed or released early the PFSP meeting will be canceled and announced on our Facebook page with a new meeting location as soon as possible. Zumba Toning, 4:30 p.m. Woodridge Primary School, Portage. $5 drop in or session fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Wednesday Cooking demo and author talk with author Genevieve Davis, 5 p.m. Montello Public Library, Montello. Davis will speak about and sign copies of her book Fannis Viennese Kitchen. There will be a strawberry cake served. Fannis Viennese Kitchen is a collection of authentic Austrian recipes for dishes like Apple Strudel and Plum Dumplings, and stories of immigrant life in Wisconsin. The talk includes a cooking demo of the strawberry cake pictured on the cover of the book, topped with whipped cream, topfen and fresh strawberries. For more information, visit www.october7thstudio.com. Bingo, 5:30 p.m. 131 Restaurant, North Main Street, Pardeeville. Bingo will be played every Wednesday, except the first one of the month. Endeavor Sharing Supper, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Endeavor Elementary School, Endeavor. Enjoy a free dinner from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Informational booths and free blood pressure checks will be set up for the adults. Kids Corner provides activities for the children. Join us in this opportunity for food, fellowship and fun. This months sponsor is Trinity United Parish. Pauquette Wordcrafters, 9:30 a.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. All writers welcome. St. Vincent de Paul free medical clinic, 9 a.m. to noon. Wilz Drugs lower level, 140 E. Cook St., Portage. No appointments needed. Information needed is name, date of birth and a contact number. A chiropractor is available from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesdays. A foot clinic is available every week. The clinic can do exams and prescribe medications. Physical therapist available. Discounted medications are available at Wilz and Walmart. Call Bonny Oestreich, RN, at 608-234-0159 for information. Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door 4. Bring childs immunization record. Call the Flu Vaccination Hotline at 608-742-9735 for information about flu vaccine. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information. Portage Center for the Arts presents the Area High School Art Show, Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Drury Gallery hours are from 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Call 742-5655 for more information. Photos at Tivoli Portage Center for the Arts at Tivoli presents an exhibit featuring paintings by Dr. James Foskett, MD. Runs through June. Free and open to the public. Tivoli is located at 2805 Hunters Trail, behind Divine Savior Healthcare in Portage. Texas Hold em card tournament, VFW Hall, 215 W. Collins St., Portage. Register at 6 p.m. Cards begin at 6:30 p.m. Entry fee is $20. One hundred percent payout. Open to the public. For information, call the VFW Hall at 742-5350. Free blood pressure screenings, 1 to 5 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. No appointment necessary. Call 745-6405 for more information. Do not eat, smoke, drink caffeine or exercise for 30 minutes prior. Zumba Toning, 5 p.m. Diverse Options, Montello. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Zumba, 5:30 p.m. 1208 Northport Road (the former Freedom Carpeting building). This is a $5 drop-in class. For more information, contact Deb at DJMACK00001@yahoo.com or Rena at 697-6713. Thursday Brown Bag Lunch Series, noon to 12:45 p.m. Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Gospel music by the Three Wives Men, featuring Jim Bernander, Paul Peterson and the Rev. Dennis Weis. Cost is $5 at the door. Bring a lunch if desired. Student groups welcome; please call 608-742-5655 for group pricing. Endeavor Lions Club Bingo, 6:30 p.m. Endeavor-Moundville Fire Department, Endeavor. Marquette County Immunization Clinic, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Marquette County Health and Human Services, 428 Underwood Ave., Montello. Bring immunization records. Parents must accompany children younger than 18. For information, call 297-3135. Museum at the Portage, 804 MacFarlane Road, Portage. Open from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday through Saturday in April, May, September and October; and 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday in June, July and August. Admission is free. Open Texas Hold em, 7 p.m. Sport Club 22, Pardeeville. For information, call 566-9655. Portage World War II Museum, 119 E. Cook St., Portage, offers free tours to all veterans from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The tours take 2 1/2 hours. For information, call 608-697-3690. Wyocena Red Cross blood drive, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Columbia Health Care Center, 323 W. Monroe St., Wyocena. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required. Zumba, 5:15 to 6 p.m. Woodridge Primary School, Portage. $5 drop in or session fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Friday Art at Tivoli Portage Center for the Arts at Tivoli presents Carnival on the Banks of the River Styx by Jim Foskett. Exhibit runs through June. Free and open to the public. Tivoli is located at 2805 Hunters Trail, behind Divine Savior Healthcare in Portage. Euchre card party, Portage Presbyterian Church, 120 W. Pleasant St., Portage. Meal served at 6 p.m. and cards begin at 6:30 p.m. A free will offering of $5 includes cards and the meal. All proceeds from this event will be directed to the Yakutat, Alaska Presbyterian Church. Bring an item for the food pantry. Oxford Red Cross blood drive, noon to 5 p.m. Oxford Grade School gym, 222 S. Franklin Ave., Oxford. Portage World War II Museum, 119 E. Cook St., Portage, offers free tours to all veterans from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The tours take 2 1/2 hours. For information, call 608-697-3690. Unique Singles, 5 p.m. Pizza Ranch, New Pinery Road, Portage, Portage. All single men and women older than age 50 welcome. The group is strictly social with no dues or officers. In one sense, said Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt, the state is requiring Columbia County to form a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. But in another sense, Voigt told the Columbia County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday, the commission offers an opportunity to explore ways to improve the whole court system. The County Board authorized the creation of the council, but not without raising several questions. According to the resolution creating the council, the purpose is to allow agencies participating in the criminal justice system to review, research and recommend criminal justice initiatives through collaboration efforts. But one key reason for forming the council, Voigt said, is to meet a state requirement that a group of this type must oversee any applications that the county might make for treatment alternative and diversion programs. Job one for the council, he said, would be to seek renewal of a Wisconsin Department of Justice grant that has paid for Columbia Countys existing treatment court for people who have been charged with operating while intoxicated for a third time. And, Voigt noted, his colleague, Judge Todd Hepler, is interested in applying for funding for a treatment court for people with addictions to opiates such as heroin. According to the resolution, the councils membership will consist of the Columbia County Circuit Court presiding judge, the chairperson of the County Board, the chairperson of the County Board committee that oversees the judiciary (in Columbia County, thats the Judiciary Committee), the district attorney, a representative from probation and parole, a representative of the Columbia County Chiefs of Police Association, the clerk of circuit courts, a representative of the public defenders office, the director of the Department of Health and Human Services and a representative of the county bar association. Although applications for TAD programs would be one of the councils functions, Voigt said it wouldnt necessarily be the only function. Acknowledging that theres room for improvement in how the courts operate, Voigt said, This strikes me as a first step in how we come up with ideas on how to do better. Supervisor Barry Pufahl of Pardeeville -- who, as chairman of the County Boards Judiciary Committee, would be part of the council -- endorsed the concept. The exchange of thoughts, ideas and concepts make this a very important thing, in terms of what were going through in the county, he said. Voigt said that, for now, he does not envision that the council will ask for any money from the county, though such a request is possible in future years. No vaping policy In other business, the County Board authorized ordinance changes to include electronic nicotine delivery devices -- such as e-cigarettes and e-hookahs -- in the existing ordinance that bans smoking on county property. The change, proposed by the Health and Human Services Board, got voice-vote approval, but with a few supervisors dissenting. Supervisor Adam Field asked if there were studies showing that vaping results in the creation of secondhand smoke that is potentially harmful to others -- especially if the electronic devices are used outdoors. Outdoors, I dont know if water vapor is an issue, he said. Corporation Counsel Joseph Ruf said the ordinance change would affect only county-owned property where smoking of tobacco is already prohibited, including outdoor areas although some supervisors pointed out the presence of ash trays near the entrance of some county structures. The ordinance does not prohibit vaping in non-county-owned venues, nor does it regulate the way county merchants market and sell e-cigarettes and the flavored liquids used with them. Copper Peak in the UP offers one of the best fall colors views in the Midwest 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. Thabo Mbeki Foundation, Wits join forces Thabo Mbeki Foundation and Wits University have joined forces to address Africas biggest challenges. The Thabo Mbeki Foundation (TMF) and the University of the Witwatersrand have signed a memorandum of agreement that will advance peace, conflict resolution and security in the continent by establishing the African Centre for Conflict Management. The African Centre for Conflict Management (ACCM), to be hosted in the Wits School of Governance, will serve as the foundation and hub for the development of African focused research, whilst lessons are drawn to avoid future occurrences. It is reported that 78% of global conflicts take place in Africa. Conflict and insecurity remain some of the major challenges confronting the continent, leading to the curtailing of growth and the reversal of substantial gains that would have otherwise been made in various African countries. It is therefore important to ensure that conflicts are averted and, where they have occurred, are managed as expeditiously as possible in order to minimise damage. The ACCM will contribute to Africas renewal by undertaking research and analysis on African conflict management, democracy and governance and by building a generation of policy analysts and practitioners. Its strategic vision is to support the creation of a culture of democracy and peace on the continent, says Professor Adam Habib, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal. Furthermore, it is envisioned that the ACCM will contribute to the academic conversion of the TMF assignments by facilitating the theoretical knowledge that will facilitate the production and dissemination of knowledge relating to the promotion of peace and security, democracy and governance regionally, continentally in Africa, and globally. Students will also benefit. Doctoral and postdoctoral students will be able to help with preparation for missions and may accompany Mr Mbeki in his work, says Professor David Everatt, Head of the Wits School of Governance. This will be unique access for students of peace, security and governance in Africa. For the TMF, this presents a unique opportunity to advance the Foundations mission of making the necessary interventions in the continent to advance its renaissance. Africa which is at peace with its self, respecting the rule of how and good governance is an essential aspect of this ideal. This partnership provides in a practical sense the ability to make the necessary interventions in the interest of Africas people, says Dr Brigalia Bam, Chairperson of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. About the Thabo Mbeki Foundation The Thabo Mbeki Foundation is a non-profit organisation launched by former President Thabo Mbeki at the end of his service to the South African Government in 2008. The Foundation was established to support Mbekis continuing engagements with efforts aimed at achieving the African Renaissance. The Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand The Wits School of Governance is the leading African institution in the arena of governance, policy and development management for the public sector. Since its inception in 1993, it has been at the forefront of an international movement to transform public and development management, and currently produces the largest number of postgraduates in its field in southern Africa. A young eaglet (temporarily) leaves the nest for a checkup Sitting up and taking notice A five-week-old bald eagle sits up on a table during a workup by the Center for Conservation Biology. The CCB is examining this years crop of the nations bird for a study funded by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Photo by Joseph McClain Raptor phlebotomy Marie Pitts (right) draws blood from the brachial vein of the eagle, assisted by Bart Paxton (left) and Brian Watts. Photo by Joseph McClain Photo - of - Hide Caption Shane Lawler was taking care of business in a loblolly pine, 90 feet above Gospel Spreading Farm, unfazed by the agitated bald eagles spiraling around his head. All right! he yelled to Bryan Watts, waiting at the base of the tree. Ive got one bird in a bag. The bird in the bag was a five-week-old male eagle chick, the offspring of the very pair that was demonstrating bald-eagle conniptions. Lawler, an aerial technician for the Center for Conservation Biology, lowered the bagged bird on a rope to Center Director Bryan Watts. Lawler, like Watts, wore protective headgear, but the eagles didnt swoop in on him, keeping a reasonable distance even as their son was lifted from the nest and bagged. Different birds take this different ways, Watts said, as he carried the bagged chick through the woods. Eagles are OK with it, mostly. Ospreys are OK. Peregrines will come at you, though. The chick in the bag is a participant in a study funded by the U.S. Department of the Interiors National Park Service. The Center for Conservation Biology is taking blood from eagle chicks like the young male at Gospel Spreading Farm, to check for presence of contaminants such as heavy metals, organochlorines and other industrial pollutants. The National Park Service wants to know how the reproductive rate of eagles on parks land compares with other eagles in the Chesapeake watershed. Watts takes the bag to a working table set up on a dirt road just a few yards away from the nest tree, where Bart Paxton and Marie Pitts are waiting. Lawler will stay up in the tree, waiting for the return of the chick. The chick will be gone from nest for such a short period of time that its not worth it to climb down the tree, then back up. Its nice up there, Watts said. I used to take my phone up there, make a couple calls. Maybe have a little nap. The bird submits to handling without objection. Watts said eagle chicks arent always so docile. This ones a little younger than the ones we usually work with, he said. And hes a male. Females can be a little more aggressive. The males tend to be a little more laid back. First on the workup agenda is banding. We have the two bands on. The one is a USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] band, Watts said, picking up a pop rivet tool. Eagles are sort of special in that they take riveted bands because they have a history of taking the other band types off. The second band is a purple field-readable, alphanumeric band. Watts said that the bands can be read in the field through spotting scopes and telephoto lenses. We get a lot of success from photographers re-sighting our birds, particularly in the lower Tidewater, he said, adding that the photographers perform a valuable citizen-scientist role, sending in reports and photos which help the CCB track movements of the eagles. Once the bands are on, the team takes morphometric measurements. Using calipers, Watts measures the hallux, the eagles thumb talon, then the tarsus, or ankle. Then the team moves on to the bill, taking several measurements. Paxton, a CCB research biologist, keeps the bird calm and supported, manipulating the eagle while Watts takes measurements and calls them out as Pitts, the CCBs data administrator, records each value. Watts puts down his calibers and picks up a carpenters rule to measure the wing and tail. The tail is one of the last things to grow out, Watts explains, Its not even completely grown when they fledge. The eagle yields up a couple small feathers, samples for the sake of science then Paxton puts a hood on the bird for the blood draw. The hood makes the already laid-back eagle even calmer. The bird slowly deflates, slumping over in Paxtons grasp. Collapsed on the table, the masked and hooded eaglet looks like a defeated Mexican luchador wrestler. Pitts serves as phlebotomist, with Paxton and Watts holding the eagle steady and smoothing wing feathers back to give her access to the birds brachial vein. Three samples are taken. The sample vials contain an anticoagulant/preservative. One vial, with a green cap, will be sent to Rob Hale, professor of marine science at William & Marys Virginia Institute of Marine Science, for a study of organic contaminants. A second, tan-capped sample goes to a graduate student at West Virginia University doing work on eagles. The purple cap goes to a lab in Wisconsin for a study of metals. Measured and sampled, the five-week-old chick is dehooded and rebagged for trip home. He goes back up the loblolly tree where Lawler is ready to return him to the nest and his anxious parents, none the worse for wear. The CCB sampling team packs up for the short trip to Jamestown Island, where they have their work cut out for them. Five pairs of eagles are nesting on Jamestown Island this year. The Center for Conservation Biology is a joint program of Virginia Commonwealth University and William & Mary. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was on hand at Roger Williams Park in Providence Sunday, with an estimated 7,000 supporters turning out. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Recovering the safety margin of nuclear reactors 25 April 2016 Share Age is no barrier to prolonging the operation of nuclear power plants thanks to technological advances that could not have been predicted by reactor designers working decades ago. That was the conclusion of nuclear industry leaders at a conference hosted recently by EDF Energy and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) in London. Commonly referred to as 'life extension' - the practice of upgrading existing units to add years to their productivity - is therefore better described as "recovering safety margin", said Duncan Hawthorne, president and CEO of Bruce Power. Hawthorne, who has led the Canadian nuclear power plant operator since its formation in 2001, said: "Every one of us that works in this industry today is kind of standing on the shoulders of giants. The people who designed the Generation II reactors did so without the benefit of very much operational experience; less than 100 years of reactor opex was available for these plants. So I never talk about life extension, but rather about recovery of safety margin." Those "stalwarts of our industry" were working without computers, animation and 3-D stress analysis, he said. "Not surprisingly, they chose to apply conservatisms to their designs to acknowledge what they didn't know and to recognise that some of the material properties were covered by assumptions." Today, the industry has more than 12,000 reactor years of experience to reply upon, along with a "massive quantum of analysis", he said. "Intergranular stress corrosion cracking wasn't even talked about when these plants were built and yet every one of us has to deal with it now in some form or other. As an industry we've learned how important it is to do good preventative maintenance programs, to have an asset-led management plan and to think of all those components." Nuclear plant operators today can also inspect reactors using multiple phased array ultrasonic detectors. "We can use so many more data calculations to come up with proper analysis of what really is the life-limiting factor," said Hawthorne, who served as chair of WANO's Atlanta Centre and, until recently, was president of WANO's governing board. On 1 May, he will become CEO of Horizon Nuclear Power, the wholly owned UK subsidiary of Japan's Hitachi. UK challenge Jerry Haller, EDF Energy Generation's programs director, said that EDF Energy is investing 600 million ($868 million) on its "long standing strategy to extend the lives of its nuclear power plants where it is safely and economically viable to do so". Since it bought British Energy in 2009, the French state-owned company "has been deploying a lifetime approach" that has resulted, most recently, in new scheduled closure dates for four of its UK advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs). In February, the company announced that the Heysham 1 and Hartlepool plants could now close five years later than originally expected, in 2024, while Heysham 2 and Torness would close seven years later, in 2030. The four plants together supply electricity to more than one-quarter of UK homes. EDF Energy's other operating UK nuclear power plants include the Hunterston B and Hinkley Point B AGRs - which both started up in 1976 and are scheduled to close in 2023 - and the Dungeness B AGR which was commissioned in 1983 and set to shut in 2028. It also operates Sizewell B - the UK's only pressurised water reactor (PWR) - which began operating in 1995 and is currently scheduled to close in 2035. "Half the fleet would have been closed by today and the rest would have been closed by 2023," Haller noted. Today, the company does not expect any of the AGRs to close before 2023 and subsequently to still be running in 2030, he said. The challenges of the AGR design fall into three categories - technical safety, economic viability and stakeholder support, he said. The nuclear island of an AGR is "largely irreplaceable" and this "creates a situation where EDF Energy is taking a long-term view on investment in components which is in the interests of safety", he added. From a regulatory safety perspective there is no change, he said. "We still require start-up permission after every three-yearly statutory outage, we have ten-year PSRs [periodic safety reviews] and of course it must be in our safety case at all times. So the strategic approach we're taking to plan for what we think about the potential of the assets is entirely complementary to the regulatory position and really no detriment to that." EDF Energy has created a series of "through-life management strategies for every key plant system", he said. These are "holistic ageing plans for all the key systems that underpin our lifetime planning case", he said. These plans consider where investments need to be made, what additional inspections are required, what R&D work would be beneficial, and how the supply chain should be involved. As an example, Haller said the lifetime strategy for AGRs "is generally not to replace our data processing systems". Instead, the company is focused on working with the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) supply chain under long-term lifetime contracts. "This creates a level of certainty and confidence for the supply chain to invest in its people, facilities and R&D work," he said. AGRs feature a graphite moderator and are cooled using carbon dioxide. The graphite blocks cannot be replaced or repaired during the operating life of the reactors. However, radiation damage changes the shape and size of the crystallites that comprise graphite, a process known as dimensional change, which in turn degrades the mechanical properties of the graphite. For continued operation, it is therefore necessary to demonstrate that the graphite can still perform its intended role irrespective of the degradation. In support of the "ageing management" of AGRs in the UK, EDF Energy - together with Atkins, Frazer Nash and NRG - launched a graphite irradiation research program ten years ago. This project aims to simulate accelerated ageing of reactor graphite and involves neutron irradiation at the right temperature combined with simultaneous radiolytic oxidation. Greater investment in R&D and an increased number of inspections create a "win-win situation for safety", Haller said. On the "external" factors concerning EDF Energy's strategy to push back the closure dates of its UK AGRs, the engagement of its stakeholders is very important, he said. Part of this approach involves "linking up with the key infrastructural partners for our fleet", such as Sellafield, the nuclear fuel reprocessing and nuclear decommissioning site in Cumbria, and Springfields, the nuclear fuel production installation in Lancashire. Canadian experience Hawthorne contrasted the challenges of AGRs and Candu reactors, noting that there is no component in a Candu reactor that cannot be replaced. "Where graphite is a limiter on an AGR, for Candu reactors it would be fuel channel integrity, either because of hydrogen uptake or because of elongation," he said. "We can go in there and scrape those channels, take samples, we can do hydrogen uptake calculations and on the basis of that we can go from what the original design assumption was, of 175,000 full-power operating hours, and to what we are talking about now, which is 300,000." Hawthorne said this "massive difference" to the operating potential of Candu reactors is achieved by "much more in-depth examination". "We recover some of the safety margin by adding additional operating life. The original design of the Candu reactor expected an operating life for the fuel channels of 25 years, but that was based on 175,000 full-power hours. We will run these plants for 40 years before we change the fuel channels," he said. "I've just signed a deal with the government of Ontario to allow us to refurbish our Candu fleet that will see them operating through to 2060. That's almost 50 years more. These reactors will go for almost 80 years in operation. Of course, in order to do that we'll replace the fuel channels and the steam generators, but the important thing is good inspection techniques, much better capability to analyse the group data and statistically to evaluate it. A much larger population of operating experience shared by the industry gives us the ability to recover safety margin." Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, in cooperation with Canadian industry, began developing the first Candu (Canada deuterium uranium) reactor in the late 1950s. Candu reactors use heavy water (deuterium oxide) as a moderator and coolant, and are fueled using natural uranium (as opposed to enriched uranium). The advantages of the Candu reactor are savings in fuel cost, because the uranium does not have to go through the enrichment process, and reduced reactor downtime from refueling and maintenance. The first commercial Candu reactors began operations in Pickering, Ontario, in 1971. Sixteen of Canada's 18 commercial reactors are located in Ontario (the others are in Quebec and New Brunswick). The technology and design of Candu reactors have evolved through several generations, with the newest reactors the Enhanced Candu 6 (EC6, based on Qinshan in China). The next-generation Advanced Candu Reactor (ACR-1000) was not fully developed. Today, there are 31 Candu power reactors in seven countries, as well as 13 'Candu derivative' reactors in India, with more being built. Export sales of 12 Candu units have been made to South Korea, Romania, India, Pakistan, Argentina and China, along with the engineering expertise to build and operate them. Three of the Canadian units are undergoing major refurbishment. As well as their use for electricity, Candu power reactors produce almost all the world's supply of the cobalt-60 radioisotope for medical and sterilization use. French strategy Age need not impact operating performance and reliability, explained Olivier Lamarre, deputy senior vice president of nuclear generation at EDF SA. The company manages all of France's 58 reactors, of which 22 will have been in operation for 40 years by the end of 2022. The French nuclear fleet represents 80% of the countrys power generation. EDF is "expanding the operational lifespan" of the French nuclear fleet beyond 40 years, which was the initial assumption at the design stage of PWRs, Lamarre said. "Since 2010, the basic position of the French safety authority has been that the 40-year stage is a new domain for nuclear safety. This position is informed by the existence of Generation III reactors like the European pressurised reactor," he said. "EDF considers that there are four industrial positions for extending the operational lifespan well beyond 40 years. First, a high-performing fleet with error-free operation both day to day and in the long-term. Second, to set and meet nuclear safety and environmental protection targets that are acceptable to the general public for operational plants over the long-term against Generation III reactor construction. Third, to maintain and renew internal engineering and operating skills. Fourth, to maintain and renew industrial equipment," he said. The evolution of nuclear power plant design has reduced the risk of core events by a factor of 2, he said, while the radiological consequences of design-basis accidents have to be reduced by a factor of 5 to 10. To achieve this, EDF will implement design modifications, he added. The company has established three industrial processes to ensure the long-term "fitness for service" of equipment and facilities, he said. These are an ongoing in-service inspection and maintenance process; a management process for ageing systems structure and components; and a management process for equipment obsolescence. EDF is focused on R&D, he said, and is involved in "large-scale international programs that are in line with international practice". This commitment was confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) corporate operational safety review team (OSART) report on EDF in 2014, he added. "EDF has embarked on a deliberate and challenging industrial program. For the non-replaceable equipment we demonstrate that it is able to perform as required for more than 50 years. And for replaceable equipment we justify its continued use in service or its replacement when its expected lifespan is less than 50 years," he said. "The continued operation of EDF's reactors beyond 40 years is an ambitious and challenging but attainable step forward for nuclear safety for the nuclear fleet in operation in France. It will make it possible to reach a very high level of nuclear safety that is close to the worldwide requirements of new reactors in terms of the radiological consequences of an accident, meaning that the extension of the operational lifespan is indeed a possibility," he said. US difficulties In the USA, operators are being forced to close nuclear power units, not because they lack potential for continued operation, but because of the "bad economics" of running them under deregulated electricity market conditions, said Bob Duncan, vice president of plant operations and supplier support at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. Duncan told the conference that, since the Three Mile Island accident - a partial nuclear meltdown that occurred in March 1979 in unit 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania - operators have "delivered the promise" of safety, reliability, high capacity factors and higher measures of safety. "What we haven't delivered on is economics. So our biggest challenge in the US at this point is matching production costs of our nuclear power facilities against the natural gas prices that for the foreseeable future will be $4 per million BTUs for 50 years and production tax credits associated with solar and wind," he said. Small single units have been "the first to go under the knife", but "we also see bad economics against the large dual-unit plants in the Midwest", he said. The latest example was Entergy's announcement earlier this month that its Pilgrim nuclear power plant, a single 680 MWe boiling water reactor, will be refuelled for the final time in 2017 and cease operations in 2019. The company cited poor market conditions, reduced revenues and increased operational costs behind its decision to close the only nuclear power station in the state of Massachusetts. The unit entered service in 1972 and is currently licensed to operate until 2032. Duncan, who is also senior vice president for nuclear operations at Duke Energy Corporation, said the US nuclear industry responded to this state of affairs late last year when the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the Electric Power Research Institute "put together a task force to work on economics". This task force established a strategy it named Delivering the Nuclear Promise to maintain operational focus, increase value and improve efficiency. "Those three strategies broke into four building blocks" that are very similar to the response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident that occurred in Japan in March 2011, he said. "Our objective is within three years to create $3 billion worth of operating margin in our costs to run our nuclear power plants. That became 30% of our operating cost, which at that point some didn't believe, but we had to create an ambitious goal so that we would be able to enliven the industry. This isn't just another cost cutting measure; this is the life and death of nuclear power in the US," he said. The first three of the four building blocks are "economic analysis, economic viability and development of the teams necessary to make the economics and the efficiencies work", he said. "The fourth centres around stakeholders because when you start to talk about a 30% reduction in O&M [operation and maintenance] costs, who cares about the job - the mechanic, the I&C [instrumentation and control] tech, the unions - many of the stakeholders that we may have taken for granted earlier, taken into the fold." International support Peter Tarren, head of operational safety at the IAEA, described the Vienna-based organisation's position on "safety over extended life". The IAEA "stole the concept" of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Generic Ageing Lessons Learned (GALL) report, he said, and used it as the starting point for its International Generic Ageing Lessons Learned (IGALL). "This is a truly international effort spread over several years and has several different technological areas. These efforts are documented in databases and publications, in the form of downloadable safety guides and reports in this area," he said. The agency also offers peer reviews. An OSART includes assessment of the long-term operation of a plant, but an IAEA Member State can also request a Safe Long Term Operation (SALTO) review. This can be tailored to focus on Ageing Management Plans and/or on other programs related to long-term operation to support the given Member State in enhancing the safety of its nuclear power plants. The SALTO peer review service can also support regulators in establishing or improving regulatory and licensing strategies for the long-term operation of plants. Tarren, who prior to joining the IAEA was the director of nuclear training at Ontario Power Generation, encouraged the "interplay between utilities and regulators". Regulators have a "real desire", he said, "to find out what long-term operation is all about". The IAEA also looks at the human resource side of long-term operation of a plant, Tarren said. "Just at the time the nuclear fleet is getting towards the end of its normal licence lifetime, sure enough the people working at the plants are also. So it's all about replacing the people and skills." He encouraged delegates to engage with the IAEA, "We welcome your assistance, not just in drawing up standards, but also in helping us to do the reviews themselves," he said. "The benefit that we hope that you will get and appreciate, especially as the global nuclear fleet becomes more mature, is an increased consistency approach among operators and regulators, sharing information and experience and reducing overall costs to safely extend the lives of these hugely valuable assets." Safety and security Chairing the 14 April conference's panel session, which was titled 'Cycle Safety over Extended Life', Stuart Crooks, managing director of EDF Energy Generation, said the subject "requires huge professionalism, engineering skill and business leadership". "This subject is in many ways at the forefront and the cutting edge of science and technology in a context of economic, political and societal change," Crooks said. "Life extension of existing nuclear assets is likely to be a key part of many national strategies, continuing the provision of low-carbon baseload generation and bridging the gap with new nuclear assets. Our primary concern when making life extension decisions should be that of maintaining and enhancing nuclear safety and security. This ensures that the unique and powerful technology we have and the technology that we manage remains a significant and positive contributor to our society and to our environment." The environment in which each of the operators speaking on the panel work "may be very different", Crooks said, "but their consideration of safety and security within life extension decisions is of a consistent and clear measure of importance". Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics EU increases Chernobyl funding on eve of anniversary 25 April 2016 Share The European Commission today pledged to the Nuclear Safety Account fund the largest part of the 45 million ($51 million) expected from the G7 and the Commission in addition to the existing support. This fund supports in particular the safe decommissioning of units 1 to 3 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. On 26 April 1986, the Chernobyl plant suffered the worst nuclear accident in history when a power runaway event wrecked reactor 4. The three remaining reactor units, however, were vital to Ukraine's electricity needs and continued to operate for some years. Unit 2 shut down in 1991, unit 1 in 1996 and unit 3 in 2000. The plant officially entered the decommissioning phase in April last year, following approval by the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine (SNRC). The first phase of decommissioning is the so-called final shutdown and preservation stage, which is expected to take ten years. EU Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica said in a statement today: "The European Union has been at the forefront of the international efforts to deal with the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, to decommission the nuclear power plant and to make the site environmentally safe. Today's pledge will further contribute to ensuring that the projects are brought to a successful conclusion." The Nuclear Safety Account, managed by the London-headquartered European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funds the construction of a storage facility for used nuclear fuel from the operation of the Chernobyl plant. The fund was set up in 1993 to finance nuclear safety projects in Central and Eastern Europe. Today it provides funds for the decommissioning of the three remaining Chernobyl units. Some 29 countries and the European Commission contribute to the Nuclear Safety Account. The main project currently supported by the fund is the interim used fuel storage facility (ISF2). Its completion is foreseen for 2017. The facility will provide for the processing and storage of the used nuclear fuel from units 1, 2 and 3, which is required for the decommissioning of the plant. The EU's contribution was announced at the Nuclear Safety Account Pledging Conference taking place today in Kiev, one day ahead of the 30th anniversary of the accident. This contribution is in addition to those already provided to the Chernobyl Shelter Fund for the construction of the New Safe Confinement (the Shelter) and to other related projects to isolate and ultimately dismantle the unit which suffered the accident. The Shelter, to be completed in 2017, will prevent radioactive releases and contribute to make the site environmentally safe and stable, which is also important to the countries directly bordering Ukraine. The EU is the main donor to this project with around 430 million. The European Commission statement noted: "After the Chernobyl accident of 1986 and political changes in the early nineties, the European Commission initiated a vast nuclear safety program and cooperated with international partners to improve the safety of the Nuclear Power Plants in the New Independent States. In the context of this program the European Commission funded a number of assistance projects in Chernobyl, worth some 550 million." In addition to contributions to international funds (the Chernobyl Shelter Fund and the Nuclear Safety Account), the Commission funded other projects to study, assess and mitigate the consequences of Chernobyl accident and for the processing and storage of radioactive waste at the site. Other projects addressed the social and regional consequences of the Chernobyl accident and provided for power replacement following the closure of the plant, as well as reform of the energy sector in Ukraine. In total, the European Commission has committed around 730 million so far to Chernobyl projects in four ways. Firstly, 550 million for assistance projects, out of which 470 million were channelled through international funds, and 80 million implemented directly by the European Commission. Secondly, power generation support of 65 million. Thirdly, 15 million for social projects. And finally, 100 million for research projects. State Specialised Enterprise ChNPP, which manages the Chernobyl plant, said on 26 November last year the first ten canisters for ISF2 had been delivered to the site. ISF2 was constructed under a contract Ukraine signed with US-based Holtec International in 2007. It will store all the used fuel on the site for at least 100 years. The 'double-walled' canisters are "at the heart of" the NUHOMS interim dry storage system to be used at ISF-2 for the long-term interim storage of used nuclear fuel from the Chernobyl plant's RMBK-1000 reactors. The purpose of this system is to store the used fuel for the entire design service life of ISF2 in an inert gas environment, SSE ChNPP said. The system consists of an enclosure vessel comprising two welded canisters that form two separate confinement areas to prevent the spread of radioactive materials, an internal basket and fuel tubes. It is designed for the horizontal placement of each canister inside the individual compartments of a concrete storage module. The canisters are being produced at Holtec's manufacturing division in Pittsburgh, USA. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Jarious Treymayne Mock By: Feng Qian A man was slapped with an additional charge after trying to post bail with fake money, police in North Carolina said. The Greensboro Police Department charged 20-year-old Jarious Treymayne Mock, with forgery after producing fake currency to post $200 bail. According to the police investigation, Mock was found drunk and disruptive on South Elm Street on Thursday. As the officer was writing a ticket for Mock, it was discovered that he had an active arrest warrant for failing to appear in court. He was booked into the Guilford County jail, where a judge set bail at $200. While he was producing cash, officers noticed that a $100 bill was fake. While being searched, officers found more fake cash. Mock was then charged with forgery. His bail was increased to $2,000. The Mexican federal government has officially shut down the investigation by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) into the September 2014 disappearance of 43 teaching students (normalistas), who are known as the Ayotzinapa 43. The five members of the GIEI presented their findings Sunday in Mexico City to a packed audience that included relatives of the victims and members of human rights groups, some of whom shouted dont leave. The 608-page document constitutes a damning indictment of the federal government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, which is already popularly reviled for its role in the atrocity. The GIEI was appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), an arm of the Organization of American States, to investigate the normalistas disappearance from Iguala, a town in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, following a day of protests against federal cuts to education. It charges that the government blocked key lines of investigation, mishandled evidence, used torture to extract confessions from alleged suspects and protected officials suspected of participating in the mass disappearance. According to a study cited in the report, 80 percent of those who were arrested in connection with the case showed signs of having suffered physical violence at the hands of the authorities. The panel uncovered evidence of federal police agents and even an agent of Mexican army intelligence having been present at the scenes in which the crime unfolded and participating in the operation to capture the students. The document establishes that claims made after the massacre, in an attempt to justify the actions of the police, that the students had planned to disrupt a political event organized by the wife of the mayor of Iguala were false. It likewise discounted allegations that the students had been linked to organized crime. In their report, the experts concluded that different police forces and organized crime members closely coordinated their efforts in order to build a net preventing the departure of buses that had been commandeered by the normalistas in Iguala. The report also said it was likely that different buses of students were taken to different locations. This contradicts what had been the official version of events put out by the former Mexican attorney general. The experts charged that the Mexican government had erected structural barriers to their investigation, by stonewalling requests for evidence, replying to the panels inquiries with formal rather than substantive responses and a refusal to pursue lines of investigation. The Mexican government promised full cooperation with the independent experts. But when some of their preliminary conclusions called into deep question the governments version of eventsthat local Iguala police had turned the students over to a drug gang who then incinerated the students bodies in a dump in the neighboring town of Coculathat cooperation ground to a halt. As GIEI members told the New York Times in an interview published on Friday, in the end their efforts were met with harassment, stonewalling and intimidation by the federal government. The experts were denied access to critical witnesses and evidence. Perhaps the most glaring obstruction by the government was its persistent refusal to allow the group to interview members of the local army garrison, the 27th military battalion. In its report today the GIEI said it had testimony that in response to pleas for help from the students, soldiers said they could not intervene because it is not our jurisdiction. Active federal involvement in the disappearance of the normalistas was recently confirmed. Testimony to the Mexican human rights office showed that federal police stationed in Iguala pointed their weapons at the students when they were taken from a bus and turned over by Iguala police to local police in yet another neighboring town, Huitzuco. The GIEI in their report today confirmed that a missing student made a call the night of the disappearance from the Huitzuco area. GIEI member Angela Buitrago, known for prosecuting military and government officials for human rights abuses in Colombia, told the Times that the greatest difficulty the experts faced was overcoming the governments pact of silence. She explained that if the state or some state officials were involved, doors closed due to that complicity. The experts have concluded that the government will not permit the truth to come out. The experts have characterized the federal governments investigation as a secret procedure, based on declarations, likely coerced, of those to whom they decided to impute guilt, local drug gangs and police, that does not incorporate scientific proof. The group of independent experts also faced orchestrated attacks by Mexican media. Business and right-wing papers such as El Financiero and Milenio smeared them, undoubtedly with the complicity of the government. For example, Buitrago was said to have a history of pressuring witnesses and fabricating testimony. Another GIEI member, Ana Paz y Paz, who prosecuted a former Guatemala dictator for war crimes, was alleged to have supported terrorists. The report states that the group had been subjected to a strong media campaign which included numerous attacks and attempts at personally disqualifying its members. These actions demonstrate that there exist certain sectors who are not interested in the truth, nor in a relationship of collaboration that would really help Mexico to confront the problems of violations of human rights in the Ayotzinapa case. In retaliation for the experts independence, the government for months pursued charges that Emilio Alvarez Icaza, the CIDHs executive secretary who appointed them, had fraudulently spent money that was meant for the investigation. The Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (PSGSocialist Equality Party) is standing in the Berlin state elections in September to provide a political perspective to mobilize the broad opposition to war and social cuts. As was the case 100 years ago, only an international socialist movement against capitalism can prevent a world war. To all those seeking to oppose war, oppression, nationalism and social inequality, we say: Do all you can to support the PSG election campaign! Of all the problems confronting workers and young people, the growing danger of war is the most urgent. For 25 years, the US has carried out a virtually unbroken series of wars. It has destroyed whole societies, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It is encircling Russia and China militarily and has provoked conflicts in Ukraine, the South China Sea and Korea that threaten to unleash a world war. Nuclear arsenals are being restocked and the use of atomic weapons seriously considered. A recent report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies came to the conclusion that an atomic war between India and Pakistan would not necessarily have serious grand strategic consequences for the US, and might well have benefits. Germanys ruling elites want to ensure that in the fight for a re-division of the world and the scramble for raw materials and markets, they do not emerge empty handed. Seventy years after the downfall of Hitlers Third Reich, they are once again striving to make Germany a world power and Europes hegemon. Two years ago, the German government announced the end of military restraint. Ever since, the government and the media have systematically promoted militarism. In NATOs drive against Russia in Eastern Europe, in the wars in the Middle East, and in Africa, the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) are operating on multiple and distant fronts. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has announced additional defence spending of 130 billion euros, and the new Defence White Paper foresees the deployment of the Bundeswehr both at home and in new foreign missions. At the root of the return of German militarism is the profound crisis of world capitalism. In 2008, the criminal exploits of the banks drove the world financial system to the brink of the abyss. Since then, the crisis has further intensified. A massive speculative bubble threatens to burst and unleash a new financial crisis. The bitter struggle for markets and profits is undermining entire industries and threatening millions of jobs. The European Union, once the framework for political stability in Europe, is breaking apart and becoming the cockpit for ferocious class battles and national conflicts. While wages, pensions and social benefits are sinking, and the younger generation is left without a future, a tiny minority at the top of society wallows in obscene levels of wealth. The 62 richest individuals in the world possess more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. The ruling elites are reacting to the crisis of the capitalist system as they did in the 1930s. They are carrying out wars and planning even bigger ones. They are whipping up nationalism and strengthening the state apparatus of repression in anticipation of social upheavals. They are witch-hunting refugees and building up far-right and fascist forces such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the National Front in France and Donald Trump in the US. All of the establishment parties are closing ranks and veering to the right. They take an identical stance when it comes to social cuts, rescuing the banks and increasing military spending. They do not represent the interests of the broad mass of the population, but only the richest 10 percent. The Social Democratic Party (SPD), once considered the party of social reform, is today the party of the Hartz IV welfare and labour counter-reforms, raising the retirement age to 67 and imposing cuts within the framework of the debt ceiling. The SPD no longer rests on the working class, but on well-paid functionaries and upper-middle class layers. Berlin, where its candidate has been mayor for 15 years, has become the capital of poverty. The Greens, who began their rise under the banner of peace and environmentalism, have become the most aggressive warmongers. They have cast themselves as a business party of the modern type, in the words of the Green Party premier for the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Winifried Kretschmann. A particularly pernicious role is played by the Left Party. The only thing left about this party is its name. In the Berlin Senate, it championed the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top and carried out a policy of social devastation. It long ago swung behind the governments militarist course. The rightward turn of all the establishment parties can be seen most clearly in the disgusting witch-hunt against refugees. Desperate people fleeing war in the Middle East are being abused, crammed into prison camps and deported to Turkey. Hundreds drown in the Mediterranean every month. The attacks on refugees provide succour to the far right and serve as the pretext for the shredding of democratic rights. They are directed against the entire working class. Opposition to militarism and war, the defence of social and democratic rights, the support of refugees, and the struggle against the far-right AfD are inseparably connected. Mankind once again confronts the alternative: Either the capitalist system plunges the world into barbarism and war, or the working class, the overwhelming majority of the population, overthrows capitalism and builds a better society based on equality and democratic planning. Only an international movement of the working class can repulse the right wing and halt the drive to war. Such a revolutionary movement is not only necessary, it is also possible. All over the world, the opposition to social devastation and war is growing. In France, tens of thousands of young people are demonstrating against labour market reforms, flouting the state of emergency and police state measures imposed by the Hollande government. In the US, the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination of Bernie Sanders, who falsely calls himself a socialist, is winning the votes of millions of workers and youth who are looking for an alternative to capitalism. In Germany too, great class battles are on the agenda. In the steel and auto industries, in engineering, in retail and in all areas of the public sector, drastic social cuts and sackings are being prepared. It is necessary to develop a conscious movement against war and capitalism out of all these struggles. This requires an international and socialist perspective, advanced only by the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit. As the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world party of socialist revolution, the PSG stands in the tradition of revolutionary Marxism, defended by Leon Trotsky against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union. The building of the Fourth International is the focus of our campaign. Here in the capital of Germany, where the return of German militarism is being prepared and implemented, where university professors justify war and dictatorship, and where all parties participate in social attacks, we counterpose the unity of the international working class to capitalist barbarism. The basis of our participation in the election is the statement Socialism and the Fight Against War published by the ICFI. It advocates the following principles for building an anti-war movement: * The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population. * The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war. * The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class. * The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. This will make possible the rational, planned development of global resources and, on this basis, the eradication of poverty and the raising of human culture to new heights. It is on this basis that we plan to conduct a powerful campaign. We call on all those who agree to support the PSG election campaign. Make a generous donation today to help our campaign! If you are eligible to vote in Berlin, sign the petition form to enable our participation! Distribute this statement and other articles among your colleagues and via social networks! Take part in the election campaign and become a member of the PSG! On Friday, a US federal district judge denied a motion to dismiss a case brought against two psychologists who collaborated with the CIA in the course of its international torture program. The case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first time a lawsuit in US courts based on the torture program was allowed to proceed past the initial stages. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of three torture victims, only two of whom survived. The plaintiffs are Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman. Gul Rahman was tortured to death at the infamous Salt Pit CIA black site in Afghanistan. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA torture program published in December 2014, Rahmans body was found chained and naked on a cold concrete floor, covered in bruises. He was abducted while he was traveling to Islamabad to receive medical treatment, in a likely case of mistaken identity. According to the report, Rahman was shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor. The warden had ordered that Rahmans clothing be removed when he had been judged to be uncooperative during an earlier interrogation. Rahman left behind a wife and four daughters. Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a fisherman from Zanzibar, Tanzania, was by all accounts innocent of any wrongdoing or involvement in international terrorism. According to his attorneys, he has been destroyed physically and psychologically by prolonged torture. Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud was a refugee from Libya who was abducted in Pakistan. The US government never charged any of the three men with a crime. The lawsuit targets clinical psychologists James Elmer Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, who were hired by the CIA to design the torture program. These two psychologists based the CIA program on torture experiments on dogs, which used a prolonged regime of unavoidable electric shocks to produce learned helplessness. The psychologists proposed to test their pseudo-scientific theory on humans to see if it could cause individuals to break and cooperate with interrogators, even though neither of them had any experience with interrogation. Nor did either of them have any expertise in counterterrorism, requisite cultural or linguistic expertise, or knowledge of Al Qaeda. The psychologists were paid $81 million by the CIA for their role in overseeing the program. The ACLU has described the psychologists theories as junk science, since individuals who are tortured will generally say anything to get the torture to stop. A video report concerning the case by The Guardian is available here. According to the ACLU, the torture methods devised by the two psychologists include slamming [prisoners] into walls, stuffing them inside coffin-like boxes, exposing them to extreme temperatures and ear-splitting levels of music, starving them, inflicting various kinds of water torture, depriving them of sleep for days, and chaining them in stress positions designed for pain and to keep them awake for days on end. The lawsuit correctly labels these two psychologists as war criminals who participated in war crimes, and also accurately describes them as participating in an international criminal conspiracy. Further, as medical professionals, Mitchell and Jessen are accused of participating in illegal human experimentation. Involuntary experimentation on human beings is forbidden by the Nuremberg Code, which was promulgated in the aftermath of the gruesome practices that were performed at the Nazi concentration camps. Because they were independent contractors, many of the authoritarian immunities and privileges otherwise available to government agents in US courts are arguably inapplicable. Indeed, the evidence against the two psychologists is so overwhelming that the federal judge despaired of any plausible rationale for dismissing the case. I cannot summarily dismiss the complaint plaintiffs have filed, federal district judge Justin L. Quackenbush said during the two-hour hearing Friday. Its thorough to say the least. On its face, the complaint alleges not only aiding and abetting but participation and complicity in the administration of this enhanced interrogation program. Attorneys for the psychologists argued that they should not be held liable because they were merely suggesting torture methods that might be used. ACLU attorneys argued that the psychologists actually designed the program and were deeply involved in implementing it. The CIA torture program looms over the ongoing US elections like a giant volcano that everyone must pretend not to notice. The Senate Intelligence Committee report implicates top figures in both the Bush and Obama administrations in war crimes and conspiracies to cover up war crimes. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are in full agreement that these crimes will not be discussed and there will be no calls for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Since the systematic exposure of the program in December 2014, the media has completely dropped the issue, while the Obama administration has worked with Congressional Republicans to suppress the full report. As of this writing, only the reports executive summary has been released. Among the innumerable crimes exposed by the report, the most infamous was the practice of rectal rehydration, without evidence of medical necessity. In the Senate report, one medical officer translated this euphemism for torture into plain English: you get a tube up as far as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the baglet gravity do the work. The Senate report describes how detainees were subjected to this procedure repeatedly for no apparent medical reason, resulting in permanent disfiguring injuries. As the group Physicians for Human Rights wrote in 2014, Insertion of any object into the rectum of an individual without his consent constitutes a form of sexual assault. None of the individuals whose crimes were exposed in December 2014 have been prosecuted. Instead, many of these individuals continue to hold high posts in the Obama administration, including those who lied about the program and helped to cover it up. None of the presidential candidates, from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders, has called for the prosecution of these war criminals. Instead, the issue of torture has been raised principally by the Republican candidates who are promising to expand the practice. Donald Trumps position on torture is that he is in favor of more of it because we have to beat the savages. In March, he declared, we cannot continue to play by different sets of rules when we have people beheading Christians and selling their children into slavery. Bernie Sanders response to the Senate torture report in 2014 was to issue a perfunctory statement that meekly criticized torture from a pragmatic standpoint within the framework of the war on terror. Of course we must aggressively pursue international terrorists who would do us harm, but we must do so in a way that is consistent with the basic respect for human rights which makes us proud to be Americans, he wrote. The United States must not engage in torture. If we do, in an increasingly brutal world we lose our moral standing to condemn other nations or groups that engage in uncivilized behavior. He has since essentially dropped the issue, together with the rest of the political and media establishment. The ruling on Friday means that the case will proceed to discovery, allowing lawyers for the victims the right to obtain documents as well as to compel testimony under oath of individuals involved in the program. In a statement Friday, the ACLU wrote, Thanks to this unprecedented ruling, CIA victims will be able to call their torturers to account in court for the first time. A sense of the looming crisis resulting from the exposure of the CIAs crimes is provided by an exchange from Fridays hearing. The federal judge asked directly, Is there evidence in this case that the President of the United States of America specifically authorized the activities? James Smith, an attorney for the two psychologists, responded, Ultimately the CIA was authorized by the President of the United States to take these actions. April 25 marks two years since Michigan state and local city officials made the fateful switch of Flints water supply from the Detroit water system to the polluted Flint River. This reckless and criminal action set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the poisoning of an entire city of 100,000 residents. Despite the exposure of the poisoning of the Flint water system, there are no plans to replace the citys dangerous and antiquated lead water pipes. Instead, the state is moving to wash its hands of the matter, summed up in its recent edict to Flint residents that it will not continue to supply bottled water past the month of August. For its part, the Obama administration, after an initial show of outrage, has failed to appropriate any significant funds to address the crisis. The needs of the Flint population are enormous. A whole generation of children face learning and neurological problems due to exposure to tainted water caused by the leaching of lead from pipes that were not treated to carry corrosive river water. It is necessary to replace lead piping to thousands of homes in the city, a project estimated to cost as much as $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, at least 12 Flint residents have died due to an outbreak of Legionnaires disease believed to be linked to the switch in the citys water supply. A city long associated with the struggles of the working classthe site of the General Motors sit-down strike that established the industrial unions in the 1930sis once again in the forefront of a major social and political struggle. Flint residents, far from being passive victims, are fighting back against the poisoning of their water supply and the attempts by the state and local governments to cover up the disaster. An examination of the background to the Flint crisis and how it unfolded reveals in the starkest form the subordination of the public good to the pursuit of private gain and the domination of the government at all levels by corporate interests. The Flint disaster is a crime of capitalism. The decision to switch Flints water supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), its long-time source, grew out of mercenary financial considerations related to the building of a new pipeline from Lake Huron by the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA). Commercial interests hoped to profit handsomely from the pipeline, including by supplying water to fracking operations in the state. The water from the KWA, unlike that supplied by Detroit, would be raw and untreated lake water, therefore cheaper and more suitable for industrial operations. KWA financial backers needed Flints participation to make the project profitable. But Flints outdated water treatment plant required major upgrades to handle raw KWA water, an investment the KWA apparently had no intention of funding. The political framework for carrying out this money-making scheme was provided by the emergency manager system imposed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder and the Republican-controlled state legislature, with critical support from leading Democrats. Under this completely anti-democratic setup, the state declares cities, towns and school districts to be in a financial emergency and appoints so-called emergency managers to take over the running of the jurisdictions. The state-appointed czars have virtually unlimited powers, relegating elected officials to the status of bystanders. The test case was the appointment of an emergency manager and declaration of bankruptcy in Detroit in 2013, which was used to slash the pensions and health benefits of city workers and privatize public assets, including the Detroit Institute of Arts. The appointment of an emergency manager for Flint followed soon after the Detroit operation. At the same time Flint was preparing to switch its water source, plans were being laid to turn the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department over to a regional water authority, the first step toward privatization. Snyders state treasurer at the time was Andy Dillon, a Democrat, who had played an instrumental role in the Detroit bankruptcy. He gave the states approval to switch Flints water supply from the Detroit system, Flints water source for some 50 years. Since the Karegnondi pipeline would not be completed until 2016, the state-appointed emergency manager for Flint proposed to draw the citys water from the Flint River in the meantime, a move he claimed would save some $5 million. Flint City Council members and the mayor, all Democrats, signed off on these moves. The decision to switch to the Flint River came despite a history of groundwater contamination in the area and despite the fact that the river had been a dumping ground for General Motors factories. At times, moreover, it had been the repository for city sewage overflows. According to a former top official in the DWSD, Flint rejected a proposal to remain with the Detroit water system that would have saved some $800 million over the life of a 30-year contract. The deal would have saved about 20 percent over the proposal by the KWA. Even before the actual switch, concerns were raised. Michael Glasgow, laboratory and water quality supervisor for the city of Flint, wrote a cautionary email eight days before the switch to Flint River water. In it, he warned the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) that the citys water plant was not ready to begin treatment of Flint River water. Within a short of period of the April 25, 2014 switch, complaints began to pour in. Residents told of rashes from bathing in the water and noted its foul taste and smell. Local and state officials responded by declaring that the water was safe and met quality standards. Between August and September 2014, the city issued three boil water alerts for elevated levels of coliform bacteria in the water. At about this time, a leading environmental expert at Michigan State University noted that the high bacteria levels were a sign that Flints water distribution system had a shaky foundation and was susceptible to other forms of contamination as well. In October, 2014, General Motors said it would stop using Flint water in its factories because it was corroding car parts. GM reached an agreement to start using Lake Huron water instead. Nothing of this was communicated to Flint residents, who continued to drink the tainted water. GMs move raised the obvious question, if the water was not safe even for industrial purposes, how could it be safe for human consumption? Aides to Governor Snyder did begin raising concerns about the Flint water supply. Michael Gadola, top legal counsel to Snyder, sent an email remarking, to anyone who grew up in Flint as I did, the notion that I would be getting my drinking water from the Flint River is downright scary. However, state officials did not issue any warnings to the public or suggest that the city shift back to Detroit water. A new crisis erupted in January 2015 over reports by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality noting excess levels of trihalomethanesor TTHMa byproduct of chlorination, in Flints water. Among the risks associated with TTHM are liver and kidney disease as well as cancer. The MDEQ report sparked calls by several Flint City Council members to switch the city off the Flint River water to Lake Huron. At this point, Detroit offered Flint the option to reconnect to its water supply for a $4 million connection fee plus $900,000 a month, but Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, a Democrat, rejected the proposal. Earley held fast even when Detroit offered to waive the $4 million fee. Later that month, at a massive town hall meeting in Flint, local officials offered bromides and false assurances to residents over the safety of their drinking water. Meanwhile, a state epidemiologist sent an email to local health officials about an outbreak of deadly Legionnaires disease. She proposed that cases of the disease be mapped to the Flint water system to determine if there was a correlation. In February 2015, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notified the MDEQ that it had detected dangerous levels of lead in the drinking water of Flint resident LeeAnne Walters. She had contacted the EPA about dark sediments in her tap water, which she felt were affecting the health of her children. Subsequent testing of her water revealed that it contained 104 parts per billion (ppb) of lead, far in excess of the EPA limit of 15 ppb. The next month, the Flint City Council took a symbolic vote to switch the citys water supply back to the Detroit water system. The citys new emergency manager, Jerry Ambrose, vetoed the action and said Detroit water was no safer than Flints. Later reports documented that throughout this period state officials were doctoring test data from Flint water, making it appear that lead levels were lower than test results actually indicated. MDEQ officials also impeded an investigation into the source of the outbreak of Legionnaires disease, believed tied to Flint water. In the meantime, an EPA official, Miguel Del Toral, reviewed the data from the home of LeeAnne Walters and became increasingly concerned about the elevated lead levels in Flint drinking water and the failure of the city to use corrosion control to prevent lead leaching from the citys antiquated lead pipes. He issued a memo warning that the city was not using corrosion control and noted that a Virginia Tech University team had found lead levels at Walters home as high as 13,200 ppb. The EPA classifies water with a lead level of 5,000 ppb as hazardous waste. Del Toral noted that three other Flint homes that were tested showed elevated lead levels. Top EPA officials in the Obama administration stonewalled Del Toral. They made sure that his findings were not made public and that Del Toral himself was isolated. An MDEQ official bragged that Del Toral had been handled and that Flint residents would not be hearing from him again. Over the summer, concerns about the high lead levels in Flint drinking water escalated, but the state still took no action. In a meeting with state officials, Walters got only smirks and laughter in response to her complaints. Residents of Flint collected 26,000 online signatures demanding that the city switch back to Detroit water. In late August, Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, in response to a request from Flint residents, notified the state that he would be conducting a test of lead levels in the Flint water system. The initial results of Edwards testing were shocking, with a high percentage of the homes tested exceeding the federal 15ppb standard. But the MDEQ rejected the results, insisting that Flint water was safe. They accused Edwards of pulling a rabbit out of his hat. In late September, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha from Flints Hurley Medical Center released the results of her own testing on lead levels in the blood of Flint children. She found that the number of children with elevated lead in their blood nearly doubled following the switch to Flint River water. State officials ridiculed Dr. Hanna-Attishas findings and personally vilified her. But the cover-up soon collapsed. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services verified Dr. Hanna-Attishas findings. As popular outrage mounted, state and federal officials began a campaign of public hand-wringing and finger-pointing, seeking to evade blame for the disaster. Even then, remedial action was utterly inadequate and proceeded at a snails pace. The city of Flint did not switch back to the Detroit water system until October 16, 2015, and the state of Michigan did not declare a state of emergency in the city until January 2016. For its part, the Obama administration refused to provide any substantial federal disaster relief funds to Flint on the grounds that the catastrophe was man-made. In the end, Obama dispersed a paltry $5 million, a derisory amount demonstrating once again the contempt and indifference of the White House toward working people. As the crisis became national and global news, a parade of Democratic Party celebrities including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, film producer Michael Moore and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders visited Flint. They offered false assurances that residents concerns would be addressed while seeking to place all the blame on the Republican Snyder administration. Just this month, Professor Edwards reported the results of testing that indicates Flints water is still not safe to drink. Indeed, several homes showed dramatic increases in lead levels from the first round of testing. Despite this, state officials told residents that the water was safe for showering and bathing. The Flint water crisis is a crimesocially, morally and legally. Those responsible include local, state and federal officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties and the corporate-financial interests they represent. The events in Flint have drawn the curtain on a broader social crisis in the United States spawned by decades of neglect of infrastructure, as vital resources have been diverted to support the criminal manipulations of the financial aristocracy and fund the Pentagon war machine. In the wake of the exposure of the Flint cover-up, reports of lead poisoning are mounting nationwide. This includes the Detroit Public Schools, just 70 miles from Flint, where 15 schools tested were in excess of the federal standard of 15 ppb for lead in drinking water. From this experience, definite conclusions must be drawn. The subordination of society to private commercial interests is incompatible with the right of the population to basic necessities, including safe and clean drinking water. Both political parties, Democrats and Republicans, serve at the behest of the banks and big corporations, running roughshod over the working population in the interests of corporate profit. There has been a concerted attempt by the politicians, particularly the Democrats, and the media to depict the catastrophe in Flint as a racial issue. This is a false presentation of the crisis. Its purpose is to obscure the fundamental class issues that underlie the poisoning of an overwhelmingly working class, multi-racial population that has been devastated by decades of plant closures, layoffs and budget cuts. The issue in Flint is fundamentally that of class, not race. Over 40 percent of the residents of Flint are white, and both white and black workers have played leading roles in exposing the outrage committed against the people of Flint. What has characterized the protests over the water crisis is the mobilization of white and black, young and old in a common struggle against a common enemy. Efforts to push racial politics serve the interests of the ruling elite by dividing the working class and diverting attention from the central role of the capitalist parties and politicians and capitalist private ownership of the banks, corporations and utilities in the decimation of the city. Absolutely no credence can be given to the claims of the big business politicians that they are addressing the crisis in Flint. The record of both parties demonstrates their complete indifference to the victims of disasters, both natural and man-made. Just ask the victims of Love Canal, Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. Love Canal, the Niagara Falls, New York neighborhood polluted by toxic chemicals, has never been properly cleaned up and lawsuits continue more than 35 years after the first exposure of the dangers. A large portion of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were permanently driven from their homes. Forced to live in shoddily built government trailers, some 17,000 got sick from exposure to formaldehyde. Meanwhile, the public school system in devastated New Orleans was dismantled and replaced with an inferior system of for-profit charters, while social inequality soared and poverty increased. In the case of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration shielded oil executives from criminal prosecution. Only a small portion of the money set aside to aid victims of the disaster was actually spent. Those who received payments usually had to settle for a fraction of their actual losses. The Gulf Coast is still suffering from the ecological consequences of the disaster, which have never been adequately investigated or mitigated. The working class must rely on its own independent strength to seek redress for the crimes committed against it in Flint and in cities all across the country. Flint has become a national and international issuea symbol of the decadence and failure of the profit system. It is to their fellow workers throughout the US and internationally that Flint residents should turn to mount a counteroffensive. It must be based on the understanding that even the most basic human needs, such as clean water, have become political and revolutionary questions. It is a matter of building an independent socialist movement of the working class, fighting to break the grip of the financial elite over economic and social life, and turning the banks, corporations and utilities into publicly owned and democratically controlled institutions. This is the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party. As Illinois budget impasse prepares to enter its 11th month, the Illinois House and Senate agreed on Friday to what has been widely referred to as an emergency or stopgap funding measure for higher education. Workers should be warned, however, that the Democrats and Republicans are working closely together to hammer out the framework of an agreement on deep budget cuts that would result in continued layoffs in higher education and social services, to say nothing of the deep suffering those cuts would inflict on the states most vulnerable residents. Anger at the ruling elite for their failure to fund higher education and social service has been mounting as individual schools continue to report on layoffs and cuts, and as the states social service providers close their doors and cut off desperately needed life-lines to the disabled, elderly and homeless. These institutions have so far received nothing from the state in the way of funding, even as the rest of state government has up to this point continued receiving funding at the same rate as the previous year due to a variety of court order and consent decrees. The bill, which provides funding for state universities and community colleges at about 30 percent of the previous years levels, may well be the only funding that these institutions end up receiving. The current plan calls for the states public universities to share $356 million, which would provide most of them with 31 percent of their funding based on last years budget level. Chicago State University, which had warned it could close down at the end of the semester, would receive 60 percent. Community colleges would receive $74.1 million, or about 27 percent of their expected budget. Grants provided through the Monetary Award Program would receive $167.7 million, about one semesters worth of funding. MAP grants are awarded to low-income students in Illinois at either public or private colleges and universities. Many institutions who concentrate on educating working class and first-generation students were hit heavily by the lack of MAP grant funding. Some even announced they would begin requiring students to pay back the grants they were awarded if the state funding never materialized. Even with the funding, it is likely that few of the already announced cuts will be reversed. Many institutions have already indicated that they will continue with planned layoffs. After the passage of the measures by near unanimous majorities, Illinois Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan took the opportunity to make a grand show of criticizing Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who has made passage of a state budget contingent on the passage of his Turnaround Agenda, a collection of anti-worker measures long sought by the most rapacious elements of the financial aristocracy. Claiming to be pushing for a more comprehensive budget and full fiscal year funding that is not contingent on passage of [Rauners] demands that will destroy the middle class, Madigan is in actuality working towards the framework of a plan that will allow Democrats and Republicans to agree to a compromise between their proposals for austerity. An important component of this plan is likely to be a move in the near future by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Michael Madigans daughter, to end the current court-mandated payments to state workers. On March 24, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit brought by AFSCME Council 31, the local representing a large portion of state workers, which had sued over promised pay raises from 2011 that were withheld because the state claimed it did not have the money. In its decision, the court said that it was a well-defined and dominant public policy under which multiyear collective bargaining agreements are subject to the appropriation power of the State, a power which may only be exercised by the General Assembly. Those court decisions, which had been supported by Rauner and his appointee and ally, Comptroller Leslie Munger, have allowed large portions of state government to continue operating. It is expected that the attorney general will attempt to apply the Supreme Court decision to the current standing court rulings by the Illinois 1st District Appellate Court and a St. Clair County court that have kept paychecks flowing to workers. In other words, the Democratic Party is moving to end the paychecks of thousands of state workers in what would amount to a shutdown of state government. This has been widely hailed as a means to force Rauner into a compromise as a response to public outcry and anger. It is, however, nothing of the sort. Such a move would actually be a prelude to massive concessions and cuts as the unions would then be free to call any kind of deal a victory in the same way that they have attempted to characterize all recent defeats for workers. In such a situation, the outstanding money for higher education is a likely target for elimination, since those institutions have by and large managed to keep themselves alive by shedding workers and cutting programs. This coming Sunday, on May 1 at 1:00 pm US Eastern Daylight Time, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) will celebrate May Day with an online rally. Featuring speeches by leaders of the Fourth International from all over the world, its central purpose will be to build a global anti-war movement of working people, students and youth against the expanding tide of imperialist militarism that threatens the destruction of the planet. Among the speakers will be Jerry White, the 2016 presidential candidate of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States. We live in an age of perpetual war. The War on Terrorjustified with lies and limitless hypocrisyis now approaching its fifteenth anniversary. It has resulted in the deaths of more than one million people in the Middle East and Central Asia. Countless millions have been made homeless refugees. Far from ending terror, the regional wars instigated by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen have led to an ever-expanding wave of violence, personal insecurity and global instability. The neo-colonial interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia are but the harbinger of even more bloody Great Power confrontations. The United States, determined to preserve its position as the global hegemon, is escalating confrontations simultaneously with Russia and China. The states bordering Russia are being stocked with military gear, backed by NATO forces. The Obama administrations pivot to Asia is embroiling the entire region in the efforts of the US to encircle China. Earlier this month, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter traveled to the Philippines to personally oversee war games in the South China Sea and the deployment of US planes, helicopters, Special Forces units and aircraft carriers to bolster Washingtons network of military alliances. Both Russia and China, whose governments represent the capitalist interests of their own nationalist and chauvinist ruling cliques, respond to these threats with retaliatory actions that can result in all-out war. The barely averted clash between Russian war planes and US military vessels in the Baltic Sea earlier this month is a serious warning: in a highly volatile situation, one misstep can very rapidly spiral out of control. As in the era of World War I (1914-18) and World War II (1939-45), all the imperialist powers are participating in the drive for a new re-division of the world. Germany is again rearming and expanding its military operations. The Japanese ruling class is determined to throw off the restraints on military operations imposed after its defeat in World War II. The danger of a third imperialist world war, fought with nuclear weapons, is greater than at any time since 1945. The leaders of world imperialism admit that they are engaged in a ruthless struggle for global power with potentially catastrophic consequences. In an interview with the newspaper Handelsblatt, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier acknowledged that world geopolitical relations are highly volatile. The old order has not yet been replaced by a new one, Steinmeier said. This struggle for influence and hegemony is not taking place in a peaceful seminar environment, but is exploding violently. The disputes over political, territorial, financial and commercial interests, embedded in the capitalist system and its nation-state political framework, are leading to world war. Even if they hope to prevent a descent into a nuclear Armageddon, the imperialist governments cannot control the consequences of their own recklessness, let alone override the logic of imperialism. The leaders of world imperialism are formulating their war strategies behind the backs of the people. They do not want their military plans and timetables disrupted by public debate and mass protests. In the United States, the capitalist parties and media are keeping the issue of war out of the 2016 campaign debates. The Democratic Party is preparing to nominate Hillary Clinton, an exponent of regime-change wars and a mouthpiece for the most ruthless elements in the CIA and Pentagon. As for the Republican Party contenders, they joke about the use of nuclear weapons as if they were toys. It is in the hands of such war-mongering sadists that the American weapons of planetary destruction will be placed after the November elections. Among the masses of working people and youth in every country there is deep and untapped hostility to war, connected to growing anger over inequality, the attacks on democratic rights and the relentless assault on the interests of the working class. The anger and opposition of billions of people around the world requires a new strategy. The ICFI insists that the fight against war must mobilize the international working class on the basis of an anti-capitalist and socialist program. The purpose of the International Online May Day rally is to develop, encourage and inspire a movement of the international working class to stop the on-going wars and prevent their escalation into a catastrophe that threatens the future of human civilization. We call on all readers of the WSWS to join the May Day Online Rally! Register today! Tell your friends and co-workers. Promote the rally on Facebook and other social media. Help make this years rally a powerful expression of international working class solidarity against imperialist war! For more information and to register, visit internationalmayday.org. In the aftermath of last weeks New York primary and the run-up to key primaries this week in Northeastern states, a chorus of Democratic figures has demanded that Bernie Sanders, the self-styled democratic socialist challenging Hillary Clinton for the partys presidential nomination, mute criticism of the frontrunners ties to Wall Street, as a first step to conceding the nomination. The attacks are focused on Sanders demand that Clinton make public the transcripts of speeches she gave to major financial firms in exchange for millions of dollars in fees. Clinton has flatly refused to release the transcripts, which would expose her flattery of financial parasites whose reckless and criminal activities crashed the US and world economy and caused untold social devastation. The Democratic Party establishment and its backers on Wall Street and in the media are preparing to anoint a candidate who is already widely hated and seen by a majority of voters as dishonest and corrupt--a reputation well earned by Clinton and her ex-president husband. Some 56 percent of voters have negative feelings toward Clinton, and only a third regard her as honest and trustworthy. At the same time, the Clinton campaign, which to this point in the primary contest has talked left in an attempt to ward off the challenge from Sanders, is preparing to shift sharply to the right in preparation for the November general election. It feels somewhat constrained, however, by the continued presence of Sanders. Hence the escalating pressure on Sanders to halt his attacks on Clintons Wall Street links and prepare a rapid exit. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada last week attacked Sanders for carrying out a negative campaign, while Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, called on Sanders to help unify our party and stand behind Hillary Clinton. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia called Sanders demands that Clinton publish her speeches to Wall Street firms over the top, and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey scolded him for attacking Secretary Clintons honesty and integrity. The New York Times, which has been slanting its news coverage to favor Clinton and using its op-ed pages to publish smears of Sanders by liberal columnists such as Paul Krugman and Charles M. Blow, has taken up the campaign for Sanders to rein in his attacks on Clinton and forcefully urge his supporters to back her in November. Sanders, for his part, is a long-time ally of the party establishment and has repeatedly said he will support the eventual Democratic nominee. The campaign by the party leadership has had its effect. Though Sanders trails Clinton by fewer than 300 pledged delegates and remains neck-and-neck in national pollsas well as in California, whose June 7 primary awards 475 delegateshis campaign has sent signals that it will limit criticism of Clinton and may tacitly concede the nomination, even as Sanders pledges to formally stay in the race until the Philadelphia convention in July. On Saturday, Sanders chief campaign adviser Tad Devine told National Public Radio that the campaign could reevaluate its criticisms of Clintons relations with the financial industry after this Tuesdays primaries, and on the Sunday morning television program Meet the Press, Sanders admitted that he had a narrow path to the nomination and pledged that he would support Clinton against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. If Hillary Clinton secures the nomination, she would be, after Trump, the least popular presidential nominee in history. The overwhelming majority of voters who do not like Clinton, moreover, are united in what they dislike, according to a poll published in mid-April. [V]oters with an unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton volunteer they think shes dishonest or corrupt, the poll reported. This is for good reason. Sanders mild criticisms of Clinton minimize the reality of a political duo that is fully wedded to Americas financial aristocracy and has been since Bill and Hillarys close ties to the Walton family (Walmart) and other corporate interests during their years in Arkansas. According to a CNN analysis carried out in February, from 2001 until the current election cycle, Hillary and former president Bill Clinton were paid a combined $153 million for 729 speeches, delivered mainly to powerful corporate firms and lobbies. Among these were 39 speeches to the major Wall Street finance houses Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Citigroup, for which the Clintons were paid a combined $7.7 million. These are the very banks whose recklessness and greed precipitated the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, and were then saved by the intervention of the Bush and Obama administrations, which made available to Wall Street hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds with no strings attached. Hillary Clinton, then a senator from New York, repaid her Wall Street sponsors by voting in favor of the $700 billion bank bailout bill. The couple delivered another 25 speeches to these firms in the years after the financial collapse. As Sanders fades, it becomes less critical to worry over Clintons speeches to the major banks, an anonymous source described as one longtime Clinton ally and confidante told The Hill . The Democrats, with the assistance of Sanders, are preparing to drop the issue of Wall Street criminality and social inequality in advance of the general election. The even more urgent issue of war has from the outset been virtually excluded from the 2016 election campaign by both parties and all of the candidates, including Sanders, who has made clear his support for Obamas wars in the Middle East and his military provocations against Russia and China. In the wake of her New York primary victory, the Clinton campaign has moved to openly promote the former secretary of states war credentials. This was signaled by a lengthy article published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine headlined, How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk, by White House correspondent Mark Landler. The article reports favorably that the Democratic frontrunner was the most militaristic figure in the Obama administration and asserts that she is now the true hawk left in the race for president. Underscoring the right-wing character of her campaign, far-right billionaire Charles Koch, a major funder of the Tea Party, said he would not rule out supporting Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee, whether it be Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Its possible, Koch told ABCs This Week on Sunday. He added, We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way. Koch also favorably compared the presidency of Bill Clinton, which ended the federal welfare program and lifted virtually all regulations on the banks and hedge funds, with that of George W. Bush. This will not prevent Sanders from carrying out his assigned task of channeling the anger and hostility to capitalism of young and working class voters back behind the Democratic Party. 25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago 25 years ago: Over half of Soviet population driven into poverty A report released in the last week of April 1991 revealed that more than half of the Soviet population had been driven into poverty as a result of massive price hikes introduced by the Stalinist regime of President Mikhail Gorbachev on April 2. The report, drafted by the economist Boris Bolotin of the IMEMO institute and accepted as accurate by leading figures within the bureaucracy, showed that the minimal subsistence income necessary to keep up with the increased prices had more than doubled, from 97 rubles to 207. The price hikes, instituted as part of the Gorbachev bureaucracys policy of paving the way for the capitalist transformation of the Soviet economy, provoked a massive wave of strikes and protests, particularly in Belorussia, where a general strike movement shut down most of the republics enterprises. Top Gorbachev aide Yevgeny Primakov said that Bolotins figures were far more accurate than those prepared by the official State Price Commission. These claimed that prices had risen on average by 1.5 times, while admitting that prices for basic necessities such as bread and meat had doubled and tripled, and prices for shoes and other clothing items had shot up by four or five times. The result of the price increases, according to the IMEMO report, was that now more than half the population of the Soviet Union was forced to live at or below the official poverty line. While the bureaucracy claimed that wage increases provided for lower-paid workers had compensated for 85 percent of the price hikes, the IMEMO report said that it had barely covered one-third of the impact of the increases. The newspaper Commersant confirmed that the other major impact of the bureaucracys price reforms had been to further widen the polarization between the masses of Soviet workers and the strata of bureaucrats, striving petty bourgeois and aspiring capitalists. The skyrocketing of state prices resulted in the forcing down of prices on the black market, particularly on luxury goods, such as electronics, available only to the wealthiest layers of Soviet society. Those who could afford to pay the higher black market prices benefitted, while the workers who depended on the controlled prices at state stores saw their living standards devastated. Despite the bureaucracys promises that the price hikes would mean an end to shortages, supplies remained just as poor as ever. [top] 50 years ago: US troop strength in Vietnam tops 250,000 On April 29, 1966, the number of US troops in Vietnam surpassed 250,000 with the landing of 4,000 soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division at Vung Tau, as the Johnson administration stepped up its efforts to drown in blood the National Liberation Front (NLF) revolution in South Vietnam while extending its military operations to North Vietnam and Cambodia. Signs pointed to a far greater escalation. In the face of growing criticism against the massive bombing campaign in North Vietnam, Vice President Hubert Humphrey led a chorus of administration officials in insisting there could be no let-up. We must stay and see it through, Humphrey told an annual gathering of the Associated Press in New York on April 26, while dismissing calls for peace talks. Having lost over 225 aircraft in North Vietnam to antiaircraft fire and enemy jets in just over a year, the Johnson administration also pledged that there would be no sanctuary in the pursuit of enemy aircraftan implicit warning that they could be pursued even into Chinese airspace. On April 29 the New York Times reported claims from unidentified US military officials that arms were being funneled through Cambodia and Laos into Vietnam. On May 1, the US attacked Cambodia for the first time, when Lt. Col. Richard L. Prillaman of the 2nd Infantry, claiming that US forces had come under fire, ordered artillery fire directed across the Cai Bac River, the border between the two nations. By the end of US involvement in the war, some 300,000 Cambodians had been killed. [top] 75 years ago: Roosevelt intensifies Atlantic war drive On April 26, 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt announced the United States would launch sea patrols, comprised of warships and planes, thousands of miles into the Atlantic, in order to detect hostile German navy forces that could endanger the shipping of US war materials to Britain. The move was calculated to bring US Navy forces into confrontation with Nazi Germany and provide the United States with an incident that could serve as a pretext for entry into World War II. The stepping up of military supplies to Britain following the British defeat in Greece was touted by Roosevelt as a way for the US to aid in the struggle against the Axis powers short of war. Roosevelts use of the term patrol as opposed to convoy was to deceive public opinion, which strongly opposed American involvement in the European conflict. But US imperialism could not stand on the sideline in the war for imperialist markets. John D. Rockefeller Jr. publicly demanded, We of the Americas should stand by the British Empire to the limit and at any cost, and called for the US to directly convoy ships to Britain. At the same time, the billionaire oil and banking magnate demanded the suppression of labor strikes at home. After announcing the new policy, Roosevelt secretly arranged to report to the British navy the location of any German ships. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in reporting to his cabinet, said of the American policy, The president ... said that he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces. Everything was to be done to force an incident that could lead to war. [top] 100 years ago: German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht denounces war at May Day demonstration On May 1, 1916, the German Spartacus League, the organization of revolutionary socialists who opposed the imperialist world war that had erupted in August 1914, led a mass demonstration in Berlin on a socialist and anti-war program. Karl Liebknecht, one of its most prominent leaders, delivered a speech indicting German militarism, its crimes abroad, and the accompanying assault on the social and democratic rights of the working class. The Spartacus League had been formally constituted at the beginning of 1916. It consisted of a handful of leading figures from the German Social Democratic Party, who opposed that organizations betrayal of socialist internationalism when it responded to the outbreak of the war by supporting its own government. The Spartacus League was subjected to intense state suppression. Its publication was banned. Liebknecht had been forced by the German government, with the complicity of the Social Democrats, to join the army despite ill health, and had been given the task of burying the dead after refusing to fight. He returned to Germany in October 1915. Rosa Luxemburg had been imprisoned for a year beginning in February 1915, also for opposing the war. Amid mounting hostility to the war, and a deepening social crisis, the Spartacus League decided to defy the authorities and launch their most public show of opposition to the war. A leaflet calling for the May Day demonstration, widely distributed in factories across Berlin declared, Our enemy is not the English, French, nor Russian people, but the great German landed proprietors, the German capitalists and their executive committee ... Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the imperialist slaughter. On the first of May let millions of voices cry, Down with the shameful crime of the extermination of peoples! Down with those responsible for the War! As many as 10,000 workers and young people responded, filling Potsdamer Platz on the evening of May 1. A first-hand report quoted Liebknechts speech and described the reaction of the crowd: By a lie the German workingman was forced into the war, and by like lies they expect to induce him to go on with war! A mighty shout went up from a thousand throatsHurrah for Liebknecht. Liebknecht raised his hand for silence. Then steadily, though knowing the cost, he said: Do not shout for me, shout rather, we will have no more war, we will have peacenow! Liebknecht was dragged from the crowd and arrested. He was stripped of his position in the Reichstag (German parliament), and found guilty on a host of charges, including attempted treason. He was sentenced to two years in prison, which was increased to four years after he delivered another anti-war speech at an appeals hearing. [top] Socialist Equality Party (SEP) presidential candidate Jerry White and campaign supporters visited several picket lines in Manhattan and Queens, New York on Sunday, discussing with workers the issues at stake in their battle with the giant telecom company. The five boroughs of New York City are home to nearly 9,000 out of 39,000 Verizon workers who struck company operations throughout the northeast and mid-Atlantic states on April 13. Verizon workers expressed their determination to resist Verizons attacks on their pension and health benefits, and its efforts to transform the workforce into low-paid and largely casual laborers with few or no rights. As one striker in Astoria, Queens put it, they want to turn the clock back to the Stone Age. The determination of the Verizon strikers, who are engaged in the largest strike in the United States in years, stands in sharp contrast to the treachery of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), who have sought to isolate the strike and leave the workers at the mercy of managements strikebreaking operations. White discussed the need for rank-and-file workers to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the CWA and the IBEW, and break the isolation of their strike by reaching out to the broadest sections of workers throughout New York City. Verizon, he said, was a powerful, transnational corporation that enjoyed the full backing of both big business parties. Its attacks could only be repelled, White said, by mobilizing the full industrial and political strength of the working class in the US and internationally. Instead the CWA and IBEW have promoted one Democratic Party politician after another, from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to Governor Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio. Workers nodded their heads in agreement when White said the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, were the party of Wall Street, inequality and war. The real attitude of the Democrats to the strikers was highlighted by the dispatch of hundreds of police officers by Mayor Bill de Blasio to escort scabs around the city, and the setting up of metal barricades to cordon off picketers and support Verizons strikebreaking operations. If you go to England theyre fighting in the streets. We cant even curse at the scabs, a striker commented to the WSWS team. Were in corrals, theyre corralling us, he said. A striker reported that at least one worker has already been fired for hate speech, under rules sanctioned by the union, which allow Verizon to fire workers for alleged strike misconduct. The main concern of both the Democrats and their allies in the trade union bureaucracy is that the Verizon strike could encourage a broader movement of the working class, particularly in New York City, where social tensions are reaching a boiling point. The city of eight million is the capital of social inequality in the United States. Seventy-nine billionaires live in the city, according to Forbes, holding a combined $364.6 billion in wealth. It feel more and more like the time of Marie Antoinette, one worker said, its the time to storm the Bastille. Several other workers, without prompting, said America was heading to a revolution. You have a hard road to fight, a worker at the garage on 47th Street said to White. It might not be the time right now for straight socialism, but it is coming soon. The super-rich have literally ruined the city, driving up rents to impossible levels and forcing large numbers of working class and lower-middle class families to move ever further away in order to afford a living space. At the same time there are millions of workers and young people from all corners of the world looking for a way to fight this inequality. You feel insulted constantly as a worker in this city. Take this new $7 commuter tax, just to drive into Manhattan. The message is obvious: workers are supposed to slave away here during their shift, then get the hell out, a picketer said. We have decent pay, but thats only because of all the times weve been out on strike and what generations of workers before us fought for. Theyve been attacking us, the workers, for a long time. Im hopeful that what were seeing here is the beginning of a new fight back. The unions are opposed to any struggle to mobilize these allies of the Verizon workers. In a tactic clearly designed to atomize and demoralize the strikers, the CWA has ordered its members to man tiny, dispersed pickets, positioned in front of Verizon outlets, where they are supposed to discourage shoppers from entering the stores. Why should we stop people from getting their phones fixed? a worker asked the SEP campaigner, mocking the CWAs pseudo-boycott stunt. While speaking to the SEP candidate, workers expressed a growing readiness to discuss a genuine socialist strategy, including the need to break with the Democratic Party and build a mass political movement of the working class against capitalism. In the course of the discussions, White and the SEP emphasized that the promotion of economic nationalism by the unions and the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders was aimed at encouraging divisions among workers and blocking an international struggle against the transnational corporations, including Verizon. White warned that this was aimed at duping workers into supporting war. No one who works sees other workers as the problem. We know its the one percent at the top thats causing the trouble, a worker replied in agreement. Another worker added, They try to blame the Republicans for us losing our jobs, but its running thin with more and more of us. Its becoming clearer every day that the Democrats and the unions have nothing to offer and are on board with the attacks against workers. I think its time for a third party. Maybe Bernie is paving the way. White explained that Sanders was trying to channel opposition back within the Democratic Party, and even if he took the unlikely decision to run as independent he would defend the capitalist system and impose austerity and war on workers. White explained that the SEP is calling for a workers government to transform the major corporations into publicly owned, democratically run utilities, operated on the basis of production for human needs. Its a crazy situation developing in this society, another worker said. People have had enough. A revolution is comingI believe it. The system is entirely screwed up. People are recognizing that something has gone badly wrong. Another Verizon worker added, Youve got graduates with advanced degrees working at Starbucks. This month, cuts to Universal Creditthe Tory governments cover scheme for slashing welfarewere implemented for some 80,000 households. By 2020, the cuts will be extended to 1 million households across the UK, saving the government 3 billion a year. Universal Credit will cost 2.1 million in-work families 1,600 a year and 1.1 million out-of-work families 2,300 a year when fully implemented, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The changes were first outlined in Chancellor George Osbornes summer budget last year, where he outlined a plan to make 12 billion of welfare cuts, mainly targeting the working poor. The Universal Credit cuts involve lowering the amount people can earn before low-wage subsidies, in the form of Universal Credit benefits, are reduced. The new earnings level at which benefits will begin to be withdrawn is now set at a flat 192 a month, down from previous levels of 222 a month for a couple and 263 a month for a single parent. In other words, the changes cut the amount of money working people can expect to be paid by the government when their employers provide only a pittance in wages. For working families, this amounts to the loss of up to 200 a month. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) estimates that families with a single earner working full-time on the national living wage of 7.20 will have to work the equivalent of an extra month a year to make up the shortfall. Single parent households, moreover, already suffering disproportionate hardship and generally among the poorer sections of society, will be the hardest hit. A single parent working full-time for the living wage will have to work the equivalent of an additional two months. Responding to criticisms of the cut, a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesman said, We are simplifying the work allowances under UC [Universal Credit] and giving people extra help to progress in work. This is alongside the increase in the national living wage and personal tax allowances which are helping us move to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society. He said households affected could get help from Jobcentres to increase their hours. Various organisations have already shown how the increases in the minimum (rebranded living) wage and in personal tax allowance have either done nothing significant to help working people or else have been outweighed by the staggering impact of welfare cuts. In December 2014, Julia Unwin, from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation charity, said, Raising the personal tax allowance is an expensive way of helping the working poormost of the additional money will actually go to better-off families, while poorer families only keep a third of the tax cut. Raising the work allowance would have been a much more effective way of making work pay for those in poverty. In September last year, Adam Corlett, from the Resolution Foundation, commented on the national living wage, While the chancellors new wage floor will give a welcome boost to millions of Britains lowest-paid staff, it cannot guarantee a basic standard of living or compensate for the 12 billion of welfare cuts that were announced alongside it. As for the suggestion that families can simply turn up at the Jobcentre and find more work, even under the governments own heavily manipulated unemployment figures, 1.7 million people are out of work. Stable employment is in short supply, with part-time work, self-employment and zero-hours contracts becoming the norm for low income families. Single parents are being trapped between the need to work longer hours and the rising cost of childcare6,003 a year on average for 25 hours a week for a child under two as of last year, a 5.1 percent increase on 2014. The fact is these cuts will drive yet more working people and their children into poverty. Moreover, transitional protection (money which the government claimed it had set aside to help families as they moved from the old tax credit system to lower Universal Credit payments), is revealed by the Office for Budget Responsibility to be almost nonexistent. The total set aside for 2018-19, by which time around 2 million people are supposed to have made the switch, was just 34 million, barely more than 1 percent of the 3 billion the Tories will gain by cutting Universal Credit. Such is the character of the first major operation to be carried out by the DWP under its new head, Stephen Crabb, following the resignation of Iain Duncan-Smith. Crabb used his first speech as an opportunity to affirm that he is absolutely committed to Universal Credit reform, which he described as the spine that runs through the welfare system. Upon Crabbs appointment, the media promoted the fact that he hailed from a less-privileged background than the usual Tory minister and grew up on a council estate in Wales under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This was supposed to lend a veneer of credibility to the most savage attacks being imposed on working people in generations. A recent interview Crabb did with the Spectator, the house organ of the Tories, is enough to show that his origins do not matter a jot. He referred in glowing terms to Thatchers right-to-buy scheme, which set the tone for the destruction of affordable and social housing that continues to this day. In response to Crabbs speech, Labours Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions Owen Smith called Universal Credit a great idea before adding, Unless he [Crabb] reverses the cuts in the work allowances and restores the work incentives its going to leave millions of people worse off. Smiths proposed solution, however, was only that Crabb conduct a thorough review of Conservative policy. This was demanded of the Conservatives, who, along with their previous coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, have imposed more than 100 billion in spending cuts over the past six years and is committed to a programme of austerity for the foreseeable future. Smith cannot demand the government abandon their programme because Labour themselves, despite uttering a few fragments of left rhetoric, are committed to a more fiscally restrictive policy than [Tony Blairs] new Labour, according to John Rentoul in the Independent. This was said in response to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnells comments this March that Labour would be absolutely ruthless about how we manage our spending and ensure that the governments debt is set on a sustainable path. Within months of being elected Labour leader on a mandate to end austerity, Jeremy Corbyn has ditched all opposition to the governments cuts. They fear that any mobilization of workers and youth against unending cuts will unleash a popular movement against the capitalist order they are determined to uphold. Rural northeastern Wisconsin residents are facing an ongoing drinking water crisis. Pollution from large-scale dairy farms known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and the failure of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources have created unsafe drinking water for thousands in Kewaunee County. Occupying part of the Door Peninsula on the shore of Lake Michigan, Kewaunee County is home to the largest concentration of dairy farm CAFOs in the state. The county is home to 15 farms housing 50,000 cows, with an additional 40,000 cows in smaller operations. Animal production is the countys second largest industry after manufacturing. Tainted water across the state of Wisconsin has become a serious problem. Since 2013, 64 Wisconsin drinking water systems have tested over federal lead contamination limits. In rural Wisconsin, households use private wells where municipal water service and treatment is not available. EPA data for 2016 indicates more than one-third of wells for Kewaunee County residents do not meet EPA safe drinking water standards. Test results from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 2014, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 2015, and now the EPA in 2016, list nitrates and total coliform bacteria as the principal pollutants, meaning manure and fertilizer byproducts of industrial farming have entered the groundwater at toxic levels. A network of different soils, gravel and rock purify water on its way to underground aquifers. Aquifers are the part of soil that holds water and sits on top of the bedrock. This process has been shortcut not only by a lack of topsoils from overworked farmlands, but also the massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and manure irresponsibly applied to the land. Excess nitrogenous waste is soluble in rain and snow, leading to pollutants entering the water table untreated. The water table is the water held in the aquifer that all wells draw upon. The US Geological Survey reports, In Wisconsin, 70% of residents and 97% of communities rely on groundwater as their drinking water source. Wisconsin has abundant quantities of high-quality groundwater, but once groundwater is contaminated, its expensive and often not technically possible to clean. Such is the case in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, where radium contamination in the water table has created a technical and political quagmire. The Wisconsin DNR is the states regulatory authority for groundwater concerns. They issue permits for CAFOs, sand used in hydraulic fracturing and metal ore mining. Their legal authority in groundwater matters has been undermined through adverse decisions in a series of high-profile lawsuits against CAFOs, and they have failed to adequately monitor the riskiest groundwater operations in Wisconsin. In late 2015 the DNR lost a lawsuit to monitor high capacity wells at a CAFO in central Wisconsin. These types of wells, common to large agricultural operations, use high-capacity water pumps to draw as much as 100,000 gallons of water per day. The household well pumps most Kewaunee County residents use draw only 100 gallons per day. High-capacity wells are dangerous to groundwater quality because they draw water much faster than the natural replacement rate and allow pollutants to become concentrated in the water table. Monitoring wells are dug and data collected by the DNR to keep abreast of sudden changes in water table levels. There is only a single monitoring well for the entire county of Kewaunee. Farmers have traditionally recycled manure into natural fertilizer by spreading it on fields over the winter. This process allows slow absorption into the soil over months. However, the quantity of manure generated by CAFOs, over 1 billion gallons per year, is far beyond what arable lands can handle, and state regulation is completely inadequate to protect against nitrogen pollution of drinking water systems. CAFOs are allowed to write and sign off on their own manure management plans. The drive for profit and avoidance of regulatory scrutiny encourages more than just fraud, it becomes a criminal trespass against the social right of clean drinking water. While the crash of 2007-2008 raised Kewaunee County unemployment rates to more than 10 percent, two-thirds of the jobs created in the recovery period are in dairy farms. Some $65 million of the countys economy is now in dairy farming, just under one-quarter of the total. This agricultural pollution crisis is historically based on federal policy stemming from the Great Depression of the 1930s and, three decades later, the actions of a single USDA administrator, Earl Butz. A board member of several agribusiness corporations prior to his appointment in 1971 by Nixon to head the USDA, Butz was hostile to what he called the socialism of the New Deal, and this played out in dramatic policy changes. Butz not only dismantled price supports and subsidies guaranteed to American farmers since the 1940s, he did away with payments to fallow (rest) fields, preventing soil from being overworked by intensive cultivation. He encouraged farmers to go big or go home by borrowing capital to expand their holdings. Reviving a largely untrammeled free market in agriculture created a glut of cheap corn and soy used for producing corn syrup and ethanol. The grain commodities bubble popped in the 1980s and farmers went broke or overextended their credit to expand, leading to further bankruptcies when commodity prices continued to fall. This drop in the price of corn and soy created the opportunity not only for corporate consolidation of farms, but the creation of CAFOs. By 1998 the USDA returned to subsidies including direct payments to farmers. These payments are directed at supporting the top producersthe factory farms. The overworked soils remaining in much of the Midwest require increasingly large quantities of fertilizer, further advantaging agribusiness corporations. These economic relationships present a race to the bottom for environmental and human health. The conditions in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin show that the deteriorating quality of drinking water is not limited to urban areas like Flint, Michigan, where industrial byproducts have led to widespread contamination by lead, copper and other toxins. Agribusiness is a capitalistic industry driven by the same profit considerations. Groundwater is a social good which has been subverted to the profit motive globally. Capitalism is engaged in the destructive and wasteful use of natural resources worldwide. Treating the natural environment as purely a source of private gain has devastated water, air, soil, plant diversity and animal welfare. 6 years, 5 months ago by Scott Hardy Clifford Dougherty charged with assault The driver who was finally caught after a high-speed chase Sunday night through two Northeast Missouri counties has been charged. Officials say 48 year old Clifford Dougherty of Springfield, Illinois has been formally charged in Lewis County with felony assault on a law enforcement officer by means of a deadly weapon. The officer involved was a Lewis County Sheriff's deputy, who tried to pull Dougherty over Sunday night on Highway 61 near Canton. A Canton Police officer told deputies that Dougherty was driving erratically on Missouri 16. The deputy tried to pull Dougherty over, but instead, he sped off heading south on 61. The chase went through Lewis and Marion Counties, and hit speeds of over 90 miles per hour. During the chase, Lewis County officials say Dougherty "drove in a dangerous manner by changing lanes and braking his vehicle, trying to cause damage to the deputy's vehicle." Officers were able to slow Dougherty down with spike strips near Hannibal, which slashed three of his vehicle's four tires. Dougherty finally stopped at a convenience store on McMasters Avenue, where he was surrounded by numerous law enforcement agencies. Dougherty is in the Lewis County Jail on $10,000 bond. He'll likely be arraigned later this week. Path to Wealth and Wisdom with Davis Wealth Management Thursdays, 12:30pm ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Police say a 6-year-old boy is safe after his father barricaded them inside a St. Petersburg home in a confrontation with police. St. Petersburg police say 31-year-old Fabian Williams is accused of domestic aggravated assault, being a felon with a firearm and child abuse. Authorities were called to the home on Sunday. Police say Williams had a fight with his girlfriend, fired a shot from his gun and then went into his neighbor's house with his son. A SWAT team came to the home and eventually Williams came outside. No one was injured. On a winter day in the Columbia Gorge in 2004, Tad McGeer watched a video from a battlefield 7,000 miles away. One of McGeer's co-workers had just brought the video home from Iraq. Filmed from the air, the footage revealed tiny figures moving about an open field below. Suddenly, the figures on the computer screen were engulfed in an explosive fireball. For McGeer, it was an unsettling moment. The video was captured by a camera on board an unmanned aerial drone, one of the newest weapons on battlefields in the global war on terror. The person responsible for creating that drone was McGeerand his years of hard work were also partly responsible for the deaths he'd just watched on his screen. "I thought it was pretty unpleasant business," he recalls. "I'm told [the targets] were evildoers. Were they really? I don't know. Certainly no court of law determined they were evildoers." McGeer never meant to build war machines when he started drawing plans in his garage in 1992. He spent nearly 10 years perfecting drones for peaceful purposes like predicting weather or tracking tuna. But since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, his creations now function as the eyeballs of a cutting-edge U.S. program to gather wartime intelligence and assassinate its enemies. The images from Iraq were filmed from a ScanEaglethe plane McGeer originally built and that the Defense Department now finds so useful. Though never weaponized with missiles like the more famous Predator drone, the ScanEagle is no less a part of the war effort. Flying at nearly 20,000 feet, it scans terrain or tracks targets from the air for up to 24 hours. It can be controlled from anywhere in the worlddelivering high-quality, real-time video both day and night. "These things have some potential to actually surprise people and to catch them out in the open. They've turned out to be very useful," says retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a military analyist who lives in Lake Oswego. "They're getting more important, not less important." One of the successful engines of that industrya company that has delivered more than 1,000 unmanned drones for military useis centered about 60 miles east of Portland in the Columbia River Gorge. The company McGeer founded Insitu Inc.is rapidly eclipsing tourism as a source of jobs in the Gorge. But it's also drawing fire from peace activists for war profiteering and what they see as a disturbing trend toward remote-controlled, robotic killing. At odds with the military direction his company was taking, McGeer left Insitu in 2005. Three years later, when Boeing bought the company for $400 million, McGeer made millionsexactly how much he won't say. "I made a Faustian bargain," says McGeer, a lanky 52-year-old Canadian who lives with his wife and daughter in Hood River. "And when you make a Faustian bargain, you can't complain when the devil shows up at the door." Many of his neighbors in the Gorge have no such qualms. The residents of Hood River and surrounding towns on both banks of the Gorge have built an industry that, according to public statements made by Insitu executives, now generates more than $200 million a year amid this recession. The drones they've built have logged hundreds of thousands of flight hours over Iraq and Afghanistan, above disaster zones like earthquake-ravaged Haiti, or patrolling pirate-infested seas off the coast of Somalia. It may seem an unlikely niche in a region better known for windsurfing, mountain biking and microbrews. But the Gorge has a big footprint in the global war on terrorism, and the industry is reshaping the area. Former military men with short-cropped hairvisiting to learn how to fly and maintain the dronesare now a more common sight around town than skiers from Mount Hood, says Hood River Mayor Arthur Babitz. FOUNDING FATHER: Tad McGeer started Insitu in 1992, then was ousted by the board and newcomer Steve Sliwa. IMAGE: leahnash.com The mayor says the drone industry has almost single-handedly anchored the service industry and local tax revenues during the recessionnot to mention employing more than 1,000 locals, both at Insitu and local businesses directly supplying the company with parts and services. "It's the sort of good-paying jobs that every small community would love to have," says Babitz, a high-tech entrepreneur with his own animation company. "We're very thankful and grateful that they're here. It's a bright spot for the entire Gorge region." But not every local is so sanguine about the Gorge's newfound fortune. Disturbed about their community's growing reliance on the military, activists are holding a three-day conference on robotic warfare in Hood River next month. Nationally known antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan is scheduled to attend. "It's the same as putting a gun to the back of someone's head," says Susan Garrett Crowley, a retired 65-year-old lawyer from Hood River who's helping organize next month's conference, April 16-19. "It would horrify people. But do it from 7,000 miles away, and there is no public outcry." Insitu, the company drawing Crowley's ire, is a success by any economic measure. With headquarters in Bingen, Wash. (population 672), the company has grown from just three employees to more than 700, spread across offices from The Dalles to Vancouver, Wash. In 2008, the same year Boeing bought Insitu for $400 million, Insitu upped its commitment to aggressively woo international customers, opening a branch office in Queensland, Australia. Winning contracts with the U.S., Canadian and Australian militaries, the company has already logged more than 200,000 hours in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. Insitu executives, about half of whom worked with McGeer before he left in 2005, declined to comment for this story. But last summer, CEO Steve Sliwa announced revenues in 2009 were expected to top $200 million. Until now, the company has mainly leased aircraft, with Insitu employees operating the drones in the field. Now the Defense Department wants to buy its own, and Insitu is competing to win a large contract this year to sell 1,000 copies of its newest planethe larger Integrator drone. The contract is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But with better-known rivals like Raytheon and General Dynamics also in the race, the outcome is far from certain. Success with the Integrator would not only boost Insitu, but cement the Gorge's role as a major hub for building drone aircraft. From welders to wing-builders, construction contractors to computer programmers, the drone industry has cast its shadow over smaller shops and businesses up and down the Gorge. Even sprawling orchards like Andy von Flotow's, four miles west of Hood River. Just installed on von Flotow's 100-acre orchard is a 200-foot tube of plastic sheeting connected to a 100-horsepower fan. The 90-mph breeze that blasts through the tube creates a wind tunnel. The enormous length allows distance to cancel the noise of the fan to allow accurate acoustic testing on airplane engines. Built last month, the tunnel is part of von Flotow's efforts to make Insitu's ScanEagle and Integrator into quieter flying machines. Less noise will mean the planes can fly lower and collect better video, without their insectlike buzz being heard from below. The tunnel is the latest gadget among millions of dollars' worth of hardware that lies scattered among a series of barns and former horse stables on von Flotow's property. His otherwise bucolic farm features Bartlett pears, Bing cherries and Honeycrisp apples. WIND MACHINE: Andy von Flotow and his crew test engine acoustics on his Hood River farm. IMAGE: leahnash.com More than 100 of von Flotow's employees swarm around the property and at two other locations in the Gorge, building giant slingshots to launch drones, designing better gyroscopelike devices known as gimbals to support the planes' spy cameras, and testing their engines. Von Flotow, a 54-year-old Canadian with piercing blue eyes and a dry sense of humor, presides over the operation with the glee of a manic genius. Von Flotow is the original reason Insitu is in the Gorgeand insiders say he continues to generate most of the company's innovations. That involves providing the generals and colonels who occasionally visit his farm with a rotating menu of possible improvements, von Flotow says. He also fields complaints from war zones about faulty equipmentand gets praise when his newest gadgets exceed expectations. "Then the enthusiasm wears off and I have to invent something better yet, or somebody else will. It's such a rat race," von Flotow says with a grin. Unlike McGeer, von Flotow has no qualms about his work. "It's a pleasant hobby, and it makes money. Making money is fun," von Flotow says. "I'd feel just as guilty if I made toilet paper." Raised on a soybean and corn farm in southern Ontario, von Flotow met McGeer when they were studying for their Ph.D.s in aeronautics at Stanford University in the early 1980s. Von Flotow moved to Hood River in 1993, and McGeer followed a year later. Like many others, von Flotow came to Hood River for its rural charm and killer windsurfing. McGeer's needs were more immediatemotivated by the technical challenge and the desire to start his own business, he was designing an unmanned plane and needed space to fly. The idea wasn't groundbreakingunmanned aircraft had been used sporadically since the early 20th century. But no one had perfected a small, versatile drone with proven commercial applications. With help from von Flotow, McGeer set out to solve a problem plaguing civilian meteorologists. With satellites, scientists could watch weather as it forms. But the old method of sending ships with weather balloons to gather direct measurements from the atmosphere had been largely abandoned. McGeer sought to fill the data void by building an unmanned plane to measure temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed. With funding from the Australian government, McGeer, von Flotow and a small team built Aerosonde, a 30-pound plane with an onboard computer powered by a modified model-airplane engine. With a successful 1998 flight from Newfoundland to Scotland on a gallon and a half of gas, Aerosonde became the first unmanned plane ever to cross the Atlantic. The publicity stunt captured headlines. But McGeer never managed to sell more than a handful of the dronesdespite some enthusiastic support from within the bureaucracies of national weather services around the world, they could not be swayed into buying. "That was life," von Flotow says. "When you're running a little garage businessand there's many such businessesyou're always chasing the dream, and the dream never quite makes it into your grasp." The next opportunity at McGeer's door came from the tuna industry, of all places. Tuna companies track schools of the fish using helicopters. It's expensive and dangerous work, and McGeer was told the industry would pay for a plane that could launch from a boat with a camera to do the job. McGeer set to work designing a new unmanned plane he called the SeaScan. Again with help from von Flotow, McGeer and five employees worked at a dizzying rate of invention to master the biggest technical hurdlelaunching and retrieving the plane from the deck of a ship. They came up with a 14-foot catapult that slingshots the plane into the air at more than 50 mph, then spent years perfecting and eventually patenting the so-called "sky hook" landing system, which lets the plane fly into a rope suspended from a pole. With a maximum speed of about 90 mph, the SeaScan was the first unmanned plane able to deliver high-quality video footage. Like the Aerosonde, however, the SeaScan never found a successful market. This time, it was terrorists who got in the way. Just as the SeaScan prototype was being completed, the 9/11 attacks came. McGeer had already been in contact with Boeing and others in the defense industry for the better part of a year about possible military uses for SeaScan. Now they left the tuna industry behind and went into high gear. But not without reservations. "There were plenty of people who weren't comfortable. But we went along with it," McGeer says. "I took an ends-justify-the-means argumentthat taking this money would allow me to get into the civilian market. But I was wrong. That never happened." Insitu underwent other rapid changes in 2001. McGeer called in Steve Sliwa, a friend he knew from their undergrad days at Princeton, to turn Insitu around. And coincidentally, the day before 9/11, the Boeing Co. first agreed to invest in Insitu. With Boeing's marketing help, Insitu courted the Department of Defense, whose generals liked the products they saw. With the glacially slow pace of federal defense contracting, Insitu began shipping ScanEagles to Iraq in summer 2004. As a result of that success, McGeer says the company board became focused on serving the defense industry. But McGeer continued to have qualms, especially about his drones supporting a questionable war in Iraq. McGeer says he wanted to restructure Insitu with a new branch dedicated to civilian applications, but Sliwa opposed it. With the board behind him, McGeer says Sliwa ousted him in 2005. Sliwa declined repeated requests to comment for this story. When Boeing bought Insitu in 2008, the deal made millionaires of both McGeer and von Flotow, who still owned shares in the company. McGeer says he would give all that money back if it meant he could prevent the conflicts that made him rich. "If you gave me the choice of turning back the clock and saying no to war in Iraq and Afghanistanif you could buy peace for a few million dollarsof course [I would]," he says. "I'm using the money to try to get done what wasn't done with Insitu." While von Flotow continues to be the brains behind Insitu, McGeer's interests have moved him in a new direction. On March 1, McGeer met with a few friends at his office in tiny Husum, Wash., to roll out the Flexrotora new drone he built over the past four years with the help of five employees in Aerovel, the company he started after leaving Insitu. Flight tests won't start until later this year, but if the Flexrotor works, it will be a remarkable achievement. The 42-pound plane with a 10-foot wingspan is designed to take off and land vertically, requiring less space for launch and retrieval. With a propeller that doubles as a helicopter rotor, the plane can hover vertically or fly horizontally. Takeoff, landing, refueling and relaunching will all happen automatically, with no need for people on site. McGeer hopes to fulfill his original dream of selling drones for civilian uses, including weather observation and geological surveyingmarkets he says Insitu abandoned when the company opted for easy money in the defense industry. Unlike his earlier civilian ventures, McGeer hopes the Flexrotor will succeed because it's cheaper and better designed. Without being specific, he says it will probably sell for "tens of thousands" of dollars. When pressed, he says he won't actively pursue defense contractsbut he won't rule out the possibility entirely. He still believes military drones can do useful work. THE AIR APPARENT: McGeer and his team at Aerovel walk in rural Washington on March 1 with the company's Flexrotor. IMAGE: leahnash.com "There are people who are dead today who would not be dead were it not for the [ScanEagle]. There are [also] people who are alive today who would not be alive were it not for the aircraft," he says. "How that balances out, I don't know." Somewhere between McGeer's moral reservations and von Flotow's comparison of making drones to making toilet paper are two other contributors to the Gorge's growing industry for war, Ross Hoag and Bill Vaglienti, founders of Cloud Cap Technology in Hood River. The two worked for McGeer in the 1990s, building the autopilot and designing software for the Aerosonde. They left Insitu in 1999 to start Cloud Cap, where along with 35 employees they build autopilots, inertial measurement units and camera systems for just about every maker of small drones on the market, except Insitu. Both say they wrestle with the morality of making a living building war machinery. Both say they'd much rather be working on civilian applications like tracking wildfires. But they stand by their defense work. "I don't make it a weapon. My customers might. I can't control that," Vaglienti says. "This is the stuff that's used to pull the trigger, and it's also used to [find] an IED [improvised explosive device]." Drones from the Gorge and elsewhere are used for both purposes. But it's the heroic side of high-altitude surveillance that Insitu's PR department tends to promote. On its website, Insitu highlights the April 12, 2009, rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Navy SEALs managed to kill four of the pirates and save the ship using surveillance from a ScanEagle. It's the dark side of drone warfare that's raised concerns from United Nations rights investigators, officials in targeted countries, and even U.S. military personnel. They say drone assassinations may not only violate international law but actually undermine national security. Begun under the Bush administration, military and CIA use of drones has mushroomed under President Obama. According to a study last fall by the Washington, D.C.-based New America Foundation, Obama sanctioned at least 41 CIA missile strikes during his first nine months in officemore than Bush did in his last three years combined. Local officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan say many of the estimated 300 to 500 people killed were innocent bystanders, including women and children. Taliban leaders seize on those collateral deaths for anti-American publicity. And that track record inflames Susan Garrett Crowley and the other antiwar activists who organized a protest last September when Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire visited Insitu. McGeer also spoke at one of the activists' meetings last year about the history of unmanned aerial vehicles. Garrett Crowley says she is concerned fighting wars by remote control makes it more likely the U.S. will enter future conflictsbecause killing from a distance means no American casualties. The drones built in the Gorge are merely the eyes of the system, gathering information instead of raining death from the sky. But she argues Insitu is just as complicit in the outcome. "Evil is banal. We're all capable of it. And the truth about people who like designing beautiful tools is that they prefer not to think about how those tools are used," she says. "We don't want to blame our neighbors for making the tools. But we do want to question the use to which those tools are put." WWeek 2015 Join or renew your WWOZ membership Choose your membership type below Support WWOZ Annual Donations New Member Gifts: Tee Shirt, Ball Cap Our volunteer-powered, listener-supported station celebrates the amazing music of New Orleans. Join WWOZ and become a Guardian of the Groove! Pledge or Renew Sustaining Gifts Recurring Donations New member gifts with a retro 'OZ logo Become a sustaining member and help WWOZ continue our mission to bring the music and culture of New Orleans to the Universe. 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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America 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 Sergio Mendes, a popular Brazilian musician, will arrive in Israel this summer for two concerts, which will take place on June 23 at the Caesarea Amphitheater and June 24 at the Zappa Club in Tel Aviv. Mendes will be on an international tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his "Brasil 66" album release and concert ticket prices will start at NIS 249. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Mendes originally studied classical music, but later became more attracted to jazz and bossa nova. He performed with Antonio Carlos Jobim and other top Brazilian artists in the 1950s and later collaborated with some of the best jazz musicians in the world including Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann. In 1966, he releassed "Brasil 66", an iconic album that achieved platinum status, launching Mendez onto the international scene. Sergio Mendes in concert (Photo: gettyimages) During his long career, Mendez released more than 50 albums and produced some of Brazil's most influential songs. He has won numerous awards and collaborated with many artists and bands including a successful collaboraton with the Black Eyed Peas in 2006, in which he record a new version of "Mas Que Nada" with the popular US group. Mendez has performed once previously in Israel in the 1980s. In a highly unusual legal move, the State of Israel has filed a request for compensation from dozens of parents of former ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews, who were not taught core subjects (such as English and mathematics) in school, and now claim that they have been significantly damaged by their poor general education. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The ultra-Orthodox Jewish sector in Israel has an independent education system which teaches very little non-religious topics, and is state-funded. The former ultra-Orthodox students are thus suing the state for allowing them to study under what they claim are inappropriate educational standards. The 52 former ultra-Orthodox plaintiffs claim that what they call a poor education has caused significant damage to their lives, impeding their ability to interweave themselves in society and to find employment. The state, however, is claiming that responsibility for the plaintiffs' ills is to be ascribed to the schools and the plaintiffs' parents. It has even filed a former request to have the plaintiffs' compensation come from the parents themselves, if indeed they are shown to have been damaged by their ultra-Orthodox education. Ultra-Orthodox schools teach almost no mathematics, science, or English. (Archive photo: Getty Images) The state claims that it provides education to all children according to the law. It emphasized that, "The plaintiffs, as well as their parents, could have chosen the school that fits their needs, worldview, and way of life from a variety of schools, as they indeed did." "The plaintiffs studied in schools according to their parents' and their own choice," the defense stated, "as far as they are concerned these studies have caused them 'damage' it is to be expected that they point their claim to their parents or to the schools in which they studied." Shlomo Lecker, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in response to the state's actions that, "In a style that befits a common insurance company, the state is shirking responsibility. It has no obligation to support extra education for those who desire it, and everyone is responsible for the neglect of education accept for it: The plaintiffs who did not choose to 'change frameworks' at age eight, the parents who didn't choose to send (their) children to expensive private education institutions, the yeshivas that are not effectively overseen." Thousands of Jews, religious, secular and ultra-Orthodox as well as non-Jewish tourists, gathered on Monday morning at the Western Wall to participate in the traditional priestly blessing during the chol hamoed period of the festival of Passover. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter They came to be blessed at the holy site by the priests, descendents of the tribe of Levi, twice during the prayer services of Shaharit and Mussaf. Priestly blessing at the Western Wall (Photo: Daniel Elior) Opposite the worshippers stand hundreds of priests who cover themselves with their prayer shawls and recite the triple blessing which is written in the Torah. May God bless and protect you, shine his face upon you and educate you and grant peace upon you. In Israel, the blessing is said during every morning service in which more than one priest participates. However, the days of Passover enable people to visit the Western Wall and receive a blessing from hundreds of priests simultaneously. Thousands gather at the Western Wall The area is heavily protected by dozens of policemen and Border Policemen, many of whom are volunteers, who are positioned along the path from Jaffa Gate. Due to the hot temperatures, Magen David Adom paramedics (MDA) have also been stationed with large quantities of water and drinks. The Western Wall - the remains of the biblical temple - is one of the holiest sites for Jews and stands adjacent to the Temple Mount compound which is also holy to Jewish worshippers. However, Jewish visits to the Temple Mount have long been at the center of controversy given that they are forbidden to pray there and can be removed for doing so. Indeed, during a visit on Monday morning three Jewish visitors were removed for praying there but regular visits were permitted to proceed as usual. A total of 842 people, of whom 638 were tourists, visited the Temple Mount over the course of the day. Priestly blessing at the Western Wall (Photo: Yoav Dodkavitch) Tensions surrounding the Jewish visits were heightened further on Sunday when the Jordanian government warned that serious consequences could arise from what it described as "the invasion of settler groups and Israeli occupying forces in the Al-Aqsa mosque." Jordanian Minister for Media Affairs and government spokesperson Mohammad al-Momani said that what Israel and the Jewish visitors ascending Temple Mount are doing is acting against Muslim worshippers in the mosque and is a breach of law and international trust. Al-Momani further demanded that the Israeli authorities immediately stop the visits and prevent the entry of Jews and Israeli security forces to the compound. Moreover, he demanded that Israel allow Palestinian worshippers to enter the mosque and perform their ritual practices. Indictments were filed at the Lod District Court on Monday against members a recently-uncovered alleged Jewish terror cell, suspected of perpetrating terrorist acts and hate crimes against Palestinians. The indictments include violent offenses, weapons charges, and other crimes aimed against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank. The alleged acts were perpetrated in the Gush Talmonim area of the West Bank, near Ramallah. The suspects are accused of committing similar offenses in the 2009-2013 period. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Last week, the Shin Bet revealed that had arrested six suspects, five from the Binyamin area, and one from Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. Three of the suspects are Pinchas Sandorfi, 22, Itamar Ben Aharon, 20, Michael Kaplan, 20. Among them are also two minors, 16 and 17 years old, and an IDF soldier, all of whose identities are under gag order. They are suspected of being involved in security offenses against Palestinians, setting vehicles on fire, assault, and throwing a Molotov cocktail and gas grenade towards inhabited homes. One of the Jewish terrorist suspects. The Shin Bet claims that a short while after their arrest, the suspects confessed to their deeds, and even reenacted several of the events. According to the indictment, Jewish extremists perpetrated Price Tag actions across Israel and in the Palestinian territories, which included setting fire to Arab people's property, lobbing gas grenades, illegally possessing weapons, and throwing Molotov cocktails into an unoccupied home. Three of the suspects are accused of illegally organizing, aggravated assault, throwing rocks at vehicles, arson, illegally carrying weapons, causing destruction due to racist motives, defacing lands, and more. The suspects allegedly perpetrated these offenses in different places across Israel and the West Bank. Their actions were allegedly accompanied by the dissemination of propaganda and provocative publications. These actions included setting fire to property which belonged to Arab people, including cars and homes, and spraying graffiti. All victims were selected due to their national and religious profile. According to the indictment, three of the suspects collected equipment for terror attacks, including military-grade gas grenades, gloves, and spray paint. Suspect number 3 is accused of illegal weapons possession, after an M-16 assault rifle was found in his home, along with ammunition. Price tag graffiti. A fourth indictment accuses the two suspects who are minors of throwing Molotov cocktails in Mazra'a al-Qibliya, near Ramallah. The indictment states that the two are suspected of filling bottles and bleach containers with fuel, walking to an Arab town or village, and throwing the incendiary devices at an inhabited home. They later allegedly sprayed graffiti on the walls which said "Jews wake up, death to Arabs." The home was damaged but its inhabitants were not hurt. The Shin Bet and the nationalistic crimes division of the Judea and Samaria District Police claim that the members of the alleged terror cell, who worked together over a long period of time, set fire to a Palestinian vehicle mere hours after the murder of Naama and Eitam Henkin in October. In addition, the group, also known as the Nahliel group, is accused of assaulting a Palestinian in July 2015, and setting fire to a Palestinian vehicle in 2014. In addition, five of the suspects are suspected of throwing a gas grenade towards a home in the village of Bitilu in December. The Palestinian Security Forces (PASF) have undergone many transformations since the creation of the Palestinian Authority 22 years ago as part of the Oslo Accords. Amongst these were different reforms, the disbanding or merging of units, and leaders who stepped down or were replaced. All of this led to changes in direction and character. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Israelis have mostly heard of the Palestinian Security Forces, but few know about their different branches and leaders or about their security cooperation with Israel and other countries. Palestinian Presidential Guard in action X A brief history The 1994 Cairo Agreement and 1995 Oslo II Accord created the PASF "to guarantee public order and internal security for the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The original plan was to create six different security services. But the PA has since created a number of additional services because PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat feared the consequences of few people amassing too much power. At its outset, PASF was primarily comprised of members of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) and received international assistance to develop its forces until 2000, but the eruption of the second intifada dramatically changed the PASF's relationship with the Israeli security services. PASF forces participated in the armed confrontations with Israel and in many cases, its leaders turned a blind eye to violence against Israel. Vision of Oslo turns into anarchy The PA did not prevent terrorist activities. On the contrary, they promoted them and sought to protect terrorists in security facilities. Consequently - and in light of the deterioration and expanding rift that had formed between the PA and the Israeli defense establishment - the IDF began attacking and destroying Palestinian security facilities. The protection of public order as envisioned by the Oslo Accords crumbled as PASF rapidly lost control of the Palestinian street, which descended into several years of anarchy. Only after the death of Arafat and the subsequent election of President Mahmoud Abbas did gradual security service reform and renewed contacts between PASF and the Israeli security services come. The US contributed to this effort, establishing the United States Security Coordinator (USSC), which oversaw the rebuilding and professional development of PASF under the leadership of General Keith Dayton. Coordination between the PASF and Israeli security forces only resumed after Arafat's passing and Abbas's election (Photo: AFP) Dayton helped professionalize the mechanisms and foster trust between Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs. His efforts bore so much success that Hamas labeled the senior officers involved in the efforts as Daytons - a term which took on a derogatory meaning in the eyes of those affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. General Keith Dayton with then-defense minister Amir Peretz (Photo: AP) As a result of the professionalism of the forces and the improvement of relations, the IDF began to gradually withdraw its forces from Area A and transfer control to PASF. 2007 constituted a significant milestone for the Palestinian forces. On the one hand, security coordination with Israel was renewed while on the other hand the PA lost control over the Gaza Strip to Hamas. Following the takeover, the PA deactivated its Gaza-based forces and has since only operated in the West Bank. Who is in PASF? According to different estimates, the PASF includes between 25,000-30,000 personnel. The precise number of PASF forces and its budget is unknown to the public. The PASF receives a set portion of the PA's annual budget. Additionally, the various forces receive supplementary budgets from various sources such as foreign intelligence agencies. The money is used to strengthen their forces, purchase equipment, for training. Naturally, there is a hierarchy between the different branches, but they are constantly fighting for the spotlight. The different branch chiefs compete to gain access to Abbass inner circle and to win the approval of the Israeli security services and, as a result, of foreign security agencies as well. Moreover, according to Palestinian law, security chiefs are limited to four-year terms, but many remain in their positions for much longer periods. General Intelligence Service (GIS) - This GIS is one of the two most prestigious PASF bodies. It was created after the Oslo Accords and comprises two parts of the Palestinian Liberation Army - the United Security and the Central Security. The GIS is the body responsible for security operations beyond the borders of the PA, including counterintelligence and security operations. In some ways, the GIS is the Palestinian equivalent of the Mossad. The GIS is also responsible for thwarting terror attacks in the West Bank. And even though it cannot legally operate outside of Area A, its cadres work covertly in Areas B and C, which are under the Israeli control, and sometimes in East Jerusalem. Such activities, which usually involve arresting suspects and taking them to Area A for investigation, are carried out swiftly and secretly. Due to the secrecy of the organization, GIS personnel operate in civilian clothing and their facilities are unmarked and unknown to the public and located in residential buildings. According to various estimations, the GIS has a holding facility in every Palestinian province, in which the GIS forces interrogate suspects. Maj.-Gen. Majid Faraj, 54, has been heading the agency since 2009. Faraj was born in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem and lost his father to IDF fire in 2002, during the second intifada. Faraj is known to have a smiling and pleasant disposition and is considered one of the highest-ranking PASF officials. Moreover, Faraj is the only one among all of his PASF counterparts who is involved in politics and is thus considered to be one of Abbas closest confidantes. Maj.-Gen. Majid Faraj, left, with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israeli PM Netanyahu (Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom, GPO) Faraj is also involved in the diplomatic process with Israel and participated in the latest round of negotiations in 2014, which ended in failure. While he is well known to all international players involved in the peace process, the fact Faraj doesn't speak fluent English is to his detriment. Moreover, in the past he has was involved in reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas on behalf of the Palestinian president and his close relations with Abbas has led many to believe he could succeed him. Faraj, left, with Palestinian PM Rami Hamdallah (Photo: Elior Levy) Preventive Security Service (PSS) - PSS is a prestigious security branch in the PA whose main responsibilities include maintaining internal security in the Authority and uncovering criminal, security or political offenses before they are committed. In practice, the PSS is the equivalent to the Shin Bet. However, its missions are almost identical to those of the GIS. Similar to GIS personnel, PSS officers operate in civilian attire, and they carry out both clandestine and public operations. The PSS was established by Fatah operatives who came to prominence in the territories prior to the Oslo Accords. It tracks, monitors and stops the activities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in an effort to weaken these organizations' influence in the West Bank. The PSS agents infiltrate Hamas and Islamic Jihad cells in both the West Bank and Gaza and collect intelligence using wiretapping and various other means. Hamas has often claimed that PSS interrogators torture their operatives in the West Bank. The branch has 11 holding facilities in the West Bank. Its chief Ziyad Hab al-Rih, who also holds the rank of major general, is one of the veteran leaders in the PASF and has led the organization in the West Bank since 2003. Unlike Faraj, Hab al-Rih lacks political talent but is described by his inner circle as a top professional and a secretive figure who avoids the media and the public like the plague. Because of the often overlapping functions the PSS and GIS serve, and the desire to find favor in the eyes of Mahmoud Abbas, there are natural tensions between Faraj and Hab al-Rih. The Palestinian National Security Forces (PSF) - The PSF is essentially the Palestinian army and constitutes the largest branch of the PASF. It is divided into nine battalions trained by British and Italian forces at the military academy in Jericho, while US forces train them at a facility in Jordan. The PSF provides support to other PASF branches and conducts large scale operations and arrests in the Palestinian territories, similar to the way the Shin Bet assists the IDF during large-scale raids. Recently, arrest operations took place in the Balata and Jenin refugee camps, where many PSF forces were deployed. They are also stationed in the entrances and exits of Area A. Algerian-born Maj.-Gen. Nidal Abu Dukhan, 48, commands the PSF. Abu Dukhan previously headed special operations for the Presidential Guard (PG). He has been described by officials in his inner circle as a serious man but not a prodigy. Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) - The PCP is responsible for maintaining public order and fighting crime ranging from solving murders and robberies to traffic policing. The Palestinian police are also sometimes responsible to stop Palestinian protesters seeking to arrive at areas of friction along the borders of Area A. The PCP is extremely professional and is respected by foreign police forces. It has division of identification and forensic science and canine unit, and its officers participate in international continuing education programs through Interpol. The force is commanded by Maj.-Gen. Hazem Atallah who, unlike Faraj and al-Rih, is educated and speaks English. He has been described as intelligent, albeit arrogant, and as someone who views himself as superior to others. His father is Atallah Atallah, who was a senior official in the Palestinian Liberation Army during the period preceding the Oslo Accords. The Presidential Guard (PG) - The PA's elite unit consists of the VIP Protection Unit and a special commando unit. The organization originated from Force 17, a Fatah commando and special operations unit that existed prior to the Oslo Accords. The PG's personnel protect the Palestinian president, his residence and the Mukataa (the PA's headquarters) in Ramallah. They are also responsible for the protection of the Palestinian prime minister, senior ministers and officials occupying sensitive posts. The PG, headed by Maj.-Gen. Munir Al-Zuabi, is also responsible for protecting and escorting foreign delegations visiting the Palestinian Authority. Compared to corresponding units in Arab countries, the Palestinian Presidential Guard is considered a high-quality force. The Guard also trains at the military academy in Jericho, where it has an open training area, a simulated urban training center, shooting ranges and living quarters. Military Intelligence (MI) - This is a relatively small unit responsible for tracking and handling members of the PASF who are involved in criminal or terror activities, exposing collaborators with Israel or with agents of other countries, preventing the infiltration of hostile figures into the security services and handling disciplinary transgressions of PASF personnel. The Palestinian Military Intelligence unit is a hybrid of the Israeli Director of Security of the Defense Establishment and the military police. The Military Intelligence unit is led by Maj.-Gen. Zakaria Misleh, who is described as lacking character and charisma. Military Liaison - This unit is responsible for liaison with its corresponding unit in Israel - the District Coordination and Liaison (DCL) office in the Civil Administration. They maintain a permanent line of communication with Israel. The unit, led by Maj.-Gen. Jihad al-Jayousi, hands Israelis who have accidentally entered PA territory over to the IDF, notifies Israel about price tag attacks, receives advanced warnings to withdraw Palestinian forces from specific areas ahead of IDF raids to carry out arrests in Area A, etc. Maj.-Gen. Jihad al-Jayousi The Civil Defense - The Civil Defense is the equivalent of Israel's Fire Department. Its functions include fighting fires and rescuing people trapped in cars or buildings. Its personnel are provided with life-saving equipment, which is considered of a relatively low standard. However, they do, from time to time, purchase new equipment. The unit train for extreme scenarios by offering aid in natural disasters around the world. The Civil Defense was commanded by Maj.-Gen. Mahmoud Issa, but he recently died due to a medical complication. He is replaced by Nasser Youssef, who served under Issa. Security coordination stronger than ever The political process has been in a deep freeze for the past year. There exists a deep-seated lack of trust between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas which has only intensified as a result of seven months of violence. This notwithstanding, the security cooperation between Israel and the PA has never been better or stronger. Furthermore, the Palestinian security forces now stand at the peak of their professional capabilities. A significant portion of their performance depends on their security coordination, which includes regular meetings between senior PASF officials and their Israeli counterparts, exchanging information and intelligence, surrendering weapons seized in Area A, demonstration-crowd-dispersal measures for the PCP, and the transfer of the PCP's findings from detainee investigations to the Shin Bet. The Palestinian security apparatus has assisted Israel on more than one occasion to locate wanted suspects. This was the case in Operation Brothers Keeper when they searched for the gang responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in 2014. The coordination also includes criminal matters, such as the returning of Israelis who entered Area A, and intelligence is shared between the respective police forces. This is why, for example, there is an Israeli police officer at every Israeli DCL and a Palestinian police officer at the corresponding Palestinian DCL, who meet and exchange information, such as fingerprints and criminal information. Coordination also takes place in civilian matters, such as when fires broke out in areas bordering territory under Israeli and Palestinian control. During the massive Carmel fire in 2010, the PA sent firefighters from the Civil Defense to assist the Israelis. The Carmel fire (Photo: Avishag She'ar Yeshuv) This security coordination between the PA and Israel removes Hamas from the picture, as this coordination is one of the central reasons that Hamas's military infrastructure is so shaky in the West Bank. Many of its military operatives are captured in their initial stages thanks to security coordination. The incitement against security forces and against coordination does not only exist in the media affiliated with Islamic groups and on social media, but also in mainstream Arab media outlets, such as Al Jazeera and Al Mayadeen which are also critical of the security cooperation. In hindsight, it is clear that the security coordination between Israel and the PA has withstood many tests, such as Operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge in Gaza, state crises, terror attacks, tension on the Temple Mount and the current wave of terrorism. Despite these challenges, the partnership remains robust. The PA's security coordination is not only with Israel, but also with other intelligence agencies, such as those in the United States, United Kingdom, and Jordan. Light weapons and SUVs Normally, all the heads of the Palestinian defense establishment meet for a weekly evaluation with the Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah. These assessment meetings also take place between them and Mahmoud Abbas, albeit with less frequency. Hamdallah also functions as a type of defense minister and is familiar with the small details of the security forces' activities. Another important senior official in the Palestinian security apparatus is Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh, who speaks fluent Hebrew and is responsible for all issues relating to civilian cooperation with Israel. He is also deeply involved on the sensitive security side of the relations between the Palestinians and Israel, and is credited for the success of the talks with the Israeli side. Al-Sheikh (along with the other leaders in the Palestinian security forces) is in direct contact with the Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, whom he meets regularly, either in Ramallah or Israel. Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh The bulk of the weaponry in the hands of the Palestinian security apparatus are small arms, along with those designed to disperse protests and vehicles made for on-road and off-road driving. In the first years following the forces' creation, it was intended to transfer to them light-armored vehicles. However, the decision was never implemented, and the vehicles were simply left to rust in Jordan. The Palestinian security forces often complain about military shortages for training. A French-Iranian citizen who left Iran in 2009 after facing espionage charges has been sentenced to six years in jail following her return to the country to visit her critically ill mother, an opposition website reported. Former French embassy employee Nazak Afshar, 58, was arrested last month on arrival at Tehran airport, website Kaleme said late on Sunday. More than four-fifths of the US Senate have signed a letter urging President Barack Obama to quickly reach an agreement on a new defense aid package for Israel worth more than the current $3 billion per year. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Eighty-three of the 100 senators signed the letter, led by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons. Senator Ted Cruz, a 2016 presidential candidate, was one of the 51 Republicans on board. The Senate's Democratic White House hopeful, Bernie Sanders, was not among the 32 Democrats. "In light of Israel's dramatically rising defense challenges, we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge," said the letter. US President Barack Obama (Photo: AP) It did not provide a figure for the suggested aid. Israel wants $4 billion to $4.5 billion in aid in a new agreement to replace the current memorandum of understanding, or MOU, which expires in 2018. US officials have given lower target figures of about $3.7 billion. They hope for a new agreement before Obama leaves office in January. The Obama administration wants to cement a new 10-year defense aid deal before he leaves office in January to demonstrate his commitment to Israel's security, especially after reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran that Israel strongly opposed. Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have had a tense relationship. A White House official said discussions with Israel were continuing. "We are prepared to sign an MOU with Israel that would constitute the largest single pledge of military assistance to any country in US history," the official said. The funding is intended to boost Israel's military and allow it to maintain a technological advantage over its Arab neighbors. The letter said the Senate also intends to consider increased US funding for cooperative missile defense programs, similar to increases in the past several years. Obama has asked for $150 million for such programs, but lawmakers are believed to be willing to send Israel hundreds of millions for programs like its Iron Dome air defense system and the David's Sling medium- and long-range military defense system. Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan claimed last week that many of the Palestinian women who committed terror attacks over the past six months have been motivated by a desire to meet handsome martyrs in paradise. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Erdan told senior Likud officials that Israeli security services learned of this desire from female terrorists interrogated after committing or attempting to carry out an attack. Before, terrorists were promised that 72 virgins would be waiting for them in paradise. Now, some of the terrorists looked so good, that the female terrorists wanted to die so they could be with them, Erdan said. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Photo: Ofer Meir) He cited the example of the 19-year-old terrorist Fadi Alloun from Isawiya who was killed after he stabbed a 15-year-old Jewish boy in Jerusalem in October 2015. Apparently, Allouns name came up during the interrogations of several female terrorists as someone who they were attracted to and someone who they would like, along with other good-looking terrorists, to be with in paradise. Indeed, we are talking about a young man who looks like a model and there are other terrorists like him who also look very good," a source close to Erdan told Yedioth Ahronoth. "It was shocking to hear young Palestinian girls during their interrogation saying that they want to die in an attack to be reunited with them in paradise. Terrorist Fadi Alloun Erdan added that incitement had provided the impetus for the latest wave of terrorism, in which prominent figures from the Islamic Movement, Israeli Arab leaders and PA and Hamas officials, stirred people to action via their smartphones. The Palestinians and their supporters can reach the minds and hearts of any young man or woman, 24/7, and tell them lies about how Israel wants to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount, the minister said. Erdan admitted that at first, he couldn't believe that anyone would seriously believe such claims: I read the transcripts of the investigations of some of the terrorists that were caught. They said that they returned from an event organized by the Islamic Movement where they were told that Israel wants to demolish the mosques. They are genuinely convinced of this. A large fire broke out on Monday afternoon near the tomb of Rabbi Jonathan ben Uzziel in Biriya Forest in the upper Galilee. Firefighters were able to gain control over the fire and stop its advancement towards the nearby communal settlement of Amuka. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Many firefighting forces were dispatched to the forest to combat the blaze, including six airtankers and the Fire Department's northern district enacted the "Lashes of Fire" alert, used when there's concern a large-scale fire would quickly spread. Fire at Biriya Forest (Photo: Yerusha Vlotker) Dozens of visitors were evacuated from the area. The forest is among one of the more popular among KKL-JNF forests and is many Israelis visit it during Chol HaMoed. Roads in the area, from Hatzor HaGlilit and Biriya to Amuka, were closed, and a command and control center was set up in the area including firefighting, Magen David Adom and police forces. KKL forester Eli Hafuta estimated that dozens of dunams have burned down. Meanwhile, a fire broke out at a grove on Highway 3 near Yesodot in the Shephelah region in central Israel. Firefighting forces were working to stop the spread of the fire towards the moshav. Train movement in the area was stopped and visitors were evacuated. A fire also broke out in Elad Forest in the Samaria district of the West Bank. Firefighting and KKL teams were able to stop the spread of the fire, and evacuated visitors to the forest. BUDAPEST - Hungary's constitution bans "Islamization" because the document aims to protect Hungarian language and culture, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Monday. Orban also said the constitution forces the government to oppose any kind of mass migration that would endanger those principles. "To be clear and unequivocal, I can say that Islamization is constitutionally banned in Hungary," Orban said in parliament at an event celebrating the fifth anniversary of Hungary's new constitution, now known as the Basic Law. Orban was quoting from the National Avowal, the Basic Law's preamble, which details the country's commitment "to promoting and safeguarding our heritage, our unique language, Hungarian culture" and the protection of "the living conditions of future generations." GENEVA - The main Syrian opposition welcomed US President Barack Obama's announcement on Monday that his administation will deploy 250 more troops in Syria to help local militia fight Islamic State militants. Salem al-Meslet, spokesman of the High Negotiations Committee, one of only a few HNC representatives still in Geneva for informal talks with the UN Special Envoy on Syria, said in a statement referring to Islamic State or Daesh. "President Obama's decision to deploy 250 more troops to fight the Daesh in Syria is a good step. We must rid our country of this scourge. But Syria will not be free of terrorism until we see the end of the Assad regime's reign of terror. We need help in freeing our country from Assad as well as from the Daesh." MOSCOW - Syria and Russia have signed agreements worth 850 million euros to restore infrastructure in the Arab nation, Russia's RIA news agency quoted Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaki as saying on Monday. "The Russian side were receptive to the idea of restoring infrastructure, accordingly a number of deals were signed," RIA quoted al-Halaki as saying. A combat soldier from the ultra-Orthodox battalion Netzah Yehuda was sentenced to 17 days in military prison on Monday after cocking his rifle and aiming it at an Israeli Arab in Jerusalem during the Passover holiday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter On Saturday, which coincided with the first day of Passover, the soldier visited Jerusalem's Old City while on leave from the army. He was dressed in civilian clothes and was carrying his rifle with the magazine inserted. Despite the fact that the soldier was not under threat and there was no operational need for it, the soldier cocked his rifle at an Israeli Arab passerby. Netzah Yehuda battalion soldiers (Illustration) The soldier told the police that he felt nervous and threatened. Police held the soldier for questioning, at the end of which it was decided to hand the investigation over to the IDF's criminal investigation division. The IDF said the soldier faced a court martial by his battalion commander and was sentenced to jail time after being found guilty of an illegal use of a firearm. The decision on whether to remove him from his combat position will be made after he is done serving his sentence. This isn't the first incident that involved soldiers from the Haredi battalion. About two weeks ago, soldiers from the battalion burned a Palestinian flag they confiscated from a vehicle. The squad commander was sentenced to 20 days in prison and removed from his commanding position, while another soldier was confined to the base for 28 days. The Air Force Bands Airmen of Note took time out of its nine-day spring tour to perform a concert April 19 for more than 600 students and faculty at W.E. Boswell High School in Fort Worth, Texas. While on a tour through North Texas, 18 Airmen performed a concert and collaborated with 17 high school musicians on two musical arrangements as part of their Advancing Innovation through Music (AIM) program. The bands level of experience blew me away, said Arthur Salinas, a Boswell student and bassist, after performing with the Airmen. The advice they gave when approaching new pieces of music is experiment. If you need to step out of your comfort zone, its just a rehearsal and anything goes. I mean, the heart of your music comes from rehearsal. Designed to build positive relationships with local and nationwide educational communities, the AIM program gives Air Force Band members the chance to work side-by-side with students of all ages, in small clinics and in large scale assemblies. With this program, they are able to reach student audiences throughout the nation. In 2015 alone, the AIM program reached nearly 23,000 school students in more than 113 events across 20 states and the District of Columbia. Senior Master Sgt. Tyler Kuebler, Airmen of Notes music director and lead alto saxophone player, expressed that these interactions help the Air Force Band program continue to give back to the community. AIM is one of the most impactful programs we have because of the direct contact and communication with students all over the country, Kuebler said. Within this program, we encounter a number of skill levels and maturity that give us an opportunity to showcase what we are about in the Air Force first, and target them musically to see where theyre at [second], and then incorporate the Air Forces core values in our interactions. We take that responsibility very seriously. With 12 years as a band director under his belt, Kevin Fallon, associate director for Boswells bands and director for the jazz band ensemble, saw a change in his students. I noticed Dave Post, our drummer, look over the Airmans shoulder while playing Cat Race, his eyes got wide as he saw choices he was making on how to fill or how to create space and time as a soloist, Fallon said. Anytime students at this level are surrounded by professionals, it provides inspiration to work harder to get to a new level. The students have been listening to the Airmen of Notes recordings and they were impressed. But theres a difference between hearing them through speakers and experiencing them live. In addition to performing Cat Race, the band and Boswell students performed a piece written by Airmen of Note trumpeter, Master Sgt. Alan Baylock. It was a real thrill to hear the students perform my arrangement of One Mint Julep," said Baylock. "Once a piece of music of mine is published I never know what happens to it - and it's nice to know that in Fort Worth, it's in very good hands." These Airmen take AIMs educational outreach program to heart. "No matter what career theyre interested in, said Kuebler. The opportunities are limitless if they have dedication, apply themselves as both professionals, good students and follow their dreams. Hopefully we can show them no matter what their goals are, they can achieve them through hard work and dedication. Airmen of Note will continue to Hewitt, Austin, Houston and Beaumont, Texas before traveling to Louisiana as part of its spring tour. The Global and United States Hydrobike Market Report has been published by QY Research recently. Hydrobike Market Analysis and Insights This report focuses on... Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Riscurile si beneficiile unei diete vegetariene Pentru a ne lamuri de la inceput, trebuie sa stiti ca dieta strict vegetariana exclude toate alimentele de origine animala: carnea de pui, vita, porc; pestele, lactatele, ouale si branza. Mierea este de asemenea condamnata, la fel si ceara de albine. Studiile au demonstrat ca incidenta hipertensiunii arteriale, [citeste mai departe] LIVE-2 Inning |24-28 BANGLADESH VS NETHERLANDS BAN 144/8 VS 36/4 NED Netherlands need 109 runs in 80 balls at 8.17 rpo Hyderabad: President All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen Party Asaduddin Owaisi demanded on Monday that government ought to pay compensation to those discharged by court in Malegaon blast case and punish erring officials for wrongful framing of Muslims. He also said that Congress and NCP party should introspect and apologise when in power in Maharsahtra they did not listen to voices who said Muslims were not involved. The MP further said, "Responsibility of NIA to get conviction so that justice is done 37 people who were killed." Owaisi took to micro-blogging site Twitter to post the following: High Court Discharges 8 Muslim Accused 06 MALEGAON blast will Govt punish ATS officers for their torture,loss of time ,ordeal ,livelihood Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 Responsibility of NIA to get conviction so that justice is done 37 people who where killed more than 100 injured no more Hostile witness Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 Will an Ex ATS Chief who was on A TV claiming 8 Muslim boys involved 06 MALEGAON will He Apologize publicly remember youth in jail 5 years Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 Congress & NCP party also introspect,Apologize where in power in Maharsahtra they never listened to Voices who said Muslims not involved Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 #Maharashtra Govt should Pay compensation to 8 Discharged MALEGAON 06 blast ,punish erring officials for wrongful framing of Muslims Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 #Malegaon 06 Blast will the ATS officials be punished under MOCOCA provisions for deliberate false implicating of Muslim youths Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 In an important development today, special Mumbai court today discharged eight accused in 2006 Malegaon bomb blast case. The order was passed by Sessions Judge VV Patil while heading a discharge applications filed by the accused. One accused in the case had died, while six were released earlier in 2011 on bail. Two other accused have been convicted in the 2006 train blast case. The National Investigation Agency had last week told a Mumbai court it has found no evidence to link nine Muslims arrested in the 2006 Malegaon blasts case to the terror attack, a move that paved the way for their release. The NIA also did not object to the discharge applications filed by the arrested accused, saying evidence collected by it were "not in consonance" with those obtained earlier by Maharashtra Anti-terrorism Squad and the Central Bureau of Investigation, which had recommended their prosecution. "It is submitted that evidence collected by NIA in further investigation is not in consonance with evidence collected by the Anti-Terrorism Squad and the CBI. The court may kindly pass appropriate orders in the matter," the anti-terror agency told a special NIA court in response to discharge applications filed by the nine accused. It said no evidence was found in support of the conclusion drawn in final reports filed by ATS and CBI, which had probed the case earlier, and recommended prosecution of the accused arrested in connection with the September 8, 2006 explosions that killed 37 people and wounded 125. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya on Monday said the decision to rusticate them from the varsity was "unacceptable" and termed as "farce" the inquiry by a high-level committee even as the students' union threatened a countrywide campaign on the matter. In his reaction, JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 by the varsity administration, said the punitive action handed down on the basis of a "farcical" probe was "simply unacceptable" and that the Union rejects it. "JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee!" Kanhaiya tweeted. Terming the decision against them as "unacceptable", Anirban and Umar alleged the authority's action amounted to a "witch-hunt" under the "diktats" of RSS. "The JNU administration declares its allegiance to RSS, once again! After allowing police to enter campus to unleash the worst repression...Now the JNU admin has come down with its own list of punishments. "A farce is what this inquiry has been from day one, made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar (JNU VC) that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS," Umar posted on Facebook. He said Hyderabad Central University's deceased Dalit student Rohith Vemula was their "inspiration", urging the students for a "fight back". JNUSU vice president Shehla Rashid Shora said, "We will launch a countrywide campaign to expose this government's anti-student, anti-Dalit character." Shehla said the action against the students was based on "sheer vendetta and a biased inquiry" and "one-sided" statements from ABVP members. "The VC is taking directions from the Central govt. He should have acted first as an academician and then as an RSS loyalist. Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," she said. JNU today slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on JNUSU president Kumar and rusticated PhD scholars Umar and Anirban for varying duration in connection with the controversial February 9 event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had triggered widespread outrage and protests. Based on the findings of a committee, Umar has been rusticated for one semester and slapped with a fine of Rs 20,000, Anirban has been rusticated till July 15. New Delhi: A four-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her neighbour, who also tried to kill her in east Delhi's Kalyanpuri area, police said on Monday. The girl is presently admitted in a hospital and her condition is critical. Meanwhile, the 26-year-old accused has been arrested. The girl lives with her parents, both workers at a private enterprise, and grandmother on the second floor of a building at Kalyanpuri in which the accused too is a co-tenant, police said. The incident took place on Saturday afternoon when the girl was sleeping beside her grandmother and the accused whisked her away to his room. When he allegedly forced himself upon her, the girl screamed following which the accused gagged her. Failing to manage the situation, he then tried to strangulate her, police said. The girl fell unconscious and the accused assumed that she was dead. He first decided to dump her outside the building but there were too many people outside. He changed his plans and went to the girl's house once again to drop her there and secretly return to his own room. But this time the girl's grandmother was awake looking for the child and raised an alarm when she saw the accused carrying her granddaughter, who was unconscious and bleeding from her private parts, police said. Locals held the accused and thrashed him. They also rushed the girl to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where she was admitted in a critical condition. It was the hospital authorities which informed the police. When a police team went to the building, locals handed over the accused to them. He was arrested immediately, charged under IPC sections for rape, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation and provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, police said. New Delhi: Six air-conditioned special buses put in place by the Delhi government to ferry MPs to Parliament, which convenes for the remaining part of the Budget Session on Monday, has found no takers. As per ANI, only two BJP MPs Ranjan Bhatt and Hari Om Singh Rathore availed the special DTC bus service launched for MPs to reach Parliament today. The Delhi government had earlier announced that it will run special buses to ferry MPs to Parliament as odd-even car rationing scheme is in force in the national capital. The Arvind Kejriwal government had even appealed to lawmakers to follow the odd-even rule. "We have decided to run six special buses to ferry MPs to Parliament as they are not exempted under the odd-even scheme," Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai had said on Sunday. I appeal to all parliamentarians to follow the odd-even rule and also do car-pooling with other MPs," he had said. 'MP Special' buses will ply from 9 am to 11 am and 5.30 pm to 8 pm, and will be available after every 15 minutes, a senior DTC official said. "If MPs do not prefer to travel by buses, they have the option to carpool. They should contribute to make Delhi a pollution-free city," he added. MPs are not exempt from the odd-even scheme, the second phase of which started on April 15 and will end on April 30. The violation of the car-rationing scheme attracts a penalty of Rs 2,000. The President, PM, Vice-President, Union Ministers, Chief Justice of India, Judges of High Courts and women among others are exempted under it. Meanwhile, the Delhi government on Saturday claimed that the rate of compliance in the second phase of car-rationing scheme was higher compared to its first round and 5,814 challans were issued in the first nine days alone. In the last edition of the scheme, 6,768 challans were issued in the corresponding period. Washington: A new research has warned that many large glaciers in Greenland are at greater risk of melting from below. According to new maps of the seafloor around Greenland created by an international research team, many large glaciers in Greenland are at greater risk of melting from below than previously thought. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine; NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; and other research institutions combined all observations their various groups had made during shipboard surveys of the seafloors in the Uummannaq and Vaigat fjords in west Greenland between 2007 and 2014 with related data from NASA's Operation Icebridge and the NASA/US Geological Survey Landsat satellites. The findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters last month, showed the glaciers in Greenland are more sensitive to climate change than previously thought. "While we expected to find deeper fjords than previous maps showed, the differences are huge," said Eric Rignot of UCI and JPL, lead author of a paper on the research. "They are measured in hundreds of meters, even one kilometer [3,300 feet] in one place." The difference means that the glaciers actually reach deeper, warmer waters, making them more vulnerable to faster melting as the oceans warm. About 90 percent of Greenland's glaciers flow into the ocean, including the newly mapped ones. The new study also shows that the older maps were wrong. Coauthor Ian Fenty of JPL noted that earlier maps were based on sparse measurements mostly collected several miles offshore. Mapmakers assumed that the ocean floor sloped upward as it got nearer the coast. That's a reasonable supposition, but it's proving to be incorrect around Greenland, he added. The researchers also found that besides being deeper overall, the seafloor depth is highly variable. "These data help us better interpret why some glaciers have reacted to ocean warming while others have not," Rignot said. (Source: NASA) Ahmedabad: The police have arrested 11 students of an engineering college in Anand, in central Gujarat, for allegedly gang raping a 20-year-old woman from the Union Territory of Daman. The Daman police made the arrest on Monday from Anand following a complaint filed by the young woman. The police said the complainant had claimed that she had come to know the young men, all second and third year students of the Anand Engineering College, through the social media. One of the youths, with a promise of marriage had lured her into coming to Anand on April 21. Then, he took the young woman to the men's hostel where his 11 friends took turns to rape her. Later she was taken in a white car to Daman where again she was repeatedly raped by some of the men before releasing her. She lodged the complaint with the Daman police following which the police picked up the 11 students named by her. The police said medical tests had confirmed gang rape of the woman. The arrested men, who were being taken to Daman, have been charged with abduction and kidnapping, besides rape, the police said. Shimla: The Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education, or HPBOSE, is expected to announce the results of the Class 12th examination 2016 on Monday. The results of the Senior Secondary Plus Two (XII) Class Examination 2016 will be published on the official website hpbose.org The Himachal Pradesh Board of secondary and senior secondary education had conducted the Class XIIth annual examinations last month beginning March 4, 2016. Once the results are declared, candidates can log on to the official website to check the results. They will be required to enter their Roll Number or Hall Ticket Number among other things to check the results. About the Board The Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education, Dharamshala came into existence in 1969 as per Himachal Pradesh Act No. 14 of 1968 with its head-quarter at Shimla later shifted to Dharamshala in January 1983. The Board Board prescribes syllabus, courses of instructions and text books for school education in Himachal Pradesh besides conducting examinations based on courses listed. At present, the Board conducts examination for the following classes and courses: 10th, 10+2, JBT and TTC. As many as 5 Lakh candidates annually appear in the examination conducted by the Board. Presently more than 8000 schools are affiliated with the Board. The Board has set up 1650 Examination centres throughout the state. Board also publishes text books for class 1st to 12th. New Delhi: Journalist Syed Mohammad Kazmi, accused in the 2012 Israeli embassy car blast case, on Monday alleged that some people barged into his house, abused his wife, called her anti-national and asked her to leave the country. Kazmi`s son Turab Ali Kazmi lodged a complaint against unidentified people at Lodhi Colony police station. Kazmi`s son said that around 7.30 pm, seven-eight people barged into his house in Jorbagh area and demolished a boundary wall. They also labelled his mother as an anti-national person who had no right to live in the country. Kazmi said his family was feeling unsafe and insecure after the incident and demanded immediate action against the culprits. Kazmi was charged under various provisions of the anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and the penal provision for attempt to murder, among others in the 2012 Israeli embassy car blast case. He is out on bail. Four people were injured when an Israeli embassy car was hit by a bomb near the prime minister`s residence. Tal Yehoshua Koren, 42, wife of Israeli defence attache Colonel Yossi Refaelov, suffered multiple injuries when a motorcycle rider attached a magnetic explosive device to her car and sped away. New Delhi: After spearheading a successful campaign for women's right to worship in temples, activist Trupti Desai on Monday said that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) should allow women to join the organisation. "The Bharatiya Janata Party was elected to power on the basis of women`s votes. Women should be allowed to join the RSS to which the BJP is affiliated," she said. Desai said she would soon write to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on the issue as part of her campaign for gender equality. Mohan Bhagwat on the issue as part of her campaign for gender equality. The demand was promptly opposed by Kanta Nalawade, vice-president of the BJP`s Maharashtra unit who said Desai should focus her energies on other issues concerning women instead of making "ridiculous demands". Desai has been in the news for months for leading a campaign to secure women`s entry into the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district and the Trimbakeshwar Temple in Nashik district. She is the founder of an organisation called the `Bhumata Brigade` which claims to have 4,000 members. Desai has said she will now start a campaign on April 28 for women`s entry into the Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai followed by the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. (With agency inputs) New Delhi: The second part of Parliament's Budget session beginning on Monday is going to be a stormy affair, as the Congress is all set to seek a discussion on the imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand, despite government's claim that the matter being sub-judice it cannot be deliberated upon. The Congress and some other parties, Janata Dal (United) (JD-U), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Biju Janata Dal (BJD), are expected to take on the Narendra Modi led government over the contentious issue. At an all-party meeting on Sunday, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan sought the cooperation of all parties for the smooth functioning of Parliament. However, it seems her efforts would go in vain as Congress' leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters after the meeting that the party MPs would move an adjournment motion seeking a discussion on it under Rule 56. However, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy contended,"To my knowldge, the matter is before the court and when the issue is pending in court and a decision is yet to come, there is no scope for a discussion on it. The Speaker has to take a decision on it." Speaker Mahajan, too, appeared to share the government's view. "The court has given stay till April 27 and I don't think till 27th (there can be a discussion)," she said when asked if a discussion on Uttarakhand can be allowed. The new session of Parliament begins on April 25 since the budget session was prorogued last month to facilitate the promulgation of an ordinance to meet the financial requirements of Uttarakhand, where central rule was imposed on March 27. Issues pertaining to the Ishrat Jahan case and the Malegaon blast may figure prominently, especially in the Lok Sabha, BJP leaders said. Mumbai: JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Sunday alleged that a co-passenger tried to "strangle" him inside an aircraft before a flight from Mumbai to Pune. However, the charge has been dismissed as "cheap publicity" by the man - Manas Jyoti Deka (33), an employee of TCS in Pune - who was detained in connection with the incident. According to Manas Jyoti Deka - Seat issue "My hand just happened to brush his neck as I was trying to balance myself on an aching leg. I do not know him personally though I have seen his pictures. This is being done for cheap publicity," Manas told reporters in Mumbai. He said he was returning to Pune from Kolkata to report for work. According to Maharashtra Minister of State (Home) Ram Shinde - Trying to malign BJP image Following the incident, Maharashtra Minister of State (Home) Ram Shinde said Kanhaiya was trying to malign the image of the BJP-led state government. Nevertheless, the state government has ordered a detailed inquiry into the episode, he said. "He had been provided full security by the state government till the time he boarded the aircraft. Nobody can be given security once inside the plane. I, too, do not get security while I am flying," Shinde told PTI. "Kanhaiya Kumar was travelling with three other persons. He had been allotted a window seat and thus, while crossing over a passenger who was seated in the middle, he got into a fight with him. The other passenger did not even know this man was Kanhaiya Kumar and he, too, is alleging he was beaten up by the student leader," Shinde said. Shinde said that he has asked Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Deven Bharti to conduct a detailed inquiry into the incident and bring out the facts. According to Kanhaiya Kumar "Yet again, this time inside the aircraft, a man tries to strangulate me," Kanhaiya tweeted after the alleged incident which took place when he was inside a Jet Airways aircraft at the airport here. Kanhaiya was subsequently offloaded from the plane by the airline staff on safety ground, forcing him to take road route to Pune to attend an event there. New Delhi: The Communist Party of India (CPI) on Monday said that it will raise the issue of repeated attacks on Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar in the second part of the Parliament Session beginning from today. "We will raise the issue of continuing attack on the JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar. It is not in one place, wherever he goes, the lynching mob is there to attack him. It is a very serious issue. The Home Minister and the government will have to react how the ultra-right wing forces are allowed to play havoc in our society," CPI leader D. Raja told ANI. Kanhaiya yesterday claimed that a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter tried to strangle him inside a Jet Airways aircraft in Mumbai, following which he was asked to deplane after he complained about the assault. This was not the first time that Kanhaiya was assaulted, as several attempts have been made in the past on the fiery student leader, who shot to fame after his arrest and release on sedition charges for organising an event at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University to mark the anniversary of the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised. Earlier, slippers, shoes were hurled at Kanhaiya in Nagpur where he was addressing a public meeting on the occasion of 125th birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar. On the same day, some men reportedly belonging to Bajrang Dal attacked Kanhaiya's car when he arrived in the city. New Delhi: World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leader Dolkun Isa has expressed disappointment with India's move to cancel visa granted to him to visit the country. Isa has blamed China for India's U-turn on the visa issue as Beijing had protested after New Delhi issued him papers to travel to the country and visit Dharamsala to attend a conference. Isa was also likely to meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama during his Dharamsala visit. I think my visa denial was India's effort to maintain its bilateral relations with China, Berlin-based Isa told ANI today. India had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press, Isa said. I express my disappointment on Indian authorities cancellation of my visa to attend the Conference in Dharamsala, the Uyghur leader added. After India had issued visa to Isa, China had protested labelling the dissident leader a 'terrorist'. A Chinese spokesperson had said that it was the obligation of relevant countries to bring Isa to justice as an Interpol notice was already issued against him. When India had granted visa to Isa, it was seen as New Delhi's response to Beijing's move to block a ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar at the United Nations. China considers WUC leaders as supporters of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province. Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik-origin Muslims, has been on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Han Chinese from different parts of the country. Berlin: Days after granting visa to World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leader Dolkun Isa to visit Dharamsala and meet the Dalali Lama, India has reportedly cancelled the visa given to the Chinese dissident leader. Isa has expressed disappointment with India's move and issued a statement. Here's the full text of the statement: Dolkun Isa Statement on Indias Recent Visa Cancellation As the Executive Committee Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), I express my disappointment on Indian authorities cancellation of my visa to attend the annual Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference taking place in Dharamsala, India, from April 30 to May 1, 2016. This conference remains a vital forum through which ethnic and religious communities in China related areas, as well as statesmen, scholars and activists are able to meet openly to discuss and exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities. India had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press. Following numerous reports, Indian authorities then proceeded to rescind the visa on April 23, 2016. I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regrets that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy. This is not the first time that I have had faced difficulties in my international travels to advocates Uyghur rights. In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratization in Asia, to which I was an invited guest. China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular. I also reject any comparison or association to Chinas recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader, Mazood Azhar. Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights. Chinas clear abuse of Interpols Red Notice issuance is also concerning. Historically speaking, the Uyghur community has maintained friendly ties with the Indian people. The Indian government hosted our late leader, Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Uyghur refugees after they fled China in 1949. Finally, I would like to thank the Indian people for their determined solidarity and commitment to rights activists like myself who wish to continue to develop and support dialogue among peoples of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. I remain disappointed with the final decision, but I am hopeful that positive steps may be taken to maintain Indias relationship with the Uyghur community. I therefore wish the conference success and hope that meaningful dialogue will take place between those who have the privileged of participating the upcoming conference. New Delhi: Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan may hold a meeting in the Indian capital on Tuesday, reports said on Monday. Pakistan's The News International reported quoting reliable sources that Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry is expected to lead a delegation to the Heart of Asia (Istanbul Process) Conference which New Delhi will host tomorrow. The meeting will also be attended by secretary-level and other high-ranking officials from the US, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and other countries. However, the spotlight could turn on a likely meeting between Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the conference. If that meeting does happen, the stalled Indo-Pak dialogue could become the focus of the parleys. Last month, India had clarified that the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue with Pakistan had not been suspended, after the latter's envoy claimed that the Indo-Pak talks are in suspension mode. New Delhi/Beijing: Just days after it emerged that India has granted visa to World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leader Dolkun Isa to visit Dharamsala and meet the Dalai Lama, New Delhi is on Monday reported to have done a U-turn on the issue. ANI and other news outlets reported that the visa granted to the Uyghur leader, whom China calls a 'terrorist', has been cancelled. ANI based the report on sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Hindu quoted Isa as saying that Indian officials have sent him an email stating that the visa issued to him has been cancelled. I really wanted to visit India. But I received an email on Saturday informing that my visa which was issued on April 6 has been cancelled. No explanations were given. No Indian official called me personally to convey this decision. Its a very sad situation for us, Isa told The Hindu from Berlin where he is based. India's move to grant visa to Isa had reportedly angered China. The cancellation of visa is being seen as a reaction to protest from China over the issue. When Indian had granted visa to Isa, it was seen as New Delhi's response to Beijing's move to block a ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar at the United Nations. China, which considers WUC leaders as supporters of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province, had stated that Dolkun is a terrorist on Interpols Red Corner. It is the obligation of all countries to bring him to justice, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said. What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries, Hua added. Isa and other WUC leaders were granted visa to attend a conference on democracy and China in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. Isa was also due to meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama. Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik-origin Muslims, has been on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Han Chinese from different parts of the country. China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a militant Islamist group, for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country. New Delhi: With the news of Indo-Pak Foreign Secretaries meeting at the Heart of Asia conference in the national capital setting social media abuzz, it is expected that India is going to raise the issue of Pathankot terror attack probe here on Tuesday. Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, who is going to lead his country's delegation to the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process, is expected to meet his Indian counterpart Subramaniam J Shankar, in the national capital tomorrow, as per ANI. According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office, since its inception in 2011, Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process. The Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process is a platform to discuss regional issues, including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan. Islamabad hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. The conference adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled "Emphasizing Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity". Pakistan's agenda for the forthcoming event is promotion of long term peace and stability in Afghanistan. The Pakistan delegation is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. A meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries to restart the CBD was derailed after the Pathankot terror attack. Since then no date for talks between the foreign secretaries were decided, but both sides have been in touch regarding the matter. Pakistan and Afghanistan jointly hosted the fifth Heart of Asia ministerial meeting in December 2015. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: In a rare strict disciplinary action against its under-training gentlemen, Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun has demoted 16 cadets for beating up their juniors and taking their objectionable photos. According to a report in the Times of India, these cadets have to repeat the six-month training as they have been "relegated to the next junior course" after they were found "violating the academy's standing orders and breaking discipline." Now these cadets will pass out from the Academy in December this year instead of June. Quoting an official from the IMA, the report says the strict punishment was awarded to the GC's to send out a strong message about the Academy's 'zero tolerance for any indiscipline'. However, one of the 16 cadets, told that the punishment by the Academy is 'unjustified' as every year new cadets have to spend some initial months under the mentorship of their seniors and such punishments have been a part of the Academy's tradition. Established in 1932, IMA is the country's training academy for military officers. Cadets have to undergo a training of 12 months. Candidates who come through Combined Defence Services Exam, have to undergo a training of 18 months. New Delhi: Imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand dominated both the houses of Parliament on Monday with the Congress raising the matter in the Lok Sabha and creating ruckus in Rajya Sabha, where no meaningful business could be conducted amid uproar. The Congress members created almost identical scenes in both houses over the issue as they raised slogans against the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand. Minutes before parliament met on the first day of the second half of the budget session, Prime Minister Modi expressed the hope that parliament would be able to transact business smoothly during the session. "In the last session also, we transacted important business. Most of them were on financial issues. The satisfaction about it reflected on the face of our members. I hope similarly business will be transacted smoothly this time as well. We hope all (parties) will cooperate in making the session a success," Modi told reporters in the Parliament House premises. The Congress members did exactly the opposite as they trooped near the speaker's podium in the Lok Sabha shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted". The leader of the Congress party in the house, Mallikarjun Kharge, had even given notice of adjournment of Question Hour to discuss the issue. Aam Aadmi Party's Bhangwant Mann had also given notice of adjournment on the issue of farmers' suicides in Punjab and the drought situation in Maharashtra. The Lok Sabha, however, was able to pass the Sikh Gurdwara (Amendment) Bill, 2016, with the house unanimously adopting the measure -- but only after a heated debate involving members of the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Congress and the AAP. According to the amending bill, every Sikh above the age of 21 and registered as a voter will be entitled to vote in Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and various gurdwara management committee elections. However, no person who trims or shaves his beard or hair will be entitled to vote in these elections. The bill, in this manner, seeks to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, which regulates the administration of gurdwaras in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on March 15, the bill was passed by the upper house on the next day. In the Lok Sabha, members, including those from the BJP, also demanded a ban on the import of Chinese goods since, they said, substandard materials from the communist country were harming India's small and medium enterprises. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said any blanket ban on imports from a country "is just not possible under the World Trade Organization norms". She, however, assured members that adequate steps are being taken to safeguard the interest of Indian manufacturers and consumers. The Rajya Sabha was disrupted thrice before being adjourned for the day without it being able to conduct any business. The Congress members raised the Uttarakhand issue vociferously, saying "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi" (Prime Minister Narendra Modi your dictatorship will not be tolerated). It had already witnessed three adjournments before it met at 3 p.m., but the Congress members assembled in front of the chair soon after and started raising the issue once again. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi tried to defuse the tension urging them that there were a number of important bills that were to be passed, hence the house be allowed to work. On this, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the Congress too wants to pass the bills but it could not be done as the house was not in order. Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien tried to pacify the agitating members but they ignored his pleas and went on shouting slogans against the Modi government. Kurien, realizing the mood of the opposition, adjourned the house for the day. Azad blamed the central government for creating an "atmosphere" just before the parliament session that would lead to disruptions. "We as the opposition want the house to function and legislation passed. But in the recent past, we have seen how an atmosphere was created to stall the proceedings of the house. For the first time in the history of Indian politics, President's Rule was imposed in Uttarakhand without following any rules and regulation. We demand a discussion on this," said Azad. "We are witnessing attempts from the ruling party to hinder the functioning of parliament. The central government provokes the opposition and induces disruptions," he added. Uttarakhand was plunged into political uncertainty after nine Congress legislators ganged up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Later, central rule was imposed in the hill state. In a major blow to the central government, the Uttarakhand High Court set aside President's Rule -- but a day later, the Supreme Court stayed the HC order. The matter in pending in the apex court. Meanwhile, the Congress said it will not compromise on the Uttarakhand issue and will not let parliament function till the issue was settled. New Delhi: Parliament on Monday passed a bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sahajdharis from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies, fulfilling a long- pending demand of the community ahead of assembly elections in Punjab next year. The Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was passed by the Lok Sabha more than a month after Rajya Sabha approved it. Replying to a debate on the bill, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the demand for not giving voting rights to Sahejdari Sikhs was made by Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee members and officer bearers. "The SGPC office bearers and members have often demanded that those who are not Sikhs should not be given voting rights (in the election to select elect the members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act). The SPGC General Assembly of 2001 also passed a resolution regarding this. "The High Court has said that a competent legislature needs to pass the bill. Even the Rajya Sabha has passed the bill unanimously," Singh said. The definition of Sehajdhari Sikh has no religious sanction as far as the fundamental tenets of the religion are concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwara Act, 1925 under certain circumstances prevailing then. The Bill proposes to remove the exception given to Sahajdharis in 1944 to vote in elections to select members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act. The Union Cabinet had recently approved a proposal of the Home Ministry to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, with effect from October 8, 2003. The amendment was also carried out by a Home Ministry notification dated October 8, 2003. However, the notification was quashed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on December 20, 2011, leaving it to the appropriate and competent legislature to decide as to whether or not to amend the Act to that effect. Participating in the discussion, Ravneet Singh Bittoo (Cong) said in view of the amendments brought in the legislation, the "Sikh Gurudwaras Act should be renamed as Badal Gurudwara Act". "You are trying to divide families through conspiracy.. You are doing wrong with 70 lakh Sikhs who had voting rights in SGPC for 60 years...You are dividing the already minority community of Punjab into sub-minority community," Singh said. New Delhi: India has cancelled the visa issued to World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leader Dolkun Isa to visit Dharamsala to attend a conference and meet the Dalai Lama. The development came after China protested India's move, stating it regards Isa as a 'terrorist'. NDTV quoted government sources as saying that the visa to the Chinese dissident leader was withdrawn after learning that an Interpol red corner notice had been issued against him. After India had issued visa to Isa, China had protested and said it was the obligation of relevant countries to bring him to justice as an Interpol notice was already issued against him. Isa today expressed disappointment over cancellation of his visa to visit India, saying, I think my visa denial was India's effort to maintain its bilateral relations with China. India had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press, Isa added. I express my disappointment on Indian authorities cancellation of my visa to attend the Conference in Dharamsala, the Uyghur leader stated further. When India had granted visa to Isa, it was seen as New Delhi's response to Beijing's move to block a ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar at the United Nations. China considers WUC leaders as supporters of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province. Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik-origin Muslims, has been on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Han Chinese from different parts of the country. Isa and other WUC leaders were granted visa to attend a conference on democracy and China in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. Isa was also due to meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama. New Delhi: With Chief Justice of India TS Thakur making an emotive appeal to the government to have more judges to ensure justice for all, a conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts on Sunday adopted a resolution to invoke a constitutional provision to appoint retired judicial officers as ad hoc judges. The CJI announced that the conference adopted a resolution that Article 224 A will be invoked to allow chief justices of high courts to appoint retired judicial officers as ad hoc judges. Addressing a conference of chief ministers, chief justices of high courts and Supreme Court judges, Chief Justice Thakur said India's judiciary suffered from a poor judge-population ratio and serious vacancies even as it dealt with an "avalanches of cases". The CJI broke down to tears during his speech at Joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts in Delhi. In the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, SJI Thakur lamented government's "inaction" in increasing the number of judges from the present 21,000 to 40,000 to handle the "avalanche" of litigations, saying, "It is not enough to criticise, you cannot shift the entire burden to the judiciary. If you compare performances of our judges to the other countries, we are head and shoulder above them." The chief justice took on the government over the failure to come up with judicial reforms, said judges should be told to work extra years when they retire, and hit out at the "commercial courts". "It is not enough to criticise. You can't shift the entire burden on judges," he said, pointing out that nine judges of the American Supreme Court together decided 81 cases in a year whereas a judge in the Indian Supreme Court decided 2,600 cases a year. Modi offered to set up a committee of government officers and people from the judiciary to address the issues. "I will make efforts to address the serious concerns." There are nearly 3 crore cases pending before the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, the 24 high courts and various subordinate courts. He said these ad hoc judges will tackle criminal cases where appeals have not been heard for the past five years. These judges will be appointed for a period of two years or upto the time they attain the age of 65. The CJI said these judges can also preside over holiday courts on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1987, the government's Law Commission had said that India's judicial system needed 40,000 judges at different levels. Since then the country's population had increased by 30 crore people. He recalled that when then chief justice Altmash Kabir told then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2013 that nothing was being done to address the ills of the judicial system, the latter replied that it concerned state governments and they had no money. New Delhi: A report claimed on Tuesday that a top Islamic State (IS) leader, who used to recruit people from India, has been killed. The Times of India quoted sources as saying that Mohammad Shafi Armar was killed in a US drone strike in Syria recently. Shafi, alias Yousuf, was in-charge of IS recruitment in India. In fact, he was very close to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his duties included helping the terror group get a hold in India. IS recruits arrested over the past few months in India are reported to have told the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and police that Shafi was working to set up IS units in every Indian state. Shafi, 26, hailed from Bhatkal in Karnataka, the report said. His elder brother Sultan Armar, who was leading the IS India unit till last year, was killed in March 2015 in a similar operation. Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Government will constitute a committee to probe into the allotment of 25,000 acres of land to set up a cement factory in Sonbhadra district to the Jaypee Group. The committee will submit its report within a month. The state government had last week taken back the allotted land from the real estate group after Uttar Pradesh Forest Department raised objection over the land allotment claiming that the company was carrying out illegal mining in the region. The matter was taken up in Supreme Court recently where a reply was sought from the UP government on the matter. The real estate is already facing heat over the delayed possession of apartments in its housing projects spread across Noida and Greater Noida. New Delhi: Voicing support for women who are fighting to end discrimination in Hindu culture and their right to enter places of worships, the Supreme Court on Monday questioned how the temple authorities can discriminate on the basis of biological phenomenon. "You are making a classification. Are you associating mensuration with purity of an individual? Can a biological phenomenon be a condition, a precedent for entry of women at temples?," the Supreme Court asked the Sabarimala temple trust. The apex court observed that all practices are acceptable until there is no distinction between genders. Responding to the court queries, the temple administration said that the hill where women aren't allowed is sanctified and the tradition not allowing women in the age group of 10 to 50, dates back hundreds of years and cannot be changed. "When recruitment for the armed forces takes place, citizens between 18-24 years of age are considered. It may seem classification amongst men, but reason is endurance, Sabarimala temple administration told the apex court. Earlier, the court had said gender equality was a constitutional message and ban on entry of women of a particular age group in Sabarimala shrine cannot be claimed as a right to manage religious affairs by its management. On January 11, the apex court had questioned the ban on the entry of women of menstrual age group at the Lord Ayyappa temple, while hearing the PIL. Thiruvananthapuram: Continuing his attack on V S Achutanandan, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy today slammed the Marxist veteran for using a product of Microsoft, which he had earlier dubbed as a "global monopoly giant", to develop his website ahead of the May 16 assembly polls. Chandy and Achutanandan are at loggerheads on various issues for the last few days. The Chief Minister said though he was happy about the Left leader's "delayed wisdom" of launching the website, Facebook and mobile application, he wished it would have been developed using free software. Alleging that opposition leader used to criticise him vehemently for not promoting free software, Chandy said it was ironical that he had launched his website using asp.Net, a Microsoft product. "The server which hosts Achutanandan's website is that of Microsoft Windows. The server is located at the data center in Singapore. And the domain is registered by GoDaddy, the American company which enjoys monopoly in domain registration," he said here in a release. A politician's words and actions should match, Chandy pointed out and said people wanted to know why he had now turned "Microsoft supporter". Achutanandan had earlier claimed that the Left government would do everything to promote and popularise free software. Chandy also said both the websites in his (Chandy's) name -- the official one and the newly launched personal site -- have been created in the open source software Linux. Chandy had attacked Achutanandan's entry into social media last week saying the Marxist leader and his party had once termed computer as a devil which would ruin job opportunities of youngsters and he was happy to know that they had embraced social media, finally. Mumbai: In a major development, a court here on Monday dropped charges framed against nine Muslim youths for their alleged role in the September 2006 Malegaon blast case due to lack of evidence. At least 37 people had died in the Malegaon blast. The order was passed by Sessions Judge VV Patil while heading a discharge applications filed by the accused. Reacting to the development, Raees Ahmed, one of the discharged accused, said, ''Though late but I am happy that justice has been finally delivered.'' AMIM leader and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, however, was critical in slamming NIA over its faulty probe into the case. High Court Discharges 8 Muslim Accused 06 MALEGAON blast will Govt punish ATS officers for their torture,loss of time ,ordeal ,livelihood Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 25, 2016 One accused in the case had died, while six were released earlier in 2011 on bail. Two other accused have been convicted in the 2006 train blast case. The National Investigation Agency had last week told a Mumbai court it has found no evidence to link nine Muslims arrested in the 2006 Malegaon blasts case to the terror attack, a move that paved the way for their release. The NIA also did not object to the discharge applications filed by the arrested accused, saying evidence collected by it were "not in consonance" with those obtained earlier by Maharashtra Anti-terrorism Squad and the Central Bureau of Investigation, which had recommended their prosecution. "It is submitted that evidence collected by NIA in further investigation is not in consonance with evidence collected by the Anti-Terrorism Squad and the CBI. The court may kindly pass appropriate orders in the matter," the anti-terror agency told a special NIA court in response to discharge applications filed by the nine accused. It said no evidence was found in support of the conclusion drawn in final reports filed by ATS and CBI, which had probed the case earlier, and recommended prosecution of the accused arrested in connection with the September 8, 2006 explosions that killed 37 people and wounded 125. The 2006 bombings were part of a series of explosions that had rocked Malegaon, a communally sensitive power-loom town in Nashik district of Maharashtra, located about 300 km from Mumbai. The blasts had occurred in a Muslim cemetery, adjacent to a mosque, after Friday prayers on Shab-e-Barat. The Maharashtra ATS, which first probed the case, had arrested Noorul Huda Samsudoha, Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah, Raees Ahmed Rajab Ali Mansuri, Salman Farsi Abdul Latif Aimi, Farogh Iqbal Ahmed Magdumi, Mohammad Ali Alam Sheikh, Asif Khan Bashir Khan alias Junaid, Mohammad Zahid Abdul Majid Ansari and Abrar Ahmed Gulam Ahmed. The case was later handed over to the CBI, which endorsed the findings of Maharashtra ATS, before it was transfered to NIA after it came into existence in 2009. After the confessions made by Swami Aseemanand, an accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast, the role of Hindu right wing organisation 'Abhinav Bharat' in the blasts came to light. Following Aseemanand's confession, the accused moved the court with discharge applications. In May this year, NIA filed its charge sheet in the case against four accused-- Lokesh Sharma, Dhan Singh, Manohar Singh and Rajendra Choudhary, contradicting the findings of the ATS and the CBI. Malegaon had seen another terror attack on September 29, 2008, also allegedly masterminded by 'Abhinav Bharat' in which seven persons were killed. Mumbai: Six persons were injured in a fire that broke out following a gas cylinder leakage in suburban Ghatkopar area here today, civic officials said. The incident took place at around 11.45 AM at room number 13 in chawl number 99 in Kamraj Nagar area, officials of the Disaster Control department of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) said. The injured were admitted to the Rajawadi hospital in Ghatkopar, they added. Fire is under control and an accidental case will be lodged in this regard, police said. Mumbai: Maharashtra Government is seeking a loan of Rs 5,000 crore from the World Bank for implementing drought-mitigation steps, from water conservation to changing crop pattern, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Monday. He said the government has submitted a proposal with the External Affairs Ministry as per the instructions of World Bank and a meeting was held between officials of both sides when the Maharashtra legislature was in session recently. "We have requested World Bank officials to help us tackle drought from the specific fund they have created for drought mitigation," Fadnavis told reporters. The State is seeking Rs 5,000 crore from the world body's drought mitigation fund, he said. The WB's help is being sought to make Maharashtra, currently reeling under severe water shortage, free of drought, Fadnavis said. The Chief Minister said generally, the process of submitting a proposal and disbursement of loan amount takes about a year-and-a-half but he has requested the World Bank officials to consider their proposal at the earliest. "The World Bank will support 3,000 villages from Marathwada and 2,000 from Vidarbha to make them drought free. We will focus on water conservation works and later decide the crop pattern of drought-prone regions." The scheme will be implemented in Aurangabad, Beed, Latur, Osmanabad and Akola, Buldhana and Amravati districts. Asked about the government's stand on the sugarcane crop, which consumes large quantity of water, Fadnavis said cane farming is sustainable and thus the first choice of agriculturists. "We cannot stop sugar mills (from operating) but we can bring sugarcane crop under drip irrigation." Replying to another question, Fadnavis said municipal corporations have been directed to provide treated sewage water to industries. "Kalyan?Dombilvli and Thane Municipal Corporations have been specifically asked to adopt this system as the industries around these cities use fresh water supplied by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation," he added. Mumbai: The unfulfilled election promises of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have emboldened even a 'tinpot' like JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar to criticise him, the Shiv Sena said on Monday. "Modi had made tall pre-elections promises: return of black money lying abroad, creating 20 million jobs every year, 'achhe din', and other things. After becoming the prime minister, he failed to deliver. So now people like Kanhaiya Kumar can talk of selling off Modi on OLX (online auction site)," the Sena said in an edit in the party mouthpiece "Saamana". Referring to the allegation made by Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president that Modi has time to travel all over the world but not to the drought-hit areas of Marathwada, Shiv Sena said the question has great resonance for the people of that region. The party questioned Kanhaiya Kumar's standing as a critic of the government and said it did not agree with his criticism. Nevertheless, the BJP must do some serious 'soul-searching' on who is responsible for breathing life into the entity called Kanhaiya Kumar, said Shiv Sena. While it was proper on Kanhaiya Kumar's part to highlight the plight of Marathwada people, the Sena wondered, "who is behind him and making him talk" on all these issues. "It will not help to strangle him, as his voice will not be subdued. Nobody has come forth to smother Owaisi who arrogantly refused to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. Does Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar have the guts to throttle Pakistan for the Pathankot incident," the Shiv Sena asked. On Sunday, following the alleged attack on Kanhaiya Kumar in a Jet Airways plane at Mumbai airport, Sena President Uddhav Thackeray had said at a meeting in Nashik it was wrong to label him "anti-national". If youth are branded anti-national in this manner, they will not be able to work for the country and the BJP would forfeit youth support, he had cautioned. Delhi: BSF has apprehended a Pakistani national at border outpost in Tarn Taran district, Punjab. As per ANI, Ahhil Ahmed was arrested at border outpost in Khem Karan. Meanwhile, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will visit India tomorrow to attend the 'Heart of Asia' regional conference where he will meet with his Indian counterpart after bilateral talks were derailed following the Pathankot terror attack. The Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement here that the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process will be held in New Delhi on April 26. "Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will lead the Pakistan delegation to this meeting," it said, as per PTI. In New Delhi, government sources said Chaudhry will also have a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart S Jaishanker. The Foreign Office said Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting "our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan". It said that Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. (With PTI inputs) Islamabad: Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group is constructing a massive new madrassa, spread over about 10 acres outside garrison city of Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province, extending its reach in the country despite a ban by the UN and the US. JeM, led by India's one of the most wanted terrorists Masood Azhar, has ties to al Qaeda and the group continues to operate openly at its base in Bahawalpur, which is also headquarters of the Pakistani army's XXXI Corps. "On a recent visit, a bearded gunman lounged by the entrance of Jaish-e-Mohammad's four-story compound downtown, which also houses an affiliated seminary. Residents and a member of the group said there hadn't been any crackdown even after India accused Jaish of being behind a cross-border attack in January," the Wall Street Journal reported. A sign outside the JeM complex in central Bahawalpur says it houses a madrassa "under the guidance" of Azhar, who has written a four-volume treatise on jihad, it said. "Outside town, an even bigger Jaish installation is under construction, spread over at least 10 acres just off a highway. A new madrassa, crowned with white domes, loomed over the surrounding farmland," the paper reported. A cleric affiliated with JeM told the Journal, "We don?t hide who we are. We are a jihadist group." Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan's population, has seen a far more low-key approach to fighting extremists, run largely by the provincial police. "Operations are only against those that shoot the police or army," Riaz Husain Pirzada, minister of federal-provincial coordination and a member of parliament from Bahawalpur, was quoted as saying by the Journal. It said Pakistan's military spokesman did not respond to repeated requests to comment. A security official said the authorities would confront "all militants in time." Citing a retired senior security official in Punjab, the Journal said members of domestically focused militant groups in the province are taking shelter with JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba to escape counter-terrorism operations. "While there seems to be an increasing recognition that the India-focused groups - Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad - represent real risks to Pakistan itself, it is not clear that anyone has settled on whether or how to address them," the paper quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying. The JeM cleric said his group opposes attacks in Pakistan. "We carry out attacks against the infidel in their country," he added. India has blamed JeM for the January 2 attack on a key air force base in Pathankot in which seven security personnel were killed. It has given Pakistan "leads" connecting JeM to the attack and sought strong action against the group. Pakistan had assured India that it was "tracing and sealing" the JeM offices, which has been banned in Pakistan since 2002 and is also labeled a terrorist organization by the US. The UN had banned JeM in 2001. Dhaka: Two people were hacked to death Monday at an apartment in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, police said, with a local television channel identifying one of them as a leading gay rights activist. "Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death. Another person was injured," Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sorder told AFP. He did not identify the dead, but private television Channel 24 said one of them was the editor of Roopbaan, the country`s only magazine for the LGBT community. A spokesman for a gay group, Boys of Bangladesh, confirmed to AFP by text message that the Roopbaan editor was among the dead. The editor was behind an annual Rainbow Rally, which since 2014 has been held on April 14, Bengali New Year. But police this year banned the rally as part of widespread security measures. Ahead of the banned rally earlier this month, the editor told AFP that they had received threats from Islamists, who posted messages online. "They have even set up an online group to threaten us," he said. The death came two days after a liberal and free-thinking professor was hacked to death in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and liberal activists that has left the country reeling. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack through its news agency, saying the 58-year-old professor who wrote poetry and fiction had been murdered for "calling for atheism". But Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan rejected the Islamic State group`s assertion and said "local militants" were responsible for the murder. The LGBT community has been heavily persecuted in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. But in recent years some activists have tried to increase awareness and rights. Islamabad: Pakistan National Assemblys Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs will be briefed on Monday on "activities of Indias intelligence agency in Pakistan", a media report said. Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz is likely to brief the committee, headed by Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, on the issue during an in-camera meeting, Dawn reported. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had briefed the Senate Defence Committee earlier this month and Senate last week on the issue, the daily said. The Inter-Services Public Relations released on March 29 a "confessional video statement of the arrested Indian spy" in which he had admitted to fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi. In his confessional statement, the RAW agent had stated that his mission in Pakistan was to hold meetings with Baloch insurgents and carry out subversive activities, the daily added. Dhaka: In the latest development in a series of brutal attacks on bloggers and intellectuals in Bangladesh, a senior editor of country's first LGBT magazine was hacked to death here on Monday, as per BBC. As per the report, the gay rights activist who was murdered today was an editor at LGBT magazine 'Roopbaan' and had also worked at the US development agency USAID. Meanwhile, another person, identified as cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, was also brutally murdered in a flat here by unidentified killers who entered the building impersonating as courier officials. Julhash Mannan, a cousin of Moni, and his friend Tanay were murdered at the flat in capital's Kalabagan, the Dhaka Tribune reported quoting deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten. Baten said armed assailants in guise of courier company officials entered the flat on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 7 PM and killed Mannan, 35, a former protocol officer of the US embassy and his friend. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. In a separate incident, another prominent Bangladeshi blogger Imran H Sarker, who has launched protests against the killings of the bloggers and minorities in the Muslim-majority country, has received a death threat from an unidentified caller from the UK. "I have been issued a death threat from a number belonging to a code of 'United Kingdom' at 7:12pm on Sunday. It has been said that I will be soon killed," Sarker wrote in a message on his official Facebook page. "Asked about the identity of the person issuing death threat, he avoided responding to my question. He repeatedly threatened to kill me. Then, he disconnected the phone," said the blogger, who has nearly one million friends on his Facebook page. Sarker, also the spokesperson of the Shahbag Movement, was threatened last year along with several others, including Dhaka University Vice chancellor. He led the 2013 protests against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes, prompting authorities to fast-track their trials. He has launched protests against the murders of the bloggers and minorities. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city. (With Agency inputs) Mumbai: The Supreme Court on Monday came down on Maharashtra government for not granting license to dance bars and warned not to turn blind eye to the apex court order. The court also criticized the state government for framing rules that prohibit opening of dance bars within a distance of 1 km from educational institutions. "Dance is a profession. If it is obscene, then it loses its legal sanctity. Govt regulatory measures can't be prohibitory," the Supreme Court told Maharashtra government. "It is better for women to perform in dance bars and earn than begging on streets or indulging in unacceptable activities," the top court added. The Supreme Court had recently cleared the decks for the issuance of dance bar licenses to hotels and restaurants in Mumbai as it modified the conditions for the permit and excluded installation of CCTV cameras from restaurants and dance performance area. In 2005, the state government banned dance bars in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharashtra. Nearly 1,500 bars across the state had employed more than 75,000 women dancers. (With ANI inputs) Coimbatore: Social Welfare Front, comprising three political parties, Monday announced its candidates for the 18 constituencies for the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. The front, with Welfare Party of India (WPI), Social Justice Movement (SJM) and Ambedkar Youth Movement (AYM), as constituents, has fielded Sahul Hameedh to contest from Thiruvrumbhur-Tiruchirapalli, a transgender from Mettuupalayam in Coimbatore District and woman candidate Jarina Jamal in Alanthur in Kanchipuram district, WPI Tamil Nadu President, S N Sikander told reporters here. WPI will contest nine seats, Social Justice Movement in eight seats and Ambedkar Youth Movement in one seat in Valparai in Coimbatore District, he said. In remaining seats, the front will extend support to those candidates, who are not corrupt and fighting for total prohibition, other than DMK, AIADMK and BJP, SJM Founder president Paneerselvam said. Chennai: Election authorities today seized Rs 3.39 crore and 245 grams of gold at Krishnagiri in poll-bound Tamil Nadu. Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu, Rajesh Lakhoni told reporters here that authorities in Krishnagiri district inspected the premises of a private school, which falls under Uthangarai constituency. "While Rs 3 crore 39 lakh cash was found, a total of 245 gms of gold coins were also found and seized. The Income Tax Assistant Commissioner, who is the nodal officer, has been directed?to the spot for further investigation," he said. Yesterday, electoral authorities and Income Tax officials had seized an undiscolsed amount from a person here, reported to be around Rs four crore. Lakhoni had confirmed the seizure, but said the value of the seizure could be stated only after the cash was counted. He had also said that about Rs 11.33 crore had been recovered after searches at some places in Karur, Coimbatore and Chennai on April 23. Ahead of the May 16 polls, a strict vigil is being maintained by the Election Commission against transportation of unaccounted money, gold and illegal money transactions. Lucknow: The Lucknow bench of Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in an interim order, on Monday stayed suspension of IPS officer Amitabh Thakur, as per a media report. As per a report in The Times of India, CAT has directed Uttar Pradesh (UP) government to reinstate him with full salary with effect from October 11, 2015. The order was reportedly passed by the bench of Navneet Kumar and Jayati Chandra. The report said that the bench said it could not find any provision in the rules which gave the state government power to give a 'post facto' extension to suspension, after 90 days period. The Daily further said that, as per the CAT order, the central government had filed an affidavit before Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court. The affidavit had stated that it had revoked the suspension. The bench also said that an affidavit before High Court cannot be taken lightly. At the same time , the CAT directed the Central and state governments to file their reply within two weeks. May 12, 2016 has been fixed as the next date of hearing. Amitabh had filed the petition in CAT on April 11, 2016. He had challenged the extension of his suspension by UP government for 95 days on March 31, 2016. Amitabh was suspended by the state government on July 13, 2015. He had been charged with corruption and indiscipline. The suspension was extended on October 10, 2015, for the period of 180 days and for the second time for 95 days on March 31, 2016. To be noted is the fact that on July 10, 2015, Amitabh had lodged a complaint with the police accusing Mulayam Singh Yadav of threatening him on phone. Dehradun: The Uttarakhand High Court will on Monday resume the hearing on nine rebel Congress MLAs' petition challenging their disqualification by state Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal. The nine legislators will present their contention before the single bench of Justice UC Dhyani. The bench had on Saturday recorded the arguments of counsel Kapil Sibal appearing for the Speaker. Eight of the nine rebel Congress legislators have moved the High Court on two grounds - that they were not given enough time by the Speaker to respond to the charges, and that they were not provided 'proof' of their alleged anti-party activities. The conflict between the Congress and their legislators arose during a debate last month over the state budget. The Speaker had on March 27 disqualified the nine Congress MLAs, including former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, who spearheaded the rebellion against former chief minister Harish Rawat, under the anti-defection law. In the number game, Congress will have the upper hand if the court upholds the Speaker's move to disqualify the MLAs. In the 70-member assembly, the Congress has 27 members excluding the nine legislators. The reported decision to disqualify the nine legislators from the Congress Party, who have revolted against Harish Rawat and joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), would reduce the effective strength of the 70-member assembly to 61. Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday lashed out at the Election Commission yet again, accusing central forces of "torturing" the electorate during the fourth phase of the assembly polls. "Today, I heard that in the name of central forces, voters were tortured. Can you imagine section 144 (prohibitory orders) has been imposed? Elections are a celebration of democracy and they (the EC) are saying `restrict people`s movement` and put them under curfew. What is this nonsense? Nuisance is going on," she said at an election rally in Patuli in suburban Kolkata. The Trinamool Congress supremo dubbed the opposition (CPI-M, BJP and Congress) as "cowards" and said they don`t trust people. "No one should vote for them. This proves their failure. The power-brokers of CPI-M and the BJP leaders of Delhi, I tell you, you will not benefit from this," she asserted. Reiterating her grievance about the polls extending for "three months" whereas in states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, they span only one day, Banerjee said developmental work was hampered due to the time frame. "The EC conducts the polls and we have to agree to it, even in this heat. It really affects me because we lose precious work days. Why three months? It could be 294 days. And amid that Delhi`s violence impacts Bengal," she said. "Today`s poll date is historic... we will achieve majority and in the next days, we will cross the mark," she claimed. With Monday`s poling in 49 constituencies, elections have already been held in 216 of the 294 constituencies in the state. While 53 constituencies go to the hustings on April 30, the remaining 25 will vote on May 5. Islamabad: At least 23 people have died and dozens of others fell ill in central Pakistan after eating sweets which police suspect were tainted with pesticides, officials said Monday. Umar Hayat, a resident of the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab province, bought the baked confectionery on April 17 to distribute among friends and family after the birth of his grandson. But their celebrations turned out to be short-lived when ten people died on the same day. "The death toll from consumption of the sweets has now risen to 23, and 52 people are still being treated at various hospitals," local police official Munir Ahmed told AFP on Monday. He said the dead included the baby boy`s father and seven of his uncles. Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the district, confirmed the incident, adding three people -- two brothers who run the bakery and a worker -- had been arrested. The worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix. "There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated, and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safe keeping," said Bukhari. "A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture," he said, but added that police were awaiting for the results of laboratory testing. Pakistan has poor food safety standards and hygiene laws are rarely implemented. Baghdad: A total of 35 people were killed on Sunday in US-led coalition air strikes and clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants in the western province of Anbar, a provincial security source said. At least 17 IS militants were killed and five of their vehicles destroyed when international warplanes bombarded IS positions in Albu Ali al-Jasim in north of the provincial capital Ramadi, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Separately, six soldiers were killed and eight others wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car into a military base in Roufa area in northeast of the militant-seized town of Garma in east of the flashpoint city of Fallujah, the source said. The suicide bombing was followed by an attack of dozens of IS militants on the military base, sparking heavy clashes with the troops which resulted in the killing of 12 extremist militants, the source said, adding that international warplanes took part in the battle, bombed the attackers and destroyed a vehicle carrying heavy machine gun. Last December, the troops recovered Ramadi, the provincial capital of the country's largest province of Anbar. Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary units have been battling IS militants for re-control of large territories in northern and western Iraq that was seized by the IS since June 2014. Riyadh: More than 800 members of al Qaeda were killed in a military offensive against the group in the south of Yemen, the Saudi-led Arab coalition operating in the country said Monday. "The operation resulted... in the death of more than 800 al Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," coalition commanders said in a statement published by SPA, the official Saudi news agency. The FDI numbers reflects that the government has been able to create a suitable climate in which the foreign investors feel confident that interest are protected. New Delhi: Foreign Direct Investment into India touched the "highest ever" mark of USD 51 billion during the April-February period of last fiscal ended March 31, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said on April 25. The Secretary the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) said that healthy business climate has been created in the county so that investments are promoted. "We have had a record inflows of FDI in this country, more than USD 51 billion from April to February (2015-16) and that is the highest ever," he said here at a Ficci function. In 2011-12, India had attracted FDI worth USD 46.55 billion. In 2014-15, it was USD 44.29 billion. This FDI includes equity, re-invested earnings and other capital. Abhishek said that ease of doing business is critical for creating a suitable business climate and the government is a making lot of efforts to improve it. "The complex procedures and delays which were the bane of our system for last so many decades are now being gradually dismantled. Enormous efforts are being made to make sure that common citizen and business both have an easy time," he said. He also said that protection of creativity and innovation is important to create a suitable climate in the country for technology to be developed and for technology to come from outside. The FDI numbers reflects that the government has been able to create a suitable climate in which the foreign investors feel confident that interest are protected. The government is committed to doing away with the obstacles and improve the whole process, he said, adding that "we need growth rate of double digits for the next three decades to improve the quality of life and eliminate poverty but that requires lot of efforts in investment side, IPR side and at other fronts". Dhaka: Bangladesh`s best-known blogger said Monday he has become the latest secular activist threatened with murder, a warning which he suspected was linked to his recent scathing criticism of the government. On Saturday an English professor was hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants, the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and liberal activists since last year that has left Bangladesh reeling. Blogger Imran Sarker, who led major protests by secular activists in 2013 against Islamist leaders, said he had received a phone call on Sunday warning that he would be killed "very soon". But Sarker claimed the threat was probably connected to his opposition to the government`s alleged crackdown on dissent, rather than the offence he caused to Islamic extremists. "A male voice called me Sunday evening and said I will be murdered very soon. He hung up as soon as I asked him where they would kill me," the 33-year-old told AFP. Sarker, who heads a network of Bangladesh bloggers and online activists, said "influential ruling party leaders have been openly threatening me" although it was the first time he had received an anonymous phone call. Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sorder said the threat would only be investigated if Sarker filed a formal complaint. But the blogger said he did not plan to approach police because it would be "no use". A senior official of the ruling Awami League party refused to comment. Sarker, who has nearly one million friends on his Facebook page, led the 2013 protests against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes, prompting authorities to fast-track their trials. The protests against Islamists accused of atrocities during Bangladesh`s 1971 battle for independence were staged with the tacit support of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina`s party. But this month Sarker joined rights groups in criticising the arrest of an elderly pro-opposition editor over an alleged plot to kidnap and murder Hasina`s son Sajeeb Wazed. Sarker called for an end to "dirty political tactics to crack down on dissent", prompting a furious reaction from Wazed who branded the blogger an "opportunist and a liar". Sarker has also recently launched protests against a perceived breakdown in law and order, the murders of the bloggers and minorities and an embarrassing $81-million heist at the central bank. Manila: Canadian hostage John Ridsdel, a former mining executive, has been executed by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, a Canadian government official confirmed on Monday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will give a statement about Ridsdel`s execution at 12 p.m. MT (1800 GMT), on the sidelines of a cabinet retreat in Alberta, a spokeswoman told reporters. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by Islamist militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. The army would not immediately confirm whether the head was that of one of four people for whom the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf had demanded a ransom. They are two Canadian men, including Ridsdel, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the centre of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. The spokesman said Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21. Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country`s prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants. Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict. Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew. Washington: The Islamic State terrorists are demanding doctors to give them sick notes in a bid to escape fighting on the front line, according to a new report by the US military. "Now some militants are so disillusioned they are looking for any way they can to get out of the fighting," a report by the US military's think-tank, the Centre for Combating Terrorism (CTC) said. The militants are reportedly struggling to keep fighter morale up as the group struggles to deal with territory losses, military pressure, financial problems and poor management. "This was reflected on a wider level when the Islamic State issued a general amnesty for deserters at the beginning of October 2015. The personnel shortages were also evidenced by an Islamic State document that emerged last year," it said. Issued in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria, the document indicates that a number of Islamic State members had been seeking false medical reports from doctors in order to avoid front line duty, the Daily Mirror reported. Much of the terror group's problems with personnel stem from their inability to pay wages. "The reasons for financial strain on the Islamic State overlap to a degree with the causes of problems of cohesion in the Islamic State?s ranks, such as reduced border access to Turkey, tougher border policies, and coalition airstrikes,' the report said. "These strikes have most recently targeted Islamic State 'cash storage' points and the oil industry." They have been forced to slash their fighter's wages - and many have quit in disgust at their treatment, the report said. Earlier this year it was reported that ISIS has been forced to cut the salaries of its murderous fighters by half. The militants now get the equivalent of just 100 pounds a month because of "exceptional circumstances", according to a document released by Bayt al-Mal, the Treasury Ministry of ISIS. Washington: Republican presidential rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich have joined forces to deny frontrunner Donald Trump the party`s nomination, a controversial move on the eve of Tuesday`s critical primaries in five US states. Embracing the ancient Sanskrit proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Cruz and Kasich unveiled their late-in-the-game ploy, prompting the celebrity billionaire to accuse them of "collusion" and declare the bid an act of desperation. With Trump poised to extend his lead in Tuesday`s primaries, Texas Senator Cruz and Ohio governor Kasich agreed late Sunday to what amounted to a non-aggression pact in later primaries. Kasich will forego vigorous campaigning in Indiana, which votes on May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories in those states. The deal would give Cruz a chance to consolidate support in Indiana, a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to win the nomination outright. "We`re focusing our energy on the state of Indiana and Governor Kasich is focusing his energies elsewhere," Cruz said at a campaign stop in Borden, Indiana. Cruz justified the teaming up succinctly: "If Donald Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton wins" the November election and Republicans lose control of the Senate, he said.Trump erupted at news of the deal, unleashing criticism on Twitter and assailing the pair at a campaign rally Monday. "You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island. "But in politics, because it`s a rigged system, because it`s a corrupt enterprise, in politics you`re allowed to collude." "Actually I was happy," Trump added, "because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are." Kasich`s campaign said the aim was to open the Republican nominating convention in July in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate. The Ohioan insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton. But his remarks also hinted at how his alliance with Cruz was already fraying. "I`ve never told them not to vote for me" in Indiana, he told reporters as he ate breakfast at a diner in Philadelphia. "They ought to vote for me." "What`s the big deal?" he added. "I`m not campaigning in Indiana, and he`s not campaigning in those other states. That`s all." He also noted his need to be frugal with campaign resources, saying he did not have "`Daddy Warbucks` behind me giving me all this money." Both candidates acknowledge their only hope of winning lies in keeping Trump, 69, from gaining the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright. If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him on subsequent rounds. Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump on the first ballot, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds when they are free to vote for whomever they choose. Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him. But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party`s establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio. Trump has pointed to the bid to stop him as evidence that the primary system is "totally rigged."Cruz, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of stopping Trump, has already begun searching for possible vice presidential options. His campaign chairman Chad Sweet confirmed to CNN Monday that Cruz was vetting several potential vice presidential candidates, and that businesswoman Carly Fiorina, herself a former White House hopeful, "absolutely" was among them. In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a chaotic convention fight would almost surely damage Republican prospects in November. The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters. Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC`s "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them. Raising eyebrows among Republicans, Koch added it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president. Trump is favored to win the states that vote Tuesday -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Clinton is expected to prevail over her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. Brussels: The Maalbeek metro station in Brussels hit by a suicide attack last month that killed 16 people reopened to passengers on Monday. Suicide bomber Khalid El-Bakraoui blew himself up at the station at 0711 GMT on March 22, an hour after two other bombers killed 16 other people at Brussels airport. A total of 32 people lost their lives in the bombings on Europe`s symbolic capital that were claimed by the Islamic State group, and 300 injured. "I`m thinking of everything that happened here, I`m thinking of the flowers that were laid out upstairs," said Piero, a retired translator from the European Commission, the EU executive arm whose headquarters are a few hundred metres (yards) away. The early morning commuters who spoke to AFP declined to give their last names, given the sensitivity of the events that took place a month ago. Along the platform, hand-written notes on the station wall expressed condolences for those killed on March 22. "Let`s cherish the life that surrounds us," said a note signed Patricia. Families of the victims were allowed special access to the station on Saturday to mourn the victims, before the official reopening to commuters. The scene at the heart of rush hour on Monday was calm, with commuters expressing patience over the the month-long closure, despite criticism of Belgium`s handling of the aftermath of the attacks. The closure "was for the right reasons", said French-national Liliana, a nuclear engineer who lives in Brussels. "I can understand that there was a need to analyse all the damage, I can understand all that," she said. Monday was the first day since the tragedy that the entire Brussels metro network was running normally. Since March 22, many stations remained shut and operating hours were reduced because of a lack of security staff. Brussels airport meanwhile is only set to resume full operations in June after it was completely closed to passengers for 12 days following the attack. nas/arp/txw Lower Saxony: US President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for European unity in the face of rising populism and scepticism about the European Union Monday, urging the continent to recognise its own achievements. "A strong and united Europe is a necessity for the world," Obama said in a landmark speech in the German city of Hanover, as he contrasted the prosperity of today with the wars and hardship of the last century. Visiting a continent reeling from a migration crisis, economic stasis and facing the prospect of Britain abandoning the European Union, Obama said "the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe." While he admitted that European institutions can be frustrating, he argued "turning inward" is not the answer to Europe`s problems. Manila: A Philippine presidential candidate who joked about raping a murdered Australian missionary has widened his lead over his rivals despite a backlash from diplomats, the influential church and women`s groups. Rodrigo Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, emerged as the "clear front runner" in a survey that research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) released Monday. The candidate, who has promised mass killings of suspected criminals, saw his support rise from 27 percent of respondents in March to 33 percent in April, giving him a nine-point lead over second-placed Senator Grace Poe just two weeks before the vote. The survey was conducted from April 18 to 20, shortly after a video circulated showing Duterte making the off-colour remark about the missionary in campaign hustings. Duterte had told laughing followers that the woman was so beautiful he wished he had been the first in line to rape her before she was murdered in a jail riot in his city in 1989. SWS spokesman Leo Laroza said the joke may have dented Duterte`s popularity but did not prevent him pulling ahead of his arrivals in the poll of 1,800 voters. "Mayor Duterte has been steadily gaining ground. It`s a clear lead. The joke could have affected him in such a way that his score could have even been higher had it not been for that news," he told AFP. Duterte`s comments drew widespread condemnation including from the Australian and American ambassadors, while women`s groups filed a complaint before the human rights commission. But Duterte was undaunted, telling the diplomats to "shut their mouths" and warning he was prepared to sever ties with Canberra and Washington over the affair. Another survey of 4,000 voters nationwide taken by research group Pulse Asia before the remarks hit the headlines also put Duterte in the lead with 34 percent ahead of Poe at just 22 percent. Human rights groups have accused Duterte of leading vigilante death squads that have carried out over a thousand killings in Davao -- allegations he has boasted about and said that if elected, he would kill 100,000 criminals. Analysts credit his appeal to popular disenchantment against the political elite in a nation where one out of four still lives in poverty. "Duterte`s rise mirrors the revolt of the periphery," sociologist Randy David wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Sunday. "It is difficult to see how, under a Duterte presidency, the country can avoid entering another period of political uncertainty." Kabul: Russia`s ambassador to Afghanistan denied on Monday that Moscow was giving its backing to the Taliban in its fight against Islamic State militants who have established a growing presence in the east of the country. Russia, which in February gave the Western-backed government in Kabul 10,000 Kalashnikov automatic rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition, was discussing two potential helicopter deals and had proposed increasing intelligence cooperation, ambassador Alexander Mantytskiy said. "We do not provide any assistance to the Taliban," he told reporters in Kabul, through an interpreter. Russia`s position has been the subject of much speculation since President Vladimir Putin`s special envoy to Afghanistan said last year that its interests "objectively coincide" with those of the Taliban over their common enemy, Islamic State, widely known in Afghanistan as Daesh. Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s and cooperation with NATO ended in 2014 over tensions in Ukraine. However, Mantytskiy said Russia`s approach had not changed and it would continue its support to strengthen Afghanistan`s defence capacity, through training and other means. Afghanistan`s acting Defence Minister Masoom Stanekzai is expected to attend a security conference in Moscow this week, with the two potential helicopter deals on the table. One option could see a maintenance contract signed for two helicopters already in service with Afghan forces while a second option would involve the sale of three new Mi-35 helicopters but Afghanistan had not yet indicated which deal it preferred, Mantytskiy said. Russia supplied 63 Mi-17 military helicopters to Afghanistan and provided maintenance and training under a former agreement with NATO but shipments ended in October 2014 after the agreement ended over the standoff in Ukraine. It also cleared the way for India to supply three of its own Russian-made Mi-25 helicopters to Afghanistan by giving the necessary approval for the transfer. Mantytskiy rejected Afghan media reports that Moscow was actively cooperating with the Taliban, which carried out one of its biggest attacks in Kabul last week, killing at least 64 people and wounding hundreds of others. He said that Russia, like several other countries, did have contacts with the Islamist movement. "Our interest with the Taliban regarding the fight with Daesh do coincide but no type of information exchange between Russia and the Taliban takes place," he said. "Our contacts with the Taliban are aimed at inviting the Taliban to the negotiating table," he said. "Russia has no hidden agenda in Afghanistan." He said Moscow was concerned about the increase in fighting in northern provinces of Afghanistan that border former Soviet Republics including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well as by the spread of Islamic State militants in the region. "We are extremely concerned that instability could spread in central Asia because disturbances in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could push refugees into Russia," he said. Ankara: Turkey has killed almost 900 alleged members of the Islamic State (IS) group since January through artillery fire and air raids, the state-run Anatolia news agency said today, citing military sources. The country, a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS, has killed 492 "terrorists" since January 9 in air raids, while another 370 were killed in artillery strikes which also destroyed arms depots, the agency said. These figures could not be independently verified. Turkey, which has been hit by attacks blamed on jihadists, including two deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul that targeted foreign tourists, began to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria last summer. Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group in Syria. Turkey began its air strikes following a suicide bombing in July last year blamed on IS extremists, which killed 34 people in the border town of Suruc. In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border from Syria, prompting the army to respond to each strike with howitzer fire. Washington: Republican and Democratic party front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are poised for victory with double-digit leads over their primary rivals in the upcoming Pennsylvania state primaries, polls showed. According to the joint poll conducted by NBC News, Wall Street Journal and Marist College on Sunday, among Republicans likely to cast their ballots on Tuesday, Trump has the support of 45 percent, an 18-point advantage over rivals Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who took 27 percent, and Ohio Governor John Kasich at 24 percent. Seventy-one delegates are at stake in the state's primary, though just 17 are awarded state-wide on a winner-take-all basis. The remaining 54 are unbound delegates, Politico reported citing the poll. Trump grabbed the backing of 57 percent of people who said they strongly support a candidate, leading among 52 percent of men and 52 percent of those who do not hold a college degree. Meanwhile, just 37 percent of college graduates said they supported him, along with 39 percent of women and 40 percent of white evangelicals, though he leads Cruz by four points among that group. On the Democratic side, Clinton leads rival Bernie Sanders 55 percent to 40 percent, in line with a 16-point advantage over the last two weeks in the rolling Real Clear Politics polling average in the state, which awards its 189 pledged delegates on a proportional basis. Clinton drew support from 67 percent of likely African-American voters, while just 29 percent said they would vote for the Vermont senator. The former secretary of state holds significant leads among voters older than 45 (66 percent to 28 percent), women (62 percent to 34 percent), those identifying as Democrats (60 percent to 36 percent) and those who are strongly behind a candidate (59 percent to 41 percent). However, Sanders leads all potential Republican challengers by wider margins, ahead of Trump by 20 points (57 percent to 37 percent), Cruz by 22 points (58 percent to 36 percent) and Kasich by six points (50 percent to 44 percent). The poll was conducted from April 18-20, surveying 2,606 registered voters in the stat. Mumbai: Asking bureaucrats to function for a day without their assistants, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on Monday said it will sensitise them to the travails of 'Aam Aadmi' and help in better discharge of their duties. The outspoken Governor said he wants to introduce a similar system for senior officials at RBI as well wherein they can be asked to discharge some simple banking duties to make them understand difficulties faced by others. "One could, as senior officials, try to spend a day doing some task which they ask their assistants to do but without revealing who they are and getting the assistance," Rajan said while addressing bureaucrats here at the state secretariat. "Perhaps, then we will have a much better sense of what Aam Aadmi faces and a much greater sympathy for changing the system than we have otherwise," he said while delivering the YB Chavan Memorial Lecture at Mantralaya. He said a lot of officials, including him, realise that the system is difficult only when they retire or leave the office where they are helped by assistants. "Post retirement, the system is much harder to deal with than pre-retirement," he added. Rajan said he is mulling introducing the system within RBI where senior officials will be tasked to do simple things like changing the nominee of a fixed deposit account, which shall make them learn about the difficulties. The remarks come at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is seeking to take special steps to make the bureaucracy more accountable and also assess it on its performance. Bucharest: Two F-22 Raptor fighters of the US Air Force arrived on Monday at an air base near the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania. The first presence in Romania of these fifth-generation fighter aircraft, within Operation Atlantic Resolve, comes as part of NATO' s collective security and regional stability, local media reported. "F-22 planes will be here only today, but will remain in Europe for a few months," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the U.S. 3rd Air Force commander, said during a press conference at the air base. The presence of F-22 fighters in Romania shows the level of strategic partnership reached between the two countries, as well as the measures established to raise operational capacity of NATO air forces, said General Nicolae Ciuca, Romania's Chief of General Staff. Aden: Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from al Qaeda militants who held it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed Monday as a major victory in which over 800 jihadists were killed. The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the Sunni extremists launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shiite Huthi rebels who control the capital. It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama during a visit to Saudi Arabia called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on al Qaeda. At the talks, which opened last Thursday, UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Monday welcomed reports of "real improvement in the situation". On Sunday, he had said "significant differences... remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace". The peace talks and Obama`s visit have contributed to a change in "strategic priorities", with al Qaeda back at the top, according to the Soufan Group consultancy. The jihadists` Yemen-based branch, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the group`s militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla. Further west in Shabwa province, a US drone on Monday struck two vehicles carrying al Qaeda militants near the town of Azzan -- from which the jihadists have fled -- killing nine extremists, a provincial official said.The jihadists have planned attacks overseas, including a January 2015 assault on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris. "We entered the city centre and were met by no resistance from al Qaeda militants who withdrew west," a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of Al-Shihr and its Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukalla`s Riyan airport. Troops deployed in Mukalla on Monday and set up checkpoints across the city, security officials said. "The operation resulted... in the deaths of more than 800 al Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," the coalition commanders said. The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of any civilian casualties. Mukalla is one of a number of southern cities that al Qaeda had overrun since the Saudi-led coalition launched its military intervention in March last year when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile after the Iran-backed rebels seized much of the country.Government forces recaptured Huta, another provincial capital further west last week. But they had to retreat from Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, after an al Qaeda car bomb killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 as they were entering the city on Sunday. The counter-offensive against the jihadists has come as a fragile April 11 ceasefire between pro-government forces and the rebels firms up. Washington has been waging a drone war against AQAP since November 2002, when it killed the suspected mastermind of an October 2000 bombing of a US destroyer that killed 17 sailors in the southern port of Aden. In April last year, a US air strike killed AQAP commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video, outside the presidential palace in Mukalla where the jihadists had set up base. Last month, an air strike on an AQAP training camp in Hajr, west of Mukalla, killed more than 70 jihadists, provincial officials said. During its year-long rule in Mukalla, AQAP imposed its strict interpretation of sharia law forbidding consumption of the mild narcotic qat, a mainstay of Yemeni social life, and demolishing the tombs of revered Sufi mystics. STEPANAKERT, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. NKR Defense Ministry announced that the attack attempt with tanks by the Armenian side on the night of April 24 is disinformation, Armenpress was informed by the Press Service of NKR Defense Ministry. Today the Azerbaijani propaganda, based on the source by its Defense Ministry, announced that the Armenian tanks approached to the positions and fired, then attempted and attacked by using manpower on the night of April 24. NKR Defense Ministry refutes the information which is the product of the imagination of Azerbaijani aggression and considers it as a propaganda trick to conceal its own first attack operations. The Defense Army, unlike the adversary, respects the ceasefire agreement reached between the two parties on April 5, refrained from any attack operations that will destabilize the situation and from the movement of armed vehicles and the troops in the frontline. Concerning the Azerbaijani disinformation on the destruction of one Armenian tank and the death of its staff, it can be perceived as another measure of adversary's propaganda. YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. President of Argentina Mauricio Macri issued a statement on 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I am convinced that only high values and respect for principles must guide people throughout their lives which will lead to peace and recognition of the past, Armenpress reports, citing prensaarmenia.com.ar, Macri mentioned. The statement of the Argentine President was delivered during an event in Buenos Aires dedicated to the anniversary of the Genocide. In his statement, Mauricio Macri thanked the local Armenian for the initiation to participate in the event. Several other officials, MPs, and Ambassadors were also present at the event. It is necessary to remember the Armenian Genocide, as we will allow the same crimes to be carried out against other nations and peoples if we deny the facts. The Armenian Genocide was the overture of the Holocaust and was denied for many years. We took an important step in Argentina by declaring April 24 the day of tolerance and respect between peoples, Provisional President of the Argentine Senate Federico Pinedo said. YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. 4 doctors of Moscow-based have conducted surgery operations in Armenia and Artsakh on 6 patients injured on Karabakh-Azerbaijan conflict zone as a result of Azerbaijani aggression. Member of the Association, orthopedic surgeon at Moscow Central Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics after Prirov Grigor Karapetyan told the journalists that 4 doctors representing the association have arrived here, and later one of them will remain in Stepanakert and will inform the others on the situation. Another member of the Association Artak Matsakyan informed that their association was set for rendering charity aid to the Armenian people. After the latest events we decided to help our army. We visited hospitals in Artsakh and conducted a number of operations. By now 6 operations have been carried out in Stepanakert and Yerevan in collaboration with the Defense Ministry of the Republic of Armenia, he stated, adding that in mid-May two more doctors will arrive in Armenia and then to Artsakh. Head of the Traumatology Department at the Central Military Clinical Hospital of the Defense Ministry of Armenia Levon Zhamagortsyan told that one of the operations was conducted in their medical centre. If we encounter complicated cases in the future that will be beyond our capabilities we will sent the patients to Moscow or the doctors will arrive here, after which we will supervise the situation, he said, adding that in the near future the cooperation with the Association of Armenian Traumatologists and Orthopedists will expand. YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades condemned on April 24 the Armenian Genocide by the Ottomans, which he called a disgrace in the history of mankind. The government expresses its full solidarity and sympathy to the Armenian people, supporting the effort for recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the international community, Armenpress reports Anastasiades said in a written statement. On Saturday night House President Yiannakis Omirou said all civilised states should recognise the Armenian genocide to avert similar crimes against humanity. He was speaking at service at the Armenian church in Nicosia to mark Sundays anniversary. Omirou condemned Turkey`s policy of ethnic cleansing and expansionist designs and reiterated Cyprus` solidarity with the Armenian people, in their struggle to have the genocide recognised by the international community. Armenians in Cyprus are part and parcel of the history and the struggles of the people of Cyprus and identify with the traditions of the country in addition to contributing to political, economic and social life, he said. Recalling that April 24 has been designated as Day to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, Omirou referred to the ruthless methods Ottoman Turks had applied to wipe out the Armenians. The Republic of Cyprus stands firm by the Armenian people in their struggle for justice and recognition of the genocide, he pledged, recalling that the House has adopted numerous resolutions recognising and condemning the genocide and brandishing as criminal offence the denial of the Armenian and other genocides. It is imperative that all civilised states recognise the Armenian Genocide to avert a repetition of such atrocities, Omirou stressed, pointing out that crimes of the past have gone unpunished, in spite of being proven by historical facts. YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The photos of Armenian soldiers who were killed as a result of the military aggression of Azerbaijan against NKR on April 2-5 were screened during the Aurora Prize Ceremony in Yerevan. Armenpress reports the photos were screened during the performance of the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia (SYOA). The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity is a new global award that will be given annually to individuals who put themselves at risk to enable others to survive. Recipients will be recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes, having overcome significant challenges along the way. The ultimate Aurora Prize Laureate will receive a grant of US$100,000 and the chance to continue the cycle of donation by nominating organizations that inspired his or her work for a US$1 million award. The Aurora Prize was created by the co-founders of 100 LIVES, Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan, and Ruben Vardanyan. It is a pioneering global initiative seeking to express gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to save Armenians from the Genocide one hundred years ago. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, the annual Aurora Prize aims to raise public consciousness about atrocities occurring around the world and reward those working to address those issues in a real and substantial manner. A recent heist at Bangladesh Bank was made possible through introducing a malware into SWIFT software which is used by banks for international fund transfers. Boston/Dhaka: The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems. SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT would release a software update to thwart the malware, alo-ng with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinise their security procedures. The new developments now coming to light in the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that an essential lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood to hacking attacks, due to the vulnerabilities that enabled attackers to modify SWIFTs client software. Ms Deteran said that it was issuing the software update to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records. She said the malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services. The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Tele-communication, come after researchers at BAE, said they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access. The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transferstotaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central banks account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February. Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing. Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were us-ed to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in or-der to erase records of illicit transfers. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. US President Barack Obama (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel address a press conference after their bilateral talks at the Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover, on April 24, 2016 US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a joint pitch Sunday for more transatlantic trade in the face of mounting opposition, vowing to complete a vast US-EU pact that could spur much-needed economic growth. After talks in the northern city of Hanover where tens of thousands marched Saturday against the planned deal, Obama said the world's largest trade pact could be finalised by the end of the year. "Angela and I agree that the United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations," Obama said. "I don't anticipate that we will be able to have completed ratification of a deal by the end of the year, but I do anticipate that we can have completed the agreement." Both sides hope the pact will provide a shot in the arm to Western economies. "As you see other markets like China beginning to develop and Asia beginning to develop and Africa growing fast, we have to make sure our businesses can compete," Obama said. Merkel echoed that sentiment, saying the deal would be "extremely helpful" for growth in Europe. "It is good for the German economy, it is good for the European economy," she said. But Obama acknowledged there was popular opposition. "People are unsettled by globalisation," he said. "People visibly see a plant moving and jobs lost and the narrative develops that this is weakening rather than strengthening the position of ordinary people and ordinary workers. "The benefits often times are diffused." Ahead of the meeting there was a sign of the significant hurdles that remain. Merkel's Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned the deal "will fail" if the United States refused to make concessions in "buy American" clauses. - 'Right side of history' - Merkel and Obama also discussed world crises including Syria and Libya. On Syria, Obama defended his decision not to impose a safe zone that could help stem flows of migrants and refugees into Europe that have hurt Merkel politically. Story continues "Sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country." But he rushed to Merkel's defence in the refugee crisis, saying she was on "the right side of history". Obama's trip -- perhaps his last official visit to Germany before leaving office in January -- coincides with the Hanover Messe, billed as the world's largest industrial technology fair and demonstrating German engineering prowess. Merkel said later in a speech to open the fair that she would throw her weight behind the TTIP talks "so that Europe can speed up the negotiations", as Obama pledged that the pact would lift common environmental and labour standards. Obama's visit to Germany follows stops in Saudi Arabia and Britain, where he plunged headlong into the debate over membership of the European Union. The president pitched in on the side of Prime Minister David Cameron, arguing that Britain would lose influence and trade opportunities if citizens vote to leave the EU in a June referendum. - Trusted partner - During his seven years in the Oval Office, the Democrat US president and the conservative German chancellor have grown closer and Obama sees her, among European leaders at least, as first among equals. Aides describe a meeting of minds, two leaders who take a cerebral and analytical approach to politics. "I have valued Chancellor Merkel's thinking and perspective on a whole range of global issues throughout my presidency," Obama said. "You have been a trusted partner throughout my entire presidency, longer than any world leader, and I value your judgement." Merkel was also, by her reticent standard, effusive in her praise. "What you see is friendly, close, trusting cooperation that I am very pleased with, also because it helps solve international problems." Obama will wrap up his visit Monday with a keynote speech designed to frame his vision of transatlantic relations and a meeting with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. Despite the diplomatic niceties, the relationship between Obama and Merkel has had its rocky moments, with relations hitting a low in 2013 when it emerged that the US government had been tapping Merkel's phone. But officials point to the Ukraine conflict as a turning point that helped both leaders begin to work in tandem. Pedestrians walk past the entrance to a BHS store on Oxford Street in central London on April 25, 2016 British department store owner BHS called in outside help on Monday to help prevent closure and avert the loss of 11,000 jobs in the biggest retail failure since Woolworths went bust in 2008. The 88-year-old chain has failed to keep pace with traditional rivals such as Marks & Spencer selling clothing and homeware in stores and online, resulting in a significant loss of market share. "The group will continue to trade as usual whilst the administrators seek to sell it as a going concern," administrators Duff & Phelps said in a statement. BHS has also suffered from the booming popularity of British discount clothing retailer Primark and Spanish-owned brand Zara, and from the rapid expansion of supermarket giants like Tesco and WalMart-owned Asda into fashion. BHS, which also sells food, has been undergoing restructuring but has been unsuccessful in negotiations to find a buyer, while property sales have not materialised as expected, Duff & Phelps added. "Consequently, as a result of a lower than expected cash balance, the group is very unlikely to meet all contractual payments," the administrators said. "The directors therefore have no alternative but to put the group into administration to protect it for all creditors." Owner Dominic Chappell, whose consortium Retail Acquisitions purchased BHS last year from retail entrepreneur Philip Green for just one pound, said no-one was to blame. The current situation "was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio", he added. - Biggest failure since Woolworths - BHS has debts totalling more than 1.3 billion ($1.9 billion, 1.7 billion euros), including 571-million pension fund deficit that proved a major stumbling block in rescue talks. "The retailer?s woes are nothing new, with legendary retail entrepreneur Sir Philip Green deciding to cut his losses last year in a deal that saw him offload the business to Retail Acquisitions for a token 1," said analyst David Cheetham at broker XTB. Story continues "The problems essentially stem from a failure to embrace change in a dynamic trading environment that has seen more nimble players such as Primark and Zara overtake them in recent years." Neil Saunders, head of retail consultancy Conlumino, added that Monday's announcement ends "a long period of decline which has seen the chain fall out of favour with British shoppers thanks to its failure to respond to changing tastes and the intensification of competition (from rival stores) on the high street". "Fifteen years ago... BHS attracted some 13.4 percent of all clothing shoppers through its (British) doors. "Although not all of these visitors would use BHS as their main store, many would buy one or two products -- helping BHS attain a respectable 2.3-percent share of the clothing market. Saunders added that last year, BHS pulled in only 8.2 percent of all clothing shoppers, handing it a 1.4-percent share of the clothing market. Sophie McCarthy, an analyst at Verdict Retail, said: "BHS is an exemplar model of what happens when a retailer fails to take risks and try something new." "Verdict research shows the post-austerity consumer are more cautious with their money, even as economic pressures have begun to ease," she said. Starting in 1928 with a chain in London, BHS has grown to stand at 164 stores and 74 franchise operations across 18 countries including Russia and the former Soviet Union and the Gulf states. Julie Palmer, partner at insolvency firm Begbies Traynor, said it looked "increasingly unlikely that any buyer will be brave enough to salvage the business in anything like its current form". Apparently America's spy agencies have a seven-year plan for cryptographic adoption: James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, has credited Edward Snowden with the acceleration of commercial adoption of encryption by 7 years. Given that Mr Clapper's job is, in part, to help Americans keep their data safe, I assume that this means he'll be sending Mr Snowden a gift basket. "As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years," James Clapper said during a breakfast for journalists hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. The shortened timeline has had "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists," he said. When pressed by The Intercept to explain his figure, Clapper said it came from the National Security Agency. "The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption what they had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks." Spy Chief Complains That Edward Snowden Sped Up Spread of Encryption By 7 Years [Jenna McLaughlin/The Intercept] Bernie Sanders free tuition model very different from what Canadian provinces are doing Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has spurred much debate surrounding what some herald as his best idea yet: making all four-year public colleges tuition-free under his proposed College for All Act. Under the US$75 billion plan, a so-called Robin Hood tax on Wall Street a 0.5 per cent speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds and other stock trades; a 0.1 percent fee on bonds; and a 0.005 percent fee charged on derivatives would cover two-thirds of the cost while states would pick up the tab for the remaining third. When Wall Streets illegal behavior destroyed our economy, the middle class bailed them out, Sanders told CNN It is now time for them to help the middle class. But some economists like the Tax Policy Center have argued that the revenue from such a tax wouldnt be nearly enough. Others argue that the proposal will require tax increases, forcing states to move existing resources from state priorities like health care or prisons into the higher education sphere and adds a complex new set of federal rules for micromanaging the affairs of states and universities alike. The plan contrasts sharply with Canada where the move for government-subsidized education has predominantly been driven at the provincial level. New Brunswick announced this month it would provide upfront financial assistance towards tuition for students from families earning an annual income of $60,000 or less when they attend one of the provinces post secondary education institutions. Previously, students who qualified for the bursary, that more-or-less was the equivalent of the cost of tuition, had to first demonstrate unmet need after maxing out their loans after which they would then receive provincial bursaries to make up the difference, and then possibly federal bursaries as well, says Erika Shaker, who is director of education and outreach at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The new plan seems to provide the bursary upfront to those students who already qualified for it under the old plan, and now additional students who would qualify for it under the new plan. Story continues The news follows Ontarios announcement that starting in the 2017 school year, the province will pay the entirety of tuition for students coming from families with incomes of $50,000 or less. As planned, Ontarios new program will likely offer enough assistance to cover books, fees and some living costs. The closest we come to a fully public-subsidized post-secondary education is the CEGEP system in Quebec, where students spend two years preparing for college or three years specializing in a trade like nursing, architectural technology or animal health. Erik Queenan, chairman of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations representing 250,000 students across Canada told CTV last week that those recent moves by Ontario and New Brunswick to help cover tuition for college and university students coming from lower income families is the first step in an impending erosion of the traditional barriers surrounding the cost of education across the country. This is a really good opportunity for the rest of Canada to see the effectiveness of upfront grants and bursaries, he told the news outlet. The evidence that will come from these programs will show that grants are the most effective way to removing barriers to post-secondary education. While Sanders plan makes for good headlines and sound bites, it comes with an arduous trek through even a Democratic-controlled senate given that some states have even rebuked the Medicaid expansion, which offers a more generous cost-sharing regime. Theres also a very robust and carnivorous student loan industry that I expect would really prefer costs of higher education to remain good and high, says Shaker. In the meantime, it seems like Canadas province-specific approach has been a key catalyst in its movement to make post-secondary education more affordable. We dont have to look south of the border, she adds. We could actually learn a great deal about how to make tertiary education public zero tuition from a home-grown example: Quebecs CEGEP system. [Co-founder of Sentebale Prince Seeiso of Lesotho (checked shirt) helps Starkey Foundation voluteers fit hearing aids for a young girl at Lesotho Cooperative College on October 10, 2013 in Maseru, Lesotho. Skilled volunteers are often welcome abroad, but if youre only offering unskilled labour on your voluntourism trip, you may not be offering as much help as youd like to think you are. / Getty Images] Mariya Aksyonova wanted to help orphans. When one of her friends said theyd be going to Peru for a couple weeks to volunteer at a medical placement, Aksyonova signed up too. With bags packed she headed for Cusco, but the trip wasnt all she had imagined. When I got there they had all the positions filled and didnt have any more child care placements, says Aksyonova who booked her placement through International Volunteer Headquarters (IVHQ). So they told me sorry, all the child care placements are taken, but for now we can send you to this school with kids. For the next two weeks Aksyonova, who doesnt speak Spanish, assisted teachers with students between ages 6-7 and pre-teen girls at a local orphanage who were enrolled in ESL. Mixing in excursions to Machu Picchu and language lessons, Aksyonova immersed herself in Perus culture as she worked on lesson plans for her temporary students. For most people travel is a way to escape the daily grind of responsibility, to get away for a bit and not work. But for people like Aksyonova, joining the ranks of travellers who want to volunteer while abroad (also known as voluntourism), responsibility is the whole point of crossing the globe. Voluntourism is the act of combining volunteer efforts with travel, enabling the volunteer to see the world, while still putting their time to good use. This travel trend has been on the rise for the past decade and continues to grow in popularity amongst the student set. Not for those looking for a bargain travel deal With so many students being involved in this type of tourism, its easy to see why people may think this form of travel is cheaper. The organization arranging the placement typically covers the room and board for the volunteers, leaving the traveller to pay for their airfare and the organizations fee, which can be as low as $180.00 USD depending on the company. Compared to resort and hotel prices around the world, this may seem like a bargain, but Aksyonova says people looking to save a buck can travel cheaper by backpacking and should only do voluntourism if theyre looking to contribute to the area theyre placed in. Story continues Stephen Cashman, a medical resident in Winnipeg, has also travelled using IVHQs services, volunteering in Nepal and doing educational placements alongside other med students in Ghana and China. Although Cashman loves travel and enjoyed his experiences abroad, he discourages people from choosing the voluntourism route and suggests travellers keep their volunteer efforts at home. Generally volunteer placements involve Westerners who are basically untrained going to a developing country to do something they dont know how to do very well, he says. It might be unskilled labour or something else that can be taught rapidly, but even then developing countries usually lack for money, not unskilled labour. If someone is highly skilled in a niche area it may make sense to volunteer, but even in these cases skills may be difficult to apply through language and cultural barriers, and likely there is someone in that country who is more qualified to do whatever you are thinking about travelling around the world to do. I would argue that if your goal is to help people you are better off donating money, and traveling as a tourist, than donating your time. [It can be cheaper and a better experience for some people if you opt to do a backpacking trip, instead. / Thinkstock] Aksyonova, like Cashman, enjoyed her time abroad, but in the end didnt feel like shed made an impact. She was disappointed that IVHQ promised her a childcare placement that they werent able to honour and felt as if her time would have been better spent building something instead of teaching. Next time I want to go and actually help build something because than you feel like you can see the results of your labour, she says, adding that two weeks volunteering was not enough time to make a difference. I was looking into going and building a school, or building a church, or a house and then I feel Ive done something. Building long-term relationships with a region While some experiences can leave travellers wanting more from their volunteer efforts, others can lead to annual trips and even life-changing events. Repeat volunteer Laurena Zondo has been returning to Rwanda since 2005 on an almost annual basis and has helped set up a youth media initiative in Africa called A Peace of Life. Zondos first trip to Rwanda was with a volunteer filmmaker who was working on a short film for the global mission organization employing Zondo. This trip was the catalyst for her now-decade of volunteering abroad. On part of this trip, I met a church group in Rwanda who had schools across the country, she says of her first visit in 2005. This encounter, and the friendship and conversation over the next months, led to my return the following year, on my own, as a volunteer over my holidays. Zondos repeat visits to Africa, which developed into the A Peace of Life initiative, have rippled out to her community and now youth from her church, Youth Baptist in Toronto, volunteer with her media initiative every year. Its like any travel, there is good and bad, Zondo says about the pros and cons of voluntourism. This kind of experience takes more energy mentally, spiritually if you are really engaging in a different context or culture, and confronting some of the harsh realities of poverty and social injustice. It changes you and your worldview. For me, the volunteer activities, new friends made, and conversations with students and others I met along the way, sparked an idea for working together on a peace camp, to help youth to meet, share ideas, and receive training on peacebuilding. Zondo would recommend people try voluntourism, but says theres a big if involved in that suggestion. I dont look at it as combining volunteerism with travel, she says. Its not an option that is tacked on to a holiday to do some good somewhere. Instead, your mindset is that you are volunteering and want to see another part of the world up close, in a deeper, more meaningful way. As a long-time volunteer with experiences abroad, we asked Zondo what her advice would be for people trying voluntourism for the first time. Here are her top five tips: [A woman sits in the front seat of a packed taxi cab during the evening rush hour December 20, 2005 in New York City. / Getty Images] Women-only ride-sharing services certainly seem to make sense following a spate of reports in which female passengers have been allegedly attacked, sexually assaulted and discriminated against by both Uber and traditional taxi drivers. But how can a segregated ride service exist today at the exclusion of men? Isnt that discriminatory? In the context of a women-only ride share program I dont think it would breach the human rights code, says Nicole Simes, an employment and human rights lawyer at MacLeod Law Firm in Toronto. Presumably the purpose is to reduce sexual violence and harassment against women which is a justifiable reason for the differential treatment. The Ontario Human Rights Code protects people against discrimination on several grounds, one of which is gender, and there is a legal test to determine if, in fact, discrimination occurred. One of the determining factors looks at whether there was a justifiable reason for the unfair treatment and Simes believes in this case there is. She likens the exclusivity of a women-only ride-sharing service to a practice employed by the Toronto Transit Commission, which accommodated women-only requests to make stops at non-designated bus stops during certain hours of the day. That ended in 2011 when the TTC extended the privilege to all riders. Businesses, groups and organizations whose founding principles ride on gender, ethnic or religious exclusivity are not uncommon. Women-only gyms and countless social, cultural and religious groups exist based on what some might consider discriminatory practices. But Simes says exemptions are made because the human rights code allows for these groups to exist in order to break down barriers and help members achieve equal opportunity. The concept of segregated ride-sharing services in Canada is gaining momentum following numerous offences allegedly made by Uber drivers against female passengers. Reports of sexual assaults by Uber drivers in Ontario and around the world continue to mount, raising questions about how the service vets drivers. Story continues In response to the safety scare, Boston is set to start Chariots for Women, a service which employs female drivers exclusively and services only female passengers and their children. Former Uber drive Michael Pelletz told Insurance Journal that he started the service in response to instances of drivers being charged with assaulting female passengers. And though he foresees legal challenges, Pelletz believes safety is worth fighting for. We look forward to legal challenges, Pelletz told Tech Crunch. We want to show theres inequality in safety in our industry. We hope to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to say that if theres safety involved, theres nothing wrong with providing a service for women. In New York City, the founders of SheRides had to curb plans to launch its service in 2014 after spending thousands on legal fees in the face of threats by activists and male drivers. The company will re-launch as SheHails and unlike its first attempt, it will allow men as drivers and passengers. The difference this time will be it is up to female drivers to accept male passengers and for female passengers to accept rides from male drivers. But a women-only ride service in Canada is likely 18 months to two years away, if at all in the offing, estimates Jim Bell, the executive director of the Canadian Taxi Association. It would be very challenging because of the scarcity of female drivers in the taxi cab market, Bell says. And there are not enough female passengers so the level of service becomes very challenging. How much are people willing to pay for that service and unless you have economies of scale you would have to charge more for the trip and again, in general, people feel safe getting into a licensed taxi cab. However, in Winnipeg earlier this year, an exclusively female ride-sharing group was launched to help aboriginal women deal with racism and rude behaviour from the citys taxi drivers. Winnipeg artist Jackie Traverse called for a boycott of all Winnipeg taxis and launched a Facebook-based ride-sharing group for indigenous women after learning of discriminatory behaviour by some cabbies. The Winnipeg Taxi Alliance is looking at improving aspects of its driver training and its complaints process in addition to other safety-related measures such as posting some kind of identification that would show a driver had underwent training and improved audio/video equipment in vehicles. Sex segregated transportation has been in place for years in Japan, India, Egypt and Iran with women-only buses, rail and subway cars. According to the Huffington Post, a recent proposal in Australia to test an all-female train carriage prompted an outcry with calls for male-only cars instead, and critics labelling the plan a temporary remedy to the rise in crimes against women. Katrina Kaif, who has been a regular fixture at the Cannes Festival for sometime now, will be giving the event a miss this time. The actress, who is currently shooting for Anurag Basus Jagga Jasoos, is so busy that she wont be able to spare time for the Cannes red carpet. Kat has had a good run at the festival, with her costume and look last year being widely talked about. However, contrary to recent reports that the actress is delaying the shoot of Jagga Jasoos, Kat has been supportive of the films team who want to release the film by July, by skipping the event to make time for the films Morocco schedule. The shooting of the film is currently going on in Mumbai, post which the team will head to Morocco for the next schedule, which means that all remaining days have to be prioritised. Since the dates of Cannes Film Festival are clashing with the Morocco schedule of the musical adventure, Katrina has decided to give the film festival a miss. A source said, Katrina will be busy shooting for Jagga Jasoos. Thats why she has decided to give Cannes a miss. The makers are wanting to release the film in July and she is cooperating. By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU competition regulators will veto CK Hutchison Holdings' 10.3 billion-pound ($14.9 billion) deal to buy O2 UK from Spanish group Telefonica to become Britain's biggest mobile network operator, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday. Hutchison, controlled by Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing, had always faced an uphill battle getting EU clearance for the deal because merging O2 with its own Three UK would reduce the number of rival mobile network operators in Britain to three. It will be the first time that European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has expressly rejected such a deal, although Scandinavian groups Teliasonera and Telenor abandoned plans to merge their Danish mobile subsidiaries in September last year after Vestager said she wanted four network operators in that market. The European Commission will this week seek the approval from national competition regulators for its decision to reject the Hutchison deal, the sources said. Such a move is usually a formality. Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso, Hutchison and Telefonica declined to comment. The EU watchdog has set a May 19 deadline for its decision. A package of concessions designed to boost smaller rivals failed to address the Commission's belief that the merger could lead to less competition and higher prices in Britain, the people said. Bowing to the Commission's demand to create a fourth network operator also proved impossible as it failed to find a buyer for either O2 or its own UK mobile subsidiary Three. Last week, sources said Hutchison declined to offer fresh concessions. Hutchison will be hoping that the Commission will not come to a similar conclusion in its investigation into its proposed merger in Italy of 3 Italia with Vimpelcom's Wind, a deal which analysts say could be equally challenging to get past the regulators, since once again it would reduce national market rivalry to just three network operators. (Refiled to correct punctuation) (Additional reporting by Kate Holton in London and Andres Gonzalez Estebaran in Madrid; Editing by Greg Mahlich) (Reuters) - Canadian miner Nevsun Resources Ltd said it has agreed to buy Reservoir Minerals Inc for about $365 million in cash and stock. Nevsun, which owns the Bisha copper-zinc mine in Eritrea, will pay two shares of Nevsun and $0.001 in cash for each Reservoir share, the company said on Sunday. The deal values Reservoir shares at C$9.401 each, representing a 35 percent premium to its last close, based on Nevsun stock's Friday closing price. Nevsun will also provide $135 million in financing to Reservoir, by buying about 12.2 million of Reservoir shares for $90.3 million and providing an unsecured cash loan of $44.7 million to Reservoir. Vancouver-based Reservoir is a mining exploration and development company. Its flagship venture is the Timok copper and gold project in Serbia, which it owns in a joint venture with U.S.-based miner Freeport McMoRan Inc . Lundin Mining , another Canadian miner, said on March 3 that it agreed to buy part of Freeport's stake in the Timok project for up to $262.5 million. The proposed transaction is, however, subject to a right of first offer (ROFO) that Reservoir had, which put Reservoir first in line to purchase the Freeport stake. With $135 million of financial backing from Nevsun, Reservoir is now able to exercise that right, scuppering the planned Lundin transaction. The deal will result in Reservoir owning 100 percent of the Timok project's upper zone and 60.4 percent of the lower zone. Reservoir will also become the operator of the project, taking over from Freeport. "Reservoir's board of directors determined that this transaction is the best funding alternative for our shareholders to fund the Timok ROFO," Reservoir's President and Chief Executive Simon Ingram said in a statement. (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) By Andrea Hopkins and Manuel Mogato KANANASKIS, Alberta/MANILA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned on Monday the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder." John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting. "The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act." Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall. "Obviously there was talk of money involved, but not by the government of Canada or by the government of Norway, but certainly by the families attempting to do what they could to free the four," said Bob Rae, a former federal politician and longtime Ridsdel friend. "But its been an awful process, just horrendous," he told Canadian television. In a statement, Ridsdel's family said they were devastated his life had been "cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home." Ridsdel, Hall and the other captives, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21. Ridsdel's former employer described him as gregarious, adventurous and warm. "We are in profound shock, disbelief and sorrow to have lost our former colleague and close friend," Calgary-based mining company TVI Pacific said in an emailed statement. Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country's prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants. Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict. Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew. ($1 = 46.8930 Philippine pesos) (Additional reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown) By Kirsti Knolle VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's far right won more than a third of the vote in the presidential election on Sunday and will face an independent in next month's run-off, dumping out the country's two main parties from the post for the first time. It was the Freedom Party's best result in a national election after a campaign that focused on the impact of the migrant crisis, which has seen around 100,000 asylum seekers arrive in Austria since last summer. Norbert Hofer, who ran on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform, won 36.4 percent of the vote to become head of state. He will face Alexander van der Bellen, a former Green Party figurehead, who won 20.4 percent, according to official preliminary results. While the presidency is largely only a ceremonial role, the fact that neither of the main ruling parties will be battling for the post on May 22 marks a major change in Austrian politics - as well as the rising role of the far right in Europe. Members of the centre-left Social Democrats and the conservative People's Party have filled the job since it was first put to a popular vote in 1951. The two parties have ruled the nation of 8.7 million in tandem for most of the postwar era. The president is head of state, swears in the chancellor, has the authority to dismiss the cabinet and is commander in chief of the military. The election outcome was "a resounding slap in the face" for the government coalition, said Wolfgang Bachmayer, who founded the OGM market research institute. His comments were echoed by political analyst Peter Filzmaier. "Only those who are satisfied vote for a government party or its candidate," he said. "This time, the annoyed voted for Norbert Hofer." "FOOD FOR THOUGHT" Around 70 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots, a big turnout compared with around 50 percent six years ago when Social Democrat Heinz Fischer, now 77, was elected for his second term. He could not run for a third term. Peter McDonald, general secretary of co-ruling People's Party acknowledged the scale of the defeat after coming in fifth in the poll with just 11.2 percent of the vote. "We have experienced a landslide that should give the entire political centre food for thought," he said. The social democratic Chancellor Werner Faymann, whose party ranked fourth, said the outcome was a clear warning to the government to work harder and cooperate better. Should Hofer get the top job, he could push to bring forward a parliamentary election due to take place in 2018 as support for his party has been growing. Polls show the Freedom Party above 30 percent, while the coalition parties would struggle to get a combined majority. Showing the far right's growing confidence in Europe, Marine Le Pen, leader of France's National Front, hailed a "beautiful result", writing on Twitter: "Bravo to the Austrian people". Both the candidates that made it through to the run-off had taken aim at the government over its handling of the migrant crisis. Van der Bellen criticised the government for being too harsh in its treatment of asylum applicants, while Hofer says it has been too soft. "It could hardly be any more dramatic," said political consultant Thomas Hofer, adding that he thought Van der Bellen would face a difficult task to win the run-off with the gap between him and Hofer. Neither Faymann nor Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner from the People's Party said they would make any recommendation for the run-off. Voters should decide independently, they said. (Reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Alison Williams) Bernie Sanders brought his call for a political revolution to Baltimore this weekend, a city that was rocked by riots one year ago and where struggling residents are desperate for their lives to change. Baltimoreans will have their chance to vote for change on Tuesday when Maryland holds its Republican and Democratic primaries and there are also competitive races for mayor and the U.S. Senate. At two appearances in the Charm City on Saturday, Sanders cited bleak statistics on poverty levels and poor health outcomes, on hungry children and youth who can't find jobs. "In Baltimore, poverty is a death sentence," Sanders told a crowd at an event billed as a "community conversation on young men of colour." The event was another outreach effort by Sanders to African-American voters, a demographic where he has struggled to gain support compared to his rival Hillary Clinton. She's crushed him in states like South Carolina, where she won 86 per cent of black voters. She again outperformed Sanders with black voters in last week's New York contest, and with the primary season winding down, his campaign knows he has to do better with black voters in the remaining states. Clinton's name recognition They are working hard on that front, particularly in Maryland, which has the country's sixth-largest black population. About 40 per cent of Democratic primary voters there are black. Sanders recently released two new ads airing in the state that target black voters and Saturday night's event in Baltimore, where 63 per cent of the population is black, is also part of his strategy. The hour-long panel discussion included actor Danny Glover, one of several black celebrities who campaigns for Sanders. Others included Harry Belafonte and Spike Lee, who has produced multiple ads for him. Vernon Carter, 28, sat with a friend in a pew of the church waiting to hear from Sanders. "People want to see how he has our best interest at heart," said Carter, an undecided Democrat. "I want to hear it in his own voice." Story continues Ben Jealous, former head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a Baltimore resident who works on Sanders's Maryland campaign, said Sanders is making progress with black voters. "We have more black support, a higher percentage in Maryland than we've seen in any southern state," Jealous said in an interview ahead of the event. In explaining why Clinton is more popular with black voters, Jealous and other Baltimore voters said her name is a huge advantage. Her husband, President Bill Clinton, was nicknamed the first black president and some believe she is just as strong a supporter of the African-American community. "I think she'll be better for us," said voter Renee Lawson. "I think she's the only one who is going to get in there that's going to try and help bring us up a little." Generational divide Natarsha Malone, a 24-year-old Sanders fan, said there is a generational divide among black voters. "If you ask my mother, it's because that's what they know," she said referring to Clinton. "She has the name recognition, they know who she is." Malone, who had just come out of a Sanders rally at a downtown arena Saturday afternoon, said the Vermont senator is more active than Clinton in courting the black vote. "I don't feel like she's doing anything. She knows she has the votes so is just going to sit back and collect them," the college student said. "I feel like he's trying to have that conversation, sit down and figure out what's in our community that is hindering us or helping us." Marissa Wilkins, another Sanders supporter, thinks he's genuinely interested in the issues facing African-Americans, he's not just playing politics. "It's not a facade, it's something that is genuine," the 24-year old said. "I think he really understands what we go through." The generational divide among black voters played out on Earl Williams's front stoop Saturday afternoon. "My man Bernie!" his daughter said when asked who would get her vote. But for Williams, Clinton is the better bet for black voters. "She's white on the outside but she's got a little soul on the inside," he said as his three grandchildren scampered around him. Sandtown struggles Williams lives in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood, the epicentre of last April's riots following Freddie Gray's death. He knew Gray, and on the day he was arrested, he heard Gray's screams. Williams's home is a few metres away from the intersection where the police van carrying Gray stopped on the way to the police station. It is believed Gray, 25, suffered a spinal injury while riding unsecured and shackled in the back of the vehicle. He died a week later. "They had him right here on this corner, I heard all the hollering and screaming," said Williams. A few blocks up the street is the spot where Gray was arrested. A large mural of the young man's face now adorns the side of a building there. Kisha Newsome, who was walking by it, also knew Gray. "He was a good kid, good heart," she said, adding he was like many other young men from the neighbourhood, struggling to find their way. She intends to vote on Tuesday, but said many in Sandtown won't because they feel like their votes don't matter, nothing ever changes. "For the African-American community, the promises that people make them, they're just so tired of being disappointed," said Newsome. Anger and frustration in the community boiled over after Gray's death last April and peaceful protests gave way to violent riots. Voter turnout expected to be up There were clashes with police, businesses vandalized, looted and set on fire, then the National Guard was brought in and a city-wide curfew imposed to try and restore calm. A CVS pharmacy was destroyed, forcing seniors in the home next to it to go much further for their medication and other needs for a year. It was rebuilt and re-opened a few weeks ago, but Sandtown residents say not much else has improved. Drugs, crime, murders and gun violence still plague the community and the streets are full of boarded-up abandoned homes. Sanders toured the neighbourhood during a Baltimore visit in December and on Saturday he recalled how struck he was by the dilapidated homes and noted there isn't a grocery store or major bank in sight. Outside the new CVS store, Terrence Bert had one plea for those on the ballot on Tuesday: "Bring jobs to the neighbourhood, and stop closing down the recreation centres for the kids." Baltimore has a history of low voter turnout, but Bert and others predict it will rise this year, because of what happened in the city 12 months ago. "I think it's going to be different this year," said Pierre McMillan, as he washed his car outside his Sandtown row-house. "We've got to make some changes." He said he can't stand when he hears people say they won't bother voting. "The vote counts, so use it," said McMillan, 58. He hasn't decided yet between Sanders and Clinton. Tamierra Stridiron will be exercising her democratic right for the first time. The 25-year-old became politically active this year and is volunteering for Sanders in Baltimore. She appreciates his efforts to reach out to the black community, she said after his event Saturday night. Fighting for every vote Sanders's challenge is educating black voters on his long history of fighting for civil rights, combating racism and on his vision for the country, she said. "If they knew what Bernie was doing, they'd get on Bernie's team," said Stridiron. Inside the church, Sanders was cheered on by the crowd when he talked about the need for affordable college and housing, criminal justice reform, investing in jobs not jails, supporting African-American business owners, raising the minimum wage, demilitarizing local police forces and ensuring they are more diverse, and overhauling drug laws. Sanders has an uphill battle in Maryland though, where Clinton is beating him by 25 percentage points according to the latest Monmouth University poll. Among black voters in the state, she's also creaming him, 64 per cent to 20. His campaign isn't predicting he can close those gaps, but Jealous said his supporters want to narrow them so Sanders remains competitive, all the way until California, the last primary in June. "We are going to fight for every vote here," said Jealous. Will his efforts with black voters pay off? "We'll find out Tuesday," he responded. [Canada Post and the government are at the centre of a human rights complaint over the delivery of the Your Ward News publication/Your Ward News] Canada Post and the federal government are being accused of distributing hate propaganda in a recent human rights complaint. Lawyer Richard Warman filed the complaint because the Toronto publication Your Ward News is distributed through the mail. Canada Post and the Government of Canada are regularly and knowingly exposing Canada Post workers to misogynist, racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and homophobic hate propaganda in the workplace, the complaint states. In the complaint, Warman references Your Ward News spring 2016 edition and points out that it advocates Nazism, engages in Holocaust denial and anti-Jewish bigotry as well as uses offensive language. In the February issue, the complaint points out misogynistic language throughout, referring to women as sluts and as being inferior to men. Canada Post is legally allowed to refuse to deliver materials that are illegal, fraudulent or obscene, but has no definition of obscene. In recent years, Canada Post has had several instances of controversial items being sent in the mail such as graphic pro-life materials. Warman states that the government and Canada Post are also in breach of Canadas international legal obligations prohibiting the dissemination of hate propaganda. Warman states he has contacted Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra and the minister responsible for Canada Post, Judy Foote. Foote had not responded by the time the complaint was filed, but was told by Canada Posts legal counsel that it would not stop distributing Your Ward News. By knowingly distributing hate propaganda and profiting from it, they have engaged in discriminatory conduct, Warman states. Warman did not respond to an interview request from Yahoo Canada News. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers released a letter of support for Warmans complaint on Friday, calling the move encouraging. Story continues Postal Workers dont pick and choose which materials to carry. If Canada Post accepts it, we deliver, Mike Palecek, CUPW national president said in the statement. But many of us are fed up with being part of the distribution network for hateful material like Your Ward News. Last year, Your Ward News was investigated by Toronto Police for hate crimes after a resident complained about receiving it in the mail. No charges were filed. We have broken no laws, which is the reason why the enemies of free speech are not coming directly after us, instead starting a proxy battle with Canada Post and the federal government, owner and publisher Leroy St. Germaine recently told the Toronto Star. There is no timeline for how long it will take for the Canadian Human Rights Commission to process the complaint. Mumbai: The shooting of Vishal Bhardwaj's 'Rangoon' starring Shahid Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Kangana Ranaut has finally come to an end."Vishal's wife Rekha took to her social media account and expressed her happiness over the same. She wrote, Finally its a WRAP for Rangoon film's shooting today #Vishal Bhardwaj @WardaNadiadwala @NGEMovies. Party time. Later in the evening, Vishal along with Rekha, Kangana, producer Sajid and wife Wardha gathered to celebrate Rangoon's successful completion together. However, Saif and Shahid were conspicuous by their absence. Vishal Bhardwaj with wife Rekha Recently, there were rumours that Saif and Shahid share cold vibes, but Kareena set the record straight by commenting, "Really? In fact, I think they are getting along too well! I haven't gone to the sets because I haven't had the time. I have been travelling and they have been having very hectic schedules at night. Saif comes and tells me what fun they have been having on the sets. He quite enjoys chatting with Shahid and finds him a really nice guy. I don't know why they shouldn't be getting along." Kangana Ranaut 'Rangoon' directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, is a classic tale that is set against the backdrop of World War II. The director who wanted to work on this subject since eight years now, promises that the film will have the musical charm of Moulin Rouge, the romance of Casablanca and the intensity of Saving Private Ryan. Sajid Nadiadwala with wife Wardha In this love triangle, well see Saif playing the character of a filmmaker, Kangana as an actress from the 40s and Shahid playing the role of an army officer. The makers of Rangoon plan on releasing the film around October next year. The film is being produced by Sajid Nadiawala. By Allison Lampert Montreal (Reuters) - Reports that Bombardier Inc is involved in launching an airline in Iran are inaccurate, the Canadian planemaker said on Sunday, although it confirmed it was in talks for sales as its executive chairman visited the country to drum up business. Bombardier Executive Chairman Pierre Beaudoin led a delegation of company aviation and rail executives to Iran last week, but no deal has been reached yet on sales with Iranian customers, company spokeswoman Marianella de la Barrera said on Sunday. Aviation Iran reported on Saturday that Bombardier signed a memorandum of understanding with officials from Iran's Qeshm Free Zone on establishing an airline. Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Qeshm Free Zone officials hoped to conclude a deal with Bombardier in the next two months on a project to set up an airline in the southern Qeshm island. De la Barrera said by phone that Bombardier did not plan to launch and run a new airline, but she could not say specifically whether the Montreal-based company was holding talks to sell planes to an Iranian start-up. "We build, market and sell aircraft and trains," she said. She said the company's talks in the country were progressing. "We are advancing in discussions," she said. "We are visiting more often." Bombardier's new CSeries passenger jet is years behind schedule, billions of dollars over budget and has won relatively few orders so far compared with its rivals. Canada said in February it was lifting some sanctions against Iran, allowing Bombardier to compete against planemakers Boeing Co and Airbus Group SE . A delegation from Boeing visited Iran earlier in April to discuss sales of jetliners, while its European rival, Airbus, agreed in January to sell Iran 118 planes worth about $27 billion at list prices. The nuclear agreement last year between Iran and six world powers allowed for the easing of some sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program. (Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal; Additional reporting by Ethan Lou in Toronto; Editing by Peter Cooney) GABORONE (Reuters) - Two South Korean firms could be picked to expand Botswana's Morupule B power station by 300 megawatt (MW) in a bid by the southern African nation to ease power shortages, the energy minister said on Friday. Energy minister Kitso Mokaila was quoted in the local Mmegi newspaper as saying that the expansion would be carried out by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) and Daewoo. The plant has an installed capacity of 600 MW but works are already under way to add 300MW by a joint venture between Japan's Marubeni and South Korea's Posco Energy. The plant would eventually generate a total of 1,200 MW when all the expansions are completed. The coal-fired power station was originally built by the China National Electric Equipment Corporation (CNEEC) at a cost of $970 million but has often broken down, leading to a reliance on diesel generators and imports from South Africa. Botswana's current electricity demand stands at 600 MW, according to the energy department. (Writing by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by James Macharia) By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - With world leaders converging in New York to sign a landmark climate deal, activists along with actor Alec Baldwin called on Thursday for a halt to deforestation, a contributor to global warming, by giving indigenous people rights to their land. Keeping indigenous tribes from being pushed off their land would help protect forests that absorb planet-warming greenhouse gasses, they told reporters in New York City. The climate change agreement, which commits world nations to lower greenhouse emissions, is slated to be signed by leaders and key officials of more than 150 nations on Friday. Rapid deforestation threatens the goal of the climate deal, negotiated last fall in Paris, to limit warming, Baldwin said. "If we keep chopping down tropical forests at the rate we're doing now, we're lost," said Baldwin. "People need to hear and understand that technology alone is not going to save us from climate disaster," he said. The responsibility lies with governments to keep indigenous people on their land, said the actor, who starred in the popular television series "30 Rock." Failing to provide them with land titles "leaves the very heroes that are working tirelessly to protect and defend the world's forests from illegal logging and from extractive industries very vulnerable," he said. Commercial farming, cattle production and timber collection are among industries faulted for clearing forests, particularly the Amazon, and stripping native inhabitants of their way of life, Baldwin and others said. "Forests act like the lungs of our planet," said Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). "If we didn't have lungs, it would be brutal." If forests were protected, they could be capable of absorbing nearly a third of global emissions, they said. Diana Rios, an Asheninka indigenous leader whose tribe in Peru recently received title to some 80,000 hectares of Amazon forest, said she takes enormous pride in helping preserve the land's ecosystem. "It's not only for me, but for the entire world," she said. Efforts to protect the rain forest have turned violent, she said. Her father and three other people were killed by illegal loggers in 2014, and intimidation continues, she said. "It weighs heavily ... but I am not defeated," said the mother of three children. "On the contrary, it emboldens me to stay the course as an indigenous woman," she said. (The story is refiled to fix headline) (Reporting by Sebastien Malo, 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) By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Columbia University student who had been accused of rape has sued the school for a second time over its decision to allow his accuser to carry a mattress around campus in protest after he had been cleared of the allegations. The lawsuit filed on Monday by Paul Nungesser came six weeks after U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan threw out an earlier version. The judge said Nungesser failed to show that Columbia discriminated against him based on his gender. Emma Sulkowicz had accused Nungesser of raping her on campus in August 2012, while Nungesser claimed the encounter was consensual. He was never charged with a crime, and graduated from the Ivy League school in New York last year. When the university determined he should not be disciplined, Sulkowicz protested the decision by carrying a mattress everywhere she went as part of her senior thesis, drawing international headlines. Nungesser's amended lawsuit again asserts that Columbia violated Title IX, which prohibits schools that receive federal funding from engaging in gender discrimination. He said the school discriminated against him by permitting Sulkowicz to protest and by taking other actions that created a "hostile environment." The new lawsuit contains additional allegations, including claims that the school's current policy regarding gender-based misconduct excludes the possibility of male victims and female perpetrators. Sulkowicz, it said, victimized Nungesser by attempting to get him expelled despite his innocence. The lawsuit also adds two faculty members as defendants, arguing they supported Sulkowicz's artwork and protests naming Nungesser as a rapist. Sulkowicz is not named as a defendant. Columbia, its president Lee Bollinger and Sulkowicz's thesis adviser remain defendants in the case. A Columbia spokesman declined to comment on Monday. In a statement, Nungesser's parents said they had heard from friends, relatives and even strangers across the country who said they "wish that Paul eventually finds justice." A number of male students have filed lawsuits against schools in recent years claiming Title IX violations based on their handling of sexual assault accusations. (Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by David Gregorio) By Dave Graham MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - At first, Mexico's government did its best to ignore Donald Trump. Then it likened him to Adolf Hitler. Now it has appointed a new ambassador to come up with a better plan. Fed up with the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination labeling Mexico as a cradle of drug-runners, job poachers and rapists, the government is sending in respected diplomat Carlos Sada to lead a fightback. Mexico's new ambassador in Washington, Sada acknowledges his country has neglected its image across the border and aims to fix that with PR and media campaigns, and by lobbying prominent U.S. companies, lawmakers and civic leaders. "We need to do a more thorough job so that people understand what (Mexico) contributes," he said after he was sworn in at Mexico's Senate on Thursday. Sada's strategy includes underscoring Mexico's importance to the U.S. economy, although it centers on defending the rights of Mexican citizens in the United States and promoting Mexican culture. That focus has fed doubts over whether the government is trying hard enough to win over its most important audience: American voters. "It's vital to improve Mexico's image and protect our people, but that's not enough to change the hateful trend that Trump and other xenophobes before him have stirred up," said Gabriela Cuevas, an opposition lawmaker who chairs the Senate's foreign relations committee. "They don't understand the extent of the damage Trump has done," she said, urging the government to be more aggressive in mobilizing powerful U.S. interests against Trump's attacks. Claiming Mexico is "killing" the United States on trade, Trump has threatened to disrupt bilateral commerce worth some $500 billion a year, and promises to deport millions of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America. To finance a border wall to keep migrants out, he has controversially proposed blocking billions of dollars in remittances sent home by Mexicans in the United States. The measures would pose a serious threat to Mexico's economy, but for months Mexico's government disregarded Trump, hoping his candidacy would fizzle out. "It's the ostrich policy: head in the sand," said Agustin Barrios Gomez, the head of Fundacion Imagen Mexico, a group dedicated to promoting Mexico's image abroad. Mexican officials say U.S. politicians and officials urged it to keep a low profile to avoid aggravating tensions, and played down the real estate magnate's chances. "The Republicans told us, 'We'll deal with Trump'," one senior Mexican government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. When Mexico eventually did respond, President Enrique Pena Nieto compared the brash billionaire' s campaign to the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Mexican officials wince with embarrassment when reminded of the comment, arguing it was tactless and went too far. EMPTY EMBASSY As Trump railed against Mexico, the government should have made a concerted effort to remind key players in the United States that the two nations' economic interests are closely intertwined, diplomats and business leaders say. But over a dozen serving and former senior Mexican officials and lawmakers consulted by Reuters said it did not. "They haven't so far, but I do see the intention to do it again," said Jaime Serra, a former trade minister who headed Mexico's negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada in the early 1990s. Trump has not been the only one to criticize Mexico. His Republican rival Ted Cruz also supports a border wall, and backs mass deportations of illegal immigrants. Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders has, like Trump, taken a protectionist line on jobs and says NAFTA was a mistake. Mexico's cause was not helped by Pena Nieto leaving his diplomatic mission in Washington without an ambassador for six months just as Trump was warming up. And his eventual choice surprised many: Miguel Basanez, an old friend who had never worked in the diplomatic service. "It was a bad decision from the start," said a senior lawmaker inside Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "They didn't grasp the size of the problem." Basanez was cast aside this month, just seven months into the job. For Basanez and now Sada, the task of promoting Mexico in the United States is complicated by problems at home. Mexico's reputation has been hurt by relentless drugs violence, conflict-of-interest scandals in government and the apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by a drug cartel working with local police. "To change the image, you have to change the reality," said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister responsible for North America. "Unfortunately, Mexico's internal reality at this point in time has a lot of negatives." (Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Kieran Murray) Guatemala has sent 3,000 troops to its disputed border with Belize after a 13-year-old boy was shot dead. "It is a preventive measure, it is not a declaration of war," Guatemala defence minister Williams Mansilla told reporters. Mr Mansilla said the Guatemalan teenager, Julio Rene Alvarado Ruano, was walking home from working in the fields last week when he was shot, and that his father and brother were also wounded. Belize rejects that account and described it as "justifiable self-defence" after one of its patrols came under fire from civilians. Both sides claim the incident happened on their side of the border and accuse each other of other violence leading up to the boys death. The US State Department said it was "deeply concerned" and called for a full investigation, but urged both countries to show "calm and restraint". An "impartial" investigation by the Organization of American States (OAS) is being carried out, said Belize's prime minister Dean Barrow - who has also asked the US to send forensics experts. Mr Barrow said he had spoken to Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and warned him the deployment of troops was escalating the situation to an "utterly unacceptable degree". He said both leaders had agreed "an immediate need to de-escalate tensions". But in a TV announcement on Thursday Mr Morales a former TV comedian who came to power in January accused Belize of "cowardice" and said his troops would ensure "strict protection" for the country's sovereignty. Tension has long simmered between the Central American states, with Guatemala having made claims over more than half of Belize's territory. Britain Belize's former colonial ruler had a small military presence in the country until five years ago as a deterrent. Both countries have issued conflicting statements over the past two decades over other outbreaks of violence. Iran is reportedly in discussions with Russia to sell it about 40 tonnes of heavy water from its nuclear programme. Abbas Araqchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, has been quoted by the Fars agency as saying the US had been the first buyer of Iranian heavy water and some other world powers, including Russia, are now showing an interest. Iran last year implemented a deal, agreed with world powers, that imposes strict limits and checks on its disputed nuclear programme. Under the agreement, Tehran is responsible for reducing its stock of heavy water - a component of making nuclear weapons and producing nuclear energy. Mr Araqchi is reported to have said: "We are negotiating with Russia to sell 40 tonnes of heavy water." It is not radioactive and the agreement gives Tehran the right to sell, dilute or dispose of it under certain conditions. In January, Iran removed the core of its Arak heavy water nuclear reactor and filled it with cement. The July 2015 deal was struck to prevent Iran from developing the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, in exchange for easing international sanctions. By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi criticized U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday for his "policy of fear," and said he was firmly in Democrat Hillary Clinton's camp. "I support very strongly Hillary Clinton because I think she is a woman able to give security to every partner, to give a message of cooperation with other parties, to continue the good policy of President (Barack) Obama" Renzi said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" show. "I consider Donald Trump a man who invests a lot in a policy of fear," the prime minister said. Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul, and former U.S. Secretary of State Clinton are the front-runners to be their parties' candidates in the November presidential election. Another European leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose immigration policies Trump has called "insane," declined to be drawn when asked about Trump. "I concentrate fully on the tasks of the year 2016, which keep me pretty busy," she said in a joint news conference with Obama in Germany. Trump has said that the refugee crisis could trigger revolutions and even the end of Europe. A million migrants, many fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have poured into Europe through Greece since last year. Turkey hosts 2.7 million Syrian refugees. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Gauri Khan, whose credentials go far beyond just being the wife of Bollywoods badshah Shah Rukh Khan, unveiled the newest feather in her creative cap a new line of saris titled Cocktails and Dreams in collaboration with Satya Paul, in Delhi. Settling down for a chat in the midst of a fair amount of chaos and excitement, she talks about her passion for design, her love for architecture, her style choices... Design is everywhere. And inspiration for it, too, is all around you no matter where you are, Gauri points out, as she begins to delve into her design sensibility, and seek things that have most influenced it through the years. Travel, she says, has been central to the evolution of her creativity. She explains, When I travel to any country, everything from its streets to its buildings such as its beautiful restaurants have something to offer to my creative process. I can be inspired by absolutely anything, anywhere in the world. Personally, one of the greatest sources of inspiration for my work has been architecture. Ive had the chance to see so many exquisite structures, whether they are historical monuments or modern commercial premises She continues, Ive always been able to connect with them and their nuances. That has definitely fed into my work and my approach to design. In general, though, inspiration can be found anywhere even in a simple cocktail! She adds that her interest in history is another influence on her design process. I have studied history and it has always fascinated me. And my fascination makes itself fairly evident in the work I do too my second collection for Satya Paul, MataHari, was inspired by the Dutch Courtesan, and even my furniture collection that was recently showcased at Maison&Objet included tables inspired by the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha. In my work, historical elements tend to merge with contemporary forms such as photo printing on furniture or bold sari prints, to create something unique and memorable, she avers. Ask her how and where her journey with design first began and she recalls, I was an art student, and worked on a lot of charcoal sketches and drawings during the course of my education. That was something I always had an avid interest in. Much later, when I started building my own home and had to delve into several other aspects of design, I realised that my interest also lay in working closely with design as a larger creative process. At that time, whenever I travelled to any place, I picked up artefacts, statement pieces and so on to eventually place in my home as I had visualised it and I think this is where my passion for design really came into its own. By the time Mannat was completed, I had understood this passion and knew that I wanted to make something more of it. What kind of a role have her husband and children played along her design journey so far? Shah Rukh is extremely supportive of my every design endeavour, and so are my kids. They take keen interest in everything I do and everything I make every piece and every design. They are very involved and that is the greatest form of support I could have asked for, she says. US President Barack Obama has warned leaders that Europe is a "blessing you cannot take for granted" during a speech at the G5 in Hanover. In an impassioned plea for European unity amid rising scepticism about the EU, Mr Obama urged the continent to realise how much it has already achieved. He said: "This is a defining moment and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe. "If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue. "The United States and the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe. "What happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe." During the speech, given in front of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Obama said anything less than total solidarity would give rise to intolerance and tribalism. He said every NATO member should be contributing its full share to maintaining security and said Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence. Mr Obama's speech comes days after he made the case against Great Britain leaving the EU , calling on British people to "reject pessimism and cynicism". Britain faces a referendum on whether to remain or leave the EU on 23 June - a so-called "Brexit" - with senior figures in industry, commerce and politics coming out in support of both campaigns. Mr Obama also confirmed the US would send up to 250 more military personnel to help fight the Islamic State group in Syria and said he would be asking the leaders of Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy to step up their contributions to the air campaign against the extremist group. A Sky Data Snap Poll has revealed 29% of people were considering voting to Leave the EU after the US President's intervention than to remain (22%). Sky Data interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,051 Sky customers by SMS on 25th April 2016. Data are weighted to the profile of the population. US President Barack Obama has told an audience of young British people to reject isolationism, pessimism and cynicism. Speaking after he made it clear he does not want the UK to leave the EU, he appeared to make a veiled call for young people to vote to stay in the EU during an event billed as a US-style 'town hall' meeting. The Remain campaign got a further boost on Saturday night as the favourite to win the Democratic nomination in the race for the White House, Hillary Clinton, reportedly made clear that she was in favour of the UK staying in the EU. Her senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan told the Observer: "Hillary Clinton believes that transatlantic cooperation is essential, and that cooperation is strongest when Europe is united. "She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong EU. And she values a strong British voice in the EU." Mr Obama told his audience at Royal Horticultural Halls on Saturday: "We see calls for isolationism or xenophobia. We see those who would call for rolling back the rights of people. "I think we can understand they are reactions to changing times. "But, when I speak to young people, I implore them, and I implore you, to reject those calls to pull back." But Out campaigner Boris Johnson, who was criticised on Friday for an attack on Mr Obama described as racist, shrugged off the president's criticism and continued to claim he was being "hypocritical". "I think this is all a complete distraction. An attempt by the Remain campaign to throw dust in people's eyes," he said. "Over the last few days, nobody on that side of the argument has been able to answer the key point that I have been making which is that it is inconsistent, perverse and yes, it is hypocritical of the United States to tell us that we should sacrifice more of our independence than they would ever dream of doing themselves." Mr Obama's message on Friday, made as he stood alongside Prime Minister David Cameron, had been one of warning as he suggested a trade deal between the UK and US would be at the "back of the queue" if the UK quit the bloc. Story continues But it was an altogether more positive tone he took on Saturday. "My primary message is going to be to reject pessimism and cynicism, know that progress is possible and that problems can be solved," the President said. "Progress requires the harder path of breaking down barriers and building bridges, and retaining the values of tolerance that our nations have worked to defend." Justice Minister Dominic Raab branded the President an irrelevant "lame duck" after his remarks. "I have got no doubt that future US trade negotiators are going to look to other opportunities - I think the British will be first in the queue, not at the back of the queue." Earlier, UKIP leader Nigel Farage also savaged Mr Obama's comments, saying the President's intervention was at the "bidding of Cameron" and accused him of "doing his best to talk down to Britain". On Friday night, Mr Obama and First Lady Michelle had dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, where they also met Prince Georg e. During the 'town hall' meeting, the President said that George was adorable . Before his meeting on Saturday, Mr Obama visited the Globe Theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. He then went on to have talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said afterwards that he had an "excellent" discussion with the President, with subject matter including inequality and the impact of technology and global corporations on world populations. Tonight, the President will meet David Cameron again, when US ambassador Matthew Barzun will host a private dinner. Authorities have described the killing of eight family members in Ohio as "a sophisticated operation" that has shocked the rural community. Seven adults and one teenage boy were found with gunshot wounds to their heads in Piketon, in the south of the state. Attorney General Mike DeWine adding that the killings appeared to be the result of planned executions. Investigators also revealed that several marijuana-growing operations were found at the crime scenes, although it remains unclear if that was in any way linked to the killings. The shooter or shooters remain on the loose. Authorities earlier released audio from 911 calls made after the slayings. In one call, a frantic female voice is heard describing the horrific scene inside one of four homes where the killings took place. "There is blood all over the house," the woman tells an emergency dispatcher. "My brother-in-law is in the bedroom. Looks like someone has beat the hell out of him." In a separate 911 call, a relative of one victim says: "I just found my cousin with a gunshot wound." "Is he alive?" the dispatcher asks. "No, no," the man responds. Authorities said the first 911 call came in shortly before 8am on Friday, with the second call coming several hours later from a different location. The victims have been identified as Christopher Rhoden Sr, 40, Christopher Rhoden Jr, 16, Dana Rhoden, 37, Kenneth Rhoden, 44, Gary Rhoden, 38, Clarence Rhoden, 20, Hannah Gilley, 20, and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. An infant and two other small children who were in the homes at the time of the shootings were not hurt. Pastor Phil Fulton of Union Hill Church told CBS News the local sheriff encouraged relatives of the dead to "be very careful" and "arm yourself". Todd Beekman, the owner of a local outdoors shop, said at least one customer came in to stock up on ammunition after the shootings. However, he said most people were not concerned for their safety because local residents know and look out for each other. Story continues "The word spread pretty fast, as it does in any rural area," Mr Beekman told the AP news agency. "Everybody's kind of their own brother's keeper down here." Pike County lies about 80 miles (130km) east of Cincinnati on the western edge of Appalachia. It has around 28,000 residents, more than a quarter of whom live in poverty. A Cincinnati-area businessman put up a $25,000 (17,000) reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers, officials said. By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - For some Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, Tuesday's primary election will be more than just a chance to pick preferred candidates for public office - it will be a mini-referendum on the future of the state's downtrodden fracking industry. Three candidates on the ballot, including Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and two Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls, want to ban or pause the controversial oil and gas drilling technique, splitting an electorate in parts of the state concerned about both jobs and the environment. A debate over fracking emerged between Sanders and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton over the last month, with Sanders calling for a nationwide ban and Clinton pushing a middle-of-the road approach that would allow it with caveats - a stance that has been criticized by more progressive democrats. The outcome of the presidential and senate primaries in a state that now the second biggest natural gas producer in America after Texas may reveal how residents of heavily drilled areas feel about an industry suffering from a decline in oil and gas prices. "Everyone is anxious," said Lois Martin, a sales manager at a store in Washington that sells gear, like steel-toe boots and drill-site clothes, to workers in the fracking industry. "Everybody is waiting for the elections to be over," she said. The question of a ban on fracking has also emerged as a key issue in the hotly contested race to select a Democrat to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania against the incumbent Republican Pat Toomey. Two candidates, former U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak and John Fetterman, a small town mayor, have called for a moratorium on fracking. The third candidate, Katie McGinty, the former head of the states environmental regulator, has been endorsed by President Barack Obama and Governor Tom Wolf, and is looking for stricter standards on the industry. Story continues "Now is the moment to really do it," Sestak said about a ban, pointing to a slump in oil and gas prices that has left many drill pads idle. "We cant even pump any more gas out because our pipelines are filled." McGinty has called that stance a "sound bite", and not a serious proposal. States like New York and Maryland have already passed moratoriums on fracking while they conduct studies into its environmental impacts. Fracking - which involves pumping water, sand and chemicals into the ground to free oil and gas reserves from rock formations - is responsible for a boom in U.S. oil and gas production over the past decade that has slammed energy company profits and lowered costs for consumers. It has also been implicated in ground water pollution, and a rash of small earthquakes in places like Oklahoma and Ohio, raising concerns about its safety. Opposition to fracking, meanwhile, has risen to an all-time high nationwide of 51 percent, according to a Gallup poll released March 31, from 40 percent a year earlier. WEALTHY OVERNIGHT In many of the most heavily fracked regions of Pennsylvania some residents are not ready for a ban. They are looking for a way to both support the industry while also improving safeguards to protect the environment. Mark Zabilitzky, a farmer with white hair in his early-sixties, said he leased out mineral rights on his property to a natural gas company four years ago in exchange for around $1,000 an acre and a cut of production royalties. But the company has not drilled yet, and Zabilitsky is hoping for a rebound in natural gas prices to make it happen before he retires. "I am not too far off of retirement," he said. "We thought we would be wealthy overnight." He said he appreciates Sanders' devotion to protecting the environment, but thinks fracking can be done safely. David Spigelmyer, president of the Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coalition, said calls for fracking bans by Sanders and the Senate hopefuls posed a risk to "mom and pop shops that have provided jobs to our neighbors." "We have people that want to take us in a dangerous direction," he said at a meeting of landowners in South Franklin township in Washington county last week. (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Andrew Hay) Hot on the heels of his visit to the UK, U.S. President Barack Obama took a trip to a German tech show where he joked over a virtual reality headset with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two heads of state were visiting the Hannover Messe industrial trade fair on what is likely to be Obamas last trip to Germany as President when they got the chance to try out the VR gadget from a German company called Ifm Stiftung. The President appears to be completely immersed in the virtual world (Getty/Alexander Koerner/Stringer) As well as giving the wearer the ability to see a life-size 3D environment, the headset is equipped with moving googly eyes on the outside, something that appeared to amuse Obama while Merkel was testing out the device. Obama tries out the headset with Angela Merkel at his side (Getty/Alexander Koerner/Stringer) As well as laughing in the face of one of his staunchest allies, the President also tested out the headset for himself and was snapped reaching out his hand to touch an object in the virtual world. The President cant resist giggling while Merkel tries out the google-eyed headset (Getty/Alexander Koerner/Stringer) After sharing a few laughs over the gadget, Obama declared Its a brave new world. POTUS lends the German Chancellor a reassuring hand (Getty/Alexander Koerner/Stringer) VR headsets are slowing gaining popularity following the release of several big name products including the Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive and affordable Google Cardboard. Image credit: Getty/Alexander Koerner/Stringer Prince, who made a terrorising debut in Vishals Naan Sigappu Manithan, made a name for himself in Naaigal Jakkirathai as a villain. After featuring in Theri, he has been flooded with several offers Yaman, Semma Botha Agadha, Pandigai, Thiri and Ulkuthu. Speaking to DC, the young actor says, Its because of Vishal anna that I got a chance in Kollywood. He was the one who encouraged me and gave me the chance. Now, with the success of Theri, Im happy that Ive a handful of roles in my kitty. Sharing his love for playing the role as an antagonist, Prince says, Even while I was trying to enter the industry, I made it clear that I would make a foray as a villain. It gives me the chance to do the evil things which I dont do in real life, he laughs. Regarding his upcoming projects, Prince expressed his happiness to getting a chance to act with the likes of Vijay Anthony, Atharvaa and Krishna. In Yaman, I play a powerful, yet silent baddie and in Semma Bodha Agadha, my role is kind of a suspense. Pandigai will be one-of-its-kind movie for both Krishna and me as its about street fighting. The output so far has been really good, he muses. When asked if he has ever got a backlash by fans for playing the baddie, Prince says, Fans of Vijay and Vishal openly threatened me! But, it means, I have played my character well. He said that though he also loves doing character roles, for now he wants to concentrate on negative roles. I first want to be an established villain. Well see whats in the store for me later, he concludes. By Marwa Rashad RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabians are anticipating with hope, doubt and worry the release this week of a government plan to liberate the kingdom from its reliance on oil, which could solve deep-rooted problems but bring economic pain. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old son of King Salman, is to announce on Monday his "Saudi Vision 2030", which is expected to set goals for the next 15 years and a broad policy agenda to reach them, official sources say. Economic details of the vision, a package of state budget reforms, regulatory changes and policy initiatives for the next five years known as the "National Transformation Plan", are expected to be released four to six weeks later. Reform drives have come and gone in Saudi Arabia several times in the past few decades with only modest results. The kingdom remains dangerously dependent on oil exports and low global prices created a state budget deficit of nearly $100 billion in 2015, emphasizing the need for change. Hundreds of thousands of Saudis are speculating in newspapers, on television, in social media and in private conversations about the contents of Monday's announcement. Many, particularly young people, say they welcome change, believing it will bring jobs, new economic opportunities and eventually perhaps more social freedom - conceivably, for example, the right for women to drive. Others doubt much change can be achieved in the kingdoms conservative society, or worry that the program will be painful as welfare benefits are cut to protect state finances and the government pushes more Saudis into the private sector jobs instead of cushy public employment. The government's official Twitter account for the announcement, @SaudiVision2030, has gained 226,000 followers since it was launched last Wednesday. Prominent Saudi economist Abdulhamid al-Amri said on Twitter that he had been hoping for such a comprehensive vision for over 10 years - a delay he believes has cost Saudi Arabia the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars. "The absence of such a vision led to the waste of trillions of riyals, the spread of monopolies, corruption, unemployment, poverty and the delay of development projects," he wrote. But he added, "Laying out a vision is the first step on a road of a million miles - the implementation remains." REFORMS Many of the broad outlines of Vision 2030 are already known; they include an efficiency campaign within the government, a bigger role for the non-oil private sector, and more aggressive management of the kingdom's foreign assets to increase returns. Given the modest impact of the past reform drives, financial markets have moved little before the Vision 2030 announcement. King Abdullah, who died in January 2015, was widely seen as a reformer when he ascended the throne in 2005. He developed an investment promotion agency, began a big scholarship scheme for Saudis to study abroad and let women vote in municipal elections for the first time. But on top of the persistent oil dependency, problems such as a shortage of affordable housing and uneven health care were only partially resolved. The current reform drive may be more effective. Prince Mohammed has conducted a tightly controlled public relations campaign to present himself as a dynamic reformer, and concentrated power over all ministries related to the economy in a council which he chairs. The scale of his authority has persuaded many Saudis that he may be able to break down bureaucratic barriers and cut through the red tape that has stifled many government operations. "The first quick win will be the efficiency and cooperation," said Prince Mansour al-Saud, senior planning manager at the state-controlled Saudi Industrial Development Fund, who participated in workshops to discuss the reforms. "Everybody will sense improvement in every single aspect of government work, in education and healthcare services." But there is concern that the dead weight of Saudi bureaucracy will once again resist change. "There will be a need for a restructuring process inside each ministry to meet program requirements. Workshops over a few months will not wipe off five decades of bureaucracy," said Saudi economist Fadl al-Boainain. Many Saudis also fear the reforms will hit their wallets, as the government cuts price subsidies for fuel and utilities, and wage rises in the public sector - which employs most Saudis - slow. "Future Vision plan - the most important thing is to stay away from citizens' pockets," one person tweeted. Another tweeted that the plan would ensure the kingdom's survival in an era of cheap oil but "it will be hard on the citizens". Officials have said the poorest citizens are likely to be compensated with cash payments for higher utility costs. On Saturday, King Salman replaced minister for water and electricity Abdullah al-Husayen, who had drawn public criticism for his handling of water price increases in December. It is not yet clear whether Vision 2030 will include politically sensitive social reforms - for example, in education, the judiciary and women's rights - to reduce the influence of a conservative religious establishment. Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg last week that "we believe women have rights in Islam that they've yet to obtain". But while increasing women's participation in the economy is a declared goal of the reforms, he and other officials have so far not promised radical, specific change. This has not stopped many Saudis from hoping. Mashael, a saleswoman at a Riyadh lingerie shop, said she believed women might ultimately be permitted to drive. "I cant wait for the day when women are allowed to drive. I don't want to spend my salary on transportation or on drivers - it would have been cheaper to let women drive than build the Riyadh metro at a cost of billions of riyals." (editing by David Stamp) A 20-year-old man has been arrested after he tweeted a bomb threat during a campaign rally for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, say authorities. The US Secret Service contacted Connecticut State Police after discovering the tweet on Saturday. The post read: "Is someone going to bomb the trump rally or am I going to have to?" In a follow-up tweet, Sean Morkys allegedly warned a friend to have his family members leave the event so they would not get hurt, state police said. The Twitter account has since been deleted. Mr Trump was appearing at the rally in Bridgeport days ahead of the state's primary election. Authorities located Morkys at a home in Waterbury, about 30 miles (48km) north of Bridgeport. He was taken into custody and released on $25,000 bond after police determined he was not an immediate threat. Morkys faces charges of first-degree threatening, inciting injury to person or property and second-degree breach of peace. The bomb threat was not the first incident stemming from a Trump campaign rally. At an event in March, a protester in Ohio was tackled by Secret Service agents after he tried to storm the stage as the billionaire businessman addressed the crowd. Other Trump rallies have been marred by occasional clashes between supporters and protesters. A 78-year-old man faces charges after he was caught on video hitting a demonstrator being led out by deputies at an event in North Carolina. Earlier this month, Mr Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was cleared by authorities over the alleged assault of a female journalist at an event in Florida. A campaign rally in Chicago was cancelled in mid-March due to security concerns amid violent clashes between anti-Trump demonstrators and supporters. By Umit Bektas and Akin Aytekin KILIS, Turkey, (Reuters) - Rockets pounded the Turkish town of Kilis near the Syrian border on Sunday, a Reuters witness reported, killing one person and injuring 26, a day after the government promised to protect the area from repeated attacks by Islamic State militants. Two rockets struck houses in a poor neighbourhood near the town centre in the morning. Sixteen people were injured and Turkish soldiers near the border returned fire into Syria, security sources said. Later in the day, one person was killed and 10 more injured when two more rockets crashed into a mosque, Hurriyet Daily News reported. The mosque was 100 metres from the governor's office, where Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan was holding talks at the time. "I am calling for our citizens to be calm," Akdogan told a news conference in Kilis. "All measures will be taken in this regard. Unfortunately there is no authority across our border." Akdogan said measures would be announced after a cabinet meeting on Monday. Police later used water cannon to disperse residents who were protesting what they said was the government's lack of action over the attacks, Dogan new agency reported. Some of the residents called on the local governor to resign, while others shouted slogan against the government. "My son wakes up with nightmares ... We aren't safe here. We are afraid to stay in our houses," Ayse, a 46-year-old woman, told Reuters. Lying just across the border from an area of Syria controlled by Islamic State, Kilis has been peppered by rocket fire in recent weeks. On Friday two people were killed in an attack on the town, home to around 110,000 Syrian refugees. "SAFE ZONES" Visiting the nearby city of Gaziantep on Saturday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu promised that all necessary measures would be taken to prevent more rocket fire. He was accompanied by EU Council President Donald Tusk as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel who had been expected to visit Kilis last weekend but the location and timing of the visit were changed. Merkel said on Saturday she favoured establishing "safe zones" to shelter refugees in Syria. At a news conference with U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday she said these could be agreed areas where civilians could feel free from bombardment, rather than zones protected by foreign forces. The militants come to the border on motorcycles and then fire rockets at Kilis, Turkish officials have said. Turkish howitzers at the border have a difficult time firing on the mobile targets. Officials have said Turkey may call on allies in the U.S.-led coalition to take stronger action in its campaign against Islamic State along the border. But in Kilis, patience is wearing thin. Residents said they were frustrated by what they called the government's inability to protect them. "I want the governor to resign," 26-year-old Murat told Reuters. "We aren't even able to sleep." (Additional reporting by Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir and Orhan Coskun in Ankara and Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Ros Russell/Ruth Pitchford) By Richard Valdmanis BOSTON (Reuters) - Support for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump among his party's church-going Catholics has risen since Pope Francis suggested the U.S. businessman was not a real Christian, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows. Trump has averaged support among 47.9 percent of Catholic Republicans in the 50 days since the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics made the comment on Feb. 18, up from 39.8 percent in the 50 days that preceded it. Their brief tiff is one of a series of controversies that have failed to dent the New York billionaire's popularity, including his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, his insults to women, and his plans to wall off Mexico if elected president on Nov. 8. The Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,117 church-going Catholic Republicans had a credibility interval of 4.8 percentage points. Asked about plans for a wall on the border with Mexico, the pope said in February: "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. A papal spokesman later said the pontiff was "in no way" singling out Trump or trying to sway voters. The blunt candidate, after initially saying it was "disgraceful" for the pope to judge another's faith in God, said Francis was "a nice man" who was probably misinterpreted by the media. Catholics are a sizable U.S. voting bloc, comprising about a quarter of the electorate, says Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Catholics nearly evenly split their presidential votes between Republicans and Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. 'NOT A DIRECTIVE' Part of the increase in Trump's support among Catholics is likely related to the dwindling number of Republican White House candidates, a field that has dropped from 12 in January to three - the Presbyterian Trump, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Southern Baptist, and Ohio Governor John Kasich, an Anglican. But Mark Gray, a senior research associate at Georgetown, said the results also showed that Catholics who heard the pope's message about Trump were not swayed. "Many Catholics probably felt that the popes comments were not a directive on how they should vote or who they should support, and still others may never have been aware of the popes comments to begin with," he said. While opinion polls have shown few U.S. Catholics think it necessary to agree with the pope on every issue to be a faithful Church member, a Washington Post-ABC poll last September showed the pope had an 86 percent favorability rating. Father William Paul McKane, a Catholic priest in rural Montana who supports Trump, said he felt the pope's comments had backfired with his flock. "I call it paradoxical, to put it gently, that the pope said that, when he lives behind walls that are about 40 feet high and 40 feet across," he said, referring to the walls around Vatican City. "That comment hurt his credibility with my parishioners." McKane said he appreciates Trump's speaking plainly about issues like security and the economy - issues he said were in line with Christian values of protecting the innocent - even if he dislikes some of the candidate's more fiery comments. "Trumps verbiage does not sound compassionate," McKane said. "I dont hold him up as a paragon of Christian virtue, but Im not looking for that in a candidate. Im looking for someone who is prudent and can make good political decisions." CLERGY FAVOR CRUZ While support for Trump among ordinary Catholic Republicans is high - roughly equal to that among Republicans as a whole - the small sums of money flowing to the candidates from Christian priests, bishops, pastors and other clergy of all denominations tend to favor the evangelical Cruz. Cruz received $155,500 in contributions from about 380 members of the Christian clergy who each gave above the $200 reporting threshold through February, compared with about $700 from 10 people for Trump and $3,500 from nine people for Kasich. McKane is the only contributor listed in Trumps campaign finance disclosures who identified himself as a Catholic priest, based on a Reuters review. On the Democratic side, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont - the only Jewish candidate - has received some $85,400 from about 280 people ordained for religious duty in the church, compared with about $192,500 from about 250 individuals for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton polls much better among church-going Catholic Democrats, with 67.8 percent support, compared to Sanders' 29.3 percent, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, despite Sanders' bid to liken his view to the pope's, especially on wealth inequality and climate change. Sanders and the pope met briefly on Saturday at the Vatican, where Sanders addressed a conference on social justice. (Additional reporting by Chris Kahn and Grant Smith in New York; Editing by Howard Goller) By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN (Reuters) - Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focused their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10. The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move towards peace. In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants. Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other. DEATHS A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. "It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighbouring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week. The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the U.N. Security Council's request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move towards peace. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Kuwait; Writing by Noah Browning and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Tom Heneghan) In what will be a busy 2016 for Dhanush, with several films including Thodari, Kodi, Yennai Nokki Payum Thotta, Vada Chennai and the Hollywood movie The Extraordinary Journey of The Fakir, he has given his fans yet another reason to rejoice, as hell be teaming up with the talented Karthik Subbaraj very soon. The Maari star took to Twitter to confirm their association, as he wrote, Glad to announce that Im doing my new film with the very talented Karthik Subbaraj. (sic) It will be an interesting project to look forward to, as this will be the first time that Karthik, who directed trendsetting movies like Pizza and Jigarthanda will be working with a top hero. Karthik, whose movie Iraivi starring an ensemble cast including Vijay Sethupathi, Bobby Simha, S.J. Surya, Kamalini Mukherjee, Anjali and Pooja Devariya, also expressed his excitement about his association with Dhanush in social media. He wrote, My next film after #Iraivi is with @dhanushkraja Very happy!! Though the cast and crew of the movie are not yet revealed, it is set to go on floors this September. As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ A doctor puts a heart monitor on the foot of a baby who is suffering from severe malaria in the Siaya hospital in western Kenya. (Photo: AP) Geneva: Six countries in Africa, the continent where malaria is most widespread, could be free of the disease by 2020, according to a WHO report published today to mark World Malaria Day. One of the goals of the World Health Organisation's 2016-2030 programme against malaria is to wipe out the disease in at least 10 countries by the end of this decade. "WHO estimates that 21 countries are in a position to achieve this goal, including six countries in the African Region, where the burden of the disease is heaviest," the Geneva-based organisation said in a statement. These countries are Algeria, Botswana, Cape Verde, Comoros, South Africa and Swaziland. In South Africa the elimination of malaria is a public health objective. The country registered 11,700 cases of the disease in 2014 down from 64,000 in 2000 with most diagnoses coming from areas bordering Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. "Through targeted action and cross-border collaboration, South Africa has the potential to eliminate malaria by 2020," the WHO report said. The other countries the organisation believes could achieve this objective are China, Malaysia and South Korea, eight Latin American nations (Costa Rica, Belize, El Salvador, Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador and Suriname), as well as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Timor-Leste and Nepal. Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus eradicated malaria in 2015, according to a WHO report published earlier this month. Some 214 million people suffered from malaria last year of which 438,000 died from the disease, according to the organisation. Nine out of 10 deaths from the disease in 2015 came from sub-Saharan Africa, the report said. The pandas are the first to arrive in South Korea from China since 1994. (Photo: Screen grab) Munching on bamboo, rolling about and occasionally napping, on-loan Chinese giant pandas Ai Bao and Le Bao made their public debut at a theme park in South Korea. The pair from China's Sichuan province will live at Everland, an amusement park in Yongin, south of Seoul with its own zoo, on a 15-year loan as agreed by the two countries during a 2014 summit. Two-year-old female Ai Bao and three-year-old male Le Bao had been under quarantine before making their highly-anticipated appearance, which drew visitors of all ages including children dressed in panda costumes and carrying panda soft toys. "Ai Bao...likes to spend time eating or resting in a tree rather than playing," Everland panda keeper Kang Cher-won said. "Le Bao is mischievous so he likes to roll around, swim and climb trees. He is very active and will be popular among visitors." China has sent pandas abroad since the 1950s as part of a goodwill tradition, or "panda diplomacy", to foster better relations. The pandas are the first to arrive in South Korea from China since 1994. Click here watch the video: New Delhi: A four-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her neighbour, who also tried to kill her in east Delhi's Kalyanpuri area, police said on Monday. The girl is presently admitted in a hospital and her condition is critical. Meanwhile, the 26-year-old accused has been arrested. The girl lives with her parents, both workers at a private enterprise, and grandmother on the second floor of a building at Kalyanpuri in which the accused too is a co-tenant, police said. The incident took place on Saturday afternoon when the girl was sleeping beside her grandmother and the accused whisked her away to his room. When he allegedly forced himself upon her, the girl screamed following which the accused gagged her. Failing to manage the situation, he then tried to strangulate her, police said. The girl fell unconscious and the accused assumed that she was dead. He first decided to dump her outside the building but there were too many people outside. He changed his plans and went to the girl's house once again to drop her there and secretly return to his own room. But this time the girl's grandmother was awake looking for the child and raised an alarm when she saw the accused carrying her granddaughter, who was unconscious and bleeding from her private parts, police said. Locals held the accused and thrashed him. They also rushed the girl to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where she was admitted in a critical condition. It was the hospital authorities which informed the police. When a police team went to the building, locals handed over the accused to them. He was arrested immediately, charged under IPC sections for rape, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation and provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, police said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, MoSes Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Rajiv Pratap Rudy addresses the media on the first day the new session of Parliament in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Over 100 activists, economists and sociologists asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to respond to the drought in several states and urged him to implement traditional relief measure. In their letter to Prime Minister they underscored the need for implementing existing measures such as the National Food Security Act, 2013 and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Emplo-yment Guarantee Act, 2005 in an effective and expanded manner. The response of central and state administrations to looming drought is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion. The scale of Mgnrega works is way below what is required and wages often remain unpaid for months. Even more gravely, the central and state governments are doing far too little to implement the National Food Security Act. Had the Act been in place, more than 80 per cent of rural households in the poorer states would be able to secure about half of their monthly cereal requirements almost free of cost. In a drought situation food security entitlements should be made universal, said the letter signed by leading activists such as Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jayati Ghosh, Satish Deshpande, Medha Patkar, Uma Chakravarty, Paul Diwakar, Bela Bhatia, Bezwada Wilson. Chennai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a battery of top BJP national leaders will hit the campaign trail in Tamil Nadu for the May 16 Assembly polls starting first week of next month. "The Prime Minister will travel to four corners of the state in two phases," a senior BJP leader said. The PM will visit the state in the "middle of May first week and second week of the same month," the leader said, adding the Prime Minister's itinerary was yet to be finalised. BJP President Amit Shah and senior leaders, including central ministers Piyush Goyal, Prakash Javadekar and Smriti Irani were also scheduled to undertake election campaign in the state, he said. Earlier, Modi had addressed a pre-election public meeting at Coimbatore in February but had then stayed away from speaking on Tamil Nadu politics. However, Shah had hit out at the ruling AIADMK in his TiruchirappallI rally on April 13, alleging that it was the "most corrupt government" in India. Unable to strike a rainbow coalition like it did for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, BJP is facing the polls with two minor allies, India Jananayaka Katchi and Akila Indiya Makkal Kalvi Munnetra Kazhagam. The party is contesting from 168 seats, and has fielded, among others, BJP National Secretary H Raja (T Nagar), state President Tamilisai Soundarrajan (Virugambakkam) and Vice-President Vanathi Sreenivasan (Coimbatore South). There are 234 assembly segments in Tamil Nadu. Hyderabad: The Osmania University is a perfect example of the dwindling groundwater situation in Hyderabad. The university, spread over 1,300 acres, is a small town in itself with nearly 30,000 regular inhabitants, including around 10,000 hostellers in 16 hostels and residents of the university's staff quarters. A large number of the inhabitants are also illegal hostel dwellers. The campus has around 60 bore wells which were sunk over a period of time and one by one, most of them have gone dry. Currently only around six bore wells are functioning and that too not to their optimum capacity. Most of the dried up bore wells have been dug till 500 feet, while a few till 1,000 feet. As a consequence the university is supplying water from water tankers to satisfy the needs of not just the inhabitants but also of students and faculty who come to the university's 53 departments daily. As per university officials, every day around 25 tankers, each of 6,000 litres, are supplied, amounting to usage of around 1,50,000 litres of water per day. Despite this, the varsity gets regular complaints of water scarcity from the hostellers, some of whom can be seen in the mornings going from one hostel to another for water or taking bath outside, near water tanks. The university's fault in maintaining groundwater cannot be ruled out as there are fewer than 20 rainwater harvesting pits on its 1,300 acre campus, a large potion of which are not covered with concrete. Some officials also blame the university's lack of enthusiasm in maintaining the bore wells. However, the present water crisis seems to have alerted the university administration as it was recently decided to have more rainwater harvesting pits on campus so that rainwater from this year's monsoon does not go to waste. The varsitys Geophysics department has been told to utilise satellite mapping to indicate points on the campus where these pits can be constructed in a weeks time. People inspect damage at a site hit by Saudi-led air strikes in the al-Qaida-held port of Mukalla city in southern Yemen, April 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] DUBAI - More than 800 al-Qaida militants were killed in an offensive by Yemeni government forces and its Arab allies in the group's main stronghold in Yemen's seaport of Mukalla, the Saudi-led coalition said. Around 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, local officials and residents said, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city. There was little fighting after a mostly Gulf Arab alliance and Yemeni forces mobilised their forces at Mukalla's suburbs, and the militants may have chosen to leave peacefully. Residents said local clerics and tribesmen had been in talks with the group earlier in the day to exit quietly and that fighters withdrew westward to neighbouring Shabwa province. Mukalla has been the center of a rich mini-state that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) built up over the past year as it took control of an almost 600-km (370-mile) band of Arabian Sea coastline. The group that has masterminded several foiled bomb plots on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year was pocketing around $2 million a day in customs revenues from the port. The coalition said in a statement carried by Saudi state news agency SPA late on Sunday night that many militants fled the Hadramout provincial capital they had held for a year after the offensive by supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi backed by Saudi and Emirati special forces. "Coalition armoured vehicles and the army entered Mukalla and al-Qaida fighters are departing," one resident told Reuters. Fighter jets from the mostly Gulf Arab alliance pounded the city on Sunday and killed 30 militants, residents said, as the military coalition ramped up its offensive to wrest swathes of southern Yemen from al-Qaida. Sunday's air strikes on al-Qaida in Mukalla were carried out in coordination with a ground offensive in militant-controlled territory further west, a Yemeni military official said. The push is being led by the United Arab Emirates, which has been training and arming local recruits for months, according to southern Yemeni tribal and political sources. The UAE is part of a mostly Gulf Arab coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in March last year to support the internationally recognised government after it was forced into exile by the armed Houthi group, an ally of Iran. The state government in response assured the court that the law would be revised. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday pulled up the Maharashtra government for framing rules that prohibit dance bars within a distance of one kilometre from educational institutions. Terming the government's condition as equal to prohibition, the apex court said that it viewed dancing as an art performance and that it was better to dance in bars than beg on the streets. #NewsAlert: SC to Maha Govt 'Dance is profession,if it is obscene then it loses its legal sanctity,Govt measures can't be prohibitory' Deccan Chronicle (@DeccanChronicle) April 25, 2016 #NewsAlert: Supreme Court says that this condition amounts to prohibition. Maharashtra Government tells SC: 'the rule will be revised' Deccan Chronicle (@DeccanChronicle) April 25, 2016 "Dance is a profession. If it is obscene, it loses its legal sanctity. Government regulatory measures cannot be prohibitory," the court said hearing a petition that opposed dance bars in Mumbai. The state government in response assured the court that the law would be revised. The Maharashtra Assembly had on April 12 unanimously passed the Dance Bar Regulation Bill, which has provisions for stringent actions against the violators. The new bill fixes accountability on the owner in case of violation of rules, exploitation of women employees, or in cases of obscenity. Owners or operators face up to up to five years in jail and fines of up to Rs 25,000 for violations. Separate rules are being formulated on this, based on the provisions of the Bill. According to the new conditions, dance bars must be at least a kilometer from any education or religious institution, their timings restricted between 6 pm and 11.30 pm, and liquor not to be served in the performance area. Army men carry out rescue works after landslide at village Phamla in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh. (Photo: PTI) Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh government on Monday released Rs 2 crore to Tawang district for relief and restoration work including ex-gratia payment to the next of kin of the deceased who died in landslides in the border district. The government also released a relief fund of Rs 1 crore each to the flood-affected districts of Namsai, Lower, Subansiri, Changlang and Anjaw besides additional relief fund of Rs 30 lakh to all the DCs and Rs 10 lakh to all the ADC headquarters, an official report said here. Chief Minister Kalikho Pul accompanied by in charge chief secretary Hage Khoda, disaster management commissioner Hage Kojeen and disaster management director Y W Ringu made an unsuccessful attempt to visit Tawang district on Sunday despite bad weather. The team had to return back to Guwahati Airport due to inclement weather as packed cloud over the Bhutan Valley en-route to Tawang had blurred visibility and deterred further movement of the helicopter, the report said. Pul said that occurrence of landslides and flash flood in the state is predominant as the state is situated in a seismically high risk zone frequented with heavy rainfall. "Presence of hilly terrains, steep slopes, loose and sandy soil and presence of multiple rivers, rivulets and small streams make our state more prone to such natural calamities," he said. He called upon the people to learn a lesson from recent incidents of landslides at Tawang that caused loss of 18 lives and the water logging at Hotel PYBSS at Itanagar that blocked the National Highway 415 for several days due to obstruction of natural flow of drain water by randomly built houses at drains/nallahs, bypassing building laws in the state. "If the faults are not corrected in time and precautions are not taken, such high rise buildings are in danger and may collapse anytime risking lives of many people," he pointed out. The Chief Minister appealed to the people to take precautionary measures and to always remain prepared. He called upon the people not to wait for disaster to happen saying, "even God cannot safe after it happens". Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao urged farmers not to sow cotton crop in the state and instead opt for alternate crops. He said cotton industry is in crisis across the world and farmers would suffer losses if they opt for cotton crops at this stage. The Telangana government has decided to take up an extensive campaign to discourage cotton farming and reduce farmer suicides after it was found that a majority of the farmers who committed suicide during the last two years in the state were cotton farmers, doing so due to indebtedness. Mr Rao has decided to prepare an action plan during the collectors conference on April 29 to discourage cotton farming in Telangana. Cotton prices have been falling world over. The Indian markets are also witnessing steep fall since the last few months. Unmindful of this, the farmers in the state are opting for cotton crops. This should be stopped as else they would suffer huge financial loss, Mr Rao said, while reviewing the issue at his camp office on Sunday. Mr Rao pointed out that the Centre had decided to increase export duty on cotton exports besides signing an accord at the WTO meeting held in Nairobi, promising to waive incentives on cotton exports. "All this will adversely affect cotton industry in the coming days and officials should gear up to devise measures to minimise this impact on farmers in Telangana," Mr Rao said. Hyderabad: Union water resources minister Uma Bharati on Sunday assured the Andhra Pradesh government that the Centre would obtain funds from the World Bank or Nabard for speedy completion of the multipurpose Polavaram project. Ms Bharati on Sunday met AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and assured him that the Centre would take up the responsibility of funding the project works and would complete a major portion of it by 2018. Mr Naidu told the Union minister that as per AP Reorganisation Act it was the responsibility of the Centre to pump funds to complete the works before the 2019 elections. Current flow of funds would not be sufficient, he added. Mr Naidu brought to the notice of the minister that the problems of the contractors working on the project had been resolved. He asked the Centre to release outstanding amounts to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore immediately. Ms Bharati told him that the Centre had recently decided to take loans from World Bank and Nabard to complete pending projects including Polavaram. She would take up the issue of getting more funds released from the finance ministry. The leaders told the media that the Centre was intent on completing the Polavaram project in time. Hyderabad: The memorandum of understanding signed by the Telangana University, Nizamabad, with the Chicago State University last year has turned out to be a failure. The signing of the MoU was hailed as a big step towards development of the university by Nizamabad MP K. Kavitha who had visited the CSU before the signing of the MoU. The MoU was to allow students from three departments of TU mathematics, statistics and computer science to pursue their Masters in the CSU without having to appear for the Toefl or the GRE. According to sources in the university, the MoU is proving to be of no use to students of statistics and mathematics departments due to incompatibility in course curriculum of the two universities in these subjects. CSU had awarded a doctorate to Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu last December. It declared a financial emergency in February this year. As per reports in the US media, it faces closure due to cutting down of funds by the Illinois state government. Another problem, according to Telangana University officials, was that most students studying in the university are from socially backward and financially weak backgrounds who cannot benefit from the MoU. Students have to pay the tuition fees and for their stay out of their own pockets, which comes to about Rs 20 lakh. It is thus not surprising that even though computer science students in TU face no curriculum issues and can apply for CSU, only two or three students have expressed interest. A senior member of the Telangana State Federation of University Teachers Association said, More than signing such MoUs, it will be useful for Telangana University if the state government appoints a permanent vice-chancellor, fills the 62 vacant faculty positions and increase block grant. Of the three departments that are part of the MoU, the mathematics department does not have a permanent faculty, statistics has just one and the computer science department, two. Meanwhile, counsel appearing for the app-based companies told the court that they have no issue in getting the licence and earlier their representation to the government were turned down. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the AAP government to convene within a week a meeting with representatives of app-based cab aggregators Ola and Uber, which are allegedly operating "illegally", to see if they are interested in getting fresh licence from the government. Besides these two stakeholders, Justice J R Midha also asked the Delhi government to call meeting with another public transport service which offers ride in autorickshaw through an app called 'Jugnoo'. "This court is of the view that the Secretary, transport department of Delhi government, shall convene a meeting with all the stakeholders (three app-based companies) to see if they are interested in getting the licence. "The companies authorised representatives shall attend the meeting and share their views on the issue," the court said, adding the same be held in a week from today. The court's suggestion in form of an order came after it was told that alleged unlicensed aggregators, Ola and Uber, are operating illegally as their applications for licence were rejected by the transport department on June 28, 2015. Meanwhile, counsel appearing for the app-based companies told the court that they have no issue in getting the licence and earlier their representation to the government were turned down. Hearing which, the court said the government should give them a chance to apply for fresh licence, as at present the Delhi government has shortage of public transport. "There should be some proper facility, so that public do not have to suffer. Call all the stakeholders and float a fair scheme," the court said, adding that "if all of you sit together, I know the difficulties raised by the taxi operators will come to an end". The court said the status report of the meeting shall be filed by May 10. The court was hearing a plea filed by Magic Sewa Pvt Ltd which has alleged that certain unlicensed taxi aggregators "have been disdainfully violating" government's notification on fares by charging very low amounts like Rs five per km or as high as Rs 38 per km. New Delhi: Former home minister P Chidambaram on Monday alleged that the affidavit controversy related to the Ishrat Jahan encounter case was only to an attempt to divert attention from the real issue. "Real issue is whether there was fake a encounter and whether four people already in custody were killed in that fake encounter. Coming to the affidavits, the Home Minister does not sign affidavits. It is signed by an Under Secretary," he said in a series of tweets. "Although I have no recollection of seeing the first affidavit, let us presume that I did. Then came the report of Magistrate SP Tamang. This report caused uproar and there was demand mainly from Gujarat that Government of India should clarify or dispel misinterpretation being placed on the first affidavit. This is why a Second, short affidavit was filed!" he added. Read: BJP targets Congress, rakes up Ishrat Jahan issue in Lok Sabha Earlier, the BJP questioned the Congress Party's silence over reports claiming that Chidambaram had signed the first affidavit in the Ishrat case, and accused the grand old party of hatching a conspiracy against the people of India with a political agenda. Media reports revealed that Chidambaram had in fact signed the first affidavit, which declared Ishrat and three others as terrorists, but gave all four a clean chit a month later as serious amendments were made in the second affidavit also signed by him. The first affidavit in the encounter case stated that Ishrat was a LeT operative, who was part of a plot to assassinate the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Chidambaram had initially claimed that the first affidavit declaring Ishrat and three others as terrorists was filed in the court without his approval, adding that he had made some editorial changes to avoid misinterpretation when the matter was brought to his notice. Chidambaram, however, completely altered his stance in the second affidavit, saying that intelligence inputs on Ishrat and the three others did not constitute conclusive proof and favoured a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe in the encounter. RTI activists pointed out that persons hailing from other states who want to file an RTI application in Kerala. Thiruvananthapuram: The state government has rejected a suggestion of the State Information Commission (SIC) to consider Indian Postal Order for remitting the fee for seeking information under the Right to Information Act. Siby Mathews, who relieved from the CIC on Saturday on completion of his term, had earlier recommended the government to allow IPO also as a means to pay RTI fee. But the government turned it down without citing any specific reasons. Sources said it was considering concerns of public regarding the difficulties in getting court fee stamp that the SIC suggested that IPO could also be considered as an option for remitting RTI fee. There are even persons who approach post offices seeking court fee stamps. Court fee stamps are not easily available and many are still even ignorant on where court fee stamps are available. Hence, we suggested that IPO may also be made a means to remit RTI fees as IPOs could be obtained from any post offices, said Mr Mathews. RTI activists pointed out that persons hailing from other states who want to file an RTI application in Kerala were also facing difficulties in getting as court fee stamp, which is issued by the state government. Though a bank demand draft is an option, it is also not that easy. To make the availability of information easier, it is essential to provide multiple options for remitting RTI fee. A proposal for the Centre to bring out an RTI stamp through the postal department is a good initiative, RTI activist D B Binu said. Yahoo Notizie Video Paolo Zangrillo nasce a Genova il 3 dicembre 1961. Si laurea in Giurisprudenza presso l'Universita degli Studi di Milano nel 1987. Dal 1992 al 2005 e responsabile del personale in Europa e nel mondo e in seguito come responsabile delle relazioni industriali e delle risorse umane presso la Magneti Marelli. Successivamente e vice presidente per le risorse umane presso la Fiat Powertrain Technologies fino al 2010 e presso la Iveco fino al 2011. Inizia lattivita politica nel 2018 venendo eletto alla Camera dei deputati nelle file di Forza Italia. Quattro anni dopo, sempre con Forza Italia, viene eletto al Senato. Il 22 ottobre 2022 diventa ministro della pubblica amministrazione nel governo Meloni. E fratello minore di Alberto Zangrillo, presidente del Genoa e medico personale di Silvio Berlusconi Adnkronos (Adnkronos) - "Il manuale Cencelli e stato rispettato al 100%. Gli incarichi sono stati dati secondo le quote indicate. C'e qualche sbavatura, ma non eclatante". A commentare la formazione del Governo e Massimiliano Cencelli, autore dell'omonimo Manuale, che sull'esclusione del leader dei moderati Lupi e dei centristi risponde all'Adnkronos: "Mica e finita la storia. Adesso ci sono altre cariche. Potrebbe essere che i centristi per compensazione ottengano altri posti. La Meloni da quello che ho The Commission includes 19 elected officials from Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington, City of Fairfax, City of Falls Church and Alexandria and one designee from the Governor. We are the co-owners of VRE, Virginia's commuter rail, and responsible for overseeing WMATA through our appointment of Virginia's members of the WMATA Board of Directors. Our role is to make sure the region has adequate funding for transit and coordinate planning to ensure the region has the transit it needs now and in the future. Howard Dean , a former Democratic presidential candidate and ex-governor of Vermont, issued a stern warning Monday to Sen. Bernie Sanders : Lay off Hillary Clinton , it's only helping Republicans. "[Sanders] has got to stop with the speeches about Goldman Sachs and all this other stuff," Dean told CNBC's " Squawk Box ." "Bernie is a deeply committed guy with an ideology. He's going to want to go to the convention ... and going to give a speech about his ideals," said Dean, formerly chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In an interview Sunday, Sanders rejected calls that he leave the race. "We intend to take the fight all the way to California," he said on ABC's "This Week." The California primary is on June 7, the final day of voter contests before the Democratic convention. On the Republican side, Dean said he doubts the effectiveness of the alliance of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich against front-runner Donald Trump. "I would be shocked if this business with Kasich and Cruz works at all. Here's why: Most voters do not go to vote against somebody." Cruz and Kasich on Sunday announced a deal to stay out of each other's way in some upcoming state primaries. However, Dean believes it will be a close call on whether Trump will get the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP presidential nomination before this summer's convention. Trump and Clinton each hold wide leads in Tuesday's primaries in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the two biggest delegate hauls among contests in five states. Dean unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. He served as chairman of the DNC from 2005 to 2009. Ahead of his White House run, Dean was governor of Sanders' home state from 1991 to 2003. More From CNBC CPSC Opens Investigation of Lead in Children's Jewelry-Making Kits The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's staff has opened an investigation into the safety of some children's jewelry-making kits after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released the results of testing done by his office. Schneiderman said the testing showed parts of several kits contained lead up to 10 times higher than federal child safety limits. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's chairman, Elliot Kaye, announced April 22 that his agency's staff has opened an investigation into the safety of some children's jewelry-making kits after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released the results of testing done by his office. Schneiderman said the testing showed high lead levels in parts of several kits supplied by LaRose Industries and sold in K-Mart, Target, and Toys-R-Us stores in Long Island, New York City, and the Syracuse and Buffalo areas. He said in some instances, the toys contained lead up to 10 times higher than federal child safety limits, and that the same kits were offered for sale in Rochester and by other retailers in New York. He called on the retailers to remove the Cra-Z-Art products from sale immediately and recall the products found to contain high lead levels, as well as any similar Cra-Z-Art products, and he urged CPSC to require a national recall of the products. "Manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers all have a responsibility to ensure that products intended for use by children are safe," Schneiderman said. "My office's discovery of children's products containing high levels of lead for sale on store shelves in New York points to an alarming breach in the safety net that is supposed to protect our kids from dangerous chemicals. In addition to calling for immediate action to remove these products from store shelves, my office will investigate and hold accountable those responsible for allowing toxic products to reach our children. No parents should have to worry that a toy they buy may poison their child." CPSC Chairman Kaye issued a statement announcing the new investigation and calling Schneiderman and his staff "strong partners with us in product safety, especially when it comes to protecting children." Kaye also said the CPSC investigation "will be thorough and swift, and we will certainly take all warranted steps to protect the public." The Center for Computer and Industrial Engineering at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University supplies industrial engineering solutions to such companies as BMW, Rolls-Royce and others. Source: Press Photo Russian institutes of higher education are opening technology transfer centers and are signing contracts with private international firms. They have recently started conducting research and supplying industrial engineering solutions for leading international companies including BMW, Rolls-Royce and Boeing. Over the past two years several technology transfer centers have been established and began operations at Russian universities. Their task is to use the scientific potential of universities to create an innovation infrastructure around them and help attract further investments. The creation of such centers is by itself revolutionary. Previously all scientific research (including applied research) in Russia and the Soviet Union were carried out as part of an Institute of Scientific Research, an institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences or another official research structure. Until recently a foreign investor was unable to get a clear idea of how to buy or invest in Russian technological innovations and companies. Today, such centers are already active at the Samara State Aerospace University, the Nizhny Novgorod State University, the Ural Federal University, the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University as well as in Saint Petersburgs ITMO University and in the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys (MISiS). Additional centers will be opened by the end of 2016 at all educational institutions taking part in the 5-100 program to enhance Russias competitiveness in the field of scientific research. According to Evgeny Kuznetsov, director of strategic communications at the Russian Venture Company (RVC), Russia is joining a world trend. At the moment 46 out of the first 50 universities of the Top-100 world university rankings are focused on technology, Kuznetsov says. They have the corresponding instruments of development and position themselves as technological universities. Brain drain Kuznetsov maintains that technology transfer centers will not limit themselves to helping universities compete with already established scientific institutes. Unlike the latter, universities have the advantage of a steady inflow of young blood, says Kuznetsov. Effective technology transfer is a useful and profitable activity. It is profitable not so much in financial terms as it is in attracting the best professors and students. Kuznetsov maintains that through such partnerships the brain drain out of Russia can be slowed, or perhaps even stopped. We can call back the best Russian cadres who dont always find a place in the West, Kuznetsov says. He cited China as a positive example for emulation as it has set up a strong basis for scientific research by calling back young scientists that could not find jobs at American universities despite their qualifications. The Vostochny Cosmodrome, Boeing and Rolls-Royce Despite the fact that these centers have only begun operating recently, universities are already seeing the benefits of these efforts. According to Viktor Koksharov, the rector of the Ural Federal University, his university received almost 500 million rubles in investment in 2014 alone. The university is working with Siemens and Boeing on titanium alloys. Currently being built in Russias Far East, the Vostochny Cosmodrome has contracted 90 million rubles worth of work with the university. According to Kendrick White, pro-rector for innovation activities at the N.I. Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University (NNSU), this university has signed contracts with 17 companies.The board of directors at NNSU features representatives from Intel, Bosch, LG and Virgin Connect, but since restructuring a university takes time, this institute cannot boast of significant profits yet. In Kuznetsovs opinion, the most outstanding example is the Center for Computer and Industrial Engineering at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University. The center supplies industrial engineering solutions to such companies as BMW, Rolls-Royce and others, he says. This world class engineering center is beginning to influence the university in a positive way. All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Srinagar: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday hit out at the Centre for cancelling the visa given to a Chinese dissident. "What was all that chest thumping earlier?" Omar asked on Twitter after India decided to withdraw the visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa apparently after protests by China over the issue. What was all that chest thumping earlier - India Withdraws Visa To Chinese Dissident Leader After Beijing Protests https://t.co/1yS80NoKoW Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) April 25, 2016 "For the last few days we were treated to lots of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this Govt is the 1st (first) to stand up to China," the National Conference leader said. For the last few days we were treated to lots of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this Govt is the 1st to stand up to China. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) April 25, 2016 Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Isa was granted a tourist visa to travel to India this week for the conference in Dharamsala, which Tibetan leader-in-exile the Dalai Lama is also expected to attend. China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." This article was originally on GET.com at: 4 Reasons Why Singapore Is A Magnet For Rich People To Reside In Given the fact that Singapore is the worlds most expensive city to live in, it is rather intriguing how Singapore remains a draw for so many high net worth individuals who seek to relocate here or in the case of locals, stay put in Singapore. According to Knight Franks annual wealth report in 2015 which forecasted that there would be an increase of about 1752 ultra-high-net-worth individuals (who have over S$41 million in assets) between 2014 and 2024. That renders Singapore as the champion when it comes to growth of this group of super rich individuals, ahead of other cities like Hong Kong, New York, London and Mumbai. Here at GET.com, we share with you 4 reasons why Singapore is a magnet for the super rich to live in. 4 Reasons Why Singapore Is A Magnet For Rich People To Live In 1. Singapore Is #1 In World At Grappling With Domestic Security Issues Singapore may just be a little red dot in this vast world but according to a global ranking by the International Police Science Association, Singapore emerges number 1 when it comes to the handling of domestic security concerns. In case youre wondering, this study that the researchers at the Institute for Economics and Peace has rounded up took into account 16 indicators such as the ratio of prisoners to official prison capacity, number of internal security and police officers, etc. Coupled with the trying times revolving around terrorism and violent extremism that the entire world is increasingly engulfed in, we must not ever disregard the importance of security and the inherent ability to tackle security issues in our day-to-day living. 2. Singapores Personal Income Tax Rate Is One Of The Lowest Amongst Developed Nations Singaporeans love to complain but did you know that our personal income tax rate is one of the lowest in the world. For those who make over $320,000 annually, the personal income tax stands at 20%, though this figure is slated to rise to 22% in 2017. Story continues Compared to other developed nations like Spain, Australia, Japan and Canada where those in the higher income bracket are taxed a whopping 49%, ours isnt that hard to stomach, though you may argue that other countries have better welfare, paid education and healthcare, etc. For those who are curious, here are the top 5 countries with highest personal income tax rates. 3. The Allure Of Investment Potential In Singapore As maintained by the U.S.-based research institute Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) in its BERI Report 2015-I (April 2015), Singapore emerged as the best city with the best investment potential despite being pitted against 49 other major investment destinations. This ranking assessed a myriad of aspects including foreign exchange, politics and operations. Plus, theres no restrictions regarding the import of capital and repatriation of profits, it is hardly surprising that the ultra rich would be keen to grow their wealth even more through shrewd investments. 4. Singapore Ranks Highly For Best Quality Of Life Our cost of living may be on the steeper side but we have to concede with the fact that our quality of life is, in fact, better than many other places in the world. Also according to the EDB, Singapore is second best place in Asia as far as living, working and playing are concerned. Additionally, according to the Quality of Living Worldwide City Rankings in the Mercer Survey 2014, Singapore is also second best when it comes to infrastructure, amenities, environment alongside a sound political climate, world-class healthcare and transportation system. Do You Want To Be A Millionaire? As cruel as it may sound, not everyone is cut out to be a millionaire but nobody says you cant live the millionaire life without being one. Dont ever beat yourself up even if you are never going to be a millionaire because lifes so much more than just having fat wallets, by-invitation-only credit cards or seemingly inexhaustible bank balances. What do you think? Share your comments with us below! GET.com Singapore is Singapore's lifestyle and personal finance website. We help you GET more for your money - food, travel, home loans, credit cards, shopping - everything! Like GET.com on Facebook and sign up to get the HOTTEST stories delivered to your inbox! For serious stuff, you can compare home loans, personal loans and credit cards at GET.com. Our free GETdeals App helps you get the best credit card discounts near you for dining, shopping, lifestyle and more. Download it today! Other Articles You May Like From GET.com And private home prices down 0.7% in Q1. To entice home buyers amidst the challenging housing market, developers are resorting to new marketing gimmicks, like holding games where everyone wins a prize, organising trips to Singapore, and launching their projects in other countries, reported The Straits Times. For instance, Kingsford Development held a Property Tycoon Challenge for buyers of Kingsford Hillview Peak in Upper Bukit Timah over the weekend. Read more here. HDB resale flat prices fell by 0.1 percent in the first quarter of 2016 from the previous three-month period, according to latest statistics from the Housing and Development Board (HDB). The number of transactions in the resale market also dropped by 10.9 percent from 4,992 cases in Q4 2015 to 4,449 cases in Q1 this year. Find out more here. Prices of private residential properties in Singapore fell by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2016, compared to the 0.5 percent decline in the previous quarter, according to complete data released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on Friday, 22 April. In the Outside Central Region (OCR), prices dropped by 1.3 percent after remaining unchanged in the previous quarter. Read more here. More From Singapore Business Review Despite being one of the most educated countries in the world, personal finance literacy isnt exactly a strong area among Singaporeans. In an article we wrote a few years ago, we highlighted a few reasons why we think that is the case. The three reasons we highlighted were 1) lack of formal education from schools, 2) our parents not being able to teach us about finance and 3) us not trusting the experts. You can read the article in the link below, as it would explain our reasons for identifying these areas. Read Also: Why do so many Singaporeans struggle with financial matters? When it comes to personal finance matters, one of the biggest missed opportunities for people today is not starting their financial planning early enough. Similar to our health, most of us dont take financial planning seriously until it starts becoming a problem in our lives. As long as we are comfortable, we tend to neglect it. Todays article is meant for the young working adults in our midst. We want to help debunk some myths that people have when it comes to financial planning. We hope that this helps you attained a more financially secured life in the years to come. (1) Your Income Comes Only From Your Day Job Source We have been taught since young that we need to study hard so that we can get a good job when we grow up and earn enough money for our family and ourselves. And while there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that statement, it is not entirely the full picture either. In fact, it subtlety suggests that earning money comes entirely from working. Those of us who are slightly more financially savvy would know that there are millions of people all over the world who earn money outside of their day job. Some of these people do not even need a full-time job, or can choose to turn up for work as and when they want to. There are people who are able to live off the investments they have made in their earlier years. These are investment made while they were still young. Story continues We are not saying that everyone should start thinking of quitting their job and do investing full-time only. However if you are still young, it is worth thinking of how you can earn an income that supplements what you earn in your full time job. For example, investing allows you to own and grow financial assets that could increase in value over time. If you were to invest $1,000 a month over the next 10 years at a return of 5% per annum, you would be looking at a portfolio of about $150,000 at the end of the period. Assuming you get a payout of 5% per annum based on your $150,000 portfolio, that gives you an extra $7,500 more each year in terms of passive income. Another area that is frequently not considered as a possible option is the taking up of work outside of full-time employment. For those with a specific skillsets (i.e. writing, designing, programming), it is possible to earn an income by taking on some of these projects on a freelance basis. Some employers stipulate that their employees are not able to do any part-time role as part of their employment contract. We think that is an old-fashion way of thinking. In the past, it is common to see employers and employees commit themselves to lifelong employment under just one company. In the modern work environment however, this is seldom ever the case. Employees should be exposed to other areas of work outside of the company which they are interested in, as long as there is no conflict of interest. Everyone needs a life aside from his or her day job and this could be in the form doing volunteering work, pursuing a cause, following up on a passion and yes, even taking a part-time job. (2) You Need To Earn More Before You Can Save And Invest Spending too Much Source When you first start working, the initial euphoria from earning $3,000 a month will very quickly go away once you settle in to your newly upgraded working lifestyle. While the $700 a month allowance you received from your parents used to be enough to buy food from the NUS canteen, you will soon realize that the $3,000 salary you now earn is barely sufficient given the amount of money you spent on after work drinks with your colleagues, or the once every 3 month break you need to take to get away from your horrible boss. You start telling yourself that when you earn the $6,000 salary your boss is making, you would have earned enough to save and invest money. You are probably wrong. You see, the main reason why a lot of people who earn a good salary cant save and invest as much as they would like to is because of their spending habits. Due to society pressure, their lifestyle always keeps up with the increment of their salary. Earn a $1,000 more each month? Lets take a nicer holiday to somewhere more expensive. Earn $2,000 more each month? Its time to reward myself with more frequent restaurant meals and that spa and gym membership. Earn $3,000 more, time for the car! Earning more in life isnt something we can always control. Spending less money is something we can. So put your effort into something that you can do something about. (3) Lets Leave It To The Experts Distrust - trust Source Most of us are not experts when it comes to personal finance matters. Even after spending some time reading up about investing and insurance matters, we know we are not going to know enough to suddenly become the next Warren Buffet. We might hear a financial consultant assuring us that we should leave our financial matters in the hands of an expert instead of trying to do it ourselves. We see these all the time of advertisement in the MRT. We believe this is a poor advice to be receiving. It suggests that people should simply pass their money to financial institutions to help them manage it, instead of worrying about it for themselves. We disagree. People should take charge of their own finances. Even if they were to use a fund manager to manage their investments, they should demand to know where their money is going into and the reason for the investments. Read Also: Conflict Of Interest In The Financial Sector And Why It Should Matter To Us Have you ever heard doctors tell their patients not to worry about their own health and to leave everything into the hands of them? Probably not. Most doctors will advise their patients based on their knowledge but would also expect their patients to do their part in taking charge of their own health. In the same way, the job a financial consultant is to provide advice to you. Ultimately however, it is your money and your responsibility on how you want to manage it. Simply shutting both your eyes and expecting someone else to do it for you is irresponsible. Read Also: Why Financial Planning Is Similar To Keeping Fit We hope that the explanation above helps motivate you to start working towards a financially secured life even when you are still young. DollarsAndSense.sg is a website that aims to provide interesting, bite-sized financial articles which are relevant to the average Singaporean. Subscribe to our free e-newsletter to receive exclusive content not available on our website. Follow us as well on Instagram @DNSsingapore to get your daily dose of finance knowledge through photos. Top Image The post What Every Young Person Needs To Know About Financial Planning appeared first on DollarsAndSense.sg. By Ayla Jean Yackley ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A century after her forebears fled massacres in Turkey for Armenia, Alla has gone the other way, hoping to win Turkish citizenship after leaving her impoverished homeland. She works as a nanny in Turkey but fears deportation, one of thousands of undocumented workers from the former Soviet republic who feel hostage to a decades-old diplomatic dispute. The conflict dates back to the killings of up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Ottoman Muslims, which was commemorated on Sunday, with tensions between Armenia and its Turkey-backed neighbour, Azerbaijan, especially amplified this year. "We live in fear they (the Turkish authorities) can kick us out if something happens," said Alla, who did not want her full name published because of her illegal status in Turkey. "When I get home from work, I thank God 1,000 times nothing happened," she said. "If I get citizenship, I won't be afraid." Estimates put the number of Armenians here between 10,000 and 30,000. A bus ticket bringing them from Yerevan to Istanbul and, they hope, a better life costs the equivalent of about $50. Their numbers are dwarfed by the 3 million Syrians and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have fled war. But Armenian migrants feel vulnerable to the changing political winds. Armenia, along with most Western scholars and two dozen nations, says the 1915 massacre was genocide. Turkey accepts that Armenians were killed during the upheaval of World War One but rejects declarations that it was genocide. Animosity between the neighbours, whose border is shut, have flared this month after clashes between Muslim Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed Christian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside Azerbaijan that is controlled by ethnic Armenians. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the deaths of Azeris "seared our souls" and blamed Armenia for the outbreak of the worst clashes since a 1994 ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh after a war that killed thousands of people on each side. Turks took to social media to denounce Armenians as "murderers" and proclaim Nagorno-Karabakh "Turkish territory". "We hear rumours they will kick out Armenians because of the Azerbaijan matter," said Alla, 54. "This hate will never end." THREAT OF DEPORTATION Angered by international efforts to deem the century-old killings genocide, Erdogan has threatened to "deport" Armenian migrants. But he has also moved towards reconciliation, expressing condolences over the loss of life and sending a minister to church services marking the centennial last year, and to a commemoration held on Sunday. "We once again respectfully remember the Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives in World War One conditions, and I express my condolences to their children and grandchildren," Erdogan said in a message to the Armenian Patriarchate, according to media reports. In central Istanbul, a few hundred people, clutching carnations and photographs of Armenian luminaries killed in the massacres, held a moment of silence at a grassroots memorial. Nearby a small group protested, holding signs that read: "The genocide is an imperialist lie." Police kept the groups apart. An overwhelming majority of Turks do not believe a genocide occurred. Garo Paylan, who in 2015 became one of three lawmakers of Armenian descent to enter Turkey's parliament in 50 years, this week brandished photographs of Armenian deputies killed in 1915 and demanded the assembly investigate their deaths. "The reason I persist on this 100-year-old issue is because it continues to haunt Turkey," Paylan told Reuters. Turkey cut ties with Armenia in 1993 during war in Nagorno-Karabakh. It agreed to restore relations under protocols in 2009 brokered by the United States, Russia and France but the deal did not have Azerbaijan's blessing and collapsed. "A renewed conflict could potentially draw in Turkey. It is Russian soldiers guarding Armenia's border with Turkey," said Aybars Gorgulu of the Public Policy and Democracy Studies think tank. "Sooner or later Turkey wants to normalise with Armenia." 'WOUNDS' Enmity towards Armenia leaves Turkish citizens of Armenian descent exposed, said Yetvart Danzikyan, editor-in-chief of Agos newspaper, which serves 60,000 Armenians out of a population of 78 million. The community faces pressures such as property seizures, poorly funded schools and sporadic violence. A teenage gunman killed Danzikyan's predecessor, Hrant Dink, in 2007. A court this week began trying senior security officers accused of complicity. "The state always leaves open wounds," Danzikyan said. Alla's family fled strife and starvation that gripped the province of Igdir during World War One and the subsequent War of Independence that forged the modern Turkish Republic in 1923. Her grandparents found refuge across the border in Armenia. Alla now earns $700 a month to support her mother and two children. An adult daughter, who was disabled, died this year. Low-skilled labourers, especially women, struggle in landlocked Armenia, where per-capita income is about $4,000 and unemployment hovers at 17 percent, according to the World Bank. Changes to immigration law in 2014 encouraged some Armenians to seek residency, but they must show large savings and pay fines. Alla said her penalty would amount to four months' wages. New arrivals help sustain a dwindling community that flourished in these lands for four millennia until 1915. Armenian migrants fill the pews of a Protestant house of worship every Sunday to sing exuberant hymns. The basement serves as an informal primary school with 140 immigrants. A volunteer said Turkish authorities turn a blind eye so the school can follow the Armenian educational system. One in three Armenians here does not plan to return home, said Anna Muradyan, a Yerevan-based independent researcher. "They're aging, their children in Turkey have adapted and know Turkish. If Turkey doesn't expel them, they want to stay." (Editing by Nick Tattersall, Timothy Heritage and Ros Russell) AFP News Ukraine on Sunday denounced as dangerous lies suggestions from Russia that it was preparing to use a "dirty bomb". Its western allies also dismissed the allegations from Moscow, just hours after Russia went public with the claims. In conversations with his British, French and Turkish counterparts, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu conveyed "concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a 'dirty bomb'", Moscow said. Russia did not mention the alleged "dirty bomb" allegation in its statement following Shoigu's call with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin. "If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on social media. "I believe that now the world should react as harshly as possible." Earlier Sunday, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced Moscow's claims as "absurd" and "dangerous". "Russians often accuse others of what they plan themselves," he added. A British defence ministry statement said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had "refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation". And in Washington, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson dismissed Moscow's "transparently false" claim. "The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation," she added. - 'Vile strikes' - Russia also announced Sunday that it had destroyed a depot in central Ukraine storing over 100,000 tonnes of aviation fuel. Kyiv's energy operator meanwhile said scheduled power cuts had been introduced in the Ukrainian capital due to Russia's repeated strikes on the nation's power network. The blackouts started from 11:13 am (0813 GMT) with consumers in Kyiv divided into three groups "disconnected for a certain period of time", energy company DTEK said. DTEK reiterated calls for residents to use electricity "sparingly" and for businesses to limit their use of external lighting. More than one million Ukrainian households have lost electricity following recent Russian strikes, according to the Ukrainian presidency, at least a third of the country's power stations having been destroyed ahead of winter. Zelensky condemned the "vile strikes" in comments late Saturday, after Russian attacks caused power cuts across the country. - 'Save your strength' - In the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig, deputy mayor Sergiy Miliutin was dealing with emergencies and power outages from his underground bunker, used as a venue for a children's martial arts competition. "I've reached a point where I just survive on my drive. You have to stay level-headed and save your strength. No one knows how long this will all last," he told AFP. The intensification of Russian strikes on Ukraine, particularly energy facilities, came after the bridge linking the annexed Crimea peninsula to mainland Russia was partially destroyed by an explosion earlier this month. It was another major setback for Moscow's forces, battling to contain a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south and east of the country. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that it was for Ukrainians to decide when "peace is possible", in comments made in Rome at the start of a peace summit. Ukraine reported three deaths in an overnight Russian artillery strike in the Toretsk area, a governor of the eastern Donetsk region said. Inside Russia, two lines of defence have been built in the border region of Kursk to deal with any possible attack, a local governor said on Sunday. On Saturday Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor in the neighbouring Russian border region of Belgorod, said the construction of defence structures had begun. Gladkov said two civilians had been killed in strikes there Saturday, and that 15,000 people had been left without electricity. - Kherson evacuations - Meanwhile Ukraine's SBU intelligence service said it had detained two officials of Ukrainian aircraft engine maker Motor Sich on suspicion of working with Russia. The SBU said management at the company's plant in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region -- partly controlled by Russian forces -- had colluded with Russian state-owned defence conglomerate Rostec. The suspects had supplied Russia with Ukrainian aircraft engines that were used to make and repair attack helicopters, the SBU said. In the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, which Russia claims to have annexed, pro-Moscow officials on Saturday urged residents to leave "immediately" amid a "tense situation" at the front. Kherson, the region's main city, was the first to fall to Moscow's troops and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine's counter-offensive. A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had left Kherson city to the left bank of the Dnipro River. Ukraine has denounced the removal of residents from Kherson, describing them as "deportations". bur-imm/raz/jj/lcm With a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, you might imagine Captain America: Civil War to rank among the greatest films Hollywood has to offer. Thankfully, youre not that far off. The sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier has yet to arrive in cinemas, but is already outselling all previous Marvel films at the same point in the sales cycle! Profits aside, the film takes place a year after the events in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, where substantial damage was dealt to the city of Sokovia. Civil War begins with the genetically-blessed team of superheroes creating yet another mess in their pursuit of justice, causing public opinion to turn on them. The vigilantes are forced to come under a governing body, who will decide when and where they are needed. MTM3MTgxMTUxNTQ5OTkwMzM3 Perhaps acting as the perfect metaphor for America, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) vehemently refuses to sign the regulation treaty in the name of freedom. This puts the Captain completely at odds with Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), who rains both sarcasm and snark in his face, along with quite a few punches. Having just a couple of heroes hold down an entire plot never makes for good cinema (were looking at you, DC). In true Marvel fashion, more is more. The surprisingly well-balanced 6-on-6 fistfight comes in the form of Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and the excitable Ant-Man on #TeamCap; and Iron Man, Black Widow, War Machine, the Vision, Black Panther, and a teenage Spider-Man on #TeamIronMan. Baywatch for supers. With #ChooseWisely as the official hashtag at the press conference held last Thursday, its not difficult to get sucked into the well-crafted marketing ploy. While Chris Evans on-screen magnetism has been on a decline since his starring role in the first Captain America flick, he more than makes up for it with his pretty boy looks. #TeamCap may be straddling the wilder left wing in this ideological conflict, but the Captains repeated excuses of I just cant does little to explain the severe escalation of the conflict. Story continues On the other hand, Robert Downey, Jr. steals the show with his uncharacteristic silence. Never one to shy away from Sorkian levels of chatter, the first half of Civil War sees the literal man of steel remaining mum about his motivations behind agreeing to government regulation. Many dissonant factors are at play in Downeys character, from a renouncement of his liberal attitude to his righteous fury thats peppered with off-the-cuff jokes. Tensions come to a head in the final scenes of the movie as Stark is forced to face his innermost demons. Scarlett Johansson presented a particularly noteworthy performance of Black Widow; one that might just wrench her free from sexist interview questions. Johanssons portrayal is one of betrayal her analytical mind views Starks pacifism as the right choice, but her heart aches for Rogers staunch rejection of the treaty, a sentiment she eventually acts on. Giving Natasha Romanoff some depth and moving on from a one-dimensional sex symbol status is a step long overdue for the Marvel brand. The introduction of Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) into the Avengers universe is nothing to scoff at. Both are scene-stealers in their own right, playing pivotal roles as excited fanboys in a massive brawl between both sides at an aircraft hangar. The newbies provide most of the laughs in a fight scene that would have otherwise felt too drawn-out and gimmicky. Civil War takes the age-old playground question of Who do you think would win in a fight between A & B? and answers it in a much better fashion than Batman v Superman, which was panned by critics the world over. While the latter spent too much time welling in its own melodrama, Civil War did a great job with the films pacing, keeping the action-packed experience light with cameos and glimpses of warmth between the feuding friends. Not one minute of the flick was wasted, and that, truly, makes for marvellous cinema. There may or may not be a post-credits scene. You have been warned. Directed by: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo Genre: Action, Fantasy Running time: 147 minutes == Stay updated and social with Popspoken: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram This article Is Captain America: Civil War Marvels Best Movie Yet? appeared first on Popspoken. Though the first phase of land sale last year was a flop, the government expects a good response now due to the growth in realty transactions. (Representational image) Hyderabad: The state government has put 54 land parcels in the city up for sale to raise money. The government has prescribed an upset price of Rs 1 lakh per sq. yard in expensive areas like Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Nandagiri Hills. The e-auction will be held on May 19. Though the first phase of land sale last year was a flop, the government expects a good response now due to the growth in realty transactions. These land parcels fall under residential, commercial, multi-use and commercial-cum-office zones. TSIIC vice chairman and managing director Mr E.V. Narasimha Reddy said of the May 19 auction: These 54 land parcels in different locations amount to nearly 170 acre. They cover prime areas like Hitec City, Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills etc. We hope to earn nearly Rs 3,000 crore through this second phase of auction. The unsold 15 parcels from the first phase are also included in this phase. We have received a lot of enquiries from potential buyers for the second phase of auction in the last three months. Mr Reddy said land parcels ranging from 240 sq. yard to 30 acre have been put up for sale this time. We have big land parcels in Hitec City, Khanamet near Metro Rail station and Financial District, for which there is huge demand from corporates, real estate developers and IT companies. The upset price of Rs 1 lakh per sq. yard has been fixed for Bharani Layout, Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills Road No.12, Nandagiri Hills and Banjara Hills Road No. 10. An upset price of Rs 90,000 per sq. yard has been fixed for HUDA Heights in Jubilee Hills and Rs 80,000 at Road No.12, Banjara Hills. The auction of Raidurg land in the first phase in November 2015 fetched Rs 29.28 crore per acre to government, the highest ever in city so far. The government expects to break this record in the second phase with big parcels on offer near Hitec City and the Financial District. By Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would do whatever he could to advance a controversial trade deal with the European Union in his last eight months in office, but warned that time was running short. Obama has pushed to complete two trade agreements before his term ends on Jan. 20 - with Pacific nations and with the EU - but has run into a growing swell of populist concerns about the impact on jobs, consumer protections and the environment. "Time is not on our side," he conceded to business leaders at the Hanover Messe, a massive industrial trade fair. "If we don't complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe would mean this agreement won't be finished for quite some time." Obama is in Germany to promote the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but the issue was overshadowed by discussions on the crises in Syria, Ukraine and Libya when the two leaders met. On Monday, they are set to hold talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on some of the same issues. But first, they had dinner in a 17th century palace with chief executives of some of the largest U.S. and German companies such as Microsoft, Dow, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, BASF, Bayer and Siemens. Also at the dinner was Matthias Muller, CEO of Volkswagen, whose company has admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in the United States, a scandal that involves 11 million vehicles worldwide. POLITICAL CAPITAL Obama normally does not sit through lengthy opening ceremonies. But in a sign of the political capital he is spending on trade - and his affection for Merkel - he took a front row seat for an unusual interpretative dance performance featuring robots, futuristic music and acrobatic break-dancing. The day before Obama arrived, thousands of protesters holding placards with slogans like "Stop TTIP" marched to express their opposition to the deal, and his motorcade whizzed past a few more as he drove through the north German city. Obama acknowledged his message about the benefits of trade has not broken though. "The benefits oftentimes are diffuse, whereas a particular plant or business that feels its been hurt by outside competition feels it very acutely," he told reporters. Obama said he hoped the deal, which supporters say could boost economies on each side of the Atlantic by $100 billion, would be agreed this year. But final ratification will take more time. The Trans Pacific Partnership is first in the queue for the U.S. Congress, which is not clamoring to hold a final vote. Obama said that could change after the Democratic and Republican parties make their final selections of candidates this summer. "When we're in the heat of campaigns, people naturally are going to worry more about whats lost than whats gained with respect to trade agreements," he said. 'RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY' Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign tour where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as important not only for the economy but also to defeat Islamic State militants and counter Russian intervention in Syria and Ukraine. "Strong growth in Europe is particularly important given the array of pressing challenges - whether it's security, defense, migration or refugees," Obama said. Obama came to Germany from London where he urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union in a closely-watched June referendum or face being at "the back of the queue" as a non-EU member hoping for a new trade deal with the U.S. Earlier in the week, he met with Gulf leaders in Riyadh to try to allay fears that Washington had become less committed to their security, especially after the nuclear deal with Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia. Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. Merkel urged the parties participating in troubled peace talks in Geneva to agree to humanitarian zones where fleeing Syrians could feel safe from bombardment. She and Obama made clear that they did not favor the creation of classic "safe zones" which would need to be protected by foreign forces. Both leaders expressed concerns about ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine and said sanctions imposed against Russia following its 2014 intervention there, could not be eased if the situation on the ground did not improve. Ties between Washington and Berlin reached a low point three years ago following revelations of widespread surveillance of German citizens, including the bugging of Merkel's mobile phone, by the U.S. National Security Agency. But in recent years, the two Cold War allies have patched things up. Obama praised Merkel for her "steady leadership" and handling of Europe's refugee crisis, saying her decision last year to welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany had put her "on the right side of history". He joked that Merkel, who lacks his easy-going charm, had a "really good sense of humour" even if it wasn't always on public display, drawing chuckles from the 61-year-old chancellor. Merkel refused to be drawn when asked whether she was concerned that she might soon have to work with Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, who has labeled her refugee policies "insane". She said only that she was watching the American election campaign "with interest". (Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Tom Heneghan) New Delhi: The consortium of banks on Monday alleged in the Supreme Court that Vijay Mallya, who has been in United Kingdom, is not cooperating in the investigation of cases lodged against him and was averse to disclosing foreign assets. Further, in the rejoinder to the affidavit filed by the beleaguered businessman, the consortium said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family is significant for recovering the dues. When contacted, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said, "we have filed a rejoinder to Mallya's affidavit in which it has been stated that he is also not indicating the date of his return to the country." He said the liquor baron has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". The AG said the "non-disclosure" by Mallya does not enable the banks to ascertain his ability to repay. "We have nothing to do with Mallya's claim that he cannot appear personally because of government's action against him," the banks in its affidavit said, adding that instead of providing the material to it Mallya and his companies are preferring to submit them in sealed cover top the apex court. The matter is listed for hearing tomorrow. The rejoinder was filed in response to Mallya's affidavit which had said that banks have no right over the information of his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. Mallya had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. "Overseas assets were not considered while granting loans," he said in his statement. Mallya, however, had said to demonstrate his bonafide and also that of his companies, an aggregate of Rs 1591 crores can be deposited before the apex court. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he will appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. (Adds that it is still not known how attackers created the fraudulent messages) By Jim Finkle April 25 (Reuters) - The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems. SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT on Monday released a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures. The developments coming to light the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that a lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood because of weaknesses that enabled attackers to modify a SWIFT software program installed on bank servers. The new evidence suggests that hackers manipulated the Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, in a bid to cover up fraudulent transfers that had been previously ordered. The findings from BAE and SWIFT do not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. That remains a key mystery in ongoing probes into the heist. Deteran told Reuters on Sunday that SWIFT was issuing the software update "to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records." She (Munich: SOQ.MU - news) said "the malware has no impact on SWIFT's network or core messaging services." The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE, which has a large cyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access. Story continues BAE published its findings on Monday in a blog post on malware that it said thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist. The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February. Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing. Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers. The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said. SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security. "Whilst we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defense against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems," Deteran said. Adrian Nish, BAE's head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers. "I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in," he said. "I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile." A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAE's findings. A senior official with the Bangladesh Police's Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe. Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the bank's computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks. Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems. "It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven't found any evidence that they advised before the heist," said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT. THWARTING FUTURE ATTACKS Monday's alert from BAE includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IP address of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff. The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hacker's tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE. BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials. It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers. Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks. Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh. While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, "the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again," according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters. The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the bank's activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said. Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said. It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered. It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston. Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka.; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Martin Howell) SOFIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's competition regulator said on Monday it had raided the offices of the local subsidiary of Austrian oil group OMV (EUREX: 430021.EX - news) as part of its investigation into possible cartel agreements. Bulgarians complain of high fuel costs despite a plunge in global oil prices and a call by Prime Minister Boiko Borisov for the competition authority to speed up its market investigation. The Commission for Protection of Competition said in a statement its staff were carrying out a spot inspection at the offices of OMV Bulgaria. In February the watchdog opened an inquiry covering seven fuel retailers over possible price-fixing and into Lukoil (Other OTC: LUKOF - news) 's Bulgarian oil refinery for possible abuse of its dominant market position. OMV was not immediately available for comment, but the Bulgarian Petrol and Gas Association, which represents all the investigated companies, has said there are no cartel agreements between any of its members. The commission had already raided the Bulgarian offices of Lukoil Bulgaria, Royal Dutch Shell (Xetra: A0ET6Q - news) , Rompetrol and Hellenic Petroleum (LSE: 0K9U.L - news) earlier this month. Nis Petrol, controlled by Russia's Gazprom Neft and Bulgarian Petrol are also being investigated. The anti-monopoly commission's spokesman said more spot checks may be made. (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Greg Mahlich) New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has cancelled the visa given to a leading Uyghur dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala. The revocation is being seen as a move made under pressure from China. The cancellation is a U-turn on Indias part after having issued it to Mr Dolkun Isa only last week. Mr Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress, was invited to the conference organised by the US-based Initiatives for China. Defending the decision, Union minister Kiren Rijiju said Mr Isa had applied for the travel document in the wrong category. He (Dolkun Isa) had given wrong information on why he wanted to visit India. The e-visa application said he wanted to come as a tourist though he was coming here to attend a conference, and that is why we had to cancel his visa, he said. The minister said India would have had to arrest Mr Isa if he visited here as an Inter-pol red corner notice is pending against him. Mr Isas name does not figure in the list of wanted people published by Interpol. Action may be due to chinas pressure: Isa In a U-turn, India has cancelled the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently buckling under pressure from China. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation. He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side, he said. Chinas unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. BJP MP irked by Stand on China After blaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the BJPs loss in the Bihar Assembly elections, party MP Bhola Singh on Monday attacked the NDA governments friendly policy towards China. Cheered by Shiv Sena MPs and supported by the BJD in the Lok Sabha, Mr Singh cited the growing trade deficit with China to demand a ban on import of Chinese goods. That country (China) is the reason for all of our problems, and, yet, the government is pursuing good friendly relations. Trade deficit is mounting, while our industries have been destroyed," Mr Singh said He asked why India should not ban Chinese imports. * Kenya reviewing taxes and levies on tea -official * Tea is Kenya's No. 1 export crop * Small-scale farmers say being squeezed * Kenya's Mombasa port hosts regional tea auction By Duncan Miriri NANDI HILLS, Kenya, April 25 (Reuters) - Kenya is reviewing taxes and levies on tea production after industry executives and farmers said the charges were putting them at a competitive disadvantage. Producers of Kenya's No. 1 export earner complain about a 1 percent levy on tea sold at a weekly auction in Mombasa and a 16 percent value added tax on tea processed and consumed locally. The East African nation is the world's leading exporter of black tea, a crop that offers a livelihood to thousands of small-scale growers who complain not enough cash reaches them. Kenya earned 125.25 billion shillings ($1.24 billion) from tea exports last year on output of 399.21 million kg. A slightly stronger shilling means officials expect earnings to slip to 115 billion to 120 billion shillings this year. Top buyers of Kenyan tea include Britain, Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan and Pakistan. Kenyan officials have also been holding marketing trips to Asia in a bid to increase sales of the commodity to countries like China. A Kenyan department of agriculture team is reviewing taxes and levies, the department's principal secretary Richard Lesiyampe, told Reuters, adding a report was due out shortly. "It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) will really help us to see what kind of levies, what kind of licences and fees that we can indeed waive," he said. The port of Mombasa hosts a weekly auction of tea produced in East African countries including Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania. "We have 10 countries which bring their tea to the auction, which is the largest in the world, and out of these countries only Kenya charges a levy, so Kenyan farmers are disadvantaged," Edward Mudibo, the managing director of the East Africa Tea Traders Association, said. The sales levy does not apply to neighbouring producers. Story continues FARMERS SQUEEZED Tea growers in the lush Rift Valley highlands say that taxes and high costs of labour and fertilisers hurt earnings and discourage expansion. "If you look at the auction, the price is high but farmers are completely squeezed. The government must find a way of helping the farmers," said 65-year-old farmer Josphat Sirma. The average price of Kenyan tea was $2.98 per kg, or about 300 shillings, at the weekly auction in Mombasa last year. But small-scale farmers like Sirma can expect to receive just 45 shillings per kg, before paying for labour. They say they need 60 shillings to survive or expand output. Joseph Lagat, a director at Siret Tea Company, said poor returns and high fertiliser costs risked driving small growers out of business. "You will have very low yields and tea quality will fall, because you will get tougher leaf which is very difficult to process," Lagat said. ($1 = 101.1000 Kenyan shillings) (Additional reporting by Wendell Roelf in Nairobi; Editing by Edmund Blair and Alexander Smith) HANOVER, Germany, April 24 (Reuters) - U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) . President Barack Obama said the European Union and United States must move forward with a trade free trade accord still under negotiation which supporters say could boost each economy by some $100 billion. "It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) is indisputable" that free trade has strengthened the U.S. economy and also has brought enormous benefits to countries that engage in it, Obama said. The U.S. president spoke at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of his closest allies in dealing with a shaky global economy and security crises in the Middle East and Ukraine. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Alison Williams) * Stake in Meridiana depends on job cuts - Qatar Airways CEO * Decision on deal by end of June * Weighing stake in Royal Air Maroc By Matt Smith DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways is in advanced negotiations to buy a 49 percent stake in Italian airline Meridiana, but a deal is dependent on restructuring and job cuts, the CEO of Qatar Airways said. The Middle East carrier is also considering taking a 25-49 percent stake in Morocco's Royal Air Maroc, although it was focused on the possible Meridiana acquisition for now, said Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker. Qatar Airways holds a 10 percent stake in British Airways parent IAG and has been open to making further investments to help expand its reach. Meridiana, which offers flights to and from the island of Sardinia and other destinations in Italy and abroad, is under a government-sponsored restructuring plan to help turn it round. "Partnering with Meridiana would only make Meridiana prosper, grow and actually increase the working population of Meridiana," Baker told reporters. "But for the initial period there will be some pain on the part of employees," he added. He did not comment on the potential cost of a stake in Meridiana which is owned by the Aga Khan, a tycoon and spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims. The airline was asking labour unions to agree to 900 job cuts -- nearly half its workforce -- as part of a planned partnership with Qatar Airways, a person involved in the talks told Reuters in February. Baker said Qatar was talking to both the staff and the unions about a deal, adding that if it reached an "amicable settlement" on the restructuring of the company it would partner with the airline. "We have to decide either yes or no by the end of June," he said. The potential value of the deal was not Baker said Qatar's resources were already stretched by one potential acquisition, so the airline would wait for the Meridiana deal to conclude before examining Royal Air Maroc. Talks had yet to start between Qatar Airways and Royal Air Maroc, but "there is an understanding between the two governments that Royal Air Maroc needs help and Qatar Airways' help would be very welcome," said Baker. (Writing by Tom Arnold; Editing by Keith Weir) Screen Shot 2016 04 25 at 11.38.51 AM Ted Cruz on Monday vehemently defended his decision to join forces with John Kasich in an unprecedented attempt to thwart Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. After Cruz called Trump's scathing response to the agreement "desperation," a reporter asked the Texas senator at a Monday press conference whether the decision to team up with Kasich is a "Hail Mary." "It is abundantly clear that nobody is getting to 1,237," Cruz said ahead of a Borden, Indiana, rally, referring to the needed number of delegates to secure the GOP nomination. "Donald Trump is in real trouble," he added. "Why? Because he cannot earn the support of a majority of delegates elected by the people." Cruz charged that the Trump campaign is "scared" and that the real-estate magnate will "scream and yell" and "cry and whine" about the alliance. "I understand that Donald will whine, that's what he will do," Cruz said. "He is a sore loser." The deal between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns called for Kasich, the Ohio governor, to pull his resources out of Indiana, the next key battleground state. In return, Cruz, a Texas senator, would recede from New Mexico and Oregon, all in an attempt to stop Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates. Both campaigns announced the plan late on Sunday night, but the candidates themselves have not asked supporters in those states to vote for the opposing candidates. When asked on Monday, Kasich even said Indiana voters "ought to vote for me." Cruz was posed a question on whether the agreement taints his "outsider" image with voters. He called his pact with Kasich "entirely about the will of the people." "After discussions with the Kasich campaign, we made a decision to allocate resources," the senator told reporters. "We decided to allocate our time and energy and resources in the state of Indiana and Gov. Kasich decided to allocate his resources elsewhere. I think that made sense for both campaigns." Story continues john kasich Kasich, who took questions from reporters at a diner in Philadelphia on Monday, also strongly defended the move. He was asked whether the plan was desperate. "Me? No, I'm not desperate, are you?" Kasich asked. "Are you desperate? Cause I'm not." Both Kasich and Cruz are mathematically eliminated from securing the Republican nomination ahead of the GOP convention. The two are hoping that by joining forces, they can stop Trump from reaching the needed number of delegates, as well, triggering a potential second ballot where many delegates will be able to vote freely for the candidate of their choice. "I don't see this as any big deal. I'm not going to spend resources in Indiana," Kasich said. "He's not going to spend them in other places. So what? What's the big deal?" Trump ripped both of the candidates in statement released in the wee hours of Monday morning. He asserted that the latest agreement was simply the "rigged" GOP nominating system playing out in a new way. "It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination," Trump said. He continued: Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system. This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail! NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are officially teaming up to stop Donald Trump More From Business Insider SAO PAULO (Reuters) - If Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer takes power, former central bank President Henrique Meirelles would accept the position of finance minister under the condition he was given approval rights over members of the entire economic team, newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Sunday. Meirelles and Temer met in Brasilia on Saturday, Folha said without disclosing the source of its information. Meirelles told Folha in a separate interview he had agreed to advise Temer but had not been invited to join a potential cabinet. A spokesman for Temer said the Folha story was speculative. Temer would take over the presidency if the Senate votes to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial next month, as is widely expected. The lower house of congress voted to impeach Rousseff for breaking budget laws, a charge she denies. Meirelles is the current chairman of investment holding company J&F Investimentos SA and served as central bank president under Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, former president and Rousseff's mentor. Reuters has reported other potential candidates for Temer's finance minister are the head of the country's banking industry lobby Murilo Portugal and Goldman Sachs Group Inc's chairman in Brazil Paulo Leme. If he takes power, Temer and his economic team will face a recession likely to be the nation's longest and harshest in over a century. Brazilian markets have rallied in recent weeks on hopes a Temer government will be more friendly to investors than the leftist Rousseff and her Workers' Party. Temer, the head of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), also met with Paulo Skaf, president of the influential Sao Paulo industry federation on Sunday. Skaf told local papers Temer had assured him he would not be in favor of raising taxes if he becomes president -- the main condition for the federation's support. Meirelles belongs to Brazil's PSD (Social Democratic Party), whose leader last week was the latest to leave an alliance with Rousseff's government. (Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Alan Crosby) SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California will increase the amount of money new parents can receive through the state's paid family leave program under a bill to be signed on Monday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, his office said Friday. The measure, passed last month by the state legislature, would increase the amount paid to new parents or people caring for a sick family member to as much as 70 percent of their regular income for the poorest workers, up from 55 percent. Those earning more would still get an increase in payments, to 60 percent from 55 percent. The state also plans to eliminate a seven-day waiting period imposed on receiving the benefits. The legislation aims to help more people take family leave, especially poorer Californians who could not afford to stop work if they only got 55 percent of their regular income, according to the bill's author Jimmy Gomez, a Democratic assembly member. The program, administered through the state's disability system, would apply to all parents who take off time from work to bond with a child within one year of birth, adoption or placement as a foster child. It would also provide payments to people who take time to care for seriously ill family members. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Andrew Hay) BEIJING (Reuters) - China is set to pass a law governing foreign non-government organisations, after state media said legislators recommended it be put to a vote following adjustments to some provisions criticised by foreign governments and civil society groups. The proposed law is part of a raft of legislation, including China's counterterrorism law and a draft cyber security law, put forward amid a renewed crackdown on dissent by President Xi Jinping's administration. The United States, Canada and the European Union have urged China to revise the draft NGO law, earlier versions of which gave broad latitude to the police to regulate activities and funding of overseas groups operating in China. Critics had argued it was too vague and could severely limit the operations of social and environmental advocacy groups, besides business organisations and academia. In a sign of its likely adoption, the law committee of China's largely rubber stamp National People's Congress (NPC) recommended that the bill be voted on during a regular session of the NPC Standing Committee, which meets from Monday to Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said. "Exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and research institutes of science and engineering will follow existing regulations," the official Xinhua news agency said. The latest version of the draft also removes a limit of only one office for NGOs in mainland China and "deletes the five-year limit on operations of representative offices in China", Xinhua said. "They will be allowed to open offices according to operational needs, but the number and locations must be approved by the regulatory authority," it added. Tougher rules had been imposed on sources of funds, expenses and revenues, it said. "Overseas NGOs, which engage in illegal activities, including those to subvert the state and split the nation, will be blacklisted and banned from operating in the mainland." The most recent version of the draft law had not yet been released and the status of its controversial provisions was not clear. China has arrested scores of human rights lawyers across the country and tightened control over almost every aspect of civil society since 2012, citing the need to shore up national security and stability. China consistently rejects any criticism of its human rights record, saying it adheres to the rule of law. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Islamabad/New Delhi: The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are expected to meet on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process in New Delhi. Various issues dogging bilateral ties, including the terror strike on the IAF base at Pathankot, are expected to be discussed during the meeting of the two foreign secretaries. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday gave the go-ahead to foreign secretary Aizaz Chaudhry to meet his Indian counterpart, Mr S. Jaishankar, on the sidelines of the conference, officials in Islamabad said. Earlier, Mr Chaudhry and the Pakistan national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Naseer Khan Janjua (Retd), had called on Prime Minister Sharif to discuss a strategy for the Heart of Asia Conference. The foreign secretary has been given permission to hold a meeting with his Indian counterpart on the sidelines of the conference. He is most likely to have a bilateral meeting, said a senior Pakistan government official. The meeting will also review Pakistans policy on Afghanistan, said another official. On the sidelines of the meet, Pakistan foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart, Mr S. Jaishankar, to review the status of bilateral ties and the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD), which is stagnant. This will be first formal meeting between Mr Jaishankar and Mr Chaudhry after the announcement of the resumption of the CBD by the foreign ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had an brief informal interaction during a Saarc meeting in Nepal in March this year. The focus of the talks would be on the investigation into the Pathankot terror strike and a possible visit by an NIA team to Pakistan in this connection, sources in New Delhi stated. The efforts to resume the CBD at the foreign secretary level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. The meeting comes against the backdrop of Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basits recent comment that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction from India, which maintained that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed. Announcing Mr Chaudhrys visit, the Pakistan foreign office, in a statement in Islamabad, had said, Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan, it added. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark should consider holding a referendum on its relations with the European Union, a key ally of the country's minority government said on Monday, as Britain prepares to vote on June 23 on whether to leave the 28-nation bloc. Like Britain, Denmark has negotiated several exemptions from EU laws, most notably from having to join the euro currency. The British referendum comes after Prime Minister David Cameron renegotiated some terms of Britain's EU membership, including curbs on EU migrants' access to some welfare benefits. Denmark should try to win similar concessions from the EU if Britons vote to stay in the bloc, said Kristian Thulesen Dahl, leader of the populist Danish People's Party, the largest of the three parties supporting the minority government in Copenhagen. If the Danish parliament is unable to agree on the matter, "then why not ask the Danes to decide on the matter via a referendum," Thulesen Dahl said in a blog. If Britain votes to leave the EU, Thulesen Dahl said he thought London would forge an accord with the EU based on close cooperation, adding that this would also "most likely" be an interesting position for Denmark. "Other countries may find it attractive as well," he said without elaborating. He stopped short of calling for a British-style In-Out referendum on Denmark's EU membership. The Danish People's Party says it is not opposed to Denmark's EU membership but calls for less interference by Brussels in Danish affairs. The party holds 37 seats in Denmark's 179-seat parliament, three more than the ruling Liberal Party, giving it a strong hand in negotiations with the government. Denmark joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the EU, with Britain and Ireland in 1973. (Reporting by Teis Jensen; Editing by Gareth Jones) By Ana Isabel Martinez and Diego Ore PEDERNALES/QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuador will temporarily increase some taxes, sell assets, and may issue new bonds on the international market to fund a multi-billion dollar reconstruction after a devastating 7.8 magnitude quake, a somber President Rafael Correa said on Wednesday. The death toll from Ecuador's weekend earthquake neared 600 and rescue missions ebbed as the traumatized Andean nation braced itself for long and costly rebuilding. "It's hard to imagine the magnitude of the tragedy. Every time we visit a place, there are more problems," Correa said, fresh from touring the disaster zone. The leftist leader estimated the disaster had inflicted $2 billion to $3 billion of damage and could knock 2 to 3 percentage points off growth, meaning the economy will almost certainly shrink this year. Lower oil revenue had already left the poor nation of 16 million people facing near-zero growth and lower investment. In addition to $600 million in credit from multilateral lenders, Correa, an economist, announced a raft of measures to help repair homes, roads, and bridges along the devastated Pacific Coast. "We're looking at the possibility of issuing bonds on the international market," he said on Wednesday afternoon, without providing details. Ecuador had been saying before the quake that current high yields would make it too expensive to issue debt. Yields on its bonds are close to 11 percentage points higher than comparable U.S. Treasury debt, according to JPMorgan data, and creditors are likely to be wary after the quake. Correa's government in 2008 defaulted on debt with a similar yield, calling the value unfair. His government has since returned to Wall Street and Ecuador currently has some $3.5 billion worth of bonds in circulation. In a nationally televised address later on Wednesday, Correa also announced the OPEC nation was poised to shed assets. "The country has many assets thanks to investment over all these years and we will seek to sell some of them to overcome these difficult moments," he said. He also unveiled several short-term tax changes, including a 2-point increase in the Valued Added Tax for a year, as well as a "one-off 3 percent additional contribution on profits," although the fine print was not immediately clear. The VAT tax is currently 12 percent. Additionally, a one-off tax of 0.9 percent will be imposed on people with wealth of over $1 million. Ecuadoreans will also be asked to contribute one day of salary, calculated on a sliding scale based on income. 'FOOD, PLEASE' Briefly pausing talk of reconstruction and hindering rescuers, another quake, of 6.2 magnitude, shook the coast before dawn on Wednesday, terrifying survivors. "You can't imagine what a fright it was. 'Not again!' I thought," said Maria Quinones in Pedernales town, which bore the brunt of Saturday's disaster. That quake, the worst in decades, killed 570 people, injured 7,000 others, damaged close to 2,000 buildings, and forced over 24,000 survivors to seek refuge in shelters, according to government tallies. Four days on, some isolated communities struggled without water, power or transport, as torn-up roads stymied deliveries. Along the coast, stadiums served as morgues and aid distribution centers. "I'm waiting for medicines, diapers for my grandson, we're lacking everything," said Ruth Quiroz, 49, as she waited in an hour-long line in front of a makeshift pharmacy set up at the Pedernales stadium. On a highway outside the town, some children sat holding placards saying: "Food, please." When a truck arrived to deliver water to the small town of San Jacinto, hungry residents surrounded the vehicle and hit it as they yelled: "We want food!" Scores of foreign aid workers and experts have arrived in the aftermath of Saturday's disaster and about 14,000 security personnel have kept order, with only sporadic looting reported. But rescuers were losing hope of finding anyone alive even as relatives of the missing begged them to keep looking. Speaking from the highland capital, Quito, Correa said the death toll would likely rise further, although at a slower rate than in previous days. "May these tears fertilize the soil of the future," he said. (Additional reporting by Alexandra Valencia and Diego Ore in Quito, Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Tom Brown, Peter Cooney and Michael Perry) By Tetsushi Kajimoto TOKYO (Reuters) - Most Japanese firms think a Donald Trump presidency would harm the Japan-U.S. security alliance and make the United States a less attractive place to invest, a Reuters poll showed, in a further sign of international angst about his candidacy. The Republican frontrunner, known for his unpredictable style and fiery rhetoric, would also cause bilateral trade to shrink if he became president, a majority of respondents said. Portraying Japan as a free-rider on security, Trump has suggested that the U.S. ally might need nuclear weapons to ease U.S. financial commitment to its defense - anathema to the only country ever attacked by atomic bombs. Trump has also said he might withdraw U.S. troops from Japan unless it pays more to feed and house the 50,000 it hosts, and he has accused Japan of stealing U.S. jobs. His comments have only fueled simmering worries amongst some Japanese in recent years about whether Washington would defend Tokyo in a crisis under their alliance - the lynchpin of Japan's security policy for decades. The Reuters Corporate Survey, conducted April 1-15, found 78 percent of firms thought Japan's security environment would deteriorate under Trump. The remainder said it would not change much. Not one firm thought it would improve. The monthly poll surveyed 510 big and mid-size firms. Around 230 answered questions on the U.S. presidential race. In written comments, companies voiced concerns that uncertainty would grow over U.S. diplomacy and that protectionism would rise, with some saying a President Trump would embolden China as it struggles to exert its influence in the South China Sea and other parts of Asia. "It is very easy to imagine China taking advantage of the power vacuum to step up military operations in the region," wrote a manager at an electronics maker. In particular, Tokyo and Beijing have long been at odds over tiny islands claimed by both in the East China Sea. "We worry that geopolitical risk would heighten a lot and Sino-Japanese relations would be extremely strained, which could result in a very negative impact on the Japanese economy," the manager added. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks did not respond to requests for comment. BAD FOR BUSINESS While the possibility of a President Trump has triggered alarm among some foreign diplomats, economists and business executives, he has moved closer to the Republican nomination after winning a commanding victory in New York state's presidential nominating contests on Tuesday. Some respondents to the survey said, however, that they see Trump's comments as mere posturing and did not expect any real change in policy even if he won the Nov. 8 election. Managers answered on condition of anonymity in the survey which was conducted for Reuters by Nikkei Research. Around 55 percent of firms said that Trump would be bad for business in the United States, that Japanese corporate appetite for investing in the U.S. would wane, and that trade between the two countries would decline. The amount of Japan-U.S. trade has grown by about a quarter in the past two decades to be worth around $215 billion, accounting for 15 percent of Japan's overall trade. The United States is Japan's No. 2 trading partner after China, while Japan is the United States' fourth-largest trading partner. In contrast to Trump, more than 80 percent of Japanese firms believe Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton would keep a steady hand on economic relations and maintain the status quo on security. The White House has described Trump's suggestions on Japan adopting nuclear arms as destabilizing. Representatives for Clinton did not respond to requests for comment. "She would adopt realistic policies. It would lack freshness and stage no surprise, which would be a relief to us," wrote a manager at a construction firm. ($1 = 109.04 yen) (Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Additional reporting by Izumi Nakagawa in Tokyo, Emily Stephenson and Amanda Becker in Washington; Editing by William Mallard and Edwina Gibbs) New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University has imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on its students union leader, Mr Kanhaiya Kumar, and rusticated Umar Khalid and two other students for varying durations in connection with the February 9 event on the campus against Parliament attack convict Afzal Gurus hanging. The action is likely to lead to large-scale protests, Based on a high-level enquiry committees findings, the university administration has also taken strict action against 14 other students, including Mr Mujeeb Gattoo and Mr Anirban Bhattacharya, who were present during the event where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised. Mr Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester, another student leader, Mr Anirban Bhattacharya, till July 15, and Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters. Mr Bhattacharya has also been barred from pursuing any course in JNU for the next five years. The campus has been rendered out of bounds for two former students Ms Banojyotsana Lahiri and Ms Draupadi Ghosh while hostel facilities have been withdrawn for Mr Ashutosh Kumar for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21. Among other students fined Rs 20,000 are Rama Naga, Ananth Kumar, Sweta Raj, Rubina and Chintu Kumari. Surprisingly, Aishwarya Adhikari, whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been fined. Even JNUSU joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the union, has been fined Rs 10,000 for disrupting traffic on campus. In separate signed orders, the JNU chief proctor said the students were being rusticated and fined by the vice-chancellor in exercise of the powers vested in him under Statute 32 (5) of the statutes of the university. Read: JNU decision to fine and rusticate students unacceptable: Kanhaiya Kumar Soon after the news related to the administrations action spread, students and faculty in unison criticised the varsity for acting according to the dictates of the saffron brigade at the Centre. They are polluting the atmosphere of the university to meet their petty political ends, a student leader told this newspaper. Reacting to this, CPI national secretary D. Raja questioned the basis on which the varsity had taken such a harsh decision against its students. What is the evidence on the basis of which JNU has acted? Even videos used as evidence have found to be doctored. The decision has been taken by the varsity on the orders of their political bosses, which is a very dangerous thing. Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on February 12, three days after the controversial event. Around 10 days later, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya resurfaced on the campus before surrendering to the police. The police had interrogated Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya together for a day, after which they identified as many as 22 persons who allegedly participated in the JNU event. Both Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid had argued before a Delhi court that they never raised any anti-national slogans and claimed that video footage showing them raising these slogans were false and doctored. The arrest of the three had triggered a wave of protests that catapulted the students into the national limelight with media telecasting Mr Kumars speeches live. The controversy also galvanised the Opposition that accused the government of attempting to muzzle dissent. JNU constituted a five-member high-level enquiry committee to investigate the incident. The committee found some students guilty of violating disciplinary norms and disrupting communal harmony on campus. The incident in the JNU campus on 9 February 2016 involving some students to hold a Poetry Reading event on the theme A Country without a Post Office did not have the approval of the administration and, as it was alleged later, some participants in the event indulged in objectionable sloganeering, the university said in a statement. It said the committee arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU Security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record. While Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya have been accused of triggering communal violence and disrupting communal harmony on campus, Mujeeb Gattoo has been charged with allegedly participating in the sloganeering. The report of the five-member panel had also pointed out lapses by the administration and took into account the role of outsiders into the event. But no action has been taken against any administration official. Reacting to this, CPI national secretary D. Raja questioned the basis on which the varsity had taken such a harsh decision against its students. What is the evidence on the basis of which JNU has acted? Even videos used as evidence have found to be doctored. By Roberta Rampton and Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama made a bold intervention into the politics of Washington's closest ally on Friday, exhorting Britons to stay in the EU and warning that if they left they would be at "the back of the queue" for a U.S. trade deal. Obama's plea to British voters ahead of a June referendum on membership of the European Union was welcomed by Prime Minister David Cameron and other supporters of the EU, but denounced by those campaigning to leave as meddling in British affairs. Britain's influence on the world stage was "magnified" by its membership of the 28-member bloc, Obama said at a press conference alongside Cameron, who has bet his political future by calling the referendum to put to rest an issue that has divided his own Conservative Party for generations. Rebutting criticism that he was interfering, Obama invoked the cherished "special relationship" between Washington and London. "If one of our best friends is in an organisation that enhances their influence and enhances their power and enhances their economy, then I want them to stay in it," Obama said. "Or at least I want to be able to tell them: 'I think this makes you guys bigger players.'" On trade, he took aim at one of the main "Out" arguments -- that Britain could easily negotiate deals and get better terms on its own. The United States would regard a deal with the EU as a higher priority than a separate agreement with a much smaller market such as a stand-alone Britain, Obama said. "It's fair to say that maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement but that's not going to happen anytime soon because our focus is negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done," Obama said. "And the UK is going to be in the back of the queue, not because we don't have a special relationship but because given the heavy lift on any trade agreement, us having access to a big market with a lot of countries rather than trying to do piecemeal trade agreements is hugely efficient." Cameron said Britain should listen to its friends, and he could not think of any close ally who wanted a Brexit. Obama set out his case in a newspaper article that invoked the interlinked history of the United States and Britain and the tens of thousands of Americans lying in European war graves. "As your friend, I tell you that the EU makes Britain even greater," the headline read. "Together, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have turned centuries of war in Europe into decades of peace, and worked as one to make this world a safer, better place," Obama wrote. "DOWNRIGHT HYPOCRITICAL" But those campaigning for an "Out" vote in the June 23 referendum were dismissive. London's New York-born Mayor Boris Johnson, a leader of the "Out" campaign from within the Conservative Party widely seen as angling for Cameron's job, said Obama's advice was "incoherent, inconsistent and downright hypocritical". Obama was urging Britain to pool its sovereignty with other nations in a way that the United States would never countenance for itself, Johnson wrote in a newspaper column. He also referred to "the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire", a comment widely criticised as demeaning the EU debate, and even denounced as "dog-whistle racism" by an opposition Labour politician. Other "Out" campaigners said Obama's views did not matter because this is his last year in office. "Obama doesn't have the authority to deny us a (trade) deal, as he will be long gone before any such proposals are on the table," said Richard Tice, co-founder of Leave.EU, one of several "Out" campaigns. Experts struggled to find a precedent for Obama's direct appeal to British voters. "It is the biggest intervention I can think of by an American president who has turned up in this way and intervened directly in the politics of a Western democracy since the end of the Cold War," said Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at Kings College London. "It is above and beyond what people do in Western democracies. And if you think as I do that it is a fear thing, then it works." Opinion polls suggest that "In" is ahead, but the race is tight and the number of undecided voters is very high. Many U.S. banks and companies fear a Brexit would cause market turmoil, diminish the clout of Washington's strongest European ally, hurt London's global financial hub status, cripple the EU and weaken Western security. The "Out" campaign says such fears are exaggerated and Britain would profit from greater control over its regulation, the ability to make bilateral trade deals and the right to restrict immigration from EU neighbours. Many in the "Out" camp say they are passionate supporters of the special relationship with the United States and think Britain would open itself up to America and to the world if it cut loose from what they regard as the dysfunctional EU. Before talks at Cameron's Downing Street office, Obama and his wife Michelle congratulated Queen Elizabeth, who celebrated her 90th birthday on Thursday. Prince Philip, Elizabeth's 94-year-old husband, took the wheel of a Range Rover to drive the Obamas to lunch on the territory of Windsor Castle, a royal residence that traces its history back over almost 1,000 years to William the Conqueror. (Additional reporting by London bureau; writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Estelle Shirbon; editing by Peter Graff) By David Ingram and David Bailey (Reuters) - The lead criminal charge brought on Wednesday against two Michigan state officials in connection with the tainted water supply in Flint, Michigan, could be difficult to prove, lawyers familiar with the state's criminal law said. The charge against state Department of Environmental Quality water supervisor Stephen Busch and water engineer Michael Prysby alleging "misconduct in office" might also be difficult to deploy against higher-level officials without day-to-day responsibilities relating to the city's water, the lawyers said. The lawyers interviewed said that to prove official misconduct, the prosecutor would have to show that someone acted with intent either by failing to perform a duty or acting in a way that violated a duty to get a conviction. "It has to be more than really screwing up your job or making a negligent mistake in your job," James Brady, a former federal prosecutor now at the law firm Dykema Gossett in Grand Rapids told Reuters. Official misconduct is a felony carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison. It has been used before in Michigan against police officers accused of excessive force as well as legislators and public officials including former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. Other charges also were lodged against Busch and Prysby, who have pleaded not guilty. A third official, Flint water quality supervisor Michael Glasgow, was charged with tampering with evidence and willful neglect of duty. It was not immediately clear when he would enter a plea. In announcing the criminal charges, state Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, vowed that no one was above the law and said more charges were to come. Embattled Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, has been the focus of public outcry over the Flint water crisis. Though he has apologized publicly for the contamination, which resulted from a decision to switch the source of the city's water, Snyder told a news conference on Wednesday he did not believe he was himself criminally liable. "A handful of bureaucrats created a terrible situation in Flint," he said. But the governor also highlighted the challenge at the heart of the official misconduct charges. "Was it actually criminal, or was it just poor decision-making?" Snyder asked at the news conference. Busch and Prysby violated the anti-misconduct law when they willfully and knowingly misled other regulators in violation of their "duty to provide clean and safe drinking water" and to protect public health, the state attorney general's office said. Prysby further violated the same law when he authorized a permit to the Flint water treatment plant despite knowing the plant was deficient, the office said. Demonstrating intent is not often clear-cut, the lawyers said. "This is an amorphous offense, which makes it a challenge for both sides, both for prosecutors and the defense," said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan and a former federal prosecutor. Theoretically, the lawyers said Schuette or the special prosecutor could go after higher-level officials including Snyder for "misconduct in office" during Flint's lead crisis but they said it would be a challenge for prosecutors the more removed the official was from day-to-day decisions. The charges against Busch and Prysby are closely related to their duties with the DEQ. "Where it becomes difficult is if it is not clear what that person's obligations were," Henning said. Kilpatrick, who resigned as Detroit mayor in 2008, was one senior official in Michigan who faced a misconduct charge. He subsequently pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting to lying under oath, in a deal with county prosecutors. He was later convicted on separate federal charges and is currently serving a 28-year sentence. Some other U.S. states have similar laws barring official misconduct. Last year, a same-sex couple in Kentucky accused Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis of official misconduct after Davis refused to issue marriage licenses despite a court order; Kentucky's attorney general opted not to prosecute. (Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Writing by David Ingram in New York; Editing by Anthony Lin, Noeleen Walder and Diane Craft) PEDERNALES/PORTOVIEJO (Reuters) - The death toll from Ecuador's devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake rose to 602 people on Friday, as dozens of aftershocks shook cities and towns around the country, spooking residents but causing no further damage. Saturday's quake, the worst in nearly seven decades, injured 12,492 people and left 130 missing, emergency management authorities said in a bulletin. Survivors were shaken again late on Thursday night when a powerful 6.0 magnitude quake struck off Ecuador's coast about 100 km (62 miles) north-northwest of Portoviejo and at a depth of 10 km (six miles). "When it started to shake last night we started to pray," said Alex Bachon, 43, a construction worker repairing damage from Saturday's quake at a hotel in Guayaquil. "I have never seen anything like this, it's been so bad." There were more than 70 aftershocks throughout Thursday night and Friday, the country's geology institute reported. There have been a total of 700 aftershocks since Saturday's quake. The tremors will continue for several weeks, emergency management official Ricardo Penaherrera warned on Friday, and he called on Ecuadoreans to stay calm. Survivors in the quake zone were receiving food, water and medicine from the government and scores of foreign aid workers, though President Rafael Correa has acknowledged that bad roads had delayed aid to some communities. With close to 7,000 buildings destroyed, more than 26,000 people were living in shelters. Some 14,000 security personnel were keeping order in quake-hit area, with only sporadic looting reported. THE COST OF REBUILDING Correa's leftist government, facing a mammoth rebuilding task at a time of greatly reduced oil revenues in the OPEC country, has said it would temporarily increase some taxes, offer assets for sale and possibly issue bonds abroad to fund reconstruction. Correa has estimated damage at $2 billion (1.4 billion pounds) to $3 billion. A raft of temporary tax increases should raise between $650 million and $1 billion, the government said, stressing those in quake areas would be exempt. The 487 megawatt hydroelectric dam Sopladora, which is still in an experimental phase, could be one of the assets put on sale. Lower oil revenue has already left the country of 16 million people facing near-zero growth and lower investment. The government appealed for travellers to continue to fuel the $1.7 billion tourism industry, but visitors may be put off by warnings from health experts about the threat of mosquito-borne viruses in the quake area. (Reporting by Guillermo Granja in Pedernales, Henry Romero in Portoviejo, Ana Isabel Martinez in Guayaquil and Julia Symmes Cobb and Diego Ore in Quito; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer, Toni Reinhold) Nine accused, suspected to have links with Students Islamic Move-ment of India, were initially arrested in the case and chargesheeted by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad. (Photo: PTI) Mumbai: A special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court on Monday discharged eight Muslim accused from the decade-old Malegaon bomb blast case in which 31 persons had lost their lives. There were a total of nine accused in this case and the court has discharged all of them. The judgment, however, came too late for Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah as he died pending trial and two other accused, Mohammed Ali Shaikh and Asif Khan, despite being discharged from the case will remain in prison because they were convicted in the 2006 Mumbai local serial train blasts case. Noorul Huda Shamsudduha, Raees Ahmed Mansuri, Mohammed Zahid Ansari, Abrar Ahmed Gulam Ahmed, Dr Farog Iqbal Ahmed Magdumi and Dr Salman Farsi were the other accused discharged by special MCOCA judge V.V. Patil. The ATS and also accused belonging to a right-wing Hindu extremist group arrested by the NIA in this case had opposed discharge application filed by eight accused saying that the court should take into consideration material put on record by the ATS and CBI that were against these nine accused. Though the reasons for discharge are not known yet, the contention of the defence was that Section 6 of the NIA Act gives an overriding effect to the NIA over other agencies like ATS and CBI and hence the court should take into account the investigation carried out by the NIA and not other agencies. The defence had also argued that the motive contended by the ATS for carrying out the blast by nine Muslim accused is illogical, as it has claimed that the accused wanted communal riots in Malegaon. Had it been their intention then being a Muslim why would they carry out blasts in a Masjid or a Muslim crematorium? They would have done this in a temple, said advocate Sharif Shaikh, adding that the court would have considered this. Interestingly, Dr Salman Farsi had not filed for discharge. My view was that I am innocent and whatever material the NIA has put before the court proves my innocence and hence the court itself should discharge me from the case and hence I had not filed a discharge application, said Dr Farsi, while speaking to The Asian Age. He also said, ATS falsely implicated us and when the government announced that the investigation would be handed over to the CBI, the ATS filed a chargesheet against us on day 59. Though it had 180 more days on its hands to complete its investigation, they filed it in a hurry so that CBI could not change their line of investigation and their lie is not uncovered. But, now the court has discharged us. The case took a crucial turn in 2012 itself when Swami Assemanand, an accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid bombing case, allegedly revealed to the probe agency the role of a Hindu right wing outfit in the 2006 Malagaon blasts case. The star witness of the ATS, Abrar Ahmed, on the basis of whose statement all the nine accused from Malegaon were arrested, turned hostile in 2010 and had filed a detailed affidavit (in Urdu) claiming that the ATS had lured him to give false evidence against all accused. Three accused persons of this case had also moved court seeking discharge at that time on the basis of the affidavit filed by Abrar, claiming that his current confession in the form of affidavit is in his mothertongue Urdu and the confession given to ATS is in Hindi and contains what could be complicated words in the language for Abrar. However, the court had rejected their application at that time. Later, the case took a turn when Swami Aseemanand alias Jatin Chatterjee, an accused in Samjhauta train blast case, stated in his confessional statement before a magistrate that the Malegaon blasts was masterminded by a Hindu group. The NIA started investigations on this line and arrested four accused from a right-wing group. Now these accused will face trial. Another four are absconding. The arrest of the second set of accused paved way for the release of nine accused on bail and they also field discharge application later. Advocate Khan Abdul Wahab, one of the defence lawyers appointed by Jamiat-e-Ulema Maharashtra to defend these accused, said, Other accused of this case had filed for discharge and once the court comes to the conclusion that all the accused in the matter are innocent, then the court has the power to discharge an accused even if he has not filed for discharge. Another defence lawyer, Sharif Shaikh, said, People of India, especially Muslims, had lost their faith on the investigating agencies and political parties because in each and every bomb blast they were implicating Muslims. But the people of the community have faith on Indian judiciary and finally the court discharged the accused. This has proved that the innocent get justice in our system. (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia announced on Monday its Vision 2030 reform plan, a package of economic and social policies designed to free the kingdom from dependence on oil exports. Following are analysts' comments following the announcement. MOHIEDDINE KRONFOL, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER FOR GLOBAL SUKUK AND MIDDLE EAST FIXED INCOME AT FRANKLIN TEMPLETON INVESTMENTS: The Saudi 2030 vision, as articulated by H.H. the deputy crown prince and consequently approved by the cabinet, will probably be viewed positively by market participants. Plans for improved governance, transparency, structural reform, and evolving social contracts should underpin the outlook for many industries. Details are still scarce, but the ambition is evident and the government appears confident in embracing technology and cultural development in the execution of its plans. Implementation and the impact on government finances will likely continue to be closely monitored. MOHAMMAD AL-SHAMMASI, HEAD OF ASSET MANAGEMENT AT RIYADH-BASED DERAYAH FINANCIAL Initial reaction, I appreciated the transparency and addressing issues that have previously not been addressed, such as military spending, the housing issue and unemployment...I believe this vision has a lot to offer and I am optimistic, but the biggest challenge will be the execution. The markets did react positively as the interview was taking place, but the efficacy of this reaction may be short-lived. AHMED AL-JUNDI, EXECUTIVE AT JEDDAH-BASED ARCHITECTURAL FIRM DIYAR CONSULTANTS The proactive approach to try and reduce the corruption and inefficiencies that led to mispricing, and cost the government billions of riyals, is a huge step forward in the right direction... As a Saudi I am optimistic, as a businessman I am encouraged, but we have to see how the government plans on pushing through with those plans in a way that is mutually beneficial to the private sector, so that we can continue absorbing more employees from the public sector. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia and Celine Aswad Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) By Ivana Sekularac and Aleksandar Vasovic BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's pro-western Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a resounding endorsement in Sunday's general election for his policy of pursuing European Union membership, securing four more years in power with a parliamentary majority. But he will have to contend with a resurgent ultra-nationalist opposition which rejects integration with the EU and demands closer ties with Russia. Vucic went to the polls two years early, saying he wanted a clear mandate from Serbia's 6.7 million voters for reforms to keep EU membership talks launched in December on track for completion by 2019. Even though Vucic presided over a period of austerity, partly forced on him by the terms of a 1.2 billion euro ($1.35 billion) loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund, voters again strongly backed the 46-year-old, himself a former hardline nationalist. His conservative Progressive Party was set to win just under 50 percent of the vote, up from 48 percent two years ago, a projection by pollsters Cesid, the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy, said. "This is an historic result, getting more votes in absolute numbers and in percentages than two years ago when we started difficult reforms," Vucic said. "Today's result strongly supports our democracy, diplomatic efforts and European integration," he said. Vucic must now decide whether he will rule alone or seek to broaden his support further by continuing to govern in coalition with the Socialists, who came second with around 11.6 percent of the vote, or another party. The election marked a resurgence by the ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, acquitted by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague last month of war crimes during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. The Radicals were set to win around 7.8 percent of the vote, turning them into the third-biggest party in parliament after a four-year absence from the assembly. They could turn into a thorn in Vucic's side, resisting his pro-EU policies and calling instead for an alliance with Russia. Seselj voiced disappointment with the result but said "in future debates we will show we are superior to our opponents." The pro-EU Democratic Party, which won around 6 percent of the vote, complained of scattered irregularities that favoured the Progressive Party, saying some voters had been given ballots that were already filled in. Exactly how many seats in the 250-member parliament the Progressives end up with depends on how many other parties exceed the five percent threshold needed to get into the assembly. Three parties are hovering around the five percent threshold, according to Cesid. If they all get into parliament, it would reduce the Progressives' majority. But analysts said the Progressives were still likely to get an absolute majority of between 137 and 156 seats, compared with 158 in the old parliament. The EU Commissioner in charge of relations with would-be member states, Johannes Hahn, said on Twitter he was confident Vucic "will use citizens' strong support in a responsible way and that it (the election) will strengthen Serbia's EU perspective." Milan Jovanovic, a political science lecturer at Belgrade University, said the Radicals would not be able to significantly influence the government's behaviour. "Quite to the contrary, they could make the government even more determined," he told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Mary Milliken) DUBAI / JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma arrived in Iran on Sunday to strengthen political, trade and investment ties after crippling international sanctions against the Islamic Republic were lifted earlier this year, his office said. South Africa is hoping to exploit a market hungry for investment as tens of billions of dollars worth of Iranian assets will now be unfrozen and global companies that have been barred from doing business there will benefit. Iranian media said the two countries signed eight agreements on cooperation in areas including trade, industries, investments, agriculture, water resources and oil industry research and development. No details of the accords were given. Iranian media also said the two countries called for strengthening intelligence cooperation in the fight against terrorism. In opening remarks after his arrival, Zuma said various mechanisms had been discussed "to strengthen our political, trade, investment and economic, as well as people-to-people relations between our countries." "The lifting of nuclear-related sanctions against Iran provides immense potential for closer commercial and investment cooperation between South Africa and Iran," the presidency said in a statement. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in remarks carried by state television that South Africa had supported Iran during its time under sanctions. "Today, after the nuclear accords and the end of sanctions against Iran, there is a sharp competition between Asian and European countries for cooperation agreements with Iran, but we will never forget our close friends from the era of sanctions," Rouhani said, referring to South Africa. Pretoria is considering building an oil refinery that will process Iranian crude to bolster its petrol supply and reduce its dependence on foreign companies. Iran has been frustrated that few trade deals have been implemented since the sanctions were lifted in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, as foreign banks still steer clear of processing transactions. On April 15 Iran called on the United States and European Union to help it access the global financial system, but the White House said the nuclear deal did not include giving Tehran such access. Zuma's visit was the second South African state visit to Iran, the first having been undertaken by late president Nelson Mandela in 1999. (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla in Johannesburg and Dubai Newsroom,; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Raissa Kasolowsky) Bengaluru: Mohammed Shafi Armar alias Yousuf al Hindi, the 27-year-old alleged head-hunter of the banned global terrorist organisation Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq & Syria) from Bhatkal, who has reportedly been killed in a drone strike in Syria had allegedly become a hot potato for Daesh, who according to sources had isolated him following the cross country arrests of Shafis recruits by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). He was tasked with the online recruitment of young Indian Muslims and had floated a new terror outfit - Junud al Khalifa-e-Hind (Soldiers of the Indian Caliphate) to attract fresh blood to Daesh. The NIA has arrested 23 alleged Daesh supporters from all over India, who were recruited online by Shafi (in pic). They have given crucial information about him and his recruitment propaganda to the NIA. Following the arrests there has been a lull in Daesh recruitment in the country and Shafi went underground, said an officer on condition of anonymity. Daesh doubts Indian Muslims commitment to their violent and extremist cause and had asked Shafi to set a criteria for his recruits and challenge them to do something spectacular in India to be considered for recruitment in Daesh. The arrests have not gone down well with Daesh, which suspects some inner hand behind the NIA action. It will not be surprising if they are behind Shafis death. There is so far no confirmation about Shafi's death, the officer added. Shafi rose up the ranks in Daesh based on the shoulders of his popular older brother - Sultan Abdul Kadir Armar, 39, alias Abu Abdullah al Hindi, who was killed in March last year during fighting at Kobane, on the Syria-Turkey border. He had founded the Ansar al-Tauhid fi'Bilad al-Hind (AuT) from the remaining cadres of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and was the masked jihadist, who used to appear in Daeshs propaganda videos to invite Indian Muslims to train in jihadi camps in Pakistans turbulent North Waziristan. The Armar siblings had fled Bhatkal almost a decade ago to join hands with the co-founders of IM - Riyaz and Iqbal but due to ideological differences and in receiving and handling of funds, the Armars split from the Shahbandaris and joined Daesh. India no campus for ISIS With the reported death of Mohammed Shafi Armar - the second Armar sibling and Daesh propagandist from Bhatkal to die in a drone strike in Syria, the global terror organisations India recruitment module has become headless. Shafi is the third fugitive terror suspect from Bhatkal to have died fighting for the jihadist organisation; In 2014 Anwer Hussain was killed in Kandahar in Afghanistan. Next year, in March 2015 Shafis elder brother Sultan, who was anointed by Daesh chief Abu Baqr al Baghdadi, as chief recruiter, was killed in Syria. By John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. special envoy for Syria has vowed to take fragile peace talks into next week despite a walkout by the main armed opposition, a breakdown in a truce and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the five-year-old civil war. The opposition declared a "pause" in the talks this week because of a surge in fighting and too little movement from the government side on freeing detainees or allowing in aid. Nearly all of its delegation left Geneva. But U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said he had no plans to call off the negotiations, the first in five years of conflict to include some rebel factions. He said a ministerial meeting of world powers was urgently needed to get the talks back on track. "Bottom line, I plan to continue the proximity talks, but at the formal level and at the technical level until next week, probably Wednesday as originally planned," he said. A fragile ceasefire in place since February was still in effect because none of the sides had renounced it, he said, but it was "in great trouble if we don't act quickly." The talks at U.N. headquarters in Geneva aim to halt a conflict that has allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group, sucked in regional and major powers and created the world's worst refugee crisis. De Mistura now says 400,000 people have been killed in the war, far higher than the previous U.N. toll, usually given as 250,000. He said he had no proof of the higher figure but the estimate of 250,000 was two years old and no longer valid. The war was tilted in President Bashar al-Assad's favor late last year by Russia's intervention. WASHINGTON CONCERNED BY RUSSIAN MOVES The White House has expressed concern that Russia has repositioned artillery near the disputed city of Aleppo. The Russian military moves have sharpened divisions in Washington over whether President Vladimir Putin genuinely backs the U.N.-led initiative to end the war or is using the talks to mask renewed military support for Assad. President Barack Obama, on a visit to London, said the Syrian crisis cannot be solved without political negotiations and that required dealing with people he deeply disagrees with. "We are not going to solve the overall problem unless we can get this political track moving," Obama told a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron. He said he had always been skeptical about Putin's actions and motives in Syria and that Russia will recognize that the Syrian problem cannot be solved by military means. Washington is leading its own campaign of air strikes against Islamic State positions in both Iraq and Syria. It acknowledged on Friday that 20 civilians were among those killed in its strikes between Sept. 10 and Feb 2. Britain's envoy to the Syria peace talks, Gareth Bayley, said on Friday: "The regime is so reliant on external support that it is inconceivable that its allies don't have the leverage to change its approach." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the decision by the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to quit Geneva was not a loss for anyone except the HNC itself. "If they want to ensure their participation (in the peace talks) only by putting ultimatums, with which others must agree, it's their problem," Lavrov said, adding: "For God's sake, we shouldn't be running after them, we must work with those who think not about their career, not about how to please their sponsors abroad, but with those who are ready to think about the destiny of their country." Moscow and Washington sponsored the fragile cessation of hostilities that went into effect on Feb. 27 to allow talks to take place but has been left in tatters by increased fighting in the past week. A warplane crashed southeast of Damascus airport on Friday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground. It said the cause of the crash and the fate of the pilot were not clear. The Islamic State group released a video claiming to have shot it down. Footage showed fighters around burning plane wreckage, part of which had a Syrian flag painted on it. Reuters could not independently verify the video. Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a Syrian military source saying it crashed due to technical malfunction. In Aleppo, government air strikes in different parts of the city killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens more on Friday, with the death toll expected to rise due to serious injuries, the Observatory said. Further southwest in Hama province, warplanes targeted rebel-held areas in the strategic Ghab plain that borders Latakia province, Assad's coastal heartland. Insurgents announced a new battle in Latakia earlier this week which they said was in response to ceasefire violations by the government side, launching fierce assaults there. Fighting raged in the area on Friday, said Observatory. ASSAD MAIN ISSUE Endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the Geneva peace talks marked the most serious effort yet to resolve the war, but failed to make progress on political issues, with no sign of compromise over the question of Assad's future. Government negotiators say Assad's presidency is non-negotiable. Underlining confidence in Damascus, a top Assad aide reiterated its view that local truce agreements and "destroying terrorism" were the way towards a political solution. The opposition wants a political transition without Assad, and says the government has failed to make goodwill measures such as releasing detainees and allowing enough aid into opposition-held areas besieged by the military. The HNC, which is backed by Western nations and key Arab states, had this week urged more military support for rebels after declaring the truce was over and said talks would not re-start until the government stopped committing "massacres". All the main HNC members had left Geneva by Friday, leaving a handful of experts and a point of contact behind. Syria is now a patchwork of areas controlled by the government, an array of rebel groups, Islamic State, and the well-organized Kurdish YPG militia. On Friday, rare clashes between YPG fighters and government-allied forces and militiamen took place for nearly a third day, the Observatory said, in fighting which a Syrian Kurdish official said had killed 26 combatants. (Additional reporting by John Irish in Geneva; writing by Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff) Evening Standard Max Verstappen has won his second Formula One world title but is still yet to receive his official trophy. F1 is unusual in comparison to most sports, which hand out the major prize immediately after the season finishes. It has led to some atypical sights in previous years with Lewis Hamilton winning the 2019 title having finished second in Austin while he was not even on the podium when claiming the championship in Mexico a year earlier, forcing him to run around the track to enjoy a moment in front of the fans. By Ercan Gurses and Alastair Macdonald GAZIANTEP, Turkey/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Turkey's president needs a thicker skin against criticism, a senior EU official suggested as European leaders try to shore up support at home for their deal with Ankara to hold back migrants. Former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits, was visiting a refugee camp at Gaziantep near the Syrian border on Saturday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and was asked about Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's legal moves against critical media, including a German comedian. Tusk said press freedom was a "permanent topic" of his talks with Turkish leaders which have produced the deal under which Turkey is taking back all refugees and migrants who reach Greek islands in return for concessions from the European Union. Recalling his own jailing in the 1980s for opposing Poland's communist government, Tusk recalled that Erdogan, too, had been imprisoned in 1999 for criticising Turkey's then rulers. "Thirty years ago, I was imprisoned for being critical of the regime," Tusk said late on Saturday. "My good friend, President Erdogan, 15 years later also had a similar experience for expressing his views." Criticism of Turkey in Europe poses an obstacle to the deal struck by European Union leaders with Ankara last month because approval of the EU's side of the bargain, notably waiving visas for Turkish travellers by June, requires support in the European Parliament. Many EU lawmakers criticise Erdogan's crackdown on critics, including a lawsuit against a comedian in Germany. Tusk said: "As a politician, I have learned and accepted to have a thick skin and I have no expectation that the press will treat me with special care; quite the opposite. "And the line between criticism, insult and defamation is very thin and relative. The moment politicians begin to decide which is which can mean the end of the freedom of expression, in Europe, in Turkey, in Africa, in Russia, everywhere." Prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases against people for insulting Erdogan since he became president in 2014, the justice minister said last month. Those targeted include journalists, cartoonists and even children. "This struggle will not end until we shut the last mouth up that expresses hatred to our country and people's history, values and culture," Erdogan said in a speech in the southern city of Adana on Sunday. "We won't turn the other cheek to those who slap us." While focused on the problems in Turkey, Tusk has also criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as his right-wing successors in Poland, whose moves to curb the independence of the public broadcaster have prompted inquiries from the European Union and European rights bodies. (Additional reporting by Akin Aytekin; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by David Dolan and Alison Williams) By Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty civilians were likely killed and 11 others injured in nine U.S. air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria between Sept. 10, 2015, and Feb. 2, 2016, the U.S. military said on Friday. The deaths brought the number of civilians killed since the U.S. air campaign against the Islamic militants began in 2014 to 41, said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. He added that 28 civilians had been injured during that time. "We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes and express our deepest sympathies to the victims' families and those affected." Ryder said. Eight civilians were killed during an Oct. 5 strike on a mortar firing position near Al Huwayjah, Iraq, Central Command said in a statement. Separately, it said five civilians were killed on Dec. 12 in Ramadi, Iraq after they "unexpectedly moved into the target location after weapons were already in flight." "In all of the cases released today, assessments determined that although the strikes complied with the law of armed conflict and all appropriate precautions were taken, civilian casualties unfortunately did occur," the statement said. The U.S.-led coalition has carried out 11,539 air strikes against Islamic State as of April 12, with 7,794 in Iraq and 3,745 in Syria, according to U.S. military data. "It is also important to highlight again Daesh's culpability due to their continued, cowardly tactic of hiding and operating among civilian populations," Ryder said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Ryder added that 162 allegations of civilian casualties had been received, 112 of which were deemed not credible, since the beginning of the campaign. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Paul Simao) Mumbai: In a noble move, a group of IT professionals has come together to raise funds for repaying loans of over 100 debt-ridden farmers in drought-hit Vidarbha region, notorious for farmer suicides. The IT professionals have united under the banner of an NGO, Apulkee (sense of belonging), with an objective to help debt and drought-ridden 121 farmers in five districts of the cotton belt. The NGO has so far raised Rs 3 lakh from people who are known to IT professionals and their circle of friends and companies. It aims to collect Rs 85 lakh to close the loans of the identified farmers. Describing the criteria for selecting the farmers, Mayuri Dhavale, a senior associate working with Apulkee, said, We shortlisted most affected five districts of the state and then zeroed in on marginal farmers with less than 5 acres of landholding. Additionally, priority was given to the families affected by farmer suicides. The list was prepared after sifting through data provided by local NGOs and volunteers associated with Apulkee. Teams visited the selected farmers to study their current condition and collected 7/12 extract (a key land ownership document) along with bank and loan details. The NGO plans to seek funds from its foreign-based volunteers also. Global private equity group KKR is said to have shortlisted six bidders for the sale of German cookware producer WMF whi KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn. Brookfield Asset Management has held the final close of its second global real estate fund on $9bn, well above the initi Hyderabad: In recent years, the number of people choosing the Hussainsagar Lake as a suicide spot has been increasing. The lake is arguably the most popular suicide spot in Telangana now. A vigilant Lake Police and the special force deployed around the lake have rescued many women, children and men who came to end their lives. After rescuing them, the police usually counsel them or offer them legal help to fix their lives. A majority of the people who came to die believed their death would be peaceful and less painful unlike the other methods of suicide. They think that drowning will be less painful and they spend a few hours sitting or walking around Hussainsagar to relax before jumping into the water. A few people also thought that since it is a public place, the chances of death would be less. Their feeling was that if god wanted them to live, then someone would rescue them. Some others admitted that the lake had been their favourite leisure spot once, so they choose the place to spend their last moments. After their rescue, when we counsel these people, many said that they came from extremely unpleasant homes to this tourist spot, where others relax and have fun. They looked for a peaceful place to end their lives, said K. Sridevi, Inspector of Lake Police, who has counselled several rescued people. During counselling, many also admitted that Hussainsagar was their favourite spot in the city. According to police officials on the ground, Tank Bund and Lepakshi are the major spots around the lake where people come to jump into the water. A few have been rescued from areas in the childrens park and other open parks. At Tank Bund, at least 10 or more cops posted at special pickets, cover every hundred metres and look for people with suicidal tendencies. There are also cops on the move, around the lake, on bikes.Police officials say that the CCTV cameras also help them keep a vigil. Women, kids outnumber men The number of women and children coming to Hussainsagar Lake to commit suicide exceeds the corresponding number of men. Last year, 27 children were rescued by police, while the lives of as many as 14 children have been saved by the lake police this year. Most kids were brought by their mothers, who wanted to end their lives together. Lake Police rescued 119 women last year, and 39 women this year. Economic reasons, domestic violence, failure in love and various other reasons pushed these people to take the drastic decision. On April 1 this year, a 35-year-old-woman and her two children, a nine-year-old girl and a six-year-old girl came to the lake to commit suicide and escape torture from her alcoholic husband. When police rescued them, the children seemed bewildered and scared. It was in the early morning. For the kids this was an exotic location and time, and they did not know what was going to happen. After we rescued them, the woman, Ajmiri, revealed that her husband Syed Dastagiri had been assaulting her. She had no way to escape from his torture, said one of the cops, who rescued them.If the reason behind victims distress is domestic violence, Lake Police inform the concerned police station to provide legal help to the victim. They did the same in the case of Ajmiri also. According to police, at least 80 per cent of the rescued were stopped before jumping into the lake. Some 20 per cent people were pulled out from the water. The trouble is that we are not specially trained in swimming. So we have to get down into the lake with the help of ropes or take help from local swimmers for the rescue mission. We also have less logistic support, said a cop, who is deployed around the lake. New Delhi: Despite Delhi governments earnest attempts to upkeep the odd-even formula, which is in its second phase, it testified a serious breach. On Monday, BJP MP and actor Paresh Rawal drove to Parliament in his personal car, which carried an even number plate. Monday being an odd number day only allows car with odd number plates to ply on roads; however Rawals car having an even number plate flouted the order. Delhi government has even announced a special DTDC bus service for MPs heading to Parliament in view of the odd-even scheme. Read: Odd-even scheme under attack in Lok Sabha The actor apologised and said that it was a blunder on his part. Made a serious blunder... Sorry to Arvind ji and Delhiites, the MP tweeted. Made a serious blunder by travelling in a odd number car to parliament ... Sorry to Arvind ji n Delhiite... Paresh Rawal (@SirPareshRawal) April 25, 2016 Other BJP MPs who flouted the rule on Monday include Choudhary Babulal, Prahlad Patel, Udit Raj, Ashwani Chopra, KP Maurya and BC Khandoori. Modified On Apr 26, 2016 03:12 PM By Arun for Honda BR-V Honda's first compact SUV, the BR-V, is all set to debut on 05 May 2016. Pre-bookings are already underway across dealerships, for a token amount of Rs. 21,000. Moreover, the automaker is leaving no stone unturned to create a buzz on social media with the 'Where Next with BR-V' campaign. It enters a segment where the Hyundai Creta and the Renault Duster have already been battling to come out on top. For Honda to topple these established players, the price has to be nothing short of spot on. Let's figure out where the prices for the BR-V should start! For starters, it is based on the same platform as the Amaze and the Mobilio and shares its engines with the City. The sharing will play a significant role in keeping costs in check for Honda. The BR-V is likely to be slotted above the Mobilio in the line-up, and be considerably more expensive compared to the MPV. Its rivals such as the Hyundai Creta and the Renault Duster start at prices that hover around the Rs. 9.5 lakh mark for the base petrol trims. We expect Honda to match this, adopting a similar price for the base petrol variant of the BR-V. The diesel will probably command a premium of a lakh over its petrol counterpart. We expect prices to start at around 10.5 lakh for the base diesel variant. Honda's usual strategy of premium pricing might not work in this segment. In fact, the BR-V would have to try and equal, if not undercut, the prices of its rivals to get the cash registers ringing. We've already driven the BR-V in Japan. Click here to read initial impressions. We will be driving the SUV in India soon. Stay tuned for an in-depth report. Meanwhile, take a look at how the BR-V fares against its rivals, in this spec comparison here. New Delhi: A day after teary-eyed Chief Justice of India made an emotional appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for more judges, heres another innovative appeal-role play by an Andhra Pradesh legislator. In an effort to get special status for his state, actor-turned-politician Dr N Shiva Prasad from the ruling TDP, on Monday sat under a tree outside the Parliament dressed in the get-up of mythological character Sudhama, with a cut-out of Narendra Modi adorned with a peacock feather, impersonating Hindu God Krishna. "Sudama was Lord Krishna's classmate. He was poor and when Krishna became the ruler of Dwarka, he hoped to get some help from the Lord and approached him. Lord Krishna didn't offer any help. But when Sudama returned, his home had turned into a palace and held much wealth," the Andhra Pradesh legislator from Chittoor told an English news channel. "Ours is a poor, revenue deficit state and Modi is our Krishna. He can change lives," Dr Shiva Prasad added. Explaining the rationale behind his bizarre strategy, the MP who was dressed in a traditional Brahmins dress complete with prayer beads and a saffron scarf, said, I am a theatre artist and I know how to play characters. The ruling TDP in the state has been demanding benefits of special status for Andhra Pradesh to mitigate the loss that the state has suffered following the formation of Telangana because of alleged inequity in division of resources. Announcing my retirement as NCUA Chairman was not a decision I took lightly. It was the culmination of a great deal of thought and soul-searching. But after serving 11 years at NCUA, including a full year beyond the expiration of my second term, it is time for the next chapter in my life. For every day of those 11 years, it has truly been an honor to protect the safety and soundness of Americas credit unions and safeguard the deposits of 103 million members. Its amazing to reflect on everything that credit unions and NCUA accomplished to ensure stability and promote growth. Through the hard work of credit union officials and NCUA staff, the credit union system rebounded mightily from the depths of the Great Recession. Virtually every metric indicates the credit union system today is strong, resilient, and poised for even greater success in the future. Putting the Past Behind Us However, when I was sworn in as Chairman in 2009, the credit union system was on the brink of collapse. Survival of the system was threatened by corporate credit unions holding $50 billion in toxic assets and consumer credit unions facing billions of dollars in potential losses. Such catastrophic losses would have wiped out the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which at the time had only $8 billion in assets. At NCUA we worked around the clock to stabilize the system, save as many credit unions as we could, minimize total losses, and rebuild the Insurance Fund. We focused on shoring up gaps in supervision and regulations that threatened safety and soundness. NCUAs new safeguards stopped the hemorrhaging and prevented the system from failing. At the same time, we resolved the most severe liquidity shortfall in credit union history. Using an innovative approach never before implemented by a federal regulatory agency, NCUA successfully repackaged the seized corporate assets to raise more than $28 billion through marketplace sales of government-backed securities. Earning Recoveries I am extraordinarily proud that NCUA became the first federal financial institutions regulator to recover losses from Wall Street firms that contributed to the Great Recession. To date, weve recovered over $3 billion in settlements with firms that sold faulty mortgage-backed securities to corporate credit unions. Net proceeds from these recoveries reduced the need for assessments paid by consumer credit unions, and increased the likelihood of a rebate after the Corporate Stabilization Fund expires in 2021. With 11 lawsuits still pending, Im confident NCUA will collect even more recoveries on behalf of credit unions. Providing Regulatory Relief After stabilizing the system and initiating recoveries, we were able to shift our focus to regulatory relief. My Regulatory Modernization Initiative yielded 21 areas of innovative regulatory relief, consistent with President Obamas Executive Order 13579. These relief measures removed unnecessary burdens and empowered credit union boards and management to make strategic business decisions. Listening to Credit Union Officials In fact, many of these initiatives came from credit union officials. One of the best parts of my job has been traveling the country to visit with credit union staff and volunteers, to hear suggestions and address concerns wherever possible. As part of my outreach, I held 19 in-person Listening Sessions, hosted 13 industry-wide webinars, and participated in meetings with tens of thousands of credit union officials representing every state. Credit unions commitment to member service is the gold standard for our nation. Serving Americans Serving the American people is a tremendous honor. So I am deeply grateful to President Obama for providing me with the opportunity to serve our nation. As I recently told the President, this has been the most challenging and gratifying position I have ever held. I chose a career in public service to make a difference in peoples lives. My two terms at NCUA have permitted me to do that in many ways. It has been a privilege working with the best staff in the federal government and the most dedicated professionals and volunteers in the financial services sector. Working together, we accomplished every goal I had set as Chairmanfrom helping the credit union system recover after the Great Recession, to modernizing the regulatory framework, to providing meaningful regulatory relief without compromising safety and soundness. I am more convinced than ever that the state of Americas credit union system is strong. I am leaving NCUA confident that the credit union system is firmly positioned for continued growth, innovation, and success for the foreseeable future. An EU trade deal that includes Brazilian and Argentine beef could severely hurt European farmers, industry leaders across Europe have warned. Producers complain the continent could be flooded with cheaply produced meat, under the EUs deal with five South American nations. This would dent farmgate prices and hurt farmers incomes. Negotiating teams from the EU and the Mercosur group of nations will make offers of market access on 11 May, hoping to strike a deal after 17 years of on-and-off talks. See also: South American trade deal catastrophic for EU farmers Newly appointed Irish Farmers Association (IFA) president Joe Healy has called on the commission to withdraw its draft offer for beef. In that package, Mercosur countries could ship in an extra 78,000t each year and possibly capture one-third of the EU steak market. This would be a total sell-out of Irish and European livestock farmers, with no gains for European agriculture, Mr Healy said. Farmers in sensitive sectors are being sacrificed for the benefit of European industry and services. So-called sensitive products have been at the heart of recent worries over the impact of greater trade with Mercosur, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Earlier this month, 20 European farm ministers called on the EU to remove quotas for sensitive farm products such as beef and pork from the EUs trade offer to Mercosur. The IFAs Mr Healy was speaking at a meeting of Copa, the joint body for European farm unions. Double standards on quality and environment Copa president Martin Merrild said trade with Mercosur could have a catastrophic on the EU agricultural market especially for beef. He said South American imports did not meet the EUs high environmental and quality standards, and there were worries of antibiotic growth promoters banned in Europe being used in some countries. We want a level playing field, Mr Merrild said. Imports to the EU must meet our high production standards. Along with its intervention over Mercosur, Copa and Cogeca, the alliance of agricultural co-ops, launched a campaign to highlight the benefits of the livestock sector. Over two years, the campaign will show off environmental, safety and welfare standards for producing meat in Europe. There will also be consumer-facing work, such as recipes to boost dwindling consumption. Deal is bad timing for Europes beef producers National Beef Association chief executive Chris Mallon said some forecasts showed a Mercosur deal could knock 80 a head off the value of cattle. He said this added extra pressure, when livestock producers incomes were tight and prices had fallen since the start of the year. Taking beef from South America while we are suffering from a beef recession [in the EU] does not seem good, Mr Mallon said. Illinois Wesleyan to Launch New Recruitment Initiative in New Orleans A cohort of Posse Scholars from New Orleans. April 25, 2016 Illinois Wesleyan University is partnering with The Posse Foundation, a national college access and leadership development program, to recruit high-achieving high school students from the New Orleans area. The program will recruit 10 students annually, beginning in 2017. Each Posse Scholar will receive a full-tuition leadership scholarship made possible, in part, by support from the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation. Increasing access, diversity and our geographic reach are key goals that this new partnership with The Posse Foundation will help us to accomplish, said President Eric R. Jensen. Well be joining more than 55 top-tier colleges and universitiesschools like Carleton, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Oberlin, and Saint Olafwho partner with Posse. Posses unique selection process and pre-collegiate training program yield student leaders who are very successful in college and after they graduate. Im looking forward to the Posse Plus retreats, in which campus issues identified by the Posse Scholars are discussed by a cross-section of the campus community. Founded in 1989, Posse identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes. Posse extends to these students the opportunity to pursue personal and academic excellence by placing them in supportive, multicultural teamsPossesof 10 students. Posse partner colleges and universities award Posse Scholars four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarships. The Illinois Wesleyan-Posse partnership is being supported financially by a $375,000 five-year grant from the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation, which has as one of its principal missions overcoming socioeconomic barriers that limit college opportunities for public high school graduates. This financial support will be used to support leadership scholarships and other program needs. Our goal is to connect outstanding students who have the drive, passion and intelligence to attend the best schools in the country and become our next generation of leaders, said Deborah Bial, president and founder of The Posse Foundation. Were thrilled to have the support of President Jensen and excited to have a fine liberal arts institution like Illinois Wesleyan University join us in this mission. We feel IWU offers top-tier academics, and the kind of welcoming and supportive community in which Posse scholars will thrive. The Posse Foundation and Illinois Wesleyans admissions team will work together to identify and recruit Posse Scholars from New Orleans-area schools each year, with the first cohort coming to the IWU campus in fall 2017. In addition to Posse Leadership Scholarships, the students will have faculty mentors and other support services. Posse Foundation scholars achieve high persistence and graduation rates, typically in the 90 percent range. There is also a block of six MLAs, including three independents, who had been supporting the Harish Rawat government when it was dismissed. BJP believes that some of them could be worked on to change sides. (Photo: Twitter) New Delhi: Amid a bitter judicial row over imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand, a top BJP leader on Monday hinted at the party enjoying support of more Congress MLAs than the nine disqualified rebels. He also asserted that though only the nine rebels have gone public about their support to BJP, "more" Congress MLAs may switch sides in the event of a floor test. BJP is keeping its cards close to chest as the Supreme Court is currently hearing the case on imposition of central rule in the state, while the plea of nine MLAs against their disqualification is pending before the state High Court. "We got only as many (Congress) MLAs to support us openly as we needed for a simple majority. There could be more support for us. BJP has the support of a majority of MLAs even if these nine MLAs remain disqualified," the leader, who declined to be named, said. In the 71-member assembly, both Congress and BJP have 27 MLAs each, barring the nine Congress rebels and one BJP rebel. There is also a block of six MLAs, including three independents, who had been supporting the Harish Rawat government when it was dismissed. BJP believes that some of them could be worked on to change sides. The BJP leader also dismissed the Congress' charge that it was engineering defection in its ranks to topple its state governments as seen in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. "Keeping its flock together is the responsibility of Congress not BJP. If there is a rebellion in our party say in Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat, then it will be our fault not Congress'," he said. There are also strong sentiments in the BJP against several observations made by the state High Court, which had restored the Rawat government and castigated the Centre over the imposition of President's Rule. Among the court's observations criticised by him were that the rebels have committed a "sin" and that a "pro- development government" was brought down. Washington, DC Its somewhat ironic that drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Inc. attempted earlier this month to have a collection of lawsuits dismissed from centralized litigation over allegedly tenuous associations between Its somewhat ironic that drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Inc. attempted earlier this month to have a collection of lawsuits dismissed from centralized litigation over allegedly tenuous associations between Benicar side effects and gastrointestinal difficulty according to plaintiffs claims. Thats because doctors often misdiagnose the sprue-like enteropathy associated with Benicar defective products given similarities to celiac disease. Patients taking Benicar to help control their high blood pressure are often mistaken as having symptoms associated with celiac disease and, thus, continue to take Benicar - further exacerbating their symptoms.In the end, a federal judge in New Jersey on April 18 dismissed Daiichi Sankyos motion based on the judges finding that he could not fault patients who might have misinterpreted their symptoms.If one, therefore, were to fault the patient for misinterpretation and errors of association, should one also fault the caregiver or health care professional having made a similar error with regard to sprue-like enteropathy and celiac disease?Benicar (olmesartan) has emerged as a drug of choice to rein in high blood pressure considered particularly problematic. And while effective in the lowering of problem hypertension, the Benicar side effects can be serious - notably, sprue-like enteropathy, a gastrointestinal condition characterized by often uncontrollable diarrhea, Benicar Illness and Weight Loss, and hospitalization with severe dehydration. Those not hospitalized are often reduced to living their lives within close proximity to the nearest restroom.Its no way to live, and Benicar patients posting in chat rooms and elsewhere take no prisoners with regard to their displeasure with Benicar side effects - especially in view of the allegation that many were unaware of the risks associated with taking Benicar. The severe pain, inconvenience and dehydration allegedly associated with Benicar have not only affected their emotional health and stamina, but have left them wondering if olmesartan is worth the serious discomfort, the dehydration and the inconvenience.Some have openly wondered if it would be better to live with the effects of high blood pressure versus the shackles that are the bastion of severe and chronic diarrhea.For its part, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in 2013, issued warning label changes for Benicar while continuing to support the drug with a risk profile that maintained a higher weight to the benefits for those patients with serious hypertension issues. At the same time, the federal regulator is continuing to study adverse reactions and continues to work with the manufacturer with regard to post-market studies.In the meantime, it has been reported that symptoms associated with Benicar side effects, and specifically sprue-like enteropathy, are so close to those of celiac disease that doctors find it somewhat of a challenge to craft a correct diagnosis. A working knowledge of the potential for sprue-like enteropathy associated with Benicar might prompt a physician examining a patient presenting with such symptoms to state their medication history and thus the potential for sprue-like enteropathy.And yet, reports suggest errors in diagnosis are continuing. Was the judge in New Jersey cognizant of this fact when he found for the plaintiffs and cut them some Benicar defective products slack? - Babangida has confirmed his illness while debunking the rumours that he is bedridden or dead - The former president has stated that nobody is above the God but Nigeria has a bright future - He also speaks about a wound he sustained during the Civil War Ibrahim Babangida, former head of state, has finally broken silence about his illness. He was speaking with some reporters on April 24, Sunday, in his home in Minna, the Niger state capital. Several days ago reports emerged that IBB,as many would call him, was seriously ill and disable. Former military president debunking the rumours said: It is true I have minimised my appearance at public functions because of my ill health, but not to the level of incapacitation as being widely circulated in some media. READ ALSO: Babangidas son speaks about fathers illness For me, it doesnt shock me neither bother me because I know I must go and meet God my Creator, he added. There is nothing really to worry about, my religion has told me. Well, as a Muslim I strongly believe everybody will die. Everybody will die and everybody has to die. It could be now or in 100 years time or two days to come. But it doesnt matter. Everybody must die. You can see me attending to people, after which we all go in for our lunch and have our prayers before I retire for my siesta. I am not incapacitated. Nobody is above sickness or death because nobody is above what God has destined. Everybody will fall sick or will die or either of their relations must die. IBB further added that the future of Nigeria is bright and the dreams of Nigerians to declare their independence was worthwhile. I still believe very strongly in this country, which is further demonstrated by the people of these great nation because they are very industrious people, hardworking, former head of state added. READ ALSO: Ibrahim Babangida reportedly seriously ill That gives me the hope for Nigeria. Babngida also disclosed that the injury received in his right leg as a result of the piercing of a bullet during the Civil War has been with him for quite sometime and its regular relapsing is an expected phenomenon. When I was the president of the country, I had to travel to Germany where the sickness was diagnosed as Radiculopathy, which has troubled me since and as such relapses, he said. In 2014 Babangida spent two months receiving treatment in Germany and there were many rumours that he wouldn't return Nigeria. Muhammed Babangida, his son, has recently confirmed his fathers illness, saying that IBB underwent surgery and is recovering. The illness of ex-president became public when he attended the valedictory dinner for Justice Fati Lami Abubakar, the former Niger state chief judge, and was helped out of the event before the end. Source: Legit.ng Thiruvananthapuram: Chandy Oommen, Chief Minister Oommen Chandys son, is expected to come back to active politics soon. Former Youth Congress state secretary who is expecting his results of LLM by next week is keen on taking an active role in politics. But he told DC that though he is yet to decide on his future, he was keen to continue his studies. Mr. Oommen has been campaigning for his Appa in Puthupally as well as attending the campaign meetings of the Youth Congress across the state. Over the last few months, the 30-year-old has been active in social media, especially on Facebook. He has returned to Kottayam after completing his LLM viva exam on Saturday and has got a plethora of degrees in his kitty BA History, LLB, MA, LLM Constitutional Law (result awaiting). Though he pursued M Phil in International Relations from New Delhi, he didnt complete it. Though I have completed my studies, still I wish to continue it simultaneously along with whatever career I pursue. On April 30 and May 1, I will be attending the mandalam conventions in Puthupally, he told DC. In between his break for viva exam, Mr Oommen found time to attend the YC election convention meetings of Vizhinjam, Vattiyoorkavu (held at Peroorkada) and Neyyattinkara constituencies as well. He had addressed the crowd before his father arrived at the venue which shows he is expected to return to active politics. He has rejected the allegations hurled against him in the solar scam. Sources close to him told DC that he was keen to clear the allegations and was firm that they should know why he kept mum last several months. - Fulani herdsmen invaded Ukpabi Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu state, killing scores of local residents - Police public relations officer confirmed the incident, adding that a combined team of police and army have moved to the area - At the weekend, the herdsmen imported about 500 tribesmen from Nasarawa state to help launch the attack on the community - Leaders of the Fulani community in Enugu state met with stakeholders from Uzo-Uwani to address the issue Fulani herdsmen Fulani herdsmen invaded Ukpabi Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu state in the early of hours of today, killing scores of local people. As a result of the attack, Christ Holy Catholic Church, Odozi-Obodo, at Onu-Eke was burnt, eleven houses were confirmed razed. Vanguard reports that the natives have fled to neighboring communities of Nkpologu and Uvuru, even as Nkpologu natives fled to Nsukka in fear of attacks. Confirming the incident, Ebere Amaraizu, the police public relations er, said that a combined team of police and army have moved to the area. At the weekend, the Fulani herdsmen imported about 500 others from Nasarawa state to help launch the attack on the community. Reacting to the development, stakeholders from the local government held a meeting where they tried to find solutions to the increased attacks by herdsmen on communities. In the last six months, over 15 people were kidnapped and several women from the area were raped. READ ALSO: Supreme Court confirms death sentence of man who murdered Fulani According to sources, Cornell Onwubuya, the chairman of the Transition Committee in Uzo-Uwani local government area, alerted Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and the state commissioner of police on the development. During the emergency meeting in Enugu, Onwubuya also alerted the leaders of the Fulani community in the state and stakeholders from Uzo-Uwani. According to him, the meeting was convened to address the allegation that herdsmen planned to import about 500 of their tribesmen to enable them invade some communities in the area. Onwubuya noted that local leaders of the Fulani community also confirmed that there were attempts to bring in mercenaries for the attack on the communities. He added that the Fulani leaders in the state had earlier complained that some of their people were killed within the axis of Ukpabi Nimbo and Abbi communities in the recent past. READ ALSO: Pandemonium as Fulani herdsmen abduct DELSU worker Also speaking at the meeting, Alhaji Haldo Saidu Baso, the Enugu state leader of the Fulani community, said that he had lived in the state for over 33 years and would not be alive to witness the type of crises that they were talking about. Baso resolved to talk to his people in the state not take the laws into their hands. We will travel to Nasarawa state to talk to the cattle owners and stakeholders to warn the rustlers in Enugu state to stay away from trouble, he said. Meanwhile, Lai Mohammed, the minister of information, has said that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is working silently towards finding a solution to Fulani herdsmen attacks. He added that Buhari also set up a board of inquiry into the recent attacks while the effects of the silent efforts would soon be felt by Nigerians. Source: Legit.ng Kolkata: The BJP and CPI(M) on Sunday lodged separate complaints against the Trinamool Congress at the cyber crime department of Kolkata police and demanded the arrest of TMC spokesperson Derek OBrien for trying to malign the image of both the parties with a morphed picture. On Saturday, Mr OBrien in a press conference had showed presented two video clips and six photographs to show a deep camaraderie between the BJP and the CPI(M). However, the picture in which Union minister Rajnath Singh is feeding a laddoo to former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat was found to be a fake one. The BJP quickly pointed out that the photograph was morphed as the real picture was taken in September 2013 after Narendra Modi was officially declared as the partys prime ministerial candidate. As soon as the BJP, along with CPI(M), lashed out at TMC for its desperate attempt to malign their image with a morphed photograph, Mr OBrien wasted no time to remove that photograph and admitted that it was photoshopped. Read: TMC in soup after morphed photo of Rajnath, Prakash Karat emerge Today, we have lodged a complaint to the cyber crime department of Kolkata police against TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee, party secretary Subrata Bakshi and its national spokesperson Derek OBrien and asked the officers to treat it as an FIR. We want their immediate arrest as it was sheer attempt to malign our image. The TMC is scared to lose the Assembly election and this shows their frustration, state BJP vice-president Jai Prakash Majumdar said after lodging the complaint. The CPI(M) and the Congress slammed the ruling party for trying to brush aside the charges of a match-fixing between the TMC and the BJP. The doctored image was distorted by morphing the picture of Prakash Karat with the intention of tarnishing the image of the CPI(M) as well as Mr Karat. The CPI(M) West Bengal state committee would like to request you to take appropriate action against such fraudulent act taking into cognisance the cyber crime committed under the Information technology Act, 2008 and to book Derek OBrien under the provision of all laws as applicable, read the complaint lodged by the CPI(M) at city police headquarters. Left Front chairman Biman Bose wondered, If professor Ambikesh Mahapatra could be arrested for circulating a similar picture of chief minister Mamata Banerjee then why Mr OBrien would be spared for committing the same crime? The TMC, on other hand tried, to push the matter under the carpet. I had a conversation with Mr OBrien and he has apologised for the incident. I think that is enough, said TMC vice-president Mukul Roy. - Sule Lamido, a former governor of Jigawa state, has said that he will contest for presidency in 2019 - He noted that if the PDP finds him worthy of the partys presidential ticket to serve Nigeria, he will oblige - Lamido stressed that the PDP had the capacity to rule Nigeria again but the members must work hard to achieve that goal Sule Lamido said that he will contest for presidency in 2019. Sule Lamido, a former governor of Jigawa state, has said that he will contest for presidency on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019. Vanguard reports that Lamido announced this while briefing journalists in his village Bamaina in Birnin-Kudu local government area of the state. However, he noted that the presidential ticket was not given to anybody on the platter of gold, stressing that a candidate must earn it. If my party finds me worthy of the partys presidential ticket to serve Nigeria, I will thank God and oblige. Although there are issues in the party that we are all working to resolve, we hope to have success soon and come out united. As Im talking to you now, we are working silently to resolve our differences and bring back to our fold those that left the party for APC, he said. READ ALSO: How contractors got N30bn and paid massive kickbacks to Sule Lamidos accounts Speaking about the internal crisis in the PDP, the ex-governor explained that the reason for it was the partys defeat in 2015 general elections. According to Lamido, the PDP has the capacity to rule Nigeria again but the members must work hard to achieve that goal. The former governor took the opportunity to dismiss rumours that there is a rift between him and his successor, Muhammad Badaru of the APC. Lamido stressed that they respect each other and he had no differences with Badaru other than political ideologies. Meanwhile, the PDP board of trustee (BoT) has advised the party to seeks its presidential candidate from the northern part of the country. Walid Jubrin, the acting BoT chairman, warned of the dangers of not adhering to the recommendations aimed at compensating the north for the obvious violation of the zoning arrangement in the 2011 election. However, the zoning formula policy took a new dimension on April 21, when the Southwest leaders at a meeting in Lagos rejected the move to zone both the presidential and party chairmanship to the north. Source: Legit.ng Meerut: Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati on Monday claimed that cow slaughter and export of beef have increased since BJP came to power at the Centre. "Slaughtering of cows is on the increase since BJP came to power. The export of beef has also increased under the BJP government," Swaroopanand, who is on a two-day visit to the city, said. The Shankaracharya of the Dwarka-Shardapeeth said a total ban should be enforced on cow slaughter and a law be soon enacted in this regard. He also appealed to political parties not to politicize the Ram Mandir issue. "Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is a responsibility of saints and political parties should not politicize it," he said. Asked about the issue relating to women organizations seeking entry into core areas of certain temples, he said, "Pune-based women's group Bhumata Brigade is fooling people...If they are so concerned about women empowerment, they should launch campaign against low female literacy rate." New Delhi: Union minister for food processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal, while holding the Congress responsible for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, on Sunday said that the files related to the attack on Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) during Operation Blue Star should be made public so that the truth is brought before the people. Addressing media persons, the Union minister said that the files related to the most pious place for Sikhs be made public, when tanks and cannon were used in precincts of the holy place, so that people know the truth behind this horrendous episode. She said that with the details coming out, the directions issued at that time too would be made public. She said that the roles of Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar should be re-investigated in the entire episode on the basis of facts that were concealed. Answering a query on Punjabs economic health, Badal said that the states financial condition was strong. Condemning the misleading campaign launched by the Opposition, she said since the state was in the pink of financial health, it was able to successfully implement a large number of welfare schemes in states. She said that in the last nine years, the state has set new records of development and implementation of welfare schemes for its people. She said that the Opposition should refrain from giving political colour to developmental issues, adding that the massive developmental strides Punjab has taken is the proof of its success. On being asked about the new affidavit filed in the Supreme Court by the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government pertaining to SYL, Badal said the dual politics of the AAP in election year has been exposed. She said that the flip-flop statements of the AAP and its chief on the SYL issue prove that the party leadership says different things at different times and hence people should beware of such politicians. The Union minister told Kejriwal that if he was really a supporter of Punjab, it should file an affidavit in court stating that it stood by the Punjab government on this issue. Chennai: The week beginning Monday will see a flurry of hectic political activity with top Chief Ministerial contenders J. Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi and other players like Vaiko and Anbumani Ramadoss filing their nomination papers. The next five days should set the high stakes ball rolling for the May 16 Assembly polls. Though filing of nominations began on Friday, so far less than 100 candidates have submitted their papers, leaving all major action to take place this week as the last date for filing the papers will be April 29. Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and her archrival M. Karunanidhi would file their nomination papers on Monday in R K Nagar and Thiruvarur respectively. Jayalalithaa is expected to file her nomination papers around noon at the Zonal Office of Chennai Corporation in Tondiarpet for contesting from R K Nagar. Her archrival M Karunanidhi will submit his nomination papers before the Revenue Divisional Officer in Thiruvarur on Monday afternoon. PMK Chief Ministerial candidate Anbumani Ramadoss, who is contesting from Pennagaram in Dharmapuri district, and People's Welfare Alliance convenor Vaiko, will file their nominations before the Assistant Commissioner (Excise) in Dharmapuri and the Revenue Divisional Officer in Kovilpatti respectively. As Monday is an auspicious, muhurtham day, most leaders, including Mr Karunanidhi and Mr Vaiko who are the products of the Dravidian movement, have chosen the day to file their nominations. Many candidates are expected to file their nominations on Monday. DMDK chief Vijayakanth, the Chief Ministerial candidate of the DMDK-PWA combine, will file his nomination on Wednesday before the Assistant Commissioner (Excise) in Villupuram. The last day for filing nominations is April 29 and scrutiny would be held on April 30 and nominations can be withdrawn till May 2. The elections to the 234-member Assembly will be held on May 16 and the votes polled would be counted on May 19. CBRE Global Investors has acquired the Jantar shopping centre in Slupsk for a net purchase price of 92.0 million, reflecting a net initial yield of 7.1%. The asset was acquired on behalf of one of its separate account clients from Tristan Capital Partners. The dominant regional centre is 44,364 sq... Photos: CBRE Global Investors [] Neinver has entered into a long-term partnership with ITG Immobilien Treuhand GmbH, investor in and owner of the Fashion Outlet Halle Leipzig in Germany. The agreement will see Neinver become the new outlet centres sole tenant and operator, responsible for its management, leasing and marketing. Th... [] The take-up of office floorspace in Madrid amounted to 103,000 m in the first three months of 2016, according to a report from BNP Paribas Real Estate. Having achieved in 2015 its best figures since the beginning of the crisis, the volume of square metres let during the finest quarter [] International advisory firm JLL summarizes Q1 2016 on Warsaw's office market. 2016 will be a very interesting year on the office market in Warsaw. For the first time in the markets history, two office skyscrapers, both above 150 metres height Warsaw Spire and Q22 - will be delivered. Furthermore, [] ScienceDaily content is protected by copyright under both United States and foreign laws both by ScienceDaily LLC and content providers. Title to the content of ScienceDaily and affiliated websites NewsDaily and WeatherDaily remains with ScienceDaily LLC, its affiliates, sources and/or its licensors. Any use of the content not expressly permitted by these Terms and Conditions is a breach of these Terms and Conditions and may violate copyright, trademark, and other laws. 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You acknowledge Science Dailys rights in ScienceDaily Trademarks and agree that any use of Science Daily Trademarks by you shall inure to ScienceDailys sole benefit. You agree not to incorporate any Science Daily Trademarks into Your trademarks, service marks, company names, Internet addresses, domain names, or any other similar designations, for use on or in connection with computer or Internet-related products, services or technologies. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions of Use. For two decades, researchers have been using a growing volume of genetic data to debate whether ancestors of Native Americans emigrated to the New World in one wave or successive waves, or from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations. Now, after painstakingly comparing DNA samples from people in dozens of modern-day Native American and Eurasian groups, an international team of scientists thinks it can put the matter to rest: virtually without exception, the new evidence supports the single ancestral population theory. Our work provides strong evidence that, in general, Native Americans are more closely related to each other than to any other existing Asian populations, except those that live at the very edge of the Bering Strait, said Kari Britt Schroeder, a lecturer at the University of California, Davis, and the first author on the paper describing the study. While earlier studies have already supported this conclusion, whats different about our work is that it provides the first solid data that simply cannot be reconciled with multiple ancestral populations, said Schroeder, who was a Ph.D. student in anthropology at the university when she did the research. The study is published in the May issue of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. The teams work follows up on earlier studies by several of its members who found a unique variant (an allele) of a genetic marker in the DNA of modern-day Native American people. Dubbed the 9-repeat allele, the variant (which does not have a biological function), occurred in all of the 41 populations that they sampled from Alaska to the southern tip of Chile, as well as in Inuit from Greenland and the Chukchi and Koryak people native to the Asian (western) side of the Bering Strait. Yet this allele was absent in all 54 of the Eurasian, African and Oceanian groups the team sampled. advertisement Overall, among the 908 people who were in the 44 groups in which the allele was found, more than one out of three had the variant. In these earlier studies, the researchers concluded that the most straightforward explanation for the distribution of the 9-repeat allele was that all modern Native Americans, Greenlanders and western Beringians descend from a common founding population. Furthermore, the fact that the allele was absent in other Asian populations most likely meant that Americas ancestral founders had been isolated from the rest of Asia for thousands of years before they moved into the New World: that is, for a period of time that was long enough to allow the allele to originate in, and spread throughout, the isolated population. As strong as this evidence was, however, it was not foolproof. There were two other plausible explanations for the widespread distribution of the allele in the Americas. If the 9-repeat allele had arisen as a mutation multiple times, its presence throughout the Americas would not indicate shared ancestry. Alternatively, if there had been two or more different ancestral founding groups and only one of them had carried the 9-repeat allele, certain circumstances could have prompted it to cross into the other groups and become widespread. Say that there was a second allele one situated very close to the 9-repeat allele on the DNA strand that conferred a strong advantage to humans who carried it. Natural selection would carry this allele into new populations and because of the mechanics of inheritance, long stretches of DNA surrounding it, including the functionless 9-repeat allele, would be carried along with the beneficial allele. To rule out these possibilities, the research team, which was headed by Noah Rosenberg at the University of Michigan, scrutinized DNA samples of people from 31 modern-day Asian populations, 19 Native American, one Greenlandic and two western Beringian populations. advertisement They found that in each sample that contained the 9-repeat allele, short stretches of DNA on either side of it were characterized by a distinct pattern of base pairs, a pattern they seldom observed in people without the allele. If natural selection had promoted the spread of a neighboring advantageous allele, we would expect to see longer stretches of DNA than this with a similarly distinct pattern, Schroeder said. And we would also have expected to see the pattern in a high frequency even among people who do not carry the 9-repeat allele. So we can now consider the positive selection possibility unlikely. The results also ruled out the multiple mutations hypothesis. If that had been the case, there would have been myriad DNA patterns surrounding the allele rather than the identical characteristic signature the team discovered. There are a number of really strong papers based on mitochondrial DNA which is passed from mother to daughter and Y-chromosome DNA which is passed from father to son that have also supported a single ancestral population, Schroeder said. But this is the first definitive evidence we have that comes from DNA that is carried by both sexes. Other authors of the study are David G. Smith, a professor of anthropology at UC Davis; Mattias Jacobsson, University of Michigan and Uppsala University in Sweden; Michael H. Crawford, University of Kansas; Theodore Schurr, University of Pennsylvania; Simina Boca, Johns Hopkins University; Donald F. Conrad and Jonathan Pritchard, University of Chicago; Raul Tito and Ripan Malhi, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Ludmilla Osipova, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk; Larissa Tarskaia, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; Sergey Zhadanov, University of Pennsylvania and Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk; and Jeffrey D. Wall, UC San Francisco. The work was supported by NIH grants to Rosenberg and Smith and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to Schroeder. Using time-, energy- and angular-resolved photoelectron imaging a team of researchers from the Max Born Institute in Berlin, in collaboration with colleagues from Milan and Padova, has been able to make snapshots of coupled Rydberg orbitals evolving in time during an ultrafast autoionization process. Electronic autoionization is a process in which multiple electrons in an excited atom or molecule rearrange in order to "kick out" one of them. Notwithstanding its long research history, the theoretical description of this phenomenon still meets with significant challenges, especially in cases where several electronic autoionizing resonances overlap. These challenges are fundamental, since most of the theories approach the inherently time-dependent autoionization process from an energy-domain perspective, thanks to the prevailing experimental information that is collected in the energy domain. However, recent advances in ultrafast laser spectroscopy and, especially, the generation of ultrashort XUV pulses, allowed the researchers to look at autoionization in nitrogen molecules on its natural time scale. In a recent publication, the experimental team has used a newly constructed XUV time delay compensating monochromator beamline to excite one of the complex autoionizing resonances in a nitrogen molecule. In the femtosecond pump-probe experiment, a second time-delayed infrared (IR) laser pulse was able remove the electron from the excited orbitals before the autoionization had a chance to take place, i.e. at a timescale of less than 15 fs. The resulting photoelectrons were detected using a Velocity Map Imaging spectrometer, which delivers both energy- and angular-resolved distributions of photoelectrons. The analysis of the angular distributions, which gives direct information about the shape of the involved electronic orbitals, showed that the photoelectron emission angles change within the lifetime of the resonance. Immediately after the excitation, the emission is more or less isotropic, i.e. the electrons are emitted with equal probability in all directions. However, with increasing pump-probe time delay, the electrons more and more tend to fly out in the direction of the laser light polarization. This observation can only be understood, if one assumes that two different electronic states with substantially different lifetimes are simultaneously probed by the IR pulse. The existence of these two states was indeed predicted by theory more than 30 years ago. The present experiment gives the first confirmation of this old prediction. The two overlapping electronic states with long and short lifetimes observed by the team suggest a role for the phenomenon of interference stabilization, previously suggested in the field of laser-dressed atoms and in atomic Rydberg physics. In the framework of this theory two overlapping resonances influence each other in such way that one of the two becomes stabilized at the expense of the other. Quantum interferences lead to a counterintuitive effect: the stronger the resonances interact, the more one of them is stabilized. The present work draws parallels between these interference phenomena in laser-dressed atoms and in molecular autoionization. Further experimental and theoretical research will shed light on how general this phenomenon is and will help to achieve a new level of understanding of autoionization dynamics. With the monsoon fast approaching, the landslide risk in Nepal remains high a year after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake that killed more than 8,000 people, according to a University of Michigan-led research team. The April 25, 2015, earthquake struck central Nepal and was followed two weeks later by a magnitude-7.2 aftershock. Both events produced strong ground shaking in the steep terrain of the Himalaya Mountains, causing widespread landsliding. In the past year, the U-M-led team has mapped 22,000 landslides caused by the Nepal earthquakes. The maps will be used to identify areas of continued high landslide risk, said Marin Clark, a U-M geomorphologist and geophysicist who studies tectonic movements in the Himalayas and who is an expert on landslides triggered by earthquakes. Hillsides stripped of vegetation by earthquake-generated landslides become hotspots for further landsliding during summer monsoon rainstorms, said Clark, an associate professor in the U-M Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. "While last year's monsoon was relatively mild, concern is high over what to expect this summer, if we were to have a normal or stronger-than-typical monsoon," Clark said. "We're releasing this new landslide inventory in time for the upcoming monsoon season so that government officials and aid organizations can use it to help a country that's still recovering from last year's disaster." With funding from the National Science Foundation, Clark and her colleagues have been studying the effects of last year's Nepal earthquakes on the landscape by analyzing where and why the landslides occurred. They used drones during the 2015 field season to help locate and map the landslides. Clark's collaborators on the study include Dimitrios Zekkos of the U-M College of Engineering and Joshua West of the University of Southern California. U-M graduate students Julie Bateman and Will Greenwood participated in the fall fieldwork, and undergraduate student Kevin Roback developed the digital landslide inventory. The highest density of Nepal landsliding, and therefore the location of highest ongoing risk, is concentrated in four large river valleys, one of which contains the main road from Nepal to China, Clark said. During the 2015 field season, the researchers also documented evidence of monsoon-related debris flows resulting from earthquake landslides. Debris flows are fast-moving mixtures of water, soil and rock. In Nepal following last year's earthquakes, debris flows impacted villages and temporarily blocked rivers, creating a flood risk. U-M graduate students will head back to Nepal next month to conduct additional fieldwork. Clark will return with a team of faculty researchers and students in the fall and is coordinating with groups from Switzerland and Germany. The landslide inventory and a related research article will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Tiny units of matter and chemistry that they are, atoms constitute the entire universe. Some rare atoms can store quantum information, an important phenomenon for scientists in their ongoing quest for a quantum Internet. New research from UC Santa Barbara scientists and their Dutch colleagues exploits a system that has the potential to transfer optical quantum information to a locally stored solid-state quantum format, a requirement of quantum communication. The team's findings appear in the journal Nature Photonics. "Our research aims at creating a quantum analog of current fiber optic technology in which light is used to transfer classical information -- bits with values zero or one -- between computers," said author Dirk Bouwmeester, a professor in UCSB's Department of Physics. "The rare earth atoms we're studying can store the superpositions of zero and one used in quantum computation. In addition, the light by which we communicate with these atoms can also store quantum information." Atoms are each composed of a nucleus typically surrounded by inner shells full of electrons and often have a partially filled outer electron shell. The optical and chemical properties of the atoms are mainly determined by the electrons in the outer shell. Rare earth atoms such as erbium and ytterbium have the opposite composition: a partially filled inner shell surrounded by filled outer shells. This special configuration is what enables these atoms to store quantum information. However, the unique composition of rare earth atoms leads to electronic transitions so well shielded from the surrounding atoms that optical interactions are extremely weak. Even when implanted in a host material, these atoms maintain those shielded transitions, which in principle can be addressed optically in order to store and retrieve quantum information. advertisement Bouwmeester collaborated with John Bowers, a professor in UCSB's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and investigators at Leiden University in the Netherlands to strengthen these weak interactions by implanting ytterbium into ultra-high-quality optical storage rings on a silicon chip. "The presence of the high-quality optical ring resonator -- even if no light is injected -- changes the fundamental optical properties of the embedded atoms, which leads to an order of magnitude increase in optical interaction strength with the ytterbium," Bouwmeester said. "This increase, known as the Purcell effect, has an intricate dependence on the geometry of the optical light confinement." The team's findings indicate that new samples currently under development at UCSB can enable optical communication to a single ytterbium atom inside optical circuits on a silicon chip, a phenomenon of significant interest for quantum information storage. The experiments also explore the way in which the Purcell effect enhances optical interaction with an ensemble of a few hundred rare earth atoms. The grouping itself has interesting collective properties that can also be explored for the storage of quantum information. Key is an effect called a photon echo, the result of two distinct light pulses, the first of which causes atoms in ytterbium to become partially excited. "The first light pulse creates a set of atoms we 'talk' to in a specific state and we call that state 'in phase' because all the atoms are created at the same time by this optical pulse," Bouwmeester explained. "However, the individual atoms have slightly different frequencies because of residual coupling to neighboring atoms, which affects their time evolution and causes decoherence in the system." Decoherence is the inability to keep track of how the system evolves in all its details. "The trick is that the second light pulse changes the state of the system so that it evolves backwards, causing the atoms to return to the initial phase," he continued. "This makes everything coherent and causes the atoms to collectively emit the light they absorbed from the first pulse." The strength of the photon echo contains important information about the fundamental properties of the ytterbium in the host material. "By analyzing the strength of these photon echoes, we are learning about the fundamental interactions of ytterbium with its surroundings," Bouwmeester said. "Now we're working on strengthening the Purcell effect by making the storage rings we use smaller and smaller." According to Bouwmeester, quantum computation needs to be compatible with optical communication for information to be shared and transmitted. "Our ultimate goal is to be able to communicate to a single ytterbium atom; then we can start transferring the quantum state of a single photon to a single ytterbium atom," he added. "Coupling the quantum state of a photon to a quantum solid state is essential for the existence of a quantum Internet." TV channels are putting up ad campaigns in an attempt to support their respective political parties. (Photo: PTI) Chennai: Spicing up shows with memes from social media, comic clips from Tamil movies and innovative advertisements, TV channels supporting various political parties, including ruling AIADMK and DMK have turned a key campaign tool in Tamil Nadu for the May 16 assembly elections. The channels are busy telecasting attacks on each other while showcasing achievements and poll promises of the parties. Jaya Plus TV programme "Nalla Sollrangayya Detailu," anchored by noted Tamil comedian Singamuthu, ridicules DMK and other political parties in the actor's own inimitable style while recalling the "achievements" of the AIADMK regime. Attacking DMK, he asks if the Karunanidhi-led party implemented its poll promises like land to the landless when it assumed power in 2006. Mimicking Vijayakanth, he asks if it was difficult for the DMDK chief and Chief Ministerial candidate of the DMDK-PWF combine to communicate clearly, how come he could aspire for the top job in the State. He says "in one form or the other" all the schemes of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa (like free mixies, grinders) has reached all households. The channel also carries regular promotional programmes like "My Leader" highlighting AIADMK's welfare schemes which includes low-cost Amma Canteen food chain with catchy phrases like "Sonnathayum Seithom Sollathathayum Seithom" (We delivered what we promised and what we had not promised.) If the pro-ruling party channel has this catch phrase, rivals have come up with a counter. TV channels like Sun News aired advertisements captioned 'Sonneengale, Senjeengala' (You promised, did you deliver?) targeting the AIADMK. The ruling party took exception to this and has made a representation to the Chief Electoral Officer to stop its airing. It had claimed that the advertisements violated the election code and the EC has said it would look into it. However, DMK leaders like M K Stalin continue to pose the same question in their campaign trail. "Sonnangale Senjangala," (They promised, did they deliver?) Interestingly, Sun News channel also mixes up, intersperses the speeches of leaders made on different occasions, giving it a hilarious effect targeting the ruling party. For instance, it shows a clipping in which Jayalalithaa says she brings welfare schemes after thorough thinking (Yosithu Yosithu). Next comes TNCC Chief Elangovan's quip "Yosithu Yosithu Parkiren Ondrun Puriyavillai" (I think repeatedly I do not understand anything.) Pro-DMK Kalaignar TV and Kalaignar Seithigal channels flood viewers with the a string of "achievements" of the previous DMK regime. For example,it chronicled how Karunanidhi gave 1,78,880 acre surplus land from landlords to 1,37,236 landless farmers by enacting the Land Ceiling Act in 1970. Makkal TV,a pro-PMK channel, hits hard at rivals, including AIADMK, DMK and DMDK. It also gives repartees to comments of rival leaders through comical quips from Tamil movies. Also, most channels including Makkal TV invariably have memes from social media ridiculing leaders for their specific comments. Makkal TV has hard hitting serious programming against rivals. For instance, it cited the Sarkaria Commission indictments against Karunanidhi in a recent show and went on to chronicle corruption allegations against Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Showing a DMDK chief Vijayakant's difficult-to- comprehend comments, the channel juxtaposes it with PMK chief Ministerial candidate Anbumani Ramadoss's distinctive promise for good governance and asks "who will be your choice?" Pro-DMDK Captain TV and Captain News channels beams programmes with all guns blazing against AIADMK, DMK and other rivals through similar shows. The channels make it a point to repeat-telecast the campaigns of their leaders, besides doing live broadcast of election rallies. Created by Canadian-American science writer/editor Dan Hogan and his wife Michele Hogan in December 1995, ScienceDaily features news from hundreds of contributing organizations worldwide. ScienceDaily's main office is in Rockville, Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C., and the web site is hosted on servers provided by Amazon.com. Dan has served as the senior science editor of The New Book of Knowledge, a 21-volume encyclopedia for elementary and middle-school students published by the educational division of Grolier Publishing in Bethel, Connecticut. He has also been managing editor of Current Science, a biweekly science news magazine for junior high school students published by the Weekly Reader Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut; science writer at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine; science information officer at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario; and reporter and later copy editor for the Kingston Whig-Standard -- Canada's oldest daily newspaper. In addition, Dan has freelanced for Chemistry magazine, a national publication for students, professional chemists, and anyone interested in learning more about the chemical sciences, published by the American Chemical Society. In April 2000, Dan joined the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, first as Senior Science Internet Specialist for the Office of Science Education at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Later, he became Web Manager for the Office of Communications and Public Liaison at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Michele has most recently served as an eighth-grade science teacher at North Bethesda Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland. Previously, she taught fifth grade at Stone Mill Elementary School in North Potomac, Maryland; and earlier in Connecticut, she taught at Schaghticoke Middle School in New Milford and at Farmingville Elementary School in Ridgefield. She has also been education reporter for The Newtown Bee, one of the nation's few remaining independent weekly newspapers. Michele has served as a judge for annual educational software competitions at the national level sponsored by the Educational Press Association of America (EdPress). She has also judged several national middle school essay contests -- organized by the Weekly Reader Corporation's sister company, Lifetime Learning Systems. In 1998, she judged an essay contest in conjunction with HBO's award-winning "From the Earth to the Moon" television mini-series, directed by Tom Hanks. In 1999, she judged an essay contest in conjunction with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on the question: "How would you spend America's tax dollars?". Michele's specialization is in science education, although she has taught a variety of subjects including social studies and language arts. She also has a background in business education, as a former manager for Junior Achievement in Kingston, and in recreational and competitive sailing. Theres a couple of characters Jordan Luck would love you to meet. The Jordan Luck Band debut album Not Only....But Also is set for release next Friday, and its the first time the front man has recorded since The Exponents. Jersey, a brown capuchin monkey, was kept as a house pet for nine years ... and it nearly ruined him. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary A family in Indiana purchased him when he was just 3 days old, through a breeder called Rainbow Primates, Kari Bagnall, founder of Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Florida, told The Dodo. Jersey became aggressive due to the stress of being kept in captivity, Bagnall said, to the point that his family moved him to the garage. Lonely and bored, Jersey started to hurt himself. He chewed off his own toes, Bagnall said, and began nibbling at his own hands. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary Capuchin monkeys are intelligent animals who typically live in groups in the wild, and thus require a fair amount of stimulation - bored capuchins can easily become destructive toward others as well as themselves when in captivity. Jersey's self-harm and aggressive behavior is likely what caused his family to bring him to the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky. From there, Jersey was sent to Jungle Friends, which would become her permanent home, Bagnall said. When Jersey arrived at Jungle Friends, his hands and feet were bound together, with a cone on his head. These were measures taken by the Primate Rescue Center to prevent Jersey from hurting himself any further. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary "Even then, he was still attacking his toes and biting [them] off," Bagnall said. Jersey had to be put on many drugs, including Prozac, to try and stop his self-mutilating, Bagnall said. One of his legs in particular was in terrible shape. Dodo Shows Dodo Heroes Woman Devotes Her Life To The Stray Dogs Of Bali Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary "He started with his self-mutilation in boredom as a pet," Bagnall said. "But then, his leg was dying and I think that's why he was attacking it more than anything." In other words, blood flow stopped circulating to the limb. After seeking medical advice and looking into other options, including skin grafts, Bagnall felt that an amputation was be the best course of action to take in order for Jersey to lead a comfortable, pain-free life. However, Bagnall's decision was met with backlash from veterinarians unwilling to do the procedure. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary "We had vets who didn't want to do it and said that Jersey should be euthanized," Bagnall said. "It's like this whole idea of animals ... if they can't be exactly as they're supposed to be, then kill them. And it's crazy." She also said former staffers at the sanctuary felt the same way, deeming the surgery too expensive and a waste of time that could be spent elsewhere. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary "That kind of attitude is not the sanctuary's attitude," Bagnall said. "Each individual at Jungle Friends deserves the chance to live." Bagnall was finally able to find a veterinarian willing to do the the surgery with the help of private donations to fund the procedure. Jersey lost his right leg and part of his left foot, both of which had become necrotic. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary "I never found a smile, I never saw a play face or him be happy at all, until the day we had his leg amputated," Bagnall said. "That day after the surgery, I got a big play face from him. He was like a different monkey." Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary Today, Jersey runs and plays just like any other monkey at the sanctuary. He's also found a special someone to share his life with at his forever home - another capuchin named Elizabeth. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary The two met during Jersey's stay at the sanctuary's clinic during his post-surgery recovery. Elizabeth was sick from an infection, and Bagnall said she believed the female monkey wasn't going to make it. But then she found a friend, and more, in Jersey. "They started lip-smacking to each other and chatting to each other and we thought 'Hmm, this might work out.'" The two of them have been inseparable ever since. "We were really glad Jersey ended up taking a liking to her. They've been living together since he had his amputation," Bagnall said. "It was love at first sight." Want to help Jungle Friends continue doing good work? Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary Consider making a donation here or sponsoring a monkey here. Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary A mule now named Marlin almost didn't have the sweet life he has now. "Marlin's picture showed up on my computer just before Christmas of 2010," Ann Firestone, president of Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue in New Hampshire, told The Dodo. "He was at an auction barn in Pennsylvania, scheduled to ship to slaughter on Christmas Eve. One look into his soulful eyes in the picture was all it took." Firestone immediately made a decision to save this anonymous mule's life. Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue "I called the auction house, put his $500 'bail' on the credit card and arranged his transportation," she said. "It is one of the best decisions I've ever made." Marlin, who was 25 years old at the time, came to live at the farm where other rescued donkeys and mules get another chance at life, often after lives of hard labor. "When he arrived at the farm I told him he would be safe from now on and would never leave," Firestone said. The former work mule is now Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue's official mascot. Not only that, but he's also formed a friendship with a human family unlike any he's ever had before. Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Guy Falls In Love With His Little Meatball Of A Foster Dog Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue "At the time I adopted him I did not realize that just because an animal was trained to pull equipment, or drive, that he would know how to behave under saddle," Firestone said. "Marlin just didn't understand what was being asked." But he soon proved that he could learn. Firestone signed Marlin up for riding lessons. "He and I went to a nearby indoor arena once a week for the winter. He was a quick learner," she said. "By spring he was ready to hit the trails." Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue Firestone's niece Lily, who was 15 when Marlin was rescued, has formed a special friendship with the mule. "He has been ridden almost exclusively by my niece Lily," Firestone said. "He loves her and she adores him. They have a very special bond." Firestone takes Marlin to ride at one of his favorite places once a year: the beach. Marlin and his rescued friends love their leisurely walks along the sand. "It's so much fun to ride on the beach and the animals love to roll in the sand at ride's end," she said. Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue Associate Professor | College of Distance Education Professor Sexton began teaching at the U.S. Naval War College in 2001 as a military professor in the National Security Decision Making Department. Upon retiring from the military in 2005, she taught as an adjunct professor for the College of Distance Education (CDE) where she taught over 850 students online before returning to campus as a civilian CDE professor in 2014. In 2018, Professor Sexton was named the program manager for online programs and is responsible for the Naval Command and Staff and electives online programs. Managing Editor | Naval War College Press Robert Ayer is the Naval War College Press Managing Editor. He has taught extensively and held administrative positions at the Coast Guard Academy. While at Defense Security Service and the Food and Drug Administration, he served as a technical writing editor. On active duty, he served as a deck watch officer on Coast Guard Cutter (CGC) Vigilant (WMEC 617) and subsequently as commanding officer on CGC Point Knoll (WPB 82364). He earned a master of arts in law and diplomacy, and a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1979. Different strains of pot are displayed for sale at a marijuana dispensary in Denver in 2013. (Brennan Linsley/AP) Normally, when a company based in one state wants to sell products in another state, it starts calling truckers. For Strainz, a Las Vegas marijuana company, it was more complicated. By early 2015, Strainzs owners knew they wanted to expand to Colorado and Washington, the states with the most normalized marijuana markets. Despite state laws that allow the sale of marijuana, it remains a federal criminal offense to ship it across state lines. And as Nevada residents, the husband-and-wife co-founders werent eligible to apply for business licenses in either state. The Hempel familys strategy for Strainz is one that marijuana companies are pursuing to build a national presence. Strainz, which recently announced that it has raised $8 million in funding, formed partnerships with the parent company of Zoots, a Seattle edibles maker, and Bronnor, a Colorado manufacturer. The factory in Washington that makes Zoots edibles has started making Strainz products, and if all goes as planned, in the coming months Strainz and Zoots products will be rolling out of the Bronnor factory in Denver and one the Hempel family partly owns in northern Nevada. The arrangement required Bronnor to build the factory in Denver, but Strainz chief executive Hugh Hempel shrugged off the expense with a hint at the profits in store. Financially its not a hard thing to justify a $4 million facility in a reasonably mature market, he said. [More and more doctors want to make marijuana legal] The market potential is enormous. In 2015, U.S. customers bought $5.4 billion worth of legal marijuana products, billions more than they spent on ketchup, salsa, mayonnaise, mustard and hot sauce combined. But while a few big brands dominate each of those condiment markets, the nascent legal marijuana industry comprises thousands of smaller businesses. For the companies that want their brands to grow into the industrys Heinz or Tabasco, expansion is imperative. Colorado and Washington voters legalized recreational marijuana in November 2012. The following August, then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole released eight priorities for federal marijuana enforcement. They include no distribution to minors and no contact between the industry and organized crime. And then this one, which complicates multi-state growth for entrepreneurs: preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states. Since the Cole memo, pot companies that follow state laws have largely been able to operate unbothered by the Justice Department. Marijuana companies that sell products in more than one state may represent only a small fraction of the U.S. pot industry, but they are among the most ambitious players in the industry. Obviously all the conduct involved is criminal under federal law, said Sam Kamin, a law professor at the University of Denver, and this shell game does nothing to change that. The companies involved want to grow without drawing attention from the federal government. But conditions that have led to multi-state partnerships could be irrelevant after Election Day. The remaining presidential candidates have expressed varying degrees of comfort with the state-level experiments. But they are all hazier on the policy questions that surround federal legalization. Pressure is likely to grow this year as California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Arizona and perhaps other states are expected to vote on full legalization, while several others will probably vote on medical use. The next presidential administration, then, will have immense power to shape the industry. It could maintain the current hands-off approach or tear up the Cole memo and enforce federal law. For the moment, legal marijuana companies are too consumed by the state and local laws that are enforced to worry about federal ones that arent. The rules weigh heavily on companies that have a presence in more than one state because every state with a legal marijuana industry has its own laws on matters as varied as packaging, dosages in edibles (if they allow edibles) and dispensary security. California is the largest legal medical marijuana market in the country, with more than $1 billion in sales last year, but some companies have stayed away because the state is a patchwork of local rules and enforcement priorities. For example, the Bay Area cities of Berkeley, San Francisco and San Jose each has its own packaging requirements for medical marijuana. The Colorado company Dixie Brands has focused on Western states where recreational use is legal or could be soon. To Dixie, a large potential medical-marijuana market such as New York is less attractive because it can be difficult even for patients with severe conditions to access the drug. The five manufacturers in New York are fighting over 200 patients, Dixie chief executive Tripp Keber said. New York is more attractive to Vireo Health, a company that calls its products pharmaceutical-grade cannabis-derived medicine. CEO Kyle Kingsley, also a physician, would ultimately like to see Vireo products incorporated into mainstream medical practice and regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Vireo operates in New York and Minnesota, two states with medical-marijuana laws tightly focused on patients with a legitimate medical need. Neither state, for example, allows dispensaries to sell products designed for smoking. (Vireos manufactured products are vaporized or swallowed.) More than 80 percent of Americans support medical marijuana in some form. Kingsley said that as more conservative states adopt medical marijuana laws, theyll find Vireo, which has raised $20 million in funding, a more palatable company than those that also have recreational businesses. Pennsylvania, which became the 24th state to legalize medical marijuana this month, will not allow smokeable products. Most states start pretty modestly and then about 18 months in you get an upward increase in patient participation, Kingsley said. In Colorado, California and Washington, it really has been a free-for-all. (Vireo owns both its New York and Minnesota businesses but is seeking partners to expand into new states.) Not all of the multi-state partnerships are as complex as Strainzs three-state strategy. More typically, a company might franchise its brand and intellectual property to a partner in another state that follows the same protocols, much like a McDonalds restaurant thats owned by a franchise company is indistinguishable to one owned by the corporation. Tom Downey, a lawyer at the Denver firm Ireland Stapleton, suggested that some of these deals might be more likely to attract scrutiny than others. The place where people will get in trouble is if its masked as a franchise but its really [one company] controlling everything, Downey said. The federal government will say this is a securities issue. MoS Ram Kripal Yadav and Apna Da MP Anupriya Patel at Parliament house on the first day of the second part of the budget session in New Delh. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Against the backdrop of a controversy surrounding M.S. Dhoni, an ally of ruling NDA on Monday suggested in Lok Sabha that celebrities should not endorse a product blindly by becoming the brand ambassador. The problem is that we have celebrity endorsements. In our country, people just not love and admire celebrities but they worship them and perceive them as Gods and role models, said Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal. Citing protests by home-buyers against property developers in the NCR region, she said when a celebrity is endorsing a product or a brand, peoples faith is strengthened. Celebrities may not have any intent to harm anyone, but because they are promoting a brand they tend to unintentionally or intentionally dictate consumer choices. That is why I feel that they do have a moral obligation, she said. Her comments came against the backdrop of a controversy surrounding Dhonis endorsement of a builder who is facing attack for delaying delivery of flats in Noida. Dhoni has since quit as the company's brand ambassador. Patel expressed concern that people here have been facing this problem for almost three years wherein the developers and builders are delaying the handing over of possession for three to four years and in certain cases even for longer periods. The Apna Dal MP appealed to the government to implement as soon as possible the Real Estate Act, recently passed by Parliament, to help home buyers. For a novelist who has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lydia Millet is not as well known as she deserves to be. Its not for lack of productivity: In the past two decades, Millet has published 10 works of literary fiction and three books for young adults. The obstacle to broader popularity is most likely her category-defying voice, a slippery blend of lyricism and absurdist humor. She asks profound philosophical questions, yet has a direct, confiding style that doesnt broadcast high seriousness; shes not above titling a novel George Bush, Dark Prince of Love (2000). Her ambitious new novel, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, is part fast-paced thriller, part quiet meditation on the nature of God. If those two genres dont quite seem to mesh well, setting up house in such disjunctions is what Millet does best. "Sweet Lamb of Heaven" by Lydia Millet. (Norton) When Anna, a professor married to Ned, a ruthless businessman, gives birth, she begins to hear voices: a constant banter that doesnt seem to issue from her daughters mouth, yet stops when the baby sleeps. Anna sees an ENT and a neurologist. No answers there. She isnt insane and doesnt consider herself a likely candidate for communication with the Almighty. My brains a little above average, according to standard aptitude tests, but not far above, this acerbic narrator reports. Whatever intelligence I have isnt rated for the ornate subtlety of the divine. However, shes handy with a search engine and learns that her voice delivers snippets from sources as diverse as the Bible, Emily Dickinson, Woody Guthrie, Greek mythology, Marine Corps marching songs and Sanskrit meditation chants. As soon as her daughter says her first word, the voice abruptly stops. But Anna develops a more urgent problem. She has fled her loveless marriage and is hiding with her now 6-year-old daughter at a seedy Maine hotel. Ned tracks her down, demanding that they return to Alaska to play-act adorable nuclear family as he launches his political career. Ned is either a normal old sociopath with excellent private detectives or a demon, because he seems to be able to control Annas dreams. It becomes increasingly clear that this Bible-toting, clean-living conservative candidate is trying to kill her. Moreover, Anna discovers that the guests at the motel have converged on this unlikely spot in winter for a reason: They all hear voices. They are, in fact, an ad hoc support group for those tuned to the mystery voiceover channel. The other guests learned about the group online, but Anna did not. So how did she wind up there? The hotels proprietor suggests that maybe migration was encoded in her genes, as it is for salmon, or the dung beetles that use the Milky Way for orientation. As well as being a novelist, Millet holds a degree in environmental policy and works for the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization focused on protecting endangered species. She shares with Barbara Kingsolver a passionate worry about wildlifes future: Her 2012 novel Magnificence features a bizarre museum of taxidermied extinct animals, and the mermaids in her Mermaids in Paradise (2014) are the last of their kind. [Review: Mermaids in Paradise, by Lydia Millet] In Sweet Lamb of Heaven, we learn that one motel guest began to hear the voices when caring for the abused captive orca whales at SeaWorld. Another guest, a botanist, attributes the voices to a certain genus of aspen tree, while another heard the voice of God from a Pomeranian! Or maybe a shih tzu. She showed us a picture on her phone. She used to carry him around in a Fendi handbag. Lydia Millet (Jade Beall) One support group member insists that human speech is just one aspect of the deep language undergirding all of life: It is language. The same kind that makes your body work without you telling it to. You know how the brain runs your kidneys, say, or tells an embryo how to grow in a pregnant woman? Whats the difference between that kind of implicit, like, limbic OS for our biology and for the biology of all animals and just a miracle? Of course, the young doctor proposing that mystical explanation is bipolar and suicidal; another guest enjoys a tad too much cocaine. But Anna grows to believe that God and evolution are one and the same, and that those who hear the voice are simply more empathetic and sensitive to the world that had evolved over millions of years, the mass of living things through which all forms of intelligence cycle . . . the broad, branching tree of evolution that was history and biology and all kinds of astonishing bodies full of ancient knowledge. Sweet Lamb of Heaven is, in short, a book that Richard Dawkins would enjoy immensely. Millet deserves to be celebrated for staking out territory in which the novel can ruminate about current scientific developments. But that makes her work sound dry or polemical, which it is decidedly not. Its exuberant and playful. That Millet can smuggle her original insights into a structure featuring a rollicking kidnapping plot and deliciously well-drawn characters makes her achievement even more remarkable. Lisa Zeidners most recent novel is Love Bomb. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Rutgers University at Camden. Q: About three years ago, we had what I think is a Formica countertop installed in our laundry room. Last year, after guests used the room, I found white stains by the sink. Perhaps it was from spilled bleach or an iron. How can I restore the counters look? Potomac A: Pat Roberts, who answers technical questions for Formica (formica.com), looked at the picture you sent and confirmed that your countertop is laminate of some type, although there is no way to know the brand just from a photograph. The white marks are from a chemical spill, he said. It could be bleach, an oxygen-bleach product or even drain cleaner. Anything strongly acidic or caustic, Roberts said. Unfortunately, once this kind of damage happens, there is no solution other than covering the marks (perhaps with a mat or doily), painting the countertop or replacing it. Its because of how laminate is made, Roberts said. Manufacturers fuse a clear cap sheet to a paper layer that has the decorative design. Spills left for a long time can seep through the cap sheet and ruin the decorative layer. But the cap remains mostly intact, so there is no way to touch up the color. If you want to try paint, options include Daich SpreadStone ($125 at Home Depot for a kit that covers 30 to 40 square feet) and Rust-Oleum Transformations Small Countertop Kit ($148 at Home Depot for 30 square feet). This old gumball machine releases more than one gumball after a penny is inserted. A reader wants to know where to take it to be repaired. (Reader photo) However, a painted countertop wont look exactly the same as a laminate countertop. Laminate is the least expensive countertop option, so you might want to just replace it, especially if the damaged countertop is the only one in the room or if you are able to find replacement laminate that matches, saving you from having to replace several countertops. There is no set time for styles to stay available, Roberts said; that is up to Formica. If you do contact the original installer, you may discover that the product wasnt actually made by Formica after all. Although many companies make laminates, Formica was an early leader, so the brand name is often used in a generic sense. Laminate countertops are sold in 4-, 6-, 8- and 10-foot lengths at Home Depot and Lowes for $45 to about $190. But to use these, you need to remove the old countertop and install the new one yourself, and you are limited to a handful of color options. For a much bigger selection, order a custom laminate countertop from a store that specializes in kitchen design or even from a big-box store. Home Depot charges $8 a square foot to remove and cart away an old countertop and $29, $31 or $35 a square foot, depending on the style, to fabricate and install a replacement. I have a gumball machine that was my grandmothers and Id very much like to keep it in the family. But it isnt working. The knob that releases a gumball does not stop at one after a penny is inserted. Where can I go to have this gumball machine restored? Leesburg A couple in the District, Ken and Jackie Durham, are longtime collectors and dealers of slot machines, vending machines and more, including gumball machines, through their website, gameroomantiques.com. Ken Durham looked at the picture you sent and identified yours as a 1940s Victor Topper. He does not repair gumball machines, however, and, unlike for some slot machines, he has no repair manual for them. However, he recommended contacting A1 Gumballs/A1 Vending in North Carolina (919-494-1322; rst12306@msn.com), where owner Scott Tidball has more than 5,000 gumball machines and a huge collection of parts. His collection is reportedly the largest in the world. Tidball said by email that he should be able to fix your machine for less than $50. We do that all the time, he wrote. He suggested sending just the coin mechanism. Search how to take apart your gumball machine on YouTube, and you can find a video, although the process might be a little different with yours, depending on the model shown. The address is 12 Water St., Franklinton, N.C. 27525. Have a problem in your home? Send questions to localliving@washpost.com . Put How To in the subject line, tell us where you live and try to include a photo. 1. No purchase necessary. 2. The Post Hunt begins and ends on Sunday, May 22, 2016, and will be conducted rain or shine. 3. 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By that I mean those women and men, girls and boys whose appearance doesnt fit neatly into traditional male and female boxes or restrooms. To be blunt: It has been cruel. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has been quick to blame outsiders, notably the PC elite and the media, for smearing our state over the HB2 debacle, which by some estimates could cost the states economy hundreds of millions of dollars. But thats not all that concerns North Carolina native Jamie Lamkin, 50, a former librarian, who said the new law invites discrimination and harassment against women like herself and her daughter. Because of her height (5-foot-10), hair (short) and build (she calls it square), Jamie has been called sir more often than she can recall even when she has worn a dress. Its happened to me my whole life, she said with a sigh. Double down on that for her 15-year-old daughter, Sofie, who has short spiky hair and sports fuzzy legs; shes often mistaken for a boy. Women like Jamie and Sofie are likely to be the most frequent victims of the law. People have all these misconceptions about gender, a very narrow view of what a boy or girl should look like, Jamie said. She recently posted on Facebook that she has seen reports of folks being questioned about their gender identity, simply being looked at funny, or being thrown out of places because they dont match a norm for the bathroom theyre entering. I sat down to talk with the two women in their Chapel Hill townhouse last week and got quite an earful. Jamie started off by talking about a deeply unsettling visit to a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in Durham recently: We had our milk and doughnuts, and I went to the bathroom, a single-use restroom that said, Women. As I was walking out, and Sofie was about to go in, this lady stopped her, called her sir and told her she was going to the wrong restroom. Thats when this Mama Bear pretty much lost it. Shes not transgender. Shes a girl. Just because she has short hair, wears jeans and T-shirts and doesnt have that girly look, they question my childs gender. North Carolina natives Jamie Lamkin, 50, and her daughter Sophie, 15, are worried about their safety when using public restrooms. Both are female and identify as female but are often mistaken for male. ( Steven Petrow/for The Washington Post) Sofie smiled awkwardly as she listened to her mom tell the story, adding that many people seem to think girls should be wearing skirts and dresses and [carrying] a little handbag. Since the passage of HB2 last month, Jamie said, It all feels different now. Fearing the proliferation of self-appointed restroom gender monitors, she said, Ive had to have a serious conversation with Sofie about safety entering the womens bathroom. I told her if anyone questioned who she was, to immediately fetch me. [Are public-restroom monitors and birth-certificate checks in out future?] Jamies friend Kathleen Roose, a registered nurse, shows her support on Facebook: Without [diminishing] the very real discrimination and danger trans people are facing, HB2 also constitutes a way to police gender conformance in people who do identify with their chromosomal sex but dont conform with normative gender expression. In fact, gender nonconforming tweens and teens, such as Sofie, outnumbered trans youth by nearly 2 to 1 in a study done of Los Angeles-area foster youth by Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The statistics showing relatively high prevalence of gender nonconformity mean that [HB2] puts more youth at risk than many realize, explained Gary Gates, an expert in LGBT demographic and policy issues. Its a Catch-22 for these kids. Trying to use the bathroom can result in verbal and physical assault while avoiding bathrooms can bring health problems like urinary tract and kidney infections. As you can tell, my sympathies lie with those who are judged and discriminated against on the basis of their appearance. I know just how hurtful these kinds of comments are. When I was in my mid-teens, my grandmother hated my shoulder-length hair (which I was convinced made me look like David Cassidy or James Taylor), telling me harshly, You look like a girl. I tried to explain that I looked like a boy with long hair, but no, I had to fit into either the boy box or the girl box. Neighborhood boys thought much the same, using that as an excuse to beat me up and call me various slurs. A transgender woman gathers like-minded North Carolinians in Charlotte to protest the state's controversial new law that restricts transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds with their chosen gender. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post) At the same time, I also understand that most Americans havent thought much about gender identity, and such out-of-the-box thinking is new and, to some, deeply unsettling. Take Lee Tart, a North Carolina farmer, who told the Raleigh News and Observer that he didnt think he had ever met a transgender person. When asked what the term meant to him, he described a man all dolled up with makeup and clothes. Once he learned more, he immediately worried about some guy dressing up who might put his daughters in jeopardy. Its that lack of familiarity and understanding that defines the challenge ahead. In many respects, the United States has come a long way since my long-haired days. Facebook now allows users to add their own gender, so maybe we are getting accustomed to living out of the box. Unless, as Jamie cautions, youre going to the bathroom. Then you do have to fit into one of those little boxes. Agree or disagree with my advice? Let me know in the comments section below. Join Petrow for a live online chat Tuesday, May 10, at 1 p.m., at live.washingtonpost.com Email questions to stevenpetrow@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @stevenpetrow. Wynwood Walls in Miami, one of the stops on the friends America in a Day trip. (Wilfredo Lee/AP) For all you kids twiddling your thumbs in math class, wondering when youll ever use this stuff in real life, a pair of George Mason University students have two-squared words for you: America in a Day. Math majors Laura Maldonado, a junior, and Kathleen McLean, a senior, devised math models to help them plot day trips to cities across the country. Their calculations have led them to Miami and Seattle, where they squeezed a whirlwind of sightseeing into one calendar day. Next up: Boston. We used a real-world network model, said Kathleen, who plans to pursue an advanced degree in engineering. Its not like, Jimmy goes to the market to get a watermelon. Added Laura, who hopes to teach high school math after graduation, Dont let the idea of a mathematical model scare you. The longtime friends hatched the idea of America in a Day at the start of spring break last March. Neither had vacation plans, so they punched in some numbers and fiddled with a handful of navigational points. Four hours later, they had two plane tickets to Miami. George Mason University students Kathleen McLean, left, and Laura Maldonado devised math models to help plot day trips to U.S. cities. (Kathleen McLean) Miami was the cheapest, Kathleen said. We mapped out how many places we could go to. At the recent Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, they presented the sample problem that inspired their adventure in math and travel: You have one day to go to Miami. Arrive at 9 a.m. and need to leave the airport, go to Bayside Marketplace, the Miami Design District, and Wynwood Walls all before 12. How can we do this? They called upon geometry and optimization for the answer. Technically, each time we map out our travels we have created a small linear programming problem and are trying to solve a network model, they posted on their blog. As cash-strapped students, they set a budget of $250, including airfare. (They raised the limit for the Seattle trip.) They compared the cost and expediency of different modes of transportation, such as bus, taxi, bikes and legs. They scoured Yelp for restaurant reviews and prices. For activities (some free), they perused Instagram and travel blogs. To maximize their on-the-ground time, they chose flights that departed early in the morning and returned late at night. To avoid wasteful transits, they determined the shortest distance between sites and diagrammed their route a scalene triangle hitching a ride on an acute triangle. They arranged the stops on Google Maps, the red points floating over the city streets like tiny hot-air balloons. Because they are always back home for bedtime, they dont need to worry about lodging. They cat-nap on the plane. For Miami, the friends said Operation One Day was 95 percent successful. The 5 percent mistake: Kathleen and Laura rode to the rental shop to return the bikes only to discover that the store was closed. The duo pedaled a mile to another outpost also shuttered. Their flight left in two hours. They rang up the parents for advice. The solution was to lock up the two-wheelers outside the shop and leave a message. They still have the keys. On their blog, the travelers document their trips and share tips. For the Seattle Art Museum, they suggest visiting during a free admission day. In Miami, they recommend Cafe Charlotte, which serves tasty tequenos, or fried cheese sticks, as well as complimentary bread. They advise flying midweek, when fares are usually lower. The America in a Day concept isnt staying in America. Their professor, Jennifer Suh, will share the approach with South Korean teachers, who may incorporate Korea in a Day into their curriculum. The friends may also expand to international destinations. If they do, they will have another math puzzle to crack: creating a model for Foreign Cities in Two Days. More from Travel: How to travel the world for free? The Points Guy shows you the way. D.C.s first Pod hotel seen through millennial and Gen X eyes Kathy Anderson and son Josh have resurrected their familys restaurant, Bar J Chili Parlor and Restaurant, in Occoquan. (Jonathan Hunley/For The Washington Post) Bar J is back. After a hiatus of a few years, the family that brought a chain of eateries to Northern Virginia recently opened a new version of their signature chili restaurant in Occoquan. When the doors opened Feb. 22, however, the second and third generations of the Anderson clan were in charge. The history of the Bar J Chili Parlor and Restaurant brand stretches back more than three decades. The first incarnation was a small location in Lorton that really put more emphasis on the bar aspect than on food, Kathy Anderson, who is running the show in Occoquan with son Josh, said last week. The floor was covered in mud from the boots of construction workers, and patrons tabs were tallied by the number of beer cans that were tossed into tin cans that originally had been filled with Charles brand potato chips. Andersons parents bought the little dive joint in 1981 and began converting it into a family restaurant, she said. They convinced customers that the food could be as important as the libations, and they won a Washington chili contest in 1984, Anderson said, which kind of put us on the map. Bar J also became known as a place where chili connoisseurs might catch a glimpse of Redskins legends Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer. Soon, the Andersons opened a second location, in Woodbridge. An expansion of the Fairfax County water treatment plant forced the initial Bar J to fade into Tex-Mex history, but that proved not such a big deal, because the Andersons were off and running. Kathy Andersons brothers got into the business, and the family opened new locations in Alexandria, Stafford and Manassas. There was a Bar J steakhouse, too, and Italian-themed restaurants named Giovannis and Spaghetti Bettys. Kathy Anderson left the business in 2003, and her father, John Anderson, stayed involved with the last remaining Bar J, on Route 123 in Woodbridge until 2008. That location closed in 2010. But about five years ago, Josh Anderson, who owns the Concrete Artisans construction business, began to nudge his mother. He was like, Mom, do you think you could do it again? Kathy Anderson said. She had worked at his company and gotten a job at Wegmans, where customers asked if Bar J might return to the restaurant scene. It was always the question, Anderson said. The Andersons decided to do it, and they settled on a space in the Riverwalk development in Occoquan, sandwiched in between the river and the bridge for Route 123. The location was new, and Josh Anderson made sure the insides of the building had a new feel that he calls modern rustic. The ceiling is painted to resemble the daytime blue sky, and the walls to look like exposed brick. New menu items are cropping up as well, such as vegetable fajitas. Otherwise, the Andersons are trying to keep an old-time atmosphere with original recipes. Their staff of about 25 also includes faces from Bar Js past. Kathy Anderson said she even may try to re-create the Bar J feeling under customers feet. Potholes dotted the gravel lot in front of the original Lorton restaurant, and they often filled with water. A shipping pallet became a fixture at the front door to keep people from stepping in a puddle. The pallet became a well-known feature, and Anderson said it would be nice to have a rug in Occoquan that resembled it. Even without such touches, Bar J has been booming in Occoquan since it opened on Andersons 56th birthday. There were two-hour waits for tables for two weeks initially, she said. Customers would sit and swap stories long after they finished eating. Letty Lynn, whose family corporation owns Riverwalk, said Bar J brings a new type of cuisine to her hometown. So thats a big plus, she said. The Andersons leasing agent was so excited that he said he would buy a space and lease it himself if a suitable existing spot failed to materialize. And Id still do that if Bar J expanded elsewhere, the agent, Guy Travers, said. Travers recalls going to Bar J as a kid, and he said that pitching the Andersons to potential landlords required nearly no selling at all because others also recognized their brand. Travers remembers lines out the door in Lorton and patrons having carved their names into the bar. Its like Cheers: Everybody knows your name, he said. Collette Cobb holds a flag during a press conference outside the White House following a meeting members of DC Marijuana Justice had with White House officials on Monday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) It took a pot-smoking protest outside the White House, but on Monday, advocates for marijuana legalization were set for a historic face-to-face meeting with the Obama administration about easing laws governing the drug. Except, it wasnt. Leaders of the ballot-measure fight that legalized marijuana in the nations capital said they were granted a White House meeting, but it was with two junior-level staffers in President Obamas Office of National Drug Control Policy. There was no presidential entourage, no promises of more meetings to come. In fact, there was no visit to the White House proper, but a mostly empty conference room in an adjacent building. [Turns out, smoking pot outside the White House gets you invited inside.] Zack Pesavento of the 420 USA Political Action Committee is seen outside the White House at the conclusion of a press conference that followed a meeting members of DC Marijuana Justice had with White House officials on Monday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) They didnt say a lot; they took notes, maybe four pages worth, said Adam Eidinger, the face of the D.C. marijuana movement, who dressed up for the visit in a black suit with a black-and-green marijuana leaf tie. We asked questions, but they didnt answer. . . . They nodded a lot. I think they understood us. Obama said in January that reforming marijuana laws is not on his agenda in his final year in office. But activists hopes have been raised by a combination of factors: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has made legalizing pot a plank of his surprisingly successful run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Meanwhile, a petition by Democratic governors has led the Drug Enforcement Administration to say it will decide by July whether to remove marijuana from the nations list of most dangerous drugs. Eidinger and other activists said they hoped Mondays meeting might begin a conversation about marijuana reform that could provide cover to likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to continue work should she win the election in November. Eidinger also tried to guilt and embarrass Obama into action. Fliers announcing the mass pot-smoking event outside the White House said the event was held not on April 20, the typical national day of action over marijuana policy, but earlier because of the president. Due to popular demand, were rescheduling 4/20 this year to 4/2 because Obamas been a BIG ZERO on cannabis reform, said the fliers. In Eidingers last letter to Obama administration, he also offered to call off the spectacle if the president agreed to sit down or bud summit with marijuana advocates. As a former cannabis (and current?) user, you know firsthand that cannabis does not belong in the Controlled Substances Act, Eidinger wrote. [The choom-gang: President Obamas pot-smoking high school days] But on Monday, both sides characterized the meeting as no more than a perfunctory listening session and partly for good reason. Since the meeting was with the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the administration officials present are not able to advocate for reclassifying marijuana thanks to funding restrictions imposed by Congress. In a statement, a spokesman for the office played down Mondays meeting: Over the years, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has met with numerous organizations representing varied perspectives on drug policy. As laid out in the National Drug Control Strategy, the Administrations drug policy continues to focus on a balanced public health and public safety approach to reduce drug use and its consequences. Thirty minutes after the meeting began, Eidinger and Nikolas Schiller, co-founder of DC Marijuana Justice, were done and outside the White House. They held a banner that read President Obama, We need a higher level meeting. Now what? Im going to write more letters, Eidinger said. The Takoma Wellness Center is a family-run medical marijuana dispensary in D.C. A sample of Blue Dream Boutique marijuana is pictured in the dispensary room on March 8, 2015. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has tapped a former state trooper and Republican political candidate as Marylands top medical marijuana regulator. Patrick Jameson started Monday as executive director of the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission, a spokesman for Hogan said. Jameson served with the Maryland State Police between 1987 and 1999 in the special operations and white collar crime divisions, earning a masters degree in business administration from Johns Hopkins University and serving as a police union officer, according to Hogans office and news reports. Hes returning to government work after spending more than a decade in the private sector, including as a homeland security director for the technology giant Oracle and principal of a management consulting firm. Jameson unsuccessfully sought office in Anne Arundel County, running as a Republican candidate for county sheriff in 2010 and applying for county executive in 2013. He included eliminating drugs in his 2010 platform. His appointment comes at a critical time for the Medical Cannabis Commission, which is managing a deluge of applications from businesses seeking licenses to grow, process and sell medical marijuana. Repeated delays in the program means it will likely not be available to consumers until 2017. [Sale of medical marijuana likely wont start until 2017] The applications are under review by experts hired by the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University. After the applications are scored and ranked, the state commission is scheduled this summer to award licenses, which are capped at 15 for growers and 94 for dispensers. Law enforcement officials have had mixed reactions to the prospect of legal cannabis sales in the communities they police. In Jamesons home county, Anne Arundel, the sheriff and states attorney supported the county executives failed attempt to ban the burgeoning industry. Elsewhere, local authorities focused on battling opioid epidemics have shrugged at medical marijuana. The cannabis commissions previous director, Hannah Byron, left in January after a long career in state government. [Drug Enforcement Administration to decide whether to change course on marijuana by July] BJP MP Paresh Rawal arrives at the Parliament with an even numbered car violating the odd-even rule, on on Monday. Made a serious blunder by travelling in an odd number car to Parliament ... Sorry to Arvind ji n Delhiite...(sic), Rawal tweeted. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Not heeding to Prime Minister Narendra Modis request of discussing issues in Parliament in a democratic spirit, Congress members on Monday created ruckus in both Houses over imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, accusing the Modi government of murdering democracy. The issue rocked both Houses on the first day of the second half of the budget session with Congress members in both Houses storming the Well and party president Sonia Gandhi joining them in raising slogans. Almost the entire Congress was in the Well in the Rajya Sabha, shouting anti-NDA and anti-PM slogans and members of other opposition parties including JD(U) and Left were seen supporting them. Mean-while, the Government placed copies of the proclamation of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand in both Houses of Parliament amid objections by Congress members. Before the two Houses met for the day in the morning, the Prime Minister hoped that members of all parties will discuss issues in a democratic spirit and take good decisions. He hoped that members will involve themselves in free discussions and important decisions will be taken. In the Lok Sabha, leader of Congress, Mallikarjun Kharge and his party colleagues staged a dharna in the Well as their notice for adjournment motion on the issue was rejected by the Chair. In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the issue accusing the central government of deliberately provoking the Opposition. A day before voters in Maryland choose their U.S. Senate nominees, former Maryland governor Martin OMalley is urging Democrats to back Rep. Chris Van Hollen over Rep. Donna Edwards. In my time serving on the Baltimore City Council, as Mayor of Baltimore, and as Governor, Chris was a reliable, progressive partner in the General Assembly and in Congress, OMalley wrote in an email to supporters. I stood with Barbara Mikulski in her historic campaign for U.S. Senate in 1986, and Im standing with Chris tomorrow on election day. OMalley was Mikulskis field director when Mikulski, who is retiring in January, first ran for Senate. The race to fill her shoes has pit Van Hollen, the favored candidate of the state Democratic establishment running on a long record in office, against Edwards, who has run as an outsider challenging that consensus. Polls have shown the two neck-and-neck for months, but a recent survey from Monmouth University suggests the better-funded Van Hollen has pulled ahead. [Chris Van Hollen takes lead in new Senate poll] State Del. Jill Carter (D-Baltimore), a longtime OMalley critic and an Edwards supporter, dismissed the endorsement on Facebook as an effort to remain relevant and continue to prevent progress. OMalley has pointedly declined to weigh in on the other statewide Democratic primary being held in Maryland on Tuesday. In early April, giving his first interview since ending his own presidential bid in February, OMalley told MSNBC he would not endorse in the race between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.). He was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Clinton in 2008. Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Jack K. OConnor, product engineer Jack K. OConnor, 91, a product engineer at the Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1975 to 1995, died March 11 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was collapsed lungs, said a daughter, Jeanne Wyand. Mr. OConnor, a native Washingtonian, was a Navy veteran of the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in World War II. He began his career as a design engineer with the firm of General Kinetics in Reston, Va. At the CPSC, he tested products including toys, Christmas lights and roller coasters, and he helped design reflectors for Schwinn bicycles. He belonged to the Senators Club, an alumni organization at Catholic University, and the Catholic Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington. Charles R. Damon Jr., Park Service supervisor Charles R. Damon, 65, who from 1988 to 2012 was a National Park Service gardener and then supervisor of the White Houses Kenilworth Greenhouses, where plants and flowers for the White House grounds are grown, died March 23 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. The cause was complications from oral cancer, said his partner, Ben Sherman. Mr. Damon, an Arlington resident, was born in Chicago. Early in his Park Service career, he worked at Yellowstone National Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park and Fredericksburg National Military Park. Joan W. Howard, travel agency partner Joan W. Howard, 77, a former partner of Chevy Chase Travel Agency in Bethesda, Md., died April 2 at her home in Boyds, Md. The cause was Alzheimers disease, said her husband, Don Howard. Mrs. Howard was born Joan Wayland in Washington. She was the office administrator of her husbands accounting practice in Rockville, Md., until the mid-1980s, when she joined the travel agency, which organized domestic and international travel for groups and individuals. She retired in the mid-2000s. Mrs. Howard belonged to the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. Cecelia F. Maloney, academic counselor Cecelia F. Maloney, 85, an academic counselor at several Washington-area schools in the 1970s and 1980s, died March 16 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was multiple organ failure, said a son, Tim Maloney. Mrs. Maloney, a Beltsville, Md., resident, was born Cecelia Fitzpatrick in Philadelphia. She taught sociology at what is now Trinity Washington University and was a child-welfare worker in the District in the 1950s. Later, she was a counselor with the American Red Cross and at Strayer University, Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg, Md., and University of Maryland University College in Adelphi. She was an adult-literacy tutor and volunteered with her local Prince Georges County public library, the Beltsville News and St. Joseph Catholic Church in Beltsville, where she was a parishioner. Her husband, Walter H. Mike Maloney, a member of the Prince Georges County Council, died in 2001. Donald Hoan Nguyen, business owner Donald Hoan Nguyen, 83, the founder of Capital Building Services, a Washington-area building-maintenance operation, died March 27 at his home in Falls Church, Va. The cause was complications from diabetes, said a son, William Nguyen. Mr. Nguyen, a Vietnamese native, was born in what was then Saigon, and he came to the United States in 1975. He became a U.S. citizen in the early 1980s. He started his business in 1979 and serviced buildings including the Pentagon and the Old Executive Office Building before retiring several years ago. He belonged to Holy Martyrs of Vietnam Catholic Church in Arlington, Va. Grace Evans, personnel supervisor Grace Evans, 98, a personnel supervisor who retired in 1971 after 30 years with the Farm Credit Administration, died March 25 at a retirement community in Springfield, Va. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a great-niece, Jennifer Shymansky. Miss Evans was born in Peckville, Pa., and settled in the Washington area in 1941. She belonged for 75 years to Calvary Baptist Church in Washington. She moved to the Greenspring retirement community in Springfield 17 years ago. Bill Thornton, electronics specialist Bill Thornton, 96, a specialist in electronics who retired in 1988 as chief of the communications and electronics division at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, died March 25 at a veterans care center in Richmond. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a daughter, Linda Mills. Mr. Thornton was born in Rusk County, Tex. He settled in the Washington area in 1950 after Navy service in World War II, including duty at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese forces attacked the U.S. naval base. From 1951 to 1975, Mr. Thornton was an electronics specialist at American Amplifier and TV Corp., then joined the staff at Walter Reed. In 2003, he moved to Richmond from Oxon Hill, Md. Elizabeth Betty Smith, auxiliary flotilla captain Elizabeth Betty Smith, 95, a Navy pathologists wife, a recreational sailor and a flotilla captain in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, died March 20 at a care center in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was a stroke, said a daughter, Barbara Adams. Mrs. Smith, a Silver Spring resident, was born Elizabeth Schrope in Camp Hill, Pa. She settled in the Washington area in 1962. She was active in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a volunteer group to support Coast Guard missions such as the rescue of boaters in distress and boating safety instruction. Julia Harris, office administrator Julia Harris, 83, who spent 15 years working as office administrator in Washington for her physician husband, Forest K. Harris II, until he retired in the 1990s, died March 1 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was complications from heart ailments, said a daughter, Deb Tucker. Mrs. Harris was born Julia Merrell in Philadelphia and grew up on a farm in McLean, Va. She was a McLean resident and a member of the McLean Sewing Bee and the McLean Historical Society. Helen F. Hays, shop owner Helen F. Hays, 84, who from 1982 to 1999 owned and operated the China Gallery & Gifts store, a Washington business specializing in Chinese antiques, died Feb. 28 at her home in Washington. The cause was cancer, said a son, Phil Hays. Mrs. Hays was born Helen Fugh in Beijing. She emigrated to the United States in 1949 and settled in the Washington area. She was a founder and former director of the Chinese Cultural Center, and had been director of the University of the District of Columbias Chinese Extension Service Center and president of the Asian-American Bicentennial Corp. Blanche Fischer, school director Blanche Fischer, 94, who was a teacher and director of the Falls Church Episcopal Day School from 1965 until she retired in 1979, died Feb. 29 at an assisted-living center in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. She had heart ailments, said a daughter, Judy Dressendorfer Mrs. Fischer was born Blanche Youngblood in Buena Vista, Ga. She began her teaching career in 1945 at Miss Thompsons Primary School in Falls Church, Va., where she later became director. In retirement she lived in Lake of the Woods, near Fredericksburg, Va., and since 1995 in North Carolina. Carol Sokolski, teacher Carol Sokolski, 83, who taught elementary school in Montgomery County, Md., from 1965 to 1982, mostly at the former Spring Mill Elementary School in Silver Spring, died March 21 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was cancer, said her husband, Alan Sokolski. Dr. Sokolski, a resident of Wheaton, Md., was born Carol Stitt in New York City and moved to the Washington area in 1962. For 18 years starting in 1997, she taught a course on the times, plays and sonnets of Shakespeare at the Schweinhaut Senior Center in Silver Spring. Correction: An earlier version of the obituary of Charles R. Damon Jr. incorrectly reported that he was supervisor of the White Houses Kenilworth Greenhouses from 1988 to 2012. He started as a gardener in 1988 and was promoted to supervisor in the mid-2000s. The obituary has been revised. Correction: An earlier version of the obituary for Carol Sokolski gave her an incorrect honorific of Mr. She had a doctorate in education and English., and the obituary should have referred to her as Dr. Sokolski. The obituary has been revised. From staff reports A fire in Maryland that officials said might have been caused by a meteorite turns out not to have been caused by a meteorite at all. Late Sunday night, the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department reported that its Station 39 had responded to a massive brush fire near Scarlett Oak Terrace. 39 runs an odd one, the department tweeted. Possible meteorite strike. The tweet was accompanied by the photograph of a crater and a small, rock-like object. After some local media began following the story, however, the volunteer fire departments captain apologized. He explained that the two-acre fire took 15 firefighters four hours to extinguish, but said it was not caused by a meteorite. A tweet was sent out using the official department Twitter account that insinuated that there was a relationship between a meteorite and the cause of fire, Chief Jonathan D. Howard Sr. said in a statement. This was simply not so and the post should have never been made listing a cause. Cause and determination is made solely by the Prince Georges County Fire/EMS Department. As the Chief of the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department, I apologize for the media attention this has created and have put measures in place to make sure this doesnt occur again. In a statement, a spokesman for the Prince Georges County Fire Department said the cause of the fire was undetermined. [Did a meteorite cause a brush fire? Definitely not, and heres why.] U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer Geoff Chester told The Washington Post that meteorites are cold when they strike the Earth and do not cause fires, unless they strike a flammable object like, for example, a gas line. The likelihood that the fire was caused by a meteorite is somewhere between slim and nil, he said. I think they have to look for some other cause for this one. The frequent Fox News commentator who prosecutors say lied about a career with the CIA to win actual government work is scheduled to change his plea Thursday, court records show. Wayne Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Md., had been set to go on trial next month on charges that his claim of working for the CIA for 27 years was a lie, and that it was only by repeating such falsehoods that he was able to briefly get actual security clearances and real government contracting work in more recent years. He had pleaded not guilty in the case, and had asserted in an interview published recently in The New York Times Magazine that there were documents scattered around the world that would back up his claims about what he did. [He claimed to be ex-CIA and was quoted as an expert on Fox News. Prosecutors say it was a lie.] Now, it seems, prosecutors and his defense attorneys appear to have reached some type of a deal. The change of plea hearing is generally an indication someone in a case intends to plead guilty though for Simmons, it remains unclear to what. A judge also must still sign off on a plea agreement, which is far from a certainty. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which brought the case against Simmons, declined to comment. William Cummings, Simmons attorney, said: All I can tell you, if you want to show up, who knows what might happen? Simmons himself confirmed a plea hearing was scheduled but he declined to comment further. [Federal prosecutor: Hes always using this supposed CIA affiliation as a trump card] Simmonss case had commanded national attention in-part because of his frequent, unpaid appearances on Fox News, and in-part because of the actual government work he was able to get. By prosecutors telling, he was deployed to Afghanistan for some weeks as a senior adviser to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, putting him in a war zone with access to classified material. On his Web site, Simmons claimed he was recruited by the CIA to work as part of an Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group and that he spearheaded Deep Cover Intel Ops against some of the worlds most dangerous Drug Cartels and arms smugglers from Central and South America and the Middle East. Prosecutors alleged, though, that Simmons was a man who was little more than a lifelong criminal with no significant work history or money to his name. Prosecutors said his criminal record includes convictions for 11 DUIs as well as for assault, gambling and having a firearm. The hearing is scheduled for 4 p.m. Inmates cross the campus at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup on Aug. 6, 2015. (Andre Chung for The Washington Post) Nearly 6 percent of children in Maryland have a parent in prison or jail, which makes it more likely that they will struggle academically, live in poverty, and have other social or psychological problems that could plague them for life. These are the findings of a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation about the damaging ripple effects of incarceration on families. The report, A Shared Sentence, provides strong evidence of the unintended consequences of imprisoning convicts, and the costs borne by children, families and communities. In the most basic sense we seem to forget that there are people that are left behind, said Scot Spencer, associate director for advocacy and influence at the Casey Foundation. For the 82,000 children in Maryland with a parent locked up, that means an unstable family environment in which they arent bonding, sometimes during the most important time of their lives. Incarceration can lead to loss of income for the affected families and throw some further into the poverty that many are already in, researchers found. The experience also causes stress equivalent to that sparked by domestic abuse and divorce, making it hard for both children and parents who are left at home to cope. New problems can arise once the incarcerated parent leaves prison and returns home, the researchers found. Transitioning back into society and a family is often complicated. Finding jobs can be difficult for those with criminal records. For children and families, incarceration is not a one-time event, but a daily reality that lasts well beyond a jail sentence or prison term, the reports authors wrote. Conservative estimates are that 5.1 million youths nationwide have had a parent in jail at some point in life. The percentage of children with incarcerated parents varies by state, from 3 percent in New Jersey to 13 percent in Kentucky, according to the Casey report. There are about 21,500 inmates in the Maryland state prison system, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. People from Baltimore make up one-third of the states prison population. Three-quarters of incarcerated Baltimoreans come from 25 communities, where 47 percent of the residents are unemployed, according to the Governors Office for Children. The office has made it a priority to find ways to better address the impact of incarceration on children and families. The office has found that communities with high rates of incarceration also have high rates of unemployment, low incomes and people receiving public assistance. These communities also have large high school dropout rates and lower life expectancy rates. The Family League of Baltimore, with support from the Governors Office of Children, is planning a conference this summer on helping families dealing with incarceration. The group describes the high cost of incarceration to children as an adverse childhood experience. Organizers plan to bring together residents, community leaders and others to discuss solutions. Johns Hopkins Universitys Urban Health Institute is scheduled to present research on parental incarceration and its effects on children, families, and communities. We will really delve into this issue to look at the implications and challenges of incarceration on children and families and to help have a public conversation about how to work toward solutions, said Amy Bernstein, director of external relations at the Family League. The Casey Foundation offers several recommendations, including setting up programs and support systems to ensure that families get the financial and emotional support they need. Casey says particular attention should be paid to making sure children keep a strong bond with the incarcerated parent. The foundation also recommends that more be done to help ex-offenders find employment once they leave prison, and supports ban-the-box policies, which prohibit employers from asking about a job candidates criminal history at the start of the application process. Communities should be strengthened by minimizing the economic and social effects of incarceration, the reports authors write. This can be done by increasing access to affordable housing, jobs, good schools and other resources. Some work is already being done on incarceration, but social justice advocates say much more can be done. Bon Secours Community Works in West Baltimore runs a program that helps ex-offenders transition back into society. Anees Abdul Rahim, the programs reentry coordinator, says families often struggle with reuniting after an incarceration. The wife or female partner may have matured faster in the years that her husband or boyfriend was imprisoned. The children might not respect the authority of the parent who has returned home. Incarceration can really break down the family in a psychological and emotional way that really makes it almost impossible to rebuild, Rahim said. You need programs to help people make it through. The death of a man found dead Monday in a house in southeastern Fairfax County was being investigated as a homicide, the county police said. Police said the man was found in the 5300 block of Bedford Terrace sometime after 3 p.m. They said he had one or more wounds to his upper body. According to police the woman had walked to the South County Government Center in the 8300 block of Richmond Highway, and reported that there was a mans body in her apartment. Police said they were questioning the woman. She and the man had a prior relationship, the police said. The mans name was not released. An autopsy is to be conducted, police said. The discovery marked the second time in two days that a homicide investigation was conducted after a mans body was found in a house in the county. The owner of the Arlington gun store that opened last month despite vociferous objections from local residents has sued 64 people, including elected officials, claiming that they conspired to destroy the business, harassed the owner and landlord and mailed death threats to the 16-year-old owner-in-training. The suit, filed last week in Richmond Circuit Court, named seven state legislators who appealed to the landlord, on official General Assembly stationery, to refuse to rent 2300 N. Pershing Dr. to Nova Armory. The lawsuit also named Arlington County Board member Christian Dorsey, School Board member Barbara Kanninen and multiple residents who have spoken out against the gun store. [He says Arlington gun store will be great but wont say who owns it] Daniel Hawes, attorney for Broadstone Security, which does business as Nova Armory, said the plaintiffs warned the lawmakers and residents against interference with the business. People generally dont like it if you try to destroy their business. Thats malicious behavior, Hawes said. He said someone has been following customers who leave the store and taking photos of their cars and license plates. Theres been all sorts of creepy stuff by people with a morbid obsession, a neurotic obsession, with firearms, he said. They are really dangerous people. The complaint says defamatory comments on social media, harassing phone calls and emails and a mailed death threat to 16-year-old Lauren Pratte forced the business to spend time and money in merely surviving the crisis. Pratte is the daughter of Dennis R. Pratte II, who described Nova Armory as a family-owned business. The lawsuit asks for $2.1 million in lost revenue and damages, an amount that can be tripled under law. [Gun store opens in Arlington] Del. Mark Levine (D-Alexandria), who signed the letter and who was singled out in the lawsuit for his comments on social media, said he was representing his constituents who do not want the gun store in the neighborhood. Levine called the lawsuit a very, very dangerous attack on the First Amendment, an absolute attack on peoples right to speak out. Protests are as American as apple pie, as pro-American as civil rights protests, as boycotts of grapes, Levine said. If this lawsuit succeeds, the Montgomery (Ala.) bus company ought to sue Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement for that boycott because they wanted to shut down that business. Upon learning that she was named in the lawsuit, 25-year resident Natalie Roy, who has opposed the gun stores opening, said, This guy is a bully who never cared about the neighborhood, and now he has proven it. Cragg Hines, a former Washington columnist for the Houston Chronicle who is now involved in local Democratic politics, said that the lawsuit is ridiculous and that those who opposed the gun store were engaged in fair comment. He read the list of other residents being sued and described them as great company. Id get in the trenches any day with them. Opposition to the gun store arose in late February, when Lyon Park neighborhood residents learned that Pratte, the former owner of another gun store, had applied for a certificate of occupancy. Virginia law does not allow local governments to prohibit or regulate firearms merchants if the business complies with basic zoning rules. More than 3,500 people signed a petition opposing the location of the gun store in a strip of storefronts just off U.S. 50, near both a military base and a private day-care facility. Members of the local civic association voted 264 to 16 to oppose the gun store. A proposed gun store in Arlingtons Cherrydale neighborhood lost its lease last spring after local residents pressured the landlord. The only other known place that sells guns in Arlington is a pawn shop on Lee Highway, but several gun shops operate just a few miles away in Fairfax County. Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Mittendorff in an undated family photo. Her body was found in Shenandoah National Park last week. (Family photo) The trolls were horrid to her while she was alive. And they continued to be awful after her death. Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Mittendorff, 31, killed herself in Virginias Shenandoah National Park, the state medical examiner concluded. But even after the search for her was over, her body was identified and memorial candles began to burn, the cyberbullies who claimed they were her fellow firefighters kept scorching away at Mittendorff online. If these trolls are actually members of her firehouse family, then Mittendorff becomes another example of a new form of workplace harassment. Instead of happening in the office, it happens publicly online. There is an investigation at Mittendorffs firehouse to find out who posted the vicious online attacks and whether they played a role in her suicide. We at Fairfax Fire and Rescue are aware of the posts and are looking into the matter. I assure you that my department can not and will not tolerate bullying of any kind, Fairfax County Fire Chief Richard Bowers wrote in a public statement Saturday. We will thoroughly investigate this matter and take any appropriate actions needed. Fairfax County Fire Chief Richard Bowers said he has "zero tolerance" for bullying after online postings raise questions about whether firefighter Nicole Mittendorff was bullied before her death. Mittendorf's body was found in Virginias Shenandoah National Park last week. (WUSA 9) [Searchers find body thought to be missing Fairfax firefighter] Mittendorffs case offers a chilling window into the persistent harassment women encounter on a daily basis online and at work. In fact, those two forms of ugliness appear to be merging. It means sexual harassment isnt just lone-wolf bosses pawing at a secretary or men disparaging female co-workers at the water cooler. It can happen from a home computer and devastate a womans reputation and career. It seems to be a newer thing, doing this online, said Angela Hughes, a Baltimore County fire captain who is also president of the International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Medical Services. Cyberbullying on social-media outlets is a new form of harassment. Her group gets frequent requests for help from firefighters who believe they are being harassed, threatened or mistreated because of their gender. But recently, the group has seen more online bullying, including some Facebook pages that actively harass female firefighters. The problem, she said, is that a firehouse fosters a culture of toughness, of not needing help. And too often, harassment goes on because its against the culture to ask for help. Online harassment gets directed at public-facing women on social media and by online commenters all the time. The women of WGN, a local television station in Chicago, recently took on their abusers when they read some of the nastiest emails, tweets and Facebook posts attacks on their weight, their voices, their faces. Keep shoving food down that pie-hole of yours, morning anchor Robin Baumgarten said, quoting one message. It shuts up that annoying donkey braying noise you make when you talk. [Broadcasters read their rudest comments online] And weve seen it in Gamergate, where women in the video-game world are continually blasted online. That scandal started with feminist video-game reviewer Anita Sarkeesian, who had to cancel a university speaking engagement two years ago because one of her many persistent and vulgar online harassers threatened a mass shooting if she spoke. And recently it included Zoe Quinn, a video-game developer who was smeared online with death threats and lurid details about her sex life by other gamers and an ex-boyfriend who didnt like her game. From A to Z, they get hazed. I know. I am on the receiving end of the onslaught daily. Heres a gem I got during a week when I wrote about a neighborhood bone marrow drive and Planned Parenthood: Hey Petula, you [profanity] ugly [profanity], he wrote in a Facebook message. Too bad your mother did not have an abortion. I Googled him. Hes an older income tax specialist living on Long Island who likes to post inspirational quotes and pictures of himself on his Facebook page. Hes not a co-worker, just a foul-mouthed jerk trying to humiliate me for what I do for a living. This brand of workplace harassment operates outside the world of those surveys, workshops and seminars that company lawyers make everyone take, which do nothing to reduce sexism, but only exist to thwart lawsuits in case a caveman boss demands sex for a promotion. Even if the trolls ripping Mittendorff apart online didnt work with her, those posts were up there to shame her for her career choice and belittle her within her career. This subversive yet simultaneously very public sexual harassment is becoming increasingly common. A Pew Research Center survey in 2014 found that 1 in 4 young women has been stalked online and about as many have been sexually harassed or physically threatened. We know women still face on-the-job harassment in male-dominated fields: the military, law enforcement, science, the tech sector. Even the women who work for the National Park Service have offered horror stories. And its especially prevalent in firefighting, where I found case after case in Rhode Island, Arizona, Utah, Florida of women winning sexual harassment cases against their departments in just the past couple of years. In federal reports, congressional testimony, courtroom testimony, personal essays and formal complaints, we hear the same story. Women continue to be harassed, belittled, passed over and manipulated by their male co-workers or bosses. And those happened on the job. What happens online? Too often, women get told to just ignore those guys, theyre losers anyhow or its online, what do you care? or to shake it off. Nope. It matters, it hurts, it means something. And it has to stop. Id say, Ask Nicole Mittendorff how this feels. But we cant. Twitter: @petulad India is on the move. Not in housing, education or healthcare. Not in urban reconstruction. Certainly not in political maturity. The movement is almost dazzlingly rapid in what might be called the software of globalisation dress, manners and everything the fashionable word lifestyle covers. Hence the sharp division in Calcutta legal circles over a new term outraging the modesty of society that a defence lawyer sprung in the Alipore court the other day. He was defending 70-year-old Kamal Ganguly who is accused (with his 37-year-old son Shouvik and some others) of assaulting a 22-year-old girl student wearing shorts and sharing a cigarette with a young man. When Ganguly senior asked the girl to throw away her cigarette, she refused and argued back. In our area, girls do not smoke or wear short dresses, Shouvik told the media. This is not Park Street or Jadavpur University where you can do anything you are supposed to respect elders. The incident took place in a lower middle-class suburban residential colony. The case being sub judice, I am not commenting on either partys conduct. My observations are confined to societal trends. Conflict is not unique to contemporary Bengal or even India. It surfaces wherever a minority races ahead of the rest. An Indian woman born and bred in India but married to an Indian Singaporean born and bred there told me how the two of them were sitting in a food court in Malaysia drinking beer when a local Tamil remarked in loud derision, Wearing sari, drinking beer! He was probably the son or grandson of a plantation worker who had migrated from the old Madras Presidency. That placed him in a special category for such expatriates tend to cling to norms that the parent society discarded long ago. They are caught in a time warp and, in Southeast Asia at least, are often surprisingly conservative. But the contrast between attire and action would have struck others too. A sari still signified convention in Malaysia and Singapore. A sari-draped female drinking beer in a food court was like the girl in shorts smoking in modest lower middle-class Kolkata. Neither would merit a glance at a fashionable private party or in the lounge of a smart hotel. But conservative society might complain that both outrage its modesty. Hindu orthodoxy was aghast when Brahmo Samaj pioneers championed the cause of womens education, a higher marriage age and widow remarriage. I have mentioned before the aggressive 19th century Young Bengal pioneers who, when they encountered a snan shuddh brahmin with the sacerdotal mark on his forehead, danced round him, bawling in his ears, We eat beef. Listen, we eat beef. Those freethinking zealots from the Hindu College, which became Presidency College and is now Presidency University (where the assault victim studies) treated beef as a symbol of emancipation. Consumption implied pleasurable defiance. Today, however, modernisation often lacks the intellectual understanding that inspired Brahmo Samaj or Young Bengal radicals. Modernisation can be Westernisation in a most superficial sense, expressed through drinking, designer clothes or American slang. Its often either imitative or advertisement driven. One thinks of the American Virginia Slims cigarette advertisement showing a woman hanging laundry over the slogan Youve come a long way baby. The catchphrase implied that women who smoked Virginia Slims were dashing young creatures who had rejected the fusty conservatism that tied their mothers and grandmothers to domestic chores. Since society everywhere is in a constant state of flux, clashes are inevitable when the majority steeped in orthodoxy is challenged by a few whose ways seem bewildering revolutionary. In England, Emmeline Pankhursts Womens Social and Political Union merrily took the sting out of the Daily Mails mocking word suffragette by embracing the term and calling themselves suffraGETtes. The message of the hard g was that they would get the vote they demanded. New York Citys Board of Aldermen outlawed women smoking in public when sophisticated American women tried to project cigarette smoking as a statement that they represented the independent-minded New Woman. My grandmother told me of an incident that must have taken place in the late 1890s when she and her sister were waiting in their carriage outside the house their mother was visiting in conservative North Calcutta. Two young men passing by looked into the carriage and exclaimed in mock horror, Such old girls and still unmarried! My grandmother was nearing 20; her sister 18. No one would have said a word if they had been sitting in their carriage in smart, Westernised South Calcuttas Park Street. But North Calcutta hadnt seen anything like them daughters of one of the first Indian members of the covenanted Indian Civil Service, they had been to boarding school in England and were members of the Brahmo Samaj. Slight in itself, the encounter represented a catalytic confrontation between two cultures. It wasnt physically violent because the men were civilised and the girls were not provocative. But by 19th century norms, the intrusiveness was violence enough. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, never forgot a Sikh friend who tried to break away from his past too fast and too quickly. He cut his hair and shaved his beard but couldnt bring himself to do away with either completely. Caught between two worlds, in the end he cracked under emotional pressures. His plight convinced Lee that Singapore should make haste slowly when modernising. That lesson should be dinned into young, upwardly mobile Indians. Modernisation is not just a suit of clothes; its the outer manifestation of inner rationalism that conquers the bonds of unreasoning tradition. To quote Gramsci: The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned. After James Happli of Mosinee, Wis., was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he was referred to a surgeon at a local hospital where he had been treated for lymphoma 28 years earlier. The surgeon told Happli and his wife that although she had never successfully performed a Whipple procedure the pancreatic cancer operation widely regarded as among the most difficult in surgery she believed she could do it with the help of a second surgeon. But Happlis operation had to be aborted after it proved too difficult. Several months later, the pipe fitter, now 58, traveled to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, 175 miles from his home. His operation, one of 127 Whipples done at Froedtert last year, was performed successfully by chief surgeon Douglas B. Evans. The procedure involves removing part of the pancreas and small intestine as well as the gallbladder, and reconnecting the digestive organs. It proved to be particularly complicated in Happlis case, Evans said, because of tissue damage caused by radiation treatment for his lymphoma. If this patient is not getting referred [to a specialist], then who is? asked Evans, who said he has seen a recent uptick in patients treated unsuccessfully by inexperienced surgeons at smaller hospitals. The largely unfettered ability of surgeons with minimal expertise to perform high-risk procedures particularly at hospitals that lack experience caring for significant numbers of patients has been the subject of a contentious, long-running battle known as the volume-outcome debate. Baltimores Johns Hopkins is one of three prominent hospital systems pledging that their surgeons will meet minimum annual thresholds for 10 high-risk procedures. (Patrick Semansky/AP) A groundbreaking 1979 Stanford study found that patients who underwent operations at hospitals that did more of those surgeries had significantly lower death rates than those treated at hospitals where they were done infrequently. That finding has since been replicated repeatedly across many specialties and found to apply to surgeons as well as hospitals. Last month, a large study found that the risk of complications was far higher among surgeons who performed only one thyroid removal annually than among those who did 25 or more of the tricky procedures per year. Recently the volume battle was reignited when a trio of prominent health systems Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the University of Michigan pledged that they will require their surgeons and 20 affiliated hospitals to meet minimum annual thresholds for 10 high-risk procedures. The three systems have asked other hospital networks around the country to join them. Under the terms of the volume pledge, believed to be the first of its kind, surgeons must perform at least five pancreatic cancer surgeries annually in hospitals where 20 such operations are done each year. For knee or hip replacements, the requirement is 25 per surgeon and 50 per hospital. There are provisions for emergency surgery and for surgeons who sometimes do not meet the threshold because they were on leave; such surgeons might be required to perform a certain number of procedures under supervision. There is this intractableness of patients undergoing surgical care in places that have no business doing it or performed by hobbyists surgeons who infrequently perform risky surgeries, said John Birkmeyer, chief academic officer at Dartmouth. Birkmeyer devised the pledge with Peter Pronovost, an internationally known expert who directs the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins. At large teaching hospitals, Birkmeyer noted, there are usually one or two or three surgeons who are recognized as go-to doctors for certain procedures and do them frequently. But theres this tail of other surgeons who do only a few a year, such as a shoulder surgeon who performs a handful of hip replacements or a breast cancer surgeon who occasionally attempts a Whipple. We decided to use volume as a pilot case, an initial foray into setting quality and safety standards, he said. And we wanted to do it in a way that was not subject to the discretion of hospital officials. Critical information As smaller community hospitals affiliate with larger ones, the questions of which surgeons should do which procedures and where are increasingly confronting health systems. Hospitals of all sizes both large academic centers and smaller community institutions face a variety of sometimes competing incentives: to retain lucrative surgical cases and to avoid angering surgeons, who fiercely prize autonomy and wield considerable clout because they generate substantial revenue. And while hospitals formerly reaped a financial reward if patients suffered complications and had to be readmitted, they now face penalties under the Affordable Care Act. The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization that represents large employers and purchasers of health care and seeks to advance patient safety, has focused on volume in its hospital rating system. Volume is a really critical piece of information, said the groups chief executive officer, Leah Binder. I think every medical staff should be grappling with these volume benchmarks, she said, endorsing the pledge. Its fundamental. Ashish K. Jha, a practicing internist and professor of health policy at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health who has written about efforts to improve medical quality, calls the pledge very reasonable. Low-volume hospitals, he said, typically lack specialized teams to care for patients as well as state-of-the-art equipment and systems designed to prevent or quickly spot complications critical factors in improving outcomes. None of us care about volume; we care about outcomes, and volume is a surrogate measure of outcomes, Jha noted. Even though weve been talking about this for 35 years, a ton of high-risk surgery still happens among low-volume providers. But surgeons groups and the president of the Joint Commission, the Chicago group that accredits the nations hospitals, have criticized the pledge as simplistic and overly prescriptive. Some officials say they fear it could unfairly penalize low-volume surgeons and smaller hospitals that have good outcomes. Theres room to improve in low-volume and high-volume hospitals, said Kevin Bozic, chair of the department of surgery at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, who heads the committee on research and quality for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. There are high-volume, low-quality hospitals as well as the converse. I know Harvard may be better than McPherson, Kansas, said Tyler Hughes, a surgeon at the 25-bed hospital in McPherson and a director of the American Board of Surgery. But for many patients, the best possible surgery is closest to home. Irate surgeons Although patient-safety experts and some insurance companies have long encouraged patients, especially those with serious illnesses or complex diagnoses, to seek care from experienced specialists at high-volume hospitals, there is little to prevent doctors and hospitals from doing whichever surgeries (other than organ transplants) they see fit, no matter how rarely they do them. Many patients dont know to ask a doctor about volume or outcomes or are unable to ferret out relevant information when choosing a surgeon or hospital. One reason, Leapfrogs Binder said, is that much important information such as complication rates remains hidden. Hospitals report detailed data about surgical outcomes to registries for internal use, but the information is not publicly available. Kerry OConnell, 59, a Denver construction executive, said that only after a botched elbow operation that required seven corrective surgeries did he learn that his was the second such procedure his orthopedist had performed. I went to the one clinic where the ER sent me, and the surgeon seemed like a nice guy, he said. We dont have enough transparency in health care, Binder said. Its the first thing everyone wants to know: Whos the best surgeon? And anyone in health care picks up the phone and asks their friends. Recently, Binder notes, there have been new efforts to inform patients. In the past year, the journalism organization ProPublica and Consumers Checkbook have launched databases that rate surgeons. Since 1995 New York state has published some data on heart surgeons. And Consumer Reports and the federal governments Hospital Compare website provide hospital-specific information. A report by Leapfrog found that in 2013, one-third of hospitals that performed procedures to remove all or part of the esophagus, a demanding surgery to treat cancer, did only one or two annually, far below the level needed to achieve proficiency. A CNN investigation of an extremely low- volume Florida heart surgery program launched in 2011 found that six babies died in a two-year period, far more than expected; the program has since closed. And a U.S. News analysis last year found that Medicare patients who had knee replacements at the lowest-volume hospitals in the country were 70 percent more likely to die than those whose surgery was performed at the highest-volume centers; for hip replacement, the figure was 50 percent. Disparities can be seen among hospitals in the same system, Birkmeyer noted. One of our highest priorities is insuring consistent quality and safety regardless of where a patient seeks treatment, he said. In the past decade, Dartmouth has grown from a single hospital in Hanover, N.H., to eight in northern New England. Baltimore-based Hopkins has affiliated with smaller hospitals in the District and suburban Maryland. Among the most irate reactions Birkmeyer said he encountered came from about 10 surgeons affiliated with Dartmouths main hospital who were told they would no longer be allowed to do procedures for which they didnt meet annual minimums. They said things like, Ive been credentialed to do this for 20 years and Ive never had a complication, and now youre telling me I cant do it? That anger and the months required to get the boards of hospitals and their executive committees to agree to the new rules may be among the reasons only three systems have signed on so far, Birkmeyer said. More than a dozen others have expressed interest. Some surgeons say that the focus on volume is misguided. The problem is actually much more complicated than volume, said David Hoyt, executive director of the American College of Surgeons. Hoyt said that the group is drafting its own guidelines that will address volume. Beyond numbers To Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission, the pledge misses the mark. The surgeons contribution to the outcomes patients experience is only one component, he said. Volume should never be used by an accrediting organization as a measure of quality because it is too imperfect a measure, Chassin added. Patients can help protect themselves, he added, by taking as much responsibility and interest as possible in their care. In the view of general surgeon Linda Halderman, doctors are the best judges of their abilities. Every surgeon has to exercise judgment of their own capabilities and know when to refer to a more experienced colleague, said Halderman, who is based in Selma, Calif. But Harvards Jha disagrees. Many surgeons, he said, tell him they have excellent results and Ill say, How do you know? Do you actually track your outcomes? Most, he said, do not. Two months ago, Linus Linaweaver, 76, chose to undergo elective abdominal surgery in his home town of McPherson, Kan., after robotic prostate surgery at a larger hospital in Wichita nearly killed him and left him with a colostomy. I wanted to be back in our town, he said, adding that he had confidence in Tyler Hughes, his surgeon, and McPherson Hospital. His seven-hour operation went well, and Linaweaver recently said he is almost back to normal. James Happli is back at work after a years medical leave. Following his failed Whipple surgery, the local surgeon proposed trying again. That offer was withdrawn after a second specialist refused to participate. At that point, Happli was referred to Evans in Milwaukee. If he had it to do over again, Happli said, I would have gone to a bigger place and a more experienced surgeon the first time. Global warming has mostly made the weather more pleasant for Americans over the past 40 years, which may explain why much of the public doesnt consider climate change as big a threat as do scientists and the rest of the world, a new study suggests. But that perceived benefit of global warming mostly milder winters will soon be outweighed by more-oppressive summer heat, according to a study in the journal Nature thats dividing the scientific community. Americans are getting the wrong signal from year-round weather about whether they should be concerned about climate change, said the studys lead author, Patrick Egan, a public policy professor at New York University. Theyre getting the good parts and havent had to pay the price of the bad part. At least, not yet. If heat-trapping gases arent controlled, nearly nine out of 10 Americans will have noticeably worse not better weather by the end of the century, especially in the summer, the study found. 1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad A world transformed: Climate changes impact around the globe View Photos As world leaders prepare to sign an historic climate change agreement Friday in New York, there have been increasing signs about the real-world consequences of global warming. Caption From crippling droughts to rising seas, scientists warn of global warming impacts. A major ice sheet in western Antarctica is melting, and its collapse is predicted to raise global sea levels by nearly two feet, scientists said in 2014. The thinning of the ice probably is related to global warming, said a study in the journal Science. Airborne radar measurements of the West Antarctic ice sheet allowed scientists to map the underlying bedrock of Thwaites Glacier. AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. To try to understand Americas reluctance to tackle climate change, Egan and Megan Mullin, an environmental policy professor at Duke University, created a weather preference index for Americans based on past studies that looked at where people move, taking employment and other factors into account. All things being equal, Americans prefer the weather to be warmer in the winter. In other words, Miami, San Diego and Phoenix, which topped the chart of the new index, are desirable places to live. Unlike, say, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit. Over the past 40 years, Americas weather has trended closer toward Miamis than Pittsburghs. For the average American, the daily weather has gotten better, Mullin said. People like going coatless in December, as many did this past year. For 99 percent of Americans, winters have warmed by 1 degree per decade in the winter and only a seventh of a degree a decade in the summer, the study found. America may have been lulled into complacency when it comes to the impacts of climate change, said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasnt part of the study but called it a solid analysis. He and other scientists said the study raises interesting points, but climate change has other major effects on people. It can trigger droughts, floods and heavy rainfalls; increase sea levels; make food and water scarce; and spread insect-borne diseases. Other scientists dismissed the study. Matthew Nisbet, who studies climate communications at Northeastern University in Boston, said it was seriously flawed. He said looking at where people live is not a good indicator of the weather that people prefer. Nisbet and University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Renee McPherson said that, according to studies and surveys, politics colors peoples perception of climate change more than weather does. Critics also noted that the study doesnt deal with extreme weather such as this months downpours in Houston, Californias four-year drought or Hurricane Sandy. George Mason University professor Ed Maibach said surveys show that nearly 40 percent of Americans say extreme weather hit their community in the past year. People moved from New Orleans because of Katrina, not because they thought Houston, Dallas or Oklahoma City had better evening temperatures, McPherson said. Mullin and Egan said their study could not incorporate the effect of extreme weather on peoples preferences, adding that a key message is that scientists should talk more about extreme weather than average temperatures. According to Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, hot summers are more of a problem than the study suggests. The fires, droughts and heat waves of a record-hot 2012 cost $75 billion. In an email, he added: It is unconscionable to say the climate has improved when the only reason is because one can use air conditioning. An effort is underway to hold down the cost of prescription drugs. (Ilene Olson/Powell Tribune via Associated Press) A broad coalition including health-care providers, insurers and seniors will propose major changes Monday designed to rein in prescription-drug costs, including a shorter exclusivity period for biotech medications and a requirement that manufacturers disclose more information about pricing. The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing, whose members include AARP, Walmart and several health plans, is trying to stoke interest in the fall elections with an eye toward winning policy changes in 2017. Many of the proposals would require congressional or administrative action and have little chance this year. We have worked pretty hard to raise this at the presidential campaign level, and each of the candidates has acknowledged this is an issue, said John Rother, president and chief executive of the National Coalition on Health Care and head of the drug-pricing coalition. We are now going to expand our efforts to other races. To promote competition, the coalition is calling for a reduction in the 12-year exclusivity period for biological drugs and is pressing for more resources for the Food and Drug Administration to allow quicker processing of generic-drug applications. Currently, the agency faces a backlog of thousands of such applications. [7 tips for cancer patients worrying about the cost of their care] Rother described the initiatives as market-based and said they would lead to a functioning market that would better balance innovation with affordability. In some ways, the proposals are fairly cautious, reflecting reluctance by some members of the coalition to push for more-aggressive government intervention. For example, the group does not call for giving Medicare the authority to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies an idea that has been endorsed by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump but is staunchly opposed by Republicans in Congress. Rother said some members of the group saw that as government price setting. We arent talking about price controls; we are talking about something quite different, shining a light on processes and speeding things up, said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which is part of the coalition. But Lori Reilly, executive vice president for policy and research at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industrys main trade group, sharply disagreed. She said the coalitions ideas were neither market based nor consumer friendly and would result in new government requirements that would themselves increase costs. [How a financial navigator helped get a cancer patient the treatment he needed.] Moreover, she said, the proposals were an attempt by the insurance industry to try to deflect the conversation about a lot of things going on in the marketplace. She pointed to studies showing that some health plans have been increasing out-of-pocket costs for consumers and have placed expensive drugs for serious or chronic illnesses, such as HIV, on tiers requiring the highest level of cost sharing. She added that drug-price increases slowed in 2015 after rising more rapidly in 2014. Bob Laszewski, a health-care consultant, expressed skepticism that drug prices would have legs as a political issue. He said only a small proportion of voters is being affected because Medicare and private insurers are paying most drug claims. Its not a consumer issue yet, so its not a political issue yet, he said. In the meantime, he said, drug companies are coming up with breakthrough medications, especially for cancer, and insurers should just pay for it and stop whining. Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, disputed the view that few consumers are affected by high drug prices. He said that while drug prices probably wont become a top-tier campaign issue, the topic resonates with many voters. And partly because of highly publicized price increases for some older products, he said, drug companies are more vulnerable than they have been in a while. On the presidential campaign trail, Clinton and Sanders have issued detailed position papers on how they would rein in drug costs. Besides allowing Medicare to negotiate over drug prices, they back permitting Americans to re-import drugs from other countries, where they are often much cheaper. In addition, Clinton, in a proposal disliked by insurers, would cap out-of-pocket drug costs at $250 a month for people with chronic or serious health problems. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has said he wants to make significant changes in the FDA drug approval process. John Kasich has said he wants to take a close look at who is actually footing the bill the taxpayers or the drug companies for research and development involving pharmaceuticals. The coalition issuing the proposals on Monday also would require manufacturers to disclose how much they spend on research and development, and how much is paid for by other entities, such as the National Institutes of Health. The group also would require drug companies to release details about their products estimated prices and the impact on federal spending before the FDA gives final approval. Read more Obama, in nod to campaign, touts health-care successes Americans wasting $3 billion a year on discarded cancer drugs Hawaiis small land mass, long history of extreme isolation and rapid pace of development have left its many indigenous species including the alala vulnerable to predators and diseases. (David Ledig/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) For centuries, a species of crow possessed of a large bill, a piercing stare and a raucous caw was revered by Hawaiians as a family god that would guide spirits of the dead into the afterlife. But modernity has been brutal to the alala, and none of them have been spotted in the wild since 2002. The only alala known to exist are at breeding centers on Maui and here on the Big Island. Hawaiians are set on bringing the bird back: A dozen captive-bred juveniles will be released into the wild in the fall. But the effort will run up against existential dangers that have led some conservationists to dub Hawaii the extinction capital of the world. Others say they fear that Hawaii is in biological free fall, with extinction of many species on an unstoppable march. Hawaii is the sounding board for the mainland: Our problems are becoming its problems, said Gregory Koob, ecological recovery chief in Hawaii for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Were just a concentrated laboratory. When something goes bad here, it goes bad big-time. Across the Hawaiian island chain, nonnative species have been rapaciously destroying native plants and birds: Feral cattle and pigs have trampled large patches of forest habitat; other nonnative species such as rats and the mongoose devour birds and bird eggs. So do the Hawaiian hawk and packs of feral cats and dogs that prowl the forest. Mosquitoes spread avian malaria. Native species in Hawaii began to disappear long ago when the Polynesians and then Westerners, including missionaries, began arriving, bringing nonnative plants and animals. The only proof that certain native species existed comes when their bones are found in lava flows. Of six species of crows native to Hawaii, only the alala is left. Of 1,225 endangered species of animals and plants listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 481 are from Hawaii. The service is debating whether to add another 49 species from the islands, including the band-rumped storm petrel, the orangeblack Hawaiian damselfly and six kinds of yellow-faced bees. The islands small land mass, their long history of extreme isolation and the recent rapid pace of development have left its many indigenous species vulnerable to predators and diseases for which they never developed defenses. References to the alala appear in journals from the 1778 expedition of Capt. James Cook, according to a 2006 book on the bird and its travails by Mark Jerome Walters. It was plentiful in forests at elevations of 3,000 to 5,000 feet, and its black feathers adorned the robes of Hawaiian royalty. The number of alala began decreasing by the late 19th century as farming and cattle ranching expanded in the islands. By the late 1970s, it was thought that no more than 150 survived, sparking efforts that so far have failed to restore the species to health. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which develops the red list of endangered species worldwide, will hold its quadrennial convention on Oahu in September. Conservationists involved in attempting to save the alala and other species hope the gathering will bring public attention to the problems of Hawaii. While the overall situation in Hawaii seems dire, there have been successes. The nene goose, the state bird, was rescued from the brink of extinction through captive breeding and careful releases. Its numbers had dwindled to fewer than 100, but in 2014 the Fish and Wildlife Service reported that upward of 2,000 could be found on Oahu, the island with the most development, and that smaller but growing populations live on other islands. The effort to save the alala, through a similar breeding and release plan in the 1990s, ended with 21 of the young birds getting eaten by hawks, feral cats and dogs, and other predators. Only six survived; they were quickly trapped and brought back to the breeding center. It was just becoming a blood bath, said Paul Banko, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, whose involvement in the save-the-alala campaign dates back more than three decades. (In the 1970s, Bankos father, Winston Banko, was one of the first biologists to issue an alert for the alala. When Paul Banko was in high school, he kept two sickly specimens at his home in hopes of nursing them back to health. In 1980, father and son published a scientific paper on the alalas bleak outlook.) Officials say the effort to reintroduce the alala will go better this time. The release area a rain forest near a national park is being prepared more carefully. The acreage has been fenced and cleared of predators. The site is at an elevation 5,200 feet where malaria-bearing mosquitoes have not been found. Each bird will have a tiny GPS device attached to a wing so its movements can be tracked to pick up signs of trouble. Before the release, set for September, an effort will be made to teach the juveniles to recognize enemies, possibly by bringing them into contact with a mature bird of a different species that has experience in the wild. Pictures of predators will be shown to the alala and the mature bird, and, it is hoped, the alala will learn from the fearful reaction of the mature bird. Even with such steps, officials are cautious, and it may be years before the effort is deemed a success. There will be bumps along the way, but there will be successes as well, said Bryce Masuda, who runs the San Diego Zoos Keauhou Bird Conservation Center on the Big Island and a similar center on Maui. More than 100 alala have been bred in captivity. The alala reintroduction is not cheap. The first years work is slated to cost $800,000, and subsequent years will require $400,000 to $500,000 each. Funds come from San Diego Zoo Global and state and federal agencies. Releasing the birds in the Puu Makaala Natural Area Reserve may help the forest recover some of the ground-level vegetation that once provided protection and sustenance for the alala but has been destroyed by foraging feral cattle and pigs. Scientists have determined that seeds left in bird excrement are unusually helpful in reforestation. We hope the alala poop seeds everywhere, Masuda said. Masuda is overseeing efforts with several endangered species, including the small Kauai thrush, the Maui parrotbill and the finch-billed honeycreeper. But the alala is clearly the first among equals thanks to its spiritual significance and its famed loud call that signaled intruders. We want to return a voice to the forest that had been taken away, said Iwikauikqua Joaquin, outreach coordinator for Kamehameha Schools, which is involved in bird conservation and the alala effort. In Hawaii, the forest is family. Walter Kohn, whose parents saved his life by sending him out of Nazi-dominated Europe before the outbreak of World War II and who went on to become an American citizen and a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for work vital in developing new materials for electronics and medicine, died April 19 at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 93. His wife, Mara Kohn, daughter of the celebrated photographer Roman Vishniac, said he died of cancer. Dr. Kohn, who was born into a Jewish family, was expelled from school in his native Austria after the Nazis annexed the country in 1938. His parents managed to send him and an older sister to safety in England on one of the last convoys of the Kindertransport rescue operation for refugee children. His father and mother later perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Far from home and family, Dr. Kohn found himself with little to support him over a long period but his intellect and the goodwill of many strangers and mentors. Like other enemy aliens, he spent time in internment camps in England and Canada until beginning his higher education, capped by a doctorate in nuclear physics at Harvard. At various times in his youth and early adulthood, he also worked on a farm, cut timber and prospected for gold. He also served a year in the Canadian army at the end of World War II. With a good-natured demeanor that belied his many harsh experiences, he worked among the worlds top scientists at leading research institutions including the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Bell Laboratories, where he was an assistant to William Shockley, a co-inventor of the transistor. Dr. Kohn, whose honors also included the 1988 National Medal of Science, was regarded as an expert in mathematical physics, the physics of solids, and what is known as condensed matter physics. Although he was known principally as a physicist, his 1998 Nobel was awarded in chemistry for work that embraced ideas and techniques from both disciplines. Scientists call the field quantum chemistry. It involved the applications of the discoveries and approaches of quantum mechanics to the interactions between chemical elements. In the early 20th century, the novel and revolutionary ideas of quantum mechanics made it possible for the first time to explain the behavior of the hydrogen atom, the simplest in existence. It has a single electron orbiting its nucleus. But the complexity of larger atoms and molecules, envisioned as possessing clouds of whirling electrons, remained for years a daunting challenge. Dr. Kohn was one of the foremost among those who applied advanced mathematical and quantum techniques to the problem of understanding the essence of complex chemical reactions. Much of the scientific progress of the past 50 years entails the manipulation of elements and compounds on the atomic and molecular scale. The work much of it credited to the theoretical advances made by Dr. Kohn helped scientists develop and create new molecules and new materials tailor-made for many purposes, including electronics and medicine. In quantum chemistry, the area in which much of his work was done, an electron is both wave and particle, with the properties of each. Explaining the behavior of just one requires great mathematical sophistication. Describing the behavior of swarms of electrons by the same techniques as used for one was virtually beyond the reach of science. Dr. Kohn was credited with finding a new technique for finding a way around the seeming intractability of the problem. Sidestepping many mathematical pitfalls, his theory emphasized the total density of the charge of the electrons involved. It opened the way to deep insights into atomic and molecular behavior, and into the formation of chemical bonds. In addition he worked on the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, surface physics and catalysis. Walter Kohn was born in Vienna on March 9, 1923, into a cultured middle-class family. His father operated a business that made and distributed high-quality postcards, for which he commissioned noted contemporary artists. The Nazis annexation of Austria upended Dr. Kohns life. He arrived in England in 1939, staying with a family with whom his father had a business connection. But he was soon placed in an internment camp on the Isle of Man with many other adult enemy aliens who were deemed possible security threats amid the war rapidly consuming Europe. He was transported by boat to Canada in 1940 to stay at a series of internment camps. You couldnt leave, but you were never maltreated in those camps, he later told the Ottawa Citizen. Working was, according to the Geneva Convention, optional. If you worked, you got 20 cents a day. Which was actually a lot of money. He spent the money he earned as a lumberjack on books about science, an interest fostered by many other Jewish camp internees who had fled the Nazis. He recalled one scholar, Fritz Rothberger, as a key mentor who taught me mathematics and made it wonderful. Finally cleared of suspicion of being a Nazi spy, Dr. Kohn began studies at the University of Toronto, from which he received bachelors and masters degrees in 1945 and 1946, respectively. At one point, he also held a summer job as a geophysicist, searching for and, he noted, finding gold in northern Ontario and Quebec. A fellowship took him to Harvard, where he worked under Julian Schwinger, a future Nobel laureate in physics. Dr. Kohn received his PhD in 1948. Nine years later, he became an American citizen. He held faculty posts at Harvard, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of California at San Diego, where he chaired the physics department from 1961 to 1963. He joined the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1979 and remained there in various capacities until his death. His first marriage, to Lois Adams, ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Mara Vishniac. Besides his wife, survivors include three daughters from his first marriage, Marilyn Kohn of San Francisco, Ingrid Paymar of Baltimore and Rosalind Dimenstein of Los Angeles; and three grandchildren. The Nobel Prize which he shared with mathematician and chemist John Pople of Northwestern University brought him wide recognition. He told the Los Angeles Times that his contributions to science were his way of trying to help live his lost familys lives. Balochistan and Kashmir are two former princely states afflicted by insurgency on the subcontinent. All others merged with either India or Pakistan and have been peaceful. The origin and history of insurgency in Balochistan are different from Kashmir. On August 4, 1947, Lord Mountbatten, the Governor- General of India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Governor-General-designate of Pakistan, and the Khan of Kalat signed a tripartite agreement stipulating that on Pakistan becoming a dominion, Balochistan will revert to its 1876 status. The British had conquered Balochistan in that year. Jinnah had been the attorney of the Khan. In March 1948, when the Khan was in Karachi, Jinnah forced him to sign the Instrument of Accession. This was repudiated by the state Assembly and led to the start of armed revolt against Pakistan. Maharaja Hari Singh was the Hindu ruler of a predominantly Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir which had common borders with both India and Pakistan. He realised that being a Hindu he had no future in Pakistan. His bitter opponent Sheikh Abdullah, who had launched the Quit Kashmir Movement against him, was a close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru. He toyed with the idea of independence. But then Pakistan invaded his state and advanced close to Srinagar. Desperate, Sheikh Abdullah fled to Jammu and sought assistance from India. He agreed to sign the Instrument of Accession but, on the advice of Mountbatten, the accession was for defence, foreign policy and communications only. This suited Sheikh Abdullah, and Nehru accepted this conditional accession. The population of Balochistan is of one ethnic and religious identity. The struggle for freedom has the support of the entire population of Balochistan. Insurgency in Kashmir is confined primarily to one community inhabiting only 10 per cent of the states land. Balochistan is the largest state in Pakistan, covering 44 per cent of its land space. It is rich in natural resources with large copper and gas deposits. It is sparsely populated. China is developing Gwadar port to have an outlet to the sea and is investing $43 billion in it. This will turn around the economy of Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmirs land space and population are a small fraction of the rest of India. The state has hardly any resource other than scenic beauty, an asset for tourism, and water reserves which have to be shared with Pakistan under the Indus Water Treaty. Pakistan has been using maximum force to crush insurgency in Balochistan through aerial bombing, artillery strikes and machine guns. India has never used such weapons against insurgents in Kashmir. The Indian Armys record of human rights in Kashmir is far superior to that of the Pakistan Armys genocide in East Pakistan and Balochistan or the Chinese Armys in Tibet and the US Armys in Vietnam and Iraq. Two specific instances in Balochistan and Kashmir highlight the difference. In 2006, an Indian Army major was caught by the local people of Handwara in the house of a woman when her daughter raised a hue and cry. It was alleged that the major had raped both the mother and daughter. The Valley was on the boil for over a month, demanding that the Army be withdrawn from the state. The major was tried by the Army, its proceedings open to public. Rape was not proven. It was found that the major had illicit relations with the woman and used to frequently visit her at nights. When her daughter found him in her mothers room, she raised an alarm. The woman alleged that she was being raped. The court martial acquitted him of the charge of rape but he was convicted of an act unbecoming of an officer. He was discharged from the Army. At about the same time, a Pakistan Army major was accused of raping a lady doctor in a hospital. There were violent disturbances against this in Baouchistan but no action whatsoever was taken against the major. The lady doctor and her husband migrated to Canada. Pervez Musharraf, on a visit to the US, was asked about this incident by a journalist. He dismissed the matter, saying, Get raped and get a visa to Canada. Mr Musharraf ordered an airstrike on the hideout of Nawab Ali Bugti Khan, the 79-year-old veteran leader of Baloch insurgency. The Khan was killed. The 80-year-old Kashmiri separatist leader, Sayed Ali Shah Geelani, who was in prison at Ranchi, was provided a state government plane to fly to Mumbai for treatment. In 2007, he was reported to be suffering from cancer of the liver. He wanted to go to the US for treatment but was denied visa by the US because of his terrorist connection. All treatment facility was provided for him in Mumbai and a successful operation was performed by a Kashmiri Pandit surgeon whose family had been evicted from the Valley. Syed Ali Shah Geelani has all the freedom to visit Pakistan high commission in Delhi. He continues to propagate sedition as well as his anti-India activities. Gilgit-Baltistan region is a colony of Pakistan. Its predominantly Shia population is denied basic democratic and human rights. Punjabis and Pathans from mainland Pakistan are being settled there to alter the demography of the region. The local population has been agitating against this and the Pakistan Army has been crushing their agitation. We have never given any assistance to separatist leaders, not even any moral support. Our high commission in Islamabad does not maintain any contact with the separatist leaders of Gilgit-Baltistan. We even agreed to open the Srinagar-Muzaffrabad road even though Pakistan refused to open the Kargil-Skardu road. Our supporting insurgency in Gilgit-Baltistan would have been a fitting reply to Pakistans cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Despite Indias non-interference in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan has been accusing her of promoting terrorism in Balochistan for long. India has no common border with Balochistan and cannot promote cross-border terrorism like Pakistan does in Kashmir or India could do in Gilgit-Baltistan. There has never been a shred of concrete evidence to establish Indias support of insurgency in Balochistan. Possibly Pakistan has been making this accusation to establish moral equivalence with India for all its nefarious activities in Kashmir. The Pakistan Army is opposed to dialogue with India and it appears that Kulbhushan Jadav, a retired officer of the Indian Navy, was kidnapped from Iran. He is being projected as a Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) agent promoting insurgency in Balochistan. His so-called confessional statement, extracted under pressure and torture, lacks credibility. Intelligence agencies send their spies or informers to work in target countries and not their senior officers. R&AW has denied that Jadhav is one of their officers. The government of Iran has instituted an inquiry into this affair and it would be interesting to see its outcome. The killings of eight family members in rural southern Ohio were sophisticated, planned executions, authorities said Sunday, as they also revealed that several marijuana-growing operations were found at the crime scenes. Investigators said at a news conference that its unclear whether the marijuana growing had a role in Fridays killings at four homes near Piketon. Marijuana, both recreational and medicinal, is illegal in the state. They also told residents they are safe but to arm themselves if theyre fearful. The killings were a sophisticated operation, Attorney General Mike DeWine said at a news conference in Piketon, a small community that has been on edge since seven adults and a teenage boy were found shot in the head. Authorities remained tight-lipped Sunday about details of the investigation and any suspects or motives for the crime. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said that in his 20 years in law enforcement, he never interacted with the targeted family in a criminal nature. He said that it was clear the family was targeted, however, and that he had told the victims relatives to arm themselves. Editor's note: This audio describes graphic scenes. The Pike County Sheriff's Office and Ohio Attorney General's Office released 911 call audio recorded on April 22, reporting the murder scenes of multiple members of the Rhoden family. (Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Pike County Sheriff's Office) DeWine said that the states crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint and that five search warrants have been executed. Autopsies were expected to be completed Monday. This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened, said Reader, noting most of the victims were shot while they were sleeping. The victims were identified Saturday as Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; his son, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16; Kenneth Rhoden, 44; Gary Rhoden, 38; Dana Rhoden, 37; Clarence Frankie Rhoden, 20; Hannah Gilley, 20; and Hanna Rhoden, 19. Among those apparently killed in their sleep was Hanna Rhoden, who was in bed with her 4-or-5-day-old baby nearby, authorities said. The newborn, Hannah Gilleys 6-month-old baby and another young child were not hurt. A Cincinnati-area businessman put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. Pennsylvania Parishioner dies in shooting at service Authorities say a dispute between two members of a suburban Philadelphia church during a Sunday worship service ended with one person shooting and killing the other. Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said the disagreement escalated from an 11 a.m. disturbance at Keystone Fellowship Church in North Wales. Authorities didnt say what the disturbance was or describe the crux of the disagreement at the evangelical church. Police were called and found Robert Braxton, 27, of Montgomeryville, with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was rushed to Abington Lansdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after noon. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday. Steele said the other man involved, who was treated at a hospital and released, was cooperating with police but was not in custody. Associated Press Body found in room after shootout: Authorities found a body in a Kansas hotel room that erupted in flames during a shootout in which three federal agents were injured while trying to arrest a robbery suspect, the FBI said Sunday. The FBI said in a release that two deputy U.S. marshals and an FBI agent who were part of a U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive task force, suffered non-life-threatening injuries Saturday night when they came under fire while trying to arrest Orlando J. Collins, 28, at a Topeka hotel. The suspect, who was being sought on a federal robbery warrant, was also on the states most wanted list and was considered armed and dangerous, the FBI said. Alleged shooter killed at prom: An 18-year-old man allegedly opened fire with a high-powered rifle outside of a high school prom in northern Wisconsin, wounding two students before a police officer who was in the parking lot fatally shot him, authorities said Sunday. Investigators did not say whether they think the two students were targeted or discuss a possible motive for the shooting outs Antigo High School late Saturday. But a school administrator said it appeared that the gunman identified by police as Jakob E. Wagner intended to go into the dance and start shooting randomly. The two wounded prom-goers were shot as they exited the building, said Eric Roller, the chief of police in Antigo, a community about 150 miles north of Milwaukee. Bubble voyage cut short: Authorities say a Florida man bidding to reach Bermuda in an inflatable bubble has been voluntarily rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. Petty Officer Mark Barney said that long-distance runner Reza Baluchi was picked up Sunday off Florida and his hydropod was being towed to shore. Barney says the man set out from Pompano Beach on Saturday despite receiving an April 15 letter from the Coast Guard warning him not to depart. The Coast Guard said it had reviewed Baluchis plan and determined it to be unsafe. The letter was posted by the Coast Guard on Twitter. Baluchi tried to make a similar attempt to reach Bermuda in 2014 and had to be rescued. He was picked up that time about 70 nautical miles east of St. Augustine. From news services SERBIA Pro-E.U. populists projected to win vote Preliminary unofficial results showed that incumbent pro-European Union populists swept Serbias parliamentary election Sunday, leaving pro-Russia nationalists far behind. The apparent triumph of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucics Progressive Party means Serbia will continue on its path toward E.U. membership despite opposition from right-wing parties, which sought close ties with Russia instead. The preliminary results published by the CeSID independent polling agency indicate that the Progressives won 52 percent of the vote while the Socialists, a coalition partner, won 13 percent. The ultranationalist Radical Party had 7 percent, followed by the pro-Western Democratic Party with 5 percent. Vucic called the election two years early, saying he needed a new mandate to press ahead with tough reforms demanded by the E.U. as the country faces deep economic and social problems. But his opponents said he wanted to tighten his autocratic rule and win another four-year mandate while he is still popular. Before the vote, there were fears in the West that Serbia could tilt further to the right and toward Russia. Any rekindling of nationalism in the Balkans is considered more dangerous than in the rest of Eastern Europe because of the wars in the 1990s, which claimed about 100,000 lives. Associated Press SYRIA 26 killed as fighting rages in Aleppo Airstrikes and shelling pounded Aleppo for a third straight day Sunday, killing two young siblings and at least 24 others in Syrias largest city and former commercial capital. The northern city has been bitterly contested between insurgents and government forces since 2012. Opposition groups control the eastern part of the city but have come under intense strain as the government has choked off all routes to the area except a narrow and perilous passage to the northwest. At least 10 people were killed by rebel shelling on areas of the city held by the government, according to activists and the official Syrian Arab News Agency. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two young siblings were among the dead. Airstrikes on the opposition side of the city killed 16 people, including a mother and her daughter, the Observatory said. A video posted on social media by the Syrian Civil Defense first-responder group, which is known as the White Helmets and operates in opposition-held areas, suggests that some of the strikes hit a market in the neighborhood of Sakhour. The opposition High Negotiations Committee, which suspended its formal participation in peace talks with the Syrian government in Geneva last week, called the strikes an attack on the Geneva process that is the only possible pathway to peace. Salem Meslet, a spokesman for the HNC, called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold Moscows allies in Damascus to the terms of a U.S.- and Russia-brokered cease-fire that parties signed onto nearly two months ago. The cease-fire is technically in place but may have completely unraveled on the ground with violence returning to most of the contested areas of the country. Associated Press 3 killed in eastern Ukraine in renewed fighting: The Ukrainian government said three troops were killed in volatile eastern Ukraine over 24 hours in what appears to be the worst death toll in months in the long-running conflict there. The troops were reportedly shelled by Russian-backed separatists heavy weaponry. Fighting in eastern Ukraine between rebels and government troops has claimed more than 9,100 lives since it erupted two years ago. Both sides have in the past weeks violated their pledges to adhere to a cease-fire, according to international monitors. Jailed Iranian Texas student said to be hospitalized: Irans judiciary spokesman has said that an Iranian graduate student studying at the University of Texas who is imprisoned in Tehran has been hospitalized for surgery outside prison. Iranian state TV quoted Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as saying that Omid Kokabee is serving a 10-year sentence on charges of having relations with a hostile country and receiving illegitimate funds. Kokabee was arrested in February 2011. French soldier injured in train station attack: French police said a search is on for a man who attacked a soldier with a box cutter in the eastern city of Strasbourg. Local government official Dominique Jane told Europe 1 radio that the incident occurred at a train station. Jane said the assailant tried to attack a group of soldiers and managed to escape after he was pushed back. One soldier was slightly injured. Jane said the attacker spoke in Arabic, but the content of his words is not known. India revokes passport of tycoon who owes $1 billion: India revoked the passport of a flamboyant businessman accused of fleeing to London in March while owing more than a billion dollars to Indian banks. The External Affairs Ministry said the decision to revoke Vijay Mallyas passport was taken based on evidence gathered by the Enforcement Directorate, which has been investigating the tycoons massive debts. The ministry was also consulting legal experts on seeking Mallyas deportation to face charges of money laundering and financial irregularities. From news services Protesters hold up missing person notices for five people affiliated with the Mighty Current publishing house in early January. (Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) Angela Gui, 22, a university student in England, and her father, a publisher who lives on the other side of the world, dont get to see each other as often as they would like. But they spent a happy Christmas together in 2014, and last fall Angela was looking forward to seeing her father again in November. A month before they were to meet, he went missing. Angela knows that her father, Gui Minhai, did some shopping on the morning of Oct. 17. A video camera in his Thai condo showed him returning home with his groceries, carrying them upstairs and then driving away again with a man who had been lurking in his garage. Angela has not spoken with her father since, although she has received messages from him or someone who claims to be him. This is a mystery, then, and a missing-person story, but not of a conventional kind. Gui is missing from public view, but we can be fairly certain that he is in a prison somewhere inside China. He was born in China, in 1964, and traveled to study at Swedens University of Gothenburg in 1988. The following year, Chinas Communist Party crushed peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Gui spent the next decade in Sweden, becoming a citizen, earning his PhD and having a daughter, Angela, his only child, who also is a Swedish citizen. As the political climate in China relaxed, Gui returned, and eventually helped establish a company in Hong Kong that published gossipy volumes about Chinas leaders. Last fall it had a potential blockbuster in the works: a biography of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The book has never been published. All Angela knew, at first, was that her father uncharacteristically had stopped communicating. Eventually her fathers friend and colleague in Hong Kong, Lee Bo, sent her an email: Your dad has gone missing. Were afraid he was taken by Chinese agents for political reasons. . . . That was an incredible shock, she said. Guis car has never been found. Thailand claims to have no record of his leaving the country. But in November, Angela received a brief text message purportedly from him. I hope you will be fine, it said. Angela, whose soft-spoken British-accented English carries barely a trace of her native Swedish, paused to compose herself as she recalled that time. He didnt respond to my messages, she said. It was clear to me by then that somebody was controlling him. In December came another shock: Lee also disappeared, apparently abducted from Hong Kong as Gui was from Thailand. I knew he had British citizenship, Angela said. He had said, As long as Im still in Hong Kong, Ill be okay. It was not unheard of in years past for Chinas Communist rulers to reach beyond their borders to silence critics. In 2002, they kidnapped democracy activist Wang Bingzhang from Vietnam; he remains in a Chinese prison to this day. But the brazenness and frequency of such actions have been growing. Overseas Chinese who speak out discover that relatives inside China have been jailed or threatened. And altogether, five employees of Guis Hong Kong publishing house have been disappeared for periods of time. Lee eventually resurfaced in Hong Kong. He delivered a bizarre statement regretting his involvement with the publishing house, praising China and refusing to provide any information about his disappearance. He then went missing again. Guis reemergence was even odder. In January, he appeared on Chinese television, tearfully claiming to have voluntarily returned to China to take responsibility for a hit-and-run accident in 2003. Angela has yet to watch the supposed confession from beginning to end. Im trying to stay focused on getting him released, she said. If I watched the whole thing, with my father in tears, I dont think I could go on. But she has watched enough to know it is false. Thats just not the way he talks, she said. She had never heard him speak of any accident. Compounding her misgivings is one final message she received from his Skype account. He said he was okay, that he went back to China on his own to solve his own problems. If anyone asks about me, please keep quiet, because thats important to me. I replied, What do you mean? Where are you? But there was no response. Angela, a sociology major who never expected to be an activist, finds herself knocking on official doors in Stockholm and Washington, hoping that governments eager for smooth relations with China will stir themselves to object to such egregious behavior. Even though he told me to keep quiet, I dont believe thats his actual wish, and I believe that if I did keep quiet, I would just be assisting in a crime against international law, she said. I hope thats the right thing. I dont know. She paused again to compose herself. Its been seven months now, and Ive not heard a thing. Read more from Fred Hiatts archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. A woman exhales after taking a hit from a bong during 4/20, the annual day of celebration for cannabis culture lovers, at Sunset Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via Associated Press) Regarding the April 21 news article Canada to introduce bill to allow marijuana sales: The idea of people from the United States jumping the border to take a few legal puffs of pots seems dangerous to me. Wouldnt it be a safer solution for border states to legalize the drug to save potential partakers from driving in unfavorable conditions for an ounce of herbal bliss? Couldnt we as a nation find a way to follow Canadas lead and regulate the substance like we do alcohol and cigarettes? Wouldnt it save border patrol and law enforcements time if Americans stayed put to get their product? Charles Clark Jr., Manassas US President Barack Obama trying on a VR headset (Photo: AP) Mumbai: On a tour of the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade show, taking place in Hannover, Germany, US President Barack Obama tried on a VR headset, and he apparently loved it. President Barack Obama is something of a technology geek and he is in his element at the Hannover Messe. Obama and his host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, checked out high-tech inventions. They even chatted with developers at the massive industrial technology trade show. US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, look at a robotic device as they tour the Hannover Messe (Photo: AP) The two leaders learnt about minicomputers that send data from a car to the cloud, a sensor that mimics a gecko's feet to pick up objects and ultra-light prosthetics created for para-Olympian cyclists. US President and German Chancellor checking out the ultra-light prosthetic created for para-Olympian cyclists (Photo: AP) They even checked out an electric vehicle battery charger that maker Phoenix Contact says can give a car battery 100 kilometers worth of charge in just five minutes. Obama also tried on virtual reality glasses made with what developer Ifm Stiftung dubs the smallest 3D camera in the world. With the glasses on his face and cameras snapping photos, Obama reached out as if shaking an invisible hand. He says, "It's a brave new world." US President Barack Obama wearing the VR Headset (Photo: AP) Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. President Obama, left, with Desmond Tutu following a tour of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 30, 2013. (Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) In his April 22 op-ed, Cultural factors in the HIV crisis, Michael Gerson made a powerful case that the HIV crisis among young women in Africa deserves Americans attention. Important HIV prevention programs funded by U.S. taxpayers can significantly reduce new infections among vulnerable girls and women so they can stay healthy and thrive. Another way Americans give women in Africa hope to remain HIV-free: Federally supported biomedical research has accelerated the discovery of a daily pill and a discreet monthly vaginal ring that can reduce HIV risk. The daily pill is approved in South Africa but not yet in wide use by women, and the long-acting vaginal ring recently showed promise in clinical trials, though further research and regulatory approval are needed before the ring can reach women. There will be no silver bullet to stop HIV. A combination of programs such as DREAMS and new female-initiated prevention tools are needed. Continued U.S. investment in the development of HIV prevention tools would make a big difference for women in Africa. Zeda Rosenberg, Silver Spring The writer is founding chief executive of the International Partnership for Microbicides. Historian David Maraniss notes, in Sundays Post, that President Obama came to office with the goal of changing the trajectory of America and leaving a legacy as a president of consequence, the liberal counter to [Ronald] Reagan. On the foreign-policy front, he is the anti-Reagan for certain. Reagan defeated Soviet communism and left us a safer world; Obama presided over the rise and metastasis of the Islamic State and left us a far more dangerous one. Domestically, Ronald Reagan told the American people: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Im from the government, and Im here to help. Obama wanted to convince Americans that they were not terrifying. And the way he was going to do it was through the only great liberal legislative achievement of his presidency: Obamacare. He failed. Even before he leaves office, Obamacare has begun unraveling. The law was passed over the objections of a majority of Americans, it is still opposed by a majority of Americans and their opposition has been vindicated. Last week, UnitedHealth Group announced that, after estimated losses of more than $1 billion for 2015 and 2016 under Obamacare, the company was pulling out of most of its ill-fated exchanges. Speaking during an appearance at SXSW, President Obama discussed the many problems that occurred during the rollout of the Affordable Care Acts website, HealthCare.gov. (Reuters) In fact, commercial insurers across the country are hemorrhaging money on Obamacare at alarming rates. Health Care Service Corp. (which owns Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas) has lost well north of $2 billion in its first two years twice as much as UnitedHealth. Highmark, the nations fourth-largest Blue Cross plan, lost nearly $600 million in 2015. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has projected it will lose more than $400 million in the first two years, and the company has said it may leave the exchanges entirely next year. The president promised these insurers taxpayer bailouts if they lost money, but Congress in its wisdom passed legislation barring the use of taxpayer dollars to prop up the insurers. Without the bailouts, commercial insurers are being forced to eat their losses while more than half of the Obamacare nonprofit insurance cooperatives created under the law failed. So what happens now? Because commercial insurers are not going to keep bleeding cash to prop up Obamacare, they have three choices: 1) scale back coverage, 2) raise prices or 3) get out of the exchanges entirely. More and more are going to choose option 3. Does this mean that Obamacare is finally entering its death spiral? Not exactly. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Scott Gottlieb explains, while commercial insurers are starting to leave Obamacare, they are being replaced by Medicaid health maintenance organizations (HMOs) offering skimpy plans that mirror what they offer in Medicaid our nations emergency health insurance program for the poorest of the poor. This is a catastrophe for people stuck in Obamacare. According to a 2014 McKinsey survey, about three-quarters of those in the exchanges were previously insured on commercial plans, either through their employers or the individual market. They were doing fine without taxpayer-subsidized insurance but were pushed into Obamacare. They now face rising premiums and smaller provider networks and as commercial insurers flee, they will increasingly be stuck in horrible, Medicaid-style plans. This is not what the president promised when he sold Obamacare to the American people. The president promised Obamacare would provide more choice, more competition, lower costs. Instead, Americans have less choice, less competition and higher costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, if UnitedHealth were to leave the exchange market overall, 1.8 million Marketplace enrollees would be left with two insurers, and another 1.1 million would be left with one insurer. As more commercial insurers do the same, there will be even less competition and higher premiums. The president promised if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. But commercial insurers who stay in Obamacare are responding to massive losses by narrowing provider networks, with fewer doctors and hospitals to choose from. And those that quit are being replaced by Medicaid HMOs with even less doctor choice. The president promised Obamacare would lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year. But insurers are raising premiums instead to cover the massive losses, and even Marilyn Tavenner the former Obama administration official who ran Obamacare has predicted premiums will rise even further next year. As they do, young, healthy individuals will be priced out of the exchanges and the only people who will be able to afford Obamacare will be high-risk patients who qualify for federal subsidies. Without enough healthy people in the exchanges to pay for the sick ones, taxpayers will be stuck with more and more of the costs over time a situation that is unsustainable in the long run. With Obamacare, Obama wanted to restore Americas faith in big government. Instead, the opposite has happened. Today, 69 percent of Americans say big government is the biggest threat to the country in the future (ahead of big business or big labor). That figure, which is slightly down from 72 percent in 2013, is higher under Obama than it has been since Gallup began asking the question about 50 years ago. Obamacare has done more to discredit big government than 1,000 Reagan speeches ever did. That, in the end, will be Obamas enduring domestic legacy. Read more from Marc Thiessens archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. In criticizing the decision to remove Andrew Jackson from the front of the $20 bill, former Virginia senator Jim Webbs April 25 op-ed, Respect Tubman and Jackson, missed the best reason for demonetizing Jackson. Jackson vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, a move, Mr. Webb said, that prevented the triumph of the aristocracy. Instituted under Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in 1791, the First Bank of the United States died at the end of its 20-year term because President James Madison adamantly opposed it. Five years later, realizing that a national bank was necessary for a smoothly functioning economy, Madison chartered the Second Bank of the United States. Ignoring the wisdom of this chastened bank opponent, Jackson removed federal deposits from the bank and then vetoed its recharter. That prompted a credit contraction that contributed to the 1837 depression, which hit the middle class much harder than the aristocracy. As for the aristocracy, Jacksons 1828 election replaced the aristocracy with a populist government of the people. Jacksons bank veto didnt prevent the spread of the aristocracy; it kicked the aristocracy when it was down. Jackson shouldnt be on any federal coins or paper currency, components of a monetary system he deplored and tried to kill. James A. Dueholm, Washington PRESIDENT OBAMAS visit to Cuba last month laid down a marker. The president hailed the islands entrepreneurs, met with dissidents, and encouraged openness and democracy in the presence of President Raul Castro, who rules without any. The regimes answer has now been delivered at the just-concluded Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party: a loud no way. The four-day conference, held in Havana, ratified the old guards hold on leadership. Mr. Castro, 84, was reelected as first secretary of the party, and the delegates cheered a farewell speech from a frail Fidel Castro, 89. Party members seemed eager to snuff out any lingering glow from Mr. Obamas visit. Raul Castro referred to the United States as the enemy and warned we have to be more alert than ever. The Cuban foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, called the presidents visit an attack on the foundation of our history, our culture and our symbols. He added, Obama came here to dazzle the non-state sector, as if he wasnt the representative of big corporations but the defender of hot dog vendors, of small businesses in the United States, which he isnt. Obviously, Mr. Obama discomfited the regime. Despite some market reforms and economic tinkering in recent years, the authoritarian system the Castros have built still dominates state and society. The brothers intention is to make it impossible for Cuba to undergo the kind of transformation that is an ostensible goal of Mr. Obamas policy. According to the Associated Press, on April 8 one of Cubas most well-known advocates of economic reform, Omar Everleny Perez, was fired from his University of Havana think-tank position for allegedly sharing information with Americans without authorization. Mr. Perez was a consultant to the Castro government when it launched some market-oriented reforms. He confirmed his dismissal, saying it was not because of his contacts with foreigners but because he wrote critically about the slow pace of economic reform. Sometimes they dont like what you write or think, he said. Exactly. This is why the authorities relentlessly harassed Oswaldo Paya, a champion of democracy who was killed in a suspicious car wreck in 2012 along with a colleague, Harold Cepero; why regime thugs still assault the Ladies in White, relatives of political prisoners who demonstrate weekly; why they rough up other dissidents and free thinkers. In all the enthusiasm in the United States for more tourism, cultural exchanges and investment in Cuba, there have been far too few demands for more democracy on the island. A lesson of Mr. Obamas visit, and the Communist Partys overheated reaction, is that the mere mention of democracy and freedom is a powerful tool. Mr. Obama put it simply in Havana, declaring that citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear. Those rushing to Havana lately must not forget to articulate this message, again and again. Jim Webb, a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia from 2007 to 2013, is the author of Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. One would think we could celebrate the recognition that Harriet Tubman will be given on future $20 bills without demeaning former president Andrew Jackson as a monster, as a recent Huffington Post headline did. And summarizing his legendary tenure as being known primarily for a brutal genocidal campaign against native Americans, as reported in The Post, offers an indication of how far political correctness has invaded our educational system and skewed our national consciousness. This dismissive characterization of one of our great presidents is not occurring in a vacuum. Any white person whose ancestral relations trace to the American South now risks being characterized as having roots based on bigotry and undeserved privilege. Meanwhile, race relations are at their worst point in decades. Far too many of our most important discussions are being debated emotionally, without full regard for historical facts. The myth of universal white privilege and universal disadvantage among racial minorities has become a mantra, even though white and minority cultures alike vary greatly in their ethnic and geographic origins, in their experiences in the United States and in their educational and financial well-being. Into this uninformed debate come the libels of Old Hickory. Not unlike the recently lionized Alexander Hamilton, Jackson was himself a brilliant orphan. A product of the Scots-Irish migration from war-torn Ulster into the Appalachian Mountains, his father died before he was born. His mother and both brothers died in the Revolutionary War, where he himself became a wounded combat veteran by age 13. Self-made and aggressive, he found wealth in the wilds of Tennessee and, like other plantation owners such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, owned slaves. He was a transformational president, hated by the reigning English American elites as he brought populist, frontier-style democracy to our political system. 1 of 10 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Here are some of the women people wanted on the $10 bill View Photos The Obama administration said it would feature a woman on the currency, and the Treasury Department solicited suggestions. Caption The Obama administration said it would feature a woman on the currency, and the Treasury Department solicited suggestions. Rosa Parks Rosa Parks rides on a Montgomery Area Transit System bus. Parks refused to give up her seat on Dec. 1, 1955, and ignited the boycott that led to a federal court ruling against segregation on public transportation. Daily Advertiser via AP Wait 1 second to continue. Jackson became the very face of the New America, focusing on intense patriotism and the dignity of the common man. On the battlefield he was unbeatable, not only in the Indian Wars, which were brutally fought with heavy casualties on both sides, but also in his classic defense of New Orleans during the War of 1812. His defense of the city (in which he welcomed free blacks as soldiers in his army) dealt the British army its most lopsided defeat until the fall of Singapore in 1942. As president, Jackson ordered the removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi to lands west of the river. This approach, supported by a string of presidents, including Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, was a disaster, resulting in the Trail of Tears where thousands died. But was its motivation genocidal? Robert Remini, Jacksons most prominent biographer, wrote that his intent was to end the increasingly bloody Indian Wars and to protect the Indians from certain annihilation at the hands of an ever-expanding frontier population. Indeed, it would be difficult to call someone genocidal when years before, after one bloody fight, he brought an orphaned Native American baby from the battlefield to his home in Tennessee and raised him as his son. Todays schoolchildren should know and appreciate that Jacksons July 1832 veto of legislation renewing the charter of the monopolistic Second National Bank prevented the creation of a permanent aristocracy in our country. Jackson was virulently opposed in this decision, openly threatened by Americas elites. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Vernon Louis Parrington called this veto perhaps the most courageous act in our political history. Just as significantly, in November 1832, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union. Jackson put a strong military force in position, letting it be known that if it attempted secession he would have 50,000 soldiers inside the state within 40 days, with another 50,000 to follow shortly after. Wisely, South Carolina did not call Jacksons bluff, and civil war was averted for another 28 years. Jackson was a rough-hewn brawler, a dueler and a fighter. For eight years he dominated American politics, bringing a coarse but refreshing openness to the countrys governing process. Jefferson called him a dangerous man. Quincy Adams termed him a barbarian. But as Parrington put it, he was our first great popular leader, our first man of the people. . . . one of our few Presidents whose heart and sympathy . . . clung to the simple faith that government must deal as justly with the poor as with the rich. Mark Twain once commented that to arrive at a just estimate of a renowned mans character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. By any standard we should respect both Jacksons and Tubmans contributions. And our national leaders should put aside their deliberate divisiveness and encourage that we do so. The April 21 editorial Georgetowns legacy of slavery brought tears to my eyes. It would change us for the better if government, corporate and other institutions made similar efforts to acknowledge their part in slavery. Would the result be reparations, as some have called for? I dont know. But then I thought about those who lived here before Europeans, before Europeans brought slaves from Africa. What is our legacy or debt to Native Americans? David Wolinsky, Frederick A sudden political alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump quickly ran into speed bumps Monday that exposed the plans risks and called into question whether it would work. In their unconventional last-ditch scheme, Kasich said he would clear the way for Cruz to face Trump in Indiana while Cruz would return the favor in Oregon and New Mexico. The plan aimed to produce what anti-Trump Republicans have yearned for since the fall: a one-on-one showdown with the mogul. But less than 12 hours after the pact was announced, Kasich undercut the idea by declaring Monday that his supporters in Indiana should still vote for him. The Ohio governor also plans to keep raising money in the state and to meet Tuesday with Republican Gov. Mike Pence. Cruz, meanwhile, said that Kasich was pulling out of the state. A super PAC supporting the senator from Texas also said it would continue to air an anti-Kasich ad in the state a sign the Cruz camp fears Kasich could still peel away enough support to sink Cruzs chances here. The tumult fueled doubts about the arrangement among voters and Republican elites, who worried that Cruz and Kasich have handed Trump a ready-made argument that the party establishment is plotting against him. The mogul said as much in a series of stump speeches on the eve of primary voting on Tuesday, when Trump is poised to rack up delegates in five Eastern states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains why the strategic alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich seems destined to fail. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Honestly, it shows such total weakness, and its pathetic when two longtime insider politicians establishment guys, whether you like it or not have to collude, have to get together to try to beat a guy that really speaks what the people want, Trump said at a rally in Warwick, R.I. [Cruz has more to gain from deal with Kasich, according to delegate rules] Cruz and Kasich are bound by two self-serving goals: winning enough delegates between them to prevent Trump from clinching the nomination outright and trying to demonstrate that he isnt favored by most Republicans. If those goals are met, Julys Republican National Convention in Cleveland is likely to be a free-for-all offering Cruz and, perhaps, Kasich a shot at the nomination. Already on Monday, many Republicans were dubious. Its hard to assess whether it will have any significant impact, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who supported Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and is neutral now, said by email. Voters tend to stick to their preferred candidate for personal, not tactical, reasons. The marriage of political convenience was announced in separate news releases late Sunday night by the two campaigns. But it was immediately put to the test early Monday, when Kasich said at a news conference at Philadelphias Penrose Diner that any Indiana voter inclined to vote for him should do so. Ted Cruz appears with his daughters Caroline and Catherine at a campaign event in Columbus, Ind. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters) Ive never told em not to vote for me, Kasich said. They ought to vote for me. But Im not over there campaigning and spending resources. Just hours earlier, Kasichs campaign co-chair in Indiana was saying the opposite. Kasich is asking his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz so Trump does not win Indiana, Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard Cruz told the Indianapolis Star, suggesting that Cruz would do the same with his voters in Oregon and New Mexico. Kasich scrapped his public events in Indiana, but he still plans to meet with Pence as Cruz and Trump did last week and to hold a fundraiser in Indiana on Tuesday, according to Kasich campaign consultant Pete Seat. The announcements on Sunday did not specifically say what the candidates voters should do, but the intent was clear: to try to help Cruz win Indiana on May 3 and to help Kasich claim Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. [Is Indiana the last stand for the Never Trump movement?] Outside groups supporting Cruz and Kasich and opposed to Trump appeared mostly keen on the plan. But the pro-Cruz super PAC Trusted Leadership said it planned to continue broadcasting an anti-Kasich ad in Indiana while ceasing plans to air ads in Oregon and New Mexico. Speaking to reporters before a rally here in Borden, Cruz said it was big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump. He said the division of resources in key primary states made sense from both campaigns. At Cruzs rally, where he did not mention he was ceding Oregon and New Mexico, there was some skepticism about whether the plan would help the senator from Texas in next weeks primary or instead bolster Trump. It could go either way, said Pat Cambron of Borden, who is deciding between Cruz and Trump. It might be a little late, said Mary Jean Halbleighb, a Cruz supporter from Floyds Knobs. [On policies, Ted Cruz shifts his stance to suit a fractured GOP] The deal was discussed in a private meeting last week between Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe and Kasich chief strategist John Weaver on the sidelines of the Republican National Committees spring meeting in Hollywood, Fla., said a person with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The deal was finalized Sunday in phone calls between the two advisers. Limited public polling in Indiana has shown that Cruz stands the best chance of stopping Trump on May 3. Cruz and his allies were worried about Kasich pulling critical votes away from him in the Hoosier State. Kasichs campaign said it sees similarities between Oregon, New Mexico and the Northeast, where Kasichs centrist pitch has won him more support than Cruz. But Kasich has struggled overall, notching his only win in his home state. Overall, Trump leads the Republican race with 845 delegates, according to the latest Associated Press count. Cruz has 559, while Kasich is much further back with 148. To win the nomination outright, a candidate must clinch 1,237 delegates. If that doesnt happen, a contested convention will be triggered and the nomination will be up for grabs. At a town hall meeting in Rockville, Md., Kasich assured the crowd that an open convention would be good for Republicans and for the country, and suggested that voters were figuring that out. Some guy, when I was walking into this diner this morning, shouted out: Its so nice to see you, Governor Lincoln! said Kasich. You go hit Google and find out what he could mean by that, okay? He was referring to a fact that the campaign later pushed out on Twitter: At seven of 10 open conventions, the eventual winner was not the candidate who entered as the favorite. One of the underdogs who won was Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In his back-and-forth with reporters, Cruz was pressed on Trumps assertion that he was engaging in collusion. Signaling how he intends to define himself against those claims, Cruz quickly pivoted away from his own actions and toward his rival. Yes, I understand the Trump campaign is going to scream and cry, he said. Thats what they do. Weigel reported from McKees Rocks, Pa. Jose A. DelReal in West Chester, Pa., contributed to this report. The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States." (Photo: AFP) Washington: The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States." Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The former Democratic senator from Florida says an administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. "I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available," Graham told NBCs' "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a "preliminary police report." "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with - all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating," the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said Friday. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner." The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. Still, protecting U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations also was believed to have been a factor. Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said Obama asked National Intelligence director James Clapper to review the papers for possible declassification. "When that's done we'd expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information," Rhodes told reporters in Riyadh last week where Obama met with King Salman and other Saudi leaders. The White House says the 28 pages did not come up during discussions. Neither the congressional inquiry nor the subsequent 9/11 Commission found any evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. But Graham, the relatives of victims and some lawmakers think there is reason to further probe possible Saudi links. Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. Al Thumairy was later denied entry into the United States in May 2003 after the State Department alleged that he might be involved in terrorist activity. Roemer also wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers. "We did not discover ... Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks," Roemer said. But he added: "We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. ... Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for al-Qaida. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. That's why we need to continue to get to the bottom of this." The online 28pages.org, an Internet site pushing to get the documents released, points to another document declassified in July 2015 that outlined ways in which the commission could examine possible Saudi links. The 47-page document lists several pages of individuals of interest and suggests questions that could be pursued. One name is suspected al-Qaida operative Ghassan al Sharbi. Al Sharbi, who was taking flight lessons in the Phoenix area before 9/11, was captured in 2002 in the same place in Pakistan as Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaida trainer who was apprehended and waterboarded dozens of times by U.S. interrogators. The document said that after al Sharbi was captured, the FBI discovered some documents buried nearby. One was al Sharbi's pilot certificate inside an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, although it's unclear whether the license had been mailed by the embassy or if the envelope was simply being reused. A CIA's inspector general report in June 2015 said there had been no reliable reporting confirming Saudi government "involvement with and financial support for terrorist prior to 9/11." But it also that people in the CIA's Near East Division and Counterterrorism Center "speculated that dissident sympathizers within the government may have aided al-Qaida." The rest of chapter, titled "Issues related to Saudi Arabia," is blacked out. A bill directing the president to release the 28-page chapter was introduced in the Senate, and nearly three dozen Republicans and Democrats in the House are backing a similar resolution. Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote Obama last week saying they don't think releasing the chapter will harm national security and could provide closure for the victims' families. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the pages and said this past week that while he wants to see them declassified to end speculation about what they say, releasing them will not quell the debate over the issue. "As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty," he said. President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pause before their tour of the Hannover Messe Trade Fair, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hanover, Germany. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) President Obama on Monday urged the United States European allies to reject the isolationist and nationalist impulses that are taking hold on the continent and pressed Europe to remain open to refugees fleeing war and poverty. We have to uphold our values not just when it is easy, but when its hard, Obama said. The European Union is facing a major crisis of confidence caused by historic flows of refugees, a slow economy and growing fears of terrorism. Obama acknowledged those problems, but his speech at a massive trade fair here seemed designed to rally the continent. Throughout his tour of Europe, which included stops over the past week in the United Kingdom, Obama has repeatedly touted the value of the European Union and urged citizens of Europe to reject forces of anger and division that are now increasingly a part of their politics. I know that some will call it blind hope when I say that I am confident that forces that bind Europe together are ultimately much stronger than those trying to pull you apart, the president said. But hope is not blind when it is rooted in the memory of all that you have already overcome. . . . You are the heirs to a struggle for freedom. In a speech that stretched nearly an hour, Obama catalogued the biggest problems facing both Europe and the United States. He talked about growing income inequality on both sides of the Atlantic, the threat of Russian aggression in Ukraine and privacy fears surrounding U.S. intelligence-collection efforts. He also described his plans to bolster the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Obama said he plans to nearly quadruple the size of U.S. Special Operations forces in Syria to up to 300 troops. Given the success, Ive approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel . . . to keep up this momentum, he said. He emphasized that the new troops are not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but will work with local forces who will do the fighting. The speech in Hanover carried intentional echoes of Obamas historic 2008 address, delivered in Berlin when he was on the cusp of being elected to the White House, said White House aides. In that speech, Obama discussed his improbable political ascent and spoke in soaring language of humanitys common destiny. He described an array of opportunities, such as a new dawn in the Middle East and trade that is free and fair for all, along with new dangers such as climate change and transnational terrorism. Nearly eight years later, the president sounded the same themes, but his tone was more sober and bore a greater recognition of the problems that Europe, which has had its confidence shaken, currently faces. Throughout the speech, Obama drew parallels to the bitter and divisive politics in the United States. He described the nations battles over immigration and refugees, which have included calls from Republican presidential candidates to ban Syrian refugees who are Muslim from entering the United States. I know the politics of immigration and refugees is hard. It is hard everywhere, in every country, he said. Because of Europes proximity to the wars in the Middle East and the historic influx of refugees, the downsides and dangers of globalization have been felt more quickly and acutely on the continent, Obama said throughout his travels in the United Kingdom and Germany. He returned to the theme in his Hanover speech. These are unsettling times, he said. And when the future is uncertain, there seems to be an instinct in our human nature to withdraw to the perceived comfort and security of our own tribe, our own sect, our nationality. People who look like us, sound like us. In todays world, more than any time in human history, that is a false comfort. Such thinking, Obama warned, could lead to oppression, segregation, internment camps a powerful message in Germany, where memories of the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust are a major part of modern Germanys identity. To meet such threats, Obama called on his European allies to carry on with the great European experiment and to continue to reach out to the rest of the world. He made the case for a massive and controversial trade deal the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that is being negotiated between the United States and the European Union. He urged American and European governments to do more to address the problem of income inequality, which has become the dominant issue in this years Democratic presidential primary. In an explicit rejection of the rhetoric that has dominated the presidential race in the United States especially Sen. Bernie Sanderss campaign the president insisted that carefully negotiated free trade deals are the best means to boost economies and close the gap between the super-rich and everyone else. If youre really concerned about inequality, if you are really concerned about the plight of workers, if you are a progressive, it is my firm belief that you cant turn inward, Obama said. He defended the National Security Agencys massive intelligence-collection efforts, which have alarmed privacy advocates in Europe and created a stir when it was revealed that the United States had been listening in on German Chancellor Angela Merkels phone calls. Obama ended that program, but he insisted that a robust collection program was essential to U.S. and European security. The threat of terrorism is real, he said. Security and privacy dont have to be a contradiction. He called on European nations to maintain support for sanctions designed to punish Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. We must not allow borders to be drawn by brute force in the 21st century, he said. His speech, though, seemed designed primarily to boost Europes flagging confidence and to counter anti-democratic and xenophobic forces that, 70 years after the end of World War II, are once again finding a foothold on the continent. People starved on this continent. Families were separated on this continent, Obama said. Now refugees were risking their lives to come to Europe. People desperately want to come here precisely because of what youve created, he said. You cant take that for granted. President Obama is endorsing U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty, D-Pa., who was campaigning in April at a SEPTA subway stop in west Philadelphia. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.) Barack Obama rose to prominence as a different kind of Democrat, an outsider who was not part of the establishment and who would chart a separate course. Eight years later, the president finds himself working hard to restore a party from which he was once eager to stand apart. Obama has presided over a greater loss of electoral power for his party than any two-term president since World War II. And 2016 represents one last opportunity for him to reverse that trend. But it is also a challenge for the president who has experimented with establishing his own political base outside the Democratic National Committee and has downsized the scale of political operations inside the White House. The first big tests of the rebuilding efforts come Tuesday in Pennsylvania, where Obama is taking the unusual step of wading into two contested Democratic primaries, endorsing Senate hopeful Katie McGinty and Josh Shapiro, a Montgomery County official and early supporter of his who is hoping to become state attorney general. [Amid deep party divisions, White House seeks to lift McGinty] Should Democrats claim those two offices in the fall, it would represent a small dent in what has become a worrisome decline of power for the party below the presidential level under Obamas watch. Between 2008 and 2015, Democrats lost 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, 913 state legislative seats, 11 governorships and 32 state legislative chambers, according to data compiled by University of Virginia professor Larry J. Sabato. The only president in the past 75 years who comes close is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who saw a similar decline for the GOP during his time in office. The Republican Party is arguably stronger now than theyve ever been in 80 years, despite not having the White House, said Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic operative and president of NDN, a liberal think tank. Democrats also are concerned about whether the coalition Obama galvanized in 2008, and then reassembled in 2012, will turn out when he is no longer on the ballot. The current Democratic presidential primary contest has so far fractured that coalition, with young people flocking to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont while many voters of color especially older ones back former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Many factors have contributed to Republicans gains on the state and federal levels, including a concerted push by their donors to target state races and a midterm election that allowed them to lock in favorable congressional district lines. Obamas defenders contend that after major victories in 2006 and 2008, it was predictable that Democrats would lose significant ground in the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014. But, they add, the presidents two successful White House bids have vastly upgraded the partys voter outreach infrastructure by expanding the national voter file the Democratic National Committee first started in 2006. And they point to the huge increases in the number of Democratic campaign volunteers from roughly 252,000 in 2004 to 2.2 million in 2012 as evidence of that upgrade. Barack Obama has single-handedly modernized the Democrats ability to wage campaigns on the local level, said Jim Messina, who managed Obamas reelection campaign. Rosenberg agrees, saying that the president built on the work of Bill Clinton, the only other two-term Democratic president of the last generation. Clinton established the intellectual framework for the Democratic Party and Obama modernized its politics, Rosenberg said. What isnt there yet is a large enough set of leaders from the next generation to carry it on. Some of Obamas earliest decisions continue to reverberate negatively for Democrats. Organizing for Action (OFA), the nonprofit group that grew out of Obamas campaign operation, has continued to compete with the Democratic National Committee for Democratic dollars first as a parallel organization within the DNC and then as a separate entity. In the first six months of 2013, the DNC raised $30.8 million, while OFA raised $13 million. And this was at a time when the DNC was carrying more than $18 million in debt. Those fiscal constraints meant the DNC had to curtail the money it provided to state parties, a practice that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) reversed in 2015 by increasing the monthly minimum transfer to each state from $5,000 a month to $7,500. Close cooperation has taken time; OFA gave the DNC limited access to its list of supporters starting in 2013, but it turned over the entire list only in August 2015. Now, according to Nevada Democratic Party chair Roberta Lange, That voter file is used by everyone in our state. While many OFA volunteers have focused on local referendums and other local political battles, the group has earned the enmity of some party stalwarts for diverting resources. During a 2010 gathering of Democratic governors in Washington, according to multiple attendees, one governor asked a senior presidential political adviser, Will the OFA please join the Democratic Party? But this White House, unlike that of Bill Clinton, has always kept its political operation on a separate track. Under Clinton, the political affairs office boasted roughly a dozen people in addition to the deputy chief of staff who oversaw political affairs and the president got a political briefing once a week. By contrast, Obama limited election activity in the White House, a reflection of both his desire to keep any scandal at bay and the influence of White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who has little campaign experience outside of working on Obamas first presidential bid. Obama phased out the political affairs office after two years to move the operation to his Chicago campaign headquarters. He appointed David Simas, who directs the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, to his current position only in January 2014, after congressional Democrats complained they did not have a direct White House contact for political matters. Obamas senior political advisers from his first term Messina, David Plouffe and David Axelrod, among others have left to focus on ventures in the private sector and academia and scaled back their involvement in day-to-day Democratic politics. Plouffe said it was natural for veteran strategists to move on but acknowledged that Obamas relationship with his top political operatives didnt automatically translate to other candidates. You dont do your best work being a mercenary, said Plouffe, now a strategic adviser to the car service firm Uber. He added that it will take the commitment of wealthy Democratic donors not just top party officials to target state contests the way Republicans have. I think we all agree something has to be done, he said. The question is how. Its not going to be the DNC. Obama, for his part, has set limits for what he will do in connection with super PACs while in office. While he did fundraising events for the one that backed his reelection campaign, Priorities USA, McDonough and Obamas lawyers curtailed what the president would do two years later for the Senate Majority PAC, a similar entity supporting Senate Democrats. In an April 2014 memo to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the PACs counsel, Marc E. Elias, stipulated that to avoid any conflict of interest Obama would not actually ask potential Senate Majority PAC donors for money even when appearing at one of the groups events. After making this point on the memos first page, he reiterated two pages later, with underlined emphasis: Again, to be clear: the President will not solicit contributions at or in connection with any of these meetings. After a protracted and bitter exchange, Reids aides abandoned their effort to involve Obama in any more than a few super PAC events, and the president agreed to transfer $5 million from the DNC to both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the fall of 2014. During the 2012 cycle, the DNC made no transfers to the two committees. But with his popularity high among Democrats and no election ahead of him, Obama has been working to shore up his party, both financially and politically. And his aides say Obama has turned controversial issues, including immigration, gay rights and climate change, to the Democrats advantage. He will be aggressive, from the presidential level down to the state and local representative level, Simas said. Theres going to be a Democratic nominee and Democratic candidates. They are the ones who are going to be driving the campaigns, and the president will be there to be as helpful as possible. [Obama wades deeper into 2016 presidential campaign] Recently in Dallas, before dozens of guests who had each given thousands of dollars to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Obama diagnosed one of the problems: Democrats just arent very good at focusing on down-ballot races, he said, according to two participants. The president may have been stating the obvious. But it reflected a shift in thinking among Democrats, who are working furiously to shore up state-level candidates to avoid getting beaten once again on redistricting. Since 2013, Obama has devoted considerable time to fundraising for the DNC and both congressional committees, doing more than 100 events for the DNC alone. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said that when he asked Obama to make a series of primary endorsements this cycle, including one of McGinty, He just did it with no muss, no fuss, in a very great way. In December, the heads of three party committees met to develop a joint redistricting strategy, and Obama signed a redistricting fundraising appeal for the Democratic Governors Association in January. Even former members such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) have been asked to attend fundraisers on behalf of state lawmakers in states such as Ohio. We have to be better and smarter about playing that long game and making those investments, said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), adding that while House Democrats will have a very strong wind at their backs this year, The day after this election, we have to understand that the winds going to be in our faces. In 2014, many Democrats in conservative states were eager to tap Obamas fundraising prowess but were reluctant to appear side-by-side with a president with sagging popularity ratings. Already, 2016 is different. Longtime Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said that for a long time Democrats wanted Obamas resources including money and analytics but they didnt want his presence. When she called the White House last year to ask if the president would do robo-calls to African American voters during Louisianas special election for governor, White House officials seemed surprised that Democrat John Bel Edwards even wanted their help. Brazile assured them that he did. And Democrats increasingly believe that they will need Obama in the fall to regain some of the ground theyve lost since 2008. Part of his legacy is to rebuild the bench, Brazile said. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.) said in an interview that the president will help in unifying the Democratic base. Hes going to help boost turnout in November, which is critical when youre winning races on the margins, Lujan said. Katie McGinty has never been elected to anything, and her name is not well known to Pennsylvania voters. So last week, at a bustling transit stop in West Philadelphia, the unlikely Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate was relying on a local power broker to sell her to his skeptical constituents. A friend with a bullhorn beckoned commuters as state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D) insisted that McGinty would prevail in Tuesdays Democratic primary on the strength of endorsements from powerful party leaders, including President Obama. Theres a crystallization, largely in the African American community, around Katie as they see folks like myself and others come out in support of her, Hughes said. Although much attention has focused on the divisive Republican presidential primary, Pennsylvania demonstrates that in some key Senate races, Democrats are struggling to capitalize on the chaos in the GOP. In the race to oust Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, McGinty will face off Tuesday against the better-known Joe Sestak, a retired three-star admiral and former congressman whose go-it-alone approach to politics has alienated the entire Democratic establishment. Democrats are also in conflict in Florida, where Rep. Alan Grayson is challenging Rep. Patrick Murphy for a shot at the seat being vacated by failed GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio another must-win race for Democrats trying to reclaim the Senate. In both races, Obama and Vice President Biden have abandoned their past reluctance to engage in primary politics. They announced their support for Murphy and dispatched Biden to campaign for him just as they are sending the vice president to Philadelphia on Monday for a second trip to boost McGinty. If Democrats win the White House and gain four seats in the Senate, they would regain the majority they lost in 2014. Obama and Biden, both former senators, have made it a personal goal to help return the Senate to Democrats control before they leave the White House in January, even if it means ruffling feathers in the partys progressive wing. In Pennsylvania, the feud is more about personality than policy: Democratic leaders despise Sestak, who never stopped campaigning for the Senate after losing narrowly to Toomey six years ago. I dont think anybody would call Joe Sestak paranoid if he said the Democratic Party was out to get him, said John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock and the third Democrat in the race. The dispute has turned into a roughly $10 million brawl for the nomination that is likely to leave the victor broke and in desperate need of a strategy to unify the Democratic ranks against Toomey and his $10 million campaign war chest. Polls showed Sestak, 64, with a large early lead. Now the race is neck and neck, but no one is sure whether McGinty, 52, can marshal her momentum and financial edge to overcome the reservoir of goodwill that Sestak has established during his years-long, nonstop campaign. The congressman, God bless him, has been running for a long, long time, and so we didnt have the name ID advantage to start with, McGinty said after meeting with a dozen senior citizens in Center City. But I think every poll is showing that we have eviscerated that early lead. The ninth of 10 children from an Irish Catholic family in Northeast Philadelphia, McGinty attended St. Josephs University and now lives in the suburbs. She served as an environmental adviser to former vice president Al Gore and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell (D), and last year served as chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf (D). But McGinty has run in just one previous race, finishing a distant fourth in the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Her commercials tend to feature others talking about her in one recent ad, Obamas voice made up almost the entire audio rather than the candidate explaining her policy proposals in her own voice. McGinty has been willing to throw elbows. She has accused Sestak of contemplating cuts to Social Security benefits, because he once said nice things about a bipartisan debt-reduction plan known as Bowles-Simpson. And she has twisted his 2009 vote in favor of a proposal to tax Wall Street bonuses into an allegation that he supports unlimited bonuses for bank executives. Still, its a measure of their deep dislike for Sestak that party leaders are backing such an unproven candidate in such a critical race. In addition to helping McGintys campaign raise money, Democratic leaders have helped build an outside coalition of support that includes the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Emilys List, labor unions and environmental groups. All told, the outside groups have so far spent an additional $4 million on McGintys behalf. [Senate Democrats pour $1.1 million into boosting McGinty] This has become a campaign that is driven by Washington, D.C., Sestak said in an interview with The Washington Post. For his part, Sestak says he tried to mend fences with party leaders. He says he considered their recommendations for his new campaign manager and fundraising chief. But he says he just couldnt take it when he was given a direct order by a senior Democrat: Sestak, whenever I tell you anything, the only answer is yes. In the interview, Sestak declined to name the party boss in question, but in earlier talks with local media, he made clear that it was Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Schumer declined to comment, but a spokesman said the exchange did not occur as Sestak described it. Several Democrats in Washington confirmed that Sestak and Democratic leaders clashed over staffing issues, but they said the decision to oppose Sestak was ultimately based on the belief that a liberal woman could mount a better challenge to Toomey in a year when the Democratic presidential nominee is likely to be Hillary Clinton. In theory, Sestak should be a dream candidate: He hails from the vote-rich suburbs of Philadelphia. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and received a PhD from Harvards Kennedy School of Government. He was a national security adviser to former president Bill Clinton, and he went on to command a carrier group in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. He returned to Delaware County, west of Philadelphia, in 2006 and won a House seat that had long been in Republican hands. Then in 2009, Biden and then-governor Rendell persuaded one of Pennsylvanias sitting U.S. senators, Arlen Specter, to switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, giving Democrats a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. That decision permitted Obama to pass major legislation during the first two years of his administration, but it left Specter badly weakened back home. [Arlen Specters party switch haunts him in primary campaign] Smelling blood, Sestak bucked party leaders and defeated Specter in the 2010 Democratic primary. He lost the general election to Toomey by just 2 percent. Over the next four years, Sestak attended more than 800 events for local Democrats to sustain support for another Senate run. But Sestak likes talking to township commissioners far more than Democratic power brokers in Washington and Harrisburg, the state capital. Ive not heard from him in more than six years, Hughes said at the street-corner event in West Philadelphia. Youve got to reach out to people, and if you want to know what the folks in this community are thinking about, you should talk to the individuals who represent them. In an email to supporters that was leaked to a liberal blog, Sestak said that Philadelphia Democrats such as Hughes and Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.) have never forgiven him for refusing to put up $500,000 in street money to get voters to the polls in 2010. Once McGinty entered the race, Sestak gave up trying to mend his tattered ties to Democratic leaders. Instead, he has once again pursued a highly idiosyncratic campaign strategy, one that includes, in the campaigns final week, the decision to do very few public events. In a game plan he crafted himself, Sestak is letting his TV and radio ads do the talking while he holds private meetings with grass-roots leaders. He says running a campaign his way is more important than winning. Trust is the biggest deficit we have today, Sestak told The Post. This isnt about my being elected. This is about earning the trust of the people. A deadly Taliban attack in Kabul on April 19 killed 64 people and injured 347 others. President Ashraf Ghani said Monday that he is stepping back from attemps at peace with the insurgents. (Rahmat Gul/AP) Afghan President Ashraf Ghani stepped back Monday from attempts to engage Taliban insurgents in peace talks, vowing that Afghanistan will instead execute enemies of the state and undertake preparations for an extended war. In a speech that signaled a significant shift in policies, Ghani left open the prospect of dialogue with Taliban fighters who put down their weapons. But he labeled the broader Taliban organization and its Pakistan-based offshoot, the Haqqani network, as terrorists and promised expanded attacks by the Afghan military. [Taliban strikes in heart of Kabul] Ghanis remarks are a setback for the Obama administrations hopes that the 14-year Taliban insurgency could be ended through a negotiated settlement. Back-channel discussions have been held for the past three years to try to establish a framework for such talks. The enemies of Afghanistan should realize, if they are captured in the battlefield fighting against the people of Afghanistan, or in terrorist activities, they will definitely be handed over to the law and will be dealt with on the basis of the law, Ghani said. He added that his government will resume capital punishment for convicted terrorists. He spoke before a joint meeting of parliament nearly a week after Taliban assailants killed 64 people and injured 347 others in Kabul in one of the largest attacks in the capital in years. In response, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid insisted that the militants would not back down. He called the Afghan leaders mercenaries imposed on the nation by their U.S. allies. The linchpin for peace talks has always been Pakistan, which has permitted some of the Taliban leaders to reside there. [Taliban promises a bloody spring ] Pakistan has been unable or unwilling to apply enough pressure on the Taliban to enter negotiations. And U.S. and Afghan military officials now think most Taliban factions have united behind a call by the groups supreme leader, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, to fight at least through this year. In his speech, Ghani demanded that Pakistan arrest and hand over Taliban leaders who find refuge in that countrys eastern region. If Pakistan fails to act, Ghani said, Afghanistan will push for responsible international entities to act outside of Afghanistan against the criminals whose hands are stained in the blood of Afghans. Western diplomats have stressed that Pakistan is probably limited in what it can do without risking a domestic backlash that could destabilize the nuclear-armed country. Despite his tough talk toward the Taliban and Pakistan, much of Ghanis speech appeared to be aimed at shoring up his domestic political support. [The elusive goal of peace talks] In recent months, Ghani and the countrys chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, have struggled to agree on nominees for scores of government positions. Afghans have criticized Ghani for failing to boost the economy or fix soaring unemployment. Ghanis leadership will be further tested by two upcoming international conferences that will decide whether foreign donors, including the United States, will continue to spend $7 billion annually to pay for reconstruction and the countrys military. President Obama also must decide later this year whether to follow through on his plan to reduce U.S. troop levels from the current 9,800 to 5,500 by January. For months, Afghan critics have accused Ghani a former World Bank official who spent much of his adulthood in the West of being too disconnected from everyday hardships. The speech was not based on [Ghanis] depth of strategy and [was] just a reaction of developments, to reduce the level of peoples mistrust, said Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan parliament member. But Mohammad Nateqi, a former Afghan diplomat, said Ghani has at least attempted to clarify his objectives. This is a turning point and change, Nateqi said. His tone was focusing on defensive and war preparations. Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world A U.S. military V-22 Osprey Tiltrotor on maneuvers during U.S.-Philippine military exercises on April 14. (Bullit Marquez/AP) A severed head was left Monday on a street in the southern Philippines, authorities said, five hours after a ransom deadline set by Islamist militants holding Western hostages and others. Canadas prime minister identified the victim as a 68-year-old Canadian. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta, was killed in a coldblooded murder by the militants. Trudeau said Canada would work with the Philippine government and international partners to bring those responsible to justice. The beheading underscored fears of widening violence by Islamist guerrillas, known as the Abu Sayyaf group, as it forges possible allegiances with the Islamic State. It also raised fears of other execution-style killings among those held. Abu Sayyaf has taken hostages for decades and killed captives as part of a rebellion it has claimed to be waging on behalf of the Muslim minority in Asias only predominantly Roman Catholic nation. The Philippine government has denounced the Abu Sayyaf group as a terrorist organization that also operates more like a criminal gang, engaging in kidnapping for ransom, extortion and drug trafficking, among other crimes. [Where U.S. forces are advising allies] The severed head described by authorities as the remains of a Caucasian male was found inside a plastic bag dropped along a street in Jolo, a provincial capital in the southern Philippines, said Jolo police chief superintendent, Junpikar Sitin. The Abu Sayyaf group had set a deadline for payment of the equivalent of $6.5 million for each of its foreign hostages, including two Canadians and a Norwegian man seized along with a Filipino woman in September from a marina on Samal Island in the countrys south. Officials in Philippines did not immediately identify the remains. But the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported that the beheaded man was Ridsdel, a former chief operating officer of mining company TVI Resource Development Philippines, a subsidiary of Canadas TVI Pacific mining company. Ridsdel had worked most recently as a consultant for the company, the CBC reported. [Defense secretary: Islamic State could embolden militants in Philippines] In various videos purportedly posted by Abu Sayyaf, Ridsdel, fellow Canadian Robert Hall and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad were shown appealing to the Philippine government to stop military operations against the militants. Police and military officials said in a statement that a military rescue operation was underway before Mondays ransom deadline. Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding other foreigners, including a Dutch man, a Japanese person and a group of Malaysian and Indonesian seamen. In November, Abu Sayyaf militants decapitated a Malaysian hostage on the same day that the Malaysian prime minister arrived in Manila for a summit. Abu Sayyaf a collection of militant splinter groups has been weakened by expanded military and police operations over the past decade, but it retains footholds in jungle hideouts used as bases for sporadic attacks and kidnappings. The group had claimed an alliance with al-Qaeda, but it recently publicly proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the Islamic State could help inspire increased attacks by Abu Sayyaf militants, such as a recent attack on a Philippine military base that killed at least 18 troops. William Branigin contributed to this report. A memorial is placed in front of the house for 1-year-old Kenzley Olson on Friday in Poplar, Mont. (Photo: AP) Billings, Montana: A woman beat to death a 13-month-old girl under her care on a Native American reservation in Montana, threw the baby's body into a dumpster and reported her missing before confessing to the crime a day later, a federal investigator testified. Janelle Red Dog, 42, admitted striking the baby on three occasions, but it's uncertain if that's what killed her, her lawyer said. Red Dog got scared after Kenzley Olson died, so she disposed of the body in a trash container several blocks from her house in the town of Poplar, attorney Mary Zemyan said. She later reported the girl missing. Red Dog appeared in tribal court Friday on the Fort Peck Reservation, about 20 miles from the U.S.-Canada border, and was ordered back into custody without bond, court officials said. Tribal prosecutors are expected to charge her by Tuesday, when she is scheduled for another hearing. It was the second major event in recent weeks to rattle the sparsely populated reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. In late February, a man allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl from a park in the reservation town of Wolf Point. The girl was found alive several days later. A sheriff's department vehicle is parked outside the house where 1-year-old Kenzley Olson was staying when she was beaten to death in Poplar, Mont. (Photo: AP) Fort Peck Tribal Chairman Floyd Azure said Kenzley's death and the recent kidnapping stemmed from a rising drug epidemic that the reservation must address. "What it's coming down to is our society is basically allowing this to be the norm," he said. "We are allowing this to happen by not speaking out." Investigators haven't publicly linked either case to drugs, but Azure said the use of methamphetamine was at the root of both crimes. Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator Ken Trottier testified in tribal court that Red Dog confessed to punching Kenzley several times on Tuesday, killing her, KTMF-TV reported. She then put the girl's body in a duffel bag and threw her in a dumpster, he said. When Red Dog reported Kenzley missing hours later, authorities issued an alert that said the girl was kidnapped, possibly by a man and woman from North Dakota. The pair turned out to not be involved, and the alert was cancelled after Red Dog reportedly confessed and drew a map to Kenzley's body. Prosecutors filed an affidavit outlining the allegations Thursday, but the chief judge overseeing the case has not released it. Zemyan said Kenzley had been under Red Dog's care since the girl's mother dropped her off about two weeks ago and then failed to return. Many details on the events leading up to Kenzley's death remain uncertain, she said. "The only clear facts are that the baby was found in the dumpster, and Janelle told them where to find her, and that Janelle at some point struck the child. Those things don't add up to murder," Zemyan said. Azure said Kenzley's mother was in jail when her daughter was killed. That was confirmed by the tribal jail, although the charges against her were not available. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach the mother and other members of the girl's family were unsuccessful. Funeral services were scheduled for Sunday. The law-and-order candidate of Austrias right-wing party swept the first round of presidential elections Sunday, winning more than 35 percent of the vote for the partys best result to date. Government coalition contenders were among the five losers, signaling deep voter rejection and political uncertainty ahead. The triumph by Norbert Hofer eclipses his Freedom Partys best previous national showing more than 27 percent support in 1996 elections that decided Austrias membership in the European Union. His declared willingness to challenge the governing coalition of center-left Social Democrats and the centrist Peoples Party spells potential confrontation ahead. Hofer might push for new parliamentary elections if he wins the May 22 runoff, in hopes that the Freedom Party will triumph. Preliminary final results, with absentee ballots still to be counted, gave Hofer 35.5 percent support, far ahead of Alexander Van der Bellen of the Greens party, who ran as an independent. Still, with 20.4 percent backing, he will challenge Hofer in the second round. Independent Irmgard Griss came in third. At 18.5 percent, she was still ahead of Peoples Party candidate Andreas Khol and Social Democrat Rudolf Hundstorfer, both slightly above 11 percent. Political outsider Richard Lugner was last, with 2.4 percent. With the candidates of establishment parties shut out of the office for the first time since Austrias political landscape was changed after World War II, Freedom Party chief Heinz-Christian Strache said the historic event reflected massive voter dissatisfaction. Still, Van der Bellen remained in the running. Many of those who voted for other candidates probably will swing behind him in the runoff in hopes that he will defeat Hofer. Hofers triumph was significant and in line with recent polls showing Freedom Party popularity. Support for his party has been driven by concerns over Europes migrant crisis. But voters were unhappy with the Social Democrats and the Peoples Party even before the migrant influx last year forced their coalition government to move from open borders to tough asylum restrictions. Decades of bickering over key issues most recently tax, pension and education reform has fed perceptions of political stagnation. If Hofer calls a new national election should he become president, it would probably result in a Freedom Party victory and could move Austria closer to the camp of anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic E.U. nations. Banharn Silpa-archa, a provincial political power broker who served a scandal-ridden 16 months as Thailands prime minister in 1995-1996, died April 23 at a Bangkok hospital. He was 83. The cause of death was complications from an asthma attack, Siriraj Hospital announced. Mr. Banharn was considered a master of pork-barrel politics, making his home province of Suphanburi, in Thailands central rice-growing region, one of the countrys most developed and prosperous looking. His domination of politics and business there led to it being dubbed Banharnburi. However, his wily political ways played out badly at the national level. Critics charged that corruption and mismanagement of the economy during his stint as prime minister paved the way for the collapse of Thailands currency, sparking the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Born in Suphanburi to a family of ethnic Chinese traders, he went into the construction business without completing his higher education. Thailands building boom of the 1960s fueled by infrastructure development promoted by the United States as it used Thailand as a rear base during the Vietnam War made him a millionaire. He joined the conservative Chart Thai Party and was elected to parliament in 1976, becoming party leader in 1992. Mr. Banharn became prime minister in 1995 by hammering together a coalition with similar regional-based political party leaders keen to share the spoils of power. He also served in a variety of ministerial posts in several governments over four decades. Mr. Banharn and members of his government were accused sometimes unfairly of accepting bribes for arms contracts and bank licenses, looting a bank of more than $3 billion, appointing incompetent cronies to the cabinet and state enterprises, firing corruption fighters, politicizing the central bank, engaging in land scams, illegal logging, muzzling the press and blocking political reform. Banharn is a great provincial politician, social critic Sulak Sivaraksa commented during one of the many crises of Mr. Banharns term in office. Unfortunately, thats not whats needed in a prime minister at this moment. The nicknames he acquired reflected his affinity to money politics. He was known as the walking ATM, the eel for his partys ability to slide from one side of the political spectrum to the other and Mr. 20 Percent, for allegedly skimming that amount off government contracts early in his career, an allegation he denied. Mr. Banharn seemed to most appreciate the ceremonial perquisites of his job, such as presiding over the celebrations of King Bhumibol Adulyadejs 50 years on the throne and hosting foreign dignitaries, including President Bill Clinton and Britains Queen Elizabeth whom he reportedly referred to as Queen Elizabeth Taylor in a slip of the tongue. Changes in Thailands political structure reduced the influence of his medium-size party, which was dissolved by court order in 2008 for election-law violations. Mr. Banharn was banned from politics for five years, but his much-reduced political machine was resurrected in the new Chart Thai Pattana party, led by friends and family members. He remained a sort of political elder statesman, generally keeping his distance from the bitter and sometimes violent political battles of the past decade involving supporters and opponents of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, an occasional political ally who was deposed by a 2006 military coup. Mr. Banharns survivors include his wife, Khunying Jamsai Silpa-archa, and three children. A relative of the worker who died during the Chernobyl power plant disaster in 1986 lays flowers at the memorial during a commemoration ceremony in Kiev on April 26. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters) As Ukrainians solemnly commemorated the 30th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident on Tuesday, President Petro Poroshenko said that Russias support for separatists in the countrys east posed the threat of a repetition of the atomic catastrophe. The remarks came at Chernobyl, where an international effort to seal the destroyed remains of the nuclear reactor that exploded in Ukraine 30 years ago is finally close to completion. Remarkably, despite the political revolution and armed conflict that have rocked the country since 2014, its close to being on schedule. On Tuesday, Poroshenko stressed the political importance of nuclear power for Ukraine, saying the country would neither today, nor tomorrow, halt nuclear reactors because of the importance of maintaining the countrys energy independence, implying away from Russian gas. [This is how scientists are keeping Chernobyls radiation contained] Standing inside a gigantic dome that will soon be installed over the reactor, Poroshenko said that Russian aggression had undermined the trust of non-nuclear governments in the nonproliferation of these weapons, and threatened the repeat of a nuclear catastrophe in our country. He noted that fighting had taken place several hundred kilometers from the nuclear power plant in the city of Zaporozhiye. 1 of 10 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Heres what the fallout from Chernobyl looked like 30 years ago View Photos The Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its impact on the Soviet Union and abroad. Caption The Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its impact on the Soviet Union and abroad. April 1986 An aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident. In front of the chimney is the destroyed fourth reactor. AP Wait 1 second to continue. The completion of the New Safe Confinement, often called the arch, could contain the radiation from mankinds worst nuclear catastrophe for a century, says the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has led the project. But it will also mark a handover to Ukraines fractious and underfunded authorities, who are expected to tackle future waste management at their own expense. That may not reassure Nadiya Makyrevych. For three decades, she has been living with the consequences of the Chernobyl explosion. She can recall that morning in late April 1986, and the small signs that something was wrong in the workers town where she lived. The tinny, metallic taste in her mouth. The way her 6-month-old daughter slept so deeply after breast-feeding. But there were no sirens then in Pripyat, no hint of the magnitude of the nuclear catastrophe playing out just miles away. Soviet authorities did not immediately report the botched experiment at a reactor in Chernobyls nuclear power plant, which released a radioactive cloud over Eastern Europe larger than that of the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan. Ukraine is still coping with the effects today. By the time we were evacuated, we had been exposed for 36 hours, Makyrevych said in an interview in Kiev this month, her speech interrupted by a hacking cough. My entire family has been affected by this. We are all sick. My daughter, my son, my husband and me. Makyrevych, who requires regular medical treatment, complained of a monthly handout of just $60 from the Ukrainian government, a payment that hasnt always been on time. And now the authorities in Kiev will have to shoulder the whole burden. [Watch: What Chernobyl looks like now from a drone] The international project will seal inside the New Safe Confinement both the wrecked reactor No. 4 and the temporary protective sarcophagus installed in 1986. Resembling a massive hangar, the 360-foot-tall buildings two sides will wheel into place next year. Once the structure is sealed, robotic cranes inside will disassemble the destroyed reactor and manage the disposal of a lava-like mass filled with uranium. Ukraine in the past two years has been racked by a pro-European political revolution, the annexation of Crimea by Russia and a grinding war in eastern Ukraine that has left more than 9,100 people dead. Inflation and austerity measures have made life harder for average Ukrainians, and the parliament has been paralyzed by infighting. But located far from the front lines and backed by 1.5 billion euros in funding, much of it from the EBRD, the European Commission and the United States, the project has largely been insulated from the political chaos taking place in Kiev, 60 miles to the south. Vince Novak, the EBRDs head of nuclear safety, said in an interview that disruptions to the project because of political turmoil in Ukraine were minimal. When former president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country after mass protests in Kiev in 2014, U.S. contractors halted work for only a few weeks, he said. French contractors didnt stop at all. The project has required careful coordination between the various administrative bureaucracies responsible for Chernobyl in Ukraine: the head of the decommissioned plant, the administrator for the exclusion zone around the plant, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, and, where the politics comes in, Novak said, the Ministry of Finance and parliament, which approve funding. Asked whether a recent cabinet reshuffle would affect progress, he laughed. I have lost count of how many ministers in charge of this I have worked with . . . a dozen and a half, including four in the last two years? he said on the sidelines of a recent forum at the National Technical University of Ukraine in Kiev. One of the roles that the bank plays here is making sure that all the players that you need are kind of rowing in the same direction. That role is quickly coming to a close, as the EBRD plans to complete the containment structure in November. Once it is operational in 2017, the bank says, the involvement of the international community is not envisaged. It will be for Ukraine to develop a national strategy for nuclear waste for the next decades, the EBRD said in a statement. The details of how Ukraine will tackle that process have not been drafted, and some are nervous. Igor Gramotkin, head of the decommissioned plant at Chernobyl, has called for workers to begin waste disposal as quickly as possible after construction is finished, while the project still has international support. It is an extremely expensive process, he said of the waste disposal in remarks to The Washington Post, and unfortunately with the current economic situation in Ukraine, I dont think that we can carry this out without international support. [How the Soviet Union stayed silent during the Chernobyl disaster] On Monday, the United States announced that it was pledging an additional $10 million to the Chernobyl restoration project, on top of $400 million Washington has already committed. The completion of construction will probably have major consequences for a small army of more than 2,000 workers, many of whom will probably no longer be needed once the project is finished. But as Ukraine seeks to cut social benefits and enact austerity measures to comply with the International Monetary Fund, the situation appears toughest for the survivors of the accident 30 years ago. Some of the surviving liquidators, the first responders who suffered debilitating or even lethal doses of radiation while fighting to contain the fallout, have protested their treatment. More than 2 million people in Ukraine are on Health Ministry rolls for benefits because of the accident. Ukraines government and civil-society organizations are holding events to mark the 30th anniversary of the explosion. In October, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, in part for her 1997 oral history titled Voices From Chernobyl. The nights are very long here in the winter, the wife of one of the liquidators said, according to Alexievich. Well sit, sometimes, and count: Whos died? Read more: Heres what the fallout from Chernobyl looked like 30 years ago Chernobyls thriving wildlife Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Burundian President Pierre Nkurunzizas announcement that he would run for a third term threw the country into turmoil. (Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images) The international war crimes court will investigate outbreaks of violence in Burundi that have killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee abroad since a political crisis erupted a year ago. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that at least 430 people have been killed in Burundi since last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a bid for a third term and then won a disputed election in July. At least three armed rebel groups have since emerged in the country. Announcing a preliminary examination by the International Criminal Court, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Monday that she had seen reports of killings, disappearances, imprisonment, torture and rape. All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC, she said. . . . At least 3,400 people have been arrested and over 230,000 Burundians forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries. Western powers and regional states fear that Burundi could slide back into the ethnically charged conflict that characterized its 1993-2005 civil war. Opponents accuse Nkurunziza of violating Burundis constitution and a peace agreement that ended the civil war by running for a third term. The president and his supporters cite a court ruling that said he could run again. In the latest incident in the resulting cycle of violence, gunmen on Monday killed an army general who was a senior adviser to the first vice president, an army spokesmantold reporters. During the weekend, a Burundian army officer being held captive by a rebel group was handed back to his unit, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. Preliminary examinations at the ICC, based mainly on publicly available information, can last months or years before leading to a possible full investigation. Only then can criminal charges be brought against individuals suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity. The court recently dropped its last case against the leaders of regional power Kenya after a fierce lobbying campaign by the country and its African allies alleging that the court unfairly singled out Africans for prosecution. The grave of Zaher al-Shurqat, a Syrian rebel who was assassinated by an apparent Islamic State militant in southern Turkey. (Hugh Naylor /The Washington Post) On a drizzly afternoon this month, they gathered in the tree-lined cemetery here to bid farewell to a charismatic rebel and outspoken enemy of the Islamic State. The mourners wept as they hoisted his coffin, draped in the three-star flag of Syrias opposition. They proudly recalled his valor in battles against government forces and his defiance of the religious extremists who have tried to overtake their rebellion. But the way that Zaher al-Shurqats life ended filled those at his funeral with dread. An apparent Islamic State militant followed the 36-year-old into an alley in the Turkish city of Gaziantep and fired a round into his head. He was the fourth prominent Syrian critic of the Islamic State to be assassinated in the past six months in southern Turkey, far beyond the militants stronghold in Syria. Were not safe here in Turkey. ISIS is watching us, said a 24-year-old former rebel who attended the funeral in Nizip, a town about 30 miles east of Gaziantep. As do many fellow Syrians who have taken refuge in the area, the man spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of the militant group, also known as ISIS and ISIL. Anas al-Shurqat receives guests at the funeral of his twin brother, Zaher al-Shurqat, in Nizip, Turkey. (Hugh Naylor /The Washington Post) After rising to prominence as leader of a rebel brigade and then as a television host, Shurqat eventually fled to southern Turkey for safety. But even in exile, he couldnt escape his radical Islamist foes back home. The Islamic State asserted responsibility for his killing, an attack that further demonstrates how the group can still strike beyond its center of gravity despite suffering mounting losses on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Its fighters carried out attacks that rocked Paris, Brussels and Beirut. In Turkey, the groups multiple suicide bombings over the past year have killed dozens. But the Islamic State appears to be waging a different kind of campaign against the Syrian journalists, activists and former rebels who spend their time in exile in southern Turkey working to expose the groups atrocities. Many suspect it of running a network of informants and assassins who monitor opponents and then behead them at their homes or gun them down in alleys. Over the past year, Turkish authorities have clamped down on the once-porous, 500-mile-long border with Syria in an attempt to halt the flow of militants. But concerns have grown that the group operates among the more than 2 million Syrians who have taken refuge in Turkey, as well as among Turkish citizens. They have really been trying to intimidate us in Turkey, said Hussam Eesa, 27, an activist from the Syrian monitoring group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently who recently left Turkey for Germany. In an especially gruesome killing last October, an Islamic State member shot dead two activists at their apartment in the city of Sanliurfa and then decapitated them. One of the victims, Ibrahim Abdul Qader, worked with Eesa at Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which has won accolades for taking extreme risks to document the Islamic States atrocities. Many of the groups activists have based themselves in Turkey, but the country has become so dangerous that a number of them have moved to Europe. They knew where we lived in Turkey, where we worked. They even went after my friends in Raqqa, said Eesa, who relocated to Germany because of the threats. In the seven months that he lived in Turkey, Shurqat received a steady stream of menacing phone calls and text messages, his family and friends said. Some of the threats came from Syrias government, they said, and many more came from the Islamic State. In December, a Syrian journalist and friend of Shurqat, Naji Jerf, was shot dead in downtown Gaziantep by an assailant who used a silenced pistol. Jerf had produced a documentary detailing the Islamic States systematic killing of anti-government activists in the northern city of Aleppo. The Islamic State is suspected of killing Jerf. But Shurqat refused to stop speaking out against the groups radical interpretations of Islam and attacks on moderate rebel forces, said Barry Abdullatif, an opposition activist who grew up with Shurqat in al-Bab, a town in northern Syria. To say that he was brave is an understatement. You have to be kind of crazy to do what he did, said Abdullatif, who also relocated to Turkey. Over the past two years, Shurqat hosted shows on the pro-opposition Aleppo Today television channel that regularly featured guests who accused the Islamic State of undermining the now five-year-old rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On a program that aired a few days before his slaying, Shurqat interviewed a rebel leader who described the Assad government as the biggest patron of the militant group. He cited its release of radical Islamists from its jails, among other calculated efforts to empower extremists against rebel forces. Appearing in a dinner jacket, a bespectacled Shurqat would often use the airtime to pick apart the Islamic States religious justifications for its brutality. An important weapon in his theological critiques was his degree from the University of Damascus in Islamic studies and his adherence to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that is known for espousing tolerance. ISIS feared him because he showed how their practices are not Islamic. Theyre just violent animals, said Shurqats twin brother, Anas. Shurqats dispute with the Islamic State started years before, in al-Bab, where he founded a rebel outfit during the early phases of the Syrian uprising. Initially battling with hunting rifles, his brigade drove government forces out of al-Bab and then joined other rebel groups in assaulting the nearby city of Aleppo. In late 2013, as the Islamic State militants grew in power, Shurqats fighters began battling the group. He even forced a now-famous standoff with the group over control of al-Babs main mosque, which resulted in the towns residents siding overwhelmingly with him. But the moderate rebels of al-Bab were outmatched by the Islamic States superior firepower and sheer ruthlessness. The group drove them out of the town, and Shurqat relocated to the rebel-held areas of Aleppo. There, friends and family said, he faced attempted assassinations and kidnappings, which eventually convinced him to relocate last year to Gaziantep. On April 10, Shurqat had just escorted his pregnant wife to a tram station in Gazianteps downtown when his killer struck. CCTV footage shows the killer walking up behind Shurqat, pulling out a firearm and then running off after the assassination. Shurqat is buried in a rocky grave with a cinder-block headstone in Nizip, where members of his family live. Even amid the palpable fear of the Islamic States intensified efforts to silence critics, hundreds turned out on that rainy afternoon to thank the man who refused to be cowed. Of course we are sad today, but what has happened is the will of God, said Muntasir Abu Talib, 28, Shurqats brother-in-law. And all I can do is thank God for what he did for us. Zakaria Zakaria contributed to this report. Read more: In Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State is in retreat on multiple fronts How the battle against the Islamic State is redrawing the map of the Middle East Syrian forces battle to reclaim ancient Palmyra from the Islamic State Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world President Obama outlined plans Monday to bolster U.S. Special Operations forces in Syria, raising their number to as many as 300 troops in a move he said was needed to keep pressure on the Islamic State. The president noted gains made by the current 50 special operators in missions to advise and assist local forces batting the Islamic State, which holds territory in Syria and Iraq. Given the success, Ive approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel . . . to keep up this momentum, Obama said in a speech that also focused broadly on European issues. Obama emphasized that the new troops are not going to be leading the fight on the ground but that they would work with local forces. The expanded U.S. military presence in Syria is aimed in part at helping to expand the ranks of Arab fighters in a network of groups, now dominated by Kurdish fighters, that the United States is backing as it battles the Islamic State. The additional U.S. forces work with Kurdish militiamen and others as they seek to isolate Raqqa, the Islamic States de facto capital in Syria. [Video shows what Special Operations forces are doing in Syria] So make no mistake, these terrorists will learn the same lesson as others before them have, which is your hatred is no match for our nations, united in the defense of our way of life, Obama said in Hanover at the end of a trip that included talks in Saudi Arabia and Britain. The president also pledged to continue pressing hard on diplomatic efforts to end Syrias civil war, because the suffering of the Syrian people has to end, and that requires an effective political transition. The decision to increase the number of Special Operations forces in Iraq and Syria was made this month. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced an additional 200 troops for Iraq during a visit to Baghdad last week. Obama also has authorized U.S. commanders in Iraq to use Apache attack helicopters and deploy American advisers with lower-level Iraqi units to assist local troops in a future offensive to reclaim the city of Mosul. U.S. officials think those measures will enhance the effectiveness of Iraqi troops, but they also will expose U.S. forces to greater risk. The increase is part of an overall acceleration in the fight against the Islamic State. Despite a string of what the administration has described as successes including territory reclaimed from the militants in Iraq and Syria and the severing of supply and communication lines between Islamic State forces in the two countries some aspects of the conflict have gone more slowly, or have been less successful, than anticipated. [How Special Operations troops secretly help target terrorists] President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel walk to an arrival ceremony at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover, Germany. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) Although Iraqi military forces, backed by U.S. air power and other enhancements, retook the city of Ramadi early this year, plans to move toward Mosul, in northern Iraq, have dragged as the Baghdad government contends with economic and political difficulties, and the melding of Iraqs Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish military forces into a unified offensive force has proved problematic. The Iraqi military also continues to struggle with issues of morale, leadership and logistics. In an interview last week with CBS News, Obama said he thought preparations for the Mosul offensive what the military calls shaping operations to surround and weaken Islamic State forces there should be finished this year and allow the eventual retaking of the city. The plan to move toward Raqqa follows last years successful northern Syria offensive that was led primarily by Kurdish forces, aided by U.S. airstrikes, with some support from a group of Sunni opposition fighters the United States has been struggling to support. Raqqa, farther to the south, is a Sunni city that Kurdish forces are not eager to move toward and where they would not be welcome. A promising, partial cease-fire in the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has seriously frayed in recent weeks, sparking renewed fighting in the northwest region near the Turkish border and complicating administration plans to begin air operations in aid of an opposition attempt to stop an Islamic State advance in that area. Speaking to reporters late last week after a visit to Iraq, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Obama had not at that point made a decision to send the additional troops to Syria. But he said the president had promised to consider granting more resources as plans came together for advancing Syrian forces campaign against the Islamic State. Its linked to our partners on the ground, in supporting our partners on the ground and their continued operations, he said. Ryan reported from London, and DeYoung reported from Washington. Read more: How U.S. Special Operations troops secretly help foreign forces target terrorists By Alex Bregman On April 25, New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler spoke to Yahoo News Chief Washington Correspondent Olivier Knox on Yahoo News Live about President Obamas decision to send up to 250 more U.S. military personnel to fight ISIS in Syria and his new book, Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle Over American Power. On the timing of Obamas announcement about forces in Syria, Landler told Knox: Hed like to leave the Syria conflict to his successor with Raqqa, which, of course, is the stronghold of the Islamic State in Syria, and Mosul, which is the largest Iraqi city still under ISIS control in Iraq hed like to leave both of those either liberated or well on the way to being liberated. In order to do that, I think he feels like he has to up the tempo of the battle against ISIS. Landler noted that this increase in forces goes against Obamas initial strategy of dealing with Syria: This has been President Obamas fear from the start in getting involved in Syria, and here he is adding to the existing number of troops, and it does have a slight feeling of a slippery slope. He continued, With todays announcement were now looking at a significant number of forces on the ground, and though the White House always draws this distinction between forces that are involved in combat and merely support, its a pretty fine distinction. In Landlers new book, he writes about the differences on foreign policy between Obama and his former secretary of state turned Democratic frontrunner for president, Hillary Clinton. Specifically on Syria, Clinton had argued for a much more robust approach from the start. On why Clinton has not brought up these differences very much on the campaign trail, Landler said, My hunch is, as we pivot from the primary season to the general election youre going to start to hear a lot more, and she will probably begin to show a bit of daylight with him on some of these core war-and-peace-related issues. Landler also wrote in the New York Times this weekend and in the book that Clinton is the only hawk left in the [2016] race. Knox asked: If Clinton is a hawk, what does that make GOP opponents Donald Trump and Ted Cruz? Landler said: If you listen to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, they sound almost like superhawks. They talk about needing to see whether we can make desert sand glow, in the words of Ted Cruz when speaking about bombing ISIS, or they talk about vastly increasing our military resources, in the case of Donald Trump. But if you dig beneath the surface with both of them, its more complicated. He continued, Theres sort of this odd paradox with both of them. They speak in extremely robust, muscular, hawkish rhetoric, but if you dig a little bit deeper their positions actually have an isolationist tinge to it. Where Hillary is different is, shes really foursquare behind a full network of U.S. alliances, a full commitment of U.S. engagement around the world very much the post-World War II model of a liberal international order headed by the United States, I think more aggressively than President Obama has been and perhaps more aggressively than either of these two Republican opponents would be. Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Yukiya Amano of Japan addresses the media at the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in Vienna, Austria. (Photo: AP) Tokyo: Japanese nuclear regulators say they'll revise law, nearly double inspection staff and send some inspectors to the U.S. for training to address insufficiencies cited by International Atomic Energy Agency experts. The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced the plans Monday in response to an IAEA evaluation of Japan's nuclear safety regulations since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The report was submitted to the government last week. The IAEA review, its first since the authority's establishment in 2012, was conducted in January. It said that even though Japan has adopted stricter safety requirement for plant operators, inspections are reactive, inflexible and lacking free access. While the 1,000 U.S. inspectors have two years of training, Japan's 150 staffers receive a two-week course. The authority plans to enact laws in 2020 to achieve the IAEA's recommendations. Trial of former Alibaba and former Tencent executive Patrick Liu Chunning has begun in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen. The court session got under way on Thursday (April 21). Prosecutors accuse him of accepting $330,000 (RMB2.14 million) in bribes while he was working at Tencent Video. Liu has denied all the charges. Prosecutors presented evidence of two alleged occasions on which Liu accepted money from supplier companies whose content Tencent licensed for distribution. According to the Caixin news site Liu says he has been falsely charged and framed. In August 2012, Dongyan Herun Film and Television is said to have paid $220,000 (RMB1.44 million) to Liu, through the bank account of Lius cousin. Prosecutors also detailed a January 2013 dinner with an executive from Shanghai Youhug Media, which had sold two TV series to Tencent. They allege that a suitcase with $108,000 (RMB700,000) in cash was handed over. Lius lawyers said the case will influence the relationship between Tencent and Alibaba. The two are Chinas two largest Internet giants with massive empires of overlapping and competing businesses that stretch from taxi hailing, to online video and film production. The two companies should take a correct view of competition and talent flow and Tencent should give Liu a chance to explain, one of (Lius lawyers) said, Caixin reports. Liu was detained by police in July last year at a time when he had moved to Alibaba. In January he was formally dismissed by Alibaba Pictures Group, having not attended board meetings. Trials in China rarely last more than a few days. But delivering a verdict can take longer. Related stories Italy's Giuseppe Tornatore to Shoot Movie for China's Alibaba Pictures Alibaba Completes South China Morning Post Acquisition, Drops Paywall China Problems Push Orange Sky Golden Harvest Into Loss Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato have canceled their upcoming tour dates in North Carolina in protest of North Carolina's controversial Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (HB2) law. Widely perceived as being anti-LGBTQ, the stars join artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and Boston as acts who have recently pulled the plug on North Carolina shows in response to the new law. North Carolina's Anti-LGBT 'Bathroom Bill' is Flushing the State's Music Business Down the Drain "After much thought and deliberation, we have decided to cancel our Honda Civic Tour: Future Now shows in Raleigh and Charlotte. One our our goals for the tour has always been to create an atmosphere where every single atendee feels equal, included, and accepted for who they are," they wrote in part in a statement posted on both of their Twitter accounts. Read the full statement below. #RepealHB2 pic.twitter.com/YTpOxNP9cB - Nick Jonas (@nickjonas) April 25, 2016 From Cosmopolitan Even before you have a baby - hell, even if you don't have one - you'll hear mixed messages about immunization. The GOP's debating it. Parents like Jenny and Neil Burdett are advocating for vaccines after tragedy struck their 2-year-old Faye. Celebs from Kristen Bell (yes) to Kristen Cavallari (no) are taking sides. Even the Tribeca Film Festival announced they'd be including a documentary called Vaxxed - centered on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's alleged cover-up of data related to the measles, mumps, and rubella (or MMR) vaccine and autism - before yanking it, citing scientific inaccuracies. Danelle Fisher, MD, FAAP, chair of pediatrics at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, constantly hears concerns from parents. "Every mom and dad wants their child to be happy and healthy," she says. "We're raising generations who've never seen small pox or polio, but we do worry about autism and mercury." According to medical professionals and the research, this is an issue that should not be up for debate. And if you come across websites that question the safety of immunization, know that they "aren't based so much on facts as they are on fear," Dr. Fisher warns. Cosmopolitan.com looked into scientific data and asked experts to weigh in to find the truth about 10 of the biggest myths about kids' vaccines. 1. Most kids who get a disease have already been vaccinated. Although there are rare cases where someone gets infected despite getting a vaccine, this is not true for the majority of vaccine-prevented illnesses, says Camille Sabella, MD, director of the Center for Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Cleveland Clinic Children's. Take last year's measles outbreaks, for example. "[Most of the people involved] were people who had not been immunized or had been incompletely immunized against the disease," Dr. Sabella says. Story continues 2. The MMR vaccine causes autism. The whole premise for this myth was a flawed report from a British physician Andrew Wakefield that was later retracted by the medical journal that published it. (The doctor also had his medical license revoked.) Even so, it still incites fear in parents. "Few topics in medicine have been studied as extensively as this relationship," assures Dr. Sabella. "And the results of all these studies have concluded that there is no link." In fact, there's some evidence that autism may start well before any vaccinations - in utero. 3. Kids today get too many vaccines, which can make them sick. U.S guidelines recommend that a child be vaccinated against 14 diseases by the time they're 6. That's a lot of shots, so sure, you may be a little freaked out - especially when you're closely monitoring everything your child eats, puts on their skin, or is exposed to. But there's no evidence that the number of antigens - foreign substances that trigger an immune system response - that kids are exposed to in all these vaccinations is dangerous, says Dr. Sabella. In fact, kids are exposed to hundreds of antigens every day. "Studies have shown that multiple vaccines given at one time is not associated with any short- or long-term effects," Dr. Sabella says. However, every disease for which vaccination is recommended is potentially deadly. It's a good thing we have more research and information than ever and therefore an immunization schedule that can protect our kids. 4. Vaccines contain harmful toxins like mercury. It is true that some vaccines (like the flu shot) do contain trace amounts of mercury in a preservative called thimerosal, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out that it's a different type of mercury than what you find in fish. The biggest difference being that it's broken down by the body and eliminated much more quickly. Plus, thimerosal was eliminated from all childhood vaccines in 2001. 5. Without vaccines, kids will develop a natural immunity to diseases. "Most vaccines actually mimic natural immunity," Dr. Sabella explains. In other words, you're given a mock infection so your body has an opportunity to build protection against future exposure to the disease. Waiting until your child gets the infection naturally means putting him at risk for a severe, potentially fatal illness, according to experts at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. 6. Vaccines may accidentally infect your child with the disease you're trying to prevent. Certain vaccines, like those for chickenpox, do contain a weakened live virus, but only to stimulate your immune system - not to cause the disease they're trying to prevent. True, they may cause a mild reaction, Dr. Sabella acknowledges, and some people still catch chickenpox even after being vaccinated. But if that happens, the illness is typically much milder than what a child who hasn't been vaccinated would experience - and the vaccinated kid will experience a shorter recovery time. 7. There's no reason to get vaccinated according to a specific schedule. Actually, the schedule recommended by the CDC correlates with when kids are most susceptible to certain diseases. For instance, "bacterial meningitis becomes most prevalent at 4 to 6 months of life, therefore, it's very important that a child is protected by 4 to 6 months of age," says Dr. Sabella. This protection comes in the form of the Hib (Haemophilus influenza type b) vaccine, which babies initially get at 2 months old. Vaccines are also suggested according to when studies show they're safest and most effective. Getting them on your own timeline may make certain combinations less effective and may result in more adverse reactions, Dr. Sabella cautions. 8. Some vaccines can cause Sudden Death Syndrome. Babies less than 6 months old are at highest risk of SIDS. Between the ages of 2 to 4 months is also when vaccines start, which has led many parents to worry that the two are related. "This is a relationship that's been extensively studied all over the world, and no causal link has been found," says Dr. Fisher. 9. The flu isn't bad enough to warrant a vaccination. OK, so maybe you managed to avoid the flu this winter. That doesn't make it any less of a big deal. "Influenza is a serious cause of severe illness, hospitalization, and death, even in previously [healthy] individuals," Dr. Sabella says. Very young children are considered at high risk of getting the flu and may be more likely to have complications. That said, the live flu vaccine which is given as a nasal mist (instead of the "killed" virus you get in a traditional shot) is not recommended for kids who have asthma, allergies, or breathing problems, or who have long-term health problems. If your child falls into any of those categories, talk to your doctor. 10. Enough people in the U.S. are already vaccinated. There's no reason I need to vaccinate my kids. In the 1940s and 1950s, polio paralyzed and sometimes even killed kids by the thousands. Now it's quite rare. That's not thanks to "enough" people getting vaccinated. The success of any vaccination program "relies on a very high vaccination coverage rate," Dr. Sabella says. If you still have concerns about immunization, bring them to your pediatrician. "My job is to help and inform parents," says Dr. Fisher. "We should have the ability to have a rational, two-way conversation." Follow Stephanie on Twitter. From Delish Sometimes you're having a case of the Mondays, other times you're just barely surviving "Hump Day." All week we're all wishing it was Friday, the kickoff to the weekend and all-play, no-work time. And because none of us can can't fast-forward through time, you probably pop into TGI Fridays for that "Fri-yay" feeling. But there's so much you need to know about the chain before you make your next pick-me-up pit-stop. 1. It all started in 1965 in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Believe it or not, the now ubiquitous chain began as a hoppin' cocktail bar in New York City. The idea came from founder Alan Stillman, who wanted to create a place for '70s singles to mingle and meet. Stillman told Edible Geography: "I wanted T.G.I. Friday's to feel like a neighbourhood, corner bar, where you could get a good hamburger, good french fries, and feel comfortable." 2. Flo Rida shot his video for "Hello Friday" at TGI Fridays. Totally taking over the South Beach, Miami location for his shoot, rapper Flo Rida invited fans to join him at Fridays. Apparently he's obsessed with the chain and captioned his social media post: "We love that TGIF, word, yeah." So be on the lookout for that. 3. You can get endless refills on appetizers. A new promotion for the chain, the Endless Apps Menu means you can get your plate of mozzarella sticks replenished as many times as you'd like for just $10. Or, if you want to venture to different dishes, you can try a series of apps for $12. 4. You can score happy hours deals all day and night. At Fridays, happy hour is all day, every day. Most locations are open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., which means you have 12 straight hours to drink on the cheap. Take advantage of daily cocktails that will only set you back between $4 and $6, plus big-brand suds like Bud Light, Miller Lite, Coors Lite, which are just $3. So, like, bring all your friends and toast to saving serious dough. Story continues 5. Potato skins are the most popular menu item. First introduced way back in 1974, loaded potato skins are a customer favorite because of their awesome toppings like gooey melted cheese and crispy bacon. Plus, you can now get them on the Endless Apps Menu, which means you can literally eat them all night long like you've probably dreamed about. 6. Boozy brunch is now an option. Mimosas are already just $5 at TGI Fridays on Sundays, but the chain is also testing out an official boozy brunch menu for its lineup. And we couldn't be more excited. The new "Hangover Brunch" menu includes chicken and waffles and bourbon steak and eggs-plus plenty of Bloody Mary cocktails. 7. You can pay at your table-from your phone. With the launch of its proprietary smartphone app in 2012, TGI Fridays debuted an industry break-through. Customers can now pay at the table. You can even tip your server through it. All without the need for those pesky built-in tablets at each table like some chains have taken on. 8. It inspired one of the funniest tropes in Office Space. Jennifer Aniston's character dons 15 "pieces of flair" on her green and white striped uniform, but her boss doesn't think it's enough, comparing her to an overly bubbly server, Brian, who's loaded up his suspenders with 37 pieces of flair for attitude and fun. It's a hilariously awkward scene that Office Space fans won't soon forget. 9. And one of the best SNL sketches of all time. Combining a recurring sketch about TGI Fridays servers with Molly Shannon's iconic Mary Katherine Gallagher character, Saturday Night Live put together a nonsensical story about a server-in-training. Our favorite part is the Lucky Charms shrimp dinner with "a side order of fun at no extra charge." Our second favorite: Will Ferrell as the manager who "goes the extra smile." 10. Since Office Space, the uniforms have totally changed. In 2014, Office Space creator Mike Judge told Deadline that he believes the uniform change at TGI Fridays was a result of the '90s flick. "About four years after Office Space came out, TGI Fridays got rid of all that (button) flair, because people would come in and make cracks about it," he said. "One of my ADs [assistant directors] asked once at the restaurant why their flair was missing and they said they removed it because of that movie Office Space. So, maybe I made the world a better place." We're not sure about better but things are definitely different: Servers don't even wear the iconic red and white stripes anymore. 11. At Fridays, you can drink like George Clooney. TGI Friday's was the first national chain to start carrying the actor's high-end tequila brand, Casamigos. Since last summer, the restaurant has been pouring shots and stirring it into drinks like the new-and super summery-jalapeno-strawberry margarita. Follow Delish on Instagram. From Cosmopolitan On April 23, 2006, three members of the Richardson family were stabbed to death in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. The murders were planned and committed by the family's 12-year-old daughter, known only as J.R., and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke. The daughter received a 10-year-sentence-four years in a psychiatric institution and 4.5 years under conditional supervision in the community-and as of May 7 of this year, she will be free. The crimes themselves were particularly brutal, including slitting the accused six-year-old brother's neck and then attacking the father. As Steinke stabbed him to death, the dad asked why he was doing this. "It's what your daughter wanted," Steinke responded. Vice reports that Insp. Brent Secondiak, a staff sergeant with the Medicine Hat Police Service at the time of the murders, said: "I've seen lots of bad scenes and lots of dead bodies, but very few children and very few children ever in that state." From Vice: If the brutality of the crimes wasn't enough, the story just got weirder as reporters learned more about J.R. and Steinke. The two were members of a website called VampireFreaks.com and spoke about drinking blood. Steinke told people he was a 300-year-old werewolf. There was a picture of J.R. online in heavy, dark makeup posing with a realistic replica handgun. The duo were part of the local punk/metal/goth community. They met at a punk show. When dressed in her darker persona, J.R. definitely didn't look 12. Her parents didn't approve of this relationship with a much older man. From all accounts, they handled the situation appropriately. They let J.R. go to concerts, but one of her parents had to go with her. As the forbidden relationship grew, the couple exchanged emails where J.R. said things like: "I have this plan. It starts with me killing them and ends with me living with you." The CBC also reports that the two shared a passion for "Natural Born Killers," Oliver Stone's 1994 movie about two young serial killers who get their start by killing the girl's parents. Story continues At the trial, J.R. said she was "kidding" about murdering her family and never thought Steinke would go through with it. She was given the maximum possible sentence for a child her age and Steinke was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years. Recently while on conditional supervision in the community, J.R. has had the chance to take classes at Calgary's Mount Royal University, and her lawyers say she's the "poster child" for rehabilitation. Follow Laura on Twitter. From Cosmopolitan On Thursday, a 16-year-old sophomore girl at Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware, died after a fight with multiple other students in a school bathroom. "There was an altercation that initially started between two people, and my understanding is that additional individuals joined in against the one person," Gary Fullman, chief of staff to Wilmington mayor Dennis Williams, told CNN. Suffering major injuries, the girl was in critical condition when she was airlifted by helicopter to A.I. DuPont Children's Hospital, where she died earlier today. According to multiple sources, Wilmington police are currently questioning two students involved in the altercation. The cause of the fight has yet to be determined, and police are still working to determine the cause of death. At this time, they do not believe a weapon was used. "This is not only an unspeakable tragedy for her family, but also for the school, and the entire community," a statement on Howard High School's website reads. "We express our prayers and deepest sympathy to her family, who need your support and sensitivity at this time." Students at the school were kept in class until 10:15 this morning, and then dismissed. According to CNN, classes will be dismissed at 11:15 a.m. tomorrow, and grief counselors and mental health teams will be readily available for all students at the school. "We are shaken but stand ready to provide support and care to the family, to Howard students and staff, and to all of those affected by this senseless act," the statement continues. "We ask that you do the same." Follow Gina on Twitter. Sixteen-year-old transgender boy James Van Kuilenberg says event staff at a Maryland rally for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz removed him from the event because of his gender identity, the Frederick News-Post reported. In a YouTube video accompanying the report, Van Kuilenburg told the News-Post he was allowed into the Thursday morning event after he showed his ticket. But not long into the rally, event staff tapped him on the shoulder, misgendered him and asked him to leave, Van Kuilenberg said. Van Kuilenberg attended the rally to "represent the LGBT youth who are hurt by his Source: Mic/YouTube V said staff at first did not say why they wanted him to leave, then claimed he was trespassing because he was part of a peaceful protest outside. "The fact that I'm thrown out based on my identity is ridiculous," Van Kuilenburg said to the Frederick News-Post. Van Kuilenburg attended the Cruz rally to show Cruz and his supporters that his anti-transgender rhetoric has real effects on real people. Source: Mic/YouTube Van Kuilenburg's mother said she was proud of her son for challenging Cruz, who has stepped up attacks agains trans people in recent weeks. "A lot of people who sat in here have interacted with transgender people and not even known it," she told the News-Post. "And maybe they needed to see that there are transgender teenagers, to put a face on them." Cruz recently released an ad depicting trans people to predators and has made transphobic jokes. @TedCruz repeats this joke in Terre Haute, IN: "If Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he still can't go to the girls' bathroom." Ted Cruz: "In the last 48 hours, Donald Trump has come out for grown men going into the bathroom with little girls." O The Cruz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday morning. BuzzFeed "For the record...we did fly to Vegas and tried to land twice at two different airports. And it was too dangerous so safety first always and we flew home."View Entire Post trump John Kasich and Ted Cruz announced late Sunday night that they would be joining forces in an attempt to stop Donald Trump. Their goal is to prevent the Republican presidential frontrunner from reaching the needed 1,237 delegates to secure the GOP nomination before the party's July convention. The plan has Kasich's campaign essentially conceding Indiana, the next state to vote, to Cruz. The Texas senator's campaign, meanwhile, will back out of Oregon and New Mexico and let Kasich, the Ohio governor, devote resources to the Western states. But for Kasich and Cruz, the plan has three major flaws: 1. The math doesn't quite add up Indiana, a state with 57 delegates on the line, is winner-take-all by congressional district and in the statewide vote. It's a huge state for the candidates looking to stop Trump a win by him there would put him well on the path to the 1,237 delegates. But it's not essential to Trump's endgame. Steve Kornacki of MSNBC recently projected that Trump could secure the nomination in the first ballot at the convention while winning just nine of the 57 delegates in the Hoosier State. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote that Trump would need 48 delegates in the state to eventually reach 1,237, but his equation did not factor in the number of unbound delegates from Pennsylvania who could vote for Trump on the initial ballot. And in New Mexico and Oregon, two proportional primaries, both Kornacki and Silver projected that Trump wouldn't even need half of the delegates at stake to consider each a success. 2. Not all of Kasich's supporters will vote for Cruz and vice versa donald trump ted cruz john kasich marco rubio In Indiana, Trump holds a more than 6-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of several recent polls. With Kasich polling at just under 20%, it's easy to assume that Cruz could overtake Trump if all of Kasich's supporters vote for the Texas senator. But it's not that simple. Story continues For example, in a recent Fox News poll, 22% of Kasich supporters said Trump was their second choice in the Hoosier State, while 53% said Cruz would get their vote if Kasich were out of the equation. Sixteen percent of respondents had Kasich as their first choice. With those numbers factored in, Trump's lead would shrink from 8 points to 3 points. But he would still be leading. Also while the Kasich and Cruz campaigns have announced plans to "allow" the other candidate to "focus" on the states in question, neither has asked voters to vote for the opposite candidate in Indiana, New Mexico, and Oregon. Indeed, when asked Monday for whom Indiana voters should cast their ballots, Kasich reportedly said, "They ought to vote for me." 3. It plays into Trump's 'rigged' argument After Cruz and Kasich announced the plan to work together in an effort to block Trump, the Manhattan billionaire released a scathing statement on the pair that falls in line with his weekslong argument that the GOP's nominating process is "rigged." "It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination," Trump said in the statement. The appearance of two candidates joining forces specifically to block Trump from accumulating delegates seems to play into that argument. "They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are," Trump said in the statement, later adding, "Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged." Trump has lambasted the delegate-selection process since Cruz began picking up delegates en masse in states such as Colorado and Wyoming, each of which held a convention instead of a more traditional primary or caucus. With the agreement between Cruz and Kasich aimed at minimizing the number of delegates Trump can acquire, the storyline is sure to flourish once again. Trump said in the statement: "This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail!" NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are officially teaming up to stop Donald Trump More From Business Insider Wangzhou Group has more than 200 subsidiaries in commerce, health and wealth management. (Photo: Via web) Beijing: Chinese police have launched a manhunt for the owner of a popular wealth management company who has gone missing with about $153 million of investors money. Police in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou have started the search after the conglomerate Wangzhou Group, parent of Wangzhou Fortune, confirmed its chairman Yang Weiguo's disappearance on Thursday. Investors in company have been reporting problems with the firm's cash flow since April 18. More than 20,000 people have invested a total of about 2.2 billion yuan ($33.8 million) in the company, which has dozens of branches in major Chinese cities, Hangzhou police told state-run Xinhua.Wangzhou Group also closed its shopping mall in Hangzhou after the scandal emerged. To repay investors, the firm will retrieve about a billion yuan after receiving principal and interest payments from its lending.It will try to cover the 1.2 billion yuan ($184 million) gap by selling properties, according to a statement from the company.Wangzhou Group has more than 200 subsidiaries in commerce, automobiles, health and wealth management, including Wangzhou Fortune. In 2015, 12.6 million Americans traveled to Europe -- out of which more than 1 million Americans visited each month during the summer -- making traveling with safety in mind a must. And while Spain is considered a safe travel destination for tourists, the Overseas Security Advisory Council, with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and U.S. Department of State, reports that "street crime continues to be a concern" in their Spain 2016 Crime & Safety Report. Though crime rates in Spain have fallen overall, the OSAC's crime data from January to September last year reveals over a half million occurrences of theft. And the most recent Crime & Safety Report points out that foreign visitors continue to be "the targets of choice" for pickpockets and thieves. Read on to learn the most common schemes to dodge and warning signs to watch out for to maximize safety while on vacation in Spain this summer. [See: 10 Things Every Traveler Must Know Before Going to Brazil This Summer.] Understand the Tactics Thieves Use to Avoid Being a Target The OSAC's report reminds us that theft in Spain among tourists happens most often in dining establishments, airports, hotel lobbies and public transit. Common tactics used on tourist targets include baggage theft while checking in or out of hotels, criminal distractions, such as dropping an item or asking for assistance and allowing a partner to take it from a tourist and stealing items from street side tables (cellphones from tabletops, purses hung over chairs). It's also not uncommon for pickpockets to corner tourists on public transportation. Take Extra Steps to Improve Safety and Stay Vigilant of Your Surroundings By taking some basic precautions, you can avoid being taken advantage of. The OSAC suggests carrying limited cash, only keeping one credit card with you at any given time, carrying an extra copy of your passport with you and avoiding carrying all of your valuables in one pocket. Additionally, the OSAC recommends utilizing a hotel safe to store passports, extra cash and credit cards, and securing personal items in hard-to-reach places. While exploring, it's also best to ensure your bags are within clear sight, avoid wearing attention-grabbing jewelry and place your wallet in a buttoned or zipped front pocket (and conceal your pockets while riding the Metro). You should also keep expensive cameras, guidebooks and maps out of sight to avoid being targeted. Story continues [See: 9 Ways to Travel Better.] Know the Steps You Should Take if Something is Stolen If you do fall victim to a pickpocket, call your bank to cancel your cards first. The number you would need to call in the event of such an emergency is usually found on the back of your credit card, so make a note of important numbers in advance of your trip to keep wherever you're staying. The next critical step is tracking down the nearest police station. While it may feel like a lost cause, you'll need a report on file if you hope to receive a payout from your insurance company. Generally, you should be able to find someone who speaks English to help if you're in a larger city, such as Madrid or Barcelona. If you find any of your travel documents have been stolen, you'll need to replace those materials as soon as possible. Get in touch with the nearest embassy or consulate if you discover your passport was stolen. [See: 7 Vacation Ideas for Solo Travelers This Summer.] The Bottom Line Make an effort to look confident anytime you're in a public space. If you look like you know where you're going, you'll be harder for thieves to pin as a tourist. And while petty crimes like pickpocketing are common in Spain, fret not: If you can remember and implement these safe travel tips once you're on the ground, it's easy to plan a relaxing, stress-free and rewarding vacation. Sarah Pike is a freelancer, adjunct professor and wanderlust sufferer. When she's not writing, teaching, or traveling, she's probably binge-watching RomComs and dreaming up her next vacation. You can find her on Twitter at @sarahzpike. Well, dont they look like an interesting bunch? Thats the cast of AMCs latest comic book adaptation, Preacher, which debuts on The Walking Dead network May 22. The darkly humorous, violent, quirky series, based on the comic book of the same name created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, revolves around small-town preacher Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper, sitting front and center on the picnic table in the cast photo). He has returned home to Anneville, Texas in hopes of a more peaceful life, after a past filled with the very opposite of that (read: a violence-filled existence). Jesse, thanks to his bond with a powerful being named Genesis, has the ability to make people do whatever he orders them to do, including doing harm to themselves, and thats part of his reason for wanting to find God literally, locate God to make God answer for what Jesse considers to be his mistakes. The rest of the cast in the main pic, from left to right, with a description of their characters from the comic book: Hugo Root (W. Earl Brown): Roots the nasty local sheriff who, in the comics, has a life-changing encounter with Jesse Custer, leading Root to a shocking act of self-violence. Eugene Root (Ian Colletti): Hes Sheriff Roots abused son, and hes more commonly known by his nickname, Arseface, after he was disfigured when he shot himself in the face in an attempt to mimic his idol Kurt Cobains suicide. Related: Preacher Reveals First Look at Arseface at WonderCon Emily Woodrow (Lucy Griffiths): Shes sort of the Preacher version of Daryl Dixon, in that Emily is a character created just for the TV series. Shes a single mom who works as a waitress, bookkeeper, and church organist, and she has a bit of a crush on Jesse. Tulip OHare (Ruth Negga): Jesses ex-girlfriend and current love interest, who, raised by her father, has serious gun skills. Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun): Whys that dude holding an umbrella? Hes Jesses BFF, and hes a heavy-drinking Irish vampire. Story continues Donny Schenck (Derek Wilson): Donnys a Civil War re-enactor who learns how much Jesse hates bullies when Jesse finds out Donny beats his wife. DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef): an angel whos been tasked with keeping his eye on Genesis, and who will reveal some very key facts about Genesis to Jesse. Fiore (Tom Brooke): DeBlancs partner, also an angel on the Genesis beat. Related: Seth Rogen and 'Preacher Team on How AMC Series Will Differ From Comic Books Preacher, which was published as a comic book series for 75 issues between 1995-2000, was developed as a series by Seth Rogen and his production partner Evan Goldberg, along with Emmy-winning Breaking Bad producer and writer Sam Catlin. Preacher premieres May 22 at 10 p.m. on AMC. SPOILER ALERT: The recap for the Fast" episode of Quantico contains storyline and character spoilers. In which Shelby may not be a terrorist after all, Drew may be out of Quantico for good, and Will may be dead. Here, 17 things we learned in this weeks episode: 1. Calebs hanging with Alex at her apartment in Brooklyn, and hes still talking to some mystery person on his cell. He asks Alex if she really believes Shelby could be involved with The Voice, and Alex tells him, Nobody knows anybody, ever. Caleb, whos still detoxing from his drug addiction, tries to talk Alex into staying home from work, but she says that would just make the FBI suspicious. As soon as she leaves, he calls his mystery friend and reports, She left. I tried to stop her. 2. Its Career Day at Quantico, but before the NATS delve into their futures, Alex and Drew are still dealing with their short-lived fling, as they keep staring each other down. Alex tells Shelby that Drew dumped her. 3. Drews more pressing ish: those tremors hes experiencing in his hand. They cause him to fall off the climbing wall, and Ryan wants to know whats up. Another NAT hears Alex talking to the twins about an unnamed cohort with a medical problem, and the eavesdropper drops her gossip on Ryan. He confronts Alex about it, but she refuses to narc on Drew. For now. 4. Wills in the hospital, claiming he was badly beaten after being jumped by some rando guys while out for a morning run. Shelby tells Liam she saw Caleb beat Will with her own eyes, but Liam does not believe her. She says Caleb is in a cult again, Liam says Calebs out on a family emergency, and tells Shelby she should let go of whatever probelm she has with Caleb. She does not, and promises Iris shes not going to let Caleb get away with beating Will. 5. Actual Career Day activities: the NATS have already submitted their preferences for where theyd like to work; now theyre being asked to choose which area of the FBI theyd like to focus on, i.e. white collar crime, hostage rescue, organized crime, counterterrorism, etc. Theyre encouraged to speak to the reps from each specialty who are at Quantico, and at the end of the day, Ryan and Liam inform them they werent really the ones doing the interviewing the reps were evaluating them, and theyll each be presented with an envelope. A red envelope means one group is interested in you; a white envelope means multiple groups are interested in you; and a green envelope means youve attracted the interest of one of the elite units. Alex, Drew, Iris, and Fletcher get green envelopes, and theyre told theyll be undergoing further training that day so the elite unit leaders can further evaluate their skills. 6. Present day, NYC: Ryans grabbing java at a coffee truck, and hes approached by Natalies mom. She hasnt heard from her daughter since last Wednesday, she tells him, and shes worried, especially since she didnt even know about the family emergency that was allegedly the reason Natalie took a leave of absence. Story continues 7. Present day, NYC: Alex is on the phone with Caleb, trying to figure out how to find Shelby, when she walks into the FBI field office and sees Shelby! Shelbys in a meeting with Miranda, and Alex barges in. Shelbys at the office to update security software via McGregor-Wyatt, which freaks Alex out, because, Shelby = possible terrorist, and software update = she gets access to the FBIs security software. The one-time friends play a game of cat-and-mouse in front of Miranda, with Shelby making it clear she is no longer on #TeamParrish. Its been too long, Alex tells Shelby, asking her to stop by her office to catch up. Shelby: And here I was thinking it hadnt been long enough. 8. Ryans coffee talk with Natalies mom made him suspicious. He tells Nimah he went to Natalies apartment yeah, he still has a key, so?! and all her things are there, her clothes, her laptop, her passport. He also had her cell phone pinged, and says she hasnt used it in the last six days, since half an hour before Alex showed up at his apartment crying and freaked out. Our takeaway from this exchange: only six days have passed over the last four episodes since Natalies death! That is a lot of twists in six days, people. 9. In the same current NYC timeline, Alex is back on the phone to Caleb, freaking out about all the evildoing possibilities the McGregor-Wyatt software update will afford Shelby. Im just not convinced that some software upgrade is cover for a legion of doom operation, Caleb counters, but Alex is Alex, and she approaches Miranda and shares her suspicions about Shelby, even going so far as to tell Miranda that Shelbys rents are still alive, after faking their deaths on 9/11 because they sold weapons to the Taliban. Miranda halts the upgrade (and never addresses the fact that Alex had previously kept this information about death fakers/weapons sellers to herself), and goes off to talk with Shelby, who demands the chance to talk to her accuser. Miranda puts Alex and Shelby alone in the conference room, and while they confront each other verbally with Shelby telling Alex the Bureau is going to realize you are the biggest mistake they ever made Shelby is tapping out a message in code with her long fingernails. Alex writes it down on a legal pad, and it spells out Im on your side. Gasp! (Have you ever counted how many times the Quantico writers want you to gasp at something in an episode? Its a lot. If this were the old live-action Batman series, there would be little word bubbles throughout the episode that would say things like TWIST! and GASP! and SNAP! and OMG!) The two continue talking and tapping and decoding, and Shelby says her parents really are dead, now, having died in a small plane crash. Miranda, watching the whole meeting via video in another room, gets a phone call saying Shelby has been cleared by security, and the final coded message Alex deciphers before Miranda comes in and tells her everyone is right about her being a wackadoo, is that Shelby wants to meet Alex in a stairwell. 10. Back on the Quantico training timeline, Alex and Drew, and Iris and Fletcher, and teamed up to carry out an exercise that has them repelling down the side of a tall building to thwart baddies in action. Fletcher and Iris pull it off with no problem, but if you think Drews wall climbing mishap earlier in the day foreshadowed a mishap scaling down a building, take a drink or high five yourself or do whatever it is you do to celebrate guessing what the next GASP! moment would be. Drew slips, and he and Alex are left dangling. They recover and complete the mission eventually, but while he celebrates, she does not. He endangered her life, and she realizes she has to tell someone i.e., of course Ryan that Drew needs to be examined. When Liam confronts him about it, he refuses to see a doctor, and instead drops out of Quantico. 11. Nimah and Raina, having already chosen to work in New York City, meet the man who is going to be their handler, and they dont trust him right away because he refuses to learn their names or how to tell them apart (we feel ya, man weve been actively trying for 19 episodes now and still cant reliably do it). He also assigns them tasks like cleaning a bag of guns, which they feel is beneath them, so when they find an envelope of cash and some drugs in his desk, they assume the worst and tattle on him to Liam. They didnt look at the cash though it looked like real money at first glance, but upon further investigation, was clearly marked as training dough. And later, as their would-have-been handler tells them goodbye, he points out he was only trying to prepare them for what it would really be like trying to infiltrate terrorist groups, the tasks they would be asked to perform. He also tells them he could have helped them; but they pigeonholed him as being old and out of touch, just like they are pigeonholed into counterterrorism work because of their cultural background. They find out just how right he is when they meet their new handler, who dismisses their list of areas theyd like to work in and tells them theyre needed for counterterrorism efforts. 12. Quantico timeline Shelby leaves a voicemail for Clayton Haas, telling him she believes Caleb has returned to the cult. Then she goes to Sistemics HQ, hands over a $500,000 check, and gets access to the cults big cheese. As shes being led down a hallway to wait for her meeting, she spots Caleb, also waiting to meet with Sistemics leader Dan Berlin. The two confront each other, and Caleb quickly downloads a lot of info: he and his dad are working undercover to bring Berlin down; he wears the Mark Raymond glasses because they feature a camera that, hopefully, will record Berlins confession about having ordered Caleb and his friend Ross to bomb a Kentucky courthouse eight years earlier; and he promises to explain everything to her later if shell just leave the Sistemics offices now. She does, and Caleb does get the slimy Berlin to admit he ordered the bombing. 13. Present day NYC Shelby meets Alex in the FBI office stairwell, and tells Alex she got a call from a stranger, telling her to rent an SUV under the name Mark Raymond, pick up Will and Simon, and drop them off at a warehouse in Yonkers. She never heard from the caller again. She says the software upgrade was her idea, not The Voices, because she saw it as a way to get access and try to figure out whats going on she does know that The Voice is a bunch of voices put together, and then run through a server at the FBI offices. (Minor gasp who has access to all those voices and the ability to run them through the FBI server?) Shelby also tells Alex shes been working on this for awhile, and has been talking to Caleb she tried to get him to keep Alex out of the office that day to protect her. You think youre the only one who knows how to run counter measures? Shelby asks a surprised Ms. Parrish. They hug and make up, but do we think Shelby is telling Alex the truth? Are her parents really dead now? Is she really on the same side as Alex? 14. Quantico timeline Caleb: he meets with his dad, who tells him Dan Berlin has just been taken into custody, thanks to Calebs recording of his confession. Unfortunately, it came too late to save Calebs BFF Ross, who hanged himself a year earlier. And theres more bad news, so much more bad news: Berlin already cut a deal thats going to allow him to go free. Sistemics will give up its tax exempt status which will lead to them running out of money, eventually, Clayton explains so Berlin can walk. Calebs devastated, but theres more: Clayton tells him he also cant give Shelby any more details about what hes done, because their operation was off the books. If anyone found out about everything they did to get the confession, the whole case against Berlin could be thrown out. In sum: No justice for Ross, Berlin remains free and in charge of the cult, and Shelby is going to think the worst about Caleb. 15. Clayton has a meeting with Shelby and tells her Caleb was working undercover at Sistemics at first. He lies, though, and tells her Caleb wasnt working with him. Caleb thought he was strong enough to pull the whole mission off himself, but he got sucked back into the cult, Clayton tells Shelby, who he then invites to come work with him after she graduates from Quantico. Papa Creep! 16. Ryan and Nimah tell Miranda everything theyve learned about Natalie, her mom, and her apartment, and that Alex was the last person to see Natalie alive. She even helped Natalie get past security at the field office on the last day anyone saw her, Ryan says, and they have video to prove it, something that cant be ignored. Find her. Find her now, Miranda tells them. 17. At Alexs Brooklyn apartment, Shelby and Alex watch Caleb sleep, and Alex asks if Shelby still loves him. Saved by the phone ring, Shelby gets a call from The Voice, who is angry with her, and tells her if shes screwing with him/her, shell be the first to die. The women trace the call from The Voice to an address in Harlem, where they arrive, guns drawn, because Its time to end this! The address turns out to be a church, and while theyre trying to find The Voice, a different voice asks Whos there? Its Will, looking very ill, telling them to stay back. He was dropped at the church, he says, but doesnt know where Simon is. He again urges them to stay away from him, because hes sick, and doesnt have much time. I helped build it. I helped build it with my own hands, he says. The nuke you have to find it. Please, you have to find it fast, he begs Alex and Shelby, as blood pours from his nose and he falls to the floor. Quantico airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC. On Reign, Mary Queen of Scots has spent all of her time not in her own country, but in France, as the wife of the king. But now, hes dead, and she has to get on with the business of living and ruling. Things are about to change drastically on the CW drama, which returns for the second half of Season 3 Monday. Mary (Adelaide Kane) might still be grieving Francis, but shell need to set those feelings aside to return to her country, find a husband to help her lead, and bear an heir to carry on her legacy. Kane chatted with Yahoo TV about the big changes, the tumultuous events of the real Queen Marys life, and saying goodbye to beloved characters (and their actors). It feels like forever since Reign was on the air. When we last saw Mary, she was going through a transition time, after losing Francis. Is she still in limbo? Yeah, a little bit. Shes going to start making some more decisions and getting some traction in moving forward with her life over the next couple of episodes, and eventually make her way to Scotland, which will be a very exciting development for the show. She wanted to find a new husband to make a good political connection, to help Scotland, so is she still looking for suitors? Absolutely! I mean, I dont think shes been looking at all that hard, but that is definitely something on her mind and theres a lot of pressure for her to wed again, especially with Scotland still in a precarious position. But I think actually knuckling down and getting married is going to have to wait until shes back in Scotland. There are definitely potential suitors, who are both appropriate and inappropriate, coming into her life. Im excited to see her get down to courting when shes back in Scotland, because then well meet her next husband eventually. With the move to Scotland, it sounds like this will be like a new show. It is! It is going to be a completely new situation weve got new sets, a new court, new intrigues, new romances, all of it. It is pretty much going to be like a whole new show. Its exciting. Its still got the same vibe, but we have brand-new sets that are amazing. We have some really incredible new locations when we were at Ireland shooting exterior stuff for the next couple of episodes. Weve also completely revamped Marys wardrobe, too, to keep more with Scotlands climate. The wardrobe will be more reflective of that court, which is super cool. Im curious to see how the fans react to that and enjoy the new setting. Story continues You mentioned that the show will have the same vibe, but what about the tone will it get darker? Now that shes in Scotland I dont know if you know her history, but her life doesnt really start until she gets back to Scotland. So, its almost like this time in France, as drama-filled as it has been, is holiday compared to what she goes through once she gets back to Scotland. I think the show is definitely going to take a darker turn. Id like to think that well still maintain our sense of humor, though [laughs]. But she gets remarried, and her husband goes kind of crazy, she loses twins historically speaking, I dont know how much theyll put in the storyline, because nobody tells me anything! And then she has her son [the future King James]. But we have another marriage to look forward to, with a potentially abusive husband, if they stick to the history books on that one. Theres her first child, which Im personally very excited about, because I love children. Babies! And then her second husband dies, and she remarries, and then shes overthrown. Theres a lot of crazy stuff coming up for her, a lot of very dark and politically driven drama. This season introduced Queen Elizabeth. Will we see even more of her now that Mary is going to Scotland? For sure. England and that court is going to play a big part in the show as we continue to move forward. Their tensions with each other and their competition and politics was a driving force in history and will be a driving force in the show, as well. I think well spend more time in that court, as well, to start getting a look at what Elizabeth went through in her struggles, and I think itll provide an interesting juxtaposition between the queens in what they went through where they went through similar problems and dissimilar problems as female rulers in a very misogynistic, sexist, patriarchal time. All of these changes also mean changes in the cast. Torrance Coombs, who plays Bash, has already announced hes leaving. That must be sad. It is! Its bittersweet. People are leaving the show to do other things, whether it be other work or settling down and getting married and buying homes and building lives. Thats incredibly exciting. Weve all grown up together in the last couple of years. I personally feel like quite a different person from when I started the show and far more of an adult when we shot the pilot and I was 22 years old. Related: Reign's Torrance Coombs Joins ABCs Still Star-Crossed, Will Exit CW Drama I can only feel so sad because Im friends with these people, and Im going to see them in my real life. But its hard to go from seeing somebody almost every day to knowing that I wont see them unless I Facetime them. Im so pleased for Torrance and so proud of him, he just shot a pilot for a Shonda Rhimes show. He and his beautiful wife, Alyssa [Campanella], whos a good friend of mine, just got married. Its crazy, me and Megan [Follows, aka Catherine de Medici] and Anna [Popplewell, aka Lola] are the last ones left from the pilot, still hanging out, holding on for dear life. Well all lose our heads eventually! Reign airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on The CW. When in doubt, add another set of wheels. That was, not long ago, the mantra of the wildly over-the-top Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 66a six-wheel drive off-road behemoth with a twin-turbo V8 and 544 horsepower to spare. It was a legendary truck, and with only 100 or so built, a rare one too. But Mercedes-Benz isnt the only firm thats good at adding another set of drive wheels, Australias Multidrive Technology is quite adept too, and theyve been doing it for over 20 years. In a partnership with the United Arab Emirates NSV group, the company produced this goliath Toyota Land Cruiser 66. It stands unapologetically tall, boasts a bumper-to-bumper length of over 20 feet, and like most Land Cruisers, itll survive practically anything you throw at it. Take a look at its grin-worthy showreel, below. RELATED: Someone Turned a Smart Car into a 66 Pickup! As you might expect, the big Land Cruiser comes packing quite a bit of power. NSV says the 4.0-liter gasoline V6 has been supercharged and now punches out 398 horsepower and 364 lb.-ft. of torque, put to the ground through a five-speed manual gearbox and all six wheels. This type of conversion puts these pickups among some of the most capable off-road leisure vehicles in the world, but theres also a practical angle toomany Land Cruisers are converted to six-wheel drive for military, mining, emergency response, and firefighting duty. If you fancy one, a 4.5-liter turbodiesel V8 is also available with an automatic transmission. While this one is a double cab variant, you can also spec-up a single cab version with a low-side cargo box in the back. However, in either case youll have to keep your big 66 abroad. Toyota doesnt sell this generationa Toyota Land Cruiser 70 serieson US shores, pity. RELATED: Cant Afford a Mercedes-Benz 66? Heres Your Homemade Alternative Photo Credit: Multidrive Technology, NSV As the weather gets warmer, you can expected young entrepreneurs across the country to open lemonade stands in the hopes of scoring some extra spending money during their summer break. But one 9-year-old from Springfield, Missouri has a different goal in mind. Tristan Jacobson wants to raise money to help his foster parents adopt him permanently. Read: Church Couple Wants to Adopt Newborn Left in Manger at Altar Nativity Scene "The financial aspect on [adopting] has really been a stresser on me," foster mom Donnie Davis told KOLR during the weekend lemonade sale. According to their YouCaring page, "Tristan's Adoption Fund," the family needed about $5,000 to pay the attorney fees. So little Tristan took the streets Friday afternoon and charged passersby $1 for some ice cold lemonade, while the Davis and her husband ran a yard sale and a bake sale "to make any extra money for the fees," Davis wrote on the YouCaring page. It turns out, the "extra money" the family raised was more than any of them could have imagined. Over the weekend, the lemonade stand received about $7,100 in donations for the cause, the Springfield News-Leader reported. Their YouCaring page has also now raised over $10,000, doubling their original goal. But all the money goes to a worthwhile cause. Davis said all the additional money the family raised will go towards the third grader's education. Read: Kind-Hearted Mom Adopts Four Kids of Best Friend Who Died of Brain Cancer Davis said her ex-husband had an affair that produced Tristan. But the boy's father went to jail shortly after his birth and although his biological mother took him in for a while, she was unable to care for him, she said. So Davis took him in instead. "Of course I agreed [to taking him]," she said. Read: Generous 9-Year-Old Girl Collecting 1,000 Barbie Dolls To Give To 1,000 Girls In Need Since Tristan had been in the care of Davis and her husband, he's suffered a bout of social issues triggered by his tough upbringing, she said. They also had a hard time catching him up in school, since he was regularly sent home for his poor behavior. Story continues But Davis wrote that Tristan has overcome many of the initial difficulties since: "He has straight As, and hes getting 100% at least 3 days a week for behavior. The other days, hes getting a 92 or higher. Hes slowly learning to make friends and have healthy relationships with them." Now, the family is working hard toward their next goal: getting him adopted. While Davis wrote that although "Tristan is already our son, in our hearts," it's important to the family that they make the adoption official. "He's been with us so long and we've been his family unit for so long," Davis told KOLR. "I know that there won't be any problem with [adopting]." Read: Couple Breaks Down in Tears When They Meet Adopted Son After Trying to Conceive for 7 Years Davis wrote on the YouCaring page that in addition to Tristan wanting to take up her last name, he came up with a full new name for himself to complete the transition into the new family: Quill Tristan Davis. Watch: Firefighters Rescue 34 Dogs From Burning Home: 'It Was an Endless Chain of Dogs' Related Articles: She is giving voice to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them, says Obama on Merkel. (Photo: AP) Hanover: US President Barack Obama on Monday hailed German Chancellor Angela Merkel as being on the "right side of history" with her welcoming refugee policy, although critics denounced his praise as hollow lip service. Speaking in the northern German city of Hanover, Obama said the embattled Merkel had "demonstrated real political and moral leadership" in letting in more than 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery. "What's happening with respect to her position on refugees here, in Europe, she's on the right side of history on this. She is giving voice to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them," he said. While the reticent Merkel blushed at the glowing praise, German officials and commentators charged that Obama's administration had done little to help her as Europe struggles with its biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Influential news weekly Der Spiegel slammed Obama's comments as hypocritical given the American role in this drama. It noted that while 137,000 people had received refugee status in Germany last year, the United States whose population is four times greater than Germany's had accepted around 70,000. Obama, who heaped accolades on Merkel again Monday in a landmark speech on transatlantic relations, confirmed in Hanover that the US would take in just 10,000 Syrians this year. "It is a pity that the chancellor could not turn to (Obama) when she needed help with the refugee crisis," Spiegel wrote on its website. "Then maybe she would not have needed (Turkish President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan," it said, referring to a highly-controversial deal Merkel brokered with Ankara to stem the flow of Syrian asylum seekers into the EU. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was more diplomatic in expressing a sense of disappointment. "Of course on the one hand, we are happy to hear Germany being praised for assuming the responsibility we have in tackling the refugee crisis or, shall we say, minimising immediate suffering as hundreds of thousands were on the move last year," he told public broadcaster ARD. "But of course we would hope for more support around the globe. That is why we are talking to the Americans. We are also talking to the Canadians and the Brazilians." Shattered illusions The strong backing from Obama comes as the conservative chancellor, in power for a decade, has seen support for her Christian Democrats slip to 33 percent, the lowest level in five years. Meanwhile, support for the rightwing populist anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged to around 14 percent. There was a time German leaders might have hungered for such praise from a US president, when West Germany during the Cold War was beholden to Washington for its security. But conservative daily Die Welt indicated that the tables had long since turned, with Washington now looking more to Berlin as the go-to European power for help in the globe's hotspots. It called Obama's farewell visit to Germany "a sign of respect" for Merkel "who, for the Americans, has become a lonely anchor of stability in a crisis-hit Europe". Berlin's daily Morgenpost said this shift had been difficult for Germans, who had looked with enormous hope to Obama when he took office in 2009. "There was euphoria that a new spirit would infuse the European-American relationship," he said. "Today the boss at the White House is sitting on a pile of shattered illusions. His relationship with Chancellor Merkel has a new sobriety too... In reality the German-American relationship consists of a long to-do list. "The best defence against disillusionment is scaling back expectations and staying realistic. Anything else would be nostalgia." For her part, Merkel touted her "friendly, close, trusting cooperation" with Obama but declined invitations by reporters at their joint press conference to share in the exuberance about their seven-year relationship. "There is no time to take stock. The future with this president is more important at the moment than the past," she chided. From Town & Country A year ago, Johnny Depp's wife Amber Heard stepped off their private jet and entered Australia without declaring the couple's two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, with the country's Customs and Border Protection Service. Mrs. Depp thought her assistant had filed the entry paperwork, but she was mistaken and a messy media and court battle followed. The illegal import of animals in Australia carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 102,000 Australian dollars ($75,000); the false document charge has a maximum penalty of a year in prison and a fine of 10,200 Australian dollars ($7,500). This week, Heard was spared a conviction when she pleaded guilty in Australian court to knowingly producing a false or misleading document, and two other charges of illegally importing her dogs were dismissed. Here's what you need to know before you take your pet to a foreign country: 1. Check the CDC. Before Americans travel to exotic places, the U.S. government advises checking with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to learn what vaccinations are needed for entry and oftentimes required to obtain visas. The same applies for pets; before planning a trip, owners should check with the CDC too along with the USDA and APHIS. 2. Know which breeds are banned. Many airlines, like American Airlines, do not allow brachycephalic (short nose) pets, like Pugs, Shih Tzus, Chihuahuas, Chow Chows, Pekingese, Lhasa Apso, Bull Mastiffs, and English Toy Spaniels, to fly at all because of the pressure and altitude's effect on their breathing. Delta does not accept brachycephalic pets as checked baggage; instead, they fly abroad separately via their special Pets First airplane. United Airlines makes it clear on their website that "in the event of an emergency, oxygen service will not be available for pets;" they offer special flights just for pets, too, called PetSafe. 3. You need a valid passport. Well, not exactly a passport, but paperwork called an "International Health Certificate" provided by your veterinarian (it's recommended that you visit the vet a month before travel). This document certifies that your pet has received required tests and vaccinations for the countries you are visiting and reentry into the United States. Story continues 4. Puppies and kittens are on the no fly list. All airlines have rules about babies. For example, United Airlines and American Airlines do not allow pets younger than eight weeks old to fly. 5. Buy the right pet kennel. No pet transport kennels are preapproved by the airlines, the airline associations, or the USDA, even if product labels make such claims, so be prepared that your kennel could be rejected at check-in if an officer sees it as unfit. The USDA requires that all kennels on international flights provide enough room for your pet to stand and sit erect-without the head touching the top of the container-and to turn around and lie down in a natural position. Additionally, the USDA and APHIS advise purchasing the strongest and most secure kennel you can find. 6. Give your pet a bath before you head to the airport. Even if your pet is certifiably healthy, if its feet or fur is covered with dirt it could be rejected at customs, especially if you are arriving from a country or region with foot-and-mouth disease. 7. Don't forget food and water. The USDA and APHIS require that your pet be offered food and water within four hours of the flight. Airlines also have their own additional rules: United requires that two dishes (one for food and one for water) be attached to the inside of the kennel but also be accessible from the outside of the kennel so they can be filled without opening the door. 8. Long-haul flights have different rules. The USDA and APHIS prohibit pets on flights longer than 12 hours in cargo. Translation: Except for service dogs or pets flying private, pets cannot jet to Japan or Australia. Therefore, these pets have to fly on commercial airlines' special pet planes like United's PetSafe and Delta's Pets First flights. 9. All pets must be declared at customs. When entering any country, all pets have to be declared at customs. Don't do it and you could face serious fines and jail time like Mrs. Johnny Depp. You might even have to make a bizarre apology video like this: By Hamid Shalizi and Mirwais Harooni KABUL (Reuters) - President Ashraf Ghani said Afghanistan faced a terrorist enemy led by Taliban "slaves" in Pakistan in a somber speech to parliament on Monday that nonetheless left the door open to resuming peace talks with parts of the Taliban. Addressing a joint session of the two houses of parliament following a Taliban bomb blast that killed at least 64 people and wounded hundreds in Kabul on Tuesday, Ghani branded the insurgents criminals fighting the legitimate government. But he stopped short of declaring a state of national emergency, pledging war against radical groups like Islamic State, usually known in Afghanistan as Daesh, or the Haqqani network while suggesting there was still some hope of compromise with at least some Taliban. "The enemies of Afghanistan are Daesh, al Qaeda, the murderous Haqqani network and some of the Taliban who enjoy shedding the blood of countrymen," he said. He added that the doors of negotiation would remain open for those Taliban ready to stop bloodshed but added: "This opportunity will not be there forever." He said Taliban leaders sheltering in the western Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta were "slaves and enemies of Afghanistan who shed the blood of their countrymen" and he called on the government in Islamabad to wipe them out. He did not say whose slaves he thought the Taliban were, but his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, frequently accused Pakistan of harboring the Taliban and supporting other militant groups such Haqqani network. Pakistan denies harboring and aiding the Taliban but Ghani urged its government to "fulfill promises and carry out military operations against those whose bases are in Pakistan". The response from the Taliban, who have already rejected peace talks while Western forces remain in Afghanistan, was scornful. "The nation is not blind, people understand who the slave is and who works for the interest of others," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a tweet. After a year that saw 11,000 civilian casualties and some 5,500 members of the security forces killed fighting the Taliban, the distinction may make little concrete difference to the fighting on the ground. But two weeks after the Taliban announced the start of their annual spring offensive and then followed up with the biggest single attack seen in Kabul since 2011, there had been wide speculation among politicians in Kabul that Ghani could declare the stalled peace process formally dead. The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist from 1996 to 2001, are seeking to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul and reimpose Islamic rule. Ghani's speech came at a time of growing apprehension in Kabul at the prospect of more intense fighting over the summer months. Over recent days, Afghan security forces have fought back Taliban attacks on Kunduz, the northern city that briefly fell to the insurgents last year. Large parts of the southern province of Helmand are now in insurgent hands and there has been heavy fighting in several other provinces from Herat in the west to Kunar in the east. Ghani said security forces, fighting alone since the end of NATO's main combat mission in 2014, were in a stronger position than last year and said a permanent minister of defense and head of the main intelligence agency would be appointed soon. (Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie) Cape Town (AFP) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) has brought a case of treason against opposition leader Julius Malema after he threatened a violent overthrow of the government, the party's spokesman said Monday. The move follows an interview Malema gave to Al-Jazeera television Sunday in which he said that if the government used violence to suppress protest "we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun". ANC national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa announced on Twitter that the party had gone to police to lay a charge of treason against Malema, leader of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). "The ANC has just opened a case of high treason against EFF and its leader Julius Malema in his personal capacity with Hillbrow police station," Kodwa confirmed to News24. Earlier, the ANC released a statement saying Malema's remarks "are a call to violence, inflammatory, treasonable and seditious". In the interview, Malema said: "We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through a barrel of a gun". The EFF has been demanding the ouster of President Jacob Zuma for several months, accusing him of corruption. EFF deputies regularly disrupt parliamentary sessions, sometimes shouting anti-Zuma slogans. Last year, EFF MPs were expelled from the assembly by security guards after fights broke out. "We are a very peaceful organisation, we fight our battles through peaceful means, through the courts, through parliament, through mass mobilisation, we do that peacefully," Malema told Al-Jazeera. "But at times the government has attempted to respond to such with violence, they beat us up in parliament... They sent soldiers to places like Alexandra (township) where people are protesting." The EFF leader, 35, was expelled from the ruling ANC in 2012 when he was head of the party's youth wing. He founded the radical leftist EFF a year later which entered parliament with 25 deputies after May 2014 elections, becoming the third largest party. Air Products & Chemicals Inc. APD is set to release second-quarter fiscal 2016 results ahead of the bell on Apr 28. Last quarter, the industrial gases giant delivered a positive earnings surprise of 4.71%. Air Products has outperformed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the trailing four quarters with an average beat of 2.73%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Air Products surpassed earnings expectations in first-quarter fiscal 2016 (ended Dec 31, 2015) and saw higher profits, backed by its cost-management initiatives and improved pricing. Air Products expects earnings from continuing operations for second-quarter fiscal 2016 to be in the range of $1.78$1.83 per share, up 15%18% from the prior-year quarter. The company reiterated its earnings guidance for fiscal 2016 in the band of $7.25$7.50 per share. Air Products is gaining from a diverse customer base, cost-reduction measures and sustained pricing power. New business deals and strategic investments are expected to support results in fiscal 2016. The company has a strong project backlog. These projects are expected to be accretive to earnings and cash flow as they come on stream over the next few years. Acquisitions and new business wins are expected to continue driving results. The acquisition of a 67% stake in Chilean industrial gas company, Indura S.A. has ushered in substantial growth opportunity for Air Products, positioning it as Latin Americas second-largest industrial gas producer. The acquisition opened up a $1.5 billion opportunity in Latin America, the second-highest growth region in the world, following Asia. Moreover, the acquisition of EPCO is an excellent fit for Air Products and will help expand its market share by offering an extended product portfolio to existing and new customers. It will also provide cost and revenue synergies to Air Products. Air Products is also embarking on headcount reduction, keeping a tight control on SG&A expenses and undertaking work process improvement initiatives. The company is making good progress with its $600 million cost-cutting program and has already achieved cost savings of $300 million. Story continues However, sluggish global economic conditions may continue to impact the demand for the companys products. Challenging conditions in Europe are expected to keep industrial gases volumes under pressure in the region. Air Products' industrial gases business in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region is seeing pressure from a weak operating environment. Moreover, Air Products remains exposed to unfavorable currency impact stemming from weakening of most currencies against the U.S. dollar. The company saw an 8 cents per share earnings headwind associated with unfavorable currency swings in the last reported quarter. Air Products is expected to continue to see currency headwinds in the second quarter. Air Products, in Sep 2015, announced plans to separate its Materials Technologies unit through a tax-free spin-off (expected to be completed before Sep 2016). Following the spin-off, both Air Products and the Materials Technologies businesses will operate as two best-in-class public companies with separate business models The spin-off will enable Air Products to become the safest and most profitable industrial gas company in the world, providing outstanding service to its customers. Also, it will allow the company to focus entirely on specialty materials. Air Products, earlier this month, also said that it will exit its Energy-from-Waste (EfW) business to focus on its core industrial gases business. The company will record a pre-tax charge in the band of $900 million to $1 billion in the to-be-reported quarter, mainly to write down assets related to the EfW business. The company will provide more color on the financial impacts of leaving the EfW business in its fiscal second-quarter earnings release. Earnings Whispers Our proven model shows that Air Products is likely to beat earnings this quarter because it has the right combination of two key ingredients. Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP for Air Products is +0.56%. This is because the Most Accurate Estimate stands at $1.81, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at $1.80. A favorable Zacks ESP serves as a meaningful and leading indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise. Zacks Rank: Air Products carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Note that stocks with a Zacks Rank #1, 2 or 3 have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings. Conversely, Sell-rated stocks (#4 or 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement. Stocks that Warrant a Look Here are some companies in the basic materials sector you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Agnico Eagle Mines Limited AEM has an Earnings ESP of +50% and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Albemarle Corporation ALB has an Earnings ESP of +1.18% and a Zacks Rank #3. Ashland Inc. ASH has an Earnings ESP of +1.74% and a Zacks Rank #3. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report AIR PRODS & CHE (APD): Free Stock Analysis Report ASHLAND INC (ASH): Free Stock Analysis Report ALBEMARLE CORP (ALB): Free Stock Analysis Report AGNICO EAGLE (AEM): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Bad news for travelers who dislike having their personal space violated: Airlines are considering charging passengers extra to avoid the dreaded middle seat. While first class, business class and anything better than basic seats in economy already cost more, some airlines are looking to implement tiered pricing for all economy seats. Passengers used to be able to avoid the middle seat by booking early, but airlines are now increasingly pushing travelers to pay more for coveted aisle and window seats. Related: 12 Must-Know Travel Trends for 2016 Southwest, which doesnt assign seats, upped the price of an early-boarding pass from $12.50 to $15 last month. For those who dont want to dish out the extra cash, theyll have to be among the first to check-in to ensure they a seat they want. On Delta Air Lines, passengers who buy a Basic Economy ticket dont get their seat assignment until after they check in, meaning travelers who paid more can choose the more desirable seats. Both American Airlines and United plan on offering a similar economy fare class later this year. Despite that kind of squeeze by the airlines, a new study found that over the past year, the airline industry actually improved its overall performance after slightly declining in 2014. The annual Airline Quality Rating report released this month ranked 13 U.S. airlines based on their rates of bumping passengers, on-time performance, mishandling luggage and customer complaints. The industry improved in all variables tracked, except for customer complaints, which jumped 37 percent over the past year, from 1.38 complaints per 100,000 passengers in 2014 to 1.90 in 2015. Related: 7 Secrets to Scoring Cheap Airline Tickets Out of the 13 airlines evaluated, six JetBlue, Delta, ExpressJet, SkyWest, Southwest and United improved their overall performance scores from last year. The remaining seven saw their scores decline. Heres how the airlines stack up this year: 1. Virgin America For the fourth year in a row, Virgin managed to snag the top spot. The airline, which is currently being purchased by Alaska for $2.6 billion, also ranked No. 1 for the fewest number of mishandled bags each month with an average of 0.84 per 1,000 passengers. Story continues 2. JetBlue JetBlue climbed two spots after falling to fourth last year. The airline boasts the lowest number of passengers who have been involuntarily denied boarding due to an oversold flight. 3. Delta Ranked third for the second year in a row, Delta has both the third-highest on-time arrival rate at 85.9 percent and the third-lowest number of mishandled bags at 2.08 per 1,000 passengers each month. 4. Hawaiian Not only is Hawaiian the oldest U.S. airline that has never had a fatal accident, the carrier also leads the industry in the highest rate of on-time arrivals, at an average of 88.4 percent each month. 5. Alaska Alaska had the lowest number of complaints reported to the Department of Transportation. On average, the carrier receives only 0.5 complaints each month. 6. Southwest Ranked sixth for the second year in a row, Southwest improved in all of the variables measured, including on-time arrivals, customer complaint rate, involuntary denied boarding and mishandled baggage. 7. SkyWest SkyWest, which jumped up from the 10th spot last year, still has a ways to go before being named among the top carriers. The airline had the second highest number of passengers who were denied boarding at an average of 1.78 per quarter. 8. United Since its 2012 debut on the rankings at dead last, United has been rising in the standings. This year the carrier improved in all of the variables measured, except for a slight uptick in the number of customer complaints. 9. ExpressJet ExpressJet has the second-highest number of passengers that are involuntarily denied boarding, despite improving from an average of 2.71 per 10,000 passengers in 2014 to 1.86 this past year. The carrier remains well above the industry average of 0.76. 10. American American fell from seventh in the rankings in 2014, thanks to poorer performance in three out of the four variables measured. The airline receives the third-highest number of complains each quarter at 3.36 per 100,000 passengers. 11. Frontier The ultra low cost carrier saw the largest decline in the overall rankings from last year. Frontier has the worst on-time arrival rate at 73.2 percent, a drop from 74.1 percent last year. 12. Envoy Air Envoy, formerly known as American Eagle, has the highest number of mishandled bags each month at an average of 9.02 per 1,000 passengers. The number is significantly above the average industry rate of 3.24. 13. Spirit Ranked dead last, Spirit also received the highest number of complaints to the Department of Transportation at an average of 11.73 per month. The airline beat out the airline with the next highest number of complaints by nearly 4. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Anita Staver, the leader of anti-LGBT group L, confessed Friday on Twitter that she will pack a pistol with her when she goes into a Target restroom, in case she meets a trans woman. Staver's tweet came the same week that retail giant Target announced that it would allow employees and customers to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. I'm taking a Glock .45 to the ladies room. It identifies as my bodyguard. #BoycottTarget @Target "I'm taking a Glock .45 to the ladies room. It identifies as my bodyguard. #BoycottTarget @Target," she wrote Friday afternoon. Liberty Counsel, run by Staver and her husband, has a hand in drafting many of the anti-LGBT bills currently popping up in places like North Carolina and Mississippi. Staver's husband has gone on record saying that non-discrimination laws will "put individuals at risk and ultimately result in significant damage and even death of some individuals." He said this despite zero recorded instances of a transgender person ever assaulting someone in a bathroom. Source: Toby Talbot/AP Meanwhile, transgender people still report feelings of fear using gender-specific bathrooms and calls to North Carolina transgender suicide hotlines have doubled. Hearing that Staver plans to bring a gun into the bathroom probably doesn't help matters much. Luckily, a chorus of opposition is growing against North Carolina's HB2 law, which requires people to use the bathroom that matches the gender assigned to them at birth, not their gender identity. Corporate giant Paypal, NAACP leaders, trans activists, rock stars and regular ole dads have all spoken out against the law. Villers-Bretonneux (France) (AFP) - Some 3,000 Australians marked Anzac Day on Monday with a sombre dawn service in northern France to honour their forebears who fought in the Battle of the Somme a century ago. "Today we come together... to commemorate all who served on the Western Front and to remember those who never made it home," Australian Air Force chief Leo Davies said. The faces of the fallen were projected onto the imposing tower of the Australian National Memorial, which honours nearly 11,000 soldiers with no known graves. A sole bagpipe wailed as dignitaries including French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and the governor general of Australia, Sir Peter John Cosgrove, laid wreaths at the monument of the cemetery at Villers-Bretonneux. "The presence of so many of you underscores the strength of our friendship," Le Drian told the crowd, which also included scores of French people. Doug Morgan, music director at Saint Peter's College in Adelaide who led 50 students to the event, said: "We've had amazing reception here. The local people are very hospitable, and still very grateful for what the Australians did." The Battle of the Somme, which lasted nearly five months, saw more than a million casualties on both the Allied and German sides and came to symbolise the futility of World War I. Each of the 141 days of trench warfare took an average toll of some 8,500 casualties, but for all that the Western Front shifted no more than a few kilometres. For the Australian volunteers, the sacrifice began with a sea journey lasting up to four months. The spirit shown by the Anzac troops has long been seen as critical in forging a national identity in Australia as well as in New Zealand, both fledgling nations at the time. Anzac Day commemorates the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25, 1915, at the start of an eight-month campaign against the Ottoman Empire in which 8,700 Australians and nearly 2,800 New Zealanders died. Story continues The battle of Gallipoli, in modern-day Turkey, is generally seen as a devastating military failure for the Allied powers against the German-backed Ottoman forces, who managed to resist the attempts to break through towards Constantinople. Now synonymous with valour, Anzac Day is a public holiday in both Australia and New Zealand, also honouring veterans from other conflicts, including South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Iraq. - 'Hell on earth' - Held across Australia, the Anzac dawn service has its origins in a military practice known as "stand-to", in which soldiers are woken before dawn to avoid the vulnerability that comes with the early light, which is notorious for playing tricks on the eyes. "It was emotional, and it was quite educational to learn about what the Australians did on the Western Front," said Craig Rogers, an Australian defence researcher, after the ceremony. "Coming out on a morning like this in the cold is a small sacrifice compared to what those people did for us." The history also runs deep in the community in northern France where so many lost their lives. "My father was born in a village near here," said Jean-Louis Delauney, whose grandfather survived a chlorine gas attack during the Battle of the Somme. "My whole childhood was affected by World War I." Monday is the 98th anniversary of the battle that liberated the town of Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens. "It puts it all in perspective to come here," said Australian Peter Crowle, 69, whose grandfather died in the battle. "The conditions they were subjected to were hell on earth." Men carry away a dead body in the Nyakabiga neighborhood of Bujumbura, Burundi. (Photo: AP) The Hague, Netherlands: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has opened a preliminary probe into atrocities in Burundi over the last year, saying violence in the African nation has reportedly left more than 430 people dead and forced 230,000 to flee their homes. Burundi descended into violence last year after President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans to run for a third term, a move widely seen as unconstitutional. The Burundian government has repeatedly denied it tortures and kills civilians, although Nkurunziza urged the security forces to use all means necessary to end the violence. The "preliminary examination" announced Monday is a step toward a full investigation that could lead to Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda filing charges against suspects. Bensouda says her investigators have received reports of crimes including "killing, imprisonment, torture (and) rape" in Burundi. Lyon (AFP) - A French cardinal accused of covering up for a paedophile priest, in a scandal that has rocked the local Catholic Church, admitted Monday to "errors in the management and nomination of certain priests." Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, made the admission in a statement after a meeting at the bishop's residence in Lyon to discuss accusations the church failed to report several child sexual abuse cases in the area. The meeting, which was held behind closed doors and attended by some 220 priests, heard from a victim of Bernard Preynat, a priest who has admitted sexually abusing scouts under his supervision over 25 years ago. Several complaints have been brought against Barbarin for failing to inform the authorities about Preynat and other priests targeted by abuse allegations in his diocese. The media-friendly cardinal, one of the top figures in the Church in France, has vehemently denied any cover-up. "The cardinal recognised that the diocese committed errors in the management and nomination of certain priests," the statement issued after Monday's meeting said. "We failed to fulfil our obligation to investigate and to seek the truth," Yves Baumgarten, vicar-general of the diocese, told a later press conference. The scandal is the worst to hit the Catholic Church in France since 2001, when a bishop was given a three-month suspended jail sentence for failing to inform authorities about a paedophile priest. Asked whether there were calls at the meeting for Barbarin to step aside, Baumgarten said that some priests were favourable to him stepping aside while the investigations was ongoing the vast majority wanted him to remain in his position. The Catholic Church in France has announced plans for an independent commission of secular experts to advise bishops on handling allegations of clerical abuse as well as for local units in charge of listening to victims' complaints. From Popular Mechanics The U.S. Army and Marine Corps will jointly test a so-called "active protection" system. These tanks and other armored vehicles will be fitted with an Israeli-developed system that shoots down and jams enemy anti-tank weapons. According to U.S. Naval Institute News, this will be the first test of Trophy on American equipment. The Army is leasing four Trophy units, enough for a platoon, and will test them on M1A2 tanks and Stryker interim armored vehicles. The services will then test Trophy on older Marine Corps M1A1 tanks. The Marines will be particularly interested in the Stryker test, as the vehicle bears a similarity to the Corps' new Amphibious Combat Vehicle 1.1. If the experiments are successful, Trophy could become an important upgrade to protect U.S. armored vehicles from anti-tank missiles and rockets. Trophy is considered an active protection system because it actively destroys the threat to the tank, as opposed to a passive protection system such as tank armor. Armor is heavy and makes armored vehicles less mobile. Active protection systems such as Trophy, on the other hand, consist of lightweight radars and the hard-kill countermeasure system. Made by Israeli defense contractor Rafael, Trophy consists of three parts: a detection radar, tracking radar, and both "hard" and "soft" anti-missile countermeasures. The system establishes a 360-degree bubble-shaped detection zone around the vehicle, with a detection radar constantly searching for inbound threats. Here's a promotional video, produced by Rafael, that describes the Trophy system: Once a threat is detected moving toward the tank, the tracking radar takes over and fires a shotgun-like blast of pellets to destroy the incoming missile or rocket. Intercepts occur as close at 10 meters from the tank. The "soft" kill component of Trophy consists of jammers designed to jam radio signals providing steering commands to anti-tank missiles. Because of the need for constant alertness, Trophy is always on and fully automated. The system's first "kill" occurred in March 2011, when it shot down a RPG-29 rocket fired by Palestinian militants. Rafael claims that several Israeli Army Merkava tanks were saved by Trophy in 2014, when Israeli forces entered the Gaza Strip and were fired upon by Hamas forces with anti-tank guided missiles. Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - Artillery fire killed a civilian on Monday despite a ceasefire in a flashpoint northern Iraqi town that has been hit by deadly fighting between Kurdish and Turkmen forces, officials said. Fighting broke out at the weekend in Tuz Khurmatu between the autonomous Kurdish region's peshmerga forces and Turkmen members of the Hashed al-Shaabi militia umbrella organisation for the second time in six months. "Clashes were renewed sporadically in Tuz, but it was not like yesterday," said Mohammed Koja, the deputy governor of Salaheddin province where the town is located. Koja said that mortar rounds and rocket fire had killed one person and wounded four. A police colonel confirmed the toll but it was unclear which side killed the civilian. The initial clashes between Turkmen and Kurdish forces began at around midnight Saturday and continued into Sunday. Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr militia, announced at a press conference on Sunday afternoon that a ceasefire deal had been reached. But a witness in the town said gunfire and periodic explosions could still be heard. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the Joint Operations Command to take "all necessary measures" to end the clashes, a statement from his office said. And he urged the leaders of the forces involved to "focus efforts against the common terrorist enemy represented by the Daesh gangs", the statement said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group. Both the peshmerga and the Turkmen fighters are battling IS, which overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014. But Kurdish forces and the Hashed al-Shaabi are vying for influence in some areas, a contest that has led to violence in Tuz Khurmatu. The latest fighting came after unrest in Tuz Khurmatu last November that began as a dispute at a checkpoint escalated into clashes inside the town. Dozens of homes were burned, and the town has been split between Kurdish and Turkmen areas, with neighbourhood minority residents moving back across the ethnic divide. Baghdad turned to the Hashed al-Shaabi, which is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, to help stem the jihadists' 2014 advance and later push them back. Kurdish forces also battled the jihadists in the north, but have largely fought independently of federal troops. * France, Germany, Japan vying for lucrative contract * Submarine decision has political implications at home and abroad * Raytheon, Lockheed bid for separate weapons contract (Adds detail on bidders, context, Treasurer comment) By Colin Packham and Nobuhiro Kubo SYDNEY/TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will announce on Tuesday whether France, Germany or Japan is the successful bidder for an A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build the country's new fleet of submarines, according to sources. Two sources with knowledge of the negotiations said the contract for the 12 new submarines, a centrepiece of Australia's future defence strategy, would be announced within hours. Local media reports suggested last week that Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the previous frontrunners for the contract, had dropped out of contention, leaving France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG to battle it out. Beyond the contract price tag, one of the most lucrative global defence deals going, Australia's decision on the submarines has political implications both at home and abroad. Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's recent gamble on a July 2 election has sped up the process. The contract will likely have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia state, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election. "There are significant expenditures of public money," Treasurer Scott Morrison told reporters ahead of the announcement. "The focus is on Australia getting real benefits from jobs and experience in the future." ThyssenKrupp is proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine. France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS has proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine. Story continues Japan has offered to build Australia a variant of its Soryu submarine. A deal with the Japanese would cement closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key allies in the region and represent a significant shift in Japan's post-war defence posture, but would also risk antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner. America's Raytheon Co, which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp , which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet. ($1 = 1.2967 Australian dollars) (Editing by Lincoln Feast) Vienna (AFP) - Austrian commentators declared the end of an era Monday after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in presidential elections, ending 70 years of domination by a political elite criticised as out of touch and ineffectual. According to final results released Monday, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) came a clear first with 35 percent in Sunday's first round of an election for the largely -- but not entirely -- ceremonial post of Austrian head of state. Hofer, 45, an engineer who walks with a cane since a paraglider accident, will now face Alexander van der Bellen, 72, an economics professor backed by the Greens who was second on 21 percent, in a runoff on May 22. Candidates from the centrist parties, which have effectively run Austria since the end of World War II, failed to even make it into the runoff on May 22, languishing in fourth and fifth place with just 11 percent each. The only candidate who fared worse was Richard Lugner, a widely ridiculed 83-year-old construction magnate and socialite married to a former Playboy model 57 years his junior, who won just over two percent. It means that for the first time since 1945, the Habsburg dynasty's Hofburg palace will not be occupied by a president backed by Chancellor Werner Faymann's Social Democrats (SPOe) or his centre-right coalition partners the People's Party (OeVP). FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who has railed against the arrival in 2015 of 90,000 asylum seekers in Europe's migrant crisis and who hopes to become chancellor in 2018, heralded "the beginning of a new political age". The Oesterreich tabloid called it a "tsunami that has turned our political landscape upside down". A map of Austria's voting districts showed a vast sea of blue representing area won by Hofer, with only a few isolated specks of other colours. "The truth for the SPOe and the OeVP is simply this: your time is over," the Die Presse daily said in an editorial. "In a way this is the end of the Second Republic as we know it," political analyst Thomas Hofer told AFP. Story continues Faymann said the result a "clear warning to the government that we have to work together more strongly". Ahead of a meeting of party chiefs on Monday evening, he scotched talk however that he would resign. Regional heads of his SPOe said in a statement that after the "very disappointing election result, a substantial discussion and the right consequences must take place... What definitely won't help is discussions about personnel." - Populists - The result was a further sign that the appeal of mainstream politicians in Europe -- and in the United States with Donald Trump -- is waning as populist figures tap into anger about immigration and growing inequality. Congratulations poured in from other far-right leaders in Europe. France's Marine Le Pen called Hofer's victory a "magnificent result". Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders said it was "fantastic", while Alternative for Germany head Frauke Petry hailed the "terrific outcome". Faymann's recent tougher line on immigration -- imposing a quota, erecting fences -- has not stopped the FPOe surging. Polls put it in first place with more than 30 percent. Hofer, the political analyst, said however that immigration is not the only issue, with the weak economy and the government's failure to implement reforms also taking their toll. But most of all, this was "an anti-system election," he told AFP. Support for the two main parties has been sliding for years and in the last general election in 2013 -- when, unlike now, the far-right vote was split -- they only just garnered enough support to re-form their "grand coalition". "The FPOe is now clear favourite to emerge as the strongest party in the next general election, and can count on forming a coalition with the SPOe or the OeVP," Anton Pelinka, another analyst, told AFP. SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Police from six Western Balkan countries have arrested 22 people and seized large quantities of weapons and drugs in a coordinated operation against an international smuggling ring, Interpol said on Monday. The Balkans region is a notorious route for smugglers of weapons and drugs to western Europe, local and European police say, and some of the guns used in last November's attacks in Paris were produced there, according to an arms manufacturer. The police operation, code-named "Balkan Trigger", took place between April 17 and April 19 in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia at the request of Interpol and was supported by Europol and Frontex, the European Union's law enforcement and border agencies, said Branislav Pavlovic, the head of Interpol's branch in Bosnia. "The goal of the action was to prevent and uncover criminal acts related to illegal trade of firearms and explosives, as well as other acts of organized crime," Pavlovic told a news conference in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. Police seized large quantities of guns, hand grenades, explosives, ammunition, cash, gold, vehicles and drugs, most of it in Bosnia, Pavlovic said. He did not give the nationality of those arrested or say where the arms had originated from. Bosnia's security agencies have stepped up cooperation with their neighbors in their fight against organized crime. The director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, visited last week to discuss anti-terrorism measures. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Adrian Croft and Robin Pomeroy) Bodies were strewn among the rubble of Bhaktapur, near Katmandu, on Sunday, as rescue workers searched for survivors. More than 3,200 people were killed across Nepal. (Photo: AP) London: A year after the deadly earthquake in Nepal, thousands of people, especially women, are being deprived of funds to rebuild because they do not own land or cannot prove they owned the land where they lived, Oxfam said on Friday. Nepal's government requires proof of ownership, but many victims have lost documents and others did not formally own the land where they lived, said a report by the international anti-poverty organisation. The government in April began distributing grants of 200,000 Nepali rupees ($1,900) to families that can prove they owned land before the earthquake, which struck on April 25, 2015. The quake killed some 9,000 people, injured more than 22,000 others and damaged or destroyed more than 900,000 houses. "Families who are landless and who were living on unregistered land are very much uncertain about the future and support that the government had promised," said Prabin Man Singh, research and policy coordinator for Oxfam, who co-authored the report. "Those families are the poorest and the most vulnerable among the victims." Some 3 million people are living in temporary shelters with tarpaulin roofs ahead of Nepal's monsoon season, according to Save the Children, CARE International and other agencies. Land tenure is largely undocumented in Nepal, and data is limited and contradictory, the Oxfam report said. It cited one pre-quake government report that said as many as 480,000 families, or 9% of the population, did not have access to land, and another report that said a third of Nepal's farmers did not own the land they cultivated. The United Nations (UN) has said a quarter of Nepalese households - about 1.3 million - did not have any land or enough land to support families. But Oxfam said that in post-earthquake surveys, more than 90% of people claimed to own their own land before the disaster. As reconstruction plans are instituted, Oxfam said women are often excluded because they "are less likely to inherit land, have land registered in their name or obtain documentation to prove their entitlement." Under Nepal's constitution adopted in September 2015, women have equal rights to own land. But inheritance laws have kept the ownership numbers low. Donors pledged $4.1 billion for reconstruction after the earthquake, but aid groups have criticised the slow pace of government reconstruction efforts. (Adds Ardagh statement, details, share movement) April 25 (Reuters) - Beverage can makers Ball Corp and Rexam Plc will sell some of their assets to European packaging maker Ardagh Group in a deal worth $3.42 billion, as they seek antitrust clearance for their planned merger. The deal would include the sale of about a fifth of the companies' combined can making or producing plants across Europe, Brazil and the United States, Ball said in a statement on Monday. The companies will also sell certain innovation and support functions in these regions, Ball said, which would put it on track to close the Rexam deal by the end of June. Ball agreed to buy British rival Rexam for 4.43 billion pounds ($6.35 billion) last year to improve efficiency and cut costs through a merger of the world's two largest beverage can makers by volume, which supply Coca-Cola Co and Anheuser-Busch InBev. However, the deal earlier ran foul with European antitrust regulators as it would give the enlarged entity considerable market share in Europe, the United States and Brazil. The two companies account for 60 percent of beverage can supply in North America, 69 percent in Europe and 74 percent in Brazil, according to Morningstar analysts. The European Commission cleared the deal in January, subject to the divestment of 12 plants. The divestment to Ardagh includes 12 plants in Europe, eight in the United States and two in Brazil. After the deal closes, Ball will have 75 metal can manufacturing facilities and joint ventures. The assets being sold accounted for $3 billion of sales and around $375 million of core earnings in 2015, Ball said. Reuters reported in March that Ardagh, the packaging conglomerate controlled by Irish billionaire Paul Coulson, was preparing an offer. Ardagh said separately that the deal would make it the third largest beverage can maker globally, giving it access to a market that complements its core glass and metal container supply business. Story continues Luxemburg-based Ardagh will pay $3.21 billion in cash under the deal that includes assumed liabilities of $210 million. The firm launched a bond offering of $2.85 billion to partly fund the acquisition, which is its most significant since it bought the U.S. jar unit of France's Saint-Gobain in 2013. Ardagh said after the deal it would operate 110 facilities and have global sales of over $8.8 billion. Rexam shares were up 0.5 percent at 639 pence at 0900 GMT. ($1 = 0.6926 pounds) (Reporting by Parikshit Mishra and Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Anupama Dwivedi) Almost anyone can become a millionaire if they make a commitment to save early in their career and stick with it over several decades. Savvy investors will be helped along by employer contributions and tax breaks and will skillfully avoid high fees that reduce investment returns. Here's how to save $1 million in time for retirement. [See: 10 Painless Ways to Save More for Retirement.] Start saving at an early age. If you start saving for retirement at age 25 and save $4,830 per year, or about $400 per month, and earn 7 percent annual investment returns, you will accumulate just over $1 million by age 65. If you wait until age 35 to start saving, you'll need to save over $10,000 per year to hit $1 million by 65, assuming the same investment returns. "For every 10 years that you delay, there is going to be a significant increase in the amount you have to save," says Danna Jacobs, a certified financial planner and founding partner of Legacy Care Wealth in Jersey City, New Jersey. "You are missing out not only on the contributions but on the compounding interest." Capture employer contributions. If your employer provides a 401(k) match, you can get by saving a little less and still hit $1 million by retirement. A worker who starts saving at 25 and gets a $1,500 annual match could save $1 million by age 65 by tucking away as little as $3,330 per year. A worker who starts saving at 35 and gets the same match would need to tuck away $8,705 annually to hit $1 million by retirement. However, job changers need to be careful that they get to keep the match. Many companies have vesting schedules that prohibit departing employees from taking the match with them until they work for the firm for a specific number of years, or they allow workers to keep a portion of the match based on their years of service. "Usually you do have to be with your employer for a certain number of years, and sometimes you do leave your employer contributions on the table," Jacobs says. "If it's a sizable amount, a lot of times you can negotiate for a sign-on bonus with your new employer to try to compensate you for those unvested amounts." Story continues [See: 10 Ways to Repair Your Retirement Finances.] Save money on taxes. You can also use tax breaks to grow your money faster. If you put $5,000 in a 401(k) and you are in the 25 percent tax bracket, you will save $1,250 on your tax bill. Income tax won't be due on your contribution until you withdraw it from the account. "When you put the money in the 401(k), it reduces the amount of income you have, so it's less tax you are paying at the end of the year," says Anjali Jariwala, a certified financial planner for FIT Advisors in Chicago. "The savings that you get from being able to defer that income is huge." However, it's important to note that you will need to accumulate more than $1 million in a retirement account to have a million dollars to spend in retirement because you still need to pay income tax on each distribution. But if you save $1 million in an after-tax Roth IRA, no income tax is typically due on distributions in retirement. Avoid high-cost funds. Your investments will grow faster if you minimize the fees that are deducted from your returns. If you save for 40 years between ages 25 and 65, but a 1 percent annual fee reduces your returns from 7 percent to 6 percent, you will need to save about $6,260 per year to reach $1 million by retirement, instead of $4,830 per year without the extra 1 percent fee. "You want to be really mindful of costs when it comes to investing," Jariwala says. "Try to get to an allocation you want for the lowest cost possible." Watch out for penalties. Don't let retirement account penalties reduce your retirement savings. There's a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty if you take money out of a traditional IRA before age 59 1/2 and a 50 percent penalty if you fail to start taking traditional IRA withdrawals after age 70 1/2. Also watch out for taxes and penalties when rolling money over from a 401(k) to an IRA or new 401(k) when you change jobs. "Create an IRA, and each time you leave a job, do a direct rollover," says Michael Powsner, a certified financial planner and founder of Upstart Wealth Management in San Francisco. "Make sure you deposit the funds in the IRA in a timely manner from the time the 401(k) cuts the check." [See: 9 Retirement Planning Deadlines You Shouldn't Overlook.] Don't plan on a lavish retirement. While becoming a millionaire seems like a worthy retirement goal, the money is only likely to produce a modest retirement income when spread over several decades of retirement. If you draw down 4 percent per year, this nest egg will produce about $40,000 of retirement income per year. When combined with Social Security income, $1 million in savings could produce a comfortable retirement lifestyle in some parts of the country, but in high-cost cities it might not be enough. "You're not going to be able to live in New York City or San Francisco on that type of income," Powsner says. Emily Brandon is the author of "Pensionless: The 10-Step Solution for a Stress-Free Retirement." Arun Agarwals life has mirrored Warren Buffetts, and hes embracing it. Raised in Omaha, Agarwal left to attend the University of Pennsylvania and became an investment banker on Wall Street before coming home. He initially returned because of his fathers ailing health and anticipated being back for a year, tops. Fast-forward twelve years and Agarwal now runs his own real estate development firm, White Lotus Group, which is three blocks from Berkshire Hathaways office on Farnam Street. Buffett was born and raised in Omaha and actually started his undergraduate education at UPenn Wharton but graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He then earned a MS in Economics from Columbia University and spent a few years working in New York before returning to Omaha to work as a stockbroker. In some places, its easy to lose perspective. But I think its very easy to keep perspective in a place like Omaha, Buffett said in an interview with the AP in 2012. Agarwal, 39, says he decided to stay in Omaha because it allowed him to think and breathe in a way that New Yorks pure corporate America, rat race culture simply didnt allow. I was most attracted to coming back to Omaha because it was a lot more progressive than I had left it. If Warren Buffett and large companies are based here, theres no reason you cant start a business here too, he says. Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) is among four Omaha companies in the Fortune 500 club. Union Pacific (UNP), construction and mining giant Peter Kiewit Sons, and insurance company Mutual of Omaha are also based in the city. ConAgra Foods (CAG), based in Omaha for more than 25 years, announced in October it is relocating to Chicago. And Omaha is one of many cities that is trying to attract budding entrepreneurs, branding itself as Silicon Prairie, but ultimately Buffett may be the silver bullet to a fairly sleepy city. Omahas lower cost of living, educational opportunities and affordable housing makes it the safest place to be entrepreneurial, says Agarwal. But our biggest challenge is still finding talent. Its still really tough in the small- to mid-sized businesses to recruit somebody from New York or one of the coasts to convince them to come to Omaha. Agarwal doesn't credit Buffett alone for putting Omaha on the map, but he says its undeniable the powerful branding his name provides. I am terrified of Buffetts successor moving Berkshires headquarters elsewhere, he says. Though 85-year-old Buffett is doing everything humanly possible to make sure that Berkshires culture sustains itself and continues to grow without him, it is inevitable that he wont be around forever. Investors like Kase Capitals Whitney Tilson think its 80% likely that Buffett will be running Berkshire for five or more years, Omaha residents like Agarwal are concerned about the citys morale if Berkshire is no longer based in the Midwest. I think most Omahans dont realize the magnitude of Berkshire and Buffett hes so humble, quiet and reclusive that they dont recognize the impact he actually does have on Omaha. Story continues Apart from Berkshire Hathaway, the Buffetts' philanthropic touch has boosted the Omaha metro. The Buffett family donated $370 million to erect the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, which provides 4,657 jobs to the metro area and adds $537 million annually into the economy, according to The University of Nebraska Medical Center. Though there are no guarantees, Buffett says he doesnt see any reason for his successor to move Berkshire. No, it wont be moved, he said. With assurance that the Oracle of Omaha isnt looking to relocate, residents like Agarwal can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now. On April 30th, Yahoo Finance will have an exclusive live stream of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Click here for more information. Since Hillary Clinton named hot sauce as her number one, always-on-her-person accessory, people have been inordinately curious as to what she actually keeps in her bag. Does the Democratic frontrunner have the same condiment-carrying habits as Beyonce? Or is there something more sinister lurking in her handbag? The anti-Clinton camp demands answers and, as such, has launched #WhatsInHillarysPurse on Twitter. The internet, composed of so many different thoughts and opinions, is speculating wildly. S WhatsInHillarysPurse is a misogynistic hashtag that distracts from the issues. Make your points without it. Awww, Berniebros start the week with another sexist hashtag to make them feel better about losing to a woman. LMAO. #WhatsInHillarysPurse The whole #WhatsInHillarysPurse thing is definitely doing a lot to dispel preconceptions about Bernie bros. #wtf Guesses as to the bag's contents included money from the big banks of Wall Street, votes stolen from Sanders, fracking, the entire Democratic Party and Katy Perry. WhatsInHillarysPurse paychecks from @GoldmanSachs and love letters from Wall St WhatsInHillarysPurse A list of voters she wants purged from upcoming primaries! Step by step instructions for voter suppression of Bernie supporters state by state #WhatsInHillarysPurse #ReleaseTheTranscripts WhatsInHillarysPurse Billions of dollars she has stolen from the hands of Haitians that are struggling to survive.Is her soul in there too? WhatsInHillarysPurse Isn't it obvious? @TheDemocrats because she's paid them off. Also @GoldmanSachs @Citi #fracking & @katyperry of course WhatsInHillarysPurse A stack of transcripts she clearly knows will end her political career if she's ever forced to #ReleaseTheTranscripts. Some suggested her bag's contents might vary depending on what voter group was asking. WhatsInHillarysPurse an Urban Dictionary.pic.twitter.com/XnmoeHy5SU https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg4iZ-_WgAAVAAN.jpg:large WhatsInHillarysPurse it depends on who is asking. Others speculated that it might really be hot sauce hot sauce for all occasions. WhatsInHillarysPurse Hot sauce. Yeah! Hot sauce. All kinds. One for each kind of protein.pic.twitter.com/64qlZn6fqm https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg2z6asWYAE6HxV.jpg:large And still others guessed at more frightening contents. WhatsInHillarysPurse wallet size copy of this @realDonaldTrump portrait pic.twitter.com/oG3CBzS7Z9 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg4E0YEU8AA2BCE.jpg:large Pepper spray in case Ted Cruz turns out to really be the Zodiac Killer. #WhatsInHillarysPursepic.twitter.com/ftEjvNzv6S https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg24JrlWIAEfoDG.jpg:large Given the volume of criticism she faces from the Twitterati, it would make sense if Hillary's purse holds a daily affirmation: WhatsInHillarysPurse this reminderpic.twitter.com/KqWyBclCVy https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg4pd4LUYAAHID6.jpg:large Because it's what she has in her bag is the Democratic nomination. WhatsInHillarysPurse, the nomination. Bernie Sanders might be the only viable Jewish candidate in American presidential history, but Hollywoods Jewish community seems to think theres something not quite kosher about him. As Sanders sets his sights on California, which has emerged as a must-win state in the Democratic race for the White House, he may have to brace for a wave of resistance from Jewish leaders in Hollywood who view him as anti-Israel. He doesnt understand the complexities of the Middle East, Clinton supporter and one of Hollywoods biggest Democratic donors Haim Saban told TheWrap. Its been proven over and over again. Saban, an Israeli-American media mogul, is just one on a long list of Jewish Hollywood power players increasingly underwhelmed with the senator from Vermont, particularly when it comes to his views on Israel. In fact, Hollywoods biggest Jewish heavy hitters, including Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Jeffery Katzenberg, Barbara Streisand, Amy Schumer, Dustin Hoffman, Abbi Jacobson and Lena Dunham, are all on Team Hillary. Also Read: Hollywood Stars for Bernie Sanders (List) While Sanders does have a few recognizable Jewish celebrity backers of his own including Sarah Silverman, Jeremy Piven, Zoe Kravitz, Art Garfunkel and Vampire Weekends Ezra Koenig its nowhere near as impressive as Clintons. From the beginning, Sanders has been slow to attract Hollywoods Jewish movers and shakers, many of whom believe the Vermont senator has been deliberately downplaying his religious ancestry for political reasons. When Sanders thanked supporters following his landslide victory in New Hampshire earlier this year, he spoke about being the son of a Polish immigrant who came to this country speaking no English and having no money. The crowd cheered. But his words were like nails on a chalkboard for many Jews watching in disbelief. Rabbi Michael Paley of New York told the New York Times he was surprised that the Vermont senator failed to mention his father was a Polish Jewish immigrant, an important distinction. Story continues Also Read: Bernie Sanders Slams 'Bad' Israel After Skipping AIPAC Convention Last month, Sanders was the only presidential candidate Democratic or Republican to skip the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential pro-Israel lobby in the country. While Sanders cited a prior commitment, he did manage to find time to slam Israel just hours later during a CNN town hall, telling Wolf Blitzer that, Overwhelmingly the United States time and time again has looked aside when Israel has done some bad things. Sanders also criticized Israel for its response to Gazas rocket attacks in 2014, which led to Operation Protective Edge, a two-month long bloody conflict. The kind of destruction that was wreaked on Gaza during that war was way above what needed to be done for military purposes, Sanders said. To be fair, there are plenty of Jews and even Israelis who agree with Sanders assessment. But many in Hollywood believe Sanders condemnation lacked context. Israel did level swaths of Palestinian territory near the border with Gaza essentially creating a buffer zone between it and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip but only after Hamas fired thousands of rockets on Israeli cities from those very same areas. A lot of people were surprised and disappointed he didnt speak at AIPAC, Los Angeles-based lawyer and Clinton fundraiser, Dana Perlman whose mother is a Holocaust survivor told TheWrap. There was so much energy and excitement about a Jewish-American vice president when Joe Lieberman joined Al Gores ticket in 2000. Im not seeing that energy when it comes to Sanders. Also Read: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Clash Over Israel in Brooklyn's Democratic Debate During an interview with The New York Daily News earlier this month, Sanders continued his criticism of Israel, saying that over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right? It actually doesnt. In fact, its almost seven times the United Nations estimates. He then added that, Hospitals, I think, were bombed. Sanders did not mention that those hospitals also served as Hamas private launching pads for rockets aimed at Southern Israel and Tel Aviv. The Anti-Defamation League quickly urged Sanders to correct his misstatements. He is critical of Israels behavior based on misinformation, Saban said. If rockets are shot out of hospitals targeting women, men, children not soldiers do you take out that rocket launcher or not? And earlier this month, Sanders was forced to fire his national Jewish outreach coordinator Simone Zimmerman just two days into her new gig, after a particularly vulgar Facebook post she wrote about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was revealed. All that has taken a hit on Sanders polling numbers among Jewish voters, a problem that extends well beyond the Thirty-Mile Zone. While a recent Siena Research survey showed Clinton leading Sanders by a mere 4 percent (52-48), when it came to Jewish Democratic voters, Sanders trailed Clinton by a whopping 22 points (60-38). Also Read: Bernie Sanders Meets Pope Francis, Calls Pontiff a 'Beautiful Man' He doesnt have a long-standing involvement with the Jewish community as Hillary does, L.A.-based Democratic strategist and Clinton supporter Donna Bojarsky told TheWrap. She obviously loves Israel. The Clintons have had a warm relationship with Israel for decades. Unlike President Barack Obama, whos had a contentious, sometimes dismissive, relationship with Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton was able to find common ground with Israels hawkish leader. For me, it was very telling that during the Democratic debate in New York, she offered what I think was a very sympathetic portrait of probably one of the most controversial Israeli prime ministers in history, Danielle Berrin, writer of the Jewish Journals weekly blog Hollywood Jew told TheWrap. Her defense of Bibi came from a deep internalization of the challenges he faces. Also Read: Mazel Tov! Bernie Sanders Becomes First Jewish Primary Winner But Berrin does not believe Sanders hates Israel. She sees him as representing the views of an emerging generation of Jewish Hollywood power players who dont necessarily have Israel at the top of their concerns when choosing a presidential candidate, and believe change in the Middle East will only come with intense international pressure. Even so, Berrin says Sanders may never enjoy the kind of support and admiration from the Jewish community in Hollywood or elsewhere as the Clintons. To ask the Jewish community to get excited about Bernie Sanders when hes not excited about the Jewish community is a tall order, she said. Sharon Waxman contributed to this report. Related stories from TheWrap: NY Daily News Endorses 'Warrior Realist' Hillary Clinton Over 'Fantasist' Bernie Sanders Hollywood Democrats 'Disappointed' as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Get Nasty Bernie Sanders Gets Slammed for 'Disaster' Interview With NY Daily News Not long after Beyonce broke the internet with the release of her visual album Lemonade Saturday night, various interpretations of the meaning behind the one-hour visual album hit social media. However, one person has uncovered a theory that many may have completely missed. During the film, Beyonce was actually depicting an African goddess named Oshun, the goddess of beauty, love and sweet water (lemonade, anyone?) Source: Tasha Robinson "Y'all think Beyonce was just breaking windows, twerking and playing in water. No, she was portraying Oshun, a Yoruba Orisha," Facebook user Tasha Robinson wrote in a post Sunday. "Sensual, sexual, beautiful Goddess [and] deity who is a healer, gives life, growth, luxury, change and prosperity. That was the message of Lemonade. Love, change and prosperity." The Yoruba people, an African ethnic group that occupies southwestern Nigeria and Benin, believe in a "pantheon of 401 gods" that are known in the traditional Yoruba religion as "Orisha." The Yoruba people regard Oshun (also spelled Osun) as the a deity of love and fertility. "When you come here and tell Osun 'I am looking for a baby,' you get a baby; 'I'm looking for a husband,' you get a husband; 'I am looking for money,' you get money," priestess Osafunke Iworo Oshun told CNN. The mystical deity not only rules over the "sweet waters," but she is known by the Yoruba as the "bringer of song, music and dance." Sound familiar? UPDATE, 9:47 AM: Bill Cosby is going to be back in court on May 24 to face criminal charges in his alleged drugging and assault of Andrea Constand back in 2004. A Pennsylvania judge set the new date and 9:30 AM ET start time for a preliminary hearing today after the states Superior Court rejected Cosbys appeal and lifted the stay on the matter on Monday. Cosby, who appeared at previous hearings on the case in ONeills Norristown courtroom, is expected to attend. If found guilty in the only criminal charges actually laid against him in the claims of more than 50 women, the 78-year old Cosby could face up to 10 years behind bars as well as hefty fines. PREVIOUS, APRIL 25 PM: Bill Cosby could be heading back to Pennsylvania court soon to face a trio of felony second-degree aggravated indecent assault charges and up to a decade behind bars. Today, the states Superior Court ruled that the criminal charges case against the actor can go forward after granting a local D.A.s motion to quash Cosbys appeal. The temporary stay entered on March 1, 2016 is lifted, said the mid-level state court on Monday (read it here). That stay was granted just a week before the 78-year-old Cosby was to face a preliminary hearing on charges arising from an alleged 2004 drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand. With more than 50 women nationwide claiming that The Cosby Show creator drugged and assaulted them over the decades, Montgomery County (PA) District Attorney Kevin Steele laid the first criminal charges against Cosby late last year to get in under the wire of the Keystone States 12-year statute of limitations for such crimes. Cosby was arraigned December 30 and released on $1 million bail without entering a plea. RelatedJanice Dickinson Appeals To Have Marty Singer Added To Bill Cosby Case No date has been announced for when proceedings will start up again in Judge Steven ONeills Norristown courtroom. Reps for Cosby did not respond to request for comment on todays ruling. Story continues Today we received two orders from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The first, at the Commonwealths request, quashed the Cosby defense teams pretrial interlocutory appeal, said a statement from Steeles office. The second, also at the Commonwealths request, denied their appeal of Judge ONeills refusal to certify an interlocutory appeal. We did not believe that the defense had a right to appeal at this stage, and are gratified that the Court came to the same conclusion. The effect of both of these orders is that we can now hold a preliminary hearing. We are ready for that hearing and look forward to the Court setting a date so we can present our case. After unsuccessfully trying to get the case shut down based on a supposed no-prosecution agreement with a former D.A., Cosby and his lawyers on February 12 filed a direct appeal to the states Superior Court to appeal ONeills ruling February 3 that the case involving the criminal charges could go forward. Later that month, Steele filed paperwork urging the higher court to reject Cosbys appeal attempt until after a trial is completed. Steeles motion is what triggered the stay from the Superior Court on March 1 and what the court formally ruled on today to get things started again. Related stories National Enquirer Wants Out Of Bill Cosby Lawsuit Against 2005 Rape Accuser Janice Dickinson Appeals To Have Marty Singer Added To Bill Cosby Case Bill Cosby's Lawyers Fail To Halt Camille Cosby's 2nd Deposition; CA Pols Hear From Actor's Alleged Victims It has recently come to my attention that is to say, his yelling woke me up during a few of my early-evening naps that Bill OReilly has become noticeably more angry over the past week or so. Those of you who do not keep your televisions tuned to the Fox News prime-time lineup may say, But wait: Isnt anger OReillys thing? His shtick? His go-to mood? Not at all, comrades. OReilly prides himself on his firm but folksy delivery; indeed, his favorite phrase is the folks his blanket term for his audience and all Americans who are not the media or members of (his other fave phrase) the far left. And so its striking to hear how steamed up hes getting these days when imparting his wisdom via the Talking Points Memo that begins each edition of The OReilly Factor. Last Monday, OReilly addressed what he termed The Big Lie of the 2016 Campaign. The lie? Oh, you know without me telling you: that politicians are deceiving Americans into believing that their success and well-being will be almost assured by a federal nanny state i.e., increasing aid to those less fortunate than people in Bill OReillys income bracket. This is typical Factor material; its the tone that has taken on a new harshness. When OReilly read his teleprompter containing the words I quoted above, he bellowed them he did not merely want to put a message across, he wanted to express his outrage, and to evoke outrage in his audience. The next night, the Memo title was Is The Supreme Court Compromised?, and OReilly went after the four liberal judges who will decide issue[s] based on their political beliefs, not the Constitution. How he achieved this mind-reading of the judges, and knew the liberal ones use political beliefs and conservative ones do not well, who can comprehend the full range of the extrasensory mental powers of OReilly? My point is that he didnt merely give his analysis; HE YELLED IT LIKE THIS! He roared; he jabbed the air with the mighty pen that he presumably uses to write all his Killing books. Story continues This is interesting. Why is OReilly so angry these days? A couple of things occur to me as factors. I wonder if hes rattled at the recent reams of publicity his colleague Megyn Kelly is receiving, and whether hes worked himself into a snit over her comments that he ought to have defended her more forcefully when he interviewed Donald Trump. I also wonder if OReilly is starting to take his oratorical cues from the righteous-fury campaign of Donald Trump, and is ramping up for a rock em-sock em Presidential campaign in which hell throw his considerable influence behind whoever will be opposing Hillary Clinton. OReilly said every night last week that he cannot see a scenario in which Trump does not win the Republican nomination. Perhaps OReilly sees a way to compete with Megyn Kelly by adapting the opposite of her cool-in-control demeanor, and letting loose his inner hounds of anger. I thought perhaps I was exaggerating OReillys new temperament, until I saw his weekly segment with Dennis Miller last Thursday. Mid-way through their bit, Miller paused to say, I notice in some of your Talking Points that youve started to get a little angry. Sure enough, on Friday night, OReilly used the occasion of the death of Prince to inveigh against the drug epidemic in America. OReilly did his minimal best not to drag a famous dead man into his tirade, but he couldnt resist saying of Prince that there are reports that he was drug-involved. What was the point of this furious Talking Points Memo? That in the golden past of Bills youth, Those who used drugs were stigmatized, until the sex, drugs, and rock and roll culture kicked in. Yesiree, Bill OReilly is really on a tear these days. Hes flexing his power, stirring up his troops. It makes for exciting viewing, even if youre never quite sure what hes so gosh-darned livid about. Im guessing only Megyn Kelly, Donald Trump, and OReillys id know for sure, and they aint talking or if they did, they wouldnt be heard over Bills yelling. The OReilly Factor airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on the Fox News Channel. On April 18, 1955, Einstein, one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived, died of heart failure in a Princeton, New Jersey, hospital. What happened right after that is pretty hard to believe. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist on call that night, began Einstein's autopsy. As a pathologist, his only job was to determine the cause of death. Instead, without permission, Harvey cut out Einstein's brain, plunked it in a jar full of formalin, and took it to his home office. Yeah, he stole Einstein's brain. "Whether he took it for himself, or took it for science it was hard for people to know which, and that's what put him in the crosshairs for a lot of people," said journalist Michael Paterniti. It makes sense that the brain that dreamed up relativity, the concept of E = mc^2 and the photoelectric effect would be the subject of fascination. What made Einstein a genius? Was his brain superior to others? But studying his brain went directly against Einstein's last wishes. According to Brian Burrell's book Postcards From the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds, Einstein wanted his entire body cremated (including the brain) and his ashes scattered in secret to "discourage idolaters." In other words, Einstein was smart enough to figure out that something like this might happen after his death, and he wanted to prevent it. Harvey did retroactively ask permission from Einstein's son, after he'd already removed the brain and stowed it away. Hans Einstein gave his blessing so long as real scientific studies were conducted and the results published in academic journals. But what happened next was a bitter battle over who would get to study the brain first. Amid the controversy, Harvey was fired, but he took the brain with him. He traveled to the University of Pennsylvania, where he sliced up part of the brain into microscope slides and celluloid squares, and kept the rest in glass jars. Story continues Then he and the brain left Princeton and ran off to the Midwest. If Harvey had big plans to advance his career in medicine with the brain, it never happened. Instead, over the years, Harvey would occasionally send some slides of the brain to scientists who asked for them. Allegedly, during his time in Kansas, Harvey kept Einstein's brain in a cider box under a beer cooler. Eventually, some scientific studies on Einstein's brain were published. Some claimed that his brain appeared to have more glial cells than the average brain, and that could lead to higher cognitive performance. But those studies have been largely discredited by modern science. "You can't take just one brain of someone who is different from everyone else and we pretty much all are and say, 'Ah-ha! I have found the thing that makes T. Hines a stamp collector!'" Terence Hines, a psychologist and stamp collector, told the BBC. Basically, we can't tell much of anything from one brain. In the '90s, Harvey drove from Princeton to California to take the brain to Einstein's . (You can read the whole story in the book Driving Mr. Albert). Einstein's didn't want the brain, so when Harvey died in Where is it now? You can actually go see some pieces of the brain it's at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Obama's sessions with leaders during a week of stops in Saudi Arabia, London and Germany focused on the IS threat. (Photo: AP) Aerzen, Germany: Taking advantage of his German visit, President Barack Obama and top US allies are gathering to discuss issues that he says are putting European unity "under strain." Monday's meeting in Hannover, Germany, comes on the final day of Obama's two-day visit to push for the conclusion of negotiations on a US-Europe trade deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were joining Obama. In a speech on US-European relations, to be delivered before the meeting, Obama planned to announce the deployment of 250 US military personnel, mostly Army Green Berets, to Syria to assist local forces fighting the Islamic State group. The deployment would bring to 300 the number of US forces battling extremists in the war-torn country. The move will significantly increase the US presence in Syria and comes a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of more than 200 troops to Iraq, where the Islamic State also controls territory, along with the first shipment of Apache helicopters. About 50 US special operations forces have been operating in Syria. The high-level talks between the US and its major European allies come a month after IS militants claimed responsibility for attacks that killed more than 30 people in Brussels, just across the German border. Obama's sessions with leaders during a week of stops in Saudi Arabia, London and Germany focused on the IS threat. Topping the agenda Monday are efforts to counter IS. Other topics include refugee migration, Syria, Russia, Ukraine and Libya. The leaders are also expected to discuss additional steps by NATO allies to address challenges on Europe's eastern and southern borders, along with efforts to spur agreement on the trade deal. Obama recently said that failure to plan for the fallout in Libya after the toppling of leader Moammar Gadhafi was his biggest mistake as president. Libya since has descended into chaos and become a base for IS. The leaders are likely to discuss how they can work with a newly installed, U.N.-backed unity government to keep IS extremists from further tightening their grip on the North African country. Obama has said he has no plans to send in ground troops, calling it an unnecessary step that would send the wrong signal. He discussed assistance to Libya during separate meetings with Cameron and Merkel in recent days. At a news conference Sunday alongside Merkel, Obama said having the unity government "requires us to do everything we can to encourage it." Merkel echoed his sentiment. "That's why we're trying to cooperate internationally in order to bring about this goal, and not have different goals that we pursue," she said. Germany has an interest because of Libya's key role as a transit point for migrants trying to reach Europe. Merkel recently helped forge a deal between the European Union and Turkey to stop the influx of migrants in the eastern Mediterranean, raising concerns that those trying to reach Europe might again switch to crossing through Libya. "We'd end up paying the bill, too, if we didn't help this (unity) government gain recognition and sovereignty in its country," Juergen Hardt, a German lawmaker and the government's coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, told The Associated Press in an interview. Germany took in the overwhelming bulk of migrants to Europe last year. Obama declined Friday to describe European unity as "in crisis, but I would say it is under strain," he said, blaming the aftermath of the financial meltdown and the more recent migration issue that exposed fault lines among European countries about how to manage it. La Paz (AFP) - Bolivian President Evo Morales underwent a paternity test Monday to settle a dispute with an ex-girlfriend whose child he denies fathering, his lawyer said. In a case that has plunged the 56-year-old leader into scandal, Morales had claimed he fathered a child with her which later died, before changing his story to say the child never existed. A court ordered the leftist president to undergo a test to answer claims by his ex-partner Gabriela Zapata that he is indeed the father of her child. "President Evo Morales, like any citizen and in compliance with the law, showed up and has taken the test that the judge arranged," his lawyer Gaston Velasquez said on television channel ATB. Morales took Zapata to court in March to make her prove the boy is alive. Compounding the scandal, Zapata has also been implicated in an alleged corruption case. Zapata is currently in jail pending trial on charges of money laundering, embezzlement and influence-peddling. A former manager at Chinese engineering group CAMC, she is accused of using her ties to the president to land $560 million in government contracts for the company. The case exploded just as Bolivia prepared to hold a referendum on whether to change the constitution to allow Morales to run for a fourth term. Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, went on to lose the February 21 vote -- his first electoral defeat in a decade in power. By Allison Lampert and Euan Rocha MONTREAL/TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian planemaker Bombardier Inc faces a pivotal week that may see a key deal announced with Delta Air Lines Inc but a federal aid package is unlikely to be approved in time for its annual meeting on Friday. The deal with Atlanta-based Delta for up to 125 CSeries jets is critical for Bombardier as Delta would be the first major U.S. airline to purchase the CSeries, which is entering service years late and billions of dollars overbudget. Deltas board is widely expected to approve the purchase, which includes 75 initial orders, this week. A Delta commitment, coupled with a firmed up agreement for 45 CSeries jets with Air Canada , would put Bombardier's CSeries order book above the 300 mark, allowing the company to hit a psychologically-important internal target by the time the first plane enters service in July 2016. "It is a flagship customer outside of Canada, which may enable and help them to capture other orders and it establishes the CSeries as a real player in the market," said Morningstar analyst Chris Higgins. Delta could not immediately be reached for comment. The advance in CSeries order talks comes as Canada's federal government and Bombardier remain far apart over a $1 billion aid package. The government wants a say in the suppliers Bombardier is using for the plane program, two sources said, and has asked the company to modify its dual-class share structure which favors the founding Bombardier-Beaudoin family. Bombardier spokeswoman Isabelle Rondeau declined to comment on the federal talks. An order from Delta, the second-largest U.S. carrier by passenger traffic, would overshadow a decision on federal aid and the finalization of a separate CSeries investment by the Quebec province. "The stamp of approval by Delta is worth much more to them than a deal with the federal government," said an aerospace analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to media. Story continues Quebec, which negotiated a separate $1 billion agreement with Bombardier to be finalized during the second quarter, did not make a first payment to the company as originally expected on April 1. The province, which wants the same conditions as the federal government, is said to be waiting for Bombardier to finalize an agreement with Canada before completing its own deal, two sources familiar with the matter said. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard on Monday said the province would finalize its deal with Bombardier as soon as certain conditions in its agreement with the company are completed. He did not specify what those were or give a timeframe. "We will eventually finalize the agreement," Couillard told reporters on the sidelines of a Montreal aerospace conference. "Its only a question related to liquidity and other subjects that have to be met. They will be met. We are there." Couillard said he had "full confidence that Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government recognized the importance of the aerospace sector to Quebec and would invest in the CSeries. An investment manager whose company owns Bombardier stock said he hoped the federal government made a decision soon because the talks were becoming a distraction for the company's management. "The company has to get to the next stage which is operations," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the federal talks are confidential. "Those discussions are taking a lot of time with a lot of people and Im sure those people would like to be focused elsewhere." (Additional reporting by Matt Scuffham in Toronto and Jeffrey Dastin in New York; editing by Andrew Hay) BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, a former labor leader, said on Monday that federal agents had not contacted him in connection with what local media has described as a wide-ranging investigation into whether the city's building unions used strong-arm tactics. The Boston Globe reported over the weekend, citing unnamed sources, that Walsh had been implicated in a federal investigation into whether city union officials threatened developers who hired nonunion workers on projects in and around the city. "I haven't been contacted myself," Walsh told reporters on Monday. A Democrat, Walsh is a former construction worker who led the city's Building and Construction Trades Council, a union grouping, for two years before his 2013 mayoral election victory. Walsh, who served as a state representative from 1997 through 2013, went on to say that even if there were an investigation into his former union, he was not concerned. "If there is an investigation, I'm assuming at some point there'll be indictments coming down. If that's the case, I will not be getting one of those," Walsh said. "Because I did nothing wrong." A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston could not be reached for immediate comment. (Reporting by Scott Malone Editing by W Simon) Brasilia (AFP) - Brazil's Senate met Monday to form a committee that will consider whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who has accused her opponents of mounting a constitutional coup. Rousseff's case was sent to the Senate by the lower house after an overwhelming vote against Rousseff on April 17. She is accused of illegal government accounting maneuvers, but says she has not committed an impeachment-worthy crime. The Senate committee -- comprising 21 of the 81 senators -- was to debate Rousseff's fate for up to 10 working days before making a recommendation to the full upper house. The Senate then votes -- on May 12, according to latest Brazilian media estimates -- whether to open an impeachment trial, with a simple majority required. At that moment Rousseff would be suspended for 180 days while the trial got underway. Her vice president turned leading political opponent, Michel Temer, would take over. To remove Rousseff definitively from office at the end of the trial, the Senate would have to vote with a two-thirds majority. If Rousseff is in fact removed from office, Temer would retain the presidency until scheduled elections in 2018. Rousseff has accused Temer of being the main "conspirator" and "traitor" in a plot to use the impeachment process to force her out. Rousseff's predecessor in the presidency and chief political backer, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, on Monday said that the opposition's ultimate goal was to bring down the ruling leftist Workers' Party, which has held the presidency since 2003. "Eliminating Dilma means they can say that the Workers' Party will not come back to govern this country. That's what's at play here," he said in Sao Paulo. "There will be a strong fight. You will see that we will have a lot of democratic resistance," he said. According to a head count by the respected Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, 50 of the 81 senators currently support opening impeachment proceedings, clearing the required minimum. However, Folha said that only 39 openly support going through with forcing Rousseff out -- well short of the 54 required. The Brussels metro station where an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded dozens last month has reopened. The citys public transport agency, the STIB-MIVB, announced Monday that train service will resume at Maelbeek station. The agency also said operating hours, cut short after the attack, will be extended. Wire photos showed heavily armed soldiers patrolling Maelbeek Monday. A memorial wall has been installed at the station, allowing people to write messages: Francois Lenoir / Reuters I got out alive, R.I.P those who didnt, one message reads. Never surrender, another says. Thirty-two people were killed and more than 300 were wounded in the March 22 terrorist attacks at Maelbeek station and the Brussels airport, where two other suicide bombers killed 16 people on the same day. Zaventem airport partially reopened earlier this month. Brussels police have spent the last month searching for the attackers accomplices. Belgiums Justice Minister Koen Geens on Monday asked European Union governments to help Belgian authorities collect data from social media in their investigation, the AP reported. Koen said terrorists are using Viber, WhatsApp, Twitter, Skype or Facebook to communicate with each other, and claimed social-media companies willingness to work with police has been far from optimal. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. 9e5389bbjw1f2ywlmsgamj213z0ty7a9 A palm cockatoo named Huizai Chinese for Grey Boy has gotten a new lease on life, thanks to the wonders of technology. The parrot who lives in a Nanjing zoo in Jiangsu, China, was on the verge of losing its beak (and respect from its peers) until he was fitted with a new beak on Apr. 17. According to one of his keepers, Chen Wei, Huizai's beak started showing cracks after a fight with another parrot, but those cracks got worse and most of it started to fall off. SEE ALSO: Phillip the duck lost his flippers, so someone 3D-printed him new ones Both Huizai's confidence and appetite were affected by the loss. Image: weibo Chen told China Daily: "The beak is very important to a parrot's appearance. Huizai knew that it was different from the others and gradually preferred to stay alone. Sometimes it even refused to come out of its cage." Because Huizai was seen as "less of a bird", its keepers started to worry about its health and decided to approach vets and researchers at the Nanjing Research Institute of Additive Manufacturing for help. According to one of the vets, Cheng Wangkun, a 3D printing company offered to rebuild Huizai's beak for free, reported CCTV News. Using another parrot of the same species and health status as Huizai for reference, the company was able to create a comfortable resin beak for Huizai. Image: weibo Cheng told reporters that the surgery was performed under anesthesia and they were able to connect Huizai's original beak with the resin part with 11 bone nails. Image: weibo Huizai has successfully recovered from the surgery and has taken to his brand new beak like it's its original one. The parrot is now able to drink and eat as per normal. With its new beak, Huizai is once again accepted among peers. Image: weibo The Hague (AFP) - A Dutch journalist who was briefly detained by Turkish police after tweeting about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Monday her Amsterdam apartment had been broken into, denouncing what she called "intimidation." "So there was a burglary in my Amsterdam home. I m impressed. intimidated. o wait... I M NOT," Ebru Umar wrote on her Twitter account in English. In another Tweet, she said the break-in was "no coincidence." Umar, a well-known atheist and feminist journalist of Turkish origin, said she was hauled out of bed and arrested late Saturday at her home in Kusadasi, a resort town in western Turkey. She was released on Sunday after top Dutch officials voiced concerns at her arrest, but is not allowed to leave the country and must report to police twice a week. Police had questioned her for about 16 hours over two Tweets she had sent in which she sharply criticised Erdogan. But Umar told the daily Metro, a Dutch newspaper which she writes for, that her Amsterdam apartment was burgled overnight, saying the door "was forced open, and my old computer was taken". She took to Twitter on Monday to voice her thanks to everyone for their support during her detention. Although the officers were "a bit harsh" at first, Umar said she had been "treated very well." Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said Sunday he was "relieved" she had been released, but slammed her arrest, saying he had contacted his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu to voice his "regret" about the case. "I made it clear that press freedom and freedom of expression is a good thing," Koenders said in a statement. "A country that is a candidate to join the EU should continue to push for press freedom and freedom of expression," he stressed. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also telephoned his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu to voice his concerns. Trials in Turkey for insulting Erdogan have multiplied since his election to the presidency in August 2014, with nearly 2,000 such cases currently open. Barack Obama has urged British voters to back continued membership of the European Union. (Photo: AP) London: Betting odds have moved sharply in favour of Britons voting to remain in the European Union after US President Barack Obama cautioned last week against leaving the 28-member bloc. The implied probability of a vote to remain in the June 23 referendum rose several percentage points to about 75 per cent, according to live odds from bookmaker Betfair. Ladbrokes' betting barometer, which is based on live odds, indicated on Monday a 73 per cent chance of Britain voting to remain. Yerevan (AFP) - An explosion on a bus killed one passenger and wounded six in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Monday evening, the ex-Soviet nation's emergencies ministry said. "One passenger died on Monday evening in a bus explosion in (Yerevan's) Halabyan street" some six kilometres from the city centre, ministry spokesman Nikolai Grigorian told AFP. "Six passengers were wounded," he added. Earlier, he told AFP that three people were killed in the blast. The cause of the blast was unclear. "Police have launched an investigation, but at this point it is premature to speak of the explosion's possible causes," Grigorian said. An AFP correspondent at the scene reported that the bus was gutted by the blast, which blew out the windows of nearby houses. The explosion occurred a day after Armenia held ceremonies marking the 101st anniversary of the World War I-era Armenian genocide. Phnom Penh (AFP) - Efforts to save Cambodia's Royal Turtle, one of the world's most critically endangered species, are being hampered by dredging and illegal forest clearances, a wildlife conservation group warned Monday. The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Cambodian government have been desperately trying to protect the tiny remaining pocket of batagur affinis turtles for more than a decade after their numbers plummeted. But in a grim statement released Monday WCS said there were believed to be "fewer than ten" remaining in the wild and that the minute population was under threat from increased human activity in the small section of Sre Ambel river, where they still breed. In Hul, the local project coordinator, said his team had observed a decline in nesting, blaming "increased sand dredging, wood transportation along the nesting habitat, and illegal clearance of flooded forest disturbing the females during the breeding season". "Only one nest has been located this year, compared to four nests last year. This is very worrying and if it continues it will be potentially putting the species at high risk of extinction," he said. The critically endangered animal acquired its name because only Cambodia's royal family was historically allowed to consume its eggs. The Royal Turtle was initially believed extinct in Cambodia until 2000, when a small population was re-discovered in the Sre Ambel river. In 2001, WCS and Cambodia's Fisheries Administration began a community-based protection program, hiring former nest collectors to search for and protect nests, instead of harvesting the eggs. Since then, 39 nests with a total of 564 eggs have been protected with 382 hatchlings. Hatchlings are then taken into captivity where they are raised until several years old and released. But WCS said ongoing habitat loss reduced survival chances. Deforestation and poaching have devastated many species in Cambodia, one of Asia's poorest and most corrupt nations. Story continues Earlier this month tigers were declared "functionally extinct" in the country, with the last big cat seen on a camera trap in 2007. In its haste to develop, the government has been criticised for allowing firms to clear hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest land -- including in protected zones -- for everything from rubber and sugar cane plantations to hydropower dams. The illegal logging trade, lubricated by violence and bribery of forestry officials and border guards, has eviscerated one quarter of the country's forests in a generation. WINNIPEG, Manitoba, April 25 (Reuters) - An Ontario resident is Canada's first confirmed case of a Zika virus infection that was contracted locally through sex, health officials said on Monday. The individual, who was not further identified, is believed to have contracted the virus from a sexual partner who contracted Zika after travelling to an affected country, according to a statement from Public Health Agency of Canada and Ontario's Ministry of Health. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; editing by Andrew Hay) Ottawa (AFP) - Islamic militants in the Philippines have executed a Canadian hostage, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday, after the Filipino authorities said they had found the head of a foreign man on a remote island. "I'm outraged by the news that a Canadian citizen, John Ridsdel, held hostage in the Philippines since September 21, 2015, has been killed at the hands of his captors," Trudeau said. "This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage." Ridsdel, fellow Canadian tourist Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Filipina Marites Flor, and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) from Jolo. Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen from the Abu Sayyaf militant group released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners. The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail. In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s, said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of $6.4 million were not paid. Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island around 1,000 kilometers south of Manila that is one of the Abu Sayyaf group's main strongholds. "We found a head in a plastic bag," provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP. He said the head belonged to a white man, but emphasized it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details. Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute Ridsdel's killers, and that efforts were underway to obtain the release of the other hostages. Story continues Canadian opposition parties also expressed outrage over the killing. Ridsdel was a friend of Bob Rae, who preceded Trudeau as leader of Canada's Liberal party. The former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine prior to retiring. - 'New Somalia' - The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird-watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organization that operates from Jolo and nearby islands. It is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s. It is blamed for the nation's worst terror attacks, including the bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that killed more than 100 people, as well as the kidnappings of dozens of foreigners in the southern Philippines and across to Malaysian Borneo. The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State group causing carnage in the Middle East and have carried out deadly attacks in Europe. However, analysts say the Abu Sayyaf is mainly focused on lucrative kidnappings for ransom, rather than waging an ideological war or creating a violent Islamic caliphate. The United States deployed special forces advisers to provide training and intelligence to Filipino troops from 2002 to 2014, which led to the killing or arrest of many Abu Sayyaf leaders. After the US forces pulled out, however, the Abu Sayyaf launched a series of increasingly bold kidnapping raids, as well as deadly battles with Filipino troops that show it remains a major threat in the south. The recent kidnapping spree prompted Indonesian Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan to warn the region was in danger of becoming a "new Somalia," referring to pirates operating from the African country who have bedevilled international shipping in nearby waters. (Adds Enbridge statement) By Nia Williams CALGARY, Alberta, April 25 (Reuters) - Canadian regulators on Monday recommended the federal government approve Enbridge Inc's plan to replace one of its major crude oil export pipelines, but also imposed 89 conditions on the project to enhance safety and environmental protection. Calgary-based Enbridge plans to replace all segments of pipe on the 1,031 mile (1,659km) Line 3 between Hardisty, Alberta, and Superior, Wisconsin, by 2019, in what will be the company's largest-ever project. The cross-border endeavor will cost more than C$7.5 billion ($5.91 billion). Monday's recommendation only applies to the Canadian section of the line. U.S. regulators are in the process of dealing with the southern leg. In a statement Enbridge said it was pleased with the regulator's announcement and was in the process of reviewing the 89 conditions. Despite being a cross-border project, Line 3 will not require a U.S. presidential permit, which ultimately scuppered TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL, because Enbridge is restoring the pipeline to its original capacity. President Barack Obama rejected Keystone XL last November after a seven-year delay, and other proposed export pipelines from Alberta's oil sands to the Canadian east and west coasts are also facing additional regulatory scrutiny. The Line 3 project will allow Enbridge to run the pipeline at maximum capacity of 760,000 barrels per day. Currently capacity is 390,000 bpd because of voluntary pressure restrictions. Dr Robert Steedman, chief environmental officer at the National Energy Board, said a regulatory panel had concluded the project was in the public interest and unlikely to cause significant adverse environmental affects. "The new pipeline will be built to modern standards and will operate with improved safety and reliability," he said. The NEB's conditions also required Enbridge to continue consultation with landowners and aboriginal groups who live along the pipeline's route. Steedman said the NEB always imposed conditions when recommending projects and the 89 required of Line 3 were not unusually high. Story continues Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said in a statement he would study the report and seek additional public input before making a decision "in fall 2016." Enbridge ships more than 2 million bpd of crude exports to the United States, the bulk of Canada's total exports. Chief Executive Al Monaco has previously said the project, which involves replacing existing 34-inch diameter pipe which 36-inch diameter high-strength steel pipe, would not boost total exports as the Enbridge system is in balance, meaning efforts to lift crude flow could cause bottlenecks. ($1 = 1.2685 Canadian dollars) (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Alan Crosby and Andrew Hay) By Nia Williams CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian regulators on Monday recommended the federal government approve Enbridge Inc's plan to replace one of its major crude oil export pipelines, but also imposed 89 conditions on the project to enhance safety and environmental protection. Calgary-based Enbridge plans to replace all segments of pipe on the 1,031 mile (1,659km) Line 3 between Hardisty, Alberta, and Superior, Wisconsin, by 2019, in what will be the company's largest-ever project. The cross-border endeavor will cost more than C$7.5 billion ($5.91 billion). Monday's recommendation only applies to the Canadian section of the line. U.S. regulators are in the process of dealing with the southern leg. In a statement Enbridge said it was pleased with the regulator's announcement and was in the process of reviewing the 89 conditions. Despite being a cross-border project, Line 3 will not require a U.S. presidential permit, which ultimately scuppered TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL, because Enbridge is restoring the pipeline to its original capacity. President Barack Obama rejected Keystone XL last November after a seven-year delay, and other proposed export pipelines from Alberta's oil sands to the Canadian east and west coasts are also facing additional regulatory scrutiny. The Line 3 project will allow Enbridge to run the pipeline at maximum capacity of 760,000 barrels per day. Currently capacity is 390,000 bpd because of voluntary pressure restrictions. Dr Robert Steedman, chief environmental officer at the National Energy Board, said a regulatory panel had concluded the project was in the public interest and unlikely to cause significant adverse environmental affects. "The new pipeline will be built to modern standards and will operate with improved safety and reliability," he said. The NEB's conditions also required Enbridge to continue consultation with landowners and aboriginal groups who live along the pipeline's route. Steedman said the NEB always imposed conditions when recommending projects and the 89 required of Line 3 were not unusually high. Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said in a statement he would study the report and seek additional public input before making a decision "in fall 2016." Enbridge ships more than 2 million bpd of crude exports to the United States, the bulk of Canada's total exports. Chief Executive Al Monaco has previously said the project, which involves replacing existing 34-inch diameter pipe which 36-inch diameter high-strength steel pipe, would not boost total exports as the Enbridge system is in balance, meaning efforts to lift crude flow could cause bottlenecks. (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Alan Crosby and Andrew Hay) Greeting the crowds at Philadelphia City Hall Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets supporters during a Get Out the Vote rally at Philadelphia City Hall on April 25, 2016, in Philadelphia. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump seek to deliver knockout blows to their rivals in Tuesdays five high-stakes primaries, with pressure mounting to wrap up the nomination races and pivot toward the general election battle. Clinton, aiming to become the nations first female commander in chief, faces a resilient liberal senator, Bernie Sanders, whose grassroots campaign to highlight income inequality has mobilized millions of young voters. But the former secretary of state is poised to extend her delegate lead Tuesday, when Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island host their primaries. A canopy of drama hangs over the Republican race, where the math points to a contested convention. That means Trump will have to defy the odds with particularly strong showings through the remainder of the statewide contests if he is to win the nomination outright before the partys delegates gather in Cleveland in July to pick their nominee. Snatching most of the Republican delegates at stake April 26 would propel him that much closer to reaching the 1,237 delegates needed to nail down the nomination. His campaign is increasingly on notice, however, that the provocative celebrity billionaire would need to surpass that number and not merely outperform rivals Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. (AFP) Heres a look at the candidates on the campaign trail. Find more news-related photo galleries on the Yahoo News Photo Tumblr! BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide attacker detonated a bomb in a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim district of eastern Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 39 others, security and medical sources said, the third such blast in four days in the capital. Islamic State said it was responsible for the explosion which went off near a cinema in Baghdad al-Jadida. Amaq news agency, which supports the group, said the bomber wore a suicide vest and targeted Iraqi security forces. The blast set fire to at least five other vehicles on a busy commercial street during evening rush hour, the sources said. Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, though attacks against the security forces and Shi'ite civilians are still frequent. At least 12 people were killed on Saturday in two separate car bomb attacks targeting security forces, while a suicide attack at a Shi'ite mosque following Friday prayers left nine others dead. Islamic State said it was behind both of them. The rise of the militants, who are fighting government forces over control of swathes of northern and western Iraq, has exacerbated a sectarian conflict, mostly between Shi'ites and Sunnis, that emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. (Reporting by Kareem Raheem in Baghdad and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; Editing by Louise Ireland) Zack Greinke says he's feeling good and that has to be a relief to the Arizona Diamondbacks. It surely won't be for the St. Louis Cardinals. Greinke looks to build on his best start for the Diamondbacks and help them end an eight-game losing streak to the Cardinals on Monday night. Greinke (1-2, 5.25 ERA) lost his first two starts with a whopping 9.90 ERA, but he's rebounded by allowing three runs with 12 strikeouts in 14 innings over his last two. The right-hander was particularly impressive Wednesday, yielding one run and scattering six hits while fanning seven in 6 2/3 innings of a 2-1 victory at San Francisco. "This was definitely the best I've felt all season," Greinke said. "It worked out pretty good. "I've been working on getting things right. Everything is smoother. My body is starting to do things it's supposed to do instead of doing things wrong." The three-time All-Star has done little wrong over his last nine starts - including three in the playoffs - against St. Louis, going 5-1 with a 1.93 ERA and 1.02 WHIP. Greinke has allowed one run in 13 2-3 innings in his last two starts against the Cardinals while with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He got two runs of support in each game, but the bullpen wasted his chances at victories. Arizona (10-10) has only backed Greinke with five total runs in the last three games, but it's batting .294 with 30 runs while splitting the last four contests. The Diamondbacks had 15 hits and four homers Sunday but that wasn't enough in a 12-10, 13-inning loss to Pittsburgh. Greinke even got in on the hit parade, lining a pinch-hit single in the 12th before being replaced by a pinch runner. Welington Castillo is on a tear, going 6 for 14 with four homers, seven RBIs and five runs over his last three games. Paul Goldschmidt ended his 10-game home run drought Sunday, launching two and driving in three runs. He's 7 for 18 during the past five games after batting .216 through the first 14. Story continues Goldschmidt is a .242 career hitter at home against the Cardinals (10-8), who have won 13 of the past 14 in the all-time series and five straight at Chase Field. They enter this four-game set in search of a third straight win after beating San Diego 8-5 on Sunday. St. Louis scored 19 runs and hit .370 while winning the last two of that three-game series. Jedd Gyorko broke out of his slump in a big way while being booed in his first series against his former team. He went 6 for 10 with two homers and four RBIs in the last two games. He came a double short of the cycle Sunday, connecting for a solo homer and his second career triple. "I hope when I go back to St. Louis they boo me there, too, because it worked out pretty well," said Gyorko, who is 1 for 13 versus Greinke. Jaime Garcia (1-1, 2.70) would appreciate some help from the offense after getting just one run of support in Tuesday's 2-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs. The left-hander allowed two runs with seven strikeouts and four walks in five innings. "It's not what I want to do," Garcia said. "Way too short and I've got to do a better job than that next time." That's not usually a problem against the Diamondbacks, as Garcia has won all five of his starts with a 2.51 ERA. He's 3-0 with a 1.62 ERA in the desert. Cesar Millan wont be a lone wolf for much longer. The Cesar 911 star is engaged to longtime girlfriend Jahira Dar, he announced on Instagram Monday morning, before sharing details of his proposal exclusively with PEOPLE. After six amazing years together, I am so happy I asked her to be my wife. Thankfully, she said yes! Millan, 46, tells PEOPLE. My pack is complete! Jahira came into my life at just the right time. She was instrumental in helping me rebuild my life and my family after my divorce and break from the Dog Whisperer television show, Millan says. She is compassionate, gentle, instinctual, spiritual, intelligent, fun, strong, adventurous, and loving. "She embodies the principles that I prize the most honesty, integrity and loyalty. On top of all of that, she loves dogs and mother nature just as much as I do. Millans March 24 proposal was the end of an elaborate surprise, a source tells PEOPLE. Dar, an actress and former stylist and wardrobe consultant, and Millan were vacationing in Spain and Dar assumed they were headed for Italy, the source says when Millan changed their tickets for Greece. They had dinner at the top of Mount Lycabettus, in Athens; and Millan popped the question as the couple overlooked the Acropolis, with a violinist playing behind them. I wanted the proposal to be special and to surprise her, so I spent months planning our trip to Greece, Millan says. I am still proud of myself that I never gave it away! From Cosmopolitan On Wednesday, after months of anticipation, the Treasury announced that women would be featured on U.S. paper currency for the first time in more than a century. Women suffragists will appear on the back of the $5 and $10, while Harriet Tubman - the first black woman on U.S. currency - will replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20. The controversial president will remain on the bill, moving to the back. While this is a positive and historic change, it's also bittersweet. And it's a reminder that even as we rightfully cheer victories that indicate progress, women still haven't achieved anywhere near full equality. Last summer, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that a woman would be on the $10 by 2020, the centennial anniversary of women's suffrage. The announcement was celebrated by American women, who 100 years ago could not vote and until about 150 years ago were considered their husband's property. Women have been striving for equal legal and social rights and representation since the founding of this country. Putting a female face on paper currency does not right any of those wrongs, of course, but it is a public acknowledgment of the errors of the past and a way to signal progress for the future. And though it is just a symbol, symbols are a reflection of our core values. As Benyamin Appelbaum said in the New York Times, "Our money is right up there with the Golden Arches as an instantly and globally recognizable emblem of America." The decision to feature women on U.S. currency is, as Vox has pointed out, "long overdue." After all, 48 other countries have beat us to it. Almost immediately, however, the announcement was met with intense backlash. When Lew initially suggested that a woman would replace the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton - a serial philanderer who would not have maintained his political position were it not for his accommodating wife - on the $10 bill, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke found the idea "appalling." Then Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway play elevated Hamilton to an unlikely modern-day pop cultural icon, and in the face of intense criticism, Lew felt compelled to compromise. Hamilton would stay on the $10, and all other revolutionary women like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would have to take a back seat. Instead, the face of the $20 would change - a move welcomed by campaigns like Women on 20s, which has been advocating for a woman on the face of the highly circulated bill for a year. But in another dramatic, unfair twist, the Underground Railroad abolitionist and savior of hundreds of black men, women, and children would not be allowed to fully take over the bill. She would be forced to share it with a man whose lasting legacy was the genocide of Native Americans. Story continues The idea that women must battle for change and then be thankful for incremental gains is nothing new. After the number of women in Congress soared from 28 to 47, and women in the Senate doubled from two to four, 1992 was declared the Year of the Woman. Those numbers are, frankly, bad - but at the time they signaled progress (though progress soon stalled in 1994, after Republicans took control of the Congress, and the nastiness of politics deterred women from pursuing political office). In 2013, the Senate ushered in 20 women - a historic moment considering that, until that point, only 16 women had served in all of U.S. history. It was a victory, but it was indeed not enough. I'm reminded of when Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Georgetown University students, "People ask me sometimes, when - when do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine." We're clearly still so far from equal representation, whether it be in the Supreme Court, in the government, or on dollar bills. Even after Lew's compromise, it's sad to see how some conservatives many feel it too extreme to swap just one of the seven white men on U.S. currency with a universally revered woman. Republican front-runner Donald Trump, a man who wants to "Make America Great Again" by banning Muslims, deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, and sanctioning torture, argued that putting Tubman on the $20 was a step too far. "Maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill," he said on the Today show, a suggestion that relegates Tubman to a relatively rare bill. "I don't like seeing it. Yes, I think it's pure political correctness." His words sends the clear message that a woman of color does not have the right to dethrone a powerful white man, and any efforts to do so are silly. Fox's Greta van Susteren echoed Trump's sentiments and proposed we invent a $25 bill for Tubman, saying that attempting to include women on the bill was "dividing" the country and breaking "the tradition of our currency." You know what divides the country? Racism and sexism. Our tradition of currency follows our tradition as a country that celebrates and elevates the accomplishments of rich white men, while curbing the rights of women and people of color. That's one American tradition we should be eager to break. It's hard to fully enjoy this moment knowing that Tubman, one of the most impressive and heroic figures in American history irrespective of gender, was not enough of a force to topple a genocidal white leader from the bill, and that even the proposed modest changes to the U.S. currency were met with such controversy. Women will achieve equality when their presence in positions of power is as ubiquitous and as expected as a man's, and when no one bats an eye at a stack of bills that are at least half, or even all, plastered with women. The hesitance to embrace a new face on America's money - and a need to make sure the men aren't slighted - shows us that sadly, we still have a long way to go. Follow Prachi on Twitter. The U.S. Justice Department on Monday approved the planned acquisition of both Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks by Charter Communications, though the deal still requires FCC approval. Shortly after the Justice Department's approval, which came with several conditions, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler issued a recommendation that the five-member body also approve the deal, though with some conditions of its own, including some that presumably favor Amazon.com, Hulu, Netflix and others. "First, New Charter will not be permitted to charge usage-based prices or impose data caps," said Wheeler. "Second, New Charter will be prohibited from charging interconnection fees, including to online video providers, which deliver large volumes of internet traffic to broadband customers." A third condition of approval "outlaws video programming terms that could harm" any service that distributes video over the internet and protects them from "retaliation." Each of those three conditions are for seven years. After the Justice Department and FCC issued their statements on Monday, shares of Charter jumped 5 percent while shares of TW Cable rose 4 percent. Bright House is not a publicly traded company. "The conditions that will be imposed ensure charter's current consumer-friendly and pro-broadband businesses practices will be maintained by New Charter," Charter said Monday in a statement. The news came after a recent delay in the 180-day review "shot clock" to give regulators time to consider the latest information on Charter's residential pricing and packaging methodology and its plan to deploy a new low-cost broadband service. Charter, in which John Malone's Liberty Media owns a big stake, swooped in with a deal for TW Cable last year after Comcast abandoned its bid for the company amid regulatory opposition. The cash-and-stock deal had a price tag of around $55 billion. Including debt, the deal at the time was valued at $78.7 billion. Story continues In May, Charter, run by CEO Tom Rutledge, unveiled its cash-and-stock deal for TW Cable, which will make it the No. 2 U.S. cable operator behind Comcast and the No. 3 pay TV operator behind Comcast and AT&T/DirecTV. Shareholders have approved the deal, and so have most states. The National Association of Broadcasters and Dish Network had urged the FCC to reject the proposed combination. Opposition to the Charter deal has been less prevalent. Many in the sector had predicted conditional approval. Last year, the FCC gave conditional approval to another pay TV mega-deal, AT&T's $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV. Rutledge said last year that he was "confident" about getting regulatory approval for the company's two big planned deals for Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, saying they would "not reduce competition in any market." While the marriage will result in a bigger company that commands about 15 percent of the nation's cable and satellite TV subscribers and 22 percent of its broadband subscribers, Charter had in an FCC filing emphasized its commitment to the principles of net neutrality. Read More: AT&T-DirecTV Merger Gets FCC Chairman's Conditional Approval From Good Housekeeping Every single doctor's appointment during pregnancy can be a cause for stress. Is the baby gaining weight? Developing normally? In the right position? One particularly anxious mom-to-be in Kentucky recently got the ultimate sign from the universe that she can relax about her health concerns. Aley Meyer, 21, was already worried that her medications for Crohn's disease could be negatively impacting her baby when she went to see her doctor last week after suffering from some unusual bleeding. They performed an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay, and Meyer kept the printed photo. It wasn't until her baby shower this weekend that she thought much of it. A guest at the shower pointed out a mystical image on the right half of the photo. There was the outline of what resembled Jesus Christ on the cross: "I definitely feel that it's a sign from God," Meyer told Today. She also suspects that her beloved great-grandmother, who passed away years ago, had something to do with it. Her fiance and mother both agreed that it was a miraculous little appearance. Meyer is due in early June. It looks like she's got someone up there looking out for her until then! [H/t Today] Follow Good Housekeeping on Instagram. By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday described as bizarre the legal process used by companies to challenge competitors' patents as the Supreme Court heard a case involving a vehicle speedometer that alerts drivers if they are driving too quickly. The eight justices heard an appeal filed by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC, whose speedometer patent was invalidated in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review board procedure after being challenged by GPS device maker Garmin Ltd in 2012. The issue before the justices during a one-hour argument in the case was whether the U.S. government has made it too easy for companies to pursue challenges to the patents of other companies. New Jersey-based Cuozzo challenged the board's action in federal court, and an appeals court last year upheld the agency's action. Cuozzo then asked the Supreme Court to reverse the appellate decision. Garmin is no longer involved in the case. Roberts was the most outspoken critic among the eight justices of the current system in which companies can adopt a dual-track strategy by challenging patents simultaneously in federal court and through the agency review board. Roberts described the system as a "bizarre way to ... decide a legal question" and a "very extraordinary animal in legal culture to have two different proceedings addressing the same question." Justice Stephen Breyer appeared more sympathetic to the patent office. He said the 2011 law that set up the review board procedure may have intended to counter criticism that the patent office issues "too many patents that shouldn't have been issued in the first place." So-called patent trolls, entities that hold patents only for the purpose of suing firms seeking to develop new products, have benefited from that generosity. Breyer indicated that the patent office views the law as allowing a second bite at the question of whether a patent should have been issued. Breyer called it a "partial-Groundhog Day statute," referring to the 1993 film "Groundhog Day" in which Bill Murray's character repeatedly re-lives the same day. Story continues Companies that are frequent targets of patent suits, including Apple Inc and Google Inc, have turned to the patent office procedure, known as "inter partes review" (IPR), to try to fight off patent challenges. Google and Apple joined court papers backing the patent office. Cuozzo told the justices that in nearly 85 percent of cases some or all of the patents challenged were canceled. A ruling is due by the end of June. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley. Additional reporting by Andrew Chung.) BEIJING (Reuters) - China has banned drug wholesalers from selling vaccines, state media said on Monday, after a scandal in which about $90-million worth of illegal vaccines was suspected of being sold in dozens of provinces. China is pushing ambitious healthcare reforms to improve its home-made medicines, but the vaccine scandal underscores the challenge facing the world's second-largest drug market in regulating its fragmented supply chain. The new rules, signed by Premier Li Keqiang and adopted on Saturday, toughen requirements for distribution of non-compulsory vaccines, the official Xinhua news agency said. They require county health officials to get the vaccines directly from manufacturers before sending them to hospitals, instead of going through wholesalers, it added. Hospitals, clinics and government health authorities must also keep better records of purchases and inventory, with regular monitoring of vaccine temperatures, records of which hospitals must request upon receiving the vaccines. The rules hike fines for improper handling of vaccines, and prescribe the sacking of government officials guilty of violations, Xinhua said. The government plans to set up an electronic vaccine tracking system, it added, but gave no details. Chinese authorities punished hundreds of officials in the aftermath of the vaccine scandal, which involved millions of illegal trades of vaccines through a blackmarket drugs ring and ignited public anger. (Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Turkey, which has been hit by attacks blamed on jihadists, including two deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul that targeted foreign tourists, began to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria last summer. (Photo: AP) Ankara: Turkey has killed almost 900 alleged members of the Islamic State (IS) group since January through artillery fire and air raids, the state-run Anatolia news agency said on Monday, citing military sources. The country, a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS, has killed 492 "terrorists" since January 9 in air raids, while another 370 were killed in artillery strikes which also destroyed arms depots, the agency said. These figures could not be independently verified. Turkey, which has been hit by attacks blamed on jihadists, including two deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul that targeted foreign tourists, began to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria last summer. Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group in Syria. Turkey began its air strikes following a suicide bombing in July last year blamed on IS extremists, which killed 34 people in the border town of Suruc. In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border from Syria, prompting the army to respond to each strike with howitzer fire. The Detroit Auto Show has long set the tone for the global car industry, but a new player on the other side of the world could prove to be a bigger player. As the Beijing Motor Show begins on Monday, it's worth taking a closer look at China's auto industry. True, China has a long way to go. The world's second largest economy still doesnt have any top-notch car manufacturers. Western companies look at the Chinese market as important for their sales, but not with regard to technological innovations. Just how could China get the upper hand? The key race in the global automotive industry is all about the connected car - what China's automotive industry leaders dubs the "Internet of Vehicles." It is important to realize that China has a number of natural advantages in this arena - as well as less "natural" ones. China's first advantage is that it does not have to contend with the rather small, "balkanized" markets found in Western countries. That makes the required scaling up much easier in China than elsewhere. The second is the ease of industrial and regulatory integration. Consider all the industries and sectors that have to align their interests and technologies in order to make the connected car a reality. These include smartphone makers, telecom firms, Internet companies, satellite navigation and traffic management firms, insurance firms, as well as car manufacturers themselves. In Western countries, there are many established players, each with their own particular agendas and conflicting goals. These incumbents exercise a lot of power, both politically and in the marketplace itself. All too often, their primary objective is to jealously protect their own turf against any other company, sector or industry in the connectivity field - even if the net result is mutual paralysis. Contrast that with China. There, industry operates in a more top-down way. Industrial policy, actively shaped by the government, is embraced, not resisted. There also is discernably more readiness to cooperate at the behest of the government. In addition, China's domestic market is so large that most players have a sense that they should be able to get a viable share of the pie. Story continues The sense of excitement and national pride also includes a clear ambition to leapfrog Western competitors. While Chinese car companies are still playing catch-up on manufacturing quality, the cards are distributed anew now that the connectivity issue ranks above all. The shift to e-mobility helps the Chinese as well. Electric cars are far less "engineering intense" than traditional combustion engines. This great leveler of the playing field helps explain why Chinese Internet companies are so determined to develop their own electric cars. They can also count on the Chinese government to subsidize the sales of those vehicles on a large-scale basis. Finally, customer expectations as to vehicle quality are less demanding than in other major countries. Combined, these factors allow China to make the grand vision of twinning e-mobility and the Internet of Vehicles a reality there first. Meanwhile, in Western countries, doubts about China's ability to innovate prevail, leading to a great deal of complacency. The sentiment often expressed is that Chinese firms are good at copycatting and perhaps at cyber espionage, but that there is precious little domestically generated innovation. Whatever the ultimate truth, and it will take a long time to come up with a definitive answer, it simply does not behoove Western firms to assume that China is deficient in that regard. What if that assumption proves to be untrue? The West cannot base its future competitiveness on culturally induced notions of superiority. So much for what could be considered China's natural advantages. What about the more "unnatural" ones? Just consider the case of Google . The Chinese authorities' long-standing efforts to keep Google from gaining a solid foothold in China were long seen in the West as a matter of impeding the free flow of information. In the connected car context, however, cutting big U.S. data gatherers out of the Chinese market means that they can't be players in the connected car market, as well as in many other dimensions of the Industrial Internet. There are other geostrategic considerations that enter into the equation. Take the effort by Chinese defense companies to use their proprietary Beidou navigation technology as the backbone of the connected car system in China. This effort is about head-to-head competition with the United States. The ultimate goal is not just to push the U.S.'s GPS out of the Chinese market. Chinese firms also realize that there is a global race underway - not least over who will dominate connected car systems in Asia's and Africa's traffic-congested metro areas. In line with the Chinese government's goal of moving more toward services and up the value-added curve, the country's clear ambition is to become the preferred provider in those markets as well. It remains to be seen whether China can realize its manifold ambitions surrounding the Internet of Vehicles. However, Western firms who are inclined to belittle, or disregard, the rather enormous competition that may be heading their way do so at their own peril. China has a handful of potent advantages that, in the specific context of the Internet of Vehicles, give it a fair shot at playing a leading role globally. Sebastian Heilmann is president of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a Berlin, Germany-based think tank on China. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com By Marc Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Global investors are expected to pull $538 billion out of China's slowing economy in 2016, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimated on Monday, although the pace of outflows has dropped. That number would be down a fifth from the $674 billion pulled out last year, the industry association said, but could accelerate again if fears re-emerge of a "disorderly" drop in the yuan, or the renminbi, as the currency is also known. Capital exodus from China can influence emerging markets more generally, partly because of its sheer size and partly because sustained outflows can trigger more exchange rate volatility, which could then feed a fresh wave of outflows. "A sharp drop in the renminbi would likely spark a renewed sell-off of global risk assets and trigger a flight of portfolio capital from emerging markets," the IIF said in a new report. "Moreover, a sharp depreciation of the renminbi could lead to a round of competitive devaluation in other emerging markets, particularly in those with close trade linkages to China." For now, though, outflows are slowing. Roughly $35 billion was pulled out in March, bringing the total since the start of the year to around $175 billion, well below the pace seen in the second half of 2015. The IIF cited progress Chinese authorities had made in easing worries about the yuan's direction. They have emphasized there is more focus on its value against a basket of currencies, rather than just the U.S. dollar. One "important unknown", however, is the threshold of currency reserves below which Chinese authorities would start to worry. They might then either allow the yuan to fall again or markedly tighten capital controls. Headline reserves have already fallen from $4 trillion in June 2014 to around $3.2 trillion in February 2016. That is still high compared with most countries. But using another calculation, developed by the IMF, the cushion between actual reserves and what could be required, has dropped to 15 percent from 50 percent just under two years ago. Story continues "From this perspective, continued large capital outflows could lower the countrys official reserves to a level that is regarded as inadequate without a serious tightening of capital controls," the IIF said. China accounted for almost 30 percent of total foreign capital inflows to emerging markets between 2000 and the end of 2014, a total of around $3.6 trillion. Since then, however, outflows have taken hold, driven mainly by foreign banks cutting credit to Chinese firms, the firms themselves paying back their debt or international investors reducing holdings of yuan deposits. Over the medium term, though, China should benefit from structural factors, the IIF said. The IMFs decision late last year to include the yuan in its quasi-currency 'SDR' basket should help inflows, while they could be "substantial" if major stock and bond index providers add China's domestic securities to their benchmark indices. MSCI is set to decide on whether to include Chinese A-shares in its 23-country benchmark EM index (.MSCIEF) in June. (For IIF report click https://images.magnetmail.net/images/clients/IIF_2/attach/china_flows_april_2016.pdf) (Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Larry King and Mark Potter) Chinese legislators are considering a new draft of a controversial law requiring foreign non-profit organisations to report activities to government agencies while curtailing the recruitment of supporters, state media said Monday. The law on overseas non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was delayed after an outcry from charities and concerns from foreign governments that it gave wide-ranging discretionary powers to police amid a domestic crackdown on civil society. A draft of the bill -- covering foreign charities, business associations and academic institutions in China -- has been submitted to a legislative session being held this week, the official Xinhua news agency said. The rubber-stamp National People's Congress is controlled by the ruling Communist Party and if the measure is put to a vote it is certain to be approved. Xinhua indicated that the law's third draft preserved features which previously triggered concerns, including a requirement that NGOs "partner" with a Chinese government-controlled agency and report activities to authorities. It said government partners of foreign NGOs would be required to report any "temporary activities" to authorities at least 15 days in advance, without giving further details. Chinese police would have the right to cancel any activities they judge a threat to national security, and would be empowered to "invite for talks" the heads of foreign NGOs in China, it said. It added police could add any foreign NGO they judged to promote "subversion of state power" or "separatism" to a "not welcome list" which would ban them from the country. Overseas NGOs would also be forbidden from recruiting "members" in mainland China, Xinhua said, barring special permission from the State Council, China's cabinet. It was not specified whether that included local staff. The Global Times newspaper, which is close to the ruling party, cited a Chinese NGO official as saying the law's "engagement" of police was unlikely to change as the measure had been drafted with "national security" in mind. Story continues At least 1,000 foreign NGOs are thought to operate in China, including development charities such as Save the Children, advocacy groups such as Greenpeace, chambers of commerce and university centres. China's state-run media in recent years have accused such organisations of undermining national security and trying to foment "colour revolution" against the ruling party. China in January arrested and deported a Swedish human rights activist who had trained Chinese lawyers, and foreign NGO staff working on legal issues report an increasingly restricted environment. President Xi Jinping has in recent years overseen a crackdown on civil society, with scores of lawyers, academics and activists detained and dozens jailed. Several have been charged with "separatism" or "inciting state subversion" for what their lawyers say is merely the expression of critical opinions. Xinhua said a legal committee had suggested the draft bill should be voted on this week by the NPC Standing Committee, which approves legislation when the full house is not in session. BEIJING (Reuters) - China is set to pass a law governing foreign non-government organizations, after state media said legislators recommended it be put to a vote following adjustments to some provisions criticized by foreign governments and civil society groups. The proposed law is part of a raft of legislation, including China's counterterrorism law and a draft cyber security law, put forward amid a renewed crackdown on dissent by President Xi Jumping's administration. The United States, Canada and the European Union have urged China to revise the draft NGO law, earlier versions of which gave broad latitude to the police to regulate activities and funding of overseas groups operating in China. Critics had argued it was too vague and could severely limit the operations of social and environmental advocacy groups, besides business organizations and academia. In a sign of its likely adoption, the law committee of China's largely rubber stamp National People's Congress (FPC) recommended that the bill be voted on during a regular session of the FPC Standing Committee, which meets from Monday to Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said. "Exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and research institutes of science and engineering will follow existing regulations," the official Xinhua news agency said. The latest version of the draft also removes a limit of only one office for NGO in mainland China and "deletes the five-year limit on operations of representative offices in China", Xinhua said. "They will be allowed to open offices according to operational needs, but the number and locations must be approved by the regulatory authority," it added. Tougher rules had been imposed on sources of funds, expenses and revenues, it said. "Overseas NGO, which engage in illegal activities, including those to subvert the state and split the nation, will be blacklisted and banned from operating in the mainland." The most recent version of the draft law had not yet been released and the status of its controversial provisions was not clear. China has arrested scores of human rights lawyers across the country and tightened control over almost every aspect of civil society since 2012, citing the need to shore up national security and stability. China consistently rejects any criticism of its human rights record, saying it adheres to the rule of law. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) From Popular Mechanics China has apparently fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the South China Sea, a provocative weapon test that-contrary to official statements-was likely meant to send a message to the United States and its neighbors in the region. News of the test, which was carried out on April 12th, had been leaked to the Washington Free Beacon. On April 19th, the Beacon reported that two warheads carried by the missile had been tracked by U.S. satellites and regional sensors. The Dong Feng ("East Wind")-41 missile is China's latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The DF-41 can carry a single 1-megaton thermonuclear warhead or up to 10 smaller nuclear warheads. A three stage, solid fuel rocket, DF-41 reportedly has a range of 7,400 to 9,300 miles-making it the first Chinese missile with enough range to reach all of the continental United States. The curious-and provocative-aspect of this test was the aiming point for the missile. Typically, Chinese missiles are launched from central China and sent westward. This time, the missile was aimed south at the South China Sea. This may be the first time China has launched an ICBM into the South China Sea. China claims that allegations the warheads landed in the South China Sea are "pure conjecture", only saying that the missile was tested near the Sea. However, China also said that it had every right to conduct such tests within Chinese territory-a given unless that territory were in some way contested by others. China claims roughly ninety percent of the South China Sea, but some of that territory is also claimed by other countries. China's territorial claims in the South China Sea have generated tension with many of its neighbors, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, and is being actively opposed by the United States, Australia, and Japan. China claimed the test was not aimed at "any specific country or target". Raptor It's big, it's bold, it's brash, and it's going to China. Ford announced late last week that it would introduce the Raptor super-truck in China, another example of a long developing trend: China's taste in cars is looking more and more like the United States'. Carmakers are enjoying huge sales of SUVs in China. Last week, a surprising earnings beat by GM was in large part thanks to the trend. At the Beijing Auto show this week, several other automakers introduced SUVs, some of them specific to the Chinese market. While Ford missed projections, it has been rapidly expanding its Chinese operations, especially in SUVs. It is no surprise that considering its success at selling the same big vehicles American consumers love, Ford should want to try its hand at selling that other great bastion of American automotive taste: the pickup truck. It's also the first vehicle from Ford's "Performance Division" to make it to China, an attempt by the company to the introduce the "halo effect" to the fastest-growing car market in the world. Exciting, range-topping vehicles like the Raptor truck while only to sell in limited quantities will attract buyers to the rest of the Ford lineup. Ford Performance marketing manager Henry Ford III recently told AutoBlog that the Focus RS, the sporty hatchback also from the Performance lineup, would also make it to China in the near future, while there are currently no plans to bring the Performance Division variants of the Mustang over there. But for now, the few lucky Chinese Ford Raptor customers will enjoy some serious off-roading capability mated to a 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 and a brand-new 10-speed transmission. Raptor NOW WATCH: Text this secret number to update your Facebook status More From Business Insider By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO, April 25 (Reuters) - Wall Street expects little from Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc's first-quarter results late on Tuesday as the burrito chain struggles to recover from a string of food-borne illness outbreaks. But its loss might be rival Panera Bread Co's gain. Shares of Chipotle have dropped 38 percent since August after norovirus and E.coli outbreaks at some of its outlets led to a plunge in sales for the company, which markets its food as healthier than rivals'. It has been handing out free burritos to win back diners, but analysts still expect it to lose money in the quarter ended March 30 and the next two quarters. At least some customers steering clear of Chipotle appear to have gone over to fast-casual competitor Panera Bread, which has also increased its focus on healthy ingredients. In December, 13.4 percent of Chipotle customers also visited Panera, up from 11.6 percent in September, the month before E.coli outbreaks linked to its restaurants, according to Placed, a market analysis firm. That might have added some extra fuel to Panera's sales in the March quarter, analysts said. "They have a similar geography, a similar number of stores, and it's a coincidence that worked out in Panera's favor that they really started hammering the whole idea of clean food and no artificial ingredients," said Maxim Group stock analyst Stephen Anderson. "'Clean food' at Panera stands in contrast to the ongoing troubles at Chipotle," he said. Chipotle's deeper-than-expected drop in February same-store sales did little to improve sentiment, and the company has warned it expects a loss of $1 or more per share for the first quarter. First-quarter revenue on average is seen at $868 million, a drop of 20 percent from the year-ago quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. In contrast, Panera late on Tuesday is expected to report earnings of $1.50 a share on revenue of $674 million, which would be a 3.9 percent increase from a year ago. Story continues On Monday, Chipotle's stock traded about flat at $442.62 while Panera rose 0.31 percent to $215.66. Options traders showed a slight preference for defensive trades in Chipotle. Weekly contracts on the shares dipping below $420 by Friday were the most heavily traded. Chipotle's stock price has recently traded above 50 times expected earnings, its highest multiple since 2007, due partly to analysts cutting their forecasts for the company's results. Panera trades at about 31 times expected earnings. (Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Saqib Ahmed in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Washington (AFP) - The US city of Cleveland has reached a $6 million settlement with the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American fatally shot by police while holding a toy gun. Under the terms of the settlement, Cleveland acknowledges no wrongdoing, according to details of the accord announced Monday by a US District Court in Ohio. The deal, which still requires the approval of a probate court, shields the city from a potential federal civil rights trial that would have drawn renewed scrutiny of its troubled police force. Rice's November 2014 death at the hands of a white officer was one of a series of high-profile incidents involving police violence against African Americans that fueled protests across the country. Several of these cases have resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements between cities and the families of victims. Surveillance video showed Rice was fatally shot within seconds of a patrol car arriving on the scene as he began to pull a toy pellet gun out of his waistband. The boy died hours later in hospital. The Rice family's lawyers said "no amount of money can adequately compensate" the relatives for their loss. "In a situation such as this, there is no such thing as closure or justice. Nothing will bring Tamir back," they added in a statement. "His unnecessary and premature death leaves a gaping hole for those who knew and loved him that can never be filled." The lawyers also denounced "the problem of police violence, especially in communities of color," calling it "a crisis plaguing our nation." Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson spoke of a "difficult time" for his city. "There is no price that you can put on the life lost of a 12 year old child," he told reporters. "That should not have happened in the city of Cleveland." Last year, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against the police officers involved in the shooting, rookie patrolman Timothy Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback. Story continues At the time, then Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty said the jury found the shooting was the result of a "perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunication by all involved that day," but not a criminal act. The officers were responding to a 911 call reporting a person carrying a "probably fake" gun. "There's a guy in there with a pistol. It's probably fake, but he's pointing it at everybody," the caller said. "I don't know if it's real or not." In its complaint, Rice's family accused the city of negligence, saying dispatchers should have told officers about the caller's description of the gun likely being a toy. The family also said the police officers were too aggressive as they "rushed" to the scene, pulling their patrol car right up next to the boy, and fired too quickly on Rice, whom they failed to provide with medical care or assistance after shooting him. The complaint said the city had a pattern of hiring police officers who are "unfit" for duty, and failed to vet or supervise them properly. In response, the city said Rice was responsible for his own death, because his injuries "were directly and proximately caused by the failure of plaintiffs' decedent to exercise due care to avoid injury." The mayor subsequently apologized for the city's "poor use of words" and "insensitivity." - Deals to avoid shame - Under the terms of the settlement, Cleveland will pay $3 million this year and $3 million in 2017. It is the latest in a string of seven-figure payouts by cities to avoid wrongful death lawsuits, which are brought by the estates of those killed against authorities liable for the death. Earlier this month, the Chicago City Council agreed to pay nearly $6.5 million to settle two separate cases of alleged police misconduct. One of the cases, caught on shocking video, involved a mentally ill man who was repeatedly struck with a Taser gun. The other was over the death of an asthmatic man following a police chase on foot. Baltimore agreed in September to pay a $6.4 million settlement with the family of Freddie Gray, whose death in custody sparked riots and looting in the gritty city located near the US capital Washington. The Baltimore police union had denounced the large payout as "obscene." Last year, New York reached a $5.9 million settlement with the family of Eric Garner, whose final words -- "I can't breathe" -- became a national rallying cry in widespread protests. Garner, unarmed, was approached by police over claims he was illegally selling untaxed cigarettes in July 2014. One of the officers placed him in a chokehold, cited by the medical examiner as a cause of death. Any women terrorists interviewed will be those who failed in their objective to carry out suicide bombings, but the researchers still expect to gain valuable insights. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP) London: A UK professor plans to undertake a first-of-its-kind global study of failed female suicide bombers languishing in jails around the world to gain valuable insights into what inspires women to carry out terror attacks. Helen Gavin, from University of Huddersfield in northern England, is considered an authority on female aggression and what draws women into terrorism. Her latest study is aimed at finding out why women may be inspired to blow themselves up, taking innocent victims with them. "We see young girls leaving the UK and going to Syria, for example, and we do not know why they have gone and whether they are being radicalised," Gavin told 'Daily Mirror'. "We will be looking at women who have been arrested and convicted of violent crime around the world. We intend to talk to female offenders," she said in reference to her planned research. Any women terrorists interviewed will be those who failed in their objective to carry out suicide bombings, but the researchers still expect to gain valuable insights. Women tend to make ideal suicide bomber recruits for terrorism chiefs because they can easily pass through checkpoints and slip into busy public places without arousing suspicion. Gavin believes clear gender differences can be drawn with a distinction between the urges to "avenge", for a wider cause, and "revenge" for more personal motives. "Although women are just as susceptible to ideological motivation, men seem to be drawn into suicide terrorism for 'avenge' purposes, whereas women tend to need 'revenge' because they have lost a loved one, often a husband," Gavin said. A recent study found more than 200 women suicide bombers have blown themselves up since June 2014, killing more than 1,000 people in Nigeria, and increasingly in neighbouring Cameroon. In her book 'Female Aggression', Gavin writes most suicide bombers are male, but since the 1980s there has been increased use of women to undertake suicide bombing. The Proceeds from the Companys Line Empowers Others to Move Beyond Financial Poverty and Supports Endangered Species Projects LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Color Me Free, a company that developed original coloring books as well as an ethically-produced clothing line, announced the launch of its wearable artt-shirts that buyers can color in themselves and use to express their creativity. A portion of the money from the clothing and books are used for empowering women in underdeveloped communities and sustaining endangered species initiatives across the planet. According to a company spokesperson, a few artistically oriented entrepreneurs who wished to spark individual creativity while making a difference for the Earth started Color Me Free. This particular project is a part of the ethical fashion movement, especially because the clothes are 100% organic and made locally or by women who wish to gain financial independence. Color Me Free offers its clients the choice between organic cotton t-shirts and t-shirts made of natural micromodal fabric from Turkey. "This project began by our love for the planet and the survival of the sentient beings that populate her," stated the representative. "We will donate a minimum of 25 percent of our profits to one or more specific endangered species projects and help underprivileged individuals here and abroad." Recently, Color Me Free decided to take its wearable art initiative to Indiegogo in hopes of raising the necessary funds to complete the project. Color Me Free is accepting contributions to help cover printing, research, travel, and production costs for its clothing line. The company is offering supporters a wide variety of perks in exchange for their donations, including coloring books, art prints, and personal illustrations. Individuals interested in learning more about Color Me Free and its work can visit the company's Indiegogo page for additional information. Story continues About Color Me Free: Color Me Free is not strictly for fun and fashion; the product's proceeds to go protecting endangered species around the globe. The designers of Color Me Free created t-shirts with beautiful art of an endangered animal that buyers can fill in with color. The clothing focuses on coloring book designs of endangered species, allowing wearers to create their very own individual art and showing how every person can help turn the loss of any species around with this product. The clothing and books both educate the consumer of the most critically endangered species and teaches them how every person can help turn the loss of any species around. For more information, please visit https://goo.gl/EJj5Pa Contact: Ross Bowman admin@rocketfactor.com (949) 555-2861 SOURCE: Color Me Free INSIDER "When you listen to him on the range of issues from foreign policy to the virus to racial injustice, it's clear he did not know what to do," Woodward wrote in the Washington Post. Guatemala City (AFP) - Belize's prime minister on Monday declared that a crisis with neighboring Guatemala prompted by a deadly shooting last week on their disputed border is "over." Prime Minister Dean Barrow said he and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales agreed "it was absolutely necessary to dial down the tension between our two countries." Still, friction between the two Central American nations remains. Guatemala is keeping in place hundreds of troops it sent to the border after the shooting incident, which left a 13-year-old Guatemalan boy dead. Morales on Monday said officials were helping the boy's family prepare a complaint against Belize before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Each country claimed the incident last Wednesday was an unprovoked attack on its soil. Guatemala said Belizean soldiers opened fire on a family of Guatemalans walking home from field labor, killing the boy. Belize said its soldiers had come under gunfire from Guatemalan civilians and responded in self-defense. Both have agreed to back an inquiry by the Organization of American States. - Historic animosity - Guatemala has made claims over more than half of Belize's territory dating back 150 years to when its small neighbor was a British colony known as British Honduras. Although Belize became independent in 1981, Guatemala did not recognize it for another decade because of its territorial claims, prompting Britain to keep a small military presence in its former colony as a deterrent until five years ago. Last week's shooting escalated tensions and alarmed the United States, the OAS and other observers as Guatemala ordered 3,000 soldiers to its north, near Belize, and doubled its military presence along the border to 1,000 troops. Barrow said in his statement that he held a meeting on Monday with his national security advisers, who assured him the heat was going out of the situation. Blaming the confrontation on a bellicose stance from Morales, he said "I am wholly satisfied" the crisis "is over." Story continues He claimed international support for Belize's version of events, saying the situation had been defused so "the return to normalcy has begun" and the two countries could work on "the reiteration and expansion of the protocols governing the complex relations between us." Morales, for his part, emphasized his support for an OAS inquiry into the shooting, saying he hoped for a "peaceful" resolution. "Both countries have shown the same intention that this (OAS) process be carried out correctly," he said. "We hope that this will be resolved by legal and peaceful means." Morales also stressed his government's support for the boy's family. "We have ordered the foreign ministry to give full backing to the family," he said, "so it can present its complaint to the IAHCR, and consultations have already started." By Marti Maguire RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) - Thousands of people flocked to North Carolina's capital on Monday to show both support and disdain for a law that has thrust the state into the international spotlight over its restrictions on transgender bathroom access and gay rights. Lawmakers returned to Raleigh to begin a short session designed to address the state budget. But controversy over the new law, which has drawn reaction from U.S. presidential candidates, U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron among others, is expected to dominate. The measure puts the state at the center of a debate over equality, privacy and religious freedom as states propose legislation seen as discriminatory against gay and transgender people in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court last year ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. North Carolina became the first U.S. state to require transgender people to use restrooms in public buildings and schools that match the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity. "Our state is a state of crisis," Chris Sgro, executive director of the Equality North Carolina advocacy group, said in Raleigh before activists delivered petitions to Republican Governor Pat McCrory's office demanding the law's repeal. A group of Democratic representatives filed a bill also seeking a repeal. But leading Republican lawmakers in the state so far have shown little willingness to back down, and they were greeted at a rally on Monday by thousands of people who came on church buses and held signs thanking them for the measure. Business leaders, entertainers and politicians including Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump have come out against the law. Opponents contend it demonizes transgender people and limits government protections against discrimination for gays and lesbians. Supporters including social conservatives and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz say it is needed to protect women and children from sexual predators in bathrooms. At a news conference with Cameron on Friday, Obama said the law should be overturned, while the British prime minister added that laws should be used "to end discrimination, rather than try to enhance it." As part of the backlash, companies and associations have relocated conventions and halted job-creating investment projects initially slated for North Carolina. On Monday, singers Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas joined a long list of entertainers who have canceled shows in the state in protest. Lovato wrote on Twitter that she and Jonas were protesting "this hateful law." Republican State Representative Paul Stam criticized companies, including PayPal Holdings , that have pulled jobs out of North Carolina over the measure. "They have offices in countries where homosexuals are executed," he said at the rally. "The hypocrisy of those who oppose this bill is amazing." (Additional reporting and writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) The fighter jets landed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, near the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP) Constanta: The U.S. Air Force on Monday flew in two F-22 Raptor fighter jets to Romania as a show of strength to deter Russian intervention in Ukraine. The fighter jets landed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, near the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania. A U.S. statement says they possess sophisticated sensors allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected. The fighters also have a significant capability to attack surface targets. U.S. Ambassador Hans G. Klemm said the U.S. and Romania, a NATO member since 2004 that has a population of 19 million, were seeking to improve "the defense of Europe, the defense of the North-Atlantic Alliance, to improve the security in South Eastern-Europe ... as a result of the aggression by Russia that has brought so much instability to this part of the world over the past two to three years." The fighters, which arrived from Britain, will leave Romania later Monday. They are part of the Operation Atlantic Resolve, a U.S. commitment to NATO's collective security and regional stability. Russia-backed separatists have been fighting government troops in Ukraine since April 2014, leaving at least 9,100 dead. Washington (AFP) - Republican presidential rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich have joined forces to deny frontrunner Donald Trump the party's nomination, a controversial move on the eve of Tuesday's critical primaries in five US states. Embracing the ancient Sanskrit proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Cruz and Kasich unveiled their late-in-the-game ploy, prompting the celebrity billionaire to accuse them of "collusion" and declare the bid an act of desperation. With Trump poised to extend his lead in Tuesday's primaries, Texas Senator Cruz and Ohio governor Kasich agreed late Sunday to what amounted to a non-aggression pact in later primaries. Kasich will forego vigorous campaigning in Indiana, which votes on May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories in those states. The deal would give Cruz a chance to consolidate support in Indiana, a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to win the nomination outright. "We're focusing our energy on the state of Indiana and Governor Kasich is focusing his energies elsewhere," Cruz said at a campaign stop in Borden, Indiana. Cruz justified the teaming up succinctly: "If Donald Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton wins" the November election and Republicans lose control of the Senate, he said. - 'Pathetic' plan - Trump erupted at news of the deal, unleashing criticism on Twitter and assailing the pair at a campaign rally Monday. "You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude." "Actually I was happy," Trump added, "because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are." Story continues Kasich's campaign said the aim was to open the Republican nominating convention in July in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate. The Ohioan insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton. But his remarks also hinted at how his alliance with Cruz was already fraying. "I've never told them not to vote for me" in Indiana, he told reporters as he ate breakfast at a diner in Philadelphia. "They ought to vote for me." "What's the big deal?" he added. "I'm not campaigning in Indiana, and he's not campaigning in those other states. That's all." He also noted his need to be frugal with campaign resources, saying he did not have "'Daddy Warbucks' behind me giving me all this money." Both candidates acknowledge their only hope of winning lies in keeping Trump, 69, from gaining the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright. If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him on subsequent rounds. Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump on the first ballot, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds when they are free to vote for whomever they choose. Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him. But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio. Trump has pointed to the bid to stop him as evidence that the primary system is "totally rigged." - 'Terrible role models' - Cruz, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of stopping Trump, has already begun searching for possible vice presidential options. His campaign chairman Chad Sweet confirmed to CNN Monday that Cruz was vetting several potential vice presidential candidates, and that businesswoman Carly Fiorina, herself a former White House hopeful, "absolutely" was among them. In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a chaotic convention fight would almost surely damage Republican prospects in November. The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters. Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them. Raising eyebrows among Republicans, Koch added it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president. Trump is favored to win the states that vote Tuesday -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Clinton is expected to prevail over her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. PARIS, April 25 (Reuters) - Dassault Aviation hopes to seal "one or two" contracts to sell its Rafale planes this year and this would include a much-heralded deal to sell 36 Rafale fighter jets to India, its chief executive said an interview. "One can hope for on one or two contracts this year, including India," Eric Trappier was reported as saying by magazine Challenges on its Challenges.fr web site. Negotiations for India to buy 36 French Rafale fighter jets are nearing the finish line, the Indian defence ministry said last week, with sources saying the price will be set at around $9 billion. "Significantly progress has been made and I sense a true will to reach an agreement, possibly in the coming weeks," Trappier said of the India talks. Both sides had hoped to wrap up the strategic order during President Francois Hollande's visit for India's Republic Day celebration in January, but hard bargaining on price stalled a final result. Dassault Aviation said in March it was working on deals to also sell Rafale jets to Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Andrew Callus) A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. The attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood also wounded at least 38 other people, a police officer said. Police earlier said it was a parked car bomb. A medical official confirmed the causality figure. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which controls key areas in the countrys west and north. Commercials and public places in Shiite-dominated areas are among the most frequent targets for the militants seeking to undermine government efforts to maintain security inside the capital. Find more news-related photo galleries on the Yahoo News Photo Tumblr! - People gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad al-Jadida, Iraq April 25, 2016. (REUTERS/Khalid al Mousily) - Iraqi firefighters extinguish a fire following a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing and wounding civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) - Security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan) - Iraqi firefighters extinguish a fire following a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing and wounding civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan) Story continues - A street vendor, center, looks for customers at the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) - Security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan) - Security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan) - People gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad al-Jadida, Iraq April 25, 2016. (REUTERS/Khalid al Mousily) - Iraqi security forces and civilians gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad al-Jadida, Iraq April 25, 2016. (Ahmed Saad/Reuters) - Security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in the capitals eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, April 25, 2016. A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan) - Smoke rises at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad al-Jadida, Iraq April 25, 2016. (Ahmed Saad/Reuters) Steve Warren The spokesman for the US military operation against ISIS made a comment in a Wednesday press briefing in Baghdad that helps justify Russia's continued attacks on Syria's largest city in the midst of a truce. US Army Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq, was asked whether Russian airstrikes on Aleppo, the current epicenter of the war, meant that Moscow was preparing to end the cessation of hostilities (CoH) agreement between government forces and the opposition signed on February 29. Warren responded that it was "complicated" because al-Nusra "holds Aleppo" and is not party to the agreement. Warren said of Russia: I'm not going to predict what their intentions are. What I do know is that we have seen, you know, regime forces with some Russian support as well begin to mass and concentrate combat power around Aleppo. ... That said, it's primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities. So it's complicated. As Middle East analyst Kyle Orton noted on Twitter, Warren came "pretty close" to saying that the coalition supports Russia's airstrikes in the city. Those strikes, however, are aimed at degrading any and all opposition to Bashar Assad the embattled Syrian president who the Obama administration has repeatedly insisted "has to go." aleppo rubble assad regime air strike Warren, moreover, was effectively echoing Russia's own military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy. He said earlier this month that 8,000 Nusra militants were amassing around Aleppo and preparing to cut off the city's main road to Syria's capital, Damascus. Story continues Emile Hokayem, an expert on Syria and a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, seemed surprised by Warren's comments. "Does the US military really believe that Nusra 'holds Aleppo'?" Hokayem tweeted on Friday. "Did Warren misspeak?" While Nusra has indeed been building up its presence in Aleppo since February, the city is also occupied by civilians and armed opposition groups associated with the US-backed Free Syrian Army that agreed to abide by the fragile agreement. Civil defence members look for survivors after an airstrike on the rebel-held Old Aleppo, Syria April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail The CoH was brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva in February. Lavrov indicated that Russia would continue supporting the Assad regime's attempts to "liberate" Aleppo, which he said had been "captured by illegal insurgent groups." But for one of the US's top military leaders to stop short of condemning Russia's airstrikes on the city sends mixed signals about Washington's commitment to upholding the truce. Warren's comments came two days after US President Barack Obama urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to "use his influence with the Assad regime to live up to the commitments that they've made in the context of the cessation of hostilities," said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. He added: "Unfortunately, we've seen that the cessation of hostilities continues to be fragile and increasingly threatened due to continued violations by the regime." 'The worst day in Syria for over a year' Syria's civil defense, a neutral organization of nearly 3,000 volunteers that respond to bombings against civilian communities in Syria, said that warplanes attacked Aleppo at least 20 times on Friday in what was "the worst day in Syria for over a year." At least 14 people were killed in the attack and dozens more wounded. Tracking attacks in Aleppo, Idlib, Homs and Damascus. Furious intensity. Teams report streets littered with bodies. pic.twitter.com/oBByKD0RAN The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) April 22, 2016 In Idlib, meanwhile, the White Helmets recorded even more attacks than in Aleppo on Friday. Nusra took over bases and seized US-supplied weapons from the Free Syrian Army's 13th Division in Idlib last month, giving Assad another bargaining chip to argue that he is the best option for preventing the spread of terrorism in Syria. Significantly, Nusra's takeover of rebel-held areas around Syria has been met with fierce backlash by activists and the more moderate rebel groups battling Assad's forces. Opposition groups realize that "the more territory al-Nusra controls, the more the 'us or them' narrative grows stronger and, ironically, the less support moderates get from the coalition," Abu Faisal, a Syrian aid worker who goes by a pseudonym, told Business Insider's Pamela Engel last month. Syria map But Nusra's presence in Idlib and Aleppo and, now, Warren's hint that the US might not be wholly opposed to a Russian offensive there has given Moscow an excuse to revamp its military presence inside Syria just over one month after announcing it planned to withdraw from the conflict. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Russia is moving heavy artillery back into the northeast, likely in preparation for a major escalation there. John Kerry confirmed the Russian buildup near Aleppo in a meeting with The New York Times editorial board on Friday. He told the Times that Russia might really be targeting Nusra in Aleppo, but is "killing people" because it has "proven harder to separate" the militant group from the more moderate opposition groups "than we thought." "And there's a Russian impatience and a regime impatience with the terrorists who are behaving like terrorists and laying siege to places on their side and killing people," Kerry said, according to The Times. Experts are skeptical, however, that Russia's singular intention is to target Nusra alone. "If Russia is signaling an offensive against Nusra, you can be sure other rebel groups will be targeted," Nadav Pollak, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, tweeted last week. And as Jeff White, a military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Business Insider in an email, the Russians are likely taking advantage of the crumbling cessation of hostilities by blaming violations on Nusra and everyone else who opposes Assad. "Even if they don't participate in a 'pitched battle' for Aleppo," White said, "the Russians can still help the regime complete the isolation of the city." NOW WATCH: A German orchestra traveled to Jordan to teach Syrian refugee kids how to play instruments More From Business Insider Some 600 disease experts from 43 nations will gather in Paris on Monday to pore over scant but increasingly worrisome data emerging about the Zika virus sweeping Latin America and threatening the world. Scientists and public health specialists will discuss the virus' links to microcephaly, a disorder that causes severe brain damage in babies, and to adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can cause paralysis and death. They will also review progress in the development of Zika diagnostics and vaccines, according to the Institut Pasteur, which will host the science meeting over Monday and Tuesday. "It is now clear that the Zika virus can cause serious complications, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the current outbreak a public health emergency of international concern," Institut Pasteur president Christian Brechot told AFP by email. "It is therefore urgent to bring together key global players in research and health." Despite a flurry of research, very little is known about Zika -- how long it may hide out in the human body, the degree of risk of sexual transmission, the full list of diseases it may cause, and which mosquito species can transmit it. Earlier this month, US health authorities confirmed the virus causes microcephaly, a long-suspected link. And they said the virus was "scarier" than previously thought. "We continue to be learning (about the virus) pretty much every day. And most of what we're learning is not reassuring," said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Zika virus was first identified in 1947 in Uganda, but for most people the symptoms -- a rash, joint pain or fever -- are mild, if they notice them at all. - Collaboration needed - An outbreak of the virus began in Brazil in early 2015, followed nine months later by an surge of infants born with microcephaly. There has also been an increase in Brazilian cases of Guillain-Barre. Since last year, the virus has been detected for the first time in 42 countries, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean. In eight nations, there have been reports of person-to-person transmission -- likely via sex. The virus has been found to survive in the semen of infected men. There is no treatment or vaccine, and the best course of action is to protect oneself against mosquito bites. Scientists are concerned the virus will spread to the southern United States and Europe as summer brings ideal mosquito-breeding conditions. A virus can be introduced to a new region when a local mosquito picks it up from an infected human -- someone coming back from a holiday in South America, for example. If it lives long enough, the mosquito can then infect people from whom it takes a blood meal, starting a vicious cycle. Next week's gathering is sponsored by the Institut Pasteur, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wellcome Trust, along with backing from the European Commission and WHO. "The speed and extent of this outbreak, which the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, requires open collaborations between researchers, the public health community and the public," states the conference website. Top research institutions, funders and publishers announced in February they would make all scientific findings on Zika available quickly and without cost. Without specifically identifying titles, Disney has made a number of release date changes, and booked some future dates for both its upcoming live action and fairy tale-live action fare. One of these dates per insiders will go to Jungle Book 2, the first installment of which is honing in on $600M worldwide. Originally, the Mouse House had December 22, 2017 booked for an untitled Disney live action fairy tale. Theyve moved off that slot a week after their Star Wars: Episode VIII release and moved up to July 28, 2017, going up against Sonys Jumanji reboot. In addition, Disney has RSVPed April 6, 2018 for another live action fairy tale, following two days after the Wednesday opening of an untitled Laika toon from Focus Features. Thats also the post-Easter holiday frame, and follows in the shadow of Warner Bros. Steven Spielbergs title Ready Player One. Also, Disney has booked August 3, 2018 for a live action movie. Currently, there isnt any competition. And on Christmas 2018, Disney has also dated another live action pic. While 20th Century Fox hasnt officially registered the date with ComScore yet, James Cameron announced at CinemaCon thats when he plans to unveil the first of four Avatar sequels. Currently, Sony Animation has a feature toon version of Spider-Man set to open on December 21, 2018. Finally, Disney has blocked off December 20, 2019 for another live action untitled fairy tale. Currently, its the only title on that date. After its animation, Lucasfilm, and Marvel properties, Disneys live action reboots of its celebrated toon classics have become a huge component of its upcoming slate with most of them grossing on average $700M worldwide. With Jungle Book booming currently in theaters, Disneys next live action classic to hit screens is Alice Through the Looking Glass on Memorial Day weekend. Now there are several pics in the mix at the Burbank-based studio that could potentially fill these untitled dates, and that list is below. Well know in the coming weeks what slots where: Story continues Cruella with Emma Stone set for the title role and Kelly Marcel writing A Wrinkle in Time with Ava DuVernay attached to direct and Jennifer Lee writing Jungle Cruise with Dwayne Johnson set to star and John Requa and Glenn Ficarra writing Dumbo with director Tim Burton and writer Ehren Kruger A sequel to Mary Poppins with director Rob Marshall, starring Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda Maleficent 2 with Angelia Jolie set to return in the title role and Linda Woolverton writing The Nutcracker and the Four Realms with director Lasse Hallstrom and writer Ashleigh Powell The Jungle Book 2 with both director Jon Favreau and writer Justin Marks returning A Tinker Bell project with Reese Witherspoon set to star and Victoria Strouse writing Related stories 'Captain America: Civil War' Set To Smash $190M+ At Domestic B.O.; Middle Age Guys Snapping Up Tickets 'Captain America: Civil War' To Plant $200M-$230M Flag In Overseas Opening - Intl Box Office Preview DisneyLife Service Suspended In China Amid Crackdown On Foreign Content - Reports A woman claims she has video evidence that her TV remote control only works if you use it in your left hand. Support worker Jess Adams texted her confused boyfriend to tell him that she was convinced that the remote was designed specifically for left-handed people - and that it simply wouldnt work for righties. The 25-year-old, from Wisbech, Cambridge, had no problems with her Celcus 32inch flatscreen TV remote since she bought it from Sainsburys in November after always using the remote with her left hand. However, when she attempted to flick between channels using her right hand while her other held her phone, she was baffled when it didnt work. She immediately texted boyfriend Scott to tell him how frustrated she was that she had a left-handed remote leaving him a little confused. Jess said: I had never noticed that there was an issue with my remote as Id always used my left but the other day I was being lazy as I had my phone in my hand so I used my right. "It simply wouldnt work, no matter what angle I pointed it or how hard I pressed it. Not a single button works when I press it with my right hand but it still works fine with my left. "I got really frustrated so started texting my boyfriend to tell him I had been sold a left-handed control by mistake but he told me they didnt exist. Baffled: Jess says her remote simply wont work in her right hand (Caters) When she then asked Scott if she needed to request an ambidextrous remote Scott told her to inform Sainsburys that it was faulty. She replied that it wasnt faulty, adding: Its just made for left-handed people. Sainsburys didnt tell me the remote was special. Jess videoed herself attempting to use the remote in both hands and it only working when in her left. However, Jess has now been mocked online by people by telling her it was a new child-proof function or that is was programmed for left-handed people and needed resetting. Jess said: "I suppose I might be wrong. I do feel a bit stupid to be honest. People I dont even know are laughing at it and asking me if I am blonde. Story continues Scott has since been round to Jess house and found that the remote refuses to work in his right hand too. Despite testing the theory himself, Scott remains unconvinced that there are remotes designed for different hands. Sainsburys encouraged Jess to get in touch with their Customer Careline if she feels the remote is faulty. A Sainsburys spokesperson said: "We havent the remotest idea why Jessica cant change channels with her right hand. Top pic: Caters US troops in Syria are mandated to advise and assist Syrian rebel and anti-Islamic State forces. (Representational Image, Photo: AP) Hanover, Germany: US President Barack Obama will on Monday announce plans to send up to 250 more military personnel to Syria, according to a senior administration official, intensifying US assistance to rebels as a ceasefire falters. Obama "tomorrow will announce that he has authorised up to 250 additional forces deploying to Syria," the source said, adding that the president would confirm the deployment in a speech in the northern city of Hanover. US troops in Syria are mandated to advise and assist Syrian rebel and anti-Islamic State forces. Obama is currently in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The pair will be joined today by leaders from Britain, France and Italy, a meeting called at Obama's request and which looks set to focus on the fight against the ISIS group. "The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said the official. Obama is set to announce the decision at the Hanover trade fair before the meeting with European leaders. On Sunday Obama pressed for parties to the Syrian conflict to return the negotiating table and "reinstate" a faltering internationally-brokered ceasefire. "I spoke to (Russian) President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities," Obama told a news conference in Germany. That was the clearest indication yet that the White House believes the increasingly troubled ceasefire has disintegrated as regime and rebel bombardments claimed 26 lives on Sunday. The White House has argued that the ceasefire, while imperfect, is worth pursuing and is the only way out of the brutal five-year war. But its stance is bringing Washington and its allies into ever more conflict with rebel groups on the ground, which continue to be on the receiving end of regime attacks. Pressure on Obama is increasing in the United States, which in is the throes of a fiercely fought presidential election race, and from European allies who want to halt a massive influx of refugees. Many of Obama's critics have called for a safe zone to be established, something that could bring Western militaries into direct conflict with Russian and Syrian forces already in the area. Obama insisted that establishing a safe zone "is not a matter of an ideological objection on my part". "As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country." Obama has come under criticism for his handling of Syria's war, with opponents saying he could have done more to stem the bloodshed. But the US president -- who came to power vowing to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan -- has stood fast in his opposition to plunging the United States into another ground war in the Muslim world. Tilda Swinton in the Doctor Strange trailer (Disney) By Graeme McMillan, The Hollywood Reporter Why is Tilda Swinton playing the traditionally-Asian Ancient One in Marvels upcoming Doctor Strange? Its a decision that has left many upset, but according to C. Robert Cargill, one of the writers on the movie (Jon Spaihts and director Scott Derrickson also took passes on the screenplay), there was no way the studio could avoid upsetting audiences. There is no other character in Marvel history that is such a cultural landmine, that is absolutely unwinnable, Cargill said during an appearance on the Double Toasted podcast. Ive been reading a bunch of people talking about it, and the really frustrating thing about it this week, is that most of the people who have thoughts on it havent thought it all the way through and they go, Why didnt they just do this? And its like, I could tell you why. I could tell you why every single decision that involves the Ancient One is a bad one, and just like the Kobayashi Maru, it all comes down onto which way youre willing to lose. (For those unfamiliar with the Kobayashi Maru, clearly more Star Trek is needed; its a training scenario for Starfleet cadets in the mythology that is famously impossible to win.) Cargill continued by describing the comic book incarnation of the Ancient One as a racist stereotype who comes from a region of the world that is in [a] very weird political place. He originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that hes Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that thats bulls and risk the Chinese government going, 'Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? Were not going to show your movie because you decided to get political. An alternate possibility, of casting an Asian actor or actress in the role, is also dismissed by Cargill. If you are telling me you think its a good idea to cast a Chinese actress as a Tibetan character, you are out of your damn fool mind and have no idea what the f youre talking about, he said. Oh, 'she could be Asian! Asian? She could be Japanese, she could be Indian, really? The levels of cultural sensitivity around this thing is, everyone is staking out their one particular place and not realizing that every single thing here is a losing proposition. Story continues Cargill credited director Derrickson with making the decision to cast a woman in the role. Theres not a lot of talk about, 'oh man, they took away the job from a guy and gave it to a woman. Everybody kind of pats us on the back for that and scold us for her not being Tibetan, he said. And thats just the way its going to go. We knew that the Social Justice Warriors would be angry either way. Doctor Strange opens Nov. 4. Related: Why Did 'Doctor Strange and 'Ghost in the Shell Whitewash Their Asian Characters? Read more on Marvel Studios Watch the Doctor Strange trailer: Donald Trump has now drawn a spotlight on the Clintons in his ongoing defense of Trump University, the ill-fated institution that allegedly had students maxing out credit cards and emptying out 401(k)s to hear Trump's supposedly hand-picked professors teaching the secrets to getting rich in the real estate industry. In new court documents filed Friday, Trump says that any references in Trump University's marketing materials to "secrets," "hand-picked" and "university" "are classic examples of sales puffery common to advertising everywhere." The Republican presidential candidate is facing several legal actions over Trump University including a class action led by Art Cohen in California that claims a violation of federal racketeering law. In this case, Trump is now pushing for summary judgment in his favor. His attorney Daniel Petrocelli tells the judge that "If this case is allowed to proceed, it would represent an unprecedented and unprincipled expansion of civil RICO and transform virtually every alleged violation of consumer protection laws into a civil RICO claim and subject owners, officers, directors and others to personal liability for treble damages." Petrocelli is a star litigator in Hollywood who once beat O.J. Simpson in a civil case and has represented pretty much every major studio. The O'Melveny & Myers partner is also a Democrat who is looking to save Trump from a trial right around the Republican National Convention. He recently previewed the defense to The Hollywood Reporter, saying that no one who signed up for Trump University thought "they were going to USC or UCLA. They were taking real estate courses over a weekend at a hotel. Those who pushed themselves found success, and those who lacked effort didn't ..." Read More: Tom Hanks Says America Can Withstand a Donald Trump Presidency Now, in summary judgment papers (read here in full), Trump's attorney is making the case there's no racketeering activity and certainly no predicate act of "fraud" in how Trump University was marketed. As part of the presentation, he basically tears apart the meaning of the word "university," pointing to another university's press release that says there is no standardized definition of the term. "As a result, educational companies and business organizations of all types frequently use the word 'university' to market their products or services despite having no affiliation with a degree-granting university," states the brief. Story continues Among the examples given is how the Clinton Foundation (founded in 2001 by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton) launched "CGI University." According to the Clinton Foundation's website, "Each year, CGI U hosts a meeting where students, university representatives, topic experts, and celebrities come together to discuss and develop innovative solutions to pressing global challenges." Trump's court papers showcase the logo: Alongside talk of this Clinton University is Disney University, Hamburger University (run by McDonalds) and Motorola University. "Even Farmers Insurance runs a well-known series of commercials starring actor J.K. Simmons as 'Professor Nathaniel Burke' at University of Farmers, where they aim to 'make you smarter' about insurance coverage," adds the summary judgment motion. The court papers say that Trump was indeed "personally involved" in hiring decisions, but that changed once Trump University's business operations expanded. But the defendant in this racketeering case says there was never any representation that Trump University was a "university" equivalent to a four-year, degree-granting institution. Read More: "Trump Effect" Boosting Campaign Ad Spends donald trump Donald Trump mocked Republican presidential rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich's commitment to a recently formed electoral alliance with Sen. Ted Cruz. During a Monday campaign stop in Philadelphia, Kasich told his Indiana supporters to vote for him, despite only hours earlier announcing that he was essentially ceding the state to Cruz. In a tweet on Monday, Trump derided Kasich for failing to commit to asking his supporters to back Cruz in Indiana. "Kasich just announced that he wants the people of Indiana to vote for him. Typical politician can't make a deal work," wrote, who often on the campaign trail chides politicians' deal-making abilities. On Sunday, Kasich and Cruz announced an alliance to consolidate anti-Trump support in a series of upcoming primary states in order to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican presidential nomination. In states like Indiana, Kasich agreed to cancel events and essentially halt campaigning, while Cruz agreed to "clear the path" for Kasich to pick up Cruz supporters in New Mexico and Ohio. Trump immediately fired back, slamming his Republican rivals in a series of tweets and releasing a lengthy statement calling the alliance a "horrible act of desperation." "Shows how weak and desperate Lyin' Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can't stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses," Trump tweeted on Monday, using a frequent moniker for Cruz. Though the Kasich campaign has reportedly been attempting to make a pact with Cruz for months, the governor himself attempted to downplay the agreement's significance Monday. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Kasich told reporters that the alliance wasn't a "big deal." "I don't see this as any big deal. I'm not going to spend resources in Indiana. He's not going to spend them in other places. So what? What's the big deal?" he said. NOW WATCH: 'It's pure political correctness: Trump on Tubman on the $20 bill More From Business Insider Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump lashed out at rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich late Sunday and early Monday, after it emerged that the pair were strategically uniting to form a Stop Trump alliance in the remaining primary contests. The background: The Cruz and Kasich campaigns announced the alliance late Sunday night, aiming to prevent Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the GOP nod before the party convention in Cleveland this July. Under the terms of the agreement, Cruz will focus his resources on winning the May 3 Indiana primary, while Kasich will hone in on Oregon, which votes on May 17, and New Mexico, where voters head to the polls June 7. Read more: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Downplays Fears of Convention Chaos at Spring Meeting With 12 other nominating contests outstanding, it remains unclear how the Cruz and Kasich campaigns will divvy up their resources in states beyond those three, but the pact represents a significant development in the monthslong effort to thwart Trump's nomination. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation," Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement. Trump isn't having it: The frontrunner's response was swift and severe. In a series of tweets, Trump framed the alliance as an act of "weakness" and "desperation," reviving his "Lyin' Ted" moniker for Cruz and noting that Kasich has only won a single nominating contest the primary in Ohio, where Kasich is the governor. Lyin' Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad! Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! Lyin' Ted Cruz and 1 for 38 Kasich are unable to beat me on their own so they have to team up (collusion) in a two on one. Shows weakness! Shows how weak and desperate Lyin' Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can't stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses. Steamrolling anyway? Trump's Twitter tirade comes ahead of what's expected to be a robust performance in Tuesday's five primary contests. Polls show Trump with wide leads in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island, suggesting that the Trump Train will gain more steam after zooming past Kasich and Cruz in last week's New York primary. From ELLE When Drew Barrymore was 23 and took the part of Danielle in Ever After-her favorite role ever in her decades-long career, she says-it was her declaration of adulthood. "I was trying to reinvent myself and come out of a tumultuous period," she told Good Housekeeping's editor-in-chief Jane Francisco at a Hearst talk this week. "[I wanted to] re-start my career and start a company with Nan [Nancy Juvonen, Jimmy Fallon's wife and Drew's friend/partner with whom she runs Flower Films], and be a young woman. I had been a kid and an awkward teenager as we all are, and I was at that place in my life where I was truly asking, What have I learned? What do I think? Who am I going to be? And then I came across this story that said, 'The Grimm brothers had it all wrong, that Cinderella rescued herself.' And I thought, 'Rescue yourself? That's who I want to be, that's who I need to be in this life.'" That mentality that has empowered her "to learn that rescuing yourself is the ultimate fairy tale, and that fairy tales are usually just very super dark in the beginning and then they have the opportunity to get super light, I like that trajectory too," Drew said. "That made me feel calm and like it doesn't matter if you feel like you have personal black x's in your life or you think you haven't done everything perfect or you got dealt a strange set of cards, whatever it is, it just doesn't matter. It always can get light. And we all want love at the end of the day. We want the prince, but if you get yourself up to that mountain instead of him carrying you up there, it's just that kiss is all the sweeter." Drew discussed her two businesses-Barrymore Wine and Flower Beauty-and how she built them at length during the hour discussion. But one of her first major shows of business leadership was years before, she recalled, when she helped shape 2000's Charlie's Angels. Drew and Nancy Juvonen-who had pretended to be characters from the '70s series as kids-rushed to Sony to pitch their vision for the movie adaptation. It was a passion project: Story continues We had just done Never Been Kissed, and [Nancy] was like "Dude,"-she doesn't talk like that very often, you know, so it's very weird-she's like, "They're making Charlie's Angels over at Sony. We've gotta get in there." And I was like, "Okay." We went in and you know, it was a big movie for them at the time. They had a lot of high hopes that it could be a big budget, you know, franchise-y type of movie and once again, here were Nan and I in our Jansport backpacks. This was the era of the power suit woman and we looked like an anomaly to all the other women who were trying to make it in Hollywood in their pinstripe skirt suits. All they really had at that point was a concept, so we told them what we would want to do, how we would want to cast it, how we see the world, handpicked the director, on and on and on, and we got to make the movie. And it was just the most fun thing in the world. I put together a reel of films, like smashed up and I had to do it VCR-to-VCR so I hooked up two VCRs together and again, I'm a girl and I'm a Pisces, this is just a disaster, it was like cords everywhere. [But] I pulled about 200 different films [from my personal library] that I thought had scenes in them thatcould show the studio what kind of tone I saw for this film. I had a movie called Foul Play. I had Enter the Dragon, the Bruce Lee movie, the scene with the mirrors. And then I went intoBob Zemeckis's first film which was called Used Cars with Kurt Russell. It went into this amazing musical number, and he's dancing on like the hood of his car, and he like does this whole light show, and there's like you know, people dancing and it's like super '70s, and that was my ode to when I thought Cameron [Diaz] would be dancing. Romance wasn't necessarily part of the vision initially, but Drew insisted on it: Look, I'm sorry, girls want love at the end of the day. We want sisterhood, we want to have each other's backs and then we want to meet back up in the morning and talk all about what happened at night with the boy. It's what girls do! I was like there has to be an element of relationship so that's why I taped this scene from Foul Play and it was just, very true to what a girl likes and feels. What if that girl also loved her girlfriends and was a real sister and they had each other's backs and they were kickass and they loved to laugh? Because a girl without a sense of humor, oof! They became producers on the project, and the rest is history: Paris (AFP) - Shares in French energy giant EDF plunged 11 percent Monday after the state said it would lead a four-billion-euro capital increase as the company tries to tackle a huge debt pile. France, which owns 85 percent of EDF, announced the move late Friday, while the power company pledged to cut millions more in costs and sell off assets. EDF chairman Jean-Bernard Levy said Monday that there would be no additional job cuts at the power company beyond the 3,350 posts which EDF has already announced are set to go by 2018. EDF shares fell 11.07 percent to 10.885 euros at the close on Monday. The power company's debt woes have weighed on its project to build a controversial 23-billion-euro ($26 billion) nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in southwest England. Hinkley Point, which EDF is to build in partnership with China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), will be Britain's first nuclear power plant in decades and is to provide seven percent of its energy needs by 2025. Questions have been raised about the financial viability of the project as EDF is struggling with a debt pile of more than 37 billion euros. Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said EDF would give the final green light to the controversial investment decision in September. The decision had been expected in May, but EDF announced the delay on Friday, saying it first had to consult with an internal committee as demanded by France's unions. On Friday, the French government announced that it would plough three billion euros into the energy provider, as part of the four-billion-euro capital increase. Falling electricity prices, low gas and coal prices and a rise in the use of renewable energies have all added to EDF's debt woes. On top of that, the state last May decided that EDF would take over the reactor arm of struggling nuclear giant Areva, at a cost of 2.5 billion euros. EDF is also racking up costs in the construction of a next generation nuclear powerplant in Flamanville in northern France, which started in 2007 and has been beset by technical delays. Story continues The cost is now estimated at 10.5 billion euros, three times the initial cost, with completion expected in 2018. The Flamanville design, considered the most advanced and safest in the world, uses the same design planned for Hinkley Point. John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, said the latest delay to EDF's investment decision "may now be the sign that the entire project is coming to a grinding halt" and showed the British government "urgently needs to back renewable energy as a more reliable alternative." Even if EDF could agree on the financing of the project, the European Commission could scupper it on the grounds that it was being built with "illegal state aid," Sauven added. A editor of Bangladesh's first LGBT publication, Roopbaan, was hacked to death in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday, according to reports. Thirty-five-year-old Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Tanay Mojumdar were murdered in an apartment by a group of people purporting to deliver a package on behalf of a courier service, the Dhaka Tribune and the Guardian reported. "Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death. Another person was injured," Maruf Hossain Sorder, a spokesman for Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told Agence France-Presse. In recent months, activists and thought leaders have been increasingly targeted in Bangladesh. On Saturday, according to the Independent, a professor was hacked to death by the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, and on April 6, suspected killed an atheist, secular activist in similar fashion. April 25, 2016, 11:25 a.m. Eastern: This story has been updated. He is currently being detained at Palma prison in isolation and is forbidden from meeting anyone. (Photo: AP) Majorca, Spain: An Islamic State fighter levied bizarre rules on his girlfriend by forbidding her to wear bikini in public and shaving body hair, according to a report in the Daily Mail. Morrocan Mohamed Harrak, 46, was arrested on the suspicion of planning a terror attack in Spain. He was suspected of spreading terrorist propaganda and recruiting fighters. Upon being questioned by the authorities, Harrak said that he did not belong to the Islamic State group and was in fact an undercover agent working as an ISIS fighter in disguise. The details about his personal life and relationship have surfaced only after he was detained by police as a suspected ISIS fighter. Revealing about his personal life, his friends told investigators that he worked as a chef in a holiday hotel. They also said that he had banned his Spanish girlfriend from wearing a bikini, stating that exposing any of the body parts is forbidden for women according to his religion. He was also accused of banning her from shaving body hair as it was also against his law. Harrak's strict rules and demands led to their breakup, one of his friend's was quoted as saying. He also told the investigators that he worked for Spain's National Intelligence Centre and was disguised as a terrorist to gather information about them and their cells. Denying all the allegations pressed against him, Harrak repeatedly said that he was only doing his duty. Harrak's friends said that his former girlfriend was unable to meet his increasing demands, following which she decided to break up with him. They also said that he had forced his mother as well as sister to wear black veil, while going out in public. Describing his work as an undercover agent, Harrak told investigators that he was asked to post pro-ISIS messages on social media and try to get a place in the terror group. He is currently being detained at Palma prison in isolation and is forbidden from meeting anyone. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Endeavour Silver Corp. (EXK) a Canada-based mining company engaged in silver mining in Mexico and related activities, including property acquisition, exploration, development, mineral extraction, processing, refining and reclamation, recently announced its production results for the First Quarter, 2016 from the Company's three operating silver mines in Mexico: the Guanacevi mine in Durango State and the Bolanitos and El Cubo mines in Guanajuato State. Silver production in the First Quarter, 2016 was 1,510,065 ounces (oz.) and gold production was 15,960 oz. resulting in silver equivalent production of 2.7 million oz. using a 75:1 silver gold ratio. Quarterly production was lower both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year as per the Company's 2016 guidance. Endeavour CEO Bradford Cooke commented, "Our plan for 2016 is to focus on profit margin by minimizing all-in sustaining costs and improving after-tax free cash flow at each mine. That means investing less on exploration and development, primarily at El Cubo and Bolanitos, as well as evaluating new opportunities to reduce operating costs at each mine. For example, we are encouraged by the initial test results to significantly improve ore grade at El Cubo by reducing waste going into the plant using an optical sorting technology." Will Silver continue to shine? For the full research report with analyst comments and analyst price targets on Endeavour Silver Corp. (EXK) please follow the link. There is no cost obligation required to view analyst brief: http://broadstreetalerts.com/exk-analyst/ FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. 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Broad Street Alerts expressly disclaims any fiduciary responsibility or liability for any consequences, financial or otherwise arising from any reliance placed on the information in this document. Broad Street Alerts does not (1) guarantee the accuracy, timeliness, completeness or correct sequencing of the information, or (2) warrant any results from use of the information. The included information is subject to change without notice. CFA and Chartered Financial Analyst are registered trademarks owned by CFA Institute. SOURCE: Broad Street Alerts Gambela (Ethiopia) (AFP) - Clashes between different ethnic groups in west Ethiopia have left 14 dead, while UN and MSF offices were targeted by angry protesters, local security service sources said. The violence was sparked after an NGO car with an Ethiopian driver ran over and killed two children from the Nuer ethnic group in a camp for South Sudanese refugees on Friday, the sources told AFP. In response, a group of refugees attacked Ethiopians living around the camp, killing 10 men and women. Ethopians from the Anuak ethnic group -- traditional rivals of the Nuer -- then marched on the city of Gambela, killing four Nuer Ethiopians in separate incidents on Saturday and Sunday. "People are angry, we want revenge. If the police hadn't got involved, plenty of Nuer would have been killed," Addis Alemayu of the Anuak group said. "With all these refugees coming from South Sudan, things are only getting worse... this is our land, we were here before them." Protesters also attacked buildings and vehicles belonging to the United Nations, which they accuse of aiding Nuer refugees. "Protesters broke open the entry gate to one of our residences and destroyed a vehicle," said Stephanie Savariaud, spokeswoman for the UN's world food programme in Ethiopia. Groups also targeted the offices of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), damaging some of the aid organisation's vehicles and forcing staff to stay in a city hotel. Gambela has a population of 300,000 but has taken in 270,000 mainly Nuer refugees fleeing the conflict in neighbouring South Sudan. Several different ethnic groups live in the town and violence between them is frequent. A former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania has revealed to the world that, at the age of 90 and some 20 years after the death of his wife, he's planning to remarry. Only this time, it's to a man 50 years his junior. Harris Wofford penned a touching op-ed for Sunday's New York Times, in which he told the world how he found love twice. Harris Wofford met Matthew Chartlon when then ex Senator was 75 (LinkedIn) "I was sure I would never again feel the kind of love Clare and I shared," Wofford recalled in 'Finding Love Again, This Time With a Man', about the period following the death of his wife, Clare, from leukemia in 1996. "During 48 years of marriage, we had spent a lifetime together." Read: Whole Foods Says It Will Sue Pastor Who Accused Worker Of Icing Gay Slur On Cake Little did Wofford know he'd be blessed with a second love named Matthew Charlton, who's now set to become his husband April 30. Wofford recalled the moment he met the 25-year-old man on a fateful day in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida five years after Clare's death. "It was afternoon, and the tanning beachgoers faced west, toward the wall of concrete buildings lining the boulevard, to catch the sun, ignoring the beautiful sea. I swam alone in the water, attracting the attention of two bystanders near the shore. They came over to say hello, which is how I met Matthew Charlton." Wofford, a father of three, was 75. "We took trips around the country and later to Europe together, becoming great friends. We both felt the immediate spark, and as time went on, we realized that our bond had grown into love. Other than with Clare, I had never felt love blossom this way before," he wrote. Read: Unisex Bathroom Sign at Supermarket is Making Some Shoppers Uncomfortable That love hasn't faded in the last 15 years of partnership. And Wofford, once a special assistant for civil rights to President John F. Kennedy and adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, is proud to share it with the world. Story continues "Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall straight, gay or in between," he wrote. "I dont categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness." Watch: Woman Writes Open Letter To Strangers Who Comforted Her at Whole Foods When Dad Committed Suicide Related Articles: By Jim Finkle (Reuters) - The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems. SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT on Monday released a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures. The developments coming to light the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that a lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood because of weaknesses that enabled attackers to modify a SWIFT software program installed on bank servers. The new evidence suggests that hackers manipulated the Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, in a bid to cover up fraudulent transfers that had been previously ordered. The findings from BAE and SWIFT do not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. That remains a key mystery in ongoing probes into the heist. Deteran told Reuters on Sunday that SWIFT was issuing the software update to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records." She said "the malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services." The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT,or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE , which has a large cyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access. Story continues BAE published its findings on Monday in a blog post on malware that it said thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist. The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February. Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing. Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers. The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said. SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said. It is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security. Whilst we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defense against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems, Deteran said. Adrian Nish, BAE's head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers. "I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in," he said. "I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile." A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAE's findings. A senior official with the Bangladesh Polices Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe. Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the bank's computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks. Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems. "It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven't found any evidence that they advised before the heist," said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT. [L2N16S0OR] THWARTING FUTURE ATTACKS Monday's alert from BAE includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IP address of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff. The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hacker's tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE. BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials. It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers. Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks. Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh. While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, "the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again, "according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters. The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the bank's activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said. Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said. It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered. It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston. Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka.; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Martin Howell) (Reuters) - Former Perrigo Co Plc head Joseph Papa was named Chief Executive Officer at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International on Monday, a role in which investors said he should focus on returning the company to growth. Papa will replace CEO Michael Pearson, whose years of frenzied dealmaking fueled double-digit profit increases at Valeant until scrutiny of its controversial relationship with a specialty pharmacy and history of sharp drug price increases hit its shares and sales last fall. Shares of Laval, Quebec-based Valeant rose on Monday after it announced the high-profile hire before losing about 2.2 percent in New York trading to close at $35.16. Shares are far from their August 2015 high of $263.70, falling to the current level earlier this year after Valeant said it would restate earnings and delay filing its 2015 financial report, opening the door to possible default on its $30 billion in debt. Papa, 60, takes the reigns after a decade at Perrigo and previous positions at drug distributor Cardinal Health , generic drugmaker Watson Pharmaceuticals which is now Allergan Inc , and pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG . Last year, he led Dublin, Ireland-based Perrigo to rebuff a $26 billion takeover by Mylan NV and spent six months meeting with investors, urging them not to sell to Mylan. His meetings and a public letter campaign convinced shareholders that Perrigo should be a standalone company. Papa's track record helped his case, but recent months have been challenging and Perrigo said on Monday that its earnings and sales will fall short this year, disappointing shareholders. The shortfall is in part due to weak sales in Europe and its Omega Pharma acquisition, both part of Papa's strategy, said Wells Fargo analyst David Maris, who downgraded the stock to market perform. Papa does not have significant experience in branded prescription drugs, Valeant's area of focus, Maris said. Perrigo sells over-the-counter products, which are a small part of Valeant's business. "Perrigo has limited international business; Valeant has a lot," said Maris, who rates the stock "underperform." "Perrigo has acquired a lot of products and divested very few; Valeants future probably has a lot of divestitures." Reuters reported earlier this month that Valeant had brought in investment banks to review its options amid buyout firms and other companies' interest in a number of its businesses. Patrick Kaser, portfolio manager at Brandywine Global, which owns more than 2.3 million Valeant shares, said Papa's experience selling over-the-counter healthcare products would be an asset for the company's skincare and Bausch and Lomb eyecare lines. Kaser said one early priority should be repairing Valeants relationship with health insurance companies, which are steering patients away from the company's products. Job One is slowing and stemming the damage, he said. The news of the appointment, first reported by Reuters, pushed shares of Perrigo down more than 15 percent. The company replaced Papa with President John Hendrickson, a 27-year Perrigo veteran, and named director Laurie Brlas as chairman. Perrigo reported preliminary first-quarter earnings of $1.71 to $1.77 per share and said it expected a full-year profit of $8.20 to $8.60 per share, excluding special items. Both are below analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Valeant was looking for a replacement for Pearson for more than a month. He suddenly left in December on a medical leave for pneumonia and returned to Valeant at the end of February. Papa will also be chairman, a role Pearson had lost after his return. The changes have come after activist investor Bill Ackman, who has lost billions of dollars on the company, joined its board and creditors began to increase pressure. Several groups of noteholders have issued notices of default, requiring Valeant to file its 2015 financial report as soon as April 29. (Reporting by Carl O'Donnell, Greg Roumeliotis and Caroline Humer in New York; Additional reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnapeg, Manitoba; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Bernard Orr) By Jim Finkle (Reuters) - SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers on Monday that it was aware of "a number of recent cyber incidents" where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system. The disclosure came as law enforcement authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigated the February cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. SWIFT has acknowledged that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank's computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Monday's statement from SWIFT marked the first acknowledgement that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions. "SWIFT is aware of a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit SWIFT messages from financial institutions' back-offices, PCs or workstations connected to their local interface to the SWIFT network," the group warned customers on Monday in a notice seen by Reuters. The warning, which SWIFT issued in a confidential alert sent over its network, did not name any victims or disclose the value of any losses from the previously undisclosed attacks. SWIFT confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the notice. SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions. Also on Monday, SWIFT released a security update to the software that banks use to access its network to thwart malware that security researchers with British defense contractor BAE Systems said was probably used by hackers in the Bangladesh Bank heist.[L2N17S0RG] BAE's evidence suggested that hackers manipulated SWIFT's Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, to cover their tracks. Story continues BAE said it could not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. But SWIFT provided some evidence about how that happened in its note to customers, saying that in most cases the modus operandi was similar. It said the attackers obtained valid credentials for operators authorized to create and approve SWIFT messages, then submitted fraudulent messages by impersonating those people. FOLLOWING THE MONEY Cyber security experts said more attacks could surface as SWIFT's banking clients look to see if their SWIFT access has been compromised. Shane Shook, a banking security consultant who investigates large financial crime, said hackers were turning to SWIFT and other private financial messaging platforms because such attacks can generate more revenue than going after consumers or small businesses. "These hacks specifically target financial institutions because smaller efforts result in much larger thefts," he said. "It's much more efficient than stealing from consumers." Justin Harvey, chief security officer with Fidelis Cybersecurity, said hackers followed the money and would be drawn into such schemes in hopes of emulating a big heist like the one on Bangladesh Bank. "After the Bangladesh Bank heist became public, every other attacker out there is looking to see if they can do the same," he said. SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha Deteran told Reuters that the commonality in these cases was that internal or external attackers compromised the banks own environments to obtain valid operator credentials. "Customers should do their utmost to protect against this," she said in an email to Reuters. SWIFT told customers that the security update must be installed by May 12. "We have made the Alliance interface software update mandatory as it is designed to help banks identify situations in which attackers have attempted to hide their traces - whether these actions have been executed manually or through malware," she said. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell and Peter Cooney) Palestinian Dima al Wawi, 12, who is believed to be the youngest female detained by Israel, looks on as she sits inside her house in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. (Photo: AFP) Tulkarm, Palestinian Territories: Israel freed 12-year-old Palestinian Dima al Wawi from prison on Sunday, more than two months after jailing her for an attempted stabbing attack. Wawi was handed over to Palestinian authorities at Tulkarem crossing point into the northern West Bank, an AFP photographer said. She was to travel from there to her family home near Hebron in the south of the territory. She was arrested, wearing her school uniform, on February 9 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and found to be carrying a knife. A wave of Palestinian knife, gun or car-ramming attacks has left 28 Israelis dead since last October, with 201 Palestinians killed over the same period, most of them while carrying out attacks. The mother of Palestinian Dima al Wawi, 12, reacts after her release from Israeli prison. (Photo: AFP) Under a plea bargain with Israeli military prosecutors, Wawi pleaded guilty to attempted murder and possession of a knife and was sentenced to four months in an Israeli prison and a further six-week suspended sentence. She is the youngest Palestinian girl ever imprisoned, her lawyer Tariq Barghouth posted on Facebook. Barghouth said that Wawis defence team had asked the military court for her early release and it agreed. According to Israeli military law, minors from age 12 can be charged, uniquely in the world according to United Nations childrens agency Unicef. Israel is currently holding about 450 Palestinian minors, around 100 of whom are under 16. By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Kids starting daycare may be at increased risk of stomach bugs during the first year but then have few infections later on, according to researchers in The Netherlands. The results suggest that daycare may ultimately protect children from stomach infections over time. So-called acute gastroenteritis is an important cause of illness and doctor visits in developed countries, particularly among preschoolers in the winter, said senior author Marieke de Hoog of the University Medical Center Utrecht. While daycare has been linked with an increased risk of stomach bugs, less was known about whether the risk decreases later in childhood, her team writes in Pediatrics. For the new study, the authors tracked 1,626 Dutch children for the first six years of life, including 1,344 who attended daycare before their first birthday. Over those six years, there were about 12 stomach infections each year for every 100 children in daycare, compared to about 13 infections among those not attending daycare. While rates of infection were similar across the entire six years, the children in daycare were about 13 percent more likely to be diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis during the first year, compared to kids who weren't in daycare. Children in daycare had a lower risk of infections from years three to six, compared to kids not in daycare, the researchers found. "It is even possible that the protective effect persist beyond six years of age, however more research is needed to support that," wrote de Hoog in an email to Reuters Health. Dr. David Dunkin, pediatric gastroenterologist at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, said the increased risk of stomach infections in the first year of daycare is likely a result of kids being exposed for the first time to the stomach infection-causing germs. "If (parents) can hang in there for the first year of them being sick, then the time after that is going to be pretty calm with less infections," said Dunkin, who was not involved with the new research. The new study can't say why children in daycare seem to have a lower risk of infection as they get older, but de Hoog said the body may learn to protect itself. Dunkin said the best advice for parents with kids suffering with a stomach infection is to make sure they're getting plenty of liquids. "A lot of these kids arent going to want to eat, because they're not feeling well, but we suggest small sips frequently," he said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1VOHVnN Pediatrics, online April 25, 2016. Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic militant group from the southern Philippines notorious for abducting foreigners, beheaded a Canadian hostage on Monday. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was "outraged" by the killing, and authorities were trying to free another Canadian still being held along with a Norwegian man and a Filipina. Here are five facts about Abu Sayyaf: Origins The group is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 100,000 lives in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines since the 1970s. It was established in the 1990s with funds from a relative of former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Abu Sayyaf's strongholds are the Muslim-populated islands of Jolo and Basilan in the far south of the Philippines, about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila. Methods Sallying forth in fast boats from the islands, the Abu Sayyaf snatches local and foreign victims, demanding ransom payments for their freedom. Hostages, many of them Western tourists but also Christian missionaries and locals, are then hidden among sympathetic Muslim communities on Jolo and Basilan. Victims are often murdered if ransoms are not paid -- the Abu Sayyaf beheaded an American man in 2002, as well as a Malaysian last year. US help The United States lists the Abu Sayyaf as a "foreign terrorist organisation". From 2002-2014, the US deployed Special Forces advisers to train and provide intelligence to Filipino troops, which led to the killing or arrest of many Abu Sayyaf leaders. US assistance was scaled back after the Pentagon concluded the group, originally with about 1,000 fighters, had lost the ability to launch international attacks. Rising threat Since then, Abu Sayyaf has launched a series of raids on foreigners and locals, as well as engaged in battles with Filipino troops that have killed dozens from both sides. A German couple abducted off their yacht in 2014 was released after six months, with a ransom of more than $5 million believed to have been paid. Story continues In September last year, gunmen seized two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipina from a Philippine resort island. When an April 25 deadline for a ransom of three million pesos ($6.3 million) passed, the severed head of Canadian John Ridsdel was dumped in a Jolo street. Fourteen Indonesians and four Malaysians have been abducted from boats in waters near the southern Philippines over the past month, an unusual expansion of operations against sailors and away from targets along the coast. Black flags In recent years, several Abu Sayyaf units, along with other small armed groups in the south, have publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that holds vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. IS, known for its black flag and brutal interpretation of Islamic law, has acknowledged them and cited the Abu Sayyaf in its communiques and news reports. Philippine authorities and security analysts say the pledges are just ploys to draw attention and potential funding from IS. They say the Abu Sayyaf is less interested in Islamic ideology than in getting rich from kidnappings. A Florida mans journey in an inflatable bubble across the sea to Bermuda ended after the U.S. Coast Guard towed him back to land. The long-distance runner Reza Baluchi, 42, was picked up on Sunday and his hydropod was brought to shore, Coast Guard Petty Officer Mark Barney told Associated Press. Despite receiving a letter earlier this month from the Coast Guard warning him not to depart, Baluchi set out from Pompano Beach on Saturday with intentions of reaching Bermuda in his hydropod that allowed him to run on water. Your vessel and the conditions under which you are attempting to complete your voyage to Bermuda is unsafe, the letter reads. I view your current planned voyage without use of an escort/support vessel or an equivalent safety precaution that would allow for self-rescue as unsafe. Ignoring the warning, Baluchi intended to set out on his five month journey at sea to raise money for children in need, according to his website. He brought protein bars with him and intended to catch food on a daily basis. According to his website, he would sleep for a few hours and wake up to begin running in his hydropod until his body became too hot at which point, Baluchi would jump into the sea to cool down. His hydropod was equipped with a hammock and tracking device so that his team would be aware of his position. Baluch attempted to make a similar voyage to Bermuda back in 2014 and was also rescued. By Gleb Garanich and Alessandra Prentice PRIPYAT, Ukraine (Reuters) - For residents of Chernobyl, a three-day evacuation turned into a thirty-year exile. On the morning of April 26, 1986, no one could yet tell that a meltdown in reactor 4 of the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine was poisoning the air with so much deadly radioactivity that it would become the world's worst nuclear accident. Now, as some survivors returned to their hometown of Pripyat on the eve of the anniversary, memories of confusion and sacrifice abound. "I barely found my apartment, I mean it's a forest now - trees growing through the pavement, on the roofs. All the rooms are empty, the glass is gone from the windows and everything's destroyed," said Zoya Perevozchenko, 66. She only realised something might be wrong that day 30 years before when her husband, Valeriy, didn't come back from his night shift as a foreman at the stricken reactor. She left her apartment in Pripyat, a model Soviet town built in the 1970s to house Chernobyl workers and their families, to look for him. "I remember thinking 'Goodness it's hot' and some people were in masks. But they didn't explain things to us straight away, it was all secret. And the kids were running about barefoot in the puddles," she said. She found her husband in a local clinic. He had received a fatal dose of radiation that had burned the skin on his face bright red. He was airlifted to Moscow for treatment, but died 45 days later - one of the 31 to die of acute radiation sickness in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Perevozchenko and her two young daughters ended up in Kiev, where they still live. Returning to Pripyat, she found it hard to reconcile the memories of her life there with the derelict ruins of a town abandoned for three decades. Images of Zoya and other former residents returning to Pripyat can be seen in a Reuters Wider Image photo essay at http://reut.rs/1pxr7D7 INVISIBLE POISON Elena Kupriyanova, 42, was only 12 when she was evacuated from Pripyat, which lies in the 2,600 square km (1,000 square mile) 'exclusion zone' that has remained largely uninhabited by law since the disaster. "It's very painful that so many people's (lives) were destroyed, that such a beautiful, new town was abandoned. It's hard on the soul," she said. Her family and most of the town's 50,000 other residents were transported out of the area in buses on April 27 and told to pack only the bare essentials because they would only be away for three days. They took their documents and a small suitcase. "It was so hot, such beautiful weather. All the fruit trees were in bloom and I thought - what do they mean 'radiation'? It's so nice outside, you can't see anything," Kupriyanova said. What irks Valentina Yermakova, 64, is that many of the belongings they left behind have disappeared. While it is forbidden to remove anything from the radioactive zone, a large amount of portable items have been smuggled out by illegal trophy-hunters and scrap-dealers. "We locked our apartment when we left. The looters wouldn't have been able to walk in, so they broke the door down," she said. "You go in and it's not that you want to cry, it's more that you get silent and numb from everything you see. The pain, it clenches inside you." But Yermakova, whose husband worked in the plant and died several years later from causes relating to radiation, said even though Pripyat is in ruins it still feels like home. "Walking around, you recognize everything - here's Lenin Street, there's the shop "Rainbow" - it was a small town, we know the streets by heart." (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) Don't let the size fool you, this puppy is in it to win it! Watch the fearless little Frenchie engage in an epic tug-of-war game with a much bigger and stronger Shar Pei. Who will emerge victorious? You'll just have to watch until the end to find out! Nevers (France) (AFP) - A French court will on Tuesday rule in the trial against a Dutchman dubbed "the dentist of horror", who is accused of causing severe injuries to dozens of patients. Jacobus van Nierop, 51, went on trial in March for ripping out healthy teeth and leaving patients with injuries including broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicaemia in the small central town of Chateau-Chinon. Prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru requested an eight-year prison sentence against a man she said took "pleasure at causing pain" to his patients. She told the court in Nevers that Van Nierop had carried out "useless and painful procedures" on about 100 patients with the aim of having them reimbursed by medical insurance schemes. Van Nierop, who called himself Mark, was hired by a head-hunter and was initially welcomed by locals into an area which was lacking in medical services. Giving evidence in court, a neighbour recalled the arrival of a smiley, larger-than-life character, with a "big 4x4, a big dog, a big cigar". But by 2011, the authorities were starting to question some of his accounting practices, and patients were starting to compare notes on his dentistry. The court heard nightmarish tales, including one from Sylviane Boulesteix, 65, who saw Van Nierop in March 2012 to have braces fitted. "He gave me seven or eight injections, and pulled out eight teeth in one go. I was gushing blood for three days," she said. Around 120 former patients joined a victims' group set up in early 2013. The trial has heard conflicting expert opinion about Van Nierop's psychological state. One psychiatrist found he had "narcissistic tendencies" and was therefore incapable of making a moral judgement of his own actions. But another found he was "perfectly aware of what he was doing". Although he is not required to offer a plea under French law, Van Nierop has sought to deflect responsibility, saying he suffers from "psychological problems" including gender identity issues and suicidal tendencies. He was arrested in June 2013, but fled France while awaiting trial. He was later tracked down to a small town in Canada, arrested and extradited first to the Netherlands and then to France. Nice (France) (AFP) - The mayor of Nice secured a green light Monday to sue the French state in a bid to block the opening of a Saudi-funded mosque in the southern city. He has accused the building's owner, Saudi Arabia's Islamic Affairs Minister Sheikh Saleh bin Abdulaziz, of "advocating sharia" and wanting to "destroy all of the churches on the Arabian peninsula". "Our intelligence services are worried about this place of worship," said the mayor, who represents France's centre-right The Republicans party, warning against "unregulated foreign funding". Estrosi received approval Monday from the council in the south coast city to take the central government's regional representative -- Prefect Adolphe Colrat -- to court over the issue. Estrosi, mayor since 2008, said that the project which was initiated under his predecessor in 2002 was unauthorised. Colrat recently gave conditional approval for the Nicois En-nour Institute mosque to open after construction, which began in July 2012, was completed in November. He said that the mosque should not be subject to any foreign influence and called for it to be a beacon of Muslim worship in Nice and the region. Opposition councillor Patrick Allemand accused Estrosi of "feeding populism". "It is a stigmatising approach, you point the finger at a whole community," he said. A petition supporting the mosque has attracted more than 2,100 signatures. MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Mobile App Friendable, (OTC Pink: FDBL) to focus on Strategic Celebrity partnerships. Friendable, Inc. (OTC Pink: FDBL) entered into an agreement with a major advertising agency with a focus on strategic celebrity partnerships to seek out such partnerships and related opportunities on behalf of the Company and the Friendable Brand. The Terms of the agreement call for a series of strategic celebrity partnerships including the integration of the Company's Friendable brand into Music Videos, over a six-month period. This could be a great accomplishment for FDBL because it not only brings validation to the brand, but also helps tap into the potentially tens of millions of fans for each celebrity partnership. FDBL just reported earlier this month that for March, the downloads of the Company's Friendable app increased 558% over the previous months of January and February 2016. As of last week, the Friendable App has 1,028,215 downloads. As these numbers continue to grow and validate the widespread acceptance of the app and its brand, FDBL could begin to look attractive to some of the major companies in the space. At this time, Friendable's (OTC Pink: FDBL) approximate market cap is a meager $1 million. What are you Friendable for right now? Try Friendable for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/friendable-free-meet-new-people/id674962256?mt=8 Try Friendable for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=friendable.com.friendable Other Stocks to Watch: Aeropostale, Inc. (OTCQX:AROP) is a specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, principally targeting 14 to 17 year-old young women and men through its Aeropostale stores and website and 4 to 12 year olds through its P.S. from Aeropostale stores and website. The Company announced that it received written notice from the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") that the NYSE has determined to commence proceedings to delist the Company's common stock, pursuant to Section 802.01D of the NYSE's Listed Company Manual due to an "abnormally low" trading price. The NYSE also suspended trading in the Company's common stock effective immediately. Story continues Later that day, OTC Markets Group Inc., operator of financial markets for 10,000 U.S. and global securities, announced that Aeropostale, Inc. (OTCQX:AROP), a specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Jason Paltrowitz, Executive VP of Corporate services at OTC Markets Group stated, "We are pleased to welcome the company to the OTCQX family." For those of you following SunEdison (SUNE), The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has granted the relief requested by the Company in key first day motions related to ordinary course business activities. This includes the continuation of employee wages and benefits, work on ongoing projects, and certain vendor payments. Some of these motions were granted on an interim basis and the Bankruptcy Court has scheduled a final hearing for May 10, 2016. The Court also granted interim approval for the Company to access up to $300 million in debtor-in-possession financing from a consortium of first and second lien lenders in support of continuing business operations. Propanc Health Group Corporation (PPCH), is a development stage healthcare company whose current focus is the development of new cancer treatments for patients with solid tumors such as pancreatic, ovarian and colorectal cancers. Propanc was established in 2007 and located in Melbourne, Australia. The Company recently announced the filing of two more patent applications in the United States regarding new compositions of its lead product, PRP, for treating cancer. The company recently showed investors a 236% increase over six trading sessions the first week of March. The company gave back half prior to the patent announcement before steadily climbing back up to .0336 per share at the close Friday. ABOUT EmergingGrowth.com: EmergingGrowth.com focus on Emerging Growth companies that can be overlooked by the investment community. The smaller companies that make the large ones great have potentially more room to grow than the large companies themselves. We look for innovation, strategy, and execution. We specialize in growth oriented and acquisition minded companies both publicly traded and privately held. If you have an idea for an "Emerging Growth" company, drop us a line at EmergingGrowth1@gmail.com. DISCLOSURE: All information contained herein as well as on the EmergingGrowth.com website is obtained from sources believed to be reliable but not guaranteed to be accurate or all-inclusive. All material is for informational purposes only, is only the opinion of EmergingGrowth.com and should not be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell securities. EmergingGrowth.com may either hold a stock position in or have been compensated by or for a company or companies discussed in this article. EmergingGrowth.com does not have a stock position in any securities discussed in this article. Please view our full disclosure which can be found here, http://www.emerginggrowth.com/disclosure-3325/. Please consult an investment professional before investing in anything viewed within. When EmergingGrowth.com is long shares it will sell those shares. In addition, please make sure you read and understand the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and the Disclosure posted on the EmergingGrowth.com website. CONTACT: Company: EmergingGrowth.com - http://www.EmergingGrowth.com Contact Email: EmergingGrowth1@gmail.com SOURCE: EmergingGrowth.com www.EmergingGrowth.com A storm between Galveston and Houston in Texas on Sunday, April 24, produced at least one funnel cloud. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for the area, including League City, where this video was taken. The NWS reported cloud rotation, but it had not confirmed there was a tornado. Credit: Twitter/Aaron Marc Martinez The worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix. (Representational Image) Lahore, Pakistan: At least 23 people have died and dozens of others fell ill in central Pakistan after eating sweets which police suspect were tainted with pesticides, officials said on Monday. Umar Hayat, a resident of the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab province, bought the baked confectionery on April 17 to distribute among friends and family after the birth of his grandson. But their celebrations turned out to be short-lived when ten people died on the same day. "The death toll from consumption of the sweets has now risen to 23, and 52 people are still being treated at various hospitals," local police official Munir Ahmed said on Monday. He said the dead included the baby boy's father and seven of his uncles. Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the district, confirmed the incident, adding three people -- two brothers who run the bakery and a worker -- had been arrested. The worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix. "There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated, and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safe keeping," said Bukhari. "A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture," he said, but added that police were awaiting for the results of laboratory testing. Pakistan has poor food safety standards and hygiene laws are rarely implemented. Washington (AFP) - US newspaper giant Gannett on Monday announced an $815 million bid for rival Tribune Publishing to create a powerhouse combining USA Today with the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The plan would bring together two large newspaper groups which have been spun off from larger media conglomerates amid woes in an industry suffering from a loss of print circulation and advertising as readers shift to digital. The plan "would deliver substantial strategic and financial benefits for the combined company," said Gannett chairman John Jeffry Louis. Gannett chief executive Robert Dickey said the deal "would bring together two highly complementary organizations with a shared goal of providing trusted, premium content for the readers and communities we serve." Gannett, spun off from its parent group last year, operates more than 100 newspapers including its national flagship USA Today. The deal would add to this empire major metropolitan dailies in Los Angeles and Chicago as well as the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant and others. A Gannett statement said the offer had been rejected by Tribune Publishing, but urged the board of directors to reconsider, saying that the proposal offered a premium to the most recent stock price and could "create a company with the financial stability and flexibility equipped to preserve journalistic integrity, high standards and excellence for years to come." However, Tribune Publishing said only that it had received the proposal and would respond "as quickly as feasible." The group was spun off the larger Tribune Co. in 2014, and has been examining options such as the sale of the coveted Los Angeles daily. - 'Buying time' - Media analyst Ken Doctor said that for Gannett, the deal represents "a real big reach to become the national newspaper company of the United States." Tribune owners, he said "would face a major shareholder revolt" if the company rejects the offer, but that the price might be boosted after negotiations. Story continues Doctor said the deal could result in cost savings of $100 million "but this does not answer the question of how their revenues and profits will improve." He added that newspapers need to do more to navigate a transition to the digital era and that "cost savings get you part of the way there but it only buys a little time." Lance Vitanza at CRT Research said in a note to clients that by going public with the proposal "Gannett may be seeking to turn up the heat on Tribune's board" to consider the deal. But Vitanza said the deal faces an uphill battle if Tribune owners refuse. "Hostile takeovers are virtually unheard of in the newspaper industry, where cultural fit is paramount and regulatory concerns loom large," he said. Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who follows the newspaper sector, said a Gannett-Tribune tie-up "would not be a good development for the newspaper business," potentially leading to significant job cuts and a decline in local coverage. "I think it's understandable that since the newspaper business is in dire straits there will be an impulse to do these combinations to try to get bigger scale to offset the shrinkage in revenues," Kennedy said. "But I think people who depend on newspapers would be far better off if we moved in the other direction, to local ownership." Kennedy added that "as bad a shape as newspapers are in, if they operate under local ownership without debt and they aren't shipping revenues to some corporate headquarters, those newspapers can get by." The news comes amid turmoil in the newspaper sector. Earlier this month, Gannett closed a deal for Journal Media Group, including its 15 daily newspapers including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Tribune Publishing meanwhile last month lost a bid for the Orange County Register after US antitrust officials objected to its merger with the Los Angeles Times, claiming it would have too much dominance in southern California. Gannett last year became the latest media conglomerate to break itself apart, splitting off its television operations into a new firm called Tegna. In Yerevan, Armenia, on Sunday, George Clooney presented Marguerite Barankitse with the a $1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity for her role in saving and sheltering 30,000 children during the Burundi civil war. Barankitse founded Maison Shalom ("House of Peace") in 1993 to protect war and AIDS orphans as Burundi descended into an ethnic conflict that culminated in civil war. Read more: George Clooney Wants the US to Finally Recognize the Armenian Genocide Conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis warring ethnicities at the source of the Rwandan genocide put countless Burundian children at risk. Though Barankitse is herself a Tutsi, she endangered her own life to protect Hutus. Barankitse received $100,000 personally and $1,000,000 to distribute to organizations of her choice, doing similarly inspiring work. Source: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images Clooney is a co-chair for the for the Aurora Prize, "a new global award that will be given annually to individuals who put themselves at risk to enable others to survive . "Recipients will be recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes, having overcome significant challenges along the way." While presenting the award, Clooney described how his own ancestors had to flee Ireland during the famine and head to America in the hopes of survival. There, he said, they were met with humanity. "The simple truth is that all of us here tonight are the result of someone's act of kindness. We all stand on the shoulders of good people who didn't look away when we were in need," he said, according to the G efugees are "people, just like you and me." Watch the ceremony here: Speaking from the Armenian capital of Yerevan, actor and humanitarian George Clooney beseeched the United States and the rest of the global community to officially recognize the death of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide. Source: Vahan Stepanyan/AP The massacre of the Armenian people at the hands of Ottoman Turks began on April 24, 1915, but both the United States and Turkey have historically refused to use the word "genocide" when describing the atrocity. Addressing an assembled crowd of 15,000 people with the country's president, Serzh Sarkisian, by his side, Clooney said that the genocide "is a part of Armenia's history, it's also a part of the world's history, it's not the pain of one nation only," according to the A. The actor serves as a co-chair on the selection committee for the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, which grants an annual cash prize to an individual who has demonstrated exceptional work for humanitarian causes "on behalf of the survivors...and in gratitude to their saviors". The inaugural prize for 2016 was awarded to Marguerite Barankitse, who has saved lives and cared for orphans in refugees in Burundi during the country's ongoing civil war. Source: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images On Friday, President Obama disregarded a vow he made during his campaign for the presidency calling the massacre "the first mass atrocity of the 20th century" in a statement but stopping shy of using the word "genocide". Clooney told the Malay Mail Online that he thinks the refusal to use the term is a foolish decision. "I think it is ridiculous not to talk about it in terms of genocide, because, of course, it was," he said. Please tell me Im not the only one who spent the last five minutes of this weeks Good Wife episode clutching the couch in horror, worried Alicia and Peter might wind up having another one of those commitment-free quickies to which theyve grown so fond, or at least accustomed. RELATEDAsk Ausiello: Spoilers on The Blacklist, Castle, Good Wife, Chicago Fire, Nashville, The Flash, Once and More The red wine was flowing like inappropriate intel from Veronicas mouth, not one aspect of Jackie and Howards ketubah signing was going as planned, Zach dropped a bombshell that he was engaged (and dropping out of college), and then Jason had to go and complicate matters by giving Alicia a deed to 500 acres on Mars a joke gift offered at the exact moment she told him she wanted to be with him in a long-term-type situation, based on her one major life realization to date, There is no better moment than now. When he came back to explain himself later in the hour, it was up to Alicia to translate his strong, silent, grinning word salad of explanation: You want to go somewhere else, and you want me to go with you, but not now, but at some point when you get itchy about staying in one place? OK, I need to think on this. The good news for Jason is, Alicia sealed her comment with a kiss. The bad news is, hows a lawyer with national name recognition supposed to make a living while living all loosey-goosey and devil-may-care? (This type of lifestyle is much easier, of course, when you have a scruffy beard, a penchant for leather jackets and a profession that doesnt require you to pass a daunting state bar examination.) RELATEDCBS Developing True-Crime Anthology Series; JonBenet Ramsey Case Up First When the densely plotted, decidedly complicated party at Casa Florrick emptied out leaving only Peter and Alicia sitting together on a bed conditions seemed perfect for an ex-rated movie. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and the duo merely toasted to their impending divorce. Id call that a happy ending because, no, no, no to paraphrase Taylor Swift, they are never, never, ever, getting back together. Story continues As for everything else, lets recap the action from Season 7, Episode 20, Party (AKA the third-to-last Good Wife ever) which took place almost entirely at Alicias pad and played out like a Downton Abbey parlor soiree: GOLD-EN OPPORTUNITY? | Eli tasks Jason with proving Peters guilt in the case of tanking the murder case against the son of a major donor because he needs to know how good Assistant U.S. Attorney Connor Foxs case really is. After all, the plea deal being offered to Peter includes three years in prison, and Eli says the evidence hes seen doesnt support it. Jason gets pretty damning intel from ADA Matan Lewis, the lead detective on the case, and the head lab tech on the evidence learning Peter (then a new States Attorney) micromanaged the case, went to the crime scene, and was the last person to check out the bullets that went missing from evidence. Matans subsequent visit with Cary has Mr. Agos worried he might be a potential scapegoat and so he hires Louis Canning, who in turn, calls Elis lawyer Diane to see if she wants to join forces in a coalition of the innocent. Louis even tries to get Alicia on board she rejected spousal privilege under grand jury questioning, he points out but his efforts seem in vain. Eli seems to buy Peters explanation that the lab tech on the case was incompetent (and needed double-checking). As for the bullets, the now Illinois governor hired Dianes hubby Kurt to double check ballistics. (Uh-oh could this be any more incestuous?) And while Eli fires Jason deeming him tainted by his feelings for Alicia Jason does some more digging on the lab tech and confirms Peters version of events. (Someone shoulda hire Robyn, am I right?!_ So if Peter actually isnt guilty of letting a man go free for murder in exchange for campaign donations, what exactly is going on? Creators Robert and Michelle King have two hours left to tie it all up in a tidy (or perhaps rumpled) ribbon! A TALE OF THREE COUPLES | Its a night to celebrate Howard and Jackie whoops, the florist delivered funeral arrangements! but Zach creates the biggest waves by bringing his new girlfriend and dropping the bombshell that theyre getting married, that hes following her to a job in France, and that he plans to be a house-husband with dreams of writing a memoir. Hannah (the new fiancee) doesnt quite endear herself to her future mother-in-law by gushing that while most of her friends think Alicia is a throwback to an old kind of domesticity, she applauds her decision to stand by Peter as a harbinger of a new kind of feminism. (Girl, at least be all in your merlot before you start spouting this kind of mess!) Unfortunately, a drunken Veronica spills Peter and Alicias divorce news not just to Jackie, but to Grace (and by proxy Zach) as well. And so Alicias mocking tone about Zachs decisions What are you going to write about, Zach? get thrown back in her face. She tells him he should hold off on moving to France until his fathers case is one its what you do for family and its shocking she wants for him the same compromised decisions that have made her unhappy for a decade now. But eventually she tells Peter to leave their son alone that his mistakes should be his own. (This after Hannah shrugs that divorce isnt such a big deal that marriage should work for us not us for marriage.) Alicia ends the hour watching what looks like the series finale of that heavy-handed cable series she loves so much, and toasting her divorce with Peter. But what to make of Jackies cryptic farewell to her soon-to-be ex-daughter-in-law theyre more alike than Alicia thinks? What did you think of this weeks Good Wife? Share your thoughts in the comments! Related stories Limitless Finale Recap: Squad Goals -- What Would Season 2 Look Like? James Corden Channels Beyonce in LOL 'Lemonade' Parody -- Watch It Now Scorpion Finale: EPs Talk Happy's Shocking News, Walter's Big Decision From Cosmopolitan Can I just say that I'd happily watch entire episodes of Grey's Anatomy set in Meredith's bathroom, the way the opening of last night's episode was? Just the three sisters, making jokes, trying to surreptitiously talk about sex without the kids noticing. That's right, THE KIDS. All three of them! And the adorable button on the scene was Meredith telling Zola, "Do not ever date a man who cannot handle your P-O-W-E-R." I know this is supposed to be about how much I loved it, but I'll also be the jerk who points out that, hey, maybe Zola won't want to date men! Grey's so frequently nails it on the progressive front, so would it have been so hard for Meredith to say "anyone" instead? (Yes, I'm a terrible monster who overanalyzes cute moments between TV moms and their TV children, and I apologize for that.) Also, while we're pointing out flaws: I will always show up for Ben and Jackson doing physical activity together, but as a Seattle hometown girl, I was irritated that the park they were running in didn't have enough evergreen trees. I was also irritated that they were wearing shirts, but that's a burden for all of us to bear together. Despite his suspension, Ben's desperate to get back into the OR, so he decides to apply for a job in the anesthesiology department. He gets one, and he takes it, but it comes at the expense of Bailey's feelings. She tells him that if this is what he wants to be doing, he needs to find someplace else to sleep. So much for their church-and-state agreement. Most of the episode focuses on two 8-year-old boys, one of whom shot and paralyzed the other (they were playing with his mother's gun, which was supposed to be locked). I couldn't quite understand why the entire staff showed up to help when the boys first arrived at the hospital - it can't be the first accidental shooting they've ever seen that involves a child. Hell, off top of my head, I can remember at least one Grey's storyline where a child shot someone. Story continues Anyway, it gave a storyline that was already pretty heavy a Very Special Episode feel, and despite some really strong moments, like Amelia trying to help the shooter realize he truly didn't mean to shoot his friend, the episode never shook that off. Amelia's also the one who gets to deliver the moral of the episode in a conversation with the mother, promising that her gun was locked up. "Kids watch. They pick up everything you do." It's a sad little callback to the moment at the beginning of the episode when Amelia and Meredith and Maggie were joking about Zola picking up on the fact that they were talking about sex. Aside from the shooting, the biggest source of the episode's drama is the continuing conflict between Callie and Arizona. Callie breezes into a coffee date with Arizona full of news about her new New York apartment and the schools she's looked at for Sofia, and Arizona points out that she was never asked about any of this. The problem here is that Callie is so completely acting like she's Sofia's "real" mom that it made me go back and double-check whether Arizona actually has a legal tie to the kid. (She does.) It's no wonder Arizona's upset. And it's not like everyone else is acting effusively happy for Callie; when she talks to Bailey, to, essentially, resign, Bailey is basically all, "LOL, what are you doing, you're the head of a department and Penny is a resident you've known for, like, four months." Anyway, Arizona lawyers up, and it's clear this isn't going to end well. Oh, also, Stephanie finally (probably) has sex with Wilmer Valderrama, someone gets catfished, and Maggie makes Meredith comfort her because she loves Meredith's children so much she can't stand worrying about them. How did Meredith somehow become the most stable sister in that household!? And because no episode is complete without another wrinkle in the ongoing WHO REALLY KILLED OWEN'S SISTER debate, Owen reveals that he was the one who asked his sister to come to visit him, and so it's really all his fault. Could the long-lost sister just show up with amnesia already? It is, at this point, unbearable. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Jo casually mentions that she owns a gun and has been keeping it at Alex's house without his knowledge, which is a fun thing to bring up during a surgical procedure on a child. I can't speak to Jo's claim that she needed the gun when she was living in her car; I haven't been through that. But I do take issue with the fact that she used "Have you seen our neighborhood?" with Alex as an excuse for having held on to it. I live in Seattle, alone, in neighborhood where people sometimes get shot, or ax murdered, or dismembered, and I don't have a gun because having a gun wouldn't make me any safer. (I do carry a padlock around in a sock for self defense, in case you were concerned, although now I've lost the element of surprise.) And so while I'm very glad Jo decided to get rid of her gun, the story frustrated me from the outset, and I didn't like her speech declaring she'd get rid of her gun because she'd "outgrown it." I hated the message, "There is an appropriate time for guns, and now that time is behind me!" and I hated the implication that part of what moved gun ownership to the past was having a boyfriend. Also, she kept it in a damn shoebox. Seriously, Jo? Follow Lauren on Twitter. EDMONTON, AB / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Grizzly Discoveries Inc. (GZD.V) (OTC Pink: GZDIF) (G6H.F) ("Grizzly" or the "Company") announces that it has closed the first tranche of a private placement (the "Offering") by the issuance of 2,794,680 units of the Company ("Units") at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of $139,734. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company ("Common Share") and one non-transferable warrant ("Warrant") with each Warrant entitling the holder to acquire one additional Common Share at an exercise price of $0.075 per Common Share until the earlier of : (a) 30 days following the issuance of a news release by the Company that the trading price of the Common Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange is at or greater than $0.12 per Common Share for 10 consecutive trading days; and (b) April 25, 2018. 200,000 of the 2,794,680 Units sold were purchased by insiders of the Company. No commissions or finders fees were paid or are payable in connection with the Offering. The Company intends to use the proceeds of the Offering for general working capital. The Common Shares and any Common Shares issued on exercise of the Warrants will be subject to restrictions on trading until August 26, 2016 in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. Pursuant to closing of the Offering, the Company has 52,407,805 Common Shares issued and outstanding. ABOUT GRIZZLY DISCOVERIES INC. Grizzly is a diversified Canadian mineral exploration company with its primary listing on the TSX Venture Exchange with 52.4 million shares issued, focused on developing significant Potash assets in Alberta and its precious metals properties in southeastern British Columbia. The Company holds, or has an interest in: metallic and industrial mineral permits for potash totaling more than 363,000 acres along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border; over 235,000 acres of precious-base metal properties in British Columbia; and approximately 200,000 acres of properties which host diamondiferous kimberlites in the Buffalo Head Hills region of Alberta. On behalf of the Board, Grizzly Discoveries Inc. Brian Testo CEO, President (780) 693-2242 For further information, please visit our website at www.grizzlydiscoveries.com or contact: Nancy Massicotte, Investor Relations IR PRO COMMUNICATIONS INC. Tel: 604-507-3377 Toll Free: 1-866-503-3377 Email: ir@grizzlydiscoveries.com www.irprocommunications.com or Ian Lambert COO, Grizzly Discoveries Inc. Tel: 416-840-9843 Email: ilambert@grizzlydiscoveries.com 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. Caution concerning forward-looking information This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information and statements address future activities, events, plans, developments and projections. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information and statements are frequently identified by words such as "may," "will," "should," "anticipate," "plan," "expect," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and similar terminology, and reflect assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management of Grizzly in light of its experience, current conditions, expectations of future developments and other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause Grizzly's actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information and statements and accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed thereon. Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary include but are not limited to the availability of financing; fluctuations in commodity prices; changes to and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including environmental laws and obtaining requisite permits; political, economic and other risks; as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. Grizzly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements except as may be required by law. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES SOURCE: Grizzly Discoveries Inc. Will Charters Core Operating Profitability Improve in 1Q16? (Continued from Prior Part) Charters revenue in 1Q16 In the previous part of this series, we looked at expectations by Wall Street analysts for Charter Communications (CHTR) losses as well as core operating earnings for 1Q16. Now lets move to the top line. Wall Street anticipates the year-over-year (or YoY) growth momentum in Charters revenue to continue during the quarter. According to the analysts consensus, Charters revenue is expected to grow by ~7.3% YoY to ~$2.5 billion for the quarter. In 4Q15, the cable companys revenue rose by ~6.4% YoY. Now lets move to the consensus versus actual revenue performance of the cable company in the recent quarters. As we can observe in the above chart, the cable players revenue was close to the analysts consensus revenue figures in each quarter of 2015. The positive or negative surprise for the analysts regarding Charters revenue figures was in the range of -0.5% to ~0.5% in each quarter of 2015. Charters revenue in 4Q15 During 4Q15, Charters Internet component continued to drive the revenue growth of its residential services. Charters Residential revenue increased by ~7.2% YoY to ~$2.1 billion during the quarter. Meanwhile, the Residential Internet components revenue rose by ~16.6% YoY to ~$0.78 billion. The Commercial component also continued to drive overall revenue growth of Charter in 4Q15. Charters Commercial segment revenue increased by ~12.3% YoY to ~$0.29 billion during the quarter. Both small and medium businesses, as well as the enterprise components, contributed to the growth of Charters Commercial segment revenue during 4Q15. For a diversified exposure to some of the largest cable companies in the US, you may consider investing in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). SPY held a total of ~1.2% in Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWC), and Cablevision (CVC) at the end of March 2016. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Love is in the air in June, one of the most popular months to hold weddings, and Hallmark Channel knows it. Thats why the network is inviting viewers to its second annual June Weddings celebration with five original movies. Hallmark favorite Danica McKellar announces the return of the programming event in the exclusive video above, shot on on the set of her new film, Wedding Bells, which kicks things off on a special night, Friday, June 3. As Michelle Vicary, Crown Media Family Networks EVP of Programming and Publicity, says in the networks announcement, [W]e have another incredibly romantic line-up of originals, including a story of reuniting with a lost love in Wedding March starring Jack Wagner alongside his Melrose Place co-star Josie Bissett. Danica McKellar portrays a woman who finds that true love can take you by surprise in Wedding Bells, and fans will also be charmed by Vanessa Marcil in The Convenient Groom and Rachel Boston in Stop The Wedding. Here are the full synopses: Wedding Bells, premiering Friday, June 3 at 9 p.m. ET Stars: Danica McKellar (The Wonder Years), Kavan Smith (When Calls the Heart), Bruce Boxleitner (Cedar Cove), Tammy Gillis (Unleashing Mr. Darcy) Molly Quinn is a young New York fashion designer who would rather be single than risk being hurt by love. As she struggles to create a new fashion line, Mollys socialite best friend, Amy, and her fiance, James, invite her to dinner. At a trendy restaurant, Molly meets handsome chef Nick Turner, a confirmed bachelor, who also believes that love only leads to heartache. When Amy learns that her wealthy family has suddenly gone broke, she is forced to cancel her elaborate wedding plans. Lending a helping hand, Nick offers to cater the affair at his fathers closed-down Massachusetts inn, and Molly volunteers to spearhead the wedding preparations. At the inn, Molly and Nick are greeted by Charlie, Nicks gruff-but-lovable dad, who is still grieving over the loss of his wife. As they beautify the resort and prepare for the upcoming wedding, Mollys vintage tastes and emphasis on comfort clash with Nicks refined sensibilities. Before long, Molly and Nick are inspired by a collection of Charlies old love letters and despite their not believing in romance find themselves falling for each other. On the day of the wedding, Amy and James realize they are not right for one another and decide to call it off. As her friends wedding plans unravel, Molly worries that a relationship with Nick wouldnt work out, and suggests they part ways. But when she returns to the New York fashion scene, Molly cant stop reminiscing about her time at the inn and her time with Nick. With the inn now staged for a perfect wedding, the young fashion designer wonders if its too late to finally take a chance on love. Story continues Ms. Matched, premiering Saturday, June 4 at 9 p.m. ET Stars: Alexa PenaVega (Spy Kids) PenaVega portrays a successful wedding planner trying to make dreams come true for brides by organizing fairytale weddings. But when she is paired with a financial advisor at a wedding expo, she soon realizes he is giving the exact opposite advice to their audience by telling them to save their money. When they are forced to spend more time together than they bargained for, they find out that they have more in common than they think . Stop the Wedding, premiering Saturday, June 11 at 9 p.m. ET Stars: Rachel Boston (The Witches of East End), Alan Thicke (Growing Pains), Teryl Rothery (Cedar Cove) When Annabelle Coakley, a young, single attorney, finds out that her beloved aunt who raised her is marrying a famous actor who is known just as much for his multiple failed marriages as for his acting career, Annabelles protective instincts take over and she is determined to keep her aunt from making a big mistake. The groom-to-bes son also runs to the rescue of his father, believing he has once again found a bride in love with his money instead of him. When the two young saviors meet, things get messy. But in the process of trying to stop the wedding, they find themselves falling in love and learning to let go. The Convenient Groom, premiering Saturday, June 18 at 9 p.m. ET Stars: Vanessa Marcil (General Hospital, Las Vegas) In the charming New England town of Nantucket, Dr. Kate Lawrence, a celebrity relationship expert, shoots another dating advice video for her popular blog. Later, at a farmers market, Kate shops with her fiance, Bryan, a handsome and perfectly polished businessman. There, Kate runs into Lucas Wright, a carpenter specializing in handcrafted furniture, who has had a crush on her since their high school days. Hoping to land a book deal, and urged by her aggressive show-business agent, Kate plans to publicly announce her engagement and film the subsequent wedding arrangements for her blog as a way to build her fanbase. At an upscale event, as Kate prepares to share the news, Bryan shocks her by breaking up with her and calling off the wedding. Wanting to save her from humiliation and protect her public image, Lucas steps in and pretends to be Kates fiance. With her career at risk, Kate reluctantly moves forward with her agents plan to let the public continue believing that Lucas whom she considers just a friend is her soon-to-be husband. As a film crew shoots Kate and Lucas wedding preparations, the counterfeit couple starts to develop real feelings for each other. When Lucas declares his affections, Kate panics and fearing a relationship would end in heartbreak pushes him away. As her career soars, Kate feels guilty about betraying her fans and decides to confess that Lucas is not her fiance. But before Kate can apologize, Bryans new girlfriend posts a viral video, exposing Kate as a liar and her engagement to Lucas as a fraud. With her career and life now in shambles, the young relationship expert learns an unexpected lesson about love, and sets out to revive the romance she let slip away. The Wedding March, premiering Saturday, June 25 at 9 p.m. ET Stars: Jack Wagner (The Bold & The Beautiful) and Josie Bissett (Melrose Place) Olivia Parsons is a fortysomething home stager and single mom to her 20-year old daughter, Grace. Though she favors work over romance, Olivia plans to marry Josh Johnson, a prominent and career-obsessed New York realtor. At Graces suggestion, Olivia agrees to have her wedding at a picturesque New England inn. When Olivia arrives at the inn, shes shocked to find it is owned and operated by her college sweetheart, former pop star Mick Turner (Jack Wagner, When Calls the Heart). Having separated on bad terms over two decades ago, Olivias chance reunion with Mick becomes even more awkward when her wedding band cancels and Micks college-bound daughter, Julie, arranges for him to perform in their place. As the wedding day approaches, Olivia and Mick initially lock horns but soon, feelings for each other begin to resurface. Meanwhile, Josh learns that Mick is considering selling the inn and jumps at the chance to become his realtor, focusing on breaking into the New England real estate market instead of his upcoming marriage. When Grace and Julie notice sparks reigniting between their respective mom and dad, they subtly and not so subtly encourage the former couple to reunite. Though Olivia and Josh make a perfect team as business partners, Olivia starts to question whether theyre romantically compatible and wonders if romance might be more important to her than she originally thought. When Mick makes his true feelings known at the rehearsal dinner, Olivia must decide if shes going to walk down the aisle as planned, or give her first love a second chance. Fun fact: Wagner will perform in Wedding March a song called You & Me, from his latest album On the Port. [In the movie], the song You & Me was co-written by our two lead characters. Little do they know that the possibility of 'You & Me is still in their worlds today, Wagner says. Tune in to see how their past can connect their future! John Oliver devoted his Sunday episode of Last Week Tonight to the massive debt crisis in Puerto Rico, capping his investigation with an impressive freestyle rap by one of this years biggest stars, Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. Oliver explored the origin of the islands $70 billion public debt, which has yielded a 45 percent poverty rate in the commonwealth thats home to 3.5 million American citizens. But the HBO host capped his investigation with a performance by Miranda, the son of Puerto Rican parents and winner of the Pulitzer Prize last week for his hit Broadway show about founding father Alexander Hamilton. Also Read: 'Hamilton' Cast Honors Prince With 'Let's Go Crazy' Performance (Video) Hoping to God John Olivers comical dissertation resonates with the Congress that got us in this situation along with suicidal tax incentive declarations, Miranda rapped of the many Congressional actions that led to the latest crisis. Yeah, well pay your bonds first close the hospital, [bleep] the patients, he continued, a reference to Congressional mandates that force the island to repay bondholders ahead of fulfilling basic governmental functions. He noted how Congress had brought a flood of industry to Puerto Rico through tax incentives that were abruptly ended a decade ago just as the Great Recession he kicked in. We got here through a million misguided loopholes, that giveth and take away businesses and poop in our soup bowls, he sang. Also Read: 'Hamilton' Wins Pulitzer for Best Drama Like Oliver, Miranda brushed aside the ongoing controversy over whether Puerto Rico should become its own state, an independent nation or remain in its commonwealth limbo. The great debate over statehood will have to wait, he noted. Thats Rose and Jack on the Titanic asking, Whens our next date?' The ship is sinking, we have to save the patient that matters. Then well figure out our Facebook relationship status. Story continues Miranda summarized the situation: To recap, 3.5 million American civilians are on the hook for billions. Vulture funds are circling and lobbying for pay-out. Theres nothing left to tax or cut. Were stuck, we need a way out. Also Read: 'Hamilton' Makes a $500K Profit Each Week, and 9 More Jaw-Dropping Facts About Broadway Hit He then pleaded with Congress for new legislation for relief from the current debt crisis not a bailout, but relief, he sang. And then he upped the stakes. Paul Ryan, Ill come sing Hamilton at your house. Ill dosey-doe with Pelosi, Ill wear my Hamilton blouse. Related stories from TheWrap: 'Hamilton' Cast Honors Prince With 'Let's Go Crazy' Performance (Video) 'Hamilton' Parody Mocks Jeb Bush's Failed Presidential Campaign 'Hamilton' Wins Pulitzer for Best Drama 'Hamilton' Makes a $500K Profit Each Week, and 9 More Jaw-Dropping Facts About Broadway Hit Ghani made the remarks during an address to parliament on Monday, a week after a Taliban assault on the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Photo: AFP) Kabul, Afghanistan: Afghanistan's president on Monday called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. Ashraf Ghani made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the Taliban, the leadership of which is widely believed to be based in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar, near the border. Ghani said there are "no good or bad terrorists, they are just terrorists," and that "Pakistan must understand that and act against them." Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States have been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban in recent months, but have made little progress. "We don't expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said. "What we want is for Pakistan, based on the four nations' agreement, to keep its promises and launch military operations against insurgents." Pakistan has denied past allegations that it aid the Taliban and says its influence over the group has been overstated. Pakistan has been waging a military offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal region since 2014, But critics have long accused it of fighting its own insurgents while covertly supporting groups that attack neighboring Afghanistan and India. From Esquire In 2004, Dave Chappelle donned a purple ruffled blouse, some eyeliner, and became intwined with Prince for the next decade. Even long after Chappelle's beloved show had ended, he revived his version of Prince for the actual Purple One's 2013 single "Breakfast Can Wait." And this week, as the world grieved Prince's tragic death at the age of 57, it was only natural to think back to Chappelle's Prince sketch with Charlie Murphy. "This is black 9/11," Chappelle told an audience Friday during a four-hour Prince tribute show in San Francisco. "I almost thought about not coming tonight, but my band was like, 'Yo, Prince would definitely not condone that." Chappelle bathed the room in purple light, and told stories about Prince as his band played the artist's greatest songs. He also revealed that he learned of The Purple One's death via media inquiries. As Rolling Stone reports: "I kept wondering all day, 'Why are they calling me?,' Chappelle said of the media inquiries. "I'll tell you what: I didn't know him well, but I knew him well." The comedian added of the mood following Prince's death, "This is black 9/11." He noted, however, "It's so much better that we grieve together." And if it wasn't obvious from Chappelle's 2013 appearance with the "Breakfast Can Wait" single, Prince actually loved the impersonation, as Chappelle show castmember Donnell Rawlings told The Hollywood Reporter. But not quite enough to actually be in the sketch. "Dave wanted Prince to be in the sketch, and he asked him about it, and Prince told Dave, 'Yeah, nah.'" Rawlings said. "And that's true to Prince's fashion with dialogue. You'll probably never hear of Prince talking more than three sentences." The second greatest Prince impression is most certainly Fred Armisen's. From Esquire Now that, as regards the presidential nominating process, it's all over but the endless recriminations, the country's pundits have a chance to kick back and let their freak flags fly high and proudly. And nobody's flag is freakier than the one belonging to Camille Paglia, who intermittently gets one of the security guards at Salon HQ drunk, lifts the keys, and gets to a computer terminal before the rest of the security staff wises up. The results are generally spectacular. This week was no exception. Gee, that sure wasn't my reaction. My first thought was: "Why is Hillary wearing a lab coat?" My second was: "Isn't this a major gaffe-reminding people of abortion clinics?" My third was: "The big belted look is not recommended for those broad in the beam." For all the complaints about an alleged higher scrutiny suffered by women candidates, affluent politicians like Hillary can afford glam squads of stylists and an infinite range of clothing choices, hairstyles, and cosmetic aids. Male candidates with their boring cropped hair and sober suits fade into the woodwork when the queen bee flies in. I would be so bold as to suggest that her fourth thought should have been, "Now where did I leave that Librium?" What in the name of Dionysus is Paglia talking about? Everyone who wears a white jacket reminds her of an abortion clinic? She must be a barrel of fun at an ice cream stand. We continue. The protective major media phalanx around Hillary certainly extends to her health issues, which only the Drudge Report has had the courage to flag. In assessing possible future occupants of the White House, the public has an inalienable right to know. I was incredulous at the passive gullibility of the media, including the New York Times, last July, when a woman internist, identified as Hillary's doctor, released a summary letter about her health that was lacking in the specifics one would normally expect in medical records. Does anyone really think that world-renowned Hillary, whose main residence for years has been in Washington and not Chappaqua, has as her primary physician an obscure young internist in Mount Kisco, New York? It's ludicrous on the face of it. And what about that persistent cough? "Allergy season," the hacking Hillary claimed on a New York radio show this week. ("You all right? Any mouth to mouth CPR?" joked a host.) I'm just a Ph.D., not an M.D., but I'll put my Miss Marple hat on here. Am I the only one who noticed Hillary's high-wrap collar, pallid, puffy face, and bulging eyes during her choleric New Hampshire primary concession speech in February? (Another unusually high collar followed the next morning.) My tentative theory is that Hillary may have sporadic flare-ups of goiter, worsened under stress. Coughing is a symptom. High collars mask a swollen throat. In serious cases, an operation may be necessary. Is this chronic thyroid condition disqualifying in a presidential candidate? Certainly not in my view, but I don't like being lied to-by candidates, campaign staffs, or their media sycophants. Story continues THE PLAGUE! I thought this might be the worst piece of political analysis I would read this week. But I had not reckoned with the cartoon canaries that flit in and out of the ears of Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins. The canaries were unusually active this week. Why are the canaries screaming, Clarice? They are screaming because The Moment has arrived. What Moment, you might ask. The Moment when Peggy Noonan realizes she has drifted off into the land of fog and the mist, never to return? The Moment when Peggy discovers that The Foot of Reagan has been buried forever beneath the sod of Simi Valley? The Moment when the paramedics break down the door? No, as it turns out, it's The Moment when you realize that you've been fronting for madmen your entire public life. I was offended that those curiously quick to write essays about who broke the party were usually those who'd backed the policies that broke it. Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me. Usually, at gatherings of the clan, I'm sockless within a half-hour and wouldn't remember if I spoke to the disembodied head of Russell Kirk. Then for no reason-this is true, it just doesn't sound it-I thought of an old Paul Simon song that had been crossing my mind, "The Boy in the Bubble." I muted the TV, found the song on YouTube, and listened as I stared at the soundless mile of cars and the soundless demonstrators. As the lyrics came-"The way we look to a distant constellation / That's dying in a corner of the sky / . . . Don't cry baby / Don't cry"-my eyes filled with tears. And a sob welled up and I literally put my hands to my face and sobbed, silently, for I suppose a minute. Ok, it's not Paul Simon's best song, but that's no reason to go to pieces over it. That's not it? Sorry. Because my country is in trouble. Because I felt anguish at all the estrangements. Because some things that shouldn't have changed have changed. Because too much is being lost. Because the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal. And yes, I know this is all personal, and not column-ish. But that was my Moment. MYYYYY ONCE IN A LIFETIIIIIIMMMMMME! The canaries continue to make more sense. Brussels (AFP) - Best-selling author and Holocaust survivor Martin Gray has died in Belgium aged 93, a local official told AFP on Monday. The Polish-born Gray, who died overnight, is best known for his 1971 memoir "For Those I Loved", which was translated into more than 20 languages. It described how he survived the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, fled the Treblinka death camp and entered Berlin as a soldier in the Red Army. The book was turned into a high budget mini-series starring Michael York in 1983 that was a huge hit in France. Some doubts emerged about the veracity of Gray's claims, but lawyer and famed Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld told AFP he firmly believed them. "He was a light-hearted man with a rare strength of spirit," he said. Tegucigalpa (AFP) - Honduran police killed 152 people over the past two years in various operations with no probes carried out into their use of lethal force, a violence watchdog told AFP Monday. The issue of deadly police action is in the headlines in Honduras following press revelations of official documents that appear to show that a cabal of senior police officers took payoffs from a drug kingpin to murder a top anti-drugs official in 2009 and a government security adviser in 2011. The scandal has galvanized Honduras to step up a purge of the police force. "We have recorded 152 deaths in police operations in the last two years, 2014 and 2015, and there were no investigations as to whether the officers killed in self-defense, or if there was excessive use of force," the coordinator of the Violence Observatory at Honduras' National University, Migdonia Ayestas, said. The government has created a commission to get rid of as many as 1,500 officers suspected of links to drug trafficking, extortion and other crimes. Ayestas noted that it was the third such commission to be set up and that the two previous ones, the last in 2012, produced no results. "The people are demanding a real and objective purge," she said. Since 2008, she said, the police killed 601 people, many of them identified as members of vicious gangs. The years with the highest number of deaths by police were in 2014, with 98 killed, and in 2009, with 95 killed. In one incident in 2015, Ayestas said, officers killed five members of one gang in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. "The resources they (the police) use are from the people, paid from the public pockets. And it is for this that they must answer effectively to the people," the expert said. The Hague (AFP) - The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said Monday she was opening a preliminary probe into violence in Burundi, which has been engulfed in a deep political crisis for a year. ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she had been following events closely since April 2015 when the central African country was thrown into turmoil by President Pierre Nkurunziza's announcement that he would run for a third term. She said she had "repeatedly called upon all involved to refrain from violence, warning that those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable". Her office had reviewed reports "detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances," she said in a statement. "All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said, referring to the tribunal based in The Hague and set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes. "I have decided therefore to open a preliminary examination into the situation in Burundi since April 2015." The initial probe is aimed at determining whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a full-blown investigation by ICC prosecutors which could result in drawing up charges against those believed to be responsible for the violence. Burundi will be the eighth preliminary probe under way at the ICC, while a full investigation has been opened into bloodshed in a further 10 countries. Nkurunziza won his third term as president in the July 2015 election with subsequent violence leaving hundreds of people dead, while hundreds of thousands have fled. ICC prosecutors believe in Burundi "more than 430 persons were reportedly killed, at least 3,400 people have been arrested and over 230,000 Burundians forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries," Bensouda said. Story continues The opposition, as well as civil groups and some of Nkurunziza's own supporters, accuse him of violating the constitution and the Arusha peace deal that ended Burundi's 1993-2006 civil war. - New civil war? - In a sign of the continuing violence, a Tutsi general and security advisor to the vice president was killed Monday in an attack by heavily-armed men in the capital Bujumbura, security sources said. General Athanase Kararuza was dropping his daughter off at school in the northeastern Ghosha district, the high-ranking security source said. Kararuza, his wife and daughter were killed in the attack. Kararuza, who had also served as deputy commander of an African Union-led peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic until late last year, had been recently named as advisor to Vice President Gaston Sindimwo, also a Tutsi. An estimated 300,00 people died in the civil war pitting the then Tutsi-dominated army against Hutu rebels. Under the Arusha peace deal, there must be strict parity between the two ethnic groups. But Robert Besseling of Exx Africa, a specialist intelligence company, warned that a year into the crisis, the country stood on the brink of a new civil war. "Rival sides in the conflict have become entrenched and violence has become more brutal," he said in a statement. "In fact, in many ways, a civil war has already begun given the ethnic tinge to the most recent violence, especially in the countryside." CHICAGO, April 25 (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Monday signed into law a bill to send $600 million to cash-starved state universities and community colleges, calling the measure "a first step toward compromise between Democrats and Republicans." An impasse between the Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature has left Illinois without a budget 10 months into fiscal 2016. In bipartisan votes in the House and Senate on Friday, lawmakers approved $600 million, or 34 percent, of the $1.7 billion Democrats had earmarked for higher education spending for the whole fiscal year, which began July 1. "Now is the time to build on this bipartisan momentum and focus on enacting a truly balanced budget for fiscal years 2016-2017 alongside meaningful reforms that create jobs and free up resources for education, social services and infrastructure," Rauner said in a statement. Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said on Friday that her office would immediately start processing payments for the universities, colleges and for college student grants funded by the legislation. (Reporting by Karen Pierog and Dave McKinney; Editing by Paul Simao) CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Monday signed into law a bill to send $600 million to cash-starved state universities and community colleges, calling the measure "a first step toward compromise between Democrats and Republicans." An impasse between the Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature has left Illinois without a budget 10 months into fiscal 2016. In bipartisan votes in the House and Senate on Friday, lawmakers approved $600 million, or 34 percent, of the $1.7 billion Democrats had earmarked for higher education spending for the whole fiscal year, which began July 1. "Now is the time to build on this bipartisan momentum and focus on enacting a truly balanced budget for fiscal years 2016-2017 alongside meaningful reforms that create jobs and free up resources for education, social services and infrastructure," Rauner said in a statement. Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said on Friday that her office would immediately start processing payments for the universities, colleges and for college student grants funded by the legislation. (Reporting by Karen Pierog and Dave McKinney; Editing by Paul Simao) China's maritime claims are ASEAN's most contentious issue, as its members struggle to balance mutual support with their growing economic relations with China. (Photo: AFP) Beijing: China has agreed with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea (SCS) territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and the Association of South East Asian National (ASEAN), China's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. Four members of the 10-member ASEAN - the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei - have rival claims to parts of the South China Sea with China, which says virtually the entire sea belongs to it. China is the biggest trade partner of many ASEAN nations. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke to reporters in the Lao capital, Vientiane, on Saturday and was quoted by his ministry as saying China had reached "an important consensus" with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos. The South China Sea problem was not a China-ASEAN dispute and it "should not affect China-ASEAN relations", the ministry said in a statement, referring to their agreement. China's maritime claims are ASEAN's most contentious issue, as its members struggle to balance mutual support with their growing economic relations with China. The grouping, which also includes Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, expressed in February its serious concern about growing international tension over the disputed waters. Land reclamation and escalating activity has increased tension and could undermine peace, security and stability in the region, ASEAN said in a statement at that time. The United States (US) has criticised China's building of artificial islands and facilities in the sea and has sailed warships close to disputed territory to assert the right to freedom of navigation. China seeks to keep the South China Sea off of the agenda at multilateral forum, but other claimant countries, such as the Philippines, have sought to raise the issue at ASEAN summits. The dispute has been divisive for ASEAN. Cambodia, a close Chinese ally, was accused of driving a wedge in the bloc in 2012 when its refusal to be drawn on China's actions in the sea resulted in a customary communique at the end of an ASEAN summit not being issued for the first time. By Andrew Torchia DUBAI (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund said it was encouraged by the efforts of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab oil exporters to repair damage to their state finances as low crude prices slash export revenues. "I do see in a number of countries action to address the budget deficit," Masood Ahmed, director of the IMFs Middle East and central Asia department, said in an interview. "That gives us encouragement and comfort." He was speaking hours before Saudi Arabia's government was due to announce on Monday a sweeping plan to ensure its economy could survive an era of cheap oil, including spending cuts, tax rises and policies to expand the private sector. Ahmed said that judging from details of the Saudi plan revealed so far, it appeared "ambitious and comprehensive". The scale of the plan "measures up to the challenge facing the economy", he said. Six months ago the IMF warned that budget reforms being considered by most of the Middle East's oil exporters were likely to be inadequate, and that countries risked running through their financial reserves. "Apart from Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, under current policies, countries would run out of buffers in less than five years because of large fiscal deficits," the IMF said in a report at that time. Its latest report on the region, published on Monday, did not repeat that warning, though it said countries still needed to do more to cut budget deficits, rebuild their financial reserves and save enough money for future generations. Ahmed said Gulf states would still face difficult decisions in carrying out budget reform plans on a sustained basis, and in trying to create millions of jobs for growing populations while reducing the dependence of their economies on oil. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is heading for a protracted economic slowdown because of the austerity policies needed to curb budget deficits, the IMF report said. The non-oil part of the GCC economy is projected to grow an average 3-1/4 percent annually over the next five years, well below a rate of 7-3/4 percent between 2006 and 2015, it said. Assuming oil prices stay low in coming years, the fiscal deficits of the GCC and Algeria will total almost $900 billion between 2016 and 2021, the IMF calculated. "Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia will become significant debtors over this period as their financing needs are expected to exceed their current liquid financial buffers," it said. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) What Could Happen after a Brexit: The Pound, the Euro, and Trade Brexit referendum and the pound On December 18, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom hinted of a British referendum to decide whether or not Britain (EWU) should remain in the European Union (EZU) (HEDJ) (VGK). On February 22, 2016, Cameron announced that the referendum would be held on June 23, 2016. As these events took place, volatility of the British pound increased. The pound has been jittery since the declaration of the referendum. On February 22, 2016, the British pound fell 2.3% to a seven-year low against the US dollar (UUP). The pound also weakened against other major currencies as investors pulled out money due to rising uncertainties. Analysts say the pound will fall to $1.35 at the end of 2Q16 Bloomberg analysts forecast that the pound will fall to $1.35 or below by the end of 2Q16. In the last six months, the pound has been hammered due to fears of a Brexit, or a British exit from the European Union. So when Britain finally votes, everyone will be in a short position and will have to cover it. That will make the pound stronger. Volatility in the pound and equities could continue Until the referendum, the British pound will most likely continue its volatility. The cross-currency risk is increasing as the referendum approaches. Investors will most likely be nervous about the future movement of the British pound (FXB) (GBB), which should be clear after the referendum on June 23, 2016. The equity market will be affected by currency volatility. Apart from the British pound, the euro also came under pressure against other major currencies. In an already weak European economy, investors are worried that Britain will make its exit. In the next part of this series, well see how the United Kingdoms trade flows could be affected if Britain makes its exit from the European Union. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: India has cancelled a visa it gave to an exiled Uighur dissident, an official said Monday, after China protested and described him as a "terrorist" wanted by Interpol. Dolkun Isa, a Germany-based activist from China's Xinjiang region, was due to attend a conference on democracy next week in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile and home of the Dalai Lama. "His (Isa's) visa has been cancelled, that is all we can confirm at this point," home ministry spokesman K.S. Dhatwalia told AFP without giving a reason for the move. Last week India had granted Isa a tourist visa, reportedly in retaliation for China blocking its request to add Masood Azhar, head of the Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, to a United Nations' sanctions blacklist. Beijing reacted angrily to New Delhi's move, describing Isa as a wanted "terrorist". "Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said last week. Xinjiang is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, many of whom say they face cultural and religious repression, and the area is regularly hit by violence which Beijing blames on Islamist separatists. Isa, now a German citizen and chairman of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress that represents the rights of Chinese Uighurs around the globe, said he was disappointed by India's latest decision. "I express my disappointment on Indian authorities' cancellation of my visa," he said in a statement on the group's website. "I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regrets that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy." Prime Minister Narendra Modi's political opponents criticised the apparent flip-flop, with many accusing his government of buckling under Chinese pressure. "Modi Ji's latest foreign policy disaster on China (#DolkunIsa) can be termed as a Himalayan blunder," Congress party spokesman Sanjay Jha said on Twitter. JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia will set up a crisis center, headed by President Joko Widodo, to handle security situations involving its citizens overseas, a senior minister said on Monday, following recent abductions of Indonesian sailors in Philippine waters. The center will include senior ministers and military and police chiefs and will be designed to respond quickly to situations that could have a "strategic impact", chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters. "We hope this will be (operational) as soon as possible," he said. Since coming to power in 2014, Widodo has placed maritime security for the Indonesian archipelago high on his government's agenda. Indonesia has voiced fears that a surge in piracy in the waters between Indonesia and the Philippines could reach Somalian levels and has told vessels to avoid danger areas. Up to 18 Indonesians and Malaysians have been kidnapped in three attacks in recent weeks on tugboats in Philippine waters by groups suspected of ties to the Abu Sayyaf militant network. Abu Sayyaf, which has posted videos on social media pledging allegiance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, has demanded 50 million pesos ($1.1 million) to free the hostages, but the Indonesian government has said it does not intend to pay the ransom. (Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) There's speculation over who will inherit Princes estimated $300 million fortune. Read: Prince Was Awake For 154 Hours Before His Death, Brother-in-Law Says He had no surviving children and both of his parents are deceased. It is unclear if the 57-year-old had a will. If he did not have a will, Minnesota law states that his estate would go to his sister, Tyka Nelson, and his seven half siblings. Two are believed to have passed away. Tax attorney Bruce Givner, who is not affiliated with Princes estate, told IE his money will go his siblings. Minnesota, like every state, has what is called an intestacy law. Intestacy meaning there is no governing document. The state has a law that says who gets it when you die, he said. Minnesota says when there is no spouse, when there are no children, when there are no parents, it goes to the heirs of the grandparents. So, this is going to be split among his siblings." Prince is believed to own the master recordings of his work, and ran the successful record label, NPG and his Paisley Park recording studio. Read: How Prince Met Beautiful Women and Made Them Into Stars He made money from royalties of his songs, as well as royalties from songs he wrote for others artists including Sinead OConnors hit Nothing Compares 2 U and The Bangles Manic Monday. It is also believed that Prince had a vault of unheard music that could now be released to the public for the first time. Watch: The World Sees Purple in Tribute to Prince Related Articles: DUBUQUE, IA / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Heartland Financial USA, Inc. (HTLF) will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss the results of the first quarter 2016, to be held Monday, April 25, 2016 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time. To participate in this event, dial 877-407-0782 approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the call. Additionally, you can listen to the event online at www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=174892 or on the Heartland Financial USA, Inc. website, www.htlf.com. If you are unable to participate during the live webcast, the event archive will be available at www.investorcalendar.com or www.htlf.com. About Heartland Financial USA, Inc. Heartland Financial USA, Inc. is a diversified financial services company with assets exceeding $8 billion. The company provides banking, mortgage, private client, investment, insurance and consumer finance services to individuals and businesses. Heartland currently has 108 banking locations serving 85 communities in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, Texas and California, with mortgage loan production offices in California, Nevada and Idaho. Additional information about Heartland Financial USA, Inc. is available at www.htlf.com. SOURCE: Investor Calendar Broken Glass At a train station with a woman If you're an investor or market watcher, it's not unreasonable to have a bit of whiplash. Markets from stocks to credit nosedived to start 2016 before making a fairy-tale-like comeback. According to Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, even though this turnaround could engender some cheery feelings, you shouldn't get too comfortable because the market is actually a bit dicey. "The market tantrum in the first part of the year resulted in lots of dislocation, some of which has normalized, some of which has not," he said in the company's quarterly earnings call Thursday. "For example, many hedge funds were caught wrong footed in a classic short squeeze when the markets rebounded in March. Segments of the debt market still remain under considerable pressure. Investment sentiment is fragile and characterized by significant caution around choppy economic data, negative rates, political rhetoric and other factors." Schwarzman clearly has a litany of legitimate issues with the market, and he supports his relative bearishness with a little data on investing returns this year. "If you had been invested in the typical portfolio, mostly equities and fixed incomes, you would have made basically no money so far this year as well as all of last year," he said. "Most pension funds is one example, obviously [they] can't reach their actuarial targets of 7% to 8% at the rates of return we've seen in the public markets and that's not even addressing the issue of volatility." Schwarzman isn't the first to make this point. Goldman Sachs CFO Harvey Schwartz said on a recent conference call that nearly 80% of the largest active US equity mutual funds underperformed their benchmarks in the first quarter. File photo of Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Blackstone Group, looks on during an interview with Maria Bartiromo, on her Fox Business Network show; Hedge funds meanwhile are getting walloped. Investors pulled Story continues nearly $15 billion from hedge funds in the first quarter their worst withdrawals in years, according to Hedge Fund Research. "How can investors generate sustained positive returns against this type of turbulence?" asked Schwarzman. "The answer is many can't, at least in the traditional areas of money management. We're increasingly looking to the alternative area as a result." Surprise! Schwarzman is pitching Blackstone's investment funds as a part of the solution. Blackstone is an alternative manager offering private equity, hedge fund and credit funds, and the purpose of the call is to convince large investors in the firm on the future of the company. That means we are getting a bit of a sales pitch from Schwarzman. Still, it is still interesting to get a peek inside the view of one of the world's heavyweight investors. Which, it appears, is fairly downtrodden for the average mom and pop investor. Tread lightly, you never know when a "fragile" market is going to shatter. NOW WATCH: 4.2 million Americans could be displaced by rising sea levels this century see if your county is at risk More From Business Insider The atoll is a potential flashpoint in the South China Sea and is claimed by Beijing, Manila and Taipei. Chinese coastguard ships took control of the area after a tense stand-off with Philippine vessels in 2012. (Photo: AP) Beijing: China on Monday said it will take "necessary action" to uphold sovereignty in the disputed South China Sea amid reports that it may start a land reclamation project at a contentious shoal to oppose the US-Philippine military alliance in the strategically vital waters. Hong Kong based South China Morning Post quoted Chinese military sources as saying that China will start reclamation at the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea later this year and may add an airstrip to extend its air force's reach. The PLA Navy said Beijing would ramp up work to establish a new outpost 230 km off the coast of the Philippines as the US and Manila drew their militaries closer together, the report said. "I haven't heard about what you mentioned", Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying told a media briefing here today when asked about a report that it will start reclamation at the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea later this year and may add an airstrip to extend its air force's reach over the contested waters. She however said islands are inherent territory China. "China will take necessary action to uphold sovereignty and legitimate rights and interests", she said. Beijing's action followed as China apprehend that the tribunal of the UN Convention on Law of Seas, (UNCLOS) hearing the petition of the Philippines will go against it, the Post said. Manila wants the court to declare that Beijing's claims must comply with the UNCLOS and the decision could come next month or in June. China will take will take action to carry out land reclamation within this year," the Post reported. "China should regain the initiative to do so because Washington is trying to contain Beijing by establishing a permanent military presence in the region," the report said. The US and the Philippines began joint patrols in the South China Sea in March, US defence chief Ash Carter said during his latest visit to the region. US forces will also have access to at least eight military bases in the Philippines, with two air bases in Pampanga, 330 km from Scarborough Shoal. The atoll is a potential flashpoint in the South China Sea and is claimed by Beijing, Manila and Taipei. Chinese coastguard ships took control of the area after a tense stand-off with Philippine vessels in 2012. With a new outpost in the shoal, Beijing could "further perfect" its air coverage across the South China Sea, the Post report said. The PLA can already land planes at Woody Island, and two additional airstrips are believed to be under construction at Mischief and Fiery Cross reefs. Iran recently rolled out its latest indigenously produced battle tank, dubbed the Tiam, which actually appears to be a mashup of tanks used by the U.S. and the Chinese during the 1960s. The Diplomat reports the hull of the Tiam, which debuted during a public ceremony earlier this month, resembles that of an M47M Patton, a U.S.-produced tank used by the Army and Marine Corps in the 1950s and 1960s. Related: Russia Begins Shipping Advanced Missiles to Iran The M47M was also produced under license in Iran during the early 1970s. Tehran unveiled a modified version, called the Sabalan, in April 2014. Meanwhile, the vehicles turret looks to be the kind fitted on Chinas Type 59 and Type 69 tanks, which were first produced in the late 1950s. You can see the tank about a minute into this video: The Tiam features a 105mm rifled main cannon, which is not as powerful as the 120mm cannons found on U.S. and German tanks, or the 125mm cannons used on newer Russian tanks. The new vehicle is also armed with 7.62 millimeter coaxial machine guns and a turret-mounted 12.7 millimeter DShK Dashka heavy machine gun. Related: Russia Wants to Sell Advanced Fighter Jets to Iran and the US Wants to Stop It Both the turret, and likely parts of the hull, are layered with reactive armor bricks, which are used to defend against modern anti-tank munitions, such as shaped charges. Its unclear what kind of shelf-life the Tiam will have as Russia and Iran are in talks for Tehran to receive a license so it can produce the next generation of Moscows T-90 main battle tank, according to The Diplomat. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Rome (AFP) - NATO is three months from launching a naval mission off Libya under a controversial plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe and begin mass repatriations, Italy said Monday. The advanced state of preparations was revealed by Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti as leaders of the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy prepared to meet in Hanover, Germany for talks expected to touch on the migrant crisis and instability and Islamist infiltration into Libya. Modelled on an existing NATO operation in waters between Turkey and Greece, the Libya mission is set to be approved by alliance leaders at a Warsaw summit on July 7, Pinotti said in an interview with Italian daily La Stampa. The plan forms part of a broader Italian strategy to stop migrants using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe by flying those with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. The plans have been slammed by rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what he sees as its arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. More than 350,000 migrants from all over the world have reached Italy on boats from Libya since the start of 2014. Aid organisations say over half the arrivals have a clear right to refuge in Europe from persecution or conflict and many more have asylum claims worthy of proper consideration. The boat people arriving this year have however been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa -- a region the European Union considers generally safe for people to be returned to. "At the NATO level we have asked for Operation Active Endeavour to be recalibrated from an anti-terrorist operation in the Eastern Mediterranean to one which oversees the Libyan coast," Pinotti said, adding that the idea had been positively received. Asked if she expected a green light at the Warsaw summit, Pinotti replied: "Yes, certainly for the coordination of missions in the Mediterranean. At this summit the proposal should become an effective decision." Story continues - Appalling conditions - NATO's operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey is the first of its kind for the alliance. An operation off Libya would be more complicated given the country's instability and the presence in some coastal regions of militants allied to the Islamic State group. The NATO presence could act as a deterrent to traffickers putting to sea with their human cargoes. But it is thought unlikely they would seek to turn boats back on the model Australia has adopted in recent years. "It is worth remembering that Libya is not party to the Geneva convention and that conditions in its detention centres are appalling," said Libya expert Mattia Toaldo. "I don't think NATO will turn boats back but I do think Italy will start flying people home direct from Sicily." Pinotti said she would be seeking support for this "difficult" option at the Hanover talks involving US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Europe's four biggest powers. "This is the road to follow, combined with respect for human rights and support for countries of origin to handle the repatriated," she said. Any repatriations depend on readmission agreements being concluded with individual countries -- something African leaders showed little enthusiasm for at a summit with their EU counterparts in Malta last year. Libya's fledgling national unity government last week offered to enter into a Turkey-style deal with Italy to take back migrants, but such an accord is seen as a distant prospect because of the rights and safety issues. Italy is preparing to lead a UN-backed peacekeeping force into Libya, if and when the new government is deemed to have obtained sufficient authority to ask for international help in stabilising the country. Pinotti said Italy and several allies were prepared to guarantee the security of the force, expected to be around 6,000 strong. Rowling with the President! J.K. Rowling joined President Barack Obama for dinner at the U.S. ambassadors London residence on Saturday, April 23, during his four-day visit to Great Britain with wife Michelle Obama. PHOTOS: Malia and Sasha Obama's Best Styles Through the Years A rep for Rowling confirmed that the Harry Potter creator attended the private dinner, according to The Hollywood Reporter. British Prime Minister David Cameron was also on the exclusive guest list. PHOTOS: Stars Who Played the President The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them author first met the Obamas in 2009 at the G20 summit, where the President had a fan moment and told Rowling that both he and his children had read all her books. The British novelist also attended the White House Easter Egg Roll in 2010 and a banquet thrown by POTUS and the First Lady for Queen Elizabeth II when the couple visited Britain in 2011. PHOTOS: Kate Middleton and Prince William Visit India and Bhutan: Photos of Their Royal Tour Earlier on Saturday, the Obamas stopped by the Shakespeares Globe theatre for the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death. The first couple also met with Prince William, Kate Middleton and Prince Harry at Kensington Palace on Friday, April 22. As Us Weekly previously reported, the royal family greeted them outside before they all stepped into the residence to say hello to Prince George. The 2-year-old, who was up past his 7 p.m. bedtime, was clad in an adorable white bathrobe with his name on it, which sold out just minutes after photos of the encounter were released on Friday. TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, speaking ahead of a visit to Beijing, said on Monday China was making the world "worried" with its military buildup and maritime expansion in the East and South China Seas. Ties between China and Japan, the world's second- and third-largest economies, have long been plagued by a territorial dispute, regional rivalry and the legacy of Japan's World War Two aggression. China and Japan dispute sovereignty over a group of uninhabited East China Sea islets, while in the South China Sea, Beijing is building islands on reefs to bolster its claims. China has rattled nerves with its military and construction activities on the islands in the South China Sea, including building runways, though Beijing says most of what it is building is for civilian purposes, like lighthouses. "Candidly speaking, a rapid and opaque increase in (China's) military spending and unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas under the aim of building a strong maritime state are having not only people in Japan, but countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the international community worried greatly," Kishida said in a speech to business leaders. 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. Kishida plans to visit China as early as Japan's "Golden Week" extended holiday, which starts on Friday. "Through candid dialogue with the Chinese side, I want to get the wheel turning to create the Sino-Japanese relations that are suitable for a new age," he said. (Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Nick Macfie) Japanese designer Wataru Tominaga has won the Premiere Vision Grand Prize at the 31th edition of the Hyeres International Festival of Fashion and Photography. The 28-year-old Central Saint Martins graduate wowed judges with his playful men's wear silhouettes, which involved pleated sleeves, cotton shirting, dyed corduroy and printed trousers with flocked stripes, noted WWD. Commenting on his skills, jury head Julien Dossena, creative director for women's wear at Paco Rabanne compared Tominaga to a "young Issey Miyake." The judging panel also comprised designer Pierre Hardy; jewelry designer Charlotte Chesnais, 2015 winner of the ANDAM Accessories prize; and Barneys New York senior fashion director Tomoko Ogura. Other winners at the 2016 Hyeres event included Finnish duo Hanne Jurmu and Anton Vartiainen, who won the Chloe prize, and Swedish designer Amanda Svert who scored the Audience Award. Steam power, once a major force behind the Industrial Revolution, could be coming back into fashion, after Chinese researchers designed the world's "darkest metal" that converts sunlight to steam at roughly 90 percent efficiency. Despite being made from gold, the so-called "plasmonic absorber" is jet black as it absorbs 99 percent of light in the visible to mid-infrared spectrum. Its designers say this is a dramatic improvement over previous metal absorbers and comparable to the world's darkest material, carbon-nanotube (CNT) arrays. Combined with its porous structure, this enables the metal to use solar energy to generate steam at far lower light intensities and temperatures than traditional approaches that concentrate sunlight to very high levels to drive steam turbines. The device can also assemble itself, which could enable large-scale manufacture of plasmonic absorbers for a host of applications, the researchers said. [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life] "It opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of solar catalysis, water purification, sensors and detectors," said study co-author Jia Zhu, a professor at Nanjing University in China. "Steam can be used to kill bacteria for biomedical applications, others are trying to use steam to run heat engines to generate electricity and steam can also be used as a clean form of water once you condense it. There are a lot of things that can be done and I see huge potential in our absorber." The new absorber, described in a paper published April 8 in the journal Science Advances, takes advantage of plasmonics, where the free electrons that allow electric current to pass through metals can also be excited by the electromagnetic waves that make up light. By carefully designing nanoscale metallic structures, it is possible to exploit this effect to absorb the energy from light. At present, these designs are normally effective only at specific wavelengths and building them requires complicated lab techniques such as focused ion beam and e-beam lithography. Story continues For their new absorber, the Chinese researchers employed anodization a simple process that uses electricity to oxidize the surface of a metal to create an aluminum oxide template dotted with nanoscale pores. They then introduced a vapor of gold nanoparticles that self-assembled onto the template surface and inside the pores. The honeycomb shape of the template helps confine light to the absorber by reducing its reflectivity, but Zhu said the secret to its success is randomly sized nanoparticles crammed together. Typically the light frequency at which electrons become excited depends heavily on the size of the particle, so having various particle sizes means more frequencies are covered. In addition, when the particles are packed tightly, their electrons can work together to interact with light more efficiently and across a wide range of wavelengths, the researchers said. "Each particle can respond to a different frequency, but when they're closely packed together they also work together," Zhu told Live Science. To demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the device, the scientists showed it could generate steam by simply floating on water when illuminated with the equivalent of four suns' worth of light, a far lower intensity than other solar-steam generators require. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas] According to Zhu, the structure of the absorber also means very little energy is wasted on heating water that is not in contact with the device. "Only the very top surface of the water gets heated up and becomes vaporized immediately," he added. "And the porous structure provides channels for the steam to escape." Ventsislav Valev, a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, recently built a working nanophotonic steam engine, in which steam is generated using laser-illuminated plasmonic nanoparticles. He said the high absorbance and the broad wavelength range of the team's structure is impressive, and he agreed that it could one day be manufactured on a large scale. "The issue I see is that, in scaling the production, heat loss to the environment will become an important factor," Valev told Live Science. He said his team found that it was easy to generate steam from small amounts of water, but it became increasingly difficult with larger volumes. Both the efficiency and bandwidth of the new absorber are similar to those achieved using CNTs, but Zhu said their approach can piggyback on the already well-developed metallurgy industry, while CNT technology is still confined to the lab. But, he thinks the two approaches to light absorption can be complimentary and both should be investigated. "CNTs have their own unique advantages, but metals are unique, too," Zhu said. "If we can now combine incredible light absorbing in metals with their other properties in things like catalysis or sensing, that would be great." Zhu said he and his colleagues are currently developing materials and processes that achieve high efficiency with much lower cost and just one sun intensity. 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. Actor Joaquin Phoenix is reportedly in talks to co-star with John C. Reilly in an indie film helmed by French director and Palme d'Or winner Jacques Audiard (via Deadline). The movie, titled "The Sisters Brothers", is based on an award-winning novel by Patrick DeWitt and set in Oregon in 1851 at the height ofthe California Gold Rush. Production is set to start sometime this summer, and the storyline recounts the tale of two brothers - Eli and Charlie Sisters - who are caught up in a murder plot when they are hired to assassinate a prospector who has stolen from their boss. Audiard won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival for his film "Dheepan". Lesbos (Greece) (AFP) - Jordan's Queen Rania on Monday called for "legal" paths into Europe for refugees, criticising the EU's controversial deal with Turkey which she said endangers lives. "The deep concern is that many of the refugees...will now start to seek more dangerous routes," Queen Rania said in reference to the EU-Turkey deal agreed in March to stem the migration flow. "It's absolutely crucial for us to look for legal alternatives and more safe and effective pathways to Europe and areas of safety," she said on the Greek island of Lesbos, the focal point of Europe's greatest migration challenge since World War II. Under the EU-Turkey deal which went into force on March 20, all migrants whose asylum claims are rejected will be sent back to Turkey. More than 320 people have been expelled so far, most of them Pakistanis, in expulsions which aid agencies such as Human Rights Watch have described as "abusive", raising questions about the fate of the deportees in Turkey. Syrian refugees constitute ten percent of the population in Jordan, which counts a refugee camp as its fourth largest "city". In comparison, wealthy Western countries have pledged fewer than 130,000 resettlement spots, and only around 67,100 people -- a mere 1.39 percent of the refugees -- have made it to their final destinations since 2013, British charity Oxfam said last month. And last month's closure of borders along the Balkan migrant route has also sparked fears that more asylum-seekers will attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy. Around 53,000 people, many fleeing the war in Syria, are now stranded in Greece, including some 46,000 who arrived before the deal took effect. "This is an exceptional crisis and requires an exceptional response," Queen Rania said, adding: "Greece...can't be the last stop for these refugees." She also called for more international support to humanitarian agencies such as the International Rescue Committee and the UN refugee agency UNHCR, who have been instrumental in providing refugees and migrants in Greek camps with food, water and shelter. Story continues "Just being here today made me realise how over-stretched and under-resourced they are," she said. Rania al-Yassin is a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who holds a degree in business administration from the American University in Cairo. She is a well-known advocate of causes such as education, health and women's rights. By Stamos Prousalis and Alkis Konstantinidis LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) - Queen Rania of Jordan met refugees at a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday in a visit to highlight the plight of people she said had "seen unspeakable horror and experienced unthinkable tragedy". Scores of refugees and migrants clapped and cheered as she walked through the Kara Tepe camp, taking photographs and giving her notes. They are among more than a million people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa who have streamed into Europe since last year in the continent's biggest migration crisis since World War Two. Jordan has accepted more than 630,000 Syrian refugees registered with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Most of them are living in poverty outside the refugee camps, according to human rights groups. "It is impossible to really understand the magnitude of the crisis until you come face to face with it," Rania told journalists after speaking with refugee women in the camp. "These people have gone from suffering to suffering and the one thing I keep hearing time and again is that if they had a choice they would be back in their homes; that this was a last resort." More than 4,000 refugees and migrants are living on Lesbos, most of them behind the barbed wire fence of a disused military camp. About 850 people, mostly families, live in Kara Tepe, a municipality-managed site from which 12 refugees were flown out by Pope Francis last week after he visited the island. Rania had been invited by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an aid agency which has installed showers, toilets, laundry facilities and lights at the site. To stem the flow of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe from Turkey on rubber motor boats, the EU and Turkey signed an accord in March under which those who arrive in Greece from March 20 and do not qualify for asylum will be sent back. At the latest count, some 8,000 refugees and migrants on Greece's islands could be returned to Turkey if their asylum applications are rejected. The deal has been criticized by human rights groups and the UNHCR, which say Turkey is not a safe country for refugees and who question whether the deal is legal or moral. "This is a crisis about human beings, not about borders and barriers. It is about human dignity, not about deals," Rania said. Part of the U.S.-led coalition that is bombing Syria, Jordan has long been praised for helping refugees and has been a big beneficiary of foreign aid as a result. But it has also drawn criticism from Western allies and the UNHCR over the situation near its border with Syria, where thousands of refugees are being kept far from any aid. (Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Louise Ireland) JeM, led by India's one of the most wanted terrorists Masood Azhar, has ties to al Qaeda and the group continues to operate openly at its base in Bahawalpur, which is also headquarters of the Pakistani army's XXXI Corps. (Photo: AFP) Islamabad: Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group is constructing a massive new madrassa, spread over about 10 acres outside garrison city of Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province, extending its reach in the country despite a ban by the UN and the US. JeM, led by India's one of the most wanted terrorists Masood Azhar, has ties to al Qaeda and the group continues to operate openly at its base in Bahawalpur, which is also headquarters of the Pakistani army's XXXI Corps. "On a recent visit, a bearded gunman lounged by the entrance of Jaish-e-Mohammads four-story compound downtown, which also houses an affiliated seminary. Residents and a member of the group said there hadn't been any crackdown even after India accused Jaish of being behind a cross-border attack in January," the Wall Street Journal reported. A sign outside the JeM complex in central Bahawalpur says it houses a madrassa "under the guidance" of Azhar, who has written a four-volume treatise on jihad, it said. "Outside town, an even bigger Jaish installation is under construction, spread over at least 10 acres just off a highway. A new madrassa, crowned with white domes, loomed over the surrounding farmland," the paper reported. A cleric affiliated with JeM told the Journal, "We dont hide who we are. We are a jihadist group." Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan's population, has seen a far more low-key approach to fighting extremists, run largely by the provincial police. "Operations are only against those that shoot the police or army," Riaz Husain Pirzada, minister of federal-provincial coordination and a member of parliament from Bahawalpur, was quoted as saying by the Journal. It said Pakistan's military spokesman did not respond to repeated requests to comment. A security official said the authorities would confront "all militants in time." Citing a retired senior security official in Punjab, the Journal said members of domestically focused militant groups in the province are taking shelter with JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba to escape counter-terrorism operations. "While there seems to be an increasing recognition that the India-focused groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e- Mohammad represent real risks to Pakistan itself, it is not clear that anyone has settled on whether or how to address them," the paper quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying. The JeM cleric said his group opposes attacks in Pakistan. "We carry out attacks against the infidel in their country," he added. India has blamed JeM for the January 2 attack on a key air force base in Pathankot in which seven security personnel were killed. It has given Pakistan "leads" connecting JeM to the attack and sought strong action against the group. Pakistan had assured India that it was "tracing and sealing" the JeM offices, which has been banned in Pakistan since 2002 and is also labelled a terrorist organization by the US. The UN had banned JeM in 2001. By David Schwartz PHOENIX (Reuters) - A judge on Monday threw out charges against a man accused in a series of freeway shootings that terrorized Phoenix-area drivers last year, a move that comes after ballistics evidence against him was challenged by defense lawyers. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville formally granted a motion made by prosecutors seeking to withdraw the 15 felony charges against Leslie Allen Merritt Jr. "in the interests of justice." The ruling leaves Maricopa County prosecutors with the ability to refile the case at a later date. A county attorney spokesman, Jerry Cobb, could not be reached for comment following the hearing, but said last week that the motion was made after a ballistics expert called into question the methodology that tied Merritt to the shootings. We have a professional and ethical duty to act in the interest of justice and not merely seek a conviction, Cobb said last week. The Arizona Department of Public Safety said in a written statement that the investigation remains active and more forensic work was needed that could not be completed in time for a trial. Only one person suffered a minor injury during the shootings before Governor Doug Ducey announced Merritt's Sept. 18 arrest with an emphatic "We got him!" Merritt, 21, was released from seven months in jail on Tuesday after the judge reduced his bail to nothing from $150,000. He has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Merritt was arrested last Sept. 18 and faced charges that included drive-by shooting and aggravated assault stemming from the first four of 11 shootings along a stretch of freeway that passes through Phoenix. State police had said they were able to "forensically link" the shootings to Merritt's handgun, found by investigators at a local pawn store. The bullets from the handgun were then matched to fragments found at some of the shooting scenes, a spokesman said. Defense attorneys challenged the ballistic evidence, telling the judge last week that a states expert now said such a match does not exist. (Reporting by David Schwartz; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Andrew Hay) 25 Apr - Ana Marie Regaliza-Datuin, sister of semi-retired actor Julio Diaz, recently revealed that the actor's condition has improved after previous medical procedure. The actor's sister gave an update on the crowdfunding site, gofundme, saying that Diaz has already been moved from the ICU into a regular ward. "With the help of physical therapy, Julio is starting to regain his strength and ability to move around," she said. However, the actor is still under observation and that visitation is restricted per doctor's advice. Datuin also expressed her gratitude towards the financial assistance that has continuously poured in for the actor, adding, "Please continue to pray for Julio's complete healing." She recently shared a photo of Julio with actress Gina Alaja, showing the actor looking much better than his previous condition. Diaz previously underwent an endovascular treatment to treat his brain aneurysm, after he was rushed to a hospital in Bulacan due to an apparent stroke. The crowdfunding site has so far raised a total of PHP600,000 (approx. USD13,551) to cover the actor's medical expenses. Among who donated are actors Coco Martin and Robin Padilla. (Photo source: gofundme.com/8jy83x38) Ohio Gov. John Kasich returned to Maryland Monday for some last-minute campaigning ahead of Tuesday's primary election. Fighting for the Republican nomination for president, Kasich stopped in Rockville and spoke for about an hour before curious voters, stressing he has the hope, the solutions and the record to fix the country's problems. Five years after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tied the knot, a fashion designer is claiming that Alexander McQueen, the designer of Kate Middletons wedding dress, copied the design. Christine Kendall, who runs a small studio in London, has filed a lawsuit against the fashion label, accusing it of being in breach of copyright. Proceedings have been issued because our client is certain that her companys design was unfairly taken and copied, Kendalls lawyer said. This claim is not against the duchess and there is no allegation of wrongdoing against the palace. There is, however, a pretty severe claim against the British design house, and in particular its popular creative director, Sarah Burton, who originally came up with the concept. The Duchess, on her wedding day. (Photo: Getty Images) A spokesperson for the label has utterly rebutted the claims though, asserting that everyone at Alexander McQueen is baffled by the implication of wrongdoing. Christine Kendall first approached us at Alexander McQueen almost four years ago, when we were clear with her that any suggestion Sarah Burtons design of the royal wedding dress was copied from her designs was nonsense. The statement also noted that Burton never saw any of Kendalls designs or sketches and did not know of Kendall before Kendall got in touch nearly 13 months after the wedding. We do not know why Ms. Kendall has raised this again, but there are no ifs, buts or maybes here: this claim is ridiculous. Considering Kendall didnt bring her first claim up for more than a year following the royal wedding and there is so far zero proof that Burton copied anything, we have to wonder if this is a case of a small-time designer simply trying to get her name in the papers. Mission accomplished. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Katie Couric weighed in on the ongoing rumors that Kelly Ripa is upset with how ABC handled the news that her Live co-host Michael Strahan is leaving for a full-time role on Good Morning America. Ripa hasn't appeared on Live since the news broke late Tuesday morning, taking Wednesday and Thursday off in addition to her planned Friday and Monday days off, which she reportedly took to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary to husband Mark Consuelos. She's expected to return to Live on Tuesday. Couric, who spent years as co-host of NBC's Today and recently hosted her own daytime talk show, shared some insights from her TV experience. "It's hard to say, but clearly feelings were hurt and clearly she wasn't included in the project," Couric said of what happened between Ripa and Strahan. "Transitions are incredibly tricky and they have to be managed carefully, especially when people have relationships with people on television. They feel they're a part of their family. It can be extremely sensitive." Read More: Kelly Ripa's Return to 'Live': High Stakes for Everyone Involved "Kelly is obviously a consummate professional - she'll come [and], if I know her, she'll be very honest with the audience because it's the elephant in room in the studio. Hopefully they'll just move forward," Couric continued, ahead of the New York Women in Communications' Matrix Awards. "She'll survive, Michael will survive, the show will survive. The show must go on." As for media reports that called Ripa's behavior "diva"-ish, Couric told reporters: "I thought that was really strange." Couric was on hand to help honor Time magazine's Nancy Gibbs. The event also honored The Hollywood Reporter's co-president and chief creative officer Janice Min, Lena Dunham and A+E Networks' CEO Nancy Dubuc, among others. Meanwhile, frequent Live guest co-host and Ripa's friend Andy Cohen spoke about the situation on his Sirius XM talk show on Monday and questioned Strahan's decision to move from his successful Live co-hosting gig to GMA's larger group of co-hosts. Story continues Read More: Kelly Ripa Says She Will Return to 'Live' on Tuesday "They had such great chemistry and it just seems like a premature end to a great relationship," Cohen said, adding of the shakeup, "I can't say this went down in the greatest way." He continued: "To me the job of co-hosting Live is the greatest job in TV. And she's so good at it and he was really good at it. It's a job that you take and you take it for life. She's been at that job for 15 years. You keep that job. You don't go anywhere. So I can't get over that he left Live With Kelly and Michael. Your name is in the freaking title. You could spend your life here and make serious bank. He left and went to GMA. He is now one of five people sitting at that crowded anchor desk. It's like 18 co-anchors." Cohen went on to suggest that if the ratings don't improve at GMA, Strahan can't go back to Live because Ripa will have found a new co-host by then. He also said he'd spoken to Ripa a "few times" and "can't wait" to watch Tuesday's episode of Live to see what she says. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the need for timely and credible elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a recent meeting with President Joseph Kabila, the State Department said on Monday amid concerns by opposition groups that Kabila may be seeking to delay elections. Kerry and Kabila held talks on the sidelines of the signing of a global climate pact at the United Nations on Friday. Congolese opposition groups have accused Kabila, who won disputed elections in 2006 and 2011, of maneuvering to stand for a third term, which is barred by the constitution. Kabila has not commented on his future. "The Secretary did emphasize that the U.S. stands ready to be a partner to all of those who are committed to timely, credible elections as called for by the DRC's constitution," State Department spokesman John Kirby told a press briefing. The Congolese government has suggested that logistical and budgetary constraints could force it to postpone the poll, a move some of Kabila's opponents say is a deliberate tactic by the president to cling to power. "The Secretary stressed that a peaceful transition in the DRC will allow President Kabila to cement his legacy," Kirby added. During their meeting, Kerry also emphasized that citizens should be allowed to speak freely without intimidation. Police, using tear gas, dispersed hundreds of anti-government protesters in southeastern DRC on April 20. Since then authorities have arrested dozens of critics of Kabila in what the U.N. and human rights groups said were trumped up charges. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Alan Crosby) Kimco Realty Corporation KIM is slated to report first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 27, after the market closes. We expect the release to lead to stock movement. Last quarter, this New Hyde Park, NY-based retail real estate investment trust (REIT) delivered a positive earnings surprise of 5.71%. In the four trailing quarters, the company beat estimates in three, with a positive average earnings surprise of 2.66%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter funds from operations (FFO) per share is currently 37 cents. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Kimcos premium properties in high-growth areas, presence of well-capitalized retailers in its tenant roaster, and investments in high-quality neighborhood and community shopping centers augur well. Moreover, amid an improvement in demand for small shop, the companys present focus on expanding this category of retail assets is also encouraging. In fact, in the first quarter, the companys average base rent for the U.S. portfolio is expected to have continued to improve. Though lackluster retail sales in the quarter are reasons to worry about, the absence of ample supply may have kept the demand/supply dynamics favorable. As such, leasing spreads are projected to have grown. Further, Kimco is focused on simplifying its business structure by concentrating on its U.S. shopping center portfolio, targeting ownership of large, high-quality assets in major metro markets, and simultaneously exiting from its joint venture portfolio. In the first quarter, the company completed around $460.8 million transactions, including the disposition of seven Canadian shopping centers. Its transaction activity from January to March reflects net selling and capital accumulation. While such efforts are encouraging for the long term, the earnings-dilution led by high disposition activity cannot be averted. These might hurt the companys growth momentum in the to-be-reported quarter. Kimcos activities during the quarter could not gain adequate analyst confidence. Consequently, the Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged at 37 cents over the last seven days. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Kimco will beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 37 cents. Hence, the Earnings ESP, which represents the percentage difference between the two, is 0.00%. Zacks Rank: Although the companys Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP, its zero ESP makes a surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are a few stocks in the REIT sector that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a positive surprise this quarter: Essex Property Trust Inc. ESS has an Earnings ESP of +1.14% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company will report results on Apr 28. Taubman Centers, Inc. TCO has an Earnings ESP of +3.53% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on May 2. Vornado Realty Trust VNO has an Earnings ESP of +2.44% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report first-quarter 2016 results on May 2. Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All earnings per share numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report KIMCO REALTY CO (KIM): Free Stock Analysis Report TAUBMAN CENTERS (TCO): Free Stock Analysis Report ESSEX PPTY TR (ESS): Free Stock Analysis Report VORNADO RLTY TR (VNO): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research German electro pioneers Kraftwerk have announced a North American comeback, with the group confirming a special nine-city tour to commence in September 2016. The run will see Kraftwerk bring 3D concerts back to the US, after their live debut in the region last September via a 12-city, 14-date tour. The 2016 dates kick off on September 3 in Washington, DC, followed by appearances in Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix and San Diego before wrapping September 18 in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl. Tickets go on sale to the public this Friday, April 29 at 10am local time for all shows except the Los Angeles date, which goes on sale Sunday, May 1 at 10am. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is seriously concerned about the degenerating situation at Syria peace talks in Geneva, the Kremlin said on Monday. "Russia has been consistently doing whatever it can to help develop and support this negotiating process, and not allow this process to be disrupted," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists. "At the same time, we still state with serious concern that the situation is degenerating at these negotiations." (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Jack Stubbs) Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death, says Bangladesh Police official. (Photo: Representational Image) Dhaka: Two people were hacked to death Monday at an apartment in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, police said, with a local television channel identifying one of them as a leading gay rights activist. "Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death. Another person was injured," Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sorder told. He did not identify the dead, but private television Channel 24 said one of them was the editor of Roopbaan, the country's only magazine for the LGBT community. A spokesman for a gay group, Boys of Bangladesh, confirmed that the Roopbaan editor was among the dead. The editor was behind an annual Rainbow Rally, which since 2014 has been held on April 14, Bengali New Year. But police this year banned the rally as part of widespread security measures. Ahead of the banned rally earlier this month, the editor told AFP that they had received threats from Islamists, who posted messages online. "They have even set up an online group to threaten us," he said. The death came two days after a liberal and free-thinking professor was hacked to death in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and liberal activists that has left the country reeling. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack through its news agency, saying the 58-year-old professor who wrote poetry and fiction had been murdered for "calling for atheism". But Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan rejected the Islamic State group's assertion and said local militants were responsible for the murder. The LGBT community has been heavily persecuted in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. But in recent years some activists have tried to increase awareness and rights. Beirut (AFP) - At least 19 civilians were killed and 120 wounded in rebel bombardment of Syrian government-held districts of the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, a monitoring group said. "Shells fired... by rebel groups at districts under regime control left 19 dead, including three children, and 120 wounded," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head, Rami Abdel Rahman. The official SANA news agency reported 16 dead and 86 wounded by "fire from the terrorist groups Al-Nusra Front (Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda) and its allies" on at least five residential districts. The Observatory also reported four people including a child killed by regime fire into rebel-held neighbourhoods of the city. Since Friday, at least 86 civilians have been killed in the divided city in artillery, rocket and air strikes. Several districts of the city, once Syria's commercial hub, have also seen sporadic fighting between government forces and rebel groups. Rebel-held neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo have had their water and electricity supplies cut by bombardment, an AFP journalist said. The fighting severely threatens a February 27 ceasefire brokered jointly by the United States and Russia. BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 60 people have been killed in three days of fighting in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as violence continues to escalate. Seven children and 10 women were among those killed in a series of air strikes by the government side and shelling attacks by insurgents since Friday, the monitoring group said. Fighting has intensified in Syria in recent weeks, all but destroying a partial ceasefire that took effect at the end of February. Last week, the main opposition walked out of formal talks in Geneva. Beginning early on Friday, government warplanes bombed a number of rebel-held parts of Aleppo, control of which is split between the warring sides. The government air raids killed 45 people, the monitoring group said. Insurgent bombardments, including the use of home-made rockets and gas canisters fired as shells, meanwhile killed 15 people on the government-held western side. The city was calmer on Monday but shells were still being fired onto government-held areas, said the British-based Observatory, which tracks the war using sources on the ground. Syria's foreign ministry said it sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council to protest what it called terrorist attacks on populated areas in Aleppo and Damascus on Saturday, the state news agency SANA reported. It said the shellings violated the cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, which took effect in western parts of the country in February. The United Nations is anxious to salvage the Geneva negotiations, which are the most serious attempt to end the five-year-old civil war. The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has vowed to continue the fragile peace talks despite the walkout by the opposition and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the war, which has killed more than 250,000 people. (Reporting by John Davison, editing by Larry King) From LennyLetter Thirty years ago, Ellen Malcolm started a revolution. At the time, Malcolm was working at a nonprofit and was, like a lot of us, sick of men dominating national politics. So she founded Emily's List, a group (now a PAC) dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to state and national office. Emily's List won its very first race when Barbara Mikulski was elected to the Senate from Maryland in 1986, and since then it's helped more than 100 women be elected to the House, 19 to the Senate, 11 to governors' seats, and hundreds more to state and local office. The list of success stories is a pantheon of Lenny's political heroes, including Carol Moseley Braun, Mazie Hirono, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. In fact, Emily's List is now so powerful that Bernie Sanders took a swipe at it last week, claiming that the PAC had declined to endorse Lucy Flores, a woman running for the House of Representatives in Nevada, because Flores is a Sanders supporter. (Emily's List is backing Susie Lee, Flores's opponent.) "We've endorsed women who are supporting Hillary and women who are supporting Bernie, which he knows perfectly well," says Jess McIntosh, vice president of communications for Emily's List. "It's a weird tactic for someone who bills themselves as a progressive champion to attack an organization dedicated to electing pro-choice women." Perhaps now we can get back to the issues. Malcolm just released a memoir, When Women Win: Emily's List and the Rise of Women in American Politics. She calls herself "an unlikely activist," but this woman is a warrior. Malcolm started messing with the status quo early on, when she led the fight for women to wear pants on campus at Hollins College in Virginia as an undergraduate. This work came full circle in 1993, when Senators Mikulski and Moseley Braun, both of whom Malcolm helped to elect, were the first women to wear pants on the Senate floor. (Pants are clearly part of the revolution). Story continues I spoke with Malcolm over the phone about the political power of American women, whether all vaginas deserve votes, and what she is going to do the day after Hillary Clinton is elected. Mikki Halpin: Why is it important to have pro-choice Democratic women in office? Ellen Malcolm: Well, first of all, it's ridiculous to exclude women from office, which is essentially what happened in the old days. You miss out on a lot of talent when you don't let people serve. But beyond that, women have very different life experiences and perspectives. They care about issues that support women and families. It's not surprising that after 1992, the "Year of the Woman," when five women were elected to the Senate, we had a huge increase in funding for breast-cancer research. In that same vein, Barbara Mikulski used her position on the appropriations committee to essentially force the National Institutes of Health to include women in research trials on strokes and heart disease. Up until then, they had only studied men. When women are in office, women win. MH: Is this an argument that we should always vote for women, no matter what? EM: I would never vote for a candidate just because she's a woman. I've spent my entire adult life actively trying to get women in office, and I would never vote for a woman just because she's a woman. This question tends to come up for progressives when the Democratic male and female candidates are pretty similar on the issues. We are a progressive party overall. So in cases like that, all things being equal - and I'm saying equal - if you care about diversity and you believe in a representative democracy, you should choose the woman. Right now, women are over 50 percent of the population, and we're only 18 percent of our Congress. That is a failure of representative democracy. We do not have enough women represented in top offices in this country, or legislative offices for that matter. I think the government would work better if we had more women in office. MH: Is that what you would say to someone trying to choose between Bernie and Hillary? EM: There are many reasons to support Hillary. I am working hard on her campaign. I understand that other people support Bernie, just as I understood in 2008 that other people supported Barack Obama. We can fight that out in the primaries and in the caucuses. At the end of the day, though, I think we'll all come together because the one thing we have to do is stop the Republican nominee, whether it's Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or whoever it ends up being. MH: Besides Hillary, what other women running this year are you excited about? EM: I think the Democrats have a very good chance of taking back the Senate this year, and women candidates could be the key to that. Catherine Cortez Masto, who is running for Harry Reid's seat in Nevada, would be the first Latina elected into the United States Senate. Tammy Duckworth is running in Illinois and doing a phenomenal job. Maggie Hassan is running in a very tough race in New Hampshire. We've also got some great opportunities to add new women to the House. I think we could see a record number of wins for women in 2016. MH: Women running for office is lovely, but I've read that you once had an elaborate fictional alias that you used to donate money to causes you believed in. So this is the part where I demand you tell me about your secret identity. EM: Ha! Well, back before we started Emily's List, I had the good fortune to inherit some money, and I wanted to give it away - but I was also working in nonprofits and I wanted to be known for my work, not as a donor. So I set up something called the Windom Fund, named after a street I used to live on because I thought it sounded classy. My friend Lael Stegall ran the operation, and I was the anonymous donor. People kept asking Lael who was giving her the money. You know how Washington loves secrets. So we decided to create a fictional Henrietta Windom and tell people that she had made her money inventing Tampax and wanted to give it to women. [Ed. note: Tampax was actually created by a man, but his heart was surely in the right, er, place.] Lael found this old portrait in Maine that really seemed like Henrietta to us. The woman in it was young but strong and looked very idealistic, so we hung it up over the water fountain. Eventually the story wound up in the Washington Post, and a couple came into the waiting room wanting to see the painting because they were named Windom and they wanted to see if there was any family resemblance. It was extremely awkward but very funny. I've always had a great fondness for Henrietta. MH: I'm sure she was a wonderful woman. If only I could have met her. EM: I suppose you could say you're talking to her right now. MH: OK then, Henrietta, tell me: What happens if Hillary wins? What does Emily's List do the day after that happens? What's the next mountain to climb? EM: The day after? MH: I will give you two days. EM: We're going to be celebrating for at least two days. And then we're going to turn around and go right back to work. Because if there's one thing I know about social change, it's that it comes in leaps and in creeps. A certain set of circumstances can come together and you make a giant leap forward, but you've got to go back to creeping until the next leap. If you don't, then we will go backward. All you have to do is see what's happening with women's health to realize we cannot stop. If we believe in progressive politics and progressive values, it is a constant commitment and a constant battle forward always. And you can never let up. So you can celebrate, you can have some fun, and then you go back to work. MH: Women are underrepresented in Congress overall. But women of color are in office at even smaller numbers. Does Emily's List care about race, or just gender? EM: We are extremely proud that a third of the women that we've elected to office in Congress have been women of color. We've worked very hard to make that happen. Gwen Moore, who is now in the House representing Wisconsin, was initially very skeptical when we came to her. She said, "I thought you were just a bunch of rich white ladies and you didn't help black women." That is not the truth. The truth is we care very much about helping black women get into office, and that's why we've elected so many of them. It's a core value that permeates Emily's List, and it's a good thing, because I think it makes our country stronger. We love breaking through those glass ceilings and seeing our women flourish at all levels of office. MH: It's an exciting time for women in politics right now - but it's also a time when a lot of women are rethinking public life because of the harassment and negativity they get for just being outspoken on Twitter, never mind the campaign trail. What would you say to someone who is wrestling with those issues? EM: A number of things. One of them is that it's very important that she participate because we need young women to come into the system to bring in your smarts and what you care about and your priorities and your understanding of how to get things done. The other thing is that we will help you every step of the way. Organizations like Emily's List will find people that will help you. It's not going to have to be a solo act. I think what motivates women and gets them beyond the fears is that women generally run for office for the best of reasons: they want to make a difference. If you really care about our country and you want to make the government work better, then you can take on a lot of nonsense and keep your eyes on the prize. These are the women we find out there that decide to run and the women that we're proud to support. MH: And how does Emily's List work with candidates? What are the kinds of things women running for office need to be able to do - besides the huge task of raising money, of course? EM: We started out simply raising money for candidates. The core of Emily's List is and will always be the donor network. One hundred percent of the money you contribute to a candidate through Emily's List goes right into the candidates' campaigns. We help our candidates get the word out about what they stand for, and we empower small contributors to band together behind a candidate and have just as much clout as big special-interest donors. As we've grown, we've started doing additional things to help candidates, like debate trainings and technical assistance with their campaigns. We also do huge programs to get out the women's vote. The partnership, as we like to call it, between the candidate money that we raise and the political work that we do, is what creates victory. This interview has been condensed and edited. Mikki Halpin is Lenny's editor at large. Lexmark International Inc. LXK is expected to report first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 26. Last quarter, the company posted a negative earnings surprise of 1.69%. Let us see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Lexmarks fourth-quarter 2015 results failed to make a mark as the bottom line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate while the top line was almost in line. Also, revenues decreased on a year-over-year basis, primarily due to lower Inkjet Exit revenues and the impact of foreign currency fluctuations. Lower revenues from imaging and software solutions also impacted overall results during the quarter. Nonetheless, synergies from the recent acquisitions (Kofax and Readsoft) and renewed focus on the software space could set it back on the growth path. Moreover, the Inkjet exit, software prospects and the managed printing services (MPS) approach are positives that will drive shares in the long term. Additionally, the company recently agreed to be acquired by a consortium led by Apex Technology Co., Ltd. and PAG Asia Capital. Legend Capital Management Co. Ltd. is also one of the buyers. In our opinion, the deal will prove beneficial for Lexmark as it has been struggling amid changing industry dynamics. Lexmark has a strong market position but declining demand for traditional printing hardware and overall macro uncertainty have been impacting its overall performance. The deal however may face some challenges. This is because the takeover of U.S. companies by Chinese organizations is not a simple process. In recent times, China's Unisplendour Corp Ltd failed to acquire a 15% stake in Western Digital Corp. WDC after CFIUS, an inter-agency committee of the U.S. government, demanded an investigation to ensure that national security wasnt being compromised. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Lexmark is likely to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the upcoming release. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. Unfortunately, this is not the case here as elaborated below. Story continues Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP for Lexmark is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 85 cents per share. Zacks Rank: Lexmarks Zacks Rank #1 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, when combined with a 0.00% ESP, it makes surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 and 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions momentum. Stocks to Consider Here are some companies, which are worth considering, as our model shows that they have the right combination of these two elements: Boyd Gaming Corporation BYD, with Earnings ESP of +36.0% and a Zacks Rank #1. Benefitfocus Inc. BNFT, with Earnings ESP of +4.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report BOYD GAMING CP (BYD): Free Stock Analysis Report WESTERN DIGITAL (WDC): Free Stock Analysis Report LEXMARK INTL (LXK): Free Stock Analysis Report BENEFITFOCUS (BNFT): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Iran conducted the first launch of the Simorgh last week, Tehrans largest satellite launch vehicle, and what the Pentagon views as a key element of its effort to build long-range missiles. Although Iran has not confirmed the test flight, both US and Russian sources reported the event, but the sources are not in agreement whether it was a success, part success or failure. The Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed the launch event, as a suborbital launch of unknown ballistic missile has been occurred at 09:33 UTC on April 19th. The Russian source said that, according to preliminary data, the launch was successful, as the burned out rocket impacted in the southern part of Iran. US sources are more ambiguous; U.S. intelligence agencies described the event to be partly successful, as the payload did not reach orbit, said defense officials familiar with reports of the test. The missile was launched from the new Imam Khomeini Space Center (map). Strategic Commands Joint Functional Component Command for Space, which tracks thousands of orbiting objects in space, did not monitor any new objects reaching orbit on Tuesday, the commands spokesman Lt. Col. Martin ODonnell said. It was either an unsuccessful launch, or a test of third stage, not meant to place a satellite in orbit, said a U.S. defense official familiar with reports of the test. (The Simorgh launcher has only two stages T.E.) The large liquid-fueled rocket has been under close surveillance by U.S. satellites and other intelligence assets at a launch pad at Irans Semnan satellite launch center, located about 125 miles east of Tehran. The Simorgh launch had been anticipated since March and comes amid growing worries about Irans development of long-range missiles. The Simorgh also is assessed as having enough lift to carry a nuclear warhead, a throw-weight greater than the 100 kg payload capacity claimed by Iranian officials. According to Irans Space Agency officials, the first generation of the satellite carrier is capable of carrying communications and sensing satellites as heavy as 100 kg to orbits some 500 km above the earth. Head of Irans National Space Center Manouchehr Manteqi described last month the planned Simorgh test program having three phases two test launches will be carried out in spring and late summer of 2017, and a third launch, planned for early 2017. The objective of the tests is to place Irans Toloo satellite in orbit. Toloo is the first of a new generation, hexagonal shaped satellites designed for remote sensing and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) reconnaissance, being built by Iran Electronics Industries (IEI). Toloo has a base diameter of 86 cm and height of 100 cm. The EO payload will be able to acquire images of earth at a resolution of 50 meters. Unlike Irans first experimental satellites that remained in space for days, Toloo is expected to remain in orbit for 1.5 years. Another mission of Simorgh is to lift the 80kg Autsat scientific satellite to LEO. Autsat is designed for a mission lifespan of 3-5 years. Simorgh, also known as Safir-2, is designed to be able to lift a payload of 350 kg to low earth orbit (LEO), using a 27 meter long, 2.5 meter wide launcher weighing 87 tons. The first stage has four main engines (likely North Korean Nodong engines, also used with the North Korean Unha satellite launcher), developing a lift off thrust of 130 tons, this thrust is four times more powerful than the Safir, which was used to lift Irans experimental satellites to orbit. Simorgh uses an extended upper stage of the Safir as a second stage. Simorgh is believed to be based on North Korean missile technology, used extensively in Irans medium-range Shahab-3 missiles. U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea supplied Iran with design data, stage separation technology, and booster equipment for the Simorgh and other rockets. Following controversy over plagiarism accusations for the initial design, organizers of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo announced the new logos on Monday, April 25. The winning logo combination, entitled "harmonized chequered emblem," was created by Japanese designer Asao Tokolo. Selected from a shortlist of four logos unveiled on April 8, Tokolo's designs are inspired by the "ichimatsu moyo" style from the Edo period (1603-1867). A press release explains that "The traditional Japanese color of indigo blue expresses a refined elegance and sophistication that exemplifies Japan." The original design by Kenjiro Sano was scrapped last year when Belgian artist Olivier Debie accused Sano of copying his design for a theater company in Liege. Debie filed a lawsuit to prohibit the Olympics from using his work. (Photo: Yahoo Newsroom) A man was arrested after creating a scene at Changi Airport Terminal 3 on Monday morning (25 April), after he had climbed to the roof of a check-in counter and refused to come down. According to reports, he had also waved an umbrella at police officers and taken off his shirt and shoes. Police told Yahoo Singapore that they received a call for help at 8.57am, and arrested a 32-year-old man for being of unsound mind upon arrival at the airport. Yahoo Singapore understands that the man is a Vietnamese national and was transiting at Changi. According to The Straits Times, the man was being sent back to Vietnam but thought he was going to Dubai for a work trip. Tweets from an eyewitness, Charlotte Corday, showed a man on top of the check-in counter at 9.06am. Subsequent tweets by her showed him walking and carrying an umbrella. Just taking a casual stroll pic.twitter.com/BiMI3Hra7P Charlotte Corday (@C_Corday) April 25, 2016 The Singapore Civil Defence Force said it received a call about the incident, but said no assistance was required. An oddball adventurer has been rescued while floating in an orb he wanted to run to Bermuda. Reza Baluchi left Pompano Beach, Florida on Saturday in his bizarre bid to run 1,000 miles across the Bermuda Triangle from inside his orb. And it wasn't the first time. The Coast Guard had rescued Baluchi two years before the long-distance runner was saved from his "hydropod" off the Florida coast this past Sunday. #BreakingNews Coast Guard towing endurance runner's HydroPod back to shore. Runner voluntarily ended sea voyage. pic.twitter.com/DzrES5dipt USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) April 24, 2016 Baluchi tried to make a similar attempt to reach Bermuda in 2014 and had to be rescued, according to reports. That time, he was picked up about 70 nautical miles east of St. Augustine. Read: Teen Alone on Kayak at Night Gets Rescued After Drifting Away from Family "When we saw him...we already knew whats going on," Mark Barney, Public Affairs Specialist 7th Coast Guard District told InsideEdition.com. In a move made to try and keep Baluchi safe, the Coast Guard sent the Iranian-born runner a letter warning him not to make the second attempt after they got wind of it April 15. "Based on a review of your proposed voyage," wrote Coast Guard Capt. A Gould. "You are not authorized to depart." The letter also warned Baluchi that he could face fines and jail time if he were to ignore the order. It appears Baluchi was unfazed. Barney said no charges were being filed at this time. He said the Coast Guard simply wanted to keep Baluchi safe, even from himself. "We want all mariners to have a plan and be safe," Barney said. "He could have been hit. A vessel could have hit him because he couldnt be seen." Story continues Watch: Officers Save a Woman Trapped in Her Burning Car In 2014, Baluchi set off on the trip with only protein bars and water, CBS News reports. After becoming disoriented, he reportedly started asking passing fishermen for directions to Bermuda. He also failed to listen to warnings on that trip, CBS reports. "I think you're going to have a very hard time punching through the Gulf Stream and heading east to make Bermuda," a Coast Guard Captain warned Baluchi at the time. After his 2014 rescue, Baluchi told the media he'd set off his emergency beacon accidentally and did not need help. "I see some helicopter coming," Baluchi said at the time. "Some person come in front of my bubble and kick my bubble. 'You ok? You need emergency doctor?' I say, 'no.'" Watch: Firefighters Rescue 34 Dogs From Burning Home: 'It Was an Endless Chain of Dogs' Related Articles: 4123e32526454dd988fc761bef30cd52 A Chinese customer who was supposedly given the wrong flavour of steamed buns by a street hawker in Beijing, China, has struck out in the most unreasonable of behaviour. The incident which took place on Thursday, was caught on camera by a bystander, who told Chinese reporters that the unidentified man and his friend, were allegedly demanding compensation from the hawker for selling him the wrong bun flavour. In a rage, the two men started to trash the stall and kicked the basket of buns onto the ground. One of the men then started to stomp on all the buns while hurling verbal abuse at a woman, while his accomplice stood by and watched. SEE ALSO: Restaurateur beaten to death by alleged Chinese government officials dining free Pictures showed the woman, who has since been identified as the stall owner, squatting next to the scene, trying to clean up the mess. As soon as the pics went viral, Chinese netizens called upon local authorities to arrest the two tyrants and punish them. Image: weibo According to Beijing Youth Daily, the stall's owner who goes by the surname Wang, clarified that the incident occurred not due to the men being served the wrong buns, but instead was due to a drunken altercation between a man and his friends. "When I watched the news this morning, my first reaction was to cry," she said. "I feel particularly aggrieved that it happened not because of buns with the wrong stuffing. I've been in this business for many years, I've never come across such a reason to smash things." The Beijing Chaoyang police has since verified the cause of the incident. It's unclear if authorities will press charges on the men. Currently, a settlement between the offenders and stall owners is being negotiated. Obama dismisses North Korean nuke proposal NEW YORK A day after North Korea's foreign minister told The Associated Press that his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea, President Barack Obama said Sunday that Washington isn't taking the proposal seriously and Pyongyang would "have to do better than that." North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, interviewed Saturday by the AP, also defended his country's right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that Pyongyang won't be cowed by international sanctions. And for those waiting for the North's regime to collapse, he had this to say: Don't hold your breath. "Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests," he said in his first interview Saturday with a Western news organization. Obama dismissed North Korea's latest overture at a news conference Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover, Germany. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities," Obama said. "What we've said consistently ... is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then we'll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. But that's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that." At least 26 killed as fighting in Syria's Aleppo continues DAMASCUS, Syria Air strikes and shelling pounded Aleppo for a third straight day on Sunday, killing two young siblings and at least 24 others in Syria's largest city and former commercial capital. The northern city has been bitterly contested between insurgents and government forces since 2012. Opposition groups control the eastern part of the city but have come under intense strain as the government has choked off all routes to the area except a narrow and perilous passage to the northwest. At least 10 people were killed by rebel shelling on government-held areas in the city, according to activists and Syria's state news agency, SANA. Rockets struck schools and residential areas, SANA reported. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two young siblings were among the dead. Air strikes on the opposition side of the city killed 16, including a mother and her daughter, the Observatory said. World music star Papa Wemba dies on stage ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast Papa Wemba, a musician known around the world as the king of Congolese rumba, has died following a collapse on stage during a concert, officials said. He was 66. Culture Minister Baudouin Banza Mukalay confirmed the musician's death Sunday, calling it a "great loss for the country and all of Africa." Footage from the concert in Ivory Coast shows his fellow performers rushing to his side as he collapsed in front of thousands of fans. He was taken to a nearby clinic but couldn't be resuscitated. The cause of death wasn't immediately known. The shaman slipped away from police in Norway House, Manitoba, in September 1907. Once free, he tied a slipknot in his sash and hung it from a tree, and within minutes, the famed healer was dead. Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow, whose name in Anishinaabe meant he who stands in the southern sky, was also known as Jack Fiddler by Europeans, who nicknamed him for his musical talent. Born in the 1830s or 40s around Sandy Lake in northwestern Ontario, Fiddler was the headman of the Sucker people, a clan within a large community of Oji-Cree, who today are known as the Sandy Lake First Nation. He was renowned among his tribe and neighboring clans for his healing capabilities, particularly his power to combat a monster feared by people of the boreal forest: the bloodthirsty half-beast they called the windigo. The windigo myth served as a cautionary tale to the Cree and others regarding selfishness and losing connection to animals. Details of the windigo myth shifted from clan to clan, but common among them was that the voracious wandering spirit was capable of possessing people and forcing them into cannibalism. Some feared they could infect others, even after death, and that their presence would scare away all other animals within the vicinity. Nadia Ferrara, an anthropologist and senior policy manager with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, says the windigo myth served as a cautionary tale to the Cree and others regarding selfishness and losing connection to animals. A shaman was a clans only hope against the windigo. Ceremonies and potions existed, but the ultimate cure for someone gripped by this spirit was death, followed by ritual burning and burial. It was typical for someone who felt they were succumbing to the will of the windigo to send for the shaman to administer the ultimate cure. Families who witnessed a loved one in the throes of delirium shouting about human flesh would also call for the shaman to euthanize their kin. Story continues Fiddler once told a minister he had defeated 14 windigos. By 1907, word of windigo killings had reached the Royal North-West Mounted Police, and a patrol was dispatched to investigate. On their travels the Mounties learned of Wahsakapeequay, a woman suspected of being possessed by the creature. She had been choked to death with a piece of string by her father-in-law, Pesequan, and his brother, Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow. The brothers were arrested and charged with murder on June 15. After 15 weeks of captivity, the frail Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow broke free and killed himself. Pesequans trial began a week later, with headlines like Devil Worship Among the Cree splashed across the Montreal Daily Witness. Pesequan had no legal representation (Canadas Department of Justice had advised the court not to provide any). Hudsons Bay Company employee James Kirkness, who knew Pesequans people like few other whites did, was available to give testimony on tribal customs, but he wasnt asked to do so. The magistrate who heard the case against Pesequan, RNWMP Commissioner Aylesworth Bowen Perry, told the jury, What the law forbids, no pagan belief can justify. The jury found Pesequan guilty and sentenced him to hang. Though the establishment had railed against Pesequan and Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow, other Euro-Canadians came to their defense. A petition, signed by prominent whites familiar with Sandy Lake and its indigenous people, stated that Pesequans actions were the opposite of murder. According to the beliefs of the Oji-Cree, they were acts of mercy that prevented a person from becoming a roving spiritual cannibal who was never allowed to reach the Happy Hunting Ground. Others questioned whether the brothers should be punished for committing an act they didnt realize was an offense. For evidence of Fiddlers unfamiliarity with colonial laws one need look no further than his statement to police, in which he insisted via an interpreter that I did not know what I was doing was wrong, and if I had known, I would not have done the deed. But critics of the sentence failed to get it overturned. Pesequan died from illness before he could hang, and in 1910, after losing two of their leaders, the Sandy Lake First Nation signed Treaty Five with the Canadian federal government. This, according to Ferrara, led to Canada exploiting the tribe like never before. Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow and other medicine men killed those around them when their communities feared they were under siege by a powerful force capable of perverting their relationship with the land. Though he took on the windigos that came his way, the shaman himself stood little chance against the winds of change. Related Articles The Megyn Kelly interview with Donald Trump is a go. After much speculation since their meeting earlier this month, the GOP frontrunner and the rising Fox News Channel star will meet for her first broadcast primetime special, it was announced Monday. "Mr. Trump and I sat down together for a meeting earlier this month at my request," Kelly said in a statement. "He was gracious with his time and I asked him to consider an interview. I am happy to announce he has agreed, and I look forward to a fascinating exchange - our first sit-down interview together in nearly a year." Kelly and Trump have only appeared together on camera once since he made her the target of a slew of verbal attacks for her line of questioning during the first GOP presidential candidate debate back in August 2015. (She questioned him again during the March GOP debate in Detroit, with fewer fireworks.) Kelly's first special on Fox Broadcasting, executive produced by Bill Geddie with FNC chairman and CEO Roger Ailes serving as senior executive producer, also will tie into an episode of her nightly Kelly File. After the May 17 debut of Megyn Kelly Presents, portions of Kelly's Trump interview also will air on the May 18 edition of Kelly File. FNC has not shied away from challenging Trump on his public criticisms of Kelly. "Donald Trump's vitriolic attacks against Megyn Kelly and his extreme, sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate who wants to occupy the highest office in the land," read a March statement from the network, after Trump called for a boycott of her program. Presumably, the interview will revisit Kelly's initial critique of Trump's past treatment and characterization of women. Michael Douglas and former O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro will also be guests on the special, the network later confirmed. The interview will be Shapiro's first TV interview since John Travolta portrayed him on The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Story continues April 27, 6:50 p.m. PT: Updated with additional guests Read More: Megyn Kelly on Donald Trump: "Don't Count Him Out" Hanover (Germany) (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Monday hailed German Chancellor Angela Merkel as being on the "right side of history" with her welcoming refugee policy, although critics denounced his praise as hollow lip service. Speaking in the northern German city of Hanover, Obama said the embattled Merkel had "demonstrated real political and moral leadership" in letting in more than 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery. "What's happening with respect to her position on refugees here, in Europe, she's on the right side of history on this," he said. "She is giving voice to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them." While the reticent Merkel blushed at the glowing praise, German officials and commentators charged that Obama's administration had done little to help her as Europe struggles with its biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Influential news weekly Der Spiegel slammed Obama's comments as "hypocritical given the American role in this drama". It noted that while 137,000 people had received refugee status in Germany last year, the United States -- whose population is four times greater than Germany's -- had accepted around 70,000. Obama, who heaped accolades on Merkel again Monday in a landmark speech on transatlantic relations, confirmed in Hanover that the US would take in just 10,000 Syrians this year. "It is a pity that the chancellor could not turn to (Obama) when she needed help with the refugee crisis," Spiegel wrote on its website. "Then maybe she would not have needed (Turkish President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan," it said, referring to a highly-controversial deal Merkel brokered with Ankara to stem the flow of Syrian asylum seekers into the EU. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was more diplomatic in expressing a sense of disappointment. "Of course on the one hand, we are happy to hear Germany being praised for assuming the responsibility we have in tackling the refugee crisis or, shall we say, minimising immediate suffering as hundreds of thousands were on the move last year," he told public broadcaster ARD. Story continues "But of course we would hope for more support around the globe. That is why we are talking to the Americans. We are also talking to the Canadians and the Brazilians." - 'Shattered illusions' - The strong backing from Obama comes as the conservative chancellor, in power for a decade, has seen support for her Christian Democrats slip to 33 percent -- the lowest level in five years. Meanwhile, support for the rightwing populist anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged to around 14 percent. There was a time German leaders might have hungered for such praise from a US president, when West Germany during the Cold War was beholden to Washington for its security. But conservative daily Die Welt indicated that the tables had long since turned, with Washington now looking more to Berlin as the go-to European power for help in the globe's hotspots. It called Obama's farewell visit to Germany "a sign of respect" for Merkel "who, for the Americans, has become a lonely anchor of stability in a crisis-hit Europe". Berlin's daily Morgenpost said this shift had been difficult for Germans, who had looked with enormous hope to Obama when he took office in 2009. "There was euphoria that a new spirit would infuse the European-American relationship," he said. "Today the boss at the White House is sitting on a pile of shattered illusions. His relationship with Chancellor Merkel has a new sobriety too... In reality the German-American relationship consists of a long to-do list. "The best defence against disillusionment is scaling back expectations and staying realistic. Anything else would be nostalgia." For her part, Merkel touted her "friendly, close, trusting cooperation" with Obama but declined invitations by reporters at their joint press conference to share in the exuberance about their seven-year relationship. "There is no time to take stock," she chided. "The future with this president is more important at the moment than the past." By Anahi Rama and Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A panel of international experts on Sunday accused Mexico's government of undermining their probe into the fate of 43 trainee teachers apparently massacred in 2014, the most notorious human rights case in Mexico in recent years. The independent panel said the government's stonewalling stopped them from reaching the truth as they wrap up their work and prepare to leave Mexico. The attorney general's office, they said, did not let them re-interview detainees accused of the crime or obtain other information in a timely fashion. Prosecutors did not pursue investigative angles that the experts suggested. "The delays in obtaining evidence that could be used to figure out possible lines of investigation translates into a decision (to allow) impunity," the report by the experts, commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), said. The case has drawn international attention and stirred protests and outrage in Mexico, where violence has surged in a decade-long drug war. Lawlessness reigns in parts of the country and has tarnished President Enrique Pena Nieto's reputation. At a 2-1/2-hour news conference on Sunday attended by more than 1,000 people, the experts cast doubt on aspects of the government's version of events. They said in the report they had been repeatedly blocked in their efforts to obtain evidence from Mexican authorities. "We feel that from January there was someone giving instructions to halt everything," one of the experts, Angela Buitrago, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday night. As the experts finished their remarks at the news conference, audience members yelled, "Don't leave!" Mexico's government says that corrupt police in late 2014 handed the student teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala over to drug gang henchmen, who believed the trainees had been infiltrated by a rival gang. They then incinerated them at a garbage dump in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. While the experts' probe showed the municipal police were mainly responsible for the disappearance of the students, they said the federal police should also be investigated. The remains of just one of the 43 students has been identified from a charred bone fragment. The government said it was found in the Rio San Juan, a river by the town of Cocula, near Iguala where the students disappeared. The experts say that the government's theory the students had been burned is scientifically impossible given the heat needed to reduce human remains to ash, and the experts raised further questions in the report about the government's story of finding the bone fragment in the river. One of the experts, Carlos Beristain, also said detainees in the case showed signs of torture. The experts report notes that medical exams of detainees who said they were tortured were inadequate and did not meet international standards. IACHR has said it will not renew the experts' term because the government was opposed to an extension. Mexico's government authorized the groups investigation, vowing to cooperate fully, but at times actively blocked them. "There seems to be no limit to the Mexican government's utter determination to sweep the Ayotzinapa tragedy under the carpet," Amnesty International's Erika Guevara-Rosa said in a statement, referring to the college the trainee teachers attended. Pena Nieto thanked the experts via his official Twitter account. He said the attorney general's office would analyze their report. "With openness, responsibility and adherence to the law, the (attorney general's office) will keep working so that there is justice," he said. In a statement, the official who is leading the investigation for the attorney general's office said that the government had held numerous meetings with the experts and had fulfilled the majority of their hundreds of requests for information. The attorney general's office offered the experts "full access to information", said Eber Betanzos, deputy attorney general for human rights. The experts said they started to encounter stiff resistance from prosecutors in January. Dozens of statements, most of which had been requested months earlier, were handed over about a week ago, when the experts were finishing up the report and could no longer analyze them. Reuters reported last week that Mexico's army withheld crucial evidence from the experts, including photographs and video footage recorded as police clashed with the students, and that investigators have not been allowed to question soldiers on duty that night in the city where the students disappeared. (Reporting by Anahi Rama and Lizbeth Diaz; Additional reporting by Luis Rojas; Writing by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein; Editing by Simon Gardner and Cynthia Osterman) What a dismal week in the Middle East for the Obama administration. In the course of a couple of days, the partial ceasefire in Syria began to fray, the peace talks in Geneva turned stony, and the Saudis pointedly cold-shouldered President Obama when he arrived in Riyadh for talks with King Salman. After what was likely Obamas last trip to the region, his Mideast legacy is clear: He has broken eggs, but hes hardly handing his successor an omelet. Presidential campaign promises notwithstanding, theres no going back to Washingtons long-established policy framework in the Middle East. Obama consigned that to the scrap heap when he joined five other major powers in talks to limit Irans nuclear program three autumns ago. The Iran agreement that was finally signed last July was a smart move. But it was inevitable that it would prompt realignments across the region, notably but not only with Saudi Arabia. Related: How the Iran Deal Alters the Ties That Bind The Saudis appear to recognize this, although theyre plainly uncertain of Washingtons intent as the status quo passes. It is a concerning factor for us if America pulls back, Turki al-Faisal, a Saudi royal and a former ambassador to the U.S., said last week. America has changed, we have changed, and definitely we need to realign and readjust our understandings of each other. But Obama has made the very worst of his own smart initiatives. By all appearances he either lost his nerve as the larger consequences of the Iran accord began sinking in or he simply wasnt up to a fundamental renovation of Middle East policy in the first place. Whoever sits in the White House a year from now will have to go forward more wisely than Obama has. Voters concerned about terrorism and the rise of ISIS should consider this in November: Either the U.S. finds a new way forward in the Middle East or we are in for many more years of disorder, costly military engagement, national security risk, diplomatic friction, and uncertain energy supply. Story continues Since Israel is a constant in American policy, the challenge is to find a new balance in relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia. These two now form an axis of animosity, and the task for Washington is to tread carefully between them. In the Iran case, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry always stressed that the nuclear accord wasnt intended to produce a broader rapprochement. That may be right or wrongits wrong in my viewbut its another thing altogether to hedge on the agreement itself, as the administration has been doing for some months. Related: Kerry Just Confirmed GOPs Worst Fears about Iran Deal First, Treasury is effectively keeping the most damaging sanctions against Iran in placealienating not only the reformists in Tehran, who deserve American encouragement, but also the European business community. Neither is able to do the business they anticipated once the agreement took effect. Second, Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed two new sets of sanctions against Iran in response to tests of nuclear-capable missiles conducted last autumn and last month. This is a sleight of hand that not even Washingtons partners in the P5 + 1 negotiating group (the permanent members of the Security Council and Germany) appear to countenance. Until recently the U.S. claimed the missile tests violate a U.N. Security Council resolution forbidding them. They do not. Resolution 2231, submitted by the U.S. and passed unanimously in the council when the nuclear accord was signed last year, supersedes earlier resolutions and merely calls upon Iran to avoid testing nuclear-capable missiles. The softened language, which emerged from intense negotiation, reflects Irans right to self-defense. In any case, Iran is now certifiably incapable of making a nuclear warhead. While the administration has now retreated from its initial charges of Iranian violations, there appears to be no thought of dropping the new sanctions. The takeaway: If Obama set out to derive as little good as possible from the nuclear accord, its hard to see how he could have possibly been more successful. In fairness, it was never going to be easy to get the Saudis to swallow the nuclear accord, given King Salmans determination to assert Sunni primacy across the region in competition with Shiite Iran. But if a cooler relationship was inevitable, something nearer ice-cold wasnt. Related: Obama Meets Saudi King as U.S. Iran Policy Strains Alliance Obamas solution, as his visit to Riyadh made crystal clear, simply isnt working. And from the U.S. perspective, its making matters worse. The administration is now increasing military assistance to the Saudis even as they wage an incautious sectarian war in Yemen. Last month the U.N. warned that Saudi bombing sorties may involve war crimes. In Syria, Obama is relying on the Saudis as a regional ally against the Islamic State, but Riyadhs ideological support for the Sunni-nationalist ISIS is well established. Is this contradiction supposed to float away simply because its inconvenient? Its the same problem in Geneva. The Saudi-supported opposition group walked out of talks last week because it continues to insist that the Assad governmentwhich is Alawite, a Shiite secthas to go before any deal can be struck. While we dont know what Assads counterproposal to form a unity government means, it sounds preferable to another Islamic regime that assumes power without elections and governs according to Sharia law. In effect, the Obama administration has led the U.S. into a dangerous moment in a dangerous region. As the fight against the Islamic State intensifies, it is starting to look as if Obama has too many chips on the Saudis to get this job done. And if the temperature in U.S.-Saudi relations continues to drop, the potential vulnerability of U.S. oil suppliesonly Canada ships more to the U.S. than Saudi Arabiacan only increase. Never mind the boilerplate about energy independence: Damaging ties with the Saudis is a risk no president should take. The next one will need a lot more diplomatic finesse. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: The walls are adorned with campaign posters and stylized images of Bernie Sanders and a loop of the Vermont senators speeches over his 30-plus-year political career plays quietly in the background. Pro-Sanders shirts, buttons and fliers are everywhere. None of those things are particularly unusual for a presidential campaign office, but what is unusual about the Sanders campaign office in Corvallis is that it is not an official campaign office; instead it was started by a grass-roots Sanders group. Stephanie Hampton, a Corvallis resident who was part of the core group of volunteers that opened the office, said the Corvallis for Bernie group got its start with a table at the Corvallis Farmers Market back in June of 2015. As the group has ramped up its canvassing and phone banking efforts, Hampton said the members realized they needed an office of their own. We really needed a space that we could use every single day, she said. The group officially opened its office in a suite downstairs at 425 S.W. Madison on April 16. Hampton said they are financing it through donations and sales of buttons, signs and shirts. Group organizers said the group has an email list of 600 local supporters, dozens of volunteers and hosts debate-watching events attended by 50 to 70 people. Organizers are using the office as a place to train volunteers how to do phone banking so they can then do it on their own from their home computers or to plan canvassing door-to-door in Corvallis. It is unusual for volunteers who arent formally connected to a campaign to open their own office, but it isnt unprecedented, said Bill Lunch, a professor emeritus of political science at Oregon State University. Lunch pointed at the primary campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy in 1968 as an example of another campaign with similar grass-roots organization. In his own memoir of the campaign republished in 2000, the anti-Vietnam War McCarthy, who won Oregon but lost the Democratic nomination, gave accounts of supporters in Oregon buying their own billboards for him and opening their own campaign offices, one of which was in a tent because a building was not available. According to McCarthy, one of his grass-roots Oregon groups was so short of campaign supplies that they made their own buttons by painting bottle caps and attaching pins to them. And McCarthys primary supporters faced a similar challenge as Sanders supporters do now: making sure potential supporters know they need to be registered as a party member to vote in the Oregon primary. Cassie Nix, another organizer of Corvallis for Bernie, said a big part of their canvassing is letting people know they need to be registered Democrats to vote for Sanders in Oregons May 17 primary. The last date for Oregonians to register to vote or change their party affiliation is Tuesday. Organizers gave a number of reasons for supporting Sanders, such as his vote against the Iraq War in 2002, his opposition to trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his support of a $15 an hour minimum wage and the Black Lives Matter movement. Its a truly progressive movement, said Hampton of Sanders backers. Hampton said they are unsure how long they will keep the office, but they may keep it because local volunteers can still phone bank for Sanders in other states after Oregon has voted. Whether we have an office or not, well continue to work for Bernie, she said. Organizers of the group said that regardless of the outcome of the election, they are happy with the issues Sanders has made a part of this years election conversation. And despite Sanders lagging behind Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegate count (Real Clear Politics says Sanders has a pledged delegate count of 1,153 to Clintons pledged delegate count of 1,428), his supporters believe he can still win, or come close enough that the Democratic National Convention in July will be contested. There are still a lot of contests up for grabs, said Nix. Its far from over. The office's phone number is 541-760-7879 and the group posts about its events and activities at https://www.facebook.com/corvallisforbernieplans. "Anything for Beyonce." That was model Winnie Harlow's mantra last December when Bey's team invited her to work on the icon's Lemonade project, which made its HBO debut on Saturday night. The 21-year-old Toronto beauty, ne Chantelle Brown-Young -- whose rare vitiligo skin condition has stunned in campaigns for Diesel and Spanish brand Desigual -- slipped into various numbers for the production, which included an African-inspired orange and teal number (as seen in the chapter titled "Resurrection" set to the sounds of Beyonce and James Blake's emotional duet "Forward") as well as a soft white, billowy number that she sashays in for "Freedom." Forever Grateful -- A photo posted by Winnie (@winnieharlow) on Apr 25, 2016 at 9:07am PDT In a continuation of Billboard's conversation with Harlow, the model breaks down her looks in Lemonade and shares a funny story about the time she swapped shoes with Beyonce. Beyonce's 'Lemonade': Model Winnie Harlow Explains the On-Set Ambience During 'Freedom' On her "Resurrection" dress So honoured to have worked with you and to be acknowledged by you @beyonce. This photo is dear to me because this is a photo of my great grandfather. I'm very blessed to know about my present and future sometimes, but I'm even more blessed to have knowledge about my past -- A photo posted by Winnie (@winnieharlow) on Apr 23, 2016 at 10:03pm PDT It was an African-inspired outfit. [The style team] chose that one specifically for me. I don't know why but it was so epic. It was so sick. They brought that one to my trailer and I was like, 'Bring it on.' I have no idea who designed [the pieces I wore]. I didn't look at the tags but they wanted something very graceful. On her skin routine for "Lemonade" I used a lot of my own makeup products in the video just because the flight [from L.A. to New Orleans] wasn't that long. It was the makeup I'd wear on a flight. There wasn't any mascara but I put concealer on light or dark marks, some lip gloss, and I had grown my eyebrows and came to set like that. I walked into makeup and the artist was like, "Oh, you look perfect. I'm just gonna add a little bit of blush to add a little healthy glow and change the lip gloss to a lighter [one] that's gonna match your lips a little more and you're pretty much done." Story continues I would suggest exfoliating and moisturizing, which I really believe in, just to get that dewy fresh look. I rarely use foundation unless I'm trying to get a beat face [Ed.: "Beat face" refers to perfectly done makeup.] but on a day to day [basis], I won't wear makeup. If I'm gonna go outside and get some stuff, I'll put concealer on the smallest things and blend it very well. I also recommend getting Color Mash for concealers and foundations 'cause you can't really correct the wrong foundation or wrong concealer. Mascara is a girl's best friend so if you like to wear mascara, that's cool as well but I feel like less is more with that look. On braided 'do [The hair styling team] actually just braided my hair in two pigtails and braided the pigtails and wrapped them over the front of my head to create that crown. @iamquvenzhane is now my honourary little sister ------ A video posted by Winnie (@winnieharlow) on Apr 25, 2016 at 8:37am PDT On that time Beyonce used her shoes I had heels on most of the time while I was filming and I took my shoes, which were basically some brown combat boots with a chunky heel from Guess by Marciano, on set. I love them. They're my favorite shoes and go with everything. We were all just standing around, waiting for Beyonce and her dancers to finish filming a scene. We were all just hanging out for the time being. One of the producers ran out, basically in a panic, looking for someone or something and kept asking, "Where's the stylist? Where's the stylist? Where's the stylist?" And everyone started looking around like, "I don't know. We just got here. We have no clue." [The producer] looked at me and down at my shoes and he's like, "Where did you get those shoes?" And I was like, "Uh, from me?" He's like, "No, which stylist gave you those shoes?" [I'm like], "No stylist gave them to me. They're mine. I brought them. They belong to me. I own them." He started to walk away then looked back at me. I asked, "Why do you wanna know?" He said, "Well, they're trying to finish this scene and Bey doesn't have any shoes. Your shoes look exactly like all the dancer's shoes." I think the dancers were wearing black combat heel boots and mine were brown so I guess that would be fine since [Beyonce] would be the one to stand out any way. He was like, "Can we you know" And I was like, "Oh, god. Please. Can I get them back? They're my favorite shoes." And he was like, "Yes." Dropped down to his knees, unzipped me out of my boots and ran with them. I was just here standing in my socks, like, "Okay, cool no biggie." So now I'm barefoot on set, standing there in front of [Beyonce's mom] Miss Tina and looking at her, like, this is kind of awkward. [Laughs] I had my outfits [for the shoot] so I just switched to the heels that were supposed to go with them. Hours had passed now and they finished wrapping that scene and I had not gotten my shoes back. So I start getting a bunch of assistants. Stylists came up to me, asking, "Can we please buy your shoes off of you? Can we replace them?" And I'm like, "Girl, listen." Beyonce Slays in Roberto Cavalli in 'Lemonade' HBO Special The theme of my whole trip has been "anything for Beyonce," like getting on a flight but I loved those shoes. Not that they're like super expensive or anything but they go with every outfit. At one point, because her personal assistant and I had gotten so close, she came to me and was like, "Listen, we'll do anything right now for continuity. Please." So I was like, "Ok, I'm gonna keep rolling with the "anything for Beyonce" [attitude] but if you can, can you please try to get those boots back to me? I know it's gonna be a whirlwind but if you can hold onto those shoes and mail them back to me.' She was like, "I'll try my best." When I get back to my trailer, there was a brand new pair of patent leather Sergio Rossi [boots]. I couldn't be mad at that trade-off. She traded in her boots for mine. I went online and found my [Guess by Marciano] shoes any way so I still got to buy mine back plus a shoe that's 10 times more expensive than mine. It's definitely a win-win. NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger's security forces have arrested more than 100 people in the Sahara desert who were trying to illegally cross the country's northern border into neighboring Algeria, security sources said Monday. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the arrests, which took place on Saturday, concerned 122 women and children found in a single truck. Local media said 150 people had been arrested. An estimated 100,000 people passed through Agadez last year, a city in the center of the West African state and a major hub for sub-Saharan migrants aiming to reach North Africa and Europe. Authorities believe more will come through this year. A security official said the truck had bypassed Assamaka, the final desert checkpoint in Niger before the border with Algeria, and was found by a customs patrol car. "The patrol immobilized the truck, discovered the migrants on board and gave the alert," said the official. Giussepe Loprete, IOM's mission head in Niger, said the migrants had been returned to Agadez on Sunday, where they were staying at an IOM center before the organization would facilitate their returns to their areas of origin. "All these people ignore the dangers that loom over them, like the breakdown of a truck in such a vast desert and the exhaustion of their reserves," said Loprete. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Tom Heneghan) A mother and daughter got a close-up look at a tornado near Superior, Nebraska, on Sunday, April 24. Storms along the Nebraska-Kansas border generated hail, winds and heavy rain. At least one tornado was confirmed, including the one west of Superior, according to local reports. Tina Hamilton, who took this video, said she and her daughter were driving home when they saw dust picking up off the field next to them. My daughter has [sic] thought it was somebody planting, since its that time of the year, she said. We looked up, and this was not what we excepted. She and and her daughter had no choice but to beat out the tornado, which they were able to do. Credit: Facebook/Tina Hamilton Will Acquisition Continue Benefitting Pinnacle Foods in 1Q16? Pinnacles stock performance Pinnacle Foods (PF) is based in Parsippany, New Jersey. It will be reporting its 1Q16 results after the Market opens on April 28. The quarter ended on March 27, 2016. The company, along with its subsidiaries, manufactures, markets, and distributes branded convenience food products in North America. Pinnacles stock has gained 2% since its last quarter earnings release on February 25. The stock rose 2.5% after the company beat earnings estimates in 4Q15. For fiscal 2015, earnings and revenue grew by 10% and 2%, respectively. The stock fell 5% on March 23 when Pinnacle announced that its CEO, Robert J. Gamgort, will leave the company at the end of April. He will be the CEO of Keurig Green Mountain. Gamgort has been Pinnacles CEO since July 2009. It closed at $43.57compared to $46.08 in the previous days trading session. So far, the stock has gained 4% in 2016. It increased 21% in 2015. Pinnacle outperformed the Market represented by the S&P 500 Index by 0.2% as of April 22. It closed at $44.03 on April 22. Peers stock performance Pinnacles peers in the industry include WhiteWave Foods (WWAV), Treehouse Foods (THS), and Lancaster Colony (LANC). So far, WhiteWave Foods has gained 4% in 2016. Treehouse Foods has gained 14%. Lancaster Colony has lost 3%, respectively. WhiteWave Foods, Treehouse Foods, and Lancaster Colony closed at $40.41, $86.77, and $109.88, respectively, on April 22. To gain exposure to Pinnacle, you can invest in the PowerShares DWA Consumer Staples Momentum Portfolio (PSL). PSL invest 1.3% of its portfolio in Pinnacle. Series overview In this pre-earnings overview, well cover analysts revenue estimates, revenue growth drivers, and earnings per share. Well see what will contribute to its earnings. Well also look at the companys outlook for 2016 along with an update on the Boulder acquisition. Finally, well look at what Wall Street analysts recommend for the stock. Story continues Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Rome (AFP) - The United States on Monday offered its backing for a NATO naval operation off Libya in support of a controversial Italian plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe. "Barack Obama said he was willing to commit NATO assets to block the traffic in human beings and the people smugglers that we refer to as modern slavers," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told reporters after meeting the US president and the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in the German city of Hanover. The talks touched on the migrant crisis as well as instability and Islamist infiltration in Libya, a departure point for 350,000 people who have set sail to Italy since the start of 2014. Italian defence minister Roberta Pinotti had earlier revealed that preparations for a naval blockade are already advanced, with approval expected when NATO leaders meet on July 7 in Warsaw. US officials confirmed that Washington is fully on board. The White House said Obama and the other leaders want to learn from efforts to shut down Europe's other major migrant conduit -- the route from Turkey to Greece -- to plan the operation. NATO already has an operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey. The influx to Greece has also sharply dropped since March 20, when a deal between Turkey and the EU came into force that will see migrants sent back -- but the agreement has come under heavy criticism on human rights grounds. The leaders "urged NATO and the EU to draw on their experience in the Aegean to explore how they could work together to address in an orderly and humane way migrant flows in the central Mediterranean", the White House said. - Germany seeks EU command - The naval action envisaged is part of a broader Italian strategy to stop people using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe. This will involve flying migrants with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. Story continues Those plans have been slammed by refugee and rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what the Catholic leader sees as an arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. Germany has said it supports naval action to combat trafficking of weapons as well as people, but wants it under EU rather than NATO command. "The USA is fully engaged and ready, in connection with the migration route from Libya to Italy, to share responsibility if necessary," Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Hanover. "However, we now have a European mission, EUNAVFOR, also called Sophia, which is working quite well." Aid organisations say over half the boat people arriving in Italy have a clear-cut right to refuge from persecution or conflict and many more deserve proper examination of their asylum applications. But this year's influx has been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa, a region the EU considers safe for people's return. - 'Appalling conditions' - Under Italy's proposals, an existing NATO mission, Operation Active Endeavour, would be "recalibrated" into one overseeing the Libyan coast. Any operation would be complicated given the presence of Islamic State fighters in some coastal regions of Libya, but the NATO presence could deter traffickers from putting their human cargoes to sea. It is unlikely, however, that the operation would seek to turn boats back on the model Australia has adopted in recent years. "It is worth remembering that Libya is not party to the Geneva convention and that conditions in its detention centres are appalling," said Libya expert Mattia Toaldo. "I don't think NATO will turn boats back but I do think Italy will start flying people home direct from Sicily." Any repatriations depend on readmission agreements being concluded with individual countries. African leaders showed little enthusiasm for that at a summit with their EU counterparts in Malta last year but Brussels' vast aid budget means it has plenty of leverage if needed. Libya's new national unity government last week offered to sign up to a Turkey-style deal with Italy to take back migrants. Such an accord had been seen as unlikely because of rights and safety concerns, but Renzi said Monday he did not see why it could not happen. Italy is preparing to lead a UN-backed peacekeeping force into Libya if the unity government consolidates power sufficiently to be able to ask for outside help without facing a domestic rebellion. Nepal's prime minister joined Buddhist monks at a prayer ceremony Monday to mark the start of rebuilding of five ancient monuments destroyed in an earthquake that killed thousands and devastated the country's rich cultural heritage. The ceremony at the seventh-century Swayambhunath Temple complex came exactly a year after the quake struck, although the main commemorations for the dead were held Sunday, the anniversary by the Nepali calendar. One of the Buddhist temples at the spectacular hilltop complex, a UNESCO world heritage site, was completely destroyed by the 7.8-magnitude quake. Rebuilding work began Monday on that and four other monuments, including a temple in the historic town of Bhaktapur and two wooden pavilions once used for royal ceremonies that crumbled in the quake. "They are treasures given to us by our ancestors... it is our responsibility to hand them down to the next generation the way they were handed down to us," said Bhesh Narayan Dahal, director general of the government's Department of Archaeology. "We will begin reconstruction of other monuments as well, work has been slow but now it will pick up pace," Dahal told AFP. About 700 monuments require rebuilding or repair. Many are major tourist draws, including Swayambhunath, known as the "Monkey Temple" because of the animals occupying the steps leading up to it. While restoration work has begun on a handful of temples, including the fifth-century Changu Narayan complex, officials say it will be years before Nepal's rich architectural heritage can be fully restored. The rebuilding of houses has been even slower to start, and on Sunday protesters marched on government offices to demand faster reconstruction efforts. The Red Cross says four million victims are still living in flimsy shelters after the disaster, which killed nearly 9,000 people, including hundreds of Nepalis and tourists who died in a massive quake-triggered avalanche that destroyed the entire village of Langtang. Story continues - 'I felt heartbroken' - Dozens of foreign trekkers travelled to Langtang Monday for a memorial service and paid tearful tribute to victims, many of whose bodies were buried so deep under debris that they have never been recovered. Buddhist monks led the service that was attended by around 100 people, including villagers who have returned to Langtang to rebuild their lives. "Someone said I lost my mother, another said I lost my daughter or son or wife or father... Some people spoke, others couldn't speak because they were crying," said guesthouse owner Palsang Tamang, who also took part in the ceremony. Survivors unveiled a marble wall inscribed with the names of those killed, including Tamang's daughter. "I felt heartbroken, I lost my daughter and so many other family members. We prayed for them. We hope they all find peace and are in heaven," he told AFP. On Everest, mountaineering teams caught up in the tragedy observed a minute's silence at 11:56 am -- the time the earthquake hit -- in memory of their fallen colleagues. The mountain suffered its deadliest ever disaster when the quake triggered an avalanche that killed 18 people. "This was an opportunity to remember those who died, those who were injured and the many people who worked so hard to rescue and treat the 100 patients," Rachel Tullet, base camp manager for Jagged Globe, said in a blog post. Nepal has issued 289 permits to mountaineers for the brief spring climbing season, which lasts from mid-April to May, and many have begun to ascend the world's tallest peak. "Tourism has suffered after the quake, but we did not see much impact (on Everest)," said tourism chief Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal. A spokesman for Nepal's National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), which is overseeing rebuilding, told AFP that work would soon start on schools and hospitals across quake-hit districts. The disaster damaged about 8,000 schools and 1,200 health centres and Nepal's government has come under fire for doing little to rebuild classrooms or rural medical facilities that are a lifeline for remote communities in hilly regions. (Adds background, details) April 24 (Reuters) - Canadian miner Nevsun Resources Ltd said it has agreed to buy Reservoir Minerals Inc for about $365 million in cash and stock. Nevsun, which owns the Bisha copper-zinc mine in Eritrea, will pay two shares of Nevsun and $0.001 in cash for each Reservoir share, the company said on Sunday. The deal values Reservoir shares at C$9.401 each, representing a 35 percent premium to its last close, based on Nevsun stock's Friday closing price. Nevsun will also provide $135 million in financing to Reservoir, by buying about 12.2 million of Reservoir shares for $90.3 million and providing an unsecured cash loan of $44.7 million to Reservoir. Vancouver-based Reservoir is a mining exploration and development company. Its flagship venture is the Timok copper and gold project in Serbia, which it owns in a joint venture with U.S.-based miner Freeport McMoRan Inc. Lundin Mining, another Canadian miner, said on March 3 that it agreed to buy part of Freeport's stake in the Timok project for up to $262.5 million. The proposed transaction is, however, subject to a right of first offer (ROFO) that Reservoir had, which put Reservoir first in line to purchase the Freeport stake. With $135 million of financial backing from Nevsun, Reservoir is now able to exercise that right, scuppering the planned Lundin transaction. The deal will result in Reservoir owning 100 percent of the Timok project's upper zone and 60.4 percent of the lower zone. Reservoir will also become the operator of the project, taking over from Freeport. "Reservoir's board of directors determined that this transaction is the best funding alternative for our shareholders to fund the Timok ROFO," Reservoir's President and Chief Executive Simon Ingram said in a statement. (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) An Eventful 1Q16: How Has Your US Large-Cap Fund Fared? (Continued from Prior Part) Performance evaluation of the Vanguard PRIMECAP Fund The Vanguard PRIMECAP Fund Investor Shares (VPMCX) fell 2.0% in 1Q16, but it was still an above average performer among the 12 funds chosen for this review. VPMCX fell 1.5% in the one-year period ended March 2016, ranking it sixth among its peers. Meanwhile, from Decembers end 2015 until April 20, 2016, the fund rose 2.5%. Weve graphed its performance against two ETFs: the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (IVW) and the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF). Lets look at what contributed to the funds above-average performance in 1Q16. Portfolio composition and contribution to returns The healthcare sector contributed the most to VPMCXs negative returns in 1Q16. Biogen (BIIB) led the negative contributors from the sector, which included Eli Lilly (LLY) and Amgen (AMGN), among others. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) was a positive contributor. Financials was the second-largest negative contributor to VPMCXs 1Q16 returns. Charles Schwab (SCHW) was miles ahead in terms of negative contribution compared to the distant second Wells Fargo (WFC). However, some of the drag was reduced by positive a contribution from Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC). The industrials sector helped to reduce a sizable drag from VPMCXs returns, contributing positively in 1Q16. FedEx (FDX) was primarily responsible for the sectors strong performance. It had support from stocks such as Southwest Airlines (LUV), among others. Information technology was the second-largest positive contributing sector. It was led by Texas Instruments (TXN) with support from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE). However, Micron Technology (MU) contributed a sizable drag. Comparison with IVW The iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (IVW) did much better than VPMCX in 1Q16 in terms of total returns. Though VPMCXs stock picks from the consumer discretionary and industrials sectors did better than those in IVW, IVW did better in all other sectors. Story continues Investor takeaway VPMCX may not have done well compared to some of its peers and ETFs in 1Q16, but this doesnt make the offering weak. Its low portfolio turnover is a testament to the fact that its fund managers have conviction in its stocks. VPMCX is closed to new investors. However, those already invested will likely want to remain invested, especially in a long-term investment horizon scenario. In the last part of this series, well take a look at the overall picture that emerges from this analysis. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - US President Barack Obama has called for Syria's warring parties to reinstate a troubled ceasefire, as regime and rebel bombardments killed 26 civilians in the flashpoint city of Aleppo. Eight weeks into the declared truce between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebels, violence has escalated around Aleppo, with dozens killed by government air strikes and rebel rockets. The surge in fighting and stalled peace talks in Geneva have dimmed hopes that the ceasefire would lay the groundwork for finally resolving Syria's devastating five-year conflict. On Sunday, Obama said he had spoken to his Russian counterpart -- a key Assad ally -- to try to shore up the truce. "I spoke to President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities," he told reporters in Germany. The president was Monday set to announce plans to send up to 250 more military trainers to Syria, intensifying US assistance to rebels, a senior administration official said. An EU spokesperson also issued a statement urging the US and Russia as brokers of the ceasefire "to bring the maximum influence to bear in order to end these breaches of the agreement". After at least 27 civilian deaths were reported in regime bombardments across Syria on Saturday, a fresh barrage of air strikes hit Aleppo on Sunday. Twelve civilians died when a strike hit an open-air fruit and vegetable market, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. An AFP photographer saw a man in a bright-blue cap carrying a shell-shocked, bleeding and barefoot young boy. - 'Attack on Geneva process' - The Observatory said four more civilians died Sunday in strikes on other opposition neighbourhoods, and in Aleppo's western government-held parts, 10 civilians including a woman and two children were killed by rebel rocket fire. Emergency responders, known as White Helmets, told AFP they were "exhausted" by the past three days of bombing in Syria's second city. Story continues "We're back to working 24-hour shifts after we started working shorter hours because of the truce," one volunteer said. Also Sunday, rockets fired into Turkey from an area of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group killed one person and wounded 26, Ankara's deputy prime minister said. The wounded included six Syrians. While officials have yet to declare the ceasefire dead, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the escalating violence in Aleppo and elsewhere meant it had effectively collapsed. Peace negotiations due to run in Geneva until Wednesday have faltered after Syria's main opposition group last week suspended its official participation in the talks. The High Negotiations Committee walked away in frustration at the devastating humanitarian situation on the ground. "The Assad regime's bombing offensive is not only a brutal attack on Syrians, but an attack on the Geneva process that is the only possible pathway to peace," HNC spokesman Salem al-Meslet said Sunday in an emailed statement. The truce was part of the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 with widespread anti-Assad protests. It has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has killed 270,000 people and drawn in regional and world powers. - Ground troops 'a mistake' - In an interview with the BBC aired Sunday, Obama warned Western governments should not send troops to topple Assad's regime. "Syria has been a heartbreaking situation of enormous complexity, and I don't think there are any simple solutions," he said in London. "It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime." He urged all parties "to sit down at the table and try to broker a transition". Obama first urged Assad to step down in August 2011 but has resisted calls by critics to use American military force to end the Syrian regime's rule. Washington did, however, launch air strikes in mid-2014 against the Islamic State group after it seized large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq. By Roberta Rampton HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since the civil war there began, saying he would dispatch 250 special forces soldiers to help local militia to build on successes against Islamic State. The new deployment increases U.S. forces in Syria six-fold to about 300. While the total U.S. ground force is still small by comparison to other American deployments, defense experts said it could help shift the momentum in Syria by giving more Syrian fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support. Obama said the move followed victories that clawed back territory from Islamic State. Given the success, Ive approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum, Obama said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, the last stop on a foreign tour that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. Theyre not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back, he added, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but the campaigns effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years. Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria last year, which has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscows ally but a foe of the United States. CLOSE AIR SUPPORT Washingtons main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, who wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. However, the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG. Presumably these are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria, Tim Ripley, defense analyst and writer for IHS Janes Defence Weekly magazine, said of the extra special forces. The more people you have, the more militia groups can have close air support that makes them more effective so they can advance in more areas, Ripley said. But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory. The real question has to be: are they going to let the Kurdish YPG forces actually go and attack and capture some territory? This is something the Americans have not been happy about because when the YPG forces attack and capture territory, it tends to anger the president of Turkey, Ripley said. The Syria Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obamas announcement but still wanted more help. "Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support, SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware. The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State scourge, but said Washington should do more to fight against Assad. Syria will not be free of terrorism until we see the end of the Assad regimes reign of terror. We need help in freeing our country from Assad as well as from Daesh, spokesman Salem al-Meslet said in a statement. If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river. That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas. THE RACE FOR RAQQA U.S. special forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic States main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital. This places them in another quandary. Do they coordinate their attack on Raqqa with the Syrian army and the Russian air force, who are advancing on Raqqa? The question is whos going to get there first, Ripley said. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more, Obama said ahead of talks with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria. Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where the five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people. In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS But Washingtons lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The sudden entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West including Washington. Washington and Moscow sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assads government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire. Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syrias largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes. The Syrian governments negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi'ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the governments enemies were terrorists. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff; editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood) The Obamas visit to Prince William and Kate's home gave the world its first look inside their private apartment at Kensington Palace. Read: Prince George Gets to Stay Up Late to Meet The Visiting Yank President Prince George can be seen playing on the wooden rocking horse the Obamas gave him for his first birthday as well as a stuffed dog that looks just like first pooch, Bo Obama. William and Kates living room is filled with intimate touches. On a side table, there is a framed photograph of the late Princess Diana with William and Harry. It was her Christmas card from 1994. The whole world is gushing about that adorable photo of Prince George in his robe, jammies and slippers greeting President Obama over the weekend. Now, parents everywhere are scrambling to copy the little princes look. Read: Photographer Reveals How He Made Prince George Giggle in Royal Family Portrait The monogrammed robe is from a company called My First Years and costs a reasonable $39. However, good luck finding one, as the robe sold out within minutes of the photo's release. Watch: The Queen's Great-Granddaughter Steals the Spotlight Holding Granny's $1,400 Purse Related Articles: * Odds on Brexit lengthen, sterling rises after Obama visit * "Leave" campaigners fight back, raise immigration concerns * But interior minister May says Britain safer within EU * Graphic on odds: http://reut.rs/1VEth0y (Adds details on odds, Home Secretary Theresa May quotes) By Estelle Shirbon LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - Bookmakers' odds have shifted sharply towards Britain voting to remain in the European Union in a referendum in June, a move in sentiment also reflected by the pound rising on Monday to a near six-week high against the euro. Both moves followed a direct intervention by U.S. President Barack Obama in favour of Britain staying in, but those advocating leaving sought to undermine his arguments and warned the "In" camp not to celebrate too early. Obama said Britain would find itself "in the back of the queue" for a trade deal with the United States if it voted to quit the EU on June 23, and said it would be safer, more prosperous and more influential if it stayed in. Following his intervention, which was more forceful than had been expected, the implied probability of a vote to remain in the 28-nation bloc rose to 74 percent, a jump of more than 10 percentage points compared with a week ago, according to odds from bookmaker Betfair. "'Remain' was already a strong favourite before Barack Obama's visit, but his comments sparked another wave of trading over the weekend with 'Remain' now backed into 1/3," said James Midmer, a spokesman for Betfair. "The market could eclipse Betfair's record for traded volume for a single political market; 3.5 million pounds ($5 million) has been matched in the last week alone," he said. The probability of a "Remain", or "In", vote implied by the odds was at its highest level since September 2015, Betfair data showed. The pound traded near a six-week high against the euro, with traders saying Obama's intervention was helping sentiment as it underlined the weight of argument from global and financial leaders in favour of the "Remain" camp. Story continues "CROWING TOO SOON" The EU issue has split the ruling Conservative Party, with Prime Minister David Cameron leading the campaign to stay in while six of his cabinet ministers and a large proportion of his party's lawmakers are openly campaigning for Brexit. The "Leave" campaign fought back on Monday, with figurehead Boris Johnson, the outgoing Conservative mayor of London seen as a potential successor to Cameron, saying Obama had "bullied" British voters and that his warning on trade was "ridiculous". In an opinion column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Johnson accused the "Remain" camp of "crowing too soon". Another prominent "Leave" campaigner, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, wrote in the Times newspaper that the next wave of EU expansion, which could include Turkey and Albania, would create a migration "free-for-all". But Home Secretary Theresa May, the interior minister who is in the "Remain" camp, said "nobody should think leaving the EU is a silver bullet that is suddenly going to solve all our immigration problems". She argued in a speech that controlling immigration and preventing criminals and terrorists from moving freely around the bloc were challenges best tackled by constant cooperation with EU partners and continual refining of the rules. "Leaving the EU would not mean we could just close ourselves off to the world ... Most of the international terrorism casework that crosses my desk involves countries beyond Europe's borders," May said. "So my judgment as home secretary is that remaining a member of the European Union means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism." ($1 = 0.6916 pounds) (Editing by Guy Faulconbridge/Jeremy Gaunt) It might be months before officials know why writer Michelle McNamara died suddenly last week at the age of 46. The noted true-crime author and wife of comedian and actor Patton Oswalt was found dead at the couple's home in Los Angeles on Thursday. Ed Winter, spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner's office, tells The Hollywood Reporter a cause of death likely will take months to determine because the medical examiner's office is so backed up with cases. Tests, including a toxicology report, will be conducted in an effort to determine the cause of death. For the moment, Winter says there is no new information in the case. The Hollywood community, especially Oswalt's friends and collaborators, were shocked by the news of McNamara's death. She is said to have been free of known medical conditions, with no prior warning signs her health might have been in danger. McNamara, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, was known for writing about real-life murderers and rapists. She founded the website True Crime Diary and also received a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Since his wife's death, Oswalt, a prolific actor (The King of Queens, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), voice artist (Ratatouille) and comic (his latest Netflix special debuted last week), has remained mostly silent on Twitter, where he is an active voice. McNamara is survived by Oswalt and their 7-year-old daughter, Alice. Read More: Hollywood Remembers Michelle McNamara: Elijah Wood, Margaret Cho React A solid-gold cross depicting Jesus with his arms outstretched may be Denmark's oldest crucifix, dating back more than 1,100 years. The gorgeous pendant was unearthed in March by a hobbyist with a metal detector. Found in a field on the island of Funen, Denmark, the Viking jewelry piece may have been worn by a Viking woman, according to the Viking Museum at Ladby, where the pendant was on display. "It's a completely sensational find that dates back to the first half of the 900s," Malene Refshauge Beck, a curator and archaeologist at stfyns Museum, told the Danish newspaper DR Nyheder. "This object will definitely need to figure in future history books as it could alter the period when it is believed that Danes became Christian." [Fierce Fighters: 7 Secrets of Viking Seamen] Fruitful day off work The stunning find was pure chance. Dennis Fabricius Holm, a metal detector hobbyist living in Aunslev, Denmakr, was enjoying a few hours off work by doing scouting in the empty field outside a medieval church. He encountered a gold pendant, and posted a photo of it to social media, where others suggested he contact an archaeologist, he told the Danish newspaper. "I got off early on Friday, so I took just a few hours, I went around with my metal detector and then I came suddenly on something," Holm told DR Nyheder. "Since I cleared the mud and saw the jewelry, I have not been able to think of anything else." The Viking bling is about 1.6 inches (4.1 cm) long and shows a man with outstretched arms. The Jesus figure is crafted out of filigree gold pellets and gold thread and weighs 0.46 ounces (13.2 g). The weighty cross likely belonged to a wealthy woman, though it's not clear whether the woman was Christian or whether a pagan Viking was showing some stolen goods, according to the museum. Rare find The Viking trinket is rare in a number of ways. It's unusual to find such a delicate and expensive piece of jewelry intact in an open field. While archaeologists had found fragments of crosses in Viking burial ships, those dated to later periods, were made of silver and were smaller that this discovery. A very similar cross, dating to about the same time period, however, was found in Sweden. Story continues Dating to the first half of the 10th century, the new find predates the A.D. 965 Jelling Stones, which include Harald Bluetooth's rune stone. That stone, which tells of King Harald's conversion of the Danes to Christianity, was previously thought to be the oldest depiction of Christ on a cross in Denmark. The medieval church near the field dates to the 1200s, but other rare objects, such as a rune stone, have been unearthed in the area before, according to a statement. That suggests the church may have been founded near an ancient Viking settlement. The new find pushes back the date at which Christianity entered the region, Beck said. "Over the last few years there have been more and more signs that Christianity was spread earlier than previously thought and up until now, this find is the clearest proof of that," Beck told DR Nyheder. The popular conception is that manly Viking pirates pillaged and terrorized Europe for centuries before converting to Christianity and settling down to a sober life of praying, farming and churchgoing in the 11th century. Over the last several decades, archaeologists and historians have realized the reality was much more complicated. For instance, most Vikings were only part-time pirates and had day jobs as farmers. Viking women came along on adventures, too. And many Vikings didn't simply loot and run, but established far-flung urban centers that are still occupied today, such as the city of Dyfflin, or Dublin, which was founded by Vikings. The new find was on display during the Easter season at the Viking Museum at Ladby, but has since been sent for preservation work, according to the statement. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Jessie Frazelle Mesosphere Last month, word broke that a star engineer for the super-hot startup Docker, Jessie Frazelle, was leaving to join another hot startup, Mesosphere. Such career leaps are often routine. But in this case, Frazelle was known as "THE face of Docker engineering to the community," as one person on Twitter put it. She was active on the speaker circuit and had contributed so much code to the Docker project that she was considered one of Docker's main builders. Docker helped invent a programming industry called "containers," which helps apps move from the programmer's computer to the cloud without breaking. A tweet from another female engineer claimed that Frazelle was "harassed out" of Docker: y'all know that @frazelledazzell was harassed out of @docker, and the company stood by the harassers instead of her, right? fuck docker. Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy) April 22, 2016 The fact that Frazelle had been subject to brutal harassment had been well-known for a while. Last July, a fed up Frazelle wrote about these experiences in a post that went viral: Ever since I started speaking at conferences and contributing to open source projects I have been endlessly harassed. I've gotten hundreds of private messages on IRC and emails about sex, rape, and death threats. People emailing me saying they jerked off to my conference talk video (you're welcome btw) is mild in comparison to sending Photoshopped pictures of me covered in blood. I wish I could do my job, something I very obviously love doing, without any of this bull. However that seems impossible at this point. It's worth repeating: This person received horrific threats because she's good at her job and out teaching others how to use an up-and-coming programming technology. Story continues She's not alone. The tech industry is riddled with similar stories of threats and sexism toward women, as if it's just one big frat house operating under 1950s "Mad Men" rules. Naturally, the tweet saying that she had been "harassed out" picked up steam, too, so much so that on Friday Docker tweeted from its main account an internal email from CEO Ben Golub to employees denying the accusation. In that email, Golub wrote: As you know, Jessie was being harassed by anonymous members of the community, and we took it very seriously. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835375. We threw our resources (including hiring private investigators, involving law enforcement, changing internal systems) to try and prevent this harassment. We always stood by Jessie. While Jessie did resign from Docker for another opportunity, we spoke to her about all of the reasons for her leaving. She did not at any time claim harassment from people inside Docker. We parted ways on good terms. Click here for a larger version of the email. We do not and never have tolerated harassment. @Docker actively pursues all internal & external claims of harassment pic.twitter.com/OtyKXmHJhU Docker (@docker) April 22, 2016 We asked Docker if hiring private investigators and going to the police worked to deter any of the culprits who were threatening its employee. The company declined to comment. No doubt Frazelle's career will continue to soar at Mesosphere, a company building a management system for containers with all the early earmarks of success. Frazelle declined to comment when we reached out to her, but she did tweet: Here's the thing, saying you won't tolerate asshattery is a lot different than actually doing something when it's happening in front of you jessie frazelle (@frazelledazzell) April 20, 2016 I lost something I loved so much and a small piece of my soul standing up for myself, and I just don't know if it was worth it. jessie frazelle (@frazelledazzell) April 22, 2016 NOW WATCH: The science behind why you shouldn't pop your pimples More From Business Insider Wellington (AFP) - Otago Highlanders centre Jason Emery received a four-week ban Tuesday over an ugly mid-air tackle on Coastal Sharks fullback Willie le Roux during a weekend Super Rugby match. Emery received a red card for the tackle in the 12th minute of the Highlanders' 14-15 loss on Friday, which sent le Roux cartwheeling through the air to land on his head and neck. The New Zealander pleaded guilty over the incident and the competition's judiciary found the offence warranted a six-week ban. However, he received a two-week discount because of his clean record, apology to le Roux and the fact that the judiciary deemed the tackle more "reckless than deliberate". Emery will miss the defending champion's upcoming Super Rugby matches against the ACT Brumbies, Waikato Chiefs and Canterbury Crusaders, as well as a club match. Le Roux was uninjured, despite his heavy fall, and returned to play a part in the Sharks' victory. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Para Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "Para") (PBR.V) (WKN:A14YF1) is pleased to announce the results of channel sample assays from the development mining faces in the underground and from the historical tailing from the El Limon Mine. The following tables and charts illustrated the results of 75 samples assayed in Activation Laboratories Ltd. - ACTLABS. The samples were taken perpendicularly to a double vein (superior and inferior) sigmoidal loop structure and to its hanging and foot walls sericitic and chloritic hydrothermally altered zones often carrying sulphides and gold mineralization as well. Beside the exceptional gold grades within the vein, the results indicate that the ore zone may sometimes be wider than originally thought. These assays indicate that at a 5 gram per ton Au cut-off grade, the mineralized zone could reach approximately 1 meter in width but at a fully diluted basis face sampling, the mineralized zone width could be increased to over than 2 meters. Some of the fully diluted channel composite results below highlight the individual gold grades in the vein included, as follows: CL-018 - 2.00 meters @ 65.33 gpt Au, including 0.30 meters @ 428.42 gpt Au CL-017 - 2.30 meters @ 13.96 gpt Au, including 0.20 meters @ 149.56 gpt Au CL-014 - 0.88 meters @ 10.43 gpt Au, including 0.20 meters @ 33.41 gpt Au CL-001 - 1.95 meters @ 7.21 gpt Au, including 0.30 meters @ 34.75 gpt Au Gold grades and sample lengths for Quartz Vein. Gold grades for Sericitic Zone. Gold grades of Chloritic Zone. The tailings that were produced from operations at El Limon over the last 23 years have been stored adjacent to the mill. These tailings will be moved to a new dump site approximately 1 km away. The company assayed samples from these tailings prior to moving them in order to establish the viability of reprocessing them. Six samples were taken randomly from the tailings pile with a hydraulic excavator and assayed in the El Limon Mine's laboratory. The results are shown in the table below: Story continues The tailing pile is empirically estimated to contain approximately 75,000 cubic meters of material or about 125,000 tons at an average grade of 3.1 grams of gold per ton. These tailings have already been milled and so it is expected that they can be fed into the mill circuit after the ball mill at a rate of 100 150 tons per day to be processed through the floatation and cyanide circuits. The tailings will ultimately be processed in conjunction with, and in addition to, the 200 tons per day from the underground and local miners. Initially the tailings and the mined rock will be processed in separate campaigns but once the mill is running at full capacity, the additional feed from the tailing will significantly increase gold production at El Limon. "These assays will help to corroborate Para's earlier analysis indicating that in addition to the mineralization in the main vein, there is significant mineralization in the host rock," states C. Geoffrey Hampson, Para's CEO. "The implication is that less waste rock will be mined, reducing the mining cost per ounce of gold produced. The addition of the tailings into the process will serve to reduce processing costs and increase ounces produced. It is expected that both will have a positive impact on El Limon's operating margin." Mr. Paulo J. Andrade, a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (MAIG #6136), Senior Geologist, Vice President of Para Resources Inc., a competent and qualified person under NI-43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release. ABOUT PARA RESOURCES: Para Resources is an exploration stage gold mining and toll milling company. Para is earning an interest in the El Limon project, in Colombia, with toll milling opportunities, and exploration and development upside. In addition the Company is gearing up to commence trial mining operations at its Tucuma Project and in particular on the Angelim prospect in Para State, Brazil. Para Resources will continue to take advantage of current market conditions to acquire and develop additional highly economic, near-term production assets that have strong exploration and development upside. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "C. Geoffrey Hampson" C. Geoffrey Hampson, Chief Executive Officer and Director For further information, please contact: Andrea Laird Telephone: 604-259-0302 Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation service provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. All statements, analysis and other information contained in this press release about anticipated future events or results constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect" and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may", "will", "should", "could" or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are subject to business and economic risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results of operations to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and opinions of management at the date the statements are made. The company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements even if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable laws. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. SOURCE: Para Resources Inc. We expect PAREXEL International Corporation PRXL to beat expectations when it reports third-quarter fiscal 2016 results on Apr 27. Why a Likely Positive Surprise? Our proven model shows that PAREXEL is likely to beat earnings because it has the right combination of two key ingredients. Zacks ESP: PAREXELs Earnings ESP stands at +2.25%. This is because the companys Most Accurate estimate is 91 cents, whereas the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at 89 cents. A favorable ESP serves as a meaningful and leading indicator of a likely positive surprise. Zacks Rank: PAREXEL currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Note that stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 or #3 (Hold) have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings estimates. Conversely, Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement. The combination of PAREXELs Zacks Rank #2 and +2.25% ESP makes us reasonably confident of an earnings beat. What is Driving the Better-than-Expected Earnings? We note that PAREXEL has posted a positive earnings surprise of 10.73% on an average over the last four quarters. PAREXEL expects third-quarter fiscal 2016 revenues in the range of $517$527 million. Adjusted earnings are likely to be within 8492 cents per share. We believe robust demand for outsourced biopharmaceutical research and development services will help the company beat its target. Moreover, new business wins, productivity and cost-control initiatives will boost overall results. Notably, PAREXELs Margin Acceleration Program (MAP) generated approximately $6 million of savings in the second quarter of fiscal 2016. Further, we believe the companys expansion into genomic-based drug development is a key growth catalyst. Meanwhile, the acquisition of life sciences consulting firm Health Advances expanded PAREXELs customer base. The buyout helped the company gain customers in the medical device, diagnostics and healthcare IT segments. Additionally, the partnership with Optum, a division of UnitedHealth, improves PAREXELs position in the post-approval and commercialization market. Other Stocks to Consider Here are some other companies you may want to consider as our model shows they also have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Align Technology Inc. ALGN, earnings ESP of +12.82% and a Zacks Rank #1. Becton, Dickinson and Company BDX, earnings ESP of +1.99% and a Zacks Rank #2. Zimmer Biomet Holdings ZBH, earnings ESP of +1.04% and a Zacks Rank #2. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report ALIGN TECH INC (ALGN): Free Stock Analysis Report BECTON DICKINSO (BDX): Free Stock Analysis Report PAREXEL INTL CP (PRXL): Free Stock Analysis Report ZIMMER BIOMET (ZBH): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research This is what its like to have your period in space This is what its like to have your period in space Lets not sugarcoat it: Having your period is the pits. You feel crampy, moody and just want to spend the week curled up wearing sweatpants. So imagine how weird it would be to have your period in space. How does that even work? Turns out, menstruating in space is not that different from menstruating on Earth. Back in 1983 Sally Ride, the first female astronaut, went to space. And people had a million questions for her a lot of which were related to her period. What exactly happens when you combine menstruating with zero gravity? Is it messy? Im not totally sure who had the first period in space, said Rhea Seddon, a female astronaut in Rides class told The Washington Post, but they came back and said, Period in space, just like period on the ground. Dont worry about it. If youre a woman planning on going into orbit any time soon, there are some things you should know. Space gynecologist Varsha Jain and space pharmacologist Virginia Wotring (yes, SPACE GYNO is a totally real job) have done a lot of research on the subject. Dont want to deal with your period in space? Find the right birth control. According to Jain and Wotring, female astronauts commonly take birth control pills continuously to suppress their periods. That method works great for short-term trips, but what about longer missions? Those who will be in space for an extended stay rely on options like IUDs, progestin injections and implants. Of course, however a woman decides to deal with her period in space is all up to her! The post This is what its like to have your period in space appeared first on HelloGiggles. Yahoo Finance is tracking the stocks youre following, based on your Yahoo Finance ticker searches. Perrigo (PRGO) The company names president John Hendrickson as CEO, succeeding former chief executive Joseph Papa. Perrigos board waived the non-compete clause in Papa's contract and elected to not contest his move to Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX). Tribune Publishing (TPUB) Gannett Co. (GCI) has proposed to buy Tribune Publishing in a deal valued at $815 million. Gannett will pay $12.25 a share for Tribune, which is 63% above Fridays closing price. Manchester United (MANU) Billionaire investor Ron Baron called Manchester United one of his favorite picks of the year in the weekend edition of Barron's. Baron said the company is undervalued compared to the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees. Amazon (AMZN) A new report by Cowen Research shows that Amazon is taking market share from Wal-Mart's and Targets grocery businesses. The online retail giant posted 18% year-over-year growth while sales from Wal-Mart and Target declined. Chipotle (CMG) UBS (UBS) warns that Chipotle has more challenges than just food safety. The investment firm said, Customer reviews of Chipotle restaurants exhibit a meaningful multi-year deterioration going back to 2010. UBS has a neutral rating on the stock with a $460 price target. Xerox (XRX) The copier and printer giant reported a first quarter drop in profits and revenue. Xeroxs profit tumbled 84% amid increasing restructuring costs. Caterpillar (CAT), Joy Global (JOY) Both firms were upgraded by Goldman Sachs (GS) from sell to neutral. The investment firm raised its price target on Caterpillars stock to $78 per share and Joy Globals price target to $24. Manila (Philippines) (AFP) - A Philippine presidential candidate whose comments about rape provoked an international outcry has emerged as the "clear frontrunner" in the latest opinion survey, pollsters said Monday. Rodrigo Duterte sparked revulsion among women's groups, diplomats and the Catholic church when he told an audience that as the local mayor, he should have been at the front of the queue when an Australian missionary was attacked in a 1989 jail riot. But far from damaging his prospects in next month's presidential vote, the remarks appear to have had little effect, with the latest opinion poll giving him a nine-point lead over his nearest rival. Analysts say Duterte's profanity-laced campaign resonates in a chaotic, high-crime society with limited opportunities for a vast underclass working for a tiny elite. Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, is the "clear frontrunner", research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) said Monday of its poll. "Mayor Duterte has been steadily gaining ground. It's a clear lead. The joke could have affected him in such a way that his score could have even been higher had it not been for that news," SWS spokesman Leo Laroza told AFP. More than 50 million people in the mainly Catholic nation are qualified to vote on May 9, when Duterte will face off against four other candidates, including the preferred successor of popular outgoing president Benigno Aquino. Duterte is hailed locally as "Dirty Harry" and has boasted of operating death squads in Davao targeting criminals -- a policy he has promised to introduce nationwide if elected. In a debate Sunday, he even vowed to kill his own children if they ever took drugs. -- 'Strongman leadership' -- The survey of 1,800 people, which was carried out in the days after Duterte's rape comments gained widespread publicity, showed his support rate had risen to 33 percent in April, up from 27 percent in March. Story continues Francisco Magno, president of the Philippine Political Science Association, said the latest poll showed a substantial voting bloc was attracted to "strongman leadership". It showed marked sympathy for his "one-issue campaign effort" against crime and illegal drugs, he added. It also indicated that issues like women's rights and human rights in general were secondary for many. "There is much to be desired about the quality of political education" in the country, Magno told AFP. Duterte also benefited from having three major rivals splitting the vote, said Magno, noting that if the three coalesced behind one candidate they might have a chance of stopping him. Current President Aquino, the son of a former president, is constitutionally limited to a single six-year term. His preferred successor Mar Roxas -- the grandson of a former president -- trails badly in surveys. Despite dramatic economic growth under Aquino, analysts say Duterte's appeal stems from popular disenchantment with the political elite in a nation where one in four still lives in poverty. Women's rights advocate Ana Maria Nemenzo said Duterte's ranking in the latest survey reflected poorly on Philippine culture. "The culture of rape is very much prevalent, it is deep-seated in our machismo system. You can see the men seem to lap up this kind of talk," she told AFP. Nemenzo, head of WomanHealth Philippines, said that despite two female presidents in the past, the reaction to Duterte's "debasing" remarks showed the country still had far to go. "If Duterte wins, it's going to be a tragedy, not only for the women's movement, but for our country," she added. The Hague (AFP) - Electronics giant Philips on Monday posted a 63-percent slump in first quarter profits for 2016, blaming the fall on a high tax bill incurred for a major company restructuring. It also confirmed that its lighting branch, which is being separated from the company's other activities, would "likely" be floated on the stock market. A household name around the world for home appliances, Philips said it had earned 37 million euros ($41.5 million) in net income for the first quarter, compared with 100 million euros in the same period in 2015. The Amsterdam-based company has re-oriented its range of activities in recent years to focus more on advanced lighting technology and on medical technology where margins are strong and less vulnerable to competition from emerging markets. The restructuring of the company, which employs some 106,000 people around the world, is expected to be completed this year. Philips said Monday overall sales rose 5.0 percent to 5.5 billion euros. But costs related to the separation for the first three months of 2016 had reached 52 million euros. Philips sold its first light bulb a few years after it was founded in 1891, but for the past dozen years has focused on medical equipment, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of sales. It abandoned its television production business a few years ago, bowing to Asian competition. And in late 2014, the company said it would sell off the core lighting business to focus more on medical equipment. But since then, Philips has said it is examining its options, hesitating between a sale and an initial public offering (IPO). "With equity markets' sentiment improving to the first couple of months of the year, an IPO increasingly appears a more likely outcome," the company said in a statement. "However the company has not yet concluded on all proposals in the private sale process," it added. Istanbul (AFP) - The Kurdish rebel PKK movement is ready to step up its fight against Turkey in response to Ankara's blistering military campaign, its leader warned in a BBC interview released Monday. Since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) last year, Turkish government forces have been carrying out operations against the group in the southeast of the country. PKK leader Cemil Bayik said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "escalating this war". "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach -- of course the PKK will escalate the war," he told the British broadcaster. Erdogan said this month that 355 members of the security forces had been killed in fighting as well as over 5,000 PKK members -- although this could not be independently verified. The PKK has been blamed for a string of attacks in Turkey in recent months, while two bombings in Ankara this year were claimed by a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical splinter group of the rebel movement. Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for the Turkish presidency, on Monday criticised BBC for the interview with the PKK leadership, saying it was not journalism. "It is nothing other than indirectly aiding terror propaganda," he said at a weekly press conference. He asked what the reaction would be if a news agency interviewed Al-Qaeda jihadists after the London underground bombing in 2005. The PKK is designated a terror organisation by Turkey, the EU and the United States. Its rebels are accused of trying to create a separate Kurdish state within Turkey -- but Bayik denied it. "We don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. We don't want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted," he said. The PKK was ready to escalate the conflict "not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well", he added. Story continues Erdogan "wants the Kurds to surrender. If they don't surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly - he doesn't hide it," Bayik said. The PKK launched a bloody insurgency against the Turkish government in 1984 seeking independence, beginning a decades-long fight for greater autonomy and rights for Kurds which has left 40,000 dead. It later watered down its demands to seek instead more autonomy with cultural and language rights. Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan called a truce in March 2013, but tensions over the Syrian conflict kickstarted the violence last year. Erdogan has proposed stripping Turkish citizenship from supporters of Kurdish rebels and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is trying to alter Turkey's constitution, to allow prosecutions of pro-Kurdish lawmakers accused of "terrorist propaganda". Calls for containing soaring prescription drug costs are all the rage on the campaign trail, and lawmakers from both parties have been conducting hard-hitting hearings on Capitol Hill to expose the worst pricing practices of major pharmaceutical companies. But with a powerful, well-financed drug industry strongly opposed to major reforms, the prospects for any significant change in the way drug companies do business is relatively slight, at least for the foreseeable future. That became abundantly apparent on Monday when the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing a national coalition seeking legislative and administrative changes to control rising drug prices issued a set of policy proposals. Related: Obama Administration Will Press Medicare Doctors to Use Cheaper Drugs Members of the coalition include the AARP, the American Hospital Association, Americas Health Insurance Plans and Walmart. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industrys trade group, has spurned participation in the effort. Yet even without the drug industrys participation, the proposals unveiled today are relatively tame and dont include some of the most controversial measures that have been touted to bring down the cost of pricey new drugs for treating cancer, Hepatitis-C and other life-threatening diseases. For sure, many of the proposals were sensible and addressed three key issues in drug pricing: transparency, competition and value. In order to enhance transparency, for instance, the coalition has called for more details on how drugs are priced and marketed and how much federal and state governments pay for them, as well as the cost of research and development. Related: Extreme Rise in Some Drug Prices Reaches a Tipping Point The coalition says that competition could be improved by speeding up the process of bringing generic drugs to the market to compete with much costlier brand-name drugs. The group favors sharply reducing the 12-year exclusivity period for cutting-edge biological drugs and providing the FDA with more resources to speedily process thousands of generic-drug applications. Story continues As for measures to address value, the coalition is advocating a major boost in funding for research on the pricing and benefits of drugs a requirement that pharmaceutical companies compare the costs and outcomes of new drugs with existing drugs, and extend that data to the sale of drugs to federal health care programs. Industry critics say that drug companies typically focus on the medical benefits of the latest, most expensive drugs they manufacture without advising consumers about comparable benefits from older, less costly drugs. Related: Drug Company Profits Soar as Taxpayers Foot the Bill Yet the group skirted some of the most controversial proposals that would require more aggressive government intervention or price setting, in light of opposition from PhRMA and Republican business leaders. Most notably, the coalition doesnt call for a change in the law that would allow Medicare the premier health care program for seniors to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. That idea has been endorsed by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and is practically boilerplate in many proposals for drug industry reform. But it is vigorously opposed by PhRMA and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill. A 2013 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research concluded that the federal government could save roughly $540 billion over the coming decade by negotiating for lower drug prices similar to those paid in other industrialized countries. However, the landmark Medicare Part D prescription drug program enacted in 2003 during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices, setting prices or establishing uniform lists of covered drugs. The Obama administration let that prohibition stand during negotiations with the drug industry over the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Related: Wonder Drugs Blow a $1 Billion Hole in VAs Budget The coalition also didnt include a call for allowing far less expensive drugs to be imported from Canada and other countries another approach strongly opposed by PhRMA and its allies. John Rother, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, who is leading the drug-pricing reform coalition, describes his groups initiative as market-based and one that would lead to a functioning market that would better balance innovation with affordability, according to The Washington Post. However, Rother and other leaders of the coalition acknowledged the political limitations in attempting to forge a bipartisan, industry-wide approach that would assuage concerns of the drug companies and the business community about heavy-handed government intervention. Related: Ignoring Warnings, Drug Companies Hike Prices By 10 Percent Rother told the Post that some members of the coalition feared that lifting the prohibition on Medicare negotiations with the drug industry would be tantamount to government price setting. He told The Fiscal Times on Monday that, We committed to a market-based plan for both practical and coalition concerns. He said that some of the campaigns members support lifting the negotiating ban on Medicare while others dont, so we went forward with a consensus platform. We arent talking about price controls; we are talking about something quite different, shining a light on processes and speeding things up, Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, told the Post. PhRMA took strong exception to the coalitions proposals, arguing that they werent market-based and would likely add costly new government regulations. Lori Reilly, executive vice president for policy and research at PhRMA, told the Post that the coalitions proposals were also an effort by the health care insurance industry to deflect attention from reports of soaring premium and out-of-pocket costs for consumers. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Get the five stories that will challenge you to rethink the world by signing up for MicCheck Daily. On Monday, news broke that the city of Cleveland had agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann in November 2014 while playing with a toy gun. Late Monday afternoon, Stephen Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, released an official statement saying that hopes that Rice's family will use some of the settlement money to teach kids about the "dangers" of having a toy gun which seems to imply that Rice was responsible for his own death at the hands of a police officer. "We have maintained from the onset this has been an absolute tragedy for the Rice family as well as our involved officers and their families," the statement reads. "We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms." You have got to be kidding me. BUT YOU AREN'T. http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2016/04/tamir_rice_settlement_should_h.html ...pic.twitter.com/Vj3LWc2ho0 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg6m1XxWYAE1dJ8.jpg:large Neither Loehmann nor his partner, officer Frank Garmback, who was also involved in the shooting, faced criminal charges in Rice's death. In February, the mayor of Cleveland had to apologize to the Rice family after they were sent a $500 ambulance bill. "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms," Cleveland.com wrote, and in his latest statement, Loomis seems to be doubling down on the insinuation that Rice is somehow to blame for being killed. In an email to Cleveland.com, Rice family attorney Subodh Chandra criticized Loomis' statement, saying that his words "reflect all that is wrong with Cleveland's police division he managed to (1) blame the victim, (2) equate the loss of the life of a 12-year-old child with the officers facing scrutiny and (3) demand money from the victim's family and counsel ... We're all still in trouble if Loomis' attitude reflects rank-and-file officers' attitudes." AMCs Turn: Washingtons Spies returns on April 25, and the producers of the Revolutionary War era-drama say that the show may have particular resonance to this years presidential campaign of overheated rhetoric and seemingly endless debate. AMC is even marketing the show with a play on this years campaign slogans They Made America Great and Feel the Turn and is conducting an online poll to choose any of this years presidential contenders vs. George Washington (Luckily, the father of our country is winning). With words like treason being bandied about, sometimes in this election cycle, I think it is good to look back and say, Here is where real treason was going down,' says executive producer Craig Silverstein. All of the politicians are invoking the founding fathers names, but they dont realize that those guys were in a major pitched battle, sometimes against each other, as the country was forming. The new season, set in 1778, finds Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell), who is at the center of Washingtons spy ring, facing a new threat of being exposed. In Philadelphia, there is increasing discord between military governor Benedict Arnold (Owain Yeoman) and others in the Continental Army. This campaign season for me is as divisive and divided as I have ever seen, says executive producer Barry Josephson. I know that there are many that have been divided..but this one sort of challenges what you think about the different parties in such a profound way. In our show, the time period has that element to it. We really thought that there was a great direct correlation between that period and this period. Listen below: George Clooney and the Money Race Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity talks about criticism of Hillary Clinton from Bernie Sanders campaign over her fundraising at high-dollar events, including a couple of fetes hosted by George and Amal Clooney. Clooney decried money in politics, but said that the bulk of what was raised would be going to national and state parties to benefit candidates down the ticket. Story continues Listen below: Trump Tamed? Hunter Schwarz of IJReview and Alexander Heffner of the Open Mind talk about speculation that Donald Trump is trying to tone it down on the campaign trail. Listen below: PopPolitics, hosted by Ted Johnson, airs Thursdays at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT on SiriusXMs political channel POTUS. Its also available on demand. Related stories Hillary Clinton to Return to L.A. for Fundraising Swing George Clooney on Hillary Clinton Event: 'There Is a Difference Between the Koch Brothers and Us' Hillary Clinton Raises Huge Sums at Homes of George Clooney, Jeffrey Katzenberg (Paragraph seven contains language that may offend some readers) By Martin Petty and Manuel Mogato DAVAO, Philippines (Reuters) - As mayor of the Philippine city of Davao, Rodrigo Duterte has secretly rented a taxi and cruised crime-infested streets with a pistol by his side, hoping robbers would target him. He has joined armed police raids on drug dens, negotiated in hostage incidents and advocated vigilante killings, making him a hero in a once lawless town he has run for 22 years Duterte is known in the Philippines as "the punisher", an uncompromising provincial tough guy, whose profanity-packed speeches and death threats to drug gangs are now resonating far beyond Davao ahead of the May 9 presidential election. A late entry into the race for the presidency, Duterte is now on the cusp of victory, surging in popularity after his promises to wipe out crime within six months. Even the mere mention of crime gets him worked up. "I will not let drugs and criminality destroy my country, I simply cannot accept that," Duterte told Reuters last week, surrounded by fans and posing fist-clenched for photographs. "If everyone sits on their ass, we'll let criminals have their way," he said. "We have to stop fucking our people." Dutertes crime-busting platform has tapped into concerns that growing drug usage among Filipinos has caused crime to skyrocket. Reported crimes in the Philippines soared five-fold from nearly 218,000 in 2012 to 1,161,000 in 2014, according to official data. Roughly half of those were serious crimes. Duterte is stretching his lead in opinion polls and eclipsing traditional candidates Vice President Jejomar Binay and Manuel Roxas, whom outgoing President Benigno Aquino backs. Two surveys this week put Duterte between seven and 12 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, Grace Poe. NO REMORSE His brashness and his rapid rise from outside of the political establishment has seen him likened to Donald Trump, as has his outrageous comments and refusal to act presidential. The former prosecutor is indifferent to the 1,424 suspicious murders since 1998 documented in Davao by rights groups, which say "Davao death squads" operate with impunity on Duterte's watch. "Duterte Harry", as he is known, denies ordering extrajudicial killings, but he doesn't condemn them "You talk about summary killings? I'm sorry, bad guys were killed. But what about the people who were abused? Who takes care of them?" he said. Duterte, 71, was in hot water recently over a remark about an Australian missionary killed in a 1989 Davao prison riot. He said inmates had lined up to rape her and as mayor, he should have been first. He is a self-confessed womanizer who lives modestly and typically dresses in jeans, polo shirts and loafers. He doesn't own a suit and said he has no plans to wear one as president. Those who work with him tell the same stories of an unpredictable, hot-headed maverick who is charitable, but brutally strict. Duterte banned smoking in Davao and threatened to kill a restaurant customer who refused to put out his cigarette. He made him eat it. He has pulled over traffic violators and made them run laps around a park and has forced land-grabbers with forged documents to eat them, and tell him they tasted delicious. "I'm sure he can be eloquent and savvy, but right now, that's not who he is," said Trisha Corpus, station manager at ABS-CBN TV radio Davao, where Duterte had a weekly show. "Because of his simplicity, he's underestimated." Live on air, Duterte cursed angrily and read out names of criminals, some of whom wound up dead days later. Many left town. Pressured by regulators, ABS-CBN had to pre-record his program and bleep out expletives that averaged 30-40 per show. Critics scoff at his plan to take his crime-busting model nationwide. Those who know him say it's not impossible. "He's instilled fear among criminals," said one senior Davao policeman. "If his subordinates obey him, then it'll be easy." 'ROUGH AND SIMPLE' Former congressman Jesus Dureza grew up with Duterte and offers a perspective that belies the mayor's thuggish image. Dureza describes him as an accomplished lawyer who studies economic research papers, follows foreign affairs and regularly consults his policy teams. "He's much deeper than what he wants people to see," Dureza said. "He comes across as rough and simple, shoot from the hip, but he wants to keep it that way." He doubts Duterte ordered extrajudicial killings but said it wasn't in his interests to distance himself from them. "He cashes in on that image," he said. "The hits aren't Duterte." But not everyone is convinced. Clarita Alia, 62, lost four teenage sons in Davao street killings between 2001 and 2007 and blames vigilantes she is certain Duterte has links to. "When I see posters of him, I see the devil," she said. "I pray he won't win." Father Amado "Picx" Picardal, a Catholic priest who documents the Davao killings, is worried Duterte will stay true to his word on crime. "I don't think this is just hyperbole to win votes," he said. "He believes extrajudicial killings are justified and I expect what he promises, he'll try to do it." (Reporting by Martin Petty and Manuel Mogato. Editing by Bill Tarrant) April 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines Carlyle teams up with Bob Diamond to prepare Barclays Africa bid (http://on.ft.com/1YP44j7) EDF postponing Hinkley Point investment decision to September (http://on.ft.com/1VMBYYp) Takeover hope for Tata's niche steels arm (http://on.ft.com/1Vwlh2T) Overview U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group LP to team up with former Barclays Plc chief executive Bob Diamond to prepare a joint bid for Barclays' African banking operations. EDF will delay the final investment decision on its Hinkley Point nuclear power plant project in Britain until September, the French economy minister said. A group of specialist metals producers in South Yorkshire eyeing a potential approach for Tata Steel's niche business in that region, and plan to redevelop the facilities and invest in new technology. (Compiled by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Crosby) April 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - The United States plans to send up to 250 additional military personnel to Syria to help local forces fighting Islamic State, significantly expanding the small American footprint in the war-ravaged country, according to U.S. officials. (http://on.wsj.com/1SYDy2d) - U.S. President Barack Obama made an emphatic pitch for international trade deals during a visit to the German city of Hannover on Sunday, as he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to lift momentum for a trans-Atlantic agreement that is facing resistance in both countries. (http://on.wsj.com/1SYDLlX) - In an unprecedented last-ditch effort to stop Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, his two remaining rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, announced Sunday night they are divvying up the upcoming primary states to try to block the New York businessman's path to the GOP nomination. (http://on.wsj.com/1SYDPSU) - Airbus Group SE will open itself up to financing from an unlikely source when the first jet is delivered Monday from its new factory in Alabama, the U.S. Export-Import Bank. (http://on.wsj.com/1SYDYWn) (Compiled by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru) From Harper's BAZAAR We're all well aware of the Kate effect: that inevitable phenomenon in which Kate Middleton wears something and it instantly sells out. But it would appear she's not the only royal with the trendsetting power. Prince George, who usually inspires mass hysteria with his chubby cheeks and all-around adorableness, has now graduated to causing frenzies of the sartorial sort just like mom. The little monarch made headlines Friday evening when he met the Obamas at Kensington Palace wearing a too-cute-for-words personalized robe over blue-and-white gingham pajamas and tiny velvet slippers. According to People, within minutes of his photo with the President and First Lady hitting the Internet, the buzzed-about bathrobe from childrenswear retailer My 1st Years was completely sold out. "We are thrilled that Prince George chose our robe to wear when he met President Obama," the company's founder Daniel Price told People. "Our website has gone crazy ever since the photo was released!" The same goes for Prince George's navy velvet slippers from Trotters, which feature a red propeller airplane embroidered on each toe, and are advertised on the site as having a "fruity scent." These sweet-smelling shoes are out of stock as well. The George effect is officially a thing. Princess Charlotte is said to have her own version of the sleepwear ensemble but with pale pink gingham trim and embroidery, People reports. That colorway, too, is sold out-and Charlotte didn't even make an appearance in it. We can only imagine what her influence will be in a few years It turns out Prince wasn't just a prolific musician; he was also a devoted activist. New stories are emerging about his continued support of black activists. Shortly after the 57-year-old's unexpected death, Alicia Garza, one of the women who began the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag that later spawned a nationwide movement, wrote a moving tribute that touched on his legacy as an activist. "Early on in the evolution of Black Lives Matter and this new upsurge of black freedom dreams, he quietly and yet deliberately made sure that we had what we needed to be successful," Garza wrote. "I remember asking what we could do to acknowledge him, what could we do to show our gratitude and the response was to keep going. To keep building. To keep moving towards freedom." Source: Mic/Kevin Winter Former White House Advisor and current political commentator Van Jones gave a moving tribute to Prince over the weekend. "Prince was immensely charitable giving away lots of money anonymously," Jones wrote for CNN. "He helped causes as diverse as public radio, Green For All, the Harlem Children's Zone and Black Lives Matter." "More importantly, he made lots of calls behind the scenes to get people to act on causes that needed attention ... He was kind of like the 911 of the celebrity class." Source: Mic/Jonathan Daniel In a tearful interview on CNN hours after his death was announced, Jones revealed that Prince was instrumental in building #YesWeCode, a program that helps low-income children learn computer programming. "There are people who have solar panels on their houses right now in Oakland, California, that they don't know Prince paid for," Jones said about the artist's support for Green For All, a climate justice nonprofit for which Jones was formerly executive director. And there was more. The Prince Museum tweeted out a picture of a check for $12,000 that Prince wrote to the African-American Louisville Free Public Library back in 2001. Prince's secret $12000 donation to an African-American library. http://m.wlky.com/news/insider-louisville-prince-made-secret-donation-to-suppot-historic-western-branch-library/39169466 ...pic.twitter.com/anYf2SYg0n https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg5PP-XWsAAmvId.jpg:large Prince's music will live on for generations. But so, too, will the impact of his activism. Minimum wage laws are much in the news these days. New York, California and various US cities have recently enacted legislation to raise minimum wage requirements to $15 an hour. In this context it is especially worthwhile to revisit the purpose and effect of minimum wage laws. Two policy questions are closely connected to the minimum wage debate: Whether government should ensure that workers receive no less than a certain amount of compensation for their labor; and Whether government should establish a price barrier to employment, and if so how high it should be. The minimum wage debate is often reported as though it is about the first of these two policy issues. It is actually about the second. If societys pertinent policy objective were to ensure that workers receive a minimum level of support for their labor, we would almost certainly pursue this objective very differently than through minimum wage laws. Federal or state governments could provide direct income support to workers, which could be designed to be a function of their employment earnings or even of total work hours. Society could make a transparent value judgment about how to balance the income needs of workers with the level of support others are willing to finance. The costs of this support could be broadly distributed among all taxpayers rather than concentrated on certain business activity. Importantly, such a policy would not create direct barriers between low-income workers and jobs. Thus we dont enact minimum wage laws primarily to ensure income adequacy for workers, which could be done in less problematic ways. The more accurate way to think of minimum wage law is as a government decision to prohibit low-wage employment. Such law expressly prevents an employer from hiring a worker for a job earning less than the legislated minimum wage, even if that worker would otherwise consider it in his/her interest to accept it. Government does not and cannot compel employers to hire workers and pay them a given wage. What government does instead through minimum wage laws is to prohibit employment at lower wages. There is no guarantee that every job made illegal by this prohibition will be replaced by another higher-paying one. Indeed it is a virtual certainty that at least some jobs will not be. Thus, minimum wage laws reduce employment. Even without an advanced mastery of economics it is easy to understand how. If the price of something (in this case labor) is raised, a purchaser (in this case a potential employer) is not only less willing but less able to buy it. To construct a deliberately extreme example; if you could hire a plumber for $1 to unplug your drain, you would probably be delighted to do so. If instead the government required that you pay a plumber $10,000 to unplug it, you would almost certainly find a way to just do it yourself. The job would simply be eliminated. It is difficult to say for certain where this line is crossed for every job but every job has such a line. Minimum wage laws push the lowest-skill workers from the employable to the unemployable side of that line. There is a debate among economists as to how large a minimum wage increase must be before it creates an unambiguous, measurable adverse impact upon jobs. Advocates of minimum wage increases often cite academic research by Alan Krueger and David Card suggesting that specific past minimum wage increases did not lead to increased unemployment. But most academic research reaches the expected conclusion that minimum wage laws do reduce jobs, including research by Jeffrey Clemens, David Neumark and Jonathan Meer. Even Krueger recently editorialized that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would risk undesirable and unintended consequences. Thus economists widely agree that raising the minimum wage lowers employment; the only serious arguments are about when the effect is large enough to be discoverable. None of this is to denigrate the motives of those who advocate raising such barriers to employment. To some eyes it is a form of exploitation if work is performed for pay below a certain level. Returning to our example of the plumber; some might regard it as unacceptably unfair to pay him only $1 to unplug your drain holding this viewpoint so strongly that they would forbid the two of you from mutually agreeing to the transaction. That the job might simply be eliminated strikes some as an acceptable price to prevent this perceived exploitation. The same logic holds that it would be preferable for a person to remain unemployed than to perform a low-wage job at, for example, Walmart or McDonalds. This means however that minimum wage laws inevitably price some workers out of the job market. Workers most vulnerable to displacement include those with the weakest job skills, perhaps because they lack sufficient education or training, or because they are young workers just entering the job market. Specific sectors such as the restaurant business often operate with thin profit margins that leave them little room to adjust to sudden changes in their labor costs other than by eliminating jobs. An underrated problem with pricing low-skill workers out of the job market is that their earnings losses are not limited to their period of unemployment. It is usually while holding a job that an individual acquires the skills necessary to achieve higher future earnings. It is therefore usually better for that individual to be employed for a low wage than not to be employed at all. This too is widely recognized. A working paper from the Boston Fed recently found that the earnings of displaced workers do not catch up to those of their nondisplaced counterparts for nearly 20 years. As the paper further states, the longer a worker is unemployed, the more his or her skills. . . depreciate, making the worker less valuable to a new employer. This effect is of particular concern right now when young adults those most often harmed by minimum wage increases -- are falling out of the workforce in rising numbers. No one knows for sure why this is happening, but the effect on these workers will be lower earnings for many years to come. This trend, as seen in Figure 1 reproduced from the St. Louis Fed, should give lawmakers pause before erecting further barriers to employment. Figure 1: Labor Force Participation Rate for Workers Age 20-24, 2006-16 It is appropriate for lawmakers to consider policies to raise worker living standards, including the compensation they receive for their labor. The amount of income support low-wage workers should receive beyond the amount they can freely earn is an important societal value judgment. However, it is a separate value judgment from whether and where to set a minimum wage, which is instead effectively a decision about how stringently to prohibit individuals from working. Charles Blahous is a senior research fellow for the Mercatus Center, a research fellow for the Hoover Institution, and a contributor to e21. He recently served as a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare. A Jewish couple from Minnesota will never forget the day Prince showed up at their door. My first thought is, Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house as a set. Im glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over!' a woman, who went by the name Rochelle, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2003. The pop icon wasnt there to destroy their house: He was trying to find converts to Jehovahs Witnesses, the religion he joined in 2001. The Los Angeles Times detailed his membership at the the St. Louis Park Congregation of Jehovahs Witnesses, where he was known as Brother Nelson. Also Read: Prince's Inner Circle Attend Secret Memorial, 'Therapy' Session in Minneapolis (Exclusive) Prince was a persistent proselytizer. When it became clear he was there to convert the couple, Rochelle said, You know what? Youve walked into a Jewish household, and this is not something Im interested in.' She said Prince replied: Can I finish? before staying 25 minutes and leaving a pamphlet. Congregant Josephine Parker told the Times that Prince was a gentle soul and mild spirit. The faith holds that Jesus was a savior but was lesser to God, and that the dead will be resurrected in these finals days of our existing civilization. He was accepted as our brother, Parker told the Times.I look forward to the time we can welcome him back on the Earth. Also Read: Fans Angry Over Silly Prince Skits in 'Saturday Night Live' Tribute Another woman told the Daily Mail that Prince once knocked on her door in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, where he introduced himself as Brother Nelson. Excuse me, but has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Prince? she said, to which she remembers him replying, It has been said. Related stories from TheWrap: Prince Cremated, Family and Friends Gather at Private Memorial Service Prince Tributes Bloom in Purple as Coachella Enters Its Final Weekend Prince's Unreleased Music Could Make Estate More Valuable Than Michael Jackson's The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in downtown Toronto has more than 6 million objects in its collection and only a fraction about 35,000 artefacts are ever on display at any one time. A new five-year plan will change all that. Mark Keating, the institutions first chief information officer, has been hired to put hundreds of thousands of those objects online, accessible through various devices. We want to be one of the top five museums in the world, he told Yahoo Canada News. We have the collection and the knowledge and our curators are some of the best in the world. The ROM, which opened in 1914, actively collects and archives everything from minerals to swords to dresses to dinosaur bones. Museums all over the world have been hopping on the digitization wagon. Back in 2011, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam led the way in making its collection available virtually. At least 50 museums in North America, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., have endeavoured to place their collections online. Keating, whose previous job was implementing a wifi system for Ontarios Peel Board of Education, emphasizes that the five-year project is about making the objects and their story come alive, not just posting thousands of photographs. We want to engage the public in the gallery and at home, he says. Keating says theres still a lot of details to work out but the ROM will be putting up those photographs and stories progressively, from now until 2021. Q: Why is the ROM so keen to do this now? The museum has been quietly imaging their collection already. I was hired to manage and put focus on getting the project up and running. [ROM officials] want people to see behind the wall so anyone can really see the true representation of its vast archives. Weve captured history and now were putting a window on it. And its not just about snapping a photo of an object, we want to tell its story. You can only tell so much about a 1.5 million year old object when its displayed in the museum. It deserves more than that. So, eventually you can find out its story online if you want to, whether youre in the museum or at home. Story continues We certainly dont want to disrupt the regular goer who doesnt want to be bombarded with audio and video, but we want to provide the option to those who want more. Q: Youve only been at the ROM for six months, what have you discovered? I got to through all the archives and [I would say] we have the best of everything in one building. If you go to New York, you go to the MOMA for art and then the Museum of Paleontology for dinosaurs. But the ROM has everything. I think its one of the best museums in the world and Id like to see the public engaged with it. We have a responsibility to really make it educational and to reach out to the public in any way we can. Q: Since the ROM has more than 6 million artefacts and you may only be featuring a segment of that collection, how are you choosing the objects? We are still sorting that out and I will be in talks with the CEO in trying to understand which key objects we want to get online from a public and research standpoint. We need to feature a cross-section of the entire collection and we want to spend time on the narrative [of] the object. Right now, its in flux. We may be changing our approach as we go along. Perhaps we can group them into themes such as flight and feature everything from bees to airplanes. Q: What are some of your favourite artefacts? Theres a mummified falcon I got to see. The pharaohs would also have their animals mummified [and buried with them], that was really something. Its in pristine condition. I touched one of the first hand instruments on record. Its the first object that was created to be a tool, a small knife. There are all types of bows not just from all over the world but from Canada alone. Hundreds and hundreds of them. You see the primitive bows and the succession of them and they just got better and better. You see evolution in front of you. Its amazing. Its civilization growing up. And then there are all sorts of swords and sabres, some of which have been in battles I imagine they mustve had some blood on them. Q: What do you hope the public will get from this project? A visit to the gallery should begin on the web. You buy a ticket and using an app, you can pick different tours and it will guide you through the museum. Or if you cant make it to the ROM, you can get a similar experience. You can engage with an artefact and learn the whole story behind the piece. The ROM experience can be in the gallery, on a video wall or on your iPad. We know no one is just going to look at picture after picture its about the history of that object and its story. It has to have meaning. Its not just a building with stuff in it. That amazing feeling I had [when I saw the artefacts], I want people to have that feeling. The ROM is a rich experience. [Photos courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum] Good news, Shelby Wyatt enthusiasts: Quanticos resident poor little rich girl isnt the big bad after all. Or, at least, thats what she says in this weeks episode, which finds Shelby teaming up with Alex to outsmart the person/people really behind the bombings. Unfortunately for Will, though, it looks like theyre a little too late. As in, My skin is about to fall off my body, so far advanced is my radiation poisoning too late. Because yeah, the shows vague villain now has a nuclear bomb at his/her/their disposal. And back in the pre-graduation weeks at the academy, its time to pick a specialty. Read on for more about Fast. RELATEDQuanticos Kelly Rutherford: Shelbys Mom Faked Death To Protect Her WELCOME BACK, WYATT | Lets do the present timeline first, because poor Will may not last much longer. Caleb wakes up in the middle of heroin withdrawal and wonders why hes chained to the radiator in Alexs bathroom. You asked me to, she gently reminds him. She leaves him to go to work didnt she flee the FBI last episode when Ryan and Nimah were on to her? Did I miss something about why its safe now for her to go back? which prompts Caleb to make a call. She left, he says, but we dont see whos on the other end of the line. I tried to stop her. Agent Parrish arrives at work to find Shelby (!) sitting in the center of it all, overseeing a systems upgrade as a civilian contractor (her familys company makes the software). Alex is all, No! Terrorist! Stop! But Miranda doesnt want to hear it. Still, Alexs accusations worry the boss enough that she halts the upgrade, giving Alex time to talk to Shelby and her side bangs. RELATEDAsk Ausiello: Spoilers on Quantico, The Blacklist, Castle, Good Wife, Chicago Fire, Nashville, The Flash, and More Story continues DASH DOT DIE? | Though Shelbs acts very antagonistic toward her former classmate, Alex notices that the blonde is tapping out something in Morse code with her finger: Im on your side. When Shelbys story checks out, everything goes back to normal; the two friends meet in the stairwell for a secret check-in, and it goes something like this. The terrorist contacted Shelby and said Caleb would die unless she rented a van under the name Mark Raymond and drove to the spot where Alex saw her. The Voice, as she calls it, is actually all of their classmates voices braided together and run through a server in the FBIs New York headquarters; by installing the upgrade, Shelby explains, she can monitor whats going on and perhaps track the terrorist down. Oh, and she and Caleb are working together. I really missed you, Alex says. They hug. Later on, The Voice calls Shelby. What were you doing in the field office today? If I find out you screwed with me, Ill make sure you die first, it threatens. Her software doohickie traces the call to an address in East Harlem. RELATED2016 Renewal Scorecard: Whats Coming Back? Whats Getting Cancelled? Whats on the Bubble? Its a church, and Wills up at the altar, begging them not to come any nearer. Im sick. I dont have much time, he cries. I helped build it with my own hands. You have to find it. You have to find it fast. He collapses, he bleeds, its gross. And it seems like things are much more dire now, eh? This also might be a good time to mention that Natalies mom finds Ryan to tell him she hasnt heard from her daughter in a while. When Ryan goes to his exs place, all of her stuff is still there. Color him suspicious RELATEDABCs Summer Schedule: Mistresses, Uncle Buck and 10 Other Premieres; Secrets and Lies Season 2 MIA SISTEMICS SHUT DOWN! (KINDA) | Back in the Quantico timeline, its the academys equivalent of career day: Various departments in the FBI come to the school to pitch their specialties to the almost-graduates. Will is missing the story is that he got jumped by thugs on his morning jog, but Shelby knows the truth and Iris suspects something nefarious and Caleb is on leave for a family emergency. Shelby once more decides to rush into Liams office and throw Caleb under the bus, saying that hes in a cult and a danger to all of us. But when her complaint gets no traction, she shows up at the Sistemics mothership and gets past the receptionist by offering an opening donation of $500,000. Once inside, she runs into Caleb, who informs her hes on an off-the-books, undercover operation sanctioned by his dad, and his Mark Raymond glasses contain a camera he hopes will catch the leader admitting to planning that courthouse bombing way back when. She leaves. Quantico Recap Season 1 Episode 19 Long story short, Caleb does get the damning evidence he needs, but the worst that happens is that Sistemics loses its tax-exempt status. Thats huge stripping Scientology of a similar status is essentially the central point of the excellent Going Clear documentary but it doesnt seem like enough to Caleb. Nobodys gonna even know what I did, he sadly says to Clayton. Ill know, his dad replies. Later, Clayton snows Shelby by telling her she saved Calebs life, explaining his sons absence by saying hes being deprogrammed and then offering her a job in his office after graduation. RELATEDKelly Ripa Confirms Tuesday Live Return, Thanks Staff for Giving Her Time to Process Strahans Exit NO GREAT SHAKES | Drews hand tremors return, and when they nearly cause Alex to fall off a building during an exercise, she tells Ryan. They confront the former NFLer, and he leaves the program. Again. Meanwhile, the twins are assigned an old-school (read: kind of jerky) handler who warns them that theyre being pigeonholed; when Islamic terrorists are no longer the FBIs biggest problem, he reasons, Raina and Nimah will become obsolete. Now its your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments! Related stories Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Recap: Crossing the Ol' Event Horizon Michael Kenneth Williams Joins ABC's Gay Rights Miniseries When We Rise Grey's Anatomy Cast Hints at 'Potential Disaster' in Season Finale After a four-month hiatus, Reign returns to The CW on Monday (8/7c) to wrap up its third season and to bid farewell to a fan-favorite character. Its a bummer, but Bash doesnt have a lot of traction in Scotland, Adelaide Kane tells TVLine of Torrance Coombs character, who wont be back for Season 4. His storyline soon will come to its conclusion, and his character has other avenues to explore that might not necessarily be on screen. RELATEDMay Sweeps/Finale Preview: Get 100+ Spoilers, Plus Exclusive Photos! Kane adds, Torrance also has a lot of exciting things happening for him career-wise, rather than working two days a week on our show. Im so happy for him, and Im going to miss him. Its bittersweet when someone whos been with you for the whole journey goes on to do their own bigger, better things. Unfortunately, it doesnt sound like Mary will have too much time to plan Bashs going-away bash as shell be a little preoccupied playing her own Game of Thrones. Marys main focus is just getting back to Scotland and trying to re-establish her power in her homeland, Kane explains. Shes attempting to take over as a queen in a country she hasnt been to since she was six years old. Shes really finding her footing back in Scotland. RELATEDReigns Torrance Coombs Joins ABCs Still Star-Crossed, Will Exit CW Drama And as difficult as it may be to see old friends and locations disappear, Kane wants fans to remember that historically speaking this is only the beginning of Marys story. Its a whole new chapter, a whole new country and a whole new court, she says. There will be new friends and new enemies. Were gearing up for some really big storylines in Season 4. Marys life didnt even really start until she got to Scotland; thats when things really kicked off for her. France was a lovely interlude, but it was only a small part of her life. Story continues As if all of the above wasnt enough, Shell also have to make the difficult decision of who to marry next, Kane teases. (No spoilers! I havent finished the book.) Your hopes for the rest of Season 3? Drop em in a comment below. Launch Gallery: May Sweeps Preview and Finale Spoilers Related stories The Flash's Iron Mask Reveal Is Going to 'Blow Your Mind' -- So, Who Is It? Arrow Video: The Team's Mourning Is Interrupted by... Black Canary?! Vampire Diaries Finale: Damon Making the 'Ultimate Sacrifice' to Save Bonnie Last Thursday, the body of missing firefighter Nicole Mittendorff was found in Shenandoah National Park. According to local news station WHSV, police found a note near the deceased and determined that Mittendorff had committed suicide. Following the discovery of Mittendorff's body, investigators found that she had been the victim of vicious, sexist cyberbullying by her coworkers on a local forum called the Fairfaxunderground. "A new tramp emerges for us to watch destroy herself. Nicole Mittendorff at 32 is already slutting her way around the county, " one user wrote. Source: Mic/Flickr On Saturday, fire Chief Richard Bowers released a statement saying that the authorities are aware of the posts, and the department "will thoroughly investigate this matter and take any appropriate actions This Virginia fire department has a history of slut shaming female coworkers, often naming and discussing specific coworkers on this forum. Back in 2014, a female forum user who went by the username funtimegal shared her experience of being sexually harassed in the predominantly male culture of the local fire department. "I have been a firefighter for 15 years," funtimegal wrote. "I know guys talk behind my back and have seen pictures of me in their lockers. I have been passed up for promotions because of what the board 'have heard'." The kind of bullying Mittendorff faced isn't unique to the Fairfax County Fire Department. Former California firefighter Alicia Dabney told the New York Times that her workplace had a "frat boy atmosphere" and described finding fliers with the words "Alicia Dabney is a whore" on the floor of the fire station. Source: Mic/Flickr Retired deputy fire chief John Murphy in Washington has been outspoken about the need to address misogynistic firehouse culture across the country. "There's a feeling that women don't belong in the fire service," Murphy said in a phone interview. "There are a lot of women who are sexually harassed, bullied and raped on duty who don't report it because they want to continue their jobs... there needs to be an anonymous reporting mechanism, for people who are harassed, that will actually lead to action to stop that behavior." Story continues From assault to bullying, Murphy believes many firefighters are afraid to report workplace sexism because they don't think they'll get help. "Often when it is reported, the administration doesn't do anything about it," he says. Murphy believes the firehouse culture is still a "good old white boys club," where women, people of color and LGBTQ firefighters often face hostile work environments. "I'm familiar with two or three gay firefighters and it took them a while to find a place where they weren't harassed," Murphy said. "There's an attitude of 'you need to find somewhere else to work.'" It's unclear whether harassment was a contributing factor in Mittendorff's decision to take her own life. Either way, however, Bowers denied to WHSV that the fire department offered a hostile, potentially sexually abusive environment for female coworkers. "I assure you that my department cannot and will not tolerate bullying of any kind," he said. h/t WHSV Teacher Jelavic (Kang Ji-young) in Assassination Classroom 2. (Encore Films) Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. Hes also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own. Secret ending? Not really, but the credits are interesting to watch. Running time: 118 minutes (~2 hours) Assassination Classroom 2, also known as Assassination Classroom: Graduation, is an action comedy based on the manga of the same name, and the sequel to last years Assassination Classroom. An unkillable teacher teaches the art of assassination to a class of failures, with the ultimate aim of getting them to assassinate him. It stars Ryosuke Yamada (Nagisa Shiota), Kazunari Ninomiya (Koro-Sensei/UT, both voice and live actor), Masaki Suda (Karma Akabane), Mirei Kiritani (Aguri Yukimura), Seika Taketomi (Rio Nakamura), Mio Yuki (Yukiko Kanzaki), Miku Uehara (Manami Okuda), Kanna Hashimoto (Ritsu), Seishiro Kato (Itona Horibe), Kang Ji-young (Irina Jelavic), Hiroki Narimiya (Kotaro Yanagisawa), Kippei Shinra (Tadaomi Karasuma), and Tsuyoshi Abe (Red Eye). It is rated PG. While the first Assassination Classroom was more like a collection of anecdotes from the titular classroom, Assassination Classroom 2 has a stronger narrative focus that leads to a definite end point. Its this tighter storytelling that makes the sequel more impactful, as well as concentrating only on the major protagonists rather than the entire ensemble cast. Amusingly, Assassination Classroom 2 suffers from the same issues with its antagonists that plagued the first film too. Seishiro Kato as Itona Horibe in Assassination Classroom 2. (Encore Films) Highlights Stronger roles for the protagonists Nagisa (Ryosuke Yamada) is much more proactive and confident in this film. The comparison between both films is inevitable, but Nagisa shows the biggest character growth across both movies, demonstrating why hes the top student in Koro-senseis (Kazunari Ninomiya) class. As for Koro-sensei, hes humanised a lot more in this film, giving us a reason to empathise with both the students and the teacher. Story continues Students get their moment of awesome All that training over the past few films finally pays off in the climax for Assassination Classroom 2, where the students get to strut their stuff against an enemy thats suitably multitudinous and powerful. Given that we havent really seen the students show their competency before this conflict (its mostly Koro-sensei doing the fighting), it really pays off because we see just how skilled and deadly they are as assassins. It doesnt just represent the students accomplishments, but Koro-senseis success in teaching them as well. Koro-sensei/UTs back story Without giving away too much of his background, Koro-senseis tragic origin story is grounded in love. While his motivations might have been alien to us in the previous film, with only a hint of what really happened, its here that we learn that Koro-sensei is just as human, if not more, than the rest of the characters. He may be inhumanly powerful, but its his human emotions that enable him to persevere to the end. Touching quirkiness Assassination Classroom 2 retains the quirkiness of the first film, but this time its more grounded in character. The teachers might be over the top in their silliness and the students might be downright weird, but in the end, its all for a greater purpose. Its done for laughs and for tears, going against the usual depiction of such quirkiness. Karma (Masaki Suda) in Assassination Classroom 2. (Encore Films) Letdown Final opponent is disappointing The last villain that Koro-sensei and his class has to overcome first appears to be an invincible foe that could truly spell their doom, but gets defeated through a deus ex machina. Compared to the previous fights, this battle feels deflated, like they ran out of ideas or budget halfway through the fight. Fortunately, it doesnt impact the ending all that much, which retains its finality and power. Mirei Kiritani as Aguri Yukimura in Assassination Classroom 2. (Encore Films) Assassination Classroom 2 is a finale well worth watching. Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? Yes. Should you watch this more than once? Nah. Score: 4.0/5 Assassination Classroom 2 opens in cinemas 28 April, 2016 (Thursday). Captain America (Chris Evans) leads Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) into battle in Captain America: Civil War. (Walt Disney Pictures) Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. Hes also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own. Secret ending: Just one (during the press screening), but two according to reports online. Running time: 147 minutes (~2.5 hours) Captain America: Civil War is a superhero action movie, and the 13th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It sees Captain America and Iron Man clash as the different superheroes rally around either camp. It stars Chris Evans (Captain America/Steve Rogers), Robert Downey, Jr (Iron Man/Tony Stark), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff), Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes), Anthony Mackie (Falcon/Sam Wilson), Don Cheadle (War Machines/James Rhodes), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye/Clint Barton), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther/T'Challa), Paul Bettany (Vision), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man/Scott Lang), Emily VanCamp (Sharon Carter), Tom Holland (Spider-Man/Peter Parker), Frank Grillo (Crossbones/Brock Rumlow), Daniel Bruhl (Helmut Zemo), and William Hurt (Thunderbolt Ross). It is rated PG. Captain America: Civil War will have you in tears, both in joy at the incredible action, and in sorrow at the sacrifices and revelations of the major characters. Its the best installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet, paying off many of the points set up in previous films while still being a standalone film that you can enjoy on its own. And then theres Spider-Man! This is the must-watch superhero film of the 2016. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) makes his debut in Captain America: Civil War. (Walt Disney Pictures) Story continues Highlights Fantastic action The fights are fast, fun, and fluid. The characters make full use of their powers, displaying it in creative ways, but it also shows us skillful fisticuffs that highlight why Captain America is such a formidable soldier. But the battles are not so laced with special effects that they cease to be a believable portrayal of super-powered beings duking it out in the real world, and this ability to strike such a balance is what makes the conflicts in Captain America: Civil War such a treat to watch. Good mix of serious stakes and fun moments The film doesnt shy away from tragedy and loss, and it has its fair share of angst and pain. That being said, characters dont stand around angsting for long periods of time. They get over their sadness and move on to bigger and better things, and give us the sense of fun and adventure that were looking for in superhero movies. This blend of darker issues and lighthearted scenes is what gives us a film thats fun to watch but still full of important, valid stakes. Keeps its focus squarely on Captain America While it looks like an Avengers film, what with so many superheroes running around on the screen, Captain America: Civil War never forgets who the main character is. It keeps its focus firmly on Captain America, making it a struggle about his ideals and his friends. Hes the cause of most of the events, but hes also the one who cleans up on his own mess. It would be easy to get lost in the sea of superheroes, but Captain America stands out as the person whose story you should be following. Understands the defining characteristics of its massive cast Despite having 12 superheroes to feature, the film manages to make each one distinctive and memorable, while still making Captain America the main character of the story. It deftly weaves in and out of the myriad storylines, while still tying them all back together for the bigger ensemble scenes. There are very few, if any, superfluous scenes, and what results is a script that has every line of dialogue play a purpose. Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr) leads Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Vision (Paul Bettany), War Machine (Don Cheadle), and Black Widow (Scarlett Johnasson) in Captain America: Civil War. (Walt Disney Pictures) Letdown Ending doesnt quite make sense Its a little too easy, how the film ends. You get the feel that everything is too neatly tied up with a little red bow, when there really should be more lingering discontent amongst the major players. Thats not to say the ending isnt a justified one, but the everything seems to fall into place too quickly, just in time for the closing credits. Perhaps its to set up the next film. Scarlet Witch in Captain America: Civil War. (Walt Disney Pictures) Captain America: Civil War raises the bar for superhero movies, and give us more Avengers action and fun. Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? Yes. Should you watch it multiple times? If youre a Marvel fan. Score: 4.4/5 Captain America: Civil War opens in cinemas 28 April, 2016 (Thursday). Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy) and Claire Rawlins (Kristen Bell) in The Boss. (United International Pictures) Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. Hes also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own. Secret ending? Bloopers reel. Running time: 99 minutes (~1.75 hours) The Boss is a comedy about a nasty CEO, Michelle Darnell, who comes out of prison with no friends or family. She turns to her former assistant, Claire Rawlins, for help to start a new business, but her old habits still linger. It stars Melissa McCarthy (Michelle Darnell), Kristen Bell (Claire Rawlins), Peter Dinklage (Renault), Ella Anderson (Rachel Rawlins), Tyler Labine (Mike Beals), and Kathy Bates (Ida Marquette). It is rated M-18. The Boss depends on a lot of sight gags for its funnies instead of utilising Melissa McCarthys talents to elevate the level of comedy. Theres nothing wrong with sight gags, but theres also nothing more to the laughs, and you might as well be watching silly memes for the time. Its a waste of a great premise, because everyone can identify with nasty bosses, but it doesnt go far enough with this idea and instead, turns it into a bunch of caricatures feuding with each other. Michelle and Claires venture in The Boss. (United International Pictures) Highlight Visual humour If theres one thing the film does well, its the slapstick jokes. Characters are frequently getting into accidents, and the film makes use of Melissa McCarthys physique when it comes to providing the sight gags. Although the comedy mostly consists of visual humour, The Boss doesnt go overboard with its jokes. Michelle is the boss in The Boss. (United International Pictures) Letdowns Ethically unsound The whole problem with the film is that they keep countering unethical actions with even more unethical actions. Its supposed to be funny and show that Michelle (Melissa McCarthy) is business-minded and savvy, but she ends up looking cutthroat and ruthless. Its like watching two villains go at each other, since just based on their actions, neither really has the moral high ground. Story continues Claire is bland Claire (Kristen Bell) is supposed to be the straight character alongside Michelles flamboyance, since we need a regular person to contrast Michelles crazy actions against. But normal doesnt equate to boring, which is exactly what Claire is. She lets everyone walk over her, complains about bad situations, and only acts when pushed by other characters. Worst of all, shes not funny. Difficult to empathise with Michelle Michelle remains dislikeable for 95% of the film, and only in one brief sequence do we ever come close to feeling sorry for her. Whatever traits made her a nasty boss at the beginning are, unfortunately, her defining characteristics. If the protagonists very personality is what makes her so aggravating in the first place, so much so that we cheer when she goes to jail, how can we root for her later? She does have some character changes, but not the portions that get under your skin. Its such a pity because she could have done so much more with the character if the focus wasnt so much on slapstick. Renault is a ham What exactly is the point of Renault? Its true that Peter Dinklage makes Renault funnier than most actors would, but he still doesnt demonstrate why we need such a character in the film. To make things worse, theres no resolution to Renaults story. Hes there purely as a plot device, then dumped the minute hes not required anymore. Michelle and Claire lead their pack in The Boss. (United International Pictures) The Boss is a shallow comedy that lacks punch and variety. Should you watch this if its free? Yes. Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? Not unless you really love Melissa McCarthy. Score: 2.5/5 The Boss opens in cinemas 21 April, 2016 (Thursday). For at least the fourth time in his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders was asked over the weekend to address controversial comments made by one of his surrogates on the campaign trail. And for the second time this month, the surrogate causing the controversy was actress Rosario Dawson. At a rally in Delaware on Saturday, Dawson invoked Monica Lewinskys name while saying that Sanders female supporters have been subjected to bullying by backers of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. We are literally under attack not just for supporting the other candidate, Dawson said. Im with Monica Lewinsky on this bullying is bad. On CNNs State of the Union Sunday, Sanders was asked whether bringing up Lewinsky was appropriate. I have no idea in what context Rosario was talking about her, Sanders said. But I would hope that all of our people focus on the real issues facing working people and the massive level of income and wealth inequality that we have. At a rally in New York City this month, Dawson told the crowd that Clinton was about to be interviewed by the FBI about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Shame on Hillary, Dawson said. Sorry, hold on, let me watch my tone yes, she is under FBI investigation. That isnt being promoted very much, but she is about to be interviewed in a little bit. The Clinton campaign responded, saying no such interview was imminent. Yet Sanders who has repeatedly refused to attack Clinton on the email issue declined to condemn Dawson. We have dozens of surrogates, and Rosario is doing a great job for us, he said on CNN. We have many, many surrogates who say many, many things. Many of these surrogates do not agree with everything I say. And I do not agree with every approach and everything that they say. And thats the simple reality. She will say what she wants to say, Sanders added. That is not what I will be focusing on. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, who endorsed his Vermont counterpart earlier this month, said Dawsons use of Lewinskys name in her attack on Clinton was out of line. Story continues This is individuals going off track on their own, Merkley said on CNN Monday. Its not helpful to the campaign, and its certainly not in keeping with what Bernie wants to see. When it comes to Sanders surrogates speaking out of turn, though, Dawson is not alone. At a rally in Atlanta in February, rapper Killer Mike, one of Sanders most visible supporters, stirred controversy while relaying a conversation he had with an activist who told him, A uterus doesnt qualify you to be president of the United States. In that case, Sanders defended the rapper. What Mike said, essentially, is that people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender, but based on what they believe. I think that makes sense, Sanders told reporters. I dont go around no one has ever heard me say, Hey, guys, lets stand together, vote for a man. I would never do that, never have. But the Vermont senator quickly condemned a comment made by one of his health care surrogates who referred to corporate Democratic whores during a massive at a rally in New York City. Medicare for all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores who are beholden to big pharma and the private insurance industry instead of us, Paul Song said before Sanders spoke at the April 13 event that drew some 27,000 to Washington Square Park. Dr. Songs comment was inappropriate and insensitive, Sanders tweeted the next morning. Theres no room for language like that in our political discourse. Chinese authorities have revoked the license of prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiquiang. Mr. Pu, who is well known for his defense of Chinese dissidents, including labor camp victims and artist Ai Weiwei, was convicted last year of vague crimes like picking quarrels and provoking trouble. Human rights defenders like Mr. Pu have been targeted by China over the past year. In its recently released report on Human Rights Practices for 2015, the State Department observed that in China, Repression and coercion markedly increased during the year against organizations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy and public interest and ethnic minority issues. The crackdown on the legal community was particularly severe, as individual lawyers and law firms that handled cases the government deemed sensitive were targeted for harassment and detention. The State Department cited other serious rights abuses in China, including tight restrictions on the freedoms of assembly, religion and travel for individuals and groups regarded as politically sensitive; enforced disappearance and strict house arrest to prevent public expression of critical opinion; continued censorship of public discourse on the internet and in print and other media; and severe official repression of fundamental freedoms for the Uighurs and Tibetans. At the release of the report, Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski said that given the hardships faced by the people in China who work for good governance, We think it is especially important [for the United States] to stand by the lawyers being imprisoned for doing their jobs, by the religious minorities persecuted for their faith, the activists and journalists being abductedfor speaking out. Like people everywhere, he said, the Chinese people want to live in a country where the rule of law is respected, corruption is punished and exposed, and environmental problems are not swept under the rug. When we speak out on these issues, Assistant Secretary Malinowski observed, we are 100 percent aligned with the aspirations of most ordinary people in ChinaThat give us confidence that if we continue to speak out in a consistent and principled way, aligned with our allies around the world and people in China who are working peacefully for their rights,over time well be successful. A massive run of salmon called a halt to a stand up paddle board class in Perth on April 23 after they erupted into a flapping frenzy on the shore. A video of the encounter, posted on the class organizers Facebook page, picked up over 525,000 views by the morning of April 25. Caroline Bradley, owner of Elemental SUP, told WAtoday that the salmon came close to shore to feed on smaller bait fish. Credit: Facebook/Elemental SUP By Matt Smith DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian budget carrier Flyadeal, launched last week, aims to have up to 50 planes flying by 2020, a senior executive said on Monday. Flyadeal, a subsidiary of the state-controlled holding company that also owns national carrier Saudia, will fly both domestic and regional routes and is part of the kingdom's expansion of air services. It will begin services in mid-2017, operate 25-50 planes by 2020 and will obtain these via new leasing agreements or from sister airline Saudia, Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) director-general Saleh al-Jasser told reporters at a travel exhibition in Dubai. The new airline's fleet will be narrow-body aircraft, either the Airbus A320 or Boeing's 737, he said. "It will be leased aircraft," said Jasser, who will sit on Flyadeal's board. "We are assessing the options whether to transfer some of the order (by Saudia) that we have or to go through an RFQ (request for quotation)." Flyadeal could break even within 2-3 years, he predicted. Loss-making Saudia is being restructured with the aim of regaining profitability by 2020 so that it can list on Riyadh's bourse, Jasser said. "The listing, it's not yet decided when, maybe even earlier (than 2020)," said Jasser. He said the size of the stake to be floated had yet to be decided although when two of Saudia's units - Saudi Airlines Catering Co and Saudi Ground Services Co - went public, 30 percent of their shares were sold to the public. Saudia has also begun the process to take its cargo division public. "We are working with investment banks. We will submit the files during this year and there's a process that will take some time," added Jasser, declining to reveal the cargo unit's valuation. (Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Saudi Arabia confirmed on Monday that it planned to sell a stake of its state oil giant Saudi Aramco which was expected to be valued at more than $2 trillion. The sale would be less than 5 percent of the company and would be via an initial public offering (IPO), Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a television interview with the Al Arabiya News Channel. He also said there were plans for Aramco, or to give it its full name the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, to be transformed into a holding company with an elected board, according to Reuters, with subsidiaries of the firm also to be sold by IPO. "The 5 percent is from the parent company," Prince Mohammed told Al Arabiya in the interview. "The kingdom can live in 2020 without any dependence on oil The Saudi addiction to oil has disturbed development of many sectors in past years," he added. "We plan to set up a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund... part of its assets will come from the sale of a small part of Aramco." The announcement came as Saudi Arabia's government unveiled a long-term economic blueprint for life in a low-oil-price world. Titled "Saudi Vision 2030," the plan includes regulatory, budget and policy changes that will be implemented over the next 15 years in the hope of making the kingdom less reliant on crude. It aims to build a "prosperous and sustainable economic future" for the kingdom, according to the press release. It also gave details on privatization and the creation of what it called the "largest sovereign wealth fund in the world." "We hope citizens will work together to achieve Saudi Vision 2030," King Salman said in a brief statement, according to the Al Arabiya broadcaster. As the world's largest oil exporter, the bulk of Riyadh's state revenues come from energy exports. But with crude prices extending their declines the per-barrel price of global benchmark Brent is down 60 percent since the rout first started in June 2014. The country logged a record $98 billion budget deficit for 2015. Story continues Officials are already taking action to diversify revenue sources before existing state coffers get depleted. This month, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that ownership of the Aramco and some other national assets would be transferred to a public fund that invests cash from the country's oil and gas operations into other sectors. Aramco does expect the oil supply-demand balance to bring a recovery in crude prices by the end of 2016. "(This is) what we hope for ... by the end of the year, as we have always said, prices will start adjusting upward because the current market price is not sustainable for the long term," Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told Reuters. Analysis from McKinsey, before the announcement Monday, suggested the kingdom could double gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 3.4 percent in 2015 and create as many as six million jobs by 2030 by focusing on eight non-oil sectors, including manufacturing, mining, tourism, healthcare and finance. Reuters and CNBC's Nyshka Chandran contributed to this article. More From CNBC By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN (Reuters) - Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focused their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10. The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move toward peace. In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants. Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other. DEATHS A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. "It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighboring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week. The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the U.N. Security Council's request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move toward peace. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Kuwait; Writing by Noah Browning and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Riyadh (AFP) - Saudi society, not the government, will determine whether women will be allowed to drive cars, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Monday. He was speaking to reporters after the unveiling of a vast plan, known as Saudi Vision 2030, to transform the oil-dependent economy. Mohammed was asked whether one of the plan's goals, to increase women's participation in the workforce from 22 percent to 30 percent, could lead to their right to drive. "So far the society is not persuaded -- and it has negative influence -- but we stress that it is up to the Saudi society," he said, adding that change cannot be forced. Saudi Arabia has one of the world's toughest restrictions on women and is the only country where they cannot get behind the wheel. The sexes are separated in restaurants and other public facilities. Women are subject to male "guardians", family members who must authorise a woman's travel, work or marriage. The kingdom's major cities are expanding their public transport networks but for the moment they remain limited, and a woman's ability to work is hindered unless she can afford a driver. What would happen if we spoke the truth? Alison Bechdel asks midway through her critically acclaimed graphic memoir, Fun Home. Its a fitting question to ask in a story that hinges on the idea that things left unsaid can have as much weight as those let out in the open. In Fun Home, Bechdel delves into the troubled, often secret-filled relationship with her late father, a closeted gay man whose death she concludes wasnt an accident, but suicide. Unaware of how her father was struggling with his sexuality, Allison was coming to accept her own queernessa complicated dynamic that plays out with humor, pathos, and wit in the pages of the novel. Fun Home has since made the leap to the stage, first as an off-Broadway musical adaptation before launching to Tony Award-winning, mainstream fame. If Bechdels heavy themes and light-hearted tone remain intact in the performance itself, the way her story has been marketed has undergone a calculated shift to ensure it reaches the broadest audience possible. And that has naturally meant downplaying the more controversial elements, such as queerness and suicide. In its year-long run as a musical, Fun Home has offered a timely case study for how producers and marketers successfully tap into the universal aspects of potentially polarizing storiesbut at the risk of perpetuating the idea that LGBT issues still dont belong out in the open. First published in 2006, Fun Home emerged as a critical darling and a cult favorite, in part thanks to the loyal fanbase for Bechdels long-running Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip. When the book was adapted into a musical in 2013, it saw rapid success at the Public Theater and became a critical sensation once again, named Best Musical by the New York Drama Critics Circle and a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Drama. After several reruns by popular demand, word came in fall 2014 that the show would move to Broadway. At the new venue, the 700- to 800-seat Circle in the Square Theater, the shows capacity had more than doubled, and it needed to reach more people. Fun Homes producers decided it necessitated a rebranda job that went to SpotCo, the marketing agency that has worked on hit shows such as Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, and School of Rock. Story continues Greenwald said the marketing team jokingly referred to the show as a lesbian suicide musical. Selling Fun Home on Broadway meant balancing two aims: making it appeal to as many people as possible without misrepresenting the storys spirit or substance. Two years after receiving the project brief for Fun Home, SpotCos co-founder and chief strategy officer Tom Greenwald recalled the main goal for marketing the show: Make sure that its never ever associated specifically with the plot or subject matter, he said, And make sure that people realize that its a beautiful, universal, family story of self-identification, reflection, and ultimately, hope. Not an easy task for a show that Greenwald said the marketing team jokingly referred to as a lesbian suicide musical. The rebranding largely played out through the visuals and the taglines used to promote the show. After Fun Home arrived on Broadway, newspapers, social-media feeds, and the streets of New York City lit up with colorful advertisements selling it as a fun, feel-good musical. One initial poster featured the shows logoa rectangle house with Bechdel and her father as cut-out figures inside the O in Homewith a small tagline underneath announcing the arrival of A NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL. After lavish critical praise, that was changed to: NOT JUST A NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL. A NEW KIND OF BROADWAY MUSICAL. And finally, after a total of five Tony wins, the slogan said nothing but WINNER! BEST MUSICAL 2015 TONY AWARDS. Recommended: Beyonce's 'Lemonade' and the Sacredness of Sex Of course, a new Broadway musical is very far from a different Broadway musical, let alone a queer Broadway musical. Despite a wide range of shows with LGBT characters, from Rent to Priscilla, Fun Home is the first musical on Broadway with a lesbian protagonist. The shows all-female writing team was also the first of its kind to win the Best Original Score Tony Award. All of these notable achievements were lost in the attempt to garner as broad a viewership as possiblea sign of how difference is given room to breathe, but only in the margins. SpotCo As for the design of the shows posters, the new versions moved away from Fun Homes previous, slightly ominous red-white-blue color scheme. We wanted to make sure it felt warm, as opposed to cold, said Greenwald, who added that they also wanted to capture a vintage look since Fun Home is set in the 1970s. I search the logo for traces of queerness, maybe hints of the Stonewall Riots, the 1969 protests that ignited the modern gay-rights movement. The cut-out characters in the letter O come across as playful and serene, and while the color scheme is quirky, its range is too narrow and shades too deep to justify any real parallels to the queer flag. The cheeriness isnt a total misrepresentation: Bechdels memoir is fun, but its also morbid and sad. In an effort to tout the most universal aspects of the story, the marketing comes close to diluting it. The musicals branding marks a major departure from the cover of the book version. (Greenwald said Bechdel has overseen and approved the creation of all the new visuals, but theyre not her work, save for the character cutouts.) The cover of the paperback, for one, is much darker than the musicals promotional materials and bears a gothic, Addams Family-type font for its title. The effect of a name like Fun Home is quite different when its accompanied by muted shades than when its paired with a cheery color schemethe former captures the works conflicted essence, while the latter masks it entirely. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt The print and online advertising campaigns for Fun Home have continued the taciturn trajectory of the branding. Review quotes like It speaks universally about big things that matter: life, love, family surviving, or Fun Home occupies the place where we all grew up, and will never be able to leave. WERE HOME, give nothing away of the actual plot, but they seem more secretive than most teasers. This month, SpotCo debuted a new TV commercial for Fun Home that will be shown across America as the show kicks off its U.S. tour this fall. The 30-second ad features a voiceover that says: Welcome to a musical about a family thats nothing like yoursand exactly like yours. Again, in an effort to tout the most universal aspects of the story, the marketing comes dangerously close to diluting it. Recommended: The Real Horror of Melisandre's 'Game of Thrones' Reveal Still, the show has made it a priority to champion LGBT rights. Each performance ends with an appeal for donations to the non-profit group Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The cast has sung at an LGBT center for senior citizens. The marketing team meticulously chose its partners, including Spotify, Uber, and Yelpall companies that support LGBT rights. Further, the shows content is anything but subdued: Theres a passionate lesbian scene, and although the story has a darker tone in print, the musical is as upfront as the book. Greenwald said that, ultimately, no Broadway showespecially a Tony-winning musical like Fun Homecan limit itself to only one kind of audience, because it will fail to address people of all backgrounds. There is absolutely no reason why a 70-year-old straight male cant be as emotionally fulfilled at this show as a 25-year-old LGBT person, he said. This fear of Fun Home being pigeonholed is a real and serious one that has been echoed by others in the industry. Hamiltons producer, Jeffrey Seller, has discussed the challenges faced by Lin-Manuel Mirandas previous Tony-winning musical, 2008s In the Heights. We were saddled in some ways with perceptual difficulties with rap music and racism, he told The New York Times. It became known as the hip-hop musical, and that unfortunately limited the audience. It deserved to run longer, and I believe it would have if not for that issue. Recommended: How Steph Curry's Injury Could Doom the Warriors' Title Chances For a queer story like Fun Home, traditional advertising may simply be a matter of survivalof finding the critical and commercial success it deserves within an imperfect system. And yet theres no ignoring the way advertisers are complicit in perpetuating flawed, deep-seated views in society. Though more progressive commercials appear to be on the rise, gender, racial, and gay stereotyping are still rife in ads. By sidestepping the storys more divisive subjects, Fun Home advertisements are potentially slowing the embrace of proudly queer voices and perspectives. There is absolutely no reason why a 70-year-old straight male cant be as emotionally fulfilled at this show as a 25-year-old LGBT person. Last month, the novelist Garth Greenwell criticized the mainstream branding of queer lives in the broader context of American society. He acknowledged that gay people have finally attained some degree of widespread acceptance and legal rightsall of which is important, but nonetheless came at an enormous cost. And that cost was a marketing campaign that took queer lives and translated them into values that could be appreciated by people who are disgusted by queer people, he said. This meant presenting a queer life that looks like the most acceptable kind of straight life: a monogamous relationship centered on the raising of a child. Suddenly the way the musicals branding emphasizes ideas of family and home makes a lot more senseyes, those subjects are present in Bechdels story, but theyre also the most palatable to people who might otherwise be unreceptive to a work that explores gay themes. The trend in attitudes toward LGBT people is one of growing tolerance, but media coverage tends to focus specifically on acceptance rates of same-sex marriagefigures that are not entirely representative of change. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports that theres significant systemic error in the data on the LGBT population: We find substantial under-reporting of LGBT identity and behaviors as well as underreporting of anti-gay sentiment ... even under anonymous and very private conditions. Still, there is some hope that Fun Home can help change minds. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, took 17 of her fellow ambassadors to see Fun Home last month, including several who represent countries like Russia and Namibia where homosexuality is a crime. Most of them didnt know anything about the show, except that it had won the top Tony Award, but Powell said later in an interview with Seth Meyers that they were blown away by the show. She added: Sometimes when you come at your fellow ambassadors frontally on the importance of LGBT rights they can end up in a defensive posture. But if you bring them into a show where you watch a young girl grappling with her first crush, and seeing life played out forward, rather than as a matter of politics or ideology, it can be easier to create more of a sense of empathy and community. In this light, perhaps, the benefits of Fun Homes publicity campaign appear to outweigh the negatives. Maybe what matters most is that the marketing for the show worksthat it draws in the crowds to watch a show that meaningfully expands audiences perceptions of how gay people navigate life, love, and personal relationships. The musical is recently reported to have recouped its initial investment of $5.25 million and is on solid financial ground at last. To what extent thats thanks to the shows advertising or other factors is difficult to measure. If the marketing that works in todays age is one that obfuscates rather than clarifies, or shies away from difference, then thats a reflection of society at large. When important works like Fun Home reach the masses against the odds, theyre helping to change that. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Sddefault Forget CNN or The New York Times the only person who truly understands Hillary Clinton is '70s disco queen, Donna Summers. Earlier today, Senator Tom Carper tried to muster enthusiasm for Hillary at a rally in his home state of Delaware. While other politicians in his position might choose an inspirational quote or memorable passage, Carper instead decided to sing Summers' "She Works Hard for the Money" completely a capella, lacking any healthy sense of irony. Take a moment and examine the faces of the audience members in the back, forced to sit through Carper's beautifully awkward call-and-response. Next up: "She Works Hard for the Soft Money," courtesy of the Sanders campaign. Hungry tuna decides that seagull doesn't taste very good Hero firefighters rescue ducklings trapped in a storm drain John Oliver and Lin-Manuel Miranda perfectly explain why we should help Puerto Rico Dog could not be worse at the simplest of cup games By Julia Harte WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Overcrowded prisons strain state budgets, take people out of the work force and pull families apart more than they reduce crime or boost the U.S. economy, said an Obama administration study discussed on Monday by experts at the White House. The study, undertaken as part of President Barack Obama's efforts to reform the criminal justice system before he leaves office, was conducted by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and focused on the costs of sentencing and incarceration policies. Despite falling crime rates, U.S. prison populations have soared in recent decades as a result of harsher federal and state-level sentencing policies, such as "three strikes" rules under which offenders much be imprisoned on their third conviction. Both conservative and liberal panelists discussing the report on Monday agreed that lighter sentences for non-violent offenders and lower barriers to job opportunities after prison would address the economic problems described in the report. "This isn't really about the money. This is about the lives that we're throwing away," said Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that co-hosted the event with the liberal Brennan Center for Justice of New York University. Obama's push for criminal justice reform has support from both ends of the political spectrum, with bipartisan legislation pending in Congress that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some low-level federal drug crimes. Those proposed reforms are backed by a Brennan Center-affiliated coalition of local law enforcement officers around the country, who agree that the default response to non-violent crimes should not be prison time, said the center's director of justice programs, Inimai Chettiar. Panelists said the study showed that some existing criminal justice policies are counter-productive. In the arena, "far too little of what we do actually makes sense or is backed by specific evidence," said Peter Orszag, who led the Congressional Budget Office in 2007 and 2008. There are 2.2 million Americans behind bars, a prison rate that is more than four times the world average. The Justice Department said on Monday it will expand federal programs that ensure ex-prisoners have the skills needed to find work, and that they also have access to housing, education and financial credit after release. Every federal inmate should get an individualized re-entry plan "tailored to his or her risk of recidivism and ... needs," said a Justice Department press release. U.S. Attorneys and the Bureau of Prisons are hosting more than 570 events nationwide this week on re-entry initiatives. (Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Frances Kerry) On April 25th we observe World Malaria day, in hopes of highlighting the global effort to effectively control, and eventually wipe out this terrible disease. This years theme is End Malaria For Good. About half of the world's population, nearly 3.2 billion people, is at risk for malaria. Most cases and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but Asia, Latin America and even the Middle East, are also at risk. Malaria is a deadly disease. In 2015, 214 million people became sick with malaria, and 438,000 of them died. But malaria is also preventable and curable, and there is good reason to believe that we can eliminate it altogether. This is borne out by the fact that between 2000 and 2015, when the global community intensified its efforts to control the disease, new cases among populations at risk fell by 37 percent globally. In that same period, malaria death rates among populations at risk fell by 60 percent among all age groups, and by 65 percent among children under 5. Nonetheless, a child dies from malaria at least every two minutes, and hundreds of millions of people at risk of contracting malaria still do not receive the services they need. The United States, in cooperation with its many partners, including host countries, multilateral organizations, and countless others, is redoubling its efforts to prevent and treat malaria. With approval from the U.S. Congress, next year, the United States will increase the budget for the Presidents Malaria Initiative by $200 million. This would allow the Initiative to expand its programs to almost 70 million additional people at risk of malaria, in Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Burkina Faso. The initiative would accelerate elimination efforts in Cambodia and Zambia, provide 13.7 million insecticide-treated nets to protect 27 million people in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria, and accelerate research, development, and evaluation of new malaria tools focused on vector control and medicines. The global malaria community stands within the reach of achieving the goals that we once thought were unimaginable: ending deaths from malaria and then eliminating malaria from the globe, said Retired Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, the coordinator of U.S. Global Malaria Programs. It is critically important that we build on this momentum. It has been close to 170 years since the British took it, but the Kohinoor diamond still remains a bone of contention between both the governments. From the priests in Puri who want the diamond to be returned in order to place it on the crown of Lord Jagannath Puri, to the Telugus and the Sikhs who have laid ownership on it, and an NGO which has been trying to get it back from the Crown jewels, everyone is staking a claim on the precious stone that currently adorns the Crown of the British monarch. The Crown Jewel is not the only priceless Indian artefact that has been taken away. Thousands of Indian artefacts have been stolen over the centuries, and are currently abroad. We take a look at seven such precious artefacts: Sultanganj Buddha: The largest known complete Indian metal sculpture, the Sultanganj Buddha was discovered by EB Harris, a railway engineer in 1862. The statue is currently at the Museum of Birmingham, and is the first object to have entered the citys collection. Saraswati idol: Made of marble, the statue of the Hindu Goddess of learning, Saraswati, had been donated to the temple at Bhojshala, in Madhya Pradesh, by a local family, before it was lost. The idol was later found in the ruins adjoining Bhojshala by the British, and was acquired by the British Museum in 1886. India has been asking for its return. Pratyangira: The sculpture, which depicts Kali with the face of a lion, was stolen by Subhash Kapoor, the art thief who plundered a number of ancient Indian artefacts from temples across the country and sold them to foreign buyers. The statue is currently at the National Gallery of Australia. While researchers believe that the statue originated from the Virddhagireesvarar temple southwest of Chennai, a lack of clarity on its actual origins has been hampering the Archaeological Survey of Indias (ASI) attempt of trying to bring it back. Peacock Throne: The jewelled Peacock throne or Mayurasana throne, which was the seat of the Mughal emperors, was commissioned by Shah Jahan in the early 17th century and located in the Red Fort. It was subsequently captured and taken by the Persian king Nadir Shah in 1739, and has since been lost. Story continues Amaravati Railings: The Amaravati Railings is a series of 120 scriptures and depictions from the Amravati Mahacetiya in Amravati village, Guntur. The railings are also known as the Elliot Marbles as they were excavated by British explorer Sir Walter Elliot, who transported them to Madras. They were kept in the Museum in Egmore, until 1853, when the then curator, Edward Belfour wrote to the Home authorities in London asking for the collection to be sent to London, as they were exposed to the elements here, and needed to be protected. The railings are currently at the British Museum. Bhawani Talwar: Originally belonging to Chatrapati Shivaji Raje Bhonsle, the founder of the Maratha kingdom, the Bhawani Talwar was later said to have been gifted to King Edward VII by Mahadeo Bharve, the diwan of the Kolhapur state, in 1875. The sword is believed to be currently with the Royal Albert Museum in London. Hope Diamond: One of the most precious stones in the world, the Hope Diamond, a large 45.52 carat deep-blue diamond, is believed to have originated in the Kollur mine in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, in the 17th century. While details of who found the stone, or who the initial owner was, is stil unclear, the Gems first known owner, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Tavernier, is said to have obtained it in the mid 1600s. He brought it to Paris, post which the stone has travelled around, before finally reaching the Washingtons National Museum of Natural History, where it has been on exhibition since 1958. NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. (DWA) concerning possible breaches of fiduciary duty by its Board of Directors. To obtain additional information, GO TO: http://zlk.9nl.com/dreamworks-animation-dwa or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. CONTACT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Eduard Korsinsky, Esq. 30 Broad Street - 24th Floor New York, NY 10004 Tel: (212) 363-7500 Toll Free: (877) 363-5972 Fax: (212) 363-7171 www.zlk.com SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Shells Upcoming 1Q16 Results: Will They Be Hit by Low Crude Oil? 4Q15 estimated and actual performance Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) is set to release its 1Q16 results on May 4, 2016. Before we look at 1Q16 estimates, lets recap Shells 4Q15 performance compared to the estimates. In 4Q15, Shells revenues surpassed Wall Street analysts estimates by 17%. That quarter, Shell reported EPS (earnings per share) of $0.29. However, on an adjusted CCS EII (current cost of supplies excluding identified items) basis, EPS stood at $0.58 compared to estimated EPS of $0.56, beating analysts estimates. On a CCS EII basis, Shell posted an adjusted profit of $1.8 billion in 4Q15, a decline of 44% over 4Q14. This was due to the upstream segment that saw a 72% decline in earnings over 4Q14, to $493 million in 4Q15. Shells downstream segments CCS EII saw earnings remain stable in 4Q15 over 4Q14. Shells 1Q16 estimates In 1Q16, according to Wall Street analyst estimates, Shell is expected to post EPS of $0.33. This is 68% lower than 1Q15 adjusted EPS and 42% lower than 4Q15 adjusted EPS. Shells revenues are estimated to be around $52 billion in 1Q16, 20% lower than 1Q15 revenues. Shells upstream as well as downstream segments are likely to be under pressure in 1Q16 compared to 1Q15. The upstream segment is likely to bear the brunt of sinking oil prices. On the other hand, the refining cracks have narrowed in 1Q16 compared to 1Q15, which is likely to impact the downstream segment earnings. Shells (RDS.A) peers Petrobras (PBR), Statoil (STO), and Cenovus Energy (CVE) are also expected to post subdued numbers in 1Q16 compared to 1Q15. The PowerShares Dynamic Large Cap Value ETF (PWV) has ~11% exposure to energy sector stocks. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: By Paul Kilby NEW YORK, April 25 (IFR) - Mexico's Sigma got the ball rolling in Latin America's primary market on Monday, arriving on the coattails of Argentina's historic return to the capital markets last week. The frozen foods company, part of conglomerate Alfa, is approaching investors with a 10-year bond rated Baa3/BBB/BBB via active books Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan. Initial price thoughts are 262.5bp area, essentially flat to Sigma's lower-rated parent Alfa (Baa3/BBB-/BBB-), which has a 2024 trading with a G spread anywhere between 260bp and 265bp. As the highest revenue generator among Alfa's subsidiaries last year, Sigma is expected to trade inside the operating company - and hence has room to tighten. "I see fair value at 237.5bp, so they will walk this thing in about 30bp," one New York-based trader told IFR. Comparables include other Triple B food companies in Mexico, such as baker Bimbo (Baa2/BBB/BBB) and tortilla maker Gruma (BBB/BBB) which have 2024s being quoted at G spreads of around 210bp and 215bp respectively, according to an investor. Those companies should arguably trade tighter to Sigma, given their larger presence in the US, the investor said, voicing concerns about Sigma's FX exposure as it takes on more dollar debt. "It is a solid business, but what concerns me is that they won't hedge (dollar debt) and about 50% of their business is in Mexico and Latin America," he said. Sigma looks particularly cheap against BR Foods, which has a 2024s trading with a G-spread of 354bp, reflecting broader troubles in Brazil despite the credits popularity among investors. Sigma already has outstanding bonds, but they are shorter dated 2018s and 2019s, which are trading with a G spread of around 166bp, said the trader. While Sigma announced amid a somewhat weaker tone on Monday, the defensive name should attract decent demand as it seeks to garner anywhere between US$750m-US$1bn, according to the investor. Story continues Argentina's massive US$69bn order book for its upsized multi-tranche US$16.5bn bond sale - its first in 15 years - underscored the enormous appetite for certain names in EM, especially in a year that has seen diminished supply. Those bonds were still trading several points above re-offer on Monday following a strong rally following pricing last week. The 2019s were being bid at 103.25, the 2021 at 102.50, the 2026s at 102.25 and the 30-year at 98.25. All priced at par with the exception of the 30-year, which came at 95.758. After a strong rally over the last month and nine consecutive weeks of inflows into EM debt funds, the market may be set for profit-taking as markets brace for more Argentina supply ahead, say market participants. Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, which came to market in the wake Argentina's deal last week, saw its new 5.875% 2021 trading at 99.80-100.20 on Monday morning, about 40 cents higher than re-offer. "It is not unreasonable to think we will start to lose some steam, but Sigma is not a bullish market trade and is still a credit that can get done," said the investor. Sigma is expected to price later on Monday. Passive joint bookrunners are MUFG and Rabo Securities. (Reporting by Paul Kilby; Editing by Marc Carnegie) If you dont know Alec Berg by name, you know his work: Silicon Valley, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm. And actually, if you know Seinfeld well, you do know his name. Berg went from writer to character to punchline on May 11, 1995s The Face Painter episode. An actor named Mark DeCarlo played the ficticious Alec Berg, who had primo New York Rangers playoff tickets something that Jerry (Seinfeld) and overzealous New Jersey Devils fan David Puddy (Patrick Warburton) took full advantage of. I can always tell when the episode has re-aired, because Ill get it from somebody, the real Alec Berg told TheWrap. Well explain what it is momentarily. Also Read: 'Silicon Valley' EP Alec Berg Tells How Twitter's Ex-CEO Dick Costolo Made the Show Even Better Back in the initial writing phase for that particular episode, Larry David and Seinfeld took full advantage of a running office joke to fill in a script hole. In the halls, the comedians had developed dueling John Houseman impressions, and walked around rattling off material in Oscar-winning British actors distinctive accent. As Berg recalls, it was David who first employed the office-favorite accent to address him: Alec Buuurg. Soon, the joke and writers name would be on NBC but Berg wouldnt learn any of it until the table read. Also Read: Watch 'Silicon Valley' Season 3 Trailer: A New CEO and Metamucil Jokes (Video) It was a complete surprise to me Literally, it was: Alec Berg Enters,' he remembered upon reading the stage direction. I was like, What the fk is going on? It was surreal. Berg still has the two pages of mention from his table draft framed on the wall. The good John Houseman name label and exaggerated pronunciation would carry over into the scenes. To me, the thing thats sort of most depressing about it, in a weird way, is I would venture that more people know John Houseman because of that, than actually know that he produced the War of the Worlds radio telecast and was a phenomenally successful show-business force, Berg told us. He was an incredibly traveled, esteemed guy. He wasnt just the asshole from The Paper Chase who did the Smith Barney commercials he had a real track record. Story continues Also Read: 'Game of Thrones,' 'Veep,' 'Silicon Valley' Renewed at HBO Watch a short video of the Alec Berg character from The Face Painter episode below. The YouTube user who uploaded the clip? Actor Mark DeCarlo. Bergs Silicon Valley Season 3 premiere airs Sunday at 10/9c on HBO. Related stories from TheWrap: Jerry Seinfeld's Wife Remembers Garry Shandling's 'Comedians in Cars' Episode Jerry Seinfeld Calls Us All Fat Slobs in 'Late Show' Stand-up Set (Video) 'Silicon Valley' Star Zach Woods Teases Season 3: Power Struggles, Robotic Beasts (Video) There are unending reasons to mourn the death of Prince. One of the geekiest, though, is the news that emerged over the weekend that we were real close to having an entire episode of The Simpsons devoted to the Purple One. According the Australian site The Music, season five of the long-running Fox cartoon was to contain a sequel of sorts to the wildly popular season three ep, "Stark Raving Mad," which featured a New Jersey bricklayer named Leon Kompowsky who believed he was Michael Jackson. As part of the easter-egg commentary for that episode, writer Mike Reiss explained that the Prince-centric show was to feature the return of Kompowsky, who was now convinced he was Prince. Prince's Remains Cremated Following Private Ceremony: Rep There was allegedly a full script written for the episode, which may or may not have included an uncredited rewrite by then-staff writer Conan O'Brien, and it was sent to Prince, who reportedly had detailed wardrobe notes. At some point, the whole affair reportedly fell apart over script issues. This Week in Billboard Chart History: The All-Prince Edition The mythological tale was confirmed on Friday by Simpsons writer/showrunner Al Jean, who took to Twitter to clarify any confusion over the never-to-be episode. Jean said the Prince show was written by a pair of freelance writers based on an idea from series co-developer Jim Brooks, with rewrites by O'Brien. @TheSimpsons original draft by Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk based on idea by Jim Brooks uncredited rewrite by Conan - Al Jean (@AlJean) April 23, 2016 A Look Back at Prince's Quirky, Idiosyncratic Paisley Park Records Better still, Jean revealed that Kompowsky (who was originally voiced by Jackson) wasn't just going to think he was the King and Prince of pop, but also a series of other musical icons. @TheSimpsons at points in the draft Kompowsky believed he was Bobby Goldsboro Roberta Flack and Leo Sayer - Al Jean (@AlJean) April 23, 2016 Story continues The best part? Jean then started a three-day spree of posting pages from the script, which include Lisa's frustrating attempts to score Prince tickets and Prince admitting to Selma that even he didn't watch one of his own movies. .@TheSimpsons page from unproduced Prince script thank you Jacqueline Atkins for finding! pic.twitter.com/GvYaJKXxgD - Al Jean (@AlJean) April 23, 2016 .@TheSimpsons possibly another objection Prince had to the script... pic.twitter.com/OgRxlZ5EKJ - Al Jean (@AlJean) April 23, 2016 On Sunday, Jean couldn't help posting one more page, in which Prince tells Lisa he wrote a song for her birthday. .@TheSimpsons Tonight fland canyon written by Burns directed by Polcino canyon by God. Here's one more prince page pic.twitter.com/eBMQR44LEq - Al Jean (@AlJean) April 24, 2016 F6cfae2815b543ef9226513f2e4ee981 Snapchat, helping the youths connect with history. One topical filter at a time. Anzac Day, held each year on April 25, marks the date Australian troops landed at Gallipoli, Turkey in 1915 during World War I. It's a day of remembrance for those who served, and what better way to memorialise the tragedy of war than with a bunch of thematic Snapchat filters to share with your mates? SEE ALSO: Snapchat adds 'Purple Rain' geofilter to honor Prince The company created three custom options for the day, including a wreath of poppies with the tagline "Lest We Forget," as well as a coin paddle, which is used for the Aussie gambling game, two-up only legally played publicly on Anzac Day. Image: mashable Image: MASHABLE Snapchat also created a live story that users could submit to for the occasion. The montage started out with footage from a dawn service in Auckland, New Zealand, where the day is also celebrated, and some quite lovely video of veterans marching. It then moved swiftly on to people drunkenly playing two-up in a pub with Postman Pat. Yep, about right. Are Snapchat filters the best way to remember "these who die as cattle?" We'll let you decide. At least this won't be a Bob Marley and 420-type fiasco small mercies. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Monday it would sue opposition politician Julius Malema after he threatened to remove President Jacob Zuma's government with the "barrel of a gun". Malema told Al Jazeera television on Sunday that the ANC used violence to suppress dissent, citing an incident last year when members of his radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party were ejected from parliament after heckling Zuma. "We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun," said Malema, Zuma's one-time protege and former ANC youth leader. "Part of the revolutionary duty is to fight and we are not ashamed if the need arise for us to take up arms and fight," Malema said. EFF protest marches were often met with violent resistance by security forces, he said. The ANC said it would pursue legal action against Malema. "These remarks are a call to violence, are inflammatory, treasonable and seditious and should be treated with extreme seriousness," the ANC said in a statement. "The ANC calls on state authorities to urgently investigate this matter and act against such conduct." South Africa is holding local government elections on August 3. The EFF and main opposition Democratic Alliance are expected to make inroads into majorities held by the ANC in large metropolitan areas, including the capital Pretoria. Malema has accused the ANC of failing to redress the inequality between blacks and whites since Nelson Mandela swept to power on a wave of optimism at the end of apartheid in 1994. The EFF was launched in 2013 and won six percent of the vote in national elections the following year. It has pledged to curb white economic power by nationalizing mines and seizing land. Its members dress in red berets and hard hats but do not carry weapons. (Reporting by Joe Brock; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Juba (AFP) - After a weeklong delay, South Sudan rebel chief Riek Machar is finally expected back in Juba on Tuesday to join a unity government being formed to end more than two years of civil war. A rebel statement said Machar, who is to be sworn in as first vice-president alongside his longtime arch rival, President Salva Kiir, "will be arriving today in Juba April 26, 2016". He was expected to land at about 2 pm (1100 GMT), depending on the weather and flight operations, said spokesman William Ezekiel. Machar, who was originally due back in the city on April 18 under a peace deal, is expected to head immediately from the airport to the presidential palace to be sworn in. His delayed arrival infuriated the international community after the months of negotiations spent on getting the rivals to return to the same city and share power in the world's newest country. Ensuring they work together in a unity government, and that the thousands of rival armed forces now in separate camps inside the capital keep their guns quiet, will be an even bigger challenge. Top rebel military commander Simon Gatwech Dual returned this Monday, in a key step forward in the floundering peace process. "We are one South Sudan," Dual shouted, waving a walking stick in the air as he marched off the plane. He was welcomed by top government army commanders, surrounded by heavily armed troops from both the government and rebels. - Deep suspicion - Both sides remain deeply suspicious, and fighting continues with multiple militia forces unleashed who now pay no heed to either Kiir or Machar. His return was stalled by arguments that at one point, in a country awash with weapons, came down to the a dispute about just over two dozen rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that the force guarding Machar are allowed to have. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes in the conflict, which has reignited ethnic divisions and been characterised by gross human rights abuses. Story continues The economy is in ruins, over five million people need aid and two million have fled their homes. Over 180,000 people are crammed into UN peacekeeping camps across the country, too terrified to venture outside the razor wire fences for fear of being killed. Tensions are high, and the days ahead will be critical. "We need the guns to stay silent and give people time -- both as official warring parties and as individuals -- with one another in coming days," said Casie Copeland from the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank. Suffering is on an epic scale. Parts of the country, especially the devastated oil producing northern Unity region, have been pushed to the brink of famine. There are huge expectations Machar's arrival means the myriad of problems will be solved swiftly -- but there will be no quick fix. - 'Best chance yet' - Diplomats note gloomily that while Machar's return is the "best chance yet", the deal imposed under intense international pressure only sees the country go back to the status quo that existed before his July 2013 sacking as vice president that precipitated the war. The agreement has already been repeatedly broken with months of fighting since it was signed, and its key power sharing formula in ruins after Kiir nearly tripled the number of regional states. South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup. The conflict has torn open ethnic divisions and been characterised by human rights violations. It has included the abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls, massacres of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, murder, mutilation and even cannibalism. South Sudan is one of poorest countries on the planet, and had some world's worst indicators for development, health and education even before over two years of war. Machar has over 1,500 armed troops in the capital, while government forces have officially just over double that. All other soldiers have to remain at least 25 kilometres (15 miles) outside the capital. The threat of violence at a local level remains enormous, with multiple militia forces unleashed and out of control. Machar and Kiir are decades-old rivals and even if they can work together both must also rein in powerful hardline field commanders. Baby Spurgeon Elliot Seewald is going international! In a sneak peek at Tuesday's Jill & Jessa: Counting On, Jessa (Duggar) Seewald and her husband Ben prepare their 5-month-old son for a journey to Central America, where he'll meet his cousin Israel, 1, for the first time. The new parents who could probably use some help from the Duggars' most organized sibling (Jill herself!) go down the list of all the day-to-day necessities baby Spurgeon will need, including bug spray, sunscreen, wipes and diapers. Hilariously, it's a bit of an eye-opener for Ben, 20, who is still learning as he goes about exactly how many diapers his son goes through each day (he estimates the tally at three to four, while Jessa reveals it's more like seven). The trip also marks the first time Jessa, 23, will reunite with big sister Jill (Duggar) Dillard, 24, since Jill and husband Derick began work on an extended in El Salvador. Along with the Seewalds, several Duggar siblings are heading down to visit the Dillards, who revealed that their little guy is "learning something new every day" including long-held Duggar family favorite traditions! during their time abroad. Jill & Jessa: Counting On airs Tuesdays (9 p.m. ET) on TLC. LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - The cost of hedging against volatility in sterling over the next three months fell by the most in a year on Monday, as investors' bets on Brexit ebbed after the U.S. president voiced his support for Britain remaining in the European Union. President Barack Obama said on Sunday that Britain might have to wait a decade for a free trade deal with the United States if it votes in June to leave the European Union, adding to his warning on Friday that Britain would find itself at "the back of the queue" for a new trade agreement if it departed the EU. Data from betting website Betfair showed the chances of Britain staying in the EU surged on Monday to their highest since September last year, with the chances of a Brexit falling to around 27 percent, down from 37 percent this time last week. Three-implied sterling/dollar volatility, derived from options that cover the June 23 referendum and its aftermath, fell to a one-month low of 13.75 percent. That was a 7.5 percent drop on the day - the biggest one-day fall since the results of last May's British general election. Six-month implied volatility fell to a six-week low of 12.425 percent, while sterling soared to a 10-week high of $1.4520. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly, editing by Nigel Stephenson) - By Ben Strubel We decided it would be fun to take a look at what stocks might be winners and losers under each of the four leading presidential candidates. We focused primarily on their economic and tax plans to look at what changes might affect the investment world. Well go through the candidates in alphabetical order by first name Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz. Before we dive into our picks and pans for another Clinton presidency, I want to explain a little bit about how we will approach things. Throughout this series we are going to assume that candidates economic plans, as they are defined now, are enacted as is. Obviously, with a divided Congress, no plan will be enacted exactly as the candidate presents it today. Not only that, if politicians are known for one thing, its lying. For all we know, these proposals may not even be close to what the candidates actually plan on doing. Additionally, we are also not the numbers police and are not here to debate whether a candidates numbers add up (you want to enact $9 trillion in tax cuts, go ahead, we will analyze that) and we are not Very Serious People deciding whether a plan is realistic (you want universal healthcare or a giant wall, we will analyze that). We are going with what the candidates say they will do. Even though nothing the candidates present is enacted as is, the plans usually do at least show the direction that candidates are leaning. For example, Cruz and Trump are proposing huge tax cuts. Is a flat tax really likely to be enacted? No, but its likely if elected Cruz would push hard for some type of tax cut. Likewise, is Bernie Sanders' $5 trillion infrastructure plan likely to be enacted as is? No, but if elected hes likely to push very hard for increased infrastructure spending. Story continues Although the information about the candidates' plans we have to go on is imperfect and subject to change, we still think its useful to look at who the winners and losers might be under their plans. Hillary Clinton is probably the hardest candidate to analyze and come up with a list of definite stock buys and sells. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are outside the political mainstream. Ted Cruz, while part of Republican Party, is not generally regarded as part of the Republican mainstream. Hillary Clinton is about as mainstream as you can get for the current Democratic Party. After eight years under a conventional Democrat presidency with Barack Obama, how much would anything really change under Clinton? Additionally, none of Clintons policy proposals are near the same scale as the other candidates. Cruz and Trump are proposing enormous trillion dollar tax cuts, and Trump has repeatedly mentioned reinstating some types of tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing companies. Sanders has proposed sweeping overhauls of the American healthcare and education system along with enormous infrastructure spending. Clintons economic plans are mild in comparison. Just some tweaks here or there. As such its probably a safe bet that the economic trends weve seen for the last eight years will largely continue with Clinton. Clintons economic platform is very vague in many areas, so we will try to sum up the important economic proposals as best we can. The major concrete proposals seem to be raising the minimum wage to $ or $5 per hour, spending $75 billion over five years on infrastructure, and spending $5 billion to make in-state college education free or very low cost. The rest of the proposals are too minor to have much impact on the economy (closing the carried interest loophole wont send all hedge funds out of business for example) and universal pre-school, while nice if you support that, isnt really going to create many short-term actionable investment opportunities. Buy: Gun manufacturers Theres almost nothing more automatic in the investment world then Democratic election victories leading to a spike in gun sales. Gun sales and gun manufacturers like Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR) and Smith & Wesson (SWHC) have had a strong run under Obama. We think that run could continue if Clinton were to be elected. Additionally, most of the proposals Clinton has put forth on gun control are along the lines of stricter background checks, waiting periods and reinstituting the assault weapons ban passed by her husband. None of these proposals are likely to seriously restrict sales by gun manufacturers, but they should serve to send demand higher as many people will fear even tighter regulations in the future. The one wildcard is how long can strong gun sales continue. Guns are a luxury item (not a necessity, for most anyway) and with proper care and maintenance, firearms can last a lifetime. Therefore, gun purchases are highly discretionary and its possible we could see sales start to plateau. In any case, I believe there is likely to be a high initial spike in sales if Clinton were to be elected. Defense contractors We also think defense contractors like Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC) and General Dynamics (GD) would do well under a Clinton presidency. Both mainstream Republican and Democrat politicians have consistently supported military intervention in numerous overseas conflicts and the global war on terror. We see nothing that would change under Clinton. Her foreign policy positions are very interventional and as Secretary of State, she has frequently been a vocal supporter of military intervention in various overseas conflicts. Out of all four presidential candidates, we believe defense contractors would see the greatest growth under Clinton. Education companies Clintons proposal to expand access to higher education, like Sanders' proposal, will likely be a boon to any company producing goods or services for the education market. With what is sure to be a huge influx of new college students, beaten down textbook and educational services company Pearson (PSO) should do well (its largest market is the U.S.) as well as companies like Scholastic Education (SCHL) and publisher John Wiley & Sons (JW-A). Sell: For-profit education Like Sanders, Clinton aims to dramatically increase the affordability of college education with the goal of making in-state four year education free to very low cost. Dramatically expanding access to higher education will put even more pressure on private for-profit schools. Perhaps companies like DeVry (DV) or Strayer (STRA) may find a small market niche of students to cater too, but I believe they likely to drastically shrink in size if not disappear outright. Low wage companies Clinton has proposed raising the minimum wage to around $ to $5. This proposal is not as large as Sanders and her overall platform does not include as many other policies that would be a boon to labor (e.g. large jobs programs). Thus, her economic proposals should put some cost pressures on companies that rely heavily on low wage labor, but not as much as Sanders' proposals. Companies like Wal-Mart (WMT), McDonald's (MCD) and Wendys (WEN) will see their labor costs rise. Its hard to guess how much the margin pressure may be offset by increased sales. A higher minimum wage gives workers more money to spend and Clintons education proposals should as well. College graduates will have more money to spend on discretionary spending rather than debt repayment. Additionally, Clintons infrastructure plan should boost the economy and provide a bit of a tailwind for low wage companies. How the all the moving parts interact is anyones guess, so Id reduce exposure to low wage companies while boosting exposure to consumer oriented companies that already pay above minimum wage salaries. Final thoughts Clintons plans are extremely similar to Sanders', just on a smaller scale. He proposes spending $5 trillion on infrastructure, she wants $75 billion. He wants to make college free, she wants to make college merely low cost. He wants universal healthcare, she supports a litany of tweaks to the Affordable Care Act to reduce costs to consumers. The list goes on. If you want more details on stocks to buy and sell based on Clintons platform, Id recommend reading our article on Sanders and simply scaling everything down. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. The Department of Education announced earlier this month its plan to create a single Web portal for federal student loan borrowers -- a move to make payments easier. Once the platform is released, borrowers will be redirected to a single portal to pay their student debt. But the site isn't expected to be rolled out anytime soon, a Department of Education spokesman says. Total outstanding debt is close to $1.3 trillion, and most of this debt is from federal student loans. [Read aboutthree changes that will help student loan borrowers.] "Our goal is to build a new state-of-the-art loan servicing system -- one that creates incentives and guidelines that support a more user-friendly single online loan management platform," said Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell in a blog post. Under the current system, borrowers with federal loans are bounced between different service providers contracted by the Education Department. The big four servicers are Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Nelnet, FedLoan Servicing and Navient, a spinoff of Sallie Mae. These providers service the majority of student loan borrowers, according to the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, a division of the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center. "Confusion reigns in the student loan space," says Carlo Salerno, a District of Columbia-based education economist. "There are people who get confused on who their loan provider is, and they see that they get a bill statement from Navient or Great Lakes and they don't understand that this is related to a government loan." Borrowers currently have to log in to their servicer's website to make payments, and some student debtors may have loans with multiple servicers. The new platform's objective is to eliminate varying experiences, providing borrowers with one main point of contact. [Check out thisguide to understanding student loan servicer changes.] The Department of Education previously had a single direct loan servicer until 2009 when it changed to the current structure. Story continues "There are many out there who believe that if you took out a loan from the government you should be able to go to a '.gov website' and pay your bill," Salerno says. These servicers collect money from borrowers and remit those payments to the Department of Education, which ultimately remits those funds to the Treasury. Federal loans aren't originated from the Department of Education, economists say. [Here are five steps to take when your student loan servicer changes.] Last summer the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which oversees consumer borrowing, received more than 8,000 comments from borrowers about loan servicing providers. The Department of Education and the Treasury incorporated this feedback into their road map -- the Financial Aid Servicing Solution -- to improve services to borrowers. In the feedback, commenters said servicing transfers resulted in surprise fees and damaged credit, to name a few problems, according to the CFPB's September 2015 report. The Department of Education says it plans to improve customer service with uniform standards for lenders. "It's not only the act of the transfer causing problems for borrowers but a lack of consistency across different servicing platforms," says CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Seth Frotman. According to the Education Department's blog, borrowers can expect department-branded communication, which will eliminate differences between servicers. Current servicer co-brands such as Navient or Nelnet leads to confusion and this may cause communication breakdowns and sometimes defaults, according to the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. With the new servicing plan, the need to know the name of a servicer will be eliminated, said Mitchell. "They propose some good ideas and some practical solutions that would be beneficial," says Persis Yu, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project , about the department's new plan. "Accountability is one of the biggest problems that we've been having with the servicers." Yu says one concern with the new initiative is the plan to add debt collection into the new system. Student loan borrowers currently can sue collection agencies for violations under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which protects consumers from abusive debt collectors. "Having it under one umbrella makes it simpl er, but on the other hand we know that there have been a lot of abuses by private collections agencies," says Yu, who says the department needs to be more transparent about the new process and include current consumer protections under the new plan. The department will award a contract to a loan service provider for the new plan at the end of 2016. In the Education Department's solicitation for a loan provider, the post says that default collections may be defined after the contract is awarded. Trying to fund your education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for College center. Farran Powell is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering paying for college and graduate school. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at fpowell@usnews.com. On the eve of what will be the fourth, but not final, Super Tuesday of the 2016 presidential primary season, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton appear headed for a clean sweep. A rout by Clinton would essentially close the door on Sen. Bernie Sanders bid and leave him with a choice: use his political clout to influence the future of the Democratic Party or keep up his attacks, a tactic that could hamper her going into the general election and alienate the Vermont senator from party leaders. Roughly a week after their resounding victories in New Yorks primary, Trump and Clinton have essentially silenced their rivals as voters in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island prepare to go to the polls on Tuesday. Across-the-board wins could add hundreds to their respective delegate counts. Related: Sanders to Clinton: Heres What My Support Will Cost You An unprecedented alliance between Trumps GOP rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, is too late to stop the billionaire this week. In fact, Trump has increased his lead in most of the states that will be voting. Instead, the tangled Cruz-Kasich alliance is aimed at blocking Trumps path to the necessary 1,237 delegates starting with next weeks primary in Indiana. Sanders likewise has failed to gain any traction against the former secretary of state in the northeast corridor and managed to lose ground in Pennsylvania and Maryland, with 318 delegates between them, compared with this time a week ago. Related: Another Super Tuesday? Trump and Clinton Lead for Now Even though Sanders has begun to entertain questions about what it would take for Clinton to win his support, the democratic-socialist has also vowed to press on until the last Super Tuesday of the cycle on June 7 the fifth mega-sized day of voting where traditionally there only used to be one. Below is a snapshot of the polls ahead of tomorrows contests: Pennsylvania 210 Dem delegates, 71 GOP delegates Democrats: Clinton: 52.7 percent | Sanders: 38.7 percent GOP: Trump: 45.8 percent | Cruz: 26.4 percent | Kasich: 23 percent Story continues Maryland 118 Dem delegates, 38 GOP delegates Democrats: Clinton: 57.7 percent | Sanders: 33.7 percent GOP: Trump: 41 percent | Kasich: 27 percent | Cruz: 23 percent Connecticut 70 Dem delegates, 28 GOP delegates Democrats: Clinton: 49.3 percent | Sanders: 43.7 percent GOP: Trump: 52.3 percent | Kasich: 26.3 percent | Cruz: 16.3 percent Delaware 31 Dem delegates, 16 GOP delegates Democrats: Clinton: 45 percent | Sanders: 38 percent GOP: Trump: 55 percent | Kasich: 18 percent |Cruz: 15 percent Rhode Island 33 Dem delegates, 19, GOP delegates Democrats: Clinton: 44 percent | Sanders: 41.5 percent GOP: Trump: 49.5 percent | Kasich: 24 percent |Cruz: 13.5 percent Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: The suspect or suspects in last Friday's slaying of eight people in rural Piketon, Ohio, remain at large. A police source tells PEOPLE that their offices are being flooded with tips. "Somebody knows something," says the police source. "We'll investigate until we come up with an answer." Attorney General Mike DeWine is cautioning the public against jumping to definitive conclusions about the slayings of seven adults and one teenage boy from the Rhoden family, who were killed in four separate homes. Two of the homes were in walking distance of each other off of a rural highway, while the third house was over a mile away, and the fourth located on a different road, according to the AP. DeWine has also noted that marijuana grow operations were found at three of the locations. "I think we can speculate what the motive was you talk about revenge, you can talk about drug-related," DeWine told NBC News. "But frankly, we just don't know," DeWine called the slayings "a sophisticated operation" and a "preplanned execution." Authorities are aware of a possible Facebook threat against the youngest victim, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden, but have not yet disclosed the content or verified its legitimacy. Sheriff Charles Reader has told the surviving family members to protect themselves, in case they are still in danger. "I cautioned them, told them we will be there," he told CBS News. "I told [them] to be armed. A Community in Mourning Whatever the purpose of the killings, they have sent shock waves through Piketon, Ohio a small town with a population of about 2,000 . Christopher, was a student at Piketon High School. School officials called in grief counselors to help students cope with the killings. Outside the building, the flag was at half mast. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. In a small press conference, Principal Jeffrey Reuter said that he was encouraging students to "be as kind as possible" to each other as they move through the grieving process. "Chris had a good heart. He really did," Reuter told reporters. "He was as stubborn as you can come. If he wanted to do something he was going to do it nothing was going to stop him." Administrators have called in several grief counselors to help students make sense of the killings. Authorities are offering a $25,000 reward provided by a Cincinnati businessman for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers. Anyone with information is urged to call 855-BCI-OHIO or the Pike County Sheriff at 740-947-2111. We cant wrap our brains around what this Gilmore Girls revival clue means We cant wrap our brains around what this Gilmore Girls revival clue means If youre like the rest of us hardcore Gilmore Girls fans, youve been tracking every move made by Amy Sherman-Palladino, Alexis Bledel, and Lauren Graham. But theres one minor character you probably havent been followingand it turns out that he knows plenty about whats to come in to the Netflix revival. At Yale, Rorys boyfriend, Logan, was part of a secret society called the Life and Death Brigade, a group all about crazy parties and hazing stunts. One of the members, Finn, is apparently coming back for the new series, thanks to a clue that actor Tanc Sade posted on Instagram. The super cryptic (what else would you expect from a secret society member?) caption reads, #gilmoregirls Clue to the #lifeanddeathbrigades return. Those that know, know. Those that dont, dont. And those that want, shall. But when? #finn #netflix #gilmoregirlsrevival. But what does it all mean? Apparently, the club is going to factor in somehow along with Finn but thats all we can really say. According to Refinery29, the groups motto, in omnia paratus, translates to ready for anything. So feel free to make your guesses, but were predicting that this is going to make for one crazy plot twist. The post We cant wrap our brains around what this Gilmore Girls revival clue means appeared first on HelloGiggles. (Updates with Table) MEXICO CITY, April 25 (Reuters) - Mexican retail sales rose in February from January, but grew at their slowest pace since October 2015, the national statistics agency said on Monday, suggesting headwinds for consumption in Latin America's No. 2 economy. Adjusted for seasonal swings, sales rose 0.2 percent in February compared with January 2016. Compared with the same month in 2015, retail sales climbed 9.6 percent, their fastest pace since at least 2009. Consumer spending has been a relative bright spot for the economy. Retail Feb 2016 Jan 2016 Feb 2015 sales (pct change) month/mont 0.2 2.7 0.7 h year/year 9.6 5.2 5.6 (Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter) Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian police fired tear gas at protesters in Cairo who defied government warnings and held a rally Monday calling for the "downfall" of the regime, quickly scattering them and making arrests. A coalition of leftist and liberal groups had called for the protest, ostensibly against the handing over of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. But in a country where most protests are banned, the gesture was aimed more at defying what activists call the heavy-handed rule of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In the lead-up to the protest, police arrested dozens of activists over the past week, in some cases raiding their homes. By Monday morning, police had closed off a street leading to the Journalists' Syndicate, where the protesters had announced they would gather, and deployed in force in central Cairo. Instead about 50 activists, including leading leftist dissidents, gathered suddenly at a square in central Cairo chanting against the government. "The level of (government) panic shows that they don't feel secure. And they believe the only option is repression," said Leila Seif, a prominent dissident whose activist son Alaa Abdel Fattah is jailed. Shortly after she spoke, an armoured police van careered into the square, and an officer fired tear gas after a few protesters hurled rocks at them. The protesters scattered into side streets. Police chased down people and arrested them, filling three vans with detainees, including several journalists. Sisi and his interior minister had warned on the eve of the planned demonstrations that security forces would deal firmly with protesters. Sisi, a former military chief, had said on Sunday: "Our responsibility is to protect security and stability." His Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar warned that "the security services... will confront with extreme rigour any attempt to disturb public order". Sisi was adulated by millions of Egyptians who opposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, whom the army overthrew in 2013. Story continues Morsi's overthrow unleashed a brutal crackdown on Islamists that killed hundreds of protesters and an Islamist militant insurgency that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers. The crackdown has extended to liberal and leftists activists, who hoped the handover of the Straits of Tiran islands to Riyadh earlier this month could help ignite protests against Sisi. - Growing discontent - Several dissidents who had led the 2011 uprising against veteran president Hosni Mubarak are now in jail. "There is diminishing support for him (Sisi) from many sectors that supported him for many reasons, ending in the sale of the islands," said Gamal Eid, a rights lawyer, in a phone interview. After years of unrest that has decimated the economy, many Egyptians say the country needs a firm hand and they have little patience with protesters they consider troublemakers. But there have been signs of growing discontent, which has apparently unnerved the government, said H.A Hellyer, a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "The Egyptian state indicated a fear of widespread disruption today that did not pass, partly due to the crackdown authorities in Cairo engaged in," he said. "But none of that has ended the current of dissension against authorities," he added. From Cosmopolitan Ted Cruz's new attack ad on Donald Trump is really ... something. In a new 27-second video, Cruz manages to offend women, the LGBT community, and anyone who cares an iota about equal rights. In the spot, Cruz takes a swipe at Donald Trump, who has criticized North Carolina's controversial new law that bans transgender people from using a bathroom that doesn't match the gender on their birth certificates. Cruz supports these discriminatory laws, spreading the myth that trans-inclusive restrooms will increase sexual assaults of women and girls in the bathroom. "Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the women's restrooms?" text in the ad asks, using the most transphobic language one could possibly imagine. Then he gets sexist too: "The same restroom used by your daughter? Your wife?" Though Cruz is apparently concerned with women's safety, he is not even attempting to talk to women here. He is talking to their protectors, I guess - straight men. Then Cruz makes Trump, a man who has no qualms characterizing Mexican immigrants as rapists, seem like a bona-fide social justice warrior: "It's PC nonsense that is destroying America. Donald Trump won't take on the PC police. He's one of them." If ever there were a doubt about how ideologically extreme Cruz is, this ad proves it. Follow Prachi on Twitter. Drivers wanting a quick bite to eat on long journeys love the sight of a motorway service station - but some may want to think carefully where they stop this Bank Holiday. Inspection reports found 10 locations across that Britain that have food outlets failing to achieve a good hygiene standard in recent tests. Analysis of hygiene ratings found that services in the south-east of England are three times more likely than the rest of Britain to have at least one food business failing to achieve a score of four out of five. Five out of 23 rest stops (22%) in south-east England fell into this category following tests in the past 18 months. This is compared to five out of 69 in the rest of Britain (7%). And two of the M25s four services - Cobham in Surrey (above) and South Mimms in Hertfordshire - have outlets which scored below four following last years inspections in January and June. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) says a rating of four must be achieved for a food outlet to be classed as having good hygiene. Problems include meatballs at a Subway not being kept warm enough and the risk of the potentially deadly E. coli at a branch of the healthy eating chain Tossed. Welcome Break: South Mimms service station scored low on food hygiene tests (Rex) Both companies said the issues raised by the inspectors in June last year have since been dealt with. Steve Gooding, director of motoring research charity the RAC Foundation, said: Frankly the nations 37 million motorists have enough to worry about without adding food hygiene to the list. "Motorway services are key to using the network safely, providing refuelling facilities for vehicles and travellers alike. We need them to be up to standard. Food hygiene expert Sylvia Anderson added: "Motorists should use the FSAs scoring to determine whether they eat in that establishment. Typically, if they are scoring below three then it is not worth the risk especially for families with young children. Story continues Beaconsfield on the M40 in Buckinghamshire is the only service station found to have an outlet scoring zero, with inspectors warning its branch of The Carvery Express in January that there is "urgent improvement necessary. El Mexicana, at the same location, was rated just one out of five in October 2015 - meaning "major improvement necessary. Outside of the South East the worst performance is at Peterborough services where an El Mexicana scored just two in September last year. Most of the affected outlets have stated that they are taking measures to improve food safety measures. Top pic: Geograph Jerusalem (AFP) - Thousands of Jewish worshippers attended a prayer ceremony at Jerusalem's Western Wall on Monday as Israel marked the week-long Passover festival amid increased surveillance over tensions with Palestinians. The Wall's administrators said 50,000 people crammed into the vast square in front of the wall to be blessed simultaneously by hundreds of men believed to be descendants of the ancient Jewish priestly caste the Cohanim, who wore prayer shawls draped across their heads and shoulders. "May God bless and protect you, may God shine His face upon you and be gracious on you, may God turn his face onto you and give you peace," they chanted. The blessing is said in individual congregations around the world during every morning prayer, but Passover in Israel gives the faithful the chance to visit the Western Wall for a mass blessing rite. Israeli security forces were heavily deployed in and around the Old City. The wall is located below the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the city occupied and later annexed by Israel. The compound is the third holiest place in Islam. Jews also revere the site as Temple Mount, the site of two ancient Jewish temples, the first of which the bible says was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and the second razed by the Romans in 70 AD. Jews are allowed to enter the mosque compound but not to pray there. They are permitted to worship at the Western Wall -- the last remnant of the second temple. Israeli authorities fear that the festivities which traditionally accompany Passover, which began on Friday, could fuel long-simmering tensions at the Al-Aqsa compound. Two Jews were expelled from the compound on Monday after "breaking the rules of the site", Israeli police said. Thirteen Jews were expelled for similar reasons on Sunday, police said. The Jordanian government on Sunday warned of serious consequences if Israeli "settlers" were allowed to visit the site. Story continues In a statement, a Jordanian government spokesman demanded "Israeli occupation authorities immediately stop such moves, deny entry to settlers and Israeli forces into the yards of the holy shrine and allow Palestinian worshippers to enter the mosque". Jordan is the guardian of the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, although Israel controls access. Israel accused Amman of misleading the public about its intentions. "There is no place for such a statement. Israel is acting responsibly and Jordan knows this," an official said. The compound is a major issue between Israel and Jordan, one of only two Arab countries with which Israel has signed a peace agreement. Bernie Sanders supporter Tim Robbins is claiming the candidate's recent primary losses are the result of rigged poll numbers. In a tweet on Monday, the actor singled out The New York Times and CNN with a photo of a chart comparing numbers from exit polls and actual results, suggesting that the media has skewed election results in favor of Sanders' Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. "Hey NYTimes, CNN. Are you saying that 2+2=5? Are you really OK supporting a candidate with these numbers? #VoterFraud," his tweet reads. Read More: Susan Sarandon, Rosario Dawson Star in Spike Lee-Directed Bernie Sanders Spot In a follow-up post, Robbins targeted Correct the Record, a Clinton-supporting research and response team, writing, "There IS evidence of voter fraud in this election. There is already evidence suggesting malfeasance in Arizona and Illinois. ... You are supporting a deeply flawed candidate with a disapproval rating that continues to grow with every tweet from your SuperPac." Robbins' allegations come just a week after Sanders lost to Clinton in April 19's New York primary. Hey NYTimes, CNN. Are you saying that 2+2=5? Are you really OK supporting a candidate with these numbers?#VoterFraud pic.twitter.com/LrxqLTaKbC - Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) April 25, 2016 #FeelTheBern @CorrectRecord pic.twitter.com/KNaPsVPSeS - Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) April 25, 2016 Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks at a middle school in Terre Haute, Ind., on Sunday. (Photo: Darron Cummings/AP) The rights of transgender people have become an unlikely talking point in the 2016 presidential election. Controversy erupted last month after North Carolina passed House Bill 2 (HB2) requiring people to only use restrooms that correspond with their biological sex, as stated on their birth certificate. Civil liberties groups, public servants, corporations and entertainers were among the many parties wading into the discussion. Supporters of so-called bathroom bills generally argue that girls and women would be put in harms way if transgender women were allowed to use womens restrooms. Critics, on the other hand, say bathroom bills legalize discrimination against an already vulnerable community. All of the remaining candidates from the two major U.S. parties have sounded off about transgender rights since Gov. Pat McCrory signed HB2 on March 23. Cruz: Keep men out of girls rooms Republican candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz supports the North Carolina law, and has said that it would prevent men from using the same bathrooms as little girls. Let me make this real, real simple for our folks in the media who find this conversation very confusing, Cruz said at a campaign stop in Indiana on Sunday. If Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he still cant go to the girls bathroom. On Friday, the Cruz campaign released a video that asks if a grown man pretending to be a woman should be allowed to use the same restroom as someones daughter or wife. Its PC nonsense thats destroying America, a video caption reads. Donald Trump wont take on the PC police. Hes one of them. Trump: Not a problem Cruz focused some of his criticisms of the opposition to the law on businessman Donald Trump, in part because of the Republican frontrunners take on the issue. On Thursday, Trump told NBCs Today that former Olympian and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner a high-profile transgender woman would be able to use whichever bathroom she chooses if she visits Trump Tower. Story continues There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate there has been so little trouble, he said to the morning show. North Carolina, what theyre going through with all the business that is leaving and strife and its on both sides you leave it the way it is. Trump said he opposes the creation of transgender-specific bathrooms, which he thinks would be discriminatory in a certain way, and an unnecessary expense for U.S. businesses. Leave it the way it is, he added. Ohio Gov. John Kasich at a town hall meeting in Rockville, Md., on Monday. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters) Kasich: I wouldnt have signed HB2 On Sunday, GOP candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich said that he likely would not have signed the polarizing North Carolina law. Kasich told CBS Face the Nation that religious institutions should be protected to live out their deeply held religious purposes, but that the issue of religious liberty becomes contentious beyond that. Obviously I dont want to force people to violate their deeply held religious convictions, but wed have to see what thats all about. I wouldnt have signed that law from everything I know. I havent studied it, he said on the program. According to Kasich, Ohio is not facing this issue, and everyone needs to take a deep breath and respect one another. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on The View, April 8. (Photo: Lorenzo Bevilaqua/ABC via Getty Images) Sanders: Bathroom bills are discriminatory Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders condemned HB2 as a clear-cut case of discrimination shortly after it was signed. Its time to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This law has no place in America, he tweeted. On April 8, during an appearance on ABCs The View, Sanders said that if elected, he would do everything in his power to overturn the law. Sanders said the U.S. has come too far, and there has already been too much discrimination throughout the nations history. I hope we remember what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us, he said on The View. You judge people on their character, not on the color of their skin. And I would add to that: not on their gender or sexual orientation. Sanders campaign site includes a section titled Fighting for LGBT Equality, which says it is unacceptable that people can still legally deny transgender men and women housing. It also outlines several steps Sanders says he would take on behalf of LGBT rights if he were elected president. One is that he would require police departments to adopt policies aimed at fairer interactions with transgender people. Clinton: Bathroom bills are discriminatory Democratic frontrunner and former Secretary of State Clinton wrote a tweet similar to Sanders on the same day. LGBT people should be protected from discrimination under the law period, Clinton tweeted. It was signed -H to indicate that she wrote the tweet herself. Clintons official campaign website includes a section on protecting transgender rights and ending discrimination against the transgender community, presenting the candidate as a firm LGBT ally. Hillary believes no one should be held back from fully participating in our society because of their gender identity, it reads in part. According to the campaign, Clinton made it possible for transgender Americans to have their preferred gender reflected on their passports; as president, she intends to direct government to collect better data on crime victims and improve reporting of hate crimes to protect transgender people from violence. Related graphic: Where the candidates stand on the issues >>> Icaros: A Vision presents the Amazon jungle as a literal and psychological heart of darkness, a simultaneously restorative and dangerous place where the boundary between the mortal world and the hereafter is gossamer-thin. Based in part on the experiences of co-director Leonor Caraballo, who succumbed to breast cancer before production was completed, this trippy work maps the intersections of West and East, body and spirit, faith and terror with beguiling grace. Too uniquely out-there to attract strong theatrical support, it should nonetheless find receptive ears and ears on the festival circuit. Caraballo and co-helmer Matteo Norzi provide little context at the outset of Icaros, which opens with American Angelina (Ana Cecilia Stieglitz) traveling to a healing center buried deep in the Peruvian Amazon. Comprised of thatched-roof huts, this remote complex is run by gray-haired Guillermo (Guillermo Arevalo) and his grandson Arturo (Arturo Izquierdo), both of them shamans who treat patients referred to as passengers with both the psychedelic ayahuasca plant and accompanying medicinal chants known as icaros which are learned from listening to plants while spending time alone in the jungle. While actor Leonardo (Filippo Timi) is there to help eliminate a verbal stutter (his prescription: eating ants), and another gentleman covets a reprieve from drug addiction, Angelina has trekked to this isolated corner of South America to cure some sort of fatal cancer. Icaros conveys that crucial plot point only during Angelinas mind-altering use of her ayahuasca remedy, during which time images of her skin being cut by a scalpel, and of her body entering and exiting an MRI machine, are spied amidst collages of undulating cellular x-ray visuals. Such obliqueness is emblematic of Caraballo and Norzis plot, which seems to exist in a state between waking and dreaming, frequently cutting away to panoramas of an older woman gliding along the river while Angelina delivers narration about the many plants, elements and sounds of the Amazon. Angelinas ruminations on the territorys salutary and corrosive vegetation are complemented by shots of bustling insects scampering along trees and the ground that further speak to the films portrait of the jungle and the Earth as fundamentally alive. Arturo tells Angelina that shes beset by susto (aka the disease of fear), and as it turns out, so is he, courtesy of a rare eye condition that will soon leave him blind. Their twin journeys toward physical (and spiritual) restoration are dramatized with almost trancelike beauty, as Ghasem Ebrahimians cinematography captures both hope and horror in its nocturnal views of men blowing smoke on Angelina as she lies in a canopied bed in the heart of the jungle, and of the centers passengers sitting on mattresses in a giant hut while Guillermo intones his mystical icaros into the dark night. Caraballo and Norzis film is set in the same region (and, briefly, at the same hotel) as Werner Herzogs Fitzcarraldo, though unlike that 1982 classic about mad mortals seeking dominion over nature, their story is ultimately fixated on the more harmonious bonds forged between the wilderness and man. The fact that Icaros was produced in a genuine ayahuasca retreat, and is populated by indigenous Shipibo natives (including leads Izquierdo and Arevalo), contributes to the materials sense of disparate forces engaging in constructive dialogue. Thats also felt in sights of cell phones being charged in the middle of nowhere, and in the directors use of animation and CGI graphics for sequences (a trip through a sand maze; a phone conversation staged with both speakers facing each other against a white background) that smoothly blend the real and the unreal. Bolstered by a naturalistic soundscape of chirping birds, blowing wind, running water, deep breathing and age-old chants, Icaros affords an enveloping, ethnographic look at an ancient culture, and land, whose relationship with modern society is alternately constructive (as when Arturo visits an eye doctor) and potentially destructive (expressed by the old woman boating past a barge transporting chopped-down trees, and a TV broadcast of oceanic animal slaughter). It strikes a mood thats at once sad and cautiously hopeful, and never less than transfixing. Related stories Film Review: 'Check It' Tribeca Film Review: 'Poor Boy' Tribeca Film Review: 'Southwest of Salem' The post-apocalyptic thriller "Here Alone" and the real-life drama of ex-convicts in "The Return" have won Tribeca Film Festival's Audience Awards, with "Children of the Mountain" and "Midsummer in Newtown" also acclaimed. Find their trailers in our quick explainer. - Here Alone - Hardened loner Ann, the optimistic but hobbled Chris, and fearful teen Olivia meet in a country ravaged by a viral epidemic, a country whose human population are either part of the violent and crazed infected, or living the grueling lives of salvagers and foragers. Making his directorial feature length debut with "Here Alone," Rod Blackhurst had previously worked with writer David Ebeltoft on 2013 short "Alone Time," while many of his leads had previously won independent film festival nominations for performances in previous projects. "Here Alone" won Tribeca 2016's Narrative Feature Audience Award. Teaser trailer: youtu.be/-GsL2lO3IJE Website: herealonefilm.com - The Return - Integrating into society is never easy, much less so for ex-convicts released from prison. When the state of California repealed an incarceration rule that had condemned thousands of convicts to life imprisonment, the prospect of release beckons for the subjects of "The Return." Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway, already recognized with four Emmy nominations for other work, won the Audience Award for Documentary at Tribeca. Trailer: vimeo.com/105711732 Website: thereturnproject.com - Children of the Mountain - Blamed for her child's cleft lip and cerebral palsy, and rejected by the neighbor with whom she had an affair, Ghanaian mother Essuman would do anything to heal her son and sets forth on a troubled journey that explores cultural attitudes to women and children. Priscilla Ananay had already netted Tribeca's Best New Narrative Director accolade for her fact-based drama before it was named the Audience Awards' runner up. Story continues Trailer: youtu.be/RVN94jOegx8 Website: childrenofthemountainfilm.com - Midsummer in Newtown - Charting the recovery process of Sandy Hook Elementary School in the years after 2012's tragic events, this documentary runner-up follows staff and students as they prepare for a pop musical adaptation of Shakespeare play "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Lloyd Kramer had previously been nominated for two Directors Guild of America awards. Trailer: youtu.be/6u6hu7gx1S4 By Steve Holland WEST CHESTER, Pa. (Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump, on the eve of primary elections in five states that he is expected to sweep, launched blistering attacks on Monday on rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich for their 11th-hour joint effort aimed at denying him the party's presidential nomination. The Cruz-Kasich agreement, which some stop-Trump Republican strategists say should have been undertaken weeks ago, was forged to try and keep Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination outright and force Republicans to consider the two rivals at the party's national convention in Cleveland in July. Kasich, the Ohio governor, and Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, agreed not to compete against each other in three upcoming nominating contests that could prove to be pivotal: Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico. Trump, speaking at Pennsylvania's West Chester University, near Philadelphia, dismissed the deal as a sign of desperation and predicted he still would win the nomination on the convention's first ballot. With dramatic flair, he compared his plight to a champion boxer whom Trump said he once warned not to go into unfriendly territory because the judges could rule against him. The boxer, Trump said, replied: "If I knock him out there's not a damn thing the judges can do." Trump is expected to win all five of Tuesday's nominating contests in the northeastern states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland, which have a total of 172 delegates at stake. Trump is already ahead in the delegate race with 845, followed by Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 147, according to the Associated Press. After Tuesday, Indiana, which votes on May 3, will be the next big battleground, with 57 delegates up for grabs. The Kasich-Cruz deal already showed signs of bending on Monday, with Kasich telling voters in Philadelphia that people who want to vote for him in Indiana should still do so. Ive never told them not to vote for me, they ought to vote for me. But Im not over there campaigning and spending resources," he said. Cruz took steps to maintain he is a serious contender for the nomination with his campaign team announcing he has developed a short list of vice presidential running mates. Traditionally, candidates wait until they have secured the nomination to select a running mate. One person being vetted for the No. 2 position is former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, an aide to Fiorina said. Fiorina, a businesswoman, endorsed Cruz when she dropped out of the race. AGREEMENT SIGNALS PANIC Showing no sign of trying to unify Republicans around him with a more serious demeanor, Trump ripped Kasich for refusing to get out of the race and even criticized his eating habits. This is just a guy whos a stubborn guy, who eats like a slob and shouldnt have press conferences while hes stuffing stuff down his throat, Trump said. On Cruz, Trump said he has done a "lousy job" in the Senate and has shown that he "cannot build consensus." Trump agreed to an May 17 interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, whose questioning of him at a debate last August angered Trump and led him to criticize her for months. Cruz said the deal with Kasich was aimed at preventing a Trump nomination that he argues would assure victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The Cruz-Kasich agreement is unique in modern presidential politics and signaled panic after Trump's sweeping victory in last week's New York primary, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "They know he's going to have a great night tomorrow," Sabato said. "If things are not shaken up, Trump's going to be the nominee. They have to do something big to shake things up. They're hoping that this is it." But Cruz said Trump was the desperate one because he knows he has a difficult path to win the party's nomination. "I don't doubt that Donald Trump is going to scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine some as well," Cruz said in Indiana. "That has been Donald's pattern." Trump has dominated the nominating contests so far but still faces a tough path to earn the delegates needed to lock up the nomination before the convention. If no candidate has enough delegate support on the first vote at the national convention, many delegates can switch to another candidate on subsequent ballots. (Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson, Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Megan Casella in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland and Ginger Gibson; Editing by Bill Trott and Leslie Adler) Donald Trump called out John Kasich at a campaign rally in Rhode Island on Monday afternoon. Read: Trump Brands Cruz and Kasich 'Totally Desperate' For Joining Forces To Stop Him The GOP frontrunner unveiled a new nickname for Kasich, calling the Ohio governor 1 for 41 Kasich. The name refers to the number of states Kasich has won during primary season thus far. In a statement on Monday, Trump said: Governor Kasich, who has only won 1 state out of 41, in other words, he is 1 for 41 and he is not even doing as well as other candidates who could have stubbornly stayed in the race like him but chose not to do so." Trump also mocked the way Kasich eats. Did you see him? He has a news conference, all the time when he's eating. I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion," he said during the rally. Earlier in the day, Trump was calling Kasich 1 win and 38 losses. By the afternoon, he changed the number of of times his rival lost primary elections. The attacks on Kasich come after he and Ted Cruz announced they are joining forces to stop Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination. On Sunday evening, both camps released statements to say they will focus on different states during upcoming primaries to keep Trump out. Read: Man Arrested After Threatening to Bomb Trump Rally at Connecticut High School: Cops Kasich will pull out of Indiana to give Cruz "a clear path" in the May 3 primary, they said. Cruz will "clear the path" for Kasich in Oregon for its May 17 primary and New Mexico for its June 7 primary. They hope that these efforts will block Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates he needs to take the nomination. So far he has 845 delegates to Cruz's 559 and Kasich's 148. Trump responded to the alliance in a tweet: Shows how weak and desperate Lyin' Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can't stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses." Story continues Watch: Trump Says Caitlyn Jenner Can Use Any Bathroom at Trump Tower Related Articles: Paris (AFP) - It would be the world's biggest ever trade deal, linking the United States and European Union, two giant economies which are home to 850 million people. Despite its vaunted economic benefits, however, many people on each side of the Atlantic are either deeply suspicious or flat-out opposed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Three key questions: - What are the benefits? - The pact, negotiated largely behind closed doors since 2013 with many of its details still undisclosed, aims to topple regulatory and tariff barriers to trade and investment between the United States and Europe. If the two sides reach an ambitious and comprehensive deal, it could give an economic boost of 120 billion euros ($135 billion) to the EU and 95 billion euros to the United States by 2027, according to a 2013 study by London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. "To be clear, this does not mean that the result of the agreement will be just a single, one-off GDP bonus of 214 billion euros in 2027. The gains it predicts are much greater because they in fact represent a permanent increase in the amount of wealth that the European and American economies can produce every year, as a result of the more open markets and more aligned regulatory systems agreed under the TTIP," it said. A European family of four would see its annual disposable income increase by an average of 545 euros a year as a result of the deal, says the study, funded by the European Commission. - What are the concerns? - Critics say it would amount to a giveaway to big corporations, coming at the expense of jobs, consumers and the environment. Even in export powerhouse Germany, which counts the United States as its biggest trade partner, there is suspicion about the deal with tens of thousands of people demonstrating in Hanover at the weekend to voice their opposition. Only one in five Germans thinks the pact would be a good thing, and one in three rejects it completely, according to a survey published this month by German foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung. In the United States, by contrast, only 18 percent of respondents were opposed, it said. Story continues People are worried about possible lowering of product standards, consumer protection and the labour market, the foundation said. Other opponents cite a threat to the protection of geographic indications, such as champagne. One source of concern is a provision for settling rows between companies and countries -- so-called investor state dispute settlement (ISDS). The European Union says it would allow a company to sue a state for compensation if, for example, a new law discriminates against foreign firms. But an alliance of opponents, Stop TTIP, argues that it would let investors sue for any action that damages their profit expectations. "ISDS can be used to undermine environmental standards, to prevent regulation or to pocket taxpayers money," says Stop TTIP spokesman Karl Baer. - Why the rush? - After meeting with German Chancellor Merkel in Hanover on Sunday, US President Barack Obama said a deal is possible by the end of this year, although ratification will likely take longer. If talks drag on into 2017, "political transitions" in the United States and Europe could delay it for much longer, warned Obama, who leaves office in January next year. In the United States, leading Democrat and Republican contenders for the White House have criticised aspects of the deal in the run-up to November elections. There is similar opposition among many in Europe, where both Germany and France hold elections in 2017. Geneva (AFP) - Turkey has asked authorities in Geneva to remove an exhibition picture that blames President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the death of a Turkish teen injured during anti-government demonstrations, a Swiss official said Monday. Berkin Elvan spent 269 days in a coma after being hit in the head by a police tear gas canister during the anti-government protests that rocked Istanbul in May-June 2013. He died in hospital in March 2014 aged 15. His injury and subsequent death helped galvanise opposition to Erdogan's government and the heavy-handed tactics used by the police. His picture is featured in a photography exhibition across the street from the United Nations complex in Geneva, which is supported by the city and press freedom group Reporters Without Borders. A caption underneath the picture reads: "My name is Berkin Elvan. The police killed me, on the order of Turkey's prime minister." Erdogan was prime minister when Elvan was injured on his way to buy bread during the so-called Gezi Park protests. A spokesman for the canton of Geneva, Philippe d'Espine, told AFP that Turkish representatives had asked for the picture to be taken down. The spokesman said a decision on the request would be taken during a weekly meeting of the municipal government on Tuesday. The exhibition showcases the work of photographer Demir Sonmez, a Swiss citizen of Kurdish and Armenian origin, who told AFP his objective was to highlight "the multiple struggles of the people." Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey should have a religious constitution, parliament speaker Ismail Kahraman said Monday, in comments that will likely add to concerns of creeping Islamisation under the ruling AKP party. "As a Muslim country, why should we be in a situation where we are in retreat from religion?" state-run news agency Anatolia quoted him as saying. "We are a Muslim country. As a consequence, we must have a religious constitution," the AKP lawmaker told a conference in Istanbul. "Secularism cannot feature in the new constitution." Critics accuse President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted AKP of eroding the secular values laid by modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk since it took power in 2002. Over the past two years, the government has lifted bans on women and girls wearing headscarves in schools and civil service. It also limited alcohol sales and made efforts to ban mixed-sex dorms at state universities. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of Turkey's main CHP opposition party, slammed the speaker's comments. "The chaos that reigns in the Middle East is the product of ways of thinking that, like you, make religion an instrument of politics," Kilicdaroglu wrote on Twitter. "Secularism exists so everyone can practise their religion freely, Mr Kahraman!" Since the AKP's re-election in November, the government has said it wants to prioritise replacing Turkey's constitution, inherited from a military junta after a coup in 1980. Several rounds of negotiations have failed -- most recently in February -- with the opposition rejecting the increasingly powerful role of the presidency under Erdogan. Kahraman on Monday backed a "presidential system" for Turkey, and rejected claims that this would push the country towards authoritarianism. "Some people say that (a strengthened presidency) means dictatorship," he said. "Where is this link? Is (US President Barack) Obama a dictator?" Istanbul (AFP) - Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of Turkey's leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was fined nearly 9,000 euros Monday for "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was prime minister. Dundar, who is currently standing trial along with his Ankara bureau chief on allegations of espionage, said on Twitter that the court-ordered fine would not stop him reporting. "If revealing the truth is a crime, we will keep on committing it," he tweeted. The court in Istanbul slapped him with the fine of 28,650 Turkish liras (8,942 euros) after finding him guilty of insulting Erdogan, his son Bilal and seven others in the paper's coverage of a December 2013 corruption scandal. Dundar's lawyer said they would appeal the ruling. Reporters Without Borders offered support to Dundar, tweeting in Turkish that the articles written were "not a crime". Prosecutors had sought up to nine years and four months of jail time for two columns and a series of articles on a corruption controversy that broke while Erdogan was prime minister, and which posed one of the biggest threats of his rule. Erdogan denounced the scandal, which centred on the illicit trading of gold with Iran, as a plot by his arch-foe, the US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, to bring down his government. Dundar and Erdem Gul, his Ankara bureau chief, have become the symbol of a battle in Turkey over freedom of the press. They have remained defiant in the face of a high-profile trial for allegedly revealing state secrets in a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms to rebels in Syria. The pair risk life in prison if convicted. The prosecution has sparked outrage among opposition and rights groups in Turkey as well as in the West, where it is seen as proof of Erdogan's determination to silence his opponents. Almost 2,000 people have been prosecuted for "insulting" him since the former premier became president in August 2014, Turkey's justice minister said in March. Nairobi (AFP) - A top Tutsi general was gunned down in Burundi on Monday, as international prosecutors announced they were launching a preliminary probe into a litany of atrocities in the troubled central African nation. A wave of unrest, targeted assassinations and alleged torture has left hundreds dead and forced more than 270,000 to flee the country since last April, and some analysts warn Burundi may be on the brink of a new civil war. General Athanase Kararuza, a security advisor to one of Burundi's vice presidents, was killed along with his wife in a gun and grenade attack as they were dropping their daughter off at school in the capital Bujumbura. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon led international condemnation, saying: "All such acts of violence serve no purpose other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi." A family source said Kararuza's daughter was seriously injured but her life was not in danger, contradicting a Burundian security source that earlier said she too had died. Kararuza was a former commander of the African Union-led peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic. It was not clear who carried out the assassination. "Those who killed my colleague General Kararuza and (carried out) other similar attacks are trying to sow divisions in the army and the police," presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe wrote on Twitter. On Sunday a police colonel, also a Tutsi, was seriously wounded in an attack, while Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife had a close escape from a grenade assault as they left church. - ICC probe - The latest spasm of violence in a country with a troubled ethnic history was triggered when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided last year to run for a third term in office. His move sparked weeks of street protests and a failed coup, but he went on to win an election in July that was slammed as anti-constitutional by civil society and the opposition. Story continues Shortly after Monday's killing, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court announced she was launching a preliminary probe into the crisis. Fatou Bensouda said she had warned that "those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable". Her office had reviewed reports "detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances". "All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said. The initial probe is aimed at determining whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a full-blown investigation, which could result in charges against any alleged leaders of the violence. The European Union described Mkapa's announcement as a "step in the right direction". Former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa said he wanted to relaunch moribund peace talks in May. - 'Civil war has begun' - The international community -- still traumatised by the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people died, mostly Tutsis -- has grown increasingly alarmed by the unrest in Burundi. There have been calls to avert a possible genocide and a repeat of its 1993-2006 civil war, which left some 30,000 people dead. The EU has even suspended its aid to Burundi's government, a vital lifeline for a country the IMF deems the world's poorest with a per capita annual income of just $315.2. The opposition, as well as civil groups and some of Nkurunziza's own supporters, accuse him of violating the constitution and the Arusha peace deal that ended the civil war. While Tutsis are the most vocal critics of the president's power grab, the current crisis is above all political in origin, with the anti-Nkurunziza front cutting across ethnic lines. Over the past year, numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility. Robert Besseling of intelligence firm Exx Africa warned Burundi was already sinking into a new civil war. "Rival sides in the conflict have become entrenched and violence has become more brutal," he said. "In fact, in many ways, a civil war has already begun given the ethnic tinge to the most recent violence, especially in the countryside." Paris (AFP) - The maker of a hard-hitting television drama about a notorious wave of racist murders across Germany has compared the neo-Nazi group behind them to a homegrown Islamic State who are far from defeated. Historian Gabriela Sperl told AFP she made "NSU German History X", based on the real-life case of a far-right group that murdered nine immigrants and a policewoman, as a warning against xenophobic "indoctrination". The killing spree by the National Socialist Underground, who targeted mostly Turkish and Kurdish shopkeepers, went undetected for more than six years with police at the time blaming the attacks on the Turkish mafia. Sperl's three-part drama centres on Beate Zschaepe, a 41-year-old woman who has been on trial in Munich since 2013 for her part in the shootings and bombings. Police claim Zschaepe is the only surviving member of the gang who carried out the murders. Her alleged accomplices Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt killed themselves after a botched bank robbery in 2011, which finally brought the group's activities to light. Zschaepe, who is half-Romanian, denies she was ever a member of the NSU or that she took part in what became known as the "Kebab murders". Sperl said the case is a lesson for Europe as a rising tide of right-wing populism sweeps a continent wrestling with its worst migration crisis since World War II. - Alienation and violence - When the group was caught, Sperl said, people downplayed their actions, saying they represented a tiny minority. "Now four years later it is in the middle of society," she added. Far-right movements are on the rise everywhere, she said. "Who would have thought five years ago that Marine Le Pen would win elections?" she said, referring to the leader of France's National Front. "Suddenly, people feel so insecure." Each 90-minute episode of the drama, which draws on the police investigation, parliamentary inquiries and interviews with members of the group, comes at the killings from a different angle. Story continues The first is set in the old East Germany and is told from the perspective of Zschaepe, Mundlos and Boehnhardt, showing how disappointment with German reunification grew into alienation and violence. "Everyone in the East was expecting that they would drive a Porsche or a BMW as the chancellor (Helmut Kohl) promised," Sperl told AFP as her films were shown at the Series Mania festival in Paris. "He said that everybody would become rich. Actually what happened is that people from the West bought everything and Eastern people lost their jobs. The youngsters had no jobs and no hope." Neo-Nazi groups from Austria and as far afield as the United States poured in to fill the vacuum, Sperl claimed. - Radicalised in prison - "They were indoctrinated like in every sect... It is the same as with the Muslim extremism, IS and its lost generation of youngsters. A boy breaks into houses, is finally caught and sent to jail, and they are radicalised there." Scriptwriter Thomas Weindrich, who grew up in the East at the same time as the three alleged killers, said even after the fall of the Berlin Wall neo-Nazi movements were very marginal. "It was more like hooliganism, a skinhead movement." Now he claims it is "impossible not to pass neo-Nazis in the street." Sperl said that there has been wide international interest in the series, which has yet to be broadcast in Germany, with the producers in talks with networks in the US and Britain. She said she first became interested in the killings long before the NSU were revealed to have been involved. The former editor of the German magazine Der Spiegel, Stefan Aust, had told her of his suspicions that right-wing extremists had been killing immigrants, and she was already thinking of fictionalising the story. With Zschaepe now facing a possible life sentence, Sperl warned that "neo-Nazis have rooted themselves in the heart of our society". "If only there were only three of them," she said. - By Kyle Ferguson Tweedy Browne Company LLC, a successor to Tweedy & Co., was first established by Forrest Birchard Tweedy in 9 as a dealer in closely held and inactively traded securities. The firms 96-year history is grounded in undervalued securities, first as a market maker, then as an investor and investment advisor. The firm takes a value investing approach that focuses on long term investments very similar to Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio), Seth Klarman (Trades, Portfolio) and the founder of value investing Benjamin Graham. During the first quarter, the Tweedy Browne (Trades, Portfolio) Global Value Fund purchased ,5,78 shares of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK). 686597.png Bank of New York Mellon was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 784, and is today the longest running bank in the U.S. The company bases their years of existence by consistently looking to invest in future innovation. The Bank of New York Mellon was the first bank to offer the first tax exempt funds, the first commodity ETFs and the first mobile securities processing application. Today, the company oversees $8.9 trillion dollars as an investment services company and has become one of the world's largest investment management companies across 5 countries in markets worldwide. The Bank of New York Mellon has a market cap of $4.87 billion, a P/E ratio of 4.7, a P/B ratio of . and a dividend yield of .66. The Bank of New York Mellon has one good sign according to GuruFocus. The company operating margin is currently in expansion with an operating margin of 7.99%. The company has increased its operation expansion by an average of % over the previous five years. Below is a Peter Lynch Chart for Bank of New York Mellon Corp. 46598476.png It is likely that the Tweedy Browne (Trades, Portfolio) Global Value purchased ,5,78 shares of Bank of New York Mellon because the company has over years of experience while successfully expanding its business operations. The company also has strong operating income growing at an average annual rate of 4.% over the past five years. Story continues Cheers to your investment success. Disclosure: Author does not currently own any shares of this company. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. In a morning of heroic rescues, law enforcement agencies 1,500 miles apart responded to reports of ducklings falling down drains. Read: Octopus Escapes Tank, Inking His Way To Freedom Through Aquarium Pipe Leading to Sea On Monday, the Oklahoma City Fire Department sent one firefighter into a storm drain to save ducklings that had accidentally fallen in. The men on the receiving end at street level ran the babies back to their duck family waiting nearby. As if to put the firefighter in the ducklings shoes, the team can be seen jokingly closing the grate on the man still in the drain in a video the Oklahoma City Fire Department uploaded to Facebook. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, police officers were alerted to nine ducklings who had walked over a storm drain, and slipped right through the cracks. Two of the ducklings, as well as the mother and father duck, waited patiently for the Hackettstown Police Department, with the assistance of the Hackettstown Department of Public Works, to rescue the animals from being flushed away. The second rescue almost led to a third, when one of the rescued ducklings accidentally slipped through the cracks upon being pulled out. Read: Rescue Dog Watches Over His 200 Little Ducklings "The ducklings all appeared to be unharmed," Hackettstown Police Department reported on their Facebook. Watch: Neglected Angora Rabbit With Matted Fur Gets Transformation of a Lifetime Related Articles: WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved a potential sale of air-to-air missiles to Australia worth an estimated $1.22 billion, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement on Monday after notifying Congress of the possible deal. The Australian government has requested up to 450 advanced medium-range AIM-120D air-to-air missiles manufactured by Raytheon. The so-called AMRAAM missiles would be used by the Royal Australian Air Force's F/A-18, E/A-18G and F-35 aircraft, the DSCA statement said. The government also requested related equipment and support. The estimated value of the total defense equipment is $1.08 billion and the total value of the deal was put at $1.22 billion. "This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping improve the security of a strategic partner and major contributor to political stability, security and economic development in the Pacific region and globally," the statement said. The sale would not alter the military balance of the region, DSCA said. (Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) By William James MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (Reuters) - Two highly advanced U.S. fighters flew to the Black Sea on Monday for the first time since Washington beefed up military support for NATO's eastern European allies who say they face aggression from Russia. President Barack Obama promised in 2014 to bolster the defenses of NATO's eastern members, unnerved by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and the Kremlin's backing for pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. A U.S. KC-135 refueling plane flew with the two F-22 Raptor fighters from Britain to Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu air base on the Black Sea. "We're here today to demonstrate our capability to take the F-22 anywhere needed in NATO or across Europe," said Squadron commander Daniel Lehoski. "We want to ... actually fly the aircraft and train with our NATO allies," he told a traveling Reuters reporter. The F-22s are are almost impossible to detect on radar and so advanced that the U.S. Congress has banned Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad. The U.S. has deployed 12 of them at a British base in eastern England. "The increased size of the 2016 deployment ... allows U.S. Forces to assert their presence more widely across the eastern frontier," said U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Major Sheryll Klinkel. "We want to be able to operate out of multiple locations. We want to be able to keep our adversary guessing on where we're going to go next." The West is seeking to strengthen the defenses of its eastern flank and reassure eastern European NATO members - such as Poland, the Baltic states and Czech republic which spent decades under Soviet dominance - without provoking the Kremlin by stationing large forces permanently. But tensions are rising and Russia says the NATO build-up is stoking a dangerous situation. FACING THE BEAR Two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea in early April, said U.S. officials, who said the vessel was on routine business near Poland. A Russian helicopter also made passes around the ship, the USS Donald Cook, taking pictures. The nearest Russian territory was about 70 nautical miles away in its enclave of Kaliningrad, which sits between Lithuania and Poland. Obama's European Reassurance Initiative includes greater U.S. participation in training and exercises, deploying U.S. military planners, and more persistent naval deployments on Russia's doorstep. The Black Sea is of particular focus as NATO is seeking to counter Russia's military build-up in Crimea, home to Russia's Black Sea fleet. Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 after street protests forced a prom-Moscow president to flee. Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania may expand NATO maritime presence in the Black Sea as part of a broader strategy to deter Russia, NATO's deputy chief said on Friday. Russia has threatened to retaliate against any such moves and some NATO members, including Germany, are skeptical of the idea for fear of antagonizing Moscow. "We are facing NATO military build-up which is completely unjustified. NATO is deploying military assets near Russian borders," Russias ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, told Reuters earlier this month. "We are in a very dangerous situation that could lead us to worsened security," Grushko said. (Reporting by William James, writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Richard Balmforth) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is outraged by the "barbaric attack" on a leading gay rights activist in Bangladesh, who was hacked to death at his apartment along with a friend, the U.S. State Department said on Monday. "We are outraged by the barbaric attack on Mr. Xulhaz Mannan, a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) rights, human rights, actually," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. Kirby said he did not know the motivation for the killing, adding that Mannan had done work for the U.S. Agency for International Development. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Paul Simao) (Adds comment from committee meeting, changes key words to SAREPTA-FDA/ from U.S.HEALTH-SAREPTA/FDA) By Toni Clarke and Natalie Grover April 25 (Reuters) - Hundreds of patients and advocates packed a hotel ballroom in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Monday to try to persuade advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to support approval of an experimental drug to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The panel of FDA advisers is charged with assessing data from a 12-person clinical trial and deciding whether the drug is effective. The drug's manufacturer, Sarepta Therapeutics Inc , presented data which appears to show the drug slows progression of the disease. FDA officials presented data which showed multiple ways that data could be flawed. Dr. Janet Woodcock, the powerful head of the agency's pharmaceutical division, said it is hard to know whether the drug, eteplirsen, confers a benefit. But she said the consequences of failing to approve a drug that actually works in devastating diseases are "extreme" and borne by the patient. Duchenne's is a rare and devastating genetic disorder characterized by progressive muscular weakness and degeneration. It is caused by a lack of dystrophin, a protein needed to keep muscles healthy and primarily affects young men. Eteplirsen is designed to increase the production of dystrophin and is aimed at a subset of patients with a specific genetic mutation. The disease typically emerges in childhood, causing weakness in the arms and legs and eventually the lungs and heart. Patients typically lose the ability to walk during adolescence and frequently die in their 20s or 30s, according to the National Institutes of Health. The panel must make its recommendation in the face of intense and emotional pressure from patients who say the drug has helped them perform daily tasks and extended the period that they can remain out of a wheelchair beyond that which is normally expected of patients with the disease. Story continues Christine McSherry, founder of the Jett Foundation, an advocacy group, and mother of a 20-year-old son with the disease who last walked when he was 13, told the committee that the drug shows clear signals of efficacy and has helped reduce falls and enable children to "play like normal kids." Dr. Eric Bastings, assistant director of the FDA division that reviews neurology drugs, said he understood the urgency patients and their families feel about gaining access to new drugs because his sister suffered from a profound disability as a child and his parents "would have done anything" to help her. But, he added, the FDA is a science-based organization and must analyze the data objectively "regardless of the pressure that has been placed on my division." FDA officials stressed that they have not made their decision on whether to approve the drug and are awaiting input from the committee. Dr. Billy Dunn, director of the FDA's division of neurology products, urged the panel to make its decision based on science. "Anecdote and emotion do not change the data," he said. Sarepta's senior vice president of regulatory affairs, Shamim Ruff, acknowledged that the company had not produced a "traditional" data set since the company did not conduct a randomized, controlled clinical trial, the gold standard. Instead it measured the progress of a dozen patients in the trial against how patients with the disease progress historically. But Ruff said the benefit of the drug as measured by the production of dystrophin, and clinical benefit as measured by a six-minute walk test, was strong enough to warrant accelerated approval for the drug. BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc's Kyndrisa, which is designed to address the same subset of patients as Sarepta's drug, was rejected by the FDA in January. This includes about 13 percent of all DMD patients or some 1,300-1,900 patients in the United States. (Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Frances Kerry and Tom Brown) If nothing else, Conor McGregor certainly knows how to use social media to stir the pot. But following a Monday morning tweet in which McGregor announced I am BACK on UFC 200! the UFC has shot down his assertion as false. A short time after McGregor's tweet caught fire, UFC officials told MMAWeekly.com that McGregor's statement was not accurate. McGregor tweeting, Happy to announce that I am BACK on UFC 200! Shout out to @danawhite and @lorenzofertitta on getting this one done for the fans. #Respect, appears to be nothing more than another attempt by the brash Irishman to drum up further fan support for his cause. He was yanked from his UFC 200 fight with Nate Diaz after refusing to go on a brief promotional tour and skipping out on filming a UFC 200 commercial. UFC president Dana White, who is the individual that announced McGregor's removal, told TMZ on Monday morning, It's not true. We haven't talked to Conor or his manager since the press conference. I don't know why he would tweet that. He added, All the media keeps asking me that. I feel like the scene in Step Brothers' when they ask if they can build the bunk beds. I don't know how many more times I can say the fight is off or how many more press conferences I can have saying the fight is off for people to believe it's off. RELATED > Nate Diaz Doesn't Want to Fight at UFC 200 without Conor McGregor So, regardless of what McGregor is saying, UFC officials have dug in their heels. The fight between McGregor and Diaz is not going to happen. At least, it's not going to happen at UFC 200. White offered to keep Diaz on the UFC 200 fight card, but in characteristic Diaz fashion, he declined. Dana White Gets Grilled Over Removing Conor McGregor from UFC 200 Follow MMAWeekly.com on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram LONDON (Reuters) - MPs insisted on Monday that a civil servant who wrote a prize-winning essay on how Britain could leave the European Union should address a committee in parliament. Parliament's Treasury Committee has repeatedly summoned Iain Mansfield, an official at the business ministry, but he and the government have turned down the request, citing rules that say civil servants should be politically neutral. Mansfield won 100,000 euros (77,800) in 2014 from the Institute for Economic Affairs, a free-market think tank, for a paper on Brexit that he wrote in a personal capacity. He said at the time he had no personal view on the question. "The views of Mr. Mansfield matter. He has offered one of the few detailed assessments of the impact of 'Brexit' on the UK economy," the committee's chair, Andrew Tyrie, wrote in a letter to Britain's top civil servant published on Monday. The House of Commons has the power to force civil servants to appear before committees whether or not ministers agree. Guidelines say this would be "a very exceptional action". Mansfield's blueprint said a post-Brexit Britain should aim to strike trade deals with its former EU partners and around the world, offer tax breaks to avoid a hit to investment and provide its own subsidies to farmers. He said his plan could give a small boost to Britain's economic output over the long term. That contrasted with the view of Chancellor George Osborne who said last week that the economy could be more than 6 percent smaller by 2030 if it left the EU than if it decided to stay in. U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday Britain could have to wait a decade for a free trade deal with the United States if it leaves the EU because it would be "in the back of the queue" behind the bloc for negotiating a commerce agreement. (Reporting by Andy Bruce, additional reporting by William Schomberg; Editing by Tom Heneghan) HONG KONG, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / The management team of UMeWorld Limited (UMEWF) is pleased to provide this shareholder and investor update: UMeWorld has recently launched UMFun on China Mobile's K-12 educational platform in the Ningxia province. As a result, UMFun is now available on China Mobile's subscription based "AND! Education" platform in five Chinese Provinces - Shanxi, Ningxia, Guangxi, Guizhou and Guangdong provinces - which collectively service over 16,600,000 paid subscribers. UMeWorld is very pleased to announce a collaboration with the School of Professional Development and Research on Secondary and Primary Education at South China Normal University. As part of this effort, Mr. Lawrence Leung, VP of Operations for UMeWorld, recently provided a half day training seminar on online education using UMFun as a teaching model, to eighty highly qualified and strategic teachers and educators. These outstanding individuals were selected and funded by the China Ministry of Education under the National Teachers Training Program (established in 2010) to attend this seminar, as part of an ongoing effort to maintain and improve overall teaching standards mandated by the Ministry. In turn, these key educators will provide this important training to their peer groups, using UmFun as a key component of that training. UMeWorld has launched our new corporate website. The site has been rebuilt from the ground up, with a more up-to-date look and feel, in addition to completely new content that accurately delineates UMeWorld's business model. The Company has retained an investor relations firm to design and implement programs to broaden the awareness and visibility of UMeWorld within the investment community and the business and financial media. About China Mobile China Mobile's educational platform is available to students from Kindergarten through Grade Twelve and is the largest subscription-based educational platform in the world, used mainly by teachers, parents and schools through many provinces in China. Story continues The kindergarten-to-grade-12 (K-12) educational system in China is the largest in the world, comprising approximately 200 million students. UMeWorld is on track to becoming a leading educational service provider in China. About UMeWorld UMeWorld is an internet technology company with a focus on the K-12 education market in China. UMFun, the Company's K-12 flagship product, is a cloud-based, patent-pending, adaptive learning and assessment platform that can intelligently analyze and adapt to a student's performance and personalizes the delivery of proprietary educational items in accordance with the student's learning needs. UMFun's off-school version is made available to Chinese K-12 students through China Mobile, the world's largest mobile service provider by network scale and subscriber base, serving over 823,000,000 customers. For more information, please contact: Ruby Hui, Executive Vice President UMeWorld Limited E-mail: info@umeworld.com Website: www.umeworld.com Telephone: (86) 020-89237947 SOURCE: UMeWorld Limited Introducing the Hardware and Communications Equipment Industry (Continued from Prior Part) Growth in mobile data traffic A rise in the penetration of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will likely drive up the demand for mobile data. Telecom companies, consequently, may look to upgrade their networks to support and monetize traffic growth. Escalating mobile data traffic will have a positive impact on router sales. According to the Cisco Systems (CSCO) VNI (Visual Networking Index) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast released in February 2016, the surge in mobile users, smart devices, and machine-to-machine connections is expected to increase mobile data traffic eightfold by 2020. Cisco also expects mobile video to have the highest growth rate of any mobile application. The Global Data Traffic report states that a new generation of robust, high-performance wireless networks will be critical in facilitating this growth, and 5G networks will be instrumental in helping the industry develop a new economic model for offering new services for digital business transformationthe rapid and escalating value derived from the interconnectivity of people, processes, data, and things. MEA and Europe expected to lead in mobile data traffic growth As the graph shows, mobile data traffic in the Middle East and Africa is projected to grow at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 72% by 2019. Central and Eastern Europe is expected to grow at a CAGR of 71%, whereas Asia-Pacific could grow at a CAGR of 58% by 2019. By comparison, mobile data traffic in Latin America, North America, and Western Europe is expected to grow at a CAGR of 59%, 47%, and 48%, respectively. Notably, Cisco accounts for 3.2% of the Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK). The other top holdings of XLK include Apple (AAPL) (15.6%), Microsoft (MSFT) (11%), Facebook (FB) (5.6%), and Google (GOOGL) (5.1%). In the next part, well take a look at the collaboration market. Story continues Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Your Insider's Guide to TC PipeLines in 2016 (Continued from Prior Part) TC PipeLines distributions TC PipeLines (TCP) 4Q15 distribution per unit of $0.89 was flat compared to its 3Q15 distribution. This represents a 6% YoY (year-over-year) rise. The 4Q15 distribution was the 67th consecutive quarterly distribution paid by TCP. TC PipeLines currently (as of April 11, 2016) trades at a distribution yield of 7.1%. Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) announced a 4Q15 distribution of $1.06 per unit, which was the same as its 3Q15 distribution. Plains All American Pipeline (PAA) announced flat distributions for 4Q15 compared to 3Q15. On the other hand, Kinder Morgan (KMI) slashed its 4Q15 dividends by 75%. The above graph shows TC PipeLines EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) and total capital expenditure over the past two years. The right axis shows the companys per-share distribution. TC PipeLines generally increases its per unit distribution once per year. The company expects an annual increase similar to 2015 in 2016. TCPs capital expenditure TC PipeLines growth capital expenditure increased from $10 million in 2014 to $54 million in 2015. This growth was driven by the construction of the Carty Lateral project, which was placed in service in October 2015. TCP expects to spend ~$3 million to close out construction expenditures on this project in 2016. Notably, Portland General Electric has a 30-year contract for 100% of Carty Laterals capacity. TCPs EBITDA TC PipeLines EBITDA grew by 5% YoY in 2015. TCP expects its future growth to be driven by dropdowns from its sponsor, TransCanada (TRP). TCP comprises 1.5% of the First Trust North American Energy Infrastructure Fund (EMLP). In the next part, well discuss TC PipeLines forward distribution yield and see where it stands compared to its historical average. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: [UBC campus / CBC] By Dene Moore Faculty harassment of students is a more widespread problem than sexual assault on campuses, says a university professor who recently took the unusual step of issuing a public warning of sorts about a repeat offender. As the University of British Columbia ponders a ban on intimate relationships between faculty and students, Carlton University professor Stephen Saideman says he supports such a ban. Saideman called out McGill University, in particular, in a recent post on his personal blog. This has been a frustration Ive had pretty much ever since it happened, says Saideman, now the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton. Very few of the faculty knew about it, in the department or anywhere else. McGill University did not respond to a request for comment. Saideman says he decided to write about one such situation after he was informed that the person in question was again supervising graduate students. When I was on grad admissions, I tried to keep students from coming to McGill because I had little confidence that they would stay away from him, Saideman writes on his blog. It is a great school and a great program with mostly great people, but there is poison within and it continues to remain and it remains under-identified and under-sanctioned. The problem is not just McGills, he tells Yahoo Canada News. Several high-profile incidents have spurred discussion about sexual assault on campus, a pervasive and serious problem, he says. But the discussion so far has not really addressed sexual harassment, a more widespread problem affecting more students, he says. Of four institutions where hes worked in Canada and the United States, Saideman says two had significant problems of faculty sexual harassment of students and most dont have clear policies in place to deal with offenders. They usually end up throwing a cloak of confidentiality over everything, which is supposed to protect the victim but almost always protects the perpetrator, Saideman says. Story continues University of California Berkeley is currently in the throes of a sexual harassment scandal, after two graduate students filed discrimination complaints against the university and a professor. University officials found last year that the tenure-track professor had indeed violated harassment policies, but he has not faced disciplinary action. Two other UC Berkeley have resigned in recent months after media reports revealed that sexual harassment allegations were substantiated but the two had not faced disciplinary action. There have been several high-profile cases in Canada, including a Lethbridge College professor who was ordered reinstated by an Alberta Court in 2008, after he was fired for sleeping with three of his students. The faculty member successfully argued that there was no policy against such relationships. There are some institutions that, while they do not have explicit bans, have tried to address faculty-student liaisons within other policies. At Memorial University, for example, faculty members are required to disclose any romantic relationships with students under the faculty conflict of interest policy. Then alternative arrangements, if necessary, would be put in place for the student (such as moving the student to another section of the course or having another faculty member evaluate the student), says Paula Dyke, associate director of communications. The university also has a section in its sexual harassment policy on power differences. When power differentials exist amongst or between members of the university, those holding positions of authority must respect the power with which they are entrusted, it says. An inappropriate sexual relationship may create a negative work or study environment for others and give rise to a complaint under this Policy. It also advises anyone in a sexual relationship with someone where a power differential exists, that if a complaint of sexual harassment is filed, the power differential may be construed against them. Saideman says universities must establish clear rules. That way we can figure out under what circumstances we can fire people who are problematic, he says. The problem in the past is that professors get their wrists slapped professors end up being punished in some mild way, the students career is derailed and then the professor can go back to business-as-usual, where people sort of look the other way or forget. Faculty-student intimate relationships create a hostile environment, he says. Ive been in places where things were very toxic precisely because some professor was sleeping with one or more grad students, he says. Washington (AFP) - The number of people caught trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico rose in the first months of this year compared to the same period last year, officials said Monday. The US authorities detained 33,335 people in March, up 11 percent from the same month in 2015, the US Border Patrol said, providing no explanation for why. Detentions in October and November were similar to levels in the same months of 2013, when the number of attempted entries spiked, especially by unaccompanied minors. That wave triggered an outpouring of concern for the children among Americans, prompting the government to take emergency measures to look after them in mid-2014. Many of the migrants come from Central America, a region plagued by poverty, street gangs and drug-related violence. Countries there are due to receive 750 million dollars in US aid this year to boost security and living standards and discourage people from embarking on dangerous trips through Mexico to the United States. An Eventful 1Q16: How Has Your US Large-Cap Fund Fared? No lack of activity in the equity market As 2015 faded into the past, you may have thought to yourself: What an eventful year! Greece, China, and oil caused all sorts of volatility in the market. There was also a debate about whether the Federal Reserve would hike rates. The central bank finally did raise the target range of the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 2550 basis points on December 16, 2015. Though the liftoff took place before 2015 ended, we think it was more about salvaging some of the central banks credibility than about fundamentals. Few came into 2016 expecting the events that took place in the very first week. Though there was a general expectation that volatility could be higher in the year, the way events unfolded took most market participants by surprise. China, oil, and China and crude oil prices (WPX) (PE) (QEP) continued from where they had left off in 2015. The weakening of Chinas economy rattled financial markets around the world, and a fall in crude oil prices until February 11, 2016, had market participants worried. Even the Fed took notice of the global developments and decided not to be as aggressive on rate hikes in 2016 as it had indicated in December 2015. Among developed markets, the ECB (European Central Bank) surprised markets by announcing aggressive stimulus measures in March 2016. On the emerging market side, apart from China, Brazil was in the news as its equities soared on hopes that President Dilma Rousseff would be impeached. Brazils lower house voted for impeachment proceedings to begin, and the motion will now go to Brazils Senate. Meanwhile, India announced its budget, with a focus on the countrys large rural population and inclusive growth. The nations central bank reduced its key rate further in April. US large-cap equity mutual funds In this series, well look at 1Q16 as it resulted for some of the largest US large-cap equity mutual funds. As can be seen in the graph above, 1Q16 was a mixed bag, with a few funds scraping out gains. Story continues Our analysis of 12 US large-cap equity mutual funds (FMAGX) (IEOPX) wont just be confined to return performance. Well look in depth into the portfolios of these funds and conduct attribution analyses to see which sectoral or stock picks helped or hurt funds. Well benchmark the performances of the funds to the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (IVW) to see whether active funds have done better than this passive one. Well begin our analysis with the American Funds AMCAP Fund Class A (AMCPX). Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's Supreme Court on Monday rejected the opposition's latest bid to cut short the term of President Nicolas Maduro, whose opponents blame him for a severe economic crisis. The court ruled that a constitutional amendment proposed by opposition lawmakers could not be applied retroactively or immediately to Maduro's current term as the bill proposed. It said that would violate "the will of the people" who elected him. The opposition vowed to oust Maduro when it took control of the legislature in January after winning elections. Lower house lawmakers last week approved on a first reading a bill proposing to reduce presidential terms from six years to four. That bill would also have to be approved in a referendum to enter into force. The court said in its ruling Monday that "trying to use a constitutional amendment to cut short immediately a term of office of someone popularly elected, such as the president of the republic, is an act of fraud against the constitution." The opposition leader in the legislature, Henry Ramos Allup, denied that the amendment was unconstitutional and criticized the court for vetoing it before it had a second reading. "You are the ones committing constitutional fraud," he wrote on Twitter, branding the Supreme Court judges "outlaws." - Recall referendum drive - Maduro has successfully blocked previous bills in the National Assembly by appealing to the Supreme Court, which critics say he controls. Attacking Maduro on another front, the opposition has also tried to call a direct referendum on whether to remove him from office. Maduro reached the halfway point of his six-year term last week. Under the constitution he can now be removed from office in a recall referendum, which the opposition hopes to do by the end of the year. Electoral authorities have so far blocked that bid too, however. Maduro's critics say he also controls the electoral board. The opposition has called for demonstrations in front of its offices across the country on Wednesday. Story continues Maduro has vowed to hold on to power and press on with the socialist "revolution" launched by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez. Venezuela's economy has plunged along with the price of the oil on which it relies for foreign revenues. Citizens are suffering shortages of medicines and goods such as toilet paper and cooking oil. On Monday, the government started turning off the electricity supply in its 10 most populous states for four hours a day to deal with a severe power shortage. It said the measure would last for 40 days. The country's biggest brewery, Cerveceria Polar, said last week it will stop producing beer because it is running short of barley. The cash-strapped government is unable to meet businesses' demand for the dollars they need to buy goods and materials abroad. The import-dependent economy contracted 5.7 percent last year, its second year of recession. The official inflation rate was recorded as more than 180 percent but private analysts say the real rate was several times that. The T-Prime Concept GTE, officially unveiled at Auto China 2016 in Beijing on Monday, is a premium off-roader with a hybrid powertrain and, according to Volkswagen, a car that not only gives a first clear idea of the company's next flagship, but of the direction in which the entire industry is moving. Demand for SUVs and crossovers has never been greater and this demand is something that consumers in all markets around the world have in common. The crossover has usurped the compact hatchback as Europe's favorite car, SUVs are outperforming everything except for pickups in the US, and, according to VW's stats, the appetite for full-size comfort-focused SUVs is expected to grow some 18% over the next six years in China. In fact, exclusive SUV sales are expected to hit 2 million unit sales annually around the world before the end of the decade. Land Rover, a company that only deals in premium off-roaders, managed to sell over 400,000 cars in 2015. With all of that in mind, it's little wonder that VW has arrived in Beijing with the T-Prime Concept GTE, a vehicle that offers the same levels of space as a Toyota Land Cruiser, the comfort levels of a Range Rover, yet has the thirst of a Ford Fiesta. "On the one hand, this concept shows the authentic Volkswagen SUV design of the modern era; but at the same time it takes entirely new approaches," said Klaus Bischoff, VW's Head of Design. "The overall radiance of the T-Prime Concept GTE makes it unmistakably clear that it is playing in the top league." And, unlike a number of recent VW SUV concepts, this one looks almost production ready and a worthy visual successor to the Touareg, right down to its impressive plug-in hybrid powertrain. It's capable of outputting a combined 375hp, of running for 50km on battery power alone and of hitting 100km/h in 6 seconds. However, it also offers a potential NEDC cycle fuel economy of 87mpg. The interior is also a very digital affair, with touch screens, voice commands and gestures; "this type of human-machine interface could become the norm in the top segment. Progress is immediately apparent here, because the real automobile is melding with the virtual world that is so real today," said Dr. Frank Welsch, VW's head of Technical Development. However, though technology races ahead, expect the dashboard in the production version to be a slightly more traditional one with buttons and levers to balance out the other interfaces. (Adds UAW filing unfair labor practices charges against VW, labor lawyer comment) By Bernie Woodall DETROIT, April 25 (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG said on Monday it would go to a U.S. federal appeals court in an effort to keep the United Auto Workers union from representing a portion of the company's plant workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The UAW in turn filed an unfair labor practices charge against Volkswagen with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for the automaker's continuing refusal to bargain with the 160 skilled trades workers who voted 71 percent in December to be represented by the union. This month, the NLRB upheld the December vote. The plant has about 1,500 hourly workers. While the skilled trades workers who maintain plant machinery are a fraction of the hourly workforce, VW bargaining with them could serve as a launching pad for the union's efforts to organize other foreign-owned plants in the South. In decades of trying, the UAW has not organized a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the region. The UAW in a statement said the VW move was "a stall tactic that won't work" and that in a previous similar case, the court of appeals that covers Tennessee sided against the company. VW said the plant's workers should not be divided when it comes to representation. "Volkswagen will take the necessary steps to have this issue reviewed" by the federal appeals court, VW said in its statement. VW did not say when it would file with the court, or to which court it would file. Tennessee is in an appeals court district that also includes Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. "Managing an auto assembly plant is a difficult job, and the task is made much more difficult when part of your workforce is unionized and other parts aren't," said Dennis Cuneo, a management-side labor attorney not directly involved in the VW-UAW issue. The UAW said, "We reject the company's claim that recognizing and bargaining with the skilled trades employees would somehow splinter the workforce in Chattanooga." The UAW on Monday once again said it has majority support among Chattanooga plant workers, but it did not call for a second election of all of the plant's workers. The UAW narrowly lost a February 2014 election in which all workers were eligible to vote. The union claims that election was unfairly influenced by Tennessee politicians and antiunion lobbying groups. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Meredith Mazzilli and David Gregorio) Wall Street is in a cautious mood ahead of a big week of earnings and as U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers meet to discuss another potential rate hike. Stocks are lower across the board (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC), with energy shares leading the declines. Get the Latest Market Data and New with the Yahoo Finance App Tribune Publishing (TPUB) shares surged in early trading. Gannett (GCI) offered to buy the owner of the Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune for about $815 million dollars in cash and debt. That translates to $12.25 a share. In a statement, the publisher of USA Today said it is seeking to expand the company's network to include more local markets and new platforms through the transaction. The deal represents a 63% premium based on Tribune's closing share price on Friday. Halliburton (HAL) is delaying its full earnings release until the first week of May. The move comes as the company waits for the Baker Hughes (BHI) deal to close at the end of the month. However, Halliburton did report it was taking a $2.1 billion charge for the first quarter after cutting more than 6,000 jobs and taking a write-off. Xerox (XRX) shares were sharply lower in early trading. The business services provider and copier company delivered earnings per share that came in a penny shy of estimates, while revenue topped expectations and sales fell more than 4% from a year ago due to a stronger dollar and weak demand for printers and copiers. Xerox plans to split into two separate companies by the end of the year. Marriott International (MAR) shares are on investors' radar. Barron's reported over the weekend that shares of the hotel operator can rise 30% over the next 18 months with profit and revenue growth both heading in the right directionthanks to the strong management team and the ample cost saving from the Starwood deal. Ted Cruz and John Kasich team up to take on Trump Ted Cruz and John Kasich are joining forces in a last-minute effort to stop Donald Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination. Donald Trump is calling efforts by his opponents a sign of "desperation." Story continues Saudi Arabias post oil-era plan Saudi Arabia Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled a major post-oil era plan for the future of the kingdoms economy. The "Vision 2030"plan includes raising money through an initial public offering of up to 5% of shares in state-owned oil giant Aramco, which is estimated to be worth more than $2 trillion. Ex-Berkshire executive reappears as activist investor The Wall Street Journal is reporting that David Sokol has resurfaced as an activist investor, pushing Middleburg Financial Corporation to put itself up for sale. David Sokol has kept a relatively low profile since leaving Berkshire (BRK-A) amid a stock-trading controversy. Donald Trump Donald Trump lampooned John Kasich on Monday for staying in the Republican primary race, hours after Kasich made a deal with Ted Cruz in an attempt to thwart Trump's efforts at securing the GOP nomination. After calling him "one-for-41 Kasich," a reference to how many contests the Ohio governor has won, he compared Kasich to a needy child. "He's like if you have a child and he says, 'I want it, mommy. I don't care, mommy. I want it, daddy. I don't care. I want it,'" Trump said during a Monday rally in Rhode Island. "That's all he is." Trump added that many of the Republican candidates would still be in the running if they said, "'I'm not getting out, I don't care.'" The pact between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns called for Kasich to pull his resources out of Indiana, the next key battleground state. In return, Cruz, a Texas senator, would recede from New Mexico and Oregon. It all serves as an attempt to stop Trump from accumulating 1,237 delegates, the total needed to secure the Republican nomination ahead of the July convention. Both campaigns announced the plan late Sunday night, but the candidates themselves have not asked supporters in those states to vote for the opposing candidates. Both Kasich and Cruz are mathematically eliminated from securing the Republican nomination ahead of the GOP convention. The two are hoping that by joining forces, they can stop Trump from reaching the needed number of delegates as well, triggering a potential second ballot on which many delegates will be able to vote freely for the candidate of their choice. Kasich, who took questions from reporters at a Philadelphia diner Monday, strongly defended the move. He was asked whether the plan was "desperate." "Me? No, I'm not desperate, are you?" Kasich shot back. "Are you desperate? Cause I'm not." "I don't see this as any big deal. I'm not going to spend resources in Indiana," Kasich added. "He's not going to spend them in other places. So what? What's the big deal?" Story continues During the Rhode Island rally, Trump also made a point of mocking Kasich's eating habits after multiple networks broadcast his Monday remarks from the diner. The GOP frontrunner said Kasich should learn from Trump's children, whom Trump has urged to eat modest portions of food. "Did you see him? He had a news conference all the time when he's eating. I have never see a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion," Trump said of Kasich. "It's disgusting," he later said. "Do you want this guy for your president?" NOW WATCH: 'It's pure political correctness: Trump on Tubman on the $20 bill More From Business Insider Tens of thousands of people head to Berkshire Hathaways (BRK-A, BRK-B) annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska every year to hear what chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and his right-hand man Charlie Munger have to say. The two address questions from the crowd about Berkshires performance, future investments, the economy, and just about anything else. And it's this part of the meeting, the question-and-answer session, that is the Oracle of Omahas favorite. He can't wait to hear the words spoken by the man sitting in the chair right beside him on stage. The thing I enjoy most about the meeting is listening to Charlie, Warren Buffett told Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer. I do not know what he's going to say. And he's insightful. He's fast. He's funny. And he can sometimes say, in ten seconds, something that it would take me an hour to get to. Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is known for his sharp wit, and many times his comments are far more straightforward and unfiltered compared to Buffett's. Yahoo Finance took a look back at some of Charlie Mungers most memorable quotes from over the years from Berkshire Hathaways annual shareholder meeting: "The interesting thing is how well it [our acquisition strategy/process] has worked over a great many decades and how few people copy it. Source: Berkshire Hathaway meeting 2005 via Buffett FAQ "We learned about foreign labor competition in our shoe business. It reminds me of Will Rogers, who said he didnt think man should have to learn easy lessons in such a hard fashion. You should be able to learn not to pee on an electrified fence without actually trying it." Source: Berkshire Hathaway meeting 2007 via Buffett FAQ Its hard to think of many activists I want to marry into my family. Source: Berkshire Hathaway meeting 2015 via New York Times "If you think your IQ is 160 and its really 150, youre a disaster." Source: Berkshire Hathaway meeting 2009 via Buffett FAQ Story continues "A foreign correspondent, after talking to me for a while, once said: 'You dont seem smart enough to be so good at what youre doing. Do you have an explanation?'" Source: Berkshire Hathaway meeting 2006 via Buffett FAQ On April 30, Yahoo Finance will live stream the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting exclusively. You can find out more information here. From Cosmopolitan A mohawk hairstyle might initially seem a little dated until you see hairstylist Sarah Potempa work her magic on this double cuff mohawk braid. Serious skills. Watch the full video above to see how to create the most mesmerizing braid you'll ever see. Do try this at home: First, separate the hair into three sections, keeping the middle section thickest. Then, begin French braiding the right section into a teeny-tiny braid following the shape of the ear. Next, pull a small section of hair from the middle and begin French braiding slightly off-center from the middle of the head. Then create a French braid straight down the middle of your head that is slightly thicker than the others. Next, French braid the last section on the left lining the ear, just like you did on the right! Return to that thicker middle braid and pull out the sides to make it ultra-voluminous. Then, roll the end of the braid underneath into the nape of the neck to hide the ponytail holder. Take the single braid on the left, wrap it underneath the cuffed middle braid, and pin it on the other side. Lastly, take the braids on the right side and wrap each underneath the middle braid, just as was done on the other side, using a bobby pin to secure it tightly. And voila, a double cuff mohawk braid that will leave even Khloe K. (the queen of braids) feeling envious. For more videos, subscribe to Cosmopolitan on YouTube. Realty Income Corp. O is slated to report first-quarter 2016 results after the market closes on Apr 26. Last quarter, this monthly dividend real estate investment trust (REIT) delivered a positive earnings surprise of 2.90%. In the four trailing quarters, the company beat estimates in two with a positive average earnings surprise of 1.10%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter funds from operations (FFO) per share is currently 71 cents. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Realty Income derives cash flows from more than 4,500 real estate properties owned under long-term lease agreements with regional and national commercial tenants. This company targets well-located, freestanding, single-tenant, net-lease, commercial properties and more than 90% of its retail tenants offer a service, non-discretionary, and/or low price point businesses. This helps the company navigate different economic cycles and compete with growing competition arising from the e-commerce boom. In the first quarter, Realty Income is expected to have experienced growth in same store rent, though at a modest pace. Store-level performance of its retail tenants is anticipated to have remained solid. Occupancy levels are expected to have remained high after the company successfully concluded re-leasing of its properties in 2015, the most active year in terms of lease expirations. Balance sheet is also expected to remain solid with adequate liquidity and financial flexibility allowing the company to target opportunistic acquisitions. But competition remained solid in the quarter and lackluster retails sales in the first quarter are reasons to worry about. Consumers seem to be cautious and unwilling to spend much. Therefore any robust growth may have eluded the first quarter. Realty Incomes activities during the quarter could not gain adequate analyst confidence. Consequently, the Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged at 71 cents over the last seven days. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Realty Income will beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 71 cents. Hence, the Earnings ESP, which represents the percentage difference between them, is 0.00%. Zacks Rank: Although the companys Zacks Rank #2 increases the predictive power of ESP, its zero ESP makes a surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are a few stocks in the REIT sector you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a positive surprise this quarter: Essex Property Trust Inc. ESS has an Earnings ESP of +1.14% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company will report results on Apr 28. Taubman Centers, Inc. TCO has an Earnings ESP of +3.53% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on May 2. Vornado Realty Trust VNO has an Earnings ESP of +2.44% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report first-quarter 2016 results on May 2. Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All earnings per share numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report TAUBMAN CENTERS (TCO): Free Stock Analysis Report REALTY INCOME (O): Free Stock Analysis Report ESSEX PPTY TR (ESS): Free Stock Analysis Report VORNADO RLTY TR (VNO): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research From Esquire President Barack Obama has been under pressure to release 28 pages of a secret chapter from a joint congressional inquiry into the attacks on September 11, 2001. The chapter in question investigated potential links between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attackers. According to reports, the Obama Administration will release the pages soon. "The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier," former Sen. Bob Graham said in February. The documents have been stored in a secure room in the Capitol since the joint congressional inquiry into the attacks concluded. Our own Charlie Pierce penned a column calling for their release on April 18, writing, "A vital part of [the history of September 11] remains hidden away in a locked room, the final bit of our common history hidden away for fear of inconveniencing a medievalist regime that has the gall to threaten the one country that has guaranteed its safety against its bellicose neighborhood." President George W. Bush requested the pages be withheld on the grounds that the pages could reveal intelligence sources and methods of gathering information. But recently, Obama asked James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, to review the pages to see if they could be declassified. "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with - all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating," former Congressman Tim Roemer said on Friday. Some, though, are skeptical that releasing the pages will help to settle matters and may, instead, fuel conspiracy theories. "As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty," said California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Tim Robbins is a famous actor and a campaign surrogate for Bernie Sanders. He's also a useful case study in why so many of Sanders' supporters are intolerable. On Monday, he tweeted a theory of why Bernie Sanders is trailing Hillary Clinton: The machines are rigged, as demonstrated by Sanders' stronger performance in exit polls than in actual election results. Here's the meme he sent out: Hey NYTimes, CNN. Are you saying that 2+2=5? Are you really OK supporting a candidate with these numbers?#VoterFraud pic.twitter.com/LrxqLTaKbC Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) April 25, 2016 Of course, the real reason Sanders does better in exit polling than actual votes is that Sanders supporters will not shut up about Bernie Sanders, so of course they're eager to talk to exit pollsters. That, not a national conspiracy among county election administrators to rig the system for Hillary Clinton, is what's at play. But Robbins' nutty conspiracy mongering starts to seem sensible if you place yourself in the mindset of a Sanders supporter, as laid out by Sanders himself. Remember, Sanders believes that if voters were truly paying attention to the issues and uninfluenced by special interests, then more than 90% of people would support his agenda. If that is really true, then there can be only three possible reasons Sanders is losing: Voters are ignorant, they've been bought off, or they actually are voting for him and the machines are rigged. If you honestly believed that, then why wouldn't you approach Sanders' opponents as ignorant and corrupt? Robbins who, in fairness, was very good in "The Shawshank Redemption" managed to indulge in the vote-rigging and -buying aspects of this theory in just the last few hours. After tweeting the "rigged" theory, some Twitter users responded to say that he was wrong. Story continues So he accused them individually of being on the payroll of Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton super PAC. Here's a sampling: robbins rant It's common for Sanders supporters to accuse politicians and reporters of being bought off. The remarkable thing here is that Robbins is lobbing these accusations at individual voters. It might seem odd that Clinton allies would bother paying off a Twitter user with just 46 followers but then, choosing to oppose Bernie Sanders is so weird that it's hard to understand how else it would happen. The third mode of Sanders supporter engagement with disagreement is condescension: If you weren't paid off and your vote wasn't stolen from you, then maybe you're just too ill-informed to realize Sanders is the candidate you actually want. We haven't seen this from Robbins on Monday, but he did say earlier this month that winning South Carolina is no more important than winning Guam, which was definitely condescending to Democrats in South Carolina and Guam. If Robbins and other Sanders supporters want to be less insufferable in the future, then they might consider that sometimes candidates lose because voters disagree with them on issues or don't think they're the most capable candidates for the job. Just putting it out there. NOW WATCH: Here's the moment Wolf Blitzer had to stop Clinton and Sanders from 'screaming at each other' More From Business Insider What's the Latest Word on the Commodity Market? (Continued from Prior Part) Copper moves in sync with oil On Monday, copper was trading very closely with the fluctuations in crude oil prices. Copper fluctuated between profits and gains today, just like crude oil, and at 3:14 PM Eastern time, copper for July contracts was trading at $2.26 per pound, a decline of 0.60%. But the losses are limited to copper because of the support copper has gotten from recent improvements in Chinese economic releases. To learn more about how copper started today, please read Why Does Copper Look Weak This Morning? As of 3:15 Eastern Time, copper producers Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), Glencore (GLNCY), BHP Billiton (BHP), and Rio Tinto (RIO) fell 3.8%, 4.4%, 4.5%, and 3.7%, respectively, whereas the SPDR S&P Metals & Mining ETF (XME) was trading with a loss of 3.3%. Gold and silver stabilized on Monday The precious metals market stabilized on Monday because of the disappointing US home sales data and the weaker dollar. According to the data released by the Census Bureau of United States, new home sales fell unexpectedly in March with a sharp decline in the west region. New home sales in March fell 1.5% to a seasonally adjusted 511,000 homes. This fall has weakened the US dollar and, in turn, supported gold and silver prices. Gold and silver started today with stability, supported by the increase in speculators net positions as investors look ahead to the central banks meetings scheduled for this week. To learn more about this, please read Gold and Silver Looks Stable This Morning. At 3:16 Eastern Time, Barrick Gold (ABX), Newmont Mining (NEM), and Royal Gold (RGLD) were trading with a loss of 0.40%, 0.90%, and 0.94% while Harmony Gold Mining (HMY) was trading with a gain of 2.3%. The SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD) was trading 0.31% higher while the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) remains almost unchanged. Browse this series on Market Realist: What's the Latest Word on the Commodity Market? WTI and Brent crude trading lower today After gaining for three consecutive trading weeks, crude oil started this week on a weaker note. At 3:05 PM Eastern Time, WTI crude was trading at $42.70 per barrel, a decline of 2.4%, whereas Brent crude was trading at $44.66 per barrel, a fall of 0.91%. We will be able to live without oil by 2020, says Saudi prince On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced its Vision 2030 program, which mainly focuses on implementing economic reforms to reduce Saudi Arabias dependence on oil. The Saudi economy greatly depends on oil markets and, in 2015, 70% of its revenue came from oil. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced the reforms to a Saudi-owned news channel and even commented that Saudis will be able to live without oil by 2020. As part of the reforms, he announced his plans to sell less than 5% of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned energy company, by initial public offering, making way for the biggest IPO in history. Please read the article Crude Oil Under Pressure on Saudis Supply Increase News to learn more about the expansion plans for Saudi Aramco and its impact on the market. Reforms will take place irrespective of oil prices The prince added that the measures will diversify the economy by investing in mineral mining and increasing military production. He also said that the announced reforms will come irrespective of present crude oil prices, which are less than half the peaks seen in 2014. Today, crude oil started on a weaker note, and even though it recovered as the day progressed, the recovery was short-lived and prices fell. At 3:07 Eastern Time, oil producers QEP Resources (QEP), WPX Energy (WPX), Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO), and Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) fell 4.4%, 3.0%, 4.4%, 0.79% whereas the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production ETF (XOP) was trading 2.3% lower. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Floods Wash Away Kansas City Southern's Carloads in 1Q16 (Continued from Prior Part) Kansas City Southerns industrial and consumer In this part, we will assess the largest contributor to Kansas City Southerns (KSU) revenues, the Industrial and Consumer segment. Any revenue headwinds associated with this segment would have more impact on the companys overall revenues. In the first quarter of 2016, KSUs Industrial and Consumer revenues were $141.4 million, down by 3% over the same period last year. Industrial and consumer volumes Although the carloads in 1Q16 rose by 1% over 1Q15, the revenue per unit fell by 4%. The year-over-year fall in revenues in this segment was mainly due to the floods in Texas and the Southeastern US in March 2016. Revenues were also negatively impacted by weakness in the Mexican peso and fuel surcharges. Much of the fall in revenues was borne by the companys Metal and Scrap business included in the Industrial and Consumer Freight business. Management outlook Patrick Ottensmeyer, chief transportation officer of KSU, noted during the companys 4Q15 conference call, I was at a rail industry conference last week and I thought one railroad executive characterized the current landscape quite well when he said, and Im paraphrasing here, we are in an energy market depression, an industrial and manufacturing recession, but somehow, the consumer is doing okay. The Institute for Supply Management, which tracks the US economy, released its monthly purchasing managers index (or PMI) for March 2016. According to the Institute, Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in March for the first time in the last six months, while the overall economy grew for the 82nd consecutive month. Indexes The new order index, along with the production index, has grown since February 2016, invoking positive sentiments among the market participants. The price index registered an increase of 13% over February 2016, indicating a favorable sign, along with the increase in inventories of raw material. Story continues Railroads are usually seen as a barometer for a nations economic growth. With the US and Canadian economies growing at an unimpressive pace, the freight growth prospects of railroads are also stalling. KSU is not the only railroad to face headwinds on the industrial freight front. KSUs peers include Union Pacific (UNP), CSX Corporation (CSX) Norfolk Southern (NSC), Canadian Pacific Railway (CP), and Canadian National Railway (CNI). These companies are also facing some rough prospects in their industrial freight businesses. All of the major US-originated railroads are part of the portfolio holdings of the WisdomTree Earnings 500 ETF (EPS). In the next part of this series, we will go through the performance of chemical revenues and related headwinds going forward. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Early Morning Update on Commodities: What Does the Week Hold? (Continued from Prior Part) Weakness in Copper Copper looks weak this morning after trading in a range overnight. At 6:18 AM EST, copper for the July contract was trading at $2.26 per pounda decline of 0.46%. Weakness in oil prices is weighing on copper. Its keeping prices weak this morning. Optimism over China supported copper last week In the week ending April 22, the copper in COMEX gained 5.4% and ended the week at $2.27 per pound. Due to the gain in oil prices along with optimism about the economic conditions in China, copper closed the week with gains for the second consecutive trading week. Recently, better-than-expected economic releases from China included the exports data, the spike in the fixed-asset investments, a rise in the industrial production, and a surge in new loan data. This improved the positive sentiment around China. Considering that China is the largest copper consumer, Chinas major economic releases will impact copper prices. China accounts for more than 45% of the global copper demand. Focus shifted to central bank meetings Investors shifted their focus from the Chinese sentiment to the central bank meetings scheduled this week. The official FOMC statement is scheduled to release on April 27 at 2 PM EST. The Bank of Japans outlook report is scheduled on April 28. According to the recent Commitment of Traders report, speculators increased their net short positions in copper by 2,195 contracts to 24,500 contracts. In the last week, major copper producers Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), Glencore (GLNCY), BHP Billiton (BHP), and Rio Tinto (RIO) gained 7.4%, 4.8%, 10.1%, and 6%, respectively. The Power-Shares DB Base Metals Fund (DBB) and the SPDR S&P Metals & Mining ETF (XME) gained 3.9% and 3.2% in the last week. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Asia and Europe Trade Lower with New Policies on the Horizon (Continued from Prior Part) European indexes trade lower European markets (DBEU) were trading negatively today as the German business climate fell short of expectations. The upcoming monetary policies from the United States and Japan also contributed to investors caution. The European market (HEDJ) carried over negativity from the Asian markets. The SPDR Euro Stoxx 50 ETF (FEZ) fell 0.75% as of 9:00 AM EST today. The German DAX and the French CAC 40 fell 0.79% and 0.61%, respectively. Among other major European indexes (IEV), the crude-related Russian economy (RSX) was also trading with a negative bias. Crude futures (USO) traded near flat. The Russian MICEX fell 0.62%. Non-Eurozone markets also suffered losses, with the United Kingdoms (FKU) FTSE 100 falling 0.69% and Swedens (EWD) OMX Stockholm 30 falling 0.47%. Why the pound rose 0.6%? The British pound to US dollar currency pair, which directly relates to the pound, saw an uptick today. The rise in the currency pair was primarily due to US President Barack Obamas views on the Brexit referendum. He says that if friends of the United States are in an organization that enhances their power, influence and economy, then he would prefer them to stay in that organization. This announcement improved investor sentiment about Britain staying in the European Union. The currency pair reflected a similar sentiment, rising 0.6% to 1.45 at 9:00 AM today. German business confidence weakens The German Ifo business climate for April was published on a weak note today. The business climate fell to 106.6, against forecasts of 107.1. The Ifo current conditions and expectations were also below forecasts, at 113.2 and 100.4, respectively. The report attributed the fall in business climate to concerns in China, Germanys third-largest trading partner. But the stabilizing Chinese economy in recent weeks is expected to result in a better business climate. Browse this series on Market Realist: Heres why I think vacationing alone is the best way to travel Heres why I think vacationing alone is the best way to travel Youre brave. Wow. I could NEVER do that. Im impressed. Wont you be lonely? Youd think I was set to orbit the Earth for six months, with nothing but freeze-dried ice cream and zero-gravity somersaults on the horizon. In reality, I had just revealed my plans for an upcoming two-week vacation in Tokyo to a group of close girlfriends. And Id be making the trip *waits for gasps* alone. Their collective shock made me chuckle. Why it was it such a bold move for me, a 35-year-old woman, to vacation solo? It had become such a commonplace occurrence in my life, I had never given it a second thought. I believe that vacationing alone is not only empowering, but one of the best ways to get to know yourself better. Still not convinced? Here are my favorite things about vacationing alone. Youre on your own schedule. This ones a given, and perhaps the single most satisfying thing about traveling alone. You get to do exactly, precisely, 100% what YOU want to do. All. The. Time. Think about that. If youre like me, you probably dont even get that kind of luxury in your everyday life. Your boss sets the deadlines at work, the doctor is late for your appointment (again), and who are we kidding, we are all at the continued mercy of our produce drawers (I JUST bought that damn avocado. Its squishy already?! Better eat it.). Flying solo on vacation means that you call the shots even if that means skipping out on your pre-scheduled plans to sleep in and order mid-day room service. Theres almost always room for one more. If youve ever organized a group outing whether it be to a restaurant, a ticketed event, or otherwise you know how logistically tricky it can be. Trying to score a table for 12 at the hottest restaurant in town will likely be met with raised eyebrows and barely-there smirks from the Pendleton-clad hipster hostess. But guess what? Theres almost always a single seat available wherever you want to go. Squeeze in at the bar of the hottest eatery in town, where theyre likely serving the full menu. If live performance is your jam (I look forward to getting Broadway drunk on theater each time I visit New York City), theres bound to be a single seat with your name on it (and my money says itll be one of the best seats in the house). Story continues Talk with the locals. Sure, you could do this while traveling with others, but you know what? Nothing makes you more eager to strike up a conversation with a total stranger than being alone in a foreign country for two weeks. As a huge Disneyphile, I spent several days at the Tokyo Disneyland resort during my recent visit to Japan, and I scheduled my Disney visit halfway through my two-week trip. I was shocked (and embarrassingly excited) when the front desk clerk at the hotel struck up a conversation with mein English. After we had talked for about five minutes, I looked up at her and said, You know, I think this is the most Ive spoken aloud this whole week. She was thrilled to practice her English (which was quite good) and it felt great for me to actually talk to another human being instead of, say, singing Taylor Swift lyrics to myself in the bathroom mirror, or talking to my sock drawer while deciding which pair I would wear that day. Vacationing alone will encourage you to chat it up with the locals, and you might make some new friends, too! Brush up on your problem-solving prowess. Ill admit it: I like it when things come easy. I wish I could be one of those people who finds complex challenges exhilarating instead of completely maddening. And as anyone who has traveled extensively will tell you, with every extended trip, youre almost guaranteed at least one oh, shit moment. A problem so hairy, you cant possibly see a way out. But guess what? There IS a way out, and when you travel alone, YOU are the only one who can get yourself out of a jam. Once you do (and after your endorphin levels have settled), youll feel about 100 times more confident in your ability to adult. Problem-solving aint pretty, but having no one to rely on but yourself builds character that stays with you long after youve returned home. You dont have to wait for anyone else to go on an adventure. Dont get me wrong I really enjoy traveling with others. Theres nothing like poring over the days events and comparing Camera Roll shots from the comfort of side-by-side beds, or trying (and loving!) something you never would have considered otherwise, all because it was on your travel buddys bucket list. But heres the thing companionship is not a requirement for adventure. As cliche as it sounds, we are never promised tomorrow. There are places to go, people to meet, trains to catch, treats to eat, dogs to pet, all around the world and theyre ready for you. So get out there and see the world. I bet theres a single plane ticket just waiting for you. Stacey Chase is a writer and editor with a passion for travel, all things Disneyland, and her feisty tabby cat, Napoleon. When shes not planning her next trip, youll find her baking delicious desserts for family and friends. She consumes chocolate daily, and spends entirely too much time watching repeats of The Golden Girls. Check out her blog for dessert recipes and bakery reviews, or follow her on Instagram. The post Heres why I think vacationing alone is the best way to travel appeared first on HelloGiggles. A Wisconsin town remains shaken after an 18-year-old man allegedly began shooting at his former high school's prom Saturday night, wounding two students before police shot and killed him. At a Monday press conference, Antigo, Wisconsin, Police Chief Eric Roller said the shooter, Jakob Wagner, arrived to the school on a bicycle. At around 11 p.m., he began firing a rifle on the grounds of Antigo High School, where the prom was taking place. A student and his date who were attending the prom were non-fatally shot as they left the school, say police. Officers who were patrolling the parking area heard shots fired and acted immediately, according to a statement released Monday. "One of those officers was able to fire upon the shooter, stopping the threat to additional attendees," the statement said. "We stopped the threat and we think it saved many lives," Roller said at a press conference on Monday, adding that the shooter was stopped in the parking lot before entering the school building, which police believe he intended to do. In a statement, Roller said, "The prior and ongoing training that our officers receive was truly imperative in preventing additional injury and casualties during this incident. Our departments will continue to provide the utmost security and safety measures to our community." Police: No Known Motive for Shooter Based on their initial investigation, which included executing a warrant at his home, police believe Wagner acted alone. Roller said Monday he does not know where he acquired the gun. While a police source says authorities do not know his motive, a former classmate told the Wassau Daily Herald that Wagner was "bullied a lot." "Ever since we were younger, he was one of the kids you kind of watched out for," 19-year-old Emily Fisher told the newspaper. "If someone was going to shoot the school, we thought it was going to be him." Fisher told the paper Wagner was bulled in middle school and high school. She added that he talked about guns and weapons and made models of them in art class. Childs described Wagner as "a sometime student." Administrators reportedly said he did not graduate with his class in 2015 and was working on earning his high school diploma. Roller said in a statement that the Antigo Police Department is being assisted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation. Roller also expressed his "deepest sympathy to the attendees who had their prom night memories turn to fear and tragedy. I understand the concern and frustration of the families who were unsure of the situation and worried about their children. Officers and I appreciate the patience that was displayed by students and their families as our staff was able to secure the facility and ensure the safe removal of students." Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Victim Shot in Leg 'Doing Well,' Says Family Donald Childs, an administrator with the Unified School District of Antigo, tells PEOPLE that the male victim was a student at the school who underwent surgery on his leg Sunday morning for non-life-threatening injuries. According to Roller, students tied a necktie around his leg as a tourniquet. The female victim was his date, from out of state, and was grazed in the shooting, Child says. She was treated for one gunshot wound and released, according to the statement. The male victim's family, who asked to remain anonymous, released a statement Monday about the shooting, asking for prayers for the victims and the shooter. Saying that the victim is "doing well," the statement adds: "He has come through a long surgery and will recover with time and effort, but we have always believe that God is good and has a plan even in the midst of tragedy." Saying they are grateful to police and to hospital staff, the family added, "We are so thankful for his girlfriend and two friends on the scene who acted so bravely and calmly." While asking for prayers for their son and his girlfriend, the family also asked people to pray for Wagner, who died at 1:06 a.m. Sunday at a nearby hospital "after lifesaving measures" were performed, said police. "Please also pray for the family of Jakob Wagner," the statement said. "As much as we are struggling through this event, we cannot imagine the grief they are experiencing at this time." An autopsy of Wagner's body has been conducted and results are pending," Roller said in his statement Monday. "My sincerest condolences to his family and friends as they mourn the loss of a beloved member of their lives." The school district provided counseling to students returning to school Monday, according to a statement from the district obtained by PEOPLE. "The district is following the advice of law enforcement experts in conducting school on Monday and providing structure and routine as best we can and as quickly as we can," the statement said. "Counselors at each school site are prepared to support any students or staff who may be struggling." An Ohio woman visiting Kentucky was killed by a train Saturday while she was in search of legendary monster. Roquel Bain of Dayton was crossing the trestle over Pope Lick Creek in Louisville in search of the Pope Lick monster, a half-man half-goat that's fabled to come out only as you cross the tracks. But a train came as Bain was crossing and she wasn't able to get to safety in time. Bain died of multiple blunt force injuries suffered in the collision and subsequent fall from the trestle, Deputy Coroner Jack Arnold told WAVE. Read: Teen Alone on Kayak at Night Gets Rescued After Drifting Away from Family Arnold said Bain and her boyfriend were visiting Louisville to take a "haunted" tour of an old sanitarium in the area. Before their tour, he said they set out in search of the "Pope Lick Monster." That's when the train took them by surprise, according to Arnold. The couple first tried to dangle off the side of the trestle, but the boyfriend reportedly said Bain wasn't fast enough. The coroner estimated that Bain fell between 80 to 100 feet. Her boyfriend survived uninjured. Read: Man in Floating Bubble Rescued After Second Failed Attempt to Reach Bermuda The goat-man creature is believed to live beneath a Norfolk Southern Railway trestle over Pope Lick Creek. The legend has reportedly turned the site into a popular spot for thrill-seekers, however the frequency of train traffic across the trestle makes crossing dangerous. While there appears to be no official count of deaths related to cross the trestle, authorities maintain multiple people have become real victims of the imaginary monster over the years. Crossing the tracks is reportedly illegal. The trestle is on private property and thrill-seekers can be charged with trespassing. Watch: Woman Jumps Fence Into Tiger Pen to Retrieve Fallen Hat Related Articles: CEO Pay 5yr Growth Stock Price 5yr Growth (Excluding Dividends) Regions Financial Corp (NYSE: RF) 13.8% annually 3.9% annually Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) 0% annually 14.4% annually SunTrustBanks Inc (NYSE: STI) (14.7%) annually 7.5% anually Regions' CEO, O.B. Grayson Hall got paid the most for the worst performance. Granted, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is a much bigger institution and plays at a different level than Regions, which is strictly a regional entity. But Wells Fargo handsomely rewarded shareholders while keeping executive compensation in line. SunTrust (NYSE: STI) is a closer comparison, but as you can see, its CEO actually took a steady pay cut (I'm sure he'll figure out how to get by on $7.9 million) while the stock delivered a decent return on a five year basis. Am I blaming bloated executive pay for Regions' poor performance? Not necessarily -- but it doesn't help. The biggest problem is the bank's business mix. Some 65% of RF's revenues come from mortgage banking -- which is what got the company, and most of the economy, into trouble in 2007-2008. And while the housing market has improved since the crash of 2007-2008, tighter lending standards and regulatory burdens have impeded growth in that particular business line. [More from StreetAuthority.com: Negative Interest Rates Are Here] The result is an uninspiring flat to negative earnings and revenue trend with annual earnings per share (EPS) averaging 77 cents a share over the last four years and annual revenues of $5.6 billion for the same period. Sure, the trend is positive after years of losses due to fallout from the financial crisis, but Regions still looks like a zombie. There are positive trends in Regions' numbers, though. Demand deposits (checking and savings accounts) have grown at an average annual rate of 20% over the last five years. I have a hunch that if the bank actually lent some of that money out, on which they are paying depositors very little, if anything, the company might actually earn a couple dollars. However, management seems unwilling to put some of that $56.7 billion to work. I certainly don't know what they're waiting for and I could guess that no one else does either. In the meantime, expect the stock to continue looking like this: [More from StreetAuthority.com: All ETF's are NOT Created Equal] Going forward, analysts do have an optimistic outlook for RF shares, forecasting EPS of 82 cents for this year. That's a 7.8% bump over 2015's yearend number of 76 cents per share. That growth still doesn't keep pace with the growth in Region's CEO's compensation, though. Also, in the company's most recent earnings call, management indicated that loan growth will come in at the lower end of their original guidance of 3% to 5% and non-interest income growth will also come in at the lower end of their 2% to 4% growth guidance. I just don't see any real catalysts for this stock any time soon. Investors seeking exposure to the financial sector have better alternatives. The Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX) is one of the biggest players in the publicly traded asset management space, especially non-equity correlated assets such as real estate and private equity. Units trade at an attractive 32% discount to their 52-week high and have a generous trailing twelve month yield of 9.6%. [More from StreetAuthority.com: Sitting On A Loser? Read This Before You Sell Another Stock] The John Hancock Financial Opportunities Fund (NYSE: BTO) is a closed end fund whose objective mandates investing in what the manager deems undervalued regional banks and thrifts. For investors looking for action in the regional bank space, this is a great basket approach. Shares trade at a 15% discount to their 52-week high with a 5.8% dividend yield. Risks To Consider: The regional bank sector is cheaply valued and one of the best positioned spaces to benefit from U.S. economic growth as it continues to pick up. Regions is one of the largest players in regional banking with over 1,700 branches across 16 states mostly the Sunbelt. The upside to the stock could be significant due to the size of the company's footprint. But based on its operating history, management's success at execution is mediocre at best. Action To Take: Investors with losses in RF shares should use rallies in the stock to pare those losses or use them to offset gains if their tax situation dictates. If you were lucky enough to buy low and are sitting on some nice gains, the market has given you a gift. Take it, say thank you, and move on to the next idea. Editor's Note: Nervous about the market? Traders using this Safe Money Secret have closed 75 winning trades in a row. In fact, they just closed 6 new trades (locking in $6,320 in profits!) in the midst of all the recent market chaos. Discover their secret here. Related Articles Naours (France) (AFP) - A century after World War I, an archaeologist exploring ancient tunnels in northeast France made a moving discovery -- thousands of scrawlings by Allied soldiers, notably Australians, as they took a break from the hell of the Battle of the Somme. And now, the public can visit them too. "LR Blake lieut 105t How Btry 7-1-17," reads one, with the help of a torch, carved into the vast underground network in the town of Naours, near Amiens. Translation: Leslie Russel Blake, a lieutenant hailing from near Melbourne and fighting with the 105th Howitzer Battery who left his mark on the chalk walls on January 7, 1917. He was to die in battle the following year and is buried nearby. Archaeologist Giles Prilaux has recorded nearly 3,000 bits of graffiti, mostly etched by Australians from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). They paint a vivid picture of young men sent to join a war far from home, something Australia celebrates every April 25 as Anzac Day to remember compatriots who served on the Western front, including the 11,000 with no known graves. For the past two years, Prilaux and his colleagues at France's National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research (INRAP) have painstakingly scrutinised and logged their finds, looking for clues of what life was like on the nearby Somme battlefields. Going was slow with the poor light in the tunnels said to date back to the third century, which also served as a refuge in a much earlier battle, the Thirty Years' War from 1618-1648. Little by little Prilaux's team found signatures, inscription dates, home towns, units and military serial numbers left by soldiers waging the bloody trench warfare that lasted nearly five months and saw more than a million casualties on both the Allied and German sides. - 'A very addictive job' - "Mostly (they were) done by Australians, but also Americans, British, and some New Zealanders, Canadians and, on occasion, Indians," said Prilaux. Story continues Next came the detective work to unpick the identities and stories of the men who had left their mark in the three kilometre-long (two-mile) tunnels. "Identification is a very addictive job," said Prilaux who first came to the caves in 2014 with the goal of determining their age until he started finding the wartime markings. With help from the National Archives of Australia, Prilaux's team was able to determine that Leslie Russel Blake, for example, was born in 1890 in a suburb of Melbourne and died from shrapnel wounds to his forehead in October 1918. Before his death, Blake had been promoted to captain and, during his service with the Australian Field Artillery, was decorated with the Military Cross and a further distinction known as Mentioned in Despatches, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He is is buried at the Tincourt New British Cemetery, 65 kilometres (40 miles) away from Naours. - 'Tumult of the battlefield' - Another engraving was left by soldier William Joseph Allan Allsop, dated January 2, 1917. Allsop's etching has proved to be crucial in understanding how the caves were used, dispelling the long-established view they were only employed for medical treatment. Cross referencing the infantryman's carving with his wartime diary, Prilaux was able to establish that he "came with several comrades to the Naours caves". "When I arrived in 2014, it was said that these underground caves had served as a hospital during World War I, but in fact, soldiers stationed in the area visited the underground tunnels for a break from the tumult of the battlefield," said Prilaux. "The fighters spent 15 to 20 percent of their time on the frontline and activities were sought to keep them busy during their free time. A visit to Naours was among the proposals offered as a distraction," said Prilaux. "This was a great discovery." Focus next turned on how to enhance the graffiti's value while ensuring its protection, according to site director Matthieu Beuvin. He and Prilaux decided to leave all as is and open a small stretch of the tunnel to visitors. Last year, 45,000 people came, 40 percent from English-speaking countries. "The inscriptions were all inventoried, photographed and a model of the site will soon be online, as will the identity cards of the authors," said Beuvin, meaning even those in Australia "can visit the site". The site has already moved at least one Australian school group who made a recent "pilgrimage" ahead of Anzac Day, and "half the students ended up in tears", said Beuvin. Another 3,000 Australians were in nearby Villers-Bretonneaux on Monday to mark the 98th anniversary of the battle that liberated that town. The valour shown by Anzac troops has played a role in forging Australian national identity. A fledgling nation at the outbreak of World War I with fewer than five million residents, 416,809 men enlisted and more than 60,000 lost their lives on all fronts, according to the Australian War Memorial. communist youth league china Unlike many of his peers in the Communist Party leadership, President Xi Jinping did not join the Communist Youth League (CYL), which is a traditional path to political power in the country. Now it seems that path may be getting cut off. Bloomberg reports that the Communist Party is considering ending undergraduate admissions into the League's University of Political Science, which was founded back in 1985 when former President Hu Jintao attended. From the report: Such a move would send a message to younger people about an organization thats been a traditional springboard for leadership posts but was not the route to power for Xi. It could reverberate through a twice-a-decade reshuffle at next years party congress, when several prominent league alumni will be in the running for positions in the partys uppermost echelons. The news that the CYL might discontinue this program was initially met with a little bit of resistance. One instructor wrote a post about the decision on Weibo and said that it was perhaps a bit too hasty. That was on Thursday, but it had already been taken down by Friday, when the university put out a statement saying that it was looking at "reform" options, according to Bloomberg. Experts say that you can expect more cuts to CYL programming and more "reforms" coming for the organization in general. You can also expect to see fewer CYL members ascending the ranks of politics. This was an organization for China's elite for princelings and Xi was not a part of that growing up. In fact, you may recall that everything we know about Xi's childhood is pretty terrifying. The party turned against his family early in his life during the Cultural Revolution, and his father was put in a work camp. This has colored Xi's entire view of politics, as he told the Chinese Times back in 2000: Story continues "People who have little experience with power, those who have been far away from it, tend to regard these things as mysterious and novel," Xi said. "But I look past the superficial things: the power and the flowers and the glory and the applause. I see the detention houses, the fickleness of human relationships. I understand politics on a deeper level. NOW WATCH: THE STORY OF GOLDMAN SACHS: From foot peddlers to a powerhouse More From Business Insider By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN (Reuters) - Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focussed their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10. The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move towards peace. In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants. Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other. DEATHS A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. "It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighbouring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week. The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the U.N. Security Council's request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move towards peace. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Kuwait; Writing by Noah Browning and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Attention, ladies! Zac Efron is single once again. The Baywatch star and model Sami Miro have split after nearly two years of dating, a source confirms to ET. The 28-year-old actor sparked breakup rumors over the weekend when he unfollowed Miro on social media and deleted all photos of them together. WATCH: Zac Efron Says He '100 Percent' Believes in Love at First Sight Miro has yet to delete her own pictures with Efron and has a handful up from when they attended the MTV Movie Awards together on April 9. The former couple went public in October 2014 during a trip to Copenhagen. While they have shared a number of snapshots since then -- like their sweet anniversary posts to one another on Sept. 5 -- both remained fairly tight-lipped on the relationship. "I've never spoken about us before, but, um, it's definitely different," Miro revealed in a rare interview last year. "If I was dating someone who wasn't in the limelight, I might have more photos on [Instagram] of our relationship. But I do think it's important. I mean, it's what is going on in my life, and I think that my social media can still represent that." Watch Efron get very, very NSFW fanboying over his Dirty Grandpa co-star, Robert De Niro, in the video below. Related Articles Tens of thousands of New Zealanders turned out Monday for the 100th ANZAC Day dawn services honouring their war dead on the anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in World War I. "The First World War helped shape our nation and our shared values. It cemented our ties with other countries, in particular our kinship with Australia," Prime Minister John Key, who attended a service at the national war memorial in Wellington, said. On April 25, 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey. More than 10,000 servicemen died in the campaign which failed in its military objectives but gave rise to the legacy of courage and close friendship that binds the two countries. Governor-General Jerry Mateparae, who attended the Wellington dawn service, said the act of remembering helped steer people towards building a better, safer world. "On this day 100 years ago, New Zealanders first gathered together to honour their loved ones who had perished at Gallipoli. "Since then, Anzac Day has become the focal point for New Zealanders and Australians to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of all involved in military conflict." The nine-month battle saw German-backed Ottoman forces resist the Allied troops trying to seize the peninsula on the western edge of Turkey to break through to take Constantinople and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Despite the tragic outcome, the later actions of New Zealanders "on the perilous North Sea, and on the fields of France -- were true to the Anzac spirit of bravery, compassion and comradeship established at Gallipoli," said Key. France marked ANZAC Day by announcing plans for a memorial in Wellington to commemorate their wartime bond with New Zealand. "France places great value on the significance of this memorial to celebrate the relationship between our two countries, the enduring friendship that unites us and the common memories we share, of which the First World War was a major example," the French ambassador Florence Jeanblanc-Risler said. Swift code bank logo is displayed on an iPhone 6s on top of Euro banknotes in this picture illustration made in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo (Reuters) By Jim Finkle (Reuters) - The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems. SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT on Monday released a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures. The developments coming to light the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that a lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood because of weaknesses that enabled attackers to modify a SWIFT software program installed on bank servers. The new evidence suggests that hackers manipulated the Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, in a bid to cover up fraudulent transfers that had been previously ordered. The findings from BAE and SWIFT do not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. That remains a key mystery in ongoing probes into the heist. Deteran told Reuters on Sunday that SWIFT was issuing the software update to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records." She said "the malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services." The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT,or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE , which has a large cyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access. Story continues BAE published its findings on Monday in a blog post on malware that it said thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist. The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February. Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing. Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers. The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said. SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said. It is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security. Whilst we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defense against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems, Deteran said. Adrian Nish, BAE's head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers. "I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in," he said. "I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile." A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAE's findings. A senior official with the Bangladesh Polices Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe. Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the bank's computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks. Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems. "It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven't found any evidence that they advised before the heist," said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT. [L2N16S0OR] THWARTING FUTURE ATTACKS Monday's alert from BAE includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IP address of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff. The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hacker's tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE. BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials. It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers. Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks. Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh. While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, "the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again, "according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters. The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the bank's activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said. Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said. It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered. It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston. Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka.; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Martin Howell) ELKO The idea of business cooperatives is not new to most communities but in Elko the practice is uncommon. The members of Wild Iris Yoga and Wellness are challenging that idea with their new co-op located at 425 Railroad St. We all wanted to offer yoga and other wellness practices in the community, said Selsea Dixon about the group who runs Wild Iris. We got together and we started coming up with ideas. They found a location and went to work forming the co-op. Wild Iris opened earlier this month and has established its program of yoga classes, foot zoning, and holistic workshops. Their first workshop is May 7 at the studio. The spring detox session is open to anyone who is interested in improving his or her health through elimination techniques. Skin brushing helps improve circulation, explained Naturopathic Doctor Sarah Sue Myers. She and her husband, Blake, provide health guidance and education. They will be offering a number of seminars throughout the year on ways to help people help themselves. Biofeedback, mindfulness, and breath work will be included in upcoming sessions. The first workshop costs $35 for members of the co-op and $40 for non-members. I hear a lot of people say that they wish a doctor could fix them, said yoga instructor Cheyanne Sparks. We give you the tools you need to take responsibility for your own body and find guidance. Aleece OBrien, an Emotional Code Practitioner, will be offering foot zoning. The belief that our feet communicate with the various systems of the body has been practiced for centuries. Using energy signals on the feet is an art and science that OBrien utilizes to help people improve digestive function, lymphatic circulation, joint mobility and other bodily functions. The co-op functions around the idea that self-improvement goes hand-in-hand with self-acceptance. You wont find any stressful tasks or competitive workouts at Wild Iris. What you will learn is that our bodies work best when they function as nature intended, moving frequently and with ease. I taught yoga at a gym and learned that people need to give themselves a reality check and respect places that hurt, said Yogi Elisa Liebelt. We want people to come here and be in the moment, explained Sparks. We want you to step in here and come for what union is. Beginning any new health program is a challenge in itself. The co-op makes it easier by providing all of the mats and other support materials for classes so that newcomers do not have to invest any money before they know if they like the practice. The yoga schedule and upcoming workshops can be found on their Facebook page or website, wildirisyoga.com. For more details call 208-308-7802. Technology earnings started pouring in last week with more misses than beats. As a result, shares have mostly moved down past the announcements. Here is a brief recap of the Intel INTC, Advanced Micro Devices AMD, Yahoo YHOO, Alphabet GOOGL, Microsoft MSFT and Netflix NFLX earnings stories plus other top news. Earnings Reports Intel: While Intel did report first-quarter earnings last week, what stole headlines was its decision to let go of 11% of the workforce. But the restructuring was probably in the cards given the persistent decline in the PC market, failure of the mobile business to take off and new headcount acquired through Altera. Management said that the rationale for the restructuring was Intels diversification away from the PC business: 40% of revenue and 60% of margin came from non-PC business in 2015. Thats probably why Intel shares recovered after the initial sell-off. Advanced Micro Devices: In AMDs case too, the earnings announcement wasnt the factor driving investor sentiments. Instead, the shares soared 52.3% on Friday upon the announcement of a licensing deal with the Chinese JV Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., Ltd. Under the deal, the company will license x86 chip technology (high performance processor and SoC) to the JV to facilitate the manufacture of servers within China for use by Chinese players. AMD expects to make around $300 million from the deal. AMD also delivered better-than expected results and guidance (although its still reporting losses) and promised to turn profitable on a non-GAAP basis in the second half of the year. Yahoo: The Internet companys results were a tale of two parts: One part, i.e. the sale of the company that management refused to comment on and the other part, i.e. Yahoos earnings, that came in higher than expected. Bloomberg said that offers for Yahoos core were in the $4-8 billion range and it was reported that bidders would be narrowed down to seven for the second round. As far as the results were concerned, the core Mavens business that seems to be what the excitement is about saw decelerating growth, search continued to struggle and headcount was taken down. Story continues Alphabet: The Alphabet story is still mostly about Google, which continues to grow strongly despite increased competition from multiple quarters and rising costs related to mobile. While overall results missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate, they were significantly hit by currency (54% of the business is generated internationally). The Other Bets piece remains an area of investment where losses increased while revenue continued to grow strongly. Around 60% of cash ($45 billion) is held overseas. While share repurchases continue, management focus remains on investing in the business because of significant growth potential in some capital-intensive Other Bets. Microsoft: Microsoft also missed both top and bottom line estimates, which naturally sent shares crashing. But of greater concern for investors was the apparent slowdown in the cloud business. Microsoft is still dependent on transactional revenue to a significant extent as a chunk of its software comes pre-loaded on devices. So when device sales fall, there is a negative impact on revenue. Management commentary about annuity revenue was encouraging, as it grew across segments. The business seems on track strategically, but there will be more clarity in the Dec 2016 quarter when enterprise adoption of Windows 10 begins. Netflix: Netflix reported a mixed quarter with earnings beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate on revenue that missed. Shares slumped in response to the guidance, which was much weaker than expected. The growth in international paid subscribers outpaced that in domestic, so the investment strategy appears justified. Lexmark In Buyout Talks Lexmark LXK is another hardware company looking for an exit from hardware. The company has been transitioning to a more software focused and MPS driven business. But these initiatives may not bring as much to shareholders as the $40.50 a share that a consortium of companies led by Apex Technology Co. Ltd. and PAG Asia Capital and including Legend Capital Management Co. Ltd is offering. Thats what management is purported to have thought because after the news became public and share prices responded appropriately, two law firms, namely Tripp Levy PLLC and Robbins Arroyo LLP are investigating the deal on behalf of shareholders. Both law firms point to the fact that the shares have traded higher at some point during the past year. This may not the only glitch, however, as the U.S. government has in the past not been too keen on transferring key technology to Chinese companies. Hardware has been a different story however, so we have to wait and see. Amazon Streaming Update Amazon AMZN has launched a new Prime Video subscription that offers consumers the option to stream Amazon instant video. Consumers now have the option of buying a video-only subscription for $8.99 a month or a full Prime subscription for $10.99 a month. The existing plan requires an upfront payment of $99 a year, which also includes video. Amazons reasons for this tiered pricing werent mentioned by the retailer itself, but there could be a number of reasons. The first would be that not all subscribers would be able or willing to make an upfront payment of $99, so the monthly pricing model would help to draw them into Amazons ecosystem. This would ultimately help to increase Prime memberships in a highly profitable way. The second could be an attempt to wrest some market share from Netflix, which charges $9.99 per subscription and is in the process of migrating customers to its premium service, which costs a buck more. Netflix and Amazon arent exactly comparable (they have different shows and original content Netflix appears more popular). But Amazon has gone slow and steady with its video plans, so this could be beneficial. Company Last Week Last 6 Months AAPL -3.79% -11.25% FB +0.84% +17.46% YHOO +2.66% +15.89% GOOGL -5.41% +7.99% MSFT -6.95% +10.42% INTC +0.56% -1.25% CSCO +0.90% +1.08% AMZN -0.86% +13.03% Other stories you might have missed- Corporate Apple Products Suspended in China: iTunes movies and books were suddenly taken offline last week, leading many customers to ask Apple (AAPL) for a refund. Neither Apple nor the government gave any reasons for the move, although Apple did say that the service would be restored as soon as possible. NYT citing unnamed sources conjectures that the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television had ordered the services offline. Apple Pay Reaches Singapore: Apple Pay has now become available for eligible American Express card holders in Singapore. The service is already available in the U.S., UK, China, Australia and Canada. Similar to other regions, the launch partner in Singapore was Amex although the iPhone maker is optimistic that credit and debit cards from Singapores most popular banks, including DSB, UOB and Standard Chartered will soon work with Apple Pay. GoDaddy Exec Joins Google: GoDaddys CTO and EVP of its cloud computing business group Elissa Murphy, is leaving the company to join Google. Her role at Google isnt public yet but its reasonable to surmise that it will be in Googles cloud division, which recently added Dianne Greene to head it. The cloud infrastructure segment that Greene is heading has a handful of very big players led by Amazon and then Microsoft. Google is a much later entrant, but is growing strongly according to market research reports. Amazon Fulfillment Center in Texas: Amazon is opening its sixth Texas fulfillment center in Fort Worth, Haslet. The company intends to employ a thousand people at the facility in addition to the 8K it already employs in Texas. The million square-foot facility will be used to pick, pack, and ship smaller customer items, such as books, electronics and toys. Alibaba Forms Strategic Alliance with New Zealand: Alibaba has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), according to which there will be formal measures to strengthen trade between the two countries. Alibaba will promote New Zealand brands in China and facilitate their sale in the country. Legal/Regulatory EUs Android Anti-Trust Probe: The EU has issued a charge sheet according to which it is investigating Googles practice of forging secret exclusive agreements with Android device makers so they pre-install 21 of its apps, but most importantly, its Play Store. Google has said that device makers have the liberty to install whatever apps they choose, but its also true that it compensates them for choosing its apps. The EU is targeting Google for its dominant position in three areas: general Internet search, licensable operating systems and app stores for Android-based devices. In short the coffin has been made to size. Google of course claims innocence. Google Books Scores Win: Google appears to have won the book scanning battle as the Supreme Court refused an appeal case by the Authors Guild alleging that Google should compensate writers for the significant portions (allegedly up to 78%) of the books it makes searchable. Google has digitally scanned books without permission that it says facilitates sales for the authors who however feel that they should be compensated for the money Google makes in the process. Some of these books are out of print, some in the public domain and some covered by copyright. A lower court (he Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) ruled last October that Googles activity was fair use and therefore, legal. New Technology/Products Facebook May Pay Some Users: Facebook is considering sharing income with some important verified users it would rather keep on its platforms. These are obviously celebs and other crowd-pullers that have the option of a number of other social networking platforms available today. Last week, the company did a survey of customers and it is currently sending out feelers to see how and if this could work. Amazon Signs Ebook Deal: Amazon has scored an important win in a segment that only Google and Microsoft has seen any success in. Last week, the company was reportedly awarded a $30 million contract to supply 1.1 million pupils across 18K public schools in New York City. The Panel for Educational Policy apparently approved the three-year contract on behalf of the Department of Education. M&A Microsoft and Google Shake Hands: Its significant that Microsoft and Google are adopting very similar ways of doing business, i.e. offering free licensable software and bundling products to induce customers to spend more with them. So its not surprising that the two have decided to bury the hatchet because of changing legal priorities according to Microsoft and to compete on the merits of our products, not in legal proceedings according to Google. At any rate, they are withdrawing all legal proceedings against each other and Microsoft has even withdrawn from FairSearch and ICOMP, two groups fighting antitrust wars against Google. Microsoft Interested In Mesosphere: Microsoft recently announced that its Azure Container Service, which uses Mesosphere technology is open to all. Mesosphere has also open sourced its data center operating system (DC/OS). Mesosphere is a cloud infrastructure startup with investors including HP Enterprise, Microsoft and the CIA. Microsoft claims that its container management system is more flexible than Googles Kubernetes (similar to DC/OS), which was open-sourced in 2014. At any rate, this is also good news for Mesosphere, which wouldnt have been able to compete with Google alone. Fiserv-Cisco: Box Ties with Cognizant: Box has tied with Amazon and IBM so its customers can store data locally while using its file sharing web application. Many countries, especially in Europe and Asia, now require companies to store their data locally, so this agreement makes it easier for Box to offer its services in these regions while also keeping its infrastructure costs down. The new solution is called Box Zones and the company says it has been working on it for the past three years. Some Numbers Some Other Companies That Reported Last Week: International Business Machines, Lam Research, Nielsen, VMware, F5 Networks, Checkpoint Some Companies Reporting This Week: AAPL, TWTR, FB, P, GRPN, AMZN, EXPE, GLW, TXN, EBAY, NXPI, FTNT, NCR, XLNX, SNDK, EFX, LNKD, WDC, JNPR, STX Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report NETFLIX INC (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis Report YAHOO! INC (YHOO): Free Stock Analysis Report MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report ADV MICRO DEV (AMD): Free Stock Analysis Report INTEL CORP (INTC): Free Stock Analysis Report ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report LEXMARK INTL (LXK): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research A Time Warner Cable sign and logo are seen on a Time Warner Cable store in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 26, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar - (Reuters) By Diane Bartz, Malathi Nayak and David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Monday gave antitrust approval to Charter Communications Inc's proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House networks, which would create the second-largest U.S. broadband provider and third-largest video provider. The Justice Department's approval carried conditions designed to protect competition, coming at a time when the pay television industry faces stagnation due to new competition from over-the-web rivals like Netflix and Hulu. The Federal Communications Commission must also approve the deal, and the agency's chairman on Monday said he, too, was prepared to put conditions on the merger aimed at promoting broadband competition. The Justice Department said that as part of its approval, Charter agreed to refrain from telling its content providers that they cannot also sell shows online. "Continued growth of OVDs (online video) promises to deliver more competitive choices and a greater ability for consumers to customize their consumption of video content to their individual viewing preferences and budgets," the Justice Department said in a court filing. "The emergence of OVDs threatens to upend the competitive landscape." At the FCC, Chairman Tom Wheeler said he circulated an order seeking approval of the merger with conditions that "will directly benefit consumers by bringing and protecting competition to the video marketplace and increasing broadband deployment." Wheeler said if approved the conditions would require Charter to extend high speed internet access to another two million customers within five years with one million served by a broadband competitor. Additionally, Charter would not be permitted to charge usage-based prices or impose data caps and would be prohibited from charging interconnection fees, including to online video providers, which deliver large volumes of internet traffic to broadband customers. He said the agreement would "demonstrate the viability of one broadband provider overbuilding another." Story continues It was not immediately clear when the FCC would decide. Both sets of conditions would be in place for seven years; Charter had sought three. Charter has valued the deal at $56.7 billion for Time Warner Cable, excluding debt, and $10.4 billion for Bright House Networks. Charter said it was pleased with both the Justice Department and FCC's actions. "We are confident New Charter will be a leading competitor in the broadband and video markets," the company said in a statement. Shareholders of both companies have approved the deal. The only other outstanding approval needed is from one last state, California. An administrative judge has recommended the state's public utilities commission approve the deal, which could come as early as May 12 Charter, backed by billionaire John Malone's Liberty Media Corp , had pursued TWC as far back as 2013. The two companies had acrimonious exchanges in 2013 and early 2014 that ended with Time Warner Cable rejecting unsolicited approaches by Charter and instead finding a white knight in Comcast Corp , the No. 1 U.S. cable services provider. Comcast's $45 billion bid, however, fell through a year ago, after U.S. regulators raised concerns. Following that, Charter and TWC resumed deal talks. In May last year, Charter said it would buy TWC in a cash-and-stock deal in order to compete with Comcast. Charter gained about 5 percent to close at $207.01 On Monday and Time Warner rose 4.1 percent to close at $209.63. While media outlets were fixated on the death of Prince this weekend, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren was in Ecuador to report on a deadly earthquake. Van Susteren didnt blink when TV airtime was filled with mourning over the music icon, she simply reported the humanitarian crisis via Facebook Live. There is an appetite for the Prince death. Everybody knew him, so of course everybody wanted to hear about it, Van Susteren told TheWrap. There are a lot of important stories so I try to grab one thats important that others arent looking at. A magnitude-7.8 quake struck Ecuador on the evening of Apr. 16, killing hundreds and leaving thousands homeless. It hasnt been covered to the extent of similar disasters, but Van Susteren understands the election and the death of Prince have tied up media bandwidth. Also Read: Did TMZ Pay to Get Its Big Prince Death Scoop? For many Americans, Ecuador is far away and very difficult to get to. Its hard for the media to get there, she said. Transportation wasnt an issue for the On the Record host, who hitched a ride on a relief organizations cargo plane. I hitchhike rides, so to speak. Whenever I know there is a plane going down and I can go down, I do it, said Van Susteren before explaining how shes used similar transportation methods to reach Iraq, North Korea and various refugee camps. Also Read: 11 Music Icons Who Died in 2016, From David Bowie to Prince (Photos) Van Susteren spent the majority of her Thursday show covering Princes death, but afterwards it was time to head to Ecuador for a quick, 25-hour trip intended to bring awareness to the crisis. Some of the footage will be shown on tonights edition of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. We caught up with Van Susteren to discuss Ecuador, Facebook Live and her thoughts on the way media outlets handled Princes death. TheWrap: Do you think Prince received too much coverage on cable news? Van Susteren: I have no problem with people going wall-to-wall on these stories because viewers want to see it and we have so many outlets for news. Its not like the old days. Wed have a very different discussion if we still only had NBC, CBS and ABC nightly newscasts. Then I would have a very different view. There are so many outlets; we can do all the news. Story continues How did your Ecuador trip come about? I knew Samaritans Purse had lots of planes going down. My whole goal is to get to the story. When I can get away to [cover] a story, I do it. How many people traveled to Ecuador with you? I only brought [Fox News producer] Griff Jenkins. I actually did a show live from North Korea with just a cameraperson and a producer. We really dont need all that stuff anymore. We can travel light. I can get a story done with an iPhone if I have to. Its not going to be pretty, but its going to communicate the news. Its also a question of space, a question of resources. Were committed to so many stories. Sometimes its just easier to travel light. Also Read: Vox Turns to Facebook to Publish New Gadget Blog How did you utilize Facebook Live to help tell the story? Im in the middle of writing a book on social media so Im always trying to find new ways to get news out fast. I have my eye on everything. I did a Facebook Live from my studio about a month ago, so Im aware of the technology. I walk around with two cell phones, two different services, because I never know where in the world Im going to be and Im always worried some carrier wont have service. All I did was tap on the app for Facebook. I found some Internet service, believe it or not. I knew I could just log on and do a live report. It goes live to my Facebook and I had my other iPhone so as people were posting comments, I could actually look down at my other phone and read them. Not only does it broadcast live, it records it and embeds it in case anyone wants to watch it later. Its incredible technology. Its going to revolutionize everything. Its so easy. [Van Susteren made sure to mention that Periscope offers similar technology] Is this the future of news? It is so the future of news. People need to figure out how to monetize it. Fox pays me a salary and has built up my credibility and my experience. Im one of the few anchors who has been sent all around the world. Fox has a vested interest in doing things, but this [Facebook Live] is free. How are you going to monetize it? Thats the issue for the future. When will news be delivered like this on a regular basis? My guess is that people are going to spot this. I dont think anyone else has done this. This is breaking news on an iPhone to Facebook. I dont know of any other news organization or any other anchor that has done this. I think once people see this, the flood gates will open. Now, there is always the problem that people are going to use bad judgment. Thats natural. This is not edited. This is live. Also Read: YouTube Antes Up on Facebook With 360-Degree Live Streaming Video What were the differences between the media presence in Ecuador and other crises youve covered? When I went to Haiti in 2010, you could hardly find a place to set up a live shot because we were tripping all over each other. The magnitude of the death was considerably higher, but death is death. People are suffering. When I was down in Ecuador, I didnt see any other news organizations. There were very few relief organizations. This is a country in great trouble. Did anyone ask you about Donald Trump or Prince when you were in Ecuador? No. Theyre trying to survive. Related stories from TheWrap: Fox News Channel Launches Division Focused on Long-Form Specials CNN Wins Prime Time Demo, Fox News Grabs Most Total Viewers Fox News Wraps Up Historic First Quarter With Victory PARIS Perched high up in his towering armchair, the excitable Seriesmaniac Series Manias new festival trophy, as created by Parisian design studio Hartland Villa certainly seemed to have his extremely wide eyes on shows from all over the globe. Voted for by an eclectic jury led by The Sopranos showrunner David Chase and comprising Israeli actress Yael Abecassis, Anglo-Irish-French actress Amira Casar, British screenwriter Tony Grisoni and French screenwriter Fanny Herrero, Series Manias top Grand Prix went to gritty crime series El Marginal from Argentina, created by Sebastian Ortega and produced by Underground Producciones, in which an ex-cop goes undercover at a California jail to infiltrate a gang that was responsible for the kidnapping of the daughter of a senior judge. El Marginals top Series Mania adds to the statute trove of Underground, the company behind some of Telefes biggest critical and ratings hits, such as Graduados and Historias de un Clan. It is also recompense for Television Publica Argentina, the Buenos Aires pubcaster which is making some of the most neo-premium TV dramas in Argentina, backing both El marginal and the Lucia Puenzo co-directed Cromo. Television Publica has been pushing hard on drama since 2009. Elsewhere, beyond Mr. Robot, Series Mania multiple plaudits prized The Kettering Incident, the first TV drama fully-financed by Australian pay-TV giant Foxtel, Midnight Sun, the title which, of all series backed by Vivendi-owned Canal Plus this year, looks to have the biggest chance of breaking out internationally and Belgian Noir, with all three of its flagship titles Beau Sejour, The Break and Public Enemy in the prize mix. Zipping over a mere 10,000km, the Special Jury Prize went to Foxtels The Kettering Incident. Created by Victoria Madden and Vincent Sheehan, the eight-part series follows the story of a doctor who returns to her Tasmanian roots and finds herself caught up in the cases of two girls who mysteriously disappeared in identical circumstances some 15 years apart. Story continues Series Manias Audience Award, for which all series were eligible, drew surprised murmurs when it was announced at a prize ceremony Sunday evening that the honor was to be shared. From Belgium came deMENSENs fantasy noirer Beau Sejour, created by Nathalie Basteyns, Kaat Beels, Sanne Nuyens, and Bert Van Dael, the highest-concept of Belgian procedurals in which a teen girls ghost investigates her own murder, perpetrated, it seems, by a member of a close-knit community in a run-down, wane corner of Belgium. Beau Sejours representatives took to the stage at a prize ceremony Sunday night alongside those from Midnight Sun, a French-Swedish production created made by Lagarderes Atlantique Productions and Swedens Nice Drama, two of Europes highest profile high-end drama producers, for Frances Canal Plus and Swedish pubcaster SVT. Created and directed by Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein, two of the main writers on The Bridge, it turns on an overseas murder case which takes a French cop (Leila Bekhti) to the wilds of Swedens Lapland. Series creators spent much of the week telling Variety about the luxury multi-part limited series, especially if premium TV cast, gave to explore character. If its first two episodes are anything to go by, Marlind and Stein delivered on that premise at Midnight Sun, in a procedural which cut insistently from the investigation to not only stunning helicopter shots of the Lapland landscape to the personal drama of the Bekhtis character who has abandoned her own son, and that of her odd-couple Swedish investigator, a feckless public prosecutor, half Sami and gay, despised by his own police force, a misfit looking for a sense of self-worth. As chosen by the International Press Jury, Best French-Language Series went to The Break (La Treve), a dark premonitory procedural set in a backwards backwoods village in the Ardennes, created by Benjamin dAoust, Matthieu Donck, and Stephane Bergmans, and directed by Donck in their very-first run at TV fiction. Best Actress in a French-Language Series went to Laurence Leboeuf, for her performance in the Canadian series Marche a lombre, and Best Actor in a French-Language Series to Angelo Bison for the Belgian series Public Enemy, created by Antoine Bours, Gilles de Voghel, Matthieu Frances, and Christopher Yates, and directed by Frances and Gary Seghers. A child killer procedural, public Enemy had already topped MipTVs first MipDrama Screenings in early April. The French TV Series Critics Association presented a new award this year, chosen from the American series in the selection. The winner was USAs Mr. Robot, adding to its Best Drama Golden Globe, created by Sam Esmail and co-directed with Niels Arden Oplev. The Bloggers Award for Best Series went to NSU German History X, created by Gabriela Sperl and directed by Christian Schwochow and another sign, after Deutschland 83 and an upbeat sales reception for ZDF Enterprises Kudamm 56 at MipTV of a revival in higher-profile German drama with international market prospects. Finally, the Webseries Award was nabbed by Dating Dali, a Spanish romantic comedy web-series-come-novel with Dali, just about to make LAge dOr with Bunuel, time traveling to the 21st century. Alonso Laporta directs; Laporta and Gon Alonso produce. Related stories Series Mania: 'Fidelio' Helmer Lucie Borleteau On Her TV Debut 'Cannabis' Series Mania: Yellow Bird Impresses With Dark Urban Fantasy Thriller 'Hidden' Series Mania: Vicki Madden, Vincent Sheehan on 'The Kettering Incident' The home where Jose Angel was found a week after he had died. OSCAR CORRAL It was one of Jose Angels 3,544 friends from the social networks who phoned the police in Vigo, Galicia, to report the 51-year-olds absence from Facebook and WhatsApp. Acquainted only with his online persona, the woman was unaware he lived under a mountain of garbage that he added to every evening after making his rounds of the local dumpsters; nor that his home was so stuffed with trash that he had to climb in and out of it through a window. The story was widely reported in the northwestern port city, but no one has claimed his body. The local authorities gave him a paupers funeral, and the only trace of his existence is a Facebook page and a small cross in the Pereiro cemetery with the number 113 on it. The authorities in Madrid receive around 300 complaints a year about people hoarding trash in their homes Jose Angel suffered from what is known as Diogenes Syndrome, a condition that drives people to compulsively hoard garbage. Last January, a 62-year-old man from Asturias, along with an 84-year-old woman in Caceres, were found in similar circumstances. At the beginning of this month, emergency services were called out to the home of a 79-year-old woman in Erandio, near Bilbao, who they assumed to be dead due to the stench from inside the property, although she died just minutes after they arrived. What made Jose Angel, 51, different to other sufferers was his online activity. Of the handful of people with DS who are found dead each year in Spain, some die of starvation or illness, while others are sometimes buried alive when the garbage they amass collapses on top of them. In winter, it is not unusual for sufferers to light cardboard and wooden boxes in an effort to keep warm, sometimes setting off fires in their homes. Typically isolated, most sufferers are not found for days or weeks after their death, and sometimes the authorities are only alerted months later. This can make it hard to identify bodies, which will often be in an advanced state of decomposition. In 2012, a 70-year-old woman was found in A Coruna two months after her death, partially eaten by rats. Sign up for our newsletter EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. In most cases, overstretched social workers are aware of people in the community with DS, but admit they are able to do little to help sufferers or to provide practical assistance to neighbors who must put up with the hygiene problems sufferers can create. According to the Madrid College of Property Administrators, 60% of inquiries by residents associations are about what to do with neighbors with DS: the authorities in Madrid receive around 300 complaints a year about people hoarding trash in their homes. In 2010, the authorities in Almeria entered 34 homes filled with refuse, while four DS sufferers died after being admitted to hospital. A 57-year-old man from Malaga died in hospital the same year after being rescued from his burning home. The local council had failed to have him admitted to a psychiatric unit, although it was able to empty the apartment and repaint it, however, within a few years he had filled it again. DS sufferers who start fires to keep warm pose grave problems for their neighbors. In March last year, a 51-year-old DS sufferer set a building in Palma ablaze, which took firefighters five hours to put out. Most sufferers live alone and have no family contact. Psychiatrists say they typically have low self-esteem and they live in a state of perpetual self-neglect. In some extreme cases, DS sufferers hoard pets as well as trash. In the small town of Rianxo, in A Coruna, the local authorities waded through tons of refuse to rescue two elderly women and 140 sick dogs, more than half of which had to be put down. One of the women lived in a bed with the animals piled in beside her. The other woman was blind and was still waiting for some form of support she was entitled to by law years later. English version by Heather Galloway. The king (r) with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at a recent award ceremony. Javier Lizon (EFE) King Felipe VI will on Monday begin the third and last round of talks with Spanish politicians to determine whether there is a last-minute chance to form a government, or whether new elections have to be called. Efforts by parties to reach governing deals following the inconclusive elections of December 20 have proven fruitless, and the deadline for the dissolution of parliament is May 2. The Spanish monarch will see eight political leaders on Monday, out of a total of 14 who are penciled in to discuss the political situation with him. Podemos and its regional associates also seem more interested in holding new elections But it is unlikely that the meetings will yield any surprises. The three best-performing groups at the last election the Popular Party (PP), Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos, who will all see Felipe VI on Tuesday seem unwilling to make any more efforts to craft alliances following the failure of their recent attempts. The PP, which earned the most seats (123, but far from the 176 required for an overall majority), is politically isolated and has failed to attract a single vote of confidence from the opposition. Its strategy from the beginning has been a passive one: it is simply waiting for a new election that, polls suggest, would bring the PP added representation in parliament. The PSOE managed an alliance with the emerging group Ciudadanos, but their combined seats are not enough for a majority and other parties refuse to lend their weight to the project. Socialist leaders refuse to associate themselves with the PP and its corrupt image, and balk at the idea of a deal with Podemos, whose program includes greater public spending and a self-determination referendum for Catalonia, among other incompatibilities. It is unclear whether a new vote would benefit the party. Sign up for our newsletter EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. Meanwhile, Podemos and its regional associates also seem more interested in holding new elections and are toying with the idea of running in tandem with the United Left. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias had initially made overtures to the Socialist Party, but his demand to be made deputy prime minister and to receive several specific ministerial portfolios cooled relations between himself and PSOE chief Pedro Sanchez. Iglesias also refuses to enter into any alliance that includes Spains other emerging party, Ciudadanos, even though both started out with a similar message of change against the political establishment. Ciudadanos has emerged in its supporters' view as the party that has made the greatest efforts to save voters from a new election by offering to mediate between the PP and PSOE, and by entering into an alliance with the latter. Although the reform party has a weak structure outside the big cities, surveys suggest that it could do well at a new election, which would be held on June 26. English version by Susana Urra. Gustavo Castro is the only witness to the murder of Berta Caceres. SAUL RUIZ More information Asi mataron a Berta Caceres It was angular, shiny and big. He could make out nothing else, except that the weapon was just two meters away and pointing at his face. Gustavo Castro threw himself to one side of the bed and instinctively covered himself with his hands. The gunman was going to kill him; he could see it in his eyes and from the way he fingered the trigger. The bullet, when it came, scraped the knuckle of his left index finger and caught his left ear, missing his forehead by a fraction. His ear bled so copiously his killer believed him to be dead. Close by, in the next room, the Mexican ecologist and sociologist heard a desperate struggle that ended with three gunshots. By the time he got there, Berta Caceres was lying on the floor bleeding. He scooped her up but minutes later she died in his arms. It was 11.40pm on March 2, 2016: one of the most celebrated human rights and environmental activists in Latin America had just been murdered at her home in La Esperanza, Honduras. The murder of Caceres came as no surprise: it was public knowledge in Honduras that she had made enemies who wanted her out of the way The murder of Caceres came as no surprise: it was public knowledge in Honduras that she had made enemies who wanted her out of the way. All the same, her death triggered a wave of international outrage, prompting the United States, the United Nations and the Vatican to all call for an immediate investigation. But more than six weeks later, no details have been released by the Honduran authorities. This lack of transparency is typical in this impoverished Central American country with a long history of human rights abuses and political instability, and where 90% of crimes go unpunished. Gustavo Castro is now Caceres supporters last hope for justice. As the only witness, he has decided to speak out. Castro, 51, landed at San Pedro Sula airport on March 1, the day before Berta Caceres was murdered. As director of Otros Mundos Chiapas (Other Worlds Chiapas), he planned to give a workshop to members of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh), founded by Caceres. The pair had worked together in the past, but it was five years since they had seen each other. After spending one night on the Copinh premises, Berta invited Castro to her home in La Esperanza so he could use her internet connection and speak to his family. Before that, they visited her mother, a well-known activist in Honduras, and ate at El Fogon restaurant. They then walked to Bertas home, a small wooden house set amid waste ground ringed by a wire fence prompting Castro to remark to his friend, Berta, this house is not safe. Everybody in Honduras knew that Berta Caceres life was in danger. Her campaigns had angered powerful sections of Honduran society Everybody in Honduras knew that Berta Caceres life was in danger. Her campaigns for the rights of the indigenous Lenca group to which she belonged, along with her environmental activities, had angered powerful sections of Honduran society. Her most recent campaign had marked her out yet again. Caceres had been leading protests against the building of the Agua Zarca dam, part of a huge internationally funded hydropower project on the Gualcarque river, an area that is sacred to local people. Her strategy of mobilizing local communities had begun to work. Both the World Bank and the Chinese state company Sinohydro have already pulled out. But local construction company firm DESA has stood its ground. For a while it looked as though Caceres would win the battle. Her leadership and resistance tactics earned her international recognition and the US Goldman Environmental Prize. This made her an even greater thorn in the side of powerful business interests. One colleague from Copinh had already been killed during the campaign, while others have been tortured or injured. The mother of four was an obvious target in a country where, according to Global Witness, 111 environmental activists were killed between 2002 and 2014. Recognizing the threat she was facing, the Inter-American commission on Human Rights ordered her protection, which meant the Honduran police should have been guarding her. They should have been, but they werent. The gunman looked around the room quickly to see if anyone else was there and then fired at Castro On the night of March 2, Castro and Caceres arrived by car at the isolated house in La Esperanza where, as Castro recalls, It was completely silent. They sat on the verandah to chat and Castro smoked a couple of cigarettes. Around 11pm, they said goodnight and went to bed. Castro lay on his bed with his computer. He was putting the finishing touches to the workshop he would give the next day when he heard a loud noise. He thought something like a cupboard had fallen over. Then he heard Berta shout, Whos there? The killers had come in through the kitchen. They knew the house well. One of them went to Bertas room and the other appeared before Castro. They didnt realize I would be there, says Castro. They were expecting to find Berta alone because her daughter had left for Mexico City the day before. It was all planned. The gunman looked around the room quickly to see if anyone else was there and then fired at Castro. I was saved by a fraction of a second. If I had moved slightly before or after, Id be dead. Berta Caceres wasnt so lucky. She took three shots to the stomach and fell to the floor, though still she managed to summon the strength to call out to Castro. When I got there, she was dying. She asked me to phone her former husband to let him know what had happened but I couldnt manage the keys on the phone. I said, Bertita, Bertita, dont go. But she didnt last longer than a minute. She died in my arms. Scared the gunmen would return, Castro began making phone calls. It was two hours before help arrived; first, a friend, and later, police and journalists. The authorities immediately applied a pre-trial confidentiality order, hoping the case would eventually be forgotten. Just 12 days later, another member of Copinh was killed. Castro and a number of organizations have demanded DESA, the local company behind the Agua Zarca project, be investigated. But so far no charges have been brought, and it is quite likely they never will be. Castro says he is aware of what he is up against, but has decided to fight. Berta didnt die for a river. Her work wasnt limited to local issues. She died for something were all responsible for; the biodiversity of the planet. We cant turn our backs on her cause. English version by Heather Galloway. Barcelona's old quarter is the setting for this one-off issue of The Walking Dead. PANEL SYNDICATE If youve ever wondered what was happening in the rest of the world while America was being overrun by the Walking Dead, graphic novelists Marcos Martin and Brian K. Vaughan have the answer at least in Spain. Picture the scene; nighttime in Barcelona, the silence of the old Gothic quarter is broken by a bloodcurdling scream that echoes around its narrow alleys. Something or someone is on the prowl, hungry for human flesh: death is not the worst fate if you live in the Catalan capital. This is the beginning of The Walking Dead: Alien, which the Spanish artist and US writer came up with after the graphic novels creator, Robert Kirkman, gave them the green light. It has all the hallmarks of the original The Walking Dead but is strictly a one-off. On Martin and Vaughans website, Panel Syndicate, fans can see how the apocalyptic scenario goes down this side of the Atlantic in 31 black-and-white pages. As a Barca fan, the idea of depicting Madrid overrun by zombies really appealed Co-writer Marcos Martin It follows the main storyline of The Walking Dead and there is a direct connection to the main series, Martin tells EL PAIS. But the scenario is completely different, and has new characters. For anyone who has never seen or read the original, it stands alone. But for fans of the original, there are things they will recognize and be able to connect to. Martin and Vaughan say their Barcelona-based episode is a way of bringing an additional angle to the story, in the same way that Star Wars or The Matrix use videogames and other mediums. For those who havent yet encountered the zombies of The Walking Dead on their TV screens, the story begins with a virus that wipes out almost the entire population of the United States. The dead rise up in search of human flesh while the survivors risk losing their humanity as they struggle to survive. It was Vaughans idea to set The Walking Dead in Spain. An old friend of Kirkman, Vaughan suggested taking the saga across the Atlantic. What started out as a joke turned into a serious four-month project. Kirkman gave Vaughan and Martin complete creative freedom and 100% of any profits they make, but has kept the copyright to their work. Meanwhile, Kirkman is publishing a print version of Martin and Vaughans online comic The Private Eye that has earned them various Eisners the Oscars of the comic world. Once Kirkman agreed to Vaughans idea, Vaughan pitched it to Martin, suggesting they set it in Madrid. Martin, however, wasnt convinced. As a Barca fan, the idea of depicting Madrid overrun by zombies really appealed, says Martin. But Barcelona was much easier for me to do. Ive drawn Batman, Spiderman and Daredevil but this time I felt more pressure than usual, admits Martin. On top of which I had to give some idea of Barcelona without turning into a tour guide. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. All that Martin will say about the project is that the main characters are a Spanish-American couple and that there will be no sequel. Supposedly, the story begins and ends within 31 pages, but as we all know, in the world of zombies, there is no end. English version by Heather Galloway. Federico Garcia Lorca at Columbia University in New York in 1929. FUNDACION GARCIA LORCA Spanish authorities are seeking to ensure that the creative legacy of Federico Garcia Lorca will stay in Spain. Faced with the threat of seeing part of his work sold or divided up to pay off a debt estimated at 10 million by the Spanish Culture Ministry, the acting central government and Madrid regional officials have declared the writers entire oeuvre a Bien de Interes Cultural BIC, or Cultural Asset. This legal status aims to afford protection from the mismanagement detected at the foundation that is in charge of preserving his legacy, the Fundacion Garcia Lorca. In just one week, state secretary for culture Jose Maria Lassalle and the regional administration, headed by Popular Party politician Cristina Cifuentes, have decided to step in and prevent the potential dispersal of Lorcas work by foundation managers desperate to raise cash. The decision was first relayed to the Lorca family and to the foundation trustees, in what constitutes another dramatic chapter in a story that began in June 2015. It was then that Laura Garcia Lorca, the poets niece and head of the foundation, filed a complaint against her financial officer, Juan Tomas Martin, accusing him of misappropriating funds and forging documents. There was a project underway to build a brand new Garcia Lorca Center in Granada, his home province, to house a legacy that currently sits inside the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where Lorca was once a resident student. The new facilities were scheduled to open on June 5. But construction company Ferrovial claimed 3 million in late payments from the consortium in charge of the project, which is made up of the Culture Ministry, the Andalusian government, the city of Granada and the provincial authority, besides the foundation itself. Later came a chain of defaults and unpaid bills, and questions regarding the final destination of a generous gift of 4 million that the government of Norway had made toward the project. International funds Besides the funds granted by various Spanish administrations for the construction of the Federico Garcia Lorca Center, there are international gifts that were apparently unaffected by the alleged financial mismanagement, yet may have been damaged in terms of the projects reputation. Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland donated 4.8 million to pay for building equipment and programming expenses. This money was managed directly by the consortium, not by the foundation, and remains untouched by the scandal. But ministry sources said that Norwegian authorities have expressed great concern over the situation and asked for a quick resolution to the problem. Part of the reason why national and regional authorities in Spain want to act fast is to prevent any damage to the poets or the countrys international reputation. The recent arrest of the mayor of Granada in a real estate corruption raid, a fact that did little to allay investor fears, was another determining factor in the decision to move fast. Of the 27 million that the foundation manager handled throughout the years, 4.4 million remain unaccounted for, according to the consortium governing councils calculations. Ever since the problem surfaced, there has been a flurry of negotiations between foundation trustees, government representatives and the companies involved in order to find a good faith solution, said Culture Ministry sources. But suggestions by some of the parties to the effect that part of Lorcas legacy could be sold off to repay debt set alarm bells ringing at government levels. The Culture Ministry has taken the first step, but Spanish law mandates that it is the government of the region where the legacy is kept who must execute the specific measures that will preserve it from division. While this role currently falls to the Madrid region, authorities in Granada have also been informed, as that is the final destination of the work of the author of Poet in New York and Blood Wedding. Federico Garcia Lorca, [Luis] Bunuel, (Salvador) Dali and [Pablo] Picasso are fundamental names in 20th-century Spanish culture. We cannot allow this legacy to escape us, much less put it at risk, said Lassalle. Anunciada Fernandez de Cordova, head of the Madrid Office of Culture and Tourism, said that a comprehensive inventory of Lorcas legacy is being drawn up. This newspaper was unable to reach the poets family for comment. The Garcia Lorca Foundation was created in 1982, and has been housed within the Residencia de Estudiantes since 1986. Madrid regional premier Cristina Cifuentes said that by declaring this archive a BIC, it goes from the basic protection level enjoyed by the documents to date to the very top protection level. Thousands of items The collection contains 46 original drawings by Lorca, 2,343 handwritten pages with prose, plays and poetry, a significant photo archive with more than 900 inventoried images, musical material including pieces written by Lorca himself, and 300 more musical pieces that he collected. Lorcas personal library is also part of this legacy. It contains an important collection of literary magazines from his era, around 125 books with personal dedications by their authors, another 4,624 catalogued books and over 500 still pending registration; and the authors correspondence, which comprises 176 letters to his family and over 2,000 pages of letters addressed to him. The fund also has copies of all the editions ever printed of Lorcas work in Spanish and in several translations. Lorca also collected art, and owned work by Salvador Dali, Ramon Gaya, Ismael de la Serna, Rafael Barradas, Manuel Angeles Ortiz, Jose Caballero and Benjamin Palencia, among others. Other items in the collection include thousands of press clippings from Spanish and foreign newspapers, and a significant number of books and articles about his life and work. The Lorca legacy totals more than 19,000 items. English version by Susana Urra. Donald Trump during an interview last Thursday. EFE More information Cruz y Kasich se coordinan a la desesperada para frenar a Trump Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich have agreed to coordinate their efforts in three primaries in a final attempt to bolster their numbers and keep frontrunner Donald Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the partys nomination. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans, Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation. Cruz will focus on Indiana and leave Oregon and New Mexico to Kasich. Indiana will produce 30 delegates for the winner on May 3. Polls show that Cruz and Trump are in a technical tie in the state. The last-minute move brings together two candidates who represent opposing sides within the Republican Party Kasich campaign manager John Weaver published a statement saying his team would return the favor. Kasich will only stump in the two small western states where he is most likely to do well. After a landslide victory in New York on April 19, Trump finally has the nomination within reach. Republican leaders were hoping that the real estate mogul would fail to win enough delegates during the primaries so that each state could reassign its delegate votes to another candidate at the convention instead of confirming him. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the Party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee, Weaver said in a statement. The last-minute move brings together two candidates who represent opposing sides within the Republican Party. Ted Cruz is an ultra-conservative backed by the religious right who criticizes the so-called establishment, a position that has put him at odds with nearly everyone in his party. Kasich is the more moderate of the Republican contenders. While Cruz calls for deportation of undocumented immigrants and denies them a path to legal residence and citizenship, Kasich is open to the latter. Sign up for our newsletter! EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. Donald Trump responded to the Cruz-Kasich strategy via social media before publishing a formal statement saying; It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination. Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are, Trump said in a press release on Sunday night. The property magnate described the primaries system as totally rigged but said he would rise above it: This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail! English version by Dyane Jean Francois. SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Google Ad Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression Armenian Police Chief involved in incident near Tsitsernakaberd Memorial New Armenia public salvation front says an incident occurred between one of its members and Chief of the Armenian Police near the Armenian Genocide Memorial on April 24. "An incident happened between Gagik Yeghiazaryan, a member of the New Armenia Public Salvation Front, and a group of police officers led by Chief of the Armenian Police Vladimir Gasparyan, near the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. On his way back from the Tsitsernakaberd memorial, Yeghiazaryan noticed citizens taking the route to Arzumanyan street without any obstacles and decided to follow suit as his car was parked in that street. However, he was soon stopped by a group of policemen who ordered him to return to the usual way meant for citizens. After Yeghiazaryan said they were restricting his right of free movement and showed other citizens freely heading to Arzumanyan street, the policemen said only representatives of delegations could go that way. When Gagik Yeghiazaryan again asked why they were creating additional obstacles for citizens and putting discrimination between delegations and citizens, another group of police officers led by Vladimir Gasparyan approached him. Not only did the Chief of the Armenian Police talk to Mr Yeghiazaryan in the language of threats but he also used expressions which do not fit a policeman whose primary task is to defend the law and the rights of citizens," the opposition group said in a statement. Harut Sassounian calls Obama 'deceitful president' (video) Publisher and editor-in chief of The California Courier Harut Sassounian says U.S. President Barack Obama should feel ashamed for not keeping his campaign pledge and calling the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks genocide. Shame on him [Obama] for not honouring his [2008] campaign promise! This was his last chance to pronounce the word but he stopped short of labeling the 1915 events genocide. A deceitful president will end his term the way his predecessors did, Sassounian said on April 25 during a meeting with media representatives. At the same time, Mr Harut Sassounian stresses that the United States recognized the massacre as genocide long ago irrespective of Obamas move. Speaking about the international recognition of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Artsakh), the publisher of the oldest independent English-language Armenian newspaper in the United States said seven U.S. states have already recognized the independence of Artsakh. Many ask today why Armenia does not recognize the independence of Artsakh. Serzh Sargsyan has announced that Armenia will recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh if Azeris attack Karabakh. The moment has come and besides recognizing the independence of Karabakh we should also announce that Arsakh is part of Armenia, Mr Sassounian said. HAK wants to suspends its participation in Electoral Code debates (video) At the start of the four-day session of the National Assembly, Levon Zurabyan, Head of the Armenian National Congress (HAK) faction, said the discussions on the draft Electoral Code will get underway in Yerevan starting April 25. They are believed to have a serious influence in terms of restoring public confidence in electoral processes. The 4+4+4 format did not work and we did not reach a consensus. The HAK does not find it appropriate to start discussions which will be undoubtedly accompanied by political tensions as we see that the authorities have not shown any sign that they are ready to meet halfway with the public, Zurabyan said. Vice-Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov praised the opinion of those lawmakers and NGO representatives who stress the need for compromises. Let me disagree with your words. We likewise feel sorry that we failed to reach a consensus but the majority in favor of compromises. Let us distinguish between compromise and ultimatum. We should be ready to constructive proposals, continue our work towards having a good Electoral Code. We still have the desire to listen to you and we think you also want to listen to our opinion. heated discussions in Armenian Parliament: Female lawmakers debate over situation in Karabakh (video) Zaruhi Postanjyan, a member of the Heritage Party faction, today repeated her concerns about the situation in the Karabakh conflict zone. She insisted that the authorities of Armenia and Karabakh meet with parliamentarians to discuss the situation at the Line of Contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijani armed forces. Hermine Naghdalyan, Vice-Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly, replied to Postanjyan saying people in the National Assembly are not less patriot [than Postanjyan] and such statements are just a a grist for the mill of Azerbaijans propaganda machine. Eduard Sharmazanov, another Voce-Speaker of the National Assembly, said he did not think the NKR authorities should arrive in Armenia to present a report on the situation at the frontlines. You should go and meet them in Karabakh - a move you have already done. In reply, Zaruhi Postanjyan said one must be blind and dumb not to see the new situation around him. Those, who keep silent and sit idle, are playing into the hands of Azerbaijan. We cannot simply take and cede territories [to Azerbaijan] or deploy peacekeepers. Thanks to our policy and our armed forces, Azerbaijan is obliged to honour truce in Karabakh. Your worries and concerns are needless, Mrs Postanjyan. There is no need to raise your voice here because it does not add your charm, as my colleague Eduard Sharmazanov told you once. You will receive all necessary information that you need. One more thing: you neednt come in breaking the open door, said Hermine Naghdalyan. Vagharshak Harutyunyan: It was senseless to lose more soldiers for 5 kilometers (video) Like Armenians, Azerbaijanis are also fighting with weapons and military hardware produced in the 80s, a former Defense Minister of Armenia said on April 25. About 70 percent of their weapons were produced in the 1980s. But I do not think that if military hardware was produced in the 80s it necessary speaks to its poor quality, Vagharshak Harutyunyan said today. In reply to a journalists observation that a ceasefire was announced at an inappropriate moment when the Armenian troops were going forward amid the escalation of the conflict, Mr Harutyunyan said those are only emotional talks. Many said the same thing in 1994 but when you consider the military aspect of the situation you understand that the agreement on ceasefire was a right decision then. As for the latest flare up of the violence, I must say that no one prevented us from advancing but it was senseless to lose more soldiers for 5 kilometers, he said. Levon Hayrapetyan lost consciousness in a Moscow prison (video) The condition of Russian-Armenian businessman Levon Hayrapetyan, who was sentenced to four years in prison earlier in April in a trial on fraud charges in Moscow, deteriorated abruptly on April 24. He even lost consciousness in a Moscow prison and was taken to the medical division. We are witnessing something doctors and lawyers have been warning for some time now. a person with poor health cannot and must not be kept in prison. His detention contradicts all humanitarian principles. Hayrapetyan, who is known to have made investments and carried out a number of charity programs for Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, suffers from cancer, had four infarctions and two strokes and other health problems. He was first arrested in 2014, but in about a year his lawyers managed to get him placed under house arrest pending the investigation and trial. On April 14, Hayrapetyan was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to four years in prison. He has denied defrauding the mother of Russian ex-senator Igor Izmestyev of $700,000. This is nonsense to charge a person based on the testimony of a man [Izmestyev] who is serving a life sentence for numerous murders. The judge did not even issue a suspended sentence for the Karabakh-born philanthropist, given his deteriorating health. Hayrapetyan needs to be placed under medical supervision. He is in a critical condition and his poor health will not allow him to endure prison conditions. Assembly of the Armenians in Europe: Ottoman Empire is internationally responsible for Armenian Genocide and must be held accountable The Assembly of the Armenians in Europe has made an appeal to the UN, EU and to the Organizations of the International Community Turkey as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire is internationally responsible for Armenian Genocide and will be held accountable Many are the great and small unresolved problems facing mankind today. One of them, still remains as the heaviest burden on the human conscience, as the first genocide of the 20th Century perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks (1915-21) against the Armenian nation, sacrificing/slaughtering over 1, 5 million Armenians hundreds of thousands at a time were uprooted from their ancestral homes in Armenia, forced onto death marches to the Syrian deserts (of Deir-El-Zor, part of the vast Ottoman Empire) thirsting and starving on the way The civilized Young Turks plundered and looted the material and cultural wealth created by the ancient Armenians over thousands of years in their native lands, which today incredibly still remain occupied by the inheritors of the Ottoman Turks, the modern Turkish fascist State. The latter continues precisely the same policies of genocide visibly and invisibly in new forms and under new disguises. Last year much of the world marked the centenary of the Armenian genocide demanding recognition, justice and compensation. Notably, the European Parliament unanimously passed a commemorative resolution on 15 April 2015, and invited the European Commission to join in the commemorations. The genocide of the Armenians is still being stubbornly negated by the Turkish State massive depositions and monetary resources (government bribes to individuals and arms manufacturing companies) are being wasted, totally immoral political decisions are taken daily, to escape responsibility and liability in the destruction of international policy obligations. The Turks could not achieve they did not even attempt to do so the moral heights of the German people. The Jewish Holocaust did find its resolution though Germany, and the whole world acknowledged the crime and compensated the Jewish survivors, and rightly so. The Jewish nation received back its country and historical fatherland, while the millennia old Armenia still remains today occupied, conquered, empty of its native nation! After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many nations and peoples liberated their countries creating national states, except for the Armenians the perversity of global war-weariness was such that, as if punishment for the enormous contribution the Armenians had made to world civilization and cultures, slaughter, massacres and genocide fell to their lot The present rulers of Turkey, ignoring all the firm objective historical facts, conduct negative denialist policies, thus proving unequivocally before the very eyes of the international community that their aims have not altered. they have learnt nothing from history Turkey and now his younger brother Azerbaijan has the common aim and intents to put an end to the existence of Armenians in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkeys openly supported Four Day War (2-5 April) of Azerbaijanis aggression against the peaceful people of Nagorno-Karabakh gives no doubt to above mentioned intentions. The Azerbaijani government has been busily buying up the deadliest weapons its oil-rich money just to seek revenge against Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, relative to the size of the American Presidential map of Armenia (known as the Wilsonian Armenia of 300,000 km2), the stamp-sized Republic of Armenia (a mere 30,000 km2) saved from genocidal extinction, today is squeezed between the same two genocidal states of Turkey and Azerbaijan, who lose no brotherly occasion in international diplomacy to shamelessly threaten their neighbour literally, intent on swallowing up the leftovers of their historical crime. The current government of Turkey headed by Erdogan showing its horrible face declare his intends to reestablish the Ottoman Empire, which means once again atrocities and genocide against all non-Turkish ethnic nationalities and peoples especially Armenians and The Kurds. The genocide of the Armenians was perpetrated before the eyes of the civilized Europeans, unfortunately, to our great regret, even by their permission, now the civilized world is silent. Such a silence means acceptance of atrocities and encourages the murderers to become more killing and crime against humanity. The present government of Turkey is the Patron of pseudo-Islamic Caliphate of ISIS and its co-conspirators Al-Qaida & Al-Nousra. Those hordes of terrorist murder-squads enjoy free entry-and-exit in and out of Turkey, enjoy the logistical support of Turkeys military-industrial complex, and are trained and well-equipped with up-to-date weaponry in Turkish military camps. This mercenary murderers have brutally slaughtered many Genocide survival Armenians of Kesab in Syria. We call upon the United Nation, European Union and the International Community to strongly condemn most recent war crime atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani military against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and take the necessary measures without delay to stop the continuing, genocidal, murderous crimes against Armenians and Kurds by Azerbaijan and Turkey. What is the humanitarian moral duty of international political centers and their co-workers? Todays international public organizations must absolutely remain faithful to their own declared values and aims. The consequences of the genocide of the Armenians can only be resolved by solutions binding on the international community via the United Nations, based on past and presently active international laws. The Assembly of the Armenians in Europe, as an NGO active in the family of the European Communities a pan-European but also a world-wide organization is determined, on the occasion of the 101th anniversary of the Young Turkish genocide, to finally focus the attention of the international public opinion on the overdue need of the genocide recognition its unequivocal condemnation, and commitment to remove its tragic consequences through necessary material and territorial compensations. We know very well that in all the countries of the world there are millions of people determined to fight for Human Rights and justice for all, until a final victory. We demand of the International Public Opinion to finally hear and listen to the scream for Justice by the global millions. We witness daily how even in Turkey itself the democratic and freedom-loving forces are evolving day-by-day, and blossoming into political movements that are determined to correct their historical criminal errors, wipe off the wounds they caused in the past, with the aim of living in harmony and peace with the children of the generation of their innocent victims decimated by the evil forces of the Ottoman tyranny. Our expectation is that, after 101 very long years as a direct result of the endless efforts of the Armenians all over the world, and in close and immediate co-operation with the progressive forces of mankind, the practical realization of the international law and Rights becomes at last manifest as a newly minted historical fact, causing the final removal of all criminal consequences of the murderous act against mankind, awarding the Armenian people accordingly a just compensation long overdue for a century! Thus, the ultimate justice fought for a hundred years shall rise up proudly as mankinds greatest victory in modern history. Assembly of Armenians of Europe Sweden, Uppsala Ecolur: Armenia did not participate in signing ceremony of Paris Agreement on Climate Change The Armenian delegation was missing at the signing ceremony of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in the UN Headquarters on 22 April, Ecolur reports. At the summit in December on Climate Change COP 21 in Paris, Armenia took part at the level of president, who made a speech. While preparing to the Paris summit, in 2015 the Armenian Government undertook commitments on the INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions)and supported the international process not to allow temperature increase in the atmosphere more than 1.5 degrees. The signing ceremony was opened by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who said that the era of consumption without consequences was over. He called for the international community to intensify efforts to decarbonize our economies. The President of France Francois Hollande was the first to put his signature under the agreements. Hollywood actor Leonardo Dicaprio also took part in the signing ceremony, as he stated to be an active supported and advocates measures on reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Out of the South Caucasus countries Georgia and Azerbaijan took part in the signing ceremony represented by Environmental Ministers, who put their signatures under the agreement. This agreements intends to mobilise USD 100 billion per year by 2020 to allot to the developing countries for the solution to the climate problems. The new agreement will come to replace the Kyoto protocol adopted in 1997 in addition to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Armenian Assembly of America applauds courageous parliamentarian in Turkey Responds to Obama's Eight-Year Pattern of Missed Opportunities WASHINGTON, D.C. - Yesterday, in Turkey, a country whose government officially denies the Armenian Genocide and in a parliament where the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party called for the lifting of the immunity of elected parliamentarians of Kurdish origin, Garo Paylan, a parliamentarian of Armenian origin, had the courage to remind his fellow MPs of the dozen Armenian members of the Ottoman parliament whose tragic fate was decided by a similar policy. On the same day, in a disappointing step that has become common practice for his administration, news from the White House confirmed that yet again, President Obama would skirt the issue of properly labeling the events of 1915 as a genocide, which he again called by its Armenian designation as the Meds Yeghern. The courage of a lone parliamentarian speaking up in Turkey stands in sharp contrast with the failure of the leader of the free world to denounce genocide. Thus in the final year of his administration, President Obama again avoided characterizing the systematic murder and ethnic cleansing committed against Armenians in 1915 as genocide, despite promises that "as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide," based on "my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence." The president passed up the opportunity to keep his word and failed to set the record straight once and for all. The missed opportunity is all the more regrettable as it could have made U.S. policy consistent across the board consonant with Secretary Kerry's endorsement of the Congressional resolution unanimously adopted in March condemning the atrocities committed by ISIS as genocide against Christian, Yezidi, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria. As the Secretary stated: "We know that in areas under its control, Daesh [ISIS] has made a systematic effort to destroy the cultural heritage of ancient communities - destroying Armenian, Syrian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches..." Any understanding of the direct link between the genocidal practices of Ottoman Turkey in 1915 and the Islamic Caliphate precisely a century later went missing. Alarm that the deliberately staged attacks upon Armenian targets in Syria, such as the expulsion of the Armenian population of the town of Kessab by Jabhat Al-Nusra and the destruction of the Armenian Genocide memorial in Deir el-Zor by ISIS, both by this point in the Syrian civil conflict demonstrably terrorist surrogates of Turkey, only proves how the conscious ignoring of the lesson of the past merely prepared the ground for future atrocities. In addition, in this day and age, that the Republic of Armenia has witnessed the arrival of approximately 20,000 refugees from Syria is one further reminder of the lasting consequences of the Armenian Genocide. These are families who were displaced during the World War I Genocide and are being displaced again because of Turkish support to ISIS. If further proof was needed of the spreading violence across the region inspired by ISIS, the treatment of the remains of Armenian soldiers killed in this month's 4 day-war launched by Azerbaijan with Turkish support in Nagorno Karabakh arrived as more than disquieting confirmation. The abomination of headless corpses of young men who fell in battle cannot in any shape or form be tolerated and yet again the Obama Administration chose not to see that the pattern of persecutions in Syria and Iraq now has emerged in Azerbaijan. Today's statement referenced Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, citing what happened to the Armenians and what happened to the Jews as prototypes of genocide, as well as the courageous leadership of U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau who alerted the world that a "campaign of race extermination," against the Armenian people was under way. However, President Obama's inability to unequivocally affirm the Armenian Genocide undermines the proud legacy and example of the extraordinary work of our diplomats at the time of the Genocide, as well as the efforts of those around the world today who risk their lives to shed light on the truth. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan squarely acknowledged the Armenian Genocide stating that "Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it - and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples - the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten." This accurately reflects America's values and record of speaking out against genocide. While President Obama encouraged and tried to provide a safe harbor for Turks who have come forward in acknowledging Turkey's genocidal past, the best safe harbor the President can provide is to reiterate the United States' position as reflected in the 1951 filing before the International Court of Justice, President Ronald Reagan's 1981 Proclamation, as well as the 1993 Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decisionwhich found that U.S. policy recognizes the Armenian Genocide. Last month, the Armenian Assembly called upon the Obama Administration to affirm the Armenian Genocide noting that the absence of proper condemnation only encourages the perpetration of crimes against humanity and their clear designation as such feeds the engines of denial that are always on the ready to distort the truth and obstruct prevention. President Obama could have strengthened the policy of containing ISIS by invoking the parallels in ideology and implementation between the Young Turk regime and the so-called Islamic Caliphate that persecutes all minorities to the point of extermination and the utter destruction of their historic and cultural heritage, including their places of worship. It is all the more disappointing to see that this lapse is due to Turkish government pressure when there is clear evidence pointing to the same government having long tolerated the conduits that promoted ISIS. "America deserves a president who speaks truthfully and condemns all genocides," stated Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. "Selective acknowledgment, especially at a time when Christians and other minorities are being persecuted is indefensible, sends the wrong message and hurts U.S. credibility," Ardouny added. Through a state-of-the-art online museum, the Assembly remains committed to genocide education, awareness and prevention.The interactive site invites visitors to explore the story of the Armenian people and its fateful experience in 1915, and will serve on the frontlines against genocide denial. Genocide prevention is our obligation and we look forward to the day when America has a president who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. The Assembly also expresses strong concern for the safety and well-being of Turkish Parliamentarian Garo Paylan. Turkey needs to guarantee its citizens freedom of speech and must uphold immunity of its parliamentarians in this regards, as well as end its international genocide denial campaign. Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization. Azerbaijan wants to destroy everything - says European Parliament member I cannot understand the OSCE Minsk Group that is guided by the Madrid Principles, Frank Engel, a member of the European Parliament, said in Yerevan on April 25. Frank Engel, who had just returned from Stepanakert, said his anticipations were justified during his visit to Artsakh. I think you all heard the statements I made at the European Parliament. I shall seize this opportunity to repeat them once again. The international community must condemn the actions of Azerbaijan. The latter wants to destroy everything. No one should have doubts about Azerbaijans aggression, the evidence of which are the severed heads and cut off ears of civilians which Azerbaijanis show to their population. In this context, the Karabakh issue becomes more complicated because of Turkeys involvement and Russias ambiguous policy. I think if a country is on friendly terms with one of the conflicting sides, it should not sell weapons to the other side. People in Karabakh and Armenia repeat that Russia is their friend but Armenian citizens and soldiers were killed from weapons sold by that country, he said. When speaking about Russias ambiguous policy, Frank Engel said it might be caused by Russias wish to attract more countries to join the Customs Union. On the other hand, Russia does not want to spoil its economic relations with Azerbaijan. He stressed that Europe is also playing a dual role. The only solution, according to Engel, is the international recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh. My colleagues and I must make every effort in the European Parliament, national parliaments and elsewhere to achieve international recognition of Karabakh, otherwise the entire nation will face the threat [of new genocide] which the civilized world should never see again, Mr Engel said. He says the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict can no longer be considered a frozen conflict. A conflict cannot be frozen if there are more than a hundred victims Two killed, six injured in Yerevan bus blast /updated/ (video) 00:50 According to the latest reports received from the Armenian medical centre one of the people injured in the bus explosion in central Yerevan is a pregnant woman. She has undergone computed tomography which showed that neither the mother nor the developing fetus was endangered. Six people were rushed to the hospital after the accident. Two of them, teen boys aged 14 and15, are in critical condition. They have been operated on. All passengers received minor injuries. 23:51 One of the passengers injured in a bus blast in Yerevan was admitted to hospital in a state of shock. Others are in the intensive care unit of the Armenia medical centre. Minister of Health Armen Muradyan is also at the hospital. At least two people were killed and seven others injured after a bus exploded in central Yerevan late on Monday. The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital. The emergency services were informed of the blast at approximately 10:00 p.m. Yerevan time. The cause of the blast is being investigated. Initially it was reported that three people had been killed and eight injured. Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia 2016-04-26 Today at the UN General Assembly and Security Council Azerbaijan has disseminated yet another provocative letter dated April 14, 2016, where, striving to put the blame on Armenia, it unilaterally denounced May 12, 1994 trilateral ceasefire agreement signed between Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia without time limitations. Armenia strongly condemns this step whereby Azerbaijan grossly breaches May 1994 ceasefire agreement, as well as casts doubt on the July 1994 agreement on the reinforcement of ceasefire and the February 1995 agreement on the consolidation of ceasefire. Notably, the July 1994 agreement requires Azerbaijan to maintain the ceasefire regime until signing of the big political agreement. In this regard the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs already have expressed their position to Azerbaijan, including at the OSCE, in particular stating that 1994 and 1995 agreements, whose terms do not expire, as before, make up the foundation of the cessation of hostilities in the conflict zone. The Co-Chairs called on to strictly adhere to the above-mentioned agreements and not to permit their violation. Disregarding this call, Azerbaijan resorted to this provocative step. It is necessary to underline that the oral arrangement reached in Moscow on April 5, 2016, to which Azerbaijan refers in its letter, was directed at the cessation of aggressive actions unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh and, as the Co-Chairs have stated, to restore the ceasefire regime. It is obvious, that the mentioned oral arrangement cannot replace the May 12, 1994 ceasefire agreement. The 1994 and 1995 trilateral ceasefire agreements have for years served as a basis for preserving the fragile ceasefire. Any harm to these agreements is a serious obstacle for the peace process, hinders the efforts of the Co-Chairs and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman in Office and undermines regional security. Armenia urges the Co-Chair countries, the international community to immediately undertake all necessary measures to oblige Azerbaijan to strictly abide to the 1994 ceasefire agreement and to implement its international commitments to refrain from the threat or use of force. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia states that, taking into consideration the possible dangerous consequences emanating from this irresponsible step of Azerbaijan, and as a signatory party to 1994 and 1995 existing agreements on the ceasefire and the consolidation of the ceasefire, Armenia will exert every possible effort and carry out all necessary steps to guarantee the security of Nagorno-Karabakh and its population. BAGHDAD -- At least seven people were killed and some 30 others wounded on Monday in a car bomb explosion at a marketplace in eastern the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said. "The latest report said that seven civilians were killed and some 30 others wounded at the busy market in eastern Baghdad," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The attack occurred in the afternoon when a booby-trapped car parking at a marketplace near al-Baiydhaa cinema building detonated in Baghdad al-Jadida district in the eastern part of the capital, the source said. The blast damaged several nearby shops and destroyed many stalls at the outdoor market, along with destroying several civilian cars at the site of the explosion, the source added. Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of violence since the Islamic State group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014. President of Laos Bounnhang Volachith (Photo: VNA) The visit, which is made at the invitation of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Tran Dai Quang, is the first overseas trip by Bounnhang Volachith as Lao Party General Secretary and President for 2016-2020. It aims to affirm the solidarity and mutual trust between the Vietnamese Party, State and people and their Lao counterparts, as well as Vietnams strong and comprehensive support for the reform process as well as national defence and construction in the neighbouring country. During the visit, the two sides are due to discuss measures to accelerate the implementation of high-level agreements reached by the two Parties and States. The Vietnam-Laos relations have been thriving in all fields. Politically, the two countries have coordinated with each other in organising visits and meetings between Party and State leaders, as well as experience exchanges between ministries, agencies and localities. Apart from three theoretical conferences between the two Parties, they have joined hands in marking major celebrations of the two countries. In the sphere of national defence, security and diplomacy, joint efforts have been channeled to actualising protocols between the two Defence and Public Security Ministries, and an agreement in border management. They have completed a project on increasing and upgrading border markers, and inked a protocol on the borderline and national border markers and an agreement on land border and border gate management regulations. The two sides have teamed up with each other to search and repatriate remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts who laid down their lives in Laos during the war. They successfully co-organised the eight Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Summit in 2014 and have actively exchanged information and closely coordinated with each other at regional and international forums. In the field of economy, trade and investment, the two sides have effectively realised a cooperation agreement between the two Governments and signed a new bilateral trade agreement and another in border trade. The one stop shop mechanism has been applied at the Lao Bao-Densavanh international border gate as part of their cooperation. Besides this, Vietnams investment in Laos has seen rosy signs with a total of 258 projects worth a combined capital of nearly USD5 billion to date, according to the Vietnam Ministry of Planning an Investment. Of which, there have been 15 hydropower projects with a total capacity of over 3000 KW, 57 projects in minerals and 18 in rubber and industrial tree plantation. Over the past years, the two sides have paid specialheed to improving the quality and efficiency of their affiliation in education-training and human resources development. Currently, nearly 9,300 Lao officials and students are studying in Vietnam while 425 Vietnamese students are learning in the neighbouring country. Bilateral collaboration in transport, science-technology, social affairs, agriculture, communication, employment, culture and tourism have also received due attention of the two sides. Of note, links between the two countries ministries, agencies and localities have been tightened, spanning the realms of infrastructure development, health care and personnel training./. Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Lao Party General Secretary cum President Bounnhang Volachith inspect the honour guard of the Vietnam People's Army. (Source: VNA) General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and President of Laos Bounnhang Volachith made the remarks during his talks with Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong following his arrival in Hanoi on April 25th to begin his three-day official friendly visit to Vietnam. The visit is made at the invitation of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Tran Dai Quang. Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong described the visit as an important event taking place after the Party Congress in each nation and the election of the eighth Lao National Assembly. The host expressed his belief that the visit will reap successes, contributing to promoting relations between the two Parties and States in the time ahead. Bounnhang Volachith, for his part, congratulated Nguyen Phu Trong on his re-election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) for 2016-2021. Vietnam is always Laos trustworthy and close friend, he said, noting his belief that under the leadership of the CPV, Vietnamese people will record more significant achievements in order to basically turn the country into a modernity-oriented industrialised nation and raise the countrys position in the region and the world at large./. The meeting discussed and passed documents to be submitted to the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM), programmes in the framework of the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM+) and other related issues. Vietnamese delegation at the ADSOM in Vietntiane, Laos on April 23. (Source: VNA) Speaking at the event, Major General Onsi Sensue, Chief of the Lao Defence Ministry Office said the event is aiming to prepare the content of the ADMM slated for May 24th -27th, especially in introducing policies and plans for ASEANs defence and security cooperation towards the goal of surmounting challenges and bolstering peace, security, stability and development in the region. The general who is also head of Laos ADSOM added that 2016 is the first year in existence of the ASEAN Community, hence ASEANs member states are required to strengthen cooperation in key pillars, including politics-security, economy and culture-society. The ADMM is the highest defence mechanism within ASEAN, which aims to promote mutual trust and confidence through greater understanding of defence and security challenges as well as enhancement of transparency and openness./. Photo: Minh Duc/vnexpress The event lured hundreds of Vietnamese people living and working in the country, and many international friends as well. They read a letter of protest, displaying large banners proclaiming Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands belong to Vietnam, China, stop militarization in the East Vietnam Sea, and China must obey UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of December 10th, 1982, and other international norms. The letter reaffirmed Vietnams sovereignty over Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands, and accused the Chinese administration of illegal moves to settle and militarise the East Sea. Hundreds of brochures and leaflets about Vietnams landscape, people and its sovereignty over seas and island, as well as Chinese illegal activities in the East Sea, were delivered at the event. Each year, the East Sea sees the transport of over USD5 trillion worth of trade goods around the world. The Chinese administration's demands have clearly encroached the mutual declarations of Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia./. 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 Ukraine and Russia must resume joint nuclear safety projects at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP), its Director General Ihor Hramotkin said. "Nuclear radiation safety is the sphere that is beyond political relations. Russia and Ukraine are experiencing difficult times, but we already need to think how to rebuild our relations in the future and why not start restoring them now by addressing our common big problem the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster?" Hramotkin said in an interview with the Ukrainian edition of the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (Mirror Weekly, ZN.UA). The NPP continues interacting with Rosatom's regional center for Eastern Europe, just to keep a finger on the pulse, to promptly receive information about opportunities, technologies and colleagues' studies in the field of decommissioning of nuclear facilities and handling radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, the NPP director said. Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Volodymyr Yelchenko on behalf of Ukraine signed the Pairs Agreement on Climate Change at the UN Headquarters in New York on Friday. "Historical moment: Ukraine signed Paris Agreement on Climate Change," reads Twitter account of the Ukrainian Mission to UN. Thus, Ukraine has joined other members of the international community in signing the Paris Agreement. The UN News Center reports that the Paris Agreement "will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 countries, accounting for at least 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, deposit their instruments of ratification or acceptance with the Secretary-General." "After signing the agreement, leaders will deliver their national statements, having been asked by the Secretary-General to, among other things, provide an update on how their Governments will implement their national climate plans and integrate them into their overall sustainable development plans; and indicate their Governments' timetable for ratifying the Agreement," it said. The Paris Agreement was adopted by all 196 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris on December 12, 2015. The 196 signatories set the goal of working together to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, compared to the pre-industrial era, and to strive for 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has passed a resolution providing financial support to Crimean Tatar ATR television, the press service of the Information Policy Ministry has reported. The financial support is provided to pay for the satellite communications services and a part of the debt for these services accumulated since February 2014, leasing and purchase of TV equipment, office rent rates and authorship royalties. Information Policy Minister Yuriy Stets at a government meeting on March 10, 2016 proposed allocating UAH 5 million to pay the debt of Crimean Tatar ATR television to Sweden's SES ASTRA AB (Astra A4 satellite). Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that he would provide support for Ukrainian aircraft manufacturers to enter new markets. The press service of the head of state reported that Poroshenko visited the Ivchenko Progress Machine-Building Design Bureau of Zaporizhia during his working trip to the region and took part in the test launch of a new AI-450 engine. Poroshenko examined the enterprise and watched samples of test launches of various engines. Poroshenko said that Ukraine is deservedly considered one of few countries in the world capable of producing modern aircrafts. "The enterprise doesnt stand still. It implements modern technologies and demonstrates positive economic and financial results," he said. He pointed out successful work of Ukroboronprom State Concern on the substitution of components previously supplied from Russia. "We have elaborated an import substitution system. Our engineers have fulfilled this task," he said. According to the president, the volume of production at Ukroboronprom has been tripled. This means that thousands of jobs have been saved and new jobs have been created. Engineers have also remained at the Progress Design Bureau. "Ukrainian aircraft manufacturing has a great future," Poroshenko said, adding that Ukrainian products had recently entered the market of Saudi Arabia and India. SPF sets task to stabilize financial situation at ZAlK Public joint-stock company Zaporizhia Aluminum Plant (ZAlK) is to stabilize the financial and economic situation at the enterprise in 2016 and keep away from wage arrears. Ukraine's State Property Fund said in a press release that the shareholders in ZAlK at a general meeting on April 21 approved the areas of activity. "The shareholders determined key areas of activity for 2016. The state will continue controlling the company's operations. Five SPF representatives out of seven members of the supervisory board were elected," the fund said. The top priority task is stabilizing the financial and economic situation, avoiding wage arrears, social package provision, restoring production and preventing a bankruptcy case opening. Supervisory board members were elected for the period of three years. ZAlK in 2015 saw net loss rise by 3.6% compared to 2014, to UAH 2.044 billion. The plant's assets in 2015 decreased by 17.7% to UAH 216.864 million. The number of employees increased by 9.1% in 2015 to 120 people. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) supports an initiative that would enable banks to transform themselves into private joint-stock companies (PrJSC). Banks currently can operate only in the form of public joint-stock companies (PJSC) or cooperative banks. The regulator said that on its website that the concept was approved at a meeting of the NBU board on April 21. The NBU said that there is no need in keeping the PJSC form from banks that do not seek to permanently attract capital on the stock exchange. Corporate management requirements for banks and the volume of information disclosure should be left unchanged, irrespective of the type of a joint-stock company. The central bank also said it would make the application for bank re-registration as simple as possible. The initiative provides for amending the Law on banks and banking operations and the Business code, updating some requirements in the Law on joint-stock companies and the Law on securities and the stock market to meet bank legislation. A requirement to obligatorily send 75% of profit by state-run enterprises to the national budget would result in a shortage of some UAH 2 billion at Ukrainian Sea Port Authority for capital investment, Deputy Head of Sea Port Authority Viacheslav Voronoi said at the Ukrainian Infrastructure Forum in Kyiv last week. He said that state-run stevedoring companies should be privatized. "I'm sure this should be done. We have a lot of private terminals, and the privatization is needed to have equal conditions. Without staying in concession or being leased you would not be competitive compared to private companies," he said. Commenting on the reform of Sea Port Authority, Voronoi said that it is initiated to halve the number of its branches to leave six instead of 13. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan earlier said that Sea Port Authority should be a servicing company providing tariff regulation services. The authority receives port fees and maintains strategic infrastructure using this money in a transparent way. Kyivkhlib seeks to start exports to U.S., Canada in 2016 Public joint-stock company Kyivkhlib, a large bread producer in Kyiv, seeks to export its cakes to the United States and Canada. According to a company report, the company in 2015 exported crackers, round cracknels and confectionary products to Germany, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. Kyivkhlib last year designed 29 new products: 20 bread products and nine confectionary products. Bread and bread products output last year totaled 168,373 tonnes, confectionary products 7,227 tonnes, semi-finished products 5,400 tonnes, macaroni 34,300 tonnes and bread crumbs 2,233 tonnes. The share of crackers and round cracknels of total sales in 2015 increased by 0.7% and cake and pastry sales by 1.7%. The share of rich fermented goods decreased by 0.1%, popular bread 1.2% and good-quality bread 1.1%. The company in 2016 seeks to retain its positions on the bread market in Kyiv, launch production of new types of goods and settle the issue of producing ordered cakes. Three Ukrainian soldiers killed, six injured in Donbas in past 48 hours Kyiv Three Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the area of Kyiv's army operation in the east of Ukraine in the past 48 hours, Ukrainian presidential administration spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk has said. "Three of our soldiers have been killed and another six have been injured as a result of fighting in the past 48 hours," he told a press briefing in Kyiv. The intensity of strikes carried out against Ukrainian positions has sharply increased in the past 48 hours, he said. "Militants are actively using mortars and armored hardware along the entire frontline," he said. The situation is relatively calm only in the Luhansk region, where "only was provocation in the Popasna district" was recorded, Motuzianyk said. Militants have been conducting strikes on the Svitlodarsk arc, in Zaitseve, Avdiyivka and near the Donetsk airport in the Donetsk region. Fourteen instances of shelling, among them seven mortar strikes, have been recorded in this area in the past 48 hours. Militants have committed 30 ceasefire violations, including six strikes using heavy weapons, near the city of Mariupol. The heaviest shelling was reported in Maryinka, Novotroitske and Shyrokyne, Motuzianyk said. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said that Russia has agreed to deploy an OSCE police armed mission in Donbas. "I'm very glad that a firm position of the Ukrainian side now has been backed by our partners in 'Normandy Four' format, our U.S. partners and finally we see that Russia is participating," Poroshenko said in an interview with the Ukrainian TV channels on Sunday evening. He also stressed that despite titanic efforts of OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), shell attacks, especially in Avdiyivka, Maryinka and certain districts of Luhansk region still continue. "And over the past 24 hours we witnessed from 30 to 70 shell attacks in one area," he said. Poroshenko stressed occupational troops are responsible for an absolute majority of the violations. "Our troops open a return fire only. But OSCE monitors can't register this. They aren't armed. They can only register the fact of shell attack, but can't always find out where it came from," the head of state said. According to him, to this reason a special new police armed mission should be sent to provide security. Member of the new OSCE mission should be able to protect themselves, the president said. Poroshenko said the mission is meant to provide security, as well as to help prepare for and conduct local elections. They can also be used to help inaugurate newly elected Donbas representatives, the president said. "I believe political resolution may begin after the security situation improves. Otherwise, we will be unable legitimize Russia's occupation through a mechanism of pseudo-elections, just as they conducted the pseudo referendum in Crimean (in March 2104) and pseudo-elections as on November 2, 2014. We won't let that happen again," he said. The Ukrainian army operation press center claimed 29 militants' attacks on army positions in Donbas over the past day in a report published on Facebook on Monday morning. The report said that the militants used weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements to deliver four strikes on Ukrainian army positions in Avdiyivka and one in Zaitseve. The militants fired 135 mines of 82 mm on the Avdiyivka industrial zone in the period from 7 p.m. till midnight, the report said. According to the report, the militants' 152mm tube artillery twice shelled Ukrainian army positions near Pravdivka during the night, damaging homes of civilians and a church. The press center reported the use of BMP-2 weapons, automatic grenade launchers and large-caliber machineguns near Luhanske. The militants allegedly fired on Ukrainian army positions near Novotroitske, Pavlopil, Stanytsia Luhanska and Shyrokyne by use of man-portable anti-tank grenade launchers and small arms. Those weapons were allegedly used 12 times against Maryinka. "In the reporting period, the Ukrainian army had to return fire four times," it said. Meeting of Ukraine-Romania renewed joint presidential commission to be held in Kyiv Ukraine and Romania have renewed the composition of the joint presidential commission, which is to meet in Kyiv soon. The respective agreement was signed by President of Romania Klaus Iohannis and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the framework of the latter's visit to Romania. Iohannis expressed hope that resumption of the work of Ukraine-Romania bilateral commission would address press concerns dealing with Ukraine, which were acquired over the past years, such as BystroeCanal and the situation of national minorities in both countries. "First of all, it is necessary to resolve issues that have been on the agenda for a long time. One of them is BystroeCanal. The second topic of discussion is national minorities, Romanians in Ukraine and Ukrainians in Romania, for bilateral relations," the head of Romanian state said during joint press conference with the president of Ukraine. For his part, Poroshenko said: "We have renewed the structure of joint presidential commission. It must become an effective mechanism facilitating Ukraine-Romania cooperation. I am glad that we managed to restore this mechanism nine years after it was originally launched," Poroshenko said. He said the next sitting (of the commission) will take place in Kyiv. Iohannis said the Ukrainian community in Romania receives EUR 1.6 million in annual state assistance. He exhorted to enlarge bilateral relations in culture and education. "We hope, that Romania Cultural Center in Kyiv and its branch in Chernivtsi will start its work as soon as possible", he added. Among the most important projects, the Romanian president mentioned construction of Sighetu-Solotvyno Bridge on Tisza, opening of new border crossing points and diplomatic offices. "The opening of the Romania Consulate in Solotvyno is important in this context," said Iohannis. Former Deputy Premier of Poland Leszek Balcerowicz has said he agreed to hold a post in Ukrainian government since Ukrainian state is a strategically important for a new regime in Europe. "I accepted an offer of President Poroshenko to become co-chair of a group of strategic advisers on reform (along with former Slovak Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ivan Miklos) and president's adviser and representative in the government," he wrote on his Facebook account. According to him, now there is a process of building a good team, which will embrace best people from Poland and Ukraine. "I took this decision since I'm deeply convinced that Ukraine in a strategic meaning is very valuable for a new regime in Europe, especially for Poland and other states of our region," he stressed. As reported, on April 22 Balcerowicz was appointed an adviser to the Ukrainian president, his representative in the Cabinet of Ministers, and a co-chairman of a group of strategic advisers on reform. Businessman Dmytro Firtash is a witness in the case on bribing a representative of the criminal police in Germany, Deutsche Welle (DW) has reported, referring to the prosecutor's office in Schwerin. "Currently Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash is not suspected However, his status could be changed," DW wrote. DW said that now a 69 year old woman from Berlin who under the guise of an employee of the consulting bureau sold information received for bribes from policemen and prosecutors is prime suspect. "The woman is suspected of getting information for bribes from an officer of the criminal police of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern federal territory in the interests of Firtash. This officer obviously gave information on the course of investigation against him in the United States, where Firtash is accused of corruption," DW reported. According to the article, the police officer sent inquiries to the United States, pretending to be an investigator in the Firtash's case. "According to NDR TV, bribes for information for the Ukrainian billionaire could exceed EUR 500,000," DW said. According to DW, on April 20, 2016 Firtash's house in Vienna was raided by the police. If new evidences appear in the case, the status of the businessman could be changed. The authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) have no intention of reacting to the OSCE statements on violation of the Minsk agreements by the May 9 military parade, head of self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Zakharchenko stated. "We will not react to any OSCE statements regarding the violation and the withdrawal. That's our business, and we will hold this parade at a top-notch level, with the participation of all units and all types of weapons," Zakharchenko told the press. As to whether OSCE SMM monitors would check weapons participating in the parade, he said the OSCE representatives were not entitled to do that. "They can watch but they cannot verify, because this is a monitoring mission," Zakharchenko said. OSCE SMM Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug said that the May 9 parade in Donetsk featuring weapons would be seen as a violation of the Minsk accords. The Ukrainian mission to the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk also dubbed the May 9 military parade in Donetsk a direct and flagrant violation of the Minsk deal. Zakharchenko told reporters last Wednesday that DPR weapons and military hardware of the WWII epoch would be demonstrated in the May 9 parade in Donetsk. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has welcomed the joint European humanitarian initiative of Pope Francis to raise funds for Ukraine in the European countries that took place on April 24. "We express our deep gratitude to 'Cor Unum' Pontifical Council and the National Conference of Bishops for the organization and support of the fundraising campaign in European countries," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on it website. According to the statement posted on its website, the ministry considers this charity initiative as an important gesture of solidarity of all Europeans with the Ukrainian people and a strong signal in support of our country in addressing pressing internal and external challenges caused by the Russian military aggression. As reported, on April 3 Pope Francis announced April 24 a day of to raising humanitarian funds in all Catholic parishes for the needs of the affected population in eastern part of Ukraine. Three Ukrainian soldiers wounded in Donbas, another one dies of injuries Shellings have left three Ukrainian soldiers injured in Donbas over the past 24 hours but nobody has been killed, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. "Over the past 24 hours, the hostilities resulted in no fatalities among our soldiers, but still three [servicemen] received injuries. This happened in the Donetsk sector. One soldier was injured in a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] attack, when an incendiary mixture was dropped near Kostiantynivka, the other two in a mortar shelling outside of Avdiyivka," Lysenko told a briefing in Kyiv on Monday. According to verified data, one Ukrainian serviceman was killed on April 23. He received injuries on the frontline and died later in hospital in Bakhmut, he said. Three instances of shelling were recorded in the past 24 hours in the Stanytsia Luhanska district, the Luhansk sector, he added. As for the Donetsk sector, almost 50 artillery shells were fired on Ukrainian army positions after midnight from a 152mm howitzer located at a distance of 20 kilometers. As a result, a church was damaged in Pravdivka, the Kostiantynivka district, Lysenko said, adding that fire adjustment was conducted with use of The Zoopark-1 intelligence and radar complex. Separately, nine instances of shelling were recorded in the past 24 hours in Zaitseve and outside of Luhansk. As for the Mariupol sector, Ukrainian army positions near Maryinka and Shyrokyne were shelled 17 times in total over the past 24 hours, Lysenko said. Mark Feygin, a lawyer for Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is convicted in Russia, said his client has recovered from her hunger strike and is virtually back to her normal food regimen. "She feels fine. It can be said that she has recovered from her hunger strike. She has lost a little weight, but her weight is normal. She is not cradling for warmth anymore, like she did when she was on a dry hunger strike, she had a down coat. It was warm in Rostov today and she was dressed very lightly. Generally, it seemed to me that everything is fine. She is now virtually back [to her normal food regimen]," Feygin said on 112 Ukraine television after visiting Savchenko at her detention facility on Monday. The lawyer said his client "eats and drinks, she just doesn't take in solid food, she eats baby food in jars to get her digestion right." "I think she will be eating normally in the coming week, maybe earlier, she will feel fine," Feygin said. On March 22, 2016, the Donetsk District Court of the Rostov region found Ukrainian servicewoman Nadia Savchenko guilty of involvement in the killing of Russian journalists Igor Korneliuk and Anton Voloshin by a group of people by a previous concert on hatred and enmity motives, and sentenced her to 22 years in a penal colony. The court also found her guilty of attempted murder and illegally crossing the Russian border. The sentence took effect on April 5. The next day, Savchenko began a dry hunger strike, demanding her immediate return to her homeland. Savchenko decided to stop her hunger strike after a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko a week ago. Nuland to come to Kyiv on Monday to meet with Ukrainian leaders, civil society U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland will arrive in Ukraine on Monday, April 25, where she will meet with the country's leadership and representatives of civil society. "On April 25, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will travel from Hannover, Germany, to Kyiv, Ukraine, to meet with senior Ukrainian government officials, political party leaders, Rada members, and civil society representatives," reads a statement posted on the website of the U.S. Department of State. She will discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues, including reform priorities and Minsk implementation. On Tuesday, April 26, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy will meet with Nuland in Kyiv, the press service of the Verkhovna Rada reported. Ukraine's Deputy Prosecutor General Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios has handed to Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked a request from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office to hand a notice of suspicion to former minister of energy and coal industry of Ukraine Eduard Stavysky, who is charged with embezzlement of public funds in Ukraine. Stavytsky is reportedly hiding in Israel as a citizen of this state under an assumed name of Nathan Rosenberg, the PGO's public relations department reported on Monday. "During the talks in the Knesset, Chief Military Prosecutor Matios handed to the Israeli justice minister a request of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine to provide international legal assistance in the investigation against the former minister of energy and coal industry of Ukraine and notify Stavytsky of suspicion of committing especially serious crimes against the state," the report says. The Israeli minister said that they would consider the request as soon as possible. Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT Echoing his comments early this year that a hard landing is practically unavoidable in China, billionaire investor George Soros issued another warning on Wednesday at an Asia Society roundtable in New York that China's credit-fueled growth bears resemblance to the conditions in the US in 2007 and 2008 before the global financial crisis. He suggested that most of the new loans are made to keep loss-making firms alive. Soros' latest comments were probably based on his observation of China's recent economic data. Total social financing, a key indicator of China's credit expansion, rose to 2.34 trillion yuan ($360.8 billion) in March from 780.2 billion yuan in February, while new local-currency loans made by Chinese banks totaled 1.37 trillion yuan, both beating market expectations. In addition, the total social financing reached 6.59 trillion yuan in the first quarter, with bank credit totaling 4.51 trillion yuan and mortgage loans more than 1.5 trillion yuan, up 25 percent year-on-year. All these figures are record high. This is one of the key reasons why home prices in the first and second-tier cities have soared recently. That means Soros believes that China's credit expanded excessively in the first quarter, but the loans did not flow into the real economy - instead they either went into the real estate sector to push up home prices or into some zombie firms in China. He believes such practice can pump up China's economy in a short term, but it forebodes disaster if property bubbles burst or risks get out of control, leading China to a point where the US was prior to the 2008 global financial crisis. Soros' latest warning was either disregarded in China or denounced by some as "conspiracy." If Soros' assertion on the Chinese economy is a conspiracy, his investment should not have lost so much this year. In the past few months, Soros' investment team have shorted Asian currencies and withdrawn from the Asian market. Probably due partly to this investment principle, Soros' family fund Soros Fund Management performed poorly in the first quarter, posting a loss of 4 to 5 percent in the first quarter. David Rogers and Joshua Donfeld, two portfolio managers at Soros' family office, are reportedly leaving the firm. The underperformance of his fund seems to indicate that Soros does not fully understand the real situation of the Chinese economy and has never expected that the Chinese government would step in to bail out the economy. The fact that Soros viewed what happened to the Chinese economy based on market principles makes it impossible for him to come to a proper conclusion. But observing China's economy using market principles is not necessarily wrong, nor is a conspiracy. The only problem is that China's current market conditions are a lot different from those assumed by Soros. That said, we cannot deny that China's debt risks are continuing to rise. How should we view Soros' latest warning on the Chinese economy against this backdrop? We cannot simply avoid discussion of the issue using the conspiracy pretext or totally disregard it simply because Soros shorted the Chinese currency yuan and made doomsday predictions on China's economy. We should rationally assess the real impact of the fast-growing credit on the economy. Even if the impact is not that huge, we should nevertheless calculate the negative factors. Only in this way can we find out the real problem China's economy is facing. In fact, the debt risks caused by the fast expansion of credit in China are quite different from that in developed countries and other emerging economies. This is because the debt, wealth structure and type of wealth possessed by Chinese residents differ considerably with those in other markets. In this case, an assertion based on a few sets of data can hardly be rational and correct. But on the other hand, excessive expansion of credit in whatever form can inevitably lead to a financial crisis. This is applied to the US and Europe as well as to the Chinese market. Some observers believe that in an economy where the government has relatively greater control over how the economy runs, excessive credit expansion will never happen. This belief is also a fallacy. Ensuring a proper amount and pace of lending as well as the quality of lending based on real demand is still vital to keeping the country's economy sustainable. The author is a professor with the College of Economics at Qingdao University. [email protected] Metro runs normally in Brussels one month after terror attacks BRUSSELS, April 25, 2016 -- A train arrives at the Maalbeek metro station on its reopening day after being closed since the 22 March attacks in Brussels, Belgium, on April 25, 2016. (Xinhua/Gong Bing) BRUSSELS, April 25 -- The Brussels Maelbeek Metro Station reopened on Monday morning and Brussels metro is running normally again. According to the spokesman of the League of Intercommunaux Transport of Brussels (STIB), Francoise Ledune, all Brussels metro stations are functional and subway runs at usual time before the attacks. However, the access to the stations remains so far limited to two entries, and the police and military are providing security on the spot. A wall of remembrance was installed in Maelbeek to allow travelers to comment. Some 200 people affected by the attacks and relatives of victims were able to visit the station which specially opened for them two days before its return to service. On March 22, two explosions at Brussels airport and another one at Maelbeek metro station near the European Union institutions killed more than 30 people and injured another 300. Airmen carrying ammunition boxes prepare to load ammunition onto a WZ-10 attack helicopter on April 22, 2016. An Army aviation brigade with the PLA 1st Group Army conducted round-the-clock live-fire training in the north of east Chinas Jiangsu Province on April 22, 2016. (ChinaMil/Wang Jiayin) UNITED NATIONS, April 24 -- The UN Security Council on Sunday "strongly" condemned Saturday's submarine-launched ballistic missile test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). "This incident constituted yet another serious violation by the DPRK of United Nations Security Council resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013) and 2270 (2016)," the Security Council said in a statement issued to the press here. "The members of the Security Council emphasized that the DPRK's development and testing of new ballistic missile capabilities, even if launches are failures, is clearly prohibited by these resolutions." The DPRK announced it has conducted a successful underwater test-fire of strategic submarine ballistic missile and the country's top leader Kim Jong Un guided the test-fire, the country's official news agency KCNA reported Sunday. The test-fire aimed to "confirm the stability of the underwater ballistic launching system in the maximum depth of waters, flying kinetic feature under the vertical flight system of the ballistic missile powered by the newly developed high-power solid fuel engine, the reliability of the phased heat separation and the working accuracy of nuclear detonating device of the warhead." This is the second time the DPRK's state-run media outlet has announced the success of the test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. On May 9, 2015, the KCNA reported that Kim Jong Un watched the test-fire of a newly developed submarine-launched ballistic missile and called it "a success as signal as satellite launch." On April 15, the 15-nation UN council strongly condemned the firing of a ballistic missile by the DPRK earlier in the day. The Security Council has adopted five resolutions to curb the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs. The latest one adopted in March imposes the most severe sanctions yet on the country, including an export ban and asset freeze. "The members of the Security Council reiterated that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shall refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, including to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program and in this context reestablish its previous commitments to a moratorium on missile launches," said the statement. In light of these recent violations, the members of the Security Council emphasized the importance of the work of the Security Council's Committee established pursuant to resolution 1718 (2006), and "urged all member states to redouble their efforts to implement the measures imposed in all relevant Security Council resolutions," the statement said. While emphasizing the need to strengthen implementation of the measures imposed in resolution 2270 (2016), the Security Council reiterated the call on member states to report to it on concrete measures taken in order to implement effectively the provisions of that resolution, the statement said. "The members of the Security Council reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the North-East Asia at large, expressed their commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation and welcomed efforts by Council members as well as other States to facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue," said the statement. The council members agreed that the Security Council would continue to closely monitor the situation and take further significant measures in line with the Council's previously expressed determination. By Mark Kapchanga (Global Times) 10:02, April 25, 2016 Illustration: Liu Rui/GT It is an irrefutable fact that China's friendship with Africa has been thriving over the last decade. Slowed by the declining global price of commodities, trade volume between China and Africa from January to October 2015 stood at $147.6 billion. On the contrary, the amount of exports from China to Africa soared, reaching $89.9 billion, a 5 percent rise as compared with the previous year. China-Africa cooperation stamina was even more conspicuous during the same period when direct non-financial investment flow in African countries hit $1.9 billion, with the contract value of projects newly signed by China in African countries reaching $55.1 billion. As the friendship grows between these two regions, so do challenges that tend to slow its pace. At the center of it has been the often-discussed labor disputes between Chinese companies and local workers. Local employees have cited poor working environments, under-remuneration, being forced to work overtime without pay, favoritism and overwork as some of the crucial challenges facing them, according to local media. This is not the ideal situation if China-Africa cooperation is to be sustainable. Local media outlets claim that most Chinese firms pay lower wages as compared to their peers from the West. They also argue that Chinese firms tend to work well beyond the traditionally agreed eight hours per day. Most employees working in Chinese companies, too, have also complained about working on Saturdays, Sundays and even during public holidays. A case in point is the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) which is working on the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya. According to local media, its workers report early and leave late from work. They do not have weekends to enjoy their leisure time because of the project's pressure, which is to be completed by July next year. However, what CRBC has done is to compensate its workers for the overtime by paying them at least double the amount received during normal working hours. According to the ministry of labor in Kenya, nearly all of the so-called trade and labor disputes arise from the fact that there is no proper communication between the parties involved. Its argument is that Chinese firms operating in African countries tend not to understand local labor-related issues such as the working hours, minimum wages, among others. On the other hand, the locals, too, fail to understand their employers due to the cultural barriers that exist between Africans and the Chinese. For instance, African workers tend to detest being micro-managed. To the Chinese, though, this is seen as a way to ensure that work quality is not compromised. With these misunderstandings come strained employer-employee relations. Naturally, this would translate to low productivity, picketing and bitter violence like what was experienced in Zambia when a Chinese manager was attacked, and eventually killed by the locals in August 2012. So, what needs to be done to have harmonious working relations between Chinese companies operating in Africa and local workers? Perhaps the starting point should be Chinese firms appreciating the fact that having a human resources department is crucial for their survival. These human resources section should not just be there, with an auxiliary function, but play a prime role in ensuring that the welfare of the employer and the employee is well balanced. Crucially, this department should be run by qualified personnel who understand the labor market. Ideally, it should be a blend of local and Chinese managers. Such a department will not only ensure that workers are remunerated according to their skills, experience, output as well as the economic dynamics but also boost the work environment, reward commendable performance and punish those who fail to meet set work targets. Beyond human resources, it is imperative that local workers are exposed to recurrent training. This is because training presents a principal opportunity to expand the knowledge base of workers, strengthen workers' skills, boost performance and raise satisfaction among employees. While a large portion of the blame is usually apportioned to the Chinese, some African workers also need to carry a fair share of this load. African workers need to adjust accordingly to the changes that are taking place in the world. Gone now are the days when Africa was referred to as the poorest continent on earth. The huge amount of resources it has should be put to maximum use so as to boost economic growth. But this would not come by for as long as leisure precedes work. Africans need to embrace a working culture. The Chinese culture of working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year should indeed be fully supported and embraced by African countries. We Africans must also be tired of being poor time managers. The archaic "African time" needs not to be feature anywhere. Indeed, the "African time" culture has been so worrying to Chinese firms such that some workers would go out for lunch for longer periods than expected; report late to work and even arrive late for important meetings. In a recent chat, a Chinese manager confided in me that there is nothing they can do because firing such employees would result in protests from the local community. It is encouraging that some countries have already started embracing the all-round-the-clock working culture such as Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, among others. It is no wonder that these are some of the countries that are attracting huge investments and experiencing massive infrastructural developments from China. For China-Africa cooperation to thrive Africans need to change their mindset about work; it is not a punishment, but a form of a reward, strength and pleasure. The author is a journalist on African issues based in Nairobi, Kenya. [email protected] Follow us on Twitter @GTopinion Activities across China mark 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death One of the films featured at the sixth Beijing International Film Festival, which closed over the weekend, is the 2015 version of Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and directed by Justin Kurzel. "Even if you have never read the original, you'll still be impressed with the visual presentation," wrote Xu Ruofeng, a Chinese critic reviewing the movie. For the 400th anniversary celebrations of the Bard's death, a flurry of activities in publishing, theater and films is taking place across China, bringing him closer to the Chinese public. Never before have Chinese lovers of Shakespeare had so many ways of approaching his immortal works. Tickets sold out for the filmed stage production of Hamlet, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, and which had limited screenings in selected Chinese cities. Other Shakespearean plays in the National Theatre Live series, such as Nicholas Hytner's Othello and Sam Mendes' King Lear, will surely be welcome additions to the lineup of the Bard's offerings. Even Coriolanus, a relatively obscure Shakespearean work by Chinese standards, wowed audiences, partly because it stars Tom Hiddleston ofThorfame and partly because a Chinese stage adaptation has put a local spin on it, sinicizing the title to General Kou Liulan. It was directed by stage luminary Lin Zhaohua. Data is not available on how many of the Bard's plays have graced the Chinese stage, but perennial favorites such as Hamlet and Romeo and Julietobviously have been presented more often than others. However, complete Chinese translations seem easier to compile and publish. RSC initiative The Beijing-based Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press has just come out with a new complete version, supported by the British Council. The bilingual format uses an English-language edition originally authorized by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Chinese translations by eminent scholars including Xu Yuanchong. In recent months, the RSC has also launched its own initiative to translate a new Chinese version specially tailored for the stage. Another sorely needed Chinese translation for the purpose of title projection, which should adhere to the Bard's mantra that "brevity is the soul of wit", would help greatly with touring productions in the original tongue, but has not made it to the agendas of translators or sponsors so far. The most influential version to date is the one by Zhu Shenghao (1911-44), who completed work on 31 of the plays under the direst of circumstances, including poor health and the Japanese invasion of China (he lost his translation manuscripts more than once to Japanese fires). His genius in capturing the essence of the Bard's work could be the single most important factor in making Shakespeare accessible to one-fifth of the world's population. Liang Shiqiu (1902-87) is so far the only Chinese who has translated every piece credited to Shakespeare. But his version is less literary and more verbatim, thus suitable for textual research for non-English speakers. Liang's version was republished this month by Penguin. Fang Ping (1921-2008) was responsible for much of the first complete version that replicated the verse form. Considering the difficulty of translating the Bard's lines, not to mention the ambiguity of some words, there will be no shortage of Chinese translators taking on this daunting task. According to Lu Gusun, a professor of English language at Fudan University in Shanghai, as many as three Chinese versions of Hamletappeared before 1949, and more have seen the light of day since. President's speech But there is still no ideal equivalent for "To be or not to be", which is arguably the best-known Shakespearean quote in China. (Incidentally, the British Council is sponsoring a campaign for Chinese to share their Shakespearean quotes, which can be from his plays or poems.) Shakespeare's plays have been a staple of Chinese theater or literature students. This year's celebrations are doubly meaningful because China's great dramatist Tang Xianzu died in the same year as Shakespeare, and comparative studies of the two are now in vogue. In October, while giving a speech in London, President Xi Jinping recounted his exposure as a youth to the Bard, saying how he was attracted by the emotions in A Midsummer Night's Dream,The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Learand Macbeth. He also described Tang as the "Shakespeare of the East", adding, "China and Britain can share our celebrations of two literary giants and push the mutual understanding and exchange of our peoples." Monks participate in dharma debates in the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, capital city of Tibet autonomous region. [Photo by Palden Nyima/China Daily] Religious leaders and scholars in China have voiced support for the government's stance on religions outlined by President Xi Jinping at a top-level conference. Religious communities were advised to retain their independence and self-management by the president in his speech at the two-day National Work Conference on Religions that ended on Saturday in Beijing. There are believers from nearly all the world's major religions in China, although nonbelievers comprise the majority of the population. Mu Zhongjian, a professor of religious studies at Renmin University of China, describes China as a "United Nations of all religions". At the conference, Xi said China is determined to protect its harmonious social relations among believers of various faiths. It also aims to protect believers and nonbelievers from attempted infiltration by external forces and from extremist ideas. "We should guide and educate the religious circle and followers with socialist core values, and guide religious people with the ideas of unity, progress, peace and tolerance," he said. At the same time, no religion can interfere with the administrative, judicial and educational functions of the State, the president said, adding that the State must uphold the rule of law when overseeing religious affairs that have a bearing on State or public interests. Guo Chengzhen, vice-president of the Islamic Association of China, said the national religious conference provided a comprehensive guideline on religions' role in Chinese society. "Localization for different religions has been discussed in the past, but until the conference, people were not quite clear how this should proceed." Father Paul Lei Shiyin, the bishop of Leshan diocese in Sichuan province, under the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, said the conference had promised to provide the necessary support to various religious groups. As a result, the Catholic Church in China now stands a better chance of overcoming the difficulties it faces, such as a shortage of clergy and being able to better serve society. Cao Nanlai, an associate professor of religious studies at Renmin University of China, said the idea of localization is a very inclusive term and may provide enough room for different religions to develop their own innovative practices in China. "A highlight of the conference was the government's confidence that religious canons and practicesno matter what they arecan be made to serve social harmony and progress, and can work with the core values of the modern China." Mu, the Renmin University professor, explaining the philosophical root of China's religious policies, said there are different versions of atheism. The atheism practiced in China not only allows, but respects, religious faiths on the individual level. It is an atheism that is based on equality and inclusiveness, Mu said. BEIJING, April 24 -- Chinese President Xi Jinpingencouraged the country's aerospace scientists and engineers to usher in a new chapter in aerospace development on Sunday, the first China Space Day. In an instruction to the occasion, Xi asked space scientists and engineers to "seize the strategic opportunity and keep innovating to make a greater contribution to the country's overall growth and the welfare of mankind." He also saluted all those who have contributed to China's aerospace development during the past six decades. "Becoming an aerospace power has always been a dream we've been striving for," Xi said. The space day was designated to mark the launch of China's first satellite on April 24, 1970. "In establishing the China Space Day, we are commemorating history, passing on the spirit, and galvanizing popular enthusiasm for science, exploration of the unknown and innovation, particularly among young people," Xi said. In a separate instruction, Premier Li Keqiangalso called for advancement of space science and technology and their practical application. He also said he wants China's aerospace agencies to foster more innovative talents. KUNMING, April 24 -- A Thai tourist was killed after a bus rolled over in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Sunday, local authorities said. The accident occurred on a highway in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture at around 9:10 a.m.. The tourist bus rolled over after colliding with a truck and then the road block. One Thai tourist was killed on the spot, and three Thai people and the Chinese driver were injured, according to a statement from the local government. The 48-seat bus was carrying 38 people, including 34 Thai nationals and four Chinese, it said. The injured have been hospitalized. The cause of the accident is being investigated. BEIJING, April 24 -- China is open to space cooperation with all nations including the United States, the heavyweights of China's space program said on Sunday, the anniversary of China's first satellite launch 46 years ago. "China will not rule out cooperating with any country, and that includes the United States," said Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut. Payload has been reserved in the Chinese space station, due to enter service around 2022, for international projects and foreign astronauts, said Yang on the occasion of the first China Space Day, an annual celebration newly designated by the government. Upon request, China will also train astronauts for other countries, and jointly train astronauts with the European space station, Yang said. "The future of space exploration lies in international cooperation. It's true for us, and for the United States too," according to the senior astronaut. His words were echoed by Zhou Jianping, chief engineer of China's manned space program. Zhou said, "It is well understood that the United States is a global leader in space technology. But China is no less ambitious in contributing to human development." "Cooperation between major space players will be conducive to the development of all mankind," Zhou added. Citing security reasons, the U.S. Congress passed a law in 2011 to prohibit NASA from hosting Chinese visitors at its facilities and working with researchers affiliated to any Chinese government entity or enterprise. The ban remains in effect. The U.S.-dominated International Space Station, which unsurprisingly blocks China, is scheduled to end its service in 2024. China's space station could be the only operational one in outer space, at least for a while. Commenting on Sino-U.S. space relations earlier this week, Xu Dazhe, the head of China's National Space Administration, cites Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster "The Martian," in which a U.S. astronaut gets stranded on Mars and is eventually brought back to Earth by NASA, with help from China. Xu Dazhe noted that China and the United States established a special dialogue mechanism last year and talks would continue this year. For chief engineer Zhou, the movie simply reflects what most people want. "Many American astronauts and scientists that I have met said they would like to work with us, if given the freedom of choice." The China Space Day was designated to mark the launch of China's first satellite on April 24, 1970. The man posted a photo of the blade he intended to use to cut his wrists. (Photo/dahe.cn) A lovelorn man from Shangqiu in Henan province recently posted information and photos of his own attempted suicide on a Baidu message board. At about 1 a.m. on April 24, a man posted a message saying, "I have seen through it. I choose to escape. I will show you the whole process of wrist-cutting." At 2:30 a.m., the man posted a photo of his wrist bleeding. He said, "It feels numb, and I am crying." As soon as the man posted the first photo, hundreds of netizens began leaving messages, hoping to persuade the man not to harm himself further. However, he didn't respond and instead continued to broadcast his suicide. He Peng and Chen Long, two webmasters of the message board, also left messages for the man. Answering the pleas of many netizens, the man finally gave his phone number to He Peng. He called at once and stayed on the phone with the man to stabilize him. Meanwhile, both He and Chen hurried to the scene of the suicide. When they arrived, many netizens were still talking to the man and attempting to dissuade him from his plan. He and Chen took the man to the hospital for treatment; after he was stabilized, they also accompanied him back home. At about 4 a.m. on April 24, the man posted a new message: "Thank you all. Thank you so much. We met and we talked a lot. Now I am feeling much better. My online friends, although we don't know each other, you cared about me so much. I will live a good life and not let you down" Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend: The volume of oil produced from Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil and gas fields' block in Azerbaijan from November 1997 to Apr.1, 2016, stood at 393 million tons, and 218 million tons of this volume accounted for the country's profit oil, Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice-president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), said. He made the remarks Apr. 25 at the SOCAR International Practical Conference on "Caspian Basin and Central Asia: Trade, Logistics, Oil Processing and Oil and Chemistry" in Baku. "The volume of associated gas produced at ACG stood at 118 billion cubic meters," he said. Some 90,000 tons of oil and 36 million cubic meters of gas are produced at the block of fields per day, according to Yusifzade. SOCAR's first vice-president added that 91 wells operate at the field. Yusifzade further said that eight million tons of oil was produced at ACG in the first quarter of 2016, of which 66 percent, or 5.3 million tons accounted for Azerbaijan's profit oil. SOCAR's first vice president said that of 407 million tons of oil exported by Azerbaijan, 299 million tons was exported via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. "The rest part accounted for the Baku-Supsa pipeline (76 million tons of oil), the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline (11 million tons) and a railway (21 million tons)," said Yusifzade. He added that 70 billion cubic meters of gas and 18 million tons of condensate has been produced at Shah Deniz gas and condensate field since the beginning of its operation. "Currently, the total volume of Azerbaijani gas export to Turkey is over 39 billion cubic meters, while over five billion cubic meters is exported to Georgia," he said. Yusifzade said that in the first quarter of 2016, gas export from the deposit to Georgia totaled 2.5 million cubic meters per day, to Turkey - 18.2 million cubic meters per day. Daily production of gas at the Shah Deniz field is 30 million cubic meters of gas. At the same time, some 7,000 tons of condensate are daily produced at eight wells of the field. The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field's reserve is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. The shareholders in the contract are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent). --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend: Nearly 70 percent of the work on the "Shah Deniz-2" project has been finished in Azerbaijan and Georgia within the Southern Gas Corridor, Azerbaijani Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said. He made the remarks Apr. 25 at the SOCAR International Practical Conference on "Caspian Basin and Central Asia: Trade, Logistics, Oil Processing and Oil and Chemistry" in Baku. He said that the work on the project has been considerably accelerated. "The work on expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline, oil and gas terminal in Sangachal, construction of compressor stations in Georgia has been completed nearly by 70 percent," said Aliyev. "We also continue to work closely with the governments of European countries on the project, which is important for both us and them." The minister said that it will be possible to export gas from Iran, Iraq, Israel and Cyprus via the Southern Gas Corridor in the future. The gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz field's development will be exported to Turkey and to the European markets by means of expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and construction of the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). TANAP project envisages transportation of gas of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field from Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey. The initial capacity of TANAP pipeline is expected to reach 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Around six billion cubic meters of this gas will be delivered to Turkey and the remaining volume will be supplied to Europe. The 878 km TAP pipeline will transport Azerbaijani natural gas from the giant Shah Deniz II field through the last leg of the Southern Gas Corridor, connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline at the Turkish-Greek border at Kipoi and then crossing Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Southern Italy. The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) is a priority project for the EU. It is designed to transport the Caspian region's gas to Europe through Georgia and Turkey. At the initial stage, the gas to be extracted during the second phase of development at Azerbaijani gas condensate field Shah Deniz is considered to be the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor. At a later stage, other sources may join the project. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Azad Hasanli - Trend: Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce (SRCIC) has invited Azerbaijan to become the organization's co-chair. This proposal was made Apr. 25 by SRCIC Chairman Liu Jianzhong at a conference in Baku dedicated to the establishment of the Entrepreneurs' Day. "Currently, co-chairs of 38 countries are the members of the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce and we hope that Azerbaijan will join them in the near future," said Jianzhong. He also noted that the SRCIC summit will be held Sept. 9 in the Chinese city of Xian. Jianzhong invited Azerbaijan's Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev and the country's businessmen to take part in the conference. "SRCIC intends to cooperate with various countries, and in this regard we would like to establish similar cooperation with Azerbaijan, to hold a conference in the country in the near future," he added. The establishment of the Entrepreneurs' Day in Azerbaijan once again proves that the country's leadership pays great attention to business problems, according to him. Jianzhong expressed hope that under the leadership of the country's president Azerbaijan's economy will become even more developed. Currently, the total budget of the SRCIC exceeds $1.2 billion. Edited by SI --- Follow the author on Twitter: @AzadHasanli Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Azad Hasanli - Trend: Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Natig Aliyev will take part in the Mediterranean Leadership Summit, to be held Apr. 28-29 in Malta, read a message issued Apr. 25 by the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry. The summit will discuss the ways to solve the problems of the Mediterranean region, opening of a new energy corridor between North Africa and Europe, development of oil and gas sector in North Africa and in the Eastern Mediterranean basin and other issues. The European Commission's Principal Adviser to the Director General for Energy Tudor Constantinescu and Malta's Energy and Health Minister Konrad Mizzi will take part in the discussions. The summit is organized by 'The Economist' magazine and the Maltese government. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 Trend: Azerbaijan's territorial integrity must be restored, said Sergiy Korsunsky, Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey in an interview with Daily Sabah. "I want to affirm that Ukraine definitely, 100 percent, supports Azerbaijan. Its territorial integrity must be restored", he said. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. France, as an OSCE Minsk Group co-chair, is urging not to resort to use of force and to come back to negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement, the French Minister of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir told reporters Apr. 25 in Yerevan, the 'Armenia Today' website reported. Desir said he had brought a message that the negotiations should be resumed. Negotiations are needed to prevent the violence witnessed recently, according to him. Desir also said France wants the control mechanisms to be applied over incidents, any military developments to cease, and the parties to be able to sit down at the negotiations table and maintain the ceasefire. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend: No meeting is planned between Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at this time, the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, James Warlick, told Trend Apr.25. "While we do not have any meetings of the ministers planned at this time, we are in constant contact with them to lay the groundwork for the sides to begin a negotiation on a settlement [of the conflict] under the auspices of the [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chairs," he said. "We are ready to meet with the ministers at any time." 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 Trend: Kremlin considers the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh as very fragile, RIA Novosti quoted Russian president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Apr.25. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend: Status quo on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable any more, as it causes the growth of tension and the threat of the conflict's renewal, says Harlem Desir, France's secretary of state for European affairs. Desir made the remarks Apr. 25 at a press conference in Yerevan, Armenia, News.am reported Apr. 25. "Our approach is that the conflict can be solved through negotiations only," he said. All have seen numerous victims and suffering over the recent years and the conflict's continuation causes more victims and suffering, he noted. In this context, as Desir said, Europe's opinion that the conflict isn't of its concern does not correspond to reality. "There can be no talk about international stability as long as there is a risk of the conflict renewal in Nagorno-Karabakh," he said, adding therefore, France, as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, and its only European co-chair, will make all the efforts for the conflict's peaceful resolution. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Edited by EA --- Follow the author on Twitter: @EmmaTariver Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend: People always feel the need to delay something planned in advance, just as the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon did recently, when it was announced that his visit to South Caucasus was postponed. But it was a bit strange that the news about postponing the visit came when little time was left for its start. Ban Ki-moon was planning to visit Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia from Apr. 23 through Apr. 27, and preparations were underway for the trip. Some sources told Trend Apr. 20 that the preparations were going on at full pace and that the UN secretary general will leave for Georgia on Apr. 23. However, the news came on Apr. 21 about the sudden postponement of the visit. Unexpectedness was the key point here; why would the visit be cancelled a day before its start? But everything became clear thanks to information obtained by Trend from diplomatic sources. It turned out that Ban Ki-moon was initially planning to arrive in Georgia on Apr. 23, then depart for Armenia on Apr. 25, and arrive in Azerbaijan on Apr. 26. However, for Yerevan, for obvious reasons, it was vital that the UN secretary general arrive in Armenia exactly on Apr. 24, the day the Armenians call "the day of genocide" and chose that day as a date when the world needs to feel "heartily sorry" for them. But Ban Ki-moon refused to take part in the Armenian show called "let's all together recognize the genocide", and tried to move the date of his Yerevan trip to Apr. 25. He just didn't want to be forced to visit the memorial, where Armenia's leadership always takes anyone arriving in the country. Meanwhile, the "long-suffering" nation doesn't want to lose so easily. Unprecedented pressure was exerted on Ban Ki-moon, including by the Armenians living in the US, diplomatic sources told Trend. The officials who have relations with the Armenian lobby, the lobby members themselves, as well as many influential members of the political elite poorly versed in history were persuading Ban Ki-moon to realize the visit. Therefore, the UN's wise secretary general, who became tired of refusing and didn't want to explain why he wouldn't visit Yerevan on Apr. 24, simply postponed the trip to the entire region - which also meant postponing the trip to Azerbaijan as well. And apparently, feeling uncomfortable by having cancelled the trip to Azerbaijan, Ban Ki-moon not only sent a letter to Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev extending sincere apologies to the president and to the Azerbaijani people for postponing his trip to Baku, but also later phoned the president and once again expressed regret that he could not visit Baku. --- Elmira Tariverdiyeva is the head of Trend Agency's Russian news service, follow her on Twitter: @EmmaTariver Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: The world cannot put up with the situation around Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region for long, famous Kazakh writer and poet Olzhas Suleimenov told reporters Apr. 25 in Baku. International community should get more actively involved in the resolution of this conflict, Suleimenov said. Any such kind of war may lead to a global catastrophe, Suleimenov said, expressing the hope that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be solved soon. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council 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 25 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received Chairman of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of Belarus Mikhail Myasnikovich April 25. Myasnikovich extended greetings and best wishes of President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko to President Aliyev. Saying he visited Azerbaijan four years ago, Myasnikovich added that significant changes happened in Baku since then. He congratulated President Aliyev on Azerbaijan`s success and considerable accomplishments in various areas, particularly in the economic sector. Myasnikovich underlined the importance of Azerbaijan`s hosting world-scale events, including the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. The president said he had visited Belarus several times, adding that each time he witnessed development, progress, order and sincerity in the country. Saying that great importance had recently been attached in the world and Europe to the role and successful development of Belarus, President Aliyev offered his congratulations on these achievements and said that the two countries were happy for each other`s success. The president emphasized the significance of the fact that Belarus was highly represented at the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, describing this as a sign of the importance attached by Belarus to the event as well as the country`s respect for Azerbaijan. President Aliyev said relations with the friendly and partner country Belarus were successfully developing in political, economic and other areas, adding that the inter-parliamentary cooperation was contributing to the development of the bilateral ties. President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Lukashenko, and asked Myasnikovich to extend his greetings to the president of Belarus. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by member of the National Assembly of the French Republic, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel. Noting that Mancel is a close friend of Azerbaijan, President Aliyev hailed his role in developing the relations between the two countries. Touching upon the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku, the president said the guests from a number of countries have already arrived for the event, and hailed the fact that France is represented at the event by a large delegation. President Aliyev noted that the Forum also creates a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral ties. The president expressed confidence that Jean-Francois Mancel`s visit to Azerbaijan will be a success. Member of the National Assembly of the French Republic, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel said they support Azerbaijan`s fair position in this complicated situation. He noted that they are working to ensure that the French government demonstrates a fair stance on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the French society knows Azerbaijan better. Touching upon the interparliamentary cooperation, Jean-Francois Mancel praised the close friendship and cooperation with head of Azerbaijan-France interparliamentary friendship group, Azerbaijan`s First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva. At the meeting, the sides highlighted the importance of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum, hailed the development of Azerbaijan-France bilateral ties, and expressed confidence that these relations would continue to strengthen. Baku, Azerbaijan Apr. 25 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev conveyed greetings and best wishes of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Ilham Aliyev. He said the goals and ideas of the 7th Global Forum of UN Alliance of Civilizations are of unprecedented importance in the current crisis period and stressed the significance of holding such an event of the United Nations in Baku. In turn, President Aliyev described the organization of the forum of the UN Alliance of Civilization in Baku as a sign of recognition of Azerbaijan's activity within dialogue among civilizations. The president added that the relevant work done and the events held in Azerbaijan have contributed to bringing nations closer to one another and strengthening mutual understanding. President Aliyev recalled with pleasure his recent meeting with President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev at the Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul. He thanked for such a high representation of Kazakhstan at the 7th Global Forum of UN Alliance of Civilizations and described this as a good sign of Kazakhstan's interest in the issues to be discussed at the Forum, as well as the country's attitude towards Azerbaijan. The president hailed the fact that chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan is visiting Azerbaijan with a large delegation. President Aliyev said the forum will create a good opportunity for holding interesting discussions and looking through the agenda of the bilateral relations between the two countries. President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of Nursultan Nazarbayev, and asked Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to extend his greetings to the president of Kazakhstan. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is on a working visit in the country. The presidents hailed the successful development of friendly and fraternal relations between the two countries based on strategic partnership. The sides noted the importance of the high level meetings in expanding cooperation, and expressed confidence that the bilateral ties would continue to expand. The presidents also highlighted the importance of the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, which is taking place in Baku, and noted that the event contributed to international cooperation. The presidents also exchanged views on bilateral relations and other issues of mutual interest. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 22 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Choosing Azerbaijan as a host of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations' 7th Global Forum is symbolic because Azerbaijan promotes the ideas of multiculturalism and the forum was established to eliminate tension between the West and the Islamic world, Azernews newspaper's columnist Amina Nazarli said at the discussions in Baku International Policy and Security Network think tank. She noted that 2016 was declared the year of Multiculturalism in Azerbaijan. "Moreover Azerbaijan is recognized in the world as the country of tolerance where many religions, cultures and ethnics, nations live together in peace, mutual understanding and respect," Nazarli said. Nazarli noted that holding such an event as UNAOC 7th Global Forum in Baku will demonstrate the growing prestige of Azerbaijan in the world and Baku will make a contribution to solution of many important global conflicts. She noted that the Global Forum is aimed to explore the new ways of promoting cross-cultural dialogue and understanding as well as new partnership and commitments. She reminded that UNAOC Global Forum is one of the largest forums in the world which is usually attended by many heads of states, international ministries, which discuss important issues. She said the Baku Forum will discuss important issues such as global migration, the role of youth as well as the role of sport, education and religion and the fight against extremism and terrorism as for the few years the world has been witnessing a raise in religion intolerance and violent extremism. The hosting of the Forum in Baku in 2016 between two major international events that was held in Baku last summer - Baku European Games and the upcoming Islamic Solidarity games scheduled for 2017 proves that Azerbaijan is the land where European and Islamic cultures come together, Nazarli said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 Trend: The Youth Forum kicked off in Baku April 25 as part of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum. The 7th UNAOC Global Forum is being held in Baku Apr. 25-27. Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the UNAOC Global Forum. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: Baku forum is a good platform for discussing the issues of the world concern, said Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations. Al-Nasser made this statement at the Youth Forum as part of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku April 25. "We have gathered in Baku to share our views on current important issues of the world concern," he said. "The international community must live in peace. Encouraging of the dialogue must be our main goal." "The youth is a catalyst for changes," Al-Nasser said. "The youth can better promote and encourage the intercultural dialogue." The Youth Forum kicked off in Baku April 25 as part of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum. The 7th UNAOC Global Forum is being held in Baku Apr. 25-27. Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the UNAOC Global Forum. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: The World Bank (WB) will provide $1 billion for funding of the construction project of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported Apr. 25. Besides the WB's loan, it is expected that $1.07 billion will be allocated by the European Investment Bank (EIB), according to the newspaper. The long-term loans will be possibly provided under the state guarantee, the newspaper said. In December 2015, Tolga Erguven, the EBRD chief banker for energy in Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, told Trend that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was discussing the project funding with the shareholders of the TANAP consortium (Trans-Anatolian Pipeline). TANAP project envisages transportation of gas of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field from Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey. Turkey will get gas in 2018 and after completing the construction of Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), it will be delivered to Europe in early 2020. Currently, the shareholders of TANAP are: the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) - 58 percent, Botas - 30 percent and BP - 12 percent. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: Ankara and Moscow will discuss the prospects for resuming the supply of Turkish agricultural products to Russia, Turkey's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock told Trend Apr.25. The discussions will be held during the visit of a delegation of Turkey's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock to Russia Apr.26. Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated after the incident with Russian SU-24 bomber. Following the incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to take measures for ensuring the national security and special economic measures against Turkey. As part of these measures, Russia banned the import of some food and agricultural products from Turkey. Edited by SI --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 Trend: "Baku International Sea Trade Port" CJSC (aka Port of Baku) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on technical cooperation in Singapore with SMRT International Pte Ltd and Ectivise Solutions Pte Ltd to enhance the operational effectiveness of the new Port of Baku in Azerbaijan. The MoU was signed by the Director-General of the Port of Baku, Dr. Taleh Ziyadov, Chief Executive Officer of Ectivise Solutions, Mr. Arthur Cheong, and Managing Director of SMRT International, Mr. Goh Eng Kiat. The two Singapore-based companies will advise and support the Port of Baku in its efforts to introduce new technologies and innovative solutions in the Port and Free Trade Zone operations, including a Group Rapid Transit (GRT) System, Integrated Operation Control Centre (OCC), Auto Warehousing Storage and Retrieval System and other security systems. As a result of this cooperation Port of Baku will be the first in the region to introduce driverless transportation - smart cars. "Today's MoU will enable the Port of Baku to achieve its set goal of becoming an exemplary and the most technologically advanced port in the Caspian region much quicker," stated Dr. Ziyadov. "We value the support of our Singaporean partners in our mission to bring technological solutions that are environmentally friendly and sustainable to users and clients of the Port of Baku," he noted. SMRT International Pte Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SMRT Corporation Ltd, which is the premier multi-modal public transport operator in Singapore. It is engaged in the business of operations and maintenance (O&M), engineering, consultancy and project management services overseas. Ectivise Solutions is an expert in large-scale network planning and a pioneer in ICT integrated infrastructure solutions such as Passive Optical Networks (PON) and Integrated Optical Backbone Architecture (IOBA). The government of Azerbaijan is currently building a new state-of-the-art port complex near the Alyat town of Baku that includes a large area dedicated to a Free Trade Zone (FTZ), which envisages the development of a transport and logistics industry, pharmaceutical cluster, common-use oil supply base facilities, and manufacturing, packaging, labeling and consolidation areas. This is a part of a larger strategy by the country's president, Ilham Aliyev, to strengthen Azerbaijan's non-oil economy and diversify it away from hydrocarbons. Located at the strategic crossroads of Europe and Asia and near sizeable markets like China, Turkey, Iran and Russia, the new Port of Baku is poised to become the leading trade and logistics hub of Eurasia. Baku, Azerbaijan Apr.25 Trend: The SOCAR Turkey Energy company has named its new director general. Deputy head of the Investments Division of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) Zaur Gahramanov has been appointed to this post in accordance with the decision of the SOCAR Turkey Energy board, the company told Trend Apr.25. He replaced Kenan Yavuz who resigned from his post. Head of the Board of SOCAR Turkey Energy Vagif Aliyev expressed gratitude to Yavuz for his activities as the company's director general and wished success to Gahramanov. Vagif Aliyev said that the company has achieved success under the leadership of Yavuz. "When serving as the director general, he supported the spread of the company's investments across Turkey and turning the company into a competitive player in the country's energy sector," said Aliyev, adding that Yavuz will continue to serve as a board member of the company. Further, Vagif Aliyev said that Gahramanov has more than eight years held important positions in SOCAR and made a significant contribution to strengthening the company's international position, increasing its competitiveness on the international arena. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 By Khalid Kazimov - Trend: The head of Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Mohammad Saeedi has said that the country has launched shipping routes to the Europe following the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA/nuclear deal). Saeedi said that the shipping routes to the Europe were launched after resolving banking and insurance issues as a result of the JCPOA, ISNA news agency reported. Saeedi said that the country's ships currently make regular trips to Hamburg, Antwerp and Genoa in Italy. According to the official Islamic Republic of Iran, Shipping Lines is also expected to launch routes to the Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. After seven years of inactivity under strict sanctions, an Iranian commercial ship, Azargoon, docked at Hamburg Port in March. Azargoon was the first Iranian merchant vessel to stop at a European port since sanctions were lifted on Iran in January. The docking marked the reopening of the European Container Line between Iran and Europe, which was suspended in 2010 due to sanctions imposed by the U.S. and their allies. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 By Khalid Kazimov - Trend: Iran's Oil Ministry is ready to take necessary measures for exporting oil as well as petrochemical products to Uruguay, a senior Iranian official said. Expressing Iran's readiness for expansion of trade ties with Uruguay, the Islamic Republic's First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri called for facilitating banking ties between the two countries, SHANA news agency reported. Jahangiri made the remarks at a meeting with Uruguay's Vice President Raul Sendic in Tehran. Sendic is in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials on ways to strengthen trade and economic cooperation. During his three-day official visit, Raul Sendic is expected to meet President Hassan Rouhani; Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani; Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif; Minister of Agriculture Mahmoud Hojjati; Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh and Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian. Iranian and Uruguayan officials are expected to discuss oil export, construction of refineries, joint ventures, customs and banking cooperation, marine transportation and shipping, science and technology. South American countries, including Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela have earlier paid visits to Tehran to discuss bolstering bilateral relations, regional and international developments. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 By Khalid Kazimov - Trend: A delegation from Pakistan's Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Resources will visit Tehran over the coming month to discuss a contract on extending Iran's gas pipeline into Pakistan. Mobin Saulat, head of Pakistan's state-run Inter State Gas systems, said that the visit will take place on the official invitation of Iran's Oil Ministry, SHANA news agency reported. Expressing optimistic views over the outcome of the visit, he further speculated that the visit will take place in mid-May. During his late-March visit to Pakistan, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran has laid a pipeline up to its border to export gas to neighboring Pakistan. He also called on Islamabad to speed up measures to complete its share to finalize the project. However, the long-awaited project for exporting Iran's gas to Pakistan seems to face some restrictions as Islamabad appears concerned over the international sanctions on Tehran, though most of them have been lifted. Tehran has already invested over $2 billion to construct the Iranian section of the pipeline, though it hasn't been fully completed. Pakistan was expected to start importing Iranian gas in January 2015, but the country has yet to begin building the pipeline in its territory. After an agreement was signed between Pakistan and China to build an LNG terminal at Pakistan's Gwadar port and to construct a 700-km pipeline from Gwadar to central regions of Pakistan in 2015, the hopes for Iranian gas deliveries to Pakistan increased. Tehran, Iran, April 25 By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend: Lord Lamont, UK's trade envoy to Iran and chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce, met with Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Iranian deputy oil minister in international affairs in Tehran to review the prospects of bilateral business in the post-sanctions Islamic Republic. The sides discussed Iran-UKEF (UK Export Finance) cooperation as well as reducing investment risk in the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), the Oil Ministry's Shana news agency reported April 25. "The British side announced that the UKEF is prepared for cooperation with Iran and has already allocated a fund for insuring related business deals," Zamaninia said after the meeting. It was also said that oil giants Shell and British Petroleum are ready to invest in Iran and take part in Iranian projects, the official further said. BP and Iran's oil industry are tied together as the formation of the company and inauguration of the oil industry in Iran in 1908 were parts of a single development. By holding 157.8 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves, Iran possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of crude oil. He said that in a meeting with Iran's banking officials earlier the day, Lamont had discussed ways to raise banking problems against international transactions with Iran. Foreign companies are still worried about conducting business with Iran despite the removal of sanctions that came in the wake of Iran's nuclear deal with world powers. He further said the sides vowed efforts to ease cooperation on Rhum field. Rhum is half owned and operated by BP, but the Iranian Oil Company has a 50 percent stake in the field, which was discovered in 1977, two years before the fall of the Shah amid the country's Islamic populist revolution. Tehran, Iran, April 25 By Mehdi Sepahvand, Emil Ilgar - Trend: The continuation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will broaden the insecurity that has already covered the area, Jaber Ansari, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said at a press-conference in Tehran April 25, Trend's correspondent reported. He added that Iran has announced readiness to render any assistance to both countries. "If two conflicting sides make any request to Iran, we will play a more active role to resolve the conflict," he said. Ansari said that as long as the sides have not urged Iran to render assistance, we will do everything possible through international procedures to be accepted by both countries. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 By Khalid Kazimov - Trend: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called for a boom in bilateral ties with Macedonia. "The volume of trade turnover between Iran and Macedonia shows that the sides have not fully used the existing capabilities and capacities, so far," IRNA news agency quoted President Rouhani as saying at a meeting with Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki in Tehran. "It is necessary to improve trade ties between the two countries in the post sanctions era," President Rouhani added. Saying that there are wide opportunities for the expansion of trade ties, he further added that there are no obstacles for boosting economic ties between Tehran and Skopje. In his turn, Poposki expressed Skopje's interest in the expansion of trade ties with Tehran and said his government is keen to open its embassy in Tehran aimed at contributing to boosting trade ties. During the meeting the sides also touched upon the necessity to fight against terrorism and called for taking serious measures to confront terrorism. Tehran, Iran, Apr. 25 By Mehdi Sepahvand, Emil Ilgar - Trend: The message about blocking Iranian assets means that the previous tendency of the US hostility against Iran will be continued and intensified, said the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari at a press conference in Tehran, reports Trend correspondent. "No country is allowed to put its domestic laws above international rules. The move showed there is no willingness in the US to end the long period of distrust that Iranians hold against Washington," added Ansari. Last week it was announced that the US would block nearly $2 billion of frozen Iranian assets to transfer them to the American victims of terror attacks, including the victims of the 1983 truck bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The US Supreme Court's investigators concluded that Iran was involved in the attacks, something that Tehran denies. The blocked assets belong to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), frozen under the US sanctions. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25 By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Iran's recent decision on sending army commandos to Syria comes in response to Damascus request, Hossein Jaber Ansari, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said Apr. 25. Iran is providing Syria with military advisory support since the crisis broke out in Syria based on the Syrian government request, Ansari said, ISNA news agency reported. While responding to a question whether Iran's choice to send Army troopers to Syria is a domestic decision or influenced by foreign demands, Ansari said that the decision was made considering the mutual relations of Iran and Syria. Tehran has dispatched military advisors to Syria on various occasions as needed and the recent decision was made within this framework, Ansari said. He also said that there is no difference between Iranian armed forces (army and the IRGC) regarding the issue. Earlier in April, Iranian media outlets quoted Brigadier-General Ali Arasteh, an Iranian Army commander, as saying that army for the first time has deployed a group of its commandos from the 65 Nohed Airborne Brigade in Syria to provide advisory support for President Bashar al-Assad's army in fight against terrorist groups. Only days after, reports were published about the first causalities of Iranian Army in Syrian clashes. Iranian officials have constantly confirmed that the IRGC provides the Syrian army with advisory support in fight against the terrorist groups. The Islamic Republic views the Syrian regime as its main strategic ally in the region, as well as a part of the "axis of resistance" against Israel. Tehran has always expressed support for the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 25 By Khalid Kazimov - Trend: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for expansion of trade ties with South Africa. Expansion of cooperation in various fields is in the favor of independent countries, Ayatollah Khamenei said at a meeting with the visiting South African President Jacob Zuma in Tehran, the supreme leader's official website reported. Ayatollah Khamenei described the Islamic Republic's attitude toward South Africa as positive and constructive, calling the relations between Iran and South Africa warm and constructive. He further spoke about Islamic civilization and said Islamic Revolution seeks "realization of Islamic civilization." Elaborating on Islamic civilization, he said it does not mean conquest, but intellectual influence of Islam on nations. Jacob Zuma is on a state visit to Tehran for the first time after the implementation of the nuclear agreement between Iran and six global powers. Heading a high-ranking political-economic delegation, Zuma arrived in Tehran on April 24 at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart President Hassan Rouhani to discuss ways to strengthen relations between the two countries. His delegation is expected to sign several documents for cooperation in trade and economic fields with Iranian side. The number of Syrian settlements that signed up to the US-Russia-brokered ceasefire has reached 71, the Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday, Sputnik reported. "The total number of settlements, the leaders of which had signed reconciliation agreements, has reached 71," the Russian center for reconciliation said in a bulletin. A US-Russia-brokered ceasefire came into force across Syria on February 27. It was supported by Damascus, as well as by dozens of opposition groups on the ground. The Islamic State (Daesh) and the al-Nusra Front terror groups, both outlawed in Russia, are not part of the deal. The Ceasefire has largely been holding in parts of Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry noted, adding the regime was breached 13 times in the past 24 hours. "The ceasefire regime has been observed in most provinces of the Syrian Arab Republic. Within last 24 hours, 13 ceasefire violations have been registered (Damascus - 5, Latakia - 3, Homs and Aleppo - 2 for each)," the Russian center for reconciliation said in a bulletin. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations which kicked off in Baku Apr.25, is an important event, TRT Haber TV channel quoted Ibrahim Kalin, spokesperson for Turkey's presidential administration, as saying Apr.25. He pointed out that Turkey has always supported the dialogue of civilizations. Kalin noted that during the visit to Azerbaijan to take part in the UNAOC Global Forum, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will also hold a number of official meetings in Baku. The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last till Apr.27. Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the UNAOC Global Forum. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku. Edited by SI --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.25 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: The talks on normalizing the relations between Turkey and Israel continue, TRT Haber TV channel quoted Ibrahim Kalin, spokesperson for Turkey's presidential administration, as saying Apr.25. He noted that the parties have achieved serious results during the talks. The removal of the Gaza Strip's blockade by Israel is one of the important issues, according to Kalin. After the deterioration of relations between Russia and Turkey, some Turkish media outlets reported that Turkey and Israel will resume the previous relations. Earlier, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed that Turkey and Israel had private talks. Relations between Israel and Turkey deteriorated after the Freedom Flotilla incident in 2010, when a convoy of six ships, including one under Turkey's flag, tried to approach the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid and activists on board. The flotilla was blocked and stormed by Israeli forces, with eight Turkish citizens being killed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel should apologize for the Freedom Flotilla incident, pay compensation to the families of those killed and end the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Edited by SI --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Android Marshmallow is rolling out for LG G3 on T-Mobile and AT&T network carriers. (Photo : YouTube/ Samsung Mobile) Network carriers Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon and AT&T are planning to release Android Marshmallow for LG G4, G3, G2, G Stylo, and V10. LG G4 has also received the Android Marshmallow update on all the network carriers. Network carrier Sprint was the first one to rollout the Android Marshmallow update in Dec. 2015 and the other carriers followed suit. Advertisement Regarding LG G3, only Verizon has released the Android Marshmallow update, as yet. The other network carriers such as AT&T, US Cellular and Sprint are expected to release it soon, in early May. According to T-Mobile's support page, the Android Marshmallow software is currently being tested for the device. On the other hand, network carriers Verizon and AT&T have rolled out the Android Marshmallow update for LG V10. T-Mobile is also about to release the update very soon. Other network carriers such as Sprint and US Cellular are expected to release the schedule shortly. Furthermore, only T-Mobile has rolled out the Android Marshmallow update for LG G4 Stylo. The other network carriers have not confirmed when they plan to release the Android Marshmallow update for the device. Moreover, users of LG G Flex 2 are also waiting for the Android Marshmallow update, from their respective carriers. There has been no confirmed release schedule of the update, from the numerous carriers. Users who are waiting for the update can check whether their device has received any notification for upgradation or not, by going to "Settings" > "About Device." Meanwhile, the LG flagship phone, LG G5 was launched with Android Marshmallow, out of the box. Hence, all the users of the device on various networks like AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Sprint and Verizon are already enjoying the latest operating system. Incidentally, the latest generation of Android, the Android Marshmallow operating system has numerous advanced features. This version comes with the concept of Material Design, which gives it a greater edge in the market. It also increases the battery life of the device, according to BGR. Watch the video for an in-depth review of the latest operating system here: Alibaba founder Jack Ma hopes to transform the South China Morning Post as a global media agency. (Photo : Reuters) Alibaba founder Jack Ma said that readers deserve a fair chance to understand what is happening in China, as he bares the reason for acquiring the South China Morning Post as well as his vision for the new acquisition. Advertisement Late last year when news broke out that Alibaba Group had acquired the 113-year-old English-language newspaper, readers were confronted with the biggest questions about the acquisition. In the second part of the SCMP series, Ma outlined for the first time since Alibaba's takeover his visions for the paper. When Alibaba acquired the Post, some readers have raised eyebrows, apprehensive that the paper, which had been aggressively reporting on China, would change its direction, while a few believed that controversial or sensitive issues might not be touched to avoid the risk of incurring the ire of Chinese leaders. Ma addressed these concerns in a face-to-face interview with the Post in Hangzhou, eastern Zhejiang Province, as he explained on having a new narrative on China that was different from both the state media and the mainstream Western media. "I don't see it as an issue of [coverage] being 'positive or negative,'" the Alibaba executive chairman said. "It is about being impartial and balanced . . . We should offer a fair chance to readers [to understand what is happening in China], not just a fair chance to China." Ma said that as a reader, obtaining unbiased information is important for a reader to draw his own conclusion from the undistorted facts presented to him. "I believe the most important thing for the media is to be objective, fair and balanced. We should not report a story with preconceptions or prejudice," Ma added. The Alibaba founder said that the Post can report on Asia and China more accurately since it has access to Alibaba's resources, data and all the relationships in its ecosystem, compared with other media who have no such advantage. "Sometimes, people look at things purely from a Western or an Eastern perspective--that is one-sided. What the Post can do is to understand the big 'why' behind a story and its cultural context," Ma explained. "I want to stress the importance of being fair to our readers. You should not impose your own view and prejudice on the readers and try to lead them to a conclusion. As a reader, I understand what a fair report is," he added. With the help of Alibaba's technology and resources, the tech tycoon said that his vision is to transform the Post into a global media agency. Ma added that Alibaba's management only wanted to represent the readers' interest and improve their experience, reiterating his promise that it would not take part in the Post's newsroom operations. "As I said to Joe [Tsai], you are going to the Post as a representative of its readers. You don't have to represent shareholders. You speak for the readers," Ma said, referring to Alibaba's executive vice chairman who is now the chairman of the Post. China is making preparations for the launching of the "core module" for its space station as the international space station will be retired by 2024. (Photo : Reuters) The launching of the "core module" for China's space station has been set around 2018 as part of a plan to establish a permanent manned space station in service by 2022, a senior official told the Xinhua News Agency on Thursday, April 21. Advertisement President Xi Jinping has called for China to establish itself as a space power, giving priority toward advancing its space program, but Beijing has also tested anti-satellite missiles, apart from its civilian ambitions, Reuters reported. The U.S. Defense Department has stressed the increasing capabilities of China's space program, saying that its activities were aimed at preventing adversaries from using space-based asset in a crisis, despite China's insistence that its space program is for peaceful purposes. Wang Zhongyang, spokesman for the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., told Xinhua that the "core module" for the space station would be called the "Tianhe-1," a Chinese word for galaxy or Milky Way. "Two space labs will be launched later and dock with the core module, Tianhe-1," Wang said. "The construction of the space station is expected to finish in 2022." Wang did not give any details of what the "core module" would consist. "If the International Space Station, which has extended its service, is retired by 2024, China's new space station will be the only operational one in outer space," Wang added. In 2013, three Chinese astronauts spent 15 days in orbit in a manned space mission and docked with an experimental space laboratory, the Tiangong-1 (Heavenly Palace). According to Xinhua, Tiangong-2 and Shenzhou-11 spacecraft will be launched this year and will carry two astronauts and dock with Tiangong-2. Tianzhou-1, China's first cargo ship, will attempt to dock with Tiangong-2 next year, the report said. Wang added that a space telescope, similar to the Hubble Space Telescope, is also being planned to be launched, which will "be on a separate space unit and share orbit alongside the space station." China was also working on reusable rocket technologies and has already built a prototype model, according to a separate report by Xinhua. The report said that although China is already developing its space program for military, commercial and scientific purposes, it still has to catch up with established space powers such as the United States and Russia. China will build 20 floating reactor platforms for the global market and an industry worth billions of dollars. (Photo : Reuters) About 20 floating reactor platforms are being planned to be built by China in a bid to meet the demand of maritime atomic propulsion and gain foothold in a market that could be worth billions of dollars, China Daily reported on Thursday, April 21. Advertisement According to eworldship, a Shanghai-based maritime industry information provider, the final assembly for the country's first-ever floating nuclear plant is about to start in Huludao, a coastal city in Liaoning Province, which will be built by Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co. Ltd., a unit of China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. "CSIC is the first company with the permission to construct the floating nuclear-powered vessel, and it aims to become the strongest builder of floating nuclear platforms within five years," the report quoted Wu Zhong, general manager of CSIC Asset Management Co. Ltd., as saying during an expert review held this week. According to Zhu Hanchao, deputy chief engineer of the CSIC 719 Research Institute, the pilot project has an average cost of about 3 billion yuan ($463 million), which can generate sales of 22.6 billion yuan in 40 years, the life span of the vessel. He added that as the company goes into mass production of the platforms, the cost could go lower. In 2014, the CSIC 719 was set up to develop a maritime nuclear power platform and core technologies in the field. The National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic regulator, approved the shipbuilder's proposal to start research for a demonstration project of the platform last year. Earlier this year, a strategic cooperation agreement was signed by China General Nuclear Power Group signed and CSIC to develop a reactor design, the 200-megawatt ACPR50S for the offshore nuclear power platform. Currently working on the preliminary design for ACPR50S, CGN is expected to start construction in 2017 and be commissioned by 2020. CGN said that the floating nuclear power plant can be equipped inside a section of the vessel. The plant is often used to supply stable electricity to remote areas, as well as to large industrial facilities such as offshore oilfield exploration rigs and seawater desalination plants. "The project has a wide range of civilian applications in providing safe and stable energy for maritime resources exploration and development," CGN said. Wu Zhong said that the nuclear-powered equipment industry is expected to reach 50 billion yuan per year in the Bohai Bay. Wu is expecting that the offshore oil drilling demand will keep growing in the next five years with a market value of 100 billion yuan. CBN Gets Green Light from MIIT to Become China's Fourth Telco Player Will CBN's entrance into the game affect China Unicom and other big telco players? (Photo : Reuters) China's three biggest telecommunication companies are about to face a fourth contender with state-owned CBN receiving the green light from the MIIT to compete against existing major telcos. According to Tech in Asia, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) "issued" CBN a telecom operator license on April 20, Wednesday, giving the company a legal permission to clash with the big three. Advertisement On its Weibo account, the MIIT confirmed that CBN had submitted an application on March 7. The basic license CBN applied for is a domestic Internet data transmission license, which includes a telecommunications infrastructure, reported People's Daily Online. The license, however, will only be used to boost CBN's broadband TV plans. This means that there is not so much to expect when it comes to mobile phone services. Tech in Asia speculates that MIIT's green light might be a move by the State Administration for Press, Publications, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT) to get some of [the] power back by getting China's internet users to watch "broadband television" rather than video streaming services that arguably fall under the regulatory control of other offices. The tech website said that the SAPPFRT "has been struggling to exert more control over the Web." Hence, granting a license to a fourth player could prompt users to switch back to traditional platforms such as print and TV, where the agency wields power. Meanwhile, analyst Fu Liang said in a report by People's Daily Online that CBN might already be late to the party because the industry's big three competitors "have made huge investments in their networks and acquired large number of users." Gartner's Peter Liu somehow echoed this statement in a China Daily report, saying that CBN "will not shock the current carriers and change the competition situation in domestic market in the short term." At present, China's telecommunications landscape is dominated by three players, namely, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile. Over-the-counter drugs can hurt the brain and increase risk of dementia (Photo : You Tube/Human Relations Media) People rely on over-the-counter medicines for quick relief of allergies, colds and insomnia. However, most of the meds used to treat these common health issues have been declared unsafe after new study revealed that taking them can lead to dementia and can possibly decrease the size of the brain. Advertisement In the newest research that was published on Journal of the American Medical Association Neurology, one research team stated that a lot of prescription and over-the-counter drugs can actually increase the risk of developing dementia among the elders. The researchers particularly mentioned anticholinergic drugs as risky to use because they are one of those medicines that are linked to dementia and cognitive impairment. Likewise, scientists said that older patients who take anticholinergic medicines to deal with wide range of health conditions such as allergies, depression, urinary incontinence, asthma, allergies, sleeping problems, hypertension and obstructive pulmonary disease, should be made aware of the side effects from such type of medication. These drugs were recently found to have serious ill effects on the brain so it must be taken with utmost precautions if it cannot be avoided. People might not be familiar with anticholinergic drugs but it is highly likely that many know about Dimetapp, Paxil, Benadryl, Dramamine, Demerol and Unisom. These medicines are commonly sold over-the-counter and often prescribed by physicians, however, these were included in the list of medicines to watch out for because scientists discovered that patients who take them score poorly on cognitive tests and their brains appear to be smaller in size compared to those who do not take such medications. In order to assess any changes in the participants' brain condition and activities, the reserachers made used of PET and MRI scans. Each person was also asked to take memory and cognitive tests which include short term memory tests, problem solving, verbal reasoning, planning and execution functions. According to CNN, 451 people had participated in the study at the Indiana University School of Medicine and most of them are already in their early 70s. Findings showed that over time, the brains of at least 60 people who were taking anticholinergic drugs have shrunk and not functioning to the level as they should. "These findings provide us with a much better understanding of how this class of drugs may act upon the brain in ways that might raise the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia," assistant professor of radiology and imaging sciences Shannon Risacher said. Finally, the professor said that with the latest findings, doctors should think twice before prescribing anticholinergic drugs. She also urged them to consider alternative medicines, whenever possible, for the safety of the patients. Watch the video for more evidence rhat common drugs may cause cognition issues: US President Barack Obama warned Sunday that it would be a "mistake" to send Western troops into Syria to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. In an interview with the BBC, he said the United States would continue strikes against the Islamic State group while continuing efforts to broker a transition deal between the Assad regime and his moderate Syrian opponents. "Syria has been a heart-breaking situation of enormous complexity, and I don't think there are any simple solutions," Obama said during his visit to London which ended Sunday. "It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime. "But I do believe that we can apply international pressure to all the parties, including Russia and Iran, who, essentially, are propping up Assad, as well as those moderate oppositions that exist and may be fighting inside of Syria, to sit down at the table and try to broker a transition. "Now, that's difficult, and in the interim, we continue to strike ISIL targets in places like Raqqa, and to try to isolate those portions of the country, and lock down those portions of the country that are sending foreign fighters into Europe." At least 30 civilians were killed Saturday in fighting in areas across Syria, threatening an eight-week-old truce as peace talks in Geneva remain stalled. The truce, brokered by Russia and the United States, had raised hopes that United Nations-backed talks in Geneva this month will help resolve the five-year conflict. "There's going to be a military component to this, to ensure that... we're also engaging in the counter-terrorism activities that are necessary," Obama said. "But in order for us to solve the long-term problems in Syria, a military solution alone -- and certainly us deploying ground troops -- is not going to bring that about." More than 270,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict broke out in 2011. Search Keywords: Short link: A bomb-laden vehicle exploded Sunday killing seven soldiers in south Yemen, where government forces backed by air power from an Arab coalition have launched an offensive against Al-Qaeda, military sources said. In the southeast, pro-government forces regained an airport and other areas on the outskirts of the city of Mukalla, which had been under Al-Qaeda control since April last year, similar sources said. The bombing, which also wounded 14 soldiers, targeted an army convoy as it entered militant stronghold Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, said the sources, blaming Al-Qaeda for the attack. Forces loyal to President Abd-rabbo Mansour Hadi began the Zinjibar offensive on Saturday, after similar assaults pushed the militants from other areas in the south. The Saudi-led coalition that has been battling Iran-backed rebels across Yemen since March 2015 has deployed Apache helicopters to support loyalists fighting on ground. Pro-Hadi forces "retreated from Zinjibar after they entered on Saturday night" from the city's southern gate, an officer in Abyan told AFP. "The withdrawal was decided following information that Al-Qaeda was preparing other car-bomb attacks against our troops," added the officer who requested anonymity. Government forces also launched an offensive Saturday to drive the militants from the neighbouring town of Jaar. Fighting there killed 25 Al-Qaeda fighters and four soldiers as loyalists seized Al-Kud, five kilometres (three miles) south of Zinjibar, military and medical sources said. "After our withdrawal, Apache helicopters will target Al-Qaeda positions to secure the town," said another officer, adding that helicopters had foiled two attempts to attack troops using vehicle bombs in Al-Kud. Meanwhile, the Arab coalition carried out a series of air raids against Al-Qaeda in Mukalla, military sources said. Residents reported heavy explosions as coalition jets struck Al-Qaeda-held arms depots in the city. "The air raids are in preparation for a ground operation as part of a major military offensive to chase Al-Qaeda out of Mukalla and the entire Hadramawt province," an officer said. Later Sunday, Yemeni ground troops backed by coalition air power advanced on the eastern outskirts of Mukalla, where they seized Riyan airport and an army brigade headquarters Al-Qaeda had held for the past year, military sources said. Coalition-backed forces have driven militants from Aden, the southern city declared by Hadi as Yemen's temporary capital after the Shiite Huthi rebels overran Sanaa in September 2014. And last week, government forces expelled militants of the militant network's local branch -- Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj. The latest fighting comes as representatives of the government and the Iran-backed rebels continue UN-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait. The negotiations, which began on Thursday, are under pressure to firm up a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on April 11, and from which the militants are excluded. Search Keywords: Short link: Prosecutors say the 11 men, who have denied the charges, used social media to organise sexual liaisons A Giza misdemeanour court sentenced on Sunday 11 men to terms of up to 12 years in prison over charges of inciting debauchery after they were arrested for allegedly committing homosexual acts, Ahram Arabic news website reported. Three people were sentenced to 12 years in prison while the rest were given between three to nine years. The defendants, who were arrested at a rented apartment in Giza, denied the charges. One of the defendants was convicted several years ago in another homosexuality-related case, according to investigators. Homosexuality is not explicitly criminalised by Egyptian law, though prosecutors have often tried gay men under laws against debauchery, immorality or contempt of religion. Search Keywords: Short link: A century after her forebears fled massacres in Turkey for Armenia, Alla has gone the other way, hoping to win Turkish citizenship after leaving her impoverished homeland. She works as a nanny in Turkey but fears deportation, one of thousands of undocumented workers from the former Soviet republic who feel hostage to a decades-old diplomatic dispute. The conflict dates back to the killings of up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Ottoman Muslims, which was commemorated on Sunday, with tensions between Armenia and its Turkey-backed neighbour, Azerbaijan, especially amplified this year. "We live in fear they (the Turkish authorities) can kick us out if something happens," said Alla, who did not want her full name published because of her illegal status in Turkey. "When I get home from work, I thank God 1,000 times nothing happened," she said. "If I get citizenship, I won't be afraid." Estimates put the number of Armenians here between 10,000 and 30,000. A bus ticket bringing them from Yerevan to Istanbul and, they hope, a better life costs the equivalent of about $50. Their numbers are dwarfed by the 3 million Syrians and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have fled war. But Armenian migrants feel vulnerable to the changing political winds. Armenia, along with most Western scholars and two dozen nations, says the 1915 massacre was genocide. Turkey accepts that Armenians were killed during the upheaval of World War One but rejects declarations that it was genocide. Animosity between the neighbours, whose border is shut, have flared this month after clashes between Muslim Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed Christian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside Azerbaijan that is controlled by ethnic Armenians. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the deaths of Azeris "seared our souls" and blamed Armenia for the outbreak of the worst clashes since a 1994 ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh after a war that killed thousands of people on each side. Turks took to social media to denounce Armenians as "murderers" and proclaim Nagorno-Karabakh "Turkish territory". "We hear rumours they will kick out Armenians because of the Azerbaijan matter," said Alla, 54. "This hate will never end." Threat of deportation Angered by international efforts to deem the century-old killings genocide, Erdogan has threatened to "deport" Armenian migrants. But he has also moved towards reconciliation, expressing condolences over the loss of life and sending a minister to church services marking the centennial last year, and to a commemoration held on Sunday. "We once again respectfully remember the Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives in World War One conditions, and I express my condolences to their children and grandchildren," Erdogan said in a message to the Armenian Patriarchate, according to media reports. In central Istanbul, a few hundred people, clutching carnations and photographs of Armenian luminaries killed in the massacres, held a moment of silence at a grassroots memorial. Nearby a small group protested, holding signs that read: "The genocide is an imperialist lie." Police kept the groups apart. An overwhelming majority of Turks do not believe a genocide occurred. Garo Paylan, who in 2015 became one of three lawmakers of Armenian descent to enter Turkey's parliament in 50 years, this week brandished photographs of Armenian deputies killed in 1915 and demanded the assembly investigate their deaths. "The reason I persist on this 100-year-old issue is because it continues to haunt Turkey," Paylan told Reuters. Turkey cut ties with Armenia in 1993 during war in Nagorno-Karabakh. It agreed to restore relations under protocols in 2009 brokered by the United States, Russia and France but the deal did not have Azerbaijan's blessing and collapsed. "A renewed conflict could potentially draw in Turkey. It is Russian soldiers guarding Armenia's border with Turkey," said Aybars Gorgulu of the Public Policy and Democracy Studies think tank. "Sooner or later Turkey wants to normalise with Armenia." 'Wounds' Enmity towards Armenia leaves Turkish citizens of Armenian descent exposed, said Yetvart Danzikyan, editor-in-chief of Agos newspaper, which serves 60,000 Armenians out of a population of 78 million. The community faces pressures such as property seizures, poorly funded schools and sporadic violence. A teenage gunman killed Danzikyan's predecessor, Hrant Dink, in 2007. A court this week began trying senior security officers accused of complicity. "The state always leaves open wounds," Danzikyan said. Alla's family fled strife and starvation that gripped the province of Igdir during World War One and the subsequent War of Independence that forged the modern Turkish Republic in 1923. Her grandparents found refuge across the border in Armenia. Alla now earns $700 a month to support her mother and two children. An adult daughter, who was disabled, died this year. Low-skilled labourers, especially women, struggle in landlocked Armenia, where per-capita income is about $4,000 and unemployment hovers at 17 percent, according to the World Bank. Changes to immigration law in 2014 encouraged some Armenians to seek residency, but they must show large savings and pay fines. Alla said her penalty would amount to four months' wages. New arrivals help sustain a dwindling community that flourished in these lands for four millennia until 1915. Armenian migrants fill the pews of a Protestant house of worship every Sunday to sing exuberant hymns. The basement serves as an informal primary school with 140 immigrants. A volunteer said Turkish authorities turn a blind eye so the school can follow the Armenian educational system. One in three Armenians here does not plan to return home, said Anna Muradyan, a Yerevan-based independent researcher. "They're aging, their children in Turkey have adapted and know Turkish. If Turkey doesn't expel them, they want to stay." Search Keywords: Short link: The Court of Cassation has ordered a retrial Egypts Court of Cassation overturned on Sunday a five-year prison sentences against 35 Al-Azhar students in a case that dates back to 2014 on rioting charges inside campus. The court ordered a retrial of the case. The students were also charged with illegal protesting, blocking roads, and resisting authorities. It is unclear if the students will be released pending the retrial. This is the second cancellation of prison sentences against Al-Azhar students within a week. Last Sunday, the Court of Cassation overturned three-year prison sentences against 17 students, also on rioting charges, and ordered a retrial. Many students were expelled from the university by Al-Azhar's high board over their participation in protests that turned violent in 2013 and 2014. Most of the expulsions were later overturned by Egypt's Administrative Court which said it was safeguarding students' "educational future and welfare." Search Keywords: Short link: Activists have set Monday, which marks Sinai Liberation Day, for protests against the recent government announcement that it was acknowledging Saudi ownership of two Red Sea islands under Egyptian control Egypt's military said on Sunday that it is deploying forces to secure major public buildings on Monday, which has been set by activists as a date for protests over the recent Saudi island deal. The army said in a statement that its forces will be deployed around vital targets and major institutions, adding that security patrols and military police forces will be stationed in major areas nationwide. A government decision this month to cede control to Saudi Arabia of the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, near South Sinai, sparked protests on 15 April, with thousands of demonstrators protesting near Cairo's press syndicate. The protests, believed to be the largest demonstrations since President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi took office in 2014, saw the arrest of dozens of people, many of whom were released later in the day. The island deal has not yet been approved by parliament. Monday marks Sinai Liberation Day, when Egypt regained control over the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 after years of Israeli occupation. The army has posted several photos of queues of military vehicles in the streets as well as forces at what appeared to be a military base. The army added that its air and naval forces will take part in celebrations marking Sinai Liberation Day, with performances planned across the country's governorates. Military ensembles will put on musical performances of patriotic pieces. Egypts acknowledgement of Saudi sovereignty over the Red Sea islands has sparked widespread public outcry, with some critics accusing President El-Sisi of "selling" the islands. Egyptian and Saudi officials say the islands belong to the Gulf kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them. Egypt's interior ministry has warned ahead of Monday's planned proteststhat it would show no tolerance for attempts to undermine the country's security, urging people not to respond to "calls inciting chaos." Search Keywords: Short link: Giza prosecutors ordered on Sunday the detention of three leading members of the 6 April Youth Movement for four days on charges of calling for protests and joining a terrorist organisation. The prosecution accused Sherif El-Rouby, the April 6 spokesperson, Ahmed Ramdan and Amr Ezz of calling for protests against the recent announcement by the government that it was acknowledging Saudi sovereignty over two Red Sea islands under Egyptian control. It is unclear which terrorist organisation prosecutors are referring to; although 6 April was banned in 2014, it has not been officially labelled a terrorist group. The groups founders, Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Maher, and its current coordinator Amr Ali are currently serving three-year sentences for breaking the countrys controversial protest law. Political parties and movements, including 6 April, are calling for protests on 25 April, which marks Sinai Liberation Day. Search Keywords: Short link: Security has been tightened in central Cairo ahead of planned protests on Monday afternoon against the recent Egyptian-Saudi Red Sea islands agreement, but life in the capital went as normal in the morning hours of Sinai Liberation Day. Dozens of armed security personnel and police vehicles have been stationed around major streets and squares in central Cairo. Protesters are set to demonstrate at three separate locations in the capital: the Journalists Syndicate and the Doctors Syndicate in downtown Cairo, as well as at Behouth metro station in Giza, all under the slogan Egypt is not for sale. Security forces closed-off roads leading to the Journalists Syndicate, the site of a large protest over the same issue ten days ago, with metal barriers, according to Ahram Arabic news website. Egypt's metro spokesman Ahmed Abdel Hady said Sadat (Tahrir) station, the central metro station in Cairo, would be closed for the day. Authorities have repeatedly shut the station down over the past few years to thwart attempts by protesters to use the fast and cheap underground transport system to mobilise rallies. Egypt's interior ministry has warned ahead of Monday's protests that it would show no tolerance of attempts to undermine the country's security, urging people not to heed "calls inciting chaos." Streets around the capital were significantly calm on Monday, a national holiday that marks Sinai Liberation Day. The Egyptian army is celebrating the occasion with air and water sows as well as concerts for the public in Cairo and other governorates. On 15 April, several thousand protesters staged rallies against the recent government decision to acknowledge Saudi Arabia's soveignty over two of the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, which lie off the coast of Sharm El-Sheikh in South Sinai, Critics of the Egypt-Saudi agreement chose Sinai Liberation Day for their planned protests in order to highlight their cause. The agreement has yet to be approved by the Egyptian parliament. In Cairo's neighbouring Giza governorate, a heavy security presence was visible around key squares and major thoroughfares. The army said on Sunday its forces would be deployed around vital targets and major institutions" in several governorates, adding that security patrols and military police forces would also be stationed in major areas nationwide. The protests against the decision on 15 April are believed to be the largest demonstrations by non-Islamist political forces since President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi took office in 2014. Dozens of people were arrested on the day, many of whom were released later. Egyptian and Saudi officials say the islands belong to the Gulf kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them. Search Keywords: Short link: Security forces arrested in the early hours of Monday the director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms Ahmed Abdallah from his home in New Cairo, the commission said in a statement. The reasons behind Abdallahs reported arrest are unclear. The interior ministry has not yet commented on the commision's statement. Abdallahs arrest comes during a wave of arrests of activists ahead of protests planned on 25 April against Egypts acknowledgment that the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir belong to Saudi Arabia. The commissions brief statement called for Abdallahs immediate release. The commission focuses on lifting injustices, whether political, economic, cultural or other, and stresses the need for a state of law that would maintain citizens rights and freedoms. Search Keywords: Short link: The Egyptian army is marking the 34th anniversary of the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from Sinai with shows and concerts Egypt's army announced it is celebrating the 34th anniversary of Sinai's Liberation from Israeli occupation with air and water shows as well music concerts throughout the country on Monday. Egypts air force launched air shows in the skies of Cairo and in a number of other governorates. Jet fighters have been releasing colourful patterns over Cairo and Giza since the morning. Sinai Liberation Day marks the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sinai Peninsula in 1982 after 15 years of occupation based on the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The Egyptian Navy also paid their respect to the event and sounded their sirens at 10AM in Alexandria in front of the Unknown Soldier Memorial in Manshiya district. The navy is also planning to hold water shows on the Mediterranean in Alexandria and on the Nile river in Cairo on Monday afternoon. The army's military bands are hoplding concerts for the public in major squares around the country. Meanwhile, Egyptian armed forces have deployed units to secure major public buildings on Monday as some opposition political activists and parties announced plans to protest in the afternoon against the recently-signed Egyptian Saudi maritime borders redrawing agreement which recognises Saudi sovereignty over the Islands of Tiran and Sanafir in the Red Sea. Search Keywords: Short link: Egyptian security forces used teargas to disperse dozens of protesters in Cairo's Dokki district at a demonstration against the government's recent agreement acknowledging Saudi sovereignty over two Red Sea islands under Egyptian control. This was reportedly the only protest in Cairo on Monday that was not pre-emptively thwarted by security forces. An Ahram Online reporter on the scene says security forces arrested some of the protesters. Earlier in the afternoon, the "Egypt Not For Sale" campaign, which has been mobilising over the agreement in the last two weeks, moved its planned protest site from downtown Cairo to Giza's Dokki in order to dodge police lockdown of the area. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt's press syndicate condemned on Monday what it described as "harassment attempts" by "regime supporters" to storm its headquarters in downtown Cairo. "Some people dressed like central security forces tried to storm the syndicate headquarters," the syndicate said in a statement, adding that the assailants "were let through by police even though all roads around the syndicate were locked down in order to prevent protests." It is unclear whether the assailants were members of police forces. "The syndicate will use its legal rights to defend its properties and journalists from police assaults," the statement added. Security has been tightened in central Cairo ahead of planned protests on Monday afternoon against the government's recent agreement acknowledging Saudi sovereignty over two Red Sea islands under Egyptian control. One major protest took place on Monday in Giza's Dokki district and was dispersed by security forces using teargas. A number of protesters as well as journalists were reportedly arrested. Earlier in the afternoon, the "Egypt Not For Sale" campaign, which has been mobilising over the agreement in the last two weeks, moved its planned protest site from downtown Cairo to Giza's Dokki in order to dodge police lockdown of the area. Search Keywords: Short link: Hundreds of people gathered on Monday in downtown Cairo's Abdeen Square to celebrate the 34th anniversary of Sinai's liberation from Israeli occupation in an event organised by the Future of Homeland Party. Organisers from the party, known for its outspoken support of Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, planned the celebration amid calls for protests on Sinai Liberation Day against the government's recent agreement acknowledging Saudi sovereignty over two Red Sea islands under Egyptian control. The celebration, which the party had earlier said would be attended by thousands of youths, featured a stage for performance of patriotic songs and music honouring the Armed Forces, as well as army fighter jets drawing heart symbols in the sky above Cairo. Participants also held up posters and banners expressing support for President El-Sisi. Party officials had said in media statements that they had obtained permits to assemble in accordance with the law for the celebration, which is set to also present documentaries and speeches honouring the Armed Forces. The event is just a few blocks from what had been planned as sites for protests against the island agreement, though security forces have implemented a total lockdown of the area. Earlier in the afternoon, the "Egypt Not For Sale" campaign, which has been mobilising over the agreement in the last two weeks, moved its planned protest site from downtown Cairo to Giza's Dokki in order to dodge police lockdown of the area. Several protesters were arrested by security sources at the dispersed Dokki demonstration, according to an Ahram Online reporter on the scene. Search Keywords: Short link: Limited protests against the recently declared Egyptian-Saudi island agreement took place on Monday before being promptly dispersed by police in Cairo amid heavy security presence, with rallies supporting the deal and celebrating Sinai Liberation Day allowed to take place. Security forces had tightened their presence in central Cairo ahead of the planned protests, which were set to take place at three separate locations in the capital; the Journalists Syndicate and the Doctors Syndicate in downtown and at Behouth metro station in Giza, all under the slogan Egypt Not For Sale. However, activists decided to move the protests from those locations, with minor marches taking place in other areas of the city. The largest protest took place in the afternoon in Giza's Dokki district and was dispersed by security forces using teargas, with dozens of protesters reportedly arrested. According to press reports, some of the protesters dispersed by police at the Dokki march have sought refuge at the nearby headquarters of the Nasserist Karama Party, with security forces besieging the building. According to the freedom for the brave Facebook page, more than 150 protesters were arrested on Monday. Local media outlets have reported that security forces in Cairo have been randomly stopping people in the streets and checking their mobile phone's online applications to see whether they were participating in any protests. Egypt's press syndicate condemned on Monday what it described as "harassment attempts" by "regime supporters" to storm its headquarters in downtown Cairo. The syndicate said in a statement that "some people dressed like central security forces tried to storm the syndicate headquarters," adding that the assailants "were let through by police even though all roads around the syndicate were locked down in order to prevent protests." It is unclear whether the "harassers" were members of police forces. The protests came 10 days after several thousand people gathered in Cairo for the 'Land Friday' demonstration to protest the maritime border agreement, which places the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir within Saudi territorial waters. Army forces were deployed on Sunday to secure major public buildings, while air force planes put on air shows above Cairo and other governorates on Monday for Sinai Liberation Day celebrations. Sinai Liberation Day marks the final withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sinai Peninsula as well as the two disputed islands. Navy ships also paid their respect for the national holiday by sounding their sirens off the coast of Alexandria near the Unknown Soldier Memorial in Manshiya district. Some pro-regime protests took place in Cairo's downtown squares of Tahrir and Talaat Harb, as well as Giza's Mustafa Mahmoud Square, where participants held up images of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Saudi flags to show their support for the island agreement. The Future of Homeland Party, which came in second in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, organised a concert attended by hundreds of people in front of Cairo's Abdeen Palace to celebrate Sinai Liberation Day. Search Keywords: Short link: A car bomb on the outskirts of the Sayeda Zeinab district south of Damascus killed at least six people on Monday, a monitoring group said, the third bombing attack in the area this year. Lebanese group Hezbollah's Al Manar television reported the blast had occurred at a Syrian army checkpoint. The death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people with serious injuries, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Multiple explosions in February killed scores of people in the Sayeda Zeinab area, home to Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine, in one of the bloodiest attacks there in Syria's five-year conflict. A suicide attack there less than a month earlier claimed by the Islamic State group killed 70 people. *This story was edited by Ahram Online Search Keywords: Short link: Yemen's warring parties held a fifth day of peace talks in Kuwait on Monday after the UN envoy said "significant differences" still separate them. A UN spokesman said the talks between the government and the Shia Houthi rebels had resumed after extensive discussions of security, political and humanitarian issues on Sunday. "Significant differences in the delegations' points of view remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace and to work intensively towards an agreement," UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement late on Sunday. Negotiations on a political settlement have made no headway as the two sides are still discussing ways to consolidate a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on April 11. The delegations have agreed to appoint two officials, one from each side, to make recommendations on how to sustain the ceasefire, the envoy said. The government delegation has insisted that the ceasefire should include confidence-building measures, such as opening safe passages to all besieged areas and releasing prisoners. The Iran-backed Houthis are demanding an immediate halt to air strikes that a Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out since March last year in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi, who heads the government delegation, described the negotiations as "impotent" and accused the rebels of avoiding discussion of key issues. Mikhlafi said on his Facebook page that the rebel delegation had backed down several times on proposals they had made. The rebels have insisted that no ceasefire can be established without an end to coalition air strikes. The coalition has said it reserves the right to respond to rebel violations of the ceasefire, with air strikes if necessary. The two sides also differ on the way to tackle other key issues. The government wants the discussions to start with the issue of a Houthi withdrawal from areas they have overrun, including the capital Sanaa, and their surrender of all heavy weaponry. The rebels want the political process and the establishment of a national unity government to come first, sources close to the talks told AFP. The negotiations in Kuwait opened late on Thursday after the delayed arrival of representatives of the Houthi rebels and allied forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Search Keywords: Short link: The Kurdish rebel PKK movement is ready to step up its fight against Turkey in response to Ankara's blistering military campaign, its leader warned in a BBC interview released Monday. Since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) last year, Turkish government forces have been carrying out operations against the group in the southeast of the country. PKK leader Cemil Bayik said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "escalating this war". "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach -- of course the PKK will escalate the war," he told the British broadcaster. Erdogan said this month that 355 members of the security forces had been killed in fighting as well as over 5,000 PKK members -- although this could not be independently verified. The PKK has been blamed for a string of attacks in Turkey in recent months, while two bombings in Ankara this year were claimed by a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical splinter group of the rebel movement. Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for the Turkish presidency, on Monday criticised BBC for the interview with the PKK leadership, saying it was not journalism. "It is nothing other than indirectly aiding terror propaganda," he said at a weekly press conference. He asked what the reaction would be if a news agency interviewed Al-Qaeda jihadists after the London underground bombing in 2005. The PKK is designated a terror organisation by Turkey, the EU and the United States. Its rebels are accused of trying to create a separate Kurdish state within Turkey -- but Bayik denied it. "We don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. We don't want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted," he said. The PKK was ready to escalate the conflict "not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well", he added. Erdogan "wants the Kurds to surrender. If they don't surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly - he doesn't hide it," Bayik said. The PKK launched a bloody insurgency against the Turkish government in 1984 seeking independence, beginning a decades-long fight for greater autonomy and rights for Kurds which has left 40,000 dead. It later watered down its demands to seek instead more autonomy with cultural and language rights. Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan called a truce in March 2013, but tensions over the Syrian conflict kickstarted the violence last year. Erdogan has proposed stripping Turkish citizenship from supporters of Kurdish rebels and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is trying to alter Turkey's constitution, to allow prosecutions of pro-Kurdish lawmakers accused of "terrorist propaganda". Search Keywords: Short link: Saudi society, not the government, will determine whether women will be allowed to drive cars, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Monday. He was speaking to reporters after the unveiling of a vast plan, known as Saudi Vision 2030, to transform the oil-dependent economy. Mohammed was asked whether one of the plan's goals, to increase women's participation in the workforce from 22 percent to 30 percent, could lead to their right to drive. "So far the society is not persuaded -- and it has negative influence -- but we stress that it is up to the Saudi society," he said, adding that change cannot be forced. Saudi Arabia has one of the world's toughest restrictions on women and is the only country where they cannot get behind the wheel. The sexes are separated in restaurants and other public facilities. Women are subject to male "guardians", family members who must authorise a woman's travel, work or marriage. The kingdom's major cities are expanding their public transport networks but for the moment they remain limited, and a woman's ability to work is hindered unless she can afford a driver. Search Keywords: Short link: Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from Al-Qaeda militants who held it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed Monday as a major victory in which over 800 militants were killed. The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the militants launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shia Houthi rebels who control the capital. It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama during a visit to Saudi Arabia called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on Al-Qaeda. At the talks, which opened last Thursday, UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Monday welcomed reports of "real improvement in the situation". On Sunday, he had said "significant differences... remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace". The peace talks and Obama's visit have contributed to a change in "strategic priorities", with Al-Qaeda back at the top, according to the Soufan Group consultancy. The jihadists' Yemen-based branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the group's militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla. Further west in Shabwa province, a US drone on Monday struck two vehicles carrying Al-Qaeda militants near the town of Azzan -- from which the militants have fled -- killing nine extremists, a provincial official said. The militants have planned attacks overseas, including a January 2015 assault on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris. "We entered the city centre and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west," a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of Al-Shihr and its Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukalla's Riyan airport. Troops deployed in Mukalla on Monday and set up checkpoints across the city, security officials said. "The operation resulted... in the deaths of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," the coalition commanders said. The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of any civilian casualties. Mukalla is one of a number of southern cities that Al-Qaeda had overrun since the Saudi-led coalition launched its military intervention in March last year when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile after the Iran-backed rebels seized much of the country. Government forces recaptured Huta, another provincial capital further west last week. But they had to retreat from Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, after an Al-Qaeda car bomb killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 as they were entering the city on Sunday. The counter-offensive against the jihadists has come as a fragile April 11 ceasefire between pro-government forces and the rebels firms up. Washington has been waging a drone war against AQAP since November 2002, when it killed the suspected mastermind of an October 2000 bombing of a US destroyer that killed 17 sailors in the southern port of Aden. In April last year, a US air strike killed AQAP commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video, outside the presidential palace in Mukalla where the militants had set up base. Last month, an air strike on an AQAP training camp in Hajr, west of Mukalla, killed more than 70 militants, provincial officials said. During its year-long rule in Mukalla, AQAP imposed its strict interpretation of sharia law forbidding consumption of the mild narcotic qat, a mainstay of Yemeni social life, and demolishing the tombs of revered Sufi mystics. Search Keywords: Short link: Serbia's pro-EU Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a landslide victory in the country's general election, the electoral commission confirmed Monday after nearly all the ballots were counted. Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party won 48.25 percent of the vote, giving him 131 MPs in the 250-seat parliament -- down from 158 in the last election, the commission said, based on 98 percent of votes counted. The Socialists, Vucic's coalition partners in the outgoing government, came second with 11.01 percent of the vote. They were followed by the far-right Radicals of ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, who won 8.05 percent of the vote. Seselj was recently acquitted of war crimes charges arising from the 1990s Balkans conflicts. Swept along by a resurgence in support, the anti-EU and pro-Russian Radicals were set to return to parliament with 21 MPs, after failing to win any seats in the 2012 and 2014 elections. Four other political groupings also made it past the five-percent threshold needed to enter parliament, according to the commission. They were the centrist Democratic Party, a new liberal party called "Enough is Enough" ("Dosta je bilo"), a liberal coalition led by former Serbian president Boris Tadic, and a eurosceptic and pro-Russian coalition called DSS-Dveri. Several groups representing ethnic minorities that are exempted from the five-percent representation rule will also be present in the assembly following the vote -- Serbia's third in four years. Vucic, premier since 2014, called the early election saying he needed a clear mandate to press ahead with the unpopular reforms required to join the European Union. But his critics saw the vote as an attempt to consolidate his power, expressing concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the 46-year-old premier, who has placed curbs on media freedom. Vucic is a former ultra-nationalist ally of Seselj who has remodelled himself as a moderate reformist. Sunday's election respected "fundamental freedoms" and offered voters a range of choice but the campaign period caused some concern, according to observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). PACE delegation head Volodymyr Ariev referred to "abuse by incumbents of the administrative advantages of office", "media coverage favourable to the ruling parties" and a "lack of full transparency in party and campaign funding". But Ariev said the observers "don't have any information" about major electoral fraud after smaller parties claimed irregularities in the voting process. In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said the observers' recommendations were "an important guidance for Serbia, also in the context of its path to the European Union." "Serbian citizens showed strong support for their country's strategic objective to join the EU," Mogherini and Hahn said in a joint statement, adding that "we look forward to working with the new government to consolidate Serbia's progress towards joining the EU." Search Keywords: Short link: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned on Monday the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder." John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting. "The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act." Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall. The captives included Ridsdel and Hall, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21. Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country's prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants. Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict. Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt netted just $500 million in tourism revenue in the first quarter of 2016, down from $1.5 billion a year earlier, a tourism ministry adviser told Reuters, highlighting the country's struggle to kickstart a key dollar-earning industry. Egypt's tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy and critical source of hard currency, has been struggling to rebound after the political and economic upheaval triggered by the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. Tourism revenue has also taken a heavy hit since a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board, which was claimed by Islamist militant group IS. Egyptian authorities are yet to release the final report on the disaster, More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011. In the first quarter of 2016 just 1.2 million tourists travelled to Egypt, down from 2.2 million a year earlier, said economic adviser to the ministry of tourism Adla Ragab. Egypt aims to attract 12 million tourists by the end of 2017 through a plan that includes increasing the presence of national carrier EgyptAir abroad, tourism minister Yehia Rashed said in a recent interview with Reuters. "Many European airlines have halted flights to Sharm El Sheikh. It's too early to say what the long-term impact of the Russian plane crash will be," said an analyst at hotel industry consultants STR. *This story has been edited by Ahram Online Search Keywords: Short link: (Hong Kong) The lackluster art auction market got a boost from several record-breaking deals at this year's spring auctions in Hong Kong. Sotheby's sale of Chinese paintings, wine, jewelry and watches from April 2 to 6 raked in a total of HK$ 3.1 billion, up 16.6 percent from the same auction in 2015. It was 17.6 percent higher than the auction house's autumn sales. The hottest item was a painting by Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) that fetched HK$ 271 million, including buyer's premium. It set a world auction record for a work from 20th century Chinese artists. The final bid for Peach Blossom Spring, a splashed-ink-and-color scroll, was over four times its highest pre-sale estimate of HK$ 65 million. After an intense 50-minute session with over 100 bids from a packed floor at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, the painting was snapped up by mainland billionaire Liu Yiqian. The former taxi driver turned art collector has been making aggressive purchases at auctions around the world in recent years. He bought Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani's Reclining Nude for a record US$ 170.4 million at a Christie's auction in New York in 2015 for the private Long Museum, which he runs with his wife Wang Wei, in Shanghai. Sotheby's also set a record for the most expensive jewel sold at auction in Asia, with the sale of the 10.10 carat De Beers Millennium Jewel 4 for HK$ 248.3 million to an anonymous buyer. A wooden seal belonging to Kangxi, China's emperor from 1661 to 1722, fetched HK$ 92.6 million, the most for an imperial seal to go under the hammer. Sotheby's wasn't the only auction house to see strong results. Poly Auction Hong Kong Ltd., a subsidiary of the mainland's largest auction house, said its earnings grew by 15.2 percent to HK$ 1.27 billion, boosted by the sale an oil painting, The Zhou Village, by Wu Guanzhong for HK$236 million. It was an auction record for the artist. "Every category performed better than expected this year," Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby's Asia, said. China's art market is picking up steam after a downturn that started in 2012, said Zhao Xugang, chairman of Poly Hong Kong. "There are enough clients with deep pockets and many big-ticket items." Art Binge Liu is among the 13 Chinese collectors listed by U.S. art magazine ARTnews in the world's 200 top collectors for 2015. He is joined by property tycoon Wang Jianlin, the head of Dalian Wanda Group, and film mogul Wang Zhongjun. Liu has been making headlines for paying record prices for rare collector's pieces in recent years. In 2014, he set the record for a Chinese artwork sold at international auction when he paid US$ 45 million for a 15th century Tibetan silk tapestry, known as a Thangka, at a Christie's auction in Hong Kong. A few months earlier he bought a tiny porcelain cup from the Ming Dynasty for US$ 36.3 million at a Sotheby's sale in the former British colony. Peach Blossom Spring, his latest purchase, was completed in 1982, a year before the artist's death, and is considered one of the most important works of Zhang's later period. His other late-career work, Panorama of Mount Lushan, is in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. "Nothing beats a painting by Zhang Daqian!" Liu said on the WeChat microblogging platform after placing the winning bid. He told Caixin: "Peach Blossom Spring makes him comparable to great artists in ancient China." The previous time the scroll appeared at an auction was in 1987 when it was sold by Taiwanese film director Yang Fan for HK$ 1.87 to the Mactaggart Art Collection at the University of Alberta in Canada. Stronger Appetite Several industry insiders said the art market is warming up after years of sluggish growth, but a boom similar to the one in 2011, a golden year for art sellers, may not come anytime soon. China's art auction market cleared 400,000 lots worth US$ 10 billion in 2011, a record high, a March 2016 report by the information provider Artprice.com and domestic industry observer Art Market Monitor run by Artron Art (Group) Co. Ltd., said. The high prices seen in 2011 were partly fueled by wild speculation. "It was a time of wild growth and expansion," said Jiang Zaiming, deputy president of China Guardian Auctions Co., a domestic auction house. The bubble burst a year later and the value of deals dropped by 37 percent in the wake of slower economic growth and a government crackdown on graft. The market has since gone south and sales in 2015 dropped to US$ 4.9 billion, down by more than one-quarter of the earnings in the previous year, the report said. Even big players like Sotheby's have tightened their purse strings, said Ching, and the auction house had smaller pre-sales exhibitions in the mainland this year. But the events in Beijing and Shanghai were packed, a sign that the appetite for collectibles is back, Ching said. After a lull of several years, the spring auctions show that buyers who had a wait-and-see attitude are regaining confidence, Jiang said. Cai Jingqing, chairman of Christie's China, said his company is "reasonably optimistic" because the domestic market has matured with more well-thought-out bids by a growing group of wealthy individuals. Art mogul Liu agrees, saying the country's 30-year-old market "is turning more rational as people learn to value art and collect items based on a deeper understanding of the works." Formerly unsophisticated Chinese collectors are now more selective at auctions, said Zhang Yixiu, executive director of Poly Hong Kong, and "only rare, good items" can fetch high prices. There were no buyers for more than half the lots that went under the hammer last year, as investors stayed away from items that lacked a high artistic value. In 2015, the ceiling for bids on artwork priced costing over US$ 1 million went up 11 percent year on year, although the total value of bids fell, because sales of lower-priced items shrank, data from the Art Market Monitor of Artron showed. (Rewritten by Han Wei) (Shenzhen) The former head of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s movie production arm has denied charges he took bribes during his time at rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. Liu Chunning, the former executive director of Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd., stood trial in Shenzhen Nanshan District People's Court on April 21. He was charged with accepting 2.14 million yuan while head of the online video department at Tencent. Liu denied all the charges and said he has been "falsely charged and framed." Prosecutors said that in 2012 Liu received 1.44 million yuan from Guo Jianjun, an employee of Dongyang Herun Film and Television Production Co. Ltd. in Beijing, to air a series on Tencent's website. Prosecutors did not say what position Guo held at Dongyang Herun. A mutual friend named Peng Li introduced Guo to Liu at a banquet in May 2012, prosecutors said. At the meal, Guo talked to Liu about broadcasting a show online and Liu later persuaded Tencent's online video department to buy it. In return, Guo asked Peng to let Liu know that he wanted to thank Liu for his help. Peng told Liu this and Liu gave his cousin's bank account number to Peng, which Peng then passed to Liu. On August 24, 2013, Guo deposited the money into the account, and the cousin transferred the money to Liu two days later, prosecutors said. Liu said emails showed Tencent had interest in the show even before he met Guo. He also said he made it clear to Guo at the banquet that the selection of shows was handled by a strict evaluation process. Although Guo contacted him several times after the banquet, he did not reply, Liu said. He acknowledged that he received the 1.44 million yuan, but he said he thought he was only giving the account information to Peng because Peng owed him money. Peng did not say that he would give the account information to Guo, Liu said. Liu and his lawyer did not explain why he gave Peng his cousin's account number rather than his and why he did not return the money after he realized it was from Guo. Another bribe came from Lu Chao, chairman of Shanghai Youhug Media Co. Ltd., prosecutors said. In June 2012, during negotiations to buy two series made by the Shanghai-based company, Yue Yu, a subordinate of Liu, asked Lu to pay kickbacks to him and Liu. On January 29, 2013, the three met at a hotel for a banquet and Liu and Lu left with a suitcase stuffed with 700,000 yuan in cash, prosecutors said. But Liu said he did not see any suitcase. The main reason he attended the meal was he wanted to thank Lu for agreeing to sell two popular shows to Tencent. Liu joined Tencent in 2003 and worked in several departments before he joined Alibaba in 2013. Tencent said in a statement in July that six former employees of its online video business, including Liu and Yue, had been detained by police investigating a bribery case. The company said an internal inquiry in 2014 found that employees of its video content department took bribes from suppliers in 2012. Liu's lawyers said the case will influence the relationship between Tencent and Alibaba. The two companies should "take a correct view of competition and talent flow" and Tencent should "give Liu a chance to explain," one of them said. No verdict was announced. (Rewritten by Chen Na) A stop at Hiroshima would make Obama the first sitting U.S. president to visit the city that was devastated when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on it, leading to the end of World War II. The bombing of Hiroshima resulted in the deaths of about 140,000 people. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki, killing about 70,000 people. A leading Japanese newspaper says U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima when he goes to Japan next month for a G7 summit. The Nikkei business daily on Friday, citing an anonymous U.S. source, said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will accompany Obama to Hiroshima. The anonymous source told the Nikkei Washington will formally notify Japan early next month about Obama's plans to visit Hiroshima. Obama was asked Friday at a news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London about going to Hiroshima. He told reporters to wait until he visits Asia before asking him questions about Asia. Meanwhile, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the stories about Obama going to Hiroshima are "not true." He added, however, that it is "very important" for Japan that world leaders visit Hiroshima to understand the reality of the suffering caused by the atomic bombing. Earlier this month, John Kerry became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Hiroshima. Kerry said the displays at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum were "gut-wrenching" and everyone should see them. Should Britain choose to break off from the European Union in a June 23 referendum, a new trade deal between it and the United States could take five to 10 years to negotiate, President Barack Obama said Sunday on British television. "The U.K. would not be able negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU," Obama said. "We wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market. But rather, it could be five years from now, 10 years from now, before we could actually get something done." Obama, whose final term as president will end in January, has spent the last three days traveling around Britain, advocating to its people that they should vote to remain part of the EU. A parade took place in Stratford to mark the anniversary. A band from the U.S. city of New Orleans performed a jazz rendition of "Happy Birthday" in honor of the British icon, as confetti flowed through the streets. Visitors, performers, literature buffs and notable people, including Prince Charles, gathered in the central English market town to pay tribute to one of the worlds most prominent playwrights. Shakespeare is regarded by many as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. Thousands of people from all walks of life and from around the world descended Saturday on the streets of Stratford-Upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, on the 400th anniversary of his death. Actors Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ian McKellen were among stars scheduled to celebrate the anniversary with performances from Shakespeare's best-known works at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The occasion was being marked across Britain with parades, church services and stage performances. Thirty-seven short films, one of each of Shakespeare's plays, were shown on giant screens installed along the River Thames in London. U.S. President Barack Obama attended a performance of scenes from Shakespeare's works, including the famous "To be or not to be?" from Hamlet, at the Globe Theatre, a reconstruction of a 16th-century part-open-air theater. In Washington, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was among those talking about Shakespeare during a program called "The Wonder of Will Live" at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which stands next to the Library of Congress. Actors, artists and scholars, including actor and former White House official Kal Penn and NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan, also participated in the program. Shakespeare was born in Stratford in April 1564. It is believed that he died there on April 23, 1616, but no record of his death exists. Merkel and Tusk were seeking to enforce terms of a deal under which migrants arriving in Greece would be returned to Turkey, in exchange for nearly $7 billion in European aid. Davutoglu spoke from the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Council President Donald Tusk. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday that his country's efforts to deter Syrians from entering Greece by sea had drastically cut daily migrant voyages from 6,000 in November to as few as 130 since early April. Davutoglu also sought to dispel accusations from humanitarian organizations that the Turkish crackdown had forced Syrian migrants fleeing war to return home against their will. "There was not a single refugee that was sent back from Turkey into Syria against their will," he said. Merkel described the visit as an opportunity to discuss migration issues with Turkish leaders, as well as human rights matters, "in a very open and frank manner." For his part, Tusk described Turkey as "the best example for the whole world of how we should treat refugees," and said no one has the right to "lecture" the Ankara government on how it has handled the refugee situation. Tusk also said the immediate monetary value of European aid would exceed $1 billion in the coming months. On Friday, Amnesty International urged members of the European delegation not to "close their eyes to the catalog of human rights abuses faced by refugees" in Turkey. Amnesty's comments followed a recent European Parliament report that criticized Turkey's record on human rights and media freedom in 2015. That report urged the country to improve its human rights record, and said Ankara's bid to join the 28-nation EU trade bloc would succeed or fail based on how it met those EU demands. The United States is purchasing 32 tons of a key component in the development of atomic weapons from Iran, in a bid to help Tehran implement provisions in the landmark nuclear deal. The U.S. Energy and State departments confirmed Friday the purchase of heavy water, which can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The plan was announced as U.S., Iranian and other officials met in Vienna to discuss implementation of the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. Earlier, Iran sold low-enriched uranium to Russia to help implement the deal. Word of the U.S. purchase came ahead of a Friday meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the U.N. climate change signing ceremony in New York. Iran has complained that it has not been getting the sanctions relief it deserves under the nuclear deal because of restrictions imposed by financial institutions. Heading into the talks, Kerry said the U.S. has not and will not stand in the way of business permitted in Iran since the nuclear agreement was implemented in January. Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion among some foreign banks, and we want to try to clarify that as much as we can, he said. Motorists convicted of driving under the influence are set to face stricter penalties. Under new measures unveiled by the National Police Agency on Sunday, repeat DUI offenders could even face a jail term, rather than mere fines. Passengers who sit next to a drunk driver will also be charged if they are found to have encouraged or ignored drunk driving on the part of another. Habitual drunk drivers could have their vehicles confiscated. Anyone caught driving while intoxicated five times in five years, and anyone with a prior record of drunk driving who becomes involved in a fatal accident, will lose their vehicle. Police will also intensify their crackdown on drunk driving, extending their patrols into the daytime hours to ferret out drunk drivers. According to police, drunk driving caused over 240,000 accidents last year, resulting in 583 fatalities and 42,880 injuries. A missile is launched from a submarine in this picture published from the Rodong Sinmun daily on Saturday. North Korea launched a ballistic missile from a 2,000-ton submarine in the East Sea on Saturday evening. North Korean state media hailed the launch under the watchful eyes of leader Kim Jong-un as a "great success" and featured a succession of photos showing the missile emerging from the water. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles are tougher to detect than missiles fired from land bases. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was launched in the East Sea at around 6:30 p.m. and flew around 30 km. The distance it flew, officials here say, was far short of the minimum range of 300 km required, but progress in developing the rocket has been unusually fast. A launch on April 15 of a mid-range ballistic missile failed and killed and injured several technicians. The earlier launch was timed with the birthday of former leader Kim Jong-il, while the SLBM launch occurred on the founding day of the People's Army. This has prompted fears that another nuclear test is imminent ahead of a massive Workers Party congress in early May. Last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave an order authorizing the nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. "North Korea has been putting into action most of the orders Kim Jong-un has given, so there is a strong possibility of a fifth nuclear test, a senior government official here said Sunday. The North made no comment after the failed test on April 15, but the SLBM launch was prominently publicized in the state media. A military source here said, "The technical preparations for a fifth nuclear test have been completed. The only thing left is to choose a date for the test." A government source said, "We can still spot movements of equipment and personnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Hamgyong Province." The source added once they disappear, a nuclear test is imminent. Meanwhile, North Korea has deployed its latest multiple-launch rocket systems along the border with South Korea. The government here said the North has deployed more than 100 new 122-mm MLRS on its frontlines. They have ranges that are 20 to 30 km longer than the ones used to shell Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. Read this article in Korean A construction company in Qatar recently laid off around 20 North Korean laborers, and the two escapees were among them. They are in custody but are at risk of being sent back to North Korea because they are unemployed. Two North Korean laborers escaped from a camp for laborers in Doha, Qatar on March 15 and sought refuge in a police station. The workers told police they could no longer endure Pyongyang's extortion after working in the scorching heat for more than two years but earning nothing. Four days later, around 100 North Korean laborers in Kuwait rose up against the state security agents who keep constant watch on them. The protest was triggered by a foreman telling workers that they would be rewarded if they met their required payment dues for the regime ahead of former leader Kim Jong-il's birthday on April 15. The workers reportedly shouted out at the foreman and demanded their back pay instead, and some tried to assault him. According to sources, the state security agents at the site were able to stop the workers from lynching the foreman, but North Korea's Ambassador to Kuwait So Chang-sik was apparently furious at the North Korea construction firm for not being able to contain them. Kim Young-hwan at the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights said, "It is unprecedented in North Korea to protest in front of state security agents." The protest took place after state security agents visited Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE in February and March to weed out potential defectors among workers there. They investigated the movements and mobile phone records of workers. "The protest occurred a week after the investigations ended," a source said. "Pyongyang's pressure has mounted to the degree where workers sent overseas are losing their tempers." North Korean officials in late February ordered workers overseas to work three more hours every day to raise hard currency for the regime, according to a source. In the Middle East that means laboring in the scorching heat without air conditioning for 10 to 16 hours a day. As fatigue built up, one North Korean laborer in Qatar fell to his death at a high-rise construction site in March, but officials apparently kept this a secret from leader Kim Jong-un. According to the Unification Ministry, North Korea has dispatched around 60,000 workers abroad, and they raise around US$200-300 million in hard currency annually. They see very little of the money, which is instead used to fund the North's missile and nuclear programs and for lavish gifts to buy the loyalty of senior officials. Ri made the proposal in an interview with AP, saying it would be possible to open the door to dialogue and ease tensions if the drills were suspended. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong on Saturday said his country is ready to stop nuclear tests if the U.S. suspends annual military exercises with South Korea. Ri was speaking at the North Korean permanent mission to the UN in New York hours after the North fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile from the East Sea. Ri claimed South Korea-U.S. drills have "reached a peak level" and have "gone to extremes," so it is "not bad" for the North to test-launch the SLBM. The North made the same proposal last year, but Seoul and Washington made it clear that the North must take verifiable steps to end its nuclear program before any negotiations can take place. Han Zheng meets visiting New Zealand PM John Key From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-04-25 17:40 SHANGHAI Party Secretary Han Zheng and visiting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key talked about increased cooperation between the two countries in a meeting last week. Han said Chinese President Xi Jinping visited New Zealand in 2014 and the two countries established comprehensive strategic partnership. Shanghai has close exchanges and cooperation with New Zealand, particularly with Dunedin, its sister city for more than 20 years. He said the Chinese economy remains robust, which is important for the world economy. Shanghai is deepening reforms and pushing for greater market opening to ensure sustainable economic growth. Han said he believes Keys visit will help him understand more about China and will give a boost to the bilateral cooperation. Key said the upgrade of New Zealand-China relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership is creating new opportunities for the two countries. New Zealand is keen to speed up negotiations with China to upgrade their free trade agreement so that more New Zealand products can enter the Chinese market. The prime minister said Shanghai is a dynamic commercial city and a gateway for New Zealand companies to enter China. He hoped both sides can expand exchanges and cooperation and he welcomed more Shanghai companies to invest in New Zealand. Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Lutong and the secretary-general of the CPC Shanghai Committee, Yin Hong, were present at the meeting. Saudi-led coalition says kills more than 800 al-Qaida militants in Yemen 2016-04-25 16:57 People inspect damage at a site hit by Saudi-led air strikes in the al-Qaida-held port of Mukalla city in southern Yemen, April 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] DUBAI - More than 800 al-Qaida militants were killed in an offensive by Yemeni government forces and its Arab allies in the group's main stronghold in Yemen's seaport of Mukalla, the Saudi-led coalition said. Around 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, local officials and residents said, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city. There was little fighting after a mostly Gulf Arab alliance and Yemeni forces mobilised their forces at Mukalla's suburbs, and the militants may have chosen to leave peacefully. Residents said local clerics and tribesmen had been in talks with the group earlier in the day to exit quietly and that fighters withdrew westward to neighbouring Shabwa province. Mukalla has been the center of a rich mini-state that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) built up over the past year as it took control of an almost 600-km (370-mile) band of Arabian Sea coastline. The group that has masterminded several foiled bomb plots on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year was pocketing around $2 million a day in customs revenues from the port. The coalition said in a statement carried by Saudi state news agency SPA late on Sunday night that many militants fled the Hadramout provincial capital they had held for a year after the offensive by supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi backed by Saudi and Emirati special forces. "Coalition armoured vehicles and the army entered Mukalla and al-Qaida fighters are departing," one resident told Reuters. Fighter jets from the mostly Gulf Arab alliance pounded the city on Sunday and killed 30 militants, residents said, as the military coalition ramped up its offensive to wrest swathes of southern Yemen from al-Qaida. Sunday's air strikes on al-Qaida in Mukalla were carried out in coordination with a ground offensive in militant-controlled territory further west, a Yemeni military official said. The push is being led by the United Arab Emirates, which has been training and arming local recruits for months, according to southern Yemeni tribal and political sources. The UAE is part of a mostly Gulf Arab coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in March last year to support the internationally recognised government after it was forced into exile by the armed Houthi group, an ally of Iran. China proposes to build world's 2nd longest high-speed rail line in India 2016-04-25 17:15 A bullet train running on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on Nov 24, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - China Railway Cooperation (CRC) is carrying out feasibility studies for high-speed lines on the 2,200 km Chennai-New Delhi route, Zhao Guotang, vice-general engineer of the CRC, said on Saturday. The proposed Chennai-New Delhi corridor could be the second-largest in the world, after the 2,298 km Beijing-Guangzhou line, which was launched three years ago. China has now the world's biggest high speed railway network which stands at a stunning 19,000 km - longer than all of world's high-speed lines put together. With successful experience in the domestic market and advanced technologies, the CRC starts to look for more opportunities in the overseas markets, including India, Malaysia, Singapore and so on. India has tied up with Japan for the country's first high speed railway line which will connect Mumbai and Ahmedabad after Tokyo offered easy loan terms to the South Asian country. China may not offer such easy loan terms but its expertise and technology are compatible with that of India, Zhao said. While China made 10,000 km of high speed tracks in the past decade, Japan made only 350 km, Zhao said, adding that China is capable of building high speed railways faster and better. The governor is misusing the position of chancellor University Act doesn't give the governor any right to remove VCs, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan said. #Korean Air-Cebu incident Korean Air flight overruns Cebu runway, no injuries reported Korean Air Co. said Monday its flight KE631 with 173 people on board overran the runway while landing at Cebu International Airport in the Philippines a day earlier but no injuries... #COVID-19 S. Korea's new COVID-19 infections continue on-week growth amid resurgence woes South Korea's new COVID-19 cases fell to below 15,000 on Monday, but the daily count recorded a marked rise from the previous week amid concerns over a virus resurgence in the wint... This weekend, the internet has mostly been freaking out over Beyonce's 'Lemonade' - she debuted an hour-long 'visual album' via a HBO special on Saturday night, followed by the nugget that she's released another surprise album via Tidal, featuring collaborations with The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, James Blake and Jack White. Since then, people have been targeting 'Becky With the Good Hair' (the internet at large believe it to be Rachel Roy, including Rachel Roy), and scoffing and Kim Kardashian's bid to steal the limelight from Beyonce (more on that momentarily). Below is just some of the reaction from the celeb world to Beyonce's latest creation... Queen YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA? The Weeknd (@theweeknd) April 24, 2016 One of the most beautiful things I've ever had the honor of being apart of...Black. Girl. Magic. https://t.co/LKdpEW59aa Zendaya (@Zendaya) April 24, 2016 10 mins into #LEMONADE.. This shit is so twisted and dark so far and I fucking LOVE IT... Wow Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) April 24, 2016 The art, the poetry, the images, the fashion, the message, the words, the music, the play, on play, on play of "Queens." I dug it. #LEMONADE Uzo Aduba (@UzoAduba) April 24, 2016 .@Beyonce I don't understand. You are so beyond. #LEMONADE is a stunning work of art! Tituss Burgess (@TitussBurgess) April 24, 2016 I feel changed. How was that THAT good?? HOW??? #LEMONADE Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) April 24, 2016 Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian was attending a swanky wedding in Miami and decided to post the following NSFW pics after presumably engaging in a totally impromptu photo shoot... Either way, her efforts were not appreciated by Beyonce fans... @KimKardashian shut up kim this isnt ur moment CASSIE (@CCCASCADE) April 24, 2016 @KimKardashian the spotlight on BeyoncA tonight not you, sit down pic.twitter.com/4jwnAAiEAY Ruby (@antiruuby) April 24, 2016 @KimKardashian stop trying to outshine beyonce bray (@arianacuIture) April 24, 2016 @KimKardashian BeyoncA dropped an album. Shut up bryan (@riseselegend) April 24, 2016 @KimKardashian LET BEYONCE HAVE TONIGHT Jake (@itsjmcd) April 24, 2016 @KimKardashian Kim I'ma let you finish but BEYONCE DESERVES MORE RECOGNITION *Kanye Voice* brown boy (@KingNiggyy) April 24, 2016 @KimKardashian you need some Lemonade? You seem thirsty today. Rhys (@BadGalRhyRhy) April 24, 2016 In short, back in yisser box, lady. As for Rachel Roy, in addition to making her Instagram private, she recently posted the below tweet (while we're at it, spare a thought for TV Chef Rachel Ray, who Beyonce fans have also mistakingly being berating)... An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language and scooping all the top awards at Cannes (and many more besides), Son of Saul is not just another concentration camp film. With the camera either placed right in Saul Auslanders (Rohrig) face or perched on his shoulder, Lazlo Nemess subjective style ensures one lives through Sauls moments just as he does. Hungarian Saul is an Auschwitz Sonderkommando, assisting the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews by herding them off the trains to the gas chambers during the summer of 1944. His pale, tired, hard face tells us hes been at this for some time and the knowledge that all Sonderkommandos are executed after a short time. However, when he discovers a young boy still breathing in a pile of bodies, he belays the SS doctor's orders to take him for an autopsy. In an attempt to cling on to a last vestige of humanity, Saul hides the body for burial and looks about a Rabbi to say the requisite words. These actions however threaten to derail a planned uprising by the inmates The style lends a nightmarish quality to the scenes: the camera is forever tight on Saul but what's happening around him sometimes just out of shot, other times out of focus lends the scenes both a real and unreal quality; one mass shooting sequence is reminiscent of the village scene from Come And See - that chaotic, hellish experience. Instead of showing what's happening, Nemes allows the sounds of the camp do the work: the gas chamber door sliding shut, the screams that slowly die away. Nemes sticking to close to Saul throughout is almost a safety instinct hes made it this far, best stick with him. Nemes gives proceedings a manic pace; the handheld camera giving the scenes an edge but also allows Nemes to get you to fixate on things like Saul's eyes and how theyve sunk into his head, or the X on the back of his jacket. But there can be confusion too. The dialogue is delivered in whispers and with the film told from Sauls myopic point of view, a man who keeps his head down and his mouth shut, details of the uprising come piecemeal. The reasons for the warnings that Saul receives aren't clear for long stretches. A visceral experience. In line with the EUs principle to demand visas from countries that have similar requirements in place for one or more EU Member States, the European Commission is considering imposing travel visa on American and Canadian nationals. According to the regulation that entered into force before Christmas last year, EU countries are required to react in common on visa matters, especially in cases where foreign countries subjects [EU] citizens to differing treatment. Currently, most EU citizens enjoy a visa-free travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program. However, citizens of Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Poland are not eligible for this scheme. Canadas visa system is not based on reciprocity and the countrys immigration service commented that, for example, Romania and Bulgaria do not meet Canadas criteria for a visa travel on the grounds of migration issues, security of travel documents, border management and even human rights. The EU executive must decide by tomorrow (12 April) whether to demand visas or not, a move that could raise tensions across the Atlantic at the time when Brussels and Washington negotiate a free trade agreement. Critics also point out that it is questionable whether such a move would be practical given Europes popularity as a tourist destination for many Americans and Canadians. An EU source commented that a political debate and decision is obviously needed on such an important issue, but there is a real risk that the EU would move towards visas for the two (Americans and Canadians). Washington, however, highlighted that any proposal by the EU Commission to introduce travel visa could be rejected by the European Parliament or the European Council. Yet, it is the European Parliament itself that insists on reciprocity in visa policy. The European Union and its 28 Member States signed the global environmental deal the Paris Climate Agreement on 22 April 2016 in a high-profile ceremony in New York. The deal was finalized at the UN climate conference in December 2015 that took place in Paris. The agreement is now open for signature for one year. Dutch Minister for the Environment and President of the Council, Sharon Dijksma, and Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic will sign the agreement on behalf of the EU. The so-called COP21 agreement, as the Paris deal is officially called, sets a milestone in global climate action. Mrs Dijksma, commented that the Paris Agreement is a real turning point in limiting temperature rise and preventing risks posed by climate change, while adding that This signature sets out in black and white the EUs commitment to do its part and keep up the momentum from Paris. Continuous action is required. The Paris Agreement will enter into force once it is signed and ratified by at least 55 countries, accounting together for at least 55 percent of the worlds global greenhouse emissions. Then, it will become legally binding for the countries that have ratified it. Last month, the European Council emphasized that the EU and its Member States needed to ratify the COP21 as soon as possible. The Paris deal aims at keeping global temperature rise well below 2C and to make efforts to keep it to 1.5C (compared to pre-industrial levels). Countries are also obliged to take steps to reduce their emissions and there will be a review every five years to take stock and summarize progress and achievements. All countries are expected to ensure transparency and accountability so that their progress can be easily tracked. Janis A. Emmanouilidis (European Policy Centre) Following the meeting of the representatives of the EU and Turkey, which took place in early March, there was a tense atmosphere among the EU Member States. The draft agreement between the EU and Turkey presented to the participants of the negotiation had emerged from a meeting that was attended only by the leaders of the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey. The agreement was, however, concluded at the summit on 17-18 March. Several states had reservations or concerns but at the same time they were also afraid of the consequences in case the negotiations failed. Despite the eventual agreement, doubts persist as to whether the aims of the deal will be achieved, that is whether illegal migration to Europe will be curbed. The agreement contains two main points. The first one talks about the return of illegal migrants from Greece to Turkey. The emphasis is placed on the compliance with the EU legislation and international law. It also means that migrants will be registered and asylum applications examined individually. Applications of those migrants who have applied for international protection in Turkey or persons for whom Turkey is the so-called safe third country might be dismissed. However, there are doubts as to whether Turkey meets the particular standards. According to the Union and Athens, the country keeps sufficient standards. However, there is a need to increase protection of Syrians and other nationalities, which have not yet been granted a refugee status. In Turkey and Greece, the processing of asylum applications will have to be sped up and accommodation capacities improved and increased for those who are waiting for their completion. The second major point talks about the system, under which there will be, for each migrant returned to Turkey, a Syrian relocated to the EU. The system counts with 72,000 places previously reserved for migrants. According to the adopted mechanism, however, individuals who attempt an illegal EU migration de facto lose their chance to be relocated. This condition should lead to a decline in illegal migration to Europe thanks to which the number of displaced persons would not exceed the existing capacity. Still, questions remain about the willingness of EU countries to accept those people. These doubts are, however, refuted by the existing argument that such states will have to resettle fewer migrants currently living elsewhere in the Union and also thanks to the acceptance of the agreement by these countries. Although Ankara put forward a number of requirements related to the accession negotiations, as well as the liberalization of visa conditions and provision of financial support, it has only been partially successful in achieving them. Turkey has also committed itself to undertake necessary measures needed to prevent the migrants from finding alternative migration routes over land and offshore. (The study can be downloaded here:http://www.epc.eu/pub_details.php?cat_id=5&pub_id=6417) DHL aims to make logistics hot for top talent Updated: 2016-04-25 09:14 By Shi Jing in Shanghai(China Daily) DHL Supply Chain eyes massive size so it could support industry development An interview with Zou Yin, the low-key chief executive officer of DHL Supply Chain China, is a rare event. He does not grant many these days. Only those executives who are on the lookout for a new job readily offer media interviews, he jokes. He is energetic, handsome, and shy, like people of his ilk from East China. His quick responses to questions suggest Zou's understanding of the logistics business is deep, and that he is very confident about its future prospects. Some Western humor punctuates his discourse, probably a result of his long work experience in Germany. The two paintings in his office indicate his affinity for Oriental aesthetics, particularly traditional Chinese culture. The one behind his back shows mountains under a clear blue sky. The other depicts a vibrant ocean. The two paintings vis-a-vis the room's layout are consistent with fengshui. They symbolize support from back and opportunities ahead respectively, he said. But it would be a folly to attribute the success of DHL Supply Chain in China in the past few years to Zou's office fengshui alone. His deep knowledge of the market and a unique management style are contributory factors. "The logistics industry is highly competitive. So there is no secret recipe. As long as you have good people and you are able to maximize their value, you will win," he said. For Zou, the maturity of his team is his greatest achievement so far. He does not believe in rigid control of employees. Instead, Zou adopts a rather loose management of people. He said he never expects a young person to work for DHL his whole life. What he wants to see is the young employee's value improving during his time with the company. DHL Supply Chain being part of the German group, hierarchy remains important. This means, people at different levels need to work within certain boundaries and abide by certain rules. But in the company's Shanghai office, Zou's door is always open to all employees. As long as an employee has an idea to contribute, he/she is welcome to walk in to Zou's office any time, regardless of his/her level in the hierarchy. "I always feel like I'm a public servant to my colleagues, that I need to solve all of their problems," he said. Logistics is traditionally seen as a low-profile industry. So, it's not easy to attract top talent. "I want to change this. We want to grow to a size by which we can support industry development, to make the industry attractive to candidates in the market," he said. Steady growth is a priority for the company. By 2020 the company expects to have set up another six logistics centers in Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shenyang, Shenzhen and the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, bringing its total national warehousing capacity to 1 million square meters. So, it is targeting business not only from existing customers, who are mostly multinational companies, but Chinese firms. Most of its customers have been clients for more than 15 years. "Out partnerships are probably longer than the average time a new-age marriage lasts now in China," said Zou.. Over the past few years, DHL Supply Chain in China has seen many of its customers, particularly those in the technology and automotive industries, move up the value chain. "We have also seen domestic manufacturers, which are also leading brands, move up the value chain. They are starting to offer really good brands and premium products. They are upgrading their manufacturing capabilities. So, we are adding value to their integrated supply chain operations, particularly for high-end manufacturing industries in the electronics business," he said. Zou said he recently had a chat on the subject with a senior vice-president at a top Chinese telecommunications company based in Shenzhen. It appears Chinese manufacturers are changing their supply chain model, he said. From focusing on a low-cost supply chain model, they are looking for alternatives in the market. They want to hit the ground running in all markets with a new product, he said. They are willing to invest more in supply chain to ensure their products reach consumers in time. "The internet helps bridge the gap between demand and supply. People want products delivered within a very short time. So, more manufacturers have to change their supply chain model, and build it according to demand," said Zou. BIO Year of birth: 1976 Work experience: He has been with DHL for over 12 years, during which time he has held management roles in Europe, the United States and China, covering commercial, strategy, shared services and operations. Education: He graduated from Peking University with double major degrees in chemistry, economics, and a minor in law. He also received an MBA from the University of Oxford. Interests: Badminton, swimming, history and traditional culture. China's biggest travel agency posts 7.86% rise in Q1 profit Updated: 2016-04-25 09:18 (Xinhua) BEIJING - China International Travel Service Ltd, the country's biggest travel agency, posted a 7.86-percent increase in profits in the first quarter of 2016. Net profits stood at 696.76 million yuan ($107.36 million) from January to March, according to the company's quarterly report filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Revenues jumped 4.7 percent year on year to 5.23 billion yuan. Earnings per share was 0.71 yuan, compared with 0.66 yuan at the end of December, the report said. The company's steady profit growth was attributed to the country's booming tourism industry, which is expected to rake in 4.55 trillion yuan this year, up 10 percent year on year, data from the China National Tourism Administration showed. GE opens wind power training center in China Updated: 2016-04-25 14:29 (Xinhua) SHENYANG - General Electric (GE) has opened a center in Northeast China to train maintenance personnel for the wind power sector. The facility in Shenyang, Liaoning province, can train between 250 and 800 field workers and technicians a year, according to a GE statement. Li Feng, a wind power executive with the US conglomerate, said the new center will help GE develop the growing Chinese market. Wind power currently is able to generate nearly 9 percent of the electricity needed in China. GE first brought its wind power products to the Chinese market in 2004. US yuan trading, clearing advocates make rallying call Updated: 2016-04-25 15:35 (Xinhua) A residents shows China's yuan and US dollar banknotes in Qionghai, South China's Hainan province, Jan 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - Heads of a US working group formed recently to push use of the Chinese currency in the United States have claimed that expanding yuan trading and clearing there will help both the Chinese and US economies. Mary Schapiro, vice chair of the Working Group on US yuan Trading and Clearing, said in an interview with Xinhua that demand for yuan in the United States is on the rise. Chinese and US leaders agreed in Washington in September that the two countries should strengthen financial cooperation and facilitate yuan trading and clearing in the United States. Shortly afterward, former New York mayor and business tycoon Michael Bloomberg led the formation of the working group from senior members of the private sector. Co-chaired by former US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, as well as President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce Thomas Donohue, the group has 22 members including leading international financial institutions, five Chinese banks and the US Chamber of Commerce. "Having trading and clearing of the yuan in the United States will enhance the competitiveness of US companies, lower transaction costs and increase efficiency," Schapiro told Xinhua. "It can help them build stronger trading relationships and business partnerships with China and should encourage more bilateral trade and investment." The working group has surveyed US companies and traders on current and potential yuan demand and released initial observations in early April. "Right now, the demand for yuan in the United States is not as high as we expected, but we think there is tremendous potential for demand to increase," Schapiro said. In January, the yuan remained the fifth most active currency for global payments by value and accounted for 2.45 percent of global payments, a slight increase from 2.31 percent in December 2015, according to data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a global financial data provider. Kevin Sheekey, chairman of external relations for Bloomberg L.P., told Xinhua that the US market's dollar-centric approach is changing with the yuan becoming more internationalized. He said the working group is preparing for a multi-currency world which would include the yuan. "Everyone agrees that the future importance of the yuan is going forward, and thus needs to provide trading centers to convert that," he said. China has set up offshore yuan trading hubs in Hong Kong, London and Toronto. The US market remains untapped. "We keep talking about hubs and spokes and wheels, but we are not reinventing the wheel entirely in the United States," Schapiro said. "We hope the experience that China had with different hubs allows us to move more quickly." She characterized financial institutions in the United States as more diversified than in other locations. That adds complexity to the mechanism. The working group is aiming to produce a final report to regulators in June that would lay out a road-map for how to strengthen access to yuan in the United States. China has been aggressively pushing for the yuan's global use, as the Chinese economy is becoming increasingly intertwined with the rest of the world. In November, the International Monetary Fund approved the inclusion of yuan into the Special Drawing Rights basket, recognizing the yuan's position as an international reserve currency. Although the yuan has gained more popularity, its activity share remains small compared with the US dollar, the Euro, the British Pound and the Japanese Yen. Steady pursuit of peace, but ready for anything Updated: 2016-04-25 07:32 (China Daily) A warship sails in South China Sea during a Chinese navy drill in South China Sea, July 28, 2015. [Photo/CFP] Washington deservedly received a warning and reminder from Beijing about the dangers of saber-rattling, after US warplanes conducted what the United States called a freedom of overflight operation near China's Huangyan Islands. This seems a weird claim since planes of all countries pass through the airspace without any trouble. The same is true of the US' so-called freedom of navigation operations. The US military appears obsessed with something that is simply not an issue. But what is happening, and may come up next, in the South China Sea goes far beyond jurisprudential common sense as well as divergent readings of international law. It is because of geopolitical calculations rather than international justice that Washington is rushing to the forefront of the maritime disputes with Beijing. It is dusting off its long-neglected military alliance with the Philippines. It is seeking closer military relationships with India and Vietnam. It is dragging the Japanese military into the South China Sea. Despite all the ear-pleasing diplomatic rhetoric from Washington, about not choosing sides, about peace and negotiated solutions, the hawkish Pentagon is making it increasingly clear that it will not give up until real trouble emerges in the South China Sea. The China-US standoff is going beyond the exchange of verbal swords, and is increasingly taking the form of hostile, though as yet by-and-large restrained, military encounters. Beijing's aspiration for a new-type major-country relationship is a blessing for all peace-minded countries and peoples. But it takes two to tango. In the South China Sea, at least at this moment, the US does not want to dance with China. Washington may not acknowledge it, but the two countries' militaries appear to be on a collision course. Which is why Beijing must be prepared. However, things are not yet irreparable. As long as Beijing considers the South China Sea a core national interest, as long as it prioritize development at home, as long as it remains committed to sustaining a peaceful environment for domestic development, as long as it aspires to become a different kind of big power, it should avail itself of every possibility to avoid military solutions to territorial disputes. The consensuses Foreign Minister Wang Yi has achieved in his visits to Brunei, Cambodia and the Laos are laudable diplomatic attempts that help set the stage for broader consultations. Since real solutions rest ultimately on agreements between China and claimant countries, Beijing should work harder to seek breakthroughs through one-on-one negotiations. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, a long-time friend and confidant of undefeated middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin recently revealed that his own promotional/management team purposely advised him not to pursue a potential showdown with undefeated former world champion Andre Ward. We're told that shortly before Golovkin's 2nd round knockout of mandatory challenger Dominic Wade, his childhood friend from Kazakhstan struck up a conversation with world-class trainer Virgil Hunter, who was also in attendance at the fights and happened to be seated right next to our source. According to our source, after showing Hunter several pictures of himself and Golovkin throughout the years, the friend began to share with Hunter a discussion that he and Golovkin previously had regarding a potential showdown with undefeated former world champion Andre Ward. "I was angry with him; he would not fight Andre Ward. I begged him. I tell him he had to for respect. He said, 'No, the promoters don't want me.' I say, 'Don't hide behind promoters. You can get the fight. You have to fight Ward for respect.' He said, 'No, not right now.' I asked him, 'Are you afraid?' He repeated, 'No, the promoters don't want me.' He got so mad," the friend reportedly said to Hunter during their conversation. FightHype.com reached out to Hunter to verify the account of our source. Although he did not get into any specific details, Hunter confirmed that he did indeed have a conversation with Golovkin's "good friend from childhood" about the reasons why a fight with Ward never came to fruition. "I like Golovkin, but I think some of the people around him are phony," Hunter added before getting off the phone. Calls to members of Team Golovkin have yet to be returned. BE SURE TO CHECK BACK SOON AS MORE DETAILS UNFOLD [ Follow Ben Thompson on Twitter @fighthype ] LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Two former employees of accountancy giant PwC go on trial in Luxembourg on Tuesday along with a French journalist, accused of leaking details of corporate tax deals that have fuelled global demands for reform. The case, coming 18 months after revelations dubbed LuxLeaks sparked accusations the Grand Duchy conspired with multinational companies to deprive other EU states of tax revenue, has drawn strong criticism from civil rights and media groups who argue the men are whistleblowers in need of protection. Analysts say the Luxembourg authorities face a dilemma between defending confidentiality within financial institutions on whose customers the tiny state's economy depends and avoiding damage to its public image that could discourage business. Antoine Deltour, a French citizen like the other defendants, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012. Prosecutors say that data, as well as material allegedly supplied by the second former PwC employee Raphael Halet, was later used in the LuxLeaks revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle called Perrin's indictment an affront to press freedom. "For a founding member of the EU to bring charges against a journalist in relation to reporting that is clearly in the public interest shows a lack of respect for the important role journalism plays in holding the powerful accountable," he said. "For a country to also charge two alleged whistleblowers shows Luxembourg has not yet caught up with public opinion." The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros ($1.4 million). Luxembourg has a law protecting whistleblowers but it is limited to exposing illegality, such as corruption and money laundering. The government and companies involved say that the practices in this case were legal. Luxembourg, with a population of just 540,000, has come to depend heavily on financial services since the decline of the coal and steel industries on which it previously relied. Michel Maus, professor of tax law at Brussels university VUB, said judges in the case would need to strike a balance between upholding secrecy laws and protecting Luxembourg's reputation as a financial centre in the long term. "If they come down hard on the defendants, they will deter future whistleblowers," said Maus. "But it is in the interest of Luxembourg financial system to be transparent, otherwise it will become internationally isolated in the longer term." Jean-Claude Juncker, who was Luxembourg's prime minister for 19 years and is now president of the European Commission, has rejected criticism of his country's past practices and has backed new EU rules to make corporate taxation more transparent. Luxembourg is one of several EU states whose special deals with major multinationals is being investigated by the EU's antitrust watchdog for favouring certain companies. (Reporting by Michele Sinner in Luxembourg and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Tom Heneghan) NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Actinium Pharmaceuticals (NYSE MKT: ATNM) SIERRA - S tudy of I omab-B in E lderly R elapsed or R efractory A ML Webinar scheduled for Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 8:30 am ET Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT: ATNM) ("Actinium" or the "Company"), a biopharmaceutical Company developing innovative targeted payload immunotherapeutics for the treatment of advanced cancers, reiterated today that the Company will host a webinar to discuss the SIERRA trial, the Company's upcoming pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial for Iomab-B. The webinar will provide an overview of the use of hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), known as a bone marrow transplant (BMT) in relapsed or refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) patients over the age of 55, an introduction to the SIERRA trial and anticipated timelines and milestones for the trial. Participant information for the webinar is as follows: Date: April 26, 2016 Time: 8:30 am EST Link: https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1098822 Speakers: Sandesh Seth, Executive Chairman, Actinium Pharmaceuticals Frank Smith, M.D., FAAP, FACP, Vice President, Medical Affairs, Medpace Felix Garzon, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Head of Clinical Development, Actinium Pharmaceuticals About the SIERRA trial Iomab-B will be used in preparing patients for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), the fastest growing hospital procedure in the U.S. The Company established an agreement with the FDA that the path to a Biologics License Application (BLA) submission could include a single, pivotal Phase 3 clinical study, if it is successful. The population in this two arm, randomized, controlled, multicenter trial will be refractory and relapsed Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) patients over the age of 55. The trial size was set at 150 patients with 75 patients per arm. The primary endpoint in the pivotal Phase 3 trial is durable complete remission, defined as a complete remission lasting at least 6 months and the secondary endpoint will be overall survival at one year. There are currently no effective treatments approved by the FDA for AML in this patient population and there is no defined standard of care. Iomab-B has completed several physician sponsored clinical trials examining its potential as a conditioning regimen prior to HSCT in various blood cancers, including the Phase 1/2 study in relapsed and/or refractory AML patients. The results of these studies in almost 300 patients have demonstrated the potential of Iomab-B to create a new treatment paradigm for bone marrow transplants by: expanding the pool to ineligible patients who do not have any viable treatment options currently; enabling a shorter and safer preparatory interval for HSCT; reducing post-transplant complications; and showing a clear survival benefit including curative potential. Story continues About Iomab-B Iomab-B is a radioimmunoconjugate consisting of BC8, a novel murine monoclonal antibody, and iodine-131 radioisotope. BC8 has been developed by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to target CD45, a pan-leukocytic antigen widely expressed on white blood cells. This antigen makes BC8 potentially useful in targeting white blood cells in preparation for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in a number of blood cancer indications, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Hodgkin's disease (HD), Non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) and multiple myeloma (MM). When labeled with radioactive isotopes, BC8 carries radioactivity directly to the site of cancerous growth and bone marrow while avoiding effects of radiation on most healthy tissues. About Dr. Franklin O. Smith, III, MD, FAAP, FACP Dr. Frank Smith received his MD degree from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine and completed post-doctoral training in pediatrics at the University of Florida and fellowship training in pediatric hematology/oncology at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Prior to joining Medpace, Dr. Smith was instrumental in helping build two prestigious stem cell transplant programs at both the University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute and at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University. He also was the Director, Division of Hematology/Oncology at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Vice-Chair of the Children's Oncology Group. He is an adjunct Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and has had over 150 scientific manuscripts published in medical and scientific journals. Dr. Smith is active with various national and international committees and societies in the field of research and clinical care, including serving on the local and national boards of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Chair of the Board of Managers for the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT) Consulting Services, faculty for the ASCO/AACR Clinical Cancer Research Workshop and as a member of the NCI's Central Institutional Review Board. Dr. Smith has also served on ad-hoc committees for the FDA including Special Emphasis Panels for Orphan Products Development. About Actinium Pharmaceuticals Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.actiniumpharma.com) is a New York-based biopharmaceutical company developing innovative targeted payload immunotherapeutics for the treatment of advanced cancers. Actinium's targeted radiotherapy products are based on its proprietary delivery platform for the therapeutic utilization of alpha-emitting actinium-225 and bismuth-213 and certain beta emitting radiopharmaceuticals in conjunction with monoclonal antibodies. The Company's lead radiopharmaceutical product candidate Iomab-B is designed to be used, upon approval, in preparing patients for hematopoietic stem cell transplant, commonly referred to as bone marrow transplant. The Company plans to conduct a single, pivotal, multicenter Phase 3 clinical study of Iomab-B in refractory and relapsed AML patients over the age of 55 with a primary endpoint of durable complete remission. The Company's second product candidate, Actimab-A, is continuing its clinical development in a Phase 1/2 trial for newly diagnosed AML patients over the age of 60 in a single-arm multicenter trial. Forward-Looking Statements for Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. This news release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the statements. The forward-looking statements may include statements regarding product development, product potential, or financial performance. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed and actual results may differ materially from those projected. Actinium Pharmaceuticals undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. drugs heroin If drug addiction is a disease like cancer or Alzheimer's, how do you explain the seemingly amoral behavior the lying, cheating, and hiding that has come to be linked with so many addicts? The answer is far simpler than you might think, at least according to neuroscience journalist and author Maia Szalavitz, whose new book, "Unbroken Brain," throws water on most of the modern assumptions that plague our understanding of drug and alcohol addiction. Addiction, she writes, is not a disease like cancer. But it's not a moral failing, either. Instead she proposes that it's a learning disorder, much like ADHD, and needs to be treated as such. This treatment regimen would vary based on the individual but could include things like cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of psychotherapy in which the therapist and patient work together to swap unhealthy learned patterns with more constructive ways of thinking, and potentially medication. Seem like a radical idea? It turns out that numerous experts from neuroscientists to economists to psychiatrists (not to mention several peer-reviewed scientific studies) agree with her. And they have for more than a decade. Treating addiction as either a disease like cancer or a moral failing based on someone's character defects, the idea goes, doesn't work. Addiction instead is a learned behavior that often results in measurable changes to the brain. And acknowledging this could revolutionize not only how we see addicts but also how we treat addiction. How we came to we see addiction as a moral failing When most of us think about addiction, we focus on one set of its symptoms the behavioral changes many addicts display like failing to keep commitments, stealing drugs when they can no longer afford them, doing them in secret, and isolating themselves from family and friends. But we've ignored the real causes. "Scientists think it's nuts" to frame the idea of addiction as a learning disorder as new, Szalavitz told Business Insider recently, "but most of the public has no idea and it's been framed to the public as a disease so when you think disease, you think cancer and Alzheimer's but then they see how people with addictions behave and they think, 'Well, that doesnt fit.'" Story continues "So on the one hand we're calling it a disease," Szalavitz added, "but then we're treating it as a sin. And that doesn't make sense." maia szalavitz There are several reasons for this, Szalavitz wrote in her book. A cult named Synanon, for example, which is now credited with spawning the "tough love" movement, focused on publicly shaming and humiliating its members who were addicted to drugs or alcohol. This focus on defects of character, Szalavitz said, is "not exactly helpful for someone who already has a lot of self-hatred." Some rehab centers and 12-step programs reinforce this idea, Szalavitz (a former member of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous) wrote, by requiring members to do things like accept the idea of God or a higher power, pray and meditate, and accept their own powerlessness (the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous). All of these approaches may be helpful to some people, Szalavitz said. And they have undoubtedly changed the lives of many people for the better. Multiple people I spoke with for this story said that if it were not for Alcoholics Anonymous, they would assuredly be dead. The problem with these approaches, Szalavitz argues, is that they're not medical approaches, but addiction is a medical problem a learning disorder that needs a medical solution. This would ideally involve doctors and trained psychiatrists and psychologists as well as support groups. "Self-help should be self-help and treatment should be treatment," Szalavitz said. "Your oncologist is not your breast cancer support group." Self-help should be self-help and treatment should be treatment. Your oncologist is not your breast cancer support group. Addiction is a learning disorder like ADHD, and changing our understanding of it is a matter of life and death A 2004 paper in the journal Nature suggested that addiction was a learning disorder, meaning it was a behavior that was learned, perhaps as a coping mechanism, and resulted in fundamental changes to the brain wiring of people who are addicted. From the paper's abstract (emphasis ours): Drug addiction manifests as a compulsive drive to take a drug despite serious adverse consequences. This aberrant behavior has traditionally been viewed as bad 'choices' that are made voluntarily by the addict. However, recent studies have shown that repeated drug use leads to long-lasting changes in the brain that undermine voluntary control. This, combined with new knowledge of how environmental, genetic and developmental factors contribute to addiction, should bring about changes in our approach to the prevention and treatment of addiction. That was 12 years ago. For many addicts, the problem is that their behavior of using eventually stops working its magic. Yet the compulsion to use remains, so they try something stronger. That's what happened to Szalavitz, who battled addiction for years. A man prepares to inject himself with heroin using a needle obtained from the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, the nation's largest needle-exchange program, in Seattle, Washington April 30, 2015. REUTERS/David Ryder The experience of Szalavitz, who used cocaine and heroin for years, describes an insatiable craving for cocaine, for example, even when she knew injecting herself with the drug no longer provided any trace of benefits. She described watching the world around her her studies at Columbia University, which she had dreamed of attending since she was a child, two parents who supported and loved her begin to crumble. Yet she kept using. A 2005 paper in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior sheds light on why this happens. In it, University of Michigan pharmacologist Gail Winger and her colleagues argue that drug addiction is a behavioral disorder, since it involves what looks like "choosing" a drug over other potential options (though the matter of choice in this matter is also hotly debated), "perhaps because the drug is a more potent reinforcer relative to competing reinforcers in the addict's life." In other words, contrary to the long-ingrained notion that Szalavitz continued to use because she liked the effects the drugs produced, she, like many addicts, used because she had learned that using would help her feel OK in the world. She describes being constantly overwhelmed by colors and sounds as a child, for example, and struggling to form friendships or even feel safe and loved despite being surrounded by loving family. But when she found drugs as an adolescent, they helped to ease all of these difficulties. They helped "lower the volume," Szalavitz said. Here's the problem: Using worked for her primarily during years when her adolescent brain was literally being remodeled and shaped for adulthood. And for many addicts, by the time the drug stops working, the brain has already decided that it needs to use, despite plenty of evidence (and perhaps even a few interventions) to the contrary. "Longitudinal investigations of individuals going through the period between childhood and adulthood reveal that there is a remodeling of the brain that starts often just before the teen years begin and continues well into the mid-twenties," Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles' School of Medicine, writes in a blog post for Psychology Today. Essentially this means that for some people behaviors that are learned between these two life phases are far more likely to stick, especially when such behaviors had positive outcomes at one point. One recovering alcoholic I talked to said this about her drinking habit, which eventually left her in jail with no money and no family to call: "I firmly believe that alcohol saved my life. It just stopped working." For years of her teenage life, she was incredibly uncomfortable in social situations. She was overwhelmed at parties and couldn't seem to hold on to any friends. Then she found alcohol, and her problems seemed to lift. She was finally able to carry on a conversation. Everything was easier. She felt comfortable in her own skin. "I had arrived," she told me. But eventually the substance in her case alcohol stopped working. party drunk binge drinking alcohol shots This is where seeing drug addiction as a disease or as a moral failing falls dramatically and tragically short. And a new approach is needed. "In actuality [addiction] is a form of pathologic learning," Szalavitz said. "With addiction overwhelming changes occur in the brain region involving areas that evolved for things like love and sex and feeding. All these things that are fundamental to reproduction." That means addiction will create what Szalavitz calls "very powerful drives" strong desires to take the drug repeatedly even if it's not providing any pleasant effects. But it doesn't make addicts totally powerless either. "We've just been getting this completely backwards, by failing to address the role of learning," she said. "If you want to call it a disease, the kind of disease it is is a learning disease." This has been proved time and time again with things like clean needle exchanges, in which providing addicts with access to sterile needles has resulted in dramatically reduced rates of diseases like HIV and AIDS. "The way it's been framed as a disease is people can't control anything about themselves they wouldn't use clean needles or try to protect their health in any way, but that's been proven false with things like needle exchanges." Evidence that addicts can learn healthy behavior is crucial, because it highlights the role addiction plays in learning. It's also incredibly hopeful, because it suggests that addicts can change, provided they have access to the right resources. "The bottom line in terms of this is that we know people with addiction have a skewed decision-making system, but they don't have no free will," Szalavitz said. NOW WATCH: The first woman in space almost didnt make it back to Earth and she had to keep it a secret for 30 years More From Business Insider DHAKA, April 25 (Reuters) - Bangladesh has increased security at its largest natural gas field, which is operated by Chevron, the government said on Monday, citing a rare threat by a militant group operating in neighbouring India. The United Liberation Front of Assam has been fighting for secession from India and many of its members are based in Bangladesh. Dhaka said it has received warnings from the Indian authorities that the ULFA was planning to target pipelines at the Bibiyana gas field in northeastern Bangladesh. The Bibiyana field, located in the Sylhet district 278 kilometres from Dhaka, accounts for 45 percent of the country's gas output. "We have taken additional security measures to prevent destructive activities in the gas field or on the supply system," said Interior Minister Asaduzzamn Khan. In 2014 a Bangladesh court sentenced ULFA's leader Paresh Barua to death in absentia for his part in a huge arms smuggling operation which was discovered 10 years previously. Chevron said it was aware of the threat to its operations in Bibiyana. "We are working with relevant government agencies to assess the security situation and take appropriate measures to secure our personnel and operated facilities," a spokesman said. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Greg Mahlich) By Anthony Boadle BRASILIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Brazil's largest opposition party is divided over how strongly to back a new interim government if it succeeds in having President Dilma Rousseff stripped of office, as it eyes a run at the presidency in 2018, senior members said on Monday. The Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) will support a government led by Vice President Michel Temer from the aisles of Congress if the left-leaning Rousseff is unseated next month but the party is split over whether to join his cabinet. The Senate was due to meet later on Monday to pick a 21-member committee that will report back on whether to put Rousseff on trial in the upper house on charges of deliberately breaking budget laws to boost her reelection bid in 2014. The lower house voted this month there were grounds for a trial. If the Senate agrees to put her on trial in a vote on May 12, as expected, Rousseff will immediately be suspended from office for the period of the proceedings. She denies any wrongdoing. Temer, whose Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) quit the government last month, is preparing to govern. Former central bank governor Henrique Meirelles is emerging as the top candidate to become finance minister, a source familiar with the talks told Reuters. Investors are looking to Temer to restore confidence in Latin America's largest economy. Brazil was stripped of its coveted investment grade credit rating in December amid the worst recession in decades and an acute fiscal crisis. Business leaders are pressing the PSDB to join Temer to help restore credibility in economic policy, but many inside the party are wary of the risks in terms of future elections of failing to pull the country out of its worst recession since the 1930s. Party leader Aecio Neves, who narrowly lost to Rousseff in 2014 and is expected to run again in 2018, said last week that he does not want party members to accept ministerial positions in a Temer cabinet. Story continues However, Senator Jose Serra, a successful former health minister who has his own presidential ambitions, is keen to be a minister and the vice president wants him in, said lawmaker Bruno Araujo, leader of the PSDB in the lower house. Araujo said the majority position in the PSDB ahead of the this month's vote in the lower house had been to support Temer but not enter his government. Since then, pressure has increased on the PSDB from many sectors of Brazilian society to help make a Temer government succeed, he said. "There is a growing feeling in the party that if it does not take the risk of joining the Temer cabinet, Brazilians will suspect it wanted Temer to fail," Araujo said by telephone. The PSDB will meet on May 3 to set its position, mindful that if it stays out of the government and Temer turns the country around, it could pay the price in the 2018 elections. Serra was interested in becoming finance minister, a position that would enhance his presidential hopes for 2018, but party insiders say Temer will offer him other portfolios, such as health. As health minister in 2001, Serra defied the international pharmaceuticals industry and allowed generic copies of brand-name drugs to be made in Brazil without the permission of the company that owns the patent. The PSDB's top economic thinker, hedge fund investor and former central banker Arminio Fraga has offered advice to Temer, and several party economists have been named as possible members of his economic team. In a Temer government, the key finance job will likely be offered to Meirelles, a former president and COO of BankBoston who has strong ties to Brazil's biggest business groups. Meirelles' PSD party broke from Rousseff's coalition last week. Meirelles met with Temer on Saturday and signaled he would agree to lead the economic team if he has a say in picking its other members, such as the central bank chief, the source said. "He has a strong party behind him and he is widely respected by the markets," said the source, who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to speak publicly. "Meirelles is an ideal candidate, but no decision has been taken." (Additional reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Frances Kerry) (Adds details, BEH CEO quote) SOFIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Bulgarian state energy firm BEH has signed a 535 million euro ($602 million) bridge loan with three international banks which is to be refinanced by a global bond issue within a year, a senior BEH official said on Monday. J.P. Morgan Securities, Bank of China and Banca IMI, the investment arm of Intesa Saopaolo, have already provided the bridge financing, BEH Chief Executive Petio Ivanov told a news conference. BEH needs the proceeds to press ahead with a deal with U.S. firms AES and ContourGlobal, under which the two thermal power producers will lower the price at which they sell their output to public power provider NEK, a unit of BEH. Ivanov said the size of the bond, earlier considered to be about 650 million euros ($731 million), would depend on the demand for such an issue on the global markets. "Our plan is to go out at the global markets as soon as possible, but what is more important is to find the favourable moment. We will seek to raise at least what is needed to cover the bridge financing, but the final amount will depend on the demand at the market," Ivanov told reporters. A source, familiar with the arrangement, said J.P. Morgan and Banca IMI would be lead managers of the pending bond, while Bank of China will participate only in the bridge loan. BEH has sought to raise the debt since May 2015 but the process hit a snag after lenders demanded state guarantees. Bulgaria's finance ministry has declined to extend such guarantees before the huge deficits in the energy system are properly addressed. In September, credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded BEH's long-term rating to BB- with a negative outlook, predicting weak credit ratios due to a widened tariff deficit at NEK. ($1 = 0.8887 euros) (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; editing by Jason Neely and David Clarke) Emmanuel Niyonkuru, Burundi's water, environment and planning minister, was killed shortly after midnight, according to a tweet sent by police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye (AFP Photo/) (CDS/AFP/File) Nairobi (AFP) - Burundi's Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife were lightly injured Sunday in a grenade attack as they were leaving a church in the capital Bujumbura, the city's mayor told AFP. "A grenade was thrown in the car park of the Healing of the Souls church in Nyakabiga," mayor Freddy Mbonimpa said, referring to a neighbourhood in the city-centre. "They were very lightly injured by the explosion and their vehicle was badly damaged. They only had a few scratches and were discharged after treatment in a hospital," he added. The mayor said "armed criminals" were behind the attack, a term used by Burundian officials to refer to members of rebel groups opposed to President Pierre Nkurunziza. Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term, which he went on to win in July 2015, with violence leaving more than 500 people dead. More than 270,000 people have fled the country. Numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks since the start of the crisis. Such attacks are never claimed, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility. By Andrea Hopkins KANANASKIS, Alberta, April 25 (Reuters) - Canada's approval process for pipelines to export crude from the landlocked province of Alberta to the coast could be shorter, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said on Monday, in response to pressure to help get the region's oil to market. New interim rules for environmental reviews announced by the Liberal government in January imposed delays on two projects - TransCanada Corp's Energy East pipeline and Kinder Morgan Inc's expansion of its Trans Mountain Pipeline. While the deadlines represent the longest estimated time for approval, the process could be shorter, Carr told reporters as he headed into a cabinet meeting in Alberta. Ottawa has been under pressure to approve pipeline projects that would carry oil from Alberta to Canada's east and west coasts since U.S. President Barack Obama last year blocked the cross-border Keystone XL crude pipeline. Trudeau has said environmental concerns must be considered. In January, Ottawa toughened environmental reviews on the grounds that public trust needed to be restored in the process for assessing big energy projects, but the prolonged slump in oil prices has hobbled Alberta's economy. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley appealed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet on Sunday to support efficient ways to get oil to market. Carr reiterated that the deadline for the government to decide on Trans Mountain is December 2016, while the process for Energy East had not even begun. "The regulator hasn't even seen the application yet," he told reporters. "So as soon as that happens then the clock begins to tick, and there will be 21 months for the National Energy Board to review, then an additional six months for the governor in council. So 27 months after that ... will be the latest at which the government will decide." Carr and Transport Minister Marc Garneau also discussed Enbridge Inc's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry Alberta oil sands crude to a deepwater port at Kitimat, British Columbia for export to Asian markets. Story continues Environmentalists and Aboriginal groups fear the project would hasten the development of Canada's oil sands and exacerbate climate change. After coming to power last year, the Liberals imposed a moratorium on oil tanker traffic along the northern coast of British Columbia, a move seen killing the project's chances. Asked if Northern Gateway could be revived if the terminus was moved from Kitimat, Carr said: "If there are differences, if there are changes, other requests, then presumably the National Energy Board will deal with it." (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Richard Chang) How Is Comcast Expected to Fare in 2016? (Continued from Prior Part) FCCs set-top box proposal In late January 2016, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) put forward a proposal that would give a choice to pay-TV consumers. They could either use the set-top box or cable app provided by their cable providers, such as Comcast (CMCSA) or Dish Network (DISH), or they could choose set-top boxes offered by third-party providers. In February 2016, the FCC voted in favor of the set-top box proposal. The final vote is still some months away. However, customers and cable companies can now put forth their opinions regarding the proposal. This month, the White House declared its support for the FCCs set-top box proposal in a blog post. The blog post stated, Today the President announced that his Administration is calling on the FCC to open up set-top cable boxes to competition. This will allow for companies to create new, innovative, higher-quality, lower-cost products. The post continued, Instead of spending nearly $1,000 over four years to lease a set of behind-the-times boxes, American families will have options to own a device for much less money that will integrate everything they want including their cable or satellite content, as well as online streaming apps in one, easier-to-use gadget. Why the FCCs set-top box proposal is relevant for Comcast Comcast refused to comment on the FCCs set-top box proposal on its 4Q15 and 2015 earnings call. Data from the set-top box is relevant for media companies such as Viacom (VIAB), as it gives an indication of the audience demographics for television programming. According to a Philadelphia Business Journal report citing analyst Jeff Kagan, Set top boxes are only one slice of the pie for cable television companies like Comcast, but it has grown to be an important part, Kagan further stated, It accounts for sizable income. Eliminating this will be a blow to Comcast. Charter Communications (CHTR) also commented on the FCCs set-top box proposal on its 4Q15 and 2015 earnings call, stating, We havent seen the proposal yet, really, fully. And but we think its a very dynamic marketplace, and that the business is moving toward app-based display and cloud-based display. And that well want to work carefully with the FCC, as they attempt to change the marketplace as it currently exists. Story continues Comcast makes up 0.82% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). For an investor interested in getting exposure to the communications services sector, SPY has 2.7% exposure to the sector. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: SEATTLE, WA / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / The marijuana industry is rapidly growing throughout the United States and could reach $35 billion in size by 2020, with Nevada representing one of the country's hottest markets. With recreational legalization on the November ballot, the state has the potential to replace Colorado as a leading marijuana tourism destination. It could even become a global destination for cannabis alongside cities like Amsterdam. Cannabis testing services are the most attractive subset within the industry and could generate close to a billion dollars in revenue by 2020, according to GreenWave Advisors' Matt Karnes. Government mandated testing generates predictable recurring revenue at 60% to 65% gross margins, while the significant upfront costs to setup a laboratory and contractual agreements with clients create a high barrier to entry for new competitors. DigiPath Inc. (DIGP) is well positioned to capitalize on both of these trends with its high-tech Las Vegas testing facility. Since opening almost a year ago, the laboratory has already attracted 14 of the state's 23 licensed cultivators. The lab headed by Dr. Cindy Orser, PhD is capable of delivering results in as little as 48 hours with unparalleled consistency and a higher capacity than any other lab operating in the city. CannabisFN recently sat down with DigiPath Inc. CEO Todd Denkin to discuss the Nevada market and the company's progress to date. Near-term Catalysts DigiPath is poised to capitalize on several near-term catalysts within the Nevada market, including a deadline for provisional licenses and recreational legalization. The Nevadan cannabis industry began rather slowly as legislators struggled to agree upon rules and pass necessary legislation. By taking their time, the state has developed one of the most comprehensive cannabis legalization frameworks in the nation. The pace is likely to pick up over the next 30-45 days as licensed cannabis cultivators setup operations in order to avoid losing their provisional license by the May 5th deadline a move that could triple the market. Story continues Recreational legalization could also have an enormous long-term impact on the market. In November, voters will determine whether or not to follow in the footsteps of states like Colorado and Washington State in legalizing adult-use marijuana. The move would open the door to the state's 42 million visitors each year to purchase and consume marijuana legally, potentially raising tax revenue and creating huge opportunities for businesses. Solving Key Issues Many states have been struggling with contaminated cannabis that has been recalled due to safety issues for consumers. The problem with these states is that they started their programs without strict testing requirements and companies were free to use pesticides of their choice. Since the drug is federally illegal, the USDA and FDA haven't issued any guidelines that apply to other agricultural crops and ensure safety for consumers. Nevada's framework permits only 22 pesticides at very low levels. If a cultivator's test crop is positive, they must destroy the entire affected production output, which can be extremely costly to growers. Colorado, California, and other states are starting to address these recall issues with their own cannabis testing guidelines. While new states are likely to follow in the footsteps of Nevada when drafting their own regulations as a best practice. DigiPath's experience in this market could prove invaluable as it expands its presence into other states. After securing a Colorado license, they are actively seeking funding to open a lab in that state. Management is also looking at acquiring pathology or environmental labs in states that have legalized marijuana as a low-cost way to expand into new markets, create a footprint across the nation, and eventually become a clear market leader. Looking Ahead DigiPath represents a compelling opportunity in the cannabis industry with its presence in Nevada's burgeoning market. With cannabis testing expected to reach a billion dollars in revenue by 2020, investors may want to take a closer look at the space. Investors in the cannabis industry, including companies like Greengro Technologies Inc. (GRNH), GrowBLOX Sciences Inc. (GBLX), or Kush Bottles Inc. (KSHB), may want to take a closer look at the stock and industry subset. For more information, visit the company's website at www.digipath.com. About CFN Media: CFN Media (CannabisFN), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis, helps marijuana companies attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed. CFN launched in June of 2013 to initially serve the growing universe of publicly traded marijuana companies across the US and Canada. Today, CFN Media is also the emerging digital media choice for the top brands in the space. To learn how your company can be covered by CFN Media, visit http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company. Legal Disclaimer Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Important factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to, the Company's need for additional funding, the demand for the company's services, governmental regulation of the cannabis industry, and the company's ability to execute its business plan. Emerging Growth LLC dba TDM Financial, which owns CFN Media, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claim to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC dba TDM Financial, which owns CFN Media, may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/. SOURCE: CFN Media trump rally Donald Trump is repeating a new insult aimed at his presidential rival John Kasich, the Ohio governor who recently announced an alliance with Trump's main rival for the Republican nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Trump is calling out Kasich for winning only one state contest out of 38 in the primary season, referring to the Ohio governor as "1 for 38 Kasich" in tweets Monday morning. "Lyin' Ted Cruz and 1 for 38 Kasich are unable to beat me on their own so they have to team up (collusion) in a two on one," Trump tweeted on Monday. "Shows weakness!" He repeated the statistic in a subsequent tweet: "Shows how weak and desperate Lyin' Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can't stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses." Trump released a statement early Monday morning after Kasich and Cruz announced their alliance in which he emphasized Kasich's losing record while blasting both of them for aligning against him. "Governor Kasich, who has only won 1 state out of 41, in other words, he is 1 for 41 and he is not even doing as well as other candidates who could have stubbornly stayed in the race like him but chose not to do so," Trump said in the statement, noting that Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who suspended his campaign last month, had more delegates than Kasich. (The 41 number in this statement accounts for additional nonstate contests, such as in Puerto Rico.) So far, Kasich has won only his home state of Ohio. But he and Cruz plan to divvy up their resources in at least three of the remaining nominating states to try to keep Trump from picking up the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican presidential nomination. The two will cede ground to each other in the states to consolidate anti-Trump support. An overwhelming victory in the New York primary last week helped Trump move closer to winning the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination on the first ballot during the Republican national convention in July. Story continues While Kasich has been openly positioning himself for a contested convention, Cruz has only recently begun publicly acknowledging that he will not be able to secure the delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright. Maxwell Tani contributed to this report. NOW WATCH: Here's the moment Wolf Blitzer had to stop Clinton and Sanders from 'screaming at each other' More From Business Insider The company logo of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc is seen at its headquarters in Laval, Quebec May 19, 2015. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi (Reuters) - Former Perrigo Co Plc (PRGO.N) head Joseph Papa was named Chief Executive Officer at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (VRX.TO) on Monday, a role in which investors said he should focus on returning the company to growth. Papa will replace CEO Michael Pearson, whose years of frenzied dealmaking fueled double-digit profit increases at Valeant until scrutiny of its controversial relationship with a specialty pharmacy and history of sharp drug price increases hit its shares and sales last fall. Shares of Laval, Quebec-based Valeant rose on Monday after it announced the high-profile hire before losing about 2.2 percent in New York trading to close at $35.16. Shares are far from their August 2015 high of $263.70, falling to the current level earlier this year after Valeant said it would restate earnings and delay filing its 2015 financial report, opening the door to possible default on its $30 billion in debt. Papa, 60, takes the reigns after a decade at Perrigo and previous positions at drug distributor Cardinal Health (CAH.N), generic drugmaker Watson Pharmaceuticals which is now Allergan Inc (AGN.N), and pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG (NOVN.S). Last year, he led Dublin, Ireland-based Perrigo to rebuff a $26 billion takeover by Mylan NV (MYL.O) and spent six months meeting with investors, urging them not to sell to Mylan. His meetings and a public letter campaign convinced shareholders that Perrigo should be a standalone company. Papa's track record helped his case, but recent months have been challenging and Perrigo said on Monday that its earnings and sales will fall short this year, disappointing shareholders. The shortfall is in part due to weak sales in Europe and its Omega Pharma acquisition, both part of Papa's strategy, said Wells Fargo analyst David Maris, who downgraded the stock to market perform. Papa does not have significant experience in branded prescription drugs, Valeant's area of focus, Maris said. Perrigo sells over-the-counter products, which are a small part of Valeant's business. Story continues "Perrigo has limited international business; Valeant has a lot," said Maris, who rates the stock "underperform." "Perrigo has acquired a lot of products and divested very few; Valeants future probably has a lot of divestitures." Reuters reported earlier this month that Valeant had brought in investment banks to review its options amid buyout firms and other companies' interest in a number of its businesses. Patrick Kaser, portfolio manager at Brandywine Global, which owns more than 2.3 million Valeant shares, said Papa's experience selling over-the-counter healthcare products would be an asset for the company's skincare and Bausch and Lomb eyecare lines. Kaser said one early priority should be repairing Valeants relationship with health insurance companies, which are steering patients away from the company's products. Job One is slowing and stemming the damage, he said. The news of the appointment, first reported by Reuters, pushed shares of Perrigo down more than 15 percent. The company replaced Papa with President John Hendrickson, a 27-year Perrigo veteran, and named director Laurie Brlas as chairman. Perrigo reported preliminary first-quarter earnings of $1.71 to $1.77 per share and said it expected a full-year profit of $8.20 to $8.60 per share, excluding special items. Both are below analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Valeant was looking for a replacement for Pearson for more than a month. He suddenly left in December on a medical leave for pneumonia and returned to Valeant at the end of February. Papa will also be chairman, a role Pearson had lost after his return. The changes have come after activist investor Bill Ackman, who has lost billions of dollars on the company, joined its board and creditors began to increase pressure. Several groups of noteholders have issued notices of default, requiring Valeant to file its 2015 financial report as soon as April 29. (Reporting by Carl O'Donnell, Greg Roumeliotis and Caroline Humer in New York; Additional reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnapeg, Manitoba; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Bernard Orr) By George Thande VICTORIA (Reuters) - The Seychelles is helping an international investigation into the troubled state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the state's Financial Intelligence Unit on the Indian Ocean archipelago said. Transactions involving 1MDB, which has piled up $11 billion in debt, are at the centre of corruption and money laundering investigations in jurisdictions that include the United States, Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates. "The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has been assisting in an international investigation into allegations surrounding the strategic Malaysian fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)," the FIU said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "Detailed information relating to offshore entities registered in Seychelles and other matters were passed to the competent authorities of investigating states," it said. The statement was sent to Reuters by Seychelles president's office on behalf of the FIU. It is the first public acknowledgement that Seychelles has joined the widening investigation into 1MDB, whose advisory board is chaired by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. UNVERIFIED BANK ACCOUNTS The FIU did not name any entities involved in the investigation. The nation's Financial Services Authority said a search of companies registered in Seychelles would not provide information regarding shareholders or company directors. A Malaysian parliamentary investigation found that $4.2 billion of 1MDB's money is unaccounted for or went to overseas bank accounts whose owners could not be ascertained. It said about $700 million was sent without board approval to an account with private banker RBS Coutts in Geneva under the name of Good Star Ltd. The report said could not determine who owned the Good Star account. RBS Coutts has declined to comment. In February, the Swiss attorney-general's office said it believed $4 billion had been misappropriated from Malaysian state companies. Singapore announced it had seized a "large number of bank accounts" as part of investigations into a company closely linked to 1MDB. Story continues The Seychelles and other offshore financial centres have increasingly come under the spotlight as global leaders seek to clamp down on money laundering and the use of so-called tax havens. The Seychelles has repeatedly said it works to ensure the archipelago is not a jurisdiction where money laundering or other illegal activities are allowed to go undetected. (Additional reporting and writing by Edmund Blair in Nairobi.; Editing by Bill Tarrant) People walk through the lobby of the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett By Kit Rees and Atul Prakash LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's top share index hit a one-week low on Monday, led by sharp falls in mining companies and oil and gas stocks as investors voiced concerns about whether commodities-related assets could sustain a recent rally. Miners have rallied since the end of January, with the sector gaining over 60 percent, but persistent concerns about an economic slowdown in China, the world's biggest metals consumer, have made investors sceptical about further gains. "There's a little bit of trepidation now as to how confident people are in emerging markets," Augustin Eden, research analyst at Accendo Markets, said. "A lot of this rally has been built on renewed confidence in China and maybe a feeling that, fundamentally, the declines we have seen up until the end of January were potentially overdone," he added, saying investors had been taking profits. The mining index fell 4.6 percent, its biggest one-day loss in more than a month, with Anglo American (AAL.L), BHP Billiton (BLT.L), Rio Tinto (RIO.L), Glencore (GLEN.L) and Antofagasta (ANTO.L) dropping between 2.0 percent and 7.3 percent as the price of industrial metals such as copper fell. Oil companies also weighed on the index, with both BP (BP.L) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) down 2.2 percent and 3 percent respectively after the price of oil declined. The UK oil and gas index was down 2.8 percent. [O/R] The blue-chip FTSE 100 index (.FTSE) ended 0.8 percent lower at 6,260.92 points after falling up to 6,249.34, its lowest since the middle of this month and further away from this year's high of 6,427.32 scaled on Thursday. On the positive side, tobacco-maker Imperial Brands (IMB.L) benefited from a broker upgrade from Goldman Sachs, which raised its rating on the stock to "buy" from "neutral", sending the shares up 3.1 percent. Outside the blue chips, clothing retailer Ted Baker (TED.L) climbed 6.4 percent after Jefferies upgraded the stock to "buy" from "hold" partly on valuation grounds. It also cited a healthy order book, differentiated business model and continued international expansion. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Mark Potter) ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece resumed talks with its creditors in Athens on Monday over reforms it must make to conclude a drawn-out review of its bailout progress and unlock more than 5 billion euros of financial aid. The reforms under discussion include changes to pensions and taxes, plus additional measures that Athens would have to put in place for use in case it misses the budget targets set out in a multi-billion euro bailout it signed up to in August. Those 'contingent measures' would kick in only if the regular measures are not enough to generate a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2018. The measures, which are supposed to produce budget savings of 2 percent of GDP, have not yet been identified and Athens says Greek law does not allow such policies to be legislated in advance. "You cannot legislate 'x' if 'z' happens in 2018 or 2019," Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said after meeting his euro zone colleagues in Amsterdam on Friday, adding that Athens was working with its lenders on a solution. Greece needs the funds that would be unlocked by a deal to pay off IMF loans, ECB bonds maturing by July, and state arrears, but finding additional budget cuts - even 'contingent' ones - will be hard for the left-led government. It was re-elected in September on promises to mitigate the impact of austerity and has a fragile parliamentary majority. EU institutions and the International Monetary Fund differ on whether regular reforms are enough to hit the target, hence the decision to seek contingent measures. The 2 percent of GDP figure is the difference between their forecasts for the primary surplus Greece can achieve in 2018. Due to their different fiscal assumptions, the lenders also disagree on whether Athens needs debt relief now. Talks have started and are expected to continue after an agreement is reached on the contingency package. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras initially hoped for a deal before Orthodox Easter, on May 1. But chances for a deal this week are slim. If there was a deal on both the regular and the contingency package, euro zone finance ministers could meet as early as Thursday to assess the progress made. (Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Tim Cook Apple Watch Apple reports its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday, and the big question is whether Apple's revenue could shrink for the first time in years. Analysts expect that Apple may report a year-over-year decline in revenue for the first time since 2003. Along with the revenue decline, many are predicting that iPhone sales will fall year-over-year for the first time in the device's history. Last year, during this quarter, Apple reported $58 billion in revenue with profit of $13.6 billion. Analysts are predicting, on average, sales of around $52 billion. Because the iPhone contributes about two-thirds of Apple's revenue, a drop in iPhone sales could send Apple investors into a panic. But last quarter, Apple already lowered its revenue guidance for this quarter, putting it between $50 billion and $53 billion. Apple's stock price has fallen 18% in the past year. Here are some other things investors will be looking at: China performance China has been the growth engine for Apple over the past few years, and the region contributed over $18 billion to Apple's top line last quarter. But there are concerns that as China's economy slows down and more of its middle and upper classes already have smartphones, the demand for Apple's highly priced iPhone could be cooling down. In addition, Chinese regulators recently shut down Apple's online iTunes media store that sold movies and books in the country. If either Apple's relationship with Chinese regulators is cooling or if its growth in the country is slowing, both would be concerning to long-term Apple investors. iPad sales ipad pro iPad air and iPad mini Apple released a new version of its 9.7-inch iPad this quarter, the iPad Pro, and several weeks of its sales will be counted in Apple's earnings. Whether that's enough for Apple to reverse its decline in shipments remains to be seen. iPad sales peaked in 2013, and fell in 2014 and 2015. The more professionally focused iPad Pro was partially designed to appeal to businesses, with the hope being that an increasing number of businesses will simply issue iPads to their employees instead of a traditional laptop. Story continues But the iPad Pro has been on sale for only a single month just like Apple's new-old iPhone SE so it might not have had the opportunity to make a huge difference yet. Services Apple has signaled that it wants to be a services company basically, it says that it can provide paid services to its installed base of over 1 billion devices in use. CEO Tim Cook even addressed the issue during a conference call to discuss the company's first-quarter earnings and broke out services revenue into its own chart. "In addition, a growing portion of our revenue is directly driven by our existing install base. Because our customers are very satisfied and engaged, they spend a lot of time on their devices and purchase apps, content, and other services," Cook said. In the past quarter, there hasn't been a huge deal in terms of new services or revenue streams, but investors will want to see that usage has continued to grow. In addition, the App Store, one of Apple's most profitable services, recently changed leadership and added new features to appeal to developers. Investors will want to see that services continue on pace to be Apple's next "$50 billion business." Next quarter's guidance Apple iPhone Sales Chart But the No. 1 question on investors' minds will be if Apple provides guidance for a second-straight quarter of negative growth. Some analysts, citing the supply chain, believe that the bottom has not yet been reached in terms of iPhone sales. Nikkei reported earlier this month that iPhone production will remain slow through June, temporarily dropping Apple's share price. Top Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has also outlined a worst-case scenario in which iPhone shipments could fall below even their 2014 level, concurring with an increasing number of analysts who think that iPhone sales for 2016 could be surprisingly low. Other analysts believe that iPhone orders have stabilized, and they expect them to grow again in the fall with the help of the iPhone 7. Still, it turns out, the most important number in Apple's second-quarter earnings will be what the company expects from the third quarter. NOW WATCH: Here's why the time is always 9:41 in Apple product photos More From Business Insider Serbian Prime Minster Aleksandar Vucic called an early election saying he needed a clear mandate to press ahead with reforms required to join the EU (AFP Photo/Andrej Isakovic) Belgrade (AFP) - Serbia's pro-EU Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a landslide victory in the country's general election, the electoral commission confirmed Monday after nearly all the ballots were counted. Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party won 48.25 percent of the vote, giving him 131 MPs in the 250-seat parliament -- down from 158 in the last election, the commission said, based on 98 percent of votes counted. The Socialists, Vucic's coalition partners in the outgoing government, came second with 11.01 percent of the vote. They were followed by the far-right Radicals of ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, who won 8.05 percent of the vote. Seselj was recently acquitted of war crimes charges arising from the 1990s Balkans conflicts. Swept along by a resurgence in support, the anti-EU and pro-Russian Radicals were set to return to parliament with 21 MPs, after failing to win any seats in the 2012 and 2014 elections. Four other political groupings also made it past the five-percent threshold needed to enter parliament, according to the commission. They were the centrist Democratic Party, a new liberal party called "Enough is Enough" ("Dosta je bilo"), a liberal coalition led by former Serbian president Boris Tadic, and a eurosceptic and pro-Russian coalition called DSS-Dveri. Several groups representing ethnic minorities that are exempted from the five-percent representation rule will also be present in the assembly following the vote -- Serbia's third in four years. Vucic, premier since 2014, called the early election saying he needed a clear mandate to press ahead with the unpopular reforms required to join the European Union. But his critics saw the vote as an attempt to consolidate his power, expressing concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the 46-year-old premier, who has placed curbs on media freedom. Vucic is a former ultra-nationalist ally of Seselj who has remodelled himself as a moderate reformist. Story continues Sunday's election respected "fundamental freedoms" and offered voters a range of choice but the campaign period caused some concern, according to observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). PACE delegation head Volodymyr Ariev referred to "abuse by incumbents of the administrative advantages of office", "media coverage favourable to the ruling parties" and a "lack of full transparency in party and campaign funding". But Ariev said the observers "don't have any information" about major electoral fraud after smaller parties claimed irregularities in the voting process. In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said the observers' recommendations were "an important guidance for Serbia, also in the context of its path to the European Union." "Serbian citizens showed strong support for their country's strategic objective to join the EU," Mogherini and Hahn said in a joint statement, adding that "we look forward to working with the new government to consolidate Serbia's progress towards joining the EU." (Adds oil market comments) KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, April 25 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia expects state oil company Saudi Aramco to be valued at more than $2 trillion and plans to sell less than 5 percent of it through an initial public offering (IPO), Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Monday. He said in a television interview that he wanted it to be transformed into a holding company with an elected board. Subsidiaries of the company would also be sold in IPOs as part of a privatisation drive and to bring more transparency to the oil giant, Prince Mohammed said. "If 1 percent of Aramco is offered to the market, just 1 percent, it will be the biggest IPO on earth," he said. Prince Mohammed added that he did not expect oil prices to fall below $30 a barrel again because of improving global demand and that Saudi Arabia's economic reform plans would not be threatened even if oil does drop that far. Aramco was once run by Americans but has long been a Saudi state corporation. It dwarfs all in the industry, with crude reserves of 265 billion barrels, more than 15 percent of global oil deposits. It produces more than 10 million barrels per day, three times as much as the world's largest listed oil company, ExxonMobil, while its reserves are more than 10 times bigger. If Aramco were ever to go public, it would probably become the first company to be valued at more than $1 trillion. "Less than 5 percent from the parent company ... we are trying to separate it and make Aramco a holding company," Prince Mohammed said. The listing of Aramco would be on the Saudi stock market, he said, adding that one idea being studied was to set up a fund in the U.S. market which would buy shares in Aramco to help to bring liquidity. It is not clear which of Aramco's ventures might be involved in a sale but the range of candidates is wide. Aramco and its subsidiaries own or have an equity interest in more than 5 million barrels per day of refining capacity. (Reporting by Reem Shamseddine and Rania El Gamal; Editing by David Clarke and David Goodman) VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2016 / Noram Ventures Inc. (NRM.V) ("Noram" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has entered into an agreement to acquire 201 mineral claims comprising 3,998.18 acres, in Clayton Valley, Nevada. The two non-contiguous claim groups (the "Li Group Claims") are located in the same geological formation as, Rockwood's and Lithium X's operations. Noram will pay USD$ 100,000 for the 201 mineral claims, by way of a promissory note to the vendor and a net smelter returns royalty (NSR) of 2.5%. The definitive agreement and transfer of tenure is expected to be completed in 10 days. In addition, Noram will pay up to USD$ 90,000 to the Bureau of Land Management and the State of Nevada, with respect to fees on the claims. To view the image of the Clayton Valley Project, please click on the following link: http://www.fscwire.com/sites/default/files/NR/657/10543_noramimg1.jpg Highlights: - Within 2 km to largest Lithium Producer in USA; Albemarle Corporation. - Albemarle Corporation has been in continuous production of Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide products from Clayton Valley brines since 1967. - Two Target Horizons, Lithium potential contained within beds and brines. - Close to infrastructure (power, transport and labor). - Project is situated adjacent to Lithium X's North block (recently acquired permits to drill*). - Within 11km of Pure Energy's holdings (NI 43-101 Inferred Resource of 816,000 Tonnes Lithium Carbonate**). * Lithium X press release March 23, 2016. * *(N I 43-101 Inferred Resource of 816,000 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate, [Pure Energy press release, July 29, 2015]). Why is Clayton Valley important to Lithium production? Clayton Valley is a region well documented for lithium bearing brines and significantly rich beds. Clayton Valley is home to the only lithium producer in the USA; Albemarle's Silver Peak Lithium Brine Operation which has been producing been Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide products since 1967. The Li Group Claims Project is located within the Clayton Valley and only 2 km from the Albemarle Operation. Story continues Currently, Lithium X and Pure Energy have begun exploration work within Clayton Valley and several other companies are actively engaged in pursuing acquisitions. Geology: The geology is considered to comprise a sequence of sediments with strata composing aquifer systems which hosts and produces lithium rich brine. Multiple wetting and drying periods during the Pleistocene resulted in the formation of lacustrine sediments with salt beds and lithium rich brines forming in the sediments within the Clayton Valley basin. These deposits form the Esmeralda Formation which has clay bearing siltstones near the base to fine grained lacustrine sediments near the top. Up to six aquifers have been identified within the basin. It appears that lithium is ubiquitous throughout the area with hot springs and aquifers to the north of the town of Silver Peak containing lithium of approx. 40ppm. The Esmeralda Formation has been reported to contain from 350 to 1,171 ppm lithium (USGS open file report 82-415). During the mid-to late 1970's the U.S. Geological Survey ("USGS") evaluated lithium deposits and resources around the world. During the course of the program they drilled 22 holes in Nevada and Arizona including seven drill holes in the Clayton Valley Basin. The USGS holes drilled closest to the Li Group Claims Project reported 1.3 and 1.7 parts per million ("ppm") lithium in the brines and 287 and 364 ppm lithium in the sediments. Pure Energy has identified lithium concentrations of up to 400ppm in brines in two aquifers on their Clayton Valley claims which are located to the south of the Li Group Claims. Pumping tests resulted in approx. 9 liters per minute at 225ppm lithium in their test well CV-1. Pure Energy reported a N.I. 43-101 Inferred Resource of 816,000 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate (Pure Energy Minerals press release, July 29, 2015). In regards to infrastructure, sources of power and water are located less than 10 km from the Li Group Claims Project. Labor and supplies are available at Tonopah, Las Vegas or Reno which are local and regional mining and supply centers. Mark Ireton, President, said, "Lithium prices have risen significantly since 2015. Demand is forecast to continue to expand for lithium and graphite and Noram expects to play a significant role in Green Energy Revolution through the development of lithium and graphite deposits, development of New Processes and through Strategic Alliances." The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Michael Collins, P.Geo., who is a Qualified Person with respect to the Li Claim Group Property as defined under NI 43-101. About Noram Ventures Inc.: Noram Ventures Inc. (NRM.V) is a Canadian based junior exploration company with interests in lithium and graphite claims, and a goal of becoming a low-cost supplier for the burgeoning lithium battery industry. The Company's primary business focus since formation has been the exploration of mineral projects that include the Clayton Valley lithium project in Nevada and Jumbo graphite property in British Columbia. Noram's long term strategy is to build a multi-national lithium-graphite dominant industrial minerals company to produce and sell lithium and graphite into the markets of Europe, North America and Asia. For further information, please visit www.noramventures.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS /s/ "Mark R. Ireton" President & Director Direct: (604) 761-9994 ### 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. This news release may contain forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release includes statements regarding, among other things, the completion transactions completed in the Agreement. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, regulatory approval processes. Although Noram believes that the assumptions used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, including that all necessary regulatory approvals will be obtained in a timely manner, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. Noram disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws. SOURCE: Noram Ventures Inc. Andy Clark | Reuters. Trade ministers huddling on the sidelines of the APEC talks are faced with some tough challenges in resurrecting the TPP trade deal since Trump ditched it. As the pace of global trade slows, so does support for a pair of deals designed to revive it. With a fresh round of European trade talks getting underway this week, President Barack Obama spent the weekend in Germany trying to counter strong political headwinds at home to his administration's effort to lower trade barriers with Europe. Obama told a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that moving ahead with the so-called Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would boost the U.S. and European economies. The United States is Germany's biggest trading partner. Supporters of the sweeping deal being negotiated with 28 European Union countries say it could add $100 billion a year to U.S. exports. "The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is one of the best ways to promote growth and create jobs," Obama told the German newspaper Bild. But with millions of American voters convinced that global trade has cost the U.S. good-paying job losses, political support for the deal has been fading along with the volume of global trade. The anti-free-trade sentiment has propelled Donald Trump to the front of the GOP pack of presidential candidates, including a pledge to reverse the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, the two top U.S. trade partners. "We will either renegotiate it or we will break it," Trump said last fall, calling it "a disaster. Every agreement has an end. Every agreement has to be fair." Trump has also vowed to raised tariffs on Mexico and China. Trump opponent Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has said he opposes any vote on trade deals before the November election. Ohio Gov. John Kasich , also in the race for the GOP nomination, has said he supports "fair" trade. The Obama administration's trade deals have also gotten a chilly reception from the two Democratic candidates. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , who initially supported the idea of expanding Asian-Pacific trade, has come out against the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying she doesn't like the terms. (Clinton hasn't taken a position on the ongoing talks to reach a deal with Europe.) Story continues Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders , who has opposed various trade deals in Congress, has been as blunt as Trump on the White House's efforts. Sanders has called the Trans-Pacific Partnership "part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system. Opposition to the European trade deal spans both sides of the Atlantic. On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters marched in Hannover, Germany, where Obama attended a trade show, to voice opposition to the deal. Police said 35,000 people took part in the demonstration, while organizers said more than double that number had attended. Read More We must better explain trade deals: US Commerce Secretary The White House has acknowledged it faces an uphill battle selling trade deals to a skeptical public. "I think that we have to do a better job to counteract voices that are distorting the reality of trade agreements," U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker told CNBC at the Hannover trade fair. But with little support from the presidential candidates, the deal's future is not looking bright. Obama conceded as much on Monday. "If we don't complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe could mean this agreement won't be finished for quite some time," Obama told a news conference. More From CNBC DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways is speaking to Boeing to secure substitute aircraft after further problems were discovered with the Airbus A320neo, the airline's chief executive said on Monday. The Gulf airline could walk away from between four and six aircraft orders that have yet to be delivered after problems affected the A320s hydraulics and software, Akbar al-Baker told reporters at a media roundtable in Dubai. (Reporting by Matt Smith; Writing by David French; Editing by David Goodman) (Repeats April 14 story with no changes to text) * Government-led shake-up to go furthest in kingdom's history * Privatisations to include tourism, infrastructure, education * Overseas investment will be less conservative in drive for yield * Some see plan as risky, hard to implement By Katie Paul, Marwa Rashad and Andrew Torchia RIYADH/DUBAI, April 14 (Reuters) - In late February, several hundred Saudi officials, company executives and foreign consultants gathered in a luxury Riyadh hotel to discuss how Saudi Arabia's economy could survive an era of cheap oil. One company manager at the event told Reuters that officials from about 30 Saudi government bodies manned booths in which they described their challenges. Corporate bosses were encouraged to "figure out ways to do partnerships to address those needs, to offer feedback, to complain, and to plan future ventures or even just future meetings," the manager said. "It was like a private sector version of a national parliament." The workshop was part of Saudi government attempts to work out how to restructure the economy so it no longer relies on oil. The National Transformation Plan (NTP), as Riyadh has dubbed the changes, is expected to be unveiled in the next few weeks. Much is still secret. Ministries have refused to discuss plans in detail and Western consultancies contacted by Reuters declined to confirm their involvement, let alone policy details. Officials, consultants and executives, though, say the five-year programme is both ambitious and risky. It includes asset sales, tax increases, spending cuts, changes to the way the state manages its financial reserves, an efficiency drive, and a much bigger role for the private sector. Such changes have been talked about for years but never put into action. One reason to think this time could be different is that policy-making has in the past year shifted away from conservative bodies such as the finance ministry and central bank. Power is now concentrated in a new 22-member Council of Economic and Development Affairs, formed after King Salman took the throne in January 2015. Story continues The Council is chaired by his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is about 30. In his role as defence minister, Prince Mohammed launched Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen in March 2015. Now, he wants to shake up economic policy. "Since the foundation of the kingdom there has been no government-led programme that innovates in this way," said Mohamed al-Afif, a veteran banker who now runs Cash Solutions, a boutique financial services firm. CONSULTANTS AND WHATSAPP People familiar with the NTP said it was born late last year in discussions between Prince Mohammed and a few other top officials. At the time, oil was sinking below $30 a barrel, about half the low point that had been expected. That saddled the kingdom with an annual budget deficit near $100 billion and strengthened the case for radical changes. While Prince Mohammed is the ultimate decider, he has chosen Economy and Planning Minister Adel al-Fakieh, a former food industry executive and mayor of Jeddah, to help with the detail. As labour minister between 2010 and 2015, Fakieh overcame opposition from business to policies that pushed companies to hire more Saudis. People involved in the NTP say Fakieh, 57, uses WhatsApp on his mobile phone obsessively, conducting chats with dozens of groups until the small hours. Riyadh is spending tens of millions of dollars on foreign consultants for the NTP. London-based Source Global Research estimated in March that total Saudi spending on consultancies - mostly by the government or state-linked bodies - grew over 10 percent in 2015, from $1.06 billion in 2014. Consultants and ministry officials, many of them young Saudis with Western degrees, work at the Khozama office building in Riyadh, thrashing out policy in as many as 40 groups known as "delivery labs". The plans are heavy on jargon-labelled targets requiring ministries to hit rigid budget and reform goals, according to documents seen by Reuters. MODELS One model is neighbouring United Arab Emirates, which began radical reforms by cutting gasoline subsidies last year, people familiar with the Saudi plan said. Another model is Malaysia, which in 2010 moved to diversify beyond commodity exports and attract more foreign investment. Consultancy McKinsey & Co played a major role in the Malaysian plan and is now at the centre of the Saudi effort. The NTP echoes Malaysia's programme in three ways. It puts a single body in charge of implementation to force better cooperation between ministries. It seeks feedback from the private sector early, even during planning. And it aims to boost the private sector's share of investment, something Saudi planners consider vital as oil revenues sag. Riyadh wants private firms to develop tourism facilities on some of its islands, plans to create "free zones" with minimal red tape near airports, and even wants private investment in some schools. New infrastructure such as roads and port facilities will be constructed under build-operate-transfer contracts, in which private firms finance the projects and then operate them to recoup their investments. "The government will take no risk anymore, it will only provide opportunities," said a Saudi economist who attended a recent workshop. The NTP will also speed up Saudi Arabia's long-running but slow-paced privatisation programme. Up to 5 percent of national oil giant Saudi Aramco will be sold to the public, Prince Mohammed says, possibly raising tens of billions of dollars. Also on the block: chunks of other companies in up to 18 sectors, including healthcare, mining and transport. Management of the country's financial reserves will become more aggressive, according to officials and consultants. The central bank, which acts as the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, holds $584 billion of foreign assets, mostly in conservative investments such as bank deposits and U.S. Treasuries. In the future, privatisation proceeds will be invested in corporate assets around the world, generating income and obtaining access to technology and expertise. Saudi officials have been visiting the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority - which has over $700 billion invested in developed and emerging market equities, fixed income, private equity, real estate and infrastructure - to see how it works, sources said. Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg last month that one fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), would be expanded to control over $2 trillion eventually. The fund is now believed to have about $100 billion of assets. DEADLINE Top officials are reviewing proposals which all the ministries involved were required to submit by March 31, two sources said. "Everyone is waiting for the NTP announcement for a clue about how things will operate going forward," said a Western diplomat who monitors the economy. There are many sceptics. Some say the NTP is too late. Local capital markets are too small to absorb a privatisation programme so attracting foreign money will be vital. But investors are wary of Saudi Arabia's prospects given the low oil price. Eliminating the budget deficit by 2020 will require an additional $100 billion in spending cuts and tax increases - equivalent to about 16 percent of gross domestic product. That could stifle growth and deter the investment the NTP seeks. Some plans are headline-grabbing but may involve little real change. For example, the PIF will take over assets such as Saudi Aramco but won't be able to reinvest that wealth unless it sells big pieces of the firm, which would be tough for financial and political reasons. And then there's the mixed fortunes of some of the models Saudi Arabia has looked at. "Most of the economic transformation programmes in various countries didn't succeed or diverged immensely from the original plans," said prominent Saudi economist Ihsan Bu Hulaiga. Malaysia, for instance, has increased the private sector's share of investment modestly, to 64 percent in 2014 from 52 percent in 2009. But the country's currency has plunged along with commodity prices, something Riyadh wants to avoid. Many question the role of highly paid consultants. "You have people in their 30s with laptops helping to determine the direction of the country," said one foreign consultant. "The potential for change has certainly gone up, but so has the risk." Some Saudis think an economic shake-up could lead to the kind of social changes many foreign business executives believe are needed to modernise Saudi's economy: allowing women to drive, for instance, or opening up the legal system. The planning itself suggests some openness to change. Senior officials, normally given to opulent robes, regularly come to workshops in simple clothes, say some attendees. And unuusally, female consultants are working closely with men. (Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Riyadh, Tom Arnold and Hadeel Al Sayegh in Dubai, and Joseph Sipalan in Kuala Lumpur; Edited by Simon Robinson) anthony hsieh Anthony Hsieh stumbled upon the mortgage industry by mistake, but it didn't take long before he became a major player in the field. At age 25, he purchased the mortgage brokerage company he was working for with his own savings and a loan from his uncle a decade later, he closed a deal with E-Trade to create E-Trade Mortgage. Today, the self-made billionaire is the CEO and chairman of nonbank consumer mortgage lender loanDepot, which he launched in 2010. We spoke to the successful entrepreneur and asked for his best advice for 20-somethings: Save for a rainy day, Hsieh emphasizes. "It's more relevant today than any time in previous generations, seeing as we are in an economy that is uncertain and changing," he explains. Not setting aside money in an emergency fund is a common mistake 63% of Americans do not have sufficient emergency savings but it can be a costly one. While it's easy to ignore the possibility of losing your job, a failed business, medical emergency, or lawsuit, these are all scenarios that could quickly become expensive realities. As David Bach writes in his bestseller, "The Automatic Millionaire," "No matter how well you plan or how positively you think, there are always things out of your control that can go wrong. Hsieh isn't the only advocate of prioritizing your emergency fund from a young age. When Business Insider asked billionaire John Paul DeJoria what money advice he would give his younger self, he said, "Have a cash cushion." Most experts, including DeJoria, agree that it's smart to have six months' worth of savings tucked away, but you may need more or less depending on your situation. NOW WATCH: The science behind why you shouldn't pop your pimples More From Business Insider ATLANTA,GA--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - ARMY AVIATION MISSION SOLUTIONS SUMMIT - Textron Systems Unmanned Systems, a Textron Inc. (TXT) business, announced today that it has received a $116.5 million award from the U.S. Army for an additional 24 RQ-7B V2 Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (TUAS) upgrades. Deliveries of the 24 systems are expected to begin in 2018. The U.S. Department of Defense inventory includes 117 Shadow systems, operated by the U.S. Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command. This contract furthers the U.S. Army's Shadow V2 block upgrade program, under which Textron Systems acts as lead system integrator, and aircraft and ground control station original equipment manufacturer. With nearly one million flight hours, the Shadow V2 delivers proven performance for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, communications relay and laser designation. The Shadow V2 is an all-digital, modern system, optimized for new multi-mission, single-sortie profiles and manned-unmanned teaming. The Shadow V2 also includes a high-bandwidth, encrypted data link that enables the aircraft to carry payloads ranging from high-definition video to secure control for prosecution missions. The Army is currently teaming the Shadow V2 system with its Apache helicopter fleet for scouting missions within its combat aviation brigades. The Shadow TUAS also is utilized by militaries in Australia, Italy and Sweden. "The Shadow TUAS has been the workhorse for the U.S. Department of Defense for years and has nearly one million flight hours -- the most for any system in its class," says Vice President, TUAS Henry Finneral. "Our Shadow V2 increases the system's reliability and endurance for various missions, including enhanced target designation, communications relay and battlefield damage assessment. The system delivers performance our customers trust." In addition to systems integration and engineering support, Textron Systems partners with the Department of Defense to support the Shadow program with staff augmentation, training, logistics and field service. Story continues Textron Systems will exhibit at the 2016 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit from Apr. 28-30 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Booth #919. About Textron Systems Textron Systems' businesses develop and integrate products, services and support for aerospace and defense customers, as well as civil and commercial customers including those in law enforcement, security, border patrol and critical infrastructure protection around the globe. Harnessing agility and a broad base of expertise, Textron Systems' innovative businesses design, manufacture, field and support comprehensive solutions that expand customer capabilities and deliver value. Textron Systems consists of its Advanced Information Solutions, Electronic Systems, Geospatial Solutions, Lycoming Engines, Marine & Land Systems, Support Solutions, TRU Simulation + Training, Unmanned Systems and Weapon & Sensor Systems businesses. More information is available at www.textronsystems.com. About Textron Inc. Textron Inc. is a multi-industry company that leverages its global network of aircraft, defense, industrial and finance businesses to provide customers with innovative solutions and services. Textron is known around the world for its powerful brands such as Bell Helicopter, Cessna, Beechcraft, Hawker, Jacobsen, Kautex, Lycoming, E-Z-GO, Greenlee, and Textron Systems. For more information, visit www.textron.com. Certain statements in this press release may project revenues or describe strategies, goals, outlook or other non-historical matters; these forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update them. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, our ability to perform as anticipated and to control costs under contracts with the U.S. Government; the U.S. Government's ability to unilaterally modify or terminate its contracts with us for the U.S. Government's convenience or for our failure to perform, to change applicable procurement and accounting policies, or, under certain circumstances, to withhold payment or suspend or debar us as a contractor eligible to receive future contract awards. The following files are available for download: Donald Trump Donald Trump implored his supporters in Rhode Island on Monday to "lock their doors" to keep safe from Syrian refugees coming into the US. At a rally in Warwick, Rhode Island, Trump suggested that refugees might be affiliated with the terrorist group ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh). He mentioned that some Syrian refugees have been resettled in the state. "Now here's one I don't like," Trump said, reading off a piece of paper. "Syrian refugees are now being resettled in Rhode Island." The crowd booed loudly. He continued: We don't know who these people are. We don't know where they're from. We don't know where they're from. They have no documentation. We all have hearts and we can build safe zones in Syria and we'll get the Gulf states to put up the money. We're not putting up the money, but I'll get that done. But you know what? We can't let this happen. But you have a lot of them resettling in Rhode Island. Just enjoy your lock your doors, folks. The response from the crowd seemed mixed, with some people chuckling and others shouting. "No, it's a big problem! We don't know anything about them," Trump shouted. "We don't know where they come from, who they are. There's no documentation. We have our incompetent government people letting 'em in by the thousands, and who knows, who knows, maybe it's ISIS." Trump then cited the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, in which officials said the two suspects were inspired by the terrorist group. "You see what happens with two people that became radicalized in California where they shot and killed all their coworkers, OK?" Trump said. "Not with me, folks. It's not happening with me." President Barack Obama recently alluded to Trump's rhetoric, which critics have cast as anti-Muslim, calling such speech "dangerous." Trump has been warning about the US letting in refugees for months. He has proposed barring Muslims from entering the US until the terrorist "problem" is under control. Experts have said that this kind of rhetoric can fuel radicalization because it further divides people, playing into fears of foreigners and Muslims. Story continues NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz just released a bizarre attack ad featuring a terrifying Hillary Clinton impersonator More From Business Insider SALT LAKE CITY, UT--(Marketwired - Apr 25, 2016) - The Utah investment market experienced the strongest first quarter on record according to Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce, with total sales volume surpassing a half-billion dollars. At this pace, 2016 is expected to exceed $2 billion by end-of-year for the first time in state history. "Record-high sales volume, record-low overall cap rates and the most square footage transacted in a first quarter all point to an overall record-breaking year," said Kip Paul, executive director -- investment sales with Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce's Salt Lake City office. "Expect cap rates to remain below the historical average through the year and into the next." Several large office and retail transactions led to a $3 million increase in the average size of first quarter investment transactions. The Gateway shopping center in Salt Lake City and the Provo Towne Center both exchanged hands, totaling a combined $125 million. High demand for industrial investments also bumped record-breaking numbers, tripling first quarter volume from 2015. Ecommerce companies are streaming into the market's northwest quadrant, near the airport, setting up distribution and warehouse facilities to leverage Salt Lake's strategic proximity to regional and national distribution and logistics chains. View the Utah Q1 Investment Market Snapshot About Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce operates the Cushman & Wakefield business in Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Washington. The firm partners with its sister company Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq to provide innovative commercial real estate solutions to occupier and investor clients, offering transaction services, capital markets services, occupier and investor services, and real estate advisory. Together the firms manage 52 million sq. ft. of retail, industrial, and office assets, have transaction revenues of more than $2 billion, and employ more than 750 professionals. Learn more at www.comre.com. About Cushman & Wakefield Cushman & Wakefield is a leading global real estate services firm that helps clients transform the way people work, shop, and live. The firm's 43,000 employees in more than 60 countries provide deep local and global insights that create significant value for occupiers and investors around the world. Cushman & Wakefield is among the largest commercial real estate services firms with revenue of $5 billion across core services of agency leasing, asset services, capital markets, facility services (C&W Services), global occupier services, investment & asset management (DTZ Investors), project & development services, tenant representation, and valuation & advisory. To learn more, visit www.cushmanwakefield.com or follow @CushWake on Twitter. By Bernie Woodall DETROIT (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) said on Monday it would go to a U.S. federal appeals court in an effort to keep the United Auto Workers union from representing a portion of the company's plant workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The UAW in turn filed an unfair labor practices charge against Volkswagen with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for the automaker's continuing refusal to bargain with the 160 skilled trades workers who voted 71 percent in December to be represented by the union. This month, the NLRB upheld the December vote. The plant has about 1,500 hourly workers. While the skilled trades workers who maintain plant machinery are a fraction of the hourly workforce, VW bargaining with them could serve as a launching pad for the unions efforts to organize other foreign-owned plants in the South. In decades of trying, the UAW has not organized a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the region. The UAW in a statement said the VW move was "a stall tactic that won't work" and that in a previous similar case, the court of appeals that covers Tennessee sided against the company. VW said the plant's workers should not be divided when it comes to representation. "Volkswagen will take the necessary steps to have this issue reviewed" by the federal appeals court, VW said in its statement. VW did not say when it would file with the court, or to which court it would file. Tennessee is in an appeals court district that also includes Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. "Managing an auto assembly plant is a difficult job, and the task is made much more difficult when part of your workforce is unionized and other parts aren't," said Dennis Cuneo, a management-side labor attorney not directly involved in the VW-UAW issue. The UAW said, We reject the companys claim that recognizing and bargaining with the skilled trades employees would somehow splinter the workforce in Chattanooga." The UAW on Monday once again said it has majority support among Chattanooga plant workers, but it did not call for a second election of all of the plant's workers. The UAW narrowly lost a February 2014 election in which all workers were eligible to vote. The union claims that election was unfairly influenced by Tennessee politicians and antiunion lobbying groups. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Meredith Mazzilli and David Gregorio) What Do Analysts Expect from First Solar's 1Q16 Earnings? (Continued from Prior Part) First Solars revenue estimate First Solar (FSLR) reported about $469 million in consolidated revenue for 1Q15. Analysts estimate that the company will report revenue of $952 million in 1Q16. This is almost a 103% increase on a YoY (year-over-year) basis. The estimated 1Q16 revenue is about 1% higher than its 4Q15 revenue. As we discussed earlier, lower revenue in 1Q15 was primarily due to substantial revenue recognition of completed projects in the prior period. Therefore, it isnt meaningful to compare YoY data. According to company filings, First Solar expects to derive a substantial portion of its fiscal 2016 revenue through the sale of its utility-scale projects in North America. Currently, these projects are categorized under advanced stage projects. The company expects to complete the sale of these projects in fiscal 2016. The estimated revenue in 1Q16 is higher than the first quarter revenue in the last five years. Also, analysts estimate a significant improvement in fiscal 2016 revenue compared to fiscal 2015 revenue. Analysts expectations are in line with the companys fiscal 2016 guidance. 2016 guidance First Solar confirmed its fiscal 2016 guidance in its latest company filings. Although there has been a marginal decrease in net sales, the company could compensate it with increased operational efficiency. The company has an earnings per share target of $4.00$4.50 for fiscal 2016. It maintained its capital expenditure guidance of $300 million$400 million. While comparing financial data of upstream solar (TAN) companies like First Solar, SunEdison (SUNE), SunPower (SPWR), Trina Solar, and Canadian Solar (CSIQ), its important to consider their revenue recognition model. The revenue recognition process may not be linear. As a result, reported sales can fluctuate in a wide range. This can impact the companys margins. In the next part of our series, well take a close look at First Solars 1Q16 margin estimates. Story continues Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: 2000 - 2022 24 .- . focus-news.net, () . 24 . 24 . . 24 . We value your privacy. Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy. To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below. Taipei, April 25 (CNA) Cabinet spokesman-designate Tung Chen-yuan () said Monday that talks on whether Taiwan should open its doors to U.S. pork imports should be postponed until after the U.S. stance on the matter is clear after the U.S. presidential election in November. KEARNEY Nebraska Press Association officials honored Journal staff members with five awards this weekend in the annual NPA Better Newspaper Contest. The Journal competed in Class C in the 2016 contest. Arkansas Press Association members judged more than 4,100 separate entries from nine daily and 69 weekly newspapers across Nebraska. NPA officials announced the top three winners in each category at a banquet in Kearney. Journal Managing Editor Patti Peterson earned first place in the use of color category. She submitted a page that focused on activities at the annual Fall Festival at Church of the Holy Spirit. Judges considered compatibility with written material and makeup of the page when they made their decision. Peterson earned first place in the speciality pages contest. Newspapers had to submit three separate pages that were devoted to categories such as business, agriculture or lifestyles. Judges considered editorial content and relevance of material to local communities. Journal Graphic Artist Jill Bedell earned first place in the small advertisement design category. She designed an ad that featured Honeyman Rental. Judges considered originality, copy and typography of ads that were smaller than one-fourth of a page. They also considered cleverness of headlines and text and the ability to captivate, entertain and attract readers. Bedell earned second place for her work designing the newspapers classified advertising section. Judges considered overall attractiveness of the section and ease in reading the classified ads. They also looked at the clarity of classified headlines, organization of the section and promotion of classified advertising space. Bedell earned third place in the agricultural advertisement category. She designed an ad that featured an agricultural theme with Cass County Bank. Judges considered cleverness of headlines and text and the ability to attract readers with the ad. The following provides a brief overview of tonights Fremont City Council meeting. The council will convene at 7 p.m. in the City Council Chambers located on the second floor of the Fremont Municipal building at 400 East Military Street. Beginning at 6:30 p.m. the council will open Public Comment Period for 15 minutes. The study session begins at 6:45 p.m. followed at 7:00 p.m. by the regular meeting. This Week of Note The council will open a public hearing on and entertain a motion to approve a resolution for the redevelopment of a blighted area of Fremont located near the area of E. 23rd and North Bell streets. The planned redevelopment includes space for a restaurant and mixed-use retail space. The intended revitalization represents part of the Redevelopment Plan undertaken by the city on July 29, 2014 which provides guidance for redevelopment activities for designated areas of Fremont. Yager Retail LLC submitted the proposal for the planned revitalization of the project site and expects expenditures of around $2,780,000 for the project. Approximately $600,000 of those expenditures will be funded through tax incremental financing. Yager Retail LLC, the will cover the remaining expenses. In addition to an additional tax revenue for the city, the redevelopment of the site will also bring new jobs. The Community Development Agency estimated that the completed projects will create five full-time professional or managerial employment opportunities in Fremont with annual salaries between $40-60 thousand. An additional 30 technical or skilled full-time jobs will also be added. On Monday, Mayor Scott Getzschman said the project will function in important ways to advance the growth and future development of Fremont. Completion of the Fountain Hills redevelopment will be considered for extension to Dec. 31, 2017. The request for extension results from delays in the Redevelopers construction schedule that stemmed from the closing on the purchase and sale of the Project Site. The council will move to approve the extension of the completion date as stated in the Redevelopment Agreement. Completion was originally slated for March 31, 2017. A public hearing, testimony and a move to introduce a request for a zoning change ordinance for 300 N Co. Road 20, by Dodd Engineering & Surveying, LLC. The change involves the conversion of approximately 2.2 acres zoned general industrial to transform limited industrial. The council will discuss a request from Interstate Commodities, Inc. on behalf of Frontier Cooperative, to rezone approximately 12 acres of agricultural use land to general industrial land in the areas located at 549 East County Road T, authorizing temporary grain ground storage piles. A report on the general activity of Fremonts Local Option Economic Development Plan will be presented. The Local Option Economic Development Plan facilitates low or 0 percent interest loans as well as performance-based forgivable grants for the attraction of new industries and the retention or expansion of current businesses in the Fremont Area. To date, a total of $1,105,670.32 remains as uncommitted funds for use in economic development. Recommendation for an approval, authorizing the Mayor to sign the Fantastic Future Me exhibit agreement with Omaha Childrens Museum, will be proposed. FFM encourages children to imagine what jobs they might hold as adults. It offers children a fun way to explore different career paths. The exhibit also inspires parents to start planning for their childs college funds through involvement in the Nebraska Educational Savings Trust (NEST) 529 plans. After receiving several grievances concerning the ailing conditions at rail crossings of the Fremont and Elkhorn Valley Railroad line, the city council will entertain the approval of a resolution to pursue legal action to pressure FEVR to make repairs and upgrades to the crossings. FEVR crosses city streets in Fremont at five locations. It is the railroads responsibility to maintain the condition of those crossings. The next Fremont City Council meeting will convene on May 11, 2016 at 7 p.m. Today U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberrys office open, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., 641 N. Broad St., Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont. Walking Taco Tuesday fundraiser, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., May Brothers Building, 105 E. Sixth St., Fremont. The fundraiser will benefit the Midland University chapter of PBL. The lunch will include a walking taco, dessert and beverage. Freewill donations will be accepted. The fundraiser is sponsored by First State Bank & Trust Company and Fremont Creative Collective. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. TOPS 58, 6-7 p.m., St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Fremont. Weigh-ins are from 5:30-6 p.m. For more information, contact Nancy Wit at 402-727-6745. Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 6:30 p.m., Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 540 W. Eighth St., Wahoo. Narcotics Anonymous It Works Group, 6:30 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door. Al-Anon meeting, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club front room, Fremont. This support group is for families and friends of alcoholics. Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 8 p.m., United Faith Church, 218 W. Gardiner St., Valley. Wednesday Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Opening of Transplanted: The Early Ethnic Settlers of Dodge County exhibit, 1:30-4:30 p.m., May Museum, Fremont. The exhibit will be on display throughout 2016 and 2017. Admission to the museum is $5 for adults, $1 for students and free for children 5 and younger. Alzheimers Support Group, 2-3 p.m., Nye Wellness Center at Nye Square, 655 W. 23rd St., Fremont. For more information, contact Mary Atkinson at 402-721-9224. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Fresh Hope Support Group, 7 p.m., Trinity Lutheran School, 16th Street and Luther Road, Fremont. The support group offers faith-based help for those with mood disorders and for loved ones trying to understand. For more information, call David and Wray Lynn Trost at 402-480-1777. Narcotics Anonymous Library Group, 7 p.m., Keene Memorial Library East Building, 1030 N. Broad St., Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has called on Pakistan to cease supporting the Taliban and instead join in the fight against the insurgents, saying if the neighboring country fails to cooperate then Kabul will take the issue to the United Nations Security Council. In a somber speech to the joint session of both houses of Afghan Parliament on April 25, Ghani said his compatriots want him to raise the issues of Pakistani support for Afghan insurgent groups. He said these groups are being hosted and aided from the territory of Pakistan. The Afghan leader said such support violates the charter of United Nations and various Security Council resolutions, which binds member states not to support terrorist groups against another country. If we dont see [a change in Pakistani policies], we will be compelled to consult the UN Security Council for serious diplomatic actions despite our wishes to resolve such issues through regional cooperation, he said. Similarly, we will ask responsible international organizations to take action against those whose hands are dyed with the blood of our compatriots and who operate from abroad. His address comes amid mounting public pressure a week after a Taliban assault in Kabul killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Since assuming office in September 2014, Ghani pivoted toward Pakistan in the hope of enlisting its support to end his countrys nearly four-decade war through negotiations with the Taliban and allied insurgent groups, most of whom operate out of Pakistani sanctuaries. The Afghan leader, however, ended his pivot toward Pakistan last summer after Islamabad failed to prevent the Afghan insurgents from launching their biggest offensive since the overthrow of their regime in late 2001. Late last year, Afghanistan again joined Pakistan, China, and the United States in a diplomatic forum called the Quadrilateral Coordination Group. In February, the four nations agreed on a road map aimed at ending the Afghan war through direct negotiations with the Taliban brokered by Pakistan, where a senior official admitted that Islamabad is hosting Afghan Taliban leaders. But the Taliban rejected peace talks and instead unveiled another summer offensive aimed at capturing more territory and toppling Ghanis government. Ghani has now called on Islamabad to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. The Afghan leader said Kabul no longer expects Islamabad to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table in Pakistan, adding that Pakistan should instead launch a military operation against the Afghan insurgents operating from inside the country. We expect Pakistan to honor its commitments in the Quadrilateral Coordination Group and take military action against those who, according to our security institutions and the intelligence services of our allies, are operating out of Pakistan, he told lawmakers. Even the Pakistani leaders have acknowledged that their [the Afghan Talibans] headquarters and leadership are inside Pakistan. Ghani added that if Islamabad is unwilling to take military action against these criminals, it should hand them over to Afghan courts so that justice can be served for their actions. We expect Pakistan -- and the international community shares our views -- to abandon its distinction between good and bad terrorists and take action against all as a responsible state, he said. Ghani characterized the insurgents as criminals fighting a legitimate government. He vowed war against radical groups like the Islamic State, commonly known in Afghanistan as Daesh, and the Haqqani network while leaving a door open for compromise with some Taliban factions. "The enemies of Afghanistan are Daesh, al-Qaeda, the murderous Haqqani network, and some of the Taliban who enjoy shedding the blood of their countrymen," he told lawmakers in a speech broadcast live on television. Ghani emphasized that the doors of negotiation would remain open for those Taliban ready to bring an end to the bloodshed. "This opportunity will not be there forever," he warned. With reporting by Radio Free Afghanistan, AP, Reuters, and DPA Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. Ghani made the remarks during a speech to parliament on April 25, a week after a Taliban assault in Kabul killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Ghani said Kabul no longer expects Islamabad to bring Afghanistans Taliban to peace talks in Pakistan, adding that Pakistan should launch a military operation against those whose leaders are based in Pakistan and are known by Pakistan to be there. Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to Afghan Taliban thought to be based in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and the United States have been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban in recent months, but have made little progress. With reporting by AP rs/ (AP) Marijuana is illegal for any reason under federal law, but states have boldly experimented with allowing its use anyway, starting with California 20 years ago. Some states have made the drug legal for medical purposes, others have removed jail sentences for carrying small amounts, and some let adults 21 and older use it for any reason. Heres a look at where the states are on pot as well as legalization developments in other countries: LEGAL FOR MEDICAL USE Eight states allow people with certain medical conditions to use marijuana, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization group that tracks state pot laws. Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Vermont each have their own lists of ailments for which sufferers can use the drug with a doctors recommendation. The drug cannot legally be prescribed in any state, because it has no accepted medical use under federal drug law. But some doctors are willing to recommend it under certain conditions. LEGAL IF IT DOESNT GET YOU HIGH Seventeen states, many in the South, have passed laws opening the door to marijuana use as long as the drug is extremely low in THC, the intoxicating ingredient. The laws have emerged in the last three years following publicity about children with severe seizures benefiting from oils derived from marijuana. Patients and parents of children say these laws are loaded with so many caveats that the drug isnt being used, sometimes because even though it is legal to use it isnt legally available. These laws exist in Iowa, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. NOT LEGAL BUT WONT PUT YOU IN JAIL Five states have removed the potential for jail time for those caught with small amounts of the drug. That means pot isnt legal for recreational use, but people smoking it to get high cant be put behind bars. Those states are Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina and Ohio. COMBINATION OF THE ABOVE A few states both have approved marijuana use by sick people and removed jail sentences for recreational users. One is California, whose voters passed the nations first medical marijuana law in 1996. Others are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada and Rhode Island. LEGAL FOR ADULTS OVER 21 Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C., allow marijuana possession in small amounts by adults over 21 for any reason. INTERNATIONAL POT LAWS Cannabis possession is illegal in most countries under a 1925 treaty called the International Opium Convention. But just like the U.S., some nations either flout the treaty or dont enforce it. Legalization supporters consider pot possession either legal or tolerated in Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay, Germany and the Netherlands. Each country has many caveats. Some consider the drug just as illegal as heroin but dont enforce the ban. Others, like Uruguay and the Netherlands, allow its recreational use. DES MOINES Gov. Terry Branstad said Monday he is favorably inclined to sign into law new statewide regulations for ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft. State lawmakers last week gave final approval to the legislation, which requires ride-hailing drivers to pass a background check and obtain a permit through the state transportation department, among other provisions. I havent had a chance to review it yet, but Im very familiar with Uber, and its really made a big difference, I think, and so I guess Id be favorably inclined, Branstad said Monday. But I want to review judgment until I see exactly what it does. Uber already operates in Iowa under local regulations in the Quad-Cities, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Ames. Uber has served more than 100,000 Iowans since beginning operations here and is considering expanding to more Iowa cities, company officials said. Waterloo-Cedar Falls officials confirmed the metro area is among those under consideration for Uber expansion. Mason City has also been mentioned, and Mason City officials said they had heard rumors but nothing official has been announced. The legislation includes a provision designed to address a disagreement between Uber and state banks over insurance requirements. The banks wanted a requirement for drivers to carry comprehensive and collision insurance; Uber called the requirement unworkable and threatened to leave the state if the provision became law. The final legislation does not require drivers to carry comprehensive and collision insurance but instead requires ride-hailing drivers using cars with liens to notify the lienholder. DES MOINES Tommy Lee McConkey, a successful construction contractor from Altoona, was shot in the head in a Des Moines parking lot at 2929 E. University Ave. on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 1975. McConkey was working at a lounge when an unidentified person drove up in a car and shot him in the face. He died the next night. Gone Cold: Exploring Iowa's unsolved murders Gone Cold: Exploring Iowa's unsolved murders is a year-long collaborative effort by Iowa news organizations to revisit some of the most brutal It was a tragic end for a man who, less than two years earlier, had participated in a candidate forum in Altoona with other City Council hopefuls and expressed his desire to make his community a safer place to live and raise a family. George Douglas Frank, 25, a former Des Moines resident living in St. Louis, Missouri, was arrested in November 1975 and charged with McConkeys murder but later was released. An AP story published in the Muscatine Journal Dec. 6, 1975, quoted Police Lt. Edgar Harlan as saying Frank was released after a witness to the slaying could not identify him in a lineup. DES MOINES An outside group that was one of the biggest spenders in the 2014 Iowa U.S. Senate race is launching a voter engagement effort squarely aimed at getting young voters to the ballot box in November to elect federal candidates who offer clean energy solutions. The 2016 election likely to offer the starkest contrast between presidential candidates that has been offered for many decades, said Tom Steyer, president of NextGen Climate. Young voters are the best hope for solving climate issues because they will have to live with the results for the longest time, Steyer said in announcing what he said would be the largest campus vote effort ever undertaken by a non-candidate campaign organization. His organization will have hundreds of organizers on the grounds at more than 200 campuses, including in Iowa, to register, engage and turn out young voters. Steyer, a businessperson and philanthropist, has budgeted $25 million for the campus campaign because he is determined to make sure young voters, who are not as engaged as older voters, are difference makers in the fall election. In Iowa, he said, more than 10,000 young voters have pledged to vote based on climate and clean energy issues. When young people engage in the political conversation, when they turn out and vote, and use the fact they are the biggest cohort in this election cycle, incredible things can happen, he said. NextGen is including Iowa in its plans because it is a battleground state in the presidential election and because the congressional contests, especially the Senate race, could make a difference in determining energy policy. He expects to make an endorsement in the Senate race involving Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and a Democrat to be determined in the June 7. Rather than endorse now, Steyer said NextGen prefers to let the candidates offer their solutions and then let the voters know the facts. For more, visit www.nextgenclimate.org/millennial. JOHNSTON Iowas candidates for governor clashed over the best use of state tax revenue, education and abortion in the first and only schedul THOMPSON A Minnesota man faces multiple felony charges after a burglary at a rural Thompson residence. Juan Vasquez Jr., 39, Bricelyn, Minnesota, will be arraigned May 10 in Winnebago County District Court on charges of first-degree theft and first-degree criminal mischief, both Class C felonies; third-degree burglary, a Class D felony; and trespassing, a serious misdemeanor. Vasquez entered a home on 460th Street near Thompson on March 31 and stole $20,000 worth of property and committed $50,000 in damage to property and objects inside the residence, according to the Winnebago County Sheriffs Office. The stolen items were found at his residence during a search warrant April 10, authorities say. Vasquez was arrested by the Freeborn County Sheriffs Office April 14 after a joint investigation by that department and the Winnebago County Sheriffs Office. He was transported to the Winnebago County Jail April 16. SIOUX CITY Both of Iowas Republican U.S. senators now back 4th District Rep. Steve King in his bid to fend off the first GOP challenge in his 14-year congressional career. First-term U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst on Monday announced her endorsement of King for the Republican nomination over state Sen. Rick Bertrand of Sioux City. Veteran U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is up for re-election himself this year, previously announced his support for King in the June 7 primary. Hours after Ernsts announcement, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad said he would stay neutral in the 4th District GOP race. Its up to the voters to decide in each of these instances. Ive always had confidence in the voters of Iowa to make a thoughtful and good decision ... I dont think endorsements make a huge difference, Branstad said. Im going to try to do all I can to help all of the candidates and let the primary voters decide who they think should be the nominee. Ernst, of Red Oak, served with Bertrand in the Iowa Senate prior to winning the 2014 U.S. Senate race for the seat vacated by the retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. Steve is a friend to small businesses in our Iowa towns and the agriculture industry that helps drive our state, Ernst said in a news release Monday from Kings campaign. Ernst also spoke about a key issue in the campaign, citing King for his support of renewable fuels. Bertrand came into the race in March in part out of concern for agriculture interests after King in late 2015 endorsed Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas. Cruz doesnt support an extension to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard for corn-based ethanol. That caused Branstad and others to publicly criticize Kings pick, with the governor saying Cruz shouldnt be supported by Iowans after his knock on an industry that is so important to the state. Bertrand dismissed the latest endorsement from a Republican office holder for King, who earlier won the backing of Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey of Spirit Lake. At the end of the day this vote is going to come down to Rick Bertrand or Steve King. A fresh new vision for Iowa or the status quo of Washington. Im out working for votes, not political endorsements, Bertrand said in a statement Monday. King said hes been glad to know Ernst since meeting her on an overseas military stop. Then-Capt. Ernst commanded the 1168th Transportation Co. tasked with hauling supplies overland from Kuwait to Baghdad. I quickly learned Capt. Ernsts first concern was for her troops. I have seen Joni progress through the ranks all the way to United States senator, King said. Branstad, who actively worked to defeat Cruz during the Iowa caucuses because of his ethanol views, said Monday he doesnt have anything to patch up with King. I would just say that weve been friends for a long time. I encouraged a couple of members of my staff, when he had a strong challenge from (Democratic congressional candidate) Christie Vilsack, to work for him and help on his campaign, Branstad said. NEVADA (AP) After deliberating for less than two hours on Monday, jurors convicted a former Mitchell County man of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a woman in a Coralville mall. Alexander Kozak, 23, a 2011 Osage High School graduate, was found guilty of killing 20-year-old Andrea Farrington. The verdict concluded a two-week trial that included testimony from witnesses who saw Kozak shoot the woman and flee the crowded Coral Ridge Mall, and experts who reviewed Kozak's mental health. Sentencing has been set for June 6. Prosecutors said Farrington was shot in the back three times June 12 while working at an Iowa Children's Museum information kiosk. Police say Kozak, who worked as a mall security guard, told officers he "snapped" after Farrington texted him to say she was breaking off their relationship. The trial was moved to Story County because of media attention. Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness said during closing arguments that the shooting was deliberate and planned, according to the Iowa City Press-Citizen. "He chose to pull the trigger a second time, and then again he chose to pull the trigger a third time. That's premeditation. That's what he intended," Lyness said. The defense did not dispute that Kozak killed Farrington, but argued his level of responsibility was diminished and asked for a voluntary manslaughter verdict. Kozak's lawyer, Alfredo Parrish, called the shooting a "crime of passion," citing an extensive texting relationship between Kozak and Farrington. He said the texts between the two showed they loved each other and that "she had led him on." Parrish also said Kozak was pushed to a breaking point in his "hot and cold" relationship with Farrington. A psychiatrist called on by the defense previously testified that Kozak may have borderline personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder, making him prone to "explosive outbursts." But Lyness argued Monday that mental health experts called by the state found no evidence that Kozak had those disorders, adding that they would not have prevented Kozak from planning the shooting. "This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't because of some mental defect or mental illness. He did it because he wanted to. He did it because he was jealous and he was mad," she said. Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. MASON CITY Protesters gathered Monday morning outside of City Hall in downtown Mason City to show their opposition to a proposed hog processing plant. Signs reading Say no to the slaughterhouse and No public money, no Prestage were waved at passing cars. There were many issues that brought together more than 20 protesters, including low wages, environmental concerns, economic impact and the City Council. Im against subsidized low wages, said Rich Zeren, who wondered how the proposed Prestage Foods workers would live and how the people of Mason City would pay for it. How many teachers will it take to educate all these new kids? he asked. How much will that cost? School districts receive additional state funding for each new pupil, but last week Prestage Farms also announced that the agreement between the company and the city would include a donation of $1.4 million over 10 years to Mason City Schools. The company would pay the school district $140,000 annually between January 2018 and January 2027. Zeren said he wants City Council members to slow down the process and also consider environmental issues. The protest comes on the heels of a City Council meeting that lasted more than seven hours Thursday. After the council heard from 50 citizens during the public forum, the meeting resulted in a 5-1 procedural vote to set May 3 as the date for a public hearing and a vote on the citys agreement with Prestage. Council member Alex Kuhn cast the lone vote against the motion. My main concern is the environment, said Lori Holthaus. You look at the maps of whats happened to other plant towns and theres CAFOs everywhere, she said, referring to concentrated animal feeding operations. Concerns about water pollution, living conditions and quality jobs brought Holthaus out to protest. She held a sign saying North Iowas future will be CAFOs. Aimee Lee was passing out fliers about the hog odor zone with a map showing a 3-mile radius surrounding the plant. Youre going to smell it, Lee said. Prestage agreed to create a 2.5-mile buffer zone around Mason City, Clear Lake and the lake itself where the company will not build or operate hog confinements or buy animals from facilities in that area. The back of Lees fliers referenced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on potential increase of flies and mosquitoes surrounding CAFOs. We want to be able to enjoy our downtown here, and this is within that 3-mile zone that the CDC states will be a problem, Lee said. All of these wonderful upgrades to downtown, you cant enjoy it. Tom Willett was unimpressed with Prestage being described as a family business. They keep calling them a family company so is the mafia, Willett said. Theyve been rushing this thing, and its not good. He said he is concerned about the students and wages for the workers. MASON CITY Roosevelt Elementary is mourning the unexpected death of a special education teacher over the weekend. Sara Powell, 32, died of natural causes at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa on Saturday. To her husband Clayton, she was a steadying force. They were Mason City High School sweethearts. He was a troublemaker and she pushed him to graduate when his path was uncertain, he said. She was the rock that kept me grounded, he said. Powell is survived by their two children, Colton, 4, and Dylan, 1. On Monday at Roosevelt, she was remembered as a caring teacher with a good sense of humor who loved her work, said Mason City Superintendent Anita Micich. This is something that you hope you never have to talk to your staff about, that it would never happen, but unfortunately, it has occurred, she said. Grief counselors were made available for students and staff, Micich said. Its shocking. The age, the fact that she has two small children, pretty young, Micich said. Death is unexpected when it comes and unexpectedly like this, I think its jarring, just really causes you to step back and take stock of whats going on around you, she said. Powell was hired at Hoover Elementary in 2013 as a special education teacher, previously working at Garner-Hayfield-Ventura. She also briefly worked at John Adams Middle School, Micich said. GHV Superintendent Tyler Williams said in an email that Powell was a woman who was always happy. She was a true professional and good for our profession, he said. She will be missed. This is really about the children, Micich said. At this age they are affected in a different way. Some knew her and some didnt. You try to maintain a sense of normalcy for kids, normally. You have to have some levity for people, because its so numbing for people, I think, she said. Donations are being directed to the Sara Powell Memorial Fund in care of her family. Funeral services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. You know what I really resent? I resent it when someone tells me I should vote for, or support, or give a pass to someone because it will be a historic moment. Dont get me wrong. Im as much a sucker for a grand and melodramatic gesture as anyone. I took my nephew to see the updated version of The Jungle Book and I was reduced to sobs when the animals of the jungle all banded together to defend Mowgli. Heck, I still get a lump in my throat during that scene in Spartacus when all the other slaves rise up to protect Kirk Douglas from crucifixion by saying, one after the other, I am Spartacus. (It does lose something, unfortunately, when they get to Tony Curtis, who emotes in perfect Brooklynese, I yam Spottackus.) All of this is to say that I am not insensitive to inspirational symbolism. Back in 2008, we were told that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for hope, change and a balancing of the playing field. The idea of electing the first black president was an intoxicating prospect for many, which is exactly why so many voted for the first-term senator from Illinois. That would be the case with Hillary Clinton, who is this years flavor of historic. As in 2008, we are faced with the possibility of finally putting a woman in the Oval Office. (No jokes about Monica Lewinsky, here, in case you were getting ready to make one.) There is something equally momentous about saying Madame President as there was about saying, Mr. First Black President. Just because I happen to be a conservative who shrinks in horror from the limiting label of feminist, I would still be delighted to see a woman head our government. Many other countries, including some actual democracies, have placed females in positions of supreme authority. My favorite was the United Kingdoms Margaret Thatcher, but Israels Golda Meir comes in a very close second, tied with Germanys Angela Merkel for my affections. The list continues with Indira Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Corazon Aquino and, of course, Benazir Bhutto, who, if youve been paying attention, was the prime minister of a Muslim country. (Yes, they assassinated her, just as the Sikhs killed Gandhi, the Burmese imprisoned Suu Kyi and the Filipinos murdered Aquinos husband. But at least they had some real moments of glory mixed in with the tragedy.) So yes, it would be wonderful to have a woman take the oath of office in January. Not necessarily this January, but some January at some indefinite date in the future. However, the idea that the gender of a candidate is an overriding factor in deciding whether shes qualified, just as the idea that the race of a candidate should be given more weight than, say, his educational pedigree, strikes me as ignorant. In fact, it stinks. Gender is a very poor barometer of how someone is going to vote, and it is insulting to believe that women vote in a bloc, just as it is insulting to suggest that all African-Americans support affirmative action or that all Latinos are in favor of immigration reform. Clinton is fueling her campaign with that combustible gasoline that threatens to burn down (not Bern down) the patriarchy. She dismisses her critics as misogynists, even though shes very skillful about not using that precise word. She simply talks about how important it is to empower women. Except shes not talking to women like me. Clinton would love to disconnect the wires on my control panel to make me and other critics completely inoperative. Thats why this idea that we need to support her because of her gender is offensive. Why should I vote for someone who looks like me when she represents everything I reject? Grand, dramatic gestures are great when Tony Curtis makes them, but not at the polls. There may be reasons to vote for Clinton, although I certainly cant figure out what they are. I love and respect some people who have openly pledged their support to her. But gender should not be relevant in the calculus. There are many women who have portfolios as impressive (Elizabeth Warren on one end, Condoleezza Rice on the other) but who dont have her baggage. Dublin, April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Therapeutics in Asia-Pacific Markets to 2021 - Increasing Usage of Newer Therapies and Expanding Treatment Population to Encourage Robust Growth" report to their offering. Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by chronic hyperglycemia - high blood glucose levels - that results from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or a combination of these. This chronic hyperglycemia is associated with long-term damage, dysfunction and failure of multiple organs including the eyes, kidneys, nerves, heart and blood vessels. The vast majority of diabetes mellitus patients can be classified as having either Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) or Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Approximately 85-95% of all diabetics have T2DM. T2DM treatment has been revolutionized in the past decade, especially with the increased use of new therapies. The marketed products landscape comprises a wide range of treatment options, including biguanide (metformin), sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones, GLP-1 receptor agonist, DPP-4 inhibitor, SGLT-2 inhibitor, and insulin therapies. Nevertheless, significant unmet need remains for products that can offer better glycemic control as well as the prevention and cure of diabetic complications, such as diabetic nephropathy, retinopathy, and cardiovascular disease. Scope The current T2DM in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market contains novel products, including Jardiance - a SGLT-2 inhibitor; Victoza - a GLP-1 receptor agonist; and Galvus - a DPP-4 inhibitor. - What are the competitive advantages of the existing novel drugs? With over 500 active pipeline molecules, most of the late-stage investigational drug candidates are being evaluated, featuring improved dosing regimens and administration routes, in comparison to currently marketed products and combination therapies. - Which classes of novel drugs are most prominent within the pipeline? - Is there strong potential for the pipeline to address unmet needs within the T2DM market? Analysis of clinical trials, since 2006, identified that the failure rates of T2DM molecules were highest in Phase II, at 54%, with the overall attrition rate for T2DM at 82.6%. - How do failure rates vary by product stage of development, molecule type, and mechanism of action? - How do other factors, such as average trial duration and trial size influence the costs and risks associated with product development? Over the 2014-2021 forecast period, the T2DM therapeutics in the APAC markets is expected to increase in value at a CAGR of 7.7%, from $6.07 billion to over $10.2 billion. Key Topics Covered: 1 Table of Contents 1.1 List of Tables 1.2 List of Figures 2 Introduction 2.1 Disease Overview 2.2 Classification 2.3 Symptoms 2.4 Etiology 2.5 Pathophysiology 2.6 Epidemiology 2.7 Prognosis 2.8 Co-morbidities and Complications 2.9 Diagnosis 2.10 Assessing Treatment Effectiveness 2.11 Treatment 2.11.1 Non-insulin T2DM Therapies 2.11.2 Insulin T2DM Therapies 2.12 Treatment Segments 2.12.1 Non-insulin therapies 2.12.2 Insulin Therapies 3 Marketed Products 3.1 Overview 3.2 Biguanides 3.2.1 Metformin 3.3 Sulfonylureas 3.4 Thiazolidinediones 3.4.1 Pioglitazone 3.5 GLP-1 receptor agonists 3.5.1 Byetta (exenatide) 3.5.2 Bydureon (exenatide) 3.5.3 Victoza (liraglutide) 3.5.4 Lyxumia (lixisenatide) 3.5.5 Tanzeum (albiglutide) 3.5.6 Trulicity (dulaglutide) 3.6 DPP-4 Inhibitors 3.6.1 Januvia/Glactiv (sitagliptin) 3.6.2 Galvus (vildagliptin) 3.6.3 Onglyza (saxagliptin) 3.6.4 Trazenta (linagliptin) 3.6.5 Zafatek (trelagliptin succinate) 3.6.6 Marizev (omarigliptin) 3.7 SGLT-2 Inhibitors 3.7.1 Forxiga (dapagliflozin) 3.7.2 Invokana (canagliflozin) 3.7.3 Jardiance (empagliflozin) 3.8 Insulin Therapies 3.8.1 Lantus (insulin glargine) 3.8.2 Levemir (insulin detemir) 3.8.3 Tresiba (insulin degludec) 3.8.4 Toujeo/ Lantus XR (insulin glargine) 3.9 Marketed Products Heat Maps 4 Pipeline 4.1 Overview 4.2 Pipeline Distribution by Stage of Development, Molecule Type and Program Type 4.3 Pipeline Distribution by Molecular Target 4.4 Clinical Trial Landscape 4.5 Promising Pipeline Molecules 4.5.1 NN-9535 (subcutaneous semaglutide) and OG-217SC (oral semaglutide) - Novo Nordisk 4.5.2 ITCA 650 - Intarcia Therapeutics 4.5.3 Ertugliflozin - Pfizer 4.6 Pipeline Products Heat Map 5 Market Forecast to 2021 5.1 Geographical Markets 5.2 Asia-Pacific Markets 5.3 China 5.4 India 5.5 Australia 5.6 Japan 5.7 Drivers and Barriers for the T2DM Therapeutics Market 6 Strategic Consolidations 6.1 Licensing Deals 6.1.1 AbbVie Collaborates with Halozyme Therapeutics to Bank on its ENHANZE Technology 6.1.2 Janssen Collaborates with Halozyme Therapeutics to Bank on its ENHANZE Technology 6.1.3 Emisphere Signs Licensing Agreement with Novo Nordisk to Develop Oral Formulations Targeting Metabolic Indications 6.1.4 Amunix Announces Exclusive Agreements with Naia to Develop GLP-1 and GLP-2 XTEN Products 6.2 Co-development Deals 6.2.1 Intarcia Therapeutics Enters into Co-Development Agreement with Servier for ITCA 650 (DUROS delivery exenatide) 6.2.2 Merck Enters into Co-Development Agreement with Pfizer for ertugliflozin 6.2.3 AstraZeneca Enters into Research Agreement with Inserm 6.2.4 Intarcia Therapeutics Enters into Co-Development Agreement with Numab 6.2.5 AstraZeneca Enters into Co-development Agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb 7 Appendix Companies Mentioned - AbbVie - Amunix - AstraZeneca - Bristol-Myers Squibb - Emisphere - Halozyme Therapeutics - Intarcia Therapeutics - Janssen - Merck - Naia - Novo Nordisk - Numab - Pfizer For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ls9h6f/type_2_diabetes NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AlixPartners, the global advisory firm, today released its 4th Annual Global Anticorruption Survey. The survey is intended to determine the impact of corruption on the global business environment and understand ways in which companies are preventing, identifying and addressing corruption risk. Respondents included corporate counsel and compliance officers representing over 20 major industries in Asia, Europe and North America. Global Corruption: A Growing Concern Ninety percent of survey respondents said they believe their industry is exposed to corruption risk, with 28% saying they believe their industry faces "significant risk." These numbers increased from last year's survey when 85% of respondents said their industry was exposed to risk, and 22% felt the risk was "significant." Also on the rise is the perceived risk respondents believe they face when working within different regions. Respondents believe the regions that pose the most "significant risk" in terms of corruption are Africa (78%), Russia (73%) and the Middle East (68%). The perceived threat for these regions has increased since last year's survey when 59%, 75%, and 48% said these regions posed "significant risk," respectively. Unfortunately, respondents aren't optimistic that the risks in these regions will dissipate any time soon. About 80% of respondents say that corruption laws in these countries and regions are ineffective, and 62% believe there are locations where it is impossible to avoid corrupt business practices, with Africa (52%), Russia (48%), and the Middle East (41%) topping the list. Harvey Kelly, Managing Director and Global Leader of AlixPartners' Financial Advisory Services practice, said: "Companies today are confronted by the reality of facing scrutiny for alleged misconduct in multiple jurisdictions. That prospect has become more evident particularly as the number of countries that have either adopted new laws or stepped up enforcement continues to expand. We have seen this trend in Brazil and China, for example, and based on our survey findings, the problem appears to be deepening in regions such as the Middle East." Corruption: Bad for Business Although 64% of respondents say their companies have not avoided doing business in a particular region due to the risk of corruption, companies operating across multiple countries and regions could still be deeply impacted by the many negative effects of corruption. A record number of enforcement actions by the SEC potentially show that corruption, fraud, and other misconduct remain legitimate problems for many companies globally. Aggressive enforcement, which now increasingly involves the use of sophisticated technology and data analytics tools, produced a record 807 enforcement actions and roughly $4.2 billion in sanctions in 2015. (Source: Securities and Exchange Commission press release, Oct. 22, 2015, https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-245.html) Thirty-six percent of respondents say they have pulled out of or delayed an acquisition due to corruption risk, 23% believe their company has lost business as a result of a competitor making illicit payments to a government official, and 32% of respondents have ceased doing business with a business partner or counterparty due to corruption concerns. "Given the dynamic and cross-border nature of risk, it is critical that companies maintain an active stance and be prepared to respond quickly when they detect a problem. Beyond the reputational and financial costs associated with a potential regulatory inquiry a company may face, comes the disruptive nature of corruption on a company's business. It may be difficult to measure the financial implications of delaying an acquisition or having to find new counterparties due to corruption; however, not taking these actions and potentially inviting a regulatory inquiry can be even more detrimental to a company's ability to achieve business and strategic objectives" said Kelly. Anticorruption Policies: Opportunities and Challenges Most respondents (75%) indicated their companies have anticorruption programs in place that are distributed to all employees. Twenty-five percent of respondents have implemented an anticorruption program in the past five years, 67% have reviewed their policies within the last year and over half have received a third party assessment of their compliance programs within the last 12 months. When asked which practices their companies have implemented to reduce risk, internal audits (44%), anticorruption compliance policies (43%) and anticorruption training for employees (42%) were seen as the most effective measures, with respondents saying these measures are "highly successful." Whistleblower programs also remain a key tool in identifying and dealing with corruption risk: 66% reported having a whistleblower hotline, and of those companies with a hotline, 27% have received a tip from the hotline in the past 12 months, up from 20% in AlixPartners' survey in 2015. When asked about challenges in their companies' anticorruption and compliance programs, the most frequent response cited was doing business in a high-risk region, with 78% citing this as being very, or somewhat challenging. Respondents were also concerned about variations in local country laws, such as date and privacy laws (76%), and due diligence on third party and other business partners (76%). As with any industry, technology and data present real challenges for compliance and regulatory issues. Respondents indicated that ensuring the security of data (76%), dealing with local data protection laws (77%) and lack of IT experience (52%) are either very or somewhat challenging, and represent their biggest challenges to conducting cross-border investigations. "Technology is changing not only how companies do business, but the ways in which regulators are able to scrutinize corporate activities. Regulators such as the SEC are using algorithms to monitor for potential compliance infractions," said Kelly. "Companies need to recognize this change in the regulatory landscape and look for opportunities to utilize technology to improve their own compliance function's ability to monitor and detect potential issues." About the 2016 AlixPartners Global Anticorruption Survey The AlixPartners Global Anti-Corruption Survey was conducted from December 2015 through February 2016. The survey polled corporate counsel and compliance officers about their companies' anticorruption efforts, compliance policies and ways of identifying and mitigating corruption risk. The survey group consisted of executives at international companies with annual revenues of $150 million or more in a broad range of industries based in North America, Europe and Asia. About AlixPartners AlixPartners is a leading global business-advisory firm of results-oriented professionals who specialize in creating value and restoring performance. We thrive on our ability to make a difference in high-impact situations and to deliver sustainable, bottom-line results. The firm's expertise covers a wide range of businesses and industries whether they are healthy, challenged or distressed. Since 1981, we have taken a unique, small-team, action-oriented approach to helping corporate boards and management, law firms, investment banks and investors to respond to crucial business issues. For more information, visit www.alixpartners.com. PLEASANTON, Calif., April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Steelwedge, a provider of cloud-based planning solutions and services that inform better decision-making for global organizations, announced today that Lenovo (HKSE:992) (ADR:LNVGY) has fully deployed the Steelwedge Sales & Operations Planning solution to support that companys data center business. The worlds largest PC vendor, Lenovo is a $46 billion global Fortune 500 company with 58,000 employees in more than 60 countries. Steelwedges dynamic S&OP cloud solution will help Lenovo integrate demand plans, attach rate planning, and supplier forecasts to inform better decision-making. The Steelwedge solution will help Lenovo run a more efficient supply chain and deliver the world-class customer experience expected by our data center clients, said David Gillon, Lenovo Executive Director, Business Transformation/IT. We have ambitious plans to grow our data center business, and a world-class IT system is critical to scaling our operations as we evolve. The Steelwedge solution will more fluidly connect sales, demand and supply chain planning to promote collaboration across every function, he added. Tim Carroll, Vice President, DCG Global Supply Chain for Lenovo, commented: Steelwedge has been a strategic partner since 2011 and was instrumental in our growth in the Personal Systems Business. In 2015 we rolled out Steelwedge to meet the needs of our industry leading Data Center business planning. Lenovo is now poised for a strong growth in the Data Center Business as well. Steelwedge provides our global team robust capability to analyze and forecast demand and supply at multiple levels needed to meet customer requirements regionally and globally in a short time period. Pervinder Johar, Steelwedge CEO, praised Lenovos business transformation team and business user community for their strong collaboration with Steelwedge in defining requirements and in partnering for a fast, smooth deployment. Lenovos team has been first-rate in its ability to work strategically with us to deliver leading-edge, high-performance end-to-end planning globally, Johar said. We are thrilled with the opportunity to help one of the worlds leading technology companies build their competitive advantage through a planning platform that improves collaboration and orchestration across departments and functions, he added. Steelwedge S&OP transforms multi-source, diverse data into the industrys most granular, actionable and tailored informationdelivering clear, targeted results that boost company plan performance. Steelwedge was named a leader in Gartners 2015 Magic Quadrant for Sales & Operations Planning System of Differentiation. About Steelwedge Organizations use Steelwedges cloud planning platform and services to align product, sales, demand, supply, strategy, operations and financial decisions across roles, geographies, products, time horizons, channels, customers and suppliers to improve efficiency and outcomes. Steelwedges PlanStreaming cloud combines predictive, prescriptive and responsive analytics and technology to equip organizations to be ready to act in time with opportunity, especially in highly competitive markets where continuous planning is essential and efficiently responding to changing conditions is advantageous. Steelwedge is headquartered in Pleasanton, California. Visit www.steelwedge.com. Media Inquiries: Will Haraway wharaway@steelwedge.com 404.593.8320 English Lithuanian AB Klaipedos Nafta (hereinafter - the Company) hereby informs that on 25th of April 2016 the Company has announced the annual liquefied natural gas (hereinafter - LNG) terminal capacities allocation procedure and an invitation for the potential users of the LNG Terminal to submit their requests for allocation of LNG terminal capacities for the upcoming Gas Year, lasting from the 1st of October, 2016 to the 1st of October, 2017. Text of the invitation (Annex No. 1) is provided along with this notification on material event and is also published on the website: www.sgd.lt. Upon coming into force of the new edition of the Regulations, for the allocation of capacities, contract conclusion with Terminal Users, preparation of Terminal use schedules and other procedures provided in the Regulations, provisions of the new approved edition of the Regulations will apply. The Company performs the allocation of capacities according to the publicly announced Regulations for Use of Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal (hereinafter - the Regulations), which were verified and approved by the National Commission for Energy Control and Prices (hereinafter, the NCECP) and the Board of the Company. The Company notified about the pre-approval by NCECP of the Regulations currently in force as well as about the approval of the main provisions of these Regulations by the Board of the Company by publishing a notification of material event on the 15th of June, 2015. It should be noted, that at the moment a new edition of the Regulations has been prepared and announced for public consultation by NCECP and which can be found at the database of legal acts of Seimas. Upon coming into force of the new edition of the Regulations, for the allocation of capacities, contract conclusion with Terminal Users, preparation of Terminal use schedules and other procedures provided in the Regulations, provisions of the new approved edition of the Regulations will apply. During the allocation procedure of the LNG terminal capacities the LNG regasification capacities and seasonal LNG reloading capacities shall be allocated. The total volume of the LNG terminal capacity being allocated is 3.75 bcm per annum, which is equivalent to 6.5 mln m3 of LNG per annum applying a relative coefficient of expansion of 1:580 at the following reference conditions: temperature (combustion/measurement)- 25/0 oC, pressure 1.01325 bar. The Company at its website shall constantly announce and update the information regarding free capacities of the LNG terminal, which shall be available for acquisition during the Gas Year as well. The Company shall accept the requests of potential LNG terminal users until 25th of May, 2016, 4 p.m. Lithuanian time. Annex No. 1 Invitation to provide LNG terminal capacity allocation requests. DGAP-News: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. / Key word(s): Miscellaneous Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. : Statement regarding the revised offer by Groupe Fnac S.A. for Darty plc 25.04.2016 / 19:20 The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 25 April 2016 Statement regarding the revised offer by Groupe Fnac S.A. for Darty plc Conforama Investissement 2 SAS ("Conforama") notes the announcement today by Groupe Fnac S.A. in relation to its revised offer for Darty plc ("Darty"). Conforama is currently considering its options and urges Darty shareholders to take no further action at this time. This announcement will be made available on the website of Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. ("Steinhoff"), http://www.steinhoffinternational.com, in accordance with Rule 26.1(b) of the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers. 
 Enquiries: Conforama Isabelle Hoppenot (Press contact) Tel: +33 6 25 58 14 38 Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. Mariza Nel Tel: +27 (0)21 808 0711 Citigroup Global Markets Limited Jan Skarbek Tel: +44 (0)20 798 6400 Nick Pagden Charles-Henri Filippi Tom Jacob Peter Brown (Corporate Broking) HSBC Bank plc Oliver Smith Tel: +44 (0)20 7991 8888 Aamir Khan Patrick Cazalaa Dimitri Fotopoulos Mark Dickenson (Corporate Broking) Media Enquiries: Havas Worldwide (French PR Adviser to Conforama) Anton Molina Tel: +33 6 37 32 80 27 Maitland (UK PR Adviser to Conforama) Kate O'Neill Tel: +44 7714 415 229
Important notice related to financial advisers Citigroup Global Markets Limited, which is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated in the United Kingdom by the FCA and the Prudential Regulation Authority, is acting as financial adviser to Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. and for no one else in connection with the matters referred to in this announcement and will not be responsible to anyone other than Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. for providing the protections afforded to its clients or for providing advice in relation to the contents of this announcement or any other matters referred to in this announcement. HSBC Bank plc, which is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated in the United Kingdom by the FCA and the Prudential Regulation Authority, is acting as financial adviser to Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. and for no one else in connection with the matters referred to in this announcement and will not be responsible to anyone other than Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. for providing the protections afforded to its clients or for providing advice in relation to the contents of this announcement or any other matters referred to in this announcement. Further information This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or subscribe for or an invitation to purchase any securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction, or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities. This announcement does not constitute a prospectus or prospectus equivalent document. This announcement has been prepared for the purpose of complying with English law and the Code and the information disclosed may not be the same as that which would have been disclosed if this announcement had been prepared in accordance with the laws of jurisdictions outside the United Kingdom. Overseas shareholders The release, publication or distribution of this announcement in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law. Persons who are not resident in the United Kingdom or who are subject to other jurisdictions should inform themselves of, and observe, any applicable requirements. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NEITHER AN OFFER TO PURCHASE NOR A SOLICITATION TO BUY ANY SHARES NOR IS IT A SOLICITATION FOR ACCEPTANCE OF ANY OFFER. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NEITHER AN OFFER TO SELL NOR A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY SECURITIES, AND SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE, IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE IS UNLAWFUL. Disclosure requirements of the City Code (the "Code") Under Rule 8.3(a) of the Code, any person who is interested in 1% or more of any class of relevant securities of an offeree company or of any securities exchange offeror (being any offeror other than an offeror in respect of which it has been announced that its offer is, or is likely to be, solely in cash) must make an Opening Position Disclosure following the commencement of the offer period and, if later, following the announcement in which any securities exchange offeror is first identified. An Opening Position Disclosure must contain details of the person's interests and short positions in, and rights to subscribe for, any relevant securities of each of (i) the offeree company and (ii) any securities exchange offeror(s). An Opening Position Disclosure by a person to whom Rule 8.3(a) applies must be made by no later than 3.30 pm (London time) on the 10th business day following the commencement of the offer period and, if appropriate, by no later than 3.30 pm (London time) on the 10th business day following the announcement in which any securities exchange offeror is first identified. Relevant persons who deal in the relevant securities of the offeree company or of a securities exchange offeror prior to the deadline for making an Opening Position Disclosure must instead make a Dealing Disclosure. Under Rule 8.3(b) of the Code, any person who is, or becomes, interested in 1% or more of any class of relevant securities of the offeree company or of any securities exchange offeror must make a Dealing Disclosure if the person deals in any relevant securities of the offeree company or of any securities exchange offeror. A Dealing Disclosure must contain details of the dealing concerned and of the person's interests and short positions in, and rights to subscribe for, any relevant securities of each of (i) the offeree company and (ii) any securities exchange offeror, save to the extent that these details have previously been disclosed under Rule 8. A Dealing Disclosure by a person to whom Rule 8.3(b) applies must be made by no later than 3.30 pm (London time) on the business day following the date of the relevant dealing. If two or more persons act together pursuant to an agreement or understanding, whether formal or informal, to acquire or control an interest in relevant securities of an offeree company or a securities exchange offeror, they will be deemed to be a single person for the purpose of Rule 8.3. Opening Position Disclosures must also be made by the offeree company and by any offeror and Dealing Disclosures must also be made by the offeree company, by any offeror and by any persons acting in concert with any of them (see Rules 8.1, 8.2 and 8.4). Details of the offeree and offeror companies in respect of whose relevant securities Opening Position Disclosures and Dealing Disclosures must be made can be found in the Disclosure Table on the Takeover Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk, including details of the number of relevant securities in issue, when the offer period commenced and when any offeror was first identified. You should contact the Panel's Market Surveillance Unit on +44 (0)20 7638 0129 if you are in any doubt as to whether you are required to make an Opening Position Disclosure or a Dealing Disclosure. Publication on website A copy of this announcement will be made available, free of charge subject to certain restrictions relating to persons resident in Restricted Jurisdictions, at http://www.steinhoffinternational.com by no later than 12 noon (London time) on the Business Day following the date of this announcement. Neither the content of the website referred to in this announcement nor the content of any website accessible from hyperlinks on Steinhoff's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement. You may request a hard copy of this announcement, free of charge, by contacting the Company Secretary at Steinhoff UK Holdings Limited, 5th Floor Festival House, Jessop Avenue, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 3SH, United Kingdom. Darty shareholders may also request that all future documents, announcements and information to be sent to them in relation to the Increased Offer should be in hard copy form. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25.04.2016 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language: English Company: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. Herengracht 466 1017 CA Amsterdam Netherlands Phone: +27218080700 Fax: +27218080800 E-mail: investors@steinhoffinternational.com Internet: www.steinhoffinternational.com ISIN: NL0011375019 WKN: A14XB9 Indices: MDAX Listed: Regulated Market in Frankfurt (Prime Standard); Regulated Unofficial Market in Munich, Stuttgart End of News DGAP News Service --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 457563 25.04.2016 SALT LAKE CITY, UT , April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the President of Green Star Products, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: GSPI), Joseph LaStella, reviewed the progress of the Company made in 2015 and assesses the company's outlook for 2016. Mr. LaStella stated, In order to reduce our expenses and increase our exposure to foreign markets the Company adopted a new business strategy wherein GSPI would license other green companies to sell our products and these companies would reciprocate allowing us to sell their green products through GSPI. This is a long term strategy to increase our domestic market and enter international markets without increasing the Companys financial expenditures. This has worked especially well for GSPI in successfully reducing our operating expenditures by 52% and increasing our profit margins by over 27%. GSPI has engineering expertise, advanced technologies and products which span several industries. Therefore, we have many opportunities to team up with several organizations to pursue mutually beneficial markets for our businesses, as follows: Nano-Lubrication Division Our lubrication and cleaning products for the firearms and machine shops industries are sold by Modern Spartan Systems (www.modernspartansystems.com) and also see the TVT Green website (www.tvtgreen.com). These superior multiple lubrication products have begun to impact several industries. The websites have multiple videos that clearly indicate the advantage of our nano-products. These products have been sold to many military, government and industrial organizations. Customers, including manufacturers, have been convinced by conducting their own certified lubricant tests which have been very similar to the impressive website video demonstrations. GSPI is presently delivering product to the USA and China and expects 2016 to be a banner year for these products. Green Star is in the process of expanding the production facilities for TV Green products in anticipation of larger orders in 2016. GSPI as Engineering Consultant and Technology Provider GSPI has rendered consulting services for several companies including an electric car manufacturer and a microalgae production company. In 2015, GSPI built and operated, under contract, a 70,000 liter premium showcase algae production facility located near South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas, Nevada. The successful results of this demonstration facility have warranted an expansion by owners in Mexico who furnish premium organic fertilizers for the farming sector. GSPI will continue to play an important role as engineering consultant and technology provider for this operation in Mexico. GSPI has also been offered an opportunity to build and operate algae facilities in China from Chinese representatives who have visited the demonstration facility in Las Vegas. We will continue to negotiate our business strategy position for this opportunity. Alternate Fuel Industry In February 2014, the President of GSPI received a high-tech loop reactor patent (US Pat. #8648209). The loop reactor is the backbone of highly efficient biodiesel plants manufactured by Green Star Products. Most present day biodiesel production systems require up to three hours and three different processes to convert the various feedstock oils through a transesterification process to produce crude biodiesel. The loop reactor does all these processes in one step and in less than five minutes. Although the biodiesel industry in the United States has waned because of the continuing high cost of feedstock and low fuel oil prices, this is not true in many foreign markets. These markets are searching for long term solutions to satisfy the demands for renewable energy and reduced carbon footprint. GSPI continues to occupy a respected position in this industry as a premium biodiesel provider and continues to receive inquiries from foreign countries that are interested in the future of the biodiesel production industry. Advanced Nano-Coatings Green Star is also marketing a variety of advanced coatings (nano-coatings) which offer significant thermal resistance and strong rust protection for industrial applications. These products offer huge energy savings and long term infrastructure protection. The Company has participated in successfully completing a four building project at an important United States military facility in the past. At the same time, we have concentrated heavily on introducing these products into China and other Asian markets. The Chinese marketplace has been difficult to break into because they do not accept most of the test work done by outside entities. GSPI has had an office in Beijing for several years, which has integrated both private firms and government agencies to bridge this gap. The Company has been successfully completing all of the required tests in China. GSPI has been delivering minor orders to China and recently has participated in a significant delivery of product to a major Asian client through our China representatives. GSPI anticipates much larger orders in 2016 through the completed successful test and demonstration program which we have diligently pursued during the past couple of years in China. In conclusion, Mr. LaStella and GSPI expect 2016 to be an exciting technological year for Green Star and we fully expect that we have emerged into a profit producing mode directly related to our new business strategy. The year 2015 was the first year to produce a net profit (although modest) since our revenue producing years in 2007 and 2008 before the economic decline in the United States and world markets. About Green Star Products Green Star Products, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: GSPI) is an environmentally friendly public company dedicated to creating innovative and cost effective products to improve the quality of life and the environment. GSPI and its consortium are involved in the production of green sustainable goods including renewable resources such as algae based biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol and other clean-burning biofuels, as well as other green products including lubricants, cleaners, coatings, additives and devices that reduce emissions and improve fuel economy in vehicles, machinery and power plants. For more information please visit http://www.gspi.com, email us at jplastella@yahoo.com or call us at 1-800-741-7648 and 1-800-340-9784. Forward-looking statements in the release are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, continued acceptance of the company's products, increased levels of competition, new products and technological changes, dependence on third-party suppliers, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's periodic filings. CONTACT: Joseph LaStella President Green Star Products, Inc. jplastella@yahoo.com CHICAGO, April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The John Marshall Law School in Chicago will co-host the Federal Circuit Bar Association's conference "Patent Litigation 2016: The Courts and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board" on April 28. The event is sponsored by the Federal Circuit Bar Association in conjunction with The John Marshall Law School, The Notre Dame Law School and DePaul University College of Law. Speakers at the event include Hon Sharon Prost, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Hon. Ruben Castillo, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and Hon Edmond E. Chang of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. In addition, Hon. Nathan Kelley, Acting Chief Administrative Judge of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and expert legal practitioners and law professors will also be participating. The April 28 discussion continues John Marshall's tradition of leading conversations about the future of intellectual property (IP) law. There have been five recent events on this theme. John Marshall's nationally ranked IP program, directed by Professor Daryl Lim, is one of 42 law schools in the country to participate in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Law School Clinic Certification Program. It is the only law school in Illinois whose USPTO program offers both patent and trademark legal services to independent inventors and small businesses on a pro bono basis. About The John Marshall Law School The John Marshall Law School, founded in 1899, is an independent law school located in the heart of Chicago's legal, financial and commercial districts. The 2017 U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Graduate Schools ranks John Marshall's Lawyering Skills Program 5th, its Trial Advocacy Program 19th and its Intellectual Property Law Program 21st in the nation. Since its inception, John Marshall has been a pioneer in legal education and has been guided by a tradition of diversity, innovation, access and opportunity. IRVINE, Calif., April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MRI Interventions, Inc. (OTCQB:MRIC) invites investors and analysts to participate in managements broadcast review of the Company's 2016 first quarter results. The conference call is scheduled to be broadcast live over the internet on Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time (1:30 p.m. Pacific Time) and may be accessed by visiting the Company's website at www.mriinterventions.com, selecting Investors / News / IR Calendar. The conference call may also be accessed at http://mriinterventions.equisolvewebcast.com/q1-2016. Investors and analysts who would like to participate in the conference call may do so via telephone at (877) 407-9034, or at (201) 493-6737 if calling from outside the U.S. or Canada. For those who cannot access the live broadcast, a replay will be available shortly after the completion of the call until May 5, 2016 by calling (877) 660-6853, or (201) 612-7415 if calling from outside the U.S. or Canada, and then entering conference I.D. number 413671. About MRI Interventions, Inc.: Building on the imaging power of MRI, MRI Interventions is creating innovative platforms for performing the next generation of minimally invasive surgical procedures. The ClearPoint System, which has received 510(k) clearance and is CE marked, utilizes a hospitals existing diagnostic or intraoperative MRI suite to enable a range of minimally invasive procedures in the brain. For more information, please visit www.mriinterventions.com. Statements herein concerning the Company's plans, growth and strategies may include 'forward-looking statements' within the context of the federal securities laws. Statements regarding the Company's future events, developments and future performance, as well as management's expectations, beliefs, plans, estimates or projections relating to the future, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of these laws. The Company's actual results may differ materially from those suggested as a result of various factors. Particular uncertainties and risks include those relating to: estimates regarding the sufficiency of the Companys cash resources; the Companys ability to obtain additional financing; future revenues from sales of the Companys ClearPoint System products; and the Companys ability to market, commercialize and achieve broader market acceptance for the Companys ClearPoint System products. More detailed information on these and additional factors that could affect the Company's actual results are described in the "Risk Factors" sections of the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Company's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, which will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Platform Specialty Products Corporation (NYSE:PAH) ("Platform") announced today that it intends to release its 2016 first quarter financial results after the markets close on Monday, May 9, 2016. Platform will host a webcast/dial-in conference call to discuss its financial results at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Monday, May 9, 2016. Participants on the call will include Rakesh Sachdev, Chief Executive Officer, Sanjiv Khattri, Chief Financial Officer and Benjamin Gliklich, Executive Vice President Operations and Strategy. To listen to the call by telephone, please dial (855) 357-3116 (domestic) or (484) 365-2867 (international) and provide the Conference ID: 99782126. The call will be simultaneously webcast at www.platformspecialtyproducts.com. A replay of the call and webcast will be available for three weeks shortly after completion of the live call at www.platformspecialtyproducts.com. About Platform Platform is a global, diversified producer of high-technology specialty chemicals and a provider of technical services. The business involves the formulation of a broad range of solutions-oriented specialty chemicals, which are sold into multiple industries, including agrochemical, animal health, electronics, graphic arts, plating, and offshore oil production and drilling. More information on Platform is available at www.platformspecialtyproducts.com. skamal7 wrote: Please can some one explain the use of could in this sentence.. Here the non-underlined part of sentence uses present tense then why is the necessity to use past tense could here? Please explain have the possibility for feeding the continent, even "have the possibility of/ for" "could possibly" so even with other parts of the world continent other parts of the world In the sentence could is used as an auxiliary verb: "could" expresses a possibility, an hypothetical situation, we don't have a necessity to use "could" though.The other answer have errors:Even though sub-Saharan Africa often evokes images of drought and famine, researchers say that the area is the home of more than 2,000 grains, vegetables, roots, fruits, and other foods thatother parts of the world.A and B use a wrong idiomE is redundant: as I said before "could" expresses a possibility andis redundant.In addition E is not parallel : "feed the continent and (...) for even".(C) could feed the continent,. Structure issue, and not parallel(D) could feed theand even. Parallel and clear amit2k9 wrote: two methods here. 1. using the solutions here. x= -3/2 and x= 2/7 are solutions. check for the regions a. x<-3/2, b. -3/22/7 values are a -( 2x+3) > (7x-2) giving x <-1/9 hence not a solution. b (2x+3) > (7x-2) giving x < 1 a solution. c (2x+3) > -( 7x-2) giving x>-1/9 hence the solution is -1/9 < x < 1 or 2. squaring both sides (2x+3) ^2 > (7x-2)^2 gives 9x^2 -8x - 1 > 0 giving solution -1/9 < x < 1. Hence C you can use whichever you are comfortable with. Hi Bunuel,Thanks for the solution! I get the squaring both sides approach, but it takes over 3 minutes for me to do it that way.Is there a faster way to solve this?I noticed Amit provided another method, but I'm not sure I understand the first approach completely. Could you explain why he used the "-" sign in the first and third parts (highlighted in blue above)? Two 9/11 Memorial security guards are facing scrutiny after they broke up a group of middle school students singing the National Anthem. It turns out that singing at the Memorial is only allowed if you've acquired a $35 non-refundable permit to sing for no more than 15 minutes on "one designated day in the spring, summer and fall provided that there is no sound amplification and the group is smaller than 50 people." "Some of the students were very upset and confused," Martha Brown, the music teacher at Waynesville Middle School in Waynesville, North Carolina told the NY Post. "I told the children, 'This is a place where you need to respect authority even if you don't understand it.'" "[The guards] could have waited 30 to 45 seconds for us to finish, or he could have stopped us before we started, and it wouldnt have gone viral, she added. Probably true. One of the student's grandmothers posted the encounter online, which took place last Wednesday afternoon, soliciting 375,454 views as of this morning. Here are the tweens being cut off right at "The bombs bursting" The guards are inaudible, but Waynesville MS Principal Trevor Putnam later told reporters that permitting was the issue. One guard gave the group verbal permission, but Memorial security was not of one mind. "We obtained permission, but not correctly," Putnam said. A spokeswoman for the 9/11 Memorial tells us the guards "did not respond appropriately" and that "we are working with our security staff to ensure that this does not happen again with future student performances." For further clarification on activities that merit expulsion from the 9/11 Memorialbathing, sleeping, gambling, lighting candles, asking questions can get you ejected; but selfies are no problemyou can peruse Section XV of the Memorial's Visitor Rules and Regulations. As for the choir, they got their moment on Fox this morning, because this is America. Rabbi Eliezer Gevirtz rested his broad frame into a chair in a Riverdale cafe and ordered a falafel platter with a glass of milk. He was wearing a checkered grey blazer over a white shirt with a red tie and had a big knitted black yarmulke on his head. He carried with him a blue canvas bag and in it was a small manila envelope containing about a dozen photos from various TV, Broadway and movie sets. Larry, as hes known on IMDB, has 35 acting credits to his name. You probably recognize him, he said pointing to one of him and Neil Patrick Harris. It was taken following the filming of a scene on How I Met Your Mother. Gevirtz, 66, grew up in Washington Heights and has lived alone in Riverdale for 22 years. He taught math and Judaic Studies at a local Jewish day school from 1981 to 2013 and has also written and edited number of books: a biography of the Chofetz Chaim, a famous 19th century rabbi, as well as a guide to the basic laws of Shabbat, and a young adult detective book titled The Mystery of the Missing Bar Mitzvah Gift. These days he spends his time tutoring and writing, but occasionally hell cue up Craigslist, click on the talent button and type extra into the search box. The first listing he ever responded to appeared in a newspaper, The Jewish Press, around 1980. The film's producers were looking for men with beards. Gevirtz at the time had no previous acting experience and no desire to transition into a full time career in the arts. But he decided to pick up the phone and dial the number from the ad. He was told the movie was called The Chosen and based on the novel, of the same name, by the author Chaim Potok. I thought it would be an interesting experience, Gevirtz said when asked why he initially inquired about the job. When I was told what it was for a book that I read and liked I figured why not. He spent two days on set and had a blast. It wasnt Star Wars, it didnt take the world by storm, he said. But it was a film that was known and distributed, something I could talk to people about and that would last. (Courtesy Rabbi Eliezer Gevirtz) Since then hes appeared in a film or two almost every year. Some are for film students, who often require hours of work at strange times in strange places for no pay. Once, Gevirtz spent the night riding the subway back and forth from Brooklyn to Queens playing a homeless man. The filmmaker had no money and therefore no permit. If cops stepped onto the car filming would halt. Then there are the major productions. Those are the experiences that you can tell people about, the ones that make a great story, Gevirtz said. He brought up the time some of his students giddily approached him about a Jake and Amir sketched he appeared in on CollegeHumor.com, and the time he got to stand in the background during a flash mob scene of the Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis film, Friends With Benefits. He then told the story about the time he won a charity auction - by placing the highest bid - to appear as an extra on Broadway in Rodgers + Hammersteins Cinderella. The package included being called out on stage following the show to take a bow. Someone even asked for his autograph afterwards. That was definitely a first, he said. Gevirtz took out a picture of him posing with the cast. He noted how nice they all were, and how he got to go backstage and see how everything works. He said those are the opportunities that he cherishes, but that theres also more to his peculiar hobby. Most of the things you do in life, they disappear immediately afterwards, he said. Theres no record of them. But with film, that moment is frozen, you can look at it again and again and say, There I am, there, I left something behind. Yaron Weitzman is a freelance writer based in New York whose work has appeared in SB Nation, SLAM Magazine and Tablet Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman The state legislature is the only body with the power to change the inherently dysfunctional structure of New York City's Board of Elections, but that isn't stopping Mayor Bill de Blasio and Comptroller Scott Stringer from giving the appearance of trying. This morning, de Blasio tried to upstage the audit Stringer announced last week with an offer of $19.6 million in funding to the BOE, contingent on a number of "common-sense reforms." The money includes $1.5 million to hire a consultant to "identify and rectify systemic challenges within the organization" and to "[empanel] a blue-ribbon commission to identify failures." Also on the table are $10 million to increase poll worker pay and update poll worker training, and $8.1 million to hire professional record keepers and create email and text-message notifications for voters. The mayor said in a statement: The Board of Elections is an outdated organization in dire need of modernizationand we need to make these changes now. We cannot allow a single voter to be disenfranchised because of the Board of Elections outdated operations. These common-sense reforms will bring much-needed transparency, modernize practices, and help ensure we do not experience an Election Day like last weeks again. Stringer, meanwhile, has said, "We've got to take a sledgehammer to this," referring to the New York voting system. Stringer is undertaking a "top-to-bottom" audit of the BOE, but, seemingly conscious of the limitations of his office, refers as much to the difficulties posed by New York's restrictive voting laws as to the BOE itself. To recap, 126,000 people were stricken from the list of active registered Democrats in Brooklyn ahead of last week's presidential primary. Voters there and across the city reported finding themselves unlisted at their local polling places on Primary Day, despite being regular voters or having registered with a party ahead of the relevant deadlines. These particularly egregious problems came along with a smattering of threats, missing ballots and voter lists, misleading mail, and late-opening polling places typical of a New York City election. So far, one official, at the BOE's Brooklyn office, has been reprimanded in connection with the Primary Day problems, suspended temporarily pending an internal review. Why aren't more people getting fired, or at least providing a public accounting of what went wrong and what's going to be done to fix it? And why isn't de Blasio demanding that, instead of throwing money at consultants and email newsletter software? Because the BOE is a political patronage mill that the city has almost no control over. Inside the agency's 32 Broadway office, who you know is much more important than your qualifications to administer large datasets, and even a past criminal conviction while working for the city isn't necessarily a barrier to employment. The problem can be traced back to state laws [pdf] delineating the structure of the boards of elections for New York City's counties, and counties across the state. Each county board is overseen by commissioners who are appointed by the local Democratic and Republican party establishment. In New York City, the two commissioners for each borough are approved by the City Council, members of which depend on the backing of their parties for reelection. The state board, which loosely manages the 62 county boards, is likewise run by commissioners appointed by state leaders of each party and signed off on by the governor. It was a leaked report from the governor-controlled state Board of Elections that called out de Blasio for alleged campaign-finance violations, an odd but not surprising turn of events given the governor's own history of questionable fundraising. The Mayor's Office did indicate that de Blasio would support state legislation transferring the responsibility for managing the city Board of Elections from commissioners to the board's hired management. However, given that the commissioners vet the agency's director and clerks, it's not clear what the advantage would be of this. Still, de Blasio has the backing of some of the same good-government advocates who criticized his use of nonprofits to subvert campaign finance laws, which is now under federal scrutiny, for at least raising the need for BOE reform. "The Board of Elections is a patronage driven entity, funded by public dollars, that willfully flouts its responsibility to taxpayers," said Common Cause NY director Susan Lerner said in a statement. "Common Cause NY applauds the Mayor for introducing these significant reforms to deliver an efficient system of elections that works for all New Yorkers." In a statement, Stringer said that state lawmakers need to professionalize the election boards, but in the meantime proposals like those de Blasio is making are a good idea. "What we need is state legislation to reform the Board of Elections and install a professional, non-partisan board of directors," Stringer said. "But the BOE could start tomorrow to improve operations by providing better training for poll workers, and instituting new hiring policies that are transparent, consistent, and fair." The BOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the mayor's proposals. An elderly Bronx man was killed in an elevator Sunday afternoon after getting into an argument with his neighbor. The dispute reportedly had something to do with holding the elevator doors open. According to police, Felix Rodriguez, 74, was found unresponsive on the floor of an elevator at 2824 University Avenue shortly after 3 p.m. Sunday. Rodriguez was rushed to Allen Pavilion Hospital, but could not be saved. Rodriguez had been arguing with his neighbor, Joaquin Feliciano, 57, about holding the elevator door open, the Daily News reports. It remains unclear which of the two men had been holding the door, but police say Rodriguez punched Feliciano in the head during their altercation, before he himself was knocked to the ground. "I fucked him up," Feliciano told police officers at the scene, according to the News. Police arrested Feliciano on the scene and have charged him with manslaughter. Apr 25, 2016 1:00 AM Author: Rob Tennant When many people think of Tourette's Syndrome, they think of compulsive swearing. But University of Utah Tourette's Center of Excellence Clinical Program Manager Eva Tukuafu, MSW, CSW, explains that's not the whole story. "People focus on that because it's what they see in movies and on TV," she says. The truth is that coprolalia, the compulsive use of socially inappropriate words and phrases, only affects a small portion of people diagnosed with Tourette. So if Tourette's isn't swearing, what is it, and how can it be treated? University of Utah Health's program is one of 10 national Centers of Excellence designated by the Tourette Association of America (TAA). Center of Excellence Director Michael Himle, PhD, defines Tourette as a relatively rare tic disorder usually manifesting in childhood and considered by many experts to be on a spectrum with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In order for a person to be diagnosed with Tourette, they must exhibit both vocal and motor tics. Brooklyn, a 12-year-old Center of Excellence patient, is one of many kids successfully treated and supported through the Center, the only regional treatment resource of its kind. Difficult to Diagnose Brooklyn remembers the exact date her first vocal tic surfaced: November 23, 2014. She was ten years old. "At first, we just thought it was a cough," Brooklyn said. "Early tics often manifest as coughs or sniffles," says Himle. "They're often misdiagnosed as allergies." But after a negative test for whooping cough, visits to multiple specialists and one ENT's camera up her nose, a neurologist at Primary Children's finally diagnosed the chronic cough as a transient tica compulsive vocalization that came and went. About a month later, she added an unspecified motor tica compulsive movement that prompted a Tourette diagnosis and referral to the Center. That was July 2015, nearly eight months after her first tic surfaced. Since then, Brooklyn has acquired other tics, some of which she gives names like "Terry," or "Jerry," as if they're a rotating cast of characters dropping in and out of her life. Tics come and go for patients with Tourette. Some of Brooklyn's have included stomping, gasping, and coprolalia. "I say inappropriate things at inappropriate times," Brooklyn admits, matter-of-fact. Treatment Options With just between .5 percent and 1 percent of the population affected by the complex disorder, treatment options for Tourette are complicated. According to Himle, treatment is highly individualized and depends on factors like age and other diagnoses. "Comorbidities are very common with Tourette," says Tukuafu. Many patients diagnosed with Tourette's also have attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). A smaller number have a tendency toward general impulsivity or even Autism Spectrum disorder or Intermittent Explosive Disorder. "We don't have a cure for Tourette. We talk about learning to live with it," says Himle. "The first step is to treat those comorbidities, then we can sort out what symptoms are the Tourette's and which aren't." There are medications to treat Tourette-related symptoms, and for years they were the only treatment available. Unfortunately, the medications in question can have serious side effects and so, unless tics are causing direct harm to the patient or significantly interfering with daily life, currently the recommended first option for treatment is Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics, or CBIT (pronounced See-bit). New Hope Through CBIT "Clinical trials show that for many patients, CBIT can be nearly as effective as even some of the 'heavier-hitting' medications," says Himle. "And the positive effects tend to be lasting in the long-term." Unfortunately, access to CBIT is limited. According to Himle, a survey of Tourette families showed that most patients had never been exposed to the therapy simply because no specialist in their area was trained to offer it. To combat this lack of access, Himle, with support from the Tourette Association of America (TAA) travels extensively in an effort to train therapists in the application of CBIT. To date, this program has trained over 300 therapists internationally. "That's just scratching the surface, though," says Himle. "Most of those are in academic medical centers, so they're concentrated in cities. That leaves a lot of underserved territory out there." That's why Himle is searching for ways to broaden the reach of CBIT. The therapy has been shown to be effective when administered online with video call technology. Himle is also currently involved in the clinical testing of an interactive online program, TicHelper, to teach the basics of CBIT to patients and their families. Though not a replacement for the intervention of a trained therapist, the method shows promise in helping patients while they seek a more permanent treatment solution. Support Through Groups, Education Beyond CBIT, patients with Tourette may also benefit from occupational therapies. Many see benefits from the education and support services offered by the Center for Excellence. When Brooklyn was first diagnosed, she had some success with CBIT. Brooklyn and her family also credit Eva Tukuafu, who acts as the center's resident social worker in addition to her duties as program manager, with helping them to navigate the world of living of with Tourette. "We attend the Center's support group religiously," says Brooklyn's mother, Beckie, referring to the monthly group run by Tukuafu in Salt Lake City for families and patients living with Tourette. A similar group also meets monthly in Utah County. "I love my friends at support group," Brooklyn adds. "I feel like I can tell them anything and they understand because they've dealt with it too." But it's when dealing with Brooklyn's school that Beckie says Tukuafu has been invaluable. "Last school year was really tough," Beckie says, "But this year Eva reached out to Brooklyn's teachers and conducted training before school started that has made a huge difference in how any problems are handled as they come up." As difficult as living with Tourette can be, Brooklyn maintains a positive attitude. "I feel like I have this for a reason. Every day, kids come up to me at school and tell me their problems and I'm able to relate and help them, and that makes me happy," she says. "If I didn't have Tourette's, I wouldn't have met all of the amazing people I've met. It's a great opportunity." Administrators with the U.S. Small Business Administration like to say the agency doesnt fund sinners, saints or landlords -- casinos, nonprofits or real estate developers -- but will consider loan guarantees to help out just about anyone else. Thats good news for most businesses in Montana, where small agriculture, construction, retail and other companies account for more than two-thirds of the states workforce. Agency officials said such businesses -- including Helenas own Ten Mile Brewery and Big Sky Cyclery -- combined to secure more than $1 billion in SBA loan guarantees over the past few years, helping them to create, by some estimates, more than 7,000 jobs. All that growth has also been a boon for the Treasure States more than three dozen local economic development organizations -- nonprofits like the Helena-based Montana Business Assistance Connection that looks to create jobs by passing along loans, grants and other financial assistance doled out by state and federal agencies. Representatives with many of those agencies joined dozens of business owners and elected officials in Butte this week for a biannual conference that featured a keynote speech from Betsy Markey, the Denver-based chief administrator overseeing the SBA region that includes Montana. Markey, speaking during an interview with the Independent Record on Wednesday, said spirits at the conference were high, as economic development professionals turn their attention to helping companies with job and technology training efforts -- many put on the backburner during the Great Recession. The hurdles still faced by those businesses -- an aging population, shrinking workforce and lackluster wage growth -- are by now pretty familiar. So are the solutions, said SBA District Director Wayne Gardella. Gardellas prescription for what ails the states economy features heavy doses of SBA-backed financial capital, but also plenty of free or low-cost contracting advice and business counseling -- the agencys two other areas of expertise. Gardella, a former banker who has headed up the SBAs Helena office since 2013, said hes helped more than a few entrepreneurs buy equipment, draw up their first business plan or talk their way into a bank loan. His eight-person office also helps businesses get on the General Services Administration schedule, a kind of Sears catalog where federal agencies go to pick out local contractors. But Gardella said sometimes, the best thing he can do for the community is talk a prospective business owner out of setting up shop. A lot of the work is best practices, Gardella explained. We probably talk 60 or 70 percent of people out of going into business, because theyre just not ready. We dont create one single job doing that, but maybe we save the guys house and his marriage. Sharon Franjevic, who does marketing and promotional work for the SBA, said despite the gobs of financing and consulting, not all prospective business owners know about the agencys services. Markey, herself a former small business owner, applauded Franjevics efforts, adding she's seen firsthand what the agency can do. Small businesses dont have the resources, like the big companies do, to find out what those big (federal) contracts are, Markey said. When my husband and I first started out, I wanted to get us on GSAs (contracting) schedule. ... SBA helped out on that, helped us figure out how to do it. It was nice to have that, because youve got small businesses, and exporters as well, that want to take their business to the next level. Those kind of services are important. YORK -- While Last Chance Gulch was drawing in hundreds of miners in the 1860s to what is now Helena, 30 miles away -- four Sun River prospectors discovered gold in a gulch along Trout Creek in January 1866, spurring the growth of present-day York. Originally named New York City, York would grow to anywhere from 1,000 to 7,000 residents, depending on what history source you look at, said Bruce Whittenberg, director of Montana Historical Society, who was the opening speaker Saturday at a York 150th anniversary kick-off event at the York Community Hall. Also joining at the festivities was Louise Ogemahgeshig Fischer, an artist from the Anishinaabe, or Chippewa, tribe of Minnesota, who lives in the York area. She spoke about the prehistoric people traveling through the area some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. As far as mining history goes, its been a boom-and-bust cycle in York. Placer mining played out by 1874, said Whittenberg, but hydraulic mining took off a short time later. The Trout Creek Mining Company mined the gulch 1888-1889, said Whittenberg, and a year later the Golden Messenger Mine opened and continued operation until 1945. It would be lauded in an April 16, 1928, edition of The Mining Truth as an immense deposit, said Whittenberg. And in May 1935, the Independent Record reported that the Golden Messenger was ready to expand production. Local mining also got a boost from the 1890 discovery of sapphires in El Dorado Bar, Whittenberg said. Despite minings ebb and flow, York endures and celebrates its history in its community hall and museum. Here we are in an area that was once known for its immense gold deposit, probably better known today for its immense burgers, quipped Whittenberg, referring to the Yorks Bar claim to fame. Lets not forget the boom times and the times that made this community what it was 150 years ago -- gave it its life, he said, praising the courage and ingenuity of the prospectors. Those same qualities live on in Yorks citizens today, he said, who are living there, taking care of York and preserving its history. Fischer shared a diorama shes created of the Dog Day People, who traveled the Old North Trail, a major historic travel route from Canada to Mexico used by early people that passes through Lewis and Clark County. Wearing an ornate, beaded traditional dress, Fischer greeted the group of about 40 attendees with an Ojibway song and spoke of how early people of this area relied on dogs to pull heavy loads on travois and to carry packs. This is my imagining what they would look like, she said, adding that these Clovis Era people had few possessions and lived totally off the land. A man with a spear led the party, followed by a woman carrying a bundle of wood and holding a leash to the dog pulling a travois that held a baby. Other people and dogs loaded with packs followed behind. Fischer also demonstrated the type of weapons early people would have used and how these evolved -- first from large spears to kill mastodons and giant beaver to the later atlatls and bow and arrow. Imagine back in this time having to make your arrow so you could eat, she said. She also passed around dried elk sinew so viewers could see what native people used for making arrows, wrapping tools and sewing clothing. Everything they made from the land, plants and animals, she said. Holding up a heavy rounded stone, Fischer showed how it was used to grind berries and meat to make pemmican, a staple food for American Indians, which was her main food as a child. She also told of the spiritual history and special handling of the jingle dresses, which were created following a dream of a man who was trying to heal his dying daughter. The dresses are often worn at powwows in ceremonial dances. Fischer and many other American Indian people continue to do the ceremonies that have been passed down from their ancestors, she said. She also spoke about spiritual time in everyday life. A relative will ask her, What did you feed your spirit today? What did you feed your soul today? It gets you thinking about your real spiritual life, Fischer said. There is too much democracy in American politics. But there is not enough democracy in American government today. This isn't the paradox it seems. Government and politics are not the same thing. Politics is the business of political parties and elections. Parties' core functions are recruiting and selecting nominees for office, running general election campaigns and organizing party caucuses in legislatures. All these activities have become more democratic in the modern reform age, 1968 to the present. The rise and dominance of popular primaries since 1968 is the towering achievement. More democracy in the parties, however, has created monster campaigns that shackle democratic government and weakened the party leadership needed to make Congress work. Government is the business of those who already have legitimate power -- legislators, presidents (and governors), civil servants and judges. Our most democratic institution, Congress, is meant to be balanced by executive and judicial power. Since the Clinton-Gingrich wars in the 1990s, dysfunction in the legislative branch has caused power to flow to the less democratic institutions, especially the judiciary and the Supreme Court. The designated voice of the people, Congress, babbles incoherently. America's political parties are mistrusted. But they need to be stronger for the federal system to regain proper balance. That means parties need to compromise their internal democracy. This is heresy in reform doctrine, which prefers open democracy in all civic institutions. But we've learned that parties without bosses and whips are like wagons without drivers; they wander aimless trails marked by horse manure. Political reformation has tilted at three windmills: democratizing the nomination process with primaries, getting money out of politics and, most recently, retooling primaries so they produce more moderate nominees who will vanquish partisan polarization. (The preferred formats are nonpartisan blanket primaries, also called top two primaries, used now in California and Washington, for example.) The problem is, our two parties are reform-resistant, according political scientist Seth Masket's new book, "The Inevitable Party." Parties are not stagnant, structured institutions like corporations or agencies; they are wily, perpetually evolving "networks of intense and creative policy demanders." He is right. Just look at the record of modern reform. The nomination process is more open but at an unacceptable cost -- the current, broken election process. Campaign finance reform hasn't just failed; it has backfired -- more money than ever comes from fewer donors with less disclosure. And scattered anti-polarization reforms haven't had much impact and probably won't; if the country is truly polarized (a big "if") tinkering with primary formats is like having a pizza party in Baghdad. The reform impulse is fundamentally confused. It dreams of a democracy without competitive, power-hungry parties, though history offers no examples. It has faith that there can be boss-less, egalitarian parties that will yield stronger, nobler government. The Founders knew better and disliked parties and didn't mention parties in the Constitution. (Big mistake: more on that later.) Once in power, of course, they formed parties. Parties appear to be a necessary ingredient of democracy, no matter how unsavory. The idea that democracy within parties was important is new. The Founders, I suspect, would have thought it silly. Members of Congress and then conventions selected presidential nominees for our first two centuries. Popular primaries were a reform of the Progressive era. They didn't become ubiquitous until after 1972. Coincidentally or not, public trust and confidence in government and its leaders has declined inexorably since. The length of campaigns has increased inexorably and grotesquely. No other country has campaigns nearly so long and few use popular primaries. Candidates at all levels no longer need parties. Donors finance campaigns, not parties. Campaigns have direct access to voters through social media and the web; they are not dependent on party permissions. Bernie Sanders isn't even a Democrat and doesn't pretend to be one! It is absurd. FDR and LBJ must be spinning in their graves. Among the many unintended negative consequences of the reform movement, one stands out: Party leaders in Congress have no real power over their members, no whip. This exacerbates gridlock and partisan paralysis. The branch of government intended to be the most democratic is now sclerotic and handicapped. I hope against hope that the embarrassment of this year's election scares the country enough to act. My heretical, un-American recommendations aren't progressive reforms but Machiavellian repairs. First, the system needs to be rigged more. Voters and donors should have less power in the nomination process; elected officials and party officials should have more. Primaries should have a diminished role and shouldn't be permitted until after the Fourth of July in election years. Some corrupt party practices need to end as well. Parties should have no role in drawing legislative districts; let the judicial branch govern that. And traps the current two-party duopoly built to abort new parties should be dismantled. Most of this is impossible or impractical under current law. Thus my second argument is that the Constitution must no longer be silent on political parties. They are entrenched in our political system and should be governed, in part, by constitutional authority in the form of amendments. The passing ideological predilections of various Supreme Courts have mucked up the job for long enough. Is this fantasy politics? Perhaps, but Donald Trump has proved that conventional wisdom isn't always wise. The very fact that he is on the cusp of power is another indicator that the parties need to be less democratic in order to make government more democratic, which is what matters most. BUTTE -- Paul Joyce, a Butte native who was a dean at the University of Idaho, was found dead in a car that had been submerged in the Dworshak Reservoir in Idaho, authorities said. Joyce, 57, who graduated from Butte High School in 1977, was found in his Toyota Prius around 5:20 p.m. Saturday, according to the Clearwater County Sheriffs Office. The county is in northern Idaho and borders Montana. The cause of death has not been determined. The University of Idaho shared news of his death on Facebook Sunday. "It is with shock and great sorrow that we share with you the death of Paul Joyce, Dean of the College of Science," the university posted on Facebook. "Paul died in a car accident Saturday. Our thoughts and deep condolences are with his family, friends and colleagues during this very sad time." Joyce joined the university's faculty in 1991 and was appointed dean of the College of Science in 2013. "He was ... admired by staff and faculty, as well as his students, for his dedication and interdisciplinary efforts. He will be sorely missed," the university's Facebook post added. Joyce lived in Moscow, Idaho. His siblings include Eileen Joyce, who is the county attorney in Butte-Silver Bow. MISSOULA -- Few hikers ever reach Glacier National Parks Grace Lake. Fish have an even harder time getting there. That makes it a perfect spot to try some ambitious research aimed at helping the parks native fish endure a future of climate change and invasive species. A plan outlining the long-range goals for that research is up now for public review. Were trying to lay out a vision for where were going in the next 10 to 20 years, said Chris Downs, Glaciers head fisheries biologist. We want as much as we can to restore things to their natural state. Its going to be a substantial level of activity for the park. In the case of Grace Lake, a substantial waterfall blocks natural fish migration between it and the much-larger Logging Lake on the parks west side. Grace would have been fish-less, except that the National Park Service decided to artificially stock it with Yellowstone cutthroat trout in the 1920s. The waterfall has kept native westslope cutthroat and bull trout out of Grace. It also has blocked access to lake trout, an invasive species that has nearly wiped out the natives since it colonized most of Glacier's western lakes from Flathead Lake. Were looking at what we can do to help native fish in a changing climate, Downs said. Invasive fish occupy habitat, which reduces natives ability to adapt to climate changes. Thats made us think we may have to do things differently, like maybe expand populations to new areas of the park. Like moving bull trout upstream of the waterfall to Grace Lake. Park biologists already have done extensive work on the Grace Lake project, and even moved some bull trout there. That may have been just in time. In 2014, they were able to capture 111 juvenile bull trout in the stream above Logging Lake. Last year, they found just a single bull. The research plan up for consideration would direct management of all Glaciers fish habitat. The million-acre park has 725 lakes and ponds, more than 174 perennial marshes and wetlands, and about 1,500 miles of perennial streams within its boundaries. Those water bodies host 17 native fish species and a wide array of amphibians and aquatic insects. Glacier National Parks native aquatic ecosystems are essential in maintaining regional biodiversity, Glacier Superintendent Jeff Mow said. However, the parks lakes and streams are increasingly threatened by non-native invasive fish and other organisms, and by the impacts of climate change. This plan will evaluate a variety of methods for addressing these threats in a comprehensive way. Tactics considered include moving native fish to new homes; removing non-native fish by netting, trapping, electrofishing and poisoning; and allowing some lakes to either naturally repopulate or remain fishless. Work crews may build fish passage barriers in some places to prevent invasive species from reaching pristine habitats. The plan considers changes to Glaciers angling rules, including whether to impose fees or permits on the currently unregulated activity. The proposed plan has several alternatives, including using only mechanical means like netting and trapping to remove nonnative fish or chemical means like rotenone. Alternatives proposed by the public also may be considered. Because of Glaciers geological history, it has a lot of self-contained laboratories where we can preserve functioning native ecosystems at a smaller scale, said Wade Fredenberg, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who coordinates with Downs and the Glacier research. But theres a lot we dont know. When you see a lake trout in the upper North Fork of the Flathead River above Polebridge, we dont know with certainty where those fish came from. They could have come from Kintla Lake as easily as Flathead. The North Fork and Middle Fork of the Flathead River form extensive parts of Glaciers boundaries. The park shares biological management with other federal agencies and Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks for those waters. Ole, Park and Nyaak creeks serve as important bull trout spawning streams that reinforce those species numbers in Flathead Lake. Public comments are due by Wednesday, May 11. The scoping brochure is available through the parks planning website: parkplanning.nps.gov/FishAquaticsPlanEIS. Comments can be made directly through this website. Written comments can also be submitted to: Superintendent, Glacier National Park, Attn: Fish and Aquatics Plan/EIS, PO Box 128 West Glacier, Montana 59936. Public scoping meetings will be held on Wednesday, May 4, in Great Falls at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and on Thursday, May 5, in Kalispell, at the Flathead National Forest Supervisors Office from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. CLINTON Clinton Chamber of Commerce Director Marian Brisard thinks the time has arrived for DeWitt County residents to change their mindset from wondering if the Clinton Power Station will close, to when it will close. Earlier this month, Exelon announced the nuclear power plant is committed to operating through May 31, 2017. But the plant's future is up in the air after that. We know its going to happen eventually, Brisard said. We hope that it wont have a premature closure. Thats the problem right now. We know they arent ready to go, and the community isnt ready for them to go. We have all been kind of not thinking about this, but now it is blatantly clear that we have to begin thinking about it. Its going to be a big impact on our community, almost as much as when Revere left. The Corning Revere plant opened in 1950, but closed in July 1999. About 350 workers lost their jobs. Of the 692 Exelon employees of the power plant, about 200 live in DeWitt County, said company officials. "Those are good jobs and will leave the community, said Clinton City Administrator Tim Followell. You cant replace those jobs because many of them are specific to the nuclear power industry. You cant just build a new one to replace those. Exelon officials said an analysis by the state of Illinois concludes closure of the plant would result in the loss of almost 1,900 direct and indirect jobs. In October 1970, Illinois Power Company officials announced plans to build a $429 million power plant with a 5,000-acre cooling lake. Early estimates placed the cost at about $500 million. By the time it went online in September 1987, the price tag was estimated at $4.25 billion, making it the second most expensive nuclear reactor in the United States at the time. Ruth Stauffer, executive director of the DeWitt County Development Council, said more than 100 homes could be on the market if the plant closes. The plant has always been scheduled to close in 2026 and thats not that far away, she said, referring to expiration of the plant's current reactor operating license that was issued April 17, 1987, and will expire Sept. 29, 2026. We are going to lose the people who have come here specifically because of the nuclear plant. And, then when you have more than 100 homes that are empty, think of the ramifications on property taxes and local sales throughout the county. It will be a dramatic effect. Officials said the premature retirement of the Clinton Power Station also would have a huge impact on local government and school finances. For tax year 2014, Clintons tax payments to local taxing bodies were $13 million, said Brett Nauman, communications manager at the Clinton Power Station. The Clinton Community School District received $8.3 million, accounting for 53 percent of its property tax revenue. To lose the Clinton Power Station would be devastating to us, to say the least, said Clinton Superintendent Curt Nettles. Nettles is in his first year at Clinton, and before taking the job, he knew the upcoming risks due to frequent discussions with former superintendent Jeff Holmes. If the plant closes and we lose tax revenue, then what we will do is present options to our community and give them some scenarios, said Nettles. We will say this is what the loss of the tax dollars will do to our programs and staff and here is the tax rate if you want to keep this or that. My hope is that we will land somewhere in the middle between what we have now and what we will lose. Other taxing districts at risk include: Richland Community College District that received $1.1 million in 2014; DeWitt County ($2.2 million); and the Vespasian Warner Public Library in Clinton ($446,928). The City of Clinton would lose $84,000 annually for fire protection services, but the community would be affected in other ways, too. The company does so much charity and in-kind work that it would really hurt a lot of the local agencies and organizations, said Followell. Its not just the company, its the employees themselves. They are very good at donating their time and money for good causes. In 2014, for example, Clinton Power Station employees raised more than $100,000 for local organizations and sponsored blood drives for local hospitals, said Clinton Police Chief Ben Lowers. The plant employs a large number of veterans that have either fund raised or individually donated more than $40,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project since 2013, he said. These employees are highly skilled, civic-minded people that take pride in our community and band together when things get tough. These individuals spend their money at local businesses and restaurants, too. The potential closure of the plant was a factor that Save-A-Lot grocery store owner Dave Jackson considered before he announced plans to build a new store in Clinton. It gives me cause for concern, but it didnt stop my plans, he said. Im optimistic opening a new store is the right thing to do, but the loss of the plant would have a major impact on every aspect of this community. They have been an extremely good neighbor and have been a great support to the local economy. Its a day I never hope will come, added County Board Chairman Dave Newberg. Its a tremendous asset and it is great for jobs and people spending money in DeWitt County and our neighboring counties. "Everyone would suffer and the school districts would take a big hit so we have to do everything we can to make sure this remains in operation. We have to fight this and I believe our residents will do that. DECATUR Kent West never lost faith in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. It just took a few Easters to come around: 34 to be exact, as 1982 was the last year the object of his adoration had moved among the world of men and showed signs of life. But finally on this Easter Sunday just past, he was ready to reveal the secret he had managed to conceal from his wife, Lea: Their rusted out, clapped-out '55 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible was back from the dead. Restored from the ground up and dazzling in its two-tone regal turquoise and ivory paint job, West had the car outside when he interrupted a family dinner to suggest his wife slip out so they can go for a ride. More than somewhat annoyed, Lea West reluctantly agreed and was confronted by a dazzling slice of Americana she had thought was still in storage as a hunk of junk. What a surprise, she says. It didn't even look remotely like the same car; I was absolutely astounded, and people just started flocking out of nowhere to look at it. And now when you are out for a ride in it, people are like constantly flagging you down and waving. Everybody loves it. Figuring out exactly why everyone is in love with it is probably the material for a doctoral thesis in anthropology. West says nostalgia drives at the heart of the phenomena, kindling our burning love for a rolling artifact from the middle of America's Century, a simpler time when I Love Lucy was on the black-and-white TV and the nation's hopes, incomes and prospects had hit overdrive. And yet it also goes deeper than that, and touches those for whom even their parents weren't a glimmer in anybody's eye back in the days when Eisenhower was president. I go down the street, and I see these little kids, these 12-year-olds, and they are like 'Hey man, '55 Bel Air ... cool', says West. It's history everybody likes. Let's take a quick drive through this particular '55's past. It was No. 14,000 on a production run of just 41,000 and was sold through the El Bauer dealership in Decatur. West, who is 65 and grew up in the city, was a neighbor of the original owner and remembers going for some hair-raising rides in it as a little kid. The woman behind the wheel, who might have been the inspiration for the Beach Boys Little Old Lady from Pasadena, drove like the devil. Her nickname was 'Jet' because she was always flying down the road, West says. She'd fly down Wood Street and never stop; she didn't believe in stop signs. We kids thought it was so much fun. West, who has identical brothers Kevin and Kim, born 10 minutes apart, clubbed together their lawn mowing money (it took three weeks of their combined earnings) and bought the car for $150 when they were 16. They shared it among themselves, which made for some interesting scheduling conflicts on dates, but, by common consent, West ended up with it because he was the most diligent about maintaining it. The car stayed with him through his college years and gradually declined into disuse and rusty repose. West never gave up on it, however, always intending to restore it, and the businessman towed it around as he worked in various parts of the state, hauling it as far as Chicago as his addresses changed over the years. Later, when car and owner returned to their Decatur hometown, West decided, like Elvis, that it was now or never. And his hand was tipped by discovering a vast bank of talent for hire who could make resurrections happen. Work began in May after he lined up car enthusiast Mike Hoskins to handle body and paint while Donnelly Automotive Machine rebuilt the V-8 engine to factory specs. Decatur upholstery maestro Bob McQuality, of Mac's Custom Interiors, re-created the white rag top, while Decatur's OK's Transmission Service put the vehicle back in drive. What amazes me, and seems unique, is all the places I've been, and yet it's here, in and around Decatur, that we've got all these wonderful and talented people, West says. He helped out himself with a lot of the grunt work, like sanding and metal polishing, and estimates he's dropped $15,000 on making the "Jet's chariot" roar again. He raided an old retirement account for the money, hiding the expenses from his wife and rushing out to intercept the delivery man whenever big packages such as re-created chrome trim panels showed up at the house. I felt bad because I was not telling my wife the truth, says West, who would hide his packages in the attic. She kept saying to me, 'You got to do something with that car,' and I guess in the end I felt better about what I was doing because I knew I was going to surprise her. Now the couple are getting ready to hit the car show circuit and have some fun going to drive-in movies and recapturing a sense of that whole '50s thing. West is, or course, happily married and knows that he must only use the powers of his resurrected car for good. He does, however, remember what it can do in the wrong hands. Yeah, you put that top down, and, man, girls just go nuts, he says, suddenly off cruising Memory Lane's romantic two-lane blacktop. They got that sun beatin' down on 'em, and it always changes their mood. CHARLESTON -- Tim David was happy to return to his alma mater Saturday, recalling the inaugural year of a university ROTC program and relishing the chance to try to help break a world record, too. The Chicago resident and 1982 graduate of Eastern Illinois University joined university ROTC cadets and others for a run and walk near the university's campus pond. ROTC and JROTC units across the country took part in runs Saturday to try to break a world record for the number of people taking part in a running event. "I love what they're doing here," said David, who was a cadet in the EIU Panther Battalion ROTC when it first started the year in 1981. He later entered the Army and retired as a lieutenant colonel. David said it was the news of the world record attempt that drew him to the event. More than 70 people took part in the EIU run, mostly university ROTC cadets, but also seven members of the Mattoon High School JROTC and a few others. The unit had been planning the event since last summer, and it was also to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ROTC program and the 35th anniversary of the EIU battalion, said Jasmine Winters, its public relations officer. She said she was pleased that the commemorative run ended up also being a chance for ROTC units to pull together in a unified effort. "That's what the Army is," Winters said. "I don't have to know you to help you out." She said she wasn't sure when it would be known if the record was broken. The mark was set in 2012 in the Philippines with 209,000 runners taking part. The cadets and some of the other runners participated in a 5k run with the route including some of the campus streets in addition to the Panther Trail at the pond. There was an option of a shorter walk. EIU student Janelle Chouinard, a Charleston native, said she joined in the run because she has a friend in the ROTC program. She said she enjoyed that it included a world record-breaking attempt. "Anything to encourage the program," she said. "It definitely adds another element to it." Marissa Clampett of Rantoul, who graduated from EIU last year, also has a friend in ROTC and said she wanted to support the program and the record try. Participants who weren't in ROTC paid a $24 entry fee, and the money went to an ROTC club that helps support the program's activities. BLOOMINGTON What started as a weekly wave between a little girl and her neighborhood trash hauler has become a heart-warming story for more than a half million people On Thursday mornings, 3-year-old Brooklyn Andracke anxiously awaits the arrival of the city garbage truck at her south Bloomington home. Last week, after she brought driver Delvar Dopson a cupcake from her birthday, mom Traci Andracke snapped some photos that eventually were posted on the city's Facebook page. As of Thursday, the photos had received 572,700 views, 12,000 "likes" and 544 comments, some from as far away as Hawaii, Florida and California, said Bloomington Communication Manager Nora Dukowitz. One commenter heard about it on a newscast in Florida. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought it would have gotten to where (they) have been shared a half-million times," said Dopson, 34. Since the story went viral, Dopson, a 10-year public works employee, said he has gotten emails from sanitation workers from across the nation, Japan and Canada. "They're garbage guys and blue collar workers," he added. "They're saying: 'Garbage guys aren't all smelly, they're smiley. Delvar, thanks for representing garbage guys across the nation.'" "My husband and I were just blown away," said Traci Andracke, an assistant general manager at the city-owned U.S. Cellular Coliseum. "I'm glad everyone sees the kindness behind Delvar's heart and that he wanted to make our Thursday mornings special for Brooklyn. "A lot of people said it brought them to tears. It was just such a heartwarming story of kindness in the world and the special relationship between our garbage man and my daughter." It started a year ago with then 2-year-old Brooklyn waving from the window as the garbage truck passed by, said her mom. Then Brooklyn, her mom and little brother Ty moved outside to wave. And when they missed the truck, Traci Andracke would drive the kids around the neighborhood to find the truck so Brooklyn could wave. The driver made a big point of honking and waving back, said Andracke. "He'd have a huge smile and she just felt really, really special," she added. "And so we look forward to Thursday mornings, garbage day, all week," said Andracke. "Monday morning, she starts asking if it's garbage day yet. "We didn't know him," she said. "For a while I've been thinking we should make him cookies some time just to tell him thanks." When Brooklyn's birthday happened to be on "garbage day" last week, she and her mom wrapped up a cupcake. "It was going to be a great time to meet him," said Andracke. "We were waiting for him as usual." As his truck came down her street, Brooklyn ran to the corner and her mom waved for the driver to pull over. Dopson stopped and got out of the truck. "It was the first time they met, and my daughter is usually so bubbly and outgoing and has a lot to say," said Andracke. "But as soon as he got out of his truck, she just looked at him like he was just this amazing person. She was completely speechless." Andracke explained it was Brooklyn's birthday and she wanted to give him a cupcake for making every "garbage day" so special. Afterward, Andracke posted on her personal Facebook page: "Then, melt my heart, he explained that he looks forward to seeing us every Thursday as well. He said that he has a meeting every Thursday morning and always tries to get out of there in a hurry so that he can make sure to see us every week. He said he doesn't have any kids of his own, but he mentors several children and just loves them." After he left, Andracke took her daughter to daycare. "Brooklyn was unusually quiet in the backseat," said Andracke. "I asked her if she was OK, and she said, 'Mommy, I'm so happy.'" Rather than the story ending there, it took on a life of its own. Andracke's co-workers sent some details and a photo of Brooklyn with her trash hauler to the Public Works Department, which forwarded it to Dukowitz. She posted additional photos on the city's Facebook page with Andracke's help. From there, the story spread. And spread. And spread. When Dopson returned this week, Brooklyn had a thank-you sign for him, which he placed in the front window of his truck. Dopson had something for her, too: belated birthday presents. "I didn't know I was her idol," he said. "I just looked forward to seeing this young lady every Thursday. She topped it off last week with a cupcake. "It doesn't matter if I'm a garbage man or if I'm a CFO at State Farm. We all have to discover our gift and be effective," said Dopson. "I mentor children and that is the passion in my heart. "This is my job, but my (life's) work is ... to inspire the young," he added. "I believe everybody on earth has a gift. Once they discover that gift, that's when they can make a true difference. "By me recognizing my gift, I think I'm affecting my workplace," he added. "I think everybody can do that." CLINTON Under federal law, nuclear reactors that are decommissioned must be returned to greenfield status within 60 years. Also under federal law, greenfield status is defined as an end point where a parcel of land that had been in industrial use is restored to the conditions existing before the plant's construction. Under that definition, within 60 years of the closure of the Clinton Power Station, the 4,900-acre lake, now used as a cooling source for the plant and a popular tourist destination, would have to be restored to marsh and farmland. Honestly, nobody is certain what would happen to the lake, said plant Communications Manager Brett Nauman. Its a great question, added Ted Stoner, the plant's vice president. Clinton Lake was built to cool the nuclear power plant owned by Exelon Nuclear. The company owns the lake and spillway, but the waterway is managed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Natural Resources officials declined to comment on the lake's future but did say the Clinton Lake State Recreation Area drew an estimated 948,335 visitors in 2015, the second most of any state recreational area. The lake features a 1,000-foot sand beach, and is a popular spot for swimmers, boaters and fishermen, who regularly pull in crappie, catfish, bass and walleye. Tourism related to the lake is such an important thing for Clinton, City Administrator Tim Followell said. The lake means a lot to our local businesses and residents. I cant imagine DeWitt County without the lake, added Clinton Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marion Brisard. I also cant imagine what it would do to DeWitt County. Naumann said Exelon officials are hoping to keep the plant open for the long-term future, and also are concerned about what happens to the lake if it does close. We certainly recognize the community benefits of the lake, and I know there would be a lot of discussion about that, he said. But as for saying for certain what would happen, we dont know. SHELBYVILLE -- University of Illinois architectural student Elisa Laurini has traveled around the world and plans to take a job with a firm in Seattle after she finishes her graduate studies this spring in Champaign. Even so, she said she had never seen anything like the 100-plus-year-old icosahedron (20-sided) building she toured as part of her historic preservation class. When you think of the technology they didnt have when they built this building, you really appreciate the craftsmanship and thought that went into building it, Laurini said. It really is something special. Laurini and other members of Paul Kapps class met with community volunteers working to preserve the Chautauqua building. Chairman Mark Shanks showed the group how support beams for the auditorium, that has no inside supports, had been strengthened and what future work needs to be done to ensure its integrity. Anytime we get a chance to show this building off, were glad to have it, Shanks said. Its really nice, though, to talk about it with professionals who understand the significance of Shelbyvilles Chautauqua. Kapp said he seeks out unusual buildings in Central Illinois for students to examine. The Chautauqua is interesting from a structural point of view but also inside for the stage area and acoustics, he said. Having a chance to learn about the history of this great old building also gives us an appreciation of the way it has stood here in the park for all these years. The Chautauqua group held a cleanup day last week and began painting the exterior. Future plans include a new roof, replacement glass and upgrading the interior. In an effort to draw attention to the Chautauqua, supporters have booked dances, concerts, vendor fairs and weddings for this summer. Kapp said he hoped nonarchitecture buffs would appreciate the buildings history. It was an incredibly innovative at the time it was built, and it's remarkable still, he said. To have this here in our backyard, so to speak, is something I hope everyone values. WASHINGTON -- Conservatives should be delighted that Harriet Tubman's likeness will grace the $20 bill. She was a Republican, after all, and a pious Christian. And she routinely exercised her Second Amendment right to carry a gun, which she was ready to use against anyone who stood in her way -- or any fugitive slave having second thoughts. On her long road to freedom, there was no turning back. Instead, we've had mostly silence from the right. Donald Trump did mouth off, of course, opining that slated-to-be-displaced Andrew Jackson "had a great history" and that substituting Tubman -- who, he allowed, was "fantastic" -- amounts to "pure political correctness." Ben Carson defended Jackson as "a tremendous president" who balanced the federal budget. Both men suggested that Tubman instead be put on the $2 bill, which nobody uses. That would be a great recipe for tokenism. I'm glad that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made a bolder and more meaningful choice. It matters who's on the money. Since the ancient Greeks began stamping coins with images of their gods, nations have used currency to define a pantheon of heroes. Tubman was a great hero not because of who she was but what she did: bravely fight to expand the Constitution's promise of freedom and justice to all Americans. Critics who polluted social media with invective following Lew's announcement seemed to look past Tubman's deeds and focus on her identity. Yes, she was a black woman. If anyone can't deal with that fact, and doesn't want to use the new bills when they finally come out, feel free to send them to me. Tubman was born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore around 1822. She escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, but returned to the South more than a dozen times, risking life and liberty, to lead runaway slaves to freedom. Slave owners reportedly offered bounties of thousands of dollars for capturing the diminutive woman known on the grapevine as "Moses." "I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years," she said later in life, "and I can say what most conductors can't say -- I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger." But that was just the beginning of Tubman's heroic service. During the Civil War, she guided a team of Union scouts operating in the marshlands near present-day Beaufort, S.C. In 1863, she led a raid on plantations along the Combahee River that freed more than 750 slaves -- becoming, apparently, the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault. Later in life, she worked alongside Susan B. Anthony and others in the crusade for women's suffrage. She died in 1913, frail, yet still unbowed, having lived one of the greatest of American lives. Is it political correctness or historical revisionism to put her defiant likeness in our pockets? Of course -- and high time, too. Unceasing struggle has expanded the meaning of "we the people," once reserved for white men only. As our understanding of freedom and equality has changed, so has our reading of the nation's history. In fighting for the rights of African-Americans and women, Tubman risked her life for the highest of American ideals. Her example ennobles us all. By definition, the study of history requires interpretation and assessment. The many vital contributions made by black people, women and other "outsiders" were long overlooked or undervalued. We are now able to see Tubman through a sharper lens, and she was magnificent. As for Jackson, history has been less kind. He was a major slave owner, of course, like so many of our early presidents. If that alone were enough to get a president booted from our money, we'd have no dollar bills, no nickels and no quarters. Of course we should keep George Washington and Thomas Jefferson around, understanding their flaws while celebrating their greatness. But Jackson also initiated the forced migration of thousands of Native Americans from the Southeast to the West, an exodus called the "Trail of Tears" that can only be described as genocidal. He knew that many Indians would die along the way -- just as Southern plantation owners, New York financiers and other supporters of slavery knew that keeping human beings in bondage was wrong. Still, Jackson did win the Battle of New Orleans; if he hadn't, the young nation might not have survived the War of 1812. I say let's put him on the $2 bill, if anybody can find one. Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less. Gov. Scott Walker reads Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to kindergarten students at La Casa de Esperanzas new charter school in Waukesha in September 2015. FITCHBURG Star Wars was represented, as was SpiderMan, Nemo and Barbie. There were butterfly kites, dragon kites, big kites, small kites kites of all stripes and colors. Organizers, in fact, sold out of the 100 kites they had on hand Sunday for a Hindu festival in Fitchburg. Ive never seen so many kites in my life! said Chris Dsouza, 7, a first-grader at Sunset Ridge Elementary School in Middleton. Dsouza had just stepped out to the big field at the American Hindu Associations Shiva Vishnu Temple and Cultural Center, a 7-acre property the group purchased in 2009 at 2138 S. Fish Hatchery Road. Its really awesome, said Chris father, Collin Dsouza, who had yet to unwrap their new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kite. Its great to see all the kites up in the sky. The Fitchburg festival mixed two traditional Hindu spring festivals for the first time the kite festival, and Holi, also known as the festival of colors, where participants grab handfuls of colored powder and throw it into the sky. They also put it all over their friends, family members and sometimes even strangers. All of these activities are designed to bring the community together, said Narend Reddy, president of the local American Hindu Association. It also is a chance for non-Hindus to come and integrate into the community and see what we are doing. What they are doing is constructing a 7,000-square-foot community center and temple on the property. Construction should be complete by the end of the year, Reddy said. Visitors were invited to take tours of the center-in-progress. Currently, the temples members worship in a three-bedroom house that sits on the property, but that space no longer meets the growing communitys needs. Association treasurer Samir Datta estimated that there are 3,000 Indian families in the Madison area, the majority of whom are Hindu. We feel like we are in India. The children are very happy, said Jayashri Shirule, who was at the festival with her husband, Bharat Shirule, and his parents visiting from Maharashtra, India. The couple moved to Madison 18 months ago after spending 18 months in Anchorage, Alaska. The festival felt like being back home in India, but with more space to spread out, said Bharat Shirule, an IT manager at American Girl in Middleton. Here, we have plenty of ground that we can enjoy. Reddy said that more than 300 people attended Sundays festival and ate food supplied by the Indian restaurants Swagat and Amber. The local band Sangamam, with nearly 20 members in tie-dyed shirts, played largely Bollywood tunes. In some other cities they do it on a larger scale, Reddy said. We want to get there. He is also interested in growing the groups Ratha Yatra or Chariot Festival, which will be held July 9. Last year, the event drew about 1,000 people, packing the centers grounds, said Bikash Pattnaik, one of that festivals founders. Venu Pittala, coordinator of Sundays festival, was thrilled with the turnout on a day that started with rain but became warm and sunny by the time the event started. There also was a perfect amount of wind for the kites. It was the first time in Wisconsin that the kite and color festivals had been combined, he said. We had a tremendous response from the community and not just Indians, Pittala said. The case of a Russian immigrant who police said admitted stabbing her husband to death at their rural DeForest home last year has been out of the public eye for several months now, but will return to court this summer. Irina Kolenkina, 55, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree intentional homicide for the June 13 stabbing death of her husband, Vladimir Shevchuk, 52, is scheduled for a trial that starts on July 5. Although court documents filed in the case did not appear initially to indicate that Kolenkina was claiming self-defense, she has since filed a motion to be permitted to provide evidence supporting a self-defense claim. According to court documents, Kolenkina walked Dane County Sheriffs detectives through events at the rented farmhouse on Highway DM in the town of Vienna, explaining how she shoved Shevchuk to the floor, causing him to trip over some exercise equipment, then she jumped on him and stabbed him repeatedly before he could get up. Kolenkina told detectives, through a Russian-language interpreter, that she killed her husband professionally, the way she did while working as a butcher in the meat industry in Russia, and would have cut his head off if she could. I wanted to kill him and I killed him, she told investigators, according to court documents. She told police they had argued off and on all day, and while they made food in the kitchen. They were also drinking vodka, beer and wine throughout the day, she said. She said she was angry that he made her part of his illegal schemes, including having her impersonate his deceased first wife. And she was angry that he denied her the documentation she needed to get a passport so she could leave him, court documents state. But at an upcoming motion hearing scheduled for June 16, Kolenkina wants Circuit Judge David Flanagan to rule that she can present evidence at her trial that supports a self-defense claim. Specifically, the evidence will show that Mr. Shevchuk began physically attacking Ms. Kolenkina, according to a motion filed in February, that she fought back and armed herself with a knife to attempt to warn him to stand back and end the fight, and that Mr. Shevchuk grabbed Ms. Kolenkina around the neck and began to choke and strangle her, cutting off her air supply, and in reaction to this, Ms. Kolenkina stabbed him in the chest area until he could no longer choke her. A criminal complaint and other court documents dont mention Kolenkina claiming that she was being grabbed around the neck by Shevchuk, only that their argument escalated into them pushing against one another. That was when she shoved him to the floor and stabbed him, the criminal complaint states. Kolenkinas lawyers are asking that in support of her self-defense claim, she be allowed to testify about several prior acts of violence against her by Shevchuk and be allowed to submit independent evidence corroborating those events. Madison police arrested a 38-old-man in connection with a fire that was set on the deck outside a house where he once rented a room. James T. Riendeau, 38, no permanent address, was tentatively charged with arson, Madison police said. A woman in her 50s awoke early Sunday and found flames on her deck of her house on Sunridge. She extinguished them with water and called 911, police said. Police and firefighters determined that a flammable liquid had been used to set fire to the deck, and a fence and a shrub on the property. The woman identified Riendeau, a former tenant, and officers arrested him near the intersection of Schroeder Road and Ray-O-Vac Drive. A container of lighter fluid was found in his backpack, police said. Despite a recent stretch of toned-down, relatively tame celebrations, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval is worried that this years Mifflin Street block party on Saturday may be a bad one, and increased police presence is planned as alternative programming put on by UW-Madison to divert attention from the spring party shrinks. Lacking a full-scaled alternative (event) ... this year, our staffing will go up as a result of the unknown implications, Koval said in a blog post Monday. The limitations of a much smaller (alternative) venue leaves a void during the traditional hours of Mifflin which could lead to a greater presence of individuals at the block parties with a wider window to consume more alcohol, Koval wrote. City Council President Mike Verveer, whose 4th District includes the student neighborhood, took a more good news/bad news approach to the party. While he, like Koval, wishes it would simply end a long shot given the partys long history Verveer said he didnt expect it would be worse than last year. And he was cheered by Saturdays forecast for rain and possible thunderstorms, noting that could help keep party attendance down or end it earlier, potentially letting officers leave sooner and reducing overtime costs. Mother Nature is the No. 1 deciding factor on attendance, Verveer said Monday. Last year Mother Nature really presented a beautiful day and so as a result crowds were larger than we had seen in the last few years. And yet, even with the larger crowd last year, Verveer noted, there were no major incidents reported no serious injuries or property damage while costs and issued tickets were low compared to the bad years before 2013. Last year it went very smoothly from that perspective, Verveer said, although I still observed obscene amounts of alcohol consumption. Verveer also didnt think Mifflin would be much affected by the reduction planned for Revelry, the music festival put on by groups affiliated with UW-Madison as an alcohol-free alternative to the block party since 2013. The last few years Revelry has been a daylong event with bands at Memorial Union and other campus locations. This year, its presence will be reduced to five bands playing an evening concert at the Orpheum on State Street. The event is smaller this year due to university budget constraints though it again received $5,000 from the city through a City Council measure sponsored by Verveer and its being held off-campus because of construction around Memorial Union. Its a tremendous new campus tradition, Verveer said, but I dont think it has a direct tremendous impact on attendance or behavior at Mifflin. Verveer also said he was told by MPD Central District Capt. Carl Gloede that Dane County sheriffs deputies would provide most of the increased law enforcement staffing to patrol the block party Saturday. The tradition of large crowds gathering and drinking heavily on or before the first Saturday of May on West Mifflin Street has been constrained the last few years, after a police ticket-writing blitz in 2012 and the universitys alternative programming starting in 2013. Also in 2013, a decentralization trend has kept party antics from becoming too focused in the Mifflin Street area. Instead, the house gatherings have spread across several student-heavy neighborhoods, a phenomenon Verveer expected would continue this year. The Mifflin Street block partys recent nadir came in 2011, when it was marred by stabbings and sexual assaults. But even without that level of mayhem and extreme drinking, the celebration offers little to recommend it, Koval noted. There are legions of people who use this event as a pretext for binge drinking, Koval said. The levels of intoxication are abysmal and the treks to detox for those so incapacitated as to be incapable of taking care of themselves is always frightening. Koval also noted that while costs have decreased over the past five years, even a comparatively good year for the block party such as the relatively benign celebration in 2015, he said, when no major incidents were reported and only about 40 citations were issued by police can cost the city more than $90,000. State Journal reporter Steve Verburg contributed to this report. The case against a Sun Prairie man, charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the alleged sword attack last year that killed his mother, is back on track after a doctor found he is now competent to stand trial. Matthew J. Skalitzky, 40, who is charged with killing his mother, Jane Skalitzky, 68, at his apartment in Sun Prairie, did not contest the findings of a doctor who concluded that Skalitzky had regained competency to assist in his defense. A criminal complaint charges that Skalitzky killed his mother on Sept. 11 after she found a box in his apartment containing swords and knives. Prosecutors also said he believed that his mother and others were inhuman clones. On Oct. 21, Skalitzky was found not competent to proceed with his case, and he was ordered kept at Winnebago Mental Health Institute near Oshkosh, where he had been held on a civil commitment since shortly after his arrest. A follow-up report in February found that he still was not competent. Skalitzky, who appeared in court Monday with trimmed hair and beard and wearing rectangular plastic-rimmed glasses, acknowledged that he was not contesting the doctors finding. He will be kept in the Dane County Jail on $1 million bail. Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds also ordered Skalitzky to continue taking medications. Skalitzky will return to court on Thursday. His lawyer, state Assistant Public Defender Stan Woodard, said Skalitzky will waive his right to a preliminary hearing and plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Competency to assist in ones defense and an insanity defense do not follow the same legal standard. In an insanity defense, a person contends that he is not legally responsible for his actions because at the time he suffered from a mental illness. If the case goes to trial, it would be in two parts: the first would to decide whether Skalitzky committed the homicide, and the second to determine if he was legally responsible for his actions. Employees at Imperial Blades in Sun Prairie were evacuated Monday including three who were taken to a hospital for treatment after they suffered reactions to a hazardous material, a fire department spokeswoman said. The workers who required medical attention had been treated and released by early Monday afternoon, and all employees were sent home for the day, Sun Prairie Fire Department Lt. Becky Gruber said. Two chemicals the company uses in manufacturing processes were accidentally combined, leading to a reaction that contaminated a 20-by-40-foot area inside the building, Gruber said. Warehouse supervisor Tedi Knox said a chemical spill occurred in the warehouse and that employee safety training helped ensure a quick evacuation. A Madison hazardous materials team assisted, and the facility was turned back over to its owners after mitigation of the chemicals, Gruber said. Imperial Blades, 450 Progress Way, manufactures cutting tools. The company was started in 2009 when owner Chris Palmer determined that saw blades he fabricated in his backyard could be sold at a lower cost than he was paying to suppliers of his wood flooring business, according to a 2013 report in the Wisconsin State Journal. Imperial Blades had 30 local employees and customers in 15 countries at that time. Orchard Ridge Elementary School students and parents took part in a yearlong project to give people a voice and build community through storytelling. Telling Stories II Building Community was a collaboration between staff at the West Side school and Madison School and Community Recreation through its Afterschool Academic Center for Excellence and Meadowood Neighborhood Center programs. It was an expansion of something Anne Fraioli, Orchard Ridge music teacher and MSCR program leader, did in the past. Fraioli wrote grants and developed the program so students and adult family members would share and create stories that reflect the diverse cultural heritage, languages and traditions within the Orchard Ridge community. Some of the storytelling involved song. One of the many facets of the program was a series of dinner workshops for parents. At one workshop, Dasha Kelly, a spoken-word artist and author from Milwaukee, guided the diverse group of parents through the steps of creating stories about where they live. Fraioli said she was impressed with what the participants were willing to divulge. This to me was what this project was all about getting to know each other through stories and stories that may be uncomfortable, she said. Other Milwaukee-area artists were Rosa Zamora, a Dia de los Muertos historian and papel picado (cut paper) artist; Della Wells, collage artist and visual storyteller, and Teju Ologboni, who tells stories from Africa, the American South and the hood. Local guest artists were Oscar Mireles, Madisons poet laureate, and Sal Carranza, who spoke of Mexican legends and myths. I enjoyed this storyteller, fourth-grader Brendita Guerra said during Mireles visit last month. During this visit, Mireles had students write about their names. Fourth-grader Serine Singvongsa said she liked that because you can write whatever you want. Visiting artists provided story workshops during the regular school day and the after-school program. In addition, family members have visited classrooms to tell stories, and some teachers created lessons related to the project. For example, art teacher Josh Ludke had students make a video that told a story with fish puppets. Will Glenn Sr., who works with students through his positions at the neighborhood center and the after-school program, said the activity ties into the goal of improving students literacy skills. The culminating activity last Thursday was Telling Stories Night, which included an art gallery. Some of the exhibits featured pieces the students did with visiting artists or as a follow-up to the visit. Families also brought dishes from their cultures for a potluck that was followed by a story hour featuring songs, stories, poems and a rap performed by fourth- and fifth-graders. The Rising of 1916 has a special place in Irish memory. Last month, on Easter Sunday, a quarter of a million people gathered in Dublin for a parade marking the 100th anniversary of the so-called Easter rebellion (which actually began on a Monday, April 24). At this years commemoration, Irish President Michael Higgins extolled the rebels generous social and political vision, one that can still inspire us today. Note: The British ambassador was there. Last year, the government in London said, Her Majestys government is committed to working closely with the Irish government during the decade of centenaries marking the events of 1912 to 1922 to promote a greater understanding of our shared history, and to do so in a spirit of historical accuracy, mutual respect, inclusiveness and reconciliation. The atmosphere was peaceful enough to obscure how much hatred and brutality the conflict once engendered notably, during the rising. The episode was a major step on the path to the independent, modern nation Ireland has become part of a historical process that now looks natural and necessary. But it didnt look like it at the time. It took place during World War I, while the government of Britain, which ruled Ireland, was occupied fighting Germany. It dramatized an old adage: Englands difficulty is Irelands opportunity. In almost every respect, the affair was a debacle. Planned for Easter Sunday, it was called off and then called back on for the following day, creating confusion and causing many rebels to stay home. A shipment of arms from Germany, a government that also sensed opportunity in Englands difficulty, never arrived. Nor was there an eruption of popular support. On the contrary, some Dubliners cheered when British troops arrived to suppress their countrymens mutiny. When one leader read the Proclamation of the Republic essentially a declaration of independence from the United Kingdom the onlookers responded tepidly. The rebels held out for only six days, taking heavy casualties from British snipers and artillery. Hundreds of civilians died, and much of the city center was reduced to rubble. To end the fight, the insurgents had to surrender unconditionally. As the rebels were marched off to jail, they were booed by locals, many of whose sons, brothers or husbands were fighting in France under the Union Jack. The first Irish Republic lasted 124 hours and seemed doomed to the double stigma of failure in accomplishment and futility in aim, wrote historian James Mackay. But the victors overstepped badly in the aftermath. By putting 16 rebels to death, Britain created martyrs including James Connolly, who was propped on a chair to face the firing squad because he couldnt stand on his wounded leg, and Joseph Plunkett, who was allowed to marry his fiancee just hours before he was taken away to be shot. W.B. Yeats wrote a poem, Easter 1916, whose final words would gain immortality: A terrible beauty is born. The executions, along with the imprisonment of hundreds of people under martial law, radicalized public opinion not just in Ireland, but also among Irish-Americans. ...Even in England, many people were dismayed. Nationalist sentiment spread in Catholic Ireland, and by 1919, the British government found itself in a savage war against the Irish Republican Army. Finally, it signed a treaty granting Ireland self-rule within the empire while allowing the Protestant-dominated northern counties to remain part of the U.K. That outcome gave way only to more strife: A civil war broke out between those Irish who accepted the accord with Britain and those who thought it shamefully inadequate. The often-bloody sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles went on for decades. ... But with the Rising of 1916, Ireland was on its way to independence, and the British empire was on its way to disintegration. A British official in Ireland said in 1914, I dont know if the Irish can govern themselves, but one things certain: No one else can. The same proved to be true of colonized people in India, the Middle East and Africa. When Britain began to relinquish its empire, many of its people were pessimistic. An independent Ireland, London feared, would provide Britains enemies with an ally next door. But history developed in a more congenial way. Those on either side in 1916 could not have foreseen that a century later, both countries would be prosperous, democratic and peaceful and close allies in the European Union. Much of the history between them is marred by enmity and sorrow, the rising included. But today, it is gratifying to see, that turbulent history is mostly a thing of the past.... Knight Hawk Coal Mine in Percy, Illinois Republicans want to save the coal industry, and that fact alone could pull betrayed middle-class Democrats to the right, said Stephen Moore in a Washington Times op-ed, "The Death of American Coal" last week: There was a time in America and it wasnt even so long ago that liberals actually cared about working class people. They may have been misguided in many of their policy solutions i.e., raising the minimum wage but at least their heart was in the right place. Then a strange thing happened about a decade ago. The radical left wing environmentalists took control of the Democratic Party. These are crazies who care more about the supposed rise of the oceans than the financial survival of the middle class. The industrial unions made a catastrophic decision to get in bed with these radicals and now they and all of us are paying a heavy price. The latest evidence came last week when another coal giant in America, Peabody Energy Corp., declared bankruptcy. This is the same fate suffered by Arch Coal Inc., Alpha Natural Resources Inc. and other coal producers that have filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors. This isnt a result of free market creative destruction. This was a policy strategy by the White House and green groups. They wanted this to happen. This was what Clean Power Plant rules from the Environmental Protection Agency were all about. The EPA set standards by design that were impossible to meet and even flouted the law that says the regs should be commercially achievable. This was a key component of the climate change fanaticism that pervades this White House. In order to track the performance and dropout rates among candidates, the Human Resource Ministry (HRD) ministry will soon be forming a child tracking system for over 200 million children across the nation. Schools to soon have child tracking system, says HRD minister Smriti Irani By India Today Web Desk: In order to track the performance and dropout rates among candidates, the Human Resource Ministry (HRD) ministry will soon be forming a child tracking system for over 200 million children across the nation. According to recent tweets by the HRD minister, Smriti Irani said that apart from introducing the child tracking system, the ministry will focus on improving the concept of bridge school that was earlier discontinued due to Right to Education. advertisement Latest announcements: Smrti Irani said that the ministry would be tracking theonline progress of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) that was earlier introduced for ensuring universal elementary education in India Also, she added, "We did mid-term review online. This year we shall track SSA daily online. Real time data will help engage productively with states." Further, Irani announced they are planning to develop a expenditure portal for centralising the school education data and a portal for Teacher Education Institutes in order to make grading in examination transparent Also, the National Assessment Survey (NAS) that was previously done once in three years would now be done every year Meanwhile, Smriti Irani said that the HRD ministry is also helping states who are lacking behind in education by helping them in developing composite schools by rationalizing stand-alone schools that consists of only one teacher. "Smaller schools are either mentored by larger schools in same geographical area or are merged in the interest of students," she tweeted. The minister also informed about a "Learning outcome portal being designed by NCERT which will have videos so that outcomes are easily comprehended n tests voluntarily taken." While concluding, she added, "Under Shaala Siddhi school evaluation was undertaken since November 2015. This year we shall extend it to all schools across the country." Click here for more education news. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Beijing, Apr 25 (PTI) Eleven people were reported missing in China today after a coal mine they were working in was flooded in the countrys northwest Shaanxi Province. The accident took place around 8 am (local time) at Zhaojin Coal Mine in Yaozhou District when 67 workers were in the shaft, a spokesman with the Tongchuan city government told state-run Xinhua news agency. advertisement Fifty-six people managed to escape and the rest are still missing. Rescue operations are underway to find the missing ones. At least 10 people were killed and 40 others were reported missing in two separate accidents at coal mines in China in August last year. In another incident, around 40 people were listed missing after a landslide swept through the living quarters of a mine company in the same Shaanxi Province. The risk for coal-mining accidents in China is one of the highest in the world. According to a 2003 government report, the coal miners death rate per one million population was about 37 times that of Americas coal-mining death rate. PTI KJV MRJ --- ENDS --- The 2006 bombings were a part of a series of blasts that rocked Malegaon in Maharashtra's Nashik district, nearly 300 km away from Mumbai. By India Today Web Desk: A Mumbai court today dropped all charges against nine Muslims accused in the 2006 Malegaon blasts case due to lack of evidence against them. The accused were discharged by Designated Judge of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) VV Patil, nearly 10 years after the serial bomb blasts outside a Muslim cemetry near a mosque at Malegaon, near Nashik, on September 8, 2006, killed 37 people and left over 100 injured. advertisement "The Special MCOCA Court's verdict came in the afternoon on the discharge application filed by all the nine accused in that case. They have been discharged," advocate Shahid Nadeem Ansari said. The Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) in Maharashtra had arrested nine men, alleged to be the members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) for the death of 37 people in the blasts. One of them died while the case was pending. Later, CBI, which took over the investigations, also confirmed the charges against them. Subsequently, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) was asked to probe the case and the agency arrested another set of people belonging to a right-wing group called Abhinav Bharat, who continue to be accused in the case. The judge said that he was accepting the discharge application filed by the eight accused as there was no evidence to prove their guilt. The eight discharged were: Noorul Huda, Raees Ahmed, Salman Farsi, Farokh Magdumi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali, Asif Khan, Mohammed Zahid and Abrar Ahmed, lawyer Ansari said. Last week, the NIA told the court that it had found no evidence to link the nine Muslims to the blasts. The agency also did not object to the discharge applications filed by the arrested accused, saying evidence collected by it were "not in consonance" with those obtained earlier by the Maharashtra ATS and the CBI, which also investigated the case. "It is submitted that evidence collected by NIA in further investigation is not in consonance with evidence collected by the Anti-Terrorism Squad and the CBI. The court may kindly pass appropriate orders in the matter," the NIA said in its response to the discharge applications filed by the accused. The 2006 bombings were a part of a series of blasts that rocked Malegaon in Maharashtra's Nashik district, nearly 300 km away from Mumbai. Bombs were planted on a bicycle parked near the cemetery while Friday prayers were on at the mosque on the occasion of Shab-e-Baraat. ALSO READ Malegaon blasts: Lt Col Purohit kept Army officials in loop, reveal documents Samjhauta, Malegaon blasts accused Col Purohit wants restoration of military honour --- ENDS --- advertisement Book a room at one of these properties to spend some quality time while in the midst of India's wildlife havens. By Simar Singh: #1 Mogli Jungle Resort, Bandhavgarh National Park, Madhya Pradesh This resort is spread across 16 lush acres in the Tala zone of Bandhavgarh, adjoining the river Charanganga. The national park is just 2 km from the resort. Picture courtesy: MogliResorts.com There is a plenty to do in the hotel itself; it has a swimming pool, bird-watching trails, and great food, among other tings. advertisement PRICE: Starts from Rs 2,450 per night INCLUDES: All meals FOR RESERVATIONS, VISIT: mogliresorts.com Also Read: 5 exclusive national parks of India you just can't afford to miss #2 Sher Vilas, Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan With gorgeous white Maharaja tents that overlook the pool or garden, and Sanganeri block-print interiors, Sher Vilas has to be one of the best places to stay near Ranthambore National Park. It is located at a distance of around 5 km from the national park, and a mere 600 meters from the safari booking office. Picture courtesy: SherVilas.com It also offers massages, spas, horse riding and Rajasthani cultural programmes. PRICE: Starts from Rs 3,500 per night INCLUDES: All meals FOR RESERVATIONS, VISIT: www.ranthamborenationalpark.com/sher-vilas-ranthambore #3 Dhanshree Resort, Kaziranga National Park, Assam Manicured gardens, large cottages, and a canal that flows right through the middle, make Dhanshree the perfect spot to relax when you're not on a safari. Picture courtesy: TripAdvisor/Suryadoy S The great thing is that guests can take elephant and jeep safaris from the hotel itself. PRICE: Starts from Rs 1,422 per night FOR RESERVATIONS, VISIT: dhanshreeresort.com #4 Sukhsagar Gir Resort, Gir National Park, Gujarat Guests at Sukhsagar can choose to stay in beautiful rooms, tents or cottages. The design of the property is quite minimalistic and neat, with dirt tracks that enhance the feel of a safari camp. Be sure to dine in their palm-fringed cafe, under the stars. Picture courtesy: TripAdvisor/AjayKShah1952 PRICE: Starts from Rs 5,100 per night INCLUDES: Breakfast FOR RESERVATIONS, VISIT: www.sukhsagargirresort.com #5 Muba at Mukki, Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh Just a stone's throw away from the Mukki gate of the Kanha National Park, Muba is a wonderful jungle resort, surrounded by Sal trees, bamboos, and other wild floral species. Picture courtesy: MubaResorts.com Muba organises safaris into the park twice a day, as well as nature walks and bicycle trails. Accommodation is offered in different types of cottages, including mud houses with thatched roofs. PRICE: Starts from Rs 3,850 per night INCLUDES: Lunch on check-in day and breakfast on check-out day FOR RESERVATIONS, VISIT: www.mubaresorts.com/kanha-muba-mukki.php advertisement #6 The Corbett View Resort, Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand Staying in this resort will make you feel as if like you're living in a quaint village close to the wilderness. The resort offers accommodation in stunning mud cottages that are spread out haphazardly, surrounded by lush vegetation and a pebbled seasonal river, merging into the fringes of the park. Picture courtesy: TheCorbettView.com The perk of staying here is that the resort provides guides for safaris in the park, and for walks to neighbouring villages. PRICE: Starts from Rs 3,000 per night INCLUDES: Bed tea and breakfast FOR RESERVATIONS, VISIT: www.thecorbettview.com #7 Jungle Inn, Nagarhole National Park, Karnataka Located on the northern fringe of the Nagarhole National Park, Jungle Inn is an eco-friendly wildlife adventure resort, which has been built on what once used to be a tobacco plantation. Picture courtesy: TripAdvisor/SubbuPhotos The main entrance of the park is just a kilometre away. Guests can also indulge in outdoor activities like boating, rappelling, rafting and more. PRICE: Starts from Rs 2,600 per night INCLUDES: All meals FOR RESERVATIONS, CONTACT: +919902363906 +919902363906 +91 9448208687 +919448208687 +91 9448208687 #8 Tora Eco Resort, Sunderbans National Park, West Bengal Tora is located on the Bali Island in the Sunderbans, and describes itself as a community-based tourism project. The resort offers travellers accommodation in ethnic, rural-style cottages that are powered by solar energy and are made of locally available material. advertisement Picture courtesy: Facebook/Tora Eco Resort and Life Experience Centre The area is surrounded by picturesque green paddy fields and a fishing pond. PRICE: Starts from Rs 3,623 per night FOR RESERVATIONS, CONTACT: + 91 9883933033 +919883933033 + 91 9883933033 --- ENDS --- Tiger Shroff has impressed B-Town and fans with his dancing skills in his debut film Heropanti. Known to be a trained dancer, the actor can give any a run for his money when it comes to showing off some cool moves on the dance floor. But this wasn't the case when he met his Baaghi co-star Shraddha Kapoor By India Today Web Desk: Tiger Shroff has impressed B-Town and fans with his dancing skills in his debut film Heropanti. Known to be a trained dancer, the actor can give any a run for his money when it comes to showing off some cool moves on the dance floor. But this wasn't the case when he met his Baaghi co-star Shraddha Kapoor. The 26-year-old recently revealed that he was quite nervous matching steps with Shraddha in Baaghi. advertisement ALSO READ: Tiger Shroff and Shraddha Kapoor in these realllly hot stills from Baaghi will make your day ALSO READ: Meet Sudheer Babu, the man giving Tiger and Shraddha sleepless nights in Baaghi In fact, he says that he was glad that they both had "different steps". "Shraddha is a fantastic dancer. After seeing ABCD 2 and her dance in Sun sathiya, I really admire her dancing skills," Tiger said in a statement. "Our first schedule together was shooting of the song Let's talk about love for Baaghi and when she came for the shoot, she was high on Sun sathiya. I got so nervous. Luckily, we had different steps. She has been winning all the dance competitions since childhood," Tiger added. The actor, who forayed into Bollywood with Heropanti in 2014, talked about his experience of shooting with the daughter of Shakti Kapoor for Baaghi. In fact, both are actors admitted that they are huge fans of Hrithik Roshan. Shraddha said, "We both are crazy Hrithik Roshan fans. So, for the annual function, I was choreographing on Ek pal ka jeena. I was teaching him the song and we both were doing the signature step. That memory has stayed. But Tiger has fully overtaken the teacher and flown." Baaghi, which brings forward a story of two rebels and how they turn out to be emotional anchor for each other, is helmed by Sabbir Khan and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. Also starring Telugu star Sudheer Babu, the film will release on April 29. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Bengaluru, Apr 25 (PTI) Reeling under sizzling heat, Bengaluru has recorded the highest ever maximum temperature for April in 85 years at 39.2 degree Celsius and is hotter than Delhi in the last five days. "Today, we have recorded the highest-ever maximum temperature of 39.2 degree Celsius for the month of April. It has broken the previous all-time record of 38.3 degree, recorded on April 30, 1931," Meteorological Regional Observatory Director-in-Charge Geeta Agnihotri told reporters. advertisement "This time Bengaluru is hotter than Delhi. Its temperature is in the range of 37 degree Celsius, and we (Bengaluru) have been recording 38 degrees for the last four to five days," she said. "It (Bengaluru) has surpassed the highest-ever value of 38.9 degree Celsius that was recorded on May 22, 1931. This observatory has been recording temperature from 1867," she said. For the last couple of days, she said, Bengaluru has been recording maximum temperature of 3-4 degrees above normal. Giving reasons for Karnataka experiencing sizzling heat, Agnihotri said it is due to very strong El Nino conditions recorded in 2015 in the subcontinent and absence of convective activity. "There is an increase in the temperature throughout the state due to very strong El Nino conditions, which were there in 2015, and this global phenomena is affecting the Indian subcontinent throughout," she said. El Nino is warming of the Pacific Ocean as part of a complex cycle linking atmosphere and ocean. It sees a huge release of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere, which can disrupt weather patterns around the world. "Even the Indian Meteorological Department had forecast higher than normal temperatures during summer seasons sometime on March 31," she said. "There is a complete absence of convective activity in the atmosphere, which has led to rising temperatures, forcing the rains to play truant in this season", she said. Giving reason for the absence of convective activity, Agnihotri said it is due to lack of moisture over land areas. "The absence of convective activity is because of lack of moisture over land areas. So, the two anti-cyclones in Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, positioned during this seasonis unable to pump in sufficient moisture over the land area. As a result, there is no rains and therefore, the temperature is continuously increasing," she said. PTI BDN RA RC SMJ --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 25 (PTI) Amid a bitter judicial row over imposition of Presidents rule in Uttarakhand, a top BJP leader today hinted at the party enjoying support of more Congress MLAs than the nine disqualified rebels. He also asserted that though only the nine rebels have gone public about their support to BJP, "more" Congress MLAs may switch sides in the event of a floor test. advertisement BJP is keeping its cards close to chest as the Supreme Court is currently hearing the case on imposition of central rule in the state, while the plea of nine MLAs against their disqualification is pending before the state High Court. "We got only as many (Congress) MLAs to support us openly as we needed for a simple majority. There could be more support for us. BJP has the support of a majority of MLAs even if these nine MLAs remain disqualified," the leader, who declined to be named, said. In the 71-member assembly, both Congress and BJP have 27 MLAs each, barring the nine Congress rebels and one BJP rebel. There is also a block of six MLAs, including three independents, who had been supporting the Harish Rawat government when it was dismissed. BJP believes that some of them could be worked on to change sides. The BJP leader also dismissed the Congress charge that it was engineering defection in its ranks to topple its state governments as seen in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. "Keeping its flock together is the responsibility of Congress not BJP. If there is a rebellion in our party say in Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat, then it will be our fault not Congress," he said. There are also strong sentiments in the BJP against several observations made by the state High Court, which had restored the Rawat government and castigated the Centre over the imposition of Presidents Rule. Among the courts observations criticised by him were that the rebels have committed a "sin" and that a "pro- development government" was brought down. PTI KR/PYK SK --- ENDS --- Prince William and Prince Harry, who were spotted on the set of Pinewood Studios last week, have reportedly shot a cameo for the upcoming Star Wars film. By India Today Web Desk: Prince William and Prince Harry, who were spotted on the sets of Pinewood Studios last week, have reportedly shot a cameo for the Star Wars VIII. SEE PICS: Lightsabers, mock fights - Prince William and Prince Harry's trip to Star Wars sets SEE PICS: When Bollywood stars met Kate Middleton and Prince William at the royal gala dinner advertisement According to a report in The Mail, the princes have filmed a cameo as Stormtroopers for the next Star Wars film. A source informed The Mail, "The line given was that they were going to have lunch and a private tour of the rest of the set. What really happened is that the director came over and told them it was time to 'get suited' and off they went to the wardrobe department." Insiders added that the princes dressed up in full Stormtrooper gear and filmed a scene, in which Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) infiltrate a secret base. The rebel characters are in a lift with Benicio Del Toro's character when a group of Stormtroopers enter, two of whom are William and Harry. The young royals were snapped at Pinewood last week, visiting the set and meeting the cast and crew of the sequel to December 2015's The Force Awakens, reported News.com.au. Prince Harry meets Chewbacca during a visit to the Star Wars film set at Pinewood Studios. Photo: Reuters Britain's Prince William, smiles at droid BB-8. Photo: Reuters Prince William tries a light saber against his brother Prince Harry. Photo: Reuters (L-R) Actor Mark Hamill, director Rian Johnson, Prince Harry, Prince William, actor John Boyega, Chewbacca and actress Daisy Ridley pose during a tour of the Star Wars sets at Pinewood studios. Photo: Reuters British actor Daniel Craig had also done a cameo for The Force Awakens. He was spotted as a Stormtrooper in a scene with Daisy Ridley's character Rey. The next Star Wars film will hit the theatres on December 15, 2017. Until then, we will have to wait to watch British Princes turning into Stormtroopers. (With inputs from ANI) --- ENDS --- The 2-foot-tall robot monk can chant Buddhist mantras and even hold conversations via voice command. By India Today Web Desk: Unveiled in October, 2015, Longquan temple (Beijing) has decided to preach Buddhism with a little help from a robot monk, Xian'er. The robot monk can chant Buddhist mantras and even hold conversations via voice command, of course. The staff of the temple that is situated on the outskirts of Beijing believes that by establishing a near-perfect blend of technology and science through Xian'er, Buddhism can be spread in an ideal way. advertisement The 2-foot tall robot reportedly "resembles a cartoon-like novice monk in yellow robes with a shaven head, holding a touch screen on his chest," according to Reuters. Also Read: How this journalist's tryst with the Dalai Lama changed his life The one-of-a-kind robot has been created by Master Xianfan, who firmly believes that science and Buddhism do not oppose each other. "Science and Buddhism are not opposing nor contradicting, and can be combined and mutually compatible," Reuters quotes him saying. Xian'er has the capacity to answer 20 simple questions based on Buddhism and daily life--and can also perform 7 different types of motions on his wheels. Contrary to popular belief, Xian'er is not a "social butterfly"--it, in fact, spends most of its time in meditation. Also Read: A new Madame Tussauds to open in China The little robot monk has been developed as a collaborative project between a technology company and artificial intelligence experts that hail from some of China's top universities. Inspired by Master Xianfan's 2013 cartoon creation of the same name, a newer, more functional version of Xian'er is on its way. (With inputs from Reuters) --- ENDS --- By Harish V Nair: Chief Justice of India TS Thakur, known to be strong-hearted, breaking down several times in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing a national judicial conference surprised many at the imposing Vigyan Bhawan on Sunday morning. The emotional CJI was in fact launching an unprecedented blistering attack on the present and earlier governments for often blaming the judiciary for mounting backlog of cases, which touched an alarming 3.14 crore, but at the same time doing nothing to improve the judge: population ratio and increasing the number of courts despite repeated pleas from the judiciary. advertisement The ratio at present is 10 judges for 1 million people while the Law Commission had way back in 1987 recommended increasing it to 40. While India had just 7,675 judges, the actual requirement today was 40,377. Thakur said an 'extraordinary' situation has arisen where it was contemplating bringing back and putting into service retired judges to dispose cases on a war footing and bring down pendency. Explaining why he turned emotional, the CJI at end of his 30-minute speech at the conference said: "If nothing else has worked in terms of the improving the condition of the judiciary, an emotional appeal may perhaps". Talking to mediapersons, CJI later admitted that "being emotional is his weakness. "One should not be emotional. Justice JS Kehar (who is likely to be the next CJI) is a strong man. He will not be emotional," Thakur said. "Several speeches and promises have been made that judges population ratio will be improved. Several debates also happened in Parliament. But nothing really appears to be coming. Therefore not only in the name of the litigant, the poor litigant? people who languish in jails but also in the name of development of the country.. its progress I beseech you to rise to the occasion and realise that it is not enough to criticise. You cannot shift the entire burden to judiciary," Thakur said. In a direct attack on the NDA regime, Thakur said the government wanted FDI, people to come from abroad and Make In India, invest in India but reminded that those whom it was inviting were concerned about the ability of the judicial system of the country to deal with disputes that may arise in connection with such investment. "So efficiency of the judicial system is virtually connected with the development of the country," he said looking at the PM who was in rapt attention. "If you compare the performance of Indian judges with that of the other countries, in the US nine judges of the SC decide 81 cases a year and an Indian judge alone handles an average of 2,600 cases. When judges come from abroad and watch us work, they are amazed. They cannot understand how a judge can work under such stressful conditions. Yet people have faith that we are doing our best," he said in a choked voice. Modi, who was not scheduled to speak as per the programme, was forced to do so following the CJI's emotional outburst. He said "I can understand his (CJI's) pain as a lot of time has lapsed since 1987. If constitutional barriers do not create any problems, then top ministers and senior SC judges can sit together in a closed room to find a solution to the issue." advertisement Also Read: CJI TS Thakur breaks down in front of PM Modi, calls for increasing judge strength --- ENDS --- US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton slams Donald Trump for mocking Indian workers in America. Clinton further criticised Trump over his divisive rhetoric and said that Trump has run a campaign of bigotry and division. By Press Trust of India: Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has slammed Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for mocking an Indian call centre worker during an election rally this week, saying it shows disrespect towards the community and is reflective of his divisive rhetoric. "Donald Trump mocking Indian workers is just typical of his disrespect that he has shown to groups across the spectrum," said John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton Campaign. advertisement "He has run a campaign of bigotry and division. I think that's quite dangerous for the country when you think about the fact that you need friends, allies. The kind of campaign he is running breeds disrespect across the globe and breeds division and danger here at home," he told reporters in Germantown, Maryland after formally launching 'Indian- Americans for Hillary', an effort by the community to rally behind the Democratic presidential front runner. Podesta was reacting to Trump's apparent use of a fake Indian accent to mock a call centre representative in India during a campaign rally in Delaware this week. The real estate tycoon said that he called up his credit card company to find out whether their customer support is based in the US or overseas. At the same time, he described India as a great place, asserting that he is not angry with Indian leaders. Meanwhile, an Indian-American entrepreneur also hit out at Trump, calling his comments "demeaning". "When Donald Trump fakes the accent of an Indian at the help desk, it is demeaning and demonising to me personally," said Frank Islam, a top Indian-American bundler in the Clinton campaign who has helped raised more than USD 100,000 for her. A resident of Maryland, Islam is part of the newly launched 'Indian-Americans for Hillary'. He also disagreed with the remarks of Republican Governor from Maine, Paul LePage, who had said that Indian workers are "worst" and "hardest" to understand. "I do not know, where he got that impression. I consider Indian-Americans very hard working and they aim high," he said. "I consider Indian-Americans to be thoughtful, constructing, hardworking and resilient. So I do not agree with him," Islam said, adding that the community played a key role in strengthening the country. --- ENDS --- His remarks came against the backdrop of the hardline group filing a complaint against him in court over alleged torture of some Canadian citizens in the state when Singh was chief minister. By Amit Agnihotri: Poll-bound Punjab's Congress chief, Captain Amarinder Singh, has said the Sikhs for Justice group is "playing into the hands of Pakistan's ISI", nettled by the activist organisation accusing him of ignoring human rights violations and forcing him to cancel a clutch of political meetings in Canada. His remarks came against the backdrop of the hardline group filing a complaint against him in court over alleged torture of some Canadian citizens in the state when Singh was chief minister. He later promoted the police officers who were allegedly involved in such cases, the organisation claimed. advertisement The Canadian court issued summons to him following the complaint. The development took place days after Singh- the face of the Congress in the state where it will fight against the ruling SAD-BJP combine and an upbeat AAP next year-was forced to cancel his public meetings, following which he shot off an angry missive to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. "The Sikhs for Justice is playing into the hands of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence by trying to abuse an otherwise well-meaning and well-intentioned law aimed at protecting and safeguarding the human rights of the Canadian citizens across the world," said Singh, who's visiting Canada to woo NRIs ahead of the polls. The SFJ's move was aimed to embarrass the country and project as if human rights violations were a norm here "like some dictatorships in different parts of the world", he alleged. Citing the recent killing of a Sikh parliamentarian in Pakistan, who was gunned down because of his religion, Singh wondered if the SFJ had ever lodged any such complaint against visiting leaders from India's neighbouring country. Rejecting the charges, he said, "First of all, there were no such incidents between 2002 and 2007 when I was the CM as it was the most peaceful period in Punjab's recent history." He also asked why the complaint was filed a decade after the alleged incidents, and at a time when he was planning to visit Canada. "Why were these complaints not made when I came here in 2004 as the chief minister of Punjab?" he asked. Referring to the promotions of some policemen accused of torturing Canadian citizens, he argued that the officers are governed by the Indian Police Service rules over which the state governments do not have any control. "Besides, we have a strong, transparent and powerful judicial system in place which takes care of everything," he said. However, he clarified that some police officers were prosecuted over accusations of torture allegedly committed by them in the 1980s and 1990s, decades before he became chief minister of Punjab. Singh has urged the Centre to take up the matter with the Canadian government at the highest level. He has also asked Canadian authorities, both in the government and judiciary, to ensure that their law is not misused and abused for "vested political interests" by groups and ends up in "the harassment of innocent people without any evidence against them". advertisement Also Read: Punjab election: Congress leader Amarinder Singh's campaign trail in US, Canada --- ENDS --- By PTI: Mumbai, Apr 25 (PTI) Capital Small Finance Bank (CSFB) has started operations after getting the licence, kicking off the era of differentiated banking in the country, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan said here today. CSFB, earlier known as Capital Local Area Bank, was given the licence recently. It became the first Small Finance Bank and the second differentiated bank after Bharti Airtels Payment Bank to get the final go-ahead. advertisement As CSFB was already operational as a local area bank, it was easy for it to start functioning. According to reports, the Jalandhar-headquartered bank started with 10 branches from yesterday. "My sense is, this is going to create a revolution in the banking sphere. And a revolution in the banking sphere will create easier access to finance for small entities," Rajan said, delivering the Y B Chavan Memorial Lecture here. The governor said he expects each of these banks to start with a higher-than-required capital of Rs 500-600 crore, which will entail having an asset book of up to Rs 6,000 crore and stressed that these will not be "tiny banks". He said there is a need for such entities not to concentrate lending activity in a particular district or sector and expressed confidence the requirement to have 50 per cent of the lending to smaller entities will take care of the risk of concentration. The RBI has given a total of 22 in-principle nods to small finance banks and payments banks and expects all the banks to get operational in a year, he said. The introduction of the new entities, through which the RBI is targeting to deepen financial inclusion, was a part of an exercise to make regulation more lighter and transparent, and create level-playing field, Rajan added. The RBI had first come out with a paper on the need to go beyond universal banks and have differentiated banks serving a special purpose. To start with, it chose to have small finance banks and payments banks, while others like wholesale banks are in pipeline. PTI AA KRK ABK --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 25 (PTI) The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has issued a notice to the Union Home Secretary seeking reasons for the postponement of the Special Task Forces (STF) meeting on womens safety. It also sought deliberations of the meeting details to tackle child rape in the city. Maliwal also sought information on the progress of the Delhi Polices initiative to understand the psychologyand motivations of a rape accused (created in light of the Usha MehraCommission report) along with a report of the findings so far and the current status of the revised Delhi Victim Compensation Scheme 2015 proposed by the city government. advertisement "As you are aware, Delhi is recording an increasing number of rape cases, especially of children. In the past one and a half months, there have been over 130 cases of rape. Out of this, over 50 are of children, two of whom were barely 1 year old," Maliwal said in the notice "In light of the mounting and unabated incidence of rapes of women and children in Delhi, the Delhi Commission for Women takes strong note of a communication from the Home Ministry regarding the postponement of the 12th meeting of the Special Task Force (STF) on Womens Safety. "The 12th STF meeting has been postponed several times and the previous meeting was held more than four months ago on the 2nd of December 2015," she said. She further said that the Commissionhas taken strong note of the fact that the 11th STF meeting and the 10th STF meeting were both chaired by the Additional Secretary (CS) and not by the Home Secretary. The last meeting that was chaired by the Home Secretary was the 9th STF, on the 14th of May 2015, Maliwal said. Maliwal said that the Commission also recognises that the aforesaid STF is currently the only body in operation which involves representatives of both the Centre and State in tackling issues of womens safety in Delhi. "In light of the above, the Commission directs you to provide detailed responses to the following:Reasons for the continuous postponement of the 12th meeting of the STFon womens safety. Maliwal today met a four-year-old rape victim at AIIMS. "She has cuts and bruises all over. She has been brutalised in most heinous manner. Rapes continuing unabated. Despite rapes happening everyday, MHA Special Task Force on women safety again postponed. Issued notice to MHA Home Secretary on child rapes. Wrote to Chief Secretary to take note of the issue of child rapes in Delhi. Central and state government need to urgently unite on this," she tweeted. PTI PLB DBS RG DBS --- ENDS --- advertisement Buzz has it that Salman Khan and Vaani Kapoor will be seen together on the silver screen in Dhoom 4. Vaani Kapoor and Salman Khan will supposedly unite for the silver screen in Dhoom 4 By India Today Web Desk: Ever since Yash Raj Films teased Dhoom fans with a teaser of what looked like Dhoom 4 in December last year, people have been waiting with bated breath to see the franchise back on screen. The last Dhoom, the third instalment of the series, had Aamir Khan and Katrina Kaif in the lead roles. ALSO READ: Dhoom 4 is on the cards, for sure advertisement ALSO READ: Dhoom 4 will see Hrithik Roshan and Parineeti Chopra together? The Dhoom Trinity. Dhoom Divas. Dhoomtastic action all packed in one! #DhoomReloaded https://t.co/7GafnRUUjZ Yash Raj Films (@yrf) December 17, 2015 Its time for an adrenaline rush. Stay tuned! #DhoomReloaded pic.twitter.com/BzkLTKO8Bm Yash Raj Films (@yrf) December 17, 2015 For Dhoom 4, names of several stars have been tossed around for a while now. Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan, Parineeti Chopra are some of the actors who were said to have been in talks regarding the fourth Dhoom. The latest buzz, however, is that Salman Khan are Vaani Kapoor are to star in the film. Salman, who is currently busy with the shoot of his wrestling-based film Sultan, is to turn a baddie for Dhoom 4, suggest reports. All the films of the Dhoom franchise have had the lead characters painted in copious shades of grey. From John Abraham in Dhoom to Hrithik Roshan in Dhoom 2, and Aamir Khan in Dhoom 3, every single Dhoom has seen the lines between the hero and the anti-hero blurred. It is still being speculated whether Salman, who has been the good guy in all his films so far, will agree to a character with shades of grey. Vaani Kapoor, meanwhile, is in the process of filming Aditya Chopra's Befikre along with Ranveer Singh in Paris. Dhoom 4 is supposed to be ready for the screens sometime in 2018. --- ENDS --- The deceased have been identified as Xulhaz Mannan, 35, and his friend Tanay Mojumdar. Mannan is said to be the cousin of former foreign minister Dr Dipu Moni. By Sahidul Hasan Khokon, Manogya Loiwal : Two people were today hacked to death at a flat in Kalabagan in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka. The dead included the editor of Roopban, the country's first LGBT magazine. The deceased have been identified as Xulhaz Mannan, 35, and his friend Tanay Mojumdar. Mannan is said to be the cousin of former foreign minister Dr Dipu Moni. advertisement Deputy commissioner of Ramna division police, Abdul Baten, said the incident took place on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 5pm today. Parvez, a security guard at the house, told reporters that five to six youths, who identified themselves as officials from a courier company, came to the building saying that they have brought a parcel for Xulhaz. "But half an hour later, I heard shouting and shooting sound from the flat and went to look. The assailants then attacked me with knives," Parvez, who is undergoing treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, said. Another security guard Sumon, who was also present at the time, said the killers were wearing blue T-shirts and each carried a bag. He said one domestic help and Xulhaz's mother were also present at the time of the incident. According to eyewitness, the killers while going out of the house chanted "Naraye Takbir, Allahu Akbar", and one of the killers had a pistol in his hand. Also Read: Professor hacked to death near his home in Bangladesh Bangladeshi student, who wrote against Islam on Facebook, hacked to death --- ENDS --- Why is an economy apparently on the upswing not being able to generate enough new jobs? Welcome to jobless growth. At 8 pm every day, 200 young technicians at pathology giant Thyrocare Technologies begin work at its automated clinical chemistry laboratory at Turbhe in Navi Mumbai. For the next 12 hours, they operate a range of state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment, which can process up to 200,000 investigations a night for thyroid, kidney and liver diseases, testing nearly 45,000 samples flown in from 1,300 collection centres in India. What would have taken several days of investigation by at least 1,000 technicians a decade ago is now being done by a workforce a fifth the size in less than a day. "Many job-seekers are qualified for the job, but not skilled," says A. Velumani, the company's CEO, who ensures freshers are given specialised training. The new challenges are exciting and even lighten the manual load, but that's for a lucky few. For the majority of jobseekers in the healthcare segment, the prospects are grim, with little job security and salaries roughly half what large diagnostic chains may offer. Every month, a million Indians become age-eligible to join the workforce, but the growth in jobs has not kept pace with the rising number of aspirants. The result: unemployment has been on the rise, despite India supposedly being one of the brighter spots in a slowing global economy. Thirty-three-year-old Ratna Shankar Choubey, a father of two, in Bihar recently lost his job for resisting a change from being a permanent to temporary in the company. "Employment creation will be one of our greatest challenges for the next decade," says Jayant Sinha, minister of state for finance. India's unemployment rate grew from 6.8 per cent in 2001 to 9.6 per cent in 2011, according to Census 2011 data. advertisement The big picture The situation has only worsened since, thanks to weak industrial growth, a struggling agriculture sector with widespread drought, cost rationalisations in several sectors and the knock-on effect of a global slowdown. Also, traditionally labour-intensive industries are beginning to increasingly mechanise their operations. While it makes them more productive and profitable, it also shrinks job opportunities. According to the labour ministry's 27th Quarterly Employment Survey of eight employment-intensive industries- textiles, leather, metals, automobiles, gems & jewellery, transport, IT/BPO and handloom/powerloom)- there were 43,000 job losses in the first quarter of FY 2015-2016. The second quarter was better, with 134,000 new jobs, but even then the 91,000 net new jobs created in the first half of FY 2015-16 look desultory. At their peak, these sectors had added 1.1 million jobs in 2010. In the following five years, however, 1.5 million jobs were lost. FY 2014-15 saw a spurt, with 500,000 new jobs added as compared to 300,000 the year before, but it was still half the peak figure. There have been no signs of recovery in FY 2016; in fact, there is a decline. One reason for the decline in jobs could be a reduction in contract workers (nearly 70,000 of them were retrenched in the first half of FY 2016, compared to 161,000 additions in the first half of FY 2015). Says labour and employment secretary Shankar Aggarwal: "Contractualisation is a universal phenomenon. The system of production of goods and services is different. Value addition is happening across the world and, depending on the circumstances, people decide where to go. We are witnessing a decline in growth across the world. To get jobs, we need flexibility in hiring." Employment in export units, reeling under shrunken global demand, also saw a sharp decline. There were only 5,000 job additions in the first half of FY 2016 compared with 271,000 in the corresponding period of FY 2015. In the automobile sector, for instance, there were 23,000 job losses in export units compared to the 26,000 job additions in the other seven labour-intensive sectors in the second quarter of FY 2016. Downsizing pain Large manufacturers are trimming operations, throwing many jobs into jeopardy. Nokia, locked in a tax dispute with Indian authorities, shut down its handset-making factory in Chennai in November 2014, rendering 8,000 workers jobless. For Microsoft, the new owner of the Nokia handset brand, making smartphones in China and Vietnam was cheaper. Meanwhile, some MNCs in the financial sector have also recently exited India, after finding the domestic competition tougher than they had bargained for. Following on the heels of Goldman Sachs and Nomura, JP Morgan Asset Management of the US exited its onshore India-based mutual funds business, selling out to Edelweiss Asset Management, the seventh foreign-sponsored fund house to exit the Indian MF business in the past three years. Cement major Lafarge is also planning an exit, after selling its 11 mt business here. Hardly a surprise as the global cement industry is beset by overcapacity and weak demand. advertisement "We've only been downsizing in the last few years, especially in infrastructure," says Sunil Kanoria, president, Assocham, and also vice-chairman, SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd. "The financial situation is so bad, companies are struggling to get more resources." Increased use of robots; will need 3.9 mn skilled workers by 2022. Photo: Getty Images Avantha Group firm Crompton Greaves is reportedly divesting its consumer business for Rs 2,800 crore. A.M. Naik, chairman, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), has gone on record saying the engineering and construction giant will exit all businesses with revenues under Rs 1,000 crore, even if it means closing some without finding buyers. The $35 billion Essar Group is reported to be in talks to sell part of its refinery business as well as a portion of its ports business to pare its steep debt. advertisement Even some celebrated start-ups, touted as the next big thing, have found themselves in a tight corner. TinyOwl, a two-year-old Mumbai-based food ordering software start-up, is still in dire straits, even after it fired hundreds. Zomato, yet another food tech company, laid off 300 employees, or 10 per cent of its workforce, last year as the business went through a squeeze. Growth without jobs Many wonder why an economy supposedly growing at a rate of over 7 per cent is not creating enough jobs. Economists say this is because more work is now being done with fewer employees. "The economy is generating less jobs per unit of GDP," says D.K. Joshi, chief economist at ratings and research firm Crisil. Illustratively, in manufacturing, if 11 people were needed to execute a piece of work that generated Rs 1 million worth of industrial GDP a decade ago, today only six are needed. Joshi's verdict: "The economy has become less labour-absorbent." advertisement Other corporate analysts offer similarly sobering opinions. "India's 7.5 per cent growth is based on the gross value added methodology, which is being debated, and the growth could be closer to 5 per cent," says Ajit Ranade, chief economic advisor with the $40 billion Aditya Birla Group. "Moreover, this growth is capital-intensive, not labour-intensive." D.K. Shrivastava, policy advisor at consulting firm EY, explains, "Whatever growth there is does not seem to be translating into jobs. Either the growth is in sectors that are not employment-intensive, or overall growth is overstated." This year's Budget had specific provisions to expand productive employment, while also giving a push to certain sectors of the rural economy and infrastructure that would create jobs. The move to encourage small and medium enterprises to hire more workers while the state pitches in with provident fund contributions, and the emphasis on roads and other infrastructure are all good measures. However, it will take a lot-particularly significantly increased investments by both private business and the state-before real benefits appear. As things stand, private investments have been static, and with the government firm on its fiscal consolidation targets, public spending too is somewhat constrained. Ajit Gulabchand, chairman of the $650 million Hindustan Construction Company in Mumbai, laments: "New job creation is poor because the investment cycle has not kickstarted. We are in a slow economy and the global slowdown is not helping." The government could incentivise job creation by giving infrastructure a push, finding a way to lower interest rates and improve ease of doing business, he says. In his assessment, "the economy will take 2-3 years to get into the fast mode of growth." Others blame higher levels of automation for the job squeeze. "The growth rate in jobs has distinctly slowed down with significant improvements in automation and productivity," says Rajeev Dubey, group president, HR & Corporate Services, of the $17 billion Mahindra & Mahindra. CII president Naushad Forbes attributes the job squeeze to the slow pace of labour reforms. "It has dissuaded companies from creating formal employment, and incentivised investments in automation." NASSCOM says software start-ups will create 800,000 jobs by 2017. Photo: Getty Images The India Exclusion Report 2013-14 by the Delhi-based Centre for Equity Studies, an autonomous research and social justice advocacy institution, says only 27 million jobs were added in the supposedly high-growth period of 2004-2010 compared with over 60 million between 1999 and 2004. The BJP, in its election campaign, highlighted the previous government's failure to create jobs, reiterating that while the UPA could create only about 1.5 million jobs a year on average in the 10 years it was in power, the earlier NDA regime had created over 10 million a year. Accordingly, one promise the BJP made in the run-up to the 2014 election was that it would create 10 million jobs a year, leveraging the power of youth below 35, who comprise 65 per cent of the population-the much talked about 'demographic dividend'. The government's Make in India jamboree held in Mumbai this February saw investment commitments of Rs 15 lakh crore from Indian and overseas investors, but those projects are still largely on paper. The programme aims to increase the share of manufacturing in GDP from the current 16 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022, and create 100 million additional jobs by then. But experts say this may not be an opportune time for a manufacturing-led model of the sort that created 64 million jobs in China between 2011 and 2016. "Creating manufacturing jobs will be tough with the advent of robotics," says Ranade. Manufacturing blues Currently, the manufacturing sector has an overall employment share of 12-13 per cent. While this share has been growing, even if gradually, in the past decade, the number of workers per factory has been dropping in the past 3-4 decades due to increased outsourcing. Moreover, the growth has not been consistent across the country and is primarily in mid-sized factories and through informal employment. In the infrastructure and manufacturing sector, getting good talent at the leadership level, especially to handle profit and loss responsibilities with requisite commercial skills, is not an easy task, says Yogi Sriram, vice-president, corporate HR, L&T. What the country requires, he says, is youth oriented to working on the shop floor. The 'dignity of labour' remains an exotic concept in India. "Shuffling papers is seen as more dignified as compared to holding a torque wrench," he observes. The manufacturing sector has been losing people to the services sector, which is seen as more glamorous, and betterpaid. It's also much easier to switch jobs and gain international exposure here. The services story Yet, there are some areas that still stand out when it comes to job creation, notably the financial services and the financial technology sectors. For example, ever since the RBI granted licences to 10 new small banks and 11 payment banks in 2015, employment opportunities have been growing. The traditional banks have been opening new branches and hiring personnel to augment their services in the face of intense competition from the new players. Similarly, in financial technologies, the entry of outfits such as PayTM that combine technology with financial services is also giving a new impetus to job creation. The other upbeat sector is e-commerce, which is flush with funds and investing heavily in logistics and lastmile delivery. "Broadly, supply chain, logistics and distribution-related jobs do well when there is economic growth and a pick-up in manufacturing," says E. Balaji, president, People Services, at TVS Logistics. "Logistics services grow at almost three times the rate of GDP growth, globally speaking." Jobs below the radar? Some skilling and data experts such as Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Education Services, and Dilip Chenoy, former CEO, National Skill Development Corporation, argue that the data does not fully capture the movement in the economy. "When you talk of highest coal production or power generation or maximum roads built... these have not been achieved without creating jobs," says Chenoy. Also, in India, the informal sector accounts for the larger chunk of jobs created. India has only about 30 million jobs in the organised sector and nearly 440 million in the unorganised sector. The Economic Survey 2015-16 highlights this conundrum: of the 10.5 million new manufacturing jobs created in India between 1989 and 2010, only 3.7 million, or about 35 per cent, were in the formal sector, where proper job contracts are signed between employers and staff, salaries are fixed and contributions to Employees' Provident Fund guaranteed under government labour laws. Jobs here will emerge in ultra-early diagnosis, senior care and treatment, artificial functional devices and organs. Photo: Danesh Jassawala The total number of establishments, according to the Survey, increased by 4.2 million between 1989 and 2010, but the formal sector accounted for just 1.2 per cent of this growth. The year 2000 marks an inflection point, when informal sector growth plateaus and employment falls even as formal sector employment picks up. However, the Survey states the informal sector could be credited with creating jobs and keeping unemployment low. Industry leaders agree with this hypothesis. "Economists and policymakers seem to underestimate the contributions of the informal sector in creating employment," says R.C. Bhargava, chairman, Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker. The company has not been making any substantial additions to its workforce, of late. However, when it rolls out 1.5 million cars a year, it also creates anywhere between 800,000 and a million jobs, Bhargava estimates. These jobs are in driver training, repairs, spare parts shops, insurance, dealerships etc. "This applies to a whole lot of other industries as well, where informal jobs are created in the thousands in the downstream sector," he adds. Government data too does not capture this trend in informal jobs. "Organised sector employment captures only one side of it," says Jayant Sinha. "The entrepreneurial sector is very poorly tracked. Many of the jobs in the economy are created by the Flipkarts, Myntras and Snapdeals of the world, and these jobs are not picked up by the numbers. We are also focusing on traditional economy jobs like fisheries, embroidery etc." The labour department is cognisant of the limitation of its data and is working towards expanding the scope of the survey. From July this year, it will include 10,000 establishments, up from the current 2,000-2,500 and expand to 18 sectors from the current eight. Start-ups, the increased focus on medium and small enterprises and greater self-employment too do not get accounted for in the data. According to IT industry body Nasscom, 3-4 IT start-ups are born every day in India. In calendar 2015, 1,200 start-ups were launched in the tech space alone, a 40 per cent rise from 2014. India has the third highest number of start-ups in the world at 4,200, behind the US and Britain, but ahead of China and Israel. Nasscom estimates software start-ups will create 800,000 jobs by 2017. Changing it winds Meanwhile, the traditional IT sector is experiencing big change that will impact job profiles and opportunities. Automation, self-service portals, costsharing are all dampeners on job creation in the ITeS segment. Customers are seeking more productivity and value addition. While this will require a higher level of skill, it will not result in more new job opportunities. The model of companies going to engineering colleges to recruit staff is changing. Disruptive technologies, such as social, mobility, analytics and cloud are offering new avenues of growth across verticals for IT companies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another upcoming area. Positions likely to be demand in the coming years include data scientists, retail planners, product managers and digital marketers. In certain instances, the advent of new technology will require more specialised skill sets. For example, interactive voice response (IVR) can easily manage a BPO unit of 500 professionals now, but we will still need technology professionals to ensure correct delivery of information through IVR. The other interesting trend is the shift of ITeS jobs to Tier-2, Tier-3 cities and rural areas-a trend that may owe to simple cost effectiveness, but which will require higher emphasis on interpersonal and communication skills. The earlier euphoria over call centre jobs has all but vanished. Here, India seems to be losing out to countries like the Philippines and Malaysia which have staff trained in non-voice analytics and accounting work. Hope on the horizon Nonetheless, there are those who still see a glimmer of hope on the employment horizon. "India is among the few countries in the world that has a reason to be optimistic," says N.S. Rajan, member, Group Executive Council, and Group Chief Human Resources Officer at the $100 billion Tata Group. "This could be due to the favourable structural growth story or the presence of a huge demographic dividend or the stability that is provided by democracy." However, even these assets can only be redeemed if the requisite skills and capabilities and the right kinds of jobs are available, he concedes. For all the turbulence, the significance of new economy enterprises should not be underestimated. These could be in education, healthcare, e-commerce and hospitality. More than half the companies that raised money through IPOs in the equity markets in 2015-16 were from these sectors. As Sebi chairman U.K. Sinha told India Today in December 2015, "This gives a signal that there is a shift happening in economic activity-new entrepreneurial energy is betting on new areas. The traditional sectors such as power and steel have not raised much in fiscal 2016." This new economy-which is more digital and technology driven and is slowly but definitely changing how we live-from technology interventions in rural areas (the 'JAM' trinity of Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile connectivity for targeted subsidies) to buying groceries online. India is on the cusp of a second-generation digital revolution, which will spread across the economic spectrum, from agriculture, rural, healthcare, education, retail, other services, manufacturing, and create a new set of jobs and render some existing ones obsolete. The government, on its part, seems to have grasped this change: new 'thrust areas'-such as Digital India, Skill India, StartUP India and Make in India-all focus on creating an ecosystem that will generate jobs. Pankaj Bansal, co-founder and CEO, Peoplestrong, an HR consultancy firm, talks about the rise of a 'gig economy'- one in which people will work on a skill- and need-based basis, doing two or more jobs in a year. HR consultants anticipate a digital divide in the country where the digital economy will demand very different skills, though some real economy vocations such as plumbing or carpentry will survive. Nearly half India's farm labour will have to move to other sectors India's skill development minister, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, hopes to address the challenge through Industrial Training Institutes, but he also believes one needs to focus on the bottom of the pyramid, as "the volumes there are higher". "We need to understand that skill development in the country is being carried out by 22 ministries through more than 70 schemes," Rudy told India Today. While saying his ministry's mandate is not to create jobs, he agrees there are skills that have either been lost or are in decline because of the introduction of new technologies. "However, we need to understand there will always be a trade-off between technology and the workforce previously performing that task," he says. S. Ramadorai, chairman, National Skills Development Council and advisor to the prime minister, speaks of the need to create skills portable across borders. "Green sectors such as solar energy and wind, besides defence and aerospace industry, construction, education and healthcare will be the new job creators," he says. Job profiles too will change. Mechanical engineers who can build robots will be in demand. "Look at the transformation in passport kendras. Too much manual work leads to inefficiencies. Digitisation is the solution," says Ramadorai. It's evident India has missed the manufacturing export opportunity China had in the 1970s. Job creation will be a consequence of increased domestic consumption, which requires macroeconomic stability (low inflation and interest rates), reduced regulatory hassles, further decentralisation and an aggressive skilling campaign. Teamlease's Manish Sabharwal doesn't believe India will ever get to a situation like China's where 34 per cent of its labour force will be involved in manufacturing, up from the current 11 per cent, equivalent to post-industrial United States. However, getting to 20 per cent is possible and that would account for another 100 million jobs. "The good news is, policy moves are accelerating the five labour market transitions that are journeys to higher productivity-farm to non-farm, rural to urban, subsistence self-employment to decent wage employment, informal to formal, and school to work," says Sabharwal. Reforms in the labour market and a greater emphasis on labourintensive industries such as textiles are needed to boost formal employment and sustain urban demand growth. "The skilling challenge is across the board," he adds. Nearly 50 per cent of India's labour force on farms needs to transition to non-farm jobs, but often does not have the skills. "A million young men and women will join the labour force every month for the next 20 years, and many of them will have degrees but will be unemployable," he says. Not a pretty picture. Also read: On hire ground with Amitabh Srivastava --- ENDS --- The world is changing faster than we think. Could we have imagined a world even three years ago where Indians would be buying groceries on their cell phones, and not only in the metros but even in smaller towns which are now the focus areas for e-commerce firms? Or a scenario where a company would actively seek a social media manager? Or a time when bulging wallets would be replaced by sleek digital ones? Or the fact that Tesla Motors, the company that jumpstarted the 21st century electric car industry, is now fighting over technology and design with Apple, the company that has reinvented and conquered every segment it has ventured into? Technology is changing the way we live and work and will determine the jobs of tomorrow. There will be jobs that will be redundant even as soon as two to three years from now, such as travel agents, copywriters, librarians, personal assistants, banking clerks etc. As further automation sets in and companies strive towards great efficiency, we will see the onset of what HR pundits are calling a 'gig economy', where a person will do two or more jobs depending on the skills and requirements. advertisement According to a CII hiring intent survey, covering 150 employers across 12 major sectors such as manufacturing, core (which would include coal, natural gas, electricity), ITeS, IT, BFSI, the hiring sentiment looks positive, with employers across sectors expecting an average increase of about 14.5 per cent in hiring in 2016. Though lower than last year, it is a positive sign. Sectors such as retail, e-commerce, BFSI, pharmaceuticals, telecom and other manufacturing (jewellery and silverware), the survey says, are leading the way, with an increase of over 20 per cent in hiring numbers, followed by BPOs, KPOs, ITeS firms and companies in the core sector. The survey also found that the composition of permanent and contractual employees is changing. With increasing focus on cost and time efficiency, there has been an increase in the hiring of contractual labour. At the moment, however, more than 40 per cent of the employers have 0-1 per cent of their workforce as contractual employees. Over 30 per cent of the respondents said more than 10 per cent of their workforce was contract labour. Tackling India's job scarcity will never be easy for any government. But an understanding of its dynamics is essential to prepare the country for future challenges. Also read: Where are the jobs? --- ENDS --- Since Haryana has the second lowest forest cover in the country, residents of Gurugram came under one umbrella and demanded the authorities to notify the entire Aravalli mountain range as a protected forest zone. A huge fire breaks out inside a multi-storey building near Netaji Subhash Place Metro station in West Delhi's Pitampura on Sunday. As many as 25 fire tenders apart from a two skylift machines were pressed into service by the fire brigade to control the bl By Ajay Kumar: Since Haryana has the second lowest forest cover in the country, residents of Gurugram came under one umbrella and demanded the authorities to notify the entire Aravalli mountain range as a protected forest zone. Holding several placards, more than 100 residents, including senior citizens and children assembled at Silver Oakes Chowk on Sunday and participated in a three-km march towards Faridabad on the Gurugram-Faridabad Expressway. advertisement "Gurugram city has no formal city forest apart from MCG-citizen run biodiversity park. We want entire the Aravalli range to be notified as a city forest," said Chetan Agrawal, a citybased environmentalist. "Aravallis has been playing critical role in the eco-fragility of Gurugram and Delhi by maintaining ground water table. Hence the available forest areas should be notified like Mangerbani, the only virgin forest in the region," Agrawal added. Also Read: Fire in Aravalli forest area in Haryana --- ENDS --- The hoardings put up by Bahujan Samaj Party workers show Mayawati holding the chopped head of Smriti Irani in one hand with blood dripping from it, and also of her standing over the body of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. By Indo-Asian News Service: Posters and hoardings of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati in the form of Hindu goddess Kali and holding the chopped off head of Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani have surfaced in Hathras, leading to a political furore. The hoardings put up by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) workers show Mayawati holding the chopped head of Irani in one hand with blood dripping from it. advertisement Mayawati is also shown standing over the body of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat. The BSP chief is shown adorned with a garland of skulls, as the Goddess Kali is portrayed. Prime minister Narendra Modi is shown begging for forgiveness and assuring that the job reservations for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes would not be scrapped. Two BSP workers, Shilpi and Kardam, have put up the hoardings. The reference apparently is to the statement of the RSS chief last year that time has come to rethink on continuation of the job quota. The union government had clarified that there was no such move. BJP state spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said his party has taken serious offence to the posters, and that such "sacrilege was being committed". "The BSP in the past has ridiculed Hindu gods and deities so it is not very surprising. But what is very worrying is the fact that through such inflammatory acts, the BSP is trying to trigger casteist clashes," Pathak said. He also appealed to the district administration to act against the people who have put up these hoardings. --- ENDS --- Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine in Kerala, claimed the ban was not discriminatory and based on reasonable classification. By India Today Web Desk: Supreme Court judges asked the Sabarimala temple management how periods can be linked to purity, after it told the court that the ban on entry of females aged between 10 and 50 years was because they cannot maintain "purity" for 41 days on account of menstruation. Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine in Kerala, also claimed the ban was not discriminatory and based on "reasonable classification". advertisement "There is no gender discrimination. There is a reasonable classification by which certain class of women are excluded," senior advocate K.K. Venugopal, representing the Devaswom Board, told a three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra. "What is the fulcrum of this classification?" the bench asked referring to the rule. "Do you to mean to say that mensuration is associated with with purity of women? You are making distinction based on purity... Now the question is whether the Constitutional principles allow this?" the bench, also comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, said. At the outset, Venugopal said women and men both are allowed entry into the temple and hence, there is no case of gender discrimination and females of a particular age group are not allowed due to a centuries-old custom. There are as many as eight Lord Ayappa temples in Delhi and NCR region and women are allowed inside, he said, adding that the Sabarimala temple is different. Women are allowed inside in Sabarimala too, but they cannot climb eighteen "sacred" steps on the hill unless they maintain 41 days of purity, he said, adding that the High Court verdict, favouring the practice, is a judgment "in rem" (continuity) and the apex court should not re-examine it by entertaining a PIL. The arguments remained inconclusive and would resume on May 2. The court is hearing a PIL filed by Indian Young Lawyers' Association seeking entry of women into the Sabarimala temple, located on a hilltop in the Western Ghats of Kerala's Pathanamthitta District. --- ENDS --- IITs have been requested to teach Sanskrit language especially with reference to study of works which contain scientific knowledge, Smriti Irani said. By India Today Web Desk: Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani told the Lok Sabha today that Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have been asked to teach Sanskrit language for facilitating study of science and technology as reflected in its literature. A panel, chaired by former CEC N Gopalaswami, in its report had suggested that IITs may facilitate study of science and technology as reflected in Sanskrit literature along with inter-disciplinary study of Sanskrit and modern subjects, Smriti Irani said in a written reply. advertisement "Accordingly, IITs have been requested to teach Sanskrit language especially with reference to study of works which contain scientific knowledge," Irani said. In July 2000, under NDA-I, the government had issued notices to around 40 institutions, including the IITs and IISC, asking them to consider introducing Sanskrit courses. Several IITs have since then integrated the knowledge available in ancient Indian texts in the mainstream engineering curriculum. ALSO READ A look at Smriti Irani's controversy-ridden 6 months in office Will develop Sanskrit in the country, says Smriti Irani in Varanasi Smriti Irani's ministry ranks JNU, Hyderabad as India's best universities After national flag, Smriti Irani ropes in Army to teach nationalism on campus --- ENDS --- Confusion seems to be the byword when it comes to tax filing. Last year, there was considerable delay in the finalising of the ITR form. From a 14-page document that required filling in details of foreign travel and dormant back accounts, it was renotified after being pared down to three pages. This year, even though the forms have been notified in time, there is confusion regarding mandatory disclosures for taxpayers with an annual income of more than Rs 50 lakh. Besides, here are some of the other points to keep in mind this return filing season. Declare interest income earned Income tax (IT) department has asked taxpayers to declare income earned from interest on various deposits in their returns. Such income cannot be hidden from taxmen, as banks, financial institutions, treasuries report details regarding interest paid to institutions and individuals directly to the tax department. Interest received on deposits is taxable unless exempt under Section 10 of the I-T Act. Section-10 of I-T Act relates to income which is tax free and not included in gross total income. Individuals earning over Rs 50 lakhs a year will have to disclose additional information starting assessment year 2016-17. The new ITR released has a separate section- Schedule AL-where all the details of assets and liabilities have to be provided. Immovable assets such as land and building have to be declared. Possession of moveable assets such as cash in hand, jewellery, vehicles, yachts, boats and aircraft all figure in the list of declaration. Liabilities of the taxpayer too have to be reported which is the outstanding loan amount. All the above is applicable to the HUFs or Hindu Undivided Families as well. The efforts to resume the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase on January 2. By India Today Web Desk: Talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are likely to resume tomorrow. Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry will be arriving in New Delhi on Tuesday to participate in the Heart of Asia (Istanbul Process) Conference. He is expected to meet his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the conference. Sources said that India has put Pathankot terror attack probe on the agenda of talks between the top officials of the two neighbouring countries. advertisement The efforts to resume the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase on January 2 that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan- based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror group. The foreign secretary-level meeting between the two countries was suspended a day before it was scheduled to take place in January in the wake of the terror attack in which 6 attackers 7 securitymen were killed The attack took place just a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise visit to Lahore to meet Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif. Modi had called Sharif on January 5 and demanded immediate action against those responsible for the Pathankot attack. Sharif had then assured India of all possible help. Couple of days ahead the Foreign Secretary-level talks in January, Pakistani media reported that JeM chief Masood Azhar has been taken into "protective custody." Following the development, India had said that talks between the two neighbouring nations will be rescheduled in the "near future." Also read: Pathankot attack probe: NIA to send fresh LRs to Pak India to insist written commitment from Pak on NIA team visit --- ENDS --- The IS recruiter was listed on the Interpol website as the founder of Junud al Khalifa-e-Hind (Soldiers of the Indian Caliphate). By India Today Web Desk: Shafi Amrar the head and principal recruiter of Islamic State (IS) in India was reportedly killed in a drone strike few days ago, said sources. Shafi Amrar (26), a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka, was allegedly in charge of recruiting members for the ISIS in India. Shafi Amrar was listed on the Interpol website as the founder of Junud al Khalifa-e-Hind (Soldiers of the Indian Caliphate). advertisement The outfit spawned from the Ansar-ul-Tauhid (AuT) with Shafi's elder brother Sultan Armar as the head. Sultan too was killed in an air strike in March 2015. Apparently, Shafi was in contact with at least 600-700 Indian youngsters on private Facebook groups and messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Skype for the past one year. There is a possibility that he may have recruited some men for the outfit. Amrar arranged funds for IS recruits in India using hawala transactions. He even sent an estimated amount of Rs 6 lakh to Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh, who he had appointed as 'Emir' of IS in India. However, the security measures undertaken by the agencies in India proved to be a hurdle for IS recruits to migrate to Syria. "We have learnt about his death and more details are awaited. Official confirmation may take time as it is difficult to relay information from Syria, where IS has a strong presence, but nevertheless it's big news," a top official said --- ENDS --- In a video that went viral in January 2016, Dr Anjali Ramkissoon was seen yelling and swearing at the driver in a fit of rage. By India Today Web Desk: In January 2016, 30-year-old Indian-origin doctor was caught on camera attacking and verbally abusing an Uber cab driver and now she has been fired. Dr Anjali Ramkissoon, a fourth year neurology resident doctor at Jackson Memorial Medical Center in Miami, went on an administrative leave after the video went viral. According to a statement released by a spokesperson for Jackson Health System, Ramkissoon was terminated from her position. However, she is entitled to an appeal process. advertisement Ramkissoon had later apologised for her actions. She was seen attempting to strike and scratch the driver while yelling and swearing at him in a video that received nearly seven million views. The driver opted to remain remain anonymous and has declined to press charges. Watch: --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 25 (PTI) Reversing a two-year declining trend, Indias reliance on the volatile Middle East region for meeting its crude oil needs has risen in 2015-16, with quantum jump in buying from Iraq. India imported 109.09 million tonnes of crude from the 10 nations in the Middle East during first 11 months of 2015-16 fiscal, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told Lok Sabha here. advertisement The region supplied 59.22 per cent of the total 184.21 million tonnes of crude oil imported by India during April, 2015 and February, 2016. In the entire 2014-15 fiscal, India had imported 109.88 million tonnes or 58 per cent of its entire oil need of 189.44 million tonnes, from the Middle East. The reliance on the Middle East in that year had declined from 61 per cent in the previous 2013-14 fiscal when the region supplied a total of 115.86 million tonnes of oil. In 2012-13, the Middle East accounted for 62.44 per cent of oil supplies. In a written reply to a question, Pradhan said Saudi Arabia continues to remain Indias number one crude oil supplier, selling 37.10 million tonnes of oil in April-February period of the last fiscal. Saudi supplies were up from 35 million tonnes in 2014-15. Imports from Iraq however saw the biggest jump - rising from about 24.5 million tonnes level of the past three years to 32.97 million tonnes - in April-February of 2015-16. Iran sold 10.58 million tonnes of oil in the first 11 months of 2015-16, as against 10.95 million tonnes in the full 2014-15 fiscal. Import from Iran in 2013-14 was 11 million tonnes and in 2012-13 it was 13.14 million tonnes. Pradhan said supplies from Kuwait has however dipped to 10.13 million tonnes from 17.85 million tonnes in 2014-15. Imports from the UAE also dipped to 14.03 million tonnes from 16.11 million tonnes. Africa overtook South America to become the second biggest source of crude oil supplies during April-February. It supplied 35.69 million tonnes of oil, ahead of 28.10 million tonnes coming from Latin America. In 2014-15, South America had supplied 34.46 million tonnes with Venezuela selling 24.4 million tonnes. In April-February 2015-16, Venezuelan supplies fell to 21.29 million tonnes. Africa had in 2014-15 supplied 33.05 million tonnes of oil to India, bulk of it coming from Nigeria (17.82 million tonnes). In first 11 months of 2015-16, Nigeria sold 21.71 million tonnes of crude oil to India. advertisement Besides crude oil, India also imported almost all of its 8.16 million tonnes LPG from the Middle East region. Qatar was the largest supplier with 3.163 million tonnes in April-February 2015-16, followed by Saudi Arabia (2.24 million tons), the UAE (1.49 million tonnes) and Kuwait (848,000 tonnes), he said. India imported 8.3 million tonnes of LPG in 2014-15, almost all of it from the Middle East. PTI ANZ ANU --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 25 (PTI) An investment of Rs 90,841.16 crore was made in the renewable energy sector in the country during three fiscals to 2015-16, government said today. "Total investment made in renewable energy sector in all states, including Jharkhand and Gujarat, during the last three years is Rs 90,841.16 crore," New & Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. advertisement The minister also informed the House that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has provided financial support of Rs 6,541.04 crore towards capital subsidy/viability gas funding/ generation based incentives in the three-year period till March 31, 2016. The maximum investment was in wind energy sector at 46,831.86 crore during the period, followed by solar at Rs 30,440 crore, biogas & bagase cogeneration at Rs 7,382.40 crore and small hydro (up to 25 MW) at 6,186.90 crore. In a separate reply, the minister said that the ministry has released Rs 941.88 crore to the states under schemes for providing solar power to villages in the country. In another reply to the House, the minister said, "During the 12th Five Year Plan Period, against the target of 88,537 MW generation capacity additions from conventional sources, 84,990.7 MW has been achieved as on March 31, 2016." The minister also informed the House that the tentative power generation capacity addition from sources like thermal, hydro and nuclear is 16,654.5 MW during the current fiscal. PTI KKS MR --- ENDS --- Sunrisers Hyderabad's mentor showed confidence in his team and said that SRH can take on any opposition if it sticks to their plans and executes them well. By Press Trust of India: Notwithstanding Rising Pune Supergiants' poor run in IPL-9, Sunrisers Hyderabad mentor VVS Laxman considers the new side as a formidable unit and said his team will have to put their best foot forward when they clash with them in their IPL match on Tuesday. "It goes without saying that (RPS captain MS Dhoni) Dhoni will be looking forward to use Ashwin against Warner and Shikhar. I believe that Pune has got a very formidable batting line up," Laxman said in a pre-match press conference. (Full IPL 2016 coverage ) advertisement "Lot of people talk about Ajinkya Rahane, Steve Smith, Faf du Plessis being similar. They are all extrordinary T20 players. We cannot at all be complacent or we cannot at all underestimate the batting strength of Pune. We are very mindful," he added. The former Test batsman, however, exuded confidence that SRH can take on any opposition if it sticks to their plans and executes them well. "But, I believe that if we concentrate on our plans and try to execute our plans, then we can do well against any opposition. It's more about concentrating and playing to our strength, while strategizing for each and every oppositon batsman or bowler," he said. Noting that the MS Dhoni-led Pune team would look to bounce back strongly, Laxman said no team can be ruled out as it is still the early part of the long IPL tournament. "I was reading that Fleming was disappointed with the way they started their campaign. But, they got an exceptionally talented side with captain MS Dhoni leading from the front. I am sure they will look to bounce back strongly. We have seen in the past someone like Mumbai Indians lost lot of the matches and went on to win the IPL. "So, it is just the start of the tournament and no team can be ruled out. I am sure they would like to bounce back. We have seen this in IPL where it's all about momentum. Once you start winning the matches, then you win continuously and once you start losing matches, you start losing consecutively two or three matches. It's all about momentum. Pune will be looking forward to win. That's why it's going to be a very important match against them," he said. After losing to Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders in the first two matches, the Hyderabad side has registered three wins in a row and Laxman said they would like to continue the momentum on Tuesday. "SRH has got great depth in its batting with openers David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan and other batsmen, including Eoin Morgan, Moises Henriques, Naman Ojha and Deepak Hooda raising the bar," he said. advertisement "In the last two years, we were told we did not have enough firepower in the middle order. Now, if you see, Naman Ojha in the last match had come at number seven, Moises (Henriques) at number six and Deepak Hooda at number five and Morgan at four," Laxman said. "So, I think we got enough depth in our batting. Bowlers like Bipul (Sharma) and Karn (Sharma) can also bat and so does Bhuvneshwar Kumar. So, I think we are very pleased. "But, in T20 format, it's also important that your top three batsmen perform and invariably, when that happens, you are always in a comfortable position to pile up a big total or chase a big total. So, the importance of the top three is very crucial," Laxman said. He also complimented the way SRH bowlers, including Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mustafizur Rahman, Barinder Sran have performed in the recent matches. "We are very pleased with the way our bowlers have performed. Especially, if you see the last two games against formidable batting line ups, our bowlers did really well. Not to single out anyone, as a bowling group, I thought, to defend both the teams below 150 was exceptional on good batting wickets. That's something which we want to continue," he said. advertisement Laxman said seasoned players Ashish Nehra and Yuvraj Singh, who are recovering from injuries, would be invaluable when they join the team after being declared fit. "To answer when Nehra and Yuvraj comes, both of them are match winners and experienced players. We are fortunate to have both of them. We will try to use their experience. "I am sure both of them are raring to go. But, we have to wait on their fitness. Once, both of them are fit, they will be invaluable to win the matches. It's important to have match winners. We do not want to rely on one or two individuals to win us matches, the more the number, the better for us." Replying to a query, Laxman said Hyderabad's key player Kane Williamson is now fit. The 41-year-old from Hyderabad said captain David Warner does have a big say in team selection and that the playing XI is picked as per team's requirements. "But, I think me, Tom (Moody), Murali (Muralidharan), along with David, we sit down and select the XI and we choose the XI depending on the opposition we are playing and depending on the condition we are going to confront," he said. advertisement "But, having said that, I think we want to be as consistent as possible with our selection. I have experienced in the past, if you chop and change with one or two bad performances, it will create a feeling of insecurity within the group which we don't want. "Over the years, we have been very consistent in giving opportunities to each and every individual. Warner definitely has a big say in picking up the XI," he said. --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 23 (PTI) The HRD ministry is bringing in a child tracking system for over 200 million children across the country which will be used to monitor their progress from one class to another and also identify drop outs. "Introducing a child tracking system for over 200 million children all across the country to track movement class to class, identify drop outs," HRD minister Smriti Irani said in a series of tweets today on the initiatives taken by her ministry in the field of school education. advertisement In another tweet, Irani said that due to Right to Education, the concept of bridge schools was discontinued "which disabilitated entrance of out of school children into the school system (sic)." Moving to other initiatives of the HRD ministry, Irani said that rather than monitoring the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the programme for achievement of universalisation of elementary education, annually as was done during the UPA, her ministry would track it online daily. "We did mid term review online. This year we shall track SSA daily online. Real time data will help engage productively with states," she said in. Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan under UPA regime was monitored once a year and was not facilitating solutions real time, she added. Irani also annouced that her ministry is developing an expenditure portal that centralises various sources of school education data in India. She also mentioned a first of its kind portal for Teacher Education Institutions which will ensure transparency and grading. The HRD minister said her ministry is supporting states to help build composite schools by rationalising stand alone schools with low enrollment and one teacher. "Smaller schools are either mentored by larger schools in same geographical area or are merged in the interest of students," she tweeted. She also announced that the National Assessment Survey (NAS) which was done once in three years by NCERT, will now be done annually. NAS, henceforth, will be competency based, she said in a tweet adding that states are to do assessment in all schools from classes 1 to 8. "Learning outcome portal being designed by NCERT which will have videos so that outcomes are easily comprehended n tests voluntarily taken," she tweeted. In another message, Irani mentioned said the Shala Siddhi scheme of her ministry will be extended to all schools. "Under Shaala Siddhi school evaluation was undertaken since November 2015. This year we shall extend it to all schools across the country," she said. PTI ADS RT --- ENDS --- While Khalid has been rusticated for a semester, Bhattacharya has been given the punishment till the beginning of next semester on July 15. By India Today Web Desk: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) today rusticated research scholars Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, and also fined student leader Kanhaiya Kumar Rs 10,000 for their involvement in a controversial event held in campus in the memory of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. While Khalid has been rusticated for the monsoon semester and fined Rs 20,000, Bhattacharya has been given the punishment till the beginning of the next semester on July 15. From July 25 however, JNU will remain out of bounds for Bhattacharya for five years. advertisement Apart from the three students, who are currently out on bail after they were charged with sedition for the Guru event, the JNU administration has also rusticated PhD student Mujib Gatto for two semesters, and imposed a penalty of Rs 20,000 on former JNUSU leader Ashutosh for the February 9 incident. The latter has also been barred from JNU hostels for a year. ABVP leader Saurabh Sharma, who had complained against Kanhaiya and his comrades for their allegedly "anti-national" activities, has also been fined Rs 10,000 for the row. "The incident in the JNU campus on 9 February 2016 involving some students to hold "Poetry Reading" event on the theme "A Country without a Post Office" did not have the approval of the Administration and as it was alleged later some participants in the event indulged in objectionable sloganeering," the university said in a statement. "The committee arrived at its conclusion based on "depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU Security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record." As per the Committee findings, application for holding this event "circumvented" the "permission process" and "the organizers disobeyed the instructions from the administration" not to hold it and that amounted to "willful defiance"," it said. The three-member committee which was later expanded to include two more faculty members recommended "the rustication and fine for three students, withdrawal of hostel facilities and financial penalty for two students and only financial penalty for fourteen students". Two former JNU students have also been declared out of bounds. Also read: Kanhaiya Kumar accuses man of trying to strangle him in a Jet Airways aircraft Kanhaiya wrongly labeled anti-national, says Uddhav Thackeray --- ENDS --- JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Sunday alleged that a co-passenger tried to strangle him inside an aircraft before a flight from Mumbai to Pune, a charge dismissed as cheap publicity by the man who was detained in connection with the incident. By Mail Today: JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Sunday alleged that a co-passenger tried to strangle him inside an aircraft before a flight from Mumbai to Pune, a charge dismissed as cheap publicity by the man who was detained in connection with the incident. "Yet again, this time inside the aircraft, a man tries to strangulate me," Kanhaiya tweeted after the alleged incident which took place when he was inside a Jet Airways aircraft at the airport. advertisement Kanhaiya was subsequently offloaded from the plane by the airline staff on safety grounds, forcing him to take the road to Pune to attend an event there. The Maharashtra government has ordered a probe into the matter. Following the incident, the man, identified as Manas Jyoti Deka (33), an employee of TCS in Pune, was detained and a noncognisable offence filed at Mumbai airport, police said. Prima facie it appears an argument broke out between two groups over seating onboard the flight and Kanhaiya was part of one of them, a senior police official said. Sahar police is in the process of registering the complaints of both the parties, he added. Deka dismissed the charge of attack and dubbed it as a cheap publicity stunt by the 29-year-old student leader. "My hand just happened to brush his neck as I was trying to balance myself on an aching leg. I do not know him personally though I have seen his pictures. This is being done for cheap publicity," Manas told reporters in Mumbai. Jet Airways, in a statement said, "Some guests on board flight 9W 618 Mumbai to Pune have been off loaded in the interest of operational safety. At Jet Airways, safety and security of guests and crew is always of prime importance. Also Read: Pistol, bullets found with letter threatening to behead Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid on bus to JNU --- ENDS --- The Sena leader's remarks came on a day Kanhaiya, president of the JNU Students Union, alleged that a co-passenger tried to "strangle" him inside an aircraft before a flight from Mumbai to Pune. By PTI: BJP ally Shiv Sena on Sunday took on the Centre for branding JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar as "anti-national" and slapping a sedition case on him. "It is wrong to brand Kanhaiya as anti-national and slapping sedition case against him. He is not anti-national. Who gave birth to Kanhaiya, Hardik Patel and Rohith Vemula? The government should ponder over it," Sena president Uddhav Thackeray said. advertisement He said India has a large population of youth and instead of guiding them, the central government is "misleading" them. When Hardik Patel, the Patel quota stir spearhead, became popular, he was charged with sedition, and now Kumar is fighting against the government, Uddhav said, addressing a meeting of Sena office-bearers and asked, "Who gave birth to these youths?" The Sena leader's remarks came on a day Kanhaiya, president of the JNU Students Union, alleged that a co-passenger tried to "strangle" him inside an aircraft before a flight from Mumbai to Pune. "Yet again, this time inside the aircraft, a man tries to strangulate me," Kanhaiya tweeted after the alleged incident which took place when he was inside a Jet Airways aircraft at the airport here. Kanhaiya was subsequently offloaded from the plane by the airline staff on safety ground, forcing him to take road route to Pune to attend an event there. The BJP-Shiv Sena government has ordered a probe into the matter and the alleged assailant identified as Manas Jyoti Deka (33), an employee of TCS in Pune, was detained and a non-cognisable offence registered against him. Kanhaiya has been attacked several times since being booked under sedition charges in connection with an event at JNU where some anti-national slogans were alleged to have been raised. He is currently out on bail. Also Read Kanhaiya says 'BJP supporter' tried to strangle him inside Jet Airways flight Kanhaiya Kumar attacked with slippers, shoes at Nagpur rally --- ENDS --- He is the first AISF member to be elected JNU Student's Union president, was arrested in February in a sedition case over an event on JNU campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. By PTI: JNU Student's Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who had earlier ruled out campaigning in the West Bengal and Kerala Assembly polls, has now decided to plump for a fellow JNU comrade who is in the fray for the May 16 elections in Kerala. Ever since he walked out of Tihar jail, where he was lodged in a sedition case over an event on campus, Kanhaiya had been maintaining he was a student and not a "politician" and that he had no plans of campaigning in the Assembly polls. advertisement However, the 29-year-old research scholar says he decided to join the campaign after Muhammed Muhassin, CPI candidate for Pattambi seat in Palakkad, mooted the idea. "He has stood by me, so I decided to hit the campaign trail," Kanhaiya said. Muhassin, is a student at JNU's School of Social Science (SSS) and is about to complete his PhD in Adult Education. He is also the Vice President of JNU unit of All India Students Federation (AISF), the student wing of Communist Party of India (CPI). Kanhaiya, who is the first AISF member to be elected JNU Student's Union president, was arrested in February in a sedition case over an event on JNU campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. Muhassin, was among those who led the agitation for Kanhaiya's release. "I still maintain that mainstream politics is not my calling and I have no intention of joining it. I still plan to stick to my goal of being a teacher but with Muhassin it was different. He has stood by JNU, stood by me all the time, I couldn't refuse him," Kanhaiya said. "And not only me but the entire AISF unit of JNU will support him. Besides, the JNU unit of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) will also travel to Kerala to campaign for him," he added. Asked about the campaigning schedule, Muhassin told PTI over phone from Kerala, "Kanhaiya along with the IPTA group and JNU students is expected to be here in the second week of May. He also plans to go to Patna before that where he will address a public meeting. He may also visit his family during the same trip." After the electrifying speech Kanahaiya delivered on his return to the campus from jail, the CPI-M General secretary Sitaram Yechury had said the student leader would be campaigning for Left parties in the Assembly polls. However, he later stated that Kanhaiya will not travel to Kerala and West Bengal to campaign citing the bail conditions and other issues. Kanhaiya too had ruled out campaigning, saying mainstream politics is not his calling. advertisement Kanhaiya had campaigned in south Delhi during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and in Begusarai, when his home state Bihar voted last year. --- ENDS --- From Kim Kardashian's selfies to Justin Bieber's shirtless poses, this 33-year-old comedian spared no one and has created a parody of the fancy photos uploaded by celebrities on social media platforms. By India Today Web Desk: Many of us are enchanted by the picture perfect lives of celebrities and follow them on various social media platforms to see get some fashion and travel goals. But those perfectly manicured nails or fancy globetrotting does not fit well in the lives of the common man. There is a stark difference between the perfect yet not so perfect glam world and thee lives those millions of followers live. advertisement This 33-year-old comedian and writer from Australia decided to do something fun with all those fancy filtered pictures celebrities upload. Through a series of photos, she mocked the crazy photos and came up with some funny parody posts. According to her the dumber she looks, the better it gets. From Kim Kardashian's selfies to Justin Bieber's shirtless poses, Celeste Barber has left no one in mocking the 'too good to be true' pictures on Instagram. She posted pictures on her Instagram account which has 665 thousand followers who not only like her humour but admire her for creating awareness about body positive movement on the social media platform. Check it out here: Privileged people only travel in style. #celestechallengeaccepted #celestebarber #funny #whohaha @whohaha A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Apr 16, 2016 at 3:19pm PDT A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Apr 19, 2016 at 2:09pm PDT Happy birthday #kourtneykardashian may your day be filled with post workout selfies and tutorials on how to eat a #kitkat #celestechallengeaccepted #celestebarber #funny #kourtneykardashian #birthday A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Apr 18, 2016 at 2:43pm PDT #nationallookalikeday #celestechallengeaccepted #celestebarber #funny #caradelevingne #katemoss #whohaha A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Apr 20, 2016 at 3:20pm PDT Remember when bathrooms were used to crap in? #celestechallengeaccepted #celestebarber #funny #justinbieber Spot the dummy. A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Apr 7, 2016 at 2:19pm PDT Don't you hate it when your doing your nails in and you get a CRAMP!?!? #celestechallengeaccepted #celestechallengeaccepted #funny #victoriabeckham A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Mar 31, 2016 at 2:32pm PDT --- ENDS --- The opposition has been alleging that the visa was cancelled by the Modi government under Chinese pressure. The granting of the visa to Isa had been seen as a sign of the Indian government standing up to Beijing by inviting a top dissident to India. By Rahul Kanwal: Ministry of Home Affairs sources have confirmed to India Today that the visa which was issued to exiled Uighur-Chinese leader Dolkun Isa has been cancelled. Dolkun Isa has said, "It's a sad situation. I really wanted to visit India. But I received an email on Saturday saying that the visa has been cancelled. No explanation was given." India Today spoke to senior government officials to understand the reason behind the cancellation of the visa granted to the dissident Chinese leader. A senior MHA official told India Today, "E-visa was granted to Isa on April 6. Subsequently it came to our notice that there is an existing Interpol Red Corner Notice against him issued by the Chinese authorities. So immigration authorities have cancelled the e-visa on April 23." advertisement Dolkun Isa is a German national of Chinese origin. He is one of the most prominent Chinese dissidents. The opposition has been alleging that the visa was cancelled by the Modi government under Chinese pressure. The granting of the visa to Isa had been seen as a sign of the Indian government standing up to Beijing by inviting a top dissident to India. Senior government sources reiterated that the decision to cancel the visa has nothing to do with Chinese pressure but was a decision taken by immigration authorities because Isa had a Red Corner notice against him. --- ENDS --- Gold and silver as gifts are out dated, planting trees on a wedding holds more value for this bride from Madhya Pradesh. By India Today Web Desk: Meet, Priyanka Bhadoriya - a science graduate and resident of Kisipura village in Maharashtra's Bhind district. On April 22, which was Earth Day and coincidentally her wedding day, she decided to do something extraordinary. Priyanka made a humble request to her groom and his family for an unconventional wedding gift - to plant 10,000 saplings around her home. Impressed by this unique demand, the groom, Ravi Chauhan, immediately tied the knot on Friday. advertisement Her demand stems from the painful memories of failing crop yields and drought in her village. Speaking to HT Bhadoriya said, "I have been planting saplings from the age of 10. When my marriage was fixed on Earth Day, I was very happy as it reminded me of my emotional bonding with the environment." Soon after the couple got married, they planted a few mango trees near their home and also vowed to plant more trees on their wedding anniversaries. The environmentally driven bride also expressed her wish to distribute more saplings among farmers and social workers. More recently, another couple from Bihar planted saplings of fruit trees to spread awareness about environment protection. The green themed wedding had food that was served on plates made of leaves and water in earthen mugs. The guest were gifted a sapling each to plant in their backyard. On December last year, Soumya Reddy, daughter of Karnataka's transport minister, hosted a one-of-a-kind environmental friendly, vegan and zero waste wedding. In the wedding 150 staff members of the Bangalore based organisation Hasiru Dala collected and segregated wet and dry waste.The guests at the wedding were instructed not to wear silk, leather or woolen products and none of the clothes gifted to the relatives and family had any silk or wool. --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Lalit K Jha Washington, Apr 25 (PTI) Much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead, the White House said today, a year after the nascent Himalayan democracy was hit by a massive earthquake. "One year ago today a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people, injuring tens of thousands more, and leaving millions without homes," said Ned Price, spokesman of the National Security Council, White House. advertisement The US government and the American people will continue to extend its friendship and partnership to Nepal as it works together to ensure a brighter, more prosperous, and safer future for all Nepalis, he said in a statement. "Much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead," said Price. Remembering those who perished in the earthquake and its massive aftershocks, he said: "We are humbled by those who risked their lives to save others, including the six United States Marines who perished in Nepal while providing relief to Nepalis in need. "As we honour the victims, we draw inspiration from Nepalis of all walks of life - men and women, young and old, from the mountains, the hills, the plains, and even overseas - who came together after the tragedy to aid the survivors and rebuild their country," he said. The massive temblor that struck Nepal on April 25 last year killed nearly 9,000 people and displaced thousands others, causing widespread devastation. PTI LKJ SAI AKJ SAI --- ENDS --- Several parliamentarians, cutting across political lines, ignored the vehicle rationing scheme of the Delhi government. Rajdeep Sardesai on his show News Today was joined by Asaduddin Owaisi, Vijay Goel and Raghav Chadha. By India Today Web Desk: On the first day of Parliament, members across political ideologies joined hands to revolt against the odd-even scheme, saying it should not apply to them. Several parliamentarians, cutting across party lines, ignored the vehicle rationing scheme of the Delhi government. The members unanimously demanded exemption from the scheme. While Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said an exemption should be made just for the Parliament session, an apologetic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Paresh Rawal said "sorry" for breaking the rule. advertisement "I made a serious blunder... Sorry to Arvind ji and Delhiites," said Paresh Rawal, who was fined by Delhi Police. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said he had received complaints from MPs and suggested that parliamentarians be exempted from the odd-even scheme. To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said, "We will talk to the appropriate authorities; and we would not want any obstruction for the MPs in executing their duties." Rajdeep Sardesai on his show News Today was joined by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President Asaduddin Owaisi, BJP MP Vijay Goel and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson Raghav Chadha. An unapologetic Owaisi denied having done any wrong, saying he does not want to break any law and asked for emperical evidence which shows things have improved after implementation of the scheme. "Is there an emperical evidence which shows... having implemented such a scheme things are improving? If things are improving based on scientific emperical data, fine. But if things are not improving, it is high time for people in power to introspect and find other ways of doing it," Owaisi said. BJP MP Vijay Goel - who violated the odd-even rule on the very first day - compared himself to Mahatma Gandhi and other freedom fighters, saying they were sent to jail for breaking the law on several occasions. "If I break the law, I will pay a fine. I broke the law because Rs 100 crore was spent on promoting the scheme... television channels, newspapers, radio stations were paid for advertising," Goel said. "The government is not interested in reducing pollution," he alleged. WATCH FULL SHOW: ALSO READ Odd-even 2.0: Frustrated with restrictions, parliamentarians demand exemption Odd-even effect: Special buses for MPs to reach House --- ENDS --- According to police, the raid was conducted to arrest a criminal identified as Furkan. Subsequently, encounter took place between the police team and three goons. By India Today Web Desk: A police sub-inspector was killed today during a police raid followed by an encounter with the goons in Dadri, Noida. Deceased, identified as Sub-inspector Akhtar Ali, was part of a 12 member police team that was conducting a raid in Greater Noida area on a tip off that a wanted criminal Sultan was hiding at a house in Dadri. advertisement According to police, the raid was conducted to arrest Sultan, a criminal against whom several cases of loot and murder are registered, at 5 am in the morning. Subsequently, encounter took place between the team and three goons. While Ali sustained injuries from the firing and consequently succumbed to death, the goons fled from the spot. Akhtar's family have refused to conduct his last rites till the criminals are arrested. "Unless the killers are arrested we will not conduct the last rites," Akhtar's elder brother Wahid said. Wahid also alleged that police personnel in the raiding team fled from the spot leaving Akhtar alone. However, police officials have denied the charge. Akhtar, who hails from Aligarh, had joined police as a constable in 1998 and later promoted to the post of Sub Inspector. He was posted at Dadri Police Station on 11 June 2014. --- ENDS --- Delhi government's vehicle rationing scheme odd-even 2.0 received staunch opposition from lawmakers across political parties, today at the parliament session. By India Today Web Desk: Delhi government's vehicle rationing scheme odd-even 2.0 received staunch opposition from lawmakers across political parties, today at the parliament session. Parliamentarians unanimously demanded exemption from the Aam Admi Party's odd-even scheme. "How can MPs be restricted from coming to the Parliament?" said Congress leader Anand Sharma. Samajwadi Party's Naresh Agarwal voiced the same opinion and stated that with the restrictions imposed under the scheme it was utterly difficult for him to reach Parliament for the budget session that resumed today. advertisement Since the odd-even 2.0 rolled out it was the first time lawmakers faced restrictions and found it difficult to reach the Upper House. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said parliamentarians must be kept out of the rule as "taxis cannot come into Parliament." While many were dejected with the commuting problems they faced, few like BJP MP and actor Paresh Rawal violated the rules. However, Rawal later apologised to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and tweeted: "Made a serious blunder... Sorry to Arvind ji and Delhiites." Meanwhile, the special bus that was arranged to ferry MPs to the Rajya Sabha returned empty. --- ENDS --- In this year's conference, terror is likely to rule the agenda. India is expected to ask for a progress report on the Pathankot probe and about the possible reciprocal visit of NIA team to Pakistan. By Smita Sharma: After stalling the India-Pakistan bilateral talks for more than three months, the two top diplomats have agreed to formally resume dialogue during the Heart of Asia Conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar will meet his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Chaudhry after talks were derailed following the Pathankot terror attack. In a statement released, Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia process, reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long term peace and stability in Afghanistan. The Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. advertisement Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process. Last year in December, the conference was chaired by Islamabad. Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sudden and historic stop at Lahore in on December 25 last year, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the conference where the two countries tried to renew the talks under a new name. However, the Pathankot terror attacks in January applied brakes onto the process and, without either side saying that the talks had been called off. In this year's conference, terror is likely to rule the agenda. India is expected to ask for a progress report on the Pathankot probe and about the possible reciprocal visit of NIA team to Pakistan. Moreover, it will also raise the issue of consular access to its national Kulbhushan Jadhav in Pakistani custody. On the other hand, Pakistan is likely to raise the issue of arrests of alleged Indian spies on its territory. Earlier, when asked if going forward the bilateral talks would be conditional to the outcomes of the Pathankot terror probe, S Jaishankar replied, "In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious." Despite India pushing back talks that were slated for January 14, the two sides have always remained in touch with one another. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval exchanged information with his counterpart Janjua. Recently, PM Modi also spoke to his counterpart Nawaz Sharif over the deadly suicide blasts that claimed scores of innocent lives in Lahore on Easter. However, Pakistan envoy to India, Abdul Basit, had stirred a hornet's nest earlier this month at a press conference by saying that India had suspended the talks. Rejecting the possibility of the return visit of the NIA to Pakistan, he said, "This is not a question of reciprocity. It is about extending cooperation between two countries." --- ENDS --- Earlier this month, on April 9, 2016, three teenage girls of Hindu community in Sindh province went missing from their villages. Burning the religious books, kidnappings and forced conversions of Hindu girls in Pakistan have made the lives of the Hindu community miserable. Photo: Agencies By Kaswar Klasra: Threatened by kidnappings and forced conversions of their teenage girls and abandoned by the government of Pakistan, the Hindu minority living in Sindh province is waiting for a divine miracle to rescue them. Earlier this month, on April 9, 2016, three teenage girls of Hindu community in Sindh province went missing from their villages. The missing includes 14-year-old daughter Pirma Bheel of Sobho Bheel, a resident of Village Nikno Bheel Talka Islamkot, Kiran Menghwar from Hyderabad, and Leelan jogi, the 14-year-old daughter Malook jogi kidnapped from Sanghar district. advertisement A wave of fear and anger has been felt among Sindh's Hindu community following the kidnapping of Hindu teenage girls. Member of Pakistan's National Assembly Ramesh Kumar says the girls were kidnapped and converted to Islam forcibly. He alleged that girls have been kidnaped by Influential Muslims of area, including Hayat Hingorjo, allegedly supported by a member of Pakistan's lower House Faqir Sher Mohammad. Until filing of this report, the whereabouts of all four girls were not known despite continuous efforts by the police and the victim's families. The kidnapping of Hindu girls and forced conversion are not new in the Sindh province. Pakistan's Hindu Council says four Hindu girls every month are forced to convert to Islam. Burning the religious books of the Hindu minority, kidnapping and forced conversions of Hindu girls in Pakistan have made the lives of the Hindu community miserable, ultimately forcing them to cross border and take refuge in India. Two years ago in May 2014, member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, dropped a bomb shell in the lower House, revealing that around 5,000 Hindus are migrating from Pakistan to India every year. Currently, Pakistan is home to about two million Hindus, most of who live in the southern province of Sindh and belong to lower castes, including Sochi. While upper-caste Hindus complain of their traders being kidnapped for ransom, lower-caste Hindus say their daughters are being targetted. There have been a number of incidents involving kidnappings of Hindu traders and businessmen for ransom. "Our community can bear looting and the kidnapping of our men, but the abduction of our daughters and burning of holy books are too painful," Dr Ramesh Kumar, who holds a National Assembly seat, told Mail Today. "Unfortunately, the frequency of these crimes is increasing due to religious extremism." According to another report from the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, about 1,000 non-Muslim girls are converted to Islam each year in Pakistan. According to this report, every month, an estimated 20 or more Hindu girls are abducted and converted, although exact figures are impossible to gather. On April 24, 2016, Patron-inchief of Pakistan Hindu Council, Dr. Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, who is in fact a ray of hope for the Hindus community living in Pakistan, criticised provincial governments of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for failing to protect the minorities. Talking to Mail today, Ramesh Kumar said the establishment of Special Task Force for the Protection of Minorities on urgent basis is the need of time. advertisement He said the Constitution of Pakistan guaranteed for the protection of minorities' rights, while founder of the Nation Quad-e-Azam had also announced to provide religious freedom for those living in the newly-born Muslim state. Dr Ramesh said it was highly regrettable that both the provincial governments were not interested in implementing the detailed ruling of the Supreme Court dated June 19, 2014 for providing security to the minorities. "When all other religious places and leaders are having state security then why the innocent Hindu community is being left at the mercy of terrorists," he questioned while mentioning the recent incident at Dera Murad Jamali, where religious Hindu literature books were stolen from a Hindu temple. He demanded the provincial governments to take solid steps such as curriculum reforms. "It is really embarrassing that hatred against the Hindu community is being taught in the governmentrun primary schools," he said. Sadly, a handful of Muslim clerics consider it an honour to convert non-Muslim girls. Mian Abdul Malik, custodian of the Bharchundi Sharif Shrine, famous for conversions of Hindu girls, said claims were not true. Rather, Hindu girls themselves visit them for conversion to Islam. "There's no such thing as forced conversions in Islam and in Pakistan," he told Mail Today adding that girls themselves come to the shrine for conversion. Last year, Malik converted two Hindu men and 15 Hindu women. Asked about this ratio, he said: "Hindu women come readily to us because after conversion we facilitate their marriages to Muslims." advertisement Also Read: Pakistan's Sindh province declares public holiday on Holi --- ENDS --- PM Modi pitched for a mass movement towards water conservation as he expressed concern over prevailing drought conditions in various parts of the country. By Amit Agnihotri: Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched for a mass movement towards water conservation as he expressed concern over prevailing drought conditions in various parts of the country. The prime minister shared his thoughts in his monthly radio programme Mann Ki Baat. Expressing hope for a good monsoon this year, the prime minister said efforts to clean the Ganga and Yamuna rivers will show results in some time. advertisement Touching upon education, he emphasised that focus should shift from enrollment to providing quality education. During his 30-minute broadcast, Modi also expressed gratitude to the one crore households, which gave up their LPG subsidy in response to his call, exhorting media to highlight positive news. Talking about the drought situation, he said prolonged drought leads to drop in water table in reservoirs. "To fight the drought and water scarcity, the governments will do their work. But I have also seen people making individual efforts. In several villages, awareness on the value of water is evident. In such places, there is sensitivity and the will to do something to conserve," the prime minister said. Referring to the weather forecast of 106 per cent to 110 per cent rainfall during this monsoon, he said such good news always brings peace. "But this news brings new awareness also. While the news about good rainfall brings comfort, it also provides an opportunity and a challenge. Can we run a movement from village to village to preserve water? To whatever extent possible, we must save water." Also Read: PM Modi to address 18th edition of Mann Ki Baat today --- ENDS --- The public prosecutor in the Pratyusha Banerjee death case said at Rahul Raj Singh's anticipatory bail hearing that early leads point to her murder. By India Today Web Desk: In a new twist in the Pratyusha Banerjee death case, the public prosecutor claimed today, during the anticipatory bail plea hearing of Rahul Raj Singh, that early leads suggest the actress was murdered. The Mumbai Police said that only after getting custody of Rahul could they could apply charges of murder. The probe suggested that Rahul could have entered the building through the adjacent window, but wasted a good half an hour in calling the neighbour. During the investigations, it was also revealed that the dupatta wasn't hanging but was kept aside. Also, no object was found using which Pratyusha could have climbed to reach the ceiling fan to commit suicide. In the meantime, the actor-producer has been granted anticipatory bail by Bombay High Court. advertisement Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee death: Bombay HC refuses to transfer case to Crime Branch As per the last update on the case, the Bombay High Court had refused to transfer the case to the Crime Branch and had asked the Mumbai Police to report the progress made. The late actress' mother Shoma Banerjee had filed a petition seeking a probe by the Crime Branch. On April 1, 24-year-old Pratyusha, who shot to fame for her role as Anandi in Balika Vadhu, was found hanging inside her flat in suburban Goregaon in Mumbai. Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee death case: Maharashtra government likely to appoint special public prosecutor --- ENDS --- Queen Elizabeth II, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday with The Duke of Edinburgh at her side, wrote the letter when she was 21 years old. By India Today Web Desk: The Royals and everything pertaining to them has a reputation of having a certain old-world charm to it. And when it comes to the world's longest-reigning monarch professing her love for a naval cadet, who ultimately went on to become her husband, the interest only escalates. We're talking about Queen Elizabeth's rare letter that has her mention her romance with Prince Philip like never before. advertisement Written in 1947, the above-mentioned letter was addressed to author Betty Shew, who according to The Telegraph UK, "was writing a book about the couple's wedding." The letter, which has reportedly been sold to "a private collector at a sale at Chippenham Auction Room in Wiltshire" has managed to rake in approximately 14,440 GBP (around Rs 13,87,005). Also Read: On her 90th birthday, we give you 15 secrets from the Queen's style files Adding her bit of normalcy to the 'Royal' romance, the letter has a visibly smitten Queen Elizabeth mentioning her first meeting with Prince Philip at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in July 1939. The couple, which has now been married for over 68 years, reportedly met for the first time when the Queen was 13 and Prince Philip was 18 years of age. "I was 13 years of age and he was 18 and a cadet just due to leave. He joined the Navy at the outbreak of war, and I only saw him very occasionally when he was on leave--I suppose about twice in three years," The Telegraph UK quotes the letter. Also Read: These shoes honour the Queen's 90th birthday and come with 3000 crystals "Then when his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, were away he spent various weekends away with us at Windsor. Then he went to the Pacific and Far East for two years as everyone there will know," wrote the Queen. Queen Elizabeth, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday with The Duke of Edinburgh at her side, wrote the letter when she was 21 years old. --- ENDS --- In 1989, Subhash Ghai gave Bollywood one of its most popular jodis, Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor, in the form of Ram Lakhan. And 17 years after the super-hit film, filmmaker Rohit Shetty is all set to bring the tale of two brothers on the silver screen once again. After months and months of speculations, it seems that the makers have finalised their Ram and Lakhan. By India Today Web Desk: In 1989, Subhash Ghai gave Bollywood one of its most popular jodis, Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor, in the form of Ram Lakhan. And 17 years after the super-hit film, filmmaker Rohit Shetty is all set to bring the tale of two brothers on the silver screen once again. After months and months of speculations, it seems that the makers have finalised their Ram and Lakhan. advertisement ALSO READ: Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra to reunite for Ram Lakhan remake? ALSO READ: Karan Johar, Rohit Shetty join hands for Ram Lakhan remake According to a report in Mid-Day, Shahid Kapoor will essay the role of Ram in the film, while Ranveer Singh can proudly say 'Mera Naam Hai Lakhan.' It seems the Rangoon actor has outrun Ranbir Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan and Sidharth Malhotra, who were the front-runners for Ram's role, to step into Jackie Shroff's shoes for the film. And Ranveer has been play Anil Kapoor's iconic role Lakhan in the remake. A source was quoted as telling the tabloid, "Out of all the names being tossed for Lakhan's part, Ranveer was the first choice. Also, last year Anil Kapoor, who played Lakhan, had said that Ranveer was perfect for the role. As for Ram's character, it was decided that Shahid would be an ideal pick. The actors, however, have not signed on the dotted line." If things turn out as expected, Shahid and Ranveer will get to share screen space for the very first time. However, the makers are still on a look out for the two female actors for Ram Lakhan remake. "The makers are looking for fresh faces to essay Madhuri Dixit and Dimple Kapadia's characters and the project is likely to go on floors by end of the year. Once everything is finalised, an official announcement will be made." Rohit Shetty has joined hands with Karan Johar to remake Subhash Ghai's 1989 hit Ram Lakhan in association with Mukta Arts. When asked about the remake, Anil Kapoor had told PTI, "I think remaking Ram Lakhan is more of a business proposition than a creative one. But I think Rohit Shetty and Karan Johar will do their best." While Shahid has recently wrapped up the shooting of his upcoming film Rangoon, Ranveer is currently filming for Aditya Chopra's Befikre in Paris. --- ENDS --- Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. By PTI: Union Minister Kiren Rijiju today accused former Home Minister P Chidambaram of making a "delirious attempt to escape" in the Ishrat Jahan controversy by saying an Under Secretary had signed the second affidavit contradicting an earlier submission that the 19-year-old girl killed in an alleged fake encounter, was a Lashkar-e-Taiba activist. "It is a delirious attempt to escape. An Under Secretary signs in an affidavit only after the minister approves," Rijiju told reporters in New Delhi advertisement He was reacting to Chidambaram's comments on the controversy surrounding the change in affidavits done during the latter's tenure as the Home Minister, saying, "The Home Minister does not sign affidavits. It is signed by an Under Secretary." "National security compromised is too serious an issue to be diverted. Congress can't divert it with an aberrant excuse. For how long will Congress protect a terrorist?" Rijiju asked. Chidambaram had also said that the affidavit controversy was to "divert attention" from the real issue, which is whether it was a "fake" encounter or not. Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The Gujarat Police had then said that those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and had landed in the state to kill the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The first affidavit, filed in the Gujarat High Court based on inputs from Maharashtra and Gujarat Police besides the Intelligence Bureau, said that Ishrat, from Mumbai outskirts, was a Lashkar-e-Taiba activist, but it was ignored in the second affidavit, Home Ministry officials said. The second affidavit, claimed to have been drafted by Chidambaram, said there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Ishrat was a terrorist. Also Read: This is what has happened in Ishrat Jahan case since 2004 Ishrat Jahan was a Lashkar operative, says David Headley --- ENDS --- The sadhus, belonging to the Juna Akhara sect, are seen in the video attacking policemen and even some devotees. By India Today Web Desk: Tensions are brewing between the seers and local administration in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain where a month-long Kumbh Mela is underway. The seers allege administrative mismanagement for the holy dip on the first day of the event on the banks of the Kshipra river. A group of sadhus clashed with the police at the Simhastha Kumbh Mela on Sunday. In one such clash a seer was critically wounded and shifted to a local hospital. The sadhus, belonging to the Juna Akhara sect, are seen in the video attacking policemen and even some devotees advertisement Large number of people from different corners of the country have converged in the holy city for the Simhastha ?M ela, which is held after a gap of every 12 years at Ujjain. Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) chief Narendra Giri on Sunday threatened the Madhya Pradesh BJP government ?saying sadhus will boycott the second 'shahi- shan'(royal bath) on May 9 and return home if the things were not set right. Giri is the head of ABAP - the governing body of 13 'akharas' of sadhus who are camping here for the Kumbh Mela. The Simhastha Kumbh Mela started on April 22 and will conclude on May 21. --- ENDS --- Dipika Kakar, who plays Simar in the show, has arranged for a special party for the entire cast and crew. By Indo-Asian News Service: Actress Dipika Kakar, who plays Simar in Sasural Simar Ka, has announced a party to celebrate the completion of five years of the popular soap opera. Dipika will arrange the special party on the set of the Colors show on Monday when the show will complete five years. She is said to have personally sent out invitations to her entire cast and crew, and a few other close industry friends for a celebration post the shoot on the set. advertisement Also read: Dipika Kakar of Sasural Simar Ka is upset because of a fan "It's a way I'm looking at meeting old people who have been connected to the show be it technicians or actors and celebrating this whole day together," Dipika said in a statement. "The idea actually is to get the onscreen and behind the screen family of Sasural Simar Ka together and celebrate this day as it is a milestone we have achieved," she added. --- ENDS --- As soon as work began in Rajya Sabha on the inaugural day of the second leg of the Budget session, Congress leader Anand Sharma called for a debate on Uttarakhand and the alleged misuse of Article 356. By India Today Web Desk: As a belligerent opposition sought a debate on the Uttarakhand political crisis in Rajya Sabha, the government deflected the matter saying the matter is sub-judice, forcing the Congress to raise slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Modi teri taanashahi, nahi chalegi (Modi, your dictatorship will not work)," shouted the Congress MPs as they accused the government of misusing its powers in implementing the controversial President's Rule in Uttarakhand, which is now being heard by the Supreme Court. advertisement As soon as work began in Rajya Sabha on the inaugural day of the second leg of the Budget session, Congress leader Anand Sharma called for a debate on Uttarakhand and the alleged misuse of Article 356. Countering Sharma's allegations, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Congress is anticipating a discussion that is already scheduled to take place later in Rajya Sabha. The answer did not placate the protesting opposition MPs, who soon began to raise slogans against the government, forcing the Speaker to adjourn the House till 2 pm. Last week, the Supreme Court stayed until April 27 the Uttarakhand High Court order, which had quashed the President's Rule and restored the Congress government in the state. Moments before Parliament met, Modi had expressed hope that the session will transact its business smoothly. "In the last session also we transacted important business. Most of them were on financial issues. The satisfaction about it reflected in the face of our members. I hope similarly business will be transacted smoothly this time as well. We hope all (parties) will cooperate in making the session a success," Modi told reporters. The session will continue till May 13. Also Read Parliament LIVE: Congress MPs raise slogans against govt over Uttarakhand crisis --- ENDS --- Customers throng the "Xuzhen Supermarket" in Shangai to buy products with nothing inside. Here's why. By India Today Web Desk: All of us might think twice before walking into a store only to buy a sparkling new empty can of soda. So, why are people in Shangai confidently marching into the "Xuzhen Supermarket" to buy products with nothing inside? This is the brainchild of Shanghai-based artist Xu Zhen and his contemporary art creation team, MadeIn Company , who set up this supermarket to oppose the notions of globalization and consumption. advertisement Xu Zhen reconstructs a convenience store with perfectly packaged regular supermarket products with nothing in it. He then invites visitors to buy them or question the actual worth of the products. His main aim is to highlight the superficiality of mass consumerism and also to 'break the barriers between art and business'. It also stands as a powerful satire on the impact of capitalism in our society. Customers who came in to buy the products realized how many people blindly buy things merely for the attractive packaging. Speaking to CCTV Vigy Jin, GM of Madein Company said, "This work is actually opposing crazy consumerism. Everyone will see the bustling appearance, but they won't pay any attention to the actual things inside it. But now our society has developed very prosperously, so the packaging is all just very bubbly and bustling. What I actually want is to make people focus more on what's inside." For more, check out the video below: --- ENDS --- The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 was passed by a voice vote earlier this year after the Lok Sabha rejected all the five amendments recommended by the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP is in a minority. By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court will hear next month a petition filed by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh challenging the "unconstitutional" passage of the Aadhaar Bill as a money bill. Seeking the assistance of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi in the matter, the apex court has fixed May 6 as the date for the hearing. The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 was passed by a voice vote earlier this year after the Lok Sabha rejected all the five amendments recommended by the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP is in a minority. advertisement A money bill can only be introduced in the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha cannot make amendments in a money bill passed by the Lok Sabha. The Congress and other opposition parties had made a strong pitch against the overall nature of the bill in the Rajya Sabha, even as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought to allay their apprehensions concerning the bill. --- ENDS --- Instead of trying something new, Kapil Sharma relied on his old bag of tricks. With just 26 episodes in this season, the team needs to impress from the word go. By Parmita Uniyal: With popularity comes responsibility. Kapil Sharma had a huge responsibility on his shoulders when he promised a grand comeback with The Kapil Sharma Show (TKSS). While the first episode was just the televised version of a live show in Delhi, the second episode was the actual test for Kapil and his team. Did he pass the test with flying colours? Or is there scope for improvement? While the TRPs will tell the true picture, we felt the show could have been better. Here's why: advertisement Is Kapil becoming a victim of his own image? Comedy Nights With Kapil was a major turning point in Kapil's career. Thanks to the show, he catapulted to stardom in no time. Result? It seems he was wary of trying out something new and took the safe route of cloning his own concept. So while it's a new show, the formula is the same. While the familiarity of Kapil's brand of humour did cheer us up initially, beyond a point the show seemed like a revamped version of Comedy Nights With Kapil, which might please the viewers in the short run, but might lead to a burnout in the long run. Besides, the characters look more or less similar, barring a few. For example, Ali Asgar is playing Kapil's Nani in the show instead of his Dadi. That she's blind and even more quirky makes her different from Dadi, but the fact is, Ali couldn't get out of playing an old woman. Our fear is that if the front-runner fails to reinvent, most comedy shows in India might soon become like the daily soaps--repetitive and redundant. Also read: The first episode of The Kapil Sharma Show was a letdown; here's why The characters seemed too close to their earlier avatars; only Sunil and Suresh shone Kapil and his gang comprising old and new faces--Sumona Chakravarti, Sunil Grover, Chandan Prabhakar, Ali Asgar, Kiku Sharda, Suresh Menon, Panash Ganatra, and Rochelle Rao--stay in Shantivan Non-Cooperative Society. Kapil plays Kapil or Kappu, an unemployed youth who moves in with his Nani after years and bumps into people from his childhood. So while Sumona plays Sarla, his childhood friend who used to study with him in school and has a crush on him, Chandan plays a tea stall owner (not much change there). Ali plays Kapil's Nani who's 90% blind. Kiku will play multiple characters, and appeared in this episode as a cop called Damodar Ishwarlal Gaitonde (DIG, in case you didn't get that). It was Sunil's character that was etched out the best. He shone the brightest among all the comedians in the role of Dr. Mashoor Gulati and he was the only comedian among the old members who did not remind us of his Comedy Nights With Kapil stint (where he was famous as Gutthi). Among the new additions, Suresh Menon as the owner of Mohan Latrine Services was impressive. Playing a South Indian character, he entertained the audience with his spontaneity and wit. As for Rochelle (nurse), she sure looked glamorous and her accent was cute, but her comic timing and acting skills were nothing to write home about. It was clear that she was completely out of her depth. Also, at one point, everybody was shouting at everybody and it wasn't comic chaos. advertisement The film promotion segment didn't work We feel that the show was a little too stretched and obsessed with its own characters. Tiger Shroff and Shraddha Kapoor, who came to promote their film Baaghi, were also made to act along with the TKSS team and the result was a disaster. Tiger looked awkward trying to make people laugh. Most of the time, he didn't follow the cues. Shraddha Kapoor, however, was better. A segment in which Dr Mashoor Gulati was trying to convince Shraddha of taking up the job of a nurse in his hospital was hilarious. And we hand it to Sunil for making the segment so entertaining. After a point though, we were waiting for the show to end as it ran for a good 1 hour 40 minutes. advertisement On the brighter side People are so used to watching Kapil on weekends that the show might work after all. Besides, no one can doubt Kapil's comic talent. With a more carefully planned structure and constant innovations, The Kapil Sharma Show can gain back the audiences' love. The Kapil Sharma Show will air on Saturday and Sundays at 9 pm on Sony TV. --- ENDS --- Bhujbal has reportedly lost 10 kgs since his arrest in March. He is seen with a full grown white beard and a very frail look in the picture. By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Once known as a fiery leader, NCP leader and OBC strongman from Maharashtra Chhagan Bhujbal's frail pictures from hospital have gone viral on social media. Bhujbal has reportedly lost 10 kgs since his arrest in March. He is seen with a full grown white beard and a very frail look in the picture. Controversies surrounded Bhujbal even in the hospital as his admission to the St George's Hospital ran into trouble and an inquiry was ordered into it. There were reports questioning why Bhujbal was taken to a St George Hospital instead of a dental hospital when he had only complained of tooth ache. advertisement However the dean of JJ Hospital in his report said that Bhujbal who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure required to be in ICU. Before being brought to the St George's Hospital, Bhujbal was lodged in anda cell of Arthur Road Jail. This anda cell was built during Bhujbal's term as the PWD minister. In the high security barrack no. 12, Bhujbal has Peter Mukerjea and NCP leader Ramesh Kadam as his inmates. Bhujbal's nephew Sameer who is also lodged in the same anda cell however is in a different barrack. Earlier when Bhujbal was not allowed home food, he shared meals with Peter Mukerjea. Sources say that since the meal timings inside jail are different, Bhujbal hasn't been eating much resulting in weight loss. Lunch is served at 11 am and dinner at 5 pm. Bhujbal was arrested by the ED in March in a money laundering case which the agency claims caused a loss of Rs 870 crore to the exchequer. The ED is probing alleged kickbacks received by Bhujbal and his kin for favouring contractors in construction of the Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi and the Kalina Central Library, works which were awarded when he was state PWD minister (he held the portfolio from November 2004 to September 2014.) He started his political career with the Shiv Sena, joined the Congress and later the NCP of Sharad Pawar. --- ENDS --- This library-themed hostel in Tokyo which allows guests to sleep in the bookshelves is paradise for bookworms. By India Today Web Desk: The most sublime feeling at the end of an exhausting day is to curl up with a good book and fall asleep. This bookstore-themed hostel located on the seventh floor of a high-rise in Tokyo's Ikebukuro neighborhood, has just taken this experience to the next level. Book and Bed is a small, 30-bed hostel in Tokyo where guests can snuggle up in the cozy library shelves packed with books. advertisement The advertisement on the website explains, "The perfect setting for a good night's sleep is something you will not find here. There are no comfortable mattresses, fluffy pillows nor lightweight and warm down duvets." The beds are only for those people who simply read themselves to sleep. The library which opened the doors to customers on November 5 2015, offers a whole range of international fiction and non fiction and the shelves can stock up-to 3000 books. A one night stay in the hostel which costs 4,500 yuan (about Rs 46,000), can drive a hole through your pocket but is definitely worth the experience. Take a look at some fantastic pictures of Book and Bed below: Photo courtesy: Bookandbed.com Photo courtesy: Instagram/Bookandbed.com Photo courtesy: Bookandbed.com Photo courtesy: Bookandbed.com --- ENDS --- Akhilesh Yadav himself reviews the state of law and order from time to time and as a result, the crime rate in UP is among the lowest in India, said Director General of Police Javeed Ahmed. By Siraj Qureshi: Uttar Pradesh is the biggest state in India and considering its size, the state's police is the most active and effective in the entire country. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav himself reviews the state of law and order from time to time and as a result, the crime rate in Uttar Pradesh is among the lowest in India, said UP Director General of Police Javeed Ahmed while talking to India Today in Agra. advertisement Ahmed said that the Uttar Pradesh Police has a special wing for women and child protection and the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has a personal interest in the working of this wing so that the women and children can live in a fear-free environment. Apart from the people, the state police also keeps a close watch on the welfare of its personnel. He said that a lot of times, criminals commit crimes in UP and go and hide in other neighboring states which makes their arrest very difficult. So the UP Police is building up its rapport with the police of neighbouring states and meetings are being conducted from time to time to ensure a close cooperation between the police forces of these states. He said that the UP Police has no paucity of modern weaponry and several prized bandits and criminals have permanently left the state because of their active pursuit by the police. Javeed Ahmed said that all the police station in charges have been instructed to conduct marches on foot through the market areas, which is sending a positive signal among the people who are now getting reassured that there is a strong police presence in their area that can be made available in any emergency. The state police also has an active interest in improving the traffic situation in the state, specially the tourism-centric areas and the police in these areas has been instructed to ensure that the tourists do not face any problems. Similarly, police force is also deployed near schools and colleges to prevent incidents of kidnapping and eve-teasing. The female wing of the police has also been made extra active around these areas. He said that the lack of adequate manpower will no longer be a problem for the UP Police, with a transparent recruitment process underway to induct new recruits. This process is now being increasingly adapted by police forces of other states in the country and also appreciated. He said that the UP Police's role in elections has been beyond reproach every time and in the future too, the police plans to keep that record intact, helping the free and fair conduct of elections. advertisement Regarding Agra, Ahmed said that Agra is an international tourist destination and is always on the priority of the police as it is also a sensitive zone due to terrorist threats. He said that it is always the UP Police's effort that the tourists return to their countries with a good image of the city and of India, so the security of the Taj Mahal and the tourists, is given equal importance. --- ENDS --- Varun Dhawan celebrated his birthday in a lavish manner yesterday (April 24). Varun is said to be dating his childhood friend Natasha Dalal, but the Badlapur actor is currently not in mood to get hitched. By India Today Web Desk: Varun Dhawan celebrated his birthday in a lavish manner yesterday (April 24). The Dilwale actor has turned 29, but still doesn't feel that he is old enough to take responsibilities related to marriage. Varun is said to be dating his childhood friend Natasha Dalal, but hasn't ever confirmed his relationship in public. SEE PICS: Lovebirds Varun Dhawan and Natasha Dalal attend a friend's wedding advertisement SEE PIC: Varun Dhawan's secret night out with girlfriend Natasha And now it seems Natasha has to wait because the Badlapur actor is currently not in mood to get hitched. In an interview with Hindustan Times, Varun said,"I have not been thinking about it at all. I am turning older, but I don't think I am that old or mature to get hitched." He added, "I would want to get married in a couple of years. Before that, I want to be able to buy a house with my own money, and also one that is close to my parents' house. There are so many things that I need to do before I can take the responsibility of having a life partner." Earlier, there were rumours that Varun was to celebrate his birthday with girlfriend Natasha. But Varun said, "My birthday plan is not with Natasha but with many other people. I wanted to celebrate my birthday with you but you broke my heart, taking a different girl's name." Varun and Natasha have always kept their relationship status under wraps. The two have been spotted together on various occasions. But they have never confirmed their relationship. In an earlier interview, the Dishoom actor had said that he's not hiding the relationship, but at the same time, he feels no need to discuss it. "I had decided much before I entered the industry, that I would not talk about my personal life." On the work front, Varun Dhawan will next be seen in Dishoom alongside John Abraham and Jacqueline Fernandez. --- ENDS --- Authorities have issued notices to cops from west Delhi's Vikaspuri police station who bungled two cases by dumping the deceased, who died in a road mishap, inside a cold chamber and made no effort to put a name to the body carrying an identity card and other personal articles. By Ankur Sharma: City police failed to identify a body and end a woman's frantic search for her missing husband even as the dead man, lying forgotten for a month at a hospital mortuary, had the answer right in his pocket. Authorities have issued notices to cops from west Delhi's Vikaspuri police station who bungled two cases by dumping the deceased, who died in a road mishap, inside a cold chamber and made no effort to put a name to the body carrying an identity card and other personal articles. advertisement Sources say a missing complaint was lodged merely a few hours before the victim, identified as Prem Singh, met with the accident. The matter came to light when former chief minister BC Khanduri from Uttarakhand, the deceased's native state, requested Delhi Police to conduct an inquiry. The probe revealed "gross negligence and carelessness" by the cops, including the then station house officer, at every step. As many as 2,558 "unidentified" bodies were found on the city's streets between January 1 and October 15 last year, police told the Delhi high court during a hearing on the condition of the city's mortuaries. According to police, Prem Singh was celebrating his son's naming ceremony on November 4. The child was ill and was taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital in Hari Nagar area. "One person identified as Aseem Ballyan went to the hospital by car for taking the infant," the inquiry report said. "After coming home, Prem Singh consumed liquor with Aseem Ballyan." But, when Singh didn't return to his residence, his wife, Manju, lodged a complaint with police on November 5. She again went to the police station the next day but was turned away by the cops. "I used to visit Vikaspuri police station from 8 am to 9 pm almost six days a week," Manju told Mail Today. "There was a time when officers refused to recognise me. Cops also asked the man standing at the gate to ask me to leave." The report says the police station got a call about an accident on November 5. It registered a case saying an unknown person was hit by a vehicle and had been admitted to the DDU Hospital in critical condition. "Here, the investigating officer didn't check the articles kept in the victim's clothes, didn't flash a wireless message and also didn't check missing person records of Vikaspuri police station," the probe findings say. " Prem Singh died on November 11. About a month later, the investigating officer in the accident case checked his belongings on December 7 and found an identity card, after which the family was notified. advertisement According to Pushpendra Kumar, deputy commissioner of police, west district, the department will act against the cops over their negligent behaviour after receiving their replies. "On the basis of the inquiry report, we have issued -show-cause notices to the cops," he said. But Manju, whose search finally ended, is now facing allegations of killing her husband from her in-laws. "I have left Vikaspuri area fearing that cops may arrest me in a false case. My in-laws also told all my relatives that I have killed my husband and that is why I left home," she said. "I am running here and there with my fivemonth-old kid. I want to know how my husband died." Also Read: Bassi promises to take action against corrupt cops before he retires --- ENDS --- One of the new features Google has added in the stock camera app is that now users can take photos while shooting videos. By Sahil Mohan Gupta : Google has updated its stock camera app with features that are there in the Android N preview. Phones that support the new 3.2 version can fix all the issues that are in the app. There are a number of design changes which include a redesigned shutter button and a reworked button for shifting between the front camera and the rear one. Google has also added a hamburger menu for broader functionality like Panorama, Lens Blur, and Photo Sphere. advertisement One of the new features Google has added in the stock camera app is that now users can take photos while shooting videos. This wasn't possible before, however, smartphone makers have added this functionality in their . Even Apple added a similar capability in the iOS camera app a couple of years ago. Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P users also get enhanced slo-motion video capability. On the Nexus 5X users can now shoot slo-mo videos at 120 frames per second and on the Nexus 6P users can shoot slo-motion videos at 240 frames per second. Last month, Google surprised users with the Android N preview. Google has also made possible for existing users of Nexus smartphones to install the update by way of an over-the-air (OTA) update. Users have for long complained that the Google Camera app is slow, hopefully Google has resolved this issue. With the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P for the first time Google released smartphones with cameras that could take on the iPhone, so having a robust camera app for Google is very important. Also Read: Split Screen to Night Mode: Here are 10 new features in Android N With Android N Google is working on enhancing the multitasking capabilities of the operating system at a platform level. By this we mean it has added side-by-side split view multitasking for both phones and tablets, just like what Samsung does on its Galaxy Note devices. Last year, even Apple added that capability to iOS, which means that some of the newer iPads have split screen multitasking. Google will likely showcase a complete build of Android N with a full feature set at Google I/O which will happen in May. Also Read: Android N developer preview out now for first non-Nexus phone --- ENDS --- Vanta-aluminium foil ["Vanta" stands for "Vertically Aligned NanoTube Arrays"] . If you paint a wrinkled aluminium foil with Vantablack, wrinkles disappear. Even the foil disappear. What remains is a plain, absolute Vantadarkness. Think of a black hole, but in a liquid form that can be used in a "Vantablack" is "the blackest black ever existed". It absorbs up to 99.965% of radiation in the visible spectrum. Its amazing, absolute blackness is the result of British company Surrey NanoSystems 's technology, which created Vantablack's black thanks to a number of carbon nanotubes that make almost all human-eye visibile and invisible light disappear. If you paint a wrinkled aluminium foil with Vantablack, wrinkles disappear. Even the foil disappear. What remains is a plain, absolute Vantadarkness. Think of a black hole, but in a liquid form that can be used in a wide range of applications -- from invisible jets to solar-energy panels. Also, it can be used in art. As some newspapers reported, Surrey NanoSystems has just provided British-Indian artist Sir Anish Kap (that of ) with exclusive rights to paint using "Vantablack". While Surrey and Sir Kapoor have not disclosed the details of the agreement, the British company that - from now on - Mr Kapoor alone can paint using Vantablack. Now, there are two ways to address this issue. The first one is to start a serious reflection on the death of artistic freedom and the intrinsically-mean nature of IP rights. The second is to be on the Dark Side. As many people have already gone for the former, we will go for the latter. The story of Sir Kapoor acquiring exclusive rights on Vantablack is indeed amazing for many reasons. "But what about the artistic freedom?!1?" [yawns] First of all, how did Surrey Nanosystem manage to transfer (and how did Sir Kapoor acquire) the "esclusive right to paint" using Vantablack? Given its highly-technological nature, Vantablack is likely protected by a number of patents. In light of its possible military applications, some of them might not even be publicly-available. Espacecenet does not seem to provide final answers in this regard, with Surrey Nanosystems owning no patent specifically protecting industrial (or artistic) applications of a colour. Some of the British company's patents covers methods for creating nanostructures, though. Has Sir Kapoor acquired the right to manufacture Vantablack -- instead of painting using it? Even darker would be this story if the IP right that Sir Kapoor acquired was a trade secret. It would be Draconian security measures. More challenging would be how the trade-secret regime could apply in the art field. For instance, the "reasonable steps" for an artist to keep the way in which its colour is manufactured secret could be significantly different from those that a company, a military body, or a bank could be expected to take to protect the secrecy of their commercial information. Sir Anish Kapoor, "Self-portrait" ( Vantablack on canvas) commercial artistic origin of works -- in short: a trade mark. Companies and non-profit associations are allowed to have their distinctive signs protected under trade mark law. Perhaps also artists could. The use of Vantablack in Sir Kapoor's future works opens even more IP scenarios. Being the only one who could lawfully use it, the relevant public could identify Vantaclack-painted sculptures, paintings, or buildings as originating from Sir Kapoor. Thus, Vantablack could be to Sir Kapoor what cuts on canvas are to Lucio Fontana , i.e. a unique element that the public perceives as indicator of theartistic origin of works -- in short: a trade mark. Companies and non-profit associations are allowed to have their distinctive signs protected under trade mark law. Perhaps also artists could. [Yives Klein and International Klein Blue is the prior art, in this field] . This story seems to tell something more, though. As technology is becoming more and more important in artistic creation, IP rights seem to make apparent what many artists have been alleging since a while [insert abused art=making money quotation] : art is not so different from other businesses, and artists could well-be like other business men -- creating their products, protecting them via soft- and hard-IP rights, and acquiring immaterial assets to distinguish their works from the others on the market. Considering the wonders that the marriage between technology and creativity could bring, this Kat is not entirely sure that the Vantablack's tale should be considered Sir Kapoor is not the first artist wishing to acquire rights over colours. This story seems to tell something more, though. As technology is becoming more and more important in artistic creation, IP rights seem to make apparent what many artists have been alleging since a while: art is not so different from other businesses, and artists could well-be like other business men -- creating their products, protecting them via soft- and hard-IP rights, and acquiring immaterial assets to distinguish their works from the others on the market. Considering the wonders that the marriage between technology and creativity could bring, this Kat is not entirely sure that the Vantablack's tale should be considered so badly It's not a disgrace, it's . [April 25, 2016] Bristol-Myers Squibb's Opdivo (nivolumab) Receives Breakthrough Therapy Designation from U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Previously Treated Recurrent or Metastatic Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to Opdivo for the potential indication of recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) after platinum based therapy. The Breakthrough Therapy Designation is an FDA program intended to expedite the development and review of medicines with early signals of potential clinical benefit in serious diseases to help ensure patients have access to new therapies as soon as possible. The designation is based on results of CheckMate -141, a Phase 3, open-label, randomized trial evaluating Opdivo versus investigator's choice of therapy in patients with recurrent or metastatic SCCHN with tumor progression within six months of platinum therapies in the adjuvant, primary, recurrent or metastatic setting. This trial was stopped early in January 2016 because an assessment conducted by the independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) concluded that the study met its primary endpoint of overall survival. Jean Viallet, M.D., Global Clinical Research Lead, Oncology, Bristol-Myers Squibb, commented, "The Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Opdivo in advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck underscores the immediate need for new treatment approaches for this devastating disease, and reflects our commitment to advancing Immuno-Oncology research with the goal of addressing hard-to-treat cancers and changing survival expectations for patients." According to the FDA, the criteria for Breakthrough Therapy Designation requires preliminary clinical evidence that demonstrates the medicine may have substantial improvement on at least one clinically significant endpoint over available therapy. This is the fifth Breakthrough Therapy Designation granted for Opdivo by the FDA, with previous Breakthrough Therapy Designation indications including patients with Hodgkin lymphoma after failure of autologous stem cell transplant and brentuximab, previously treated advanced melanoma, previously treated non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer, and advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma. About Head & Neck Cancer Head and neck cancer is the seventh most common cancer globally, with an estimated 400,000 to 600,000 new cases per year and 223,000 to 300,000 deaths per year. The five-year survival rate is reported as less than 4% for metastatic Stage IV disease. Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) accounts for approximately 90% of all head and neck cancers with global incidence expected to increase by 17% between 2012 and 2022. Risk factors for SCCHN include tobacco and alcohol consumption, and the increasing role of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection leading to rapid increase in oropharyngeal SCCHN in Europe and North America. Quality of life is often impacted for SCCHN patients, as physiological function (breathing, swallowing, eating, drinking), personal characteristics (appearance, speaking, voice), sensory function (taste, smell, hearing), and psychological/social function can be affected. Bristol-Myers Squibb & Immuno-Oncology: Advancing Oncology Research At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we have a vision for the future of cancer care that is focused on Immuno-Oncology, now considered a major treatment choice alongside surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and targeted therapies for certain types of cancer. We have a comprehensive clinical portfolio of investigational and approved Immuno-Oncology agents, many of which were discovered and developed by our scientists. Our ongoing Immuno-Oncology clinical program is looking at broad patient populations, across multiple solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, and lines of therapy and histologies, with the intent of powering our trials for overall survival and other important measures like durability of response. We pioneered the research leading to the first regulatory approval for the combination of two Immuno-Oncology agents, and continue to study the role of combinations in cancer. We are also investigating other immune system pathways in the treatment of cancer including CTLA-4, CD-137, KIR, SLAMF7, PD-1, GITR, CSF1R, IDO, and LAG-3. These pathways may lead to potential new treatment options - in combination or monotherapy - to help patients fight different types of cancers. Our collaboration with academia, as well as small and large biotech companies, to research the potential of Immuno-Oncology and non-Immuno-Oncology combinations, helps achieve our goal of providing new treatment options in clinical practice. At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we are committed to changing survival expectations in hard-to-treat cancers and the way patients live with cancer. About Opdivo Cancer cells may exploit "regulatory" pathways, such as checkpoint pathways, to hide from the immune system and shield the tumor from immune attack. Opdivo is a PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor that binds to the checkpoint receptor PD-1 expressed on activated T-cells, and blocks the binding of PD-L1 and PD-L2, preventing the PD-1 pathway's suppressive signaling on the immune system, including the interference with an anti-tumor immune response. Opdivo's broad global development program is based on Bristol-Myers Squibb's understanding of the biology behind Immuno-Oncology. Our company is at the forefront of researching the potential of Immuno-Oncology to extend survival in hard-to-treat cancers. This scientific expertise serves as the basis for the Opdivo development program, which includes a broad range of Phase 3 clinical trials evaluating overall survival as the primary endpoint across a variety of tumor types. The Opdivo trials have also contributed toward the clinical and scientific understanding of the role of biomarkers and how patients may benefit from Opdivo across the continuum of PD-L1 expression. To date, the Opdivo clinical development program has enrolled more than 18,000 patients. Opdivo was the first PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world in July 2014, and currently has regulatory approval in 50 countries including the United States, Japan, and in the European Union. U.S. FDA APPROVED INDICATIONS OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma. OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. Patients with EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations should have disease progression on FDA-approved therapy for these aberrations prior to receiving OPDIVO. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have received prior anti-angiogenic therapy. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Immune-Mediated Pneumonitis Immune-mediated pneumonitis, including fatal cases, occurred with OPDIVO treatment. Across the clinical trial experience with solid tumors, fatal immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred with OPDIVO. Monitor patients for signs with radiographic imaging and symptoms of pneumonitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater pneumonitis. Permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 and withhold until resolution for Grade 2. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated pneuonitis occurred in 1.8% (14/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2) and Grade 2 (n=12). In Checkmate 057, immune-mediated pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 3.4% (10/287) of patients: Grade 3 (n=5), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=3). In Checkmate 025, pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 5% (21/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 18% (73/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 4.4% (18/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=12), and Grade 1 (n=1). Immune-Mediated Colitis Immune-mediated colitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of colitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 (of more than 5 days duration), 3, or 4 colitis. As a single agent, withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 or recurrent colitis upon restarting OPDIVO. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 31% (242/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 4.1% (32/787) of patients: Grade 3 (n=20), Grade 2 (n=10), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 057, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 17% (50/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 2.4% (7/287) of patients: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 025, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 25% (100/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 32% (126/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated diarrhea or colitis occurred in 3.2% (13/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=5), Grade 2 (n=7), and Grade 1 (n=1). Immune-Mediated Hepatitis Immune-mediated hepatitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for abnormal liver tests prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater transaminase elevations. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 immune-mediated hepatitis. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 2.3% (18/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 4 (n=3), Grade 3 (n=11), and Grade 2 (n=4). In Checkmate 057, one patient (0.3%) developed immune-mediated hepatitis. In Checkmate 025, there was an increased incidence of liver test abnormalities compared to baseline in AST (33% vs 39%), alkaline phosphatase (32% vs 32%), ALT (22% vs 31%), and total bilirubin (9% vs 3.5%) in the OPDIVO and everolimus arms, respectively. Immune-mediated hepatitis requiring systemic immunosuppression occurred in 1.5% (6/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=5) and Grade 2 (n=1). Immune-Mediated Endocrinopathies Hypophysitis, adrenal insufficiency, thyroid disorders, and type 1 diabetes mellitus can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of hypophysitis, signs and symptoms of adrenal insufficiency during and after treatment, thyroid function prior to and periodically during treatment, and hyperglycemia. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater hypophysitis. Withhold for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hypophysitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Administer hormone-replacement therapy for hypothyroidism. Initiate medical management for control of hyperthyroidism. Administer insulin for type 1 diabetes. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hyperglycemia. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, hypophysitis occurred in 0.9% (7/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 025, hypophysitis occurred in 0.5% (2/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1) and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 1% (8/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=5), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 057, 0.3% (1/287) of OPDIVO-treated patients developed adrenal insufficiency. In Checkmate 025, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 2.0% (8/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=4), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis occurred in 9% (73/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=37), Grade 1 (n=35). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 4.4% (35/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=12), and Grade 1 (n=22). In Checkmate 057, Grade 1 or 2 hypothyroidism, including thyroiditis, occurred in 7% (20/287) and elevated thyroid stimulating hormone occurred in 17% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 1 or 2 hyperthyroidism occurred in 1.4% (4/287) of patients. In Checkmate 025, thyroid disease occurred in 11% (43/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO, including one Grade 3 event, and in 3.0% (12/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Hypothyroidism/thyroiditis occurred in 8% (33/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=14). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 2.5% (10/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 2 (n=5) and Grade 1 (n=5). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 0.8% (6/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 025, hyperglycemic adverse events occurred in 9% (37/406) patients. Diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 1.5% (6/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=1). Immune-Mediated Nephritis and Renal Dysfunction Immune-mediated nephritis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for elevated serum creatinine prior to and periodically during treatment. For Grade 2 or 3 increased serum creatinine, withhold and administer corticosteroids; if worsening or no improvement occurs, permanently discontinue. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 4 serum creatinine elevation and permanently discontinue. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, nephritis and renal dysfunction of any grade occurred in 5% (40/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 0.8% (6/787) of patients: Grade 3 (n=4) and Grade 2 (n=2). In Checkmate 057, Grade 2 immune-mediated renal dysfunction occurred in 0.3% (1/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 025, renal injury occurred in 7% (27/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 3.0% (12/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 3.2% (13/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 5 (n=1), Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=5), and Grade 2 (n=6). Immune-Mediated Rash Immune-mediated rash can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Severe rash (including rare cases of fatal toxic epidermal necrolysis) occurred in the clinical program of OPDIVO. Monitor patients for rash. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 rash. Withhold for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated rash occurred in 9% (72/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=7), Grade 2 (n=15), and Grade 1 (n=50). In Checkmate 057, immune-mediated rash occurred in 6% (17/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO including four Grade 3 cases. In Checkmate 025, rash occurred in 28% (112/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 36% (143/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated rash, defined as a rash treated with systemic or topical corticosteroids, occurred in 7% (30/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=7), and Grade 1 (n=19). Immune-Mediated Encephalitis Immune-mediated encephalitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Withhold OPDIVO in patients with new-onset moderate to severe neurologic signs or symptoms and evaluate to rule out other causes. If other etiologies are ruled out, administer corticosteroids and permanently discontinue OPDIVO for immune-mediated encephalitis. In Checkmate 057, fatal limbic encephalitis occurred in one patient (0.3%) receiving OPDIVO. Other Immune-Mediated Adverse Reactions Based on the severity of adverse reaction, permanently discontinue or withhold treatment, administer high-dose corticosteroids, and, if appropriate, initiate hormone-replacement therapy. In < 1.0% of patients receiving OPDIVO, the following clinically significant, immune-mediated adverse reactions occurred: uveitis, pancreatitis, facial and abducens nerve paresis, demyelination, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune neuropathy, Guillain-Barre syndrome, hypopituitarism, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, gastritis, duodenitis, and sarcoidosis. Across clinical trials of OPDIVO as a single agent administered at doses of 3 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg, additional clinically significant, immune-mediated adverse reactions were identified: motor dysfunction, vasculitis, and myasthenic syndrome. Infusion Reactions Severe infusion reactions have been reported in <1.0% of patients in clinical trials of OPDIVO. Discontinue OPDIVO in patients with Grade 3 or 4 infusion reactions. Interrupt or slow the rate of infusion in patients with Grade 1 or 2. In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, Grade 2 infusion related reactions occurred in 2.7% (21/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=8), and Grade 1 (n=11). In Checkmate 057, Grade 2 infusion reactions requiring corticosteroids occurred in 1.0% (3/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 025, hypersensitivity/infusion-related reactions occurred in 6% (25/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 1.0% (4/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Embryo-fetal Toxicity Based on its mechanism of action, OPDIVO can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with an OPDIVO- containing regimen and for at least 5 months after the last dose of OPDIVO. Lactation It is not known whether OPDIVO is present in human milk. Because many drugs, including antibodies, are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from an OPDIVO-containing regimen, advise women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment. Serious Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 067, serious adverse reactions (37%), adverse reactions leading to permanent discontinuation (14%) or to dosing delays (28%), and Grade 3 or 4 adverse reactions (44%) occurred in the OPDIVO arm. The most frequent (=10%) serious adverse reactions in the OPDIVO arm were diarrhea (2.6%), colitis (1.6%), and pyrexia (0.6%). In Checkmate 037, serious adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 42% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse drug reactions reported in 2% to <5% of patients receiving OPDIVO were abdominal pain, hyponatremia, increased aspartate aminotransferase, and increased lipase. In Checkmate 066, serious adverse reactions occurred in 36% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions reported in =2% of patients receiving OPDIVO were gamma-glutamyltransferase increase (3.9%) and diarrhea (3.4%). In Checkmate 057, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in =2% of patients were pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, dyspnea, pleural effusion, and respiratory failure. In Checkmate 025, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in =2% of patients were acute kidney injury, pleural effusion, pneumonia, diarrhea, and hypercalcemia. Common Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 067, the most common (=20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO arm were fatigue (53%), rash (40%), diarrhea (31%), and nausea (28%). In Checkmate 037, the most common adverse reaction (=20%) reported with OPDIVO was rash (21%). In Checkmate 066, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) reported with OPDIVO vs dacarbazine were fatigue (49% vs 39%), musculoskeletal pain (32% vs 25%), rash (28% vs 12%), and pruritus (23% vs 12%). In Checkmate 057, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) reported with OPDIVO were fatigue (49%), musculoskeletal pain (36%), cough (30%), decreased appetite (29%), and constipation (23%). In Checkmate 025, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) reported in patients receiving OPDIVO vs everolimus were asthenic conditions (56% vs 57%), cough (34% vs 38%), nausea (28% vs 29%), rash (28% vs 36%), dyspnea (27% vs 31%), diarrhea (25% vs 32%), constipation (23% vs 18%), decreased appetite (23% vs 30%), back pain (21% vs 16%), and arthralgia (20% vs 14%). About the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Collaboration In 2011, through a collaboration agreement with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Ono) Bristol-Myers Squibb expanded its territorial rights to develop and commercialize Opdivo globally except in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, where Ono had retained all rights to the compound at the time. On July 23, 2014, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono further expanded the companies' strategic collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize multiple immunotherapies - as single agents and combination regimens - for patients with cancer in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. About Bristol-Myers Squibb Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. For more information about Bristol-Myers Squibb, visit us at www.BMS.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Bristol-Myers Squibb Forward-Looking Statement This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceutical products. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Among other risks, there can be no guarantee that Opdivo will receive regulatory approval for an additional indication in SCCHN. Forward-looking statements in this press release should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect Bristol-Myers Squibb's business, particularly those identified in the cautionary factors discussion in Bristol-Myers Squibb's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our Current Reports on Form 8-K. Bristol-Myers Squibb undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005278/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] Moms Around The World Say Advertisers Miss The Mark On Realistically Portraying Their Lives, According To New BabyCenter Research SAN FRANCISCO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BabyCenter's latest 21st Century Mom Insights Series study, "Mind the Gap: The Disconnect Between Moms and Marketers," reveals the huge divide between how moms perceive themselves and how they feel they are portrayed by marketers and shows that the difference is felt across the globe. Only 16% of the expectant and new mothers surveyed in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, India, Germany, and Middle East feel that they are presented realistically in advertising. Only 1 in 5 pregnant women feel that advertisers portray them realistically. As women progress from pregnancy to early motherhood, this feeling drops to just 15% a 21% drop. The implications for brands are tremendous. When asked about the qualities of their favorite brands, 7 in 10 moms surveyed agreed that the description "Is a brand that understands what it's like to be a mom" was somewhat or very important to them. With 85% of the women surveyed saying they have changed their purchasing criteria since becoming a mom, brands may be turning off potential new customers by presenting what one mom called an "airbrushed" image of motherhood. "We received a resounding message from moms across the globe: Brands don't understand them," said Julie Michaelson, Head of Global Sales, BabyCenter. "Moms don't identify with the idyllic portrayals of pregnancy and early motherhood, and so they don't trust advertising that does not reflect the reality of, say, a screaming baby at feeding time. Authenticity trumps aspiration. Mom wants marketers to embrace what we call the 'real motherhood' warts and all and they reward their favorite products with strong loyalty and are vocal in their support." Drilling in to exactly how pregnant women and new moms perceive themselves and how they feel they are portrayed in advertising, BabyCenter looked at specific terms: Describe Yourself/Brand Portrayal Pregnant New Moms Beautiful 30%/63% 26%/60% Fit 13%/32% 14%/43% Anxious 50%/21% 42%/21% Emotional 55%/37% 56%/30% This gap was generally consistent across the countries surveyed, but there were some regional differences. In Canada, India, the UK, and the US, a third of respondents said they perceive themselves as "anxious." Comparatively, more than half of Brazilian moms felt the same, with only 18% saying that this reality was effectively portrayed in advertising. Discussions among 7,000 Brazilian moms within Talk Tracker, BabyCenter's proprietary social listening tool, revealed that their higher level of anxiety is likely due to increasing concerns about the Zika virus. For example, one mom in Brazil noted that "I'm terrified of the Zika virus, and doing research, I learned about other viruses and infections that can harm my baby." The upside for brands that successfully connect with today's new generation of moms is huge, in both brand loyalty and advocacy. When asked, "Which actions do you typically take if you find a product you love?," 3 in 5 moms in the surveyed markets said they bring it up in conversations, and 4 in 5 said that they will purchase it again. BabyCenter discovered some differences between countries. For example, in Canada, moms are likely to sign up for rewards or newsletters (55%), while in the US, almost half (46%) leave online reviews if they love a product. In Brazil, moms will follow brands they love on social media (41%), while in India, they text their friends about it (42%). The complete study can be downloaded here. Methodology This study included qualitative and quantitative research conducted by BabyCenter. The in-depth survey was responded by 4,811 new and expecting moms (with children newborn to 5 years old) who were sourced through our proprietary 21st Century Mom panel and websites in 7 different regions: Brazil, Canada, India, Germany, Middle East, United Kingdom, and United States. The qualitative interviews were conducted over the phone in the UK and Canada, and through in-house friendship groups in the US, to reveal even deeper insights. Trends around specific topics in some countries were also uncovered using BabyCenter's Talk Tracker, a social listening tool. About BabyCenter LLC BabyCenter is the world's partner in parenting. The #1 pregnancy and parenting digital destination, BabyCenter reaches more than 45 million parents a month from every corner of the globe through its 11 owned and operated properties in 9 different languages. In the United States, 8 in 10 new and expectant moms online use BabyCenter each month. BabyCenter provides parents with trusted information, advice from peers, and support that's Remarkably Right at every stage of their child's development. Products include websites, mobile apps, online communities, email series, social programs, print publications, and public health initiatives. BabyCenter also leverages its industry-leading audience engagement to provide unparalleled insights and innovative marketing solutions to the world's top brands, retailers, and institutions. BabyCenter is also committed to improving maternal health globally, and, through its Mission Motherhood campaign, works closely with nonprofits, NGOs, and governments to help make motherhood safer for all women. BabyCenter LLC is a member of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. Visit BabyCenter on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn or follow @BabyCenter and @MomInsights on Twitter. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moms-around-the-world-say-advertisers-miss-the-mark-on-realistically-portraying-their-lives-according-to-new-babycenter-research-300256507.html SOURCE BabyCenter [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] FICS Celebrates Innovation, Compliance Preparation at 30th Annual Users' Conference Financial Industry Computer Systems, Inc. (FICS), a mortgage loan origination software, residential servicing software and commercial servicing software provider, hosted lenders, servicers and industry partners at its 30th Annual Users' Conference in Dallas earlier this month. This year's conference was the highest attended conference in the company's three-decade history. The conference provided users of FICS' technology solutions, such as Commercial Servicer, Loan Producer, Mortgage Servicer, and FICS' supporting software packages, with in-depth demonstrations of new and enhanced products, educational sessions targeting upcoming regulatory deadlines, and user-focused workshops and panels. A common theme across the conference was the ongoing use of technology and innovation to consistently provide an overall greater user experience - both for users of FICS' software and for the users' end customers. Susan Graham, president and COO of FICS, further explained during the oening remarks at this year's conference how FICS has constantly evolved to serve its user base. "2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the FICS Users' Conference, and looking back over the years, one thing that jumps out is the longevity of our customer base," Graham said in her opening speech. "Over the past three decades, FICS has been dedicated to helping companies navigate the ups and downs of the housing market and manage regulatory changes with innovative technology that provides the tools you need to be more efficient so you can better serve customers." Lenders and servicers in attendance highlighted the opportunity for additional training and educational sessions to prepare for the industry's big issues as primary draws. One such industry issue was Fannie Mae's Future Changes to Investor Reporting requirements. FICS' high percentage of customers servicing Fannie Mae loans and early adoption of the required system changes led to Fannie Mae representatives speaking at the conference about the implementation requirements. One of the hugest things gained from the conference, though, is the chance to network with peers. "Attending the FICS Users' Conference each year is an influential, hands-on learning opportunity that I highly recommend to any FICS customer," said Jeff Laux, director of servicing for Gilbert, Ariz.-based Cascade Financial Services. "I felt that my voice was heard. I was able to share ideas with other users, as well as FICS staff, regarding new ways to navigate the changing industry. The most valuable resource of being at the conference, though, is the interaction with other professionals who also use the FICS system." As part of her keynote speech, Graham also spoke to FICS' continued evolution of services and delivery channels - and how this aids lenders and servicers in better addressing borrower demands. In 2015 alone, FICS made significant updates to Mortgage Servicer, its residential servicing platform, and introduced a more robust Document Services Interface for its residential loan origination software (LOS), Loan Producer. Valerie Gilbert, assistant vice president of Merrillville, Ind.-based Lake Mortgage, appreciated the information provided. "The FICS Users' Conference provided me with answers to questions regarding new and existing regulations," said Gilbert. "Having been fully engrained in every aspect of the TRID process within my institution, I feel much more informed of the necessary rules and regulations and the impact they have on my institution, thanks to the FICS staff." The 2017 Users' Conference will be held April 5-7, 2017 in Dallas. About FICS Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Financial Industry Computer Systems, Inc. (FICS), specializes in providing flexible, comprehensive residential and commercial technology solutions to the mortgage industry. FICS' systems are designed to operate on Microsoft Windows platforms with the most recent solutions written using .NET (News - Alert) Framework that include a rich Windows Presentation Foundation user interface and multi-tiered shareable services. The company also provides innovative document management and web-based capabilities into its full suite of products. Additional information about FICS is available via the company's website at www.FICS.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005924/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] OpenStack Board Approves Chinese Startups EasyStack and UnitedStack as Gold Members of the Foundation The Board of Directors of the OpenStack Foundation approved EasyStack and UnitedStack as the newest Gold Members of the Foundation. The decision was made during the Foundation Board's meeting at the OpenStack Summit in Austin. The OpenStack market has grown rapidly in China as the No. 1 region for contribution to the software base and organizations including HengFeng Bank, Lenovo (News - Alert), The Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the State Grid of China among those who have adopted the cloud platform. China-based Huawei was previously approved as a Gold Member in 2015. "With the government's support, China's OpenStack community is rapidly growing and maturing. Local technology vendors and individual contributors are increasingly playing key roles in the OpenStack Foundation and provide several OpenStack-powered clouds to Chinese organizations," according to the Forrester (News - Alert) report "Brief: Leverage OpenStack To Fuel Your Cloud Strategy," written on January 6, 2016. UnitedStack is the first cloud service provider offering managed private cloud in the China market. UnitedStack has dozens of enterprise customers, covering various industries such as internet, energy, public, finance and manufacturing. EasyStack was a top contributor to the recent Mitaka release of the software and has more than 100 enterprise customers, inluding State Grid, China Telecom (News - Alert), Lenovo, Postsaving Bank of China, Shunfeng Group, TCL and Tsinghua University. Foundation membership is limited to 24 Gold Members, who vote annually to select eight Board Directors representing the class. In addition to EasyStack and UnitedStack, Gold members are Aptira, CCAT, Cisco, Dell, DreamHost, EMC (News - Alert), Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, inwinSTACK, Juniper Networks, Mirantis, NEC, NetApp, Odin and Symantec. About the OpenStack Summit More than 7,500 participants from 55+ countries are expected to attend the OpenStack Summit in Austin, April 25-29, 2016, at the Austin Convention Center. The international event will spotlight enterprise IT strategies, cloud application development, the telecom ecosystem and emerging NFV architecture, and exciting new projects and technologies within the OpenStack community. Developer working sessions will determine the roadmap for Newton, the 14th release of OpenStack software, expected in October 2016. Featured keynote speakers at the OpenStack Summit Austin include OpenStack users and community members at AT&T, SAP, Volkswagen, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, LivePerson, Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable, OVH and TACC. Hundreds of presentations about cloud strategy, operational best practices and case studies will be recorded and available to view this week at openstack.org. About OpenStack OpenStack is the most widely deployed open source software for building clouds. In use globally at large and small enterprises, telecoms, service providers, and government/research agencies, OpenStack is a technology integration engine that supports the diverse ecosystem of cloud computing innovation. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006008/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 25, 2016] COMPUTEX Finalizes Keynote Speakers, Themes for CPX Conference COMPUTEX, the leading global ICT show with a complete supply chain, has finalized its keynote presentations for its upcoming CPX Conference at the Taipei International Convention Center May 31st and June 1st. The keynotes will explore the latest developments and innovations in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the future of technology. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006337/en/ COMPUTEX 2016 keynotes will explore the latest developments and innovations in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the future of technology. (Photo: Business Wire) Taiwan is a hotbed for IoT entrepreneurship and development, ranking sixth among the 132 countries and second in Asia in the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI)'s Global Entrepreneurship Index 2016. And CPX at COMPUTEX will bring together top-tier investors, C-level executives, leading researchers and others deeply enmeshed in the ICT world for keynotes, forums, and panels centered on IoT, smart manufacturing, and innovative developments throughout the ecosystem. The conference's keynote addresses, in particular, will highlight the most important trends shaping the next wave of tech applications, and identify the many important business opportunities they will usher in. "This year's CPX conference features keynots by ICT visionaries that provide a bridge to the future of IoT, alerting conference attendees to the goals ahead and how they can be achieved," said TAITRA Executive Vice President Walter Yeh. "We're proud to welcome global ICT professionals to Taipei. The best IoT solutions are often a result of industry-wide collaboration, and CPX fosters an environment where attendees develop key relationships with fellow colleagues that ultimately breed success." Keynotes at CPX will focus on the themes of the Future of Technology and Smart Manufacturing. Keynotes will provide deep coverage of topics reflecting the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2016 as identified by Gartneri, which include the Device Mesh, Advanced Machine Learning, and the Internet of Things Platforms. May 31 will feature the "IoT/Future Technology" addresses: Simon Segars, CEO of ARM, Rahul Patel, senior VP and GM of connectivity for Qualcomm (News - Alert), and Asit Goel, senior vice president and general manager business line secure monitoring and control for NXP Semiconductors will give keynotes on the subject; while Erdal Elver, president and CEO of Siemens (News - Alert) Taiwan will address the topic, Industry 4.0. On June 1, when the theme turns to "Disruptive Innovation," Steve Wyatt, group vice president of ABB speaks on the subject "Smart Manufacturing," while innovative designer and futurist, Vito Di Bari of DiBari & Associates addresses the topic. Also, as the final addition to the conference's keynote presenters-Lucas Wang, founder and CEO of HWTrek-will deliver a keynote. Wang will draw upon his experiences as one of the top four accelerators in Taiwan to provide a platform for connecting hardware entrepreneurs around the world. The CPX Conference also features forums and panels with top-tier speakers and experts that further explore IoT ecosystem partnerships, including speakers from Cisco, Ericsson (News - Alert), SBCK, Amazon Web Services, Intel, and Thread Group. An additional topic is IoT applications; companies joining this discussion include Advantech, Blocks, Bosch, SK Telecom (News - Alert), and IDC, etc. Registration for the CPX Conference is now open. To register, please visit www.accupass.com/go/cpx2016en. About COMPUTEX TAIPEI (known as COMPUTEX): Established in 1981, COMPUTEX is the leading global ICT show with a complete supply chain. Co-organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and the Taipei Computer Association (TCA), COMPUTEX, in the heart of Taiwan's ICT cluster, covers the whole spectrum of ICT from upstream components-manufacturing all the way to system assembly and IoT applications. With over a third of the world's computing devices made by Taiwanese companies, Taiwan is a strategic destination for buyers looking for partners in Internet computing ecosystems. Follow COMPUTEX on its website at www.computextaipei.com.tw and on Twitter (News - Alert) @computex_taipei using the hashtag #COMPUTEX. About TAITRA: TAITRA, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, organized 36 exhibitions in 2015. A total of 11,475 international and local exhibitors participated, occupying 32,982 booth spaces and visited by 82,939 international visitors. i Gartner, Inc. "Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2016." News Release. 10/6/15 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006337/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] MATTOON -- An application is in the works for grant funding to pave the gravel portion of the Lincoln Prairie Grass Trail between Charleston and Mattoon. The two cities plan to submit a joint application for federal funds administered by the Illinois Department of Transportation. The grant would also help pay for extending the trail west to downtown Mattoon and creating routes from the trail to sites in both cities, including Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center. Charleston City Planner Steve Pamperin said the improvements to the 20-year-old trail will provide a more transportation friendly path for bicyclists and pedestrians from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston to the Amtrak station in downtown Mattoon, and to shopping, health care and other destinations in between. "There are a lot of things we will be able to connect by enhancing the trail," Pamperin said. Mattoon is scheduled to hold a public meeting about this grant application and a related funding application during the Public Works Advisory Board meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall, 208 N. 19th St. Charleston will hold a second public meeting at a later date on the grant application for the trail paving project. Public Works Director Dean Barber of Mattoon said the cities will seek approximately $800,000 in funding from the Illinois Transportation Enhancements Program for the trail paving and other work. He said each city will would provide approximately $100,000 in matching funds for the grant. Barber said, in a press release, that this grant would pay for placing an asphalt surface on the crushed limestone portion of the trail from Logan Street in Mattoon to E Street in Charleston. This grant-funded project would also extend the west end of the trail in Mattoon from 10th to 16th streets. "This will connect the trail to the YMCA, downtown Mattoon, the Amtrak train depot, the Greyhound bus station, and Dial-A-Ride (bus stop)," Barber said. In addition, Barber said this grant would pay for connecting the trail to the Cross County Mall. Plans call for extending a 10-foot-wide asphalt spur from the trail to Richmond Avenue and Holiday Drive on the west side of the mall. The Transportation Enhancements Program grant would also cover extending bicycle lanes along Loxa Road and County Road 800N to Sarah Bush Lincoln and the LifeSpan Center, and connecting the trail to the Lincoln-Douglas Debate Museum at the Coles County Fairgrounds in Charleston. Barber said these connections will provide trail users with access to additional parking, restrooms, drinking water, and temperature-controlled areas where they can rest. In Charleston, the Transportation Enhancements Program grant would also be used to connect the trail to the downtown business district and to Eastern via bike lanes on Sixth and Seventh streets. "The sum of these improvements would be a direct bicycle route from EIU to the Amtrak train depot in Mattoon," Barber said. Barber said the long-term expansion of the trail is intended to inter-connect a variety of destinations. He said Mattoon completed a connection to Douglas-Hart Nature Center in 2015. He said Charleston is working on future phases of the trail expansion to connect from Eastern to Lake Charleston and from the lake to Fox Ridge State Park. Regarding Mattoon's related grant application, Barber said the city plans to seek funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Transportation Improvements Generating Economic Recovery program. He said this program focuses on neighborhood revitalization, multi-modal transportation opportunities, and other areas. Barber said this grant would pay for street resurfacing and sidewalk repairs on Dewitt Avenue from Logan to 14th streets, and on Western Avenue from 21st to 26th streets. This funding also would cover street road resurfacing and bike lane striping on Richmond Avenue from Logan Street to Holiday Drive. "The work on Richmond Avenue is part of a connection from the existing bike trail to the Cross County Mall," Barber said. "The work also includes widening the existing sidewalk on the east side of Logan Street from Richmond Avenue to the bike trail to establish a 10-foot-wide pedestrian/bicycle shared-used path." On Tuesday, the Mattoon City Council voted to apply for this federal grant funding for the planned improvements along DeWitt, Western, Richmond and Logan. The council also authorized $150,000 in city matching funds for this $1.4 million project. Mattoon anticipates that both grant-funded project would occur in 2017 if the grants are approved. SPRINGFIELD Gov. Bruce Rauners administration and a union representing 38,000 state workers began a legal showdown Monday over whether contract talks have reached an impasse. Lawyers for the state and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 are arguing their cases before Sarah Kerley, an administrative law judge for the Illinois Labor Relations Board. The parties began bargaining over a new contract in February 2015, and the Rauner administration in January moved to have an impasse declared, which could ultimately clear the way for the state to impose its contract terms on the union. The state and the union have reached tentative agreements on many issues, but wages and health care benefits remain major sticking points. The administration argues that the union has stuck to unreasonable demands in a time of unprecedented financial difficulties for the state, while AFSCME argues that the contract talks have been mired by Rauners hostility toward the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith. Tom Bradley, an attorney for the state, said in his opening statement Monday that AFSCME has repeatedly refused the administrations proposal to freeze wages and institute a merit-based bonus system that would reward employees for their job performance. Those measures and proposals to have employees cover a greater share of their health insurance costs are necessary as the state grapples with its fiscal challenges, Bradley said. The state was not negotiating in a vacuum, he said. To the contrary, the state was negotiating under the very heavy weight of the worst fiscal crisis in the states history, a fiscal crisis in which the states very best fiscal experts projected that the state would, over the (four-year) life of the contract, incur budget deficits in excess of $20 billion. Although the state made numerous concessions, Bradley said, the sides were unable to reach agreements on a dozen issues, including wages and health benefits. AFSCME attorney Steve Yokich argued in his opening statement that the union was still willing to negotiate when the state walked away from the bargaining table in early January. Contract talks have been slowed because the state sought in its initial proposal to throw out provisions that have been in place for 30 years or more, he said, illustrating his point by tearing pages out of the previous agreement. The governor has a well-known hostility toward collective bargaining by government unions, Yokich said, pointing out numerous anti-union statements Rauner made before being elected. You have two situations at work here, Yokich said. One situation is that you have a chief executive who despises the idea of government employee collective bargaining, and you have an original proposal that shreds the contract. The administrations very public pronouncements on issues like merit pay tied negotiators hands and prevented them from making serious concessions, he said. As for the states fiscal crisis, Yokich called it a self-inflicted wound. Rauner refused to back an extension of the states temporary income tax increase, which in January 2015 rolled back from 5 percent to 3.75 percent, taking an estimated $5 billion in annual revenue with it. Several more days of hearings are scheduled, and a final decision from Kerley is not expected for some time. Meanwhile, Rauner has yet to act on a bill thats been sitting on his desk since mid-March that would send the stalled contract talks to binding arbitration. He vetoed similar legislation last year. CHARLESTON (JG-TC) -- A student at Jefferson Elementary School in Charleston was named a "top winner" in an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency contest. Two other Jefferson students received "special recognition" in the agency's annual "Poster, Poetry and Prose" contest. The IEPA conducts the contest to recognize "creative skills used to express environmental awareness," according to a news release from the agency. Jefferson student Makena Hanner was one of six students named a "top winner" in the contest's poster category, the news release said. The students receiving "special recognition" were Nick Hawk in the contest's poetry and prose category and Ellie Jacobs in the poster category. The theme of this year's contest was "W.A.T.E.R. -- "What a True Environmental Resource" and focused on the importance of conserving water, the news release said. It said the contest is open to students in fifth and sixth grade and the winners were announced Friday in recognition of Earth Day. The winners were recognized during a reception at the Old State Capitol building in Springfield last month and the winning entries will be on display at the IEPA's office in Springfield through May 9. MATTOON -- The Illinois State Library recently announced that it will award a $35,000 grant to help replace the leaking roof of the Mattoon Public Library. Now, the Mattoon Public Library Board of Trustees is making plans to replace the roof as soon as the grant funding is available. The board is also preparing to conduct an applicant search for a new director following Ryan Franklin's departure from this position last month. Board Treasurer Clay Dean said the Live & Learn Construction Grant grant from the office of Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, who is also the state librarian, will be used to replace an asphalt shingle roof that dates back to the 1995 expansion and renovation of the Mattoon library. Dean said broken shingles from the roof often can be found on the grounds and roadways around the library after windy weather. He said the loss of these shingles is allowing storm water to leak through the roof and into the children's department on the upper level of the library. "The roof is in bad need of repair," Dean said. "We have not sustained any major damage yet, but it is definitely something of concern that we need to address soon." The Illinois Secretary of State's Office notified the library that it will receive grant contract documentation within the next few weeks with instructions on how to proceed. Dean said the board wants to replace the roof as soon as the grant funding is available. Dean said the library's interim director, Assistant Library Director Wenche Nonaas, did a great job of explaining the library's pressing need for a new roof when she helped give a presentation at a recent Live & Learn Construction Grant application review meeting in Effingham. Noonas started serving as interim director after Franklin left the library in March, Dean said. Franklin had served as library director since May 2008. Noonas also served as interim director prior to the hiring of Franklin. Dean said the board is preparing to conduct an applicant search for a new director. He said members plan to kick off a fundraising campaign and strategic planning process for the library. Consequently, he said, they will seek a new director who can help with fundraising and community outreach efforts for the library. "We want to fill the director position as soon as possible," Dean said. The following top CFS associates qualified for the Central Financial Services 2016 Leaders Conference hosted by Timothy E. Cox, CEO and Luella Cox. Qualification was based upon performance and service excellence provided to their life insurance, annuity and securities clients. Congratulations to Ken Broman, Lincoln, Denny Danielson, York, Lee Duhachek, Lincoln, Curtis Harrington, Omaha, Mike Messersmith, Gothenburg, Mark Ricklefs CFP, CLU, Kansas, Mike Rood and Jace Champlin (RCA Wealth Strategies, LLC, Kansas), Darcy Yocum (Yocum Wealth Management, Iowa) & Tim Walla, CFP (Walla Street Wealth Management, Inc., Kansas). The five day conference was held April 10-14 in Key West, Fla. The Ameritas Leaders Conference took place April 6-10 in Miami. Congratulations to the following AIC registered representatives from Central Financial Services who qualified to attend, along with Timothy E. Cox: Leaders Court, Mike Messersmith. Presidents Club, Jace Champlin, Mark Ricklefs, CFP, CLU & Tim Walla, CFP. Central Financial Services, RCA Wealth Strategies, LLC, Walla Street Wealth Management, Inc. and Yocum Wealth Management, are independent financial services firms offering comprehensive planning services, life insurance and annuities. Securities and investment services offered solely through Ameritas Investment Corp. (AIC), member FINRA, SIPC. Central Financial Services, RCA Wealth Strategies, LLC, Walla Street Wealth Management, Inc., and Yocum Wealth Management, are not affiliated with AIC. Additional products and services may be available through Central Financial Services, RCA Wealth Strategies, LLC, Walla Street Wealth Management, Inc. and Yocum Wealth Management that are not offered by AIC. RAPID CITY, S.D. On a cool spring morning one Sunday in 2003, a beat-up brown van drove off the highway about a mile south of New Underwood, vaulted up an embankment and slammed down onto a driveway. When paramedics arrived, they found a badly injured 11-year-old girl in the driver's seat. Her 13-year-old brother was also injured, as was her mother, 37-year-old Lori Ann Mestes, of Dupree, who authorities believe had been drinking cans of Budweiser during a two-hour trip from Pine Ridge while the girl drove. Mestes' boyfriend, 37-year-old Paul Anthony Clifford, also of Dupree, died of blunt-force trauma. None of them wore seat belts, investigators said. Mestes was later charged with second-degree manslaughter and allowing an unauthorized driver to operate a motor vehicle. A warrant was issued for her arrest. But that warrant has never been served. Mestes, also known as Lori Ann Neiss, reportedly fled to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Pennington County authorities cannot arrest her there, and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has refused to extradite her. "She's never been held accountable, and the victim's family has never had justice," said Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom. The 13-year-old case has come to symbolize the distrust felt by western South Dakota tribal governments toward the white justice system in the region's biggest population center, the Pennington County seat of Rapid City. None of the three tribal governments closest to Rapid City allows extradition of criminal suspects back to Pennington County. That distrust was one thing on the minds of Pennington County officials who recently applied for $4.9 million in funding from the MacArthur Foundation to reduce the county's jail population by 25 percent. Included in the application are a number of proposed initiatives to reduce the disproportionately high incarceration rate of Native Americans. While working with area tribes on the initiatives, Sheriff Thom hopes to build a spirit of cooperation that might avert future problems like the stalemate over the Mestes case. Thom compiled his department's felony warrants in December 2013 and found that 28 percent of them 72 out of 258 were for Native American suspects believed to be residing on reservations. Among those 72 cases, 39 had identifiable victims, and 18 of the victims were Native American. "So my point is, Native Americans aren't getting justice," Thom said. Whether greater cooperation between the white justice system in Rapid City and Native American tribes might ever lead to extradition agreements is unknown. Thom said he approaches the topic carefully. "People get nervous when you start talking about extradition from reservations, in terms of sovereignty," Thom said. "But I think it's an acknowledgement of sovereignty. We're saying that you are sovereign, so we have to ask you." Members of the grant planning committee in Pennington County visited with tribal leaders, elders and others on the Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Cheyenne River reservations while gathering information for the MacArthur grant application. The Journal was unable to reach any of those tribes' leaders for this story. But committee members, including Richie Richards, a staff writer at the Native Sun News and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, are optimistic about the opportunity to forge improved relationships and improve life for Native Americans both in Rapid City and on the reservations. "One of the key issues is that the criminality of the reservations, whether it's Pine Ridge or Rosebud or wherever, and the criminality of Rapid City bleed back and forth into each other," Richards said. "Either they're committing a crime in Rapid City and running to the reservation, or running from crimes they committed on the reservation and coming up to Rapid City." Richards said committee members recognize how closely the fortunes of Rapid City and the reservations are tied, and their work on the grant application showed a new spirit of cooperation. That was reflected in the application itself. "Simply put, there is a long-standing distrust of non-native law enforcement and government," the application says. "We have visited all three adjacent reservations and have seen a willingness to create positive changes. Four young men convicted of buying alcohol for an 18-year-old fraternity brother who died will have to share their story with high school and college students as part of their probation sentences. Clayton Real died after drinking too much at a 2014 party for freshmen members of Farmhouse Fraternity at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In a letter, the Real family asked Lancaster County District Judge Andrew Jacobsen to include public education as part of the sentences. Real's dad, Ken, sat in the courtroom for all four sentencing hearings on Monday, the first starting at 9:30, the last ending just before 4 p.m. Afterward, he said he hopes people will check out awareawakealive.com to learn more about the signs of alcohol poisoning. It's a start, he said. Attorney Jon Braaten, who represented defendant Vance Heyer, said alcohol use is rampant by minors and adults in fraternities. Upperclassmen bought for Heyer, now a senior at UNL, when he was a minor, Braaten said, so he bought for an off-campus fraternity party on Sept. 4, 2014. Real passed out at the party, and fraternity brothers carried him back to his room at the house at 3601 Apple St. The next morning, they couldn't wake him, and Lincoln Fire & Rescue workers couldnt save him. The coroner later determined the teenager had died of acute alcohol intoxication. Braaten said there's nothing Heyer can do to take back the decision he made more than a year ago. The only good that can come out of this, he said, is trying to change the views of high school and college kids. Earlier in the day, attorney Sandy Pollack told the judge his client, Ross Reynolds, already is spreading the word. Pollack said he shared a letter Reynolds, 23, wrote about the experience with his own son and stepson, one a college freshman and the other soon to be one. This is an absolutely tragic situation, he said. Pollack said the worst decision Reynolds made, and likely will make in his life, came on Sept. 4, 2014, when he bought alcohol for the party. Lancaster County prosecutors charged Heyer, Reynolds, Cory Foland and Thomas Trueblood with felonies for procuring alcohol for a minor leading to a death. They later charged Michael J. Miller, with a misdemeanor. UNL police investigators determined Trueblood, then 19, had arranged for and transported alcohol bought by the others. Cameras at Kens Kegs caught them buying the alcohol and loading it into Truebloods SUV. In February, Heyer, Reynolds and Foland, all 23, pleaded no contest to procuring alcohol for a minor, a misdemeanor. Trueblood, 20, pleaded no contest to that charge and to being a minor in possession. Miller pleaded no contest to aiding and abetting procuring and is set for sentencing next month. In court Monday morning, Foland, the only one of the four to make a statement before being sentenced, fought back tears and said he wanted to apologize to his family and to the Real family. I couldnt imagine what they went through, he said. Foland said he has learned from what happened and asked them for forgiveness at some point in your life. Defense attorney Brad Roth said Foland lost a fraternity brother and a friend. This has been traumatic for everyone, he said. Outside the courtroom later, Ken Real stopped Foland and shook his hand. Jacobsen sentenced Reynolds and Foland Monday morning to a year of probation, a $1,000 fine and community service: speaking once a month to high school and college students about the dangers of underage drinking. In the afternoon, the judge gave Trueblood the same sentence after defense attorney Peter Blakeslee said it is clear Trueblood has extreme regret and remorse over the death of his friend. Trueblood is a sophomore at UNL. Clayton Real was from Grafton, graduated from McCool Junction High School in May 2014 and came to UNL to major in agricultural economics. He had planned to go home after college and work on his family's feedlot. He was on the UNL Rodeo Team and a linemen on his high school football team. He served on the student council, as an officer of Future Farmers of America, was a member of Fellowship of Christian Athletes and mentored elementary school kids through Big Brothers Big Sisters. A 65-year-old man was cited Saturday after a confrontation over dogs at a campground led him to allegedly use a stun gun on two women. Robert Miles showed up to Wildwood Lake about 5:30 p.m. with his Alaskan Malamute dog named Teddy and three other dogs. A nearby camper was bitten on his left hand when he intervened to keep Teddy from attacking his dog, according to an incident report from the Lancaster County Sheriffs Office. The 46-year-old bitten did not require medical attention. The people in the campsite told deputies that Miles then stunned two women, 19 and 46, who also tried to intervene. They said he used a dual purpose flashlight and stun gun. Then, witnesses said, Miles pulled down his pants and defecated. Deputies arrested him on suspicion of second-degree assault and cited him for having a dog at large, misdemeanor child abuse since two children witnessed the incident, disturbing the peace and public indecency, the report says. Teddy will be quarantined for a standard 10-day observation period. Sheriff Terry Wagner said he didn't know if the dog was on a leash at the time. Three men were arrested early Monday after a traffic stop led Lincoln police officers to an alleged assault victim. Just after midnight, a Lincoln officer saw a Chevy SUV at the intersection of Nebraska 2 and 56th Street, Officer Katie Flood said. The officer pulled the SUV over and as he talked with driver Shon Greenfield, 27, he noticed the four passengers looked distraught, were shaky and had bloodshot eyes, Flood said. The officer told all five men to get out of the SUV. A 27-year-old in the SUV got the officer's attention by mouthing "help me" and told him two of the men in the SUV had punched him in the face and held a machete to his neck and a gun to his head before forcing him to get into the SUV at 80th Street and Old Cheney Road earlier in the night, Flood said. The man said his attackers accused him of theft and he was afraid they were going to kill him. Officers then searched the SUV and found a loaded .22-caliber long gun, a BB gun and five machetes and switchblades, plus an ounce of marijuana and a pipe with meth residue, Flood said. They arrested Greenfield on suspicion of false imprisonment and Richard Jacobs, 24, and Eric Little, 37, on suspicion of false imprisonment, terroristic threats, felon in possession of a firearm and use of a weapon to commit a felony. A fourth person was released after officers determined he wasn't involved in the incident, Flood said. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Today the Journal Star editorial board continues its endorsements for the May 10 primary. We are making recommendations only in races in which at least one candidate will be eliminated. District 27 The Journal Star thinks that Dick Clark and Anna Wishart clearly are the best candidates to move on to the general election. If voters want a candidate who hews to conservative positions on seemingly every issue, Clark is their man. Clark, 35, an attorney who came to Nebraska in 2011 to work in the executive branch for then-Gov. Dave Heineman, later served as research director for the Platte Institute for Policy Research. Clark said he likes to say that he is a libertarian when it comes to the economy. He wants to control government spending and wants government to be a responsible steward of every tax dollar. He says that some kids are not getting what they need in the states schools. He supports changing state law to allow charter schools in the more populated parts of the state. He opposes Medicaid expansion. Anna Wishart, 31, gives voters a choice on the other side of the political spectrum. She says that one of her top priorities is economic development, and points to her five years on the Airport Authority, which owns and successfully manages an industrial tract, as evidence of her acumen. During her tenure on the board, where she currently is president, the airport reversed its long slide in passenger totals. Wishart thinks that expansion of Medicaid in Nebraska is vital for public and economic health. She said legislative district 27 alone has more than 2,300 residents who fall into the coverage gap. Her proposals for economic development and helping children in poverty include workforce development, infrastructure investment, quality public education and early childhood education. Deb Andrews is the third candidate in the race. State Board of Education Patsy Koch Johns and Bob Rauner have the Journal Stars endorsement in the primary race for a seat on the State Board of Education, which sets educational policy for public schools in Nebraska. Koch Johns, 66, who was 2006 Teacher of the Year, would bring a valuable teachers perspective to her role on the state board. She taught for 24 years in Cozad before moving to Lincoln High in 2000. Like Rauner, Koch Johns would like the state to reduce the amount of time devoted to testing, and she wants to ensure that Nebraskas relatively new assessment system works effectively. A former theater teacher at Lincoln High School and current president of Nebraskans for the Arts, Koch Johns believes that music, theater and arts are important to secondary education. Rauner, 46, a physician who is director of Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln, is best known for his activism in increasing the amount of time younger students spend in physical activity. He has spent eight years working with Lincoln public schools on various projects to improve student health. His work, which showed that improving student fitness benefits learning has been highlighted nationally by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and published in the Journal of Pediatrics. Like Koch Johns, Rauner is a supporter of early childhood education, especially as an aid to help children in poverty succeed in school. Stephanie Bohlke-Schulte is the third candidate in the race. GRAND ISLAND Authorities say one person has been killed and two people have been treated at a hospital after a fire at a plumbing company building in Grand Island. Grand Island Fire Chief Cory Schmidt said firetrucks were dispatched after several people reported hearing explosions around 10:45 p.m. Sunday. An estimated 40 firefighters battled the flames, and crews were still on the scene Monday morning to handle hot spots at the Winfrey Plumbing and Heating building and a nearby building where the fire had spread. Fire Department shift commander Ed Carlin said one body was recovered and that the two people injured were taken to a Grand Island hospital. Schmidt said the state fire marshal's office has been called to help determine what caused the explosions and fire. Hilsabeck borrowed $145,000 from the bank in August 2012 to pay for digital equipment and accessories as part of an upgrade to digital technology in the theater. RACINE Police confirmed Monday that they have made an arrest in connection with a shooting late Sunday morning in the area of Sixth and Jones streets. According to witnesses, William M. Lockhart, 34, of the 1700 block of Maple Street, was walking his dog Sunday when he called over to Darnell L. Barker, 47, began to argue with him, and allegedly shot Barker in the chest. Witnesses indicated Barker was in stable condition on Sunday afternoon, but police have yet to comment on his condition. Jail records show Lockhart was arrested Sunday. While he hasnt officially been charged, police said and jail records confirm that hes being held at the Racine County Jail on suspicion of attempted homicide. According to witnesses, Lockhart threatened to kill Barker before the shooting in a message he scratched onto Barkers car. Prior Convictions If Lockhart is charged with attempted homicide, it would not mark a personal first. In 2004, Lockhart pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted homicide. According to a Journal Times story from 2004, Lockhart, then 22, was accused of shooting Kendrick Smith at close range during an argument in the 600 block of 12th Street on June 26, 2003.{/span} Lockhart had been riding in a car with some other people when the driver stopped the car near where Smith was standing, according to court records. Lockhart got out of the car, they argued and Lockhart shot Smith. Lockhart said he was jumped by close to a dozen people and only meant to shoot into the air to scare them off. In July 2004, Lockhart was sentenced to four years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision, court records show. He was released in May 2007, according to Wisconsin Department of Corrections records. Lockhart returned to prison in 2010 for reasons that were unclear Monday, and was released in September 2012. He pleaded guilty to firearm and marijuana possession in 2014. Just last week, police cited Lockhart for operating a vehicle while suspended and without insurance. MOUNT PLEASANT Although Jared Ricchio never sought to go into space, the 17-year-old now has an idea of what life is like for an astronaut. In February, Ricchio, a junior at Case High School, participated in an intensive, week-long course at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. Taking part in the Honeywell Leadership Challenge Academy, Ricchio, of Mount Pleasant, helped design a makeshift heat shield to protect a spacecraft descending to earth, served as CAPCOM (capsule communicator) relaying messages from the mission control center to a Swedish pilot during a simulated space mission and other activities. Beyond the simulations and challenges, Ricchio said the experience gave him a new sense of confidence in himself to be a leader, taking charge at the camp alongside dozens of intelligent teenagers from around the world, from Sweden to Saudi Arabia to South Korea. Hearing all their backgrounds and their school backgrounds, how smart they were, I felt like I was kind out of my league almost in a way, he said. Then, getting to take that leadership role and help all of those people do some work together, that really made me feel like a better person. I feel like if theres something that needs to be done Ill find a way to do it. About the program Ricchio was one of about 320 16- to 18-year-old students from 30 states and 36 countries who took part in two sessions of the Honeywell Leadership Challenge Academy in late February and early March, according to a news release from Honeywell. The program developed with the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and launched in 2010 as a scholarship-funded opportunity for children of Honeywell employees, including Ricchios mother is designed to instill leadership skills in teenagers while also stimulating a deeper interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) topics and careers. Activities include flight and space mission simulations, science workshops and team exercises as well as opportunities to meet scientists, engineers and former astronauts, according to the release. Ricchio said he jumped at the opportunity to take part in the program despite having to write two essays to apply in order to build his leadership skills and learn more about the science topics involved. Although hes interested in astronomy and the unexplored frontiers in space, he said hed rather make a career in biology, either tending to animals in a zoo or designing more bountiful and resilient crops as a way to build on the farming tradition of his father and grandfather. He noted hed be interested in working on ways to farm food on the moon. While Ricchio was excited by the activities, he said his favorite part of the camp was the opportunity to meet and get to know so many people from around the country and around the world. He noted that despite their different backgrounds, the teenagers at the camp quickly found they shared interests and could all put their minds together to work as a team. It made me realize that even with all the problems and issues going on in the world, theres a lot of good people out there, he said. It made me feel like theres nothing we couldnt do. A Dane County judge on Monday declined to put on hold his ruling barring enforcement of Wisconsins right-to-work law, which he found to be unconstitutional earlier this month. Circuit Judge William Foust, who ruled on April 8 that the law unconstitutionally takes property from unions without compensation, said that he will continue to bar enforcement of the law while the state Department of Justice appeals Fousts decision. I think the factors weigh in favor of maintaining the decision, Foust said. I dont think they weigh in favor of a stay pending appeal. DOJ has already appealed the ruling to the state District 3 Court of Appeals, based in Wausau. Attorney General Brad Schimel said in a statement that he is disappointed by Fousts ruling and that DOJ plans to seek a stay from the appeals court, where we feel confident this law will be upheld. In the past the case would have gone to District 4, based in Madison, but a recent change in state law allows those filing appeals to choose the district where they wish their appeal to be heard. DOJ argued in a court filing last week that allowing continued enforcement of the right-to-work law wont substantially harm labor unions, and that similar laws have benefited 25 other states. In a response last week, the unions argued that the purpose of the law ostensibly was to enhance Wisconsins business climate, but that its being done at the expense of a small proportion of the states working population, the fewer than 10 percent who are union members. This attempt to place the entire burden of the law upon a small group further weakens the defendants showing of harm, the unions wrote in their brief. The right-to-work law prohibits unions and employers from entering into agreements that require all employees to pay fees to join a union, either in the form of membership dues or fair share payments for those who opt out of joining a union but are still represented by it. The AFL-CIO and two other private sector unions sued the state, arguing that state and federal laws require unions to provide collective bargaining services to all employees in a represented workplace, regardless of whether they pay union dues. They argued that made the states right-to-work law an illegal taking of their services. In arguments before Foust on Monday, Assistant Attorney General Steven Kilpatrick argued that a stay was in the public interest, which is in maintaining the status quo under the law that the Legislature enacted. He said that the state would suffer irreparable harm if Foust does not grant a stay putting on hold his decision barring the enforcement of the right-to-work law. Kilpatrick also argued that laws enacted by the state have the presumption of constitutionality. Frederick Perillo, arguing for the unions against the stay, called that argument breathtaking. Theoretically, he said, that argument could mean that the state could pass obviously discriminatory Jim Crow laws and defend them as having the presumption of constitutionality. He also argued that the state hadnt shown any evidence that it would be harmed by barring enforcement of the right-to-work law, and instead its the unions who are being harmed on an ongoing basis by having to provide services to free riders. On balance, Foust said, he said he believes that the harm is less to the few current nonunion members who would be made to pay dues because of his decision and more to the unions who have had to foot the bill for them for the past year, for the foreseeable future if he stayed his decision. This decision boils down to something as simple as there is no free lunch, Foust said. There is no right to be a free rider. Perillo called Fousts ruling the right decision. Wisconsin AFL-CIO president Phil Neuenfeldt said the union is pleased with the decision. Rather than respecting the constitution, Neuenfeldt said in a statement, Gov. Walker and Attorney General Brad Schimel are trying every legal maneuver in the book to advance their own partisan agenda and deny workers their right to a meaningful union. Special registration deputies the voter-registration volunteers whose elimination became central to the debate over Wisconsins new online voter registration law likely will be able to continue to register voters through the November election, the state elections board said Monday. A law establishing online voter registration in Wisconsin, signed by Gov. Scott Walker last month, does away with the deputies who help conduct voter-registration drives. The measure linked the abolition of the deputies to the implementation of online voter registration, either this year or next. Online registration likely wont be ready for prime time by the November election, according to the agenda for Tuesdays meeting of the Government Accountability Board, the state elections board. The states Division of Motor Vehicles, which will provide information for the voter-registration database, advised the board of that timeline last month. Having online registration in place by the November election would be too tight a time frame for a project of this importance and magnitude, Department of Transportation spokeswoman Patricia Mayers said in a statement. Assuming the timeline is not accelerated, that means the special deputies may continue to register voters through the upcoming election, board spokesman Reid Magney said in a statement. The only exception relates to the deputies registering voters at polling places, which no longer is permitted under the law. The law creates new election registration officials to fill that role instead. Supporters of the online-registration law have said the special deputies no longer will be needed when the state has online registration, which they say would enable almost anyone to help a voter register. The registration deputies are deputized by election clerks and receive special training. They bring registration forms to voter drives, help voters complete them, verify voters places of residence and return completed forms to election clerks. The deputies have been championed by groups such as League of Women Voters many of whose members are deputies as integral to boosting voter registration in underserved communities. Their elimination was key to Democrats opposition to the law, which passed the Legislature with only Republican support. The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin registers thousands of voters each year with help from the deputies, according to its executive director, Andrea Kaminski. Kaminski said Monday that shes pleased to hear the deputies likely may continue to function for now. Thats our plan: just to keep registering voters as long as we can, Kaminski said. The law made Wisconsin the 31st state to allow voters to register or update their registrations online. Lawmakers from both parties generally support online registration; the elimination of the registration deputies along with some other specifics in the measure were the sticking points. Adams body to be kept at Nepal Academy for tribute Barbara Adams will be cremated at the Pashupati Aryaghat on Monday. Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years. Annus horribilis Government, bureaucracy should stop their legitimacy from eroding further Armed Indian police personnel arrested for illegally entering Nepal from Doti Five Indian police personnel, who were arrested by the Doti District Police for illegally entering Nepal with weapons, have been handed over to Kailali District Police Office on Sunday. Asian Paints hands over houses Locals of Jugedi Pari in Dhadings Naubise VDC are more than gratified after they were handed over 30 earthquake-resistant houses with proper sanitation, road and solar light facilities by Asian Paints Nepal on Sunday. Australia teen charged with Anzac day terror plot Police in Australia have charged a 16-year-old with preparing an act of terrorism, saying they believe he was plotting to target Anzac Day services. Bangladesh LGBT editor hacked to death A leading gay rights activist and editor at Bangladesh's only LGBT magazine has been hacked to death, media reports and officials say. Caravan Actor Thinley falls off cliff, dies Popular actor and social activist Thinley Lhondup died in his home district Dolpa on Sunday. He was 72. CNI: Bring policies to rehabilitate industries Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) has asked the government to put in place policies to rehabilitate industries hit by the Gorkha earthquake and Indias trade embargo. Conor McGregor: I'm fighting at UFC 200, says Irishman Conor McGregor says he will fight at UFC 200, although there has not yet been any comment from event organisers. Cooking gas black-marketer nabbed Police on Sunday arrested a businessperson of Pokhara-10, Rambazaar for his involvement in black-marketing of LP gas. Court extends Dixits custody The Special Court on Sunday granted the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) permission to extend custody of journalist and Sajha Yatayat Chairman Kanak Mani Dixit to 10 days. Curbs on press freedom Constitution drafters seriously misunderstood idea of press freedom, which differs from right to communication Dixit arrested as public office-bearer: CIAA The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has stated that journalist Kanak Mani Dixit was arrested in his capacity as the Chair of Sajha Yatayat Cooperative Limited, a public entity. Donor community renews support to reconstruction Major donors and Red Crossthe largest humanitarian partnerhave renewed their support for reconstruction bid in Nepal as the country commemorated the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake. EU pledges 105m grant The European Union (EU) has pledged a grant assistant of 105 million euros for the post-earthquake rehabilitation and reconstruction. Family awaits missing mans homecoming It has been a year since Bhabisara Bhusal of Sanoshree Taratal-6 in Bardiya lost contact with her husband. Bhupendra Bhusal had gone to Khasa, Tibet, to work at a construction firm there. Fear over eating disorder care in Japan Most people suffering with eating disorders in Japan are not receiving any medical or psychological support, according to doctors. Former Ncell CEO could face prosecution Former Ncell CEO Erim Taylanlar could face prosecution after he failed to respond to a letter from the Large Taxpayers Office to present himself before the LTO. Hrithik Roshan goes cryptic online Amid the legal battle with actress Kangana Ranaut, actor Hrithik Roshan has posted a cryptic tweet about troubled times. Korean speaker calls on speaker Gharti Speaker Onsari Gharti and her South Korean counterpart Mr Chung Eui-hwa had a meeting at the Legislature-Parliament building at New Baneshwor today. Locals demand revision of power line alignment Locals of PhidimPanchthar district headquartershave objected the proposed alignment of transmission lines under the Kabeli Corridor Project, a high-priority electricity project under survey. Mexico missing students: Government 'hampered' independent inquiry A panel of international experts investigating the disappearance of 43 Mexican trainee teachers in 2014 says the government of President Enrique Pena Neto has hampered its inquiries. Nation remembers quake victims The country marked the first anniversary of the devastating Gorkha earthquake by remembering thousands of people who lost their lives and symbolically inaugurating the reconstruction of several damaged structures. Naya Shakti expels leader Ashok Thapa Naya Shakti Nepal has expelled its interim council member Ashok Thapa, who was arrested on Sunday on fraud charge. Naya shakti member held for running lottery scam Ashok Kumar Thapa, the interim council member of Baburam Bhattarai-led Naya Shakti, has been arrested on fraud charge. NRNA to build 573 houses in Laprak The Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA) and the government authorities have reached a deal to make an integrated settlement at earthquake-hit Laprak VDC in Gorkha district. Pakistan contaminated sweets kill 23 At least 23 people have died from eating contaminated sweets in central Pakistan, police say. Ghumphir Barsa launched: Go out and enjoy Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has urged foreign investors and tourists to not harbour any reluctance to invest and travel in Nepal. President Sisi urges Egyptians to 'defend state' ahead of protests Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions ahead of planned anti-government protests. Ramp up reconstruction with confidence: PM Oli Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli today called for expediting the reconstruction campaign with confidence. Reconstruction project in 11 districts The National Reconstruction Authority formally took its house rebuilding project to 11 severely quake-affected districts on Sunday, on the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake. Secularism sold for millions of dollars: NC leader Shekhar Koirala Nepali Congress Leader Shekhar Koirala has remarked that the term secularism was adopted in the constitution in exchange for millions of dollars. Syria conflict: Obama 'to send 250 more non-combat troops' US President Barack Obama is to send 250 additional military personnel to Syria to support local militias in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS), officials have said. There are possibilities of Nepal becoming another Haiti As we mark the first anniverssary of the Gorkha Earthquake, the pace of reconstruction has been slow. Much time was spent on political wrangling in setting up the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). Even after the NRA was established, it failed to deliver at a pace that was expected. TMLP set to hold conclave in June The Tarai Madhes Loktantrik Party has announced that the party would hold its first general convention from June 20 to 22. The party has not held the convention since its formation on 2007. Wildfire destroys over 10,000 hectares of forest in Kanchanpur Wildfires in different community and national forests including Shuklaphant Wildlife Reserve Area have destroyed over 10,000 hectares of forests. Wildfire destroys over 980 hectares of forest in Kavrepalanchok Wildfires in different community and national forests have destroyed over 980 hectares of forests in Kavrepalanchok district. Yes, its hard to to tell when one enters the city limits Yes, they will make the city more inviting Maybe ... does it really matter? No, the signs in place are fine No, it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars Vote View Results The saving culture in Uganda remains very low despite the growing number of financial institutions in the country. The Assistant Commissioner in charge of Private Schools at the Ministry of Education George Mutekanga blames the poor savings financial illiteracy and poor child upbringing. It is against this background that the Ministry of Education in conjugation with Bank of Uganda have organized a National Primary Schools Essay Writing Competition 2016 under the theme Why saving money is good. Mutekanga says this competition is meant to inculcate the saving culture right from the lowest level of education to help pupils appreciate the importance of putting some income away for future use. The competition to be under taken during second school term of the year 2016 will involve Primary 5 to Primary 7 classes. Mutekanga made the remarks while launching ceremony competition this morning at Kibuli Core Primary Teachers College in Kampala. Story By Damalie Mukhaye At least 40 suspected Rwenzori attackers have been charged with murder. Fred Enanga, the police spokesperson says 25 suspects have been charged with murder in Bundibugyo and seven in Kasese while four have been charged with attempted murder, arson and aggravated robbery. The conflicts that broke up following the February controversial elections left over 45 people killed while others survived with injuries. In Bundibugyo the most affected sub-counties include Ntotoro, Busaru, Kirumya and Bubukwanga where house houses burnt to ashes and cocoa plantations cut down. In Kasese the clashes broke out at Kasenyi village in Busongora North Constituency where a video of a soldier shooting dead a civilian armed with a stick was captured. Others places that were affected by the clashes include Hima town council and Kasese Municipality. Security forces have since arrested over 200 people suspected to be members of Kirumiramuthma militia group that is accused of masterminding the killings. Story By Joseph Kato Former Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi has handed over the final East African Community Election Observers report to Dr. Richard Sezibera, the East African Community (EAC) Secretary General. At the ceremony that took place in Tanzanias capital Dar-es-Salaam, H.E Mwinyi said the observers were impressed with reputable patience and orderliness with which the voters conducted the February 18th elections. He also says that the Ugandan election pose a number of good practices to be emulated by other countries. The report which is yet to be handed to the Electoral Commission also consists of recommendations to streamline the electoral process in future. This is the second election observers report to be released after the European Union Election Observer Mission released one last week, citing lack of transparency and independence by the Electoral Commission. Story By Moses Kyeyune Over 1200 students of Mbarara High School have been sent home following yesterdays fire that gutted a boys dormitory. Fire gutted Addis Ababa dormitory that houses students from different classes at around 9:00 pm while the students were in classes reading, destroying property of over 100 students. The school headmaster Benon Twinomujuni says the students were scheduled to begin end of first term exams this morning but the fire has disrupted all preparations for the same. According to the Rwizi Region Field Force Police Commander Collins Kaganzi, the cause of the fire is still being investigated. He says the four rooms of the dormitory were found locked and had to break-in in desperate attempt to save the property. The security guard who was supposed to be on duty at the time of the fire outbreak has been arrested to help with investigations. Story By Felix Ayinebyona Government has been asked to create a ministry for happiness. The call has been made by the deputy chief executive officer Dubai Export Authority, Mohammad Ali Mohammad Kamali while speaking at the UAE-Uganda trade and Investment conference at Kampala. He says a ministry for Happiness will help monitor and put in place things which make Ugandans happy because happiness has made miracles for the United Arab Emirates economy. He said a happy community is a basis upon which people are willing to embrace government programs, do business and be innovative to maintain their happiness by accomplishing their key performance indicators which enable wealth creation and economic development. He cites a lot of opportunities to be explored in Uganda in the areas of agriculture particularly exporting perishables, water treatment, tourism because of the countrys geographical location in the region as a land link to surrounding countries. Opening the conference, the Third Deputy Prime Minister Gen. Moses Ali described this as a unique and important opportunity for Uganda to break through the Middle East market and penetrate others areas like India and China. The Dubai Authoritys advice comes at a time when Ugandan employees are beginning to manifest with diseases related to stressful working conditions that have resulted into inefficiencies at work. Detour set for Hwy. 61 south at I-90 Dresbach Bridge Motorists exiting Interstate 90 to travel south on Hwy. 61 will be detoured for two and a half days beginning at 9 p.m., April 29, while the old I-90 bridge over Hwy. 61 and the railroad tracks is demolished, according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation. The closure for the demolition work is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m., Friday, April 29 and be completed by 5 a.m., Monday, May 2. Eastbound I-90 motorists who want to travel south on Hwy. 61 toward La Crescent will need to exit early at Exit 267 (Nodine). The detour route travels south on Winona County Road 12 to Winona County Road 1 south into La Crescent where it connects with Hwy. 61. Westbound I-90 motorists who want to travel south on Hwy. 61 toward La Crescent should detour through La Crosse and use the Hwy. 14/16/61 bridge into La Crescent. To follow this route, exit I-90 at Exit 3 in La Crosse, onto Hwy. 53, then turn right to use the Hwy. 14/16/61 bridge into La Crescent. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is seeking volunteers for its Citizen Stream and Citizen Lake Monitoring programs. program volunteers track water clarity, which helps the MPCA learn more about a lake or streams water quality. Thirty years ago, when I started monitoring Long Lost Lake, I thought it would be an interesting thing to do for a summer. Little did I know that I would still be at it three decades later. I guess you could say Im hooked, said Jim Svobodny, volunteer. The MPCA uses data collected by Jim and other volunteers to determine whether water quality is improving or declining in specific water bodies or watersheds. Identifying these trends is one of the first steps in protecting or improving water quality throughout the state. More than 1,300 Minnesotans participate in the Citizen Monitoring programs, but in order to reach all water bodies across Minnesota, more volunteers are needed. (There are) 69,000 miles of rivers and over 12,000 lakes is a lot of water to cover, said Laurie Sovell, coordinator of the MPCAs Citizen Stream Monitoring Program. We are looking for people curious about local water bodies and passionate about protecting our states water resources. As part of the program, volunteers are asked to perform a short and simple water clarity test at their favorite lake or stream, once per week throughout the summer. Equipment and training are provided by the MPCA and no prior experience is necessary. For some lakes and streams, volunteer-collected data is the only data available, making citizen involvement critical to ensuring the lasting health of Minnesotas waters. Find out if your favorite lake or stream needs monitoring by using the MPCAs interactive map at http://www.pca.state.mn.us/d4awwwd. To become a volunteer or learn more about the program, go to the programs website at www.pca.state.mn.us/cmp, or call 800-657-3864. Landowners, counties and watershed districts are now reviewing the preliminary map of Minnesota public waters requiring protective buffers. Landowners who have buffers identified on their property can work with their local soil and water conservation district or drainage authority to ensure the preliminary map is accurate. Minnesotas buffer law establishes new perennial vegetation buffers of up to 50 feet along rivers, streams and public ditches to help filter out phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment. The Department of Natural Resources role is to produce a map of the public waters and public ditches that require permanent vegetation buffers. Specific questions about the maps depiction of waters on private land should go to local soil and water conservation districts or drainage authorities, DNR Buffer Mapping Project Manager Dave Leuthe said. Soil and water conservation districts are ready to work with landowners on these issues. The preliminary map created by the DNR displays public ditches only in counties and watershed districts that have submitted their data and had them incorporated into the map by the DNR. A status map is also available, showing the progress of each Minnesota county and watershed district in getting their data on the preliminary buffer map. Eighty-two of the 95 drainage authorities have submitted the required data. The DNR is working with those entities that have not yet submitted data, and designed a tool to help counties with paper data to digitize and submit their information. Counties and watershed districts reviewing the preliminary map can suggest updates or corrections where ditch data on the map may not accurately show the current length or course of public ditches. The DNR has designed a tool that local governments can use to easily submit their suggested corrections online. Corrections made during this review process will help the DNR deliver a more accurate buffer map this summer. The preliminary buffer map and status map are available at www.mndnr.gov/buffers. Also available at this website is a link to submit comments through May 31 about how the map is being created and more information about the buffer mapping project. One person died and three others were injured in a one-vehicle, roll-over weekend crash on Co. B in the town of Jefferson. Samuel B. Ruehmann, 25, La Crosse, was negotiating a curve about 5:30 p.m. Saturday when he lost control of his vehicle and went off the right side of the road. The vehicle rolled over multiple times. Alexander T. Mickelson, 22, La Crosse, was a passenger in the rear seat and was not wearing a seat belt. Mickelson was ejected from the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene by the Vernon County Coroners Office. Two other passengers, Anthony P. Greeno, 22, La Crosse and Ruehmanns six-year-old daughter, who was not identified by the sheriff's department, were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash. Greeno and Ruehmans daughter were able to safely get out of the vehicle. Samuel Ruehmann became trapped during the crash and was extricated by the Viroqua Fire Department. Samuel Ruehmann was wearing a seat belt. Samuel Ruehmann was airlifted by Med-Flight to Gundersen Health System in La Crosse with serious injuries. Both Greeno and Ruehmanns daughter were transported to Gundersen Health System in La Crosse by Tri-State Ambulance. Ruehmann was listed in fair condition this morning and Greeno was discharged from the hospital. Assisting at the scene was the Wisconsin State Patrol. The crash remains under investigation. WHITEHALL Her pupils aren't shaped liked other people's. Even so, Sonja Kern has come to accept her own contours, no matter where she finds them. The 18-year-old Whitehall Memorial High School senior and Extra Effort Award designee was born with colobomas. I'm basically missing tissue in my eyes, Kern said. Legally blind, Kern has some light perception in her right eye; her left is even better she can see up to 10 feet away. Because she's been prepared for what she was assured would be total blindness this year, she has learned braille. (But my vision is now stable.) She can also use a magnifier to read. It depends on my mood, she said. Mood, it seems, is almost everything. That's what's changed most about Kern, especially in the last year. Take, for instance, her grades. I'm going to be an adult now, she told herself at the beginning of senior year, so I better start acting like one. Then she told herself, I'm ready for this. That's a far cry from where Tain Mikesell found her five years ago. And he matters a great deal to Kern because he's the only father figure she's had. She's learned she has to stand up for herself, Mikesell said. When he started dating her mother, he found Kern in a depression; she wore baggy clothes, slept all the time, and essentially stayed hidden in the corner. Worse, she had no interest in school. This isn't life, he told her. Somehow, she listened. She also heard him when he told her her disability isn't a crutch. Instead, he offered his hand, and she took it. Literally. When they first met, Kern couldn't stand to be touched in any way. Now, he said, she'll hold his hand when they're walking down the street; she'll even give him a hug and accept one in return. She's not afraid of herself anymore, he said. She has a whole different outlook. She's blossomed. Kern credits Mikesell with opening her eyes. It's just that he doesn't take any baloney from her, and now she's found she's less inclined to give it back to anyone. If people aren't supportive of you, she said, they're not worth your time. Children are worth her time. Kern works part time at a local daycare. She thrives on the energy and affection of the kids. They have their temper tantrums, but I just love them and they love me, she said. Yes, there has been tumult at home in the past, and, yes, they haven't always had a lot of money, but she likes to keep that all in perspective. It's not like going through a brick wall or anything, she said. She keeps herself busy, especially with the Pigeon Falls Lions Club, doing whatever she can helping out a concession stands, whatever they need that she can do. She has attended Camp Rosholt, a Wisconsin Lions-funded camp for children with disabilities, the past five summers. She's been able to fish, boat, hike, even do archery. And she's met friends from all over the state. She also somehow finds the time to help wrap Christmas presents at an area nursing home. How much she's changed has definitely been noticed by Shannon Beighley, Kern's resource teacher at Whitehall. Her observations, independent of Mikesell, are almost a mirror. You can't walk all over her, Beighley said. She's going to live life. She's not going to use being legally blind as an excuse. Beighley said Kern has become her own best advocate, almost a living embodiment of the support system's goal. Among other things, Beighley manages Kern's Individualized Education Program, partnering the young student with supporters from the Cooperative Educational Service Agency 4, Wisconsin's Department of Vocational Training, and Whitehall staff teachers. She said Kern has accepted the challenges in her life as part of who she is. She's blossomed into this amazing young person, Beighley said. When she graduates, she's thought about the two-year early childhood education program at Western Technical College. Perhaps she'll start off working for a bit. In any case, it's time to start looking forward. Still, looking at how far she's come, and everything she manages to do, there couldn't possibly be anything she's left out. Ilya Katsnelson for 10 years was on one of the most exclusive lists in the world, but instead of opening doors, it closed them: The Russians in 2006 put him on Interpols Red Notice list. In 2004, at age 37, the former Madison resident and his oil-tanker business partners were accused by Russian President Vladimir Putins regulators of money laundering, fraud, conspiracy and abuse of authority. And they suddenly owed 846 million rubles in back taxes. He and his family were chased out of the country just as an arrest warrant arrived. That the warrant was politically motivated, and the charges baseless, mattered not at all, Katsnelson discovered, and he spent 10 years, until April 1 of this year, proving it. The pickle Katsnelson ended up in was detailed in a Wisconsin State Journal story in 2008, after the multi-lingual millionaire who fled to Copenhagen, Denmark, from Moscow had faced delays and detailed questions every time he traveled to the United States. Katsnelson was hounded because after he fled, the Russians in early 2006 filed a Red Notice with Interpol, the worldwide crime information agency headquartered in France. The effect was to put Katsnelson on a list of people that various countries there are 190 members of Interpol suspected of crimes, including people who could be detained until more information was gathered. While that was an irritant at first especially in the United States, where someone can be detained, but not arrested, for being on the list it developed into life-altering and life-threatening events for Katsnelson. In 2008, German police saw his name on the Interpol alert list while he was traveling through that country. He was arrested and placed in a maximum security prison for 50 days. When he was released, under armed guard, he said the Germans told him the guards were to protect him from the Russians. Being arrested was his first confirmation that he had been placed under a Red Notice, not the less-restrictive Blue Notice issued by Interpol. But while German, Danish and English officials all went on record saying the Russian Interpol notice was politically motivated, U.S. officials were indifferent to his requests for help. In the U.S., where his parents and relatives live, Katsnelson graduated from Madison West High School (1984) and UW-Madison (1989), where he was a Brittingham Viking Scholar. His parents left Russia in 1976 and moved to Madison in 1980. Katsnelson has taken his degree in history and his experience in marketing and moved into investments, an airline supply company and, he said, philanthropy. He is active in Democratic politics among citizens abroad. Though a U.S. citizen since 1980, after the Red Notice was issued, he was able to travel just about everywhere except the United States, where he was detained every time. Luggage was searched, wallet contents copied, itinerary noted. His bank closed his account and liquidated his assets, costing him $100,000. The United States is actually helping the Russians by harassing me and possibly passing information about my movements and other information, he said in 2008. His effort to get the attention of the departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security sputtered, and elected officials did no better on his behalf. After years of little headway in getting responses, let alone action, the DOJ finally sent a letter in June 2014, after intervention from Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison). It admitted that U.S. authorities dont have the resources or the capability to review Red Notices for violations of Interpols rules against political use. (Interpol did not respond to a request for comment on Katsnelsons status. He provided copies of letters from Interpol, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.) Homeland Security told him that if a competent U.S. authority identifies such an abuse, the U.S. National Central Bureau can and has declined to enter Red Notice information into U.S. databases, the bureau director wrote. The gist of the letter was to advise Katsnelson to take his case elsewhere, an appeal to Interpol. A combination of his uninterrupted legal assault on Interpol, where its Secretariat to the Commission for the Control of Interpols Files handles appeals, along with an international media spotlight that has over the past three years brought attention to increased use of the Red Notice for blatantly political purposes, appears to have gained Katsnelsons appeal attention from Interpol. It no doubt helped that Katsnelsons case was repeatedly used as an example. Last July, Katsnelson said, the Interpol commission accepted more than 70 pages of my appeal and 72 documents, exculpating me on every single sentence of the (Russians) accusations. After several delays, he said, the secretariat on April 1 concluded that this case was of a predominantly political nature, and so the Red Notice was not allowed. All data related to Katsnelson was deleted, Interpol members were alerted that all data had been deleted and any police cooperation with this case via Interpol was not allowed. Katsnelson, however, remains wary. In a visit to the United States last week, he said he pledged to work with a human rights organization, Fair Trials International, based in London, which had helped his case. His grievances are not unusual, according to numerous articles and investigations by human rights groups and media. At the very least, the subjects of Red Notices should have an opportunity for a hearing and a chance to plead their case, Katsnelson wrote for the Center for Public Integrity. He plans to avoid flights that go through Russian air space, he said, and he is not finished with Interpol: Experience has shown that it is much easier to get into a database than to get yourself out of one. The governing body for UW-Madison faculty is moving forward with a vote of no confidence on University of Wisconsin System president Ray Cross and the Systems Board of Regents despite a warning from Chancellor Rebecca Blank that approving the resolution could prompt a backlash from state lawmakers. The resolution to be considered next week blasts the Regents for approving new tenure policies that weaken faculty layoff protections and accuses Cross and the board of damaging the reputation of the flagship campus. Written by sociology professor Chad Alan Goldberg, who has been among the most vocal faculty members in calling for strong tenure protections, the resolution declares the Faculty Senate has no confidence in Cross or the Regents to protect tenure and shared governance. Cross and the Regents have come under fire from professors and others for how they have handled the 2015-17 state budget, which cut $250 million from the UW Systems funding, weakened the facultys role in governing universities and made it easier to fire tenured professors. Speaking at a meeting of the Faculty Senates executive committee Monday, however, Blank said she strongly opposes the no-confidence resolution, and encouraged the faculty to instead adopt a milder statement. The backlash on this will be potentially very real, Blank said, particularly as were going into a budget year where the number of people who are looking for reasons to cut UW-Madison is uncomfortably high. This gives them those reasons. Blank said a no-confidence vote risks alienating UWs potential supporters in the Capitol and the business community, groups with whom she said Cross is popular, and questioned what UW-Madison would gain from the resolution. Passing a resolution that attacks your governing board is likely to get you just a lot more problems, rather than benefits, Blank said. Goldberg responded that he believes the Republican-controlled state Legislature is already hostile to faculty members and UW-Madison. If they dont use this as a pretext, theyre going to use something else as a pretext to cut the universitys funding, he said. Citing the new UW System tenure policy, which was approved by the Board of Regents in March despite professors objections, as well as changes the Regents made to layoff protections that faculty at UW-Madison had passed for their campus, Goldberg said it was time for the vote of no confidence. Weve reached a breaking point, Goldberg said. This is obviously the strongest kind of statement that we could make, and I think the time has come for that. The Faculty Senate is made up of 220 elected representatives who help advise university administrators on personnel and academic issues on behalf of 2,200 faculty. Asked about the resolution Monday, UW System spokesman Alex Hummel said Cross and the Regents consider it a faculty matter. They are focused on working with students, staff, faculty, chancellors and UW System partners to keep each institution a world-class institution, Hummel said. Vernon County recorded its first fatal traffic accident of 2016 on Saturday, April 23. According to the Vernon County Sheriffs Department at approximately 5:30 p.m., a vehicle operated by Samuel B. Ruehmann, age 25, of La Crosse, was northbound on Co. B, in the town of Jefferson, near the intersection of Sebion Road, when he lost control while negotiating a curve. The vehicle traveled off the right side of the road and rolled multiple times before coming to rest on its roof. Ruehmann had three other passenger in the vehicle at the time of the crash. Alexander T. Mickelson, age 22 of La Crosse, was in the back seat of the vehicle and was not wearing a seat belt. Mickelson was ejected from the vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene by the Vernon County Coroners Office. Two other passengers Anthony P. Greeno, age 22 of La Crosse, and Samuel Ruehmanns 6-year-old daughter were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash and were able to safely exit the vehicle. The driver, Samuel Ruehmann was also wearing his seatbelt, but was trapped inside the vehicle during the crash and required extrication by the Viroqua Fire Department. Samuel Ruehmann was air-lifted by Med-Flight to Gundersen Health System in La Crosse with serious injuries. Greeno and Ruehmanns daughter were also both transported to Gundersen Health System in La Crosse by Tri-State Ambulance. Assisting the Vernon County Sheriffs Office at the scene were members of the Viroqua Fire Department, Tri- State Ambulance Service, Med-Flight and Wisconsin State Patrol. The crash remains under investigation by the Vernon County Sheriffs Office. Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the worlds worst nuclear accident. The effects of the disaster are still felt today. On April 26, 1986, a reactor exploded at a nuclear power center in the town of Chernobyl, in what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine. The reactor caught fire, and it released huge amounts of radiation. Many emergency workers died. Soviet officials ordered 116,000 people living around the power plant to leave the area. Another 220,000 were forced to leave later as the death zone -- the nuclear contamination area -- expanded. Recently, Associated Press reporters visited the edge of the contamination zone in Belarus. They found that milk from a dairy farm there contains radioactive isotopes. The isotopes give off radiation -- and can harm people and other living things. Tests found that the milk contains radioactive isotope levels at least 10 times higher than the countrys food safety limits. The farm was about 45 kilometers north of the former Chernobyl nuclear plant. The dairy farmer said his cows produce milk for a local factory, called Milkavita. It produces Parmesan cheese that is sold mostly in Russia. Milkavita officials rejected the AP laboratory results as impossible. They said their own tests show that radioactive isotopes in their milk supply are well below safety limits. Belarus President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said Monday that cleaning up the radioactive fallout from the nuclear accident has been a major and pressing task for his country for 30 years. Possible danger is nearby Scientists are warning that it is possible a new disaster could be hiding in forests around the closed power plant. Canadian scientist Timothy Mousseau is a leading expert on the Chernobyl disaster. He told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that forest fires could send clouds of toxic radioactive material up into the skies over Europe. Mousseau said two acts of suspected arson caused large fires around Chernobyl over the past year. The fires burned a long time, but they werent particularly hazardous in terms of radioactivity. He added that a third fire last year burned through part of the red forest, which was the most contaminated part of the area. This fire was small, and contained quickly. But, he said, it is the kind that can do serious harm if it had spread much more. Mousseau explained that the radioactivity in the woods would go back up into the atmosphere. Depending on which way the wind was blowing, and whether it was raining or not, it could land somewhere else. His and other research into the Chernobyl accident suggests that the toxic cloud from a major fire could carry different kinds of radioactive materials across Europe. At the time of the accident 30 years ago, he said, a huge cloud from the fire at Chernobyl rose into the atmosphere. This allowed radioactive material, in his words, to be transported for thousands of miles. Now the risk has increased, partly because of rising temperatures on Earths surface. In addition, dead leaves from plants, fallen logs or dry grass could catch on fire. "This dead organic matter on the surface of the soil is highly radioactive," Mousseau said. When it dries out, it becomes a possible fire threat, and provides the fuel for large and dangerous forest fires. While it has been 30 years since the Chernobyl nuclear accident, it has been only five years since Japans deadly Fukushima-1 plant disaster. Other nuclear disasters The first big hit to nuclear power came at the end of March 1979. That is when a new reactor in the American state of Pennsylvania partially melted down. There was no evidence of health issues tied to the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. But it started the debate about the safety of nuclear energy that continues around the world today. People ask whether splitting atoms to create energy is a safe, effective and economical way to get electricity to our cities. There are about 400 reactors working in 31 countries. More than 60 are being built in 15 countries. The Fukushima disaster will take a century to cleanup and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Nuclear power was not used in Japan for nearly two years, but two reactors were restarted there last year. The debate over nuclear power continues in the island nation. Japan depends on imports for about 90 percent of its main energy needs. Those against nuclear power usually support the use of green power, like wind and solar power. But the supporters of nuclear power say it is safe, and more effective than wind or solar. Adding to peoples concerns over nuclear power is the fact that experts still do not agree on how many people lost, or will lose, their lives because of the Chernobyl accident. Fewer than 100 emergency workers died from the radiation. The World Health Organization warned years ago that Chernobyl would cause 4,000 additional deaths. But the environmental group Greenpeace ordered a study that shows, in the end, 93,000 people could die. The town of Chernobyl still is home to about 3,000 people. They continue to work on decommissioning, or closing down, the plant. They are only permitted to stay in the area for 14 days to reduce their risk of radiation exposure. Scientists say the nuclear exclusion zone will not be safe enough for humans to live there for another 20,000 years. Yet in one part of the area, a few hundred people who were evacuated have come back to live. Many of the residents are older adults. Ukrainian officials quietly let them stay there. The residents grow their own food, even with the warnings that food could be affected by the radioactive material. It appears some people who were sent away after the accident just wanted to be back home. Im Anne Ball. Anne Ball adapted this story for Learning English based on reports from VOAs Steve Herman, Henry Ridgwell, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Associated Press and the Reuters news service. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and visit us on Facebook. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story contamination n. made unfit for use by undesirable elements radioactive isotopes n. any one of different forms in which the atoms of a chemical element can occurthat have been exposed to radiation fallout n. the radioactive particles that are produced by a nuclear explosion and fall through the atmosphere task n. a job for someone to do toxic adj. containing poisonous substances arson -n. when a person sets a fire to cause damage This is Whats Trending Today: The relatives of Tamir Rice will receive a $6 million settlement from Cleveland, Ohio. Rice was 12 years old when he was killed by police officers in November 2014. Rice was playing with a toy gun in a park. The police thought it was real. Rice, an African-American, became one of the symbols of the Black Lives Matter social justice campaign. The movement highlighted a number of young black men and women who were killed by police officers in recent years. Michael Brown was killed by officers near St. Louis, Missouri in the summer of 2014. Freddie Gray died while in custody of the Baltimore, Maryland police in the spring of 2015. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was one of the most important trending topics of 2015. The social justice movement continues to be part of the political conversation in the U.S. as the presidential election gets closer. A grand jury decided not to charge the police officers who killed Rice with a crime. They concluded that the use of deadly force against Rice was justified. They said the officer did not know if the gun was real. The decision generated more protests in Cleveland. Rices family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the police officers shortly after Rice was killed. A judge announced the decision to award $6 million to Rices family on Monday. Lots of people had something to say about it on social media. #TamirRice was one of Twitters top hashtags on Monday. Many people reacted to one part of the settlement. It says the city does not have to accept responsibility for doing something wrong. One person wrote the settlement [with] #TamirRice is infuriating. Another, Devin Lamar, wrote I'm glad #TamirRice family is getting $6 million from the city of Cleveland, but it'd be a lot cheaper to just train police not to shoot us. Cerece Rennie Murphy wrote, no amount of money could ever make this right. While many people have sympathy for Rice and his family, others think it is time for the people behind the Black Lives Matter movement to take action. One of those critics is President Barack Obama. During his visit to London over the weekend, Obama was asked about racial profiling. He turned his attention to Black Lives Matter during his answer. Obama said [when] elected officials or people who are in a position to start bringing about change are ready to sit down with you, then you cant just keep on yelling at them. He continued, saying the value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room, and then to start trying to figure out how is this problem going to be solved. And thats Whats Trending Today. Im Dan Friedell. Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. What do you think about the Tamir Rice settlement? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. __________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story racial profiling n. the act of suspecting a person of a crime because of their skin color, religion or ethnic background justified adj. something that is right or reasonable grand jury n. a group of people who look at the evidence against someone who has been accused of a crime in order to decide if there should be a trial President Barack Obama said on Monday he would send 250 soldiers to Syria to help local forces fight against the Islamic State. The deployment will increase American forces in Syria to around 300. Most of the new 250 U.S. forces will be U.S. Army Green Berets. About 50 American forces are already in Syria since 2015. Obama told an audience at a trade fair in Hannover, Germany, the forces will not be leading the fight on the ground. The president said the forces will provide training and will assist local troops to keep up this momentum in the fight against IS. Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. This remains a difficult fight and none of us can solve this problem by ourselves, he said. Stephen Zunes is a regional expert from the University of San Francisco. He told VOA the deployment could be viewed as mission creep in both Syria and Iraq. "At the same time, given that Obama has had a pretty cautious approach in terms of U.S. military involvement in Syria, it could be an indicator that the initial troop deployment has been successful, and that it is an indication, in his mind at least, that additional U.S. forces could actually advance the cause of defeating ISIS and strengthening local forces that are fighting them. Im Jim Dresbach. Jim Dresbach adapted this story for Learning English with reporting from VOA, the Associated Press and Reuters. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story momentum n. the strength or force that allows something to continue or to grow stronger or faster as time passes Green Berets n. U.S. Army personnel trained to organize, instruct, supply, and supervise indigenous forces engaged in guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency operations, and to themselves conduct unconventional warfare logistics n. the things that must be done to plan and organize a complicated activity or event that involves many people NATO n. also known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is an organization of countries that have agreed to provide military support to each other. It includes many European countries as well as the U.S. and Canada. cautious adj. careful about avoiding danger or risk approach n. a way of dealing with something or a way of doing or thinking about something indicator n. a sign that shows the condition or existence of something ISIS n. stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and is an extremist militant group. Also known as ISIL and Islamic State Two U.S. presidential candidates will work together and try to stop Donald Trump from becoming the Republican Partys presidential nominee. On Sunday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich announced a joint plan to defeat Trump in three states. The businessman has been leading in the race for the Republican presidential nomination since February 9, when he won the New Hampshire primary. Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton has won the most delegates in the race to become the Democratic Partys candidate for president. Barack Obama has served two four-year terms as president. That is the most permitted under the U.S. Constitution. Obama will leave office in January. Some political observers thought Trump would not be successful in his campaign for the Republican nomination. But he has won primaries and caucuses in many states. He now controls the largest number of delegates to the partys nominating convention. That meeting will take place in July. However, many top Republican officials do not like Trump. His positions on immigration and foreign policy are different from those of many Republicans. Some officials worry that Trump will not support the partys positions. But with less than three months before the convention, Trump is the only candidate with a chance to win the majority of delegates needed to become the Republican nominee. Both Cruz and Kasich have each said many times that Trump will hurt the Republican Party if he is the nominee. They believe if he is nominated, the Democratic partys nominee -- who many experts believe will be Clinton -- will easily win the election in November. On Sunday, Cruz and Kasich announced their plan to stop Trump from winning enough delegates to win the nomination. Representatives from each campaign announced that Kasich will let Cruz try to win the presidential primary in the Midwestern state of Indiana. That primary will take place on May 3. Indiana has 57 delegates. The winner of the primary will get 30 of them. The rest will be given to the winner in each of the states nine congressional districts. Recent public opinion surveys showed that Trump has the support of 39 percent of likely Republican voters in Indiana. Cruz has 33 percent, and Kasich has 19 percent. If some of Kasichs supporters vote for Cruz, he could easily beat Trump and win most of the states delegates. The Cruz campaign said the agreement with Kasich is designed to ensure that the Republican nominee is someone who can unite the party. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or (Vermont Senator Bernie) Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation, Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said. During the campaign, Trump has repeatedly criticized the Republican Party as being unfair to him. He said the effort by Cruz and Kasich to work together to deny him the nomination is sad. Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters -- all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race -- it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and in our political system, Trump said. In exchange for not campaigning in Indiana, Kasich was promised that Cruz would not campaign in the Western states of Oregon and New Mexico. Twenty-eight delegates will be chosen in Oregon on May 17. Twenty-four delegates will be chosen in New Mexico on June 7. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee," the Kasich campaign said. Both the Cruz and Kasich campaigns said they will compete against one another in the other states that have yet to choose delegates. If a majority of Republican delegates do not vote for Trump as the nominee on the first election of the convention, there will be a second vote. The partys rules permit the delegates that Trump won during the primaries and caucuses to choose another candidate -- or vote for Trump again. This means Cruz or Kasich, or even someone who stopped campaigning or never campaigned, can be chosen by the delegates as the partys presidential nominee. Chris Hannas reported this story for VOANews.com. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story convention n. a large meeting of people who come to a place for (usually) several days to talk about their shared work or other interests or to make decisions as a group ensure v. to make (something) sure, certain, or safe top of the ticket expression the presidential candidate; the top candidate rig adj. to control or affect (something, such as a game or election) in a dishonest way in order to get a desired result emerge v. to become known or regarded as something Tiger Shroff, who is all set for the release of his action film Baaghi, admits that the film has pushed him to an extent of hard work which he never realised existed. I think any film I do next would be much easier for me. We wanted to show the audience something different, something new. My character demands a lot of action. So we had to work very hard towards it, Tiger told Firstpost in an interview. Since his debut film Heropanti is also an action film, many have termed Baaghi as a sequel to Heropanti. Tiger however argues, Heropanti was a love story and a family drama. This is an action film. You cant compare Baaghi with Heropanti. Its a very different film and nothing close to Heropanti." Tiger is striving hard to create a distinct identity for himself. "I don't want people to say that I am better than others. I just want to be known as different from others. I will be extremely choosy about films I do at this point of time, he said. Tiger might be an ardent fan of Hrithik Roshan, but his father actor Jackie Shroff however wants him to look up to Shah Rukh Khan. Ask Tiger if he endorses his fathers belief, and he says, Shah Rukh Khan sir is so humble and modest as a superstar. He is so disciplined when it comes to work, I think thats what my father means. I am not saying I am successful or anything but if I do become successful, he wants me to follow the mind-set Shah Rukh Khan sir has. As far career graph, skills and talent are concerned I look up to Hrithik Roshan. Tiger also spoke about working with his father, Jackie Shroff, He is a super actor with huge screen presence. Who will see me if I am in the same film as him? (laughs). No, I would need a little time to work with my father. New Delhi: After making it mandatory to carry larger pictorial warnings on cigarette packets, the government is now working on a proposal to completely ban foreign direct investment (FDI) in the tobacco sector. At present, FDI is permitted in technology collaboration in any form, including licensing for franchise, trademark, brand name and management contract in the tobacco sector. However, it is prohibited in manufacturing of cigars, cigarettes of tobacco and tobacco substitutes. According to sources, the Commerce and Industry Ministry is proposing to even ban FDI in licensing for franchise, trademark, brand name and management contract in the sector. It would eventually mean that FDI would be totally banned in tobacco segment in any form. The ban would eliminate the possibility of indirect flow of overseas funds to the tobacco sector, even through foreign technology collaboration including licensing for franchise, trademark and brand name, they said. The ministry has already circulated a draft Cabinet note to seek views of different departments including health, finance, commerce and Niti Aayog. The move also assumes significance as India is signatory to the Framework Convention on Tobbaco Control, under which it has the responsibility of reducing consumption of tobacco products. It is now mandatory for all tobacco products to carry larger pictorial warnings covering 85 per cent of the packaging space. Major cigarettes manufactures including ITC, Godfrey Philips and VST had raised serious concerns over this move. New Delhi: The minimum wage for contract workers has been increased to Rs 10,000 per month, Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said on Monday. The Minister of State for Labour and Employment informed Lok Sabha that the wage hike has been done based on a Supreme Court verdict. Asserting that the government is committed towards the betterment of the working class, he said workers are being protected through all the rights. "Recently, we have increased minimum wage to Rs 10,000 at the national level taking into consideration the Consumer Price Index and Dearness Allowance. This was based on the verdict of the Supreme Court. We have linked this increase of minimum wage to pension and bonus," he said during Question Hour. On 17 April, Dattatreya had said the government would bring out an executive order to ensure that contract workers get a minimum wage of Rs 10,000 per month. "It is the endeavour of the Central government to make reforms in labour laws and to proceed from minimum wage to universal wage. Because the Opposition is not cooperating in Parliament, we will do it through an executive order," he had said. "We have taken a decision to make changes to rule 25 of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Central Rules. Every contract worker will be entitled to get Rs 10,000 per month," Dattatreya had said. PTI New Delhi: Foreign Direct Investment into India touched the "highest ever" mark of USD 51 billion during the April-February period of last fiscal ended March 31, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said today. The Secretary the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) said that healthy business climate has been created in the county so that investments are promoted. "We have had a record inflows of FDI in this country, more than USD 51 billion from April to February (2015-16) and that is the highest ever," he said here at a Ficci function. In 2011-12, India had attracted FDI worth USD 46.55 billion. In 2014-15, it was USD 44.29 billion. This FDI includes equity, re-invested earnings and other capital. Abhishek said that ease of doing business is critical for creating a suitable business climate and the government is a making lot of efforts to improve it. "The complex procedures and delays which were the bane of our system for last so many decades are now being gradually dismantled. Enormous efforts are being made to make sure that common citizen and business both have an easy time," he said. He also said that protection of creativity and innovation is important to create a suitable climate in the country for technology to be developed and for technology to come from outside. The FDI numbers reflects that the government has been able to create a suitable climate in which the foreign investors feel confident that interest are protected. The government is committed to doing away with the obstacles and improve the whole process, he said, adding that "we need growth rate of double digits for the next three decades to improve the quality of life and eliminate poverty but that requires lot of efforts in investment side, IPR side and at other fronts". The Rs 9,000 crore Kingfisher case has got far more complicated for banks after the Narendra-Modi government, on Saturday, revoked Vijay Mallyas passport. More than a banks vs defaulter case, the whole episode now has evolved into a test of committed bilateral cooperation with respect to law enforcement between India and UKsomething Modi and his UK counterpart, David Cameron, agreed in November, 2015 during Modis three-day UK-visit. With his passport revoked, life will be no longer the same for Mallya. The issue is no longer a banker-borrower dispute, but about an offender whose passport has been revoked after fleeing to a foreign country in the backdrop of massive loan default and alleged financial irregularities. There are non-bailable arrest warrants issued against the liquor-baron. That makes Mallya officially an absconder. Mallya can still seek asylum in UK or in any other foreign country. Going by reports, Mallya appears on the electoral rolls in the UK with his country home in Britain as his recorded address. In any case, passport revocation prohibits Mallya to move out of UK. He could move to a local court to make his case to stay back in UK for the rest of his life. That, unless, Indian government and investigative agencies convinces their UK counterparts in the context of Modi-Cameron commitment about the nature of Mallyas exit and seek to deport him back to India. The External Affairs Ministry has already begun the process for deportation. But, whether UK cooperates on this will depend upon what sort of diplomatic pressure Modi-government puts on UK on the issue. Even if the government manages to get Mallya back, the question is whether there are sufficient evidences to corner Mallya in a court of law. As an earlier Firstpost story said, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) doesnt have evidences on fund diversion by Mallya, even though the Enforcement Directorate claims otherwise. Also, only two banks in the 17-member consortium has so far tagged Mallya as a wilful defaulter. The rest has remained silent. An official at IDBI Bank said the lender so far doesnt have any evidence of fund diversion by Mallya. The differences among the investigating agencies and the apparent division among banks could weaken the case against Mallya. Chances for Mallya returning to the country in the near future look unlikely. If that was the plan, Mallya would have acted when his passport was suspended. Its difficult to predict the future. But, I doubt whether Mallya will return since he will get arrested the moment he lands here, said a senior banker in the lenders consortium. The only good thing in this case is that government is helping banks to recover the money, said the banker. Through his lawyers and his tweets, Mallya has cited the atmosphere not conducive fore his return to the country on account of media trial. Also, governments haste in suspending his passport has created impediments in the whole process and endeavor,Mallya had said. An email query sent to Mallyas spokesperson seeking his comment on passport revocation remained unanswered. There have been cases in the past where Indian government has failed to bring back absconders and criminals (Iqbal Mirchi, Nadeem Saifi and Abu Salem). Legal experts, such as Majeed Memon, had pointed out earlier that for someone like Mallya, it wouldnt be difficult to seek asylum using his money power. It is too late for government to rise and wake up, Memon told to CNBC TV 18 when Mallyas passport was suspended. It is not that easy (in UK), where human right laws are strong. It is a long, time consuming and money consuming exercise that might end up in futility, Memon said. If Mallya evolves into another Lalit Modi, that will termed as a diplomatic failure for Modi-government. It will also lead to further questions on the governments inability to prevent Mallya from fleeing the country, when investigations were on his financial dealings and loan default and who tipped off him about the impending troubles. According to a Hindustan Times report Mallyas case is also expected to be handled by a high-profile team of lawyers. Besides other rules under which individuals such as Mallya are considered, Britain also has the Tier 1 Investors Visa, under which people who invest 2 million can apply for permanent residency after five years; investing 5m cuts the waiting time to three years, and 10m brings permanent residency after two years, the report said. The challenge lies before Modi-government to persuade the UK-government quickly to deport Mallya and initiate actions on bank loan recovery, before Mallya makes his next move. It wouldnt be easy since UK has been a safe home to several high profile offenders to escape from local laws. Most likely, Modi will have to use his good offices to get back Mallya. Thereafter, it is the job of Indian investigative agencies and banks to make a watertight case against Mallya. If they fail to do so, it will be egg on the face of Modi-government for acting in haste in the Mallya-case before making a watertight case. There is the crisp static of expectation in the air. Market-watchers know that India has a tremendous advantage when it comes to solar power. This is confirmed by India Ratings (or Ind-Ra, a Fitch group company) in its recent report on solar power just last fortnight. It stated that it maintains a stable outlook on the solar energy sector for FY17 (financial year 2016-17). FY15 saw the addition of 1.1 GW of solar power capacity, bringing the total installed capacity to 3.7 GW. This year should see another 1.4 GW being added bringing the cumulative installed capacity to 5.1GW. While some may view this growth with pleasure, the fact remains that the incremental growth is a very far cry from the 100 GW of additional solar power capacity that the present government wants India to have by 2022. Will the pace pick up? Yes, if some things are done right. The present policies pursued may not bring in the desired result (more on this aspect in the next part to this series of articles on solar power). It must however be underscored that Ind-Ra, like this author, is convinced that solar tariffs are headed south. It expects tariffs to be around Rs.4/ kWh (during the last round of competitive reverse bidding, tariffs have already touched Rs.4.34 /kWh). This author expects them to tumble still further. Ind-Ra expects the internal rate of return (IRR) to investors for the projects allotted in FY15 and FY16 to range between 12 per cent-14 per cent, lower than the 20 per cent registered historically. However, the developers ability to raise debt at an attractive cost (typically in foreign currency with a hedging cost of 4 per cent) will improve the IRR further to 14 per cent. This only means that as developers begin to find the right way to structure solar projects, and the profitability increases, the pace should increase dramatically. But the biggest bonanza for India could be falling capital costs. As a Bloomberg-BusinessWeek report stated just a few days ago, solar panel costs have already fallen by 40 cents a watt. First Solar Inc has now managed to sell its its panels at prices that are at least 15 per cent less than Chinas Trina Solar Ltd. According to that publication, by 2019, First Solars module-cost could be as low as 25 cents a watt. That could make solar power cheaper than even thermal electricity. It is possible that solar panels could be available at one-third if not one-fourth -- current prices in India. In fact, Indias advantage has been quite well analysed by the latest Economist in its report on solar power . This publication referring to a report by KPMG expects the share of solar power to rise to 12.5 per cent in Indias energy mix very soon, compared to just 1 per cent today. In fact, even Coal India, a state-owned company, wants to generate 1 GW of solar power to cut energy bills Ind-Ra believes that developers will favor projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) over state projects. This is because of the lower counter-party risk and limited responsibility towards constructing support infrastructure as in the case of solar parks. This, along with increasing competition in the sector, could intensify bidding quotes resulting in a tariff bid of below INR4/kWh. The reasoning sounds right, but somehow, there are questions which demand answers. While CERC has pegged capital costs at Rs.5.01 crore per MW of installed capacity, this author believes that costs should soon tumble to almost quarter this level, given the expected fall in both solar panel and battery costs. But even at Rs.2 crore per MW, the setting up of 90 GW of solar power capacity will involve investments of Rs.1.8 lakh crore. Add to this other costs like those relating to land acquisition and transmission infrastructure requirement. Where are the funds going to come from? Most analysts, including Ind-Ra, expect huge chunks of investment to come in from global investors. But there is an urgent need to rethink policy, and create the right environment for tapping private funds locked up by small individuals. The answer could lie in rooftop solar. That seems to be happening. During November 2014 to October 2015, India added 240MW of rooftop capacity, up from 154MW in the previous year. But that is just a wee fraction of what needs to be done. More of that in Part IV London: Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who owes Rs. 9,000 crores to various banks in the country, has been living at a $15 million (Rs 100 crore) mansion in England's Hertfordshire county, The Sunday Times reported. The mansion was bought from the father of Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One champion, by a company with offshore links, the daily said. An arrest warrant for Mallya, 60, nicknamed the King of Good Times, was issued by an Indian court last week after he flew to Britain. The use of companies with offshore links to buy properties in Britain has come under increasing scrutiny as the practice can allow the real owner or beneficiary to remain hidden sometimes for tax purposes. Such companies collectively hold up to $245 billion of British property, much of it in London and the home counties. Mallya is one step closer to being deported from Britain after his passport was revoked by India's external ministry on Sunday. Meanwhile, a media report said Mallya appears on the electoral rolls in Britain with his country home in Hertfordshire as his recorded address. New Delhi: Independent MP and liquor baron Vijay Mallya is all set to face expulsion from Rajya Sabha, with a Parliamentary panel examining the matter related to his alleged loan default of over Rs 9,400 crore rupees, today unanimously favouring such action. At the same time, the Ethics Committee of Rajya Sabha headed by veteran Congress leader Karan Singh, decided to give Mallya one week time to explain his conduct, which the members said is a "procedural formality". In a step closer to initiating his deportation, the government had yesterday revoked the passport of Mallya, who is believed to be in the UK after leaving India on March 2. "We have examined the entire issue related to Mallya's case. The documents that we had sought from banks have also come. There was a unanimous view in the panel that he should be expelled from the House membership. "But still we have decided to give him a week time to tell us whatever he has to say. The next meeting of the committee has been fixed on May 3, when we will take a final decision," Singh told reporters after the meeting. Asked whether the committee is unanimous in the view that Mallya should be expelled, Singh said, "the committee is unanimous but we have to follow the procedures." JDU President Sharad Yadav, who is also a panel member said,"Mallya should be expelled from the Rajya Sabha and he will be expelled. His membership is almost gone now. This is the firm view of the committee. It is final that his membership will go. He has been given the time to complete the procedure". CPI-M General Sitaram Yechury said that the opinion in the committee was that Mallya has no right to remain a member of Rajya Sabha. The committee had sought details of the liabilities on Mallya's airline Kingfisher from 13 banks, which furnished their replies according to which the total liability on Mallya's company is Rs 9431.65 crore. Of this IDBI's liability alone is Rs 1687.04 crores followed by the Rs 1223 crore by Punjab National Bank. The committee decided to crack the whip on the ground that Mallya never declared these liabilities in the last ten years, which a member is supposed to do annually. Enforcement Directorate had last week written to 17 banks and a clutch of probe agencies with an aim to prepare a water tight case against Mallya who is being probed for money laundering charges in the IDBI bank alleged loan fraud case. Acting on the notices given by Opposition members, the Chairman of the Upper House Hamid Ansari had referred the matter to the panel last month. The panel had taken cognizance of the matter on March 14. The 10-member committee headed by Singh comprises Satish Chandra Misra (BSP), Avinash Rai Khanna (BJP), Sharad Yadav (JDU), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), Mukul Roy (Trinamool Congress), Neeraj Shekhar (Samajwadi Party), A Navaneethakrishnan (AIADMK) and Devender Goud T (TDP). New Delhi: The consortium of banks on Monday alleged in the Supreme Court that Vijay Mallya, who has been in United Kingdom, is not cooperating in the investigation of cases lodged against him and was averse to disclosing foreign assets. Further, in the rejoinder to the affidavit filed by the beleaguered businessman, the consortium said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family is significant for recovering the dues. When contacted, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said, "we have filed a rejoinder to Mallya's affidavit in which it has been stated that he is also not indicating the date of his return to the country." He said the liquor baron has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". The AG said the "non-disclosure" by Mallya does not enable the banks to ascertain his ability to repay. "We have nothing to do with Mallya's claim that he cannot appear personally because of government's action against him," the banks in its affidavit said, adding that instead of providing the material to it Mallya and his companies are preferring to submit them in sealed cover top the apex court. The matter is listed for hearing on Tuesday. The rejoinder was filed in response to Mallya's affidavit which had said that banks have no right over the information of his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. Mallya had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. "Overseas assets were not considered while granting loans," he said in his statement. Mallya, however, had said to demonstrate his bonafide and also that of his companies, an aggregate of Rs 1591 crores can be deposited before the apex court. The court on 7 April had directed Mallya to disclose by 21 April the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he will appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. DAAMGADE, Nepal (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal a year ago, 25-year-old Yama Tamang lost his farm, where he used to grow maize. To support his wife and their three children, he now makes bamboo baskets in the Daamgade temporary camp in Dhading district, 90 km (56 miles) from the capital, Kathmandu. The baskets are used on construction sites for carrying materials like stones and cement. Daamgade, one of seven camps set up in Dhading, shelters 131 families, most of whom also make baskets for a living. Helping families recover after last year's devastating earthquakes has proved harder than expected, for reasons ranging from funding delays to a fuel blockade. As they struggle to rebuild their homes, many find themselves trapped in camps or forced to migrate to cities or out of the country to find ways to support their families. CLIMATE SHOCKS Manamati Tamang, who shares a common local surname, lives with her three children at the camp. Their tents were blown away by a wind storm in the last week of March. Her husband went to find construction work in Qatar after the earthquake and sends Manamati a little over 10,000 rupees ($93) a month. "Feeding the family, paying for the children's education and other daily expenses has been a struggle," said Manamati. "If we lived in a house, we at least wouldn't have to worry as much about protecting ourselves from the climate." Manamati's house in nearby Ree village, where she used to live, was destroyed during the earthquake, forcing her family to leave the land where they grew crops including maize, millet and paddy. More than 600 earthquake victims living at Daamgade face constantly changing weather conditions, including at times heavy rain and hail. The hilly land where the camp is situated is frequently flooded, which residents fear may cause landslides. DELAYED RECONSTRUCTION The Nepalese government's promise in May 2015 to distribute 200,000 rupees ($1,880) to each family affected by the earthquake filled people with hope, said Daaud Tamang, manager of the Daamgade camp. But most of that money has yet to materialise. "The recent changes of government and of management of the country's National Reconstruction Authority are partly to blame for the delay in compensation," said Bishwa Prakash Subedi, chief district officer for Dhading. An unofficial blockade on Nepal's southern border, supported by the Indian government and sparked by ethnic protests at Nepal's first post-monarchy constitution adopted in September, also hurt the availability of fuel, medicine and other vital supplies for months, hampering reconstruction, Subedi added. According to Govinda Pokharel, former head of the National Reconstruction Authority, the government should appoint more staff to speed up the rebuilding process. "There is a reconstruction plan - it just needs to be executed," he said. UNCERTAIN HOUSING Pressure for residents to vacate Daamgade is mounting, as the land where it is located is privately owned. Families were initially only expected to stay in the camp for a few months, until rehabilitation got underway. But with the process showing no signs of being completed soon, the land's owners are pushing camp residents to find alternative shelter. Many are taking their families to neighbouring cities, in the hope of finding a job as a builder or a porter. Some are staying with relatives, while others return to their villages to build new homes though without the right building guidelines, these are unlikely to be earthquake-resistant, Subedi said. About 80 to 90 families out of 131 living in Daamgade have purchased nearby strips of land measuring 1,000 square feet, big enough for a small house, for 150,000 rupees as part of a government scheme. But not all families can afford that. International agencies are attempting to fill the breach. Since October 2015, the International Organization for Migration has put workers in touch with local groups providing month-long jobs for earthquake survivors. The jobs include house demolition work, which pays 500-700 rupees a day. But these jobs provide no long-term security, Yama said, adding that living in a temporary shelter for a prolonged period prevents people from finding a permanent source of income and makes it difficult to prepare for the future. "The rainy season is coming in June, so we have to plan beyond the next few weeks," he said. "We simply don't know what we may face tomorrow, and we dont want to die." (Reporting by Arun Karki, editing by Zoe Tabary and Laurie Goering. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. HANOVER, Germany President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since its civil war began, but the move was unlikely to mollify Arab allies angry over Washington's cautious approach to the conflict. The deployment of up to 250 Special Forces soldiers increases U.S. forces in Syria roughly six-fold and is aimed at helping militia fighters who have clawed back territory from Islamic State in a string of victories. Defense experts said giving more fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support could shift the momentum in Syria. But a senior member of the Saudi royal family who asked not to be identified dismissed the decision as "window dressing." In announcing the deployment, Obama emphasized the importance of sustaining the gains made in the fight against Islamic State, although he cautioned that the U.S. forces would not be spearheading the battle. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back," he said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. Obama was speaking on the last stop of a foreign tour that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but its effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years. A Russian air campaign launched in Syria last year has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the United States. Rising tensions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies, which have privately criticized the Obama administration's security policy towards the region, also have complicated the U.S. effort in Syria. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign praised the deployment. "These Special Forces will continue to provide critical support to local forces on the ground who ultimately must be the ones to win this fight," it said in a statement. In a speech in November, the Democratic front-runner and former secretary of state had called for a tougher approach to fighting Islamic State, arguing for more air strikes and Special Forces. Senator John McCain said the move was overdue but ultimately insufficient. "Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria to which this administration has borne passive witness," said McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump did not mention the deployment during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. He plans to address foreign policy in a speech on Wednesday in Washington. CLOSE AIR SUPPORT Washington's main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, which wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. However, the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG. "Presumably these (extra U.S. forces) are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria, said Tim Ripley, defence analyst and writer for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly magazine. The deployment will include medical and logistics support personnel, officials said, and U.S. support for the American forces in Syria will be staged out of northern Iraq. Their goal will be to help screen and equip Arab fighters seeking to join up with the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. officials say Arab fighters will be crucial to future operations against Islamic State in traditionally Arab parts of Syria. But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obama's announcement but said it still wanted more help. "Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support," SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. "So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware." The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State "scourge", but said Washington should do more to fight Assad. If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river. That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey, which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas. THE RACE FOR RAQQA U.S. Special Forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience in Hanover, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls Mosul in Iraq in addition to Raqqa and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. "Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more," Obama said. European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission. Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where at least 250,000 people have been killed in the civil war. In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS But Washington's lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favour of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West, including the United States. Washington and Moscow have sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad's government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire. Obama, Merkel and the leaders of Italy, Britain and France on Monday called on the parties in the Syrian war to respect the agreement to cease hostilities and make peace talks work, the White House said in a statement after the Western leaders met. Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria's largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes. The Syrian government's negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi'ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government's enemies were terrorists. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason, Kevin Drawbaugh, John Walcott, Phil Stewart, Emily Stephenson and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; Writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership, Giles Elgood and Paul Simao) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Srinagar: The Army will hold recruitment rallies at Anantnag and Bandipora districts of Kashmir in July this year, a defence spokesman said on Monday. "Army Recruitment Office, Srinagar will be hosting recruitment rallies at Bandipora from July 12 to July 15. Bandipora region covers the districts of Bandipora, Kupwara, Ganderbal, Baramulla and Srinagar," he said. "A similar rally from July 19 to July 22 will be held at Anantnag covering the districts of Budgam, Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag and Kulgam," the spokesman said. He said the recruitment will be for all categories, including soldier general duty (GD), soldier tradesmen, soldier clerk/store keeper technical (Clerk/SKT) and soldier technical. The eligible candidates have been asked to register and apply online at www.joinindianarmy.nic.in, he said, adding registration will be open from 1 May to 26 June. The army recruitment rallies have drawn huge response from the youth over the past few years with thousands of them taking part in the hope of joining the armed forces. Lakhisarai: Six persons, including four children, died and over 700 houses gutted in two separate incidents of fire in Bihar's Lakhisarai and Darbhanga districts on Sunday, police said. Four children were charred to death as fire broke out at Pokhrawan village under Kajra police station of Lakhisarai district, Kajra police SHO Ranjit Kumar said. The deceased have been identified as sons of Gulshan Kumar - Prince Kumar (8) and Sujit Kumar (6), and daughters of Ranjit Thakur - Saraswati Kuamri (4) and Sudha Kumari (6). The fire was caused by an electrical spark at Gulshan Kumar's home during cooking which also spread to neighbouring Ranjit Thakur's home, the SHO said. The other family members of the deceased had gone for harvesting of wheat crop when the incident happened, he said. The flames were so severe that all the four children including goods were reduced to ashes and that's why the bodies could not be recovered, he added. In another incident in Darbhanga, over 700 houses were gutted in Hanumannagar block causing deaths of two elderly persons due to shock and resultant cerebral strokes while seven others sustained burn injuries, an official said. The fire leaped through Khaparpura, Kolhanda, Patori and Ramtol villages under the block razing over 700 houses, mostly thatched structures, District Magistrate Chandrashekhar Singh said. The two elderly deceased were identified as Suresh Chaudhary and Parvati Devi. About half a dozen cattle were also charred to death, Singh said, adding he along with relief and rescue teams were camping at the affected villages contiguous to each other. When the Chief Justice of India T S Thakur let tears roll down his cheeks while Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched him address the conference of Chief Justices and Chief Ministers in New Delhi on Sunday, he reflected the pent up feeling among judiciary of the rising stress of cases. As the CJI pointed out, there are just 18,000 judges to deal with around three crore cases pending in Indian courts. "It is not only in the name of a litigant or people languishing in jails but also in the name of development of the country, its progress, that I beseech you to rise to the occasion and realise that it is not enough to criticise. You cannot shift the entire burden on the judiciary, CJI Thakur said, wiping his moist eyes. Quite an emotional moment it was. It was also an unprecedented scene that brought into focus the increasing backlog of cases, paucity of funds for providing even basic infrastructure to set up courts so that justice could be administered. Modi's prompt but conditional offer to redress the grievances being faced by judiciary at every level of system was surprising. Modi, an advocate of transparency and accountability, felt a closed-door meeting with the judiciary would sort out the problem. Modis reply indicated that all would be well after "closed-door" deliberations which could throw up an amicable solution to the judicial crisis that has persisted for decades. There has been a series of conferences and seminars besides deliberations by high-level committees for resolving the crisis. Many meetings have focussed on the paucity of resources which could only be procured from the political executive. But the situation has worsened with whopping arrears of cases, acute shortage of judges and vacancies at different levels. India's current strength of the judiciary is just half of the requirement to deal with pending cases and the ever-rising flow of new litigations civil, criminal and taxation. Former judge B D Ahmed feels that the current criminal justice system is on the verge of collapse. He says jails are overflowing with under-trial prisoners because of delays. "The acquittal rate in India is about 60 per cent. This means as many accused persons have to virtually languish in jails despite being innocent." It is believed that over 40 lakh cases are pending in 24 High Courts, about 2.63 crore in subordinate courts and about 60,000 in the Supreme Court. No wonder than that in 2010, Justice VV Rao of the Andhra Pradesh High Court had said it would take 320 years to clear the backlog 31.28 million cases pending in various courts. Theres been a palpable wedge between judiciary and political executive for many years, particularly after the Supreme Court stripped the executive off its power to select, appoint and transfer judges by creating the mechanism of judges select judges or the collegiums at the Supreme Court and High Courts. While the collegium system did away with know the law minister than law to adorn a bench' practice, it also created the phenomena of uncle judges, as a parliamentary committee pointed out. It may be pointed out that theres been tremendous heartburn in political executive, in particular, over the collegium system and judiciary alone has been held responsible for its plight and fate of litigants. The differences between the two prominent organs of the State was evident during the lengthy debate on Parliament on the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act and its scrapping by a constitution bench of the SC amidst serious allegations by countrys top law officer, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi. "The collegium did not follow the principle of meritocracy in appointing judges and, hence, many undeserving persons got appointed as judges," Rohatgi had sought to discredit the collegiums system and the need for NJAC. His categorical statement had drawn the line between the rival claims on the necessity for an independent commission under the governments control to select and appoint judges. When the NJAC law was declared unconstitutional by the apex court, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, an eminent lawyer himself, had termed the judgment as tyranny of the unelected. No wonder then the Union government is sitting over at least 170 recommendations sent by the apex court collegium two months ago for appointment of High Court judges despite knowing that many High Courts are working below 50 percent of their strength. "If you have 170 names sent to you (for appointment of HC judges) for two months, I don't understand why they are held up, where are those proposals stuck, we should know," CJI Thakur told Modi on Sunday as he took strong umbrage at the governments stance blaming the judiciary of all the ills in quick disposal of cases. "Why should the Intelligence Bureau take months to send its report (on judges' appointment)? Why can't the Prime Minister's Office ask the IB to send its report within 15 days? Why should the IB sit over these reports?" the CJI had sought many explanations from the government. Seeing the lackadaisical approach of the government, Thakur has now decided to appoint retired judges as ad-hoc judges so that pendency of cases could be lessened. But, his move unmasks the real intent of the executive. This was not the first time that a CJI had spoken about the governments inaction in improving the condition of ailing dispensation system. It has been stated that the government spends less than 0.5% of its budget on the judiciary. According to a 2012 National Court Management Systems report, although the number of judges increased six-fold in the last three decades, the number of cases shot up 12-fold. It says the number of cases reaching courts will touch 15 crore requiring at least 75,000 judges in the next three decades. A Chief Justice of India soon after his retirement had said that justice system suffers from chronic ailments like frequent adjournments, stay and bail; lengthy judgments, insufficient knowledge of law by new incumbents and , most important, lack of political will to improve the system. Unfortunately, expenditure on health care and incapacitated justice system doesnt attract votes, which is the key incentive for attracting the attention of the political executive. There is public discomfiture about the recent disclosures of how the Ishrat Jahan investigations were tampered with. It's the same with similar reports about the Malegaon bomb blasts. And at each stage, the name of P Chidambaram at various times the Union Finance Minister and Home Minister of India keeps cropping up. Chidambaram has been insisting that he is innocent, and whatever he did was strictly according to law. But the more one examines his past record it becomes apparent that he has a penchant for cutting corners around Indian laws. The long shadow of Enron Take a couple of instances. Remember, he used to advise Enron though it must be stated that he was not a minister then, and was within his rights to act as a lawyer for anyone. But Enron is a special case. It has emerged as one of the biggest fraudsters in the world. It broke the laws in the US and in several other countries. In India, it also managed to get a sovereign guarantee for the monies it had invested in a gas-based project at Dabhol. It entered into a very unusual relationship that allowed it to charge gas prices based on the prices discovered by its fuel management company based on gas prices in the middle-east. This was despite public awareness that gas pricing is fragile as it is not widely traded, and hence its prices could be rigged at any time. This was confirmed when Senate hearings began in the US. And had it not been for Enrons own collapse as its misdeeds came to light in the US, India might have had to pay a very heavy price for the Dabhol project being scrapped. India was in one of the most painful situations. Had it gone ahead with the Dabhol project, it would have slipped into a big financial mess. If it had cancelled the project, there were stiff liquidated damages that it would have to pay. Enrons collapse helped India escape many of the what-would-have-been-crippling financial liabilities. This author isnt suggesting that Chidambaram showed them the way to put India into this awful fix. But if a man is judged by the company he keeps, Chidambaram does cut a very sorry figure. The Goldquest matter Take another case. Chidambaram's wife Nalini was a legal advisor to Goldquest International Ltd, which was accused of floating a pyramid scheme to sell coins in India. It described itself as a retailer of gold products, and found its customers by word of mouth. It was founded in 1998 by two entities: An investment group from the EU and Asean countries, and an Asian team of business leaders (known as the V team). But the names were never clear as it was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, with its headquarters on the 64th and 68th floors of Central Plaza in Hong Kong. Its chairman was a man known as Kakitalo (a banker). The company had offices in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, UAE (it opened its office at Al Khaleeja Towers in Dubai in October 2000), and launched operations in Mumbai in 2001. Its business model was to promote sales through referring customers, who were rewarded with commissions. And even though the Government of India was set against pyramid schemes, Chidambaram offered to represent them before the RBI. Curiously, Jaswant Singh, who was the finance minister at that time, did not express any of his own views about Goldquest. Goldquest operated in India through Qnet, which was founded by Vijay Easwaran and Joseph Bismark in Hong Kong in 1998. The company, first known as GoldQuest and QuestNet, made custom-commissioned coins and later began selling luxury jewellery and watches. In 2000, Qnet was the official distributor of the Sydney Olympic Games commemorative coins and was also a distributor at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, and the 2008 Beijing Olympic games. However, when multi-level-marketing companies came under a cloud (remember SpeakAsia?), there were reports that suggested that the company came under the investigative eye of the Government of India. The company's operations as QuestNet and GoldQuest were shut down in India by police in 2009. But by November 2012, there were indications that the group would resume its operations in India. It must be clarified that the author has no knowledge if Chidambaram is still advising this company for its operations in this country. Take yet another instance. In November 2013, the markets were agog with the proliferation of Rs five coins depicting the image of Vaishno Devi. This was surprising, because India has never promoted gods or goddesses on its coins and currency. True, the use of gods on Indian coins was not unusual. Even the East India Company introduced a coin depicting Lord Ram and his family in 1616. So did many other kings, especially those from the Kushan dynasty. But India is a secular republic and the government has no legal (or even moral) justification for promoting gods. Some people might say that this is the responsibility of the RBI and not the finance ministry. But the RBI is on record stating that it is in no way involved with coins. It looks after currency notes, not coins. So, clearly, the finance ministry was aware that coins promoting gods were issued. Yet Chidambaram has maintained a silence on this issue as well. Was he playing the religious card once again? For, of and by the lawyers? But the gravest disregard for propriety took place when Chidambaram tried to exempt lawyers from payment of service tax. In 2006, he assured the Rajya Sabha that he would make service tax applicable to lawyers and doctors alike in the due course of time. But through a notification on June 2012, Chidambaram exempted various legal services from the purview of service tax. What was even more galling was this was being done while his wife continued to be a lawyer. He too had been a practising lawyer earlier, and everyone knew that he would return to this profession sooner or later. Yet, disregardful of the conflict of interest, ignoring the need to deal an even hand to all sectors, Chidambaram tried to keep lawyers away from the ambit of service tax. It was only after Chidambaram demitted office, that this rule was finally reversed. It is at such times that one realises that Chidambaram can claim to speak the truth. But his past actions suggest that many of them could be half-truths. He may criticise the tilt that some political parties may take towards religious beliefs. But he himself has not shied away from using religion as a means of promoting some agenda (which to this day is not very clear to this author). The 12-year old child looks angelic as he stands at the back of the classroom in his bright uniform. The room seems cramped, with the rows of neatly turned out students. Gradually gathering confidence, the child relates a litany of complaints. His theme is discrimination. The army kills Kashmiris, he says. Kashmir students are beaten and badly treated in states across India while outsiders are safe in Kashmir. Water cannons are used in other states, live bullets in Kashmir. They fire shells at schools, he adds, his eyes dilating a bit. A teargas shell was apparently fired outside a nearby school during an exam a few days ago, when common people gathered to protest and throw stones during an armed encounter between militants and forces. The students view it as an unjustifiable tactic; it rankles terribly. So do memories of teargas and the blast from 'sound bombs' that they have experienced. These do not repress. They incite. Beef is accepted in 'our religion', says another student, but Kashmiris have been oppressed over beef. Dadri is in their minds... and Udhampur. This room full of students ranging from 12 to 18 years of age has been summoned from the playing field by their principal to talk to me. But they are not upset at being kept away from sport. They are eager to share their angst. Even when school gives over, it is only when staff come to say that a particular bus is about to leave, that students who have to take that bus leave the room. The rest say their homes are walking distances away; they want to continue this discussion. They will sit till evening if I will, even talk through the night, they say. Their litany of complaints is one that has become common across Kashmir. It is the discourse that now undergirds the new militancy. The passion with which it is voiced is a little more intense in this school. For, this school is in a hamlet at the pulsing heart of the rebellion that has overtaken Pulwama district in the south district. The militant commander Abu Qasim, who was killed in an encounter last winter, spent three years living here. A number of militants have emerged from this belt northeast of Pulwama town. More are ready. Those in this classroom including the girls sitting in the right half of the room announce that they would all turn 'mujahid' if arms were available. That is echoed by students with whom I interact in different parts of south Kashmir during a four-day visit that takes me through Awantipora, Bijbehara, Aishmuqam, Anantnag, Kulgam, Shopian and Pulwama. One hears the same complaints everywhere. Comparisons are drawn with state action against the Jat agitation in Haryana and the Patel agitation in Gujarat: Water cannons there, bullets here. Further, students complain that their 'mothers and sisters' cant go into the fields for fear of humiliation. Among students, this discourse is new. Talk of Islamic identity, jihad, Islamic rule, and discrimination against Muslims too is common. In one room full of students, the only response to 'Who is your hero?' is the prophet. 'Who in the contemporary world?' is greeted with silence. Not (Syed Ali Shah) Geelani sahib, I ask, or the Mirwaiz (Umar Farooq)? None of them, the students respond. Not only is there great disappointment with the PDP-BJP coalition, many young people disparage democracy as a system. The Islamic State has no organisational presence here, but minds and hearts are full of notions that would suit it. Many more students talk of Pakistan than did five years ago when I toured the Valleys educational institutions extensively. Islam is their connection, they say. Some also talk of Islamic rule unbounded by nation states. There are variations in opinions, to be sure. But some of the alternative voices tend to take a little time to emerge during conversations anti-India voices being more ready at hand, and louder. Towards the end of my discussion with students at the Pulwama Degree College, a student speaks of corruption and doublespeak in his society. Another said, "The fault is not only with India or the army; we too are at fault." Some residents of Pulwama and of Shopian speculate on whether the high levels of anti-State sentiment in the belt where Abu Qasim lived could also be related to the areas relative economic backwardness and the poor quality of local soil. An extraordinarily high proportion of students in that school classroom say their family earnings are from agriculture. Five years ago, youths from such backgrounds with family incomes less than Rs 5,000 a month tended to prefer peace and opportunities for prosperity. They were against agitations and instability. That this has changed indicates that hope has been extinguished. Exclusivist and political ideas about religion have increased alongside. Generally speaking, the youngest seem to be the most radical in religious and political terms. One of the most vocal of the teenaged students in that school classroom speaks of corruption in society, but seems to equate corruption with participation in the establishment. He speaks of all those who work for the government as 'mukhbir' (informers). An erudite phiran-clad friend in Shopian rues the extraordinary radicalisation among the young. Over steaming salt tea, my grey-haired friend dates the Islamic civilisations intellectual decline from Ghazalis criticism of philosophy (Imam Ghazali died in 1111 CE). He speaks glowingly of Indias spiritual traditions, Mahatma Gandhi, and Kashmirs Communist traditions. Although anger and a greatly increased sense of religion-based exclusivity are the dominant sentiments, they are not comprehensive. One student comes up after my lecture at a college in south Kashmir to say with a smile that he could not say it in the conference hall but, "I am an Indian". He is certainly not the only one in south Kashmir who feels committed to India, but those who talk of Pakistan do so openly, vigorously. The numbers of those who do has jumped over the past five years. Over the past couple of decades, 'separatism' generally meant independence from both India and Pakistan. "No wonder," observes freelance journalist Sheikh Hilal Ahmad of Shopian, "RSS activists talk of sending everyone they dont like to Pakistan so often that they have made Kashmiris think Pakistan is the place anyone uneasy with 'Hindutva' must go." Behind the jest is a valid point. The rhetoric and violence of RSS activists has indeed alienated Kashmiris. On the other hand, the kid-gloves the government used for Kashmiris who shouted slogans at JNU has not helped. That Pakistan is back in focus is no cause for liberal Pakistanis to celebrate, however. Generally, those Kashmiri youth who talk of Pakistan are extraordinarily radicalised and conservative. New Delhi: The JNU on Monday slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated three others for varying durations over their alleged role in the controversial 9 February event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had sparked outrage and triggered protests. Based on the findings of a high-level enquiry committee (HLEC), Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and another leader Anirban Bhattacharya till 15 July. Umar has also been slapped a fine of Rs 20,000. Anirban has also been barred from JNU campus for a period of five years from 23 July. Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gattoo, has been rusticated for two semesters. A penalty of Rs 10,000 has been imposed on JNU students union (JNUSU) joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the union. JNU students union president Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with the controversial event and are out on bail. Their arrests had triggered widespread protests at JNU and many other universities, following which the Opposition had accused the government of attempting to stifle dissent. While Umar and Anirban were blamed for "triggering communal violence" and "disrupting" communal harmony on the campus, Mujeeb was found guilty of participating sloganeering. Kanhaiya was pronounced guilty of indiscipline and misconduct. Those who have been imposed fine of Rs 20,000 each include former JNUSU President Ashutosh Kumar, former general secretary Chintu Kumari, current General Secretary Rama Naga, Aishwarya Adhikari, former Vice President Anant Prakash Narayan and Gargi for "violating" dissciplinary norms. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students -- Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi -- while hostel facilities of Ashutosh Kumar have been withdrawn for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21. In his reaction, Kanhaiya said the punitive action announced by the authorities was "simply unacceptable" and that the students rejected it. The students will hold an "all party" meeting later tonight to finalise future course of action. "We completely reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. These are all innocent students, coming from extremely humble and underprivileged backgrounds," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said. The JNU had constituted a five-member high-level enquiry committee to investigate the controversial event at the campus on February 9 and the panel had found some students guilty of violating disciplinary norms and disrupting communal harmony. on the campus. An official of the JNU said financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students including Kanhaiya. Anirban's punishment is the harshest as he has been debarred from the university for five years. When asked about punishment to Anirban, the official said, "During the period of rustication, the student ceases to exist on rolls of the university but has an option of joining back and re-enrolling in the same course after period of rustication is over. "However, following debarment from the university for a period the student cannot enroll in any course or join any academic activities on campus," the official said. He said while Umar and Gattoo will have the option of resuming their courses once the period of rustication is over, Anirban has been given a window of a week (July 16-23) to complete his thesis. "If he is unable to do so, he will not be able to seek an extension or re-enroll as he has been debarred from university for five years on completion of that week. If his PhD is not completed during this period he will not be able to do it from JNU for five years however he can enroll at some other university," he said. The official said disciplinary measures have been taken for not following university procedures, misinforming the university, misconduct and indiscipline, causing and colluding in the unauthorised entry of persons into the campus, putting up objectionable posters, arousing communal, caste or regional feelings and creating disharmony, blockade or forceful prevention of any normal movement of traffic and violation of security, safety rules notified by the university. The committee imposed the fine on Sharma, who had objected to the event, for blocking traffic on the day it happened. Surprisingly, Aishwarya whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been imposed the financial penalty. "A farce is what this enquiry has been made from day 1 to witch-hunt students and punish them by hook and crook. I want to tell the VC that his friend Appa Rao did the same in Hyderabad university but our friends fought back. We will also do the same," said Umar. A senior university official said, "Based on the report of the high-level committee which arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record, the university has decided to rusticate three students. The report of the five-member panel has underlined lapses on part of administration and taken into account the role of outsiders in the event. However, no action has been taken against any administrative official. "As per the committee findings, application for holding this event circumvented the permission process and the organisers disobeyed the instructions from the administration not to hold it and that amounted to wilful defiance," the JNU official said. Following the preliminary report of the committee, the university had suspended eight students. However, their suspension was revoked when the panel submitted it report on March 11. Slamming the authorities for the action against the students, Shora said,"They are all dedicated activists and this is a conspiracy to crush anti-Modi voices. "Not only will we not remain silent against this anti-people government, we will also challenge this sham of a report. The punishments are all based on one-sided statements from ABVP members, and our repeated calls to conduct a fair enquiry were ignored." Accusing the Vice Chancellor of "taking directions" from the Centre and acting as an "RSS loyalist", she said the students will launch a countrywide campaign to "expose" the government's "anti-student and anti-Dalit" character. "Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," she said. ABVP's Sharma said punishments announced by JNU is a "compromise and not penalty". "Penalising me for blocking traffic for stopping the event is injustice," he said. Mumbai: Ten years after a series of bombs exploded in Malegaon killing 37 people, a special court on Monday dropped charges against eight Muslim youths due to lack of evidence against them. The accused, including two doctors, were discharged by V V Patil, Designated Judge trying cases under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). The serial bomb blasts outside a cemetry near Hamidia Mosque at Malegaon, near Nashik, on 8 September, 2006, also left over 100 persons injured. Bombs were planted on bicycles parked near the cemetry and they went off after Friday prayers at the Mosque on the occasion of Shab-e-Baraat. Hailing the verdict, Farok Makhdoom, a doctor and an accused who argued personally in the court, said, "I was never scared of conviction because I am innocent. There was lot of evidence to prove that I was not involved in the case." Nine accused, suspected to have links with Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), were initially arrested in the case and chargesheeted by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS). One of them died while the case was pending. Four others, including a Pakistan national, are absconding. Later, CBI, which took over investigations, also confirmed the charges against them. Subsequently, in 2011, NIA was asked to probe the case and the agency arrested another set of people belonging to the majority community, who continue to be accused in the case. However, the case took a turn when Swami Assemanand, an accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjis bombing case, allegedly revealed to the probe agency about the role of a Hindu right wing outfit in the 2006 Malagaon blasts case. Thereafter, NIA told the court that it had no evidence against the nine accused in the case. Another serial blasts had rocked Malegaon in 2008 in which ATS led by late Hemant Karkare allegedly found the involvement of a Hindu right wing outfit. Hearing the 2006 case, the judge said that he was accepting the discharge application filed by the 8 accused as there was no evidence to prove their guilt. All the eight accused discharged from the case were on bail and had come to the court on Monday to hear the verdict on their plea. As soon as the judge pronounced the order, tears trickled down their cheeks and faces brightened up with smile and hugged their kith and kin who were accompanying them. The NIA informed the court that evidence collected by it after further investigation in the case was not in consonance with the evidence collected earlier by ATS and CBI. "No evidence was found in support of conclusion drawn in the final report filed by ATS and supplementary final report submitted by CBI recommending prosecution of the nine accused," NIA said and urged the court to pass appropriate orders in view of its submission. Of the nine accused hailing from the powerloom town of Malegaon, eight, including two doctors, applied for discharge from the case saying the court had powers to free them from the charges framed against them even before the trial. One accused had passed away while the case was pending. The charges against him would be abated. They were charged under various sections of IPC such as 120(b)(Conspiracy), 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) and under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA sections 3 (unlawful Association) and 7 (power to use funds of an unlawful organisation). Besides, they also faced charges under the provisions of Maharasthra Control of Organised Crime Act. Four others Riaz Ahmed Rafi Ahmed, Istiyak Ahmed Mohammed Issak, Munwar Ahmed Mohammed Amin and Muzammil (from Pakistan) are absconding. They would be tried as and when they are caught, said the public prosecutor. The eight accused, who have been set free, would not face the trial in the case, which is yet to begin. They are Narul Hooda Samsuda, Raes Ahmed Rajab Ali Mansoori, Dr Salman Farsi Abdul, Dr Farok Iqbal Ahmed Mukdoomi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Anamat Ali Shaikh, Asif Khan Bashir Khan, Mohammed Jahid Abdul Majid Ansari and Abrar Ahmed Ghulam Ahmed. The NIA has arrested another set of accused in this case. They are Manohar Nariwala alias Sumer Thakur, Rajendra Chowdhary alias Dashrath, Dhan Singh and Lokesh Sharma. The agency has filed chargesheet against them and all of them are currently in jail pending trial. The Supreme Court, which is currently hearing a plea to allow women to enter the Sabarimala temple, lambasted the Travancore Devaswom Board for being unfair and for their stand on banning entry of women of menstruating age inside the temple. Slamming the temple board for being unfair, the Supreme Court asked: "Is menstruation a tool to measure the purity of women? How will you measure the purity of men?" Raising pertinent questions about the controversial issue, the Supreme Court on Monday championed the rights of women to pray without being restricted by the various practices of tradition. On Sunday, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had made it clear that his government would not interfere in the customs and traditions of the hill shrine. "Government doesnt interfere beyond a point on matters with regard to (religious) customs and faith," Chandy said when asked about the stand of his government on the issue. The Supreme Court on Monday, very pointedly told the Sabarimala temple administration, "You are making a classification. Can a biological phenomenon be a reason for discrimination? All practices are acceptable till there is no distinction between genders." SC to Sabrimala:Are you associating menstruation with purity of a woman?Can biological phenomenon be condition precedent for discrimination? ANI (@ANI_news) April 25, 2016 SC to Sabrimala temple board: Whatever tests of austere practice you apply for men, apply for women too..? ANI (@ANI_news) April 25, 2016 The Temple administration, according to ANI news, argued that the hill where women are not allowed is sanctified and this tradition dates back to hundreds of years. "When recruitment for the armed forces take place, citizens between 18-24 years of age are considered. It may seem as classification amongst men, but reason is endurance," the temple administration told the Supreme Court. Supreme Court raised the following questions for the Sabarimala temple administration: "If men can go till a point (near the temple) without undertaking austere activities, why can't women go If tests of austerity apply to men, why can't women undertake them? Are you associating menstruation with impurity? You are making a classification. Can a biological phenomenon be a reason for discrimination? All practices are acceptable till there is no distinction between genders." Greater Noida: A sub inspector was killed in an encounter with criminals in Dadri on Monday morning, police said. On a tip off that a wanted criminal Sultan was hiding at a house in Dadri, a police team reached the spot. Sultan, who is wanted in several cases of loot and murder, opened fire and an encounter ensued in which the SI identified as Akhtar Khan was killed, they said. Akhtar's family have refused to conduct his last rites till the criminals are arrested. "Unless the killers are arrested we will not conduct the last rites," Akhtar's elder brother Wahid said. Wahid also alleged that police personnel in the raiding team fled from the spot leaving Akhtar alone. However, police officials have denied the charge. The deceased is survived by wife, two sons and a daughter. He hailed from Aligarh. Akhtar had joined police as a constable in 1998 and later promoted to the post of Sub Inspector. Since 11 June 2014 he was posted at the Dadri Police Station. Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh government on Monday released Rs 2 crore to Tawang district for relief and restoration work including ex-gratia payment to the next of kin of the deceased who died in landslides in the border district. The government also released a relief fund of Rs 1 crore each to the flood-affected districts of Namsai, Lower, Subansiri, Changlang and Anjaw besides additional relief fund of Rs 30 lakh to all the DCs and Rs 10 lakh to all the ADC headquarters, an official report said here. Chief Minister Kalikho Pul accompanied by in charge chief secretary Hage Khoda, disaster management commissioner Hage Kojeen and disaster management director YW Ringu made an unsuccessful attempt to visit Tawang district yesterday despite bad weather. The team had to return back to Guwahati Airport due to inclement weather as packed cloud over the Bhutan Valley en-route to Tawang had blurred visibility and deterred further movement of the helicopter, the report said. Pul said that occurrence of landslides and flash flood in the state is predominant as the state is situated in a seismically high risk zone frequented with heavy rainfall. "Presence of hilly terrains, steep slopes, loose and sandy soil and presence of multiple rivers, rivulets and small streams make our state more prone to such natural calamities," he said. He called upon the people to learn a lesson from recent incidents of landslides at Tawang that caused loss of 18 lives and the water logging at Hotel PYBSS at Itanagar that blocked the National Highway 415 for several days due to obstruction of natural flow of drain water by randomly built houses at drains/nallahs, bypassing building laws in the state. "If the faults are not corrected in time and precautions are not taken, such high rise buildings are in danger and may collapse anytime risking lives of many people," he pointed out. The Chief Minister appealed to the people to take precautionary measures and to always remain prepared. He called upon the people not to wait for disaster to happen saying, "even God cannot save after it happens". Nainital: Every act of a public functionary at any level must be bona fide even in an action like imposing President's rule in a state, which is liable to be struck down if it is done with mala fide, the Uttarakhand High Court has held. The court noted that there is a modicum of power with the President having regard to Article 74 to always ask the Cabinet to reconsider any advice but if the same advice is re-tendered after re-consideration, it binds the President. "The material (on which the decision is taken) cannot be irrelevant or extraneous. It cannot be mala fide. Every act of a public functionary at any level must be bona fide. "It is, therefore, that, even in an action under Article 356, the action is liable to be visited with invalidation if it is done mala fide," the bench of Chief Justice K M Joseph and Justice V K Bist has said. The observations are part of the 99-page judgment the bench orally dictated in the open court on 21 April which was made available on Monday with the signatures of the judges. The judgment quashed the imposition of President's rule imposed in the state on 27 March and revived the government of Harish Rawat who had challenged the President's notification under Article 356. The Supreme Court had on Friday stayed the judgment till 27 April on the ground that the signed verdict was not available and asked it to be submitted by Tuesday. Undoubtedly, under the written Constitution, in which the preamble proclaims India to be a democratic soverign and socialist republic, there is little space for unreviewable powers, the court said citing the apex court verdict in the S R Bommai. "Our understanding is that the power under Article 356 is, indeed, extra-ordinary. It is to be used as a matter of last resort. It can be used only when the Government cannot be run in accordance with the Constitution. "It points to a certain level, where it is quite impossible to run the Government in the manner provided in the Constitution. There must be material. The material must be verified. It is not any material that will suffice," the court said. It said the material must be relevant for the formation of the satisfaction. "The satisfaction, undoubtedly, is subjective satisfaction. It is the subjective satisfaction not of the President, but of the Cabinet for all legal purposes," it said. "When mala fide is attributed to the Government, the mala fide is malice in law or legal malice. Attainment of a collateral purpose, though it may appear to be intended to secure a legitimate purpose, is impermissible," it said. Conceding that there are situations in which Article 356 can be invoked, the court said it cannot exhaustively lay down the situations. "But, one thing is clear that it should be used as a matter of last resort and it should be used with the greatest care. This we say for the reason as we deem it appropriate to deal with another argument of the learned Attorney General, as also Mr. Harish Salve, that what is involved in this case is only a suspension of the Assembly and not the dissolution. "We are of the view that, be it suspension or dissolution, the fact is that toppling of a democratically elected Government breeds cynicism in the hearts of the citizens, who had participated in the democratic process. It undermines the foundations of federalism," the bench said. On the argument that the Governor in this case has not recommended Article 356, the division bench held that the satisfaction under this provision is to be entered by the Central Government. The Felicity of expression of the Governor, or rather, lack of it cannot possibly determine the boundaries of jurisdiction of the competent authority, the court said. "We only say that, in a given case, if the other elements are present, which warrant in the imposition of President's rule, the merely lack of phraseology used by the Governor, by itself, would not be decisive," it said. Questioning different aspects in building the ground for imposing President's rule, the judgment noted the mention in Governor's report of removal of the advocate general, who is related to one of the dissident Congress MLAs and that Rawat had hit at the rebel Congress men and dismissed a minister. "We are at a total loss, to say the least, to understand how the removal of the advocate general is a material, which is relevant for deciding the issue of imposition of President's rule under Article 356. "The aspect of removal of the ministers who can continue on the confidence on the Chief Minister, is also baffling, to say the least. We do not see what is the nexus it bears to the satisfaction that the government cannot be carried out in accordance with Constitution," the judgment said. On the matter relating to Speaker disqualifying nine dissident Congress MLAs, the bench said the Government of India could not have taken the disqualification as a relevant material for the decision to impose President's rule. "In the first place, when the cabinet met on the night of 26/03/2016, the Speaker had not yet taken the decision. Assuming for a moment that they could divine what was coming in the way of nine dissident MLAs, we would think that it is completely irrelevant for the Central Government to wait in this case for deciding to impose the President's rule. "What will happen if they are disqualified and, therefore, what would be the composition of the house on 28/03/2016 when the floor test would take place, surely could not have been the look out of the Central Government. "The government, when it takes action under Article 356 is expected to be completely non-partisan. It cannot have any bias. Therefore, we would think that the fate of the nine dissident MLAs was an entirely irrelevant and extraneous matter. This is for the reason that it has got nothing to do with the petitioner (Rawat) as such," the bench said. The court also came down heavily on the allegation by the Centre's counsel regarding a dissident BJP MLA was a "mistake of fact". "This means that, what was hotly contested before us by the Attorney General on the basis of there being laxity on the part of the Speaker reflecting double standards and also opening the doors to action under Article 356, was without any basis at all. "There was, in other words, no material. We are, in fact, shocked that the decision taken at the highest level and the matter, which apparently, influenced the decision, and which engaged the counsel and the court in this litigation, has been done without due care and without any basis. It was totally without any factual foundation. It was in fact a blatant falsehood," it said. New York: Diabetes can damage the auditory system, new research has found, suggesting that clinicians should include the testing of hearing in managing Type-2 diabetes. The findings, published in the journal Current Diabetes Reports, are based on a review of studies of possible linkages between Type-2 diabetes and hearing impairment. "An association between diabetes and hearing impairment in human subjects has been shown in many, but not all, studies. Direct comparison of these studies is complicated due to a lack of consistency in defining hearing impairment and other factors," said one of the researchers Elizabeth Helzner, assistant professor at SUNY Downstate Medical Centre in New York. "However, the association between diabetes and hearing impairment tends to be stronger in studies that included younger participants, perhaps because in older samples, other causes of age-related hearing impairment may mask the contribution of diabetes to the impairment, Helzner noted. "This factor in itself lends weight to the notion that Type-2 diabetes can damage hearing," Helzner explained. The researchers, however, added that well-designed longitudinal studies are necessary in order to explore whether patients with diabetes are at increased risk of early-onset hearing impairment, and whether the progression of hearing impairment varies based on diabetes status, as well as disease management factors, after taking other known contributors to hearing sensitivity into account. Hearing impairment has been associated with social isolation and depression, cognitive decline and incident dementia, a higher propensity for falls and hospitalisations, and increased mortality. Patna: Stray incidents of violence, in which one person was killed, marred the first phase of the three-tier Bihar panchayat polls which recorded a 55 percent voter turnout. A presiding officer also died of heart attack at Patori block of Samastipur district but the polling process was not affected, state election commissioner said. One person was killed when two groups clashed with firearms at Daulatpura village in Hishua block of Nawada district while a few others sustained injuries, the SEC AK Chauhan said. Nawada SDPO Sanjay Kumar Pandey said the deceased was identified as Sunil Kumar Singh and three person who also sustained injuries in the clash were admitted to a hospital. Chauhan said Prof Anupam Kumar deputed as presiding officer at polling station number 185 of Patori block of Samastipur district had a heart attack in the morning and was hospitalised where he died. The incident did not affect the polling as the presiding officer was replaced, he said. The polling by and large passed off peacefully and a total of 55 percent of voters' turnout was recorded in the first phase, Chauhan told reporters. He said the voting percentage may slightly increase once the final figures reach the Commission. Polling in first phase was held in 60 blocks of 38 districts where 55 percent of 61,25,167 voters exercised their franchise, he said. Altogether 310 persons were arrested, while 16 vehicles and 10.8 litres of illicit liquor were seized, the SEC said. Chauhan said the Commission received reports of destruction of ballot papers from Gaya and Jamui districts. Some people forcibly put ballot papers in the ballot box at a polling station in Kormathu panchayat of Gaya district, he said, adding that a few ballot papers were missing while there is a report of seal of a ballot box being broken. It has been learnt that some naxalites attacked a polling station in Chakai block of Jamui district and threw ballot papers into a well, he said. "We have sought report from District Magistrates in both the cases. Repolling will be ordered only after going through the reports," Chauhan said. Cyclical swings in the votes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been playing a crucial role in the outcome of elections in Kerala. The swings noticed in every alternate election since the BJP hit the poll fray in 1982 have found to have always benefited the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) except in 2006, when the benefit went to the Left Democratic Front (LDF). Curiously, the state started witnessing wild swings from one front to the other, bringing the UDF and LDF to power alternately since 1982. The UDF government that included the Communist Party of India (CPI) is the only incumbent government that was ever re-elected in Kerala since the Independence. This government remained in power from 1970 to 1980. The BJP entered the fray for the first time in the 1982 Assembly election by contesting 69 seats in the 140-member house. It registered its presence by polling 2.75 percent of the total polled votes. The UDF won the election then with 77 seats. When the BJP recorded its all time high vote share of 6.47 percent in the next election in 1987 the UDF tally came down to 61 seats. The LDF, which got power with 79 seats, got a margin of 5.34 percent votes over the UDF then. A 1.8 percentage point swing in the BJP votes in the next election in 1991 saw the UDF getting power with 90 seats. The vote margin of the UDF over the LDF then was a mere 3.18 percent as against the BJP vote share of 4.67 percent. This means that the BJP votes accounted for 56 percent of the margin. The LDF romped home with 81 seats in the 1996 election when the BJP vote share rose to 5.48 percent. When it came down to 5.01 percent in 2001 the UDF secured 100 seats. The trend saw an exception in 2006 when the LDF got the benefit of a 0.25 percentage point swing in the BJP votes. The minor swing towards the LDF saw the UDF tally coming down to 40 seats. The UDF could get only 72 seats in the 2011 election in the absence of any swing in BJP votes in its favour. The saffron party had increased its votes from 4.76 percent in 2006 to 6.03 percent in the 2011 elections. A similar trend was also visible in the Lok Sabha elections. The UDF maintained a tally of 11 to 17 seats when the BJP vote share ranged between 1.75 and 8.2 percent. It tumbled down to just 1 seat in 2004, when the BJP polled its highest vote share of 10.39 percent. If the trend is any indication, there will not be any swing in the BJP votes in favour of the UDF in the coming election. In fact, political observers are expecting a quantum jump for the BJP as the party is making a strong bid to make an electoral breakthrough in the state this time. This could be disastrous for the UDF, which is trying to rewrite the states four-decade-long electoral history of electing the two fronts alternately. Though most pre-poll surveys do not indicate any sign of an anti-incumbency wave against the current UDF government and some even show Oommen Chandy as the most popular choice for chief ministership, all the surveys, including the latest Asianet-C fore survey, predict victory for the LDF. Is this because of the BJP factor? All the surveys say the BJP will open its account this time in the state. The Asianet-C fore survey released on Saturday says the party will win three to five seats by increasing its vote to an all time high of 13 percent in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. The survey showed Oommen Chandy stealing a march over the LDFs chief ministerial prospect V S Achuthanandan for the first time. While 29 percent of the respondents favoured Chandy, Achuthanandan got the backing of only 26 percent. The BJP gain is possible because it has stitched together a third front for the first time in the state. Though the party had tried to make a strong bid for power by consolidating the Hindu votes that account for 54 percent of the total population in the state, it could rope in only one of the major two Hindu groups and some minor caste organisations. UDF strategists, however, do not believe that the BJPs alliance with Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), a party formed by the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam, a powerful organisation that represents the backward Ezhava community, may not help the BJP much since it has alienated the upper caste Nair community from the party. Moreover, a large section of the Ezhava community has still not reconciled with the political moves of the SNDP. The UDF also believe that the alliance with the BJP may hurt the LDF most since the lower class Ezhavas are the backbone of the communist movement in the state. However, the local body elections held in November last year has proved this wrong. The electoral understanding between the BJP and the BDJS then had affected the UDF, which lost nearly 1/3rd of the local bodies it won in 2010. Political observers see no chance for BJP to gift its votes to either the UDF or LDF in the current election. Writer and political commentator N M Pearson said the BJPs attempt this time would be to gain additional votes besides securing its entire traditional votes. The party had transferred votes in the past as its supporters did not see any chance for the BJP to win the election. This time the party has entered the fray saying that they are fighting the election to come to power. Even though the BJP supporters do not believe this will happen in the near future, they think that the party can win few seats this time. This may lead to a mobilisation of BJP votes, says Pearson. The cyclical swings in the BJP votes is also seen by political observers the result of mass transfer of votes to the UDF, either under a secret pact or as part of a determined bid by the Rashtriya Swayasam Sevak Sangh (RSS), which is daggers drawn with the CPI(M) in their strongholds in many parts of the state, especially the northern district of Kannur, to prevent the LDF from coming to power. The CPI(M) calls it votes trading. The secret pact became evident in the 1991 general elections when the UDF and the BJP fielded common candidates in the Vatakara Lok Sabha constituency and the Beypore assembly constituency. The LDF had alleged that the secret pact then had covered as many as 40 assembly constituencies. Allegations regarding vote trading used to come up during every election since then. This time too, the CPI(M) has alleged such a secret understanding between the Congress and the BJP. Party state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan says as per the secret pact both parties will help each other in Thiruvananthapuram in favour of Congress candidate V S Sivakumar and BJP leader O Rajagopal in Nemom. The CPI(M) cites the Congress decision to leave the Nemom seat to its ally that has no base there to support its allegation. Nemom, where Rajagopal himself had come second in the 2011 Assembly polls and came first in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, tops the list of seats that BJP hopes to win in the election this time. Apart from this, there are also allegations regarding a secret pact between the Congress and the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), a major ally of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) representing the backward Ezhava, the largest Hindu group in the state. Prominent Ezhava leader Vidyasagar says BDJS president Thushar Vellappally and his father Vellappally Natesan had made the secret pact with UDF to transfer Ezhava votes out of their fear that the LDF would pursue the corruption cases filed against them by CPI(M) leader V S Achuthanandan if they come to power. Interestingly, the allegation has not had many takers. BJP leaders say that people have not taken them seriously as they know that the Congress is the main enemy of the BJP at the national level. A senior party leader, who did not want to be identified said, that the partys national leadership will not tolerate any attempt to help the Congress in the state as it will help the party to assert more at the national level. He pointed out that party all-India president Amit Shah was maintaining a close watch of the entire election proceedings right from the selection of candidates with a determination to make its electoral breakthrough in the state. He wants the party to put up its best show in this election. How can we gift our votes when we are trying to provide a third alternative in the state? We have been focusing on consolidating our votes in the last one decade. This can be clearly seen in the votes being polled by the party since 2006. We have recorded the all time high vote share of 14 percent in the local body elections in 2015, the leader pointed out. Political observers attribute the sudden rise in the BJP votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and the 2015 civic body polls to the Modi wave. In fact, a major poll theme of the party in the election is the developmental works being carried out by the Prime Minister at the Centre. The local BJP leaders hope that Modis campaign in the state would boost its prospects. His visit to Kollam to see the temple fireworks mishap victims on 10 April has already stimulated the BJP supporters. Though the Prime Minister is scheduled to address six public meetings, the dates have not been finalised so far. Even though the trend favours the LDF this time, the outcome could be historical if the BJP alliance with the BDJS helps the party to make inroads into the LDF votes, mainly in the southern districts, where the Ezhavas constitute a major chunk of the electorate. New Delhi: BJP on Monday raked up the VVIP chopper scandal in Lok Sabha following Italian court's reported observation that the UPA government showed "substantial disregard" in arriving at the full truth behind the multi-crore scam. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Meenakshi Lekhi said that the observations of the Italian court that found corruption in the Rs 3,565-crore Agusta Westland deal, were serious. Seeking a statement from the Defence Ministry, she said Italy had requested India in April 2013 to get full documentation in the case but was provided only three documents and that too in 2014. She wanted a thorough probe in the matter as also a discussion in the House. Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu assured the member that he would bring the matter to the notice of the Defence Minister. New Delhi: "Butchers cannot be preachers", Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said, mounting a counteroffensive against Congress, which has accused the Modi government of "murdering democracy" by imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand. "Butchers cannot be Preachers". Congress which dismissed more than 100 non-congress governments. right from E M S Namboodiripad, under article 356, is now criticising BJP. Ridiculous!," Naidu said on twitter on a day Congress disrupted proceedings in Parliament over bringing Uttarakhand under central rule. Naidu had earlier targeted Congress calling it "mother of defections". "The Congress government at the Centre dismissed E M S Namboodiripad's first democratically-elected Left government in Kerala, despite its majority in the Legislative Assembly in 1959," Naidu had said against the backdrop of Left joining hands with Congress in targeting the Centre over the political developments in Uttarkhand. Facing opposition onslaught over the Uttarakhand issue, the Modi government has decided to take rivals head-on, citing instances of states being placed under central rule when Congress, Janata Party and United Front were in power. An internal documemnt circulated in the government notes that out of 111 times President's rule has been imposed since 1951, "Congress governments and those propped by it imposed it 91 times" including "45 times during the 16-year tenure of Indira Gandhi" and "10 times during the 10-year rule of Manmohan Singh". Parliament session began today with a face-off between the ruling and opposition benches as the Modi government was slammed over imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. Amid opposition demand for a discussion on the issue, Congress members created a ruckus in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, accusing the BJP-led dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Dehradun: Former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat has asked the people of the state to teach a befitting lesson to the BJP, accusing it of hatching a conspiracy to topple an elected government. Rawat held rallies at Tharali, Narayanbagad, Karnaprayag and Gopeshwar in Chamoli district on Sunday and asked people to teach a befitting lesson to the BJP, accusing it of hatching a conspiracy to topple an elected government, creating political instability in the state and derailing its development. He addressed the rallies as part of the second phase of his save democracy yatra to mobilise public opinion against the imposition of President's rule in the state. He said though he had no idea when the clouds of political uncertainty will lift from Uttarakhand, assembly elections were not far away and people had a chance to teach a lesson to those guilty of derailing the state's development. Assembly elections in Uttarakhand are due early next year. Rawat also highlighted the decisions taken by him in "public interest" at the two Cabinet meetings he chaired during the brief revival of his government recently in the wake of the High Court's verdict revoking President rule in the state on which a stay was put by the Supreme Court just a day later. Though their implementation will depend largely on what the Supreme Court rules on 27 April, Rawat took nearly a dozen populist decisions at the two cabinet meetings with an eye on assembly polls including reappointment of guest teachers and hiking their salary to 15000 per month, setting up a committee to look into reduction of land circle rates, a pension of Rs 3100 for identified statehood agitationists, an increase of Rs 200 in the pensions of widows, old women and the handicapped. Pradesh Congress President Kishore Upadhyay, who accompanied the former chief minister, claimed large crowds attended the rallies. This is the second phase of Rawat's save democracy yatra which covered constituencies of rebel MLAs in its first phase. Mumbai: Taking a swipe at Shiv Sena for its constant criticism of the BJP-led Maharashtra government while simultaneously being a part of it, Congress on Monday said the party, "helpless for (its need of) power", should stop invoking King Shivaji's name as it had lost its self-respect. "Sena is bent on reaping the fruits of power while at the same time is indulging in constant drama of behaving like an opposition party and attacking the government. If it is not happy with the BJP government's functioning and has any self-respect left, it should immediately quit the government," Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said in Mumbai. "If it remains helpless for power, how can it play the politics in the name of Shivaji Maharaj? People are more unhappy with Sena for being in power for selfish motives," he said. The Uddhav Thackeray-led party can criticise BJP as much as it wants, but only after regaining its diminishing self-respect, Sawant said. Referring to media reports that discussion is on between BJP and Sena over the state cabinet's expansion, Sawant said it is "surprising" that they were discussing this rather than the drought. "Maharashtra is reeling under extensive drought and both parties are surprisingly discussing cabinet expansion, which is not a matter of discussion at all at this moment. Both parties should at least get their priorities right," he said. New Delhi: Expressing the hope that the second leg of the Budget session will not be "stormy", Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said the government is "willing to discuss any issue" in the House. "I do not think there will be any stormy thing in the House. Because, this is the second part of the Budget session, we have financial business. We have demands for grants. "We need to discuss certain demands also that were agreed upon earlier, they have been listed. The government is willing to discuss any issue, every issue as usual," Naidu said in New Delhi as the session began. Naidu, however, said rules and regulations have to be followed for taking up any issue in Parliament and the opposition should be aware of it. "But the question is if somebody wants to discuss an issue (Ishrat Jahan) which is before the Supreme Court; the procedure, the rules and regulation, the Speaker seems to have made very clear. So, I do not think, the opposition which have been in power for 50 years, they must be aware of the rules and regulations," he said. As far as the issues are concerned, Naidu said, "The drought situation is there in certain parts, there is water shortage in certain parts of the country. The government is willing to discuss because we have nothing to hide and all those situations are not created by our government." Targeting Congress, Naidu said, "With regard to Ishrat Jahan issue, some shocking revelations have come, affidavits have been filed and again it has been doctored and changed also and that is now not contested by the former Home Minister (P Chidambaram)." He, however, said all depends on the Speaker for the discussion on Ishrat Jahan issue to be allowed in the House. "Our people also have given some notices about Ishrat Jahan issue. If the opposition also wants to discuss Ishrat Jahan issue, there should not be any problem whatsoever. But it all depends upon the Speaker," he said. Reaching out to the opposition, he said, "I have already appealed to the opposition. Be constructive on whatever issue you want to be discussed, the government is willing to discuss as per the rules." Kozhikode: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Monday hit back at CPM politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan who has alleged that there is a secret tie-up between the Congress-led UDF and the BJP-RSS in Kerala for the upcoming assembly polls. Addressing reporters here, Chandy, who is touring the northern districts of the state as part of the election campaign, said the Congress has never ever tied up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, while the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has done so. "I am surprised that Vijayan is making baseless allegations about this, and who does not know that it's being done purposefully to appease the minority community (Muslims) to get a few votes," said Chandy. Elaborating on the tie-up that the CPM in Kerala had with the erstwhile Jana Sangh, Chandy said "Soon after the lifting of Emergency in 1977, we saw that Vijayan contested the assembly polls and so did KG Marar, the Jana Sangh leader". "They shared the stage together and a tie-up was there between the two parties. They said they joined hands because of the Emergency, but the elections were held after lifting of the Emergency, so that does not hold good to substantiate their tie-up. And instead they are blaming us," said Chandy. Chandy pointed out that during the Bihar assembly polls last year, the CPI-M had played truant. "The CPI-M has a blind opposition to (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi; otherwise they would have joined the grand alliance in Bihar. Instead they contested separately, and it helped the BJP to win an additional 11 seats," said Chandy. "Vijayan should now come clear on his allegations that I had talks with the BJP/RSS," said Chandy. In Kerala the principle poll battle is between the traditional rivals - the UDF and the CPM led LDF, while the BJP is yet to open its account in the 140-member Kerala assembly. During the 2011 assembly polls, the BJP finished second in just three constituencies while it was pushed to a distant third in more than 100 constituencies. With the BJP increasing its vote share gradually over the years from single digit in the 2006 assembly polls to double digits in the last local body elections, the traditional rival fronts are yet to come to terms on which among them is going to benefit. State BJP president, Kummanem Rajasekheran on Monday lashed out at both fronts and said the CPI-M and Congress are playing a double game to fool the people. "In West Bengal the Congress and CPI-M are hand in glove, while they are here to fool the people. They fight each other in the open but on the sly they join hands together to see that they defeat the BJP here," said Rajasekheran in a press release. New Delhi: Parliament on Monday passed a bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sahajdharis from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies, fulfilling a long-pending demand of the community ahead of assembly elections in Punjab next year. The Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was passed by the Lok Sabha more than a month after Rajya Sabha approved it. Replying to a debate on the bill, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the demand for not giving voting rights to Sahejdari Sikhs was made by Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee members and officer bearers. "The SGPC office bearers and members have often demanded that those who are not Sikhs should not be given voting rights (in the election to select elect the members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act). The SPGC General Assembly of 2001 also passed a resolution regarding this. "The High Court has said that a competent legislature needs to pass the bill. Even the Rajya Sabha has passed the bill unanimously," Singh said. The definition of Sehajdhari Sikh has no religious sanction as far as the fundamental tenets of the religion are concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwara Act, 1925 under certain circumstances prevailing then. The Bill proposes to remove the exception given to Sahajdharis in 1944 to vote in elections to select members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act. The Union Cabinet had recently approved a proposal of the Home Ministry to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, with effect from October 8, 2003. The amendment was also carried out by a Home Ministry notification dated October 8, 2003. However, the notification was quashed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on December 20, 2011, leaving it to the appropriate and competent legislature to decide as to whether or not to amend the Act to that effect. Participating in the discussion, Ravneet Singh Bittoo (Cong) said in view of the amendments brought in the legislation, the "Sikh Gurudwaras Act should be renamed as Badal Gurudwara Act". "You are trying to divide families through conspiracy.. You are doing wrong with 70 lakh Sikhs who had voting rights in SGPC for 60 years...You are dividing the already minority community of Punjab into sub-minority community," Singh said. Bittoo said the Sikh population in the country was 1.75 crore and the amendment to the Sikh Gurudwaras Act will take away voting rights of 70 lakh Sikhs. He said it will not be proper to amend the Act as there were several cases pending in Courts. As the Congress member criticised the provisions of the Bill alleging that the hefty funds of the SGPC were being misused to organise election rallies of the Akali Dal government, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) members shot back, asking him "not to play politics." Prem Singh Chandumajra (SAD) said there will be no divide within the community with the passage of the bill and alleged that those "trying to stop the amendment" to the Act as they were themselves involved in illegal activities in gurudwaras. Supporting the Bill, BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi said those who did not follow the basic tenets of Sikhism cannot be a part to choose the management that controls Gurudwaras. Maintaining that the SAD government in Punjab was using religion for political gains, Bhagwant Mann (AAP) said "their seats (in Punjab) are diminishing and so they are trying to misuse it". Intervening in the discussion, Union Minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal said the bill dealt with an issue which does not affect any community other than the Sikhs. "Non-Sikhs are not in a position to decide who can vote. It is the Sikh community which can decide. Do not play politics and make a mockery," she said, adding only two per cent of the national population were Sikhs who have sacrificed lives for freedom struggle. Santokh Singh Chaudhary (Cong) charged the Akalis with encouraging separatism and terrorism. Assembly elections in Punjab are scheduled early next year. Pandemonium and slogan shouting against the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand marred the first day of the Lok Sabha on Monday as opposition members flayed the government for its "autocratic" decision. As soon as the obituary references were made, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge demanded adjournment of the house and suspension of Question Hour to discuss the issue. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said she was disallowing his demand but he could raise the issue during zero hour. Angry over the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, Congress created a ruckus in Parliament, accusing the Modi dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. They massed there shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted". When the Speaker allowed the question hour to go on, some members squatted at the spot. Questions related to as many as five ministries including petroleum, labour, tourism and commerce were taken up. Amid slogans like "Modi sarkar hosh mein aao" (Government must come to senses) and "Shame, shame", Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government will soon launch a Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Scheme aimed to providing five crore cooking gas connections to rural areas, especially in the name of women for families below poverty line. The issue generated heat in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on the opening day of the session with Congress members in both Houses storming the Well and party chief Sonia Gandhi joining them in raising slogans. In the Lok Sabha, Leader of Congress Mallikarjun Kharge and his party colleagues staged a dharna in the Well as their notice for adjournment motion on the issue was rejected by the Chair. "It is a murder of democracy," Kharge said as the Lower House assembled for the day, telling Speaker Sumitra Mahajan that he has given a notice for an adjournment motion on the issue. Members of JD(U) and AAP were also in the Well along with Congress. AAP leader Bhagwant Mann was repeatedly seen pleading with the Chair to allow Kharge to have his say. Amid a noisy protest by the treasury benches, Kharge said the Union government is purchasing MLAs, pressurising MLAs to install a BJP government "by killing the Constitution." The Speaker reminded Kharge that the matter is before the Supreme Court and hence he should not say anything further. Kharge said he is referring to the action of the central government and not the ruling of Uttarakhand High Court which had revoked the President's Rule. The Supreme Court later stayed the High Court's order till 27 April. He said the BJP-government at the Centre celebrates the Constitution Day and birthday of key architect of the document B R Ambedkar, while it has "destabilised" democratically-elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. "There appears to be a great hurry by the NDA to grab power in every state... don't forget there is Constitution...you could have waited for the March 28 floor test but you imposed President's Rule on March 27," he said. Azad said for the last one year, it has been seen that efforts are being made by the ruling party to create a situation that the House does not function. The senior Congress leader said he had never seen that a government "does things during the session or just days before the session so that Parliament does not function". He said during winter session, the duly-elected Arunachal Pradesh government was "brought down" and the Centre did not stop till it installed its own government there. Azad said President's rule has been imposed in the past also, but never in such a "crude" way. When he said he wanted to congratulate the judges of the Uttarakhand High Court for "having the guts to fight the Government of India", Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said there should be "no commentary" on the judicial issues. As Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi objected to the raising of the Uttrakhand issue saying the matter was sub-judice, Azad said the Centre "which disrespects the court, cannot be trusted". "Discussion will take place," he asserted, as several Congress members carrying placards stood in the aisle. Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) countered Naqvi saying Leader of the House Arun Jaitley had said in the last session that discussion on issues, even if sub-judice, cannot be prevented in the House. "Apply your own precedents," he said. Anand Sharma (Cong) said the Centre used proclamation of President's rule to disturb an elected government. "We will discuss it. We will expose you," he said. Subseqently, Jaitley asked Congress members to debate the issue when the proclamation comes up for discussion. "It will come up for discussion before the House. This will House will have an oppourtunity to discuss it. Therefore, when the proclamation comes up, please discuss it. "But today, you cannot by an alternative motion anticipate a discussion which is to take place when the proclamation comes up. You cannot discuss it at the pre-proclamation stage," Jaitley said. However, Congress members did not relent and several of them trooped into the Well. They raised slogans like 'Modi teri taanashahi nahi chalegi' (Modi, your authoritarianism will not work) and 'Loktantra ki hatya bandh karo' (stop murdering democracy). Deputy Chairman P J Kurien then adjourned the House till noon. When it reassembled, Congress members again raised slogans from the aisle. The House was adjourned by Chairman Hamid Ansari till 2 pm within a few minutes. BJP also raked up the Ishrat Jahan issue in the Lok Sabha accusing a former Home Minister in the UPA of playing with national security by seeking to dub a terrorist as a martyr. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Kirit Somaiya sought to know whether an official committee which went into the disappearance of four documents in the Ishrat Jahan issue has submitted its report. He alleged that the former Home Minister had dubbed Ishrat as a terrorist in the first affidavit but changed it in the second affidavit. Somaiya also took the name of another Home Minister in the UPA tenure. But Speaker Sumitra Mahajan disallowed the names to be taken in the House. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge sought to utilise the issue to have a dig at the government wondering how the issue could be allowed to be raised as the matter, like Uttarakhand President's Rule, is sub-judice. Mahajan remarked that the BJP member has only raised a question. Meanwhile, Lok Sabha passed a bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sahajdharis from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies, fulfilling a long-pending demand of the community ahead of assembly elections in Punjab next year. The Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was passed by the Lok Sabha more than a month after Rajya Sabha approved it. Replying to a debate on the bill, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the demand for not giving voting rights to Sahejdari Sikhs was made by Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee members and officer bearers. "The SGPC office bearers and members have often demanded that those who are not Sikhs should not be given voting rights (in the election to select elect the members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act). The SPGC General Assembly of 2001 also passed a resolution regarding this. "The High Court has said that a competent legislature needs to pass the bill. Even the Rajya Sabha has passed the bill unanimously," Singh said. The definition of Sehajdhari Sikh has no religious sanction as far as the fundamental tenets of the religion are concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwara Act, 1925 under certain circumstances prevailing then. With inputs from PTI and IANS Puducherry: Former Chief Minister V Vaithilingam and 38 others, including independents, filed their nominations on Monday for the 16 May Assembly elections in the Union Territory. With this, the total number of nominations filed for the 30 Assembly seats at stake has risen to 42 since the poll process began on 22 April, election officials said. Congress' Vaithilingam, who is the Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing assembly, filed his papers from Kamaraj Nagar constituency. Pradesh Congress Committee President A Namassivayam filed his nomination seeking re-election from Villianoor while two former ministers and his party colleagues M Kandasamy and M O H F Shah Jahan entered the fray in Embalam (Reserved) and Kalapet constituencies respectively. CPI state Secretary and Convenor of the People Welfare Alliance R Viswanathan filed his nomination from Kamaraj Nagar while BJP state President V Swaminathan submitted his papers to contest from Lawspet segment. Former DMK MLA Annibal Kennedy also filed his nomination seeking election from Uppalam segment. New Delhi: Pandemonium and slogan shouting against the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand marred the first day of the Lok Sabha on Monday as opposition members flayed the government for its "autocratic" decision. As soon as the obituary references were made, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge demanded adjournment of the house and suspension of Question Hour to discuss the issue. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said she was disallowing his demand but he could raise the issue during zero hour. Several opposition members, including Sushmita Dev and Abhijit Mukherjee of Congress and AAP's Bhagwant Mann, rushed towards the speaker raising anti-government slogans. They massed there shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted". When the Speaker allowed the question hour to go on, some members squatted at the spot. Questions related to as many as five ministries including petroleum, labour, tourism and commerce were taken up. Amid slogans like "Modi sarkar hosh mein aao" (Government must come to senses) and "Shame, shame", Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government will soon launch a Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Scheme aimed to providing five crore cooking gas connections to rural areas, especially in the name of women for families below poverty line. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said contrary to demands from members including from Bhola Singh (BJP) and Tatagatha Sathpathy (BJD), the government cannot put a blanket ban on import of Chinese goods. "Blanket ban of a country is not possible under WTO norms," she said. After question hour, Mallikarjun Kharge charged the government with "strangulating democracy" by dismissing elected governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. "A series of unconstitutional steps were being taken by this government," he alleged. Several BJP members, including RK Singh, Sanjay Jaiswal and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, were on their feet, saying that matters in court cannot be taken up in the house. Making a brief intervention, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the crises in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand were not the creation of the BJP or NDA. "All these happened due to internal problems in their own party (Congress)," he said, and welcomed the Speaker's ruling that the subjudice matters cannot be discussed in the house. "Even otherwise the house will take up for discussion on the proclamation of President's Rule. Members can participate in the debate then," he said. The proclamation of President's Rule needs to be approved within two months by parliament. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought assistance of Attorney General on a plea of senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh challenging the decision to treat Aadhaar bill as a money bill, which was passed during Budget session last month, overruling amendments moved in Rajya Sabha. "We will like to have the views of Attorney General (Mukul Rohtagi)," a bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur said when senior advocate and former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram sought issuance of notice on the plea of the Congress leader. Chidambaram said that treating the Aadhaar bill as a money bill was "unconstitutional". The bench, also comprising Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit, fixed the matter for further hearing on 10 May. It, however, did not issue notice on the plea of Ramesh. Lok Sabha had on March 16 passed the Aadhaar bill that aims at better targeting of subsidies through the Aadhaar unique identity. The House had earlier adopted the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, by a voice vote after rejecting recommendations for five amendments made by the Upper House. Armed with the Speaker's decision that it was a money bill, the government pushed it in Rajya Sabha, which cannot amend it but only make recommendations for amendment to Lok Sabha. Once Lok Sabha passes a money bill with or without amendments recommended by Rajya Sabha, it is deemed to have been passed by both the Houses. Showing urgency in getting the law through, the Centre, which enjoys a comfortable majority in Lok Sabha, had brought the measure to the Lower House within an hour of being returned by Rajya Sabha. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who had moved the bill and piloted them in both the Houses, had also turned down the opposition argument that Parliament cannot legislate since the matter is before the Supreme Court. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh while proposing amendments in the bill in Rajya Sabha, had expressed "anguish" that the bill was brought as a money bill, an act he likened to "knocking a nail in the coffin of the Upper House". Calling the passage of the bill in this manner "a very dangerous trend", Ramesh had said that the government tried to "bypass" Rajya Sabha by doing this. Insisting that a series of conditions are specified in Article 110 and that Article 110 uses the word "only" if those conditions are prevalent can a bill be declared a money bill, he had said that the Aadhaar bill, which was passed as a money bill "ignored five recommendations made by the Rajya Sabha. "It had many other provisions and most constitutional experts have given the view that the Aadhaar bill is not a money bill. While the prerogative of declaring a bill as a money bill or not is that of the Speaker and the Speaker's decision is final but the recommendation to the Speaker to consider making it a money bill is that of the government. "It is the government that decides whether it is a money bill or not and the Speaker only certifies it as money bill," Ramesh had said. Moving amendments in the Upper House during consideration of the bill, the former Union Minister had argued that every individual should have the freedom to opt out of Aadhaar and said the present bill does not give that space. Stating that he himself does not have an Aadhaar card, Ramesh had said a situation may arise when it may be needed even to book a flight or get a phone number. He had also opposed another provision in the bill which he termed as "broad" and "amorphous" and could become the ground for misuse of the law as it gives "sweeping powers" on the grounds of national security. He had suggested that rather than national security, the terms "public emergency" or "public safety" could be used. He had said that an independent member like the CVC should be included in the panel that decides which information regarding a person can be shared. Ramesh had said any suo motu powers, "even to collect information" should not be given to the Aadhaar authority, for instance it could even direct collection of DNA. He had said there were concerns of privacy and the amendments moved by him were in line with the recommendation suggested by a commission headed by Justice (retd) A P Shah, which had been set by the Planning Commission to examine the matter. The political temperature in poll-bound Tamil Nadu is expected to go up several notches as Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and DMK president M Karunanidhi filed their nominations on Monday. Jayalalithaa filed her nomination from R K Nagar, where she is a sitting MLA. Hundreds of enthusiastic party workers and people greeted her en route to the electoral office before she filed her nomination. Karunanidhi filed nomination from his native Tiruvarur, a constituency he is representing for the consecutive term in the 234-member state assembly. Nominations will close on 29 April. Tamil Nadu: DMK Chief M. Karunanidhi arrives to file nomination at Tiruvarur for upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls pic.twitter.com/rKQE16QuKf ANI (@ANI_news) April 25, 2016 Banking on her government's five year achievements in various sectors, including social welfare and infrastructure, Jayalalithaa is leading the charge of her party workers even as she eyes a successive term. The leader has also been sharply critical of DMK, targeting it on issues like family rule, inter-state river disputes and law and order. Braving age and related health issues, the 93-year-old leader hit the campaign trail on Saturday, hitting out at the Jayalalithaa government while billing his party as the right alternative. DMK Treasurer MK Stalin will file his nomination for his Kolathur constituency on 27 April. DMDK leader Vijayakant and MDMK founder Vaiko are also scheduled to follow suit this week, tentatively on the same day. Vijayakant and Vaiko are contesting from Ulunthoorpet and Kovilpatti, respectively. DMDK has aligned with Vaiko-led People's Welfare Front (PWF) for the elections. Meanwhile, top leaders of BJP and Congress from Delhi, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi, are slated to address election rallies in the state in May. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will also undertake campaign with his party striving to put up a good show in alliance with DMK. The party had won five seats in the 2011 Assembly polls as part of the DMK alliance. Top left leaders such as Sitaram Yechury of CPM and B Sudhakar Reddy (CPI) are also expected to address election rallies in May. With inputs from PTI It is almost impossible for the Indian Parliament to have a peaceful and cooperative session these days. Even as Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Sunday presided over an all-party meeting and made a strong pitch for the smooth functioning of parliament session beginning on Monday, we all know what is really going to happen. With the political crisis in Uttarakhand, the heated political rivalry during the Assembly elections and other controversial issues like the Ishrat Jahan case or pretty much anything related to Kanhaiya Kumar, this Parliament session is bound to turn into an open season against the Modi government faster than you can say 'second half of the Budget session'. Here are the issues that will probably disrupt the Parliament: Uttarakhand political crisis Even as the government has listed a heavy agenda for the session, including passage of 13 bills in Lok Sabha and 11 bills in Rajya Sabha, there is understanding among its floor managers that pushing the contentious measures like GST will not be possible in first few days, PTI had reported. Congress, backed by the Left, JD(U) and other opposition parties, is determined to corner the Centre over the imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, calling it an "assault" on the federal structure. The NDA government is likely to counter the attack citing instances of imposition of President's rule when Congress governments, governments backed by it or other Opposition parties were in power at the Centre. Ishrat Jahan case This is an issue which had disrupted the Parliament even in the first part of the Budget Session. When the BJP government claimed that the previous UPA regime had deliberately removed the charges against Ishrat Jahan in its second affidavit filed in the case to trap Narendra Modi, all hell had broken loose in the Parliament. Now, an ABPLive report has quoted sources as saying that "Sonia is said to be seething with rage at the 'sinister attempt' to link her name to this legal wrangle and has decided not to cooperate with the government." When the president of arguably the most significant Opposition party is reportedly "seething with rage", it can never be a good thing for the Parliament. The alleged morphed picture used by TMC CPM general secretary Sitharam Yechury had said on Sunday that he will raise the issue of the morphed picture used by Trinamool Congress in the Parliament Session. "I will raise the morphed picture issue in Parliament. Our party has already lodged a police complaint in this connection in Delhi," PTI had quoted Yechury as saying at an election meeting in Singur in Hooghly district. Senior CPM leader Prakash Karat had filed a complaint at Mandir Marg police station in New Delhi against Trinamool lawmaker and its national spokesperson Derek O'Brien for allegedly using a morphed picture of him being offered sweets by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Attacks on Kanhaiya Kumar And of course, how can a Parliament session be complete without some outrage related to the JNU row? CPI has reportedly said that it will raise the issue of attacks on JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar in the Parliament. Will raise in parliament the issue of serial attacks on JNUSU president #KanhaiyaKumar: CPI ANI (@ANI_news) April 25, 2016 This statement comes a day after Kanhaiya alleged that a BJP supporter tried to strangulate him on a Jet Airways flight. Other issues The Opposition is also planning to attack the government over the imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, the Pathankot terror attack, drought management and alleged communalisation of educational institutes. After the near wash-out of the two sessions last year, the government is looking ahead to the second half of the Budget session to push bills, including the key Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, touted as the biggest tax reform in India. But maybe even the government knows that not a lot is going to happen on the first day. DNA reported that the government has included only one new bill The Indian Institute of Management Bill, 2016 in its priority list in the Parliament. With agency inputs Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu: MDMK chief and a key architect of the DMDK-PWF-TMC combine Vaiko, on Monday stunned his supporters by going back on his decision to contest the 16 May assembly polls, alleging the DMK was planning to create caste violence. He, however, vowed to work hard for the victory of the front of which his party is a key constituent. The announcement stunned his supporters who had thronged to hear him speak from an open-top propaganda van here as Vaiko had earlier announced his decision to contest from the Kovilpatti segment after a hiatus of two decades. Vaiko alleged the "plan" was to "create violence" between the "Thevar and Naicker communities" in the constituency. He said the violence, according to the plan, "would be centred around him", a remark seen as an implied reference to his Naicker caste. Naming the DMK, he said, "I also came to know that the district secretaries (Tuticorin and Virudhunagar) of the party encouraged the violence idea and I was terribly grieved." "My heart swirls in pain and I shudder to even think of caste violence targeting me," he said, adding "against this background, since I realise that communal rage will ruin the future of Tamil Nadu, I have decided to not contest in the Assembly elections." Though his supporters appealed to him not to do so, Vaiko gestured to them to be silent. He named MDMK functionary Vinayaka Ramesh as the party candidate for the Kovilpatti constituency, which was won by an AIADMK candidate in the 2011 polls. However, Vaiko vowed to slog for the victory of the DMDK-PWF-TMC alliance in the polls. He also said he would dedicate the rest of his life for the welfare of the Tamil people, eradicating the menace of alcohol consumption and for an "independent Tamil Eelam (separate homeland for Lankan Tamils)". The nineteenth of May is the date set for the declaration of the winner of the one-and-a-half month-long Election Contest in West Bengal. This has been the longest election in the state, held in six phases of polling, where phase one was held in sub-phases A and B. With three more phases left and D-Day nearing, instances of criminal intimidation, threats and killings are high as tensions simmer in several areas in rural West Bengal a fallout of the age-old political culture of cutthroat rivalry. Twelve lives have already been lost until the third phase in poll related violence in separate incidences in the state. The Trinamool Congress has been claiming that eight of its workers were killed in separate incidents in pre-poll and post-poll violence. On 15 April, the house of TMC local leader Akbar Sheikh was attacked with local crude bombs in the Joykrishnapur area under Ausgram PS of Burdwandistrict. Two women members of the family were seriously injured and admitted to Burdwan Medical College and hospital. Later, on 21 April the second day of polling two CPM polling agents, Sheikh Fazlan Haq and Dukhiram Dal were killed by political opponents. The deceased were returning home late in the evening when they were attacked by opponents, attacked with bombs and eventually killed. Their bodies were later brought to the local party office of the CPM in Burdwan district for the final salute, where tensions seemed to be high. The incident occurred in Lodhna village on the banks of the Damodar river in Khandaghosh Assembly constituency, that had been on the boil since the last Assembly election in 2011 when the Left had won the seat. The sitting MLA Nabin Chandra Bag switched sides to the TMC just before these elections to contest from the reserved constituency. A similar sort of incident took place on the same night with a Congress worker Ali Khandekar who was killed in Raina in the Burdwan district. Earlier, a CPM worker Sheikh Fazlan Sheikh was also killed in Sirpara village in the Domkal Assembly constituency in Murshidabad district. In Lodhna, the deceaseds son Sajal Sheikh said, Elections come and go but our loss is forever and we cannot overcome this now. It is the TMC supporters who killed my father. They asked us to withdraw the cases or else I would face the same consequences. They want us to leave the village and go away like many in 2011 when the CPM supporters had to live as Ghor Chhara (in exile) in different parts of the state. We had informed the police about the prospective attack and the hurling of bombs that has been going on for sometime now, but the police did not take any action. This culture of post-poll violence is not new to the politically-sensitive state. Given its track record of ongoing political rivalry, severe hostility and violence for years together, the Election Commission had strategised a foolproof security arrangement. The phase-wise elections spread over a month and a half was supposed to allow for free-and-fair polls all over the state in a manner not applicable to other states that are also polling at the same time. Yet, it is being said that just as the EC planned to use this opportunity of phase-wise elections to mobilise security forces and utilise resources properly to conduct free-and-fair elections, political rivals have also planned their toxic strategies accordingly. They are using this opportunity to mobilise party strongmen, divert resources, share vehicles, focus on specific areas and let party-affiliated goons go scot-free in the process of helping them win these elections. Although the EC stops political parties from campaigning in the constituency 48 hours before polls, it could not restrict televised campaigns of political leaders in nearby constituencies that would go to polls on a later date these could directly influence voter mindsets till as late as the last minute. The violence unleashed in one area has already put fear into ordinary voters in many other areas that are yet to go to polls. The city of Kolkata is voting in three phases and despite campaigning having stopped 48 before polls, political leaders campaigned aggressively in other areas, issuing arm-twisting tactics to directly influence ordinary voters concerned about their safety. This is also the fallout of the ongoing phase of post-poll violence in areas that have just completed elections. Imtayaz Alam, a local journalist in Asansol said, This is the time for threats, intimidation and Bomabaji (a term used locally for hurling of local bombs) at each other. The security forces stay till the polls are over. What happens afterwards is not seen by anyone. It seems there is an eerie silence this time after polls closed. It's as if people are waiting for the results to see who comes to power so that political vendettas can be settled." During the first phase of campaigning, MP Abhisek Banerjee had said, After 19 May, when the ballot boxes will be opened, the people of Bengal will witness a new Trinamool. All this while, we have been very courteous, we have given you (opponents) many opportunities... but not anymore. In the days to come, inch-by-inch, you will be given a befitting reply. Be prepared for that. He happens to be the nephew of Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee who herself had defended him when the opposing Left leaders raised the issue with the Election Commission. During her Junglemahal campaign in the first phase, referring to the security personnel on poll duty she had said, Dont be afraid of them; treat them to tea and biscuits. They are just our guests; they will go after the polls are over. And when the Trinamool Congress will be come back to power, you will not see any of the opponents her. a reference to the Left and the Congress party workers. Political analysts termed it a veiled threat to the people that West Bengal is so used to. Post-poll violence does not end with the election results. The effects of political rivalry are long and lasting and impacts ordinary voters for all days to come. Matching the pitch of political rivalry and intimidation, CPM leader Mohammed Salim during his campaign rally in Birbhum just before the second phase of elections said, We will avenge the death of all our workers who were killed in the past five years, boosting the spirit of many of his party supporters who had laid low during the past five years. Many had fled their homes and it is only now that they have returned. Locals in Birbhum, Bankura, West and East Midnapur districts where polling has ended have started feeling the heat. CPM supporters in Goaltore where many had earlier left homes and lived as Ghor Chhara have returned home to cast their votes and stay on. With the Left and the Congress coalition working fine at the grassroots-level in these areas, these Left supporters have got a boost and are ready to wage a battle that might last long after elections results are declared. A long history of persecution, threats and discrimination unleash after the elections results. Whichever party is able to take control in the area will trouble the other," said Afsiya Begum in Khandgosh, And women are for no reason made victims. We have always been in fear, be it this way or that way. Men will be caught, persecuted and forced to leave homes. The EC has got as many as 46 people arrested by police in post-poll violence following the third phase of the West Bengal Assembly polls and has been following up with chief electoral officer of West Bengal on each and every case of violence. But as the TMC chief campaigns for her jailed contestant Madan Mitra in Kamarhati constituency in North 24 paraganas, she said, A wounded tiger is more dangerous than the one that roams around freely in the jungle. So, it is imperative to ensure a bigger margin of votes for him than what he had got five years ago." This will worry many in the constituency. Sajid Khan, a resident and voter of Kamarhaticonstituency said, We have lived here for five generations. My brother, a CPM polling agent in 2011 could not vote after that because he was forced to leave home. The EC has to ensure safety for us even after the polls, if the free-and-fair impression of elections is to be maintained. Kolkata: The CPI(M) and BJP on Monday lodged complaints to the EC against state minister and TMC candidate from Rajarhat-Gopalpur constituency Purnendu Bose for allegedly helping in malpractices in his constituency and demanded repolling in the seat. The CPI(M) too has lodged a complaint and requested the Election Commission to look into the matter. "We have seen television footages were it was shown that Purnendu Bose along with his associates were entering a polling booth and his associates engaging in rampant rigging. We have demanded a repoll in the entire constituency and have asked the EC to initiate action against Bose," state BJP leader Jayprakash Majumdar told PTI. CPI(M) state secretariat member Rabin Deb, said the party too has lodged a complaint against Bose and has demanded that the EC should look into the matter. "We have demanded that the EC should look into the matter. It is a serious issue," Deb said. The Election Commission officials, however, said they were yet to receive any such complaint. Bose was unavailable for comments as calls to his mobile number went unanswered. NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Environmental activists attempted to shame multinational PepsiCo on Monday by draping its iconic New York City billboard with a banner in protest at its use of palm oil. A huge white banner reading "Cut Conflict Palm Oil" hung for about an hour from a celebrated Pepsi-Cola sign that is one of the most recognisable features of the New York waterfront. The red neon billboard was designated an official city landmark earlier this month. Activists from the Rainforest Action Network said the stunt was intended to pressure PepsiCo into ridding its supply chain of palm oil from plantations where employers are accused of abusing workers and being responsible for large-scale deforestation. PepsiCo did not immediately respond to requests for comment by phone and email. On its website, the company says it is committed to purchase palm oil certified by the "Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil by 2020" and is committed to "doing business the right way and to realizing zero deforestation and respect for human rights." In recent years, large swathes of tropical forests have been cut down particularly in Southeast Asia to make way for commercial palm oil plantations amid growing demand, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The activists said PepsiCo should play a larger part in encouraging responsible behaviour by the palm oil industry. "Pepsi is a globally influential, multibillion dollar brand. It has both the power and the resources to tackle the palm oil crisis head on," said Ginger Cassady, a spokeswoman for the Rainforest Action Network. PepsiCo sells products to over 200 countries and territories, according to the company's website. It owns a slew of global brands including Gatorade, Lipton and the classic cola beverage Pepsi. (Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Islamabad: Pakistan is expected to ask India to revive the stalled peace process in the ice-breaking meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in New Delhi, sources said on Monday. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will travel to New Delhi on Tuesday to attend the Heart of Asia regional conference, Foreign Office (FO) said. Diplomatic sources said Chaudhry will meet his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the conference. "The two diplomats will discuss various issues. Pakistan will also seek revival of peace process as was agreed in December," they said. This will be first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had an informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year. Pakistani sources said no major breakthrough was expected in the meeting to be held under the shadow of the Pathankot attack and the arrest of an alleged Indian spy in the country. FO said Pakistani delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other countries. It, however, did not mention anything about Chaudhrys meeting with Jaishankar. Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process, which was established in 2011 as a platform to discuss regional issues including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, the Foreign Office statement said. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on 9 December, 2015. The conference had adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled 'Emphasising Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity'. KANANASKIS, Alberta/MANILA Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned on Monday the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder." John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting. "The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act." Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall. The captives included Ridsdel and Hall, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the centre of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21. Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country's prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants. Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict. Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato in Manila and Andrea Hopkins in Kananaskis, Alberta,; Editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. BEIRUT A car bomb in a district south of Damascus killed at least six people and possibly many more on Monday, according to Islamic State militants who claimed responsibility for the attack. The ultra-hardline Sunni group's attack near a Syrian army checkpoint had killed or injured 48 people, a news agency close to the militants said. Lebanese group Hezbollah's Al Manar television reported the blast was at an army checkpoint and put the death toll at eight. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said eight people had been killed and the toll was expected to rise because of the number of people with serious injuries. State media said the bombing was on the outskirts of Sayeda Zeinab, home to Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine. The area has already been hit by two bomb attacks this year. Multiple explosions in February killed scores of people in one of the bloodiest attacks in that area in Syria's five-year conflict, and an Islamic State suicide attack there less than a month earlier killed 70 people. Syrian government negotiator Bashar Ja'afari said Monday's blast "that four terrorists carried out" had hit a hospital, killing some patients evacuated last week from two rebel-besieged towns in the northwestern province of Idlib. Separately, rebel shelling of government-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 18 people, the Observatory said. Syrian aerial bombing has killed dozens of civilians in Aleppo's residential area of Bustan al Qasr and areas under the control of rebels in the last few days, it said. The government says it is planning a campaign to take areas of Aleppo under rebel control and to cut off their only remaining route into the city. (Reporting by John Davison, Tom Perry and Suleiman al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Louise Ireland) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. BEIRUT An Islamic State car bomb on Monday in a district south of Damascus killed at least six people and possibly many more, according to the radical Sunni movement and a monitoring group. Islamic State claimed responsibility for detonating the car laden with explosives near a Syrian army checkpoint, a news agency close to the militants said. It first gave no details but later said the blast killed or injured 48 people.[5N17S4EK] Lebanese group Hezbollah's Al Manar television reported the blast had occurred at a Syrian army checkpoint and put the death toll at eight. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people with serious injuries. State media located the bombing on the outskirts of Sayeda Zeinab, home to Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine. The area has already been hit by two bomb attacks this year. Multiple explosions in February killed scores of people there in one of the bloodiest attacks there in Syria's five-year conflict, while an Islamic State suicide attack there less than a month earlier killed 70 people. The Syrian government's chief negotiator at Geneva talks said the blast struck a hospital. Syrian government negotiator Bashar Ja'afari said Monday's blast "that four terrorists carried out" had hit a hospital, killing some patients evacuated last week from two rebel-besieged towns in the northwestern province of Idlib. He said 10 people were killed. (Reporting by John Davison, Tom Perry and Suleiman al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Dominic Evans and Tom Heneghan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Days after India issued a tourist visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa and three others allowing them to visit the country for a conference in Dharamshala next week, New Delhi cancelled the visa on Monday, reported NDTV. The decision came after Beijing protested the move, calling Isa a terrorist. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), lives in Germany and was invited to the conference being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China. Chinese dissidents in exile and members of the Uyghur community were expected to attend and discuss democratic transformation in China. "We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a Home Ministry spokesperson confirmed on Monday without elaborating further. China's unhappiness about reports that Dolkun has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying's statement. "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries," he said. NDTV reported that according to government sources, Isa's visa was cancelled after India learnt that he had an Interpol red corner notice against him. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, "On 23 April, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation." He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. "Maybe because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side," he said. He, however, speculated it may have been because of Chinese pressure on the Indian government. China has been battling Uyghur Islamic extremism in the Xinjiang province since the 1990s. Dolkun Isa is regarded as a terrorist by China. He has been a German citizen since 2006 and has been at the forefront of the movement for democracy, often speaking out against the human rights abuse by Chinese authorities. India's decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking India's bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. Beijing has long been wary of independence-minded militants in Xinjiang and has kept tight controls over the region. It began labeling the militants terrorists in 2001 in a bid to win international support for the struggle against the militants. Scholars have argued that China's stifling policies in the region including restrictions on beards and veils have marginalized the Uighurs and fueled militancy. Tsering Tsomo, executive director of the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, expressed disappointment at the revocation of Isa's visa. The center is one of the organizers of this weekend's interfaith leadership conference that Isa had been planning to attend in Dharmsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is headquartered. "We just wanted a small group of like-minded people to come and exchange their views in a free and democratic manner," Tsomo said in a statement Monday in Dharmsala. "The aim was to help improve the human rights situation in China." The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, has been living in Dharmsala since he fled Tibet in 1959. Beijing accuses him of seeking to separate Tibet from China. But Tibetans and the Dalai Lama say they simply want a high degree of autonomy under Chinese rule. With inputs from Agencies New Delhi: After a period of uncertainty, India and Pakistan are to hold talks again when their foreign secretaries meet in New Delhi on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia conference. Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry is arriving in New Delhi to attend the conference and he will meet his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar. He will also have meetings with delegations from other countries, informed sources said. Chaudhry will take part in the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process Senior Officials meeting convened by India on Tuesday. The two foreign secretaries will draw up the modalities to resume their Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. The 2 January terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot that was blamed on Pakistani terrorists stalled the peace talks. Washington: Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has slammed Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for mocking an Indian call centre worker during an election rally this week, saying it shows disrespect towards the community and is reflective of his divisive rhetoric. "Donald Trump mocking Indian workers is just typical of his disrespect that he has shown to groups across the spectrum," said John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton Campaign. "He has run a campaign of bigotry and division. I think that's quite dangerous for the country when you think about the fact that you need friends, allies. The kind of campaign he is running breeds disrespect across the globe and breeds division and danger here at home," he told reporters in Germantown, Maryland after formally launching 'Indian-Americans for Hillary', an effort by the community to rally behind the Democratic presidential front runner. Podesta was reacting to Trump's apparent use of a fake Indian accent to mock a call centre representative in India during a campaign rally in Delaware this week. The real estate tycoon said that he called up his credit card company to find out whether their customer support is based in the US or overseas. At the same time, he described India as a great place, asserting that he is not angry with Indian leaders. Meanwhile, an Indian-American entrepreneur also hit out at Trump, calling his comments "demeaning". "When Donald Trump fakes the accent of an Indian at the help desk, it is demeaning and demonising to me personally," said Frank Islam, a top Indian-American bundler in the Clinton campaign who has helped raised more than $100,000 for her. A resident of Maryland, Islam is part of the newly launched 'Indian-Americans for Hillary'. He also disagreed with the remarks of Republican Governor from Maine, Paul LePage, who had said that Indian workers are "worst" and "hardest" to understand. "I do not know, where he got that impression. I consider Indian-Americans very hard working and they aim high," he said. "I consider Indian-Americans to be thoughtful, constructing, hardworking and resilient. So I do not agree with him," Islam said, adding that the community played a key role in strengthening the country. Washington: A nationwide grassroot body of Indian-Americans has been launched by Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's campaign to support the former secretary of state, hinting that an Indian-American could also be appointed under her presidency. The organisation named Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton (IAHC) was launched on Sunday in a Maryland suburb of Washington by Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta. Podesta, who personally came down from the campaign headquarters of New York, told a gathering of Indian-Americans that relationship between India and the US would reach a new level after Clinton is elected as the president in the November elections. "One of the things that she is committed to having a broad diverse cabinet than any administration. And I think, as senator and as secretary she showed that commitment by appointing Indian-Americans to positions of responsibilities and I think you should expect that as president of the United States," Podesta said. Podesta was speaking to a group of Indian reporters after formally launching Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton wherein he was asked if a Clinton Administration could see the first Indian-American Cabinet appointment. "I could think of at least one person, who you have already spokes with, who I would like to see in a future Democratic administration," Podesta said, referring to Indian-American Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, a top American think-tank who worked with Clinton for around 14 years. Tanden was one of the key note speakers at the launch of Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton'. Given her past work and experience, Podesta told Indian-Americans that he has no doubt that the bilateral ties would reach a new height under Clinton administration. "As Secretary of State, she tried to develop a strong relationship between US and India. She actually helped begin to lay the foundation, which I had the ability to work on when I was in the White House for President Barack Obama, to deepen the relationship with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi to try to get an outcome in the Paris negotiations," he said. Thrilled at the launch of Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton, Tanden said that the small but influential ethnic community could play a significant role in several key states like Maryland, New York, Ohio and California. "In every position that Hillary has ever held as First Lady, senator, secretary of state, she has always had Indian Americans. I am sure, she will recognise the talents of the Indian-American community because she has already done that in the past," said Tanden. Referring to the divisive campaign from the opposition Republican party, Tanden said by doing so they are questioning "whether we are going to embrace the diversity" or whether racial and religious minority are being seen as part of the country. Dubai: Oil exporting countries in the Middle East lost a staggering USD 390 billion in revenue due to lower oil prices last year, and should brace for even deeper losses of more than USD 500 billion this year, the International Monetary Fund said today. The fund had projected in October that oil exporting countries in the region would see revenue losses of USD 360 billion in 2015, but oil prices took a tumble by year's end and the drop in revenue amounted to USD 30 billion more. In a revised economic outlook report released today, the IMF said these countries will see revenues from oil exports drop even more in 2016, to between USD 490 billion to USD 540 billion compared to 2014, when oil prices were higher. Oil prices plunged to around USD 30 a barrel in January compared to USD 115 in mid-2014. IMF Director for Middle East and Central Asia Masood Ahmed said these losses translate into budget deficits and slower economic growth, particularly for countries like Saudi Arabia that are still heavily dependent on oil to finance their spending. Though the kingdom has been working on plans to overhaul its economy, oil still accounted for 72 per cent of total revenue last year and Saudi Arabia projects a budget deficit of nearly USD 90 billion this year. The report said that economic growth in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates will slow from 3.3 percent in 2015 to 1.8 per cent this year. Saudi Arabia, the region's biggest economy, will see growth at just above 2 per cent. The IMF has encouraged reforms that would limit public spending on welfare programs and handouts that citizens in the Gulf have become accustomed to, such as lifting subsidies and tightening public sector wage bills to offset the impact of declining revenues. Already, most GCC countries have raised fuel, water, and electricity prices. Outside the GCC, oil exporter Algeria recently hiked fuel, electricity, and natural gas prices, and Iran increased fuel prices. "Oil prices are likely to improve from where they are, but they're not going to go back to the figures that we saw in 2013 and 2014 for a long, long time, so this means that many of them have to cut back spending and they also have to try to raise revenue outside the oil sector," Ahmed told The Associated Press. The IMF warns that just among oil exporters in the region, 10 million young people are expected to enter the workforce by 2020, yet 3 million of them will find themselves without jobs at the current pace of development. Young people's frustration at their lack of prospects was a key driver of the Arab Spring uprisings that rocked the Middle East in 2011. Beijing: Accusing India of following a "tricky two-sided" China policy to "maximise gains at minimum costs", an article in the state media in Beijing said India's stand on a negotiated settlement in the disputed South China Sea is aimed at securing membership of the China-led SCO grouping. "Indian diplomacy rests on engagement with major world powers instead of clinging to a particular country. By adopting an ambiguous strategy, India places itself in a position that all the major powers woo it, but it never explicitly promises anything regarding the policies of other nations," the article in the state-run Global Times said. "This makes these countries hope about wooing India while not willing to break ties with it due to its ambiguous stance. India has been trying to maximise its interests with minimum costs, which so far has achieved satisfying results," the article 'New Delhi may get dragged into tussles' said. Referring to the joint statement issued after the 18 April meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, India and China (RIC), it said India struck a common stance toward the simmering tensions in the South China Sea (SCS) backing a negotiated settlement to solve territorial disputes. China opposes the Philippines' arbitration under the UN Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS) on the SCS but is open for a negotiated settlement. "Having established a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, China-Russia relations have warmed up in the past two years and Russia has expressed understanding and support for China's stance in the South China Sea. But India's attitude is tricky," it said. "For years, India has remained a prudent yet ambiguous stance over the SCS issue. At a sensitive moment such as now, India expressed the same attitude as China and Russia, indicating a changing state of mind of India," it said. "One possible reason is that India has been striving for full-fledged membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). In July 2015, SCO Ufa summit launched the process of accession for India and Pakistan. "But India's inclusion into the SCO has not been completed. India needs to prove that its accession can play a constructive role for the unity of SCO members and the international effect of the SCO," it said. "In addition, what rights India will be entitled to after it enters the SCO will be determined by the existing members. Against this backdrop, India taking a consistent stance with China and Russia in diplomatic matters will facilitate its accession to the SCO and help it better play its role within this regional framework. "This may be part of India's consideration," the article said adding that India at the same time agreed to share military logistics with the US. "By joining the communique in support of China's stance on the South China Sea, India seemingly tries to strike a diplomatic balance at a high level. Yet it doesn't connote any change in India's diplomatic intentions to seek a balance between powers," it said. "India's moves to substantively bolster the US in military cooperation and meanwhile disappoint the latter right before the South China Sea arbitration outcome is released indicates the duality of India's policy. They show that India also takes a two-sided stance in dealing with China," it said. New York: India has sought time to implement the Paris climate agreement, saying it should not be done in "haste" and all countries should be allowed to follow their national processes. "A debate about early entry into force of the Paris Agreement is unfortunate. Early ratification can be understood, but it will take time as per the national processes of approval," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said at the Major Economies Forum Meeting on Sunday. "We should not make haste because Paris Agreement is to be implemented post 2020. There is enough time for ratification and all countries should be allowed to follow their national processes," he said. According to reports, the US and China are leading a push to bring the Paris climate accord into force much faster aided by a typographical glitch in the text of the agreement. India on 22 April signed the historic deal along with more than 170 nations, marking a significant step that has brought together developing and developed nations for beginning work on cutting down greenhouse gas emissions. "Paris agreement is a historical achievement for mankind. All countries should implement it in letter and spirit. After signing of Paris agreement, developed world needs to immediately ratify the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period and should present enhanced pre-2020 actions," he said. The minister also urged developed nations to announce their "enhanced" pre-2020 climate action plans and undertake the "urgent" task of mobilising USD 100 billion, lack of which will hamper implementation of nationally determined contributions of developing countries. "The second urgent task to be done is Mobilisation of USD 100 billion. Without this crucial mobilisation, many of the developing countries cannot implement their nationally determined contributions," Javadekar said. He said the need of the hour is to lay out the complete institutional mechanism for building up on the Paris accord. "The plan to work for the first meeting of Ad hoc group on Paris Agreement (APA) and additional works by Subsidiary Body for Implementation and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBI/SBSTA)...should be prepared in consultation with all stake holders as issues covered under these bodes have a direct bearing on the Provisions of the Paris Agreement. There is a need for coherence between COP, APA, SBI, SBSTA and other institutions," he said. Observing that India has led from the front as far as pre-2020 action is concerned, he said that though it is not mandated to take pre-2020 actions as per Kyoto Protocol, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has showcased to the world that if there is political will, there is a way. "India has shown its leadership by action. It is now actions of developed countries which will be watched by the world against the backdrop of India's proactive achievements," he said. Noting that the "real" issue is pre-2020 actions of both the developed as well as developing countries, Javadekar said the pre-2020 actions of developed nations should be in accordance with the principles and provisions of the Convention. "It should be comprehensive, covering all relevant sources, sinks and reservoirs of green house gases, and adaptation as well as finance, technology development and transfer, including of cost effective technologies," he said. Elaborating about India's actions, Javadekar said that coal cess which has been increased from 70 cents per tonne in 2014 to USD 6 per tonne in 2016 is a "bold" action and if developed countries follow India, they can easily mobilise USD 100 billion per annum, which has remained "elusive" till now. He termed the government's decision to tax polluting vehicles and incentivising electric and hybrid vehicles as a "major step in the right direction". "World's largest programme launched by India of 175 GW of renewable energy is on track. A new major initiative to expand metro network in next five years to 1,300 km from present 300 km is an ambitious initiative in providing clean public transport to more than 10 million commuters. "LED bulb program has succeeded beyond any calculations and has already achieved 100 million target and in next four years it will achieve target of 700 million bulbs," he said. The chief India recruiter for the Islamic State (IS) was killed in a US drone strike a few days ago, The Times of India quoted sources as saying. Mohammad Shafi Armar, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka, and a key aide of the terror outfit's head Abu bakr al-Baghdadi, was looking to establish the IS in India. According to the report, he is learnt to have recruited at least 30 men for the outfit. According to the 23 Islamic State recruits arrested by the National investigation Agency until now, he had planned to establish the outfit in every Indian state. While the exact circumstances of his death is yet to be ascertained by intelligence agencies, it is now believed that the Indian branch of the IS is currently without a leader. The report further said Shafi recently formed the Junud al Khalifa-e-Hind after dissolving the Ansar-ul-Tauhid (AuT). He had formed the AuT after developing differences with Bhatkal brothers-led Indian Mujahideen. Lately, the IS has been been looking to spread its operations to India. In the latest issue of Dabiq, its international mouthpiece, IS said that Hindus in India and neighbouring Bangladesh must be targeted in mass numbers. In December 2015, the outfit also targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him a 'right-wing Hindu nationalist' who 'worships weapons' and is 'preparing his people for a future war against their number one enemy - Muslims'. In July the same year, a PTI report claimed that the Islamic State was preparing to attack India to provoke an Armageddon-like confrontation with the US. HANOVER, Germany U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would do whatever he could to advance a controversial trade deal with the European Union in his last eight months in office, but warned that time was running short. Obama has pushed to complete two trade agreements before his term ends on Jan. 20 - with Pacific nations and with the EU - but has run into a growing swell of populist concerns about the impact on jobs, consumer protections and the environment. "Time is not on our side," he conceded to business leaders at the Hanover Messe, a massive industrial trade fair. "If we don't complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe would mean this agreement won't be finished for quite some time." Obama is in Germany to promote the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but the issue was overshadowed by discussions on the crises in Syria, Ukraine and Libya when the two leaders met. On Monday, they are set to hold talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on some of the same issues. But first, they had dinner in a 17th century palace with chief executives of some of the largest U.S. and German companies such as Microsoft, Dow, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, BASF, Bayer and Siemens. Also at the dinner was Matthias Muller, CEO of Volkswagen, whose company has admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in the United States, a scandal that involves 11 million vehicles worldwide. POLITICAL CAPITAL Obama normally does not sit through lengthy opening ceremonies. But in a sign of the political capital he is spending on trade - and his affection for Merkel - he took a front row seat for an unusual interpretative dance performance featuring robots, futuristic music and acrobatic break-dancing. The day before Obama arrived, thousands of protesters holding placards with slogans like "Stop TTIP" marched to express their opposition to the deal, and his motorcade whizzed past a few more as he drove through the north German city. Obama acknowledged his message about the benefits of trade has not broken though. "The benefits oftentimes are diffuse, whereas a particular plant or business that feels its been hurt by outside competition feels it very acutely," he told reporters. Obama said he hoped the deal, which supporters say could boost economies on each side of the Atlantic by $100 billion, would be agreed this year. But final ratification will take more time. The Trans Pacific Partnership is first in the queue for the U.S. Congress, which is not clamoring to hold a final vote. Obama said that could change after the Democratic and Republican parties make their final selections of candidates this summer. "When we're in the heat of campaigns, people naturally are going to worry more about whats lost than whats gained with respect to trade agreements," he said. 'RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY' Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign tour where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as important not only for the economy but also to defeat Islamic State militants and counter Russian intervention in Syria and Ukraine. "Strong growth in Europe is particularly important given the array of pressing challenges - whether it's security, defense, migration or refugees," Obama said. Obama came to Germany from London where he urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union in a closely-watched June referendum or face being at "the back of the queue" as a non-EU member hoping for a new trade deal with the U.S. Earlier in the week, he met with Gulf leaders in Riyadh to try to allay fears that Washington had become less committed to their security, especially after the nuclear deal with Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia. Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. Merkel urged the parties participating in troubled peace talks in Geneva to agree to humanitarian zones where fleeing Syrians could feel safe from bombardment. She and Obama made clear that they did not favor the creation of classic "safe zones" which would need to be protected by foreign forces. Both leaders expressed concerns about ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine and said sanctions imposed against Russia following its 2014 intervention there, could not be eased if the situation on the ground did not improve. Ties between Washington and Berlin reached a low point three years ago following revelations of widespread surveillance of German citizens, including the bugging of Merkel's mobile phone, by the U.S. National Security Agency. But in recent years, the two Cold War allies have patched things up. Obama praised Merkel for her "steady leadership" and handling of Europe's refugee crisis, saying her decision last year to welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany had put her "on the right side of history". He joked that Merkel, who lacks his easy-going charm, had a "really good sense of humor" even if it wasn't always on public display, drawing chuckles from the 61-year-old chancellor. Merkel refused to be drawn when asked whether she was concerned that she might soon have to work with Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, who has labeled her refugee policies "insane". She said only that she was watching the American election campaign "with interest". (Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Tom Heneghan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. HANOVER, Germany President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since the civil war there began, saying he would dispatch 250 special forces soldiers to help local militia to build on successes against Islamic State. The new deployment increases U.S. forces in Syria six-fold to about 300. While the total U.S. ground force is still small by comparison to other American deployments, defence experts said it could help shift the momentum in Syria by giving more Syrian fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support. Obama said the move followed victories that clawed back territory from Islamic State. "Given the success, I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum," Obama said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, the last stop on a foreign tour that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back," he added, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but the campaign's effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years. Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria last year, which has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the United States. CLOSE AIR SUPPORT Washington's main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, who wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. However, the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG. Presumably these are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria, Tim Ripley, defence analyst and writer for IHS Janes Defence Weekly magazine, said of the extra special forces. The more people you have, the more militia groups can have close air support that makes them more effective so they can advance in more areas, Ripley said. But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory. The real question has to be: are they going to let the Kurdish YPG forces actually go and attack and capture some territory? This is something the Americans have not been happy about because when the YPG forces attack and capture territory, it tends to anger the president of Turkey," Ripley said. The Syria Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obama's announcement but still wanted more help. "Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support," SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. "So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware." The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State "scourge", but said Washington should do more to fight against Assad. "Syria will not be free of terrorism until we see the end of the Assad regimes reign of terror. We need help in freeing our country from Assad as well as from Daesh," spokesman Salem al-Meslet said in a statement. If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river. That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas. THE RACE FOR RAQQA U.S. special forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital. This places them in another quandary. Do they coordinate their attack on Raqqa with the Syrian army and the Russian air force, who are ... advancing on Raqqa? ... The question is who's going to get there first, Ripley said. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. "Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more," Obama said ahead of talks with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria. Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where the five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people. In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS But Washington's lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The sudden entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favour of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West including Washington. Washington and Moscow sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad's government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire. Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria's largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes. The Syrian government's negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi'ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government's enemies were terrorists. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff; editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. HANOVER, Germany U.S. President Barack Obama said during a visit to Germany on Sunday that he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. Speaking after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a 17th century palace near the northern city of Hanover, Obama spoke of a "tragic humanitarian crisis" in Syria and said he continued to believe in a political solution to the fighting there. Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign tour where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as important to increase trade, defeat Islamic State militants and counter Russian intervention in both Syria and Ukraine. "We remain deeply concerned about the upsurge in fighting in Syria over the last several days, and we continue to agree that the only real durable solution is a political solution that moves Syria towards an inclusive government that represents all Syrians," Obama said. Merkel urged parties to peace talks in Geneva, which are at risk of collapse, to agree humanitarian zones where fleeing Syrians could feel free from bombardment. She and Obama made clear that they did not favor the creation of classical "safe zones" which would need to be protected by foreign forces. The two leaders, who have developed a strong, pragmatic relationship after a rocky start in which Merkel refused to allow Obama, then a senator campaigning for the presidency, to speak at the Brandenburg Gate in 2008, touched on a range of issues, including Ukraine, North Korea, Libya and free trade talks. Obama praised Merkel for her "steady leadership" and handling of Europe's refugee crisis, saying her decision last year to welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany had put her "on the right side of history". He joked that Merkel, who lacks his easy-going charm, had a "really good sense of humor" that she didn't necessarily always share in public, drawing chuckles from the 61-year-old chancellor. RUSSIA & NORTH KOREA Both leaders expressed concerns about violations of a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and said sanctions against Russia, imposed by the West in response to Moscow's intervention there, could not be eased before the situation on the ground improved. Obama was also asked about North Korea's latest demonstration of military might - a submarine-launched ballistic missile test that Pyongyang described on Sunday as a "great success". A series of tests in recent months have increased tension on the Korean peninsula, angering ally China and triggering new United Nations sanctions. "What is clear is that North Korea continues to engage in continuous provocative behavior, that they have been actively pursuing a nuclear program, an ability to launch nuclear weapons," Obama said. "And although more often than not they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time they engage in these tests," he added. Ties between Washington and Berlin were damaged in 2013 by revelations of widespread surveillance of German citizens, including the bugging of Merkel's mobile phone, by the U.S. National Security Agency. But in recent years, the two Cold War allies have patched things up, coordinating closely on the Ukraine crisis and pushing for agreement on a free-trade deal between the United States and European Union before Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been difficult and time is running out. Thousands of protesters holding placards with slogans like "Stop TTIP" marched on Saturday to express their opposition to the deal. Europeans and Americans alike fear it could cost jobs and erode consumer protections. But Obama said he hoped the deal, which supporters say could boost economies on each side of the Atlantic by $100 billion, would be agreed this year. "Time is not on our side," he said as he and Merkel opened the Hanover Messe, a massive industrial trade fair. "If we don't complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe would mean this agreement won't be finished for quite some time." Now in the last nine months of his presidential term, Obama came to Germany after spending three days in London where he urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union in a June referendum, whose result could have global economic consequences. Earlier in the week, he met with Gulf leaders in Riyadh to try to allay fears that Washington had become less committed to their security, especially after the nuclear deal with Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia. Before Obama returns to Washington late on Monday, he and Merkel will hold talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Among the issues they are expected to discuss will be closer intelligence sharing following Islamist militant attacks in France and Belgium. "Everyone said things would slow down," Obama quipped about his final year in office. "It hasn't happened." (Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Writing by Noah Barkin, Editing by Ros Russell) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Peshawar: Pakistani police have arrested six suspects in the killing of a Sikh lawmaker and are denying a Taliban claim of responsibility, saying a rival within the Sikh community hired assassins to carry out the shooting. Sardar Suran Singh, a provincial adviser on minority affairs in northwestern Pakistan, was gunned down Friday as he headed home. The Pakistani Taliban claimed the attack. But Azad Khan, police chief in the Malakand district where the shooting took place, said Monday that a rival Sikh politician, Baldev Kumar, paid around $10,000 to have Singh killed. Kumar was among those in police custody, and does not yet have a lawyer. Sikhs are a tiny minority in Pakistan, and have been targeted by the Taliban and other Muslim extremist groups in the past. Islamabad: Pakistan National Assemblys Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs will be briefed on Monday on "activities of Indias intelligence agency in Pakistan", a media report said. Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz is likely to brief the committee, headed by Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, on the issue during an in-camera meeting, Dawn reported. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had briefed the Senate Defence Committee earlier this month and Senate last week on the issue, the daily said. The Inter-Services Public Relations released on 29 March a "confessional video statement of the arrested Indian spy" in which he had admitted to fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi. In his confessional statement, the RAW agent had stated that his mission in Pakistan was to hold meetings with Baloch insurgents and carry out subversive activities, the daily added. Mountain View, California: The two Swiss pilots taking turns to fly a solar-powered airplane around the world said Sunday the endeavor is not only a demonstration of the importance of renewable energy but also of the many challenges the human body can endure. Pilot Bertrand Piccard completed a risky, three-day flight across a great expanse of the Pacific Ocean while sleeping only 20 minutes at a time inside the plane's tiny cockpit with no heat or air conditioning and while having to keep constant contact with the Europe-based control centre. "You have interviews, navigation control, communications with the control centre in Monaco. You have health checks, a lot of health checks," Piccard said. "It's very active, there are a lot of things to do, but you can nevertheless enjoy it." Piccard said he uses self-hypnosis to keep his energy up and puts heating pads inside his shoes and gloves for warmth. He said he has no complaints about the ready-made meals he can warm up with a special heat packet and that can include risotto, chicken curry and potatoes. On Sunday, special guests, many of them with Google, which is sponsoring the project, had a first look at the plane inside a huge white tent at Moffett Airfield. The guests also mingled and took photos with Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg. Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, on Saturday night following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight from Hawaii without fuel. The landing came hours after Piccard made a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators below watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings. Piccard and Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. The trans-Pacific legs were the riskiest part of the plane's travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. "We have demonstrated it is feasible to fly many days, many nights, that the technology works" said Borschberg, 63, who piloted the plane a five-day trip from Japan to Hawaii and who kept himself alert by doing yoga poses and meditation. The project has helped to show that "as a human being you can be sufficiently sustainable to be able to fly at least five days in such a plane." The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way. The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, too. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavorable weather and a damaged wing. A month later, with better weather conditions, the plane left Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii. The plane's ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs over 5,000 pounds, about as much as a midsize truck. The plane's wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night. Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey. Borschberg said the plane will again take flight this week, and the next stop could be Phoenix. But that will depend on weather. The project, which is estimated to cost more than $100 million, began in 2002 to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. "I think innovation and pioneering must continue," Piccard said. "It must continue for better quality of life, for clean technologies, for renewable energy. This is where the pioneers can really express themselves and be successful." Solar-powered air travel is not yet commercially practical, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft. "Maybe it will be boring in 20 years when all the airplanes will be electric and people will say 'Oh it's routine.' But now, today, an airplane that is electric, with electric engines, that produces its own energy with the sun, it can never be boring," Piccard said. Until it gets boring, watch the landing of Solar Impulse 2 here: Hanover: US President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for European unity in the face of rising populism and scepticism Monday, warning this was a "defining moment" for the continent. "A strong and united Europe is a necessity for the world," Obama said in the German city of Hanover, in a landmark speech that carried the tone of a blunt challenge to friends. Visiting a region reeling from a migration crisis, economic stagnation and facing the prospect of Britain abandoning the European Union, Obama warned that "progress is not inevitable". Contrasting the prosperity of Europe today with the wars and hardship of the last century, Obama called on Europeans reject the "us-versus-them" politics that has fuelled the rise of the far right in countries from Poland to France. "Perhaps you need an outsider, somebody who is not European, to remind you of the magnitude of what you have achieved," he said, a day after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in a presidential vote in Austria. Hours before he and Chancellor Angela Merkel were to hold talks with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy, Obama painted today's Europeans as heirs to the popular movements that ended the Cold War. And he also recalled the devastating consequences of "intolerance and extreme nationalism" that drenched Europe in blood during the 20th century. "In the last century, just twice in 30 years, the forces of empire and intolerance and extreme nationalism consumed this continent and cities like this one were largely reduced to rubble," Obama said. "Tens of millions of men and women and children were killed." Don't turn inward While admitting there could be frustrations with European institutions, he argued that "turning inward" was not the answer to Europe's problems. As rightwing populism gains ground in parts of the continent in response to growing Islamic radicalism, he urged Europe to remain open. "I want you to remember that our countries are stronger, they're more secure and more successful when we integrate people of all backgrounds and faiths, and make them feel as one. And that includes our fellow citizens who are Muslim," he said. On a visit to Britain ahead of his arrival in Germany, the US president had also waded into an increasingly-bitter debate over the UK's membership in the European Union, urging Britons to vote against leaving the bloc in a June referendum. For much of Obama's seven years in the White House his relationship with Europe has been uneasy. Obama began his presidency with Europeans revelling in Washington's more relaxed approach to foreign policy than under his predecessor George W. Bush. But since then, Obama's star has dimmed, and the US president has become frustrated with Europe's inability to move quickly in response to the global recession or to the threat from jihadists. In a mark of that frustration, Obama bluntly told his audience that Europe needs to do more to shoulder the collective security burden. "Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence," Obama said, repeating a long-standing call for Nato allies to increase defence spending to at least two percent of economic output. More than half a century after the end of World War II, much of the continent, including economic power Germany, remains firmly under the umbrella of security provided by the United States. Pushing forward US-EU trade Obama stressed not only the need for European nations to work together, but to work with Washington to tackle a host of challenges, from Syria and Iraq to global trade and climate change. And he said he would send up to 250 more special forces military trainers to Syria to help rebels fighting Islamic State jihadists. His remarks came as Europe scrambles to try and limit the refugee flow into the bloc and the bloodshed in Syria. As he arrived in Germany on Sunday, Obama made a strong pitch for US-EU trade. "Angela and I agree that the United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations," said Obama of the vast EU-US trade agreement in the making which has run into strong public opposition. He called for the agreement to be sealed before the end of the year, even though tens of thousands marched through Hanover on the eve of his visit to protest against the treaty amid fears it would erode protection for workers and consumers. Both Obama and Merkel say the pact will provide a shot in the arm to Western economies. New York: Billionaire and US presidential hopeful Trump is favored to win in the five states that vote Tuesday -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. There are 21 states left in the primaries which are a miniature election spread across seven months where each party's candidates seek battle for nomination based on votes from their own tribe. Among the 5 states that vote Tuesday, Pennsylvania is the big prize. The reason is its quirky system and the mathematical possibilities it throws up. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich launched into a team effort Monday to deny Donald Trump the party's nomination, a late-in-the-game bid the billionaire frontrunner dismissed as an act of "desperation." Trump and Hillary Clinton both lead their rivals by double digits, reports CNN. The big story in Pennsylvania isnt what happens on Tuesday, but what happens after Tuesday. Only the 17 delegates awarded to the statewide winner will be bound to a candidateThe 54 district delegates (three awarded in each congressional district) will be selected individually by voters, and nowhere on the ballot will it indicate which candidate each delegate supports. This state sends more "unbound" delegates to the Republican convention than any other. Watch for Penn State, Indiana and California to see where the Republican party is headed. These are the numbers that will decide whether it is a contested convention or not in July. As per the latest reports, India has withdrawn the visa granted to Dolkun Isa the German based Uyghur activist following strong protests by China, who was termed by the Chinese as a 'terrorist'. India had earlier granted him visa to attend a conference on democracy in Dharamsala scheduled for later this month. Given asylum by Germany in 1990s, Dolkun stands accused by China for instigating violence in the Xinjiang region. Media had quoted Ministry of Home Affairs' sources as saying that at the time of granting the e-visa to Dolkun, the red-corner notice against him had not been detected. But red-corner notice apart, China has never clarified what the definition of a terrorist is perhaps because in Mandarin, words have multiple meanings that can often be diagrammatically opposite. That is why perhaps China considers Masood Azhar an apostle of peace, while some Chinese refer to The Dalai Lama as some sort of saboteur. Even at the recently held Raisina Dialogue 2016, the singular sour note was the retort by former Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxings saying, Your friend Dalai Lama is not the head of a country. He is only a political monk trying to divide his own motherland. Considering Li was speaking in Indias capital, such a remark was not only undiplomatic but reeked of arrogance that has become the hallmark chutzpah of many Chinese in recent times. Indias decision to grant visas to Uyghur activists is being deduced as intended to send a message to China for vetoing Masood Azhars designation as terrorist. But India did the right thing by cancelling Dolkuns visa once the red-corner notice came to light, notwithstanding the fact that he was probably labeled terrorist because Chinese machinations ensured that no one would veto the move or put it on technical hold as China had done in the case of Masood Azhar. But, let us hypothetically put aside the issue of the red-corner notice for a while which, according to the MHA, cropped up at a later stage. For a minute, it appeared that India had come full circle from the time when a few years back the President had to cancel his trip to Kolkata to attend an event, because The Dalai Lama was attending it and the Chinese had raised objections, so the Governor of West Bengal had to attend the event instead. But, while the red-corner issue in the case of Dolkun had not yet surfaced, a cross section came up against what was termed as upping the ante against China, even recommending that we should wait another 8-10 years. It was also opined that this upping the ante would hinder counter-terrorism cooperation from the Chinese side. What was left unsaid was perhaps the latent fear that China may attack us. It is reminiscent of a TV debate on the 19 km deep PLA intrusion in Depsang Plains during the erstwhile UPA regime, when a military veteran suggested that we should confront them or sit behind them in our own territory. A politician (better known as the Pole Tortoise who doesnt know how he got there, what to do and how to get down) retorted, General Sahib, aap to ladai karwa kar chhorroge. This tortoise appeared petrified that the next thing that may happen would be a nuclear attack by China. But let us take a peep into Chinas record. Chinas unrequited love for Masood Azhar has already been demonstrated twice, but that is just one issue. What about providing sanctuary to United Liberation Front of Assams Paresh Barua for months on Chinese soil after he was booted out from Bangladesh? Why was China accommodating him at Ruli? What is the difference between Paresh Barua, Masood Azhar and Dolkun Isa? What about Naga insurgents training in China for the past few decades? How were four Chinese nationals apprehended in Indian Territory with fake Indian documents on a mission to visit the Naga rebels? Why has China established the United Liberation Front of West, South East Asia (ULFWSEA), bringing nine major insurgent groups of northeast India, including the NSCN (K) and ULFA under one umbrella, concurrent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing the Act East Policy. Of course, unmarked Chinese origin illegal small arms flooding pan-India cannot be traced back but then there have been reports in the media of China providing small arms manufacturing capability to Kachen rebels in Myanmar and Indian Maoists. Today, President Xi Jinping is warning against foreign infiltration through religion but what about the atheist Maoists that China established the world over (Nepal and Burma, the New Peoples Army of Philippines, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Japanese Red Army, and Shining Path in Peru) and the killings and violence they wrought in those countries. Taking the above into account, what counter-terrorism can we expect from China, other than the ongoing facade of fake-smile and stab-in-the- back? What conceivable cooperation do we expect anyway that the Chinese intelligence would hand over Khaplang and Barua to us? How has Afghanistan benefited by handing over the East Turkestan Islamic Movement cadres to China, with China continuing to tacitly support Pakistans export of terror, both in Afghanistan and India? As to the recommendation that we wait another 8-10 years, does it imply after our encirclement is complete; CPEC, Gwadar, 18 Chinese strategic support bases (read military bases) in IOR and the ULFWSEA gone as strong as United State Wa Army (USWA), the other Chinese proxy in Myanmar already equipped with an array of Chinese weaponry including missile fitted helicopters? If this is not pusillanimous war mongering by China, what is? One look at recent developments in the South China Sea (SCS) tells you that China has no respect for global law, conventions or norms. China plundered Tibet of copper and gold deposits worth over US$ one trillion, in addition to silver, lead, zinc, lithium, and other raw materials, uranium and natural resources. China is leveling some 700 mountains to develop cities despite warnings of ecological disaster by geologists. They would have plundered the riches of Aksai Chin in the same fashion by now. China grabbed the Shaksgam Valley and claimed the whole of Arunachal Pradesh (90,000 sq kms of our territory) as late as 2005 again for the same reason, and is already mining uranium in northern Nepal. China has thrown its complete lot with Pakistan deliberately and has ignored India. So what 'upping the ante' are we talking about and what is the scare? China understands fully that the days of teaching lessons are gone. Attack across the LAC at any point can get it a bloody nose, which it cannot afford because of the self aggrandizement that China has very carefully orchestrated. That is why it is resorting to dirty pusillanimous war, or unrestricted war in Chinese parlance. China's behavior is that of a typical bully, that plays the psychological trump card: you get scared, they mount on your head; you look them in the eye, they respects you. Deceit and ambiguity are hallmarks of the Chinese policy. When Premier Li Peng visited India in 2001, it was he who first recommended joint exercises between the PLA and the Indian Military. The obvious aim included softening the blow of laying claim to entire Arunachal Pradesh four years later. With Isa Dolkun regretting the cancellation of his visa, and Naela Qadri Baloch saying, India lacks the political will to take an initiative in Balochistan, Commander in Chief Xi Jinping and protege Raheel Sharif would be popping the bubbly. But there is no need to lose heart. As Lord Krishna told Arjun a small ant in the ear of the elephant can bring it down to its knees. Same goes for the Dragopus (the Dragon-cum-Octopus), which China has transformed into. The Dragon also has a large soft belly and the octopus may well get entangled in a maze of nations that would come up at some point of time. Both China and Pakistan need to be paid back in the same coin, this being an era of dirty warfare. Besides, China does need our huge markets while we have other options like that of Japan, South Korean, Taiwan and goods from other countries till our own industrial base catches up. There is one last issue that needs to be examined; was the MHA unaware of the red-corner notice to Doklun while issuing the visa and cancelled it when the fact emerged, or was the visa issued knowing about the red-corner and revoked it later under pressure, irrespective of where it came from. Hopefully it was not the latter, but if it was indeed the case then a grossly wrong message has been conveyed to the bully, confirming that we are a soft state. But in the ultimate analysis, it is up to China to take a call whether they want friendship with India or want to keep stabbing us in the back. (The author is veteran Lieutenant General of the Indian Army) Srinagar: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday hit out at the Centre for cancelling the visa given to a Chinese dissident. "What was all that chest thumping earlier?" Omar asked on Twitter after India decided to withdraw the visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa apparently after protests by China over the issue. "For the last few days we were treated to lots of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this Govt is the 1st (first) to stand up to China," the National Conference leader said. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Isa was granted a tourist visa to travel to India this week for the conference in Dharamsala, which Tibetan leader-in-exile the Dalai Lama is also expected to attend. China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." ADEN Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focussed their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10. The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move towards peace. In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants. Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other. DEATHS A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. "It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighbouring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week. The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the U.N. Security Council's request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move towards peace. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Kuwait; Writing by Noah Browning and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Tom Heneghan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Barcelona The Exe Hotels chain is now operating the Exe Salamanca 4*, formerly Tryp, and Exe El Magistral 3* in Oviedo under lease agreements. With these two incorporations, Eurostars Hotel Company, the hotel division of Grupo Hotusa, has expanded its presence in Spain after the recent purchase of two hotels in Andalusia: Eurostars Gran Via 5* in Granada and Eurostars Sevilla Boutique 4*. Grupo Hotusa President Amancio Lopez Seijas says, "We aim to continue adding hotels in Spain through rental agreements, as is the case with these two hotels in Oviedo and Salamanca, or purchases, as we recently did with the two hotels in Andalusia." Exe Salamanca 4* is the group's third in that city, where it also operates the Eurostars Las Claras 4* and Exe Hall 88 Aparthotel 4*. Located in the centre of the city, just steps from the Plaza Mayor and other tourist attractions, Exe Salamanca 4* has 63 modern rooms with contemporary decoration, a buffet restaurant, lobby bar and two meeting halls for events with up to 140 guests. Exe Hotel El Magistral 3*, with 52 rooms, is the third establishment the company operates in Oviedo, in addition to Eurostars Hotel de la Reconquista 5* and Exe Oviedo Centro 4*. Located near the Cathedral and the Medieval city wall, Exe Hotel El Magistral 3* also has three meeting halls with natural light for events with up to 70 guests. The Exe Hotels portfolio now includes 40 establishments, 25 of which are in top Spanish cities. The chain is also present in various cities in Andorra, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Austria and Argentina, as well as Mexico and Colombia, where Exe Cities Reforma 4* in Mexico City (Mexico) and Exe Santafe Boutique Hotel 5* in Bogota (Colombia) joined the group earlier this year. Grupo Hotusa Set up in 1977 and with headquarters in Barcelona (Spain), Grupo Hotusa is a dynamic organisation composed of different companies related to the most diverse areas of the tourism sector. Aside from Eurostars Hotel Company, the organisation includes the world's biggest hotel consortium, Hotusa Hotels, with over 2,700 associated hotels worldwide; the hotel representative Keytel and the Restel reservation centre. Daniel Guillen Communications at HOTUSA Hotels 93 268 10 10 (Ext. 463) Hotusa Hotels S.A. There's still over a year left for the assembly polls, but former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh is already out there clocking more kilometres in the Punjab hinterland last month than in the 19 months since he defeated BJP heavyweight Arun Jaitley in Amritsar in May 2014. The freshly re-anointed Congress state party president is evidently a man in a hurry, his unusual, early-bird poll campaign galvanised by the daunting prospect of a twin electoral challenge in 2017-the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine and the rising new-kid-on-the-block, the Aam Aadmi Party. At both New Moti Bagh, Amarinder's imposing family palace in Patiala, and at his place in Chandigarh, it's already beginning to buzz like old times. State police posses posted at the gates are distinctly more polite. Inside, he happily receives a swelling stream of supporters; no one, including the odd critic there to complain, is turned away, perhaps to deflect old charges of being "inaccessible" and "surrounded by infernal coteries". advertisement Amarinder says he is intent on doing it differently this time. "No big rallies, at least not until the final few days before polling," he tells India Today, taking a cursory last look in the mirror before heading out to what he hopes will be "a no-holds-barred" interaction with some 1,000 students on the Panjab University's sprawling campus in Chandigarh on January 28. SAD and BJP contested as an alliance The 73-year-old's return to the helm (for the third time) on November 27 reflects a definite rethink on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's earlier moves to try and effect a 'generational shift' in the states. The induction of Pratap Bajwa, 58, in March 2012 following the party's second consecutive defeat in the state, had clearly failed to work, the resulting factionalism leading to a majority of leaders rallying behind Amarinder. So what inspired the change of heart in Delhi? "I really have no idea," says Amarinder. "Rahul called me shortly after my return from London in early November saying they had decided to make me the PCC president," he says. (Insiders insist the Congress high command was unnerved by the Captain's threats on floating a separate party, a rapprochement seems to have done the trick.) Amarinder, who had famously faulted Rahul Gandhi for not knowing India enough on September 20, has turned discernibly cautious. "I can tell you now after my interaction with him (Rahul) over the past few months, I have found him very perceptive," he says. "No one is born a leader. People build themselves and mature. And I am sure when the day comes, he (Rahul) will be a great leader for this nation," he says acknowledging the latter's efforts to engage with Punjab. "He is very receptive. We agree most of the time. But he often has an argument that is stronger than mine," Amarinder concedes in a telling redefinition of his relationship with the "de facto Congress boss". Party sources in Delhi, however, say the decision to redeploy Amarinder was essentially prompted by the realisation that Punjab, where the ruling SAD-BJP coalition is facing 10 years of anti-incumbency, represents the surest opportunity of a turnaround in political fortunes following the string of drubbings since Lok Sabha 2014. advertisement Back at the law auditorium in Panjab University, Amarinder walks in to a thunderous standing ovation. And just as he wanted, it's a 'no-holds-barred' discussion: "You want to be chief minister. But who will be the real movers? You or the coterie that surrounds you?" asks Tanheer Bariana, a sprightly young student of human rights. The Captain blinks, a trifle unsure, but is intent on responding: "As a chief minister, one needs both capable as well as loyal people." Responding to a similar query, he says, "No one can function in isolation. I have a mind of my own. I listen to everyone and take an informed decision." The former CM, however, seems aware of the perils of continuing with the 'discredited' associations from his previous (2002-'07) tenure. The familiar backdrop of faces from the past years is conspicuously missing at this interface. He was similarly the only one onscreen during an engaging Skype session with college girls from Chabbewal, Hoshiarpur, on January 22. Ten days later, listening to farmers' problems in Sandhaur village or responding to young people's questions at the Turning Point marriage palace in Malerkotla, only local partymen, including ex-MLA Razia Sultana accompany Amarinder. In public, at least for now, the 'coterie' is not visible. advertisement "Amarinder is the most credible face in Punjab, untainted by corruption or the trading of falsehoods," says ex-finance minister and chief minister Parkash Singh Badal's estranged nephew Manpreet Badal, 53, who merged his People's Party of Punjab (PPP) with the Congress in January. Shake on that: Amarinder Singh works the crowds. Photo: M Zhazo Twenty years Amarinder's junior at Dehradun's Doon School, Manpreet, who many say is positioning himself for a significant national role in the party, believes the former possesses "the right mix of charisma and fearlessness that will put Congress in the lead in 2017". He points to how after leaving the Indian army, the Captain reclaimed his commission when war broke out with Pakistan in the monsoon of 1965. Manpreet also cites the former CM's success in taking on the "money and muscle" of the Shiromani Akali Dal headed by his uncle and cousin, deputy CM Sukhbir Badal. "He frightens them," Manpreet says. That Amarinder's return has the ruling alliance jittery is already showing. From being dubbed a "chronic turncoat" by CM Badal, vitriolic attacks by state BJP chief Kamal Sharma to being accused of being "hand-in-glove with Khalistani radicals", the Captain has become the centre of their barbs. Even the AAP's Arvind Kejriwal, when he launched his broadside against the Badals and PM Narendra Modi at the Maghi Mela on January 14, focused much of his attack on Amarinder, accusing him of being in cahoots with the ruling clan. advertisement After close to five decades in politics, 2017 may well be the ex-royal's final crack at the hustings. It may also be his trickiest. The ruling SAD-BJP dispensation is, as Manpreet says, flush with resources (he calls it "loot") accumulated over 10 continuous years in office. And if the last polls-when deputy CM Sukhbir splurged generously and micromanaged the electoral arithmetic-are anything to go by, Amarinder could well find himself sitting it out again. He is, however, convinced that the anti-incumbency has swelled far above the threshold where results can be 'managed'. "I have never seen a government so hated as these chaps," he says, confident that the "continuing ghastliness that began with police opening fire on villagers protesting the tearing of the Granth Sahib at Behbal Kalan village of Faridkot (October 14) to the gruesome murder of Dalit Bheem Tank, inside a SAD leader's farmhouse in Abohar (December 11), to the outrage in the CM's own constituency, Lambi, after police forcibly snatched the body of a 12-year-old schoolgirl crushed to death by a SAD leader's bus" has pushed Punjabi voters far beyond "Sukhbir's machinations". There's also the small matter of the AAP, who former Punjab Congress chief Bajwa believes is "the real threat". "We (Congress) somehow need to address and win over younger voters in the 18-30 age group who have only experienced the miserable governance of the Akali Dal and have no memory of Congress rule," he says. The challenge, says an Amarinder loyalist who wished to remain anonymous, "will be to convince voters that the Congress under him can ring in systemic change...young voters aren't simply looking for a change in government. Their parents have spent years switching regimes. They want assurance of a systemic change and that, whether it can deliver or not, is what AAP is promising them." "I am 73, my time is almost over. I am doing this for you! You are the future subedars (rulers) of Punjab," Amarinder tells 2,000 wildly cheering youngsters in Malerkotla. "How many of you are my friends on Facebook?" he asks, and at least 500 hands go up. "There you are, my friends!" His campaign is pointedly talking to young people, the nine million (of the 2.9 crore Punjabis) between 18-35 years. He is 'all ears' whether it is Samir Malik, a Muslim primary school teacher in his mid-20s, or Swarn Singh Bhangoo, an evidently inebriated young farmer. Happily wading into the crowd at the end of the interaction, an angry young Sikh steps up to ask, "A Congress government sent soldiers into Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple) in 1984. You think that was right?" Amarinder doesn't blink: "Galat si! (It was wrong)," he says, gently reminding the youngster that he had quit the Congress then on the issue. "Just like four years later, in 1988, I quit as minister when the Akali government sent police into Harmandar Sahib (Operation Black Thunder)," he adds. The Captain has just won himself a new supporter and he's just 20. For a politician who owes his success to his fearless nature, both in taking on the party high command like he did by legislating the abrogation of all water-sharing agreements with contiguous states in July 2005, or in targeting the Badals, Amarinder says he wants to run a "positive campaign" this time. Yes, that's right, no Badal-bashing. He already has a team of economists and former civil servants working to flesh out a vision for Punjab that he says "will offer people new hope and real alternatives on livelihood issues". From Malerkotla, we drive to Zirakpur outside Chandigarh, for what will be his last pit stop of the day-the wedding reception of Akali leader Deepinder Dhillon's son. Weddings in Punjab are amazing barometers of political loyalties. That Amarinder was the 'guest of honour' was a clear sign of the direction Dhillon was headed. (And for sure, Dhillon, who was expelled from SAD soon after, is now back in the Congress.) It's an interesting drive back. Amarinder, in the front seat of the Toyota SUV, is engrossed-browsing social networks, responding to queries from supporters. He asks Nivran Sandhu, his 27-year-old grandson, for updates on 'page views' and 'shares' on posts about his youth interaction programmes. Through the two-hour-long drive, Amarinder looks up from his smartphone only occasionally-once to ask a staff officer to make arrangements for the cook in Chandigarh to learn the recipe for a chicken snack served at a friend's home. "Ask him to use boneless chicken, it's nicer than on-the-bone," Amarinder says before going back to his new FB friends. Manpreet is confident that the Congress's traditional votebase in the state's three regions-Majha, Doaba and Malwa-will hold and benefit the party in what is evidently emerging as a three-cornered contest. "It won't be easy, but it is doable," says the former SAD leader who opted to join the Congress under Amarinder in the face of many reported overtures from AAP. Meanwhile, Amarinder admits with characteristic candour that 2017 will be his last shot at electoral politics. But the man is clearly keen: "I essentially remain the soldier I started out as. I have never ever backed off from a fight," he says, promising to give it his best shot. Follow the writer on Twitter @Asitjolly --- ENDS --- Branding his state 'Sunrise Andhra Pradesh', chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is capitalising on a slew of opportunities. "Every state is blessed with resources and manpower. But it can progress only if the government is progressive, visionary and investor-friendly," he says. Starting virtually from scratch-most industrial investments in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh were around Hyderabad-on June 2, 2014, following the hiving off of Telangana, Naidu is pushing quick and hard for rapid growth through a mix of public and private investments. Not a week passes without him interacting with potential investors across the country. He has travelled abroad and even attended the 2015 and 2016 World Economic Forum sessions hard-selling the state. On March 11 and 12, he was in London, to woo investors in the United Kingdom. advertisement "There will be no hassles and you'll be given all help. Clearances will be given in 21 days-you'll never regret investing in the state," is his sales pitch. "I aim to transform AP into a manufacturing and export hub, foster information technology hardware and software facilities," says Naidu, emphasising the need to resuscitate manufacturing and enable job creation to reverse the prolonged economic slump. He is keen to tap the potential of port-led development, rich minerals, water and land availability, 24x7 power supply and a 974-km-long coastline, the longest for any state. Industry has responded overwhelmingly to the bonhomie between AP and the Centre. Post the split, Naidu emphasises, AP has attracted Rs 4,67,577 crore worth of investments through the 331 MoUs signed so far with Indian and foreign investors, including those from the US, China and several Asian countries. The investments, if realised, may result in 9.58 lakh jobs. Most MoUs and announcements were made during the CII Partnership Summit the state hosted mid-January in Visakhapatnam. To ensure that these fructify, Naidu plans to get action-taken reports on the status and progress of the investment proposals. This is vital for a state which has little to boast about, except for the industries in and around Visakhapatnam, the smaller port town of Kakinada and Sri City, the 7,500-acre multi-product vibrant Special Economic Zone near the state's border with Tamil Nadu. Hamstrung by the loss of Hyderabad to Telangana, the CM is pulling out all stops to welcome investments to the residuary AP. To this end, the state has announced a first-ever retail policy that includes goods and grocery business retail enterprises under the Essential Services Maintenance Act, to leverage on costs, particularly of labour, compared with China. He is also expecting additional incentives from the central government to draw more international investors. "If there is no industry, there will be no income," he says. "So, we have asked for export manufacturing incentives for countries who want to invest in India." The results are beginning to show. With no significant urban area or industrial hub, AP registered a growth rate of 8.39 per cent in 2014-15-a remarkable achievement for a truncated state. This despite the state's grim financial situation. Revenue deficit shot up to Rs 7,919 crore by mid-February as against the Rs 7,299 crore projected in the budget estimates for 2015-16. The fiscal deficit stood at Rs 19,092 crore against the estimated Rs 17,584 crore for the year. Revenue receipts so far are only Rs 83,826 crore against the projected Rs 1,12,852 crore. "Andhra Pradesh started off with a revenue deficit of about Rs 16,000 crore following bifurcation. This posed an enormous challenge for us, but still we notched a growth rate of 8.39 per cent, increased it to 10.5 per cent so far in 2015-16 and are targeting 15 per cent growth in the GSDP for next year," says finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu. "In India, the future happens in Andhra Pradesh first. The government is pro-poor and pro-market and the state is showing the way for the transformation to become the economic engine of India," says minister of state for finance, Jayant Sinha. advertisement The CM draws inspiration from the fact that the World Bank, on September 14, 2015, ranked the state second, with a score of 70.12 per cent in ease of doing business, just below Gujarat which topped with a score of 71.14 per cent. Simultaneously, Naidu has drawn up broad-based priorities for industrial development taking into account the inherent strength of each district with respect to various sectors. Sensing that the most visible impact of reforms is made relatively easily in the retail sector, AP's retail policy allows enterprises to be open seven days a week from 6 am to 11 pm, employ people on an hourly basis but limit the number of workers to 25 per cent of the firm's total employees. The government is also allotting land to retailers to set up distribution centres and warehouses under the commercial category to be valid for 33 years. The retail policy has enthused the big players-Walmart India, Future Group, Spencer's and Arvind Lifestyle-to set up large format stores involving investments of at least Rs 1,500 crore that will create 25,000 new jobs. "AP's retail trade policy is a new beginning and a good start," says Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani, who plans to set up new stores in seven cities before the year-end. Walmart India CEO Krish Iyer says they are looking at opening 15 new stores apart from a facility to source farm produce from small and marginal growers across AP. The state constitutes about eight per cent of India's total retail market of 13 million stores and the sector contributes about 33 per cent to AP's GSDP. advertisement Naidu is also ensuring that infrastructure keeps pace with desired development. Having Visakhapatnam port and Dugarajapatnam, which has been identified for promotion as Asia's major port by the central government, and a host of 14 other minor ports shortlisted for rejuvenation, state officials are also aiming to attract investments in infrastructure. "When Singapore port can contribute seven per cent of maritime trade to its GDP, AP has the potential to outshine it with 14 ports," claims Naidu. advertisement Besides this, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and the proposed capital of Amaravati are to be developed as mega cities and a tri-city corridor is to connect the three to boost the economy. Driven by the ease of doing business and the promise of high-speed internet connectivity by July 2016, AP is already stealing Tamil Nadu's thunder. A number of big-ticket projects bound for TN have already come into the swanky new business district, Sri City, 55 km from Chennai. It is well connected by rail and road networks with access to four ports and four airports. Chinese handset brand Gionee has taken a big step to full-fledged local manufacturing by starting production of one of its models at the Taiwan manufacturing giant Foxconn's Sri City plant. Chinese solar cell maker Xi'an Longi Silicon Materials Corporation, is setting up a Rs 1,500 crore solar module and cell manufacturing plant in Sri City. Apart from the ease of setting up business, Naidu is also helping with costs by doling out tax incentives. Hero MotoCorp, for example, has been given cent per cent exemption on value-added tax on bikes produced in the state. It is to set up a Rs 2,200 crore manufacturing facility in Chittoor district on 600 acres given by the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation at Rs 1 lakh an acre. The state is also offering power subsidy of one rupee a unit and giving land at throwaway prices. The state sits pretty on 7.64 lakh acres (see graphic). Among the earliest decisions Naidu took post-division was to direct revenue authorities in all 13 districts to identify unencumbered parcels of government land for a land bank. In his quest to maximise investments and create jobs, Naidu is providing every village with 1,000 mbps broadband connectivity and ensuring there is at least one e-literate person in every home. He wants to quickly close the skills gaps with contiguous Tamil Nadu which, because of its large pool of engineers, already has the second-largest concentration of IT firms after Karnataka in south India. "To top all this, creating an economic development board, like in Singapore and Turkey, is a step in the right direction," says GMR Group chairman G. Mallikarjuna Rao, who is also AP State Skill Development Corporation chairman. Naidu has fostered widespread wider optimism. "He is clear about the need for more investments and industry, grasps issues quickly and makes it easy without compromising the interests of the state," says Suresh Chitturi, chairman, CII, AP. "Andhra Pradesh is poised to take over from Gujarat as the No. 1 state," says Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, impressed by the detailed planning and long-term vision. Naidu is pragmatic and realises it is only possible to take one step at a time. He wants to AP to be among the top three states by 2022, become a top economy with the highest happiness index by 2029 and the best state by 2050. Follow the writer on Twitter @AmarnathKMenon --- ENDS --- With his familiar mop of white hair, 91-year-old Krishen Khanna came in to the champagne lounge looking for his progeny, as he likes to call his children, all of whom were in attendance to witness him receive and give out the inaugural edition of the India Today Art Awards, and by the time he left, he had learned to click his first selfie. Accompanying him was 93-year-old art legend S.H. Raza, who had just had his opening at the Vadehra Art Gallery, and 92-year-old artist Ram Kumar was represented by his son Utpal and grandson Avi, while the diminutive Uma Padmanabhan came in place of her father, 92-year-old K.G. Subramanian, who was unable to travel from Baroda. These four grand old men of Indian art, like the sages from which all lineage was sprung, were surrounded by India's top contemporary artists, from Rameswar Broota to Anju and Atul Dodiya, Himmat Shah and Jitish and Reena Kallat, in a rare coming together at this, the first India Today Art Awards, sponsored by DLF Crest in partnership with The Leela Palace, Delhi, EDC and India Art Fair. Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, India Today Group, Aroon Purie, sparked off the evening with his video address, explaining the long-time genesis of the awards in his personal passion for art. "We stand today at that point when the influence of the modern on the contemporary is completing a stage of transition. We are proud of our past and eager for our future. Art can be a great force for India, and we at India Today are committed to supporting that," he said. advertisement Group Editorial Director, Broadcast and New Media, India Today Group, Kalli Purie, explained how the idea was planted, nurtured and finally implemented as the brand celebrates its 40th anniversary. "We wanted all of our country's artists with the most unique perspectives in one room, '' she said. In the days before the award, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei had spent 48 hours with an India Today team in Levsos, Greece. The provocative image of him lying face down on the pebbled shore, reminding the world of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi who had washed up on the shores of Bodrum in Turkey in 2015, been the most powerful use of art to make a point in recent times. The image was exhibited at the India Art Fair in New Delhi, where India Today showcased images of India's finest artists from its archives shot for the magazine over the past few decades in a show titled 'The Artists'. At the awards, Ai Weiwei shared a video message, saying provocation came as a natural outcome of one's work and that being picked as the International Spotlight "is encouraging for me to be active and be part of political discussions and change". The evening also witnessed a first-of-its-kind panel discussion, which addressed some of the most basic questions of art for a wider televised audience than the art community is usually used to, moderated by India Today Television's Karan Thapar. The panel brought some of the finest names in Indian art together on stage: contemporary artists Atul Dodiya, Bharti Kher, Jitish Kallat, along with photographer Dayanita Singh and Modern artist Anjolie Ela Menon debated with Thapar the primary question of "What is art?" Menon said: "It means different things to different people. It absorbs me, drives me, has a life of its own and I am a slave to it." To this, Kher added: "Art is all about faith and the object you create takes you on a journey. Our madness is our companion and we love it when fellow travellers talk to us." The conversation traversed the spaces of what art is defined by and what kind of viewers are attuned to it, whether its purpose and meaning needs to be more explicit and approachable, and whether issues like money matter to the artist. Asked if art is perplexing, Jitish Kallat said: "Art is a conspiracy in your mind at the moment of viewing... sometimes as an artist you see the viewer jaywalking away from your intention." Asked if art is lucrative, Dayanita Singh said: "You need to be the author of your own work and own it. There's too much emphasis on the buyer but art is an expression of what the artist wants." advertisement On the issue of works fetching high prices in today's world, Atul Dodiya said, "Tyeb Mehta's name was not mentioned through his life but when his work fetched an astronomical amount, suddenly everyone was writing about him." More inspirationally, Dodiya explained, artists are driven to work with what material is available to them, if too poor to afford canvas and paints, then watercolours, if not watercolours, then ball pen, if not even that they would make art of tea bags and rice, he said to rousing applause. Karan Thapar with panelists Dayanita Singh, Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, Bharti Kher and Anjolie Ela Menon. Photo: Rajwant Rawat Awards were given across nine categories and winners were selected by a jury comprising Aroon Purie, Vasant Valley School Chairperson Rekha Purie, healthcare entrepreneur Malvinder Singh, Chairman of the Ambuja Neotia Group Harshavardhan Neotia, philanthropist founder of India's first privately-funded museum of art Kiran Nadar, collector Lekha Poddar, managing director and head of equity at Darashaw & Co. Dara Mehta, restaurateur and writer Aman Nath, International Director of Asian Art at Christie's auction house Amin Jaffer, and India Today's Group Visual Director Rohit Chawla. advertisement The ceremony began with honouring the doyens of Indian art: Ram Kumar, K.G. Subramanyan, S.H. Raza and Krishen Khanna. "I don't know what to say," said Khanna, making his acceptance speech on behalf of the doyens. "From the time we began to now, it has been a long journey. Me and my contemporaries, we went through difficult times. But fortunately, we have come to a situation which is fruitful.'' Some of the other highlights of the evening were the presence of rare stars, often talked of but rarely in attendance, such as art writer B.N. Goswamy, Rameswar Broota, and an emotional cheer for late artist Mrinalini Mukherjee, just ahead of her first death anniversary. Young and edgy artists and gallerists such as Parmesh Sahani of the Godrej Culture Lab, Priyanka and Prateek Raja of Experimenter, and Asim Waqif stole the show entirely. The evening saw collectors such as Shalini Passi and Anupam Poddar rubbing shoulders with artists such as Jayshree Burman, Paresh Maity, and Subodh Gupta. As the curtain came down on the first India Today Art Awards there was a sense that the conversation on art was only just beginning. advertisement Follow the writer on Twitter @prachibhuchar --- ENDS --- Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, 72, is the man facing the fire after solar scam accused Saritha Nair told a Judicial Commission that she paid him a Rs 1.9-crore bribe. The embattled CM spoke to Associate Editor Jeemon Jacob. Excerpts: Q. Did you take money from Saritha Nair? A. Never. I've never taken a bribe in my whole life. I came into politics to serve the people and not to make profits from the offices I hold. You can crucify Oommen Chandy all you want with the 'revelations' of Saritha Nair. But I've not taken any money from her. advertisement Q. Do you think there's a political conspiracy afoot with these late revelations? A. Of course, there is a political conspiracy. The Opposition in Kerala has lost its confidence and political will. Saritha has been out of jail since 2014 and she's been meeting mediapersons ever since. She has never raised allegations against me before. I also deposed before the judicial commission for 14 hours. Her lawyer never raised these questions there. Q. Do you have any evidence to show that she had conspired to raise these allegations against you and your family? A. I can't reveal the evidence now. But Saritha herself has told the media that she was offered a 100 million rupees by CPI(M) leaders to raise these allegations. She has not disowned her statement. One of the bar owners, Elegance Binoy, has also stated before the media that she met Saritha before the latter deposed before the commission. All my political life, I've worked with a clear conscience. I do hope people will realise this and reject all the allegations. Q. Do you regret appointing such shady characters as your personal staff? A: I'm a person who wants to do good for the people. When I take a hundred decisions, sometimes 10 of them may be wrong. I might have committed mistakes but I've rectified those when it came to my notice. I've never done a wrong deliberately. I've also not helped the solar scam accused or given them political patronage. When the case surfaced, I ordered strong action against the accused. --- ENDS --- The group of a dozen Musahar women, the lowest of the low among the scheduled castes, had travelled over 230 km from Bairia block of West Champaran district. Now they were here at Lalu Prasad's sprawling 10, Circular Road residence in Patna, being ushered in for an audience with the Rashtriya Janata Dal boss. But there's little time for pleasantries-the women unleash a volley of demands: "We don't have land"; "We haven't got a house under Indira Awaas"; "Where are the job cards?"; "We want schools for our children...please talk to collector sahib". Seated on a rattan chair, Lalu teases them for a while. "But why come to me? This is an administrative issue. Go to (chief minister) Nitish Kumar, he is the bada sahib, let him take a call," he says in his thick Bhojpuri accent, (still unaffected by his decades in Patna). But the women are equal to the task. "No, you are the bada sahib, we may be illiterate, but we are not fools," they say, standing their ground. advertisement So a call is promptly placed to the district magistrate. Lalu tells the IAS officer to listen to the women's complaints. The phone is then passed to one of them. "Hello, tum hamare yahan kyon nahin aati ho?" a woman in her 30s wants to know, having overcome her initial struggle with the phone. "Arre, it is a male officer, tell him kyon nahi aate ho," Lalu intervenes, asking her to correct the gender even as he rolls around with laughter. He finally takes the phone back and sums up the issues. The officer is told to do everything he can and submit a compliance report. This is what Lalu does-injecting a sense of empowerment and belief in people who call on him, that they will get relief, that their work will be done. Though the BJP sees red in Lalu's growing interventions (Opposition leader Prem Kumar says he's "acting like a super chief minister...someone who has authority without any responsibility"), the numbers visiting his home are surging. "Laluji bahut badal gaye lagte hain (Lalu seems to have changed a lot), he does not scold anyone," says Ashok Kumar of Nawada, who visited the RJD boss to seek a farmer's subsidy. Lalu, as usual, is unperturbed about the criticism. "Who can stop me from meeting the people? ...the people of Bihar have given us a huge mandate," he says. Indeed, it has even had a sobering effect. Making up for lost time Having been on the political margins for over a decade since the RJD's drubbing in the 2005 assembly polls, it's only in November 2015 that Lalu has managed to bounce back. Now he's the leader of the largest party in the mahagathbandhan led by JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar, controlling 12 heavyweight portfolios, including road construction, buildings, health and finance. But in this new phase of life, Lalu has quickly discovered that though he may be the most popular politician in Bihar, there is little recall of how he "empowered the masses" when he last ruled as chief minister 19 years ago. Indeed, the fodder scam case that forced him to step down in July 1997 has largely overshadowed his governance achievements in the eye of political observers. Not much survives of his governance legacy either. There are no portraits, no milestones, no plaques left from that time. Even the chapter on his life, 'Mitti ke Gaurav,' was deleted from the Class VIII Hindi book in 2007 when Nitish was ruling with the BJP. Today, Lalu, already convicted in one fodder scam case, perhaps sees the latest mandate as the last opportunity to cement his stature as a leader of the masses. Almost a thousand people come to meet him in Patna every day. The willing listener in Lalu refuses no one, even when a problem is beyond his influence. Like when a young man from Nalanda (Nitish's hometown) wanted help getting back his wife who had eloped with someone. Lalu played patient listener, but since sympathy itself is no solution, for good measure he also called the cops to take up the man's case. advertisement The 'super CM' tag, then, is not idle gossip. From questioning a sub-inspector for branding an "innocent" a Naxalite in Samastipur to taking a health official in Saharsa to task for missing medicines at a primary health centre, Lalu is stopping at nothing, or nobody, as he pulls up public officials-from the chief secretary to a police station clerk-to deliver his brand of instant justice. Former Rajya Sabha member Shivanand Tewari says, "Lalu always had excellent chemistry with the people. But he's probably more eager to deliver this time, thanks to the massive mandate." The taskmaster When his two sons, Tejaswi and Tej Pratap, returned home after being sworn in as ministers on November 20, the first thing Lalu apparently told them was to sack all favour-seekers posing as friends. The first one to go was a young man who had been working as Tej Pratap's secretary. Many others also got the sack. advertisement Lalu knows well that there are many who hope his sons will create the same problems his infamous brothers-in-law, Sadhu and Subhash Yadav, did for the RJD in its 15-year rule. The sons have been told to be prudent over expressing opinions or writing on government files. "Remember, there are people waiting to record everything you say or do. Be on your guard," is the commandment. He has also ensured that the duo, though entitled to ministerial bungalows, stay put at the family's 10, Circular Road residence. Trusted IAS officers Sudhir Kumar and R.K. Mahajan, from Lalu's days at the Centre, now manage Tejaswi's roads department and Tej Pratap's health department respectively. Though his party has never been famous for upholding the rule of law, the RJD boss has been, of late, doing everything to change that old 'jungle raj' perception. So when extortionists killed two engineers in Samastipur in December, it was Lalu who was talking of stern action (which even turned into a war of words, alliance partner JD(U) not taking kindly to being lectured on, of all things, law and order). In January, when a woman charged JD(U) MLA Sarfaraz Alam of misbehaving with her, Lalu was again the first to demand action against the lawmaker (incidentally, the son of RJD MP Taslimuddin). "Maa-bahan se battamiji karne wala par karyavahi hona chahiye," Lalu declared, in a complete departure from the past when he used to maintain a studied silence on such issues. Again, the RJD suspended its MLA, Rajballabh Yadav, who is accused of raping a teenager. advertisement Meanwhile, with Nitish's elevation as JD(U) chief being linked to his national ambitions, Lalu Prasad is expected to help with his larger social base. On the face of it, it sounds perfect, as Nitish's national role will open the ground for Lalu's sons in Bihar. But will the Bihar CM's national role come in conflict with Lalu's ambition for his sons? For now, the RJD boss is unwilling to look too far ahead, except to say that all socialist friends need to bury their egos and join hands. "Bihar has already shown a way to the country. It's high time all of us came together," that's all he's willing to commit to. Follow the writer on Twitter @Amitabh1975 --- ENDS --- In his new avatar, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi is keen to assume new identities, seek new alliances, broker peace among the old guard in a bid to win over poll-bound states On February 5, in an informal interaction with journalists, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi suddenly revealed a new identity-that of a Kashmiri. Asked if the party was keen to cobble together a government in Jammu & Kashmir in alliance with the National Conference, given the quagmire the BJP-PDP coalition is in after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's demise, Rahul did not give a straight answer. Instead, he said, "I'm a Kashmiri and the people of Kashmir want to protect Kashmiriyat." One-quarter Kashmiri through his grandmother Indira Gandhi, this was a badge he hadn't embraced until now. This is indeed a new Rahul, eager to assume new identities, create new political buzzwords, and seek out new friends. Sources close to him say the transformation has happened with a single objective in mind-to create an anti-Modi axis by uniting all the opposition forces. And though the Grand Alliance's success against the BJP in the Bihar assembly polls has been the catalyst, Rahul wants one change in the narrative: the pivot around which this axis revolves must be the Congress. advertisement "Rahul believes that Modi is the antithesis to his idea of India, and that's why he is ready to go any length to fight him," says a Congress Rajya Sabha MP. "That the prime minister has made little attempt to reach out to Rahul has also resulted in a bitter and unhealthy rivalry between the two." The last straw was the National Herald case, which the Gandhi family sees as a below-the-belt attack by the saffron party. For now, Rahul has set a one-point agenda for his party-hit the Modi government hard at every opportunity. Till now, the Congress has managed to block the passage of two big-ticket reforms of the NDA government, the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and the GST Bill. Another big gain, Rahul believes, was reinforcing the perception that the Modi government is pro-rich. "The 'suit-boot sarkar' jibe has forced the Modi government to recycle, rebrand and celebrate Congress policies. Look at MNREGA," says the party's communication in-charge, Randeep Singh Surjewala. But a bigger revenge may come in Arunachal Pradesh, which is under President's Rule after the Centre dismissed the Congress-led state government. The Nabam Tuki regime had been on the verge of collapse, with over 20 Congress MLAs pledging support to rebel minister Kalikho Pul. In a meeting in Delhi with Rahul earlier this month, the rebel MLAs reportedly agreed on a reconciliation formula. If a united Congress stakes claim, the governor will have no option but to invite it to form the government, causing huge embarrassment to the BJP. "If Rahul can resolve the differences between Tuki and Pul, this episode may become a blessing in disguise as it will be a huge loss of face for Modi," says a Congress Rajya Sabha MP. With five states going to polls in May, the Congress strategy seems to revolve around replicating the Bihar model. All the warring factions of the West Bengal Congress have buried the hatchet and have asked the central leadership to join hands with the Left to counter the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government. But this will not be easy because in Kerala, where the Congress is in power, the principal opposition is the Left. Within the CPI(M) too, there are two views: party general secretary Sitaram Yechury is open to "being friends with the Congress in Bengal" while his predecessor Prakash Karat's dead against it. advertisement In Tamil Nadu, where the Congress is a minor player, talks of rebuilding the alliance between the Congress and the DMK have again gained ground, especially after the Chennai floods. But DMK chief M. Karunanidhi's son Stalin is a stumbling block, though his daughter, Kanimozhi, who enjoys a cordial relationship with Rahul, is open to a partnership. Rahul's biggest achievement, however, has been putting an end to the cold war between state president E.V.K.S. Elangovan and ex-finance minister P. Chidambaram. Chidambaram's son Karthi was involved in a bitter war of words with Elangovan, who had been handpicked by Rahul. Unlike in the past, when Rahul strongly believed in shutting out dissidents, he reached out to Chidambaram and the two state leaders now share "more than a working relationship", according to sources. T his is Rahul's new avatar. He does not hold grudges and is ready to forgive and move on. The best example of this newfound management style is Captain Amarinder Singh, who was a bitter critic of Rahul until two months ago. The Gandhi scion not only named Amarinder president of the Punjab Congress, he's also set up a communication hotline with the ex-CM. advertisement Rahul at University of Hyderabad, to protest the Rohith Vemula suicide. Photo: Mohammed Aleemuddin In Assam, Rahul has dumped the idea of an alliance and decided to go it alone under the leadership of three-time CM, Tarun Gogoi. Two factors worked against an alliance with the AIUDF, the probable ally in the state. A pre-poll tie-up with AIUDF, perceived to be the party backing the interests of 'illegal' Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants, could polarise the Hindu votes in favour of the BJP. Also, the party could not reach a consensus over seat sharing. Assam is politically significant as it's the only poll-bound state where the Congress and BJP are in a direct contest. The result will have long-term political implications because it could be the first major victory in two years for the Congress, if it pulls it off. But in Kerala, the state he's visited the most since his 56-day-long sabbatical last year, Rahul has been unable to set a divided house in order so far. As if the public spat between Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and state president V.M. Sudheeran, a Rahul favourite, was not enough, the leaking of a letter written by home minister Ramesh Chennithala to the Congress president alleging that Chandy was acting against the interest of Hindus, further embarrassed the party. And with Chandy now embroiled in the 'solar scam', the party seems to have given up hope on keeping power in the state. advertisement Apart from his state management, Rahul has also put to rest rumours of a revolt against him by the party's old guard. Barring general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi, he now has a cordial working relationship with veterans like Ahmed Patel, Anand Sharma and Kamal Nath. Having eased these complications, Rahul is now focusing single-mindedly on Modi, and eyeing the five upcoming Assembly elections as the first step towards 2019. Follow the writer on Twitter @KDscribe --- ENDS --- Deep inside India's most celebrated big cat haven-the Panna Tiger Reserve-a red line, freshly painted over the khaki outcrops of ancient Vindhyan sandstone, marks the alignment of the proposed 77-metre-high, 2.03 km-long Dhaudan dam on Madhya Pradesh's Ken river. It will be the first of some 3,000 big dams and storage structures that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government wants to build as part of a grand plan to interlink and redesign the natural flow of 37 major rivers. The aim is to end water scarcity, while booting up for the country's future water needs. It's an audacious, some say "hubristic", venture. Touted as the world's largest irrigation infrastructure project, the Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) programme proposes 30 river links. ILR will see the excavation of 15,000 km of new canals to relocate 174 cubic km of water-enough to annually supply over 100 mega-metropolises the size of Delhi or Mumbai. The National Water Development Agency (NWDA), which has designed the projects-14 for Himalayan rivers and 16 in peninsular India-as part of the National Perspective Plan (NPP) for Water Resources Development since 1982 is already listing the "benefits". advertisement Ultimate idea NWDA director-general S. Masood Hussain, 56, who has over three decades' experience in designing mega dam projects, including the Indira (Narmada) Sagar, says the ILR will double India's current 42,200 megawatt hydropower generation (from medium and major projects), adding 34 additional gigawatts to the capacity. Also designed to irrigate 35 million monsoon-dependent hectares, Masood says ILR is the only realistic means to raise the country's irrigation potential from 140 million to 175 million hectares by 2050, when the population is projected to touch 1.6 billion. But 'unofficial' estimates published by the Delhi-based South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) say the project will displace nearly 1.5 million people from their homes. This caused by the submergence of at least 27.66 lakh hectares of land needed for the storage structures and the network of planned canals. And it's not just the human cost. The overall land area going under includes 104,000 hectares currently under natural forest cover, including reserves and sanctuaries. Click here to Enlarge Graphic by Saurabh Singh It will also be an astronomically expensive adventure. Initially pegged at Rs 5.6 lakh crore at 2002-03 prices, Union water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation minister Uma Bharti tells india today that "ILR will now cost Rs 11 lakh crore". This includes cost of land acquisition, compensation and construction. Hussain says final cost outlays for individual links will only be known after the "detailed project reports (DPRs) have been techno-economically approved" in each case. An old dream Dreams of bending river courses aren't anything new. In 1858, Arthur Thomas Cotton, a British military engineer, proposed navigable canal links between major rivers to serve the East India Company ports and deal with recurrent droughts in the southeastern provinces. In 1972, Kanuri Lakshmana Rao, India's irrigation and power minister in three successive regimes, mooted an ambitious 2,640 km-long canal that would transfer monsoon floodwaters from the Ganga near Patna to the Cauvery in the south. Two years later, Dinshaw J. Dastur, a commercial pilot-turned-water management expert, advocated long-distance irrigation through a network of 'garland canals' in the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. Grand notions of interconnecting rivers continued to exercise the country's water bureaucracy, and a decade after Dastur's proposal was discarded as economically unviable, the NWDA was established as an autonomous society under the water resources ministry to examine ILR proposals mooted in the 1980 NPP. The NWDA has completed reports for 14 peninsular and nine of 14 Himalayan river-linking projects. DPRs are currently in place for four 'priority' links in peninsular India. Successive governments, significantly, chose to ignore the NWDA proposals for years. This went on until October 2002 when a Supreme Court bench asked for action. Avidly pushed by then PM A.B. Vajpayee, a national task force was put together amid grand proclamations. Little, however, happened. advertisement Dream coming true After a full decade of considered disdain under UPA-I and UPA-II, during which then environment minister Jairam Ramesh described the proposal as "disastrous", the ILR programme has got a strong second wind under NDA-II. "Atalji's dream of linking rivers is our dream as well. This can strengthen the efforts of our hard-working farmers," Modi tweeted after a poll rally in Bihar in April 2014, signalling his intent more than a month before moving from Gandhinagar to Delhi. The Centre's confidence flowed from a second judgement in February 2012, wherein an SC bench including then chief justice S.H. Kapadia and National Green Tribunal (NGT) chairman Swatantra Kumar, said the programme was "in the national interest". They ordered the creation of a "special committee for inter-linking of rivers". advertisement Acting with predictable alacrity, Modi's administration constituted a special committee under the water resources ministry on September 23, 2014. An independent task force too was established in April 2015 under the ministry's chief advisor, B.N. Navalawala, to identify means of fast-tracking projects and to bring on board many of the reluctant states. Now, 22 months after Modi took office, construction is ready to begin on the first project-a link canal that will annually transfer 1,074 million cubic metres (MCM) from the Ken river at Dhaudan (inside Panna Tiger Reserve) in Madhya Pradesh to the Betwa river, 221 km to the south in Uttar Pradesh. The first among five "priority links", there's a palpable sense of urgency about Ken-Betwa. Bharti calls it a "model project" which plans to allocate a third of projected outlay-Rs 6,323 crore of Rs 15,000 crore-to environment management and rehabilitation. Hussain talks about the payoffs-"irrigation to 6.35 lakh hectares across Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh and Panna in MP, and Mahoba, Jhansi and Banda in UP; domestic drinking water for 13.42 lakh people in both states; and 78 MW of power from two hydropower stations". It all sounds too good to be true. advertisement Bad science, good science "It is," says Himanshu Thakkar, 53, SANDRP's convenor, who has spent most of his life battling big dam lobbies. He calls the SC's February 27, 2012 judgement "judicial overreach". Focusing on the Ken-Betwa project, Thakkar questions the very wisdom of the ILR programme. "There's simply no scientific evidence to justify what the government wants to attempt," he says. He says the NWDA's simplistic identification of 'water surplus' and 'water deficit' river basins is premised on "flimsy and dubious scientific data". Thakkar believes many of NWDA's water balance studies (for 137 basins and sub-basins) have been "deliberately manipulated", while most feasibility reports since 1982 "are outdated because water use patterns since then have far outstripped availability in almost all basins". Thakkar also points to the fact that the NWDA has "deliberately overlooked examining the complete water resource management options before decreeing a particular river basin as 'surplus' or 'deficit'". Water balance studies, their basis for showing the Ken is surplus and the Betwa dry, are prejudiced, he says. "Both rivers are in the same situation." On the ground too there is scant evidence of any "surplus". By October, the Gangau, an old weir 2.5 km downstream from where the 77-metre-high Dhaudan dam is to be built, is almost out of water. The predominantly Adivasi residents of Dhaudan, like nine other villages inside the Panna Reserve, are back to using contaminated old wells for their needs. The Ken, shrivelled in the wake of another failed monsoon (2015), is too distant. Things are worse downstream in Panna district. "Betwa mein paani zyada hai (the Betwa has more water)," Mohan Lal Gautam, a guard at the famous temples of Khajuraho located nearby, is visibly surprised by the plan to transfer water from the Ken to the Betwa. Then resignation sets in: "Sahib, ye government ke kaam hai, kuchh bhi ho sakta hai (Sir, this is the government's work, anything can happen)." Outside the dense teak forests too, the farmlands are decidedly desiccated. Shyamendra Singh, 52, who runs the popular Ken River Lodge adjoining the tiger reserve, is still taking stock of the drought situation. He says scores of distressed small farmers and farm workers have migrated in search of work. The Ken catchment has witnessed many monsoons of alternating flood and drought. Water activists point to "concomitant floods and droughts in both Ken and Betwa basins", to challenge the NWDA's assertions of the Ken as a surplus river. Hussain argues that the criticisms "are based on apprehensions, fears and preconceived notions without scientific basis". Seated at an expansive writing table inside the NWDA's well-appointed chambers in south Delhi, he makes a compelling case for big dams: "The development debate in India has been very unfair-activists oppose projects to serve vested interests and the press plays along," he says, a trifle impatiently, asserting that "the reality is, India needs more big dams". There are some statistics to support this view. A 2015 Food & Agriculture Organisation's water development and management unit report ranks India below Mexico, China and South Africa in per capita water storage (from large and small dams). With an annual storage capacity of 250 BCM (billion cubic metres), the average Indian has access to just 225 cubic metres of water (from storage reservoirs) annually. This is "minuscule" compared to, say, Russia's 6,130 cubic metres or even China's 1,111 cubic metres. Per capita water availability (1,545 cubic metres from all sources) is precariously close to 'stress' levels. Over 220 million Indians make do with under 1,000 cubic metres, the minimum level. Those pushing the ILR programme insist it's the "only way forward". They point to India's projected 2050 population of 1.6 billion. "We need to boost foodgrains production from the 265 million tonnes now to 450 million tonnes, which is impossible without unconventional mechanisms like ILR," Hussain says. Dangerous delusion But could the Modi government be chasing a dangerous dream? Consider this: M&M (major and medium) irrigation projects or big dams account for 16 million hectares which is a fourth of the total irrigated area (66-68 million hectares) in the country. "The maximum coverage ever achieved (17.7 million hectares) from M&M projects was in 1991-92," Thakkar says, pointing to the largely ignored fact that over 60 per cent of India's current irrigation needs are met from groundwater and small irrigation projects. And this is going up with every passing year. Not just that. The November 2000 report by the World Commission on Dams concluded that a mere 10-12 per cent of India's foodgrains production comes from big dams. But it is groundwater that has been India's real lifeline,Thakkar says. It is estimated to be 70 per cent more productive than canal irrigation, it needs to be sustained by protecting traditional recharge systems. If implemented, the ILR programme, he says, would seriously jeopardise the very resource that sustains India's food security. Former water resources secretary and a determined ILR opponent, the late Ramaswamy Iyer had dismissed it as "technological hubris", famously saying that a river wasn't "a bundle of pipes which can be cut, turned and welded at will". Equally vehement, Thakkar says the gargantuan scale would play havoc with groundwater recharge "because river courses-the most important recharge areas-completely lose their capacity to replenish aquifers because of being denied flows downstream of the dams". The ILR's detractors say the programme entails environmental tinkering on an epic scale-destruction of natural rivers, aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, salinity ingress and a significant increase in methane emissions from storage reservoirs. Activists say "the cumulative devastation from 30 ILR projects will be irreversible". And that's not the half of it. Mihir Shah, 59, Planning Commission member from 2009-14, points to the evidence that "the (ILR) scheme will deeply compromise the very integrity of the monsoon cycle". Inflows from rivers help maintain high sea-surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal, critical for creating low-pressure areas and intensification of the monsoon. Shah says reducing the flow of river waters into the sea could bear "serious long-term consequences for climate and rainfall in the subcontinent". Interestingly, there are dissenters to ILR even within the BJP. Women & child development minister Maneka Gandhi, a former environment minister herself, openly criticised river-linking projects on TV while speaking on India's role in climate change and global warming on December 4 last year. In May 2014 too, days before she found a place in Modi's cabinet, she had declared linking two rivers was "extremely dangerous". Meanwhile, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, whose consent is critical for the ILR projects on Damanganga-Pinjal and Par-Tapi-Narmada-two other projects Delhi hopes to fast-track-also seems sceptical. During an assembly debate last July, the CM stated that despite having 40 per cent of India's big dams, 82 per cent of the state remains rain-fed. Fadnavis called for a return to watershed management and conservation instead of pushing big dams for irrigation. Many states have opposed the ILR programme questioning the NWDA's water balance assessments. Odisha turned down a proposal on the ambitious Mahanadi-Godavari link project days after a central team briefed CM Naveen Patnaik in June 2015. Responding to concerns over extensive submergence from the big dam at Manibhadra, the Navalawala task force is drafting alternative strategies. The Mahanadi-Godavari link is critical to the construction of eight other downstream river links. Refusing to cut any slack, Bharti is promising (if she doesn't "face any hurdles") to complete the first three priority river links in the next seven years. But the start date for the Ken-Betwa (Phase One) has already been missed twice, last in March 2016. Hussain told india today on April 12 that a fresh date for implementation could only be set after clearances from the National Wildlife Board and the water resources ministry's Environment Appraisal committee. At the end of the day, Ken-Betwa will also need to be cleared by the Supreme Court since it involves interventions in a protected wildlife reserve. In March 2012, Centre for Science & Environment director-general Sunita Narain said, "The idea of interlinking rivers is appealing as it is so grand. But this is also why it is nothing more than a distraction that will take away from the business at hand-to provide clean drinking water to all." So is that what it is, just a grand distraction? Follow the writer on Twitter @Asitjolly --- ENDS --- The Ken-Betwa Project will destroy the impossible-to-replicate natural habitat of the Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) effectively 'killing' the 32 resident big cats "quicker and more surely than the poachers did", says conservationist Raghu Chundawat, 56, who was the first to blow the whistle after poachers 'emptied' the park of its tigers in 2008. PTR is special, celebrated as it is the world over as the only tiger sanctuary in the world which was successfully repopulated. Now consider this: the Ken-Betwa river-linking project will almost entirely be located within the reserve, its reservoir permanently inundating 90 sq km of tiger territory. NWDA officials claim the reservoir behind the Dhaudan Dam will submerge just 5,258 hectares (52.58 sq km) of core forest area, the rest being what is presently protected as a part of PTR's buffer area. Conservationists say NWDA is cleverly omitting a critical detail, which Shyamendra Singh of Ken River Lodge outlines: "The reservoir will effectively bifurcate the reserve, leaving barely 245 sq km of the 542 sq km core forest area available to the tigers." He says this shrunken forest area will be much too small a range for Panna's tigers. advertisement Chundawat points to another critical detail that could have serious repercussions for the Bundelkhand Tiger Habitat, which spans 200 km. "The reservoir will destroy crucial tiger migration and dispersal corridors," he says. Panna's forest officials, understandably nervous about commenting publicly, told India Today the submergence at Dhaudan is likely to significantly exceed the 90 sq km claimed by NWDA. They predict that 28-30 per cent of the reserve will be submerged. Construction activity to build the dam, two powerhouses and tunnels will entail quarrying, mining and blasting with dynamite over five, even 10 years. The NWDA seems to believe Panna's unique mix of wildlife, its tigers, ghariyals, vultures, leopards, sloth bears will simply bounce back. It sounds like wishful thinking. --- ENDS --- Delivering a lecture in Pune in 1983, the then sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), Balasaheb Deoras, took the scourge of untouchability head-on. Citing the former US president Abraham Lincoln, who once said if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong in this world, Deoras said: "If untouchability is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." As the three-day annual Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the main decision-making body of the RSS, came to an end at Nagaur in Rajasthan on March 13, old-timers among the 1,150 participants were harking back to the same Deoras speech while discussing the crucial issue of caste discrimination. The ABPS further deliberated the need for "reviewing" the reservation policy along the lines laid out by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat during the Bihar assembly elections in 2015 (later cited as a main reason for skewering the BJP's chances there) while ensuring reservations for Dalits and the socially and economically poor, as specified in the Constitution. advertisement Review of reservations The recent discourse on caste triggered by the suicide of Dalit doctoral scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad, the Hardik Patel-led Patel demonstrations in Gujarat and the Jat agitation in Haryana has caused visible unease within the Sangh parivar. Given such a backdrop, the review of reservations for the creamy layer will indeed be a bold move as large sections of these castes (Patels and Jats) form the core constituency of the RSS's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party. A firm stand on reviewing of quotas for the affluent castes establishes the nationalist credentials of the RSS, since it'll be seen as willing to take the risk in the larger interest of the nation, rising above short-term considerations of caste votebanks. On caste reservations, RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi says: "Even after 60 years, reservations have still not benefitted the last person in society. Why is this so? This has to be studied and measures should be suggested to address the issue." When asked about the creamy layer taking all the benefits of quota at the cost of the needy amongst the backwards, Joshi said this is precisely why a review is needed. The RSS stand on affirmative action is nuanced. It doesn't stop at asking affluent Hindus not to seek reservations. Instead, the RSS leaders invoke the views of the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly, Babasaheb Ambedkar, since he's the man who mooted reservations constitutionally. Has Ambedkar's dream been realised? Has the quota system ended caste discrimination? Has reservation benefitted the last man among the deprived? These were the questions that RSS leaders raised in Nagaur. If not, then it is time to review reservations, they claimed. That the RSS's stand did not snowball into a big issue this time was due to reasons both political and strategic. Perhaps Joshi, who answered the media's questions on the reservations issue, had considered the political impact before taking a clear stand. He possibly knew that reservations had never been an issue in Assam or West Bengal, states where elections are scheduled. Even in poll-bound Tamil Nadu, most sections except for the Brahmins have been under reserved category for a long time now. Additionally, Joshi's careful language and Ambedkar idioms left no room for any ambiguity that could be exploited by the opposition political parties. Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati did raise the quota issue in Parliament. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, put an end to the debate by claiming: "It is the stated policy of the government that the present arrangement of reservations will be maintained." advertisement Meanwhile, on the other critical issues of the day, the ABPS was unequivocal in its stand on the significance of "nationalism" and condemned the "anti-national slogans raised in various universities". On the issue of gender equality, the Nagaur meet did clarify in a media interaction that the RSS was for the entry of women into the sanctum sanctorum of Hindu temples. But the process of entry must be through discussion and cooperation, not conflict, it stressed. BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao, a former convenor of the RSS's Swadeshi Jagran Manch and a close confidant of the late RSS leader Dattopant Thengdi, says, "The Sangh has always stood for the progressive interpretation of religious texts. And anyway, the Vedas say there is nothing like man or woman before the divine force. I'd like to add here that what many observers interpret as a new turn for the RSS is in fact only a reiteration of what the Sangh has broadly believed since the beginning." Shorts to trousers However, the decision that really created a sensation among the media was the change in uniform-the khaki shorts making way for brown trousers, an issue that has been debated in the organisation since 2010. Given the demographic dividend in the country, the main reason for changing the ganvesh (uniform) was a bid to attract youngsters to the 91-year-old organisation. However, sartorial changes may not be enough to draw them in. The Sangh leadership knows that the battle to draw young men into the fold has to be fought on the ideological front as well. Towards this end, around 1.15 lakh youth were trained in residential camps in the last year. advertisement The rise of the RSS in the past five years has been significantly steady, partly due to the efforts of its leaders and partly due to the wave created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign. The figures are impressive: the total number of shakhas today stands at 56,859 with over 10,500 of these coming up after 2012. Last year, around 15,000 RSS workers took leave of their family for a week to spread the Sangh's message, which in turn has led to additions to the number of shakhas. The long-term aim is to have a shakha in all of the six lakh villages in India. advertisement Though the RSS's reach has increased significantly in the past six years, the majority of those joining the movement are still either in higher secondary school or college. A section is driven by power politics, since the BJP-RSS are seen as establishment forces. That said, studies show that those who join at the primary school level and at a tender age grow up to be ideologically stronger than those who join in later years. However, the latter are fewer in number these days, with a section of parents seeing the brotherhood of khaki shorts as "old-fashioned". They are unwilling to send their kids to the shakha despite being impressed by its nationalist objectives. Says a senior RSS functionary, "The decision to switch over to trousers is a very thoughtful one. It aims at drawing the children to the shakhas in what is a search for an ideologically stronger cadre for the future." A section of RSS functionaries argues that another serious change required is married pracharaks. That is easier said than done. From day one, when the RSS was floated, a cardinal rule has been that the pracharak has to remain unmarried. And if at some stage he wants to, he has to leave his post. Interestingly, even marrying from the women's cadre, the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, is frowned upon. However, fresh winds are blowing. One factor is because fewer parents are allowing their sons to become pracharaks (and this has as much to do with the smaller families of today). In the past, larger families and more sons meant at least one of them would end up becoming a pracharak. Says a senior RSS worker, "Sooner or later, the Sangh will have to effect this major change: married pracharaks to replace unmarried ones." Among the other two resolutions taken up, one called for quality affordable education and a second, affordable health services. All India Prachar Pramukh (publicity head) of the RSS Manmohan Vaidya says, "The RSS has been adjustable to the tides of change from the beginning. And in spite of the attacks of our ideological rivals, we have continued to grow." On the last day of the meet, the overall feeling was one of enthusiasm as the Sangh's stand on most contentious issues-often used by Left strategists to beat it with-had taken the wind out of the latter's sails. And the path breaking resolution holding Hindus responsible for the discrimination on a section of their own based on caste (even while maintaining that such a thing was never preached by the scriptures but was a later perversion) went a long way in the session's success. The medieval town of Nagaur, symbolised by its strong fort, has been witness to many changes in history. Today it was witnessing fundamental changes in India's largest family: the Sangh parivar. Follow the writer on Twitter @UdayMahurkar --- ENDS --- The young, suave Sachin prepares to take over the Congress mantle from Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and sets himself up to take on the powerful Vasundhara Raje. There is a new political star intently rising over Rajasthan's almost-too-often cloudless horizon. Sachin Pilot, 38, has clearly arrived. For a man who was visibly reluctant and seemed itching to leave when Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi dispatched him as state party chief following the veritable drubbing the party suffered in January 2014, slowly but very surely, the air force officer-turned-politician's son is emerging as the man who will rescue the Congress out of perdition. The Rajasthan Congress headquarters in Jaipur was rightly agog on March 3, when former chief minister Ashok Gehlot virtually backed off from backing Pilot's leadership. Perhaps the understandably sinking realisation that he was in the irretrievable process of being toppled by the younger and clearly more charismatic Pilot, along with the denial of a party ticket to his own son Vaibhav, Gehlot, who has had an unquestioned domination over the Pradesh Congress Committee for over two decades, was evidently unnerved. And it showed. advertisement Dour-faced, he looked positively in a panic when senior vice-president Vishvendra Singh, scion of the erstwhile Jat state of Bharatpur and inducted into the 200-member state Congress executive under Pilot's watch in February, called for a unified party fully backing the PCC chief. "Do you all accept the leadership of Sachin Pilot?" Singh's question to those present was more of a proclamation. A declaration of intent, if you will. There was a minuscule minority which refrained from joining the enthusiastic flurry waving their support for Pilot. Lal Chand Kataria held back. A confidant of former Union minister and AICC general secretary C.P. Joshi, Kataria had been a contender for the state Congress presidentship that swung Pilot's way in 2014. Pushing on in the certain knowledge that every bit of the meeting would be reported back to Rahul Gandhi in Delhi, Vishvendra Singh cleverly turned his query to the galaxy of party veterans on the stage. Gurudas Kamat, AICC general secretary in charge of Rajasthan, was the first to raise his arm, nudging the others to follow suit. And it worked: Girija Vyas, Chandra Bhan and B.D. Kalla, all former PCC chiefs sidelined and edged out by Gehlot, joined the growing chorus of support for Pilot. Clearly left with no option and with his back to the wall, Gehlot too capitulated, albeit rather dismissively, gesticulating with his left hand. Four days later, on March 7, he made his feelings very clear: "Vishvendra keeps doing such hand-raising ceremonies. PCC president and leader of Opposition do lead in elections but the chief minister is selected either by the high command or the elected MLAs," the former chief minister said, clearly still hoping to make a third comeback. But that could now well be a pipedream given how openly critical his own partymen are of him. Many see his evident reluctance to accept Pilot's leadership as sheer "jealousy". Vishvendra Singh, who enjoys an independent stature given his blue-blooded credentials, says Gehlot is being petty. "I feel hurt. Gehlot undid our effort to project a united (Congress) face. He (Gehlot) has had his innings. The time has come for him to bless Sachin Pilot," he says. With Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi at an Indian Youth Congress Convention in Delhi in November 2015. Photo: Getty images With Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi at an Indian Youth Congress Convention in Delhi in November 2015. Photo: Getty images Pilot's ascendancy is undoubtedly piggybacking on Gehlot's rapidly diminishing support within the Rajasthan Congress. Sushil Asopa, a former public health engineer who took voluntary retirement to join the Congress in 2014, slammed the former chief minister on Facebook, advising him to embrace "sanyaas". Asopa says that through two chief ministerial tenures, presidentship of the PCC for eight years and multiple terms as Union minister, Gehlot only managed to sink the Congress boat in his home state of Rajasthan, whenever he became the chief minister. advertisement Even independent voices like Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, a former MLA and nephew of the late Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, is disappointed by Gehlot. "A seasoned politician like him (Gehlot) should never have gone public with his criticism of Pilot," he declares, with evident angst. But what is making a seasoned man like Ashok Gehlot so afraid of a relative rookie like Sachin Pilot? For one, and perhaps most significantly, Gehlot, who has always enjoyed the blessings of the Gandhi family, sees in Pilot a sturdy, younger and perhaps more politically savvy rival with an independent line to the new de facto boss-Rahul Gandhi. The fact that the party suffered its worst ever drubbing (21 out of 200 seats) in the 2013 assembly polls under his watch only makes things worse for him. It is true that Pilot, a Gurjar, doesn't command any significant caste vote bank in Rajasthan, but he has managed to win the trust of the electorally influential Meenas who view him as a future leader with potential, like they did his late father, Rajesh Pilot. Even the Jats, who turned against Gehlot after he trumped Parasram Maderna (a Jat politician) to become chief minister in 1998 and later resisted including them in the OBC quota, see Pilot as "fair". His decision to induct three senior vice-presidents-a Scheduled Caste, a Rajput and a Jat-has given the younger Pilot traction across Rajasthan's caste boundaries. advertisement A media-savvy politician quite like his father, Pilot is widely viewed as a leader with a modern vision for Rajasthan, perhaps even better equipped than the incumbent chief minister Vasundhara Raje. "His earnest but firm boyish charm and his inspiring personality could become a problem for us," says a senior BJP politician who has, with some trepidation, watched Pilot grow in stature. But Sachin Pilot has no illusions. Bearing up against the crushing Modi Wave in 2014, he had candidly admitted that it would be tough to win even one of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The Congress failed to win even one. Despite this, he chose to contest from Ajmer so that he wasn't accused of running away from a fight. advertisement "It takes a lot of hard work to revive a near-dead party," Pilot said from Barmer on March 14, and despite the drubbing and his own loss in Ajmer, he bounced back to pose the ruling BJP a serious challenge in the four assembly byelection seats which were vacated when BJP MLAs got elected as MPs in September 2014. "I kept my confidence afloat and that revived the mood in the party," he says. Working via traditional Congress institutions-Youth Congress, Mahila Congress, Seva Dal and the NSUI-he galvanised the state unit to spring a major upset, winning three of the four byelections. There is more that has Raje and her party in a sweat. Under Pilot's watch, the NSUI consecutively swept the Rajasthan University student elections in 2014 and 2015. Analysts attribute much of Pilot's success to his enduring connect with Rajasthan's youth. "He patronises no one and shrugs factionalism," says Khachariyawas, a grassroots leader who says he was surprised when Rahul Gandhi made him in charge of the Jaipur Congress unit on Pilot's recommendation. Pilot is also upending the notion that the Opposition needs to "sit it out" in the five years it is out of power. As PCC chief, he has relentlessly toured each of Rajasthan's 33 districts twice in two years, meeting party workers, engaging with youth workers and looking up veterans. "He (Pilot) is without doubt the most accessible party president ever," says a young Congress worker. And even though Rajasthan will go to its next assembly polls in 2018, Pilot is already in election mode. "I know I have to build the party brick by brick," he says, ever so ready to put the Raje government on the mat whenever he can. Relentlessly focusing public attention on the mining scam, he even petitioned the CAG, forcing an inquiry into wrongdoings in allotting 600 mines on first come first serve basis in violation of a Government of India circular. Raje was forced to cancel the allotments in October 2015 . He has been equally single-minded in his questioning of Raje over her failure to stem the rapidly rising incidents of rape in Rajasthan, or slamming her government for repealing MNREGA to replace it with a dubious state government scheme. The positions Pilot takes on social issues have won him the support and admiration of Rajasthan's influential NGO sector. Yet, there is a long way ahead for Pilot before he can take on a formidable Raje in the 2018 elections. Little known to masses, Pilot has yet to present his altenative vision to bring them back into the party fold. More than Gehlot, it is Raje's image of a CM who can deliver for the better that should worry Pilot. Follow the writer on Twitter @rohitO --- ENDS --- In 2011, a sitting Kerala High Court judge came out and praised Saritha Nair, 38, and her partner Biju Radhakrishnan's efforts to sell solar panels in Kochi. Team Solar Renewable Energy Ltd's scheme, the judge noted in a letter of endorsement, directly threatened criminals who took advantage of the dark to commit crime. In just two years, those words would come back to haunt the judge. Saritha and Biju were arrested for a string of cheating cases. 'Solar Saritha' is Kerala's newest celebrity, a ratings magnet for prime-time TV and a star for the selfie-crazy public. Indeed, the impact of the scam's sex, lies and political sleaze has even got Mollywood in a tizzy. She was even signed on by filmmaker Shaji Kailas for a Suresh Gopi-starrer, Thalasthanam (Capital), a potboiler loosely based on the scam. Born in a lower middle class family in 1978 in Alappuzha district, Saritha was raised by her mother Indira after her father Somashekharan committed suicide when she was still in school. Teachers in St Annie's High School, Chengannur, remember her as a bright student-she scored 538 out of 600 marks in her secondary examination in 1993 and later did her diploma in Applied Electronics. The turning point came in 2004 when she met Biju Radhakrishnan while working in a financial firm. Her proximity to Biju led to her divorce after which she joined his consultancy firm. Between 2008 and 2010, 16 cases of cheating and fraud were registered against the duo for duping businessmen by offering fake loans. advertisement IGP M.R. Ajithkumar, who arrested the couple in 2010 for fraud, calls them a "strange and dangerous mix". "Saritha was manipulative, and Biju, a born criminal." After getting bail in 2010, the couple began setting up solar panels in homes of VIPs to build contacts and use their political contacts to cheat people. It is still not clear exactly how Saritha Nair gained unfettered access to CM Oommen Chandy's office and residence but by the end she was a familiar face to ministers and staff there. Soon, Congress ministers and legislators were promoting her company and sharing the dais with her. The couple parted ways over mutual suspicions in 2013. During her interrogation that year, Saritha revealed how Biju had murdered his wife in 2006, a revelation which led to Biju being charged for murder. "Nothing can stop Saritha if she is determined to use you," rues a Congress legislator who did not want to be identified. "She is like an assassin who finds her victim in the most unexpected ways." Politicians call her a blackmailer who extorts money from high-profile victims. She made a sensational claim of rape against Congress MLA A.P. Abdullakutty in 2014 but backed off soon after, saying it was done at the instigation of his political rival, KPCC general secretary Thambanoor Ravi. During the course of all this probe itself, there was first the leak of call records, then the sensational letter bomb. She told judicial magistrate N.V. Raju that she had been sexually exploited by many political leaders and had identified them in a sealed letter. But the magistrate didn't record her statement for which he was later censured by the high court. Political commentator A. Jayashankar feels Saritha has effectively used the judiciary and media to serve her ends. "By agreeing to the inquiry commission, the CM unwittingly handed Saritha a platform from where she can damage him," he says. Days after her sensational bribery allegation against the CM, the makers of the political thriller Saritha had signed on for announced they were shelving the film. Reality was clearly overtaking make-believe. --- ENDS --- On the eve of the third Asia Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation inaugurated by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 12 in New Delhi, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Global Tiger Forum (GTF) announced a 22 per cent jump in the world's wild tiger population--from 3,200 in 2010 to 3,890. The announcement syncs with the 'Tx2'goal--doubling tiger numbers across its 13 range countries by 2022-adopted at the Global Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg in 2010. But are tiger numbers really rising? And is all well with the tiger, as laid out at the summit? There are definitely more tigers in the wild than was estimated before, attributed at least partially to a more rigorous counting methodology coupled with extensive surveys. However, in a strongly worded statement, four leading tiger experts including India's Dr Ullas Karanth, director of the Science Asia-Wildlife Conservation Society, have questioned the methodology. They urge caution warning that "using flawed survey methodologies can lead to incorrect conclusions, an illusion of success, and slackening of conservation efforts, when in reality grave concern is called for". The danger of playing the numbers game to generate feel-good news is that it glosses over the real issues, like the shocking decline in tiger habitats. Consider this: tigers now occupy only seven per cent of their historic range. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) points out to a "tiger range collapse", confirming that tigers have lost 40 per cent of its range since 2010. What this means is that in less than a decade nearly half of the area occupied by tigers earlier has been emptied of them. advertisement There has been no let up in the poaching either, a fact underscored at the conference by the wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC. As per their data, parts of a minimum of 1,590 tigers were seized by law enforcement officials between January 2000 and April 2014. This double whammy has meant that tigers are functionally extinct in Lao PDR, China, Vietnam--in such low numbers that there is no scope for revival. In Cambodia, the big cat has been exterminated. Cambodia's last tiger was camera trapped in the Mondulkiri Protected Forest in 2007. The country now dreams of repopulating its forests with tigers. It only admitted to the extinction (just before the summit) in a bid to seek help, and tigers, from India, given that it has successfully relocated tigers in two reserves--Panna and Sariska, where they had been exterminated. India appears inclined. In 2014, when announcing that India had 2,226 tigers, a 30 per cent jump from the previous count of 1,706 in 2010, the minister for environment, forests and climate change, Prakash Javadekar, generously offered "to donate a few to those countries which are lacking". Tiger bones seized from poachers near Corbett National Park In principle, it may be a good idea to repopulate areas that have lost tigers-but is Cambodia prepared to receive them? Experts believe that it does not have the inviolate habitat, or the prey base to sustain a tiger population. Cambodia has also seen the highest deforestation rates in the world-by some estimates over 2,000 square kilometers of its ancient forests every year, a third of which is inside legally protected areas (where it plans to cart the tiger). Experts question this unseemly haste, and the wisdom to invest considerable amounts of money (the estimated cost is between US $20-50 million), in essentially what is a "futile exercise". The focus, instead, should be on recovering populations in reserves where tigers are far below their optimum density, even in India which has over two-thirds of the world's tigers. Tiger habitats of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are examples. It can be done. Thanks to enhanced protection and rigorous monitoring, populations have recovered, remarkably so, in specific reserves in Southeast Asia, Bhutan and Russia, and indeed India-particularly so in Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Assam and even in some lesser known ones like Valmiki in Bihar. In his inaugural speech, PM Modi invoked India's rich history of protection and its cultural connect with nature. No country has invested as much to recover tiger populations, including in a Special Tiger Protection Force and funds to incentivise voluntary relocation from core areas of tiger reserves, while at the same time affording these marginalised communities a better life and opportunities outside. advertisement Yet, the tiger is not out of the woods, not even in India. Indeed, it has been a grim year for tigers. According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, in the first quarter of 2016, 25 tigers have been killed (data includes seizures of skins and other derivatives), the maximum in the past 15 years. Even the finest of reserves are not secure. On March 13, five tiger skins plus 125 kg of tiger bones were seized near the Najibabad-Haridwar road by the Uttarakhand Police's Special Task Force. Scientists at the Wildlife Institute of India matched four of the skins to tigers captured on camera-traps within the core of the Corbett tiger reserve. In Madhya Pradesh's Pench, a poisoned waterhole resulted in the loss of a tigress, Baghin nala, a favourite of the tourists, and her young cubs. One week later, a poacher was arrested in the same reserve with four tiger paws. The tiger's mutilated body was found buried two days later. advertisement The PM, in his speech, expressed his pain at such traffic in tiger parts, but one wonders what stops the Prime Minister from putting his might behind cracking down on the illegal trade, in the exemplary manner when poaching hit the Asiatic lion in 2007. As the then Gujarat chief minister, Modi moved the state's machinery to ensure all the guilty were arrested and convicted. Surely, the tigers deserve a similar effort? And lost in the hype and hoopla of such summitry is the ground reality of protection. Staff on the frontline of protecting tigers are woefully ill-equipped and not empowered to take on poachers. Shortages plague most reserves, in some cases, they are almost unmanned, like Palamu in Jharkhand, which has an astounding 97 per cent shortage/deficit. Oddly, or perhaps intentionally, the conference skirted around the contentious issue of the pressures of a developing economy on vital tiger habitats; and the fact that the tiger is being increasingly perceived as inimical to development. Nepal's increase in tiger numbers was applauded, yet the proposed rail and road projects that imperil its flagship Chitwan National Park found little mention. So were other threats like the massive thermal power plant on the edge of Bangladesh's Sundarbans, or the network of existing, and proposed, mines and highways across the central Indian tiger habitat. It was the prime minister who addressed the elephant in the room in his speech asserting that "tiger conservation, or conservation of nature, is not a drag on development", adding on "the need to factor in tiger concerns in sectors where conservation is not the goal". advertisement Really? Then how is it that the ill-advised expansion of National Highway 6 & 7 tore through India's finest tiger landscape, disregarding the mitigation measures advised by experts, citing shortage of money? Ironically, even the celebrated success of Panna's tiger relocation-from zero in 2009 to an astounding 50 currently, is doomed by the Ken-Betwa river-linking project, which will submerge about 90 sq km of the reserve, and half its breeding tigers. The National Board for Wildlife, of which the prime minister is the ex-officio chairperson, has also cleared a number of projects with deleterious impacts on crucial tiger habitats. In its last few meetings, it approved roads inside Dudhwa (Uttar Pradesh) and Kali (Karnataka) tiger reserves, railway tracks through Mahanada wildlife sanctuary (North Bengal) and the proposed Ratapani tiger reserve (Madhya Pradesh), an ashram in Rajaji, one of the country's newest tiger reserves, to quote just a few examples. Breaking of such connectivity will be fatal to the tiger. India's reserves are small, and few are capable of sustaining viable breeding populations on their own. Protecting linkages--genetic corridors as it were--between these reserves is crucial. Most worrisome though is the fraying of the policy and legal framework protecting tigers, with a proposed change in India's environment and forest laws which have been the bedrock that has protected wildlife, and afforded India's global leadership in conservation. Despite the rush of increased numbers, there is no room for complacency. The tiger is again at a crossroads. Tigers occupy about three percent of India's terrestrial area-and here, it must hold sway. Key tiger habitats need to be sacrosanct-to affoed a secure future for India's national animal. Fortunately for the tiger, the prime minister has made a powerful pitch for its conservation, stating that tiger reserves provide a range of economic, social, cultural and spiritual benefits. He stressed that saving the tiger was not a choice, but an imperative. Here is hoping he walks the talk. (The author is former member, standing committee, National Board for Wildlife) Follow the writer on Twitter @prernabindra --- ENDS --- As temples try to keep women out of their inner chambers in the name of gods, women take recourse to their constitutional rights to worship at par with men. An enchanted village. A magical black stone as its guardian. And a sense of the miraculous. That's Shani Shingnapur, tucked away in remote Maharashtra. A happy place, they say, where for 400 years there has not been a single theft, riot, murder or rape. There's no home with locks, doors or windows, no ailing elderly, no bad blood, no unhappy spirits walking by night. Just ancient peepal trees that people touch reverentially every Saturday as they fast. Watching over the village is its dark lord, Shani Dev, a five-and-a-half-feet rock, in his open-air temple. Beware his great malefic eye or suffer seven years of tough luck. It's the stuff of fairy tales. But in an unbelieving 21st century, the fairy tale has turned into a soap opera. On January 26, Republic Day, the nation couldn't take its eyes off the television screen as 1,500 women-activists, housewives, students-marched toward the Shani temple. Their demand? To enter and worship in the sanctum sanctorum, traditionally off limits to women for the "harmful vibrations" the god apparently emits when the fairer sex comes up close. "Our Constitution guarantees women equality and equal right to worship. This is a black day for democracy," shouted someone, while others chanted devotional songs. In the ensuing tussle with the police, interspersed with placatory tweets from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, a jarring question cropped up: are we in the midst of an unusual constitutional crisis? advertisement The odd couple Religion and constitution make an odd couple. Both could do just fine without each other. At the core of their uneasy coexistence is a confrontation that occurs on the contested terrain of women's bodies and sexuality. If religious bodies get vocal about what women should wear, who they should talk to or spend their leisure hours with and how, the legal regime reacts by stepping inside the home and dictating terms of conjugality, relationships and family. The conflict over women's rights to worship is one such challenge, playing out over confused ideas of what is pure and what is not. "The history of religion shows that it's still a very powerful force in social and individual life," says veteran sociologist and professor A.M. Shah, "but radical changes are taking place in the Indian society due to the exigencies of modern, secular life." For instance, the age-old taboo on cooking or eating without taking a bath has all but disappeared. The prohibition on eating with footwear on has passed into oblivion. Very few take a purificatory bath after a haircut. Nobody bothers to find out about the caste of a cook at a restaurant. Time was when menstruating women did not cook or serve food. Now they move about freely. Nor does anyone mind touching a woman who has just given birth. Women demanding the right to enter the inner sanctum of the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar on January 26 But such taboos continue to be very strong in the field of religion. Temples, in particular, have complex rules and rituals of purity. "After all, it's here that people's needs, hopes, fears and aspiration find their way," Shah says. Hinduism, in particular, has undergone constant change and dynamic adaptation. "Religion responds more to social reforms than constitutional coercion," he adds. Faith vs courts The rumblings of something major coming were felt on January 11, when the Supreme Court said that the "Sabarimala temple can't ban women". The apex court was hearing a 10-year-old case filed by a group of women lawyers, the Indian Young Lawyers Association (IYLA), against the Kerala temple. Although the court has not delivered a verdict yet, the judges clearly disapproved of the contentious custom: "The temple cannot prohibit entry, except on the basis of religion. Unless you have a constitutional right." The Supreme Court's mood, in ways both subtle and direct, is at the centre of a far-reaching battle involving the entry of women into religious shrines. On January 18, the Bombay High Court said it would wait for the SC ruling in the Sabarimala case before deciding on a plea by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan challenging the 2011 ban imposed by Mumbai's Haji Ali Dargah on women praying inside the mausoleum. On January 28, around 100 women protested, holding placards and chanting slogans: "The Constitution has given you equal rights", "Islam supports the Constitution", "This is against the tenets of Islam". advertisement As Naushad Ahmed Khan, president of IYLA, says, both the cases hinge on three fundamental rights ensured by the Constitution: Article 14 (equality before law), Article 25 (right to freedom of religion) and Article 26 (freedom of religious denominations to manage their religious affairs). "There's a vast accumulation of wealth in these trusts, and they are often misused," he says. "It's high time the government intervened to bring it back into the economy." Mystery of Shani He is the dark lord of karma. His brother, Yama, judges karmic actions after death while he counts the bad karma in life. Austere and unforgiving, he is so scary that he is primarily worshipped outside the home, says Indologist Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri of Asiatic Society, Kolkata. "Shani doesn't appear in the Vedas, Upanishads or even the early Puranas." The only reference one finds is in one of the later Puranas, the Brahma Vaivarta Purana of 10th century AD, where as an invitee at Ganesha's birth he chars the new-born's face just by looking at him. advertisement Bhaduri, who has penned 23 books on Hindu mythology, however, has never come across any mention of Shani being hostile to women. "He was not a bachelor, nor a celibate." Then, what explains the diktat at the Shani Singhnapur temple? "Possibly, some local incident at some point led to it," he says. "If you notice, most of the temples with strict taboo on women, worship gods and goddesses that are C or D grade deities on the pantheon of Hindu divinity," adds Bhaduri. The temple taboo may have reflected the mood of the later Puranic age: conservative, feudal, caste-oriented, riddled with rituals with declining status of women. "Religion is one thing and religious institution is another," says Ranjana Kumari, women's rights activist and director, Centre for Social Research, Delhi. Management trusts are not just violating the Constitution by denying women the right to worship at par with men, they are also institutionalising the inferiority of women. She believes "this has a larger social implication". Ninety per cent of those who attend satsangs across the country are women. "You take their money, you make them listen to you, and then you don't allow them in? This is not acceptable," she adds. advertisement Right time for a woman One thing held against women is that they menstruate and men do not. At the Sabarimala temple, for instance, that means non-entry for women of reproductive age-between 10 and 50 years, as fixed by the Kerala High Court in 1983. It reached a new level of crudity when in November 2015 the chief of the powerful Travancore Devasom Board, managing the temple, Prayar Gopalakrishnan, triggered off a #HappyToBleed campaign on social media with his comment: "When a machine is invented to scan if it is the 'right time' for a woman?we will talk about letting women in." One comes across the same attitude at temples across the country. "Religion is a matter of interpretation," says Brinda Karat, women's rights activist and CPI(M) politburo member. "What is the proof that some gods don't like women?" The politics of worship is not new in India's history, she points out. India has had many temple entry movements in the past, but they were mostly as part of Dalit movements to break Brahmanical codes. "But for the constitutional promise of religious freedom for women to become an issue in 21st century, reflects how little India has progressed," she says. Politics of worship Trupti Desai, 38, finds it hard to accept that the lord of Shani Shingnapur wouldn't be interested in her devotion. "I am a devotee of Shani Dev. I offer him mustard oil every Saturday and then fast," says the Pune-based rights activist and mother of a six-year-old. "Why should my touch defile him? Just because I am a woman?" The idea to gate-crash the temple came to Desai on November 29, when a girl stepped in, accidentally, and the villagers raised a hue and cry, performing a milk ritual of the idol to purify the "defiled" god. She hardened her stand when politicians jumped in: Congress MLA from Solapur Praniti Shinde promised to "raise the issue in the winter session of the legislative assembly" while the BJP's minister for women and child development Pankaja Munde pooh-poohed it all as a "non-issue". On December 20, along with three of her colleagues from her 400-strong outfit, Bhumata Brigade-which works for farmers and women, and also against corruption-Desai took the dare: climbing the six steps to reach the inner platform. Although thrown out by security guards, the brigade gave an ultimatum: "Change things in eight days or we will come back on January 26." Promptly, the temple trust declared that it had received 10 applications from women candidates of the gram sabha, vying for posts on the temple board. With housewife Anita Shete as the new chairperson, and another woman as a member, a new committee came up by January 12. The historic change of guard did little to change things on the ground though: the new members were as staunchly in favour of barring access to the sanctorum for women devotees. The politicians flew in once again. BJP MLA Balasaheb Murkute rallied to dissolve the new board, while the hardline Hindu Janajagruti Samiti announced its campaign to preserve the status quo: "There is some spiritual reason for not allowing women to go near Shani Dev and we should respect it." Steel barricades came up around the shrine while the police declared Section 144 in the area. "We activated our women's wing, Ranrangini, booked a helicopter in case of an emergency and then set out for the temple on January 26," recalls Desai. The rest, as they say, is history. It's about power "It is more about power, not religion," says Subhadra Mitra Channa, professor of social anthropology, University of Delhi. Religion, like politics, works within a power structure-economic, political or gender. "These are culturally symbolic, the domination and the protest, an expression of changing values in society." The diktats that bar women from temple entry come from the priestly class, especially those interested in secular power. "And women protest only when they have the power to do so." The nation is watching, as Desai and her Brigade get ready for the next phase of action in February. The CM is taking a personal interest in the case, as is godman Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. But along with the bouquets come the brickbats: Desai is sometimes called a Congress stooge, sometimes a Christian, while tweets linking her to the Aam Admi Party or the Naxalites are doing the rounds. "I have my guru, the late Gagan Maharajji's blessings. I am inspired by Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev. I don't give up easily," Desai smiles. Let's wait and watch. Follow the writer on Twitter @DattaDamayanti --- ENDS --- Next time you accept a degradable plastic bag at the supermarket, think again you may be doing little to help the environment and adding dangerous microplastics to rivers and oceans, experts say. The warning has prompted a Senate committee to call for a public awareness campaign to explain the differences between degradable, biodegradable, compostable and traditional plastic bags - and how they should be disposed of - to educate consumers who mistakenly believe they are doing the right thing. "Degradable" plastics, commonly used for shopping and rubbish bags, contain additives that make them disintegrate more quickly than traditional plastics. Some people also refer to these products as "biodegradable". While such bags do not remain for decades in the environment as large debris, they can break into smaller and smaller particles until they become microplastics - tiny plastic fragments less than five millimetres in size. A Sydney couple sued for defamation by a neighbour over comments on a community social media page say mounting legal fees could leave them bankrupt and they have no means to defend themselves against the plaintiff's latest appeal. Matthew and Annette Palmer thought their fight with Nader Mohareb was finished after a settlement was negotiated, a term of which included the publication of an apology on the Scotland Island Community Facebook page. Matthew Palmer was sued for defamation over an unflattering Facebook post about his neighbour Nader Mohareb. Credit:Facebook But what should have been a straightforward resolution to the dispute collapsed when the page's moderator, unaware of the agreement, deleted the apology. The case returned to court and the Palmers sought a lump sum costs order of $14,721, but District Court judge Judith Gibson refused, saying the page administrators should have been contacted prior to the publishing of the apology. She further found Mr Palmer subsequently removed the apology after it was reposted. A 16-year-old arrested over an alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot was attempting to obtain a firearm over the weekend, police will allege. The boy, from Auburn, did not appear on screen in Parramatta Children's Court on Monday morning and did not apply for bail. His matter will return to court again on Tuesday. Court documents state that the boy is facing one charge of doing an act in preparation or planning for a terrorist act. Police will allege that, some time between 12.01am on Saturday and 6pm on Sunday, he attempted to obtain a firearm. Donald Trump's two party rivals are collaborating to stop the billionaire businessman from securing the 1237 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination for president before the convention in July. The deal, flagged on Sunday (US time), will see Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich co-ordinating the states they campaign in, to concentrate their effort to thwart Mr Trump. At present Mr Trump has 844 delegates. Mr Cruz has 543, while Mr Kasich has only 148 to date. Mr Trump has defied party insiders and the broader Republican base by emerging as a clear front-runner in the campaign, particularly after his convincing win in the New York Republican primary last week. A car bomb exploded in a predominantly Shi'ite commercial district in eastern Baghdad Monday, killing at least 11 civilians and wounding 38 others. The suicide bomber blew up his parked car, according to local police - one of three similar attacks in just the last four days in the Iraqi capital. No group has immediately claimed responsibility, but Islamic State frequently targets commercial areas and Shi'ite majority districts. The group has claimed responsibility for for two attacks in Baghdad in recent days. Islamic State has increased attacks on Baghdad since the government, backed by U.S. airstrikes, has pushed the group back on a number of fronts in recent months in an effort to reclaim territory seized by the extremists during their sweep across northern and western Iraq in 2014. A U.S. Army airborne exercise in Germany is attracting more than a million viewers on social media after a video surfaced showing a Humvee breaking free of its rigging and plummeting to the ground, followed by another and another. By Friday afternoon, the video posted on the Facebook group U.S. Army W.T.F.! moments had 1.5 million views. The scene starts serenely as equipment is dropped by parachute April 11 from planes with the 173rd Airborne Brigade flying across blue skies until the first Humvee breaks free and drops and someone yells out Oh yes! Its followed by a second, then a third and increasing laughter on the video. The Army says nobody was hurt, and its investigating what went wrong and who shot the video. AP The historic agreement on climate change marked a major milestone on Friday with a record 175 countries signing on to it on opening day. But world leaders made clear more action is needed, and quickly, to fight a relentless rise in global temperatures. With the planet heating up to record levels, sea levels rising and glaciers melting, the pressure to have the Paris Agreement enter into force and to have every country turn its words into deeds was palpable at the U.N. signing ceremony. The world is in a race against time, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his opening speech. The era of consumption without consequences is over. Today you are signing a new covenant with the future. This covenant must amount to more than promises, he said. The agreement will enter into force once 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions have formally joined it, a process initially expected to take until 2020. But following a host of announcements at the signing event, observers now think it could happen later this year. China, the worlds top carbon emitter, announced it would finalize domestic procedures to ratify the agreement before the G-20 summit in China in September. The United States, the worlds second- largest emitter, reiterated its intention to ratify this year, as did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of Mexico and Australia. Maros Sefcovic, the energy chief for another top emitter, the 28-nation European Union, has also said the EU wants to be in the first wave of ratifying countries. Congos President Joseph Kabila, speaking on behalf of the worlds 48 least-developed countries, said all were committed to to move in one irreversible direction to secure a safer climate. Even though small emitters, he said they would take the steps required to ratify the agreement as soon as possible, a reflection of the wide reach of the agreement. The Washington-based World Resources Institute said that at least 25 countries representing 45 percent of global emissions had either joined the agreement Friday or committed to joining it early. French President Francois Hollande, the first to sign in recognition of his key role in achieving the December agreement, said he would ask parliament to ratify it by this summer. There is no turning back now, Hollande told the gathering, adding that a key to success in combating climate change will be to get governments, companies, and people all over the world to work together to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. U.S. Secretary of State Kerry said the signing of the agreement had to be followed by a recommitment by world leaders to actually win the war against carbon emissions that are making the world hotter every year. Putting the deal into economic terms, he said, the power of this agreement is what it is going to do to unleash the private sector to define the new energy of the future and set the global economy on a new path to growth and development that preserves the environment. Academy Award-winning actor Leonardo Dicaprio, a U.N. messenger of peace and climate activist, captured the feelings of many when he said: We can congratulate each other today, but it will mean absolutely nothing if the worlds leaders gathered here go home and do nothing. No more talk, no more excuses, no more 10-year studies, he told the VIPs. The world is now watching. You will either be lauded by future generations or vilified by them. After he spoke, leaders and diplomats from the 175 countries were called to the front of the chamber to sign the agreement. Kerry carried his granddaughter in his arms, a symbol of the future generations the agreement is aimed at protecting. The signing set a record for international diplomacy: Never have so many countriessigned an agreement on the first available day. States that didnt sign Friday have a year to do so. The ceremony, held on Earth Day, brought together a wide range of states that might sharply disagree on other issues. North Koreas Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong made a rare U.N. appearance to sign and Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe brought applause when he declared, Life itself is at stake in this combat. We have the power to win it. Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga of Tuvalu, which has seen four of its small islands disappear into the Pacific Ocean since 2000, said the agreement can change the world but islands on the frontline of climate change urgently need better access to financing to protect themselves against rising oceans. He urged international support for an insurance program for Pacific island nations. Tuvalu was one of 15 nations that not only signed but ratified the agreement on Friday. Those that havent indicated they will sign include some of the worlds largest oil producers Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria and Kazakhstan, according to the World Resources Institute. The Paris Agreement was a major breakthrough in U.N. climate negotiations, which for years were slowed by disputes between rich and poor countries over who should do what. Under the agreement, countries set their own targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The targets are not legally binding, but countries must update them every five years. Already, states face pressure to do more. Scientific analyses show the initial set of targets that countries pledged before Paris dont match the agreements long-term goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial times. Global average temperatures have already climbed by almost 1 degree Celsius. Last year was the hottest on record. The latest analysis by the Climate Interactive research group shows the Paris pledges put the world on track for 3.5 degrees Celsius of warming. A separate analysis by Climate Action Tracker, a European group, projected warming of 2.7 degrees Celsius. We have a once-in-history opportunity to create a new, shared, inspiring and sustainable world, Professor Nicholas Stern, who heads the climate change institute at the London School of Economics, told a luncheon hosted by the secretary-general. If we delay, it will be gone. If we do get it right, we will launch a new wave of dynamic innovation and growth in the medium-term, Stern said. The consequences of getting it wrong are unthinkable. Edith M. Lederer, Cara Anna, AP North Korea said yesterday that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a dagger of destruction. South Korea couldnt immediately confirm the claim of success in what marks Pyongyangs latest effort to expand its military might in face of pressure by its neighbors and Washington. Hours before the announcement, South Korean military officials said the North fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast. The Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectile traveled about 30 kilometers Saturday evening. Thats a much shorter than the typical distance of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which can fly at least 300 kilometers. A successful test from a submarine would be a worrying development because mastering the ability to fire missiles from submerged vessels would make it harder for outsiders to detect what North Korea is doing before it launches, giving it the potential to surprise its enemies. While South Korean experts say its unlikely that North Korea currently possesses an operational submarine that can fire multiple missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on such technology. In a typical example of overblown rhetoric, the Norths Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un observed from a test facility as the ballistic missile surged from a submarine and spewed out a massive stream of flames as it soared into the sky. It said the missile met all technical thresholds. The KCNA report said that after the test Kim declared that the North now has another strong nuclear strike method and also the ability to stick a dagger of destruction into the heads of its enemies, South Korea and the United States, at any time. The KCNA report didnt say when or where the recent test-firing took place. South Korean officials said the launch on Saturday took place near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems. The North last test-launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Dec. 25, but that test was seen as failure, the Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The North first claimed of a successful submarine-launched missile test in May last year. U.S. Strategic Command, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, said its systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan. The U.S. State Department said that in response to Saturdays launch, it was limiting the travel of North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his delegation to U.N. functions in New York, where they are attending a U.N. meeting on sustainable development. The U.S. noted launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further destabilize the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and international obligations, said State Department spokesman John Kirby. North Korea has recently sent a barrage of missiles and artillery shells into the sea amid ongoing annual military drills between the United States and South Korea. Pyongyang says the drills are a preparation for an invasion of the North. The firings also come as the North expresses anger about toughened international sanctions over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. North Koreas belligerence may also be linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement leader Kim Jong Uns grip on power. Promoting military accomplishments could be an attempt to overshadow a lack of economic achievements ahead of the Workers Party congress, the first since 1980. Kim Tong-Hyung, Seoul , AP Chinese speculators have a new obsession: the commodities market. Trading in futures on everything from steel reinforcement bars and hot-rolled coils to cotton and polyvinyl chloride has soared this week, prompting exchanges in Shanghai, Dalian and Zhengzhou to boost fees or issue warnings to investors. While the underlying products may be anything but glamorous, the numbers are eye-popping: contracts on more than 223 million metric tons of rebar changed hands on Thursday, more than Chinas full-year production of the material used to strengthen concrete. The great ball of China money is moving away from bonds and stocks to commodities, said Zhang Guoyu, a Shanghai- based analyst at Tebon Securities Co. Weve seen a lot of people opening accounts for commodities futures recently. The frenzy echoes the activity that fueled Chinas stock market last year before a rout erased USD5 trillion, and follows earlier bubbles in property to garlic and even certain types of tea. Chinas army of investors is honing in on raw materials amid signs of a pickup in demand and as the nations equities fall the most among global markets and corporate bond yields head for the steepest monthly rise in more than a year. Hao Hong, chief China strategist at Bocom International Holdings Co. in Hong Kong, says the improvement in fundamentals and the availability of leverage to bet on commodities is making them irresistible to traders. These guys are going nuts, Hong said. Leverage exaggerates the move of the way up, but also on the way down much like what margin financing did to stocks in 2015. The gain in steel prices isnt just on the futures market, with spot prices for the physical product also rallying amid a sudden shortage as construction activity accelerates. Rebar prices have risen 57 percent this year on average across China, according to Beijing Antaike Information Development Co., a state-owned consultancy. Even after output of steel increased to the highest monthly volume on record in March, rebar inventory is still falling, signaling a supply deficit. To cool activity, the Shanghai Futures Exchange increased transaction fees while the Dalian Commodity Exchange raised iron ore margin requirements. The bourse in Dalian also tightened rules on what it called abnormal trading, which now includes frequent submission and withdrawal of orders and self-trading. The Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange urged prudent investment on cotton futures amid relatively large price fluctuations. Theres a lot of liquidity and there are people looking for opportunity, said Ben Kwong, a director at brokerage KGI Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong. Investors are just boosted by recent rebound in those commodity prices and its speculative behavior. Futures slid Friday after the exchange clampdown, with contracts on rebar closing down 4.8 percent at 2,619 yuan a ton, its biggest daily decline in six weeks. A gauge of materials shares sank 2.7 percent on the mainland as the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index advanced 0.2 percent. Officials cracked down on speculators using borrowed money to buy equities after a surge in debt exacerbated the boom-to- bust of the worlds second-largest stock market. When China was spurring lenders to pump credit to aid growth in 2008 and 2009, investors speculated on everything from Puer tea to garlic. Easy money is again surging, with new credit topping $1 trillion in the first quarter. The market is moving so quickly, yesterday felt just like the stock market in June last year before the crash, Tiger Shi, a managing partner at Bands Financial Ltd. said by phone from Hong Kong. I think how it goes up, thats how it will come down. Bloomberg An Asia-based public relations agency, Petrie PR, has announced the launch of a promotion of Taipas retail and restaurant sector in a bid to showcase the MSARs non-gaming attractions, representatives told the Times. However, there are likely to be other, legitimate though undisclosed, interests at stake. The agency announced on Thursday that Taipa Village Destination Ltd has launched the promotion under the slogan Taipa Village: Authentic Macau, which will simultaneously target Macau locals and tourists from across Asia, but mainly target those tourists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Taipa Village strives to be a new landmark in Macau by offering a perfect alternative to the citys casino resorts, said Pamela Chan, Senior Marketing Manager at the company. As a destination brand, it represents our vision to grow the awareness of Taipa Village while preserving and protecting the unique heritage of the area. The statement, which was released to the press, implies that the project to grow awareness of Taipa and preserve and protect the historic village is not related to any commercial interests. Taipa Village Destination Ltd is a subsidiary organization of Sniper Capital Group a real estate investment company with a self-described particular focus and presence in Macau that also holds assets amounting to more than USD550 million (according to Bloomberg) and ownership of the London Stock Exchange-listed Macau Property Opportunities Fund. When asked if the intention behind the promotion of Taipa was linked to real estate interests, a representative of Petrie PR insisted that it was not. She told the Times that the companys intention was to protect and develop the area [of Taipa] and was driven by a partnership program with local retailers and restaurants. Macau seems to offer only the gaming side [in its tourism offerings], but we want to help promote the non-gaming side where you can experience the authentic Macau, she added. The representative was not able to confirm whether the MSAR government is involved in the project before press time. Were this to be the case, a lack of commercial motivation for the project would be reconcilable. Taipa Village Destination Ltds website offers more clues. Regarding the companys commercial interests, Taipa Villages website states that it possesses extensive experience in retail and F&B [food and beverage] business development. The company seeks to focus on ongoing F&B, retail and mixed-unit concept development in Taipa Village in terms of self-run businesses, joint ventures and tenant acquisition; possessing extensive experience in asset acquisition, development and re-development projects in Macau; [and] offering retail opportunities in prime locations, it adds. The website also marks a distinction between what is referred to as Tapia Village Destination Ltd and the Taipa Village Cultural Association, the latter of which has the mission to preserve, promote and develop this landmark neighborhood. A representative of Sniper Capital Group, the parent organization, told the Times that the promotion is intended to promote eatery units owned by the group in Taipa Village, such as the Portuguese-style restaurant Antonio. After persistent questioning, he admitted that the promotion can push real estate values higher [] that is one of the reasons [behind the promotion], but refused to say anything further. Daniel Beitler Dear Editor, As rainstorms and thunderstorms are increasingly occurring in the mornings, there is an imperative need on accurate and confident predictions by the Macau Meteorology and Geophysical Bureau (SMG) and considered delays and suspensions by the Macau Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) to ensure the safety of Macau students and families transporting their children to school. Following the incident back in March in which a delay/suspension was issued inaccurately, despite the fact that it was likely necessary given the potentially dangerous conditions, DSEJ and SMGs credibility in handling weather events has decreased. The last rainstorm delay on April 13th was one example in which the right call was made. However this morning (Friday, April 22nd), conditions were considerably worse as rain falling at steady rates in excess of 30mm/hour combined with frequent, near-by lightning threatened the safety of those that had to brave the storm. SMG called a Thunderstorm warning at 7:30 am, well in advance of the start time of most schools, but DSEJ was silent. With no delay or cancellation called by DSEJ, students and parents needed to risk the health and safety of their children in order to avoid an unexcused absence. Thankfully my childs school, St. Josephs College Primary School and Kindergarten (CDSJ), made the moral and ethical call to make on-time arrival an option with no penalty so that we could wait for the storm to reasonably subside before taking any attempt to face dangerous conditions. This matter stems from SMGs confusion as to what a Thunderstorm or a Rainstorm is. In reality, most of the time they are one in the same. Thunderstorms are often more dangerous as they include heavy rain with dangerous lightning and wind gusts. However, DSEJ requirements only permit a delay if SMG issues a Rainstorm Warning, but not a Thunderstorm Warning. This oversight and failure to recognize dangerous weather conditions puts our children at great jeopardy of physical harm or sickness, especially when these storms occur at transportation times. Fridays ridiculousness was capped when 15 minutes to 9 a.m. SMG indicated that they would issue a Rainstorm Warning at 9:05 am, after school start times. Followed by afternoon school cancelations and a Rainstorm Warning for conditions that never materialized. This gives great insight that SMG doesnt understand their own classification systems and that DSEJ fails to error on the side of reasonable caution when it comes to student safety in these situations. Clarification and refinement of this confusing and broken system is needed. DSEJ, SMG, parents and the local schools need immediate action to correct this potentially dangerous problem. Luke Lienau, Macau CHINA Authorities in eastern China have halted plans to build a trash incinerator after rowdy street protests by residents and the arrests of four people. The Haiyan county government in Zhejiang province said in a statement that hundreds of residents began to gather illegally last week and blocked roads. NORTH KOREA says it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a dagger of destruction. SYRIA Air strikes and shelling pounded Aleppo for the third straight day yesterday, killing two young siblings and at least 24 others in Syrias largest city and former commercial capital. AUSTRIA The law-and-order candidate of the countrys right-wing party swept the first round of presidential elections yesterday, gathering over 35 percent of the vote and leaving the other five candidates far behind. COLOMBIAN President Juan Manuel Santos asked all his 15 ministers to resign ahead of a cabinet reshuffle. Santos told the New York Times that he needs to make changes to some ministries ahead of a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas that the government expects to sign soon. NIGERIA deployed police and soldiers to gasoline stations to maintain order as fuel shortages grip Africas biggest oil producer. The most severe fuel scarcity in a year in Africas most populous nation has left motorists paying more than double the governments official price for gasoline and put increasing pressure on a stagnating economy. USA A 20-year-old man is facing charges after authorities say he tweeted out a bomb threat during a Donald Trump rally in Connecticut on Saturday. Connecticut State Police say the U.S. Secret Service contacted them Saturday afternoon after they say Sean Morkys posted on Twitter, Is someone going to bomb the trump rally or am I going to have to? SAUDI ARABIAs King Salman fired the water and electricity minister following public complaints over a surge in prices less than six months after the government cut generous utility subsidies. The US President, Ronald Reagan, has landed in China at the start of a six-day visit the first by an American president since Nixon in 1972. He arrived with his wife, Nancy Reagan, just after 1400 local time (0600 GMT), and was driven to Tiananmen Square, in the centre of the Chinese capital, Beijing, for a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People. He was greeted by the Chinese President, Li Xiannian, to the deafening sound of a 21-gun salute. Mr Li told Mr Reagan he shared his view of the importance of the Pacific region, referring to a comment made by Mr Reagan in a statement before his arrival. President Reagan then attended a banquet given in his honour by President Li. Mr Reagan used the occasion to speak, in Chinese, about the need for mutual respect and benefit between China and the United States. The president is accompanied in China by a party of more than 600 journalists, aides, secret service men and officials who guard the codes for launching nuclear missiles. The talks start tomorrow, and are expected to address a variety of subjects. The White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said the United States and China are expected to reach an agreement to assist US companies in helping develop commercial nuclear power in China. But there is no sign of any compromise over the key issue of Taiwan. The government-controlled Peoples Daily newspaper has today re-stated the view of the Chinese government that relations with America are being held back by Washingtons support for the Kuomintang nationalist regime in Taiwan. Until Nixons visit in 1972 Washington only recognised the ousted nationalist government in Taiwan, where it had been forced into exile after being overthrown by communist forces in 1949. Nixon, however, signed the Shanghai Communique, which for the first time recognised the communist government in Beijing. It resulted in diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time, as well as the transfer of diplomatic recognition to Beijing as the Chinese capital. Washington still continues to support Taiwan, however, and maintains unofficial links, including the sale of arms, to the frustration and anger of the communist leadership in Beijing. Courtesy BBC News In context There was, as expected, no agreement on the key issue of Taiwan. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping told President Reagan the US should not interfere in the process of reunifying China. The Sino-American relationship is widely seen as one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world, and has gone through many ups and downs. Perhaps the lowest point was the Chinese armys brutal suppression of student democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. US-China relations were frozen for almost 10 years. There have also been several difficult incidents, such as the Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the collision of a US spy plane with a Chinese jet in 2001. Washington continues to supply Taiwan with arms, and there is still little progress towards addressing persistent criticisms of Chinas human rights record. But Chinas campaign for wider global acceptance resulted in its membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2001. Diplomacy between the two countries still remains fraught with difficulties, and looks set to remain a delicate balancing act for the foreseeable future. The newly elected president of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachit, is visiting Vietnam to boost ties between the communist neighbors. Vorachit told his Vietnamese host, General-Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, that it was a great honor to visit Vietnam on his first overseas trip to meet Vietnams leaders who are extremely close and trustworthy friends of Laos. Trong, who was elected to a second five-year term in January, said Vorachits visit will boost bilateral relations between two of the worlds last remaining communist countries. The 78-year-old Bounnhang Vorachit was elected president of the single-party state last week after he was appointed leader of the countrys Communist Party at its five-year Congress in January. Laos, a poor, landlocked country with a population of just 7 million, will have a higher-than-usual profile this year because it is its turn to hold the annual chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as the organization grapples with territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Vorachit will meet Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during his three-day visit. AP Many locals seem unwilling to show up in demonstrations 16 years after the establishment of the SAR unless the protest is directly related to them, according to Macau lawmaker Pereira Coutinho. And even when they do so, they usually opt to conceal their faces with masks, even if the issue is not particularly sensitive. That was the case last week, when a group of parents of Colegio Diocesano de Sao Jose students some of them wearing masks delivered a letter requesting a meeting with Bishop Stephen Lee. Even the person handing the petition to the Dioceses representative was wearing a mask, which was only partially removed. Asked to comment on the large number of protesters that prefer to conceal their faces with masks during rallies or petitions, Coutinho admits that members of the public are afraid to be recognized by employers and friends, and that Macau still has a long way to go before locals can actively express their opinions. The best way to do that is to educate them, to have the government leading the way to educate people to participate in demonstrations because those rights are constitutional rights, explained the lawmaker. Coutinho also criticized the citys education system, since university courses lack subjects related to global political systems. He linked this to factors that could affect local youths sense of belonging. This is just to say that education on political issues and education on Macau history will help to create a real sense of belonging [] it will really set on their mind that they need to participate even if the issues are not related to them, stressed Coutinho. He also argued that Macau, being dominated by the gaming industry, has eroded traditional family values and morals. Though the lawmaker believes that there are no major restrictions on freedom of speech in Macau, he emphasized that the frequent mask-wearing could be solved with better education by local schools. Coutinho added that the quality of education in Macau and Hong Kong is incomparable as Hong Kong institutions prepare students to care about local issues. Larry So, a scholar from Macau Polytechnic Institute, told the Times that expressing oneself without being identified is popular, especially among the younger generation, as they are deeply involved in local politics and prone to expressing anonymous opinions on the Internet and social media. Being anonymous on the Internet is good [] they are not that kind of responsible to their own statement and comment [] so were transferring the culture of the Internet to the real world, says So. The scholar admits that some are still affected by the tradition of obeying the government, especially the elderly generation, which encourages youth not to oppose the government so as to remain unidentified, especially if they aim to work as civil servants. Its a belief [of] the elderly generation. Thats how we have been taught. If you go to any demonstration [wearing masks] you kind of keep yourself anonymous, then feel more secure, says the scholar. So also stressed that the tendency to protest anonymously is common in many segments of local society. Staff reporter Around 60 guests attended an Anzac Day observance ceremony at MGM Macau yesterday organized by the Australian Chamber of Commerce for Hong Kong and Macau, marking the 100th anniversary of the war on the Western Front during World War One. The ceremony was followed by a breakfast hosted by the chamber of commerce. Meanwhile more than 700 people gathered for the traditional Anzac Day service at the Cenotaph in Hong Kong this year, according to a statement from the Australian Consulate-General Hong Kong. According to the statement a record number of Australians and New Zealanders in Hong Kong stood to attention yesterday morning, while a bugler played traditional remembrance song, The Last Post to honor the fallen. Also in attendance and performing was the Hong Kong Police Band. Yesterdays commemoration involved the laying of wreaths by officials, community and business groups, veterans groups and others. Among them was Australian Consul General for Hong Kong, Paul Tighe. Today is not about war but about people; the people we mourn, not only the Anzacs sacrificed a century ago, but also all those who served our countries and died in all wars and conflicts, said Tighe. The Anzac legend forged by the Australian and New Zealand forces during the Great War became an important part of the identity of both nations, shaping the ways in which we viewed both our past and future, he added. Named after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), the event this year also marks the centennial of the withdrawal from the Gallipoli Campaign that concluded on January 9, 1916, and for which the occasion was originally created to commemorate. Today it has matured into an event to generally remember the contribution and suffering of all those who have served, according to the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, as well as to take pride in the coming-of-age of what at the time were two newly-formed nations. Anzac Day is very much a part of the Australian spirit, said Australian-born, Macau resident Leanda Lee. We are reminded of the courage, camaraderie, selflessness, loyalty, ingenuity and steadfastness of the men and women who fought together side-by-side regardless of their station in society, their backgrounds, religion, color or race. It is customary to hold such services at dawn or early in the morning because of the symbolic links to the dawn landing at Gallipoli. The first service will be at dawn on April 25, usually outside at the local war memorial. Another will often be held later in the morning, said Lee. Both are solemn but marvelous community events. Anzac Day services are held in almost every city and town across Australia and in many countries around the world, including in those with large Australian and New Zealander expat communities. It is also observed in the Cook Islands, Niue, Pitcairn Islands and Tonga, and previously was a national holiday in Papua New Guinea and Samoa. Daniel Beitler On the edge of Belarus Chernobyl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning Stop! Radiation, a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk. Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nations food safety limits. That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the worlds worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm use and in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin. The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding impossible, insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits. Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 2,200-square-kilometer ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems mean Chernobyls troubles can be consigned to history. There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation? said Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm just 45 kilometers north of the shuttered Chernobyl site, and two kilometers from the boundary of a zone that remains officially off-limits to full-time human habitation. Chubenok says he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese on site. His milk is part of the Milkavita supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90 percent of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. The World Bank identifies Russia as the major market for Belarusian food exports, which represent 15 percent of the countrys export economy. Since rising to power in 1994, President Alexander Lukashenko the former director of a state-owned farm has stopped resettlement programs for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone and developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock. The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians closest to the plant had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living nearby left voluntarily. One of the most prominent medical critics of the governments approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship. Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply. We have a disaster, he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country. The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture. The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium. The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognized unit of measurement for radioactivity. The Minsk lab informed the AP that the milk sample contained 37.5 becquerels. That radioactive isotope is, along with cesium-137, commonly produced during nuclear fission and generates most of the heat and penetrating radiation from nuclear waste. When consumed, scientists say strontium-90 mimics the behavior of calcium in the human body, settling in bones. Milkavita chief engineer Maia Fedonchuk rejected the findings. Its impossible. We do our own testing. There must have been a mix-up, she said, adding they test samples from every batch of milk they receive from Chubenok and do an in-depth analysis every six months. She said the plants own lab analysis indicates its overall milk supply contains an average of 2.85 becquerels per kilogram. A person who answered the telephone at the press office of the Belarusian Emergency Situations Ministry, which is tasked with dealing with the fallout of the nuclear disaster, said they would not comment on the APs findings. Health officials say the danger level posed by low levels of radioactive isotopes depends greatly on length of exposure and individual physiology. Notably, the regional free-trade bloc that includes Belarus and Russia permits higher levels of strontium-90 in goods of up to 25 becquerels per kilogram, still lower than that detected in the AP-commissioned test. The question is whether anyone in authority is positioned to identify the true level of risks in produce from farms on the frontier of Belarus prohibited zone. The deputy director of Belarus Institute of Radiobiology, Natalya Timokhina, said Belarus permits food producers to conduct their own food safety monitoring and lacks the lab equipment necessary to identify the presence of americium, which is estimated to be present in about 2 percent of Belarus top soil and is expected to remain a health risk for another 270 years. One-time ingestion of contaminated food is not very dangerous, Timokhina said. Whats dangerous is the accumulation of radionuclides in the body. Ausrele Kesminiene, a doctor in the cancer research unit of the World Health Organization, said the consumption of radioactive food is linked chiefly to the development of cancer in the thyroid, a gland in the neck that produces body-regulating hormones. Thyroid cancer is typically not fatal if diagnosed early. WHO officials say they are dependent on reports from sister agencies in Belarus to alert them to cancer clusters or other signs of unresolved Chernobyl-related dangers. Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said the agency had no authority to regulate or oversee food safety even products exported to other countries because that is a domestic responsibility. Radiation effects and the development of cancers and the effects on the region are something which go on over a long, long period. So we havent seen the end of it, Hartl said. Undoubtedly there is going to be some increase in cancers. Hartl said WHO officials have not received any red flags from Belarus. Environmentalists critical of Belarus Chernobyl cleanup record says thats hardly surprising, since the government has funded no machinery to scrutinize corrupt practices in the food industry. As a result, they say, no Belarusian food maker has ever been prosecuted for using ingredients or producing goods containing excessive levels of radioactive materials. Irina Sukhiy, founder of the Belarus ecological group Green Network, said workers in food-industry factories have confidentially told her that ingredients and products are blended to dilute the impact of potentially radioactive ingredients from Belarusian suppliers bordering Ukraine. Such alleged mixing, she said, reduces the level of potentially carcinogenic isotopes in dairy products and processed meat below the allowable dose, but it is still hazardous to health. The division of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry responsible for cleaning up the consequences of Chernobyl says that the rate of thyroid cancer in children runs 33 times higher than before the nuclear blast. It says thyroid cancer rates run several times higher in adults. Farmers working both on the edge of, and inside, the prohibited zone say they see no obvious signs of nuclear dangers, have been given no guidelines on reducing the risk of permitting radioactive isotopes into the food chain, and arent worried about this. Chubenok, the dairy farmer, said he had never heard of the sorbent substance Ferocin, known as Prussian Blue, which farmers in Ukraine feed their cattle to accelerate the removal of the cesium-137 isotope from their digestive tracts. A tractor driver on one of his neighboring farms, where an abandoned village has been demolished to make way for fields of grain, says hes never seen an official testing for radiation levels in the soil. But Leonid Kravchenko said there was no reason for alarm. Nobodys in danger, he said. Yuras Karmanau, Gubarevichi, AP China warned residents of risks connected with buying insurance products in Hong Kong after previously tightening restrictions on such purchases as part of efforts to control capital outflows. Products denominated in currencies such as the Hong Kong dollar and the U.S. dollar pose currency risks for buyers, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission said in a statement on its website Friday. Purchases of overseas life and investment-related insurance products are transactions under the capital account, which is not open under current rules, the regulator said. Policyholders risk being unable to make timely premium payments if foreign-exchange payment policies change, the regulator said. In addition, the insurance policies are covered by Hong Kongs laws, not Chinas, it said. Since February, Chinese regulators have moved to control residents purchases of insurance in Hong Kong, transactions which had served as a convenient way of skirting the countrys currency controls. During yesterdays Civic Roundtable event, lawmaker Ng Kuok Cheong, along with lawyer Hong Wing Kwan, and assistant professor from the University of Macau, Agnes Lam, discussed the 2015 Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) report, which was published earlier this month. The main topics of yesterdays discussion were public tenders; penalties imposed on high-rank officials; and amendment of the procurement law, which was first established back in 1986. Lam argued that revising that law is one way of eradicating corruption from public tender processes. There are a lot of problems [in the procurement law]. I think one thing we could do is simplify it, said Agnes Lam. Regarding corruption amongst civil servants, the scholar argues that there should be a legal system for high-rank officials. Earlier, Chief Executive Chui Sai On said that corruption among civil servants happens because the latter lack awareness of the law. In response, lawmaker Ng Kuok Cheong, during the discussion, refused to accept Chuis reply by arguing that, its not that they dont know the law well enough. It is indeed a [result of] longterm complicity between public servants and businessmen. According to Lam, the discussion was expected to conclude with a proposal to ask the government to revise the procurement law. The 2015 CCAC report was released this month. It indicates that cases of corruption and bribery in the private sector were trending down and that no private bribery cases were successfully referred to judicial institutions last year. The main reason for this, according to the CCAC, is that the related crimes are semi-public offences and the private sector opts to smooth things over and not to exercise the right to file a complaint, resulting in the CCAC not being able to pursue such cases under the law. The Commission therefore stressed that it is necessary to improve the laws around the prevention and minimization of bribery in the private sector and to further enhance awareness of matters of integrity among citizens. Staff reporter Authorities in Chinas northern province of Heilongjiang announced last week that couples who meet certain requirements will be permitted to have a third child to help counter the areas ageing population. The provision will apply to overseas returnee couples and those from regions such as Macau, Hong Kong or Taiwan. In addition, couples who live in one of 18 selected border counties and those who are members of specific ethnic minorities will also be permitted to have a third child. Another bid to mitigate the effects of an ageing population in the province saw local government officials extend marriage leave for newly-weds from 15 days to 25. Authorities concerned over oyster catching Last Saturday, a small group of residents were spotted harvesting oysters around Rua de Hac Sa, Long Chao Kok, according to a report by TDM. Some tourists were also spotted walking towards the shore. One of the people collecting oysters told the tourists that the oysters were only for personal consumption, and that they were not for sale. The Civil and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) told reporters that the department is not sure whether these oysters meet the IACMs food hygiene standards, and it recommends that residents refrain from eating them. The IACM website states that oysters might be contaminated if there are viruses in the water. Paternity leave Wong Kit Cheng brought a question to the plenary regarding the long-awaited recognition of paternity leave, to which the CE responded that he is in favor of a paid paternity leave scheme. I personally support the introduction of paid paternity [leave], he said, recalling that in order to achieve a fair compromise, the government and the Standing Committee for the Coordination of Social Affairs (CPCS) have analyzed the systems in neighboring regions. The CE said that a consensus should be reached soon, and he believes that the final solution to be implemented will grant fathers between 3 to 5 days of paid leave. The current law only allows fathers two days of justified absence from work after the birth of their children. On Saturday, the Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lionel Leong, commented on Chuis statement, stating, I believe that call-out is a positive reminder for the members of the CPCS to reach a solution as soon as possible. Shortage of bilingual staff Lawmaker Cheang Chi Keong questioned the CE over the shortage of bilingual staff, asking how many are required to achieve the goal of making the region a platform connecting China and Portuguese-speaking countries. Cheang added that the measures in this important field might not be working with sufficient haste and proposed the idea of making the learning of the Portuguese language mandatory from primary level at all schools in the territory. The CE acknowledged that there is a great lack of bilingual staff including in the government and especially in the legal field. Chui Sai On also said that is a shortage of 126 translators in the administration, and confirmed that the topic is a priority for the government in its forthcoming five-year plan. Regarding the school proposal, the CE said that there are now 3,800 students learning Portuguese in private schools, representing an increase of about 20 percent. Non-political municipal bodies Ng Kuok Cheong took the opportunity to once more raise the topic of the creation of so-called non-political municipal bodies. The CE replied that work in that area is proceeding cautiously, and that they have now entered into a phase of study and work preparation regarding [their] composition and constitution. Chui added that there is a historical sequence that must be taken into account, and said that the proposal will be ready for public consultation in the second semester of this year, concluding that he hopes the completion of all preliminary work and the creation of the non-governmental municipal bodies would be finalized by 2018. Following the so called Mong Kok riot a celebration of the Year of the Monkey that turned into a night of mayhem some Hong Kong lawmakers urged the government to introduce an anti- mask law. As depicted in the images aired endlessly by Hong Kong TV stations, many Hong Kongers suspected of stirring up violence had concealed their faces with masks, goggles, hats and various articles of clothing, so as to not be identified by authorities. The neighboring regions police had to deploy a special team to analyze the surveillance footage and identify the rioters. Police also released pictures of the masked suspects, seeking the publics help to identify them. The fact that protesters in Hong Kong are masking themselves to avoid legal responsibilities has raised red flags in the regions political leadership. Following the Mong Kok incident, pro- establishment lawmaker Elizabeth Quat, a member of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, urged the government to introduce a new law like in Germany, Austria, Canada and the States, to ban protesters from wearing masks. The South China Morning Post reported that several countries have introduced similar laws. In some cases, those laws are over 100-years-old: An anti-mask law in the United States can be traced to 1845, when tenant farmers wore disguises to attack law enforcement officials. In 1965, the law in some states was updated to prevent masked gatherings of two or more people, except in the case of masquerade parties. Canada approved a bill in 2013 that forbids people from covering their face during a riot or unlawful assembly. The offence carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Germany and France passed such regulations in 1985 and 2010, respectively, the article read. PB Government officials, diplomats and ordinary people gathered at the remains of a fallen iconic tower in the Nepalese capital yesterday to mark the anniversary of a devastating earthquake that killed thousands and injured many more in the Himalayan nation. Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli laid a wreath at the ruins of the Dharahara tower in the heart of Kathmandu. The structure collapsed on April 25 last year, killing 132 people. I lost a friend who was working at the top of the tower on that day. I hope he and others are in a good a place, said Ram Shrestha. He said that he had just stepped out a few minutes before the earthquake to go shopping and survived. Madhav Newpane, who runs a shop near the tower, witness its collapse. He returned on Sunday with a bouquet of flowers and candles. There were many people killed here on that day. I will never be able to forget that day, said Newpane. Buddhist monks also gathered at the Kathmandu Durbar Square to pray for nearly 9,000 people killed in the earthquake and aftershocks. Nepal is under criticism for the slow reconstruction of the nearly 1 million houses despite foreign donors already pledging USD4.1 billion in aid. Millions of people remain homeless. A small group of about 20 protesters dressed in black took to the streets, chanting slogans criticizing the slow pace of rebuilding. Police quickly removed their banner but allowed them to shout anti-government statements. AP New Zealand tourism chiefs were celebrating yesterday after the mountain resort town of Queenstown won a major contract to host 10,000 salespeople of a Chinese company, Xinhua News Agency reported. Amway China will be sending 10,000 of its top salespeople to Queenstown, in the South Island, for five days, as a reward for hard work. Chief executive of the governments Tourism New Zealand agency, Kevin Bowler, said the contract would be a major boost to the economy. The 50 million NZ dollars (USD34.83 million) in value is estimated just from the companys spend on the incentive alone, Bowler said in a statement, adding that each of the 10,000 staff will also contribute additional personal spend while in the country bringing the total even higher. China is now our second-largest and fastest growing tourism market, contributing nearly 1.7 billion NZ dollars to the economy in 2015. And Chinese tourists have the highest daily spend of any of our visitors, read the statement, quoted by Xinhua. According to data published by Macaus Human Resources Office (GRH), there were 181,436 non-resident workers in the territory at the end of March. The figure represents a slight decline of 0.37 percent from the end of February (182,109) but almost no change over that recorded at the end of January (181,415). Over the last six months, the number of non-resident workers has remained mostly stable at just over 180,000, growing or shrinking slightly each month, in contrast to the surge in numbers recorded between 2010 and 2015. This bottoming-out reflects the gaming slowdown and the delays in opening the new gaming resorts in Cotai, which are currently slated for later this year and in 2017. Local economist Jose Sales Marques told the Times that the number of non-resident workers in Macau of recent times is determined by two conflicting forces: the gaming slowdown and the rise in the construction of new resorts. There has been a huge increase in the past, due to the convergence of the two elements, as well as supporting industries like restaurants and retail, said Sales Marques. The demand for non-resident workers will slow down with the economy, but on the other hand, construction works are still ongoing and most of the construction workers here are non-residents, added Sales Marques, who is also president of the Institute of European Studies of Macau. At the end of March 2016, non- resident workers were mostly involved in the hotel and restaurant sector (47,441), the construction sector (43,708) and in domestic work (23,928). In relation to the geographical size of the territory and its current population density, Sales Marques said there must be an optimum number of non-residents. However, he also pointed to the possibility of more non-residents living in Zhuhai while working in the MSAR. If we consider the structural features of Macau, there must be an optimum number, but I havent seen any studies that identify where this might be [] I expect it to start increasing again later this year with the opening of new resorts, he explained. The leading countries of origin for non-resident workers remained mainland China (116,356), the Philippines (25,015), and Vietnam (14,813). Asked about allegations that the government and the GRH are tightening the process of obtaining work permit allocations, Sales Marques believes that it could harm the MSARs prospects for economic diversification. The policy should be the contrary, he said. Macau needs more professionals in order to diversify, so I am in favor of a policy contrary to the tightening because there is no economic reason to justify this. Daniel Beitler A day after North Koreas foreign minister told The Associated Press that his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea, President Barack Obama said yesterday that Washington isnt taking the proposal seriously and Pyongyang would have to do better than that. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, interviewed Saturday by the AP, also defended his countrys right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that Pyongyang wont be cowed by international sanctions. And for those waiting for the Norths regime to collapse, he had this to say: Dont hold your breath. Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests, he said in his first interview Saturday with a Western news organization. Obama dismissed North Koreas latest overture at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover, Germany. We dont take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test of these kinds of activities, Obama said. What weve said consistently [] is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then well be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. But thats not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. Theyre going to have to do better than that. Obama also said that until North Korea does better, as he put it, the U.S. will continue to emphasize our work with the Republic of Korea and Japan and our missile defense mechanisms to ensure that were keeping the American people safe and were keeping our allies safe. Ris interview with the AP came just hours after North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in its latest show of defiance as this years U.S.-South Korea exercises wind down. He referred to the launch in the context of current tensions caused by the military exercises. The escalation of this military exercise level has reached its top level. And I think its not bad as the other side is going for the climax why not us, too, to that level as well? The U.S. State Department said that in response to Saturdays launch, it was limiting the travel of Ri and his delegation to U.N. functions in New York, where they are attending a U.N. meeting on sustainable development. The U.S. noted launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. In his interview with the AP, Ri held firm to Pyongyangs longstanding position that the U.S. drove his country to develop nuclear weapons as an act of self-defense. At the same time, he suggested that suspending the military exercises with Seoul could open the door to talks and reduced tensions. If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well, he said, speaking in Korean through an interpreter. It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise. DPRK is an abbreviation for North Koreas official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Ri, who spoke calmly and in measured words, a contrast to the often bombastic verbiage used by the Norths media, claimed the Norths proposal was very logical. He granted the interview in the countrys diplomatic mission to the United Nations. He spoke beneath portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il, North Koreas two previous leaders the grandfather and father of current leader Kim Jong Un. If the exercises are halted for some period, for some years, he added, new opportunities may arise for the two countries and for the whole entire world as well. It is extremely rare for top North Korean officials to give interviews to foreign media, and particularly with Western news organizations. Ris proposal, which he said he hoped U.S. policymakers would heed, may well fall on deaf ears. North Korea, which sees the U.S.-South Korean exercises as a rehearsal for invasion, has floated similar proposals to Washington in the past, but the U.S. has insisted the North give up its nuclear weapons program first before any negotiations. The result has been a stalemate that Ri said has put the peninsula at the crossroads of a thermonuclear war. In Seoul, South Koreas Foreign Ministry released a statement Sunday that called the Norths proposal not worth considering. The ministry noted that the Norths suggestion is nothing new, and said that the comment was just part of its maneuvering to wiggle out of the difficult situation created by stronger international sanctions. In response to Ris remarks, a U.S. State Department official defended the military exercises as demonstrating the U.S. commitment to its alliance with the South and said they enhance the combat readiness, flexibility and capabilities of the alliance. We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions and rhetoric that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations, said Katina Adams, a spokeswoman for the State Departments Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. Sanctions, Ri said, wont sway the North. If they believe they can actually frustrate us with sanctions, they are totally mistaken, he said. The more pressure you put on to something, the more emotionally you react to stand up against it. And this is important for the American policymakers to be aware of. Ri said the possibility of conflict has increased significantly this year because the exercises have taken on what Pyongyang sees as a more aggressive and threatening tone including training to conduct precision decapitation strikes on North Koreas leadership. This years exercises are the biggest ever, involving about 300,000 troops. Washington and Seoul say they beefed up the maneuvers after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, in January, which also brought a new round of tough sanctions by the U.N. down on Pyongyangs head. The exercises are set to continue through the end of the month. Pyongyang, meanwhile, has responded with a series of missile launches and statements in its media that the country has developed its long-range ballistic missile and nuclear warhead technologies to the point that they now present a credible deterrent and could even be used against targets on the U.S. mainland, though not all foreign analysts accept that claim. In the interview, Ri stated that the United States has used its power to get other countries to join in pressure on North Korea. A country as small as the DPRK cannot actually be a threat to the U.S. or to the world, he told the AP. How great would it be if the world were to say to the United States and the American government not to conduct any more military exercises in the Korean Peninsula [] But there is not a single country that says this to the U.S. These big countries alone or together are telling us that we should calm down, he said. For us this is like a sentence, that we should accept our death and refuse our right to sovereignty. Eric Talmadge, New York, AP Two local women, who are awaiting the results of lawsuits against a Zhongshan real estate company which had deceived them, reminded Macau residents to pay attention to scams when buying properties in the mainland, according to a report by Macao Daily News. The two women who are surnamed Tsui and Chung, and are in their 30s invested RMB805,000 and RMB790,000, respectively, in properties last August located in Tanzhou Town, a region of Zhongshan that is close to Zhuhai. According to the report, the investments were made through a real estate agency based in Zhuhai. Both owners planned to rent out their properties as shops. However, the contracts specified that the spaces could only be used as garages. The agents told the buyers that said spaces could indeed be rented out, but the contract stated otherwise. The agents further claimed that writing the contract in this way would allow buyers to use the spaces for an extended period of 20 years, even providing deposit receipts with the word shop written on them instead of garage. The victims, after signing the contracts, contacted the Zhongshan Administration Bureau for Industry and Commerce, which assured them that the spaces could only be used as car parks. The agency later admitted that these incidents are a result of the absence of related laws, and that such things are common in the mainland. The Secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan, told public broadcaster TDM that she believes that the proposed extradition treaty with Hong Kong will apply retroactively. That would allow the surrender of individuals to cover those already convicted as long as the rulings against them are still valid. Chan said that, after the agreement has been signed, the extradition rights can be applied to all previously delivered sentences that are still in force. According to our interpretation of that accord with Hong Kong, after the signing, all sentences are valid. This, from our point of view, means that after it takes effect both parties can ask for the sentence to be enforced, Chan told TDM during an exclusive interview. The secretary stressed, however, the difficulties involved in resolving differences between the legal landscapes of Macau and Hong Kong. The differences are further pronounced in similar deals being worked out with both Mainland China and Taiwan. As you know, our law is very different from that of those areas, in both aspects of the judicial tradition, such as our respective regulations. When we think about creating a legislative measure of a mutual legal assistance agreement with mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan in the future, it will not be easy to adapt our legislation because of those differences, the secretary explained to the broadcaster. We are aware of the differences in the legal framework and hope that, among the four regions, there can be a consensus on how to carry out the legislative work, she added. The highest-profile cases that could be targeted by the extradition agreement, if signed, are those of Joseph Lau and Steven Lo, who were both sentenced to prison in 2014 for corruption and money laundering in connection with Ao Man Long. The pair has evaded their sentences by avoiding travel to Macau, where they are considered fugitives. Last month Sonia Chan told reporters that she was unable to comment on individual cases. DB Local resorts are slashing room prices by up to 30 percent to cope with the competition this coming Labor Day weekend, reported the Hong Kong Economic Journal, amid an increased supply of rooms in the market. Observers have noted an increase in casino resort discounts of late. Earlier this month, Deutsche Banks Karen Tang cautioned that a hotel price war would soon be in full swing. A total of five new hotels have entered the market since last years Labor Day weekend, providing more than 3,500 additional rooms combined. The sharp increase in supply heralds the coming of newer resorts that will open later this year, adding further strain to the struggling industry. As casino operators seek to maximize their market share and occupancy rates, analysts reckon that the MSAR can expect an abundance of sales promotions and price slashing. Four to six typhoons are expected to hit the territory this year, the Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau (SMG) revealed yesterday at a meeting of the territorys civil defense units regarding the Campaign for prevention of tropical storms in 2016. The SMG also forecast that this years typhoons will be stronger, with at least two level 8 tropical storms between August and September. The first typhoon to reach the territory should arrive during the second half of June. IPM holds seminar on Chinese language teaching The Macau Polytechnic Institute (IPM) has invited professor Chen Ping, chair of Chinese Studies and director of the Confucius Institute at The University of Queensland, to discuss development trends of Chinese language teaching. According to a statement issued by IPM, the professor explained the educational environment of Chinese and foreign languages in Australia. He analyzed the main similarities and differences between English and Chinese in terms of vocabulary, syntax and semantics. CHINA President Xi Jinping says that China must be on guard against nefarious religious influences from abroad. His comments over the weekend follow a tightening of religious space that has seen bans on the wearing of veils and beards in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang and the removal of church crosses in eastern China. VIETNAM-US Before joining President Barack Obama on his first trip to Vietnam next month, Secretary of State John Kerry will take a day to reflect on his long and complicated history with the Asian country, first as a soldier and later as a war protester and statesman. USA In an extraordinary move, Trumps Republican rivals announced plans to coordinate primary strategies in upcoming states to deprive the GOP front-runner of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Cruz and Kasich issued near-simultaneous statements outlining an agreement that may be unprecedented in modern American politics. The Kasich campaign will give Cruz a clear path in Indiana. In return, the Cruz campaign will clear the path for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. USA The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. SOLAR PLANE A solar-powered airplane on a mission to fly around the world lands in California, completing a risky, three-day flight across the Pacific. MEXICO There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to a report released by an outside group of experts. SYRIA An opposition monitoring group says at least 26 people, including two young siblings, killed in Aleppo, as rebels and government forces trade fire. Also yesterday, a car bomb has exploded in a suburb of Damascus that is home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Syria, killing six people. SERBIA An official vote tally has confirmed Serbias incumbent pro-EU populists won a landslide victory in the countrys general election. The tally presented by the state electoral commission yesterday also shows pro-Russian nationalists are returning to Parliament. With about 96 percent of the vote counted, the Progressive Party won 48 percent and its Socialist coalition partner got 11 percent in Sundays vote. Two right-wing parties lagged far behind the Radical Party with 8 percent and DSS-Dveri with 5 percent. AUSTRIA The law-and-order candidate of Austrias right-wing party sweeps the first round of presidential elections, winning over 35 percent of the vote for the partys best-ever result. The overwhelming winners of Idaho's Republican primary and Democratic caucus, respectively, are also positioned to do well in the state in a general election, according to the latest poll released by Idaho Politics Weekly. Ted Cruz would beat either of the Democrats easily, and Bernie Sanders, while he still loses to any of the three Republicans, polls better than Hillary Clinton and is within the margin of error in a head-to-head race with Donald Trump. While Cruz would easily beat either Clinton or Sanders in Idaho's general election, the poll found John Kasich, who got just 7 percent of the vote on primary night, would actually do a bit better against Sanders the Ohio governor would beat Democrat Clinton by 63-22 and Sanders by 56-34. Cruz, who won Idaho Republicans in the primary by 17 points over the national frontrunner Trump, would beat Clinton 64-26 statewide and Sanders 54-37, according to the poll of 603 Idaho voters, which was taken from April 8 to 19 by Salt Lake City polling firm Dan Jones and Associates. Trump has struggled in Mormon-majority areas in particular. He did poorly in Idaho largely because of the overwhelming support for Cruz in the heavily Mormon southeastern part of the state (Marco Rubio, who got 16 percent statewide, even beat Trump in some of those counties). He is the weakest of the three Republicans in an Idaho general election but still beats Clinton by 49-32, with 19 percent undecided. Against Sanders, though, who won the Democratic caucus by nearly 4-1, Trump is up just 45-43, well within the poll's 4 percent margin of error and a surprising showing in a state that went for Mitt Romney and John McCain by more than 60 percent over Barack Obama. If Trump is the GOP candidate, the poll found 8 percent of self-described Republicans would vote for Clinton if she's the Democrat's pick, and 15 percent of Republicans would vote for Sanders if it's Trump against Sanders. A majority of Idahoans 60 percent believe Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and a 45 percent plurality believe Trump will be the Republican. They're more divided when asked who they think will win the presidency 29 percent expect Clinton, and 23 percent Trump. Democrats are pretty certain 60 percent of Idaho Democrats expect Clinton to be the next president but Republicans and independents are a lot more unsure. Twenty-six percent of independents say Clinton will win, 19 percent Trump, 17 percent say Sanders and a quarter don't have a guess. Among Republicans, 36 percent said Trump will be the next president, 26 percent don't know, and smaller numbers picked other candidates. TWIN FALLS Iconic pictures of dust clouds swallowing homesteads during the Dirty Thirties are often the first thing that come to mind when soil conservation is mentioned. But here in the Magic Valley, water or the lack of it was the impetus for forming many conservation districts five to seven decades ago. When Roy Prescott thinks back to the critical position American agriculture was in when the federal Soil Conservation Service and local conservation districts were formed, he is amazed by the evolution that has occurred. Prescott farms in Jerome County and also runs cattle on both federal and private land, and is supervisor of the North Side Soil and Water Conservation District. Soil surveys in Jerome County in the late 1940s showed that more than a third of the countys cropland had lost between 25 and 75 percent of its topsoil to both wind and water erosion. People living south of Twin Falls were hauling domestic water for about six months each year in the 1950s. Water shortages left many fertile fields uncultivated and rangeland undeveloped. Flooding from the Raft River was a prime concern in eastern Cassia County, although it took two years of drought before a conservation district was formed. Years of straightening streambanks caused serious erosion both above and below the channeled areas in the Fairfield area. In Gooding and Jerome counties, irrigation water had made the desert bloom, but trying to manage irrigation water on poorly organized, uneven fields was difficult. Within a decade of the Soil Conservation Service becoming an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1935 the service was later renamed the Natural Resources Conservation Service landowners began forming local conservation districts to help address their resource concerns. North Side SWCD carried out a Farm-in-a-Day program in 1952. Working with local equipment dealers, county merchants and civic groups, more than 1,000 volunteers turned 128 acres of undeveloped land into a conservation farm. In just one day, a home was built and 103 acres were leveled, planed, chiseled, plowed, harrowed, seeded, fertilized and corrugated. Additionally, 3.5 miles of fence, 3,000 feet of underground pipe and 21,000 feet of irrigation ditches were installed. A woodlot and windbreaks were planted. The 11,320 people attending the event saw how conservation could be integrated into the development of a new farm. The Twin Falls Soil and Water Conservation District spearheaded the Cedar Creek Watershed project in the early 1960s to provide irrigation water to 5,000 acres on what is now known as the Roseworth Tract. A 54-inch concrete pipe was installed in Cedar Creek Canyon in 1963 to replace a rapidly deteriorating flume. That was followed by rebuilding five miles of mainline canal in 1964 and constructing a regulating reservoir in 1965. Conservation districts have also maintained a system of snow measurement courses since the 1950s to help farmers develop better irrigation water supply forecasts. Irrigators on the Salmon Tract in southern Twin Falls County got good news during the Twin Falls SWCDs 62nd annual water forecast meeting earlier this month. Even under the driest forecast (they are given five predictions from driest to wettest), they should receive 0.75 acre-feet per share. Not quite a full share (1.1 acre-feet per share), but twice as much as theyve received each of the last three years. As early conservation planning helped farmers improve their land management and crop rotations, more emphasis was placed on improving natural resources. The Snake River and Twin Falls conservation districts began the Rock Creek Rural Clean Water Project in the 1980s. It was one of only 13 pilot projects in the nation and was the only one that included irrigated agriculture. Over 180 contracts were signed to reduce erosion on cropland draining into Rock Creek and the Snake River. Conservation work often requires expensive equipment that farmers are reluctant to buy until they see it will work for them. In the 1950s, several conservation districts leased carryalls and bulldozers for farmers to level land, improving their irrigation efficiency and reducing irrigation-induced erosion. Today, several districts are helping farmers experiment with no-till equipment to reduce wind erosion. The Minidoka and Cassia districts have purchased two no-till drills that farmers can lease, while the Balanced Rock district has cost-share for cooperators who want to lease a no-till drill or plant cover crops. Ive seen the transition from the days when we used to burn sagebrush, Prescott said. With the technology we have in place and the demands from the public to grow the food they eat every day while protecting the environment, soil and water conservation districts and their partners the Natural Resources Conservation Service and University of Idaho are the singularly most important vehicle to help farmers do as we should to be profitable and sustainable. Gooding County Felony Sentencings Luke Austin Pierce, 38, Gooding; domestic violence with traumatic injury, amended to domestic assault second offense, $687.50 costs, restitution, one year jail, one suspended, five years supervised probation. Luke Austin Pierce, 38, Gooding; possession of a controlled substance, $1,345.50 costs, seven years penitentiary, five determinate, two indeterminate, 147 days credited, sentence suspended, five years supervised probation. Amanda Lee Meza, 37, Boise; custodial interference, $245.50 costs, three years penitentiary, one determinate, two indeterminate, sentence suspended, 18 months supervised probation. Driving Under the Influence Sentencings Marcos Ayala-Jimenez, 30, Bliss; possession or consumption of an open container of an alcoholic beverage by passenger charge dismissed. DUI third or subsequent offense, $1,290.50 fine, five years indeterminate penitentiary, 66 days credited for time served. Resisting or obstructing an officer charge dismissed. Failure to purchase drivers license charge dismissed. Kara D. Boyles, 34, Bliss; DUI, amended to DUI excessive, $287.50 costs, $3,662.22 restitution, 180 days jail, 119 days suspended, 61 days credited, 24 months supervised probation. POST FALLS (AP) | For the first time since 1914, the Underdahl family can send out "it's a girl" baby announcements. The Coeur d'Alene Press reported that the northern Idaho family had only birthed boys for 101 years, until Scott and Ashton Underdahl of Post Falls welcomed Aurelia Marie Ann on April 12. Scott Underdahl says that after four generations of only boys, the whole family was hoping for a girl. He says he didn't know what an Underdahl girl looked like. Now he does and he says Aurelia has her grandfather's nose. TWIN FALLS Nestled between the library and the county courthouse at City Park is the Tree of Peace. Beneath it is a plaque surrounded by flowers that reads, In memory of the Armenian Genocide and the contribution that the American Armenians have made to our community. The decision to plant the tree there was not an accident, said Liyah Babayan, chairwoman for the Idaho chapter of the Armenian National Committee of America. The library and the courthouse represent reason and justice, Babayan said Sunday afternoon. Genocide will continue its ugly cycle if there is not justice, she said. You get to justice not with more war and more bloodshed and more atrocities. No. You get to justice through wanting peace. Thats what the desire is. It was 101 years ago on April 24, 1915, that mass killings of Armenians began. 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives by the hand of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in what is known as the Armenian Genocide. Forget Me Not Its a small flower but it has its name hidden inside, said Svetlana Movseseyan, proudly displaying a purple flower on her blouse. The pin was designed after the forget-me-not flower, and was created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Although a tiny trinket, it has become a symbol and reminder for Movseseyan to continue sharing the history however she can. It says forget me not, and thats exactly what were doing, she said. Well never forget that, even at 100 years. Movseseyan was one of many people who gathered around the Tree of Peace on Sunday to remember and mourn those who lost their lives. Just after 2 p.m. on Sunday, Armenian Americans and other Twin Falls residents gathered around the Tree of Peace and joined Father Michael Habib, the pastor at St. Ignatius of Antioch Orthodox Church, in prayer. This gathering is something that Habib finds is unique in a small city like Twin Falls, and what makes this community such a wonderful place for Armenians and other refugees. Growing up I never heard of a gathering like this, and its unique because we have such a large Armenian contingency in this city, Habib said. Its good because its a small city, and we can come together and support each other. It is these kinds of gatherings that Habib and Babayan think will help bring awareness to a cause not many people know about. There is absolutely nothing we can do in 2016 to restore the 1.5 million souls their lives, Babayan said. But we can give them dignity and in their honor save other human beings from the same atrocities. Part of the reason for the lack of knowledge on the genocide is that its not widely taught in schools. It has become part of Babayans mission to help encourage the state Board of Education to use this in lessons on social science and history. Over the years, 43 states have made an effort to teach this part of history, but Babayan wont be happy until it is all 50. For us to gather here, we know our history, she said. What we are trying to do is educate the community at large and make them more aware. In Armenia, April 24 is a day of remembrance and celebration. People gather together, bringing flowers, balloons and memories, dance, and as Movseseyan remembers it, it is a wonderful time. No matter what your situation was, you would show up to that event, she said. People in wheelchairs, the sick and the old would come out. When she told her family back in Armenia what her plans were for the day of the anniversary, they were thrilled. I talked to my Armenian relatives, and they asked me what I was going to do. So I told them at 2 p.m. we were going to gather together and they were surprised, Movseseyan said. They said Its so good to know its not only us celebrating this. Its far, far away in America too. As the crowd cleared, and the final flowers were placed beneath the tree, three children wandered across the park. They noticed plaque and Babayan smiled as she watched them read the words on it aloud. Between awareness and reason we get to justice, she said. We wanted to make sure to have this memorial as close as possible (to these places) so that the young ones, like this, who know nothing about it can learn. But the plaque beneath the tree in City Park, situated between the symbols of justice and reason, has an even greater meaning. It is a reminder of an epic story of humanity, it is endurance and what it can withstand. Turkey thought they could bury us. The Ottoman Empire thought they could bury Armenia to wipe it off the map, Babayan said. But what they did not realize is that we are seeds, and we have grown and we have sprouted and we have bloomed. Seniors Wellness The Twin Falls Senior Center will hold a presentation for senior citizens at 11:45 a.m. Monday at 530 Shoshone St. W. Rhea Lanting, University of Idaho Extension Service, will discuss Nutritional Needs as We Age. Free; 208-734-5084. Childbirth St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Centers prepared childbirth classes, 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, April 26 through May 24, in the Oak Room on the lower level of St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. Topics: Wellness during pregnancy; labor and delivery process with relaxation and breathing techniques; caesarean birth; postpartum care for mother and newborn; infant CPR; car seat and home safety; and a tour of the maternal and child units. Bring a labor-support person if possible. Cost is $25 for a five-week session. Pre-registration is required: 208-814-0402. Laughter Exercise Laughter Therapy class, 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the Twin Falls Senior Center, 530 Shoshone St. W., with Mary Martinat, a retired physical education instructor. Learn how laughing can relieve stress and improve your breathing. Free. 208-734-5084. Victims Support Support group for victims of domestic violence, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. every Tuesday at the Mini-Cassia Shelter Haven of Hope, 323 First St., Rupert. Information: Rachel, 208-312-7021. Alzheimers Support Alzheimers Association, Greater Idaho Chapters Caregiver Support Group meeting, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at DeSano Place Suites, 545 Nevada St., Gooding. The group meets on the second and fourth Wednesdays every month. Information: 208-934-4623. Infant Safety, CPR Infant safety and cardiopulmonary resuscitation class, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday in the Oak Rooms on the lower level of St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. New parents, grandparents and caregivers learn CPR and what to do if a baby chokes. The class isnt a certification course. Free; no registration required. 208-814-0402. Vision Support Visually Impaired Support Group meeting, 12:45 to 2 p.m. Thursday at the Twin Falls Senior Center, 530 Shoshone St. W., Twin Falls. Topics: glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetes-caused vision problems. Information: Idaho Commission for the Blind, 208-734-2140, or Verna Motes, 208-732-0627. Grief Support Visions of Hope meeting, 5 p.m. every Thursday at Hospice Visions, 1770 Park View Drive, Twin Falls. This grief support group is open to everyone in the community. Information: 208-735-0121. Mental Health Support Mental Health Support Group, 5:30 p.m. every Thursday at Family Health Services/Behavioral Health building, 1102 Eastland Drive N., Twin Falls. The free support group is open to Magic Valley residents. Information: 208-734-1281. Childbirth Childbirth refresher course, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, May 3, in the Oak Rooms on the lower level of St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. Topic: Review of childbirth preparation and medical center procedures, and a tour of the maternal and child unit. Bring a labor support person, if possible. Cost is $15; pre-registration is required: 208-814-0402. Anxiety Support Anxiety Support Group, 6 p.m. every Thursday at Magic Valley Fellowship Hall, 801 Second Ave. N., Twin Falls. Support for those who experience anxiety, panic attacks or depression. Learn about the signs, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and coping skills. Information: Cathy Shaddy, 208-410-2768. Childbirth St. Lukes Magic Valley prepared childbirth bootcamp, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 7, in the Oak Room at St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. This session is for those unable to attend the five-week prepared childbirth classes. Topics: wellness of the mother; labor process with relaxation and breathing techniques; videos of deliveries and labor positions; and care of the postpartum mother and newborn. Bring a labor support person if possible. Cost is $25 and pre-registration is required, 208-814-0402. Democrat Branden Durst represented the southeast Boise area in the Idaho House for two terms after his elections in 2006 and 2008, and then for about a year in the Idaho Senate after his election in 2012. In November 2013, having half-moved to Washington state, he resigned. This year, situated full-time in southern Pierce County (county seat: Tacoma), hes running again, now for a House seat in Washingtons 29th district. In the early days of most of our Western states there was nothing unusual about running for office, sequentially, in multiple states; many of Idahos early lawmakers did, spreading expertise gathered in sundry statehouses. In more recent decades, political people in most states have found more electoral strength in emphasizing local roots over job experience. Among recent Idaho legislators, only Senator Steve Vick, R-Hayden, comes to mind as having been elected to another states legislature (the Montana House). If anyone knows of another in recent years, let me know. Nationally, its not unknown, but rare. The similarities and differences of running in different states surely offer some insights single-state candidates dont see. I asked Durst last week about some of those. He is running in District 29, a mostly suburban area reaching south of Tacoma, including such communities as Lakewood and Parkland. That area actually is a lot like Dursts old southeast Boise district, including its at-present Democratic lean. Durst is challenging an incumbent Democratic representative, David Sawyer of Parkland. Theres also a Republican, Rick Thomas, in the race. For all that Washington is classed as a Democratic blue state in the presidential election, its legislature is split closely between the two parties, with a Republican Senate and Democratic House. A number of legislative issues track across state lines. Public school financing is a hot topic in Washington. There as in Idaho the state supreme court has said the legislature has not adequately addressed that funding, but in Washington, the court has gone further and held the legislature in contempt, and imposed fines. Its a subject of widespread discussion. One obvious campaign difference from Idaho is the top two element. Durst and both other candidates in the August primary election each are seeking to do better than come in third; whichever two do progress on to November, even if theyre of the same party. November becomes a runoff. Mostly around the state this still means a Democrat and a Republican running against each other in November, but not always. Another difference, which pops up in the practicalities of running, is that outsiders have a harder time there gaining traction than they do in Idaho. In Idaho, candidates can (and often should) do a good deal of work before formally filing for office in March, but they dont have to. In Washington, most of the campaign finance, organization and other work is long since done by the time a candidate formally files in May. Major endorsing organizations too have made their donation or other support decisions far in advance of May, Durst said, and if youre new to the political process youd have almost no chance of being successful. They need more resources too than in Idaho. A legislative district in Washington has several times as many people as those in Idaho, and campaign budgets and organizations typically are several times as large. In 2014, Representative Sawyer and his main opponent each spent more than $90,000, but thats on the low side; many competitive campaigns in Washington have quarter-million dollar budgets. Thats far more than the norm in Idaho. In Idaho, individual candidates have a little more control over their individual destiny, Durst said. And he said that in Washington, theres much more transparency in finance here, with state agencies that require extensive filing of campaign and personal finances. The downside is that this can rapidly become complex and difficult: people are expected to pay for a consultant, and consultants arent cheap ... That would be unheard of in Idaho. Still, he said, the basics are the basics. Knocking on doors and shaking hands is not so different in any state. The fundamentals are the same, wherever you live. Hamas has slammed French efforts for an international peace conference between Israel and Palestine scheduled to take place on May 30 as a waste of time and a free service for the Israeli government that continues its daily violations against the Palestinians. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the conference will not end the conflict as long as Israel continues its occupation and the abuse of Palestinian rights. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas have expressed support to the conference which will be attended by Arab and European states. Spokesman Abu Zuhri warned those who will be attending the meeting against agreeing to any deal that would harm the Palestinians and their national interests. Israel is not enthusiastic either about the international conference and has been handling it with caution. The France-proposed conference is aimed at reviving talks between Israel and Palestine, stalled since 2014 and the summer war which left Gaza devastated. An offensive military operation by Yemeni, Saudi and Emirati forces on al-Qaeda militants in the south eastern provincial capital of Mukalla has left at least 800 members of the extremist group dead including some of their leaders according to a statement released by the Saudi-led coalition commanders. The oil terminal in the city, the Riyan airport and the army brigades headquarters on the outskirts were also recaptured. The city has been an al-Qaeda stronghold but they had to withdraw and flee to the west towards the vast desert in Hadramawt and Shabwa provinces after residents persuaded them to spare the city the ruins of fighting, a military source said. Ground troops aided by airstrikes used Emirati military vehicles to enter the city where they faced almost no resistance. Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) operates from Yemen and the more than one year long crisis in the country helped it widen its operations and expand the territory under its control. The government backed by the Saudi-led coalition has embarked on a wide offensive aimed at capturing and securing strategic cities from extremist groups as it has just did in Mukalla. AQAP is considered as the most dangerous branch of the al-Qaeda network. The Yemeni government and the coalition now seem to be fighting on two fronts, against the Houthis and against al-Qaeda.0 President Obama has stated that the United States will be sending an extra 250 military personnel to Syria to join the 50 already on the ground and their role will be limited to training local forces to fight the Islamic State (IS.) In a defiant message to the extremist group, the US president warned that these terrorists will learn the same lessons that others before have, which is: your hatred is no match for our nations, united in defense of our way of life. The presence of US troops in Syria is considered illegal by the Assad government because they do not coordinate with Damascus and Washington has been calling for Assads departure. Obama believes that the commitment of additional US Special Forces can play a critical role in pushing back IS as he raised concerns about the increasing violence between government and opposition rebel groups. A ceasefire agreement reached by the US and Russia had helped to keep Syria relatively calm but it has been hardly respected lately. Russia, a major ally to Assad, meanwhile is questioning the mixed messages being sent by Washington. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked why the US is shy in admitting that it cooperates with Russia in fighting terrorism in Syria but rather continues to claim that their cooperation is only meant to avoid air incidents. President Obama said that Syrias heart-breaking situation of enormous complexity cannot be solved in the long-term by a military solution alone. Last year, a US program to train and arm rebels to fight Assad and the IS group failed as most of the trainees returned to join extremist groups with their arms. Obama said sending troops to the war torn country will be a mistake. According to officials familiar with the matter, the additional troops would also help to encourage Sunni Arabs to join forces with Kurdish militia groups. Both groups have limited trust in each other. With expectations that fighting will intensify after rebel opposition groups suspended their participation at the UN-led talks last week, the truce that has been in place since February would soon practically become null and void. Morocco, host country of the 22nd United Nations Conference on climate change (COP22) scheduled in Marrakech next November 7-18, has officially signed at a high profile ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York the Paris climate change agreement sealed at COP21. On this occasion, King Mohammed VI addressed the United Nations. In a speech read out on his behalf by Princess Lalla Hasnaa, his youngest sister, the Sovereign said We are proud Morocco is going to be among the first nations to sign the historic Paris Agreement on climate change and we pledge, in this respect, to take the necessary measures to ratify it as soon as possible. As we prepare for the COP22, which Morocco will have the honor of hosting in Marrakech, our collective efforts should focus on implementing the provisions of this comprehensive, balanced and equitable Agreement effectively, said the Moroccan monarch. To honor its climate change commitments, the Kingdom of Morocco has adopted an integrated national policy to ensure environmental protection, tackle the effects of climate change and cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 32 pc by the year 2030, he added. In this regard, Morocco has launched several initiatives to promote the green economy; it has adopted the National Environment Charter as well as the energy efficiency strategy and has liberalized the renewable energy sector, stressed the Sovereign. He also said that the North African Kingdom has set an ambitious goal seeking to meet 52 pc of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2030 thanks to major projects, particularly solar and wind farms. The holding of COP22 in Morocco is an international recognition of the countrys efforts to boost renewable energies and environment-friendly economy. In its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to address climate change to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC,) the country has unveiled an ambitious plan to increase the share of renewable electricity capacity to 42 pc in 2020 and to 52 pc by 2030. According to experts, Moroccos efforts to boost renewable energy is gaining momentum, putting the country on track to reach a 42 percent goal within the next few years. The projects that are currently under construction in wind, solar and hydro power will enable the North African country to achieve its renewable energy goals and be thus far ahead of its regional neighbors. The Paris Climate Agreement, finalized at the UN climate conference in December 2015 is now open for signature for one year. It will enter into force once it is signed and ratified by at least 55 countries, accounting together for at least 55 percent of the worlds global greenhouse emissions. The Agreement will become legally binding for the countries that have ratified it. Saudi Arabia will embark on a broad reform plan meant to diversify the countrys economy beyond dependence on oil exports, state media reported on Monday. The plan, known as Saudi Arabias Vision 2030, was approved Monday by the Saudi cabinet. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who presented the broad lines of the plan stressed the need for the Saudi Kingdom, the largest economy in the Arab world and the leading crude exporter, to end its dependency on oil. The plan, presented by Prince Mohammed as a road map for the development of the kingdom during the coming fifteen years, is intended to diversify Saudi economy, which depends on oil for more than 70%. Under the plan, the country is to sell less than 5 per cent of oil giant Aramco in IPO, in what could be the worlds largest initial public offering. According to Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the value of Aramco is to exceed $2 trillion. Part of these assets will be used to set up a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, he said, adding that the new investment fund will turn the worlds top oil exporter into a global investment power. This new fund to top the ranking of world sovereign funds will control more than 10% of the investment capacity in the world () and the volume of its assets represent more than 3% of existing assets, said the young Saudi Prince, 30, who is also Defense Minister and chairman of the Council of Economic Affairs and Development. The council oversees Aramco, the kingdoms economic pillar which has reserves of over 261 billion barrels and employs over 61,000 people. After Aramco, other subsidiaries will be introduced on the stock market, said the Prince, predicting a Saudi economy that no longer depends on oil but on investment returns. According to press reports, the kingdoms existing Public Investment Fund (PIF) had made returns of $8bn in 2015. Among the other measures to be implemented part of the reform plan, Prince Mohammed announced a green card system that will be introduced within five years to allow resident expatriates in the kingdom to have more rights in order to improve its investment climate. Sweeping reforms, among which the proposed green card, will be implemented even if oil prices rise back above $70 a barrel, he said, announcing plans for a military industries holding company to be fully owned by government at first and offered in IPO by end of 2017. The reform plan will not require major spending but will involve restructuring, prince Mohammed said, adding that spending on infrastructure projects would continue. He announced that the housing ministry will be restructured to help more citizens buy homes, insisting that subsidies should not go to the rich. Efforts will also seek to reduce unemployment among Saudi nationals to 7% from 11.6% currently. Saudi economic grow is expected to stand at 1.2% this year, against 3.4% in 2015. The collapse of oil prices has forced Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, to take unprecedented measures for the reduction of fuel subsidies and the imposition of new indirect taxes. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria headed to Geneva on a private visit during which he will undergo periodic medical checkups, it was officially announced in Algiers. If the announcement of the medical checkups is no surprise, the president being in poor condition since a stroke in 2013, the destination is raising questions, because the Algerian head of State used to be treated in France. Observers explained the change of destination by the turmoil in Algerias relations with France, after a French paper published a picture of President Bouteflika among some world leaders whose names appeared in the Panama Papers. To make things worse, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls posted on his twitter account a picture of his talks with Bouteflika during his recent visit to the North African country. The picture showing a physically weakened president in his wheel chair irked Algerian authorities. The Algerian parliament accused Valls of a reprehensible behavior and a serious blunder denoting a malicious intention and showing an ill-considered tendency that violates ethics, diplomatic customs and the bounds of political decency. He was also accused of being part of a French organized campaign against Algeria. Analysts also impute Algerias fury to Frances crystal clear backing to the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara, a backing that was renewed during Manuel Valls visit to Algeria. Controversy is swirling over 28 pages from the congressional report on the 9/11 terror attacks that have been kept hidden from the public. There is a suspicion that they implicate Saudi Arabia, a United States ally in the Middle East. The Saudis have, for years, vigorously denied any involvement in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., co-chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee that helped write the report and has pushed for release of all the documents looking at Saudi involvement in the attacks. Sunday on Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd asked why United States and Saudi officials don't want the information released. "To me, the most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" Graham said. "I think it's implausible to think that people who couldn't speak English, had never been in the United States before, (and) as a group were not well-educated could have done that. So who was the most likely entity to have provided them that support? And I think all the evidence points to Saudi Arabia. We know that Saudi Arabia started al-Qaida. It was a creation of Saudi Arabia." We wondered if, in fact, it was Saudi Arabia that created al-Qaida, the organization led by Osama bin Laden that engineered the attacks. Keep reading C. Eugene Emery Jr's fact-check from PolitiFact. @MichaelAuslen and @WilliamEMarch State Rep. Dwight Dudley, D-St. Petersburg, will not run for re-election, he announced Monday. "There are mighty challenges to improve policy in our state, but its been a great experience," he said. "I think weve been able to advocate for some good stuff and actually move the needle some on a few things." Dudley is leaving the state House with his eye on another public office, the Group 8 Pinellas County judgeship. Two candidates, Dora Komninos and Curtis "CK" Korsko, are already filed for the seat. Its not decided, Im thinking about that, Dudley said. Im leaning in favor of doing that. I think I have a lot to offer in that regard. I treat people fairly, and I think its a worthwhile thing to be doing. Dudley, a practicing lawyer and former public defender, said he has experience in the courtroom, with more than 100 cases tried. Hes also a former legislative aide and legislative analyst with 16 years in state jobs, including the Legislature. If he won a judgeship, his time on state payrolls would be combined with his judges salary to provide a substantial pension. Shortly after Dudley's announcement, the Florida Democratic Party said that Ben Diamond, a St. Petersburg attorney and former general counsel to Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat, will run for the seat. Diamond has the backing of party leaders, including former Gov. Charlie Crist and incoming House Democratic Leader Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, according to FDP's release. "We have a lot of work to do," Diamond said in a statement. "We have to ensure that every child has access to a quality public education, regardless of the neighborhood they grow up in. We have to increase funding to early learning programs to give our children a head start on success." Last week, a Republican opponent emerged in Dudley's House re-election campaign. Dudley was first elected to the House in 2012. He has been an outspoken advocate in the Legislature for reforms to Citizens Property Insurance, Public Service Commission and in criminal justice. The 182 men living at the Bridges of America work release center in Pompano Beach are in prison but they spend their time getting ready to leave taking classes in things like addiction education, anger management, forklift certification, computer basics, the ABCs of finance and getting out on work-release to hold a job. Its one of about 34 minimum-security community release centers operated by the Florida Department of Corrections, and one of the programs FDC Secretary Julie Jones has testified is critical to keeping former felons from returning to prison. But last week the privately-run non-profit Bridges of America program was told it must close down by May 16. The reason: The state agency needs the office space. The owners and supporters of the Broward-based center were stunned. The lease for the Pompano facility was up on May 16 and when the FDC issued its requests for proposals to renew the contract in March at rates reduced from $52 a day to $56 a day Bridges of America was the only one to respond. But rather than follow through with contract, FDC last week reversed course and said it needed the facility to house its probation office, which is seeking new space. No action taken by this Department will negatively affect the future of the inmates currently incarcerated at Broward Bridge, Jones said in a press release on Monday. Opportunities will be made available for these individuals to continue in their journey to rehabilitation and successful transition into Floridas communities. Owners and supporters of the non-profit organization are pushing back. They held a press conference Monday voicing their support for the program and urging community groups and legislators to tell FDC to keep it open. The facility has taught me everything I need to know about the disease of addiction, Arthur Keene, a former inmate who attended the Bridges program, said at a press conference outside the Pompano facility. It would be a great injustice if this place were to close down. William Meyer, who runs a transport company, said his two top employees are former Bridges clients who now have jobs and tell their story to others. Its going to be a real sad day because everybody deserves a second chance, he said. Lori Costantino-Brown, Bridges CEO, told the Herald/Times she believes the decision by the agency just seems arbitrary. The department has never mentioned this need for this kind of space. It has a number of properties in this area and could very easily put offices elsewhere. Its not necessary for them to shut down a reentry center. Thats a very poor decision on the departments part. Corrections officials have tried to negotiate. Constantino-Brown said they offered to give the company a six-month extension on its contract at its Bradenton facility, which expires in July, if they stopped contesting the Broward closing. The only offer we had from the department is contingent on us throwing out any claim on Broward, she said. Now we find ourselves in a precarious position in both centers. Costantino-Brown is now also prepared to go to court. Language tucked every year into the state budget requires the Department of Corrections to give 60-day notices to the governor and lawmakers when they repurpose a prison. That didnt happen, and Constantino-Brown said she will ask a court to halt the closing because of it. Jones said in her press release that her agency had no choice. Currently, FDC operates six probation offices in a single building complex in Lauderdale Lakes, she wrote. Earlier this year, the Department was notified by members of the Lauderdale Lakes City Council that an ordinance would be proposed which will re-zone the address at which our probation offices currently operate. This issue is one that the Department has faced time and time again in communities around our state. To overcome this obstacle and continue to provide services which are an operational imperative for this agency, the Department plans to relocate a portion of our probation offices, which serve more than 5,600 offenders, to the state-owned building currently occupied by Broward Bridge. A transition plan has been formulated which will ensure a smooth transition for work release, substance abuse treatment and probation services. This is the second time in four years that Bridges of America believes it has been singled out by the agency. The same two facilities were scheduled to close in 2012 when the then deficit-plagued corrections department attempted to close an estimated $79 million budget hole by shuttering two the reentry centers in Pompano Beach and Bradenton. Costantino-Brown agreed to close some beds and make other concessions, and the facilities remain open. Then, as now, Costantino-Brown was a vocal critic of the need for reform in the states prison system. Supporters say she has been a successful advocate for civil justice movements seeking sentencing reform. Critics say she is motivated by efforts to privatize more state prison programs. Clearly, the repeated articles in the newspaper show a very troubled department, she said. Im not sure why theyre doing the things that theyre doing. Corrections doesnt historically value programs they never have, regardless of what they publicly say. Their actions speak differently. As Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet prepare to resume the search for a new insurance commissioner Tuesday, a few legislators are weighing in with their own endorsements of candidates to be Kevin McCarty's successor. Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, sent Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater a glowing recommendation for Ray Blacklidge, a friend and constituent in Pinellas Park who has an extensive background in various forms of insurance. Blacklidge was added to the list of candidates last week by Atwater. In a letter, Latvala describes Blacklidge as a "national expert on no fault automobile insurance" with more than 30 years of executive experience in the property and casualty insurance industry. Blacklidge, 55, is an executive of two write-your-own insurance carriers, American Traditions Insurance Company and Modern USA Insurance Company, and Latvala said his "remarkable experience and commitment to the citizens of our state" makes him an excellent candidate. Latvala reminded Atwater of his role as a Senate sponsor of the 2002 legislation that created the Office of Insurance Regulation, which includes a requirement that Atwater and Scott must agree on a choice for the job. Some background on that political battle can be found here. Two South Florida legislators wrote separate letters of recommendation for another candidate who has not been short-listed and will not be interviewed Tuesday. Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, and Rep. Hazelle Rogers, D-Lauderdale Lakes, both urged Atwater to support Dolce Suarez-Resnick of Miramar for the insurance post. She was an appointee of former CFO Alex Sink, a Democrat, to the state Financial Literacy Council. @PatriciaMazzei Miami's three Cuban-American Republicans in Congress recently traveled to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the office of U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen announced Monday. Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House subcomittee on the Middle East and North Africa, took the trip along with Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart. Also traveling were Reps. Ted Yoho of Gainesville and George Holding of North Carolina, both Republicans. Here's Ros-Lehtinen's statement on the trip: The U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay is so much more than the detention center; It is a strategically important military base and our only permanent base in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, since President Obama announced his changes to our Cuba policy, the administration has been seeking to play down the importance of the Naval Station. Returning GTMO to the Castro regime would be the ultimate concession to the ruthless dictator and the final stroke in the President's misguided and dangerous Cuba policy, and Congress must not allow this to happen. "From humanitarian operations and emergency response, to drug and weapon interdiction and so much more, GTMO allows us to maintain a permanent presence in the region in order to protect and promote our national security interests. "The President's plan to close the detention center at GTMO is naive and dangerous. We've already heard testimony from his Special Envoys on Guantanamo Closure and Guantanamo Detention Closure that some of the individuals we have released not only went back to fighting against us, but have American blood on their hands. There can simply be no justification to release these dangerous prisoners when we know that many of them will go back and join the fight. Congress must prevent the President from closing the detention center and retuning the base to the Castro regime. Here's Curbelo's statement: This week I visited the US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay a critical military and national security asset serving key roles in the war on terrorism, drug and migrant interdiction, and as a strategic forward base for the Atlantic Fleet. Every day approximately 7,000 US military personnel and contractors go to work at GTMO to keep our country safe and advance our national security interests in the Americas and throughout the world. I had the privilege of meeting with Captain Culpepper, the base commander, who briefed us on the bases preparedness to assist with major migrant events in the Caribbean. This is important considering the significant increase in Cubans fleeing from the island over the last year. I also met with Rear Admiral Clarke who serves as Commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo. The JTF is working professionally and diligently to provide safe, humane, legal, and transparent care and custody of detainees. I was able to inspect the detention facilities, and I was impressed with efforts to treat the detainees with dignity and respect. Our young men and women in uniform do an extraordinary job of representing our country, sometimes under very difficult circumstances in this theater. The men and women of Naval Air Station Guantanamo, the Joint Task Force, and the Marines who protect the base perimeter deserve the admiration, appreciation, and support of the American people and this Congress. I thank my colleague from South Florida Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for leading our visit to GTMO, and I urge all of my colleagues to work to protect and strengthen this critical military asset. This post has been updated. Photo credit: Courtesy Rep. Carlos Curbelo's office @Cveiga In the national battle against high-stakes testing in schools, Ceresta Smith is a leading voice. The Miami-Dade County high school teacher travels the country railing against corporate influences on education and using test scores to sort kids and teachers. The answer, she and other members of the Opt Out movement say, is to simply refuse to take the tests. You have a totally test-driven culture, she said. More and more innocent children are being stamped as failures early in their development. Across the country, thousands of parents and students have heeded the call. In New York last spring, more than 20 percent of students opted out of state tests. But closer to home, Smith and her fellow Opt Out supporters havent found much traction. While its not clear how many students in Miami-Dade are refusing tests, everyone agrees its not many. Read more here. @JeremySWallace While none of the five Republican candidates running for the U.S. Senate in Florida have much statewide name identification, there is no doubt who is the leader when it comes to fundraising. In the first three months of 2016, U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis raised more money than all four of this GOP opponents combined. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, DeSantis collected $1,135,635 - about $4,000 more than U.S. Rep. David Jolly, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, homebuilder Carlos Beruff and businessman Todd Wilcox combined to raise. Since he got in the race, DeSantis, a Republican who lives in Ponte Vedra Beach in northeast Florida, has raised over $4 million and spent $1.5 million. That gave him with $3.2 million in his campaign account as of April 1 - millions ahead of any of his GOP foes. DeSantis continues to get a boost from other members of Congress. U.S. Reps Tom Rooney, R-Okeechobee; Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas; Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., and Andy Harris R-MD, are among those who used political action committees they run to donate to DeSantis since Jan. 1. The most any other candidates raised in the first three months of 2016 came from Wilcox, who raised $358,811, but $250,000 of that came from a personal loan that the Orlando businessman gave his campaign. Jolly, R-Indian Shores, posted the next best fundraising quarter, collecting $308,298. Lopez-Cantera raised $251,481 and Beruff, in just his first quarter on the campaign trail, raised $212,982, though nearly half of that came from donations he gave his campaign. CASH ON HAND Below is a list of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate ranked by who had the most money in their campaign accounts at the end of March. - $3,221,536 - U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis - $1,083,028 - Todd Wilcox - $562,657 - U.S. Rep. David Jolly - $389,284 - Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera - $59,631 - Carlos Beruff DeSantis also is benefitting from a so-called super PAC that is supporting his campaign. That PAC, called Fighting For Florida Fund, cannot directly coordinate with DeSantis, but has stockpiled $1.2 million to support him. Reform Washington, a super PAC supporting Lopez-Cantera, had $740,000 in the bank as of the start of April. Jolly had $272,629 in a PAC called FloridAmerican Conservatives. A super PAC formed to support Beruff, Lets Cleanup Washington, had not raised any money as of March 31. There is no super PAC supporting Wilcox. Five candidates filed to run for three open seats on the Missoula County Public Schools board of trustees. They are John Fletcher, Vicki McDonald, Shane Small, and incumbents Michael Beers and Diane Lorenzen. Each of the three positions is a three-year term. Below are responses from candidate Lorenzen. Why are you running for the school board? I have enjoyed my first term as a MCPS trustee and would like to continue for a second term. The highlight of my time on the board has been the passage of the school building bonds, and I would like to continue working with the district to see the building projects get started. What is the school districts most pressing issue? How would you help solve it? MCPS middle schools play a very key role in our district, but I feel they are under too much strain and need focused attention from the board. Our district is large and complex with nine elementary schools, three middle schools and five high schools. The middle schools have the difficult role of bridging the gap between the elementary schools and high schools. Our middle schools are doing excellent work, but they are often forced to react the actions of the other schools instead of charting their own course. The board can encourage the administration to articulate the mission and role of the middle schools so we can better understand how to support them. MCPS middle school teachers and administrators guide our students through three very difficult school years, and they care deeply about the students. We need to give the middle schools a voice in deciding what programs will be introduced in the elementary and high schools so they can help the students make a successful transition. What impact would efforts to redraw surrounding school districts boundaries have on MCPS, and how should MCPS deal with the subsequent financial restructuring? This is a purely hypothetical question and I choose not to answer. No such discussions have taken place at MCPS or any other school district as far as I know. How would you have voted on the Jane Bennett/Willard Wire issue? Why? If you voted, why did you vote the way you did? As a sitting trustee, I cant discuss personnel issues. This situation was discussed in an open meeting and the minutes of that meeting are available on the MCPS website. What MCPS policies most need updating? What changes would you support? School board policies are the guiding principles of the district. Its important to keep the policies relevant and not to write unnecessary policies. Specific educational programs do not belong in policy, but MCPS currently has a few policies related to specialty programs, which I would like to see removed. MCPS works with the Montana School Boards Association and our legal counsel to add any required policies and to update existing policies based on any laws that are changed. What should MCPS goal be in working with the surrounding elementary districts? MCPS goal should be to provide an atmosphere in each high school that supports students from all parts of the high school district. The MCPS high schools are home to students from 11 independent elementary districts as well as students from the MCPS middle schools. This creates a very diverse high school population and requires MCPS teachers to welcome incoming freshman classes with a variety of educational backgrounds. As a board, we can encourage the administration to devote significant resources to ninth-grade core classes so that every student gets a solid foundation in high school. What is your stance on the teachers union? The teachers union and the classified employee union are important partners to the MCPS board and administration. The teachers are closest to the students and, through their union representative, can provide the board with valuable insight into how administration actions are affecting the students. POLSON It contains the good (the recruitment and training of female detention officers), the bad (a jail without enough room to hold everyone charged with felonies) and the boring (budget numbers). But it is, as far as Lake County Sheriff Don Bell knows, a first. Bell released his annual report on the sheriffs office to the public this week, detailing the ups and downs of his first year in office. Technically, it wont qualify as an annual report until he files a second one next year, but Bell said he has every intention of doing so. Its new, the sheriff said Friday. I figured it would be good for the public to see what were doing some of our challenges, and some of our successes. Theres a lot of information in the 13 pages residents might not know about their county law enforcement agency. And theres a lot Bell thinks they should know. *** The jail may lead the latter list. It is not uncommon for people who are charged with non-violent felony crimes to be issued a citation and simply released, as though they were ticketed for jay-walking, Bell writes. As is often the case in drug-related crimes, the defendant does not show up for court, resulting in a warrant for their arrest. However, even those warrants are not arrested due to the lack of jail space to house them. Additionally, its important to point out that a majority of our criminal cases are drug- and/or alcohol-related. Burglaries and thefts allow addicts to feed their addiction, and violent crime is often the result of the unpredictability of those under the influence. The sheriff notes the Lake County Detention Facility used to house 80 or more inmates at a time, but since the late 1990s has been limited to 42 as a result of an ACLU lawsuit over jail conditions. In the short term, Bell said he has prioritized the shipment of inmates sentenced to state prison out of the county facility to make room for others the justice system says should also be incarcerated. Though the county is paid $69 per day by the state to house those sentenced offenders, I wish to put our community safety ahead of offsetting operating costs by housing state inmates, Bell said. The sheriff also announced the county is in the exploratory phase of approaching the public about funding a new detention facility. It is my goal to construct a jail of which a modern design would allow for safer and more efficient use of staff per inmate, far less risk-management than our current facility, and provide for the ability to follow justice through, rather than allowing felony offenders to walk free, Bell said. As your sheriff, it would be irresponsible of me to continue ignoring the problems, and potential liability posed by our current facility. *** The report says methamphetamine is the countys most problematic illicit substance, and thats reflected in statistics listed elsewhere. Drug cases outnumbered any other type of criminal activity in Lake County last year by nearly a 3-1 margin. Deputies dealt with 305 cases involving possession, distribution or production of drugs in 2015. Next most prevalent were domestic assaults, at 126. Bell said his office dealt with 114 burglaries, including four aggravated burglaries involving assault; 112 DUIs; and 92 felony assaults, including nine aggravated domestic assaults and eight assaults on peace officers. The sheriffs office also investigated 15 rapes, 11 robberies, 11 stalking cases and four arson cases in 2015. Overall, Bell said deputies responded to more than 1,800 reports of criminal acts last year. *** Bell opened the report with what he called the boring side of our office its budget. Lower certified property values resulted in a cut of almost $190,000 from his departments budget, Bell said, and after taking office, he was told by the Lake County finance director that budget practices prior to my administration were not in accordance with best budgeting practices. Specifically, a budget reserve has not been maintained to fund the Sheriffs Office for the first one-third of the fiscal year" from July to November. In the past, Bell said, sheriffs would borrow this operational budget from the county budget and pay it back when property taxes were collected in November. He said he has started a reserve fund to be used to cover operational expenses for the first third of the fiscal year, initially applying $200,000 to it. However, the initial $200,000 was reduced in order to cover operating costs, he wrote. We are and will continue to make progress, but as you can understand, this is very difficult given the already tight budget we operate on. The department has three fewer uniformed positions than it did in 2014 because of budget constraints, according to the report. The overall budget for the sheriffs office is $3.8 million. Bell called it a pretty modest sum for an office that runs three separate divisions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 365 days per year with over 60 employees. *** There were multiple reassignments of duties and multiple departures during Bells first year. His first undersheriff, James Atkins, returned to the Polson Police Department in October, the report says, and Bell appointed Deputy Ben Woods to replace him. Lt. Mike Sargeant, who previously oversaw detectives and deputy coroners, was reassigned as a patrol supervisor and later retired after 20 years with the department. Bell said three other long-serving employees also retired: Capt. Luc Mathias, Patrol Sgt. Tony Buff and Detention Sgt. Lonnie Erickson. Cpl. Joel Shearer was promoted to replace Mathias, who had overseen the detention facility and 911 Dispatch Center. Bell said transferring the duties to a non-sworn position, and making Sargeant a uniformed officer, made it possible to keep patrol shifts fully staffed in the wake of the loss of the three uniformed positions. The 911 Dispatch Center, which employs 13 full-time and one part-time dispatcher, handled more than 35,000 calls in 2015. The center had an inordinate amount of scheduled overtime when he took office, the sheriff said, due to an emergency schedule implemented several years earlier because of a shortage of employees at the time. With sufficient manpower, and negotiations with the 911 Dispatchers Union, we were able to eliminate this scheduled overtime, Bell said. Earlier this month the Lake County commissioners removed the 911 Dispatch Center from the sheriffs control and placed it under the Office of Emergency Management. The commissioners said it was necessary to give all the first responders that rely on the center the sheriffs office, fire departments, municipal and tribal police departments, ambulance crews and game wardens a say in its management. Bell opposed the change, saying he believes it will cost the county more to operate the center without any net improvement of dispatch services. Regardless of the decision, we look forward to continued cooperation and service between the Sheriffs Office and the 911 Center, Bell wrote in his report. *** During his first year in office, Bell said enough female detention officers were recruited and trained so that there is now one working every shift at the jail. This has alleviated the need to have a (female) 911 dispatcher leave their duty station to assist the jail in pat-down searches of female inmates, the report says. This greatly reduced risk to the dispatchers who are not trained detention officers. Under Shearer, Bell said, the jail has also added an additional security door in the main lobby between the holding cell and visiting area, improved security for the kitchen staff and restructured job positions so that all shifts are evenly covered. The facility employs 19 detention officers, including four sergeants one who serves as sexual and violent offender registrar and evidence technician a transport officer, a court officer and a control officer. I focused a lot of attention on this division in my first year, and the facility is running as efficiently as it possibly can, Bell said. *** The report offers the public a glimpse into several other facets of the law enforcement agency: The departments lone full-time civil deputy, Dusty Seegers, processed 829 civil papers attempts to collect money for a judgment creditor, tax executions, writs of assistance for eviction, subpoenas and other court orders in 2015, it says. Seegers receives more than three papers a day, and it takes an average of four attempts to serve each one about 13 attempts per shift. The countys two detectives investigated 120 cases last year half of them sex crimes. Eight of the departments sworn personnel are also deputy coroners, and they investigated more than 200 deaths in 2015, including eight suicides and five motor vehicle fatalities. Deputy Scott Sciaretta and K9 Max, a drug-sniffing dog, were deployed 102 times last year half of them to assist other agencies such as the Montana Highway Patrol or municipal police departments to search for drugs and drug paraphernalia. Maxs busts included ones where his positive indications resulted in search warrants that revealed a vehicle that contained 44 grams of meth, half a gram of heroin and a firearm, and another that netted more than 40 pounds of marijuana. Bells report also recognized three citizens for their help during emergencies in 2015. Greg Garder of Irvine Flats held two felony suspects he discovered on his property at gunpoint until a deputy arrived, and then provided cover for the deputy while the two were placed under arrest. The pair had been trying to outrun Lake and Flathead county deputies, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Police, the Montana Highway Patrol and a Two Bear Air helicopter that was searching for them. Isidra Perez of Ronan safely barricaded several children at a daycare when a non-custodial father and an accomplice attempted to take his children from the daycare, and beat the daycare owner. None of the children were harmed, or witnessed the violence. And Polson High School student Shayne Pierre acted quickly to ensure the safety of children who were on or exiting a school bus when a drunk driver plowed into the rear of the bus while it was stopped on Montana Highway 35. Pierre also tended to the driver of the pickup that hit the bus, and who was injured in the crash. In early March, certified nurse midwife Brenda DeGrazio delivered Amy Portes youngest son Beau at Community Medical Center. Last week, Porte had a follow-up appointment with DeGrazio, who is now working at a newly opened midwife center at Providence St. Patrick Hospital. The new Missoula Midwives program, which includes DeGrazio and fellow CNM Wendy Flansburg, is a complement to the Family Maternity Center that St. Patrick opened last year. It's an attempt to offer expectant mothers the more personal touch that comes with working with a midwife, while still having the resources of a hospital. Certified nurse midwives have more time to spend with patients, from the start of a pregnancy through delivery and postpartum, DeGrazio said. Its more than just a going-in-and-catching-the-baby type of thing. DeGrazios history in Missoula goes back quite a while. Until moving over to the new Missoula Midwives program, she worked at Community Medical Center, where in 1995 she became the first midwife to have hospital and delivery privileges. When the practice was being developed one of the patients across town was a practice manager here and asked if I was interested, DeGrazio said. The welcome, the hospitality and excitement of having a nurse midwife here has been outstanding. Porte said DeGrazio has worked with her during all three of her pregnancies. I just felt so comfortable with her, Porte said. Brenda, shes just a joy. She feels like family. DeGrazio said there are several misconceptions people have about midwives and Providence St. Patricks new program. The most important distinction is that the CNMs only conduct deliveries at the hospital, they dont do home births. Also, having a nurse midwife doesnt preclude using pain medication, it doesnt mean we cant use an epidural, she said. The Missoula Midwives program also offers a full range of womens health services like gynecology, prescriptions and breast exams, in addition to family planning and reproductive counseling. Theres just more time to talk and work with patients. More time to divulge things that normally wouldnt come out like past abuse or drinking issues, DeGrazio said. I think the biggest part of medicine needs to be listening. *** Before coming to Missoula, Flansburg, the new programs other CNM, started as a labor and delivery nurse in Montana. She became a certified nurse midwife more than a decade ago, and most recently was working in the Flathead Valley. When Providence St. Patrick opened its Family Maternity Center in August of 2015, she decided to send in a resume as a certified nurse midwife, despite the fact that the hospital not seeking to fill such a position. They reached out and asked if I was interested in this new program, she said. I was really surprised, I really hadnt expected it to go anywhere. She said using midwives is quite popular on the East Coast and is starting to gain traction in the West as well. Its about being able to build that bonding with a patient, she said. Missoula is definitely very keen on the idea, a lot of people seem to be very interested in this approach of doing things slightly different from the traditional hospital way. One of the benefits of having the Missoula Midwives clinic be a part of a larger hospital is having other specialists, including OB-GYNs at Western Montana Clinic just down the hall, available to assist if necessary. They are always there to be consulting physicians if there is a complication or if we end up needing to do something like a C-section, Flansburg said. I think we have the best of both worlds. All the tools are here if we need them. For more information about Missoula Midwives, call 329-7300. Two candidates filed to run for the three-year term open seat on the Target Range School District board of trustees: Evan Rosenberg and Jennifer Long. A separate uncontested race is for a one-year term seat. That candidate is Boone Jensen. Why are you running for the school board? Both in my work life and in my volunteer work, the topic that has always been the most important to me is helping the youth in our community succeed. Education is one of the most critical influences on a childs life. It has been very rewarding to play a role, through the Fort Courage Board, in my 5-year old daughter's day care, overseeing significant changes that greatly improved Fort Courage. I believe I could be a valuable asset to the Target Range School Board by bringing a fresh, objective view to the Board and through my years of experience in writing policy and running youth programs at the Department of Labor and serving on the Fort Courage Board. I want to ensure the students of Target Range get the best quality education possible and ensure that area parents and property owners get maximum value for their tax dollars. What is the school district's most pressing issue? How would you help solve it? In December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an important piece of legislation that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and replaces No Child Left Behind. ESSA provides states with a great deal of flexibility in how to implement the new law. Montanas Office of Public Instruction will publish in July of this year their state plan that details how they will implement ESSA. This will have a significant impact on our school district, particularly around accountability and student testing. It is critical that the school board provide input to the state and assist the school district administration in the implementation of ESSA to ensure that it has a positive impact on our students and teachers and fulfills its mandate of requiring all students be taught to high academic standards to prepare them to succeed in college and careers. Do you support efforts to redraw school district boundaries, and how much effort are you personally willing to put toward it? How would you deal with the subsequent financial restructuring? I am not aware of any current efforts to redraw school district boundaries for the Target Range School District. Based on the information available, the current school district boundaries appear sufficient. What is your position on open enrollment? Should the district charge out-of-district students? Why or why not? I support open enrollment. Open enrollment is an important strategy for keeping the school full and maximizing state resources as well as offering a wide variety of activities and opportunities to all students. However, the district should consider charging out-of-district tuition. While Missoula County Public Schools charges the maximum allowed by state law to out-of-district students, I would not advocate charging the maximum allowed. As Target Range School reaches capacity the district should consider charging some amount of tuition to out-of-district students in order to be fair to Target Range families. I have met many families who choose to live in the district specifically because of access to one of the best schools in Missoula. Those who live in the district are paying a significant amount of money in taxes and cost of housing to attend Target Range School in district. It is only fair that out-of-district families pay something as well. A comparable analogy is how the publicly-funded state university system works. The University of Montana charges much lower rates of tuition to in-state students because Montana residents tax dollars go toward funding our state universities. Out-of-state students at the university are a valuable and important asset to the school, but are charged higher rates of tuition since their tax dollars dont contribute to the funding of the university system and the mission of the university system is to educate its state residents first. What policies most need updating? What changes would you support? In my 18 years of writing policy for youth employment and training programs, I have learned that it is most important to first learn from all stakeholders school administration, teachers and students how policies impact each of them. Prior to supporting any policy changes, I would review current policies and seek input from all of these stakeholders to learn about the impact of the policies. I would write or change any policies based on a student-centered approach. If I am elected to the school board I would hope to join the school board policy committee in order to leverage my policy experience and help the school district in drafting and maintaining sound policies. What is your stance on the teachers union? For me personally, teachers have had a significant influence on my life. Great teachers early on instilled a love of learning in me. They helped give me the confidence to succeed educationally and emotionally. Teachers are a critical part of our childrens education. Labor unions, including the teachers union, have historically played an important role in protecting and advocating for workers rights, ensuring safe working conditions, and negotiating fair wages and benefits. It is important for the school board, school administration and teachers union to work collaboratively to create the best school possible. On Feb. 29, the Missoulian carried a guest column by Congressman Ryan Zinke to honor Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Feb. 13. The column was headlined Scalia served the Constitution, the Senate should honor his legacy, but aside from Zinkes generalized ode to the justice, it seemed powered primarily by anti-Obama venom. A good deal of Zinkes piece was devoted to the presidents timely and considerate nomination of a replacement justice, as called for by the U.S. Constitution. In a remarkable feat of legerdemain, Zinke joins the leadership of the U.S. Senate GOP, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley, in their opposition to the constitutionally mandated tradition for the Senate to consider the nominee, giving advice and consent after the president has acted. On top of this, another guest column on Feb. 18 by Russell Fagg quotes a Stanford University lawyer, Michael not Mitch McConnell, with respect to Scalias legacy: (Scalia) believed in a color-blind Constitution. As a result of his three decades on the Supreme Court bench, constitutional law more closely resembles what the Constitution actually says. Im sure there are plenty of legal scholars who would disagree with that assessment, but the reference to Scalias color-blindness, even to a layman like me, is far off-base. How could the justices leadership in gutting the Voting Rights Act, which has given rise to a new Jim Crow era, in any way fit that description? Coincidentally, on the same day Zinkes column appeared, the New Yorker carried a column by a most perceptive author, Jeffrey Toobin, with an alternative view. I recommend it highly as a reasoned, thought-provoking contribution, and I borrow extensively from it in the following paragraphs. Toobins assessment: Antonin Scalia devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward. Toobin goes on to recount that when the court ruled in 2003 that gay people could not be imprisoned for consensual sex, Scalia wrote a rare dissenting opinion. Normally, he joined or wrote the opinion for the conservative majority. Toobin notes that Scalia pioneered originalism, an idea that the founders, many of whom owned slaves, set the Constitution in stone when they ratified it in the 18th century. This led Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to deny Scalia majority opinions so as not to upset Justice Sandra Day OConnor with his extremist views. Only after John Roberts took over as chief justice did Scalia get the nod. According to Toobin, Justice Samuel Alito put the issue of originalism in perspective during a rare disagreement with his senior colleague. During a court proceeding about placing warning labels on violent video games, Alito interrupted Scalias harangue by asking, I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them? Toobin writes that Scalia described himself as a believer in judicial restraint, that the court should respect the actions of elected branches of government but he acted otherwise, jumping at chances to overrule President Obama and Democratic legislators. In addition to the Voting Rights Act, he helped overturn McCain-Feingold and other campaign finance rules, and in his last official act, blocked climate change regulations. Scalia and his allies succeeded in creating a cash marketplace where almost unlimited money could buy legislators far and wide. Scalias views, though passionately held, went against the current and will be borne back to the past, Toobin writes. It seems a shame, and perhaps tragic, that an individual with so many positive attributes and skills charm, wit, a superb command of the English language both written and in speech could leave so unfortunate a legacy. The fight over use of the state airplane just took off, so to speak, with the announcement by the Republican Governors Association that it is releasing a six-figure ad campaign criticizing Gov. Steve Bullock for using state resources for his re-election campaigns purposes. In the meantime, three Republican state legislators say they will introduce legislation to clarify and restrict when any governor, Republican or Democrat, can use the plane. Truth is, there is nothing new or very exciting about governors, especially in large Western states like Montana, choosing to fly instead of drive to various functions related to official business. And almost like clockwork, the issue arises whenever the governor and legislative majorities happen to be from opposing political parties and particularly during campaign years. Its well known that Bullocks predecessor, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, spent so much time aloft he often quipped that he looked at the world from 30,000 feet. Less well known is that Schweitzer also made profligate use of state helicopters, which are considerably more expensive to fly than the $500 per hour Bullocks administration estimates the fixed wing plane costs. In large part, Bullock brought the controversy on himself by using the state plane to fly short distances that would normally take an hour or two by car. Critics say Bullocks trips from Helena to Butte, Missoula and Great Falls did not warrant use of the state plane. Responding to criticism, Bullock instituted a new policy last month in which he will refund $127.23 per trip for the 21 instances he mixed campaign functions with official business. But as Missoula Republican Rep. Brad Tschida, who authored a stinging opinion column criticizing Bullock, put it: Theres a level of arrogance demonstrated by our governor, who only reimbursed taxpayers because he got caught and then continues to fly on the taxpayers dime to these fundraisers, as if nothing were wrong. Of course arrogance in a governor is hardly a crime. Going back through the decades, youd have to search hard to find a governor that wasnt arrogant. Gov. Marc Racicot, who put forth his nice guy image, was so arrogant he decided to rush through a highly complex bill to deregulate utilities late in the 97 session. The result? With virtually no opportunity for Montanans to weigh in, deregulation turned out to be one of the most disastrous and costly policies in the states history. Schweitzer was renowned for his arrogance. And his predecessor, Republican Gov. Judy Martz, was arrogant enough to believe she actually had the skills to run Montana and became a one-term governor. Whats troubling is what Bullock has come to consider state business thats conveniently tied to campaign events. For instance, his trip to Billings to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for homeless people with young students certainly raised eyebrows. A campaign fundraiser that followed the press op didnt help matters. But given that its an election year and we are now treated to the usual back-and-forth attacks between Republican and Democratic party operatives, its probably a good idea to take most of their vitriol and highly slanted attacks with a grain of sand. That said, the proposed legislation to limit the use of the state plane to trips over 126 miles unless theres an emergency is probably a pretty fair solution to the issue. If the legislation becomes law, which is far from certain for any bill, it will apply equally to elected officials regardless of political affiliation. Moreover, communication technology has progressed so much in the last decades that physically flying all over the state is hardly always necessary for conducting official business. The Internet, smart phones, Skype, video conferencing and email make instant communication possible from almost anywhere in the world. Of course you cant press the flesh or make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with schoolkids using those communication methods. And theres simply no doubt that theyre far less productive when it comes to campaign fundraising. But the bottom line for any public officeholder should be doing the business they were elected to do with the greatest efficiency and least costly methods available. If it takes a new law to accomplish restraint on waste or abuse of state resources by public officials that may actually be the best way to bring this long-simmering and highly partisan controversy to an end. Recently, someone stole my daughters three-wheel bike from in front of her condo in broad daylight. As a young woman with Down syndrome, that bike represents her only mode of independent transportation and so to her, this was a devastating loss. Because she is convinced there are no bad people in Missoula, she just cannot understand how someone could deliberately be so mean. Apparently someone took it only to steal the bike seat and lights and flag, because they dumped it less than a block from the condo. This random act of meanness was counterbalanced by such kindness from our Missoula neighbors! Im not wild about social media but I was encouraged to put it on Facebook and within hours, over 500 people had shared my posting and many people had seen the bike in a ditch. A friend of a friend had seen it, so she had her husband meet me with his truck to help me pull it out, but it was gone by then. Later that night, I got a message from a woman in Alberton who had the bike at her house. Her husband Mike was driving by when he noticed the bike being dragged to a trash pile. He stopped and "rescued" it, and once he got home, he and his wife heard the story and reached out to me. Mike worked on the bike in his shop that night and then brought it to my house the next morning. Thank you to a wonderfully caring community. Thank you to Mike and his wife for their honesty. Thanks to Bob at REI for his kindness - for fixing up the bike and not charging us anything for it. Just another reason why I love Montana! Karen Bailey, Missoula Democratic Party: I may choose to provide support but only when I see and can be assured that the Trans-Pacific Partnership goes down in flames to massive defeat. The TPP deal, done behind closed doors by corporate interests, is all but a final nail in the coffin for this country. The results will certainly follow the same path as prior agreements and more decent-paying jobs will transfer to other countries. Further, the Democratic Party, the Clintons and the Hilary Victory Fund conspired, and now appear poised, to steal the nomination for Hillary Clinton through the purchase yes, they bought superdelegates from 33 states including Montana. This is not acceptable, not appropriate, and as a lifelong Democrat I am more than disappointed in the party. The GOP continues down a disastrous path for the economy and the people. The Democratic Party is doing so little to address the real issues, supporting policy such as the TPP, that the results are further devastation of what little is left of the middle class. Corporate interests support both Democrats and Republicans knowing that through trade agreements, weak legislative regulation and nearly complete lack of enforcement (no one on Wall Street went to jail), they can continue taking whatever they wish. Only one candidate, Bernie Sanders, is truly addressing the issues and concerns. I will continue to provide support to Sanders until he wins or I see significant action on the part of the Democratic Party to address real issues. Overturning Citizens United is imperative. Removing big money from our system is imperative and the Hillary Victory Fund is as problematic as the various GOP super PACs. Mike L. Brown, Missoula I sent a March 16 letter to the House Committee on Ethics asking for an investigation into Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke. My letter was in response to Zinke's March 15 letter to Acting Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Glenn Fine, in which the congressman calls for an investigation of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Colonel John G. Buck, relating to the Gateway Pacific Terminal project proposed in Whatcom County, Washington. Zinke provided no evidence to support the claims he made against Buck. In my letter to the House Committee, I said I believe that Zinke has violated the U.S. House of Representatives Code of Official Conduct, Rule XXIII "Code of Official Conduct." I said I also suspect that Zinke is potentially in breach of United States Code, Title 18-Crimes and Criminal Procedure, Part I-Crimes, Chapter 47-Fraud and False Statements, Section 1001, letter (a), numbers (1), (2) and (3). Zinke's actions (outlined in my letter) cause me to believe he intentionally misrepresented facts to the Inspector General of the DoD, and to the public at large, for the benefit of the companies and organizations involved in, and/or which have direct or indirect financial interests in the proposed GPT project, some of which are generous contributors to Zinkes election campaign. I also believe Zinke has intentionally been misleading the public and our U.S. government to make it appear as though the Crow Nation has a present real ownership stake in Pacific International Terminals (PIT)/GPT, in an effort to influence governmental entities, and the public, regarding the permitting phase of the GPT project. Zinkes March 15 press release stated: The Crow have invested in this terminal [GPT] so they can export their vast coal reserves to Pacific Rim markets Zinke's press release also stated: The GPT, which is owned in-part by the Crow Nation of Southeast Montana It's my understanding that the Crow Tribe currently does not have any official ownership investment stake with PIT/GPT. The Crow Tribe has an option to secure 5 percent of Cloud Peak's 49 percent stake in PIT/GPT. That option has not been exercised. Sandy Robson, Birch Bay, Washington Last year Hell Creek State Park on Fort Peck Reservoir operated at an $87,000 deficit. So raising camping fees from less than $30 to $50 a night to cover more of the parks expenses would seem to make sense. Unfortunately, thats not the case. Theres a disincentive for us to raise revenues, Chas Van Genderen, Montana State Parks administrator, told the Montana State Parks and Recreation Board during its Thursday meeting in Miles City. Thats because Hell Creek, like many other parks, receives federal funding from a tax on the sale of fishing equipment, boats and boat fuel. Last year that amounted to $70,000 for Hell Creek State Park, a large chunk of its $228,000 in expenditures. The more money the park raises in revenue, though, the less the federal grant will pay. I dont love this grant, Van Genderen said. Sayonara Hell Creek State Park has been pegged for removal from the state parks system in 2021 in part because it has a $4 million list of possible improvements. Under a new ranking system to fund the most-visited and important parks first, Hell Creek is near the bottom. Out of four classes, Class 1 being the most important parks, Hell Creek is ranked Class 3, partly because visitation is limited due to its location a long way from nowhere. Situated on a southern arm of Fort Peck Reservoir in northeastern Montana, the closest community is Jordan, a town of less than 400 people. The town is the seat of Garfield County, which has a population of only 1,300 people. Despite its remote proximity, though, the campground draws about 30,000 visitors annually. Consequently, the tourists mostly anglers, boaters, campers and hunters provide a much-needed economic boost to the rural area. Ive been here 15 years, and its the same faces walking through the doors, said Clint Thomas, owner of Hell Creek Marina. Marina woes The marina has been put in limbo by the states proposal to possibly leave in 2021 unless new sources of funding can be found. State parks is manufacturing a crisis, said James Gustafson, a Helena resident and Hell Creek user since 1987. Gustafson has been critical of the parks management. He said the impending departure by state parks is a way to gather support for other funding sources at the expense of Hell Creek Marinas future. Thomas contract with the state to operate a concession runs until 2018. After that hed like to renew his lease for 20 years. In fact, a bill was passed in the last Legislature to allow such long contracts with concession operators like Thomas. Longer contracts make it easier for concessionaires to secure bank loans to invest in their businesses. Were tied into the mix of this without a whole lot of say, Thomas said. Weve been playing this game for five or six years now. That makes it tough to run a business. County option Advocates for the park and Thomas marina have rallied in defense. Theyve contacted local legislators as well as the states federal lawmakers seeking support for a quicker solution. Some of the ideas theyve tossed out include having the Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the property that the marina and the campground occupy, take over the marinas lease. The Corps has been noncommittal. Another is to have Garfield County take over management of the entire park. We have to see what that looks like, said Teddy Robertson, Garfield County commissioner. The sad thing is that Garfield County is a poor county. Robertson said the county already spends more time and money grading the 20-mile road to Hell Creek than the rest of the roads in the county combined. Theres got to be a group effort, to sit down and see whos best able to fill those needs, Robertson said. We think thats an ambitious project, Tom Towe, chairman of the Montana State Parks and Recreation Board, told Gustafson when he outlined the idea. We encourage you to pursue that. The public is clamoring for an opportunity to use that area. Van Genderen said if Garfield County is serious about taking over Hell Creek, his staff would be available to explain the nuances of managing the property and whats involved in its upkeep and maintenance. The citizens of Montana dont really care who owns the land, they just want to have the ability to recreate, Van Genderen said. Waiting game Thomas said hes glad that his long-time customers are getting involved in the debate. Everybody has a lot to lose, he said, but they are pushing in the right direction now. Yet Thomas worries that a decision may not be reached in time to keep his business solvent. Meanwhile, state parks is struggling with how to adequately fund its premier parks and still graciously back away from those it has classified as less important. Were trying to balance a park system that has been underfunded for decades, Van Genderen said. If were going to take care of our Class 1 parks like Makoshika, were going to have to make some hard decisions. An 11th-grade female student, age 17, needs some clothing, including undergarments, which must be new and in the original package, shirts, shoes and socks. Because of sizing, we are asking for a gift card for this young lady. You can help by donating $150 to My Student in Need and we will purchase a gift card so the teacher can take the student shopping. Willard No. 1604. A second-grade male student, age 8, needs size 8/10 sweat pants (black, gray or navy). New or gently used is wonderful! You can help by donating either donate gently used sweat pants that are stain-free or by donating $60 and My Student in Need will purchase a gift card and the teachers will purchase what is needed. Franklin No. 1602. AHSAHKA, Idaho Authorities say a dean at the University of Idaho was found dead in a car that had been submerged in the Dworshak Reservoir. The Clearwater County Sheriff's Office says 57-year-old Paul Joyce, a Butte native, was found in his Toyota Prius around 5:20 p.m. Saturday. The cause of death has not been determined. The University of Idaho shared news of his death Sunday on Facebook. Joyce joined the faculty in 1991 and was appointed dean of the College of Science in 2013. The sheriff's office put out an attempt to locate Joyce at 3 p.m. Saturday after he was reported overdue. A couple of hours later, his car was found in the reservoir at the Big Eddy Boat Ramp. The reservoir is located along the North Fork of the Clearwater River. The sheriff's office did not provide other details. BEIJING A prominent democracy activist said on Monday that he had been blocked from traveling to India to meet the Dalai Lama after the Chinese government urged Indian officials to rescind his visa. The activist, Dolkun Isa, had been scheduled to attend a conference this week in Dharamsala, the Himalayan city that is home to the Tibetan government in exile. Indian officials had initially approved his visa, Mr. Isa said, but on Saturday, after China publicly denounced the decision, the government said his visa had been canceled. I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy, Mr. Isa said in a statement. Image Dolkun Isa is a leader of the World Uyghur Congress. Credit... Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Mr. Isa, 48, is a leader of the World Uyghur Congress, a Munich-based group that advocates self-determination for Xinjiang, an expansive region in western China that is home to a large population of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. He now lives in Germany. Butte police reports JOYRIDE ARREST Moriah Post, 32, of Butte was caught hiding in a bush about 1:30 a.m. Monday after police attempted to stop her riding an all-terrain vehicle in the area of Mount Highland Street and Continental Drive. A resident on Kelsey Lane reported the ATV was driven through her yard and stuck in a small creek. Police say the 2012 Polaris was stolen April 10. Post was arrested on misdemeanor charges of fleeing from or eluding police and careless driving. STEPPING UP A resident on the 2800 block of Silver Bow Boulevard reported a broken storm window that occurred between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday. A note was found under a rock on the porch. It said, Sorry about the window. p.s. a kid. PANHANDLING MAN Isaiah Otherbull, 23, of Butte was arrested for disorderly conduct after he allegedly refused to stop panhandling and swore at police in the area of Mercury and Montana about midnight Friday. ASSAULT CHARGE Curtis Bunse, 32, of Butte is facing a misdemeanor charge of partner or family member assault after a woman, 40, told police she was afraid of him in connection with an argument at their home on the 2000 block of Walnut Street on Saturday. DISTURBANCE Police responded to the 700 block of West Daly Street about 9 p.m. for a disturbance between several people. Dale Hjelt, 25, of Butte was arrested on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Police say he may have been under the influence of a drug. URINATING MAN Nicholas Amestoy, 20, of Butte was arrested for alleged public urination on the 800 block of West Copper Street about 12:30 a.m.Sunday. DUI CHARGE Sheryl Lynn Hall, 49, of Butte was pulled over by police Sunday morning for allegedly driving 35 mph in a 25-mph zone on Grand Avenue. She failed field sobriety tests and a Breathalyzer test showed her blood alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit. She is facing misdemeanor charges of speeding, driving without a valid license, no liability insurance and aggravated DUI. A 29-year-old Butte man refused to cooperate with authorities on what led to his being stabbed twice in the chest over the weekend. Butte-Silver Bow police were alerted by staff at St. James Healthcare when the man arrived at the emergency room about 6:30 a.m. Saturday. The wounds to the mans upper right chest were non-life-threatening, police said. Undersheriff George Skuletich said police believe an individual driving a pickup truck drove the man to the hospital and abandoned it in the parking lot. A sign in the lots southeast corner may have been hit during the dropoff. The man has also refused to press charges against his assailant. The undersheriff said the incident is still under investigation. No additional details including a motive for the attack were available as of Monday morning. Tuesday, April 26 POOL FORUM A public forum on Buttes proposed aquatic facility and bond measure starts at 6 p.m. in the Butte-Silver Bow courthouse, third floor. The meeting will be broadcast on KBMF 102.5 FM. Questions may also be submitted with the form at http://www.co.silverbow.mt.us/ or contact J.P. Gallagher at jgallagher@bsb.mt.gov or (406) 497-6571. PARK STREET FORUM Butte-Silver Bow, the Butte Local Development Corp. and Community Builders provide updates on the West Park Street Corridor Plan at the Superfund Advisory and Redevelopment Trust Authority meeting at 6 p.m. at the Butte Justice Center, 3615 Wynne Ave. Details: Dori Skrukrud at 406-497-6469 or dskrukrud@bsb.mt.gov TECH FILM SERIES The movie Black Girl, directed Ousmane Sembene (1966), will be shown at 7 p.m. in the Tech library auditorium. ECOLOGY WORKSHOP The Imagine Butte Resource Center, 68 W. Park St., and EyeLand Institute ecologist Mich Pillet present a free introductory biology/ecology workshop from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays through May 17 called The Teaches of Niches: Approachable Ecology. Details: imaginebutte@gmail.com. LITERACY PROGRAM The Butte Literacy Program will hold a social 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Headframe Spirits, 21 S. Montana St., to provide information on the program and to raise money for materials and supplies. A portion of every beverage purchased that day goes to the program. Details: Jamie 406-723-7905. CLUBS AND MEETINGS BUTTE Butte Mineral and Gem Club meets at 6:30 p.m. at 400 W. Park St. Public welcome. Details: 406-498-5364. United Commercial Travelers will meet at 6 p.m. at the Comfort Inn. Butte Exchange Club meets at noon at 16 E. Granite St. on the second floor. Details: Steve, 406-782-4253. Butte-Silver Bow Tourism Business Improvement District will meet at 3 p.m. in the Chamber of Commerce Building, 1000 George Street. Details: Maria Pochervina at mariap@buttecvb.com or call 406-723-3177. Robert Pal has a dream for Butte. The native of Hungary believes that in 20 years the Butte Hill a site reclaimed after more than 100 years of mining activity will contain a mosaic of trees, up to 20 different types of flowers and shrubs rising above the historic buildings in Uptown. And much of that future diverse beauty of native plants, shrubs and trees on a site that was once a moonscape will be in place thanks to his implementation of the Native Plant Program at Montana Tech. Pal directs the program through a grant by the Butte Natural Resource Damage Council. It has a greenhouse at Montana Tech, a greenhouse manager, and four Tech students who gain job experience and ecology restoration skills. Pal has a vision for the program and that has Natural Resource Damage Council environmental science specialist Pat Cunneen excited. Cunneen acts as an administrator to the BNRC, which recommends how to spend millions of restoration dollars in Butte, to Gov. Steve Bullock. The BNRC gave a $1 million grant in 2013 for eight years to get the Native Plant program off the ground. The program's goal has its challenges. Much of the reclamation work used grasses that are not native to the state. And those grasses can't just be dug up, because they protect the mine waste cap. But Pal said with the help of trees and shrubs, the grasses can be edged out. Meanwhile, native grass seeds along with more trees, shrubs and flowers are added to slowly repopulate the reclamation sites. This creates the long-term diversity of vegetation that has not been seen since before mining began in Butte. So far, the projects have been small. Last summer Pal and his students planted trees, native flowering plants and a few shrubs in a subdivision just west of West Elementary School, at the Britannia Dump. On Saturday, Pal helped with tree planting for an Earth Day celebration at the West Gagnon Dump at Woolman and Washington. But Pal thinks big. "I think he's going to make a huge impact for us," Cunneen said. "It was time to look at the long term. That's what Robert brings to the table; he thinks 10 to 50 years out. He has a system for the future." Along those lines, Pal convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to change its seed mix last fall. Reclamation specialist for Butte-Silver Bow Tom Malloy said that one of the criticisms of EPA's grass seed is that it's not native to Montana. The tall yellow stalks growing like a field of wheat on the Butte Hill is crested wheat grass, a type of grass native to of all places Pal's home country of Hungary. "Because of Robert's expertise in native plants and seeds, I asked Robert to come up with a mix unique to the Butte Hill that would be more representative of a natural seed mix for the Butte Hill," Malloy said. The grass on the mine waste cap as well as the slope of the hill, the rocks, the fertilizer, and the type of soil are all regulated by EPA to protect the cap. EPA gave permission to switch, and Malloy has labeled the new native seed mixture "Pal Mix 2015." This is one of the first seeds, so to speak, Pal is planting for Butte's future. "Robert's got a clear vision of what needs to be done to restore the native ecosystem," Cunneen said. "I don't know if anybody had the big picture like he does." Already a tenured professor at the University of Pecs in Pecs, Hungary, Pal left that job and made the leap to Butte with his wife Judit in 2015 even though his future here comes with a degree of uncertainty. The Native Plant program is funded through the BNRC until 2021. Though he also holds the position of assistant professor at Tech, he had to restart the process of gaining tenure. But Pal, who started raising plants in elementary school, says finding a job in Montana is a dream come true and worth the risk. "It's become my favorite place," Pal said. Pal came to Montana initially on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2009 to do research at the University of Montana-Missoula. He has traveled widely, including to New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia. "He's an incredible person, and I feel really fortunate Butte has him," Cunneen said. For Pal, Butte is a huge laboratory. "This is the perfect place to put things (restoration work) into application," Pal said. "It is a benefit to your time to be here in Butte." HELENA The federal Bureau of Reclamation has launched an investigation in response to a 3-year-old childs death following injuries sustained at a Canyon Ferry Reservoir recreation site last week. Landon Haight of Butte was injured when a metal dock stored on shore partially collapsed and pinned him at about 3:30 p.m. Friday at the Shannon Boat Launch, a site owned and managed by the bureau. Several people at the site assisted including performing CPR, and the boy was transported via ambulance to St. Peters Hospital. He was stabilized and then flown to a hospital in Spokane, Washington, where he later died. A spokesman for the bureau on Monday said the agency has convened a team to investigate the incident. The Reclamation family is deeply saddened by this tragedy. Reclamation offers its condolences to the family members, spokesman Tyler Johnson said in an email. We cannot speculate on what happened; Reclamation has launched a full safety team to investigate the circumstances of the accident. Any recommendations that come from the safety team will be implemented. The safety of individuals visiting Reclamation facilities is Reclamation's top priority. The Lewis and Clark County Sheriffs office concluded its investigation as of Saturday. Sgt. Brian Robinson told the Independent Record, It was just an unfortunate accident that occurred, while thanking those on scene who assisted. Haights family launched an online fundraiser to help with medical expenses. To donate to the boy's family, visit https://www.gofundme.com/sstxztq4. Funeral arrangements are pending in Butte. Canyon Ferry Reservoir is located east of Helena. Paul Joyce, a Butte native who was a dean at the University of Idaho, was found dead in a car that had been submerged in the Dworshak Reservoir in Idaho, authorities said. Joyce, 57, who graduated from Butte High School in 1977, was found in his Toyota Prius around 5:20 p.m. Saturday, according to the Clearwater County Sheriffs Office. The county is in northern Idaho and borders Montana. The cause of death has not been determined. The University of Idaho shared news of his death on Facebook Sunday. "It is with shock and great sorrow that we share with you the death of Paul Joyce, Dean of the College of Science," the university posted on Facebook. "Paul died in a car accident Saturday. Our thoughts and deep condolences are with his family, friends and colleagues during this very sad time." Joyce joined the university's faculty in 1991 and was appointed dean of the College of Science in 2013. "He was ... admired by staff and faculty, as well as his students, for his dedication and interdisciplinary efforts. He will be sorely missed," the university's Facebook post added. Joyce lived in Moscow, Idaho. His siblings include Eileen Joyce, who is the county attorney in Butte-Silver Bow. Joyce earned his bachelors and masters degrees in mathematics at Montana State University and his doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of Utah. He did post-doctoral work at the University of Washington and the University of Southern California before joining the Idaho faculty as an assistant professor in 1991. He was promoted to associate professor in 1994 and became a full professor in 2001, according to the university. He had served as the director of the graduate program in bioinformatics and computational biology. He also served as vice chair and chair of the faculty senate. Butte and the rest of Montana got natural gas for heating and cooking in the early 1930s, when the Bowdoin Dome near Malta, Montana, began to produce significant natural gas. But Butte was using gas long before that. The Butte Gas Light & Coke Company was established in 1884. President Anthony Barret was a Kentucky native who came to Montana in 1875, first to Alder Gulch, then Pony, and finally to Butte in 1878 where his success in the saddle, harness and carriage business allowed him to branch out into other investments. He formed a partnership with real estate tycoon John Noyes and banker Andrew Jackson Davis in the lighting and fuel company, which became Butte Gas Light & Fuel in 1899. The gas the company sold was distilled from coal, which was imported to their facility at the corner of Second Street and Maryland Avenue in South Butte. The plant was just down the street from the Schlitz Beer Depot and the Anaconda Sampling Works, and their uptown office was at 202 N. Main, where the Wells Fargo bank is today. By the 1910s, most of their coal was from the coking coal mines at Sunnyside, Utah, though they were also using tar from Pocatello, Idaho, and from Missoula. Besides gas for heating, lighting, and cooking, lighter liquid by-products such as coal oils were used to make oil-based paint, and the heavier tarry distillates became roofing pitch, road tar, and tar paper coatings. They produced about six barrels of liquid distillate per day, sold as creosote paint by the Ellis Paint Company at 24 W. Granite for $1.50 a gallon. In 1918, Butte Gas Light & Fuel had 30 miles of pipes carrying gas around the city with nearly 30 more miles of distribution pipes for individual customers. They processed 25 tons of coal every day in 30 retorts, piping it into a huge 80-foot-high storage tank marked with COOK WITH GAS in huge letters. To prevent explosions, the gas was covered with 2 inches of water which took lots of heating in the winter to keep it from freezing, probably one of the companys biggest costs. With an average capacity in 1900 of 175,000 cubic feet a day, Butte Gas Light & Fuel had a monopoly on gas services in Butte. In 1913, customer prices ranged from $1.00 to $1.65 per thousand cubic feet per month. They only had 12 employees, but one report said the business standing is as solid as Gibraltar. Company secretary and plant superintendent R.S. Feurtado had come to Butte from his native Jamaica just maybe the only Jamaican in Butte in 1900. Competition from electric lighting and the development of electrical appliances certainly impacted the companys business, but they continued to operate until 1927, coincident with the time when electric stoves began to compete seriously with gas ranges. Anthony Barret served as Montana state treasurer in 1901-1905 and died in 1918. Barret was succeeded by J.H. Leyson, probably better known as a jeweler. Alcohol server training offered Alcohol server training sessions are planned Tuesday, May 3, at Fairmont Hot Springs and Tuesday, May 10, at the Anaconda Local Development Conference room in the old hospital. Both start at 6 p.m. Both classes meet the requirements for State of Montana Alcohol Servers and are free. The classes are presented by Anaconda Community Intervention and the Drug-free Communities Block Grant. Details: Dan Haffey, 406-560-2529. Street rod inspection May 7 The Pioneer Street Rods will once again host the National Street Rod Safety Inspection from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at the Highlands College Automotive Shop. Inspectors from the NSRA will be available to do safety inspections on special-interest vehicles. This event is free, and you do not have to be a member of Pioneer Street Rods or the NSRA. Lunch will be served. The Montana Street Rod Association will hold its quarterly meeting following lunch. Details: Tom Taylor at 406-490-2384 or Tony Patrick at 406-494-5243. Owl walk set at state park An owl walk with park ranger Tom Forwood Jr. starts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. Meet at the lower visitors center. The first part will be around the campground and is suitable for all ages with a short walk focusing on a great horned owl nest. The second part will be an hour-long walk up the park road after dark. This portion is more suitable for adults and children 10 and up. Cost is $4 per person. Cave tours start May 1 Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park will conduct its summer guided cave tours Sunday, May 1, through Sept. 30. The two-hour tours leave approximately every half hour beginning at 9:30 a.m. daily. Tickets are $12 for adults (12 years and up) and $5 for children (6 to 11), and children under 5 are free. May is Military Appreciation Month, when tour tickets for active or former military and their families are $8 for adults, $4 for children, and kids under 6 free. Kids flower class offered DILLON The Southwest Montana Arts Council hosts a free flower arrangement workshop at Wildwood Floral on Saturday, April 30. Rebecca Knotts will help participants create an arrangement for an early Mothers Day gift. Workshop 1 is for grades K-5 from 10 to 10:30 a.m., and workshop 2 is for grades 6-12 from 11 to 11:30 a.m. Each workshop has room for 15 participants. To sign up, call or text 406-683-6208 or email SMACarts@gmail.com. Child advocate volunteers needed The Court Appointed Special Advocates/Guardian Ad Litem Program of Deer Lodge, Powell and Granite counties will hold two informational meetings for people interested in learning about becoming CASA/GAL volunteers. The meetings are Wednesday, April 27, at the Kohrs Memorial Library in Deer Lodge and Thursday, May 5, at the Hearst Free Library, Anaconda. Both start at 5:30 p.m. The program is recruiting volunteers to serve as advocates in those three counties. Volunteers advocate for children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. A five-week training session for volunteers starts May 8. Details: Sue at 406-563-7972, ext. 17. An 88-year-old Butte man was found safe Sunday afternoon after going missing for about 20 hours. Butte Police say Edward "Butch" O'Connell was located in a residence near his home mid-afternoon Sunday. He had not been seen since 6 p.m. Saturday after leaving his residence at 400 Holmes Ave. in Butte on foot. Butte Police and 15-90 Search and Rescue combed the area where OConnell went missing after being alerted around 9 a.m. Sunday morning. They continued to search later Sunday until he was located. Sheriff Ed Lester thanked everyone for their help in finding him. Failure to communalize grief can imprison a person in endless swinging between rage and emotional deadness as a permanent way of being in the world. Dr. Jonathan Shay in Achilles in Vietnam as quoted in The Things They Cannot Say by Kevin Sites. Montana State University (MSU) recently added to one soldiers burden by choosing to ShootReadyAim, adding insult to injury, displaying remarkable institutional cowardice and insensitivity. MSU leadership summarily fired Butte native and former Navy SEAL, Robert ONeill, from a public speaking engagement sponsored by the MSU Leadership Institute. MSU feebly rationalized its decision, citing consultation with veterans and student leadership groups and concluding that ONeills recent arrest in Butte for DUI would overshadow the (publicly supported) speech planned for the following Monday evening. What? If MSU felt he had important things to say before his arrest, he still had those important things to say afterwards. No doubt Rob would be smart enough to deal with any behavioral lapse issue up front. Rob knows the seriousness of the authoritys accusation. After all, he thrived in the Navys Zero Tolerance of DUI system. Meanwhile, ask yourself: Why would Rob voluntarily leave the Naval service after 16 years? Was it because he wanted to selfishly tour the country saying: Look at me everybody! Im a rootin-tootin hero cowboy!? Hardly. My bet is he was exhausted by constant, unrelieved stress with only the promise of more. Still, the facts are that he is a man of integrity with a tremendous amount of hard-won value to offer. He has performed in excruciating crucibles as a leader and a follower. Meanwhile, like all veterans he must recover from his prior existence without the camaraderie of his mates to carry him through. Like all veterans, he must make a living and do work that matters. He has a lot to offer that is eminently worthy. Some, like former Presidents, Secretaries of Defense and Retired Seal Team 6 Commanders, write books or become Representatives. Robs medium is through the immediacy of riveting, up close and personal speech. I have heard him and his multi-media presentation is truly inspirational. Through years of demanding preparation, experience, real-life competition, ability and leadership, Rob found himself at the absolute forefront of Special Operations Forces with a team of contemporaries comprised of millions of man-hours and billions of dollars worth of collective effort to find and kill Americas #1 enemy! An argument can and has been made that his speaking out is ill-considered and self-aggrandizing. I dont buy it. Whether you represent the Navy, DoD, or MSU, asking him to stay mum on the Bin-Laden subject is an insult to all of us including his contemporaries let alone Rob. What he has done and is currently doing is courageous, born of a self-sacrificing service ethic. Lets assume Rob is indeed guilty of either DUI or at least the bad judgment of taking prescribed medicine (Ambien) especially when combined with any alcohol that is strong enough to impair psychomotor skills such as driving. Insomnia, prescription medications and alcohol literally shout Post-Traumatic Stress. Robs breath-taking 16 years of service could be expected to create PTS. The community should be absorbing some of the resultant pain. He will never publicly say he is in pain; his mantra is Never Quit. Now MSU has unnecessarily and unjustly added an unhealthy measure of grief, pain, anger and fear to the unrelenting combat load he is carrying carrying in our name. We should be doing all we can to ensure all like him, struggling to heal their wounded spirits, do not simply become statistics when life proves not worth living. Rob wanted to share what he had learned, especially for the benefit of other wounded special operations warriors. The $28,000 speakers fee is chump change compared to the value of his presentation. Senior Chief Petty Officer ONeills exceptional personal combat awards are no fluke. No Stolen Valor here! Meanwhile, like thousands of other veterans, Rob needs us to listen to him not discard him. We need to communalize his extreme experiences so that the almost unbearable weight of sustained combat does not in the end destroy Rob and his extended family. And well all be better for having listened! Hope and joy spring from love and appreciation and we have stifled too many combat veterans already. Just ask any Korea or Vietnam-era combat vet how he feels on this subject. -- Col. Eric Hastings, (ret), USMC enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1960 at the age of 17. He learned to fly the F-8 Crusader and later the A-4 Skyhawk, which he flew for the majority of his career, including the 168 combat missions he flew in Vietnam. After his tour in Vietnam, Hastings was sent to several places around the world, eventually reaching the rank of colonel. Hastings was the chief of staff for Marine forces during Operation Desert Storm, in 1990-91. He is co-founder, volunteer, chairman emeritus of the Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundation. http://warriorsandquietwaters.org/ When Pam Bucy starts on about equal pay, she should look in the mirror and examine the Department of Labor's elitist practices and policies. My wife worked a job that, because of her disabilities, she could do without causing her any problems. The main organization paid her $12 an hour, but as an independent contractor much like doctors and lawyers, who have made the exceptions to the rules to benefit themselves. The Department of Labor stepped in and the main company turned her over to an all-woman's group in Oregon that paid her $8.25 an hour, yet for the same job in Oregon the pay was higher. The Department of Labor doesn't seem to be helping people work here in Montana, nor do they seem to care. One year she worked 100 days, yet the next year, when the all-woman's organization took over, they hired more women and reduced her work schedule down to 30 days. Pam Bucy's Department of Labor, with their elitist attitude, have failed to address this inequality. Now she and Sheila Hogan want to wave the flag of injustice and see themselves as defenders of fair equal pay when they themselves are part of the problem. They need to raise the minimum wage to come up to par with the surrounding states. Pam Bucy and Sheila Hogan need to tear down that wall of inequality and open up to fairness and common sense by raising Montana's minimum wage to a higher level like in Oregon and Washington. -- Roy Rando, Frenchtown 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!) MUSCATINE, Iowa A man was sentenced last week for the death of a Muscatine woman that occurred 22 years after he attacked her. Muscatine County District Judge Nancy Tabor imposed a prison sentence not to exceed 20 years against Hiram Antonio Serrano Sr., according to a statement from Muscatine County Attorney Alan Ostergren. The 51-year-old will be transported to the Iowa Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale to begin serving his prison sentence. Serrano was convicted of attempted murder and willful injury in a jury trial following the attack in November of 1990. In 2012, the victim died of complications because of the injuries from to that attack, according to the medical examiner. This year, on March 1, Serrano pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and the sentence was issued April 21. WAPELLO, Iowa The Wapello Community School District Board of Directors will have a special meeting at noon Wednesday, April 27, to consider financial proposals opened and reviewed by the superintendent, secretary of the board and financial advisor. The board will also consider a resolution directing the sale of bonds. WAPELLO, Iowa Where's Lonna and What's She Cooking provides a new food option for residents of Wapello. Lonna Abraham has been in the restaurant business for more than half of her life, and said she loves having her food trailer in rural Iowa. She opened in July of 2015, and said business has been steady. Abraham graduated from Muscatine High School, and after cooking and working in the restaurant industry for years, received a culinary arts degree from Kendall College in Evenston, Illinois, in 1992, when she was 50 years old. I was the oldest graduate, and I loved it, she said. After living in Chicago for several years, Abraham said she saw the success of food trucks and decided to create one of her own. With the help of family and friends, Abraham gutted a camper trailer and brought it up to code. You have to make them up to code, just like you would any other restaurant; you cant just open something with some crock pots and make it work, she said. Despite the work that went in to the small trailer, Abraham said she prefers it to other styles of restaurant. The building and land and everything could cost $150,000, but with this at around $30,000, and I own every part of it, its more cost effective, she explained. She also owned a restaurant in Wapello previously that helped her build a reputation and prepare for her food truck opening. It was just called Lonnas, and I loved being able to cook and talk with people at the same time, she said. The people are what drew Abraham to stay in the restaurant industry, and she said she would not have it any other way. People are wonderful; its amazing what you learn about people. Thats the part of the restaurant business I love, she said. Warren and Trish Ball, who live outside of Wapello, ate at Wheres Lonna and Whats she Cooking for the first time on Monday, and said they plan on coming back again. I think its a neat idea, we were impressed, Trish said. The mobile food trailer rests at Backyard Buildings and More on Highway 61 in Wapello, and Abraham said she likes the mutual benefit both businesses receive. "Its a perfect setup, theres plenty of driveway space for people to come, not only that, while theyre waiting for their food they can walk around and look at some of these buildings because theyre really neat," she said. Where's Lonna and What's She Cooking is open seven days a week, typically from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Abraham said everyone is welcome to call ahead and order food to go, or spend time at the small table next to her trailer. She only closes for high winds or other weather issues. For more information or to order food for carry-out, call 815-757-2624. Dear white people: As you no doubt know, the water crisis in Flint, Mich., returned to the headlines last week with news that the state attorney general is charging three government officials for their alleged roles in the debacle. It makes this a convenient moment to deal with something that has irked me about the way this disaster is framed. Namely, the fact that people who look like you often get left out of it. Consider some of the headlines: The Racist Roots of Flint's Water Crisis Huffington Post How A Racist System Has Poisoned The Water in Flint The Root A Question of Environmental Racism The New York Times As has been reported repeatedly, Flint is a majority black city with a 41 percent poverty rate, so critics ask if the water would have been so blithely poisoned, and if it would have taken media so long to notice, had the victims been mostly white. It's a sensible question, but whenever I hear it, I engage in a little thought experiment. I try to imagine what happened in Flint happening in Bowie, a city in Maryland where blacks outnumber whites, but the median household income is more than $100,000 a year and the poverty rate is about 3 percent. I can't. Then I try to imagine it happening in Morgantown, West Virginia, where whites outnumber blacks, the median household income is about $32,000 a year, and the poverty rate approaches 40 percent and I find that I easily can. It helps that Bowie is a few minutes from Washington, D.C., while Morgantown is more than an hour from the nearest city of any size. My point is neither that race carries no weight nor that it had no impact on what happened in Flint. No, my point is only that sometimes, race is more distraction than explanation. Indeed, that's the story of our lives. To be white in America is to have been sold a bill of goods that there exists between you and people of color a gap of morality, behavior, intelligence and fundamental humanity. Forces of money and power have often used that perceived gap to con people like you into acting against their own self-interest. In the Civil War, white men too poor to own slaves died in grotesque numbers to protect the "right" of a few plutocrats to continue that despicable practice. In the Industrial Revolution, white workers agitating for a living wage were kept in line by the threat that their jobs would be given to "Negroes." In the Depression, white families mired in poverty were mollified by signs reading "Whites Only." You have to wonder what would happen if white people particularly, those of modest means ever saw that gap for the fiction it is? What if they ever realized you don't need common color to reach common ground? What if all of us were less reflexive in using race as our prism, just because it's handy? You see, for as much as Flint is a story about how we treat people of color, it is also I would say more so a story about how we treat the poor, the way we render them invisible. That was also the story of Hurricane Katrina. Remember news media's shock at discovering there were Americans too poor to escape a killer storm? Granted, there is a discussion to be had about how poverty is constructed in this country; the black poverty rate is higher than any other with the exception of Native Americans, and that's no coincidence. But it's equally true that, once you are poor, the array of slights and indignities to which you are subjected is remarkably consistent across that racial gap. That fact should induce you and all of us to reconsider the de facto primacy we assign this arbitrary marker of identity. After all, 37 percent of the people in Flint are white. But that's done nothing to make their water clean. Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, readers may contact him at lpitts@miamiherald.com. 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 [] Growing trade between Africa and Asia has prompted talk of a new mega subsea broadband cable along Africas eastern coastline, says Hong Kong ICT firm PCCW. Last week, PCCW said it along with Telkom, MTN , Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Telecom Egypt (TE) signed a memorandum of understanding to build Africa-1. The Africa-1 broadband system is planned to stretch 12 000 km along Africas eastern coastline towards Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan and could go live next year. Last year, South Africas Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said that trade flows between Africa and Asia had increased over the years, totalling $423bn in 2013. As the trade links between Asia and Africa, and between the rest of the world and Africa, have continued to grow, we have responded by increasing both the capacity on our network and the services delivered across it, PCCW spokesperson Ivan Ho told Fin24. We have continued to invest in the continent, both in terms of submarine cable capacity and in terrestrial connectivity linking the landlocked countries in Africa to high-speed subsea capacity. Africa-1 is a natural extension of our network strategy which will help to address the increasing capacity demands of the Asia-Africa trade corridor with better levels of reliability, connecting people and businesses in some of the worlds fastest growing economies, said the spokesperson. PCCW, over the years, has increased its presence in Africa. In 2014, PCCW announced that it planned to provide telecoms and technology services for the R84bn Zendai smart city project in Modderfontein, Johannesburg. Last year, PCCW also launched video-on-demand service ONTAPtv.com in South Africa. Cable debate But talk of Africa-1 has sparked industry debate as Chris Wood, CEO of African connectivity wholesaler WIOCC and co-chair of the EASSy (The Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) consortium, told Fin24 last week that Africa-1 is totally unnecessary. Wood said that the likes of Seacom and EASSy currently provide more than enough broadband capacity to Africa. Seacom, EASSy and WACS (West Africa Cable System) have been connected to Africa since 2009. Telkom, last week, also said that it hasnt committed financially to Africa-1 yet. When asked about whether there is sufficient demand for the cable, the PCCW spokesperson did not answer Fin24s questions but instead said the project is in its planning stages. The Africa-1 cable is still in the planning stage, and the consortium shall release further news, information and development at appropriate stages, said the spokesperson. Fin24 More on fibre Uncapped Prices: FTTH versus ADSL The fibre revolution in South Africa Former CEO at MTN Group, Sifiso Dabengwa, scored a R40 million salary in 2015, including R23.7 million compensation for loss of office, despite a massive fine imposed on the group in Nigeria last year under his watch. The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) hit MTN with a $5.2 billion fine for failing to disconnect more than five million unregistered SIMs on its network, while Dabengwa was in charge at the group. He subsequently stepped down in November, with former CEO, Phuthuma Nhleko, taking up position as head of MTN under the role of acting executive chairman. On Monday, the mobile operator released its annual report for 2015, showing that Dabengwa was paid a salary of R8.42 million; R1.08 million in post employment benefits; R2.88 million in other benefits; and R23.66 million compensation for loss of office. Adding share gains to the payout, Dabengwa received a total package exceeding R40.58 million. Current chief financial officer, Brett Goschen received a salary of R7.56 million, with a total package exceeding R9.26 million. And for his work between November and the month ended March 2016, Nhleko received a salary of R5 million. The former group lead has been at the forefront of negotiations in Nigeria however, the fine still stands. The three top company executives received a combined package of R54.84 million, the annual report showed. MTN Nigerias CEO Michael Ikpoki, also stepped down in November, after the fine was imposed on the group. MTN paid Ikpoki R17.26 million compensation for loss of office amount, out of a total remuneration of R26.891 million. According to Bloomberg, MTN shares have declined 25% since the fine later reduced to $3.9 billion was made public in October. The stock traded 1.72% lower at R144.80 as of 12h15 in Johannesburg, valuing the company at R267 billion. More on MTN 48-hour network outage costs MTN MTN loses 500,000 South African subscribers COLUMBUS, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Sunday that the slayings of eight family members in rural southern Ohio "was a pre-planned execution" and he expects the investigation will be lengthy. The Friday killings at four different homes near Piketon was "a sophisticated operation," DeWine said at a news conference in the small community that has been on edge since the seven adults and one teenage boy were found shot in the head. "This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened," said Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader, saying most were targeted while they were sleeping. Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed more than 30 people in hopes of finding leads in the deaths. The victims were identified Saturday as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. It appeared some of the family members were killed as they slept, including Hanna Rhoden, who was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was 4- or 5-days old. The baby, Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby, and 1 other small child were not hurt. Since the slayings, authorities have refused to discuss many details of the crime, including any evidence or the search for the assailant or assailants. Investigators sought tips and gave people a number to call if they had any details about the crimes. A Cincinnati-area businessman also put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway. The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away, said the investigation's leader, Benjamin Suver, a special agent in charge with Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Officers were called to the 1700 block of American Canyon Road at 2:45 p.m. There, a man apparently was trying to holster his gun when the firearm went off, wounding him in the right thigh, according to Sgt. Doug Pace. Napa County sheriff's deputies made arrests in connection with two separate theft incidents Saturday in Yountville, according to authorities. At about 10 a.m., deputies patrolling near Yountville Park tried to contact two people walking near the town cemetery, but they fled, leaving behind a backpack containing suspected illegal drugs, according to Sgt. Doug Pace. The sheriff's dog Jax caught the scent from the knapsack and led deputies to a hotel in the 2200 block of Madison Street. There, deputies found James Edward Cull, a 31-year-old transient, on the grounds near a pickup truck that had been reported stolen in the city of Napa on Friday, Pace said. Deputies contacted the truck's owner, who reported that Cull had stolen the vehicle and nearly ran him over during his getaway, according to Pace. Cull was arrested and booked into the Napa County jail on suspicion of assault, possession of stolen property and possessing a stolen vehicle. The second person seen near Yountville Park had not been found as of Sunday afternoon, Pace said. At about the same time as the hotel incident, sheriff's deputies were notified of a home burglary in Yountville in which an intruder stole credit cards and electronics, according to Pace. Later in the day, at about 7:32 p.m., deputies pursued into Clearlake a pickup that had been reported stolen in Lake County, Pace said. A man and woman fled the truck, but deputies detained the woman, 24-year-old Ashley Lauren Jackson of Clearlake. Jackson was booked into the Napa jail for investigation of receiving stolen property, and Pace said the sheriff's office is seeking a warrant against her alleging vehicle theft. The man, identified by the sheriff's office as 20-year-old Zachary Stovall of Clearlake, remained at large Sunday on a felony warrant for alleged possession of a stolen vehicle, Pace reported. All of the items stolen from the Yountville home were recovered, including belongings traced to Sonoma County and credit cards left at the scene of the vehicle stop, according to Pace. April 25--Considering his outsize influence and role in Sonoma and California history, some are saying it's about time that Gen. Mariano Vallejo is honored with a statue in the town he founded more than 180 years ago. Vallejo, once the most powerful man in Mexican-controlled California and who also favored annexation by the United States, is getting a life-sized bronze likeness that will be placed in a prominent spot in the Sonoma Plaza, following unanimous approval by the City Council last week. "No one deserves a statue more in the plaza than the founder of the pueblo and the person who laid it out," said Robert Demler, president of the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation. "This is really significant and very exciting," said Vallejo's great-great granddaughter, Martha Vallejo McGettigan, a former Sonoma resident and member of the monument committee, who said the statue is long overdue. "Sonoma has been behind the times, as far as acknowledging this," she said Friday. Vallejo has been described as a man of high principles, rare culture and wealth. One of his biographers, George Tays, wrote, "it's been justly said that any institution is but the lengthened shadow of one man. This is likewise true of Sonoma. For without Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, there would have been no town." But the statue has its critics, including members of the city's Cultural and Fine Arts Commission, which approved it 4-3 over objections that included its casual depiction of Vallejo sitting on a bench, his arm stretched over the back. Longtime Sonoma resident and retired attorney Robert Parmalee is also a prominent naysayer, arguing that the plaza should be kept a venue for families, students and civic events. "Don't turn the Plaza into a 'mausoleum of the past,' " he stated in an e-mail to the City Council last year. He noted that there is already a "splendid relief portrait" of Vallejo at the entrance to City Hall. "Another monument could open the door to memorials for people such as General Hap Arnold, Jack London, California Indians and Chinese workers and more," he said, listing some of the prominent personalities and groups that are part of Sonoma Valley's history. None of the objections voiced over the statue are based on the legacy or actions of Vallejo, who held high military positions in California when it was under Spanish and then Mexican rule. Popular among visiting foreigners, he spoke English well and learned French and Latin, according to biographer Alan Rosenus. When California became a state, Vallejo helped draw up its constitution and was elected a state senator. He also was California's first commercial wine grower. At one time, his holdings -- which included his Rancho Petaluma -- encompassed about 175,000 acres, according to McGettigan, and he donated land to establish the cities of Benicia and Vallejo. By the time he died in 1890, his holdings were down to less than 300 acres, with most of his lands and livestock lost to squatters and settlers amid failed attempts to get American courts to recognize his title. Currently, the only statue in the Sonoma Plaza is the century-old Bear Flag monument. It commemorates the 1846 uprising of a rag-tag band of American settlers who surprised the sleepy town and declared the short-lived California Republic. In the process, they imprisoned Vallejo, the Mexican military governor. At the time, there were relatively few Americans in California, but many more were on the way in wagon trains, and nervous Mexican military authorities were threatening to expel them and take their possessions. Ironically, Vallejo was sympathetic to Americans and had expressed a desire to make California a part of the United States. He almost died after being taken by the Bear Flaggers to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, where he endured months of poor treatment and contracted malaria. At last week's City Council meeting, Sonoma attorney Tom Hauser said he wasn't so much objecting to the Vallejo statue as the lack of a master plan for the plaza. Jim Callahan, who is creating the sculpture in his Sonoma foundry, is a good artist, Hauser said, but "the city should be saying 'This is what we want,'" not " 'well, OK, this sounds like something nice, let's accept this ad hoc proposal.' " Hauser noted that some critics felt the statue of the seated Vallejo with one arm extended along the top of the bench was disrespectful and common. "I have been told Ronald McDonald does this also," he said. But City Council members embraced the statue's design and the proposal by the monument committee, which made its initial pitch a year ago. Mayor Laurie Gallian agreed that the plaza is a "beautiful precious gem" that needs to be safeguarded, but said the statue is a legacy that "needs to be there, as far as a community statement." Councilwoman Rachel Hundley called the statue tasteful and noted that people who have seen a model like the design. The city won't be paying for it because the sculpture is being funded by donations, she said. The statue and bench, on a base of basalt stone, is estimated to cost between $70,000 and $80,000, and about half of the money already has been raised, according to Demler, the preservation group's president. He said the statue, which could be in place in 10 months to a year, will serve as a gathering spot and a photo opportunity. It will be "like meeting under the clock at Grand Central Station," Demler said, but instead people might say "meet you at the general's bench." He said the installation also will display a small digital code that schoolchildren and other visitors will be able to scan with their smartphones to access photos and information on Vallejo. "It's going to be wonderful," Councilman David Cook said. "This is a great improvement to the backside of City Hall," Councilman Gary Edwards said. He noted that by placing Vallejo's likeness on the north side of the plaza, the statue will be facing across Spain Street in the direction of his original home, the two-story "Casa Grande" adobe that Vallejo built in the 1830s. Vallejo was a lieutenant in the Mexican army when he founded Sonoma in 1835 under orders of Mexican Gov. Jose Figueroa. His wealth would multiply along with his titles. He was sent to settle and colonize Alta California -- which extended north from about Monterey -- to counter the presence of Russians who established Fort Ross on the Sonoma Coast. He chose the spot near the previously established San Francisco de Solano Mission to build troop barracks and lay out a dusty plaza and training ground. "Sonoma was the prominent place. San Francisco didn't exist. At the time, it was still Yerba Buena," McGettigan, an independent historian, said of the pueblo's significance. "All the important things that happened pretty much happened in Sonoma." Even though Vallejo lost his cattle herds and land holdings that once stretched from Mendocino County to the Carquinez Strait, he still retained his homestead in Sonoma when he died in 1890 at the age of 82. He remained a man of distinction and influence. But in the end, Demler said, "the richest man in California wound up in very modest circumstances." The Walking Cradle Co. presents acoustic and Imrat guitarist, composer and improviser, who debuts his genre-defying musicOn Eagle Mountain. A unique blend of new age, jazz, and world music, with hints of folk, bluegrass and classical North Indian flairMosby will kick-off the tour from the 'Focal Point' in St. Louis on Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 8 pm. Album artists Michael Manring, Jeff Haynes and Premik Russell Tubbs will join Mosby on tour in California.Two men adept at tapping into the talent Mosby has spent 3/4 of his life developing are Will Ackerman and Ustad Imrat Khan.Grammy Award winner and founder of Windham Hill Records,just completed an acoustic guitar based set of recordings with Mosby. Mastering the Imrat guitara hybrid sitar-guitarwas the brainchild of Mosby's mentor Ustad Imrat Khan. Mosby is the first and only guitarist in the world to become a member of the North Indian royal family of sitar, a family that traces its roots back 500 years.Slated to redefine the contemporary instrumental genre in his first majorly produced album by the team of Will Ackerman (also ZMR Lifetime Achievement Winner) and Tom Eaton from the acclaimed Imaginary Road Studios, On Eagle Mountain spans multiple genres and many moods (vibrant, serene, contemplative) with fluid grace and artistic depth.Todd incorporates more influences into his composition and performances on guitar than anyone I've ever worked with. Somehow he manages to synthesize these disparate elements into a singular musical voice that is unique...and unique is not a word I throw out easily or frequently. His music is staggeringly beautiful," Ackerman said.Acoustic guitarist Todd Mosby is joined by a stellar cast of Grammy Winning and Nominated artists on his newest release, On Eagle Mountain. Listeners will hear the world's leading solo bassist, percussionist, multi-talented Will Ackerman, violinist Charlie Bisharat, cellist Eugene Friesen and bassistamong others like. Todd also plays the unique Imrat guitar, a 20 stringed hybrid sitar/guitar bridge instrument he helped develop for bridging East and West music.Spirit Dancer" is one composition where I pay homage to my guruUstad Imrat Khan and one of my guitar heroes. The composition can be approached from either a strictly melodic improvisation based on chords, based on the rag, or any combination of each or all...It is all placed over a very hip 6/4 groove, which tends to get things churning underneath a bit," Mosby said when asked about what he drew inspiration from in his music and life.Todd Mosby & The New Horizons Ensemble is an evening that features original and, at times, a few familiar compositions, so much so that the ensemble defies genres and rocks with a virtuoso flair. The group is joined by special guests Bryan (guitar/vocals) and Lola (piano/vocals) Toben while on tour in St. Louis and in parts of California.Sat April 30: Focal Point, St. Louis, MO (8 pm)& the New Horizons EnsembleOpening: R. Scott BryanBryan & Lola, Ben Wheeler, Kevin Cheli, Ben Reece, Traci Andreotti, Kathy Nix, Jacki KleineWed / May 25: Hotel Utah Saloon, San Francisco, CA (7:30 pm)& the New Horizons EnsembleOpening: Bryan & Lola TobenMichael Manring, Jeff Haynes, Premik Russell TubbsSat / May 26: Don Quixote Music Hall, Santa Cruz, CA (7:30 pm)& the New Horizons EnsembleOpening: Michael ManringJeff Haynes, Premik R. Tubbs, Bryan & Lola TobenFri / May 27: SOhO Cafe, Santa Barbara, CA (7pm)& the New Horizons EnsembleMichael Manring, Jeff Haynes, Premik Russell Tubbs, Bryan TobenSat / May 28: Jupiter, Berkeley, CA (8 pm)& the New Horizons EnsembleMichael Manring, Jeff Haynes, Premik Russell TubbsOn Eagle Mountain is available for purchase at these fine online retailers: CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and toddmosbymusic.com.Todd Mosby is a composer and innovator in the field of instrumental acoustic and electric guitar, contemporary composition, and improvisation. He has mastered multiple musical forms including classical, jazz and Indian raga. This broad spectrum enables him to create works which are highly creative and intelligent. His live shows introduce audiences to a constantly evolving, musical journey of fun and transformative tuneful moments!According to Mosby's mentor Ustad Imrat Kahn, Todd is one of the most innovative musicians of the 21st century." The 20-stringed Imrat guitar is the first of its kind, and is designed to bridge Eastern and Western music.Todd Mosby has shared the stage with diverse artists as The Rippingtons,, and. He holds a Masters in Music Composition from Webster University, schooled in composition, guitar and improvisation from Berklee College of Music, and a massive Certification (diploma) from Berklee College of Music.Mosby Music Group (MMG) is a live music production and licensing agency that specializes in intimate concert presentations. MMG targets small to medium size venues for unique, traditional and non-traditional concerts. For more information on Michael Manring,, Jeff Haynes or booking other artists. Syunik governor in Frances Vienne, sister city of Armenias Goris, discusses implemented projects, future cooperation Climate protesters throw mashed potatoes at Monet painting in Germany museum There is chance for peace in Ukraine, Macron says US, Russia defense chiefs discuss Ukraine situation for 2nd time in last few days Turkey plans to set up 2 more military bases in northern Syria Germany wants to use Israel UAVs to protect its key infrastructures UK defense secretary holds phone talk with Russia counterpart US to attempt set Russia oil price cap above $60 per barrel? Russia, Turkey defense ministers confer about Ukraine situation Armenia official: Terms for buying, building houses for those displaced from Artsakh have improved Saudi Arabia forum set to draw American business leaders despite existing tensions Iran plans to increase natural gas exports to Turkey Iran army ground forces holding exercise in West Azarbaijan Province Sovereignty renunciation to be punished in Armenia with 12-15 years of imprisonment, as per justice ministry draft 2 pilots killed in Russia fighter jet crash Russia, France defense ministers discuss Ukraine Fighter jet crashes into house in Russias Irkutsk 150 residents of 3 Karabakh settlements handed over to Azerbaijan get compensation certificates Rishi Sunak confirms UK premier bid Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson hold talks Biden slammed for 'scary' long pause during interview Elite US troops conducting exercises on Ukraine border Iran MP: Military exercises on Azerbaijan border are decisive response to Israel 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 Many are the great and small unresolved problems facing mankind today. One of them, still remains as the heaviest burden on the human conscience, as the first genocide of the 20th Century perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks (1915-21) against the Armenian nation, sacrificing/slaughtering over 1, 5 million Armenians hundreds of thousands at a time were uprooted from their ancestral homes in Armenia, forced onto death marches to the Syrian deserts (of Deir-El-Zor, part of the vast Ottoman Empire) thirsting and starving on the way The civilized Young Turks plundered and looted the material and cultural wealth created by the ancient Armenians over thousands of years in their native lands, which today incredibly still remain occupied by the inheritors of the Ottoman Turks, the modern Turkish fascist State. The latter continues precisely the same policies of genocide visibly and invisibly in new forms and under new disguises. Last year much of the world marked the centenary of the Armenian genocide demanding recognition, justice and compensation. Notably, the European Parliament unanimously passed a commemorative resolution on 15 April 2015, and invited the European Commission to join in the commemorations. The genocide of the Armenians is still being stubbornly negated by the Turkish State massive depositions and monetary resources (government bribes to individuals and arms manufacturing companies) are being wasted, totally immoral political decisions are taken daily, to escape responsibility and liability in the destruction of international policy obligations. The Turks could not achieve they did not even attempt to do so the moral heights of the German people. The Jewish Holocaust did find its resolution though Germany, and the whole world acknowledged the crime and compensated the Jewish survivors, and rightly so. The Jewish nation received back its country and historical fatherland, while the millennia old Armenia still remains today occupied, conquered, empty of its native nation! After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many nations and peoples liberated their countries creating national states, except for the Armenians the perversity of global war-weariness was such that, as if punishment for the enormous contribution the Armenians had made to world civilization and cultures, slaughter, massacres and genocide fell to their lot The present rulers of Turkey, ignoring all the firm objective historical facts, conduct negative denialist policies, thus proving unequivocally before the very eyes of the international community that their aims have not altered. Turkey and now his younger brother Azerbaijan has the common aim and intents to put an end to the existence of Armenians in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkeys openly supported Four Day War (2-5 April) of Azerbaijanis aggression against the peaceful people of Nagorno-Karabakh gives no doubt to above mentioned intentions. The Azerbaijani government has been busily buying up the deadliest weapons its oil-rich money just to seek revenge against Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, relative to the size of the American Presidential map of Armenia (known as the Wilsonian Armenia of 300,000 km2), the stamp-sized Republic of Armenia (a mere 30,000 km2) saved from genocidal extinction, today is squeezed between the same two genocidal states of Turkey and Azerbaijan, who lose no brotherly occasion in international diplomacy to shamelessly threaten their neighbour literally, intent on swallowing up the leftovers of their historical crime. The current government of Turkey headed by Erdogan showing its horrible face declare his intends to reestablish the Ottoman Empire, which means once again atrocities and genocide against all non-Turkish ethnic nationalities and peoples especially Armenians and The Kurds. The genocide of the Armenians was perpetrated before the eyes of the civilized Europeans, unfortunately, to our great regret, even by their permission, now the civilized world is silent. Such a silence means acceptance of atrocities and encourages the murderers to become more killing and crime against humanity. The present government of Turkey is the Patron of pseudo-Islamic Caliphate of ISIS and its co-conspirators Al-Qaida & Al-Nousra. Those hordes of terrorist murder-squads enjoy free entry-and-exit in and out of Turkey, enjoy the logistical support of Turkeys military-industrial complex, and are trained and well-equipped with up-to-date weaponry in Turkish military camps. This mercenary murderers have brutally slaughtered many Genocide survival Armenians of Kesab in Syria. We call upon the United Nation, European Union and the International Community to strongly condemn most recent war crime atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani military against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and take the necessary measures without delay to stop the continuing, genocidal, murderous crimes against Armenians and Kurds by Azerbaijan and Turkey. What is the humanitarian moral duty of international political centers and their co-workers? Todays international public organizations must absolutely remain faithful to their own declared values and aims. The consequences of the genocide of the Armenians can only be resolved by solutions binding on the international community via the United Nations, based on past and presently active international laws. The Assembly of the Armenians in Europe, as an NGO active in the family of the European Communities a pan-European but also a world-wide organization is determined, on the occasion of the 101th anniversary of the Young Turkish genocide, to finally focus the attention of the international public opinion on the overdue need of the genocide recognition its unequivocal condemnation, and commitment to remove its tragic consequences through necessary material and territorial compensations. We know very well that in all the countries of the world there are millions of people determined to fight for Human Rights and justice for all, until a final victory. We demand of the International Public Opinion to finally hear and listen to the scream for Justice by the global millions. We witness daily how even in Turkey itself the democratic and freedom-loving forces are evolving day-by-day, and blossoming into political movements that are determined to correct their historical criminal errors, wipe off the wounds they caused in the past, with the aim of living in harmony and peace with the children of the generation of their innocent victims decimated by the evil forces of the Ottoman tyranny. Our expectation is that, after 101 very long years as a direct result of the endless efforts of the Armenians all over the world, and in close and immediate co-operation with the progressive forces of mankind, the practical realization of the international law and Rights becomes at last manifest as a newly minted historical fact, causing the final removal of all criminal consequences of the murderous act against mankind, awarding the Armenian people accordingly a just compensation long overdue for a century! Thus, the ultimate justice fought for a hundred years shall rise up proudly as mankinds greatest victory in modern history. YEREVAN. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan does not see an opportunity for the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the Karabakh conflict zone, he said in an interview with Bloomberg agency. If there are no negotiations, how can Russian forces appear in Karabakh or between Azeri and Karabakh forces? Sargsyan said. The peacekeepers can be deployed in the region at the invitation of one of the parties, President said, adding that he is convinced that Russia is not interested in large-scale hostilities in the region. He said large-scale hostilities, regardless of the outcome, are not beneficial to the Armenian side, too. Serzh Sargsyan noted that Armenia is a small country, and the consequences may be irreversible. We must keep fighting and fighting only when we are forced to, when there is no alternative. Do you know why I say that Russia is not interested in large-scale military actions? Because, when I analyze the events of the four-day war, I see that Russia is pursuing, at least at the media level, at least at the level of statements, a balanced policy regarding us and Azerbaijan, despite the fact that we have a strategic agreement with Russia and, as expressed by Russian officials, Azerbaijan is a strategic partner for them, Sargsyan said. We are a strategic ally, and Azerbaijan is a strategic partner. So they maintain balance. In Armenia, there is a certain public discontent, just as in Azerbaijan. But if they become a party, there will be much greater discontent in one of the countries, and they do not need it, he resumed. Its better for Azerbaijan to have weapons which it is possible to have influence on, than those which cannot be influenced, member of the Council of Federation of Russian, Igor Chernishenko, told journalists Monday. In his words, the presence of cannonry and missiles regardless of whether U.S. or Turkish ones - wont change the situation to the better during the military actions. I have been dealing with the Russian-Armenian relations long ago in the framework of the parliamentary ties with Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov. And of course, I have been to Nagorno-Karabakh. From Azerbaijan I got a letter saying that I was a persona non grata. Nevertheless, its very difficult for me to give a deeper assessment than our President and Foreign Minister do, Chernishenko said. According to him, there are very many problems which the society doesnt fully possess. The tragedy which took place several days ago is our common pain. Armenian people died, some of them being brutally killed. Of course, this is disaster for those who love and cooperate with Armenia, Chernishenko noted. But, according to him, the path is still not military. We all realize this very well. I know that there are certain narratives that despite having its its military presence, Russia still sells weapons to Azerbaijan. Both our President and Foreign Minister speak less about this, but we understand that if we leave this market, it will be taken over by the same Turks and same Americans. And in this balance of interests, I dont want to assume the role of a higher judge than the leadership of our country, but I think all this is done not to the disadvantage of Armenia, since our actual armed forces are on the Armenian land, Chernishenko stressed. In his words, this is a stronger guarantee of defense than the presence of Russian weapons somewhere. According to the MP, the Russian arms can be found anywhere in the world: Kalashnikov rifle is available in over hundred countries. This is not to imply that we will provide spare parts, missiles and other things in full volume. This is also an element of certain suppression. And the Armenians should understand that if there is a weapon there, whose battle condition is supported from Russia, we have more mechanisms to influence it than if it were a Turkish weapon. What is happening in Syria now that weapons are supplied from Turkey to ISIL? Chernishenko said. YEREVAN. Armenias Foreign Ministry issued a statement regarding provocative steps of Azerbaijan. The statement reads as follows: Today at the UN General Assembly and Security Council Azerbaijan has disseminated yet another provocative letter dated April 14, 2016, where, striving to put the blame on Armenia, it unilaterally denounced May 12, 1994 trilateral ceasefire agreement signed between Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia without time limitations. Armenia strongly condemns this step whereby Azerbaijan grossly breaches May 1994 ceasefire agreement, as well as casts doubt on the July 1994 agreement on the reinforcement of ceasefire and the February 1995 agreement on the consolidation of ceasefire. Notably, the July 1994 agreement requires Azerbaijan to maintain the ceasefire regime until signing of the big political agreement. In this regard the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs already have expressed their position to Azerbaijan, including at the OSCE, in particular stating that 1994 and 1995 agreements, whose terms do not expire, as before, make up the foundation of the cessation of hostilities in the conflict zone. The Co-Chairs called on to strictly adhere to the above-mentioned agreements and not to permit their violation. Disregarding this call, Azerbaijan resorted to this provocative step. It is necessary to underline that the oral arrangement reached in Moscow on April 5, 2016, to which Azerbaijan refers in its letter, was directed at the cessation of aggressive actions unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh and, as the Co-Chairs have stated, to restore the ceasefire regime. It is obvious, that the mentioned oral arrangement cannot replace the May 12, 1994 ceasefire agreement. The 1994 and 1995 trilateral ceasefire agreements have for years served as a basis for preserving the fragile ceasefire. Any harm to these agreements is a serious obstacle for the peace process, hinders the efforts of the Co-Chairs and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman in Office and undermines regional security. Armenia urges the Co-Chair countries, the international community to immediately undertake all necessary measures to oblige Azerbaijan to strictly abide to the 1994 ceasefire agreement and to implement its international commitments to refrain from the threat or use of force. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia states that, taking into consideration the possible dangerous consequences emanating from this irresponsible step of Azerbaijan, and as a signatory party to 1994 and 1995 existing agreements on the ceasefire and the consolidation of the ceasefire, Armenia will exert every possible effort and carry out all necessary steps to guarantee the security of Nagorno-Karabakh and its population. Brevard County Commissioners Robin Fisher, Andy Anderson, Curt Smith and Jim Barfield stayed at The Broadmoor, a 5,000 acre luxury resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Photo credit: The Broadmoor Brevard County Commissioners took an opportunity at last Tuesdays Commission meeting to explain a trip that they took to a luxury resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado along with Economic Development of Floridas Space Coast (EDC) President Lynda Weatherman and North Brevard Economic Development Zone (NBEDZ) President Troy Post. Commissioner Robin Fisher. Credit: SCGTV still. Commissioners Robin Fisher, Andy Anderson, Curt Smith and Jim Barfield attended the 32nd Annual Space Symposium that was held on April 11th-14th at The Broadmoor a Five-Star resort with AAA Five-Diamond restaurants where the room prices range from $300 to $1,000 per night. Commissioner Trudie Infantini was the only commissioner who did not take the trip. Commissioner Curt Smith . Credit: SCGTV still. I had somebody, and Im not sure if they were joking or not when they said, Well we in the private sector dont get anybody to pay us to take a vacation. I can tell you. I didnt take a vacation when I went to that place, said Smith. I got there after a grueling day Monday in planes. I had my first meeting it was a dinner meeting to be sure I got to feed my face. But it was business. And I didnt get to bed until about 11 oclock that night. And considering the time difference, thats way past my bedtime. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); And then Tuesday we started about 8 oclock in the morning and we didnt get done until about 9 oclock that night. And thats what? 11, 12 oclock our time? So its a long blooming day and we did the same thing on Wednesday. Then Thursday, I along with these guys all got up and we all flew back and spent 7 or 8 hours. So it was not a vacation, Smith explained. My only view of Colorado was from the airport to the motel and from the motel back to the airport. Fortunately, Pikes Peak can be seen from everywhere, so I did get to see Pikes Peak but from a distance. So, it was very rewarding. But a vacation, it was not. Commissioner Jim Barfield . Credit: SCGTV still. Ive been in the Space Program since the early 60s, said Barfield. Ive been involved with it. We have an excitement going now within the Space Program thats nothing like weve seen before with the commercial side and exploration side We met with, probably, at least 15 companies that are seriously, seriously considering coming here. In fact, I met with Bob Cabana from KSC to say, There may not be enough room on your Space Center to accommodate new commercial companies coming in. And I think all yall agree with that. Commissioner Andy Anderson . Credit: SCGTV still. Anderson said that he had met with a company at the symposium that has now scheduled to have a meeting with NBEDZ this week. In addition to being a County Commissioner, Anderson is a full time employee with the City of Palm Bay. He wrote in an email to Brevard Times that he was able to use accrued vacation time at his city position to take the trip. Brevard County Clerk of Court, Scott Ellis, criticized the trip taken by the Commissioners. Last week a workshop on Budget and possible reductions was cut short at lunch, never discussing either, because some Commissioners could not stay past lunch, Ellis wrote. Commissioner Barfield introduces a new tax for the Indian River the same week, unannounced and unadvertised, at a zoning meeting an emergency. 15:34 Yoga guru Ramdev did a U-turn today from his controversial remark that if not for the law, he would have "beheaded" people for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', saying he was merely responding to AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi's statement that he won't raise the slogan even if a knife is put to his throat. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Ramdev said insulting religions like Islam or Christianity would be as "idiotic" as Owaisi's remark. "I believe in non-violence, coexistence and oneness. It would be wrong to say that behead me but I won't respect the Quran or the Bible. I take pride in my religion but that does not give me the licence to insult other faiths. That would be as idiotic as Owaisi. "He says at the drop of a hat that behead me but I won't say 'Bharat mata ki jai'. So I responded in rustic language that I would have done so but I believe in the Constitution. No one needs to be scared of me...'Woh toh baat ki baat thi'. If someone wants to say 'Bharat mata ki jai' then let him, what's the point in protesting against it," Ramdev said. The yoga guru said JNU and NIT Srinagar incidents are "offshoots" of a crisis of ideology, principles and policy in the country. Asked about Amitabh Bachchan's name surfacing among the Indians listed in Panama Papers, Ramdev said the Bollywood megastar appeared to be a "good person" but he needs to come up-front and say that he is ready for a probe into the matter. Answering a range of questions, Ramdev also said he does not have any role in the political turmoil in Uttarakhand. On the black money issue, on which he had been vocal in the past, Ramdev said he has left the issue to "Modi ji" to handle. "I have my full focus on Yoga," he said. Ramdev also praised the anti-pollution measure 'odd-even' enforced by the AAP government and the liquor ban imposed by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, saying other political parties should follow suit. The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] $1 million NSF grant fuels energy scholarships by Tim Crosby CARBONDALE, Ill. A national research agency has awarded Southern Illinois University Carbondale a new $1 million grant aimed at helping community college students prepare for careers in the energy sector. The National Science Foundation awarded the grant from its Division of Undergraduate Education to SIU, said Lizette Chevalier, associate dean of the College of Engineering. The grant, which also serves as a research project in the area of STEM education, is a collaborative, cross-disciplinary effort that involves several academic departments on campus. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which is receiving a major push by education leaders throughout the country. Students can apply now for the Southern Illinois Energy Scholarship, which on average will be worth about $7,000 a year for two years, Chevalier said. Fran Harackiewicz, professor of electrical and computer engineering, is the primary investigator on the project. John Evans, director of Institutional Research and Studies at SIU, Karen Renzaglia, professor of plant biology and distinguished scholar, and Chevalier are co-primary investigators, and will help manage the project. Harackiewicz will serve as the main contact for students, manage the grant and disseminate the findings of the research component as related to energy education. The rest of the team will focus on student success, including recruitment, retention and placement, Chevalier said. SIU has a long history of educating tomorrows energy sector leaders. In addition to this latest scholarship opportunity, the university also is home to the Advanced Coal and Energy Research Center, which awards scholarships and provides a regional resource to help meet the challenges the energy industry will face in the future. National education and research agencies, such as the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, all are emphasizing the need to invest in long-term strategies to secure sustainable solutions for the countrys energy needs. Energy touches many areas of research and education, however. To be successful, tomorrows leaders must study fields as diverse as renewable energy, so-called smart grids, high-efficiency coal technology, energy efficiency in industry, advanced vehicles and bioenergy. Strong employment prospects await students who enter those fields, Chevalier said. In Illinois, for example, employment and wage data predict a nearly 9 percent increase in the number of energy related jobs, with the largest growth occurring in energy engineering. Chevalier said faculty members recognized the need for innovation and advanced technical knowledge, as well as employment trends in energy related fields, leading them to apply for the grant. In doing so, they reviewed various campus programs and identified energy-related degree pathways through the curricula offered in the colleges of engineering, science, liberal arts, business, and applied science and arts. Some of the approaches involve traditional programs, such as geology or mechanical engineering. They also identified graduate level interdisciplinary degree programs, such as the doctoral program in environmental resource policy and the professional science master's degree in advanced energy and fuels management. The university wants to emphasize such programs to attract and retain students who want careers that are relevant to society, have growing employment forecasts and provide opportunities to engage with faculty mentors and research groups, she said. The total grant is for $1 million, the majority of which will be available as scholarship money to qualified students, with transfer students from community colleges as the programs main target. The amount of each scholarship will be based on financial need, Chevalier said. One of the strengths of our program is to build cohorts of students, promoting their retention and sense of being a part of the SIU campus, Chevalier said. Programs eligible for the scholarship include: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mining engineering, electrical engineering technology, physics, chemistry, plant biology, geology, geography and architectural studies. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship, financial need and have a minimum 3.0 grade point average at the time of application. The application information can be found here. According to sources, the victim, identified as Rustam Ali, had served in the prison and retired in November 2015, bdnews24 reported. The incident occurred around 11.00 a.m. near the main entrance of the Kashimpur jail, a police officer said. The attack came days after suspected extremists killed a university professor in Rajshahi district, some 256 km northwest of Dhaka. Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, professor of Rajshahi University's English Department, was hacked to death on Saturday by unidentified assailants. --IANS ksk/vm ( 111 Words) 2016-04-25-12:58:05 (IANS) Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry will hold talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar here on Tuesday, on the margins a global conference on Afghanistan. It will be the first meeting between the two after the January Pathankot terror attack derailed the India-Pakistan bilateral dialogue. A Pakistan High Commission spokesperson here confirmed Chaudhry's day-long trip for the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process meeting. The Pakistan delegation will "also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting". While the spokesperson was silent about talks between Chaudhry and Jaishankar, an informed source told IANS that the the two foreign secretaries were likely to meet. Chaudhry "will have bilateral meetings with other delegations, including Jaishankar", the source said. The meeting will be the first contact between the two countries at the foreign secretary level after the January 2 attack on the IAF base at Pathankot killed seven Indian security personnel. India blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) for the attack. The meeting comes after the two sides recently declared that they were in contact to hold a meeting of their foreign secretaries, who will draw up the modalities for holding a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. The development comes after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit created a flutter when he said here that the peace talks between Islamabad and New Delhi have been "suspended". The Afghanistan conference in Delhi follows the 5th Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Islamabad to attend the conference that adopted the Islamabad declaration for enhanced regional cooperation to countering security threats. --IANS ruwa-sar/rn/mr ( 279 Words) 2016-04-25-15:06:21 (IANS) The emerging strategic and security scenario and the operational preparedness of the Indian Army will be among the key issues to be discussed in the Army Commanders Conference beginning from today. The six-day conference will also appraise current and emerging strategic security scenario, review of operational preparedness of the Indian Army and aspects pertaining to training, administration, military technology and force modernization. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will inaugurate the conference at the Manekshaw Convention Centre in the national capital. The conference will be chaired by Chief of the Army Staff, General Dalbir Singh. All Army Commanders and other senior Army Officers will attend the conference. (ANI) Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa today expressed his disappointment over the last minute cancellation of his visa by the Indian government, saying he understands the difficult position New Delhi found itself in. India's move to host the Uyghur leader had left China fuming as Beijing calls Mr Isa a terrorist with a red corner notice also issued against him at the request of the Chinese authorities.In an email interview to UNI, Mr Isa said "As the Executive Committee Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), I express my disappointment on Indian authorities' cancelling my visa to attend the annual Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference taking place in Dharamsala, India, from April 30 to May 1, 2016. "This conference remains a vital forum through which ethnic and religious communities in China related areas, as well as statesmen, scholars and activists are able to meet openly to discuss and exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities" he said.The Indian government had granted him a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after his proposed visit was widely reported in the Indian press. Following numerous reports, Indian authorities then proceeded to rescind the visa on April 23. "I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regrets that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy" said Mr Isa.He said this was not the first time that he had faced difficulties in his international travels to advocates Uyghur rights. In September 2009, he was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratization in Asia, to which he was an invited guest. "China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular," he pointed out. "I also reject any comparison or association to China's recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader, Mazood Azhar. Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights" said Mr Isa."Historically speaking, the Uyghur community has maintained friendly ties with the Indian people. The Indian government hosted our late leader, Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Uyghur refugees after they fled China in 1949.Finally, I would like to thank the Indian people for their determined solidarity and commitment to rights activists like myself who wish to continue to develop and support dialogue among peoples of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. I remain disappointed with the final decision, but I am hopeful that positive steps may be taken to maintain India's relationship with the Uyghur community," he said."I therefore, wish the conference success and hope that meaningful dialogue will take place between those who have the privileged of participating the upcoming conference," he added.UNI MK SHS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-699659.Xml Over 2.5 tonnes of fish were produced last year by using cage farming in Dal Lake in Srinagar while the production is expected to double this year, an official spokesperson said here today. He said the preliminary results have been overwhelming with cages in Dal Lake producing 2.5 tonnes of fish last year, adding this year the production is expected to reach five tones. He said the department of fisheries has started trial in cage farming by installing cages at Dal Lake, Manasbal Lake and Ranjit Sagar Dam. "Cage farming involving installing floating cages of 10X18 feet and 10 feet deep inside a waterbody wherein fish are reared. The cages can also be used by fishermen to store fish caught during a lean season. The fish can then be sold at the times of high demand fetching them more income," he said. Meanwhile, Harwan Trout Farm, which is India's oldest Trout farm - established in 1904, has a production of 2-2.5 tones of rainbow trout per year. "The farm also supplies seed to 14 trout farms established in private sector in the adjoining areas. The farm also has a conventional fish feed mill that supplies high quality fish feed to fish farms in private and government sector," he said. The spokesperson said the Rainbow Aquarium cum awareness centre at Gagribal is visited by around 10,000 tourists and locals every year. "There is also a huge rush of students coming on a study tour at the aquarium, he added. Meanwhile, Minister of State for Forest, Animal & Sheep Husbandry, Cooperative and Fisheries, Zahoor Ahmad Mir has called for adopting modern methods in Pisciculture to create new avenues for unemployed youth and increase the income of present fishermen. The Minister stressed the need to speed up the trials cage fish farming so that the new method is introduced in the state on a wider scale. The Minister said that the Cage Farming would revolutionize aquaculture in the state. "Unemployed youth or fishermen would simply have to install a floating platform inside a waterbody and they will be able to produce upto 10 tonnes of fish every year," he said, adding it will also decrease pressure on our land and water resources as the cages can be fixed inside Dal, Wular and any other waterbody.UNI BAS ASM SHS RK1208 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-699637.Xml Army is holding recruitment rallies for the youths in the Kashmir valley from July 12 for all categories, a Defence ministry spokesperson said here today. Colonel N N Joshi said Army Recruitment Office, Srinagar will hold recruitment rallies at Bandipora in north Kashmir and Anantnag in south Kashmir.He said from July 12 July to 15, 2016 recruitment rallies will be held at Bandipora in north Kashmir covering the districts of Bandipora, Kupwara, Ganderbal, Baramulla and Srinagar.From July 19 to 22, at Anantnag (South Kashmir) covering the districts of Budgam, Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag and Kulgam for all categories.The categories included soldier General Duty (GD), Soldier Tradesmen, Soldier Clerk/Store Keeper Technical (Clerk/SKT), Soldier Technical and Soldier NA.He said eligible candidates can register and apply online at website www.joinindianarmy.nic.in Registration will remain open between May 1 to June 26, 2016.UNI BAS SHS SB1255 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-699661.Xml Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa has voiced disappointment at the cancellation. The union home ministry cancelled the tourist visa as is not a valid travel document to attend a conference, sources said. "We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a home ministry spokesperson confirmed on Monday. The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is scheduled from April 28 to May 1 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. It is being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China. Voicing his disappointment at cancellation, Isa said that Indian authorities had granted him a tourist e-visa, "but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press". He said the Indian authorities cancelled the tourist visa on April 23. "I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy," he said. The conference was to see ethnic and religious communities in China as well as scholars and activists meet and openly to discuss and "exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities". Isa also said that China has "regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular". The invite to the dissident Uyghur activist was bound to have rankled China. Last week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Li in Moscow on the sidelines of the Russia, India, China trilateral, while National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was in Beijing to meet with State Councillor Yang Jiechi, special representative on the Chinese side for the 19th Special Representatives' Meeting on the China-India Boundary Question. India has raised with China its disappointment over Beijing blocking the move in the UN to ban Jaish-e-Mohamed chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot attack. China, a close friend of Pakistan, had said there were not enough grounds to ban Azhar. The move to give Isa a visa to attend the Uyghur conference was seen as a tit-for-tat move by India. --IANS rn/vm ( 369 Words) 2016-04-25-13:07:53 (IANS) The Aam Admi Party's (AAP) Madhya Pradesh unit has launched an agitation against the alleged increase in activities of liquor mafia and demanded that prohibition of alcohol be introduced in the state. Led by the state's AAP Secretary Akshay Hunka, hundred of party workers arrived at Kalpana Nagar here yesterday in the support of women who had been staging protest against the hooliganism of liquor sellers. On the occasion, Mr Hunka said that the party would be forced to launch an agitation if prohibition is not introduced. In a statement issued here, Mr Hunka claimed that the state government was allowing opening of liquor shops in residential areas to derive economic benefits. Local residents are being inconvenienced and are staging protests but their concerns are not being heeded. He alleged that the contractor of a liquor shop at Kalpana Nagar and his friends beat up women agitators who were protesting against selling of liquor from the shop, which is in residential area. UNI PKJ-PS SHS RK0138 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-699739.Xml Taking a dig at Government of India (GoI) for withdrawing visa to Chinese dissident leader Dolkun Isa, an Uyghur activist, presently in Germany after Beijing protests, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah questioned what happened to claim that the present BJP led NDA government was first to stand up to China. Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter working president of the main opposition National Conference (NC) in the state, he said " For the last few days we were treated to lots of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this Govt is the 1st to stand up to China". "What was all that chest thumping earlier - India Withdraws Visa To Chinese Dissident Leader After Beijing Protests", Mr Abdullah who was junior External Affairs minister during Atal Behare Bajpayee rule tweeted. Dolkun Isa, an Uyghur activist, was granted a tourist visa to travel to India this week for a democracy conference in Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh (HP). The Dalai Lama was also expected to attend the conference. However, the GOI has now cancelled the visa to Isa, who has expressed his disappointment. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had secured non-bailable arrest warrants against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two others for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.. China used the power in the UN to put on hold a resolution moved by India to declare a terrorist.However, Mr Abdullah's tweet evoked mixed reaction as some claims China will help India in Masood Azhar case. "Trust me you will not tweet on this when Masood Azhar is blacklisted by China at UN as a tradeoff for this Visa " while another said " India can't mess with China". " "'please note n also quote the reason -- red corner Interpol notice is the main cause...plz. dont spread incomplete news" while another said "To comment like this might be ur pol.compulsion but sir, it is a tactical move to show mirror to China". A tweet however said " elephant is still scared of the dragon... ", while another said " we pas warning mesg to #chaina ...hope they do not support @HafizSaeedLiv .UNI BAS SHS SB1308 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-699707.Xml Some members in the Lok Sabha today demanded blanket ban on importsfrom China in the wake of its adverse impact on viability of goods of domestic small, medium and micro industrial units. The issue figured during the Question Hour as Dr Bhola Singh(BJP) and Tathagata Satpathy(BJD)expressed serious concern over prevalent bilateral trade deficit with China and questioned Centre's"soft stance" in respect to the neighbouring nation terming it as "country with enmity". They said huge imports of wide range of goods from China were adversely impacting viabilityof goods being marketed by domestic small, medium scale industries and micro enterprises. The members demanded total ban on imports from China for saving the domestic market and thelocal industries.Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman ruled out imposing ban saying 'in view of multi-faceted ties between two nations--involving diplomatic, strategic, trade and border related issues and aspects it was not possible to consider such measure.UNI SS AE/RSA 1427 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-699891.Xml Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa, whose visa was cancelled by the Indian Government at the eleventh hour, today expressed his disappointment over the move and said his case should not be linked or compared to China's recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistan based terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar.In an emailed interview to UNI, Mr Isa said, "I reject any comparison or association to China's recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader, Masood Azhar." The Indian Government had issued e-visa to Mr Isa to attend an interfaith conference in Dharamsala, seat of Tibet government in asylum, barely a month after China scuttled India's attempt to get Jaish-e-Mohammad chief listed as a terrorist by the 1267 committee of the UN. Issuance of visa by the Indian External Affairs ministry was being projected as a diplomatic tit-for-tat to China. "Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights" said Mr Isa.The human right activist in his capacity as the Executive Committee Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) was invited to participate in the conference, which is being held from April 30 to may 1.The MEA cancelled his visa after the Government's move left China fuming, although sources in the government clarified that India did not buckle under Chinese pressure. Even though, the Uyghur leader expressed his disappointment over the MEA's move but said, "I recognise and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy. The Indian government had granted him a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after his proposed visit was widely reported in the Indian press. Following numerous reports, Indian authorities then proceeded to rescind the visa on April 23.He said this was not the first time that he had faced difficulties in his international travels to advocates Uyghur rights.In September 2009, he was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratization in Asia, to which he was an invited guest."China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular," he pointed out."Historically speaking, the Uyghur community has maintained friendly ties with the Indian people. The Indian government hosted our late leader, Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Uyghur refugees after they fled China in 1949.UNI MK SHS 1404 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-699837.Xml Chief Minister and All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) supremo Mamata Banerjee is expected to win comfortably despite presence of two other heavy weight candidates in the prestigious Bhabanipur assembly constituency in South Kolkata.In the battle of ballots Ms Banerjee has to take on Congress-Left Front combine candidate former Union Minister Deepa Dasmunsi , BJP nominee Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grandnephewChandra Kumar Bose and Lok Janshakti party nominee Bobby Halder, a transgender candidate, in a four corner contest that goes to polls on April 30. Bhabanipur, an urban constituency in south Kolkata is a stronghold of ruling Trinamool Congress After Mamata was sworn in as the chief minister in 2011, then party general secretary and the chief minister's trusted lieutenant, Subrata Bakshi, had vacated the Bhabanipur Assembly seat. In the consequent by-election Mamata defeated CPI(M)'s Nandini Mukhopadhyay by a mammoth margin of 54,213 votes. The Bhabanipur seat falls in the Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituency which has beenrepresented by Mamata for a long time. Ms Banerjee emerged as a prudent leader who not only ended the Left Front's 34 year rule in the state but also portrayed herself as an 'icon of change' in the state. In the backdrop of the controversial land deal between the state government and the Tata Motors in Singur, Ms Banerjee rose to power with her pro-farmer approach. Her first term in government saw a number of unhappy incidents in the state (the Narada sting operation being the latest) and fighting anti-incumbency for the first time and the Opposition entering a seat understanding in this election, she may feel a bit apprehensive. This year's election will certainly be a test for her leadership and capabilities as a leader and not as a force driving the opposition. However, in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, though BJP candidate from Kolkata SouthTripura Governor Tathagata Roycame second, he led by 185 votes in Bhabanipur assembly segment, where Mamata lives. In her home turf Bhabanipur, Ms Banerjee or Didi (sister) is facing Boudi ((elder brother's wife), Deepa Das Munshi, wife of veteran Congress leader and one of his party's biggest faces in Bengal former union minister Priyaranjan Das Munshi. Dasmunshi, however, has been in a coma for the last few years.More UNI BM ADG AS1517 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0343-700158.Xml The Nifty of National Stock Exchange (NSE) declined by 44.25 points to 7,855.05. The Sensex shed by 163.30 points to 25,674.84 in early trade. It crashed by 252 points to 25,585.93, a day's low. Till the end of the session, it recovered slightly and closed at 25,678.93, sliding by 159.21 points as compared to its previous close. Meanwhile, it registed day's high at 25,891.03 points. Stocks of auto, public sector banks and index heavyweights Reliance Industries, HDFC and ITC led losses for key benchmark indices. Finance, FMCG, Health Care and Energy stocks dragged the market down further. Scrips of Maruti Suzuki, NTPC and ONGC declined, however, buying in Bharti Airtel, TCS, Bajaj Auo and Hindustan Unilever capped its further decline, brokers said. The market breadth was negative as 1,533 shares fell and 1,081 rose while 150 were unchanged on BSE. The BSE Mid-Cap index fell 0.1 pc. The BSE Small-Cap index provisionally shed 0.43 pc. The decline in both these indices was lower than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms. A total turnover on BSE amounted to Rs 4,403 crore, compared with a turnover of Rs 2,575.10 crore registered during the previous trading session. In overseas stock markets, European stocks fell amid declining oil prices and also due to unexpected deterioration in German business sentiment in April.More UNI NV SS NP1719 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-700376.Xml Pune-based startup LiveHealth today said it has achieved a milestone by delivering 60 lakh instant medical reports within six months. LiveHealth, a mobile app, provides an EMR solution to the diagnostic centres and laboratories, using which doctors and lab technicians can create and maintain their patients' medical records in customised formats for a lifetime. Today, over 85 per cent of patients associated with 200 plus LiveHealth powered diagnostic centres and have preferred to access their health information electronically, the company said in a statement. It has catered to around 3 lakh patients and 30,000 doctors by providing 6.1 million diagnostic reports (monthly 1.5 million). The startup was launched in 2013 by Abhimanyu Bhosale and Mukund Malani and is operational in 25 cities across India. Once a patient decides to opt for a diagnostic test with one of the 200 plus health providers the startup has tied up with, the system helps in registering the patient with the provider, generating a unique barcode for the sample, tracking the status of the sample and collecting the results directly from the lab, it added. Using the barcode generated earlier, the test results are then automatically fed into corresponding reports of the patient and verified by a doctor with the help of the app. The company raised its first round of angel funding of three lakh dollars from healthcare veterans such as Dr Rajaram Samant, CEO of Akumentis Healthcare and Dr Pramod Dhembare, founder and MD of Fidelity Diagnostics. UNI ASH RN SB VP1820 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-700468.Xml Seventeen people died of malaria during 2015-16 compared to 31 in 2014-15. According to official reports, Mamit has topped in malaria deaths with five people falling victims to the killer disease, followed by Lunglei and Aizawl West districts with four and three deaths respectively. No malaria death was reported from Saiha district during this period. The remaining districts- Aizawl East, Kolasib, Champhai, Lawngtlai and Serchhip have witnessed one death each. Of the 3,02,942 blood samples tested during 2015-16, 26,400 cases of malaria were detected of which 22,599 were pf and 3,801 were pv. Doctors said pf is more deadly than pv. In 2014-15, a total of 3,30,882 blood samples (more than 30 per cent of the state's population) were tested in which 23,105 were found to be positive for malaria, including 21,083 pf and 2,062 pv. Of these, 31 people died, mainly due to negligence on the part of the patients that resulted in delayed treatment. The health department has set up FTD/ASHA in all towns and villages to help malaria patients get treatment on time. Of the six vector borne disease common in India, namely- malaria, dengue, chikungunya, filariasis, yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis- only malaria and dengue have been detected in Mizoram. Out of these 6 diseases, malaria is the most dreadful and widespread in Mizoram. During 2013-2014, roughly 20 people out of every 100 population were tested for malaria parasite using either rapid diagnostic kit or blood slide. Total positive case was 11,747 i.e., 10 in 1,000 population. The number of both blood tested and positive case have increased from the previous year due to increase surveillance and improved case detection. In the meantime, the number of death due to malaria has come down, it has reduced from 119 deaths in 2009 to just 21 in 2013. Also there were seven confirmed cases of dengue in 2013 with 0 death report, no confirmed cases have been reported this year. For the 9th time, the world malaria day was observed in Mizoram today with the main observation at vanapa hall in Aizawl which was attended by health minister Lal Thanzara. In his address, Lal Thanzara said as the state vector borne diseases control programme alone cannot defeat Malaria, active community participation is required to eradicate the killer disease in the state. The people should make use of the FTD/ASHA set up in all villages and towns where malaria treatment is available. Doctors said delayed treatment is the major cause of malaria deaths in Mizoram.UNI ZS AKM SB GC1850 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-700512.Xml The 22nd Cycle of Indo-Thai CORPAT between navies of India and Thailand is presently underway from April 19 to 27 in Andaman Sea.Indian Naval Ship Karmuk and Royal Thailand Navy ship HTMS Klaeng along with Dornier aircraft from both countries are participating in the CORPAT."The Andaman Nicobar Command has been participating in the biannual Coordinated Patrol (CORPAT) with the Royal Thai Navy for over a decade," Col Yogesh Sharma, the Public Relations Officer of Andaman Nicobar Command informed media today. The objectives of the INDO-THAI CORPAT are to ensure the effective implementation of 'United Nations Conventions on Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982) which specifies regulations regarding protection and conservation of natural resources of both countries, conservation of the marine environment, prevention and suppression of illegal fishing activities, drug trafficking and piracy, exchange of information in smuggling and illegal immigration, conduction of search and rescue operations at sea," he said.The PRO added that the sea phase of the exercise took place from April 20 to 24 in the Andaman Sea along India-Thailand International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL)."The closing ceremony of the CORPAT is being held at Port Blair from April 25 to 27. Rear Admiral Warongkorn Osathanonda, Commander, Phang-Nga Naval Base, 3rd Naval Area Command is leading the Thai delegation. Commodore Girish Kumar Garg, the Naval Component Commander (A & N) leads the Indian delegation. The Indo Thai CORPAT is reflective of the strong relations between the two countries and a shared desire for a peaceful Indian ocean for common good," the PRO added.UNI SKR BM SB BD2017 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-700697.Xml Meanwhile, Umar has also been fined Rs. 20,000. The High Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC), also took stern action against 14 other students including Mujeeb Gattoo and Anirban Bhattacharya who were present during the event. Other students who have been fined Rs 20,000 are Rama Naga, Ananth Kumar, Sweta Raj, Rubina and Chintu Kumari. The committee has suspended Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15 and has debarred from ordered pursuing any course for coming five years. Two other students Banojyotsna Lahiri and Draupadi Gosh has been made out of bound from campus for five years. (ANI) Police said here that Mr Rakesh Kumar, who runs state bank customer centre, was returning from bank after withdrawal of cash when criminals attacked him near Neura village. They looted Rs 2.5 lakh from him and managed to escape. "Raids are being carried out to nab the criminals and recover looted cash from them", police said adding that an FIR in this connection had been registered at concerned police station.UNI XC-KKS AKM SB AN2113 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-700713.Xml Seventy-nine-year-old political analyst Ashish Nandy, today told the Supreme Court that he was ready to tender an unconditional apology in connection with his 2008 article written in a national daily, for which an FIR was registered against him for allegedly portraying Gujarat in a bad light.The Gujarat police had registered the FIR in January 2008 against Nandy after getting a complaint from one, V K Saxena, currently the Chairman of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission and President of Ahmedabad-based NGO National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL). Nandy's lawyer's statement was made before the Apex Court bench comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra, which was hearing the appeal filed by him against the 2010 decision of Delhi High Court. The Delhi HC had refused to quash criminal proceedings by Gujarat Police for allegedly promoting communal disharmonyThe Gujarat state government had moved the Apex Court seeking its intervention to continue with the investigation to a "conclusive end" into the FIR against him under section 153A (promoting communal disharmony) and 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) of the IPC.The state government had said Nandy's petition seeking quashing of criminal proceedings against him be dismissed as "the FIR in the instant case prima facie discloses the offence under sections 153A and 153B of the IPC."UNI XC PY SB 2204 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-701101.Xml The opposition National People's Party today nominated former Meghalaya finance minister Conrad K Sangma as the candidate for the by-election to the Tura Lok Sabha seat in Meghalaya.Mr Sangma, who is also the youngest son of late Purno Agitok Sangma, will contest the Tura Lok Sabha bypoll. The ruling Congress has recommended the name of sitting Congress legislator Dikkanchi D Shira's name to the AICC as the party candidate for the Tura Lok Sabha by-poll. The bypoll will be held on May 16. A notification in this regard will be issued on April 22 with April 29 as the last date for filing of nominations. Counting of votes will take place on May 19. The poll has been necessitated following the death of Purno Agitok Sangma on March 4.Shira, who is Mukul's wife, is a first-time legislator representing Mahendraganj constituency in South West Garo Hills. She won her first election in the 2013 Assembly polls. UNI RRK AKM SB BD2148 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-700898.Xml The personnel of Assam Rifles was able to apprehend one arm peddler in Dimapur town and recovered arm from his possession. According to a statement issued by the PRO of the Inspector General of Assam Rifles (North) today said, on April 21, based on specific information about the movement of an arms peddler in general area NST Colony near City Tower in Dimapur town, a search operation was launched by the troops of 32 Assam Rifles under aegis of Headquarter 6 Sector Assam Rifles along with police representatives. The troops searched the house and found one pt 38 mm Revolver and one live rounds of pt 38 mm Revolver and some incriminating documents from the house. The individual was consequently arrested and handed over to East Police Station, Dimapur with all the recovered items, the statement added. UNI AS BM SB AN2154 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-700883.Xml Amid demands of banning Chinese products in the country, the government on Monday said having legitimate reasons to stop imports from a country is not enough to ban products. "There is a demand to ban Chinese products, which is practically not possible. We may have legitimate reasons to stop imports from a country, on a blanket kind of law... that is not possible. Just because we have legitimate reasons, we cannot stop goods coming from a country just because we want to stop everything from that country," Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman told ANI. "I can take the example of toys, wherein we find toxic material, and when some toys from China did come with such toxic material present in them, bringing in the question of safety of our children.. they were stopped," she added. Sitharaman further stated that the government banned Chinese milk and milk products because there were some elements of some undesirable products. "The telephones with a particular description have also been stopped from China. So if there are reasons and if there are standards and the commodity which comes from China is below the prescribed standards, we can stop it," she added. Earlier in the day, the Union Minister in a written reply in Lok Sabha today said that trade defence measures like anti- dumping duty and countervailing duty are available to industries to seek remedies under the prescribed provisions. "The Import of milk and milk products (including chocolates and chocolate products and candies, confectionary, food preparations with milk or milk solids as an ingredient) from China is prohibited till 23.6.2016 or until further orders, whichever is earlier," she said.(ANI) A special court here today ordered the police to file a criminal case against the doctor, the parents and other relatives of a woman who allegedly abducted her and forcefully aborted her foetus for having an inter-caste marriage. As per the details, the man, Shilraj Uttamrao Dhawale, belonging to Buddh community, married a girl ofDhangar community against the will of her parents. The girl's parents opposed the marriage and did not allow the girl to live with Dhawale. So, Dhawale knocked on the door of the court and took custody of his wife by a court order and started living with her. However, the girl'sparents of the girl, out of hate of inter-caste marriage, abducted their own daughter and took her to Pune where they forcibly aborted her foetus. Dhawale then filed a case at the special court under the section 156(3) of Criminal Procedure Code. Taking cognisance of the matter, the District and Sessions Court Judge A L Yawalkar directed the Bhagya Nagar police to file criminal cases, along with various sections of the SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against the parents of the girl including mother Shivkanta Baliram Gade, father Baliram Vithoba Gade (residents of Limboti in Loha tehsil), sister Ayodhya Manchak Aachane (resident of Murambi in Loha tehasil), maternal uncle Basweshwar Bhagwat Wadile (resident of Nanded) and other relatives Ujwala Pandurang Lokare (resident of Ahemadpur in Latur district), Dayananad Ankush Gite alias Gotya, Anil Giri (both residents of Hadapsur in Pune), Vyenkatesh Balaji Holkar (resident of Lohagao in Parbhani district) and Dr Sheikh of Sheikh Hospital in Pune.UNI XR SS SB AN2302 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-701113.Xml The CPI(M) Loksabha member from Tripura Jitendra Choudhury today expressed satisfaction over the decision of union civil aviation ministry to make flight information announcements at the Agartala airport in Kokborok, a tribal language following his constant persuasion. Mr Choudhury said in a letter Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju informed besides, Hindi, English and Bengali, all passenger related announcement would also be made in Kokborok from now onwards for convenient communication to more than 30 percent of the tribal population of Tripura. "Announcement on flight information in tribal Kokborok language would be made at Agartala airport in addition to the present broadcast in Hindi, English and Bengali languages, as in the present budget session you raised the issue in last month," the addressed to Mr Choudhury said. Tribals constitute more than 10 lakh, one-third of Tripura's total population have been communicating in Kokborok language, which was also made an official language of Tripura since January 1979. Tripura government has been demanding to include Kokborok language in the eighth schedule of the constitution, considering that about 15 lakh Tripuri tribes are inhabited not only in Tripura state but also in other northeastern states, Uttaranchal and neighbouring Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan. To promote the language, left front government in Tripura had set up a separate directorate for development of Kokborok language and other minority languages. Also, Kokborok is being taught now in schools and colleges in Tripura as one of the language subjects up to degree level. Tripura (Central) University has also introduced short-term course in Kokborok.UNI BB BM SB PM1129 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-700634.Xml Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz is likely to brief the committee, headed by Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, on the issue during an in-camera meeting, Dawn reported. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had briefed the Senate Defence Committee earlier this month and Senate last week on the issue, the daily said. The Inter-Services Public Relations released on March 29 a "confessional video statement of the arrested Indian spy" in which he had admitted to fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi. In his confessional statement, the RAW agent had stated that his mission in Pakistan was to hold meetings with Baloch insurgents and carry out subversive activities, the daily added. --IANS ahm/ ( 152 Words) 2016-04-25-07:48:04 (IANS) "This clearly shows the government's efforts in protecting and preserving forests and biodiversity," Environment Minister Say Samal told a national workshop on the establishment of the five new protected forests. He said that the government had worked on this plan for two-and-a-half years before deciding to register them as protected forests. The five forests were previously controlled by the ministry of agriculture, forestry and fishery, but were recently handed over to the ministry of environment for conservation and environmental protection, he added. According to official data, some 23 forests with a total of 5.5 million hectares have been registered as protected areas across Cambodia. --IANS ksk ( 146 Words) 2016-04-25-10:48:04 (IANS) A promise that US Republican front-runner Donald Trump will adopt a more presidential campaign style does not signal a retreat from core policies such as his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border, his top adviser said.Senior Trump aide Paul Manafort dismissed rival Republican candidate Ted Cruz's accusation that the real estate mogul had lied about his policies on immigration to "fool gullible voters."The tussle over Trump's style and substance preceded tomorrow's Republican and Democratic nominating contests in Pennsylvania and four other Northeastern US states: the next chapter in 2016's drawn-out selection of the candidates for November's presidential election.Cruz seized on Manafort's comments at a closed-door meeting of top Republican officials in Florida on Thursday that Trump, 69, would temper the image he has projected so far, saying the "part that he's been playing is now evolving.""I never said Trump wasn't going to build a wall. I never said Trump was going to change any of his positions," Manafort said on "Fox News Sunday."The adviser said Cruz, a 45-year-old US senator from Texas who is Trump's closest rival, was trying to distract voters from his own difficult path to the nomination. Ohio Governor John Kasich, 63, is also vying to be the Republican candidate.But, despite Manafort's promise of a more restrained tone, Trump has continued to employ insulting nicknames at rallies, on Saturday referring to Cruz as "Lyin' Ted."The billionaire New Yorker has alarmed some senior party figures with unflattering descriptions of Mexicans, a pledge to immediately deport millions of illegal immigrants and a proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, among other things.The rhetoric has drawn protesters to Trump rallies, sometimes culminating in scuffles. On Sunday, the Connecticut State Police arrested a 20-year-old man, saying he had posted a threat on Twitter to bomb an upcoming Trump rally.On Tuesday - one week after Trump's crushing win in New York's primary election - Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island will hold their primaries.Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's campaign says the former secretary of state now has an essentially insurmountable lead over rival Bernie Sanders. The 74-year-old US senator from Vermont has no plans to drop out of the race, according to his staff, who are counting on defying pollsters with some surprise wins on Tuesday.Trump is working to accrue the 1,237 delegates to the July 18-21 Republican National Convention needed to win the nomination outright. That would avert a contested convention, in which Cruz, Kasich or a dark-horse establishment figure could win the nomination on a second or subsequent ballot.Manafort predicted Trump would win the nomination on the first ballot at the Cleveland convention.Trump already has at least 844 delegates committed to him, according to the Associated Press. Cruz has 543 and Kasich has 148.In the five Northeastern states, 118 delegates will be at stake. Pennsylvania will also choose 54 delegates not bound to any candidate.Trump has won more states overall than Cruz has, but the Texan has tried to keep Trump from winning the needed delegates by using selection rules that vary by state. In Colorado, for example, delegates were picked without a popular vote."He's trying to say the process doesn't matter. He's trying to say voting doesn't matter," Manafort said of Cruz on Sunday. "He's trying to say all that matters is to destroy the party and see who can pick up the pieces on a second, third or fourth ballot."We're not going to let that happen," Manafort said.State nominating contests continue through June.KOCH COMMENTSAlso on Sunday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus played down conservative billionaire Charles Koch's comment that "it's possible" Clinton, 68, would make a better president than the Republicans in the race."Charles, in the past, has gone out of his way to make the case for him being a little bit less partisan than people would expect," Priebus said on ABC."It's going to come down to four to eight more years of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or a different direction," Priebus said. "And I think that's going to be a very powerful case that we're going to be able to make as a party."Democrats, including Clinton, have criticized Koch and his brother, David Koch, for using their wealth and a huge funding network they helped organize to support politicians, usually Republican ones, who reflect their opposition to government regulation of industry.The Clinton campaign was not pleased with Koch's faint praise.A response to Koch's comments posted on Clinton's Twitter account said, "Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote."REUTERS JW PM0406 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0094-699475.Xml President Barack Obama plans to send as many as 250 more US troops to Syria, bringing the total American presence on the ground to 300 to help fight Islamic State militants, US officials said.The decision, which a US official said would be announced in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed an April 1 Reuters report that the Obama administration was considering a significant increase in US forces.The additional deployment aims to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-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.While Obama has resisted putting US troops into Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people, he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria last year in what US officials described as a "counterterrorism" mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war."He (Obama) intends to put in more ... forces to the tune of 250 in Syria," said one US official, adding he was unable to break down how many of those would be special operations forces and how many might be medical or intelligence support personnel."The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said a second Obama administration official.Obama will announce the latest deployment during his 11:25 a.m. (1455 IST) remarks at the Hanover Messe fairgrounds on Monday, that official said.MOMENTUM SHIFT?There are mounting indications the momentum in Iraq and Syria may have shifted against Islamic State.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 from 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, U.S. officials told Reuters in early April.Obama is in Hanover meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Monday, the two will be joined by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss Syria and other foreign policy issues.Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo.But speaking at a news conference with Merkel, Obama said it would be very difficult to see how a so-called safe zone would work in Syria without a large military commitment."The issue surrounding a safe zone in Syrian territory is not a matter of an ideological objection on my part," he said. "It's not a matter of me not wishing I could help and protect a whole bunch of people. It's a very practical issue about how do you do it?"Obama posed a number of questions about such a zone, including what country would "put a bunch of ground troops inside of Syria" after five years of civil war.REUTERS JW0555 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0094-699485.Xml President Barack Obama will announce today he plans to send as many as 250 additional US troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the American presence working with local Syrian forces fighting Islamic State militants, US officials said.The deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory from the hardline Sunni Islamist group.Obama will explain his decision in a speech at 11:25 a.m. (1155 IST) in Hanover, where he discussed the Syria crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday. They will meet with other major European leaders after his remarks.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.While Obama has resisted putting US troops into Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people, he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria last year in what US officials described as a "counterterrorism" mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war.His decision to boost those numbers was first reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday and confirmed an April 1 Reuters report that the Obama administration was considering a significant increase in US forces."He (Obama) intends to put in more ... forces to the tune of 250 in Syria," one US official said yesterday, adding he was unable to break down how many of those would be special operations forces and how many might be medical or intelligence support personnel."The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said a second Obama administration official.Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency, he has found it necessary to keep or add troops to help with conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.The president is ending a six-day international trip that began in Riyadh, where he held talks with Gulf Arab monarchs concerned that Washington's commitment to the Middle East had diminished.After that meeting, Obama sidestepped a question about whether he would add special forces in Syria, saying: "None of the options are good" if political talks fail to end the civil war there.'WE HAVE MOMENTUM'Obama has said the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State had made key gains in squeeze the group's territory in Iraq and Syria, reducing its numbers and cutting off its finances."We have momentum, and we intend to keep that momentum," he said earlier this month.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 from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.The Pentagon also announced last week that about 200 more troops would be deployed to Iraq, mainly to advise Iraqi troops fighting Islamic State.Since US-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, US officials told Reuters in early April.Syria dominated the Sunday talks between Obama and Merkel. The German leader had just returned from a trip to Turkey to see refugee camps along the border.The European Union has grappled with the flood of about a million migrants last year, most fleeing the Syria crisis. Merkel pushed her EU partners to accept refugees, and recently hammered out a deal with Turkey to stop the migrant flow.After meeting with Merkel for about 90 minutes, Obama told reporters he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo.Today, the two leaders will be joined by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss Syria and other foreign policy issues.Obama and Merkel made it clear they were not considering safe zones enforced with military support in Syria."The issue surrounding a safe zone in Syrian territory is not a matter of an ideological objection on my part," he said. "It's not a matter of me not wishing I could help and protect a whole bunch of people. It's a very practical issue about how do you do it?"REUTERS JW PM0715 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0094-699490.Xml Amy Goodman will give a talk followed by a book signing at in Albuquerque, at a benefit for Albuquerque media non-profit organization Quote...Unquotes new low-power FM radio station, which will transmit from the campus of of Robert F. Kennedy Charter High School. 6 pm: RFK Charter HS Food Trucks open, with food for sale. Tours of the high school campus will be given as well. 7 pm: Introductions by RFK Charter HS, Quote...Unquote, and NMPBSs American Graduate program. 7:15 pm: Amy Goodman talk, introduced by Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino 8 pm book signing and social hour English to Spanish language interpretation will be provided by RFK Charter HS To mark this 20th anniversary, Amy, along with her journalist brother, David Goodman and Democracy Now! colleague Denis Moynihan, has written a new book, Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America In 1996 Amy Goodman began hosting a show on Pacifica Radio called Democracy Now! to focus on the issues and movements that are too often ignored by the corporate media. Today Democracy Now! is the largest public media collaboration in the US, broadcasting on over 1400 public television and radio stations around the world, with millions accessing it online at democracynow.org. Now Amy and her co-authors share stories of the heroes the whistleblowers, the organizers, the protesters who have brought about remarkable change. This important book looks back over the past two decades of Democracy Now! and the powerful movements and charismatic leaders who are re-shaping our world. Goodman takes the reader along as she goes to where the silence is, bringing out voices from the streets of Ferguson, to Staten Island, Wall Street, South Carolina to East Timorand other places where people are rising up to demand justice. Democracy Now! is the modern day underground railroad of information, bringing stories from the grassroots to a global audience. A panel of international experts accused Mexico's government of undermining their probe into the fate of 43 trainee teachers apparently massacred in 2014, the most notorious human rights case in Mexico in recent years.The independent panel said the government's stonewalling stopped them from reaching the truth as they wrap up their work and prepare to leave Mexico.The attorney general's office, they said, did not let them re-interview detainees accused of the crime or obtain other information in a timely fashion. Prosecutors did not pursue investigative angles that the experts suggested."The delays in obtaining evidence that could be used to figure out possible lines of investigation translates into a decision (to allow) impunity," the report by the experts, commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), said.The case has drawn international attention and stirred protests and outrage in Mexico, where violence has surged in a decade-long drug war. Lawlessness reigns in parts of the country and has tarnished President Enrique Pena Nieto's reputation.At a 2-1/2-hour news conference yesterday attended by more than 1,000 people, the experts cast doubt on aspects of the government's version of events.They said in the report they had been repeatedly blocked in their efforts to obtain evidence from Mexican authorities. As the experts finished their remarks at the news conference, audience members yelled, "Don't leave!"Mexico's government says that corrupt police in late 2014 handed the student teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala over to drug gang henchmen, who believed the trainees had been infiltrated by a rival gang. They then incinerated them at a garbage dump in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero.While the experts' probe showed the municipal police were mainly responsible for the disappearance of the students, they said the federal police should also be investigated.The remains of just one of the 43 students has been identified from a charred bone fragment. The government said it was found in the Rio San Juan, a river by the town of Cocula, near Iguala where the students disappeared.The experts say that the government's theory the students had been burned is scientifically impossible given the heat needed to reduce human remains to ash, and the experts raised further questions in the report about the government's story of finding the bone fragment in the river.One of the experts, Carlos Beristain, also said detainees in the case showed signs of torture. The experts report notes that medical exams of detainees who said they were tortured were inadequate and did not meet international standards.IACHR has said it will not renew the experts' term because the government was opposed to an extension. Mexico's government authorized the groups investigation, vowing to cooperate fully, but at times actively blocked them."There seems to be no limit to the Mexican government's utter determination to sweep the Ayotzinapa tragedy under the carpet," Amnesty International's Erika Guevara-Rosa said in a statement, referring to the college the trainee teachers attended.Pena Nieto thanked the experts via his official Twitter account. He said the attorney general's office would analyze their report."With openness, responsibility and adherence to the law, the (attorney general's office) will keep working so that there is justice," he said.In a statement, the official who is leading the investigation for the attorney general's office said that the government had held numerous meetings with the experts and had fulfilled the majority of their hundreds of requests for information.The attorney general's office offered the experts "full access to information", said Eber Betanzos, deputy attorney general for human rights.The experts said they started to encounter stiff resistance from prosecutors in January.Dozens of statements, most of which had been requested months earlier, were handed over about a week ago, when the experts were finishing up the report and could no longer analyze them.Reuters reported last week that Mexico's army withheld crucial evidence from the experts, including photographs and video footage recorded as police clashed with the students, and that investigators have not been allowed to question soldiers on duty that night in the city where the students disappeared.REUTERS JW PM0755 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0094-699499.Xml According to media reports, approximately 2,000 Yemeni and UAE troops took control of the port and airport and set up checkpoints throughout the coastal city. Residents were quoted, as saying that al Qaeda fighters had moved westwards to Shabwa province on the request of the local leaders. The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been control of an almost 600-km Arabian Sea coastline for a year. The control of Mukalla was achieved with the help of air and ground strikes. (ANI with inputs) A French-Iranian citizen who left Iran in 2009 after facing espionage charges has been sentenced to six years in jail following her return to the country to visit her critically ill mother, an opposition website reported.Former French embassy employee Nazak Afshar, 58, was arrested last month on arrival at Tehran airport, website Kaleme said late on Sunday.She was freed on bail from Evin prison after sentencing, it said. The Iranian judiciary has not commented on her case or made the charges against her public.Afshar, who had dual citizenship, was arrested and tried in 2009 on charges of spying and acting against Iran's national security. No verdict was issued and she was freed following the intervention of the French government, leaving the country the same year.The potential opening up to the West after last year's nuclear deal has alarmed Iranian hardliners, and Afshar's arrest appears to be part of a crackdown against what some officials have portrayed as Western infiltration.Several other dual-nationality citizens or expatriates have been arrested on returning to visit Iran, and a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said on Sunday that four had recently been sentenced for their connections to foreign countries."Five people who were arrested recently for their connections outside the country were put on trial ...and four of them have received their sentences," Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.Iran does not recognise dual nationality.Iranian conservative media reported last week that the presenter of a pro-opposition television channel was arrested as he travelled to Iran in "the disguise of visiting relatives."Sabri Hassanpour, was host of the online network "Simay-e Rahayi" (Liberation TV) in the Netherlands, and an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic.Other dual nationals Iran is holding include Iranian-Briton Kamal Foroughi, 76, who was arrested in 2011 while working in Tehran as a business consultant. Iranian-US citizens Siamak Namazi and his 80-year-old father, Baquer, are also in jail.Iran's judiciary spokesman said in January that most of the detained dual nationals were facing espionage chargesREUTERS CJ SB1327 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-699762.Xml Two workers were killed today following a blast at private weapons producer Arsenal in central Bulgaria, the interior ministry said."Two workers have died, there are no data for other injured people and there is no danger of a follow-up blasts," it said in a statement.The ministry said the accident occurred during repair work in one of the buildings of the country's biggest weapons maker. The blast triggered a fire that was quickly put out, the interior ministry said.Police have cordoned off the building and will be investigating the reason for the blast. REUTERS DS SB1512 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-699990.Xml President Barack Obama will announce later today plans to send up to 250 additional US special forces troops to Syria to support local Syrian forces fighting against Islamic State, a White House adviser said.The deployment will increase US forces in Syria to about 300. Its goal is to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory from the hardline Sunni Islamist group."We've seen across parts of northern and eastern Syria progress as ISIL has been pushed out of some strongholds," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters in the northern German city of Hanover, the last stop on Obama's six-day foreign tour."We want to accelerate that progress and we believe the commitment of additional US special forces can play a critical role."Obama will explain his decision in a speech at 11:25 am (1430 IST) in Hanover, where he discussed the Syria crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday. Obama and Merkel are due to hold talks with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy in the afternoon.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 responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.Rhodes emphasised that the US troops would not themselves be directly involved in combat, but would act as support for Syrian forces on the ground."The mission that they are being given is not to go into Syria and engage the enemy, to engage ISIL," he said. "They are not being sent there on a combat mission. They're being sent there on a mission to be advising and assisting and supporting the forces that are fighting ISIL on the ground."While Obama has resisted putting US troops into Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people, he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria last year in what US officials described as a "counterterrorism" mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war.Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep or add troops to help with conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.The president's international trip began in Riyadh, where he held talks with Gulf Arab monarchs concerned that Washington's commitment to the Middle East had diminished. He also spent three days in Britain before arriving in Germany yesterday.'WE HAVE MOMENTUM'Obama has said the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State had made key gains in squeeze the group's territory in Iraq and Syria, reducing its numbers and cutting off its finances."We have momentum, and we intend to keep that momentum," he said earlier this month.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 from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.The Pentagon also announced last week that about 200 more troops would be deployed to Iraq, mainly to advise Iraqi troops fighting Islamic State.Since US-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, US officials told Reuters in early April.Syria dominated the yesterday talks between Obama and Merkel. The German leader had just returned from a trip to Turkey to see refugee camps along the border.The European Union has grappled with the flood of about a million migrants last year, most fleeing the Syria crisis. Merkel pushed her EU partners to accept refugees, and recently hammered out a deal with Turkey to stop the migrant flow.After meeting with Merkel for about 90 minutes, Obama told reporters he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. REUTERS DS VP1520 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-700019.Xml The shooting occurred in front of a school, leaving two people dead and another seriously wounded, Xinhua news agency quoted BFMTV as saying. Citing close source to the investigation, the report said the shooting was "targeted" and was likely related to drug trafficking. --IANS mr/ ( 74 Words) 2016-04-25-17:06:28 (IANS) Saudi Arabia plans to set up a holding company for military industries that would be fully owned by the government at first and listed later on the Saudi bourse, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on television today."We are now about to establish a holding company for the military industries 100 percent owned by the government that will be listed later in the Saudi market," Prince Mohammed told Al-Arabiya TV."We expect it to be launched by end of 2017 with more details."REUTERS DS VP1736 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-700440.Xml Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan denied today that Moscow was giving its backing to the Taliban in its fight against Islamic State militants who have established a growing presence in the east of the country.Russia, which in February gave the Western-backed government in Kabul 10,000 Kalashnikov automatic rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition, was discussing two potential helicopter deals and had proposed increasing intelligence cooperation, ambassador Alexander Mantytskiy said."We do not provide any assistance to the Taliban," he told reporters in Kabul, through an interpreter.Russia's position has been the subject of much speculation since President Vladimir Putin's special envoy to Afghanistan said last year that its interests "objectively coincide" with those of the Taliban over their common enemy, Islamic State, widely known in Afghanistan as Daesh.Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s and cooperation with NATO ended in 2014 over tensions in Ukraine.However, Mantytskiy said Russia's approach had not changed and it would continue its support to strengthen Afghanistan's defence capacity, through training and other means.Afghanistan's acting Defence Minister Masoom Stanekzai is expected to attend a security conference in Moscow this week, with the two potential helicopter deals on the table.One option could see a maintenance contract signed for two helicopters already in service with Afghan forces while a second option would involve the sale of three new Mi-35 helicopters but Afghanistan had not yet indicated which deal it preferred, Mantytskiy said.Russia supplied 63 Mi-17 military helicopters to Afghanistan and provided maintenance and training under a former agreement with NATO but shipments ended in October 2014 after the agreement ended over the standoff in Ukraine.It also cleared the way for India to supply three of its own Russian-made Mi-25 helicopters to Afghanistan by giving the necessary approval for the transfer.Mantytskiy rejected Afghan media reports that Moscow was actively cooperating with the Taliban, which carried out one of its biggest attacks in Kabul last week, killing at least 64 people and wounding hundreds of others.He said that Russia, like several other countries, did have contacts with the Islamist movement."Our interest with the Taliban regarding the fight with Daesh do coincide but no type of information exchange between Russia and the Taliban takes place," he said."Our contacts with the Taliban are aimed at inviting the Taliban to the negotiating table," he said. "Russia has no hidden agenda in Afghanistan."He said Moscow was concerned about the increase in fighting in northern provinces of Afghanistan that border former Soviet Republics including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well as by the spread of Islamic State militants in the region."We are extremely concerned that instability could spread in central Asia because disturbances in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could push refugees into Russia," he said. REUTERS PY BD2035 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-700927.Xml An American reporter living and working in Turkey was barred from re-entering the country and forced to fly home today in the latest incident in which a foreign journalist has been denied entry or accreditation.Freelance correspondent David Lepeska, who wrote for the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Foreign Affairs and others, told Reuters that immigration officers at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport informed him an "entry ban" had been placed on his visa.It was not immediately clear why Lepeska, 42, had been denied entry but he is the latest journalist to be stopped at the border, heightening international concern about Turkey's record on press freedom.A senior Turkish government official told Reuters that Lepeska did not have a press card or a press visa and was not employed by a media company."Individuals who go through the proper legal channels do not face similar problems," the official said, adding that the case was not a matter of press freedom but of legal procedure.Turkey says foreign reporters permanently assigned to Turkey should apply to the prime ministry for press credentials.After waiting for clearance for 20 hours, Lepeska was given the option of either returning to Italy, from where he had arrived, or flying to the United States, he said in a statement. He tweeted that he was boarding a plane home to Chicago.Lepeska's ban comes amid heightened sensitivity towards coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis and security operations against Kurdish militants.A German public television journalist and a Russian news agency representative were both turned away this month, and Turkish media reports quoted a Greek photographer working for a German newspaper as saying he was refused entry at Istanbul airport on Saturday.Yesterday, a prominent Dutch journalist who has criticised President Tayyip Erdogan was briefly detained."I've been given no reason for the entry ban nor confirmation that this status is lasting or permanent," Lepeska said.In February, Norway's Aftenpost said Turkey had refused to accredit its correspondent. Der Spiegel of Germany withdrew its correspondent in March when his accreditation was denied.NATO member and European Union hopeful Turkey ranks 151st out of 180 nations in Reporters Without Borders' 2016 World Press Freedom Index.Foreign media outlets in Turkey have generally been spared the pressure faced by some local press, which have seen journalists prosecuted, as well as newspapers seized or closed in recent months and broadcasters taken off air.The government has repeatedly denied muzzling the press, saying that no media workers are prosecuted for their journalistic work and that such cases are part of efforts to weed out support for illegal militant groups. REUTERS PY BD2126 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-701032.Xml Detectives turn to DPP According to police reports, the mother of baby Amanda, had an argument with a male relative and the child was left unattended at their Laventille home. When the mother returned she found Amanda unrespnosive. The child was rushed to the Port-of- Spain General Hospital where doctors pronounced her dead. However, when doctors noticed dried blood to the back of the childs head the police were called in. Police detained several persons for questioning including a female relative but they have since been released. Cine Lit Fest to bridge TT & Latin America She was speaking on Friday night at the Cine Lit launch held at the residence of the Spanish Ambassador at Cascade. Salandy-Brown extended a special welcome to all the ambassadors of the Latin American countries who have been our chief collaborators in this scheme to bridge the gap between Latin America and the English-speaking Caribbean. She explained that since the Lit Fest started six years ago they have been trying to recognise the fact that this country sits in the Caribbean where there are countries which speak other languages and every year we have been trying to make the connection. She said the gods were with us as it is the 400th anniversary of the death of Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, the father of the Spanish language, and also the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeares death. De Cervantes is regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and penned the seminal work Don Quixote about a delusional man who believes he is a night and his adventures with a farmer. Salandy-Brown explained that de Cervantes and Shakespeare will be meeting each other at the Bocas Lit Fest and they will be screening 27 films in the new enterprise from Saturday to May 1. Cine Lit will feature films from countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Brazil, El Salvador, Colombia, Argentina and Guatemala. Salandy-Brown said the festival at the National Library has more than 100 events including the films and they are all free except the workshops which are full. Chilean Ambassador Fernando Schmidt Ariztia in his remarks said Shakespeare and de Cervantes created a dialogue, and dialogue is the idea behind the film festival. It is a dialogue among cultures and through the languages, he added. He explained that it is cinema based on books or on lives of authors. He thanked Salandy-Brown for the opportunity to present Latin American culture in Trinidad and Tobago. He described it as a contribution of all Spanish-speaking countries to Bocas Lit Fest and to this countrys culture and for an understanding between us. He said it is a quality festival and the quality is very high, with some of the films receiving international awards around the world. He also noted that most of the films being screened here for the first time. The Ambassador pointed out that it is the first time all the Latin American embassies in this country were doing something together and this is a good pilot experience and perhaps we can go again and do something in the future. Therefore this is a cultural landmark in Trinidad and Tobago, he added. Spanish Ambassador Jos? Mar?a Fern?ndez L?pez de Turiso in his remarks said that for the past year the Spanish Embassy and the NGC Bocas Lit Festival have been working together on finding a way to jointly commemorate the 400th anniversary of de Cervantes death. For his remarks he wore a ruff around his neck, a frilly item of clothing which was worn in Western Europe from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. Among those in attendance on Friday night were a number of ambassadors from Latin American countries, Miss Universe 1998 Wendy Fitzwilliam and storyteller Paul Keens-Douglas. MP Lovell promises help for fire victims He visited us on Thursday and promised to help us with materials. He is a very nice man and he sat and talked with us. We are not sure when he would gave us the materials but he said it will be soon, said 43 year-old grandmother Rose-Ann Darsoo. She is one of nine relatives who escaped a fiery death in an arson attack early Wednesday at their home located at Mandingo Road, Fifth Company, near Princes Town. Since the near fatal incident which gutted the house and household articles, Darsoo admitted that the family remains in dire need of assistance. The children cannot go to school because they do not have any uniforms or books. They are missing out on classes. When we get the fire report, we have to use it to get back our ID ( identification) cards, birth papers, grants and all important documents. Right now so many people are staying in one house, it is very congested. We are just coping, Darsoo told Newsday. The other homeless victims are Darsoos husband Ryan, 45, and their children Rea, 25, Christian, 19, Danile, 15 and Kaydee, three. Reas common-law husband, Riaz Ali, and their children- Shemiah Ali, five, and Sapphire Ali, two, are also homeless. The family are part of Francis constituency. Danile, attends the Princes Town West Secondary School while his niece - Shemiah- the Fifth Company AC Primary School. A raging fire in the house at about at about 2.30 am on Wednesday awakened the family members who realised that someone had blocked the front doors with a piece of metal in an attempt to trap them inside. Rea and her brother Christian, attempted in vain to extinguish the flames. Christian managed to break down a bolted back door, saving himself and other relatives from fiery deaths. He suffered burns to his right arm and face and received medical care at the Princes Town District Health Facility. No one else was injured. Constable Jacob is continuing investigations. The man suspected of being behind the arson attack, police investigators said, is also wanted by police in connection with the sexual assault of a two-year-old girl two weeks ago. Up to last evening, the suspect remained on the run. Garcia has grave concerns about Debe campus As we look at tertiary education, we must always pay attention to the University of the West Indies, we must also pay attention to the University of Trinidad and Tobago and in paying attention to the University of the West Indies, I want to signal the governments grave concern, I want to use my words carefully, the governments grave concern at the proposed Penal/ Debe campus of UWI, Garcia told a packed audience hall of retired and active teachers at TTUTAs 37th anniversary celebrations, Centre Pointe Mall Auditorium, Chaguanas on Saturday evening. Garcia continued: This is providing serious challenges how to maximise the use of that facility. It was first planned as an extension to the Law faculty of St Augustine. Now we are hearing of a variety of courses that will be offered, I can say at this moment that that does not meet the satisfaction of this government, he said. Garcia observed that he had also raised the concerns of the Trinidad and Tobago government at a meeting of the Universitys grants committee in Jamaica some two weeks ago. I was in Jamaica just two weeks ago attending a meeting of the Universitys grants committee and I took the opportunity, even before the session started, to have a discourse with the vice chancellor, [Professor Sir] Hilary Beckles and I explained to him the position of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago with respect to that proposed Penal/ Debe campus, he said. And at the meeting of the University Grants Committee, I told the University hierarchy that this government has serious concerns, Garcia said, adding, you will be hearing more about this in the not too distant future. It is something that we must think about because as a country we have invested in excess of $500 million dollars to construct that facility, he said, and noted that government had to make sure that it is put to the best use that would facilitate all of our population, all members of our population. And with members of Government-assisted schools also in the audience, Garcia reiterated his governments intention to strengthen, and not diminish the role of the Church in the education sector. We looked at the Concordat and again I want to take the opportunity to let you and your organisation know that it is never our intention to diminish the role of the Church in education, he said, adding, In fact its our intention to strengthen the role of the Church and education. The Penal/ Debe campus sits on approximately 40.5 hectares (100 acres), of land in the vicinity of the Debe High School. What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames news Pesticide spraying of marijuana fields harms local residents In March 2014, while harvesting marijuana in a remote valley outside Port St Johns, South Africa, Cynthia (not her real name) was sprayed with herbicide from a police helicopter. This is apparently a regular occurrence in this part of the world, an area with very little employment where rural farmers rely on small marijuana crops to survive. Cynthia reported that she ran away and tried to hide, but the helicopter followed her and sprayed the area, the droplets coming into contact with her unprotected skin. It burned and itched and the poison smelled of strong chemicals. Afterwards there were black marks on my body, she commented. Two years later she still suffers with sinus problems. A marijuana cultivator since her teens, Cynthia relies on marijuana for an income, despite the poor quality of the plants she grows. The little she earns goes towards buying groceries and paying for school fees. What upsets locals like Cynthia the most, is that in a country known for its violent crime, the police are slow to respond to incidents of murder and robbery, yet the small cannabis growers are targeted as if they were the worst of criminals. Marijuana in South Africa South Africa is termed a major cannabis producing country by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The quantities of marijuana seized annually by the South African Police Service (SAPS) consistently rank among the highest in the world. South Africa is also a transit hub for marijuana grown in neighboring countries in the region, for example Lesotho and Swaziland. In 2004, the United States government donated a helicopter and three aerial spraying devices, worth a lot of money, to the SAPS Air Wing, stating that it is in the interests of the US to fight the war on drugs. Before spraying marijuana fields with pesticides, police patrols cleared plantations by hand, burning uprooted shrubs with petrol. The type of high-grade, export-quality marijuana grown by agricultural farmers in the region is not the same as the cheap marijuana (dagga as it is called locally) that is grown by Cynthia and other villagers. Yet these small rural farmers bear the brunt of aerial eradication programs run by SAPS. Glyphosate, the chemical used to clear marijuana plantations, is the worlds top-selling herbicide. It is most commonly marketed under the brand name Roundup. According to Monsanto, the manufacturer of the product, Glyphosate poses no unreasonable risks to humans or the environment when used according to label instructions, a notice on Monsantos website states. However, instructions for using Kilo Max, the glyphosate formulation used by SAPS, suggests wearing elbow-length gloves, eye protection, waterproof clothing, and impervious footwear when preparing the substance, in order to protect oneself against the toxins. The instructions also specify what to do in case of skin contact: Immediately take off all contaminated clothing. Wash skin immediately with cold water, followed by soap and water Contaminated clothing should be washed before re-use. Sources: //allafrica.com/stories/201604200400.html //ecowatch.com/2015/01/23/health-problems-linked-to-monsanto-roundup/ Submit a correction >> Secret aircraft attempted to capture Edward Snowden Officials are demanding that the U.K. government disclose information about a confidential flight through Scottish airspace, which many suspect was intended to capture whistleblower, Edward Snowden. The plane took off from the American east coast on June 24, 2013 after Snowden moved from Hong Kong to Moscow. The plane was part of contentious U.S. rendition missions. According to Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell, the flight was part of a secret mission to seize Snowden after he released documents disclosing mass surveillance from secret services, based in the U.S. and U.K.. Since the plane passed over Scotland airspace which is regulated by the U.K. its been suspected that the U.K. and political officials in Scotland were involved in a scheme to capture Snowden. Official demands transparency from U.K. Government Alex Salmond, a SNP foreign affairs spokesman, is demanding complete transparency from the U.K. Government on this matter. As a matter of course and courtesy, any country, particularly an ally, should be open about the purposes of a flight and the use of foreign airspace or indeed airports, he told sources. What we need to know now is, was this information given to the U.K. Government at the time. If so, then why did they give permission? If not, then why not? As a minimum requirement, the U.K. authorities should not allow any activity in breach of international law in either its airspace or its airports. That is what an independent Scotland should insist on. Of course, since no rendition actually took place in this instance, it is a moot point as to whether intention can constitute a breach of human rights. However, we are entitled to ask what the U.K. Government knew and when did they know it. The flight occurred in wake of U.S. federal prospectors filing a criminal complaint against Snowden on June 14th. The FBI and CIA met regularly about how they planned to arrest Snowden for breaching the Espionage Act. Questions about the N977GA plane Fresh documents, provided by Danish media group Denfri, verified that the N977GA plane was harbored at Copenhagen airport for state purposes of a non-commercial nature. Two days later, Danish officials received notification from the U.S. Department of Justice to help capture Snowden. N977GA was first discovered by Dave Willis, as an airplane used by the CIA to transport U.S. prisoners. Snowden pressed that the Danish Government plotted to arrest him. Remember when the Prime Minister Rasmussen said Denmark shouldnt respect asylum law in my case? Turns out he had a secret, Snowden said. John MacDonald, director of foreign policy group the Scottish Global Forum, said, Given the constitutional arrangements, there are a number of areas in which the Scottish Government may well have interests or concerns but will be excluded because security arrangements with the US are deemed out of bounds for Scotland. However, if you take serious the supposition that all responsible governments have a moral and legal obligation to raise questions about flights which may be involved in dubious security and intelligence activities, then the Scottish Government may well have an interest in or even be obliged to raise questions. Questions have already been raised about the nature of military and intelligence air traffic through Scotland and if this activity is raising concerns within Scottish civil society and it seems to be then it is surely incumbent upon the Scottish Government to raise the issue with London. The National Air Traffic Control Systems (Nats) claims rendition flights have been a recurring issue for the U.K. Government. They have so far declined to provide any information about attempts to capture Snowden, or the passage of the N977GA flight. Sources include: (1) TheNational.Scot Submit a correction >> Share Tweet In the movie The Terminator, the character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger sees a stream of information not unlike what a fighter pilot might see on a heads-up display, as The Economist noted in a story earlier this month. The concept of augmented reality (AR), however, is now moving beyond the sci-fi flick and into the workplace. Indeed, Nokia (News - Alert) was one of the companies at the giant Mobile World Congress event earlier this year demonstrating augmented reality solutions and showing how they can be put to use in real-life environments. As discussed in a Nokia blog posted earlier this month, the company in Barcelona showed the Nokia OZO virtual reality camera and demonstrated Nokia Augmented Reality for the field force. That demo showed how companies can reduce their field costs and otherwise be more efficient and improve quality related to managing their networks. An initiative of Nokias Care Mobile Networks business, this can reduce human error related to trouble ticket resolution by nearly 20 percent, according to the company. With Augmented Reality for the field force, the field engineer receives a view of a physical network element such as a base station or radio network controller using any device with a camera and display, ie. his smartphone or tablet, the blog explained. In practice, the field engineer scans the serial code of the network element with his device, which then summons the alarms from Nokia NetAct. He then receives a visual overlay on his device of the alarms and a set of instructions to follow in order to resolve his trouble ticket. The AR glasses come into play when he needs free hands to work on the resolution. This technology will help him resolve the trouble ticket much faster so he can move on to his next field job. It also prevents field technicians from having to lug around and page through heavy and cumbersome manuals, the Nokia blog added. Edited by Peter Bernstein The oceans hold more than four billion tons of uraniumenough to meet global energy needs for the next 10,000 years if only we could capture the element from seawater to fuel nuclear power plants. For half a century, researchers worldwide have tried to mine uranium from the oceans with limited success. In the 1990s, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) scientists pioneered materials that hold uranium as it is stuck or adsorbed onto surfaces of the material submerged in seawater. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiated a program involving a multidisciplinary team from U.S. national laboratories, universities and research institutes to address the fundamental challenges of economically extracting uranium from seawater. Within five years this team has developed new adsorbents that reduce the cost of extracting uranium from seawater by three to four times. Uranium from seawater would unlock access to over 4 billion tons of uranium and more uranium goes into the ocean from rivers eroding land (all land has about 3 parts uranium per billion) Switching to advanced breeder reactors or extensive reprocessing can increase the efficiency of uranium usage by 60 times. New material would absorb one kilogram of uranium per ton of membranes every two months. This is dozens of times more efficient than than a peak uranium doomer assumed a few years ago. Ugo Bardi assumed recovering one kilogram of uranium would require processing at least 3 tons of membranes per year. Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers developed a fiber to adsorb uranium from seawater. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory exposed the fibers to Pseudomonas fluorescens and used the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory to create a 3-D X-ray microtomograph to determine that the fiber structure was not damaged by the organism. Image credit: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy Understanding how the adsorbents perform under natural seawater conditions is critical to reliably assessing how well the uranium adsorbent materials work, Gill said. In addition to marine testing, we assessed how well the adsorbent attracted uranium versus other elements, adsorbent durability, whether buildup of marine organisms might impact adsorbent capacity, and we demonstrated that most of the adsorbent materials are not toxic. PNNL also performed experiments to optimize release of uranium from the adsorbents and adsorbent re-use using acid and bicarbonate solutions. American Chemical Society The Uranium from Seawater Program at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Overview of Marine Testing, Adsorbent Characterization, Adsorbent Durability, Adsorbent Toxicity, and Deployment Studies Marine testing at PNNL showed an ORNL adsorbent material had the capacity to hold 5.2 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent in 49 days of natural seawater exposurethe crowning result presented in the special issue. The Uranium from Seawater program continues to make significant advancements, producing adsorbents with even higher capacities for grabbing uranium. Recent testing exceeded 6 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent after 56 days in natural seawater an adsorbent capacity that is 15 percent higher than the results highlighted in the special edition. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is evaluating the performance of adsorption materials to extract uranium from natural seawater. Testing consists of measurements of the adsorption of uranium and other elements from seawater as a function of time using flow-through columns and a recirculating flume to determine adsorbent capacity and adsorption kinetics. The amidoxime-based polymer adsorbent AF1, produced by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), had a 56-day adsorption capacity of 3.9 0.2 g U/kg adsorbent material, a saturation capacity of 5.4 0.2 g U/kg adsorbent material, and a half-saturation time of 23 2 days. The ORNL AF1 adsorbent has a very high affinity for uranium, as evidenced by a 56-day distribution coefficient between adsorbent and solution of log KD,56day = 6.08. Calcium and magnesium account for a majority of the cations adsorbed by the ORNL amidoxime-based adsorbents (61% by mass and 74% by molar percent), uranium is the fourth most abundant element adsorbed by mass and seventh most abundant by molar percentage. Marine testing at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with the ORNL AF1 adsorbent produced adsorption capacities 15% and 55% higher than those observed at PNNL for column and flume testing, respectively. Variations in competing ions may be the explanation for the regional differences. Hydrodynamic modeling predicts that a farm of adsorbent materials will likely have minimal effect on ocean currents and removal of uranium and other elements from seawater when farm densities are less than 1800 braids per square kilometer. A decrease in uranium adsorption capacity of up to 30% was observed after 42 days of exposure because of biofouling when the ORNL braided adsorbent AI8 was exposed to raw seawater in a flume in the presence of light. No toxicity was observed with flow-through column effluents of any absorbent materials tested to date. Toxicity could be induced with some non-amidoxime based absorbents only when the ratio of solid absorbent to test media was increased to part per thousand levels. Thermodynamic modeling of the seawateramidoxime adsorbent was performed using the geochemical modeling program PHREEQC. Modeling of the binding of Ca, Mg, Fe, Ni, Cu, U, and V reveal that when binding sites are limited (1 10^8 binding sites/kg seawater), vanadium heavily outcompetes other ions for the amidoxime sites. In contrast, when binding sites are abundant, Mg and Ca dominate the total percentage of metals bound to the sorbent. Uranium coordination and computer-aided ligand design (ORNL) Thermodynamic, kinetic and structural characterization of the adsorbent (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ORNL, PNNL) Adsorbent synthesis using radiation to graft more polymer onto the polyethylene (ORNL, Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Maryland) Adsorbent synthesis using a chemical method (ORNL, University of Tennessee) Adsorbent nanosynthesis (ORNL, PNNL, Hunter College, University of Chicago, University of South Florida, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of CaliforniaBerkeley) Laboratory testing and modeling of adsorbent performance (ORNL, Georgia Tech) Marine testing and performance assessment of the adsorbent (PNNL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of Miami) Adsorbent durability and reusability (PNNL, University of Idaho) Adsorbent characterization, toxicity and biofouling studies (ORNL, PNNL, UI) Technology cost analyses and modeling (University of TexasAustin) Green chemistry: Adsorbents prepared using marine shellfish waste (University of Alabama) Adsorbent deployment (PNNL, ORNL, MIT) Uranium from terrestrial sources can last for approximately 100 years, according to Erich Schneider of the University of TexasAustin. As terrestrial uranium becomes depleted, prices are likely to rise. If we have technology to capture uranium from seawater, we can ensure that an essentially unlimited supply of the element becomes available if uranium prices go up in the future, Schneider said. Best places in the oceans to intercept uranium In marine science, current strength is sometimes measured in Sverdrups, a unit that corresponds to one million tons of water per second, or 30 trillion tons of water per year. The Strait of Gibraltar carries a current of about 1 Sverdrup. Japan has proposed various scaling up plans for uranium from seawater. Japans look at the Black Current (42 Sverdrup) in the ocean off of Japan and how much materials it is moving. The Agulhas Current is the Western Boundary Current of the southwest Indian Ocean. It flows down the east coast of Africa from 27S to 40S. It is narrow, swift and strong. It is even suggested that the Agulhas is the largest western boundary current in the world ocean, as comparable western boundary currents transport less, ranging from the Brazil Current, 16.2 Sverdrups), to the Kuroshio, 42 Sverdrups The sources of the Agulhas Current are the East Madagascar Current (25 Sverdrups), the Mozambique Current (5 Sverdrups) and a reticulated part of the Agulhas Current itself (35 Sverdrups). The net transport of the Agulhas Current is estimated as 100 Sverdrups. Uranium for more than current energy needs for 5 billion years 4.5 billion tons of Uranium in the oceans, 4 billion tons of uranium on the seafloor and 32000 tons of uranium runoff from rivers It now seems quite certain that uranium can be extracted from the ocean at well below $500 per pound and there is even some optimism that it can become competitive at current market prices ($30/lb). It is clear, then, that uranium from seawater must be considered as a completely acceptable fuel for breeder reactors, contributing less than 1% to the cost of electricity. In terms of fuel cost per million BTU, even at $400/lb the uranium cost is only 1.1 cents. Seawater contains 3.310^9 (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium. The 1.410**18 (1.4 million trillion) tonnes of water in the oceans contains 4.610**9 tonne of uranium. The energy content of uranium burned in a breeder reactor is 1 MW day/g, or 1000 GW day/tonne; at 37% efficiency, readily achievable in a breeder reactor, this is 1.0 GWe yr/tonne (GWe = GW of electricity). All of the worlds present electrical usage, 2325 GWe [372 GWe of nuclear make up 16% of world electrical supply] , could therefore be supplied by the uranium in seawater for (4.610**9/2325) = 1.98 million years. At ten times the power level, it would last 198,000 years and at one hundred times it would be 19,800 years. Rivers bring 32 trilloion tons per year of water into the oceans, and their uranium content averages one part per billion. 32,000 tons per year of uranium enter the oceans from this source. We can withdraw 16 000 tonne/yr of uranium from seawater continuously for hundreds of millions of years. This is enough to produce 16 000 GWe or 480 quadrillion BTU per year, which is 6 times the worlds present electricity usage, and almost the worlds present total energy consumption. SOURCES Oak Ridge National Lab, Wikipedia Three government workers are facing criminal charges in the Flint, Michigan tainted water crisis. Genesee District Judge Tracy Collier-Nix authorized charges against Flint employee Michael Glasgow and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) employees Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby. Michael Prysby, a district engineer for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and Stephen Busch, who is a supervisor with the DEQ's Office of Drinking Water, are both charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence and violations of water treatment and monitoring laws. Flint employee Michael Glasgow is also charged with evidence tampering and willful neglect of office. Glasgow faces up to five years in prison and $6,000 in fines, while the two MDEQ officials each face up to 20 years in prison and $45,000 in fines, according to court documents. He was purportedly told by Busch and Prysby to alter the results on water quality as well as remove those samples with the highest lead levels. UFC 197: Jon Jones vs. Ovince St Preux didn't fit the usual Jones mold, it was because he was competing in uncharted territory. The contest was scored 50-44, 50-45, 50-44 in Jones favour. "I was asked to do this by a lot of residents, by the press, so I'm just following through on what I was asked to do", he said of drinking and cooking with filtered Flint water. Schuette did not dismiss the possibility of taking his investigation all the way to the governor's office. Although he presented this as a way to help alleviate residents' concerns, many felt it was a publicity stunt. It also said Snyder and his administration failed to act even after "suggestions to do so by senior staff members in the Governor's office". Schuette and other investigators have scheduled a news conference Wednesday afternoon to make a "significant" announcement in the investigation. The news was welcomed by local activists, who cautioned that the people of Flint are still being impacted. Poisoning a community. They failed in their responsibilities to protect the health and safety of families of Flint. They want you to do that every day for two weeks. His actions are a flawless portrayal of Republican priorities: they let diseases spread, they let crucial infrastructure deteriorate, and they forced the residents of Flint to watch their children suffer and neighbors died, all in the name of the almighty dollar. "I feel like we've started making strides but there is a long way to go". Although he is estimated to be worth $200 million, he is billing MI taxpayers $1.2 million for his legal fees (while Schuette requested $1.5 million from the state to pay for attorney Todd Flood's work), and has resisted all calls for his resignation. "They look at me and they wonder if there's any truth to this investigation...I told one of my friends, I said you might not believe in government or state. but believe in me. You need to take your job seriously and do the right thing". What happened? To save money, the state switched Flint's water supply in 2011 from Lake Huron to the notoriously filthy Flint River. The governor has blamed a bureaucratic lack of common sense at the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health & Human Services for the lead allowed to seep into Flint residents' faucets. Prom Shooter Identified, Parent Of Witness Reacts He loved video games and music, particularly the violin and cello, and had been in the school marching band , his friend said. Those who knew Wagner described him as a seemingly nice guy with an angry streak and an interest in guns. The state made the decision to switch the water source, but some lawsuits accuse the city of being complicit by not doing enough during the 18 months that residents received their drinking water from the Flint River. "It was his person who pushed the change of water supply through and he knew there were problems but did nothing". In late February 2015, when the EPA first began inquiring about Flint's use of corrosion controls, emails show both he and Busch were confident that Flint did not need to implement corrosion controls until after two, six-month periods of water testing had been concluded. At the same time, Schuette's office is also defending Gov. Snyder against the growing number of civil claims being filed against him, a move that many criticized as being a giant conflict of interest. "We are glad that justice is being served", says Karen Weaver, Flint city mayor. In one of the most high-profile announcements, Cairo said it had agreed to demarcate its maritime borders with Saudi Arabia, officially placing two islands in the Straits of Tiran in Saudi territory. This is because Tiran and Sanafir are both in the Gulf of Aqaba, which means that they're right in the middle of where both Jordan and Israel have shipping lanes, and they are even near where there are actual ports. An Egyptian government official said other deals with Riyadh - excluding the investment initiative - would amount to $1.7 billion. On Friday, King Salman announced that a bridge connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be built across the Red Sea. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi commented on national television that the two country leaders have arrived at a decision regarding the name of the bridge as well. Second Zika Virus Case Confirmed in CT The department declined to release any additional information about the man, his condition, or where in CT he lived Friday. The virus is transmitted to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti mosquito. But in an apparent allusion to Egyptian-Israeli relations, he added: "There is an agreement and commitments that Egypt accepted related to these islands, and the kingdom is committed to these". Egypt is giving the two islands away in exchange for a United States dollars 20-billion aid from Saudi Arabia, he said. According to the treaty, the Straits of Tiran and the entire Gulf of Aqaba are global waterways open to free passage by Israel and overseen by the worldwide observers. "By engaging Israel, Saudi Arabia essentially vowed to comply with the terms of the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel", he wrote in Israel Hayom newspaper, considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The last serious discussion regarding a bridge construction connecting the Arab states to Egypt was in 2011 which was said to amount to 5 billion USA dollars to complete, but the project got scrapped soon after. Olympic torch lit for Rio Games An actress portraying a pagan priestess ignited the Olympic flame by using a concave mirror to focus the sun's rays on her torch. Once there it is expected to touch virtually every corner of the country, traveling over 12,000 miles by road and 10,000 by air. The two countries also signed agreements to develop a 2250 Megawatt electricity plant with a cost of $2.2 billion, set up agriculture complexes in Sinai and develop a canal to transfer water. Saudi Arabia has been a major diplomatic and financial backer of Egypt since 2013 when the army, led at the time by Al Sissi, deposed president Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood. King Salman's visit comes amid recent strains in the relationship, with President Sisi taking a less hard-line stance against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Riyadh seeking more support from Cairo for its war against rebels in Yemen. For Saudi Arabia, which is in competition with regional rival Iran, keeping Egypt under its aegis is crucial, and it has played a key role in propping up Egypt's economy. Brown says public health officials can infer native transmission of Zika won't be a problem in IN by looking at the relative rarity of a similar virus, Dengue. The CDC guidelines suggest that women who may get pregnant should wait at least eight weeks after exposure to Zika before having unprotected sex with their partners. According to CNN, "Brazil and French Polynesia are seeing alarming spikes in babies born with microcephaly, and the World Health Organization estimates three to four million people in the Americas will contract Zika within the next 12 months". Others who are infected may experience mild symptoms such as fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis that last several days to a week. At issue: Should government health-care officials recommend that American women delay getting pregnant in regions of the country once the mosquito-borne virus becomes active there? The Zika virus guidelines are designed specifically for outdoor workers and include measures for control and prevention of transmission. Biden mum on whether he voted for Clinton or Sanders Republican Oregonians will vote on May 17 and the Washington Republican primary will follow on May 24. Many delegate candidates are relatively anonymous, and some are better-known officeholders. The guidelines also call on employers to reduce mosquito breeding grounds by removing standing water from work sites. "It's areas throughout the city so it's more beneficial to that area but wherever we're putting it is where they would probably breed from and once they breed they can probably travel 5 to 7 miles from where they hatch out", Hughes said. The woman contracted the virus while traveling to Nicaragua - a known area of Zika transmission. State Department of Health public health veterinarian Jen Brown says her department regularly canvasses the state to find different types of mosquitoes. In January, Malloy directed DPH to test for Zika virus. Yemeni troops backed by Saudi-led coalition has recaptured a south eastern Sunday's air strikes were carried out in coordination with a ground offensive in territory further west, a Yemeni military official said. The state's first Zika case was confirmed in March and involved a woman in her 60's who had traveled to a Zika-affected area. "We do not have a recommendation to not become pregnant", Frieden said. After long suspecting a connection between the Zika virus and birth defects, doctors from the CDC scrutinized evidence and determined that the virus does cause defects such as microcephaly. But, Zika also has been linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome, an uncommon nervous system illness in which a person's immune system damages the nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis, according to the CDC. There are tons of resources provided by the Centers for Disease Control to help you. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union officials visited a refugee camp in southeastern Turkey on Saturday in an attempt to bolster the controversial deal. The visit comes as a way for both Turkey and the European Union to celebrate their recent deal that involves deporting refugees who arrive in Greece from Turkey in return for billions of dollars in aid to the Turkish government and a visa-free access to the European Union for Turks. But the deal remains beset by myriad moral and legal concerns. Merkel described Turkey's issuing work permits for Syrian refugees as a "very courageous step". Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has also put Merkel in a hard position by demanding that Germany press charges against a comedian who recited a sexually crude satirical poem about him on a German public broadcaster last month. All three European politicians said Turkey must meet certain legislative conditions for the visa liberalization to occur, while Davutoglu said it was a precondition for Turkey's continued involvement in the readmission agreement. On Friday, Amnesty urged the European delegation not to "close their eyes to the catalogue of human rights abuses faced by refugees" in Turkey. "If it doesn't happen, then the readmission agreement will not come into play", he said. Bernie Sanders supporters file in ahead of Providence rally Elleithee said the way Sanders and his surrogates handle the next month-and-a-half will determine his campaign's legacy. The venue's management said, despite having little time to prepare for the event, it was ready to go. The deal initially slowed the number of arrivals to Greece sharply, but boats have been coming again with about 150 people a day, the International Organization for Migration said. She said that EU-funded projects that form part of the migration deal are meant to provide opportunities for all 2.2 million Syrians living in Turkey - not just the 10 per cent to 15 per cent living in camps - and to pave the way for "all children to have an education". The EU in return has earmarked 6 billion ($8.5 billion Cdn) to Turkey over the next four years to help improve conditions for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees inside Turkey. Merkel joined Turkey's Prime Minister to visit a migrant camp on the country's border with Syria. Judith Sunderland, Human Rights Watch's acting deputy director for Europe, said that instead of "touring a sanitized refugee camp", the delegation "should go to the detention centre for people who were abusively deported from Greece". Blues Come Back to Win Game Three, 3-2 over Blackhawks And the 2015 Blackhawks trailed their conference finals series against Anaheim and Stanley Cup Final series against Tampa Bay 2-1. Elliott has pushed aside 105 of 109 shots in this series and has a. 956 save percentage in his last five starts against Chicago . Last week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was investigating reports about Turkish soldiers firing live bullets at the Syrian border - a charge Turkey has denied. The U.N. has warned against the plan unless there was a way to guarantee the refugees' safety in the war-torn state. Aid workers have opposed it. Meanwhile, Turkey on Sunday also briefly detained a Dutch journalist for a tweet deemed critical of Turkish President Erdogan. But the leaders refused on Saturday to be drawn into the controversy, with Merkel saying simply that they had "talked frankly" about it. She said she had been "very impressed" with Turkish efforts at the Nizip camp. Merkel's decision to let prosecutors pursue a case against Jan Boehmermann angered many Germans, who saw it as a sop to an authoritarian leader. Hundreds of Nepalese today held memorial services to mark the first anniversary of last year's devastating natural disaster that killed almost 9,000 people, as victims still forced to live in tents accused the government of failing to look after them. In Kathmandu, Prime Minister K.P. Oli led a day of mourning Sunday, placing a wreath at the remains of the Dharahara, or Bhimsen Tower, which collapsed during the quake, killing 132 people. The 7.8-magnitude quake struck high in the Himalayas minutes before noon on a sunny Saturday, toppling one million houses, upending roads and turning hundreds of mountain villages into ruins that left about 9000 people dead and 22,000 injured. Thousands of people gathered at the tourist landmark, which was damaged during the 7.8-magnitude quake. He returned on Sunday with a bouquet of flowers and candles. Honor flight to soon take to the skies Another Korean War veteran to make the trip Saturday, Sylvester Nord, was in the Army's Infantry during the conflict. They're heading to our nation's capital to see the monuments and memorials in their honor. "They have to remember those who died, but first they have to remember us survivors and come here to help us", said the 40-year-old, who earns 35 rupees (R 4,80; 32 USA cents) a day from knitting gloves. About 100 protesters, demonstrating against the slow rebuilding of the homes, scuffled with police outside the prime minister's office. The Red Cross handed out more than 130,000 emergency housing provisions during the months that followed the quake, but Nepalese government has been slow to rebuild affected areas and homes, the organization said. They also expressed desire on working with the Government of Nepal and other development partners on the reconstruction efforts. "There were many people killed here on that day". Vince Velasquez pitches CG with 16K's! Cliff Lee was Philadelphia's last pitcher to get 16 strikeouts against Atlanta on May 6, 2011. "The first of many", he joked. While the Padres were able to put 8 men on base, they struggled to get the bat on the ball with runners in scoring position. The country has received $1.28 billion in foreign aid with another $2.82 billion pledged by outside nations, the Associated Press reported. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, an estimated 4 million people are still living in sub-standard temporary shelters in conditions that pose a threat to their health and well-being. Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel said the delay was because it was necessary to conduct a detailed survey of the damaged houses before reconstruction could begin. Mosquito killer billboards installed in Rio de Janeiro attract and trap mosquitoes that carry Zika virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been no local mosquito-borne Zika virus cases reported in the USA, but there are some travel-associated cases. Gov. Larry Hogan has declared this week to be Maryland's Zika Virus Awareness Week. One man traveled to Venezuela, then came home and was intimate with his partner, according to the CDC. Zika is circulating mostly throughout the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and is spread through mosquito bites. The administration reluctantly transferred nearly $600 million in previously appropriated funds to take on Zika, but says more money is still needed. Per Mertesacker slams Arsenal defensive flaws and discipline in Premier League Arsenal legend Jens Lehmann has criticized the team, accusing them of throwing away the league title. He expressed frustration with the result, claiming responsibility for the result. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed it can cause microcephaly, a birth defect, which causes underdeveloped brains in newborns. "Although there are no reports of transmission of Zika virus from infected patients to health care personnel or other patients, minimizing exposure to body fluids is important to reduce the possibility of such transmission". The virus usually causes symptoms like fever, joint pain, rash and red eyes. While Colombia had originally estimated the number of Zika cases could triple through the end of June, the government emphasized that the epidemic was "dropping precipitously" for the time, and faster than predicted. Kyle Busch wins for the fourth time in eight days Maybe I can give the old man a little bit of advice this week, I'll talk to him. "We just ran out of tires, you know", Truex said. Jones was relegated to the rear of the field after his pit crew jumped over the wall too soon on a stop under caution on lap 77. DPH officials said the patient is a CT resident, who tested positive for the virus. The technical specifications of the billboards have also been published by the marketing firms online and may be downloaded for free, allowing those from other parts of the world to also make and use the boards to trap and get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes. The director general of health services (DGHS), health ministry officials said, has issued guidelines advising pregnant women to defer their travel to the affected countries. "Here in NY at least 60 confirmed cases". She added that there have been eight cases where the virus had been sexually transmitted. Prior to 2015, 16 countries had reported evidence of Zika transmission. The virus has also been linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a neurological condition that can cause muscle weakness and paralysis. We can only hope that the topic fades into background noise because Zika is controlled - and there is not another deadly outbreak. Brazil is fighting back against the disease with its latest Zika virus prevention method-by installing billboards that kill mosquitoes. Scott Langley, Stuart Appleby and Charley Hoffman were tied for second. Harrington would have been alongside Reed on eight under if he had made par or better on the closing hole, but a couple of poor shots close to the green on the final hole proved costly. Ricky Barnes seeks his first PGA Tour win of his career as he takes a one stroke lead into the final round of the Valero Texas Open. Id be lying if I would say it was a successful career being out here without a win, Barnes said. "There's so much trouble down either side of every hole, if you drive it well you'll be in pretty good shape and that's normally a good part of my game so I try to lean on that". Coming in Sundays and have a chance to win, ' Barnes said. Harriet Tubman to be the New Face of the $20 Bill Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday (April 20). Maybe a $2 bill". "They're really saying, 'this is what we want you to think of us... these are our best people'". Barnes was ninth in the Heritage last week and has fired three under-par rounds at TPC San Antonio, which is no mean feat at this hard venue. IT is tight at the top in Texas - 11 players are within four shots of the lead - and a resurgent Luke Donald is attempting to end a long US Tour victory drought for the second consecutive week. Barnes would have a bigger lead had he not finished each nine with a bogey. Entering Saturday, Hoffman was a PGA Tour-best 38 under at the course dating back to 2010, per Ray, and that level of comfort could provide him with some extra confidence with a title on the line Sunday afternoon. "I've been showing a lot lately". I want to get a win and take what comes along.. "It's my favorite place to come", Steele said. Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights for 200000 Felons On Friday, Virginia Governor, Terry McAuliffe, has restored voting rights to over 200,000 Virginia convicted felons . Virginia is one of a small handful of states that permanently disenfranchise residents with a felony record. Langley had an eagle on the par-five 14th in a round of 68, while Appleby was able to survive a triple bogey on the 10th and dropped shots on the 15th and 18th thanks to seven birdies in his round of 70. Two-time defending champion Lydia Ko (70) was four strokes back at 5 under. South Africa's Lee-Anne Pace and South Korea's Na Yeon Choi were tied for second. The 23-year-old Japanese player had three birdies and two bogeys to reach 10-under 206 with one round left. "I took advantage of my good shots, converted on my birdies and then obviously a bad finish, bad swing at the end", Barnes said. Langer and Lehman had 7-under 28 on the front nine on Buffalo Ridge's Springs Course and added four birdies on the back nine. Austin won the Mitsubishi Electric Classic last week in a playoff in Georgia for his second victory in the last three events on the 50-and-over tour. England's Callum Shinkwin was two strokes back after a 62. Rather, Barnes rebounded in composed fashion as he carded three birdies in a four-hole span on Nos. NEW YORK - John Tavares tied it in the final minute of regulation and got the victor at 10:41 of the second overtime, leading the New York Islanders past the Florida Panthers 2-1 Sunday night and into the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 1993. A team with plenty of hype and hope in October ended its play for 2015-16 with a insane 5-4 loss to the Dallas Stars in Game 6 of the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Playoffs first round Sunday afternoon at the Xcel Energy Center. The Wild, in the middle of a playoff run (currently down 2-3 against the Dallas Stars in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals), dedicated a portion of their arena to the Minneapolis born musician by featuring his logo over a section of seats, right next to the state of Minnesota. But the Wild forced overtime when Koivu went top shelf for the tying goal with 3:09 left in regulation. Oh, and Giroux - the highest-scoring player in the league over the past five seasons - finished the series with no goals and one assist. That's not quite as bad as Steve Mason's from Game 2 of the series between the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers, but yikes, Dubnyk has to stop that. The goal was credited to Alex Goligoski. Islanders goaltender Thomas Greiss rose to the challenge, stopping 41 of 42 shots in the deciding game, giving him a. 944 save percentage in his first playoff series as a starter. PDP Sweeps Ondo State Local Govt Fourteen political parties participated in the election that was adjudged free and fair by stakeholders. He described the conduct of the election as peaceful and the results very impressive. Not Game 5. With nowhere to hide and the Stars coming for blood, Dubnyk emerged from the shadows and grabbed the Wild's fate with his trapper, making 33 saves entering overtime. Chris Tierney and Matt Nieto scored early goals and Joe Pavelski got another late score for the Sharks, who stared down the demons of their past playoff failures against Los Angeles and advanced to the second round for just the second time since 2011. They moved on to face the victor of the Chicago-St. "We've got to clean up some of our plays we made with the puck, but we had the puck most of the night". Granlund and Jordan Schroeder put the team up 2-0 in the first, but Stars defenseman Johnny Oduya sparked some life into his team with a goal two minutes left in the period. Stars captain Jamie Benn tied it at 2 with some nifty stick work, guiding the puck around Dubnyk and into the net only a minute into the third period. John Klingberg, Patrick Sharp, Jamie Benn and Alex Goligoski also scored for the Stars. "That momentum can switch real quick and it did", Koivu said. The Queen rounds off her birthday celebrations with a beacon lighting ceremony The Queen , Cameron said, has been "a rock of strength for our nation" throughout her reign, the longest ever in British history. Folks put up special decorations in the streets and local shops sold special plates to commemorate the day. A Wild fan launched an online petition earlier this week in an effort to get the team to change its goal song to Let's Go Crazy, Prince's hit song from the 1984 album Purple Rain. "We were up, they were up, and everything happened so quickly", said Wild center Mikael Granlund. "Certainly it's not how we scripted it after the second period, but we'll take it and now we'll have a couple days to try and better our game and see who we play next". "Tough goals, most of them". Hitchcock is working on a one-year contract this season after the Wild eliminated the Blues last spring in the first round of the playoffs. At 04:55 he tipped a Ryan Suter shot past a helpless Niemi for the win, and sending the series back to Minnesota for Game 6. It deflected off Pominville and fluttered in, marking the first time in the series that the Wild scored first. "The way we worked in the third period", Dubnyk said, "I was proud to be back there and a part of that and watching these guys". We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. UKs Foreign Secretary Sunday revealed that British forces whether ground, naval or air could be sent to Libya at any time to combat IS which may use illegal migration routes to mount attacks in UK and Europe, but any military action in the North African country will be submitted to the House of Commons. But if there were ever any question of a British combat role in any form ground, sea or air that would go to the House of Commons, Hammond said in an interview with Telegraph. Philip Hammond indicated that his country cannot rule out sending combat troops to the North African country torn by division and waiting to fall in the hands of IS which has taken control of most coastal lands and is overseeing illegal human trafficking. For him there is no doubt IS militants could hide among migrants or sail across the Mediterranean to stage attacks in Europe and the UK as the terrorist group is also seeking to turn Libya into a safe-haven and launch pad to attack Europe, or ships at sea. The former Defense Secretary also indicated UK and its European allies are waiting for an invitation from the nascent Libyan unity government to intervene. He however argued that the invitation may take long to come. Secretary Hammond met with Libyan nominal Premier Faiez Serraj last week in Tripoli where he pledged UKs support to the unity government and to its fight against IS. British naval forces could be also asked to intervene in Libyan waters to head off launch of hundreds of makeshift boasts laden with migrants in direction of Italian coasts. UKs Defense Secretary Michael Fallon Saturday announced that HMS Enterprise, a Naval survey ship, would expand its mission off the coast of Libya to gather intelligence on terrorists arms smuggling activities. The appalling attacks in Paris and Brussels underline the need for robust action to tackle the links between illegal migration, terrorism, and arms smuggling that threaten our security, Fallon said. Secretary Hammonds comments contrast those of President Obama who during his Friday trip to London said that sending international troops to Libya was pointless and could be a bad signal to the struggling unity government. Obama indicated that the US and its European allies stand ready to giving training to local Libyan forces fighting IS. Theres no plan for ground troops in Libya. I dont think thats necessary. I dont think it would be welcomed by this new government. It would send the wrong signal, he said. What we can do is provide them with expertise, what we can do is provide them with training. The German city of Hanover is due to host Monday a meeting between the US and the EU key players in Libya. The meeting will discuss world security issues and how the allies can support the Libyan unity government. The Algerian ailing leader has been flown Sunday for medical checkup in Geneva instead of France where he often gets treated. Analysts suggest recent tweet by France Premier Manuel Valls showing an ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika and jibes from French media may explain the choice of Geneva. The choice of Geneva, according to analysts and media, underscores that tension is heating up between Algiers and Paris, amidst repeated statements by French officials renewing Frances unwavering support to Moroccos autonomy plan as a serious and credible basis for the settlement of the Sahara conflict. French-Algerian relations started to deteriorate after French paper Le Monde published a picture of the Algerian leader in a story on the Panama Papers. Algiers reacted angrily and refused to issue an entry visa to the publications reporter to cover Vallss visit to Algiers this month, accusing France of waging a hostile campaign against Algerian institutions. The 79-year-old President has been used to going to France for medical checkups, especially after he suffered an intestinal hemorrhage in 2005 that required surgery. He was also flown to France in 2013 when he suffered from a stroke that glued him to a wheel chair and affected his speaking ability. Since then he has been regularly going to France for periodic medical checkups. His latest known visit took place in December His health condition raises criticism about his ability to rule the country and also about Frances support to the ailing Algerian retired military General, who won the 2014 presidential elections for another five-year term, despite his poor health condition. Speculation about his succession is well underway in Algeria. Some well-known public figures including former supporters recently accused the President of losing control of the country. Morocco and Bahrain are poised to strengthen further their relations of friendship and cooperation during the current brotherly and working visit King Mohammed VI is paying to Bahrain. The visit takes place just few days after the first Morocco-GCC summit held last Wednesday in Riyadh that sealed the strategic partnership binding Morocco to the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, mustering Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. King Mohammed VI and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa had both attended the Summit along the other leaders of the Arab Gulf countries. The Bahraini Cabinet has lauded, at his regular meeting on Monday, the positive results of the Morocco-GCC summit and said the Bahraini delegation to the summit was led by King Hamad given its importance in strengthening cooperation between GCC countries and Morocco on confronting challenges that affect their security and stability, and the need to stand together firmly against all threats. The Council praised the summit, held at the initiative of King Salman of Saudi Arabia, as reflecting keenness to step up Arab coordination on the challenges and threats the region is facing. During the Riyadh Summit, King Mohammed VI had delivered a strong speech deemed as a roadmap for cooperation and partnership between Morocco and the GCC member States. Despite the geographical distance, Morocco and GCC countries are bound by solid relations that, in addition to language, religion and civilization, include a commitment to the same values and principles and the same constructive policies, the Sovereign had said, underlining that Thanks to our shared determination, we have managed to lay the foundations for a solid strategic partnership, which is the result of fruitful bilateral cooperation. King Mohammed VI insisted that Moroccan-Gulf partnership is not the result of transient interests or calculations. Rather, it derives its strength from a firm belief that ours is a common destiny and that we hold the same views on issues of common concern. We are facing plots that target our collective security, the King of Morocco said underlining that the security and stability of the Arab Gulf countries and the security of Morocco are one and the same. On the morrow of the summit, King Hamad said that the Moroccan Kings speech clearly stressed the need for joint action to deal with the current situation and advocated an enhanced partnership for the welfare of all brotherly countries. In a statement relayed by the Bahraini News Agency, King Hamad had praised the depth of the brotherly relations linking Morocco and the GCC countries and pledged that the recommendations, ideas and visions emerged at the Summit will be placed at the top of our priorities to achieve the sought objectives. In the joint statement issued at the end of the Riyadh Summit, the GCC leaders reiterated their position in favor of the Moroccan Sahara and support for the autonomy initiative presented by Morocco as the basis for any solution to this artificial regional dispute. They expressed their total ejection of any act that may affect Moroccan supreme interests, on top of which the Moroccan Sahara issue. Underlining that this first summit is but a reflection of the special and exceptional relations, binding GCC member states and Morocco, the joint statement stressed the keenness of the GCC member states leaders to put their bilateral relations with Morocco, at the highest levels, in all political, economic, military and security-related aspects. Broaden your expertise, enhance patient care, and never worry about another license requirement again with Elite Passport Membership. Available across ten healthcare professions in a variety of options to suit your career goals, Passport Membership propels your career advancement and offers exceptional value to healthcare providers. No GOP Convention for our summer plans. Photo: ABC Right-wing mega-donor Charles Koch is apparently going to skip the opportunity to spend mid-July in Cleveland this year, saying in an interview with ABC News that aired Monday that he doesnt plan to attend the 2016 Republican National Convention. Why go? Koch said. Were not interested in politics. Were interested in moving us towards a culture and policies that will enable people to improve their lives. Koch, along with his brother David, has poured hundreds of millions into their Freedom Partners network, which supports a broad array of conservative causes and candidates. In the two-part interview, Koch said that he thought it possible that Hillary Clinton could be a better president than any of the GOP candidates. Clinton, however, wanted absolutely nothing to do with that begrudging nod of almost-approval: Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote. https://t.co/TWN4zYhMBh Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 24, 2016 And Koch admitted that while hes really not thrilled with the the slate of GOP candidates this year, he doesnt support the idea of Paul Ryan swooping in and becoming the partys nominee at a contested convention. Koch said that the current Speaker is better on the issues, but that giving him the nomination would create the impression this whole thing is rigged, which thats the opposite of the direction we want to go. It wasnt part of Ryans deal with conservatives to actually do anything. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images At the New Republic David Dayen has an appropriately scathing appraisal of House Speaker Paul Ryans accomplishments this year. He famously cannot get a budget resolution passed. Hes done nothing on the list of priorities he announced when he took up the gavel. But beyond those failures, he cant even deal with emergencies, including the Puerto Rico debt crisis, the Zika crisis, the Flint water-poisoning disaster, and the opioid epidemic. To Dayen, that makes Ryan worse than useless, because [t]he basic test of governance is the ability to respond to rapidly changing events. This may be true in theory, but the entire premise of Ryans accession to the Speakership is that hed place governance on hold until November, despite a Potemkin village semblance of regular order and other legislative activity. Heres how I put it back in December: What Boehner, McConnell, and Ryan in turn appear to have accomplished is to convince conservative activist groups and the members of Congress who listen to them to become satisfied with an apocalypse later rather than an apocalypse now. Ryan will get the lions share of praise as some sort of party-unifying genius, but its the promise of a postelection conservative ideological feeding frenzy thats really done the trick. If Republicans pull off the POTUS/House/Senate trifecta next year, then the kind of policies now considered divisive when pushed against the resistance of Senate filibusters or presidential vetoes will then be noncontroversial. And so, all the controversial stuff was dumped out of a continuing appropriation and tax extender package (the so-called taxibus) that ensured the federal government would continue to function until the end of the fiscal year (conveniently near Election Day), with the gamble being that divisions over what to do with a Democratic president might soon be moot. But this do-nothing plan didnt take emergencies into account, and thus emergencies are hanging fire for Ryan. He will presumably muddle his way through, but the steadily darkening prospects for any sort of Republican mega-win in November is making all the signatories to this implicit deal uneasy. And if things go south on Election Day, so will Ryans reputation: If, on the other hand, the GOP loses the presidency and/or the Senate, then the party could be back to where it was when Boehner was Speaker, and Paul Ryan wont necessarily be any better at dealing with frustrated right-wingers. The difference is that Ryan may be exposed as a fraud, which is not what he had in mind when he agreed to take the gavel. Sanders, speaking with voters in Baltimore. Photo: Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images In an appearance on Sundays Meet the Press, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders pegged his losses to Hillary Clinton in many states on the lack of poor voters at the polls. Asked by host Chuck Todd why he has tended to lose states with the highest levels of income inequality, despite that issue being a primary focus of his campaign, Sanders responded, Well, because poor people dont vote. I mean, thats just a fact. Adding that a majority of the poor didnt vote in the 2014 elections, he called low voter turnout among eligible voters with lower incomes a sad reality of American society, and thats what we have to transform. Sanders said on Meet the Press that 80 percent of low income voters skipped the last election, but a Politifact review of the data indicates that the actual number was more like 65 to 70 percent. Nonetheless, the argument itself is of course a staple of the Sanders campaign, as one of its central tenets has always been the idea that Sanders would be able to transform the country on the back of a progressive political revolution powered by increased voter turnout among traditionally low-turnout demographics like the poor. But while Sanders may be correct that an influx of poor voters would somehow transform politics in the country, that influx might not have yielded the victory he imagined for his campaign, as the Washington Post explains: Sanders has lost Democratic voters with household incomes below $50,000 by 55 percent to 44 percent to Clinton across primaries where network exit polls have been conducted. (He has lost by a wider 21 percentage-point margin among voters with incomes above $100,000, and by 9 points among middle income voters.) Regardless, as the Guardian notes, Sanderss appearances on the Sunday shows also seemed to indicate a possible, if slight, redefinition of his campaigns purpose to focus on voter turnout. If such a shift is indeed underway, it may at last be an acknowledgment of the unlikelihood that Sanders will be able to win the Democratic nomination away from Clinton, though he continues to reject calls to leave the race and insisted on Sunday that he thinks his campaign still has a path to victory. It takes a con to know a con. Photo: John Lamparski/2016 John Lamparski Donald Trump has been roundly criticizing the GOP Establishment for months, but last week, in an effort to mend bridges, Trumps new campaign manager tried to convince party elites that Trumps bluster was all an act. Paul Manafort didnt mean for these comments to be made public he was addressing RNC members during a private briefing in Florida but both the Washington Post and the Associated Press received recordings of his remarks. Now both Manafort and Trumps son are walking back on the comments, claiming Manaforts reassurance that Trump is projecting an image was taken out of context. Previously, Manafort promised RNC members that Trump would change his ways. The part that hes been playing is evolving into the part that now youve been expecting, he said in Florida. The image is going to change. One would think Trumps image would be closely linked to his policies after all, the former creates the latter but Manafort insisted this isnt the case. We were talking about evolving the campaign, not the candidate, Manafort said on Fox News Sunday. He also said that promising RNC members Trump would tone it down was in reference to when hes giving speeches on policy, settings that are not rally-oriented. Trumps policies, he stressed, were as conservative as ever. Trumps oldest son, Donald J. Trump Jr., also chimed in, telling CNN his fathers pivot is a natural evolution. Sometimes he has to talk about things in a certain way to draw the requisite attention that that topic actually needs, he said of Trump Sr.s harsh campaign rhetoric. So I think for him this is a natural evolution, getting focused on the general election where hes going to have to talk to the broader audience. By doing outlandish things like hiring a speech writer, planning policy speeches, and renting some teleprompters, the Trump campaign has already hinted that the Donald will make a shift in upcoming weeks. But now it insists that shift will be totally natural and not at all an attempt to manipulate powerful Republicans into accepting him as a politician while he continues to pander to extremist crowds at enormous rallies Wonderful Donald would never do a thing like that. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis Gentrification is an incredibly hot subject right now it seems to be the subject of endless articles and hot takes, as people try to decide just how damaging it is that people with money are suddenly taking an interest in so many once-undesirable neighborhoods in New York, D.C., and other cities, often leading to rising rents and longtime residents being forced to live elsewhere. But what if gentrification just isnt as big a piece of the inequality puzzle as everyone thinks? Thats the thesis of an interesting post and accompanying infographics at City Observatory, an organization that studies urban issues (and is funded by the Knight Foundation). The post, as the headline of one of the infographics puts it, argues that Concentrated poverty is a bigger problem than gentrification. Bigger problem can mean a lot of things here, of course. Heres how Joe Cortright, an economist at City Observatory and the author of the post, explains: Neighborhood change has been a hot topic in many American citiesand, increasingly, on the national stagefor a number of years. At City Observatory, were especially interested in shifting community demographics as they relate to economic and racial integration, which have been shown to have profound impacts on peoples class mobility, longevity, and more. But while most of the focus has been on gentrificationthe process of middle- and upper-income people moving into lower-income neighborhoodsour own research shows that low-income communities are much more likely to suffer from the opposite problem: increasing poverty and severe population decline. Three-quarters of neighborhoods with a poverty rate twice the national average in 1970 still had very high levels of poverty in 2010, and had lost an average of 40 percent of their population. That represents a much larger number of people who have been displaced by a lack of opportunity or high-quality public services than have been displaced by gentrification. Reading this immediately brought me back to the sociologist Matthew Desmonds phenomenal book Evicted, which I interviewed him about in March. In that book, he embedded himself with a bunch of low-income Milwaukeeans facing agonizing housing difficulties many of them, in part because they were perpetually short on cash, ended up getting evicted over and over. For the most part, these werent people who could afford to live anywhere near gentrifying neighborhoods. Rather, they were at the very bottom of the housing market, and, as Desmond explains, because theres such unmet demand for housing, they were perpetually searching desperately for utterly ramshackle units they could barely afford anyway. Even the cheapest units arent cheap for the people and families who need them. This doesnt account for everything Cortwright is writing about, of course, but its part of the story of urban poverty (and addiction and crime and all of povertys other correlates), a big one, and its one of many examples that dont really have a huge amount to do with gentrification. The problem is that there simply isnt enough cheap housing even in poor neighborhoods gentrifiers want nothing to do with, anyway. And yet the popular conversation about cities does seem to be focused way more on gentrification than on the sorts of stuff Desmond writes about. Cortwright thinks thats partially because Our perceptions of neighborhood change are often shaped by those places that are experiencing the greatest pace of change. Thats true, but Id take that a step further: This also has to do with the question of which sorts of neighborhoods journalists themselves are going to be most familiar with. A huge number of journalists live in gentrifying neighborhoods, or visit them for restaurants and nightlife, and hardly any live in truly poor neighborhoods. If you compared the number of journalists living in Crown Heights, a rapidly gentrifying part of Brooklyn, to the number living in Brownsville, a poor and violent part of the borough just down the road, the difference would be stark. More broadly, journalists have a well-known bias toward focusing on issues of interest to people with money, and its people with money who move into gentrifying neighborhoods. In short, journalists are, of course, just as susceptible to bias as anyone else, so when they try to figure out what stories matter the most, and whats worth writing about, its no wonder that gentrification comes in high on that list. And then, from the point of view of people with a casual interest in cities or inequality or whatever else, when they search for information on theses subjects (or have it served up to them via social media), the most prominent subject discussed, for the above reasons, is gentrification. None of this means gentrification doesnt bring real challenges with it for a lot of people, of course, and this conversation is just the tip of a really complicated iceberg when it comes to that subject. But its an interesting example of how peoples concerns get focused on certain topics at the expense of less sexy but maybe more important others. oh man Reply Thread Link Well, she looks fake and very vulgar... Reply Parent Thread Link She...I just...Jesus Christ Reply Thread Link omg i see it, esp in the top middle one Reply Parent Thread Link biitch Reply Parent Thread Link holy shit.. lmfao Reply Parent Thread Link NOOOOO LOL Reply Parent Thread Link lmfaoooo Reply Parent Thread Link LMFAO NO YOU DIDN'T Reply Parent Thread Link i see renee zellweger Reply Parent Thread Link yeah i see it too Reply Parent Thread Link Olicity reached the rap sphere. Reply Parent Thread Link I knew she reminded me of someone but I couldn't think of it. ty! Reply Parent Thread Link this is really sad. I just feel so sorry that she feels that she needed those surgeries and to lighten her skin.! Reply Thread Link mte. she used to be cute, too Reply Parent Thread Link IA, i feel sorry for anyone who feels that way about themselves Reply Parent Thread Link The racial implications of tanning vs bleaching are different, no? Reply Parent Thread Link You sound white Reply Parent Thread Expand Link lmfao, expose yourself Reply Parent Thread Link seriously fuck society and racist people. Is this what you want? a world devoid of diversity? #allwhiteeverything !!! Reply Parent Thread Link omg I thought it was a typo when the headline said lil kim. wow. Reply Thread Link If I saw her on the street, I would never have guessed it was Lil' Kim. Reply Parent Thread Link mte, then I thought wait is there a different lil kim? Reply Parent Thread Link omg :\ Reply Thread Link is this a real product or a parody? Reply Parent Thread Link Unfortunately its real. Azealia Banks uses it Reply Parent Thread Expand Link the funny thing is Dencia is darker then that, she uses photoshop to get that white affect her product doesn't whiten skin it evens dark spots and her dumb self hating ass has the nerve to have a song about Africa Reply Parent Thread Expand Link how does one even do that to their face... like she missing at least 40% of her original skin and bone structure. Reply Thread Link it's definitely just face tune - editing software. Reply Parent Thread Link LOL Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao Reply Parent Thread Link lol Reply Parent Thread Link She looks like one of the stepsisters from the animated Cinderella movie Reply Parent Thread Link this is SO accurate. my god. Reply Parent Thread Link that bitch Drizella got her degree good on her Edited at 2016-04-25 06:03 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link lmfao Reply Parent Thread Link the doctor looks so fucking smug omg. Reply Parent Thread Link lmfao Reply Parent Thread Link LMFAO Reply Parent Thread Link lmao Reply Parent Thread Link SCREAMING Reply Parent Thread Link LOL Reply Parent Thread Link omg Reply Parent Thread Link lmao slay Reply Parent Thread Link That face lmao Reply Parent Thread Link Dear God @ those recent pics Reply Parent Thread Link I'd never guess this was the same person who played one of the popular girls in She's All That. :/ Reply Parent Thread Link oh man. what kind of doctor would even do those sorts of surgeries? i guess if you're getting paid enough but wow... Reply Parent Thread Link god the difference in shade between her face and hands. the reverse kylie Reply Parent Thread Link Holy shit, I'm realizing now how much Chloe Grace Moretz looks like her. Reply Parent Thread Link lmfaooo i see it Reply Parent Thread Link omg I'm dying that was my first thought Reply Parent Thread Link OMG Reply Parent Thread Link The cat look is honestly horrifying. Reply Parent Thread Link christ @ that last recent Reply Parent Thread Link those cheekbones Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i'm curious how pale her skin really is under all that foundation Reply Parent Thread Expand Link She looks Asian now. Reply Parent Thread Link It's so sad. I always thought she was really cute back in the 90s. Reply Parent Thread Link a LOT of this looks like make-up tho right? please tell me its mostly make-up. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Holy Jesus. No. Reply Parent Thread Link daamn wtf is going on with her check bones? I mean, she looked fine before, gorgeous actually! Like...damn.... Reply Parent Thread Link tragic :( Reply Parent Thread Link In the last photo she looks like that lion lady. Reply Parent Thread Link I don't think she is THAT bad yet. I really hope she will stop at this level and change her hair color. Reply Parent Thread Link so like denicia they just use make-up to make their faces 'ashy grey white' but the rest of the body is brown.. k Reply Parent Thread Link yikes. :( i hate to say it, i still see og kim in there. of course she's nowhere near what she used to be but i still see a glimmer in there. i think most of the "skin lightening" is just makeup, tbh Reply Parent Thread Link Wow.... Tbh I didn't even know it was possible to bleach your skin this drastically. :/ Reply Thread Link i think she just piled on a bunch of makeup to get it this white, but she's probably lighter than she used to be. Reply Parent Thread Link yes Reply Thread Link mte Reply Parent Thread Link mte [2] Reply Parent Thread Link I mean, all those movies are shit. I enjoy him as Thor, but it's true that he doesn't really have that leading man charisma. He's bland. Reply Thread Link Yes!!! His brother too. Edited at 2016-04-25 06:38 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link I came here to comment "the answer is yes" and then saw op put it right in the post lmao. in the heart of the sea was... better than i expected because i thought it'd be much worse. it was just mediocre. Reply Thread Link Goes on to say maybe Hemsworth has been typecasted and no one can see him as anything but Thor. this is def true imo Reply Thread Link I'm not sure most people even know he is the one that plays thor. Reply Parent Thread Link mte lol Reply Parent Thread Link Lol. Probably true. Reply Parent Thread Link Everyone I've met knows he's Thor. At least the woman I've met do. But I also think the films he's picking aren't interesting enough for his fandom. He honestly needs to go romantic comedy roles and not these serious roles as his fandom are mostly women who aren't interested in those films. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link He should earn it. Be the romantic interest of female leads; do indie movies or tv. He should earn it. Be the romantic interest of female leads; do indie movies or tv. Reply Thread Link Mte. He needs to prove he can actually act. I love him as Thor but can't see him as anything else. Reply Parent Thread Link yes Reply Thread Link They should, but they won't. Fit, attractive, white family men in Hollywood go far. Reply Thread Link right? they'll keep giving him roles for existing. Reply Parent Thread Link ie. ethan hawke, jude law, sam worthington, orlando bloom, taylor kitsch I can keep going Reply Parent Thread Link now sis, ethan hawke and jude law can actually act (and also have terrible careers lol) Reply Parent Thread Link Sam Worthington is the worst. I felt this way when Avatar came out. Reply Parent Thread Link yup Reply Parent Thread Link Yes tbh. I like him as Thor but outside of that he's not interesting enough to be a leading man. Reply Thread Link look at someone like keanu reeves he for the most part can hold a film up and get people to see it like john wick Reply Thread Link But not the one we deserve Reply Parent Thread Link Keanu's acting is laughable but he's endearing as fuck for some reason. I watched point break for the first time like 2weeks ago and fuck me, he cannot act. Reply Parent Thread Link I love Keanu dearly and always have. He's a treasure. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Keanu gets a free pass because even his worst films have amazing cinematography. Plus his acting skills are next level, by that I mean they are at an unattainable level. Keanu doesn't act in a film, the film acts around him. And Keanu remains flawless. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Tell it OP. I don't know how many times audiences have to reject these mediocre white men before they stop being given a chance. I guess the problem is that there are soooooo many roles written for white men that they can just keep casting them until they find something that fits while women have to fight tooth and nail for bit roles. Reply Thread Link accurate just look at Ryan Reynolds Reply Parent Thread Link Ughhhhhhh. I can't wait for studios to continue giving him projects even though he's had about half a decade's worth of flops outside Deadpool. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This is the one that irks me THE MOST. Reply Parent Thread Link the system is more important than money. misogyny and racism run that deep. Reply Parent Thread Link Once you're accepted into the Good Ole Boys club you're pretty much set unless you actively go against the status quo. Reply Parent Thread Link definitely. he's supporting-character/love-interest material at best. Reply Thread Link yes for all 4 Chrises tbh Pratt can be lead in comedies tho Reply Thread Link Nah. They should all just be perpetually cast in bland roles like "the boyfriend" or any other whose fuction is to take off their shirt and be eye candy. Reply Parent Thread Link [ Spoiler (click to open) ] this is gonna be huge some sony promo reel with Passengers stuff leakedthis is gonna be huge Reply Parent Thread Link jen looks beautiful in that shot with the black dress. ngl i'm excited for this movie even tho the script was meh Reply Parent Thread Link I've just synopsis/plot desription of this today and damn it's gross as fuck Edited at 2016-04-25 07:08 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link what is this? a thriller? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link that one drop tear tho i've no idea what this is supposed to be. thriller/romance/drama/sci-fi? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link lmao this looks like some regular rom com with some drama.. Like what are these outfits? Are t they on a fucking spaceship? Lol Reply Parent Thread Expand Link for a marvel chris, he can be happy looking at his other projects. but no, writing him off wouldn't be a loss, he's likable enough but doesn't offer anything of substance in his "serious" roles Reply Thread Link I've only liked him when he's doing comedy. He needs to go the Channing Tatum route and just depend on his comedic timing and taking his shirt off. Reply Thread Link IA with the Channing Tatum comment. Reply Parent Thread Link this made me lmao but ur being too generous/nice Reply Parent Thread Link Yep! That's basically how I feel or at least go romantic comedy route. I don't think he's willing to be as goofy as Channing and let's be honest Channing is endearing. If Chris starts off like Matt McConhey whoever you spell it and then eventually works his way up to serious movies then I think he wouldn't flop as much. Reply Parent Thread Link Exactly, his comedic timing is perfect. Reply Parent Thread Link Fucking James is back but no Harry Truman? I imagine it might be health related rather than anything else... Reply Thread Link Robert Forster is playing Harry Truman. Apparently there was some drama with Ontkean. Reply Parent Thread Link i'm so excited for laura dern Reply Thread Link so stoked 4 monica bellucci Reply Thread Link Ugh I want more Asian representation but Charlyne Yi is the woooooorst. Also wtf Sky Ferreira?!? Is this also like musicians involved in the soundtrack, I assume? Reply Thread Link lana needs to be on this list if that's the case tbh! Reply Parent Thread Link Agree! It would be awesome. Reply Parent Thread Link He's actually a fan of hers, so I could definitely see this happening. Reply Parent Thread Link Charlyne Yi is the woooooorst she really is Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Yes, Queen Julee Cruise! Wonder if she'll provide any music for the soundtrack. I also wonder if Lynch will tap anything music-wise from Trent Reznor- I think he had a lot of Trent's music on the Lost Highway soundtrack. Reply Thread Link There's no way Julee isn't contributing to the music somehow. I'll be so disappointed if she doesn't. Reply Parent Thread Link If she's in the cast list, I'm assuming we'll at least see her at the Roadhouse or something. But I'm not sure she's been putting out new music, so we might just get some songs that were already on the Twin Peaks soundtracks? Who knows... I know Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti continued to collaborate, and I think I read he'll be doing the score for this as well. Reply Parent Thread Link Omg I love Richard chamberlain Reply Parent Thread Link michael cera??? lord Reply Thread Link Jaysus I didn't even clock that Reply Parent Thread Link Ugh and Charlyne? Twin Peaks: Awkward Walk With Me Reply Parent Thread Link ugh noooo Reply Parent Thread Link monica bellucci! Reply Thread Link I was so happy when I read their names ngl. Reply Parent Thread Link me too omg Reply Parent Thread Link Those two can really act imo Reply Parent Thread Link Balthazar was soooo terrible on Alias, it made me hate him. And I used to hate Matthew Lillard mostly b/c every time I wanted to see a Freddie Prinze Jr movie during my teenage years, that fucker was in the movie, too. BUT I warmed to him upon rewatching stuff plus ...you fucking hit me with the phone, you dick <333 and that episode where he was Carol Burnett's weird lover made me like him Reply Parent Thread Link Here for so many of these people!! Especially Sky Ferreira. No Lana Del Rey tho? Aww. They should've brought back movie!Donna. Lmao, how did Sara Paxton get in there? I was wondering what happened to her. Reply Thread Link Oh yeah, missed opportunity with LDR! She would fit right into a Lynch piece. Reply Parent Thread Link LDR is obviously a fan of Lynch, too, w/ that Blue Velvet H&M spot and the music video for Summertime Sadness Reply Parent Thread Link sky ferreira? Reply Thread Link lmao hey, I'm on that list too Reply Thread Link michael cera better be prancing. Reply Thread Link Michael cera, Tim Roth, Matthew Lillard, what is this list Reply Thread Link Critical decision over the weekend on one of the worlds most-watched infrastructure developments in the fast-emerging oil and gas basins of Eastern Africa. That came from a meeting of the so-called East African Community bloc on Saturday. Where countries including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi got together with one of the biggest items for discussion being the route for a massive new oil pipeline in this part of the world. Heres why this a big deal. The last several years have seen a lot of oil discovered in both Kenya and Uganda. Onshore Kenya finds by explorers like Africa Oil and Tullow Oil have already reached into the hundreds of millions of barrels. And players like Chinas CNOOC are actively developing Ugandas reserves. Related: The Real Reason Saudi Arabia Killed Doha None of these mega-plays are selling oil however. Because of a lack of pipelines to move the crude from inland basins to the coast for export. East Africas oil nations have been discussing how best to build such a pipeline. With two major schemes emerging: a Uganda-Tanzania route, and a competing Uganda-Kenya route. The map below shows how the different routes shape up. Source: qz.com And heres the big decision: the East African Community bloc decided this weekend to go with the Tanzania oil pipeline route. Related: Horizontal Land Rig Count Summary 22nd April 2016 One of the biggest drivers in the decision was reportedly Frances Total. Which is a co-developer of Ugandas oil fields and which had been concerned about security along the Kenyan export route, especially in areas where the pipe would have passed close to Somalia. It appears that Total will now get the route they want. With Kenyas oil developers getting the shorter end of the stick being left on their own to foot the bill for a stand-alone export pipeline. All indications were that such a Kenya-only pipeline will now proceed, meaning that Kenyas developers will at least have a clearer timeline on first production for their fields. The key now will be financing watch for news here on how groups like Tullow and Africa Oil will pay for this all-important piece of infrastructure. Heres to keeping it moving By Dave Forest More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: As Iraqi exports from the southern coast reach a monthly record high and the government is trying to lure in new investment on the border with Iran, all is certainly not welland oil-rich Kirkuk in the north is becoming a violent flashpoint. On the surface, things are looking up for Iraq. It never wanted to join an output freeze, and in April it posted a record level of oil exports, adding further downward pressure to oil prices. According to data provided by Reuters, Iraqs averaged 3.43 million barrels of oil per day from its south in the first 24 days of April. In November last year, it managed 3.37 million bpd. Last year, Iraq was the fastest growing oil supplier in OPEC, and this year it is likely to retain that title, even if growth is a bit slower, hindered by supermajor spending cuts and the ongoing conflict with the Islamic State (ISIS). But thats the south, and while oil exports are creeping back up to normal in the north as well, trouble is brewing and Kirkuk is the frontline in another battle for control of Iraqi oil wealth. Related: Expert Commentary: Oil Market Analysis and The Week Ahead Kirkuk is in a tricky spot. It holds large and productive oil fields, but has been under threat from ISIS for two years and lies in disputed territory between the Iraqi central government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), and control over Kirkuk is raising tensions between the two sides. In March, the authorities of the KRG offered up official support for plans by the local government of Kirkuk to create their own oil company, detached from the Iraqi state-run North Oil Company (NOC). Kirkuk and the Kurds are falling back on an Iraqi constitutional legal clause that apparently allows for the establishment of a separate oil company if local production exceeds 100,000 bpd Kirkuks output has already exceeded 150,000 bpd. The local government of Kirkuk wants more control over its own oil, and the Kurds have agreed to deposit $10 million a month into a Kirkuk account to realize this new deal. This is the Kurds second step into Kirkukthe first was the necessity of its forces to hold back ISIS, the second will be through the Kirkuk Oil Co. Related: What Iron Ore Futures Tell Us About Oil Prices Baghdad, of course, doesnt like it. It has already punished the Kurds for their truculence by shutting off Iraqi national exports through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, and since then it has started arresting NOC officials, ostensibly for corruption. According to the Iraq Oil Report, nearly two dozen current and former NOC officials have been implicated and/or arrested so farand theyre all apparently from Kirkuk. They face charges that they used a fake company to cheat the Iraqi government out of millions of dollars. At the same time, violent unrest between Kurds and Shiites in the disputed northern territories is being stirred up, and Baghdad could be behind it. This sudden spurt of ethnic violence could work to the benefit of ISIS. Here, Baghdad is playing a very dangerous game. Despite rising oil production, Baghdad could be overplaying its hand. General Electric Oil & Gas (GE Oil & Gas) signed an agreement with the Iraqi Ministry of Oil to enhance the operational efficiency of the Ministrys energy assets. Theyll also come up with a solution to reduce gas flaring in Iraqi oil fields and put it to better use for the countrys power generation. GEs a veteran in Iraq, but it will be its oil and gas segments first foray into the country. Related: The Real Reason Saudi Arabia Killed Doha Baghdads optimism extends to its border with Iran, where there are rumors that the two countries are reviving plans to jointly develop three fields in three provincesBasra, Missan and Diyala. But this comes at the same time that Iran is talking to the Kurds about a potential new pipeline route that would transport Kurdish oil to Iran, and also secure Iranian gas for the Kurds. Its a deal that would give the Kurds a stable alternative to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline for its unilateral exports. At this point, while ISIS remains a destabilizing scourge for Iraq and tensions between Baghdad and Kurdistan are rising, Iran is the trump card that can patch things up between the two sides. Irans joint development with the Iraqi Oil Ministry wont come without its tradeoffs, and in the name of stability, that will probably include some sort of deal for the Kurds. By James Burgess of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: $240,000. More than British Prime Minister David Cameron earns per year. Back in 2013, Oilprice.com published an article about a cook on an Australian offshore platform earning this kind of salary during the heydays in the oil sector. But things have changed in the oil patch. For many years one of the most lucrative jobs in the already lucrative field of engineering was as a petroleum engineer. While industrial, mechanical, and chemical engineering grads all commanded respectable salaries, usually ranging from $55,000 to $75,000, in recent years petroleum engineering salaries often top $100,000 or more. The days of that prosperity are ending or at least on hold for now though. Jobs for petroleum engineers are becoming increasingly scarce even for grads from traditionally good universities. Part of the problem is that as U.S. shale oil boomed, so did the number of petroleum engineering grads. There are more than three times as many students graduating today with petroleum engineering degrees as there were in 2008. Related: Doha Is A Distant Memory As Oil Rises To Mid $40s In that sense, the petroleum engineering glut is even worse than the oil glut. While the oil markets will rebalance over a period of a couple of years, many petroleum engineers will likely leave or never enter the industry in the first place. Now to be fair, engineering is an extremely useful field and there is considerable overlap between many of the engineering disciplines. My undergrad training and initial work experience is in industrial engineering, which has significant commonalities with mechanical engineering. In the same way, petroleum engineers will be able to get jobs in other technical fields mathematical and scientific skills are always in demand. Still, for many students who went to school and took on student loans under the expectation of getting a six figure petroleum engineering job, a rude awakening is likely ahead. Petroleum engineering became a much more attractive field thanks to the shale boom, which meant that these engineers were no longer likely to have to take a job abroad or on an offshore platform. If shale is dead or partially dead, that changes the calculus for many petroleum engineers. To employ a meaningful number of the current stock of engineers, oil prices would likely have to get back to around $70 a barrel which would make shale at least reasonably profitable in many geographies. Related: Oil Prices Show No Sign Of Weakness After Doha Petroleum engineers who do want to work in the oil field need to be looking at older technology rather than new tech for opportunities. While the economics of many shale fields are looking very questionable, many oil companies are now looking at their existing conventional fields and seeking ways to extract as much production as possible from these fields. That means higher demand for traditional petroleum engineering work, and less demand for new specialties like hydraulic fracking. The influx of private equity money into the space is also trending in the same direction for savvy petroleum engineers, its a case of back to basics rather than newer and more expensive techniques. Layoffs are likely to continue in the oil patch in 2016, and that also means that firms will be looking to hire less fresh faces to the mix. The petroleum engineers who do find jobs in the field are going to be the ones with useful skills (like knowledge of older technology), and those with either good networking connections or stellar academic performance. In the current environment, every big oil company out there has their pick of multiple qualified petroleum engineering candidates. That means that only the best applicants will make it through. Related: This Six-Year Running Oil And Gas Trend Just Reversed Itself In the end, many different occupations go through surges of graduates and eventually the markets adjust. For instance, there has been frequent concern in recent years about law schools producing too many lawyers leading to difficulty for many grads in getting law jobs. Eventually though, people adjust and industries with a need for smart people take up the slack. Not every petroleum engineer will get a job in the oil patch many wont but that doesnt mean they wont get jobs at all. By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Saudi Arabia single-handedly scuttled the Doha meeting, knowing all along that Iran would not participate, with a valid reason. The Russians and others agreed to proceed without Iran, planning to include them at a later date. So if everything was known beforehand, why did the Saudis pour cold water on the aspirations of the remaining members, risking its alienation from Russia and the OPEC community? Was it simply Saudi enmity toward Iran? Not exactly. Upon closer scrutiny, we can find the Saudi masterstroke behind Doha. It is well known that Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on oil revenues, and that those revenues are on the brink of collapse. They have sought financial aid from various international agencies to support their dwindling economy. But the trick here is to determine exactly how desperate the Saudis are. Certainly not as desperate as other countries. Angola has recently sought support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Venezuelas struggles started well before crude prices dropped to 12-year lows and is fighting to avoid a disaster. Azerbaijan has also approached the IMF and the World Bank for help. Nigeria is also seeking the World Banks support. Without external support, Iraq will find it difficult to continue its war against the Islamic State (ISIS). Lower oil prices continue to make matters worse, and Iraqi Kurdistan has taken advantage of the situation and works towards independence and beefing up its unilateral export plans. Ecuador is the worst hit, and now the devastating earthquake has crippled the nation. It will need help from the IMF, the World Bank and a few other lenders to reconstruct. Related: $91 Billion In Capex Cuts, A Serious Hangover For Oil After a 3.5 percent contraction in 2015, Russias gross domestic product will take a further 1.5 percent hit in 2016, as projected by the Central Bank. Kazakhstan is faring no better. Its growth shrunk to 1.2 percent in 2015 from an impressive 6 percent in 2013 and is expected to slow down further to 0.1 percent in 2016. Most of the participating nations are financially ruined. They have to undertake drastic measures to reduce their dependence on oil. Disaster is imminent. The Saudis are definitely not immune, even if on the surface disaster isnt obvious. Saudi Arabia is burning through its reserves at a record pace, but at the same time, it can sustain low prices for the next three to four years. Not only that, it can increase its production by another 2 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), if more funds are required. But why the drastic action on the eve of the meeting disregarding the plight of the participating member nations? Though the real reason for the about face is known only in the secretive halls of the royal palace, consider this: Saudi Arabia has held the mantle as the world leader in oil for decades, and has largely enjoyed veto power on all things concerning oil. However, since 2014, it has waged a losing battle against the U.S. shale oil drillers, who are phenomenally more resilient than anyone expected. Related: Low Oil Price Thwarts Wider LNG Adoption in ShippingFor Now The first signs of the shale producer vulnerability are now, however, becoming visible, with oil production in the U.S. dropping below 9 million barrels a daythe lowest in 18 months. If oil prices continue to remain below $40 per barrel, a few more shale oil producers will fall by the wayside. But if crude prices rise above $50 per barrel, the shale producers have made their intentions clear, that they will be back in business. If Saudi Arabia had accepted the deal, oil prices would have jumped to $50/b, giving the shale oil industry a new lease on life. Shale producers would have started pumping at a frantic pace, increasing the glut and pushing oil prices back down. This whole exercise would permanently dent Saudi Arabias reputation as the leading oil player. The baton would have passed to the shale oil drillersan event that the Saudis simply cannot allow. With Irans return post-sanctions, Saudi Arabias leadership in OPEC is under threat. By scuttling the meeting, Saudi Arabia has asserted its supremacy and reminded the OPEC nations just how much power the Saudis still wield. Related: Oil Price Rally Unwinds As Strike In Kuwait Ends The Saudis have ascertained their importance in the new cartel as well. They have not let Russia assume sole leadership, they have ensured that they remain at the centre of any decision making in the new cartel. By voicing their objection to the meeting, Saudi Arabia has attempted to win back the leadership baton from American shale producers. It has shown the OPEC members that it still is the leader, thereby blocking Iran from challenging it, and finally, it has maintained its importance in the new bigger cartel, demanding an equal say in the scheme of things alongside Russia. The Doha washout was the Saudi masterstroke to regain its importance. However, with many OPEC nations on the edge of collapse, the next OPEC meeting will confirm if the Saudi move was indeed a masterstroke, or if it was just a short-lived power grab. By Rakesh Upadhyay for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The first U.S. LNG shipment will soon arrive in Europe, marking a new era for energy on the continent. Cheniere Energys newly completed Sabine Pass facility on the U.S. Gulf Coast recently sent a shipment of American liquefied natural gas, which should arrive in Portugal within a few days. LNG coming out of the U.S. is probably the single most important thing that will transform the future LNG market, Melissa Stark, energy managing director at Accenture, told Bloomberg. It heralds the arrival of a global market. European LNG demand is rising as domestic natural gas production is falling. Europes LNG imports climbed by 16 percent in 2015 compared to a year earlier. Chenieres exports alone wont amount to much in the grand scheme of things, at least for now. But several more LNG export terminals are under construction along the Gulf Coast. U.S. LNG supply to Europe may have strong geopolitical symbolism, but its current volume impact will be negligible, until the big volumes come on stream in 2018-19, and cargoes will probably go to higher value markets in Latin America and elsewhere, Jonathan Stern of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said in an email to Bloomberg. Related: Eni Hopes To Develop Supergiant Gas Field By 2017 U.S. LNG will have hard time competing with cheaper natural gas from Russia for the European market. Russias state-owned Gazprom said a few months ago that it wants to push gas exports to Europe to record levels and the company is confident that U.S. LNG wont steal market share. Gazprom already supplies about one-third of European gas demand, and the Russian company wants to ramp up gas flows by 2 percent in 2016, with more increases coming in the years ahead. The vision is to continue to hold onto about 30 percent of the European market through 2035, according to a budget obtained by Bloomberg earlier this year. Gazprom argues it can undercut U.S. LNG on price. In a five-year perspective, the cost of U.S. LNG is seen higher than forward prices at the British hub NBP, Alexander Medvedev, a top Gazprom official said in New York in January, referring to a benchmark natural gas price in the UK. Imports of North American gas to Europe will be limited. Related: Oil Majors Lose Faith In The North Sea 100 Shut Downs Looming Not everyone agrees. Earlier this year consulting firm Wood Mackenzie issued an estimate, projecting that 55 percent of U.S. LNG volumes, or about 32 million tonnes per year (mtpa), will be sent to Europe by 2020. While Asia often sees higher LNG spot prices, making it a desirable export destination, transportation costs for U.S. LNG destined for Europe are lower. But Gazprom could block a lot of those cargoes by stepping up export volumes and selling them at prices below what can be achieved by U.S. LNG. Gazprom can export pipeline gas to Europe for $3.50 per million Btu (MMBtu) while American LNG would need prices of $4 to $5/MMbtu. Currently, Gazprom sells gas to Europe at a price of about $5.80/MMBtu on average, but could lower the price to beat U.S. LNG. Of course, viewed another way, the growing U.S. export capacity the mere existence of a competing source of supply should push down the price that Gazprom is able to charge, a victory for Europe and a blow to Gazprom. Without U.S. LNG, its proponents argue, Russia would not be forced to accept lower prices. Its the start of the price war between U.S. LNG and pipeline gas, said Thierry Bros, an analyst at Societe Generale, according to the WSJ. Related: Why Are Bankrupt Oil Companies Still Pumping? Another strategy for Gazprom is to expand pipeline connections to secure more buyers for a longer period of time. The Russian gas giant, along with several international gas companies, is pushing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, an expansion of the existing conduit that connects Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea. The proposed project has become highly controversial, with its sponsors including E.ON, Wintershall, Shell, OMV, and Engie arguing that the pipeline expansion is purely about business. Some governments in Eastern Europe see a more sinister plot to keep them hooked on Russian gas while depriving Ukraine its leverage as transit hub. Ukraines state-owned gas company Naftogaz calls Nord Stream 2 a Trojan horse. On the other hand, if the project meets all legal requirements and the companies want to move forward, European politicians may have a tough time trying to slow it down. Speaking at an event at The Atlantic Council in early April, Friedbert Pfluger a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Washington DC-based think tank, rejected the argument that the Nord Stream did not make commercial sense. Who decides this? Is it government? Politicians? Are we in a planned market society? Do we teach Gazprom and the Russians that we know better as politicians than companies what the future market share and consumption in certain fields are? Pfluger said. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Europe is on track to send security experts to Libya after it successfully installed a so-called unity government that is willing to work with international agencies. A primary goal of this move will be to address the problem of the smuggling of people to Europe. The move is in the planning stage. EU officials have declared that help will be sent should the new government, called the Government of National Accord (GNA), ask for assistance, which it did earlier this week. The GNA has asked for help from the EU in general, with an emphasis on restoring the security of the country and dealing with militant groups. Related: $91 Billion In Capex Cuts, A Serious Hangover For Oil European officials have underlined that Europes involvement in Libya will not be military, but it seems this is a temporary decision. First of all, the GNA is not recognized by other unofficial governments that control different parts of the country, so its stability is questionableat the very best. Second of all, the EU is treading very cautiously lest it should create the impression that it is jumping the gun, as one EU official told Reuters. Be that as it may, realistically speaking a military involvement would be difficult to avoid given the extent of Libyas problems, which are spilling over into Europe through the overwhelming migration that the continent cannot deal with. But Europe is militarily motivated beyond the refugee crisis. Oilwhich one can almost always find below the surface of any military actionis a big motivator. Since Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, Libyan oil output has steadily declined, reaching a paltry 396,000 barrels in January this year. Related: Oil Price Rally Unwinds As Strike In Kuwait Ends The EIA chart below shows production fluctuations in Libya for the last six years, as well as the causes. (Click to enlarge) Now, Libya has been an important source of crude for Europe and its energy industry. Italian Eni, French Total SA, and German Wintershall all have a major presence in the country. Disruptions to supply caused by militant activity are not good for Europe. They are good for oil prices, however, and whats good for oil prices in terms of upward potential, is good for Saudi Arabia. In fact, there are suspicionsnone of them proved and all in the realm of rumor and theorythat the desert kingdom is arming some Islamist groups in Libya precisely to ensure the further disruption of its oil production. In this respect, Europes interests are in direct opposition to Saudi Arabias. Related: Eni Hopes To Develop Supergiant Gas Field By 2017 But swinging back to the other motivating factorrefugeesthe European Union is desperate to get out in front of this, particularly in the wake of its pact with Turkey, which has worked to decrease the influx from the Balkans but increases the likelihood of migrants taking the North African route, via Libya. It is barely feasible at this point to eliminate the North African route without a military intervention, an intervention that will happen if the GNA simply asks for it. At this point the story will be about oil security, oil infrastructure, and getting production back on line. And if we see a return to Gaddafi-era production figures, were looking at production of over a million barrels per day, and a much worse glut than we have right now. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: On April 13, the energy ministers of Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran met in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, where they agreed to create a single, common electricity market. For this purpose, bilateral Russia-Georgia, Armenia-Georgia, and Armenia-Iran projects are being planned to expand the capabilities of the four neighbors energy systems (News.am, April 13). Specifically, the Russia-Georgia project envisages synchronizing the two countries electricity grids. The Georgia-Armenia project aims to build trans-border power lines and will be completed by the end of 2018. The Armenia-Iran project foresees construction of a 400-kilovolt electricity line that will supply Iran with Armenian electricity in exchange for Iranian natural gas being sent to the Yerevan Thermal Power Plant. The project will be finished by the end of 2017. Once all these projects are completed, the electricity networks of the four countries will be able to coordinate an energy capacity of 1,200 megawatts (MW), enough for commercial, barter and any other type of supply (Arka.am, April 13). Needless to say, these energy projects will undoubtedly bring the four countries closer, facilitating not only energy, but also overall economic cooperation and integration in the Caucasus region. Yet, whether or not this is a positive development for its participants will depend on the ultimate results of the aforementioned key energy projects. Related: Expert Commentary: Oil Market Analysis and The Week Ahead At first glance, these projects appear innocuous and even economically beneficial for all sides. But economic cooperation, especially in a region as geopolitically volatile as the Caucasus, never exists in isolation. It tends to be driven by deeperoften politicalcalculations and result in far-reaching geopolitical repercussions, especially when such cooperation involves a revanchist power. Undoubtedly, Russia is and will continue to use any means at its disposal to solidify its influence in the Caucasus and beyond in Eurasia. The recently agreed-to quadrilateral energy market seems designed to advance this goal. First and foremost, it creates a huge space for energy (and hence, economic) cooperation, stretching from Russia to Iran, in which Russia, simply because of its size, will almost certainly dominate. Second, it locks Georgia into energy cooperation, and possibly future energy dependence, with Russia, from which the country managed to detach itself after much hardship from 20042008. Economic benefits of this renewed cooperation with Moscow are far from clear, and the Georgian government has yet to provide any satisfactory explanations for this policy course to the Georgian public. The political rationale also seems rather perplexing, given that 20 percent of Georgias territory remains under Russian military occupation. It is difficult to argue that energy cooperation with Russia will do anything to restore Georgias territorial integrity in the medium or long term. Above all, Russias long-standing record of being an unreliable energy partner to Georgia and Europe more generally (see EDM, March 23, 2006; November 9, 2006; January 16, 2009) gives no guarantee that the past will not repeat itself. Related: What Iron Ore Futures Tell Us About Oil Prices Moreover, the energy project brings Russias satellite Armenia even closer to Moscow, as it locks Yerevan into one more Russian arrangement. Against this background, recent public protests in Yerevan over Russian arms sales to Azerbaijan and, more generally, against Moscows overwhelming influence in Armenia seem powerless, at least in the short and medium term (News.az, April 16; Lragir.am, April 19). Furthermore, the joint electricity project solidifies the Russian-Iranian geopolitical axis in the Caucasus and the wider Middle East. Irans access to the Armenian energy market poses no threat to Moscow, as Armenia seems locked safely within Russias orbit, while the project at the same time provides additional incentives and a venue for cooperation between the regions two main anti-Western powers (Iran and Russia). Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Irans energy cooperation further sidelines Azerbaijan, a participant in every major regional energy project since the mid-1990s. Subsequently, it further increases Azerbaijans sense of regional isolation, which may force Baku to seek closer ties with Moscow. The first signs of this are already evident: Azerbaijan, in fact, became one of the major purchasers of Russian arms in recent years (Azernews.az, March 18). Related: The Real Reason Saudi Arabia Killed Doha Curiously, Moscow sees its position in the South Caucasus as so unassailable that it does not seem particularly worried about how Armenia, Russias key satellite in the region and Azerbaijans archenemy, will react to such intense military arms trade between its main ally and enemy. So far, Moscow seems determined to play a win-win game, wiring up the region with a new electricity infrastructure project, while dealing successfully with one of its main losers, Azerbaijan. Overall, Russia is clearly actively working to change the geopolitical balance of power in the South Caucasus. The latest energy project is the Kremlins most recent step toward this goal. As the project progresses, its geopolitical repercussions will gradually become clearer. However, it is unlikely to be the last vehicle of this type designed to boost Moscows ambitions in the region. By Vasili Rukhadze via Jamestown.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: MOXIE, a new Whitefish Bay restaurant, is slated for a late summer opening in the former Placesetters location at 501 E. Silver Spring Dr. According to owners Tamela Greene and Anne Marie Arroyo, the restaurant will showcase a small but focused menu which includes traditional dishes with innovative twists that are made from locally sourced ingredients. It will also have a full bar which serves up both classic libations and craft cocktails. "The goal is to offer something delicious and different," notes Greene. "Well be focusing on sourcing as locally as possible. And the menu will be reinvented often, with the aim of delighting customers with something surprising and new each time they dine with us." The name MOXIE, Greene notes, is really central to the feel behind the restaurant. "As we were working with Boelter + Lincoln on our branding, it was this one word that made us all smile," she says. "Its fearless. Its about determination and spunk and tenacity. And all of those things will be part of who we are and the sort of food we serve." Pictured: Tamela Greene and Anne Marie Arroyo Currently, the partners say they are looking for a chef whos excited to share their vision for the restaurant and help them to steer the direction of the menu. "Were really excited to find the person whos bold and creative and willing to try new things," says Greene. "Were looking for someone with experience, someone with moxie and a person who shares our passion. One of the must-haves is locally sourced, so established relationships with farmers is something wed like someone to bring to the table." Built by community Arroyo and Greene, who have been married for two years, note that the decision to open the restaurant was born when both women were laid off from their jobs at Harley-Davidson in late 2015. However, it has roots in a long-held dream to own their own business. "That loss of our jobs has truly turned out to be a blessing," notes Arroyo. "Its become an opportunity to reinvent ourselves and give back to the community weve grown to know and love." Arroyo, who spent fifteen years working front-of-house positions in the restaurant industry, says that as she thought about things shes always loved to do, hospitality always seemed to bubble to the top of the list. "When I brought the idea to Tami [Greene], she was all in," notes Arroyo. "So, we decided to look into how we could make it work." Greene, whose experience includes marketing, advertising and customer service expertise, says the couple immediately noted a gap in the number of dining options available in Whitefish Bay. "But rather than jumping in blind," says Arroyo, "we wanted to gauge the feelings of the neighborhood. So, we surveyed people in the area about what they wanted." Results of the survey showed a great interest in expanding the dining options in the area, particularly with restaurants that offered up not only great food, but also impeccable service. "People also noted that they really wanted a place with a great bar," says Greene. "So, thats one of the things well be focusing on is a great bar program." Ultimately, Arroyo says, the restaurant is being developed with the community in mind, and its progress moving forward will continue to be based on feedback from customers. The look and feel Atmosphere will also be part of the equation, notes Greene, who describes the interior as "rugged and lush." She says initial design of the 40-seat restaurant will make use of both industrial components and reclaimed materials. A color scheme of burnt reds and sage greens will pull elements together. "And there are plenty of windows," says Greene, "So there will be lots of natural light. The hope is that MOXIE will provide an intimate setting with a warm, welcoming feeling." Arroyo says that future plans for the restaurant will also include catering, private party space rental, cooking classes and even a food truck or grab-and-go curbside service. Patio seating is also in the plan for 2017. To keep up with MOXIEs progress, follow the Facebook page. To inquire about the open chef position with the restaurant, email info@eatatmoxie.com. Tentative hours for MOXIE are Tuesday through Thursday from 4:30 to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 4:30 to 10 p.m. Lunch is expected to be served Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. After putting together a design team to look at ways to transform The Shops of Grand Avenue, the property's owners Milwaukees Aggero Group and Minneapolis Hempel Companies, who purchased the mall last year today released a series of renderings showing ways the mall could be converted into a mix of large office spaces, retail including a grocery store and more. "Given the size of the property, the development lends itself uniquely to satisfy several market demands," Tony Janowiec, principal of the Aggero Group, said in a statement issued with the renderings, created by The Kubala Washatko Architects. "The propertys large, contiguous floorplates, high ceiling heights, mostly column free space, and its expansive glass roof structure allow for an unprecedented office experience for the large corporate users. In addition, the growing residential density in the neighborhood, including a lack of fresh food options near the Marquette campus, make a grocery store a natural solution. The urban marketplace allows for the best of Milwaukees retail and restaurant experiences to coexist while creating a sense of place and welcoming for every Westown patron." The team included TKWA UrbanLab, Colliers International, Mid America Real Estate Group and NEWaukee, which celebrates YP Week this week. "There are few locations in the city of Milwaukee where the whole community can feel a sense of belonging," said NEWaukee CEO Angela Damiani in the statement. "Our vision for the development is grand. We believe the property will be Milwaukees next must-see destination, where the lines of community and commerce are blended naturally and easily." The renderings suggest a complete makeover of the main entrance at 3rd and Wisconsin, removal of the elevator inside that entrance, the location of a grocery store in the old Linens 'n Things space in the Plankinton Arcade, an alley marketplace outdoors and more. Here are the renderings... 1. Grocery store in the Plankinton Arcade 2. Grocery store in the Plankinton Arcade, looking west 3. Urban marketplace, elevator removed 4. Urban marketplace, looking west from 2nd Street entrance 5. Alley marketplace, off Wisconsin, between 2nd and 3rd Streets 6. Large office use 7. Large office use 8. New 3rd Street entrance 9. New 3rd Street entrance, looking out toward Wisconsin Avenue Early last Thursday afternoon, I finalized my prep for an interview with Frightened Rabbit drummer Grant Hutchison, previewing the groups upcoming Pabst Theater show on April 28. There was no shortage of material surrounding the Scottish indie rock band. After all, itd just released its new album, "Painting of a Panic Attack," a little over a week before a clearly personal record for frontman Scott Hutchison focusing on his struggles acclimating to his move to Los Angeles. By the time we reached our phone interview later that night, however, all that prep seemed besides the point, as the whole music world mourned the sudden, shocking news of Princes death reported mere hours earlier. So Grant Hutchison and I just had to talk about our favorite Prince moments and songs, plus Frightened Rabbits latest work and how having to work an ocean apart was actually a good thing. OnMilwaukee: Your new album is really steeped in the loneliness and feelings of being in a new place because of Scotts experience moving to Los Angeles. What was it like as not only his band member but his brother hearing about these tough, kind of homesick experiences? Grant Hutchison: The end of the last campaign was sort of a pivotal moment in the bands history, in that we all kind of felt a bit fed up and that maybe there wouldnt be another album. After a few months, we all had some time off and some time away from it and realized no, we actually do still want to do this and we need to it, really, more than anything. So we got back together and starting writing again. I think one of the main problems that we had with the last campaign was a lack of communication. Communication really broke down between all of us, probably in particular Scott and myself. So we opened that up again, and that was great. So when these lyrics started coming out, it obviously was quite shocking to hear some of them, but I was aware of it, and I was working through it with him, whereas previously, even back with some of the stuff on "The Midnight Organ Fight," that was me finding out for the first time how deep a hole he was in. So this time around, it had less of an effect on me because we were communicating and speaking about it, and also helping him through it. That was the best thing about this album and these songs; we kind of spoken about it already. As always, hearing Scotts lyrics, the same as everyone else, you sort of get this "oof" that sort of shock. But this time, we were more in touch and therefore I was less paranoid about what was going to happen. Were there any concerns about working on these songs from across the ocean? Hes out in L.A., and you guys are back home in Scotland. Funnily enough, it was actually a lot better because I think its hard to be brutally honest in a room with someone if theres something that theyve recorded that you dont really like or dont think is working or fits well. Which happens certainly, and its hard to take that as well. So having that sort of distance made for a lot more communication in a strange way. Scotts sending stuff over, and instead of having to sit there and give him a reaction or an opinion instantly, you could download it, take it away, listen to it for a couple of days or hours and really digest it a little bit more than you would if you were in a room. And also, generally, if were all together, were in a place that were paying for the studio time or paying for the accommodation, youve got all of that in the back of your mind. Like, we need to come away from here with something, something solid that we can then work on and make a song. That wasnt the case here. We were on a bit more of our own time, so you could take that song or that demo, and work it differently. It actually helped a lot, and we had a lot more time to concentrate on what we were doing and what fits with the song, rather than, "Weve only got a few days in this place; we need to f*cking come out with something," or "We need to move on and do another song." So, in a strange way, it opened up communication more than being in the same room together. A lot of reviews for the album pointed out how the kind of bombast from past albums was a little more restrained this time. Yeah, thats something we spoke about even on the last album, and we completely failed. (laughs) That was just ridiculous; we went completely overboard on the last one. And its fine; it worked out. I think it was the album we needed to make last time. So this time, when we actually sat down and started writing and demoing, we were, like, we absolutely cant do that again this time. What we want to achieve is more space, less of the obvious, bombastic in-your-face, creating a big sound by adding layers literally making it big by piling things on top of each other. So that was something we were very conscious of even during the demo process, of saying, "Stop, thats enough; lets move on, and if something else comes up, fair enough, but lets try not. Lets try to go into the studio with some room and some space to move." Howd you try to do that? The person we really, really need to give the most credit to for that is Aaron Dessner, who produced it. That was a conscious choice for that reason, knowing how much he has to do with his bands sound and not wanting to sound like The National, but being really appreciative and in awe of how they manage to have these moments and have this weight to a song but its so subtle and very spacey and theres not a lot going on. And thats what makes it so brilliant. So choosing him was a conscious decision to push us in that direction. I gotta say, at first, he had a way of working that were not used to. He does put a lot of stuff down and records a lot of stuff and then just moves on. And were like, "Whats happening here? This seems a bit messy." (laughs) Basically, what he does is, at the end, he puts it all together and gets rid of what he doesnt think is necessary and does a good job of editing the stuff thats there into a song. Honestly, its incredible, because we were right up to the last day thinking, "What the f*ck does this record even sound like?" Genuinely we were a bit panicked and worried that wed got this producer in because we thought he was going to give us this sparse-sounding record that wed been trying to achieve for a while, and wed done the exact opposite. But it was just his way of working that we werent aware of. But it was tough, because there are moments in your industry where wed been working to almost a formula in the past of what we know works. There were a few moments in the studio that we couldve done that lets add in a keyboard there, wait a couple bars, add another guitar, wait a couple bars but that wasnt Aarons vision, and that what was great about him. He forced that on us, which was incredible because thats what we needed, someone to go, "No, no, no, it doesnt need another four guitars." Before we go, I have to ask: Do you have any particular Prince memories? I do remember when I was younger weird; you saying that just triggered this I used to dress up in this red wooly hat and a red woolen shawl, and Id look like a raspberry. And then someone, I think one of my moms friends, put on "Raspberry Beret," and I danced around to it. At the time, I had no idea what it was or anything, but that was my first sort of memory. With him now, especially these past two years, youre listening to the radio and youre like, "Is that Prince?" It feels like now that sound has made a comeback, with bands like CHVRCHES and The 1975 doing extremely well. I dont want to say ripped off, because that doesnt give those bands credit, but some of those sounds and the feel has come back. I know they would admit it themselves too, that they wouldnt be anywhere without that guy. Its just shocking. Yeah, that pop/funk/rock sound, the way he gelled all those genres together in such a unique, personal way. There were really few others like him. Thats exactly it. Its not like he was the first person to play it, but that very particular style of pop funk, he just completely nailed it. And with integrity as well, which I think is the hardest thing to do in the music industry: to become such a global artist and star and still keep your integrity and what you believe in intact. Between him and Bowie, those guys were not only themselves, but they were cool being weird and being themselves. Exactly. Those people dont really exist anymore. I certainly cant think of any new artists making waves the same way they did. Longevity is not a thing that a lot of people think about now certainly not on the business side of the industry. Thats really sad, but hopefully well get another icon soon enough. Were due for one. Theyve taken so many from us this year alone. Do you have a particular favorite Prince song? I was actually looking through em today, and its really difficult to pick! I kind of just ended up landing on "Purple Rain." I know its the most obvious one, but how good is that song? Its incredible, and the movie as well. Its gotta be that I think. When the lights were on I saw all those Donald Trump placards in the expensive balcony box seats, so I know that this crowd knows that Marin County is one of the nation's richest counties. (For YouTube reflection of this, click here later.) You Trumpites probably did not know that Mrs. Buck was one of Marin's richest women, because her husband Leonard, who passed in 1953, placed his Belridge Oil Company assets into her Buck Trust. Recently estimated sometimes at over $1 billion, her Buck Trust stipulated that her money could "only be spent in Marin County." As the mid-eighties approached, some meddlesome Oakland attorneys raided the "spend-me-only stipulation," maintaining that communities in Oakland and San Francisco had greater financial needs. White knighted attorneys, from Marin's Frank Lloyd Wright Civic Castle, repelled the assault by stipulating that three major Buck Trust grants would be dedicated to "bettering all of mankind," not just spent on those NIMBY-ISH Marinites. Now, in my wonderful Jesuit high school, I failed a course titled "Understanding God." To help me grasp this simple concept, I was required to do summer school, where to get closer to passing I memorized the chapters dedicated to "Bettering Mankind." The Jesuits further enlighten me by sometimes assigning me to JUG (Justice under God), a Jesuit pedagogical acronym amounting to after-school detention camp. Armed with this Jesuitized camp knowledge on "bettering mankind," I submitted a grant request to the Buck Trust's worldly-wise grant bequeathers to compete for one of those three "benefiting all of mankind" grants. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Ah".the Donald. I mean Donald J. Trump, Republican Presidential frontrunner candidate. Not the one from "The Apprentice" fame even though they are one and the same. Just when you thought this pea-brain giant of a Republican politician could surprise no more, Bang! He's done it again. Fresh from his New York Trumpfest and his now boring monotony about "making America great again," as if such greatness was lost in the bogs of Queens where sundry Mafioso park their victims, he's now accusing his erstwhile nemesis Ted Cruz of bribing delegates. The Donald in his most Sarah Palinesque manner (she whose head is devoid of even air; the sing-songy alarmist from Alaska) continues to create his own unique brand of Trumplucy -- a strain of infectious lunacy specifically contagious just by standing near to him or allowing a strand of that god-awful hair style to fall on you. Thing is Trump and Cruz are the two carriers of the 2016 Republican Presidential election plague. Raccoons and 'possums beware! Donald "Mexico wallathon" Trump is a class act. "I'll build a wall, a long wall, a wall separating Mexico and America! Folks, trust me I'll lock out the rapists, criminals and Pope Francis"and Mexico will pay for the wall." And of course he'll make America great again. You and I know that the Donald speaks from his ass, er, heart (heh, heh sorry got my human biology mixed up). Why the man is a regular "speechifier!" Plus, he's utterly knowledgeable about EVERYTHING -- including the Holy Bible! Listen to his pearls of wisdom! "Well, I think many. I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That's not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what's happening to our country, I mean, when you see what's going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us. And they laugh at our face, and they're taking our jobs, they're taking our money, they're taking the health of our country. And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you." Who the f**k could ever compete with such eloquent speech delivery? Don Quixote? No wait, he was a bit mad and attacked a bunch of windmills because he thought they were giants. The Donald's clearly a cut above the addled knight. Wait, wait I've got it! Bring back George W. Bush who once, just as eloquently as The Donald, famously told America and the world that he'll "bring the suiciders (bombers I presume) to justice." Apparently, Good Ole W had the powers of resurrection being a born again Christian and all. Or he was just plain bat s**t crazy. But children, I digress from the very serious discussion about the Donald calling the Republican nominating process "rigged" and that Lyin' Ted Cruz was bribing delegates. Maybe the Donald's right. After all we don't know what's in his brain and I'm no shrink. Though I do think that any shrink would be hard pressed to follow the Donald's line or trend of thought. He's the "International Man of Mystery" but no Austin Powers. A little mix of Dr. Evil and he's had it in for Ted Cruz ever since he lost his mojo to Marco Rubio and been trying to find it ever since. Personal Trump Note to Trump self: measure everybody's hand in my campaign. Anybody with bigger hands than me is out. Buy tight fitting underpants to display man parts and if that does not work always walk with a green banana that I can stick in my boxers. Also do pants (the British call them trousers) inspection (men over 18 only). That ought to do it. Now for the first time in US Presidential elections history we have a new campaigning technique pioneered by the Donald -- whining and griping. You lose a state -- blame others for your loss, cry foul, accuse the Tooth Fairy and Bugs Bunny of stealing who knows what. Don't understand how an electoral or campaign process works? Suck you little, sorry, BIG thumb in your pie-hole and blame the media. Works every time! And when all else fails, do everything to turn a presidential election into a version of "The Apprentice" since you, by any and all measures, are a political apprentice. Now I hear that the Donald is going to get presidential, he'll read speeches more, and be more measured in his criticism as a true politician. Crap! Where's the f***ing fun in that? This presidential election is about to go "low energy!" Donald, dear boy, we can't have that, come on man! You're the life of the thing. Can you imagine sermonizing Ted Cruz upstaging you on national television just because some fool tells you to "act presidential." What the f**K that means anywhere? Cruz wants to run on the 23rd Psalm integrated with his "Trust Ted" BS. Trust Ted? The guy who wants to pass a law ordering women to wear their dresses below the knees? What's a bonafide pervert to do? Why, the man wants to make sure that there is a prayer in every school because God's his campaign manager. I don't know about you but I think that you have a right and obligation to keep Ted Cruz from bringing back Ole Hatpin Mary and the vagina cops who want to check for broken hymens as part of God's plan for the women of America. He wants to make America Virgin Again, that's why he hates Planned Parenthood. You on the other hand have earned your stripes and have had your fair share of dalliances in the sack. You and Ole Raunchy Bill of Clinton fame have a lot in common -- you both just love you mammas family! Cruz is a square and he must have brought a flashlight and a tape measure to his honeymoon (please don't ask me what these two tools were used for; you ask him Donald). And don't get angry with me for referencing Bill of fellatio under the Oval Office desk fame, I'm not comparing you two. But I hear you man, you're getting ready to show Hillary your manhood and your right to be president. You have the edge -- she does not have a shlong, and as you made abundantly clear before, as far as you were concerned the President of the United States MUST have serious man parts in his pants. Such a criteria is a no brainer. How else can the US president "measure up" with Putin and company? Hillary just can't compete, no siree! Wait a minute, did you measure Bill's hands? You can't take a chance not knowing if he'll out shlong you. And you sure as hell can't ask Hillary. What about Ted Cruz? Donald you just gotta measure; you just gotta know! Besides, just as you'll compel Mexico to build and pay for the wall you can compel them to "drop to their knees." Donald you can weigh in on the bathroom/transgender thing. You can't trust Ted Cruz on this, his idea of a transgender person is a Humpty Dumpty look alike. I believe that judging from your statements on the virtues of having been blessed with big hands and a corresponding big you-know-what (though we'll have to speak to Melania about that) you could care less where anyone peed. Just so long as their stream was TREMENDOUS AND YUGE. That's what counts right? Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Fighting for the Mentally Ill at City Hall Step By Step, a consumer run drop-in center for the mentally ill caused quite a stir in the small upstate New York town where it's located. Causing a stir was not their intention. Expanding services was the plan in 2014 when the nonprofit organization purchased a vacated elementary school in a residential neighborhood. The school wasn't the community's only abandoned, oversized building sitting in a residential area. Officials realized even before the drop-in center purchased the school that its antiquated zoning laws needed to be changed. They'd begun the process when backlash from citizens over the prospect of some residents suffering from a mental illness becoming their neighbors erupted. Discrimination reared its ugly head in the community that has been home to the state run St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center since the 1880s, providing good paying jobs with State benefits and retirement for generations of families. A few years earlier the psychiatric center was on the chopping block. The community came together. A task force was formed to save the facility. It was made clear early on their main concern was the continuation of inpatient care for the mentally ill and not those good paying jobs. Yet, from the outrage displayed over the drop-in center moving into the abandoned school, it became obvious that the concern for continuation of care meant care only provided inside that psychiatric center. Once those patients are released, the rules and the caring seem to change drastically. As I sat and listened to the outrage meeting after meeting I was amazed by the lack of understanding of an illness that has been part of the community's history. The mentally ill have provided salaries-paid for college-paid for vacations and cars and groceries and heat and lights and taxes yet when the tables turn and the mentally ill want to become a part of the community outside the psychiatric center, they're greeted with a discrimination that echoes ignorance and cruelty. A few examples of the discrimination spoken at meetings and written in Letters to the Editor are as follows: "They're not much of a threat if they take their meds." "We must be concerned for the safety of our children. The potential harm mental or physical is too great to be ignored." "I object to its locating in my neighborhood where there are many children. This is not the place for them. I am fearful of living so close to them. They'll be able to see me in my house. I refuse to pull the shades. I feel extreme fear. I won't be able to sit on my front porch or work in my yard. Medicated clients walking in the road or even worse, coming up on my porch causes me great fear." "Mental health people belong somewhere else. Put them where they can be supervised." "Why would I want this mental health facility in my neighborhood? I've worked hard keeping my home and property up." "This is nothing against the mentally ill. I've known some mentally ill. But a school is three blocks away. Ninety percent of those children walk to school." "Did you catch the shooting in NYC the other day? The one where the schizophrenic (certified) attacked the female cop with a hammer on the mean streets? His third or fourth attack in as many days they say. Also a bit off his meds they say. This drop-in center serves schizophrenics." "Being in a program assures nothing. They are voluntary. Read the daily paper and you'll see that program members go off the rails all the time." "We're not against them. We're against them living in our neighborhood." After a long, drawn-out battle of regulations and rules being changed in the middle of meetings and voters continuing to spew hatred, City officials denied Step By Step's application in May, 2015. No reason was given. But that was not the end of the story. Step By Step decided to seek justice both for their members who'd become victims of discrimination and for the mentally ill in other communities facing similar circumstances. The law firm of Cooper Erving & Savage LLP located in Albany, NY was hired. Litigation Associate Carlo A. C. de Oliveira represented Step By Step in both town hall meetings and in the Federal Court of the Hon. David N. Hurd, Northern District of NY. On April 13th, Judge Hurd ruled in favor of Step By Step, ordering the City to approve Step By Step's zoning application in order to establish a mental health facility consistent with its application. In the Judge's own words, "And while obtaining public comment on a matter of public concern is commendable, the City Council may not cede its decision making authority to the public especially when a significant portion of public opposition was based on improper biases towards Step By Step's clients." Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (Image by billy3001) Details DMCA Is there any reason we voters should care which of you is better at lacerating the other when what we need to know is how well you will be able to fight our real opponents after the convention and after the election? What sense does it make for you two to argue over your respective policy programs when, unless you can get the Republican obstructionists out of the way, all that's at stake in your arguments will prove to have been just which of your agendas the Republicans will block? If you're serious about getting any of your proposals enacted, shouldn't you be looking down the road at the obvious roadblock that's in the way, and taking steps now to remove them? You've spoken, Hillary, about your being good at reaching across the aisle--as if that means you'll be able to move us forward. Do you really think that you can reach across that aisle with any more openness to finding common ground than President Obama displayed for years, hoping to work together with Republicans to get things done? That got him nowhere, because they were interested not in getting things done but in making him fail. Do you have any reason for thinking your "reaching across the aisle" would go any better? And you, Bernie, have done a great service in calling attention to some important truths about the rigging of our economy and of our politics by the corrupting influence of Big Money. But why aren't you educating the American public about how it is the Republican Party that has been systematically blocking all efforts to level the playing field? (It's not the "billionaire class" you should be denouncing -- voters can't take power from them directly -- but their GOP political minions whose power the people can take away.) And while you've made a big point of stressing that the overturning of Citizens United is your major litmus test for any Supreme Court appointee, why aren't you educating the American public about how that widely despised Supreme Court decision was the product of a five-justice majority, all of whom were appointed by the Republicans? Given that you've got every political incentive to wrest control of Congress away from the Republicans, why aren't you campaigning in a way that gives you the best chance of accomplishing that? My fear is that the answer may be that you are both reflecting the weakness that has beset the leadership of the Democratic Party for the past generation, a weakness manifested in the continuing failure to adequately confront to the Republican Party as it has been breaking bad. " Failure in the 90s to denounce and stand up against the right-wing attempt to destroy the Clinton presidency. " Failure during the W presidency to fight even to censure, let alone impeach, a president who committed half the impeachable offenses (I would estimate) perpetrated by over two centuries of American presidents. " Failure during the Obama presidency to return fire with an intensity and determination that even remotely matched that of the Republicans with their continuous assaults on this Democratic president. It should not be difficult now -- after all the Republicans have done -- to go after them effectively. It should not be difficult to demonstrate to the American electorate that, if they want the nation to move forward, in a variety of ways the majority desires, they've got to take power away from this Republican Party, which has deliberately chosen to hobble the people's government rather than get anything accomplished. It should not be difficult to demonstrate that this Republican Party continuously fails what might be called "the founders' test." That test would consist of asking: When our founders drew up the Constitution, would they have regarded the way the Republicans have been conducting themselves in our constitutional system as an acceptable example of what they had in mind? This Republican Party would fail that founders' test again and again. In particular, there's no way that the founders would have regarded "If the president is for it, we had to be against it" as passing that test. A nation disabled and adrift in the face of serious challenges is hardly what they had in mind. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Article originally published in the Orlando Sentinel. By Robert Weiner, Lile Fu and Ben Lasky On Friday, China announced that it plans to land a rover on Mars by 2020. The Russian Federal Space Agency is working with the European Space Agency . Every major power in the world has some form of interest in Mars. Like 1961, when Russia first rocketed Yuri Gagarin into orbit and the U.S. was afraid that Russians would beat us with the first actual man on the Moon, the race is on. The U.S. should again set its priorities to be able to claim that it first stepped foot on the Red Planet. Unfortunately, we are not. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, Americans dreamed of the possibilities in spaceflight. We were certain that in the not-too-distant future, an astronaut would land on Mars. However, 47 years after the moon landing, the U.S. is no closer to that goal. The U.S. still has its eyes on Mars -- at least that's what the government leads us to believe. Astronaut Scott Kelly was back on Earth after spending 340 days in space on March 2. His year in space was part of a NASA study involving both him and his twin brother, Mark, a former astronaut, on space travel and the human body in space versus on Earth. This was in preparation for a theoretical Mars mission. The problem is, there has been no mission to Mars. For nearly 50 years and counting since we landed on the moon, there has been a manned mission-to-orbit circling 200 to 300 miles above us, and an unmanned mission to other planets. Mark Kelly and Col. Terry Virts, a former Air Force pilot, attended a "breakfast from space" presentation in person on the mission to Mars at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 15. Mark's brother, Scott, also spoke at the event, live from the International Space Station. There is a "lack of political will" to generate public support for funding, according to Kelly and Virts. We have spent countless trillions of dollars on failed wars with wasted results, but we have spent nowhere near what we need to accomplish manned science in other parts of our universe. This could have amazing givebacks in resources and knowledge. "Space is just a blip on the political radar," writes Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee and the editor of NASA Watch. NASA's budget is less than half a percent of total federal spending, which hit $3.7 trillion in the 2015 budget year. NASA's budget has stayed at less than 1 percent of the federal budget for more than 30 years after reaching its peak of almost 4 percent under President Nixon, when we stepped on the moon. NASA advocates have tried. However, the Constellation human-spaceflight program was first removed from the 2010 NASA budget request, and has disappeared since, even though President Obama predicted a U.S.-crewed orbital Mars mission by the mid-2030s, preceded by an asteroid mission by 2025. Liberals typically block space programs to better spend money "at home." According to Virts, technology has a lot of promise in a journey to Mars. He also said that based on the progress between 1961 and 1969, from Earth orbit to manned lunar landing on Mars is not far-fetched. But it can be done only with a green light from Congress and the White House. "We must think of [space activities] as part of a continuing process and not a series of separate leaps," Nixon stated on March 7, 1970. Subsequent presidents put Mars exploration into their presidential calendars -- and then ignored the funding. Ford saluted the landings of the twin Viking robotic explorers on Mars for life exploration in 1976. Carter, a US Navy nuclear submarine engineer earlier in his life, in 1978 sought more details, such as what mountains and valleys look like on Mars instead of rolling surfaces. George H.W. Bush announced the well-known "Space Exploration Initiative" in 1989, to go back to the moon and launch a manned mission to Mars (did not happen). Clinton emphasized searching for further evidence of life on Mars after the announcement of potential primitive bacterial life in Martian origin by NASA scientists in 1996. George W. Bush announced new plans of a human return to the moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars. We would not recommend lining up at the launching pad. The central question inspiring Earthbound humans remains: Is there, or was there ever, life elsewhere in the solar system? Earth is the only planet that possesses life that we know. But that does not pass our common-sense test, which is why millions either did see UFOs or believe they did. Whether life is possible on another planet attracts scientists and everyone else. And then there is commercialization. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ran for president and called for space colonization. Maybe that's not the best reason to go there. Neil Armstrong famously declared that his landing was, "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." That joy of pure science and exploration is a great hope. However, since those first steps, the U.S. has barely crawled toward anywhere else. Robert Weiner is a former spokesman for the Clinton White House and House Government Operations Committee. Lile Fu of Beijing, China, is policy analyst at Solutions for Change. Ben Lasky is senior policy analyst at Solutions for Change. Link to original:http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-mars-mission-042416-20160423-story.html We all are facing with the growing HIV/Aids epidemic and sad things in many countries where no free drugs are provided, the problem is worse. Thus,many positives patients have been deprived of CD-4 Cell Count facility, and ARV drugs. Antiviral drugs is expensive and an effective. And also, anti HIV/AIDS vaccine is still not available. Globally, patients only take the drugs when they can afford them. And also, they cannot afford the costly diagnosis, and treatment plans. Many medicines still are not available. Dr Mark Nelson, director of HIV services at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, said "patients were unlikely to be denied the drug because of its high cost". When the cost of the medicine is high, the poor patients can't buy them. Even the check-up charge is costly. We need to cut down the prices. Price of ART had to be brought down to make it accessible for the poor. As we know If CD-4 count is persistently below 500, the immune system is considered to be weak and increasing risk of infections. It is very important to have CD-4 count measured regularly to monitor the immune system. It also helps monitor the effectiveness of any drugs the patient is taking. Dr Edward Telzak, director of the Aids programme at the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in New York, says "The medicines often don't make people feel well. Gastro-intestinal upsets, diarrhea, weakness, rashes, and some people have trouble swallowing the large numbers of pills". Jack Summerside from the UK charity Terrence Higgins Trust said: "Fuzeon is an important extra treatment option for people with HIV, particularly for those who have used up other treatments available. "But it is costly and even more difficult to take than existing HIV medications". WHO expert Don Sutherland said "If you don't give the drugs to HIV/AIDS patient, you have 100 percent failure. What's wrong with saving 50 to 60 percent of those lives?" This is a human rights issue. In addition, there are only few doctors who treat AIDS patients in many countries. The high risk groups like sex workers, their clients, injecting drug users or migrant workers need to get the drugs first. Even Ex UN Secretary General Kofi Annan encouraged "leaders everywhere to demonstrate that speaking up about AIDS is a point of pride, not a source of shame." Lack of access to ART is a global health emergency. The New York Times reported -- that there are too many companies making too many generic anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV. Two types of HIV diagnostic tests are currently in the many countries: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests and rapid tests. ELISA tests are the most widely used HIV diagnostics and are the most accurate. However, ELISA tests are fairly complicated, require laboratory support, and do not provide immediate results. Alternative rapid tests, which provide results in minutes and do not require laboratory support. Thus drug companies have been accused of putting their own profits. HIV infection rate is up. It's unfortunate that we are unable to provide affordable care. Quotations and Truth Tradition is accessed through language--at first, orally from one generation to the next, eventually through texts written for all of posterity. Thus the Oral Law becomes the volumes of the Talmud, of the Catholic Magisterium, of the Islamic Hadith or Sunnah. This written tradition, moreover, cannot be absorbed at once in its entirety. Small doses are necessary; hence, a portion of Scripture is recited on the day of rest (Friday, Saturday, or Sunday). The bridge connecting most persons with the written tradition is therefore the quotation; that is, a small passage of the text that addresses a particular issue. a shelf of antiquarian quotation books (Image by QuotationsCentral.com) Details DMCA The quotation takes on larger importance when the task is to provide an answer to a burning issue. The definitive role of a quotation in establishing the "truth" is what differentiates a "traditional" or theocentric society from a "modern" or secular society . Thus in a traditional setting, a Rabbi or a Catholic Theologian or Muslim Ayatollah says that, on the basis of some textual evidence, A=B; another one says no, on the basis of different textual evidence, or of the same text read differently by the light of another text, actually A=C. After the merits of both positions are canvassed, the matter is settled by the citation of authoritative commentators (e. g., Maimonides, Aquinas), or, when necessary, the Biblical text itself. That ends the discussion, with the quotation from what tradition considers sacred writing being the ultimate proof. In a secular, rationalist, modern setting, the resolution of a problem is achieved through reasoning, which usually includes observation of natural phenomena, as well as experience or experimentation, which involves distorting natural phenomena. As Bacon pithily put it in an age of judicial torture, an experiment is torturing nature to force her to confess the truth. Any quotation is consequently merely an accessory or an adornment, reinforcing what has already been established by other means. Text alone--like the tradition in which it originated--no longer has the authority to dictate any answer to a problem. There are, in fact, no sacred texts. Put differently, the quotation from a holy text puts one in contact with divine precepts and offers the goal of all inquiry--the "truth." The quotation in a secular setting, on the other hand, puts one in contact with the wisdom of the human species, which is not at all necessarily the "truth." In the first instance, tradition being binding, quotation is absolutely necessary; in the second case, tradition being dubious, quotation is optional. The quotation does not prove anything definitively--proof having been provided by either reason and/or experience--but it does provide the sense that one is working within an intellectual community, that the offered answer accords with the answer others have independently arrived at, whether through experience, intuition, or imagination. The modern use of a quotation merely means that the rational answer is not out of touch with common sense and that the person presenting that modern answer is fulfilling the human need--man being a herd animal--to be in accord with other thinking individuals. Instead of the comfort of being on God's side, we moderns, in proving a thesis and then quoting some thinker, have the comfort of being on the side of (presumably) thoughtful fellow human beings. Instead of God, we have our secular community. Instead of divine marching orders, we have human norms. To give a summary of this matter is to say that, in a traditional approach, the sacredness of a text gives magical powers to words and thus to quotations. But in the desacralized modern view, text is supplemented by experience (experiments and surveys, which eventually become that modern quasi-holy writ--statistics), and words are replaced by numbers. As the power of tradition and of intellectual authority is diminished in modern society, the role of text and quotation is consequently marginalized. So it is that Socrates (in this regard anticipating "modernity"), pushing a line of reasoning, says, "It comes in fact to what Euripides said"; "And shall we believe Hesiod when he says"?" "Certainly we shall"--i.e., poetry echoes and corroborates reasoning but does not prove. And Galileo, who inaugurated modern science, explicitly said that poetry--and even Scripture as traditionally taught --- has no role to play in scientific discourse. The old physics relied heavily on Aristotelian texts; the new physics says, "nullius in verba [on the basis of no one's say so]." Hence quotation goes the way of authority, and hence Scripture or Aristotle, which used to settle disputes, must be reinterpreted to accord with experimental evidence, must play second fiddle to sense experience and mathematics. The change in atmosphere, beginning with Luther, can be seen in a devout worthy like Milton. The most recent scholarly biographer of Milton, Barbara Lewaski, remarks: "He uses much of his preface to construct an elaborate narrative about writing his divorce tracts first and then discovering various confirming authorities: 'I owe no light or leading receav'd from any man in the discovery of this truth'" (other than the Bible, of course). One of his tracts "concludes with a historical survey that reviews the status of divorce in law and theory from early Christian times to the present," which he offers "only to satisfy 'the weaker sort' who rely on authority." This is not a matter of religious or moral or scientific issues exclusively. We see the two approaches clashing in the legal system. Conservatives ask what was the intention of the Founders in writing the Constitution (specifically nowadays the Second and Fourteenth Amendments); hence their ready use of quotations from the writers of the Constitution as dispositive. Liberals, on the other hand, say that the Constitution must take account of changing circumstances, and the intention and wording of the Founders must therefore be interpreted broadly; hence authoritative-sounding quotations from long ago take a back seat to the findings of recent experience (e.g., statistics). Both sides are, of course, right, and that is why we have democratic politics and why we have the perpetual pendulum swing between--the rotation in power of-- the two sides. Conservatives, in short, treat the Constitution as their religious counterparts treat the Bible--inerrant, unchanging, literally, while Liberals treat it as Reform Jews and liberal Protestants treat the Bible: loosely. The resulting modern aporia is nicely dramatized by a passage from Jewish lore about the great disputes between the rabbis of the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. Wearying of the inability to settle the matter, the rabbis decided at last on a defining course of action: to leave the matter for God to settle. The response that came from on high was that--both Houses were right. Here was a traditional quotation with sacred origins but without practical use. Reprinted from Jonathan Cook Blog Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted in Israel's military courts each year, says rights group A jabbing pain in his shoulder and thigh roused Obada from his sleep at 3am. In the half-light, the 15-year-old could make out eight masked men surrounding his bed, their rifles pointed at him. "I felt terrified," he said of the experience of being arrested in February from his home in the village of al-Araqa, near Jenin in the northern West Bank. Obada is one of more than 100 Palestinian children who, in recent months, have found themselves dragged from bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, according to children's right groups. Testimonies like Obada's feature in a new report, No Way to Treat a Child, compiled by Defence for Children International -- Palestine (DCIP), a group monitoring Israeli violations of Palestinian children's rights. The 440 children currently in military detention are the highest total since the Israeli army started issuing figures in 2008 -- and more than double the number detained this time last year. The rights group says that, despite promises two years ago from the Israeli army to phase out night raids following international condemnation, in practice they are used as routinely as ever. During his arrest, Obada said he was hit with a rifle butt, blindfolded and his hands tied with a plastic cord that cut into his flesh. "The soldiers dragged me out of the house without allowing me to say goodbye to my family and without telling me why and where they were taking me," he said. Over the next fortnight, according to Obada, he was repeatedly beaten. Indignities included being locked overnight in a small toilet cubicle and assaulted with a taser when he protested. For 12 days, his only break from solitary confinement was to be taken from his cell to an interrogation room where he was tied tightly to a chair, slapped and threatened. He was repeatedly questioned about his ties to two school friends, Nihad and Fuad Waked, who had been killed a few days earlier during an attack on soldiers. Obada's account of his arrest and detention accord with a pattern of abuse similar to other children's testimonies, said Ivan Karakashian of DCIP. Three-quarters of children reported being physically assaulted during their detention. In nearly 90 percent of cases, parents had no idea where their child had been taken, and in 97 percent of interrogations, no parent or lawyer was allowed to be present. Some 60 percent of children were then transferred to prisons in Israel, in violation of international law, where, typically, they waited three months for their first family visit, as relatives struggled to get entry permits to Israel. Such abuses contrast strongly with the rights guaranteed to children both in Israel and in Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Presidential candidate Ted Cruz may not be as bombastic as presidential candidate Donald Trump, but his ideas are no less concerning. For all his faults, at times Trump gets it right as when he rails against automakers moving some of their operations to Mexico: Mexican joblessness will be ameliorated by this action, while America's job market gets hobbled. Americans are understanding people! They forgive presidential candidates on the campaign trail their rhetorical excesses. Among these excesses are promises about tax cuts to spur robust economic growth. They assert this ignoring the empirical evidence to the contrary as there appears to be no correlation between low tax rates and rapid economic growth. For instance, when marginal tax rates were high in the post-WW II era, more than 90 percent, economic growth averaged 4 percent. However, when marginal tax rates were lowered to the neighborhood of 35 percent, economic growth averaged 2 percent. This is not difficult to calculate--data on tax rates and economic growth are available from the government, so if you doubt this positive relationship between tax rates and economic growth rates you can compute it yourself. No need to rely on the self-serving narrative of the political class. It is not clear why Cruz believes tax cuts for the rich "would create economic growth not seen in 30 years." (See ThinkProgress.org) Cruz would have a flat 10 percent rate on individuals and a 16 percent rate on business. He is proposing to convert the mildly progressive tax system into a regressive one where people's tax bite falls with income. The current top marginal tax rate on individuals earning over $415,050 is 39.6 percent. On the other hand, the bottom (lowest) tax rate is 10 percent. The top corporate rate 39.1 percent--arguably the highest among developed countries. Apart from the fact that there is no empirical evidence Cruz's plan would lead to faster economic growth, such a tax cut will have two effects. First, it will give the rich a tax break of 29.6 percent. Nothing for people in the 10 percent income tax bracket would change. Second, an instantaneous effect of the cut will be growth the income inequality gap. According to Bloomberg, the gap between CEO compensation is about 500 times the income of nonsupervisory employees. Wages have remained relatively flat: One has to assume labor productivity has not risen, but CEO productivity jumped by a factor of 500. Further some people have argued that the unearned income should avoid taxation because of double taxation. But such a move would exacerbate the inequality gap. The inequality gap was not always so daunting: in the 1950s, the ratio between workers' pay and CEOs' was 20 to 1. Since then, this ratio has ballooned 1000 percent. "Today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950." Moreover, income inequality can lead to social unrest: strikes and demonstrations for higher worker compensation like a $15 minimum wage. Recently around the country service workers, low-wage workers, with the support of the Service Employees International Union organized huge protests in favor of raising the minimum wage $15. Bernie Sanders was considerably more ambitious with his tax plans for the country were he to become president. First, he wants to make substantial changes to the estate tax laws. In terms of the estate tax, the bulleted quotes below show: Start of quote, Sanders' bill does the following: " Lowers the estate tax exemption level from $5.4 million to $3.5 million for individuals and from about $11 million to $7 million for couples. " Increases the marginal tax rate to 45 percent on estates between $3.5 million to $10 million, 50 percent on estates between $10 million and $50 million, and 55 percent on estates over $50 million. " Creates a new billionaire surtax of 10 percent that would only impact 530 billionaires who are worth a combined $2.6 trillion. " Ends loopholes allowing billionaire families to set up dynasty trusts to avoid taxes. " Closes loopholes used by the wealthy to avoid estate taxes. " Protects family farms and conservation easements. Positive reaction to Sanders bill was widespread: In addition to addressing the estate tax, Sanders had no compunctions about returning to the 90 marginal tax rates of bygone years. Altogether, along with advocating free education and healthcare, Sanders' approach would help to close the income inequality gap. Large cuts in taxes to benefit the rich defies economic logic and seems to be part of the doctrine of trickle down economics. This is what a flat tax does presidential candidate on the right advocate to jolt the economy to faster rates of growth. However, if the present value of a prospective investment opportunity's net payoff is positive, i.e. profitable, why would an astute, discerning rich person need an incentive in the form of a tax cut to take up that investment? If the present value of an investment opportunity is negative, then the tax rate does not matter, unless as when the companies pay no tax and receives tax subsidies from the government. Implicit in the flat tax progressive tax debate is trickle-down versus trickle-up basis for economic growth. Historically, the evidence appears to be on the side of trickle up--minimum wage earners are more likely to spend their minimum wage increases and help economic growth than the rich who presumably have all the consumer goods they want. A 90 percent marginal tax might removes the incentive of the rich to hide their money in secret offshore accounts. Instead, they might try to avoid the tax by expensing wages (paying their employees more) and investing in their plants (expansion, innovation, etc) to grow their business domestically. Further, historical evidence on low taxes versus high taxes seems to support the former. This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: At this website, the book offers are coming fast and furious these days. Think of it as a late winter and spring flurry. The latest is for a new book by a TomDispatch regular we much admire: Rebecca Gordon. She's written a particularly readable volume with a well-deserved hot-button title: American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her piece today demonstrates just why such trials were justified (and why, of course, for the leaders of the "sole superpower" they will never happen). For a donation of $100 or more ($125 if you live outside the United States), you can get a signed, personalized copy for yourself and lend this website a helping hand staying afloat in a crazed universe. Check out the details at our donation page. Tom] Let's take a moment to think about the ultimate strangeness of our American world. In recent months, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have offered a range of hair-raising suggestions: as president, one or the other of them might order the U.S. military and the CIA to commit acts that would include the waterboarding of terror suspects (or "a hell of a lot worse"), the killing of the relatives of terrorists, and the carpet bombing of parts of Syria. All of these would, legally speaking, be war crimes. This has caused shock among many Americans in quite established quarters who have decried the possibility of such a president, suggesting that the two of them are calling for outright illegal acts, actual "war crimes," and that the U.S. military and others would be justified in rejecting such orders. In this context, for instance, CIA Director John Brennan recently made it clear that no Agency operative under his command would ever waterboard a suspect in response to orders of such a nature from a future president. ("I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure.") These acts, in other words, are considered beyond the pale when Donald Trump suggests them, but here's the strangeness of it all: what The Donald is only mouthing off about, a perfectly real American president (and vice president and secretary of defense, and so on) actually did. Among other things, under the euphemistic term "enhanced interrogation techniques," they ordered the CIA to use classic torture practices including waterboarding (which, in blunter times, had been known as "the water torture"). They also let the U.S. military loose to torture and abuse prisoners in their custody. They green-lighted the CIA to kidnap terror suspects (who sometimes turned out to be perfectly innocent people) off the streets of cities around the world, as well as from the backlands of the planet, and transported them to the prisons of some of the worst torture regimes or to secret detention centers ("black sites") the CIA was allowed to set up in compliant countries. In other words, a perfectly real administration ordered and oversaw perfectly real crimes. (Its top officials even reportedly had torture techniques demonstrated to them in the White House.) At the time, the CIA fulfilled its orders to a T and without complaint. A lone CIA officer spoke out publicly in opposition to such a program and was jailed for disclosing classified information to a journalist. (He would be the only CIA official to go to jail for the Agency's acts of torture.) At places like Abu Ghraib, the military similarly carried out its orders without significant complaint or resistance. The mainstream media generally adopted the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "harsh techniques" in its reporting -- no "torture" or "war crimes" for them then. And back in the post-2001 years, John Brennan, then deputy executive director of the CIA, didn't offer a peep of protest about what he surely knew was going on in his own agency. In 2014, in fact, as its director he actually defended such torture practices for producing "intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives." In addition, none of those who ordered or oversaw torture and other criminal behavior (a number of whom would sell their memoirs for millions of dollars) suffered in the slightest for the acts that were performed on their watch and at their behest. To sum up: when Donald Trump says such things it's a future nightmare to be called by its rightful name and denounced, as well as rejected and resisted by military and intelligence officials. When an American president and his top officials actually did such things, however, it was another story entirely. Today, TomDispatchregular Rebecca Gordon catches the nightmarish quality of those years, now largely buried, in the grim case of a single mistreated human being. It should make Americans shudder. She has also just published a new book, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes, that couldn't be more relevant. It's a must-read for a country conveniently without a memory. Tom The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn't The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah By Rebecca Gordon The allegations against the man were serious indeed. * Donald Rumsfeld said he was "if not the number two, very close to the number two person" in al-Qaeda. * The Central Intelligence Agency informed Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee that he "served as Usama Bin Laden's senior lieutenant. In that capacity, he has managed a network of training camps... He also acted as al-Qaeda's coordinator of external contacts and foreign communications." * CIA Director Michael Hayden would tell the press in 2008 that 25% of all the information his agency had gathered about al-Qaeda from human sources "originated" with one other detainee and him. * George W. Bush would use his case to justify the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program," claiming that "he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained" and that "he helped smuggle al-Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan" so they would not be captured by U.S. military forces. None of it was true. And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah -- with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials -- is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror. So who was this infamous figure, and where is he now? His name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, but he is better known by his Arabic nickname, Abu Zubaydah. And as far as we know, he is still in solitary detention in Guanta'namo. A Saudi national, in the 1980s Zubaydah helped run the Khaldan camp, a mujahedeen training facility set up in Afghanistan with CIA help during the Soviet occupation of that country. In other words, Zubaydah was then an American ally in the fight against the Soviets, one of President Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." (But then again, so in effect was Osama bin Laden.) Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Y4VRA (Image by USVRA.US) Details DMCA The 2016 presidential race is evolving into one of the most exciting (and dangerous) political events in American history. With an avowed socialist challenging the New Democrats and a narcissist billionaire confronting the establishment Republicans there will be, undoubtedly, tens of millions of disgruntled voters following the election. If Hillary Clinton manages to secure the Democratic nomination, millions of unhappy--primarily young--supporters of Bernie Sanders will be looking for a cause. If Donald Trump loses in the primary, or is defeated in the general, his angry followers will be ready to revolt. If no candidate obtains a majority vote in the Electoral College, and the president and vice president are selected by Congress, the entire electorate will be marginalized--and thoroughly disgusted. United by the willful failure of their government to respond to their needs, all of these people are being primed to take action. What can be done to mobilize and energize the anger and discontent of the People for effective political change? Young people around the world have been at the vanguard of recent mass political movements. Are the students of America willing and capable of leading a peaceful uprising in the United States to compel the constitutional changes required to transform their government? Around the World. One of the most amazing things to come out of the Colombian civil war was the Children's Mandate, an election in support of peace organized by the children of a nation being torn apart by war. Starting with a gathering of just 26 young people, 2.7 million children voted on October 25, 1996 for 12 basic rights including justice, a clean environment, peace, love, and family. One year later, the children were joined by 10 million adults who voted for peace. Commencing in Tunisia, the Arab Spring youth movement swept through the Middle East between 2010 and 2012, resulting in changes in the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. A number of other nations in the region also experienced massive protests. Although Western governments played a role in its instigation, the Ukrainian revolution in February 2014 commenced with massive protests against the government and led to a near civil war before the government capitulated and its leadership fled the country. The new government immediately sought closer ties with the European Union, and Russia began a process of destabilization that continues to this day. Following England's surrender of its territorial rights to Hong Kong in 1997, the city-state was accorded a special status allowing it to retain its laws, currency, and local government, while the People's Republic of China assumed responsibility for military and diplomatic affairs. Differences over the nomination process for its legislative council and chief executive led to a massive youth-led peaceful movement in 2014. Organized by students, the Umbrella Revolution occupied the city center and defied the Chinese government for more than two months. Most recently, on Sunday March 13, 2016, 3.5 million Brazilians participated in anti-government rallies across the nation seeking the ouster of the current president and arrest of the previous leader. Confronted with a deep economic recession and widespread political corruption, the spontaneous protests were diverse and consisted of a broad range of people fed up with their "horrible" government. Would such a protest movement be possible in the United States? Back in the U.S.A. Commencing in America and England and spreading throughout the Western world, the counterculture of the Sixties brought beneficial social and political changes in the United States--many of which are now being challenged and reversed by the economic and political elite that has seized power in America. Primarily focused on its opposition to the war in Vietnam, the counterculture insurgency mostly involved disaffected middle-class young people who were disenchanted with the direction of the nation and its government. In addition to substantial improvements including Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, Voters' Rights Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, the movement also forced the end of the military draft in 1973. Most amazing, for purposes of this paper, was the 26th Amendment in 1971 which lowered the voting age to 18. Having built momentum throughout the Sixties, the proposal to allow 18-year-olds to vote in all national elections was passed by Congress on March 23, 1971. The Amendment was sent to the states and ratified four months later. The illusion of prosperity resulting from Reaganomics, the arrival of the "Me" and "Gen-X" generations, and general disinterest in government all contributed to an overall decline in political involvement, particularly by young people. This began to change during the presidential election of 2004, when Vermont Governor Howard Dean challenged Senator John Kerry, the establishment candidate, for the Democratic nomination. Although he failed to secure the nomination, Dean pioneered Internet-based fund raising from small donors and net-roots organizing--which Barack Obama took advantage of four years later in his campaign. Democratic victories for the White House and Congress in 2008 contributed to the rise of the Tea Party, which initially opposed Obama's plan to provide financial aid to bankrupt homeowners. The ultra-conservative grassroots movement organized opposition to the entire administration agenda and began to influence the election of local, state, and federal Republicans. Current presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz is a darling of the Tea Party. Inspired by the Arab Spring movement and concerned about social and economic inequality, primarily progressive young people began to "occupy" public places around the world in 2011. The best known of these in the United States was Zuccotti Park in New York City, and within months there were occupations in many American cities and towns. Committed to nonviolence and united by the slogan, "We are the 99%," the struggle relied on emerging web technologies and social media to spread its message; however, there was an aversion to any structured organization. Relying on "participatory democracy," working groups considered most issues, and decisions were collectively made by the general assembly at each location. A primary criticism of the movement was the absence of clearly defined goals, and, without leadership, most occupations ended within a few months. Although the Tea Party and Occupy movements never gained significant political traction on their own, both have had an influence on the 2016 presidential election, particularly the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Each in their own way, using both the new and old media, have organized campaigns that challenge the established political parties. The 2016 Campaign. Previously an independent who caucused with the Democratic Party, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders became a candidate in the Democratic primary as a Democratic Socialist determined to focus attention on the failures of militarism and big business to address the true needs of the nation. Initially believed to have a role only in pressuring Hillary Clinton--the establishment candidate--toward more progressive positions, Sanders' campaign made full use of the organizational structure pioneered by Howard Dean, and the Internet funding strategies of Barack Obama, to create a highly effective national campaign. Eschewing contributions from political action committees, lobbyists, corporations, and financial institutions, Sanders is now consistently raising more money than Clinton, primarily in small amounts from millions of individual donors. While Clinton has a lead in the delegate count, particularly when the establishment super delegates are included, Sanders has at this point won eight of the last nine primaries and is leading in national polls. Continued success could force a brokered convention in Philadelphia during the last week of July. At the minimum, we can expect a massive demonstration of support for Sanders and the principles he has espoused, both inside and outside the convention. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. Reprinted from Counterpunch The day after the impeachment vote in the lower house of Brazil's congress, one of the leaders of the effort, Senator Aloysio Nunes, traveled to Washington, D.C. He had scheduled meetings with a number of U.S. officials, including Thomas Shannon at the State Department. Shannon has a relatively low profile in the media, but he is the number three official in the U.S. State Department. Even more significantly in this case, he is the most influential person in the State Department on U.S. policy in Latin America. He will be the one recommending to Secretary of State John Kerry what the U.S. should do as the ongoing efforts to remove President Dilma Rousseff proceed. Shannon's willingness to meet with Nunes just days after the impeachment vote sends a powerful signal that Washington is on board with the opposition in this venture. How do we know this? Very simply, Shannon did not have to have this meeting. If he wanted to show that Washington was neutral in this fierce and deeply polarizing political conflict, he would not have a meeting with high-profile protagonists on either side, especially at this particular moment. Shannon's meeting with Nunes is an example of what could be called "dog-whistle diplomacy." It barely shows up on the radar of the media reporting on the conflict, and therefore is unlikely to generate backlash. But all the major actors know exactly what it means. That is why Nunes' party, the Social Democracy Party (PSDB), publicized the meeting. To illustrate with another example of dog-whistle diplomacy: On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military kidnapped the country's president, Mel Zelaya, and flew him out of the country. The White House statement in response did not condemn this coup, but rather called on "all political and social actors in Honduras" to respect democracy. This dog-whistle signal worked perfectly; most importantly the coup leaders and their supporters in Honduras, as well as every diplomat in Washington, knew exactly what this meant, even as statements condemning the coup and demanding the restoration of the democratic government came pouring in from around the globe. Everyone knew that this was, in diplomatic code, a clear statement of support for the coup. The events that followed over the next six months, with Washington doing everything it could to help consolidate and legitimize the coup government, were pretty much predictable from this initial statement. Hillary Clinton later admitted in her 2014 book, "Hard Choices," that she worked successfully to prevent the return of the democratically elected president. Tom Shannon has a reputation among Latin American diplomats as an amiable fellow, a seasoned career foreign service officer who is willing to sit down and talk with governments that are at odds with U.S. policy in the region. But he has had a lot of experience with coups. Some of Hillary Clinton's released emails shed additional light on his role in helping to consolidate the Honduran coup. He was also a high-level State Department official during the April 2002 coup in Venezuela, in which there is substantial documentary evidence of U.S. involvement. And when the parliamentary coup in Paraguay took place in 2012 -- something similar to what is happening in Brazil but with a process that impeached and removed the president in just 24 hours -- Washington also contributed to the legitimation of the coup government in the aftermath. (By contrast, South American governments suspended the coup government in Paraguay from MERCOSUR, the regional trading bloc, and UNASUR [the Union of South American Nations]). Shannon was ambassador to Brazil at that time, but was still one of the most influential officials in hemispheric policy. The U.S. State Department responded to questions about Nunes' meetings by saying, "This meeting had been planned for months and was arranged at the request of the Brazilian embassy." But this is irrelevant. It merely means that Brazilian embassy staff were, as a matter of diplomatic protocol, involved in arranging the meetings. This does not imply any consent by the Rousseff administration, nor change the political message that the meeting with Shannon sends to the opposition in Brazil. All of this is of course consistent with Washington's strategy in response to the left governments that have governed most of the region in the 21st century. They have rarely missed an opportunity to undermine or get rid of any of them, and their desire to replace the governing Workers' Party in Brazil with a more compliant, right-wing government is fairly obvious. This column originally appeared in Huffington Post. Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts Website The Third World War is currently being fought. How long before it moves into its hot stage? Washington is currently conducting economic and propaganda warfare against four members of the five-bloc group of countries known as BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Brazil and South Africa are being destabilized with fabricated political scandals. Both countries are rife with Washington-financed politicians and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Washington concocts a scandal, sends its political agents into action demanding action against the government and its NGOs into the streets in protests. Washington tried this against China with the orchestrated Hong Kong "student protest." Washington hoped that the protest would spread into China, but the scheme failed. Washington tried this against Russia with the orchestrated protests against Putin's reelection and failed again. To destablilze Russia, Washington needs a firmer hold inside Russia. In order to gain a firmer hold, Washington worked with the New York mega-banks and the Saudis to drive down the oil price from over $100 per barrel to $30. This has put pressure on Russian finances and the ruble. In response to Russia's budgetary needs, Washington's allies inside Russia are pushing President Putin to privatize important Russian economic sectors in order to raise foreign capital to cover the budget deficit and support the ruble. If Putin gives in, important Russian assets will move from Russian control to Washington's control. In my opinion, those who are pushing privatization are either traitors or completely stupid. Whichever it is, they are a danger to Russia's independence. Eric Draitser provides some details of Washington's assault on Russia ... of Washington's attack on South Africa ... and of Washington's attack on Brazil. For my column on Washington's attack on Latin American independence, see here. As I have often pointed out, the neoconservatives have been driven insane by their arrogance and hubris. In their pursuit of American hegemony over the world, they have cast aside all caution in their determination to destabilize Russia and China. By implementing neoliberal economic policies urged on them by their economists trained in the Western neoliberal tradition, the Russian and Chinese governments are setting themselves up for Washington. By swallowing the "globalism" line, using the US dollar, participating in the Western payments system, opening themselves to destabilization by foreign capital inflows and outflows, hosting American banks, and permitting foreign ownership, the Russian and Chinese governments have made themselves ripe for destabilization. If Russia and China do not disengage from the Western system and exile their neoliberal economists, they will have to go to war in order to defend their sovereignty. Articles Listed By Date List By Popularity Search Title Date Between Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 and Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 Page 1 of 3 First Last Back Next 2 3 View All SHARE Possible Recurrence of OAS Electoral Fraud in Bolivia Bolivia's general elections on Sunday, October 18, could again be threatened by the involvement of the Organization of American States (OAS), Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot warns. Thursday, October 15, 2020Bolivia's general elections on Sunday, October 18, could again be threatened by the involvement of the Organization of American States (OAS), Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot warns. (2 comments) SHARE Joe Biden Championed the Iraq War: "It's Worth the Price" Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting Preside Tuesday, March 3, 2020Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting Preside (3 comments) SHARE Bernie is Not a Radical - He is a Pragmatist Bernie Sanders understands that politics is about compromise, getting the best deal you can while keeping your eye on the ultimate goal. Wednesday, February 12, 2020Bernie Sanders understands that politics is about compromise, getting the best deal you can while keeping your eye on the ultimate goal. SHARE What Does the Future Hold for US-Bolivia Ties? One hundred and thirty-six economists and statisticians said the OAS charges were false. Members of the US Congress demanded answers from the OAS for their false accusations. Thursday, February 6, 2020One hundred and thirty-six economists and statisticians said the OAS charges were false. Members of the US Congress demanded answers from the OAS for their false accusations. SHARE Trump's Trade War With China: Is It About to End? The latest de-escalation of the trade war with China with exemptions from some tariffs on both sides has left markets uncertain as to whether it will end before there is serious escalation. But if I were managing a hedge fund, I would bet on it. Wednesday, October 2, 2019The latest de-escalation of the trade war with China with exemptions from some tariffs on both sides has left markets uncertain as to whether it will end before there is serious escalation. But if I were managing a hedge fund, I would bet on it. (1 comments) SHARE Return of the 'Pink Tide' in Argentina? What are we to make of Argentina's surprise election results on August 11, which jolted pollsters and analysts alike, and roiled the country's financial markets? In the presidential primary for the country's October election, the opposition ticket of Alberto Ferna'ndez trounced President Mauricio Macri by an unexpected margin of 15.6 percent. Thursday, August 22, 2019What are we to make of Argentina's surprise election results on August 11, which jolted pollsters and analysts alike, and roiled the country's financial markets? In the presidential primary for the country's October election, the opposition ticket of Alberto Ferna'ndez trounced President Mauricio Macri by an unexpected margin of 15.6 percent. SHARE Tariffs Are a Bad Response to an Imaginary Border Crisis The most up-to-date measure that we have of migrants crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico without authorization is the Custom and Border Protection's "apprehensions/inadmissibles." Over the past five years (fiscal years 2014 to 2018) this number has actually fallen, Monday, July 1, 2019The most up-to-date measure that we have of migrants crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico without authorization is the Custom and Border Protection's "apprehensions/inadmissibles." Over the past five years (fiscal years 2014 to 2018) this number has actually fallen, SHARE Congress is finally pushing the US to withdraw from Yemen. It's about time The resolution is already co-sponsored by the Democratic leadership, including Nancy Pelosi and the incoming Democratic chairs of the most important House committees. Then the Senate can pass a companion concurrent resolution to force the president to withdraw, and follow up through defunding offensive US activities in Yemen. Friday, November 30, 2018The resolution is already co-sponsored by the Democratic leadership, including Nancy Pelosi and the incoming Democratic chairs of the most important House committees. Then the Senate can pass a companion concurrent resolution to force the president to withdraw, and follow up through defunding offensive US activities in Yemen. (5 comments) SHARE When will America stop participating in Yemen's genocidal war? The 1973 War Powers Resolution is still the law of the land, and the courts have not overturned any part of it. There are officials in the "national security state" who believe that the president can decide without Congress to participate in a war. But that is not the law, or is it consistent with the US Constitution. Thursday, November 15, 2018The 1973 War Powers Resolution is still the law of the land, and the courts have not overturned any part of it. There are officials in the "national security state" who believe that the president can decide without Congress to participate in a war. But that is not the law, or is it consistent with the US Constitution. SHARE Trump Was Handed a Major Defeat on Tuesday -- And There Will Be More The Democrats' victory in the House is important not only in the immediate sense that it will provide a check on Trump but also because it could mark the beginning of the end of this nightmare. Trump's strategy for political survival (which appears to be practically his only concern) is to continuously throw red meat to his supporters. Saturday, November 10, 2018The Democrats' victory in the House is important not only in the immediate sense that it will provide a check on Trump but also because it could mark the beginning of the end of this nightmare. Trump's strategy for political survival (which appears to be practically his only concern) is to continuously throw red meat to his supporters. (4 comments) SHARE Trump Administration Tries to Torpedo Venezuelan Elections as It Intensifies "Regime Change" Efforts In recent weeks, the Trump administration has stepped up its efforts at "regime change" in Venezuela. In the past, Trump himself has even mentioned military action as a possible option, but the most recent moves appear more likely to be implemented, and some are already operational. Sunday, March 4, 2018In recent weeks, the Trump administration has stepped up its efforts at "regime change" in Venezuela. In the past, Trump himself has even mentioned military action as a possible option, but the most recent moves appear more likely to be implemented, and some are already operational. (14 comments) SHARE Trump Doubles Down on Sanctions and Regime Change for Venezuela Trump and his allies in the EU and the right-wing governments in Argentina and Brazil, as well as the fanatical Secretary General of the OAS, want to make sure that a recovery never happens. And despite all their blather about human rights and democracy, it is not a peaceful strategy they are promoting as they take measures to increase Venezuelans' suffering in the hopes of provoking the overthrow of the government. Monday, November 13, 2017Trump and his allies in the EU and the right-wing governments in Argentina and Brazil, as well as the fanatical Secretary General of the OAS, want to make sure that a recovery never happens. And despite all their blather about human rights and democracy, it is not a peaceful strategy they are promoting as they take measures to increase Venezuelans' suffering in the hopes of provoking the overthrow of the government. (1 comments) SHARE Trump Sanctions on Venezuela Will Cause More Harm The Trump administration announced new, unprecedented sanctions against Venezuela on Friday that are designed to cut off financing to Venezuela. The Trump team pretends that the sanctions are only directed at the government. But as any economist knows, this is clearly false. By starving the economy of foreign exchange, this action will harm the private sector, most Venezuelans, the poor, and the vulnerable. Thursday, August 31, 2017The Trump administration announced new, unprecedented sanctions against Venezuela on Friday that are designed to cut off financing to Venezuela. The Trump team pretends that the sanctions are only directed at the government. But as any economist knows, this is clearly false. By starving the economy of foreign exchange, this action will harm the private sector, most Venezuelans, the poor, and the vulnerable. (3 comments) SHARE NAFTA has Harmed Mexico Much More Than a Wall Will Ever Do The wall would cause significant environmental as well as economic damage, if it is ever built. But it is the long-term damage that Washington has helped visit upon the Mexican economy that has brought us to the point where a US president could even propose such a monstrosity. Tuesday, February 14, 2017The wall would cause significant environmental as well as economic damage, if it is ever built. But it is the long-term damage that Washington has helped visit upon the Mexican economy that has brought us to the point where a US president could even propose such a monstrosity. (2 comments) SHARE Intel agencies ask Americans to "trust, don't verify" in new Cold War The media has become so distracted with the festivities at America's new 1950s theme party, hating on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia like there's no tomorrow, that the lack of evidence has become almost irrelevant to the big media conversation. Wednesday, January 11, 2017The media has become so distracted with the festivities at America's new 1950s theme party, hating on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia like there's no tomorrow, that the lack of evidence has become almost irrelevant to the big media conversation. SHARE Trump's China Policy is Already a Disaster We will soon see if the new US presidential administration actually wants to do anything to preserve US manufacturing jobs. In the meantime, picking a fight with China over Taiwan is about the worst way it could start out, short of actual warfare. Wednesday, December 28, 2016We will soon see if the new US presidential administration actually wants to do anything to preserve US manufacturing jobs. In the meantime, picking a fight with China over Taiwan is about the worst way it could start out, short of actual warfare. (1 comments) SHARE Breaking From Neoliberalism: Why the Democrats Need New Leadership Partly because of Bernie Sanders' campaign, the Democratic Party produced its most progressive platform ever this year. But this was not enough to convince swing voters that Hillary, given her record, would implement it. All this is not to ignore the fact that Republicans are reliant on voter suppression, and gerrymandering for the House of Representatives in order to get the power they now have. Sunday, November 27, 2016Partly because of Bernie Sanders' campaign, the Democratic Party produced its most progressive platform ever this year. But this was not enough to convince swing voters that Hillary, given her record, would implement it. All this is not to ignore the fact that Republicans are reliant on voter suppression, and gerrymandering for the House of Representatives in order to get the power they now have. (6 comments) SHARE Obama's Campaign for TPP Could Drag Down the Democrats Obama has most likely gotten the message that a failure to go all out for the TPP would cause some big money to shift from the Democratic to the Republican party. The most powerful corporations in the country, as well as many actors in the "national security state" want this agreement very badly. It is a coalition of everybody who is anybody. Except for the people. Thursday, August 25, 2016Obama has most likely gotten the message that a failure to go all out for the TPP would cause some big money to shift from the Democratic to the Republican party. The most powerful corporations in the country, as well as many actors in the "national security state" want this agreement very badly. It is a coalition of everybody who is anybody. Except for the people. (21 comments) SHARE The End of Trump Sanders has announced the formation of Our Revolution, which plans to continue organizing around the issues that he raised in his presidential campaign, as well as recruit political candidates "from school board to the US Senate." This will be the legacy of the 2016 presidential race, long after Trump has taken his "very nice, long vacation." Tuesday, August 16, 2016Sanders has announced the formation of Our Revolution, which plans to continue organizing around the issues that he raised in his presidential campaign, as well as recruit political candidates "from school board to the US Senate." This will be the legacy of the 2016 presidential race, long after Trump has taken his "very nice, long vacation." (1 comments) SHARE Is the Republican Party a Legitimate Party? It is pretty clear that voter disenfranchisement is the bedrock of Republican power. As such, the legitimacy of the Republican Party is questionable. More broadly, this country needs voting reform that can put an end to this form of "American exceptionalism," just as the civil rights legislation of the 1960s put an end to the disgraceful era of African-American disenfranchisement. Tuesday, August 2, 2016It is pretty clear that voter disenfranchisement is the bedrock of Republican power. As such, the legitimacy of the Republican Party is questionable. More broadly, this country needs voting reform that can put an end to this form of "American exceptionalism," just as the civil rights legislation of the 1960s put an end to the disgraceful era of African-American disenfranchisement. Page 1 of 3 First Last Back Next 2 3 View All " " Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against voter ID laws, Sept. 13, 2012 in Philadelphia. William Thomas Cain/MCT via Getty Image In the U.S., the right of adult citizens to vote and elect public officials is one of their most hallowed principles or at least, that's what is taught in middle-school civics class. In reality, though, there's another tradition that goes back even further in American history: finding ways to keep people from voting, whether through arcane laws or open intimidation. In some ways, voter suppression, as such efforts are called, goes back to the earliest days of the country. As historian Jill Lepore wrote in a 2008 New Yorker article, only 6 percent of the U.S. population was eligible to vote in the first presidential election in 1789. That's because most states only allowed white male landowners to vote. Advertisement In the 1800s, the property requirements started to fade, and over the next century, racial minorities and women legally got the right to vote. But, local and state governments came up with a variety of ways to limit who actually got to participate in elections, whether it was requiring poll taxes, literacy tests or changing the dates and times for polling stations. Efforts to restrict voting continue even today. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based think tank and civil rights advocacy organization, since 2010 alone, 25 states have passed new laws making it more difficult to vote. Here are 10 ways that people have been kept from voting, both in the past and the present. Image: Simulation of renewable energy share in the United States, 2013-20260. AR5 450 ppm is a transition necessary for the U.S. to support the 450 ppm mitigation pathway in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Colored lines and prediction bands show mean and standard deviations around modeled scenarios, across different possible election results. Politics plays a hand in how, and whether, a nation transitions to renewable energy. But despite the significant effects of policy on technological progress, few growth projections for renewables take political dynamics into account. A new computational model by SFI Omidyar Fellow Marion Dumas and colleagues adds a layer of complexity to the existing models, by forecasting 50-year carbon emissions under differing political scenarios. "Models that try to understand the dynamics of these [energy] technologies don't incorporate political competition," Dumas explains, "but political competition interacts with the technology's dynamics. Certain actions taken today will affect the actions possible in the future." The researcher's model frames empirical data on technological progression in the context of two competing political partiesa "green party" and the "brown party" with differing degrees of commitment to their constituents. Among other findings, their model shows that winning an election early on has significantly greater impact on the 50-year trajectory than a later win, and a strong commitment from one party can force the less committed party to compromise. The article, published in Ecological Economics, overlays 50-year political scenarios onto the 450 ppm carbon limit set by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). According to Dumas, the United States is "still far from a situation where the green party is driving the dynamic, and supports a committed electorate. That's what's needed to avoid overshooting the IPCC's limit." Explore further Divided parties rarely win presidential elections, study shows More information: Marion Dumas et al. Political competition and renewable energy transitions over long time horizons: A dynamic approach, Ecological Economics (2016). Marion Dumas et al. Political competition and renewable energy transitions over long time horizons: A dynamic approach,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.01.019 Provided by Santa Fe Institute Professor Majid Bahrami of Simon Fraser University's School of Mechatronics Systems Engineering is developing a sustainable solution to the global water shortage by more efficiently generating drinkable water from the atmosphere. Credit: Marianne Meadahl/SFU University Communications Researchers in Simon Fraser University's School of Mechatronics Systems Engineering are tackling the world's water crisis by pulling water out of the air. Professor Majid Bahrami, the recipient of a 2016 Canada Clean50 Award, has spent the past three years working with his PhD student, Farshid Bagheri, to find a sustainable answer to the world's growing water needs. Their result is the patent-pending Hybrid Atmospheric Water Generator (HAWgen), which generates clean drinking water from the atmosphere through the integration of sorption, refrigeration and water filtration systems. The system provides water generation even in hot and dry conditions and uses both waste heat and renewable energy sources. Developed in Bahrami's Laboratory for Alternative Energy Conservation at SFU's Surrey campus, the atmospheric water generation technology will be marketed through their company, WATERGENICS Inc. The company was recently shortlisted for a BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) 2016 Technology Impact Award in the most-promising pre-commercial technology category. Winners will be announced on June 7. The company is cited for "being positioned to introduce the next generation of atmospheric water generation technology, and products in both custom-engineered systems and proprietary standard off-the-shelf solutions." The HAWgen is the latest venture for Bahrami, whose research focuses on improving the efficiency of heating and cooling systems for use in vehicles, electronics and buildings. He plans to target the product for applications in various resource industries, such as mining, oil and gas and even disaster relief, as well as consumer use, by the end of 2017. "Our vision is for this technology to not only make a difference as we face the ongoing issue of global water shortage, but to do so sustainably for future generations," says Bahrami. The technology will also play a role in the City of Surrey's newly unveiled BioPod Initiative, a regional hub for agri-tech innovation, where researchers can test high tech solutions to improve the efficiency of year round food production. The HAWgen will be central to providing a sustainable source of water for plant growth in the facility. "Majid has earned more than $10 million from funding agencies for his alternative energy research," said Uwe Glasser, dean of SFU's Faculty of Applied Sciences. "He is creative and clearly a leader in this important area. As a faculty member, he has provided an opportunity for many undergraduate and graduate students to challenge themselves and push the boundaries of their knowledge in sustainable energy." Fast Facts: The HAWgen system is environmentally friendly. Bahrami says the water is sustainable because whatever is extracted from the atmosphere's nearly 13 trillion cubic meters of renewable fresh water is replenished naturally, thanks to ocean evaporation. The HAWgen is able to generate water in nearly all climates, unlike more conventional atmospheric water generatorsthose rely on hot and humid environments and can fail when humidity drops. The HAWgen can handle dry climates and can be powered by sustainable energy sources. It works by pre-conditioning the incoming air stream using an adsorption system, then channeling it into a refrigeration unit for condensation. The generated water is then filtered. The researchers' pre-market prototype can generate up to five times the amount of water per day than conventional atmospheric water generation systems. Explore further Water recovered from whey can be used for clean-in-place procedures Provided by Simon Fraser University Onthophagus (Proagoderus) rangifer Klug. Credit: Olga Helmy One of the largest and most important groups of dung beetles in the world evolved from a single common ancestor and relationships among the various lineages are now known, according to new research by an entomologist from Western Kentucky University. The study by Dr T. Keith Philips, recently published in the open access journal Zookeys, provides important insights into the evolution and diversity of these dung beetles, which make up about half of the world's dung beetle fauna. The two tribes studied, the onthophagines and oniticellines, evolved from a single common ancestor and are found worldwide, except for Antarctica. These dung beetles make up the vast majority of species and dung beetle biomass in many ecosystems, feeding on mammal dung. Dung beetles are well known to many people because many species are colorful and active in the daytime. Additionally, many taxa have unusual behaviors, such as making and rolling balls of dung away from a dung pile. Often thought of as nature's garbage collectors, the important ecosystem service offered by dung beetle helps recycle nutrients, reduces parasites, and can even help seeds germinate. Cladogram of the tribes Oniticellini (left) and Onthophagini (right). Credit: T. Keith Philips While the two tribes studied do not have species that create balls, they instead have evolved many other diverse behaviors. This includes species that do not feed on dung but specialize on fungi, carrion, and dead millipedes. Many species that evolved from the same common ancestor even live in close association with termites and ants, where they might be feeding on nest debris. "This is one of the most important groups of dung beetles that finally has a hypothesis on how they evolved and diversified on earth," Philips notes. "The evolutionary scenario can now be tested and refined in the future with more data." Although relatively well known, this group still may have as many as 1,000 undiscovered species left for scientists to document. Explore further Two brand new dung beetle species from montane grazing sites and forests in Mexico More information: T. Keith Philips, Phylogeny of the Oniticellini and Onthophagini dung beetles (Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae) from morphological evidence, ZooKeys (2016). Journal information: ZooKeys T. Keith Philips, Phylogeny of the Oniticellini and Onthophagini dung beetles (Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae) from morphological evidence,(2016). DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.579.6183 Provided by Pensoft Publishers In Long Beach, Calif., six city employees were fired after people complained items had gone missing from inside impounded cars. In Philadelphia auditors found safety issues in a dozen rental properties as well as more than $350,000 in unpaid taxes. And in Richmond, Va., a city employee is on the hook for nearly $10,000 in bogus expenses. All of these cases were brought to auditors' attention by tipsters using hotlines or fraud apps, which allow smartphone users to anonymously report government waste, fraud and abuse. Cities and states have long had hotlines for reporting misuse of government resources. But mobile apps bring a new level of sophistication. They allow people to submit photos and videos in support of their claims; and in some cases auditors can use the app to respond and ask for follow-up information, all while maintaining a tipster's anonymity. Sixty-four percent of American adults now carry a smartphone, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. (The Pew Charitable Trusts funds both the Pew Research Center and Stateline.) Because reporting waste, fraud and abuse through an app is so easy, people are more inclined to do so, auditors say. "Smartphones are becoming a ubiquitous tool, and I think we need to meet people where they are," said Dave Yost, the state auditor who in 2014 introduced a fraud app in Ohio. The cost of developing the apps varies. Ohio was able to develop its app in-house, while Richmond spent about $10,000 for outside help. Pittsburgh's app was unveiled this month. It cost $20,000 to develop and will cost $3,000 for upkeep, but it also allows users to access a range of databases on city contracts and campaign contributions. In many places, it's hard to discern how much of a difference the apps are making compared to traditional hotlines because auditors don't keep track of where tips originate. Many of the apps allow users to call a fraud hotline from the app. So far, relatively few citizens have downloaded the apps. In Long Beach there have only been 160 downloads. In Ohio there have been 673. In Philadelphia, which in 2011 developed one of the first fraud apps, there have been 2,015 downloads. Whether tips are received through a hotline or an app, governments have received valuable information. Tips from residents led the Philadelphia Controller's Office to investigate 261 properties. Thirty-six of the properties had altogether 135 code or licensing violations, including fire code issues and poor maintenance. One property was cited as being in imminent danger of collapse. Beyond safety issues, several of the properties had unpaid property and water taxes totaling just under $357,000. "The amount of interaction we get is more of a benefit than the cost to develop the app," said Brian Dries, the spokesman for the city controller, of the app's $9,000 price tag. After citizens in Long Beach complained about items going missing from towed and impounded cars, six city employees were fired. And an audit brought about changes to the way the Towing and Lien Sales Division takes inventory and accounts for money. Not all tips result in reports, and many are difficult to investigate. In Philadelphia and Long Beach, about a quarter of all tips are flagged as not providing sufficient evidence, so the tips do not get more than an initial review. "A majority of individuals like to remain anonymous, but if they don't provide enough information and if they don't provide a contact, it's hard for us to follow up on what we're investigating," Philadelphia's Dries said. In many cases, tips are referred to other government agencies, to follow up on a personnel matter or to investigate something within that agency's jurisdiction. In Ohio, tips about drug dealers or a photo of someone's Facebook post offering to sell food stamps are forwarded to the agencies that can take action, Yost said. But the state is obligated to look into tips that make accusations against city officials, regardless of how implausible they may seem, Yost said. That includes a recent tipster's observation that though his town was on the verge of bankruptcy, the mayor was seen buying lottery tickets at multiple gas stations around town. In many cases, the tips come from government employees. A study of 58 tips to the Long Beach City Auditor's Office hotline found that 40 percent of callers were city employees and 36 percent were residents. The remaining 24 percent chose to remain anonymous. Though government employees are often protected by whistleblower laws, many may still be hesitant to go through official channels to report any problems they see. In Richmond, where a fraud app was introduced in 2012, Craig Johnson, investigations manager for the City Auditor's Office, estimated that 70 percent of the tips his office gets are from government employees, based on the wording of the complaint or the specificity provided. "Some people are making legitimate complaints, but some people have not so legitimate complaints and just want to get someone in trouble," Johnson said. "Sometimes they leave out facts. Perhaps they just want to inconvenience someone by having them looked into. But if they report something false we can't go after them because we don't know who they are." One recent tip, however, led city investigators to nearly $33,000 in questionable, unjustified or fraudulent spending by a Richmond employee who, among other things, overcharged the city for travel expenses. That includes billing the city for a conference in Portland, Ore., that she never attended, traveling instead to Seattle. The employee pleaded guilty and will have to reimburse the city $9,556. The tipster is eligible to receive an award of 10 percent of the recovered funds, up to $5,000. Explore further Taxi drivers block streets in Buenos Aires after Uber launch 2016 Stateline.org Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, farmer Nikolai Chubenok stands near horses in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) On the edge of Belarus' Chernobyl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning "Stop! Radiation," a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk. Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nation's food safety limits. That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm useand in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin. The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding "impossible," insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits. Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 2,200-square-kilometer (850-square-mile) ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems, suggest that Chernobyl's troubles can be consigned to history. "There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation?" said Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm just 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of the shuttered Chernobyl site, and two kilometers (a mile) from the boundary of a zone that remains officially off-limits to full-time human habitation. Chubenok says he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese on site. In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, a worker feeds horses at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) His milk is part of the Milkavita supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90 percent of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. The World Bank identifies Russia as the major market for Belarusian food exports, which represent 15 percent of the country's export economy. Since rising to power in 1994, President Alexander Lukashenkothe former director of a state-owned farmhas stopped resettlement programs for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone and developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock. The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians not directly struck by fallout had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living near the prohibited zone left voluntarily. One of the most prominent medical critics of the government's approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship. Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply. "We have a disaster," he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. "In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country." In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, farmer Nikolai Chubenok stands near horses at a farm in the village of Vorotets,on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture. The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium. The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognized unit of measurement for radioactivity. The Minsk lab informed the AP that the milk sample contained 37.5 becquerels. That radioactive isotope is, along with cesium-137, commonly produced during nuclear fission and generates most of the heat and penetrating radiation from nuclear waste. When consumed, scientists say strontium-90 mimics the behavior of calcium in the human body, settling in bones. Milkavita chief engineer Maia Fedonchuk rejected the findings. In this photo taken from the footage on Monday, April 11, 2016, an equipment for milking cows with milk is fixed on a wall at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land, just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) "It's impossible. We do our own testing. There must have been a mix-up," she said, adding they test samples from every batch of milk they receive from Chubenok and do an "in-depth" analysis every six months. She said the plant's own lab analysis indicates its overall milk supply contains an average of 2.85 becquerels per kilogram. Health officials say the danger level posed by low levels of radioactive isotopes depends greatly on length of exposure and individual physiology. Notably, the regional free-trade bloc that includes Belarus and Russia permits higher levels of strontium-90 in goods of up to 25 becquerels per kilogram, still lower than that detected in the AP-commissioned test. The question is whether anyone in authority is positioned to identify the true level of risks in produce from farms on the frontier of Belarus' prohibited zone. The deputy director of Belarus' Institute of Radiobiology, Natalya Timokhina, said Belarus permits food producers to conduct their own food safety monitoring and lacks the lab equipment necessary to identify the presence of americium, which is estimated to be present in about 2 percent of Belarus' top soil and is expected to remain a health risk for another 270 years. "One-time ingestion of contaminated food is not very dangerous," Timokhina said. "What's dangerous is the accumulation of radionuclides in the body." In this photo taken from the footage on Monday, April 11, 2016, a worker feeds cows at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land, just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Ausrele Kesminiene, a doctor in the cancer research unit of the World Health Organization, said the consumption of radioactive food is linked chiefly to the development of cancer in the thyroid, a gland in the neck that produces body-regulating hormones. Thyroid cancer is typically not fatal if diagnosed early. WHO officials say they are dependent on reports from sister agencies in Belarus to alert them to cancer clusters or other signs of unresolved Chernobyl-related dangers. Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said the agency had no authority to regulate or oversee food safetyeven products exported to other countriesbecause that is a domestic responsibility. "Radiation effects and the development of cancers and the effects on the region are something which go on over a long, long period. So we haven't seen the end of it" Hartl said. "Undoubtedly there is going to be some increase in cancers." Hartl said WHO officials have not received "any red flags" from Belarus. Environmentalists critical of Belarus' Chernobyl cleanup record says that's hardly surprising, since the government has funded no machinery to scrutinize corrupt practices in the food industry. As a result, they say, no Belarusian food maker has ever been prosecuted for using ingredients or producing goods containing excessive levels of radioactive materials. In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, horses walk at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Irina Sukhiy, founder of the Belarus ecological group Green Network, said workers in food-industry factories have confidentially told her that ingredients and products are blended to dilute the impact of potentially radioactive ingredients from Belarusian suppliers bordering Ukraine. Such alleged mixing, she said, reduces the level of potentially carcinogenic isotopes in dairy products and processed meat below "the allowable dose, but it is still hazardous to health." The division of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry responsible for cleaning up the consequences of Chernobyl says that the rate of thyroid cancer in children runs 33 times higher than before the nuclear blast. It says thyroid cancer rates run several times higher in adults. Farmers working both on the edge of, and inside, the prohibited zone say they see no obvious signs of nuclear dangers, have been given no guidelines on reducing the risk of permitting radioactive isotopes into the food chain, and aren't worried about this. Chubenok, the dairy farmer, said he had never heard of the sorbent substance Ferocin, known as Prussian Blue, which farmers in Ukraine feed their cattle to accelerate the removal of the cesium-137 isotope from their digestive tracts. A tractor driver on one of his neighboring farms, where an abandoned village has been plowed away and turn into fields of grain, says he's never seen an official testing for radiation levels in the soil. But Leonid Kravchenko said there was no reason for alarm. In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, horses wait to be fed at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) "Nobody's in danger," he said. Driving toward Chernobyl and into the nearby Radioecological Reserve required AP journalists to negotiate painstaking government permission. Inside the zone, Belarus has authorized an experimental farm to operate for the past decade. Today it contains 265 horses, 56 cows and apiaries buzzing with honey bees. The farm director, Mikhail Kirpichenko, said he's permitted to pursue commercial ventures, including the sale last year of 100 horses to a Belarusian manufacturer of kumys, a popular beverage in swathes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Kumys is produced from fermented mares' milk. "We're not afraid of radiation. We've already gotten used to it," said Kirpichenko, who suggested that his horses had to pass a basic eyesight test to confirm their good health. "Horses aren't being born with two heads or without legs. There are no such mutations," he said. "This Chernobyl syndrome passed long ago." Explore further 30 years after Chernobyl, camera study reveals wildlife abundance in CEZ 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. A CMS collision event as seen in the built-in event display on the CERN Open Data Portal Today, the CMS Collaboration at CERN has released more than 300 terabytes (TB) of high-quality open data. These include over 100 TB, or 2.5 inverse femtobarns (fb1), of data from proton collisions at 7 TeV, making up half the data collected at the LHC by the CMS detector in 2011. This follows a previous release from November 2014, which made available around 27 TB of research data collected in 2010. Available on the CERN Open Data Portalwhich is built in collaboration with members of CERN's IT Department and Scientific Information Servicethe collision data are released into the public domain under the CC0 waiver and come in types: The so-called "primary datasets" are in the same format used by the CMS Collaboration to perform research. The "derived datasets" on the other hand require a lot less computing power and can be readily analysed by university or high-school students, and CMS has provided a limited number of datasets in this format. Notably, CMS is also providing the simulated data generated with the same software version that should be used to analyse the primary datasets. Simulations play a crucial role in particle-physics research and CMS is also making available the protocols for generating the simulations that are provided. The data release is accompanied by analysis tools and code examples tailored to the datasets. A virtual-machine image based on CernVM, which comes preloaded with the software environment needed to analyse the CMS data, can also be downloaded from the portal. These data are being made public in accordance with CMS's commitment to long-term data preservation and as part of the collaboration's open-data policy. "Members of the CMS Collaboration put in lots of effort and thousands of person-hours each of service work in order to operate the CMS detector and collect these research data for our analysis," explains Kati Lassila-Perini, a CMS physicist who leads these data-preservation efforts. "However, once we've exhausted our exploration of the data, we see no reason not to make them available publicly. The benefits are numerous, from inspiring high-school students to the training of the particle physicists of tomorrow. And personally, as CMS's data-preservation co-ordinator, this is a crucial part of ensuring the long-term availability of our research data." The scope of open LHC data has already been demonstrated with the previous release of research data. A group of theorists at MIT wanted to study the substructure of jetsshowers of hadron clusters recorded in the CMS detector. Since CMS had not performed this particular research, the theorists got in touch with the CMS scientists for advice on how to proceed. This blossomed into a fruitful collaboration between the theorists and CMS revolving around CMS open data. "As scientists, we should take the release of data from publicly funded research very seriously," says Salvatore Rappoccio, a CMS physicist who worked with the MIT theorists. "In addition to showing good stewardship of the funding we have received, it also provides a scientific benefit to our field as a whole. While it is a difficult and daunting task with much left to do, the release of CMS data is a giant step in the right direction." Further, a CMS physicist in Germany tasked two undergraduates with validating the CMS Open Data by re-producing key plots from some highly cited CMS papers that used data collected in 2010. Using openly available documentation about CMS's analysis software and with some guidance from the physicist, the students were able to re-create plots that look nearly identical to those from CMS, showing what can be achieved with these data. "I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was for the students to get started working with the CMS Open Data and how well the exercise worked," says Achim Geiser, the physicist behind this project. Simplified example code from one of these analyses is available on the CERN Open Data Portal and more is on its way. Prior to the launch of the CERN Open Data Portal with the first batch of research-quality data from CMS, the Collaboration had provided certain curated datasets for use in high-school workshops. These "masterclasses", developed by QuarkNet and conducted under the aegis of the International Particle Physics Outreach Group, bring particle-physics data to thousands of high-school students each year. These educational datasets are also available on the CERN Open Data Portal, along with an "event display" for visualising the particle-collision events. "We are very pleased that we can make all these data publicly available," adds Kati. "We look forward to how they are utilised outside our collaboration, for research as well as for building educational tools." CMS is one of two general-purpose experiments at the LHC that have been built to search for new physics. It is designed to detect a wide range of particles and phenomena produced in the LHC's high-energy proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions and will help to answer questions such as: "What is the Universe really made of and what forces act within it?" It will also measure the properties of well-known particles with unprecedented precision and be on the lookout for completely new, unpredicted phenomena. Such research not only increases our understanding of the way the Universe works, but may eventually spark new technologies that change the world in which we live as has often been true in the past. The conceptual design of the CMS experiment dates back to 1992. The construction of the gigantic detector (15 m diameter by nearly 29 m long with a weight of 14000 tonnes) took 16 years of effort from one of the largest international scientific collaborations ever assembled: CMS currently has around 2900 scientists (including nearly 1000 graduate students) plus over 1000 engineers and technicians, from 182 institutions and research laboratories distributed in 42 countries all over the world. Explore further CERN makes public first data of LHC experiments More information: More information: More information: cern.ch/cms Provided by CERN This post originally appeared in The Huffington Post. On December 23, a paramedic with the civil defense, or White Helmets, was killed by Syrian government shelling while aiding the wounded in al Nashabiya, a small town in besieged Eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus suburbs. Three others were killed and 13 injured during that assault. Nine months earlier, just a few miles away, journalist Noureddine Hashim was photographing first responders picking through the rubble from a Syrian government air raid in Arbin, east of Damascus, when President Bashar al-Assads forces unleashed a second attack. The 21-year-old correspondent for Al Etihad Press was killed, along with at least 10 other civilians. It is no coincidence that this medic and this reporter were on the front lines. Many health professionals and journalists have given their lives saving others or documenting the horrors of conflict for the wider world. In doing so they are supposed to enjoy a protected status on the battlefield. But in Syria, where the crisis marked its fifth year this month, health workers and journalists are deliberately targeted. The special protections afforded to medical staff and facilities are flouted with impunity. Journalists are spies to be shot or kidnapped for ransom or gruesome propaganda videos. Doctors are regularly attacked and their work places systematically targeted. These attacks especially alarm us at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), as they undermine international legal and human rights protections for journalists and health workers in dangerous environments. Targeting them also means multiplying the wars ghastly effects, whether that is compromising civilians access to lifesaving health care or to critical information. All civilians, including journalists, are shielded against direct attack under international humanitarian laws, or the laws of war. In addition to these blanket protections awarded to all civilians, medical professionals, facilities, and aid providers receive additional special protections a reflection of how vital these services are. The continuous, deliberate attacks against them cross the lines set by the Geneva Conventions and constitute war crimes. Syria is a dangerous place for everyone. An estimated 400,000 people have died as a direct result of the conflict, not to mention the tens or even hundreds of thousands who have died from lack of access to health care, malnutrition, or in desperate attempts to reach safety. Last month, at least 45 people were killed and dozens wounded when at least four hospitals and a school were attacked in northern Syria. Reporters, photographers, and other journalists give us a window into Syria, exposing or confirming atrocities such as chemical weapons attacks and the barrel-bombing of civilians. Doctors, nurses, and other health professionals are often the first to witness the horrific injuries and effects of the war. They save lives and treat the sick and wounded regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or political affiliation. In Syrias opposition-controlled areas, the government targets them in order to make life unbearable for anyone living outside its control. The Syrian government is overwhelmingly responsible for the deliberate attacks on medical facilities 2015 was the worst year on record for these assaults, with at least 112 facilities attacked. PHR has documented attacks on medical care for 30 years, but the scale and brutality of the attacks on Syrian medical facilities and health professionals is unparalleled. More than 700 medical personnel in Syria have been killed over the last five years. The doctors who have risked their lives to remain there have been decimated by Assads forces, which consider it a crime punishable by death to provide medical treatment to the other side. At least 93 journalists have been killed since the conflict began, 12 of them specifically targeted because they were journalists. While the spate of journalist abductions has dipped from the high seen in 2013, some 25 journalists including six from Western countries are missing. The drop in kidnappings is attributable in part to the fact that Syria is just too dangerous, and fewer foreign journalists are going there. Even when journalists flee into exile they are not safe. Three courageous reporters who defied ISIS and tried to report independently on life inside the Islamic State were hunted down in neighboring Turkey and brutally murdered in separate attacks. When those who expose wrongdoing and treat the vulnerable become the enemy, we can be sure that tyranny and cruelty are at work. All sides must agree on one basic principle: international law must be upheld. Noncombatants including doctors and journalists must be protected. The laws and UN resolutions to protect medics and journalists exist. It is now up to governments and the United Nations to enforce them and stop this barbarity. Follow Donna McKay on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DMcKayPHR For decades, the massacres of 1965 have been spoken about in whispers if at all. Attempts to openly discuss the murder of at least half a million suspected communists in Indonesia have repeatedly been censored, shut down and subject to violent attacks. But this week, a symposium on the events marks the first time there has been open discussion about this bloody chapter of the countrys past. As journalists from KBR radio report, there is hope the talks will be a stepping-stone to a broader reconciliation process. The massacres of 1965 have been described as one of the worst crimes of the 20th Century. The killings began after an alleged coup, and the death of six army generals, which was blamed on the communists. Sumini was a local leader of Gerwani, a womens organization linked to the Indonesian communist party, or PKI, at the time the third-largest communist party in the world after China and the Soviet Union. She was detained for more than six years for her connection to the party, and recalls the treatment upon her arrest. Every time I was interrogated, my feet placed under the table and the interrogators would sit on the table until I lost consciousness. That happened often. For more than half a century the events of 1965 have remained deeply sensitive. The truth of what happened, long silenced. With anti-communist propaganda a key part of Indonesias historical narrative, generations of Indonesians have grown up learning the killings were heroic, and justified. Even a decades long decree that sees 40 million Indonesians banned from jobs in the government and military if their grandparent, or great grandparent was a suspected communist, is still in place. Its the reason why this weeks symposium in Jakarta is so important. The two-day event was an unprecedented public forum for airing the grisly details of what really happened back then mass executions, kidnappings and rape. For the first time victims and survivors were given the opportunity to publicly describe the atrocities committed by government and paramilitary troops, and Islamic organizations. There are still tensions but finally the state has been willing to listen, explains Agus Wijoyo, one of the organizers of the symposium. We hope to bring together two parties that are directly related. Both who had a role in government agencies and family victims of former PKI members. But there is so much rejection because the dynamic is very high, Wijoyo commented. The governments willingness to support the 1965 event inspired hope the talks could lead to a deeper reconciliation process, and justice for the victims. But as soon as the symposium started, it was apparent that some clear lines had already been drawn. Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan admitted that Indonesia must make peace with its past, but ruled out the government offering any official apology. The government has no intention to apologize. We're not that stupid. I would say to you that we knew what we were doing and it was the best for this country, the Minister stated. For years the government has resisted any real discussion of the 1965 atrocities. In 2012 it rejected a comprehensive investigation and report by the national human rights body. At the time, the attorney general said the perpetrators would never face trial. Some in the human rights community worry this weeks symposium might be used as way to swept the issue under the rug, for good, and avoid a deeper, and more painful, truth and reconciliation process. Dolorosa Sinaga, from the International Peoples Tribunal, says these talks are just the first step. We urge the government not to use this symposium as a reason to declare that the problems and cases of 1965 have been completed. We cannot accept it. We in the civil society, the families of the victims, and academics as well, will continue to encourage and urge the government to solve the cases of 65. Bangkok once the speedy growing capital city of Thailand - struggles to live as normal after its 18th coup. (Photo: Kannikar Petchkaew) Thailand recently enacted a new constitution. Its the countrys 20th in less than a century. It strengthens the role of the King and the military in the political sphere, but there are question marks over whether it will lead to greater stability in a country that has been wracked by coups. Thailand has had more coups than any other country in modern history. In the land of smiles there have been 18 attempted coups since 1932. Our Thai correspondent Kannikar Petchkaew, asks what has made Thailand so prone to coups. In the modern history of Thailand, there have been 18 attempted coups but only 11 have been successful. The latest coup introduced a curfew and martial law, but both have since been lifted. Its been two years now under strict junta rule, of people being detained, and banned from political activities, such as public gatherings. Others have been slapped with travel bans. Its no surprise then, that many have already fled the country. In 1932, Thailand moved from absolute monarchy to democratic rule. But since then it has endured 11 successful military coups and seven failed attempts. Thats a least one attempted coup per decade, and enough to see Thailand top the global coup detat list. Low levels of education and poor knowledge of democracy is the usual explanation offered. We have conducted surveys in every village, asked the villagers if they know anything about democracy," says Prayuth Chan-ocha, Army General turned junta leader. "They said they dont know. They even barely know the charter drafters, he continued, referring to the new Constitutional Drafting Committee. Thai people, Chan-ocha believes, are not really informed about what goes on in their government. How many farmers know about this?" He asked. "They just struggle to make ends meet everyday. They were made to be poor. Do they know anything?" But not everyone shares that view. To suggest the villagers are not informed about the electoral process is insulting to the villagers. Thai villagers have a long history of voting for their own leadership, says Katherine Bowie, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Bowie has been conducting her research in Thai villages for the past 40 years. What Thailand should be very proud of is its very long history of village-level democracy," she continued. "In an article that I wrote earlier I traced the last governing electoral politics at the village level back to 1987 and I argued that Thailand is the first country in the world where both man and woman have the right to vote. Women had the right to vote without any controversy, she stated. Pasuk Pongpaijit is an economics professor who has spent the past two decades focusing on corruption in Thailand. We have many coup detats and we still have big problem [with] corruption. It proves that it doesnt help at all, she commented. The junta has often spoken of the need to clean up corruption, not only among the nation's politicians, but society at large. In fact the government that comes after a coup detat often changes or introduces institutions that tend to obstruct the process of allowing corruption to be managed properly, Pongpaijit continued. From her findings, corruption rises every time the checks and balance system is set aside something that can happen often when there is so many coup detats. Its only after the coup when the government gets overthrown that we get to know what went on behind the scenes," argues Pongpaijit. She cites the case of military dictators in the 1970s, their corruption was investigated after they were overthrown. For Pongpaijit and Bowie, blaming the Thai people and corruption is standard practice for any military takeover in Thailand. But could there be another explanation? Yukti Mukdawijit is a lecturer at a leading Thai university. He says it could be about how resistant the Thai elite are to change. The people themselves, they are ready. They learn more, they gain power more from the process of democratization, the participation of power," he says. "In this direction I think it becomes a threat to the power of the elite. The establishment cannot stand it." The fear of parliamentary democracy is related to the fear of an oligarchy losing its power, and the rest of the population gaining that power, according to Pongpaijit. "It is that fear, she concludes. Despite controversies like the recent rape joke, supporters of presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte continue to volunteer in their ways like offering free printing of t-shirts for D Likened to the brash style of Donald Trump, Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte is known for his womanizing ways, and his ruthless approach to fighting crime. Duterte is no stranger to controversy, but this week he has caused global outrage over a joke he made about a murdered rape victim. Madonna Virola reports on the backlash from the city of Calapan. Gabriela, a womens rights advocacy group has quickly demanded an apology from presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte. In a video uploaded to YouTube, Duterte is seen making a remark about an Australian missionary, Jacqueline Hamill, who was murdered and raped during a prison riot in Davao in 1989. Duterte was mayor at the time. Duterte publicly commented about the incident, saying, They raped all the women. There was this Australian woman. I saw her face and thought, what a pity. She was beautiful. The mayor should have been first. The remark has sparked outrage, and the video has gone viral. Gabriela spokesperson, Gert Ranjo Libang, says Duterte took it one step too far this time. That rape is not something that should be trivialized. He still has to apologize because the issue of rape became a joke with what he said. Its not good. The pressure has been on the presidential candidate to respond. Australias Ambassador to the Philippines, Amanda Gorely even took to Twitter to voice her concerns, saying that rape is no laughing matter. And that violence against women and girls is unacceptable anytime, anywhere. After days of the heat, Duterte finally caved, offering a weak half-apology for his outrageous comments. Im sorry in general, to the Filipino people, its my style, its my mouth. I said it in the heat of my anger but listen to the story behind. It was not a joke, I said it in a narrative, I was not smiling, I was just talking plain sense. Duterte is nicknamed Duterte Harry after the Clint Eastwood film character, Dirty Harry a figure will little regard for the rules He has built a political name with an iron-fist approach to fighting crime in the insurgency-plagued south, where he has been mayor for 22 years, as well as stints as vice mayor and as congressional representative. His methods have been effective, but brutal and extrajudicial. During his presidential campaign, Duterte has vowed to use his approach to rid the country of corruption and crime in six months. Despite his brash ways, Duterte is currently leading in the polls in the lead up to the May 9 election. But the latest controversy might see his numbers take a hit, says Warlito Cajandig, a bishop in Oriental Mindoro. His style, which is his personal style, is unacceptable to the public, especially that he is aspiring as president of the republic. We also have conventions and standards. But some Duterte supporters remain unmoved. Last November when he called Pope Francis a son a whore in a speech, his followers in the devoutly Catholic nation forgave him. Jumyr owns a printing press that offers free t-shirt printing of Dutertes face, he commented, People attack him even with old issues because he is the leading candidate. I continue to support him. Weve long been under a democratic rule. The country needs someone with a strong heart, courageous, to reduce criminality. Only the poor ones get punished. The rich go to house arrest, hospital arrest. Like me, I only own a printing shop. With him, I hope for fair justice in the country. Even Dutertes daughter, Sara, who revealed she is also a rape victim, said she was not offended by her fathers remarks. Others have pointed to Dutertes track record on womens rights in Davao, where he has promoted contraception, set up a domestic violence response desk, and a unit dedicated to the rights of women. Under Duterte, the Women Development Code was also established to protect women against discrimination. It was a first for the Philippines. But for womens rights group like Gabriela, a president should be above making jokes about rape. I finished "The Power and the Glory," another Graham Greene novel that concerns itself, obsessively, with religious dilemmas and devotion. Greene had an amazing 50-plus year career as a novelist, and this one came fairly early -- 1940. His novels improved over time, with gems like "Our Man in Havana" and "The Quiet American" published in the 1950s and my personal favorite of those I've read, "Travels with My Aunt," published in 1969. The less he wrestles with religion, and specifically, Catholicism, the better, and his obsession with the subject comes close to ruining some otherwise good books, like "The End of the Affair" (1951) and "The Heart of the Matter" (1948). The one book I've read in which Greene manages to balance the treatment of religious themes and personal conflicts to good effect is "A Burnt Out Case" (1960). Maybe the combination works there because the novel is set in the world of priests and missionaries, so the religious-wrestling feels integral to the story and not imposed on it. Also, the unrelenting grimness of the story is impressive. GRANVILLE Police seized a truckload of stolen property, including a gun and $4,000 worth of disc jockey equipment that police believe a man stole during a days-long crime spree that included at least one home burglary and thefts from numerous parked cars. Police believe the suspect, Chad M. Maurer, 25, was on his way out of town to sell the stolen items downstate, Granville Police Chief Ernest Bassett said. Maurer was charged with second-degree burglary and criminal possession of stolen property, both felonies, police said. Maurer is a four-time felon and native of the New York City area who has been staying at a home on Main Street in Granville in recent months with a female friend, police said. He came under suspicion in recent days for a string of thefts in the village of Granville, including at least two home burglaries, and State Police and Washington County sheriffs officers are looking into whether he was responsible for thefts at homes in the town of Granville as well, including some in which guns were stolen. Bassett said Granville Police filled the village courtroom with items that were seized from the vehicle Maurer was in, which included thousands of dollars worth of electronics and other valuables, including laptop computers, GPS receivers, phones and equipment that a disc jockey left in a vehicle. A shotgun that had been stolen from a home in the village, not the home Maurer has been charged with burglarizing, was also recovered, the chief said. He had a truckload of stuff, Bassett said. He knew what he was doing. He was headed right of town with it to get rid of it. It appeared most, if not all, of the vehicles were left unlocked, Bassett said. Maurer had been a suspect in the thefts before he was pulled over Sunday night, police said. Anyone who is missing items can contact Granville Police at 642-1414 or 642-2946 to view what was seized. Maurer was arraigned and sent to Washington County Jail without bail. His prior felony convictions include counts of robbery, criminal possession of stolen property and criminal possession of a controlled substance, and he served a state prison. He served two years of a 2 to 6 year prison term for convictions in Orange County in 2011, but was discharged from parole in 2015, two years early. Each of the candidates in the 21st Congressional District believe local voting results in New Yorks presidential primaries bode well for their campaigns. Democrat Bernie Sanders carried the 21st District and much of upstate, even though Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary. And Donald Trump swept the Republican primary, including in the 21st District. Democratic congressional candidate Mike Derrick said Trumps and Sanders common criticism of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is a good sign for his candidacy. TPP, as it is commonly called, is a proposed trade agreement between the United States and 12 other nations, including Japan, that would align to provide a global alternative to trade with China. Derrick opposes the agreement, as does Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, has supported the agreement, which is supported by regional paper and rail car manufacturers, among others. Labor unions and other opponents say the agreement will lead to companies moving more jobs overseas. Its interesting because its on both sides of the aisle to have a distinct change on issues such as the trade agreement, which the Obama administration and the Bush administration before that negotiated, said Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru, in Clinton County. Some fallout from that (TPP) may happen. But you cant fault her (Stefanik), conceded Warren County Republican Chairman Mike Grasso. Shes a smart gal. And if thats the only issue they have, so be it. Stefanik was busy with the House session on Thursday and Friday and was not available to comment directly, said Lenny Alcivar, Stefaniks campaign spokesman. Alcivar said Stefanik recognizes the importance of expanding global trade for manufacturers, particularly those in Plattsburgh. He (Derrick) believes that parroting Democratic talking points from Washington is going to be helpful to him in a district where trade and commerce and access to trade is vital, Alcivar said. Warren County Democratic Chairwoman Lynne Boecher said she is not certain how issues such as TPP will affect the congressional race, but the heavy voter turnout in the presidential primary is a good sign for November. They voted. ... So I take that as being they are engaged, she said. Alcivar said the explosive support for Sanders, a socialist, among Democrats in the 21st District gives Stefanik an opportunity to make inroads with moderate Democrats. And there also is the Funiciello factor, he said, referring to the Green Party candidate who received about 11 percent of the vote in the 2014 local congressional race. So Mike Derrick has to peel off Bernie Sanders Democrats in an environment where the Green Party is the first place where those voters look to, he said. The pundits have already said it is the year of the outsider, Funiciello said, referring to the major party primary victories in the region for Trump and Sanders. Funiciello said he, more so than Stefanik or Derrick, is emblematic of the legitimate outsider voters want. That certainly bodes well for me, he said. Funiciello said independent polling in the 2014 race showed disenchanted Republicans and Democrats supported his candidacy. I think a lot of the Trump voters will be pulling our lever, he said. Derrick has endorsements from the Greater Glens Falls Democracy for America chapter and the Working Families Party, two of the organizations that supported Sanders in the primary. Derrick said outsiders may not be the best term to describe Trump and Sanders, particularly given Sanders long career in Congress. A phrase that is often used in leadership study and theory is change agent, or agent of change, he said. These guys each are introducing a very different agenda. Stefanik is associated with the current government leadership voters want to see changed, Derrick said. Elise Stefanik is closely associated with that leadership and I think that will have a negative affect on her outcomes, he said. Alcivar said the outcome of the primaries reinforced Stefaniks campaign strategy. She did what she said she would do in 2014, he said. She made a series of promises, and on all fronts she kept those promises. ... She has a record on that. SCHUYLERVILLE Construction will begin in September on the Champlain Canal Region Gateway Visitors Center in Fort Hardy Park on Route 29. The center is being built in cooperation with the Timber Framers Guild, an organization dedicated to the art and science of timber framing. The building, which will be similar in design to the nearby Schuyler House, will serve as the gateway to the Lakes to Locks Passage historical site, will direct visitors to communities and assets along the passage and will introduce visitors to the key partners, experiences and interpretive themes of Lakes to Locks. Tom Richardson, Mechanicville town supervisor and chairman of the Historic Hudson-Hoosic Rivers Partnership, unveiled the design last week at the Saratoga Board of Supervisors meeting. The center is the result of a collaborative effort of nonprofit and federal, state and local government entities. It is designed to increase tourism and community revitalization in Rensselaer, Saratoga and Washington counties. The Champlain Canal is one region of the Lakes to Locks Passage, a National Geographic geotourism destination. The center will be centrally located along the 60-mile path of the Champlain Canal. It is within sight of an intact section of the historic Champlain Canal and is accessible to boaters at the nearby Schuyler Yacht Basin and by pedestrians on the parallel Champlain Canalway Trail. Funding for the project came from state and federal grants, including contributions from the Saratoga County IDA and Saratoga County. CHESTER Woof Stock gave new meaning to the dog days of summer in the Adirondacks last year. Modeled after similar events in Canada and other areas of the country, the Tri-Lakes Business Alliance brought the inaugural canine and Woodstock-themed event to the area last June. It was the first of its kind in the northeastern U.S. In the field behind the Chester Municipal Center, an estimated 3,000 people and 1,000 dogs traveled to the two-day event. The second annual Adirondack Woof Stock returns this year from June 18 to 19, a weekend of peace, paws and music, as the event slogan says. There will be several returning attractions, such as the Hudson Valley Dock Dogs 40-foot dock and pool for dog diving competitions and the My Dog Has Talent competitions. It greatly exceeded our expectations last year. I think everyone did have such a great time. I think everyone who was there last year is going to come again and bring someone else with them, said Cindy Mead, Adirondack Woof Stock Committee chairwoman and secretary of the Tri-Lakes Business Alliance. Last year there was a nighttime concert, but it was indoors, a complication for visitors who didnt want to leave their dogs in their hotel rooms and campsites. This year, Mead said they decided to have the Saturday night concert outside by The Hub near the banks of the Mill Pond in Horicon, which involves another nearby community and allows visitors to keep their dogs with them the whole time. Mead thanked the town of Horicon for allotting $2,000 in occupancy tax for what they will call Woodstock Revisited, a spirit-of-1969-themed outdoor concert with laser light show that will feature food and merchandise vendors and glow-in-the-dark beach balls. The Burn your Bra for Charity Bonfire is also returning June 18, the date of the concert and light show. The concert is still in the planning phase, so they dont have a lineup to announce yet, but the bands will all be 1960s-style music. Itll be like a block party at the Mill Pond in Brant Lake, Mead said. The night of June 17, theyre planning Paws and Pubs, another new offering. People who go to participating restaurants dressed in tie-dye and 1960s garb, or show their dogs dressed up, will be eligible for specials and prizes. Mead also thanked the town of Chester for awarding $6,000 in occupancy tax funds for promotion of Woof Stock. Returning are the Hudson Valley Dock Dogs, the Beantown Disc Dog group from Massachusetts with canine disc-catching competitions and the Doggie Fun Zone Lure Chasing Course. North Shore Animal League, Adirondack Save-A-Stray and the Warren County SPCA are also returning. State Police will be there with canine demonstrations this year as well. They were planning to attend last year, but the dogs were needed on the job to search for the escaped prisoners from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. There will be vendors, food and music both days. There is no entry fee to get in to Woof Stock or the Woodstock Revisited concert. Mead said they still need vendors. The cost for a vendor for the weekend is $50. We need a pet fence company. We definitely need people to sell tie-dye. we need vendors for both Woof Stock and Woodstock Revisited, she said. She said theyre also ordering tie-dyed Woof Stock T-shirts again this year after going through a few hundred last year. They are looking for sponsors businesses or individuals who, for a $100 donation, can get their names on the back of the shirt. The names are arranged in the shape of a bone. KINGSBURY Even though the town has arranged for Washington County to handle some of its building code issues, Supervisor Dana Hogan says Code Enforcement Officer Ross Cortese will continue to do some work for the town. Ross will remain in his current role of a shared capacity with the village, still addressing local zoning rules and nuisance matters, Hogan said last week. Kingsbury is in the process of developing a formal nuisance law, which will likely increase his role in this capacity. Cortese had been splitting his time between the town and the village of Hudson Falls, but village officials were concerned the arrangement was not giving Cortese enough time for village building code and enforcement issues. At one point Kingsbury officials discussed hiring him full-time, but they later chose to ask the county to step in, as it does for many other towns. Hogan said the annual commercial fire inspections and legwork of building permits will be provided by the county. But as I understand it, initial review of building permit applications must be approved by the local code enforcement officer to ensure conformity with local zoning, he said. Hudson Falls has been focusing on nuisance buildings in an attempt to clean up the village. Cortese has been working closely with Mike Fiorillo and the village DPW in doing that cleanup work. Kingsbury joins a number of other towns having their building code enforcement done by Dave Armando and his county staff. The county does the work for Argyle, Dresden, Fort Ann, Granville, Greenwich, Hampton, Hartford, Hebron, Jackson, Salem, White Creek and Whitehall. Its staff also covers all the countys villages except Hudson Falls. Some towns have a local code enforcement officer as well. With the economy having achieved considerable stability and expansion in addition to demonstrating resilience in the face of global economic challenges on the commodity market and the coming on stream of pipeline projects, we are convinced the recent discussions and concerns raised about the issue of job creation can be beneficial if it is situated within the context of specific measures taken to address the longstanding global and national challenge of unemployment. Several interventions aimed at creating more jobs, as well as helping the private sector to expand and create job opportunities for the youth have been initiated. READ MORE: YEA to introduce internship module for graduates Government can assure that the economy is set to create more jobs in both the formal and informal sectors as various Ministries, Departments and Agencies complete different pipeline projects and implement new interventions. With the economy having achieved considerable stability and expansion in addition to demonstrating resilience in the face of global economic challenges on the commodity market and the coming on stream of pipeline projects, we are convinced the recent discussions and concerns raised about the issue of job creation can be beneficial if it is situated within the context of specific measures taken to address the longstanding global and national challenge of unemployment. Several interventions aimed at creating more jobs, as well as helping the private sector to expand and create job opportunities for the youth have been initiated. While acknowledging the need for all stakeholders to do more to curb unemployment, we wish to give an account of some specific efforts in this regard not only to serve as an update but also to guide the youth seeking employment to explore the opportunities available: Between 2013 and 2015, Government through the Export Trade Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) supported local industries to the tune of GHc 245.4 million. This amount funded over 125 different projects in the pharmaceuticals, rice, sheanut, poultry and textiles industries among others, thereby creating jobs for thousands of Ghanaians; The Skills Development Fund, implemented by COTVET, has disbursed a total of GHc 150 million to 654 businesses, which have trained 93,600 people in vocational and technical skills across sectors of the economy. A total of 43,485 businesses have also received support under the Fund; The printing and distribution of over 100 million exercise books under the free exercise books initiative has created thousands of jobs since its inception in 2010. The GHC100million worth of contracts for local printing of textbooks for schools will in addition create jobs for 4,000 people. Duties on importation of raw materials for printing textbooks have been removed to incentivise the industry; and The distribution of over 2 million school uniforms under the Free School Uniforms Programme has also created thousands of jobs for people engaged in the production of these uniforms in the textiles industry. Under the Free Zones Board, a total of 69 companies were established between 2013 and 2015, leading to the employment of 16,372 people; The Youth in Agriculture programme employed 23,000 youth in 2013 bringing the total number of young farmers in the programme to 81,150; The National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI), Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skill (ICCES) and Opportunities Industrialisation Centres (OIC) have employed 21,802 people; The Graduate Business Support Scheme run by the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations has engaged 2,000 people; The Department of Cooperatives registered a total of 1,757 Youth Co-operatives in 10 Regions with a total of 34,657 jobs created; The Rural Enterprise Project created 21,045 jobs across the country between 2013 and 2015; GRATIS foundation under the Ministry of Trade and Industry also created 500 jobs through the production of over 1,000 agricultural implements and The Micro Finance and Small Loan Centre (MASLOC) has advanced micro credit to a total of 190,607 beneficiaries between 2010 and 2015.This has enabled the beneficiaries to set up micro businesses which are offering jobs to themselves and others. They have also distributed 953 vehicles for commercial transport, 25 tractors for agricultural use etc. Kumasi Shoe Factory (DIHOC) 200 jobs created; Ghana National Gas Processing Plant, Atuabo 265 jobscreated; The Oil and Gas Sector since 2010 7,000 jobs created; Shea nut processing plant at Buipe 50 permanent staff (and 2,000 shea nut pickers). The Business Process Outsourcing Centre near the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange has been completed and will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. Another IT Enabled Services Centre has been completed by the Ministry of Communications at the Tema ICT Park in the Free Zones Enclave and is already employing about 250 people; The Komenda Sugar factory will also create 7,300 direct andindirect jobs (including outgrowers of sugar cane to feed the factory); The new Fish processing factory at Elmina will create 2,500 direct and indirect jobs; Tema Harbour Expansion will create 3,000 jobs Takoradi Harbour Expansion will create 3,000 jobs Governments transformational agenda in the area of agriculture with job creation as a core objective. Notable among them include: Distribution of 110 million cocoa seedlings to farmers, at no cost, in the 2014/2015 and the current 2015/2016 crop season. This has created 9,000 jobs across 418 nursery sites; Government is encouraging more people able and willing, especially the youth, to enter into cocoa farming. Government through COCOBOD has put together a motivation package to boost early growth and substantial return on investment. This package includes provision of effective extension support, free cocoa seedlings and free sulphate of ammonia fertilizers; Since the programme was launched in 2014, over 30,000 youth have signed up in Ashanti, Central, Eastern and Western Regions; This year, 5million improved, early-maturing and high-yielding coffee seedlings are being raised and supplied to farmers. The supplies will be substantially increased every year to ensure that coffee production increases from the present 6,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares of coffee farms in some targeted locations by 2021. These locations are in but not limited to parts of the Volta, Eastern, Central and the transitional areas of the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions such as Techiman, Wenchi, Bechem, Nkoranza, Atebubu, Kwame Danso, Drobo, Akomadan, Offinso, Jamasi, Asante-Mampong, Kete Krachi and Dambai. Thousands of jobs will also be created along the coffee value chain; The pilot phase of the Ghana Broiler Re-vitalisation Project was launched in July 2014. A total of 650,000 birds were raised, processed and sold by 2015. This created 350 direct jobs and 7,800 indirect jobs for poultry farmers and the youth along the poultry value chain; The Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development is supporting the establishment of a Shrimp Project to promote processing and production for the Ghanaian market and for export. Production of fingerlings, laboratories, fish feed factories, production ponds, processing and marketing facilities will be located in parts of the Greater Accra, Volta and Eastern Regions. The project will create 76,000 direct and indirect jobs. Production is estimated to be 30,000 metric tonnes and projected export revenue ranges between US$60 million to US$200 million. The project is expected to commence by the close of this year; Similar initiatives in oil palm and shea production will soon be launched. These offer ample proof of both Governments commitment to create more employment opportunities for the youth and the pragmatic steps being taken to reduce this perennial global challenge to the barest minimum. The Role of the Private Sector Government duly acknowledges and welcomes the role of the private sector, both formal and informal, in creating jobs and remains confident that with the resolution of the power supply shortfall and the relative stability of the macroeconomic environment, the economy will expand between now and the years ahead leading to massive job creation and economic empowerment for all. We shall continue to collaborate with the private sector in this endeavour. The optimism is also shared by our development partners. The World Bank It will be recalled that barely two weeks ago (12 April, 2016) the World Bank was on record to have stated in a report on Ghanas economic outlook that, Ghanas real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is projected to rebound to 5.2% in 2016 from 3.4% in 2015 reflecting the positive impact of a more stable energy supply and increased contribution from the oil and gas and agriculture industries. Energy supply is expected to improve following the emergency measures including the use of power barges. The countrys medium-term growth prospect is strong with 8.2% in 2017 and moderating to 7.5% in 2018 under the assumption that fiscal adjustment remains on track with the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other development partners. BRIGHTER PROSPECTS In conclusion, the Government of President John Dramani Mahama remains committed to fiscal discipline even as we implement zero percent (0%) financing from the Bank of Ghana, the lender of last resort. We shall sustain the gains and ensure they translate into more jobs to empower the citizenry. Let us continue to be hopeful, for, just as many have been employed in both the public and private sectors, there are many more job opportunities in the months and years ahead. Signed: Acting President of Coalition of Concerned Teachers, Mr. King Ali Awudu has told Pulse.com.gh that the said teachers are likely to be paid in May. "The union's position was that the validation should be completed before payment is made. And now government is saying that it wants to pay those that has been done because when it has delayed so huge, payment might be a problem, so we are yet to sit down with them to nullify whichever decision was taken earlier. But for this month of April, no payment will be made. If payment will be made at all, it will be in vain," he said. Government had subsequently met the various teacher unions on two different occasions to try and reach an agreement for the teachers to rescind their strike decision. However, government on the third meeting with the teacher unions on Wednesday ordered the release of an amount of GHS 1,579,078.20 to settle 2012 salary arrears of teachers across the country. A communique signed by the various stakeholders at the meeting said arrears for 2013 and 2014 will, however, not be paid, until authorities validate some payment processes which will begin on Thursday. The validation of documents began to pave way for the teachers to be paid their arrears. The teacher unions, including the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), and the Concerned on March 1, 2016 officially suspended their intended strike which was scheduled for February 29, 2016 until validation of their claims and documents are completed. The General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), David Ofori Acheampong, said even though they are yet to receive full payment of their salary arrears from government, they will hold on to the strike following the validation process that has begun by the Controller and Account Generals Department, CAGD and the Audit Department. Agya Koo, known in real life as Alexander Kofi Adu, had said that his absence on screen has created a vacuum for Kumkum Bhagya and other telenovelas on various television stations. According to him, he revived the movie industry at a time movies from Nigeria had taken over Ghanas market. But Bob Smith Jnr believes the comment that he revived the industry is never true. I dont know why he said that nor what he was asked. But if he did with pride, he should apologise. You are an actor, you paid your dues; but to say you revived it, I disagree, he said on Hitz FM. Adding his voice to the issue, Secretary of Film Producers Association of Ghana, James Aboagye agreed with Bob Smith Jnr. The best he can say is, he has paid his dues. To say he redeemed the industry, I beg to differ because the industry was there before him, he intimated. Until recently, movie producers were not engaging the services of Agya Koo due to what they described as, arrogance on the part of the actor. They argued that, Agya Koo on a number of occasions charged exorbitantly and showed disrespect to movie producers because he thought they needed him more than he did. Speaking on Happy FMs Showbiz Xtra, the FIPAG PRO issued a disclaimer that it was his opinion and not that of the associations. He needed less than that amount to survive What is the wisdom in raising that amount to bring the body back? It doesnt make sense to me, he noted. Ola, however, indicated that due to the cultural differences, some people will oppose the body cremated in China. We have our culture and values. Some families will never agree that their relative be cremated. But the Chinese will; they will not bury him. It is new to us, he stated. Nii Odoi Mensah passed on in China while undergoing kidney treatment. Movie producer, Socrate Safo had said that Nii Odoi needed $26,000 for treatment but because he was unable to raise the amount, doctors decided that he come to Ghana so they send him them medicine. In a separate interview, Socrate disclosed that, it would cost $68,000 to transport the body. The Chief Executive Officer Raymond Snowdenteamed up with like-minded Harry Zakkour and under their direction, Redsea Maritime has grown into a Ghanaian success story in 5 years of its operation. Redsea has succeeded in changing not only the way people perceive terminal operations in Ghana but has also introduced innovation and best practices into terminal operations in the Port of Tema. Some of the innovative changes are the introduction of the use of technology and the moves towards the acquisition of ISO 9001 Certification to streamline our service delivery. Redsea Maritime has recently appointed an officer dedicated to enhancing our customer services and external relations. Raymond Snowden has not only cut across the Ghanaian market as an industry leader but also been recognized by the European Business Assembly. He recently picked up the award for the Manager of the Year and this comes on the back of extensive rebranding of the company that has grown from a start-up to an industry player with more than enough capability to take maritime services to the next level. Redsea Maritime unveiled a new logo that embodies the direction and future of the company as a RISING SUN. This represents diversity and represents the new direction the company is taking as it expands into being a one stop service provider at the Tema Port. Redsea Maritime can be contacted for the following services: haulage, logistics management, freight forwarding and warehousing among others. In line with its quest to add value to the industry, Redsea Maritime recently co-sponsored the 15th Intermodal Africa Conference. Intermodal Africa is the biggest annual Container Ports and Terminal Operations Exhibition and Conference in Africa. Covering West and Central Africa, it was a two days Conference Programme featuring 30 world-class conference speakers addressing topical issues and challenges on global transportation and logistics attended by a gathering of 400 senior executive industry players. Registered in 2013, CEO and Co founder of Meqasa.com, Kelvin Nyame and his two co-founders set out to create a real estate platform that makes it easier for individuals to find suitable accommodation in Ghana at the right price and according to their tastes and preferences. It was a big deal because MeQasa, at that point, was one of the few tech startups to actually attract such financial validation, at a time where everyone was wondering if Ghanaian tech startups were actually financially viable models. CEO and Co founder Kelvin Nyame tells us, a good entrepreneurial foundation from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology had a major role to play in how their product was structured and the value it provided for the market. Above all, lots of the onus were on the team, four at the time, to build a very investment-friendly business and a discipline to stick to its values even in the face of financial constraints. I think there were great ideas around before we came, but it is important for entrepreneurs to choose their fields properly. Because a careful observation will reveal the sectors that are attracting investments lately and position your business well. Kelvin, in sharing a few more tips on how other Ghanaian startups especially, tech startups can attract needed funding, charged startups to properly understand the market in order to grow quickly. It is important for startups to understand the needs of their customers. They need to practically learn how customers react to their products and see how to better satisfy them. That is one of the ways to grow customer base quickly, and strengthen your business. All these things work together to make you attractive to a prospective investor, he said. A little background to Ghanas real estate and housing sector will help you appreciate the solution Meqasa is providing. Getting suitable accommodation in Ghana can be a difficult, frustrating process. Though the methods differ depending on your income level, they are ridden with long-standing bottlenecks. For the vast majority, renting is the option, whereas the middle-class will prefer to build their own homes by buying land, and undertaking full construction themselves. Others will prefer to buy or take a mortgage. Again, no matter the process you choose, there are deep-seated bottlenecks of fraud, gross time wasting, and a big chance of a raw deal from agents. Here is how MeQasa takes care of all these challenges: They make available to you all the accommodation and properties available in any location by the click of a button. No need to take time off work or your busy schedule to scout un-end for a place to live. They facilitate a meaningful, trusted engagement between customers and agents, by segregating agents into classes based on level of experience, customer service, and price. MeQasa provides same convenience for corporate bodies in search of office space and commercial buildings. From their beginnings in the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, an innovations lab in Ghana, Kelvin and his team have kept an eye on the most effective trends for building a successful startup in an unpredictable economy like Ghanas. It all started in Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, with my co-founders and I, and the whole plan was to understand the tech and software space. We worked on several projects and then finally settled on MeQasa as a product to go to market with Kelvin revealed. After the Minimum Viable product was developed, management of MEST invested $90,000 as seed capital for the group to start. The business was viable, and had a lot of potential at that time. And MEST was happy to invest. So they gave us $90,000. We however realized quickly enough that competition got keener with other foreign platforms coming into the market with huge marketing budgets. At the same time, real estate agents who would have ordinarily enlisted their property on our site, were going to other e-commerce websites who were not necessarily into real estate but made it possible for anybody to post any photograph and get customers. So we found agents enlisting their property on Google Trader at the time. They didnt last, but they were indirect competitors at a point. MeQasa realized that they needed some more investment to be able to compete on the marketing front. The $90,000 from MEST was fast running out, and the business had not started making money. Kelvin and his team turned their attention to the Venture Capital Firm, Frontier. And with their strong results over the one and a half years of running MeQasa, Frontier gave them $500,000. This pushed MeQasa to the next level in terms of capital liquidity, and resources to pursue more audacious marketing strategies. Today, the company is growing steadily and sturdily, staying above competition and employing some of the trendiest marketing strategies, modelled around valuable real estate content in the form of a weekly newsletter, content on partner online news platforms, and a blog. The team was happy to announce to Meet The Boss, the launch of the first ever comprehensive housing guide. Additionally, MeQasa has been reaching out to other market segments in the real estate sector, the diaspora who wish to own a home in Africa and even plan on having a long business stay on the continent. According to a British Council report titled Language for the future, the top 10 languages for the future are predicted as being Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese. The report also makes an economic case why learning Arabic is important. The report, among other things said: "Six Arabic speaking countries appear among the UKs top 50 export market in goods, with a combined value to the economy of over 12 billion in 2012 more than the value of UK exports to Spain, China or Italy. The Gulf economies are booming as they diversify away from oil and gas, open up their economies and bring down barriers to trade and investment. "Significant opportunities exist for British companies, particularly in supporting the vast infrastructure work planned in the region. "Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all been identified by the Confederation of British Industry as priority markets. This is endorsed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Arabic speakers are most sort after in the western world. The Middle East is becoming important in the global world and geopolitics. However, there are few people who speak Arabic and under the culture of the Arabs in the Western world. In addition, learning Arabic can land you a job in a variety of fields: journalism, business and industry, education, finance and banking, translation and interpretation, consulting, foreign service and intelligence, and many others. The Middle East is estimated to have a GDP of over 600 billion dollars annually. The region provides an opportunity for export markets of goods and services. Huge investments are made in areas like construction, finance, telecom and tourism in the Arabian Gulf. Also, the banking system in the Arab world is largely on Sharia laws. To understand Sharia law, you will need a better understanding of the Arabic language, and their culture. Another reason you should learn Arabic is that it makes the brain works more. A study conducted by Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim and Prof. Zohar Eviatar at theb in Israel concluded that readers in Arabicperform comparatively much more since the two halves of the brain process Arabic differently than they would for other languages. It emerges that the contribution of the two halves of the brain to processing written language depends on the graphic and linguistic structure of these languages, said Dr. Ibrahim. The two researchers also noted that Arabic should be strongly encouraged the same way other intellectual activities are, such as Chess, which require a higher-than-normal cerebral activity. Adding to the millions of Arabic speakers, many more understand the language since the Quran is written in Arabic. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, according to a 2010 Pew Research Center estimate. Islam is also the fastest-growing major religion currently in the world. The language for prayers in Islam is Arabic. Arabs have made significant contributions in the area of science, medicine, philosophy, literature, mathematics, navigation, astrology and architecture. Knowledge of Arabic enables the exploration of this vast body of knowledge in their original language. Furthermore, if you are a business man or woman who often travel to the Arab world to do business, it will serve your own interest to be able to speak the language. Arabs are such that they warm up to be they feel speak their language. This is natural actually. People readily identify with people who speak their language. You may also want to be a diplomat or as an ambassador in the Arab world. However, you may want to break that language barrier before such an opportunity comes starring you in the face. Speaking to the media, a victim who escaped the attack said: They suddenly emerged from the bush and started shooting at vehicles that refused to stop. And when I stopped my car, they asked me to lie down and close my eyes and they took my money, about GHC250.00 from my pocket. As for the pastor and his elder they just shot at them before asking them to stop.I could identify at least two Fulanis and one twi speaking guy, who I believe is an Akan, he added. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! He is also accused of appointing "family and friends" to serve in his administration, according to the Majority Leader Alban Bagbin. But the president defended himself, arguing that there is perception of corruption against his government because he is prepared to "investigate, expose and sanction corruption" in an interview with Volta Star radion in Ho in the Volta region during his 'accounting to the people' tour of the region. Where evidence of corruption is found, we investigate and we sanction. I dont know of what incident those references are. Ive dropped more ministers and dealt more with my appointees than other governments have done, he said. President Mahama bragged that he is not a politician who is afraid to talk about corruption, stressing "Im prepared to talk about it every day and I speak about it every day. Perception is the means of measuring corruption because there is no other instrument for measuring it, since the giver and the taker are not willing to talk about it. So by measuring peoples perception, we are able to determine what the level of corruption is," he said This also has its flaws because in a country that is open, has a vibrant media, where people have free expression, the perception of corruption is likely to be higher than a closed society, president Mahama added. But under his watch, the National Media Commission sort to introduce a law that will require media practitioners to submit content of their programs for approval before it can be aired. New Patriotic Party flagbearer Nana Akufo Addo in a recent interview on Kasapa Fm said he will rate president Mahama two to three over 10 in the fight against corruption, and further accused him of abusing the procurement law through sole sourcing. He described the president recent appointments as puzzling and bizarre. At a ceremony to elect the Greater Accra regional executives of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in Accra, former first lady Nana Kunadu Agyeman Rawlings accused president Mahama of having appetite for shady deals. She cited for instance the ballooned budget for the Ridge Hospital. She said whereas it cost Dangote $12 million to build a 1000-bed hospital in Nigeria, the government was spending over $250 million to expand the Ridge Hospital to a 420-bed facility. She said the NDC's campaign slogan of "Changing lives, Transforming Ghana" is a mere propaganda. According to him, there is a trap laid for Ghana in the case. That thing, I keep talking talking talking and people are not hearing; theyll wait till somebody from another country prophesies, then they start running. That borderline dispute, there is something in it, and if we dont pray, Ghana will be disadvantaged by the verdict that will come out if we dont do something and find out who the lawyers representing Ghana are, and look into that thing. There is some trap in it. Watch it. You write it down, he prophesied to his congregation on Sunday April 24. The maritime dispute ensued in 2014 when Ghana hauled the Ivory Coast before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea over the latters claim of ownership of parts of the oil and gas-rich Cape Three Points. Cote dIvoire has up to April 4, 2016, to file its counter-memorial as to why it should be declared the owner of disputed oilfields and adjoining seabed. Ghana will on July 4, 2016, submit a reply to Cote dIvoires counter-memorial, while Cote dIvoire is expected to file a rejoinder on October 4, 2016. The 'True love' crooner will participate in NYPF events that connect entrepreneurs at home and abroad, lend his voice to projects that stimulate a start-up culture in Nigeria and also harness his own ideas and experiences to the NYPF goal which is to develop the next generation of Entrepreneurs through easy access to capital for innovative ideas and education. Recall that a few days ago, on Wednesday, April 20, 2016 the singer became the first ever African ambassador of Italian liqueur brand, Campari. 2face now known as 2Baba has been on an incredible run this year, releasing three singles including the groovy Coded Tinz and the Valentine Special Officially Blind. The latest single titled "Oya Come Make We Go", which features multiple award-winning Kenyan Afro-pop band, Sauti Sol, was released following the announcement of the new endorsement deals, on Friday, 22 April, 2016. Nnaji today, Monday, April 25, 2016 took to Snapchat sharing several photos of a block of flats. She simply captioned the photos as, "Back to site. #stick&stones". In the photo we can see construction work going on in the estate which begs the question, Is the actress into the real estate business? Recall that earlier this year, Nnaji shared photos of a block of apartments in Apo Dutse, Abuja. Genevieve Nnaji captioned those photos as "#sticksandstoneshomes" (sama as now) which might be the name of her real estate company. With the real estate being a lucrative form of business expect Genevieve to rake in more cash for 2016. The Global Call to Action to Stop Violence Against Women in Politics was organized by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government. The event was attended by the former U.S. Secretary of State and NDI Chairman Madeleine K. Albright as well as Madame Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, womens rights activist and wife of the Prime Minister of Canada. Other special guests were Dr. Juli Minoves Triquell, president of Liberal International; Alejandra Mora Mora, minister for the Status of Women in Costa Rica; Khadija El Morabit, vice president of the International Network of Liberal Women; Irena Hadziabdic, IFES Board Director and Purna Sen, director of the Policy Division at UN Women. During the conference, Stephanie Linus played a key role where she introduced the Global Call To Action, and encouraged everyone to work towards making a difference. We can stand here in New York and talk, or we can go out into the world and make a difference to the lives of women who want to be voices in their nation she said during her presentation. As a womens advocate, Stephanie Linus continues to champion several causes against the exclusion and under representation of women, and strongly believes that all violence against women is wrong and must be stopped. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! The baby goat had according to reports, belonged to Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) settler, Ibrahim Basir who had reportedly refused money offers to purchase the carcass. The 63-year-old had instead, chosen to hand over the carcass to the department, which would allow them to carry out investigation on the strange-looking kid. Mr Ibrahim, from Felda Sungai Mas in Malaysia's state of Johor, reveals his shock when he discovered that one of his goats had given birth to a kid which had the features of a human baby. He adds that he had been informed by his business partner, Jamaludin Abdul Samad, at around 11am, last Friday, April 22, 2016, that some parts of the baby goat looked like a human infant. "When I went to check, I was quite shocked but fascinated too as its face, nose, short legs and even the condition of its soft body seemed like a human baby, but the light brown fur covering its whole body resembles that of a goat." Mr Ibrahim adds, that despite the features, the kid did not have any umbilical cord which was equally strange, adding that the kid had already been dead when they had found it, believing that it may have been trampled by its mother or other complications. "We kept the kid's carcass in a polystyrene box filled with ice cubes before taking it to the district veterinary office at around noon yesterday." The hearing on Kanu's appeal which was scheduled to hold on Monday, April 25, 2016, was shifted to May 5, after a three-man panel of justices found out that the case was not listed on the courts case list. According to a statement issued by the group's spokesman, Mr Emma Powerful, in Onitsha, Anambra State on Monday, April 25, the DSS, Attorney General and the Judiciary have all ganged up to play hide and seek game with Kanus trial, to they can continue to imprison him. The statement read: The Nigerian Federal Government and its agents have deliberately refused to come to court for the case. They have refused to respect court orders and do not honour court date, and we are wondering why Mr. Kanu is still being held, since, they are not ready to continue the trial which will expose the emptiness of the present APC led Federal Government. We want to let the present government of Muhammadu Buhari to know that no amount of frustration will make Mr. Kanu to stop the struggle. The present Nigeria government, Attorney General of the Nigerian Federation and the Federal Court of Appeal Judges who have hand in the frustrating activities to continue the trial will be disgraced at the end of the day. No plan by the occupier of Aso Rock in sabotaging the efforts of our leader to excise his fundamental rights at the Federal Court of Appeal, Abuja will be successful. The hide and seek game of the APC led Federal Government, Attorney General of the Nigerian Federation and the DSS, through the Judiciary, the Federal Court of Appeal and their Judges who connived in the evil plan to frustrate Mr Kanu will fail. All their plans will come to naught and at the end. Mazi Kanu and IPOB will laugh last. Powerful further said: Mr Kanu filed a suit challenging his illegal detention in Kuje prison and the court of appeal Judge fixed 25th April 2016 for hearing, only the Judge to disappear while the lawyers and masses were in the court waiting for him to come and preside over the matter assigned to him, that act is part of the plan to frustrate Mr. Kanu. IPOB worldwide regrets that the Judiciary is not free in Nigeria, and we will not hesitate to conclude that the judiciary is carrying out the order of their master in Aso Rock, not to attend to the court, because their master is not satisfied with the way his secret agents have not come up with the evidence to nail Mazi Kanu. It is however, a well known fact to the world that Mazi Kanu, the leader of IPOB did not commit any crime in Nigeria or the world at large. Nevertheless, we want to let the world know the mess the judiciary is into in Nigeria and how the present APC government is using the judiciary to delay the release of our leader. The three-man panel of Justices of the Appeal court sitting in Abuja, led by Justice Abdul Aboki,had adjourned hearing on the appeal that was lodged by Kanu till May 5, after it discovered that it was not listed for hearing in the courts case list. Kanu's lawyer, Chief Chuks Muoma, SAN, however insisted that it was the appellate court itself that originally fixed April 25 to hear the matter. The Yola Camp Coordinator, Saad Bello, who, on behalf of the Director General of NEMA, Muhammad Sani Sidi, stated this when he took the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Samanthan Power, round the facilities at Malkohi IDP Camp in Yola, Adamawa State on Saturday, April 23, 2016. He said there were 32 formal camps in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States with a total of 189, 783 IDPs. Borno has 19 camps with 150, 858 IDPs; Yobe has 9 camps with 31, 988 IDPs and Adamawa 4 camps with 6, 937 IDPs, Saad Bello was quoted in a statement signed by Sani Datti, NEMAs Information Officer issued on 24 April 2016. The Camp Coordinator added that there were 14 satellite camps in liberated communities, mainly in Borno State with 216, 184 IDPs. The camps with the highest population are Ngala with 70, 505; Dikwa 53, 636; Bama 27, 000 and Damboa/Sabon Gari 25, 311. Saad said host communities in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states have a total of 1, 391, 613 IDPs. Borno state has the highest with 1, 158, 362; Adamawa 125, 689 and Yobe 107, 562. He said Federal Government through the coordinating agency, NEMA and relevant line Ministries, Departments and Agencies have been trying to meet the needs of the IDPs in the provision of food, nutrition, non-food items (NFIs), temporary shelter, medicament, psycho-social therapy, security and protection.According to him, government continued in the efforts to meet the needs of the IDPs, more supports were critically required for the IDPs across the three identified kinds of camps before they return back to their communities. The critical areas where further support is needed are food, non-food items (including basic household needs), shelter, WASH, education, nutrition, protection, health and sexual reproductive health, and psycho-social helps. The U.S. Ambassador to UN, Samanthan Power, who led a high level delegation from US to the Malkohi IDPs camp and host communities told them that they were there to determine what more could be done to defeat Boko haram so that they can return back to their communities. I know how difficult these last years have been for you and on behalf of President Barack Obama, I express my sympathy and my condolences for all you have lost and our resolve to try to make things better together, she said. According to the Army spokesman, Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, five terrorists were killed in the process. Usman, in a statement obtained from the Armys social media page, said The ambushed terrorists were trying to link up with other terrorists or members of their families to relocate to other places. It will be recalled that the troops intercepted a group of women and children yesterday who claimed to have escaped from the terrorists enclave in Sambisa forest. However, during screening and interrogation, it was confirmed that they were the terrorists advance party relocating to a new safe haven following intense tactical operations by troops. Adding that The troops sprang a surprise ambush on the group of escaping terrorists from Sambisa forest crossing towards Alagarno mounted on motorcycles and bicycles, killing 5 of them and recovering a number items. These include 5 motorcycles, 9 bicycles, 80 new pairs of bathroom slippers, assorted laundry items, polythene bags and mats. From all indication, the terrorists intended to link up with their wives and children earlier mentioned, who were obviously despatched to wait for them close to Fulawani for onward movement to other locations. Reports say Boko Haram now straps bombs to birds so they can blow up particular areas. See Pulse Photo-News gallery below. Read the statement, issued by the groups chairman, Suleiman Adeniyi on Sunday, April 24, 2016, below: The President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government of Nigeria should go and clear the den of Boko Haram sect, popularly called Sambisa Forest for its proposed Grazing Reserve Project for the Fulani Herdsmen. The proposed bill would increase avoidable crisis in the land through the violent resistance across the region of the country. The Fulani herdsmen have become dangerous species across the states of the federation. President Buhari should drop the idea of forcing the grazing reserves bill on the states contrary to section 17, 18 and 20 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, in order to save the country from imminent violent problem. The proposed grazing reserves idea is ill-conceived, illegal, unconstitutional, self-serving, retrogressive, day-light robbery and time bomb which is capable of igniting monumental crisis across the length and breadth of the nation. ----------------------------------------------------------- The Presidential aide said In the past, somebody would come to Aso Rock, a chief or a politician. And they package $100,000, $50,000 for him. The man gets back to his hotel room, dashes his driver $500, dashes his PA $1,000, his girl friend $200. This has stopped. Such money must go into productive services, medical services, infrastructure etc. Lets do something that is enduring for our people. All these stop gap measures, going as subsidies, were going to stop them. Lets make our refineries work. Dont let us make millionaires of a few and poor people of millions. Ojudu also said Buharis government never expected that things will be this difficult, adding that Nigerians will surely get the change they voted for. The Presidents aide also asked Nigerians to be patient, because the problems of the country cannot be solved overnight. He said When we were campaigning, oil was still $112 per barrel. Nobody could have thought it would just crash and become $33 per barrel. Were now on $40 per barrel. Nobody envisaged that our foreign reserve could go as low as $28 billion. He also blamed the current state of the nation on corruption. Ojudu said What people are saying is just like saying bring back corruption. They dont know what corruption has done to this country. You vote about a billion naira for a hospital, and N800 million is taken away by corruption, and you have only N200 million left. So, there wont be medication, there wont be ambulances etc you can imagine how many people die due to such act. They stash such money outside the country. They buy houses in America, buy private jets etc. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested former minister of state for Finance, under Goodluck Jonathans administration, Mrs Nenadi Usman allegedly over N2.5b fraud. See Pulse Photo-News gallery below. The Minister stated this in Lagos on Monday, April 25, at the town hall meeting hosted by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed. He said the scarcity has lingered mainly because the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) are being diverted other countries rather than points of sale in Nigeria, and the trucks cannot be tracked. Do not judge our work on the basis of the difficulties you have had in fuel supply. I love your patience, I appreciate it; we are working feverishly at solution. We are looking at intelligent solutions, the Minister said. Over 30 per cent of (fuel) supply is diverted. For example, in the last five days, we have pumped 400 trucks of product into Lagos state. The total consumption (in the state) at the maximum is 250 trucks, and most of those trucks are diverted from Lagos to the hinterland of Chadand Cameroon. We need, literally, a whole army to stop this from happening. So I continue to supply and over-supply and so we struggle. According to him, Nigerians must join the government in tackling fuel crisis by reporting incidents of diversion of fuel. We started publishing deliveries and telling you the filling stations they were allocated to, so if you dont find products in those filling stations, there are hotlines to call and for police to report," Kachikwu said. He said the NNPC has mostly dealt with the shortfall in supply resulting from debt to marketers; and then foreign exchange scarcity, which has substantially improved supply of products. However, he noted that this move is just a short-term solution, adding that the private sector needs to drive this business because ultimately, without doing that, we are never going to find a solution to this problem. IBB said this at his Minna Hilltop residence, where he held a briefing to dismiss rumours of his death. He said As a Muslim, I have the belief that every one of us must die; it could be now, it could be hundred years or in two days, it does not matter. Everybody must die, and to me, the death rumour does not shock me; it is not something to worry about. Speaking on the state of the nation, the former Head of State said he believes that Nigeria will overcome any challenge it is facing right now. IBB also said I still believe very strongly in this country; that is further demonstrated by the people themselves. The calibre of people the Nigerians are, they are very industrious people, so with Nigerians possessing this quality, it keeps my hope going for Nigeria. Yes I think so. I believe very strongly that the country holds a very beautiful future for us and you younger generations, he added. General Ibrahim Babangida removed Major General Muhammadu Buhari in a coup on August 27, 1985. See Pulse Photo-News gallery below. Justice Inyang Ekwo of a Federal High Court in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital on Monday, April 25, found Daudu guilty of 77 out of the 208 count-charge brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He was jailed for two years on each count, which is expected to run concurrently. The charges against him bordered on conspiracy, advanced fee fraud and money laundering involving about N1.4 billion. The ex-lawmaker had been standing trial, as the Caretaker Chairman of the Ogori/Mangogo Local Government Area of Kogi State between January and July 2008, since April, 2010 alongside a former Commissioner for Agriculture in the state, Albert Adesina. But the court discharged and acquitted Adesina, who was only charged with one count. Report said the trial of Daudu was initially before Justice Adamu Bello of a Federal High Court in Abuja but was later transferred to the Lokoja Division of the Federal High Court before Justice Ekwo, where Daudu and Adesina were re-arraigned twice on amended charges. The prosecution counsel, Mr. Wahab Shittu, was said to have provided 13 witnesses, and tendered 47 exhibits to prove the charges against Daudu. This is contained in a statement issued by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Joint Negotiating Council (JNC) at the end of an emergency meeting in Lokoja on Monday, April 25. According to NAN, the statement was jointly signed by Mr Onuh Edoka, the state NLC Chairman; Mr Ojo Ranti Matthew, Chairman of TUC and Mr Aaron Akeji, the Chairman of JNC. The workers unions said the government did not honour its previous promises to pay the salary arrears. It also condemned the payment of salary in piecemeal; adding that salaries for the months of October and November, 2015 were paid three months after each of the month was due. The statement also decried the exclusion of workers employed between January and December, 2015 from receiving the November, 2015 salaries. It urged the state government to pay those affected because they worked for the month. The state government is claiming that the employment of the concerned workers was irregular, since there was an embargo on employment in the state," the statement said. Responding to the planned strike, Mr Kingsley Fanwo, the Chief Press Secretary to the state Governor, Yahaya Bello, said that it would be unfair to blame the present government for a problem created by past administrations. Fanwo said Bellos administration was able to offset two months salary arrears within his 57 days in office. Labour was on an indefinite strike before the inauguration of the present administration, but the governor intervened to settle the industrial dispute, he said. The two other officials released along with the permanent secretary are: a Director in the ministry, Mr Tajudeen Badejoko and their Driver, Mr Oladapo Ajani. This is contained in a statement signed by the state Head of Service, Mr Sunday Owoeye, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Osogbo. According to the statement, the officials regained their freedom from their abductors on Sunday evening but did not indicate where the victims secured their freedom. It, however, said that "arrangements were ongoing to convey them to Osogbo within the shortest time possible by security agents with a view to re-uniting them with their families. In a statement signed by a Director of Press, Baode Akinola on 25 April, 2016, the Minister said: "Our prayers is that almighty God in his infinite mercy will give the family, friends and the entire members of NMA the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss. To the survivors, our prayers are that they will recover soon and get integrated into their normal daily activities. The Federal Ministry of Health is in constant touch with the leadership of the NMA so that the survivors of the accident could get the best healthcare service. I am using this medium thank the leadership of the NMA especially those at the scene of accident in Kaduna who were involved in the evacuation of both the survivors and the deceased." "We also appreciate the outpouring of emotions and greetings from friends, organisations and agencies on this unfortunate incident," the minister said. At the emergency meeting of the National Officers Committee (NOC) meeting held at 7.00am on Monday, April 25, 2016 at Giginya Coral Hotel Sokoto, the medical association had released the number of the people killed in the auto crash in Kaduna. Meanwhile, at the emergency meeting of the National Officers Committee (NOC) meeting held at 7.00am on Monday 25th April, 2016 at Giginya Coral Hotel Sokoto, the medical association released the number of the people killed in the auto crash in Kaduna. A statement signed by Dr. Kayode Obembe and Dr. Adewunmi Alayaki , National President and Secretary General respectively the Medical Association said as a follow-up to their earlier statement issued by NOC on Sunday, April 24, 2016, "it is now confirmed that the Ekiti State delegates for the Annual General Conference/Annual Delegates Meeting (AGC/ADM) currently holding in Sokoto, were involved in a fatal motor accident along Abuja-Kaduna Expressway." "Six of our members and the driver have been confirmed dead and these are their names: Dr. Alex Akinyele Secretary NMA Ekiti, Federal Teaching Hospital (FTH), Ido Ekiti, Dr. Tunde Aladesanmi General Surgeon, FTH, Ido Ekiti, Dr. O.J. Taiwo Anatomic Pathologist, Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH), Ado-Ekiti, Dr. Ogunseye J.B National Association of General and Government Medical and Dental Practitioners (NAGGMDP) National Secretary, Hospital Management Board (HMB), Ekiti, Dr. Olajide .O Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), EKSUTH President, Dr. Atolani Adeniyi Secretary NAGGMDP, Ekiti State, and Mr. Ajibola NMA Ekiti Driver. "Other members of the delegates who survived the accident are in stable condition and are receiving medical attention under the auspices of the Chairman of the Kaduna State NMA and his team. The bereaved families have been contacted and arrangements are in motion to convey the bodies back to Ekiti State. NOC have sent its representatives to Kaduna for on the spot assessment and compliment the effort of the Kaduna team." The statement said while the conference continues, the NOC has directed all doctors to observe one week of mourning from Tuesday 26th to Tuesday 3rd of May, 2016. We are going to appeal to Nigerians to be patriotic and they should please stop attacking and destroying critical facilities. On the part of government, what we have done now is looking for other means of gas such as non-associated gas, he said. We have also been trucking gas from Utorogu to Warri and Ughelli so as to allow for the stations around Sapele to have gas. By February this year, we were able to generate and transmit 5,074Mw of power but we are in this situation today mainly because of the attack on the Forcados export line. So now we have capacity to generate but we dont have enough gas and as soon as this platform is repaired we will be able to generate and transmit more than 5,000MW. Therefore, aiming at 10,000MW for 2019 is quite feasible, he added. Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his government will deal with vandals the same way that it had dealt with Boko Haram. ------------------------------------------------------------ Umar was being investigated by the EFCC over an alleged N10m fraud incident. Sarakis lawyer, Ajibola Oluyede who spoke on his behalf said We are not saying he (Umar) is guilty. We are saying he is tainted and that he cannot act independently while the EFCC that is investigating him and had indicted him is now prosecuting our client before him. That is why we asked him to excuse himself from the trial. He did so before in the case involving former FCT Minister, Jeremiah Useni, where he excused himself from the hearing on the ground that he had close relationship with Useni. We are asking him to do so again now because of the facts that we have presented. Oluyede also cited some documents that was purportedly written by former EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde that said the CCT chairman might have demanded and collected money from the complainant (Taiwo) through his Personal Assistant (PA). Efforts made to recover the telephone handset used by Justice Umar proved abortive as he claimed that he had lost the telephone in 2012. This has made it impossible to subject it to independent scientific analysis with a view to corroborating the allegation. Justice Umar also admitted that he met privately with the complainant in his chamber at the tribunal. This is a most unethical and highly suspicious conduct on his part. Justice Danladi Umar last week, ordered security men to throw out Oluyede for insisting on presenting a motion seeking the CCT chairmans withdrawal from the case involving the Senate President. See Pulse Photo-News gallery below. The motion was thrown out on Monday, April 25, by a three-man panel of Justices of the appellate court led by Justice Abdul Aboki, following the withdrawal of the motion by Sarakis lead counsel, Kanu Agabi, SAN. Agabi, who did not a reason for the withdrawal, however prayed the court for accelerated hearing of the substantive appeal challenging jurisdiction of the CCT to entertain the 13-count criminal charge against Saraki. He apologised to the appellate court panel for the decision to withdraw the stay of proceeding motion. "We sincerely apologise to your lordships for taking the action after you have already read through such a voluminous motion. It is unfair to say we are withdrawing. But we have to. We want to withdraw the motion", Agabi said. The counsel o the federal government, Mr. Rotimi Jacobs, did not oppose the withdrawal of the application. While the appellate court has not fixed a date for hearing of the main appeal, the motion that was struck out was filed on April 4. Pulse recalls that on April 5, Justice Danladi Umar, who heads the CCT panel, had declined to suspend further hearing on the criminal case against Saraki pending the outcome of his appeal. Saraki had challenged the powers of the Attorney General of the Federation to initiate the charge against him, urging the tribunal to hands-off the case and insisting that his trial was politically motivated. He replaces Abdul-Nashiru Issahaku who was promoted to the top job after the previous governor Henry Kofi Wampah announced his surprise resignation late last month. Asiama, 48, is an economist with around 20 years of experience at the Bank of Ghana and, until his appointment on Thursday, had co-ordinated the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). The MPC sets the bank's benchmark policy rate, which is currently at 26 percent. The earlier case related to an ongoing money laundering investigation linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the state fund at the centre of a scandal raging in neighbouring Malaysia. According to the document, Yeo Jiawei, a 33-year-old Singaporean, was charged on April 15 with receiving funds amounting to S$200,000 ($148,247) in his account that were termed "benefits from cheating". "As investigations are on-going, no further details are available at this time," the Attorney-General's Chambers said in a statement on Friday, adding that Yeo was a former BSI Singapore employee. Yeo was charged under an act that covers corruption, drug trafficking and other serious crimes, the charge sheet showed. BSI was not immediately available to comment on the latest probe against a former employee. A secretary at the bank confirmed that Yeo was no longer an employee and said his contact details were unavailable. Reuters was unable to discover his whereabouts. In February, court documents showed senior BSI banker Yak Yew Chee was facing a criminal probe for handling accounts for 1MDB and related entities. Yew Chee subsequently left the private bank. In an affidavit filed at the court, he denied any wrongdoing or getting unlawful benefits from managing the accounts of 1MDB or its affiliates. South African Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago told CNBC Africa in an interview on Thursday that this was a sign of investor confidence. "Monetary and fiscal policy are acting in sync, and these things do not go unnoticed by global financial markets," he said. "...We have actually able to get the investor community re-interested in South Africa." Investors have said their faith in South Africa's institutions had been somewhat restored following a court ruling against President Jacob Zuma. The president survived an impeachment vote earlier this month after the Constitutional Court said he breached the law by ignoring an order to repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent on renovating his private home. "When people analyse the credit matrix of a country, they trend to reduce it to a number... They forget a very important component of the credit matrix and that is the strength of institutions," Kganyago said. "The robustness of these institutions has been tested and ...(they have) passed with flying colours." Kganyago, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and other government officials, executives and trade union leaders have been on overseas road shows anxious to reassure investors about continuity in fiscal policy after Zuma changed finance ministers twice in less than a week in December, triggering a run on the rand. "I talk to investors all the time and its is very clear that the South African message is now getting understood," Kganyago said. Kganyago said ratings agencies would also do well to consider South Africa's democratic institutions. Adighije, who made this known while speaking with newsmen on Sunday in Abuja, advised Buhari to take several factors into consideration before accenting to the budget. He said that the pressure created by the current challenges in the country should not be a reason for Buhari to sign the budget without proper verification. '' I do not have the details of the budget with me, so it is difficult for me to say he should just sign; but I want him to study the grey areas carefully. ''I think the so-called grey areas need to be cleared before his accent. ''All I want is for him to be meticulous and sign a budget that will be for the good of all Nigerians.'' On the persisting fuel scarcity, the senator appealed to Nigerians to be patient with the president. He expressed optimism that the APC-led Federal Government would restore normalcy in fuel supply, power and other sectors of the economy in no distant time. Goje and Jibrin, who are the chairmen of the legislative committees on appropriation, made the appeal via a joint statement released on Sunday, April 24, 2016. Read the full statement below: Following the transmission on of the 2016 appropriation bill and details passed by the National Assembly, there have been all manner of misinformation, misrepresentations and innuendos about the roles played by the Joint Committees on Appropriation in the course of passing the budget. Even though most of the allegations, especially those specifically levelled against the two of us, as chairmen of the committee, are unfounded, we intend to respond to them at the appropriate time. For now, what we consider important is to resolve the impasse around the budget and get it assented to so that its implementation can begin in the interest of all Nigerians. However, we must put it on record that the details aggregated and transmitted to the executive are largely the inputs we received from the standing committees of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Given the foregoing, and all factors considered, we hereby state that we have had enough controversy over the 2016 budget. What is needful right now is a resolution of the differences and to that end, we call on our colleagues in the National Assembly to accede to the request by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari to have a second look at the details and make the necessary adjustments so that he can assent. This, in our opinion, should not go beyond this week. To the extent that there are already ongoing consultations, a debate about who is right or wrong is unhelpful in the circumstance; and in any case, does not advance the cause of our country men and women whose interest we have been elected to serve. Nevertheless, we must commend President Muhammadu Buhari, Senate President Bukola Saraki, Speaker Yakubu Dogara and the entire members of the National Assembly, members of the federal executive council, the Minister of Budget and the budget team for their cooperation even as we assure all Nigerians that we will do everything to protect and defend their interest, at all times. ------------------------------------------------------------ He said this would give the PDP a chance to return to power in 2019. What happened in 2015 has opened the eyes of Nigerians. Nigerians have lost faith in APC. From what we have seen, it is obvious that Nigerians were deceived. They have seen the deceit of APC and they have returned to where they belong," he said. They have seen the truth and they are back to their original party. The false stories of 2015 will no longer be accepted and come 2019, PDP will bounce back to power. I am going back to the Niger Delta to tell the people that PDP is fully rooted in the North. He said for thousands of people to gather for the PDP event in the state, it means that there is no APC Jigawa. The PDP National Chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff, who was also present at the rally said APC is finished. Banned clothings include armless, short sleeved dresses, short dresses, cleavage showing dresses. Andrew Kofi Wofersor, president of the church stated that the dresses worn by most women to church now is against Christianity. Explaining the reason for the ban, Wofersor said that Muslims wear what they wear to look decent and not to distract men. It is not that the dresses are not good, but they are not good for the church. When we stop them from putting them on to church, at a point in time they will even stop wearing them to public places, Mr. Wofersor said. Wofersor urged parents and guardians to monitor what their wards wear. Recently, the Anglican Church in Enugu banned the wearing of tube wedding gowns. The Most Rev, Emmanuel Chukwuma, Archbishop of the Anglican Archdiocese of Enugu. On Wednesday, April 20, Mrs. Semenitari said the hostel project would be re-assigned to a more competent contractor. The NDDC boss said she was dismayed that a contract that was awarded to Unibright ENGRG Limited since 2004 had barely reach 25 per cent completion. Contractors like this should not be allowed to go scot free. This is unfathomable. By next week I want to sign the termination letter for this contract so that it can be re-assigned to a contractor who is ready to work to get the job back on track, Semenitari said.. She apologised to the university community for the poor performance of the contractor whom she said had gone contrary to the standards of the NDDC. These are problems that come up when you are dealing with a lot of things at the same time. The Commission has a lot on its plate with 8,000 plus jobs. Its always not too easy to be on top of all of it. We apologise where standards are below par but the whole idea of what we are doing is to come back to speed and come back to standards, she said. This is contained in a statement signed by UNIBENs Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Farady Orumwense and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Benin. Orumwense, while congratulating the appointees on behalf of management urged them to be guided by wise counsels.He described the feat, as a demonstration of the pedigree of UNIBEN, which has re-enforced its positive presence in the public domain globally. If nothing else, these appointments have gone a long way to demonstrate the testimonial of the university and re-enforced the deployment of quality service delivery epitomised by the appointments. This is a clear testimony of robust and undisputed quality service to the Nigerian nation in particular and the world at large, the statement said. Those appointed include: Prof. Akii Ibhadode, VC, Federal University of Petroleum Resources and Engineering (FUPRE); Prof. Emmanuel Aluyor, VC of newly established Edo State University, Iyamho; Prof. Sunny Onoheabhi, Rector, Institute of Building Technology, Uromi. The company, while making the announcement, said it would offer the wholesale wireless broadband Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology service to its prospective partners especially major Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), major Internet Carriers (IC), Internet Service Providers (ISP), and Bandwidth Aggregators. According to an Innovation Village report, the NCC adopted the concept of Wholesale Wireless Access License as a long term sustainable solution to the availability of broadband services and a key component toward achieving the Nigerian National Broadband Strategy. Mr. Biodun Omoniyi, Managing Director of VDT Communications, the company that oversees Bitflux operations, said the service would be provided via Bitfluxs 30MHz of the 2.3GHz spectrum on its LTE advance platform. Our services are now available nationwide and the immediate focus is to put to rest the unnecessary use of unlicensed spectrum to deliver last mile access services. Our wholesale wireless broadband LTE service is designed for retail partners such as 4G LTE Broadband Service providers, Enterprise Connect Partners, Bulk Corporate LTE customers, Wi-fi Bundle customers and Licensed frequency last mile service providers, Omoniyi said in a statement. Finding Peace of Mind: Discover These Five Places in Europe to Unwind As Wells Fargo Bank moves out of the downtown Davenport tower that it and its predecessors have occupied since 1927, the departure leaves the building's owner poised to repurpose the historic space. "We're excited to give that lobby different uses," said developer Rodney Blackwell, whose Financial District Properties has owned the Wells Fargo Bank Building for the past decade. He said the plan is for two or three tenants to share the mammoth lobby, including a financial services company that he would not identify. "Banking has changed over the years," Blackwell said, adding that the financial tenant will be "more adjusted to size." He estimated it will occupy about 6,000 square feet and the other two tenants will split the remaining 16,000 square feet. The office space Wells Fargo occupied above the adjacent parking ramp likely will become a combination of new housing and commercial space, he said. Financial District Properties also owns Wells Fargo's drive-thru at 3rd and Main streets, which was vacated Friday. Blackwell said he believes a drive-through will remain there, but he also is looking at options such as a building atop it. "We'll need to convert that to a whole better use." Of the historic lobby, he said "I think people will get hung up on what can it be. Everyone understands it's a beautiful bank lobby and (will question) how it gets utilized better. They have to understand that banking model went out 20 years ago." Soaring two stories high, the lobby features a ceiling that showcases 10 6-foot-high, hand-painted murals atop each pillar. The scenes depict moments in region's early history including the arrival of white men, Sauk tribal leader Black Hawk, the building of Fort Armstrong and the first railroad bridge, as well as the first steamboat. The lobby's architecture includes marble floors and marble wainscoting as well as remnants of its early banking days in the multiple vaults and teller windows. With the building on the National Register of Historic Places, Blackwell assured, "The coolest lobby in the world will stay the coolest lobby in the world." Wells Fargo's relocation returns about 36,000 square feet of what Blackwell calls "usable space" including the lobby, an annex that attaches the tower to the parking ramp and offices above it. He hopes to lease the annex to a single tenant who may take the office space too. If not, those will be converted to apartments. Two years ago, he converted four floors of office space in the tower above and below the law offices of Lane & Waterman into housing. But he said the demand remains for more downtown housing. The historic designation makes it eligible for tax credits, he added. Wells Fargo's move comes at a time when the building is at its highest occupancy since Blackwell purchased it along with the nearby Mississippi Plaza office building more than a decade ago. Financial District Properties acquired the pair of office buildings in a $15 million deal. "The good news is the building just went through about a $15 million rehab with the new housing, elevators and all the mechanicals," Blackwell said. Much of Wells Fargo's space was basement storage that Blackwell does not consider "usable." "The hardest thing is to figure out how to get something going (with a tenant) from the lobby to the safe deposit boxes downstairs, which is cool space," he said. "There's also space all the way at the top to the clock tower, but no one has ever leased that room. There's a few life safety issues that are hard to get through." Nearly 90 years of history came to a close as Wells Fargo left its iconic downtown Davenport building over the weekend to move two blocks away into a new beginning and the next chapter of downtown redevelopment. There was a flurry of activity as workers locked the doors of the Wells Fargo Bank Building for the last time Friday afternoon, cleared their desks and packed up their last-minute boxes. Moving crews went to work after the bank closed early and relocated the bank from the historic office tower at 3rd and Main streets to the new downtown offices at 104 W. 2nd St. Staff spent the weekend unpacking their business areas as well as install and performing checks on all the technology needed to get the branch operational. Wells Fargo reopens at 9 a.m. today at its new location in City Square at 2nd and Brady streets. The building is the first of three in a half-block stretch being renovated to become Restoration St. Louis' new $60 million City Square. "There's nobody here, it's an odd feeling. We're really moving now," Carrie O'Neill, Wells Fargo's Quad-Cities market president and regional private banking manager, said Friday afternoon as she surveyed her old office. "It's bittersweet; you can be a little sad. It's been home for so long." "We're going from one piece of history to the next piece of history in the making," she said. The move comes one year after Wells Fargo Bank announced plans to relocate to the former Parker Building. "It was important for us to continue to be a very important part of downtown Davenport," O'Neill said. While the bank was committed to downtown, she said today's banking model no longer required the 70,000 square-feet it had in the old building. "The lobby was huge and really, banking has changed," she said, adding that her 48-member staff now occupies 23,500 square feet of modern office space. Makeover dresses up former store Wells Fargo's new space spans the first floor, a mezzanine and the second floor of what once was the M.L. Parker Department Store. O'Neill said Restoration St. Louis "did a really nice job of staying true to the integrity and history of the building but with a new flair." With a modern floor plan on the first floor, the mezzanine area filled with individual office spaces made of glass and wood has a view down onto the retail banking area and business banking offices. "We're really proud of that,'' she said of the mezzanine. Her department, private banking, occupies most of the second floor of the building. Wells Fargo also "wanted to be true to Davenport ... and be part of its growth," O'Neill said of the relocation. Bank employees know customers will miss the building occupied since 1927 by Wells Fargo and its predecessors, including 60 years by the former Davenport Bank & Trust. "Folks will miss walking into the grand entrance in the lobby, but honestly, not a lot of people walk into the lobby," O'Neill said. Online banking, direct deposit and ATMs have dramatically changed the face of banking, she said. "More people want to do more on their mobile devices." Jason Clay, business banking manager, said customers recognize the significance of the move. "The emotions I get from customers in a lot of cases is the excitement that we're in on the ground stages" of City Square's development. Meanwhile, staff is enthusiastic about the reconfigured space and the new technology, including video conferencing. "That will allow us to video conference with our customers who travel or vacation in other areas," he said. "We're seeing the technology get to a point where more and more folks are comfortable with it." The closer quarters, he said actually will help instill more team cohesiveness. In the old bank, departments were far removed from each other. Wells move raises interest Amy Gill, who with husband Amrit Gill owns Restoration St. Louis, said landing Wells Fargo as an anchor was a big win. "They're such a stable tenant," she said. "I think they'll be a great asset to the building, anchoring it and anchoring downtown." Gill added that Wells Fargo's opening now will spark more interest in the remaining Class A office space and its 20 luxury apartments, of which five already are leased. "The downfall of downtown is people don't believe (a project) is going to get done. Once you get some of it done, that's when the real interest begins," she said. The St. Louis developer had the same experience when it redeveloped Market Lofts in downtown Davenport's warehouse district. Two more commercial tenants, Hub International/Ruhl & Ruhl and Cottingham and Butler, will move into City Square in June above Wells Fargo's space. Gill said their relocation from the former Putnam Building will allow construction to begin there on what will be Blackhawk Suites hotel. The Gills own the Hotel Blackhawk, which they renovated. "We're already doing selective demolition and starting to clear it out," Gill said. The Center Building will provide a second floor connection of City Square, which runs along 2nd Street between Brady and Main streets. It will include 12 apartments, executive conference facilities, a fitness center and some retail. Planning the move For Wells Fargo, preparing to move the bank has involved months of pre-planning and coordination involving not only the local staff but Wells Fargo project team managers from across the country. "We need to be up and running for business at 9 a.m. (today)," said Sherri Wagler, community bank district manager, who oversees the retail operation. According to Wagler, planning began in 2014 when the bank's lease was coming due. Plotting the move "has taken a lot of hours, multiple tasks and many phone calls, as many as 17 or 18 major conference calls," she said. "We've been doing weekly conference calls for some time." For the retail team alone made up of tellers, personal bankers and managers, the move involved 200 individual tasks ranging from moving furniture and equipment as well as the shipment of cash to the new location. History uncovered Just like emptying out a long-occupied house, staff diligently scoured every inch of the Wells Fargo Building. In tucked-away storage areas, they uncovered outdated and unnecessary things as well as pieces of the bank's history. Some of the unusual finds were shipped to Wells Fargo's Archive Department for use in its museums. Tasked with clearing what they call "the dungeon," business associate Christine Mirfield said "One of the cool things we found was a handwritten balance sheet from the second quarter of 1938. It was metal-bound and in a vault downstairs." "We had an endless amount of space so people found a way to fill it," she said. Bishop Demetrios of Mokissos, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago, delivered a message of expectations and hope Sunday at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Rock Island during its Palm Sunday services. He also spoke Sunday evening at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in East Moline. This is the beginning of Holy Week for Eastern Orthodox followers worldwide. It is always wonderful to visit all the churches in the Metropolis of Chicago, he said after the service. I cover six states in the Midwest, 58 parishes. It is important for the bishop to get to all of them. This church is always cheerful. Easter in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is determined by the first full moon after the vernal equinox and after the Jewish Passover is complete. He serves as chancellor of the Metropolis of Chicago (equivalent to a Roman Catholic vicar general), under the leadership of Metropolitan Iakovos of Chicago. The bishop's message talked about how Jesus was welcomed as the Messiah on Palm Sunday, but less than a week later, citizens were shouting 'crucify him.' for treason. They thought he deserted them. He went on to say the world does not want a Messiah, or leader of any kind to tell them what they need. They want them to give people what they want. He also told church members that Jesus' death was the death of sin itself. The Rev. Michael Constantinides of the Rock Island church, said it was an honor to host the bishop on Palm Sunday. It adds to the excitement of an already exciting day. It makes it special, for my people and of course, for me, he said. That also is how the Rev. Thomas Alatzakis of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, feels about the visit. It is always an honor having the bishop, he said. Both said so many people know little about their church, but they are excited to share with anyone. We are the best-kept secret, Constantinides said. The best way to know who we are is to come when we worship. East Moline Mayor John Thodos, a member at Assumption, and Rock Island Mayor Dennis Pauley, were invited to the Rock Island service. I am honored to have visited and come to the service and him being in town, he said. I enjoy going to different church services on special occasions. I enjoyed this very much. The special service also was touching for parishioners, including friends Cleo Caras of Rock Island and Cleo Dalmaggas of Moline. I think we are quite honored to have him here, Dalmaggas said. There are a lot of churches in Chicago he could be at, but he came here. So, we are so honored. We are also so pleased when the bishop can come. It is always a treat and blessing. ALEDO, Ill. An Aledo man has been sentenced to a five-year prison term in a child abuse case. Justin Kidd, 34, pleaded guilty Monday in Mercer County Circuit Court to a Class 3 felony of aggravated battery to a child. The amended charge accuses Kidd of causing several fractures to a 2-month-old infant. The original charge had accused Kidd of causing over 20-fractures to the baby, who is not his. The mother of the child told Judge Richard Zimmer in court that she was in agreement with the five-year prison term. Mercer County States Attorney Greg McHugh said the child remains in protective custody with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Kidd was arrested last December, and the injuries to the child occurred between Oct. 1 and Nov. 15. DES MOINES An outside group that was one of the biggest spenders in the 2014 Iowa U.S. Senate race is launching a voter engagement effort squarely aimed at getting young voters to the ballot box in November to elect federal candidates who offer clean energy solutions. The 2016 election likely to offer the starkest contrast between presidential candidates that has been offered for many decades, Tom Steyer president of NextGen Climate. Young voters are the best hope for solving climate issues because they will have to live with the results for the longest time, Steyer said in announcing what he said would be the largest campus vote effort ever undertaken by a non-candidate campaign organization. His organization will have hundreds of organizers on the grounds at more than 200 campuses, including in Iowa, to register, engage and turn out young voters. Steyer, a businessperson and philanthropist, has budgeted $25 million for the campus campaign because he is determined to make sure young voters, who are not as engaged as older voters, are difference makers in the fall election. In Iowa, he said, more than 10,000 young voters have pledged to vote based on climate and clean energy issues. When young people engage in the political conversation, when they turn out and vote, and use the fact they are the biggest cohort in this election cycle, incredible things can happen, he said. NextGen is including Iowa in its plans because it is a battleground state in the presidential election and because the congressional contests, especially the Senate race, could make a difference in determining energy policy. He expects to make an endorsement in the Senate race involving Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and a Democrat to be determined in the June 7. Rather than endorse now, Steyer said NextGen prefers to let the candidates offer their solutions and then let the voters know the facts. For more, visit nextgenclimate.org/millennial. UnitedHealthcare will exit Iowa's individual insurance market in 2017, the state's insurance division announced on Monday, the latest shoe to drop in the company's pullback from the Affordable Care Act's online marketplaces. The Iowa Insurance Division said UnitedHealthcare will no longer sell individual policies on or off the marketplace. It also will no longer offer small group coverage on the Affordable Care Act's SHOP exchange. The state said about 8,700 individuals insured by UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands will be affected. Were obviously disappointed about UnitedHealthcares decision as thousands of Iowans are now forced to make changes, Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart said in a statement. However, we understand that the companys decision to withdraw is a business decision. The decision seems more national in scope, but thankfully we anticipate having other offerings around the state. Iowa's dominant insurer, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, has said it will enter the Affordable Care Act exchange in 2017. Companies have until May 11 to submit rate information to the state. UnitedHealth Group said last week that it would leave all but a few of the Affordable Care Act exchanges around the country. The company, the nation's largest insurer, said that it expected to lose $650 million in its exchange business this year and would only remain in "a handful" of states. A spokesperson confirmed Monday that it would leave the individual and SHOP exchanges in 2017. The Obama administration minimized the pending departure of UnitedHealthcare from marketplaces last week, as did some independent analysts who said that in many places across the country there were other insurers that could fill the gap. In the Quad-Cities, there are other insurers to choose from, too, but UnitedHealthcare also had some of the lowest premiums. In Scott County, the company offered the second lowest premiums for a silver plan for a 40-year-old male. In Rock Island County, it had the lowest premiums. Iowans insured by UnitedHealthcare will be able to switch coverage when the enrollment period for 2017 opens in November. The state insurance division said while the company's UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. would no longer sell policies on the SHOP exchange, it would continue to do so outside the exchange. UnitedHealthcare Life Insurance Co. also will not provide coverage for 2017, the insurance division said. That will affect 328 people. Fourth-grader Jordan Bledsoe, 9, of Davenport, could not have grinned any wider Sunday afternoon. He beamed proudly beside his comical watercolor self-portrait on the wall of the Figge Art Museum, Davenport. Jordan was among students from 19 Davenport schools who were recognized for artistic achievement Sunday at the Young Artists at the Figge ceremonies in the museum. His Wilson Elementary School art teacher Adam Little said students were chosen as much for the quality of their character as they were for the quality of their art. Jordan said it took three weeks of art class to complete his painting. It made me feel good when he was called to the front of the auditorium, he said. He does a lot of drawing at home, said his mother, Julianna Bledsoe. Even when he was little, he made his own little books. Now, she said, he designs board games. She said she is impressed with Little and the way he encourages his students. All the students received certificates in honor of their artistic achievements. One student from each school will receive a scholarship to attend Young Artists Day in June at the Figge. Among the representatives from Davenport Community Schools were school board member Linda Hayes and Superintendent Art Tate. The fine arts, Tate said, are one of our stakes in the ground. He said the fine arts are one of the strengths of the schools district that we want to enhance rather than chip away at it. Thats preserved here. Everyone, regardless of family income, can participate in art, which reduces the opportunity gap, he said. Having artwork in the community gallery is something for students to be excited about, said Laura Dunn, outreach educator at the museum. Steve Schwaegler, fine arts curriculum specialist for the school district, said individual teachers each have a different approach to art education. Student artists were from Adams, Blue Grass, Buchanan, Buffalo, Eisenhower, Fillmore, Garfield, Harrison, Hayes, Jackson, Jefferson, Madison, McKinley, Monroe, Truman, Walcott, Washington, Wilson and Young. After the ceremony, children participated in Lego challenges in conjunction with the museum's exhibit "The Art of Architecture: Lego Sculptures" by Adam Reed Tucker with photographs by J. Hunt Harris II. DES MOINES That state has deployed a mobile response unit designed to assist local law enforcement in child abductions just twice in nearly a year, Iowa officials said Monday. In both instances, the states mobile response unit was deployed to assist in missing children cases, not abductions, an official said. Unveiled in May 2015, Iowas Child Abduction Response Team, or CART, is a mobile unit containing technology and equipment for state law enforcement agencies to help local officials work on child abduction cases. The unit was created and paid for with $25,000 in federal grant funds plus state assets from civil forfeitures. We have not had to use it in the last year (for child abductions), and were thankful for that, state Public Safety Commissioner Roxann Ryan said Monday at a news conference. Ryan said the department receives an average of 15 to 30 abduction reports per year and three to five arrests are made each year. Ryan and Gov. Terry Branstad used the governors weekly news conference to speak about measures families can take to prevent child abductions and noted steps the state has taken, including creation of the CART unit, to handle reported abductions rapidly. Ryan said concerned individuals should pay attention to things that look unusual, and if an abduction is suspected, to gather and remember as much information as possible, such as physical descriptions of the children and the suspected abductors, and a description of the vehicle involved and its license plate number. Ryan and Branstad said many of the plans were developed after child abduction cases in Evansville and Dayton, Iowa. After the experiences in Evansville and Dayton, we have certainly made a much greater effort to try and prepare for the actual abductions, Ryan said. Ryan and Branstad cautioned spring and fall are particularly difficult times as childrens routines are undergoing significant changes, causing irregularities and less adult supervision. Thats when they are at their most vulnerable, Branstad said. The federal government has announced a program to provide $1.3 billion in debt relief for about 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on loan payments or face foreclosure. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the farm loan relief program funded from $3.1 billion set aside in the Inflation Reduction Act allocated toward assisting distressed borrowers of direct or guaranteed loans administered by USDA. The law was passed by Congress and signed by Biden in August. The money anounced Tuesday is the first round of payments designed to help farmers hard hit by pandemic-induced market disruptions or climate-driven natural disasters including drought stay in business or re-enter farming. The USDA says additional programs are to come. This week on the podcast, reporters discuss the 2016 Iowa legislative session that might have been; Washington weighs in on the Iowa Democratic Senate race, including the latest fundraising reports; and the U.S. House races in Iowa's 1st and 4th districts. On Iowa Politics is a weekly news and analysis podcast that aims to re-create the kinds of conversations that happen when you get political reporters from across Iowa together after the day's deadlines have been met. This week's show features James Q. Lynch, Todd Dorman, Erin Murphy, Christinia Crippes, Bret Hayworth and Ed Tibbetts. The show was produced by Richard Pratt, and the music heard in the podcast is courtesy of I Cry Wolfe. Find us at qctimes.com/oniowapolitics, chat with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @OnIowaPolitics and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Send band sound files to oniowapolitics@gmail.com. If there's a line to be drawn from Mike Judge's early animated hits ("Beavis and Butt-head," "King of the Hill") to his cult films ("Office Space," "Idiocracy") and his current show "Silicon Valley," it's the recurring idea that independence and individualism can be stupid just as often as it can be liberating. "Silicon Valley's" heroes are all smarter and more accomplished than the snickering teens of "Beavis and Butt-head" or the angry office drones of "Office Space," but they're also inexperienced in the tech world and arrogant, especially after winning tech plaudits in season 1 and a major copyright case in season 2. Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), CEO of Pied Piper, barely got time to celebrate at the end of last season before learning he was fired (or demoted to CTO, as we learn in "Founder Friendly"), but lord knows he's going to get up in arms about it. Not that he doesn't have his reasons: told by Raviga CEO Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer) that he's created something too valuable for him to run it himself, Richard feels unappreciated for the hard work, the touch of genius, and several lifetimes' worth of anxiety he put into Pied Piper. Still, he's arrogant enough to storm out of Raviga saying that he won't accept a demotion, that he's quitting, and that his whole team will leave with him. Responses on the Pied Piper team are mixed: Jared (Zach Woods), ever-frighteningly loyal, follows Richard. Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) are annoyed that Richard's making decisions for them. And Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller), will fight for Richard, but not before making sure that he can't be CEO instead. The opening minutes of "Founder Friendly" have some of the best physical and verbal comedy of the series so far, from Richard and Erlich running over what they think is a deer but is actually a neighboring company's "BamBot" and Erlich kicking it back down (it keeps jumping back up, defiantly) Richard's young lawyer, Ron (Ben Feldman), informing him that his situation with Raviga is essentially a case where he handed a loaded gun to Russ Hannemann, who then sold the gun for Raviga to pistol-whip him. But the best material comes with the clash between Richard and Laurie, the former emotional, angry and twitchy, the latter insisting it's a very emotional time for her as well without changing her stilted businesslike tone. For Laurie, it's about finding the best person to run the company and maximize profitability, and that might mean taking the founder down a peg. For Richard, it's an outrage, and the news that it's worth far more than he thought isn't going to dissuade him from ripping off his tie and storming out...or, rather, getting the tie caught around his neck and trying many times before finally pulling it off. "Silicon Valley" is great at undercutting dramatic gestures to expose their inherent absurdity. Erlich, for one, is outraged that Richard is being replaced by someone other than himself, and that Monica (Amanda Crew), the one Raviga board member who's usually in their corner, has turned against them. "At least Judas had the decency to kill himself after he betrayed Jesus, you know, the CEO of the world," he says with his unique mix of slackerism and bombast, with Monica's admittance that she did so to stay as a Team Pied Piper member of the board assuaging no fears. Erlich even prepares a list of insults for "Action" Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky, or "NED! RY-ER-SON!" of "Groundhog Day"), the installed CEO, suggesting to the older man that he's a big fan of "old people things" like senior citizen discounts at Perkin's Family Restaurants, deviled eggs as entrees and "LIKING IKE," he says with special disdain. But in fact, "Action Jack" is a fan of Aviato, Erlich's old company, and he's ready to work with Pied Piper's built-in team. Erlich, for once, is the first to swallow his pride. Richard, Dinesh and Gilfoyle are having a bit more trouble. The deadpan, sarcastic Gilfoyle and the more nervy, fast-talking Dinesh have been a great yin and yang over the past two seasons, but even better than seeing them snipe at each other is seeing them unite against a common perceived enemy, in this case Richard. When their conversation by the pool gets a bit too clogged with disclaimers and prefaces that they like Richard, they find a catch-all acronym, "RIGBY" (or "Richard is Great, But, Y'know") to run through their problems with him: he's a prima donna, he expects them to quit with him after they already gave up their own apps to work on Pied Piper, the works ("F--- him...RIGBY"). Richard, meanwhile, has the benefit of an unquestioning sycophant in Jared, who hovers over his boss, more excited for his new prospects at other companies than he is ("Your pumped-ness makes me pumped"). No one's about ready to get over it, especially after Gilfoyle and Dinesh come out and tell Richard that he's an arrogant prick and they can carry on without him, to Erlich's exasperation (he nearly convinced Richard to meet with Barker). If none of these guys can get over themselves, at least Gavin Belson (Matt Ross), the head of Richard's old company Hooli, can...pretend to, shutting down Nucleus, Hooli's Pied Piper rip-off, and saying that though a good 1,700 people are getting axed (without severance), the failure and burden of failure is his, even if he won't see any repercussions. Ross plays his big speech beautifully, adopting a false face of magnanimity as he's forced to say goodbye, pregnant pause, to the entire Nucleus division. His countless Yes Men refer to him as courageous, and his lawyers tell him he's mostly golden, which just lives Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti (Josh Brener) to take care of. The recurring gag of Big Head advancing at Hooli despite having no talent or ambition entirely because of his association with Pied Piper has been funny, but even funnier is Brener playing his severance scene with a mix of knowledge that he didn't do anything (says the lawyer, "Good, you're getting the hang of it already") and the goofy, childish indecision when he learns he can't keep his ID and hang out with his friends at Hooli. "I have to think about this," he says, before learning that he's getting $20 million, not $2 million, if he just goes away and doesn't say anything bad about Hooli in public or private. There's a priceless look of wonder on his face there as we see the most successful member of the Pied Piper crew getting ahead not because of his ego, but because of sheer dumb luck and total lack of arrogance. That ego is coming back for everyone else, from Gilfoyle and Dinesh, who realize they don't understand the hardest part of the coding, to Richard, who interviews at a dumb company that wants him to work on a program that puts photorealistic mustaches on people on video (options: John Waters, Alex Trebek, Hitler, and Sam Elliott). He takes his new information to his lawyer, Pete (Matt McCoy), now incarcerated for a relapse but still deadpan and professional as ever, who informs him that "eating s---" from Raviga and avoiding the dumb mustache company would be far better. "Swallow your pride or soon you'll be eating something far worse than s---." Richard does meet with "Action Jack," telling him he's reluctant to work at his own company for someone else...and Jack understands, acting like the friendly, forgiving father figure everyone wants and gently stoking Richard's ego. "Without you handling the tech, I don't see how this company works." Judge shoots the scene with warm colors, from lush plant life to Tobolowsky's purple shirt, to make him seem as welcoming as possible, and just as Richard's leaving, he realizes this is the best shot he has and turns around. He'll swallow his pride for now, and maybe it'll work...but probably not. Playing nice and getting rid of ego goes so far, but if there's one thing "Silicon Valley" has taught us, it's that bad as unchecked individualism can be, getting stuck in corporate machinations is worse. Stray thoughts: -Laurie twitches and flinches very slightly every time Richard or Erlich suggest that her reasonable suggestion isn't so reasonable. It's strong comic acting in that it's big without losing its specificity. -Monica is familiar with the Judas/Jesus story, as she went to Catholic school for years. Erlich uses that as an excuse to ask if Catholic school uniforms are as low cut as he thinks they are, to Monica's vocal displeasure. While I do wish "Silicon Valley" gave Crew more to work with or brought back Alice Wetterlund (who was funny but underused last season), I can't deny how hard I laugh at Miller's buffoonish eternal id. -Funnier still, though is Jared's eternal, more than a little creepy cheer, with him calling Richard the belle of the ball and looming over him in banked excitement. -The sight gag of the mustache glitching and winding up on Richard's hand as he makes a phone call is funny, but even better is McCoy's deadpan delivery of "...mustaches..." as he tries to process Richard's decision to join another company. -I can't say how excited I am to see this tech-savvy knuckleheads back on my TV for ten weeks. The Butte County Railroad Authority Friday received a $47,000 check from the Butte County Commission for startup operations at the new rail spur and transload facility at the Belle Fourche Industrial Rail Park. Also at Friday's meeting, top executives from the RCP&E Railroad discussed general possibilities for businesses in the Industrial Rail Park and beyond. The grant from the county comes from a fund begun under a block grant for economic development. Commissioners noted that the economic development money had been sitting unused on the county's books for more than a dozen years, and that the new rail facility fits the definition of economic development for the county. Commissioner Stan Harms noted that the county has two members on the board for the rail authority that had been formed in expectation of operating the rail facilities. The rail facility is along the RCP&E tracks and offers Industrial Rail Park businesses access to the nation's rail system. Businesses in the rail park pay real estate taxes to city, county and schools. The Belle Fourche park is unique in South Dakota in being certified as site ready for new businesses as well as having rail access. Micah Powell, the railroad's vice president for sales and marketing, noted that RCP&E has been in operation since June of 2014 when the South Dakota section of Canadian Pacific Railroad operation was sold to Genesee and Wyoming, a major operator of short line railroads. Since then the railroad has invested some $32 million on the line, he said, and further track upgrades are in the works. Powell told business people at the rail authority meeting that anyone using the Belle Fourche facility has three class one rail interchanges for both all of the U.S. and international trade. "It definitely offers you good market reach," he said. Expanding use of rail even for current Belle Fourche and Black Hills area business is now a strong potential, he said. Shawn Engle, assistant general manager for the railroad, added that service to Belle Fourche already has increased with addition of two "yard jobs" that have to do with train connections and movement. He said that should also help with in-town street traffic at rail crossings. Powell told the rail board, "I can't promise you customers tomorrow," "We want as many cars as possible here," he said. "We are ready for Belle Fourche to be busting at the seams." He said he and the railroad staff want to work with customers and potential customers to investigate ways that the local rail service can help them be as competitive as possible and expand their marketplace. A panel of university faculty members steeped in American history and politics spent more than an hour over the weekend talking about the new biography of the late George McGovern, a South Dakota political icon and repeated Democratic presidential candidate. As a final, timely point of discussion, the group of experts who met at a university in Sioux Falls on Saturday hypothesized about where McGovern would have fit into this years contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Several speakers said they thought McGovern would have backed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, for a variety of reasons, rather than former U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. But Emily Wanless didnt think so. An assistant professor at Augustana University, who specializes in studying political ambition, she smiled and offered, Hed be running. McGovern, a former U.S. representative and U.S. senator for South Dakota, ran for president in 1968, 1972 and 1984. Opposed to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, he won the 1972 Democratic nomination for president and lost 49 states to Republican Richard Nixon that November. The panel Saturday at the Dakota Conference on history at Augustana University discussed the first full biography on McGovern. Jon Lauck, a historian and aide to Republican U.S. Sen. John Thune, moderated the session. This book has been in the works for decades, Louck said. He met the biographys author, Thomas Knock, a Southern Methodist University professor, in 1994 when Knock was already working on the project. The biography, The Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern, published on March 1 by Princeton University Press, covers his life through 1968. Knock, who wasnt at the conference Saturday, plans a second volume starting with the 1972 bid for president. John Miller, a retired history professor from South Dakota State University, said Saturday he also is planning a biography of McGovern. He said Knocks first volume is long but theres hardly anything Miller would have left out. Knock held 23 interviews with McGovern and many interviews with family members, friends and political figures from all sides, Miller said. This is a book that has long been needed, Miller said. He described the book as well-written and fair but could be vulnerable to criticism from reviewers that Knock was too favorable to McGovern. Miller pointed out McGovern and Knock shared the same graduate adviser in Arthur Link at Northwestern University. Northern State University professor Jon Schaff said McGovern studied to be a historian after considering ministry. Schaff said McGovern sought to be an activist historian as was Link, who studied President Woodrow Wilson. This progressive approach to history exemplified by Link and McGovern, according to Schaff, relies on current opinion trumping, rejecting constitutionalism, seeking constant experimentation and rejecting limits on government. Dordt College professor Jeff Taylor said the book could have been more detailed but is well detailed. He agreed with a description of McGovern as Henry Fonda-like, a very traditional American in many ways. Augustana faculty member Wanless applied whats called the emergence calculus to see how likely McGovern was to become a candidate. Yes, he was ambitious, she said. His cost-benefit ratio for his first run in 1956 for the old eastern South Dakota seat in the U.S. House weighed strengths such as his recent statewide work as executive director for the South Dakota Democratic Party. She said McGovern understood he needed a grassroots mobilization effort, that agriculture would be an essential campaign theme and he must be a moderate. He had a pristine reputation, likability, determination, a reputation as a non-scary Democrat and World War II heroism as a bomber pilot as positive characteristics, she said. His liability? He was a Democrat, Wanless said. She added that opponents painted him as on the wrong side of the U.S. position toward China, which was being won by communists. But above all, I think he was a risk-taker, Wanless said. Tom Devine, a professor from California State University-Northridge, is an expert in the politics of Henry Wallace, who ran for president in 1948 as the Progressive Party candidate. McGovern supported Wallaces candidacy, as did most of Links graduate students that year, according to Devine. He said McGovern was a pragmatic idealist and more pragmatic than Wallace, who didnt know until later that communists surrounded him in the Progressive run. Most of them lied to him (Wallace) about who they were, Devine said. In that respect Knocks tone is somewhat off regarding McGoverns leaning toward Wallace and the 1948 version of progressivism, Devine suggested. McGovern broke away after 1948, he said. Devine believes McGovern was right in emphasizing bread over bullets in the Food For Peace program he ran for the first two years of the Kennedy administration after losing his 1960 run for U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Karl Mundt. McGovern won the states other U.S. Senate seat in 1962. He lost in 1980 to Republican Jim Abdnor. McGovern died in 2012 at age 90. Devine said Soviet documents that have become public since the U.S.S.R.s dissolution absolutely confirms the Soviets were very, very concerned about programs such as the Marshall Plan that rebuilt parts of Europe after World War II. I think McGovern had the right track then, Devine said. He said McGovern wasnt pro-communist. He was in his own way an independent, a progressive, Devine said. Devine praised the book and the man. Although Knock tends to be uncritical, he gets McGovern right, Devine said. He added about McGovern: He was a good guy. It comes out in the book. As the new superintendent of the Rapid City school district, Lori Simon will receive an annual salary of $207,000, a brand new $42,645 Jeep Grand Cherokee and five weeks of paid time off each year. Some community members have taken to online comment sites to express frustration with what they see as exorbitant compensation for a superintendent of a district strapped for cash. School Board President Jim Hansen adamantly disagrees with that outlook. Youre entrusting this person with a $180 million budget, entrusting them with almost 14,000 students, 1,700 employees, $900 million in assets, entrusting them to be the face of this community, and thats all youre paying them? Hansen said Thursday. Are you kidding me? Assistant superintendent and business manager Dave Janak said Simons salary is appropriate in the marketplace for her level of experience and the size of the district she is moving to. You cant expect a highly professional person to pull up roots and come out here for nothing, Hansen said. Its ludicrous to think that. The salary for current Superintendent Tim Mitchell, who is leaving the district in June, is $153,000. Simon will make $54,000 more than that a year when she starts July 1. According to a 2015 survey conducted by the School Superintendents Association, the national average salary is about $190,000 for a superintendent in a district with a student enrollment between 10,000 and 24,999. The Rapid City district has about 13,700 students. Simon currently serves as the director of academics and elementary schools for Robbinsdale Area Schools in New Hope, Minnesota, a district with 13,000 students, where she has worked for five and a half years. Her salary there is a little more than $142,000. Simon will be one of the highest-paid school superintendents in South Dakota, where Rapid City is the second-largest district only behind Sioux Falls. When he was hired in 2015, Sioux Falls Superintendent Brian Mahers salary was $220,000, about $25,000 more than his predecessor. Maher also received a monthly stipend of $2,900, $750 a month for transportation, and a one-time payment of $25,000 for moving expenses. Simons three-year contract in Rapid City does not include a monthly stipend, mileage reimbursement, or moving money. Theres so many more things that she could have requested that were not given, Hansen said. If you go through and look at superintendents across the nation, we got a bargain on that end. Simons contract does provide her with a brand new Jeep, which district officials say is cheaper than providing mileage reimbursement over time. Janak said it is not unusual for the district to furnish certain employees with their own vehicles. District electricians and plumbers get utility vans, while the transportation manager, facility manager, and building and grounds manager each get their own Suburban. In his six years as superintendent, Mitchell was allowed to use a brand new Chevy Malibu worth $18,000. When Mitchell leaves for a new superintendent position in Iowa, his vehicle will be cycled into the district fleet, and likely used to transport teachers to and from conferences in Pierre, Janak said. Simon will also receive a district-paid cell phone, and a total of 30 days of paid time off consisting of five sick days, five personal days, and 20 vacation days. As comparison, Mitchells contracts only included 16 sick days. Simons sick leave will be allowed to accumulate up to 180 days. Like every district employee, Simon will receive health, dental, and life insurance through the group plan. She will also receive an annual payment of $2,500 to go toward her retirement plan. She will have access to severance pay after she works for the district for a minimum of seven years. "At the end of the day," Janak said, "this is the person who is going to lead the district. This is the person who's going to lead that charge. And what's that worth?" Simon was one of four candidates who interviewed for the Rapid City school district superintendent position in February. She has a bachelors degree in music from the University of Wisconsin, which is where she got her teaching license as well as a masters degree in elementary and special education. She became an education specialist at the University of St. Thomas, earned her superintendent license from Mankato State University, and a doctorate in educational leadership from Saint Marys University of Minnesota. Our goal here is to increase our graduation rates and scores so we can produce wonderful citizens for the world, Hansen said. And we think this woman can do it. Outdoors artist Terry Redlin has died in South Dakota. Redlin Art Center Executive Director Julie Ranum tells The Associated Press that Redlin died Sunday night in a care center in the Watertown area. He was 78. Ranum said Monday that Redlin died of complications from a nine-year struggle with dementia. Redlin is known for his paintings of wildlife and outdoors scenes. In the 1990s he was named American's most popular artist in annual gallery surveys conducted by U.S. Art magazine. The Redlin Art Center in Watertown features his work. He also was known for his conservation work and opened the Terry Redlin Environmental Center in Watertown. Over 17 years, his art donations to Ducks Unlimited raised more than $28 million for wetlands projects. Redlin retired from painting in 2007. Passing bills through the U.S. Senate is not an easy task, especially bills that include sweeping reforms. Thats why I was particularly pleased that 95 of my colleagues recently voted to approve my bipartisan Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act and send it to the House of Representatives, which gets it one step closer to the presidents desk. While passing bills might be difficult, making the case for getting this bill across the finish line and signed into law is pretty straightforward. First, its good government. Congress should get back in the business of reauthorizing federal programs and agencies, and thats what were doing here. Our oversight role is an important one, and it cant be overlooked. The Republican-led Senate has made it a priority to get back to the basics and do the work the American people expect us to do. Until Republicans took the majority in January 2015, the committee process had essentially ground to a halt. Today, were moving bills through committees and onto the Senate floor where they can be debated and amended. Take the Commerce Committee for example. Ive chaired this committee for just over a year, but weve already tackled some pretty monumental items. We helped pass the first long-term transportation bill in nearly a decade, made first-of-their-kind reforms to the Surface Transportation Board, passed legislation that will help develop the next generation of wireless broadband, and now weve ushered through what has been described as one of the most passenger-friendly FAA reauthorization bills in a generation. Which brings me to another important reason this bill should be considered in the House without delay: the numerous provisions we included that would make the customer experience easier. As a frequent traveler I fly to and from my home in South Dakota nearly every week the headaches of air travel are well-known. My bill makes common-sense changes that would require airlines to return certain fees when services arent rendered, like when your luggage is lost or delayed. The bill also requires airlines to make seat availability clear at the time of booking, which would be a big advantage for families who travel with small children. Not only do we try to make air travel a little easier, but we make it safer too. Its unfortunate, but in todays world, terrorists will try to do anything to cause harm, and we must do everything within our power to stay one step ahead. My bill tightens the vetting process for airport workers who have access to secure areas, like the gate agents who double as baggage handlers at small airports. As Ive said before, a vast majority of these people are hard-working, dedicated employees, but we must take every necessary precaution. South Dakotas general aviation community was a priority in this bill too, which is why I included a key safety provision requiring small towers, like those that line the South Dakota landscape, to be properly and safely marked so agriculture applicators and other pilots who typically operate at low altitude can clearly identify them. The Pilots Bill of Rights 2 was also included in my bill, which means the regulatory burden faced by many recreational pilots will be reduced without compromising safety. My bill also directs important advances in drone safety to protect the flying public while still fostering opportunity for innovative new uses, such as in agriculture. Its not easy to do big things in the Senate. But that is the job I signed up to do on behalf of the people of South Dakota. This bill and the process through which we operated prove that by working hard and building a consensus, we can get the big things done. Its time to delist the Yellowstone grizzly. The population has recovered over the past 40 years and stabilized in the past decade. But delisting shouldnt open the door to hunting Yellowstones iconic bruin. As reported by the Associated Press, a draft memorandum of agreement between Wyoming, Montana and Idaho sets out how the three states will divvy up the grizzly population for hunting after delisting. The draft says the hunting will be allocated according to the percentage of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem land outside of the national parks. So, Wyoming would get 58 percent of the bear hunting, Montana 34 percent and Idaho 8 percent. A final draft memo says the states wont allow hunting if the grizzly population falls below 600 unless necessary to address human safety issues. Last year, the GYE grizzly population was estimated to be 717 bears. If this hunting allocation were in effect, the states could potentially hunt more than 100 grizzlies. Grizzly hunters arent looking to put meat on the family table. This is a trophy sport where the prize is the head and hide. The Billings Gazette cheered the recovery of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly 11 years ago and agreed then with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to remove that bear population from the endangered species list. In 2005, the Yellowstone grizzly population was estimated at 600, a remarkable improvement from an estimated 136 in 1975. In 2015, Yellowstone National Park logged a record high number of recreational visits: more than 4 million. Every one of those visitors came to the park hoping to see a bear. The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission is expected to finalize the draft memo in May, according to Ron Aasheim, FWP spokesman in Helena. Aasheim pointed out that Montanas involvement in grizzly management after delisting also is subject to the Southwest Montana Grizzly Management Plan that was updated last year, and a multi-agency conservation strategy signed by wildlife agencies of the three states and the federal government. Yet if all those plans still allow Yellowstone grizzlies to be hunted for sport not because they caused a problem the result could be disastrous. Imagine if a popular bear wanders out of the park and becomes a trophy. The grizzly will be missed, the backlash from bear watchers will be loud. Visitors who come from all over the world to enjoy Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks will have less opportunity to see grizzlies. Its important to tell the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department and Idaho Department of Fish and Game that managing Yellowstone grizzlies shouldnt mean hunting them. Lets conserve the iconic grizzly and hunt more plentiful wildlife populations that arent world-class tourist attractions. Yellowstone grizzlies are more valuable alive than dead. RAPID CITY | Cecelia Gabriel (Nee) Roseland, 88, passed away peacefully with her family by her side on Thursday, April 21, 2016, at the Golden Living Center in Rapid City. Cecelia was born March 9, 1928, in south Boston, where she spent her youth amongst a large family. WWII brought a sailor named Dean Allen Roseland into her life. In 1948, she traveled by train to Aberdeen, SD, to meet her future in-laws. The couple was married on August 12, 1948, and shared 51 years together. They lived in many South Dakota towns before settling in Rapid City. After her husbands passing, she spent her remaining years enjoying the company of her children and grandchildren. She is survived by her five children, Michael (Shirley) Roseland of Springfield, SD, and Patrick Roseland, Dianne (Martin) Nelson, Rex (Cheryl) Roseland and Vernon (Katie) Roseland, all of Rapid City; five grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandchild. She was preceded in death by her husband, Dean in 1999; and numerous siblings. Visitation will be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. today at Kirk Funeral Home. Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, at the funeral home. Interment will follow at 12:30 p.m. at Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis. The family requests memorials to Regional Health Hospice of the Hills. You are welcome to sign an online guestbook at the funeral homes website. Russian authorities bust 5,000 tons of sanctioned food products since November - report MOSCOW, April 25 (RAPSI) Nearly 5,000 tons of sanctioned food products, transported from Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, were busted in Russia since November 2015, Izvestia newspaper reported on Monday. According to Izvestia, the Federal Customs Service and Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) have found banned meat, vegetables and fruits. These services were given right to stop any transport wagon with Belorussian, Kazakh or Ukrainian car numbers. In August 2014, Russia restricted imports of food products from the countries that imposed sanctions against Russia, including the EU. The ban covers meat, sausage, fish, vegetable, fruit and dairy. In late June, officials decided to extend the embargo until August 5, 2016, and also excluded young oysters and mussels, any cheese and limited non-lactose dairy products. Sagarmatha Network Pvt. Ltd. is the organization dedicated in the field of printing, publishing service since 2001. As part of media, we've been publishing Review Nepal, an English medium weekly registered at District Administration Office (DAO) Kathmandu with registration number 130-162-163 and reviewnepal.com as an online digital newspaper, with registration number 849-075-076 at Department of Informational and Broadcasting (DIB) from Kathmandu, Nepal since 2003. The Daily Star - April 14, 2016 by Shashi Tharoor SIXTY-SIX years after adopting one of the worlds most liberal constitutions, India is being convulsed by a searing debate over a colonial-era provision in its penal code, Section 377, which criminalises awhoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal.a Though not widely used a there were 578 arrests under Section 377 last year a the law is a tool for the harassment, persecution, and blackmail of sexual minorities within India. It must be changed. Beyond forcing millions of gay men and women to live in fear and secrecy, Section 377 has undermined HIV-prevention efforts and contributed to depression and suicides. A 2014 study by the World Bank revealed that India suffers a loss of between 0.1 percent and 1.7 percent of GDP because of homophobia. The issue is not one of sex, but of freedom. By giving the state the authority to control what Indian adults do, consensually, in their bedrooms, Section 377 violates the constitutional rights to dignity, privacy, and equality enshrined in Articles 14, 15, and 21, respectively. As the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has observed, aThe criminalisation of gay behavior goes not only against fundamental human rights, but it also works sharply against the enhancement of human freedoms in terms of which the progress of human civilization can be judged.a In the period after a liberal Delhi High Court struck down Section 377 in 2009, the heavens did not fall; Indian society did not collapse. Yet bigots petitioned to reverse that decision, ultimately succeeding in turning back the clock for gay rights in India in 2013, when the Supreme Court overturned the High Courts decision. Like many Indians, I found the Supreme Courts 2013 ruling antithetical to Indias commitment to pluralism and democracy, which provides for the embrace of a multitude of identities, including those based on sexual orientation. So, last December, I sought to introduce a bill that would have amended Section 377 and decriminalised all consensual sex between adults, irrespective of their gender and sexuality. A vocal section of homophobes in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) voted overwhelmingly against the bills introduction, so that no pragmatic debate on the bills merits could take place. The same thing happened when I tried again in March. Sneering comments were made about my alleged personal interest in the bill, to which I responded that one does not need to be a cow to defend the rights of animals. The BJPs vote is incongruous on several levels, but most glaringly in its rejection of millennia of Indian practice in favour of a British colonial law (which the British themselves have outgrown). The Indian ethos toward sexual difference has historically been liberal, with neither mythology nor history revealing the persecution or prosecution of sexual heterodoxy. In fact, the Hindu epics are dotted with characters like Shikhandi in the Mahabharata, who was born female and became male; many Hindus venerate the half-man, half-woman Ardhanarishvara; and temple sculptures across India depict homosexual acts. Yet the BJP, the party of Hindu chauvinism, chooses to ignore this Hindu tradition. In its 2013 judgment, the Supreme Court said that legislators, not judges, must decide the fate of Section 377. Unfortunately, thanks to the prejudices of a few dozen vocal and motivated BJP members, Parliament is not up to the task. Indeed, legislative recourse for the injustice of Section 377 may not be available as long as the BJP is in power. But there is still hope for relief through Indias judicial process. The Supreme Court has now agreed to undertake a acurative reviewa of its 2013 decision. Such a review could lead it to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. While I have been unsuccessful in my efforts to amend Section 377 through legislative channels, I remain committed to human rights, to keeping the government out of our bedrooms, and to defending Indian pluralism. As we await the Supreme Courts review, we can and must continue to seek justice for Indias minorities in the court of public opinion. To this end, I have circulated a petition, with the goal of highlighting for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party that public sentiment has moved beyond the 19th century. With 65,000 people having already signed, the message is clear. But, in terms of real change in this area, my hopes rest with the judiciary, rather than the government. After all, whereas change via legislation would require political courage a a quality sorely lacking in the current Indian government a the judiciary is not hampered by such considerations. The good news is that Indias Supreme Court has an exemplary record of interpreting statutes in a way that expands human rights in the country. The curative review raises hope that it will do so again, creating an India in which the law embodies constitutional values of privacy, equality, dignity, and non-discrimination for all citizens. The alternative a allowing Indian law to continue to serve as an iron cage for some of our people a would directly undermine the freedom of identity and expression that constitutes the backbone of Indian democracy. What is more, it would leave India out of step with much of the rest of the international community, a country embarrassed before the worlds other democracies. We must demand that our Supreme Court a if not our lawmakers a affirm a pluralist India that accommodates all identities within our country. The time for change was many years ago. But it is never too late to do the right thing. I hope that the Supreme Court is listening. The writer, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is currently Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and an MP for the Indian National Congress. Dhaka Tribune - April 21, 2016 by Ikhtisad Ahmed Atheism has become a derogatory word Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina knows the pain of loss better than most. She has lived with it since the slaughter of her family on August 15, 1975. Her promise to bring the murderers of Rajib Haider an architect and atheist, secular blogger killed in Dhaka for his views February 15, 2013 to justice, had the honesty of someone who deeply empathised with his family, whom she was visiting to offer her condolences and grieve with in person. Three years later, Bangladesh still awaits fulfilment of that promise. Two days after Bangladesh turned 45, the High Court took two minutes to dismiss a petition that had been a nuisance to the countryas fiercely independent judiciary since 1988. Following the same courtas ruling in October 2010, secularism, enshrined in the constitution as one of the four founding principles of the nation, was revived when the document was amended for the 15th time by a legislative branch committed to keeping the nation and its laws from becoming archaic. The compromise of retaining Islam as the state religion, however, meant that the constitution was rendered incongruent and toothless due to its inherent contradictions. The March 28 decision upheld Islamas standing, thereby allowing Awami Leagueas version of a Bangladesh built on the solid foundations of compromise to continue unabated. The trouble with compromise is that it allows those in power to garner support from diametrically opposite views as required to remain in power, with devastating consequences for average citizens. Nazimuddin Samad, a secular activist who was one of the few voices to take issue with the baffling legal ruling, was butchered by Islamic fundamentalists on April 7. Vast swathes of conversations on the day and the one after centred on the impending Pohela Boishakh celebrations being anti-Islamic, while the government investigated whether Nazimuddin had hurt religious sentiments. The government concurred with the loud vitriolic voices of intolerance in looking to blame the victim and make murder acceptable, legal. In her Pohela Boishakh address after Nazimuddinas murder, the same prime minister who had so passionately showed solidarity with Rajib, secularism, and the oppressed secularists, chose to be on the wrong side of history. Dictated by perceived realpolitik, she denounced indecent statements about religion and declared the government could not take responsibility for their heinous consequences. It matters little what else she said since she had expressly endorsed censorship, intolerance, and the violent vigilantism of narrow-minded fundamentalists. A correct version of Bangladeshi history does, indeed, show Awami Leagueas claims of military dictators, Zia and Ershad, introducing the scourge of Islamism in independent Bangladesh to be true. The claims of Jamaatas historic fundamentalism and violence also hold water. The party in government is less candid about contemporary history, however. The current battle over religion in politics has come to pass because Awami League brought these historic political divisions that had simmered under the surface and adversely affected the country to the fore in 2013. The government dishonestly played the secularism and patriotism cards when those values were needed to keep it in power. The prime ministeras heartfelt actions in the aftermath of Rajibas murder and her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, going to Shahbagh with an entourage, are lasting images from that time. Repeatedly saying that the AL is the only thing that stands in the way of Bangladesh being engulfed by the flames of Islamism, prompted and nurtured by BNP and Jamaat, does not make it true. Under the governmentas watch, aatheisma which is not proselytised like Islam and Islamism, or any other religion and its extremist offspring has become a derogatory word worthy of brutal punishment, and asecularism,a afreethinking,a and aheresya have become its interchangeable synonyms. Self-censorship, once patronisingly encouraged as good sense and practice, has become mandated by the state. Even the prime ministeras brave refusal to bow to the demands of extremists and enact new blasphemy laws in 2013 has been reduced to a political manoeuvre by a government that has a natural affinity with existing blasphemy laws dating back to 1890, a remnant of the British imperial penal code, that characterise the undefined and indefinable concept of hurting religious sentiment as a criminal offence. The British zeal for a divine right to rule manifested itself as Bengal being divided along religious lines to be conquered. The only conceivable reason for the government not to take any responsibility for drawing similar lines, encouraging communalism Islamism versus secularism and all else and being a supportive bystander to intolerance and violence, is that this is precisely what it wants. The Islamist terror narrative bruited about the world is believed more easily than the planet Earth being older than 6,000 years. The promulgation of the campaign against it allows domestic and imperialist autocrats to subdue it by any means necessary. The real danger to any regime, however, is dissent stemming from secularism and socialism. The ALas ideologically paradoxical compromise is an attempt to be three moves ahead in a game of chess of its own making. Islamism and secularism may have been defenestrated, but the government is not above using them when necessary, and the populace will be left to peck at the crumbs the thrusts and parries will inevitably leave behind. [Following the killing of Xulhaz Mannan on 25 April 2016 in Dkaka, Media Reports and Statements by PEN and Amnesty are posted below - updated on 28 April 2016] The Daily Star, April 25, 2016 LGBT magazine editor stabbed dead at Dhaka home Star Online Report Assailants posed as courier service staff To make way into the house, attackers stabbed security guard Victim Mannan worked as US ambassadoras protocol officer Islamists posted threat messages onlinea Senseless act of violence, says US envoy Miscreants stabbed dead a local staff of USAID, who was one of the senior editors of the countryas first LGBT magazine, along with his friend at his flat in Dhakaas Kalabagan area this evening. Talking to The Daily Star, Mohammed Iqbal, officer-in-charge of Kalabagan Police Station, said they suspect the involvement of militants in the killing. Editor of LGBT magazine aRoopbaana, Xulhaz Mannan was known for his gay rights activism. He was working for USAID. Earlier, he worked as a protocol officer of former US ambassador Dan Mozena for a long time. Tanay Fahim, the other victim and his friend, was also a LGBT activist. aHe was a theatre activist,a M Ibrahim Khan, additional deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (Ramna Division), told The Daily Star. The incident took place two days into the grisly murder of Rajshahi University teacher Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern city. According to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, international militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility of Siddiqueeas murder. aThree persons came around 5:45pm and claimed they had a courier for Mannan. When I went up and told him (Mannan) this, he said that he was not expecting any such parcel,a Parvez Mollah, a security guard of the building, told The Daily Star. Mannan used to live on the first floor of the seven-storied building on lane No. 35 in Lake Circus neighbourhood. aAs I came down and told them this, they insisted that I allow them to meet him (Mannan),a Mollah said. As he declined to allow them in, the group stabbed him leaving him injured in the left eye and left arm. The assailants then rushed to Mannanas flat and swooped on Mannan and his friend Tanay indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, told The Daily Star. The two died immediately on the spot. Accomplishing their mission, the attackers fled by Dolfin Goli, Bari said quoting locals. A patrol team of police tried to intercept the assailants as they were fleeing, Ibrahim Khan of DMP said. aOne of the assailants this time attacked ASI [assistant sub-inspector] Momtaz with a machete.a Describing the incident to The Daily Star, a witness said wishing not to be named: aI saw six to seven people rushing out of the building. Each of them was carrying bag packs.a The body of Mannan was found lying at the entrance of the house while Tanayas body was found inside. During the attack, Mannanas mother and a domestic help were at home, said Nurul Islam, the driver of Xulhazas brother Minhaz Mannan Emon. THREATS FROM ISLAMISTS A spokesman for a gay group, Boys of Bangladesh, confirmed to AFP by text message that the Roopbaan editor was among the two dead victims. He was behind an annual Rainbow Rally, which since 2014 has been held on April 14, Bengali New Year. But police this year banned the rally as part of widespread security measures. Ahead of the banned rally earlier this month, the editor told AFP that they had received threats from Islamists, who posted messages online. "They have even set up an online group to threaten us," he said. aSENSELESS ACT OF VIOLENCEa US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat said she is devastated by the brutal murder. aWe abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders,a the US envoy said in a statement this evening. o o o BBC News - 25 April 2016 Bangladesh LGBT editor hacked to death From the section Asia Image caption The murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another man have been condemned by the US ambassador Police in Bangladesh say two people including a leading gay rights activist and editor at Bangladeshs only LGBT magazine have been hacked to death. The US ambassador to Bangladesh condemned the killing of Xulhaz Mannan, who also worked at the US embassy. Another person was also injured when the attackers entered a Dhaka flat. Since February last year suspected militants have killed several secular or atheist writers and members of religious minority groups. The two men were murdered two days after a university teacher was hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants. So-called Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility - but the Bangladeshi government insists there is no IS presence in the country. Lurching from secularism to sectarian terror? Who is behind the Bangladesh killings? "I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi," said US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat. "We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the Government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," she added. Image caption The other victim, identified by Bangladeshi media as Tanay Mojumdar, also worked at Roopbaan BBC Bengali Service editor Sabir Mustafa said staff at Roopbaan, which had not been condemned by the government and received some support from foreign embassies, had been careful to protect their identities but had not believed their lives were at risk. Suspected extremists in Bangladesh are gaining a sense of security that they can carry out killings with impunity, he says. A British photographer who knew Mr Mannan and the other victim, known as "Tonoy" and named in Bangladeshi media as Tanay Mojumdar, said they and other friends had set up Roopbaan with the aim of spreading tolerance. Both men were openly gay and believed that if more gay Bangladeshis came out then the country would have to accept them, the photographer said. They were also were behind the annual "Rainbow Rally", held on Bengali New Year, 14 April, since 2014. This years rally was banned by police as part of widespread security measures. Their killings were likely to spread fear among the gay community in a country where homosexuality is technically illegal and remains a deeply sensitive issue, the photographer said. "Until a year ago the only threat to coming out was shame of the family and having to start a new life elsewhere in Bangladesh. Now its one of danger," he said. Long line of killings Meanwhile Bangladeshs best known blogger said he had received a death threat on Sunday. [caption] Imran Sarker, who led major protests by secular activists in 2013 against Islamist leaders, said he had received a phone call warning that he would be killed "very soon". Image copyright AFP/Getty Earlier this month, a Bangladeshi law student who had expressed secular views online died when he was hacked with machetes and then shot in Dhaka. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were also killed with machetes. The four bloggers had all appeared on a list of 84 "atheist bloggers" drawn up by Islamic groups in 2013 and widely circulated. There have also been attacks on members of religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Two foreigners - an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer - have also been killed. Muslim-majority Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government has failed to properly address the attacks. o o o The Guardian - 25 April 2016 Editor of Bangladeshs first and only LGBT magazine killed Saad Hammadi in Dhaka and Aisha Gani The editor of Bangladeshas only LGBT magazine has been killed in the latest of a series of horrific murders of bloggers and activists. Xulhaz Mannan was one of two people hacked to death in an attack in the capital, Dhaka, police said, by a gang posing as couriers in order to gain access to his apartment in the Kalabagan area of the city. Mohammad Iqbal, the officer in charge of the local police station, confirmed that about six people had entered the apartment building and hacked Mannan and his friend to death in a first-floor flat. Two other people were seriously injured. aA person came with a box identifying himself as courier service personnel. Xulhaz took him upstairs to his flat,a Iqbal said. Mannan, 35, was the editor of Roopbaan, the countryas only magazine for the LGBT community and also worked at the US development agency USAid. The magazine had been launched in 2014 to promote greater acceptance of LGBT communities in Bangladesh. A security guard at Mannanas building said the group had identified themselves as courier company officials when they arrived at around 5pm. aHalf an hour later, I heard shouting and shooting sounds from the flat and went to look into the incident,a he told the Dhaka Times. aThe assailants then attacked me with knives.a Police said they had found the box, but did not divulge its contents. Marcia Bernicat, the US ambassador to Bangladesh, condemned the killing. aI am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi,a she said. aWe abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders.a . The deaths of Mannan and his friend adds to a series of horrific murders of bloggers and academics in the country. It comes two days after Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, an English professor, was hacked to death with machetes as he walked from his home to a bus station in the north-western city of Rajshahi. Earlier this month, Nazimuddin Samad, 28, an atheist blogger was murdered near Jagannath University, where he was a law student. Mannan, as well as being editor of Roopbaan, had been behind an annual arainbow rallya in Dhaka, which since 2014 had been held on 14 April, at the beginning of the Bengali new year. It was cancelled this year on police instruction. Shateel Bin Salah, a close friend of Mannanas, currently in the US, said Mannan had told him on Facebook that after the rally was cancelled four participants were arrested and only released after their families had been informed athat their sons were homosexualsa . Homosexual relations are criminalised in Bangladesh and many LGBT activists have been forced into exile. Bin Salah described Mannan as amy elder brother, friend, guardian, mentora . He said the two had known each other since becoming friends through the online LGBT group Boys of Bangladesh, where members would talk about their daily struggles and challenges. Advertisement aPeople would make friends there, virtual friendship under pseudo names as no one trusted nobody a insecurity was high in that group, but he shared a series of photographs on Dhanmondi Lake on a winter morning and posted them under his real name Xulhaz Mannan,a he said. aXulhaz was the first openly gay person I had known. He was out to his close university and school friends, out to his colleagues, and everybody loved him to bits a he introduced me to a world where straight people did not care what my sexual orientation was.a Champa Patel, Amnesty Internationalas south Asia director, said: aThere have been four deplorable killings so far this month alone. It is shocking that no one has been held to account for these horrific attacks and that almost no protection has been given to threatened members of civil society. aBangladeshi authorities have a legal responsibility to protect and respect the right to life. They must urgently focus their energies on protecting those who express their opinions bravely and without violence, and bringing the killers to justice. The authorities must strongly condemn these horrific attacks, something they have failed to do so far.a Rashed Zaman, a professor of international relations at the University of Dhaka, said. aThis is unacceptable. People may have belief and orientation but at the end of the day everyone has their own individual rights to live the life they want. aI firmly believe in spite of the many difficulties I think our law enforcement are more than capable enough to unearth these cases if they put in effort.a o o o PEN International Bangladesh: Brutal murder of LGBT editor an appalling indictment of authoritiesa failure to protect Xulhaz+Mannan25 April 2016 a The savage murder of an editor and leading gay rights activist of Bangladeshas only LGBT magazine in Dhaka is another tragic example of the governmentas gross failure to protect intellectuals, activists and writers in Bangladesh, PEN International said today. Xulhaz Mannan, an editor at LGBT magazine Roopbaan, was killed alongside another victim, when unidentified attackers came to their apartment in Dhaka earlier today, posing as couriers. Another person was also injured in the attack The killings come just two days after a university professor, 58-year-old Rezaul Karim Siddique, was hacked to death near his home in the northern Bangladesh district of Rajshahi, on his way to the cityas public university where he taught. aHow many more writers, editors, and free thinkers in Bangladesh will have to pay the ultimate price a their life a in exercising their right to speak freely, before the government acts? What the government needs to do is pretty clear: it must say, unequivocally, that freedom of expression means the freedom to express views with which others, even the majority, might disagreea, said Salil Tripathi, Chair of PEN Internationalas Writers in Prison Committee. aBangladesh must ensure that the investigative authorities identify the murderers and prosecute them, instead of advising writers, editors, and bloggers about what is permissible and what is not, what they can say and what they cannot a all of which only ends up rationalising the murderers who have acted with impunity.a There has been a spate of murders of secular bloggers and thinkers in Bangladesh over the last year. Earlier this month Nazimuddin Samad, a Bangladeshi law student who had expressed secular views online, died when he was attacked with machetes and then shot in the capital, Dhaka. In 2015, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes. In May 2015, more than 150 PEN members and writers around the globe called on the Prime Minister of Bangladesh to take immediate action. It is an appalling indictment of the failure of the authorities to act decisively in this regard that another three writers have lost their lives since then. PEN International reiterates its call on the Bangladesh authorities to make the protection of vulnerable writers and investigation of these crimes an utmost priority and to ensure that an immediate end is put to this cycle of violence, fear and consequent self-censorship. o o o Amnesty International Bangladesh: Authorities fail to curb brutal killing spree as LGBTI editor hacked to death 25 April 2016, 17:09 UTC "The brutal killing today of an editor of an LGBTI publication and his friend, days after a university professor was hacked to death, underscores the appalling lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country,a said Champa Patel, Amnesty Internationalas South Asia Director. aThere have been four deplorable killings so far this month alone. It is shocking that no one has been held to account for these horrific attacks and that almost no protection has been given to threatened members of civil society. Bangladeshi authorities have a legal responsibility to protect and respect the right to life. They must urgently focus their energies on protecting those who express their opinions bravely and without violence, and bringing the killers to justice. The authorities must strongly condemn these horrific attacks, something they have failed to do so far.a The brutal killing today of an editor of an LGBTI publication and his friend, days after a university professor was hacked to death, underscores the appalling lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country. Champa Patel, Amnesty Internationalas South Asia Director Homosexual relations are criminalised under the Bangladeshi Penal Code. Amnesty International has interviewed exiled LGBTI activists who said that when they tried to report threats against them to police, the police instead said they could be charged for aunnatural offences.a "While the Bangladeshi authorities have failed to bring these violent groups to justice, the attackers have expanded their range of targets to now include a university professor and LGBTI activists,a said Champa Patel. aThe Bangladeshi police needs to guarantee the protection of the countryas LGBTI community, not harass them or threaten them with arrest, as they have been doing.a Background Since the start of the month, four brutal killings have taken place of Bangladeshi activists and their associates. On 7 April, four masked men attacked Nazimuddin Samad, 28, with a machete before shooting him dead. Samad was a student activist who had organised campaigns for secularism on social media. He was named on a ahit lista of 84 bloggers published by a group of radical Islamists in 2013. On 23 April, Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, a much-admired university professor was attacked by men carrying machetes as he walked to the bus station in the city of Rajshahi. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by jihadists belonging to Islamic State. On 25 April, Xulhaz Mannan, 35, the editor of Roopbaan, Bangladeshas first LGBTI magazine, and his friend Tanay Mojumdar were both hacked to death after a group of attackers posed as couriers to gain entry to Mannanas apartment. During 2015, five secular Bangladeshi bloggers were hacked to death using machetes. The first attack of this kind took place in 2013. For the killings starting in February 2015, not a single person has been held to account. Bangladeshi authorities continue to criminalise the countryas LGBTI community and, far from offering them security, have urged them to be aless provocative.a Many Bangladeshi LGBTI activists have been forced into exile because of the threats against them. o o o Human Rights Watch - April 26, 2016 Bangladesh: Investigate LGBT murders Protect Activists From Attack (New York) a The Bangladeshi authorities should immediately investigate the killings of two lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) human rights activists, Human Rights Watch said today. Police found Xulhaz Mannan and Tonoy Mahbub hacked to death in a Dhaka apartment on the evening of April 25, 2016. The killings follow a spate of recent targeted attacks on writers, educators, bloggers, and editors who promote liberal and secular ideas that radical groups believe are against Islam. The killings of Mannan and Mahbub brings to nine the number of liberals hacked to death in Bangladesh in 2016. aThe slaughter of two men advocating the basic rights of Bangladeshas beleaguered LGBT community should prompt a thorough investigation, aimed at prosecuting those responsible,a said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. aThe government needs to protect activists and to call a halt to the impunity that links this chain of vicious murders.a On April 23, machete-wielding assailants killed Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, an English professor at Rajshahi University, in an assault that copied previous attacks by Islamist militants on secular and atheist activists. On April 7, Nazim Uddin, who was openly critical of religion and Islamic fundamentalism, was hacked to death on the streets of Dhaka. Mannan was an editor of Roopban, Bangladeshas first LGBT-themed magazine, which began publishing in 2014. He was a visible and openly gay human rights activist who supported and protected LGBT people even in the face of threats against the community. Mahbub was also an openly gay activist. Several bloggers and their publishers were similarly hacked to death by Islamist militants in 2015 for promoting secularism. Religious extremist groups have claimed responsibility for murders and even published a hit list of activists and bloggers. The government offered police protection for those on the hit list, but the protection has clearly been inadequate as several on the list have been killed since. Prime Minister Sheik Hasina advised bloggers to use restraint in their exercise of free speech or leave the country for their safety. Although the prime minister has promised to take action against the attacks, authorities appointed by her have instead prosecuted bloggers for ahurting peopleas religious sentiments.a Mannan had participated in planning a diversity celebration slated to take place in Dhaka on April 14. The evening before the event, police asked organizers to cancel it due to threats against LGBT activists, and organizers agreed to the request. However, on the morning of April 14, police arrested four people and accused them of attempting to stage the event regardless. Mannan spent the day working for their release. In 2013, the countryas National Human Rights Commission called on the government to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination. In a 2015 manual on sexual and gender minorities, the commission acknowledged that police physically and sexually assault LGBT people, and also arbitrarily arrest them based on their appearance. In a 2015 report, Bangladeshi LGBT rights groups said that, aVisibilityacan be life-threatening and isolating due to social stigma, religious beliefs and family values that create a hostile environment for LGBT individuals.a Following a 2015 visit, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religious belief said, aSexual minorities do not find much acceptance in the society and often experience verbal or other abuse.a Human Rights Watch interviewed LGBT people in Bangladesh in recent months and found that they faced threats of violence, particularly after homophobic public comments by Islamic leaders. Activists working on gender and sexuality said that to ensure their personal safety, they conceal their identities and constrain their work. Those who were exposed in the media and public spaces felt particularly vulnerable. Same-sex sexual behavior, dubbed acarnal intercourse against the order of nature,a is criminalized in Bangladesh under section 377 of the countryas colonial-era penal code. In recent years, LGBT people in Bangladesh have also been targeted with extremist rhetoric. For example, in November 2015, when activists began publishing a cartoon series featuring a lesbian character, religious groups issued hateful anti-LGBT statements, calling on the government to prosecute LGBT people under section 377 and Sharia (Islamic Law). The government should use laws and law enforcement to protect, not harass and prosecute LGBT people, Human Rights Watch said. In a 2009 UN human rights review, the government of Bangladesh received a recommendation to train law enforcement and judicial offers to protect women, children, and LGBT people aand adopt further measures to ensure protection of these persons against violence and abuse.a The government accepted the recommendation with regard to women and children, but said: aThe specific recommendation on sexual orientation cannot be accepted.a Indeed, sexual orientation is not an issue in Bangladesh.a aThe massacre of two gay men in a private home demonstrates the need for the government to combat extremists preying on minorities,a Ganguly said. aDismissing sexual orientation as a non-issue effectively sanctions abuse of an already-marginalized community.a o o o SEE SOME RELATED CONTENT on SACW.NET: Killing of Professor Rezaul Karim Siddique in Rajshahi - Three Editorials from Bangladesh http://www.sacw.net/article12630.html Target Killings of Secularists in Bangladesh: Editorials, Dhaka Tribune and The Hindu on the killing of Nazimuddin Samad http://www.sacw.net/article12599.html Bangladesh: UN and EU officials condemn the murder of the blogger Nizamuddin Samad / Fellow Students protest after killing http://www.sacw.net/article12577.html o o o SEE ALSO: Timeline of Bangladeshi bloggers hacked to death http://www.thehindu.com/specials/timelines/article8516522.ece Text of Statement by Jean Lambert Chief of European Parliament Delegation For Relations With Countries of South Asia [27 April 2016] SCOTUS grants cert on two new criminal cases | Main | "A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families and Communities" April 25, 2016 Republican National Committee adopts resolution urging criminal justice reform in Congress This Daily Signal article, headlined "Republican Leaders Throw Weight Behind Prison Reform," reports on a notable development during the RNC's Spring Meeting in Florida last week. Here are the details: The Republican National Committee [on Friday] adopted a resolution in support of reforming the nations criminal justice laws, in a significant sign of bipartisan consensus to undo mass incarceration in America. In the one-page resolution, obtained by The Daily Signal, the RNC commends conservative-led states that have adopted policies to reduce their prison populations such as Texas, Alabama, and Georgia and urged Congress to act as well. This is the Republican Party coming together and saying criminal justice reform is an issue that needs to be addressed, and I think its sending a message that the RNC wants to make certain Congress has this as one of its top priorities, said Telly Lovelace, the Republican National Committees director for urban media. Lovelace added: "Its the first time the RNC has taken a significant step like this on criminal justice reform, as the issue is sweeping the country, with conservative states leading the way in adopting policies to deal with it. Criminal justice reform is an issue that impacts all Americans, no matter which part of the country they live in." The RNCs official position supporting prison reform was one of 10 resolutions announced to committee members today during the national GOP organizations spring meeting in Hollywood, Fla.... Each resolution is voted on by nine committee members, including RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. Criminal justice reform is thought to be one of the few areas where Congress and President Barack Obama can work together to enact a substantive law during a contentious election year. Both the Republican-led House and Senate judiciary committees have advanced legislation that would shorten prison sentences for low-level nonviolent drug offenders and allow well-behaved inmates to earn time off their prison terms. But on the Senate side, some conservatives have argued that the Judiciary Committees proposal would allow violent felons the chance to be released from prison early. The bills authors, including Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have fought that characterization. They recently made revisions to the legislation to satisfy critics. Mark Holden, a top lawyer at Koch Industries, one of the biggest proponents of criminal justice reform on the conservative side, says he hopes the Republican National Committees resolution pushes skeptical conservatives in Congress to support the effort. The RNC position makes it clear that Republicans can and should continue to lead on this critically important issue as they have for the past several years, Holden told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement... In its resolution, the RNC notes that the federal prison population, over which Congress has jurisdiction, increased 734 percent from 1980 to 2015, while taxpayer dollar spending on the prison system spiked 595 percent in that same period. The resolution states that taxpayers are not receiving the public safety return they deserve because lengthy prison terms increase recidivism rates for low-level offenders. In addition to supporting treatment options for drug addicts, and other policies to reduce the number of re-offenders, the RNC calls for mens rea reform. That would require prosecutors to prove that certain criminal suspects knowingly intended to break the law. The text of this resolution does not yet appear to be posted on the RNC's website, but I will post it once it becomes available. April 25, 2016 at 10:12 AM | Permalink Comments I first voted for Richard Nixon in 1960, but for the first time I am completely disgusted by the apparent Republican nominee. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCE WILL I VOTE FOR TRUMP!!! I completely agree with the idea from the Wall Street Journal that the Republican Party must look for someone else to nominate: If Mr. Trump doesnt start to act like a political leader, and his poll numbers collapse between now and the July convention, he may start to hear rumblings that delegates are looking for someone else to nominate. As traumatic as that would be, the Republican desire to avoid a landslide defeat that costs the House and Senate might be stronger. Actually the Journal's wording is far too mild for many people who would like to vote Republican but can't in good conscious. Roger Nelson, Woodbury, MN Posted by: Roger Nelson | Jun 8, 2016 11:59:48 AM Been a Republican since I was,18yrs old. Raised a Democrat all my family turned Rep after first disowning me! We The GOPh as be Posted by: Grossot | Aug 11, 2016 3:41:40 PM I want the money back I have Given the GOP since 1973!!! The whole party has lost it's way. Dear you can all realize most of us trust the Dems More then you all? At least now a days they are in our faces with their Disgrace. GOP STILL SNEAKY "WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING"... We Vote you in office you do nothing! DC GOES WILD ESPECIALLY OBAMA Posted by: Grossot | Aug 11, 2016 4:03:34 PM Agree with Roger Nelson Posted by: Grossot | Aug 11, 2016 4:07:26 PM GOP ARE YOU NOW SUPPORTING HILLARY CLINTON? WASHINGTON AND REAGAN HAVE TO BE ROLLING NB IN THEIR GRAVES YOUR NOT REPUBLICANS Posted by: Grossot | Aug 11, 2016 4:12:45 PM Post a comment The San Francisco Police Department has confirmed that they believe that a man found dead on a San Francisco street Monday morning was the victim of a homicide, but are keeping mum on all but the most basic details. According to the SFPD, they were called to the 600 block of Eddy Street, which is between Larkin and Polk Streets, at 2:21 this morning. When they arrived, they discovered a deceased black male in his 40s, police say. When reached by SFist, a San Francisco Medical Examiner's office staffer did not have any additional identifying details on the man to release. KTVU, which has numerous photos from the crime scene, says that "Investigators completely blocked off Larkin street for several blocks in both directions as they searched for evidence" and that area residents say that they had not heard "a commotion, argument, or gunshots" before the man's death was reported. According to the Chron, the victim "was pronounced dead at the scene from an apparent knife wound to the neck," after police were alerted by "the overnight clerk at a nearby hotel" who "called police after several people ran inside to report the stabbing." An SFPD spokesperson could not immediately confirm San Francisco's current homicide count for 2016. Assuming no changes have been made to their list, this is likely the 15th homicide of the year, following a fatal stabbing near the Asian Art Museum last Thursday. As of Monday morning, police say, no arrests have been made nor was any suspect information available. However, if you know anything about the case, they ask that you call SFPD's Anonymous Tip Line at 415-575-4444 or to text a tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the beginning of the message. Flipped car on Mission and 23rd this morning. Photos just sent to me by a friend. pic.twitter.com/wrl21DKSBN Capp Street Crap (@cappstreetcrap) April 25, 2016 A crash between two vehicles this morning left one upside down and the southbound Mission Street lane at 23rd closed off as crews worked to clean up the scene. Mission Local reports that, according to a witness, a sedan ran a red light heading south and collided with the black SUV heading west. The black car was crossing the street, and the other one ran the red light, the witness, Mariana Acevedo, told the publication. Apparently one person was taken to the hospital with injuries, although at this time it is unclear who that person is. When two cars are going 30-40 miles per hour and collide, one of them is going to flip over, Lieutenant Ron Banta, who was on the scene, told Mission Local. One witness tweeted out concern for what she says were the two children inside the SUV. Pray for the lady whose car just flipped twice with children inside on 23rd and Mission! Scrumptious Smooches (@Smooches415) April 25, 2016 Car flipped over, one injured at 23rd and Mission streets Monday morning: https://t.co/zwA3euFiiX pic.twitter.com/kAfP8r23Cw Mission Local (@MLNow) April 25, 2016 This morning's crash is reported to have occurred around 9:40 a.m., and follows news of two big wrecks on Sunday. Namely, a multi-vehicle crash in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood that left three people injured and a Lexus driver that allegedly ran a red light and struck a police car. Related: Three Injured After Car Crashes Into Sutter Pub & Restaurant Injuries to the 2 @SFPD officers are not life threatening, says @OfficerManfredi pic.twitter.com/ocUJGZYDJ7 Joe Vazquez (@joenewsman) April 25, 2016 Two San Francisco Police Department officers were rushed to the hospital Sunday afternoon, after a driver who allegedly ran a red light slammed into their patrol car. According to the SFPD, a 48-year-old woman driving a white, 2004 Lexus RX330 Sport Utility vehicle ran the red at the intersection of Evans Avenue and Phelps Street at 5:19 p.m. Sunday, crashing into a patrol car that was driving on the green. Both police officers in the vehicle received lacerations to the head, police say, and expressed "complaints of pain to head, neck, and chest." According to Bayview Police Station Captain Raj Vaswani, both officers were transported to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment, as was the driver of the SUV. All suffered injuries that are not considered life-threatening. Officers still at SFGH and will be treated released. Driver of other car will also be treated/released. https://t.co/koQJLyjDZW via @SFGate Captain Vaswani (@sfvas) April 25, 2016 According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Carlos Manfredi, who spoke with the Chron, It appeared to just be a regular vehicle accident. There wasnt any foul play. It wasnt a hit and run. Three top Republican elected officials have moved to support U.S. Rep. Steve King in April, as he heads toward an important June 7 primary election with a Republican challenger Rick Bertrand. King, a seven-term congressman from Kiron, also has the support of Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey. Bertrand is a state senator from Sioux City. Ernst prefers King in the Iowa 4th congressional district primary race. Steve is a friend to small businesses in our Iowa towns and the agriculture industry that helps drive our state, Ernst said in a release from King's campaign. She also spoke about a key issue in the campaign, citing King for his support of renewable fuels. Bertrand came into the race in March in part out of concern for agriculture interests after King in late 2015 endorsed Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas. Cruz doesn't support an extension to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard for corn-based ethanol. That caused Gov. Terry Branstad and others to publicly criticize King's pick, with the Republican governor saying Cruz shouldn't be supported by Iowans after his knock on an industry that is so important to the state. Branstad has not made an endorsement in the Iowa 4th District race. King said he's been glad to know Ernst since meeting her on an overseas military stop. "Then-Capt. Ernst commanded the 1168th Transportation Company tasked with hauling supplies overland from Kuwait to Baghdad. I quickly learned Capt. Ernst's first concern was for her troops. I have seen Joni progress through the ranks all the way to United States senator," King said. PASADENA, Calif. | So far it seems only Netflix has staked out a space as the must-have, add-on video streaming service, but that hasnt stopped Amazon and Hulu from trying to do the same. Of the two, Amazon seems better positioned with splashy series like The Man in the High Castle, returning for its second season in the fall, and critically acclaimed rom-com Catastrophe, which is back for its second season. A British import, the first season of Catastrophe, which lives in perpetuity on Amazon, followed the relationship between American Rob (Rob Delaney), a businessman visiting London, and the Irish woman he meets and has a brief relationship with, Sharon (Sharon Horgan). She gets pregnant, and the two eventually opt to stay together and raise a child. Season one set the shows tone as a romantic comedy without the saccharine tropes of the genre. Instead, Catastrophe was rooted in more realistic comedy with a darker core. The series still had its sweet moments, but they were earned and felt natural, not predetermined. And it was often laugh-out-loud funny as Horgans quips found equal footing with Delaneys quick-witted retorts. Season two continues in the same tone but somewhat less successfully now that the pair are enmeshed in domestic woes. Its the inevitable result, of course: The depiction of pursuit is more thrilling than domestic doldrums. Add in a potential infidelity plot and Catastrophe doesnt feel quite as fresh this time out. Not that its bad; the series just isnt the revelation it was the first time around. The new season of Catastrophe picks up several years after season one ended. The time jump was an intentional attempt to avoid child-rearing stories, according to the shows stars, who also write every episode together. We concentrated on their relationship, like how the baby and having a family affects their love rather than how to cope with children in a relationship, Horgan said at an Amazon press conference during the Television Critics Association winter press tour. We felt that it was more interesting to show them further into their relationship. Theyve already done the baby thing, and its just about trying to find some joy amongst all of the hardship. We wanted the children to essentially be scenery and operate on their relationship as a stressor, Delaney added. DEAR ABBY: Thirty-five years ago, my wife was raped in her mother's home when she was a teenager. Eight years ago, my daughter was also raped at the age of 11 in the same home. My mother-in-law blames them both for having been raped. She told them if it did happen, they probably deserved it. I don't understand this. How can someone take the side of the perpetrator and not their own flesh and blood? How can someone who is supposed to be nurturing, loving and caring say such terrible things to her children? I want to call her up and give her a piece of my mind, especially since both of them are passive when it comes to this woman. Can they file a lawsuit against her for mental anguish? Help! I want to help them heal from this tragedy, and I don't know what to do. -- DISTRAUGHT DAD IN TEXAS DEAR DISTRAUGHT: It is not unusual for families to circle the wagons when this kind of sexual assault occurs, or to blame the victim. That is why the damage persists from generation to generation. It's clear that your wife's mother is either in denial or without shame. If the perpetrator isn't in prison or a program for sex offenders, the person you should talk to is a detective in the police force in the city where these sexual assaults happened. If your wife and daughter haven't received counseling for the assaults (and I'm betting they haven't), they should find some now. The victims didn't "deserve" being assaulted. Counseling may help them get in touch with their anger, aim it where it belongs, and finally release it along with their passivity -- which may really be fear of expressing their emotions. DEAR ABBY: My wife's first husband died of cancer. When we got engaged years later, she decided to keep his last name (partly in regard to her daughters) and add mine to it. She continues to display some photos of him around the house and maintains her plan to be buried with him at their common gravesite. Whoever thinks I must be jealous or resentful about this would be wrong. I haven't experienced a long marriage, raising children or nursing a terminally ill spouse for years. Instead of demanding that my wife "prove her love" by ignoring her history, I prove my love for her -- in part -- by deferring to her choices. Soon after our wedding we learned that I, too, had cancer. My case was treatable and I am now cured, thanks to God in heaven and my wife's tender care. We once knew someone who couldn't bear to think of his wife's ever marrying after his death. He pleaded, badgered and practically forced her to vow she wouldn't. So this is my message for men who are jealous about a deceased or hypothetical "rival": That is your own choice and it disgraces you. Grow out of it. Be a man and love your wife while you both live. -- LATECOMER IN PASCO, WASH. DEAR LATECOMER: Your wife is one lucky woman because she married an intelligent and pragmatic man. I hope you enjoy many more happy, healthy years together. Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069. EARLY, Iowa | The Iowa State Medical Examiner's office has identified the man who died in a fiery crash on U.S. Highway 20 in Sac County Saturday morning as 64-year-old Rieng Lo, of Storm Lake, Iowa. According to a Sac County Sheriff news release, Lo died after his car, which was stopped on the travel portion of Highway 20, was struck from behind by a 2007 Freightliner operated by 67-year-old Russell John Buckley, of Earling, Iowa. Lo was pronounced dead at the scene. Buckley was not injured in the crash, according to the release. Assisting agencies included the Sac County Sheriff's Office, Iowa State Patrol, Region 5 HAZMAT from Fort Dodge, Iowa, and the Early and Sac County fire departments. Capt. Paul Neeson with Region 5 HAZMAT said the HAZMAT crew had responded around 6:04 a.m. to the accident, which was near the U.S. Highway 71 junction. Neeson said the two vehicles were found in the ditch, where the car and semi had caught fire and were severely burned. The crash remains under investigation by the Sac County Sheriffs Office and Iowa State Patrol. Hulse is doing what she believes to be right. If you want to call her something, call her an example to landowners whose property is along the route of Navigator's proposed CO2 pipeline. She wants others like her to know they're not powerless. Mark Hannan, 19, of South Sioux City, was indicted last week in U.S. District Court in Omaha with theft by an employee of a gaming establishment on Indian lands. According to court documents, from Nov. 1 through Feb. 15, Hannan worked at the Native Star Casino, which is owned and operated by the Winnebago Indian Tribe of Nebraska. On several occasions, he withdrew money from the casino cashier's case totaling approximately $15,000 and used the cash for his own personal use, court documents said. ORANGE CITY, Iowa | In celebration of the Find Your Park promotion, Pizza Ranch has donated $25,000 to the National Park Foundation. The Orange City-based restaurant chain also has launched a contest with the top prize of a trip to any national park in the country. Launched in March 2015, Find Your Park is a public awareness and education movement to inspire people to celebrate and support Americas national parks and community-based programs. Through April 30, Pizza Ranch guests are encouraged to use their Ranch Rewards card to be entered into a drawing to win a five-day, four-night trip for four to any national park in the United States. The prize includes the cost of airfare, hotel accommodations, a $250 gift card and an annual Federal Recreational Lands Pass, which is valid for free entrance to national parks and thousands of federal recreation sites in the country. SPENCER, Iowa | Clay County deputies found an intoxicated Spencer man driving a tractor in rural Clay County last Tuesday night after he had wrecked the Jeep he was driving away from the scene of a domestic assault. Clay County deputies, Iowa State Patrol troopers and a member of the Spencer Police Department reported to the home of David Maurer, 4110 225th Ave. in Spencer, around 11 p.m. April 19 on reports that he had assaulted his wife and fired a shot before leaving the residence in a 2005 Jeep, according to a Clay County Sheriff news release. Law enforcement diverted Maurer's wife to a safe location, secured the residence and seized all firearms and ammunition, the release said. Maurer, after leaving the residence, drove the Jeep about eight miles northeast before crashing it upside-down in a creek. After escaping the vehicle, Maurer found a 1988 Caterpillar tractor on some of his property and began driving it back to his residence. A Clay County deputy soon found Maurer driving the tractor in the 2200 block of 410th Street. Maurer was arrested and treated for his injuries. He was found to be intoxicated. Dep. Brad Hawley with the Clay County Sheriffs Office said deputies later recovered a handgun inside Maurer's Jeep. Maurer was taken to the Clay County Jail and charged with operating while intoxicated, reckless use of a firearm and domestic assault impeding airflow. Maurer was being held on $2,000 bond. He posted bond Wednesday. SIOUX CITY | The City Council will decide Monday whether to apply for a $14.8 million federal grant for a proposed 18th Street viaduct. The $20.7 million viaduct would span railroad tracks between Floyd Boulevard and Lewis Boulevard, which city officials say would open up additional industrial development in the Hoeven Valley corridor. As of late last week, the city was finalizing its application to the U.S. Department of Transportation for a Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery Program, or TIGER, grant. The city would provide a local match of $2 million, and the Iowa Department of Transportation and local businesses benefiting from the viaduct would contribute the remaining $3.9 million in costs. The city has identified Cargill, Union Pacific Railroad, and Canadian National Railway for private sources of funds, but has so far declined to disclose specific contributions from each. Glenn Ellis, the city's engineer, said Friday that the two railroads with tracks that cross 18th Street would be required by law to pitch in 5 percent, based on the portion of viaduct that will affect their respective rights-of-way. Based on that formula, UP, for example, would pay about $500,000, city officials said at a public meeting last week. CN would contribute somewhat less than that, Ellis said. The IDOT is expected to contribute about $7,000. To meet grant requirements, the city would be required to close not only 18th Street but at least one other rail crossing -- 11th Street, 28th Street or both. Union Pacific has told the city it would contribute more funds than legally required if all three crossings would close to traffic, city public works director Dave Carney said. Calli Hite, a spokeswoman for Union Pacific, said in a statement: "Union Pacific is engaged in continued and evolving dialogue about the proposed 18th Street viaduct project. Railroad contribution figures ... for this grade separation have yet to be determined." Mark Klein, a spokesman for Cargill headquarters in Minneapolis, declined to comment on how much the company might contribute. City officials have said the contributions will become public before the City Council votes Monday on the grant application, but details were not available as of late Friday. A vast majority of American workers are worried about their financial future, according to a new study by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The latest Workplace Benefits Report has revealed that American workers stress about their finances has increased, while confidence in their financial futures has decreased. Specifically, three in five employees today feel stressed about their financial futures, up from 50 percent in 2013. For the study, Bank of America Merrill Lynch conducted a nationwide survey of more than 1,200 employees with 401(k) plans at companies of all sizes. Key Takeaways Some of the key findings of the study about employee financial stress include the following: More than half (55 percent) admit to needing help managing their finances, including saving for retirement and managing debt. About seven in 10 (69 percent) have experienced a rise in healthcare costs over the past two years, directly attributing to decreased retirement savings. Fifty-nine percent want help understanding how workplace financial benefits can aid in increasing their financial security. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of employees say they have increased their focus on retirement planning and saving and recognize the importance of the saving plans offered by their employers. About 68 percent say that financial benefit plans offered by their employers will be their largest or second largest source of income in retirement. What You Can Do to Reduce Employee Financial Stress With ongoing market volatility severely impacting the economy at large, its not difficult to understand why the heat of employee financial stress is being felt. Its also not a surprise that employees are now looking at their employers to help them manage their financial lives. Given how many are struggling with todays financial demands while planning for their future, employers are in a critical position to help their employees secure their financial future, says Lorna Sabbia, head of Retirement and Personal Wealth Solutions for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. By working in close partnership with a plan provider dedicated to helping employees live better, such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, employers can provide their employees financial wellness programs and benefits that are accessible and integrated. A study of employers (PDF) conducted in 2015 found that providing financial employee wellness programs can help employers identify the trouble spots that prevent employees from gaining financial security. From a business perspective too, it makes sense to provide the right financial guidance to the employees. As Kim Kasin, financial guidance executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch says, By offering financial wellness solutions and addressing their employees needs, employers can create a culture that enables the employees to accept the assistance. Congratulations you came up with a great idea or designed a new invention! Now you may be wondering, should I file for a patent? Filing for a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is a great way to guard all your hard work, but there are rules to filing for this creative protection in short, not everything can be patented. A patent is a protection for your intellectual property, that is, the design or product you created. Patents keep others from replicating your work and selling it as their own, and also give you perks like the exclusive right to make and sell your product. Patents can last up to 20 years and grant you the ability to protect your invention through the legal system which is why there are restrictions on what can and cant be patented. Should You Patent Your Idea or Product? Successfully filing a patent requires you to meet a handful of eligibility standards, including: Your invention is useful. This means that the item youre attempting to patent has to have some kind of use meaning it has a practical application or its a specific process to creating, fixing or using something. The best way to pass the usefulness test is to explain what your created item can do. This means that the item youre attempting to patent has to have some kind of use meaning it has a practical application or its a specific process to creating, fixing or using something. The best way to pass the usefulness test is to explain what your created item can do. Your invention is explainable. A heavy component of the patent application process is being able to show what exactly your product does, how it works and how it was created. Many patent applications also require diagrams and schematics to help further show and explain your patent. If you cant fully explain how your invention works or should be used, it may be time to do additional research to meet this requirement. A heavy component of the patent application process is being able to show what exactly your product does, how it works and how it was created. Many patent applications also require diagrams and schematics to help further show and explain your patent. If you cant fully explain how your invention works or should be used, it may be time to do additional research to meet this requirement. Your invention has to be legal. It almost goes without saying, but any product you design and attempt to have patented has to be for legal use. Inventions that break laws or support illegal activity just arent going to be patented. Plus, attempting to patent an item that breaks the law just might not be wise. It almost goes without saying, but any product you design and attempt to have patented has to be for legal use. Inventions that break laws or support illegal activity just arent going to be patented. Plus, attempting to patent an item that breaks the law just might not be wise. Your invention has to be significantly different from previous versions. In many cases, people are granted patents for items that already exist, with the caveat that they have significant changes. In the eyes of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, these improvements essentially create a new product, so long as the features increase the use of a current item, or solve a problem that an already existing product has or creates. Things You Can Not Patent Sometimes, people have great ideas and products that just cant be patented. In case youre wondering what explicitly cant be patented, consider these guidelines: You cant patent naturally occurring things. If you can find your idea in nature, you likely cant patent it. For example, its not possible to patent raw materials like lumber, rocks or produce. Theories in scientific research fall into this category as well meaning you cant patent scientific work, partially because its solely an idea, and also because theres no physical product. You cant patent art and media. Patents are for products and items with use that can be manufactured and sold. While art and media do have their humanitarian uses, they dont qualify for patents. Although, if youre interested in protecting artistic works youve created, consider copyrighting your materials the legal process of protecting against plagiarism and theft for written materials. You cant patent ideas. Many people create standout ideas for useful products, but dont continue on the road to designing and inventing them. Because patents are for actual items or processes, you cant patent an idea or an improvement suggestion for a product. To seek protection from competitors or duplicators, youll need to actually create the item and explain how it works. You cant patent something that already exists. It may seem like common sense, but its important to remember that you cant patent an invention thats already been created and patented. For this reason, its important to seek out similar items through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to ensure they havent already been designed and patented by someone else. Patents are a great way to protect your innovations, but theres a lot of time and effort that goes into obtaining official patent status. Understanding what you can patent and how to patent your idea before you file paperwork is a great way to ensure youre on the right track to sharing your invention with the world. Republished by permission. Original here. 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 Sen. Bernie Sanders talks to thousands in Baltimore arena. (Photo: Hannah Klarner, Capital News Service) BALTIMORE Deborah 'Spice' Kleinmann, a Baltimore City preschool teacher. (Photo: Hannah Klarner, Capital News Service) (April 23, 2016)Thousands flocked to Baltimore's Royal Farms arena Saturday to see Bernie Sanders for the same reason people packed the hall for Bruce Springsteen earlier in the week.These fans have heard the tunes over and over, but they wanted to see the performance live, "feel the Bern" and catch the vibe of thousands there to chant, "Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie."They wanted to say they saw Bernie Sanders in the flesh, support his "political revolution," hear his New Yawk accent in the raw, and boo his references to Wall Street, Trump and Hillary.They ate up the warm-up acts."The people united will never be defeated," said Kwame Rose, an activist, artist and blogger, leading the crowd in that chant."Bernie Sanders is fighting for those like me who look like Freddy Gray," said Rose. Sanders was the only white man who spoke to the diverse but predominantly white crowd."This is the only campaign that is truly fighting for America," said Rose. "This is our last hope."Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez could have used the stool Sen. Barbara Mikulski typically brings to speaking events.Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez could have used the stool Sen. Barbara Mikulski typically brings to speaking events.Dimunitive Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez of Montgomery County, a Salvadoran immigrant and candidate for Congress, was there to represent Latinos but could barely be seen over the high podium. She couldn't quite get the crowd chanting the Spanish version of Rose's chant. "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido" More joined her in repeating a throwback from the 2008 Obama campaign, "Si se puede," "Yes we can."Before the speakers, the music included not only pop tunes, Motown but "Entren Los Que Quieran" (Enter those who want to) from a political album by Puerto Rican band Calle 13not on the playlist at a Trump rally.For presidential campaign visits to Baltimore, it was Obama himself who had last filled the arena in 2008. In Sanders case, the top floor and a third of the hall was blocked off after rain forced an overnight change of venue from Druid Hill Park.Ben Jealous, former NAACP president, introduced Sanders, saying, "only one candidate can defeat Donald Trump."Sanders said "we need to address issues the establishment would prefer that we sweep under the rug."In a speech without notes that lasted more than 45 minutes, Sanders laid out familiar themes: a corrupt campaign finance system, a rigged economy that benefits the few, and a broken criminal justice system "with more people in jail than any country on earth."All three brought boos and jeers from thousands standing at their seats through much of the speech.Sanders brought some of his national themes home to Baltimore."In Baltimore, Maryland, in the richest country in the history of the world, one out of every four people live in poverty, (boos) where 80 percent of the children in Baltimore public school system are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch (boos) "Where poverty is a death sentence. If you are poor in Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods, your life expectancy is almost 20 years shorter than if you were born in its wealthiest neighborhoods," Sanders went on."Fifteen neighborhoods in Baltimore have lower life expectancy than North Korea. Two of them have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank in Palestine."Baltimore teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 face poor health conditions and a worse economic outlook than those in distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa."We are talking about the United States of America in the year 2016 in a country in which the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%.""In this country, we are going to make profound economic changes. The status quo is not acceptable," the Vermont senator said.Sanders was talking like a man who thinks he could become president. He took several swipes at Hillary Clinton. He said a $15-an-hour minimum wage was realistic, not the $12 an hour Clinton has proposed as a stage."We have profound differences" on campaign finance, as a pocket of the crowd began chanting "no super PAC." Sanders said he now has gained seven million donors, and of course the crowd could tell him the average contribution: $27."That in itself is a political revolution. We can run a strong national campaign without depending on special interests," like the $15 million Clinton PACs have gotten from Wall Street.He railed against perpetual war in the Middle East, against trade pacts that shipped millions of jobs overseas, and against wage inequality for women."They don't want 79 cents an hour. They want the whole dam dollar."On climate change, he called for abandonment of fossil fuels and creating more jobs through reliance on renewable sources such as solar."I strongly believe we've got to phase out fracking in this country," said Sanders, to some of the loudest applause and cheering his speech.In the evening, Sanders heard presentations and took questions from a smaller crowd that packed the Carter Memorial Church of God in Christ for a "Community Conversation on Young Men of Color" featuring Jealous, pastor Jamal Bryant and actor Danny Glover, who got some history wrong earlier in the day when he said Maryland had seceded from the Union in the Civil War.Sanders was taken aback when Bryant referred to 70,000 heroin addicts in Baltimore; he checked the figure with Jealous, shook his head, covered his face, and then said that the epidemic of heroin and opiate addiction needed to be treated like a health problem and not a criminal issue. Matthew Taylor Brann, age 25. (Booking photos) PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. (April 25, 2016)A wanted man took police on a high speed chase this morning in Calvert County. The man had open warrants and had eluded police earlier in the morning. The suspect, identified as Matthew Taylor Brann, age 25, subsequently fled a traffic stop around 8:55 a.m. Police say Brann ditched his car and fled into a wooded area, leaving his "obviously shaken" female passenger in the vehicle.Police setup a search perimeter; a K9 and MSP Trooper 7 helicopter assisted in the search. After an hour, police were unable to locate the man and cleared the scene, after impounding the vehicle.Before the morning was over, a citizen called to report the location of the suspect. Sheriff's office deputies and state police personnel responded to the area and located Brann walking at the intersection of Rt. 231 and Thunder hill Road. He was taken into custody without incident.In addition to being served with the outstanding warrants for first degree burglary, malicious destruction of property and violation of probation, Brann will also be charged with fleeing and eluding and numerous traffic charges, say police.Brann has 42 assorted traffic and criminal charges in the Md. Judiciary database dating back to 2009, at which time he was age 18.The Calvert County Sheriff's Office provided the following detailed narrative of the incident:On April 25, 2016 at approximately 8:55 a.m. Dfc. Livingston of the Calvert County Sheriff's Office initiated a traffic stop on a 2001 Mercedes Benz along southbound Maryland Route 4 in the area of the Radio Shack shopping center. The operator had an open warrant and had eluded police earlier in the morning. The vehicle stopped and upon Dfc. Livingston approaching a female in the car put her hands up and told Dfc. Livingston she wanted to get out. At that moment, the operator of the car fled the traffic stop. The vehicle turned right onto West Dares Beach Road. The vehicle continued west on West Dares Beach Road to the intersection of Prince Frederick Boulevard. The operator disregarded the red signal at the intersection and drove south on Prince Frederick Boulevard. The operator of the vehicle then failed to stop at the stop sign and turned right to travel west on Maryland Route 231. The vehicle continued westbound on Rt. 231 disregarding the red light at J.W. Williams Road. The vehicle continued west on Rt. 231 to German Chapel Road where it made a left. The vehicle was travelling at an extremely high rate of speed on German Chapel Road. Deputies were unable to keep up with the vehicle and lost sight of it. The personnel in the area knew that the vehicle had not made it to Rt. 4 from German Chapel and a general perimeter was set up.Once deputies began to back track, the vehicle and the obviously shaken female were located near the end of Dan Bowen Road in the driveway of a private residence. The male subject had exited the vehicle and had run into a large wooded area. Multiple units from the Sheriff's Office and the Maryland State Police established a more specific perimeter and a search was conducted by Calvert County Sheriff's Office Dfc. Morder and his K9 partner "WOLF". MSP Trooper 7 also assisted with searching the area from above. A NIXEL was also sent out to alert citizens of the police activity in the area. After approximately one hour passed the perimeter was broken down, the vehicle was stored and the bulk of the units cleared the scene.At approximately 11:10 a.m. a citizen from Thunder Hill Road contacted the Sheriff's Office and advised there was a male subject matching the suspect's description walking in the neighborhood. CCSO deputies and MSP personnel responded to the area and located the suspect walking at the intersection of Rt. 231 and Thunder hill Road. The suspect was taken into custody without incident. 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 25, 2016)The Prince Frederick Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) today released the following incident and arrest reports.POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA AND XANAX: On 4/21/2016 at 03:24 pm, Master Trooper Gill stopped a vehicle for traffic violations at Rt. 4 and Ball Rd. in St. Leonard. The odor of marijuana was emitting from inside the vehicle. A probable cause search was conducted and both marijuana and xanax were located. James W. Kiesner, 22, of Leonardtown, was arrested and charged with possession of CDS-Not Marijuana. He was incarcerated at the Calvert County Detention Center. Jordan R. Bell, 21, of Prince Frederick, was issued a civil citation for possession of marijuana under 10 grams and was released.POSSESSION OF CONCEALED WEAPON: On 4/21/2016 at 11:53 pm, Trooper First Class Lewis stopped a vehicle on Rt. 4 and Doris Dr. in Owings for traffic violations. Ian P. Roche, 19, of Arlington, Va. was found to be carrying a concealed weapon. Although he did have a concealed carry permit in Virginia, Maryland does not recognize out of state permits. He was arrested and incarcerated at the Calvert County Detention Center.POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA: On 4/23/2016 at 7:00 pm, Trooper First Class Casarella stopped a vehicle for traffic violations on Rt. 2 and Mount Harmony Rd. in Sunderland. The odor of marijuana was emitting from inside the vehicle. Lance M. Clift, 50, of Chesapeake Beach, was arrested for possession of marijuana over 10 grams. He was incarcerated at the Calvert County Detention Center.DUI, FLEEING AND ELUDING: On 4/24/2016 at 3:27 am, Trooper First Class Lewis stopped a vehicle on Plum Point Rd. in Huntingtown after observing the vehicle cross the roadway, striking a guardrail and crossing back into the other lane striking the guardrail on that side. After coming to a stop the driver exited the vehicle and fled into the woods. Calvert County sheriff's deputies assisted in locating Andrew O. D. Truitt, 21, of Chesapeake Beach. He was arrested for Driving Under the Influence and cited for Fleeing and Eluding Police. Truitt was incarcerated at the Calvert County Detention Center.Paul A. Crowl, 26, of Dowell, arrested on 04/20/2016 @ 12:59 am by TFC S. LewisSalvador E. Hidalago, 37, of Chesapeake Beach, arrested on 04/23/2016 @ 12:55 am by TFC S. LewisMichael L. Johns, 34, of North Beach, arrested on 04/23/2016 @ 04:41 pm by TPR. J. WarrickJeremy D. Gall, 22, of Lusby, arrested on 04/24/2016 @ 01:34 am by TFC B. BrayAndrew O. D. Truitt, 21, of St. Leonard, arrested on 04/24/2016 @ 02:47 am by TFC S. LewisVivian Abalama, 43, of Lusby, arrested on 04/25/2016 @ 12:47 am by TFC S. LewisLinwood R. Thomas, 29, of Pr. Frederick, arrested on 04/25/2016 @ 03:03 am by TFC B. Bray CAIRO (Sputnik)On Monday, celebrated in Egypt as the Sinai Liberation Day, activists across the the country are due to take to the streets to protest a recent decision by Cairo to cede control over two islands at the southern entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba to the Saudis. "The military high command has issued an order to deploy field armies in their areas of responsibility so that they can participate in the Sinai Liberation Day celebrations together with the Egyptians and protect essential sites from those, who will decide to spoil the holiday," the statement published on Sunday said. The statement added that the army troops, along with police forces would be used to patrol the streets and squares of the country's major cities. YOSHKAR-OLA (Russia) (Sputnik)The Egyptian authorities still have a lot of to do to provide security in the country, Russian President said Monday at a meeting of The All-Russia People's Front, a pro-Kremlin public movement. "there are difficulties with visiting the places our people have become accustomed to, I mean Egypt, where, [they] would be glad to see us, but I think that the local authorities still have a lot to do to provide security," Putin said. Russia suspended flights to and from Egypt last fall after a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai desert on October 31 while flying from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board. Militants affiliated with the Daesh militant group, outlawed in Russia, claimed credit for the terror attack. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The diplomat explained that piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea are increasing at an alarming rate. "Strong political will from African governments and leaders is needed to pursue and prosecute crimes at all levels within criminal enterprises," Sison said. As a result, as much as 400,000 barrels of crude oil are stolen daily in the Gulf of Guinea. That fracturing has allowed the terrorist group Daesh, also known as IS/Islamic State, to flourish, especially in Gaddafis hometown of Sirte. "Itsnot only symbolically important as Gaddafis hometown, but strategically important because of its location, because it allows ISIS to operate on both sides of the country," Draitser says. "[It] is essentially a mercenary army is able to more-or-less destabilize all the different regions of Libya. "In many ways, it provides a very convenient pretext for the Western powers to be able to reassert, or reinsert, themselves into Libya." Instability within a number of European nations could also provide an impetus for launching a new foreign intervention. We also need to note that in 2013 David Cameron personally intervened to prevent offshore trusts, such as the one his millionaire father had set up in Panama, being included in an EU-wide crackdown on tax avoidance. Greed & Hypocrisy In a wider sense however, it is perhaps understandable that #PanamaPapers are helping the Brexit campaign. This is not just because 'Call Me Dave', the most important public figure backing 'Remain' has been exposed as a brazen hypocrite. The Panama leaks vindicate the positions taken by populist, anti-globalization campaigners. As Leo McKinstry anti-EU columnist with the Daily Express, put it: "The fact is that this controversy feeds perfectly into the anti-establishment, Brexit narrative that we are governed by a privileged elite that has no connection to the mainstream public. "Indifferent to national interests, these elitists adore globalization because it enables them to transfer their money easily round the world while trumpeting their devotion to openness." The Panama Papers leaks reveal the greed of the global elite in a time of turbo-globalization. And the fact that the EU is seen rightly or wrongly as an organization which serves the interests of the elite, helps the Brexit cause. 'The People's Army' However, things are not really as clear cut as they may first appear. UKIP is Britain's leading anti-EU party. It calls itself 'The People's Army'. But, as the Daily Mail's chief political correspondent Peter Oborne noted, the usually very vocal Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, has been rather quiet about the Panama Papers revelations Farage, a former City stockbroker, has admitted that he had a trust himself on the Isle of Man but said he had never used it. He also expressed concern about politicians being asked to publish their tax returns. Since the #PanamaLeaks scandal broke Farage has made not one single comment on it. Why? Otto English (@Otto_English) 10 April 2016 There is, it must be said, a 'Red' faction in UKIP, who would like to see the party ditch neoliberalism and pursue more majoritarian economic policies like nationalization. This faction, would I'm sure, in common with many UKIP voters, like to see the party go for Cameron's jugular on the Panama Papers/tax avoidance issue. But Farage, for whatever reason, doesn't seem keen to do so. Peter Oborne, who himself is a Euroskeptic, argues that the #PanamaPapers could actually help the 'Remain' side because of UKIP's weak position on tax havens. Labour Talks Tough UKIP's stance is in sharp contrast with that of Labour who have landed some good blows on Cameron over Panama and the subject of tax generally. Leader Jeremy Corbyn said that Cameron had "misled the public" and "lost the trust of the British people." Labour is taking a tough line on tax avoidance they have called for the government to consider imposing "direct rule on UK overseas territories which don't observe UK tax law," but the party is lining up with most of the ruling class in supporting Britain staying in the EU. "One rule for the super rich and another for the rest" my response to @David_Cameron's statement on #panamapapershttps://t.co/XWclrxSzlM Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) 12 April 2016 Jeremy Corbyn, who has spent much of his political career criticizing and opposing the EU, said, in his first major speech of the referendum campaign, that staying in the bloc was the most viable way to "protect social and human rights, tackle climate change and clamp down on tax dodgers." Take note of those last five words: "Clamp down on tax dodgers." This was an obvious attempt to bring Panama into the debate. We'll have to wait and see what impact Corbyn will have on the 'Remain' campaign. Cameron's Conundrum One thing we do know though. Unlike 'Call Me Dave', 'Jezza's' ratings are on the up. In a recent poll, the Labour leader's approval ratings passed Cameron's for the first time. Ten days ago, a YouGov poll showed that public trust in Cameron had fallen eight points. Meanwhile, on 16th April, over 150,000 people marched in London to demand Cameron's resignation. TOKYO (Sputnik)On April 25, North Korea celebrates the Military Foundation Day, which is considered to be one of the country's major national events. "Our military is maintaining thorough preparations against the possibility of North Korea carrying out a nuclear test We are keeping particularly close attention to the possibility because today marks the founding anniversary of the North's armed forces," South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said as quoted by the Yonhap news agency. According to the spokesman, Seoul has detected signs of Pyongyang's preparations for the nuclear test. The White-cheeked macaque (Macaca leucogenys), a species new to science, was first discovered in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district, bordering the Tibet region of China by a group of biologists and wildlife photographers last year, during a bird watching trip. However it took nearly a year for the scientific community to acknowledge that it was a new species different from macaques normally found in this region. They narrowly missed being the first in the world to formally report the species after spotting the primate. A group of Chinese researchers, led by Cheng Li had beaten them to it by days reporting the discovery of the species in the American Journal of Primatology. Formally reporting a find in a journal takes precedence over spotting a species. India's U-turn in first issuing a visa to Dolkun and then cancelling it may have been due to Chinese pressure as China has previously protested the issuing of the visa. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist on Interpol's red notice and is wanted by Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is the due obligation of all relevant countries." The Indian decision came soon after the Chinese protest. In fact, sources within the Ministry of External Affairs told Sputnik that Dolkun Isa's visa was cancelled after reviewing the Interpol red corner notice against him. "There is no explanation. I got a very brief message from the Indian side, that your visa, valid for a month, is cancelled," Dolkun Isa told Sputnik, still clearly perplexed by the Indian Government's decision. Swing seems to be swinging against India's strategic interest @SEAsia. India's clout compromised as #ModiBowsToChina pic.twitter.com/YDzfqcVfmx Maharashtra Congress (@mahcongress) 25 April 2016 The decision has received sharp criticism. The issue of the visa was seen as a tough response by the government in view of China's decision to not designate Pakistani national Masood Azhar as a terrorist by the UN. Dolkun Isa, leader of World Uyghur Congress lives in Germany and was invited to the interfaith conference in Dharmasala in the state of Himachal Pradesh in India. Besides being accused of carrying out the rehabilitation measures at a snail's pace, the government is also being blamed for not paying enough attention in addressing the unprecedented public trauma. Speaking from Nepal to Sputnik, Sudip Grimire, mental health and psycho-social senior program officer with the International Medical Corps, said "When the earthquake occurred, I was in the capital Kathmandu. I found most of the people very much afraid and frightened by this terrible earthquake. So, immediately we organized psychological first-aid support in the worst affected places." Up to 213,000 people have been helped by the charity with the assistance from the Nepali government and local groups. The NGO has also trained several medical and social workers to help survivors cope with the trauma. Shambhu Gurung, who himself lost his five-year-old son and his wife, was among the victims, has now become a counsellor to console others. "I am in a position in my community where people seek my help, where people look to me. This is partly because of my experience providing psychosocial support, but also because I know what they are going through. I can help because I feel the same pain as everyone else," said Gurung. UNESCO: On anniversary of Nepal earthquake, a new partnership for heritage https://t.co/JFZwjzGURN pic.twitter.com/vWPhNhKouO Donna Yates (@DrDonnaYates) 18 April 2016 Several NGOs have urged the government to intensify the relief measures but with little or no success. The Nepali government, stricken by bureaucratic hurdles and domestic political wrangling, has so far been unable to put the rebuilding efforts into full swing. "If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world," Ri added. President Obama appears uninterested in the offer. On Sunday, he told reporters that he doubted Pyongyangs sincerity. "We dont take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test," he said. "Thats not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. Theyre going to have to do better than that." Since January, North Korea has carried out a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests. These resulted in harsh new sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. Pyongyang, however, insists that the technology is necessary to defend itself against threats from the US and its key ally, South Korea. The asset freeze approved by a London judge includes Kolomoisky's properties in the UK and France, including a one hectare French villa, and a 50 acre estate in the Haute Savoie region, a boat, and a private jet. Boholiubov's frozen assets include expensive London properties, including a house on Belgrave Square near the gates of Buckingham Palace in London. Kolomoisky, who is believed to have been one of the principle financial backers of the Maidan protests of late 2013 to early 2014, which culminated in the illegal overthrow of unpopular but democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Syria and Russia have signed an agreement on renewing the countrys infrastructure for a total of 850 million euros, Wael Nader said. The Russia side responded to the idea of renewing the infrastructure that resulted in the signing of many deals with the Russian side, among which are agreements with a total of 600 million euros and 250 million euros, Halqi said in an interview. According to the prime minister, more than 60 percent of [power] stations are not operating and are in need of fuel. But the production of electricity relies on fuel, and the oil sector has been more exposed to terrorism than the electrical energy sector, Halqi said, adding that 35,000 tons of oil are needed daily in order to produce electricity. Damascus offers the Russian companies to participate in the construction and modernization of oil refineries in Syria, Prime Minister said. The Russian companies were offered "to invest into the projects on the use of excessive refining capacity in the oil refineries in Homs and Baniyas, to become partner in the construction of. a joint refinery [which also involves Iran and Venezuela], and take part in the modernization of the Baniyas oil refinery," Halqi said. He recalled that Syria was interested in generally boosting cooperation with the friendly countries, particularly with Russia. Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, when mass anti-government protests against President Bashar Assad and the ruling party escalated to an armed confrontation between government troops and allied militia on the one hand, and the Syrian opposition on the other. New Delhi (Sputnik)India is relying heavily on Irans LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) to lend a new aspect to its friendly relations with neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan told Sputnik, India is planning to expand its LPG network to neighboring countries also. We are in discussion with Bangladesh to set up an LPG terminal at Chittagong port and in collaboration with Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation; India can establish its market base in Bangladesh. Sri Lanka too expects LPG supplies from India for fulfilling the requirements of its people. There has been a recent understanding between Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, a government-run national oil company, and the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation to examine the possibility of jointly setting up a LPG import terminal on the coastal belt of Bangladesh's Chittagong district, marketing LPG in Bangladesh's domestic market as well as developing related infrastructure in Bangladesh. According to Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, after calculating the total requirement of Indian consumers and the demand in neighboring countries, India's LPG requirement could rise to 30 million metric tons in the coming years. After the lifting of economic sanctions, there is a big scope for us to imported LPG from Iran. MOSCOW (Sputnik) China considers the 38 billion cubic meters (1.34 million Btu) of gas per year set to be supplied by Russia via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline sufficient to meet demand, Russian energy giant Gazprom's management committee deputy chairman, Vitaly Markelov, said. In 2014, Gazprom signed a 30-year agreement with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for annual deliveries of 38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas through the eastern route pipeline, formally known as the Power of Siberia. "In case of interest from the Chinese side, we can increase the value of gas supplied along the route. However, the Chinese side admits that the currently agreed volume is sufficient to satisfy both existing and forecast demand for imports of Russian gas along this route," Markelov said in an interview published in Gazprom's corporate journal. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Iran will receive from five to eight new planes in 2016 which the country earlier has purchased from the European Airbus company, Head of Irans Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) Ali Abedzadeh said Monday. "As the first phase of the contract inked between Airline of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Airbus Group SE, five to eight A320 and A330 jets purchased from Airbus will join Irans civil aviation fleet in the current year," Abedzadeh said as cited by Mehr News Agency. The CAO head expressed his hope that the relevant entities and institutions would ensure the required financing of the jets. He also added that the deal is a sign of cooperation between the EU and Iran. . If you do not agree with the blocking, please use the Access to the chat has been blocked for violating the rules . You will be able to participate again through:. If you do not agree with the blocking, please use the feedback form The discussion is closed. You can participate in the discussion within 24 hours after the publication of the article. As Armenians around the world observed a day of remembrance honoring the victims of the Ottoman Empire's genocide of their people 101 years ago, Yerevan continued to battle in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. According to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, they violated a standing ceasefire 130 times over the course of 24 hours. "Despite the previously reached agreement on the ceasefire regime along the contact line in Karabakh, the Armenian side, using howitzer D-30 and mortars, violated the regime along the line 130 times in 24 hours," the press service said. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The plane carrying 298 people crashed while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing everyone on board. A Dutch-led inquiry concluded last year it had been blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. But the UK broadcasters program "Conspiracy Files: Who Shot Down MH17?" will explore the possibility that the Boeing-777 was shot down by a fighter jet. "There are eyewitness accounts of other aircrafts seen flying next to MH17 close to impact," BBC says on a webpage for the documentary. MOSCOW (Sputnik)The proposed US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal would have disastrous consequences for the French economy, National Front party leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday. "This transatlantic agreement is an atomic bomb for our country's economy. The president of the republic must announce his refusal [to take part]," Le Pen said in an interview with the France 2 public broadcaster. The 13th round of EU-US talks on the TTIP deal started in the United States earlier on Monday, following US President Barack Obama's trip to Europe. On Sunday, Obama visited Germany and met Chancellor Angela Merkel, where he urged Europe to move forward with the free trade accord and draft the full text of the agreement before the end of the year. Earlier in the day, media reported that the shooting at a local school took place soon after 10 a.m. local time (08:00 GMT). "Yes, there are two dead and one injured," the spokeswoman said. MOSCOW (Sputnik)The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) launched a scheme on Monday offering 10,000 kroner (over $1,500) to migrants willing to return to their homelands voluntarily. "UDI increases on Monday, April 25, the financial support of 10,000 kroner for the first 500 applications for assisted return to their homeland. The scheme applies to the first 500 who actually leave within six weeks of applying for assisted return," the directorate said in a statement. The initiative applies to migrants who applied for asylum before April 1 and are either awaiting a response from the UDI or the Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board, the directorate added. On April 9, Barbaros Leylani, then vice president of the Turkish National Association, raised hell with a speech at a demonstration in Stockholm, where he announced his support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Also, a number of flag-waving members of the Grey Wolves, a Turkish supremacist, far-right and neo-fascist organization, were spotted at the demonstration. "Death to the Armenian dogs! Death! Death!" Leylani shouted, among other things, according to Goteborgs-Posten. This triggered an investigation to find out whether the Turkish National Association reflects the basic requirements of democratic values. Protesters having fun with "Obama & Merkel" in Germany:p pic.twitter.com/W1SXx9QEy3 Anastasia Churkina (@NastiaChurkina) 23 April 2016 Moreover, the Investor State Dispute Resolution system comprising separate tribunals can be used by big business to sue governments who refuse to allow their goods to be sold, or put up barriers affecting their profits. There is major opposition to this aspect of TTIP in the European Parliament, which is likely to delay Obama's plans. Syria Second, there is discord over Syria. Merkel is warming to the idea of setting up "safe zones" within Syria, where foreign forces would protect civilians in some areas. She said: "I believe that if you had followed what I said yesterday in Turkey, it is something that has to come out of the Geneva peace talks; it is not about classical safe zones." However, Obama countered: "As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us being willing to militarily take over a chunk of that country, and that requires a big military commitment." Turkey Turkey is proving to be an even more difficult subject, with Merkel leading an EU deal with Ankara to give Turkey US$6.75 billion over two years to support refugees within its border as part of a relocation scheme which will see "irregular migrants" from Greece returned to Turkey and one a one-for-one basis Syrian refugees accepted into the EU. 1 month of #EUTurkeyDeal today& only 129 refugees have been relocated to N.Europe. RT if you agree this must change pic.twitter.com/1n0NWWLbzl IRC Intl Rescue Comm (@theIRC) April 20, 2016 There is already deep division over Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's record on human rights and media freedoms and the EU-Turkey deal has been branded immoral, inhuman and possibly illegal. Another aspect of disagreement is that Turkish citizens under the deal will have visa-free access into the EU a part of the deal that has met with opposition throughout Europe. How can EU cooperate with a country which does't respect international law? https://t.co/r5TAfNFE7M #EUTurkeyDeal pic.twitter.com/19TKuhbF5F ALDE Group (@ALDEgroup) April 20, 2016 Obama's critics say he is unaware of the massive impact the migrant crisis has had one Europe and many feel the US should take in many more refugees itself. In particular, US-Turkish relations have taken a turn for the worse, since the US is relying on an offshoot of the Kurdish PKK to support the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) in the fight against Daesh also known as ISIS. Erdogan's forces are at war with Kurdish separatists. With so many items on Monday's agenda, most commentators think the outcome will just be a gentle chat between Obama and the EU leaders. The full extent of their differences are many and nuanced and unlikely to be resolved in Hanover or soon. King's College London withdraws speaking invitation offered to Boris Johnson, statement: pic.twitter.com/g1yDt1pUHT Ross Hawkins (@rosschawkins) 24 April 2016 Boris Johnson, a leading pro-Brexit campaigner took umbrage to Obama's pro-EU rhetoric and responded with an article many believe to be a deeply offensive smear. Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill called Johnson's article "appalling". Boris Johnson has embarrassed himself, our capital city and our country. Moron. #StrongerIn https://t.co/zyzmW9zyrr Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) 22 April 2016 In an email to Boris Johnson, King's Think Tank group said: "Given you inappropriate comments and inferences towards President Obama's Kenyan heritage, of which he is rightly proud, and your general tone of disrespect over the past few days in relation to the President of the United States of America, we are now formally withdrawing your invitation at Kings College London." The email from King's Think Tank continues: "The level of discourse over the past few days does not meet the bar we set for these events nor do we feel does it help the British people in making the most momentous decision of our lifetime. "Furthermore we believe it does not reflect the true greatness of the United Kingdom, a land of tolerance, respect and fair play towards all." It was signed by the Director of the EU Referendum events at KCL and the president and vice president of the KCL think tank. When are Tory 'leaders' going to find the balls to take Boris Johnson apart and tell the truth that he is unfit for high office? Alastair Campbell (@campbellclaret) 25 April 2016 Boris Johnson should have asked whether Obama's missing birth certificate is the reason he 'hates Britain' Sunny Hundal (@sunny_hundal) April 22, 2016 After Boris and Farage's attacks, Obama must feel like the Republican Party has followed him here. George Eaton (@georgeeaton) April 22, 2016 Boris Johnson hadn't yet accepted the invitation to speak at the think tank's EU Referendum Debate before it was withdrawn or no-platformed. 'No Platform' is a National Union of Students (NUS) policy that traditionally applies to not allowing people or organizations considered racist or fascist, a platform to speak from at a NUS organized event or debate. Critics of the student policy say it amounts to censorship. UK voters were asked in a recent poll, whether or not it was "appropriate" for Obama to express a preference with regards to Britain's vote in the upcoming EU Referendum. Only 35% of respondents agreed with that statement, with a massive 53% saying it was "inappropriate" despite that, the President's net approval rating remains unchanged at +56. Public to Obama: we love you, but stay out of EU debate https://t.co/LE6zBKxa9k pic.twitter.com/0wl0wOItf7 YouGov (@YouGov) April 23, 2016 Coinciding with his visit to the UK, President Obama published a controversial, but impassioned plea for UK voters to remain in the European Union. Writing in The Telegraph newspaper, he said: The Danish Foreign Minister has been an ardent supporter of the EU, but still recognizes that the EU is "off track" and at worst may shatter. "There should be less interference in member states' social systems and cultural situations and more respect for the countries that choose their own path," he told the newspaper Berlingske. "We have to ensure that Brussels focuses on the right thingsthe EU's core tasks such as cross-border problems," he told the newspaper. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The issue of deploying an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) police mission in eastern Ukraine would be impossible without direct dialogue with representatives of the region, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. "The issue of some kind of an OSCE police force must be decided within the OSCE itself, and it is hardly possible to raise this question without such an agreement," Peskov told reporters. "Most importantly, of course, is the fact that this [deploying an OSCE police mission] is impossible to do without taking into account the opinions and without engaging in direct dialogue with those republicson whose territories the deployment would take place," he added. The idea belongs to Kristin Jones, the head of Tevereterno, a non-profit organization campaigning for the cultural regeneration of the Tiber waterfront, who suggested it to Kentridge over ten years ago. Securing permission from Romes municipal and regional public authorities has been the real colossal project, the website quotes the artist as telling the Ansa Italian news agency. Authorities are trialing a technology currently used in Afghanistan to take down combat drones, which targets unmanned aircrafts by jamming their radio signals. Developed by a joint venture of three British tech companies, the equipment would cost less than one million pounds (US$1.4 million) to install in an airport facility. The system, according to one of its creators, Blighter Surveillance Systems, can spot drones flying within a radius of nine kilometers from the restricted area, by detecting the heat from the vehicle's batteries. Then, the ray can either simply snipe the drone down, or commandeer it and fly it back to its operator so that police can find (and presumably fine) them. MADRID (Sputnik) Spanish King Felipe VI started on Monday the last set of consultations with the leaders of the country's parliamentary parties in an attempt to unblock a political impasse in the country and propose a candidate for the post of prime minister, local media reported. According to the EFE news agency, Felipe VI is expected to hold a meeting on Monday with the leaders of eight political parties, including Pedro Quevedo from the small New Canarias group. On Tuesday, the king will meet the leaders of the parties that finished in the top four positions in December's general election. Following these consultations, Felipe VI should nominate a new candidate for prime minister to be voted on by the congress of deputies. New elections could be held on June 26 if the parties fail to find common ground before the May 2 deadline. "Essentially, it's a parallel legal system which is open to foreign investors, or corporations, to take action against a government for treating them unfairly [which] has come to mean anything which damages their bottom line, their profits," Nick Dearden, the director of campaign group Global Justice Now told Sputnik. "Any piece of legislation or regulation a government undertakes has the potential to damage corporate profits. That's fine if it's in the public interest, or protecting the environment or something we democratically want to do. "Our worry is that something in these trade agreements that privileges foreign corporations or investors, provides the stick they can use to beat governments who are trying to protect the public interest," Dearden told Sputnik. Risk Assessment Ignored Now, as the latest TTIP talks get underway in New York Monday (April 25) Global Justice Now has obtained a Freedom of Information request showing that the British Government has made no risk assessment of investor protection in CETA the free trade deal between Canada and EU. British govt ignored its own risk assessment on TTIP's corporate courts, which warned 'don't do it' https://t.co/4BXpVOlcPP #NoTTIP Nick Dearden (@nickdearden75) 25 April 2016 "Both CETA and TTIP will open this mechanism up to tens of thousands more companies that can take this action against them. With CETA they haven't taken any risk assessment at all. On TTIP, they did do a risk assessment which essentially said 'don't do it' because there is far more risk to this than there is potential benefit. So the only risk assessment they've done, they have essentially ignored," Dearden told Sputnik. It was the previous Moderate government that toyed with the idea of high-speed trains connecting Stockholm with both Malmo and Gothenburg and started the ball rolling. Should the idea become a reality, the trains will set off around 2030. This should reduce the traveling time between Stockholm and Gothenburg to two hours, compared to three hours today. A trip from Stockholm to Malmo will only take 2.5 hours, compared to 4.5 hours today. The planning has continued under the present red-green alliance government, although the total cost still remains unclear. In December 2015, the Swedish Transport Administration came out with an estimate of 190-320 billion krona (23 to 40 billion dollars). After further investigations, the bill was trimmed down to a "mere" 250 billion krona (30 billion dollars). Sweden's Transport Agency argues that it is unlikely to reduce the final price to less than 200 billion krona (25 billion dollars). Regardless, this is set to become the largest investment in Sweden in 150 years. The National Institute of Economic Research argues that the high cost means that the government will have to subsidize every ticket by 700-800 krona if the price for railway tickets continues to linger at its current levels. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will make a stop in Ukraine today to discuss with senior officials and party leaders the countrys reforms and the implementation of the Minsk accords, the US Department of State announced in a statement on Monday. "On April 25, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will travel from Hannover, Germany, to Kiev, Ukraine, to meet with senior Ukrainian government officials, political party leaders, Rada members, and civil society representatives," the statement said. "[Nuland would] discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues, including reform priorities and Minsk implementation." Nulands visit to Kiev comes as Ukraine is undertaking a range of reforms, including anti-corruption measures, power decentralization and the reorganization of the national energy sector, in order to obtain the latest bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. "Serco has used hotels to temporarily house asylum seekers in the North West and Scotland. The last six months or so have seen exceptionally high numbers of people entering the UK to claim asylum resulting in the use of hotels to be used for accommodation on a temporary basis. "Wigan council is concerned at the use of hotels to house asylum seekers and has raised those concerns previously with Serco and the Home Office. A recent review written on website Trip Advisor by a guest said to, "avoid" staying at the hotel in Wigan citing that: "The problem is the refugees that are being held in the hotel, all men too? They wander [around] the Hotel waiting to be called by the officials in the reception area." The Home Office has a US$253,23 million (175m) budget to house asylum seekers in the UK but outsources the responsibility to private companies who profit from the public money. A coloured #wristband on the arm of an asylum seeker, which indicates that they are entitled to meals at #LynxHouse. pic.twitter.com/XbAYK2g89T Stop Moslimhaat (@stopmoslimhaat) January 26, 2016 Accommodation for asylum seekers in England and Wales hit the headlines at the beginning of 2016 following reports asylum seekers were forced to wear wristbands to obtain food and doors on homes accommodating asylum seekers were painted red. "G4S, Serco and Clearsprings receive millions of pounds of public money to house asylum seekers, and revelations in recent months have been alarming," Chair of Home Affairs select committee Keith Vaz MP said. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK but housing support is provided. They have to survive on US$7.65 a day for food, toiletries and clothes. Germany cannot exist in monetary union with France and most other European countries because of cultural differences which influence financial policy, Alternative for Germany (AfD) chairman Jorg Meuthen told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in an interview on Sunday. "Nobody wants to throw France out. But France is of course a political problem, for which I have no solution," he said. The party's vice-chairman Alexander Gauland explained that while in principle the party is not opposed to French membership of the Eurozone, "If they can't or don't want to afford it economically, then you have to find other structures." MOSCOW(Sputnik) The outcomes of the first round of the presidential elections in Austria with most votes secured by the far-right politician Norbert Hofer came as a shock for many Austrians, a spokesman for the Green Party told Sputnik on Monday. On Sunday, Austria held presidential elections. Hofer, the Freedom Party's candidate, gained 36 percent of the votes followed by Alexander van der Bellen from the Greens with 20 percent. Independent candidate Irmgard Griss came third with 18.5 percent of the votes, leaving far behind candidates from the two coalition governments parties, the center-left Social Democratic Party and the center-right Peoples Party, with 11 percent each. "The result of yesterdays election was not predictable, and it was not predicted by any opinion polling. So it was quite a surprise and a shock for many people in Austria," Reinhard Pickl-Herk said. MOSCOW (Sputnik)On New Year's Eve, hundreds of women in Cologne and in many other German cities were robbed and sexually assaulted by groups of aggressive men, believed to be mostly of Arab and North African origin. In January, the German authorities registered some 3,400 arrivals of North Africans to the country, while in February and in March only 599 and 480 arrivals, respectively, were recorded, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported, citing Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) data. The newspaper reported that the decline could be explained by Berlin's plans to classify Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia as safe countries of origin that would deprive residents of these states of an automatic right to apply for asylum in Germany. On April 21, fighter jets conducting the NATO Baltic Air Policing Mission were once again scrambled to identify and escort the Russian aircraft, the ministry added. "The fighter jets operated from Siauliai Air Base identified and escorted two Su-24 front-line bombers which took off from Kaliningrad and later returned to starting point. The NATO fighter aircraft operated from Amari identified and escorted two Tu-22 strategic bombers flying from and subsequently back to the mainland of the Russian Federation," it specified. Spain and Belgium are currently implementing NATO air patrols in the Baltics in compliance with a regular rotation principle introduced in April 2004. Spain leads the mission with four Eurofighter Typhoon jets based at Siauliai, Lithuania, while Belgium based its four F-16 fighter jets at the Amari Air Base in Estonia. Last week, BAE Systems warned redundancies at the shipyard would be unavoidable if Ministry of Defense funding was not released. The warning prompted concerns over whether the program to build the Navy vessels on the Clyde would go ahead with workers representatives accusing the government of "betrayal". In a separate statement issued Monday, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon echoed concerns over the warships future. "Workers won a contract for 13 Type 26 frigates and have already had to watch that be cut back to only eight vessels. Now there are doubts over the time table for these vessels and for other work due to come to the Clyde," Sturgeon said. "The workforce here has already seen its numbers reduced and it would be a disgrace if they are to face further cuts. A series of claims were made by the Tories and Labour during the referendum about employment at these yards and we will do everything in our power to hold the Tories to their promises," Sturgeon added. The BAE shipyards on the Clyde employ over 2,500 people. Scottish voters rejected independence from the United Kingdom by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent in a referendum held in September 2014. The latest events are certain to put pressure on EU leaders of the deal struck with Turkey to return "irregular migrants" from Greece to Turkey on a one-for-one basis for Syrian refugees being sent from Turkey to the EU. Critics of the deal say Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's record on human rights and media freedoms make the deal hypocritical on the part of EU leaders. The latest incidents involve Ebru Umar, a Dutch journalist of Turkish origin, who was arrested while on holiday in Turkey on Saturday (April 23) after writing in her column that Erdogan's attacks on free speech was equivalent to Dutch World War 2 Nazi Party "NSB practices," calling Erdogan a "megalomaniac dictator." So I m at the Kusadasi police station to prove I m in Turkey and they just glace at me: what is it you're here for?! pic.twitter.com/lvsgNogIXO Ebru Umar (@umarebru) April 25, 2016 German media reported that the European Commission was put under pressure by Turkey to withdraw funding for a performance by the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra to mark the 101st anniversary of the Ottoman Empire's slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, is to contain sung and spoken texts that describe the killings as genocide, which Turkey denies. Frey also believes that "one of their [Freedom Party's] men has a chance to make it into the presidential office," and even though the position is mostly "ceremonial," it has massive significance for the future of Austria. "Austria has been at the forefront of this. The Freedom Party has been very strong up to 27-28 percent in 1999. So they have been the most successful right-wing Europe party for a while now and now they seem to be again ahead of other European countries in a negative way," Frey said. The success of the Freedom Party has also meant that some believe there to be a rise of far-right activity across the EU and this has further added weight to support that claim. "But the fact he has a third of all votes is a surprise. It is a shock and it shows that the old two-party system which has hung on until now, is now crumbling probably also under the weight of the migrant crisis, which has turned many more voters away from the government and looking for alternatives." Speaking about how much power Hofer could possibly have, Frey said: "It is hard to say, the constitution which was adopted in 1929 gives the president a fair amount of influence. But this kind of influence or power has never been used. Hofer has already announced that he wants to be a more active president, that he wants to dismiss the government if they don't do what they want him to do." According to Frey, Hofer has expressed the desire to "join and be active at the EU summit". For some this is also an indication that Austria is heading towards a pro-European stance. However Mr Frey, believes that this is not the case, and the Freedom Party if they had power may leave the EU if public opinion went against it; however they have not said openly that this will be the case. For the Freedom Party however, the main issues may concern the refugee crisis. Last summer's influx of refugees and migrants, fleeing war-torn countries, caused a lot of debate around the issue of open borders. "Last summer and also September, when a wave of refugees came from Hungary, there was a lot of public support for taking in Syrians and people running away from the war. But as the fall went on, people said now is enough, and the government did not hit the brakes they were waiting for Germany and Mrs Merkel to deliver some sort of solution, and when they finally changed their tunes and policies., starting in January and February, people had already felt it was too late." With these new results, some fear we could see a completely new Austria emerge over the next few years. "This could be, although we don't know what it will look like," said Frey. "There will be a national election in 2018. Even if the Freedom Party is the largest party after that, it's not clear whether they will be able to find a coalition partner," he added. "Undoubtedly," Mirzayan writes, "Vucic and Dacic should expect even more serious protests, and not only over the measures to reduce social spending that will be required under the agreement with the IMF. At some point, the Serbian government will have to decide what to do with Kosovo. Right now, the Euro-integrationists, giving up their president and their generals, continue to maintain that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia. However, to enter the European Union, Belgrade will have to recognize the region's independence 'special conditions' on the question of its sovereignty are out of the question." "It's possible that the Euro-integrationists are hoping that in time while negotiations continue, Serbs will come to terms with the idea that Kosovo has become an independent territory. For this reason, both Brussels and Belgrade will postpone, as much as possible, the Kosovo dilemma; it should be decided as the last or next-to-last step prior to the country's accession to the EU." Ultimately, the analyst notes, "if the social mood changes, there will be a referendum. If not, there will be a decision at the executive level (along the lines of the Montenegro case, where the head of state recently decided to take his country into NATO, in spite of popular attitudes)." The Lithuanian military is about to renovate three of its early warning ports, Delfi news portal reports. The military intends to completely renovate the facilities and to replace the Soviet-era equipment currently deployed there with NATO-standard long-range radars. The media outlet notes that this initiative comes in the wake of an incident which occurred on April 12 when three Russian military helicopters approached the Lithuanian border and allegedly violated the countrys airspace. However, despite the fact that servicemen of the Lithuanian border guard claimed to have witnessed this intrusion with their own eyes, the military declared that their radars didnt detect any such airborne targets entering the countrys airspace on that date. Earlier in April, Lithuanias Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius also declared that a force of Russian paratroopers allegedly landed on Lithuanian soil in the vicinity of Juodkrante. The minister declared that Lithuanian special services reacted to the incursion 'promptly and adequately,' but for some reason has not elaborated further on the nature of the incident, claiming that the information is classified. MOSCOW (Sputnik) A strong army and increased state security is a key priority for the current Polish government, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Monday. "And all of you in this room can be absolutely sure that today Poland is ruled by people for whom building a strong state and the security of the state, and therefore a State which has a strong and efficient army, is an absolute priority," Duda said during a briefing with the country's Defense Ministry and Armed Forces staff, as quoted by the Polskie Radio public broadcaster. Earlier on Monday, Poland's Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz signed a decree stipulating the creation of a new "territorial force" army unit. Earlier in April, Macierewicz said that there are plans to increase Poland's army by up to 50 percent over the coming years, with at least three territorial defense brigades to be deployed at the country's eastern border. BERLIN (Sputnik) Another ministerial meeting of the Normandy Four group of international mediators of the Ukrainian crisis is essential at the moment, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said Monday. "It means that the heads of the foreign ministries of all four countries will meet at a certain point in time," the spokesman explained, answering a RIA Novosti question on the matter, without specifying a date for the meeting. On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Paris and Berlin envisaged the possibility of a new Normandy Four group meeting at Germany's initiative in the near future. KIEV (Sputnik) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) counts on the new Ukrainian government to continue reforms taken up by the previous administration, IMFs First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton said in an interview with the Ukrainian press Monday. Volodymyr Groysman was appointed new Ukrainian prime minister on April 14 after the resignation of his predecessor, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The new Ukrainian cabinet has been approved the same day. The IMF pledged a $17.5-billion 4-year loan for Ukraine in exchange for political reforms in March 2015. "Primarily, this [new government] means that we can resume the discussion about the implementation of the Ukrainian IMF program. Previously, it was rather difficult to seriously discuss the future steps in this direction. Now there is someone we can speak with," Lipton told the Russian-language version of the Ukrainskaya Pravda news portal. YEREVAN (Sputnik) Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and French State Secretary for European Affairs Harlem Desir discussed the situation in Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, stressing the necessity to monitor truce violations and implement confidence building measures, the presidential press service said on Monday. "The parties concurred that in this situation it is necessary to expeditiously establish mechanisms for the monitoring of the violations of the ceasefire regime and introduction of the confidence building measures to prevent aggressive interventions and to create a possibility for reaching at the table of negotiations mutually acceptable solutions," the press service said in a statement. Desir also noted that Paris was interested in the resumption of negotiations for the benefit of a peaceful resolution of the conflict, according to the statement. We believe that this is stability-inducing that people will see this as a sign of Bitcoin going mainstream, said Kodric. It also allows us to be taken seriously and partner up with more serious institutions, because we had a lot of discussions in the past but it always comes to a point where theres no one overseeing us, and bigger financial institutions are still reluctant to work with unlicensed companies doing [financial technology]. The move is a huge step for Bitcoin, the most widely used cryptocurrency by far, making its way into the mainstream. Bitcoin users hope this will help provide more legitimacy to the digital cash that many still associate with dark-web criminal activity. An enormous whiteboard has been installed in the reopened station, as a memorial, for people to write their wishes and condolences for the victims of the attacks. People have left flowers and written their notes on the board, with an optimistic, resilient mood notably prevalent. "Let's cherish the life that surrounds us," reads one note, while "Love wins" reads another. Since the day of the attack, the people of Brussels have been reluctant to express hatred or aggression towards Daesh terrorists who, losing their ground in Syria, have sought to induce fear among Europeans. Experts of the five-member panel said they had been obstructed in their work and complained over lack of access to evidence they needed to establish the truth behind the suspected murder of dozens of teacher students. Over a hundred people were arrested following the incident, including the former mayor of Iguala and numerous police officials. Experts said some of those detained had been tortured. Initially, authorities blamed the alleged abduction on local drug cartels and criminal gangs, but additional evidence provided by independent experts pointed to local police and army having been involved in the kidnappings. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The launch of a Russian Soyuz ST-A carrier rocket from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, to put an EU satellite into orbit, originally planned for April 21, is expected to take place on Monday evening, the launch service provider Arianespace said in a statement. "Replacement operations are underway for the inertial unit of Soyuz Flight VS14 that was affected by an outage Liftoff of the Soyuz launcher is now targeted for Monday, April 25, 2016, at the precise moment of 06:02:13 p.m., (Local time in French Guiana) [21:02 GMT]," the statement published on Sunday reads. In an exclusive interview with Sputnik , Ecuadors Minister of Public Health Margarita Guevara thanked the Russian people and Russias President Vladimir Putin for the humanitarian aid that was delivered by an Il-76 cargo aircraft of Russias Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM). On April 16 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Ecuador, killing over 525 people and leaving the resourced-strapped country scrambling to conduct adequate search, rescue and relief efforts. "On behalf of our country, and on behalf of the provinces of Manadi and Esmeraldas, I thank you for your solidarity. I thank you in advance for everything you send, any and all assistance is welcome now," the minister said. According to the World Watch Monitor, the Virgin Mary Syriac Orthodox Church, the Surp Sarkis Chaldean Catholic Church, the Diyarbakir Protestant Church, the Apostolic Armenian Surp Giragos Church, an Armenian Catholic church, and the Mar Petyun Chaldean Catholic Church are now under government control. Turkish officials claim that this land has suffered from violent conflict in the last few years and will be restored to turn the city of Diyarbakir into a tourist attraction. According to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the government would rebuild Sur, Diyarbakr's metropolitan municipality, to look like the scenic Spanish city of Toledo. "Everyone will want to come and appreciate its architectural texture," he said. MOSCOW (Sputnik) "Ruheiba (Damascus province) and Abtin (Aleppo province) have received 4.5 tons of humanitarian cargoes," the Russian center for reconciliation said in a bulletin. Aid workers from the Hmeymim-based center in the western Latakia region offered medical assistance to 22 civilians, the ministry said, adding more humanitarian convoys for people in the Damascus province were being loaded. Russia has been mediating a ceasefire in parts of Syria since February. More than 50 armed groups have so far signed up to the truce with the government. The lull in fighting has enabled Russia to deliver tonnes of aid cargo, mostly food, to residents in the war-torn country. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) will boost its fight against Ankara, if Turkey continues its military operation against Kurds, PKK leader Cemil Bayik said Monday. "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach of course the PKK will escalate the war," Bayik told the BBC, speaking about Ankara's actions. RUHEIBA (Syria) (Sputnik) Six militant groups numbering around 600 individuals, who control the Syrian city of Ruheiba in Damascus Province, have joined the cessation of hostilities agreement, Russian Center for Reconciliation spokesman Yuri Zraeyev said Monday. Together with our friends from the Ministry of Reconciliation, federal authorities represented by the deputy governor, as well as with the [Russian] Center for Reconciliation in the Syrian Arab Republic, we were able to sign papers with the representatives of armed formations. This process is very complex and continued very difficultly. But there was a positive in this at the same time, as the different sides were nonetheless able to reach an agreement, Zrayev told journalists. He said the agreement guarantees a ceasefire in the region of Ruheiba and would help in expanding the ceasefire regime into neighboring cities. HOMS (Sputnik) Alleged terrorists have detonated a vehicle laden with explosives in the southern Shiite neighborhood in Syrias capital of Damascus, injuring an unknown number of individuals, a source in the Shiite militia said Monday. Terrorists detonated a vehicle laden with explosives at the Ziyabiya checkpointwe can only so far say that there are injured [from the incident], the source told RIA Novosti. At least eight people have been killed others injured after a vehicle laden with explosives detonated in a southern Damascus neighborhood, a source in the Red Crescent said Monday. ANKARA (Sputnik) Turkey plans to develop its own missile defense system, which will be integrated with that operated by NATO and may help the country to increase the chances of enteringthe alliance, the head of T urkey's Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM) said Monday. In November 2015, Turkey canceled a $4-billion tender for the purchase of components for the country's missile defense system, as it decided to develop the system domestically. "We have canceled the results of the tender, not the project itself. Soon we will enter a new phase, where domestic companies, including Roketsan and Havelsan, will participate. We continue the development of short-, medium- and long-range systems, gradually increasing the range. We will not make any direct purchases, but at the same time the missile defense system we are developing, will be integrated in the NATO system. We consider that joint work with NATO will speed up the process [of the development]," Ismail Demir told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet in an interview. HOMS (Sputnik)Four UNESCO employees from France and Lebanon arrived to the ancient city of Syrias Palmyra on Monday for a one-day trip to assess the historic part of the city that was liberated of terrorists in March, a Syrian Cultural Heritage and Museums source said Monday. Four UNESCO employees have arrived in Syria. Two employees from Beirut and two from Paris. They will look at the damage and conduct a preliminary analysis with our specialists. Theyll be here for only one day, the source told RIA Novosti. After the liberation of Palmyra on March 27, Russia deployed its bomb squad and specialized robots to Syria in the next few days to demine the historic city. MOSCOW (Sputnik)The United States will deploy up to 250 additional personnel, including special forces, to Syria to fight the Daesh terrorist group , US President Barack Obama said Monday. I have decided to increase US support for local forces fighting Daesh in Syria. The small number of American Special Operations Forces are already on the ground in Syria And their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven Daesh out of key areas. So given this success I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum, Obama said during his visit to Hanover. ANKARA (Sputnik) Turkish authorities arrested 954 foreign citizens suspected of Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist group membership since the start of the Syrian conflict, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Monday. "More than 3,300 suspicious foreigners have been deported, 2,800 detained and 954 arrested [since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011]," Kalin told reporters. President Recep Tayyip Erdogans spokesman added that around 41,000 people have been added to the list of suspected Daesh members or associates forbidden from entering Turkish territory. ANKARA (Sputnik)For months, Kilis has been subjected to shelling from the Syrian territory, occupied by the Daesh militant group. The rocket attacks have intensified recently and the Turkish troops deployed in the vicinity and within the town have retaliated by shelling positions in Syria. According to the Turkish television broadcaster A Haber, vehicles from the 5th Armored Brigade Command, stationed in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, have been redeployed to Kilis. Daesh is a terrorist group outlawed in the United States and Russia among other states. The group has seized large areas in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate on the territories under its control, as well as trying to spread its influence to the neighboring territories. DAMASCUS (Sputnik)Damascus plans to begin the process of lifting sanctions effecting financial operations in Syria with the rest of the world, Syrian Prime Minister Wael Nader Halqi told Sputnik. Considering the fact that Syria was not isolated from the world and supported the serious financial ties with most countries, as well as having a reliable financial reputation, we plan to begin the process of lifting these unfair sanctions on Syrias financial operations with the world, Halqi said in an interview. Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with the government forces fighting several opposition factions and militant organizations. The crisis has caused a humanitarian disaster and breakdown of country's infrastructure. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Iraqi Kurdistan is grateful to Russia for supplying it with arms and looks forward to continued cooperation in this area, the head of Iraqs Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Hemin Hawrami, said Monday. "I would like to express our gratitude to Russia on the behalf of Iraqi Kurdistan for [its] help in the fight against Islamic terrorism. We hope that deliveries of equipment will continue in the future," Hawrami said at a press conference in Moscow. Syria's trade with Russia is recovering, with Syrian exports to Russia surpassing 2015 levels in the first quarter of 2016 alone, Syrian Prime Minister said. "According to Ministry of Economy and Trade data, in the first quarter of 2016, Syria exported twice as much to Russia as it did in all of 2015, which indicates the start of the restoration of balance in the trade between the two countries," Halqi said. Given the crisis in Syria, the exact trade volume is not as important as the consistent flow of goods between the two countries, as well as the quality of goods traded, he added. Syria has faced difficulties in maintaining its foreign trade since the outbreak of civil war. The European Union imposed sanctions on Syria in 2011. The measures include trade restrictions, as well as personal travel bans and asset freezes on certain Syrian officials. The country and its government have also been targeted by sanctions imposed by the Arab League, the United States and Turkey. "So far, our mutual trade experience is still at an embryonic level, and some time is needed to study markets and modify businesses to become compatible with market demands," the prime minister noted. Damascus supports Russian companies' participation in the field of communications and high technologies in Syria, Wael Nader Halqi said. "Russian companies have chances to invest in this sphere. We welcome this cooperation with Russian companies," Halqi said. According to Halqi, Syria and Russia are likely to cooperate in the field of infrastructure for data centers and production of communications devices in demand in the Syrian market. "Russian companies have the experience, knowledge and technical ability to provide these services, have channels of contact between the Ministry of Communications of Syria, its various divisions and Russian firms. We, in turn, provide all possible support and encourage this cooperation," the prime minister said. In 2015, the Russian Ministry of Communications held a number of meetings with representatives of Syria and expressed its intention to continue cooperation in the field of public administration automation despite the conflict in Syria. Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting several opposition factions and extremist groups, including the Islamic State, which is outlawed in Russia, United States and several other countries. "The trends are the withdrawal of troops that is a red flag. This is not rocket science, thousands of troops have been here and this coupled with other things have created a bubble economy," Mr Sultanzoy told Sputnik. Both Mr Davy and Mr Sultanzoy believe the withdrawal of troops from the country is one of the factors that has led to its failure to recover. However, both experts also think that this is not the only reason. "The corruption by local, national and international community is important as well. The black economy related to drugs, the government before this current one, left chaos in various regions of the country The people who made money were merchants not businesses, so they did not reinvest their money back into country. "The Afghan military had a big part to play as well it's rather traditional Also look at the number of unemployed people. Failure to provide jobs leads to more people joining the Taliban. Also lack of hope, failure to build a justice system and structures has led to the further collapse of the country," said Mr Davy. However there is hope, Afghanistan is not irreparable. "No it is reparable, it's supportable. If we could clarify the situation and bring people around the same table and its possible to create change," Davy said. "The Taliban requires support. If we could get corruption under control it would be less attractive to support them. It will take international efforts, British support is growing. If we don't do something to help the community and government it will all be for nothing. "The international government has ADHD distracted by Libya, Syria etc. We should be able to pay attention to all the issues. Afghanistan is not a small problem; it can be fixed but requires determination and cohesion. "The people in this country need to bring confidence back to the nation and instill hope back into the lives of people. The government is for them, not for anyone else. Not just by words but by actions. The international community need to finish the half-done job they left behind." ANKARA (Sputnik) Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier in the day that Moscow was interested in Alparslan Celiks "clear and detailed" account of his involvement in the killing of Russian pilot Oleg Peshkov. "Celiks statement in which he talks in detail about the incident with the plane will be given by me to the Russian Embassy in Turkey and the Russian Foreign Ministry," Celiks legal counsel Murat Ustundag told RIA Novosti. Celik was arrested alongside 13 others in the Turkish city of Izmir in early April on charges of illegal gun possession. The suspect previously said that he had not shot at Peshkov but had accepted the responsibility for the killing as a commander of a militant group. Celik insisted he had repeatedly ordered his men to take the Russian pilot prisoner, and not to shoot at him. "Iraq's political and ethnic communities will use their associated militias' gains to boost their power in Baghdad," the report said. In addition, Iraq will have to face regional competition playing out in the country, as the rivalry between Iran and Turkey-backed militias will continue. Stratfor noted Baghdad is currently concerned that Turkey has been aiding a number of militias to increase its foothold in northern parts of the country. "Once the Islamic State has been defeated and Iraq's many local and regional interests can turn their attentions to their underlying agendas, the real fight for Iraq will begin," the report concluded. Daesh, has been designated as a terrorist group and is outlawed in the United States, Russia and numerous other countries. The infamous group has seized large areas in Iraq and Syria, and declared a caliphate on territories under its control. GENEVA (Sputnik) Head of the Syrian government delegation said that the terrorists are to blame for the latest attacks on Aleppo and Damascus: "It is not surprising that the attacks in Aleppo were carried out by Ahrar ash-Sham, trained by Turkey, and the terrorist attack in Damascus by Jaysh al-Islam, which is trained by Saudi Arabia," Jaafari told reporters after talks with UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. The Syrian diplomat added that he addressed the escalation of violence in Aleppo in talks with de Mistura, and asserted that the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC) opposition groups "statements were aimed at disrupting the ongoing intra-Syrian talks and increasing external intervention in these negotiations." Hersh did not provide an exact figure in terms of money involved, but asserted that it was hundreds of millions. I have been given numbers, but I havent done the work on it so Im just relaying. I know it was certainly manyyou know, were talking about four or five yearshundreds of millions [of dollars]. But I dont have enough to tell you, Hersh asserted. A recent bill in Congress to release the classified 28 pages of the 9/11 commissions report that details the Saudis role in the events has resulted in Riyadhs threatening to sell billions in US assets if it goes through. No matter what happens in the coming weeks, months or years its apparent we may be getting closer to the truth about not just 9/11 but the Saudis global role in funding terrorist activities and a major shake up to the geopolitical stage may be on the horizon, Jim Carey wrote of the interview for the Fifth Column. "We are currently collecting information that Jabhat al-Nusra subjugates groups that seemed to have declared truce and readiness to join [the] ceasefire," he said. "We will summarize facts and present them to [the] UN Security Council to adjust terrorist lists." The United Nations Security Council is negotiating a new Syrian constitution which will help bring an end to the five-year conflict that has left nearly 250,000 people dead and millions displaced. On Monday, Foreign Minister Lavrov also discussed the United States recent decision to distance itself from Russias operations in Syria. "The system is working, but its working despite the fact that the Pentagon and the State Department as of late are publicly trying to distance themselves from the existence of any sort of coordination between our militaries and say that all of the contracts with the Russian Aerospace Forces encompass only the agreements on avoiding [air] incidents," he said. "The deployment of 250 additional US military forces to Syria is a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient," McCain stated. "Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria." McCain accused the US government of being foolish in seeking to work with Russia to negotiate a peaceful end to the Syrian civil war. On April 11, the 173rd US Army Airborne Brigade conducted a failed airborne drop that resulted in three Humvees free-falling several thousand feet to their demise sparking an investigation into what officials consider an egregious and embarrassing failure. The incident occurred during the Saber Junction 16 military exercise conducted at the Hohenfels training area in Germany. The exercise called for a "heavy drop" which included parachuting 150 supply bundles, vehicles, communications equipment and indirect weapons systems. "Additional measures of military nature will be taken, while the damage suffered by craftsmen and merchants of Kilis will be compensated in the framework of economic aid," Kurtulmush said at a press briefing in Ankara. Earlier in the day, local media reported that the Turkish Armed Forces sent additional armored vehicles to Kilis. "They'll be in support of local forces on the ground, the idea is that they will not be engaged in direct combat, they will not be on the front lines," Cook explained. "They will be providing support to those local forces that are taking the fight to ISIL." The additional deployment of US forces to Syria was announced by President Barack Obama earlier on Monday. Cook explained that they will "defend themselves if they come under fire," adding that combat was "not the intent of this deployment." On April 15, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir issued a chilling threat to Washington, stating that if Schumers legislation were to advance, the Saudi government would immediately divest their over $750 billion holding in US Treasury bonds, which would trigger an instant economic crisis for the US. Rebuffed by that threat, the Obama Administration released several statements asserting that the president would immediately veto any legislation providing 9/11 families the ability to sue the Saudi government, and dispatched State Department officials to lobby Congress directly. Republican leadership instantly accepted Obamas refusal to support 9/11 families over terrorist financiers, with Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Lindsey Graham lining up to block the measure. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) blasted the Beltway consensus, saying the United States cannot be blackmailed, and raising concerns about the Saudi governments current funding of the Daesh global terrorist network. BELGRADE (Sputnik) Serbias Republic Electoral Commission will provide opposition parties in the country that have alleged vote rigging occurred during Sundays parliamentary elections with access to election materials, local media reported Monday. On Sunday, 3,270 candidates from 20 political parties and coalitions ran in elections to Serbia's 250-seat National Assembly. According to the television broadcaster B92, the leaders of several Serbian opposition parties, which failed to reach the 5-percent threshold necessary to enter parliament, went early on Monday to the Republic Electoral Commission to launch complaints about vote rigging during the elections. May also mentioned the so called Passenger Name Records Directive, which gives law enforcement agencies access to information about the movements of terrorists, organized criminals and victims of trafficking on flights between European countries and from all other countries to Europe. " without the kind of institutional framework offered by the European Union, a complex agreement like this could not have been struck across the whole continent, because bilateral deals between every single member state would have been impossible to reach," May added. According to May, EU membership serves UK economic and trade interests. Retaining certain security components after leaving the European Union falls short of the intelligence-sharing benefits the United Kingdom enjoys as a member of the 28-member bloc, May said. "If we were not members of the European Union, of course we would still have our relationship with America. We would still be part of the Five eyes [alliance], the closest international intelligence-sharing arrangement in the world," May outlined the pro-Leave arguments. The United Kingdoms "first-rate" security and intelligence agencies, as well as intelligence sharing on terrorism and crime with EU allies would also stay unchanged should the British voters side with the Leave camp, she added. "But that does not mean we would be as safe as if we remain," the home secretary stressed in a speech billed as her first on the EU referendum. Saakashvili was forced to flee his native country in November 2013, with Georgian prosecutors later filing several criminal cases against him in absentia related to abuse of office and the embezzlement of nearly $5 million in public funds for personal use. The politician was later declared wanted inside Georgia. In June 2015, Georgian authorities said that they had exhausted the possibility of extraditing Saakashvili, since he had been granted Ukrainian citizenship. The Georgian politician emphasized that his desire to return home does not mean that he is looking to flee Ukraine, since his policy team intends to continue its work reforming Odessa. Instead, he cryptically noted that "the choice is not Georgia or Ukraine. The choice is for a common bright future." Commenting on Saakashvili's intention to go home, Svobodnaya Pressa columnist Andrei Ivanov suggested that the disgraced former president's "chances for a triumphant return to big politics are extremely low." This, he noted, is connected to the charges he faces, and to the fact that, without Georgian citizenship, he can't actually hold public office. Furthermore, "during the years of his rule Saakashvili lead the majority of Georgians to impoverishment, and brutally dispatched with his critics. Of course Georgians have not forgotten the failure of his military adventurism in 2008 in South Ossetia, either" (which prompted Russian intervention and the region's declaration of independence from Georgia). "The Secretary [Kerry] did speak today separately with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Republic of Armenia President Serzh Sargsyan," Kirby stated. "They discussed in both callsthe need for the sides to adhere to the ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and to enter into negotiations on a comprehensive settlement." Kirby added that Kerry also reviewed ongoing US bilateral cooperation with both leaders. "The US government, along with the Finance Ministry, will continue to implement a two-year program of funding the consulting services to reform the Ukrainian Customs Service, initiated by the previous [Finance] Minister Natalia Yaresko. As part of this program, the United States will provide $4 million to attract international advisers, who will help introduce the worlds highest quality service at the Ukrainian Customs," the finance minister wrote on his Facebook page. At present, each Arctic nation is working on its own and carrying out independent scientific research, which can lead to a duplication of efforts, Papp noted. "Not one country within the Arctic Council can do everything that needs to be done within the Arctic," Papp stated, noting that sharing scientific research among states will be "more efficient and, in the long-term, more effective." In a brief interview with reporters on Monday, Papp explained that he did not want to discuss the details of the proposed scientific cooperation protocol, arguing it could harm the negotiating process. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Elbe Day commemorates the linking of the Soviet and US Armies at the River Elbe in Germany on April 25, 1945, which was an important step toward ending the Second World War. "I would like to underline that the fact that so many Russian and US citizens who remember the feat of our peoples have gathered here is extremely important not only for the present generation but even more for the future ones," Kislyak said. "It is especially important when there are the attempts to rewrite the history and to forget much of the heroic things done by the Soviet people." Russian, US well as the delegations of the former Soviet Union states laid wreaths at the "Spirit of the Elbe" memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. As President Obama visits Germany today, he is set to meet with not only Angela Merkel, but the leaders of France, Britain and Italy to discuss ways to "stabilize" Libya. Are the lessons of the 2011 NATO bombing campaign going unlearned? Brazil sets up a special committee today to determine whether to go ahead with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Journalist Pepe Escobar joins Becker to address whether this is simply a legal process initiated against corruption, or is a coup orchestrated by the super wealthy against the poor represented by the Workers Party. In the final segment, Becker is joined by distinguished author and historian Gerald Horne, who discusses his most recent books including "Paul Robeson: The Artist As Revolutionary" and "Confronting Black Jacobins". Hughes tells me, as he told the U.S. District Court Judge in federal court yesterday, that he has "no regrets" for his protest, despite the high costs he is being forced to pay, including, ironically enough, the loss of his voting rights in the state of Florida. "I will never do this again, but I have no regrets over having done it," he says. "Judge Kotelly said my flight was a stunt. And it was a stunt, because it didn't change anything as far as the laws were concerned. It didn't do anything. Except it changed the perception that resistance is futile. People now believe that they can change (the campaign finance system), and a lot of people are getting engaged in changing it." Hughes shares his thoughts on the 'Democracy Spring' protests for election and campaign finance reform that have resulted in more than 1,000 arrests over the past two weeks at the nation's capitol, even as the mainstream corporate media barely covered any of it. He describes his remarkable conversation with a CNN producer who called him yesterday after his sentencing. He says he told the CNN staffer that Democracy Spring protesters "were chanting 'Where is CNN?' You get thousands of people together and not a single CNN camera! There was no coverage of what was going on. I said, 'What kind of ghouls are running the organization that you've got to have to have somebody dead before the media will cover it?'" The colorful and impassioned Hughes also comments on the absurdity of big banks and other major corporations getting away with tax-deductible financial settlements for actual crimes (including murder), while their executives get off scot-free. But, he argues, there is a way to change what seems like an unbeatable system, and he says it involves taking on both Democrats and Republicans alike in primary elections if they refuse to join forces to move campaign finance reform forward. "Like 4% of the population of any district is more than enough to beat the incumbent in the primary." There is much more to hear from my discussion with Hughes (his website is here if you'd like to help him), before I am finally joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report. This one, on Earth Day and a very significant one at that You can find Brads previous editions here. And tune in to Radio Sputnik one hour a day, five days a week. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Moscow supports the idea of creation of a collective security system in the Asia-Pacific region, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Monday. "We advocate the creation of a collective, equal and undivided security system in the [Asia-Pacific] region," Antonov said in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel. Russian diamond mining company Alrosa is in talks with the Moscow Exchange to offer investors there the chance to invest in up to $1 billion worth of diamonds, news agency RBK reported on Friday. While rare stones such as blue diamonds are subject to sharp changes in their valuation, other diamonds could offer a more stable investment than precious metals, as their value tends to fluctuate by less than five percent a year. Alrosa spokesman Aleksandr Tikhomirov told RBK that the company intends to offer futures contracts in near colorless or faint yellow diamonds, with a weight of 0.5 0.59 carats (5.2 mm diameter) or 1-1.49 carats (6.5-7.5 mm diameter). YOSHKAR OLA (Sputnik) According to the president, currently, for these reasons, as well as due to the deteriorated relations between the two countries, it is difficult for the Russian citizens to travel to Turkey. "the [Turkish] authorities, unfortunately, can't cope with the influx of various criminal gangs coming from the nearby countries, because they are in contact with them," Putin said at the All-Russia People's Front forum. Russian-Turkish relations deteriorated following the downing of the Russian Su-24 aircraft by a Turkish F-16 fighter in Syria on November 24, 2015. In response to this "stab in the back," as it was described by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow imposed a number of restrictive measures on Turkey. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia continues to support bilateral contacts with oil-producing countries, while awaiting a decision from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on freezing the level of oil production, Russias First Deputy Energy Minister Alexei Teksler said Monday. On Wednesday, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia would join a new round of talks on oil production freeze only if OPEC member states reach an agreement on the issue. "All this is ongoing, communication has not ceased[Energy] minister [Alexander Novak] said that OPEC should decide itself on the issue of freezing [oil output]. In the meanwhile, the contacts bilateral, working are not discontinuing. They remain on various areas of cooperation with all sides," Teksler told reporters, when asked whether the discussion of possible freezing of oil production is ongoing. Having studied fossil records from various dinosaur families found in different countries and using network theory', a team of British researchers have managed to visually depict the movement of dinosaurs around the world during the Mesozoic Era. The study, published in the Journal of Biogeography, confirms that dinosaur migration across the world continued even after the Pangaea supercontinent split into land masses separated by oceans. The scientists believe that dinosaur migration was facilitated by temporary land bridges which appeared due to changes in sea levels, thus temporarily reconnecting the previously separated continents. The cafe offers four different alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, which are either bright blue or green the same color as the drone's "eyes." The drinks are picked up and carried by a set of pinchers underneath the drone, in a bid to show that these hovering robots can be used to carry out delicate missions such as delivering medicines or even helping to track down burglars. In their video presentation, the students explain that the aim of the project was to research how one day domestic drones could be part of the human society. How a drone could become a friend. We discovered that a drone can be very useful indoors. Because thats where the people are. A drone can be used for safety, it can detect intruders, but it can also be just convenient to have a drone in our house to bring you an apple, says one of the students. They call their first creation, Blue Jay, an intelligent bird that lives in complex social environments and can move on its own through our physical world. As the students were working on Blue Jay, they detected four basic principles which lie at the core of domestic drone evolution. One: by using sensors and a closed frame, they can ensure that Blue Jay operates safely. Two: its claw resembles a human hand because their research has shown this is the most functional tool for common daily tasks. Three: the most difficult and uncommon: it has to be able to fly indoors, but as propellers get smaller and batteries get better, it will feel less dangerous to have a drone around the house. The last rule it has to be intelligent. An autonomous drone is like a trained pet, the students say. Its eager to learn and it is fun to play with. Once a drone gets a human owner, it will need to be taught some tricks. The drone has cost about 2,000 euros to build and the project has been funded by the university. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Some 60,000 protesters rallied outside the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles on Sunday to call for justice for Armenians slaughtered in 1915 on orders of the Ottoman Empire government, US media said. Sunday marked the 101 anniversary of what Armenians and many other nations say was genocide of ethnic Armenians. Turkey refuses to recognize the murder and starvation of some 1.5 million as an organized effort, saying Turks were also victims. "Today, we are all Armenian. We have one cause and that cause is justice, " US Representative Adam Schiff said in an address to the crowed, as quoted by Los Angeles Times. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russian military experts will fly over parts of France under the Treaty on Open Skies on April 25-29, Sergei Ryzhkov, who is head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, said Monday. "As part of the international Open Skies Treaty, a Russian inspection team plans to carry out an observation flight on a Russian An-30 plane over the territory of the French Republic. An observation flight with a maximum range of up to 2,078 kilometers [1,291 miles] will be carried out during the period from April 25 to 29 from the Orleans-Bricy Air Base," Ryzhkov said. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US Congress should repeal a pair of laws that have subjected immigrants to arbitrary detention and expedited deportations over the last 20 years, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Monday. "The US appears to be coming to grips with the harm caused by its 90s-era crime laws," said Alison Parker, co-director of HRWs US program. "These 90s-era immigration laws also deserve serious scrutiny and reconsideration." The laws in question are the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), both signed in 1996 by then-US President Bill Clinton. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The White House has secured pledges from more than 90 US companies to hire individuals with a criminal background, Senior Advisor to the US President, Valerie Jarrett, said on Monday. "When we launched this fair pledge, we had nine companies who agreed to come forward but since that time we are now up to 90 companies," Jarrett stated at a White House event on criminal justice reform. Facebook, Coca-Cola, and Pepsico are among the larger companies taking part in the Fair Chance Business Pledge. The pledge is aimed at reintegrating formerly incarcerated people into society by lifting barriers to employment placed on the nearly 70 million US citizens who have a criminal background. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Porter, part of the US 6th Fleet, is forward deployed to Rota Spain "in support of US national security interests in Europe," the release explained. The Navy gave no other details. The Porter is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, featuring the Aegis battle management system. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) None of the three Republican presidential candidates will get enough votes to secure the partys presidential nomination, so the party will have to hold a contested convention, presidential hopeful and US Senator Ted Cruz said in a press conference on Monday. "It is now abundantly clear nobody is getting to 1,237," Cruz stated of the number of delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican Partys convention in July. "We are headed to a contested convention." On Sunday, Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich announced an agreement to divide some of the remaining states to stop their rival businessman Donald Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination. Reza Baluchi, 44, a long-distance runner, left Pompano beach on Saturday in his hydropod, despite warnings from the Coast Guard that the voyage would be unsafe and an order for him not to attempt it. He previously tried the same trip and failed in 2014. The goal of the stunt, he told CBS, was to raise money for children in need. The craft was made from 36 buoyancy balls on each side and was equipped with a life jacket with a built-in water filter, GPS, shark repellent, and backpacks full of energy bars and gatorade. The letter the Coast Guard sent Baluchi warned of possible criminal penalties of up to seven years confinement and a $40,000 fine, but that did not deter him. "Today, I would like to highlight this deployment as a demonstration of our promise to support Romania and the rest of our NATO allies," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray said in an Air Force press release. "Romania is one of our strongest allies." While Ray said the aircraft would be used to "defeat any possible threat," US Ambassador Hans G. Klemm went on to specify the concern. "[The F-22s seek to improve] the defense of Europe, the defense of the North-Atlantic Alliance, to improve the security in South Eastern-Europeas a result of the aggression by Russia that has brought so much instability to this part of the world over the past two or three years." In an interview with Sputnik, Amnesty International's Turkey expert Andrew Gardner said that EU has to laud Ankara in order to maintain myth of Turkey being a safe state. The interview came after European Council President Donald Tusk heaped praise on Ankara regarding its treatment of refugees. "The EU really has to keep praising refugees in a bid to maintain this myth of Turkey being a safe country for refugees and to keep this illegal EU-Turkey deal alive," Gardner said. Berlin is in talks with Ankara, and hopes to build its own permanent air base on Turkish soil which will allow it to fight Daesh, the international terrorist organization which has been condemned by numerous countries including Russia and the United States, the magazine Der Spiegel reported on Monday. According to Der Spiegel, German authorities plan to allocate almost 30 million euros for the construction of a German airstrip and accommodations for its soldiers on the territory of the Incirlik Air Base. The project is scheduled to be implemented before the end of 2017, Der Spiegel reported. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Algerian counterpart Abdelmalek Sellal will discuss joint projects in the energy sector on April 27 in Moscow, the Russian Cabinet press service said in a statement Monday. "During the meeting, the Russian and Algerian prime ministers will consider the whole range of topical issues in Russian-Algerian trade-economic, scientific-technical, cultural and humanitarian cooperation," the statement reads. ROME (Sputnik) On March 31, the long-anticipated UN-backed Government of National Accord started to perform its duties in Libya after more than four years of civil war. The government is headed by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj. "We will only intervene if the Sarraj Government appeals to us and to the rest of the international community for support, and [an intervention is possible] with the international community. We are ready for a strong role, but for no adventures," Renzi told la Repubblica newspaper. Commenting on the refugee crisis, which has grown out of the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, Renzi urged the European community to "face" the problem and fundamentally revise its approach by changing the present relations with these war-torn countries. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Iran is currently in talks with Russia on the sale of heavy water from its nuclear power projects, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hussein Jaber Ansari said Monday. The negotiations with the United States were of a technical character and we recently announced the agreement. At the same time we are holding talks with the Russian government on the sale of the remainder of the heavy water, IRIB television quoted Ansari as saying. The United States and Iran are expected to finalize a deal for Washington to purchase an estimated $8.6 million worth of heavy water to help Iran comply with its nuclear agreement. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Interpol may return to reviewing an inquest to place ex-Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the international wanted list if Russia prepares the needed materials, the Russian Prosecutor Generals Offices spokesman said Monday. Among the topics raised was the issue of the grounds for the Interpol central offices refusal to place M. Khodorkovsky on the international wanted list, who is suspected in organizing the murder of the Nefteyugansk mayor in June 1998. Representatives from Interpol headquarters expressed their readiness to return to reviewing this request if Moscow prepares a package of additional materials on this case, Alexander Kurennoy said. Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the now-defunct Yukos oil company, was placed on the wanted list in Russia last December after a Russian court charged him with organizing the 1998 murder of Nefteyugansk town mayor. Syria and Russia are holding consultations on the possibility of transactions in their national currencies Wael Nader Halqi said. Back in 2013, the Central Bank of Syria prepared a detailed bank mechanism on the exchange [of goods] in national currencies and presented it to the Russian side to a representative of the Russian Central Banks head. Several rounds of negotiations were held on this mechanism. We were told that consultations with Russian banks were ongoing. Work on examining this issue, as well as the issue of cooperation with Syrian banks in this is still ongoing. Soon we will be told the names of these banks, Halqi said in an interview. According to Halqi, the topic was also reflected in a memorandum that the Syrian side presented to the members of the Customs Union, which later turned into the Eurasian Economic Union. Syria intends to seek financial support from its partners, including Russia, Syrian Prime Minister said. "Yes, we will request help from friendly countries. As for the amount restoring the country requires a lot of funding, this will depend on the position of the country wishing to take part in this and invest. Industrial investments in important projects can be carried out either with the full funding of the state or partially through established investment forms, such as, for example, open credit lines in accordance with the financial needs of the social and service sector, loans on favorable terms.. It is impossible to calculate the required amount, as we first and foremost ask friendly countries to be financially involved in accordance with their capabilities," Halqi said. "[The aid] has a major impact on meeting citizens' basic needs and supporting vital sectors. This regards rescue and humanitarian activities. As for the strategic period, the aid will be provided in the form of financial investments, which the Syrian government plans to get from friendly states in the form of concessional loans to finance investment projects in strategic fields, most importantly energy, infrastructure, industry, agriculture and others," he added. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Moscow is closely monitoring the the statements made during the meeting of the leaders of France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy in Germany's Hannover, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. "So far, we have not captured any new elements, but we surely do closely monitor the whole range of statements, [which are] traditionally made in a variety of formats," Peskov told reporters. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The United States is pledging $10 million more to the Chernobyl fund on the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident for the affected areas, the US Department of State announced in a statement on Monday. "On this 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, our thoughts remain with the victims, from the emergency workers who gave their lives to prevent an even greater disaster, to those living in the area affected by the fallout," the statement read. "The United States marks this anniversary with a pledge of an additional $10 million dollars to help ensure the safety of future generations who live in the affected area." TEHRAN (Sputnik) Tehran has prepared a lawsuit against the United States over a US Supreme Court decision allowing Washington to collect about $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets for victims of terrorist attacks, the Iranian presidential administration said Monday. "Iran can turn to the international court to be granted its rights. For this, a lawsuit has been prepared that Iran will hand over to the international court due to the US Supreme Court's decision to give Iran a $2 billion fine," the presidential administration said in a statement. In 1984, the United States designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, accusing Tehran of funding and arming terrorist groups. BERLIN (Sputnik) The issue of increasing military presence in Syria was not discussed at an informal meeting of the US, UK, German, French and Italian leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday. On Sunday, US President Barack Obama arrived in Germany for bilateral talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The chancellor used the occasion to invite the four European leaders in Hannover to discuss major international issues on Monday. "We haven't discussed this in this sense," Merkel told reporters after the talks at German Hannover's Herrenhausen Palace. ARLINGTON (Sputnik) Elbe Day commemorates the linking of the Soviet and US armies at the River Elbe in Germany on April 25, 1945, which was an important step toward ending World War II. "It is significant to remember the sacrifices our countries made during World War II together. It's symbolic of our cooperation," Green, who headed the US delegation, told Sputnik. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) US President Barack Obama, along with leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, have reiterated their intention to lift the sanctions imposed on Russia upon the countrys full implementation of the Minsk accords to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the White House said in a press release on Monday. "There was agreement that full implementation of the Minsk agreements remained crucial," the White House stated. "The leaders reiterated that sanctions against Russia would be lifted if the Minsk agreements were fully implemented." The Western leaders also reiterated rejection of Russias "attempted annexation" of Crimea. As stakes season approaches, a number of the three-year-old pacers aiming for Canadian harness racing's biggest prize have made on-track appearances and statements as they aim to displace the reigning divisional kingpins. For the past several years, Trot Magazine's Pepsi North America Cup Spring Book has served as an initial barometer for the colts and geldings that may be in the running for the sophomore pacing set's single biggest payday. This year's edition of the $1 million Pepsi North America Cup will be contested on Saturday, June 18 at Mohawk Racetrack in Campbellville, Ontario. Listed by the Spring Book odds as featured in the April 2016 edition of Trot Magazine, here are the horses that are still Cup-eligible and have raced or are in-to-go as of April 25, 2016. Big Top Hanover / 10-1 -- raced on April 24 at Mohegan Sun Pocono, finished 3rd, individually timed in 1:51 Ideal Rocky / 22-1 -- qualified on April 15 at Southern Oaks Training Center, finished first, timed in 1:55.3 Pretty Boy Hill / 30-1 -- qualified on April 23 at the Meadowlands, finished first, timed in 1:56.1 Check Six / 32-1 -- raced on April 24 at Harrah's Philadelphia, finished first, timed in 1:52.2 All The Cookies / 35-1 -- raced on April 16 at The Meadowlands, finished tenth after making a break Rollaroundtheworld / 38-1 -- raced on April 24 at Mohegan Sun Pocono, finished fourth, individually timed in 1:52.2 Inspiration View / 40-1 -- qualified on April 23 at The Meadowlands, finished second, individually timed in 1:56 Easy Lover Hanover / 40-1 -- raced on April 23 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished first in 1:51.4 Magnum J / 42-1 -- qualified on April 21 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished first in 1:54.1 Kokanee Seelster / 45-1 -- raced on April 23 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished tenth, individually timed in 1:53.3 The Catamount Kid / 45-1 -- raced on April 9 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished fourth, individually timed in 1:53.3 Manhattan Beach / 50-1 -- raced on April 18 at Mohegan Sun Pocono, finished first, timed in 1:51.1 Arsenic / 50-1 -- qualified on April 21 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished second, individually timed in 1:54.4 Do Over Hanover / 55-1 -- raced on April 20 at Harrah's Philadelphia, finished fifth, individually timed in 1:54; entered to race on April 27 at Harrah's Philadelphia Tap Into Power / 60-1 -- qualified on April 23 at The Meadowlands, finished fourth, individually timed in 1:57.4 Cruise Patrol / 60-1 -- qualified on April 23 at The Meadowlands, finished sixth, individually timed in 1:57.2 Dreamfair Mesa / 60-1 -- raced on April 2 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished sixth, individually timed in 1:56.1; entered to qualify on April 25 at Mohawk Racetrack Flaherty / 60-1-- raced on April 9 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished third, individually timed in 1:53.2; entered to race on April 25 at Mohawk Racetrack Bettor Memories / 65-1 -- raced on April 17 at Mohegan Sun Pocono, finished first, timed in 1:51.4 Stonebridge Beach / 65-1 -- raced on April 18 at Pompano Park, finished first in 1:54.3; entered to race on April 25 at Pompano Real Kid / 65-1 -- raced on April 11 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished eighth, individually timed in 1:58; entered to race on April 25 at Mohawk Racetrack Think On It / 65-1 -- raced on April 21 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished fourth, individually timed in 1:53.2 Lyons Snyder / 70-1 -- raced on April 23 at The Meadowlands, finished first, timed in 1:51.2 Some Gold / 70-1 -- qualified on April 15 at Southern Oaks Training Center, finished second, individually timed in 1:54.2 Max Is Back / 70-1 -- qualified on April 14 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished second, individually timed in 1:54.4 Major Hill / 75-1 -- qualified on April 21 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished first, timed in 1:53.1 Sutton Seelster / 90-1 -- qualified on April 8 at Southern Oaks Training Center, finished first, timed in 1:55.3 Beast Mode / 100-1 -- raced on April 14 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished first, timed in 1:51.4; entered to qualify on April 25 at Mohawk Racetrack Brookdale Sonny / 100-1 -- raced on April 21 at Mohawk Racetrack, finished seventh, individually timed in 1:53.4 Santafes Prince / 110-1 -- raced on March 22 at Mohegan Sun Pocono, finished third, individually timed in 1:54.2 Totally Great / 110-1 -- raced on January 24 at Flamboro Downs, finished ninth, individually timed in 2:05.3 Judicial Watch: New Benghazi Documents Reveal September 11, 2012, Hillary Clinton 'Call Sheet' Describes Benghazi Assault as Attack by 'Armed Extremists' WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Judicial Watch today released new State Department Hillary Clinton documents that contain a "call sheet" background document for Clinton that called the Benghazi attackers "armed extremists." The documents also include a copy of Hillary Clinton's schedule that shows she met with then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice and attended a meeting in the White House situation room before the arrival ceremony for the remains of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. The documents also detail for the first time that Turkish officials provided intelligence on the attack and offered to "shelter" Americans in the Benghazi residence of the Turkish Consul General. The documents confirm earlier reports that the Obama administration relied upon Turkey to be the " protecting power ," safeguarding the lives of Americans in Libya after the closure of the American embassy in 2011. All records related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. special mission compound in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to, notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath. September 11, 2012 , call sheet states: "Armed extremists attacked U.S. [special mission compound in] Benghazi on September 11, setting fire to the Principal Officer's Residence and killing at least one American mission staff, Information Management Officer Sean Smith, on TDY from The Hague." Unlike other call sheets, the agency withholds the identity of the foreign leader for whom the Benghazi background information was prepared. The State Department cites three exemptions for the block of text that includes the name of the person she called: E.O. 13526, Sec. 1.4(d), which allows for the classification of information related to foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources; FOIA Exemption b(1), which allows for the withholding of properly classified material; and FOIA Exemption b(5), which protects inter- or intra-agency communication that is deliberative/pre-decisional in nature. Announcing the 2016 Winning Titles of the Book of the Year Award Contact: Sarah Bolme, 704-277-7194 CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 25, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA) is pleased to announce the winning titles for the 2016 Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award. Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award honors books produced by small publishers each year for outstanding contribution to Christian life. Book lovers and retailers selling Christian products voted on the nominated titles in each of fourteen categories. "We are proud to continue to recognize outstanding Christian books by small publishers and independent authors," states Sarah Bolme, Director of Christian Small Publishers Association, the sponsor of the award. The winners in each of the fourteen categories are: Fiction 489: A Short Story About Forgiveness, Beyr Reyes, ShadeTree Publishing, 978-1937331702 Historical Fiction Wilted Dandelions, Catherine Ulrich Brakefield, CrossRiver Media Group, 978-1936501236 Romance His Last Hope: A Contemporary Christian Romance, M. A. Malcolm, 978-9769581517 Christian Living Despite Your Circumstances, Candida Sullivan, ShadeTree Publishing, 978-1937331689 Bible Study / Theology Songs from the Heart: Meeting with God in the Psalms, Tim Riordan, GreenTree Publishers, 978-0692213476 Devotional For You My Husband, Melissa Moxley, CrossLink Publishing, 978-0985289669 Biography / Memoir Out of the Darkroom, Into the Light, Tracey Casciano, 978-1512714692 Relationships / Family The Talks, Barrett Johnson, INFO for Families Resources, 978-0615913711 Children's (age 4 to 8) What do you see? What does God see?, Denise D. Brown, db Word Gallery, 978-0991059300 Children's (age 8 to 12) Picture Imperfect, Susan Thogerson Maas, Ashberry Lane, 978-1941720103 Young Adult (age 12+) Edging Through the Darkness, D.L. Koontz, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, 978-1941103968 Gift Book Hungry for God ... Starving for Time, 5-Minute Devotions for Busy Women, Lori Hatcher, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, 978-1941103821 Christian Education Dreams Revealed: Handbook for Biblical Dream Interpretation, Terri Meredith, ShadeTree Publishing, 978-1937331740 eBook Exclusive The Royal Couple, Nicole Taylor The winning titles can be viewed at www.bookoftheyear.net The Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award is sponsored by Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA). A total of 123 titles were nominated for the award categories. About Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA) COPS have launched an appeal for information to find a missing boat. The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force is asking people for help to locate a 25ft yellow and maroon vessel with a 250 horse power Yamaha motor. The boat was moored at the Lewis Cox Dock in South Caicos but was discovered missing on the morning of Friday, April 15. It has the name Corporate Creed written along both sides of the hull. Police are urging anyone with information to contact South Caicos Police Station on 946-3299 or alternatively to call Crime Stoppers anonymously on 1-800-8477 or by using the online reporting page at www.crimestoppers.tc. "IF THE people of an overseas territory wish to consider the possibility of independence then we will not stand in the way of a referendum. Those were the words of Governor Peter Beckingham who spoke about the TCIs future during a meeting of a Grand Turk volunteer group earlier this month. Beckingham stressed that there are "some obvious benefits to the relationship with the UK including education, access to Europe, support for government institutions and security. "But it would be for the people of TCI to make up their own minds about whether those benefits outweigh the advantages of becoming an independent country. The Governor was guest of honour and speaker at the annual dinner of the Soroptimists Grand Turk branch on April 15. He spoke about similarities between the challenges facing the Turks and Caicos Islands and the UK. "Both our countries face important decisions about regional and global challenges, including migration, security and national disasters and our place in our regions, Beckingham said. "Unlike the UK and some EU and other countries, TCI does not currently face the ever present threat of terrorism, but we do need to ensure that we are as well prepared as possible for natural disasters and any other issues that would impact on the well-being of the people of TCI, on tourism and on the economy. "Similarly, the Governor continued, "both our countries face challenges about migration and the integration of minorities. He said that he is aware that the migration issues facing the UK and Europe are on a different scale to those of Turks and Caicos Islands. "But as European countries tackle the problems of absorbing millions of minority communities, so TCI needs to think in the medium term about its willingness or otherwise to embrace foreigners, both from the region and globally. "If our tourism expansion continues at the current rate then we need to make decisions about how we handle the increased demand for a skilled workforce. "The business of international tourism, in which we are now a significant player, demands the responsible and sensitive involvement of government in all decisions, from employment to environment. By Olivia Rose THE PROGRESSIVE National Party (PNP) administration said it is committed to fostering growth of the middle class while increasing job opportunities. Governor Peter Beckingham delivered his throne speech in the House of Assembly in Grand Turk on Monday (April 18) outlining the Governments agenda for the year. He said: "Since coming to office the Government has created over 400 new positions in the civil service alone, and with the support for investment and development many others gained employment opportunities in the private sector. "This will continue as more development stimulates the construction industry and as this occurs, the Government will continue to agitate for the employment of Turks and Caicos Islanders. "But efforts will not stop there, employees in the work force need to be assured of fair compensation and be given fair opportunities for development and advancement. In this vein he noted that the Government will seek to make the necessary changes through the new immigration legislation to ensure that job opportunities are properly and accurately advertised and that Islanders are given fair opportunities to be employed in those jobs. "Modernise the labour laws to mitigate against discrimination in the work place to ensure that persons of equal or comparative qualifications receive comparable compensation regardless of nationality. "Encourage higher remuneration commensurate with experience and responsibility by delivering another pay raise to the civil service this financial year. "Work with the Civil Service Association to develop policies on long term and terminal benefits. "Alleviate the strain on lower income households by conducting a comprehensive review of the minimum wage with a view to improving minimum earnings and the establishment of a living wage rather than a minimum wage. Governor Beckingham revealed that a review is also in the pipelines for the hospitality industry service charge that will provide workers with savings for a rainy day. In the face of globalisation and the eventuality of free movement the Governor pointed out the need for greater protection of Turks and Caicos Islanders in the employment market. He said: "This Government will build upon its current policy for Turks and Caicos Islanders to be given first choice for placement in those positions for which they are qualified by ensuring that greater accountability is placed on employers looking to import labour. "The Government will expand the requirements for employers to submit staffing plans beyond the resorts to include all entities as a means of ensuring that remunerations are based on job functions and not on nationality. "The Government will continue its efforts to fulfil its commitment to conducting a national skills audit and the development of a labour market information system that can inform of the skills currently available and those needed. This skills assessment he explained will inform both national immigration as well as education policies. It will afford the Government greater insight and enable them to permit the import of those skills that are needed and prohibit import of those that are readily available, while also funding the development of skills that are lacking through the national scholarships and grants programme. The Government also plans to modernise the trade union legislation as an additional mechanism to protect the rights of employees from unfair labour practices and discrimination. By Daisy Handfield POLICE have introduced a liquid solution geared at decreasing petty crime. SmartWater CSI leaves a semi-permanent mark on property that can be viewed only with the use of ultraviolet black lights. A press conference was held on Friday, April 15, at the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force (RTCIPF) headquarters in Providenciales to introduce the product and to provide a demonstration on how to use it. The force has purchased 1,000 kits for distribution across the country and to date officers have already distributed about 500 kits. Rodney Adams, assistant commissioner for the RTCIPF, said that the system has finally been put in place after years of difficulty in combating theft and the retrieval of stolen goods. "After many years and efforts to source this much needed tool to assist with property crime investigation, we are pleased here at the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force to present to you this product. Adams said that the product will be identified for use in the Turks and Caicos Islands Property Identification Partnership Programme (TCI PIPP). The solution can be used on items such as smartphones, fishing equipment and jewellery. Antonio Arserio, from SmartWater CSI Florida said during the conference that the water based solution with rare earth metals is made up to form a unique forensic signature. He said: "Each bottle is unique to each user. Once you register your bottle with the RTCIPF, it goes into our database and everything that you mark will register back to you as the property owner. The solution is an invisible marker which fluoresces under an ultraviolet light. Any item marked with the solution cannot be seen by the naked eye, but can be picked up by the ultraviolet light and tested and traced back to its owner as every single marker has a unique DNA. "It is extremely effective. We have over 1,200 convictions worldwide and our biggest claim to fame is the power of the deterrents of SmartWater CSI. "Virtually every neighbourhood and every community that its gone into, whether its Europe or the United States, they have seen drastic reductions in property crime or from 25 percent to as high as 75 percent, Arserio said. Anyone who wants a kit can contact assistant superintendent Hilton Duncan on 232-4383 in Providenciales or inspector Sandy Williams on 232-6652 in Grand Turk. A Longview man is a $50,000 winner in the Washington lottery, and he owes the prize to a little forgetfulness. Darrell Hooper had left his canning jars at his sons house, so he went to the Ocean Beach Safeway on Sunday to buy some more. While he was there he bought a scratch ticket. It was a $50,000 winner, according to a Tuesday press release from the Washington State Lottery. I first tried calling my son to tell him the good news and he didnt answer, so I called my good friend, Hooper told authorities. He immediately responded with Youre joking! I had to send him a photo for him to believe me. Hooper told officials he is going to take his children and grandchildren on a long-awaited trip to Disneyland and buy himself a new truck. Then hes pocketing the rest in savings. After taxes, the winnings totaled about $37,000, Washington Lottery spokeswoman Erin Brown said . Proceeds from Washington lotteries benefit the Washington Opportunity Pathways Account, providing grants to college students statewide. tech2 News Staff Seems like Apple has indeed found a way out of the mandatory domestic sourcing norm (at 30 percent) that kept the company from opening up its own branded Apple Stores in the county. According to the Times of India, the policy change that took place last year and Apple's recent presentation to the industrial policy and promotion secretary Ramesh Abhishek seems to have had a positive outcome. The policy changed in November 2015, allowing companies like Apple to seek an official government exempt for the complete waiver of sourcing norms. These would include 'state-of-the-art' and 'cutting-edge technology' as well. On Tuesday, TOI points out that Apple gave a presentation to the committee where the Cupertino tech giant pressed for the special provision. The same indicates that Apple really fits the case, because there was very little that the company could source from the country that is limited to some chargers that are currently being exported to markets like China. The results of the same will be announced in a few days. Turns out even Xiaomi and LeEco have also submitted proposals, but the same are on hold at the moment. Until the Apple Stores arrive, the company will continue to sell via its distributors in India. As for the the company's plans to sell refurbished smartphones, in the country, it said that it has no intentions of starting the same anytime soon. tech2 News Staff Google wants to retain its top talent and now has a plan for it! According to a report by TheInformation the company plans on building an in-house startup incubator internally known as Area 120. This entrepreneurial space will let Google employees develop their ideas, which will be supported and funded by Google. The report further adds that executives Don Harrison and Bradley Horowitz will be managing the incubator. Once the business plan is drafted by employees, teams can work full time on the said project. After some months they get the option to either pitch for more funding and set out as a whole new company, adds the report. The name Area 120 is reported borrowed by the famous "20 percent time" philosophy that Google follows, wherein it asks employees to invest 20 percent of their time in something they like. With this move, it is possible that the company may be able to encourage employees to work on something new and retain it, rather than lose talent. "This idea nursery might not be enough. It's relatively easy to raise funds in the current Silicon Valley climate, and the freedom of going it alone may prove more tempting than Google's safety net. However, it could be worthwhile for the internet pioneer if even one big new idea stays within its walls," points out Engadget. It should also be noted that earlier this month former Darpa head Regina Dugan left Google for Facebook. She was running the Advanced Technologies and Projects lab at Google. tech2 News Staff Google celebrates Earth Day with five doodles by doodler Sophia Diao. The Doodles showcase five biomes from around the world. You have to look sideways and squint to spot the Google logos. The tundra has a lonely polar bear on an ice sheet below auroras. There is a skewed Google logo that is formed in the melting ice. One of them shows a fox running through the trees in a temperate broad leaf forest. Here the logo is formed in patches in the patterns on the trees in the foreground. There is the grass savanna at sunset with an elephant. Trees, sticks, flowers and the setting sun seem to be in the same places as the letters in the logo. Refresh and you will also see a doodle of a semi arid desert with an tortoise (shaped in the letter 'O') reaching out to eat from a 'G' shaped shrub. Finally, there are the underwater coral reefs with an octopus. The flowing tentacles of the octopus seem to form a little too many 'G's and 'O's if you look closely. Every April 22, Earth Day celebrates the end of winter and the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. The day is dedicated to environmental concerns, and peace. On Earth Day 2016, The Paris Agreement is expected to be signed by over 120 countries, a worldwide effort to tackle the problems of greenhouse gas emissions. hidden Google sought to play down its anti-trust battle with the European Commission on Friday, with a senior executive insisting the row was "normal". Brussels has charged Google with abusing the dominance of its Android mobile phone operating system in a move which could could change the face of the global smartphone sector. But Carlo d'Asaro Biondo, Google's Europe head of strategic partnerships, said he was unfazed by the investigation. "We'll see where that leads. It's normal, given the importance Android has in Europe ... that the Commission undertakes controls," Biondo told reporters. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager says the Silicon Valley giant has used practices such as making manufacturers pre-install its market-leading search engine as the default in phones to "abuse its dominant position". Brussels believes such practices breach EU competition law. The Android operating system accounts for about 80 percent of the world market for mobile phones, far ahead of Google's closest rival, Apple. The EU has accused Google of obstructing innovation by giving unfair prominence to its own apps, especially its search engine, in deals with mobile manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei. Google must now respond inside three months to avoid sanctions which could amount to fines up to 10 percent of the group's annual global sales or $7.4 billion (roughly Rs. 49,328 crores) based on their 2015 results. Biondo said Google would now seek to put its own case. "We are in that phase and will see what happens," he told reporters. "What we are trying to do today is explain what we are doing and what our system is. We are not at the sanctions phase, we are in the analysis phase," he added, indicating that Android allows several phone makers easier access to the market without having to develop their own operating systems. He said the platform enabled a current estimated 1.2 million developers to work on applications in Europe and that the software was free for operators which they could use or not as they wished. "Google Play is a magnificent way of distributing non Google applications," Biondo said. Reuters hidden India has banned import of milk and milk products, certain mobile phones and a few other items from China after finding them sub-standard or not following security codes. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Lok Sabha that India banned import of milk and milk products from China as their quality was unacceptable. Sitharaman said some mobile phones, which do not carry International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number or other security features, and some steel products have also been banned from importing from China. "Complete ban of import from any country is not possible now due to WTO rules even if we have problems diplomatically, territorially or militarily," she said. The Minister said India's trade deficit with China stood at USD 48.68 billion during 2015-16 (April-February) and the total bilateral trade was USD 65.16 billion during the period. "Increasing trade deficit with China can be attributed primarily to the fact that Chinese exports to India rely strongly on manufactured items to meet the demand of fast expanding sectors like telecom and power, while India's exports to China are characterised by primarily and intermediate products," she said. PTI hidden Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc's Google have reached a deal to withdraw all the regulatory complaints against each other, the companies told Reuters. "Microsoft has agreed to withdraw its regulatory complaints against Google, reflecting our changing legal priorities. We will continue to focus on competing vigorously for business and for customers," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email. Google, in a separate email, said the companies would want to compete vigorously based on the merits of their products, not in "legal proceedings". The companies in September agreed to bury all patent infringement litigations against each other, settling 18 cases in the United States and Germany. "... Following our patent agreement, we've now agreed to withdraw regulatory complaints against one another," Google said on Friday. Google's rivals had reached out to U.S. regulators alleging that the Internet services company unfairly uses its Android system to win online advertising, people with knowledge of matter told Reuters last year. The European Commission also accused Google last year of distorting internet search results to favor its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers. Reuters hidden The US space agency is preparing to put in the sky an array of new experimental aircraft -- known as X-planes and intended to carry on the legacy of demonstrating advanced technologies that will push back the frontiers of aviation. Called "New Aviation Horizons", NASA's renewed emphasis on X-planes was announced as part of the US budget for the fiscal year that begins from October 1 this year. The plan is to design, build and fly the series of X-planes during the next 10 years as a means to accelerate the adoption of advanced green aviation technologies by industry, the space agency said in a statement. "They [X-planes] certainly are all interesting in their own way. Each one of them has a unique place in aviation that helps them make their mark in history," said Bill Barry, NASA's chief historian. Although it may not wind up being the first of the New Aviation Horizons X-planes to actually fly as part of the three-legged stool of research, design work already has begun on "QueSST" (Quiet Supersonic Technology). A preliminary design contract was awarded in February to a team led by Lockheed Martin. This new supersonic X-plane could fly in the 2020 timeframe. QueSST aims to fix something the X-1 first introduced to the flying world nearly 70 years ago -- the publicly annoying loud sonic boom. "We know the concept is going to work, but now the best way to continue our research is to demonstrate the capability to the public with an X-plane," said Peter Coen, NASA's supersonic project manager. The goals include showcasing how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75 percent less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than today's jets -- perhaps even when flying supersonic. "If we can build some of these X-planes and demonstrate some of these technologies, we expect that will make it much easier and faster for US industry to pick them up and roll them out into the marketplace," added Ed Waggoner, NASA's Integrated Aviation Systems Programme director. The very first X-plane called the "X-1" was built by Bell Aircraft. The "X-1" was the first plane to fly faster than the speed of sound, thus breaking the "sound barrier". It was October 14, 1947, when Air Force captain Chuck Yeager climbed into the bright orange Glamorous Glennis and flew the "X-1" into its moment in history. The "X-1" also marked the first in what became a long line of experimental aircraft programmes managed by the NASA, the air force, the navy, and other government agencies. Perhaps of all the X-planes NASA has been associated with, none was more cutting edge and became more famous -- rivaling even the X-1 -- than the "X-15" rocket plane. "The X-1 was certainly the most historic for being the first and for what it did for supersonic flight. But the X-15 was probably the most productive model of an X-plane," Barry said. Flown 199 times between 1959 and 1968, the winged X-15 reached beyond the edge of space at hypersonic speeds, trailblazing design concepts and operational procedures that directly contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo-piloted spaceflight programmes as well as the space shuttle. IANS tech2 News Staff Advertisements to support publishers of free content seems to be a solution from which all involved parties benefit. Publishers generate revenues from the advertisements, readers get to consume content for free, and advertisers gain exposure to a targeted audience. The reality is far from this ideal abstract concept though. The problem was that advertisements started getting more and more intrusive, to the point of being distracting and disturbing when navigating a web page. They have also evolved from simple graphics into complex multimedia widgets that play back audiovisual content, mini games and motion graphics. This consumes too much bandwidth for those who are economical with their data usage. Finally, the ad networks keeping track of web searches and browsing history to deliver targeted ads were creepy, and had unintended effects. Not everyone is comfortable with their shopping histories pasted across all the web sites they visit. The most powerful and common tools users have to combat these ads are Adblock and Adblock Plus, browser plugins that have a list of advertisement providers, and blocks content from those sources. The plugin works like a charm, removing most ads from most pages. The exceptions are normally native advertisements, and non intrusive apps that large companies have paid for to be counted as "acceptable ads". The Acceptable Ads initiative reveals a key aspect in this struggle, that most users only have a problem with intrusive advertising. Ad Block is understandably, bad news for Digital Publishers. It blocks their revenue stream, resulting in heavy losses. A report by PageFair and Adobe on the cost of ad blocking, estimates the loss to the industry because to be US$21.8 billion in the year 2015. Ad Block has also started seeing phenomenal adoption in the last year, and the number of users is only expected to grow exponentially. As of now the impact is only seen for desktop versions of the site, but ad blocking software is expected to take off on mobile platforms as well. Apple has made it much easier to block ads in the iOS9 update, and Google has restored ad blockers on its store even after taking them down. Chrome and Firefox currently block the most ads in mobile. This is not exactly a Red Queen's Race, where there is an ongoing fight between those who want to deliver the ads and those who do not want to see the ads, to remain in relatively the same place despite all their efforts. The consumers seem to be winning, forcing publishers to rethink how they deliver ads or generate revenue. A slew of new services offer just this to publisher. PageFair, Secret Media and Sourcepoint offer a two step process to their clients, the first estimates the revenue loss to the publisher because of ad blocking software, and the second offers a range of technology products to circumvent the ad blocking. Sites such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired and Time are clients of these platforms. Those navigating to these sites with Ad Blocking software are given a range of options. This can be paying a subscription fee for accessing the site content without ads, or a prompt to whitelist the page and continue browsing by looking at the ads. There are even AdBlock blockers that use custom implementations and continuously updated code to deliver ads despite the block, these services claim they themselves are not wholly effective though. It is almost impossible to get something for nothing, so readers know that they have to pay for the content in one way or the other, and ad supported web content seems to be a good idea all around. It only becomes a hassle when the ads go too far, are too noisy, too invasive, or just are too many. Most users do not have a problem with considerate ads that are not distracting, do not track personal data, and don't use the speakers. The best option for content publishers right now is to just ask their readers nicely to be whitelisted. Sheldon Pinto Everyone is building, or planning on building, an electric car these days. Oddly, this list includes software giants such as Google. And as much as they would like to deny it, Apple as well. And of course you have car manufacturers such as GM and Tesla who have have been finding out long terms plans to monetise the same. Of course there's also the popular ride-sharing service Uber that many are concerned about. Close competitor Lyft is also in the news. Recently, GM pumped in $500 million into Lyft to help it take on Uber and obviously get something in return. After Tesla's recent show of power and dominance in the electric car space with a stunning 400,000 preorders, all eyes are on now on Apple who seems to surfacing in the news time and again. After breaking ties with automotive giant Daimler we now also know that Apple has broken ties with BMW over a data-sharing dispute. Apple wanted the data coming from its car to be integrated with its iCloud service while BMW and Daimler wanted a make data protection the key element in its offering. What this resulted in a 'secret car lab' in Berlin where Apple is said to have hired 15-20 "top class" automotive experts to think openly, without boundaries, as opposed to the limited and conservative outlook (profit-oriented) most automotive companies have. Apple is also said to have a long term plan to monetise its electric car platform in the form of what BMW has achieved with its Drive Now electric car-sharing service. Austrian contract manufacturer Magna Steyr is expected to build the vehicles for Apple. While a majority of the attention is garnered by European and American brands, a recent showcase by Chinese Internet conglomerate, LeEco, seems to have take things to the far east. LeEco who has also partnered with luxury automaker Aston Martin and US-based, Chinese-backed Faraday Future, showcased its Super Car LeSEE concept and they seem to have a long term plan as well. As reported earlier, LeEco plans to bank on its content and software offerings to make money off its electric car business. In fact, founder Jia Yueting also claimed that he would not mind offering his electric car for free and that they would make their business when customers used Le Ecos software products. The radical LeSEE concept indeed seems like fancy version (all concepts are) and the actual electric vehicle could look a bit more down to earth and humble. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also hinted in Norway that he has a plan, that is similar to ride-sharing model similar to that of Uber. This one may not necessarily involve the the Model 3, but a simpler mode of urban transport that could carry a lot more people. Uber as we all know and often forget is a software company. It makes its monies based on the idea that people do not need to drive their own cars and even own them for that matter. Clearly, Musk wants to sell more cars so this may not necessarily be the right outlook. GM's investment in Lift will have not have anything to do with its own plans more of secondary initiative to prevent Uber from growing into a bigger giant. It acquired Sidecar for that and out here its taking baby steps like everyone else. Its been a few years now and everyone's jumping onto the electric car and autonomous car bandwagon. In short, electric cars always have been a means to put on a if you can do it, I can do it better attitude. And so far for most it remains at that. However, these are smaller risk free investments at the moment and the only company that has plenty banking on it is Apple due to its now dying hero product the iPhone. Moreover, with Apple expected to reveal a less than impressive quarterly report at its upcoming quarterly earnings call, the company may have to go all in and "re-invent" or "revolutionize" (like it usually claims it does) the electric car altogether to save itself. hidden More than one million people are now connecting to Facebook through Tor "dark web" -- which maintains privacy and leaves no digital trail -- every month, media reports said on Saturday. According to Facebook, the growth of Tor over the past few years has been "roughly" linear, noting that some 525,000 people who accessed the service via Tor in June 2015 rose to more than one million in April this year. "This [Tor] growth is a reflection of the choices that people make to use Facebook over Tor, and the value that it provides them. We hope they will continue to provide feedback and help us keep improving," TechCrunch quoted Facebook as saying. Tor allows anonymous web browsing by sending data through multiple encrypted steps rather than making direct connections that shields the identity of its users. Facebook created a dedicated address for Tor access in October 2014, making it easier for users to connect via Tor and give them privacy. Facebook also expanded its Tor support at the start of this year by rolling out support for the Android Orbot proxy, giving Android Facebook users an easier way to use Tor. Apple's iOS platform still does not have Tor support. Confirming Facebook's claim, a spokeswoman for Tor said in a statement: "When using Facebook website over Tor, Tor Browser is in charge of that data, so it is anonymous. Of course, someone may post a status update saying that they are at some restaurant, for instance, and that would de-anonymise them." Tor could be used in countries where internet access or use of Facebook is blocked or censored, the Tor statement added. "Many people use Tor in countries where the internet is censored, not in order to be anonymous. Tor allows them to access the uncensored internet, including reaching Facebook. In Iran, for instance, Facebook is blocked. So people use Tor to get onto the internet and browse and from there they can reach Facebook," it read. Privacy activists, hackers, activists and journalists use this "dark web" to communicate securely. IANS tech2 News Staff Today, at an event held in Bangalore, Patni brothers along with Mohandas Pai, Naganand Doraswamy and Prashant Deshpande announced Ideaspring Capital. Doraswamy, said that Ideaspring aims at investments in early-stage product innovation startups for entrepreneurs with deep technology and domain knowledge. Out of the fund size of Rs 125 crores, Rs 50 crores is aimed at seed funding and Rs 50 crore at pre-series/ series A funding. It will provide up to Rs 3 crore seed funding and subsequent co-investment at series A stage of up to Rs 5 crores. It has also announced the Startup Assist program to help startups in product management, customer management, best practices with hands-on approach. https://twitter.com/tech2eets/status/724523938886250497 The key differentiator, Doraswamy says, is intellectual property in the form of algorithms and deep technology. Ideaspring Capital plans to invest in only 4-5 startups a year and offer high-tech Startup assist program to these handful entrepreneurs. Ideaspring Capital has raised majority of its investment from Indian investors such as Aarin Capital as the anchor investor, just at the time when government is looking for ways to boost domestic funding. It should be noted that the Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha had said that 90-95 percent of the venture capital money invested into the Indian startup ecosystem is from outside India. "When we look at our entrepreneurs, we want to know what is so different that they are bringing to the table," Doraswamy adds. Talking about relatively newer tech trends such as Internet of Things (IoT) or Virtual Reality (VR), he added that some bits of technology may be new, but at the end it matters what the startup has done to prove it knows the technology well. Miscreants hack to death two people in Dhaka`s Kalabagan bdnews24.com : Unknown assailants have hacked two men to death inside a house in capital Dhakas Kalabagan, two days after a Rajshahi University teacher was murdered in similar fashion near his home. One of the victims of the Monday attack has been identified as USAID programme officer Xulhaz Mannan, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni. Manna had also worked as a protocol officer at the US embassy in Dhaka. Better known for his gay-rights activism, Mannan also edited Roopban, the first magazine in the country advocating for the rights of transgenders.The murders took place inside Asia Nibas, a six-storey building on Lake Circus Road, around 5pm, DMP Assistant Commissioner (AC) Ruhul Amin Sagar told bdnews24.com. The incident occurred hours after Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said Saturdays murder of the university teacher in Rajshahi City and the killing of a retired prisons guard in Gazipur on Monday morning were isolated incidents and the people should not feel insecure. AC Sagar identified the other victim as one Tonoy. Police think he was Mannans friend. But details were unavailable. Mannan lived in a flat on the first floor of Asia Nibas. At least six men raided his home around 5pm and hacked Mannan and another person with sharp weapons, security guard Sumon told bdnews24.com. He said the assailants, while fleeing, hacked another guard named Parvez Molla. Sumon later admitted Molla to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). Molla received a sharp weapon wound on the left side of his forehead. Quoting residents of the area, several TV stations reported that the assailants had also hacked one policeman when they were leaving the scene. Police could not immediately say who the killers were. Afghan President calls on Pakistan to battle Taliban President Ashraf Ghani speaks during a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. AP, Kabul : Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a sombre speech to the Afghan parliament on Monday, called on Pakistan to battle some factions of the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. Ghani's statement comes a week after a Taliban assault on the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Although President Ashraf Ghani said Afghanistan faced a terrorist enemy led by Taliban "slaves" in Pakistan, his statement appeared to leave the door open to resuming peace talks with some factions of the Taliban as he suggested there was still some hope of compromise with at least some Taliban. He said that the doors of negotiation would remain open for those Taliban ready to stop bloodshed but added: "This opportunity will not be there forever." He said Taliban leaders finding shelter in Peshawar and Quetta were "slaves and enemies of Afghanistan who shed the blood of their countrymen" and he called on Pakistan to wipe them out. Ghani stopped short of declaring a state of national emergency, pledging war against radical groups like the militant Islamic State (IS) and the Haqqani network. The Afghan president did not say whose slaves he thought the Taliban were, but his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, has accused Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban and supporting other militant groups in the past. Pakistan denies harbouring and aiding the Taliban but Ghani urged the Pakistan government to "fulfill promises and carry out military operations against those whose bases are in Pakistan". Ghani said there are "no good or bad terrorists, they are just terrorists", and that "Pakistan must understand that and act against them." The response from the Taliban, who have already rejected peace talks while Western forces remain in Afghanistan, was scornful. Barack Obama to stress partnership with Europe US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the official opening ceremony of the Hanover Industry Fair. AFP, Hanover : Barack Obama will set out his vision of relations with Europe with a speech in the northern German city of Hanover on Monday trying to frame a relationship that has been less than easy throughout his presidency.With the end of his administration in sight, Obama will stress the issues that Europe and America have tackled together, from Syria to trade, Iraq to climate change.Obama started his presidency with Europeans reveling in a less hardline approach to foreign policy than they saw under his predecessor George Bush.Since then Obama's star has dimmed, but aides see the speech as an opportunity to reflect his 2008 speech in Berlin, when as a presidential candidate he described a need for a self-sustaining partnership.Obama has pressed allies on the need for European powers to bolster their own defense operations, which still shelter under a US umbrella."(The) speech will be an opportunity to discuss joint US-European efforts to confront a range of challenges, including countering ISIL, the current refugee crisis, Ukraine, and the headwinds in the global economy," said a US official."The president will discuss the progress made on these issues over the past few years, and outline the additional work to be done moving forward."Turning to Syria, Obama will announce he will send up to 250 more troops to the country to augment the train and assist mission, according to a senior administration official.That announcement comes as European allies, including his host Angela Merkel, scramble to try and limit the refugee flow into Europe and blood flow in Syria.US troops in Syria are mandated to advise and assist Syrian rebel and anti-ISIS forces.On Sunday, the first day of his visit to Germany, Obama made a pitch for transatlantic trade."Angela and I agree that the United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations," Obama said, referring to vast EU-US trade agreement in the making.He called for the agreement to be sealed before the end of the year. Pay incentive to locals for nature conservation: Expert Staff Reporter : Local people should be paid for the services they provide to protect the ecosystem through safeguarding natural resources, says an environment economist. "We never pay the local communities who help save natural resources. But, the thing is that people are extremely poor in the areas where there's a plenty of natural resources," economics professor of East West University Dr Enamul Haque told a function on Monday. USAID and Spellbound Communications Ltd jointly organised the closing ceremony of a biodiversity conservation project at Hotel Radission in the capital. For example, Dr Enamul Haque said, the haors which have a huge natural resources and a unique ecosystem provide various ecosystem services. "If the haors don't preserve huge volume of water that come from upstream countries each year, the paddy in many parts of the country will get inundated during boro season." About environment conservation, the environment economist said conservation efforts will never be sustainable if economic incentive is not given to local people who live in and around the nature sites. He said people do not show their interest in conservation of the resources, which they are not able to use it, so development programmes must be included in the conservation efforts. Depicting Dhaka city's unchecked pollution, Dr Enamul said many claimed Buriganga water will become clean after the relocation of Hazaribagh tanneries, but this is not true at all. Apart from relocation of the tanneries, the authorities concerned must stop dumping all other industrial and household wastes into the Buriganga to revive the lost nature of the river, he said. The economist stressed the need for formulating a new law to make it mandatory to keep 20 percent area for water conservation while taking housing and other development projects in the capital. Under the UASID project, 60 journalists working in different districts-Khulna, Bagerhat, Satkhira, Jessore, Sylhhet, Sunamganj, Moulvibazar, Hobiganj, Chittagong, Bandarban, Rangamati and Cox's Bazar-were trained on how to write stories on biodiversity conservation. Editor of Bangla daily Bhorer Kagoj Shaymol Dutta and team leader of Global Climate Change of USAID Bangladesh Dr Karl Wurster, among others, spoke at the function. Veteran journalist Shafiq Rehman\'s wife Taleya Rehman speaking at a press conference at her residence in the city on Monday demanding release of Shafiq Rehman. Renowned environmentalists call on DU VC A three-member delegation of internationally renowned environmentalists led by Dr J Craig Jenkins, Professor of Sociology, Political Science and Environmental Science of Ohio State University, USA called on Dhaka University (DU) Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique on Monday at the latter's office of the university. Other members of the delegation were Dr Javier Chercoles, Team Leader of IDMVS-SIMON Project and Dr Nazmun N Ratna, Prof of Lincoln University, New Zealand. Pro-VC of Bangladesh Open University Prof Dr Khandoker Mokaddem Hossain and Director of the Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies (IDMVS) Prof Dr Mahbuba Nasreen were present on the occasion. During the meeting, they stressed the need for strengthening on-going research programmes on various environmental issues including disaster science and management jointly conducted by the University of Dhaka and Ohio State University, USA. Earlier, the delegation members delivered their lectures in a daylong international seminar on "Challenges of Climate Change and Resilience" organised by the IDMVS of DU at Nabab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Bhaban of the university. 146 BD nat`ls killed by BSF in 4 years bdnews24.com :Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has said that 146 Bangladeshis were killed along borders with India by the neighbouring country's border guard BSF and civilians in the past four years.In reply to a question in Parliament, he said on Monday that in 2012, BSF killed 24 Bangladesh nationals, while Indian civilians killed another 10. In 2013, 18 Bangladeshis were killed by BSF and 10 by common citizens.In 2014, BSF was instrumental in the killing of 24 Bangladesh nationals while common Indian citizens killed another 16. In 2015, number of BSF-inflicted casualties was 38, while the death at the hands of civilians was one, the minister said. In the current year until April 18, five Bangladesh nationals had been killed by the BSF, the minister informed the Parliament. Apart from securing border, the home minister said, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) was determined to provide the security to the people living along the border. Yet due to various reasons killings were taking place in the bordering areas, he added."To stop killings on the border, as per the high-level decision of the border guards of the two countries, only non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets, sound grenades are being used," the minister said.Asaduzzaman told Parliament that at the director general-level meeting between the BGB and the BSF held in India from Aug 2-7 last year, the BSF chief, in response to his Bangladesh counterpart's call for a definite action plan, agreed to bring down the number of border killing to zero. "Vigil by BGB has been significantly intensified to curb border crimes like drugs and cow smuggling and trespassing," he said. In reply to another question, the minister admitted that coast guards did not have adequate number of vessels and manpower to secure the country's maritime border in the Bay of Bengal. But, he said, there was plan to develop the Bangladesh Coast Guard into a self-contained force."As part of that plan, nine ships and six boats will be added to its fleet by 2018. This will ensure security of the Bangladeshi fishermen at sea and river." BD urged to invest heavily on human capital for rapid economic dev Staff Reporter : Bangladesh could gain a rapid social and economic development taking advantage of her young population which reached 66 per cent of the total population, according to a report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). "It is the good time for Bangladesh to harness its demographic dividend. The number of its young population is about 10.56 crore which will be increasing in the coming years," it added. According to the report, there are 49 per cent population of Bangladesh are aged less than 24 years. The young population across the globe has reached a remarkable 1.8 billion out of 7.3 billion, and most of them live in developing countries like Bangladesh, it said. The report, titled "Shaping the Future: How Changing Demographics Can Power Human Development," will be launched today (Tuesday) in Dhaka. The report will be launched in partnership with the Bangladesh government. The developing nations, including Bangladesh, with large youth populations have been urged to invest heavily on them for their quality education and health services for economic and social gains. If they are equipped with necessary skills, good health and effective choices, they present an enormous opportunity to transform the future, said the UNDP. The latest Asia-Pacific Human Development Report, which is being released on the UNDP's 50th anniversary, offers a wealth of insights and data. The report, UNDP said, is a practical guide for development planners and decision-makers in governments across Asia and the Pacific. It recommends switching from short-term election cycle priorities to long-term development strategies, and offers a set of "Nine Actions for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific," tailored to the demographic makeup of each country. The UNDP conducts the survey on 45 countries in the Asia Pacific region. A team of experts of the UNDP's New York office made the report. The report analyses population trends in Asia and the Pacific and puts forward a set of long-term strategies for sustainable development. Ahead of releasing the report, the United Nations urged the Philippines and other countries in the middle of the "demographic transition" to maximize the population trend. In the report, it was found that the capable people of Bangladesh aged from 15 to 64 is 56 per cent of the country's total population. The number of the capable people will increase and it will stand on about 12 crore in 2030 which will be 70 per cent of country's total population. Meanwhile, the unemployed population in Bangladesh has been increased in 2016. According to a survey report by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the most of unemployed population are youths. About the report, Haoliang Xu, UN assistant secretary-general and UNDP Director for Asia and the Pacific, said that Asia and the Pacific would have nearly five billion people by 2050. How countries manage that population will have an impact on their growth. "Over the past 65 years, the population in the region has tripled. Some countries have rapidly aged while others have seen a jump in the numbers of working-age people and youth. Our new report suggests how countries can turn these population trends into opportunities for sustainable development," said the UNDP Director The report is a practical guide for development planners and decision makers in governments across Asia and the Pacific."Given the population challenges in Asia-Pacific, we have to be ambitious, innovative, and deliver at scale if we want to end poverty by 2030," added Haoliang Xu. "With 58 percent of the world's people, our region is key to unlocking a sustainable future." The UNDP said the Philippines can maximize the demographic transition by creating more and better jobs and livelihoods, increase women's equal participation and channel savings into productive investments. Countries that should also heed this advice are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Federal States of Micronesia, India and Indonesia. The list also includes the Islamic Republic of Iran, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal and Vanuatu. These recommendations are part of the UNDP's "Nine Actions for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific." The other recommendations are to invest in basic capabilities, such as universal, high-quality education; smoothen the transition from school to work; and encourage youth participation. This set of recommendation is for countries that are in the early demographic transition. The focus of these countries should be in unlocking the potential of the next generation. The UNDP said these countries are Afghanistan, Kiribati, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Tonga. The last set of recommendations is for countries in the advanced stages of the demographic transition. These countries focus should be to manage ageing and driving human development. These countries are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, China, Fiji, Hong Kong-China, Japan, Macao-China, Mongolia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. RUTA threatens nonstop strike UNB, Rajshahi : Rajshahi University Teachers' Association (RUTA) on Monday threatened to go on a nonstop strike if the government fails to arrest the killers of Prof Rezaul Karim Siddiquee by seven days. RUTA leaders came up with the ultimatum while addressing a rally in front of the Senate Bhaban around 11am. They said they will go on the strike from May 3 if their demand is not met by May 2. The teachers also decided to put on hold their protest programmes until May 2. Earlier, RUTA members formed a human chain at Paris Road and brought out a rally to press for the demand. Addressing the rally, RUTA president Prof Md Shahidullah and its general secretary Prof Shah Azam Santanu demanded immediate arrest of the killers. Later, they submitted a memorandum to RU Vice Chancellor Prof Mizanuddin in this regard. Besides, the teachers and students of the RU English Department brought out a silent procession on the campus over the same issue. Meanwhile, police in a drive early Monday arrested Khairul, an Islami Chhatra Shibir activist, from Lalitahar area of the city on suspicion of his involvement in the killing of the teacher. With this, two Shibir men have so far been arrested in connection with the incident. Prof Rezaul Karim, 58, of the RU English Department, was killed by miscreants in the city's Shalbagan area while he was waiting for a university bus on April 23. Victim's son Sourov Hossain filed a murder case with Boalia Police Station. The case was transferred to the Detective Branch (DB) of police from Boalia Police Station on Sunday for a thorough investigation. Hartal observed amid sporadic incident Staff Reporter : The half-day hartal called by the two platforms of some left leaning student organisations demanding arrest of Tonu's killers was observed amid some sporadic incident across the country on Monday. The Progressive Students' Alliance and the Anti-Imperialist Students' Union called the hartal on Saturday. At least 50 pro-hartal activists were injured and 15 others were detained during the hartal. Traffic in Dhaka city was thinner than usual in the starting hours. Private cars and public buses were plying the streets and their numbers increased as the day progressed.Students protesting government's failure to arrest the killers of Tonu, blockade at Shahbagh intersection, one of the major intersections in Dhaka, created acute traffic congestion in the capital in the morning. Commuters were stuck in almost all over the capital including roads linked to Shahbagh, Kakrail, Ramna, Mohakhali, Banani, Khilkhet reported their painful experience in the roads during the peak hours. Student bodies and pro-hartal activists were also seen in position at Mohammadpur, Malibagh, Paltan and Old Dhaka in the capital to clamp the hartal. Separate processions were brought out at Paltan and Shahbagh - the political hub of Dhaka. "At least 50 of our leaders and activists were injured in the attacks of police across the country. The police also detained 15 activists from Savar," pro-hartal leaders claimed. Our JU Correspondent adds: Police detained at least 13 pro-hartal activists after they blockaded Dhaka-Aricha highway for about an hour. Ashulia Model Police Officer-in-Charge Mohsinul Quadir told The New Nation that detentions were made to clear the highway. Around 100 students under the banner of Progotishil Chhatra Jote gathered the highway. The arrested students have been identified as Masuk Helal Anik, Vice-president of Chhatra Front of JU unit, Susmita Morium, Secretary of Chhatra Front, Abid Sarkar Sohag, Secretary of JU Chhatra Union, Akash, Ujjal, Mitul, Siyam, Jisan, Taniya, Rakib, Chandan and Tusar. Additional police have been deployed in the University Prantik gate to avert any untoward situation, the police official said. Shafik went to US to verify rumour Staff Reporter : Taleya Rehman, wife of senior journalist and pro-BNP intellectual Shafik Rehman, has said that her husband went to USA a few years ago to verify the 'rumour of financial irregularities' about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wajed Joy. But it does not mean that there was a relation [with Shafik Rehman] about the abduction or murder plan against Joy, as because the allegation in this regard was rejected in the US court a few years back, she claimed. "I am afraid hearing some recent remarks of government high-ups, including Prime Minister and Joy, about Shafik Rehman. I think, these comments are one-sided, untrue and misleading. I also fear whether the investigation of the case will follow the right track. I'm not sure whether we will get justice, or not," she said while addressing a press conference at her Eskaton residence in the city on Monday. Replying to a query, she said, "Shafik Rehman had met FBI agent Robert Lustyik. But so far I know he was not involved in financial dealings with Robert Lustyik to buy any information. He went there after knowing that information was collected by the US authority about Joy. But it was many days ago, in 2012 In the meantime, he also didn't write anything over the issue." Taleya said that, he [Shafik] went to the USA in 2012 to investigate the matter. The related documents about the issue were kept under his possession for the last three years, which were seized by the police. "I suspect, Shafik has been subjected to physical and mental torture. After his arrest, PM's son Joy has been posting false statuses on his facebook page one by one. These are not only tarnishing the image of Shafik, but also influencing the ongoing investigation," she claimed. She urged the journalists to publish the news after verifying its potentiality, which are now supplied by the detective branch of police. "I also fear Shafik may be subjected to inhuman torture during second phase remand to get false statement through his mouthapparently to prove their [Joy and others] remarks true before the nation," she noted. Terming Shafik Rehman a 'patriot', Taleya urged the Prime Minister for his release by cancelling remand and cases. "He is seriously ill. We have informed the authority about his sickness, but no initiative was taken till the date for his check-up. I fear his death due to illness and torture in this old stage of life," she added. Earlier on April 20, Taleya Rehman said that the allegation brought against her husband was totally baseless and fictitious. "As his wife, I know him for 59 years. He can never be involved in any criminal activity," she said. Detective Branch personnel arrested Shafik Rehman, a noted journalist, opinion-maker and former editor of the daily Jaijaidin, from his Eskaton house in Dhaka on April 19. Five killed in a single day Jail guard, USAID official among victims Staff Reporter :The overall law and order situation has deteriorated to an alarming extent in the country as gruesome killings are taking place one after another intensifying sense of insecurity among people.The incidents of killings in the broad daylight are rampant as terrorists and criminal curtails are showing extensive clout under the nose of law-enforcing agencies.On Monday, unidentified assailants on a motorcycle have gunned down a prison guard of Kashimpur jail in Gazipur in broad daylight and fled away.In another development, two persons including the Editor of Roopbaan, the country's first ever LGBT magazine, have been hacked to death at a flat in capital's Kalabagan.Besides, two young men were shot dead by unidentified miscreants at Purba Sarakbhata village in Rangunia upazila in Chittagong early Monday.Rustom Ali, 60, a sergeant instructor of Kashimpur Jail, was shot when he was sitting in front of a shop near the prison around 11:15am, reports our Gazipur correspondent. Hailing from Comilla, Rustom was on leave preparatory to retirement (LPR) since November last year, the correspondent said quoting Superintendent of Kashimpur Jail Subrata Kumar Bala.Rustom was in civil dress when he was murdered, he said. "The assailants, riding a motorcycle, suddenly appeared on the scene, opened fire at Rustom and fled away." The victim received gunshot wounds to the head and chest. He died on the spot. The body has been sent to the morgue of Gazipur Shaheed Tajuddin Medical College Hospital.One person has been picked up from the crime scene, said Harun-or-Rashid, Gazipur Superintendent of Police.Inspector General of Prisons (IGP) Brig Gen Syed Iftekhar Uddin admitted that a murder "so close" to the proximity of the prison is "of great concern to the police and the general public."He added that the jail authorities all over the country have been instructed to beef up security.The assailants are still at large and police are yet to achieve any breakthrough to nab the killers.In another incident, two persons including the Editor of Roopbaan, the country's first ever LGBT magazine, have been hacked to death at a flat in capital's Kalabagan.The deceased are Xulhaz Mannan, 35, and his friend Tanay Mojumdar.Abdul Baten, Deputy Commissioner of Ramna division police, told The New Nation that Mannan was a cousin of former foreign minister Dr Dipu Moni.The incident took place on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 5pm Monday.DC Baten said armed assailants in guise of courier company officials entered the flat and killed the duo.He said, Xulhaz Mannan was known for his gay rights activism.He was working for USAID. Earlier, he worked as a protocol officer of former US Ambassador Dan Mozena for a long time.Tanay, the other victim and his friend, was also a LGBT activist.Parvez, 18, security guard of the house, told The New Nation that five to six youths identifying themselves as courier company officials came to the house around 5pm mentioning that they have brought some parcel for Xulhaz.He said: "But half an hour later, I heard shouting and shooting sound from the flat and went to look into the incident.""The assailants then attacked me with knives," said Parvez with heavy wounds on his eye.He is now undergoing treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.Another security guard Sumon, who was also present at the time, said the killers were wearing blue T-shirt and everyone had a bag on their shoulder.He said one domestic help and Xulhaz's mother were also present at the time of the incident.According to eyewitness, the killers while going out of the house chanting "Naraye Takbir, Allahu Akbar."One of the killers had pistol in his hand.The incidents took place two days into the gruesome murder of Rajshahi University teacher Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern city. According to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, international militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility of Siddiquee's murder.Meanwhile, two young men were shot to death by unidentified miscreants at Purba Sarakbhata village in Rangunia upazila early Monday over previous enmity, reports our Chittagong correspondent.The deceased were identified as Manju, 28, and Hashem, 31. Officer-in-charge of Rangunia Police Station Humayun Kabir said a group of miscreants swooped on a house in the village where the duo was sleeping around 1:00 am. The attackers hacked Manju and Hashem, and later opened fire at them, leaving them dead on the spot. Informed, police recovered the bodies and sent those to Chittagong Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy on Monday morning."Crime being committed in the cities, towns and villages and it is in a way shocking to see the rapid deterioration of law and order in the country," a former Chief of Bangladesh Police told The New Nation, requesting not to be named.He alleged that the law and order situation in the country has been deteriorated alarmingly and rule of law has broken."The government is providing background for turning the country into a militant state by stopping democratic practices," he alleged. Killing of prison guard and public safety THE gun down of a prison guard of Kashimpur Jail in Gazipur in the broad daylight on Monday just two days after the killing of Rajshahi University (RU) Professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee outside his home showed the desperate law and order situation where nobody is safe now in the country. Tragedies are only making the nation mute. It is almost unthinkable that three gunmen killed the jail guard, now on leave preparatory to retirement, in front of the jail gate defying the high security in the area. In another development some assailants chopped to death two persons last evening in the city's Kalabagan area including a cousin of former Foreign Minister and Awami League leader Dr Dipu Moni in his flat. The killing spree, which appears to be targeted killings, apart from ongoing violence and such other killing throughout the country on socio-political ground, is sending the ominous sign of growing chaos and public disorder ahead. What appears quite surprising is that hardcore criminals did not hesitate to shoot the prison guard right in front of the jail gate throwing challenge to the government. Jails are places where criminals are imprisoned and punished but the killers showed they are least bothered about it. In fact we are living in a situation now when people don't know when and where they may fall victim to assailants' hands. More and more violence and killings are now creating panic in the nation almost on daily basis. The government does not bother to do anything to save the lives of the people, other than saying killers were motivated to bring bad name to the government. It should be clear to all that such routine killings do not speak of the government being in charge of law and order. It will not help the government to find excuses for not saving lives. The admission of Inspector General of Prisons that a murder "so close" to the proximity of the prison is "of great concern to the police and the general public" makes sense. But his disclosure that jail authorities all over the country have asked to beef up security is not enough. But we think that bureaucratic power-based thinking will not save the people or help the government. Fuel price cut welcome but not enough THE government has finally cut petrol and octane prices by Tk 10 while per litre and that of diesel and kerosene by Tk 3 per litre in the backdrop of the drastic fall in petroleum prices in the international market. The cut is welcome but it is not enough in view of the huge fall in fuel prices at global market. The cut in oil prices came after the Finance Ministry's proposal to slash the prices of octane and petrol by 15 percent and that of diesel and kerosene by 25 percent. But the strategy to cut fuel prices apparently in three phases led to the small cut at the beginning. But many fear that ordinary people may not get any benefit if the price reduction goes at a snails pace as the transport owners may not feel obliged to reduce the fare citing minor changes in oil prices. The call for adjusting oil prices on the local market was getting louder since mid-2014 when petroleum prices started falling on the global market. Oil prices plummeted 66 percent on the international market since June 2014. In January this year, it dropped as low as $27.65 a barrel before rebounding to $40 recently. But the government was reluctant to adjust the prices downward asking Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) to repay first its earlier loans and recoup the losses it incurred from early 2000. The government recently agreed to reduce fuel prices after the BPC said its entire bank loans had been repaid, and that it was counting profits. Energy Ministry officials said further reduction in fuel prices would be made if consumers benefit from this price cut and the prices of products and services that depend on oil consumption ultimately go down. Earlier, the Energy Ministry cut the price of furnace oil by Tk 18 per litre to Tk 42 from Tk 60 following the Cabinet decision. After slashing the furnace oil price, the cost of electricity generation had come down but the tariff of electricity has rather increased. The Power Development Board received electricity at a much lower price from the government-approved private power companies but the increase of power tariff did not reflect the price adjustment in the government entity. When the government said it would further reduce the fuel price if the transport fares come down is a rather vague statement. Transport owners operate under the government and they have enough scope to reduce fares acting on reduction of the fuel price. In our view the government should make the benefit of lower fuel price accessible to common people instead of tolerating transport owners to stay back to stop from further reduction of fuel prices. People paid exorbitant fuel prices when its prices were too high. It has come down now and they have the right to benefit from it. Two bills that have been moved to the House floor in Louisiana could put pressure on law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal officials when policing undocumented immigrants. Two bills that have been moved to the House floor in Louisiana could put pressure on law enforcement agencies in major metropolitan areas to cooperate with federal officials when policing undocumented immigrants. After hours of debate and several amendments each, the House Judiciary Committee last week advanced HB 151 by Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, and HB 453 by Rep. Jay Morris, R-Monroe. Hodges HB 151 prohibits laws creating sanctuary cities, where law enforcement do not cooperate with federal immigration officials in the detaining of immigrants in the country illegally, and prevents the State Bond Commission from issuing bonds to such cities. An original draft of the bill prevented sanctuary cities from receiving any state funding, but Hodges, along with Attorney General Jeff Landry, who testified in support of the bill, decided to lessen the punishment. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who also testified in support of the bill, argued that New Orleans and Lafayette are the states two major sanctuary cities. The New Orleans Police Department, due to a clause in a 2012 agreement between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice, does not hold detainees for federal immigration officials, and Lafayette will only do so with a court order. Rep. Robby Carter, D-Amite, took issue with one piece of the bill that he interpreted as racial profiling by police, since it allows them to ask any person their citizenship status. He supported an amendment that limited the question being asked only of those suspected of or are witness to crimes. Other critics of the bill said that the sanctuary city label is a misnomer. Fernando Lopez of the Congress of Day Laborers, which represents manual laborers in the New Orleans region, said undocumented immigrants are already racially profiled and subject to unjust policing in the Crescent City and that the bill would open them to further mistreatment. There are no such things as sanctuary cities in Louisiana, Lopez said. HB 453, a companion bill which allows victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants released by police to sue the city or parish, was also passed by the committee unanimously. 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. Paris, TX (75460) Today Rain showers in the morning with thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 74F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near an inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms during the evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 51F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. SPRINGFIELD Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation authorizing $600 million in emergency funding to keep major Illinois universities operating until fall. The Republican signed the bill Monday after a debate last week over the temporary spending plan in the General Assembly. The package includes $170 million for the Monetary Award Program, a needs-based grant that colleges doled out this past school year without state reimbursement. Rauner and Democrats who control the Legislature have been unable to agree on a plan for the budget year that began July 1. In a statement Monday, the first-term governor said the law doesn't solve the crisis but is "a first step toward compromise." He wants business reforms and union-power curbs while working with Democrats to reduce the deficit. The bill is SB2059. SPRINGFIELD Gov. Bruce Rauners administration and a union representing 38,000 state workers began a legal showdown Monday over whether contract talks have reached an impasse. Lawyers for the state and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 are arguing their cases before Sarah Kerley, an administrative law judge for the Illinois Labor Relations Board. The parties began bargaining over a new contract in February 2015, and the Rauner administration in January moved to have an impasse declared, which could ultimately clear the way for the state to impose its contract terms on the union. The state and the union have reached tentative agreements on many issues, but wages and health care benefits remain major sticking points. The administration argues that the union has stuck to unreasonable demands in a time of unprecedented financial difficulties for the state, while AFSCME argues that the contract talks have been mired by Rauners hostility toward the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith. Mixed day for public employee unions at Illinois Supreme Court SPRINGFIELD Two Illinois Supreme Court rulings issued Thursday are a mixed bag for public Tom Bradley, an attorney for the state, said in his opening statement Monday that AFSCME has repeatedly refused the administrations proposal to freeze wages and institute a merit-based bonus system that would reward employees for their job performance. Those measures and proposals to have employees cover a greater share of their health insurance costs are necessary as the state grapples with its fiscal challenges, Bradley said. The state was not negotiating in a vacuum, he said. To the contrary, the state was negotiating under the very heavy weight of the worst fiscal crisis in the states history, a fiscal crisis in which the states very best fiscal experts projected that the state would, over the (four-year) life of the contract, incur budget deficits in excess of $20 billion. Although the state made numerous concessions, Bradley said, the sides were unable to reach agreements on a dozen issues, including wages and health benefits. AFSCME attorney Steve Yokich argued in his opening statement that the union was still willing to negotiate when the state walked away from the bargaining table in early January. Contract talks have been slowed because the state sought in its initial proposal to throw out provisions that have been in place for 30 years or more, he said, illustrating his point by tearing pages out of the previous agreement. The governor has a well-known hostility toward collective bargaining by government unions, Yokich said, pointing out numerous anti-union statements Rauner made before being elected. You have two situations at work here, Yokich said. One situation is that you have a chief executive who despises the idea of government employee collective bargaining, and you have an original proposal that shreds the contract. Senate approves union-backed contract arbitration bill SPRINGFIELD A bill that would send stalled union contract talks to arbitration is headed b The administrations very public pronouncements on issues like merit pay tied negotiators hands and prevented them from making serious concession, he said. As for the states fiscal crisis, Yokich called it a self-inflicted wound. Rauner refused to back an extension of the states temporary income tax increase, which in January 2015 rolled back from 5 percent to 3.75 percent, taking an estimated $5 billion in annual revenue with it. Several more days of hearings are scheduled, and a final decision from Kerley is not expected for some time. Meanwhile, Rauner has yet to act on a bill thats been sitting on his desk since mid-March that would send the stalled contract talks to binding arbitration. He vetoed similar legislation last year. Volunteers are needed to help with the 31st annual Fishing Expedition for Special Populations, which is scheduled for May 11 at Bleyer Lake in Carbondale. Bleyer Lake is 1.5 miles south of Midland Inn, just off Country Club Road. More than 1,600 special population children, adults and volunteers from nine Southern Illinois counties are expected to attend. The event is sponsored by Frank Bleyer, The Bank of Carbondale, Mountain Valley Properties and Mountain Valley Water of Carbondale. Volunteers will help participants with their fishing equipment, bait fishing hooks and encourage their efforts. Fishing equipment and a picnic lunch will be provided. Volunteers must be at least 18 years old, unless accompanied by a parent or school official. Volunteers must be at Bleyer Lake by 8:30 a.m., and the event will conclude by 2 p.m. Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Elizabeth at The Bank of Carbondale at 618-549-2181 or elizabeth@tboc.com. Sign-up sheets are available at any Bank of Carbondale location. The Southern BLACKVILLE When it comes to selecting a forage for hay production, one size does not fit all. Bermudagrass is the gold standard for South Carolina hay production, but specific variety selection can greatly impact profits, said Clemson University forage specialist John Andrae. An entirely different species could be better for some growers, he said. Soil type and drainage, environment, grower-management preferences and end use are important factors in choosing a forage species and specific species variety for hay production, he said. A lot of these things are considered too late, Andrae told growers at the Clemson University Hay Production Workshop and Field Day at the Edisto Research and Education Center. South Carolina produced $70.8 million in hay last year, making it the states third largest cash crop behind corn ($96.7 million) and soybeans ($90.6 million) in production value, according to the U.S. Department of Agricultures National Agricultural Statistics Service. Hay is a cash crop and its an important crop from both supporting our livestock industry and from a sales standpoint, Andrae said. Hay species and variety selection are critical to success. The big key is to find out who you are selling to and what your management style is and key to that. Another critical factor is to take into account what you already have. The first question to ask is whats already there? Old fields of Coastal bermudagrass, for example, could be brought back into productivity with proper management for weeds, pests and fertility. Establishing a new field with a modern hybrid like Tifton 85, however, will be harder, more expensive and slower to accomplish because it requires more tillage and investment. Soil and environment Bermudagrass does not thrive in soils that do not drain water. In poorly drained areas, alternative species like bahiagrass or nontoxic tall fescue can be considered. Cold hardiness needs to be considered as well, particularly for South Carolina growers in the Upstate where winters get cold. Hybrids such as Tifton 44, Midlands 99 and Ozark are more cold-hardy than other varieties and will persist throughout the state. Coastal and Russell perform well in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain if planted on appropriate soil types. Tifton 85 is best suited for the southern Piedmont and Coastal Plain. These hybrids do not produce seed, but seed-producing types are available for growers without planters. Seeded bermudagrass is cheaper than the hybrids maybe even a third of the cost but their lower yields, occasional issues with disease resistance and lack of options for weed control make them risky, Andrae said. Management preferences Are you going to invest in inputs or are you just happy harvesting whatever Mothern Nature gives you? Andrae asked participants at the Hay Production Workshop. This also dictates what forage species are options for your operation. Certain forage species require more fertilizer for productivity or herbicides for weed control, Andrae said. Bermudagrass, for example, needs plenty of nitrogen or yield declines quickly. Alfalfa requires strict attention to soil pH and nutrient levels and must be harvested in a timely manner. If you are willing to add lime, potash and weed control to your field, you have a lot of options, Andrae said. If you want to do low input or cant afford to add fertilizers, your options are more limited. If you have a year-to-year contract on your hay lease, its hard to justify putting out lime much less converting an existing species in the field because you just dont know if you will be harvesting the same acreage year after year. Bahiagrass and mixed fields of fescue, crabgrass, common bermudagrass and dallisgrass can be grown with fewer inputs, but sales price and market options are often limited. Consider the end use or buyer Dairies, equine operations and even zoos often buy high-quality hay and may pay a premium for something like alfalfa, but most producers sell their hay to beef cattle producers who often want fair quality at an affordable price. Alfalfa can fit for people willing to utilize a high level of management and inputs. It has high fertility requirements but is extremely drought-tolerant. Mostly alfalfa is higher quality than beef producers normally need anyway, Andrae said. The specific market you target will dictate what you produce. If you are growing forage for personal use on your livestock farm and are considering a seeded bermudagrass, a modern bahiagrass variety like Tifton or TifQuick are options, Andrae said. These grow quickly, affordably and easily in hot climates but often do not sell well. Its seeded and it works on poorly drained soil better than bermudagrass, Andrae said. Tifton 9 bahiagrass has a 25 percent higher yield than other bahiagrass varieties and its 10 percent more digestible than Pensacola. This Tifton 9 is a real option for a personal, cow-calf operation. The Hay Production Workshop and Field Day also included presentations from Clemson experts on hay fertility, weed and insect pressures and control options, precision agriculture technologies that can help growers maximize yields and tips for correctly calibrating pesticide sprayers. Flood-damaged forests may quality for payments South Carolina has been approved to accept applications through May 30 for the Emergency Forest Management Program to address flood damages in counties including Orangeburg, Calhoun and Bamberg. EFRP provides payments to eligible owners of non-industrial private forest land to enable the owners to carry out emergency measures to restore land damaged by a natural disaster. After applications are received, the S.C. Forestry Commission will provide technical assistance by evaluating the damage and developing a plan to restore the NIPF land. The local FSA county committee will determine land eligibility and approve applications. In order to meet eligibility requirements, NIPF land must have existing tree cover or had tree cover immediately before the natural disaster occurred and be sustainable for growing trees. The land must also be owned by any non-industrial private individual, group, association, corporation or other private legal entity that has definitive decision-making authority over the land. The natural disaster must have resulted in damage that if untreated would impair or endanger the natural resources on the land and/or materially affect future use of the land. Individuals may receive up to 75 percent of the eligible cost of restoring the damage. The minimum qualifying cost of restoration is $1,000 per participant, approximately 5 acres, unless a waiver is requested and approved. Contact the local county Farm Services Agency office for more information or visit http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov. NRCS signup for quail initiative COLUMBIA The U.S. Department of Agricultures Natural Resources Conservation Service has announced an Environmental Quality Incentives Program signup for private landowners to apply for financial and technical assistance to facilitate the restoration of the northern bobwhite quail and other early successional habitat in South Carolina. The application deadline is April 30. The counties eligible to signup for this EQIP funding are Orangeburg, Calhoun, Union, Allendale, Chesterfield, Clarendon, Darlington, Hampton, Lee, and Newberry. These counties have been designated as being part of a focal area for bobwhite quail, having landscapes with the highest bobwhite quail restoration potential due to current and projected land cover and land use trends. To learn more about financial and technical assistance available to help South Carolina farmers and other landowners improve and protect their land, visit NRCS in South Carolinas website at www.sc.nrcs.usda.gov, or visit your local NRCS office. USDA service center locations are listed at http://offices.usda.gov. S.C. Farm Resource Rodeo WEST COLUMBIA Farmers have a chance to learn about the local, state and federal resources and programs available to them as part of a South Carolina Farmer Resource Rodeo event scheduled for Thursday, May 5. The event will provide farmers technical, financial and educational assistance. The event will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Phillips Market Center, 3501 Charleston Highway in West Columbia. Participants will include a number of agencies: USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service; USDA-Farm Service Agency; USDA-Rural Development; SC Department of Agriculture; S.C. Forestry Commission; Clemson Livestock-Poultry Health; Clemson Organic Program; USC Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities; Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and the S.C. Farm Bureau. The cost of the event will be $20 and will include lunch. Individuals can register online at: https://goo.gl/M7MVbO The event is sponsored by the members of the Midlands Local Food Collaborative with support from several partner organizations. Nexsen Pruet donates to Plant it Forward COLUMBIA Nexsen Pruet law firm donated $10,000 to Plant it Forward South Carolina, an initiative by South Carolina Advocates for Agriculture. Plant it Forward SC will provide relief funds specifically for covering a portion of seed costs for 2016, as well as hay losses livestock farmers suffered because of the flood. Total agricultural losses from Octobers flooding are approaching $600 million. Friends and clients are still recovering from the impact of the historic storm, said David Gossett, leader of the firms agribusiness team. We recognize the vital role that agriculture plays in our statewide economy, so we felt obliged to step up with financial support and we are asking for other business leaders and professionals to do the same. Nexsen Pruet agribusiness attorneys have deep roots in working for clients that range from small input supply farms to major multinationals. Their attorneys regularly advise on legal issues arising from financing, immigration, litigation, real estate, environmental and taxation. On behalf of South Carolina farmers, I cannot thank Nexsen Pruet enough for their generous donation to Plant it Forward SC. Their donation shows their continued support of and commitment to South Carolina farms and agribusinesses, Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers said For more information on Plant it Forward SC, or to make a donation, visit www.plantitforwardsc.org or contact Stefanie Kitchen at 803-734-2210. WASHINGTON Conservatives should be delighted that Harriet Tubmans likeness will grace the $20 bill. She was a Republican, after all, and a pious Christian. And she routinely exercised her Second Amendment right to carry a gun, which she was ready to use against anyone who stood in her way or any fugitive slave having second thoughts. On her long road to freedom, there was no turning back. Instead, weve had mostly silence from the right. Donald Trump did mouth off, of course, opining that slated-to-be-displaced Andrew Jackson had a great history and that substituting Tubman who, he allowed, was fantastic amounts to pure political correctness. Ben Carson defended Jackson as a tremendous president who balanced the federal budget. Both men suggested that Tubman instead be put on the $2 bill, which nobody uses. That would be a great recipe for tokenism. Im glad that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made a bolder and more meaningful choice. It matters whos on the money. Since the ancient Greeks began stamping coins with images of their gods, nations have used currency to define a pantheon of heroes. Tubman was a great hero not because of who she was but what she did: bravely fight to expand the Constitutions promise of freedom and justice to all Americans. Critics who polluted social media with invective following Lews announcement seemed to look past Tubmans deeds and focus on her identity. Yes, she was a black woman. If anyone cant deal with that fact, and doesnt want to use the new bills when they finally come out, feel free to send them to me. Tubman was born into slavery on Marylands Eastern Shore around 1822. She escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, but returned to the South more than a dozen times, risking life and liberty, to lead runaway slaves to freedom. Slave owners reportedly offered bounties of thousands of dollars for capturing the diminutive woman known on the grapevine as Moses. I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, she said later in life, and I can say what most conductors cant say I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger. But that was just the beginning of Tubmans heroic service. During the Civil War, she guided a team of Union scouts operating in the marshlands near present-day Beaufort, South Carolina. In 1863, she led a raid on plantations along the Combahee River that freed more than 750 slaves becoming, apparently, the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault. Later in life, she worked alongside Susan B. Anthony and others in the crusade for womens suffrage. She died in 1913, frail yet still unbowed, having lived one of the greatest of American lives. Is it political correctness or historical revisionism to put her defiant likeness in our pockets? Of course and high time, too. Unceasing struggle has expanded the meaning of we the people, once reserved for white men only. As our understanding of freedom and equality has changed, so has our reading of the nations history. In fighting for the rights of African-Americans and women, Tubman risked her life for the highest of American ideals. Her example ennobles us all. By definition, the study of history requires interpretation and assessment. The many vital contributions made by black people, women and other outsiders were long overlooked or undervalued. We are now able to see Tubman through a sharper lens, and she was magnificent. As for Jackson, history has been less kind. He was a major slave owner, of course, like so many of our early presidents. If that alone were enough to get a president booted from our money, wed have no dollar bills, no nickels and no quarters. Of course we should keep George Washington and Thomas Jefferson around, understanding their flaws while celebrating their greatness. But Jackson also initiated the forced migration of thousands of Native Americans from the Southeast to the West, an exodus called the Trail of Tears that can only be described as genocidal. He knew that many Indians would die along the way just as Southern plantation owners, New York financiers and other supporters of slavery knew that keeping human beings in bondage was wrong. Still, Jackson did win the Battle of New Orleans; if he hadnt, the young nation might not have survived the War of 1812. I say lets put HIM on the $2 bill, if anybody can find one. Inland port sails past Orangeburg County again. The Times and Democrats Thursday morning headline summed up a story about the S.C. Ports Authoritys announcement that a second inland port facility is being considered for South Carolina and it wont be here, even though Orangeburg County for decades has been pushing itself as a location for a such a distribution facility. Disappointment here began when the SCPA three years ago opened a first inland port, a facility that serves as a collection and distribution point for goods going to and coming from port terminals in Charleston. But hope remained that despite no short-term plan, a second inland facility would come to Orangeburg County with its location at the crossroads of Interstates 26 and 95. However on Wednesday, the SCPA announced it is looking to establish an industrial park between Latta and Dillon, situated along I-95 in the Pee Dee region, as a location for a second port. The announcement came as a surprise to officials such as Orangeburg Sen. Brad Hutto, who said he and Bowman Sen. John Matthews met as recently as 10 days ago with SCPA officials and were told Orangeburg County is still on their radar screen. Hutto said the SCPA decision does not mean an inland port will never be located here, which is exactly the message preached by Orangeburg County Development Commission Executive Director Gregg Robinson. The newspaper headline erroneously leads people to believe Orangeburg County has been slighted, Robinson said Thursday. As a local official with inside knowledge of the issue, Robinson said the Ports Authority is looking at Dillon now because of container volume, density of manufacturing within proximity of the site and primary rail service. The distance away from the port (more than 125 miles) makes more economic sense, Robinson said. Given the stabilization of gas prices, the turn times at the port and efficacy today, Orangeburg County is still a truck play. However, as manufacturing density increases, congestion increases and turn times become more difficult, the economics will shift. Additionally, downstream trains can always add value to I-95 counties and offer advantages to the logistical chain, Robinson said. He said Orangeburg Countys Global Logistics Triangle, the area bordered by Interstates 95 and 26 and U.S. 301, needs development of the type that could come with suppliers for Volvo, Daimler and Boeing choosing to locate in industrial parks that would produce sufficient container volume, as well as additional agribusiness/timber manufacturing. At Dillon, the site along I-95 will be a center for goods going and coming from the Pee Dee area of South Carolina and Wilmington and other areas in North Carolina. Primary rail service (CSX main line) is available at Dillon, Robinson said, which is the same situation with the first inland port at Greer (Norfolk Southern main line) adjacent to BMW. Norfolk Southern Railway serves the Upstate site while CSX has a primary line that would serve the Dillon facility. This allows balance between the two main providers. To date, sites in Orangeburg County in the Global Logistics Triangle have only secondary rail service, Robinson said. He sees cooperation between the rail competitors as necessary for full development of the local sites and as key to Orangeburg County ultimately fulfilling its goal of becoming a distribution hub that would be home to an inland port. More importantly, Orangeburg and Dorchester counties offer the ability to have dual-access sites if the two rail providers wish to work together with an equal, dual-access location, Robinson said. The Ports Authority said much the same as Robinson in a Wednesday statement to The T&D: SCPA explored and considered sites across the state, including ones in Orangeburg, before deciding to pursue Dillon as the next inland port location. At this time, Dillon offers a significant existing cargo base and opportunity to access a new intermodal network that will benefit our customers as well as the port. As manufacturing and population growth in the Southeast continue to grow, we look forward to more such opportunities and will carefully consider all alternatives as we look to expand the ports reach. For Orangeburg and its development team led by Robinson, that means continuing to sell the county as an ideal location for business and industry, particularly for industries related to the growing auto and aerospace hubs in the Charleston area. Orangeburg County offers a significant advantage and location when trucks are the primary delivery method, which could make the county a site for a future inland port, Robinson said. But more rail options are desired and needed. Robinson believes those options will come as developmental successes continue. We look forward to writing headlines proclaiming those successes. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva has today met with chair of UN Women for Peace Association Muna Rihani Al-Nasser and representative of the Emerging Leaders in Technology and Engineering Inc. of Ghana Dadzie Akrasi. They noted the importance of the Youth Event held at the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku. Leyla Aliyeva highlighted the activities of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by member of the National Assembly of the French Republic, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel. Noting that member of the National Assembly of the French Republic, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel was a close friend of Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev hailed his role in developing the relations between the two countries. Touching upon the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku, the head of state said the guests from a number of countries had already arrived for the event, and hailed the fact that France was represented at the event by a large delegation. President Ilham Aliyev noted that the Forum also created a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral ties. The head of state expressed confidence that Jean-Francois Mancel`s visit to Azerbaijan would be a success. Member of the National Assembly of the French Republic, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel said they supported Azerbaijan`s fair position in this complicated situation. He noted that they were working to ensure that the French government demonstrates a fair stance on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the French society knows Azerbaijan better. Touching upon the interparliamentary cooperation, Jean-Francois Mancel praised the close friendship and cooperation with head of Azerbaijan-France interparliamentary friendship group, Azerbaijan`s first lady Mehriban Aliyeva. At the meeting, the sides highlighted the importance of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum, hailed the development of Azerbaijan-France bilateral ties, and expressed confidence that these relations would continue to strengthen. The 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations is a testimony of Azerbaijan's willingness to preserve peace and prosperity in the world. The summit is the most important global summit that has been held in Azerbaijan. It shows once again the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev, his determination to peace, prosperity and also fostering friendship and cooperation in the world, international programs assistant for the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES) Peter Tase told journalists. He said that the forum was the perfect venue to promote peace, stability, economic development and dialogue among the civilizations. "It is the perfect time once again to emphasize the importance of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan, and to show the world the suffering that the Azerbaijan nation has endured for two decades. We should remind the international community that Azerbaijan is the number one country for the number of IDPs per capita. The world should know that coexistence, peace, stability and the fact that disagreements can be solved with the peaceful ways. Armenia tries to export chaos and violence abroad. Armenia has violated the international law, peace and stability in the region. The international community should take much more stronger stand and position to preserve the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan based on international law. Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijani land. Nakhchivan is also suffering because of isolation. There are constant provocations in Ordubad and other provinces of Nakhchivan," Pter Tase stressed. Foreign banks have no problems for dealing with Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday, IRNA reported. Speaking to the state TV, he added that Iranian diplomats should not be worry about their remarks abroad when they are addressing Iran's foreign partners. Iranian top nuclear negotiator referred to the recent remarks by president of Central Bank of Iran while addressing US policy makers and said Mr. Seif's remarks and blaming Washington for continuation of pressures against Iranian banks was a right action. Iran's diplomacy for removal of sanctions have been successful and US high-ranking officials have underlined that there is no obstacle on the ways of revival of ties between non-American banks and their Iranian partners, the diplomat added. He said that many of European banks have not transited from the period of sanctions to the post-deal era and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation has a duty to convince the European banks to revive their ties with Iran. Saying that Iran has still some problem for transfer of its released assets as well as the oil revenues to the country, Araqchi urged US officials to facilitate the issue. /By Azernews/ By Aynur Karimova Iran has expressed its readiness to be a bridge between South Africa and the countries in Central Asia, Caucasus and Russia, as well as Eastern Europe. President of the Islamic Republic Hassan Rouhani voiced this intention at a joint press conference with his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma, adding that Iran can connect South Africa to these countries through the North-South corridor. "Through the ports of South Africa, Iran can gain a way to the large parts of Africa, as well," Rouhani noted. He further noted that Tehran and Pretoria enjoy significant opportunities in economy, trade and technology sectors, and the issues of cooperation in banking and transportation sectors were high on the agenda of talks held between the two presidents. Rouhani believes that developing banking relations can take the lead in expanding the general relations between the two countries. "We can also have a good cooperation in industry, mining and energy sectors as well," he added. The 5,000-kilometer long North-South corridor, running from India to Helsinki, is designed to carry more than 20 million tons per year. Being a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russia's St. Petersburg to the Mumbai port, the corridor is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and further - to Northern and Western Europe. Experts say that the North-South route enjoys several advantages compared to other transport corridors; it is more profitable for each parameter than other alternative routes, such as the Suez Canal-the Mediterranean Sea-Northern Europe and the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Northern Europe routes. The preliminary estimates show that at an initial stage, it is planned to transport 6 million tons of cargo via the North-South corridor a year, and 15 to 20 million tons of cargo in the future. Heading a high-ranking 180-member economic and politic delegation, President Zuma arrived in Tehran on April 23 at the invitation of President Rouhani. The milestone of this visit was signing of 8 memoranda between Tehran and Pretoria. Pretoria was one of Iran's traditional oil markets before the imposition of sanctions on the Islamic Republic due to its disputed nuclear program. Before sanctions cut down Iran's crude oil exports in June 2012, South Africa was importing on average 68,000 barrels of oil from Tehran per day. Gulf International Banks (GIB) latest bond issue met with strong demand as the bank priced its senior unsecured SR2 billion ($533 million) five-year Floating Rate Notes issuance at a spread of 140 basis points above three-month SAIBOR. The issuance was well oversubscribed, achieving an attractive spread for GIB and reflecting investors high confidence in GIBs financial strength and credit worthiness. Rated A (Fitch Foreign Currency)) / A3 (Moody's Senior Unsecured Debt)), GIBs bond issue is considered as the first financial institution issuance in the domestic Saudi Riyal market since September 2015. Initial price guidance was communicated on April 11, which resulted in strong momentum allowing GIB to price the transaction within the guidance range. The order book was well diversified and investors comprised banks, non-banking financial institutions, corporates, government agencies and investment companies within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Abdulaziz Al-Helaissi, GIBs chief executive officer, said: "We are very pleased with the successful closing of this bond issue at this attractive pricing level. The demand from a large number of highly respected entities reflects the markets confidence in GIBs experience and strong financial position. This bond issue confirms GIBs commitment to diversify its funding sources and utilise different funding structures to achieve the most suitable cost of funding for the bank, he added. GIB Capital was lead coordinator for the offering, and the joint lead managers and book runners were GIB Capital, Samba Capital & Investment Management Company, Riyad Capital, and Saudi Fransi Capital. TradeArabia News Service The chairman of Emaar Properties has admitted that he was "really scared" of market conditions coming into 2016 but said the performance of Dubai's largest developer in the first quarter looked good after some severe cost cutting. The Dubai real estate sector has softened since late-2014 after a three-year boom fed by inflows of cash from politically-unstable Arab nations. Consultants CBRE registered a 15 percent drop in prices in 2015 and are forecasting a further 10 percent decline this year. However, last week Emaar unveiled plans for a tower which would surpass in height of the world's currently tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. On the sidelines of Emaar's annual shareholder meeting, Mohamed Alabbar admitted conditions earlier had him worried. "We were really scared of 2016. Preparing for our cost budget, we basically went back to a cost budget base of two years ago, just to be cautious," Mohammed Alabbar told reporters. "Did we cut costs? Yes, of course, a severe cost cut," he said, declining to quantify this. Sales activity had been much better than he expected in the first quarter and he was "pleasantly surprised" with the company's performance. He gave no specifics. An analyst at SICO Bahrain has forecast the company will make a net profit in the quarter of 1.22 billion dirhams, which would be a 19.1 percent year-on-year increase in earnings. REBELLION QUELLED Emaar survived an attempt from some shareholders to increase its proposed dividend for 2015 to 20 percent, equivalent to 0.20 dirhams ($0.05) per share. A vote of shareholders present, approximately 55 percent of the roster, approved the cash payout at 15 percent, in line with the board's recommendations. The developer, in which Dubai's government owns a minority stake, paid 15 percent in both 2013 and 2014, although the latter was supplemented by a special dividend after Emaar floated a stake in its malls business and returned cash to its shareholders. Emaar has outlined plans to spin off a number of its units, including its hospitality business, but Alabbar ruled out floating this in 2016 due to turbulent financial markets. "I don't think it's the time now, so we'll wait and watch," said Alabbar. "We are not rushing because we want to cash out. We want to do genuine business when the time is right." Emaar is looking to fully take over its India business, Alabbar said, after the company announced last week it was splitting from its joint venture partner. "It's the right time for us to take charge in India and manage our own affairs," said Alabbar, declined to give a timeline for when Emaar MGF would be dissolved. - Reuters Middle East Computer Services (Mecos), a division of Al Safar Group, is set to showcase its innovative home automation solutions for real estate developers at the Gulf Property Show 2016, which opens tomorrow (April 26) in Bahrain. The boutique showcase for real estate and property developments in the region, Gulf Property Show is being organised by Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE) till April 28 at the Bahrain International Exhibition Centre under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of Bahrain. Mecos is a key provider of home and commercial automation systems and security solutions that depend on connecting all electrical devices and appliances to a central control unit, thus providing users the accessibility to control lighting, air-conditioning, TVs and other devices remotely, which may result in saving energy. At the upcoming expo, the Bahrain-based company will be rolling out its portfolio of home automation solutions to update the real estate developers and visitors with the latest technologies in this growing industry, and the benefits it may provide to offices and homes at reasonable prices. Al Safar Group chairman Adel Al Safar said: "We are pleased to take part in the Gulf Property Show which is witnessing an increasing number of real estate developers and visitors every year. It provides an ideal opportunity to highlight the latest technologies in home and commercial automation." The event, which offers a specialised platform to showcase real estate development projects, is expected to attract over 7,000 visitors from Bahrain and the GCC, of which 20 per cent will be from Saudi Arabia. "Mecos is offering various solutions to businesses and homes that enable them to remotely control the environment inside the office or home as well as providing more security," noted Al Safar. "The company aims to provide the latest advanced technologies in home and office automation and to spread awareness regarding the benefits of using technology in saving energy, living conveniently and securely," he added. Mecos is one of the leading companies in Bahrain in homeautomation systems and security solutions. It also provides network video solutions and expertise in digital, IP and network video and analogue CCTV.-TradeArabia News Service Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced a sweeping reform plan on Monday that he said would transform the kingdom into a global investment power and wean the world's top oil exporter off crude by 2020. Prince Mohammed, a son of Saudi King Salaman who also serves as defence minister and head of the country's economic council, was giving his first nationally televised interview since his accession last year. The plan was a recognition that an economy based purely on energy can be vulnerable to external shocks. "I think by 2020, if oil stops we can survive," Prince Mohammed said. "We need it, we need it, but I think in 2020 we can live without oil." As part of his Vision 2030 reform plan, Prince Mohammed said the state-controlled Public Investment Fund had been restructured to become a hub for Saudi investment abroad, partly by raising money through sales of shares in national oil giant Saudi Aramco. "We restructured the fund. We included new assets in the fund, Aramco and other assets, and we fixed the problems of the current assets that the public investment fund owns, both in terms of companies and other projects," he said. "Initial data say the fund will have control over more than 10 percent of global investment capacity." A green card system would be launched within five years to enable expatriate Arabs and Muslims to live and work long-term in the country, Prince Mohammed said, in a major shift for the kingdom. Saudi Arabia's stock market recovered from early losses and rose in late trade on Monday as Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed outlined the reform plan. The stock index was up 2.2 per cent in late trade. Reuters Iran has reached an agreement with the German Federal State of Sachsen to develop cooperation and invest in agricultural projects, including the processing and supplementary industries, said a report. The arrangement was reached during a meeting between Irans Deputy Agriculture Minister Ali Akbar Mehrfard and German Minister of Agriculture and Environment Thomas Schmidt in Tehran, added the Iran Daily News report. During the meeting, Mehrfard noted Iran produces some 120 million tonnes of crops each year, adding that Germany could help boost the sector by transferring modern technology, it said. Schmidt said the two sides should work together to improve ties, noting that German companies and private sector seek trade and investment opportunities in Iran, particularly in food packaging and processing. He also invited private businesses to visit Germany to learn more about Sachsen's technical and scientific capacities, added the report. Dubai-based flydubais Cargo division recently received the award for Cargo Operator of the Year at the 10th annual Supply Chain and Transport Awards (Scata). The award recognised flydubai Cargos growth in the last year as it continued to provide increased accessibility to previously underserved markets and its use of electronic air waybills (e-AWB) throughout its operations, said a statement from the airline. The airlines cargo unit in 2015 increased its tonnage carried by 28.4 per cent from the previous year and provides cargo services to more than 85 destinations across its network. Interline agreements with other carriers provide access to more than 200 destinations around the world, it added. Flydubai Cargo is one of the few cargo operators that only uses electronic airway bills and in Dubai a fully automated warehouse storage facility and retrieval system enhances operations and transit times, it said. It has been recognised by the International Air Transport Association (Iata) as one of only five airlines in the world who process more than 75 per cent of its air waybills electronically, further added the statement. Hamad Obaidalla, chief commercial officer at flydubai, said: Our cargo unit has become an integral part of our business and we are delighted that it has been recognised for its strong performance last year. Despite a challenging trading environment, our company was able to grow its operations and its great to see this acknowledged in the industry, he said. Receiving this award is a great achievement and represents how far our company has come in such a short period of time. We look forward to continuing to provide effective cargo solutions for our customers, especially in previously underserved markets, he added. TradeArabia News Service US President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would do whatever he could to advance a controversial trade deal with the European Union in his last eight months in office, but warned that time was running short. Obama has pushed to complete two trade agreements before his term ends on Jan. 20 - with Pacific nations and with the EU - but has run into a growing swell of populist concerns about the impact on jobs, consumer protections and the environment. "Time is not on our side," he conceded to business leaders at the Hanover Messe, a massive industrial trade fair. "If we don't complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe would mean this agreement won't be finished for quite some time." Obama is in Germany to promote the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but the issue was overshadowed by discussions on the crises in Syria, Ukraine and Libya when the two leaders met. On Monday, they are set to hold talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on some of the same issues. But first, they had dinner in a 17th century palace with chief executives of some of the largest US and German companies such as Microsoft, Dow, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, BASF, Bayer and Siemens. Also at the dinner was Matthias Muller, CEO of Volkswagen, whose company has admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in the United States, a scandal that involves 11 million vehicles worldwide. POLITICAL CAPITAL Obama normally does not sit through lengthy opening ceremonies. But in a sign of the political capital he is spending on trade - and his affection for Merkel - he took a front row seat for an unusual interpretative dance performance featuring robots, futuristic music and acrobatic break-dancing. The day before Obama arrived, thousands of protesters holding placards with slogans like "Stop TTIP" marched to express their opposition to the deal, and his motorcade whizzed past a few more as he drove through the north German city. Obama acknowledged his message about the benefits of trade has not broken though. "The benefits oftentimes are diffuse, whereas a particular plant or business that feels it's been hurt by outside competition feels it very acutely," he told reporters. Obama said he hoped the deal, which supporters say could boost economies on each side of the Atlantic by $100 billion, would be agreed this year. But final ratification will take more time. The Trans Pacific Partnership is first in the queue for the US Congress, which is not clamoring to hold a final vote. Obama said that could change after the Democratic and Republican parties make their final selections of candidates this summer. "When we're in the heat of campaigns, people naturally are going to worry more about what's lost than what's gained with respect to trade agreements," he said. 'RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY' Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign tour where Obama has sought to shore up US alliances he views as important not only for the economy but also to defeat Islamic State militants and counter Russian intervention in Syria and Ukraine. "Strong growth in Europe is particularly important given the array of pressing challenges - whether it's security, defense, migration or refugees," Obama said. Obama came to Germany from London where he urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union in a closely-watched June referendum or face being at "the back of the queue" as a non-EU member hoping for a new trade deal with the US Earlier in the week, he met with Gulf leaders in Riyadh to try to allay fears that Washington had become less committed to their security, especially after the nuclear deal with Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia. Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. Merkel urged the parties participating in troubled peace talks in Geneva to agree to humanitarian zones where fleeing Syrians could feel safe from bombardment. She and Obama made clear that they did not favor the creation of classic "safe zones" which would need to be protected by foreign forces. Both leaders expressed concerns about ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine and said sanctions imposed against Russia following its 2014 intervention there, could not be eased if the situation on the ground did not improve. Ties between Washington and Berlin reached a low point three years ago following revelations of widespread surveillance of German citizens, including the bugging of Merkel's mobile phone, by the US National Security Agency. But in recent years, the two Cold War allies have patched things up. Obama praised Merkel for her "steady leadership" and handling of Europe's refugee crisis, saying her decision last year to welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany had put her "on the right side of history". He joked that Merkel, who lacks his easy-going charm, had a "really good sense of humour" even if it wasn't always on public display, drawing chuckles from the 61-year-old chancellor. Merkel refused to be drawn when asked whether she was concerned that she might soon have to work with Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, who has labeled her refugee policies "insane". She said only that she was watching the American election campaign "with interest". Reuters President Barack Obama plans to send as many as 250 more US troops to Syria, bringing the total American presence on the ground to 300 to help fight Islamic State militants, US officials said on Sunday. The decision, which a US official said would be announced in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed an April 1 Reuters report that the Obama administration was considering a significant increase in US forces. The additional deployment aims to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-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. While Obama has resisted putting US troops into Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people, he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria last year in what US officials described as a "counterterrorism" mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war. "He (Obama) intends to put in more ... forces to the tune of 250 in Syria," said one US official, adding he was unable to break down how many of those would be special operations forces and how many might be medical or intelligence support personnel. "The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said a second Obama administration official. Obama will announce the latest deployment during his 11:25 a.m. (0925 GMT) remarks at the Hanover Messe fairgrounds on Monday, that official said. MOMENTUM SHIFT? There are mounting indications the momentum in Iraq and Syria may have shifted against Islamic State. 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 from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Since US-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, US officials told Reuters in early April. Obama is in Hanover meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Monday, the two will be joined by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss Syria and other foreign policy issues. Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. But speaking at a news conference with Merkel, Obama said it would be very difficult to see how a so-called safe zone would work in Syria without a large military commitment. "The issue surrounding a safe zone in Syrian territory is not a matter of an ideological objection on my part," he said. "It's not a matter of me not wishing I could help and protect a whole bunch of people. It's a very practical issue about how do you do it?" Obama posed a number of questions about such a zone, including what country would "put a bunch of ground troops inside of Syria" after five years of civil war. Reuters Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced a sweeping reform plan on Monday that he said would transform the kingdom into a global investment power and wean the world's top oil exporter off crude by 2020. Prince Mohammed, a son of Saudi King Salaman who also serves as defence minister and head of the country's economic council, was giving his first nationally televised interview since his accession last year. The plan was a recognition that an economy based purely on energy can be vulnerable to external shocks. "I think by 2020, if oil stops we can survive," Prince Mohammed said. "We need it, we need it, but I think in 2020 we can live without oil." As part of his Vision 2030 reform plan, Prince Mohammed said the state-controlled Public Investment Fund had been restructured to become a hub for Saudi investment abroad, partly by raising money through sales of shares in national oil giant Saudi Aramco. "We restructured the fund. We included new assets in the fund, Aramco and other assets, and we fixed the problems of the current assets that the public investment fund owns, both in terms of companies and other projects," he said. "Initial data say the fund will have control over more than 10 percent of global investment capacity." A green card system would be launched within five years to enable expatriate Arabs and Muslims to live and work long-term in the country, Prince Mohammed said, in a major shift for the kingdom. - Reuters Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from Al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a major shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focused their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire between coalition forces and the Houthis has been in operation since April 10. In 48 hours, the coalition deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday that its offensive had killed 800 Al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 Al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said local clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the Al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighbouring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has prepared the ground for peace talks now under way in Kuwait. - Reuters The Police Band and traditional craftsmen in a ceremonyto bid farewell to the cruise ship Artania which docked in Bahrain. Cruise tourism soared by 28 per cent in Bahrain this year, compared with last year, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication, citing figures that showed a total of 122,182 cruise travellers visited Bahrain from November to April. To read further, please visit GDNonline. Reports that Bombardier is involved in launching an airline in Iran are inaccurate, the Canadian planemaker said on Sunday, although it confirmed it was in talks for sales as its executive chairman visited the country to drum up business. Bombardier executive chairman Pierre Beaudoin led a delegation of company aviation and rail executives to Iran last week, but no deal has been reached yet on sales with Iranian customers, company spokeswoman Marianella de la Barrera said on Sunday. Aviation Iran reported on Saturday that Bombardier signed a memorandum of understanding with officials from Iran's Qeshm Free Zone on establishing an airline. Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Qeshm Free Zone officials hoped to conclude a deal with Bombardier in the next two months on a project to set up an airline in the southern Qeshm island. De la Barrera said by phone that Bombardier did not plan to launch and run a new airline, but she could not say specifically whether the Montreal-based company was holding talks to sell planes to an Iranian start-up. "We build, market and sell aircraft and trains," she said. She said the company's talks in the country were progressing. "We are advancing in discussions," she said. "We are visiting more often." Bombardier's new CSeries passenger jet is years behind schedule, billions of dollars over budget and has won relatively few orders so far compared with its rivals. Canada said in February it was lifting some sanctions against Iran, allowing Bombardier to compete against planemakers Boeing and Airbus Group SE. A delegation from Boeing visited Iran earlier in April to discuss sales of jetliners, while its European rival, Airbus, agreed in January to sell Iran 118 planes worth about $27 billion at list prices. The nuclear agreement last year between Iran and six world powers allowed for the easing of some sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear programme. Reuters Dubai International Airport was named Best Airport in the Middle East at the Business Traveller Middle East Awards 2016 held at the Versace Palazzo in Dubai yesterday (April 24). The Best Airport in the Middle East category of the awards recognises the range and quality of services including check-in, transport connection and accessibility, security checks, luggage and customs as well as availability of meeting rooms, food and beverage and retail offerings. Dubai Airports continues to invest in state of the art facilities and services to elevate customer experience across our airports and provide passengers world class options for dining, shopping and relaxing. The recently opened $1.2 billion Concourse D is a shining example of our renewed focus on service quality and a customer-centric approach and this award is a timely validation of our efforts, said Anita Mehra, senior vice president, communications and reputation at Dubai Airports. Held in Dubai, the awards are adjudged based on the feedback from frequent flyers and Business Traveller readers, many of whom regularly fly through Dubai International. Concourse D features nine lounges, plenty of seating spaces, a wide range of food and beverage options including some world renowned names, such as The Kitchen by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, Pret a Manger, and Camden Food Company among others. The facility also offers 8,400-sq-m of walkthrough shopping area that merges with an open boarding gate system, and wellbeing concepts such as SnoozeCubes and Be Relax for the comfort of passengers. - TradeArabia News Service Abu Dhabi is set to host the worlds leading cruise line executives when they meet in the UAE capital for the return of the annual Seatrade Middle East Cruise Forum this December. The forum is being organised and managed by Seatrade, planners of cruise industry events worldwide, and brought to the emirate by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi). It is anticipated that the worlds leading cruise lines, including those which currently operate regional Arabian Gulf cruises such as Celebrity Cruises, MSC, Costa, AIDA, TUI, Cunard, Thomson Cruises and Royal Caribbean will gather at the Seatrade Middle East Cruise Forum, which takes place in the Desert Island Conference Centre, adjacent to Desert Islands Resort & Spa by Anantara on Sir Bani Yas Island from December 12 to 15. Abu Dhabi is making waves in the global cruise tourism sector and our hosting of the regions leading cruise development forum reflects the giant strides we have taken in recent years to develop the emirates cruise tourism appeal. We are immensely proud of the significant progress we have made in the three years since our last hosting of the event. Abu Dhabi now boasts a permanent cruise terminal which serves as a home porting venue for cruise lines, and has added the regions first beach stopover on Arabian Gulf cruise itineraries, said Saeed Al Dhaheri, cruise sector and city tour development manager at TCA Abu Dhabi. We will be working hand-in-hand with a number of strategic and supporting cruise sector partners to showcase Abu Dhabi to cruise industry decision-makers, and will work closely with Seatrade to ensure we attract a high calibre of delegates who share our ambitions and can identify the opportunities to fulfil the regions cruise tourism potential, added Al Dhaheri. The forum follows the emirates first hosting of the Middle East Cruise Forum in 2013 which identified and addressed crucial topics to enable cruising in the Arabia Gulf to develop and grow. We are delighted to be returning to Abu Dhabi and being able to showcase this magnificent emirate to the international cruise line executives that will fly in for the Forum. This is the seventh consecutive cruise forum which once again will show the commitment to promoting the region as an exciting cruise destination with more diverse shore excursions and itineraries planned for 2016 and onwards, said Chris Hayman, chairman of Seatrade, organisers of the Seatrade Middle East Cruise Forum. The forum will continue the conversation of key issues impacting the development of the Arabian Gulfs cruise industry a discussion debated between cruise line executives and regional governments and industry in a common goal to help the region grow its share of the global cruise marketplace. The two-day summit at the beachside Desert Islands Conference Centre brings together ministers, ports and immigrations officials with industry stakeholders, tourism authorities, global tour operators and other industries involved in the cruise tourism sector to discuss, debate and identify opportunities to stimulate the development of cruising in Abu Dhabi and the Arabian Gulf. Strategic delivery partners for the event include Etihad Airways, the UAEs national airline and Abu Dhabi Ports, Abu Dhabi Cruise Terminal operator and developer of the Sir Bani Yas Island beach destination. Peter Baumgartner, Chief Commercial Officer for Etihad Airways, said: Abu Dhabi is growing as an important cruise destination with more and more ships looking to home port in the emirate. Etihad Airways and Hala Abu Dhabi have been keen supporters of the new cruise terminal at Zayed Port and were playing a significant role flying thousands of visitors into Abu Dhabi to start their journey around the Arabian Gulf. While in addition, our destination management company, Hala Abu Dhabi, has also been assisting with ground arrangements and shore excursions for those incoming guests. Peter Baumgartner, Chief Commercial Officer for Etihad Airways, said: Abu Dhabi is growing as an important cruise destination with more and more ships looking to home port in the emirate. Etihad Airways and Hala Abu Dhabi have been keen supporters of the new cruise terminal at Zayed Port and were playing a significant role flying thousands of visitors into Abu Dhabi to start their journey around the Arabian Gulf. While in addition, our destination management company, Hala Abu Dhabi, has also been assisting with ground arrangements and shore excursions for those incoming guests. There has been a sixfold increase in Abu Dhabis cruise tourism arrivals since cruise operations began in 2006, with the 2015-16 season welcoming 228,000 passengers from 113 calls, as well as the return of home porting by MSC Cruises to the new Abu Dhabi Cruise Terminal at Zayed Port. We are eagerly waiting for this years Forum to share our success story during the just concluded cruise season and learn from the similar experiences across the globe. The unprecedented passenger traffic and highly efficient operations at Abu Dhabi Cruise Terminal, which already received praise from tourists and cruise operators, marked a grand beginning of a major landmark for cruise tourism in the Arabian Gulf, said Noura Al Dhaheri, Cruise Terminal Manager at Abu Dhabi Ports. The forums hosting also coincides with two significant milestones in Abu Dhabis 2016-17 cruise season, which is expected to deliver 250,000 passengers from 151 calls. Besides Abu Dhabi, the forum has previously been hosted in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Dubai who together with Abu Dhabi make up the Cruise Arabia alliance of regional Gulf cruise destinations and its return to Abu Dhabi reflects the events regional significance. The full conference programme, details of speakers and exhibitor information will be revealed on the event website www.seatradecruiseevents.com/middle-east. - TradeArabia News Service Saudi Arabian budget carrier Flyadeal, launched last week, aims to have up to 50 planes flying by 2020, a senior executive said on Monday. Flyadeal, a subsidiary of the state-controlled holding company that also owns national carrier Saudia, will fly both domestic and regional routes and is part of the kingdom's expansion of air services. It will begin services in mid-2017, operate 25-50 planes by 2020 and will obtain these via new leasing agreements or from sister airline Saudia, Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) director-general Saleh Al Jasser told reporters at a travel exhibition in Dubai. The new airline's fleet will be narrow-body aircraft, either the Airbus A320 or Boeing's 737, he said. "It will be leased aircraft," said Jasser, who will sit on Flyadeal's board. "We are assessing the options whether to transfer some of the order (by Saudia) that we have or to go through an RFQ (request for quotation)." Flyadeal could break even within 2-3 years, he predicted. Loss-making Saudia is being restructured with the aim of regaining profitability by 2020 so that it can list on Riyadh's bourse, Jasser said. "The listing, it's not yet decided when, maybe even earlier (than 2020)," said Jasser. He said the size of the stake to be floated had yet to be decided although when two of Saudia's units - Saudi Airlines Catering Company and Saudi Ground Services Company - went public, 30 per cent of their shares were sold to the public. Saudia has also begun the process to take its cargo division public. "We are working with investment banks. We will submit the files during this year and there's a process that will take some time," added Jasser, declining to reveal the cargo unit's valuation.-Reuters Wyoming energy producers are used to encountering opposition to planned developments. Less common are disagreements among the states largest energy industries. A pair of Wyoming coal companies are objecting to a Houston oil firms plans to drill 1,500 wells in the Powder River Basin. EOG Resources had submitted the proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for an environmental review in 2013. But Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy, two of the countrys largest coal companies, raised concerns over the proposal during an initial comment stage meant to define the limits of the BLMs study, saying the area identified by EOG overlaps mining leases in the region. Cloud Peaks objections were particularly pointed. EOGs project overlaps areas where the Gillette-mining firm has applied for and, in some instances, acquired leases, Cloud Peak wrote in public comments submitted to the BLM. The projects location would likely negatively impact Antelope Mines ability to advance the mining operation and to efficiently and properly recover federal coal resources and reclaim those coal lands as existing planning documents such as the Buffalo (Resource Management Plan) mandate, the company said, referring to the BLMs plan for guiding development in the area. How EOG intends to respond to those concerns was not immediately clear. A company spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. A Cloud Peak spokesman referred a reporter to the written remarks. BLM officials, for their part, said whichever company acquired federal leases first would get legal precedent. However, we rarely have any issues like that. Generally the industry people work it out, said Brady Owens, a spokesman for the bureaus High Plains District. The dispute comes at a time when energy development in the Powder River Basin has waned substantially. Coal output in the region is down by more than a third through the first three months of 2016, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, as producers curtail shipments in the face of weak market conditions. Cloud Peak is somewhat unique in that it is the sole company still actively pursuing new leases. Arch Coal and Peabody dropped plans for new leases in a bid to conserve cash. Peabody nevertheless raised doubts over EOGs plans, noting in its comments to the BLM that the proposal included areas designated for potential coal production. The BLM needs to identify the overlap issues between the various leases and permits, identify whether the overlaps can be avoided, and if not identify strategies they will use to manage possible conflicts, Peabody wrote. Oil development in the area has been similarly slow, though companies have continued to permit new projects at a rapid rate. Only one oil rig was active in the Powder River Basin during the week of April 22, according to Baker Hughes. Exploration and production firms have submitted 490 permits to drill to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission thus far in April, as firms jockey for prime drilling positions in anticipation of an eventual rise in crude prices. That is down from the 572 applications submitted the same month last year, but more than the 417 applications filed in April of 2014. Federal environmental reviews, a separate process from drilling permit applications, are lengthy endeavors. The BLM released a final environmental review of the Continental Divide-Creston project, which encompasses plans for nearly 9,000 natural gas wells in southwestern Wyoming, after almost a decade last week. Widespread development of new wells there is not expected at present because of low natural gas prices. In EOGs case, the BLM will now use the initial public comments to inform a draft study. Public comment will be accepted on that draft before a final edition is completed. 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. NARFE social set Casper Chapter No. 358 of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) will have a no-host social meeting at noon. The meeting will be held in the meeting room at the Casper Senior Center, 1831 W. Fourth St. Petroleum ladies meet The Ladies of the Petroleum Club will hold their April luncheon in the banquet room. Miss V, the Gypsy Cowbelle, will entertain us with singing and playing her homemade plank banjo. Her music is rustic, heartfelt and timeless. Miss V has produced five CDs and a documentary. The telephone committee will call for reservations. If you have not been called and wish to attend, please call Metta Martin at 235-1044 or Mary Walford at 237-8191. Large carnivore seminar The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is encouraging people to attend a free public workshop titled Living in Large Carnivore Country. The workshop will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Casper Regional Game and Fish office. Anyone who spends time in bear and lion country is encouraged to attend. Weve found that there are a lot of people who may not be sure how they should react if confronted by a bear or mountain lion, said Cody Bish, East Casper Game Warden with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. These workshops provide people with good, practical information on how to prevent conflicts and what to do in an encounter with one of these large carnivores. Last year, we had a young black bear visit the outskirts of town, so it is also a good idea to know what to do in these situations. The workshop is designed to focus on how to avoid conflicts with large carnivores while recreating. Seminars are free and open to people of all ages and skill levels. For more information, people may contact Janet Milek at 307-233-6404 or at janet.milek@wyo.gov. Intro zoological illustration class The Tate Geological Museum will host a scientific illustration class taught by the museums illustrator and Tate education specialist, Russell Hawley from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Introduction to Zoological Illustration will take those attending on a dive into the art and science of zoological illustration while they learn tips and strategies for making animal drawings more accurate and realistic, said Hawley. Students will be provided with several drawing exercises to familiarize themselves with some of the fundamentals of animal structure and posture, according to Hawley. The cost is $5 per person and the fee includes drawing supplies, but students are quite welcome to bring their own favorite media, Hawley added. Refreshments will also be served and at the end of the class students can peruse my library of animal and drawing books and experiment with their own illustrative approaches, said Hawley. Seating is limited and reservations are requested by calling the museum at 268-2447. The Tate Geological Museum is on the Casper College campus. Family Movie Night Both families and individuals of all ages are invited to the Natrona County Public Librarys Family Movie Night at 6:30 p.m. in the Crawford Room. Aprils feature (rated PG) is set in the mind of Riley, a young girl whose five personified emotions Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust try to lead her through life as her parents move the family from Minnesota to San Francisco. Pizza will be provided by the Friends of the Library. Call 577-READ, ext. 2, or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for the movie title. Teen Book Club A young adult book discussion, sponsored by the Natrona County Public Library, will be held at 6:30 p.m. at Metro Coffee Co. This months novel is The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. The group is open to teens in grades nine through 12. Participants receive a free drink, courtesy of the Friends of the Library. To participate, pick up a copy of The Naturals in the librarys Teen Zone. The Teen Book Club meets the fourth Tuesday of every month and new members are always welcome. Call 577-READ, ext. 101, or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information. JACKSON One of the oldest bald eagles captured in Wyoming has been euthanized. Officials at the Teton Raptor Center say the eagle was not healing after being treated for injuries believed suffered when the bird hit a power line. Wildlife officials say a band showed the bald eagle was about 34 years old. Rehabilitation coordinator Meghan Warren said the eagles wounds were having trouble healing after she had been captured flightless in March across the highway from the National Elk Refuge. The wounds might not have healed, Warren said, and if they did heal, it would probably have taken months and months of painful rehabilitation to get to that point. Warren also said the bird was having difficulty eating and was losing strength. A portion of the eagles right wing had to be removed because it wasnt getting enough blood. We decided the most humane option for her would be to give her a dignified and humane death, Warren said. She was so stoic and resilient throughout her entire rehab that for the majority of the time we were really hopeful that this was going to be successful, Warren said. Bald eagle populations have grown in recent years, wildlife officials say. The species is now considered recovered after being protected for a long time under the the Endangered Species Act. The birds body was shipped to the National Eagle Repository near Denver, where her feathers and other body parts will be distributed to Native American tribes. Natrona Countys budget will be short about 14 percent for next year, initial estimates show, and commissioners arent sure yet where to cut. The decrease amounts to some $6.4 million, with much of it attributed to lower property and sales and use taxes. County budget officials are projecting about $39.4 million in income in 2017, compared to $45.8 million that was estimated for 2016. Commission Chairman Forrest Chadwick emphasized the figures were the first estimates before two months of county budget deliberations, and the amounts could change. One major uncertainty is whether Congress will approve federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes funding for 2017. The money is given to local governments to offset revenue lost because federal land is not taxed. About half of Natrona County is federally owned, and it received some $3.2 million in 2016, about 8 percent of its operating budget. We just dont know what the federal government is going to do on that, Chadwick said, while noting a $2 million figure was entered for 2017 budgeting purposes. Meanwhile, the county has seen property tax revenues drop from an estimated $20.6 million in 2016, to an estimated $18 million for the coming year. Sales and use taxes are also expected to decline from $10.2 million to $7.6 million. Weve had two or three months in a row now that the sales taxes have been at that level, 25 to 27 percent (down), Chadwick told the commission. I would say in the next few months it might get worse, because weve seen more layoffs here, remarked Commissioner Rob Hendry. Natrona Countys current unemployment rate is 7.2 percent, one of the highest in the state. The commission also discussed how to approach budget cuts. Commissioner Matt Keating asked if they would be across the board, or made on a priority basis. I honestly think were going to have to prioritize, Keating said. It was four weeks ago I had three really, really, nice ladies who work at the library ask me about the budget, and I just flat out told them, I said, Well look, were going to have to prioritize, and Im not too optimistic about where were going, but I truly value a (sheriffs) deputy more than I do your computers. Earlier this year, the county asked all department leaders to look at 10 percent budget cuts. It was anticipated any personnel reductions would come through attrition, though that may now change. I dont think weve grown like the state has, for sure, said Hendry. But I think we have just over 300 employees, and I think weve been that way for a long timeso we have been pretty prudent, but we have to talk about that. The demand for services is, for obvious reasons, going to lessen, Chadwick noted in the discussion. There will be some ability therefore for them to make adjustments in their budgets, and were already seeing those things happen. Well see what they come to us with. The commissions department budget hearings will run from May 10 through June 14. A final budget will be ready by July 5. I see 17 as a transitional year, said Chadwick. We could be off another 9, or 10, or 12 percent, next year, we just dont know. That wouldnt surprise me. SHERIDAN Officials from the Wyoming Attorney General's Office held a conference call Monday with officials in Montana to discuss a solution to an ongoing conflict over water rights along the Tongue River. The talks were scheduled after the U.S. Supreme Court approved a recommendation by a special master finding Wyoming liable for taking Montana water in 2004 and 2006. The amount of water involved is relatively small, but Montana wants guidelines that Wyoming must follow in the future when Montana calls for water to be released under provisions of the Yellowstone River Compact. Montana said there were violations in other years, but the court found Wyoming was only at fault in two drought years. Now the two sides must agree what issues are at stake, how those issues will be resolved and how long it will take. Barton Thompson, the special master appointed to the case, said the agreement will probably have limits and Montana won't get all it wants. "They're asking for those things," Brown said at a presentation for state officials Thursday. "I don't think they're going to get them." Montana has already asked Wyoming to respond to its requests for water within five days and Wyoming has complied. Brown said the agreement for response time is only a verbal agreement. Brown also expects Montana to ask for money for damages from crop losses. So far, Wyoming has only agreed to pay about $36,000 for the water it took for those two years. If the two sides cannot reach an agreement and the case goes to trial, the dispute could continue into next year. CHEYENNE Jails are not known for their lavish accommodations, and the room where the women of G Pod do their work is no exception. Situated on the ground floor of the Laramie County Detention Center, the room is as spartan as the plain coveralls the women wear: dingy white with gray trim, buzzing fluorescents overhead, the lone television set a dead, black rectangle. Yet amid the dreary setting is a cornucopia of color: pastel pinks, greens and purples, bold Old Glory red, white and blue, all arrayed in shapes like stars, stripes, checkers, diamonds and hearts. Its those splashes of color, the women say, that help them get through their day. And more and more groups across the city have been coming to appreciate them as well, as theyre assembled into beautiful quilts and donated to charity. The jails quilting program is exclusive to the women of G Pod. It was launched three years ago by Laramie County Sheriffs Deputy Rick Watson as a sort of revival of an earlier program. They selected me as the inmate labor director, and going around, I found these quilts that had been made years ago, along with some sewing machines, Watson said. I started donating the quilts to Needs Inc., and they started giving me more materials, so I had my girls keep making more. Each woman is carefully screened to ensure they can work around needles, scissors and other sharp objects without cause for concern. And for those who are approved for the program, it has become a privilege they relish. Most of us work in the kitchen here, and when we get out, well jump straight into quilting, seven days a week, said G Pod member Jessica Jimenez, 33. Jimenez has been at the jail for about a month now; she was arrested on a bond violation and is still awaiting a resolution to her case. She finds quilting is not only a good way to pass the time, but also a way to bond with fellow inmates and to grow as a person. It helps them build self-esteem, pride in themselves, Watson said as he watched the group work this past Tuesday. Theyre proud of their work. On that particular day, Jimenez was working alongside Sue Frerich, an outside volunteer with Cheyenne Heritage Quilters, who has been leading a quilting class at the jail for about a year and a half. As she surveyed her students work, Frerich noted many of the women who take part in the program begin with little experience, but demonstrate great potential that comes out as they build their skills. More often than not, theyll tell me, I havent sewed since the seventh grade, Frerich said. And its fun to see some of the creativity that comes out of them. They just amaze me from one week to another. Take Jimenezs latest quilt, for example: Its one of four patriot-themed quilts she has made over the last few weeks, and its festooned with red-and-white stripe designs, pinwheeling blue star shapes and patriotic images, all entirely unique to the quilt, yet keeping in theme with the three others shes designed. Theyre of a quality that would fit in at any craft show, said sheriffs Detective Don Heiduck, who has been working to publicize the jail quilting program. Weve ended up with some really nice ones. Weve auctioned some of them off to our employees and given the proceeds to other organizations, and Ive started checking the local community for where we think these could be best used. Last year, the inmates produced Christmas quilts for patients at the Cheyenne Veterans Affairs Medical Center. This time around, Jimenez said the goal is to get 25 patriot-themed quilts done in time for Memorial Day so they may be given to terminally ill veterans as a final salute to their service. Whats so neat about this is, the fact of the matter is we have a number of veterans who may have spent time in jail, and its that particular connection that I think is important to them, said Cheyenne VAMC spokesman Samuel House. Our veterans love these gifts. And I think for these inmates, if what theyre doing is helping them get through their own healing, and for them to come out of it a more well-rounded individual, knowing the time they spent actually helped to benefit someone, I think thats important as well. Along with Needs Inc. and the VAMC, Heiduck said inmate-made quilts have also been donated to Laramie County Head Start, STRIDE Learning Center and several local nursing homes. Both he and Watson would like to donate to more organizations, but they say theyre currently limited. But thats not due to the womens skills with nothing but time on their hands, some G Pod members can crank out three quilts in a single day. Rather, it comes down to a lack of raw materials. Though Needs Inc. has helped some, Watson and Heiduck said the quilting program relies mostly on individual donations from folks in the community. Batting (the material that goes inside the quilts) is the hardest thing to get, Watson said. I usually have to pay for that out of pocket. Were always looking for more, and were taking almost anything, Heiduck added. For the VA, theyre working on patriotic-type quilts, so anything that looks red, white and blue will work, along with any type of batting that goes into the quilts. Though most of their work ends up either donated or auctioned off, the women of G Pod do enjoy one additional benefit in that each gets to make one quilt for herself or, more often, her children. Laci Watters, 32, who was arrested in late February for a probation violation, said she has fashioned plenty of quilts for Head Start so far, but shes been holding off on making one for her own two kids. Instead, shes waiting until shes released to put her new-found skills to work. I just cant give one something and not the other, Watters said. So Im thinking, when I get out Ill take them both to the store and have them pick the fabric out. That way I can make one for each of them. GREELEY, Colo. The University of Northern Colorado is investigating 44 bias-motivated incidents on campus over the past year. The incidents range from students saying "gay" if they mean "bad" to students criticizing the university's campus salon for not meeting the needs of students of color. UNC describes bias as any verbal, nonverbal or written behavior toward an individual or group based upon actual or perceived identity characteristics including, but not limited to: race, religion, faith or spirituality, national origin, sexual orientation, ethnicity and gender. To help combat bias-motivated incidents the university has developed a Bias Response Team, which works to report bias-related incidents, mediate discussions between offended parties and the person who offended them and to educate the campus about bias and how to avoid it. SHERIDAN Officials from the Wyoming Attorney General's Office are holding a conference call Monday with officials in Montana to discuss a solution to an ongoing conflict over water rights along the Tongue River. The discussions were scheduled after the U.S. Supreme Court approved a recommendation by a special master finding Wyoming liable for taking Montana water in 2004 and 2006. The two sides must agree how those issues will be resolved and how long it will take. The amount of water involved is relatively small, but Montana wants guidelines that Wyoming must follow in the future when Montana calls for water to be released under provisions of the Yellowstone River Compact. That agreement regulates the administration of water rights on rivers in the Yellowstone River tributary. HANNOVER, Germany President Obama mounted a strong defense of international trade deals Sunday in the face of domestic and foreign opposition, saying its indisputable that such agreements strengthen the economy and make U.S. businesses more competitive worldwide. But he acknowledged that the clock is ticking on his faltering trade agenda. Obama, on a farewell visit to Germany as president, is trying to light a fire under stalled talks about a trans-Atlantic trade deal, a massive pact that would rewrite the rules for the billions in trade and investment between the European Union and the U.S. At a press conference, a trade show and a private dinner with chief executives, Obama tried to counter public skepticism about the unfinished deal with Europe, while also brushing off opposition from the 2016 presidential candidates to a pending Asia-Pacific trade pact. Despite all that, Obama said, the majority of people still favor trade. They still recognize, on balance, that its a good idea. If you look at the benefits to the United States or to Germany of free trade around the world, it is indisputable that it has made our economies stronger, Obama said. The president said he was confident negotiations on the trans-Atlantic trade deal could be completed by the end of year, with ratification to follow. And he said that once the U.S. presidential primary season is over and politics settle down, the trans-Pacific pact, awaiting ratification, can start moving forward in Congress. Obama is pushing to conclude negotiations on the European deal before he leaves office, so that next president can pick that up rapidly and get that done, he told the BBC in an interview broadcast Sunday. But its not certain that the next president would pick up where Obama leaves off on trade. The trans-Atlantic pact has not been a top issue in the campaign to choose Obamas successor. And both leading candidates Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump oppose the Asia-Pacific trade pact for its potential impact on American jobs and wages. Obama isnt alone in facing opposition on trade. His host and partner on the daylong campaign, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also is under pressure from critics who claim the trans-Atlantic deal would erode environmental standards and consumer protections. Thousands of people took to the streets in Hannover to protest the trade deal on the eve of Obamas arrival. Throughout the day, Obama and Merkel stressed their alignment on trade, as well as other matters. At a press conference, Obama made a strong public show of support for her handling of the migrant issue, saying she was on the right side of history on this. Her decision to allow the resettlement in Germany of thousands fleeing violence in Syria and other Mideast conflict zones has created an angry domestic backlash. Merkel recently helped European countries reach a deal with Turkey to ease the flow, but she and the other leaders are now under pressure to revisit it. Obama said Merkel was giving voice, I think, to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them. But Obama would not go so far as to back her support for establishing a safe zone in Syrian territory, saying that would be difficult to put in place. As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country, he said. And that requires a big military commitment. Merkel has endorsed the notion of creating areas that could provide safe haven for the thousands of migrants fleeing the violence, and said such zones would improve access to humanitarian aid. She insisted the proposal would not require outside intervention, saying safe areas should be part of the Geneva peace negotiations that involve the Syrian government and moderate opposition groups. AERZEN, Germany President Obama will send an additional 250 military personnel to Syria to help local forces fighting the Islamic State group, increasing to 300 the number of U.S. forces battling extremists in the war-torn country, administration officials confirmed Sunday. Obama was expected to announce his decision Monday during a speech in Hannover, Germany, at the close of a weeklong trip, where IS was a focus of his meetings with world leaders in Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and Germany. The move will significantly increase the U.S. presence in Syria and comes a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of a similar number of troops to Iraq, where Islamic State militants also control territory. About 50 U.S. special operations forces are already operating in Syria. Most of the additional 250 personnel will also be special operations forces, largely Army Green Berets. The group will also include an unknown number of medical and logistical troops to provide them with support. Senior U.S. officials have been touting the success of the forces in Syria, including their ability to generate critical intelligence that gives the U.S.-led coalition a better view of what is happening on the ground, including efforts to target insurgents. In a sign of Obamas reluctance to use force, Mondays announcement will cap a trip during which the president advocated diplomacy over military intervention. Asked last week whether he planned to increase special operations forces in Syria, Obama did not answer directly. But he said hed had discussions with an adviser about options should a fragile cease-fire break down. None of the options are good, he said in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. It has been my view consistently that we have to get a political solution inside of Syria and that all the external actors involved have to be committed to that as well as the actors inside of Syria. ... The sooner we can end fighting and resolve this in a political fashion, the better. Obama has said he remains opposed to large-scale U.S. military intervention in either Iraq or Syria. But he has incrementally deepened U.S. involvement in both countries. The increase of U.S. troops in Syria has been discussed for weeks, including rumblings last week when Carter announced sending an additional 217 U.S. troops to Iraq, the first major increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in nearly a year. Eight Apache helicopters were also being sent to Iraq for the first time to help fight against the Islamic State group there. Both moves were carried out to help Iraqi forces as they prepare to retake the key northern city of Mosul. The deployment brought the total authorized troop total to just more than 4,000. Obama re-entered Iraq in June 2014 with an initial contingent of 170 soldiers serving Iraqi forces as advisers, in response to Islamic State territorial seizures. PHOENIX Republican leaders of the Arizona House and Senate spent long hours in the past week behind closed doors with Gov. Doug Duceys representatives hashing out details of a budget deal that could be revealed as early as Monday. House Speaker David Gowan and Senate President Andy Biggs and their appropriations chairs met every day last week as they sought to iron out differences between the chambers and the governor. Many House and Senate Republicans are hoping an acceptable deal can get the needed 31 and 16 votes to make its way to Ducey by the end of the week. But theres a considerable number of majority Republicans in the House who say they will resist a rushed deal after feeling burned by last years quick budget passage. One of those is Chandler Rep. Jeff Weninger. He said late last week hes holding out until he reads and understands the entire package and sees that it meets the needs of residents he represents. Theres some key issues that I think need addressed that my constituents are concerned about, Weninger said. And those will have to be addressed. And Im going to hold out until I am fully briefed and fully read everything in the budget. Weningers position is shared by a broad group of House Republicans minority Democrats are essentially left out of budget negotiations because they went along with their leaders last year and signed off on a tight budget package that cut spending on universities, kept K-12 funding essentially flat and included tax cuts. But a month after the March 2015 passage of that package and the Legislatures adjournment, news emerged that the states revenues had surged. Ducey this year is also proposing a relatively tight budget package. The $9.5 billion spending plan in January mainly leaves in place much of a nearly $500 million budget surplus. House Republicans want to add to Duceys spending proposals on universities, K-12 education and local roadbuilding efforts, and many also want to restore a health-care program for low-income children known as KidsCare. Whether all those items make it into the agreed-upon budget is yet to be seen. Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said if a deal can be worked out by Monday its quite possible to have the budget done by the end of the week. But, he noted, there are concerns that the House may have added on things for their members that might not fly in the Senate. We were skeptical. When The Rogue Theatre announced Cynthia Meier was adapting Thornton Wilders novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey for the stage, it seemed, well, impossible. But then, Meier, the companys co-founder, had adapted William Faulkners As I Lay Dying, and Virginia Woolfs short stories in The Lady in the Looking Glass. Both had seemed impossible. And both wowed. Still, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wilder book is deeply personal to so many. Including this writer. Thus the skepticism. But moments into the production, which opened Saturday, April 23, it was clear that Meiers respect for, and love of, the material vibrated. The first line uttered is the first line of the book: On Friday noon, July the 20th, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below. We knew we were in good hands. Almost all the words were Wilders if Meier used any of her own, it was hard to distinguish them. While the story is packed with drama, it was hard to imagine how it could be translated to the stage. It is about a man of the cloth, Brother Juniper, who examined the lives of the five who plunged to their deaths, expecting to prove that God had a plan. The book is divided into sections detailing their lives and Brother Junipers findings. It took a mind well-tuned to storytelling and the powerful magic of theater to figure out how to adapt this while keeping its soul. And that is what Meier has done. She left the stories separate, but made it clear how the lives intertwined. She incorporated much of Wilders dialogue. She spread the narrative throughout the cast, giving it a rhythm and clarity that was surprising. Joseph McGrath directed the ensemble of actors, who were almost always on stage, sitting in the background if they were not in the scene. He made use of pantomime which can be annoying, but in this instance helped illuminate the story. And he brought a compelling flow to the production. This troupe of actors many of whom likely never heard of the 1927 book clearly embraced the tale and its varied and fascinating characters. But most of all, they got the heart of the tale. This was truly an ensemble effort, with most everyone playing several roles. Still, there were a few who stood out, especially Kathryn Kellner Brown in her role as the Marquesa Dona Maria, a woman who was ugly, lonely, and cursed with a boundless, suffocating love for a daughter who wanted little to do with her. Kellner twisted her body and her face to an unrecognizable point as she crawled into the characters skin. The suffering and longing oozed out of her. And when her characters physical maladies occasionally faded away at times when she spoke of or wrote to her daughter we realized the beauty of the character. Marissa Garcias Camila Perichole, an actress with a cold heart and many admirers, commanded attention whenever she danced or sang or spoke. Her face revealed the characters cold heart and shallow nature. But when pain rocks her, and insight comes to her, her face told us of that, too. Meier has a triumph here. McGrath and the company of actors do as well. The book is wonderful; this adaptation makes it dance off the page and on to the stage. Do not let skepticism keep you away. Three Tucson teens have been named Flinn Scholars and will receive scholarships valued at more than $115,000 each. As winners of the 2016 Flinn Scholarship, Cameron Carver of Sabino High School, Martha Kiela of Basis Tucson North and Maggie Zheng of University High School will have the cost of their tuition covered at one of the states three universities, funding for room and board, support for at least two study abroad experiences and an off-campus internship, along with university faculty mentorship and other benefits. Twenty scholars were selected from across the state out of 761 applications submitted. The typical Flinn Scholar achieves at least a 3.5 grade-point average, a top-5 percent class rank, a score of 1300 on the SAT or 29 on the ACT, and participation and demonstrated leadership in extracurricular activities. CFHS senior selected to attend science camp A Catalina Foothills High School senior has been selected as Arizonas delegate to the National Youth Science Camp. Jack Burgess along with a student from Phoenix will take part in the summer program held in West Virginia where they will exchange ideas with scientists and professionals from the academic and corporate worlds. Lectures and hands-on research projects will also be presented by scientists from across the country and delegates will take part in seminars on their own areas of research and interest. Burgess will be attending Dartmouth College in the fall. Scholarships to help 7 pursue art education Seven students from four high schools here were awarded scholarships by the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild this month to further their art education. The winners submitted samples of their work and were judged on visual impact, design and composition, creativity and originality, technical skill and presentation. The winners: Emma Bayne of Canyon del Oro High School was awarded the $1,000 Shirley Hamilton Scholarship Naomi Chandran of CDO was awarded the $1,000 Laura Hollander Scholarship Kayley Manuel of University High School received the $1,000 Award of Excellence Scholarship Mackinzi Blank of UHS was awarded the $750 Lois McDonald Scholarship Karena Gonzales of Ironwood Ridge High School was awarded the $750 Award of Excellence Scholarship Madeline Penna of CDO received the $750 Award of Excellence Scholarship The Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild is a community of water media artists recognized for excellence in their work, promotion of art education and the advancement of water media in Southern Arizona. Mountain View excels at leadership event Mountain View High School Early Childhood Education students earned top marks at a statewide leadership conference last month. The students took home four gold medals, three silver medals and one bronze medal at the FCCLA Family, Career and Community Leaders of America 2016 Arizona Leadership Conference. Olivia Andreatta took home gold and qualified for the national conference in Washington, D.C., in July in the teach and train category. Ashley Ortega and Nancy Weiler earned gold medals and qualified for nationals in the advocacy category. In the area of Focus on Children, Kayla Moore earned gold and Emily Prevedello received bronze. Ivanna Ortega took home silver in the category of career investigation. In the job interview category, Alysee Barney earned silver and was named a national conference alternate. Raleigh Kmet also earned a silver medal. Saint Ambrose kinder roundup set for May 3 Saint Ambrose Catholic School is hosting a kindergarten roundup on May 3. Prospective students and families will have an opportunity to visit the campus, 300 S. Tucson Blvd., between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Families are encouraged to schedule a time to come by in advance as students will also have to take a placement test. To make an appointment, call 882-8678. Scholarships for the private school are available. A family of three was displaced after a fire erupted in their south-side mobile home early Sunday afternoon. The family called Tucson Fire Department at 12:25 p.m. after a 22-year-old male resident smelled smoke inside the home at the 400 block of East Corona Road, states a TFD press release. After discovering a fire in the middle bedroom, he tried to use a fire extinguisher to put it out. But the fire was too large, so he was forced to evacuate the home along with a 19-year-old female and a 16 month old baby. When firefighters arrived at the scene four minutes later, they saw smoke and flames coming out of the bedroom window. The crew extinguished the fire by spraying water through the window onto the ceiling so it would act like a sprinkler. Members of the crew, which was 23 firefighters strong, then entered the home and installed a high-powered fan to blow the smoke out. The fire was under control within 15 minutes, the press release says. No firefighters were injured. The family will receive help from the Red Cross because the damages to the mobile home left it beyond repair. Investigators are still working to determine the cause of the fire. OPINION: "As a parent and teacher, I know the best way to address discord is to listen first and establish trust. As a neighborhood leader, I know how to work through differences by treating people with dignity and respect. As a mathematics teacher, I always taught my students that there is more than one way to solve problems," writes Theresa Riel, a candidate for the District 2 seat on the Pima Community College Governing Board. Help India! By Md. Sajjad, Aligarh Muslim University is once again closed sine die. Students arose in protest on October 26th, 2009 following the killing of a student outside the campus the night before. As about almost every previous agitation/forced closure, the latest campus closure that begain on October 31st is also sine die. If assured of anonymity, significantly large number of the insiders would share the secret that the student agitation in AMU is basically an outcome of the fierce rivalry between the warring groups of teachers. Support TwoCircles The turmoil and agitation on the AMU campus is sadly a recurrent phenomenon, which makes it a focus of controversy. It can only be understood by dissecting the politics of internal power struggle in AMU. Does it have anything to do with: (a) the enormity of the size of the boarding students? (Of the total of over 32000 students, about 17000 live in the hostels, probably the biggest residential one-campus university), (b) form and content of the teaching, which does not help the students in developing critical, questioning capabilities and abhorring all kinds of chauvinist world-views (c) Recruitment/ promotion policy, (d) admission policy, (e) lethargic, biased, weak, inefficient, corrupt administration? Quite often, the student agitations in AMU are believed to be engineered by one or the other group of politicking teachers. Niraj Roy, in a different context of 1981, had precisely said the same thing that the AMU students are the pawns of the self-seekers (Indian Express, July 19, 1981; for different views on the 1981 agitation see, Asghar Ali Engineer, Trouble at AMU, EPW, August 15, 1981, among many others). Urdu periodicals, memoirs/ autobiographies (mostly of insiders) have great many interesting and revealing details, pertaining to the affairs of AMU through the ages. Vested interests As rightly observed by an alumnus and distinguished IAS officer, local factors, particularly vested petty interests have always played major de-stabilizing role in the affairs of the university. This time, the factionalism and polarization has become even more evident in the various meetings of the Executive Council (EC, 2007-09), practically the highest decision making body of AMU, which has got about 26 members in all, of which a good number is ex officio, handpicked by the V.C.; rest is nominated by the Visitor (President of the Indian Republic)/ Union government. Only four are directly elected by the teachers: two by the Lecturers, and remaining two by the Readers & Professors jointly. Are the factions really concerned about corruption in administration or they are fighting for their own shares/ kickbacks in the contracts for constructions and purchase? It is necessary to probe this question. The ongoing enquiry by the committee led by Justice Fakhruddin may probably be examining it. This is also almost a pattern in the history of AMU that allegations, counter-allegations and exposes of corruption often accompany (or result into) turmoil, indiscipline and upsurges. This hypothesis is exemplified, among few others, by the Shaikh Abdullah Committee Report (1926) and consequent Ibrahim Rahimatoola Committee Report (October 1927), AMU Official Enquiry Report (1961, was it called Chatterjee Committee?), Justice Mathew Report (1998, made public only in March 2007, and taking no action against those indicted) and the ongoing Justice Fakhruddin Committee (2009). Students movements If the teachers/ officers (Karmacharis) are going to be exposed by these reports then why do the turmoil in the university invariably manifests through student agitations? Is there really a link between the discomfiture of the teachers/ officers and those of the students? Insiders would almost certainly give an affirmative answer to this. Arguably, in AMU there has never been a student movement (let alone its autonomous character) of long term vision and dynamics, not even on the issue of minority status during 1965-81 (Violette Graff, EPW, 11 August, 1990). There have only been sporadic, spontaneous, short-lived upsurges; and relief distribution among the Muslim victims of communal riots, at times inviting allegations of embezzlement of the relief fund by the office-bearers of the Students Union [Besides some outbursts on emotive issues like Muslim personal law, Urdu, Babri Masjid etc.]. Quite often, replacement of some teacher-administrators was the only important demand of the agitating students. They however, hardly demand any change in the principles and style of functioning of these administrators. In the early 1990s, this phenomenon had become much recurrent, when the pliant VC (1990-94) invariably succumbed to the demands of the student leaders whose influence on and accessibility to the VC (and other high functionaries) had reached such a menacing limit that the student-leaders could decide the recruitment/ promotion of the teachers, teacher-administrators and other functionaries (I. H. Siddiqui, Tahzibul Akhlaq, Sir Syeds Death Centenary Number, 1998). These observations may not be telling us everything we want to know, but they do illustrate some critical features in which the system called AMU works. Isolation syndrome In the 1960s [and the subsequent decades], large number of the Indian university campuses were agitating on the issues like unemployment, rural poverty, economic inequality, land reforms, atrocities against Dalits & minorities, social justice, civil liberty, social composition of the structures of power etc. It was an era of worldwide student politics, but in northern India particularly, [politically] committed vice chancellors with their handpicked aides and advisors took charge (Rudolph & Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, Chicago, 1987, p. 290, 302). The AMU students movements however preferred to remain largely oblivious of all these issues. This isolation syndrome of AMU (Muslim educated youth in a secular democracy) awaits deep academic exploration. An unpublished brilliant essay on AMU, 1909-65 by Prof. Hameeduddin Khan (1893-1974?) , informs us that the void (created by the teachers who migrated to Pakistan), was largely filled by the Left leaning teachers, whose influence in the power-structure of AMU enhanced particularly with the AMU Amendment Act of 1965. Could they help radicalizing the outlook, orientation of the campus life? How and why did the Islamist student outfits emerge on the campus? How did all these outfits look at the society and state of India? Or did they also turn into another groups of vested interests? Sadly, many respondents would say yes. Another student group, Forum for Democratic Rights (FDR) made its presence felt on the campus during 1994-99, got a tremendous mandate in the students union elections of Jan-Feb. 1999, and tried to break the isolation syndrome by connecting with the larger world of progressive had they got the backing ideas, but its ex-activists would tell us that massive administrative repression was one of the most important causes of their decimation. All vested interests, they would say, got united against the FDR. In retrospect they realise that of a group of teachers, they would have not been decimated so easily, but in that case they too would have ended up as another vested interests. Teacher-Officer-Student nexus Arguably, it is perhaps because of the teacher-officer-student nexus that the VCs are often compelled to resort to populism, yet, at the end of the day, feel helpless in dealing with the turmoil. To complete their tenures, the VCs depend upon the various internal lobbies for local support. Depending upon the situation and whims, the VCs have to decide which clique to be avoided/ antagonized and support of which to be enlisted. The clique closer to the VC will have greater following as prospects of extracting due/undue favours look bright to the followers. If the person of the VC lacks the tact, integrity, firmness and the qualities like that, are more prone to fall prey to such cliques. It therefore becomes necessary to explore the manner in which such lobbies come into being, the manner in which leadership of such lobbies is acquired and exercised. Brass analyzes that the manipulative leadership emerges through: (a) The politics of patronage which involves mutual dependency and the politicians build their power by diabolic cultivation of linkages from top to bottom through bargaining, compromise and exchange, accompanying jobbery, demagoguery and populism. Aggregating power from the bottom up enhances the importance of the local actors/ factions, because of a symbiotic relation between the top power and local brokers. Unscrupulous inbreeding through infamous Local Selection Committees, and recommendations of three (each year) such committees placed them till further order (TFO), making them virtually permanent employee. It also taxed the academics of the meritorious ones. (Syed Shahabuddin, Editorial, Muslim India, July 2000). Of late, the relatively strict insistence of the UGC-NET could put only some restraint on illegal recruitments at the entry level of lecturers. Presumably, the exercise of the RTI Act 2005 might also be creating some check on fearless violation of the rules. Reckless, populist promotions, without taking care of research publications in reputed peer-reviewed journals are arguably one of the greatest banes of AMU. These (mal) practices have particularly fattened the vested interests. (b) The politics of crisis which plays upon or manufactures dramatic volatile issues, who can engineer, manipulate and control the upsurges. Association of local politicians with criminals/ lumpens or quasi lumpens hovering around the mohallas adjacent to the campus would only add to the problem. Badruddin Tyabji, the AMU-VC (1962-64) recalls in his autobiography (More Memoirs of an Egoist, Haranand, Delhi, 1994) that the inefficient and corrupt staff constantly hindered him and that they had entrenched themselves in the university over the years, and it was not easy to cure them or dispense with their services as so many vested interests had grown round them . A former teacher observed that the dubious process of recruitment (more so of the non-teaching staff) and the principle of their functioning suffer from cousin-syndrome, which helps them form a powerful nexus. Anil Maheshwari, a correspondent of the Hindustan Times had also (in early 1990s) reported that, In-Laws and out-laws make laws in AMU. It had detailed how few clans had dozens of its members on the pay rolls of AMU. Once, Prof. H.A.S. Jafri, the then Registrar cum Pro-VC cum had to make a press statement that in AMU there are no ideological groups, rather in the name of ideologies of Leftism, Islamism, piety etc they pursue the brazen politics of opportunism and favouritism. In 2007, the Times of India reported that the administration in AMU had deteriorated particularly because the then Registrar and Proctor (both newly promoted professors of law) were at loggerheads with each other, and this factionalism manifested more through student mobilizations on trivial and real issues. Group of rowdy students ransacked the private houses of the then officiating VC, Prof. Saleemuddin and the then Registrar. Many believed that this was schemed by the rival groups of politicking teachers. The decision of enquiry into the upsurges of April-September 2007 by Justice Faizanuddin has not yet been allowed to start on one or the other pretext. Such fragmentation and factionalization renders the VCs weak and helpless. In such a situation even an upright VC of impeccable credentials and capabilities can face enormous resistance, incapacitating him/her in confronting the lobbies (persistent centres of power, whose support is so crucial for the VCs to complete their tenure) head on and breaking the networks of kin-clan-faction-region-sub-region ties. One can only imagine, what will happen to one who launches selective and cynically opportunistic crackdown on illegal recruitment/ promotion, leaving many more fishes out of their net, while at the same time indulging in similar kinds of wrongs. As the agitating students are reported to have complained that why does not the VC launch a crackdown against those Provosts who dispose and utilize the Hall staff at their own residences? Interestingly, this malaise along with corruption in the management of the Halls was resented by Badruddin Tyabji also. The credibility of the teachers among the students have got so badly eroded that those teachers who went to pacify the agitating students (last week of October 2009) were greeted with the embarrassing remarks like, what kind of promotion/ administrative assignment do you intend to bargain with the VC in exchange of pacifying us (fizzling out our agitation)? What do we make of such spine-chilling disrepute of the teachers? Does not it affect the self-esteem at least of those teachers who dont have any such embarrassing & disgusting personal axe of self-promotion to grind with? A serious question to Aligs: self-introspection is probably inevitable at least now. Help India! Intro: I am one of the arrested students of UoH in connection with protest for justice for Rohith Vemula. We were arrested and brutally tortured by the police and then we were sent to the prison. False cases have been filed against us by the VC and the police. In this context, I wrote this letter from prison. It took a long time to collect the letter because it was with some other people. Now I am writing this letter from the Cherlapally Central Prison, Hyderabad. I am an undertrial political prisoner bearing the id no ut9609. I was arrested from Hyderabad Central University by the police on 22nd March, 2016 and after one-day illegal police custody, I was sent to the prison on 23rd March late night. It is very hard for me to believe that I am in jail now for doing nothing wrong. Not even in my wildest dream did I imagine that I would be incarcerated in prison for just protesting for Rohith`s justice. Apart from peacefully and democratically protesting for justice for Rohith, I fail to understand what crime I have committed; why I have been arrested and brutally tortured by the police and then sent to prison. This is a poignant memory which I have bear throughout my life. However, I am learning about a new world of prison and also, I am proud of the fact that my name is registered with Rohith Vemula`s struggle for a caste-less society. Support TwoCircles I am Md Hasanujjaman, an M Phil research scholar from the University of Hyderabad. I come from a financially deprived family living in a village in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. I came to this university for higher studies to uplift my family by getting a job, and to contribute to the betterment of the society. My family always dreams that I will find a job and support it. As I am the first person in my family to get a govt job, my family has a lot of expectation from me. But I do not know what misery my family will go through when they will come to know that I am in prison. Apart from supporting my family, I also wanted to be a responsible citizen of this country and work for the well-being of the society. But when I came to this university, I saw injustice is being done to the Dalits, Adivasis, and minorities. As I wanted to be a responsible citizen of this country, I could not remain a mute spectator to the injustice and discrimination done to these weakest sections of the people. I also saw these intricate problems in the society as impediments to the development and progress of the country. So I felt that I should speak up against the problems and injustices and strive for a better and just society. I saw the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula is an instance of the discrimination and injustice done to the Dalits. Rohith was forced to take his own life because he wanted to assert the rights of Dalits and to become a dissenting voice. Rohith Vemula was a friend of mine since I came here. Being pained by his death I could not remain silent. So, I stood for justice for Rohith. For more than three months we have been struggling for the justice but in vain. The culprits are freely roaming around in daylight under the impunity of the government. On 22nd March after a long disappearance, the VC intrudes in the university and illegally takes over the charge of VC, despite the fact that an investigation is going on against him under the SC/ST prevention of atrocities act. We, the student community felt pained and upset at VC`s illegal resumption of the post and that is why we were peacefully protesting against this. It was a scorching hot day. We were sharing water and biscuit with the police. We were very calm and friendly with police. But the police under the instruction of the VC unleashed brutal lathi charge and assaulted all of us indiscriminately. The VC also took revenge by directing the police to arrest and to brutally torture us and then to put us behind the bars. It was a horrific moment when I was chased and caught by the police. I was beaten up mercilessly and dragged literally into the police van. Then the police unveiled their brutal face by unleashing brutal and inhuman torture on all of us in the van. They snatched my mobile and spectacle. When I pleaded with them to return the spectacle as I have a serious eye problem, the police as a response hit me on my right eye. In this way, I was beaten up black and blue. On their faces, I did not find any sign of mercy. Because of their continuous beatings, I felt breathlessness and numb sometimes. The police also unleashed verbal abuse. They called us Pakistani ISI agents and supporter of Pakistan and threatened to send us to Pakistan. They called us anti-national alleging that we conduct beef-festival, kiss of love and celebrate Afzal Guru, Yakub Memon. The police made extremely anti-women and sexist comments by threatening to rape our mothers and sisters and to take their naked videos bringing them here. They also threatened to rape our female friends in the university. They abused and slapped Prof K Y Ratnam. Moses Abhilash, an independent freelance journalist was also a victim of the atrocity. They even did not spare the departed soul of Rohith Vemula whom they abused badly and they said so many others things. After severe harassment in one-day police custody, we have been sent to the prison even without allowing us to appear in front of the honourable Magistrate. Being in jail now, a lot of things are coming to my mind. When I hear that some cases have been booked against me, I wonder if protesting for justice ends up being booked with cases then what would happen to the justice itself. I am not afraid of myself but of my family who hopes that I would support it. I support my family by the fellowship which I get. But unfortunately, I have not got the fellowship for last ten months. And when I am expecting my fellowship after ten months, I am in prison and if I get it, I am unable to send the money to my home. I told my father that I will send money at the end of this month. But now I do not know when I will be released from the prison. I do not know what answer I will give to family. By sending us to prison, the VC wants to destroy our careers because at this point in time most of us have exams and thesis to finish. I myself am supposed to write my M Phil thesis within a very limited time. Now I have to apply for Ph.D. within a few days of time. If I fail to finish my MPhil and get into Ph.D., I will forfeit the fellowship. I am also afraid if the cases against me become an impediment to getting a job and also my further prospect. The VC with the help of police is threatening us by filing false cases. And they want to create fear in us so that we do not again dare to raise our voice against the VC. After coming to the prison, we are having very interesting time. As part of our daily activities, we are reading a lot of books. All of us are reading some books or the other. Sometimes we are singing songs and reciting poetries. Many of us are busy in writing about how we are feeling in the prison. The most enlightening thing is that we are having enlightening discussions with our two teachers who were also arrested along with us. We are discussing various issues. Eklaviya speaks also found space in our schedule. We are sharing our experiences of discrimination and bias. The prison for us has become a truly academic space, and at least better than our university now. The teachers who are with us are wonderful people. They behave with us very friendly. They are like our guardians in the prison. It is such a democratic space that there are people from different ideological backgrounds, and still we are very friendly and united. In the prison, we are not being harassed but we are troubled to see a hierarchy. The prison authorities are giving us good food but the other prisoners are being given very bad food. The prisoners are working for us like wage labourer. We are exempted from any work as we are the political prisoners. But later we told them that we ourselves can do the work of sweeping and cleaning. We are not made to stand in the queue while others are. We always have visitors. The visitors are bringing us a lot of fruits and other necessary things. We are sharing the fruits with other prisoners who do not have the same privilege as we have. Hardly, they have anyone to visit them. They do not get fruits like us as most of them are poor. We can see caste system not only in the society but also in prison. The Dalits are being discriminated either by their fellow upper caste inmates or by the upper caste prison authorities. I met an upper caste man who practises casteism in the prison itself. We also heard that the upper caste prison authorities namely, Reddy always discriminate the Dalits and favour the upper caste Reddy prisoners. The Reddy prisoners get more opportunities and promotions in the prison itself. They are treated specially. Interacting with some prisoners we understood that the Dalits suffer both as being Dalit and also as poor. They have neither political nor financial support to get them released. I saw a very old man who is made to work in the prison. Thus, the Dalits are the victims of the structural caste discrimination. We are also witnessing the plight of the Muslims. When we are also interacting with the Muslim prisoners, we hear their stories of how they are implicated in false cases and suffer long imprisonment as under-trials. Many Muslim youths are a victim of the structural conspiracy of implicating the innocent Muslim youths in the name of terrorism and other false cases. When we meet them, they tell us about their families and relatives. They convince us that many of them are innocent. Many of them are in prison for long years still as under-trials. Some are for four; some are for six; some are for ten; some are for sixteen and some are for twenty. They are in a trap in the system of injustice. So, we are having experience of a new different world. We are learning new things in the new world. I would like to request my friends to contact and tell my family that I have not committed any crime. I was raising my voice against the injustice done to our friend Rohith Vemula. I am striving for making this nation a better place and for this, I am in jail now. It is painful that those who actually want this nation to develop and contribute to making it better, suffer and those who plunder this country and befool the people are enjoying the power and luxury. I would also like to tell my family that I am fine now and ultimately the truth will prevail. I have full faith in the Constitution and I am also faithful that we all be proved innocent. I miss my little niece of three years of age, who calls me and asks for a red small car and dresses. I will come back home soon and meet my niece once I am out of jail. I would request my friends not to tell my family that I was brutally beaten up by the police because my mother will not be able to bear this at all. I would like my M Phil supervisor to be informed that I am in jail now. I will surely come back and write my thesis. But I am afraid because the harassment in the police custody and coming to prison have badly affected my mind; and I do not know how quickly I will able to overcome the mental trauma I am going through. Lastly but most importantly, I would like to tell my departed friend Rohith Vemula that I will continue to fight for your justice. You have given the inspiration and road to fight against the ugly and dangerous caste system. As a collective we will fulfil your cherished dream of annihilating caste from the society. When I will look at the star I will remember you and your vision and the struggle you have built. By giving up your life you have given us the spirit to fight against the caste system. We will carry forward your struggle. Please be with us always and inspire us. Long live Rohith Vemula! Amar Rahe Rohith Vemula! Md Hasanujjaman Cherlapally Central Prison Date: 25th March, 2016. T-Systems Releases Dynamic Unified Communications Share Tweet By Casey Houser Contributing Writer By Casey HouserContributing Writer T-Systems, a division of global telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert), recently announced that it has launched is new Dynamic Unified Communication (DUC) software to South African businesses. This unified communications product means to address the need for management of multiple communications channels within a single interface. It offers businesses a common graphical environment for all channels, including calling and instant messaging, while allowing for access to those channels on desktop and mobile devices. Hein Witte, a specialized solution sales manager at T-Systems (News - Alert), called this release the best of its kind. Leveraging global capabilities from T-Systems parent Deutsche Telekom, combined with our local expertise, DUC is the most mature and sophisticated of its class, Witte said. In addition to its offering of device interoperability, DUC also tries to enhance worker productivity by allowing customer support and sales teams to interact with one another and with customers. DUC breaks down into various options that include the Connect, Communicate, Co-operate, and Collaborate units. First, Connect gives businesses the basic dial tone they need to complete outgoing calls and receive inbound calls from customers. Businesses can then use the Communicate option to gain services such as caller authentication and identity. This way, employees will always know who wants to reach them from the other line. Co-operate offers users a mobile client and integration with the Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook email software. This functionality will be essential to those sales teams that are always on the go; it can also aid companies that invest heavily in a bring-your-own-device style of employee mobile device access. Finally, Collaborate rounds out the other options with a number of collaboration tools for better inter-office communication. It also provides support for the instant messaging channel, so business agents can keep in contact with customers in a medium they feel comfortable using. This is not the only reach into mobile collaboration that T-Systems has engaged in recent months. Last autumn, it began a partnership with BroadVision to help push forward the adoption of the BroadVision Vmoso mobile social enterprise software in Europe and surrounding geographical areas. The Vmoso application brings together email, chat, and content sharing within enterprises to enhance worker productivity and ease of collaboration. Similarly, DUC should have that effect in South Africa with the newest Deutsche Telekom clients. The need for mobile integration and office collaboration is essential, and DUC aims to help businesses meet their goals of owning such tools. 8x8 Helps Auto Europe Update Global Communications Share Tweet By Rory Lidstone Contributing Writer By Rory LidstoneContributing Writer Auto Europe, an international car rental services provider, recently selected 8x8, provider of global enterprise communications as a service (ECaaS) and a Leader in the 2015 Gartner (News - Alert) Magic Quadrant for unified communications as a service, to roll out a company-wide, modern cloud communications system. This system is being used to manage Auto Europes global office telephony and call centers across the U.S., Australia and Germany. Auto Europe has provided international care rental services for travelers to Europe for more than 60 years from its headquarters in Portland, Maine. The company also offers travel services like cruise, airline and hotel bookings, as well as exotic/luxury rentals for VIP travelers, who may require 24/7 customer service. As such, consistency and reliability are top concerns for Auto Europe in terms of its communications system. After experiencing ongoing reliability issues with its existing set of carriers, then, it became clear Auto Europe needed a change. The company consulted the Gartner Magic Quadrant to consider several vendors. Ultimately, it decided to replace its on-premises PBX (News - Alert) equipment and home-grown call center solution with 8x8s integrated, cloud-based Virtual Office (VO) and Virtual Contact Center (VCC). Auto Europes initial deployment includes 600 VO seats and over 300 VCC licenses. With this new 8x8 (News - Alert) solution, Auto Europe can deliver enhanced customer experiences, while substantially improving employee productivity and lowering overall costs. The cost savings from replacing the on-premises legacy PBX system alone completely funds Auto Europes cloud telephony and 300-seat contact center. We are honored that Auto Europe, a global industry leader, has entrusted its business communications to 8x8, said Vik Verma, chief executive officer of 8x8. As the only provider of a fully-integrated Enterprise Communications (News - Alert) as a Service solution, 8x8 continues to win mid-market and enterprise customers that are looking for a trusted partner to help move them to cloud and upgrade their communications capabilities for improved business productivity and cost savings. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Article comments powered by Disqus Article comments powered by Edited by Maurice Nagle As men age, there is an increased incidence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), often from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) which can adversely affect sexual function. There are many different treatments for these symptoms; however, many of the treatments also affect sexual quality of life, specifically in the realm of ejaculation. Our paper will review the medications, surgical procedures, minimally invasive procedures, and even investigational procedures used to treat LUTS/BPH and the effect they have on ejaculation. The aim of this paper is to help practitioners counsel patients more effectively on treatment options when ejaculation is a concern. Current urology reports. 2016 Jul [Epub] Michelle Herberts, Michael Butcher, Tobias Kohler Division of Urology, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 301 N 8th St-4th Floor, PO Box 19665, Springfield, IL, 62794-9665, USA., Park Nicollet Urology, Minneapolis, MN, USA., Division of Urology, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 301 N 8th St-4th Floor, PO Box 19665, Springfield, IL, 62794-9665, USA. . PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27105993 A special agent of the National Intelligence Agency has been detained by Senegalese policeafter he was spotted at an anti-Jammeh protest in Dakar with a digital recording device and smartphones. Gibriel Kujabi is said to be in Dakar to monitor the activities of those living in exile and report back to Banjul. He was seen recording audio and taking photos and videos with his phones. Special Agent Kujabi disguised himself as a protester. He is said to be stationed in the countrys embassy in Dakar. Gambian embassies in most parts of the world have intelligence and defense attaches. Kujabi was taking pictures and recording protesters and officers that arrested him found two phones on him with implicating contents. He is likely to face espionage charges. Kujabi and another NIA agent were recognized by some Gambian protesters. Kujabi was caught but the other unknown NIA escaped when approached by journalists. Senegal not safe for Gambians Gambians in Senegal have complained of high spy presence. At least two Gambians have been kidnapped in Senegal. Saul Ndow and Mahawa Cham, critics of President Yahya Jammeh went missing without a trace when they were on a visit in Cassamance. Their families have expressed concerns about their safe return amid reports that they were kidnapped by Jammeh loyalists in the region. Ndow was a businessman who had backed President Jammeh during the early days of his regime but has been on the Gambias most wanted list after being implicated in a 2006 thwarted coup. Senegalese have been mute on their disappearance. The Gambias National Intelligence Agency has been used by President Jammeh to intimidate citizens. It is notorious for tortured and extra judicial executions. It is the most feared security agency in the country and only answerable to the president. The agency still operates under military decrees from the country transitional period after Jammeh took power in a 1994 coup. Senegal is home to many Gambian refugees who said the country is not a safe haven for them. Most recently, a wanted naval chief and a tortured journalist from The Gambia escaped authorities in Banjul and have joined the growing Gambian refugee community that calls Dakar home. Li hails quake victims' spirit Updated: 2016-04-25 06:58 By Hu Yongqi(China Daily) P remier Li Keqiang talks with villagers in Lushan county, Sichuan province, on Sunday. Lushan was hit by a deadly magnitude-7.0 earthquake in 2013. Li's trip marked the third anniversary of the disaster. [Photo/Wu Zhiyi] Premier Li Keqiang hailed the people of Lushan on Sunday for their "unbreakable spirit" after paying tribute to victims of the 2013 earthquake. He was visiting the county in Sichuan province to inspect reconstruction work four days after the third anniversary of the magnitude-7.0 quake, which claimed 196 lives and injured more than 14,000 people. "The unbreakable spirit of the Sichuan people has helped build new homes, and it will drive them to a better life," the premier said. He paid tribute to victims in front of the Lushan Earthquake Memorial Museum with a minute's silence and placed flowers at a memorial table in which names of those who died in the disaster have been engraved. The quake was the first serious natural disaster Li had to deal with after he took office as premier in March 2013. His plane headed to the region just five hours after the first tremors struck. On Sunday's visit, he inspected new houses, schools, tourism developments and factories. At a branch of Sichuan Rural Credit Cooperative in Longmen township, he said the institute should continue to finance agricultural companies and help develop local businesses. Li also saw innovative models of smart communities and new energy, all made by the students, during a visit to Lushan No 2 Middle School, which was reconstructed in September. The premier said locals must find new ways to build their homes and make a difference for others. Longmen, the epicenter of the quake, was the area worst-hit. However, since then it has been developed into a key national tourism destination, with many survivors running restaurants and hotels. The premier visited two families in the township who he met three years ago. One of them was Gao Quanliang, 47, who told Li about his house, which was rebuilt with government subsidies, as well as the employment and education provided for his family. "The quake crushed our lives when our house collapsed. But your condolence gave us strength to rebuild our home," Gao's wife, Gao Rongzhen, told the premier. Government line on religions wins support from faith leaders Updated: 2016-04-25 07:11 By Xu Wei(China Daily) Monks participate in dharma debates in the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, capital city of Tibet autonomous region. [Photo by Palden Nyima/China Daily] Religious leaders and scholars in China have voiced support for the government's stance on religions outlined by President Xi Jinping at a top-level conference. Religious communities were advised to retain their independence and self-management by the president in his speech at the two-day National Work Conference on Religions that ended on Saturday in Beijing. There are believers from nearly all the world's major religions in China, although nonbelievers comprise the majority of the population. Mu Zhongjian, a professor of religious studies at Renmin University of China, describes China as a "United Nations of all religions". At the conference, Xi said China is determined to protect its harmonious social relations among believers of various faiths. It also aims to protect believers and nonbelievers from attempted infiltration by external forces and from extremist ideas. "We should guide and educate the religious circle and followers with socialist core values, and guide religious people with the ideas of unity, progress, peace and tolerance," he said. At the same time, no religion can interfere with the administrative, judicial and educational functions of the State, the president said, adding that the State must uphold the rule of law when overseeing religious affairs that have a bearing on State or public interests. Guo Chengzhen, vice-president of the Islamic Association of China, said the national religious conference provided a comprehensive guideline on religions' role in Chinese society. "Localization for different religions has been discussed in the past, but until the conference, people were not quite clear how this should proceed." Father Paul Lei Shiyin, the bishop of Leshan diocese in Sichuan province, under the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, said the conference had promised to provide the necessary support to various religious groups. As a result, the Catholic Church in China now stands a better chance of overcoming the difficulties it faces, such as a shortage of clergy and being able to better serve society. Cao Nanlai, an associate professor of religious studies at Renmin University of China, said the idea of localization is a very inclusive term and may provide enough room for different religions to develop their own innovative practices in China. "A highlight of the conference was the government's confidence that religious canons and practicesno matter what they arecan be made to serve social harmony and progress, and can work with the core values of the modern China." Mu, the Renmin University professor, explaining the philosophical root of China's religious policies, said there are different versions of atheism. The atheism practiced in China not only allows, but respects, religious faiths on the individual level. It is an atheism that is based on equality and inclusiveness, Mu said. Child-killing suspect caught in China Updated: 2016-04-25 11:01 (Xinhua) Xu Zengzhi, who has allegedly killed two children and injured four others in East China's Jiangsu Province, is seen in this photo published by Pizhou public security authority on Weibo. [Photo/Weibo.com] NANJING - A man who has allegedly killed two children and injured four others in East China's Jiangsu Province has been caught by police in Beijing, authorities said Monday. According to Jiangsu public security department, the incident was happened in Pizhou City on Sunday afternoon when Xu Zengzhi, the suspect, tempted the children into his home before hitting them with a blunt object. Two were killed and the other four injured. Xu was caught in Beijing around 11:30 p.m. on Sunday. A preliminary investigation found that the suspect committed the crime after a dispute with neighbors. Further investigation is underway. Draft law on overseas NGOs likely to be put to vote Updated: 2016-04-25 11:35 (Xinhua) BEIJING - A draft law to regulate overseas nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in China was submitted for its third reading on Monday and is likely to be put to the vote. The bill was submitted to the bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which runs from Monday to Thursday. The NPC Law Committee suggested in a review report to the lawmakers that the bill should be put to the vote at this session for it has been quite thorough after two readings. Li Xiaolin: People at heart of diplomacy Updated: 2016-04-25 11:01 By Hua Shengdun in Washington(China Daily USA) Li Xiaolin, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, speaks about US-China people-to-people diplomacy at Gallaudet University in Washington on April 23. Allan Fong / For China Daily Li Xiaolin has had a front seat to the dramatically expanding cultural dialogue between China and the US, going back to the 1970s. "At that time, because of the impressions left by movies, periodicals and reports on the Korean and Vietnam wars, the American people were villainized in my mind," said Li, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). "The images that I saw in movies at the time were of American soldiers with an olive branch of democracy and freedom in one hand, and talons of bombers of war in the other," she said. Li spoke at the 22nd Washington seminar on US-China Relations, hosted by the US-China Peoples Friendship Association (USCPFA) at Gallaudet University in Washington on April 22. She recalled her impression of 41 years ago, a stage in China-US relations when the countries' cultures were practically unknown to each other, with the exception of what movies and news stories told Chinese citizens of the Korean and Vietnam wars. However, Li's view of Americans changed following her first encounter with them. Li started a career at the CPAFFC in 1975, three years after US president Richard Nixon's historic summit in China. The first delegation she welcomed to China was a group of American activists organized by USCPFA. "After face-to-face interactions with my American friends, as it turned out, Americans were very kind, civilized and well-educated people," Li said. These days, visits are much more frequent between the two countries. As Li pointed out, "Every 24 minutes, there is a flight taking off between our two countries. Each day, more than 10,000 people are traveling across the Pacific Ocean between our two great nations." Cities in both countries have made efforts to unite. There are 45 pairs of sister states and 209 sister cities between China and the US. Li believes that subnational-level exchanges can strengthen the countries' overall relationship. "I think people-to-people diplomacy is the foundation of our operations, especially CPIFFC's long-term cooperation with USCPFA," she said. "State-to-state relations rely on people-to-people interactions between the two countries." Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story. State Grid wins Brazil work Updated: 2016-04-25 11:01 By Ji Ye in Rio de Janeiro(China Daily USA) China's State Grid Brazil Holding has won the bidding to build two power transmission lines in Brazil, said the Brazilian Electricity Regulatory (Agencia Nacional de Energia Electrica). The company won the rights on two lots located near the Paranatinga town in Mato Grosso, west of Brazil, for 334.5 million reais ($95.6 million) and 61.4 million reais ($17.5 million), respectively. On April 13, more than 10 companies got 14 transmission lines stretching across 3,402 kilometers, with bids totaling 6.87 billion reais ($1.96 billion), said the agency, also known as ANEEL. The companies that won the contracts will earn up to 2.5 billion reais ($715 million) annually over 30 years of the concession. They also will be able to benefit from the substations, which start operation in 2017, according to tender contracts. Jose Jurhosa, director of ANEEL, said that the investments are of significant value for a country coping with a recession. "Given the situation of the Brazilian economy, receiving such an amount of investment in infrastructure is really very positive," said Jurhosa. The regulatory agency had put out to bid 24 transmission lines over 6,500 km, which it estimated would bring in 12.2 billion reais ($3.49 billions) and create 27,640 direct jobs. According to a study conducted by ANEEL last October, nearly 63 percent of all work to build new transmission lines in the country has been on hold, which has caused massive delays in connecting new wind farms and small hydroplants to the grid. That is where State Grid Brazil, an experienced provider of transmission grids, can help, according to Ricardo Correa, an analyst for Ativa Corretora, a Brazilian financial services company. "The participation of new actors in energy generation is difficult in Brazil, as the sector is crowded. However, in transmission, the Brazilian market is open and only requires volume, which State Grid has handled in China," he said. "The project will yield a win-win result," said Zhang Jianping, an expert at the Academy of Macroeconomic Research of China's National Development and Reform Commission. In addition, the project will create a huge demand for electricity equipment and steel and push Brazil to update its power infrastructure. To China, the transmission lines are a breakthrough in overseas development. Given the weak export growth, the project will serve as a window for the world to see China's advanced technology and production capability. Those can be new growth points in foreign trade for China, Zhang said. Brazil hopes to attract Chinese investment in highways, railways, ports, airports and other infrastructure projects, while the Chinese government regards infrastructure building as key to bilateral cooperation. "The Brazilian government can count on infrastructure investment as a way to overcome the current economic recession and promote economic and social development," said Xie Wenze, a visiting scholar from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A 1 percent increase in infrastructure investment can raise Brazil's GDP by about 0.6 percent, he said. For China Daily Obama casts doubt on post-EU deal Updated: 2016-04-25 09:08 By Reuters In London(China Daily) President says UK would not get preferential treatment over bloc in negotiating new pact A trade deal between Britain and the United States could take five to 10 years to negotiate if Britain votes to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum, US President Barack Obama told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Obama, who is in the final nine months of his presidency, has spent the last three days in London urging Britons to stay in the EU as the British public prepares to vote on whether to remain a member of the bloc. "It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we're actually able to get something done," Obama told the British broadcaster, adding to his earlier warning that Britain would find itself at 'the back of the queue' for a new trade deal with the United States if it left the EU. Obama's visit and decision to intervene in the EU debate has angered the Eurosceptic "Out" campaign, which has repeatedly argued that Britain could easily negotiate deals and get better terms outside the EU. Answering that criticism, Obama said that his involvement had been justified because of the two countries' special relationship, and that he hoped he had been able to persuade some British voters. "My hope is, is that this is something that would have some influence on how voters think," he said. Obama added that Britain would not get preferential treatment over the EU when it came to negotiating a new trade deal. "The UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU," Obama said. "We wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market." He said he hoped to conclude talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - trade deal between the EU and the United States - the end of his term in office, although he said the agreement may not be ratified by the US Congress before he leaves his post. Last nine months Obama also said he hoped that his final months in office would see the influence of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria reduced. "I do think that we can slowly shrink the environment in which they operate and take on strongholds like Mosul and Raqqa that is the beating heart of their movement," he said. However, he dismissed the prospect of sending ground troops into the region to oust the Syrian government "It would be a mistake," he said. But the United States and others should use their international influence to persuade allies of Syria, such as Russia and Iran, to broker a political transition, he said. (China Daily 04/25/2016 page13) Rural community rattled by killings Updated: 2016-04-25 09:08 By Associated Press In Piketon, Ohio(China Daily) Residents of the rural southern Ohio community of Piketon are rattled by a rare major crime that took the lives of eight members of a tight-knit family known in the area as hard workers. Authorities were still trying on Saturday to find out who targeted the seven adults and teenage boy and why. Their bodies were found on Friday at four different homes near Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus. Kayla Hay said she got to know one of the victims, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden, when they both worked as nurse's aides at a nursing home. Hay said she was shocked and saddened when she heard Rhoden was among those killed. "I've never heard her say anything about being frightened or concerned about anything bad happening," said Hay, who described Rhoden as outgoing and friendly. "She was always in a good mood and was very bright, both in her personality and her intelligence," Hay said. All of the victims were members of the Rhoden family. The others were identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. It appeared some of the family members were killed as they slept, including Hanna Rhoden, who was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was 4- or 5-days old, authorities said. The infant, Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby, and one other small child were not hurt. Authorities said none of the injuries appeared self-inflicted. A search for the killer or killers continued on Saturday, and investigators said they had interviewed more than 30 people. Robin Waddell, who owns the Big Bear Lake Family Resort just south of Piketon, said Christopher Rhoden often did work for him as a carpenter and helped out with his excavation business. He said Rhoden was a nice guy whose kids sometimes visited him while he was working. "It's a large family," Waddell said. "There's a lot of them and they've been in this community for generations. So this is affecting a lot of people." Lt. Michael Preston, of the Ross County Sheriff's Department speaks to the media on Union Hill Road that approaches a crime scene, on Friday, in Pike County, Ohio. Shootings with multiple fatalities were reported along the road in rural Ohio on Friday morning, but details on the number of deaths and the whereabouts of the suspect or suspects were not immediately clear.AP (China Daily 04/25/2016 page13) Solar-powered airplane completes ocean crossing Updated: 2016-04-25 09:08 By Associated Press In Mountain View, California(China Daily) A solar-powered airplane landed in California on Saturday, completing a risky, three-day flight across the Pacific Ocean as part of its journey around the world. Pilot Bertrand Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, at 11:45 pm following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight without fuel. The plane taxied into a huge tent erected on Moffett Airfield where Piccard was greeted by project's team. The landing came several hours after the Piccard performed a flyby over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings from below. "I crossed the bridge. I am officially in America," he declared as he took in spectacular views of San Francisco Bay. Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. The trans-Pacific leg was the riskiest part of the plane's global travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way. The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, as well. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavorable weather and a damaged wing. A month later, when weather conditions were right, the plane departed from Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii. The plane's ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds, or about as much as a midsize truck. The plane's wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night. Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or Northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey. The project, which began in 2002 and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, is meant to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. Solar-powered air travel is not yet commercially practical, however, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft. Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco on Saturday. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean.Noah Berger / AP (China Daily 04/25/2016 page15) Obama plans 250 more US troops for Syria, boosting force to 300 Updated: 2016-04-25 10:29 (Agencies) US President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hanover, Germany, April 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] HANOVER, Germany/WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama will announce on Monday he plans to send as many as 250 additional US troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the American presence working with local Syrian forces fighting Islamic State militants, US officials said. The deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory from the hardline Sunni Islamist group. Obama will explain his decision in a speech at 11:25 am (0925 GMT) in Hanover, where he discussed the Syria crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday. They will meet with other major European leaders after his remarks. 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. While Obama has resisted putting US troops into Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people, he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria last year in what US officials described as a "counterterrorism" mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war. His decision to boost those numbers was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday and confirmed an April 1 Reuters report that the Obama administration was considering a significant increase in US forces. "He (Obama) intends to put in more ... forces to the tune of 250 in Syria," one US official said on Sunday, adding he was unable to break down how many of those would be special operations forces and how many might be medical or intelligence support personnel. "The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said a second Obama administration official. Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency, he has found it necessary to keep or add troops to help with conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The president is ending a six-day international trip that began in Riyadh, where he held talks with Gulf Arab monarchs concerned that Washington's commitment to the Middle East had diminished. After that meeting, Obama sidestepped a question about whether he would add special forces in Syria, saying: "None of the options are good" if political talks fail to end the civil war there. Australians mark Anzac Day despite thwarted terror plot Updated: 2016-04-25 14:47 (Xinhua) A war veteran walks in front of the Cenotaph during the annual dawn service commemoration on ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) Day in central Sydney, Australia, April 25, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] CANBERRA - Thousands of Australians got up early on Monday morning as they did every Anzac Day to mark the bloody battle fought at the Turkish beach of Gallipoli by Australian and New Zealand troops during the World War I. About 55,000 people attended the Anzac Parade held in front of the War Memorial in Canberra, the national capital. Before the parade, a large crowd showed up despite the autumn chill of Canberra for the Dawn service held at 5:30 a.m., the time when the Anzac troops first began their landing at Gallipoli 101 years ago. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull delivered the commemorative address at the national service at the War Memorial. "At their training camps outside Cairo, diggers stood in reverent silence as they recalled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of the year before," he said. "Many of them had been evacuated from Gallipoli only months before. They knew that more terrible challenges awaited them." "Within weeks they would sail for France, having experienced the horror of trench warfare on the ridges above Anzac Cove, they were now to confront even more." Turnbull said Australia, New Zealand and Turkey count Gallipoli as a momentous chapter in their foundation story. "Today we offer our solidarity to the Turkish people as we and our allies battle together a new war against terrorism, a new war fought both abroad and at home and in every dimension in the battle space and the cyber space," Turnbull said in his first Anzac Day address as the nation's leader. He also said that Anzac Day was not about glorifying war. "This day does not commemorate a triumph of arms," he told the crowd at the Australian War Memorial. It commemorates the triumph of the human spirit, the courage and resolve of those who 100 years ago and ever since, and today put their lives on the line." Ted Cruz, John Kasich team up to prevent Donald Trump nomination Updated: 2016-04-25 16:55 (Xinhua) US Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks at a campaign event at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Terre Haute, Indiana April 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] WASHINGTON - Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the two US Republican presidential rivals, announced late Sunday night that they will cede certain states to each other in a bid to keep Donald Trump from garnering enough delegate votes he needs to secure the Republican nomination. In a pair of unexpected statements, Texan Senator Cruz said he would concentrate his resources in Indiana while Ohio Governor Kasich would put all his effort into Oregon and New Mexico. Both candidates also called on their supporters to follow suit. Their aim is to stop Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates so the real estate tycoon won't clinch the Republican nomination in a first-ballot victory. Trump, the controversial billionaire who, to many's surprises, has been leading the race of the Republican presidential nomination, is the only hopeful who can realistically get a first-ballot victory, with Cruz struggling to keep up and Kasich far back in the delegate chase. And the only hope left for Cruz and Kasich is to drag Trump into a second ballot. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico," Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement, calling Trump at top of the party ticket "a sure disaster." "Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana," John Weaver, Kasich's chief strategist, said in another statement. China holds maritime demarcations talks with the ROK Updated: 2016-04-25 17:36 By Wang Xu(chinadaily.com.cn) The first round of maritime demarcation talks between China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) was carried out in a friendly and candid atmosphere, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua chunying told reporters at a daily press briefing on Monday, adding that the next round will be held in the ROK. The talks were held in Beijing on April 22, Hua said, under a consensus reached by the two countries in Seoul last December. "The two sides exchanged their views regarding maritime delimitation issues, and the meeting was carried out in a friendly and candid atmosphere," Hua said. Hua said the date for the second round of talks will be determined later after consultations. Beijing and Seoul have overlapping claims on exclusive economic zones, one of the few concerns in their thriving relationship. During President Xi Jinping's visit to ROK in July 2014, Xi and his counterpart Park Geunhye agreed to start talks regarding the issue. China to meet ASEAN countries over maritime conduct code Updated: 2016-04-25 18:41 By Wang Xu(chinadaily.com.cn) China and ASEAN countries will hold talks to discuss the implementation of the declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in Singapore, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday. The 22nd China-ASEAN Senior Officials' Consultation will be held in Singapore from April 27 to 28, Hua told reporters during a daily briefing, adding that Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin and Singaporean permanent secretary for foreign affairs Chee Wee Kiong will co-chair the meeting. The meeting is to strengthen regional cooperation between China and ASEAN countries, and will also prepare for commemorative activities for the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the China-ASEAN dialogue relations this year, Hua said. Liu and senior officials from ASEAN countries will hold an in-depth exchange of views on the implementation of the DOC, and promote the consultation process for the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, she added. Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. A bridge spans over the Co Co River to connect Da Nang and Hoi An city with ring road system. VNS Photos Cong Thanh Viet Nam News -A NANG a Nang is seeking a US$51.74 million loan to fund the Traffic Infrastructure Improvement Project for 2016-19. The Peoples Committee secretariat said the improvement of the busy intersection west of the Rong (Dragon) Bridge and the construction of a bridge and road system over the Co Co River was part of the project. The project will ease traffic congestion and accidents in the city centre and boost connectivity with Hoi An city. The bridge over the Co Co River and the road leading to it will cover a distance of 1.2km and result in a smooth traffic flow from the city to tourism hub Hoi An. The city also plans to complete the construction of a 2.6km road on Tran Hung ao Street and create a key traffic system on the Han River bank connecting the citys North-South key roads. There are also plans to build two road tunnels at some busy junctions and a tunnel through the Han River to ease traffic congestion, with a total investment of $172.88 million. a Nang has received funding from the World Bank for infrastructure development projects for the period 2008-19. The World Bank had funded 70 per cent of the project, with a total investment of $218.4 million in 2008-13. The project had helped upgrade urban infrastructure, develop bridges and roads, and focus on issues related to resettlement areas, the environment, waste water treatment, staff training and city management. In 2013, the World Bank agreed to undertake a major sustainable development project in the city with a total investment of $272.1 million, of which $202.4 million was donated by the World Bank. The project will add sewage drainage systems, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes and resettlement areas, as well as two key urban roads and bridges to aid the citys future development. VNS HCM CITY The chairman of HCM City Peoples Committee said at a conference held last Friday that the city sought continued support from Japan in the transfer of technology, ODA, management expertise and investment in several fields, including human resources, hi-tech agriculture, pharmaceuticals and tourism. Speaking at the Viet Nam-Japan Investment and Tourism Promotion Conference in HCM City last Friday, Nguyen Thanh Phong said Japan was a leading economic partner of Viet Nam, especially of HCM City. He said that Viet Nam had become a long-term investment site for the Japanese because of its convenient geographic location, stable politics, improved infrastructure and abundant and low-cost labour force. With more than 865 projects with a total registered investment capital of US$2.87 billion, Japanese ranks sixth out of countries and territories having investment in the city, he said. In recent years, Japanese visitors have ranked first or second in the top 10 of foreign visitors to the city, and the number of Vietnamese visitors to Japan has also increased significantly. The city expects to continue to receive co-operation and support from the Japanese Government and enterprises to improve the growth , he said. "The city will always welcome and create favourable conditions for foreign investors, including Japanese, who come to seek long-term investment and business opportunities," he said. Speaking at the conference, a special advisor to the Japanese Prime Minister, Iijima Isao, who also led a delegation of 22 Japanese businesses to HCM City, said he believed that Japanese firms would continue to invest strongly in Viet Nam, particularly in HCM City. The Japanese busineses who visited the city this time are Japanese leading companies involved in pharmaceutical, medical, water and waste treatment, agricultural, transport, construction, logistics, manufacturing, tourism and IT sectors. Vu Tien Loc, chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the countrys participation in a series of free trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, had made it more popular among investors. Recently, many investors from Japan, the US and EU have visited Viet Nam to seek business opportunities, he said, adding that many companies had shifted their investments from China to ASEAN countries, including Viet Nam. Masuda Chikahiro, deputy chief of JICA Viet Nam, said Japanese companies wanted to penetrate the market of nearly 100 million people in Viet Nam and use it as a production base for export. He said that reform of the investment environment was needed to welcome a new investment wave to Viet Nam. Japanese firms, he said, were striving to overcome two difficulties, including the rate of locally-made products supplied to Japanese producers in Viet Nam. This stands at about 33 per cent in 2014, much lower compared to countries in the region. Secondly, the countrys human resources have yet to meet requirements of Japanese firms, he said. Viet Nam should solve issues such as these mentioned in the Viet Nam-Japan Joint Initiative, he said. At the conference, Pham Thiet Hoa, director of the Investment and Trade Promotion Centre of HCM City, told Japanese investors that the city was seeking investors for the 27.2 km monorail line No 2 and the 6.3 km underground monorail number 6 projects, as well as the underground mall project at the Ben Thanh Central Station and the Saigon Safari project in Cu Chi District. - VNS A pond is pollutaed in My ien Village in the northern Bac Giang Province. Photo danviet.vn BAC GIANG Widow Than Thi Ngoan, of My ien Village in the northern Bac Giang Province, said in tears that her husband died six months after discovering he had stomach cancer. When he was alive, he rarely got sick and did hard labour as a construction worker in the city to feed his family of six, Ngoan said. She faced additional pain and loss when three close relatives of hers from the same village died of cancer. Phung Minh Toan, village head, said there were about 60 deaths from cancer in the last seven years. On average, seven or eight out of every 10 deaths have stemmed from cancer in recent years, Toan said. Earlier this year, two local young people died from cancer, and in all three villages of Hoang Ninh Commune, a number of local villagers suffered from cancer. We feel true fear because diseases are developing, Toan said. Two industrial parks of inh Tram and Van Trung were built in Hoang Ninh Commune from 2003 to 2008. Eighty-two per cent of farming land in the three villages of My was rezoned into industrial land. When asked about the environment, communal Peoples Committee officer Le Xuan Hiep said a garbage dump obstructed access into the commune. Waste and sewage flowed into all the villages. A local 60-year-old woman said a truck comes to collect rubbish twice a week, but sometimes it only swings by once a month. In addition to garbage pollution, My ien villagers must also face polluted water sources. In past years, villagers relied on shallow wells as their primary water source, but those wells ran dry, so they were forced to drill new, deeper wells. At present, the residents of three villages are using well water, but those water sources have become contaminated, according to local woman Nguyen Thi Hue. No fish can survive Le Xuan Hiep and many residents of My ien 1 village said the well water is so yellow that their white shirts are soiled after washing them with the water. Phung Minh Toan, the village head, said a few tests of individual water sources have revealed that the local water is contaminated with iron and bacteria. Polluted water poses dangers for disease. Maybe it is causing the increase of cancer rates in the area, Toan said. He said local households empty their wastewater into ditches and canals that run along the village, which turns the water black. Rubbish floats on the surface of the pond and lake, he said. No type of fish can survive in the rivers of the black water. Continue to live, ignore cancer A district budget-funded project to supply clean water to My ien village launched in 2008. The project ended two years later, while water pipes leading to residential houses were left unfinished, according to Toan. Several billions of ong invested in the project was wasted, he said. I dont know what the cause is. Le Van Bac, chairman of Hoang Ninh Communes Peoples Committee, said local authorities are looking for a suitable place for a new dumping ground, but they have faced many challenges. Budgeted expenditures are low, making it difficult for communal authorities to hire employees to collect rubbish every day. An official from Viet Yen Districts health centre said there has not yet been an official report or investigation into the cancer epidemic in the village. Deputy Head of Viet Yen Districts environment department Nguyen Xuan iep said district funds for the environment are limited, so they can only focus on tackling the rubbish collection issue at present. -- VNS Heavy lorries carrying stones have been driving around the clock and making a terrible and dusty environment in Phu Man Commune, in Ha Nois Quoc Oai District. Photo baotainguyenmoitruong.vn HA NOI Heavy lorries carrying stones have been driving around the clock and making a terrible and dusty environment in Phu Man Commune, in Ha Nois Quoc Oai District. Over recent years hundreds of households in the commune, 30km from Ha Nois centre, have suffered from serious pollution, but local authorities have not helped them. Stone exploitation at local mines was to blame according to local residents; some enterprises have been licensed to exploit stone since 2007. Before 2007, the environment of the six villages in Phu Man Commune was healthy, local residents said. Things started to get worse when stone mining began. Local peoples daily activities were affected as were schools and health centres by the loud lorries. The 2.7 km main road linking the commune centre with the villages was seriously damaged, causing traffic jams. Early last year, Quoc Oai District authorities invested money from the local budget to upgrade the road. Local residents complained to the district Peoples Committee that owners of stone-trucks didnt traffic laws. A 60-year-old local man, inh Cong Chiu, said Every day, hundreds of 40-50 tonne- lorries carrying stone from mines drive at high-speeds on the inter-commune road to the district centre. When a lorry goes through, the whole road is covered by white dust. Local people have to keep their doors closed all day and even spread canvases to prevent dust. Although stone mining enterprises watered the road every day, the high volume of lorries meant dust soon covered the road again. Deputy Chairman of Phu Man Commune Peoples Committee, Bui Chi Ben said local authorities recognised how bad the situation was for local residents. But, commune authorities have no administrative method to solve the problem. Every year, commune authorities signed documents with enterprises, asking them not to use heavy vehicles, to water the road regularly and must spend money to repair it if was damaged. inh Tran Trung Hieu, deputy chief of the districts transport police, said the nine-officer strong police force had to patrol 40km of road so they couldnt watch Phu Man every day. Lorry drivers intentionally avoided transport police and whenever police were absent overloaded lorries without canvas drove bumper-to-bumper on the dusty road. Hieu said commune authorities and the districts road management board must share the resp to solve violations. A VN17 billion (US$763,300) project funded from the district budget to upgrade the Phu Man Commune road is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. o Quang Huy, an official from the project said the route would help local people travel more conveniently but the noise and dust was still a concern. If local authorities and relevant offices dont solve the violation, the new road will be damaged soon, he said.-- VNS A photo of the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathryx nemaeus) was taken by wildlife photographer Nguyen Truong Sinh in the Son Tra Nature Reserve in a Nang City. A communication campaign for the protection of the endangered langurs has been launched in the city. Photo courtesy GreenViet Viet Nam News -A NANG The Biodiversity Conservation Centre, GreenViet, has launched a communication campaign to protect the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathryx nemaeus) in the Son Tra Nature Reserve in this city. The centres vice director, Le Thi Thu Trang, said photos of the primates taken by French wildlife photographers Cyril Ruoso and Vietnamese Nguyen Truong Sinh have been posted on bus stops in a Nang main streets. She said the move aimed to raise awareness among the community and the tourists on the need for protection of the red-shanked douc langur. Trang said scientists and biologists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had agreed to list the red-shanked douc langur as critically endangered (CR) with unlimited protection status in the world. In 2013, IUCN had listed the animal as endangered (EN). The Son Tra Nature Reserve, which is 10km from a Nangs centre, is known for its rich biodiversity, with 287 species of animals and 985 species of plants. The 2500ha reserve, which is 600m above sea level, is home to 300 red-shanked douc langurs only found in east-central Laos and Viet Nam. The reserve is a favourite tourism destination, with 10,000 tourists visiting the reserve every month. Last year, the citys forest protection sub-department prosecuted a criminal case that involved the illegal killing of three red-shanked doucs in the reserve. According to GreenViet, traps are still found in the reserve and illegal hunting continues. Many restaurants built inside the reserve have been used for illegal hunting and wildlife trafficking in the area. Illegal loggers have also destroyed a vast area in this protected nature reserve on the Son Tra Peninsula. Two illegal hunting cases were documented in the reserve last year, while 2,000 traps were dismantled by rangers and volunteers. Earlier this year, a monkey (Indochinese rhesus macaque) was killed by a motorcyclist on the Son Tra Mountain. The a Nang-based GreenViet is also co-operating with the Frankfurt Zoological Society of Germany, the San Diego Zoo Global in the United States and the IUCN to protect the red-shanked douc langur through long-term campaigns. The city plans to make the red-shanked douc langur the citys symbol of biodiversity at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit (APEC) in a Nang in 2017. VNS THUA THIEN - HUE Great interest has been expressed by Buddhists and archeologists, as a 2,000-year-old Buddhist palm book is put on display in an exhibition in Hue. The rare ancient Buddhist manuscripts from the Schoeyen Collection will be displayed in the citys Theravada Huyen Khong Pagoda on Tuesday and Wednesday for public viewing. According to venerable Phap Tong, deputy head of the Buddhist Sangha of Viet Nam, Vietnamese Sangha and Thai Sangha worked together to organise the exhibition of the ancient book, a world cultural heritage item. The arrival of the precious ancient palm book in Hue provides an opportunity for Buddhists to have a look at a glorious stage of Buddhism from 2,000 years ago, said the venerable. He also praised the displaying of the palm book as a great archaeological achievement, saying the exhibition would be meaningful to local researchers as well. In recent weeks, delegates from the Norwegian Government and the Thai Buddhist Sangha arrived in Hue to prepare for the exhibition at a pagoda, which is located on the outskirts of Huong Ho Commune, about 5km from Hue Citys centre. As of Monday afternoon, Apr 25, some 50 Buddhist officials and followers from the Thai Sangha accompanied the arrival of the Buddhist manuscripts from Thailand. Also, a lantern floating ceremony will be held on the local Huong River to express solidarity between ASEAN countries with the participation of the countries officials. The rare and valued palm book was found in fragments in caverns near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan by professors from Norway, Japan, German, and the US. Formal arrangements were later agreed upon with the collections owner, Martin Schoeyen. The book is a world cultural heritage item, under the supervision of the Norwegian Government, which authorised the Thai Sangha exhibitions in South East Asia and North Asia. Venerable Phap Tong asked to borrow the book for an exhibition in Viet Nam after he saw the book displayed at the World Peace Buddhist Conference held in Myanmar in January this year. At the exhibition, a collection of old Buddhist Tipitaka books in Pali Latin, English, Burmese, Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese will also be showcased. The exhibition is this years first event at the biennial Hue Festival, which begins April 29. VNS National Assembly Vice Chairman Uong Chu Luu (first left) at the meeting. VNA/VNS Photo Duy Trinh Viet Nam News -HA NOI National Assembly (NA) Vice Chairman Uong Chu Luu proposed numerous measures to foster co-operation between Asia and Europe at the 9th Asia-Europe Parliamentary Partnership (ASEP-9) Meeting, which ran from April 21-22 in Mongolia. Luu, who led the Vietnamese delegation at the event, stressed the importance of ASEP, stating that the connection between the two economic blocs in Europe and Asia will create a new impetus for trade and investment exchanges, as well as other shared issues. He noted that Viet Nam is one of the leading ASEAN nations in concluding negotiations for free trade agreements (FTA) with key international economic and political hubs, such as the European Union (EU) and the Asian-European Economic Union. Touching upon security and political issues, the Vietnamese delegation head reiterated the settlement of disputes via peaceful measures in line with the United Nations chapters and international law. He called for respecting the freedom of navigation and overflight at sea and strictly adhering to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) towards completing negotiations on a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC). ASEP-9 is one of two key events hosted by Mongolia this year, along with the 11th Asia-Europe Summit Meeting (ASEM-11), which aims to mark the 20th founding anniversary of ASEM. This years event saw the participation of 200 delegates from 32 ASEP member nations and international organisations. With the theme The role of ASEP to ASEM, the meeting focused its discussions on the connectivity and efficiency of multi-lateral mechanisms and a partnership towards the future. During the event, the Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) Vice Chairman was received by the Mongolian NA Chairman, at which time the two sides discussed measures to strengthen relations between the two NAs and nations. Luu also had bilateral meetings with delegations from Italy, Russia, Australia, Finland, Laos, Cambodia and Singapore. --VNS National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan inspects the northern provinces preparations for the upcoming election of deputies to the 14th legislature and Peoples Councils at all levels for 2016-2021.. VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc Viet Nam News -HA NOI Hai Duong Province should draw up a list of voters, as the locality houses many industrial zones and clusters where multiple employees from other localities are working, said National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. The top legislator made the request yesterday while inspecting the northern provinces preparations for the upcoming election of deputies to the 14th legislature and Peoples Councils at all levels for 2016-2021. NA Chairwoman Ngan, who is also head of the National Election Council, urged the locality to announce the official list of candidates for all-level Peoples Councils before April 27 and final candidates for NA deputies no later than May 2. Communication work should be stepped up to popularise the significance of the election as well as its date, form and constituencies, she said. The chief legislator underlined the need for Hai Duong to create favourable conditions for all candidates to meet with voters in order to present their action programmes equally. The provincial election committee should team up with competent agencies to handle petitions, complaints and recommendations about the election before May 12, ten days ahead of election day, she said, adding that pending ones will be settled following the poll. With 10 districts, one city and own town, Hai Duong is entitled to elect nine deputies to the 14th NA, 65 deputies to the provincial Peoples Council, 434 deputies to the district Peoples Councils and 6,680 deputies to the communal Peoples Councils. The province has a total of 1,976 polling stations. After the third consultative conference on April 15, the Viet Nam Fatherland Front Committee in Hai Duong Province made a list of 13 candidates eligible to run for seats in the NA. Women account for 46 per cent; young people represent 15 per cent; and non-Party members account for 15 per cent. Additionally, 104 candidates will run for seats in the provincial Peoples Council in the May election. Also yesterday, NA Chairwoman Ngan inspected preparations for the election and new-style rural area building in Co Thanh Commune, Chi Linh town, where she hailed the localitys performance in this area. VNS Viet Nam News -HA NOI General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and President of Laos, Bounnhang Volachith, will pay an official friendly visit to Viet Nam on April 25-27. General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and President of Laos, Bounnhang Volachith. VNS Photo The visit, which is made at the invitation of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Tran ai Quang, is the first overseas trip by Bounnhang Volachith as Lao Party General Secretary and President for 2016-2020. It aims to affirm the solidarity and mutual trust between the Vietnamese Party, State and people and their Lao counterparts, as well as Viet Nams strong and comprehensive support for the reform process as well as national defence and construction in the neighbouring country. During the visit, the two sides are due to discuss measures to accelerate the implementation of high-level agreements reached by the two Parties and States. Viet Nam-Laos relations have been thriving in all fields. Politically, the two countries have coordinated with each other in organising visits and meetings between Party and State leaders, as well as experiencing exchanges between ministries, agencies and localities. Apart from three theoretical conferences between the two parties, they have joined hands in marking major celebrations of the two countries. In the sphere of national defence, security and diplomacy, joint efforts have been channeled to actualising protocols between the two Defence and Public Security ministries, and an agreement in border management. They have completed a project on increasing and upgrading border markers, and inked a protocol on the borderline and national border markers and an agreement on land border and border gate management regulations. VNS HA NOI General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and President of Laos, Bounnhang Volachith, said that the visit to Viet Nam in his first overseas trip as Party and State leader shows that the Party and State of Laos and he himself attach great importance to preserving and enhancing the friendship, special, loyal and pure solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation with Viet Nam. The Lao Party leader made the remarks during his talks with Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong following his arrival in Ha Noi today to begin his three-day official friendly visit to Viet Nam. The visit is made at the invitation of the Vietnamese Party leader and President Tran ai Quang. Trong described the visit as an important event taking place after the Party Congress in each nation and the election of the eighth Lao National Assembly. The host expressed his belief that the visit will reap successes, contributing to promoting relations between the two Parties and States in the time ahead. Volachith, for his part, congratulated Trong on his re-election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) for 2016-21 period. Viet Nam is always Laos trustworthy and close friend, he said, noting his belief that under the leadership of the CPV, Vietnamese people will record more significant achievements in order to basically turn the country into a modernity-oriented industrialised nation and raise the countrys position in the region and the world at large. Visit shows Laos priority The ongoing visit to Viet Nam by General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and President of Laos, Bounnhang Volachith, demonstrates that the country treasures its ties with Viet Nam. The statement was made by Sunthone Sayachak, head of the Lao Party Central Committees Commission for External Relations, in an interview with Vietnam News Agency. The Vietnamese and Lao Parties, States and people boast a time-honoured relationship, fostered by Presidents Ho Chi Minh, Kaysone Phomvihane and Souphanouvong, and strengthened by generations of officials, soldiers and people of the two countries over the past decades, she said. Despite the difficulties facing each nation, bilateral cooperation has thrived, the official stressed. Regarding bilateral collaboration, Sayachak said political ties have served as a foundation for their affiliation in other fields. Apart from security, national defence and foreign affairs, the two countries cooperation in investment, economy and trade has made big strides, she said, noting that Viet Nam is now one of Laos leading investors with total registered capital of US$4.9 billion. Cooperation in the sphere of human resource d evelopment is also noteworthy, where the Lao side highly values Viet Nams support to the country, she said. Many Lao officials, who have received training organised in Viet Nam, hold key positions in the countrys Party, State and Government at both grassroots and central levels. Sayachak said during his Viet Nams visit, from April 25-27, the Lao Party General Secretary and President is due to hold meetings with Vietnamese leaders, during which the two sides will affirm their goodwill and desire to enhance bilateral cooperation and friendship. VNS The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) has asked provincial departments of education and training to build swimming pools in schools to give swimming training to students. Illustrative Image dayboi.net HA NOI The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) has asked provincial departments of education and training to build swimming pools in schools to give swimming training to students. The request was released after two recent cases of students drowning in two different provinces. Nine sixth grade schoolboys drowned last Thursday afternoon while they were swimming in a section of the Tra Khuc River in central Quang Ngai Provinces Thanh Khiet Village. Two seventh grade schoolgirls drowned on Wednesday afternoon on the Ta Ruc Lake in Cam Phuoc Tay Commune, Cam Ranh City in the central province of Khanh Hoa. The MoET asked departments of education and training to join hands with local authorities to build swimming pools and organise swimming training courses for students. Accidental drowning prevention must be supervised closely. Supervision results must be reported to the MoET twice a year. But some experts have lamented the shortage of funds. Associate Professor Le Huu Lap, from the Academy of Posts and Telecommunications, told Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that 15 years ago he proposed that the academy build a swimming pool and consider swimming as one of the physical training subjects. But then he himself had to withdraw the proposal, because the academys funds and the funds of other universities, colleges and schools were dependent on the State budget, so building a swimming pool was difficult work. Le Hoang Hao, chairman of the Vietnamese Association of Educational Equipment, suggested to use of mobile swimming pools at a reasonable price, which is about VN200 million (US$8,900) per pool. Nguyen Hiep Thong, deputy director of the Ha Noi Department of Education and Training, said that the capitals immediate measure was to encourage parents to take their children to swimming centres to study swimming, especially in the coming summer vacation. The department would create good conditions for enterprises interested in building swimming pools for students, and suggested such firms make contact with schools to discuss the work, he said. -- VNS Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung inspects fish farms Ky Anh Commune of central Ha Tinh Province. Photo nld.vn HA TINH Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development yesterday told Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung that in three to five days, they would have an answer to the massive death of fish along coastal provinces in the past two weeks. The commitment was made during a working session between Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung as he inspected several fish farms in Ky Anh Commune of central Ha Tinh Province. During the inspection, Dung asked the four provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua ThienHue to make accurate calculations of the damage and loss caused by the massive fish death event so that adequate support could be given to local residents. He also asked the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to inspect the waste water treatment systems of large firms and production units. Over the past two weeks, it is estimated that some 15 tonnes of natural fish and 2 tonnes of farmed fish have died in Ha Tinh Province. Meanwhile in Thua ThienHue Province, some 30 tonnes of natural fish died and were washed up on beaches. Yesterday morning, a dead whale was found on a beach in central Thua Thien-Hue Province. All along the coast of Thua Thien-Hue dead fish were found and many fish farms along the coast that use ocean water for aquaculture in Lang Co Bay have also been effected. Nguyen Huynh Ky, who runs a fish farm in Lang Co Town, told a Viet Nam News reporter that two thirds of his fish had died without any symptoms of disease. He suspects that the ocean water was somehow poisoned. Meanwhile, fishermen along coast of Phu Vang and Quang ien said they had returned to shore with empty nets from recent fishing trips in local waters. Officials from the ministries of the environment, agriculture and public security have arrived at the affected areas to investigate the incident. -- VNS Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha said Viet Nam needs to shift its development model, which is based on low labour costs and natural resources, to a clean and environmentally -friendly model to prepare for the Paris Agreements implementation. Photo monre.gov.vn NEW YORK Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha said Viet Nam needs to shift its development model, which is based on low labour costs and natural resources, to a clean and environmentally-friendly model to prepare for the Paris Agreements implementation. Speaking to Vietnam News Agency on the sidelines of the Paris Agreement signing ceremony in New York last Friday, Minister Ha said that although the agreement will take affect after 2020, it is already opening opportunities for countries, including Viet Nam. He called on all countries to exert strong efforts and ambitious plans to implement their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) as part of the agreement. He stressed that responding to climate change is an urgent task for the Vietnamese Government and people, noting that Viet Nam is one of the developing countries most vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. Minister Ha also pointed out the challenges and suggested forming a sustainable production model and better consumption habits to save natural resources. He called for the adoption of the law on climate change, incentives for investors to fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and proactive adaptation to climate change. He said Viet Nam should consider a low-carbon growth model as a solution for Viet Nams development to avoid the middle income trap. Second, the country must review its mechanisms and policies based on the content of the agreement, then amend and promulgate mechanisms and policies to respond to climate change in line with newly-formed rules on a global scale, he said. He also added that in the long-term, it is essential to legalise binding provisions of the agreement on the policies and laws of Viet Nam in order to enact a climate change law. He also noted the importance of the development of human resources, scientific research and technological development to transform models of growth, production and consumption towards low carbon emissions. He said it was time to develop internal resources, take advantage of international support for the implementation of Viet Nams commitments and transform the growth model. Ha added that certain challenges lie ahead for Viet Nam, including the deep-rooted habit of using high-carbon energy sources. Thus, its of great importance that a change in behaviours and lifestyles within the community is encouraged in conjunction with the low-carbon growth model. Ha said after the signing ceremony that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will coordinate closely with ministries, branches and localities to complete the legal procedures for approval of the agreement and develop a roadmap for its implementation, including plans to adapt to climate change consistent with United Nations guidelines. Strategies, programmes and plans in response to climate change - such as the national strategy and action plan on climate change and strategy and action plan for green growth - will be implemented effectively, he said.--VNS ONG NAI Prosecutors and police in southern ong Nai Provinces Nhon Trach District yesterday apologised for wrongly arresting and prosecuting a local woman who had reported illegal sand dredging in September 2015. At the meeting with Nguyen Thi Anh Ngoc, the woman who was wrongly arrested, the two State agencies admitted they had made mistakes during the investigation and the prosecution. Colonel Le Van Hung, a representative of the ong Nai Provinces investigation police, said Ngoc should have been fined for her actions against law enforcers instead of being arrested. According to the police document, Ngoc had rented land for shrimp farming in Phuoc An Commune in Nhon Trach District. On September 5, 2015, she called police to report an illegal sand dredging boat on the ong Nai River. When Nhon Thanh District police arrived, they let the boat go and said they would write a violation report for a different location. Ngoc and other local residents insisted the police record the violation immediately. She even held the sand pumping pipe, shouted at the officers and threatened to kill herself if the police did not punish the violators. Ngoc told the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that she held the pipe so that the boat could not leave and she wanted an immediate report from police so that they could not "ignore" the violations like they had done previously. Six months later, on April14, 2016, the district police prosecuted Ngoc for her actions against the law enforcers. On April 19, 2016, Ngoc was summoned to the police station and put in temporary detention in connection with another case in which she reported forest rangers had beat her and destroyed her shrimp farm in February 2015. The woman said she had submitted several letters of denunciation to local authorities and photos taken as evidence, saying many forest rangers did not fulfill their duties and aided and abetted sand thieves to continue their illegal activities. Her arrest was questioning by the public, following which Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked the provincial Peoples Committee to review her case. The head of Nhon Trach District Peoples Prosecuracy, Truong Bui Nha Linh, said Ngoc had been prosecuted because police documents showed Ngoc acted against the law enforcers. Later, however, investigators found new evidence of police errors and cancelled Ngocs temporary detention and prosecution. VNS PHU THO (VNS) The Ministry of Transport (MoT) has fined Viet Tri Bridge BOT JSC for illegally blocking vehicles from traveling on Hac Tri Bridge in this northern province. The company, last Friday, closed the toll station and directed vehicles to travel through Viet Tri Bridge, which cars and trucks had been blocked from traveling on by the MoT since April 11 because of its deteriorating condition. A representative from the company said heavy rain that day had caused the electricity system at the station to short-circuit, leading the company to ban vehicles from passing the toll station. The companys action violated traffic regulations, affecting the Viet Tri Bridge, the safety of travellers and the secure passage of vehicles, according to the MoT. Authorities asked the company to reopen the toll station and let traffic pass on Saturday. Hac Tri Bridge, which crosses the Lo River, has been in operation since December 2015, with an investment of VN1.9 trillion (US$84.4 million) under the build-operate-transfer model. The company collects tolls, allowing it to recover its capital over 20 years and eight months. The lowest fee is VN35,000 ($1.5) per car with fewer than 12 seats. The highest fee is VN180,000 ($8) per truck weighing more than 18 tonnes. VNS Gia Loc HCM CITY The Department of Education plans to ask the city to issue detailed regulations on private services for students who must attend school in either a morning or afternoon shift. The department wants to ensure that services and facilities offered by individual providers are safe for children, including food and facilities. Some public schools, particularly those with rising numbers of students from increased migration from the provinces, do not have enough classrooms for both morning and afternoon classes. They also cannot provide lunch. Because of the shortage, many parents, who are often busy at work all day, often have to make arrangements with private services provided by individuals located near the students schools, according to Nguyen Hong Ha, deputy head of the Culture and Social Affairs Board under the Peoples Council. The students who cannot attend both morning and afternoon sessions often go to a private school for either a morning or afternoon session. The private services include only lunch and extracurricular activities such as English. Some students receive extra academic instruction. Nguyen Quang Vinh, head of the citys Department of Education and Trainings primary education division, said that in the 2015-2016 academic year, the pressure of compulsory primary education and rising number of children of migrants in the city had led to insufficient classroom space. The districts with rapidly growing numbers of children of migrants from other provinces are Binh Tan, Tan Phu, Go Vap, 12 and Hoc Mon. The private service providers sometimes pick up the children from public schools. But at other times, they do not so the children must walk there, which usually are located in someones home. A mother of a first grader from Go Vap District said her son studies at An Hoi Primary School in the morning and then goes to Than ong Establishment in the afternoon. We could not pick up and take care of him at home as we are busy. So, we have to pay VN700,000 ($31) per month for the private service, she said. Her son must cross a road and walk to the Than ong Establishment after the morning shift at An Hoi School. In the last few years, in Go Vap District, the public primary schools met only 50 per cent of the peoples demand for full-day attendance. With such a need, the number of private services establishments located near public schools in the district has risen to seven, with more than a total of 770 children. Tan Phu Districts schools also have reduced the rate of students who attend all day, though the demand remains high. Each year, the district schools see an increase in 7,200 first-graders. In the last two years, the rate of all-day students in the district was only 24-25 per cent, the lowest proportion in the city. It is expected to rise to 35 per cent by 2020, said Ta Tan, head of the districts educational division at recent meeting with the Culture and Social Affairs Board of the city Peoples Council. To meet the remaining 65 per cent, three private establishments have been opened however they can receive about 500 students. Besides the individual providers, private schools that are licensed offer lunch and extracurricular sessions for public school students who cannot attend school all day. Tran Thi Nga, principal of the privately licensed Ruby School, said the school received students from public primary schools, including Phan Chu Trinh, Huynh Van Chinh, Ho Van Cuong and Duy Tan at prices between VN1.5 million and VN1.7 million. The number doubled from 80 in the 2013-2014 academic year to 163 in the 2015-2016 year. Truong Nguyen Hai Yen, a third-grader at Phan Chu Trinh Primary School in Tan Phu District, attends Ruby School in the morning. Yens parents are busy at work and have two other children, so they cannot pick her up at public school or tutor her at home. Yen is picked up at Phan Chu Trinh Primary School by the Ruby School. I like going to school rather than staying at home in the morning because I have friends to play with, Yen said. Better management Because many of the private service individual providers may pose risks, the citys Culture and Social Affairs Board under the Peoples Council has told the educational department to closely monitor these establishments. Cao Thanh Binh, member of the Culture and Social Affair Board, said the department should petition the city Peoples Committee to have detailed regulations on how these establishments should be managed. Problems can arise from a shortage of regulations related to management, he added. Nguyen Van Hieu, the departments deputy head, said the department had encouraged more private schools with empty classrooms to work with public schools that have a shortage of classrooms. He said that parents would then have more options. VNS MARIB, Yemen Yemeni troops backed by Arab coalition air strikes killed more than 800 members of al-Qaeda in an attack on a southeastern provincial capital held by the group for the past year, the coalition said yesterday. Pro-government forces recaptured an oil terminal as well as the city of Mukalla, which was considered a jihadist stronghold, military sources said. "The operation resulted... in the death of more than 800 al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," Arab coalition commanders said in a statement published by SPA, the official Saudi news agency. The operation was part of a wider offensive aimed at securing parts of the country captured by jihadist militants who have exploited a 13-month war between Gulf-backed loyalists and rebels supported by Iran. It coincides with UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait after a ceasefire entered into effect on April 11, but from which jihadists groups are excluded. "We entered the city centre (of Mukalla) and were met by no resistance from al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west" towards the vast desert in Hadramawt and Shabwa provinces, a military officer said from the city the jihadists seized last April. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents of Mukalla, home to an estimated 200,000 people, had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Yemeni military sources said Emirati military vehicles were used in the operation and that troops from the Gulf country, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition, were among the forces that entered Mukalla. AFP could not immediately confirm these reports from officials in the United Arab Emirates. The Arab coalition battling rebels in Yemen since March 2015 carried out air strikes against al-Qaeda positions in Mukalla to pave the way for the ground troops, military sources said. Troops also recaptured Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal in Shehr further east, the sources said. Earlier on Sunday, military sources said pro-government forces seized Riyan airport and an army brigade headquarters al-Qaeda had held for a year on Mukallas outskirts. Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is regarded by Washington as the networks most dangerous branch, and has carried out deadly attacks on the West in the past. Last month, a US air strike on an al-Qaeda training camp in Hadramawt Province killed dozens of fighters in a major blow to the jihadists. A provincial official in Shabwa said jihadists also fled from the town of Azzan on Sunday which they seized in February. Bomb kills 7 troops As the anti-jihadist offensive gained momentum, a bomb-laden vehicle exploded on Sunday, killing seven soldiers and wounding 14. They were in a convoy entering another southern jihadist stronghold Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, said military sources, blaming al-Qaeda for the attack. The coalition, led by Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, has deployed Apache helicopters to support loyalists fighting on the ground. Forces loyal to internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadis government have retreated from Zinjibar after entering it late on Saturday, an officer in Abyan said. "The withdrawal was decided following information that al-Qaeda was preparing other car-bomb attacks against our troops," added the officer who requested anonymity. Coalition-backed forces have also driven militants from Aden, the southern city declared by Hadi as Yemens temporary capital after the Shiite Huthi rebels overran Sanaa in September 2014. And last week, government forces expelled AQAP militants from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj. When US President Barack Obama met Gulf leaders on Thursday in Saudi Arabia, they discussed the wars in Yemen and Syria. During the visit, Ben Rhodes, one of Obamas closest advisers, urged all warring sides in Yemen to participate "constructively" in the Kuwait talks that began on Thursday, saying that a political solution would "allow for a focus on AQAP in Yemen". AFP HANOVER, Germany Barack Obama will set out his vision of relations with Europe with a speech in the northern German city of Hanover today, trying to frame a relationship that has been less than easy throughout his presidency. With the end of his administration in sight, Obama will stress the issues that Europe and America have tackled together, from Syria to trade, Iraq to climate change. Obama started his presidency with Europeans revelling in a less hardline approach to foreign policy than they saw under his predecessor George Bush. Since then Obamas star has dimmed, but aides see the speech as an opportunity to reflect his 2008 speech in Berlin, when as a presidential candidate he described a need for a self-sustaining partnership. Obama has pressed allies on the need for European powers to bolster their own defence operations, which still shelter under a US umbrella. " (The) speech will be an opportunity to discuss joint US-European efforts to confront a range of challenges, including countering ISIL, the current refugee crisis, Ukraine, and the headwinds in the global economy," said a US official. "The president will discuss the progress made on these issues over the past few years, and outline the additional work to be done moving forward." Turning to Syria, Obama will announce he will send up to 250 more troops to the country to augment the train and assist mission, according to a senior administration official. That announcement comes as European allies, including his host Angela Merkel, scramble to try and limit the refugee flow into Europe and blood flow in Syria. US troops in Syria are mandated to advise and assist Syrian rebel and anti-Islamic State forces. Close allies On Sunday, the first day of his visit to Germany, Obama made a pitch for transatlantic trade. "Angela and I agree that the United States and the European Union need to keep moving forward with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations," Obama said, referring to vast EU-US trade agreement in the making. He called for the agreement to be sealed before the end of the year. Both Obama and his host Merkel hope the pact will provide a shot in the arm to Western economies. "As you see other markets like China beginning to develop and Asia beginning to develop and Africa growing fast, we have to make sure our businesses can compete," Obama said. Merkel echoed that sentiment, saying the deal would be "extremely helpful" for growth in Europe. "It is good for the German economy, it is good for the European economy," she said. But in a sign of differences, Obama felt the need to underline his longstanding opposition to establishing a safe zone in Syria, something European countries have discussed to stem the flow of migrants. "Sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country," he said. AFP WELLINGTON Tens of thousands of New Zealanders turned out yesterday for the 100th ANZAC Day dawn services honouring their war dead on the anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in World War I. "The First World War helped shape our nation and our shared values. It cemented our ties with other countries, in particular our kinship with Australia," Prime Minister John Key, who attended a service at the national war memorial in Wellington, said. On April 25, 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey. More than 10,000 servicemen died in the campaign which failed in its military objectives but gave rise to the legacy of courage and close friendship that binds the two countries. Governor-General Jerry Mateparae, who attended the Wellington dawn service, said the act of remembering helped steer people towards building a better, safer world. "On this day 100 years ago, New Zealanders first gathered together to honour their loved ones who had perished at Gallipoli. "Since then, Anzac Day has become the focal point for New Zealanders and Australians to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of all involved in military conflict." The nine-month battle saw German-backed Ottoman forces resist the Allied troops trying to seize the peninsula on the western edge of Turkey to break through to take Constantinople and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Despite the tragic outcome, the later actions of New Zealanders "on the perilous North Sea, and on the fields of France were true to the Anzac spirit of bravery, compassion and comradeship established at Gallipoli," said Key. France marked ANZAC Day by announcing plans for a memorial in Wellington to commemorate their wartime bond with New Zealand. "France places great value on the significance of this memorial to celebrate the relationship between our two countries, the enduring friendship that unites us and the common memories we share, of which the First World War was a major example," the French ambassador Florence Jeanblanc-Risler said. AFP S M Reza Ali Khan, a direct descendent of Mir Jafar, the first Nawab of Bengal with the support of East India Company, is a bitter man these days. Not only is he tired of battling the perception of the descendent of a 'traitor', he is not happy with the way political parties have approached the minority issue thus far. President Barack Obama said on Sunday that he was confident the United States and the European Union would succeed in negotiating a new trans-Atlantic trade deal by the end of the year, saying the benefits of such an agreement were "indisputable." Obama said images of plants moving overseas and jobs lost created a narrative about trade agreements that "drives, understandably, a lot of suspicion" in places like the US and Germany. But, he added, well-designed trade deals can have greater benefits. "It is indisputable that it has made our economy stronger," he said. "It has made sure that our businesses are the most competitive in the world." Obama's comments came as he stood next to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany during a news conference in Hanover as they prepared to preside over the opening here of the world's largest industrial trade fair. The President's visit to Germany was intended to bolster negotiators seeking to wrap up a trans-Atlantic trade agreement between the US and the European Union, an accord that Merkel supports but that is highly unpopular in her country. The Chancellor greeted the President at the Schloss Herrenhausen, the former summer residence of the Royal House of Hanover. They stood in front of a line of German troops in gray overcoats and green berets as the national anthems for the two nations played before returning inside for a private meeting. Obama said he hoped the trade negotiations could be completed before he leaves office. "I don't anticipate that we will be able to complete ratification of a deal by the end of this year, but I do anticipate that we will have completed the agreement," he said. Once negotiations are finished, he said, "people will be able to see exactly why this will be good for our two countries". 2016 The New York Times News Service Sydney soaked by wettest October ever recorded A Sky News Australia meteorologist has predicted how much rain Sydneysiders can expect for the rest of 2022 as two weather systems lash almost every inch of New South Wales. Jurors in rape trial make request amid ongoing deliberations The 12-member jury of the Bruce Lehrmann rape trial have requested extra time to come to a unanimous decision on whether the former Liberal staffer sexually assaulted Brittany Higgins. Lambie prays for Netball Australia after sponsorship mess Senator Jacqui Lambie has thrown her support behind Gina Rinehart as she slammed Netball Australia for losing a major sponsor while local sports clubs struggle to stay alive. Labor move to derecognise West Jerusalem a slap in the face to a loyal ally Just as the two countries gear up for close cooperation in high-tech areas of food security and missile defence, Canberra has put a major dent in its relations with Israel. WATERLOO A slump in the farm economy doesnt necessarily dictate a downturn for all firms doing business in the agriculture space, according to some attendees at last weeks AMC Engineering Conference at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center in Waterloo. We understand they might be a little tight with the money right now, but if someone invests, they dont necessarily want to add to head count, which might give them the bandwidth to do these things internally, said Benjamin Jefferson, director of business strategy with Cedar Falls-based DISTek Integration Inc. Some factors, other than economics, can dictate a strategic move, Jefferson said. An upgrade to meet new emissions requirements or a rush to meet an expiring tax incentive were two possible examples he cited. So, people were buying some things probably sooner than they might otherwise do so, and it worked at the time because commodity prices were up, he said. Now, prices are down and some farmers are pulling back on purchases, Jefferson noted. Now, prices are down and it seems the farmers, the end users of all the equipment, tend to be more cautious when it comes to making the bigger purchases the tractors, the combines, the quarter-million-dollar-and-up equipment, he said. But thats not necessarily the case when it comes to some of the smaller equipment, Jefferson said. I know that in the construction world, which has followed a similar economic cycle as agriculture, last year, the manufacturers in the compact equipment actually increased revenues and profits, he said. The big earth movers the dozers and excavators are on a much different trajectory, for sure. Theyre really feeling the pain. And its a similar scenario when you look at the sales numbers for compact and utility-type tractors; theyre actually up quite a bit year over year right now. The larger tractors and the big combines tend to be down in terms of unit sales, and I think thats just farmers trying to ride it out with the equipment they have. Theyll supplement where they need to and replace when they have to, but maybe waiting longer to do that replacement than they would have three to five years ago. The business of engineering perks along, even if prevailing economic winds dont cooperate, said Derek Rude, project manager for Prairie Agriculture Machinery Institute in Humboldt, Saskatchewan. The progressive manufacturer with the long-term outlook wont stop that process, he said. They may scale back or make sure where theyre spending their developement funds is justified. They may adjust dates, but they dont drastically change their approach in product development. Clients often can work around the difficulties and still get the upgrades they need, said Darrell Mirva, engineering manager with another Canada-based firm, Ram Industries Inc., which makes hydraulic cylinders for a variety of industries. We can two things, he said. One, in the past, people would buy off the shelf and do their own modifications, and that would cost them money. What we can do is come in and build exactly like you need it, so when it comes through your door, you can install it directly on your machinery. Theres also another economic opportunity at the moment, he said: the currency exchange. The The Canadian dollar is worth about 30 percent less, so we can come down here and if theyve been buying from a local supplier, their prices stay basically the same, he said. Our price in relationship has actually dropped by up to 30 percent. And were not a huge company, so we try to give you the service you need. We can save you a little money, so you can be more competitive. It also helps to have a hand in numerous business sectors, said Jason Neal, sales engineer with ACTech North America Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich., a subsidiary of Germany-based ACTech GmbH. In Europe, its different, Neal said. We do really well in Europe right now. We do automotive, aerospace, everything, so if one things down, something else is going. I dont know if that really affects us as much. Product designers often work with the future in mind, anyway, so they can keep present economic slumps in perspective, said Jeff Shaw, territory manager with Clancey, a Lenexa, Kan.-based design and product distributor. Working with engineers, right now, everybody is trying to take cost out of equipment, so in a lot of ways, were busier than ever because what theyre designing today is what theyre going to sell next year, and if you get locked into a platform, that can carry on for five, 10 years at a time, he said. Kevin Last, a sales engineer with Clancey, agreed. Their production numbers are way down, but the engineering side of it doesnt really slow down, Last said. The farm economy will have its way, one way or another, said John Costain, sales representative for North Chesterfield, Va.-based Sealeze, which manufactures brush seals. Its definitely affected us, Costain said. I was given very ambitious sales targets for last year. I was so far away from my targets, it was not as nice as a Christmas, he said. But corporate has realigned their outlook. Now, theyre using the a-word, as in attainable goals. CEDAR FALLS Birthright of Black Hawk County had a dedication ceremony recently at its new permanent facility, 4113 University Ave. in Cedar Falls. The dedication included opening remarks by Board President Cindy Boyle, who thanked the financial donors and individuals and businesses that donated time and talent in remodeling the facility. Deacon John Schwennen led an opening prayer and blessed the new office. Executive Director Nancy Brannon presented certificates of appreciation to Gary and Jeanne Heuer who were named Volunteers of the Year and to the Cedar Falls Chapter of the Knights of Columbus, represented by Mike Babinat and Francis Bakula. Certificates of appreciation also were given to the following businesses and individuals who donated time, building supplies and labor to make the project a reality: All Star Plumbing, Artisan Tile, Bertch Cabinets, Hawkeye Alarm, Home Interiors, Huff Construction, Iowa Wall System, Locksperts, Parkersburg True Value, Rileys Flooring, Schmitt Telecom, Scott Jordan Electric, Signs & Designs, Simpson Furniture, Scotts Custom Window Treatments, Tom Fereday Heating, Verbrakens New Look Painting, Young Plumbing & Heating, Jim Benda, Jeff Engel, Gerry Frost, Lindgren Glass, Gene McElmeel, Peter McElmeel, Steve Michaels and Scott Schmidt. This chapter of Birthright has been active in the Cedar Valley for more than 40 years. Maureen Porth, a volunteer for 18 years and board member, offered comments about the organizations many longtime volunteers and thanked everyone in attendance for their continued support. Birthrights office is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday; 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The centers phone number is 277-2000; the 24-hour hotline is (800) 550-4900. Birthright provides any woman in the Cedar Valley who is distressed by an unplanned pregnancy a safe place to get support and the help she needs. The organization never charges for its services. It is 100 percent supported by volunteers and private donations and has no paid staff. No federal, state or local government funds are requested or received. DES MOINES Soil and Water Conservation Week runs through May 1, state agriculture officials announced. The week is an opportunity to recognize the important conservation practices placed on Iowas landscape and bring attention to the ongoing work by farmers, landowners and urban residents to protect the states soil and water resources, officials said. On Monday, Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds are scheduled to visit Iowa State University to receive updates on the work being done by the Nutrient Research Center. Branstad also will sign a proclamation recognizing April 24 through May 1 as Iowa Soil and Water Conservation Week at ISUs cover crop research site. On Wednesday, Branstad will receive an update on the Benton/Tama and Miller Creek Iowa Water Quality Initiative demonstration projects and review water quality practices there. The event will be held at the John Weber farm, 3213 Iowa Highway 8, Dysart. Branstad then will visit a site of a tree planting on the Jim and Jody Kerns farm just south of Edgewood in Delaware County. Kerns is the Tree Farming and Forestry representative on the State Soil Conservation Committee. The farm is located on County Road C7X, about one-half mile east of Iowa Highway 3. Iowa Soil and Water Conservation Week is in coordination with the National Stewardship Week, sponsored by the National Association of Conservation Districts. This years Stewardship Week theme is We All Need Trees. More information about the activities for Soil and Water Conservation Week in Iowa can be found at www.iowaagriculture.gov/conservationweek.asp. Government in action Tennessee state Rep. Jeremy Durham has such a reputation as a dog around women working at the capitol the house speaker issued a directive in April relocating Durhams office to a less-populated building across the street. Further, Durham is allowed access only to certain legislative meetings and to certain staff (i.e., no free-ranging among female staff members). After interviewing 34 people, the state attorney general said he believed Rep. Durhams unwanted sexual approaches and commentaries were impeding legislative business. Whos a good dog? Some are just blessed with doggy charisma, say owners who showcase their pets charm on personal social media accounts, and now specialized marketers scour those sources to match the most popular pooches with advertisers seeking just the right four-legged companion for their image. As The Wall Street Journal reported in April, entrepreneurial dog owners have rushed to create popular Instagram accounts and Facebook posts (and now, even to put their photogenic pups on a live-streaming app called Waggle) to catch agents eyes and, they hope, lead to four- and five-figure paydays from such advertisers as Nikon, PetSmart, Residence Inn and Heinz. Sad state of affairs New Jersey is a big state, but when just one man decided to move away, the state legislatures budget office director warned the loss of that mans taxes might lead to state revenue problems. Billionaire hedge-fund manager David Tepper evidently pays a bundle, and the budget office director pointed out the states reliance on personal income taxes means even a 1 percent drop in anticipated tax could create a gap of $140 million under forecasts. Police blotter According to surveillance video, a man broke into a Five Guys restaurant in Washington, D.C., in the middle of the night March 18, cooked himself a cheeseburger and fled. Ellis Battista, 24, was arrested for the February break-in at Bradleys convenience store in Las Cruces, N.M., in which he took only a pack of cigarettes for which he left $6 on the counter. However, he also damaged the door getting in. Amanda Schweickert, 28, was charged with a felony and three driving offenses in March in Springville, N.Y., when deputies noticed her rear license plate was just a piece of cardboard painted to sort of resemble a New York plate (but more likely suggesting the work of an elementary school art class). New York also requires a front plate, but Schweickert had not gotten around to that yet. Karma A 55-year-old man was killed in Memphis, Tenn., on March 23 when a 15-foot trailer came loose and crashed into him on a sidewalk. The deceased, who had a lengthy criminal record for sexual assault, might have avoided the trailer if he had not been distracted by watching pornography on his phone as he walked. WATERLOO Prayers and a plea for funds were answered when the Catholic Worker House received nearly $75,000 to purchase a new home for the communitys homeless population. They put out a request last December seeking an estimated $45,000 to purchase a new home to address the needs of single males in need of a place to stay. The substantial increase in their stated goal, however, means they could make even more room at the inn, as they dubbed the fundraising project, by buying a house that is both larger and in better condition but still next door to its current location. We were overwhelmed, and we were humbled and honored that people trusted us, first of all, and apparently felt that what we were doing was worthwhile, said Fran Fuller, one of four full-time volunteers with the Catholic Worker House. Everybody was floored. Fuller said when they set the goal there was uncertainty as to whether the $45,000 was an achievable goal. Though they did some public announcements, a fundraiser and sent a newsletter to past supporters, Fuller said they hardly did anything to see the $73,750 flow into their coffers. It was incredible. I dont know, maybe the timing was just right. It was just meant to happen, I guess, Fuller said. Ive never experienced anything like this Its kind of flabbergasting. She said the funds were raised by mostly small donations, though several supporters gave as much as $1,000. Fuller partially attributes the success to one of the houses founding members Rose Quirk, who has been active in the community. Quirk, however, expects something larger was at play. What I have learned through the years with the Catholic Worker house is that God always provides and is full of surprises, Quirk said, adding her gratitude for the communitys support. We had a plan to buy a house, but God had a bigger plan and surprised us with a bigger house next door. The not-for-profit, nondenominational Catholic Worker House at 321 E. Eighth St. in Waterloo has purchased the house next door at 325 E. Eighth St. and expects to be able to start moving in after May 5. Its volunteers and supporters plan to hold a house blessing, which will be open to the public, after getting settled into the new house. The time and date will be announced on its St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Worker Facebook page in the coming days. The Catholic Worker House also is seeking input from the public on what to name the new house and what notable person in the community it could honor. Fuller said the house, which will more than double the current offering of beds for mens emergency shelter, should be ready to accept people within about a month of the Catholic Worker House taking ownership. It will offer six additional beds to the current five beds that are available for men; though, at peak times the house will open its couches to men in need of emergency shelter as well. The Catholic Worker House is just one of the many places that offer shelter to those in need. Others include House of Hope, Peoples Clinic, Community Housing Initiatives, Cedar Valley Hospitality House and Salvation Army. But surveys of homelessness show the Cedar Valleys needs are many. The Institute of Community Alliances that looks at homelessness in Iowa shows 931 people were homeless in Black Hawk County in 2014, which makes it the fifth highest rate in the state. But 2,134 people got housing services, which put Black Hawk behind just Polk and Linn counties, the two most populous in the state. A report by the Waterloo Community Development Board on housing says the Waterloo Housing Authority provides more than 1,000 housing vouchers to people to prevent homelessness and is at maximum capacity. But there is a five-year wait to get into the program. The Catholic Worker House launched its fundraising goal because they saw an increased need, and fewer beds available, for men. It also offers space to women and families in a separate house. Fuller said the Catholic Worker House has been able to keep afloat during its 34 years of operation thanks solely to the same type of small donations that allowed it to purchase the house. They do not get government assistance, apply for grants or get support from the Catholic Church. But Fuller noted, A lot of people doing a little bit just makes a huge difference in peoples lives. WATERLOO A Waterloo home was hit by gunfire late Sunday, but no injuries were reported. Witnesses reported seeing a dark-colored Pontiac drive down the street and open fire, striking 621 Keystone St. at about 9 p.m. Sunday. The resident was inside the home but wasnt injured, said Capt. David Mohlis with the Waterloo Police Department. No arrests have been made in the shooting. Meanwhile, a Waterloo man is recovering after he was shot in the face over the weekend in an unrelated incident. Gene Autry Gates, 24, was sitting in a parked car outside 726 Logan Ave. waiting for an acquaintance when someone fired at his vehicle at about 3:25 a.m. Sunday. The bullet shattered a window, and a fragment of the projectile struck Gatess face. He fled to the Kwik Star on Broadway Street where paramedics with Waterloo Fire Rescue took him to Unity Point/Allen Hospital for treatment. Police said his injuries arent considered life threatening. WEST UNION Leroy Kula Jr. will spend up to 60 years in prison for committing sex crimes against three girls. Judge Richard Stochl imposed the sentence Monday in Fayette County District Court after hearing from the mother of two of the victims. I see no signs of the man I knew, the woman said, but rather a thief who stole her daughters innocence. Kula opted for a bench trial, presenting evidence in January directly to Stochl. Stochl subsequently found Kula, 36, guilty as charged on two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. On Monday, the girls mother described Kula as weak and cowardly during the trial. The woman said Kula refused to look at her as she exposed his lies to the court. Kula used his position to gain access to the girls, manipulating their blind faith in him, according to the woman. Testimony during the trial revealed Kula set up video cameras and VCRs in his home in Arlington to record the girls dressing. Deputy Jim Davis testified investigators recovered more than 200 tapes and hundreds of CDs and DVDs. Davis also said authorities identified at least eight children in Kulas collection. Stochl noted evidence of Kula video recording children in Grinnell, Independence and Oelwein, describing a pattern of criminal behavior. The girls mother called Kula a selfish monster who fell well short of the man he could be. Her daughters, the woman added, had become everything Kula is not, both generous and fearless. Stochl also heard from Kulas mother. My son is a wonderful father and husband, Londa Huggins said, and a wonderful son to his mother. She suggested Kula had some mental and physical problems but said she doubted his accusers. I will always believe in my son and know that he would never hurt anyone, Huggins said. My son is innocent by all means, she added. Huggins described her sons accusers as vindictive doing anything and everything to destroy him. After the hearing, as spectators, including the girls mother, filed out of the courtroom, Huggins spoke to Kulas son, her grandchild. Liars, Huggins said. Kula also spoke briefly. I know I did not do this, he said, pointing out his son and mother were always in the house when the girls were there. Id never do this to anybodys kids ever, Kula added. Denise Timmins, an assistant Iowa attorney general, prosecuted Kula. She recommended Kulas prison terms be stacked end to end rather than allowed to run concurrently. Each one of these children deserve their own sentences, Timmins said. Stochl agreed, ordering Kula to serve two, 25-year prison terms and a 10-year term consecutively. Because two of the offenses are considered forcible felonies, Kula must serve at least 35 years before becoming eligible for parole. During the hearing, Stochl and the attorneys also addressed a handwritten letter Kula sent April 19 to the Fayette County Clerk of Courts office, asking for a new trial, attorney and judge because, he said, defense attorney Matthew Hoffey provided ineffective counsel and Stochl reached an unfair ruling. Kula also alleged witnesses, including the girls mother, changed their statements. Stochl said he did not consider the letter a legitimate motion. Timmins and Hoffey agreed. There are no motions before the court in my opinion, your honor, Hoffey said. Good morning, Cedar Valley! It's Monday, April 25, 2016. Today's forecast: Partly sunny, with a high near 76. Breezy, with a west southwest wind 11 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 26 mph. Tonight: Partly cloudy, with a low around 51. West wind 7 to 13 mph becoming north northwest after midnight. Today in the Cedar Valley: --- As early as today, traffic on the University Avenue reconstruction project in Cedar Falls between Grove Street and McClain Drive in front of College Square will shift from the north-side lanes to the south-side lanes. Traffic will flow in one lane of travel in each direction. The Tucson Drive, Boulder Drive, Holiday Road and Black Hawk Village intersections will remain open. City officials urge motorists to use caution in construction zones. --- The Waterloo City Council meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall. --- The Cedar Falls City Council will hold a special meeting on the University Avenue project at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall. --- The Waterloo Board of Education meets at 6 p.m. at the Education Service Center, 1516 Washington St. --- The Cedar Falls Board of Education meets at 7 p.m. at the Administration Building, 1002 W. First St. DES MOINES A potential partnership with a neighboring state may be the most likely expansion of Iowas limited medical cannabis law this year. Advocates have spent months pushing state lawmakers to expand Iowas medical cannabis program, which permits Iowans to possess cannabidiol, a medicinal byproduct of the marijuana plant, to treat children with epileptic seizures, but the law does not provide access to cannabidiol in the state. Multiple proposals have failed to gain sufficient support from state lawmakers. The latest plan to emerge, being explored by House Republicans, would establish a partnership between Iowa and Minnesota, which has a more expansive medical cannabis program, in which Iowans would be able to purchase cannabidiol from Minnesota dispensaries. Iowa state lawmakers have been in contact with Minnesota state lawmakers, and the offices of the states governors also have been in contact regarding the issue. Any potential partnership would require a change to Minnesotas law. Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Bondurant, said Iowa legislators also are considering partnerships with other states with more expansive medical cannabis programs, including Illinois, but the most substantive discussions have been with Minnesota. Were thinking what Iowans could potentially do to acquire it immediately, to acquire it affordably, Nunn said. Other legislative proposals would permit the production and sale of cannabidiol in Iowa. Those same advocates said the proposed partnership with Minnesota falls short of their expectations. In a statement, Iowans 4 Medical Cannabis said Iowans still would have to travel great lengths to obtain cannabidiol and there is insufficient time left in Iowas legislative session to craft a proposal and get it approved by legislators and the governor. Were pleased that (Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake) is interested in helping Iowans that need medical cannabis. However, suggesting we look to another state to solve Iowas problem is counter-productive at this stage in the session, Steve Gaer, co-founder of Iowans 4 Medical Cannabis, said in a statement. We need the comprehensive solution that (Rep. Peter Cownie, R-West Des Moines) and a large, bipartisan group of legislators have been advocating for since the beginning of this session to become law, Gaer said. Nunn said any proposal will have its supporters and detractors and House Republicans simply are trying to expand access to cannabidiol for Iowans in need. Were not going to have revolutionary change to whats already in current code, Nunn said. Were trying to establish a better public policy to be able to afford people the ability to get the cannabidiol that they use for their ailment. DES MOINES An outside group that was one of the biggest spenders in the 2014 Iowa U.S. Senate race is launching a voter engagement effort squarely aimed at getting young voters to the ballot box in November to elect federal candidates who offer clean energy solutions. The 2016 election is likely to offer the starkest contrast between presidential candidates that has been offered for many decades, Tom Steyer president of NextGen Climate. Young voters are the best hope for solving climate issues because they will have to live with the results for the longest time, Steyer said in announcing what he said would be the largest campus vote effort ever undertaken by a noncandidate campaign organization. His organization will have hundreds of organizers on the grounds at more than 200 campuses, including in Iowa. Steyer, a businessman and philanthropist, has budgeted $25 million for the campus campaign because he is determined to make sure young voters, who are not as engaged as older voters, are difference makers in the fall election. In Iowa, he said, more than 10,000 young voters have pledged to vote based on climate and clean energy issues. When young people engage in the political conversation ... incredible things can happen, he said. Dog classes set at Gateway Park CEDAR FALLS The Waterloo Kennel Club will run obedience and conformation classes, beginning May 17 at Gateway Park. Times are 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. for obedience classes, and 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. for conformation classes. Cost is $60 for a six-week class. For registration and more information, call Suzanne at 429-1961. Blum art show planned at UNI CEDAR FALLS The University of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art and Department of Art will present Rep. Rod Blums 2016 Congressional Art Competition of Iowas 1st Congressional District, which will take place in the Kamerick Art Building from Tuesday through May 7. An award ceremony and opening reception for the exhibition is set for 6 to 8 p.m. May 4. Blum will address attendees at 7:15 p.m., when the grand prizewinner and several honorable mentions will be announced. Each spring, the U.S. House of Representatives sponsors a nationwide high school visual art competition to recognize and encourage artistic talent in the nation and in each congressional district. The Artistic Discovery competition began in 1982, and since then more than 650,000 high school students have participated. The University of Northern Iowa, Southwest Airlines and Kyles Framing and Gallery in Marion sponsor this program. All events are free and open to the public. Graduation dates set in Waterloo WATERLOO Graduation dates for Expo Alternative Learning Center, East High and West High Class of 2016 will be: Expo, June 1, 6 p.m., at the school. East, June 2, 6 p.m., McLeod Center, Cedar Falls. West, June 3, 6 p.m., McLeod Center, Cedar Falls. All graduations will be rebroadcast on Mediacom Local Access Channel 79.6. Lego League gets copyright WATERLOO A certificate of registration has been issued by the U.S. Copyright Office for the text and video of Kid Congress Teaches the World to Listen. The copyright is registered under each of the team members names and is good during their lives. The video was created by the students while attending Orange Elementary and produced by Waterloo Schools. The team will be recognized and each member presented a copy at the Hoover Renaissance Program at 7 p.m. April 28 in the Hoover auditorium. A reception will follow. Hawkeye to host training event WATERLOO Hawkeye Community College will host an information session on its partnership with John Deere to train workers as product development specialists at 6 p.m. May 3 in Tama Hall on the colleges main campus, 1501 East Orange Road, Waterloo. At John Deere, the product development specialists work in teams with engineers on the development and testing of diesel engines, transmissions, axles and agricultural equipment. To train for this career, students enroll in Hawkeyes Electronics Engineering Technology program and complete a 500-hour paid internship. Upon completion of the program, students receive preferential hiring for full-time positions at John Deere. Financial assistance is available to pay for up to two-thirds of tuition for qualified students. The information session will provide an overview of the John Deere hiring process and benefits, Hawkeyes program, training requirements, financial assistance, and employment opportunities. For more information, call 296-4000 or go to www.hawkeyecollege.edu/go/john-deere. KWWL to add CW Network WATERLOO The CW Network is coming to KWWL in September. The CW Network will air on KWWL 7.2, replacing thisTV, and will be distributed free over the air via antennas as well as most cable and satellite distributors in high definition. The changes come as a result of an agreement signed in 2015 between the CW Network and KWWL. The switchover will take place Sept. 12. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Doug Oberman couldnt lift a finger after age 8 due to polio, but he touched many lives. But many lives touched him as well, contributing to his success as an attorney and an international spokesman for the eradication of child polio. Oberman, 71, passed away April 17. A 1964 graduate of Cedar Falls High School, Oberman had the misfortune of being among the last to contract polio before the vaccine was invented in the early 1950s. He was unable to move from his neck to his waist. He slept in an iron lung and had to consciously make an effort to breathe, an involuntary function most able-bodied people take for granted. Home schooled or a while, he didnt miss a beat in his educational background. He graduated from CFHS with his age class, then the University of Northern Iowa in four years and the University of Missouri Law School in three years. He worked at Swisher & Cohrt law firm in Waterloo for 28 years. He lived 19 years at Bickford Cottages in Cedar Falls after his mothers death. Following retirement from his law practice he toured nationally and internationally raising money through Rotary International for the eradication of child polio in underdeveloped countries. Oberman used his nose. mouth and feet instead of hands to manipulate a book, open a door, work at a computer and other daily functions. Friends said he never let his disabilities get him down and never considered himself handicapped. He was an inspiration to all who knew him. But now, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story. Doug Oberman won many honors, including a local Heroes Among Us award. Had Oberman carried a mirror with him, were sure hed have turned it around and shown everyone the heroes in his life. They include, but are not limited to: The kids who rode the bus to school with him and treated him like one of the gang. The people who helped him through college, especially in law school at Missouri, tending to his personal needs. The lawyers and staff at Swisher & Cohrt, starting with senior partner and fellow polio survivior Chuck Swisher, who promised Oberman a spot at the firm. Theres also staff who helped him prepare dictated legal briefs and the law partners who helped him with basic functions, like going to the bathroom, and included him in the good-natured ribbing he enjoyed so much and thrived on. Fellow Rotarians, like Steve Thorpe and his wife, Liz, who traveled with him on his various speaking trips no easy task, involving transporting a more-portable iron lung, making sure it functioned correctly and working with airlines and hotels on accommodations. Thorpe told a story of a London book store worker near Westminster Abbey who pulled out a tool kit and repaired a wheelchair Oberman was using on the spot. Last and certainly not least, his parents Doug, a Rath Packing Co. worker and supervisor and World War II veteran, and his mother, Opal, worked as a shipyard steel worker during the war. Powell, reflecting on Obermans life, commented many thought his friend wouldnt live past 20. The fact Oberman not only survived, but thrived, is in no small measure due to the very people for whom he was a hero, who not only supported him, but uplifted him to a place in life where he could use his talents to their full potential. The patience, dignity and affection they showed him are an example for others to follow. Doug Oberman gave a lot to his friends, his workplace, his community, his associations and the world. 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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. 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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. Bonus: 100% Match Bonus up to 100 Register Now Betway: 100% Match Bonus up to 100 Claim Now Coral Casino: 25% Cash Back on Deposits Claim Now Ladbrokes Casino: 35% Cash Back on First 3 Deposits Claim Now Paddy Power Casino: 100% Match Bonus up to 200 Claim Now William Hill Casino: 100% Match Bonus up to 200 Claim Now 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. He was accused of embezzling 32 Billion FCFA belonging to the defunct national carrier, Cameroon Airlines, Camair, when he was General Manager. The Yaounde-based Special Criminal Court, SCC, on Monday, April 25, 2016, sentenced Yves Michel Fotso to life imprisonment for embezzling 32.4 Billion FCFA during his tenure as General Manager of the defunct national carrier, Cameroon Airlines, Camair. 237online.com The ruling was for the second of two matters for which Fotso is standing trial at the SCC. Fotso was also fined 19 Billion FCFA for the financial losses caused Camair as a result of the embezzlement. Also, money in about 15 frozen Fotso bank accounts was confiscated. The ruling, just like recent court sittings, took place in the absence of Yves Michel Fotso and all his five counsel. The lawyers wrote to the court last February to announce their withdrawal from the trial, alleging unfair hearing. Their decision came after Fotso wrote to the SCC to announce that he will no longer appear in court because the trial was being conducted in a biased manner. The judgement was delivered by a trial team headed by Mrs. Justice Virginie Eloundou, assisted by Mrs. Justice Siewe Yvette and Mrs. Justice Hayatou Zakiatou. The Advocates General were Mr. Justice Tagim and Mr. Justice Omam Fils. Earlier, after declaring Yves Michel Fotso guilty of embezzlement, Advocate General Omam Fils asked for the maximum jail term for the accused and the confiscation of his seized property and frozen bank accounts. Counsel for the State, Barrister Sama Francis Asanga, supported the position of Mr. Justice Omam Fils, but also requested commensurate losses for his client caused by the embezzlement. 237online.com Barrister Ngongo Ottou, lawyer for Camair Liquidation, asked for losses equivalent to 6 per cent annual interest on the embezzled amount of 34.4 Billion from 2010 to 2016. He also demanded 500 Million FCFA as cost for moral losses caused the Camair Liquidation Committee. Prior to Mondays sentence, Yves Michel Fotso was already serving a 25-year jail term for alongside others, embezzling about 21 Billion FCFA meant for the purchase of a presidential aircraft, the Bbjet 2. They were sentenced on September 12, 2012 by the Mfoundi High Court in Yaounde. Kimeng Hilton NDUKONG DUBAI, UAE, April 25, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- While this is the age of prodigious telecommunications, SMS is one of the trendiest and most effective forms of it. However, when it comes to sending SMS to every single targeted potential end user, it is undoubtedly too challenging since no one can procure the mobile numbers of a host of would-be clients. Moreover, gaining access to the right SMS gateway is another hassle. At the crossroads, BroadNet Technologies surfaces as a premier and reliable telecommunication service provider offering bulk SMS Gateway offers and reseller solutions for reselling clients in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain at most affordable price rates. "After reviewing the scenario of the SMS market in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, we conferred with a variety of leading reseller partners and surfaced with something that is not only useful and exciting but is also what the partners and the resellers are looking for earnestly," said Rabih Farah, CEO and Founder of BroadNet Technologies. "Proudly, we are directly connected to the mobile service operators in Qatar- Qtel & Vodafone; Bahrain- STC, MTC Vodafone & Batelco; Saudi Arabia- Mobily, STC & ZAIN and UAE- Du & Etisalat. The reseller program price rate we offer in eachcountry is also very affordable." "The innovative Reseller Partner Program is comprised of our regular as well as up-to-date products and services. The program is now also much more available in terms of financial benefits, whilst offering a broader spectrum of support and marketing services to both new and existing resellers in the aforesaid four different Middle East locations. To help our partners and resellers better compete and enhance the level of business productivity in today's cutthroat market, we at BroadNet Technologies have revised the SMS reseller program to offer wide-ranging prodigious discounts and benefits to the resellers. These benefits will contribute monumentally to enable our partners and resellers to thrive and succeed." He added. BroadNet Technologies new bulk SMS Reseller Partner Program for resellers in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain will come into force from today only. This innovative bulk SMS Reseller Partner Program is a cardinal part of the ongoing BroadNet Technologies bulk SMS offers. Existing and potential end users interested in learning about and availing of Bulk SMS reseller program should visit www.BroadNet.me. Established in 2003, BroadNet is a leading international SMS services provider (HLR, SMSC, A2P, and OTP Verification) and various Web & Mobile Application Development for its worldwide clients. BroadNet is specializes in Bulk SMS Services, IT services including Mobile Application Development, Innovative Solutions and Search Engine Optimization. The Company also offers comprehensive, cost-effective e-marketing solutions connecting businesses with targeted customers. BroadNet is a privately-held Company, GSMS Associated member, with headquarter in Lebanon and global branch offices in UAE, UK, Singapore and India. BroadNet proven international global simplified Bulk SMS and various IT Services continually provides our clients with satisfied, differentiated and secure services! For more details Please contact: [email protected] +961-1-300-917 # # # Apr 25, 2016 | By Kira Two pharmacy students from North Dakota State University have developed a system for cloning tumors in order to treat individual cancer patients with personalized and more targeted drugs. The system, which is comprised of a water pump system from a fish tank, cell cultures bought online, and a 3D printed capsule manufactured at a UPS store may sound unlikely, however it has already picked up two NDSU awards and could lead to cheaper and more effective cancer treatment options. Graduate students Prajakta Kulkarni and Matthew Confeld began the Opti-M3D project last summer with the goal of overturning the ineffective cancer treatment methods in practice today. Currently, once a patient is diagnosed, they are prescribed a drug regiment based off of clinical trials of patients with a similar cancer. However, since cancer cells vary greatly from one person to the next, theres no telling whether those clinical trials have any relevance to the patient in question. To say a treatment is effective is to say it works 50% of the time in patients, explained Confeld. And thats high for most drugs. Another issue with the current method is that, even if the anti-cancer drug doesnt prove to be effective, it can still cause a range of distressing side-effects, including hair loss, nausea, vomiting, problems with red and white blood cells, etc. The less you can give the patient, the better for them, said Confeld. Kulkarni and Confelds proposed solution is to clone three-dimensional tumors from the patients own cancer cells in order to test a multitude of anti-cancer drugs. Because multiple drugs can be tested at once, the process saves the patient precious time, money, and physical distress. Instead of a patient undergoing a treatment, and trial and error over that treatment, we can treat all the replicas of those tumors in a complex environment outside of the body, explained Kulkarni. The Opti-M3D is centered on a biodegradable 3D printed capsule, which hosts the tumor as it grows. Cancer cells are placed inside the 3D printed capsule, which is then connected to tanks containing cell culture mediai.e., the conditions within the body that allow cells to survive and grow. The cell culture media is pumped throughout the capsule, simulating the blood flow of an actual human body, and encouraging the cells to grow into a 3D tumor. The process sounds simple enough, yet it did require some resourcefulness: the students didnt have access to their own 3D printer, but were able to use UPS 3D printing services to manufacture their cell-hosting capsule. The pump used to connect the capsule to the cell culture tank was originally designed for a fish aquarium, and the cancer cells they used to test the device? Those were purchased online (from a dedicated research cell provider, of course). Not only were the students able to successfully clone the cancer cells, but they also discovered they could create up to four tumors at a time. That could means four times less trial and error for patients to physically undergo, and a much speedier route to finding the most effective cancer treatment. Using this process, Kilkarni and Confeld believe testing would take around 15-20 days depending on the cancer. They could also use the cloned cancer tumors to conduct ongoing tests and track if the cancer develops a resistance to certain drugs. We can do a follow-up and continue to grow those tumors and treat them, explained Confeld. If resistance does develop, we can alart the physician and say there is resistance developing, you might want to alert the patient and see if its happening in them too. Finally, a major advantage of testing anti-cancer drugs on cloned tumors is the cost savings. Many drugs can cost between $10,000 to $20,000 or more a month, yet by singling out the tumor rather than administering them to the patients entire body, doctors could use much smaller amounts of the drug, and potentially save patients thousands of dollars. Kulkarni and Confeld submitted the Opti-M3D to the NDSUs Innovation Challenge under the Service Track. Their 3D printed invention earned them the First Place Prize as well as Peoples Choice Award, valued at $5,000 and $1,000 respectivelywhich will probably go towards buying them their own 3D printer (sorry, UPS). Though they are currently taking a break to finish their current studies (Kulkarni is writing her thesis, also about cancer treatment, while Confeld is finishing his studies in pharmacy and preparing to begin his PhD), they will move forward with developing the Opti-M3D in the near future. Project advisor and PhD professor of pharmacy Sanku Mallik is assisting them in securing a patent through the NDSUs Tech Transfer office, and Kulkarni is pursuing funds from the North Dakota Department of Commerce. Eventually, the Opti-M3D tumor-cloning apparatus could be offered as a service for hospitals and cancer research centers. Its going to have tremendous impact, Mallik said. Its going to touch the lives of many cancer patients. Last month, researchers in Australia also revealed that they are developing a patient-specific 3D printed cancer treatment that targets the tumor rather than the whole body. While most doctors (and patients) want to eliminate tumors forever, that may not be possible anytime in the near future. However, going the opposite route and cloning them could actually be the key to treating them more effectively and improving cancer patients' lives. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Apr 25, 2016 | By Tess Earlier this month, Rehovot, Israel and Minneapolis based 3D printer company Stratasys unveiled their most recent innovative product: the J750 3D Printer, capable of high resolution multi-material and multi-color printing. The new 3D printer, the first of its kind in the world, is expected to be a game changer for both 3D design and product development. Excitingly, the J750s amazing potentials have been showcased recently through two stunning art projects, Wolfkiam an impressive 3D printed sculpture designed by Nick Ervinck, and Polyomino created by architect, programmer, and game designer Jose Sanchez. Both projects, created by Stratasys J750 3D printer, display the high quality functions of the printer and mark the first two artistic pieces made with the potentially revolutionary technology. Wolfkiam by Nick Ervinck Ervincks Wolfkiam sculpture is the first piece in a new collaborative art venture that Stratasys is embarking on called The New Ancient, which will investigate the relationship between ancient crafts and artworks and modern technologies, such as 3D printing. The series will be made entirely with the J750 3D printer and will feature works created by such accomplished designers as Neri Oxman, Daniel Widrig, Dov Ganchrow, Luc Merx, and most notably Zaha Hadid Architects. As Naomi Kaempfer, Creative Director of Art Fashion Design at Stratasys, explains of the exciting new collaborative art series, "The New Ancient is a tribute to ancient wisdoms and lost crafts. The collection focuses on revisiting timeless design concepts from different cultures and antique eras and exploring the way in which these are interpreted with our modern tools, technologies and contemporary visions. Merging these historical design elements with our new breakthrough 3D printing technology is the perfect way to celebrate this transformation of art, design and manufacture. Wolfkiam, which resembles a sort of futuristic organic being, was inspired by the unique capabilities of the J750 3D printer, which offers a wide range of colors (over 360,000 of them!) and an extremely precise layer thickness of 0.014mm (half the diameter of a human skin cell). Ervinck explains, "The vibrant colors and intricate details of the piece, such as the central lines representing the figure's veins, were integral to the sculpture, both in creating a sense of movement and fluidity and in reflecting the traditional cultural styles that inspired the work. It would have been impossible to manually transfer this texture onto the sculpture in any other way - it is only with the new Stratasys J750 3D Printer that this first-of-its kind artwork has been made possible. Ervincks sculpture intricately combines design elements from ancient Inca and Mayan cultures with a more technological aesthetic that connects the sculpture to our present times. The sculpture, which features extremely detailed, veinlike elements as well as a biomorphic color palette could only have been made using additive manufacturing, as even the empty spaces of the sculpture are deliberate and precise. Ervinck explains further, With Stratasys' J750 3D Printer, I was able to design a piece that combines an organic, biomorphic shape with a very technical play of lines and colors, and bring this to life from screen to sculpture with unmatched precision and quality - all at the click of a button. Polyomino for its part, marks the final phase of a two-year long collaboration between Stratasys and Jose Sanchez. The project, which has recently been finalized thanks to the capabilities of the J750 multi-color and multi-material 3D printer, was inspired by the constructive nature of certain video games, like Tetris, and as it is made from many separate parts, is meant to be assembled in a number of different ways. Polyomino by Jose Sanchez Sanchez explains of the importance of the J750 for the final phase of his project saying, The artwork uses color as a guideline to construction. Consisting of only two different geometries, we explored the use of color as a form of differentiating the connecting pieces. With the limitless colors available on the J750, we were able to explore the way in which different colors affect perception of the piece, mimicking areas of lightness and shade and facilitating an almost infinite number of unique mixes and blends. These options connect 3D printing with gaming strategies, allowing users to explore and interact with an artwork in an entirely new way. Having seen the impressive nature of the first two artworks created using Stratasys J750 3D printer, we have to say that we are very excited for them to unveil their next projects, especially as their The New Ancient series continues. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: by Ahmed Humayun Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore Terrorist attacks of the sort we have seen in Lahore, Brussels, Ankara, Paris, and in so many other cities around the world, are serious atrocities against innocents. These attacks are also a cunning attempt by strange cult-like groups to provoke large scale conflict between Muslims and Westerners, and between different types of Muslims. These groups are utterly opposed to those of us who hold multiple identities at the intersection of different cultures, and do so comfortably or even proudly. People become members of terrorist organizations for different reasons. Some are fanatics and true believers; some are looking for adventure; some are commonplace thugs and criminals; some are sadists; some are deceived and some know exactly what they are doing. Whatever the case may be, the leadership of these groups is investing an enormous amount of time and energy in finding young Muslims who have real or imagined grievances, and channeling this sentiment into a destructive path. A vast infrastructure of extremism and propaganda is designed to incite and recruit people to the ranks of these groups. It's true that terrorist recruitment mostly fails: the number of terrorists are a tiny portion of the global Muslim community. Yes, that matters. Most people are not attracted to spectacular terror as a way of life. But this is small comfort. Terrorist groups may comprise a tiny minority of Muslims but they have an outsized impact on the politics of Muslim majority societies, and on the state of Muslim communities in the West. Consider what has happened to the Muslim world so far. There are now tens of thousands of members of these types of militias, maybe more, depending on how you count. Many of these people are from the middle class people who have lots of options in life. Thousands have migrated from Western societies to join the wars in places like Syria and Iraq. (Though, we are overly naive when we ask, how do people with choices fall for this murderous nonsense? The people with choices the rich Bin Laden's, the middle class Zawahiri's are at the vanguard of these types of groups. The use of terror to advance utopian ideas has deep precedent in modern history). Tally the lives lost and maimed, the treasure expended to confront these groups. And when you factor in the devastation of Islam's intellectual and cultural heritage, the serious setbacks to democratization, scientific progress, and moral advancement, the costs start becoming incalculable. It is true that terrorism is far from the only challenge faced by Muslim countries. We know about the long, sordid history of shoddy and brutal government that predates terrorism. We know that even without terrorism, in many countries illiberal elements are influential, that there are serious social deficits in areas like women's rights, or the situation of minorities, or in the overall progressiveness of legal systems. We know about the challenges of economic underdevelopment and the lack of education. Helping these societies move forward will require action on many fronts. (At the same time, let's not forget that the story of Muslims in our world at large is not merely the story of terrorism or illiberalism. It feels trite to say, but I think it has to be said that Muslims are making positive contributions to their communities and their nations everywhere. They are launching startups, running charities, doing stand up comedy, writing novels, making music, and so on. Reducing the Muslim experience to the squalidness of terrorism does not reflect the world as it is). Yet if the state of affairs in the Muslim world is complex, one thing is clear: there is a large and growing cluster of extremist groups that aim to impose their harsh vision through indiscriminate violence. And these groups are not going anywhere. They see tremendous opportunities for growth in our fractured world. There is every reason to believe that atrocities will continue to happen, and that the ranks of these groups will grow, unless they are countered. Next, look at the West. It is true that relative to many other threats, terrorism kills much less people by orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, terrorists have had an extraordinary impact on Western countries. They have been highly successful in disrupting the politics of advanced democracies and empowering many of the worst elements within them. The sad fact is that terror works. No Hollywood screenwriter could have dreamed up the inventive barbarism of these groups, carefully designed to polarize and provoke overreaction. Fear has been an enormous boon for organized anti-Muslim networks. These groups are actively trying to whip up fear of all Muslims not just terrorists, of whom we all need to be wary. Anti-Muslim bigotry is real. It would be wrong if it was just a spontaneous grassroots reaction to terrorist attacks, but it is worse than that. Anti-Muslim bigotry is being systematically stoked by formerly fringe entities that have now gone mainstream. Anti-Muslim bigotry manifests itself in different ways in different countries, depending on unique histories and political cultures. In the American context some advocate taking discriminatory measures against all Muslims due to the actions of terrorists. This sort of anti-Muslim sentiment is inconsistent with the principles and laws of the nation, which has historically tried to transcend this sort of rank tribalism, whether it is based on religion or ethnicity or country of origin and so on. Collective guilt or responsibility is the inverse of the American spirit properly understood. While we should call out anti-Muslim bigotry, we should also realize that it does not represent' America. The rejoinder to anti-Muslim stereotypes should not be anti-American stereotypes (or vice versa). This is what terrorists want, and one way to counter them is to not to play into their hands. Just because people claim to speak in the name of America does not mean they speak for all Americans. And just because people claim to speak in the name of Islam does not mean they speak for all Muslims. Both America' and Islam' contain multitudes; neither are the sole property of the loudest voices that prattle on in their name. We owe it to each other and to the values we claim to hold to do better. Ahmed Humayun is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, and an expert at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, both in Washington, D.C. These views are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of either institution. by Jonathan Kujawa In 1894 Benjamin Finkel, a teacher at the Kidder Institute in Missouri, founded the American Mathematical Monthly. Its purpose was and is to provide inspiration and stimulation for teachers of mathematics. As Finkel later described the founding of the Monthly, Knowing that the status of the mathematical teaching in our high schools and academies was very deplorable and even worse in the rural schools, I had the ambition to publish a journal devoted solely to mathematics and suitable to the needs of teachers of mathematics in these schools. B. Finkel Apparently decrying the state of mathematics education was as popular then as now. But rather than fume and write an op-ed for the New York Times, Finkel created the Monthly. It still appears every month and contains a variety of mathematics for teachers and students at the high school and college level. The favorite pages for most, though, is the Problem section. In it you can find puzzles of all kinds, most of which don't require anything more than high school math. A good example of a Monthly problem is this one proposed by Harry Dweighter [1] in 1975: The chef in our place is sloppy, and when he prepares a stack of pancakes they come out all different sizes. Therefore, when I deliver them to a customer, on the way to the table I rearrange them (so that the smallest winds up on top, and so on, to the largest on the bottom) by grabbing several from the top and flipping them over, repeating this (varying the number as I flip) as many times as necessary. If there are n pancakes, what is the maximum number of flips (as a function of n) that I will ever have to use to rearrange them? That is, imagine you have a spatula and a stack of pancakes of all different sizes which you'd like to put into order from biggest to smallest. In the worst case how many times would you have to stick the spatula between two pancakes and flip over the part of the stack sitting on your spatula? For example, if there are two pancakes, either they are in order or they are out of order. If out of order, then slipping your spatula under the stack and doing a single flip is all that's needed. If there are three pancakes, then the worst case is when the stack of pancakes from top to bottom is smallest, largest, medium. This requires three flips. In general, let's write f(n) for the number flips required in the worst case stack of n pancakes (so f(1)=0, f(2)=1, f(3)=3, etc.). Harry Dweighter is asking us to determine a formula, rule, or algorithm which computes f(n). This is a classic Monthly problem. No fancy math, just a nifty puzzle which came to mind over breakfast. There is no expectation that this will lead to deep new math or cure cancer, just a little recreational math with your morning coffee. Amazingly enough, despite its simplicity, forty years later we still don't know how to answer Dweighter's question! Some progress has been made, though. Two years after Dweighter posed the question, Garey, Johnson, and Lin of Bell Labs used computers and found f(n) for n up to eight. They also obtained upper and lower bounds to show it couldn't be too big nor too small. Their results appeared in the Problem Solutions section of the Monthly. It's hard to imagine nowadays that a bunch of folks at a corporate research facility could unabashedly use company time and state-of-the-art computing resources to calculate pancake flips! What can we say about f(n)? A little thought shows that f(n) is always less than 2n. Namely, for any stack you can put it into order by first sliding your spatula under the largest pancake and doing a flip. Now you have a stack with the largest pancake at the top. Do a second flip where you flip the entire stack. Those two flips put the largest pancake at the bottom where it belongs. If you repeat this procedure on the n-1 pancakes which are stacked on top of the largest pancake while being careful to never move the largest pancake, then in two more flips you can have the second largest pancake where it belongs on top of the largest pancake. Continue in this way and you'll have the stack sorted in at most 2n flips [2]. On the other end, there are stacks of n pancakes which take at least n flips. You can see this by counting breakpoints between pancakes. A breakpoint happens each time two pancakes are neighbors in the stack, but aren't neighbors in size. For breakpoints we count the plate as an extra large pancake. For example, if you have three pancakes in a stack and measure them from to top to bottom, small/medium/large/plate has no breakpoints, large/medium/small/plate has one breakpoint, and small/large/medium/plate has two breakpoints. The /'s are the potential breakpoints and we get an actual breakpoint if the two pancakes at the / are not next to each other in size. If you count carefully you will see that a stack of n pancakes has n potential breakpoints. Once the stack is large enough you can cook up stacks which actually have the maximum number of breakpoints. The key point is that each time you do a flip you can reduce the number of breakpoints by at most one. Namely, you notice that by inserting the spatula at a breakpoint you may be able to remove that one, but all the rest will remain. And, of course, if you have the pancakes in order, the stack has zero breakpoints. This means that in those large stacks which have n breakpoints even the most adroit flipper will take at least n flips to sort the stack [3]. In 1979 a research article was published by one William H. Gates of Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Christos Papadimitriou of UC Berkeley with the fancy title Bounds for sorting by prefix reversal. Despite its fancy title, the paper is about the Pancake Problem. In it they show f(n) is always less than (5n+5)/3. This is a bit better than our 2n and as n becomes Brobdinagian in size, their bound does noticeably better. On the lower end, they show that whenever n is a multiple of 16, f(n) must be at least 17n/16 which, again, is a bit better than our bound. We should note that Gyori and Turan independently obtained similar results by similar methods. Remarkably, the Gates-Papadimitriou bounds were the best known for nearly thirty years! It is only in the past decade that incremental improvements have been made. Even today we don't know how to compute f(n)! So what do you do if you can't solve a problem? The Mathematician's Ruse in this situation is to distract you with a different problem. In this case Gates and Papadimitriou introduced the Burnt Pancake Problem. It's just as in the original Pancake Problem but now each pancake is burnt on one side. In addition to using your spatula to flip all the pancakes into order you must also ensure each pancake is burnt side down. If n is the number of burnt pancakes, let g(n) be the number of flips required in the worst case to sort a stack of burnt pancakes. Adapting their approach from the Pancake Problem to the Burnt Pancake Problem, Gates-Papadimitriou showed that g(n) is never more than 2n+3 and is always larger than 3n/2-1. Gates worked on the Pancake Problem as an undergraduate at Harvard. Presumably disillusioned by fact that academics would spend their time researching (and publishing!) on the sorting of pancakes, Gates dropped out of Harvard the next year to found a scrappy little computer company. Fortunately for Gates, nobody realized at the time that pancake sorting would turn out to be the same math used in parallel computing and in DNA and phylogenetic trees. It leads to a bunch of cool ideas which we'll have to save for next month. Bill probably is okay with missing out. After all, he can console himself by diving into his billions like Scrooge McDuck. The Gates-Papadimitriou bounds in the Burnt Pancake Problem were the best known for nearly twenty years. In 1995 Manuel Blum and David S. Cohen, a computer science professor and graduate student, respectively, at UC Berkeley, published a paper with the straightforward title On the problem of sorting burnt pancakes. In it they improved the lower bound from Gates-Papadimitriou's 3n/2-1 to 3n/2 and on the upper bound they lowered it from 2n+3 to 2n-2. If n is one million, then their lower bound is 3,000,000 while Gates-Papadimitriou is 2,999,999. That these modest improvements are notable enough to be published just shows how difficult it is to compute f(n) and g(n). Presumably traumatized by his experience writing this paper, David S. Cohen dropped out of graduate school, went into hiding by changing his name to David X. Cohen and moving to Hollywood, and has scraped together a living as a widely respected writer and producer for The Simpsons and Futurama. Another sad story of a budding science career foundering on the shoals of stacked pancakes. The moral of the story, of course, is that if you wish to be wildly successful you should first pay your dues by sorting pancakes. Next month we'll see that besides launching careers, the Pancake Problems lead to all sorts of interesting problems in biology and math. [1] Harry Dweighter (aka harried waiter) is the pseudonym of the mathematician Jacob Goodman. [2] In fact we can do slightly better if we play close attention. For example, at the second to last step we know it takes a most one flip to sort two pancakes. Using our procedure on the first n-2 pancakes and the single flip on the last two tells us that f(n) must be no more than 2(n-2)+1=2n-3. [3] Again we can do slightly better. If we more closely study what's going on with breakpoints we see that once n is large enough you can find a stack which takes at least n+1 flips. Arjun Jayadev over at INET: Can we theorize the economy as an entity that is growing, evolving, never in equilibrium? An economy passes through periods of intense instability and groping towards an uncertain future as a matter of course? How might one begin? The pretense that we know the future probabilistically as a given set of probability distributions of every damn thing is, I think, a pretty dangerous delusion, but its also a comforting one to some people. The year was 1967. Young Axel Leijonhufvud sat in front of a pile of papers, full of unfinished notes, half-worked through arguments and intellectual dead-ends that he had been at for nearly four years. Two years into a tenure track position in the economics department at the University of California Los Angeles, he seemed unable to fashion a coherent dissertation from the morass of ideas in the sprawl. This year was his last chance to do so if he wanted to remain in academic employment. The Swedish emigre had rather immodestly and perhaps unwisely decided that his doctoral work should be on some of the deepest problems of macroeconomics: why was it that the capitalist economy sometimes fails calamitously, and why was it that the Great Depression (still very much in the public memory in the 1960s) had been so very different from ordinary recessions? In trying to understand that defining period of the 1930s he had undertaken a wide range of reading of earlier economists, including a closer reading of the ur-text of the discipline the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes. One day, following yet another dead-end, and feeling like he was ready to give up and leave academic life, he began to look in desperation at his footnotes. For the first time, he began to see something in his scribblings an electrifying theme emerged that laid the ground for what was to be a set of ideas that aimed directly at the heart of academic macroeconomics. More here. Northern football player donates hair to Wigs for Kids Zach Bohnenkamp has been growing his hair out since he arrived at Northern. Thursday he had 12 inches of hair cut and donated to Wigs for Kids. ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost. A pair of Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., are urging their colleagues to increase the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit by 50 percent. Joined by housing builders and advocates last Friday in New York, they called for reforms to better target the lowest-income populations. Over the past 30 years, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit has financed nearly 3 million homes across the country. The proposal would cover approximately 400,000 additional units of affordable housing nationwide over the next decade. Access to affordable housing is essential for the health of our families and the economic strength of our communities and thats why expanding the federal low-income housing tax credit is so important, Schumer said in a statement. The key to New Yorks continued growth and economic strength is directly tied to the need to expand our pool of affordable housing for young people, for new families and for others and the federal government, via this tax credit, needs to be a full partner in that effort. With thousands of homeless and housing-needy people in New York City alone, we need to do all we can to provide families and children with safe and affordable housing options. Last December, Cantwell secured a fix to the LIHTC program by permanently extending the tax credit rates to 9 percent of eligible costs on new construction, ending a period when variable rates made financing of affordable housing less predictable. Like Washington State, New York and our nation as a whole face serious challenges when it comes to affordable housing and homelessness, said Cantwell. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit is a critical tool that communities across the nation can use to address these issues. The state tax arena is filled with variation, complexity, confusion and ambiguity, which has major implications for U.S. corporations, according to findings from Bloomberg BNAs 2016 Survey of State Tax Departments, conducted for the 16th consecutive year. The survey clarifies each states position on the gray areas of corporate income tax and sales and use tax, with an emphasis on nexus policies. For example, this years survey found that business travel via airplane from another state will create income tax nexus in two out of five states. Given the growing need for revenue, states are increasingly looking for new and unique ways to tax businesses, said Bloomberg BNA Tax & Accounting editorial director George Farrah. This survey provides the information needed to navigate an ever-changing state tax landscape. This year, all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated in the survey. New portions of the survey this year address treatment of pass-through entities, reporting federal changes, and sales tax refunds and qui tam cases. The survey also features new sections for special industry sourcing rules, including airlines, radio and television broadcasting companies, and oil and gas. We come up with new questions by looking at hot topics in the world of state tax, as well as areas of particular complexity, said Melissa Fernley, managing editor in State Tax. We will add in a question or a series of questions so that we can get a straight answer from the departments, sometimes even before states release official guidance. One growing area of complexity is nexus, she said. This year we asked the states whether employees flying into the state on a commercial airline for business purposes one to four times per year would create nexus in the state. Twenty states (2 out of 5) said that it would create income tax nexus. This at first seems surprising, but it indicates how states are looking to increase their revenue in any way possible, and are becoming more and more aggressive with their nexus policies. Survey findings include: Use of a contract carrier such as FedEx or UPS to deliver goods in a state will create sales tax nexus for remote sellers in one out of four states. States are still unable to reach a consensus on how to source income, potentially leading to double taxation for companies. Complicating the issue are the myriad industry-specific rules imposed by the states. States are split on whether they require pass-throughs such as partnerships, S corporations and real estate investment trusts to apportion their income using the same rules as corporations. Only six states have rules that are specific to pass-throughs, so many taxpayers lack guidance in this area. Adjustments to tax returns by other states, municipalities or foreign governments do not trigger a reporting requirement in most states. Only one in 10 states has consumer protection laws that allow purchasers to bring class actions against vendors for over-collection of sales tax. Navigating through the states different tax policy positions has not gotten any easier, said Fred Nicely, senior counsel at the Council on State Taxation. What is nice about this survey is that businesses and practitioners have all the state tax administrators responses to an issue, and state-by-state comparisons can be made. A complimentary copy of the survey is available for download at BloombergBNA.com. Some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases. Trenton, N.J.: Preparers Kamal J. James, a.k.a. Bro. Messiah Aziz El, 34, of Seaford, Del., and Crystal G. Hawkins, a.k.a. Sis. Crystal Gabri El, 39, of Laurel, Del., have been sentenced in connection with filing fraudulent returns on behalf of inmates at various New Jersey prisons. James received 96 months in prison and Hawkins 48 months. They were previously charged in a superseding indictment with one count of conspiracy, 16 counts of making false claims and three counts of mail fraud. According to the indictment and evidence, between October 2011 and October 2013, James and Hawkins operated Release Refunds, a purported tax prep business previously based in Brick, N.J., and in Seaford through which they solicited current and former New Jersey prison inmates as clients and then filed fraudulent returns on their behalf. (The company is no longer in business.) James and Hawkins sent Release Refunds flyers to inmates at various prisons and halfway houses offering prep services; the pair asked inmates interested in Release Refunds services to provide basic ID information and to sign income tax returns and other IRS documents but not to include any information about their income or withholdings. James and Hawkins then filled in the missing income information on the return forms, fabricating the inmates earnings to trigger fraudulent and inflated refunds. An undercover investigator posing as an inmate in a New Jersey prison submitted a completed Release Refunds form and sent it to James and Hawkins. They then sent back blank income tax forms and other IRS documents and instructions to sign the documents. James and Hawkins requested no financial information from the undercover agent before preparing three fraudulent returns to be filed on behalf of the agent for tax years 2010 through 2012. The fraudulent returns generated several thousand dollars in refunds and a $1,485 fee for the defendants. In addition to the prison terms, both James and Hawkins were sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $570,897 restitution. Nashville, Tenn.: Preparer Tracey Brown has been charged with six counts of assisting in the preparation of false returns, two counts of filing false personal returns and one count of obstructing the due administration of the internal revenue laws. According to the indictment, Brown operated the tax prep business Total Tax Services from her residence and allegedly between 2006 and 2010 filed false returns on behalf of her clients. On these returns, she claimed various fraudulent deductions including medical expenses, charitable contributions and unreimbursed employee expenses. After one of her clients was audited, Brown provided false documentation to the IRS and is also alleged to have under-reported the gross receipts and sales figures on her personal income tax returns for 2008 and 2009. If convicted, Brown faces a maximum of three years in prison for each count, as well as substantial monetary penalties, supervised release and restitution. De Kalb, Miss.: The Justice Department seeks to permanently bar preparer Christopher Chamberlin from preparing returns for anyone other than himself. According to the complaint, Chamberlin, sole proprietor of C&T Services LLC, allegedly prepared returns that fraudulently overstated refunds by reporting fictitious or exaggerated expenses on Schedules C and F. The falsely claimed expenses generated losses that purportedly qualified Chamberlins clients to receive or increase the EITC or to otherwise create or maximize refunds. Based on audit adjustments the IRS made to returns prepared and filed by Chamberlin for tax years 2012 and 2013, the suit alleges that his conduct may have cost the government more than $1 million for those years alone. Orlando, Fla.: The U.S. has filed to bar preparers Patrick Clarke, of Hallandale Beach, Fla., and Ruby Rodriguez from owning, operating or franchising a tax prep business and preparing returns for others. According to the complaint, which also requests that the court order Clarke and Rodriguez to return fees they obtained through the alleged fraud, Clarke owns and operates Tax MD, a tax prep business with stores in Florida and North Carolina. Rodriguez allegedly manages one of Clarkes stores located in Orlando. According to the complaint, Clarkes preparers, including Rodriguez, targeted primarily low- to moderate-income customers with misleading advertisements, prepared and filed fraudulent returns to inflate refunds, and profited through unconscionable, exorbitant and often undisclosed fees. The complaint alleges that Clarkes preparers engaged in such activity as falsely claiming the EITC; claiming improper filing statuses; fabricating businesses and related business income and expenses; and fabricating Schedule A deductions, including for unreimbursed employee business expenses. According to the complaint, Clarke was previously a franchisee of LBS Tax Services; this is one of 10 lawsuits that the Justice Department has filed in Florida against former LBS franchisees or related individuals. Washington, D.C.: Preparer Joann Little, 59, of Suitland, Md., has been charged with 35 counts of aiding in the preparation of false returns. According to the indictment, Little worked at Instant Tax Service, now operating under the name Speedy Tax Service. The indictment alleges that Little prepared false personal income tax returns for clients for tax years 2009 through 2014. She is alleged to have attached schedules that reported inflated or fictitious deductions, which resulted in fraudulently claimed income tax refunds. If convicted, she faces a maximum of three years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count. Memphis, Tenn.: Preparer Stephanie Edmond and her husband, preparer Kevin Williams, have been barred from the Tax Factory and the Tax Firm preparation businesses and face sanctions after a federal judge found that they violated previous court orders, according to news reports. The court reportedly found that Edmond and the Tax Factory violated a previous court order by having Williams, using a third tax preparers EFIN, operate the Tax Firm. Other violations included not properly reporting to a monitor as ordered, reports added. In addition to being barred from preparing federal returns, sanctions include paying to the U.S. government all fees collected since Jan. 15, 2016, for preparing returns, reports said. Espanola, N.M.: Deborah Quintana, 58, has been indicted on 28 counts of tax fraud and eight counts of attempting to evade or defeat tax. Quintana allegedly prepared 28 false personal income tax returns for clients. Between $14,000 and $70,000 is owed to the state of New Mexico for those false returns; she also owes $21,000 for failing to pay gross receipts tax on her prep business. These charges carry a maximum sentence of 55- years in prison and a fine of $180,000. Miami: The Justice Department is suing to stop tax preparer Rose M. Chazulle and her company, RMC Professional Services Corp., from preparing federal returns for others. According to the complaint, Chazulle prepared federal income tax returns for clients that falsely claimed refundable credits, including the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit. She included the false education credits for clients who did not incur educational costs and otherwise didnt qualify for this credit, the complaint alleges. In addition, the complaint states that Chazulle prepared returns that falsely claimed fuel tax credits for clients who had no businesses of any kind; business losses even though the clients didnt have a business; and wages described as household help income to falsely claim a larger EITC. The complaint estimates that Chazulles conduct cost the U.S. more than $14 million for the tax years 2011 to 2013. Play is the language of childhood. Watch a child play, and youll see her express a variety of emotions, acting out fanciful scenarios. You almost see her trying on different kinds of expression. Play therapy taps into this intuitive childhood language, helping children develop greater self-esteem. It empowers them to cope with their problems from ADHD challenges to traumatic events to damaged relationships. When parents play along, the parent-child bond improves. For my seven-year-old daughter and me, play therapy healed our relationship. When she was three, she and I started butting heads, and it got worse over time. I couldnt understand why this pint-sized individual drove me to madness. However, once she was diagnosed with ADHD, her behaviors impulsivity, incessant arguing, enormous meltdowns started to make sense. I understood why my firm approach to her misbehaviors made things worse. Even with this new understanding, we needed something else to improve our relationship and we found it in play therapy. When I met play therapist Pam Mitchell, LCSW, in Salt Lake City, I expected her to fix my child. Several sessions later, we had something more profound a healed relationship and the tools to help us keep it that way. The ABCs of Play Therapy Play therapy is founded on the premise that play is a natural way for a child to express herself. If play is a childs language, toys are her words. Research by the UK Society for Play and Creative Arts Therapies suggests that 74 to 83 percent of children who participate in play therapy show a positive change. Another study, a meta-analysis of 93 studies on play therapy, showed that the approach is an effective intervention for a range of childrens problems. Whats more, research indicates that children whose parents practice play therapy at home, in addition to working with a therapist, derive more benefits than those who play with a therapist alone. [Read This Next: Play Therapy Techniques and Games to Try at Home] An astute play therapist observes and interacts with a child as he plays, picking up on social cues and mirroring the childs emotions. The therapist helps a child express himself when he doesnt know how to articulate whats troubling him. Play therapy does for children what a good, long talk with a therapist or trusted friend does for adults. A child uses his imagination to achieve the outcomes that we get through talking. As we watch our children play, we have a front-row seat to their inner thoughts, struggles, motivations, and feelings. When we learn their language, we can relate to our children on a deeper, more empathetic level. The therapist plays alongside the child in the play therapy room. She doesnt guide the child, but follows him. This non-directed play allows a child to explore challenges or feelings at his own comfort level. Its important to let the child define the play. If a child picks up a tiger and calls it an elephant, the therapist goes with that. Its not about teaching; its about letting the child use the toys to express himself. If a child or family member has recently experienced a traumatic illness or injury, the child may choose to play with doctor toys. The therapist knows that the child is playing as a way of relating to his experiences, but she wont call attention to that right away. [Additional Reading: The Healing Power of Yahtzee, LEGOs, and Baby Dolls] We wont say to a child, Oh, remember how you were hurt,' Mitchell says. There are many ways to mirror what the child is doing. One might say, Oh, your baby has an owie on her arm. Look how sweet youre being with that baby. Look how you can heal. It might feel good if everything could get fixed. Or the therapist may take the perspective of the hurt doll, voicing babys feelings. The play therapist makes educated guesses as to what the child is expressing, and the child will let the therapist know if shes on the right track. Play therapy works because it validates the childs feelings. Through the therapists facial expressions and words, she mirrors the emotion she believes the child is expressing. This type of therapy is useful in boosting a childs self-esteem by overcoming shame. Giving a child permission to express himself freely in a play therapy room, and having his feelings mirrored back, allows a child to gain confidence in who he is, ADHD diagnosis and all. Taking It Home I lost my ability to play when I was a teen, so I was skeptical about playing with my daughter at home. But I found it simple and not at all intimidating. In play therapy, I follow my daughters lead. She chooses which toy to play with and how, and I ask to be involved. Typically, shell hand me a toy and tell me what to do with it. If I dont know what to do next, I ask. She tells me. As the parent follows the childs lead, says Mitchell, it shows the child that her parent gets what shes feeling, cares about it, and wants to understand. In addition to playing, I now set aside time to tell stories with my daughter, a practice that play therapy reminded us that we both love. After we stopped formal play therapy sessions, a new challenge arose in our relationship. Without the tools I learned from play therapy, wed still be trying to resolve things. But I knew what to do. I set aside time each night to spend with my daughter. As I let her guide our play and storytelling, the challenge became smaller. It never went away, but it did shrink. She and I didnt get angry with each other, and the situation didnt get worse. In my parenting book, I would call that success. [Free Download: The Friendship Guide for Kids with ADHD] When dining out, people with diabetes seldom have it easy. Most dishes look appetizing. Theres a temptation to try something new. And the environment encourages people to take liberties. Consequently, after a meal, people end up with a feeling of guilt and a spike in sugar levels. But things are set to change after the launch of Blue Dot on April 7, 2016. Blue Dot is the brainchild of McCann Health, India and was developed together with United Diabetes Forum. In simple words, Blue Dot is a sign that tells you whether a preparation is appropriate for people with diabetes. It will feature in menus and nametags next to dishes deemed to be diabetes-friendly. It works just the way Green Dot does for vegetarian dishes and Red Dot for non-vegetarian. Currently, Blue Dot has been activated only in select dining establishments. Blue Dot is supported with science and approved by regulatory bodies. Preparations worthy of Blue Dot are to adhere to strict parameters as defined by an expert panel set up by United Diabetes Forum. The panel includes noted diabetologists and endocrinologists (Dr Anoop Misra, Dr Shashank Joshi, Dr Manoj Chadha, Dr Banshi Saboo, Dr Rajiv Kovil, Dr Manoj Chawla, Dr Tejas Shah), nutritionists (Rekha Sharma, Shilpa Joshi, Dr Seema Gulati, Dr Jagmeet Madan, Soly James, Dr Bhaskarachary), as well as a psychologist (Dr Anuradha Sovani) and a statistician (Dr Vishnu Vardhana Rao). The panel was constituted in June 2015 and deliberated over the proposal across several Advisory Board meetings. Once the expert panel arrived at a consensus regarding the definition of Blue Dot, the idea was presented to leading chefs, restaurant associations, lawyers, food technicians, government bodies, food inspectors, FMCG organisations and pharmaceutical companies. The consensus paper is due for publication shortly. The advent of Blue Dot is a notable achievement for a nation with over 60 million diabetes patients. In sum, it represents a revolution in diabetes care, said Dr Harshit Jain, Senior Vice President & Country Head, McCann Health. Blue Dot was launched on World Health Day in Mumbai. Holiday Inn and Sahara Star were the participating hotels. Special print collaterals were developed for the purpose, such as posters and tent cards. Executive Chefs Salil Fadnis (Sahara Star) and Sudhir Pai (Holiday Inn) dreamed up the Blue Dot recipes. The diabetes-friendly dishes were part of the hotels buffet menu. Both hotels were delighted with the response. Diners were keen to know more about Blue Dot and eager for more such experiences. Going forward, United Diabetes Forum and McCann Health are ready to take the idea national. More hotels and restaurants are being lined up. And sooner than later, they believe Blue Dot will cross international borders. In a move to strengthen the organisation, Network18 Group has been on an aggressive hiring spree. The company recently appointed Joy Chakraborthy as President - Revenue, TV18. Under the new mandate, Chakraborthy will be in charge of revenue across all entities within TV18. All sales heads within TV18 (except Viacom18) will report to him. Chakraborthy comes with over 20 years of experience in the media industry and has worked across top media organisations in the country. Prior to joining Network18, he was Director - Response at BCCL. Earlier, he was CEO at TV Today Network. He was at ZEEL for seven years, last as Executive Director, handling revenues, channel placement and entire niche channel business. Prior to that he was Executive Vice President at Star India for six years, heading advertising sales of most channels. A graduate from the National Defense Academy with a Masters degree in marketing management from NMIMS, Chakraborthy has also completed Advanced Management Programme from the Harvard Business School. With the entries now closed for Kyoorius Creative Awards 2016, stage is set for the Jury sessions, which will be held from May 4 to 7 in Mumbai. The awards show will be held on Friday, June 3, 2016 in Mumbai. In this interaction with AdGully, Rajesh Kejriwal, Founder and CEO, Kyoorius, sheds light on what makes Kyoorius Awards such an important event for the industry, the state of design today, growth drivers for the design industry and more. Excerpts: AdGully (AG): How and why have the Kyoorius Awards been able to gain the stature that it has today in just three years of its launch? Rajesh Kejriwal (RK): The industry has given us the stature, we just invested in integrity, transparency and impartiality of our awards. Kyoorius set high benchmarks and our jury panel refuses to give out Elephants unless the work meets the stringent standards. Many awards compromise their standards to ensure every category has a winner or they include various categories to ensure that a larger sect of people win awards and are happy. But it is a paradox, we think that we need to ensure that winning an award is not easy Kyoorius, since inception, has set the bar really, really high. Not only is winning a Blue Elephant very tough, your work has to be really good to even win a Baby Elephant at Kyoorius. It should be a matter of pride to win an award and if you are able to establish that, then the stature is automatically achieved. AG: What was the idea behind incorporating the Media Awards category? RK: Disruption is all around us. Media agencies are slowly becoming the home for marketing innovation. Media agencies are reinventing themselves to become integrators and now consistently devise innovative and effective solutions for brands. A creative communication award cannot ignore media any longer and I must add, in many ways, PR also. Next year, we will add PR to Kyoorius Creative Awards. AG: What can we look forward to at this years edition of the Kyoorius Awards? RK: We are not big fans of bigger and better, those words have been done to death. What we do is challenge ourselves every year to better ourselves and create better experiences and to do that we make sure that we listen to feedback and address as many of those that we can. Once you start working through the lens of your audience, you start re-inventing yourself to deliver something really powerful. AG: Where do companies and brands go wrong when it comes to design? RK: A dear friend and mentor, the late Wally Olins stressed on this Make it simple, make it clear, let it be original and brilliant, but above all ensure that it works. Many times companies and brands are so close to the project that they either lose sight of consumers or concentrate so much on consumers that they lose sight of all the other stake-holders. AG: What would you consider as the key growth drivers for the design and creative industry? RK: First of all, lets understand that design is going to be the growth driver in the future for not only the creative industry, but also for the knowledge economy. AG: What are the top emerging technologies that marketers should watch out for? RK: The basic but obvious ones are Smartphones (mobile) and Social Media. While these are known to marketers, the full capabilities of how they can be used is still evolving. Beyond this would be: Big Data (Big Insights) and Internet of Things Wearable Technology Location-based marketing and the fusion with wearable technology Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality AG: What are the new trends that will impact the advertising, digital and media space in the next 4-5 years? RK: In this fast changing world, this is a question that one can answer for an immediate future, but never for a longer period. What is more important to answer here is probably what people should be wary of in the near future are. The convergence economy is here to stay and brands have to embrace technology without losing their humanity. How do consumers interact with your communication and digital landscape and how emerging technologies are impacting this. In the cluttered world where every brand is reaching out to the consumer, what are you doing to differentiate through customer experience? How are you using the tools available today to reach out to them differently? How are you using Big Data to get Big Insights the good thing about digital is that it is track-able and measurable, but this is good only if you gather insights, develop learnings and understand consumer preferences. AG: Please share some examples of use of design by brands in recent times that have impressed you and why. RK: Fastrack and Indigo in India are other brands that have consistently used design very effectively to build their business. The future is returning to AUTHENTICITY. Which also means localisation. Brands that have impressed me in the recent past are Paperboat in India. AG: According to you, which brands have been consistent in the effective use of design over the years? RK: Actually its a tricky question to answer. Apple is the one that immediately comes to mind, but in the recent past has it effectively used design is something that I keep wondering. Design and innovation go hand in hand, companies and products need to consistently innovate and keep consumers wanting to know whats next. Apple had this earlier, but missing now. Recent examples would probably be for services AirBnB, Uber, Cleartrip; for products Tesla. They have used design very effectively. F-22 Raptors arrive in Romania Two F-22 Raptors and one KC-135 Stratotanker arrived at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base on April 22. The F-22s and approximately 20 supporting Airmen are from the 95th Fighter Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. The KC-135 is from the 916th Air Refueling Wing deployed from Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina. "Today, I would like to highlight this deployment as a demonstration of our promise to support Romania and the rest of our NATO allies," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the Third Air Force commander, said during a press conference. "Romania is one of our strongest allies." This is the largest F-22 deployment to Europe to date and is partially funded by the European Reassurance Initiative, which provides support to bolster the security of our NATO allies and partners in Europe while demonstrating the U.S. commitment to regional and global security. The F-22s will remain at Mihail Kogalniceanu AB for a brief period of time before returning to Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, to continue their training deployment. "Today, we rapidly deployed these aircraft, along with a KC-135 Stratotanker, here to showcase our flexible response and our range of capabilities," Ray said. "These aircraft have the ability to project air dominance quickly, at great distances, to defeat any possible threat." The F-22 deployments to RAF Lakenheath and Mihail Kogalniceanu AB prove that European bases and other NATO installations can host fifth-generation fighters while also affording the chance for familiarization flight training within the European theater. "It's important we test our infrastructure, aircraft capabilities, and the talented Airmen and allies who will host these aircraft in Europe," said Gen. Frank Gorenc, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa commander. "This deployment advances our airpower evolution and demonstrates our resolve and commitment to European safety and security." This F-22 forward deployment is conducted in coordination with Romanian allies and is a demonstration of the United States continued commitment to the collective security of NATO and dedication to the enduring peace and stability of the region. (This feature is part of the " Through Airmen's Eyes " series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)Asian-Pacific Americans have fought and served with the U.S. military for more than two centuries. The legacy continues for three Filipino-American Airmen deployed with U.S. Pacific Commands air contingent at Clark Air Base, where they fulfill a number of roles ranging from medical support to aircrew flight equipment and aircraft maintenance.Knowing I am supporting the mission while working alongside the Philippine military makes me so proud of where I'm from and what I'm doing, said Staff Sgt. Jay Perocho Acasio, a native of Ozamiz City in the Misamis Occidental, Philippines.I've had the opportunity to talk with the Philippine pilots and show them what I do. Seeing how excited and interested they were really made me glad I'm here, said Acasio, an aircrew flight equipment journeyman with the 51st Operations Support Squadron at Osan AB, South Korea.Similarly, Tech. Sgt. Kathlyn Hidalgo, a native of Guiguinto in Bulacan, Philippines, explained how she draws strength from her heritage while serving at home as a U.S. Airman.It makes me feel so proud to be both an American Airman and a Filipino, said Hidalgo, an independent duty medical technician with the 25th Fighter Squadron at Osan AB. To be able to serve the country I hold citizenship in and the country I grew up in at the same time is such an honor. Looking at myself wearing the U.S. Air Force uniform and to be in my home country I have no words to describe how I feel.Airmen join the U.S. Air Force for a number of reasons, but for these Filipinos, serving in the U.S. armed forces affords them an opportunity for their military commitment to transcend serving a single nation."Knowing that my service benefits not only the U.S. and Philippines, but the international community, opens my eyes to a broader view of the military, Acasio said. "We have so many diversities serving in the U.S. military and knowing that as a U.S. Airman working with the military of the country I was born in it just amazes me."I have gotten a few questions from Filipino military members about my national background and it makes me proud to say, 'I'm Filipino serving in the U.S. military, he added.This service before self attitude stems from a long line of Filipinos who have served in the U.S. armed forces dating as far back as the War of 1812. While the battlefields have changed, their commitment to service remains the same.I wanted to be a part of the U.S. Air Force, said Senior Airman Nikkie Javier, a Norwalk, California, native, whose family moved to the U.S. from the Philippines. Our mission here is very important because were here supporting our Filipino allies. We dont take our allies for granted and instead show the world where we stand, side by side, with the Philippines. It makes me proud to be a part of something so great.Both nations benefit from Filipino Airmen serving in the U.S. military, as they are able to translate cultural differences in a way both nationalities can understand.I feel like I am a liaison or bridge for both countries, Hidalgo said. I am able to explain what is going on to my fellow Airmen and, likewise, to the Filipinos. No matter how big or small a country is, we need each others support, and thats really why we are here, supporting our friends and for me, my family too.When asked how she feels about being home, Hidalgo said that for the first time in seven years, Its so good to be home. Just being able to interact with Filipinos on a daily basis is amazing.Hidalgo, Acasio and Javier are here with the newly stood up air contingent created at the invitation of the Philippine government, utilizing the Airmen and aircraft already in place at the conclusion of the Balikatan exercise. The purpose of the air contingent is to help build the capacity of the Philippine Air Force in order to address local and regional security concerns. These three Filipino-American Airmen are serving both countries as a result of the partnership.Ive seen the sacrifices service members make to keep our nations free, said Javier, a precision guided munitions crew chief with the 51st Munitions Squadron at Osan AB. Im humbled to be here and a part of this mission. Humanitarian aid delivered to Haiti through Denton Program Members from the 701st Airlift Squadron delivered humanitarian aid to Port-au-Prince on April 21 as part of ongoing Denton Program efforts. Two C-17 Globemaster IIIs were filled with 32 combined pallets as they transported more than 170,000 pounds of humanitarian aid to Haiti. Our role in the Denton mission is supporting the delivery of the cargo and supplies, said Capt. Ed Sutton, a 701st AS pilot. Its a rewarding experience to be a part of relief efforts to areas like Haiti or anywhere else in the world that may need it. The Denton Program creates an opportunity for private organizations to utilize space available on U.S. military cargo aircraft to transport goods to countries in need. The cargo moved under the Denton Program generally includes medical supplies, education supplies, furniture, vehicles, agricultural supplies, machinery, and clothing to support relief efforts and development projects. The supplies delivered by the 701st AS will be used by nongovernmental organizations throughout Haiti. Haiti is a developing country that has experienced its share of natural disasters. Currently, 1.5 million Haitians are threatened with malnutrition -- double the estimated number last year -- due to a three-year drought in the Caribbean region. Crops are being lost, rivers have dried, and children from villages in the mountains are being left unattended in Port-au-Prince, because their parents believe the childrens survival is greater in the city alone than with them in dry rural areas, said Pacius Gueston, the Haiti Christian Development Project director. This aid will save many lives. Orphaned as a child, Gueston was raised by a nun in Haiti and taught the importance of education and work ethic. After attending college in the United States, he returned to Haiti to give back to the people that needed support. Today, 70 percent of the estimated crops on the Caribbean island have been lost due to an ongoing drought, creating food instability for more than 3.6 million individuals. With farming being the primary source of income for Haitians, the drought has created more financial instability. Many agencies are working together to combat these issues, but more work still needs to be done. Kathy Cadden, president and founder of the nonprofit Operation Ukraine, is another face on the ground in Haiti welcoming service members, like those in the 701st AS, during the offload of humanitarian supplies. Well make great use of the donated food and supplies, said Cadden, who estimates shell oversee more than 8,500 dry meals and 3,500 cooked meals to be made for children. Were very thankful for everything the donors and the military have done. Since 1998, the Denton Program has overseen more than 5 million pounds of humanitarian supplies sent to more than 50 countries across the globe. The Morocco-GCC Summit kicked off Wednesday, April 20, 2016, night at the Al-Dariya Palace in Riyadh, in the presence of Moroccan sovereign Mohammed VI, and the leaders of the six-member Gulf cooperation Council (GCC). On this occasion, King Mohammed VI has addressed a historical message to the Morocco-GCC Summit, held Wednesday in Riyadh. Here is the full text of the Royal speech: Praise be to God May peace and blessings be upon the Prophet, His Kith and Kin Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Dear Brothers, My heart is brimming over with affection and pride, as is always the case when I come to the Arab Gulf region. I should like, first, to extend my sincere thanks to my brother, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, for hosting this important Summit, and to thank all leaders of GCC States for taking part in it. I would also like to say how much I value the moral and material support you have been providing to Morocco to implement development projects and defend its just causes. Our meeting today reflects the solid fraternal bonds and mutual esteem between us, as well as the close cooperation and solidarity between our countries. By the grace of the Almighty, and despite the geographical distance, we are bound by solid relations that, in addition to language, religion and civilization, include a commitment to the same values and principles and the same constructive policies. We are also facing the same challenges and threats, particularly with regard to security. Why hold this Summit, which is the first of its kind? And why today? Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Dear Brothers, Thanks to our shared determination, we have managed to lay the foundations for a solid strategic partnership, which is the result of fruitful bilateral cooperation. The Moroccan-Gulf partnership is not the result of transient interests or calculations. Rather, it derives its strength from a firm belief that ours is a common destiny and that we hold the same views on issues of common concern. We are therefore meeting today to give strong impetus to this partnership, which has gained in maturity to the extent that we now need to lay down an institutional framework for it, and provide it with practical mechanisms. There can be no better proof than this partnership that Arab joint action cannot be achieved through meetings and speeches, or formal periodic summits and ready-made, inapplicable resolutions. Rather, joint action requires serious endeavors, tangible cooperation and success stories which can be further consolidated and from which we can benefit; the pioneering GCC experience is a shining example in this regard. It is a message of hope for ourselves and a strong signal to our peoples that we can develop common, rallying projects. Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, This Summit is being held at a difficult time. The Arab region is being rocked by attempts to change regimes and divide states, as is the case in Syria, Iraq and Libya. As a result, many of the sons and daughters of the Arab homeland have either been uprooted, displaced or killed. What has been described as the Arab Spring has caused destruction, chaos and human tragedies. And now we are witnessing a calamitous autumn, with attempts to lay hands on what remains of Arab countries resources and spoil successful experiences, like that of Morocco, by undermining its outstanding national model. We respect the sovereignty of States, their choices and their freedom to establish and promote relations with partners of their own choosing. We are not here to call anybody to account for the political or economic choices they make. And yet, there have been new alliances which may lead to disunity and a reshuffling of roles and functions in the region. In fact, these are attempts to foment strife and create chaos, and no country would be spared. It could have serious consequences for the region, even the world at large. Though it remains committed to its strategic relations with its allies, Morocco has, in recent months, sought to diversify its partnerships at political, strategic and economic levels. My successful visit to Russia, last month, is part of that process. It has made it possible to turn Moroccan-Russian relations into an in-depth strategic partnership, and a number of major agreements have been signed in several crucial areas. We are also looking forward, in Morocco, to launching a strategic partnership with India, and also with the Peoples Republic of China, to which I will soon be paying an official visit. Morocco is free in its decisions and choices, and is not the exclusive preserve of any country; it will continue to honor the commitments it makes to its partners, and the latter should not think that their interests will be affected. For this reason, the convening of this Summit is not targeting any party in particular, least of all our partners. It is a natural, logical initiative by countries which are defending their interests, as all countries do. My brothers in the Gulf bear the costs and consequences of the successive wars in the region. Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, This is a serious situation which is compounded by egregious, misleading generalizations and insincerity, as shown by expressions of friendship and alliance on the one hand, and stabbing in the back, on the other. So what do they want from us? We are facing conspiracies which seek to undermine our collective security. Things are quite clear and require no further analysis. They want to destabilize the few countries which have managed to safeguard their security, stability and political systems. I am referring to the Gulf countries, Morocco and Jordan, which are oases of peace and security for their citizens and a factor of stability in their respective regions. We are all facing the same perils, the same threats, though their origins and manifestations may differ. Therefore, to defend our security is not only a shared obligation, but it is also a collective, indivisible one. Morocco has always perceived the security and stability of Gulf countries as an intrinsic part of its own security and stability. What hurts you hurts us, and what affects us affects you. Morocco has consistently sought to demonstrate this in all situations and circumstances. The aim has been to stand up to all threats in the region, as in the First Gulf War, the operation in Yemen to restore legitimacy and the ongoing security and intelligence cooperation. Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Dear Brothers, The hostile plots which seek to undermine our stability are continuing; they will not stop. Several countries in the eastern part of the Arab world have been torn apart and destroyed; today, it is the western part which is targeted, and the most recent of these conspiracies has been hatched against the territorial integrity of your second home, Morocco. There is nothing new in this. Moroccos opponents are using every means, directly or otherwise, as part of their thinly-veiled maneuvers. Thus, depending on the circumstances, they try to delegitimize Moroccos presence in its Sahara, promote the independence option and the separatist thesis, or undermine the autonomy initiative, which the international community has described as serious and credible. As the plotting continues, the month of April, which coincides with the Security Council meetings on the Sahara issue, has become a bogeyman used against Morocco and a tool to exert pressure on my country at times, and blackmail it at others. Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, I cannot let this occasion pass without expressing my pride and appreciation for the constant support you have been giving my country for the defense of its territorial integrity. The question of the Moroccan Sahara has always been the cause of Gulf countries as well. And this is hardly surprising. In 1975, delegations from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates took part in the Green March for the recovery of our southern provinces. The participants included my brother, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, who was 14 years old at the time. Since then, the Gulf States have spared no effort to uphold our just cause and defend Moroccos sovereignty over its entire territory. This position was reaffirmed during the recent crisis with the UN Secretary-General. Only this time, the situation is serious. It is also unprecedented in the history of this artificial dispute over the Moroccan Sahara. What we are witnessing, in fact, is a proxy war, in which the Secretary-General of the United Nations is being used to infringe on Moroccos legitimate, historical rights in its Sahara, through biased statements and unacceptable behavior regarding the Moroccan Sahara. This should not come as a surprise, for there is something that might explain it all! Indeed, what can one expect from the Secretary-General when he himself admits that he is not fully informed on the Moroccan Sahara issue nor is he on many others? He is unaware of this issues intricate developments and its real background. What can the Secretary-General do while he is a hostage in the hands of some of his aides and advisers, to whom he delegates the responsibility of managing a number of important issues and settles for merely implementing the proposals they submit to him. It is a fact that some of these aides have national agendas. They are politically motivated and they serve other parties interests without regard for their duty, as staff members of the United Nations Organization, to act impartially and objectively an obligation that lies at the very heart of UN action. The Secretary-General, whom I personally esteem, is only human after all. He cannot be fully cognizant of all issues on the United Nations agenda, nor find solutions to all crises and conflicts around the world. I wish to emphasize, in this respect, that Morocco does not have a problem with the United Nations Organization, of which it is an active member; nor does it have a problem with the Security Council, whose members it respects and with whom it is constantly in touch. Morocco has a problem with the Secretary-General, and more particularly with some of his aides, because of their hostile positions towards my country. As regards this artificial dispute over our territorial integrity, Morocco has always liaised with its traditional friends, which include the United States of America, France and Spain, and with Arab sister nations, especially the Gulf States, as well as African countries, such as Senegal, Guinea, Cote dIvoire and Gabon. We have a problem because of frequently changing governments in some of these countries. With every change, significant efforts have to be exerted to introduce new officials to all aspects of the Moroccan Sahara issue and to make them aware of its real implications. They have to be reminded that this dispute, which has been going on for more than forty years, has caused many casualties, that its material cost has been considerable and that the Sahara issue is the cause of all Moroccans, and not just the Monarchys. Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Now is the time for honesty and truth. The Arab world is going through a difficult period. What some States are experiencing is not exceptional; it is all part of well-planned schemes that target us all. Terrorism does more than just tarnish the reputation of Islam and Muslims; it is also being used by some people as a pretext to divide our States and foment strife in them. For this reason, the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence need to engage in a frank, in-depth dialogue to correct misrepresentations, convey the true image of Islam and uphold, once again, the tolerant values of our faith. What is at stake is not the situation in a particular country as much as the need, for all of us, to be aware of the challenges confronting us and to show genuine determination to renew our strategic pact with our partners, on the basis of clear determinants that can govern our relations in the decades to come. This is a turning point; a watershed moment between what we want and what the others want us to be. Today, more than ever, we need clear, unified stances between all Arab States. Either we stand together, like a solid structure, whose parts reinforce one another, or we become something we do not want to be. May Almighty God grant us success, for the benefit of our peoples and our Ummah. Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullah wabarkatuh. The work of the Morocco-Gulf Countries Summit, held on Wednesday April 20th, 2016, in Riyadh, in the presence of Moroccan King Mohammed VI, and the leaders of the six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), was marked by the issuance of a final joint communique. In this communique, the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have reaffirmed their principled position regarding the Moroccan Sahara issue which they consider an issue of the GCC as well, reiterating their support to the Moroccanity of the Sahara and to the autonomy plan presented by Morocco, as a basis of any solution to this artificial regional dispute. They expressed, also, their rejection of any infringing on the higher interests of Morocco with regard to the serious indicators witnessed by the file in recent weeks. Furthermore, the leaders of the GCC expressed their commitment to the common defense of the security and stability of their countries, and to the respect of the sovereignty of States, of their territorial integrity and their national values, as well as to the rejection of any attempt aiming at jeopardizing security and stability and at propagating separatism and division, with the purpose of restructuring maps of countries and of their partition, at the risk of threatening peace as well as regional and international security. The full text of the joint communique is as follows: 1. Deriving from the strong relations and the solid historical ties between the leaders and peoples of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Kingdom of Morocco, and their belief in the importance of solidarity and complementarity between them. 2. A Summit was held, on April 20th, 2016, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, between Their Majesties and Highnesses the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council and His Majesty King Mohammed VI, King of Morocco. 3. Their Majesties and Highnesses the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council and His Majesty the King of Morocco reiterated their firm belief in their unified destiny and goals, as well as their abidance by effective solidarity and sincere brotherhood on which exceptional historic relations between GCC member States and the Kingdom of Morocco are based. 4. This Summit was an opportunity to boost strategic partnership and coordination stance between GCC States and the Kingdom of Morocco for addressing the challenges and threats facing the Arab region, as well as to share views on international and regional issues of mutual interests. 5. The leaders expressed their satisfaction over continued progress in the joint action to achieve the goals of partnership in accordance with the work plan to boost human development and promote trade exchange and investments. They also insisted on the need to give this partnership a strong boost and develop its institutional aspect. 6. They also stressed their commitment to mutually defend their countries security and stability, and to respect their sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as their national constants. They also affirmed their rejection of any attempts aimed at undermining security and stability, and the dissemination of separatism and segregation to redraw the map of nations or splitting them, which threatens regional and international security and peace. 7. Based on these constants, the Summit stressed that the Kingdom of Morocco and the GCCs countries constitute a strategic unified bloc, in the sense that what affects the security of any one of them affects the security of the other countries. 8. In this context, the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council reiterated their principled position that the cause of the Moroccan Sahara is also the cause of the GCC countries. They affirmed their position supporting the fact that the Sahara is Moroccan and their support for the initiative of autonomy presented by Morocco, as the basis for any solution to this artificial regional dispute. They also expressed their rejection of any infringing on the higher interests of Morocco with regard to the serious indicators witnessed by the file in recent weeks. 9. In light of the political development and dangerous security threats in the Arab region, worsened by the failure to reach a solution to end the conflict in the Middle East and solve the crisis in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, the Summit stressed the importance of concerted efforts to face these challenges with appropriate firmness and responsibility. 10.The leaders also renewed their condemnation of extremism and terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and emphasized not linking this dangerous scourge with any civilization or religion, and standing in the face of attempts to spread sectarianism that fuels strife and intends to interfere in the internal affairs of states. They called for the coordination of regional and international efforts to counter terrorism and its eradication and the elimination of its causes, stressing the importance of the Islamic military alliance to fight terrorism in supporting these efforts. 11.The Summit was a good opportunity to discuss the foundations for broader cooperation between the GCC, the Kingdom of Morocco and Sub-Saharan African countries, so as to promote security and stability and common interests. 12.Finally, Their Majesties and Highnesses stressed the importance of continuing consultation and coordination in order to support the pillars of the existing partnership between the GCC and the Kingdom of Morocco, in order to meet the aspirations of their peoples and serve the interests of the Arab and Islamic nations as well as to achieve international peace and security. Done in Riyadh, on Wednesday 14 Rajab 1437, corresponding to April 20th, 2016. By: Ahmed Al-Jarallah Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times Normally, the Sun sets in the West, but the Sun of loyalty sets in Morocco. Brotherly ties, unity and self-determination are considered the foundations of the vision of GCCs sister Kingdom, because their relationship is based on common concerns and interests. This is in addition to the fact that Morocco is blessed with leaders who tread on the unity path to ensure stability of the entire Arab world, such that the economic heavyweight States are stable politically and economically. This is the conclusion made by those who closely follow up the speeches of King Mohammed VI who is keen on completing whatever King Hassan II started in internal, Arabian and international levels. The Kingdom managed to overcome a critical phase, when the international saboteurs put it on the Arab Spring list, through its rational vision based on the legacy to maintain intimate and friendly relations between the King and the people. This was also made possible through daily monitoring of peoples concerns and interests as the leader prioritizes the interests of the homeland over any other interests. Morocco is the Golden Gate of Arabs to the black continent as it is the gate of Africa to the Arab world; hence, the real exchange between the two civilizations goes through this gate. Therefore, when it sets sight on this part of the Arab world, it is heading towards the right direction. This necessitates everyone to ponder on the statement of King Mohammed VI who has high intellectual and cultural stature. He said the Moroccan-Gulf partnership is not the result of circumstantial interests and incidental accounts, because it gets its strength from the belief in the importance of shared willpower and points of view on issues of mutual concern. He underscored the fact that partnerships emerged through unity in dealing with various situations throughout the past decades. Certainly, the summit, as the Moroccan King described it, is being held under difficult circumstances that pose a threat to the remaining stable countries in the region. Since the region has remarkable leaders, these countries will not fall into the trap; they will remain as effective venues for formation of power in preventing the spread of fire in their borders. They will play the role of firemen with the ability to extinguish fire caused by volcanoes erupting in several Arab countries. We can describe the Moroccan Kings speech as a decisive response to the clear and straightforward question, What do they want from us? He summarized everything that lingers in the minds of those searching for clear answers to many questions raised in the past five years. Given that the question is passive and its subject has been ignored, the King presented his explanations as he pointed out the bodies which set eyes on the region. It is then unacceptable to run behind illusions in resisting the destruction project and we were all partners in resisting it. He is also a person striving towards peace and he is fully aware of the strong will which defeats the uproar against Morocco that usually emerges in the month of April in the United Nations Security Council. The Sahraoui issue is not a local matter, it is rather an Arab issue as reflected in the solidarity march which started in 1975 with the participation of delegates from GCC countries. The support of GCC countries will continue as long as the world is round and the Sun continues to rise. Mohammed VI did not only amaze us through his speech, but he also set the features of the coming period when everyone is obliged to contemplate on the whole issue and work hand in hand to prevent any spark from the volcanoes from reaching our country. Indeed, the speech of the suitable, loyal and determined King will never fade. It will strengthen the partnership a partnership of hearts that beat together, not a partnership of destiny and blood. The speech delivered by King Mohammed VI at the Morocco-GCC Summit highlights the current issues of the Arab nation, head of the French observatory of geopolitical studies, Charles Saint-Prot, said on Thursday. The King recalled the challenges facing the entire Arab nation, including the problems of stability and security, Saint-Prot told MAP. The Sovereign also stressed the need to strengthen solidarity between countries in the region, the French expert pointed out, noting that the royal speech also highlighted the common struggle of the Gulf countries and Morocco for the preservation of Islam against deviations and manipulation. The royal speech was very firm when addressing the destabilization plan targeting Morocco by making the link with the artificial conflict maintained by the Algerian regime in the Moroccan Sahara, he said. Saint-Prot said that the UN Chiefs behaviors affect the credibility of the United Nations Secretariat, adding that the report drafted by Ban Ki-moon on the Sahara issue is outrageous and unacceptable Rudroneel Ghosh, Times of India In what can be best described as a historic speech, Moroccos King Mohammed VIs address at the recent Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-Morocco summit succinctly summarized the problems facing the Arab world and what is needed to ensure stability and security in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. But before we delve into the contents of King Mohammeds speech, lets take a moment to reflect on the current situation in that part of the world. The 2011 Arab Spring wave was hailed as a push for democracy in the region. Long-time strongmen were toppled and the activist forces pledged to create new governments and democratic constitutions for these Arab countries. However, it soon became clear that the activist forces had very little experience of governance. And the only organized groups that emerged were the Islamists as exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood backed Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt and the Ennahda movement in Tunisia. But the Islamists werent trusted by the West, leading to its tacit support for counter-revolutionary forces as in Egypt. On the other hand, in countries like Libya, Syria and Iraq different international actors saw the Arab Spring uprising as an opportunity to foment armed insurrections against the ruling regimes. And its this turmoil that gave birth to the Islamic State (IS) terror group which is directly responsible for destroying the territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria. All of these happenings over the last five years quietly established a dangerous precedent that it was perfectly legitimate for external actors, both regional and non-regional, to interfere in the internal matters of the MENA countries. In this regard, regional countries started using sectarianism as a pretext to support radical forces in rival nations. Meanwhile, non-regional countries used more sophisticated tools available to them in the form of lobbies in international organisations to further their strategic interests. The latter is best exemplified by the annual UN deliberations on the Moroccan Sahara issue. The net effect of these machinations was the redrawing of the map of the Arab world, which is still underway. But this is in total violation of the compact that was worked out between world powers at the end of World War II. The consensus back then was that the territorial integrity of nations would be respected and matters related to self-determination would be settled through dialogue and deliberations at a global forum like the UN. However, over the decades this principle has been gradually degraded. Add to this the resistance of global powers to reforming UN institutions such as the UN Security Council to make them more representative. Hence, we have come to a pass where the sanctity and efficacy of the UN continue to be subverted. In fact, it can be argued that the UN forum, on occasions, has been used to adopt partisan positions. Take the example of the recent Chinese blocking of Indian proposals to proscribe Pakistan-based terrorists. Such actions only reduce the faith of the international community in UN systems. The only alternative is a multi-polar world where both the dignity and mutual interdependence of countries are guaranteed. Its in this context that King Mohammeds above mentioned speech needs to be seen. Calling for truth and honesty, the King has described what the Arab states are currently experiencing as a well-planned scheme to destabilise the region. The implication here is that the Arab countries are willy-nilly falling into a trap. Instead of protecting their interests, they are fighting among themselves in the region and allowing external forces to take advantage of the situation. At a time when there is great need for unity, the MENA region is a divided house. The sectarian battles being fought between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their respective proxies are doing much more harm to all these countries than the so-called strategic gains that are accruing to them. In this regard, the King proclaimed that terrorism does more than just tarnish the reputation of Islam and Muslims; it is also being used by some people as a pretext to divide our states and foment strife in them. Further, the King called for the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence to engage in a frank, in-depth dialogue to correct misrepresentations, convey the true image of Islam and uphold the tolerant values of the Islamic faith. For far too long Islam has been deliberately misinterpreted to legitimize the activities of extremist groups for the strategic benefit of certain countries. Everyone knows these countries. However, Morocco has been pioneering a project to promote moderate Islam to fight the growing spread of Islamic radicalism. But unless the entire Muslim world unites in correcting misinterpretations of Islam, rejects radicalism and terrorism, and recognizes the scope of national specificities within the Islamic faith, the problem of jihadism will endure. King Mohammeds message is aimed at getting the Arab-Muslim world to recognize their own failings and realize that as long as they choose to ignore these and refuse to unite in common cause, external elements will continue to take advantage of the MENA countries and the current chaos will prevail. If the Arab-Muslim world is to become a veritable pole of a multi-polar global order, it must heed King Mohammeds words, stop internal rivalries and sectarian projects, shun terrorism, and unite for peace and development of the people. A prominent Sikh politician in Pakistan who was gunned down last week was killed by contract killers hired by his miffed Hindu rival after he failed to secure a ticket for elections; police said, days after Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the murder. Baldev Kumar, a Swat district councilor and minority leader of Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), was arrested by the police for his alleged role in the murder of Dr Sardar Sooran Singh, also of the same party. 52-year-old Singh was the Special Assistant to Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Minority Affairs. Kumar hired contract killers by promising them Rs one million. He was miffed after being overlooked for the ticket which was given to Singh who was comparatively new entrant to the PTI, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Malakand Division Azad Khan said at a press conference. Baldey Kumar planned Singhs killing with help of his friend Muhammad Alam, former-nazim from Shangla. Alam fixed his killing plan with Saeed Jan and promised Rs one million for killing and Rs two lakh were paid in advance. Saeed Jan hired Mukhtar and Behroz Khan and sent them Buners Pir Baba for targeting him. Mukhtar and Behroz Khan attacked Sooran Singh on last Friday at his doorstep in the Pir Baba area of Buner after returning from a funeral, the police officer said. He said that soon after the murder, police received information and arrested the attackers. During interrogation, the accused confessed to have killed Singh in lieu of money, saying they were hired by Saeed Jan. The accuseds confession led to the arrest of Saeed Jan, who, during interrogation, said that he planned the killing after being asked by Muhammad Alam and Kumar, the DIG said. Kumar targeted Singh after he could not get a party ticket for provincial assembly on reserved seats for minority for 2013 elections. PTI gave ticket to Singh, who had joined the party in 2011 and elected general secretary of minorities wing of the party after intra-party elections, Khan said. Kumar and Singh were also business partners, Khan said while rejecting the claims by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that they had killed Singh. The TTP in a statement had said that sharp shooter of Special Task Force of TTP successfully targeted Sardar Sooran Singh in his home district Buner. In a major development, a court on Monday dropped charges framed against eight Muslim youths for their alleged role in the September 2006 Malegaon blast case due to lack of evidence. At least 37 people had died in the Malegaon blast. Judge VV Patil gave this verdict in the Mumbai sessions court. In the last hearing, NIA took an u-turn opposing the discharge of the accused contradicting stance taken by it in the past. All accused were granted bail by a trial court in November 2011 after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) gave no objection to their bail pleas. Of the nine accused, one Shabir Ahmed died in an accident in 2015. The accused, including Salman Farsi, Noorulhuda Doha, Rais Ahmed, Mohammed Ali, Asif Khan, Javed Sheikh, Faroogue Ansari and Abrar Ahmed, were being investigated for four bomb explosions on September 8, 2006, that killed 37 people and injured more than 100. The explosions took place near Hamida Masjid in the Bade Kabarastan area of Malegaon. The Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) in Maharashtra had arrested nine men, alleged to be the members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) for the blasts. While one of the accused died in an accident in 2015, six others were released in 2011 on bail. Two others have also been convicted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case. Last week, the NIA told the court that it had found no evidence to link the nine Muslims to the blasts. The agency also did not object to the discharge applications filed by the arrested accused, saying evidence collected by it were not in consonance with those obtained earlier by the Maharashtra ATS and the CBI, which also investigated the case. It is submitted that evidence collected by NIA in further investigation is not in consonance with evidence collected by the Anti-Terrorism Squad and the CBI. The court may kindly pass appropriate orders in the matter, the NIA said in its response to the discharge applications filed by the accused. Case so far The police claimed that the aim of the blast was to cause an outbreak of communal violence in the restive town which has been stigmatized as a place seething with Muslim anger and alienation. The nine accused included six from Malegaon and three from Mumbai. Many of them were related to each other through marriage or had business relations. For the police the nine people were members of the banned Student Islamic Movement of India who had carried out the attacks with the help of unidentified Pakistanis. The initial investigation was started by Malegaon police and a special team of officers constituted by IGP Nasik Range. The case was handed over to the Anti Terrorism Squad, Mumbai on 23 October 2006 which made all the arrests. With local residents vouching for the innocence of those arrested and calling for a fair probe the Central Government decided to transfer the case to the CBI in December 2006. In 2008, another bomb ripped through Malegaon. An investigation led by then ATS Chief Hemant Karkare found Hindu extremists to be behind the blast. In 2010 Swami Aseemanand, an alleged Hindu extremist, confessed that radical Hindu activists were behind the blasts. The NIA was handed over the case in 2011 and its investigation nailed Hindu extremists who are suspected in the 2006 blast as well. Nowadays, like any other profession, we can see competition in spiritual world too. Some spiritual leaders are vote banks whereas some work as political settlers. Some have gained more than expected exposure whereas some are still struggling for achieving name and fame. Recently, Bhayyuji Maharaj, a spiritual leader with a strong following in Maharashtra, announced retirement from the public life. I was surprised on hearing his announcement and what kind of public life he was in? He says he is not good at managing business, but believe me his business managers will charge you lumpsum money for washing his feet (Paad Pooja) or seeking his special darshan. People queue for his glimpses. Anyways, if you compare him with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or Baba Ramdev then he is yet a small time guru and failed to spread his empire as wide as they could do. Bhayyuji, who is originally from Indore in Madhya Pradesh, surprised many with the sudden announcement considering his proximity to political leaders in Maharashtra. He was associated with key Congress, NCP and BJP leaders for 17 years. His most favourite leaders because of whom he remained in limelight such as Vilasrao Deshmukh, Balasaheb Thackeray and Gopinath Munde all passed away, he remained isolated in the present BJP rule. In political arena, he is known as political settler than spiritual leader. Meanwhile, he tried his level best to be on social network such as linkedIn and twitter but his reach was always limited. On the other hand, Baba Ramdev not only entered into mainstream business but also sold his Yoga to all limits; he overnight became blue-eyed boy of BJP for attacking Congress and its alleged corruption. Whereas Bhayyuji Maharaj is neutral person and he is on good term with every parties and its leaders. His utility is quite meagre for present political party. His inferiority complex is justified. Meanwhile, gurus and mahagurus have been promoted by people in power and not only politicians every citizen who has the power to do so, socially, economically, politically etc. Many of us rethink about the condition, we live and how the guru take centre stage and use the situation to their best ability. They are just ordinary human beings but the ability to sell their ideas to the larger section of society is incredible. Generally, Indians live with fear of all kinds and this may be the reason for strong beliefs in extra ordinary powers with this human beings. Moreover, people of all faiths walk in to this trap and forget to serve the people for happiness but their objective is to gain all the time in some way or the other and never be a loser of any kind. Most of the todays godmen and women are far from following the true spiritual path as laid down by the religion. They are more interested in earning easy money and getting patronage from the so-called community leaders (politicians). Eventually, the beneficiaries of these hidden agenda keep propping up these godmen and women for their benefits. They are vote banks, they are money-laundering centres, they can create communal violence and they can promote religion for political advantage. These gurus are backbone to the filthy politics of India. Indian spiritualism is about consumerism and wealth accumulation like the rest of Indian culture today. Nobody is blind here both the guru and the followers know what they are aiming to secure. It is a just another reflection of total social breakdown in India. For Baba Ramdev, yoga and ayurveda have been the main money-spinners since he shot to fame in 2004. Besides crusading against corruption and black money, he runs a 100-bed hospital, an Ayurveda college, a university, a real estate business and a mini hospitality industry at the sprawling Haridwar campus of Patanjali Yogapeeth. The success story of Sri Sri Ravi Shankars Art of Living (AOL), headquartered in Bangalore, is no less fascinating. The organisations crowning glory is its international appeal. Founded in 1981 by the soft-spoken guru, AOL has become an educational and humanitarian movement across 150 countries claiming to have touched 370 million lives, with its stress management and other spiritual initiatives. Like all good things in life, the healing and rejuvenation process comes for a price. One has to admire the efficient business model of the AOL. If you are interested, then you click on interested and the website then asks you for your personal details (name, phone number, email ID). Within minutes, a person calls you with all the information you need. The payment is made on the spot via cheque or cash, or online transaction if the programme is at the ashram. The money collected by the teachers goes to the ashram funds, which is sent in by the teachers who are basically volunteers working here part-time. There are other spiritual gurus not so famous as the ones above. The chances are that most of them are waiting for the right moment. Inside every successful godman lurks a suited CEO with a power point presentation at hand. However, the one who lack these business skills find no other option than taking break from the public life. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) We must do more for victims of war and persecution, says film star, who reveals his own ancestors flight from famine-ravaged Ireland. The Oscar-winning actor opened up over his own ancestors struggles in fleeing the famine in Ireland in the 19th century and called on people to believe they could make a difference. The simple truth is that all of us here tonight are the result of someones act of kindness. We all stand on the shoulders of good people who didnt look away when we were in need, Clooney told a humanitarian conference in Yerevan, Armenia. The Clooney family fled a famine in Ireland to come to the United States where their very survival required a room, a meal, a helping hand. We call them refugees, but theyre just people, like you and me. And if you stand right in front of them and take a look deep into their eyes, you might just see an Irish farmer fleeing a famine. If we are to survive as a people, we simply cant look away. Not from the people of Syria or South Sudan or the Congo. About 4.8 million people have fled Syria since civil war broke out in 2011, according to UN figures. The actor has previously produced documentaries on the Darfur conflict in Sudan and said on Saturday that he combated the suffocation of fame with human rights activism. Clooney was in Armenia to present the Aurora prize, an award held to recognise those who put themselves at risk to save the lives of others. He handed the inaugural award to Marguerite Barankitse, who saved the lives of 30,000 children during the Burundi civil war. She was personally given $100,000 (70,000) and awarded a $1m (700,000) grant to donate to a charity or organisation that has inspired her. The actor said Barankitse served as a reminder of the impact that one person can have even when encountering seemingly insurmountable persecution and injustice. The Islamic States chief recruiter in India has been killed in a US airstrike in Syria last week, ending a large hunt of security agencies for a man considered extremely crucial in setting up the terror networks fledgling bases in the country, official sources said on Monday. The sources said India was informed by American officials about the death of Mohammed Shafi Armar, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka, who headed and recruited Indians for the Islamic State and its regional franchisee Jund ul Khalifa-e-Hind (The Army of the Indian Caliphate). The National Investigation Agency (NIA) considered Armar the brain behind the Islamic States online recruitment in India. We have been informed about his death by the US. We dont know where he was killed and exactly. We were told that he died in a US strike, an official said. The official, requesting not to be named, said the details surrounding Armars death were being sought from the Americans. Armar recruited youngsters for the Jund ul Khalifa-e-Hind by radicalising them online and luring them to jihad. He earlier headed the Ansar-ul Tawhid fil Bilad al-Hind Supporters of Monotheism in the land of India a breakaway faction of the Indian Mujahideen. Armars death comes exactly a year after Indian security and intelligence officials in April 2015 busted a terror cell in Madhya Pradesh. Five terrorists arrested in Ratlam were said to be among the first recruits linked to the Islamic State. The sources said the chief of the busted cell, identified as Irfan Khan, was directly recruited by Armar in March 2014. Armar, who was the former Indian Mujahideen member, had also recruited 14 Indian men who were arrested by the NIA in January while they were planning terror strikes in India. The United Arab Emirates deported in January this year three Indians who were allegedly working under Armar. His death is likely to deal a major blow to Islamic States plan of expanding in India, particularly in Kashmir where the group had recently vowed to fight the cow-worshipping Hindus and the apostates from factions allied to the idol-worshippers of Pakistan, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is a setback for the group, the official said. US President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for European unity in the face of rising populism and scepticism about the European Union on Monday, urging the continent to recognise its own achievements. A strong and united Europe is a necessity for the world, Obama said in a landmark speech in the German city of Hanover, as he contrasted the prosperity of today with the wars and hardship of the last century. Visiting a continent reeling from a migration crisis, economic stasis and facing the prospect of Britain abandoning the European Union, Obama said the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe. While he admitted that European institutions can be frustrating, he argued turning inward is not the answer to Europes problems. To which Harris interjected:I have it here as well, 7 May 1998.:And Davis responded:"It actually says, 'There is no conflict of interest'. Should the editor then"However, what the interchange hides is the fact that Wakefield disclosed his involvement with the litigation while denying that there was a conflict - all of which had anyway long been known to the Lancet ( AoA Smoke and Mirrors AoA The Last Day of Wakefield's Defence ). In the letter published on 2 May 1998 Wakefield had stated:"A Rouse suggests that litigation bias might exist by virtue of information he has downloaded from the internet: from the Society for the Autistically Handicapped. Only one author (AJW) has agreed to help evaluate a small number of these children on behalf of the Legal Aid Board. These children have all been seen expressly on the basis that they were referred through normal channels (eg, from general practitioner, child psychiatrist, or community paediatrician) on the merits of their symptoms. AJW has never heard of the Society for the Autistically Handicapped and no fact sheet has been provided by them to distribute to interested parties. The only fact sheet we have produced is for general practitioners, which describes the background and protocol for the investigation of children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms. Finally all those children referred to us (including the 53 who have been investigated already and those on the waiting list that extends into 1999) have come through the formal channels described above. No conflict of interest exist."Daviss evidence was defective in not mentioning that Wakefield had made a disclosure while denying correctly that there was any conflict in the paper (nor was he corrected by Harris). He was also wrong in implying that Wakefield had taken 3 months to respond. The letter was published only 9 weeks after the original paper, and was responding to a letter from Dr Rouse dispatched only four days after publication, the delay being determined entirely by the Lancet and not by Wakefield.The delay quickly became a key part of the Lancets defence, with Horton claiming that he took Wakefield to mean that he had been engaged by the Legal Aid Board after the publication of the paper. Horton responded to Wakefield in the Journal on 17 April 2004:"We do not accept Andrew Wakefield and colleagues' interpretation of the letter published in The Lancet on May 2, 1998,..which was, in any event, only published 3 months after the original 1998 Lancet paper."And when Horton was examined by Sally Smith QC at the GMC in August 2007 the delay was beginning to extend to four months:Smith: Looking at the wording of the sentence you referred to "only one author that agreed to evaluate a small number of these children on behalf of the Legal Aid Board", you say you took that to mean since the publication of the paper and we are now some three or four months on.To which Horton responds with a single word:Yes ( First amended complaint ). This delay which seems to have been so important to Hortons and the Lancets case against Wakefield - has never had any basis in fact.John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism. Chairman Chris Gent said: James has taken this decision to focus on his current duties as non-executive chairman of BSkyB and following his decision to re-locate to the United States as chairman and chief executive, international, of News Corporation. John Stone has written about both Murdoch and Davis and their proximity to the Dr. Andrew Wakefield MMR Lancet Paper BMJ topic. James Murdoch Still Supported by GlaxoSmithKline ran last July: Lancet Boss Failed to Disclose Own Conflicts to Parliament While Denouncing Wakefield Both posts run in full following the jump: We are running this "Best of" in light of the VaXed, The Movie controversy having been pulled from the Tribeca Film Festival and subsequently thrust into the limelight. From January, 2012. By John Stone The Wall Street Journal reports that James Murdoch, son of beleaguered media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose empire is embroiled in scandal, has stepped down from the GlaxoSmithKline board. See WSJ online HERE. In addition, Sir Crispin Davis, former Chief Executive of Reed Elsevier, which owns The Lancet, which published the paper that included Dr. Andrew Wakefield's MMR information, is leaving the board after a nine year tenure. James Murdoch, the beleagured News Corporation executive, has received a ringing endorsement from MMR manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline according to Reuters news agency on Friday. GSK who appointed him to their board in February 2009 insist Murdoch has made a strong contribution to the group and received share payments worth $158,000 in 2010. Murdoch was appointed to the board of the pharmaceutical manufacturer with a brief to reviewexternal issues that might have the potential for serious impact upon the group's business and reputation ." Within a fortnight of his appointment News International had published at least 5 articles attacking MMR researcher Andrew Wakefields integrity. The accusations, while flawed, were devastating to Wakefields reputation. According to the Sunday Times, and its journalist, Brian Deer Wakefield was singly guilty of fabricating the data in the Lancet paper of 1998 although none of his 12 co-authors have ever repudiated it and one of them, histopathologist, Susan Davies subsequently wrote to British Medical Journal rebutting Deers interpretation of her evidence before the General Medical Council. Deers allegations were also based on his own inexpert interpretation of GP records which were never available to the authors of the paper. The allegations which were re-cycled by British Medical Journal were rebutted by Wakefield in his book Callous Disregard, and frequently in articles published on Age of Autism (AofA The Big Lie , AofA Time To Revisit Deer's Claims , AofA Part 2 Time To Revisit Deer's Claims ). In contrast to normal academic journal policy BMJ have adopted a legalistic defence of its allegations and (more here). Furthermore, they were forced to admit under pressure that they had undisclosed conflicts with MMR manufacturers Merck and GSK. The Sunday Times campaign against Wakefield began in 2003 when section editor Paul Nuki approached Deer saying that he needed "something big" on "MMR" . Nuki was the son of Prof George Nuki who sat on the Committee on Safety on Medicines when MMR/Pluserix were first introduced in the late 1980s. Shortly afterwards Deer interviewed parent litigants under a false name. Unknown to Sunday Times readers Deer also pursued his own official complaints against Wakefield and colleagues and came to an arrangement with General Medical Council lawyers that he would not be named in the case, leaving him free to continue reporting as if an independent journalist . Deers obtaining and use of confidential data remains to be investigated. A statement on copyright on his website probably dating back some years states (my underlining.): 'For reference, with regard to Brian Deer's MMR investigation, almost all of the key facts and documents are not public domain, and, such is the culture of plagiarism, he will act against authors who represent his writing, interviews, documents, or other research, as the fruit of their own inquiries, whether referenced or not.' In an article his website he also mentioned reading confidential reports in the MMR litigation and commented on them. When these issues were raised in British Medical Journal last year the journal took the step of removing several letters from its on-line correspondence, effectively banning all further reference to the matter from its columns. The role of both BMJ and the News International in this affair require urgent official investigation. Lancet Boss Failed to Disclose Own Conflicts to Parliament While Denouncing Wakefield Sir Crispin Davis, until recently chief executive of Reed Elsevier which owns the Lancet, failed to disclose his own conflicts while denouncing Andrew Wakefield to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in March 2004. Sir Crispin failed to disclose either that he was a non-executive director of MMR defendants, GlaxoSmithKline, or that it was his own brother Sir Nigel Davis who had endorsed the Legal Services Commissions decision to pull the plug on the funding of the case in the High Court 3 days before ((HERE). This was barely more than a week after allegations had been levelled against Wakefield by Lancet editor Richard Horton, and Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer. Nor do Daviss conflicts ever seem to have been mentioned by Horton. Remarkably, these relationships had been mentioned in Sunday Times article about Sir Crispin, just weeks earlier: "Family get-togethers could become galling for Davis if he ever slips up, such is the incredible success he and his brothers have achieved. One of them, Ian, is managing director of McKinsey, the management consultancy, another, James, is a partner at the top law firm Freshfields, while a third, Nigel, is a High Court judge. "Daviss only other City job is as a non-executive board member at Glaxo Smith Kline, a position he secured last year." This did not stop Sir Crispin accusing Wakefield as he was cross-examined before the committee by Dr Evan Harris MP who had accompanied Deer to the Lancet offices 12 days earlier. He told Harris: At the time of the submission of the article there was no admission of conflict of interest. Three months later there was a written letter. I think I have got it somewhere here. To which Harris interjected: I have it here as well, 7 May 1998.: And Davis responded: "It actually says, 'There is no conflict of interest'. Should the editor then" However, what the interchange hides is the fact that Wakefield disclosed his involvement with the litigation while denying that there was a conflict - all of which had anyway long been known to the Lancet (AoA Smoke and Mirrors , AoA The Last Day of Wakefield's Defence). In the letter published on 2 May 1998 Wakefield had stated: "A Rouse suggests that litigation bias might exist by virtue of information he has downloaded from the internet: from the Society for the Autistically Handicapped. Only one author (AJW) has agreed to help evaluate a small number of these children on behalf of the Legal Aid Board. These children have all been seen expressly on the basis that they were referred through normal channels (eg, from general practitioner, child psychiatrist, or community paediatrician) on the merits of their symptoms. AJW has never heard of the Society for the Autistically Handicapped and no fact sheet has been provided by them to distribute to interested parties. The only fact sheet we have produced is for general practitioners, which describes the background and protocol for the investigation of children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms. Finally all those children referred to us (including the 53 who have been investigated already and those on the waiting list that extends into 1999) have come through the formal channels described above. No conflict of interest exist." Daviss evidence was defective in not mentioning that Wakefield had made a disclosure while denying correctly that there was any conflict in the paper (nor was he corrected by Harris). He was also wrong in implying that Wakefield had taken 3 months to respond. The letter was published only 9 weeks after the original paper, and was responding to a letter from Dr Rouse dispatched only four days after publication, the delay being determined entirely by the Lancet and not by Wakefield. The delay quickly became a key part of the Lancets defence, with Horton claiming that he took Wakefield to mean that he had been engaged by the Legal Aid Board after the publication of the paper. Horton responded to Wakefield in the Journal on 17 April 2004: "We do not accept Andrew Wakefield and colleagues' interpretation of the letter published in The Lancet on May 2, 1998,..which was, in any event, only published 3 months after the original 1998 Lancet paper." And when Horton was examined by Sally Smith QC at the GMC in August 2007 the delay was beginning to extend to four months: Smith: Looking at the wording of the sentence you referred to "only one author that agreed to evaluate a small number of these children on behalf of the Legal Aid Board", you say you took that to mean since the publication of the paper and we are now some three or four months on. To which Horton responds with a single word: Yes (First amended complaint). This delay which seems to have been so important to Hortons and the Lancets case against Wakefield - has never had any basis in fact. The House Education and the Workforce Committee is preparing to debate a child nutrition reauthorization bill that would force the Agriculture Department to reconsider school meal standards every three years and roll back restrictions on snacks that were imposed under the expired Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The markup hasnt been officially scheduled, but sources said it is expected to be on Thursday. In reviewing the nutrition standards, USDA would have to ensure that school meal standards dont increase costs for schools. For years, schools have struggled to deliver healthy meals under difficult constraints and unrealistic mandates imposed by Washington, said committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn. USDA issued a statement Friday saying that the bill threatens to eliminate and weaken the nutrition safety net for our nations students and families. For many children, their only access to nutritious meals is at school, through the school meal programs. We should be making it easier for more children in need to access breakfasts and lunches to address the dangers of food insecurity and hunger. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, meanwhile, is expected to mark up a new Water Resources Development Act. EPW Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and ranking member Barbara Boxer of California, ideological opposites on issues such as climate change, have proven to be effective collaborators on infrastructure development. Did you know Agri-Pulse subscribers get our Daily Harvest email and Daybreak audio Monday through Friday mornings, a 16-page newsletter on Wednesdays, and access to premium content on our ag and rural policy website? Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription. For every dollar we invest (in infrastructure), we get $16.60 in benefits, Inhofe said at a February hearing. Inhofe said he wants to enact a WRDA bill every two years. Meanwhile, the Senate resumes debate this week on amendments to its fiscal 2017 Energy-Water spending bill, which funds the Army Corps of Engineers. The House is expected to pass a pair of bills on Wednesday that are important to pesticide manufacturers and biotech companies. The American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act (HR 4923) would set up a process for determining tariff relief on components that the pesticide industry need to import. The previous miscellaneous tariff bill expired in 2012. The Senate-passed Defend Trade Secrets Act (S 1890) would allow biotech companies to file civil claims directly in federal courts against people the firms say have stolen trade secrets. Organics Board wrestles with hydroponics, biotech Away from Capitol Hill, the National Organic Standards Board on Monday begins a three-day meeting where it will debate several issue that the industry has been struggling with for years. One is a longstanding proposal by the board to bar the use of hydroponics in production of organic production. Critics of the practice say hydroponic vegetables are being grown in several states and also imported from Europe and Mexico and sold as organic. Farmers and other advocates of the ban say true organic farming cant be done without soil, but the issue has been caught up in a pending USDA proposal to approve organic aquaculture. Some fish farms want to raise vegetables in the water. The board also is wrestling with how to ensure the purity of organic seed. The board is expected to consider a proposal by the Organic Trade Association to do a study that could be used to determine limits for trace amounts of biotech contamination in organic seed. US-EU talks resume in New York Trade negotiations with the European Union resume in New York on Monday. Twenty-six farm-state senators, led by Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and ranking member Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, wrote U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman on Friday, saying that the EU must be willing to work toward liberalization in all sectors of agriculture. The senators specifically criticized EU efforts to protect geographical indications, and the letter complained about delays by EU member countries in approving biotech crop traits. The presidential candidates face another Super Tuesday this week, this time in the Northeast. Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island all hold primaries for both parties. Donald Trump, who is in the process of trying to project a more presidential image, is scheduled to speak on foreign policy the following day at the National Press Club. Heres a list of agriculture- or rural-related events scheduled for this week in Washington and elsewhere: Monday, April 25 Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is in Vietnam through Tuesday to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership and agricultural trade. The 13th round of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations opens today and goes through Friday, New York. National Association of Farm Broadcasters Washington Watch meeting, though Wednesday. North American Agricultural Journalists annual meeting, through Tuesday, Cosmos Club. National Organic Standards Board meeting, through Wednesday, Omni Shoreham 9 a.m. - USDA releases monthly Food Price Outlook. 11 a.m. - FDA webinar on FSMA transportation rule. 4 p.m. - USDA releases Crop Progress report. Tuesday, April 26 NOSB meeting. Center for Strategic and International Studies forum, U.S. Energy Policy in the 2016 Elections and Beyond: Incremental or Transformational? All day. 1616 Rhode Island Avenue NW. Global Food Security Symposium sponsored by Chicago Council on Global Affairs, all-day, Reagan Bldg. 10 a.m. - Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the impact of different price environments on oil and gas development, 366 Dirksen. 2:30 p.m. - U.S. Chamber of Commerce China Business Conference, 1615 H Street NW Wednesday, April 27 U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman meets with an AmCham Japan delegation. Army Corps of Engineers environmental advisory board meeting, Residence Inn, 1199 Vermont Ave. NW. 8:30 a.m. - Chamber of Commerce China Business Conference continues. 10 a.m. - House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing, Bureau of Land Management's Regulatory Overreach into Methane Emissions Regulation, 1324 Longworth. 10:30 a.m. - House Agriculture subcommittee hearing, Focus on the Farm Economy: Factors Impacting the Cost of Production, 1300 Longworth. Noon - Donald Trump speaks on foreign policy at the National Press Club. Thursday, April 28 8:30 a.m. - USDA releases Weekly Export Sales report. 10 a.m. - House Agriculture subcommittee hearing to review the impact of capital margin requirements on end-users, 1300 Longworth. Noon - EPA farm, ranch, and rural community advisory committee holds public teleconference. 2 p.m. - House Agriculture subcommittee hearing, Focus on the Farm Economy: Food Prices and the Consumer, 1300 Longworth. 2:30 p.m. - Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee hearing on impact of invasive species on land and water resources, 366 Dirksen. Friday, April 27 #30 For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com Swedish Channel Says Turkey Asked It Not to Air Film About Assyrian A programme director of Swedish TV4 television network said in a statement that the Turkish embassy called for the broadcaster to withdraw a film about the genocide of Assyrians, Armenians and other ethnic minorities in the Ottoman Empire during the World War I. The broadcaster showed a documentary entitled "Seyfo 1915 -- The Assyrian Genocide," on Sunday. Seyfo is a term that is used to describe mass killings of the Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire that took place during the World War I alongside with the genocide of other ethnic groups, such as Armenians. "Turkish embassy [to Sweden] has tried to exert pressure on TV4 to stop a documentary. They urged us to 'reconsider our decision' to broadcast the 'Seyfo 1915 -- The Assyrian Genocide' in the evening," Viveka Hansson said in a statement published on Sunday. She added that the TV channel would never accept such demands and would protest against attempts to bring pressure on freedom of expression. During and after World War I, the Ottoman government ordered a series of mass killings and starvation against the country's minorities, such as Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks. Turkey refuses to recognize the massacre as genocide, claiming that Turkish nationals were also victimized. Turkey's attempts to impose restrictions on freedom of speech both within the country and abroad, have previously been criticized by the international community, including the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, Russia and the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Turkey ranks 151th out of 180 countries in the RSF 2016 press freedom index. Assyrian Confederation of Europe Established in Brussels Members of the Assyrian Confederation of Europe meeting in Brussels. ( AINA) Brussels (AINA) -- On April 22nd, the Assyrian Confederation of Europe was officially established at the European Parliament in Brussels. The new organization is meant to unify the voice of the 500,000 thousand Assyrians living in Europe by bringing together the Assyrian national federations from several EU countries. The Confederation currently comprises the Assyrian Federations of Belgium, Germany and Sweden. These Federations work to bring together the Assyrian populations, associations and organizations in their countries, and the Confederation represents the consolidation and expansion of their work at a European level. Several other Assyrian organizations are in the process of joining the Confederation as associate members or full members as national federations in their host countries. The Assyrian Confederation of Europe and its constituents seeks to foster Assyrian social, cultural and political activities and participation. With the establishment of the Confederation, the Assyrians on the European continent can both contribute to and gain from the other Assyrians. The pooling of Assyrian resources, talent, and expertise will facilitate projects and endeavors in every field pertaining to the social and cultural welfare of Assyrians in Europe. Assyrian first came to Europe in the late 1910s and early 1920s, after the Turkish genocide of Assyrians in 1915, which claimed 750,000 Assyrians (75%). The first Assyrians arrived in Marseilles and Toulouse in southern France. Since then the exodus from the land known historically as Assyria has continued and accelerated in recent years. Ethnic cleansing, kidnappings, massacres and targeted killings along with the general turmoil in the Middle East continues to drive Assyrians away from the Middle East. Today there are large Assyrian populations in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, Switzerland, and smaller populations in Spain and Greece. April 22, 2016 Michel Samaha, Lebanon's former information minister, is back in prison and even his onetime supporters don't seem to mind much, as rival parties appear to be making some progress on the political front. Samaha, known for his close ties with the Syrian regime, was arrested Aug. 9, 2012, on charges of transporting explosives from Syria to Lebanon in his own car and planning to assassinate Lebanese political leaders. In the investigations, Samaha reportedly mentioned that the targets were high-ranking figures. In February 2013, Military Judge Riad Abu Ghida had even recommended the death penalty for Samaha and Syrian Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, one of the main pillars of the Syrian security regime. When Samaha was finally sentenced last year, he received a 4-year term. The decision infuriated the Sunni community, as Samaha had been found guilty of planning to execute a Syrian regime-orchestrated plot to trigger sectarian strife in Lebanon. Amid sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites that had reached a peak in Lebanon and in the region, his sentence triggered a barrage of objections, especially among the March 14 Alliance, a coalition of political parties that opposes both the Syrian regime and the regime's Shiite ally, Hezbollah. A retrial was quickly ordered. Pending the do-over, the Military Court of Cassation released Samaha on bail Jan. 14 which of course did not go over well, either. But by April 8, the court had rendered an irreversible sentence totaling almost 10 years with hard labor and stripped Samaha of his civil rights. (The official sentence was 13 years, but under Lebanese law, a prison year only equals nine months.) It seems that the court's final decision might have been intended to contain the Sunni fury caused by the decision to grant Samaha bail. But why haven't Samaha's supporters objected to his sentence especially those who had shown solidarity with Samaha when he was first arrested in 2012? Those supporters, led by Hezbollah, included parliament member Mohammad Raad, the head of Hezbollah's Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, who praised the decision to release Samaha. But the voices that once supported Samaha are muffled. Even Jamil al-Sayyed, one of the most hard-line figures in the Axis of Resistance the anti-West alliance between Hezbollah, Iran and Syria and within the ranks of the March 8 Alliance, has nothing good to say. Sayyed tweeted Jan. 15, a day after Samahas release, Michel Samaha betrayed my trust and erred against me when he accompanied me from Damascus with him knowing what he was hiding in his car. Sayyed reaffirmed that stance in another Twitter posting April 8, the day the court handed Samaha his prison term. It appears that the irreversible decision came against the backdrop of uninterrupted bilateral dialogue sessions between the Future Movement Party (part of the March 14 Alliance) and Hezbollah (part of the March 8 Alliance) that started in December 2014. The dialogue has been ongoing despite the political sparring between Future Movement and Hezbollah over the war in Syria and the emerging crisis with Saudi Arabia; the next session is scheduled for May 10. Two items on the agenda are easing sectarian tensions and finding a solution to the two-year presidential vacuum. One of the outcomes of this dialogue so far is Minister of Interior and Municipalities Nouhad al-Machnouk's rejection of the Arab Interior Ministers' decision March 2 to brand Hezbollah a terrorist organization. An equally important outcome was the indirect call by head of the Future Movement, Saad Hariri, for Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to meet him halfway on a political compromise. Hariri issued the call during a March 10 television interview on Kalam al-Nas, a live political talk show on the Lebanese LBC satellite channel. Hariri's opening up to Hezbollah was reflected by his nomination of Suleiman Franjieh one of the leaders of the March 8 camp and a close ally of Hezbollah as Hariri's candidate for the Lebanese presidency. Samaha's case has cast its shadow over the Future Movement and was one factor in a sharp divergence of views among its poles. The most prominent display of this disagreement was the Feb. 20 resignation of Minister of Justice Ashraf Rifi (who objected to Samaha's release) over Hezbollah's increasing influence in the government. The Sunni public views Rifi as a leader rather than a minister, and his resignation raised their ire, while Hariri posted on Twitter that the resignation of Rifi does not represent his own position. The divergence within the Future Movement ranks escalated to the point of division. Ghattas Khoury, a Hariri adviser, said in an April 10 television interview on the MTVLebanonNews channel, There are currently no efforts for any meeting between [Hariri] and [former] Minister Rifi. There is no doubt that the recent court decision lends credibility to Hariris strategy of not resigning from the government and continuing the dialogue with Hezbollah, which allowed him to obtain a fair judicial decision that shows no leniency, contrary to the release decision, and avoid Hezbollahs obstruction. Michel Hajji Georgiou, a political activist and journalist at French-language daily LOrient Le Jour in Lebanon, spoke with Al-Monitor about Hezbollahs silence following the court's recent decision and the waning solidarity with Samaha. The main reason that pushed the Axis of Resistance, represented by Hezbollah and its allies, to turn its back on Samaha is the embarrassment that the latter has caused to the resistance in particular. This was the first time [anyone] was caught red-handed moving explosives in his car from Syria to Lebanon, and this is the first time that evidence has been revealed about the involvement of Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, which directly implicates the Syrian regime. Although the court's recent sentence putting Samaha back behind bars may yet defuse the Sunni anger, some contentious matters are much bigger, not the least of which is Hezbollahs fighting alongside the regime in Syria, its involvement in the Yemeni war and its campaign against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Samahas return to prison could be a palliative to save the dialogue between the Future Movement and Hezbollah, and to cut off the way to hawks such as Rifi. Rifi decided to resign when the government did not approve to defer the Samaha case to the Judicial Council (the highest court) after the Military Court decided to release him. He accused Hezbollah, among many others, of obstructing such a referral and consequently refused to stay in a government at the mercy of Hezbollah. Samaha was politically and socially executed by both the rival March 8 and March 14 camps. Sending him back behind bars is a mere moral gain for the Sunnis. Easing the sectarian tension between Sunnis and Shiites will require much more. April 25, 2016 RAMALLAH, West Bank My first visit to the big Palestinian city since the start of the current wave of terror ended with an optimistic smile. On the way home, my escorts thought the fastest way out of the city and through the jammed Qalandia checkpoint would be to catch a ride at the closest point to the Israeli security check. This is Shlomi and hes from Israel, could you take him in your car? my escort asked a random Palestinian woman. Her teenage son sat beside her. To my surprise, her response was Ahlan wa sahlan Welcome. Heres a thought experiment: How would an Israeli woman respond if I asked her, This is Mohammad from Ramallah, could you take him in your car? I hope you dont have a suicide belt, the kind Palestinian driver laughed, and I responded with a big smile. Listen, she said, all that we want is a future for our children. This is my son, Ali, what do I want after all? That hed have a good life. So come on, tell your people that its time they saw us. I toured Ramallah on April 23, three days after activists in Bethlehem announced that a Hamas cell had carried out the terror attack on a Jerusalem bus. The sense in Ramallah is that Hamas is trying to incite the West Bank through field operations, social media and TV broadcasts from Gaza, but at the same time truly fears another conflict with Israel centered at the Gaza Strip. There is no intifada, Ali from Ramallah told Al-Monitor. (He and others interviewed for this piece asked that their last names not be divulged.) I met him at a local restaurant called Nazareth. If this were a real intifada, he said, you wouldnt sit here and eat hummus with us. Its not even an outburst. But its easy for you to say that theres an intifada and that [President] Mahmoud Abbas supports it and so does the whole Palestinian people. Look around you, what do you see? People who want to live and dont want war. We dont want blood and dont want our young people to go and die in your cities. In Ramallah and other Palestinian cities, people fear that Hamas will succeed in embroiling the West Bank in another cycle of violence with one significant terrorist attack. But all of the Palestinians I spoke with remarked that they hope that the Palestinian Authority and Abbas especially would deal with the inciters. Yes, thats how people in Ramallah see the broadcasts by Hamas Al-Aqsa and Al-Quds stations. [Hamas] shows on TV events that have no connection to reality, said Dahud, who works for the Palestinian Ministry of Communication. Its a mashup of parts of photos and old clips that were taken from the second intifada. Theyre trying to mislead the public. According to him, there are some who do believe Hamas propaganda, but the general opinion in the West Bank is that even if both the political and the military branches of the Hamas movement tried very hard, they could not re-create the days of the second intifada, when Izz Ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades was considered its leader. Moreover, he said that the Palestinian public in the West Bank, including those who voted for Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election, has discovered over the years that the Hamas movement does not fulfill its promises to voters in the West Bank, and that it brought disaster to Gaza and established a tyrannical regime there. [Hamas] destroyed the peace agreement with Israel for political rather than national reasons, another Ramallah resident told Al-Monitor. They did not think of the good of the people, only about themselves. Where did they bring us and themselves? Theres no peace with Israel and theres not even hope. They destroyed everything, and now theyre looking for a way to survive. Following the bus attack, Hamas activists distributed a poster with the photo of attacker Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour from Beit Jallah in the West Bank. But unlike in Hamas' old martyr posters, Abu Srour, 19, isnt holding a weapon. Hes not wearing a military uniform or black clothes, and has no a kaffiyeh around his neck. His outward appearance shows no Muslim religious symbol to tie him to a religious resistance movement. Hamas is at a crossroads. It seems that the movement's activists in Bethlehem tried to walk a fine line they boasted that a local man carried out the bus attack, but they didnt take responsibility for the attack, as was customary for terrorist attacks carried out by the group in the past. This is evidence for the dilemmas facing Hamas. Some in Ramallah believe that Hamas' infrastructure in Bethlehem claimed Abu Srour's actions out of embarrassment and frustration. Terrified chickens, some in Ramallah call Hamas activists. The way they see it, Hamas today is a beaten movement that maintains quiet on the border and stops anyone who tries to fire a Qassam rocket at Israel, but still brags over its media outlets as if the intifada were at its height. Thats how terrified chickens behave, Ramallah resident Ibrahim said emphatically, and all the patrons of the restaurant roared with laughter. Hamas is like a bound tiger, said Ihab, a Nablus resident on a visit to Ramallah. He also argues that Hamas wants to see an intifada in the West Bank, but wants it to happen without its leadership. According to him, Hamas fears not only Israel but also the Palestinian security services, which have arrested many Hamas activists in recent months. When we crossed the Qalandia checkpoint, the driver stopped and bid me farewell. If you need anything else, were here, she added. On the way to my car on the other side of the checkpoint, I wondered if its Israeli society that has become more extreme, as opposed to Palestinian society, which has become more moderate. Is it Abbas' temperament that inspires moderation in Palestinian society, compared to the Israeli governments right-wing policies? Its a fact that most West Bank residents havent joined the intifada. The sense is that most of them are trying and even succeeding in calming the atmosphere despite the wide frustration and hopelessness. April 24, 2016 UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said April 22 that the cessation of hostilities that began Feb. 26 is still in effect. None of the sides have renounced to it. But it is in great trouble if we do not act quickly. Speaking in London the same day, US President Barack Obama said that the cessation of hostilities is fraying, adding that although he has always been skeptical about Mr. [Russian President Vladimir] Putins actions and motives inside of Syria we are going to play this option out. If, in fact, the cessation falls apart, well try to put it back together again even as we continue to go after ISIL [Islamic State]. The day before, in remarks in Riyadh with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Obama said, The cessation of hostilities is obviously under tremendous strain, including continued violations by the [Bashar al-] Assad regime. This violence is yet another reminder that theres only one way to end this civil war, as our GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] partners agree a transitional governing body, a new constitution with free elections, including a transition away from Assad. Press reports and US officials have blamed the erosion of the fragile cease-fire primarily on Iranian- and Russian-backed Syrian forces, while noting a buildup of Russian artillery around Aleppo in preparation for a likely offensive. No doubt the Syrian government is seeking to press its advantage, even as its delegation stays on in Geneva to continue the UN proximity talks. But the situation on the ground deserves a closer look. The Economist notes that the Syrian government has gotten away with its attacks on Aleppo until now in part because the opposition there is dominated by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaedas affiliate in Syria, one of the terrorist groups excluded from the cease-fire, along with Islamic State (IS). The highly regarded Institute for the Study of War reports that Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other armed groups had formed the Rad al-Mazalem Operations Room to undertake military operations against Syrian government positions in the Latakia region. The report also notes, Salafi-Jihadist groups Jund al-Aqsa and the Turkestan Islamic Movement seized the village of Khirbet a-Naqous in the Sahl al-Ghab plains of northwestern Hama Province. The Russian Ministry of Defense blamed Ahrar al-Sham for cease-fire violations around Latakia and Aleppo, and Jaish al-Islam for mortar attacks around Damascus. Sardar Mlla Drwish reports this week for Al-Monitor on the fighting in the Sheikh Maksoud neighborhood of Aleppo, where the US-backed Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) have been battling an array of armed groups. Human Rights Watch has condemned the indiscriminate attacks that have continued during the cessation of hostilities, including a Syrian government airstrike on Deir al-Assafir on March 31 that killed at least 31 civilians. Tom Rollins reports on the consequences of the fighting between Jabhat al-Nusra and IS in the Yarmouk refugee camp. Lets put aside who is responsible for the erosion of the cessation of hostilities, as there seem to be plenty of violations to spread the blame. One could even, for the sake of argument, assume that culpability lies primarily with the Syrian government. Even so, the increased coordination of the FSA with Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam and other foreign-backed Salafi groups that, depending on the political currents, are barely one degree of separation from Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaedas affiliate in Syria, should be cause for alarm. This column has not pulled its punches about Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, which we consider to be fellow ideological travelers with Jabhat al-Nusra, with which they have cooperated in the past. On both fact and principle, we prefer not to characterize them as rebels and question any lasting trend toward the Salafization of Syrian opposition politics. These extremist groups should be marginalized, not mainstreamed, in the Syrian opposition. Secular patriots in the opposition have had to swallow hard in dealing with both groups, who while also being adversaries of Assad have access to money and arms from foreign patrons who share their radical agenda at the expense of the Syrian people. Absent this foreign support, we question their attraction and staying power. And there is another possible catch. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters April 8 that his office was coordinating with the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons to investigate reports that Jaish al-Islam had used chemical weapons against Kurdish groups in Aleppo. A Jaish al-Islam statement April 7 said that a commander had been reprimanded for using weapons not authorized for use in these types of confrontations, which it later claimed were modified Grad rockets, not chlorine or chemical gas. Whether Jaish al-Islam used chemical weapons or not, the revelations of an increasingly assertive role by it, Ahrar al-Sham and other Salafi groups should be a reminder that the only viable approach to a settlement in Syria is more, not less, coordination between the United States and Russia to rally the regional parties to marginalize these groups while keeping pressure on the Assad government to cease bombardment of civilian areas and expand humanitarian relief to besieged areas. As we warned last week, there is no viable plan B for Syria, especially if such a plan depends on providing advanced weaponry to groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, or the potential for such weapons to end up in their hands. The maneuvering of these groups is too tactical, their ideology too clearly radicalized and the lines between them and Jabhat al-Nusra too blurry. An alternative plan might be to rethink how best to deal with an anticipated Russian- and Iranian-backed advance on Aleppo, where IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Salafi groups still hold sway. Rather than seeing such an operation, if it occurs, as a deal killer for a cease-fire, perhaps a more fruitful approach would be for the United States and Russia and their respective allies to coordinate their operations in Aleppo to target Jabhat al-Nusra and IS forces and reduce civilian casualties. This column has written that the liberation of Aleppo could be a turning point in the Syrian war and a devastating setback for the forces of radicalization. The United States and its regional partners should engage, rather than resist, that outcome. April 25, 2016 DIYARBAKIR, Turkey Rising Islamophobia has recently manifested itself in rallies organized across Europe by a group called Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West. Surveys show negative perceptions of Islam are on the rise in the United States as well. But is Islamophobia an issue unique to non-Muslim countries, as many might assume? Not so, according to Mehmet Yanmis, a scholar of religious sociology at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, the largest city of Turkeys mainly Kurdish southeast. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Yanmis said the rise of the Islamic State (IS) and its slaughter of civilians had fueled Islamophobia in Muslim societies as well, a process he believes will strengthen trends toward secularization. In the Islamic world, young Muslim generations with a secular education or strong political or commercial bonds with the West are being estranged from Islam, especially by the killings of civilians, he said. I think Islamophobia or fear of fundamentalism will become a major topic of discussion in the near future for all of us in Muslim societies, from Morocco to Indonesia. This will encourage secularization along with modernization. According to Yanmis, who has been researching Islamophobia for six years and is a published author on the issue, the trend is very real in Turkey, especially in the southeast, where a bloody feud between Islamist and secular nationalist Kurds dates back many years. The Kurdistan Workers Party, which espouses a Marxist ideology, and the local Hezbollah, a Kurdish-dominated Islamist group unrelated to its Lebanese namesake, fought a vicious war in the 1990s that claimed hundreds of lives on both sides. In later years, Hezbollahs chilling reputation reverberated across Turkey with the discovery of so-called grave houses where dozens of the groups victims had been killed and buried after being tortured. Old enmities flared anew in October 2014 as Kurdish protests against the IS onslaught on Kobani in Syria degenerated into deadly street clashes between nationalist and Islamist Kurds. Yanmis stressed that the Kurdish nationalist movement began to nourish antipathy toward Islam back in its fledgling years in the 1970s, singling out the Kurdish communitys traditional religious leaders as a main cause of the Kurds' failure to obtain statehood. With Hezbollahs actions in the 1990s, the fear that was already there reached new highs, Yanmis said. In my past interviews with young, educated people, some would say they did not wear the headscarf, did not pray publicly, or shunned religious groups and symbols [because] they feared being labeled as Hezbollah sympathizers. Others, he added, would even say they were socialists, humanists or liberals to mask being practicing Muslim believers. The secular groups continued use [of critical rhetoric] has also been an important factor. Because of the regions [conservative fabric], they cannot target religion directly, so they are criticizing Islam indirectly through criticism of the actions of fundamentalist groups, Yanmis said. He stressed that negative perceptions of Islam among Kurds have been reinforced by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government with the massive security crackdowns on urban Kurdish militants since last summer. I think Islamophobia will be much stronger in Kurdish-populated regions. There are the recent examples of Hezbollah and IS, which the Kurds experienced first hand. A recent study of ours shows that an important segment of young Kurds also blames the security operations on the AKP, which they similarly identify with religion. So in the eyes of young Kurds, all four forces that dealt them blows in the past three or four decades are Muslim forces, Yanmis said. Though the blame may sometimes be misplaced, the academic expects serious soul-searching in religious quarters in the coming years. The picture becomes even gloomier for them given that traditional religious authorities in Kurdish society have lost their old power and the modern religious groups that have come to replace them dont seem so strong as to fend off all this, he said. According to Yanmis, Islamophobia appears in different forms in Turkey. We keep discussing the West, but in Turkey we have Shariaphobia and reactionary-phobia. Those are the names of Islamophobia in our country. Its all the same, he said. Especially in communities where religious tradition has weakened, young people, business people, and social and political elites are wary of Islam and opt for secular identities and lifestyles. Pointing to the different faces of Islamophobia in the West and Muslim-majority countries, Yanmis said, In the West, we speak mostly of hatred for Islam because of fundamentalist attacks. In the Muslim world, this is manifested as an estrangement from Islam first by shunning religious symbols and rituals and then, perhaps as an ultimate form, estrangement on the level of faith. Comparing his past and recent research, Yanmis said that Hezbollah and IS had produced similar prejudices against religious groups among Kurds. After the Hezbollah experience, people would report reluctance to send their children to Koranic courses or to grow beards. Now, many say they feel distant from Islam after seeing IS, he said. We are not supposed to make generalizations out of some specific examples, but hearing all this stuff from various quarters leads one to think that this is a social phenomenon and that Islamophobia is on the rise among Kurds. We could well say that IS has several times amplified the Hezbollah effect, Yanmis said. According to the researcher, the slaughter of civilians is the main reason fanning Islamophobia in Muslim societies. Salafist groups have turned to killing civilians in recent times. Earlier, they would kill soldiers of the United States or Britain, which they see as colonial powers, or people they saw as collaborators, he said. Islamophobia is fueled mostly by the killing of civilians, Islams constant association with radical groups and the counter-propaganda of [local] secular groups. More than 1,000 Alabama shoppers' prescription information is at risk after a laptop was stolen from a vendor. Many are wondering if CVS will be held accountable for it. That's hard to say - but it is certainly possible, said Michel Marcoux, a Partner at Birmingham law firm Balch & Bingham. Monday, CVS announced that one of its vendors - it wouldn't say which, but it did say that the company would -continue to use them - had discovered a laptop was stolen that contained information of customers of the Calera store. The data wasn't encrypted. "The law does not require you to encrypt, but practically speaking, healthcare providers and pharmacies are certainly telling their vendors to utilize encryption whenever possible, so that if you have something stolen you can say it's not a breach," Marcoux said. "A breach only exists if the protected health information is not secure." CVS requires its vendors to encrypt its data. So it seems the vendor is the one at fault - but CVS could still be held liable, Marcoux said. It's usually settled in a contract between a company and its vendors who will pay for the procedural costs and penalties levied in the event of a violation. Usually, the vendor assumes all liability if the breach is its fault. "I would bet almost 99 percent that that's the case if CVS gets hit with any penalty," Marcoux said. "There's an incentive there for big healthcare companies not to use small companies, because they're not going to have the money to pay the costs associated with breaches." In situations where more than 500 people are affected by a HIPAA violation, the provider has to tell the local media as well as the Department of Health and Human Services. The laptop had been stolen on March 16. CVS learned of the theft on March 22 (HHS). AL.com asked CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis why the company waited to announced the issue until Monday, and he declined to answer. But even in cases of clear violations, HHS doesn't pursue penalties for all violators. But the department is much more likely to when it's a big, national provider, Marcoux said. "If it's CVS or your local, small pharmacy, I think [HHS going after] CVS is more likely," Marcoux said. "This isn't a major breach in the scheme of things, but it would be kind of a warning sign - Hey, CVS, you need your vendors to be doing what they say they're doing in the contract." nightmare prom dress.jpg Alivia Briggs, 17, a junior at Austin High School, ordered what she thought would be an elegant beaded pink dress from an online retailer based in China. What she got was quite different. (Submitted) "This is why you don't order from China!" tweeted one Alabama teen after she received a prom dress that was, well, not what she was expecting. Alivia Briggs is a 17-year-old junior at Austin High School. She'd saved up her own money for a prom dress and was shopping around a couple of months ago when a friend told her about DH Gate, an app that sells everything from clothing to kitchen appliances. http://www.dhgate.com/ Briggs found a dress she loved - dusky pink, with a mermaid skirt and hand-beaded detailing. After reading reviews of the dress, which was from a website called Allanhu, Briggs bought it for $230. She ordered it on March 10; her prom was April 16. This is why you don't order from China!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/9fCk6Csz7P Liv (@alivia_briggs) April 14, 2016 "They told me it would take 17 days," she said. "Then they told me the dress would be ready by April 5. Then they told me I should get it by the 12th. I asked if I could pay for quicker shipping but they told me the dress is hand-beaded so it couldn't be rushed." A friend had a green beaded mermaid-style dress she wasn't wearing to prom and offered to let Briggs use it if hers didn't arrive in time. It fit perfectly, so Briggs relaxed a little. "I was kind of worried, but I wasn't panicking yet," she said. The dress finally arrived. With a sense of foreboding, Briggs took the package to her friend's house so they could open it together. "I opened it," she said, "and just started laughing. "The material - you couldn't even use it as a bedsheet, that's how cheap it was." The dress was Pepto-Bismol pink. The line of delicate buttons that ran up the back - one of Brigg's favorite parts of the online version - were nonfunctional and attached to a crooked zipper. The "hand-beaded" appliques appeared to be ironed on, with a few stitched plastic beads attached. "I put it on and walked around my friend's house," she said. "I could tell my friend's mom didn't want to say anything until she knew if I liked it or not. Her dad was like, 'What is that?' "It was pretty funny." She later tweeted about the dress debacle, saying it looked like "a quilt with arm holes." Briggs wore her friend's green gown to prom, and said she felt beautiful in it. As for the pink dress? She messaged DH Gate the following day to say she would be returning the dress and wanted a full refund. A representative messaged her back and said they'd need to see pictures before they decided whether she would get a refund. She's tried several times - and from several different computers - to upload pictures, but the site gives her an error message every time. She plans to keep trying. A family friend who is an attorney offered to help. Briggs' nightmare prom dress story has garnered national an international attention from outlets like Seventeen.com and the UK's The Daily Mail. Some of the commenters from other sites called her a "spoiled rich girl" but Briggs wanted them to know she had saved up her own money to purchase the dress. She's bought a few less expensive clothing items from Chinese-based websites prior to the prom dress and had no problem. She says she might consider doing so again, but would never order another evening gown or anything expensive. The dress is still listed for sale and the site claims to be "committed to your 100% satisfaction." Charles Shields Mockingbird.jpg Charles Shields is the author of "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, from Scout to Go Set A Watchman." Author photo courtesy of Michael Bailey. Harper Lee's February death was the conclusion of a life that has long piqued curiosity of literature lovers. The Pulitzer Prize-winning, native Alabama author spent decades avoiding the press, and as a result information about her life has not been easy to find. Luckily for her fans, biographer Charles Shields put in the legwork for his 2006 bestseller, "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee." Now Shields has updated the book, which will be reissued today as "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee from Scout to Go Set A Watchman." A third of the book is new material. Shields will sign copies Tuesday at 5 p.m. at Alabama Booksmith in Homewood, and Wednesday at noon at Fairhope's Page and Palette. The latter event will take place as a lunchtime program at the shop's Book Cellar restaurant area. We spoke to Shields via telephone, while he was waiting for a flight at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. When and why did you begin work on updating the biography? So much has happened in the last 10 years, not only in the life of Harper Lee but also in the country. After being out of sight for almost 50 years, all of a sudden Harper Lee reemerges, accepting several awards, and then she becomes involved in a lot of litigation involving the copyright of her book. Then she and her agent begin a fight with the local people in Monroeville. So she's much more visible. Then there's the discovery of "Go Set A Watchman," which is not really a discovery at all. The family always knew it existed but Alice didn't want it published because it was an inferior effort. Their father is portrayed in a very unflattering light. ... If people had come to love Atticus, they spun their father A.C. Lee as a secular saint, and in "Go Set A Watchman" he comes off as a man of his time. There was a lot more to talk about in the life of Harper Lee, but there was also more to talk about in terms of this country and what's happened. When the biography was first published in 2006, we had never had a minority president. That was an important shift in the perspective of the country. Also, when the bio was published, the Confederate flag was still flown with impunity all over the country. But the massacre in Charleston put to an end to that. So a controversy that had gone on for 30 years was suddenly over and we revisited the Civil War. In light of that, it was time to revisit "To Kill A Mockingbird," what it is, what it has been and the way teach it in classrooms. People have rightly made the point that the black people in "To Kill A Mockingbird" exist for the purpose of white people to test their morals ... Is this book still timely? Or should it be taught as a cultural document? That's important. And then of course, same thing applies with "Go Set A Watchman." What to do with it exactly? I know a lot of people like it, but I have to tell you as a literary critic it is clearly an early effort. The book is exposition heavy ... The so-called romance between Jean-Louise Finch and Hank is not credible. Those people. If there was ever an argument that Harper Lee was not interested in men, it was "Go Set A Watchman." It was certainly inauthentic. I argue that it's ("Go Set A Watchman") not literature, it's a revisiting of the way the country was back in the late 1950s. There's a number of things we can do with these books now that couldn't be done before. We could teach them together in creative writing. Here's a first draft, enter an expert editor, out comes "To Kill A Mockingbird." We could teach them side by side, the South in the 1930s, the South in the '50s when NAACP is going to court. I was certainly excited as a writer interested in process. Reading the two offers insight into how the book evolved. Now when I give talks to people about the two books, I say this is the difference between being published and not being published. She brings in a manuscript that she thinks she's done with, she accepts guidance from an older and experienced editor who is a liberal New Yorker, a Quaker, and realizes the first book has no chance (laugh), not in 1959. She walks through different iterations, and out comes "To Kill A Mockingbird." It's that ability to step back and say, maybe I could use some help, and accepting it. Too many people throw up their hands when (they receive rejections). Nobody makes a grand piano in their garage the first time. There's a lot more to the story, says author of updated Harper Lee biography How did you become a biographer of cultural figures? Way back in college during the summers when I was working in factories--I was an English major--I just set an arbitrary goal of reading 15 books every summer. I found myself drifting toward the stories of how something got written. When I would read something like "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, I wanted to know more about the author. I began reading biographies of authors to find out what shaped their stories and how these books came to be. ... In 1997 I left teaching and began to write full-time. My first audience was high-school kids because I knew them. I wrote 20 histories and biographies for young people because I knew that market. When I thought about a book for the adult trade market, I thought who hasn't been written about and what would attract a lot of people? I thought shoot, "To Kill A Mockingbird" is read by 100,000 school kids a year. It was a creative-slash-financial decision. I'm not a scholar and I don't want to write anything that only ended up in university libraries. Do you Google yourself? Oh yeah, sure. Things pop up in other languages, too. I can't read Polish, I can't read Korean, (but) you'd be surprised how many enterprising journalists out there make a mention of American literature and there I am. We've gone from being published in America to being published. What do you read when you're in the middle of a writing project? I try to read everything that my subject was familiar with, and then I try to read the already-existing literature about the works and the person. But I've discovered that there's a hole in my education, and now I have to go back and fill it. When I was in college, back in the '60s or so, new criticism really failed writers of my generation. We weren't taught any context. You'd be handed an anthology of poems and asked to discuss what they mean. Without knowing (when and where it was penned). ... The author's items were out there floating around without any anchors. I'm having to go back and read a lot of intellectual history. I'm having to read about the time, the thinking, what affected people. There's fascinating books coming out now about Cold War literature, for example, things that were written under the anxiety of the Cold War. How did that affect "Catch 22"? How did that affect Kurt Vonnegut? You cannot just pluck something out of literature and critique it without knowing what people were living and feeling at that time without any sense of the future. They didn't know any more about what would happen the next day than you and I do about tomorrow. Authorities say they have recovered a significant amount of stolen items with the arrest of two people from New Jersey. Sheriff Jeff Shaver said Steven Franks and Necole L. Wood, both 31, are being held in the Cherokee County Detention Center on five counts of third degree burglary and second degree property theft. A deputy began looking for the two on Friday, April 15, after receiving a report of two burglaries on County Road 194. The couple were seen running out of a house, and residents chased them until deputies arrived, along with police officers from Cedar Bluff, Centre and Leeburg. A search in the woods did not locate the two. Necole Wood Then on Sunday, April 17, residents called the sheriff's office to report the couple had been spotted. They were arrested a short time later. An investigation has revealed three more burglaries and "a significant amount of stolen property," Shaver said. "The successful apprehension of these suspects is a result of the cooperative effort among law enforcement agencies in the county and citizen involvement," he said. Four people were shot Monday afternoon near the Music City Central bus station in downtown Nashville, according to media reports. The Tennessean reports an 18-year-old was critically injured. He was reportedly on an escalator when the gunfire erupted at about 3:40 p.m. A 17-year-old, 15-year-old and an adult received minor injuries. They received graze wounds, according to News Channel 5. All four victims were taken to area hospitals. Local media reports two persons of interest are in custody and a handgun was recovered at the scene. The bus station is located at 400 Charlotte Avenue near the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in downtown Nashville. @FOXNashville police are now directing people and the injured has been taken to the hospital. Shooter is a runaway pic.twitter.com/qLHW8Xt2jB RustyG (@RustyG) April 25, 2016 An Alabama craft brewery will observe the state's new growler law by debuting a limited-release peach beer inspired by the ongoing Gov. Robert Bentley scandal. Salty Nut Brewery of Huntsville said its new Unimpeachable Pale Ale will celebrate the "unimpeachable leadership shown by Bentley," who came under fire in March after he admitted to making sexually inappropriate comments to his former political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, who has since resigned. The promotional artwork references a leaked recording, part of which includes Bentley describing how he liked to stand behind Mason and touch her breasts. Both Bentley and Mason have denied there was a physical relationship between them. "When naming and branding a beer, we try to come up with names and imagery that are memorable and descriptive of the beer, and feel that Unimpeachable Pale Ale is both," said Salty Nut co-owner Jay Kissell in an interview with AL.com. Unimpeachable Pale Ale, made with fresh peaches and Idaho 7 hops, will be available for on-premise consumption on 2406 Clinton Avenue West in mid-May and 32-ounce cans when the growler law takes effect June 1. T-shirts, posters and stickers are already available for purchase here. The initial taproom release will likely be a week or less. If consumer interest is there, Kissell said the brewery would be eager to make Unimpeachable Pale Ale available to beer lovers across the state. Kissell, who wouldn't directly address the impact the scandal has had on Alabama's image, said they are focused instead on "the positive attention that the passage of the growler law has brought to the state of Alabama." "Eight years ago, Alabama had a very restrictive legal structure for breweries that has changed dramatically and the industry and consumers are seeing the benefits," he said. Bentley signed the growler law, also known as House Bill 176, the day after he apologized to the people of Alabama for comments he made to Mason in 2014. It was the same week former Alabama Law Enforcement Secretary Spencer Collier hurled the affair rumors into the national spotlight. Salty Nut co-owner Jay Kissell says the limited-edition Unimpeachable Pale Ale is "so good you'll have to lock the door when drinking it." (Courtesy photo) The bill will allow breweries that make less than 60,000 barrels per year to directly sell up to 288 ounces of its beer per customer per day for off-premise consumption. The law also abolishes the requirement that brewpubs can only open in historic buildings, historic districts or economically-distressed areas. While to-go sales may not change Salty Nut's business dramatically, the owners think it will offer more convenience to customers, especially out-of-town visitors. "We believe the new law will have a positive impact on small businesses, economic development, and Alabama's blossoming craft brewing industry," said Brent Cole, president and head brewery at Salty Nut. Whether Bentley is actually unimpeachable remains to be seen. Earlier this month, the governor said there was "absolutely no basis" for impeachment, despite a recent call by several Alabama lawmakers to impeach him for willful neglect of duty, corruption in office, incompetency and offenses of moral turpitude. Bentley, who has said the effort to remove him from office is "political grandstanding," said last week he had "no problem" with the House of Representatives setting up a committee that could consider impeachment articles against him. Kissell isn't concerned about potential fallout from the Unimpeachable Pale Ale. "The name of our brewery is Salty Nut Brewery -- clearly we don't take ourselves too seriously," he said. "But we are serious about making good beer." Tamir Rice The family of Tamir Rice and the city of Cleveland have indicated that they are willing to engage in settlement talks. (File photo) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland has agreed to pay Tamir Rice's family $6 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed over the boy's November 2014 shooting death by city police. The settlement announced Monday does not resolve all of the lingering legal issues surrounding the 12-year-old's killing. However, it is a sign that both the city and the boy's family did not want to endure what could be tension-filled and expensive litigation process that could last years. The settlement was revealed via a court filing from U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who presided over settlement talks. Tamir Rice's estate will receive $5.5 million, Samaria Rice, the boy's mother, and his sister Tajai Rice will each receive $250,000. Neither the city, officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback nor dispatchers involved will admit to any wrongdoing. The city will pay $3 million this year and $3 million in 2017. (You can read the court filing here or at the bottom of this story.) The agreement must be approved by a Cuyahoga County Probate Court judge before it is final. Monday's settlement is likely the largest the city has ever paid for a police-shooting case. However, the amount the family will receive is in line with amounts paid in other high profile police use-of-force cases nationally in the past year. For example, the city of Chicago in 2015 paid $5 million to the family of Laquan McDonald before a lawsuit was even filed over his police shooting death. And the city of Baltimore agreed to pay $6.4 million to the family of Freddie Gray, whose neck was broken in a police van in April 2015. Attorneys representing the Rice family say that while the settlement is "historic in financial terms, no amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a life." The statement continues, "in a situation such as this, there is no such thing as closure or justice. Nothing will bring Tamir back. His unnecessary and premature death leaves a gaping hole for those who knew and loved him that can never be filled." Mayor Frank Jackson, in a news conference held Monday afternoon, said that the settlement, nor the case as a whole, is an easy one to deal with. "And I can't speak to how difficult it must have been for the family of Tamir Rice," Jackson said. I can't even speak to that, because it's hard for me to imagine how I would feel and behave at that time. ... At the end of the day, a 12-year old child lost their life, and that should not have happened in the city of Cleveland. It should not have happened." An attorney the city hired to represent Loehmann and Garmback said in a statement that both officers maintain that they believe their actions were "legally reasonable," but that they "recognize the value of early legal resolution to allow some healing to begin." And Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association, said that he hoped some of the money from the settlement will be used to educate children about the use of look-alike firearms. Loehmann and Garmback were the first officers to respond to a report of a "guy" pointing a gun at people outside the Cudell Recreation Center on West Boulevard. Loehmann shot the boy within seconds of arriving. Loehmann would later say that he feared for his life and that he thought Tamir was reaching for the gun tucked in his waistband that was later revealed to be an airsoft pellet gun with the orange safety tip removed. Tamir died Nov. 23, 2014, the day after the shooting, and the lawsuit was filed two weeks after his death. The family and the city agreed in March to enter settlement talks. The shooting caused near-instantaneous outrage and was seen by many as just one of several examples of police in Cleveland and across the country using too much force when responding to calls involving black residents. Those views were later backed up by a scathing U.S. Justice Department report. The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department conducted a criminal investigation against Loehmann and Garmback. A grand jury, following a recommendation from Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, declined to hand up charges against either officer. That recommendation is likely the reason that McGinty lost his re-election in the March primary. But while the criminal investigation against Loehmann and Garmback was more narrow and focused on their actions immediately leading up to the shooting, the lawsuit was broad. It called into question the actions of the dispatchers who first put out the call about a disturbance at Cudell. It also had claims against Lt. Gail Bindel and Sgt. Edwin Santiago, who helped to hire Loehmann in 2014 despite the then-cadet having a poor track record with Independence police. The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a review of the case to see either officer violated any federal civil-rights laws. However, such reviews rarely yield criminal charges. Both officers are also under internal investigation by the police department. In an interview Monday, Rice family attorney Subodh Chandra said the settlement is cold comfort for Tamir's family, who feel robbed of a fair grand jury review of the boy's slaying. "They lost a child," Chandra said. "And they also feel, correctly, that they were cheated out of a fair criminal justice process. ... If the process had been fair, the family would have been willing to accept whatever result came out of it. But because it was so transparently unfair, it's just hard for them. There is no justice here, and they will never have their beloved child back." Reporter Leila Atassi contributed to this story. Updated with references to other police use-of-force settlements, as well as comments from the Rice family attorneys. Rescued after 22 hours, five-month-old Sonish became a symbol of hope, but what became of his family in the year since? Bhaktapur, Nepal Rashmila Awal changes baby Sonishs clothes after giving him an early morning oil massage, just as she did a year ago, shortly before her house crumbled, burying her then five-month-old son beneath it. Mum had just left to do some errands, and I ran away as soon as I felt the tremor, remembers Rashmilas 11-year-old daughter, Soniya. She quickly returned to the upper floor to pick up Sonish, but was struck and left unconscious as her baby brother was trapped beneath a cupboard. A few hours later, Soniya was rescued, but it was 22 hours before Sonish was pulled from the rubble with little more than a couple of scratches. Now, a scar on his thigh is the only physical reminder of what he endured. Losing hope In April 2015, a photo of a dusty Sonish gave some hope after Nepals deadly earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people, injured 22,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands. But hope is something the family says they are now running out of. Despite $4.2bn being pledged by international donors, little progress has been made in rebuilding the country. Today, the reconstruction of damaged private houses should have started. But nearly 900,000 families are still waiting for the work to resume. We dont expect anything from the government We dont expect anything from the government. Only people have supported us, complains 36-year-old Rashmila, who is temporarily living with her family in a one-room-flat located two kilometres away from the ruins of her former home in the centre of Bhaktapur. According to Bhaktapurs recently appointed chief development officer, Tej Prasad Paudel, around 28,000 houses were destroyed and 329 people killed in Nepals fourth most affected district. National authorities budgeted $221 on emergency response plus $147 more on winter clothes for each of the affected households. Although such a small amount would do little to address the victims needs, many say they did not even receive that compensation in its entirety. Rashmila says she had to split the relief aid among her relatives. We used to live with my husbands brothers and wives under his parents house, she explains. The Nepalese tradition of having houses inhabited by joined families, and a lack of property certificates, has proved problematic for many families trying to access their aid entitlement. Unequal aid distribution The unequal distribution of aid was aggravated by claims of false beneficiaries. Nearly 50 percent of the allegedly damaged houses in Sindhupalchowk [Nepals most devastated region] were registered after the earthquake, says 31-year-old Krishna Shrestha, an assistant at Kathmandus Tilganga Hospital who was born and raised in Sindhupalchowks Melamchi village. In recognition of these eligibility issues, around 5,000 civil engineers were deployed to verify damage and resume the reconstruction of private houses a few months ago. A year after the disaster, the countrys National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has just opened the registration process for affected families to access the 200,000 rupees ($1,878) grant for rebuilding each house. A typical farmhouse may have more than one building. So if one of them collapsed, some people would declare that all structures were damaged. Now the criteria will be based on the kitchen in order to make a house eligible, explains United Nations Development Programme country director Renaud Meyer, who agrees that public funds were not only unequally distributed but were too small to cover victims needs. We can afford this room only because my friend lowered the rent down to 2,000 rupees [around $18], explains Rashmila. As a truck driver, her husband, 34-year-old Sham Krishna Awals $84 monthly wage doesnt meet the familys bills, which total $90 a month. But Sonishs survival story attracted the attention of private donors as well as the media. Soniya schools fee are being sponsored and ordinary people have supported us, says Rashmila, sitting on the bed in the 6sq-metre space the family shares, some gifts displayed alongside Sonishs toys. Still, Rashmilas plight is better than that of her sister, who is sharing a tent with four family members. Twenty-six-year-old Sadika Pragapati invested all the aid she received from the government in building the shelter and renting the land it occupies in one of the several camps scattered across Bhaktapur. Inadequate aid Most of the citys displaced used all the aid they received within the first month after the earthquake. Many of the nearly 3,500 residents of Chachopati, Nepals largest camp, which is located in Kathmandu, claim that the little help offered by the authorities was rapidly spent on food. As per family, we gave 400 grammes per person, or half a kilo, in the main affected areas, explains Shrimani Raj Khamal, a divisional manager and spokesperson at Nepal Food Corporation. According to Khamal, the countrys main supplier distributed just 4,500 metric tonnes of rations nationwide, but had 26,000 metric tonnes in storage. He explains that food provisions depend on the orders placed by local governments. We have plenty of stock to provide, but if nobody demands, we cant supply affected areas. The inadequacy of aid provision was later worsened by shortages due to the long blockade of the Nepal-India border. A bottle of petrol rose up to 10,000 rupees [around $93] on the black market, and we couldnt find some medicines, explains Rashmila. READ MORE: Nepals Hard Rock Cafe The blockade increased the price of goods by up to 50 percent, according to the World Food Programmes communications officer in Nepal, Seestashma Thapa, who adds: The emergency situation has passed and we shouldnt make people dependent on aid supplies because, otherwise, they would never [get back on] their feet. They will privilege some people It took eight months, once the initial recovery phase had passed, for the reconstruction agency, the NRA, to be formed. The body now faces the challenge of rebuilding a country wracked by political instability. That institution is a political appointment and we are in a big political transition . If we have another change in the government, this will clearly affect the way the NRA will work, says Ashish Thapa, the executive director of Transparency International Nepal, an organisation that monitors national governance. Cases of embezzlement have risen in Nepals recent history. Five years ago, the Commission for Investigation for the Abuse of Authority (CIAA) blocked the Local Government and Community Development Programme, intended to help the countrys poor, because it had been misused to benefit political parties and their cronies instead. Cases of embezzlement have mushroomed recently. Last Monday, the CIAA filed a case against more than 30 former officials of the Poverty Alleviation Fund accused of pocketing nearly half-a-million dollars. Rashmila, like many others, doesnt expect much from the NRA. They will privilege some people just like the Village Community Development gave more coupons for food to their relatives, she says. Walking away from the ruins of her house, Rashmila is stopped a couple of times as neighbours ask for photos with her baby. This money will help us buy land to build our new house, she says, taking the little money they offer her. Unlike the rest of victims, Rashmila has received around $1,800 in private donations thanks to Sonish, the baby boy who survived 22 hours amid the rubble of his destroyed house. Bujumbura, Burundi Burundis post-colonial history is stained by civil war, massacres, and two genocides. In 2005, following a peace accord, Pierre Nkurunziza was elected president by parliament, and in 2010 secured a second term in a national plebiscite. Last year, on April 25, the CNDD-FDD, Burundis ruling party, announced Nkurunziza as their candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections. This sparked widespread protests across the capital, as demonstrators denounced the bid for a third term as unconstitutional. A heavy-handed police response further increased the protests, and was followed by a failed military coup in mid-May. The authorities response to the terrorists, as it has labelled the protesters, has become even more brutal, with widespread repression in opposition neighbourhoods. Last week Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the United Nations human rights chief, warned of a sharp increase in the use of torture and ill-treatment in Burundi. He said that hundreds had been tortured or ill-treated by security forces, and Reuters reports that at least 400 people have been killed since the protests began 90 people were killed in a single day in December. Grenade attacks have targeted both civilians and security forces since last year, and rebels make infrequent incursions into the interior. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 people have fled the country; most now live in refugee camps in neighbouring Rwanda and Tanzania. The UN Security Council has twice visited Burundi since the crisis erupted, but no solution to the violence has been found. The UN is expecting the number of refugees to reach at least 330,000 by the end of the year. Ahmed Rashid is a journalist and the author of five books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. Has China just issued its first conciliatory statement towards the Uighur Muslim ethnic group, which has been persecuted for years? And has it done so out of fear or embarrassment that Uighur Islamic militants have now gone global, fighting for Islamic causes in many corners of the globe? Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, speaking to the Communist Party chief and party delegates of Xinjiang province, appeared to be acknowledging for the first time the deep frustration felt by young Uighurs, the eradication of Uighur culture and, most seriously, the lack of jobs in the province. Let the people, especially the young, have something to do and money to earn, he told them at Chinas annual meeting of parliament. He urged private companies to invest in Xinjiang and for the majority Han Chinese population to mingle more with their Uighur brothers. Xinjiangs development and stability have a bearing on nation and ethnic unity and national security, he added (according to Reuters). For years draconian measures have been imposed on the 10 million Uighurs who live in Xinjiang, but who are being turned into a minority by the huge numbers of Han Chinese settlers brought in by the government. Harsh crackdown There has been a harsh crackdown on Islamic traditions for what is the largest group of Muslims in China. Mosques are barred from calls to prayer, fasting during Ramadan is forbidden, children under 18 are banned from entering mosques and Uighur culture and language is being ignored. READ ALSO: Chinas vision of the Middle East As ethnic and religious persecution has multiplied, so have attacks by Uighurs on security forces and Han Chinese. However, rather than punish a few Islamic militants or independence-seeking nationalists, China has victimised and punished the entire Uighur population. Chinese actions are being increasingly depicted in the wider Muslim world as a war against the very practice of Islam. In turn, Chinese officials claim they have dismantled 200 terrorist groups and executed 49 militants since 2014 in Xinjiang. For nearly two decades, Uighur militants have been training and fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the Taliban and other Central Asian groups, much to the anger of the Chinese. More recently, Uighurs have started attacking security forces in Xinjiang itself, usually with knives and clubs rather than explosives or Kalashnikovs. Neighbouring states China has urged its neighbouring states not to accommodate Uighurs. Pakistan has forced out the Uighurs but many have just stepped across the border into Afghanistan where they line up with the Taliban to bring down the Kabul government. The Chinese are now worried and fearful of a dramatic Uighur presence in other war zones. by Late last year, hundreds of Uighurs joined the Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to briefly capture the northern Afghan city of Kunduz which borders on Central Asia. But the Chinese are now worried and fearful of a dramatic Uighur presence in other warzones. From Afghanistan, Uighur militants have moved to Syria and Iraq to fight for various extremist groups. The oldest group of Uighur militants that emerged in the 1990s, calling themselves the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and loyal to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar of the Taliban both of whom are now dead have now renamed themselves in the Arab world as the Turkistan Islamic Party. In Syria, the Uighurs have formed their own units and also joined up with other Central Asian units composed of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz and others. They all mostly fight for the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. However Uighur militants have now also spread into Thailand and Malaysia countries which are critical for Chinas national security, trade, investment and good neighbourliness. READ ALSO: Canadas Miss International Incident Last August, Uighurs allegedly carried out a deadly explosion which killed 20 people at a Bangkok shrine that was packed with Chinese tourists. Two suspects later arrested were both Uighur males. A month earlier the Thai authorities had deported 100 Uighur refugees who were seeking asylum in Thailand, and the attacks were believed to be in revenge for those who were forcibly returned to China. Uighurs in Indonesia There are also Uighurs in Indonesia fighting alongside local Islamic militants. In January, Indonesian intelligence officials said that Uighurs were enlisting with the Islamic State group led by Abu Wardah Santoso, the most wanted militant in the country. Uighurs had arrived traversing Burma, Thailand and Malaysia to reach Santosos headquarters in the jungles of the island of Sulawesi. On March 16, Indonesian security forces killed two Uighur militants in Sulawesi. There is now close cooperation between Indonesian and Chinese authorities to stem the tide of Uighurs coming illegally to Indonesia. Sadly much of the Uighur presence and militancy in Southeast Asia comes from Uighurs who started out as refugees fleeing their homeland because of persecution or victimisation. Treated badly in host countries and unable to get asylum, some then became radicalised. China has never experienced widespread terrorism or Islamic militancy and it has certainly not tried to export it either. Now it is facing both dangers, and neighbouring states are questioning Chinas ability to treat its Uighur population fairly and halt these trends. Recent Chinese official statements may be setting a new, more conciliatory trend. Ahmed Rashid is the author of five books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. His latest book is Pakistan on the Brink. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. It is easy to blame the Nepali government but it is also important to ask where the internationals stand in this fiasco. A year ago this weekend, an earthquake in Nepal killed around 9,000 people and destroyed three quarters of a million homes. Theres been a lot of water under the bridge since then. The survivors may feel that not much has happened: around two million of them are still huddled miserably under tin sheets and tarpaulins, awaiting the onset of a second monsoon. Meanwhile, among the direct and indirect consequences of the disaster, billions of dollars have been pledged (but not spent); the countrys rulers rushed out a flawed and contentious new constitution, provoking months of protests in which dozens died; and this in turn led to a four-month disruption of imports from India that crippled the economy. Its been a dreadful 12 months, which have left many people deeply depressed about the state of the country. What, then, is the most consoling thing that can be said? In the days after the earthquake almost everyone who could became involved in spontaneous, amateur relief efforts to help those in the affected areas. Months later, several of these were revived, as survivors struggled to survive the Himalayan winter. Patchy humanitarian response After that, one probably has to look at what hasnt happened. Thanks to a difficult, slow, and patchy humanitarian response, which probably at least managed to give most people something, and a large measure of luck, there has been no secondary disaster. Theres been no major outbreak of disease. A weak monsoon last year meant there were fewer devastating landslides on the weakened slopes than feared. READ MORE: A second disaster awaits Nepals heritage In difficult circumstances, immediately after the quake, a Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) was hurriedly completed. It's not actually surprising that the survivors have been so poorly served: the survivors of flooding and landslide disasters in preceding years haven't yet been taken care of either. by This proved to be quite seriously flawed, but was the basis for a donor conference at which $4.1bn of reconstruction aid was pledged. Four days before the conference, the government decided that the money would be spent by a National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). But as soon as the money was pledged, politicians switched their attention to power politics. The fast track constitution had a lot to do with forming a new government, which would control this unprecedented windfall. Rebuilding private houses is the biggest and most difficult task of reconstruction. This scheme is already highly controversial, and it looks set to give the World Bank, which is paying for it, a splitting headache for years to come. A survey of households was supposed to be complete by September, and the first payments made before the autumn Dasain festival. In fact, only now is the survey well advanced, and a few hundred households have received their first payment of $500. Given the delays, and the number of hoops recipients have to jump through to receive $2,000 altogether, which isnt enough to build a house anyway, its not surprising that many poor families are opting out. Around 26,000 people remain in camps, with no plan for their relocation. And those who live in districts of which only small parts were devastated such as Okhaldhunga or Makwanpur have been completely overlooked. Tragically, but tellingly, instead of sticking around to rebuild the country, outward labour migration has surged. Remittances are up 20 percent in the last year. It followed a normal [post disaster] pattern, according to one foreign expert, except it was worse. Survivors poorly served Its not actually surprising that the survivors have been so poorly served: the survivors of flooding and landslide disasters in preceding years havent yet been taken care of either. Amid all these problems, the four-and-a-half month blockade of imports, especially fuel, across the Indian border deepened the crisis. It caused great public hardship, perhaps especially in urban areas which are most reliant on imported commodities, and massive damage to the economy. It also undoubtedly hindered humanitarian operations. But while it is politically expedient to blame everything on the blockade, insiders say its humanitarian effect should not be exaggerated. READ MORE: The disaster in Nepal after the earthquake For one thing, many of the problems existed before the blockade began, and remain after it ended. For another, Kathmandus roads remained congested thanks to a booming black market in fuel, in which politicians and officials were evidently complicit. The international community in a move which has not been previously reported found it necessary to make a series of unpublicised demarches (or official diplomatic requests) to the government to ensure that the relatively small amount of fuel which was needed for humanitarian logistics was made available. About seven tankers a month were required by each of the three humanitarian hubs. Somewhat belatedly, the government obliged. On December 2, six months after the donor conference, following much political interference in the selection of its CEO, the NRA was finally established. However, it remains only semi-functional because of understaffing. Bureaucrats think it would be career suicide to work there. On the anniversary of the disaster, the NRA is only now beginning the first, modest disbursement of reconstruction funds. Critically, epic levels of uncertainty remain over which projects will be implemented. What permission will someone who wants to rebuild a school, say, even with her own money, have to obtain from which offices? No one seems to have any idea. It is, of course, easy to blame the government, and it does bear most of the responsibility especially after taking so much trouble to discourage or hinder others from doing anything to help. For many months, survivors were even told not to rebuild their own homes. But it is almost as important to ask where the internationals stand in this fiasco. After all, they are paying for much of it, as well as supposedly being a font of expertise. It appears that by early this year the international community was beginning to realise that the NRA was not going to be ready to concretise the donors pledges with actual plans in time to have anything to show on the anniversary. Donors confused By March they started talking about doing a Post Disaster Needs Framework (PDNF, to go with the PDNA) which has taken up everybodys time for the last six weeks. This is a planning document to be launched with great fanfare as a mark of progress on the anniversary. I would say that theres a 50 percent chance that after next week well never hear of it again, says one of those who spent time on it. Even some bigger donors say in private that they dont know whats going on. According to an insider, they are letting themselves be driven. Smaller donors are totally confused, and who can blame them? What can you do? says another, Its all got tangled up in politics. One might just as well ask: If you cant get the job done, then what are you paying for? Indeed, it seems that some donor headquarters are now asking that. With three Level Three emergencies currently going on around the world, plus the European refugee crisis, there is a great danger that Nepal will lose some of the funds that have been pledged if it cant put them to good use soon. At the beginning, there was much talk of building back better, not so often heard these days. Practitioners see post-disaster reconstruction as an opportunity to make the country more resilient to the next disaster. Here, apparently, that seems a pretty distant possibility. In policy terms, it feels like were back in 2012. Who, for instance, will respond to secondary disasters such as landslides this monsoon? At the moment there is no answer to that question, and the Home Ministry and NRA are each pointing to the other. Thomas Bell has reported on Nepal for more than a decade. His new book of history and reportage, Kathmandu, is published this month by Haus. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Ahmed Rashid Ahmed Rashid is the author of five books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. His latest book is ''Pakistan on the Brink.'' He is the author of ... more the best-seller ''Taliban''. Ted Cruz and John Kasich announce they will coordinate state-by-state in bid to slow Trumps advance to nomination. Republican party presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich have agreed to coordinate in a last-ditch effort to deny frontrunner Donald Trump the partys nomination for US president. Cruz plans to stop campaigning for the Oregon and New Mexico primaries to help Kasich, while the latter will give Cruz a clear path in Indiana. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans, Cruzs campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation. WATCH: Would the US lose with a President Trump? Kasichs chief strategist John Weaver said that Kasichs goal was to have no candidate win the number of delegates required to clinch the nomination, which would lead to an open nominating contest at a Republican National Committee convention scheduled for Cleveland in July. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee, Weaver said. Dead and desperate Trump, a billionaire property tycoon and reality television star, in a series of tweets said the announcement was a sign of desperation. Lyin Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad! he said . Trump has a clear lead in delegates with 846 compared with 563 for Cruz and 147 for third-placed Kasich. But he may still fall short of the 1,237 needed to win outright. If he does not reach that target, the vote would come down to a contested convention, where a different nominee could emerge through negotiations among party figures. Republicans in the northeastern states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island go to the polls on Tuesday. Trump is predicted to be the leading candidate in all of those states. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi tells Egyptians to defend country from forces of evil ahead of planned demonstrations. Egypts President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi has urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from what he called the forces of evil ahead of planned demonstrations against his policies. In a televised speech, Sisi said there was a need for stability and any attempts to destabilise Egypt would not succeed if the people of the country were united. We have made a tremendous effort to achieve security and stability, he said. I am reiterating to the Egyptian people this is the responsibility of all of us, for us to protect this security and stability. Security was stepped up across the country where protests are effectively banned after opposition activists called for demonstrations on Monday, a national holiday that commemorates the withdrawal of the last Israeli troops from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. Officials warned that any protesters would be firmly dealt with. READ MORE: Egyptians stage anti-Sisi protest Al Jazeeras Middle East analyst Yehia Ghanem said the Egyptian governments reaction to the planned demonstrations is likely to be violent. We need to look at the track record of both Sisis government and his security forces. The track record is not very shining. It is very violent, he said. So when Sisi talks about a firm response, we should be expecting violence from the side of the security forces. Earlier this month, thousands of people marched in the biggest anti-government demonstrations since Sisi took office in 2014, shouting slogans such as Down with the regime and Leave, both of which were used during the 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak. More than 80 people were arrested in Cairo, Giza and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, security officials said. A growing number of Egyptians are losing patience over corruption, poverty, and unemployment, the same issues that led to Mubaraks downfall, while Sisi has appeared increasingly defiant in his speeches. Discontent with his government worsened this month after a demarcation agreement that led to the handover of two Red Sea island to Saudi Arabia. READ MORE: Sisi says dont listen to anyone but me Sisi has defended that decision, saying the islands had been under Egyptian administration at Saudi Arabias request since 1950. The negotiations over the islands began a decade ago, he said, and the deal allows the two nations to move forward with plans to build a bridge connecting them across the Red Sea at an estimated cost of $3bn to $4bn. Al Jazeeras Ghanem said a majority of Egyptians were not angered by the handover of the islands as much as by the way the transfer was done. It was done covertly, in absence of people, he said, People didnt know there was such a thing as negotiations about the demarcation of maritime borders. Government opponents say police have cracked down on dissent since the protests earlier this month, arresting anti-Sisi activists and human rights lawyers. Romes strategy aims at putting pressure on Egypt to conduct an honest investigation, but will it work? The family of the slain Italian student, Giulio Regeni, may consider suing the Egyptian government in an international court, Amnesty International said on Sunday. Regenis parents and representatives of the Amnesty International were attending a demonstration in Milan aimed at keeping the attention high on a case that is causing a diplomatic spat between Rome and Cairo. We want truth and justice for Giulio and we denounce torture in Egypt, said Antonio Marchesi, president of the Italian chapter of Amnesty International. Egypt has signed the convention against torture and [its government] could be brought in front of an international court for not abiding by the convention. This is something we may consider. The 28-year-old researcher disappeared on January 25, on the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian popular uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Regenis body was found a week later in a ditch, bearing the signs of systematic torture compatible with those suffered by other prisoners in police detention, human rights organisations said. OPINION: An Italian students death in Egypt and now we care? Relations between Italy and Egypt reached a breaking point in early April after Cairo refused to hand over phone records and video material that the Italian prosecutor considered key evidence in the investigation. The by Andrea . We must then conclude that the focus in Washington, just as in Paris and Berlin, is on other priorities: oil, weapons, and the war against the Islamic State group, to name a few.] Cairo has always denied that its security services were involved in Regenis murder. However, lack of cooperation and improbable reconstructions of the murder by the Egyptian prosecutors have raised suspicion that Cairo is manoeuvring to cover up the case. We should not let the case slide into oblivion, said Marchesi. According to several analysts, Romes strategy aims to keep international attention on Regenis case while at the same time exercise pressure on Egypt to conduct an honest investigation. Italy fears that more aggressive or single-handed measures may just irritate the Egyptian authorities without helping investigators to get any closer to the truth. However, recent visits to Cairo by Western leaders, who pledged support for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis government, have been marked by a deafening silence over the murder of the Italian citizen and the issue of human right abuses in Egypt. On Saturday, US State Secretary John Kerry met with Sisi in Cairo, a visit described by the Italian edition of the Huffington Post as quick and with grave omissions. In the world of diplomacy, even silence and inaction can be full of meaning. The US has decided not to utter a single word on this case [Regenis murder] . We must then conclude that the focus in Washington, just as in Paris and Berlin, is on other priorities: oil, weapons, and the war against the Islamic State group, to name a few, wrote Andrea Purgatori. Security concerns, the critical role of Egypt in stabilising Libya and multibillion-dollar arms deals have prevailed over any public reference to Regenis death. The broader issue of human rights abuses has been either casually referred to or has been discussed privately. READ MORE: Egypt prosecutors in Rome to discuss Giulio Regeni case Last week, French President Francoise Hollande visited Cairo to sign arms and security contracts worth over $2.2bn, partially to be financed by French banks.Human rights are not a constraint but also a way to fight against terrorism, was the only reference Hollande made on the issue at a press conference with Sisi. Later he told reporters he had brought up the cases of Regeni and French citizen Eric Lang with the Egyptian President. A day earlier German vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said in Cairo that Germany will provide all support to Egypt and that there are no restrictions on the provision of arms as he kicked off discussions over the sale of two submarines to the Sisi government. Gabriel said that Sisi was an impressive president, a comment that didnt go unnoticed among human rights watchers. Neither the French nor the German officials took heed of a resolution, issued by the European Parliament in March, calling for the suspension of any form of security cooperation and assistance with Egypt as long as its security apparatus continues to fuel radicalism and violent extremism through its systematic violations committed in full impunity. The resolution condemned the human rights situation in Egypt with particular emphasis on the case of Regeni. As Rome grapples with Cairos attempts to sideline the case, Italians keep watching with dismay at Europes aloofness. The most distressing of all, though, is probably the position taken by the United Kingdom. Regeni, a student at Cambridge, had been mandated by the British university to conduct research on the Egyptian unions. The UK Foreign Office waited for over two months before calling for a full investigation into the death of the student. However, it did so only after a petition signed by more than 10,000 people forced the government to take a stand, as requested by the countrys legislation. This casts a serious doubt on the credibility of UK universities sending foreign students abroad to conduct research. Regeni was not only an Italian student, he was a student at Cambridge, a UK institution, said Alberto Negri, a journalist with Il Sole 24 Ore. An Italian official, who asked not to be named, said Italy was not happy with the way the UK, and Cambridge University, were trying to stay out of the case. While the timid support of European officials is quickly dying away, the government of the Italian Prime minister Matteo Renzi has to handle the case unaided. Three weeks after recalling its ambassador for consultations, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni, has gone silent. We should remain firm in our position without escalating the tensions, said Stefano Stefanini, a columnist of daily La Stampa and a former diplomat. Recalling the ambassador is a strong signal. We should allow Egypt the time to react and avoid sensational moves that would just exasperate the Egyptians without helping us get closer to the truth. Cairo has the opportunity to hold a fair process and Italy should be careful not to help the hawks by giving way to purely demonstrative reactions, he said. Stefanini explained that there is a divide within the Egyptian state apparatus between those who prioritise security at all costs and those who would like to strengthen the State within the framework of the international justice system. WATCH: Giulio Regeni and the case of media selection Italy may succeed in keeping Egypt under pressure with harsher measures, however, Egypt seems to have the upper hand in the case.after the solid backing it received by other Western countries over the past weeks. Last week, Egypts Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, mentioned the possibility of overcoming the obstacles that brought the investigation to a standstill, but he said the inquiry may continue for months. The Italian government, say analysts, will have to find a difficult balance between diplomacy and firmness. Measures may range from discouraging travel and tourism to withdrawing from bilateral meetings and cultural exchanges. Asked whether commercial sanctions were also under study, Negri said this would be Italys last resort. Although commercial relations with Egypt are good, Italy is not an essential business or political partner. Egypt relies heavily on France and Saudi Arabia for political and financial backing as well as for all its key supplies, especially in the military and security field, he said. The Egyptian president, says Negri, would never jeopardise his relations with the security apparatus to appease the Italians. He would sooner turn to other European partners such as the French to supplant any commercial needs. According to Amnesty International, some 41,000 people have disappeared in the first two years of General Sisis rule. Thousands have been killed during the suppression of protests, strikes and by the death sentence. Halhul, occupied West Bank After spending 2.5 months in a prison cell, 12-year-old D* al-Wawi, the youngest Palestinian female detainee, was released on Sunday on early parole. D, arrested on February 9 near the illegal Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur, was convicted of attempted voluntary manslaughter and illegal possession of a knife in a plea bargain by Israels military court days after her detention. She was sentenced to 4.5 months in Israeli military prison, and completed more than half of her sentence. While Israeli citizens are governed by Israeli civil law and can only be imprisoned from the age of 14, Israeli military law, which oversees Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, allows children as young as 12 to serve jail time. According to prisoners rights group Addameer, 438 Palestinian minors are currently serving time in Israeli prisons, 98 of whom are under 16. On April 24, after travelling several hours from the northern Jbara checkpoint near Tulkarem to her hometown in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, D arrived home with her family for the first time in 75 days. Upon her arrival in Halhul village, she was greeted by hundreds of neighbours and family members, waving the Palestinian flag and cheering for her return. Al Jazeera spoke with D after her release. READ MORE: Rise in Palestinian children held by Israel alarming When the Israeli soldiers arrested me, they kicked me a lot. One of the soldiers kicked me hard in my back, and then when I was lying on the ground, another soldier jumped on top of me and that caused me a lot of pain for a long time. Al Jazeera: Do you know that you are being described as the youngest Palestinian girl to be imprisoned by Israel? D* al-Wawi: Yes, I heard that, but there are other children in the prison too. I left friends behind; some were 13 and 14 years old. We sang together and stuck together the whole time I was in prison and they helped me, so Im not the only young one. Of course I am happy to be free, but I am sad at the same time because there are still children in prison and I know what it is like now. Al Jazeera: What was it like to be in prison? D: It was scary and I missed my parents. My mom came to visit me twice and when she left, I felt like I was taken away again. Al Jazeera: What was the scariest part of the two months in detention? D: The scariest part was at the beginning of it. On the bus when they transported me from Hasharon Prison to Ramla Prison and then to Ofer military court to see the judge. The seats on the bus were made of hard metal and my legs were chained together and my hands were cuffed. It was cold in February and I didnt have a jacket. It was freezing and I was alone and I didnt know what would happen. Al Jazeera: Were you interrogated? D: Yes, the interrogation was also very scary. There were like five men questioning me at the same time, it was confusing and I was also alone then too. They were screaming at me angrily and laughing at me as if I was a joke, all of them. I just wanted to go home. Al Jazeera: Did you think then that the court would sentence you to time in jail? D : I didnt think the judge would send me to prison because Im a kid. I thought I would go to the judge and go home with my parents on the same day, but the judge said I would stay in the prison for four months and I didnt know what to do. Al Jazeera: Were you ever physically hurt when you were in prison? D: In the prison no, but when the Israeli soldiers arrested me, they kicked me a lot. One of the soldiers kicked me hard in my back, and then when I was lying on the ground, another soldier jumped on top of me and that caused me a lot of pain for a long time. Al Jazeera: How did you spend time in prison and who did you see there? D: I had an Arabic teacher whom I liked a lot. There were also aunt Dunya and aunt Yasmine, who were sweet, took care of me and bought me chocolate. I also learned hand embroidery. I made my mother a book that had sweetest mom on it in embroidery. Al Jazeera: What did it feel like when your handcuffs were taken off and you saw your parents again? D: When my handcuffs were taken off, it was like I could breathe again, and when I saw my parents, I was ecstatic. I have never been happier in my entire life. I am very, very happy to be home, but I will be happier when things go back to normal. *Al Jazeera has refrained from revealing the girls name due to her age. Deployment labelled effort to keep up momentum in campaign, with European allies urged to match US contributions. US President Barack Obama has said he plans to send 250 more troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the number of Americans working with local Syrian forces. Ive decided to increase US support for local forces fighting ISIL in Syria Ive approved the deployment of up to 250 US personnel in Syria, including special forces, Obama said, announcing the decision after a meeting in Hanover with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate the process of driving back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, White House adviser Ben Rhodes said. In Iraq, the US plans to send 200 more soldiers and Apache helicopter gunships in preparation for an offensive to retake Mosul. ISIL controls the cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. I think the administration has come to the conclusion that the Iraq army is not capable of taking Mosul, Peter Galbraith, a former American diplomat, told Al Jazeera from Paris. The strategy is going to be to go after Raqqa with the Syrian Kurds. In his remarks, Obama also said that Europe needed to take on its share of the burden to ensure collective security, adding that the Western allies could do more in the fight against ISIL. While Obama has resisted deploying US troops in Syria, he initially sent 50 US special operations personnel there last year. The US officials described the forces as being on a counterterrorism mission rather than involved in an effort to tip the scales in the war, which Staffan De Mistura, the UN envoy, estimates has killed 400,000 people. READ MORE: Deadly car bombing strikes near Damascus Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. However, in the latter part of his presidency, he has made decisions to keep or add to the numbers of troops deployed to conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Obama is ending a six-day international trip that began in Riyadh, where he held talks with Gulf Arab rulers concerned that US commitment to the Middle East had waned. After that meeting, Obama sidestepped a question about whether he would send special forces to Syria if talks failed to end the war, saying: None of the options are good. Obama also said the US-led coalition fighting ISIL had squeezed the groups territory in Iraq and Syria, reducing its numbers and cutting off its finances. Al-Qaeda affiliate claims responsibility for attack that killed editor of magazine for LGBT community. Two people, including the editor of a magazine for the transgender community, have been hacked to death in the capital of Bangladesh. A third person, a security guard at the apartment building where the killings took place, was seriously wounded in Mondays attack in Dhaka, in which six attackers murdered Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Tonoy. Mannan was the editor of Rupban, the only LGBT magazine in the country. Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death, Maruf Hossain Sardar, a Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman, told the AFP news agency. No suspects have been arrested, police officer Shamim Ahmed told the Associated Press news agency. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Hasina vowed to hunt down and prosecute those responsible. She accused the countrys opposition party and what she called allied armed groups of being behind the killings. The opposition has denied the allegations. The BNP-Jamaat nexus has been engaged in such secret and heinous murders in various forms to destabilise the country, Hasina said, referring to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party and the outlawed Jamaat-e-Islami party. Such killings are being staged in a planned way. But the BNP called Hasinas accusations ridiculous and unfortunate. How can the government come to the conclusion without any proper investigation? Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the secretary general, told Al Jazeera. Instead of finding the murderers, the government is busy accusing the democratic opposition, he said, adding that the government has failed to investigate a spate of recent killings. Alamgir said that govermnment repression of opposition has shrunk the democratic space and the extremists are taking advantage of that. Ansar al-Islam claim A group affiliated to al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility, the Reuters news agency has reported. A Twitter account associated with the Ansar al-Islam group said its members had killed the men, denouncing them as the pioneers of practicing (sic) and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh. Ansar al-Islam has issued similar claims in the past, according to a Bangladeshi security expert. The authenticity of the claim of responsibility could not immediately be verified. Maruf Hossain Sardar, a spokesman for Dhaka city police, dismissed the groups claim as baseless, saying international armed groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and al-Qaeda had no organisational base in Bangladesh. Mannans magazine, Roopbaan, was launched two years ago and became a platform for promoting the rights of LGBT people in a country where homosexuality is illegal. The group also runs an annual Rainbow Rally parade on Bengali new year, that was cancelled this year owing to security concerns. The incident came two days after a university professor was killed in similar fashion in an attack in Rajshahi, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) group. Parvez Mollah, an 18-year-old security guard, told Al Jazeera that the six attackers were aged between 25 and 30 and that they had arrived at the building posing as couriers. They told me they had some parcels for Mannan and, as I went up to his apartment, three of the six attackers followed me to the second floor and attacked Mannan with machetes, Mollah said. As Mannan fell to the floor, the attackers entered the apartment and fired bullets before fleeing. Al Jazeeras Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said that freedom of speech was threatened by such attacks. OPINION: The hit list endangered bloggers of Bangladesh There is widespread fear in the country and the government is denying involvement of international terrorists or ISIL, even after such groups have announced that Bangladesh is one of their operating bases, he said. Earlier this month, Nazimuddin Samad, a 28-year-old law student, was hacked to death by three men riding a motorcycle as he walked with a friend in central Dhaka. Last year, at least four atheist bloggers and a secular publisher were hacked to death in a long-running series of killings of secular activists. The South Asian country has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal and secular activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted. With additional reporting by Mahmud Hossain Opu Gathering was the last chance for the candidates to get their policy ideas for the country across to the voters. Manila Presidential hopefuls in the Philippines have met in a third televised debate ahead of next months general elections. The gathering was the last chance for the candidates to get their policy ideas across to the voters in the country. Each of the five candidates has very vocal and impassioned supporters, and the winner will have to work hard to unite an increasingly divided public. Bakery managers arrested as police suspect pesticides kept in the premises for safekeeping was the source of poisoning. At least 23 people have died after consuming poisoned sweets in central Pakistan, police officials say. Umar Hayat, a resident of the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab province, bought the sweets on April 17 according to Pakistans Dawn newspaper from Tariq Hotel and Sweet Shop to distribute among friends and family after the birth of his grandson. But celebration turned to sorrow when 10 people died the same day, including Hayats six brothers, a sister and two family children. The death toll from consumption of the sweets has now risen to 23, Munir Ahmed, a local police official, told AFP news agency on Monday. In addition, 52 people are still being treated at various hospitals. Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the district, said three people two brothers who run the bakery and a worker have been arrested. There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safekeeping, said Bukhari. A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture. Bukhari said police were awaiting laboratory results. Aleksandar Vucic says Serbia will continue on European path as his party looks set to win nearly half of votes cast. Serbias pro-Western Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has claimed victory in Sundays snap general election after projections showed that his conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won nearly half of the votes. Vucic went to the polls two years early, saying he wanted a clear mandate from Serbias 6.7 million voters for reforms to keep European Union membership negotiations on track for completion by 2019. His Progressive Party has split the country by pushing for Serbias inclusion in the EU. The far-right Radical Party (SRS) made significant gains in the election, with support from those who favour closer ties with Russia. The party was projected to win nearly eight percent of the votes, becoming the third largest party in parliament. SRS leader Vojislav Seselj, whom the United Nations war crimes tribunal cleared of accusations related to the Yugoslav wars less than a month ago, was once a political partner of the incumbent prime minister but is now his foe. Vucic was once a member of the SRS to protest against what he believed was the Wests victimisation of the Serbs during the NATO bombing campaign in the 1990s. Continue on its European path After Sundays election Vucic claimed that his party won 158 of the 250 seats in parliament. Todays result strongly supports our democracy, diplomatic efforts and European integration, he said. Serbia will continue on its European path and well try to accelerate it, Vucic told supporters gathered in the SNS headquarters. There is no compromising with that. However, the incumbent prime minister also stressed that Belgrade would still maintain a friendship with Russia, its traditional Orthodox ally and supporter. Serbia has been walking a tightrope between the West and Moscow since the conflict between the two sides escalated over Ukraine. Analysts said that while Vucics victory is confirmed, the number of seats claimed by each party may yet swing significantly. Three small parties hovered around the 5 percent mark, the minimum they must win to claim seats. The more parties to enter the legislature, the fewer votes are left over for redistribution, which gives the SNS a higher number of seats in the parliament. The Socialist Party (SPS), the junior partner in the outgoing coalition and the party of Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, came in second, projected to take nearly 12 percent of the votes. Once the party of Slobodan Milosevic, the SPS is now also following a pro-EU agenda just like its coalition partner. It is unclear whether SNS and SPS will renew their alliance but analysts expect Vucic to use an alliance with SPS to broaden his base. SRS leader Seselj immediately offered a coalition to any party willing to renounce EU ambitions and turn to Russia. The party may complicate EU membership talks by resisting concessions, such as ending Serbias constitutional claim to sovereignty over Kosovo. But, Vucic has previously said that he would not compromise with right-wing parties. After casting his vote on Sunday, he said: Im almost certain that well carry on our EU integration process. The South African president is in deep trouble following the latest court ruling against him. Jacob Zuma has long been considered something of an escape artist, evading several scandals since he first emerged into the political spotlight. But events this week will cost him financially, and perhaps politically as well. Zuma has been found to have violated the constitution when he refused to pay back public money he had spent on home renovations. Now opposition leaders are calling for him to step down, and suggesting impeachment if he does not. Will this latest accusation be the one to sink President Zuma? And if so, what would be the fallout for his party, the African National Congress? Presenter: Martine Dennis Guests: Jimmy Manyi Former Cabinet Spokesman. President, Progressive Professionals Forum. Dali Mpofu National Chair, Economic Freedom Fighters. Thembisa Fakude Researcher, Al Jazeera Centre For Studies. The case against Assange is as political as it is legal; where does it go from here? Plus, Kenyas election influencers. California task force recommends reparations for descendants of enslaved people, some of whom are living on the streets. Guitarist Rolf Sturm has found himself on two recent and exceptional recordings: Roswell Rudd and Heather Masse's August Love Song (Red House, 2016) and Jenna Mammina & Rolf Strum's Spark . He is a guitarist of expansive facility and a sense of humor, to boot. Take his present Young as an example. The release began conceptual life as a collection of Victor Young compositions. You know...the guy who wrote "When I Fall in Love," Moonlight Serenade," "Love Letters," My Foolish Heart," "Stella by Starlight," and "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Change with You." Yes, that guy. Well, Sturm decided to address several of these, but when he saw the album art, could not resist throwing in some Neil Young compositions too. Victor Young and Neil Young...that makes of strange bedfellows indeed!So interspersed among these pre-1950 Great-American- Songbook standards, mostly show tunes, are four Neil Young classics. The old a new meld into an informed continuum serving to remind us that all music as a thread passing through civilization connecting all time. Sturm studied with John Abercrombie, whose influence donated an abstraction to Sturm's style, which is as informed by gypsy jazz as it is by the New OrleansKansas City Chicago triumvirate. "My Foolish Heart," Stella by Starlight," pair oddly well with "Pocahontas" (from Rust Never Sleeps (Reprise, 1979). An assertive, muscular "Cowgirl in the Sand" rubs against a chaste and introspective "Ghost of a Chance" offering a contrast as impressive as an abstract "Tell Me Why" enhances a dark and rich "Golden Earrings." Sturm successfully navigates two disparate composers to make a cogent whole. Good Show. 2005 .. The Secretary-General met today H.E. Mr. Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They exchanged views on the political and security situation in the DRC and the implementation of the mandate of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). The Secretary-General encouraged the Government to []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... The Secretary-General welcomes the decision of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan to accept the compromise proposal on the arrangements for the return of First Vice President-designate Riek Machar. This was developed through the efforts of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (JMEC) along with regional and international partners. The Secretary-General is hopeful []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... AR's Editor Joe Shea Talks About Elections On Iranian TV Bear Stearns Saved By Fed As Lehman Bros. Falters; Major Bank Failure Looms Over Wall Street, Sends Markets Into 200-Pt. Dive Lie Upon Lie Five Years Into the Iraq War The Administration Still Churns Out Lies by Randolph Holhut A Small Tragedy Even at 90, As Friends Turn Cool She Knows the Show Must Go On by Joyce Marcel I'll Take Me Imagine John Wayne or Arnold In Heels, Silk and a Girdle by Elizabeth Andrews Sen. Nelson Calls For New Fla. Primary; Gov Crist Backs 'Do-Over' Who'll Win? Ask Spock Spock.com Engine Predicts Winners By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him But I Think He's a Non-Believer by Constance Daley Death of a Thug The Life and Horrors of Suharto by Andreas Harsono ___________________________ This Just In Sierra Club: McCain Ducked All 15 Key Votes On Green Laws (AR) A Work By AR's T.S. Kerrigan Is Chosen As 'Best Poem' By Wordpress Site Murder At Mile 63 The Deadly Assault and Bush Administration Cover-Up by S. Eben Kirkesby and Andreas Harsono 5427 14th St. West, Bradenton, FL 34207 $6.99 Fish Fridays! Manatee Co.'s Only 24-Hr. FREE Wi-Fi Paid Advertisement On Native Ground AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I'm not sure but I think I may be socially incorrect. [MORE] On Native Ground ENOUGH FOR A WAR, NOT FOR A PEOPLE by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Last week, the National Governors Assn. met in Washington, D.C. One of the tasks the NGA had on its agenda was to ask President Bush to increase federal spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects as a way to stimulate the economy. He rejected their pleas out of hand, claiming that infrastructure projects wouldn't offer any short-term economic boost. [MORE] Brasch Words BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008 HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies: WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008 AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008 CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE] The yearslong fight over ending too big to fail has spilled out of the bar and into the parking lot of the contest for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders urges immediate and forceful action. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, puts the issue in the hands of the banks regulators charged under the Dodd-Frank Act with implementing a solution to this nettlesome problem. Now come those regulators with their near-unanimous thumbs down on the living wills of the U.S. institutions deemed the biggest risk to the financial system. Only Citigroup received a passing grade from both the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The regulators findings drive home the point that, eight years after the financial crisis and almost six years after the enactment of Dodd-Frank, the financial system is still vulnerable. The Fed and the FDICs findings also shine a harsh light on the core defect in the law. Dodd-Frank tries to address the systemic risk of the largest firms and its sister issue TBTF with four different tools; I call them the Big Four. They are: capital rules, liquidity rules, living wills and new FDIC authority to manage resolutions of failing firms. Each of these tools has some merit. But none of them either alone or in concert are sufficient to address the too-big-to-fail problem. The tools aim at an uncertain future, not at current conditions. Implicit in each tool is a question. How much capital is enough to protect the financial system in the future? How many assets need to be liquid to protect the system in the future? How can an institution be resolved by global regulators in the future? How can a firm go through bankruptcy in the future without taking down the financial system? Now, our regulators are dedicated, talented people but they have a miserable track record of predicting future events. The core problem with the living wills, as with the other Big Four tools, is that that they are by definition an attempt at predicting future events. It is doubtful that the too-big-to-fail banks have the will to devise credible living-will plans, since credible bankruptcy plans presumably undermine their mystique of invincibility, making them subject to market discipline just like any other firm. Even assuming they have the will, is there a way? The shifting sands of the Fed and FDIC criteria for submitting a credible bankruptcy plan, and the unpredictability of the various stress scenarios banks must consider in drafting them, make planning for a resolution at some future date almost unfathomable. Add on to that the fact that the whole endeavor is secretive and youre left with a process that itself is not credible. This array of Big Four tools based on unknowable future events has enhanced the deep suspicion of a symbiotic relationship between the banks regulators and the TBTF banks. They are in this together and the failure of one or more TBTF firms will be equally devastating on both sides. So what are we to do? Here are two actionable proposals for giving the living-will process more credibility. First, make the process transparent. The publicly released letters regulators sent to each of the firms on their living-will results contain numerous redactions of key information. Most significantly, the meat of the resolution plans is contained in thousands of pages of documents hidden from public view. Follow the advice of FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig and open up the process. After all, if the endgame is to eliminate the perception of TBTF, Trust us just isnt going to cut it. Second, now that systemic risk has been added to the Feds mandate of full employment and stable prices, borrow the forward guidance tool from the Feds monetary policy toolbox. Nothing would be more meaningful now than a clear message from Fed Chair Janet Yellen that the endgame of the living-will process is not the scripting of playbooks that will never be used. Rather, it should be the dismantling of these firms to the point where neither the regulators nor the marketplace perceives them as operating above a taxpayer safety net. An even better idea would be to examine empirically how each of the biggest banks is benefiting now, not at some future date, from their market advantage. This is what most refer to as the banks subsidy. Rather than deluding ourselves into thinking that regulators peering into their crystal balls can come up with a magical fail-safe formula, lets examine the facts as they actually exist. If it turns out as it will that investors, counterparties and regulators are showering financial rewards on TBTF companies, then the path ahead is clear. Its a whole lot easier to report on what has happened than to predict what might. In China, there is no ambiguity when it comes to the four dominant policy banks. If any of these large state-owned banks experiences material financial distress in the future it will be bailed out pure and simple by the Peoples Bank of China, the countrys central bank. The U.S. financial system shouldnt be governed by the same approach. If the candidates in November are truly concerned about the TBTF issue, they would do well to focus on the current moment and not on some vague future time. Cornelius Hurley is director of the Boston University Center for Finance, Law & Policy and professor at the Boston University School of Law. He is a former assistant general counsel at the Federal Reserve Board. Those who live close to the Mexican border in Arizona and New Mexico consistently express two sentiments. First, the number of illegals crossing the line has plunged from a flood to a trickle in most places. The feds and the political spinners love that because it allows them to say, with some truth, that the border is as secure as it's ever been. But they leave out the second part. The worst of the worst, the drug smugglers, vagabond bad guys, and mulitiple deports who use the border as a turnstyle are still out there, as dangerous as ever, as plentiful as ever, if not more so. Two kidnappings in six months late last year highlight the point. The first took place in southwest New Mexico's boot heel on December 7, 2015. A worker for Elbrock Water Systems was working on the remote Gray Ranch when stranded drug smugglers commandeered his truck, loaded it with drugs and drove to Willcox, Arizona. They set the worker free there with a warning not to go to authorities. He did anyway and the FBI is investigating. For weeks, the episode received no publicity. It stayed hidden behind the Tortillla Curtain. Everyone has heard the expression, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. A similar phenomenon occurs in the borderlands. But boot heel residents, and their friends in southeast Arizona, decided it was important to pull back the curtain and tell the story. On March 10, they organized a gathering in Animas, New Mexico, that drew 500 farmers and ranchers, activists, state and federal bigwigs, and finally, considerable media. The message: You have no idea what we face out here. You don't know what we see every day. You think the border is secure and it's not. Help us. The second kidnapping happened two months earlier, on October 5, on a ranch outside Nogales. This event, too, has received no publicity. But it's an important story for Americans who want to understand life on the border. From the beginning, especially with the perpetrator still at large, the Nogales victims have been reluctant to go public. Even today, with Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada confirming they have a DNA hit on a suspect being held in the L.A. County jail, the victims don't want their real names used. We'll call them Sam and Mary. They're both in their 80s. Also taken that day was Sam's secretary. The ranch is located in the mountains west of Nogales along a notorious smuggling corridor. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered not far away in 2010. The episode began about 5:10 p.m. that day. Sam was working in his office, a separate building alongside the house, when his secretary walked in. She was being hustled along by a man holding two knives at her back. He said, "Do what I say or I'll kill you both." The man was filthy, disheveled, and wild-eyed, suggesting he'd been walking the backcountry for a while. He marched Sam and his secretary over to the house and forced Mary to cook him supper. He helped himself to a beer from the fridge and stood while devouring four hamburgers. He waved one knife at the three of them while using the other knife as a utensil. He went around the house pulling out drawers searching for valuables. He found a shotgun and a two rifles in a closet. He forced the secretary to hand over her two rings and demanded Mary's 60th wedding anniversary diamond ring. The secretary says that when Mary struggled to remove it, the man stepped closer waving the knife and threatening to cut off her finger. Says Sam, "I considered a couple of escape or 911 scenarios. But one or all of us might've been stabbed. If I'd been alone, I might've tried to escape or resist." The man talked incessantly in English with a Spanish accent. He said he had a mother and brother in L.A. and wanted to get north. He talked of walking all the way to Phoenix, 150 miles away. He said he'd spent 20 years in prison and vowed that he was never going back. "He made multiple threats to kill us if we moved an inch," says the secretary. "His face would get all contorted and hed be very scary. When I realized he was totally unpredictable, thats when I got more frightened." Says Sam, "I have a clear recollection of what a knife an inch from my nose looks like." After two hours in the house, the man demanded to be driven to Nogales, the four of them traveling in the secretary's car. The man sat behind the secretary, who was driving, with Sam's double-barreled shotgun across his lap. "I thought he might take us into Sonora and murder us or hold us for ransom," says Sam. The secretary thought the same thing and considered ramming another car and running to get help. In Nogales, the man ordered the secretary to pull into a McDonalds near the border crossing. But the parking lot lights were too bright and they drove to a nearby Burger King. As the man was repacking his stolen stuff in a backpack, the secretary, seeing her opportunity, threw open the driver's door and dashed into the Burger King, hollering for someone to call 9/11. Sam and Mary threw open their previously locked doors and ran, too. The man jumped from the car and bolted in the direction of the international border and seemingly vanished into Mexico. But three days later, a cop in Sahuarita, 45 miles north of Nogales, approached a man sitting atop a railroad car. Before running away, the man, likely the kidnapper, dropped a backpack containing the items stolen from the victims. Six months passed before Sam and Mary learned that Santa Cruz County got a DNA match on a fellow who'd been arrested in L.A. on Dec. 13. The suspect, Ramon Francisco Florentino, is a Mexican national about 39 years old. He uses more aliases than can be listed here along with mulitiple dates of birth. His rap sheet includes an arrest in L.A. in 1994, at 18, on a murder charge that was reduced to voluntary manslaughter. He got three years in prison. The suspect has also been arrested for loitering, disorderly conduct, and prostitution. In 2002, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and got 13 years. The suspect was deported through San Ysidro, California, in 2015, and came back to land at Sam and Mary's ranch later that same year. He has been deported three other times, in 1991, 1995, and again in 1996. His December arrest in L.A. was for allegedly attempting to kidnap a five-year-old boy to commit a sexual act. The boy escaped unharmed. Sheriff Estrada says his office is working to return the suspect to Santa Cruz County to stand trial. But he doesn't know when that will be. "It could take a while, but we don't want him to slip through the cracks," he says. If you want to understand why borderland residents are looking over their shoulders, locking doors, working only in pairs, sometimes carrying weapons, and holding public meetings, this suspect is your poster boy. As for Sam, he is ticked off at the pace of the county's investigation and that the sheriff is still holding his recovered guns and other possessions. And he has contempt for government officials who claim the border is secure when "felons can go back and forth like yoyos," a practice he believes has accelerated with the Obama Administration's turn-em-loose policies. "I guess we can add this creep to the list of alien criminals who are released and come back to commit crimes against U.S. citizens," he says. So why not pack up and move, eliminate the worry? In the Animas kidnapping, FBI investigators asked the victim: "Why do you live here?" The answer in both places is the same: It's our home, it's in our hearts, and we won't allow criminals to drive us out. Sam and Mary are tough, resilient, and now, prepared. They've spent more than $5000 on security upgrades, including new doors, a driveway gate, a sophisticated burglar alarm with eight security cameras allowing them to see what's going on outside. Sam has stashed pepper spray and pistols at multiple locations around the house, and Mary keeps a shotgun. In his office, Sam keeps a pistol in his desk drawer and a snubbed-nose revolver in his car. But their best protection might be their Springer Spaniel, who "has an absolute fit if anyone comes into the yard." Says Sam, "If somebody kicked the door down, with the alarm and with the dog, I'd be able to get a shot at him pretty quickly." Welcome to life behind the Tortilla Curtain. Last year, the first lady, Michelle Obama, gave a commencement speech at Alabamas Tuskegee University that sounded more like she was paying homage to black activist W.E.B. DuBois than the schools founder Booker T. Washington who, as an ex-slave, believed character and hard work were key to improving the plight of the black man. Then again, Michelle is part of the illiterate gang who ousted evil slave owner Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill without researching the philosophies escaped slave Harriet Tubman stood for. Wait until Obama, who misquoted MLK on his Oval Office rug, realizes Underground Railroad conductor Tubman was a devout Christian whose pistol-packing ways mirror Sarah Palin, not Maxine Waters. Nonetheless, Michelle recently returned from a trip with the guy who lectures continents on gay rights and who, after wishing Queen Elizabeth happy 90th birthday, threatened Britain by warning that voting Yes on a referendum to bow out of the EU would place the UK at the end of the TTIP trade deal queue. Sorry, but that sounds more like Chicago-style coercion than a friendly suggestion to an ally. Either way, Mrs. Obama is not unlike her Saul Alinsky-trained husband. The FLOTUS also sees the world not as it is but as it should be and feels its her duty to set the non-compliant straight. Thats why, after returning from making enemies overseas, Michelle quickly donned her tam and gown and headed to give a confrontational commencement speech in a state still stigmatized by a dark image concerning civil rights. It was at historically black Jackson State University that Michelle chose to include in her remarks a rebuke to Mississippi for daring to uphold the First Amendment. As part of the discourse, the FLOTUS used voting rights as the vehicle to refer disparagingly to the religious freedom bill recently signed into law by governor Phil Bryant. The basis of the bill is to protect those who, because of a religious opposition to things like same-sex marriage, extramarital sex, or transgenderism, refuse to provide services to whose behavior falls outside what they believe to be Scriptural precepts. Governor Bryant maintains that the religious freedom bill was passed "to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions... from discriminatory action by state government." Bryant said the new law "merely reinforces" existing religious freedom rights on the state level, "does not limit any constitutionally protected rights or actions," and does not challenge federal law. The bottom line is that Americans are still free to live any way they choose. With that in mind, religious freedom should mean that no one is strong-armed to accept or accommodate conduct that runs contrary to a persons deeply held faith. Much like her husband, Michelle Obama disagrees. Its good to know that, in the name of nondiscrimination, dear FLOTUS can always be counted on to verbally discriminate against anyone who desires to remain true to constitutional or religious convictions. Thats why; by comparing the God-given civil rights of black Americans to gender identity confusion and illegal immigration Mrs. Obama pretty much exploited Jackson State University graduates. Michelle got all preachy saying, "We see it right here in Mississippi -- just two weeks ago - how swiftly progress can hurtle backward. How easy it is to single out a small group and marginalize them because of who they are or who they love." Its obvious from that statement the FLOTUS believes that if who you are and what you believe make you hesitant to share a restroom with a transgender; you are worthy to be discriminated against. Otherwise, according to Michelle, singling out and marginalizing is unacceptable. And so, rather than commend her audiences achievements, or inspire black graduates to forthcoming success, the FLOTUS turned a graduation into an opportunity to publicly reprimand a Republican governor and to stir animosity by insinuating that Mississippi is reverting back to civil rights abuses. Mrs. Obama pressed on: So we've got to stand side by side with all our neighbors - straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu immigrant, Native American -- because the march for civil rights isn't just about African-Americans, it's about all Americans. It's about making things more just, more equal, more free for all our kids and grandkids. The FLOTUS must have gotten confused because, while secretly viewing Christians as the ones doing the oppressing, she mistakenly included Jesus-following, gun, and Bible-clingers in her march for civil rights appeal. More importantly, since when is a force against ones will to benefit anothers will the definition for the upholding of civil rights? And if that is how things now work in Obamas fundamentally transformed America, shouldnt Halal butchers be mandated, despite religion, to sell legal pork products to customers who demand bacon? Besides, if justice, equality and freedom are the goals, how does one carp about laws being passed that seek to ensure the right to freedom of religion? Moreover, in what way does the president saying, while in the UK, that a law should be overturned that preserves religious liberty make America more just, more equal and freer? In the end, Michelles anti-freedom/ averse-to-equality rant are just more drivel issuing forth from a woman who, together with her subversive spouse, profess love for America and adherence to the Christian faith, but exhibit neither. Instead, in an effort to destabilize the Constitution, disparage Biblical values, and chop away at conventional social mores, every year, Michelle turns up like a bad penny at historically black commencement ceremonies where she attempts to stir up racial divisiveness and gain political points by playing the victim card. At the end of the day, Mrs. Obama can be counted upon to defend against intolerance by speaking prejudicially against the foundational principles held dear by great historical figures such as the Christian freedom fighter about to be memorialized on the front of the $20 bill. Jeannie also hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com On a recent trip to Paris, I had plans to meet an American friend at a new burger joint in the Latin Quarter. After fumbling to figure out a way to get there by public transportation, I gave up in favor of a cab ride because it was getting late. The driver, a man in his early sixties, was well dressed in a suit, and sounded educated. His accent gave him away as a first-generation North African. I decided to leverage my taxi fare to gain insights into the burning topic of migrants, against the backdrop of France's Muslims uneven integration into their adoptive country. As an entry point into the conversation, I asked my driver which of the three Maghreb countries he was from. "Algeria," was his reply. Good! I knew his country for having worked there in 1998, in the thick of the civil war, on a UN fact-finding mission. This immediately got him started: "Ah, Madam, the West almost destroyed my country with its backing of Islamists.... It took Algeria years to get back on its feet." He used to be an engineer before leaving his embattled country for France, where he now worked as a taxi driver: "The West was already helping Islamic terrorists back then, as it does now in Syria...history is repeating itself." I baited him to hear more: "Is that right? The UN Panels Chairman wanted to interview the FIS, the banned Islamist Party. He said he wanted to be even-handed and talk to all political parties. "It was not about fairness, interjected my driver, "there is a plan to destabilize the Middle-East. "To be sure, your minister was totally opposed to that interview. He believed it would give terrorists legitimacy and complicate things for the government. Then, changing the subject, I asked him if he had found integration in France difficult. No, was his answer, but you know, I am Kabyle and it makes all the difference. Kabyles do not consider themselves to be Arabs, that much I knew, and they have an ambivalent relationship with their fellow Algerians of Arab origin, to say the least. Therefore, it made sense that it was easier for them to integrate into France. What always surprised me, though, is that Kabyles who deny any Arab identity, quite readily identity with Islam, even though the latter was brought by the former to the land of the Berbers.[1] After lunch and another failed attempt at taking public transportation, I found myself inside a taxi again, headed to my next appointment. Another cab, another Algerian driver, another interviewing opportunity and a 180-degree perspective shift. This one was quite young and spoke excellent French with a Parisian accent. He was born in France but his darker skin color and discourse pointed to his Arab ancestry. I started with a compliment on his French and casually asked if he felt more French or Algerian. Algerian! was his cry of the heart. My expression of surprise was to invite him to say more. He was bitter and defiant: How could I feel French when peoples gaze make me feel otherwise, day in and day out? And you know what? I dont give a damn, one way or the other! It was as if his buttons had been pushed, for he let it all out without any prompting: If tomorrow France was at war with Algeria, I would fight on Algerias side. Even if Algeria was the one to attack France. Wow, this is rather extreme. But you surely must feel very unhappy living in a country that you dont like? Why stay here? There was a moments hesitation, some rambling about the decision made by his father a long time ago to go and work in France. Then, with the law on family reunification, they had all come to join him. He suddenly volunteered: Actually, it is only with us, with the people of the Maghreb, that immigration was not successful. With all others, the Portuguese, the Italian, it all worked out fine in the end, after a bit of tension in the beginning. Oh, and why is that? I have no idea... I took a deep breath before asking my Barbara Walters question: Could it be the Koran, which creates a competing loyalty, that of the Umma? No, no, it has nothing to do with that. Hmm, so what could it be? I think it is because no other wave of immigration followed the first one. (Factually incorrect - there were five cycles of Algerian migration before the 1962 independence, and three immigration waves since then). He explained: Regarding the Portuguese and Italians, after the arrival of their second wave of immigrants and the attendant tensions and conflicts, their first generation was... you know...forced to assimilate. In a seeming departure from his previous comment, he exclaimed, I see... So youre saying the second pushed the first into place? But let me ask you this - knowing what you know about the difficulties of integration, what is your position on immigration, are you for or against it? Oh, I am absolutely against it. Nobody is happy, in the end. It is much better for people to stay in their homeland, where they belong. It is not good to be uprooted. I couldnt have agreed more. Our elites too, probably. Yet, turning entire populations into homeless nomads had to be serving someones agenda - ordo ab chao... But this was another story and, anyway, I had already reached my destination. In any other election year, at this point in the primaries, party leaders would be rallying around the frontrunners in the name of unity. But 2016 is no ordinary year. Hillary Clintons coronation has been a bumpy ride thanks to Bernie Sanders, though, short of a federal indictment, Mrs. Clinton will probably be the liberal standard come November. The Democratic Party will be running under the business as usual banner too. Their campaign slogan might well be: If you liked Bill and Barack, you will love Hillary. In contrast, the Donald Trump phenomenon, under a Republican guidon, is nothing short of revolutionary. Trump defies the pundits, the prognosticators, both parties, the conventional wisdom, and the politically correct at every turn. He has redefined candor and the notion of outsider. Trump is reviled by the establishment press and entrenched political hacks on both sides of the political divide. Neither left nor right, neither liberal nor conservative; Trump is anathema to the entire American nomenklatura, and still wildly popular with a substantial slice of American voters. Indeed, the Republican frontrunner seems to have redefined high negatives as a virtue. Trump is running on a telling theme. He wants to give America back to democracy and the vulgar folk who work, vote, and pay the bills. A revolutionary idea, indeed! Trumps boast that he will help make America great again touches the G Spot of national angst. The emphasis is on the conjunctive adverb, implying that America is not what she once was or could be. Such candor is fraught with peril and possibility. Many people are fed up with the smug condescension and pandering of both political parties. Voters are also fed up with a special interest oligarchy which finances American political elitism. The pay to play ethic perfected in the Clinton years may have reached its sell-by date. The electorate is also fed up with the cooked books of national security threats and all those small wars with no objectives save bigger defense budgets. A popular vote on humanitarian intervention and regime change doctrines is long overdue. A popular vote on immigration, especially from dystopic Islamic countries, is timely too. Trump challenges the conventional wisdom on these and many other fronts. Ironies here are not lost on the lumpen proletariat. A belief that only an oligarch like Trump will do battle with entrenched political elites seems to underwrite the new American populism. Trump raises the specters of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt simultaneously. The Republican Party was begun by the Lincoln revolution. Trump has donned the mantel of parvenu iconoclast. Combined primary votes for Sanders and Trump may be an augury of things to come. When Bernie Sanders returns to maple syrup country, the angst vote on the left may swallow hard and stay home -- or vote for Trump. Either way, neither of those possibilities is good news for the Clintons. With Hillary, you know what to expect. With Trump, there is more than a possibility of real change. Clinton is stasis or yesterdays news. Trump is the uncertain, yet sure to be messy, future. The differences between Clinton and Trump couldnt be more obvious. America cannot believe what Hillary says, just as it has never heard some of the things that Trump says. The choice here is between mainstream mendacity and a novel variety of brutalist candor. Trump might be a bitter pill, but sick nations, like critical patients, often have to die a little before they get better. If character matters, there is no comparison between the candidates, especially if the issue is family values. The ongoing Clinton soap opera speaks for itself. Who with a pinch of conscience would vote to give Bill a third run at White House interns? Trump, in contrast, is replete with family values. Indeed, he has three families, all of which seem content. Any man who has navigated three wives without major casualties has mastered the art of the deal. Trump doesnt smoke, drink, or use drugs, either. All of his wives and children are well above average (and photogenic). Whats not to like? Nevertheless, Donald Trump is still somewhat of a pariah, a personification of political shock therapy. America has been hit by a stun gun. Political elites, the media, and a good percentage of the progressive populace are apoplectic about Trumps candor and candidacy. While the left has misgivings about Trump, the American right is contemplating seppuku. Withal, Donald Trump, warts and all, is not a public enemy. The Golems for both parties in 2016 are stasis and apathy. Even Sanderss Democrats recognize the need for a revolution inside the Beltway. Alas, right-of-center Republican Party drones do not want Trump -- or change. If fact, ideological recidivists are especially obstreperous. George Will would rather see Clinton III than take a flyer on a populist pragmatist like Trump. If the truth be told, the righties across the board are in denial. Denial is usually the first stage of grief. Denial comes in two flavors in 2016. The first tastes like sour grapes, the unwillingness to recognize Trumps popularity, potential, or success to date. Trump was a winner as a businessman and now he is now a winner as a candidate. Like it or not, these are inconvenient truths. Trump leads the pack and will probably get the nomination if momentum and votes are probative. A second form of denial is the ongoing attempt by party insiders to circumvent democracy and the will of voters, the attempt to deny Trump the nomination and deny the wisdom of crowds. Shame! Here we see a pernicious effort, mostly on the far right, to thwart the wishes of a voting majority by machinations large and small. Any successful anti-Trump shenanigans by convention regulars in 2016 amounts to playing Russian roulette with all chambers loaded. There are three large stakes in 2016: the American future, the White House, and the Republican Party. The Trump train is about to leave the station. Activists can get on board or be left to grieve over a failed party that became the enemy of new blood and new ideas. Lincoln was reviled before and after his Election Day, only to be redeemed by war and martyrdom. Teddy Roosevelt was a bull in a china shop, attacking his own class interests to make his mark. Reagan was mocked as a dunce, yet changed the bipolar world by creating an anti-communist revolution -- without firing a shot we might add. If Republicans ignore or deny the will of the people in 2016 and dump Trump, the party of Lincoln will surely be the second casualty. G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security. Judicial Watch has obtained emails through the Freedom of Information Act that show the Centers for Disease Control was concerned for the health and safety of their employees who were treating illegal alien children during the border surge of 2014. There was also concerns for the personal safety of CDC staff because notorious street gang MS-13 were brazenly going into shelters housing the illegals and recruiting. A government official warned employees deploying for the influx of illegal immigrant minors about health and safety risks because the new arrivals would have tuberculosis and some were young adultsnot childrenlike the Obama administration proclaimed, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. We might as well plan on many of the kids having TB, states a June 26, 2014 guidance e-mail from a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) environmental health scientist, Alaric C. Denton, as the agency prepared to handle the crisis. Most of these kids are not immunized, so we need to make sure all our staff are immunized. Denton, who is stationed at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, predicts in the directive that the agency will be overwhelmed pretty quickly and that screening requirements will be hard to keep up with. Judicial Watch had to sue the CDCs umbrella agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, (HHS) for the records. Though chunks have been redacted, the documents contradict the Obama administrations public statements dismissing possible health and safety risks created by the tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) fleeing violence in Central America. The CDC official reveals in the documents obtained by JW as a result of the lawsuit that some of these kids are not really kids they are young adults, and we should be wary of personal safety. JWreported this early on, when the first group of UACs arrived through the Mexican border in the summer of 2014. Homeland Security sources directly involved with the mess told JW that holding centers were jam-packed, rampant with diseases and sexually active teenagers. A veteran Border Patrol officer who heads the agencys Tucson sector quickly established that many of the UACs were not little kids but rather 17-year-olds with possible ties to gang members in the U.S. Weeks later JW reported that the nations most violent street gangsincluding Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13were actively recruiting new members at U.S. shelters housing illegal immigrant minors. A high-level Homeland Security source told JW the gangs used Red Cross phones at the shelters to communicate with the new recruits. There were similar warnings at the time from Texas health officials who were on the front lines of the crisis. But the Obama administration dismissed these concerns despite knowing full well that there were real dangers health care workers were being exposed to. Now that another surge of illegal aliens from Central America is underway, will the Obama administration be honest with the public and warn us of the risks? The public health is endangered when hundreds of thousands of illegals from third world countries, carrying with them third world diseases, arrive here unannounced. And once again, the US is ill-prepared to receive them. Fundraising by Republican presidential candidates in March was abysmal as GOP mega-donors have indicated they are fed up with the circus that the campaign has become. The Hill: Interviews with major Republican donors and fundraisers reveal that many are fed up after early enthusiasm for unsuccessful candidates. Many of these donors spent millions on the super-PACs supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former favorites who dropped out of the race after getting throttled byDonald Trump. Now, with Trump and Cruz the two likeliest nominees, a number of donors say they would rather sit it out and wait to see how the next two months play out in the lead up to the Republican National Convention before they open their checkbooks again. I have been called and asked for money, and I said, Once we pick a nominee, then I will give money again, said Minnesota billionaire Stanley Hubbard, who gave an early $50,000 donation to a pro-Scott Walker super-PAC but has made no significant investment since. The problem is that nobody prefers either of those two candidates [Trump or Cruz], and the third candidate [Kasich] no one thinks he has a chance, so why waste your money? Hubbard told The Hill. Doug Deason, a multimillionaire Texas businessman whose family spent $5 million supporting Rick Perry and has now thrown $200,000 behind a Cruz super-PAC, said the feeling among his donor friends goes beyond exhaustion. He said many establishment donors believe their money has been wasted this cycle, with the only winners being the high-priced consultants who have gotten rich by charging commissions on ad buys. Donors are upset about how their money was spent and the bang they got for their buck. They are suspicious, and rightfully so, Deason told The Hill. Somebody should be indicted over Right to Rise, he added, referring to the super-PAC that spent more than $100 million in a failed attempt to make Bush the Republican nominee. I would sue them for fraud. With a stroke of his pen, Governor Jerry Brown (D) issued an executive order to extend Californias onerous climate change regulations, but the independent legislative counsel found he exceeded his authority. Like Obama, Brown also uses his pen to push his agenda when the legislature does not act. A group of moderate Democrats has joined with Republicans and business groups to thwart tougher climate change legislation. In response, Brown issued an executive order last year. The News Release announcing the order states: Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued an executive order to establish a California greenhouse gas reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 - the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next decade and a half. Note that Brown enacted the benchmark, which somehow leaves out any action by the legislature. According to an AP story in the Washington Times: The top lawyer for the California Legislature says Gov. Jerry Brown exceeded his authority when he issued an executive order imposing what he called the most aggressive carbon-emission reductions in North America, aligning California with the European Unions aggressive climate change standards. The opinion by Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine does not curtail Browns authority to continue implementing the greenhouse gas reduction plan, but it suggests a lawsuit challenging them could be successful. Browns executive order cites the emergency powers of the governor under Government Code 8567 and 8571 as the authority to extend the climate regulations. These powers are designed to respond to immediate threats such as floods, earthquakes or fires. The governor, however, takes an expansive view of his authority, which, if not challenged, could be used for almost any purpose. The executive order stands at this time, but someone with staying power could challenge it in court to put the brakes on Browns expansive executive authority. Welcome to the last 270 days, and here comes Mrs. Obama. During a school speech, First Lady Obama decided to attack the people of Mississippi and their elected officials. This is from the Daily Mail of the U.K.: Michelle Obama has waded into Mississippi's religious freedom law row, slamming the state for marginalizing the LGBT community. The First Lady told 35,000 people at Jackson State University to 'stand side by side' with people of all sexualities, not only on social media but also at the ballot box. 'We see it right here in Mississippi -- just two weeks ago -- how swiftly progress can hurtle backward,' Mrs Obama said in her commencement speech. 'How easy it is to single out a small group and marginalize them because of who they are or who they love.' Then she went after people who don't vote: Continuing her speech in Mississippi, Mrs Obama said if people fail to exercise their fundamental right to vote, rights will be under threat. 'Congress will still be gridlocked. Statehouses will continue to roll back voting rights and write discrimination into the law,' she said. She said many young black people disenfranchised themselves in the 2014 midterm elections, when only about 20 percent of them voted. 'You can hashtag all over Instagram and Twitter, but those social medial movements will disappear faster than a Snapchat if you're not also registered to vote,' the First Lady said. Frankly, this is very unfortunate, demagogic, and irresponsible. It is unfortunate because the first lady should be speaking in a positive tone, especially to young people who are getting a degree and listening to the first African-American woman in that role. Also, what reason did the Obama administration give young African-Americans to vote? It is demagogic because she is not offering any solutions other than making noise. Has she actually spoken to African-Americans about men using women's bathrooms? It's easy to make noise about this issue when your own daughters will never use a public restroom without security around or attend a public school. It is irresponsible because it shows the Democrats' desperation. They are down to gender, racism, or whatever other card to get voters excited about Mrs. Clinton. There is a lot of youthful excitement on their side, but it's about Senator Sanders, not Mrs. Clinton. The last 270 days will be tough to take. My guess is that President Obama knows that there is not much of a legacy, from a collapsing Obamacare to the mess in the Middle East to the events we just watched in London. Yes, the Obamas will go out with a bang, but not a very classy one at all. P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. What would we do without NPR to monitor our use of language? There are so many groups that can be offended, we need a federally-funded organization to keep us up to date on what words weve used our entire life, with no malice whatsoever, to discard. Rebecca Hersher explains: Confused about the word Eskimo? It's a commonly used term referring to the native peoples of Alaska and other Arctic regions, including Siberia, Canada and Greenland. It comes from a Central Algonquian language called Ojibwe, which people still speak around the Great Lakes region on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. But the word has a controversial history. (Editor's note: And that's why it's not used in the stories on Greenland that NPR has posted this week.) Hmm, origin with Native Americans (or, as they say north of the border, First Canadians). Doesnt that make it holy? But wait! People in many parts of the Arctic consider Eskimo a derogatory term because it was widely used by racist, non-native colonizers. Many people also thought it meant eater of raw meat, which connoted barbarism and violence. Although the word's exact etymology is unclear, mid-century anthropologists suggested that the word came from the Latin word excommunicati, meaning the excommunicated ones, because the native people of the Canadian Arctic were not Christian. But now there's a new theory. According to the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, linguists believe the word Eskimo actually came from the French word esquimaux, meaning one who nets snowshoes. Netting snowshoes is the highly-precise way that Arctic peoples built winter footwear by tightly weaving, or netting, sinew from caribou or other animals across a wooden frame. So the fact that white people (colonizers, unlike the native peoples who also moved in and conquered territory from other groups) used a word makes it bad. And some linguist theorizes that it may come from French! That is certainly enough to make it derogatory. Except, where does that leave the Central Algonquin people who formerly got credit (because you cant blame nonwhite people for anything) for the word. Wait, isnt there some cultural appropriation going on here? But who is appropriating whom? Were the French appropriating the Central Algonquin people? I dont know, but if they did, I am sure it is bad. On the other hand, what if the Central Algonquin people, who probably met the French explorers colonists first, approipriated the French word? Would that be bad? After all, native Americans/First Canadians are allowed to use pharmaceuticals, televisions and pickup trucks, so obviously they cannot be accused of cultural appropriation of anything. So, would that make the word Eskimo OK? My head hurts. I am so confused. NPR, please explain it better so I can be a good person. Hat tip: Open Blogger at Ace of Spades President Obama may soon release parts of the 28 classified pages from the joint House-Senate intel committee investigations into the 9/11 attacks. National director of intelligence James Clapper is currently reviewing the documents and will decide what parts could be released to the public. Fox News: The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States." Graham, who has pressed for the documents to be made public, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. "I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available," Graham told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a "preliminary police report." "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with -- all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating," the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said Friday. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner." The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. Still, protecting U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations also was believed to have been a factor. Stupid is as stupid does, and one of the stupidest ideas yet proposed in a modern democracy has been championed by a number of politicians on both the right and left of Canada's political spectrum: the abolition of the Senate. The founders of major nations created Senates with longer terms of office to act as balancing forces against the populist emotional whims and anti-democratic urges that can far too often come sailing through majority parliaments. Only intellectual children ignorant of human history and wannabe despots want Senates abolished. So as the Conservative Party of Canada looks to rebuild, one of the worst choices they could make would be to take the advice of some columnists at the National Post and make championing Senate abolition a core policy platform. It shouldn't need to be said to the members of this party although given its walloping at the hands of the Liberal Party and its inexperienced pot-smoking drama teacher last October, one cannot take anything for granted anymore in assuming collective or individual intelligence but the staff columnists at the National Post are either closet NDPers, those rejected from influence in the Liberal Party, angry cousins of the mother of Pierre Trudeau's love child, or perpetually wrong, or some combination thereof. If you want to lose elections on the right side of the spectrum, listen to them. Michael Den Tandt claims that the Canadian public overwhelmingly supports Senate abolition: If there is a pathway to abolition one that forces the hands of provincial legislators, making a consensus practically achievable it is via a national referendum in which the vote goes massively in favour of abolition. It's difficult to foresee circumstances, even absent another big spending scandal, in which the outcome wouldn't be upwards of 90 per cent for scrapping the place and turning it into a museum. An unimaginably wrong assessment of public opinion. Didn't the far-left NDP make Senate abolition a party plank for the general election? And didn't they get spanked at the polls in response, and do they not now sit at less than 12% in the national polls, with their provincial proxies dropping like flies to historic lows in recent elections and getting turfed out of office? Thought that might have been the case. EKOS polling has been measuring support for Senate abolition since 1994, and over 22 years it has never climbed above 59%. In fact, the trend line has been downhill, and the expense scandals of the past few years have only decreased, not increased, support for abolition. As of mid-2015, it stood at just 46%. These results are consistent with recent data coming from other organizations. A CBC/Nanos poll from June 2013 showed that only 41% wanted to abolish the Senate. An Angus Reid poll from March 2015 also had support at 41%. Current support could be far lower. A Harris/Decima poll in late May and early June of 2015 came in with just 28% support for abolition. The answer for the current problems isn't the juvenile and quasi-authoritarian knee-jerk Senate abolition response that would be an electoral disaster for any party to get behind; it is the so-called Triple-E Senate (equal, elected, and effective) that the former Reform Party championed in the 1990s. We have moved about 5 min west of our old location! See our new address in the contact us section. Guangji Bridge, also known as Xiangzi Bridge, is an ancient bridge across the Han River in Chaozhou, Guangdong province, China. It is renowned as one of the countrys four famous ancient bridges the other three are the Zhaozhou Bridge, the Lugou Bridge and Luoyang Bridge. It is said that if you went to Chaozhou and did not visit the bridge, your visit to Chaozhou was worthless. Aside from the antiquity and historical significance, Guangji Bridge is special as being the worlds first pontoon bridge that can open and close. A part of the Guangji Bridge is supported by eighteen floating boats, that could be moved aside to create an open channel for ships and boats to pass through. Originally, the entire bridge was a floating structure supported by eighty-six huge boats. Today, only the middle section can be opened. Photo credit: www.scmp.com Guangji Bridge was built, as a floating bridge, during the Song Dynasty in 1170, led by a magistrate named Zeng Wang. It was originally named Kangji Bridge. Just four years after its construction, a flood swept the bridge away, and so another magistrate Chang Wei led workers to reconstruct it. In those times, districts were headed by magistrates who not only oversaw law and order but were also responsible for the district's administration. Soon several magistrates of the prefecture became involved in the bridges construction. Among them, Ding Yunyuan led people and built the most piers. His achievements were most outstanding so the bridge was called Ding Gong Bridge. In 1194, one magistrate built a pavilion at the east coast and named the bridge Jichuan Bridge. By 1206, the east and west end of the bridge was finished, and the middle section was connected by some boats, making it both a beam bridge and a pontoon bridge. During the Ming Dynasty, the bridge was reconstructed and renamed Guangji Bridge. Later, during the Qing Dynasty, two statues of oxen was added on both ends. The bridge, which is about 500 meters in length, is now supported by 24 stone piers and 18 boats, and has 24 pavilions. Photo credit: economytraveller.com Photo credit: mygola.com Photo credit: Slices of Light/Flickr Photo credit: Luis Evers/Flickr Photo credit: o/Panoramio Photo credit: Luis Evers/Wikimedia Right now, we know of self-driving cars to be a mostly Google and American endeavor. While European firms and regulators are turning their attention to the technology with increased fervor as well, it looks as though it could be the Chinese that sees self-driving cars go mainstream before anywhere else. Just as we saw with the likes of WiFi and 4G, new technology needs to be regulated and to some extent, controlled, in order to make sure that the new technology works as intended and so on. To that end, it appears as though China might have the upper hand when it comes to regulating self-driving cars, and thus enabling firms and car makers to get on with the work needed to get such vehicles onto the road. A draft of a roadmap detailing the deployment of self-driving cars could be completed as early as this year, allowing regulators in the country to get to work on implementing something concrete into law much sooner than many would have expected. Li Keqiang, a professor of automotive engineering at the Tsinghua Unversity chairs the committee responsible for the draft, which is itself backed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Its clear that the Chinese government is looking ahead to the future of the car and possible uses for autonomous vehicles. Delivery trucks, for example, are one type of vehicle that would benefit from being self-driving and help boost the economy, as a lot of shopping in China is done online and then delivered locally, rather than handed over to a third-party delivery firm. Advertisement This is one area that Chinas rigid governmental structure can help, as the United States sees individual laws for each state concerning driving and road laws, whereas the Chinese government can make one decision that applies to all. Whether or not the Chinese government will make such a move is still unclear, but as the completion of said draft grows nearer, eyes from the US and Europe will be on China to see what kind of moves they make next and could perhaps provide leverage for companies like Google and Tesla to use in making their case relaxing regulation on self-driving cars. Google has two mobile consumer operating systems: Android and Chrome OS. Android is the more popular operating system, being designed for a touchscreen and optimised for the smartphone platform. Chrome OS is optimised for the laptop or keyboard / desktop platform and does not need a touchscreen. Both are based on LINUX, but are structured rather differently. The Chrome OS is essentially the Google Chrome browser running on top of a simplified LINUX base. And for a time, these two platforms have existed side by side catering for a different market. However, over the last two years we have seen persistent rumours that Android and Chrome OS were going to be pushed together. These came in the shape that the two platforms would merge, something that has been denied by Google. We have, however, seen Googles executives saying that the two will be closer aligned. This closer relationship is likely to be driven by the changes in the laptop market, where touchscreen convertible devices are becoming more popular. One of the structural differences between the two platforms is how they operate. Chrome OS is designed very much to be a thin client and relying on Googles infrastructure. Applications and data can be downloaded and run on the device, but the Chrome OS platform has been optimised to cache data from the Google service in local storage and synchronise it when it has an Internet connection. In the past, one project that could easily see the two platforms much closer is giving Chrome OS the ability to run Android applications. Google has already experimented with this, as have other developers: there are a number of Android applications that will run on the Chrome OS platform with a little tweaking. This is the ARC project and it allows Chrome OS to run applications written for other platforms including Android and Windows. However, official news has been quiet on the subject but it appears Google has been quietly working on the project. Advertisement Reddit user TheWiseYoda has spotted something interesting. Firstly, a new option has appeared in the Google Chromebook settings: Enable Android Apps to run on your Chromebook. This is not especially exciting in itself but the code commit contains a reference to the Google Play Store. This means that over a million applications could be available for the Chromebook platform taken directly from the Android collection. This opens up a potentially new and huge market for developers and could expand the functionality of our Chromebooks. There are a couple of caveats to this, however. One is that whilst Chrome OS is designed to be hardware agnostic that is, it will run on Intel and ARM hardware and each model is kept up to date for five years since launch it is possible that not all Chromebooks will support the new feature. Customers of older models may find that only some applications are compatible, or that performance is limited. Perhaps some Chromebook models that are still in their five year support window will not have access to the Google Play Store, although this would seem unlikely. Instead, it is more likely that older, slower Chromebooks will simply run applications less quickly than newer models, which is what we would expect. The second caveat is that we dont know when the feature will be be made available. It could be at the next Google I/O but it might not be. Regular readers will remember that last year, Google was silent about Chrome OS. Nevertheless, allowing Android applications to run on the Chromebook could be very good news indeed especially for customers with both an Android smartphone and Chromebook. Perhaps a future evolution of Chrome OS could see the Chromebook platform looking closer to the Google Pixel C device, and running similar applications and services? Google Photos is a cloud backup and archiving database that may be used to store all of our photographs and videos. Its a replacement for Googles Google+ Photo Backup and for a short time the Google+ and Photos applications and services ran side by side. Google Photos has unlimited storage providing you restrict your images to what Google calls high quality, which reduces the image size to 16MP if its higher. It may also be used to store unlimited videos of 1080p resolution or lower. Customers wanting to store their media at a higher resolution will use part of their Google Drive storage space. However, Google Photos offers more than a means of storing photographs. Lets take a look at a number of Photos other features, starting with how Google maintains a comprehensive and thorough search database on our devices. Google Photos automatically organises media by date order but for the Android application, tapping on the Search icon (typically at the bottom right of the screen) brings up the search area. Here, Photos has automatically catalogued pictures into various categories: people, objects and places, but as you use Photos these areas fill up. This search and grouping engine is able to create computer models of faces present in your photo library and collate images of the one person, which you can easily tag. This tag is personal to your account but makes it much easier to find images of somebody. Furthermore, Google Photos also allows you the ability to hide a face from your photographs: this can be handy is you dont want to see an ex in your photographs, for example. Advertisement Google have shored up the uploading and storage management features of Google Photos, recognising that not everybody has a device with capacious storage. The application recently gained the option to scan your device with the ability to delete media that has been downloaded providing it has been safely uploaded to the cloud. Youll find this in the Settings part of Photos under Free up device storage. When it comes to managing photographs in your account, Google have added a bin to the service: if you delete something and discover a few days later that you want it back, no problem as the account has sixty days before material is permanently deleted. Another neat trick of the media uploading side of Photos is that this is independent of the application: these settings are found in the Google Settings application as well as the Google Photos application. You dont need the application on your device in order to upload photographs into the service. For those of us with a Chromecast, Google Photos is an ideal way of showing off our collection on the big screen. Photos includes the necessary software and Cast functionality; open a photograph or video and tap cast icon to send it to the television. On a related note, although Google Photos does not currently allow for the two way synchronisation of photographs on a device, there are a couple of ways to easily get media is copied to another device. One involves a third party application to synchronise a Google Drive folder with another device; for a desktop or laptop computer, you can use the Google Drive application. Youll have to make sure the option to show recent uploads in Google Drive is turned on. Another option is to use the Google Takeout service, which is a means of exporting all of your data in one large zip file. Tell the Google Takeout service that you want your media and let it do its thing. The final set of features revolves around how to share photographs and media using Google Photos. There are several ways to do this: we can download and send the media, or we can share a link. Its also possible to create albums and share these they can be view only or you can specify who has access to change the contents. When it comes to sharing media, the recipients do not need to have the Google Photos application or even the service in order to view a picture or video from your collection. Earlier today, HTC announced that its discontinuing its One Gallery Android app this Saturday, April 30th. In other words, the app which allowed its users to merge their photos and videos from the native HTC Gallery with ones from various cloud storage services will be pulled from Google Play Store and unavailable for download as of next month, i.e. this Sunday. No official reasoning has been given for this decision, but theres speculation about the Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturer giving up on supporting One Gallery because it simply wasnt used by a significant amount of the companys customers. According to the information listed on the apps Play Store page, it had between one and five million installs since it launched several years ago. While a seven-figure number of installs cant exactly be called small per se, it does seem that way in the context of the main HTC Gallery app being downloaded between 10 and 50 million times. Speaking of which, the Taiwanese company is assuring its customers that the HTC Gallery isnt going anywhere and that this decision solely pertains to the One Gallery app. So, HTC users who enjoyed the ability to instantly view all of their local and online multimedia content are out of luck. Its worth noting that this service didnt actually allow for upload of local content to various cloud services, so it was only useful in the context of providing a quick and simple way to view all of ones captured photos and videos. While that may not seem like much, most of the users who understood what it does and bothered to leave a review on its Play Store page were relatively satisfied with it. It remains to be seen whether HTC will decide to offer a similar integrated view in its gallery app in the near future, but that doesnt seem likely at the moment. Luckily, there isnt a shortage of quality photo management apps on the Play Store to choose from and as most of them offer an integrated experience similar to the one featured by One Gallery, the majority of HTC users probably wont be too troubled with this discontinuation. Huawei has released quite a few devices this year already. The company has on only introduced their flagship Huawei P9 and P9 Plus handset, but has also rolled out their mid-range Huawei P9 Lite smartphone and two tablets, the MediaPad M2 and MediaPad T1 7.0 Plus. That being said, the company has also introduced their VR Headset recently, and tow more smartphones will be announced in the coming days / weeks, read on. The company has already scheduled April 28th event for the Honor 5C announcement, and the Honor V8 will be introduced on May 10th, which was also confirmed by Honor, Huaweis subsidiary. Weve been wondering when will TENAA (Chinas equivalent to the FCC) release Honor V8 certification info, and that has happened quite recently. Two variants of the Honor V8 have been certified by TENAA, one variant is fueled by the Kirin 950 SoC, and comes with 32GB of internal storage, while the other variants comes with Kirin 955 and 64GB of native storage. That is actually the only difference between the two models, so lets take a look at Honor V8s other specs, shall we. The device will sport a 5.7-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) 2.5D curved display, along with 4GB of RAM. Both Kirin 950 and Kirin 955 SoCs ship with the Mali T880 GPU for graphics, and two SIM card slots will also be available here. The 3,400mAh battery will be included in this package, and will not be removable. Speaking of which, youll also get fast charging with the Honor V8, and the fingerprint scanner will be placed on the back of the device. The infrared sensor will, interestingly enough, be included as well, and the Honor V8 is made out of metal. The 12-megapixel snapper will be available on the back of the device, and is flanked by the dual-LED, dual tone flash, and the Laser Autofocus. The 8-megapixel shooter can be found on the front side of the Honor V8, and Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes pre-installed here, with Huaweis Emotion UI (EMUI) skin on top of it. Advertisement The Huawei Honor V8 will measure 157 x 77.6 x 7.75mm, while it will weight 170 grams. The phone will be available in Silver, Gold and Rose Gold color options according to TENAA, and it will launch soon. As already mentioned, the phone will come to life on May 10th, the same day Xiaomi plans to release their Xiaomi Max phablet. Although Android OS is primarily an operating system for smartphones, over the years the platform grew and has been borrowed by OEMs to use in niches other than the mobile market. The OS has a counterpart for smartwatches, and the automotive world continues to adopt Android Auto at an accelerated rate. More recently, Philips has decided to use Googles operating system for a new product that doesnt fall in either one of the aforementioned categories. Its called the Philips SpeechAir and as the title above suggests, its an audio recorder powered by Android OS. Audio recorders come in various shapes and sizes, but generally speaking, they tend to share the same basic characteristics. They offer powerful audio recording tools and hardware, they come with a handful of physical buttons, and most often than not they feature a simple display which usually relies on STN LCD technology. Interestingly enough, however, Philips recently took the veil off a new audio recorder called the Philips SpeechAir which, unlike most other gadgets from its class, can be considered more of a smart device by todays standards. This is due to the fact that the recorder features 4-inch IPS touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 and Gorilla Glass on top, and runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box. The terminal uses a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor clocked at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB DDR3 RAM, and 16 GB of on-board storage out of which 12 GB are available to the user. Advertisement Furthermore, the Philips SpeechAir is equipped with a light and motion sensor, an optical proximity sensor, a built-in rectangular dynamic speaker, and a 5-megapixel camera with [email protected] video recording capabilities. It features a directional microphone, a 360-degrees microphone, and a MEMS microphone for VoIP. The device records audio in AMR or ACC format and can protect your content through 256-bits AES encryption; it has a bit rate of 28 kbit/s (DSS Pro), 256 kbit/s (PCM Voice), 16-bit sample rate, and can record 1073 hours (DS2) or 117 hours of WAV audio format. Last but not least, the device is powered by a 2,700 mAh battery which should offer up to 97 hours of standby time, it measures 62 x 127 x 15 mm, weighs 116 grams, and can be coupled with a docking station which weighs 264 grams on its own. As yet, Philips hasnt listed any details regarding pricing, but prospective customers can head down to the manufacturers website (source link below) and try finding a retailer in their areas. Etihad Airways guests will enjoy 10 per cent off flights, and members of the airlines loyalty programme Etihad Guest, will receive 250 bonus miles for every booking made through the mobile app before 30 May 2016. Those who attend the Etihad Airways stand (ME 2310) at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai from 25 28 April 2016 will be able to trial the apps considerable features and functionality. Guests can organise their journey on the app including booking tickets, checking-in and viewing the status of their flight. The airline also partnered with Abu Dhabi Airports Company, enabling guests to navigate their way around Abu Dhabi International Airport using indoor maps a first in the Middle East. The mobile app also incorporates high-resolution enhanced seat maps, giving passengers a detailed layout of the cabin and their chosen seat. Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways chief commercial officer, said: Etihad Airways is dedicated to delivering excellence in every single guest interaction, be it face to face or on digital channels. We strive to provide innovative solutions that ensure our guests enjoy a seamless world-class service. We are confident that our guests will be delighted with the speed of the app, its ease of use and its considerable functionality. Regular travellers will also appreciate the ability to organise their journey on the go all on the mobile app. The Etihad Airways app allows passengers to check in for their flight by using their mobile phone to simply scan their passport page. Guests can also pay for their tickets by scanning their credit card, eliminating the need to enter passenger details and payment information manually. The simple booking process allows guests to compare multiple fare choices and upgrade options. In the My Trips section guests can view all their past and upcoming trips, which are automatically linked to their Etihad Guest reward programme account. Boarding passes can be viewed from the app or downloaded directly to iOS Wallet. The app offers a countdown to take off feature to ensure guests arrive at the departure gate in plenty of time. Live flight status updates provide real time flight information enabling passengers family and friends to track their flight. Robert Webb, Etihad Aviation Groups chief information technology officer, said: The mobile app marks a great step forward in our Digital Guest Innovation strategy. Through technology, were creating more personalised and tailored digital services and products to benefit our guests. This is just the beginning as we continue to empower our guests with greater control and flexibility over the entire booking and travel experience including how they choose to interact with our airline. The news late last week twinned the Metropolitan Museum of Art* and the Museum of Modern Art,* making them a study in contrasts: The Met had just announced programming cutbacks, buyouts and other financial woes, while MoMA was basking in the glow of a $100 million donation from David Geffen. But Ive been thinking for a while about a more apt pairing: Have the Met and the Whitney Museum* traded places? There was a time not so long ago, youll recall, when the Whitney was the enfant terrible of the New York City museum world. It could barely do anything right. Its biennials were almost uniformly blasted by the critics (for a reminder of the infamous 1993 version, see last weeks New York magazine), and so were many of its other exhibitions (too trendy or too P.C.). The board was unruly, and directors inevitably turned over after a clash about something (Tom Armstrong, David Ross, Max Anderson). Whitney curators and other staff were frequently unhappy. Attendance dropped. Opening hours shrank. Leonard Lauder, the Whitneys biggest financial backer, failed to receive the respect he should have had, as the new wanted to sweep out the old and move downtown. And other things like that. In 1999, The New York Times Magazine published an article headlined The Curse of the Whitneyand that curse seemed to live on and on. And now? The Whitney has just come off a highly successful first year in a new building that, while not the most beautiful on the outside, has been wonderful for showing art. The inaugural exhibit featuring its permanent collection, America is Hard to See, was highly praised, and so have the museums other exhibitions this year, for Frank Stella and Archibald Motley, among them. People have been lining up to get in. Ive even heard good things about the restaurant! Next Saturday, to celebrate, the Whitney will be free to residents of its four neighboring zip codes and other celebratory events. Curators there seem happy, even though director Adam Weinberg has made changes that might have created turmoil. Meanwhile, uptown, it seems that the curse has passed to the Met. Its exhibitions have, for the most part, been up to snuffor betterwith the exception of the Unfinished and other exhibits at the Met Breuer. Insiders tell me that curatorial morale is at an all-time low (and perhaps no wonder, after director Tom Campbell publicly told them to stop whining). After emptying out the Asian galleries last year for the costume institute exhibition, this year the Met will empty out much of the Lehman wing for the soon-to-open costume show on technology and fashion (some Lehman paintings have been hung elsewhere in the museum; others are in storage). While most curatorial departments have shrunk (except for Modern and Contemporary, which expanded), the technology/digital staff has shot up to about 80 people, Im told. As for the costly new logo and branding efforts, well, youve heard how much its disliked by many. Yes, the Met has managed to, well, manage its image with some publications (and also here), but the jig may be up. Last week, the Met said it went public with its cutbacks to be transparent, but was it? And are the troubles really a result of the times and the Mets need to compete in the contemporary art arena, or are they a reflection of poor management decisions? Among the questions that come to my mind What is the total cost of the Breuer building to the Met, lease plus renovation expenses plus operating costs? How much did the logo/rebranding cost? The number Ive heard from several good sources is $3 million, but the Met has denied that. What is the cost of that technology department? Will it, too, be cut back? If admissions are down, how much of the decline can be attributed to the free admission given to holders of the new New York City ID cards, a pet project of the de Blasio administration? Retail revenue is supposedly downbut what about retail profits (which Im told are non-existent, though that is not unusual in the museum world)? Will the Met finally close, as is rumored, its high-rent Rockefeller Center store? In the cutbacks, what will happen to acquisitions? Can we be assured that the endowment principal will not be invaded or become a source of borrowed money? I could go on *I consult to a foundation that supports these institutions by Christopher Sharma Reconstruction operations are taking place too slowly. Survivors are hungry and cold. Those who can take out loans at high interests to build houses. Political divisions and party privileges prevail. NGO are being stopped and closely monitored to avoid proselytising. Kathmandu (AsiaNews) Exactly a year after Nepals earthquake, the entire nation stopped to remember the 8,961 victims. However, few are paying attention to the thousands of displaced people who still do not have a home or a place to live. Last years powerful 7.9 earthquake destroyed the homes of millions of people, and damaged those of least another eight million people. Since then, thousands of people struggle and endure hardships to get some food and shelter. Right after the quake, the Nepali government called on the international community to help in rescue operations and the distribution of basic necessities, but now it is allowing no one to provide a voluntary contribution without its consent. Most victims are still living with the food and items provided by charitable organisations. For its part, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), which was set up by the government to deal with the aftermath of the quake, has not yet done much to help people, or gather data on their situation and needs. Rajani Gurung lost her husband to the quake. She survives with her three children in Barpak, Gorkha district (the quakes epicentre). Her current "home" is a tree. "My three children and I live under a tree as a temporary shelter, she said. Before I used to live outdoor, in the fields, but the government banned it. I have no land, so I have to live here." "I heard that the government offers soft loans for reconstruction, but how can one believe them. We have had a wretched time during the winter and the rainy season. " "Last winter there was a lot of rain and snow, she said, crying. The roof on our temporary shelter blew off because of the wind. We survived staying under this tree and these branches. For days, we had no food; my children were crying . . . I dont have any no money to build a new house, so I have to wait for the government's response, but I have not much hope." Salina Tamang, 26, is a mother of two, in Sindhupalchowk district. "My husband is in Saudi Arabia as a migrant worker, she said. For a year, my smallest child, almost newly born, and I lived in a tent. The government has now provided 25,000 rupees: 15,000 for temporary housing, and 10,000 for winter clothing. But this money is nothing. My oldest child has stopped going to school because I do not have the money to pay the monthly fee. My husband works very hard, but he has a very low pay and is not able to save money." "I received food and clothes from some charities. This is how we are surviving. Caritas Nepal has given me food and even a tent." Conversely, she has little good to say about politicians. "Political leaders only give us false assurances, she laments. When there is something to hand out, they start with their own kind. After local party and government officials get enough, our turns come. We have lived this way for a whole year. Let us hope that the government will help us build houses before the next monsoon." "The government was unprepared for the disaster, said Rameshwor dangal, head of the Disaster Management Division at the Home Affairs Ministry. I am afraid it is not capable of dealing with future disasters. This could be because of politicisation and divisions. Since last years quake, the National Seismological Centre has recorded 30,000 aftershocks, including 448 above magnitude 4. Around a million houses and structures were fully or partially damaged. The government estimates the damage to property to be around US$ 7 billion. However, those who can get loans are not waiting for government support. One survivor, Krishna Prasad Pandey, from Bidur-1, Nuwakot district, said he applied for a loan at Nepal Bank Limited. "We spent a whole year in a hut. We cant wait any longer!" The NRA has an office in the district, but its work is slow due to lack of staff. For Radhika Ghale, of Bidhur-3, the NRA is not very effective. Sabita Thapa, another survivor, has taken out a loan to build her house, at a high rate, 10 per cent. "Although the government announced easy loans, we have been compelled to pay high interests. For NRA Chief Executive Officer Sushil Gyanwali, political divisions and delays in forming the NRA didnt allow us to speed up our works. But we are now moving quickly and soon will reach all victims with our support. As for any ban on charities, Gyanwali dismissed the notion. We have not banned [them], but rather sought commitments from all NGOs, INGOs and charity organisations for what they want to do. They are not free to go into affected area and do things [as they please]. We ask them to seek our approval, providing clear objectives and do things under our monitoring and supervision. We took this decision as many Hindus criticised Christian charity organisations for luring and converting people in the name of aid. So far six I/NGOs have been given approval for work. Led by Card. Joseph Zen, dozens of Christians of all denominations protested to ask Beijing to stop the destruction of Christian religious symbols. The retired bishop of the territory: "We have less freedom here too, it is our moral duty to denounce this". Xi Jinping meets religions: "You have to obey the Party, and Communist officials must be atheists and Marxist to defend ourselves against overseas infiltration ". Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - A group of dozens of Christians led by Card. Joseph Zen has asked the Chinese government to stop demolishing crosses on mainland China and to release religious leaders from jail. The retired bishop of Hong Kong pointed out that freedom is declining even in the former British colony: "We need to speak out, to take action to prevent this from spreading". The protests were held yesterday in front of the Hong Kong Liaison Office with China. The Hong Kong Christian Institute, Christians for Hong Kong Society, Christian Social Concern Fellowship and Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Hong Kong were the four groups that protested yesterday. Participants chanted "respect for religious freedom" as they left flowers in memory of those who have died to affirm this right in China. The group reminded those gathered that more than 2,000 crosses were removed or demolished in the province of Zhejiang alone since the end of 2013, when the campaign against Christian religious symbols was started by the local Party. In addition, the protesters asked the central government in Beijing to release pastors and priests imprisoned for opposing these demolitions. Card. Zen he was worried the anti- Christian campaign could spread to Hong Kong. "The freedom is less and less. So we have to speak out because we, in Hong Kong, can see the possibility of the anti- Christian campaign spreading from the mainland," he said. The Hong Kong protests come one day after the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and representatives of the United Front (which gathers together all "non-communist" social groups in modern-day China). During his address, Xi stressed that religious groups must obey the Party: " Religious groups must adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China". But party members must be "unyielding Marxist atheists," Xi said, calling on them to "resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means". by di Nirmala Carvalho The rally takes place from April 22 to May 21 in the city of Ujjain. The largest Hindu pilgrimage in the world, about 50 million pilgrims are expected to bathe in the waters of the sacred river Kshipra. 13 Akharas of the country, the training school for seers and holy men, also take place. The local church offers free care for the medical needs of the pilgrims. Ujjain (AsiaNews) - On the banks of the sacred river Kshipra,in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, the Simhastha Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of Hindu faithful on the planet has begun. The month of celebrations, from 22 April to 21 May, it is expected to attract around 50 million pilgrims who come from all over the country to make ablutions in the river and break free from the cycle of rebirths. The local Church has opened the Pushpa dispensary to provide medical treatment to the pilgrims in case of need. Speaking to AsiaNews the director of the structure, Fr. Anthony, said: "All the pilgrims are children of God. They are to receive the blessing of the gods. Being at their service is an act of grace for the Catholic Church ". The Kumbh Mela is one of the most popular Hindu festivals. It is celebrated every three years in rotation in four Indian locations (Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik), where the holy rivers of the Hindu religion are located. The celebration includes immersion in the river water, prayers, songs and meetings. This year the celebration takes place in Ujjain, where the Mahakaleshwar temple, which houses one of the 12 Jyotirlingas found across the country, the phallic symbol representing the god Shiva. In addition to the citizens, all 13 Akharas of the country are participating. These are the schools that form seers and holy men. The state government has deployed 22 thousand agents to ensure the safety of the event, including police and security officials from other departments. To meet the medical needs of this huge mass of people, Msgr. Sebastian Vadakkel decided to open the Catholic dispensary. Fr. Anthony says: "The Catholic Church is at the service of pilgrims. Four doctors, six nurses and two assistants work at our clinic. All treatment is completely free of charge". by Xin Yage The winning party in the elections, the DPP, is seen as closer to young people and determined to try new paths. But the new president will also have to find a balance with mainland China. And her contribution as a woman. Taipei (AsiaNews) - The new president of the group that emerged victorious from the 16 January elections, begins her term of office in a month. In order to obtain an overall view of peoples expectations we went out onto the streets to interview people from every walk of life in the capital, ahead of Tsai Ing-wen () and her government beginning their work on 20 May. What was most striking is the burden of expectations placed on the new government team. Among the young, everyone feels that the Progressive Party (DPP, ) cares much more about their future than the Nationalist Party (KMT, ). This is at least the general idea. The KMT is seen as too slow in understanding the generational change taking place and far too tied to big corporations. "For example, their slowness in understanding this was seen in the last election campaign - says Ann Wang (), 28, a hairdresser by profession it took them weeks and months to select the new leaders. They gave the impression of not having a clear idea. How can a young person be attracted to a confused party? " Her father also remembers the past: "Since the properties of who was in power before 2000, that is, the KMT (money and various types of assets, including a lot of real estate) still belong to the KMT, a lot are wondering if it is not the case to start looking into who they really are. There are still many people exploiting the glorious past of the KMT, its connections and its properties. But we must recognize that others, within the same party, such as Eric Chu (), who was defeated in the last election by Tsai Ing-wen, is loved, and willing to dialogue. " One thing that worries the youth is their future in the world of work. Sitting at the bar with Mr. Zhou ), 24, a step away from a degree in engineering, he tells us: "As for finding a job, Taiwan lags behind Korea and mainland China. Their governments have better understood the needs of young people, while the KMT was not worried about this, or has been unable to find convincing solutions. For this reason young people chose another government and another politics". His friend, Mr. Chen (), who started up his own company a few years ago, intervened saying: "In addition, the DPP is preparing a bill to allow people to vote once they turn eighteen [Now you can vote only if you are 20]. Now the opportunity is in the hands of the DPP, Tsai Ing-wen, however, must be very good at not throw it to the wind, or in four years they will suffer the same fate as those who are now in government". "Even the current president, Ma Ying-jeou (), had broad support in 2008. But the support of today is no guarantee of support tomorrow. Now Tsai Ing-wen is preparing to fight on two fronts: to give a good old age to the elderly, which can create employment for young people, and at the same time finding ways to enable young people to have more children. The task is not easy but she focuses on long-term care for the elderly ( ) and new biotechnologies ( ) ". Ms Chou ( ), who teaches history and civic education in a secondary school in Taipei, is the proud host of a popular internet blog on political issues. She also touches on other sensitive issues: "One of the main problems is always the management of the relationship with the continent. Ms. Tsai is striving to reaffirm that her government will not damage the very good relations with Beijing. Unfortunately some branches of the tourism industry have already experienced a decline after the elections, even before the new government takes office. However, this was her area of specialization during her studies in England (her thesis focused on skills in negotiations) so there is a lot of hope in her diplomatic capabilities". I ask her to about the new elected presidents stand out feature: "Her main talent is her natural ability in working with different people, creating an atmosphere of calm and seriousness and her targeted analysis of the situation". And as a woman? Does she feel better represented? "There are undoubtedly a lot of expectations about the fact that she is the first female president. Among the young people it recognizes the value of women in order to make important decisions. Even compared to 20 years ago there is a very different perception of the woman's capacity if placed in conditions conducive to work and not disadvantaged in their profession. Also the fact that women of value as Chen Chu (), who as mayor of Kaohsiung ( ) is doing an excellent job, has opened the way for a woman can apply even to the Presidency of the country. I am a teacher and I can say that Tsai Ing-wen has better ideas than others, about the value of education in professional formation. In a recent meeting with a large group of high school students in Taipei [pictured], she encouraged the young people to nurture four things ( ): curiosity () willingness to risk () courage () and radical change (). This shows the spirit in which she wants to throw herself into her new position, for all these reasons I think the Taiwanese population has chosen the best person for the challenges that await us in the coming years". One of the saddest parts about summer ending is that suddenly it becomes a lot harder to go out for ice cream. Most ice cream shops that had l By Alessandro Palci, Research Associate in Squamate Evolution People are fascinated by the unknown, by the possibility that there are things out there that are yet to be discovered. We think that most of our planet has been mapped by satellites and continents have been thoroughly explored. Although scientists estimate that millions of species are yet to be discovered, these are mostly assumed to be very small animals, especially invertebrates. Long gone are the days of famous explorers, when the borders of uncharted lands were marked with warnings such as here be dragons. And yet, many of us, still hope that some amazing, unexpected creatures may be hiding somewhere. These creatures are the so-called cryptids, animals such as the Himalayan Yeti, north American Bigfoot or Australias own Yowie. Perhaps the most famous is the Loch Ness monster, which has been back in the news recently, thanks to the discovery of a nine-metre long object at the Scottish lake. A team of Norwegian researchers found what was initially thought to be evidence for the existence of the monster, informally known as Nessie. But this evidence later turned out to be just a prop from the 1970 movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which sank after its buoyant humps were removed. This team of researchers was using some advanced sonar technology in the hope of unveiling the mystery of Loch Ness once and for all. But the prop is all they have found so far. Certainly, many people were disappointed. But from a scientific perspective, what are the odds that a prehistoric reptile actually inhabits the depths of Loch Ness? Finding Nessie Let us examine the arguments that can be reasonably put forward for the existence of a monster in Loch Ness. The first written report of an unusual aquatic creature in the proximity of the lake dates back to the seventh century. But medieval texts arent terribly reliable, as they often include monsters and supernatural creatures. We have to wait until the end of the 19th century for the next sighting. Interestingly, the eminent English palaeontologist William Daniel Conybeare described the first fossil skeleton of a plesiosaur about 50 years earlier, and these prehistoric animals rapidly captured peoples imagination. Could this have affected the sightings that came in the years that followed? If we exclude the plethora of anecdotal accounts that occurred in the 20th century, the evidence so far is in the form of photographs and movies, which sceptics dismiss as floating logs, seals or hoaxes. Then there are sonar images, which unbelievers claim to represent fish schools, algal blooms or echoes from submerged cliffs (or even movie props). Shutterstock/Kostyantyn Ivanyshen Some scientists argue that a giant aquatic reptile would have a hard time surviving in the frigid waters of the Scottish lake (around 5, on average). But sea turtles are large reptiles as well (some exceed 200kg) and they can thrive in the cold waters off the coasts of Iceland and Alaska. A study by French scientist Aurelien Bernard and colleagues, published in Science in 2010, examined the oxygen isotopes extracted from the fossil bones of plesiosaurs. The isotopes showed that these animals were likely capable of adjusting their body temperature (endothermic), and were therefore capable of surviving in relatively cold waters. However, unless Nessie is a fish, it would need to surface regularly in order to breath and so its apparitions should be fairly frequent. But they are not. South Australian Museum Such discrepancy could be explained by the peculiar body shape of the creature, purportedly looking similar to a plesiosaur. The small head located at the end of a long neck would make it easy to conceal the body in the murky waters while only its nostrils break the surface for a few gulps of fresh air. More than one Nessie needed But there is another problem that makes the existence of such a creature extremely unlikely. Nessie cannot possibly be a single creature that has survived for thousands of years. What we call Nessie, if real, must be a population of several interbreeding animals that made it to our days. Population biology tells us that only two interbreeding animals would not be enough for a species to survive. But, if we have several Nessies, why is it so hard to see these creatures? The lake was sealed off from the ocean at the end of the last Ice Age, at least 10,000 years ago. Any population in question must be somewhere in the lake, if it actually exists. Whats more, animals die. So why hasnt a carcass of one of these animals been found? New species of large animals do turn up unexpectedly every now and then. The Coelacanth, a fish thought to be extinct for millions of years, was caught off the coast of South Africa in 1938, and the megamouth shark is another living fossil discovered only about 40 years ago. But these are creatures that live in the ocean, a very poorly explored part of our planet. Considering how much attention has been devoted to exploring the waters of Loch Ness in the past few decades, with sonars, submersibles and the like, I would be very surprised if a creature the size of a plesiosaur was actually living down there. So I ask again, why are we still searching for the Loch Ness monster? Alessandro Palci does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above. Originally published in The Conversation. Wow! That's awesome! I am indeed delighted for you and your spouse! Thanks so much for the encouragement and kind words! Wishing you and your partner all the best! My husband and I had also applied for the Partner Visa subclass 309 / 100. We have been married for 2 years and 3 months at the time of our application. Our paper application was lodged at AVAC in Kuala Lumpur on 6 April 2016. Then, we received an auto-generated email with receipt and file numbers from the DIBP on 7 April 2016. Nothing since though. The officer at AVAC Kuala Lumpur did advise us that we would need to post the original AFP and Malaysian police clearances to either them or the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur in the future. I shall keep you updated with our progress. Thanks again. Take care. Have a safe flight! A 457 visa and a 2 week bridging visa was lodged with an interview to take place last Friday for my Taiwanese friend. Upon arriving at the interview process he was told there is nothing on file that these forms were lodged, first the lady said a 457 can't be lodged online while later stated he had to lodge it online, "confusing" He was given until Wednesday this week to file again, He has original Lodgement number, but this was not even checked at immigration dept If anyone knows a Immigration Lawyer in Victoria open today as time is running out, and need advice as soon as possible Cheers I don't really know but I guess we submitted a decision ready one with heaps of proof of relationship and the fact that his parents came here to meet mine. It was even very lucky I was about to leave for my CFO on April 27,2016 when i got the email. So i didn't have to come back with the visa to get the sticker. Also,seems like the embassy is churning those visas out fast because at the CFO there were 2 other women who got theirs around 4.5-6mos only. I received visa invitation for subclass 190. I have submitted the visa fees, uploaded all the relevent documents, completed the medical, its showing in my health assessment section "All health examinations required for the specified visa subclass have been finalised. Processing of this person's visa application can now continue." However, i have not been assigned a case officer uptil now. I have a couple of questions. 1. Which other documents do i need to fill and upload apart from Form 80 ? I have uploaded the form 80. 2. How long approximately it shall take from here for me to get the visa ? 3. Is there any advise or guideline do i need to keep in mind at this moment..? Thanks. So, we've completed the Partner Visa online via the Immi Account/ And we are now trying to complete the 'Sponsorship for a Partner to migrate to Australia' and a lot of the lengthier questions are the exact same as the Partner Visa application. Specifically, the ones about the financials and nature of household etc. Can I just use the same responses on this as the other application, or how should we approach this? Thanks in advance, SUV HP The newfrom the Japanese brand is inspired by the Acura Precision Concept , and features the latest technologies and styling trends from Hondas premium division.The CDX comes with a brawny profile and aggressive lines. Naturally, the CDX was designed before the Precision Concept, as the latter was revealed at this years Detroit Auto Show, and the CDXs development was completed by then.The two models share the companys promise of Precision Crafted Performance, but the CDX wants to deliver it in the form of an SUV, while the concept was just an exhibit to showcase the broad outlines which will be shown on future models of the brand.Acuras CDX comes with a 1.5-liter turbocharged engine, and thats mated to an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. The engine delivers 182and 240 Nm (177 lb-Ft) of torque. The new SUV is available in both front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive versions.The car has an attractive design, which lost the companys signature beak. We expect future models to follow this trend, which started with the facelifted MDX.Concerning size, the CDX has a length of 176.9 inches (4,495 mm), a width of 72.4 inches (1,840 mm), and a height of 63 inches (1,600 mm). The wheelbase of this SUV is of 104.7 inches (2,660 mm). Its size puts it between the HR-V and the CR-V from the Honda range.The CDX is the first ever Acura to be built in China, marking two premieres at the same time. Acura is also celebrating a decade of presence on the Chinese market, so the association with their local partners was a great opportunity to launch a new model.The local manufacturing facility for the Acura CDX is the ZengCheng Plant in Guangzhou City, and it is operated by Guangqui Honda Automobile Company. Sales of the CDX commence in July 2016. To be more precise, Marco forgot to secure the frunk of the Prancing Horse before setting off. The inevitable happened, so he didn't even manage to shift into second before things turned nasty."My camera was still running the moment I broke my mistake my friend R3 Wheels' Ferrari 458 Speciale. A erroneous closing of front bonnet has caused its sudden opening as I took off with the result of smashing the windshield," Marco explains.Despite the Fezza delivering audible warnings, the driver failed to notice the issue, once again proving that driving errors are embedded into the human source code. Fortunately, the owner of the supercar seems to have taken things lightly, at least judging by the reaction he has on camera.In case you're wondering what he does for a living, the guy who supplied the 458 happens to own a few custom wheels brands, label displayed on the car included.We have to admit we had noticed this 458 due to its Milka chocolate-like livery (the Ferrari previously had a Marlboro wrap) and we were looking forward to Marchettino's drive, but when the unexpected hits, there's not much you can do.P.S.: This happening might make some wonder about the daily driving experience of the supercar spotter. We should probably mention that Marco, whose nickname we believe has something to do with Ferrari's Manettino, started off with a Fiat 500 Abarth, but also acquired an R35 GT-R earlier this year. For the participating drivers that like to keep an eye on what happens in the racing world, this probably didn't come as a total surprise - the title must've been reserved for the snow that shook the Six Hours of Silverstone earlier this month. As it turns out, global warming, not British weather, is to blame for all the slippery time track many drivers, be they pros or amateurs, have to face this year.However, since many 'Ring tourists don't necessarily fall into the category described above and with amateur track days obviously lacking pit crew assistance, the cars had to face the weather's caprices while on winter tires.As a result, most of the resulting soundtrack was comprised of tire noise, with engines being treated milder than during their break-in interval.Even so, there were enough drivers who decided to stick to the plan, thus allowing spotters to record pieces of footage such as the one below. The clip is almost surreal, for instance showing a guy fighting the weather in a 930-generation 911 Turbo. You know, the Porsche that has the "Widowmaker" nickname.Weather conditions changed throughout the day, so there was also dry tarmac to be enjoyed. Those of you who are not in a hurry can check out the second video below, which gives us a more complete idea of what Nordschleife-lapping drivers had to deal with yesterday.Guess this isn't exactly the 2016 season start Koenigsegg was hoping for, with the Swedes aiming to set a lap record in the One:1 this year. Angelholm might have just found a driver for the job by now... NEDC SUV 4Motion HP kWh kW The German carmaker brought an exhibit which looks close to production at this years Beijing Auto Show, but the T-Prime is just an example of how the upcoming Touareg wil be designed. For instance, the concept car features a new type of infotainment system, called Curved Interaction Area.Instead of conventional controls, the T-Prime merges every command under a sheet of transparent glass, from where the driver can operate the multimedia unit. The concept also features voice and gesture control, touch-sensitive surfaces, and an electronically operated gear selector.The gauge cluster is fully digital, and the dash is dominated by a massive touchscreen display, used for the new multimedia unit. Conventional buttons and controls are eliminated and replaced with touch controls.Concerning exterior design, the T-Prime concept GTE has a look that could easily be interpreted as ready for production. The body features production mirrors, door handles, and even protective trim on the doors to prevent minor scratches when opening them in a cramped space.In this regard, we must also mention the look of the front grille and the integration of individual trim elements within the headlamps. The front bumper features a C-shaped LED strip instead of regular fog lights, and the stoplights have a new interior graphic, as well as a fresh shape.The Volkswagen T-Prime Concept GTE has a 0-60 MPH (96 km/h) time of 6.0 seconds and a top speed of 139 MPH (223 km/h). Volkswagen announced the estimated range of this vehicle, which is 31 miles in the fully electric mode, while thefuel consumption is rated at 87 mpg (2.7 liters/100 km) in the mixed driving cycle currently used in Europe.The fuel economy figures are impressive for a full-size, even if we are talking about a plug-in hybrid. Volkswagens latest concept featuresall-wheel drive with a hybrid drivetrain which delivers 375and 516 lb-Ft of torque (700 Nm). The powertrain consists of a 2.0-liter TSI four-cylinder turbo engine with an output of 248 HP, assisted by an electric motor which provides 134 HP.The eight-speed automatic gearbox fitted on this vehicle integrates a limited-slip differential, which distributes power to the front and rear wheels. Both engines are placed under the hood.The high-voltage battery has a capacity of 14.1, and it helps the SUV start in E-Mode every time. From an entirely low state, the battery is charged in eight hours from a 220-Volt outlet, while public recharging stations with a 7.2power can recharge it in just two and a half hours. Bentley will introduce a First Edition Mulsanne at the 2016 Beijing Auto Show. The luxury vehicle will only be available for a limited period. The Bentley First Edition Mulsanne is based on the facelifted Mulsanne that debuted in March 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland. The upcoming version features several improvements in its interior. The additions to the luxury cars interior include an Asprey of London-made custom Mulliner sterling silver vanity kit bundles a vanity mirror, comb and hairbrush that can all be properly placed in the rear picnic table made by Mulliner. The cabin features several First Edition accents, such as unique tread plates, Union Jack seat embroidery and a diametric overlay on the picnic tables at the backseat. The First Edition also boasts of an exclusive Flying B hood ornament and champagne cooler. World Car Fans notes that there will only be 50 units of the Bentley Mulsanne First Edition to release, to be split among three models, namely, the standard Mulsanne, the Mulsanne Speed and the top-end Mulsanne Extended Wheel Base (EWB). The Mulsane First Edition Extended Wheel Base will showcase a Fulbeck veneer with ripple pattern, originating from a 350-year-old English walnut tree. The company reportedly acquired the rare wood from an auction at an undisclosed amount, just to fit the vehicle. The other two First Edition Mulsanne models will feature an Antique Ash veneer. AutoCar writes that Bentley did not yet announce the pricing for the newest Mulsanne. The standard Mulsanne has a starting price of $331,000, while the Mulsanne Speed costs $364,000. The facelifted model and newer version are expected to be slightly higher. Considering the price of the First Edition Bentayga SUV, the starting price of the First Edition car may be near $433,000. According to Auto Express, the 2016 Beijing Motor Show will feature the Mulsanne EWB, the Flying Spur V8 S and the Bentayga by Mulliner. The V8 S is the newest member of the Flying Spur group which recently held its world premiere in Geneva in March 2016. The Bentayga will particularly showcase a special veneer set that presents the mountain scene where the SUV was named after. The one-off vehicle was embellished by the Mulliner team from Crewe with over 30 individual pieces using 10 different veneers. The primary goal of the project was to show the craftsmanship of the team. More updates and details on the 2016 Beijing Motor Show and the Bentley First Edition Mulsanne are expected soon. Engine manufacturers and airframers have long worried that the FAA would like the authority to declare the replacement fuel for 100LL as applicable for fleetwide use. But at Aero in Friedrichshafen, Germany, this week, Lycomings Michael Kraft told AVweb that the FAA reauthorization bill currently snaking through Congress has specific language giving the FAA administrator power to declare a fuel suitable for the entire GA fleet. It has language in there to actually give the administrator the toolkit to actually throw the switch on the unleaded fuel transition, Kraft said. Its rather dull language to read through, but its incredibly meaningful because the stumbling block has always been how do you implement the transition, Kraft said. One big worry manufacturers had was that the new fuel, while having the correct octane, wouldnt be an easy drop-in fit for 100LL and would require modifications to some or many engines, raising the question of who would design, certify and pay for such mods. Its a big deal. The logistic picture on a new fuel never ceases to amaze me on how hard changing the world over to a different fuel actually is, Kraft added. Two fuels recently emerged from the FAAs Piston Aviation Fuel Initiative, one from Shell and one from Swift Fuel. The second phase of testing now begins, to include more test cell work and actual flight testing. A fuel is expected to be approved by 2018. Hear more on the subject in this exclusive podcast with Lycomings Michael Kraft. 25 April 2016 11:33 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova Armenia's repeated violation of the armistice with Azerbaijan on the frontline once more demonstrated Yerevan's unwillingness to peaceful solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Over the last two days, Armenian military forces breached truce by using heavy artillery despite the previous ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan. The Armenian Armed Forces intensively fired at the Azerbaijani positions in the direction of Agdere region and some villages of the Terter region adjacent to the frontline area using large-caliber guns, mortars and rocket launchers, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said on April 24. As a result of enemys shelling a house belonging to a resident of the Shikharh village of Terter region was destroyed, the ministry said. The enemy, using a 122-mm D-30 howitzer, fired 20 shots in the direction of our positions, the ministry stressed, adding that the Azerbaijani Armed Forces have taken immediate operational measures to prevent further escalation of military activity. The ministry reported that the Azerbaijani military forces have fired enemys tanks, which were trying to move closer to Azerbaijans positions. The enemy has lost a battle tank with its crew and thus, was forced to retreat in the direction of Agdere, the defense ministry said. "Our units have not suffered any losses. Azerbaijani Armed Forces have a total control over the operational situation and are conducting twenty-four-hour monitoring of enemys movements, the ministrys statement reads. Azerbaijans Defense Ministry stressed that Armenia is trying to involve the Azerbaijani side in the active hostilities by carrying out provocations on the contact line of troops. The Armenian criminal military regime is entirely and solely responsible for the provocations that take place at the frontline. Moreover, the ministry believes that the only solution to the long-lasting Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged as a result of Armenian aggression in early 1990s, is the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Armenia captured 20 percent of Azerbaijans internationally recognized territories as a result of 1992-94 war. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations and signing of another agreement on truce in 1995. However, Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council 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 25 April 2016 13:21 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova The recent developments on the contact line of troops between the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies have activated a new round of talks with the mediation of Russia, one of the co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group. The four-day war, which emerged as a result of Armenian provocations towards Azerbaijan, is considered the most violent clash since the ceasefire agreements were signed in 1994 and 1995. Therefore, immediately after the escalation of the situation Russia, which enjoys great influence on Armenia, tried to suppress the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict firstly in Baku with President Ilham Aliyev and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov and then in Yerevan as part of the two-day visit. However, the residents of the Armenian capital are not as hospitable as they try to represent to the whole world the Russian minister was greeted by mass rally. The protesters showed slogans Karabakh is ours!, Armenia is independent, while some accused Russia in occupation of Armenia. Moreover, some demonstrators even burned and trampled Russian flag in protest against Moscows cooperation with Azerbaijan. Those engaged in rally explained their actions by the fact that, in their opinion, Lavrov brought to Yerevan anti-Armenian plan. What did Lavrov discuss in Yerevan? Lavrov met his Armenian counterpart last in Moscow on April 8 as part of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers. On the eve of this event, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that the political solution to the Karabakh conflict remains a priority. On April 21, Lavrov headed to Yerevan to discuss the problem with Serzh Sargsyan and Edward Nalbandian. Despite the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova said that Lavrov has prepared some new groundwork and stressed that the Minister never sits at the negotiation table empty-handed, following the talks Nalbandian said that Lavrov did not say anything new. At the same time, the Russian FM stressed the importance of the so-called roadmap on the long-lasting conflict prepared by the OSCE in 2011, as well as the role of Germany in the settlement process. Moreover, Lavrov said Armenia did not reject the Kazan agreement, which were signed by the parties to the conflict and envisages return of the Azerbaijani territories around Nagorno-Karabakh captured by Armenians during the 1992-1994 war. Some believes that this plan meets resistance from the Armenian side, but another say that if Moscow exerts pressure on Sargsyan, he will be obliged to return the Azerbaijani territories due to the difficult political and economic situation. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 15:18 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova The continuation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will broaden the insecurity that has already covered the area. Spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Jaber Ansari made the remark while talking to a press conference held in Tehran on April 25. Iran has announced readiness to render any assistance to both countries, Ansari said. If the two conflicting sides make any request to Iran, we will play a more active role in resolving the conflict, he stressed. Armenia captured 20 percent of Azerbaijans internationally recognized territories as a result of 1992-94 war. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations and signing of another agreement on truce in 1995. However, Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. As long as the sides have not urged Iran to render assistance, we will do everything possible through international procedures to be accepted by both countries, the spokesperson concluded. Earlier, Mahmoud Vaezi, Irans Communications and Information Technology Minister said Iran is interested in ensuring peace and security in the region, noting the importance of expanding cooperation in fighting against terrorism, radicalism and regional threats. Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, also announced that that Karabakh conflict is one of the main regional issues under the focus of Tehran. Iran and Russia must use every efforts and opportunities to convince Azerbaijan and Armenia to settle the conflict politically, according to Larijani. Iran, Azerbaijans southern neighbor and one of the main actors in the region, has repeatedly declared its readiness to help in resolving the long-lasting conflict that emerged as a result of Armenias aggressive policy towards Azerbaijan in early 1990s. Tehran has repeatedly stated about its support of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 15:38 (UTC+04:00) No meeting is planned between Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at this time. U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, James Warlick announced about on April 25, while talking to Tend. "While we do not have any meetings of the ministers planned at this time, we are in constant contact with them to lay the groundwork for the sides to begin a negotiation on a settlement [of the conflict] under the auspices of the [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chairs," he said. "We are ready to meet with the ministers at any time." Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war. The peace talks have been largely fruitless so far despite the efforts of the co-chair countries over 20 years. The sides to the conflict currently hold talks based on the renewed Madrid principles, which envisage return of occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, ensure the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence, future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh and etc. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:00 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The postponement of visits always serves somebody's interests. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has recently postponed his visit to South Caucasus scheduled for Apr.23-27. It is strange that everything happened a day before the visit. Ban Ki-moon planned to visit Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia and the visit to the region was prepared. Some sources confirmed to Trend Apr.20 that the preparations for the visit to the region are going on at full speed and that the secretary general will leave for Georgia Apr.23. However, the news came on Apr. 21 about the sudden postponement of the visit. Unexpectedness became the key point here. It's strange when a visit is canceled the day before its start. Everything became clear thanks to information obtained by Trend from diplomatic sources. It turned out that Ban Ki-moon originally planned to arrive in Georgia in the evening of Apr. 23, in Armenia - on Apr. 25, and in Azerbaijan - on Apr. 26. However, for our neighbors from Yerevan, for obvious reasons, it was vital that the UN secretary general arrive in Armenia namely on April 24, the day the Armenians call "a day of genocide" and chose it as another date on which the world needs to feel heartily sorry for them. However, Ban Ki-moon refused from taking part in the Armenian show entitled "Let's all together recognize the genocide" and honestly tried to postpone the date of the visit to Yerevan to April 25. The reason of postponement is not to visit the memorial under compulsion April 24. The Armenian leadership usually invites everybody who arrives in Armenia to visit this memorial. However, the "long-suffering" nation does not yield so easily. The unprecedented pressure was exerted on Ban Ki-moon, by the Armenians in the US as well, the diplomatic sources told Trend. The officials having relations with the Armenian lobby, the lobby members themselves, as well as many influential members of the political elite poorly versed in the history were persuading Ban Ki-moon to pay a visit. Therefore, the wise UN Secretary General, who became tired of refusing and didn't want to explain why he wouldn't visit Yerevan Apr. 24, simply postponed his visit to the region. Meanwhile, apparently, feeling uncomfortable by the fact that along with the visit to Armenia he was forced to postpone his visit to Azerbaijan, Ban Ki-moon not only sent a letter to Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev in which he delivered a sincere apology to the president and the Azerbaijani people for the postponement of his visit to Baku, but also later personally called the president and once again expressed regret that he could not visit Baku. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 14:10 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The Youth Event of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum kicked off in Baku on April 25, bringing together 150 young leaders from all around the world to exchange their visions and solutions for the world to live together in inclusive societies, Azertac reported. UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, addressing the event, said The UNAOC 7th Global Forum is dedicated to Living Together In Inclusive Societies and attaches great importance to the role of youth in meeting the challenge of, and progress towards, building diverse, inclusive and peaceful societies. Youth and media are particularly key actors in moving forward to the goal of inclusive societies. And without you, we would not be able to achieve our objectives, he said. In opening this event, we also highlight something we deeply believe in at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations: the strength of young people and their ability to transform our world for the better. For the Alliance, inclusive societies cannot exist without the full participation of youth. The Youth Event is just one of many youth-focused activities and programming that we offer. These are built on the principle that young people are the primary agents of change not just in the future but in our present as well. He further said the Baku Forum is a good platform to discuss issues facing the world. "We have gathered in Baku to share our views on current important issues of the world concern," he said. "The international community must live in peace. Encouraging of the dialogue must be our main goal." He emphasized the youth is a catalyst for changes, adding that mainly these young people can better promote and encourage the intercultural dialogue. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser said: Through our Fellowship program, we sponsor every year young people from the Middle East, Europe and North America to experience immersive visits in each others regions. This program enables participants to understand other cultures and traditions, to believe in the importance of living with the others and to encourage them to reject any type of violence. It empowers them to better fight xenophobia and the East-West divide as they go back to communities where they are emerging as leaders. We also organize a video festival called Plural Plus, which celebrates young filmmakers who creatively address critical issues affecting our world. This youth video festival acts as an international platform that amplifies young peoples voices on migration, diversity and social inclusion. Another important program of UNAOC is the Youth Solidarity Fund, which provides youth-led organizations with direct funding to implement outstanding projects promoting intercultural and interfaith dialogue. This year, we funded projects in Africa and the Middle East, in areas affected by tensions, conflicts and violent extremism. Established in 2008, the Fund responded to calls for action made by youth-led organizations around the world on the importance of establishing funding mechanisms for youth. Today, the Fund is more relevant than ever: As the global agenda increasingly speaks of youths participation and contribution to peace, development and security, it is critical to support this participation and contribution through funding and partnership opportunities. Its an important year for the United Nations and the whole international community. We just adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a particular focus on youth, and set new goals for the World. For the first time in History, the Security Council Resolution recognizes the significant role that young people play in adapting to todays global challenges, including those to peace and security. And with the signature of the Paris agreement last Friday, we made quite an important progress towards securing the continued abundance of the resources of the planet for present and future generations. These frameworks are all on todays agenda. As a community, we have to make sure that we empower young people and that they are part of the ongoing process of changing the world. At the Alliance of Civilizations, we know from our experience of supporting youth-led initiatives and grassroots programs that peaceful and inclusive societies cannot be sustainable built without the participation and commitment of young people. This is why we have decided, once again, to include you, young people, into the Forum discussions as key stakeholders. You have been asked to develop Narratives of Tomorrow, in order to brainstorm and reflect on the Forum themes. I look forward to coming back later today to see how your narratives have been shaped and how they will bring new perspectives to the Forum discussions, the United Nations High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations added. Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Goodwill Ambassador of UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Leyla Aliyeva expressed her confidence that the Baku Forum would play a vital role in encouraging mutual understanding and cooperation on a global scale. She highlighted cultural legacy and tolerance in Azerbaijan. Leyla Aliyeva noted the importance of building close cooperation between FAO and UNAOC in order to address the problem of ensuring global food security. She also drew the audience`s attention to the activities of International Dialogue for Environmental Action, IDEA, campaign. Initiated by Leyla Aliyeva, the campaign is meant to unite the global youth with the aim of awareness raising in the field of environmental protection. The campaign accredited to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and granted an observer status within the organization. Azerbaijani Youth and Sports Minister Azad Rahimov provided an insight into the country`s youth policy. He said Azerbaijan`s second largest city, Ganja, was announced the European Youth Capital for 2016. The Minister also highlighted the activities of the Youth Foundation under the President of Azerbaijan. He said that the meeting of intelligent young people from around the world in Baku is very important in term of resolving issues facing the world today. The minister said that Azerbaijan takes significant measures for the young people, adding that the country supports initiatives towards raising the role of youth in the international arena. The Youth Event is conceived as a preparatory event of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum and as such supports the selected young leaders to meaningfully participate in the Forum and to bring youth voices to the Forum discussions. During the Event participants will be able to engage with UNAOC on the relevance of its activities for young people, and to support youth participants access to and knowledge of the global youth movement for peace and its network. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 15:59 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova France, as one of the three co-chairing countries in the OSCE Minsk Group, urged not to resort to the use of force and to return to negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution. Harlem Desir, French Secretary of State for European Affairs, made the remark while talking to media in Yerevan. The talks are needed to prevent such forms of violence which we have witnessed recently, he told media. We need to work together to create a world based on the non-use of force, on the principle of territorial integrity and the right of nations to self-determination. Desir further added that he came to Armenia to call for a peace, justice and reconciliation. The French official believes that the control mechanism over the incidents should be applied, while the parties to the long-lasting conflict should sit at the negotiating table and strictly observe the ceasefire. Despite the reached agreement on ceasefire on April 5, Armenia continues violating truce on the contact line of troops. Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reports that the Armenian Armed Forces intensively fired at the Azerbaijani positions in the direction of Agdere region and some villages of the Terter region adjacent to the frontline area using large-caliber guns, mortars and rocket launchers on April 24. Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war. The peace talks have been largely fruitless so far despite the efforts of the co-chair countries over 20 years. The sides to the conflict currently hold talks based on the renewed Madrid principles, which envisage return of occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, ensure the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence, future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh and etc. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 18:00 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Last year was the hottest year on record, breaking the record set in 2014 by a huge margin. However, 2015 will not be able to keep the leading position for long, experts say expecting this summer to be warmer than in previous years. Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies predicts 2016 to set new records, saying that there's a greater than 99 percent chance this year will be the warmest year on record. March 2016 was the hottest March on record, going back 136 years, according to the Goddard Institute. The average global temperature in March was 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average and the highest for the month of March between 1880 and 2016. Maharram Hasanov, the head of the ANAS Geography Institute also predicts this summer to be warmer in Azerbaijan as compared to 2015. He reminded that in 2015, no rainfall was observed in the country from July 20 to August 20 and the temperature was high. Prolonged heat wave is not expected this year. But the temperature will rise to 40 degrees on some days, he said. Hasanov went on to say that this winter was quite warm in Azerbaijan, and comparative analysis of individual days shows that the air temperature was above the norm. The studies covering period from 1991 to 2012 showed that temperature throughout Azerbaijan increased by 0.5-0.6 C, while precipitation decreased by 15-89 mm. Global temperatures are expected to continue to soar over the next 12 months as rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions and El Nino, an irregularly periodical variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, continue to bring more record-breaking warmth to the planet. Chairman of Azerbaijan Green Movement Farida Huseynova, in turn, admitted that effects of the climate change are obvious, as winters now are shorter, while summers hotter in the country. --- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 16:40 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev received Chairman of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of Belarus Mikhail Myasnikovich in Baku on April 25, Azertac reports. Myasnikovich extended greetings and best wishes of Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko to the head of state. Saying he visited Azerbaijan four years ago, l Myasnikovich added that significant changes had happened in Baku ever since. He congratulated President Aliyev on Azerbaijan`s successes and considerable accomplishments in various areas, particularly in the economic sector. Mikhail Myasnikovich underlined the importance of Azerbaijan`s hosting world-scale events, including the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. The head of state said he had visited Belarus several times, adding that each time he witnessed development, progress, order and sincerity in the country. Saying that great importance had recently been attached in the world and Europe to the role and successful development of Belarus, President Aliyev offered his congratulations on these achievements and said that the two countries were happy for each other`s successes. The head of state emphasized the significance of the fact that Belarus was highly represented at the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, describing this as a sign of the importance attached by Belarus to the event as well as the country`s respect for Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani president said relations with the friendly and partner country Belarus were successfully developing in political, economic and other areas, adding that the inter-parliamentary cooperation was contributing to the development of the bilateral ties. President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of Alexander Lukashenko, and asked Mikhail Myasnikovich to extend his greetings to the President of Belarus. Later, President Aliyev received a delegation led by member of the National Assembly of the French Republic, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel. Mancel was a close friend of Azerbaijan, President Aliyev hailed his role in developing the relations between the two countries. Touching upon the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku, the head of state said the guests from a number of countries had already arrived for the event, and hailed the fact that France was represented at the event by a large delegation. President Aliyev noted that the Forum also created a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral ties. The head of state expressed confidence that Jean-Francois Mancel`s visit to Azerbaijan would be a success. Mancel said they supported Azerbaijan`s fair position in this complicated situation. He noted that they were working to ensure that the French government demonstrates a fair stance on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the French society knows Azerbaijan better. Touching upon the interparliamentary cooperation, Jean-Francois Mancel praised the close friendship and cooperation with head of Azerbaijan-France interparliamentary friendship group, Azerbaijan`s First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva. The sides highlighted the importance of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum, hailed the development of Azerbaijan-France bilateral ties, and expressed confidence that these relations would continue to strengthen. Then, the Azerbaijani leader received Minister of State for Tolerance of the United Arab Emirates Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi. Noting that the relations between the two countries were developing successfully, the head of state recalled with pleasure his successful official visit to the United Arab Emirates and meetings he held there. Stressing that the two countries enjoyed friendly and partnership ties, President Aliyev noted that the number of Azerbaijanis visiting the UAE was bigger before, the number of UAE tourists visiting Azerbaijan had recently increased. Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi said Azerbaijan achieved the rapid development as a result of the implementation of the big infrastructure projects, adding that Baku had become a beautiful and modern city. Noting that this time she visited Azerbaijan as a Minister of State for Tolerance, Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi said the UAE was a multi-national country, and hailed the role of different communities living here in developing the country and ensuring economic success. The sides further stressed the importance of successful cooperation between the two countries within international organizations, and exchanged views over the issues related to the development of the bilateral ties in cultural, trade, tourism and other spheres. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 22:16 (UTC+04:00) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has today arrived in Azerbaijan for a working visit. A guard of honor was arranged for the Turkish head of state at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport decorated with the national flags of the two countries. President Erdogan and his spouse Emine Erdogan were welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister Ali Ahmadov and other officials. Later, President Ilham Aliyev met with President Erdogan, who is on a working visit in the country. The presidents hailed the successful development of friendly and fraternal relations between the two countries based on strategic partnership. The sides noted the importance of the high level meetings in expanding cooperation, and expressed confidence that the bilateral ties would continue to expand. The presidents also highlighted the importance of the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, which is taking place in Baku, and noted that the event contributed to international cooperation. The presidents also exchanged views on bilateral relations and other issues of mutual interest. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 14:23 (UTC+04:00) The project of the international promotion of Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna platform continues. The observatory for the cosmetic chain of international importance organized by Bologna Fiere is present in Bologna, Las Vegas (Cosmoprof North America) and Hong Kong (Cosmoprof Asia). Thanks to the collaboration with Cosmetica Italia and the support of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and ICE the agency for the promotion of Italian companies abroad, the presentation of the exhibition in key markets for the beauty industry continues, which not only confirms the international leadership of Cosmoprof network, but it encourages contacts with new key players and buyers. The first step for the promotion of Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna, celebrating in 2017 the 50th edition, is Azerbaijan. A delegation of buyers from Azerbaijan was already present in the 2016 edition, within the collaboration program with ICE. On 28 and 29 April the organizers of Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna will give presentations to companies and local chambers of commerce. Azerbaijan's choice as the first stop of the road show in 2017 is not random: the country is experiencing significant economic growth rates, thanks to the rise in domestic consumption, which also affects the beauty, hygiene and perfumery products. New business contacts in Azerbaijan will promote the presence of buyers, distributors and retailers of the country in Bologna, for the 50th edition of Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna, scheduled from March 17 to March 21 and from March 16 to March 19 with Cosmopack, the event dedicated to the beauty industry . For more information: www.cosmoprof.com --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:17 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva The old buildings will be gradually replaced with more convenient and newer buildings in Nizami district of Baku in order to provide more comfortable life to the residents of the capital city. The old buildings will be demolished and replaced with new ones in next 5 years. In this regard, Nizami district administration held a meeting with local residents. As many as 131 buildings which are located in this area are under emergency condition. These buildings should be demolished gradually and replaced by new buildings. Chief executive of Nizami district, Arif Gasimov stressed that the government will be in full control of the construction of the new buildings till the apartments are obtained by the citizens. Therefore, no construction company can leave the construction unfinished. Six buildings will be demolished in the initial stage, Gasimov added. In addition, two-storey buildings will be demolished in Mehdi Abbasov Street, Nasimi Street, Chobanzadeh Street, etc., the deputy head of the Nizami district, Garib Mammadov told. He further added that this process will be implemented in accordance with the agreement concluded between the residents and the construction company. The construction undertakes providing temporarily the residents of buildings under demolishment with apartments. VESTA Construction is one of the companies that will carry out the renovation works in the old buildings in the district. The company has developed modern projects for the construction of new buildings. The main objective is to provide the population with modern, comfortable, renovated and affordable apartments. The most important point is that every resident will own his/her own home. The company will offer apartments in the new buildings at the price that will be 30-50 percent below the market prices. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 16:43 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova Baku International Sea Trade Port and Singapores SMRT International and Ectivise Solutions signed a memorandum of understanding on technical cooperation on April 25. The document, which was inked by Taleh Ziyadov, the head of the Baku International Sea Trade Port, Arthur Cheong, Chief Executive Officer of the Ectivise Solutions and Goh Eng Kiat, the Managing Director of the SMRT International, is aimed at enhancing the operational effectiveness of the Baku Port. The two Singapore-based companies will provide support to Azerbaijan in its efforts to introduce new technologies and innovative solutions in the port and free trade zone operations. Thus, Singapore will advise Baku in adoption of such technologies as Group Rapid Transit (GRT) System, Integrated Operation Control Centre (OCC), Auto Warehousing Storage and Retrieval System and other security systems. Thanks to this cooperation the Baku International Sea Trade Port will be the first in the region to introduce driverless transportation smart cars. Todays MoU will enable the Baku Port to achieve its set goal of becoming an exemplary and the most technologically advanced port in the Caspian region much quicker, Ziyadov believes. We value the support of our Singaporean partners in our mission to bring technological solutions that are environmentally friendly and sustainable to users and clients of the Baku Port. Azerbaijan is currently building a new state-of-the-art port complex near the Alyat town of Baku that includes a large area dedicated to a Free Trade Zone (FTZ), which envisages the development of a transport and logistics industry, pharmaceutical cluster, common-use oil supply base facilities, and manufacturing, packaging, labeling and consolidation areas. Located at the strategic crossroads of Europe and Asia and near sizeable markets like China, Turkey, Iran and Russia, the new Port of Baku is poised to become the leading trade and logistics hub of Eurasia. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 17, on measures to establish a special economic area in the Alat settlement, which will also include the territory of the new Baku International Sea Trade Port. This document on creation of a free trade zone type special economic area in the Alat settlement of Bakus Garadagh district represents a milestone of Azerbaijan's policy to strengthen the country's position as a regional logistics and transportation hub. Once established, the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) will bring huge revenues to Azerbaijan's state budget. The profitability of FTZ has many examples in the world; FTZ in Hong Kong or in Dubai turned both cities into a center of attraction for investors from all around the world, and paved the way for inflow of huge funds to the countries. The establishment of FTZ will also bring a large amount of foreign investment into Azerbaijan, as well as open the country's doors to new investors. As Taleh Ziyadov, Director General of the Baku International Sea Trade Port said earlier this free trade zone will attract up to $1 billion just in the first few years. This will become possible thanks to the special tax and customs policy, which will be pursued in the territory of the FTZ. The privileges can cover the income tax, VAT, tax of profit and property tax. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:19 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva The issue about financing the project on the construction of a wind power station on the islands on Pirallahi and Chilov in the Caspian Sea can be resolved in the next month, Jamil Melikov, the deputy head of the State Agency on Alternative and Renewable Energy Sources told reporters on April 25. The cost of the project fell to 400 million euros due to the devaluation of the manat, he said. Financing will be carried out by a foreign investor. The delegation from the foreign company will visit Baku for talks in May, Melikov added. Perhaps, there will be an agreement on further cooperation. In general, the implementation of the project will take at least three years. Preparations for the feasibility study will be carried out in the next year. Earlier, the wind power plant was planned to be built on the water without using any platform. However, in this case, the project cost would exceed 1 billion manat ($667 million). Its construction on the platforms will save about 500-550 million manat ($333-367 million), Akim Badalov, the head of the SAARES said to media last week. Like the Oil rocks, the wind farm will be the first wind power station ever constructed in the Sea. The planned wind power plant will have the capacity of 200 megawatts. It will be constructed on the platforms between Pirallahi and Chilov islands in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan is currently increasing the share of the renewable sources in its electricity production. At the moment, the capacity of the power system in Azerbaijan amounts roughly to 7,200 megawatts in total. However, the total potential of alternative and renewable energy sources exceeds 12,000 megawatts in Azerbaijan. Most of it accounts for solar energy with the estimated potential of 5,000 megawatts. The potential capacity of the wind power is estimated at 4,500 megawatt, biomass 1,500 megawatts, geothermal energy 800 megawatts, while the remaining 350 megawatts accounts for the potential small hydro power plants. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:54 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova Producers of export-oriented products in Azerbaijan will be provided with additional privileges when issuing loans. This was announced by Economy and Industry Minister Shahin Mustafayev at a conference dedicated to the Entrepreneurs Day in Azerbaijan in Baku on April 25. The government is taking measures towards amending the appropriate legislation, he added. "As a result of measures on developing the business environment, including in the field of ensuring transparency and protecting the interests of businessmen, entrepreneurship has become a driving force of the Azerbaijani economy," he said. Recently, the government has been taking significant measures to improve the business climate in the country. Since November 2015, when audit of entrepreneurial activity in Azerbaijan was suspended for two years, only 44 audits were carried out, including 34 - in the first quarter of 2016. In comparison, more than 19,000 checks were conducted in the first quarter of 2015. "An effective system of the state support, including provision of tax benefits, subsidies, preferential loans for projects, establishment of agro-parks, industrial parks, business incubators, works on enlightenment, organization of business forums and exhibitions and other measures allowed to increase the share of the private sector in GDP to 80 percent, and in the employment - up to 74 percent," Mustafayev stated. Furthermore, the number of business entities in Azerbaijan has increased by four times - up to 700,000over the past 10 years. Promotion of entrepreneurship Speaking at the event, State Customs Committee Chairman Aydin Aliyev announced that the Committee jointly with the country's Taxes Ministry has developed a package of proposals to support and promote investment making. He noted that representatives of other ministries also participated in the development of this package of documents, and these proposals have already been submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers. "The policy of customs duties and taxes, which aims at supporting the development of domestic production and protecting market, is reviewed in this document," Aliyev said, adding that the State Customs Committee continues to enhance its activity within the framework of instructions of the head of state, and the first results have already been achieved. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 4 on additional measures in connection with continuation of reforms in the customs system. Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee and the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies have been tasked to establish postal offices within six months at customs checkpoints for conducting customs debt payments in line with the Article 244.2 of the country's Customs Code. Also, the State Customs Committee was instructed to ensure receipt of all declarations in electronic form, mutual exchange of electronic information between different government agencies within two months. To accelerate the turnover at the customs checkpoints, the Committee was also instructed to create conditions for transportation of goods on the basis of veterinary, phytosanitary, hygienic and other certificates, documents provided in advance by the exporting country. "We have two months to address issues arising from the order. We have already begun the process of electronic declaration. Other issues, in particular on the creation of "green" corridors, opening of deposits at customs will be resolved in the near future," he said. Released lands Shahin Sadigov, the head of the economy and finance-credit policy department at the Cabinet of the Ministers, believes that it is high time for local entrepreneurs to submit their proposals for the implementation of projects in the Azerbaijani territories liberated from the Armenian occupation. Sadigov, addressing the event, said that these projects will allow supporting entrepreneurship and economy in Azerbaijan. "The Azerbaijani society has an ultimate goal - the liberation of our lands. I believe that the second highest goal is the development of non-oil sector and the sustainable development of the economy," the official said, adding that the major part of the normative documents, which are currently considered by the Cabinet of Ministers, is aimed at the development of entrepreneurship in the country. Silk Way The Chairman of the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce, Lu Jianzhong has invited Azerbaijan to be this organization's co-chair. "Currently, 38 countries are the co-chairs of the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce, and we hope that Azerbaijan will join these countries in the near future," he said in his speech. Recalling that on September 9, the Chinese city of Xian will host a summit of the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce, Lu Jianzhong invited Azerbaijan's Economy and Industry Minister and the country's businessmen to take part in the summit. "The Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce intends to cooperate with various countries, and in this regard we would like to establish similar cooperation with Azerbaijan, and to hold a conference in the country in the near future," he added. Lu Jianzhong believes that establishment of entrepreneurs day in Azerbaijan once again proves that the country's leadership pays significant attention to the business issues. He also expressed confidence that under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan's national economy will become much more developed. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 13:01 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Nizami Cinema Center in Baku hosted the awarding ceremony of the first Booktrailer Festival in Azerbaijan organized with the assistance of Azerbaijan's Culture and Tourism Ministry, Trend Life reports. Booktrailers are short videos that promote a book or an author, providing a good illustration of the book content. Founder and Director of the Festival Ruslan Sabirli, addressing the opening ceremony, said that the Organizing Committee of the Festival has received 25 works, including from Italy, France and Bulgaria. "We are very pleased by the attention given to our first project by foreigners. However, since the project isn't international, only 21 booktrailers were allowed to compete in the Festival. The jury evaluated the work of each participant separately. After that, the Organizing Committee summarized experts opinions and winners have been identified. All films submitted to the Festival are available on www.booktrailer.az. Here, you can once again confirm the talent of our youth," said Sabirli. First Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Vagif Aliyev, for his part, noted the importance of the project in education of the youth. "The Festival aims at promoting books, supporting and developing creative forms of reading, searching talented young people in cinematography and promoting bookrailers as a part of art and business," said Aliyev. Later the winners were named. Thus, the first place went to Elchin Guliyev (E,Akarsu "Melody for Two), the second place were shared by Natiq Akhundov (N. Vujicic " Life without limits") and Farid Rasulov (S. Bahar "Aztagram"), the third place were taken by Elchin Elhanli (O.Fikretoglu " Dead text"), Elmin Aliyev ), Elmin Aliyev (V. Yolchiyev " Crumpled photos") and Asif Aliyev (V.Nuru " The Presidents daughter"). Sabina Guliyeva and her work "Another, Happiness" (Marc Levy) received the prize of audience recognition. The first place winner received a cash price in the amount of 1000 manats ($604), while the winners of the second and third places 800 manats ($483) and 500 manats ($302), respectively. The secretary of Azerbaijani Writers' Union, President of the PEN club, world-famous writer Chingiz Abdullayev, screenwriter, director, honored art worker and laureate of state prize of the USSR KGB Prize Ramiz Fataliyev, a graduate of Russian State University of Cinematography, laureate of national awards, director Elkhan Jafarov, honored art worker, laureate of national awards, director Ulviyya Konul and another graduate of Russian State University of Cinematography, laureate of national and international awards, filmmaker Nadir Mehdiyev and founder and director of the festival, actor Ruslan Sabirli were the jury members of the festival. Media partners of the event were Trend, Day.az, Milli.az and Azernews.az --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 16:22 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova The Russian Information and Cultural Center in Baku hosted Easter Charity Bazaar on April 21-22, Trend Life reports. A fascinating event, organized by the Russian embassy in Azerbaijan and the Baku and Caspian eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, brought together MPs, representatives of the Culture and Tourism Ministry as well as diplomats and public figures. The Easter Charity Bazaar aimed to collect funds for orphan children. The charity included wide range of events, as visitors viewed works of Azerbaijani painters, woodcarving craftsmen, handmade jewelries, and tasted Easter cakes. The event program also included a charity lottery. All money from the Easter Bazaar will be directed to the needs of orphans. The most active participants of the event were handed the letters of thanks from representative office of Rossotrudnichestvo in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan enjoys a tolerant atmosphere for different nations and religions. The national policy is defined on the principles of tolerance and coexistence of various nationalities, ethnic groups and religious minorities. Many religious confessions co-exist there. There are 1,834 mosques, 12 churches and 6 synagogues functioning in Azerbaijan. The government has created all conditions for religious worship in the country. Easter is the time when Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, which is observed in March or April. It's celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon which is on or after March 21st. The Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday and the last three days are Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Many churches hold special services on Easter Sunday. The coloring eggs in bright and vibrant colors, egg rolling contest as well as preparation of Easter cake is an essential part of this spring celebration. World nations celebrate the holiday differently. For instance, in Russia, the neighbor or loved one of a person pierces the branch of the soft blooms, kept on the latter's shoulder. In the Czech Republic, the males of a family spank females with a homemade whip decorated with ribbons. The spanking is lighthearted and is believed to bring health over the next year. Sprinkling is a popular Hungarian Easter Monday tradition, in which boys playfully sprinkle perfume, cologne or water over young womens head, and ask for a kiss. One very famous U.K. Easter tradition is the giving out of 'Maundy Money' by the Queen on Maundy Thursday. Centuries ago it was tradition that the reigning King or Queen would wash the feet of a few of poor people, the number of people being the same as the monarch's age. This was to remember that Jesus washed his disciples feet before the Last Supper. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 15:45 (UTC+04:00) Extraordinary journey to Paris within "The Art of Travel" project of Fairmont Baku gave an opportunity to participants of the project to experience gorgeous Paris in the most exclusive way. One of the most famous and outstanding hotels of Paris - Raffles Paris, Le Royal Monceau hosted local group and created remarkable moments during the trip. Fairmont Baku Hotel and Raffles Paris Le Royal Monceau are the part of a leading luxury hotel chain FRHI which unifies the hotels under the brands Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel. The comfortable direct flight to Paris from Baku of "Azerbaijan Airlines" has allowed the project participants to proceed immediately to the art travel program prepared by YARAT. The first day of the journey has started with a visit to the galleries of Chantal Crousel and Marian Goodman, continuing with the private tour to Louvre for participants led by Head of Contemporary Art Department, Martin Kiefer. In the evening, participants of the project were invited for dinner to the newly opened restaurant Matsuhisa of Raffles Paris, Le Royal Monceau where they had a chance to taste exceptional dishes by legendary Chef Nobu Matsuhisa. Various combinations of dishes of Peruvian and Japanese cuisines prepared by using unique recipes of Chef Nobu Matsuhisa were presented and specially adapted to the tastes of Azerbaijani Group. The next morning was marked by a visit to the exhibition of Chinese artists demonstrated in the cultural center and Foundation Louis Vuitton, which was launched by LVMH to promote contemporary art. In Centre Pompidou participants attended the exhibition of one of the most popular contemporary artists in Europe Anselm Kiefer. Later, the group visited Paris Art Fair and had an artist talk with the famous Azerbaijani artist Babi Badalov about his installation at Palais Tokyo (Palais Tokyo). Journalists and Bloggers were actively sharing their impressions in social networks. The full reports and articles dedicated to the journey of Azerbaijan Press group under the Art of Travel project will be released soon. About Fairmont Baku Flame Towers On the highest part of the city of Baku, Azerbaijans vibrant capital lies the just opened Fairmont Baku, located in the northernmost tower of the three comprising the Flame Towers complex. Designed by HOK International in the shape and essence of a flame - an apt symbol for this historic land of fire- the building is one of the most extraordinary and innovative constructions of modern times and is itself the tallest building in Azerbaijan. The 36-storey Fairmont Baku, Flame Towers features 318 rooms suites and apartments, over 2,500 square metres (26,900 square feet) of multi-use meeting space, a 3,500 square metre (37,674 square feet), spa facility - ESPA at Fairmont Baku, located over two floors - and several restaurants, bars and lounges. With breathtaking views over Baku, the Caspian Sea and the UNESCO World Heritage site of the ancient Inner City, Fairmont Baku Flame Towers is swiftly becoming the place to stay and be seen. About Friends of YARAT Friends of YARAT is a unique platform for corporates and individuals to be a member of the Art community and be connected with the best network for contemporary culture in Azerbaijan and abroad. Friends are given the privilege of experiencing YARAT like no other visitor and to enjoy a greater level of engagement with the Centre, our curators and exhibitions. You will receive packages with exclusive benefits, including invitations to unique art events, dinners, artist talks, previews, and many other networking and enlightenment activities. Friend of YARAT means belonging to a community that supports active artists and their works. Your support helps to bring the Best Contemporary Culture of Azerbaijan to the world. Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) AZAL is a major air carrier and one of the leaders of the aviation community of the CIS countries. Total route network of the airline is 40 destinations in 19 countries. Azerbaijan Airlines transported more than 1.8 million people in 2014. Azerbaijani civil aviation fully meets the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and AZAL is a member of the most prestigious civil aviation association - the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In June 2015 AZAL received a prestigious "4 Stars" from the leader in air transport research, world-famous British consulting company Skytrax. At the same time, Azerbaijani national carrier was nominated for the award established by Skytrax agency the World Airline Awards in the global category "World Airline that achieved most progress", taking its second place of honor. AZAL has one of the newest airplane fleet that consists of 25 airplanes. AZAL headquarters is in Baku, at Heydar Aliyev International Airport that meets international standards (it was awarded "4 Stars" rating in December 2014). Heydar Aliyev International Airport has become the number one in the post-Soviet space and Eastern European countries due to its revolutionary modernization. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 14:40 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva The Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline, which is designed to transport Azerbaijani gas to the European markets as part of the Southern Gas Corridor, will receive $2 billion to get implemented. The World Bank will allocate $1 billion for the construction of the TANAP gas pipeline, Turkish Huriyyet newspaper reported on April 25. The European Investment Bank is also expected to allocate $1.07 billion for the project on long-term basis and perhaps, under the state guarantee. Last December, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development head of the energy issues for Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Tolga Ergyuven said that the bank was discussing with the shareholders of the TANAP consortium about financing the project. The pipeline will be beneficial not only for Azerbaijan but also to the transit countries. TANAP pipeline fully meets the interests of Turkey. It is significance lies in the fact it is controlled by Baku and Ankara, said Yigit Bulut, the chief adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the TRT Haber TV channel. He added that the pipeline will turn Turkey into an energy hub in the region. In addition, Saltuk Duzyol, TANAP General Manager said to Azertac last week that all opportunities will be used for commissioning TANAP before June 2018. He added that a tender with an approximate cost of $4.5 billion is complete and agreements have been signed within the framework of the project. So far, welding of pipes on the 440-kilometer section of the pipeline has been finalized. The TANAP pipeline project envisages transporting Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas from the Georgian-Turkish border to the western border of Turkey. Shah Deniz gas will be supplied to Turkey in 2018, and after the completion of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, the Azerbaijani gas will be transported to Europe roughly at the beginning of 2020. SOCAR owns 58 percent stake in TANAP project while Botas and BP have 30 and 12 percent stakes respectively. The Southern Gas Corridor included to the list of priority projects for the EU. It provides transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region to Europe via Georgia and Turkey. At the initial stage, the gas will be produced within the framework of developing second phase of Azerbaijani gas condensate field Shah Deniz which is considered the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor. Other gas sources can be connected to the pipeline at the later stages. The gas produced within the second stage of the development will be exported to Turkey and to European markets through the expansion of the South Caucasus gas pipeline and the construction of TANAP and TAP. Moreover, TAP pipeline envisages transporting Shah Deniz gas from Greek-Turkey border to Southern Italy. The pipeline's construction is planned to start in May 2016 while its planned commissioning will happen in 2019. TAP's initial capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year but this volume will be expandable in future. Overall, the realization of the SGC will contribute to enhancing the EUs energy security and diversification of its gas supply routes. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 13:55 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva The latest progress with the Shah Deniz-2 and Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields was discussed at SOCARs International Practical Conference on Caspian Basin and Central Asia: Trade, Logistics, Oil Processing, Oil and Chemistry in Baku on April 25 in Baku. Nearly 70 percent of the work under the Shah Deniz-2 project has been finalized in Azerbaijan and Georgia within the framework of implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor. The statement was made by Energy Minister Natig Aliyev during SOCARs conference. Aliyev emphasized that the work carried out within the framework of project has intensified considerably. The work on the expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline, oil and gas terminal in Sangachal, construction of compressor stations in Georgia was done by 70 percent. Azerbaijan is working closely with the governments of the European Union which is essential for both sides, Aliyev added. It will be possible to export gas from Iran, Iraq, Israel and Cyprus via the Southern Gas Corridor in the future as well. The Energy Minister further added that Azerbaijan has all opportunities for discovering new gas condensate fields. The gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz field development will be exported to Turkey and to the European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and construction of the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline. The initial capacity of TANAP pipeline is expected to reach 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Around six billion cubic meters of this gas will be delivered to Turkey and the remaining volume will be supplied to Europe. The Southern Gas Corridor is among priority projects for the EU. It is designed to transport the Caspian region's gas to Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice-president of Azerbaijan state-owned energy company SOCAR who also attended the conference stated that the volume of oil produced in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block in Azerbaijan stood at 393 million tons from November 1997 to April 1, 2016, and 218 million tons of this volume accounted for the country's profit oil. The volume of the associated gas produced at ACG amounted to 118 billion cubic meters, Yusifzade said. The vice president noted that about 90,000 tons of oil and 36 million cubic meters of gas are extracted in the block of fields per day. Currently, 91 wells operate on the ACG. Yusifzade further said that eight million tons of oil was produced from the ACG during the first quarter of 2016, and 66 percent or 5.3 million tons of it accounted for Azerbaijan's profit oil. Moreover, he added that 299 million tons of overall exports (407 million tons of oil) was transported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The remaining part was exported via the Baku-Supsa pipeline (76 million tons of oil), Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline (11 million tons) and a railway (21 million tons), Yusifzade said. He added that 70 billion cubic meters of gas and 18 million tons of condensate has been produced from Shah Deniz gas and condensate field since its commissioning. At the moment, the total volume of Azerbaijani gas export to Turkey is amounted over 39 billion cubic meters, while over five billion cubic meters is exported to Georgia, he added. Yusifzade stressed that gas exports from the deposit to Georgia equaled to 2.5 million cubic meters per day, while supplies to Turkey made up 18.2 million cubic meters per day in the first quarter of 2016. Daily production of gas from the Shah Deniz field totaled to 30 million cubic meters of gas. Meanwhile, some 7,000 tons of condensate are produced at eight wells of the field per day. The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field's reserve is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. The shareholders in the contract are BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent). --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 15:10 (UTC+04:00) By Gulgiz Dadashova Azerbaijan, a key energy player in Eurasia, today is completely successful country both in terms of production and in terms of transportation of energy resources, and the country is committed to make great strides to boost this position. Over the past decade, Azerbaijan could considerably expand its energy industry enabling the country to be a secure energy supplier to the world. However, the country still enjoys every opportunity to discover additional reserves of gas condensate from its own fields in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijans Energy Minister Natig Aliyev made the remark in Baku on April 25, further noting the necessity of developing mining projects, where all recourses are available. "First of all, it is the third stage of full development of gas condensate field Shah Deniz. The full potential of the block of oil and gas fields Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea is also not disclosed. Here, it is necessary to conduct additional exploration and study deposits below the productive strata. Azerbaijan enjoys enough prospects and targets for the discovery of new gas condensate fields, Aliyev said. The country holds over over three trillion cubic meters of gas reserves which helps the development of the country's export potential. The Shah Deniz natural gas and condensate field started producing in late 2006, making Azerbaijan a net gas exporter. While the main focus is on the Shah-Deniz field with estimated gas reserves at 1.2 trillion cubic meters, Azerbaijan possesses additional significant gas fields such as Absheron, Umid, Babek and Nakhchivan, of which Absheron field is projected to be commenced in 2021. The cited indicators ensure future development of the gas industry in Azerbaijan for a period exceeding 100 years. These reserves are expected to allow Azerbaijan to focus on expanding its energy industry and broader supply routes ensuring a stable economic growth. Azerbaijan, the second-largest oil producer in the former Soviet Union, enjoys a potential to produce oil and gas from shale. Shale gas fields are located at the territory of Gobustan, Shemakhi and other regions. Earlier, ConocoPhilips conducted geological survey at Azerbaijani foothills in accordance with the agreement with SOCAR. Meanwhile, the country recently announced that for the first time it hit a record in commercial gas production level in 2015. The countrys commercial gas production hit 18.9 billion cubic meters in 2015, some 0.2 bcm more than in 2014. Commercial gas production was raised from both Shah Deniz and Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields associated gas. All of these fields are operated by BP. The country produced 9.9 bcm of commercial gas from Shah Deniz Stage 1 in 2015. The total gas production in Azerbaijan (including flared and re-injected gas to oil wells) reached 29.4 bcm in 2015. Azerbaijan has long aspired to engage and cooperate with multiple customers, and for the next decade it plans to be one of the key gas suppliers to the Europe. Most of Azerbaijan's natural gas is destined for Turkey, but the country supplies a small volume to Greece via the Turkey-Greece interconnector. Under a previous arrangement, Turkey was re-exporting Azerbaijani natural gas to Greece, but the ongoing Southern Gas Corridor project will allow Azerbaijan to directly export volumes to Europe. The Shah Deniz Stage 2 will result in increased exports to Europe once the needed infrastructure is completed. The country has the capability to provide additional gas export volumes beyond Shah Deniz phase 1 and 2 developments from 2021-22 onwards, when the Absheron field will come on-stream. The Southern Gas Corridor has made Azerbaijan even more vital to Europe's efforts to become less energy dependent on one source. Europe also called on Azerbaijan to participate in the Trans-Caspian pipeline project and bring Central Asian gas to Europe. There can be a ready market for Azerbaijani gas in the countries of the Central Europe and the Balkans. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 11:00 (UTC+04:00) Foreign banks have no problems for dealing with Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday, IRNA reported. Speaking to the state TV, he added that Iranian diplomats should not be worry about their remarks abroad when they are addressing Iran's foreign partners. Iranian top nuclear negotiator referred to the recent remarks by president of Central Bank of Iran while addressing US policy makers and said Mr. Seif's remarks and blaming Washington for continuation of pressures against Iranian banks was a right action. Iran's diplomacy for removal of sanctions have been successful and US high-ranking officials have underlined that there is no obstacle on the ways of revival of ties between non-American banks and their Iranian partners, the diplomat added. He said that many of European banks have not transited from the period of sanctions to the post-deal era and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation has a duty to convince the European banks to revive their ties with Iran. Saying that Iran has still some problem for transfer of its released assets as well as the oil revenues to the country, Araqchi urged US officials to facilitate the issue. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 11:11 (UTC+04:00) Iran's Airports and Air Transport Co. has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Italian Milan Airport on building a new terminal at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport. If the MoU turns into a contract, then a passenger terminal will be built in an area of 80,000 square meters, Rahmatollah Mahabadi, the CEO of the Iranian company said, ISNA news agency reported April 23. The official said building the terminal is estimated to cost 250 million, adding that the terminal will also provide parking space for 6,000 cars. He added that another MoU has been signed with another Italian company to build a passenger airport in northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz. The Tabriz airport will cost about 50 million funded by the foreign company, Mahabadi said, adding that the Italian side has also agreed to transfer technology and work experience to the Iranian side. Iran's aviation industry suffered great damage under sanctions, as the country was deprived of foreign help not only with airplanes, but construction, maintenance, and technology as well. Now, as the sanctions are lifted, Iran is looking forward to a more modern and well-equipped aviation industry. The country is said to be in need of 500 new aircraft to be imported over five years. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 12:33 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova Iran has expressed its readiness to be a bridge between South Africa and the countries in Central Asia, Caucasus and Russia, as well as Eastern Europe. President of the Islamic Republic Hassan Rouhani voiced this intention at a joint press conference with his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma, adding that Iran can connect South Africa to these countries through the North-South corridor. "Through the ports of South Africa, Iran can gain a way to the large parts of Africa, as well," Rouhani noted. He further noted that Tehran and Pretoria enjoy significant opportunities in economy, trade and technology sectors, and the issues of cooperation in banking and transportation sectors were high on the agenda of talks held between the two presidents. Rouhani believes that developing banking relations can take the lead in expanding the general relations between the two countries. "We can also have a good cooperation in industry, mining and energy sectors as well," he added. The 5,000-kilometer long North-South corridor, running from India to Helsinki, is designed to carry more than 20 million tons per year. Being a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russia's St. Petersburg to the Mumbai port, the corridor is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and further - to Northern and Western Europe. Experts say that the North-South route enjoys several advantages compared to other transport corridors; it is more profitable for each parameter than other alternative routes, such as the Suez Canal-the Mediterranean Sea-Northern Europe and the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Northern Europe routes. The preliminary estimates show that at an initial stage, it is planned to transport 6 million tons of cargo via the North-South corridor a year, and 15 to 20 million tons of cargo in the future. Heading a high-ranking 180-member economic and politic delegation, President Zuma arrived in Tehran on April 23 at the invitation of President Rouhani. The milestone of this visit was signing of 8 memoranda between Tehran and Pretoria. Pretoria was one of Iran's traditional oil markets before the imposition of sanctions on the Islamic Republic due to its disputed nuclear program. Before sanctions cut down Iran's crude oil exports in June 2012, South Africa was importing on average 68,000 barrels of oil from Tehran per day. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 14:55 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova An Iranian official has said that foreign banks have no problems for dealing with Tehran. While speaking to the state TV, the Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs of the country, Abbas Araqchi said on April 24 that Iranian diplomats should not be worry about their remarks abroad when they are addressing Iran's foreign partners. Iranian top nuclear negotiator referred to the recent remarks made by President of Central Bank of Iran Valiollah Seif, who blamed Washington for continuing pressures against Iranian banks. Araqci said this blaming was a right action, IRNA reported. Iran's diplomacy for removal of sanctions has been successful and the U.S. high-ranking officials have underlined that there is no obstacle on the ways of reviving ties between non-American banks and their Iranian partners. Also, many of European banks have not transited from the period of sanctions to the post-deal era and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation has a duty to convince the European banks to revive their ties with Iran. Araqci, saying that Iran has still some problem for transfer of its released assets as well as the oil revenues to the country, urged the U.S. officials to facilitate the issue. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Secretary, John Kerry said earlier that Washington is not opposed to foreign banks doing business with Iran following Tehran's compliance with a historic nuclear agreement with the P5+1 group of countries. "The U.S. is not standing in the way, and will not stand in the way of business that is permitted in Iran since the nuclear agreement took effect. I want to emphasize we lifted our nuclear-related sanctions as we committed to do," Kerry told reporters, sitting alongside his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in a New York hotel on April 22. "There are now opportunities for foreign banks to do business in Iran. Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion among some foreign banks and we want to try and clarify that as much as we can," he added. Zarif welcomed Kerry's statement, expressing hope that it would bring Iran's rights under the JCPOA. "We hope that the statement made today by Secretary Kerry will begin to open the difficult path that had been closed because of concerns that banks had about the U.S. approach toward implementation of the commitments under the JCPOA," he said. The U.S., UK, France, China, Russia and Germany reached the nuke deal-the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in July 2015 in the Austrian capital Vienna. The agreement went into effect on January 16, 2016. Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to put some restrictions on its nuclear energy program in exchange for relief from international economic sanctions. Iran has repeatedly criticized the U.S. for refusing to grant it access to the global financial system. Tehran says such access is one of the goals of the nuclear deal, and has urged Washington to stop preventing non-American banks from dealing with Iran. On April 21, Zarif told reporters at the end of special meeting of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York that Iran does not recognize the verdict of the U.S. Supreme Court against Tehran. "The U.S. government knows well that any attempt concerning Iran's assets will make that country in the position of accountability vis-a-vis the Iranian nation and obliging that country to return those assets to the Iranian nation," he said. The U.S. Supreme Court on April 20 ruled that almost $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets should be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran. The assets belong to the Central Bank of Iran, which has been blocked under the U.S. sanctions. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:00 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Saudi Arabia is ready to tolerate the low oil prices with the hope that it will be stabilized in the long term, Jason Tuvey, the economist at the British consulting company Capital Economics told Trend news agency on April 25. Saudi Arabia is likely considering the oil market from the long-term perspectives, the economist said in his report. Tuvey believes that Saudis probably fear that short-sighted deal on supporting oil prices will contribute to the development of the unconventional oil sources which in its turn, would undermine the country's long-term position in the market. In addition, it can also reduce the demand for hydrocarbons and accelerate the process of eliminating the use of fossil fuels, the expert added. Saudi Arabia has been the major obstacle on the way to reaching an agreement on cutting oil production for a long time, he said. The country preferred to deal with low oil prices rather than lose its market share. The last meeting of the major oil producing countries in Qatari capital Doha on April 17 also ended without any agreement on freezing oil production at the level of January 2016. Previously, Saudi Arabia said that it would not agree to freeze its oil output in the market if the other oil producers, especially Iran do so as well. In its turn, Iran announced plans to increase oil production to the pre-sanctions levels. The main reason of the failure was explained by many experts with the geo-political tensions between Saudis and Iran. Whats more, Iran and Libya did not participate in the meeting. According to the latest report of OPEC, oil production in Saudi Arabia remained unchanged at 10.2 million barrels per day in March. Meanwhile, world oil prices showed a weak trend growth on April 21, while new highs for the year 2016 have been established a day before. The cost of June futures of Brent crude exceeded $45 per barrel on April 25. The main reason for the low prices is blamed to be a supply surplus which currently exists in the market. Abdullah al-Badri, Secretary General of the OPEC, told the reporters during the International Oil Summit in Paris that he expects the world oil market to balance itself by the end of the current year or the beginning of 2017. He also showed overproduction as the only problem that is needed to be resolved in order to balance the market, RIA Novosti reported. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:04 (UTC+04:00) Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov plans to pay an official visit to Belarus in May, a Belarusian TV channel reported on April 25. This issue was discussed during the meeting of Turkmenistan's president with chairman of the Council of the Republic of Belarusian National Assembly Mikhail Myasnikovich who is on a working visit to Ashgabat. Myasnikovich noted that currently, around 10 projects are being implemented in Turkmenistan jointly with Belarus. During the talks, the parties discussed the economic cooperation and restoration of the pre-crisis level of the trade turnover. The information technologies, medicine and other spheres are among the priority areas of cooperation. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 April 2016 17:23 (UTC+04:00) The talks on normalizing the relations between Turkey and Israel continue, TRT Haber TV channel quoted Ibrahim Kalin, spokesperson for Turkey's presidential administration, as saying on April 25. He noted that the parties have achieved serious results during the talks. The removal of the Gaza Strip's blockade by Israel is one of the important issues, according to Kalin. After the deterioration of relations between Russia and Turkey, some Turkish media outlets reported that Turkey and Israel will resume the previous relations. Earlier, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed that Turkey and Israel had private talks. Relations between Israel and Turkey deteriorated after the Freedom Flotilla incident in 2010, when a convoy of six ships, including one under Turkey's flag, tried to approach the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid and activists on board. The flotilla was blocked and stormed by Israeli forces, with eight Turkish citizens being killed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel should apologize for the Freedom Flotilla incident, pay compensation to the families of those killed and end the blockade of the Gaza Strip. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3.0 ( - - ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com Mayor of London Boris Johnson met staff at the Uxbridge branch of Subway to talk about key issues affecting the food industry. These included Greg Madigan, Subways chief executive of UK and Ireland, Charles Stewart, director of operations for Greater London, and Rusty Warren, regional field manager for Greater London. The visit to the high street sandwich retailer on 22 April provided an opportunity for discussions surrounding the key issues affecting the foodservice industry. Subway also said in a statement that the agenda included: Subways positive economic contribution to the UK and the governments public health responsibility deal, and how the franchise is working with the local community to promote the business opportunities in Uxbridge. Last month, Subway opened its 5,000th European outlet with a new site in Livingston, Scotland. Securities America has paid more than $15 million in an SEC case and settlements with the fraud victims of Hector May and his daughter, Vania May Bell. It is quite a life the Abu Sayyaf rebels live on the Phillipines jungle island of Jolo where they keep several foreign hostages for ransom or simple murder. They demanded $6.5 million for former Calgarian John Ridsdel (right) seen with fellow hostage Robert Hall in captivity. Money for hostages is how they keep their war against the Phillipines government going. Every now and then when no one pays up, Abu Sayyaf indulges itself in the luxury of cutting off a hostages head. Thats what it has done to Mr. Ridsdel. The Canadian government confirmed his death through the appearance of a severed head delivered to someone in the Philippines. The CBC quotes one of Mr. Ridsdels friends, former Liberal leader Bob Rae, as saying: Its hard. Its just very hard. Ive been involved behind the scenes for the last six months trying to find a solution and its been very painful. BOB RAE A FRIEND The CBC also says that the Philippines government had said earlier it was moving to rescue the two Canadians and a Norwegian after their Muslim militant captors threatened to behead one of them if the huge ransom was not paid. Whether things could have been done differently, its too soon for that to be said, Mr. Rae said. Certainly the family did everything they could to try to reach a solution. In Alberta, prime minister Trudeau condemned the heinous act and said the Canadian government will work with the Philippines government to bring those responsible to justice. He also offered deepest condolences to friends and family of Ridsdel. He was one of four hostages, including fellow Canadian Hall, held by the Abu Sayyaf militants, who had issued a ransom deadline that lapsed earlier Monday morning. They were kidnapped from a resort last year. The Clifton Steamboat Museum is featuring a temporary exhibit of U.S. military uniforms dating back to the War of 1812 through present, on loan from Doug Porter of Military Memories. Notable historic include infantry uniforms from the War of 1812 and Mexican-American War, as well as a Rough Riders cavalry uniform from the Spanish-American War. The exhibit will be on display until May 31. The next temporary exhibit will be on the history of the United States flag, dating back to the original 13 star design. That exhibit will open on Flag Day, June 14, with a free opening night happy hour from 5 to 7 p.m. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Port Arthur school district plans to more than double its basic flood coverage when it renews in the fall, joining other local districts in guarding against millions of dollars in potential damage from monster rainstorms. Lack of flood insurance is a hard lesson to learn, as evidenced by Deweyville ISD, which is facing more than $12 million in repairs for its elementary school, heavily damaged in the Toledo Bend flood in March. School districts in the Houston area also are assessing damage from last weekend's heavy downpour.If a flood rivaling Houston's or the Sabine River area's occurred anywhere from Beaumont to Sabine Pass, flood insurance would offer some protection for a school district's taxpayers. On Tuesday, the Beaumont school district's Board of Managers learned BISD has $35 million in flood insurance coverage, said Cheryl Hernandez, chief financial officer. In Port Arthur ISD, finance director Phyllis Geans said the district plans to increase its regular flood insurance to $25 million from the $10 million it currently pays for. PAISD has other flood policies that cover certain parts of the district considered more vulnerable, Geans said. Memorial High School has a $60 million policy, with another $7 million for its auditorium. Other flood policies cover Dick Dowling and Adams elementaries, totaling about $24 million. Hurricane Ike showed Port Arthur's vulnerability from a storm surge. The city was saved in that September 2008 storm by its seawall, which had less than two feet of freeboard from the hurricane-whipped tide. No school district learned its lessons better than Sabine Pass ISD, said superintendent Kristi Heid. Sabine Pass carries $60 million in flood coverage for a tropical event, which would be flooding from any named storm, Heid said. Sabine Pass ISD suffered flood damages in Hurricanes Rita and Ike. The school district also carries $13 million for flood coverage in a rain event, similar to the Deweyville flooding, Heid said. Hamshire-Fannett ISD has $5 million in flood coverage, said Allison Byrd, the school district's director of finance. She said HFISD trustees asked that question this week. Port Neches-Groves ISD has flood insurance, but the amount of coverage wasn't available Friday. Nederland ISD did not respond to a query from The Enterprise about whether it has flood insurance. Information from Hardin-Jefferson ISD wasn't available Friday. In the Houston area, the state's third-largest school district, Cypress-Fairbanks, suffered at least $4 million in flood damage across its more than 50 campuses this week. The school district reports that it had "good insurance" for the disaster. The northwest area of Harris County was hit hard by flooding. Klein ISD also reported water in one of its schools, but no damage estimate was available. In the March downpour that dumped 18 inches of rain over Toledo Bend, dam operators opened the floodgates, sending a flood cascading downstream areas along the Sabine River. Deweyville ISD had limited insurance to deal with flood damage at its elementary school, whose students will finish the school year in the high school. DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If a window breaks at Ron Cunningham's immaculate one-story home in Beaumont's West End, a newly installed alarm can be heard miles away. His neighbor put up a beaming nuisance of a bright light over both of their backyards, scheduled to turn on at sunset. Meanwhile, Cunningham is reluctant to load suitcases into his trunk in plain view. It hasn't always been this way on the quiet Dowlen Place subdivision cul-de-sac. Not until Cunningham's home was broken into and ransacked in February, with burglars staying overnight while his family spent the weekend in Dallas. Residents in the West End are panicking, as the area they once considered safe from crime has experienced a jump in burglaries dating back nine months. They are spending money on alarm systems and cameras while hoping their valuables turn up in pawn shops and rethinking additional insurance policies on their belongings. Every week more people are joining neighborhood watch groups. Mobile devices also are uniting them, as residents join private social networks designed to make for safer neighborhoods. One of the most disturbing elements of the trend is that homes are being burglarized in broad daylight, when most people figure it's safest. Beaumont Police Chief James Singletary acknowledged in a news conference earlier this month that burglaries are up in the West End, part of a citywide increase. "It's all over Beaumont but a lot more in the West End than usual," he said. As of last week, only four of 130 West End cases this year had been cleared by arrests. Residents have reacted. Security systems are in vogue in the West End. Cunningham did not have a security system before the burglary. He promptly called a home security company to install sensors on the windows, something he had not considered since moving there in 1998. Burglars apparently entered through Cunningham's laundry room, which leads to the kitchen and dining area. A stack of logs was knocked over and his barbecue pit was used as a boost for someone to shimmy into a narrow back window. Cunningham found a tequila bottle - unopened when he left for the Dallas trip - half empty. Vodka and a bottle of orange juice from his refrigerator were missing. They also took a pajama set that was a Christmas gift from Cunningham's daughter. The most valuable item lifted was his wife's jewelry box, but the Cunninghams had to change their locks because the thieves made off with their spare keys. "We were very fortunate they did not break anything else," Cunningham said. On edge Neighbors in a cul-de-sac on Shadow Lane, where a local surgeon's home was hit, have upgraded their security systems. Police sometimes are able to use surveillance footage from multiple homeowners' cameras to track thieves' activities in a single case. Jean Hillin has lived on Thomas Road for 14 years and said she always considered it safe. After her house was burglarized, she installed a more advanced security system, which is equipped with glass sensors. Fourteen burglaries in one weekend this month - which included large car dealerships and a South End clothing store - prompted BPD's Singletary and Jefferson County District Attorney Bob Wortham to plead for help from the community. The common targets in those burglaries were security safes. The South End clothing store incident marked the 27th time since August that a vehicle was used to smash into a building for a burglary. Wortham called for prosecutors to be aggressive if the cases end up in court, with no probation offered. It's because people are on edge. "The panic, it's just not good for this town at all," Hillin said. "It's happening every day." Hillin said she was there most of the day her home was broken into, with her expensive jewelry and husband's guns lifted from their bedroom within minutes. The burglars removed pillow cases and stuffed them with stolen goods, making their way in and out of the master bathroom. They took a patio furniture cushion and broke into a French door toward the back of the house. Hillin was gone for about two hours - sometime between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. It was a large enough window for intruders to make Hillin feel violated, especially when she found out neighbors also had been hit, one earlier the same day in February. "Someone is obviously watching the area and knowing when I'm gone," Hillin said. "It's stressful." Ron and Debbie Hunt are doing more walkthroughs around Briar Creek because of burglaries. Debbie Hunt, who networks with other West End residents on the Nextdoor mobile app, said there is a newfound interest among neighbors. They're nosier, but well-intended. The Hunts are constantly monitoring neighbors' gates and garages, even ringing doorbells when one is left open and unattended. Burglaries are the hot topic at homeowners association meetings, where Beaumont police have given standard, common-sense advice like locking doors and reporting suspicious activity. "We are concerned about it, any neighborhood would be," Debbie Hunt said. Feeling violated A burglary on Briar Creek the same day as Hillin's, about two miles further west, was almost identical. Security footage from a neighbor's camera showed the same white Chevrolet Impala, unfamiliar to either homeowner, pulling into their driveways. While the law defines robberies as crimes against people and burglaries as crimes against property, West End residents make no such distinction about being violated. Hillin said she police corrected her after she said she was robbed. Meanwhile, Beaumont PD detectives are overwhelmed. Singletary said earlier this month that burglaries citywide are up 35 percent from last year. The West End's burglary numbers are actually the lowest of the three zones, according to BPD records. Of 444 burglaries from Jan. 1 to April 18, about 30 percent were in the West End. Most years, the North End leads the city's three zones in burglaries, but it's the South End that has seen the most since January. As of last week, only 26 burglary cases had been cleared by arrests, including the West End's four. Police suspect Houston gangs are responsible for most of the crimes, while residents fear the thieves might be a lot closer to their backyards. Cunningham said he found a wallet left at his home identifying a Port Arthur man. No arrest has been made. For now, West Enders are relying on security systems and nosy neighbors. Some of them are being told to search local pawn shops for their stolen property. "No one wants to hear that after they've just been violated," Hillin said. Heightened awareness Local dentist Alan Coleman had an alarm at his home for years but rarely used it until the break-ins started happening around him. There was one in his Delaware Place subdivision two months ago, then another around the same time about half a mile away at Hillin's home. After his 84-year-old mother's neighbor was hit, he installed an inexpensive, user-friendly system at her house. Coleman put in the SimpliSafe, a self-installed unit, for less than $300. It equips his mother with a lava-lamp size base unit that calls the alarm company if there's a break-in, three window censors, a motion censor and a loud external siren that cost less than $200 a month. She can also press a red panic button that immediately dispatches the police. Because of the public response, Singletary has instructed officers to drop what they're doing when a burglary in progress is reported. Very few people are recovering stolen property. Gerald Farha, a local realtor who was burglarized in March, had property discovered at a pawn shop. Someone tried to pawn his firearm and Rolex. A a jeweler became suspicious and turned in video to investigators. It led to one of the few arrests in a series of mysterious cases. "Now that this is happening, we turn the security system on every time we leave the house because we know what's going on," Coleman said. BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/BrandonKScott Valero Energy plans to expand a Pleasure Island dock, currently used to ferry crude oil from foreign sellers to its Port Arthur refinery, so that it can also load gasoline and jet fuel onto outgoing ships, according to a recent permit filing. Valero, which did not respond to repeated phone calls, said in a permit application to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that it hopes to complete the expansion by the end of 2017. The permit application says the capital cost will exceed $25 million, and previous information indicates it could be close to $50 million. Operating since last year, the $75 million Sabine-Neches Ship Channel dock allows large tankers to unload crude oil into pipelines running to Port Arthur. A second dock built under the expansion would use a reversed system, allowing finished products to be loaded onto departing ships. Although Valero applied for a permit, which carries a $75,000 filing fee, it does guarantee the company will pursue the project. Final decisions on industrial projects often are made after all regulatory approvals have been secured. Valero's Port Arthur refinery, which employs 850, processes 375,000 barrels of crude oil per day and is configured to process heavy, sour crude found in places like Venezuela, Canada, Mexico and other nations. Valero, as a 50-50 partner in PI Dock Facilities, operates the Pleasure Island dock, which was developed by co-owner Trans-Global Solutions. TGS chief executive Bill Scott through his assistant declined to comment, citing a non-disclosure agreement. Scott told The Enterprise in 2013 the project's second phase would cost $50 million. A potential third phase, valued at $75 million, would bring total investment at Pleasure Island to about $200 million, Scott previously said. The proposed expansion would include new piping, product loading arms, emissions control equipment and a new dock. "All of the product that will be loaded at the new dock will be transported to the site via pipeline," the permit application says. The development will emit 185.5 tons of volatile organic compounds per year, according to the application. VOCs, depending on the specific compound, range from being extremely toxic to having no health impacts, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. For context, the dock's VOC emissions would represent about a 1.6 percent increase to the amount of VOCs released by Southeast Texas facilities - 11,026 tons per year - but fall short of the 250 tons per year threshold for classifying major sources. The facility would rank 19th in area VOC emissions, according to TCEQ emissions data from 2014, the latest available figures. EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/EricBesson_news While Texas keeps finding new reasons to deny Medicaid coverage to low-income residents, other states like Arkansas are finding ways to expand it. We should be like them. Last week a Texas appeals court upheld $350 million in Medicaid cuts imposed by the Legislature that would have gone to disabled children. The Third Court of Appeals supported the reductions in reimbursement rates for therapists who serve Medicaid recipients, including kids with disabilities. Perhaps in attempt to soften the blow, the court ruling said, "Medicaid benefits are entitled to constitutional protection, but this protection does not mandate that a Medicaid participant has access to a particular provider or that a participant's provider will continue to receive payment or reimbursement rates at a previously set amount." The legalese notwithstanding, advocates for the poor said the bottom line was less health care for people who desperately need it. Medicaid fared differently in Arkansas last week. That state, like Texas, has a conservative Republican governor. In fact, when Asa Hutchinson was running for that office, he repeated the standard talking points about Obamacare and its Medicaid expansion being a blight on this land of ours. Once elected, however, reality set in. Hutchinson saw that Medicaid expansion had provided subsidized health insurance to more than 250,000 low-income residents of his state. Reluctantly or not, he supported his state's first-in-the-nation hybrid Medicaid expansion. It's an alternative to the standard Medicaid expansion under Obamacare in other states. But it basically provides fig-leaf protection for conservatives who want to do the same thing but pretend they are not. Last week Hutchinson even used an odd parliamentary maneuver to preserve the hybrid program. Lawmakers approved a measure that required supporters of the program to back a provision ending it. Hutchinson then used his veto to strike the end date for the program, thus keeping it alive. It's not something they teach in Politics 101, but it worked for now. When the Texas Legislature convenes in January, some similar compassionate conservatism would be welcome. Oklahoma recently became the first state to remove maintenance of certification requirements for physicians, according to a Medscape report. There are similar laws in other states moving up the legislature, challenging the American Board of Medical Specialties' MOC program. Those against MOC including internists as the biggest critics feel the requirement "wastes their time and money and does little to nothing to improve their patient-care abilities." Here are five things to know: 1. In the face of criticism, the American Board of Medical Specialties is open to reforms but continues to promote the MOC program as a basis for "lifelong learning." Only physicians who obtained board certification after 1990 are required to abide by the MOC program. 2. The Oklahoma law is an attempt to allow physicians to obtain hospital privileges without the MOC program, so physicians can become employed without it. However, hospitals could require MOC before admitting privileges, but in that case physicians could challenge the requirement as interference with their ability to practice medicine. 3. The ABMS feels hospitals should have the right to use the MOC as part of their credentialing process; the organization revamped the MOC process in response to criticism with some positive feedback from physicians. 4. While Oklahoma was the first state to repeal the requirement, Kentucky's governor signed a more limited measure focused on the MOC's requirement for licensure and Michigan legislators are considering an even tougher version of the Oklahoma law. The potential Michigan law wouldn't allow hospitals to deny admitting privileges just based on MOC. 5. It's unclear how the new law will change the landscape for Oklahoma physicians. When fashion designer and high-end furrier Dennis Basso was a patient at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, he decided its chapel was "nice and neat," but not nearly reaching its inspirational potential. In the hospital for routine care, Mr. Basso told The New York Times, "A friend came to visit," according to the report, "and we decided to go down to the chapel. We looked at each other and we said this is the greatest hospital in world with the finest equipment, but this chapel really needs some help." He got in touch with Laura Forese, MD, Weill Cornel's COO and executive vice president, after hosting a fashion show to benefit the hospital to talk about a special donation. "I told her, 'I don't want to do an X-ray machine, I don't want to do a waiting room,'" he told The New York Times. "I told her, 'It's great there are people who want to do that. I'm a designer. I'm creative. I want to do this.'" So Mr. Basso and his husband, Michael Cominotto, called on the expertise of Kenneth Alpert, their personal interior designer, who also designed Mr. Basso's Madison Avenue store, according to the report. Mr. Alpert assisted with the renovation of the 60-year-old chapel, which now includes planters from France, candleholders from Italy and chandeliers that are reminiscent of the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. He frosted over a window in the foyer that overlooked a less-than-scenic courtyard, but otherwise followed "the bones of the room," opting for a classic look, according to The New York Times. The biggest challenge was adhering to hospital-approved materials, particularly for the carpet. Though Mr. Basso and Mr. Cominotto are self-proclaimed practicing Catholics, the project is nondenominational and has no visual religion. Mr. Basso's only requirement was to make the chapel a beautiful place, "no matter what your religion is," according to the report. The redecorated chapel opened last week and was dedicated to Mr. Basso's late parents and Mr. Cominotto's late father and to his living mother, according to the report. More articles on facilities management: Mercy Health to start on $271M expansion project 8 hospitals launching facility expansion, upgrades St. Luke's Warren campus opens $5M expansion Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic has given its Epic implementation project a nickname, one that reflects the health system's history of innovation and advancement. The EHR project is called Plummer, an homage to Henry Plummer, MD, who is credited with forming the core unified medical record infrastructure of Mayo Clinic, reports The Post-Bulletin. According to Mayo Clinic, Dr. Plummer and his colleague Mabel Root designed a "numeric registration system and unified medical recordThe medical record, originally a paper dossier, contains the patient's medical history in one convenient location. For many years, the medical record was transported via pneumatic tubes and mechanical systems similar to the way department stores used to move dry goods." Mayo Clinic spokeswoman Rhoda Fukushima Madson told The Post-Bulletin that naming the Epic installation after Dr. Plummer is a way to honor his legacy. Mayo Clinic announced its Epic contract in January 2015. The implementation is projected to begin in mid-2017. More articles on Epic: US Coast Guard terminates Epic contract Shared credentials in Epic v. Tata case is 'every CIO and CISO's nightmare' Loyalty rankings: Epic, MEDITECH clients feel 'trapped'; Cerner, athenahealth clients 'most loyal' Al Allred, CFO of Florida Hospital New Smyrna in New Smyrna Beach, has resigned, according to a Daytona Beach News-Journal report. Here are three things to know about Mr. Allred. 1. He will leave his position at the hospital, formerly Bert Fish Medical Center, May 11. 2. He submitted his letter of resignation April 11, about one week after Bert Fish Medical Center joined the East Florida Region of Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Adventist Health System. 3. Mr. Allred was eligible for payouts if there was a change in control at the medical facility, and will receive two years of regular compensation and benefits, according to the report, which cites his contract. More articles on executive moves: 23 latest hospital, health system executive moves River Hospital names new executive director of development: 3 things to know Mount Carmel Medical Group gets new president: 3 things to know Payer EmblemHealth plans to cut 250 IT jobs because it is changing its IT provider, reports Capital New York. The New York-based insurance company currently uses Cobal as its IT platform, but plans to end that contract in favor of one with Trizetto, a subsidiary of Cognizant. The 250 IT workers whose jobs will be cut represent approximately 8 percent of the payer's workforce, according to Capital New York. Karen Ignagni, CEO of EmblemHealth, told Capital New York the new IT platform will be more efficient and automate processes previously done by employees. "We have had incredibly dedicated employees but because of this clunky platform, they've had to do workarounds," Ms. Ignagni said in the report. With the new IT platform, "we will be able to do all that much more seamlessly and provide a significant increase in support for our provider partners." Ms. Ignagni said in the report the company plans to offer retraining and other support to help people find other employment. Employees plan to silently protest the layoffs outside EmblemHealth's offices, according to the report. More articles on layoffs: 4 latest healthcare layoffs 89 layoffs ordered at UConn Health Center as part of state budget cuts Northside Medical Center to lay off employees: 4 things to know Physicians who perform abortions in Oklahoma are at risk of getting their medical licenses revoked, according to the Miami Herald. A bill passed by the state legislature this week stipulates physicians who engage in "unprofessional conduct" by performing abortions would be barred from obtaining or renewing their medical licenses, according to the report. The bill, which passed the state Senate in early March and the state House on April 21, would not apply to abortions performed in cases of rape or incest or to save a mother's life. Both the House and the Senate are controlled by Republicans. Gov. Mary Fallin (R) has not yet disclosed whether she will sign the bill. Democrats are outnumbered roughly two-to-one in the House. Several fought against the bill, arguing it is misguided and unconstitutional. State Rep. Emily Virgin (D) asked House Rep. David Brumbaugh (R), who co-sponsored the bill, about a statement from the Oklahoma State Medical Association, which said it has not chosen sides on the abortion debate but opposes the legislation because it overrides physician judgment, according to the report. "We already have a severe physician shortage in Oklahoma, so are you at all concerned about physicians leaving Oklahoma if this bill becomes law?" Rep. Virgin asked, according to the report. Rep. Brumbaugh said he does not expect the bill to affect physician retention because it would only impact physicians who perform abortions, according to the report. Other Democrats suggested the bill would cause a rise in unintended pregnancies. "Oklahoma politicians have made it their mission year after year to restrict women's access vital healthcare services, yet this total ban on abortion is a new low," said Amanda Allen, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which advocates for abortion rights, according to the report. "The Center for Reproductive Rights is closely watching this bill and we strongly urge Gov. Fallin to reject this cruel and unconstitutional ban." A 2-year-old girl was struck and killed by an ambulance outside of Boston-based Tufts Medical Center just after 1 p.m. Saturday, according to The Boston Globe. The victim was taken to into the emergency room and pronounced dead. She was footsteps away from her home in the city's Chinatown neighborhood, according to the report. No charges have been filed against the driver of the ambulance, which belonged to EasCare. Tim Coolen, president and CEO of EasCare, provided a statement that the company is deeply saddened by the incident and intends to cooperate fully with the investigation into the crash, according to the report. The investigation is ongoing, but Boston police spokesman Officer Stephen McNulty said initial evidence suggests it was a tragic accident, according to the report. More news: [Updated] US Coast Guard terminates Epic contract Okla. legislators pass bill to bar physicians who perform abortions Physician fired after hiding cameras in NY hospital's bathroom To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below 11,000 jobs may go amid fears BHS could file for administration A total of 11,000 jobs throughout the UK may be at risk as high street chain BHS confirms it is entering administration. The UK-wide chain has four stores in Northern Ireland - a large outlet in Belfast city centre along with stores in Newtownabbey, Holywood and Lisburn. Around 300 staff in Northern Ireland could now lose their jobs. The group will continue to trade as usual while a buyer is sought, administrators Duff & Phelps said. Independent traders' representative Glyn Roberts said: "This is a sad day for the retail sector and the high street as a whole. "The potential closure of the four local BHS stores will not just have an impact on their staff but also result in less footfall for surrounding retailers "Change is the only constant in retail and it does seem that BHS did not keep up with the marketplace and the expectations of 21st century consumers." Mr Roberts is chief executive of the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association (Niirta) The call would end 88 years of trading by British Home Stores, one of the UK's most recognised high street brand names. It would also be the biggest retail failure since Woolworths folded in 2008 with the loss of almost 30,000 jobs. Sports Direct has been in talks to buy some of BHS's 164 stores but it is understood any company would only buy the shops if it did not have to take on its 571m pension deficit. Entrepreneur Sir Philip Green, who owns Topshop, sold BHS last year for 1. Owner Dominic Chappell insisted "no one is to blame for the imminent collapse of BHS". Mr Chappell said: "No one is to blame. It was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio. "In the end, we just couldn't reach an agreement with Arcadia over pensions." He added that he will continue to work with the administrators Duff & Phelps to "find a solution post the administration". The fashion and homewares store was thrown a lifeline last month when creditors backed two company voluntary arrangements (CVA) designed to revive its ailing business by cutting costs and preventing widespread store closures. The company said the immediate future of the firm was secured when 95% of creditors and landlords voted in favour of a CVA for BHS Limited, which represents 125 stores. A second CVA for BHS Properties Limited - which oversees 23 BHS stores in the UK - was also voted through with a majority of 75%. The CVA is a form of insolvency that allows businesses to change and alter their lease arrangements in order to reach financial compromise with creditors. At the time the retailer said 40 of it stores would need to secure a "substantial" rent reduction of at least 75%. Volkswagen admitted almost 1.2 million vehicles in the UK were affected The Government has been accused of being more concerned with protecting the reputation of Volkswagen than punishing the manufacturer after it "poisoned the people of this country". The claim was made as the Commons Transport Select Committee questioned transport minister Robert Goodwill over the response to the diesel emissions scandal. Mr Goodwill came under fire for refusing to state whether he believed software installed in UK vehicles to cheat emissions tests was illegal, or whether VW should pay compensation to affected owners in this country after agreeing to payouts in the US. Committee member and Labour MP Graham Stringer told Mr Goodwill: " You're more concerned with protecting the reputation of Volkswagen into the future than you are about punishing Volkswagen, who have poisoned the people of this country." Mr Goodwill said his " primary consideration" was to ensure that the affected cars are fixed. Mr Stringer also claimed that the German manufacturer's lawyers would be "popping very expensive bottles of champagne tonight after this performance". When Mr Goodwill replied that VW had probably cancelled its champagne order "some time ago" and was "in a very bad place in a number of countries", Mr Stringer commented: "Not in this country minister, they're laughing." Fellow committee member and Labour MP Robert Flello accused the Department for Transport (DfT) of being "frighteningly complacent" as it is "more interested in getting (the problem) fixed rather than taking any sort of action". The minister said he did not accept that the department had been complacent, saying the UK was the first member of the European Union to publish detailed results of its vehicle-testing programme after the scandal. The figures showed that d iesel cars being sold in the UK emitted an average of six times more nitrogen oxide (NOx) in real-world driving than the legal limit used in official tests. The investigation found that all of the 37 top-selling diesel cars tested exceed the legal limit required for laboratory tests when driven for 90 minutes on normal roads. Ministers insisted no laws had been broken by the manufacturers as they are only required to meet lab test regulations. The 1 million inquiry found no evidence of car manufacturers other than the Volkswagen Group fitting devices to cheat emissions tests. VW admitted last September that 482,000 of its diesel vehicles in the US were fitted with defeat device software to switch engines to a cleaner mode when they were being tested. It announced that almost 1.2 million vehicles in the UK are affected, but is disputing whether the software constitutes a defeat device in the European Union. More than 100 company directors in Northern Ireland have been disqualified in the last two years - leaving behind a debt mountain that topped 200m. More than 100 company directors in Northern Ireland have been disqualified in the last two years - leaving behind a debt mountain that topped 200m. The case of one couple alone accounted for half the total debt linked to banned directors over that period. The new figures turn the spotlight on mismanagement in the province's boardrooms. On average one person a week is banned because of poor financial conduct. It has meant a spectacular fall from grace for some of our once high-flying business figures. In one case a Dungannon property developer couple were handed seven-year bans after their firm collapsed, costing creditors more than 100m. Peter and Jacqueline Dolan ran the Dungannon-based Jermon group, which went bust in 2011 as a result of the property crash. Economist John Simpson said disqualification was a significant matter. "A disqualification is a serious debarment and, while it generally doesn't finish people's careers, it is not something you want on your record," he said. "It means you haven't kept your books properly, or alternatively have gone bankrupt and haven't paid the taxman. "Often there are very large sums of money involved." Figures released by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment show 107 directors were disqualified since April 2014. In total they accumulated deficiencies of 210,702,561. A disqualification order is made by the High Court under the Company Directors Disqualification (Northern Ireland) Order 2002. It bans a person from: Becoming a director of a company. Directly or indirectly being concerned or taking part in the promotion, formation or management of a company. Being a liquidator or an administrator of a company. Acting as a receiver or manager of a company's property. Conduct which may lead to disqualification includes continuing to trade to the detriment of creditors when the company was insolvent; failing to keep proper accounting records, and not submitting tax returns. According to DETI's figures, 36 directors were disqualified in the last 12 months, owing creditors a combined 25,292,029. In 2014/15, a further 71 directors were banned, with deficiencies totalling 185,410,532. More than half of this figure related to Jermon Ltd. Mr and Mrs Dolan were disqualified in October 2014 - three years after their company folded. It had borrowings of more than 190m from various banks. When the firm collapsed its assets were valued at just 91m. At the time of disqualification, their deficiencies were disclosed as 107,700,058. The second highest debt bill, some 21,127,016, related to EASSDA Limited. The company went into administration in November 2009 with estimated total assets of 11.84m, and liabilities to creditors of 32.93m. In 2014 four directors were disqualified for between seven and eight years. One of the most high-profile cases saw the former boss of the scandal-hit Northern Ireland Events Company handed a 14-year ban. Janice McAleese was chief executive from 2003 until it went bust in 2007, leaving the taxpayer to underwrite debts of 1.6m. Her conduct was described by the Northern Ireland Audit Office as the worst ever by a public official. The notice of her disqualification in February carried a litany of failures. These included falsifying accounting records, making payments of 486,000 without documentation, and failing to disclose a conflict of interest. Directors can be disqualified for between two and 15 years. Failing to comply with the terms of an order is a serious criminal offence and usually leads to prison. Shell is reacting to the fall in oil prices Oil giant Shell is pushing ahead with plans to cut jobs and close offices in the wake of the plunging oil price and its takeover of BG Group. The cost-cutting drive will trigger three office closures, including the former BG Group headquarters at Thames Valley Park, Reading; BG's offices at Albyn Place, Aberdeen; and Shell's Brabazon House office, Manchester. It has also asked staff at the Thames Valley site to apply for voluntary redundancy, while a separate voluntary severance programme has been rolled out to "some UK employees" as oil prices remain persistently low. The firm revealed last year that the impact of its mega-merger with BG Group - coupled with lower oil prices - would to lead to 10,300 job losses. It has already made 7,500 job cuts through an efficiency drive, with 2,800 jobs also being lost from its tie-up with BG Group. Huibert Vigeveno, BG Group chief executive, revealed the office shake-up during an announcement at the Thames Valley Park. He said: "We now have the outcomes of the UK office footprint review. One of the review's recommendations was to consolidate all Shell's London and South East based operations into central London. "Our intention is therefore to close the Thames Valley Park campus by the end of this year. "The review also recommended that all Aberdeen-based onshore operations move to the Shell Aberdeen Tullos office, with BG's offices at Albyn Place closing by the end of this year, and the closure of Shell's Brabazon House office in Manchester by the end of 2017." Shell, which has a total UK workforce of 7,500, employs 800 people at Thames Valley Park, 300 at Albyn Place and 500 staff at Brabazon House, Manchester. Staff at Thames Valley will be moved to its headquarters in central London, while employees at its Manchester office will be offered redeployment to the capital. It will also transfer w orkers at the Albyn Place to its Tullos office in Aberdeen. The firm said any staff that leave the company as part of the severance programme will counted as part of its drive to cut 10,300 jobs. Shell described the takeover of BG as a ''new chapter'' in February when it announced an 80% plunge in annual profits triggered by the tumbling oil price. The cost of crude has collapsed by more than 70% since a peak of around 115 US dollars a barrel in the summer of 2014. Shell saw full-year earnings tumble to 3.8 billion US dollars (2.6 billion) in 2015 from 19 billion US dollars (13 billion) in 2014, when it reported its annual results at the beginning of February. Ellie Goulding will perform on the new Belsonic stage at Titanic Belfast. The Chemical Brothers are to play the Belsonic 2016 festival at Titanic Belfast Five new shows in August have been added in to the Belsonic 2016 line-up. Madness, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Fatboy Slim, Disclosure and The Corrs are among the acts lined up for the new gigs at Titanic Belfast. They join The Chemical Brothers, Ellie Goulding, David Guetta, Faithless, Foals, Tiesto, Biffy Clyro, Stereophonics, Bring Me The Horizon, Olivers Heldens & Robin Schulz, who are set to perform in June. Belsonic shifts to Titanic Belfast from Custom House Square, where it was hosted for its first eight years. The move is designed to offer better food and beverage facilities, improved VIP area, and enhanced staging, sound and lighting. The Chemical Brothers, who take to the stage on the second night of the ninth annual festival on Friday, June 10, have had six number one albums and 13 Top 20 singles, including two number ones. Belsonic promoter Alan Simms said the new site will mean more people can attend the festival than ever before. "The new site also means there is more space for us to lay it out in a more user-friendly fashion," he said. "In previous years we found that a large portion, around 50% of the show was sold out, leaving a lot of fans not being able to see their favourite acts so we have been keeping an eye out for somewhere bigger but that is also a landmark site. "The Titanic site ticks a lot of boxes with us, particularly the fact that it's possibly Belfast's most iconic building now. "This capacity means we can really go to town with production, we can put a bigger stage in and more lighting and bigger screens. Expand Close Family reunited: from left, Sharon, Jim, Caroline and Andrea PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Family reunited: from left, Sharon, Jim, Caroline and Andrea "Having this site lay-out means having stuff for people to do when they are there, like more bigger and better food stalls." Belsonic 2016 lineup June Thursday 9th June 2016 - Tiesto + Oliver Heldens & Support Friday 10th June 2016 The Chemical Brothers + Erol Alkan, Phil Kieran & Schmutz Saturday 11th June 2016 Faithless & Support Friday 17th June 2016 - Bring Me The Horizon + ASIWYFA & Don Broco Thursday 23rd June 2016 Foals + Frightened Rabbit & Guests Saturday 25th June 2016 - Biffy Clyro & Support Sunday 26th June 2016 - David Guetta + Robin Schulz & Jonas Blue Tuesday 28th June 2016 - Ellie Goulding + The Coronas & Walking On Cars Wednesday 29th June 2016 Stereophonics & Special Guests The Vaccines plus support August Thursday 18th August 2016 The Corrs & Support Saturday 20th August 2016 Madness & Support Tuesday 23rd August 2016 Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds + Catfish & The Bottlemen & Pleasure Beach Wednesday 24th August 2016 Disclosure [Live] + Kano & SG Lewis Saturday 27th August 2016 Fatboy Slim & Support Adventurer - and Co Down man - Bear Grylls is bringing his survival expertise to Belfast's SSE Arena. The 41-year-old, from Donaghadee, has carved a name for himself through high-octane TV programmes such as Man Vs Wild, Born Survivor, Running Wild, and The Island. Read More However, while the out doors may be his playground - he is bringing his skills and knack for endurance indoors, to the indoor SSE Arena. The 12-date tour kicks off in London on October 7 and comes to Belfast on October 18 before heading to Dublin on October 19. Using state-of-the-art technology audiences will join the adventurer as he transports them to multiple environments in this edge-of-your-seat, action-packed two hour show. Celebrating some of the greatest feats of courage, endurance and endeavour through the ages, fans will witness the heroism and adventure that have shaped our world. Bear will guide the audience on a journey, uncovering true life stories of survival from frozen Antarctica and the cruel winds of Everest, to the humid jungle and shark-infested waters. The audience will be swept into the heart of the action, with worlds that appear and fade away before them, they will see the tiny detail of rock crumbling beneath Bears feet as he climbs and witness him seemingly swimming with sharks before their very eyes. Through dizzying aerial stunts and intimate storytelling, Bear will reveal the wonder of our planet and the important value of mankinds indomitable human spirit. Bear Grylls said: I am so excited to see this show truly come to life, and to be able to take people on this incredibly inspiring journey of courage, heroism and survival against all the odds. "With Endeavour we harness so much ground-breaking new technology to take the audience on a very intimate, immersive and at times terrifying journey through some of the greatest and most unknown feats of exploration. "It is a truly uplifting experience this show, and I am so proud of it - and it reminds us all that at the heart of so many of mankind's greatest achievements and hair raising adventures is this one word: Endeavour. Endeavour is produced in association with Bear Grylls Ventures and by arrangement with Peters Fraser + Dunlop. Tickets go on sale on Friday, April 29 at 9am from Ticketmaster. The 39-year-old is the chef and owner of The Muddlers Club restaurant in Belfast. It opened just six months ago and has already been shortlisted for the best restaurant and best newcomer awards in the Irish Restaurant Awards. Gareth lives in the city with his wife Eimear Maguire and their children, Che (8) and Etain (7). My best moment My first service (the peak time in the restaurant's kitchen) in The Muddlers Club was a pretty big achievement. It took two years to get the restaurant off the ground. I always wanted to open my own place, but it took a lot of time to find the right site and get it up and running. We've been going for six months now and I couldn't believe it when we were shortlisted for the awards. My best song I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Creedence Clearwater Revival. We listen to a lot of rock 'n' roll music in the kitchen because the chefs like it. Spotify is the source for music here and this song just keeps popping up over and over and when it does we turn it up loud. It's become a bit of an anthem for The Muddlers Club. My best way to relax Drinking red wine works for me. I have a beer with the guys from the kitchen after a busy service and then I go home and unwind with a glass of red before I go to bed. My best job That was Working with the wboys at Ox restaurant. It's another place that came out of nowhere and broke all of the rules. Being part of it when it was all kicking off was a great experience. Ox took everything in a new direction which was nice to see. The guys there knew I would eventually go out to do my own thing. They gave me a lot of encouragement and pointers - the dos and don'ts of what to look out for. I couldn't have bought the knowledge they passed on to me. My best bit of advice It came from my mother and she always told me to dream big. She's always been very positive and always pushed me to my full potential. It was probably that encouragement from a young age that gave me the drive to achieve my ambitions. My best movie The Big Lebowski. I've watched a lot of brilliant movies down the years, but I could sit and watch that over and over again and I see different things in it every time I watch it. I am a big movie fan and my kids are getting into them now, too, so we constantly watch films in our house. My best gift My dad bought me a motorbike when I was in secondary school. It was brilliant, it gave me independence and started a life-long love of bikes. My best achievement My two kids. Being a dad is a brilliant thing and I don't get to see them enough because I'm at the restaurant so much. I make a point to bring them down every Friday afternoon so they can have a dessert and hang out a bit. I try and squeeze in as much time as I can. My best buy My Harley-Davidson motorbike. I've had it for about three years and it's parked outside the restaurant now that the weather has improved. If it's dry I take every opportunity I can to ride it. My best book The Alchemist by Paul Coelho - it's a book that I revert back to at different times of my life. I find that it helps me think and keep an open mind. My wife is even reading it to my sons at the moment. I'm not much of a reader but this book has always stuck with me. Noel McCurdy welcomes First Minister Arlene Foster to Rathlin during her visit to Northern Irelands only inhabited island Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, Vice-President Mary Lou McDonald and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis in Dublin on Saturday Arlene Foster has accused Gerry Adams of insulting her and other IRA victims through his praise for republican activists. And she labelled as a "backward step" his call for fresh efforts by the next Irish Government towards a united Ireland. Responding to the Sinn Fein president's speech at the party's ard fheis, the First Minister also argued Mr Adams' project had "run out of steam". The two-day congress in Dublin was timed to coincide with the calender anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, and Irish unity was the main theme of the weekend. In his keynote address closing the ard fheis, Mr Adams told delegates: "We are proud of the men and women of 1916." And to sustained applause, cheering and whistling, he went on: "We are equally proud of the men and women of the H Blocks and Armagh and of the 1981 hunger strikers and of the patriot dead from our time. We remember them all here tonight." Mrs Foster's RUC father John Kelly survived an IRA shooting, and when she was 16 she was on a school bus attacked by the Provos in an attempt to murder the driver, a part-time member of the UDR. She said the comments were "insulting to those of us who were victims of the PIRA". The DUP leader went on: "This is a clear reference to the PIRA. In an attempt to shore up the base, Sinn Fein ditched any concern for innocent victims. Is Sinn Fein proud of the cowards who planted the Enniskillen bomb, the La Mon bomb or who masterminded the Disappeared? "Gerry Adams is very clever at selectively quoting the past but he can rest assured that I will not allow him or anyone else in Sinn Fein to rewrite the past." Setting out his vision, Mr Adams also said: "A united Ireland must be inclusive, agreed and welcoming for all the people of this island. That includes our unionist neighbours. This is their homeland also." He argued the Good Friday Agreement provided a peaceful and democratic route towards Irish unity, and the "Orange state" that was once Northern Ireland no longer existed. "The northern state is still in place; and yes the majority of people there are unionists, but the Union is no longer unconditionally upheld in British law. "The British Government is now obliged to legislate for Irish unity if a majority wants that. The duty of the Irish Government is to achieve this. "Of course, from a republican and democratic perspective, the British Government has no right to be in any part of Ireland. But from a unionist perspective all has changed, changed utterly from the days of a one-party state where nationalists were excluded from power; denied equality in housing, employment and voting rights; and where expressions of Irish national identity were criminalised." Mrs Foster said: "In 2016 more people than ever support Northern Ireland's place in the Union. People can see that it makes sense politically, economically and socially. Gerry Adams' call for any new government in the Republic of Ireland to increase their efforts in bringing about 'Irish unity' is unwise and a step backwards." Lyrica, which is used to treat epilepsy, has become a popular street drug Republican paramilitaries have ordered a "Mr Big" of the Belfast drugs world to pay them a 15,000 tax to allow him to keep dealing, it can be revealed. The man, who also has links with loyalist paramilitaries, is now under threat from republicans in the New Lodge area after he failed to pay up. According to sources, the dealer, who is in his 50s and on Disability Living Allowance, was making around 3,000 a week selling the highly addictive prescription drug Lyrica, also referred to as "bud". However, the Belfast Telegraph understands that his business was thwarted last month after a police operation in north Belfast blocked the source of his supply. Lyrica, which is used to treat epilepsy, has become a popular street drug. Users take apart the capsule, crush the contents and inject it into their bodies. It is said to produce a similar effect as Valium. It has been reported that the drug is prevalent among prisoners in local jails. The dealer, who lives in a city centre apartment, is under police investigation. His property was raided earlier this week. The PSNI said the search had been carried out under the Misuse of Drugs Act. A PSNI spokesman added: "Nothing was found during the search and no arrests were made." It is understood that after the search police asked him to come forward "to assist with their enquiries". However, through his lawyer he told officers he would not be making himself available. A source said he was now concerned about the republican terror threat hanging over him for not paying his protection money. "He is a Mr Big in the dealing of prescription drugs in Belfast. That lot (members of a dissident republican organisation) in the New Lodge realised how much he was making and have been charging him a tax. It wasn't a problem paying it until he couldn't get his hands on the bud anymore after a police sting last month," he said. "I've estimated he has dealt more than 500,000 worth of Lyrica. These tablets go for about 2 or 3 each on the street. But now he can't get his hands on it, he can't pay up. He's gone to the UVF for protection." Both republican and loyalist terrorists carry out "punishment" attacks on drug dealers within their communities. They say they are protecting their areas from the scourge of drugs. However, drug dealers are allowed to operate in paramilitary-controlled areas as long as they pay a tax to terror bosses. In 2014/15, 88 people died as a result of drug abuse, according to official statistics. This was the highest level in a decade. The killer drugs included illegal ones such as heroin and cocaine, and prescription medicines like sedatives and anti-depressants. Figures show prescription medicines were - by a wide margin- mentioned on more death certificates than anything else. Last year, of all drug-related deaths, diazepam was mentioned on 42 death certificates. The Home Secretary has said the UK should withdraw from the ECHR - but not from the EU UK proposals to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights would rip up the Good Friday Agreement, Amnesty International has claimed. Home Secretary Theresa May said the convention prevented the deportation of dangerous foreigners. But Amnesty International Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan said the move threatened the human rights upon which the Northern Ireland peace accord was founded. He said: "Theresa May's proposal to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights would mean ripping up the Good Friday Agreement, on which peace in Northern Ireland has been built. "The Home Secretary's proposal is not just foolish, it is downright dangerous. To undermine an international peace agreement, on which 18 years of peace has been based, is reckless in the extreme." The human rights treaty was drafted after the Second World War during which millions of Jews perished. Mrs May said it could bind the hands of Parliament and added nothing to British prosperity. "If we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn't the EU we should leave, but the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court." Mrs May cited the cases of clerics Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada, who were at the centre of protracted legal battles in the UK, and a controversial ruling on prisoner voting. The European Court of Human Rights ultimately backed the extradition of Abu Hamza and four other terror suspects from the UK to the US. Using the convention, it blocked the deportation of Abu Qatada to Jordan, saying he cannot be deported while "there remains a real risk that evidence obtained by torture will be used against him". The Home Secretary dismissed suggestions she was against human rights, insisting the UK could protect human rights in a way that does not jeopardise national security or restrict parliamentarians. The Human Rights Act 1998 was introduced by Labour to enshrine the rights of the convention in UK law. Ministers are planning to replace it with a British Bill of Rights, but the move has been hit by delays. Mr Corrigan said: "The European Convention on Human Rights is a cornerstone of the Good Friday Agreement, and has given confidence to people in Northern Ireland that their rights will be protected equally, whatever their religious or political views. "Given the history of political discrimination and mistrust in policing in Northern Ireland, binding international human rights obligations have been crucial in building and bolstering public confidence in these key structures post-Troubles." Outspoken unionist politician Ruth Patterson has said she would support the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland if it stops women taking abortion pills unsupervised. Ms Patterson also said that abortion should be available as a choice to women in cases of fatal foetal abnormality or rape. She spoke emotionally about the trauma of a school-friend who became pregnant after she was sexually abused by her father. The Belfast councillor, who is contesting South Belfast in next month's Assembly elections, described the prosecution of a 21-year-old woman who bought abortion pills on the internet as "wrong ... it sets a very dangerous precedent". She added: "I am not coming at this from an ideological viewpoint but as someone who lives in the real world. If women have unprotected sex, they get pregnant and sex education is the key here. Prevention is always much better than cure. "But, when these things happen, we should respond with compassion and humanity. I am an open and broad-minded person. Raising four children on my own as a single mother has taught me not to be judgmental." Ms Patterson - a DUP councillor for 14 years until she was expelled after criticising it in a Belfast Telegraph interview last November - said last night that women had abortions for many reasons "but whatever those reasons, it will always be very traumatic and personal". In the case of fatal foetal abnormality, she said the woman, or couple, involved should be free to make the decision best for them: "Some may decide to abort straight away. Others may choose to carry on with the pregnancy, labour and birth in order to get some comfort and closure to their grieving process." Ms Patterson added: "When I was head girl at school, a prefect was abused by her father for a long period of time. "She fell pregnant but, with no-one to turn to, she carried on with the pregnancy. The baby was adopted but, had my friend had access to a circle of support and abortion, she may have gone down that road. We will never know." Colin Howell's second wife has described her former husband as a monster ahead of a TV drama about the killer dentist. New York native Kyle Jorgensen said that for 10 years Howell forced her to keep it secret that he had murdered both his first wife Lesley and police officer Trevor Buchanan, the husband of his mistress, Hazel Stewart. Howell told her not to utter a word for the sake of their children, or he would take his own life. Ms Jorgensen, who now lives in Florida, told the Sunday Mirror that Howell had admitted the murders to her in 1998 when the couple were raising their seven-month-old son Erik. He also told her that he had sexually assaulted his female patients while they were sedated. She said she sat stunned at the kitchen table as Howell admitted his crimes. "He abused patients, he is a compulsive liar, he was an adulterer in our marriage and murdered two people," she said. "Everyone thought he was this great Christian guy but they were so wrong. He was a monster." Ms Jorgensen met Howell at church in Castlerock after moving to the UK after a violent three-year marriage to her first husband. The story behind the 1991 murders will be told in a four-part TV drama starring Co Antrim actor James Nesbitt. The Secret tells the dramatic story of how the Ballymoney dentist and lay preacher gassed his wife and Stewart's husband, and made their deaths look like a suicide pact. The bodies of mum-of-four Lesley and dad-of-two Trevor were found in a car filled with fumes in Castlerock. In 2009 Ms Jorgensen convinced Howell to confess and the terrible truth began to emerge. In 2011, Howell was later sentenced to a minimum 21 years for the double murders. Hazel Stewart, who got married again, is spending 18 years in prison for her role in the killings. The Secret begins on ITV on April 29 William Humphrey and Bill Lochrie after the paint bomb attack on Clifton Street Orange hall yesterday Masonry believed to have been launched at police A missile that smashed the windscreen of a police Land Rover in west Belfast may have been a mortar containing rocks, according to a witness. The front windscreen was badly damaged - with two holes clearly visible in the glass - in the attack. It happened on the Glen Road at around 1am yesterday, just hours ahead of republican and loyalist parades through Belfast city centre. Forensic tests are ongoing and it is believed that police are looking for explosive residue on the glass, although at this stage they do not know what the object was. The Glen Road and a number of other roads in the area were closed for a number of hours yesterday while the PSNI and Army bomb disposal officers carried out searches. Nothing was found. Detective Sergeant Keith Wilson appealed for witnesses following the attack on the early morning PSNI patrol. "Police enquiries into exactly what kind of object hit the Land Rover this morning will continue," he said. It is understood no explosion was reported at the scene and initial searches in the early hours of the morning did not uncover anything definitive to suggest that an explosive device had been aimed. A police source told the Belfast Telegraph that officers were patrolling the street when there was a "massive bang" on the front window. "The whole windscreen was smashed - the glass didn't come in but it was pretty badly damaged," he said. Meanwhile, an eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said there were rocks strewn all over the road in the immediate aftermath of the attack. "The local community believes that a homemade mortar filled with rocks was used to hit the Land Rover," he said. Yesterday republicans were blamed for another attack on an Orange hall in Belfast. North Belfast DUP Assembly candidate William Humphrey condemned those responsible for the overnight paint bomb attack on Clifton Street Orange hall. After visiting the scene last night, Mr Humphrey said: "Once again Clifton Street Orange hall has been attacked by republican vandals. "There can be no doubt that the hall was deliberately targeted and paint bombed to coincide with Sunday's Belfast Orange Widows' parade and service, in a clear attempt to raise tensions. "The intolerant and ignorant bigots behind this sectarian attack have nothing to offer our society going forward. "They seek to attack, damage and destroy the Orange Institution's property, while at the same time demonstrating a complete intolerance and disrespect for Orange culture and tradition." The same hall was paint bombed last August, and there was a petrol bombing on the building in June. Anyone with information can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Michael McGibbon's family and friends watch as his coffin is carried into the church Michael McGibbon's wife Joanne kisses her daughter as the coffin is carried into the church Joanne McGibbon is surrounded by her four children as her husband Michaels remains are brought into Holy Cross Church in north Belfast Press Eye Ltd Thursday 21st April 2016 - The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye Press Eye Ltd Thursday 21st April 2016 - The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Mr McGibbon's wife Joanne McGibbon. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Mr McGibbon's wife Joanne McGibbon. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye Press Eye Ltd Thursday 21st April 2016 - The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Mr McGibbon's wife Joanne McGibbon. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Mr McGibbon's wife Joanne McGibbon. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Mr McGibbon's wife Joanne McGibbon. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 20th April 2016 Funeral of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in Ardoyne in north Belfast last Friday. The 33-year-old father was shot in a punishment style shooting dying from his wounds later in hospital. Michael McGibbon's family follow his coffin as it leaves the family home on the Crumlin Road for Requiem Mass in Holy Cross Church near by. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 20th April 2016 Funeral of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in Ardoyne in north Belfast last Friday. The 33-year-old father was shot in a punishment style shooting dying from his wounds later in hospital. Michael McGibbon's family follow his coffin as it leaves the family home on the Crumlin Road for Requiem Mass in Holy Cross Church near by. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Seana McGibbon joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Funeral of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in Ardoyne in north Belfast last Friday. The 33-year-old father was shot in a punishment style shooting dying from his wounds later in hospital. Michael McGibbon's wife Joanne and his children follow his coffin as it leaves the family home on the Crumlin Road for Requiem Mass in Holy Cross Church near by. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Press Eye Ltd Thursday 21st April 2016 - The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye Press Eye Ltd Thursday 21st April 2016 - The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Mr McGibbon, 33, was shot three times in his legs in an alleyway at Butler Place. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye The funeral of Michael McGibbon at Holy Cross Church in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast on Thursday Morning. The funeral of Michael McGibbon at Holy Cross Church in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast on Thursday Morning. Joanne McGibbon with her children during the funeral of Michael McGibbon at Holy Cross Church in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast on Thursday Morning. The funeral mass takes place at Holy Cross in North Belfast of Michael McGibbon, who was murdered in the Ardoyne area of the city last Friday evening. Photo Matt Mackey / Press Eye Joanne McGibbon during the funeral of Michael McGibbon at Holy Cross Church in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast on Thursday morning. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker The heartbroken widow of a taxi driver murdered by dissident republicans has written an emotional message about how her husband's death has brought both communities together. Joanne McGibbon's letter also included a fervent wish that Catholic and Protestant children in north Belfast will have a brighter future to look forward to. The brave mother-of-four personally delivered her letter to Methodist minister Rev Colin Duncan at the Woodvale Manse on Saturday - just 48 hours after her husband Michael's funeral. And, in a moving show of strength and kindness, Mrs McGibbon asked the cleric to pass on her gratitude to the local Protestant community for their support during the dark days following his brutal murder. "I just hope one day that this hatred and evil will be gone and we can all live happy with each other, the way it should be," she wrote. "Thank you all so much again. It is so lovely to see the two communities agreeing with each other for a change. It would be nice if our children could have a brighter future." Joanne is understood to have been appreciative of the gesture by the Orange Order to suspend its nightly protest at Twaddell Avenue on Thursday - the day Michael was laid to rest after Requiem Mass in Holy Cross Church. Mr McGibbon passed away in hospital on April 16, surrounded by his family, after he was shot in the legs in Ardoyne by the so-called New IRA. One of the gunmen's bullets struck the young father on the thigh, severing a major artery and causing him to bleed to death in an alleyway as Joanne, a nurse, cradled him in her arms. The 33-year-old had gone to meet his killers at Butler Place after refusing to come to the door when two paramilitaries visited his house in Ardoyne 24 hours earlier. 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 Widow Joanne McGibbon (centre) with her daughters Michaela and Seana and Fr Gary Donegan joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Michael McGibbon died after being shot by dissident republicans in an alleyway Photopress Belfast Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Michael McGibbon and wife Joanne Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Widow Joanne McGibbon joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Widow Joanne McGibbon (centre) with her daughter Seana and Fr Gary Donegan joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Seana McGibbon joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Seana McGibbon and joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Pacemaker Press 18/4/2016 The alleyway at Butler Place, Where Michael McGibbon was shot, The PSNI have said his killing carried the hallmarks of a paramilitary murder. A 34-year-old man is still being questioned. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 18/4/2016 PSNI officers near the Family Home (of Michael McGibbon) in the Ardoyne area in North Belfast on Monday, As they continue their investigation into the Murder of Michael McGibbon, 33, who died after an attack in an alleyway at Butler Place, with police saying his killing carried the hallmarks of a paramilitary murder. A 34-year-old man is still being questioned. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 18/4/2016 The alleyway at Butler Place, Where Michael McGibbon was shot, The PSNI have said his killing carried the hallmarks of a paramilitary murder. A 34-year-old man is still being questioned. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 18/4/2016 PSNI officers in the Ardoyne area in North Belfast on Monday, As they continue their investigation into the Murder of Michael McGibbon, 33, who died after an attack in an alleyway at Butler Place, with police saying his killing carried the hallmarks of a paramilitary murder. A 34-year-old man is still being questioned. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 18/4/2016 Graffiti near The alleyway at Butler Place, Where Michael McGibbon was shot, The PSNI have said his killing carried the hallmarks of a paramilitary murder. A 34-year-old man is still being questioned. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker PACEMAKER BELFAST 19/04/2016 Joanne McGibbon with her young daughter at the candle light vigil that was held at Holy Cross Church last night in support of her husband Michael who was murdered earlier this week PACEMAKER BELFAST 19/04/2016 Joanne McGibbon with her young daughter at the candle light vigil that was held at Holy Cross Church last night in support of her husband Michael who was murdered earlier this week Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Widow Joanne McGibbon joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 19th April 2016 Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Widow Joanne McGibbon (centre) with her daughters Michaela and Seana and Fr Gary Donegan joins members of the public at a vigil in the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Ardoyne, in support of the family of taxi driver and father-of-four Michael McGibbon who was shot dead in North Belfast at the weekend. His shocking murder robbed Joanne of a husband and their children - daughters Seanna (17), six-year-old Michaela and Corry-Leigh (4), and their nine-year-old son Shea - of a father. "To all our neighbours 'on the other side', in Woodvale, Glencairn, Twaddell (Twinbrook LOL) etc etc", the hand-written card began. "I just want to thank you all for the cards and support you have shown to my husband Michael and my family during this difficult time. I have lots of friends who are Protestants and other religions and they all mean a lot to me. It just shows we are all human and feel the same way. "I have nursed people from all religions/cultures and cared for them all equally." Mr McGibbon, who was working for Five Star taxis, was targeted after unfounded allegations were made about him making inappropriate comments to a young female passenger. He left his job with Glenard cabs on Ardoyne Avenue as a result and had assumed a new job as a driver with the Antrim Road company when he was killed. Five Star also employs prominent dissident Damien 'Dee' Fennell, who was arrested last weekend in connection with Mr McGibbon's murder before later being freed without charge. Despite the unproven claims about the former chef being at least a year old, they were still being cited as the reason for his murder. Signing off "Love, Joanne McGibbon xo", the widow entrusted the card to Rev Duncan, who then passed on its contents and sentiment to local parishioners. DUP North Belfast Assembly candidate William Humphrey said the community had been touched by how Mrs McGibbon had dealt with her tragic loss. "As someone born and raised in the Woodvale, I am not surprised to read that people from the Greater Shankill community have been of support to Joanne and her family," he said. "The cancellation of the Orange Institution's Twaddell protest was a manifestation of that. "I, like many others, have been moved and impressed with how Joanne has conducted herself. Her quiet dignity and decorum is an example to us all and is in stark contrast to the evil people who murdered her dear husband." A ticket stub from the VIP enclosure at the launch of the Titanic has sold at auction for 15,000 - exceeding its 6,000-10,000 estimate. It belonged to Harland & Wolff secretary Charlotte Irwin and was bought by a private collector from Britain at the sale at Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire. Miss Irwin was just 20 and worked in the drafting office at the Belfast firm's shipyard when Titanic was being built. And when the ocean liner was launched on May 31, 1911, she was in an executive box set aside for specially invited White Star Line and Harland & Wolff staff - giving her a great view of the Titanic sliding down the slipway into the water. Miss Irwin kept the ticket, No 116, as a souvenir of a memorable day. It read 'TITANIC Launch', below which it states: 'To be retained for admission to Stand.' The stub is flanked with fleur-de-lys and on its reverse are shorthand manuscript notes which read: 'Launched 31st May 1911. Left Belfast 2nd April 1912. Sailed on her maiden voyage 10th April 1912. Struck an iceberg at 11.45 on 14th April 1912 Sank with the loss of over 1,000 lives at 2.20am 15th April 1912." Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge described the item as "an exceptional piece". He said: "It is very unusual with launch tickets to be able to put a face to a ticket." Police investigating the 2009 murder of Mark Gourley have arrested a second man. The 36-year-old was reported missing on March 7, 2009. He was last seen in the Burneys Lane area of Glengormley at around 2.30pm. Mark was described as a vulnerable individual and was on medication at the time of his disappearance. The Carrick man's body was never located and in 2013, police launched a murder investigation. A 45-year-old man was arrested on Monday morning in Carrickfergus and has been taken to a police station in Belfast for questioning. A second man, aged 43, was also arrested by police. Detective Inspector Darren McCartney said: I am appealing to anyone who may have information about Marks disappearance or who may have seen Mark on or after March 7 2009 to contact police. Previous appeals for information did generate reports of sightings but the last definite sighting of Mark was at 2.30pm on March 7 2009 in the Burneys Lane area of Glengormley. "Mark did not have a mobile phone or a significant amount of money with him when he disappeared. Mark was from the Castlemara area of Carrickfergus and police believe he may have returned to that area on March 7. Police are asking for anyone who may have noticed vehicles or individuals acting suspiciously in either the Burneys Lane area of Glengormley or in the Castlemara area of Carrickfergus around March 7. Detectives also re-issued an image of Mark which was used to appeal for information at the time of his disappearance. He was around 5ft, 9 tall, weighing between 10-11 stone and described as well-built. Mark had short dirty fair cropped hair and an eyebrow bolt in his right eyebrow. He was wearing a black zipped jacket with a grey motif on the back of the shoulders, dark Umbro tracksuit bottoms, black trainers and may have been wearing a blue Glasgow Rangers woollen hat. DI McCartney added: I believe there are people in these communities who have knowledge of what happened to Mark. "Todays police activity is proof that police are continuing to investigate what happened to him. Additionally, people may have heard rumours about what happened to Mark. "I would appeal to them to share this information with police. If anyone has information about him, I would ask them to examine their conscience and come forward to police. Alternatively, information can be provided anonymously to the independent charity Crimestoppers by telephoning 0800 555 111. A number of lethal terror attacks were thwarted by a major policing operation over the past month, a top police officer has revealed. Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris said several planned attacks by dissident republicans over Easter were prevented. Any feeling of success has been dampened, however, by the murder of prison officer Adrian Ismay, added Mr Harris. Mr Ismay died last month after a bomb exploded under his van at Hillsborough Drive, off the Woodstock Road in Belfast. He died of a heart attack triggered by a blood clot 11 days after he was injured. "We had quite a bit of trepidation looking towards Easter 2016 as to what it might mean around these violent dissident republican groups. "That was set against the backdrop of the murder of Adrian Ismay," said Mr Harris. The senior officer added: "Easter period itself, in our terms, went off well and peacefully enough, free from major incident. Undoubtedly a lot of what they wanted to do was thwarted, but any sense of success we might feel about that is completely set aside because Adrian Ismay was murdered." Mr Harris warned that Mr Ismay's killing demonstrated that dissident terrorists had both the access to explosives and the intent to use them. "It remains very concerning. As ever, we are dealing with a severe threat and work very closely with our colleagues in An Garda Siochana and the security service. There is a lot we are doing around enforcement and bringing pressure to bear, but still a severe threat exists." He added that the ruthlessness of these groups was also demonstrated last weekend when they murdered taxi driver Michael McGibbon in north Belfast. He was ordered to attend a "punishment" shooting. He bled to death in an alleyway after he was shot three times in the leg. Intelligence of dissident republican intent to step up their campaign of violence over the Easter Rising centenary led to a major surge in police activity. That level of policing is now being downgraded, Mr Harris said. "In the run-up to Easter and throughout we had decided on a very full programme of patrolling. All the available officers were doing long hours and duty. That's hard to sustain so we have had to come back from that. But if there are any particular threats at a particular time we are in a position to uplift that. That has been the pattern over many months. We just can't keep our staff on surge all the time," he explained. He added: "Undoubtedly we are constantly in this effort to prevent attacks. I don't want to say how many or what week, but attacks have been prevented over the last number of months. People should be assured that, constantly, our resources are about preventing these attacks and bringing perpetrators to justice. That includes these punishment attacks. They are terrible attacks. We do not turn a blind eye in any shape or form to those." Last year there were 16 attacks by dissidents, compared to 40 in 2010. Mr Harris said this drop was due to policing successes both sides of the border. "2010 was a particularly active year for all these various dissident groups. There has been a lot of success in between in terms of the criminal justice process both north and south. We should see that difference between 2010 and 2015 as being a success in terms of preventing these terrible attacks. At the same time, there are these groups of people with intent, and that seems to be a more difficult thing to erode." George talks to his mum while sitting on his rocking horse in Kensington Palace The woman who put Northern Ireland on the agenda in Barack Obama's UK trip is a rising star in the SDLP, it has been revealed. Cliona McCarney is the vice-chair of SDLP Youth, and said the US President's praise of the province as a "story of perseverance" was "groundbreaking". It "set a real sort of challenge to young people in Northern Ireland that we can no longer demand and expect a better future. We have to build it ourselves", the 21-year-old Belfast woman added. At an event with young people on the last full day of Mr Obama's visit on Saturday, Ms McCarney asked the President about the role the United States had played in the peace process and how this will continue. Mr Obama said it required "forging a new identity that is about being from Northern Ireland as opposed to being unionist or Sinn Fein". "This is a challenging time to do that because there is so much uncertainty in the world right now, because things are changing so fast, there's a temptation to forge tribal identities that give you a sense of certainty, a buffer against change," he said. "And that's something our young people, they have to fight against, whether you're talking about Africa, or the Middle East, or Northern Ireland, or Burma. "The forces that lead to the most violence and the most injustice typically spring out of people saying: 'I want to feel important by dividing the world into us and them. And that threatens me, and so I've got to make sure that my tribe strikes out first'. "And fighting that mentality and that impulse requires us to begin very young with our kids." The President also said Northern Ireland as a whole was "more important than any particular faction or any particular flag". He said he was heartened by the growth of integrated education here. "One of the things that you've seen in Northern Ireland that's most important is the very simple act of recognising the humanity of those on the other side of the argument. Having empathy and a sense of connection with people who are not like you," he said. "One of the most encouraging things in Northern Ireland is children starting to go to school together and having a sense that we're all in this together, as opposed to it's us against them." Miss McCarney said the President had shown a real interest in Northern Ireland. She added: "What he said about integrated education as well was very interesting and another thing I really agree with." Caolan Faux, from Newtownbutler, said Mr Obama was "everything you could have hoped for in terms of how he spoke". "He gave the impression that he had time to spare on the people on the room, and I think that was a huge part of his success throughout his term in office," he added. Gardai at the scene of a fatal shooting at the Sunset House pub in north Dublin last night A Co Tyrone man has been shot dead at the Sunset House pub near Croke Park in Dublin's north inner city. The incident happened at around 9.35pm on Monday in the Ballybough area. The victim is believed to be a 34-year-old who is originally from Co Tyrone but was living in Ballymun, North Dublin. A silver coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C, was later found burnt out on Walsh Road in Drumcondra. Prior to this car being recovered it is believed that three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in another silver coloured saloon car. The victim was reportedly known to the Gardai for involvement with dissident republicanism. He had been before the courts on IRA membership charges in the past and was a known associate of senior members of the Hutch crime gang. Dublin councillor Nial Ring said the victim was "a nice guy doing his job" and the shooting has left the community "devastated". "Apparently, a guy came into the bar and there were three shots. Instantly, people were in shock. There was a special needs chap in the place having a pint and he's in a terrible state. The shock of it. "And a lot of young mothers were there and there was a big match on the television and it was nearly over when this happened. "It's unacceptable what has happened in this area tonight. I was borned and reared within 100 yards of this spot and it's appalling what happened. "Obviously, we're praying for him. He was a nice guy," he said. "He was from Tyrone and he lived locally. He was a barman in The Sunset House and he took over the pub fairly recently. "He had been attracting new customers and was doing up the place. Yesterday, we had a huge celebration around here for the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. The pub was well done up in Irish and celebratory colours as was the whole area. "He would have been part of that. He lived locally and had a girlfriend living locally. We're just devastated," he said. Temporary CCTV installed just days ago may have captured the shooters' escape, according to a TD who lives nearby. North Dublin TD Noel Rock (FG): "Another gangland shooting goes to show that we urgently need new recruitment and we urgently need the temporary overtime measures extended. "The car, which was dumped at the foot of Walsh Road, yards from my home, is in an area which is currently covered by temporary CCTV which was erected in recent days by coincidence. I trust Gardai will seek this footage as soon as possible from Dublin City Council and use every avenue possible. "In the interim, I strongly urge Minister Fitzgerald to extend the overtime measures as it's clear that - with this being yet another incident ending in a normally quiet part of the northside, that we badly need further resources right now" Local Labour TD Aodhan O Riordain appealed for calm. "Seriously concerned at reports of another shooting. Calm needed now at all costs," he said. Local councillor Gary Gannon (Social Democrats) explained that the victim was known only by his first name in the area and people were unaware of his past. "He was known from the pub. This bar is a couple of minutes from my house so I would see him fairly regularly. "He was always very friendly and affable." Mr Gannon said the "political elite" in the country were not taking the gangland crisis seriously. "The Acting Minister for Justice is too busy talking about local Cumann meetings to get up and do something about this." Investigating Gardai are appealing for witnesses, particularly those people who were in the Sunset House public house on Monday evening from 9pm onwards or who may have observed a silver coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C prior to this incident or its discovery on Walsh Road, to contact them at Mountjoy Garda Station on 01 6668600, The Garda Confidential Line, 1800 666111 or any Garda Station. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has said his party would be willing to enter into talks about forming the next Irish Government - despite repeatedly ruling it out since the election. Mr Adams has left himself open to accusations of hypocrisy after now admitting he would consider devising a Programme for Government with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. Throughout the general election campaign, senior Sinn Fein figures insisted they would not do business with either of the two main parties. On several occasions during the impasse Mr Adams and his colleagues said they do not have the "mandate" or the "numbers" to get into government. And during his own ard fheis speech on Saturday night, the Louth TD attacked Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin for potentially facilitating a Fine Gael-led administration. "He (Mr Martin) also said he would not put Enda Kenny back into government," Mr Adams said. "But putting Fine Gael back into power is exactly what he is negotiating. That's not in the national interest," he added. But in an extraordinary U-turn, Mr Adams yesterday said his party would consider devising a Programme for Government with Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. He said such a plan, if agreed, would be sent back to the Sinn Fein ard fheis for approval. "Would we talk to them? The answer to that question is 'yes'," he told RTE's The Week in Politics. "If in the course of all of that, although it would be very, very challenging, we came up with a Programme for Government which did the business as far as we were concerned, our leadership would consider that and yes, if we thought that was an advance and would help to deal with these issues we have just talked about, including in the centenary year the issue of Irish unity, of course we would have to bring that back to an ard fheis." Mr Adams said it was not his preference to return either party to power, but a government was urgently required to address problems such as homelessness. Meanwhile, Mr Adams declined to say how long he will remain on as Sinn Fein leader. But he has indicated he will lead the party into the next general election, if one is held within the next two to three years. Sinn Fein sources have said Mr Adams is devising his own "exit strategy" and that there is little appetite at the moment for a change of leadership. Charities are calling for Government action over more than 150 children with family in the UK who are stuck at a camp in Calais More than 150 children with close family in Britain are living alone in a Calais refugee camp, new research shows. A report by aid charity Citizens UK found there were 157 unaccompanied children in the border camp known as the Jungle who have close family members in Britain to live with. Four leading charities have now called for the Government to take urgent action following the report. Citizens UK, Save the Children, Unicef UK and Help Refugees want the Government to address the number of unaccompanied refugee children in Europe, ahead of a parliamentary debate on the topic, as part of the Immigration Bill on Monday. Of 157 children in Calais with family links to the UK, two are just ten-years-old. The charities say the children are traumatised by war, living rough and facing a long and complex bureaucratic procedure before being reunited with their families in Britain. Immigration Minister James Brokenshire defended the Government's record, saying 24 children with family in the UK had been approved for transfer from France in the past six weeks. Neil Jameson, of Citizens UK, said the Government needed to speed up the process for these individuals and added: "The fact that children, who have a legal right to come to the UK, are living alone in tents in Calais is a national embarrassment." According to Help Refugees, there are currently 4,946 refugees in the camp. Co-founder Josie Naughton referred to the UK's Kindertransport scheme which rescued thousands of Jewish children from Nazi Germany. She said: "There are hundreds of unaccompanied children in Calais and thousands across Europe, scared, alone and extremely vulnerable. "According to Europol, 10,000 refugee children are missing in Europe. This is the same number of children that Kindertransport rescued from Nazi persecution. We hope our government remains on the right side of history." Last year, approximately 95,000 refugee and migrant children travelled to Europe alone or lost their families in transit. Save the Children said there were more than 2,000 lone child refugees in Greece trapped after the closure of the Balkans route. They said the Greek system was overwhelmed and safe shelters were oversubscribed. The charity also highlighted the problem in Italy where, in a period of 48 hours last week, more than 450 children arrived alone. Unicef suggested the EU-Turkey deal on migrants, and border closures, could be making the situation worse. The group said it could increase the risk of abuse of unaccompanied children, psychological trauma and exploitation by traffickers and criminal gangs, amid the chaos. The children's charity also added the new agreement could push people into taking more dangerous routes. Lily Caprani, of Unicef UK, said: "It is simply an injustice that the life of any child, anywhere, has been put on hold for all this time - these children in Calais have families waiting for them here in the UK. They cannot be left like this, in this state of limbo." Mr Brokenshire said: "We continue to work with the French authorities to address the situation in Calais. "This includes improving the process for reuniting children with family in the UK where asylum claims are made in France. In the last six weeks 24 cases have been accepted for transfer to the UK." Jeremy Hunt has appealed to junior doctors not to withdraw emergency cover during their strike but said "no trade union" has the right to veto a Government manifesto commitment. In a clear sign that he will not back down just hours before an all-out strike by medics across England, the Health Secretary said changes were needed to create safer services at weekends. Referring to the British Medical Association (BMA), he said " no trade union has the right to veto" a manifesto commitment made by the Government to improve weekend services. In a statement to MPs, he said the disruption over the next two days was "unprecedented" but the NHS has made "exhaustive efforts" to ensure patient safety. Mr Hunt added that there were plans in place to provide safe care, particular in maternity, A&E and crisis mental health services. Mr Hunt said: "No trade union has the right to veto a manifesto promise voted for by the British people. "We are proud of the NHS as one of our greatest institutions but we must turn that pride into actions and a seven-day service will help us turn the NHS into one of the highest quality healthcare systems in the world." He added: "I wish to appeal directly to all junior doctors not to withdraw emergency cover, which creates particular risks for A&Es, maternity units and intensive care units." He said he understood that some doctors may disagree with the Government over the new contract but said it offered doctors more premium pay than "police officers, fire fighters and nearly every other worker in the public and private sectors". Hospitals across England are finalising plans for dealing with the first all-out strike by junior doctors in the history of the NHS. It will run from 8am to 5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. More than 125,000 appointments and operations have been cancelled and will need to be rearranged, according to figures from NHS England. The BMA has defended the walkout, repeating its stance that it will call off the strike if Mr Hunt agrees to lift his threat to impose the contract. Mr Hunt has rejected this offer but wrote to the head of the BMA, Dr Mark Porter, over the weekend calling for an urgent meeting on Monday to discuss some parts of the deal. Earlier on Monday, more than a dozen presidents of royal colleges and faculties urged David Cameron to step in "at the 11th hour" to break the stalemate between junior doctors and the Government. Their letter said: "You have spoken many times about your commitment to the NHS. In our view, as leaders of the medical profession, the ongoing impasse in the dispute between Government and junior doctors poses a significant threat to our whole healthcare system by demoralising a group of staff on whom the future of the NHS depends. "At this 11th hour, we call upon you to intervene, bring both parties back to the negotiating table, end this damaging stand-off, and initiate an honest debate about the serious difficulties facing UK health services." Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, also pleaded for an end to the dispute. She said: "On behalf of the patients of this country, we plead with the Government and the BMA at this late stage to talk and reach an amicable solution." Dr Porter told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the Government had "distorted" weekend death statistics. Responding to Mr Hunt's claim that lives are being put at risk by the strike, he said: "The Health Secretary is trying to find some way to throw mud at the junior doctors of this country who have been providing weekend and night emergency cover since the NHS started." Dr Porter added: "The reality is we have advised our members to take part in contingency planning and the NHS has put in place a magnificent effort of contingency planning to make sure that safe emergency care will be delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will be delivered by consultants and staff and associate specialty doctors. "If the Government will call off the imposition, we will call off the strikes." On Saturday, a coalition of MPs including Labour shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander urged Mr Hunt to test the new work contract in a small number of trusts rather than impose it across England without the support of the BMA. The Health Secretary dismissed the proposal as Labour "opportunism". A Government source told the BBC that the BMA was trying to bring down the Government, saying it had radicalised a "generation of junior doctors". If the Government backed down, it would face similar industrial action by other unions, which were watching this dispute "like a hawk". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Hunt should "back off" in the junior doctors' dispute, adding: "We must stand up and defend the NHS." He asked if there was a "deeper agenda" to reduce the efficiency of the NHS while promoting private industry. In his statement, Mr Hunt sought to reassure patients that everything possible is being done to keep them safe during the strikes. He said: "The NHS is busting a gut to keep the public safe. "But we should not lose sight of the underlying reason for this dispute, namely this Government's determination to be the first country in the world to offer a proper patient-focused seven-day health service." Professor Robert Winston told 5 News Mr Hunt was making a "massive mistake". He said: "There really is a need for a compromise and I think that the doctors would be happy to accept a compromise. These are altruistic people and they don't want to strike, they don't want to withdraw their labour. And obviously the hope is that patients will not be damaged, but even delaying operations is not great. "I think the Secretary of State really should think again about how he can persuade what is really important in the National Health Service, right across the board, the need for high morale. At the moment the morale in the health service has never been lower and to some extent Jeremy Hunt is responsible for that." From left, Jac Holmes, Joe Akerman and Joshua Molloy take a selfie in Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, yesterday, following their release from jail The former Royal Irish Regiment soldier released from an Iraqi prison after crossing the border illegally from Syria will probably never go back to the Middle East, his relieved father has said. Joshua Molloy (24) made headlines when he was picked up more than 10 days ago coming back into Iraq after months spent fighting Isis alongside a Syriac Christian group allied to the Kurdish YPG. Yesterday his parents Declan and Anne Marie, from Ballylinan, Co Laois, finally got word that their son had been freed. "He's in a hotel in Erbil and is planning a route home," Declan Molloy said. "He will probably visit some friends in Central Europe on his way home, but we hope to have him here soon where we will give him space, fatten him up a bit and let him recharge his batteries. "It is one big sigh of relief for all of us, we are overwhelmed, very relieved and very worn out," he added. Mr Molloy said he is looking forward to having a cold beer with Joshua and letting him tell his story at his own pace. Joshua travelled to the Middle East region in April 2015 to fight against Isis with the forces allied to the Kurds. He is a former British soldier, and his parents were anxious to express that he is not a soldier or a freedom fighter, but a man with compassion and an interest in world affairs. According to military sources, Molloy served with the Royal Irish Regiment based in England until February last year when he completed his four-year tour of duty. Expand Close Joshua Molloy (24), from Ballylinan, Co Laois was arrested by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Joshua Molloy (24), from Ballylinan, Co Laois was arrested by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) He served with the regiment during a six-month tour of Afghanistan in the Helmand Province in 2011-2012. The regiment saw "intense" action with the Taliban. Sources also say that while serving with the Kurdish forces in Syria, Joshua was part of a force that was almost overwhelmed by Isis forces and ran out of ammunition. Their lives were saved when a US Air Force jet dropped a bomb on the Isis forces advancing on his position. Joshua joined the Kurdish fighters along with two other British soldiers, one a former member of the Parachute Regiment. He was held along with British citizens Joe Akerman, also a former soldier, and Jac Holmes, an IT worker. It is understood that a condition of the release of the three men is that they are banned from re-entering the country for two years. Mr Molloy said he was able to speak to his son via Facebook yesterday morning. "I'm not sure what his exact plans are but it is one big sigh of relief that he is free and it will be another big sigh when his plane eventually touches down in a European airport," he added. Barack Obama has described Prince George as "adorable" after he met the two-year-old at Kensington Palace. He also expressed his hope he would be as "engaging" as the Queen is as a lunch partner when he turns 90. Prince George was allowed to stay up late on Friday when his mother and father hosted the US President and the First Lady at Kensington Palace. Before he was taken to bed, George showed the couple the rocking horse they gave him when he was born. The prince, who was wearing check pyjamas and a white dressing gown, also showed them the stuffed toy they sent him when his sister Princess Charlotte was born. Mr and Mrs Obama had earlier had lunch with the Queen, who celebrated her 90th birthday on Thursday. Mr Obama told an audience at Lindley Hall in central London: "I guess you all know why I came this week. It's no secret. "Nothing was going to stop me from wishing happy birthday to Her Majesty, and meeting George, who was adorable. "Michelle and I had the privilege to visit with Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh yesterday. I can't tell you what we talked about. I can tell you that I hope I am such an engaging lunch partner when I am 90." As the Obamas arrived, William, wearing a blue jacket and blue trousers, apologised to the Obamas, saying: "Sorry about the weather." Kate wore a teal and maroon dress, while Mrs Obama was wearing a long camel coat over a lighter camel dress. There are many accounts of sons being favoured over daughters, and daughters' lives being obscured by the brilliance of their brothers - Mozart's sister is thought to have been as musically gifted as he, but she did not get the same chances, perhaps, to develop. Fred Astaire's sister, Adele, was once the more celebrated dancer - but Fred is the Astaire who is remembered. But there are examples, too, where sisters shine famously and 'the brother' is merely a shadowy footnote. The lives of Charlotte Bronte, author of the immortal Jane Eyre (and other novels), and her dazzling literary sisters, Emily (Wuthering Heights) and Anne (Agnes Grey) are being currently marked for the bi-centennial of Charlotte's birth. But faded into the background - and painted out of the famous group portrait of the three Yorkshire sisters - is their brother, Branwell, who died of drink, dissolution and opium addiction, probably accelerated by tuberculosis, at the age of 30. It is the Bronte women who are celebrated as a trio of literary geniuses; Branwell, their brother, only exists in relation to them. Yet some biographers have suggested that Branwell had more than a hand in the inspiration and writing of Wuthering Heights and as young children, the Bronte siblings wrote, painted and played music together, creating their own fantasy world, in which Branwell, their only brother, had a dominant role. Like the girls, Patrick Branwell Bronte - their father, the Rev Patrick Bronte came originally from Co Down, where the family name had been Prunty - was a creative child; by the time he was 18, he had filled up 30 volumes of stories, poetry and plays, imagining an entire world of fiction and fantasy. But the Bronte childhoods were full of tragic loss - Branwell lost his mother when he was four (she died, probably of a form of sepsis, after giving birth in quick succession to six children). The elder sister he adored, Maria, died of tuberculosis when she was 12 and he was nine - she's described as an exceptional child who showed all the literary and artistic gifts that marked the whole family. His second sister, Eliza, soon died too. His widowed father tried to remarry, but few women would take on an impoverished parson with four children to raise and so an older aunt came to be the family housekeeper. She meant well, but was steeped in a particularly gloomy form of Calvinism and gave Branwell a dark obsession with hell and hellfire. What went especially wrong with Branwell's life? His sisters had the same grievous early losses and yet they overcame them sufficiently to live and work as happily as they could. Charlotte and Anne both felt that their brother had been too leniently treated - the girls were sent away to a harsh boarding school, but Branwell was tutored at home. He was well educated in the classics, spoke Latin, Greek and French fluently and could write with both hands, sometimes simultaneously. But he was always small for his age, was bullied for being a 'carrot-top', and was super-sensitive. His sisters came to feel that if he had been toughened up a little more, he might have coped better with the world. But Branwell never could cope with the world. He tried to become a painter - he was a more than adequate portraitist and some of his works can be see at Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth - but his failure to get enrolled at the Royal Academy in London was a blow. He was disheartened by rejections of his stories and poems sent to a literary magazine. He was, perhaps, easily led astray into the taverns and inns where drink could be had. He was always poverty-stricken, but because he was an entertaining conversationalist, drinking pals would indulge him and he began to cadge. Under the influence of Coleridge, he started to take opium - which was easily available from corner shops as laudanum - for pennies, in the 1830s and 40s. He worked as a railway clerk - and was dismissed when the till was found to be short (he probably didn't steal from it, but he was drunk when someone else did). He worked as a tutor to a well-to-do family, the Robinsons, where, the Victorian biographer Mrs Gaskell claimed, he was cruelly rebutted by his pupil's mother, Lydia, when he fell in love with her. A more recent biographer, Joan Rees, has suggested that, in fact, Branwell may have had a homosexual relationship with the boy he was teaching - but we do not really know. We only know that every enterprise Branwell undertook ended in failure and often in humiliation. Like many a profligate son, he broke his father's heart - "Branwell leads Papa a wretched life," wrote Charlotte. Although she had been close to her brother in childhood, she was exasperated by his faults and failings. His emotions were too strong and too easily aroused, she thought, his ambitions too grandiose and his character, alas, too weak. And yet others who met him also discerned his essential gentleness. When Branwell died, Charlotte wrote that their father: "Cried out for his loss like David for that of Absalom - my son! - my son!" Branwell's poetry has survived in archives and is cited at length in Winifred Gerin's biography, written more than 55 years ago. Much of it is marked by mourning for his sister Maria, who had been a "little mother" to him. Sometimes the wounds of childhood are irreparable and for Branwell, the lost Bronte, it seems to have been the case. In his letter (Write Back, April 20), Mark Holt deplores the deportation of orphaned refugee children. He is right. We should - and could - do far more to help refugees, especially orphans. That this is not the case is due not to any lack of resources but to complete failure - indeed refusal - of the powers-that-be to enforce proper use of the ample funds already available specifically to help those in genuine fear and need. The vast amounts of money we already give in foreign aid abroad and in support for migrants who, despite that aid, arrive here must be used to do what it is meant to. The large and increasing numbers of opportunistic economic migrants falsely posing as refugees must be stopped from arriving freely and soaking up resources needed for genuine ones. That means a complete tightening-up on the massive abuse of our national generosity. Unfortunately, because our Government is not prepared to crack down on the endemic abuses, much (if not most) of the aid meant to be for the really needy or endangered is wasted, squandered or just plain stolen. Example: corrupt recipient governments who do nothing for their needy with their share of our massive 0.7% GDP foreign aid budget. Squirrel it away in personal Swiss accounts, or give it straight back by buying British arms to oppress their poor. Example: immigrant chancers who impersonate real refugees and abuse our benefits, housing, health and education. They come from non-dangerous places all over north Africa and dump their passport or ID so they can claim to be Somali or Syrian, or like one recently, to be fleeing oppression in Iran. Just two examples of myriads in the gross mismanagement of policing implementation of our foreign aid and of our response to the hysterical bandwagon of opportunist migration that is depriving those fleeing in real need not only of material help, but of the sympathy of an inherently generous society sick and tired of being exploited by the opportunism of impostors. DISSENTER Carrickfergus, Co Antrim The notion that, in the event of EU exit, the Treasury will simply morph into a benevolent alms house, doling out largesse to our province, is not borne out by experience insists Tom Kelly The notion that, in the event of EU exit, the Treasury will simply morph into a benevolent alms house, doling out largesse to our province, is not borne out by experience insists Tom Kelly. When asked to chair the Northern Ireland campaign to remain in the EU I hesitated momentarily, because I couldn't believe a campaign would be needed to convince people of the obvious benefits to Northern Ireland from Europe. Over the past number of weeks I have become more attuned to the babble and confusion that those arguing for a UK withdrawal have been deliberately peddling. Rather than relying on a cogent and rational case, the Brexit campaign's every utterance is driven by irrational emotion and hubris against their fabled and favourite "Brussels bogeyman". Each fact and figure produced by independent national and international organisations of repute on national security, immigration, trade or on the diminished influence of a UK outside of the EU is brushed aside with breathtaking arrogance, huffing indifference and bar-room swagger. There is not even unity among the major advocates of a Brexit as to the consequences of the morning after the night before if a decision to leave the EU were taken. They either mislead the public to the truth, or simply don't know what would happen next. So, let's look at the facts - starting with immigration. The fears about migration are often genuinely held, but usually skewed because of the scaremongering raised by Brexit followers. The UK, like the Republic of Ireland, is outside of the Schengen Agreement and therefore the free movement of migrants does not apply within the UK. Countries outside of the EU but in Europe, such as Norway, have had to accept the free movement of people in order to secure a trade agreement and there's no reason to imagine that we would get a different deal. Norway also pays more per capita than us into the EU without having any influence in Brussels. Pay without say is not an option for us. In fact when you look at what tight border controls would mean for Northern Ireland, it throws up some very serious questions. Senior figures in the Brexit campaign and many neutral commentators acknowledge there would be a need for new border controls to stop immigrants using the Republic as an open back door to the UK. It stretches credulity to believe otherwise. What we do know from past experience is that we're likely to see increased or special checks for Northern Ireland citizens travelling to and from Britain at both airports and ports. Put bluntly, Northern Ireland would effectively become a second-class citizen within the UK. And within the UK no region has more to gain from being a positive player in Europe and more to lose from exiting the EU. The respected economic forecaster, Oxford Economics, showed Northern Ireland would be hit more than any other part of the UK by a Brexit because of its " ...unique characteristic of sharing a land border with another EU member state", as well as our economy being based around industry, agriculture and the public sector, which would be particularly vulnerable following a Brexit. Think of the damage leaving the EU would do to the many small businesses trading with or exporting to the Republic. And what of the businesses currently relying on free trade with France, Spain, Germany, Italy and any other EU member? Northern Ireland exported 3.6bn worth of goods to the EU in 2014 - that's 61% of our total goods exports. Risking that trade threatens to deal a huge blow to Northern Ireland's economy. And, yet, still the Brexit campaign sells reckless uncertainty with gossamer-thin ideology and blase claims. Only last week a so-called "Brexit expert" told the media that "trade agreements could be renegotiated in a heartbeat". That is not optimism, it's naivety. Canada, with its population of 36 million, has taken nearly nine years to complete a trade agreement with the EU and it's still not across the line, and this is despite the fact that the EU is its second-largest trading bloc. But it's not all about the economy. Something we all value is the benefit of something as simple the European Health Insurance Card, which gives us all peace on mind while on holiday. And already the EU has provided over 1.5bn to the Northern Ireland PEACE programme since 1994, and it's earmarked another 150m for the next six years. Leave the EU and that funding will disappear. And what about our farmers? Agriculture is particularly important to Northern Ireland. We value our farmers and food producers. The single farm payment makes the difference between going under and surviving for many in rural communities. In the last 10 years the single farm payment totalled 2.5bn in Northern Ireland. Direct EU payments to farmers represent 87% of annual farm income. Farmers' leaders across the UK have made it clear leaving the EU just isn't a viable option. What we know about the benefits of EU membership, particularly here in Northern Ireland, outweighs what we don't know about life outside of the EU. Consider that we have the experience of successive economic policies set by the Treasury. The notion that, after exiting the EU, it will morph into a benevolent alms house, doling out largesse to Northern Ireland, is not borne out by experience. Let's act now in our own interests. Let's put Northern Ireland first. And let's do it together with one voice and as one community, because the outcome of this referendum affects you, whether you are a student, farmer, worker, employer, food producer, exporter, researcher, holidaymaker, or homemaker. And when we're in, we all win. SWIFT may have been compromised in the Bangladesh cyber-heist (File image) Hackers who stole 56m from the Bangladesh central bank may have found a way to exploit the SWIFT global bank payment system, BAE Systems computer security experts have said. After uncovering tools it believes were linked to February's heist, one of the biggest in history, BAE Systems claims to have discovered that "sophisticated" malware was used to compromise the SWIFT system. SWIFT is used by 11,000 banks around the world, and provides a platform for them to share information about transactions. By exploiting this system, BAE Systems said the hackers managed to cover their tracks and get away with the stolen money. Using the malware, the hackers could delete money transfer details from the database, intercept incoming confirmation messages and manipulate account balances, essentially making the multi-million-pound transactions invisible to the bank and giving them more time to launder their takings. Explained How Did Hackers Who Stole $81 Million from Bangladesh Bank Go Undetected? https://t.co/apLUJWEshE pic.twitter.com/BJ7PtfIOnZ The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) April 25, 2016 Worryingly, the hackers' toolkit is "highly configurable", according to the company, and could "feasibly be used for similar attacks in future." SWIFT appears to be aware of the issue. Speaking to Reuters, spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said a software update designed to thwart the malware would be going out today. She said the update would help banks "spot inconsistencies" in their databases, and added "the malware has no impact on SWIFT's network or core messaging services." Financial institutions will also get additional warnings to carefully scrutinise their security measures. Adrian Nish, Bae Systems' head of threat intelligence, told Reuters he had never seen such an elaborate scheme. "I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customise it for the environment they were operating in," he said. "I guess it was the realisation that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile." Nish's team found the malware on an online database, and are confident it was the software used in the attack because it was created close to the date of the heist, contained information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Bank has been contacted for more information. Independent Nestled into a country road in Kingsland, County Roscommon, a research grade observatory boasting two large telescopes is masked by a traditional country cottage. Eamon Ansbro set up his observatory in the mid 1990s at a time when locals began reporting strange lights and flying objects in the skies. The nearby town of Boyle has a history of UFO activity. The late Betty Meyler set up the UFO society of Ireland in the sleepy rural town, where the night skies are black and totally free from light pollution. Several UFO sightings have been reported in the area, most famously the crash landing of a supposed flying saucer in 1996 that drew parallels with the infamous Roswell incident. Eamons house-cum-research facility sits just under a mile away from Kingsland National School where I was a pupil in the late 1990s . I remember the other kids talking about the man who looks for aliens. Strangely, Ansbros house fits fits well within the friendly - albeit slightly insular - community. Its large telescopes are hidden inside corrugated iron sheds, a row of smaller cameras pointing skyward on the roof of the cottage are the only sign of abnormality. While it is true that Ansbro has dedicated much of his professional life to a field that many of his neighbours and scientific peers would deem crazy, it is clear upon meeting him that he is far from the tin-foil-hat-wearing loon that springs to mind when one thinks of a 'ufoligist'. He could by described by some as an eccentric, but he is also articulate, calm and confident in his work. He is also keen to distance himself from other local ufologists, who - despite having his utmost respect - do not follow a scientific approach in their quest for first contact with an intelligent extra terrestrial species. Ansbro is not interested in second hand accounts of sightings or indeed any degree of speculation, he is on a quest for definitive proof of extra terrestrial life. His ultimate goal is first contact. Ansbro is by no means the first man to begin the search for extra terrestrial life. the search for extra terrestrial intelligence agency (SETI) are a well funded society of scientists who work to the same ends as Ansbro. The difference between them lies in their method. SETI function on the premise that the intelligent civilisations are likely using methods of communication that are extremely advanced, but function in a similar manner to our own i.e. using radio waves, sound waves or radiation. This is a belief that is totally at odds with Ansbros who believes that we need to look beyond the laws of physics and science as we know them. When something or somebody is emphatically dismissed by mainstream science - warning bells start to go off. However, in this case its different. Its different because mainstream science - in this case SETI - havent found anything yet. Perhaps then there is method to Ansbros madness. These civilisations are operating at a completely different level, on completely different systems he explains. I think that there is a sort of telephone directory that we arent in, our Solar System is on the outermost arm of the galaxy, I suspect that there are many clusters of civilisations nearer to the centre. Scalar technology Contacting civilisations at the centre of the galaxy requires faster than light communications, something that we cannot achieve within the confines of electromagnetism - the theories on which all our systems of communication and travel are based. Ansbro believes the secret lies in scalar waves a type of electromagnetic wave that works outside of the laws of physics as we know it. He believes that despite the difficulty of his task, he thinks he is close to a breakthrough. "I'm confident that we will achieve first contact" he says. "I think I know how they're doing it now"." If Ansbro is successful in his mission, he will take his place alongside Einstein, Newton, and Hawking in the history books. Until then his telescopes will remain trained on the skies over Co. Roscommon. Irish Independent Are there some places you just dont go to? Some ideas or images that make you immediately close your eyes and mind? Is there something within you thats frozen with fear and panic. This world can certainly bring on a sense of anxiety. And such worry can weigh heavily on us, making us heavier and heavier in spirit until, with all that weight, we lock up, frozen as we look at whats happening and worse, what could happen to us, our loved ones, and our little corner of the globe. But still inside of us is a Spirit infused with courage and ingenuity that never leaves us. God-given, always ready, if we reflect on the potential the Spirit poses for us, we can warm to its blazing light, gain wisdom and begin to thaw. As we do this, we understand that there are tangible things we can do so that we are more effective in the world than wed previously thought. We can take more, not less, charge of events and how they effect us. We can rise above pain and tragedy to experience Gods healing and goodness. We can live in light, not sticking to the dark corners where we believe (erroneously) that more tragedy wont tough us. My new book, Dont Panic!: How to Keep Going When the Going Gets Tough, recognizes that crises will occur. There will be times when well feel those fingers of iciness moving through us, threatening to freeze us from positive, practical action. But we can also act decisively to shake off the chills and thaw whats frozen, for the better! Peace, Maureen Focusing on rather unusual beliefs, Id like to look at one that isnt as unusual as you might think. The idea that people should not have kids. Should people consider the economic costs of having a family? Sure. No-one should bring up children they cant afford to raise. But lets look at the more militant versions of the idea of not procreating. One is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Another is anti-natalism. You can ready about voluntary human extinction at the VHEMT site. Essentially, they worry for the human impact on the Earths biosphere. A legitimate concern. For them, human breeding is at fault. If the human population would only decrease, resource shortages would end, the negative impact on animal habitats would stop, and the eventual extinction of humans after living a long life but not having kids will make the Earth safe for all those animals we might care so dearly for. So, should people stop being born? Are we really that bad? Followers of such a movement can abstain from having kids and depart from our plagued world, but what can it do about the people who disagree? Surely, one of the problems with the VHEMT is that its goal is impossible? At best, all the VHEMT could accomplish is its own extinction, the extinction of the people who want to be extinct. Good for them. Should people stop being born? Is this even a measurable or achievable goal? Supposing the VHEMT got maximum coverage, it might convince family after family not to have kids. But even at the height of its measurable success, the VHEMT would not have made humans extinct, but its own supporters. The movements own extinction is the only thing certain, making Voluntary VHEMT Extinction Movement possibly a more fitting name, whereas any possible impact on human numbers throughout the movements period of operation could only hope to be pitiful. What can a movement supposedly so broad in scope do about the billions of people who wont listen or cant listen for reasons of their religion, culture, the political regime they live under, etc? The progeny of all the people who disagree or didnt even hear the message at all will still be here, long after all the followers of such a movement as the VHEMT have all voluntarily gone extinct or slightly altered the demographics of the countries they operate freely in (the only possible practical outcome). Interestingly, one or two historical Christian sects genuinely did decide that having children was immoral and castrated themselves (the Skoptsy are one known example). If VHEMT proponents stop to think and understand the level of resistance that comes from trying to suppress human biological behavior, they would be wisest to decide that coercion is a much more measurable and achievable plan (are they going to be the future environmental terrorists constantly hinted at by Lifeboat Foundation writers?). Fast forward to the future. Earth is in greater throes than ever. Persuasion alone is just making their own supporters extinct. They need a way to get at their opponents too. But a resource-consuming war of starvation, sterilization or extermination to stamp out human biological behavior for the good of the planet would, ironically, be very bad for the planet, making coercion just as useless as persuasion in such a movements toolbox. As such, the VHEMT is an ironic creature. Support it, and you are only helping it go extinct. Is it inhumane to bring children into the world? Children cry when they are born. They dont seem happy to be here. Medically, thats just a reaction to using their lungs for the first time, which previously were filled with fluid. But lets get on to the real issue at hand. The second view I wanted to discuss is anti-natalism, and this is more interesting. Rather than appealing about the fate of other species and the Earths tragedies like the VHEMT, or asking for us to be hyper-environmentalists with the ironic task to be prolific messengers who arent so prolific at all, anti-natalism is more a philosophical school of thought. They dont claim to have any practical, measurable or achievable plan. They simply believe that it is best not to be born. According to them, all the heartbreak, anguish, agony and physical pain of life (including the ultimate trauma of death) are apparently so chilling that it is inhumane to create a person at all, knowing they will go through such torments and have to die at the end. Therefore, they will say, it is the most moral choice not to have a child, since having the child at all means the child will need to die eventually. Whether or not humans should be extinct is not the issue for anti-natalists. Their focus is more on humans and the suffering they endure. One can draw a parallel with Buddhism, which sees all life as suffering and laments being part of it at all. But in Buddhism, we also have the idea of the Bodhisattva, the one who stays here in full knowledge of all the suffering to guide others, rather than simply achieving and keeping enlightenment for oneself. Rather than deciding to flee from life by not participating in it, not raising a family, you can play the part of someone trying to abolish suffering. Similarly, people so compassionate enough to consider their own extinction just to make life better for others can do better than disappear and leave empty chairs. They should stay, and if they choose to have a family, be blessed. One of the ironies of wanting to persuade people not to have kids is that it is impossible in any practical sense, even if you agree with it philosophically. At most, all that can be accomplished is that the few impressionable people or nearby people in the states where such advocacy exists will fall to the arguments presented and wont have children. It wont do anything to curb the human population globally, or do anything to subvert the people who were just too fertile and too driven by base instincts to listen. There will still be people born here on Earth a long time from now, no matter what philosophies would try to oppose such a thing. However persuasive your philosophies and articles might be, convincing people to stop people having children is as futile and as wasteful as trying to convince sparrows. The bodies of two men who were hacked to death are brought down from an apartment in Dhaka, April 25, 2016. Updated at 6:04 p.m. ET on 2016-04-25 Assailants on Monday hacked to death the editor of Bangladeshs first LGBT magazine and another man inside an apartment in Dhaka, police and witnesses said. Xulhaz Mannan, the 35-year-old editor of Roopbaan magazine who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a former protocol officer at the U.S. embassy, and Mahbub Tanmay, 34, were fatally attacked at Mannans apartment by a group posing as couriers, officials said. Three attackers forcefully entered the house and hacked to death the USAID official and his friend. The police have been investigating the incident. We will find out the killers, I tell you, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews on Monday night. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing, We are outraged by the barbaric attack, adding that Mannan was a beloved member of the embassy and a courageous activist for LGBT rights. The White House paid tribute to Xulhaz Mannan in deploring "the brutal murders this evening in Dhaka." "[H]e worked on behalf of his fellow Bangladeshis as a voice for justice, equality, and human rights for all. Mr. Mannan set an example of dignity, courage, and selflessness, and his legacy will live on in the causes he championed," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement issued by the White House press office. Wave of attacks Parvez Molla, a private security guard, was also injured in the attack that occurred around 5 p.m. and brought to four the number of people killed in machete attacks in Bangladesh since April 7, including a university professor and a secular blogger. Police suspect that Islamic militants may have been involved in the first two killings, but authorities had yet to say whether there was such a link to Mondays double-homicide in Bangladesh. A wave of machete attacks by suspected militants has gripped the predominantly Muslim country since early last year, targeting secular writers, intellectuals and members of religious minorities. Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia told reporters that Mondays killings were pre-mediated to create anarchy in the country. But he did not reveal any information on who may have been behind the attack. The latest killings occurred less than 60 hours after A.F.M. Rezaul Karim Siddique, an English professor at Rajshahi University, was slain with machetes on Saturday morning. A student at the campus in northwestern Bangladesh, who is a member of the student wing of the faith-based opposition party Jamaat-e-Islami, has been arrested in connection with Siddiques killing, according to Agence France-Presse. Witness accounts According to witnesses, at least five strangers came to the West Dhanmondi apartment building where Mannan lived with his mother and a servant. The security guard Molla asked the strangers to identify themselves and they replied that they were delivering a package to Mannan, police said. Three of the strangers headed to the apartment, followed by Molla. Mannan sir opened the door and tried to shut the door, looking at them. Then I told them to leave, as sir [did] not want them to get in. Then they hit me on the left forehead and I collapsed, Molla later told reporters at Dhaka Medical College Hospital. All of the strangers wore blue T-shirts and jeans, and they carried bags, he said. According to another guard, Sumon, the strangers then forced their way into the apartment and attacked Mannan and Tanmay. I then took Molla to the hospital, said Sumon adding that the attackers chanted Allahu Akbar. Senseless act Mannan was the editor of the countrys sole magazine devoted to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. On April 14, four members of Bangladeshs LGBT community were detained by police as they tried to rally under the Roopbaan banner at Pahela Boishakh, the Bengali new year festivities in Dhaka. On Monday, Roopbaan posted a two-word message on its Facebook page in Mannans memory: R.I.P. Xulhaz. Mondays killings in Dhaka drew condemnation from U.S. officials. I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka. Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the U.S. Embassy, American Ambassador Marcia Stephens Bloom Bernicat said in a statement. We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the Government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders, she added. Indian intelligence officials said Monday they were working to verify reports that the alleged head of an Islamic State cell and principal recruiter for IS in India had been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria. Mohammad Shafi Armar (alias Yousuf al-Hindi), who comes from the south Indian state of Karnataka, was killed in a drone strike a few days ago, according to a report published by the Times of India on Monday that cited top government sources. An official at Indias Intelligence Bureau (IB) told BenarNews that although it had received an intelligence report of Armars death from American intelligence officials on Sunday, the bureau was cross-checking to verify the information. Prima facie, it seems he [Armar] is dead. But we cant say anything for sure until we verify [the information], said the official who requested anonymity. The confirmation process may take some time because getting information from Syria, which is an IS stronghold, is not easy, the official added. Common link Armar, 26 (pictured below), is believed to be the common link among at least 25 people arrested by Indian security agencies over the past year for showing leanings toward the Middle East-based terror outfit, according to intelligence sources. The Times of India claimed to have confirmed the information about his death from three top government and intelligence sources. The alleged IS sympathizers told investigators during interrogation that they were radicalized and recruited by Armar through online platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype, sources in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) told BenarNews. Armar allegedly took over the reins of ISs India offshoot Ansar ul-Tawhid (AuT) after his brother, Abdul Khadir Sultan Armar, 38, was killed in an airstrike in Kobane, Syria, in March 2015. Armar recently dismantled AuT and renamed it as Junud al Khalifa-e-Hind, which translates to soldiers of the Indian caliphate, with an aim to establish an IS unit in every Indian state, according to intelligence agencies. Following the death of Armars brother last year, their mother, Hajira, told The Indian Express that her sons had stopped communicating with her in 2010, five years after the brothers left for Oman. A police official in Bhatkal, the Armar familys hometown about 525 km (326 miles) from the Karnataka capital Bengaluru, told BenarNews that Armars mother and father, Shabbir Hussain, had relocated to Dubai within the past year. BenarNews was unable to locate Armars parents for comment. A total of 23 Indians have left India to fight for the IS in Iraq and Syria, according to an intelligence report released last year. Of them, six had died in battle before reports of Armars death emerged. While at least 25 suspected IS recruits have been arrested by Indian security forces, more than 150 are under surveillance for showing sympathy toward the militant organization, according to officials. A Uyghur activist whose visa to attend a conference at the headquarters of the exiled Tibetan government in northern India was revoked on the weekend hinted Monday that New Delhi may have bowed to pressure from Beijing, which labels him a terrorist. I think my visa denial was Indias effort to maintain its bilateral relations with China, Dolkun Isa, chairman of the World Uyghur Conference (WUC), said in a statement from Germany, where he is living in exile. Isa, 49, was granted a tourist e-visa to attend a conference organized by the U.S.-based Initiatives for China in Himachal Pradeshs Dharamshala town. Members of the Uyghur community and other exiled dissidents, including the Dalai Lama, are expected to attend the two-day conference, from April 30, to discuss democratic transformation in China. Isas visa was revoked Saturday following a protest from Beijing, which called him a terrorist. Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is [the] due obligation of relevant countries, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said last week after India issued a tourist visa to Isa. An official of Indias Ministry of Home Affairs who requested anonymity told BenarNews that New Delhis move to cancel Isas visa had nothing to do with pressure from Beijing. We need to respect the Interpol. Since [Isa] has a red corner notice against him, we would have had to arrest him the moment he landed in the country, the official said. The Home Ministry official said the tourist visa was issued to Isa because the government was unaware of the red corner notice against him. Not published openly Isa is not currently listed as wanted on Interpols website. You are right, you cant find my name on the Interpol website. I think there are different list of Interpol, some lists which are not published openly, Delhi-based media outlet The Wire quoted Isa as saying. "I have been detained in the past at the airport (South Korea in September 2009 for three days), and was also denied entry into the U.S. in 2006 this problem was solved in 2012, however, and I have since been able to enter the US for travel and work for the past 4 years," he said. In the WUC statement, Isa voiced disappointment that he would not be able to attend the a vital forum through which ethnic and religious communities in China-related areas, as well as statesmen, scholars and activists, are able to meet openly to discuss and exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities. Isa added that his visa was cancelled after his scheduled visit was widely reported in the Indian press. He rejected reports that India initially granted the visa to get back at Chinas recent veto to place Masood Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), on the United Nations Security Council Sanctions list. Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights, Isa said. Chest thumping Tenzin Ninjey, the organizer of the Dharamshala conference, said last week that China was wrong to brand Isa a terrorist. Dolkun Isa is a peace activist. There is no comparison at all with terrorist Masood Azhar, he told Indian news agency ANI. Later on Monday, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told reporters in New Delhi that Isas visa was cancelled because he applied in the wrong category. He has given wrong information on why he wanted to visit India. The e-visa application said he wanted to come as a tourist though he was coming here to attend a conference and that is why we had to cancel his visa, Rijiju said. Indian opposition parties slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for bowing to Chinese pressure. What was all that chest thumping earlier? asked former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Twitter. For the last few days we were treated to a lot of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this government is the first to stand up to China. But former diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar said India had done the right thing by reviewing its decision to grant visa to Isa. Had it been otherwise, there would have been serious negative fallouts on the relationship with China. All one can say at this point would be that there has been a political decision, conceivably at the highest level, to supersede the foreign and security policy establishments earlier move to issue an electronic visa to the [Uyghur] fugitive, Bhadrakumar said in his blog. Thai police investigate the scene of a bomb attack that killed one person and seriously injured 11 others in Narathiwat province, April 25, 2016. A shooting and two bomb attacks in Thailands Deep South killed three people and injured at least 20 others on Monday, ahead of an informal round of peace talks between the Thai government and local rebels expected later this week. The latest fatalities brought to at least 35 the number of people killed in attacks by suspected rebels since Feb. 10, when Thai security forces raided a suspected insurgent hideout in Pattani, one of the provinces in the Deep South. Two bombs rigged to motorcycles exploded simultaneously in two locations in Narathiwat province around midday, police said. The explosions killed one person, identified as 33-year-old Ruslan Da-o, and seriously injured 11 others including a 6-year-old girl, civilians, security volunteers and police, Narathiwat Police Maj. Gen. Patanawut Angkhanawin said. Nine others were treated for minor injuries. Police examined security cameras and released a photo of the alleged perpetrators riding away from one of the bomb scenes, according to Patanawut. Police released a photo of suspected bombers leaving the scene in Narathiawat province, April 25, 2016. [Courtesy of Narathiwat provincial police bureau] In nearby Yala province, two rubber farmers, Hamdee Tolupoh and Unu Talae, were killed in a roadside shooting on Monday while transporting logs from Ban Mai, a tambon or village cluster, to Yala town. Police said the shooters used military-style weapons. The two bombs were similar to bombs used in two earlier other bombings earlier this month, police said. On April 11, a perpetrator dressed as a Muslim woman used a motorcycle bomb to kill a police officer and a 4-year-old Muslim boy in front of Jana Railway station in Songkhla province. On April 19, a bombing at a grocery store near Ban Ta Paed railway station killed one person and injured 18 others. Thamrong Kirativirotekul, an owner of shop near where the first bomb went off on Monday, said he called police after noticing a suspicious person parking a motorcycle and leaving with someone on another motorbike. The bomb exploded a minute later, he said. Doubts about peace talks Violence linked to the conflict in the Deep South, a predominantly Muslim and Malay-speaking region, has claimed more than 6,500 lives since the insurgency flared up again in 2004. Mondays violence occurred in the run-up to informal, Malaysia-brokered peace talks that are expected to take place in Kuala Lumpur at an unannounced date this week. Thailands junta, which seized power in May 2014, has been trying to persuade various rebel groups and factions to reopen formal peace talks for the first time since December 2014, when a civilian-led government was in power. Srisompob Jitpiromsri, director of regional think-tank Deep South Watch, expressed pessimism about the upcoming round of informal talks, following the removal of a key negotiator from the Thai delegation. Last week, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha said Army Lt. Gen. Nakrob Boonbuathong was removed from the negotiating team on which he had served since 2013 as part of a routine reassignment of duties. Nakrob was the man who clinched the terms of reference (ToR) that were agreed upon and accepted by both sides. Now he is not there and we dont know whether any ToR contents were changed at all, Srisompob told BenarNews. And if there were some changes, we dont know if MARA Patani can accept that, he said, referring to an umbrella body representing southern rebel groups at the negotiations table. For Immediate Release, April 25, 2016 Contact: Brett Hartl, (202) 817-8121, Bhartl@biologicaldiversity.org Reward for Information on Red Wolf Killing Comes Six Months Too Late U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Failed to Offer Any Reward for Information on Seven Other Red Wolves Killed in 2015 RALEIGH, N.C. In a long-delayed attempt to prosecute the illegal killing of an endangered red wolf six months ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it is offering a $2,500 reward toward for information leading to an arrest. A red wolf was illegally killed on Oct. 31, 2015 near Fairfield in Hyde County, N.C., by suspected gunshot. Todays reward was the first offered by the Service in more than 18 months relating to an illegally killed red wolf, despite the fact that at least seven other red wolves were either confirmed or suspected to have been illegally shot in 2015. Since 2014 the Service has slowly dismantled the red wolf recovery program, including law-enforcement efforts to protect the species, resulting in this delay between the crime and the reward being announced. Offering a reward six months after the crime occurred confirms that the federal government has turned its back on these critically endangered animals, said Brett Hartl, endangered species policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. By waiting until the trail has gone cold to take action, the Service is pandering to special interests opposed to wolves instead of doing its job to protect one the nations most-imperiled species. With as few as 45 wolves remaining in the wild, the red wolf is now one of the worlds most endangered carnivores. The species was declared endangered in 1973, and, in a final attempt to save it, 17 wild red wolves were captured for captive breeding. Wolf releases began in North Carolinas Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s, and the population slowly grew to more than 130 wolves by 2012. But in 2014 the Service decided to curtail all aspects of the recovery program, in violation of the Endangered Species Act, including removing law-enforcement efforts to protect the species. Earlier this month the Center filed a lawsuit demanding that the Service release documents on its decision to abandon wolf recovery. The Service needs to get biologists back on the ground doing recovery work, it needs to restart reintroductions of wolves from captivity back into the wild, and it needs to get law-enforcement officers out there to protect the remaining wolves, said Hartl. The red wolf reintroduction program was once considered one of the worlds most innovative programs to restore a critically endangered carnivore. A 2014 report from the independent Wildlife Management Institute concluded that if the red wolf was going to recover, two additional populations would need to be established, with additional resources needed to build local stakeholder support for the red wolf recovery program. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Ingenico Group has deployed a cashless revenue collection solution in Kenya in an initiative sponsored by Equity Bank. Image by 123RF This initiative reinforces the emerging cashless-based culture by collecting county fees such as parking, land rates, business permits, market stall fees, all through electronic payment. Its benefits include stronger accountability for funds collected and effective cost reduction thanks to a fully electronic process. People in Nyeri, Kenya, can now pay county fees from the area of operations without wasting time commuting. County agents, equipped with Ingenico wireless smart terminals with a specific revenue Collection application, can now simply collect payments when arriving at the business premises. We selected Ingenico Group and its local partner Tracom as they have shown a strong expertise in providing innovative solutions to strengthen cashless payment behaviours, explained Andrew Wakahiu, general manager-agency banking, Equity Bank. This Revenue Collection program has been successful because it relies on a technology that is both simple and secure. No more paperwork, complex processes or cash management issues in the agent network; its a real gamechanger for the County administration. Equity Bank, a leading regional banking institution, has partnered with Ingenico Group and Tracom for the past few years to deploy cashless programs in East Africa. This has been part of a global strategy which aims to deepen financial inclusion among the local population. Equity Bank has been a pioneer in Branchless Banking where local merchants became trusted agents, offering the unbanked population a full banking portfolio (including account ownership and management as well as savings and credit) through a simple agency banking application on Ingenico iWL smart terminals. Local merchants became trusted agents, offering the unbanked population a full banking portfolio We are proud to be Equity Banks partner on this governmental program, commented Luciano Cavazzana, Eastern Europe & Africa managing director for Ingenico Group. We are demonstrating that our technology is not limited to traditional payment but is open to a wide range of new opportunities.Through this initiative, Tracom and Ingenico Group addressed administrative challenges by providing a quick and convenient fees collection solution to better anchor cashless habits in Kenyans daily lives. New York Festivals and its 2016 partners, New York Women in Communications, The Content Council, Weber Shandwick and Miami Ad School, will present a powerhouse of creative panels, which will explore campaigns that-intentionally or not-got people talking about more than the brand on 19 May 2016. Programme 10-11am - New York Women in Communications presents Content Disruption Consumers today are in control and they are savvier than ever. To meet their increasingly demanding preferences, marketers have broken through the bonds of traditional advertising and storytelling is now the thread that runs through everything. So how do brands develop content that breaks through? This panel will discuss not only what it takes to break through but also how brands can even drive the cultural conversation, when they get it right. Panellists: Beth Collins Ellard, executive VP, Media The Advertising Council, NY and Maya Draisin, associate publisher & head of marketing Wired, NY. Moderated by Georgia Galanoudis, md Imprint, NY. 11.30am -12.30pm - The Content Council PresentsIs content marketing the only marketing left? Create a movement and inspire a tribe of people to believe. That is when content marketing is at its best. Sure, you can use content to educate, but how do you inspire people to action? How can you make a brand stand for something bigger than a product or service? Join the premier non-profit organisation, representing content marketers globally, for a lively discussion on using storytelling for a greater purpose. Panellists: Jacquie Loch, VP content solutions St. Joseph Communications Media Group, Canada, Andy Seibert, chairman & managing partner Imprint, NY / chairman The Content Council, NY, Rachel Jo Silver, founder Love Stories TV, NY and Beth Tomkiw, chief content officer Manifest, Chicago. Moderated by Lori Greene, founder LPG Enterprises, NY. 1.30-2.30pm Weber Shandwick presentsPushing buttonsand cultural boundaries. Advertising has typically reflected a cultural status quo, offering scenarios that represent the friendly and familiar. However, what happens when the taboo or controversial is presented? As more brands become socially conscious and inclusionary of non-traditional lifestylesand recognise those who live them as a growing and often underrepresented demographic we are seeing the emergence of a new definition of normal. Whether it is LGBTQ couples or biracial families, to presenting topics that touch a political nerve, more brands and organisations are sparking conversations. This panel will shine a light on campaigns that intentionally courted conversation by including groups or topics normally excluded from mainstream messaging while purposefully leaning into unchartered territories to elevate the holy trinity of paid, owned and earned integrated campaigns. How will advertising be more culturally relevant and react faster to cultural shifts in an always-on world evolves? Panellists: John Mescall, global executive creative director McCann Worldgroup, Gary Osifchin, Vice President, Brand Equity, Global Biscuits Mondelez International, Josy Paul, chairman & chief creative officer BBDO India and Jenna Young, executive creative director Weber Shandwick, NY. Moderated by Michael Schiferl, executive VP - Weber Shandwick. 2.30-4.00pm Miami Ad School presentsBeyond your portfolio: get people talking about you! Agencies hire people, not portfolios. This workshop will look at some of the things young creatives did that challenged societys entrenched beliefs and attitudes and explore what you need to do to get people talking about you! Panellists: Raj Ramamurthy, art director - Ogilvy and Mather, NY, Jessica Shriftman, art director - Wieden + Kennedy, NY and Nick Smatt, account planner - BBDO, NY. Facilitated by Pippa Seichrist, cofounder, head of innovation & development Miami Ad School. Bookings The 2016 New York Show events, on 19 May, feature four creative panel sessions, a cocktail reception, the awards ceremony and an after-party. New York Festivals will welcome award winners, jury members and guests from around the globe to this day long series of events honouring the Worlds Best Advertising. To purchase tickets, go here. Cardiologist, Dr Wouter Basson's bid to have two Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) disciplinary committee members recused from his sentencing proceedings has been turned down by the North Gauteng High Court. Guilty of unprofessional conduct After a very lengthy hearing that lasted six years, Dr Basson, was eventually found guilty of unprofessional conduct by the council in December 2013. The charges were related to his involvement in developing chemical weapons for the South African Defence Force during the apartheid years, which has also earned him the nickname, Dr Death. Court application During the hearing in mitigation of sentence early last year, Dr Basson wanted two of the members of the disciplinary committee to recuse themselves on the grounds of bias. Shortly after walking out of the proceedings, his legal team lodged a review application at the North Gauteng High Court for the removal of the two. A statement by the HPCSA at the time said: "An order is sought to compel the chairperson of the professional conduct committee, Professor Jannie Hugo and a member of the committee, Professor Eddie Mhlanga to provide information relating to their membership to any of the organisations who signed the petition agitating for the removal of Dr Basson from the roll of medical practitioners. Judgement dismissed However, last week, acting judge David Unterhalter ordered that the application be dismissed with costs as Dr Basson's application was premature, and the court could not hear it until he had exhausted his internal remedies of appeal before the council. "There is no reason to think that such an appellate body will not give fair consideration to an appeal brought by Dr Basson," he said. The HPCSA says the sentencing hearing will proceed in due course. Excited caffeinistas queued outside of the newly opened Starbucks in Rosebank on Thursday, paying no mind to the cold or drizzle. The queue outside Starbucks in Rosebank, four days after opening.Photographer: Jessica Taylor The coffee giant has iconic status among customers, largely due to its free WiFi and customised drinks, with buyers' names written on cups. One curious onlooker, Gary Logan, who declined to join the large crowd queuing for coffee, said that he had been to a Starbucks in the US once before, but had found the whole system to be too complicated. "I have simple needs when it comes to coffee. It's either a small cup or a big cup of good black coffee. The new-age language they use is confusing to me," he said. Newbies will have to learn a whole new coffee language. The menu options are built on a complex framework, offering 14 dimensions along which customers can make choices to "design" their own drink. Drinks come in four sizes; short (available, but not on the menu); tall; grande (Italian for large); and venti (Italian for 20). In terms of pricing, an Americano brew will set you back R22 for the standard (tall). Vida e caffe charges R20 for a single Americano. A double Americano will cost you R23. Ciro national training manager Deon Mastenbroek said the arrival of Starbucks had created a renewed interest in coffee among domestic consumers. "It will possibly even bring noncoffee drinkers into the market. Starbucks will also force other local coffee chains to up their game in terms of quality and customer service," he said. A second Starbucks store will open in Attacq's R5bn Mall of Africa in Midrand next week. "In two years, we think the market will have between 12-15 stores," Taste Holdings CEO Carlo Gonzaga said. Taste will roll out the stores in SA, under its licence agreement with Starbucks. Famous Brands has bought 51% of Lupa Osteria, a chain of three Italian restaurants in KwaZulu-Natal, for an undisclosed amount. Photographer: Jeremy GlynImage source: Darren Hele.Photographer: Jeremy GlynImage source: BDlive The purchase amount fell below the JSEs threshold for "categorised transaction" and would be settled in cash, the restaurant franchisor said on Monday. All suspensive conditions had been fulfilled and the effective date of the transaction would be 1 May. "Trading is buoyant in all three existing restaurants, with high levels of consumer acceptance, positive feedback and repeat business," Famous Brands CEO Darren Hele said. "In the short term our plan is to grow Lupas footprint to six restaurants in KwaZulu-Natal; over the long term, we believe that a network of 35 restaurants in SA and select African countries is achievable." Lupa Osteria was founded by Guy Cluver and Chris Black who operate restaurants in Hillcrest, Westville and Durban North. The name Lupa the she-wolf synonymous with and symbolic of Rome was chosen to indicate the chain served Roman-style food, as opposed to other variants of Italian cuisine, Cluver said. Hele said: "Over the past year our stated strategy has been to explore and capitalise on opportunities in the casual dining category one of the quickest-growing segments in the restaurant industry over the past decade. Our more recent acquisitions, including the Mythos brand, demonstrate our progress in pursuit of this goal." Aggressive retail sales promotions have helped drive foot traffic to beauty and pharmaceutical group Clicks, which reported double-digit interim profit growth. Clicks on Thursday reported growth of 13.4% in retail sales for the six months to end-February, while turnover increased 13.4% to R12.1bn. Aftertax profit grew 16% to R509m. Sasfin Wealth senior equity analyst Alec Abraham said the company had been aggressive in its marketing, which had helped it to gain market share. "The groups sales are well ahead of other retailers of its kind. Their promotion strategy is working very well for them. The results themselves were perfectly in line with expectation," Mr Abraham said. ClubCard membership, its loyalty programme, increased by almost 1-million, bringing total membership to 5.7-million active customers. Clicks said its businesses had performed particularly well over the festive and holiday season, with customers responding positively to value offers and innovative product ranges. Group CEO David Kneale said Musica, in particular, had flourished during the festive season. "We used a pop-up store concept that consumers seemed to love. Its a concept we intend to use again. "We continue to believe that there is a market for the physical formats of music and DVDs. We have absolutely no intention of selling (Musica) off," he said. Musica increased sales 3.4%. Kneale said technology products such as speakers and headphones proved popular. Retail health and beauty sales including Clicks and the franchise brands of The Body Shop, GNC, and Claires, increased 14.1% for the six months. UPD, the groups pharmaceutical distribution business, grew turnover by 12.8%. The retailer declared an interim dividend of 76c, a 16% increase from the matching period last year. The group would spend about R455m on capital expenditure this financial year, Kneale said "The two big components of that will be the opening of new stores and information technology investment. We are opening new stores at a rate of 20-25 stores a year. We will also invest in existing stores so that they continue to look modern, fresh and appealing to our customers," he said. Clicks share price touched an intraday high of R109.30 on Wednesday. By yesterday afternoon, it was trading lower, at about R105.50. "Its a steady performer and it has consistently moved up. Generally, the view is that it is fully valued. The share pulled back on Thursday but thats to be expected," Abraham said. Clicks is part of the food and drug retailers index on the JSE. Year to date, the index has seen growth of 16.48%, far ahead the all share, which has risen 6.17% this year. The growth comes despite pressing conditions in the South African economy. Clicks said its core health and beauty markets "are relatively resilient to economic downturns". The directors forecast that diluted headline earnings per share for the year to August would increase 10%-15% over the 2015 financial year. PRETORIA: Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa has signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change at the United Nations in New York. The Paris Agreement is universally regarded as a seminal point in the development of the international climate change regime under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Paris Agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015 at the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC CoP21, held in Paris from 30 November to 13 December 2015. The Agreement was adopted after four years of intense negotiations mandated by the 17th UNFCCC CoP held in Durban in 2011. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, acting in his capacity as depository of the Agreement convened a high-level ceremony for the opening for signature of the Agreement on Friday, 22 April. Parties to the Convention are able to sign the Agreement until 21 April 2017. Minister Molewa signed the Agreement on behalf of the South African government. The Agreement is a comprehensive framework which will guide international efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to meet all the associated challenges posed by climate change. It signals the change in pace towards the low carbon development from 2020 onwards through commitments of countries in ambitious national plans called Nationally Determined Contributions. This outcome recognises that climate change represents an urgent threat to human societies and the planet, requiring the widest possible cooperation by all countries and other stakeholders. The main objective of the Agreement is to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees. The recognition of the 1.5 degree target is of central importance to South Africa as an African and developing country that is highly vulnerable to climate change. The Paris Agreement is also an important tool in mobilising finance, technological support and capacity building for developing countries, and will also help to scale up global efforts to address and minimise loss and damage from climate change and increase climate resilience. Signing the Agreement requires that countries will later need to adopt the agreement within their own legal systems, through ratification, acceptance, approval or accession. The agreement will enter into force when ratified by at least 55 countries, which together represent at least 55% of global emissions. South Africa is already acting on climate change. The country has significant investment in renewable energy, public transport, energy efficiency, waste management and land restoration initiatives. South Africa is also striving to enhance efforts to transition to a lower carbon economy and society, as well as to adapt in the short, medium and long term to the impacts of increasing temperatures, and reduced rainfall in many parts of the country. The G.A.P. Awards honor GLOBALG.A.P. certified producers who have achieved outstanding results through their commitment to GLOBALG.A.P. principles and the implementation of Good Agricultural Practices while also offering GLOBALG.A.P. certified farmers an opportunity to showcase their achievements and gain industry recognition for their efforts. The G.A.P. Awards 2016 will focus on the following three categories: 1. Talent for agriculture, women and youth 2. Water management 3. Integration of smallholders Assessment criteria Traceability - IT/Transparency Usage Push for Partnerships/Cooperations (public, private, etc.) Innovative Practices/Technologies Economic Aspect/Created Value Passionate and Powerful Story The G.A.P. Awards 2016 is open to all GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance Standard certified farmers and farmer groups, as well as any programs involving one or more certified farmers . All the winners will receive: A ticket to the GLOBALG.A.P. Summit 2016 in Amsterdam, including travel and accommodation costs for one person A G.A.P. Awards 2016 Trophy A G.A.P. Awards 2016 Winner Certificate A G.A.P. Awards 2016 Winners Seal for their communication, emails, website Deadline: 30 June 2016. For application criteria and information, go to G.A.P Awards 2016. The 29th Annual Labour Law Conference, taking place 24-25 August 2016 at Emperors Palace, will discuss factors affecting youth employment, the role of trade unions and the question of the national minimum wage. The South African government has committed to introducing a national minimum wage but the detail is yet to be thrashed out. At present minimum wages are set in various specific sectors but there is no minimum wage legislation that applies to all employees in South Africa. This is a hotly contested topic and there is no doubt that the design and implementation of the national minimum wage legislation and the level at which it set will be crucial. Some are convinced that the introduction of the national minimum wage will have a devastating effect on employment. However, statistical modelling by Wits Universitys National Minimum Wage Research initiative shows that setting the national minimum wage of between R3500 and R6000 per month will have a negligible detrimental effect on employment. This research is borne out by the extensive international research in this regard conducted in both the developed and the developing world. In South Africa, when minimum wages were introduced in the domestic worker and security guard sector, they did not have a negative impact of employment levels in those sectors. It is widely agreed that employees with the South African average of four dependants, who earn less than R4000 per month, are not able to lift themselves and their families above the poverty line and are referred to as the working poor. Shockingly, over 40% of South African workers earn below this level. In the agricultural and domestic sectors, it is estimated that 90-95% of employees earn below this level. South Africa one of most unequal societies Overwhelmingly, evidence shows that introducing national minimum wages contributes significantly to reducing inequality in society. Currently, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. On average, the top 10% of wage earners earn 24 times more than the bottom 10%, while the top 5% of the highest earners earn about 50% more than the bottom 5% of earners. This gap is widening at an alarming rate. In 2010, the gap between the top and bottom 5% earners was 20 times less than it is today. Interestingly, wage differentials rather than unemployment are regarded as driving inequality. The latest figures show that unemployment is rife particularly among the youth (18-25 years old), where the official rate of unemployment almost doubles to approximately 52%. Trade unions discussed At the conference, there will also be a detailed presentation on issues concerning the national minimum wage and the practicalities involved in its design and implementation. The conference will also tackle the question of how to reinvigorate social dialogue on these key issues between the social partners. This is especially important given the challenges that trade unions and trade union federations are facing in these uncertain times. There will be two slots dealing with trade unions specifically - one entitled The Role of Trade Unions in Recessionary Times and the other entitled Challenges facing Trade Union Federations. For more information, www.annuallabourlawconference.co.za, call Erin on +27 (0)31 303 9852 or email az.oc.ocfnoc@nire. Inbound foreign tourist arrivals exceeding the 1m mark for the first time ever in a month in January made for great headlines. But welcome as the achievement is, SA's tourism industry is still falling way short of its full potential. Gaertringen via pixabay Inbound tourist numbers in January look impressive on paper, having risen 15.4% compared with January 2015. However, they came off a low base in 2015, a year in which tourist numbers fell 6.8% on 2014 and almost 1% on 2013. The number of visitors from Africa, the source of most foreign visitors, lifted year-on-year by 15.2% in January to 797,000. Of these, 94% arrived by road, with Zimbabwe and Mozambique making up half of the arrivals. External factors driving increased arrivals Arrivals from overseas, the ones that account for most of the big-spend, lifted 16.4% to 214,903 in January. David Frost, Southern African Tourism Services Association CE, is unimpressed. "It is pathetic," he says. "It represents growth of only 5% since January 2014." Otto de Vries, CE of the Association of SA Travel Agents, also has strong reservations. "SA is not doing anything fantastically well," he says. "Rand weakness is a major contributor to recent increases in foreign arrivals." De Vries believes terrorist attacks in Paris in November also played a role. "In the months after the 9/11 attacks in the US, overseas tourist arrivals in SA jumped sharply," he says. Visa requirements reversed growth In the industry's defence, its efforts to promote growth have been hamstrung by the department of home affairs' heavy-handed regulatory stance. The first blunder was the imposition in April 2014 of draconian visa requirements for tourists from a number of key markets, including what had been SA's two fastest growing markets, China and India. Among the requirements was that an applicant appear in person at an SA diplomatic mission. For many would-be visitors, it entailed huge inconvenience. They reacted by simply turning their backs on SA. What had been vigorous growth went into reverse. The number of visitors from China, which grew by 169% between 2008 and 2013 (to 108,219), had by 2015 shrunk by almost a quarter. Tourist arrivals from India, which hit almost 95,000 in 2013, also went into steep decline, falling to just over 78,000 in 2015. Belatedly, home affairs have recently undertaken some damage control. In China there are now six visa centres and accredited tour operators are permitted to book on behalf of groups. India now has nine visa centres. But concern remains. "The visa situation is still fraught with problems," says Johan Groenewald, CE of Royal African Discoveries, an Indian inbound tourism specialist. "It is supposed to take five working days to issue a visa, but can take up to 20 days." Groenewald's big concern is that India is moving into its peak holiday season, which runs to June. "Huge damage to SA's image has already been done," he says. "If we have another mess-up, the travel trade will lose all confidence in SA." People go elsewhere While home affairs have made some effort on the visa front, it remains adamant on onerous birth certificate requirements. On 1 June 2015, SA became the only country requiring children under 18 entering or leaving the country to have an unabridged birth certificate. "Ten to 30 families a day are being turned away before boarding at overseas airports and do not make it to SA," says Alan Winde, Western Cape minister of economic opportunities. Says Frost: "It results in huge negative PR. People go elsewhere. We can't measure the number, but it is a big one." A lot to learn from Australia Frost believes SA could learn a lot from Australia. "Though they are a more expensive destination and have not had the benefit of as weak a currency, they totally outperform us," he says. It shows in the figures. In the 12 months to January 2016, Tourism Australia reported 620,500 foreign visitor arrivals, a year-on-year rise of 13.6%. Arrivals from China lifted 55.1% to 114,300, ousting New Zealand from top position. "In Australia the tourism board, government and industry players all work together to promote growth in tourism," says Frost. "They ask: what is hindering it? They then tackle the problems." In the case of visas, which Frost terms the "new competitive edge" in foreign tourism, they identified 10 things that needed to be done to make visa applications easier. "Australia's home affairs department was instructed to implement the necessary changes," says Frost. De Vries bemoans the growth opportunities SA's foreign tourism industry is losing out on. "If we did everything right just imagine how many tourists we would get," he says. Source: Financial Mail Carrying the same slogan of 'Technology.Innovation.Talent' on which the event concept is built, the two day summit will act as a platform including the main global players in the technology industry, namely industry professionals as speakers, technology businesses, entrepreneurs and startups, investors, users and media representatives. Techne Summit will present international speakers with the opportunity to share their experience with professionals, enthusiasts in the industry, as well as network with others in the technology field from around the world. Techne Summit will be an opportunity for startups to grow in the Middle East and North Africa region by connecting with investors and distributors by showcasing their products and acquiring funding for their businesses as well as foster the exchange of ideas and experience across various regions worldwide. Access to latest innovations Techne Summit aims to create a platform where booming startups in the technology market are able to showcase their latest innovations, granting their products or services greater visibility among industry professionals and enthusiasts. Similarly participants will have access to the latest innovations and recent business trends, therefore gaining exposure and increased knowledge in the field. Similarly investors will be able explore new areas of potential business collaboration and success, paving the way to mutual business growth for all participating parties. The event aims to ultimately develop the technology industry by fostering the mindset of decentralisation within the field and building bridges of informational and cultural exchange between regions. An important goal of Techne Summit is to also grow the contribution of conference tourism to the city of Alexandria and in turn Egypt. Markade Agency event organisers, along with organising partners Innovideas, revealed on the Techne Summit website the speaker line-up from around the world who will be sharing their experience and expertise at this years event. New additions Techne Summit 2016 offers a variety of new additions to the previous years event. For the first time Techne Summit will feature the field of medical technology. Acclaimed speakers will discuss how technological innovations can contribute to the diagnosis, monitoring or treatment of diseases and medical conditions, ultimately having a positive impact on individuals quality of life. Techne Summit 2016 also has also announced that this years event will feature a wide array of elite competitions for startups and present shining startups with opportunities to pitch and in turn fund their businesses. Among the highlighted competitions is The SeedStars Alexandria 2016 Competition, which aims to support tech or tech-enabled startups with prizes of over $1m in value. Tickets to Techne Summit 2016 are available online or at Alef Bookstore outlets and co-working spaces M3mal, Villa 307 and AlMaqarr. South Africa's sought-after vintages, producers and sommeliers have been making news around the globe again this week. And get this - a group of forward-thinking scientists are now using neuromarketing techniques and technologies to explore the subconscious and the underlying emotional drivers that drive decision-making when it comes to wine. Yip, that's right, we are now officially entering the realm of science fiction where wine is concerned. How awesome?! So without further ado, heres your round-up of wine news from around the globe this week. NeuroWine produces red and white blends according to data drawn from the subconscious The gist of it: In a ground-breaking development born from a partnership between neuromarketing consultancy Neural Sense and BLANKBottle label winemaker Pieter Walser, 21 white wines and 20 red wines from different vineyards across the country were used to set benchmarks in terms of emotional and cognitive responses to taste experience. This data was then used to create NeuroWine (one red and one white blend). So how did they do it? Neural Sense director David Rosenstein said the process involved the use of a device which fits around the head and picks up the electrical activity on the surface of ones scalp. It looks at how the brain is functioning and the associated brain waves, which tells us various things about brain activity. Back in our laboratory, we built a model of Pieters brain activity with Dr Lester Ryan John, and together with the other biometric data we were able to uncover his unconscious responses to the wine tasting experience, said Rosenstein. This model enabled the team to determine the best performing aspects of the various varietals he was tasting, and identify the top wine varietals that appealed to his unconscious. Read more here. Bonus factoid: Did you know that sound influences the way food and beverages taste? I kid thee not. High-frequency sounds enhance the sweetness in food, while low frequencies bring out the bitterness. So could sound replace sugar? And what kind of music should restaurants play? Read more here. Bouchard Finlayson takes gold at the 2016 Global Pinot Noir Masters Awards The gist of it: Bouchard Finlaysons Galpin Peak Pinot Noir 2013 has won a Gold medal in the prestigious 2016 Global Pinot Noir Masters awards. Judged blind by some of the most refined palates globally on a panel of Masters of Wine, Master Sommeliers and senior buyers, the third annual Global Pinot Noir Masters was presented by the pre-eminent European drinks trade publication, The Drinks Business to recognise and reward the finest Pinot Noirs in the world. The award-winning 2013 Bouchard Finlayson Galpin Peak competed against 220 wines from 18 countries and was honoured to receive one of only 22 Gold medals this year, having moved up from Silver in 2015 to Gold this year, to once again proof its alluring ageing potential. Esteemed winemaker and Pinot Pioneer Peter Finlayson says he is gratified with the result, even more so considering that it was a close call for the 2013 vintage, after a particularly wet season had threatened to spoil the harvest. Finlayson admits that the wine, which as the 21st edition of Galpin Peak Pinot Noir of domain grapes from the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley vineyard, was indeed faced with make or break weather conditions. Bonus factoid: While we most definitely wouldnt recommend you use this fine wine for the purpose, you could use a pinot noir to create delicious home-made ice cream with a twist. See the recipe here. Entries streaming in for the Wines of South Africa Sommelier Cup The gist of it: The competition to make it into the WOSA (Wines of South Africa) Sommelier Cup finals is heating up. Entries have been streaming in since the beginning of March when the event was opened up to those working in the restaurant trade of the nine key growth markets determined by the competition committee (namely US, Canada, Asia, Germany, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Kenya and Ghana). As gatekeepers to consumers, these influencers are an important target group for WOSA in building the country's winemaking profile amongst international wine lovers. The idea is to expose finalists to the best in South African wines and winemaking, equipping them with the information and context to become de facto ambassadors. WOSA CEO Siobhan Thompson says: "Now that the country's reputation for trailblazing, unusual and individualist winemaking has captured the wider public imagination, South Africa has become a 'hot' category and interest in competing in the 2016 Sommelier Cup is at an unprecedented high. Read more here. Bonus factoid: Swedens Arvid Rosengren emerged from a field of 15 semi-finalists to claim the top prize at the best sommelier in the world competition in Mendoza, Argentina that we mentioned here last week. This weeks Weekly Wine Wrap-Up was brought to you by Juliet Cullinan Wines. The 26th annual Juliet Cullinan Standard Bank Wine Festival will be hosted on 12 and 13 July 2016 at Summer Place, Hyde Park. Tickets are available at Webtickets from April onwards. In its inaugural report, Deloitte Africa Automotive Insights focuses on three key African economies where most business interest is currently being channelled, namely Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia. Gjermund Alsos via 123RF Despite its billion-strong population and rising income levels, Africas automotive industry is yet to be unlocked. Apart from a small number of countries, African automotive markets are mostly pure retail markets that are largely serviced by imported second-hand vehicles. In 2015, approximately 1.55 million new vehicles were sold or registered across Africa, the report states. Africa holds enormous promise, but is complex," says Karthi Pillay, director: Africa Automotive leader at Deloitte. "The automotive industry is clearly gearing up to address Africa as the next big market and needs to stay close to this market. While no single report will capture that complexity, our objective is to begin creating a portal of data including automotive insights; leveraging our network across the continent, which includes access to 51 of the 54 countries in Africa. Though it is an ambitious postulate that Africa could one day rival industrialising countries such as China in the production and assembly of vehicles, Pillay points out that Ethiopias current rate of motorisation, two per thousand population, is higher than was Chinas when it commenced automotive manufacturing in the period 1983-85. Competitive environments We are not claiming that Africa has any immediate comparative advantage that has been extensively exploited. Though many of the commodities necessary to automotive manufacture are to be found in abundance in Africa, a thriving industry is feasible only if certain African countries put in place appropriate competitive and enabling environments. Auto companies are already interested in Africa - being active not only in South Africa, but also Egypt, Morocco and Algeria. However, most African markets are currently some distance from being open for business given that 80% of the continents existing market consists of second-hand vehicles. Globally, the strategy for manufacturers is to get closer to their consumers - and Africa has a growing number of consumers entering the middle income bracket, explains Pillay. The value chain of the automotive manufacturing industry is massive, and on its own can kick-start the industrialisation of Africa, provided the continent can harmonise manufacturing and trade policies. Deloitte has a blueprint vision for the automotive industry in Africa. It involves identifying an anchor country, which already exists in the form of South Africa, which has the necessary enabling environment and export-focus, and which has already supported Nigeria in establishing its policy. Secondly, it requires a regional approach in order to leverage economies of scale, with each country in the region identifying its unique role within what will be a single value chain. Nigerias auto manufacturing industry is one of the emerging successes of the continent. While the National Automotive Industry Development Plan (NAIDP) has been welcomed in general by motor vehicle assemblers, the policy reveals potential gaps. To ensure that the NAIDP is successful, the automotive-focused policy needs to be embedded into a broader industrialisation and economic policy that reduces operating costs across industries in Nigeria, states the report. Interventions required It is Deloittes view that achieving scale and unlocking the automotive market in Africa is a potentially sizeable medium- to long-term opportunity. A market-shaping approach, including a combination of interventions by industry stakeholders and governments that target supply-side and demand-side challenges, will however be required in the countries evaluated. Regarding Ethiopia, the report states that while the country lacks a coherent automotive strategy, its government offers strong support for industrialisation and auxiliary industries, and sizeable investments in infrastructure (both physical and economic) position the country favourably for automotive manufacturing in the long-term. Ethiopias economic policy, the second Growth and Transformation Plan, aims to support and grow the manufacturing contribution to GDP from 4% in 2014 to 8% by 2020. This is supported by attracting investment through industrial parks and extending incentives, including tax incentives, to foreign investors. In Kenya, expenditure on the purchase of cars, motorcycles and other vehicles accounted for 1.5% of total consumer expenditure in 2015 and is expected to remain relatively stable to 2025 as incomes rise. Decreasing the age of cars that are allowed to be imported into Kenya whilst simultaneously decreasing the affordability of these cars by increasing the taxes levied on them should drive sales of more affordable, newer, more road-worthy, locally-assembled cars. Major names in the auto industry found themselves caught in headlights of a global engine-rigging scandal on Friday as Volkswagen totted up the costs it faces so far. Ryhor Bruyeu via 123RF Emissions irregularities As VW's supervisory board met to approve the carmaker's 2015 accounts, a German government source revealed that around 630,000 Audi, Mercedes, Opel, Porsche and Volkswagen cars are to be recalled in Europe owing to irregularities in their emission of pollutants. Top-of-the-range German maker Daimler announced it was launching an internal investigation into its emission certification process at the request of the US authorities. In Asia, Mitsubishi Motors has also been forced to admit it cheated on fuel-efficiency tests. And France's biggest automaker PSA Group said its premises had been raided by the country's anti-fraud squad as part of a government probe into emissions after "anomalies" were found in three vehicles. In the northern German town of Wolfsburg, where VW is headquarted, the supervisory board was meeting to approve the group's 2015 accounts. Newspaper reports suggest VW may set aside more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) in provisions to cover possible regulatory fines, lawsuits and the cost of recalling or replacing the suspect engines. VW was already forced to postpone publication of its full-year results in the wake of the scandal that erupted in September, when it came to light the German group had installed so-called "defeat devices" into 11 million diesel engines worldwide. This sophisticated software deliberately skews emissions readings when vehicles are undergoing tests. In all, it has been a dramatic week for the global automobile sector. Raids and investigations Late on Thursday, Daimler - owner of Mercedes-Benz - announced that it was launching an internal investigation, "into its certification process related to exhaust emissions in the United States upon the request of the US Department of Justice (DOJ)". Daimler pledged to "investigate possible indications of irregularities and of course take all necessary actions," it said as its shares went into a tailspin on the Frankfurt stock exchange. And in Asia, Japan's transport ministry sent officials to raid a Mitsubishi Motors research and development centre for a second day on Friday. Mitsubishi said it would halt production and sales of the affected models - mini-cars sold in Japan including many made for rival Nissan - and warned that the number would likely rise, as it looks to vehicles sold overseas. Compensation For its part, VW reached an agreement with US regulators to offer US owners of some 480,000 illegally polluting diesel cars options of "substantial compensation" and to fix the cars, or to buy them back. The German giant had faced a court deadline for solutions to the emissions scandal and San Francisco district court judge Charles Breyer said the agreement in principle would give owners of its 2.0 liter diesel cars choices for compensation which also included cancelling the contracts for those under lease. The offer, which will likely cost Volkswagen billions of dollars, also included creation of a fund for environmental protection, the company said at a court hearing. Details of the proposal between Volkswagen USA, the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency were not immediately released. But it appeared to be enough to allow Volkswagen to avert a huge trial over how it would deal with the scandal that has already deeply damaged the company. The so-called 'dieselgate' scandal led to the departure of VW's chief executive Martin Winterkorn. Volkswagen has already set aside six billion euros in provisions, but the final sum is expected to be much higher. The German giant, which has abandoned its ambitions of becoming the world's biggest carmaker ahead of Toyota in the wake of the scandal, has already started recalling some eight million vehicles affected in Europe. The scandal has greatly tarnished the reputation of a company once regarded as a paragon of German industry, even if group unit sales already seem to have stabilised. The recall operation in Europe is expected to take all year. And while VW is footing the bill, it is not expecting to have to pay European owners compensation, much to the chagrin of consumer protection groups. It was the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) that originally broke the scandal. Negotiations with the US authorities have proven much tougher than in Europe. Another bone of contention in Germany recently has been the question whether VW's top executives should be entitled to their normally very generous annual bonuses in the wake of the scandal. Source: AFP #CommerceMonth: Why uAfrica's eCommerce Awards have been put on hold The eCommerce Awards have been put on hold for 2016, so I thought I'd interview the organiser to find out why... Mario Toscano We have thought long and hard about the way we evaluate the winners of the eCommerce Awards, and will be changing the way that we choose winners, explains Mario Toscano, client relationship manager of uAfrica. We are also discussing how to expand the categories that we adjudicate for the awards, and may potentially partner other events to make the awards bigger and better. Its all in the planning phase right now. uAfrica is a technology company that provides cloud-based e-commerce services to SMEs across Africa. Here, Toscano goes into more detail on other projects the company is focusing on and, on a broader level, discusses the state of e-commerce in SA, its growth over the last 10 years and the impact of technology on the sector in SA and Africa at large According to the According to the website , this year youre focusing on 'building e-commerce tools to make e-commerce in South Africa even better. Please explain. Well, multi-channel or omni-channel retail is a big focus for our partner Shopify in other parts of the world. In line with this we have built our uAfrica Multichannel product, which allows Shopify merchants to sync their product and order information between their Shopify store and bidorbuy, or other Shopify stores. Shopify currently integrates into Facebook, as well as into Shopify POS. With the addition of bidorbuy as a sales channel, SA merchants are sure to get more exposure earlier, and get more sales sooner in a more South African context. We are also looking at adding more channels like Takealot.com and, perhaps, some of the other African marketplaces. We have also built a uAfrica Custom Shipping Zones, which is a Shopify app that allows merchants to present rates to their customers on checkout, based on the customer's South African post code. This app is now available in the Shopify app store. In addition to the above, we have also just completed our most exciting product: uAfrica Shipping, which is a revolutionary shipping tool that will allow our merchants to get orders booked out for delivery quickly while keeping the customer informed on the status of his shipment. Whats more, we have negotiated special rates with our courier partners to offer the best possible rates to our merchants. Now, our merchants can ship any order directly from within their uAfrica dashboard without hassle, and keep their customers in the loop about their orders at any time. Are there any other project(s) youre working on? Are there any other project(s) youre working on? We are working to add other sales channels to our multi-channel product, and on adding features to uAfrica Shipping for our merchants. We are also engaging with Shopify to bring the platform to other African countries soon too. The South African eCommerce Awards celebrated its tenth year in 2015. Comment on the journey so far. Looking back, I think the journey of the awards runs parallel to the journey of e-commerce in South Africa. At the start, e-commerce was largely unknown and there were a handful of people getting it right. As a result the adjudication and execution of the awards was simple. Its no longer a case of the site looking good and the buyer receiving his order on time. Right now, the spotlight is on e-commerce, so that means that running an event like the eCommerce Awards is much more difficult and we need to start adjudicating based on more complex aspects of entrants, like customer service, delivery condition and contact-ability, etc. I think the best years for the awards still lie ahead, but our eCommerce Conference/Awards ceremony combination were some of the highlights of the past 10 years of the awards. We have also built up incredible relationships with some of SA's best e-commerce providers, from courier companies, to platforms, and marketplaces and those relationships have been useful to help us all understand the sector. In your opinion, what is the current state of e-commerce in SA? In your opinion, what is the current state of e-commerce in SA? E-commerce is full steam ahead. People from all walks have realised that selling online is a viable way to start or expand a business. Online merchants are faced with very unique hurdles with online sales, and they are tackling them with gusto. There is an incredible optimism among online merchants. There is definitely a growing audience of shoppers turning to the internet for their shopping needs, and these shoppers are spending more year-on-year online, which is encouraging. Deeper internet penetration and ease of access to the internet are helping this along the way, as are smartphones. Smartphones are shaping, and will continue to shape, the future of e-commerce too, and we will continue to see more people adopting technology to help them get smaller tasks done - including shopping. What is particularly interesting to us is the number of niche, artisanal products available online, which are selling incredibly well online. We see all sorts of great handmade products like leather goods, jewellery, toys and other crafted products being successfully marketed on Shopify in SA. On the other side of the spectrum, we are starting to see the bigger retailers realising that they need to be online too, which is exciting. Comment on the growth of e-commerce over the last 10 years. Comment on the growth of e-commerce over the last 10 years. Growth has been phenomenal over the past few years for sure. In the early 2000s growth was slow as e-commerce was a new concept, but it has been accelerating over the past few years. Last year, we saw figures of around 35% growth from 2014 and, this year, the sector is estimated to grow by around 30%, to a total worth of around R9 billion. By global standards we are certainly a small market for e-commerce, but I think in years to come we will start catching up and our e-commerce sector will become more mature. Something to bear in mind is that e-commerce is very difficult to measure, strictly speaking. In some cases, sales may not happen online directly, but a shopper may purchase a product as a result of a Facebook post or an online classified advert. Is that sale then attributed to e-commerce? I think we need to see e-commerce more as a tool for sales as well as a medium for sales, and the data for both is very encouraging. How does uAfrica.com fit into the e-commerce sector, in SA and Africa? And what impact does it have on the sector? Our primary role as uAfrica.com is as a technology company. We want to build great tools to help merchants sell their products online both here in South Africa, and in Africa at large. We already provide a world-class platform through our partnership with Shopify, and we are working to make e-commerce the same as the needs of Europeans or Americans, but we can take their solutions and adapt them to suit our unique needs. Thats where uAfrica.com comes in. We specialise in helping people succeed with their online stores - and we look to technology to do that. Why do you think its important to recognise/reward those South African websites that have demonstrated excellence in their use of the internet as a platform for e-commerce? We recognise the best South African websites because they deserve to be recognised and because they are doing things that are groundbreaking and innovative. Its a great opportunity for other online store owners to learn some lessons from those stores that are making their online stores successful. Additionally, the awards help the sector as a whole with awareness about online shopping. In conjunction with the awards, we run a survey in which we ask online shoppers about their experiences shopping online, and measure their responses to previous years. This allows us to present this information to online store owners, so that they are aware of the public's perception of e-commerce and can take steps to address any perception problem areas. I think this is an important function of what we do with the awards too. Anything youd like to add? It is now easier and more affordable than ever for anybody to create a business. Technology has come a long way to serve the needs of business owners, old and new, to help their businesses succeed. Business owners should no longer be asking themselves if they should start selling online. They should be asking: How can I sell online? Following a rigorous selection process involving more than 700 applicants from 26 countries across Africa, the top three finalists in the MTN Entrepreneurship Challenge powered by Jumia, have been announced. The challenge, which aims to boost entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as build a stronger and more sustainable business environment on the continent, kicked off in February, and is a joint initiative between MTN, Jumia and the MTN Solution Space based at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. Through the entrepreneurship challenge, students were invited to develop a unique digital application or smart solution to address a problem faced in Africa. Applicants heeded the call and hundreds of original ideas covering the areas of E-Commerce Marketplaces, Education Technology, Smart Cities and Solutions, and Health Technology were received. Over the past few weeks, the ideas were narrowed down, with 11 Live Pitch events taking place from Cameroon to South Africa, to shortlist the top candidates who will eventually pitch their business ideas at the Entrepreneurship Festival in Cape Town in May 2016. The three finalists are: Pass.ng (Nigeria). Pass.ng is a web, desktop and mobile-based CBT examination preparatory and testing platform, with a vision to help candidates excel in all the major Nigerian examinations and tests. Pass.ng is a web, desktop and mobile-based CBT examination preparatory and testing platform, with a vision to help candidates excel in all the major Nigerian examinations and tests. MedRX (Ghana). MedRx app is an interactive health platform for all users who have health needs. The app connects users to health personnel from various fields of practice including hospital, pharmacy, laboratory and academia. MedRx app is an interactive health platform for all users who have health needs. The app connects users to health personnel from various fields of practice including hospital, pharmacy, laboratory and academia. Vicoba (Tanzania). Village Community Banks (Vicoba) are an important instrument of development work, allowing people who do not have access to conventional bank accounts, to access informal investment groups. Vicoba app creates a collaborative platform that includes existing tools for financial and task management in a way that is adapted for the African market. MTN Solution Space Manager, Sarah-Anne Arnold, congratulated the winners and commented: Universities are resource-rich, highly networked and create opportunities for students to find like-minded co-founders and explore and develop new opportunities together, and are therefore the ideal environments to encourage entrepreneurs. This was shown by the amazing talent that emerged during the incredible week of Live Pitches which took place across campuses in 11 countries, in collaboration with partner universities and sponsors. Congratulations and best of luck to the finalists. The top two applications from each region were selected for the semi-finals and awarded the opportunity to undertake a short course from GetSmarter in order to build new capabilities in areas such as Search Engine Optimisation or Digital Marketing. The finalists will face a panel of experienced business leaders at the Entrepreneurship Festival, where the winning team will be named. The panel includes Jeremy Hodara, co-CEO Africa Internet Group, Professor Walter Baets, director of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, and Herman Singh, MTN Group chief digital officer. ..."The gaps in the African entrepreneurship ecosystem are in capital and mentorship..." Bankole Cardoso, head of communications at Africa Internet Group added, Over the last week, we have held over 100 live pitches and given young entrepreneurs across the continent a platform to showcase their business ideas and even more importantly, to receive critical feedback from experienced professionals on our judging panels. The gaps in the African entrepreneurship ecosystem are in capital and mentorship, so it was great to undergo an exercise like this that will no doubt force them to improve. I now look forward to working closely with these three finalist teams to prepare them for whats to come in Cape Town. It is an incredible opportunity for all of them to propel themselves to the next level. The winners will be announced at the Entrepreneurship Festival in Cape Town, 27 May 2016, with the top team being awarded the opportunity for incubation at the premises of either the MTN Solution Space at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, or at one of nine Jumia offices across the continent. The winner will also win a cash prize of US$25 000 towards their start-up and have access to a Facebook Start Programme to the value of US$15 000, which includes tools and services needed to build mobile applications. In a bid to create greater efficiencies, as well as enable the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), MTN Business is driving the development of ICT solutions, specifically for SMEs. To this end, MTN Business has unveiled a new cloud delivery platform in Rwanda and Cameroon, which will enable this segment of customers to access cloud services with greater ease. Dubbed MTN Business Cloud Services platform, the web portal will also be available in Swaziland, Ghana and Uganda by the end of April 2016, and will provide a comprehensive view of the product portfolio available for business customers from MTN, as well as its partners. This platform was developed to address some of the pain points experienced by our SME customers, in particular. As MTN Business, we are acutely aware that to enable the growth of this key sector, ease of access to solutions that drive efficiencies and lower costs, such as cloud, is vital," says Debbie Minnaar, acting executive of MTN Group Enterprise Business Unit. Daunting process "While the benefits of cloud services for SMEs are numerous, the process of accessing and purchasing such services can be daunting. Through the MTN Business Cloud Services platform, the emphasis is on simplifying this process and meeting customers needs, says Minnaar. Through the MTN Business Cloud Services platform, customers can use single login credentials for all services and make use of 'Live Help' to resolve any issues immediately and in local languages of the market from which the customer is accessing the platform. In addition, customers will be able to pay for products and services they require in their local currency, using different payment methods, including MTN Mobile Money. The roll-out of the platform, which is set to go live in all MTN markets by the end of 2016, is aligned to the companys strategy for the SME segment. We recognise fully the value of SMEs in our markets and we are committed to aiding their growth and development. We have a significant opportunity to become an effective strategic partner of SMEs and to contribute to this key sector of the economy by providing relevant and cost effective ICT solutions tailored for this segment, says Omotayo Ojutalayo, general manager for SMEs at MTN Group Enterprise Business Unit. Meetings, hearings, workshops, discussions, training, workspace, events, presentations, demonstrations, brainstorming, strategic planning can be held in this Cape Town based space. Seats 18 comfortably around three round tables of six each. Room configuration is flexible Can hire in additional chairs if required Monday to Friday from 7.00-18.00 (not open on weekends or evenings) No parking available on premises Street parking available in area and Kloof Lifestyle Centre is two blocks away with undercover pay parking Standard package - R20 per person Arrival, morning and afternoon refreshments - includes: water/tea/coffee/biscuits Treat package - R40 to R50 per person Arrival, morning and afternoon refreshments - includes: water/tea/coffee/juice/biscuits/pastries/muffins/table sweets Lunch package - R25 per person Standard package plus in-room lunch, including ordering take aways, cutlery, crockery and cleaning (actual take away food order cost not included) Full day: R1,095 - eight hours Half day: R765 - four hours While KIA troops have clashed frequently with army forces in Shan State, this month's clashes have been the first army attack on KIA positions in Kachin since since last year. The Kachin News Group (KNG) has learned that fighting at the Pau Se outpost on 17 April resulted in losses for KIA forces. The outpost is located west of Nam San Yang on the Myitkyina to Bhamo Road. The Burma Army attacked the KIA post which was mostly manned by troops from the KIO's local militia, known in Kachin as MHH. with three columns after the Kachin troops conducted their prayers at around 11 am on Sunday April 17th. Two soldiers were killed and seven were injured, according to a KIA official, who spoke on condition anonymity. The KIA was forced to retreat from their outpost following the attack he said. When last week KNG contacted the KIA's Lt-Col Naw Bu for comment he said he had to yet confirm the casualty figures. This was the third time the Burma Army has seized an KIAs outpost near Laiza since the National League for Democracy (NLD)s government took office last month. It is expected that more fighting will take place in the near future. The army has ordered people living in the villages of Nam San Yang, Gang Dau Yang, and other villages along the Myitkyina to Bhamo Road to move out by the end of the month. The Maisak Pa route which has been used for travel from Myitkyina to Laiza has also been blocked off since the fighting began earlier this month. The latest wave of fighting began when the Burma Army troops attached a Kachin Independence Army (KIA) outpost near the group's Laiza capital on Thursday 7 April. While KIA troops have clashed frequently with army forces in Shan State, this month's clashes have been the first army attack on KIA positions in Kachin State since since last year. The Kachin News Group (KNG) has learned that fighting at the Pau Se outpost on 17 April resulted in losses for KIA forces. The outpost is located west of Nam San Yang on the Myitkyina to Bhamo Road. The Burma Army attacked the KIA post which was mostly manned by troops from the KIO's local militia, known in Kachin as MHH, with three columns after the Kachin troops conducted their prayers at around 11 am on Sunday 17 April. Two KIA soldiers were killed and seven were injured, according to a KIA official, who spoke on condition anonymity. The KIA was forced to retreat from their outpost following the attack he said. Last week when KNG contacted the KIA's Lt-Col Naw Bu for comment he said he had to yet confirm the casualty figures. This was the third time the Burma Army has seized a KIA outpost near Laiza since the National League for Democracy (NLD)s government took office last month. More fighting is expected to take place in the near future. The Burma Army has ordered people living in the villages of Nam San Yang, Gang Dau Yang, and other villages along the Myitkyina to Bhamo Road to move out by the end of the month. The Maisak Pa road which was used for travel from Myitkyina to Laiza has also been blocked off since the fighting began earlier this month. Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI The attack happened on the 30th of March at Pang Hka village. During the attack a 70-year-old woman, named as Ma Kaw, was shot in the stomach. Before Ma Kaw could reach a clinic, she died of her injuries. A 7-year old girl received a gunshot wound to her arm, while a 32-year-old man was badly wounded by shrapnel from a propelled grenade. Grave fears are held for nine villagers who are still unaccounted for in the days following the attack. FBR said that the attack involved as many as 100 soldiers from Burma Army Light Infantry Battalions 276 and 237. The assaults and killing are the latest in the Burmas destructive war in Shan and Kachin States that first began with a Burma Army offensive against Kachin Independent Army in 2011. Ceasefire negotiations have failed to bring a halt to the conflict which has brought in an array of non-state armed groups including the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA). FBR has estimated that at least 100,000 civilians have been displaced in the conflict in northern Burma. The new DKBA Deputy Commander-in-Chief Saw Steel made the statement on 22 April. He said to KIC News: Just as Grandfather Lah Pwe [the previous DKBA commander-in-Chief who died on 13 March 2016] instructed before he died, our aim for peace is to obtain peace and stabilise it. As for the political process we will continue to carry it out in line with the NCA, just as he [Lah Pwe] instructed us to. The DKBA is one of the three Karen ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) out of the eight EAOs that signed the NCA. The DKBA have said they will join hands with everyone for peace. The DKBA recently held an emergency meeting of DKBA commanders at Sone See Myaing from 19 to 21 April following the death of their commander Lah Pwe. At the meeting General Saw Mo Shay was appointed as the new DKBA commander and military and departmental reorganisations were discussed and approved. New departments of military training, education, health, social care and economics were also formed and the heads of all departments were promoted to the rank of colonel. Basic Military Strategy, and Military Operations Command Number 1 and Command Number 2 each had three battalions of troops put under their command. Previously the DKBA was a far larger organisation known as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, but when they signed a peace agreement with the government and decided to become a Border Guard Force (BGF) government militia DKBA Brigade 5 split from the original DKBA because they did not want to join the BGF. On 8 November 2010 the breakaway DKBA Brigade 5 renamed themselves the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army. During the 2010 elections they attacked government troops and security forces in Myawaddy, Karen State before signing a Union Level Peace Agreement with the government on 11 December 2011. Translated by Thida Linn Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI On April 21, U Thein Swe, Union Minister of Labour, Immigration and Population of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar welcomed Mr. Peter Lysholt Hansen, the Ambassador of Denmark to Myanmar, in order to discuss future cooperation on labour market issues. Following the meeting, the Union Minister and the Danish Ambassador announced that Myanmar and Denmark will cooperate on an initiative aimed at ensuring safe and healthy work places and improved social dialogue in Myanmar. In the following interview with Mizzima, the Danish Ambassador explains the importance of the programme and why his government is involved. Please could you tell us about the initiative being pursued by the Danish government to work with Myanmar to help improve the safety and health of workers in their workplace? How long has this been running and what are the objectives? The overall goal of the new initiative is to contribute to the development of safer and healthier working conditions and improvement of social dialogue in Myanmar through the strengthening of labour market institutions. More specifically, the Danish support consists of capacity building activities in two areas. The first of these is the area of occupational safety and health where experts from the Danish Working Environment Agency (which is the Danish government institution responsible for occupational safety and health in Denmark) will be providing advice and technical training on occupational safety and health to the staff at the Factories and General Labour Laws Inspection Department (FGLLID, department under the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population). Basically, this is about the workers of Myanmar being able to go to work without getting sick, injured or even dying. The second area of focus will be capacity building of representatives of the social partners in Myanmar (workers and employers organizations). This training is planned to be carried out by representatives from Danish workers and employers organisations (peer-to-peer training). Generally the activities are scheduled to be launched around the beginning of September. However, two weeks of pilot trainings for staff at the FGLLID have already been carried out in September and October of 2015. What do you see as the challenges to improving workplace safety and health in Myanmar? The good news is that there is a strong commitment and eagerness to improve the situation amongst the relevant Myanmar authorities. At the same time, workers are increasingly getting aware of their right to safe and healthy working conditions, and employers are starting to realize that good working conditions can both increase productivity, as well as that it might be a prerequisite for securing orders from large international companies, e.g. in the garment industry. It is also helpful that the number of inspectors at the FGLLID has increased, and that a new draft law on Occupational Safety and Health is awaiting parliamentary scrutiny. It goes without saying that the situation will not change overnight, but against this background there really is reason to be optimistic. What is the message your embassy is receiving from Myanmar's new government on this issue? It is very positive. I met with U Thein Swe, Minister of Labour, Immigration and Population on 21 April. From this meeting it was very clear that the government prioritizes improving the situation of the workers in Myanmar and reforming the labour market in order to foster sustainable economic growth, which will be crucial in facilitating Myanmars reintegration into the World economy. Are the existing workplace laws adequate? Are there plans to change the laws? As I stated earlier, it is extremely positive that there is strong commitment to labour market reform, because the task that lies ahead is considerable. Positive changes have taken place in the legal framework within recent years. However, attention has to be paid to whether these legal changes bring about the desired results in practice or not, and further legal reforms are necessary too. While legal reforms are a prerequisite for a modern and well-functioning system of labour market governance, its no quick fix, though. The capacity of the institutions responsible for implementing and enforcing the new laws will have to be increased too. In the same vein, it will be equally important to ensure that the legislative process is undertaken in a consultative manner and to further build the capacity of labour market actors so that they are capable of engaging effectively in social dialogue, which is in its very early stages in Myanmar. This is the rationale behind the Danish support. Concrete steps have already been taken in planning further legislative reform. On November 14, 2015, together with Myanmar, Denmark, the United States, Japan, and the ILO launched the Initiative to Promote Fundamental Labour Rights and Practices in Myanmar, which is intended to help modernize Myanmars labour legislation, improve compliance with international labour standards, and foster a robust dialogue between the government, business, labour and civil society. Is there anything else you would like to add? The importance of well-functioning social dialogue understood as negotiation, consultation or simply an exchange of information and views between representatives of employers, workers and governments really should not be underestimated. Take the Danish example. Denmark has a proven track-record of successfully combining economic growth, high employment and social security. This success is frequently attributed in large part to the particular institutional setup of Danish labour market governance which is characterized by a strong cooperative spirit amongst the government, trade unions and the employers organizations. The Danish system was established as far back as in 1899 when a major industrial dispute ended. The dispute ended only as the social partners recognised each other and made an agreement about the rules on the labour market. A revised version of this agreement is still valid today. U Gambira was a leader of the 2007 Saffron Revolution and a former political prisoner. He was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to 68 years in prison. He was released in 2012. On 19 January 2016, he was arrested by around 20 police officers at his hotel room in Mandalay. He was charged under the Myanmar 1947 Immigration Act for illegally crossing the border and entering the country. U Gambira, who now lives in Thailand, travelled to Myanmar to obtain a new passport, and he was able to cross the Thailand-Myanmarborder at an official crossing point without facing any problems. He is currently being detained in Obo prison while his trial continues. He was refused bail despite the fact that he is suffering from physical and mental illness due to mistreatment during his previous imprisonment which requires him to take regular medication. The charges against U Gambira are politically motivated because of his political activities in the past, said Wai Hnin, Campaigns Officer at Burma Campaign UK. He was a leader of the Saffron Revolution and he has been through several arrests and horrific torture. He should be released immediately so that he can continue his medical treatment. I hope that the NLD-led government will work to release U Gambira and the remaining political prisoners in Burma. The incidents consisted of four road traffic accidents, one brawl and one death. The Mon State Police Chief Win Aung explained that only incidents reported as taking place between 6am and 6pm during the Thingyan festivities were recorded as Thingyan crimes. Crimes taking part outside of these hours during Thingyan were recorded in the same way as normal. At the Meeting for Organising a Traditional Burmese Thingyan Festival led by the Mon State Government fifteen Thingyan rules and regulations were laid down. Amongst these were rules that said people should not: play with water in a way that would cause injury or harm to others; not disturb each other; and not carry sticks knives or other weapons that can cause harm. Win Aung said that the public had happily let the police search them and had not created any trouble when the police had confiscated sticks, knives and flags, all of which had been banned. He said that there had been no crimes or accidents reported as happening between 6am and 6pm on the final two days of the water festival and that most of the road traffic accidents occurring over Thingyan had involved vehicles carrying groups of pilgrims on their way to pay their respects at various pagodas. The Mon State Police Force said that 35 crimes were committed after 6pm over the Thingyan period. These were: three homicides, 14 road traffic accidents, five brawls, two rapes, three deaths, one pickpocketing, one robbery and six other crimes. Last year between the hours of 6am and 6pm over Thingyan there were seven road traffic accidents, one homicide, four deaths, two brawls and one other crime. Win Aung said that next year groups of people who want to parade together on motorcycles in matching costumes over the Thingyan festival will have to apply for permission beforehand. Each group will also have to nominate a leader to help prevent fighting between groups. Win Aung also urged public administration sector workers and members of the public to assist in preventing fights at next years Thingyan festivities. Translated by Thida Linn Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI It looks like you have reached this page in error ... The content you are looking for has either moved, or if you typed in the address there might have been a mistake. If you believe there has been a technical error please let us know. Most Popular Destinations It may be a breach of etiquette if the judge presiding over this case were to laugh at Ammon Bundy's counsel, but one could hardly blame them. Defense counsel for Ammon Bundy, the leader of the group that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, is more or less arguing in court what the Bundy clan argued during their occupation. More specifically, they're arguing that the federal government has no rightful control over federal land. The U.S. Constitution granted "very limited powers'' to the federal government, and that once Oregon became a state, the federal government lost a right to own land inside the state's borders, his attorney Lissa Casey wrote in a court motion filed late Friday. [...] Bundy's lawyers on Friday filed an emergency motion in U.S. District Court in Portland, seeking more time to argue to dismiss the indictments for lack of jurisdiction. This probably sounds familiar because it's exactly what the Bundy militia and so-called sovereign citizens everywhere believe. To say the least, it's amazing to me that a trained and presumably certified lawyer would argue that federal land is unconstitutional given that the Constitution explicitly grants authority to the federal government under the Supremacy Clause. Federal law supersedes even state constitutions. The only way someone with even a cursory understanding could argue this is if they're also a true believer. This is not a good look for his counsel. Charles Koch grabbed the headlines yesterday by saying Hillary Clinton may be a better president than the Republican candidates, but he also said the Republican candidates need to stop being Republicans. Koch spoke to ABC yesterday and said he'll remain on the sidelines unless Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, whoever the nominee is, renounce the positions that got them nominated to begin with. During the same interview, Koch said the remaining Republican candidates include some terrible role models, and he would only support Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) if they go back on some of the policy proposals they have made thus far, including Cruzs proposal to carpet bomb ISIS and Trumps proposal to ban all Muslims from the country. What was worse was this well have them all registered,' Koch said during the interview, referring to Trumps proposal to create a national database of all Muslims in the United States. Thats reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I mean thats monstrous, as I said at the time. The Kochs must really miss the George W. Bush administration, a time when Republicans still pretended to be "compassionate conservatives" while pillaging public coffers and deregulating everything in sight. That is not today's GOP. Today's party is openly hostile and even the idea of showing compassion has been cast aside as some kind of liberal weakness. Ignoring social movement conservatives is a lot easier when they enjoy exclusive control over a party that is now frequently opposed by the Chamber of Commerce. The Republican party has steadily crept from being the pro-business party to, in many cases, being actively anti-business. We aren't the only ones who noticed when the Export-Import Bank was shuttered because Republicans in Congress and at least one independent senator from Vermont have no idea how anything works. Needless to say, it would be a really big deal if the Kochs stay out of the presidential election. I expect they will continue to fund the fight at the local level, but the Kochs reportedly planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the general election. Located 2.7 km from National Museum of Music, Sopatel Silmande in Ouagadougou has an outdoor swimming pool and tennis court. first of all people - staff at front desk, restaurant and throughout were exceptional! food was also delicious! hotel had a large swimming pool which was great after a hot day Show more Show less A file photo. NEW DELHI (PTI): Aiming to validate and fine-tune its strategy to take over enemy land via sea, the Indian military has just completed a mammoth amphibious exercise 'Jal Prahar' that saw participation of all three wings of the armed forces in the strategic Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The exercise began on March 27 and ended earlier this week, defence sources said. "The idea is to validate and fine-tune our strategy to take over enemy land via sea. The Navy, Army and the Indian Air Force participated in this war game," the source said. The aim was also to check preparedness and readiness of the armed forces to ensure functional integrity of all three services and security of the Islands. Ships, aircraft and troops along with tanks from both the Eastern Naval Command and Andaman & Nicobar Command participated in the exercise. It was conducted in a manner, keeping all fragile environmental and ecological aspects in mind. The Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) is the first integrated theatre command in India with headquarters at Port Blair. A file photo. NEW DELHI (PTI): Asserting that Indian Navy has contributed significantly to the nation's geopolitical and developmental aspirations, Navy chief Admiral R K Dhowan said on Saturday that indigenisation programme for platforms, weapons, sensors and equipment should remain an area of focus for the force. Addressing the bi-annual Naval Commanders' Conference, which commenced on April 21, Dhowan addressed the Navy's top leadership on myriad issues including enhancing operational readiness of the Commands, infrastructure development, human resource management, coastal security, cyber security and foreign cooperation initiatives. He revisited the thrust areas as also the importance of the C3I model Commitment, Compassion, Credibility and Integrity to keep focus on defined goals and maintain the Navy on the correct track. He said that the Navy has contributed significantly to the nation's geopolitical and developmental aspirations. Emphasising that combat readiness of the fleet and other operational formations is of prime importance, the Admiral said focused efforts, as hitherto, are required at all levels to ensure sustained growth of the Navy into a formidable multi-dimensional force. He complimented all ranks of the Navy in maintaining a high tempo of operations during the last six months including the "very successful" International Fleet review (IFR) held by the Navy at Visakhapatnam in February this year, apart from a number of other notable operational activities such as the first Combined Commanders' Conference on board Vikramaditya in December last, a statement by the Navy said. Among the focus areas discussed during the conference were aspects pertaining to training, skill development and welfare of retiring personnel who constitute a vital resource for the nation. The indigenisation programme of the Navy was discussed and the Navy chief stressed that indigenisation of platforms, weapons, sensors and equipment, through DRDO, public and private sectors as also through in-house efforts, should remain an area of focus. During the course of the conference, the Chief of the Naval Staff reviewed the progress of airfield infrastructure, security of Naval Air Stations, dockyards and naval establishments. In addition meteorological and oceanographic initiatives being undertaken in support of naval operations were also discussed. He emphasised the need for constant review and refinement of the Navy's logistics support structures to ensure that its combat units and formations receive quality logistics support while maintaining a high operational tempo. One of the highlights of the conference was the opportunity Naval Commanders had to interact with the MoD officials, wherein issues pertaining to joint operations and military synergy were discussed. He added that Navy's role is not only vital for national security, but also for national prosperity and development. The first edition of this year's bi-annual Naval Commanders' Conference concluded on Saturday. Ceres' Haulani Crater, with a diameter of 21 miles (34 kilometers), shows evidence of landslides from its crater rim. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA NEW DELHI (BNS): Dawn has provided scientists with spectacular views of the dwarf planet Ceres. Craters with bright material on the dwarf planet shine in new images from NASA's Dawn mission. Haulani Crater, with a diametre of 21 miles (34 kilometres), has shown evidence of landslides from its crater rim. Smooth material and a central ridge stand out on its floor, according to scientists. An enhanced false-colour view allows scientists to gain insight into materials and how they relate to surface morphology. This image shows rays of bluish ejected material. The colour blue in such views has been associated with young features on Ceres. "Haulani perfectly displays the properties we would expect from a fresh impact into the surface of Ceres. The crater floor is largely free of impacts, and it contrasts sharply in colour from older parts of the surface," said Martin Hoffmann, co-investigator on the Dawn framing camera team, based at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany. The crater's polygonal nature (meaning it resembles a shape made of straight lines) is noteworthy because most craters seen on other planetary bodies, including Earth, are nearly circular, they said. The straight edges of some Cerean craters, including Haulani, result from pre-existing stress patterns and faults beneath the surface. A hidden treasure on Ceres is the 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) Oxo Crater, which is the second-brightest feature on Ceres (only Occator's central area is brighter). Oxo lies near the 0 degree meridian that defines the edge of many Ceres maps, making this small feature easy to overlook. Oxo is also unique because of the relatively large "slump" in its crater rim, where a mass of material has dropped below the surface. Dawn science team members are also examining the signatures of minerals on the crater floor, which appear different than elsewhere on Ceres. "Little Oxo may be poised to make a big contribution to understanding the upper crust of Ceres," said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dawn delves into the unknown and achieves what's never been attempted before. A mission in NASA's Discovery Programme, Dawn orbited and explored the giant protoplanet Vesta in 2011-2012, and now it is in orbit and exploring a second new world, dwarf planet Ceres. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Sixty-five years later, Michael Czuboka still recalls many details from a pivotal battle during the Korean War. I remember it vividly, the veteran and former Brandon resident said. There were 700 of us and maybe 10,000 or 20,000 Chinese. The Battle of Kapyong took place in South Korea at the end of April 1951, and is considered one of Canadas most significant military engagements. Submitted Korean War veteran Michael Czuboka graduated from Brandon College in 1957 and went on to become a teacher following the war. (Submitted) Czuboka, a private with the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry, was only 19 years old during the week-long battle. We were very lucky to get out of there because we were surrounded by the Chinese army for a couple days, he said. We had our supplies dropped to us by parachute from the American Air Force. One of Czubokas most prominent memories during the battle was an evening ambush that saw 500 Chinese soldiers descend upon his mortar platoon. The attacking troops didnt realize the Canadian platoon was also armed with six 50-calibre machine guns and Czuboka says the Chinese offensive was decimated. I think that was a major factor (in the battle) because after that they must have thought, this was a well-armed enemy and their attacks slowed down to some extent after that, Czuboka said. Czuboka signed up for the war effort shortly after graduating from high school in Brandon. His older brother had served in the Second World War Czuboka was only 14 when that war ended and the young man was eager to embark on an adventure he felt he had missed previously. We wanted to go to Korea to help the Korean people but it was also something exciting that we were going to do, he said. File photo Korean War veteran Michael Czuboka, centre, is seen in this October 2013 photo during a reception in Winnipeg in honour of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice. His excitement of being overseas was brought down to Earth after his first experience on the front lines in South Korea. There was something like 100 black American soldiers and they had all been bayonetted and shot and they were naked, Czuboka said, adding that he didnt eat for several days after witnessing the battle ground. I did get over it eventually, but it was rather devastating to see on the first occasion. Following the war, which ended on July 27, 1953, Czuboka got a degree from Brandon College and worked as a high school teacher. In the 1960s, he became the principal of Ecole secondaire Neelin High School and later went on to become the superintendent of schools in eastern Manitoba. Now residing in Winnipeg, Czuboka has been back to South Korea on three occasions and says the gratitude of the countrys residents is apparent. The veteran says its important for Canadians to remember the forgotten war and honour important moments like the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Kapyong. Its been called the forgotten war because it didnt happen in Canada, it didnt really affect that many people except those who were there, Czuboka said. Its very significant because we saved South Korea from becoming a totalitarian communist dictatorship like North Korea is now. Submitted Michael Czuboka, right, poses next to a mortar in South Korea in 1951. Czuboka has penned a novel based on his experiences during the Korean War titled Manifest Destiny. ewasney@brandonsun.com Twitter: @evawasney Already have an account? Log in here OTTAWA - Abu Sayyaf, the Philippines militant group responsible for killing a Canadian hostage on Monday, sprang up in the early 1990s as an offshoot of another, larger Islamic insurgent group. We need your support! Local journalism needs your support! As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed. Now, more than ever, we need your support. Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website. or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527. Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community! Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. EDMONTON Albertas credit rating has taken another hit. Moodys Investor Service announced Monday it has downgraded Albertas long-term debt rating to double-A1 from triple-A and has given it a negative outlook. Its the second downgrade from a rating service since the province released its budget on April 14 that included removal of its debt ceiling and a forecast of $58 billion in debt by 2019. Moodys says the downgrade reflects the provinces growing and unconstrained debt burden, extended timeframe back to balance, weakened liquidity, and risks surrounding the success of the provinces medium-term fiscal plan given the outlook for subdued growth. It also says the province forecasts oil prices to be higher than what Moodys is predicting. Finance Minister Joe Ceci, who is on a trip to Toronto and New York to meet with business leaders, says the downgrade is disappointing. We have the strongest balance sheet in the country and net assets of nearly $50 billion, Ceci said in a news release. The budget released last week clearly demonstrated our commitment to getting costs under control, especially in health care, by cutting spending growth to an average of two per cent over the next three years. Moodys said Albertas success in reducing the deficit is predicated on the success of the provinces spending plan and whether the anticipated forecasts for revenue improvement and oil price recovery will materialize. Given the lengthy period of deficits, potential for weaker economic activity and continued revenue dependence on volatile oil royalties, the negative outlook reflects Moodys view that the provinces fiscal health could deteriorate further. A day after Albertas budget came out on April 14, DBRS downgraded the provinces rating to double-A from triple-A due to debt levels. The budget includes a $10.4-billion deficit this year. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The bureaucracy at National Defence helped scuttle two attempts by the Harper government to acquire helicopter landing ships over the last few years, documents show. The most high-profile of the cases involved the sale by France of two Mistral-class warships, which had originally been built for Russia, but were on the auction block after the Kremlins annexation of Crimea. Documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information legislation show former defence minister Jason Kenney received conflicting advice from top civilian and military commanders, but decided to ignore it and made a last-minute, personal pitch to French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Defence experts say the memos and briefings makes the current defence policy review by the Liberals more important because they underscore how the lack of clear direction can lead to in-fighting among bureaucrats with competing visions of what is necessary. Kenney and Le Drian held a teleconference last June, a few months before President Francois Hollandes government decided to sell the 21,000-tonne vessels to Egypt. The former Conservative government was interested in acquiring landing ships, which can carry troops, equipment and helicopters, as a way to boost the militarys ability to respond quickly to trouble spots and humanitarian disasters around the world. The documents reveal that, prior to discussions with the French, the Conservatives examined the idea of acquiring large, surplus British Bay-class amphibious ships a proposal defence bureaucrats also shot down. In his advice over the Mistral sale, deputy defence minister John Forster acknowledged that having such a capability would be a strategic asset to Canada, particularly in the Arctic, and allow the country to be more self-sufficient in international operations, reduce dependency on allies, and assume greater leadership roles. But then he went on in a June 19, 2015 briefing to provide a litany of reasons why the Conservative government should not go ahead, notably because the ships did not fit within the existing defence investment plans and would put unforeseen money pressures on National Defence in the magnitude of billions of Canadian dollars. Forster told Kenney the same arguments were used a few years earlier to persuade the government not to pursue a deal with the British. He suggested the navy didnt have enough sailors and those it had were not trained for such a ship. As well, jetty infrastructure would need to be updated and helicopters modified. Finally, there werent enough bureaucrats to guide the acquisition. The briefing suggested it would take up to six years before the brand new ships were up to Canadian standards in terms of communications and weapons. The documents also raised concern that buying ships from the French might conflict with the National Shippbuilding Strategy, a principal aim of which is to build warships in Canada. Forster put forward the arguments, even though the documents show National Defence had an independent report that mostly argued the opposite an analysis that was initially not provided to Kenney. Dave Perry, an analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, says officials seemed bent on giving more reasons not to proceed, than in providing a balanced perspective. He said the concern about money was legitimate, but the Conservative cabinet wasnt even given the opportunity to reflect on pros and cons of adding an amphibious capability to the navy. My read of this is that there was interest up top, but it was torpedoed down below, Perry said. The strongest thing was the funding issue, but the notes made clear that if extra incremental funding became available, the department had other priorities. That, he said, is not the way it is supposed to work and its the government that should be setting the direction. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. CALGARY John Ridsdel, a Canadian killed by hostage-takers in the Philippines, was remembered Monday as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship. He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way, said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist who grew up with him in Yorkton, Sask. Ridsdel was one of four tourists including Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman who were kidnapped last September from a marina resort on southern Samal Island by Abu Sayyaf militants. The Islamic militants had threatened to kill one of the male hostages if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday local time 3 a.m. ET. Police said Monday that the head of a Caucasian male was recovered in the southern Philippines and Canadian government officials confirmed the victim was Ridsdel, 68. Thurston said Ridsdel is survived by two adult daughters from a former marriage. Both went on to achieve PhDs. Saskatoon resident Don Kossick got to know Ridsdel in the 1970s, when Ridsdel was working in Regina. Kossick led a letter-writing and Facebook campaign calling on the Canadian government to help Ridsdel and Hall. He was just a really warm, gracious person with a really nice smile. I remember that very well. He was just really open. We were young in those days, so we talked about a lot things. John was really bright, he was on top of issues, and it was really nice being around him. Thurston, who for a time shared a house in Calgary with his friend, also recalled Ridsdels questing, probing intelligence put to good use during a stint as a reporter for CBC. Whenever he chose to apply his stunning mind to anything, you knew it was going to be very well explored and also brought into eloquent terms that explained it in such ways that it became available to everyone. Thurston remembers long, penetrating conversations with his friend, who could seemingly speak with insight about anything and was concerned with social justice. In terms of taking a stand on something, John was one of those people. Thurston, a retired theatre professional and educator, said Ridsdel had environmentalist friends and didnt fit any kind of little slot of a mining executive. He addressed all the concerns of the levels of the (mining) role. He also made certain that all voices that came to him were heard. That was his nature. There wasnt any draw from the holster and blast things out until you get it correct. Thurston said his friend was marked by the compassion and respect with which he treated those around him. The most important thing about John is that he applied what I like to apply: If you can listen as carefully as you speak and speak as carefully as you listen, then that changes a lot of things. Former Ontario premier Bob Rae, who first met Ridsdel in 1966, remembered him as an adventurous, gregarious man. He showed great courage and dignity throughout his ordeal in captivity, and had the loving support of his wonderful family, Rae said in a Facebook post. What has happened is an unspeakable atrocity, and is a reminder to all Canadians about the brutal reality of our ongoing battle with extremist terrorism. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall also posted his condolences on Facebook. His life was taken away in a brutal act of murder by those with diametrically opposed values to the ones we hold, he said. It is hard to believe this could happen to someone who was raised in Yorkton. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called it a monstrous act and offered condolences to Ridsdels family and friends. Albertans of every faith pray for the rescue of the remaining hostages. By Bob Weber in Edmonton with files from Jennifer Graham in Regina. Follow them on Twitter at @row1960 and @JGrahamCP Already have an account? Log in here OTTAWA - The federal government promises new money for provinces and cities to upgrade aging water and sewer pipes, and to pay for design and construction costs of new projects. Here is the total amount each province will receive through the community water and wastewater fund: We need your support! Local journalism needs your support! As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed. Now, more than ever, we need your support. Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website. or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527. Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community! Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA They had come to reinvent the wheel one their Canadian predecessors had played a significant role in shaping some six decades earlier. The closed-door meeting at Global Affairs Canada on Jan. 29, 2016, was a brainstorming session on a topic that, at one time, would have been inconceivable in Canadian government circles: how Canada could make a meaningful contribution to international peacekeeping. The day-long session brought together representatives from Canadas renamed foreign ministry, leading diplomats, academics and former United Nations peacekeeping officials. The agenda, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press, asked a number of questions about Canadas return to the peacekeeping fold. The participants tackled a range of issues from the militarys capability to take on peacekeeping missions and how they would fit Canadas broader foreign policy interests to how to incorporate women and where to deploy. It was one of the first steps towards transforming a Liberal foreign policy campaign promise into a reality one that had to confront the fact that Canada had been out of the peacekeeping business for more than a decade, focused instead on war-fighting in the post 9-11 era. This exercise will serve to lay the ground for establishing the criteria for engagement in specific missions or initiatives, said the document, which asked far more questions than it answered. What are the respective strengths, weaknesses and implications of adopting these priorities, both for our peace operations engagement and for activities across government? The participants discussed some of the underlying criteria for future missions, including the responsibility to protect civilians, preventing violent extremism and whether unspecified geographic priorities should be the deciding factor. They also looked at gaps in the militarys capability and how Canadas capabilities need to be updated and improved to be more responsive to UN needs. Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion acknowledged that a lot of work lay ahead before Canada could return to the world of peacekeeping. We need to be very selective, Dion said in a recent interview. We need to have a clear view about where we will be the most effective in co-operation with others. We will not act in isolation about peacekeeping. He also made clear that Canada will have to filter the requests of its allies, now that the government has publicized its intention to return to peacekeeping. The requests come from everywhere, Dion said. From the French, from the British, from the U.S. everybody has an idea about what Canada should do. Theyre not cheap, he added: If we add all these requests, I think the minister of finance will have a tough time. Transition documents prepared for the incoming Liberal government last fall showed that Canada had 31 military personnel and 85 police officers assigned to UN peace operations, which ranked the country 68th among the 124 countries that contribute. Canada is the ninth financial contributor to UN peacekeeping operations with an annual contribution of about $240 million U.S. Canada deployed more than 3,000 personnel deployed on operations in the mid-1990s. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he doesnt envision Canada deploying large numbers of soldiers on the ground in future UN missions, and will instead contribute high-level experts engineers and medical experts, as well as leveraging its French speakers. Walter Dorn, a professor at the Canadian Forces Staff College in Kingston who has studied the decline of Canadas contribution to UN peacekeeping, disagreed, saying Canada could increase its contribution 10-fold, to 300, without much trouble. You cant get the top leadership positions if youre not going to make substantial contributions to the missions, Dorn said. I think we need to show we can put boots on the ground. The dynamics of peace support operations have changed dramatically since former external affairs minister Lester Pearson, backed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower proposed the first UN peacekeeping mission in 1956 to help defuse the Suez Crisis. That earned Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize a year later. The January meeting in Ottawa looked at how Canada can make a constructive contribution to the UNs conflict prevention, mediation and post-reconstruction efforts. There are plenty of opportunities for Canada to make contributions to missions in francophone countries, such as the Central African Republic, Mali and Haiti, Dorn said. Canada is one of Haitis largest aid donors having contributed $1.6 billion in development and humanitarian assistance since 2006. The country has faced political instability for months. Brazil is looking for new peacekeeping partners in Haiti, Dorn noted. Its in our backyard, and we have the francophone component which can help a lot. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. HALIFAX Delta Airlines practice of bumping obese travellers or making them buy two seats is discriminatory and should be banned in Canada, says a Halifax man who advocates on behalf of airline passengers. Gabor Lukacs appeared Monday before the Federal Court of Canada, telling a three-judge panel that even though he is not overweight himself, he should have the right to file a complaint about a carriers policy. The airline is discriminating based on size, Lukacs said in court. It could be eye colour.Its a slippery slope. Gabor Lukacs is seen in Halifax on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2014. Lukaacs argued in Federal Court on Monday that even though he is not overweight himself, he should have the right to file a complaint about a carrier's "discriminatory" practice of bumping obese travellers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan He said the airline routinely asks large passengers to move to another seat, take a later flight or buy an additional seat. The Canadian Transportation Agency dismissed his initial complaint in November 2014, finding that Lukacs had no private or public standing in the matter because he wasnt directly affected by it. Lukacs said dismissing his complaint simply because the issue didnt affect him personally was akin to disregarding someones concerns over contaminated food just because they werent made sick by it. Because what we are protecting here are public and societal interests, not individual interests. It doesnt matter whether the complainant is me or someone who is actually large, he said outside court in Halifax. The question of who the complainant is should be utterly irrelevant because it affects everybody. He told the court that the agencys own legislation makes it clear that anyone can file a complaint. As well, he said he has a demonstrated expertise in the area of passenger issues, having filed more than two dozen successful complaints with the agency and, as a result, bringing about improvements to the industry. The 46 mentions of his name in agency decisions show that he has a long-standing, real and continuing interest in the rights of air passengers, he said. In the U.S. they do many things that we disagree with, Lukacs said outside court. There are states that discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation We are Canadians. We are different. We dont subscribe to discrimination. The panel reserved its decision on standing to a later date. A lawyer for Delta declined to comment outside the court. Lukacs said the airline should use adjustable seats that can be widened for big passengers. The first thing they should do is leave passengers alone, he said outside court. If a passenger can physically fit into a seat, even if they are overreaching on both sides, they should be allowed to occupy the seat. With files from Michael MacDonald Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The Canadian government publicly says it does not negotiate with terrorists, but the private reality may well be more flexible. Canadians abroad are not immune to being kidnapped for financial gain or for political or propaganda purposes, says Public Safety Canadas 2014 report on terrorism. Ransom money is often used to help fund terrorism-related activities, including recruitment, arms procurement, training camps, terrorist attacks and furthering political agendas. The report insists the federal governments approach to kidnapping respects firm principles: no policy changes, no prisoner exchanges, no immunity from prosecution and no ransom payments. The Abu Sayyaf militants who murdered Canadian John Ridsdel in the Philippines had demanded a huge ransom for him and three others. The federal travel advisory website says that if a Canadian abroad is the victim of a hijacking, hostage-taking or kidnapping, Canadian consular officials can work closely with local authorities to facilitate an early and safe release, and maintain contact with a designated family member to keep them informed. Even so, in a statement Monday, Global Affairs Canada said we do not pay ransoms to terrorist groups. Kidnap for ransom is a significant source of terrorist funding, fuelling violence and instability. Canada in good conscience cannot contribute to this. Paying ransoms perpetuates the actions of these groups, encouraging terrorists to put new victims and their loved ones through similar ordeals. An al-Qaida letter obtained by The Associated Press three years ago suggests about $1 million was paid for the release of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler in Niger in 2009. Fowler, the highest-ranking United Nations official in the African country, and his colleague Louis Guay, were kidnapped and held for four months before being released. The news agency did not indicate who provided the $1 million for Fowler and Guay. In a published memoir, Fowler said he did not know if a ransom was paid. However, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported the deal brokered by several Western nations working through African intermediaries involved a prisoner swap and multimillion-dollar payment. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from February 2010 lent credence to the notion Canada makes payments, quoting Washingtons then-ambassador to Mali as saying it is difficult to level criticism on countries like Mali and Burkina Faso for facilitating negotiations when the countries that pay ransom, like Austria and Canada are given a pass. Journalist Amanda Lindhout, a native of Red Deer, Alta., and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were seized by young gunmen near strife-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in August 2008. Both were released in November 2009 after their families paid a ransom. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 24/04/2016 (2374 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. KANANASKIS, Alta. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his 30 ministers holed up Sunday at a luxury mountain resort in Alberta to discuss the devastation wrought by plunging oil prices on the provinces economy. Premier Rachel Notley met privately with Trudeau and then gave a detailed presentation to about half the cabinet in the evening at which she drove home the message that a healthy Alberta economy is a necessary precondition for robust national economic growth. She spoke of the desperate need for a pipeline to get the provinces oil sands crude to tidewater and for a quick start to job-creating infrastructure projects. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walks to a meeting with his cabinet at a Liberal Party cabinet retreat in Kananaskis, Alta., Sunday, April 24, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh And she reiterated her objections to a recent boost in Employment Insurance benefits for hard-hit regions of the country, which wound up excluding Edmonton. I think that the interests of Alberta were well-served today, she said following her presentation. I made the case again that Albertas economic health really is linked to Canadas economic health. However, she got no specific promises on any of the issues she raised. And not all cabinet ministers attended the detailed session with Notley, choosing instead to attend other presentations being given at the same time or to flit from one to another. Among those who didnt plan to attend Notleys presentation was Finance Minister Bill Morneau, whose maiden budget last month introduced the EI changes and promised billions in infrastructure funding. Im going to another presentation right now. I think hers is over-subscribed, Morneau told reporters during a brief break. Nevertheless, he said the mountain location of the three-day retreat was very much on purpose because we wanted to be here in Alberta to understand better the challenges. Morneau defended the formula by which the federal government calculated which regions of the country are entitled to beefed up EI benefits but appeared to leave the door open a crack to modifying it. Thats where were at right now and I appreciate that Premier Notley, you know, is anxious to make sure that people across the province are well served. On pipelines, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said the federal government understands how important the energy sector is for Canada and for Alberta; we know that the sector is going through a very difficult time at the moment. But he offered no new hope for speedy approval of any of the three proposed pipelines that are currently mired in the environmental review process and facing stiff uphill battles with public opinion. We want to move our natural resources to tidewater sustainably and weve announced a set of principles that will guide us along that way, Carr said. Notley said she agrees with the approach the Liberal federal government is taking, which she argued is more likely to produce results eventually than the pipeline cheerleader approach taken by the previous Conservative governments in Ottawa and Edmonton. You know, two Conservative governments both at a federal level and at a provincial level came together to fail on the issue of getting a pipeline approved because they paired that with a refusal to deal with climate change and a refusal to deal with the fact that people distrusted the process that was in place, she said. Like Trudeau, she argued that Canadians are more likely to support a pipeline if they have faith in a beefed up environmental review process. Notley spent some time during her presentation educating federal ministers on her own governments climate change plan, including a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi, a former Edmonton city councillor, said he talks weekly with his Alberta counterpart and is hopeful that infrastructure money can start flowing soon. We are working with them to sign bilateral agreements as quickly as possible and our goal is not to lose this construction season, he said. Earlier Sunday, as the prime minister and his ministers arrived for the retreat, Trudeau said the gathering would give cabinet a chance to focus on the challenges and opportunities facing Alberta. Its also a chance for his cabinet to take stock of what theyve accomplished in their first six months in power and all the hard work that lies ahead, he said. This is the second cabinet retreat Trudeau has held. The first, at a seaside resort in New Brunswick in January, cost almost $150,000 and the price tag for this one is likely to be similar. But Trudeau said its important for him and his ministers to get out of the Ottawa bubble. One of the things we talked about a lot during the election campaign was the need to get out and be strong voices for our communities in Ottawa, he said after strolling through a chilly rain with his ministers shortly after arriving at the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis, a spectacular resort nestled in the Rocky Mountains about 80 km. west of Calgary. And that requires us, MPs and ministers, to be engaged on the ground, connecting with people and thats exactly what were doing. In addition to Notley, ministers could attend other presentations Sunday by several experts: Management consultant Dominic Barton, recently appointed by Morneau to head up his economic advisory council, which is supposed to advise the government on how to foster economic growth in the face of the collapse in oil prices. Head of the prestigious global consulting giant McKinsey & Co., Barton has close ties with business and governments in Asia. He was to give a presentation to cabinet about China and the global growth agenda. Michael Barber, one-time adviser to former British prime minister Tony Blairs government, on deliverology his approach to ensuring that governments actually deliver on their promises. Barber also gave a presentation at Trudeaus first cabinet retreat. Dan Gardner, co-author of Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. The retreat wraps up midday Tuesday. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The article in Thursdays Brandon Sun by Charles Tweed, Grits, NDP Face Challenges After Vote, provided a very good summary of Manitobas election results over almost half a century. The graph showed that until this past week, the NDP had won eight of the previous 12 Manitoba elections over the better part of half a century. What it does not show is that Greg Selinger had become the least popular premier in Canada and I found it interesting that, of the so-called Gang of Five cabinet ministers who opposed Selinger, only one ran in this election and he was easily re-elected. Of the cabinet ministers who continued to support the premier, almost all were defeated. The graph also shows that Brian Pallister and his Progressive Conservatives won the greatest victory in the modern era, that it will be the only government in decades to be supported by a majority of the provinces voters, and that Pallister easily exceeded even Gary Doers 49.2 per cent of the popular vote in 2013 and Sterling Lyons 48.6 per cent in 1977. In writing the article, Mr. Tweed consulted a couple of my fellow political scientists, Chris Adams and Kelly Saunders, and they are both correct in their assessment of the Liberal leader and her campaign and both are correct in their view that she should step down. In last years federal election, more than 268,000 Manitobans voted for Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party, while a few days ago fewer than 62,000 Manitobans voted for Rana Bokhari and her provincial Liberals. Where did these 200,000 Liberals go? Many of them stayed home rather than support a disastrous provincial Liberal campaign or one of the other parties; others switched their votes to the NDP, PCs or Greens. In fact, many of them continued the longstanding Manitoba tradition of supporting the Liberals federally and the NDP provincially. Where Chris Adams goes wrong in his analysis is when he says, This is the end of the alliance between Gary Doers NDP and the urban middle class in Winnipeg. There is no proof for this whatsoever. A large number of middle-income voters in Winnipeg did support Pallisters PCs, but in almost every seat they won, it was the NDP that came in second place with the Liberals a distant third. This was certainly the case in Bokharis own constituency of Fort Rouge. And, while the Liberals won only two seats in Winnipeg, largely based on the personal popularity of their local candidates, the NDP won 12 seats. In most elections, those suburban Winnipeg voters tend to shift back and forth between Conservatives and Liberals federally and the PCs and NDP provincially. The article concludes by speculating on premier-designate Pallisters cabinet picks and how Manitobas second-largest city should be represented in the provincial cabinet. This is a tradition that dates back to 1969 when newly elected premier Ed Schreyer appointed the late Len Evans as a cabinet minister in the first NDP government. It is a tradition well worth following and I would agree with Kelly Saunders that it is not one that should be broken. James A. McAllister Ajax, Ont. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Sen. Mike Duffy was cleared of criminal wrongdoing last week, but the question of whether he and other senators behaved unethically in claiming travel and other expenses has not been resolved fully in the court of public opinion. Two other senators, Mac Harb and Patrick Brazeau, are also scheduled to go on trial for similar offences, so its entirely possible different judges could come to different conclusions on similar facts. Indeed, retired Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie, in adjudicating the case of another senator in a non-criminal action, said the senator should have relied on old-fashioned common sense in determining the location of his primary residence for the purpose of billing for expenses. Every senator who came under scrutiny for filing suspicious expenses complained the rules were confusing and vague. But if that were the case, why did they all remain silent for so long? The scent of scandal in the Senate had actually become an obstacle to reforming the chamber, which many Canadians, including former prime minister Stephen Harper, wanted to abolish. The Duffy affair merely added ammunition for those who wanted to put it out of its misery. Thats one of the reasons it was essential to deal with the allegations of corruption in a court of law or some other forum. The truth needs to be laid bare. The next steps in creating a meaningful Senate have already been taken by the Trudeau government. Ironically, one of the easiest reforms was rewriting the senate residency requirements to make the rules clearer. It is now no longer acceptable to merely own property in the province a senator represents. He or she must provide documentation to prove it is their place of permanent residence. It was never that difficult to amend the regulations to reflect the times, but for some reason the Senate continued to operate on rules that were nearly 150 years old. If Mr. Harper seemed intent on destroying the Senate by neglect, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is equally determined to breathe new life into it. He has established a new process to appoint Canadians to the Senate on the basis of merit and ability, rather than political affiliation. An independent advisory board recommends qualified candidates to the prime minister. The first seven appointments under the new process were made last month. They included a former Ontario NDP cabinet minister, Frances Lankin, who was chosen not because of her political experience, but because of her long-standing commitment to public life. Partisan affiliation should not automatically disqualify a potential candidate, but nor should it be the sole reason for an appointment. Two Manitobans were among this distinguished group. They are Murray Sinclair, former chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Raymonde Gagne, former president of the Universite de Saint-Boniface. A Senate built on merit will rebuild the institutions reputation over time, but questions about its relevance will remain. The Supreme Court has already ruled the Senate cannot be substantially changed, or abolished, without the approval of the provinces, and the will for such change does not exist today. That means people who are appointed to the Senate will have to find ways to make the institution more relevant in the lives of Canadians. The original idea of a chamber composed of socially conscious Canadians who represented the regions and provided advice on national problems still seems as if it has a place in Canadian life. Indeed, the Senate has produced many important studies and reports on a range of issues. The spending scandals may have sullied its reputation temporarily, but theres no reason why a chamber of good Canadians cannot make a difference in the life of the nation. Winnipeg Free Press Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. In a unique move that has shaken up the 2016 U.S. presidential race, Donald Trumps primary opponents have announced they have created an informal alliance against him. The goal of this tag-team is twofold: first, hold down Trump in a few key states to make it impossible for him to grab the delegates he needs for a quick win at the Republican convention, then defeat him on subsequent convention ballots. Here are five key questions about this arrangement, answered. Whats the plan? Trump has two opponents left for the nomination. They now intend to co-ordinate efforts. Sen. Ted Cruz will focus on winning Indiana; he will leave New Mexico and Oregon for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. They are doing this two ways. The first is self-explanatory: they will avoid campaigning on each others turf. But their public statements went an extra step. They instructed allies to follow their lead. Legally, campaigns cant collaborate with richly funded, independent groups better known as Super PACs. This sends these groups a clear message: No advertisements against one another in selected states. How does it work? Its all about keeping Trump from reaching the magic number: 1,237. Thats how many delegates it takes to secure the nomination, with a 50-per-cent-plus-one majority on the first ballot in July. It is going to be close. A Canadian Press analysis of the remaining states suggests that if Trumps poll numbers hold up he could find himself along the edge of 1,237 delegates entering the Republican convention. A key wildcard is Indiana. Almost 10 per cent of the remaining delegates will be allocated in that state May 3. And nearly half those Indiana delegates are winner-take-all, meaning they are awarded en masse to whoever finishes No. 1. Can it succeed? Maybe. Trump has a tight lead in Indiana polls. Its 39 per cent for Trump, 33 per cent for Cruz, 19 per cent for Kasich according to an average of polls compiled by the site Real Clear Politics. Should Kasich voters shift as a bloc to support Cruz, he would win the state, and they would keep Trump from winning a few dozen critical delegates. Can it fail? Several signs point to: Yes. The plan wasnt even a day old Monday, and several cracks had already appeared. For starters, this was announced three weeks after advance voting had already started in Indiana. Even now, its doubtful Kasich voters will act as a bloc. A Fox News poll suggests Kasich supporters are, in fact, almost as likely to prefer Trump (33 per cent) as Cruz (41 per cent) for their second choice. With such percentages, Trump would almost certainly squeak by. Yet another problem involves messaging: these would-be allies dont have one. Cruz called the agreement momentous. Kasich called it no big deal. Trumps message Monday was way simpler: He said the political system is corrupt and rigged against outsiders like him. What are they saying? Cruz, to reporters Monday: Were all in on Indiana It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana, to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump Donald has been a minority candidate a fringe candidate (who) benefited early in the race by having a multitude of opponents where the opposition to Donald was diffuse We are seeing the full spectrum of the Republican party uniting I understand that Donald will whine. Thats what he does. Donald is a sore loser. Kasich: I never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me. But Im not over there campaigning and spending resources. We have limited resources I dont have, you know, Daddy Warbucks behind me giving me all this money I dont see this as any big deal. Trump, to a rally: If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics because its a rigged system, because its a corrupt enterprise, in politics youre allowed to collude. So they colluded. Actually I was happy. Because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are It takes two guys longtime politicians to try and get together to try and beat Trump. BHS is one of the UK's most recognised high street brands but it has struggled against value fashion rivals and online shopping. By 2016 the BHS Group was performing on average 1,000,000 transactions a week across 164 stores and 74 franchise stores across 18 countries - but it is struggling to be profitable. :: 1928 British Home Stores is set up in a store in Brixton, south London. Nothing costs more than a shilling. :: 1929 Prices rise to a five shilling maximum as home furnishings are introduced. :: 1970 Expansion since the Second World War means the brand now has 94 UK stores and around 12,000 workers. :: 2000 Sir Philip Green buys British Home Stores for 200 million. It is rebranded as BHS. :: 2002 BHS becomes part of Arcadia when Sir Philip pays 840 million for the clothing chain which includes Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Burton. :: 2005 The shop is beginning to lose pace as it is pitched against cheaper rivals such Primark. :: 2014 BHS department stores start selling food with the aim is for it to be about 10% cheaper on branded goods than the big four supermarkets who are already involved in a price war. BHS, which has 171 stores, made a cash loss of 21 million in the year to August 2014, compared with 19.3 million in the year earlier, the Financial Times reports. :: 2015 Soon after the retailer was bought by Retail Acquisitions Limited RAL for 1 in March 2015 work began on a turnaround plan to try and bring it back into profitability. BHS employs 11,000 people and has a pension deficit of about 100 million, the FT reports. :: 2016 The store is thrown a lifeline in March when creditors back two company voluntary arrangements (CVA) designed to cut costs and prevent widespread store closures. Weeks later BHS issues a statement saying it "would like to advise that despite some press speculation it is not in, nor has applied to go into administration" but within days fears deepen that it may go into administration by April 25, threatening 11,000 jobs. The London market opened on the back foot weighed by miners and a drop in the oil price. The FTSE 100 Index fell 43.8 points to 6266.2, as Brent crude slipped 0.9% to just under 45 US dollars a barrel. Miners were also lower, with Anglo American 31p down to 701.5p, BHP Billiton falling 40.7p to 946.9p and Rio Tinto slipping 72p to 2262.5p. The fall in the London market follows a slump of 71 points on Friday, again prompted by declining commodity prices. Beleaguered high street department chain BHS is expected to file for administration today, threatening almost 11,000 jobs. The privately-owned retailer has reportedly sent a letter to staff, which said it will call in administrators after being unable to secure a rescue package to save the 88-year-old business. A formal announcement is expected at around noon. Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital, said: "The same pressures that squeezed the life out of BHS are being felt across the UK retail sector today." However, the effect on other retailers was mixed. Sainsbury's and Tesco were both down - 3.7p to 288.p and 2.2p to 184.5p respectively. But Marks & Spencer edged up 0.9p to 428.9p, while Dixons Carphone lifted 1.8p to 422.3p. Scotland could hold the key to keeping the UK in the European Union and businesses must "stand up and be counted" to prevent an exit, a leading Liberal Democrat peer has warned. Lord Menzies Campbell, head of the European Movement in Scotland, said Scottish businesses need to "get off the sidelines" in the Brexit debate. Treasury analysis on the cost of an EU exit says the UK's national income could be 6% smaller - the equivalent of 4,300 a year per household - by 2030. More than 330,000 Scottish jobs are dependent on EU exports, almost half of Scotland's international exports go to the EU and Scotland attracts more foreign investment than anywhere in the UK outside London, Lord Campbell said. He said: "It is vital that Scottish businesses get off the sidelines and ensure that they raise their concerns over an exit and highlight what the bigger picture of our EU membership means to them. "As part of the largest single market in the world, our businesses are able to trade freely across the 28 nations of the EU and we are a focus for inward investment, in part due to our membership of the EU. "However, the Scottish Chamber of Commerce has already highlighted how 'fragile' the Scottish economy is and withdrawal from the EU will damage our economic recovery. "With the vote so close across the UK, Scotland could hold the key to the outcome of this referendum and it is vital that all who recognise our future as EU members stand up and be counted. "The business community has a key role to play here and would urge those who benefit from and see our future as being members of the EU not to sit on the sidelines and see us sleepwalking to Brexit, but to stand up and be counted." Telecom giant Meteor Mobile has been convicted and fined 25,000 for removing massive discounts from customers' phone contracts without telling them. In the first prosecution of its kind, the company pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court today to breaching statutory regulations. The court heard the company, which is owned by Eir, had discontinued a 50% discount package. However, the bundle continued to be sold by shop operators and Meteor agents to 123 customers who later had it taken from them without any notification or any offer to withdraw from their contracts without penalty, which is required under the regulations. The case came after customers' bills doubled and some of them complained to telecoms industry watchdog Comreg. Judge John O'Neill described the company's explanation that they had technical problems as gobbledygook. He also said it was ironic that they were involved in the communications business when they had difficulty communicating to their stores that the packages should not be sold anymore. One customer got cut off when he complained that his discount had been taken from him without warning. There were 123 counts of breaching the Universal Services and Users Rights regulations. Prosecution counsel Christian Keeling told that it had been agreed that that a guilty plea would be entered by Meteor to 10 counts and Comreg would withdraw the remaining charges. He said the regulations contain consumer protection measures where a provider must notify subscribers of any changes and advise them of their rights to withdraw from their contract without penalty if they did not agree with the modifications. Comreg compliance officer Miriam Kilraine told Judge O'Neill the 123 customers had been given a phone bundle with a 50% discount for 24 months. However it was later removed from their packages. Customers who complained were told that the discount had been given to them in error. This result in their bills being effectively doubled, she said. The court heard that 29 customers complained directly to the company but refunds to all those affected came following intervention by Comreg. On top of the refunds 111 customers who have remained with Meteor have been given the discount back for the duration of their contracts. The average refund was 240, the court heard. Ms Kilraine cited two examples. One customer was told by Meteor that there was nothing they could do after they noticed their bill had increased. Another customer on a two-year contract noticed his 50% discount had been removed after a couple of months. He complained and held off paying the bill but Meteor cut him off, the court heard. She agreed with defence counsel Joe Jeffers that the people in the two case studies had discounts reapplied and refunds within a couple of weeks. She said that the company had co-operated in a qualified way and Comreg found the information provided to it by Meteor was not of a standard they would expect. They had no prior criminal convictions. However Ms Kilraine said the company pleaded guilty in other proceedings for over-charging but that case was struck out after Meteor gave a charitable donation. Meteor director Maeve O'Malley told the court the company had ceased offering the 50% discount on a 400 free minutes, texts and two gigabytes of data bundle. However their shops and agents such as Carphone Warehouse were still able to give it because it was not removed from their computer system. She said they would have been notified that the discount had been stopped. She rejected a suggestion by the judge that the sales continued because the shop managers had not been informed and she denied that she was being evasive. She said the issue raised by Comreg about information they provided was because of the complexity of going through their accounts. She said the refunds cost 25,000 and the company was apologetic, have new measures in place and are confident it won't happen again. The offence can result in court convictions and fines of up to 5,000 per offence. Defence counsel Joe Jeffers asked that the company, which has agreed to pay prosecution costs, be given a chance to donate 10,000 to charity and spare it a conviction. However, Judge O'Neill refused and imposed fines totalling 25,000 which have to be paid within four months. A Dublin man has gone on trial accused of stabbing his wifes son to death following a row over his bicycle. David Mahon of Ongar Village in Clonsilla denies murdering 23-year-old Dean Fitzpatrick in May 2013. A man has been shot in a suspected gangland attack in a pub in Dublin. Gardai said the man was hit a number of times in a gun attack in the Summerhill area of north Dublin. The incident took place at around 9.30pm, with the victim targeted at the Sunset House bar. There was immediate speculation that the shooting was the latest in a bloody feud involving associates of the Kinahan and Hitch families. The two sides have been embroiled in a bitter row which has claimed the lives of several people in gangland style gun murders since late last year. Former Labour TD Aodhan O'Riordain appealed for calm. "Seriously concerned at reports of another shooting. Calm needed now at all costs," he said. The latest shooting is about a mile from where Read More: Martin O'Rourke He was caught in the crossfire on Sheriff Street as another murder bid linked to the feud was launched. That in turn was a mile or so from where taxi driver Read More: The Hutch-Kinahan feud spiralled into a killing spree when Read More: His killing is believed to have been avenged in the Regency attack, which claimed the life of Read More: Within days, Eddie Hutch was dead, and at the end of last month Read More: Meanwhile, speaking earlier today, the Garda Commissioner says the investigations relating to recent gangland murders and activities are progressing very well. Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan, made the remarks during the first meeting held in public, between the Policing Authority and the Garda Commissioner. Commissioner O'Sullivan, says protecting communities from violent and organised crime is the top priority of An Garda Siochana. Update 3.49pm: Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin says the vast majority of the electorate are not in favour of another general election. The Cork South Central TD has refused to give a timeline for the conclusion of government formation talks, but earlier admitted that there is a 50/50 chance of another election being called. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are back in talks this afternoon in a bid to thrash out a deal on a minority Government. Speaking to Cork's 96FM and C103 earlier, Micheal Martin said he hopes the talks will bring about a resolution sooner rather than later. The vast majority of people dont want an election, and I think people would like these issues resolved, he said. I think the important point to make is that Fianna Fail is not going into Government, its going into Opposition however, it is prepared to facilitate a minority government. We didnt get the numbers, we sought to lead a minority Government ourselves and we werent successful. That said, we are prepared to facilitate a minority-led Fine Gael Government. We think the world is changing in Irish politics and minority Governments could be the thing of the future. Update 2.42pm: Fine Gael's Simon Coveney has said the talks between the two main parties are complex and cannot be rushed, but he he's hoping for a resolution on the Irish Water debate in the coming days. Theres no point in setting something up thats not going to last for more than six months, he told Corks 96FM. So there was quite a long list of issues that we needed to address together and to try and accommodate each other on, in the context of Fianna Fail facilitating a Fine Gael led minority Government. Weve been through most of those issues and we have agreement on most of them, but there are three or four still left to resolve. Obviously, one of them is water, and I hope well be able to make progress on that today or tomorrow. Update - 2.05pm: Fianna Fail TD for Carlow Kilkenny John McGuinness says a commission to look at a new charging regime for Irish Water is not needed. He said: "Fianna Fail's position has been that we outlined what we are going to do - in government or in support of government - with Irish Water, which is abolish Irish Water and suspend the charges. "We need to stop and define where we are and where we want to go with this, and that means the structure of Irish Water comes into question and the charges come into question." Earlier: The Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin says there is a 50/50 chance of another general election. Mr Martin was speaking in Cork before returning to Dublin this afternoon to continue talks on the formation of a new government. He says a minority government needs to be solid to avoid a collapse further down the line, and that issues - including Irish Water - need to be resolved before that can happen. Speaking to Cork's 96FM / C103 news, Mr Martin said he cannot give a timeline as to when the government formation talks must conclude, but he says that it could go either way at the minute. He said: "It would appear to me to be a 50/50 situation at the moment and I dont want to negotiate in public, I think so far there has been a willingness to keep channels open and to engage, and that's important. "I think the tone has been good, we are civil people and we are civil to each other, obviously there are political differences and sometimes you read that there is a war of words, but there is not. "From my perspective this (Irish Water) is an issue that needs to be resolved, before the government is formed." Meanwhile, Fine Gael's Simon Coveney said the talks are complex and cannot be rushed. He told Cork's 96FM that he is hoping for a resolution on the Irish Water debate in the coming days. Mr Coveney said: "There's no point in setting something up that's not going to last for more than six months, so there was quite a long list of issues that we needed to address together and to try and accommodate each other on. "In the context of Fianna Fail facilitating a Fine Gael-led minority government, we've been through most of those issues and we have agreement on most of them, but there are three or four of them still left to be resolved. "Obviously one of them is water and I hope we will be able to make progress on that today or tomorrow." By Chris McCullough Police have killed a bull on a Co Tyrone farm after it gored a farmer to death. The farmer, who was attacked last Saturday, has been named as Nigel Murray and is said to be a bachelor in his early 50s. The Health and Safety Executive in Northern Ireland confirmed it is investigating the incident. A spokeswoman for HSENI said: HSENI can confirm it is investigating the death of a farmer in an incident involving a bull on Saturday, April 23 at a farm in the Aughnacloy area, Co Tyrone. Our thoughts are with the family involved at this most difficult time. Safety alert: HSENI warning farmers to take extreme care when working with bulls: https://t.co/n638sgZn5H. @UFUHQ @YFCUpresident HSENI (@Hsenigov) April 25, 2016 A PSNI spokesman added: "A man has died following an incident involving a bull in a field. Police attended and after consultation with the vet and members of the family police shot the bull as it posed a risk. The office of the Police Ombudsman has been informed of the incident. A spokeswoman for the Ulster Farmers Union said: The Ulster Farmers Union regrets all farm deaths and know the impact they have on farm families. Regardless of circumstances they are a reminder of the risks the industry has committed itself to tackle. Animals are one of the four key risks identified by the Farm Safety Partnership. This underlines why they rank with slurry, falls and machinery as a risk. Tyrrelstown tenants, at the centre of a housing storm involving a property developer and a Goldmann Sachs firm, have won a case taken to the PRTB. Counsel for the landlord accepted that the notices of termination were invalid, on foot of a ruling by the High Court earlier this month. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has condemned the "cold-blooded murder" of a Canadian by terrorists in the Philippines who were holding him hostage. Mr Trudeau confirmed that the victim was John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta. He was 68 years old. Mr Ridsdel was one of four tourists - including Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman - that were kidnapped last Read More: The militants had threatened to kill one of the three male hostages if a large ransom was not paid by 3pm Monday local time (0800 GMT). Mr Trudeau says his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this "heinous act". Two men on a motorcycle left Mr Ridsdel's head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief supt Junpikar Sitin said. Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming Abu Sayyaf militants, who have been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. "This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate," Mr Amin said. Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees as the Abu Sayyaf's deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said. The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos (5.7m) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands. Prime Minister Trudeau issues statement on the Killing of a Canadian hostage In the Philippines https://t.co/xPypbAVFxd KERRY LEE CRAWFORD (@StepsAfterDark) April 25, 2016 The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month. "Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue," the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III. About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said. In militant videos posted online, Mr Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. Belarusian milk has been found to contain a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times above the nation's food safety limits. The samples came from farmer Nikolau Chubenok's cows close to the country's Chernobyl exclusion zone, just down the road from signs warning "Stop! Radiation". The finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986 explosion at the plant in neighbouring Ukraine continues to affect life in Belarus. However, many people living along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 2,200-square-kilometre (850-square-mile) ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, show little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems mean Chernobyl's troubles can be consigned to history. "There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation?" said Mr Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm just 45 kilometres (28 miles) north of the Chernobyl site. Mr Chubenok said he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese on site. His milk is part of dairy factory Milkavita's supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90% of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. Milkavita called the findings of the Associated Press-commissioned lab finding "impossible". Factory officials insisted their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits. Since rising to power in 1994, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, the former director of a state-owned farm, has stopped resettlement programmes for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone. Instead, he has developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock. The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians closest to the plant had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living nearby left voluntarily. Dr Yuri Bandazhevsky, one of the most prominent medical critics of the government's approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with EU sponsorship. Dr Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, said he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply. "We have a disaster," he told the AP in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. "In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country." The state-run Minsk Centre of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in the milk sample in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium. The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognised unit of measurement for radioactivity. The Minsk lab informed the AP that the milk sample contained 37.5 becquerels. That radioactive isotope is, along with cesium-137, commonly produced during nuclear fission and generates most of the heat and penetrating radiation from nuclear waste. When consumed, scientists say strontium-90 mimics the behaviour of calcium in the human body, settling in bones. Milkavita chief engineer Maia Fedonchuk rejected the findings. "It's impossible. We do our own testing. There must have been a mix-up," she said, adding they test samples from every batch of milk they receive from Mr Chubenok and do an "in-depth" analysis every six months. She said the plant's own lab analysis indicates its overall milk supply contains an average of 2.85 becquerels per kilogram. Health officials say the danger level posed by low levels of radioactive isotopes depends greatly on length of exposure and individual physiology. Notably, the regional free-trade bloc that includes Belarus and Russia permits higher levels of strontium-90 in goods of up to 25 becquerels per kilogram, still lower than that detected in the test. The deputy director of Belarus' Institute of Radiobiology, Natalya Timokhina, said Belarus permits food producers to conduct their own food safety monitoring and lacks the lab equipment necessary to identify the presence of americium, which is estimated to be present in about 2% of Belarus' top soil and is expected to remain a health risk for another 270 years. "One-time ingestion of contaminated food is not very dangerous," Ms Timokhina said. "What's dangerous is the accumulation of radionuclides in the body." Ausrele Kesminiene, a doctor in the cancer research unit of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said the consumption of radioactive food is linked chiefly to the development of cancer in the thyroid, a gland in the neck that produces body-regulating hormones. Thyroid cancer is typically not fatal if diagnosed early. WHO officials say they are dependent on reports from sister agencies in Belarus to alert them to cancer clusters or other signs of unresolved Chernobyl-related dangers. Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said the agency had no authority to regulate or oversee food safety, even products exported to other countries, because that is a domestic responsibility. "Radiation effects and the development of cancers and the effects on the region are something which go on over a long, long period. So we haven't seen the end of it," Mr Hartl said. "Undoubtedly there is going to be some increase in cancers." Donald Trump's Republican rivals have announced shock plans to co-ordinate primary strategies in upcoming states to deprive the front-runner of the delegates he needs to win the party nomination. In an extraordinary move, Ted Cruz and John Kasich issued near-simultaneous statements outlining an agreement that may be unprecedented in modern American politics. The Kasich campaign will give Mr Cruz "a clear path in Indiana". In return, the Cruz campaign will "clear the path" for Mr Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," Mr Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement explaining the new plans. "Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation." Mr Kasich's chief strategist John Weaver added: "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee." The arrangement marks a sharp reversal for Mr Cruz's team, which aggressively opposed the idea of a co-ordinated anti-Trump effort as recently as late last week. Yet it underscores a bleak reality for the billionaire businessman's Republican foes - time is running out to stop him. The announcement came less than 48 hours before voting begins across five north-eastern states where New Yorker Mr Trump is poised to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. He campaigned on Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Speaking to several thousand people in an aircraft hangar in Hagerstown, Maryland, Mr Trump stressed repeatedly that he expected to win the 1,237 delegates needed in the first round of voting to stave off a contested convention. "I only care about the first. We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth," he said. Even before the plan was announced, Mr Cruz all but abandoned the north-eastern states in favour of Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Both Mr Cruz and Kasich had cast the state as a critical turning point. Under the terms of the new agreement, however, Mr Kasich will allow Mr Cruz take on Mr Trump without interference. As recently as three days ago Mr Kasich's campaign announced investments in Indiana, including the opening of two offices and the creation of a campaign leadership team. And he had planned to campaign there on Tuesday, with a town hall and gathering in Indianapolis to watch the results of the primaries. Those events have now been cancelled. As Mr Kasich backs out of Indiana, Mr Cruz promised to not compete in primary contests in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. "We will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the north east politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well," Mr Weaver said. Like Mr Cruz's campaign, Mr Kasich's encouraged allied super PACs - political action committees - and other outside groups to "honour the commitments". Mr Trump did not immediately respond to the agreement. He has repeatedly condemned the Republican presidential nominating system as "rigged". There was far less drama on the Democratic side as underdog Bernie Sanders rallied thousands of voters in two New England states, seeking momentum even as he offered mixed signals on how hard he would push his differences with front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator largely steered clear of Mrs Clinton at a Rhode Island park, but hours later ramped up his critique before more than 14,000 supporters in New Haven, Connecticut. Mr Sanders reiterated his call for Mrs Clinton to release transcripts of lucrative Wall Street speeches she delivered after leaving the State Department in early 2013. "This campaign, unlike Secretary Clinton's, has not raised 15 million (dollars) from Wall Street and millions more from other special interests," he said as the crowd booed at the mention of Mrs Clinton's name. "This candidate has not given speeches behind closed doors on Wall Street for 225,000 dollars a speech." Mrs Clinton eyed victories in four or five of Tuesday's contests, which would all but cripple Mr Sanders' White House bid. The former US secretary of state went to two Philadelphia church services attended largely by African-Americans ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania, Tuesday's top delegate prize. She declined to attack her Democratic rival by name in the morning appearance and a subsequent stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, focusing on the GOP candidates. Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz downplayed tensions between Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton, whose rivalry has become increasingly nasty in recent weeks. "Regardless of the intensity of what's played out here ... we are going to be unified," she declared. The family of a man who died with his two young children in a car crash on a French motorway said their lives had been "torn apart" by the incident and "will never be the same again". John Crompton, aged 31, and his son Morgan Lund, aged nine, and daughter Evie-Lily Crompton, aged four, were killed in a crash on the A39 near Beaurepaire-en-Bresse, which is between Lyon and Dijon, shortly after 7am on Sunday. The murders of eight family members in rural Ohio were sophisticated, planned executions, authorities have said. It also emerged that several marijuana-growing operations were found at the crime scenes but investigators said it was unclear what, if any, role it had in Friday's massacre at four homes near Piketon. Marijuana, both recreational and medicinal, is illegal in the state. Residents have been told they are safe, but to arm themselves if they are fearful. The killings were "a sophisticated operation", attorney general Mike DeWine said at a news conference in the small community that has been on edge since seven adults and one teenage boy were found shot in the head. Authorities remained tight-lipped about details of the investigation, any suspects or motives for the crime. Pike County sheriff Charles Reader said that in his 20 years in law enforcement, he never interacted with the Rhoden family "in a criminal nature". He said it was clear the family was targeted however, and he had told the victims' relatives to arm themselves. Sheriff Reader said he did not believe safety was an issue for others, but added: "If you are fearful, arm yourself." Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed 50 to 60 people in the hope of finding leads and a 38-strong team is combing wooded areas around the shooting scenes to ensure no evidence has been missed. Mr DeWine said the state's crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and forensic standpoint and five search warrants have been executed. Post-mortem examinations were expected to be completed on Monday. "This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened," said Sheriff Reader, noting most victims were targeted while they were sleeping. The victims were identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden; his 16-year-old son, Christopher; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and Hanna Rhoden, 19. Hanna Rhoden was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was four or five days old. The newborn, Hannah Gilley's six-month-old baby, and another small child were unhurt. Since the murders, authorities have refused to discuss many details of the crime, a potential motive, weapons, or the search for the assailant or assailants. "We don't know whether it was one or more people involved in this," Mr DeWine said. Maggie Owens, 39, a cook at the town's Riverside Restaurant, said: "I know a lot of people are just scared. You don't hear about stuff like that around here." She said her son was friends with the younger Christopher Rhoden. She described Dana Rhoden as a woman with "a heart of gold" who gave her clothes and money when her home burned down last year. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, who have set up a hotline for people to call as police seek information about the crimes. A Cincinnati-area businessman also put up a 25,000-dollar reward for details leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. Robin Waddell, who owns the Big Bear Lake Family Resort just south of Piketon, said Christopher Rhoden often worked for him as a carpenter and helped out with his excavation business. He said Mr Rhoden was a nice guy whose children sometimes visited him while he was working. "It's a large family," Mr Waddell said. "There's a lot of them and they've been in this community for generations. So this is affecting a lot of people." Kendra Jordan, 20, said she often worked nights at a nursing home with Hanna Rhoden and described her as outgoing, funny and always smiling. "If you were having a bad day, she'd be the first one to come up to you to question you about what was going on," Ms Jordan said. "She was amazing." The exact timing of the shootings remains unclear. Authorities received the first 911 call shortly before 8am on Friday. The second came several hours later from another location. Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely-populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway. The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away. Todd Beekman, who owns an outdoors shop a few miles from the crime scenes, said at least one customer came in to stock up on ammunition after hearing about the shootings, but he and others added that they were not concerned for their own safety because residents know and look out for each other. "The word spread pretty fast, as it does in any rural area," Mr Beekman said. "Everybody's kind of their own brother's keeper down here." Turkey has deported 3,300 foreigners suspected of links to jihadi groups, particularly militantss from the so-called 'Islamic State' group, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman. Ibrahim Kalin said another 41,000 foreigners have been barred from entering Turkey as part of the country's fight against the militant group. A woman who refused life-saving kidney treatment after saying she had lost her "sparkle" had damaged her kidneys when taking a drug overdose in a failed suicide bid, a court in England has heard. A Court of Protection judge heard that she then refused to have kidney dialysis treatment and doctors asked a Court of Protection judge for a ruling on her mental capacity. Specialists argued - at a hearing before Mr Justice MacDonald in London in November - that she had a ''dysfunction of the mind'' which made her unable to make decisions about treatment. And the London-based King's College Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which had responsibility for the woman's care, asked the judge to rule that it would be in her best interests if treatment was ''imposed'' and restraint and sedation used if necessary. But one of the woman's daughters said her mother wanted to die because she thought that she had lost her ''sparkle''. She said her mother was mentally capable of deciding to refuse medical treatment. Mr Justice MacDonald dismissed the application by hospital bosses. The judge said he was not satisfied that hospital bosses had proved that she lacked the mental capacity to decide to refuse dialysis - although he said they had been right to bring the case to court. She died shortly afterwards. Mr Justice MacDonald was told that the woman had a number of daughters - including one in her teens - and a grandchild, the judge heard. She had faced a number of "problems" before attempting suicide, including failed marriages and financial difficulties, he heard. One adult daughter told him that her mother's life had "to all appearances" been fairly glamorous. And she said her mother did not want to be poor, "ugly" and "old". "She has said the most important thing for her is her sparkly lifestyle," said the daughter. "She kept saying she doesn't want to live without her sparkle and she thinks she has lost her sparkle." The daughter had told Mr Justice MacDonald that family members would be devastated if the woman died. But she had added: "We think it is a horrible decision. We don't like the decision at all. But I cannot get away from the fact that she understands it." She had told Mr Justice MacDonald that she was speaking for her mother's family. Her mother knew what she was doing and was mentally capable of deciding to refuse dialysis, said the daughter. "We have told her countless times, 'mummy, they have said your kidneys will get better - do you understand that?'" the daughter told the judge. "She said 'yes, but I don't care if they get better. I don't want to live'." The daughter said her mother had told her: "I am not going to be poor, be ugly and live in a council house." Her mother had added: "I don't want to be going to Nando's near the hospital as the highlight of my day. I don't want to live in a council house. "I am not being poor." The woman had suffered financial difficulties, Mr Justice MacDonald heard. "She thinks the highlight of her day will be occasionally getting to go out to Nando's," said the daughter. "It is not going to be racing or being on the yacht as it was before." The daughter told the judge: "She always told me she didn't want to be old." She said her mother felt that she had enjoyed a "good innings". "Mummy has always had an incredible ability for getting what she wants and getting that without any cost to herself," the daughter told the judge. "She has never worked as far as I am really aware. She has done bits of au pairing before I was born. But since I was born nothing. "Yet she has never gone without a manicure. She has had various cosmetic procedures. She has had champagne every Friday. "She has had a life that to all appearances has been fairly glamorous. She has had a very good life. She feels like she is too old to do it anymore. "She has said to me several times, 'I am not going to be an old granny'." CHICAGO: US soybean futures rose 1.4% on Thursday as good export data buoyed hopes that overseas buyers will book... ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Housing and Works has demanded the grant of a sum of Rs 9,179 million to meet the ... LONDON: Boris Johnson and former finance minister Rishi Sunak were leading the potential contenders to replace... TEHRAN: Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons "to be used in the war in... Many were tortured or shot dead, yet those who survived rescued prisoners of war and inflicted devastating losses on the enemy during World War II. Ordinary, courageous men regarded as the forerunners of today's elite Special Air Service Regiment, who parachuted into the jungles of Borneo behind Japanese lines, will be recognised at the Australian War Memorial. people in Borneo, and more recently with the Australian War Memorial on memories of WWII, when she uncovered these special men who had operated there, and found several still alive, and interviewed them. Major Toby Carter, of Z Special Unit's operation Semut, with a Kelabit chief in Sarawak, Borneo, in 1945. Credit:Australian War Memorial An associate professor at the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the ANU, Dr Helliwell trekked for six months in Sarawak, Borneo, collecting Dayak memories of the war and went to where men of Z Special Unit operated and found people who still had memories of them. "These men performed extraordinary feats, yet there is almost no knowledge of the work of their activities within Australia," she said. "In large part this is because of the secret nature of the unit and its work. On return from the war they were forbidden, under the Official Secrets Act, from discussing their activities with anyone, even their families, for decades." The true legacy of the Anzacs is love and mateship, the head of Australia's War Memorial says. More than 65,000 people commemorated Anzac Day at the Australian War Memorial's ceremonies, with 55,000 attendees standing in silence as the Last Post and the warble of the bush pierced the morning. The playing of the didgeridoo by Arnhem Squadron patrol commander and Yolngu elder Sergeant Norman Daymirringu signalled the start of the national dawn service on the 101st anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, as thousands of battery-operated candles twinkled like stars in the darkness. Australian War Memorial director Dr Brendan Nelson used an emotional address to remind Australians Anzac Day was not a celebration of war, but rather love and friendship. Melbourne's first Anzac Day (100 years ago this week) was shocking and sad and surely sobering for those who thought there was glory in war. "Clio" in Melbourne's Punch began by being relatively bright and breezy. Anzac Day. She'd seen how "The Base Hospital Soldiers' Refreshment Stall celebrated Anzac Day by entertaining over 200 returned [wounded] Anzac men, presenting each guest with packets of. cigarettes, sweets, and matches. There was no speechifying or boresome formality about the affair just a homely, cheery greeting." But then "Each arrival was just enjoined in greeting to 'remember the day, and what it commemorates' and, indeed, the majority, of those present, with limp, hanging, empty sleeves, shaded eyes and pathetic bandages, had every reason to remember." The man in charge of BHP Billiton's mining operations in Australia has effectively ruled the miner out of the hunt for bargain assets that have been thrown up by the local coal sector's great fire sale. And Mike Henry, the newly minted president of BHP's minerals operations in Australia, has warned that the coal industry's downturn could last longer than in previous cycles. BHP Billiton's Mike Henry says the miner won't be hunting bargains in the coal sector. Credit:Jesse Marlow Mr Henry told The Australian Financial Review that expanding in the coal sector was not BHP's priority, with chief executive Andrew Mackenzie making it clear the miner is keen to add top-quality assets in copper and conventional oil if it can snare assets on the cheap from weakened competitors. "Is our preferred path forward on coal? No," said Mr Henry, who has responsibility for BHP's coal, iron ore, copper and nickel assets in Australia. Upmarket department store chain David Jones has won international plaudits for a pioneer store in a broader strategic shift. The David Jones' outlet at Eastland in outer suburban Melbourne was named the best new department store globally in the Retail Design Institute's international store design competition. To win the "new or completely renovated full-line department store" category David Jones headed off a field of leading international department stores, including the large US chain Nordstrom. David Jones is opening a range of new-look stores in the coming year, including a smaller format store at Barangaroo, Sydney, a full-line store at AMP Capital's Pacific Fair and in Wellington, New Zealand. Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free. With a sense of awkward humility, abiding reverence and overwhelming pride, we pause here at the Australian War Memorial free and confident heirs to a legacy born of idealism, forged in self-sacrifice and passed now to our generation. We gather in renewed commitment to one another, our nation and the ideals of mankind. Young Australians and New Zealanders gave their all at Gallipoli, forging in bloody sacrifice the bond within which our two nations now live. It heralded the cataclysm from which we emerged proud but inconsolably mourning 62,000 Australian dead. Like all political leaders with legacies to protect, Jon Stanhope can be paternal about the Alexander Maconochie Centre. His protectiveness can also extend to criticism of perceived departures in jail management and practices as they were planned and conceived during Mr Stanhope's term as chief minister. Earlier this month, Mr Stanhope wrote a letter to The Canberra Times critical of a reduction in the visiting rights of prisoners and, in recent days, he's expressed concern at the sizeable jump in Indigenous incarceration rates. Mr Stanhope, an adviser to the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service, has spoken out before about the high rate of Aboriginal imprisonment in the ACT. This time, however, he appeared to cast doubt on whether the lavishly funded, human-right compliant facility was delivering the results that government and ratepayers expected. "If it doesn't measure up, serious questions have to be asked about what management is doing with the very, very, generous funds they receive," Mr Stanhope said. "I wouldn't be looking to change the funding; I'd be looking to change the management." The over-representation of Aborigines in prison or police custody, particularly in the Northern Territory and WA, has weighed heavily on the national conscience in recent decades, particularly since their rates of deaths in custody appeared far higher than that of the non-Indigenous jail population. In fact, the rates of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal deaths in custody are not dissimilar. The costs of this tax regime are large. For every taxpayer that negatively gears, nine others do not, and they pay more tax to subsidise the minority of negatively geared investors. We estimate that the Commonwealth would raise an additional $5 billion a year in tax if investment losses could not be deducted from labour income, and if tax was paid on 75 per cent of capital gains rather than the current 50 per cent. The additional taxes required to make up this $5 billion a year subtract far more from the economy than is added by the current negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements. Evidence from around the world shows that tax incentives don't do much to increase how much people actually save. However, they do impose other costs on society. They alter where people save. They encourage investment in assets that are expected to have high capital returns, even if their annual returns are lower. In Australia for the last 15 years, that meant residential property. As a result, people have disproportionately invested in property rather than in more productive assets. The tax arrangements also encourage investors to borrow more than they would otherwise. As a result, almost all of the net additional 700,000 investors in property over the past 15 years are negatively geared. As the Reserve Bank and Murray financial system Inquiry cautioned, the overall effect of these tax concessions is to make property prices more volatile, and make the economy more vulnerable to external shocks. Finally, our tax regime contributes to falling home ownership rates for all households under the age of 55. The current tax arrangements encourage investors to pay a little more, giving them an advantage at auctions over would-be home-owners. Louis Latour, who has died aged 83, was the 10th-generation head of his family's Burgundy wine house. He was a visionary entrepreneur, a charismatic statesman of his industry and a scholarly historian of wine. His forebears acquired their first vineyard in Cote de Beaune in 1731, established Maison Louis Latour in the village of Aloxe-Corton in 1797 and began exporting to Britain in 1815. Their holding of grand crus vineyards grew to some 29 hectares, the largest of any family in the region. Latour wines were originally made only from their own vines, but after taking the helm in 1973 Louis developed a substantial negociant business to buy in grapes from other growers. Fiercely proud of his dynastic heritage, Louis continued to make elegant and relatively light wines which paid little attention to changing tastes over the decades, bottling all his products with the "Louis Latour" label and shunning supermarket distribution. But in other respects he was a radical moderniser, both in winemaking technology and in his response to rising international competition. Recognising that Burgundy's production capacity was limited, his solution was to take vines previously thought of as quintessentially Burgundian and plant them elsewhere. In 1979 he began working with local growers in the Ardeche region, 320 kilometres further south, to produce high-quality chardonnay wines, which in due course transformed the company's financial performance. He went on, less successfully, to plant pinot noir vines in the Haut Var area of Provence. In an all-Christian edition of Q&A, Australian Christian Lobby leader Lyle Shelton was confronted over a visiting American ally accused of equating gay rights with the rise of the Nazis in a panel debate that traversed everything from indigenous disadvantage to terrorism. Mr Shelton, appearing on the program's panel for the second time in eight weeks, was confronted by an audience questioner over his support for visiting Christian author and broadcaster Eric Metaxas and the American's apparent comparison of gay advancement with the failure of churches to oppose the rise of the Nazis. "Do you think these comments are acceptable in a tolerant society such as ours, and are similar comments what we have to look forward to in an upcoming plebiscite debate on same-sex marriage?" audience member Daniel Comensoli asked. Mr Shelton said Metaxas, the ACL's guest for its national conference, had been taken out of context. But he added that in modern debates, he agreed with the American "in terms of the church being silent about certain cultural trends and going along with things which are contrary to the teachings of the church, whether it's on marriage or something like that". "That's the context with which Eric was making that point and I think it's a good point because I'm very concerned that the church isn't speaking up enough on this issue, because it's a big social justice issue, it's a big public policy issue and it has implications for the future of society, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and particularly for the freedom of children to be allowed wherever possible to know their mother and father and this is the sort of public policy that will change that." Storage levels of the ACT's four dams has fallen since August, and now sits at about three-quarters full, compared to about 80 per cent last year. Icon Water's manager of customer and community affairs, Lisa Quinn, acknowledged the declining levels but said overall storage was still quite high. After the storm: Kangaroos on Red Hill. Credit:Graeme Taylor "Currently our dams are storing more water than we could have held at capacity prior to the construction of the enlarged Cotter Dam," she said. "The first quarter of 2016 has been very dry, so runoff in our catchments into our dams is lower. However, due to the increased water security and increased storage capacity from projects like the enlarged Cotter Dam, we are not concerned about the current storage levels." The Labor Party is yet to announce whether it will let non-party members take part in the preselection of its would-be councillors even though some councils are less than five months out from their local government elections. Two contenders have emerged to challenge serving councillor Linda Scott for the top spot on the party's ticket for the City of Sydney, the only council that Labor has confirmed will adopt a "community preselection" model in picking its candidates for the upcoming poll. The Sydney Town Hall. Credit:Steven Siewert Cr Scott was the first person selected using the model in 2012, when opening up the process to include non-party members nonetheless failed to arrest Labor's slide in the council it once dominated. Cr Scott was the only candidate on the party's ticket to secure a spot in the City of Sydney chamber. Vying with her this time around for the chance to wrest the Lord Mayoral chains from long-serving independent Clover Moore is Friends of Erskineville president Darren Jenkins and NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association organiser Holly Rebeiro. Police are at the scene of a sudden death in Morayfield where a man's body has reportedly been found inside a burnt out barrel. A Queensland Police spokeswoman told Fairfax Media police had established a crime scene while they continued their investigations but they were not treating the death as suspicious. "A report will be prepared for the coroner," she said. Emergency services were called to the Crestbrook Drive address just after 1pm. Four separate suspicious fires in southern Queensland overnight Monday have significantly damaged a Gold Coast school, destroyed a country pub and a Logan house, and prompted the evacuation of an apartment block in Brisbane's north. Police and fire investigators are probing the causes of all four fires, with all being treated as suspicious. None are believed to be related. On the Gold Coast, a crime scene has been established at St Andrews Lutheran College at Tullebudgera, after fire caused significant damage to the school building. Peter Earnshaw said his grandfather would wrap his legs every day in bandages to ease the pain from the mustard gas burns he suffered to his legs at Gallipoli in 1915. Mr Earnshaw's grandfather, William Howard Earnshaw, was in the first wave of soldier's that landed on the beach of Gallipoli on April 25, with the 11th Battalion of the Western Australian Regiment. "He suffered horrendously with it," Mr Earnshaw said, proudly wearing his grandfather's original Anzac medals at the dawn service at Kings Park on Monday. "He had his legs always wrapped in white gauze and some creamy stuff because he had been shot up with mustard gas. A Perth artist who has spent the past year living the nomadic life will this week trade his yurt for a raft on the Swan River. Steven Finch lives in a home-crafted yurt affectionately nicknamed Mr Universe. Steven Finch will trade his yurt for a raft this week. Credit:Facebook Never in more than one place for two months, the round tent-like structure provides Finch with shelter everywhere from a backyard to an artist's residency, with a homemade pull-cart bringing it and all of his possessions along for each move - on foot. Nearly five metres in diameter and able to seat 16, it hosts storytelling nights and Open Kitchen Dinners, where guests come to eat, 'paying it forward' by bringing ingredients for the next dinner. latest news October 3, 2022 Dee Gambit Hundreds if not thousands of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ... Campus News Students using RateMyProfessors.com but with caution By JEFFREY GUIHER I never actually look at RateMyProfessors.com. When I want to know what students think which I always do I ask them. Ujjwala Lahoti has a routine when deciding what classes to take. The UB senior accounting major goes online, looks up the course she is considering and notes the name of the professor teaching a class. She then logs onto RateMyProfessors.com. Near the top of her computer screen is a gray search bar with a prompt to log in or sign up. She types the professors name in the search bar. When the professors name appears, shell click on it, finding the match for both name and university. RateMyProfessors.com immediately gives Lahoti cumulative student ratings for the professors helpfulness, clarity and easiness, all listed below an overall rating for teaching quality. There are also tags to describe the professor, such as hilarious and amazing lectures, along with a count of how many times the tag was selected. Below the ratings are student comments. I look into the course and see what all professors are teaching, and then take the professor's name and search him on the website, says Lahoti. And then, accordingly, I register for the class. Lahoti is far from alone. This brief but potentially decisive process of checking RateMyProfessors.com before chosing a course is something many students have adopted as an essential tool in deciding which faculty members they want as teachers. RateMyProfessors.com is the largest online rating site for college and university professors in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The site claims more than 15 million rating postings in more than 7,000 institutions. Students can either post reviews or comments, ideally to help alleviate for others some of the stress and indecision inherent in making course selections. But not everyone is a fan of RateMyProfessors.com. Many have questioned its credibility since software engineer John Swapceinski started it in 1999. There is no guarantee that those using it are a representative group of college students. There is also no assurance that vindictive students are not inflicting low ratings on professors who justly gave them poor grades. High ratings given in appreciation for an easy A are equally unfair to the more demanding educators. But Lahoti and other students trust their peers. They realize not all comments will be reasonable and accurate. I take the comments seriously to a point, Lahoti says. It even depends on how many people have written the comments. If its only one or two, then I look into which [class] time suits me. Mostly, the comments are true about the professors. Its our peers who write them, and these days we all follow up on this website a lot so people do write true comments. The UB Reporter recently surveyed students about RateMyProfessors.com questionnaires were left at the circulation desks at the North Campus libraries. A week later, students had returned 52 responses. Results of this random, informal survey indicate that students even those who use RateMyProfessors have their doubts about its accuracy as an assessment of teaching quality. But even though they have their doubts, most students returning the survey said they are likely to check out what the site says about professors. When asked Do you check RateMyProfessors.com before registering for classes? 43 students responded yes while only nine said no. Only seven students replied very serious to the question: How seriously do you take the ratings and comments about a professor. Sixteen chose serious; the majority of respondents, 27, selected somewhat serious. Only two people answering the survey selected not so serious. The more feedback a professor had received in RateMyProfessors, the more importance student respondents placed in those ratings. Thirty-one of the 52 people responding to the survey said they never had posted reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, compared to 21 who said they had. Their reasons ranged from doubts about the site to whether its a good use of their time. Their responses included: I dont believe in complaining much. If I have positive feedback for a professor, then Ill tell him directly. I feel its too open. I dont have time to make an account. I think a lot of the answers tend to be exaggerated. UB students are not the only ones on campus with strong reservations about RateMyProfessors.com. UB faculty also share those doubts about its usefulness. Given that RateMyProfessors is done voluntarily and anonymously, the validity of professor ratings should not be assumed, says Xiufeng Liu, professor of learning and instruction and director of the Center for Educational Innovation, which is dedicated to advancing university teaching. Both students and professors should use additional sources of evidence to cross-validate the RateMyProfessors ratings. Most professors interviewed agree with Liu. They consider the site unreliable for feedback and prefer to use other means to assess how they teach. Some UB professors occasionally check the site, but consider RateMyProfessors more of a secondary source for getting feedback on their teaching. I read them, but I try to take them with a grain of salt, says Shira Gabriel, associate professor of psychology. For the most part, the comments seem fair and accurate. A couple of times people have written things that didnt seem accurate, but there are so many comments that a few odd ones dont concern me. I suspect that a student using the website to learn about professors would take that into account. Other faculty members also have mixed feelings about the usefulness of the site as a tool for instructors. Anecdotal evidence suggests most students, though not all, use the site with the aim of determining which teachers are demanding so that they can avoid their classes says Y.G. Lulat of the Department of Transnational Studies, College of Arts and Sciences. I doubt the site will have much use from the perspective of teachers who truly care about their profession. Shahid Ahmad, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, calls the opinions in RateMyProfessors mostly fair and accurate, except for the fact that students with poor performance in a course tend to be more inclined to rate and write comments than those who have done well. Although the credibility of RateMyProfessors.com remains in question, Timothy Boyd, research associate professor of classics, says he is not bothered about online commentaries affecting his reputation. He offers what may be the best solution. I never actually look at RateMyProfessors.com. When I want to know what students think which I always do I ask them. With a mammoth wealth of 13.1 billion pounds, India-born Reuben brothers, David and Simon, topped The Sunday Times Rich List 2016. Rising real estate value made their fortune take a huge jump to 3.4 billion pounds and clinch the top spot from last years fifth position. They were followed by the Hinduja brothers with a total wealth of 13 billion pounds. keep a large portion of their wealth in liquid assets like cash or bonds, The Sunday Times noted. Business Standard takes a look at other such interesting facts about the brothers. Who are these brothers? David (77) and Simon (74) have made their fortunes with the help of investment in metals and real estate. Initially, David had moved into trading of metals, while Simon forayed into carpets business. Simon, at the start of his career, was an importer of carpets before he went on to buy a manufacturer in 1965 and sold it at a profit years later. These proceeds were invested in real estate. David, on the other hand, was involved in trading of metals before he set up his own metal trading firm Trans World in 1977. The duo had made their fortune by taking brave move of entering Russian aluminium market and purchased huge chunks of the business there. They had to, eventually, wrap up the business as business climate in the country is said to have turned hostile after Vladimir Putin took over. But their real estate and other businesses in the UK have helped them amass this wealth today. What are their prominent investments? Currently, the brothers own many prominent properties in London. It includes Millbank Tower, the John Lewis Partnership HQ in Victoria, shops in Sloane Street, London Oxford Airport and London Heliport. In their most recent investments, they are said to be leading investors in Metro Bank, which was floated last month. Overseas property and metal businesses added 300 million pound to their wealth. What is their India connection? The brothers were born to an Iraqi-Jewish family in Byculla area of Mumbai. Their family is said to have lived in British India in the 1800s. The duo moved to London during their teenage when their parents separated. They were raised by their mother and grandmother. Have they been involved in controversies? Their aluminium business in Russia was marred by controversies as their partnership with Lev Chernoy raised eyebrows. Chernoy was later alleged to have ties with the Russian Mafia. However, it was also reported that there was no evidence to suggest that their dealing was not legal. In his defence, he told a publication, "I was the only westerner to succeed in a place that's like a toilet (read Russia) and you always come out of a toilet with a smell." Back home, the brothers had bailed out Sahara chief Subrata Roy, where they had inked Rs 5,500-crore refinancing deal, which included three marquee hotels from being sold off on default. What are their interests apart from core businesses? Apart from their investments in real estate and metals, the brothers are said to be involved in philanthropic work. They set up Reuben Foundation to participate in such activities. Their website lists work in the areas of children and education, health, communities along with contributions for several charities and organisations. Trucks & Buses, Indias fourth biggest commercial vehicles player, might look at entering the mini truck segment to compete with Tata Ace, warhorse of the segment. The Delhi-based company, which is a part of VE Commercial Vehicles, on Monday moved a notch below its smallest offering and launched the Pro 1049 truck, a 4.9-tonne (gross vehicle weight) in the light commercial vehicles (CV) segment. The company has kept away from the mini truck segment while focusing on medium and heavy vehicles, backed by technology from Swedish giant Volvo, its partner in India. Shyam Maller, senior vice-president (sales and marketing), VE Commercial Vehicles said, Todays launch is a starter. We will see how it goes, and on the basis of that we will take a call. We want to be indeed a full-scale player in the CV segment. The sub-2 tonnes category (cargo) witnessed a decline of 11 per cent last year to 116,560 units, compared with 131,455 units sold in 2014-15, according to data provided by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam). Tata Ace and its variants, Mahindra Maxximo and Jeeto, as well as the Piaggio Ape and variants, which make up this segment, provide the vital link of bringing goods into cities and catering to intra-city movement. The 2-tonne to 3.5-tonne segment, the biggest in the CV space, reported a growth of 3.5 per cent to 183,414 units last year, compared with 177,132 units in 2014-15. This segment, dominated by Mumbai-based Mahindra & Mahindra with a share of 69 per cent, is driven by pick-ups. Entering the sub-3.5 tonne truck segment will provide Eicher the opportunity to cater to the last-mile segment. This segment, though faced with demand pressures during two years of downturn, is slowly turning the tide. During an upswing in the economy, the medium and heavy commercial vehicle (MHCV) segment is the first to show growth, followed by the LCV segment. MHCV sales have been very promising and the LCV segment has also begun to show some revival, added Maller. The mini truck market has progressively moved to high tonnage vehicles, particularly pick-ups, because of demand for better performing vehicles in terms of load carrying capability and engine power. Mahindra has been the biggest beneficiary of this shift, with volumes growing from 73,000 units to 127,000 units in four years. The company is rolling out yet another pick-up on Thursday called Bolero Pik-Up. Meanwhile, Tata Motors, the countrys biggest CV company, marked a fall of 23 per cent in sales of Ace family of vehicles to 84,143 units sold last year, compared with 109,959 units in 2014-15. Its sales were 205,000 units in 2012-13. In CV segment, Eicher posted growth of 26 per cent, compared with industrys average growth of 12 per cent, according to Siam data. Gujarat is now one of the key source markets for tourism in Australia, as arrivals from Gujarat into the southern continent grew 118% in the past three years, coupled with expenditure rise of about 53% during the same time. For the year ended December 2015,13,800 tourists from Gujarat visited Australia. These tourists spent Australian $ 51 million (over Rs 245 crore) on their Australian holidays. As per the tourism statistics gathered over the last three years, the state of Gujarat has recorded a staggering increase of 118% in tourist inflow to Australia, and a 53% increase in spend. Nishant Kashikar, country manager, India & Gulf, Tourism Australia, said, Due to their penchant for travel, the Gujarati community have always remained trendsetters in international tourism. For Tourism Australia, Gujarat is a key market in India, being a key to have delivered a tremendous growth of over 100% in arrivals over the last three years." What's more Gujarati tourists tend to stay longer, and as a result spend more during their holidays in Australia. Kashikar went on to add, "We have observed that Gujarati tourists tend to stay longer and spend more during their holiday in Australia.They usually opt for a pre-packaged itinerary, including as many experiences and activities as possible on their Australia sojourn." Gujarat as emerged as one of the fastest growing markets in India, Tourism Australia said. Australia has witnessed a continued growth trajectory in tourist arrivals from India. As per the year ended December 2015, around 233,100 Indian travellers visited Australia, which is an increase of 19 per cent over the previous year. For the year 2015, Indian visitors contributed over Australian $ 1.1 billion (around Rs 5,500 crores) to the Australian economy; an increase of 38% over 2014. India has also improved its ranking to become the 8th largest market for arrival and 10th largest market for spend in Australia. Indians spent a total of 14 million visitor nights in Australia during 2015; an increase of 38 percent over 2014. India is one of the fastest growing outbound tourism markets, and therefore, a key focus market for Tourism Australia. To support the distribution network, Tourism Australia runs the online training program Aussie Specialist Program for travel agents. For the year ended December 2015, the platform has over 500 agents from Gujarat registered. This article has been modified. Please see the clarification at the end. is setting up a factory in Andhra Pradesh. It plans to invest Rs 3,000 crore, for annual capacity of 1.8 million units. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu will be unveiling the foundation stone next month.Hero has four manufacturing facilities, at Gurgaon and Dharuhera in Haryana; Haridwar in Uttarakhand; and Neemrana in Rajasthan. The two-wheeler major is also setting up another facility at Halol in Gujarat.For the new facility, the state government has allocated around 600 acres at Tada in Chittoor district, close to Chennai the latter is one of the largest automotive manufacturing hubs in the country. Last September, the company signed an MoU with the Andhra Pradesh government to allot 600 in Chittoor district to the company. The facility will be close to SriCity, an industrial township. The allocation for this site has been the subject of a court battle already, with a Chennai-based company contesting it. Hero had to get a stay on construction removed via a high court order before it could erect a wall around the 600 acres it was allotted. According to reports, the petitioner moved the High Court alleging that the AP government has failed to follow the provisions of fair compensation, transparent land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement. While a single judge delivered a verdict, a division bench stayed the order, which came as a big relief for from the Hyderabad High Court, which vacated a stay on the construction work and allowed the two-wheeler maker to erect a wall around the 600 acres it was allotted. With these developments, the company has decided to start construction of the factory. While the company did not disclose any numbers till now. Last September, the AP government successfully wooed and the facility will cater both domestic and export markets. Hero MotoCorp proposed to build its sixth facility with a capacity of 1.8 million units with an estimated investment of Rs 3,000 crore. The new facility will take Hero's overall annual capacity of 12 million units. CLARIFICATION An earlier version of this article had mentioned that Hero MotoCorp was setting up a manufacturing plant at Neemrana in Rajasthan. The company has clarified that its Neemrana facility has been operational since October 2014. The error is regretted. India stands to gain from the strict implementation of environmental norms and safety standards on Chinese firms, which resulted in the closure of several unorganised and small units in that country. Over the past decade, China saw blind industrial expansion, led by government facilitation and easy financing. This, coupled with the countrys lax regulations, contributed to serious environmental problems. To crack down on polluters, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection enforced strict penalties with effect from January 2015. This resulted in numerous plant shutdowns and softening of the global leaders exports. As a consequence, import of speciality chemicals from China to India has declined. Besides, Indian manufacturers have started steadily capturing markets in China and in other markets. There has been a phenomenal change in the structural dynamics of Indian speciality chemicals industry over the past year. Until a year ago, India was not having the extra edge in speciality chemicals compared to China. But now, with more stringent environment control regulations being implemented in China, it is no more has the extra edge. We have started exporting to China as Chinese manufacturers have lost the price advantages they used to enjoy till a year ago in the world of specialty chemicals market, said Ashok G Rajani, chairman and managing director, Seya Industries Ltd, a specialty chemicals manufacturer based in Mumbai. According to industry sources, this opportunity has come Indias way after many decades as the cost of production of Indias specialty chemicals works out to 10-15 per cent lower than that in China after investment in environmental protection. Seya is planning to invest Rs 600-700 crore over the next two years to increase its existing production capacity. About a third of our proposed investment would be met through internal accruals, while the remaining would be funded through equity and term loans as we have enough room to expand our loan book position, said Amrit Rajani, chief operating officer, Seya Industries. The other companies in specialty chemicals manufacturing have also proposed huge investment to expand capacity. After investing Rs 738 crore for three years ending 2014, Aarti Industries plans to invest additional capital expenditure of Rs 300 crore in the next two years. The $25-billion Indian specialty chemicals sector is growing at 12 per cent annually despite economic slowdown in global markets. The sector is now expected to achieve $33.2 billion by 2019. Specialty chemicals find application across various industries and their growth is driven by exports as well as domestic consumption. Traditionally, low-cost labour and raw material availability have been key success factors for Indian companies. However, factors such as product innovation, branding and distribution are becoming increasingly important. The specialty chemicals market is witnessing tightening import norms in developed nations due to environmental concerns. This is making it difficult for smaller players to stay cost competitive and compliant. The world is also seeing a shift in production from the west to Asia. Multinational companies are focusing on Asia thanks to lower cost of production, availability of low-cost skilled manpower and increasingly stringent environmental regulations in their home markets, HDFC Securities said in a recent report. Under the new policy framework, China is expected to cleanse its environment by shutting down or shifting 1,000 plants to a green belt. While China saw softer exports in 2015, we expect more of the same in 2016, Surya Patra, an analyst with PhillipCapital. Over the past five years, the Indian specialty chemicals market saw faster growth (13 per cent annual average) against global growth of around seven per cent. More than exports, steadily rising local demand supported its growth momentum. We expect India to emerge as a strategic alternate source for manufacturing of speciality chemicals for multi-national companies. The implementation of new environmental laws in China has already caused a decline in its chemicals exports and the trend is likely to sustain in 2016-17. The emerging trade gap due to softening Chinese exports offers huge opportunities for Indian chemical players, particularly for manufacturers of polymers, dyes & pigments, textile chemicals, and agro chemicals, said Patra. Preet Mohan Singh, executive director of Avendus Capital, believes India is fast becoming an important manufacturing hub and exporter for speciality chemicals. GREEN RULES After three difficult years, Essar Power with a total planned generation capacity of 6,100 Mw hopes to make all its projects operational by 2019-20, in phases. The company's executive vice-chairman Sushil Maroo tells Sanjay Jog that the improvement in the domestic coal availability, fall in the price of imported coal, softening of gas prices, and the central government's new initiatives are big positives for a turnaround. Edited excerpts: What is the present status of your power projects? During the past three years, the company faced a lot of difficulties in the completion of units, starting the operations, sale of power in the market, procurement of fuel, especially coal and gas, and the collection of money to pay off lenders. Those years were nightmarish... the company has seen the lowest possible level. However, it is time to look up. For the 1,200-Mw imported coal-based plant at Salaya (Essar Power Gujarat), the power purchase agreement (PPA) with Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam (GUVNL) was signed in 2010 based on competitive bidding. However, due to the jump in international coal prices, the variable cost which was planned at the time of PPA signing escalated 70-80 per cent and the plant became unviable. There was no Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) margin left and it went into the negative territory. So, it became difficult for the company to pay the banks. The Salaya project almost eroded its equity and 80 per cent of its net worth went away. However, the promoter company pumped in a lot of money to keep the account alive. But now, the widening of the coal basket has resulted in a drastic fall in prices of imported coal. The Salaya project has become profitable and the 80 per cent net worth that eroded has started coming back. From a negative company, Essar Power Gujarat has, for the first time, become PAT (profit after tax) positive. As far as the 1,200-Mw Mahan plant (Essar Power MP Ltd) and 1,200 in Tory project (Essar Power Jharkhand Ltd) are concerned, both were designed primarily as domestic captive coal-based. When the plant was designed and location was planned, only two things were kept in mind coal pithead and evacuation of power by laying transmission lines. In Mahan, the company completed the whole project and its ready to start. However, the plant is shut for the past three years as coal was not available. The company is now required to buy coal from far off mines but at least coal is available at reduced prices. The company has commenced operations of unit-I (600 Mw) in April and it hopes to commission unit-II (600 Mw) in September. The company is participating in the upcoming PPA tenders and plans to tie up significant capacity. In case of the Tory plant, the coal mine was cancelled when the plant was half-completed. The company has so far spent about Rs 4,000 crore. However, the lenders stopped funding, following the cancellation of the coal mine, but they are charging the interest during the construction, which has shot up four times. This also led to a substantial rise in the project cost. The company had 90 per cent-plus PPA, but the plant could not operate for the past two years. The company expects the Tory project revival with the new coal linkage policy. Well sign the revised PPA with the Jharkhand government by June this year and it will help it get the mega-plant status. Why are gas-based projects still a non-starter? The company started on a strong footing and developed 1,015 Mw of gas-based capacity including Essar Power (515 Mw) and Bhander Power (500 Mw). The 500-Mw plant was supplying power to GUVNL (300 Mw) and to Essar Steel (215 Mw). However, after the gas supply was stopped, the plant was shut down. It remains closed for the past two years. The government came out with the gas-pooling policy last year, but since Gujarat was not very keen to buy power at that cost, the plant could not be revived. However, with the fall in RLNG (re-gasified liquefied natural gas) prices to $4 per million British thermal unit, the company is currently engaged in the procurement of gas from a domestic supplier and will also launch negotiations with suppliers from outside. The company hopes to restart the 515-Mw capacity by May. Similarly, the Bhander plant has not been functioning for some time now owing to high gas prices. However, it will be restarted soon due to fall in gas prices. What is the net debt at the group level? Outstanding debt for power business is close to Rs 20,000 crore. Already restructured Rs 10,000 crore under 5/25 scheme and hope to complete up to Rs 18,000 crore. This apart, Essar Power Orissa Ltd (EPOL), the holding company has a net debt of Rs 3,600 crore. Of which it has repaid Rs 1,550 crore in the last one year and the balanced debt will be repaid through past claims to be received from the government owned utility and/or monetization of investments in the subsidiaries. Where do you peg the current ratio of captive and merchant power business? Nearly 50 per cent of the operational capacity is used for captive consumption. The group expects couple of its companies to turn PAT positive. L&T Metro Rail (Hyderabad) Limited, the concessionaire of the Rs 16,000-crore Hyderabad metro rail project, was yet to decide the timing of the launch of initial stage operations covering a 19 km distance owing to last mile issues among other considerations. "We are discussing with the state government and evaluating various parameters for this purpose. We will take a call soon on whether to start the initial operations during the current year or not," L&T Metro chief executive V B Gadgil told Business Standard on Monday. On top of the last mile issues such as the necessary security arrangements by the government and the safety certification being awaited from the Central authorities, the concessionaire was also keen to make sure of itself that the subsequent stages of operations are added within a gap of every six months thereafter. The entire project was proposed to be completed in five years from the appointed date of July 5, 2012 though field level problems in granting right of way and the removal of utilities and structures were expected to push the project beyond 2017. The government had cleared most of the bottlenecks that came in way of the project execution. The company has so far spent about Rs 8,900 crore on the project. In the initial stage, L&T has readied two stretches for operating the metro rail, one with 8 km and the other one with 11 km distance on the two ends of a 29-km corridor of the three-corridor maitro rail project that covers a total distance of 73 kms. "There were no stage-wise milestones prescribed as the concession agreement only talks about completion of the project in five years of time. However, we have planned to launch the project in stages to gain and improve upon the experience in running the project. But we also want to be in a position to operationalise the next stage project within six months from the launch of operations on the first19 km distance," Gadgil said citing some field level issues involving the next stage, which connects the two initial stretches to Secunderabad railway station. According to Gadgil, the prospective metro passengers will be able to find the usefulness of metro ride only when the new distances were added on each of this corridor in a quick succession. Besides this, the company has been focusing simultaneously on the transit oriented development(TOD) as the commercial and retail space being built on the upcoming Metro Rail stations was projected to contribute 50 per cent of the revenues to the project concessionaire at least in the initial years after the completion of the project. Currently three properties, each having a multiplex provision, were under development at the busy places of High Tech City, Punjagutta and Erramanjil while the PVR group had already signed MoU with L&T Metro to operate all the three multiplexes . "We have concluded MoUs for almost 75 per cent of the 1.2 million square feet space in these three places. The first two properties will be ready by June this year while the TOD at Erramanjil is expected to be completed by October this year," the L&T Metro chief said. As the utilisation of commercial development waslinked to the start of metro rail operations, the concessionaire has also been under pressure to achieve progress on both the fronts. Prominent startup investors T V Mohandas Pai, Naganand Doraswamy, Arihant Patni, Amit Patni, Prashant Deshpande and Rajiv Mody have come together to launch a Rs 125 crore fund Ideaspring Capital to back early stage product startups in the country.The fund will look to invest in entrepreneurs and startups that have a deep technology focus in areas such as machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, internet of things and enterprise software. Ideaspring has allocated Rs 50 crore from the corpus to invest in seed stages, another Rs 50 crore will be used to back in pre-series Series A rounds, while the balance will be used as a buffer for bridge rounds and for fund expenses. "We wanted to work with entrepreneurs that had IP as the key differentiator. When I say IP it's either some algorithms they're working on or deep technology as a differentiator that they are bringing to the table. This typically means the entrepreneur has worked in the domain for some period of time," said Naganand Doraswamy, MD and CEO at Ideaspring Capital. The success of Indian such as Zoho, Freshdesk and Capillary at a global level has shown how lucrative the product space can be, and Ideaspring is looking to specifically target such firms. The fund will focus on which proceed to the series A round in a span of 12-18 months, a period much longer than what business focused startups are allowed today. Mohandas Pai, general partner at Ideaspring said that this time will be utilised by the startup to develop their product and get validation from customers. Moreover, the companies would not have to worry about aspects other than building their product during this time, with the Ideaspring team mentoring them on product management, customer management and design thinking for serving clients globally. "In terms of Indian companies building products for global scale, we have no choice. However, the trend that we're seeing is that larger startups are buying software from smaller startups, so that change is coming and I'm so glad that we have some unicorns in India," added Doraswamy. While product companies are seen to provide less returns than business or e-commerce companies, the investment required is also much smaller. Ideaspring has set Rs 3 crore as the benchmark for every seed investment it makes and plans to fund four to six startups a year. It will also help these startups connect with more institutional investors for their pre-series A and Series A investments, but says companies it invests in should begin showing intent to buy from customers after a year. Ideaspring expects to receive Rs 90 crore of the targeted Rs 125 crore fund within a month, while the remainder will be closed four months down the line. While the fund has already selected a few companies, it declined to disclose which companies these were. Ideally, entrepreneurs with experience working in research arms of multinationals, Indian entrepreneurs returning from the US and people who have done academic research are potential investment targets for Ideaspring. Educational training, skills and talent development major NIIT Limited is looking to focus on the digital skills space. By offering high-end programmes in skills that are currently in demand, the aim to generate talent that is employable, according to Rahul Patwardhan, CEO NIIT Ltd. Patwardhan said that since there have been a lot of changes happening in the IT sector and digital transformation is a reality, which led to a new set of skills that are in demand. "Huge vacuum needed to be addressed and though there are many computer programmes, they did not meet current skill need," he said. The company will now offer futuristic programs like MEAN Stack, Big Data & Data Sciences Stack, Design Thinking, Cloud Stack, Internet of Things (IOT) Stack, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Robotics and Virtual Reality, Cyber-Security, under the DigiNxt Series brand umbrella. Through this move, NIIT aims to totally re-align the Skills and Career Group to the changing future-skill-sets requirement of the industry to help create job-ready talent pool for the fast evolving global economy. In their own centres across the country, NIIT is looking to offer the high-end programmes that includes 'DigiNxt' apart from GNIIT. In their business partner centres, Patwardhan said that there would be a mix of these programmes as well as plain vanilla courses that are in demand. "The current workforce need to be retrained. Demand is much higher and we need to scale up fast enough to meet the demand, he further said. With respect to their corporate business, NIIT has grown at an around 15% every year. Patwardhan said that they were much on track for first three quarters and that opportunity is larger than what they can service. In October 2015, NIIT launched a initiative - StackRouteTM to create multi-skilled and multi-disciplinary full-stack programmers. For a certain period, NIIT faced some stress in the retail business. Patwardhan said that retail had been a troubled business because IT was de-growing. However, he said that this business has seen a turnaround and they have been able to bring it back to profitability. This year, he said that they will start scaling it up. , this year it will start scaling up. NIIT also has NIIT.tv, a digital learning initiative and already has 5000 plus programmes on this platform. Patwardhan said that online learning space is seeing more students than offline and they are planning to put more commercial programmes online. In quarter two, NIIT will launching its commercial multimodal portal which is currently being built. This will be a new interface of NIIT to the marketplace. Here, the platform will automatically configure itself and offer an individual a programme based on whether you are school student, college student or working professional. They will also be given the option to do the course either online, at the physical centre or using the hybrid model. According to MIT Centre for Digital Business, 77% of organizations consider missing digital skills as the key hurdle to their transformation strategy. Therefore, Indian & Global IT Companies are investing heavily in building digital transformation skills to enable their clients transform digitally. Mid-cap IT product and services firm, expects 15 per cent of FY17 revenue coming from its alliance with IBM. While, MD & CEO, Persistent Systems agrees that IBM as a client will mean big revenue, the company is already working on similar such alliances. In an interview with, he talks about the recent restructuring of the company and its impact, business growth in FY17 and acquisitions. Edited excerpts: Before we get into the analysis of Q4 numbers, could you please explain the rationale of the restructuring and the impact of the IBM alliance on the numbers this quarter? We thought that it would be meaningful to define four clear units with each focused on their deliveries and business. Within the four our alliance with IBM is fairly significant. It will add 15 per cent to our revenues. Compared to last year's numbers, 15 per cent would mean $50 million. There are two aspects to the alliance: One, we are investing in the creation of continuous engineering product. Two, this will give us access to a large number of customers of IBM and Last we will be setting up centres in Israel and Mexico. The digital focus will mean focus on IP as well as partner eco-systems like Oracle, Sales Force and Microsoft. Our traditional business will now come under the services segment. What has the impact of this alliance been on this quarter's numbers? We grew 12 per cent this quarter. Almost 8 per cent came from IBM which would be roughly $8 million. The rest of the growth came from our IP business, which has seen a significant amount of acquisition. We have also stated that the impact of the alliance will be evident on margins. We have guided that the IBM will have an impact of 200 basis points on margins. If you see this quarter our margins were impacted 220 bps due to IBM. Revenue growth the last few quarters has been lumpy. With the IBM deal, do you see more consistency now? No. We think volatility in growth or lumpiness is the new normal. Rather IP led and product business will continue to be lumpy. Rather the IBM deal would be similar to the growth dynamic that IBM reports. What is important, I feel, is that fact that we have to give a set of numbers to the street on a quarterly basis. However, we cannot run the whole business on quarterly basis but look at trends and what is coming in and take appropriate call. We are also making some changes in the way business is changing for us. So if you notice this quarter we have done away with sharing onsite-offshore mix. We think as the business matures the more apt parameter would be revenue utilisation per person. This is important as we are not just selling services, but focus has shifted to IP, products etc. We are also looking at other deals like IBM that can be worked out in future. How do you see growth in FY17? We think growth will be good in the IBM alliance, and digital front. We expect services to be softer, but that's by design as well. If Reliance Industries Ltd's (RIL's) performance is anything to go by, there seems to be a rebound in petroleum export volumes from India. Sixty-three per cent of the company's petroleum product sales were in the export market in the quarter ending March. RIL's exports have remained in excess of 10 million tonnes (mt) for three continuous quarters. RIL says it weighs realisation in local and export markets and accordingly pushes products. The prevailing low prices, however, brought down its export earnings by 36 per cent. The company said its sales from domestic retail outlets was the highest among its peers at 240 kilolitres a month during the quarter. Some 200 outlets were added during the last quarter, with volumes more than doubling over 2014-15. RIL opened 950 retail outlets in India during 2015-16 against a target of 1,000 announced by its chairman, Mukesh Ambani, at the annual general meeting last year. In April 2015, the company said it was aiming to restart the entire network of 1,400 outlets in 2015-16. Diesel retail sales in the domestic market were up 42 per cent over the quarter ending December 2015. "Encouraging customer response and the growing popularity of the Reliance brand attracted channel partners," said the company. In bulk diesel sales, it re-secured its earlier customer base with about 3.5 per cent market share. The biggest private sector refiner continued to sell less than half its petroleum products in the domestic market during the quarter. Of the total 17.8 mt refinery throughput, RIL sold 3.7 mt in the domestic market, 10.8 mt in the export market and used 2.6 mt during January-March 2016. Sales in the domestic market were marginally down from four mt in October-December. In its presentation to investors, the company said it successfully placed products in Turkey, East Africa and Australia, beside introducing a new gasoline grade, 91/81. It recorded the highest ever yearly production of ultra-low sulphur diesel at 15.7 mt. Petroleum exports were to the West Asia, the US, South East Asia and Australia. Gasoil exports were to Europe, Africa and South East Asia. The company also placed premium Petroleum grades (Alkylate, PBOB) in Latin America and the American market at healthy netbacks. While the firm plans to leverage information technology for retail sales, it also wants to deploy the Reliance JIO platform to upgrade its fleet management programme. The Indian government on Monday said it has cancelled the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala. The cancellation comes on the heels of China's objection to the visa approval, asking India to bring the 'terrorist' to justice. "We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a Home Ministry spokesperson on Monday said without elaborating further. The government cited Interprol's red corner notice against Isa as reason for the cancellation. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, "On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation." He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. "May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side," he said. India's decision last week to allow WUC leaders, whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province, had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking India's bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." Xinjiang, which has a population of over 10 million Uyghur Turkik origin Muslims, was on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different parts of the country. China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a militant Islamist group, for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country. Most Indians, if not the world, would have never heard of before this week began. However, for the People's Republic of China, Isa is a man who merits a Red Notice from the Interpol. Isa, executive chairman of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited by the Indian government for a conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. China's reaction to the invitation, ostensibly, made India cancel the visa granted to Isa, according to reports on Monday. WUC claims to represent the struggle of the people of 'East Turkestan', officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, to determine their political future. Xinjiang, which has a population of over 10 million Uyghur Turkik origin Muslims, has been on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different parts of the country. But, who is Isa and who are the Uyghur people? One man's terrorist, another man's freedom fighter? Expressing his country's unhappiness over the invitation extended to Isa, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." However, Isa has categorically denied any links to terrorists and China's allegations against him. Responding to the cancellation of his visa, Isa, in a statement published on the World Uyghur Congress page, said: "I also reject any comparison or association to Chinas recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader, Mazood (Masood) Azhar. Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimise my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights. Chinas clear abuse of Interpols Red Notice issuance is also concerning." This is not the first time Isa has fielded questions regarding China's allegations against him. In a March, 2014, interview to Zee News, while responding to whether he believed that the Uyghur had any relations to international terrorists, he had said: "...We believe in peaceful and non-violent activities in WUC, and we will always struggle through peaceful measures on international platforms. But the Chinese government has accused WUC of terrorist activities and tried to stop our lobbying several times." An editorial in the Republic of China's (Taiwan's) Taipei Times, dated July, 2009, says that Germany gave Isa asylum in 1997 and citizenship in 2006. It added that Germany, till that date, had not appeared to be too concerned about China's allegations against him. Additionally, the US Endowment for Democracy, which according to the piece funds the WUC, and even Taiwans Foundation for Democracy, which hosted the 2006 General Assembly of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation and invited Isa, did not appear to be concerned either. An article in Design & People, dated 2011, sheds some light on Isa's early years, before he became an exile. The article describes him as a student-leader who was involved in pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in the 1980s. The report adds that Dolkun, as a consequence of his activities, was dismissed from the University. After his dismissal, Isa then pursued his Master's Degree in Politics and Sociology from the Gazi University of Turkey. The Chicago Tribune describes his student days in greater detail. According to a Bloomberg View report carried by it, after his expulsion from the university in Xinjiang, Isa had began distributing Uyghur history books to Uyghurs deprived of learning about their culture in Chinese communist schools and, according to the report, for that act he was exiled to Turkey. According to the same report, In March this year, ahead of the meeting between US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing protested the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington presenting an honour to Isa a day ahead of Xi's meeting. Describing how China has attempted to curb his movement, Isa, while responding to India's move to cancel the visa, said: "This is not the first time that I have had faced difficulties in my international travels to advocates Uyghur rights. In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratisation in Asia, to which I was an invited guest. China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular." A foreigner flying an unmanned drone in the high-security Vijay Chowk area, near the Rashtrapati Bhavan and Parliament, in New Delhi had sent the police into a tizzy in October last year. In the same month, a Central Industrial Security Force officer was suspended after an unidentified flying object was spotted hovering near the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. In possibly a bid to regulate unmanned flying devices that could become a security and safety hazard, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued draft guidelines. Drone users would have to obtain a permit and secure a unique identification number (UIN) for each drone, if the rules are approved. India is not the first country to do so. The US tightened its rules on drones after a man was caught in March last year trying to fly a drone over the walls of the White House. Now, drones or unmanned aircraft are being used for several purposes such as mapping, survey and commercial photography, while e-commerce giant Amazon is looking to use them for deliveries to its consumers in the US. However, drones are also viewed as a security risk and even the International Air Transport Association has referred to drones as threat in airspace and called for a greater stakeholder engagement to ensure safety. The draft regulations are a first step to legalise the use of drones in India but owners or operators would need to follow some of the stringent criteria that is required to own and operate an airline. The DGCA has proposed the UIN will be granted to an Indian citizen or a company whose chairperson and two-thirds of its directors are Indian citizens. Also "substantial ownership and effective control" of the company needs to be vested with Indians. The user will also require a security clearance from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security. The user would require a DGCA permit for all drone operations at or above 200 feet over ground in an uncontrolled airspace. The draft regulations state that "operations of civil unmanned aircraft in controlled airspace are restricted". It also states that drones can enter a controlled airspace only with prior approval of air traffic control and will require formulation of standing operating procedures. A controlled airspace is an area where prior clearance of the air traffic control tower is required for flight movement. The restrictions ease as one travels further away from an airport. For instance controlled airspace of Mumbai airport covers a radius of 40 nautical miles (from airport) and a height of 14,000 feet and below. Outside 40 nautical miles area, a height up to 7,000 feet is not treated as controlled air space of Mumbai airport. According to the rules, drones shall not be allowed to be flown over the entire air space of Delhi and also other sensitive locations such as nuclear plants or military facilities and areas within 50 km of international borders. Also the drones will not be used to discharge or drop substances unless it is specifically mentioned in the permit and will not carry any explosives or dangerous goods. The draft regulations also cover aspects related to maintenance of drones and training of remote pilots operating them. The remote pilots, for instance, need to be 18 years of age, and have ground training equivalent to that of private pilot's licence holder apart from proficiency in handling of drones. "The DGCA draft regulation is a step in the right direction. Given the odds it is better to have a regulation around the use of these high-potential devices than have nothing at all. The bigger concern for the industry is enforceability of these regulations and ensuring that the DGCA has both the technology as well as the staff to ensure that the regulations are met. Now, the DGCA has one official overseeing every two aircraft while at the US Federal Aviation Administration there are on an average three officials overseeing every aircraft on its register," said aviation consultant Mark Martin. REGULATIONS IN OTHER NATIONS United States Singapore Other countries, such as the US and Singapore, have already come up with regulations for dronesAll small unmanned aircraft weighing over 0.55 pounds need to be registered before outdoor flightCitizens of 13 years of age or above can register unmanned aircraft through a web-based system. Non-citizens get an ownership certificateIf regulations are violated, civil penalties of up to $27,500 and criminal penalties of up to $250,000 and three years' imprisonment could be imposedTwo types of permits are granted, for operators and for activitiesPermits required from various agencies for certain aspects of unmanned aircraft operation, such as Singapore Police Force (SPF) for aerial photography or flight of over security-sensitive locations, or Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore for the use of radio frequenciesSources: US Federal Aviation Administration and Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore websites JNU Students Union president on Sunday alleged that a BJP supporter had tried to strangle him on a Mumbai-Pune Jet Airways flight. Following the incident, both of them were deplaned and the alleged attacker had been detained by the Mumbai Police. Hours after the incident, questions about Kumars allegation surface, suggesting he was actually involved in a scuffle. This is not the first time the student leader has been involved in controversies. Ever since his 6-month interim bail in the sedition case, Kumar has made headlines for several reasons. Business Standard takes a look at how Kumar has stayed in the headlines after his bail. Campaigning for Assembly Elections for Left After his speech at the JNU campus upon his release from Tihar Jail in March that caught the popular imagination, CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury had said that Kumar would be campaigning for the party in the ongoing assembly elections. This was later turned down by Kumar stating that he was a student and would like to move on to teaching and had no interest in mainstream politics. 2002 and 1984 riots are different Kumar said recently that there was a fundamental difference between the riots of 2002, which took place in Gujarat and which happened in 1984. There is difference between emergency and fascism. During emergency, goons of only one party were engaged into goondaism; in this (fascism) entire state machinery is resorting to goondaism, he had said, leading to a huge debate over his views. Critics pointed out that the Congress government had been accused of being complicit in the anti-Sikh pogrom that ravaged Delhi in the wake of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhis assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. 69% of people voted against Modi During his speech at the JNU, Kumar said that 69% of voters had not chosen Modi as their leader. I want to remind our government that 69% voted against you. Just 31% voted for you and some of them were caught up in your jumlas, he said. Visit to Hyderabad Central University campus The JNUSU President visited the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) Campus to protest against Rohith Vemulas suicide. He also met Vemulas mother during his visit there. His visit to the campus had led to increased security and media being barred from entering it. Stone pelting, slippers being hurled at Nagpur Right-wing activists pelted stones and hurled slippers at Kumar, when the latter visited the city earlier this month. He had gone to Nagpur to address a function that marked the 125th birth anniversary of Dr. BR Ambedkar. Maiden Mumbai visit but no takers The student leaders maiden visit to Mumbai saw many venues refusing to let Kumar host his event in the city. Reports stated that many popular venues had turned down booking on hearing Kumars name. It was then settled at a small school in Worli. Citing security reasons, the venue was again shifted to Tilak Nagar locality only days before his visit. Social revolution Addressing a gathering at the Bal Gandharva Hall in Pune, Kumar said that a social revolution will take place in the country, which will unite the masses, irrespective of its caste, creed of religion. He also used the platform to hit out at PM Narendra Modi for dividing the country on caste and communal lines. The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the AAP government to convene within a week a meeting with representatives of app-based cab aggregators Ola and Uber, which are allegedly operating "illegally", to see if they are interested in getting a fresh licences from the government. Besides these two stakeholders, Justice J R Midha also asked the Delhi government to call a meeting with another public transport service which offers rides in autorickshaw through an app called 'Jugnoo'. "This court is of the view that the Secretary, transport department of Delhi government, shall convene a meeting with all the stakeholders (three app-based companies) to see if they are interested in getting the licence. Read more from our special coverage on "CAB AGGREGATORS" Bumpy road ahead for cab aggregators "The companies authorised representatives shall attend the meeting and share their views on the issue," the court said, adding the same be held in a week from today. The court's suggestion in form of an order came after it was told that alleged unlicensed aggregators, Ola and Uber, are operating illegally as their applications for licence were rejected by the transport department on June 28, 2015. Meanwhile, counsel appearing for the app-based companies told the court that they have no issue in getting the licence and earlier their representation to the government were turned down. Hearing which, the court said the government should give them a chance to apply for fresh licence, as at present the Delhi government has shortage of public transport. "There should be some proper facility, so that public do not have to suffer. Call all the stakeholders and float a fair scheme," the court said, adding that "if all of you sit together, I know the difficulties raised by the taxi operators will come to an end". The court said the status report of the meeting shall be filed by May 10. The court was hearing a plea filed by Magic Sewa Pvt Ltd which has alleged that certain unlicensed taxi aggregators "have been disdainfully violating" government's notification on fares by charging very low amounts like Rs five per km or as high as Rs 38 per km. Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated three others for varying durations for their alleged role in the controversial February 9 event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had sparked outrage and triggered protests. Based on the findings of a high-level enquiry committee (HLEC), Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15. Khalid has also been slapped a fine of Rs 20,000 and Bhattacharya has been barred from the JNU campus for a period of five years from July 23. Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gattoo, has been rusticated for two semesters. A penalty of Rs 10,000 has been imposed on JNU students union (JNUSU) joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the union. Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with the controversial event and are out on bail. While Khalid and Bhattacharya were blamed for triggering communal violence and disrupting communal harmony on the campus, Gattoo was found guilty of participating in sloganeering. Kumar was pronounced guilty of indiscipline and misconduct. Those who have been imposed fine of Rs 20,000 each include Ashutosh Kumar, Chintu Kumari, General Secretary Rama Naga, Aishwarya Adhikari, Anant Prakash Narayan and Gargi for violating disciplinary norms. In his reaction, Kanhaiya said the punitive action announced by the authorities was simply unacceptable and the students rejected it. The students will hold an all party meeting late Monday night to finalise future course of action. A special court on Monday discharged all eight Muslim men, including one deceased, who were charge sheeted in the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts case, a defence lawyer said. "The Special MCOCA Court's verdict came in the afternoon on the discharge application filed by all the nine accused in that case. They have been discharged," advocate Shahid Nadeem Ansari told IANS. Read more from our special coverage on "MALEGAON BOMB BLAST" Malegaon blast case: Special court drops charges against 8 accused Of the nine accused, Shabbir Ahmed died in an accident a few months back, he added. The eight discharged were: Noorul Huda, Raees Ahmed, Salman Farsi, Farokh Magdumi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali, Asif Khan, Mohammed Zahid and Abrar Ahmed, lawyer Ansari said. They were arrested and later charge-sheeted for the 2006 Malegaon blasts which left 37 dead and over a 100 injured. They were subsequently freed on bail in November 2011. The blasts case has taken various twists and turns with the Maharashtra ATS arresting nine Muslim men, accusing them of belonging to the the banned Students Islamic Movement of India or SIMI. The ATS alleged that these men carried out the blasts with the help of the Pakistan based terror group Lashkar-e-tayyaba. But later when the Investigation Agency or NIA took over the case in 2001, they booked another set of accused owing allegiance to a group called Abhinav Bharat. The ethics committee of the Rajya Sabha, chaired by the Congress Karan Singh, has unanimously decided to begin the process for ending businessman Vijay Mallyas membership of the Rajya Sabha, which anyway concludes in June. Mallya is an Independent member. The committee met on Monday and decided to give Mallya, charged with default of more than Rs 9,000 crore of loans, a week to explain his conduct, which according to members is a procedural formality. A consortium of banks in their reply filed before the Supreme Court have alleged that non-disclosure of assets by Mallya showed his lack of bonafides. Over the weekend, Mallyas diplomatic passport has been revoked and an arrest warrant issued against him by a Mumbai court. Karan Singh told the media after the ethics committee meeting, We have examined the entire issue related to Mallyas case. The documents we had sought from banks have also come. There was a unanimous view in the panel that he should be expelled from the House membership. But, still we have decided to give him a week to tell us whatever he has to say. The next meeting of the committee has been fixed on May 3, when we will take a final decision. CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the opinion in the committee was that Mallya had no right to remain a member of the Rajya Sabha. Janata Dal (United)s K C Tyagi added, Mallya will be expelled. This is the firm view of the committee. The committee had sought details of the liabilities on Mallyas Kingfisher Airlines from 13 banks. According to the banks, the total debt is Rs 9,432 crore. Of this, IDBI's liability is Rs 1,6874 crore and Punjab National Banks Rs 1,223 crore. The committee decided to initiate action against Mallya on the ground that hed never declared these liabilities in the past 10 years of his membership, something required to be done annually. The Houses chairman, Hamid Ansari, had on the basis of notices given by Opposition members referred the matter to the committee last month. The panel had taken cognizance of the matter on March 14. In the Supreme Court, the consortium of banks in their reply to his affidavit filed four days earlier have asserted he was bound to disclose his assets as ordered by the court. The case is slated to come up for hearing on Tuesday before a Bench of Judge Kurian Joseph and Judge Rohinton Nariman. In the affidavit, the consortium of 17 banks, led by State Bank of India, has told the court that non-disclosure showed his lack of bonafides. In the face of his attitude, the banks are not able to assess his alleged inability to pay the Rs 9,000 crore demanded from him. It is also a hurdle in a settlement across the table. The court had asked for details of Malllyas assets, including that of his close family members, and assets abroad. Supression of this information is deliberate and his stand that he is not bound to disclose them is an attempt to confuse issues, the consortium said. In fact, he had disclosed foreign assets to the banks to the tune of Rs 796 crore in 2009. The banks also claimed a right to proceed against Mallyas assets abroad. They alleged he had not even disclosed the payout by London-based liquor firm Diageo which could be considered his own assets. Further, transactions in the equity shares of United Spirits and Kingfisher Airlines, where he had controlling interests, are cloudy. The banks insisted on his return from London where he had gone on March 2 and joining the proceedings in the Supreme Court. Executives with public sector banks (lenders to Kingfisher) said they were open to a settlement but Mallya had to make a reasonable offer. According to the filings for the case, Mallyas assets in India are valued at about Rs 2,000 crore. It was unusual to see the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), candidate from Nanoor, Shyamali Pradhan, sleeping in the party office in the afternoon days ahead of elections. The party's zonal committee secretary Hasibur Rehman was getting ready to take a bath and other workers were about to go for their routine afternoon nap only to be disturbed by our unwanted intrusion. An old vehicle parked outside the office gave the impression that it has not run for days. Despite efforts at diversifying sources of crude oil imports, Indias dependence on West Asian nations rose in 2015-16, according to the latest data on imports shared by Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the Lok Sabha on Monday. Data show the share of 10 West Asian nations in Indias imports dropped from 62.5 per cent in 2012-13 to 57.5 per cent in 2014-15 but rose marginally to 59.2 per cent during the first 11 months of the previous financial year (2015-16). India imported 109 million tonnes (mt) of crude oil from the 10 nations between April 2015 and February 2016, around 59.2 per cent of total imports of 184 mt during that period. The increased share in 2015-16 as compared to 2014-15 was mainly driven by higher imports from Iraq (33 per cent increase to 32 mt) and Saudi Arabia (nine per cent rise to 37 mt) even as imports from Iran remained flat at 10 mt. Pradhan said India imported almost the entire 8.2 mt LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) from West Asia in 2015-16 as compared to 8.3 mt in the previous financial year with Qatar the largest supplier at 3.2 mt, followed by Saudi Arabia (2.24 mt), the UAE (1.49 mt) and Kuwait (848,000 tonnes). With positive feedback from passengers for its Vikalp initiative, the Indian Railways has decided to launch the alternative train accommodation scheme for wait-listed passengers on five new routes. Under the scheme, wait-listed passengers are allowed to get confirmed accommodation in the next alternative train if they choose that option while booking tickets online. The scheme, launched on a pilot basis last November, was so far available on the Delhi-Lucknow and Delhi-Jammu routes. The five new routes are Delhi-Howrah, Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Chennai, Delhi-Bengaluru and Delhi-Secunderabad. The Vikalp scheme introduced in October 2015 will be expanded to provide choice of accommodation in specific trains to wait-listed passengers, Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu had said in his speech for the 2016-17 Budget. As per the latest decision, the expanded scheme would provide the option of alternative accommodation irrespective of whether the boarding and destination stations of the passenger are originating and terminating stations on the route. The expanded scheme is being introduced on the five new routes on a pilot basis for six months and the railway board has asked Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the rail ministry's technincal arm, to make necessary modifications in the ticketing software. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan on Monday harped on the need for having a basic safety net in the country to encourage risk-taking abilities. Basic health care, unemployment insurance and old age benefits should be part of the system, so that entrepreneurs get the impetus to start afresh if a business venture fails. Of course, as a poor country, we have to be careful of what we spend ... we should be careful that it is not a gold-plated safety net like the welfare scheme of the US, Rajan said at the 27th Yashwantrao Chavan Memorial Lecture at Mantralaya, Maharashtras state secretariat. Failure of business is not necessarily bad but continuing to put in resources for a sick unit is, he said and therefore, resources, including the manpower, should be quickly channelled to more productive enterprises. Enterprises can fail, but people should not fail. A firm, which is facing a failure shouldnt be occupying resources, he said. But, it should not be an unfair exit, Rajan said, explaining creditors somewhat have draconian power in the form of some lows that get activated swiftly when it comes to small firms but are quite powerless when a large corporation with access to more resources and lawyers challenge the power of banks. Small firms should not exit too fast, and large firms should not be allowed to last too long, Rajan said in his speech. Small firms that grow can only create jobs; therefore, the business environment should encourage firms to grow. Rajan lauded the governments Startup India initiative and said the government and RBI jointly are trying to create a level playing field with transparent, predictable and light regulations that would also protect property rights. RBI is trying to do much more on the web and trying to make regulations simpler, he said. Anybody should be able to enter and compete and there should not be any special privilege for anyone, Rajan said. He cited the remarkable job done by Dalit entrepreneurs who particularly prospered in states where the business environment was friendly and open for everyone to compete. With concerns being raised about cash-burn in the burgeoning e-commerce sector, the governor made it clear that getting revenues through deep discounting was not a viable business model for start-ups. If the only reason you are getting revenues, not profit, is because you are selling based on 50 per cent discount, it can't be viable in the long run, he said. He was quick to acknowledge that many businesses are in different stages of their life-cycle with some trying to establish the viability. All these businesses are trying to establish viability, some are still being financed in a big way, he said, adding that it is natural for some of them not to work which will lead to shutting down the business. Access to finance is one of the most crucial needs in the economy and the emergence of new-age banks and improving technology would be a game-changer, he said, adding, under the new bank licence regime, four new banks have been given licences and 18 more would come in the next year. Most of these banks would be knowing their customers intimately and therefore would supplement large banks who did not always have a lot of knowledge about their customers. Creating unique identification numbers for small firms, based on the unique ID of the borrower, would make the loan process simpler and reliable for the lenders, he said. On small finance banks, Rajan said, My sense is, this is going to create a revolution in the banking sphere. And a revolution in the banking sphere will create easier access to finance for small entities. The governor said he expects each of these banks to start with a higher-than-required capital of Rs 500-600 crore, which would entail having an asset book of up to Rs 6,000 crore and stressed that these wont be tiny banks. Addressing the bureaucrats, Rajan said, One could, as senior officials, try to spend a day doing some task which they ask their assistants to do but without revealing who they are and getting the assistance. He wanted to introduce a similar system for senior officials at RBI as well. This was in order to sensitise them to the travails of the Aam Aadmi and help in better discharge of their duties. The movable assets value of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has shown a decline of Rs 3.4 crore in a matter of ten months from June, 2015, resulting a decline in her total wealth, though the wealth has recorded a growth over a five year period.The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) General Secretary has filed her affidavit to contest from Dr Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency in Chennai in the upcoming Legislative Assembly election scheduled to be held on May 16, 2016. According to the affidavit filed by Jayalalithaa with the Election Commission on Monday, the total value of the movable assets is Rs 41.63 crore, while the total value of self acquired assets (immovable assets) is Rs 72.09 crore. Put together, the total assets of the chief minister is currently valued around Rs 113.73 crore. This is around Rs 3.4 crore lesser than the total value of assets filed by Jayalalithaa when she contested in the 2015 by-election from the same constituency. While the total value of self acquired assets (immovable assets) remained Rs 72.09 crore, the value of the movable assets was Rs 45.04 crore in 2015. Put together, on June 5, 2015, when she filed the affidavit, the total value of the assets she had was Rs 117.13 crore. The total liabilities she has is around Rs 2.04 crore. Read more from our special coverage on "J JAYALALITHAA" One more died during Jayalalithaas campaign: Reports Jayalalithaa seeks PM Modis intervention in repatriation of 63 stranded fishermen Prakash Javadekar echoes Piyush Goyal, says TN CM Jayalalithaa inaccessible Jayalalithaa launches a series of initiatives Jayalalithaa thanks opposition MLAs; lauds Speaker for being unbiased The total income shown was Rs 33.22 lakh, excluding income exempt from tax, during the filing on June 2015, which became Rs 95.23 lakh, excluding income exempt from tax, when she filed the affidavit on Monday. There was a decline of Rs 4.25 crore in terms of investment in various firms as a partner, between June 2015 and April 2016. The investment in the firms was Rs 31.68 crore when the affidavit was filed for the by-election, while the total capital as on March 31, 2016 was Rs 27.44 crore. During the 2011 elections, as per the affidavit filed, she submitted that the total value of movable assets were around Rs 13.03 crore and immovable assets as per the market value or guideline value was Rs 38.37 crore, while the approximate total value of market price of asset during the period was Rs 51.4 crore. During the period, when a disproportionate asset case against her was pending, the investment into four firms was a total of Rs 10.90 crore. It may be noted that a Special Court in Bengaluru, in 2014, ordered her as guilty in a Rs 66.64 crore disproporationate asset case and sentenced her four years imprisonment and Rs 100 crore fine. Later the Karnataka High Court has acquitted her and three others, in an order stating that the disproportionate assets in J Jayalalithaa's case was Rs 2.82 crore and is within permissible limit. The dispute is currently pending with the Supreme Court. Karunanidhi's wealth grows in five years Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) President and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has seen his wealth increasing from Rs 4.92 crore in 2011 to Rs 13.42 crore by 2016. This is apart from the wealth reported in the name of his life partners Dayalu Ammal and Rajathi Ammal. According to the affidavit filed by the DMK supremo on Monday, the value of movable assets is worth Rs 13.42 crore, while the movable assets under the name of his wife Dayalu Ammal and Rajathi Ammal are Rs 7.44 crore and Rs 37.9 crore respectively. Karunanidhi does not have any immovable assets, according to the affidavit. The total value of self acquired assets of Dayalu Ammal is Rs 8.03 lakh, and of Rajathi Ammal is Rs 4.14 crore. Rajathi Ammal has total liability of Rs 11.94 crore, while Karunanidhi and Dayalu Ammal does not have any liabilities. During 2011, the value of movable assets of Dayalu Ammal and Rajathi Ammal were Rs 15.39 crore and Rs 20.62 crore respectively. The approximate guideline value of immovable properties held by them were Rs 5.51 lakh and Rs 3.14 crore respectively, during the period. During 2011, Karunanidhi had a liability of Rs 10 lakh,while Rajathi Ammal had a laibility of Rs 1.01 crore. The DMK leader has filed his nomination on Monday to contest in the Thiruvarur constituency, in Thiruvarur district. He contested in the same constituency, which his home town, and won the election in 2011. Over 42% voters exercised their franchise in the first four hours of polling for the fourth phase of West Bengal Assembly elections today even as over 100 people were arrested for bogus voting and booth jamming. Till 11 a.m, 42.37% voters cast their votes in North 24 Parganas district while the corresponding figure in Howrah was 41.25%. Overall, 42.01% voter turnout was recorded for 49 seats in the two districts after polling began at 7 a.m.In Howrah district, BJP candidate Roopa Ganguly accused the presiding officer at Salkia of being biased.In Dum Dum North constituency, CPI(M) candidate Tanmay Bhattacharya sustained injuries on his hand after stones were hurled at his car. Three persons were arrested, Barrackpore Police Commissioner Niraj Singh said.So far, 110 people were arrested in Barrackpore police commissionerate area for bogus voting, booth jamming and being outsiders, Singh said.Two other persons were arrested this morning in connection with an attack on the house of a family known for their affiliation to CPI(M) in Halishahar last night, he said.In Beejpur seat, a family of CPI(M) supporters alleged that their three-and-half-year-old child was beaten up.West Bengal opposition leader and CPI(M) candidate Surjya Kanta Mishra said, "Unnerved TMC goons targeting all. From the 3.5-year-old child to the Left candidate. Even women were not spared. People will give a rebuff by ousting TMC."In Howrah north seat, Trinamool candidate Laxmiratan Shukla has complained that her co-contestant and BJP leader Roopa Ganguly entered booths and "threatened" presiding officers, disrupting the polling process.The phase is crucial as it will decide fate of several ministers - Finance Minister Amit Mitra, Agriculture Minister Purnendu Basu, Law Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, Tourism Minister Bratya Basu, Food and Supplies Minister Jyotipriyo Mullick and Agriculture Marketing Minister Aroop Roy.Former Minister Madan Mitra, who has no voting rights as he is in judicial custody in Sharada chit fund scam, is defending his Kamarhati constituency on a Trinamool ticket.An estimated 1.08 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise to decide the fate of 345 candidates, including 40 women.Voters were seen lining up before 12,500 polling stations since morning to avoid the scorching sun as the day progresses.Kolkata had yesterday recorded 40.2 degrees Celsius, five degrees above normal and several districts are already reeling under heatwave.Unprecedented security arrangements have been made as about 90,000 security personnel, including central armed forces, have been deployed by the Election Commission.Special interventions includes patrolling in night and even on rivers are being done for the first time in this elections.Special focus is being laid on Salt Lake area (Bidhannagar) in the northern part of city, EC officials said.The central force contingent, including 672 companies, will be assisted by a 22,000 strong team of state police personnel.To keep a strict vigil on the law and order situation, five police observers, all of IAS ranks, have been deployed in the two districts.Besides, another 1100 mobile surveillance teams will be doing additional monitoring work. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor R Gandhi on Monday said the central bank would soon come up with a concept note on peer-to peer (P2P) or social lending and will take decisions on how to regulate the fast-growing lending marketplace. P2P lending refers to an online form of lending by unrelated individuals for a variety of businesses, mainly to small entities. The space is unregulated but is considered the fastest-growing new form of lending. The deputy governor said the RBI would hold discussions with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on regulating the space. Gandhi was speaking at a non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) summit by Assocham. Later, on the sidelines of the event, Gandhi elaborated that the discussion paper would examine whether to regulate the sector at all or not. We will have to take feedback from all stakeholders. We will discuss about the pros and cons, whether we should be regulating or not regulating. Based on the feedback, we will take the final call, Gandhi said, adding while Sebi had come up with a discussion paper exploring the securities side of the business, the RBI was yet to come up with its discussion paper from the lending and borrowing side. Gandhi said the NBFC sector cannot be equal to the banking sector and the central banks stance was to harmonise, not equalise. Totally exempting small NBFCs from regulations may not be feasible from the customer service point of view, he said. The rule that we prescribe for a bank cannot exactly apply for NBFCs. Harmonising means to remove the arbitrage. Whatever needs to be done, that much we will do but beyond that we will recognise that this is a separate entity and banking is a separate entity, Gandhi said on the sidelines. It would be prudent to keep the deposit-taking activities limited to banks as at the time of maturity there could be asset liability mismatches for NBFCs. However, NBFCs were free to take up financing activities even as RBI was trying to reduce the number of categories NBFCs are branched up. But the central bank was also open to allow new kinds of NBFCs if the situation so required, Gandhi said. The deputy governor said three foreign banks have applied to set up wholly owned subsidiaries in India. He, however, named only two State Bank of Mauritius and DBS of Singapore. The Islamic State terrorists are demanding doctors to give them sick notes in a bid to escape fighting on the front line, according to a new report by the US military. "Now some militants are so disillusioned they are looking for any way they can to get out of the fighting," a report by the US military's think-tank, the Centre for Combating Terrorism (CTC) said. The militants are reportedly struggling to keep fighter morale up as the group struggles to deal with territory losses, military pressure, financial problems and poor management. "This was reflected on a wider level when the Islamic State issued a general amnesty for deserters at the beginning of October 2015. The personnel shortages were also evidenced by an Islamic State document that emerged last year," it said. Issued in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria, the document indicates that a number of Islamic State members had been seeking false medical reports from doctors in order to avoid front line duty, the Daily Mirror reported. Much of the terror group's problems with personnel stem from their inability to pay wages. "The reasons for financial strain on the Islamic State overlap to a degree with the causes of problems of cohesion in the Islamic State's ranks, such as reduced border access to Turkey, tougher border policies, and coalition airstrikes,' the report said. "These strikes have most recently targeted Islamic State 'cash storage' points and the oil industry." They have been forced to slash their fighter's wages - and many have quit in disgust at their treatment, the report said. Earlier this year it was reported that has been forced to cut the salaries of its murderous fighters by half. The militants now get the equivalent of just 100 pounds a month because of "exceptional circumstances", according to a document released by Bayt al-Mal, the Treasury Ministry of . India stands to gain from the strict implementation of environmental norms and safety standards against Chinese firms that has resulted in the closure of several unorganised and small units in that country. Over the past decade, China has seen unrestrained industrial expansion, enabled by the government and by easy financing. This, coupled with lax regulations, contributed to serious environmental violations. To crack down on polluters, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection enforced strict penalties starting January 2015, leading to plant shutdowns and softening of the global leaders exports. Under the new policy framework, China is expected to cleanse its environment by shutting down or shifting 1,000 plants to a green belt. While China saw softer exports in 2015, we expect more of the same in 2016, said Surya Patra, an analyst with PhillipCapital. As a consequence, import of from China to India has declined. Besides, Indian manufacturers have started steadily capturing in China and in other . There has been a phenomenal change in the structural dynamics of Indian industry over the past year. Until a year ago, India was not having the extra edge in compared to China. But now, with more stringent environment control regulations being implemented in China, it no more has the extra edge, said Ashok G Rajani, chairman and managing director, Seya Industries Ltd, a specialty chemicals manufacturer based in Mumbai. We have started exporting to China as Chinese manufacturers have lost the price advantages they used to enjoy till a year ago in the world of specialty chemicals market, he added. According to industry sources, this opportunity has come Indias way after many decades as the cost of production of Indias specialty chemicals works out to 10-15% lower than that in China after investment in environmental protection. Sensing the chance, other specialty chemicals manufacturers are looking to invest large sums to increase production. Aarti Industries, for example, plans to invest about Rs 300 crore over the next two year, after having already invested Rs 738 crore in the four years ending 2014. Seya, too, is planning to invest about Rs 600-700 crore over the next two years. The $25-billion Indian specialty chemicals sector is growing at 12% annually despite economic slowdown in global . The sector is now expected to be worth $33.2 billion by 2019. Specialty chemicals find applications across various industries and their growth is driven by exports as well as domestic consumption. Traditionally, low-cost labour and raw material availability have been key factors for Indian companies. However, factors such as product innovation, branding and distribution are becoming increasingly important. The specialty chemicals market is witnessing tightening import norms in developed nations due to environmental concerns. This is making it difficult for smaller players to stay cost competitive and compliant. The world is also seeing a shift in production from the west to Asia. Multinational companies are focusing on Asia thanks to lower cost of production, availability of low-cost skilled manpower and increasingly stringent environmental regulations in their home markets, HDFC Securities said in a recent report. Over the past five years, the Indian specialty chemicals market saw faster growth (13% annual average) against global growth of around 7%, with the momentum supported more by rising domestic demand than exports. We expect India to emerge as a strategic alternate source for manufacturing of speciality chemicals for multi-national companies, said Patra. The emerging trade gap due to softening Chinese exports offers huge opportunities for Indian chemical players, particularly for manufacturers of polymers, dyes & pigments, textile chemicals, and agro chemicals. continued to trade weak in late trades on Monday weighed down by index heavyweights with Reliance Industries leading the decline. At 2:30pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 208 points at 25,630 and the Nifty50 was down 58 points at 7,840. Reliance Industries was down over 2% despite robust fourth quarter earnings because of sequential increase in capital expenditure in the March quarter. Among other index heavyweights, ITC and HDFC were down over 1.4% each. Among other shares, Zensar Technologies has dipped 8% to Rs 919 on the BSE after the company reported 2% decline in net profit at Rs 70.20 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2016 (Q4FY16) on sequential basis. It had profit of Rs 71.50 crore in a year ago quarter. Welspun India has moved higher by 5% to Rs 105 on the BSE in an otherwise weak market in noon deal after the company reported 20% year on year (YoY) growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 193 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2016 (Q4FY16). The textile company had registered a profit of Rs 161 crore in the March 2015 quarter. ____________________ (updated at 12:50pm) Benchmark share indices continued to trade weak in noon trades on Monday with stocks losing the most on profit taking after gains last week. Meanwhile, traders are also turning cautious ahead of the April derivative contracts which expire on Thursday. Further, investors are eagerly awaiting policy decisions this week from the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan (BOJ). At 12:50pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 162 points at 25,676 and the Nifty50 was down 50 points at 7,849. In the broader market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were trading with marginal losses. Market breadth was weak with 1373 losers and 959 gainers on the BSE. The second half of the Budget session of Parliament, starting today, is all set to be a stormy affair with opposition parties closing ranks over the imposition of Presidents' rule in Uttarakhand. The two-day US FOMC meeting is scheduled to start on Tuesday, April 26. Reliance Industries was down nearly 2% on profit booking as the stock gained in the past few sessions ahead of the results. It reported its highest quarterly net profit in over eight years as fall in oil prices boosted refining and petrochem margins, helping the company post a 16 per cent jump in earnings for the three-month period ended March 31. Cairn India dropped 3% after it reported its biggest quarterly loss of Rs 10,948 crore in the quarter ended March 31 mainly because of impairment loss on goodwill and non-producing oil and gas assets due to drop in oil prices. Sasken Communications was down nearly 4% after it reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 174.63 crore for the March quarter on the back of exceptional income of Rs 298.12 crore. M&M Financial Services reported a 12% rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 411.33 crore for the quarter ended March 31. The stock jumped 5%. Zensar Technologies was down nearly 5% after it reported a marginal dip in consolidated net profit at Rs 70.67 crore for the March quarter, weighed down by lower revenue from its maintenance services business. Persistent Systems slipped over 3% after it posted a 6.24% rise in consolidated net profit to Rs.80.80 crore for the quarter ended 31 March. BUZZING STOCKS Bharti Airtel is up nearly 2% as the company is likely to consider a buy back of equity shares in its board meeting on April 27. The board will also consider a final dividend for 2015-16. The telecom major is due to slte its numbers this week. Tata Motors is down over 1% as it plans to issue non-convertible debentures (NCDs) to raise Rs 300 crore, and a meeting of senior executives and directors will be held on Wednesday. TCS was up nearly 1% after the company announced the launch of Launches Monitoring and Management Framework for Red Hat OpenStack Platform". Sensex losers include, HDFC, Axis Bank, ITC, Sun Pharma, Maruti Suzuki and NTPC among others. A Dhaka court has placed Mahmudur Rahman, editor of Amar Desh newspaper on a five-day remand for interrogation in connection with an alleged plot 'to kidnap and kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy'. The court of Metropolitan Magistrate Md Golam Nabi directed assistant commissioner of Detective Branch of police Hasan Mahmud, who is the investigation officer of the case, to follow the directives of High Court Division during the interrogation, reports Daily Star. The decision came when the detectives produced Rahman before the court with a 10-day remand prayer. This morning, the Amar Desh editor was arrested in the case. A pro- Bangladesh Nationalist Party journalist and a former energy adviser, Rahman has been behind bars since April 2013. Senior journalist and a pro-BNP intellectual Shafik Rehman was arrested in the same case and placed on a five-day remand. Australian High Commissioner Harinder Sidhu and New Zealand Charge d'Affaires Suzannah Jessep paid their respects to the women and men who lost their lives in service to their country during an Anzac Day ceremony at the Delhi War Cemetery today. They were joined by members of the Australian and New Zealand communities in India, as well as members of the Indian military to honour those who had laid down their lives to defend their nations and their shared values in conflicts around the world. "Anzac Day is a day to remember Australian and New Zealand servicemen and women who have served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations since the First World War, and to honour those who continue to serve today," Ms Sidhu said. Ms Sidhu noted the contribution by many Indians during the First World War and in other operations since. "Indians were in many instances serving alongside Australians and New Zealanders - it is a shared commitment to freedom and democracy that continues to this day." New Zealand's Charge d'Affaires in India, Suzannah Jessep, said: "While we may each have our origins in different cultures, speak different languages, and worship in different ways; we all share in our histories the tragedy of armed conflict." "Let us use this experience to work together, to renew our efforts to help states out of conflict, to support efforts to rebuild," she said. Anzac Day, commemorated on 25 April, marks the anniversary of the first major military action by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) in 1915 during the First World War. Approximately 16,000 Indian troops fought alongside the ANZACs in Gallipoli and around 1,600 lost their lives. Some 8,700 troops from Australia and 2,779 from New Zealand died in that conflict. Over 200 people attended the Dawn Service to pay their respects including representatives from the international community in Delhi and the Indian military. In line with tradition, buglers from the Indian Army played "The Last Post" and "Reveille" at the service. Student bodies blocked a key intersection area of the Shahbagh area ?over what they called the government's failure to arrest the killers of Comilla college student Sohagi Jahan Tonu. The half-day-long protest, which commenced this morning, was jointly sponsored by the Progressive Students' Alliance and Anti-Imperialist Students' Union, two major left-leaning student alliances. There was a significant response to the protest, reports the Daily Star. Faisal Mahmud, coordinator of Anti-Imperialist Students' Union, was quoted by the Daily Star, as saying that the hartal programme earned support from all corners of Bangladesh. Hartal supporters have been attacked in Bogra, Joypurhat, Gazipur. Some of the activists have been detained there. Comilla's Victoria College student Tonu's bloody body was found inside the Comilla Cantonment area on March 20. Though a month has passed, the government has not taken any action to identify the killers. Students said that their hartal is a protest against abuse and repression on all women in the country. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has laid down the roadmap for expediting the process of examining the applications of patents, designs and trademarks by appointing additional 458 new examiners and 263 contract examiners at various levels to clear the backlog. DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said that his department is making a conscious effort to bring down the timelines of examination of patents and trademarks to match them with the international standards. The applications were now being reviewed on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis, he added. Abhishek was inaugurating a conference on 'Intellectual Property: A Key Enabler for Strengthening India's Landscape' organized here today to commemorate the World Intellectual Property Day 2016, by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in association with Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and Intellectual Property Office (IPO). He said that DIPP was committed towards creating a highly transparent, e-enabled, efficient and accessible IP eco-system in India that would provide legal certainty to the industry. Searcy Hayes, who was not a known-name till she was dubbed the "Female Ted Cruz" due to her looks a week ago, after she appeared on the 'Maury Povich show,' will be shooting a 10,000 US dollar-porno with her boyfriend. The 21-year-old Mississippi native is quite confident to strip down for the deal she made with XHamster.com to film a six-minute sex tape, as she made few private pornos of her own earlier, reports News.com.au. In an interview, Hayes said that she is "fine with it" because everything is going to "support" her family. Hayes' 25-year-old partner Freddie Green too has no doubts about making the racy video. The couple was approached by XHamster following their appearance on the talk show last week, where they were getting a paternity test on their three-month-old son to confirm Green was the father. Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will lead his country's delegation to the Senior Officials Meeting of the - Istanbul Process, which will be held here on April 26. According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office, since its inception in 2011, Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the - Istanbul Process. The - Istanbul Process is a platform to discuss regional issues, including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan. Islamabad hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. The conference adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled "Emphasizing Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity". Pakistan's agenda for the forthcoming event is promotion of long term peace and stability in Afghanistan. The Pakistan delegation is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. After being denied a visa by the Indian authorities to visit Dharamsala for a conference, Dolkun Isa, a leader of the World Uyghur Congress, on Monday expressed disappointment and described the move by New Delhi as its effort to maintain bilateral ties with China. Speaking to ANI over telephone Isa said, "I really wanted to visit India. It was one of my dreams. I wanted to enjoy Indian culture." "I think my visa denial was India's effort to maintain its bilateral relations with China," he added. Isa, in a statement earlier, said, "As the Executive Committee Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), I express my disappointment on Indian authorities' cancellation of my visa to attend the annual Inter-ethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference taking place in Dharamsala, India, from April 30 to May 1, 2016. This conference remains a vital forum through which ethnic and religious communities in China related areas, as well as statesmen, scholars and activists are able to meet openly to discuss and exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities." "The Indian government had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press. Following numerous reports, the Indian authorities then proceeded to rescind the visa on April 23, 2016. I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regrets that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy," he added. He also said that this was not the first time that he had faced difficulties in his international travels to advocate Uyghur rights. "In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratization in Asia, to which I was an invited guest. China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular," he said in the statement. Isa also rejected any comparison or association with China's recent veto to place JeM leader Mazood Azhar on the UN Security Council Sanctions list. "Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights," he said. "Finally, I would like to thank the Indian people for their determined solidarity and commitment to rights activists like myself who wish to continue to develop and support dialogue among peoples of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. I remain disappointed with the final decision, but I am hopeful that positive steps may be taken to maintain India's relationship with the Uyghur community," the statement added. His visit was being seen as a retaliatory measure taken by the Indian Government after China blocked the listing of Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar as an international terrorist at the United Nation. Dolkun Isa had been invited to a conference being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China. Meanwhile, the organiser of the event, Tenzin Ninjey, had earlier said that China is wrong in calling him a terrorist. "Dolkun Isa is a peace activist. There is no comparison at all with terrorist Masood Azhar," he told ANI. Earlier, China had expressed unhappiness with Dolkun being given the visa with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. The Naxalites have gunned down two villagers from Gadchiroli District near Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border on suspicion of being police informers. The incident took place this morning in Kurkheda tehsil near Kamtheda forest. Last week, a police personnel was killed in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast triggered by Naxals in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur District. Earlier this month, as many as 122 Naxals, including 11 women, surrendered before the police in Sukma District of Chhattisgarh. One of the youngest Indian filmmakers, Varun Chopra, is all geared up to make his debut with a documentary 'God On A Leash' at The Festival De Cannes 2016, which kicks off on May 11 and runs over 10 days. The 22-year-old Indian-born director's 14 minute-long short film has been shot in the capital city, New Delhi. The story revolves around two ancestral art forms that survive in the modern world through their undying devotion to Hanuman- the Hindu deity who had a human body, but with the face and tail of an ape. One of these communities is the "Madari," which was the ancient occupation of training monkeys to perform and entertain like humans. The other community is of the "Behrupiyas" or the 'masters of disguise'. These people were traditional impressionists who trained young children to behave like apes. "Both of these communities of Madaris and Behrupiyas are similar to each other in terms of their poverty and the firm belief in the power of the Monkey God, Hanuman- a deity that symbolizes selfless devotion and strength," Varun explained. 'God On A Leash' will show a parallel contrast between the life of a Madari and a Behrupiya. On one hand, it shows the life of a captured monkey family, who travel around to places with their master. They are mistreated and painfully trained in the art of amusing humans. While on the other hand, a young boy from the Behrupiya community dresses up and acts like a monkey for public performances. He further said, "Both groups convene to perform at the Hanuman temples. My documentary concentrates on the possibility of a role reversal between the animals as humans and vice versa. It makes the viewer wonder about who would triumph, or if either of them will triumph at all. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday appealed to the political leadership of the country, including those from the opposition, to make the second half of the budget session of parliament as productive as the first. "We hope that all parties will cooperate in making second part of budget session a success as well. I am confident that we will make good decisions in this session of the Parliament," Prime Minister Modi said. Expressing confidence about the session coming out with good decisions, he said, "The first part of the budget session of Parliament was very productive. All the political parties made efforts for the proper functioning of the Parliament. Many important decisions took place in the first part of the session." The session is set to be a stormy one with the opposition closing ranks to raise the issue of Presidents' rule in Uttarakhand. The government, on its part, has listed a heavy agenda for the session, including the passage of 13 bills in the Lok Sabha and 11 in the Rajya Sabha. Discussion on demands for grants of various ministries, consideration and passing of the Railways Appropriation and Finance Bills along with GST, Factories, Compensatory Afforestation and Enemy Property Bills are the main agenda of the session. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had yesterday held an all-party meeting to ensure smooth functioning of the Parliament. Mahajan said, "Leaders of different parties have assured their cooperation to have a fruitful session. Some party leaders raised the issue of President's rule in Uttarakhand but the matter is sub judice and cannot be discussed before April 27." Leader of Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said his party has given a notice for an adjournment motion to discuss President's rule in Uttarakhand. He said the Congress also wants a discussion on drought and drinking water problem. The session will continue till May 13. Last month, the budget session of Parliament was prorogued to facilitate the promulgation of an ordinance to meet the financial requirements of centrally-ruled Uttarakhand. Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli on Monday urged foreign investors and tourists not to be reluctant to invest and travel in Nepal. Emphasizing that all parts of Nepal had not been affected by last year's earthquake, Prime Minister Oli said tourists should not be insecure about visiting and investing in Nepal. Addressing a programme to mark the occasion of the 'Visit Year 2073' organised by Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA), Oli called on tourists to visit the holy birthplace of Gautam Buddha, the Pashupatinath Temple, Mt Everest, historical temples and monuments in Patan, Bhaktapur and Hanumandhoka and also view the unrivalled natural beauty of the country. The earthquake has only inflicted partial damages to our historical and archaeological sites. I want to persuade all to visit those places and relish it," the Prime Minister emphasized. He further underlined the need for additional efforts from the visiting tourists, government and private sector to spread the message to the nook and corner of the that Nepal is safe for travel. On the occasion, the PM also scribbled a note 'Welcome to Nepal' on a map of Nepal. The programme was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Chitra Bahadur KC and Tourism Minister, Ananda Prasad Pokharel. President Pranab Mukherjee is expected to sign several agreements during his five-day tour to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and New Zealand next week. This is President Mukherjee's first-ever state visit to the two countries. The President will be accompanied by Minister of Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal and several Members of Parliament. In the first leg of his visit in Papua New Guinea, several agreements are expected to be inked in the fields of education, health, connectivity, economic cooperation, agriculture and dairy farming. The President will arrive in PNG as guest of Governor-General Sir Michael Ogio. During his visit he will also meet PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill who visited India last August for a summit meeting. Moving on the President will also attend a business event and address Indian community. He is also scheduled to deliver a speech at the PNG university. On the President's visit to New Zealand, which starts from April 30, agreements and MoU's in the field of air connectivity and education are expected to be signed. New Zealand country strategic papers wishes to make India its core trade, economic and political partner. Here he will meet Governor General Jerry Mateparae, Prime Minister John Key and Leader of Opposition David Cunliffe. He will also address a gathering of top New Zealand businessmen, an Indian community event, and students and faculty of Oakland University of Technology. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had visited India in 2011 while the Governor General of New Zealand visited the country in 2008, 2009 and 2011. The Obama administration is likely to soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into 'specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States, reports Independent. Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The former Democratic senator from Florida says an administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained United States relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a 'preliminary police report.' There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating,the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said on Friday. Troops from Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have reportedly captured the seaport city of Mukalla located in the southern part Yemen, from al Qaeda fighters on Sunday. According to media reports, approximately 2,000 Yemeni and UAE troops took control of the port and airport and set up checkpoints throughout the coastal city. Residents were quoted, as saying that al Qaeda fighters had moved westwards to Shabwa province on the request of the local leaders. The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been control of an almost 600-km Arabian Sea coastline for a year. The control of Mukalla was achieved with the help of air and ground strikes. A range bound movement was witnessed as key benchmark indices hovered near the day's low in mid-morning trade. At 11:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 145.72 points or 0.56% at 25,692.42. The Nifty 50 index was currently down 41.65 points or 0.53% at 7,857.65. Weakness in Asian stocks spoiled investors' sentiment. Asian shares edged lower as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week. The Sensex fell 157.50 points, or 0.61% at the day's low of 25,680.64 in mid-morning trade, its lowest level since 18 April 2016. The barometer index rose 52.89 points, or 0.2% at the day's high of 25,891.03 in early trade. The Nifty fell 45.45 points, or 0.58% at the day's low of 7,853.85 in mid-morning trade, its lowest level since 18 April 2016. The index rose 11.70 points, or 0.15% at the day's high of 7,911 in early trade. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was negative. On BSE, 1,205 shares fell and 948 shares rose. A total of 119 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.08%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently down 0.13%. The decline in both these indices was lower than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms. In overseas stock markets, Asian shares edged lower as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week. US stocks finished mixed during the previous trading session on Friday, 22 April 2016, as earnings misses in the previous session from Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet slackened optimism on Wall Street. The US Federal Reserve holds a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, 26 April 2016 and Wednesday, 27 April 2016. As per market expectations, the Fed is likely to hold rates steady this week and instead will opt to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points in its June meeting to 0.5-0.75% in what will be the second in its first series of rate rises in nearly a decade. In Japan, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) holds a two-day monetary policy meeting on Wednesday, 27 April 2016 and Thursday, 28 April 2016. Market participants are becoming more confident in their expectations of further easing from the Bank of Japan. The BOJ in January decided to begin charging 0.1% interest on some bank reserves parked with the institution, in a bid to kick-start the economy and pull it out of two decades of deflation. Index heavyweight Reliance Industries edged lower after announcing Q4 March 2016 results after trading hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. The stock was currently off 2.38% at Rs 1,014. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,044.90 and a low of Rs 1,012.75 so far during the day. RIL's consolidated net profit rose 15.93% to Rs 7398 crore on 10.95% fall in total income to Rs 62010 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Strong operating performance from refining and petrochemicals businesses coupled with favorable exchange rate movement was partially offset by lower contribution from Oil & Gas business. The decline in revenue was led by the 41.4% decline in benchmark oil price which averaged at $30.4 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 as compared to $51.9 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. Based on standalone performance, the gross refining margin (GRM) increased to $10.80 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 from $10.10 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. RIL did not specify when exactly it would start commercial roll out of telecom business. RIL said that the commercial roll out is expected in coming months. Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL) launched full-scale service offerings for the RIL group employees, partners, vendors and associates on a trial basis on 28 December 2015. RIL's telecom business is being carried out through its subsidiary RJIL. Index heavyweight and housing finance major HDFC was down 1.27% to Rs 1,117. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,130 and a low of Rs 1,112 so far during the day. Index heavyweight and cigarette major ITC was down 1.11% to Rs 322.10. The stock hit a high of Rs 325.50 and a low of Rs 321.85 so far during the day. Metal shares edged lower. Vedanta (down 3.48%), Hindalco Industries (down 3.12%), Jindal Steel & Power (down 3.08%), Bhushan Steel (down 2.82%), Tata Steel (down 2.15%), Hindustan Zinc (down 1.89%), Steel Authority of India (down 1.52%), JSW Steel (down 1.12%), NMDC (down 0.9%), National Aluminium Company (down 0.79%) and Hindustan Copper (down 0.71%) edged lower. Copper price edged lower in the global commodities markets. High Grade Copper for May 2016 delivery was currently down 0.20% at $2.26 per pound on the COMEX. Most IT stocks edged lower. Persistent Systems (down 3.54%), Tech Mahindra (down 1.26%), MindTree (down 0.66%), Infosys (down 0.56%) and Oracle Financial Services Software (down 0.37%), edged lower. HCL Technologies (up 0.07%), MphasiS (up 0.17%) and Hexaware Technologies (up 0.48%), edged higher. Wipro was down 0.21% to Rs 556.55. The company after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016, announced that it has fixed 6 May 2016 as the record date for the purpose of buyback of equity shares. Wipro's board of directors recently approved a proposal to buyback up to 4 crore equity shares of the company for an aggregate amount of up to Rs 2500 crore, being 1.62% of the total paid up equity share capital. The buyback will be through the tender offer route at Rs 625 per share. The promoters of the company have indicated their intention to participate in the proposed buyback. TCS was up 0.86% to Rs 2,438. The company after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016, announced the launch of Mobile Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management framework for anytime-anywhere NFV monitoring and management for Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The TCS framework enables the Network administrators to securely and flawlessly monitor and manage critical operations with Red Hat OpenStack Platform. Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services rose 3.57% after consolidated net profit rose 12% to Rs 411 crore on 13% growth in total income to Rs 1905 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced on Saturday, 23 April 2016. The company's board of directors at its meeting held on Saturday, 23 April 2016, approved the increase in the borrowing limits of the company from Rs 50000 crore to Rs 55000 crore. The board approved the issue of secured/unsecured non-convertible debentures including subordinated debentures on a private placement basis, within the overall borrowing limits of the company. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Government of India has decided to release 10,000 tonnes of unmilled Tur dal @ Rs.66 per kg and unmilled Urad dal @ Rs.82 per kg to the States for retail distribution of milled/processed dals at not more than Rs.120 per kg. States have been requested to immediately place their requirement for making allotment of Tur and Urad dals for retail distribution through their channels. Government of India has built a buffer of 50,000 tonnes by way of domestic procurement. Additionally about 26,000 MT of Tur and Urad dals have been contracted for imports. Powered by Capital Market - Live News A bout of volatility was witnessed as the the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, pared losses after hitting one-week low and the Nifty 50 index trimmed losses after hitting its lowest level in almost two weeks. At 12:17 IST, the Sensex was down 142.09 points or 0.55% at 25,696.05. The Nifty was currently down 44.90 points or 0.57% at 7,854.40. Weakness in Asian stocks spoiled investors' sentiment. Asian shares edged lower as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week. The Sensex fell 189.02 points, or 0.73% at the day's low of 25,649.12 in early afternoon trade, its lowest level since 18 April 2016. The barometer index rose 52.89 points, or 0.2% at the day's high of 25,891.03 in early trade. The Nifty fell 58.80 points, or 0.74% at the day's low of 7,840.50 in early afternoon trade, its lowest level since 13 April 2016. The index rose 11.70 points, or 0.15% at the day's high of 7,911 in early trade. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was weak. On BSE, 1,372 shares fell and 913 shares rose. A total of 134 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.15%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently down 0.26%. The decline in both these indices was lower than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms. In overseas stock markets, Asian shares edged lower as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week. US stocks finished mixed during the previous trading session on Friday, 22 April 2016, as earnings misses in the previous session from Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet slackened optimism on Wall Street. The US Federal Reserve holds a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, 26 April 2016 and Wednesday, 27 April 2016. As per market expectations, the Fed is likely to hold rates steady this week and instead will opt to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points in its June meeting to 0.5-0.75% in what will be the second in its first series of rate rises in nearly a decade. In Japan, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) holds a two-day monetary policy meeting on Wednesday, 27 April 2016 and Thursday, 28 April 2016. Market participants are becoming more confident in their expectations of further easing from the Bank of Japan. The BOJ in January decided to begin charging 0.1% interest on some bank reserves parked with the institution, in a bid to kick-start the economy and pull it out of two decades of deflation. Most FMCG shares edged lower. Colgate Palmolive (India) (down 1.18%), Marico (down 1.08%), Hindustan Unilever (down 0.79%), Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care (down 0.73%), Nestle India (down 0.68%), Jyothy Laboratories (down 0.56%), Britannia Industries (down 0.4%), Godrej Consumer Products (down 0.22%), Dabur India (down 0.19%) and Bajaj Corp (down 0.14%), edged lower. Tata Global Beverages (up 0.12%) and GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (up 0.14%), edged higher. Shares of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group companies fell. Reliance Power (down 1.42%), Reliance Infrastructure (down 0.7%), Reliance Communications (down 0.53%) and Reliance Capital (down 0.46%), edged lower. Kalpataru Power Transmission (KPTL) rose 3.48% after the company said that it has received new orders/notification of award in excess of Rs 1150 crore. KPTL said that it has received orders worth Rs 930 crore for construction and supply of 225KV & 90KV overhead transmission lines in West Africa. The projects have been awarded to KPTL and its wholly owned subsidiary Kalpataru Power DMCC and will be delivered by the respective entities. The company also said that it has received orders worth Rs 220 crore for construction of 220KV & 132KV substations, transmission lines and feeder bay work from Madhya Pradesh Power Transmission Company. DIC India tumbled after announcing first quarter results. The stock was currently off 7.74%. Net profit rose 26.8% to Rs 7.20 crore on 2.1% decline in net sales to Rs 167.95 crore in Q1 March 2016 over Q1 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could rise 26.15 points at the opening bell. In overseas markets, Asian shares edged lower today, 25 April 2016, as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week that are expected to hold clues to future policy moves. US stocks finished mixed Friday, 22 April 2016, as earnings misses in the previous session from Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet slackened optimism on Wall Street. US Federal Reserve will hold its next two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, 26 April 2016 and Wednesday, 27 April 2016. As per market expectations, the Fed is likely to hold rates steady at its policy meeting later in April and instead will opt to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points in its June meeting to 0.5-0.75% in what will be the second in its first series of rate rises in nearly a decade. Closer home, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 191.07 crore yesterday, 22 April 2016, as per provisional data released by the stock exchanges. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 168.64 crore yesterday, 22 April 2016, as per provisional data. On political front, the second part of the budget session of Parliament will commence today, 25 April 2016, after a month long recess and will conclude on 13 May 2016, during which government hopes to receive support of opposition parties in passage of key legislations including the Goods & Services Tax (GST) Bill. Among corporate news, UltraTech Cement announces Q4 results today, 25 April 2016. Reliance Industries (RIL)'s consolidated net profit rose 15.93% to Rs 7398 crore on 10.95% fall in total income to Rs 62010 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Profit before interest, depreciation and tax (PBDIT) rose 16.9% to Rs 13994 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin increased by 3.22% to 12.1% in Q4 March 2016 as compared with Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Decline in revenue was led by the 41.4% decline in benchmark oil price which averaged at $30.4 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 as compared to $51.9 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. Gross refining margin (GRM) per barrel increased to $10.80 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 compared with $10.10 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. On consolidated basis, Cairn India reported net loss of Rs 10948.22 crore in Q4 March 2016, higher than net loss of Rs 240.82 crore in Q4 March 2015. Net total income from operations declined 35.87% to Rs 1716.83 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Cairn India's bottom line during the quarter was dragged down due to impairment charges. Due to decline in crude oil prices in the international market, the company has recorded an impairment on the carrying value of goodwill and some of its non-producing oil and gas assets aggregating to Rs 11389.63 crore and Rs 284.17 crore respectively in Q4 March 2016. Cairn India said it is committed to the company's merger with Vedanta and continue to work towards its completion. The merger would generate value for the shareholders and de-risks Cairn India by providing access to a portfolio of diversified assets in a volatile market and deliver significant near term growth, the company said in a statement. With regard to its business outlook for the current financial year (FY 2017), Cairn India said it aims to maintain production from Rajasthan asset broadly at FY 2016 level. With an estimated net capex of $100 million, the company plans to invest 80% in development (primarily RDG Gas and Mangala EOR completion activities) and 20% in exploration. Cairn India said it will continue investing in pre-development activities of its key projects in Core MBA fields, Barmer Hills and Satellite fields, to ensure project readiness for development with rebound in oil prices and grant of extension of Production Sharing Contract (PSC). Cairn India said it maintains the flexibility to raise its capital investment as oil prices improve and aim to generate a healthy cash flow post capex so as to retain the ability to pay dividends. Bharti Airtel announced on Saturday, 23 April 2016, that its board of directors will consider a proposal for buyback of equity shares on 27 April 2016 when it is announcing Q4 March 2016 results. The board will also consider payment of final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2016. Wipro announced that it has fixed 6 May 2016 as the record date for the purpose of buyback of equity shares. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. TCS announced that to aid the growing demand for network services due to rise of smart devices and increasing mobile data traffic it has launched Mobile Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management framework for anytime-anywhere NFV monitoring and management for Red Hat OpenStack Platform. NFV enables operators to monetize their cloud infrastructure more effectively by providing capabilities to start new services quickly and seamlessly meet changing network demands. It also provide them with the ability to monitor their cloud environment and make critical business decisions in near real time is crucial to fully realize the benefits of NFV. The TCS framework enables the Network administrators to securely and flawlessly monitor and manage critical operations with Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. A divergent trend among various index constituents resulted in small losses for key benchmark indices on Friday, 22 April 2016. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, lost 42.24 points or 0.16% to settle at 25,838.14. The Nifty 50 index lost 12.75 points or 0.16% to settle at 7,899.30. The small decline pushed the Nifty to its lowest closing level in more than a week. Powered by Capital Market - Live News A bout of volatility was witnessed as the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, and the Nifty 50 index trimmed losses after both these indices hit their lowest level in almost two weeks. At 14:18 IST, the barometer index, the Sensex was down 175.49 points or 0.68% at 25,662.65. The Nifty was currently down 51.20 points or 0.65% at 7,848.10. Weakness in global stocks spoiled investors' sentiment. The Sensex fell 232.80 points, or 0.9% at the day's low of 25,605.34 in mid-afternoon trade, its lowest level since 13 April 2016. The barometer index rose 52.89 points, or 0.2% at the day's high of 25,891.03 in early trade. The Nifty fell 69.55 points, or 0.88% at the day's low of 7,829.75 in mid-afternoon trade, its lowest level since 13 April 2016. The index rose 11.70 points, or 0.15% at the day's high of 7,911 in early trade. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was weak. On BSE, 1,526 shares fell and 977 shares rose. A total of 137 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.2%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently down 0.34%. The decline in both these indices was lower than the Sensex's decline in percentage terms. In overseas stock markets, European stocks fell amid declining oil prices and as German business sentiment deteriorated unexpectedly in April. The Ifo's business climate index slipped to 106.6 in April from 106.7 in March, bringing it further below levels seen at the end of last year. The Ifo's measure of the current business situation dropped to 113.2 in April from 113.8 in March, but its gauge of business expectations rose to 100.4 from 100 the previous month. The German economy is the Europe's biggest economy. Asian shares edged lower as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) holds a two-day monetary policy meeting on Wednesday, 27 April 2016 and Thursday, 28 April 2016. Market participants are becoming more confident in their expectations of further easing from the Bank of Japan. The BOJ in January decided to begin charging 0.1% interest on some bank reserves parked with the institution, in a bid to kick-start the economy and pull it out of two decades of deflation. US stocks finished mixed during the previous trading session on Friday, 22 April 2016, as earnings misses in the previous session from Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet slackened optimism on Wall Street. The US Federal Reserve holds a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, 26 April 2016 and Wednesday, 27 April 2016. As per market expectations, the Fed is likely to hold rates steady this week and instead will opt to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points in its June meeting to 0.5-0.75% in what will be the second in its first series of rate rises in nearly a decade. Stocks of public sector banks (PSU banks) dropped. Allahabad Bank (down 3.24%), Canara Bank (down 2.46%), Punjab and Sind Bank (down 2.37%), Union Bank of India (down 2.22%), Syndicate Bank (down 2.04%), IDBI Bank (down 1.93%), Bank of Baroda (down 1.92%), Bank of India (down 1.18%), Andhra Bank (down 1.15%), Dena Bank (down 1.14%), Corporation Bank (down 1.1%), Central Bank of India (down 0.87%), State Bank of India (down 0.58%), United Bank of India (down 0.5%), Bank of Maharashtra (down 0.49%), Vijaya Bank (down 0.47%) and Punjab National Bank (down 0.39%) edged lower. UCO Bank (down 2.45%) and Indian Overseas Bank (down 0.63%) edged lower after the National Stock Exchange (NSE) announced the removal of these two stocks from its futures & options segment. Private sector banks were mixed. Axis Bank (down 1.5%), IndusInd Bank (down 0.48%), Yes Bank (down 0.18%), HDFC Bank (down 0.11%) and ICICI Bank (down 0.08%) edged lower. City Union Bank (up 0.42%), Kotak Mahindra Bank (up 0.63%) and Federal Bank (up 1.05%) edged higher. Capital goods shares were mixed. Alstom T&D India (down 2.59%), Bharat Heavy Electricals (down 2.11%), Reliance Defence and Engineering (down 1.8%), Jindal Saw (down 1.44%), Siemens (down 1.3%), Punj Lloyd (down 1.25%), Suzlon Energy (down 1.08%), Praj Industries (down 1.07%), BEML (down 1.06%), AIA Engineering (down 0.42%) and Lakshmi Machine Works (down 0.08%), edged lower. SKF India (up 0.15%), Thermax (up 0.28%), Havells India (up 0.58%), Bharat Electronics (up 0.74%), Crompton Greaves (up 0.78%), ALSTOM India (up 0.87%) and ABB India (up 1.42%), edged higher. Motherson Sumi Systems fell 4.56% after Volkswagen posted a 4.1 billion euros operating loss for 2015 in the wake of a diesel emissions test-rigging scandal. Volkswagen is a key client for Motherson Sumi Systems (MSSL). Media reports suggested that a foreign brokerage has retained its underperform rating on the MSSL stock, stating that a combination of likely pricing pressures from Volkswagen and its lower growth poses a risk to MSSL's aggressive growth targets. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Reliance Industries (RIL)'s consolidated net profit rose 15.93% to Rs 7398 crore on 10.95% fall in total income to Rs 62010 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Profit before interest, depreciation and tax (PBDIT) rose 16.9% to Rs 13994 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin increased by 3.22% to 12.1% in Q4 March 2016 as compared with Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Decline in revenue was led by the 41.4% decline in benchmark oil price which averaged at $30.4 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 as compared to $51.9 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. Based on standalone performance, the gross refining margin (GRM) increased to $10.80 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 from $10.10 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. On consolidated basis, Cairn India reported net loss of Rs 10948.22 crore in Q4 March 2016, higher than net loss of Rs 240.82 crore in Q4 March 2015. Net total income from operations declined 35.87% to Rs 1716.83 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Cairn India's bottom line during the quarter was dragged down due to impairment charges. Due to decline in crude oil prices in the international market, the company has recorded an impairment on the carrying value of goodwill and some of its non-producing oil and gas assets aggregating to Rs 11389.63 crore and Rs 284.17 crore respectively in Q4 March 2016. Cairn India said it is committed to the company's merger with Vedanta and continue to work towards its completion. The merger would generate value for the shareholders and de-risks Cairn India by providing access to a portfolio of diversified assets in a volatile market and deliver significant near term growth, the company said in a statement. With regard to its business outlook for the current financial year (FY 2017), Cairn India said it aims to maintain production from Rajasthan asset broadly at FY 2016 level. With an estimated net capex of Rs $100 million, the company plans to invest 80% in development (primarily RDG Gas and Mangala EOR completion activities) and 20% in exploration. Cairn India said it will continue investing in pre-development activities of its key projects in Core MBA fields, Barmer Hills and Satellite fields, to ensure project readiness for development with rebound in oil prices and grant of extension of Production Sharing Contract (PSC). Cairn India said it maintains the flexibility to raise its capital investment as oil prices improve and aim to generate a healthy cash flow post capex so as to retain the ability to pay dividends. UltraTech Cement announces Q4 results today, 25 April 2016. TCS announced that to aid the growing demand for network services due to rise of smart devices and increasing mobile data traffic it has launched Mobile Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management framework for anytime-anywhere NFV monitoring and management for Red Hat OpenStack Platform. NFV enables operators to monetize their cloud infrastructure more effectively by providing capabilities to start new services quickly and seamlessly meet changing network demands. It also provide them with the ability to monitor their cloud environment and make critical business decisions in near real time. The TCS framework enables the Network administrators to securely and flawlessly monitor and manage critical operations with Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Bharti Airtel announced on Saturday, 23 April 2016, that its board of directors will consider a proposal for buyback of equity shares on 27 April 2016 when it is announcing Q4 March 2016 results. The board will also consider payment of final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2016. Wipro announced that it has fixed 6 May 2016 as the record date for the purpose of buyback of equity shares. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Shriram Transport Finance Company announced that the Banking and Finance Committee of the company in its meeting held on 22 April 2016 approved and allotted 260 secured redeemable non-convertible debentures(NCDs) of face value of Rs 10 lakhs each, aggregating to Rs 26 crore on private placement basis. NCDs have a tenure of 10 years and coupon rate of 9.2% per annum. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Tata Communications announced that it has made additional investment of 5% equity in Smart ICT Services following Smart ICT's board of directors' approval to transfer 5% of stake held by Centios Co to Tata Communications. Following the transfer, Tata Communications' stake in Smart ICT increased to 24% from the earlier 19% and consequently Smart ICT became associate of the company. Smart ICT has been awarded a contract by the Gujarat International Finance Tec-city (GIFT) to design, finance, establish, install, test, commission and operate and maintain the ICT in GIFT city. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. DIC India's net profit rose 26.98% to Rs 7.20 crore on 2.74% decline in net total income from operations to Rs 168.75 crore in Q1 March 2016 over Q1 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Dewan Housing Finance Corporation announced that the company proposes to issue 130 secured redeemable non-convertible debentures aggregating to Rs 13 crore on private placement basis. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services' consolidated net profit rose 12% to Rs 411.32 crore on 13.37% rise in total income to Rs 1904.87 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced on Saturday, 23 April 2016. Honda Siel Power Products announced that as a part of make in India initiative and renewed thrust on farm mechanization, the company has announced the launch of indigenously built power tiller to cater to the vast domestic market as well as other emerging markets globally. The announcement was made on Saturday, 23 April 2016. Astral Poly Technik announced that it has has executed lease agreement with Rajasthan State Industrial Development & Investment Corporation (RIICO) for lease of land admeasuring 32,500 square metres situated at Plot No. SP5-132, Ghilot Industrial Area, Dist: Alwar, Rajathan. The company intends to set up a unit for manufacturing of PVC/CPVC pipes/fittings to cater to the demand of North India. The announcement was made on Saturday, 23 April 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Key benchmark indices were trading near flat line in early trade. At 9:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 1.67 points or 0.01% at 25,839.81. The Nifty 50 index was down 2.65 points or 0.03% at 7,896.65. Broader market was trading higher. The broad market depicted strength. There were more than two gainers against every loser on BSE. 729 shares rose and 345 shares rose. A total of 61 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.25%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.15%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In the overseas market, Asian shares edged lower today, 25 April 2016, as investors awaited central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week that are expected to hold clues to future policy moves. US stocks finished mixed Friday, 22 April 2016, as earnings misses in the previous session from Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet slackened optimism on Wall Street. US Federal Reserve will hold its next two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, 26 April 2016 and Wednesday, 27 April 2016. As per market expectations, the Fed is likely to hold rates steady at its policy meeting later in April and instead will opt to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points in its June meeting to 0.5-0.75% in what will be the second in its first series of rate rises in nearly a decade. Metal shares were mixed. Bhushan Steel (down 0.94%), Hindustan Zinc (down 0.52%), Vedanta (down 0.38%), Tata Steel (down 0.37%), JSW Steel (down 0.33%) and Jindal Steel & Power (down 0.27%), edged lower. Hindalco Industries (up 0.10%), NMDC (up 0.15%), National Aluminium Company (up 0.34%), Steel Authority of India (up 0.43%) and Hindustan Copper (up 0.62%), edged higher. Reliance Industries (RIL) was down 0.96%. The company consolidated net profit rose 15.93% to Rs 7398 crore on 10.95% fall in total income to Rs 62010 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Profit before interest, depreciation and tax (PBDIT) rose 16.9% to Rs 13994 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin increased by 3.22% to 12.1% in Q4 March 2016 as compared with Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Decline in revenue was led by the 41.4% decline in benchmark oil price which averaged at $30.4 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 as compared to $51.9 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. Gross refining margin (GRM) per barrel increased to $10.80 per barrel in Q4 March 2016 compared with $10.10 per barrel in Q4 March 2015. Cairn India was down 3.57%. On consolidated basis, Cairn India reported net loss of Rs 10948.22 crore in Q4 March 2016, higher than net loss of Rs 240.82 crore in Q4 March 2015. Net total income from operations declined 35.87% to Rs 1716.83 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. Cairn India's bottom line during the quarter was dragged down due to impairment charges. Due to decline in crude oil prices in the international market, the company has recorded an impairment on the carrying value of goodwill and some of its non-producing oil and gas assets aggregating to Rs 11389.63 crore and Rs 284.17 crore respectively in Q4 March 2016. Cairn India said it is committed to the company's merger with Vedanta and continue to work towards its completion. The merger would generate value for the shareholders and de-risks Cairn India by providing access to a portfolio of diversified assets in a volatile market and deliver significant near term growth, the company said in a statement. With regard to its business outlook for the current financial year (FY 2017), Cairn India said it aims to maintain production from Rajasthan asset broadly at FY 2016 level. With an estimated net capex of $100 million, the company plans to invest 80% in development (primarily RDG Gas and Mangala EOR completion activities) and 20% in exploration. Cairn India said it will continue investing in pre-development activities of its key projects in Core MBA fields, Barmer Hills and Satellite fields, to ensure project readiness for development with rebound in oil prices and grant of extension of Production Sharing Contract (PSC). Cairn India said it maintains the flexibility to raise its capital investment as oil prices improve and aim to generate a healthy cash flow post capex so as to retain the ability to pay dividends. Bharti Airtel was up 1.20%. The company announced on Saturday, 23 April 2016, that its board of directors will consider a proposal for buyback of equity shares on 27 April 2016 when it is announcing Q4 March 2016 results. The board will also consider payment of final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2016. Wipro was up 0.37%. The company announced that it has fixed 6 May 2016 as the record date for the purpose of buyback of equity shares. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. TCS was up 0.81%. The company announced that to aid the growing demand for network services due to rise of smart devices and increasing mobile data traffic it has launched Mobile Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management framework for anytime-anywhere NFV monitoring and management for Red Hat OpenStack Platform. NFV enables operators to monetize their cloud infrastructure more effectively by providing capabilities to start new services quickly and seamlessly meet changing network demands. It also provide them with the ability to monitor their cloud environment and make critical business decisions in near real time is crucial to fully realize the benefits of NFV. The TCS framework enables the Network administrators to securely and flawlessly monitor and manage critical operations with Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 April 2016. On political front, the second part of the budget session of Parliament will commence today, 25 April 2016, after a month long recess and will conclude on 13 May 2016, during which government hopes to receive support of opposition parties in passage of key legislations including the Goods & Services Tax (GST) Bill. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Egyptian forces killed 30 militants on Monday in air raids in the country's restive North Sinai province, an official said. The raids coincide with the military celebration of the 34th anniversary of Sinai Liberation Day marking the withdrawal of the Israeli troops from Taba, the last occupied part of the Sinai Peninsula, Xinhua news agency reported. Weapons and ammunition caches were also destroyed in the strikes that targeted southern Sheikh Zuweid city, the statement said, noting that the forces also managed to foil an armed attack on a security checkpoint. Egypt has been facing growing anti-government terror attacks since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and later blacklisted his Muslim Brotherhood group. The Egyptian Armed Forces also announced they will celebrate the national day by air and water shows and military music concerts in major cities nationwide. --IANS pgh/bg A total of 35 people were killed on Sunday in US-led coalition air strikes and clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants in the western province of Anbar, a provincial security source said. At least 17 IS militants were killed and five of their vehicles destroyed when international warplanes bombarded IS positions in Albu Ali al-Jasim in north of the provincial capital Ramadi, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Separately, six soldiers were killed and eight others wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car into a military base in Roufa area in northeast of the militant-seized town of Garma in east of the flashpoint city of Fallujah, the source said. The suicide bombing was followed by an attack of dozens of IS militants on the military base, sparking heavy clashes with the troops which resulted in the killing of 12 extremist militants, the source said, adding that international warplanes took part in the battle, bombed the attackers and destroyed a vehicle carrying heavy machine gun. Last December, the troops recovered Ramadi, the provincial capital of the country's largest province of Anbar. Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary units have been battling IS militants for re-control of large territories in northern and western Iraq that was seized by the IS since June 2014. --IANS ahm/ A special court here on Monday discharged all nine Muslim youths charge-sheeted in the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts case, a defence lawyer said. They included one who died recently. "The Special MCOCA Court's verdict came this (Monday) afternoon on the discharge application filed by all the nine accused in that case. They have been discharged," advocate Shahid Nadeem Ansari told IANS. Of the nine accused, Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah died in an accident a few months back, he said. All of them had spent a minimum five years in jail after they were arrested. The eight Muslim youths discharged by the Special MCOCA Court judge were -- Noor-ul Huda Samsudha, Raees Ahmed Rajabali Mansuri, Salman Farsi Abdul Latif Aimi, Farogh Iqbal Ahmed Magdumi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam, Asif Bashir Khan, M. Zahid Abdul Majid Ansari and Abrar Ahmed Ghulam Ahmed. They were arrested and later charge-sheeted for the September 8, 2006, blasts near a Muslim cemetery and a mosque during afternoon prayers on Shab-e-Baraat holy day, when special prayers are held for the dead. The bombs which were planted on two bicycles parked there triggered loud explosions that were followed by a stampede which left 37 dead and over 100 injured. The organisations suspected to be behind the blasts and were probed included Lashkar-e-Taiba, Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), and Jaish-e-Mohammed. All the accused, including some who were allegedly linked to the banned SIMI, applied for bail and were subsequently freed on November 16, 2011. At the previous hearing on April 12, National Investigation Agency (NIA) lawyer Prakash Shetty informed the special judge that the court should take a decision on the discharge plea of the accused. The NIA, which had taken over the investigation from the Maharashtra Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), submitted that it had found no evidence to link the nine accused with the blasts, paving the way for their discharge on Monday. At an earlier hearing on the discharge application in 2014, the NIA had raised doubts on the ATS and CBI case against the nine accused, and sought their discharge, lawyer Ansari said. The NIA said it did not object to the discharge applications since the evidence collected by it was not "in consonance" with the evidences collected by the ATS and then the CBI, which had recommended the prosecution of the nine accused. Malegaon, a sensitive Muslim-dominated town around 300 km northeast of Mumbai, was rocked by another blast on September 29, 2008, allegedly masterminded by certain Hindu fundamentalist groups. --IANS qn/pm/vt Five Indian police personnel in uniform and carrying weapons have been arrested along with their driver in far-western Nepal's Doti district for illegally entering the Himalayan nation, officials said on Monday. The Indian police personnel were ostensibly in pursuit of a Nepali national wanted in connection with the murder of a Punjab-based doctor, it is learnt. The five Punjab Police personnel were identified as Inspector Roshan Lal, Assistant Inspector Shashi Kapoor, Assistant Sub Inspector Jaspal Singh and Havaldars Savash Singh and General Singh. Jeep driver Ganga Deep Sharma was also arrested by police in Sanagaun in Doti district on Sunday for illegally entering Nepal with weapons. They were handed over to neighbouring Kailali district police on Sunday evening. Nepal Police said they "sneaked" into the country on Saturday evening. Security officials from both sides are mandatorily required to take prior permission while travelling in the other country in uniform and carrying weapons. The Indian police personnel had one AK-47 rifle, a pistol and 37 rounds of ammunition. Their vehicle, bearing an Indian number plate, was also seized. Meanwhile, customs officials at the Gadda Chauki border point, in Kanchanpur district, said the Indian police personnel had taken permission to visit Nepal for three days. Before they reached Doti -- after crossing Kanchanpur district, the Indian police personnel were asked to stop by Nepal Police in Acham district "but they sped away", officials said. ASI Tej Bahadur Khadka said: "As soon as we saw the Indian vehicle with police personnel, we tried to stop it but they sped away. How come they crossed two districts before reaching Doti?" The Indian police personnel had entered Nepal from the Indian state of Uttarakhand through the border in Kanchanpur district searching for a Nepali man who is accused in the murder of a Punjab-based doctor. Ram Prasad Regmi, chief of the Gadda Chauki customs unit, said the Indians paid customs duty for their belongings. Police in Kailali have launched an investigation and will hand them over to Indian authorities after completing their investigation. (Anil Giri can be contacted at girianil@gmail.com) --IANS giri/pm/dg The police have arrested 11 students of an engineering college in Anand, in central Gujarat, for allegedly gang raping a 20-year-old woman from the Union Territory of Daman. The Daman police made the arrest on Monday from Anand following a complaint filed by the young woman. The police said the complainant had claimed that she had come to know the young men, all second and third year students of the Anand Engineering College, through the social media. One of the youths, with a promise of marriage had lured her into coming to Anand on April 21. Then, he took the young woman to the men's hostel where his 11 friends took turns to rape her. Later she was taken in a white car to Daman where again she was repeatedly raped by some of the men before releasing her. She lodged the complaint with the Daman police following which the police picked up the 11 students named by her. The police said medical tests had confirmed gang rape of the woman. The arrested men, who were being taken to Daman, have been charged with abduction and kidnapping, besides rape, the police said. --IANS desai/rn/bg The much-talked about odd-even traffic system in Delhi figured in the Lok Sabha on Monday during zero hour with Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, expelled from the RJD, stating that the measure has only added to people's problems. Bharatiya Janata Party member Kirit Somaiya raised the controversial Ishrat Jahan case during zero hour and slammed the former Congress-led UPA regime over it. Raising the odd-even traffic restrictions scheme in the Lok Sabha, Pappu Yadav said it has only sought to help CNG companies and bus manufacturers. Yadav, MP from Madhepura in Bihar, launched Jan Adhikar Party on the eve of Bihar polls last year. Criticising the odd-even scheme, he alleged that it was launched by the Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal only for achieving "cheap popularity". This would hardly contribute to reduce pollution, he claimed. A number of BJP members were seen supporting the Bihar MP. Yadav cited a recent IIT-Kanpur study as revealing that pollution from cars was a mere five per cent. He argued that the odd-even mechanism fails to address other issues concerning environment and means of travel which contribute 95 per cent to pollution. The Delhi government of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is not bothered about this, he alleged. Vocal AAP member Bhagwant Mann was seen strongly protesting the remarks. The issue of odd-even had figured at an all-party meeting on Sunday too and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan announced that she has directed parliament officials to arrange additional vehicles for members. Meanwhile, cornered over Uttarakhand in both houses of parliament, BJP member Kirit Somaiya raised the controversial Ishrat Jahan case in the Lok Sabha and slammed the erstwhile Congress-led UPA regime over it. He raised the issue during zero hour and blamed former home ministers from the Congress during gthe UPA regime for what he said was an attempt to play with national security. Speaker Mahajan, however, disallowed him to take names. The BJP member alleged that the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) dispensation had tried to make a martyr out of a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative. He said the UPA government itself earlier described Ishrat Jahan, who was killed by Gujarat Police in an alleged gun battle in 2004, as a terrorist. But in the second affidavit it was changed "with motives", he alleged. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge took pot shots at the government wondering how the issue could be allowed to be raised in parliament as the Ishrat Jahan case like President's Rule in Uttarakhand, is sub-judice. Earlier, Kharge and his party colleagues and members from AAP and Indian Union of Muslim League were not allowed to move an adjournment motion on the Uttarakhand political crisis as the matter is pending before the Supreme Court. --IANS nd/rn/vt A Bharatiya Janata Party member on Monday demanded in the Lok Sabha a ban on comments by judges while hearing a case. BJP member and chief whip of the party Arjun Ram Meghwal raised the issue in the Lok Sabha during zero hour. "It's not good for democracy to make running commentaries against the people sitting in top constitutional posts by judges during hearing of the cases. It should be stopped and parliament should make provisions for it," Meghwal said. Some of the opposition members protested, but Meghwal said: "I am not doing politics over it and no one should do politics over the issue." He said: "Constitution has made provision for separation of powers. Legislative, executive and judiciary have been given separate powers, but in recent days we have seen judges making running commentaries during the hearing. Later this becomes law." "They say as per Article 141 this is law of the land. There should be prohibition on this. What should be the limit of these running commentaries must be decided, and that too through parliament," he said. Meghwal also questioned the powers of the judiciary, saying lawmaking is the prime work of parliament. "Judiciary people say these days that they make the laws. The country is going in the wrong direction. This is not good for democracy," he said. More than a dozen members associated themselves with this demand. The Uttarakhand High Court, while hearing the case over imposition of President's Rule in the state, had made very strong comments, saying that the country's President was not a king who could be infallible. The strong rebuke over imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand came as the bench observed: "Absolute power can spoil anybody's mind and even the President can be wrong, and in that case his decisions can be subjected to evaluation." The bench said the right to judicial evaluation of orders passed by everyone lies with the courts. The court had also criticised the central government during the previous hearing over imposition of President's Rule on March 27, a day before the floor test was due to be carried out in the state assembly. --IANS bns/rn/vt A Border Security Force (BSF) trooper was arrested on Monday for allegedly shooting and killing his wife in north Kashmir's Ganderbal district. Police said Ghulam Hassan Chowhan, a trooper of the 193 Battalion posted in Rajasthan and presently on leave, shot and killed his wife with a rifle following a scuffle between the two. "The trooper has been arrested and a case of murder registered in Kangan police station of Ganderbal district", a senior police officer said here. --IANS sq/ksk/vm Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday condemned heinous killing of Canadian John Ridsdel after he was held hostage for more than six months in the Philippines. "This was an act of cold-blooded murder, and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Justin Trudeau said a statement issued via his office. Trudeau is currently visiting Alberta, Canada, Xinhua reported. Trudeau said the Canadian government will work with the Philippine government to bring those responsible to justice. He also offered deepest condolences to the family and friends of Ridsdel. Ridsdel, 68, was the former chief operating officer of mining company TVI Resource Development Philippines Inc., a subsidiary of Canada's TVI Pacific. He was captured along with three other people, including a Filipino woman, by gunmen in September 2015 from a marina on southern Samal Island. The kidnappers reportedly demanded 300 million pesos (some 6 million U.S dollars) for each of the foreign hostages, who were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungle-clad province where the militants are believed to be holding several hostages. Apart from Ridsdel, three other hostages included Robert Hall, a fellow Canadian, held by the Abu Sayyaf militants, who had issued a ransom deadline that lapsed earlier Monday morning. There's no immediate news about the other three being held hostage. --IANS ahm/ The war on social media between Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan intensified on Monday with the former asking the latter to practise what he preaches on usage of software. Chandy has asked Achuthanandan to explain why he opted for Microsoft when it came to setting up his own website and Facebook page while he has been battling for free software (open source) all these years. In a statement issued here, Chandy said that all along Achuthanandan has been speaking on the use of free software and he wrote to him quite a few times criticising him for opting for proprietary software and not free software. "I have two websites and both are run using the free software, while your (Achuthanandan's) website has been developed using asp.net, the product of Microsoft - which you often term as multinational. The server that's being used to post your write-ups on the website is of Microsoft Windows and the domain has been registered with another multinational - Go Daddy, whereas I use everything which is in India," said Chandy. "I really wished you would have kept out Microsoft, but you have not done it and I wish you tell the people why you don't practise what you preach," the chief minister said. The two have been having a free-for-all on social media. Chandy told reporters in Kozhikode on Monday that if Achuthanandan does not withdraw his statement on "cases registered against ministers in the state cabinet" in two days, he will approach the State Election Commission. Soon after filing his nomination, Achuthanandan, 92, said in Palakkad that Chandy is feeling jittery and hence making all this noise. --IANS sg/pgh/bg China has emerged as one of the top five bilateral donors to Nepal in fiscal 2014-15 in terms of funds disbursed, Nepal's Finance Ministry said on Monday. Chinese aid of $37.94 million was disbursed in the 12-month period which made China the fourth largest bilateral donor behind the UK, the US and Japan, according to the country's Development Cooperation Report 2014-15. Switzerland is the fifth largest donor, reports Xinhua news agency. "China has also provided technical assistance through scholarship, trainings and study tours conducted in China which is not fully reflected in the total volume of assistance," read the report. This figure does not cover the assistance China announced during the global conference of last year for Nepal's post-earthquake reconstruction. --IANS mr/ Republican candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced an agreement to coordinate their efforts to prevent party front-runner Donald Trump from winning the presidential nomination. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for (Ohio) Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico," Jeff Roe, Cruz's campaign manager, said in a statement late Sunday night. The Kasich campaign sent its own statement minutes later, NBC News reported. "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee," Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, wrote. Trump responded by tweeting, "Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. Desperation!" According to sources, Cruz's and Kasich's partnership is a recognition that Trump has a legitimate chance to earn the total 1,237 delegates through the primary process and clinch the nomination. The alliance, which was finalised over the weekend, came after Cruz was all but mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination outright. --IANS ksk Afghan security forces arrested eight Taliban fighters in Jauzjan province on Monday, provincial police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani said. The security forces targetted Taliban hideouts in Manjagak district in the early hours of Monday and captured eight rebels, including their group commander Qari Amin, Turkistani told Xinhua news agency. The security forces did not suffer any casualty, he asserted. Meantime, Taliban outfit in an online statement confirmed the clash in Manjagak district on Sunday and claimed that seven security personnel and two militants were killed and six others, including five security personnel and a Taliban fighter, were injured during the gun battle. --IANS pgh/vt The Congress on Monday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asserting that Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) defaulted on Rs.19,700 crore bank loan under his tenure as the chief minister. "The Gujarat government-owned GSPC had borrowed Rs.19,700 crore from 15 banks to find gas. Our dramatic prime minister had stated in 2005 that GSPC would discover India's biggest gas deposit. Eleven years are gone and no gas was discovered and GSPC has to repay the banks Rs.1,800 crore annually in terms of interest alone when its income is hardly Rs.80 crore. This is a scam of unprecedented proportion," senior Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh told reporters at Parliament House. He added that the government is acting on liquor baron Vijay Mallya who has allegedly siphoned off Rs.9,000 crore as it is under the pressure from the public, media and opposition parties. "Why government is not acting against those who are responsible for the GSPC scam? That is because the issue reaches the door of the prime minister. If Vijay Mallya's fraud is a person's scam, the scam of GSPC is a company's scam where a person is involved till the highest level of it. The scam could not have happened without the knowledge of the then chief minister," Ramesh said. He also asked: "Why Gujarat government had not declared GSPC bankrupt? Or why it was not declared a non-performing asset?" Ramesh accused the government of politicising the National Investigative Agency (NIA). "NIA has become Narendra Investigative Agency. That is the reason why people linked to RSS who were involved in various cases being investigated by NIA have got acquitted in the tenure of this government," Ramesh said. He was replying to a question on NIA's clean chit to Col. Purohit in the Samjhauta Express blast case. --IANS vin/rn/vt The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday announced it will collaborate with Sun Pharma to initiate research for malaria eradication and other innovative programmes related to it. The research body also signed an agreement with the pharmaceutical company and the Madhya Pradesh government to establish a malaria elimination demonstration project titled 'Malaria Free India' under the public-private partnership model. It will support the national framework for the elimination of malaria in India. "It is the first time ICMR is entering into a partnership with India's largest pharma brand in the field of malaria research. Drugs and other disease strategy in India can be tackled by this effort," said ICMR director general Saumya Swaminathan. The malaria elimination demonstration programme will start in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh, which along with five other states contributes 60 percent of malaria cases in India. To demonstrate the feasibility of eliminating malaria and prevention of re-establishment of this disease, ICMR and Sun Pharma will use rapid diagnostic tests and anti-malarial drugs, long-lasting insecticide treated bednets and indoor residual spray. Joint scientific research for development and testing of medical products (including drugs, biosimilars and vaccines) as well as disease control and elimination programmes would be undertaken. Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda said the agreement between ICMR and Sun Pharma reiterates India's commitment to eliminate malaria. "Implementing the malaria demonstration project in a high transmission district of Mandla using proven case management and vector control strategies will be done in collaboration and through the government of Madhya Pradesh," Nadda said. The two organisations will set-up a Joint Working Group to identify and collaborate in disease surveillance and elimination that are relevant to India. "Both will expand cooperation in the area of translational health sciences research with the objective of developing new and improved medicines for infectious and chronic diseases. They will jointly work to strengthen capacity and facilities required for conducting research and trials aimed at testing safety and efficacy of medical products," said a statement from the ministry. --IANS rup/pm/ Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry will hold talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar in New Delhi on Tuesday, on the margins of a global conference on Afghanistan. It will be the first meeting between the two after the January Pathankot terror attack derailed the India-Pakistan bilateral dialogue. A Pakistan High Commission spokesperson here confirmed Chaudhry's day-long trip for the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process meeting. The Pakistan delegation will "also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting". While the spokesperson was silent about talks between Chaudhry and Jaishankar, an informed source said that the the two foreign secretaries were likely to meet. Chaudhry "will have bilateral meetings with other delegations, including Jaishankar", the source said. The meeting will be the first contact between the two countries at the foreign secretary level after the January 2 attack on the IAF base at Pathankot killed seven Indian security personnel. India blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) for the attack. The meeting comes after the two sides recently declared that they were in contact to hold a meeting of their foreign secretaries, who will draw up the modalities for holding a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. The development comes after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit created a flutter when he said here that the peace talks between Islamabad and New Delhi have been "suspended". The Afghanistan conference in Delhi follows the 5th Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Islamabad to attend the conference that adopted the Islamabad declaration for enhanced regional cooperation to countering security threats. India's oil imports from the volatile Middle East region rose to 59 percent in the first 11 months of the last fiscal, reversing a previous decline, parliament was told on Monday. Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told the Lok Sabha in a written reply that India imported 109.09 million tonnes (MT) of crude from 10 countries in the Middle East between April 2015 and February 2016, which was 59.22 percent of the total oil imports during the period. In fiscal 2014-15, India had imported 109.88 MT, or 58 percent, of its total oil need of 189.44 MT, from the Middle East. The increase was mainly on account of the rise in imports from Iraq, which saw the biggest jump from around 24.5 MT in each of the past three years, to 32.97 MT during April-February 2015-16. Pradhan said Saudi Arabia continues to remain India's principal crude oil supplier, selling 37.10 MT in April-February period of the last financial year, which was an increase over the 35 MT supplied in 2014-15. Iran supplied 10.58 MT of oil in the first 11 months of 2015-16, as against 10.95 million tonnes in entire 2014-15. The minister also said Africa overtook South America to become the second biggest source of crude oil supplies during the period in question, supplying 35.69 million tonnes of oil, over the 28.10 MT imported from South America. In 2014-15 Africa had supplied 33.05 MT. Pradhan also informed parliament that India imported nearly all of its 8.16 million tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supplies during the April-February of last fiscal from the Middle East. Qatar was the largest supplier with 3.163 MT, followed by Saudi Arabia (2.24 MT), the UAE (1.49 MT) and Kuwait (848,000 tonnes). --IANS bc/vd A fire broke out in the gynaecology ward on the third floor of the Kalawati Saran Children's Hospital in central Delhi on Monday, damaging an air conditioner, fire officials said. A fire official told IANS: "The fire office received information about the incident at 8.30 a.m. and four fire tenders were sent to the spot immediately." Officials suspect electrical short-circuiting in the air conditioner caused the fire. The fire was doused in 10 minutes. There were no injuries. --IANS aks/rn/vt Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed sadness on the death of social worker Poornimaben Pakvasa, the mother of renowned Odissi classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, on Monday. "Sad to hear about demise of Poornimaben Pakvasa. She was a phenomenal personality who did exceptional work towards educating tribal girls," Modi said in his condolence message. "Poornimaben led a long life, leaving us at the grand age of 103. Recall my interactions with her whenever I visited Saputara. Spoke to late Poornimaben's daughter, Sonal Mansingh and expressed my deepest condolences," he said. --IANS vin/vd Lok Sabha members, including those from the BJP, on Monday strongly demanded a ban on the import of Chinese goods since, they said, substandard materials from the communist country were harming India's small and medium enterprises. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said any blanket ban on imports from a country "is just not possible under the World Trade Organization norms". She, however, assured members that adequate steps are being taken to safeguard the interest of Indian manufacturers and consumers. "We are not soft-pedalling, but we are examining things professionally," she told the members. The issue was raised vociferously by Bhola Singh, a BJP parliamentarian from Begusarai in Bihar, who said: "While we can show a big heart culturally and be accommodating to China, the same cannot be said about the economic and trade relations." He said there was no justification in soft-handling China in commercial relations as the trade deficit between India and China was growing even otherwise. The commerce minister agreed that the trade deficit with China has been growing, but said that the government was taking steps against dumping. "I wish to inform (the house) that where reason and facts show that dumping is happening, safety standards are being violated, we have stopped imports," she said, adding that import of Chinese milk products has been banned after irregularities were detected. "On Chinese imports, we have taken specific actions. Import of parts of mobile phones have been stopped as certain parts used in them were unacceptable. Wind-operated electricity generators imported from China are under investigation," she said. Vocal Biju Janata Dal member Tathagatha Satpathy supported the BJP member and demanded the ban on Chinese imports. "China has smashed India's small and medium enterprises as crooked importers are importing substandard things from China," he said. On the ban on Chinese mobiles, the Biju Janata Dal member offered to go with the minister to Khan market in Delhi and "show her how Chinese mobile handsets are available in abundance". "These are available in Delhi, Bhubaneshwar and all small towns," he said. The minister, however, countered him, saying she never spoke of a blanket ban on mobile phone sets from China. She clarified that only those not meeting international standards and with no proper labelling of international numbers are not being allowed to be imported. "Blanket ban on a country is just not possible under the WTO norms," Sitharaman said. "Culturally we will remain friends with China; economically, we will take adequate steps," she added. --IANS nd/tsb/vt Bangladesh's High Commissioner to India Syed Muazzem Ali on Monday said strong political will was needed to strengthen connectivity to boost relations between India and his country. "We need political will and change of mindset as there are anti-connectivity forces which are constantly raising slogans of insecurity," Ali said at the two-day Economic Cooperation Dialogue in Eastern South Asia here in Meghalaya. "Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar and India -- we are neighbours and we will remain neighbours forever. One can change anything in life but one can't change the geographic nature of a country," he added. The dialogue is being organised by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific and the North Eastern Council (NEC). Delegates from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Vietnam are taking part. Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma stressed the need to improve connectivity infrastructure to boost relations between India and its neighbouring countries. He said the international borders should be looked at as catalysts for growth and prosperity. "The northeast is important for Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and the region is capable of contributing to the growth of the nation. Therefore, there is a need to create border economic zones besides development of inland waterways," Sangma said. "We must create border economic zones. The Inland Waterways Authority of India has proposed to develop at least 20 rivers. Out of this, four are connected to Meghalaya which include two from the India-Bangladesh border to Bangladesh," he said. --IANS rrk/pm/bg There was no let up in the heat wave gripping Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Monday while the met office has issued a warning of severe heat wave conditions for both the states for next two days. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) warned that severe heat wave to heat wave conditions will prevail in all 10 districts of Telangana till April 27. It has made a similar forecast for all four districts of Rayalaseema and six out of nine districts of coastal Andhra Pradesh. The heat wave in both the states reeling under second successive drought has killed dozens of people, triggered drinking water scarcity and migration by farmers and agriculture labourers to towns. "Severe heat wave to heat wave condition most likely to prevail over many parts in the districts of East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore of coastal Andhra Pradesh and in the districts of Anantapur, Chittoor, Kadapa and Kurnool of Rayalaseema," said the meteorological centre here. Khammam, Nalgonda and Ramagundam in Telangana sizzled at 45 degrees Celsius on Monday, while Badrachalam and Hanmkonda recorded 44 degrees. Hyderabad is also in the grip of intense heat wave with mercury rising to 43 degrees Celsius. This is second time this month that the city recorded this temperature, the highest for April in over four decades. Mahabubnagar and Medak also recorded maximum temperature of 43 degrees. Streets were deserted in many parts of the state, especially between 12 noon and 5 p.m. as hot winds forced people to remain indoors. The state's disaster management department remained silent on the number of deaths due to heat wave after confirming 66 deaths as on April 2 even as the unofficial reports say the harsh weather has claimed over 200 lives so far this season. In the drought-hit Telangana, the children and the elderly were the worst-affected by the heat wave. Dozens of cases of sunstroke are being referred to government-run hospitals every day. The daily wage labourers, vendors, beggars and others living on the streets were the worst-hit. Andhra Pradesh too had confirmed 45 deaths in the first week of April but since then the officials have not revised the toll. The opposition parties in both the states claim that the governments are suppressing the deaths as they have to pay compensation to the families of the victims. According to the met office, temple town of Tirupati in Rayalaseema and Jangamaheswarapuram in coastal Andhra recorded maximum temperature of 46 degree Celsius during last 24 hours. Nellore and Nandyal too sizzled at 45. It was 44 in Nandigama, Kadapa and Kurnool. --IANS ms/vd The odd-even traffic scheme hit lawmakers and also rocked parliament on Monday, the first day of budget session part II, with some forgetful members violating the scheme while some MPs car-pooled to arrive at Parliament House. One MP cycled it, while AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi walked to parliament. The issue also rocked the Lok Sabha with both the road rationing scheme and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal coming in for criticism. This created a ruckus for a while forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to adjourn the house till lunch. The issue reverberated in the Rajya Sabha too, as members demanded exemption from the odd-even scheme, stating that it was preventing them from executing their duties as members of parliament. Bollywood actor Paresh Rawal, Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, BJP MPs Chaudhry Babulal, Udit Raj. B.C. Khanduri and Prahlad Patel were among others who violated the scheme. Rawal realised his mistake when he reached parliament by travelling in his personal car with an even-number plate, and was immediately questioned by reporters. "Yaar, galti ho gayi," he said. Later on, Rawal apologised to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for violating the scheme and said it was a "serious blunder". "Made a serious blunder... Sorry to Arvind ji and Delhiites," the BJP MP tweeted. Maurya, who was recently appointed BJP chief of Uttar Pradesh, said: "I am having one car. Will take care (tomorrow) Tuesday." However, some MPs with even number car plates travelled to parliament either by car pooling or by some other mode. BJP Rajya Sabha member Anil Dave took a bicycle to reach parliament while Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Bhagwant Mann car-pooled with some MPs. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi walked to parliament, and raised questions on the traffic scheme. "We are not from Delhi and come here only when parliament is in session. So, they should think over this. However, they claimed to have made some arrangements like bus but I didn't find anything," Owaisi told reporters. The Delhi government had announced a special DTC bus service for MPs to reach parliament, but there were very few takers. Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Pappu Yadav, who has been critical of the scheme, raised the issue during zero hour, stating that the measure has only added to people's problems. The traffic rationing has only sought to help CNG companies and bus manufacturers, alleged the Madhepura MP from Bihar. Yadav also alleged that the new traffic system was launched by the Delhi government under Arvind Kejriwal only for achieving "cheap popularity". The issue was also raised in the Rajya Sabha with Samajwadi Party members criticising it. The issue of odd-even had figured at an all-party meeting on Sunday too. The issue was raised in the Rajya Sabha by Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agrawal. "Being an MP, it is our special privilege that we participate in the proceedings of the house," Agrawal said. "We get only one security pass, which is for one car. They (Delhi government) did not exempt MPs (from the odd-even) on purpose to insult them," he alleged. Congress leader Anand Sharma spoke up in support of the MP and said: "Parliament has reconvened today. Except for 10 members, all parliament members come from outside Delhi. Vehicles without security label cannot enter, and the parliament bus is not able to ferry all MPs. It (odd-even) is coming in the way of discharging their duties," Sharma added. "The house should decide when the house is sitting on how do members come? This issue needs to be addressed," said Sharma. Janata Dal-United (JD-U) member K.C. Tyagi said while the intention of the Delhi government is good, "they should exempt MPs". Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien agreed and said: "It is the government's duty to facilitate discharge of duties of parliament. This has become an inconvenience for MPs in discharging their duty." The deputy chairman also observed that it delayed some meetings. "I have been told that one committee was delayed for more than one hour because MPs could not reach," he said. "Why not the parliamentary affairs ministry take up the matter with the Delhi government or consider the suggestion that MPs should be exempt," Kurien said. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad also said he had received complaints from MPs and suggested that MPs may be exempted from the odd-even scheme when parliament is in session. To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said: "We will talk to the appropriate authorities; and we would not want any obstruction for the MPs in executing their duties." --IANS bns-ao/rn/bg Pandemonium and slogan shouting against the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand marred the first day of the Lok Sabha on Monday as opposition members flayed the government for its "autocratic" decision. As soon as the obituary references were made, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge demanded adjournment of the house and suspension of Question Hour to discuss the issue. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said she was disallowing his demand but he could raise the issue during zero hour. Several opposition members, including Sushmita Dev and Abhijit Mukherjee of Congress and AAP's Bhagwant Mann, rushed towards the speaker raising anti-government slogans. They massed there shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted". When the Speaker allowed the question hour to go on, some members squatted at the spot. Questions related to as many as five ministries including petroleum, labour, tourism and commerce were taken up. Amid slogans like "Modi sarkar hosh mein aao" (Government must come to senses) and "Shame, shame", Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government will soon launch a Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Scheme aimed to providing five crore cooking gas connections to rural areas, especially in the name of women for families below poverty line. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said contrary to demands from members including from Bhola Singh (BJP) and Tatagatha Sathpathy (BJD), the government cannot put a blanket ban on import of Chinese goods. "Blanket ban of a country is not possible under WTO norms," she said. After question hour, Mallikarjun Kharge charged the government with "strangulating democracy" by dismissing elected governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. "A series of unconstitutional steps were being taken by this government," he alleged. Several BJP members, including R.K. Singh, Sanjay Jaiswal and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, were on their feet, saying that matters in court cannot be taken up in the house. Making a brief intervention, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the crises in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand were not the creation of the BJP or NDA. "All these happened due to internal problems in their own party (Congress)," he said, and welcomed the Speaker's ruling that the subjudice matters cannot be discussed in the house. "Even otherwise the house will take up for discussion on the proclamation of President's Rule. Members can participate in the debate then," he said. The proclamation of President's Rule needs to be approved within two months by parliament. --IANS nd-bns/mr Imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand dominated both the houses of parliament on Monday with the Congress raising the matter in the Lok Sabha and creating ruckus in Rajya Sabha, where no meaningful business could be conducted amid uproar. The Congress members created almost identical scenes in both houses over the issue as they raised slogans against the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand. Minutes before parliament met on the first day of the second half of the budget session, Prime Minister Modi expressed the hope that parliament would be able to transact business smoothly during the session. "In the last session also, we transacted important business. Most of them were on financial issues. The satisfaction about it reflected on the face of our members. I hope similarly business will be transacted smoothly this time as well. We hope all (parties) will cooperate in making the session a success," Modi told reporters in the Parliament House premises. The Congress members did exactly the opposite as they trooped near the speaker's podium in the Lok Sabha shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted". The leader of the Congress party in the house, Mallikarjun Kharge, had even given notice of adjournment of Question Hour to discuss the issue. Aam Aadmi Party's Bhangwant Mann had also given notice of adjournment on the issue of farmers' suicides in Punjab and the drought situation in Maharashtra. The Lok Sabha, however, was able to pass the Sikh Gurdwara (Amendment) Bill, 2016, with the house unanimously adopting the measure -- but only after a heated debate involving members of the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Congress and the AAP. According to the amending bill, every Sikh above the age of 21 and registered as a voter will be entitled to vote in Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and various gurdwara management committee elections. However, no person who trims or shaves his beard or hair will be entitled to vote in these elections. The bill, in this manner, seeks to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, which regulates the administration of gurdwaras in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on March 15, the bill was passed by the upper house on the next day. In the Lok Sabha, members, including those from the BJP, also demanded a ban on the import of Chinese goods since, they said, substandard materials from the communist country were harming India's small and medium enterprises. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said any blanket ban on imports from a country "is just not possible under the World Trade Organization norms". She, however, assured members that adequate steps are being taken to safeguard the interest of Indian manufacturers and consumers. The Rajya Sabha was disrupted thrice before being adjourned for the day without it being able to conduct any business. The Congress members raised the Uttarakhand issue vociferously, saying "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi" (Prime Minister Narendra Modi your dictatorship will not be tolerated). It had already witnessed three adjournments before it met at 3 p.m., but the Congress members assembled in front of the chair soon after and started raising the issue once again. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi tried to defuse the tension urging them that there were a number of important bills that were to be passed, hence the house be allowed to work. On this, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the Congress too wants to pass the bills but it could not be done as the house was not in order. Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien tried to pacify the agitating members but they ignored his pleas and went on shouting slogans against the Modi government. Kurien, realizing the mood of the opposition, adjourned the house for the day. Azad blamed the central government for creating an "atmosphere" just before the parliament session that would lead to disruptions. "We as the opposition want the house to function and legislation passed. But in the recent past, we have seen how an atmosphere was created to stall the proceedings of the house. For the first time in the history of Indian politics, President's Rule was imposed in Uttarakhand without following any rules and regulation. We demand a discussion on this," said Azad. "We are witnessing attempts from the ruling party to hinder the functioning of parliament. The central government provokes the opposition and induces disruptions," he added. Uttarakhand was plunged into political uncertainty after nine Congress legislators ganged up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Later, central rule was imposed in the hill state. In a major blow to the central government, the Uttarakhand High Court set aside President's Rule -- but a day later, the Supreme Court stayed the HC order. The matter in pending in the apex court. Meanwhile, the Congress said it will not compromise on the Uttarakhand issue and will not let parliament function till the issue was settled. --IANS sk/rn/dg Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif, who made her Cannes International Film Festival red carpet debut last year as the ambassador of cosmetic brand L'Oreal Paris, will be skipping the prestigious film gala this year due to "prior commitments". Disappointed at having to give a miss to the film fest that acts as a "fabulous platform" for an artist, Katrina says it has been "an enormously busy year for me so far" that is keeping her on her toes, but she hopes to be part of the film gala next year. "Cannes is a fabulous platform for any artist to attend, and I really enjoyed the experience last year. While the brand invited me to attend Cannes again this year, I have had to regretfully decline the opportunity due to prior commitments," Katrina said in a statement. The actress is busy with Anurag Basu's upcoming comedy-drama "Jagga Jasoos", also starring Ranbir Kapoor. She also has "Baar Baar Dekho" lined up. The actress added: "This has been an enormously busy year for me so far, and I am working on some amazing projects which are really keeping me on my toes. Nevertheless, although I will be giving Cannes a miss this year, I wish the lovely L'Oreal Paris ambassadors who will proudly represent India the very best and hope to attend next year." Katrina was praised by one and all for her sartorial choices and confident stride on the red carpet last year. Raagjeet Garg, general manager, L'Oreal Paris India said they respect her "dedication to her work and are going to miss her magic at Cannes 2016". "Katrina had a glorious debut at Cannes last year and was one of the most spoken about L'Oreal Paris ambassadors at the platform. Unfortunately she's unable to attend the event this year due to some prior commitments. We absolutely respect her dedication to her work and are going to miss her magic at Cannes 2016," Garg said. The Cannes International Film Festival is scheduled to be held from May 11-May 21, 2016. Indian stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sonam Kapoor will be representing the brand at the event this year. Both the actresses have always managed to dazzle their fans at the French Riviera and this year they will sport looks created using the L'Oreal Paris Infallible Cannes Collection. --IANS sug/nn/dg Two people including a pro-LGBT editor of a magazine were hacked to death by unidentified assailants here on Monday, the media reported. A police official said at least five machete-wielding assailants forcibly entered the house of Zulhas Mannan who used to edit "Rupban" -- Bangladesh's first magazine for the LGBT community -- in Dhaka's Kalabagan area, Xinhua news agency reported. The assailants stabbed the people there indiscriminately, leaving two including Mannan and his friend Tanoy dead and two including a security guard critically injured, said the official who did not wish to be named. He said the assailants managed to flee the scene immediately on motorcycles. The motive behind the attack could not be immediately known. Monday's attacks occurred days after suspected extremists killed a university professor in Bangladesh's Rajshahi district. Rajshahi University's English department professor A.F.M. Rezaul Karim Siddiquee was hacked to death on Saturday morning by unidentified assailants. A number of liberal writers, bloggers and publishers in Bangladesh have been killed or seriously injured in attacks by Islamist extremists since 2013. --IANS pgh/bg The Ethics Committee of the Rajya Sabha on Monday recommended the expulsion of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, wanted for defaulting bank loans to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore, from the upper house of parliament. He has been given a week to reply. The Rajya Sabha Ethics Committee held a meeting to discuss the issue. One of the members, Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal-United said, "It was decided that his membership will be revoked. It was unanimously agreed by all the members." The government revoked Mallya's passport on Sunday after he failed to turn up for a probe into a Rs 9,000 crore default of loans from Indian banks. This has set in the motion the process for the billionaire's possible deportation from Britain, where he is staying at present. The Ethics Committee of the Rajya Sabha on Monday unanimously agreed that liquor baron Vijay Mallya, wanted for defaulting bank loans to the tune of Rs.9,000 crore, should be expelled from the upper house of parliament. Mallya, an independent member of the house from Karnataka, has, however, been given a week's time, and a final decision will be taken when the committee meets on May 3. Rajya Sabha Ethics Committee chairman Karan Singh said that they will send Mallya a mail, and he will be given a week's time to respond. "It has been decided that he should be expelled. All members agreed to it," Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leader Sharad Yadav told reporters after a meeting of the committee, where Mallya's case was discussed. Karan Singh said, "We reviewed the whole situation. We will give him a week's time so that he can say what he has to say. The committee will meet again on May 3." Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury spoke on similar lines. "The opinion of members is very clear, he should be expelled," he said. According to sources, in the discussions the committee was made aware that for around 10 years as a member of the Rajya Sabha, Mallya had been declaring his assets and liabilities as "nil". "This is a blatant lie. He lied to the house and action will be taken," a committee member said. In the meeting, the issue of revocation of Mallya's passport was also taken up. "It was raised in the meeting, and some members felt it only meant giving him a free run. The UK government may not agree on deporting him, and he can even get a British citizenship," sources said. The government revoked Mallya's passport on Sunday after he failed to turn up for a probe into a Rs.9,431 crore default of loans from Indian banks. This has set in the motion the process for the billionaire's possible deportation from Britain, where he is staying at present. Rajya Sabha members on Monday demanded exemption from the odd-even scheme, stating that it is preventing them from executing their duties as members of parliament. The issue was raised by Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agrawal when the house met post-lunch. "Being an MP, it is our special privilege that we participate in the proceedings of the house," Agrawal said. "We get only one security pass, which is for one car. They (Delhi government) did not exempt the MPs (from the odd-even) on purpose to insult them," he alleged. Agrawal also said that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and member of the upper house Vijay Goel got a challan when he protested and had to pay a fine of Rs.3,500 instead of Rs.2,000. "I don't know why the central government is keeping quiet," he added. Congress leader Anand Sharma spoke up in support of the MP and said: "Parliament has reconvened today. Except for 10 members, all parliament members come from outside Delhi. Vehicles without security label cannot enter and parliament bus is not able to ferry all MPs. It (odd-even) is coming in the way of discharging their duties," Sharma said. "The house should decide when the house is sitting on how do members come? This issue needs to be addressed," said Sharma. Janata Dal-United (JD-U) member K.C. Tyagi said while the intention of the Delhi government is good, "they should exempt MPs". Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien agreed and said: "It is the government's duty to facilitate discharge of duties of parliament. This has become an inconvenience for MPs in discharging their duty." The deputy chairman also observed that it delayed some meetings. "I have been told that one committee was delayed for more than one hour because MPs could not reach," he said. "Why not the parliamentary affairs ministry take up the matter with the Delhi government or consider the suggestion that MPs should be exempted," Kurien said. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad also said he had received complaints from MPs and suggested that MPs may be exempted from the odd-even scheme when parliament is in session. To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said: "We will talk to the appropriate authorities; and we would not want any obstruction for the MPs in executing their duties." --IANS ao/rn/vt Pakistan National Assembly's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs will be briefed on Monday on "activities of India's intelligence agency in Pakistan", a media report said. Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz is likely to brief the committee, headed by Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, on the issue during an in-camera meeting, Dawn reported. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had briefed the Senate Defence Committee earlier this month and Senate last week on the issue, the daily said. The Inter-Services Public Relations released on March 29 a "confessional video statement of the arrested Indian spy" in which he had admitted to fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi. In his confessional statement, the RAW agent had stated that his mission in Pakistan was to hold meetings with Baloch insurgents and carry out subversive activities, the daily added. With World Dance Day around the corner, there is nothing more fitting than conveying the message of unity and harmony. Reflecting this, eminent Kathak danseuse Shovana Narayan will host "Vividh Mat: Perceptions", a two-day seminar-cum-dance festival, starting from Tuesday at the Rabindra Bhawan. Presented in collaboration with the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the event will see a combination of well- known dancers and panelists sharing the dais. "As the name implies, Vividh-Mat" will explore the range of perceptions on two topics "Dharma -Adharma" and "Can the Twain Meet". Both the topics are relevant in current social context and it stresses the need for ideas and people to co exist," Narayan, a recepient of the Padma Shri India's fourth highest civilian honour, told IANS. The debate on Dharma and Adharma will be unfolded by performance by Shovana Narayan and Shruti Gupta Chandra on Karna-Kunti Samvad, an intriguing story in Mahabharata. Later, the topic will be discussed by panelists including dancer Sonal Mansingh, economist Bibek Debroy and senior journalist Saeed Naqvi. The second day will see an evocative piece "Yudhishthir and Draupadi" by Shovana Narayan and theatre actor-director Sunit Tandon. "It is based on a poem of Pavan K. Varma. The performance looks at both viewpoints of Yudhishthir and Draupadi. Both dance sequences give a fourth perspective on the theme of the evening's seminar," Narayan said. A discussion will followed on the topic "Can the Twain Meet" by historian Pushpesh Pant and poet Keki Daruwala, among others. Narayan, who was initiated into Kathak at the age of four, said that the dance form has come a long way from the early days. "It is moving with the times and lot of reconstructions has happened over the years. It was even mentioned in the Mahabharata in Adi Parv and Anushashnik Parv," said Narayan, a disciple of Kathak maestro Birju Maharaj. Social themes have always been the central theme of her work. Be it "Dishantar" (environment issues) or "Shunyata" (communal harmony) and "Jehanara" (women's empowerment), Narayan always used the medium to fight social evils. "I was brought up in a family where lot of literature and social issues were discussed. It has always been the thread of my work," said the danseuse, who has also used soliloquy, opera and films in Kathak, her all-time passion. However, the veteran dancer does not believe in fusion dance forms. "What we are seeing in a fusion is a harmonious collage of two art forms. It's drawing upon the similarities of two art forms such as Spanish Flamenco and Kathak or Kathakali and Flamenco," she reasoned. A retired bureaucrat, the dancer also believed that though she spent whole life for dance, she has lot more to do. And passion keeps her going. "Vividh Mat: Perceptions", on April 26-27, at Meghdoot Theatre III, Rabindra Bhawan --IANS pn/vm The Sikh Gurdwara (Amendment) Bill, 2016, on Monday secured parliamentary approval with the Lok Sabha unanimously adopting the measure -- but only after a heated debate involving members of the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Congress and the AAP. Introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Home Affairs Minister Rajnath Singh on March 15, the bill was passed by the upper house on the next day. According to the amending bill, every Sikh above the age of 21 years and registered as a voter will be entitled to vote in Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and various gurdwara management committee elections. However, no person who trims or shaves his beard or hair will be entitled to vote in these elections. The bill, in this manner, seeks to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, which regulates the administration of gurdwaras in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 creates an exception for Sehajdhari Sikhs who trim or shave their beard or hair, and allows them to vote. The amending Bill removes this exception, disentitling Sehajdhari Sikhs from voting if they carry out these activities. During the discussion in the Lok Sabha on the legislation, acrimonious scenes were repeatedly witnessed as Akali Dal members, led by union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, exchanged heated words with Congress and AAP members. "This is a bill about the Sikhs... I don't understand why non-Sikhs should take part in it and pass judgement on who is a Sikh or not," she said. The minister was repeatedly countered by Congress MPs who said the Akali leadership in Punjab had maintained a "monopolistic" control over the SGPC, also known as the mini-parliament of the Sikhs. Congress member Santokh Singh Chaudhary alleged that the bill will deprive over 70 lakh people, who also believe in Sikhism, from participating in the management of the influential SGPC. He was supported by Aam Aadmi Party parliamentarian Bhagwant Mann, who entered into an argument with the union food processing minister more than once. Mann said he vehemently opposed the bill as it will only tighten Akali Dal's as also the Badal family's control over the Sikh body. He was also seen arguing with another Akali Dal member Prem Singh Chandumajra. At one point of time, Biju Janata Dal member Tathagatha Satpathy stood up in support of the bill but hastened to add that any attempt being made to create exclusivity and divisions among communities was unwarranted. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy tried to use his persuasive skills more than once to cool the tempers in the house. As BJD member Satpathy described Harsimrat Kaur Badal as a valiant debater and said "I am surrendering before her", the house erupted in laughter. Responding to the concerns of the members, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the bill was necessitated following a Punjab and Haryana High Court directive. "There should not be any doubt about the contribution made by the Sikh community for the country and to add to the richness of Indian culture," Rajnath Singh said and requested the members to pass the bill unanimously as it concerned the welfare of a valiant community. "Even in the Rajya Sabha, the bill was passed unanimously," the home minister said. The amending measure is in light of a government notification of October 8, 2003 which had sought to disentitle the Sehajdhari Sikhs from voting in the SGPC and management committee elections. However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had struck down the notification as invalid in 2011. It had noted that the legislature must amend the law, if Sehajdhari Sikhs are to be disentitled from voting. Sehajdharis are those who follow Sikhism but without being Amritdharis, or baptised. They do not adopt the baptismal vows of the Khalsa panth initiated by Guru Gobind Singh. They might be born in Hindu, Sikh or other families but follow the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. --IANS nd/tb/dg Republican and Democratic party front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are poised for victory with double-digit leads over their primary rivals in the upcoming Pennsylvania state primaries, polls showed. According to the joint poll conducted by NBC News, Wall Street Journal and Marist College on Sunday, among Republicans likely to cast their ballots on Tuesday, Trump has the support of 45%, an 18-point advantage over rivals Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who took 27%, and Ohio Governor John Kasich at 24%. Seventy-one delegates are at stake in the state's primary, though just 17 are awarded state-wide on a winner-take-all basis. The remaining 54 are unbound delegates, Politico reported citing the poll. Trump grabbed the backing of 57% of people who said they strongly support a candidate, leading among 52% of men and 52% of those who do not hold a college degree. Meanwhile, just 37% of college graduates said they supported him, along with 39% of women and 40% of white evangelicals, though he leads Cruz by four points among that group. On the Democratic side, Clinton leads rival Bernie Sanders 55% to 40%, in line with a 16-point advantage over the last two weeks in the rolling Real Clear polling average in the state, which awards its 189 pledged delegates on a proportional basis. Clinton drew support from 67% of likely African-American voters, while just 29% said they would vote for the Vermont senator. The former secretary of state holds significant leads among voters older than 45 (66% to 28%), women (62% to 34%), those identifying as Democrats (60% to 36%) and those who are strongly behind a candidate (59% to 41%). However, Sanders leads all potential Republican challengers by wider margins, ahead of Trump by 20 points (57% to 37%), Cruz by 22 points (58% to 36%) and Kasich by six points (50% to 44%). The poll was conducted from April 18-20, surveying 2,606 registered voters in the state. A police sub-inspector was on Monday killed in an exchange of fire with criminals in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh, police said. A police team, led by sub-inspector Akhtar Khan, was sent to the Dadri area on a tip-off that three criminals were present there, Dadri Station House Officer (SHO) Om Singh Yadav told IANS. There was an exchange of gun fire between the three criminals, Tota, Furkaan and Javed, and the police team, in which Khan was killed, Yadav said. The criminals then fled the scene. They are yet to be arrested. Special teams have been formed to nab the three and entry and exit points of the region have been sealed, he said. --IANS md/kb/vt Two F-22 Raptor fighters of the US Air Force arrived on Monday at an air base near the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania. The first presence in Romania of these fifth-generation fighter aircraft, within Operation Atlantic Resolve, comes as part of NATO' s collective security and regional stability, local media reported. "F-22 planes will be here only today, but will remain in Europe for a few months," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the U.S. 3rd Air Force commander, said during a press conference at the air base. The presence of F-22 fighters in Romania shows the level of strategic partnership reached between the two countries, as well as the measures established to raise operational capacity of NATO air forces, said General Nicolae Ciuca, Romania's Chief of General Staff. --IANS ahm/ Singing of kirtans at an Ivy League university has drawn protests from a multi-racial group of students there. Unlike in the protests against yoga, the demonstrators this time were not religious fundamentalists, but students spewing leftist rhetoric at Brown University. They protested a non-Indian white woman singing kirtans, asserting that only those born Hindu should sing the religious hymns, according to media reports. The performance by Carrie Grossman, who has adopted the Hindu name Dayashila, was disrupted Thursday by protesters claiming that by singing kirtans she as a white person was wrongly "appropriating" elements of Hinduism. They used radical leftist terminology like white privilege, structural change and "radical love" to oppose what they called "cultural appropriation" by a white person. "Cultural appropriation," according to those who protest it, happens when people use or performs elements from a culture not their own. Many in the audience confronted the protesters, who eventually left the event and staged a sit-in outside. "Several audience members turned around and asked them to be quiet," The Brown Daily Herald reported. "In addition, some of the audience members stood up and moved to where the protesters were sitting to ask them to leave." Most of those in a picture published by Herald of the demonstration against the kirtan performance were white and African American, with few Indians. Rajan Zed, the president of US-based Universal Society of Hinduism, called the protests at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island state, "sad and inappropriate". "Color of the person should not matter in devotional singing and anybody should be able pay respectful homage to Hindu deities through kirtan or other forms," Zed said. "Kirtan offered means to connect to the heart, to the divinity that lies within." He asked Brown University president Christina H. Paxson and chancellor Thomas J. Tisch to "make sure that such unreasonable interruptions did not happen at the Hindu events on the campus in the future" and to hold a formal inquiry into the disruption. The Herald reported that Grossman, a Brown University alumna, told her audience that she discovered kirtans during a visit to India and "found (chanting) very powerful and very healing". Describing her mission to spread the singing of kirtans, Grossman writes on her website about her experience in the third person: "At the altar of her instrument she called out to the divine and unburdened her heart. This process was profoundly healing and, the more she did it, the more she felt drawn to share her sound with the world." She has produced a recording, "Soma Bandhu," that features hymns like "Om Nama Shivaya," "Jai Ma" and "Sarve Bhavantu." Although the protesters used radical leftist rhetoric, their agenda appears to be a form of selective opposition to conversions or religious interactions - in effect, banning those not born Hindu from singing Hindu religious hymns or participating in rituals. Christian fundamentalist also oppose non-Hindus participating in Hindu cultural or health practices. From New York to California, some Christians have protested yoga practice in schools. Most recently fundamentalists in Georgia protested against the namaste greeting during yoga. However, similar protests are not held by those claiming to be against "cultural-appropriation" when non-Christians sing Christian hymns or participate in Christian observances. Wearing bindi or pottu by non-Indian women have also been crticised as "cultural appropriation." In the face of protests, the Contemplative Studies Departmental Undergraduate Group, which organised the kirtan, issued an apology saying that they "humbly acknowledge that those intentions (in arranging the event) do not preclude harm and hurt that we may have inflicted," the Herald reported. Ironically, Anchal Saraf, one of the protesters with an Indian name quoted in the media, was a signatory to a petition demanding freedom of expression at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Freedom of expression in US universities is under threat not from the government, but from students and faculty. At elite universities like Yale, students have in the past year explicitly protested freedom of expression on campuses and tried to silence professors and students not conforming to their version of liberal or radical views. Even media faculties are not immune despite freedom of expression being at the core of journalism. Last year, a journalism teacher at University of Missouri, who supported an African American student protest, instigated an attack on an Asian American photographer trying to record it in a public place. --IANS al/rn Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh on Monday held a meeting with Bahamas Foreign Minister Fredrick A. Mitchell. "Deepening the Caribbean connection. MOS @Gen_VKSingh meets with Fredrick A. Mitchell, Foreign Minister of Bahamas," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted along with pictures of the two leaders. Mitchell, who arrived here on Saturday on a five-day visit to India, is scheduled to attend a business meeting with the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) later on Monday. On Tuesday, he will meet Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi besides attending two other business meetings with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and the PHD Chamber of Commerce. --IANS ab/dg The Congress on Monday said it will not compromise on the Uttarakhand issue and will not let parliament function till the issue was settled. The issue of imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand is presently being heard by the Supreme Court which, on April 22, stayed till April 27 the Uttarakhand High Court order quashing President's Rule in the hill state. "Uttarakhand is the most important issue. There will be no compromise on it," Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said. "There is no prospect of parliament functioning till the Uttarakhand issue is settled," the Congress leader said. He said the Narendra Modi-led government did not want parliament to function. The parliament session began on Monday and will continue till May 13. Pandemonium and slogan shouting against the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand marred the first day of the Lok Sabha on Monday as the opposition members flayed the government for its "autocratic" decision. Even the Rajya Sabha was repeatedly disrupted as protesting Congress members raised slogans against the Narendra Modi government. --IANS ao/tsb/bg After the lawyers' demand for exemption, it was the turn of parliamentarians to seek exemption from the odd-even rule to ply passenger vehicles imposed by the Aam Aadmi Party-led government in Delhi. While Samajwadi Party's Naresh Agarwal complained that a Standing Committee meeting of MPs had got delayed last week because some participants were stranded at the airport, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad complained MPs were being greatly inconvenienced. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma demanded exemption from the rule for MPs while Parliament was in session. It is quite another matter that special Delhi Transport Corporation buses that had been pressed into service for the MPs on Monday found few takers. In a small amphibious training exercise called Jal Prahar that terminated last week, India's military paid token obeisance to the notion of tri-service command, which serious, warfighting militaries have embraced decades ago. Jal Prahar was conducted by the Andaman & Nicobar Command (ANC), India's only tri-service command - which means it owns assets from the army, navy and air force and is commanded, in turn, by general officers from all three services. It involved a hundred soldiers, a handful of amphibious assault craft mostly borrowed from the navy's eastern command, and three Jaguar strike aircraft that the Indian Air Force (IAF) kindly made available. The ANC, which military reformers established in 2001 in the forlorn hope that this might catalyse similar tri-service structures across the military, has failed spectacularly in achieving this aim. There can be no two opinions that the sight of the Chief Justice of India nearly breaking down in public when discussing the problems faced in effectively delivering justice should serve as a wake-up call for the government and for the public. Increasing the effectiveness of the judicial branch of government is essential. The settling of disputes is central to the duties of a well-governed state and to the prospects of economic growth; Indias sclerotic and dilatory judicial process is not just unjust, but a severe impediment to any other efforts to raise India out of poverty. There are over 30 million pending cases in Indian courts, and settling them all could, at the current rate, take several decades. Clearly this is unsustainable. Kirit Somaiya ko gussa kyon aata hai? That must be a question in the minds of some creative entrepreneurs, advertising copywriters and rival party politicians these days. For Somaiya, the activist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarian, can take you to the cleaners before you understand what hit you. A First Information Report (FIR) here, a public interest suit there and some television interviews, brandishing incriminating documents, garnished with spicy language and delivered with a lisp, the alleged scamsters are consigned to their doom. And, then there is a Facebook page with close to a half a million likes and a Twitter handle with 77,600 followers. Read more from our special coverage on "KIRIT SOMAIYA" BJP MP asks RBI to probe all Mallya transactions Last week, Punebased builder Maple Shelters came in the cross hairs of the Somaiya machine. Its crime: Issuing advertisements of low-cost houses it was marketing and using photographs of the prime minister and the chief minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis. It allegedly misrepresented itself as a government scheme by using the term Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in the advertisement. Unlike the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which registered a protest in its own way, Somaiya got the PMAY mission director to issue an order for enquiry (The order even mentions that Somaiya is on the case!!!). He then got an FIR registered in Pune. Not content, he told PTI that proceedings to arrest the promoter were on. The rattled builder wrote a long letter to Somaiya, apologising profusely to the prime minister, chief minister and everyone below, and trying to explain how there has been a wrong perception about the ad. It also explained how the advertisement had a disclaimer which clearly said that it was not a government scheme. It is not clear if Somaiya is convinced. In another recent case, Somaiya did not have to think much before declaring the offer by Freedom 251 mobile phones a ponzi scheme. The cell phone makers are now contesting a suit filed by Somaiya. Earlier, he also trained his guns on the Security and Exchange Board of India, claiming over 200 ponzi schemes were still in operation. A chartered accountant himself, Somaiya has been taking up investor and consumer issues for several years. He has a dedicated team to go into these issues, dig out the official filings and use the Right to Information Act where necessary. He has also built an elaborate network of journalists and an information technology-enabled feedback system, that keeps him abreast of potential scams. Yet, the 62-year-old has not in the past had such successes as he has been enjoying in the past few months. He has arrived at a sweet spot, with his party firmly in the saddle both at the Centre and in Maharashtra, where he hails from. Government officials, regulators and police now ignore him at their peril. Often, they are only too happy to oblige. Last week, he tweeted a photograph with two cops smiling from inside the Shivaji Nagar police station in Pune. But, rivals are fuming. In a legal notice, Nationalist Co ngres Party leader Nawab Malik accused Somaiya of wanton allegations, without verification of facts, in the matter of the Anna Bhau Sathe Corporation. There was not an iota of truth, the notice claimed, and demanded an unconditional apology in two days. Somaiya stuck to his guns and reiterated his allegations. In similar manner, Shri Chhagan Bhujbal had also given me Defamation Notice & threatened to take me to court..&.. now all misdeeds of Bhujbals exposed by me proved correct. Rivals might attribute the string of recent successes to his political affiliation, rather than thoroughness of his research or strength of documentation. It is important for Somaiya to build a Chinese wall between his two important roles, to bolster his credibility in both areas. Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app. Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006. Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more. Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them. 26 years of website archives. The legal battle over "surge pricing" by Uber and Ola in the Delhi High Court presents the classic regulatory dilemma over the conflict between the illegal and the just. On the one hand, the very legal basis of providing taxi services on demand by terming the platform as a mere aggregator is suspect. On the other, the provision of the service is so widely prevalent that a legal dispute has arisen over the terms on which it is provided. Two long-running controversies that are likely to disrupt the Budget session of Parliament, which convened on Monday after a recess, highlight a troubling element about the ethics of governance in India, irrespective of the party in power. These concern the killing of three men and a woman by security forces in Gujarat in 2004, and the 2008 bomb blasts in Malegaon allegedly organised by Hindu terrorists, which killed 37 people and injured 125. There are murky claims and counter-claims being made in both cases involving interference by government functionaries in a manner that scarcely raises confidence about the veracity and integrity of the investigative and legal processes. Recently, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), proposed bringing unregulated pension funds under its ambit. This largely refers to superannuation funds that are offered by employers and managed by private trusts. These funds are legal because they follow Income Tax Laws with regard to formation of the trust and investments. But while rules are in place, often there is not enough transparency about how they operate and the returns generated, say experts. Earlier manufacturing companies used to offer superannuation benefits to their employees. Some multi-national companies too used to offer superannuation benefits. But it became unpopular when Fringe Benefit Tax was introduced. Today, there are very few superannuation trusts, says Anil Lobo, India Business Leader (Retirement), Mercer. Superannuation benefits are of two kinds: defined contribution or super defined benefit. In case of defined contribution, up to 15% of the employees basic salary goes towards superannuation benefits. The tax benefit was capped at Rs 1 lakh. In case of super defined benefit, the superannuation amount was calculated based on the last drawn salary of the employee. Superannuation funds can be also be either self-managed trusts or trusts managed by life insurance companies. If they are insurance managed trusts, then the insurance company gives a consolidated statement to the employer, but may not provide it to individual employees. While in case of self-managed trusts, trustees are supposed to give annual statement to employees, it is unlikely that this happens at the ground level, admits Lobo. Ideally, superannuation is part of the Cost To Company and the employer should disclose how much money goes to the fund, returns generated, etc. And since employees can also contribute an additional amount to the fund, they must ask for details of the investments, he said. It is not a big concern if the is not regulated by one authority, since these funds are governed by income tax rules. But logically they must be regulated by PFRDA since it is the pension regulator, he adds. Today, companies are more focused on benefits that address current needs rather than retirement, such as healthcare, leave allowance, etc. This has taken away the focus from retirement benefits like superannuation, says Sudip Mukhopadhyay, managing partner, VantageHealth and Benefits Consulting. To judge the performance of your superannuation fund, check if returns match current EPF rates. As per rules governing investment, superannuation funds can invest only in safe instruments, mostly debt, he adds. According to I-T rules, the investment pattern for superannuation funds is as follows: government securities-minimum 45% and maximum 50%, debt securities and term deposits of banks- minimum 35% and maximum 45%, money market instruments- up to 5%, equity and equity related instruments-minimum 5% and up to 15% (this also includes exchange traded funds, index funds and derivatives) and asset backed securities, units of real estate/ infrastructure investment trusts-up to 5% limit. Due to the lack of transparency regarding superannuation funds, and because employees dont ask for details, a lot of times management and trustees may not be very proactive in investing and the fund may fail to generate optimum returns. Or employers may not make the contribution on a regular basis, especially if cash flow or profits have been low in a particular year. The only way to know this is to ask for annual statements from your company about the fund. While so far there have been no cases of fraud where money is not paid to the superannuation fund, there have been cases where the record administration is not clear and individual allocation is not disclosed. Employees who face such problems can approach the Labour Court. That is the only recourse, says Lobo. DLF, the country's largest real estate group, and Indiabulls Housing Finance led the list of donors to political parties in the financial year ending March 2015, shows an analysis by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). Based on contribution reports filed by electoral trusts to the Election Commission of India, the analysis shows 15 of these bodies approved by the Central Board of Direct Taxes. Of these, six had reported contributions totaling Rs 177.55 crore. Electoral trusts are required to donate 95 per cent of their total income to registered political parties in a financial year. In line with this, the trusts distributed Rs 177.4 crores (99.9 per cent) to various political parties. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accounted for the lions share of these donations, cornering Rs 111.35 crore or 63 per cent. The Congress got a little less than 18 per cent. Another 17, including Nationalist Congress party (Rs 6.8 crore), Biju Janata Dal (BJD, Rs 5.5 crore) and Indian National Lok Dal (Rs 5.05 crore) shared the leftovers. The bulk came from the Satya electoral trust, which received contributions of Rs 141.78 crore in FY15. Three DLF group companies DLF, DLF Cybercities and DLF Assets together contributed Rs 45 crore to Satya. Among individual donors to it, Indiabulls Housing Finance topped the list, contributing Rs 40 crore in two instalments of Rs 20 crore each. Two Bharti group companies, Bharti Airtel and Bharti Infratel, together gave Rs 31 crore. Hero MotoCorp, Kalpataru, Jubilant Foodworks and JK group firms were other donors to Satya. The BJP received Rs 107.25 crore or 75 per cent share from this trust, followed by the Congress (13.2 per cent) and NCP (4.2per cent). Eight Tata Group companies contributed a total of Rs 25.15 crore to Progressive Electoral Trust in FY15. Tata Steel was top with Rs 14.1 crore, followed by Tata Sons (Rs 4.7 crore) and Tata Motors (Rs 1.8 crore). The Congress party accounted for Rs 9.9 crore or about 40 per cent. BJD got Rs 5.25 crore (21 per cent), followed by the BJP (Rs 2. 1 crore). Bajaj Auto was the only contributor to Bajaj Electoral Trust, which received Rs 3 crore. Four Murugappa Group companies contributed Rs 3 crore between themselves to the Triumph Electoral Trust and three small firms contributed Rs 52 lakh to Samaj Electoral Trust. Donation break-ups of these three small trusts were not available. An executive of ADR said it had stopped classifying electoral trusts as belonging to or operated by a certain corporate group after certain companies disputed this last year. The names of electoral trusts, currently, do not indicate the name of the company/group of companies which set up the trusts. To have greater transparency regarding details of corporates which fund political parties, it would be ideal to include the name of the parent company in the name of the electoral trust, ADR said in its analysis. Apart from the 15 approved by CBDT, six more General Electoral Trust, Electoral Trust, Harmony Electoral Trust, Corporate Electoral Trust, Bharti Electoral Trust and Satya Electoral Trust were formed before the transparency rules were formulated by the central government. As the rules are not retrospective, these six are not required to declare their donor details. Among these, General Electoral donated Rs 131.65 crores to seven political parties during 2014-15. The BJP received Rs 63.2 crore (48 per cent) and the Congress Rs 54 crore (41 per cent). BJD, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena were among other recipients. ADR said details of donors to these six electoral trusts remain unknown, leading to speculation on whether donations to these were a means of getting tax exemption or a way to convert undisclosed money stashed in tax havens to white money in India. Therefore, details of donors to these electoral trusts which were formed before the CBDT rules came into existence should also be disclosed. Also, the same rules which apply to those trusts formed after January 31, 2013, should also apply to the above mentioned trusts, to improve transparency. Despite a belligerent Opposition bent on disrupting proceedings in Parliament, the Lok Sabha managed to conduct some business on Monday, when both Houses met for the Budget session's second half. In the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) does not have a majority, the Congress party ensured no business was transacted. They created a ruckus over the controversial imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand. It had to be adjourned thrice. In the Lok Sabha, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge staged a dharna in the Well of the House, leading sloganeering from the Opposition benches. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, however, managed to get the Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill and Regional Centre for Bio-technology Bill passed by the lower House. Rajya Sabha could be a wash out this session. Government sources conceded the much-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill is off the table for this session. On Monday morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed hope that all parties would help in smooth running of Parliament. The Congress, however, made it clear it will no longer be a "goody goody constructive Opposition". Senior Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh enunciating the party line said: "There has been a murder of democracy, first in Arunachal Pradesh and now in Uttarakhand. There is no prospect of the House functioning when you put a gun to our heads. "We will not be a constructive Opposition as we have been so long and help them in passing Bills." In response, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said "butchers cannot be preachers". He said the Congress governments at the Centre had dismissed around 100 state governments since Independence, and were now accusing others of murdering democracy. Home Minister Rajnath Singh attempted to snub Opposition allegations. He said the "crisis" in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh has not been created by the NDA or the BJP but "it is an internal crisis of the Congress party." Speaker Sumitra Mahajan refused to let the Uttarakhand issue be discussed since the matter was pending before the Supreme Court, leading to more protests. The only exception the Congress is willing to make to its belligerence is by taking part in a debate on the drought situation in the country, to be held in the upper House on Wednesday. Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad accused the central government of "deliberately provoking" the Opposition and "inducing" disruption. The Congress found support from the Janata Dal (United) and the Left parties. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley attempted to thwart the demand for a discussion on Uttarakhand, saying that issue can be debated when the proclamation of President's rule comes up for discussion in both Houses. The government has till the end of the session to get the ordinance through which it imposed President's rule in Uttarakhand to be passed in the Rajya Sabha. It is likely to be defeated as it is in a minority in the upper House. However, the number of Opposition members in the House is low, as many of them are busy with Assembly elections in their states. It can again pass another ordinance to the same effect on May 13, when the session ends. The BJP is ensuring that its members as well as those its allies are present in the two Houses, but particularly in the Rajya Sabha, in full strength till May 13. The chief whips of the BJP on Monday held a meeting. The government support in the Rajya Sabha is set to increase with six nominated MPs, including Subramanian Swamy and Navjot Singh Sidhu, set to take oath on Tuesday. The animosity between the Treasury and Opposition benches has reached such levels, that there appears to be little room for negotiation. The Business Advisory Committee on Monday allocated time for discussion for seven Bills in the Rajya Sabha, and for discussion on the Railways and Finance Bill. It listed seven Bills for discussion in the Rajya Sabha, including Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, Whistle Blowers' Protection (Amendment) Bill, Indian Trusts (Amendment) Bill and Industries (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill. It decided that the "guillotine" will be applied on May 3. The Lok Sabha is scheduled to take up the Finance Bill after that. The business advisory committee did not allocate any time for the GST Bill, ostensibly because of "low attendance of members in the Rajya Sabha". A constitution amendment needs more than half the total strength of a House to be present and voting. No time was allocated for the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code as the report of the joint committee is awaited and is to be submitted on Friday. Whatever be the Supreme Court ruling on the Uttarakhand crisis, the the Congress has spied an opportunity to rally around the disparate Opposition parties, like it managed to do with the Land Acquisition Bill. The party will be hitting the streets within the next fortnight. The last time around, Congress President Sonia Gandhi succeeded in leading Opposition leaders on a protest march from Parliament to Rashtrapati Bhavan. The BJP-led government had to retract before an united Opposition. The Treasury benches tried to rile the Congress with Kirit Somaiya raising the Ishrat Jehan case during Zero Hour, accusing former UPA ministers of playing with national security by seeking to dub a terrorist as a martyr. The Delhi government's imposition of the "odd-even" rule for private cars in the capital, resounded in Parliament with MPs demanding that they were being inconvenienced and should be exempted from it during the duration of the session. The only issue on which the Opposition and the government united was the expulsion of Vijay Mallya from the Rajya Sabha. The Ethics Committee of the Rajya Sabha met on Monday and "unanimously decided" to expel industrialist Vijay Mallya. It has however given him a week's time to respond. Mallya, accused of bank loan default and money laundering, is an Independent member and his six-year-long tenure ends in June. RETURN TO WORK LOK SABHA Passed Sikh Gurudwaras (Amendment) and Regional Centre for Bio-technology Bills Took up Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill RAJYA SABHA Time allocated for seven Bills Ethics Committee unanimously decided to expel Vijay Mallya from House membership LOOKING AHEAD April 29: Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code report to be submitted Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code report to be submitted May 3: "Guillotine" to be applied "Guillotine" to be applied May 4: Finance Bill likely to be taken up Despite frequent disruptions, Parliament managed to do some work on Monday, when the Budget session resumed For the first time in its history, the 1000-year-old mosque at Thazhathangady here, famous for its rich architecture and wood carvings, has thrown open its doors for Muslim women in . Women were allowed to enter the mosque yesterday to take a look at its famed architecture. Thousands of Muslim women, including tourists, flocked to the mosque from various parts of and abroad. The move comes at a time when the demand for permitting women at places of worship is gaining ground. "This is a 1000-year-old mosque. Our women had not seen it so far and had a great desire to visit the holy place. So the mosque committee decided to allow women to visit it on April 24 and May 8", Advocate Nawab Mulladom, president of the mosque committee, told Press Trust of India. The mosque was not opened for "any celebrations or for offering prayers. It was only to allow women to see the place", he said, adding the men were asked to leave the mosque before the women were allowed in. Muslim women wore their traditional attire during the visit. Fathima, one of the lucky ones to enter the holy place, said: "Standing before many historical mosques, I had always wanted to enter and offer worship. But I was afraid of even expressing that desire. I am happy that such an opportunity has come now". The Juma Masjid is a mosque situated at Thazhathangady, one of the Heritage Zones of Kerala, in Kottayam town. Situated on the banks of the Meenachil river, the mosque is famous for its rich architecture, wood carvings and beauty. The mosque, considered the oldest in India, is also known as the 'Taj Juma Masjid'. It has a square inner courtyard, an exquisitely carved wooden gabled roof, a traditional bathing area and lovely latticed windows, making it resemble a king's palace. Eleven people were reported missing in China today after a coal mine they were working in was flooded in the country's northwest Shaanxi Province. The accident took place around 8 am (local time) at Zhaojin Coal Mine in Yaozhou District when 67 workers were in the shaft, a spokesman with the Tongchuan city government told state-run Xinhua agency. Fifty-six people managed to escape and the rest are still missing. Rescue operations are underway to find the missing ones. At least 10 people were killed and 40 others were reported missing in two separate accidents at coal mines in China in August last year. In another incident, around 40 people were listed missing after a landslide swept through the living quarters of a mine company in the same Shaanxi Province. The risk for coal-mining accidents in China is one of the highest in the world. According to a 2003 government report, the coal miners' death rate per one million population was about 37 times that of America's coal-mining death rate. Maharashtra has emerged as the leading state in the country in giving up LPG subsidy with over 16 lakh people surrendering it, the state government today claimed. "The total LPG subsidy surrendered in Maharashtra is the highest at 16,42,814 in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign of 'Give It Up'. The state had been aggressively pursuing the centre's campaign in over a dozen cities and towns in Maharashtra," a statement by the Maharashtra government said. It noted that the "Give It Up" campaign launched last year estimated that one crore consumers did not require LPG subsidy. There are 14.54 crore active LPG consumers in the country. "The five states that topped in surrendering LPG subsidy are Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, almost accounting for 50 per cent of contributors," the statement said. At least 19 civilians were killed and 120 wounded in rebel bombardment of Syrian government-held districts of the northern city of Aleppo today, a monitoring group said. "Shells fired... By rebel groups at districts under regime control left 19 dead, including three children, and 120 wounded," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head, Rami Abdel Rahman. The official SANA agency reported 16 dead and 86 wounded by "fire from the terrorist groups Al-Nusra Front (Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda) and its allies" on at least five residential districts. The Observatory also reported four people including a child killed by regime fire into rebel-held neighbourhoods of the city. Since Friday, at least 86 civilians have been killed in the divided city in artillery, rocket and air strikes. Several districts of the city, once Syria's commercial hub, have also seen sporadic fighting between government forces and rebel groups. Rebel-held neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo have had their water and electricity supplies cut by bombardment, an AFP journalist said. The fighting severely threatens a February 27 ceasefire brokered jointly by the United States and Russia. Two persons, including a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, were brutally murdered in a flat here by unidentified killers who entered the building impersonating as courier officials, the latest in a series of brutal attacks on bloggers and intellectuals in Bangladesh. Julhash Mannan, a cousin of Moni, and his friend Tanay were murdered at the flat in capital's Kalabagan, the Dhaka Tribune reported quoting deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten. Baten said armed assailants in guise of courier company officials entered the flat on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 7 PM and killed Mannan, 35, a former protocol officer of the US embassy and his friend. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city. Welcoming the verdict of a special court in Mumbai that exonerated eight Muslim youths in the 2006 Malegaon bomb blasts case today, an NCP MLA Asif Shaikh demanded that ATS officials be punished for "framing the youths". "I demand that action be taken against the investigating ATS officers for framing the youths in the case and ruining their lives by keeping them in jail," said Shaikh, a legislator from Malegaon from where the youths hailed. He said the government should pay the youths a compensation of Rs 50 lakh each. The special court of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court today dropped the charges against the youths due to lack of evidence against them. Three persons, including a scrap dealer from Gujarat, were arrested for allegedly looting brass sheets worth Rs 14.04 lakh from a company in the district, police said today. A group of around 7-8 persons entered the premises of Fedel Products Company at Murbad in the district on March 5. They assaulted company's watchman and looted brass plates worth Rs 14.04 lakh from there, Senior Police Inspector Abhay Kurundkar of Local Crime Branch (LCB) of Thane Police, said. At that time, a case under relevant sections of IPC was registered at Murbad police station. Later, the case was transferred to LCB, he said in a statement issued here. According to police, 351 brass sheets each weighing 14 kilos were recovered from the trio. Acting on a tip off, LCB officials laid a trap at Shil Phata in the district on April 15 and apprehended two accused - Ahmad Hussain Mohammad Sattar Sawant alias Langada and Dileep Kumar Bindesar Das, the officer said. During investigation, it was revealed that the duo took assistance from five or six others to commit the crime, Kurundkar said. It was also revealed that the duo sold the sheets to a scrap dealer - Chetan Jayantilal Dave in Gujarat. After this, a police team went to Surat and arrested Dave on April 21, he said, adding investigations are underway. At least 30 Takfiri militants were killed today as Egyptian air forces raided underground tunnels and weapon stores of the terrorists in restive North Sinai. The raids coincided with the commemoration of the Sinai Liberation Day, which celebrates the final withdrawal of all Israeli military forces from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. The raids targeted a number of underground tunnels and weapon stores belong to the militants in Touma village and south Sheikh Zuweid city in North Sinai, army spokesperson Brigadier General Mohamed Samir said in a statement. Egypt's North Sinai has witnessed many violent attacks by militants since the January, 2011 revolution that toppled the ex-president Hosni Mubarak. The attacks targeting police and military increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by military following massive protests against his rule. Over 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then. The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip. Five Indian policemen, who were arrested by Nepal police for allegedly entering the country illegally with weapons, have been handed over to authorities for further action. The policemen, possessing one AK-47 rifle and a pistol were arrested from Sanagaun in Doti district yesterday and were handed over to Kailali police yesterday, The Kathmandu Post reported. The arrested Indian policemen, said to be from Punjab, include one inspector, one sub-inspector, two head constables and one constable. They allegedly entered Nepal from Gaddachauki border in Kanchanpur district while searching for a Nepali man accused of involvement in the murder of a Punjab-based doctor. Kailali police have not provided any information regarding the incident but according to the report, the policemen will be handed over to the Indian border security officials. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani today threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refuses to take action against the Taliban, in a new hardline stance after a brazen insurgent attack left 64 people dead. The assault last Tuesday on a security services office in the heart of Kabul appeared to be the deadliest on the Afghan capital since the Islamists were ousted from power in 2001. It cast a pall over international efforts in recent months to jumpstart Pakistan-brokered peace talks, which stalled last summer after the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar. "I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan parliament. "But we want Pakistan to fulfil its promises... And take military action against their sanctuaries and leadership based on its soil. If they can't target them they should hand them over to our judiciary. "If we do not see a change, despite our sincere efforts for regional cooperation, we will be forced to turn to the UN Security Council and start serious diplomatic efforts." Ghani's remarks reflect his frustration after he expended substantial political capital since coming to power in 2014 in courting Pakistan in the hope of pressuring the militants to the negotiating table. The Pakistani government recently admitted, after years of official denial, that the Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country. "Ghani is clearly running out of patience with Pakistan," Kabul-based analyst Mia Gul Waseeq told AFP. "His risky and ambitious diplomatic outreach to Pakistan has failed to yield results." Ghani vowed a tough military response against the insurgents and pledged to enforce legal punishments, including executions of convicted militants. "The time for amnesty is over," he said. "For the Taliban who are ready to end bloodshed, we have left the door open for talks. But the door will not be open forever." Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rebuffed Ghani's remarks, reiterating that the group would press on with their jihad until the "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan ends. The Taliban earlier this month announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan. The announcement came even after a four-country group comprising Afghanistan, the United States, China and Pakistan held meetings since January aimed at ending the drawn-out conflict. Last Tuesday's attack, which also left nearly 350 people wounded, was seen as the opening salvo in this year's Taliban offensive, widely expected to be the bloodiest in 15 years. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani today implored Pakistan to battle the Taliban instead of trying to bring them to peace talks, in a new hardline stance after a brazen insurgent attack killed at least 64 people. The assault last Tuesday on a security services office in the heart of Kabul appeared to be the deadliest on the Afghan capital since the Islamists were ousted from power in 2001. It cast a pall over international efforts in recent months to jumpstart Pakistan-brokered peace talks, which stalled last summer after the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar. "I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan parliament. "But we expect them to launch a military operation against their sanctuaries and leadership based on their soil. If they can't target them they should hand them over to our judiciary." Afghanistan for years has accused longtime nemesis Pakistan of sponsoring the Taliban insurgency. The Pakistani government recently admitted after years of official denial that the Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country. "There are no good or bad terrorists... Pakistan should act on them as a responsible government," Ghani said. Ghani's remarks reflect his frustration after he expended substantial political capital since coming to power in 2014 in courting Pakistan in the hope of pressuring the militants to the negotiating table. "Ghani is clearly running out of patience with Pakistan," Kabul-based analyst Mia Gul Waseeq told AFP. "His risky and ambitious diplomatic outreach to Pakistan has failed to yield results." Ghani vowed a tough military response against the insurgents and pledged to enforce legal punishments, including executions of convicted militants. "The time for amnesty is over," he said. "For the Taliban who are ready to end bloodshed, we have left the door open for talks. But the door will not be open forever." Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rebuffed Ghani's remarks, saying the group would press on with their jihad against the US-backed government. The Taliban earlier this month announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan. The announcement came even after a four-country group comprising Afghanistan, the United States, China and Pakistan held meetings since January aimed at ending the drawn-out conflict. Last Tuesday's attack, which also left nearly 350 people wounded, was seen as the opening salvo in this year's Taliban offensive, widely expected to be the bloodiest in 15 years. Afghanistan's president has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. Ashraf Ghani made the remarks during an address to parliament today, a week after a Taliban assault on the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the Taliban. The Taliban leadership is widely believed to be based in Pakistani tribal regions along the border. Ghani said there are "no good or bad terrorists, they are just terrorists," and that "Pakistan must understand that and act against them." Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States have been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban in recent months, but have made little progress. An Army jawan's wife, who had consumed biryani bought on an express train and later stayed at a fumigated room at the CST here, has died and investigators say it could either have been due to food poisoning or inhalation of poisonous fumes after pest control fumigation. The victim, identified as Nadia Fatun (28), was declared brought dead at a city hospital on Saturday. The victim and and her husband Jia-ur Rehman (32), a Lance Naik, who was recently transferred to Tamil Nadu, had arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on Friday. The couple, who hailed from West Bengal, had come to Mumbai and booked a retiring room after their arrival at CST. "After reaching the retiring room, they consumed biryani, which they had purchased from the pantry car of Madgaon Express earlier," the official said. However, after some time, the duo felt uneasy and asked the attendant to shift them into another room. The couple was then accommodated in the officer's room. They stayed there overnight, but the following morning they suffered from giddiness and started vomiting. "The couple felt unconscious in the afternoon. The attendant brought the matter to the notice of deputy station master and the couple was rushed to a nearby hospital. However, the woman was declared brought dead on arrival, while the jawan is under treatment," police said. During the investigation, it came to light that the room, where the couple had stayed was fumigated by pest control services a few days ago and another tourist, who had stayed at the same room, had suffered giddiness and uneasiness. He had been admitted to a hospital and discharged after treatment. After learning about this development, state Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) teams were called in yesterday. They collected samples from walls, furniture and others to check if it is a case of residual air poisoning, caused by wrong or excessive pesticide, police said. "According to doctors it could be either food poisoning or inhalation of insecticide," the officer added. A case of accidental death case has been registered and post-mortem report of the victim is awaited. Further investigation into the case is on. Arunachal Pradesh government today released Rs 2 crore to Tawang district for relief and restoration work including ex-gratia payment to the next of kin of the deceased who died in landslides in the border district. The government also released a relief fund of Rs 1 crore each to the flood-affected districts of Namsai, Lower, Subansiri, Changlang and Anjaw besides additional relief fund of Rs 30 lakh to all the DCs and Rs 10 lakh to all the ADC headquarters, an official report said here. Chief Minister Kalikho Pul accompanied by in charge chief secretary Hage Khoda, disaster management commissioner Hage Kojeen and disaster management director Y W Ringu made an unsuccessful attempt to visit Tawang district yesterday despite bad weather. The team had to return back to Guwahati Airport due to inclement weather as packed cloud over the Bhutan Valley en-route to Tawang had blurred visibility and deterred further movement of the helicopter, the report said. Pul said that occurrence of landslides and flash flood in the state is predominant as the state is situated in a seismically high risk zone frequented with heavy rainfall. "Presence of hilly terrains, steep slopes, loose and sandy soil and presence of multiple rivers, rivulets and small streams make our state more prone to such natural calamities," he said. He called upon the people to learn a lesson from recent incidents of landslides at Tawang that caused loss of 18 lives and the water logging at Hotel PYBSS at Itanagar that blocked the National Highway 415 for several days due to obstruction of natural flow of drain water by randomly built houses at drains/nallahs, bypassing building laws in the state. "If the faults are not corrected in time and precautions are not taken, such high rise buildings are in danger and may collapse anytime risking lives of many people," he pointed out. The Chief Minister appealed to the people to take precautionary measures and to always remain prepared. He called upon the people not to wait for disaster to happen saying, "even God cannot safe after it happens". (REOPENS CES4) Citing that the system is already in place, Pul called upon the people to abide by the system as it is often felt that the people neglect government instructions and later put the blame on the government and the authorities. He asked the people to maintain the building bye-laws of Ground plus 3 in whole of the state and to construct earth quake resistant buildings. He also requested the people to avoid construction over drain, river valleys and rivulets, run off way, low lying and flood prone areas besides avoiding random earth cutting and quarrying in order to thwart repetitions of such incidents in future. The chief minister gave instructions to all the DCs to conduct intensive awareness generation activities involving all stakeholders on Do's and Don'ts on earthquake, fire and other disasters. "The government has given instructions to all the district administration to ensure that all the schools and hospitals (both govt and private) and all the offices in the districts to have their Disaster Management Plan, Standard Operating Plans (SOPs) and Emergency Support Functions (ESFs) in place. It was also instructed to conduct mock drill at least once in a month on earthquake, fire safety and other disasters in schools, hospitals and other public places," the report said. The district administrations were asked to identify safe locations/evacuation routes/open grounds for emergency operations for setting up of relief camps in case of any disaster like earthquake, fire, floods, high speed winds etc. and also to keep ready, search and rescue teams. The government also instructed the authorities to keep the Incident Response System (IRS) and Incident Response Teams (IRT) in place. They were asked to put up all systems in place and to depute men and machinery for dealing with any disaster like situation. The district heads were also asked to ensure immediate rescue, evacuation, relief assistance, etc in case of any eventuality as per the relief norms. It was further instructed there should not be delay in response to relief operations at any level and also to ensure proper reporting as per the govt norms. It was further instructed to plan development activities in such manner which are disaster friendly and disaster resilient, the report added. Political analyst Ashish Nandy today tendered an "unconditional apology" in the Supreme Court for a 2008 article written in a national daily which had led to the registration of an FIR against him for allegedly portraying Gujarat in bad light. The apex court, which took on record the content of Nandy's apology, quashed the FIR lodged by Ahmedabad Police on a complaint by V K Saxena, currently Chairman of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC). In his letter, Nandy "deeply regretted" that his critical analysis of the outcome of the Gujarat Legislative Elections held in December, 2007 had "hurt the sentiments of many". Saxena, who is also the President of Ahmedabad-based NGO, National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), had filed the complaint against Nandy for his article namely, "Blame the Middle Class" which was published on January 8, 2008 in the national edition as well as local editions of a daily. A Bench comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra disposed of the appeal filed by Nandy against the 2010 decision of Delhi High Court refusing to quash criminal proceedings by Gujarat Police for allegedly promoting communal disharmony. The bench passed the order in presence of writer's senior advocate Kapil Sibal and Saxena's senior counsel Mahesh Jethmalani after going through the draft of the apology letter in which the noted author also regretted that his article caused "pain" to many which was "not intentional". "I tender my unconditional apology for any hurt that my article has caused and reiterate that it was not intentional and was against my own beliefs and principles," he said. Taking note, the bench said, "In view of the aforesaid letter giving unconditional apology for having published in the editorial page Ahmedabad edition, on January 8, 2008, and by consent of the senior counsel appearing on behalf of the parties, we quash the FIR registered against petitioner (Nandy). The special leave petition stands disposed accordingly. Nandy had earlier contended that the FIR was registered out of malafide intention and aimed at penalising him for expressing his bonafide views. Gujarat government had been seeking the nod of the apex court to continue with the investigation to a "conclusive end" into the FIR against him under section 153A (promoting communal disharmony) and 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) of the IPC. The state government had said Nandy's petition seeking quashing of criminal proceedings against him be dismissed as "the FIR in the instant case prima facie discloses the offence under sections 153A and 153B of the IPC." The apex court on January 4, 2011 had stayed the verdict of Delhi High Court which had refused to quash criminal proceedings initiated against Nandy by Gujarat Police. The High Court in its September 1, 2010 order had directed Nandy to submit his grievances before a court in Ahmedabad. The NGO, NCCL, had alleged that the article written after the 2007 assembly polls had projected the state in bad light and promoted communal disharmony. The state government had maintained that the FIR in this case prima facie disclosed the offence under the Code of Criminal Procedure and the court should not interfere and allow the investigation to be completed. A beautician today alleged that she was assaulted by the wife of a Lok Sabha MP here. The beautician told police that she, along with an assistant, went to the MP's Lodhi Estate residence on call. She claimed that the MP's wife asked her to do some household work and when she refused, she was abused. This led to a heated argument during which the lawmaker's wife allegedly assaulted her, a police official said. The beautician and her assistant then went to the Tughlaq Road police station and lodged a complaint. However, no FIR has been registered so far, the official said. "The complaint has been received and we are looking into the matter," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said. BJD member Tathagata Satpathy today used a discussion in the Lok Sabha to hit out at the government for revoking the visa given to a Chinese dissident and said it should have the courage to stand by its decision. He said there was no difference between the UPA government and the NDA dispensation as both toed the US line, prompting Congress chief Sonia Gandhi to remark that "there is a difference". "I thought this government had the gumption, the strength to stand up to bully that China has evolved into... Lo and behold, they revoked it. It's a shame," he said, referring to the government's decision to revoke dissident Dolkun Isa's visa after granting it. The senior BJD leader said the government should have either not given him the visa and if it did give, then "it should have the courage to stand by it". He said governments were not taking cognizance of what was required on the ground and there was no difference between the UPA and NDA governments as the former "bowed down" to the US and the latter is "kneeling down". At this, Gandhi was heard saying, "There is a difference." Satpathy was speaking on the Regional Biotech Centre Bill during which he also said that there was no connect between output of such stand alone, isolated centres and the need on the ground. Some of the top scientists in the world are Indians but they have done research in the US, the UK and other countries except India, he said. Hukum Singh (BJP) said there is a need to balance the promotion of biotechnology and the quality of food products brought out with its help. M Srinivasa Rao (TDP) expressed concern over brain drain. BJP today raked up the VVIP chopper scandal in Lok Sabha today following Italian court's reported observation that the UPA government showed "substantial disregard" in arriving at the full truth behind the multi-crore scam. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Meenakshi Lekhi said that the observations of the Italian court that found corruption in the Rs 3,565-crore AgustaWestland deal, were serious. Seeking a statement from the Defence Ministry, she said Italy had requested India in April 2013 to get full documentation in the case but was provided only three documents and that too in 2014. She wanted a thorough probe in the matter as also a discussion in the House. Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu assured the member that he would bring the matter to the notice of the Defence Minister. Brazil's senate has met to form a committee that will consider whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who has accused her opponents of mounting a constitutional coup. Rousseff's case was sent to the senate by the lower house after an overwhelming vote against Rousseff on April 17. She is accused of illegal government accounting manoeuvres, but says she has not committed an impeachment-worthy crime. The senate committee comprising 21 of the 81 senators was to debate Rousseff's fate for up to 10 working days before making a recommendation to the full upper house. The senate then votes on May 12, according to latest Brazilian media estimates whether to open an impeachment trial, with a simple majority required. At that moment, Rousseff would be suspended for 180 days while the trial got underway. Her vice-president turned leading political opponent, Michel Temer, would take over. To remove Rousseff definitively from office at the end of the trial, the senate would have to vote with a two-thirds majority. If Rousseff is in fact removed from office, Temer would retain the presidency until scheduled elections in 2018. Rousseff has accused Temer of being the main "conspirator" and "traitor" in a plot to use the impeachment process to force her out. Rousseff's predecessor in the presidency and chief political backer, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, on Monday said that the opposition's ultimate goal was to bring down the ruling Leftist Workers' Party, which has held the presidency since 2003. "Eliminating Dilma means they can say that the Workers' Party will not come back to govern this country. That's what's at play here," he said in Sao Paulo on Monday. "There will be a strong fight. You will see that we will have a lot of democratic resistance," he said. According to a head count by the respected Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, 50 of the 81 senators currently support opening impeachment proceedings, clearing the required minimum. However, Folha said that only 39 openly support going through with forcing Rousseff out well short of the 54 required. Burundi's Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife were lightly injured in a grenade attack as they were leaving a church in the capital Bujumbura, the city's mayor told AFP. "A grenade was thrown in the car park of the Healing of the Souls church in Nyakabiga," mayor Freddy Mbonimpa said yesterday, referring to a neighbourhood in the city-centre. "They were very lightly injured by the explosion and their vehicle was badly damaged. They only had a few scratches and were discharged after treatment in a hospital," he added. The mayor said "armed criminals" were behind the attack, a term used by Burundian officials to refer to members of rebel groups opposed to President Pierre Nkurunziza. Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term, which he went on to win in July 2015, with violence leaving more than 500 people dead. More than 270,000 people have fled the country. Numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks since the start of the crisis. Such attacks are never claimed, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility. A 35-year-old Kanpur-based businessman was offloaded and arrested from a IndiGo plane after he allegedly created nuisance in an inebriated state at the IGI airport here, police said today. The incident happened yesterday when Mahesh Mishra created nuisance in an inebriated state in the Indore-bound flight. Airline's security manager called up police and reported the matter. Mishra, who owns a furniture business, was offloaded from the plane and handed over to police, who arrested him under relevant sections of law and later granted bail, a senior official said. "Butchers cannot be preachers", Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said, mounting a counteroffensive against Congress, which has accused the Modi government of "murdering democracy" by imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand. "Butchers cannot be Preachers". Congress which dismissed more than 100 non-congress governments. Right from E M S Namboodiripad, under article 356, is now criticising BJP. Ridiculous!," Naidu said on twitter on a day Congress disrupted proceedings in Parliament over bringing Uttarakhand under central rule. Naidu had earlier targeted Congress calling it "mother of defections". "The Congress government at the Centre dismissed E M S Namboodiripad's first democratically-elected Left government in Kerala, despite its majority in the Legislative Assembly in 1959," Naidu had said against the backdrop of Left joining hands with Congress in targeting the Centre over the political developments in Uttarkhand. Facing opposition onslaught over the Uttarakhand issue, the Modi government has decided to take rivals head-on, citing instances of states being placed under central rule when Congress, Janata Party and United Front were in power. An internal documemnt circulated in the government notes that out of 111 times President's rule has been imposed since 1951, "Congress governments and those propped by it imposed it 91 times" including "45 times during the 16-year tenure of Indira Gandhi" and "10 times during the 10-year rule of Manmohan Singh". Parliament session began today with a face-off between the ruling and opposition benches as the Modi government was slammed over imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. Amid opposition demand for a discussion on the issue, Congress members created a ruckus in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, accusing the BJP-led dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. A Canadian held hostage by Islamic militants in the Philippines has been executed, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today, after Filipino authorities said they had found the head of a foreign man on a remote island. "I'm outraged by the that a Canadian citizen, John Ridsdel, held hostage in the Philippines since September 21, 2015, has been killed at the hands of his captors," Trudeau said. "This was an act of cold blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage." Ridsdel, fellow Canadian tourist Robert Hall, Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometers from Jolo. Six weeks after the abduction, Abu Sayyaf gunmen released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting demanding USD 21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners. The men were forced to beg on camera for their lives, and similar videos were posted over several months in which the hostages looked increasingly frail. In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree aged in his late 60s, said he would be killed on April 25 if a ransom of 300 million pesos was not paid. Hours after the ransom deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island about 1,000 kilometers south of Manila that is one of the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf militant group. "We found a head in a plastic bag," provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP. He said the head belonged to a caucasian man, but emphasized it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details. Trudeau said Canada was working with the government of the Philippines to pursue and prosecute Ridsdel's killers, and that efforts were underway to obtain the release of the other hostages. The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organization that operates from Jolo and nearby islands. Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt Amarinder Singh today termed the amendment to the SGPC act barring the Sehajdhari Sikhs from casting votes in the SGPC elections as most "unfortunate, regressive and retrograde." "This will simply mean slamming your door on hundreds and thousands of Sikhs and dividing the community", he said in a statement while reacting to Parliament today passing a bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sahajdharis from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies. Capt Amarinder equated this move by the Akalis with their demand for Punjabi Suba which ended in "fragmenting Punjab into small pieces." "Like for the narrow sectarian and partisan interests they slashed Punjab into pieces so that they could form the government of their own, which still they never could, they have now repeated the formula to retain their control over the SGPC by virtually throwing out a majority of the Sikhs and virtually dividing the community", he said. The PCC president said the SGPC, which is running under the "direct control" of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, should better have spent its energy and resources on reforms and educating the youth of the community than taking the easy way out. The former Chief Minister reiterated that every Sikh, who believes in the tenets of Sikhism, must have the right to vote in the SGPC elections. "It is an irony that the very democratic legislative procedure has been misused to disenfranchise a large section of the society from exercising their democratic right to vote", he observed. A bomb blast in a Damascus suburb that is home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Syria killed eight people today, according to a pro-government TV station and an activist-run monitoring group. Syrian state TV said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed vehicle at a military checkpoint at the entrance to the Sayyida Zeinab suburb. Syria's Al-Ikhbariya TV station showed footage of a slight depression on a road near a checkpoint where the bomb was said to have gone off. The wreckage had already been removed. Al-Manar TV, run by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, said eight people were killed in the blast. The Shiite militants have a heavy presence in the suburb. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist-run monitoring group, gave the same toll. Syrian state TV said five people were killed and 20 wounded. The heavily guarded shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the daughter of the first Shiite imam Ali and granddaughter to the Prophet Muhammad, receives thousands of Shiite pilgrims each year. Allies of the embattled Damascus government have mobilized Shiite fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon to fight on the side of President Bashar Assad's forces on the grounds of defending the shrine and preserving the country's religious plurality. A previous bombing in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb, claimed by the Islamic State group, killed some 130 people in February. The Syrian uprising began with mostly peaceful protests in 2011, but a brutal government crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency eventually plunged the country into a full-blown civil war. The fighting has killed more than 250,000 people, according to the United Nations, which stopped tracking casualties several months ago. A car bomb killed at least seven people today near the revered Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zeinab south of the Syrian capital Damascus, state television reported. The Islamic State group said it was behind the bomb attack on Al-Diyabiyah, a town serving as one of the gateways for pilgrims from around the world who visit the Shiite holy site. Another 20 people were wounded, state agency SANA reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at eight and had no immediate word on whether civilians were among the dead. The shrine contains the grave of Zeinab, a venerated granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed, and is known for its glistening golden onion-shaped dome. The bomb struck a checkpoint near a construction site and left a small crater in the pavement, an AFP correspondent reported. A guard at the checkpoint told AFP his bomb detector began beeping when a suspicious pickup truck pulled up. "We stopped the car at the checkpoint... When we began doing a manual search, they detonated the car. My colleagues were killed," he said. The windows of a small hotel across from the checkpoint were blown in by the blast. The hotel is mostly occupied by displaced people from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite-majority towns in northwest Syria that are under siege by Islamist rebels. One woman who had fled Kafraya said her young daughter, who had been traumatised by frequent rocket fire on their home town, thought the explosion was a mortar round hitting the hotel. The area around the shrine, which is heavily secured with regime checkpoints hundreds of metres (yards) away to prevent vehicles from approaching, has been hit by Sunni extremists from IS several times this year. In online media, IS said today's attack killed or wounded more than 48 people. A string of IS bombings near the shrine in February left 134 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Observatory. And in January, another attack claimed by IS killed 70 people. Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah cited the threat to Sayyida Zeinab as a principal reason for its intervention in the civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. More than 270,000 people have been killed and millions more been forced to flee their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu formally inaugurated the state's interim government complex (temporary secretariat) at Velagapudi village in capital region Amaravati earlier on Monday. As there is no other auspicious 'muhurtam' in the coming few months, the chief minister completed the formalities today amid vedic chants and a Ganapati 'homam' (religious ritual). A 2,000 sqft office space was hurriedly readied for use by the chief minister and Chandrababu occupied it to mark the inauguration. He signed a file relating to waiver of loan for horticulture farmers on the occasion. The government is determined to begin operations from Amaravati region from June 15, Chandrababu said. The construction of the government complex has been going on at a brisk pace to meet the deadline. Later, the chief minister announced that a five-day working week would be implemented for employees who come to work at Velagapudi from Hyderabad. Also, they would be paid an additional 30% as house rent allowance. "In the first phase, we will build 5,000 houses for the employees within a year in the new capital region. More number of houses will be built in the subsequent phases," Chandrababu said. "Make use of technology and our e-office system. I only want that files are cleared in time and there is no corruption," the chief minister said. On the occasion, he also announced that an additional 50 square yards of land would be given to farmers of the region who parted with their lands under the Land Pooling Scheme for the development of the capital. Deputy Chief Minister N China Rajappa, ministers P Narayana, P Pulla Rao, Devineni Umamaheswara Rao were among others who attended the event. A Chinese film unit has found itself in a spot for allegedly damaging a portion of a 'chattri' on the banks of a pond here and have been asked to cough up Rs 50,000 as fine. The Municipal Board of Jaisalmer imposed the fine after the film unit damaged the dome during shooting here yesterday. "A case against the unit was registered at the local police station and a fine of Rs 50,000 was imposed after a junior engineer of the board visited the site," Commissioner of the board Indra Singh said. A Chinese film unit has found itself in a spot for allegedly damaging a portion of a 'chattri' on the banks of a pond here and has been asked to cough up Rs 50,000 as fine. The Municipal Board of Jaisalmer imposed the fine after the film unit damaged the dome during shooting here yesterday. "A case against the unit was registered at the local police station and a fine of Rs 50,000 was imposed after a junior engineer of the board visited the site," Commissioner of the board Indra Singh said. State-owned CIL's coal stock has increased to 57.674 million tonnes (MT) as on April 1, 2016 mainly due to regulated lifting by power producers, Parliament was informed today. "Coal India has informed that closing stock of coal as on March 31, 2016 is 57.674 MT. During 2015-16, coal stock of CIL has increased by 4.205 MT from 53.469 MT as on April 1, 2015 to 57.674 MT as on April 1, 2016," Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha. The increase in coal stock is mainly on account of regulated lifting by power utility sector in view of their comfortable coal stock position of 38.87 MT as on March 31, 2016, which is equivalent to 27 days' requirement, he said. The minister further said that CIL has recently taken several measures to liquidate coal stocks which includes offering of coal to power utilities/independent power producers (IPPs) under special e-auction window at a reduced reserved price. The other measures include supply under "as is where is" scheme for power utility sector consumers wherein coal is offered for lifting by consumers through their own logistics and exclusion of supply of higher grades of coal (G1 to G5) from calculation of performance incentives for all sectors and additional coal against import component being supplied to consumers consequent to enhanced production. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has slammed Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for mocking an Indian call centre worker during an election rally this week, saying it shows disrespect towards the community and is reflective of his divisive rhetoric. "Donald Trump mocking Indian workers is just typical of his disrespect that he has shown to groups across the spectrum," said John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton Campaign. "He has run a campaign of bigotry and division. I think that's quite dangerous for the country when you think about the fact that you need friends, allies. The kind of campaign he is running breeds disrespect across the globe and breeds division and danger here at home," he told reporters in Germantown, Maryland after formally launching 'Indian- Americans for Hillary', an effort by the community to rally behind the Democratic presidential front runner. Podesta was reacting to Trump's apparent use of a fake Indian accent to mock a call centre representative in India during a campaign rally in Delaware this week. The real estate tycoon said that he called up his credit card company to find out whether their customer support is based in the US or overseas. At the same time, he described India as a great place, asserting that he is not angry with Indian leaders. Meanwhile, an Indian-American entrepreneur also hit out at Trump, calling his comments "demeaning". "When Donald Trump fakes the accent of an Indian at the help desk, it is demeaning and demonising to me personally," said Frank Islam, a top Indian-American bundler in the Clinton campaign who has helped raised more than $100,000 for her. A resident of Maryland, Islam is part of the newly launched 'Indian-Americans for Hillary'. He also disagreed with the remarks of Republican Governor from Maine, Paul LePage, who had said that Indian workers are "worst" and "hardest" to understand. "I do not know, where he got that impression. I consider Indian-Americans very hard working and they aim high," he said. "I consider Indian-Americans to be thoughtful, constructing, hardworking and resilient. So I do not agree with him," Islam said, adding that the community played a key role in strengthening the country. Demand for a CBI probe into the Rs 20,000 crore alleged foodgrains scam in Punjab was made by a Congress member in the Lok Sabha today. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Ravneet Singh Bittoo said the plight of farmers in the state has worsened in the wake of the scam as the affected banks have restricted the cash credit limit. He said suicides by farmers in the state are on the rise as they are unable to sell their produce in the wake of the scam. Supported by AAP leader Bhagwant Mann, Singh demanded that Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan should make a statement over the scam to tell the nation who was responsible for it. Bringing Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the line of fire, Congress today demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe into "irregularities" in the alleged Rs 20,000 crore Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation(GSPC) scam. On a day when Parliament session began, party spokesman Jairam Ramesh also said that Congress would remain aggressive on the issue of imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand and could hit the streets soon over the matter. He said that the way democracy has been "murdered" in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, it would be "difficult" to have a smooth session of Parliament. "The trail in the GSPC scam could lead to the door of the Prime Minister. ....It is just impossible that what has happened is without the (then) Chief Minister being in the know", he said. Noting that the GSPC scam was of an "unprecedented proportion", he said that the Gujarat state undertaking owed Rs 19,700 crore to banks and has been asked to pay Rs 1,800 crores to repay the debt. This, he said, was at a time when the GSPC's earning was a mere Rs 80 crore annually. He released copy of a CAG report which went into the GSPC affairs. He said that the Prime Minister, who often quoted Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru these days, should agree for handing over the inquiry to a sitting Supreme Court judge. Ramesh reminded the Prime Minister that Nehru was instrumental in holding judicial probe into the Mundhra scandal that led to the resignation of the then Finance Minister T T Krishnamachari. He claimed under the opposition pressure, the government is pursuing Vijay Mallya who has outstanding debts of Rs 9000 crore, but was doing nothing in the GSPC scam. Asked to comment on the nine accused in the Malegaon blasts case being discharged by a special court, he remarked that the NIA has now become "Narendra Investigation Agency". On the question of the reaction of the Congress that an Italian Court has said that UPA did not provide ample evidence in Augusta Westland case, Ramesh said, "we don't have the exact details of what the Court has said but let me say that the UPA Government has parted with whatever information was demanded of it" "Our former Defence Minister has gone on record repeatedly and said that we have nothing to feel defensive, apologetic and absolutely nothing to hide in this matter. A Pennsylvania appeals court has rejected Bill Cosby's attempt to throw out his criminal case because of what he called a decade-old deal not to prosecute him. The mid-level state Superior Court ruled today that the criminal sex-assault case against Cosby can proceed, prompting the district attorney to press for a preliminary hearing date. Cosby, 78, is facing trial over a 2004 encounter at his home with a then-Temple University employee who says she was drugged and molested by the comedian. Cosby says they engaged in consensual sex acts. Former prosecutor Bruce Castor has said he promised he would never prosecute Cosby and urged him to testify in the woman's 2005 civil lawsuit. The release of that testimony last year led a new prosecutor to arrest him. In the lengthy deposition, the long-married Cosby acknowledged a series of affairs and said he had gotten quaaludes to give to women he hoped to seduce. Cosby has not yet entered a plea in the criminal case, and remains free on USD 1 million bail posted after his December 30 arrest. "We ... Look forward to the court setting a date so we can present our case," Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said in a statement. Cosby's lawyers were considering whether to respond to today's ruling, a spokesman said. He could potentially appeal again to the state Supreme Court, but it's unclear if that would delay the case. "He may do that, but the critical question will be whether the Supreme Court will give him a stay during the review," said David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. Cosby is meanwhile locked in a number of legal battles around the country with women who accuse him of sexual assault or defamation. He has countersued some of them, including the Pennsylvania accuser. His lawsuit accuses her of breach of contract for talking to police who reopened the case last year, given the confidential settlement of the lawsuit she filed against him after Castor turned down the case. Castor re-emerged in the case last fall as a key defense witness who said he had made a deal that Cosby would never be charged. Castor last year was running to return to the district attorney's office. He was defeated by Steele. Cosby acknowledged in the deposition that he gave the Temple ex-employee, Andrea Constand, the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl before engaging in sex acts with her at his home near Philadelphia. He calls the encounter consensual. Ten years after a series of bombs exploded in Malegaon killing 37 people, a special court today dropped charges against eight Muslim youths due to lack of evidence against them. The accused, including two doctors, were discharged by V V Patil, Designated Judge trying cases under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). The serial bomb blasts outside a cemetry near Hamidia Mosque at Malegaon, near Nashik, on September 8, 2006, also left over 100 persons injured. Bombs were planted on bicycles parked near the cemetry and they went off after Friday prayers at the Mosque on the occasion of Shab-e-Baraat. Hailing the verdict, Farok Makhdoom, a doctor and an accused who argued personally in the court, said, "I was never scared of conviction because I am innocent. There was lot of evidence to prove that I was not involved in the case." Nine accused, suspected to have links with Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), were initially arrested in the case and chargesheeted by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS). One of them died while the case was pending. Four others, including a Pakistan national, are absconding. Later, CBI, which took over investigations, also confirmed the charges against them. Subsequently, in 2011, NIA was asked to probe the case and the agency arrested another set of people belonging to the majority community, who continue to be accused in the case. However, the case took a turn when Swami Assemanand, an accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjis bombing case, allegedly revealed to the probe agency about the role of a Hindu right wing outfit in the 2006 Malagaon blasts case. Thereafter, NIA told the court that it had no evidence against the nine accused in the case. Another serial blasts had rocked Malegaon in 2008 in which ATS led by late Hemant Karkare allegedly found the involvement of a Hindu right wing outfit. Hearing the 2006 case, the judge said that he was accepting the discharge application filed by the 8 accused as there was no evidence to prove their guilt. All the eight accused discharged from the case were on bail and had come to the court today to hear the verdict on their plea. As soon as the judge pronounced the order, tears trickled down their cheeks and faces brightened up with smile and hugged their kith and kin who were accompanying them. The NIA informed the court that evidence collected by it -- after further investigation in the case -- was not in consonance with the evidence collected earlier by ATS and CBI. "No evidence was found in support of conclusion drawn in the final report filed by ATS and supplementary final report submitted by CBI recommending prosecution of the nine accused," NIA said and urged the court to pass appropriate orders in view of its submission. Of the nine accused hailing from the powerloom town OF Malegaon, eight, including two doctors, applied for discharge from the case saying the court had powers to free them from the charges framed against them even before the trial. One accused had passed away while the case was pending. The charges against him would be abated. They were charged under various sections of IPC such as 120(b)(Conspiracy), 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) and under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA sections 3 (unlawful Association) and 7 (power to use funds of an unlawful organisation). Besides, they also faced charges under the provisions of Maharasthra Control of Organised Crime Act. Four others --Riaz Ahmed Rafi Ahmed, Istiyak Ahmed Mohammed Issak, Munwar Ahmed Mohammed Amin and Muzammil (from Pakistan) -- are absconding. They would be tried as and when they are caught, said the public prosecutor. The eight accused, who have been set free, would not face the trial in the case, which is yet to begin. They are Narul Hooda Samsuda, Raes Ahmed Rajab Ali Mansoori, Dr Salman Farsi Abdul, Dr Farok Iqbal Ahmed Mukdoomi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Anamat Ali Shaikh, Asif Khan Bashir Khan, Mohammed Jahid Abdul Majid Ansari and Abrar Ahmed Ghulam Ahmed. The NIA has arrested another set of accused in this case. They are Manohar Nariwala alias Sumer Thakur, Rajendra Chowdhary alias Dashrath, Dhan Singh and Lokesh Sharma. The agency has filed chargesheet against them and all of them are currently in jail pending trial. The opposition alliance of CPI(M) and Congress today alleged that the ruling Trinammol Congress was unleashing violence for fear of losing the polls. Their accusation drew sharp rebuff from TMC, which called the untoward incidents as "fallout of infighting" between the alliance partners. CPI(M) state committee secretary Surya Kanta Mishra said "From a 3.5-year-old child to the Left candidate, from old people to women! Unnerved TMC goons targeting all! People will give a rebuff by ousting TMC." "A 3.5 year old child is even not spared by TMC goons as his father is a Left polling agent! Fear and frustration of loosing ground at its zenith," Mishra said. In Dum Dum North constituency, CPI(M) candidate Tanmay Bhattacharya sustained injuries on his hand after stones were hurled at his car. Three persons were arrested, Barrackpore Police Commissioner Niraj Singh said. "I was on my way to visit a polling agent, who was attacked by TMC. As soon as I entered the area, I was attacked by TMC goons. Stones were pelted towards my car. I'll inform the EC. This the kind of democracy that TMC is trying to establish," Bhattacharya said. State Congress President Ashir Chowdhury said "the more TMC unleashes the terror, the more strong will be the resistance of the masses. The alliance of Left and Congress is surging ahead and that is why TMC is nervous. These incidents of violence are sign of nervousness". The Trinamool Congress leadership, however, denied the allegations and said those were the "results of infighting" between Congress and CPI(M). "They are trying to malign TMC. The TMC will win with a comfortable majority. These incidents of violence are result of infighting between Congress and CPI(M)," TMC Vice President Mukul Roy said. Bihar government today said rate of heinous crimes has decreased by 27 per cent in the month of April since the imposition of total prohibition in the state. A high-level meeting held by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with senior officials of Patna division comprising six districts of Patna, Nalanda, Bhojpur, Rohtas, Buxar and Bhabua, highlighted that the rate of heinous crime from April 1 to April 23 this year was 2,328 as compared to 3,178 during the corresponding period in 2015. The fact regarding lowering of crime rate was stated by Commissioner Patna division Anand Kishore during the meeting held by Nitish Kumar to take stock of situation in the wake of promulgation of total ban on liquor in the state on April 5 last, an official statement said. The Commissioner informed the meeting that cases of death in road accidents have also come down during this period after declaration of the state as total dry. Besides, tension during communal procession and other kind of march have also witnessed a slide due to prohibition, it said. The CM during the meeting, in which Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and state police chief P K Thakur were present, asked about raids conducted to enforce prohibition and arrest of persons under the new Excise law. He also enquired about check posts and barriers put in the districts for catching liquor bottles and functioning of de-addiction camps in the districts. Kumar, who took a decision to declare Bihar a complete dry state from April 1, has been leaving no stones unturned to plug the loopholes in implementation of the decision. Starting today, the CM is scheduled to hold such high level review meetings of other divisions too to ensure success of total prohibition and also make preparation for implementation of seven resolves of his government, which has been adopted as a policy of governance of the grand secular alliance for the next five year. Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich have said they will coordinate with each other in an effort to stop frontrunner Donald Trump from becoming the party nominee which the real estate tycoon dismissed as an act of "desperation". Texas senator Cruz and Ohio governor Kasich issued statements that they would not compete with each other in several states to try and stop Trump from securing the necessary 1,237 delegates before the Cleveland convention in July which they hope would make it a contested convention and thus open up their paths to the White House. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead," Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement. Kasich's campaign also issued a similar statement. "Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner- takes-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland," said John Weaver, chief strategist for 'Kasich for America'. "We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana," he said. "In turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well," Weaver said. As of yesterday Trump had 845 delegates to Cruz's 559. However both Cruz and Kasich's campaigns asserted it is only they who are best suitable to get the party's nomination. "Donald Trump doesn't have the support of a majority of Republicans - not even close, but he currently does have almost half the delegates because he's benefited from the existing primary system. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee," Weaver said. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation," Roe said. Trump reacted tweeting "Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!," Trump said. "Lyin' Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad!," he tweeted. REOPENS FGN 4 "This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail!" Trump said in a statement today. Trump said the coming together of Cruz and Kasich with the sole objective of preventing him from becoming the Republican presidential nominee despite he having got millions of votes is reflective of the rigged Republican presidential system. "Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system," he said. "It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination," Trump said. "Cruz has done very poorly and after his New York performance, which was a total disaster, he is in free fall and as everyone has seen, he does not react well under pressure," Trump charged. Also, approximately 80 per cent of the Republican Party is against him, Trump added. "Governor Kasich, who has only won one state out of 41, in other words, he is 1 for 41 and he is not even doing as well as other candidates who could have stubbornly stayed in the race like him but chose not to do so," he said. "Marco Rubio, as an example, has more delegates than Kasich and yet suspended his campaign one month ago. Others, likewise, have done much better than Kasich, who would get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton once the negative ads against him begin. 85 per cent of Republican voters are against Kasich," he added. "Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive," Trump charged. "They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are," he said. Noted farm activist Kishor Tiwari today said the Maharashtra government should replace "killer crops" like sugarcane and Bt Cotton in the 14 districts of drought-hit Vidharbha and regions in the state. The Farm Distress Mission, which Tiwari heads, has said it in recommendations which were submitted to the Chief Minister a day ago, he told PTI. Terming sugarcane and Bt Cotton as "killer crops", he said instead "food crops" like oil seeds, pulses, maize and sorghum should be encouraged with incentives and support price protection. Stringent conditions should be imposed to curb the cultivation of rain-sensitive cash-crops like sugarcane and Bt Cotton which have over-exploited the water in the parched areas of the state and led to a man-made drought, he said. "At a time when farmer suicides is a burning issue, Vidharbha and regions are facing a drought and also need drinking water," he said. Cultivation of water-hungry cash-crops like sugarcane and Bt Cotton exacerbated the agrarian crisis, he said. He also urged the state Government to provide additional Rs 10,000 crore for fresh crop credit. Farm credit, crop pattern and cultivation practises are the core issues of agrarian crisis, he said. "At present only 35 per cent of the debt-trapped farmers out of the four million distressed farmers in the 14 districts are getting fresh loans. Hence the panel has recommended to the Government to provide additional farm credit of Rs 10,000 crore to the distressed farmers," he said. Soil health card and soil moisture management will play a key role in reducing cultivation cost by half, he said. As part of the pre-independence biannual darbar move, Jammu and Kashmir government will close its summer capital offices on April 29 and will start functioning from Srinagar on May 9. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary B R Sharma today reviewed the 'Darbar move' arrangements from Jammu to Srinagar here in a meeting with officers. Trucks and buses have been deployed for ferrying official record and employees onApril 30 and May 1and on May 7 and 8, an official spokesman said. Sharma also directed the officers to put all necessary measures in place to ensure smooth movement of darbar move vehicles. "Extra buses and trucks be kept available during the move days besides deploying adequate number of cranes, mobile workshops, recovery vans, medical mobile teams, ambulances along with necessary equipment and staff en-route to meet any exigency," Sharma said. The Chief Secretary also asked representatives from BEACON to ensure good condition of Srinagar-Jammu National Highway especially at vulnerable spots. Arrangements have also been made for providing escort security to the employees and convoys carrying the official records, he said. With the death of five more persons, the toll in the tragic sweetmeat poisoning incident in Pakistan's Punjab province rose to 25, officials said today amid reports that the sweets may have been tainted with pesticides smuggled in from China. The government sent a 10-member team led by Punjab Food Authority (PFA) director Ayesha Mumtaz to investigate the matter. At least 25 people died of consuming poisonous sweetmeat including three children and eight of a single family while another 20 or so are still fighting for their lives, officials said. The sweetmeat was brought from a shop by Sajjad Hussain in Layyah district on Thursday, some 325 kilometers from Lahore, to celebrate the birth of a child. It was served to eight members of Sajjad's family. Their condition deteriorated soon after eating the sweet. They were rushed to the nearby hospital. "Sajjad along with his six brothers and a sister died while 12 others who consumed the poisonous sweet also breathed their last yesterday," Executive District Officer Ameer Abdullah said, adding another five patients died today as doctors could not save their lives. He said the doctors have declared all the admitted patients in district headquarters hospital Layyah critical due to lack of antidote to the pesticide that was mixed with the confection. Reports says the pesticide may have been smuggled in from China. District Police Officer Layyah Muhammad Ali Zia said that the shop owner Khalid Mahmoud was arrested. "Cheep imported liquid glucose is suspected to be used in manufacturing the sweetmeat at the shop instead of sugar (which costs more)," he said. Meanwhile, Punjab province's Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has announced ex-gratia of Rs 500,000 to the next of the kin of those died. Ringing in technology in the education sector, Delhi government today launched a mobile app for assisting the newly-appointed estate managers in state-run schools while teaching the basics of Facebook and Twitter to the principals, in a bid to help them in "peer learning". The mobile app, developed by a private entity, will enable the estate managers, who have been tasked with looking after maintenance of schools, to send their inspection reports to the department, letting the principals to focus strictly on education. The app will be integrated into the system in such a way that top officials in the department and Education Minister Manish Sisodia himself will receive the reports everyday. "In three months, the public will also be able to access the app...All the government schools in Delhi are being built in line with the 'pilot' schools, 54 of which have been developed in the first phase," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said at its launch in Thyagaraj Stadium here. Addressing the gathering of estate managers and school principals, Sisodia said, "We are training our teachers and principals in social media so that they can do peer learning and share their experiences with teachers from across the world through Facebook and Twitter." AAP social media head Abhinav trained the principals and teachers at a session here. In his speech, Kejriwal touched upon the issue of private schools, a few of which have recently expressed concern over AAP government's attempts to regulate them. The CM said some of the private schools were being run as "businesses". "It's not that we have anything against private schools. But we want to dismantle the system where we take for granted that rich kids will go to private schools and poor kids to government schools. "Government schools are being systematically destroyed as a few political leaders have stake in the private system. It has never happened in the country that private schools have refunded the fees taken arbitrarily from the students," Kejriwal said. Sisodia said that even videos can be uploaded through the mobile app, developed by 'Mindtree', who have earlier implemented the model in Gujarat and Rajasthan. "In the pilot phase, being used for the last five weeks, as many as 7,320 cases have been solved using the app out of which 3,492 pertain to maintenance, 2,151 to sanitation and the rest 1,677 to security," an executive of 'Mindtree' said. However, during the interactive session with the CM and deputy CM, many estate managers complained that the issues flagged by them have not been looked into. Kejriwal asked the estate managers to prepare a list of all the issues in the next 15 days, which he said, the government will try to resolve. "Most of the estate managers are drawn from the forces. I want them to treat schools as another border where their services are required," Sisodia said. The estate managers, who have been recruited on a contract of one year, are being paid Rs 25,000 per month. Kejriwal said it was perhaps the first time where principals were given a free hand to recruit estate managers for their schools. "Now any sort of excuses won't be entertained," he said. Sisodia added that technological interventions and investment would go waste if students were unable to read or write properly. "It's but a fact that in many schools, students of class seven, eight, nine and even ten can't read textbooks. During a recent visit to a school, I found that 20 per cent students of class ten could not write the spellings of 'vidyalaya' (school), brahman and 'aap ki' (mine)," he said. Delhi government today rolled out special air-conditioned bus service for Members of Parliament (MPs) to ferry them to and fro during the on-going odd-even car rationing scheme but had to withdraw a majority of the buses within hours due to poor response from parliamentarians. Only four-five lawmakers availed of the facility of DTC's "MP Special" to reach Parliament on the first day of the launch of the service. In view of the Parliament session, Delhi government had announced it would deploy six air-conditioned buses to ferry MPs and appealed to them to follow the odd-even scheme. The 'MP Special' buses were to ply from 9 AM to 11 AM and 5.30 PM to 8 PM. "However, keeping in view today's experience and following consultations with officials concerned in both Houses of Parliament, it has been decided that two buses will be retained as shuttles for MPs and remaining four will be reverted back to the DTC fleet from tomorrow morning," Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai said. The minister, who took a bus ride to inspect compliance of the fortnight-long car-rationing scheme in the morning, cautioned that if MPs "intentionally" violate the odd-even rules, they will not be "spared". Rai ruled out exempting MPs from the scheme but the AAP dispensation will work to address their issues through public conveyance. Earlier in the day, the Transport Minister met Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari and discussed how MPs would reach Parliament. After the meeting, the minister said there are just four days left and by the time any change in the notification is effected, the scheme will itself end. The odd-even scheme today came under attack in Parliament with some members alleging it would lead to "corruption" and was aimed at "insulting" MPs as they sought exemption from the scheme to attend the House. BJP MP Paresh Rawal today violated the odd-even rule by reaching the House in his even-numbered car, following which he apologised to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. "Made a serious blunder by travelling in a odd number car to Parliament... Sorry to Arvind ji n Delhiite...(sic)," Rawal tweeted. The BJP MP later tweeted a challan copy, saying he has paid a fine for violating the odd-even rule. According to Delhi government, a help desk has also been set up on Parliament premises to assist lawmakers in availing of the bus service. A senior government official said that keeping security of MPs in mind, some security personnel will also be deployed in these buses. MPs have not been given exemption under the odd-even scheme, the second phase of which started on April 15 and will end on April 30. The violation of the car-rationing scheme attracts a penalty of Rs 2,000. President, Prime Minister, Vice-President, union ministers, Chief Justice of India, judges of high courts, women among others are exempted under it. Asking bureaucrats to function for a day without their assistants, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan today said it will sensitise them to the travails of 'Aam Aadmi' and help in better discharge of their duties. The outspoken Governor said he wants to introduce a similar system for senior officials at RBI as well wherein they can be asked to discharge some simple banking duties to make them understand difficulties faced by others. "One could, as senior officials, try to spend a day doing some task which they ask their assistants to do but without revealing who they are and getting the assistance," Rajan said while addressing bureaucrats here at the state secretariat. "Perhaps, then we will have a much better sense of what Aam Aadmi faces and a much greater sympathy for changing the system than we have otherwise," he said while delivering the YB Chavan Memorial Lecture at Mantralaya. He said a lot of officials, including himself, realise that the system is difficult only when they retire or leave the office where they are helped by assistants. "Post retirement, the system is much harder to deal with than pre-retirement," he added. Rajan said he is mulling introducing the system within RBI where senior officials will be tasked to do simple things like changing the nominee of a fixed deposit account, which shall make them learn about the difficulties. The remarks come at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is seeking to take special steps to make the bureaucracy more accountable and also assess it on its performance. Global donors today pledged additional money to help Ukraine keep Chernobyl safe for generations after causing the world's worst nuclear power disaster 30 years ago. The 87.5-million-euro (USD 99 million) commitment toward the construction of a new spent nuclear waste storage facility comes on the eve of the former Soviet republic's commemoration of an accident whose death toll remains in dispute to this day. Ukraine will still need to find an additional 15 million euros for the underground site to be able to start safely storing the hazardous material in metal caskets by the end of the year. "It's an important project for the world as well as, of course, for Ukraine and Ukrainians," said Suma Chakrabarti, head of of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which is spearheading the project. Three of Chernobyl's four reactors continued churning out power and creating spent nuclear fuel for 16 years after the April 26, 1986 accident. An additional 200 tonnes of uranium remain inside the damaged reactor number four, raising fears there could be more radioactive leaks if the ageing concrete structure covering the stricken reactor collapses. Work began in 2010 on a new 25,000-tonne steel protective barrier that will surround the existing sarcophagus by next year. Funding for that dome, which costs more than 2.1 billion euros, is mostly in place, although it remains unclear who will pay for its upkeep and operations. Three decades after the tragedy, which the Soviet authorities spent weeks trying to cover up, the number of people who have died from radiation poisoning remains a matter of intense dispute. A UN report published in 2005 estimated that "up to 4,000" people could eventually perish from Chernobyl's aftereffects in Ukraine and neighbouring Russia and Belarus. The following year, the Greenpeace environmental protection group branded the figure a gross underestimate. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation officially recognised around 30 deaths among those sent to fight and contain the disaster in the days following the blast. Already home to the world's biggest skyscraper, Dubai has another tall order to fill: By 2030, its leader wants 25% of all trips on its roads to be done by driverless vehicles. Tuesday's announcement by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum came without warning and with few details, as is sometimes the case with the many aspirations of the leadership of the United Arab Emirates. Read more from our special coverage on "DRIVERLESS CARS" Chinese driverless cars complete 2000-km road test In this car-crazed city-state of over 1.5 million registered vehicles, it's not unusual to see Ferraris idling alongside Lamborghinis at traffic lights. And Dubai already is home to a driverless Metro rail system, which carried 178 million riders in 2015. Smart-car technology is being used in some of the world's luxury vehicles, and it is advancing rapidly enough for the plan to become a reality or a nightmare for the thousands of taxi drivers who now plying the streets among the sleek skyscrapers in the UAE's commercial capital. In a statement carried by the state-run WAM news agency, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan would cut down on costs and traffic accidents. The project would be a joint venture by Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority and the Dubai Future Foundation, he said, without offering how it would be funded in the oil-rich nation. "Today, we lay down a clear strategy with specific goals for smart transportation to form one of the key drivers for achieving sustainable economy in the UAE," Sheikh Mohammed said, who can be seen driving himself around Dubai in his white Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV, license plate No 1. Dubai boasts the world's tallest building with the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, which opened in 2010. In 2020, it will host the World Expo, a world's fair that is held every five years. Mattar al-Tayer, the director-general and chairman of the Roads and Transport Authority, said his agency has contacted a number of driverless vehicle sellers and "plans to conduct live test-runs for these vehicles in Dubai." His agency already has signed a deal with Toulouse, France-based driverless vehicle manufacturer EasyMile to conduct tests on their box-shaped EZ10, which carries up to 10 passengers, according to a statement from al-Tayer. EasyMile referred questions to its Emirati partner Omnix, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An Energy University will be established in Anantapuramu district of Andhra Pradesh from the 2017-18 academic year, Principal Secretary - Energy, Infrastructure and Investment, Ajay Jain said here today. Addressing a press conference Jain said the university would be set up as a Public-Private Partnership initiative and managed by internationally-reputed firms in the energy sector. "The university will facilitate research in new technologies in power generation... Ways are being developed for producing electricity from rain water. So we want to focus on such research activities," he said. The Higher Education Department has granted permission for the university while the state government would soon allot the land. He said a mobile app would be launched on June 8 to provide information on power supply, utilisation and interruptions. With the State Fiber Grid project set to be launched in the next couple of months, the Energy Department would install smart meters in all households for recording of electricity consumption in real time, he said. "As the government will provide internet facility to each household, consumers can now verify their electricity consumption and billing details online. Smart meters will help in this," Jain added. The Principal Secretary, who released a report for the year 2015-16 on the performance of state power sector, said power transmission losses fell to 10.2 per cent from 11.4 per cent the previous year. "At the time of the bifurcation of the state, power transmission losses stood at 14 per cent. Now our aim is to reduce this to single digit," Jain said. He said four major solar power projects would come up in the state to generate 4,000 MW of electricity by 2018. "Two Solar Energy Parks will be set up in Anantapuramu district and one each in Kurnool and Kadapa districts. They will generate 4,000 MW power," Jain said. Equitas Holdings has sold an additional 4 per cent shares to Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund, as part of the exercise to pare its foreign shareholding to be able to set up a small finance bank. The Chennai-based Equitas Holdings is one of the 10 entities to get an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank in September 2015 to set up small finance banks. In a regulatory filing today, the company said it has sold an additional 4.08 per cent (equivalent to 13,700,000 equity shares) to Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund. With this, the shareholding of Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund will go up to 7.87 per cent (26,390,240 shares) in Equitas, from 3.78 per cent earlier, the company said. Franklin Templeton had acquired the said number of shares in the company on April 21, through its various schemes, by way of market acquisition. The valuation of the acquisition by Franklin Templeton was not provided. According to the data available on Equitas Holdings website, shareholding by foreign companies/bodies/DFIs stood at 93 per cent (equivalent to 250,058,652 shares) as on March 31, 2015. As per the regulatory norms, foreign shareholding should be below 49 per cent to operate as a small finance bank. Earlier last week, Equitas Holdings launched its initial public offer (IPO), that will bring down its foreign holding to 35 per cent, from the current 93 per cent. Equitas Holdings provides credit to small business units, small and marginal farmers, micro and small industries and other unorganised sector entities, through high technology-low cost operations. Shares of the company closed 1.16 per cent down at Rs 136.05 apiece on BSE. Farmers affected by the proposed Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) in Ahmedabad district have given a 15-day "ultimatum" to the state government to scrap its plan to develop the 940 sq km-area into an SIR zone. The villagers have threatened to launch a fresh stir after a meeting scheduled on May 2, in case the government fails to denotify Dholera SIR, which affects 22 villages. "Farmers met at Dholera yesterday to chalk out the next course of action against the government. We have given a 15-day ultimatum to the government to take action, after which we will launch another round of agitation," Sagar Rabari, general secretary of Khedut Samaj, a farmers' body organising the agitation, said. Rabari said farmers have also demanded from the state government to construct a canal till Dholera, connecting Narmada main canal in a time-bound manner, so that 22 affected villages could be given irrigation water. "As many as 920 square kilometres of area has been earmarked for the SIR region in Dholera, of which 40 per cent is government land, while five per cent land belongs to farmers," Rabari said. Of this, 370 sq km of the project is under the coastal regulation zone (CRZ). No work on the development of the SIR has been taken yet, he said. Dholera SIR is a part of Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project, a high impact industrial area to be developed alongside the railway freight corridor being developed with the aid of Japanese government. Agitating farmers had earlier in 2014 moved the Gujarat High Court against the notification, challenging the legality of the SIR Act. The HC has asked the government to maintain status quo on the matter. The state government was pushed on the back foot in 2014 after farmers protested against the land acquisition for the Hazira SIR, which included land from villages in Olpad and Chorasi talukas of Surat district. The government had to denotify the SIR. In August 2013, the government was forced to denotify the Mandal-Becharji SIR in North Gujarat. The farmers affected by the proposed Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) in the district have given a 15-day "ultimatum" to the Gujarat government to scrap its plan to develop the 940 sq km-area into an SIR zone. The villagers have threatened to launch a fresh stir after a meeting scheduled on May 2, in case the government fails to denotify Dholera SIR, which affects 22 villages here. "Farmers met at Dholera yesterday to chalk out the next course of action against the government. We have given a 15-day ultimatum to the government to take action, after which we will launch another round of agitation," Sagar Rabari, general secretary of Khedut Samaj, a farmers' body organising the agitation, said. Rabari said farmers have also demanded construction of a canal till Dholera, connecting Narmada main canal in a time-bound manner, so that the affected villages could be given irrigation water. "As many as 920 square kilometres of area has been earmarked for the SIR region in Dholera, of which 40 per cent is government land, while five per cent land belongs to farmers," Rabari said. Of this, 370 sq km of the project is under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ). No work on the development of the SIR has been done yet, he said. Dholera SIR is a part of Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project, a high impact industrial area to be developed alongside the railway freight corridor with the aid of Japanese government. Agitating farmers had in 2014 moved the Gujarat High Court against the notification, challenging the legality of the SIR Act. The HC had asked the government to maintain status quo on the matter. The state government was pushed on the back foot after farmers protested in 2014 against the land acquisition for the Hazira SIR, which included land from villages in Olpad and Chorasi talukas of Surat district. The government had to denotify the SIR. In August 2013 also, the government was forced to denotify the Mandal-Becharji SIR in north Gujarat. A man accused of raping a 20-year-old girl, surrendered today at Lalaurikheda police station here, fearing wrath of villagers, police said. Pramod, accused of raping a girl in Jatipur village, earned ire of locals over the incident and surrendered at the police station today. The accused has been arrested and the girl has been sent for medical examination, Omvir Rathi, police station incharge said. The Gujarat High Court today asked the state government to appoint one more Additional Information Commissioner (AIC) within two months. The direction came following a PIL filed by RTI activist Praful Desai seeking a direction to fill up vacant posts in the office of Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). A division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi ordered the government to fill the post of one AIC within two months. On April 13, the government had told the court that two posts of AIC have been filled. In December 2015, the HC had ordered the state government to fill three posts of AICs to clear the backlog of appeals pending before the government under Right to Information Act (RTI) based on Desai's PIL. But the government had filled two posts, leaving one vacant. Desai approached the high court again seeking its direction to the state to fill up one vacant post at the earliest. In his original PIL filed in 2012, Desai contended before the court that due to the vacant posts in the office of the CIC, the number of RTI appeals pending before the CIC was growing. Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai today said Parliamentarians violating the odd-even scheme "intentionally" will be challaned but those who flouted the rule by mistake while going to Parliament today will be spared. "The rules are same for all and MPs are also covered under the odd-even scheme. Those who will intentionally violate it or repeat the mistake will be issued challans," he said. Rai said the Delhi government is ensuring that the lawmakers are facilitated and do not face any problem due to the car-rationing scheme. "It is an opportunity for the Parliamentarians to set an example by obeying the scheme and show that they also follow the rules like other people," he said. The Transport department has deployed six DTC buses to ferry MPs to Parliament to attend the ongoing session as the second phase of the scheme is in force till April 30 in the city. "They have the option to either travel by DTC buses or carpool. Some MPs today traveled by bus and I hope a majority of them considers odd-even to be a good scheme and will follow it by taking buses or carpooling," Rai, who today traveled by a DTC bus to assess the implementation of the scheme, said. The minister also thanked the MPs who took special DTC buses to Parliament. The Delhi Transport Corporation is operating two 'MP Special' buses each from North Block and South Block, and one each from Akhbar Road and Ashoka Road. Rai said the number of MPs who traveled by DTC buses will be known later and subsequently, a decision will be taken regarding the number of buses. The minister also visited Parliament. "I have talked to the Lok Sabha Secretariat about spreading the information regarding the special buses," he said. He said there was no major problem of traffic congestion due to odd-even scheme which, he added, helped reduce air pollution by bringing down PM2.5. "There were four-five points where problems came up. In Nehru Place, it was the construction work of an over-bridge... while a traffic jam was witnessed on the stretch between AIIMS and Dhaulakuan after a pipe had burst. Barring these points, traffic movement is smooth all across Delhi," he said. "The reports so far have shown the impact of the odd-even scheme on PM2.5. It is natural because this time more people are following it. So if compliance is more, it is going to help the environment," he said. To reduce litigation, the Finance Ministry today raised the monetary limit for filing appeals in indirect tax cases to Rs 10 lakh in appellate tribunal, and Rs 15 lakh in High Courts. The ministry has also made it mandatory for Principal Commissioners or commissioners to hold a pre-showcause notice consultation with assessee in all cases where duty is above Rs 50 lakh, a statement said. "The threshold limit below which appeals are not to be filed by the department in CESTAT (Tribunal) and High Courts has been raised to Rs 10 lakh and Rs 15 lakh respectively," it said. The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has asked officers to withdraw all cases in High Court and CESTAT where there is a precedent Supreme Court decision and against which no review is contemplated by the department. "The has taken several measures to manage litigation and reduce disputes," the statement said. Chief commissioners or principal commissioners have been asked to identify the cases fit for withdrawal among the cases pending in appeal before Custom Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) and High Courts. The field formations have identified 2,051 and 5,261 cases which are fit for withdrawal from High Court and CESTAT respectively as per the threshold monetary limits prescribed now. They have already filed withdrawal applications in 980 and 2,174 cases in High Courts and CESTAT respectively. Out of this, High Courts has allowed withdrawal in 250 cases and CESTAT in 202 cases. Further to ensure quick dispute resolution, has asked officers for going into pre-showcause notice (SCN) consultation with the assessee in all the cases where duty involved is above Rs 50 lakh. Detailed instructions have been issued to all field formations regarding the manner, in which an SCN is to be issued, personal hearings are to be granted and speaking adjudication orders to be issued. The chief commissioners have been directed to do sample verification of records of such proceedings from time to time. "Also training or workshops are being organised to train officers to issue quality SCN, judicious adjudication orders, advocacy, in order to minimise disputes and further litigation. This will assist ease of doing business," the statement added. Commenting on the move, EY India Tax Partner Bipin Sapra said the measures on litigation management are in line with the recommendation of Tax Administration Reform commission(TARC). "The pre-showcause notice discussion with the assessee if applied in true spirit could drastically cut down litigation and hence the transaction cost of doing business in India," Sapra said. The Supply department and police have seized a Kerosene-laden tanker and booked four persons for allegedly trying to sell fair price kerosene to a factory. The tanker, filled with 12,000 litres of kerosene from Bharat Petroleum corporation, on Saturday was seized when it was being taken to a Kosi Kalan-based factory, with the connivance of wholesale dealer, Kotwali police station Inspector Sanjai Jaiswal said. They also mixed some chemicals to the kerosene to change its color to prevent it getting identified, he said. Some chemical was mixed in kerosene to turn it into a red colour liquid so that it could not be identified, Jaiswal said. Tanker driver Sanju Sharma, the vehicle owner Laxmi Narain, wholesale dealer Prem Shankar Kaushik and the owner of the factory have been booked under the Essential Commodities Act, he said. An FIR has been filed in the matter on the complaint of Supply Inspector Preeti Singh, Jaiswal said. Efforts are on to identify the owner of the factory, he said. Meanwhile, District Supply Officer K P Mishra said, "The license of the wholesale dealer andthe purchasing factory have been cancelled by District Magistrate. : Four members of a farmer's family were killed and two seriously injured when the car they were travelling in fell off a 30 foot bridge near Kolathur, police said. They said the family were on their way back home here last evening after visiting the M M Hills at Kollegal in Karnataka and the Kodumdi temple at Coimbatore when the mishap occurred. Police suspect the car driver, also its owner, might have dozed off due to tiredness after which the car slammed the wall of the bridge and fell off it. The injured persons have been hospitalised. Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered tonight along with a friend in his flat here by suspected Islamists, in the latest audacious attack on high-profile bloggers and intellectuals in the Muslim-majority country. Julhash Mannan, the editor of 'Roopban' - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Fahim were killed by armed assailants who entered the flat impersonating as courier company officials, Deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten said. Mannan, 35, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni and ex-protocol officer of the US embassy, was known for his gay rights activism. Tanay, the other victim, was also a LGBT activist. "Three persons came this evening and claimed they had a courier for Mannan. When I went up and told him (Mannan) this, he said that he was not expecting any such parcel," said Parvez Mollah, a security guard of the building in Kalabagan. "As I came down and told them this, they insisted that I allow them to meet him (Mannan)," Mollah said. When the guard objected, they stabbed him leaving him injured in the left eye and left arm. The assailants then rushed to Mannan's flat on the second floor and stabbed him and his friend indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star. The two died immediately on the spot. Mannan's body was found lying at the entrance of the house while Tanay's body was found inside. The killings came two days after the grisly murder of liberal university professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern Rajshahi city. The attack was claimed by the ISIS. Quoting local residents, several TV channels reported that the assailants also hacked one policeman when they were leaving the scene. Citing witnesses, private Jamuna TV said the attackers shouted Allah-o-Akbar (God is great) and fired blanks to create panic as they left. Mannan along with his friends launched 'Roopbaan' two years ago. They also organized an annual rainbow rally since 2014 on April 14, Bengali New Year. The rally was banned this year due to security reasons. US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat condemned the killings, saying she was devastated by the brutal murder. "We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," the US envoy said in a statement issued this evening. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. Bangladesh's prominent blogger Imran H Sarker, who has launched protests against the killings of the bloggers and minorities in the country, last evening received a death threat from an unidentified caller from the UK. Sarker recently grabbed the media focus by criticising the arrest of senior pro-opposition journalist Shafik Rehman, who has been accused of plotting abduction and murder of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son in the US. He led the 2013 protests against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes, prompting authorities to fast-track their trials. Backing those demanding mother tongue as the Medium of Instruction (MOI) in Goa's primary schools, Union Minister Shripad Naik has suggested that the BJP-led state government rectify its policy in this regard. "It is their right to agitate. It is a universal principle that primary education should be in mother tongue," he said in yesterday. Notably, the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) yesterday began its statewide protest meetings, beginning from Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar's Mandrem constituency in North Goa, demanding regional languages as MOI. BBSM is a body of like-minded people advocating regional languages to be MOI in schools. The Union minister for AYUSH said, " government has enough opportunity to correct the fallacies in the MOI policy." "BBSM is right in agitating and demanding their right of primary education in mother tongue," he further said. government had earlier announced a policy for making regional languages as MOI, but continued giving grants to 127 schools in English medium, which irked the BBSM. "There are attempts made to work out a solution for this problem. Everyone is trying their best to solve this problem, and hence I feel everyone should take two steps back and allow the government to work on the solution," Naik suggested, without elaborating further. "If our next generation has to be attached to the ethos and culture of the state, then it is required that they should be educated in mother tongue," he said. Responding to a question, he said the state government's policy is wrong. "But then Congress and the current BJP government had to take decision depending on the circumstances prevailing at that time," he added. Chief Minister Parsekar had recently reiterated his preference for local languages during the Budget session of the state Legislative Assembly. Gopal Roy has been nominated by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) to be the next leader of the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) in Tripura Assembly, TPCC chief said today. Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President Birajit Sinha yesterday wrote a letter to the Speaker of the Assembly recommending Roy as next CLP leader in the Assembly, Sinha told reporters here. The post of the CLP leader fell vacant since April 7 as the then CLP leader and the Leader of the opposition Sudip Roy Barman resigned from his post to protest against the alliance of Congress and CPI-M in West Bengal. Meanwhile, Tripura Pradesh Mahila Congress President Kalayani Roy and another TPCC member and Chief of the Schedule Cast wing of the party Prakash Das besides 40 other leaders have resigned from their posts and joined hands with Burman. Regarding the desertion of party leaders and workers of the party, Sinha said he had informed the AICC regarding the development. "Practically we have nothing to do regarding the tie-up of Congress and CPI-M in West Bengal. It is a policy decision taken by our high command in Delhi. But we do not see any such possibility in Tripura," Sinha said. Government today banned import of dogs for breeding or any other commercial activity. "Import of commercial dogs for breeding or any other commercial activities is not permitted," Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification. However, it said that import of dogs is allowed only for the specific purposes such as pet dog with valid pet book and relevant records/documents in the name of importer; dogs imported by the R&D organisations for conducting research with the recommendation of Committee for the Purpose of Control And Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA). It said that for the internal security by the defence and police force also the imports are allowed. The Senior Medical Officer of sub-divisional hospital, Phagwara was put under suspension today for allegedly forcing patients to purchase medicines and undertake tests in the market against the government rules. Health & Family Welfare Minister Surjit Kumar Jyani suspended Dr Narinder Singh after the department's principal secretary Vini Mahajan's surprise visit to the hospital. She found out that the patients were being made to purchase medicines and undertake laboratory tests from outside the hospital, officials said. The government had announced 218 types of essential drugs and various other consumables and suture materials would be provided free of cost at all government hospitals. The secretary found out that even the indoor patients were not being provided medicines within the hospital, they said. Taking a serious note of the irregularity, the Health Secretary discussed the matter with the minister who directed the SMO be immediately placed under suspension. The SMO of ESI Hospital Phagwara has been given the charge of the hospital. Meanwhile, the government has transferred Dr Varindra Singh, Civil Surgeon, Kapurthala as Gurdaspur Civil Surgeon on the administrative grounds. Dr HS Kahlon, Civil Surgeon Gurdaspur has been posted as Civil Surgeon of Kapurthala. The government is working on a draft policy which encourages private and public sector companies to take up afforestation of degraded forests to reduce import of wood products, Rajya Sabha was told today. "The Environment Ministry has not issued any guidelines allowing degraded forests to be handed over to private companies so far. "However the Environment Ministry is working on draft policy guidelines for encouraging participating of private/public sector in afforestation of degraded forest with a view to improving forest condition and decrease import of wood products," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said. He said that proposed guidelines titled 'Guidelines for Public participation in afforestation of degraded forests' provide for consultation with gram panchayats, village panchayats and joint forest management committee wherever necessary and obtain their consent in respect of forest land identified under the scheme before inviting Express of Interest (EOI). "To ensure that ecological, environmental and social security of people dependent on forest is not compromised, the draft guidelines provide for adequate safeguards," Javadekar further added. (Reopens DES18) Replying to another question, Javadekar said the area where compensatory afforestion has been undertaken up to March 31, 2015 in lieu of diversion of forest land under the provisions of Forest Conservation Act 1980, including projects for construction of roads is 6,87,809 ha against a stipulation of 8,60,791 ha which represents 80 per cent achievement of the targets. "It is true that artificial afforestation carried out under compensatory afforestation provisions of Forest Conservation Act 1980 cannot substitute natural forests, yet keeping in view the imperatives of development and the crucial role played by development projects including highways in the process of development. "...Permission for diversion of forest land is granted under the FCA 1980 only in cases where diversion of forest land is inevitable. Compensatory afforestation is undertaken to minimise the loss of impact of forest diversion in due course of time," Javadekar said. A Government Railway Police (GRP) sub-inspector was killed when the motorcycle he was riding on was hit by a speeding truck on Panki-Bhaunti National Highway here, police said. Kunwar Bahadur Singh Patel (34), a resident of Allahabad, was going to his home in Ramadevi area from Bhimsen Railway Station last evening when the accident occurred on the highway, a police official said. Patel had been transferred 10 days back from Uri to Bhimsen Railway Station after promotion, he said. The victim was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared dead, the official said, adding the driver sped away with the truck. He is survived by a daughter and his wife. Police said the body has been sent for postmortem and the case in under investigation. To "wake up" the BJP-led Gujarat government regarding the water scarcity in major parts of the state, Gujarat Congress today announced to take out a march across the state from tomorrow. The 'Pani-Yatra' would commence from 14 different places across Gujarat and cover all the districts before culminating at four cities from four different zones -- Rajkot (Saurashtra), Mehsana (north), Vadodara (central), Surat (south). The decision was taken today at a high-level party meet held here to chalk out a strategy for the upcoming 2017 Assembly elections, an official release said. "In spite of the acute water shortage in many villages, BJP-led state government is still shying away from declaring them as scarcity-hit or drought-hit. To wake up this government, Congress will take out 'Pani Yatra' across Gujarat on April 26, 27 and 28," Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki was quoted as saying in the release. AICC general secretary and in-charge of Gujarat Congress Gurudas Kamat along with Leader of Opposition in Gujarat Assembly Shankersinh Vaghela were also present during the meeting. To corner the BJP government on the issue of alleged irregularities in KG Basin operations, Solanki also announced to stage protests across Gujarat on April 30. In his address, Vaghela asked party workers to gear up for the 2017 elections. He also announced to launch a 'Lok Darbar' from his constituency of Kapadvanj in Kheda district. "Congress will start public meetings in the form of Lok Darbar from May 9. It will kick start from Kapadvanj and later on held across Gujarat. In these meetings, Congress will highlight the issues concerning people, such as rampant corruption, unemployment, law and order situation, etc." Vaghela said. In his address, Kamat said, "Time has come to highlight the problems being faced by the people, as this government has miserably failed to keep it's promises. Congress will initiate a mass movement to address the plight of citizens. A lady doctor and her father-in-law were gunned down today by some unidentified bike-borne gunmen in this Pakistani city of the restive Khyber Pakthunkhwa province. The assailants waylaid the car in which Dr Zainab Iftikhar was traveling along with her father-in-law Sabir Hussain, a retired Pakistan Air Force employee in Gulbahar area here, district police officer Shakir Khan Bangash said. Iftikhar, whose husband is an employee of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in Islamabad, was on her way to drop her seven-year-old son at a school along with Hussain when the gunmen opened indiscriminate fire, killing Iftikhar and Hussain on the spot. The doctor's son was safe as he was was not targeted. Police have registered a case but no arrests were made till late night. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Delhi High Court today asked the AAP government to convene within a week a meeting with representatives of app-based cab aggregators Ola and Uber, which are allegedly operating "illegally", to see if they are interested in getting fresh licence from the government. Besides these two stakeholders, Justice J R Midha also asked the Delhi government to call meeting with another public transport service which offers ride in autorickshaw through an app called 'Jugnoo'. "This court is of the view that the Secretary, transport department of Delhi government, shall convene a meeting with all the stakeholders (three app-based companies) to see if they are interested in getting the licence. "The companies authorised representatives shall attend the meeting and share their views on the issue," the court said, adding the same be held in a week from today. The court's suggestion in form of an order came after it was told that alleged unlicensed aggregators, Ola and Uber, are operating illegally as their applications for licence were rejected by the transport department on June 28, 2015. Meanwhile, counsel appearing for the app-based companies told the court that they have no issue in getting the licence and earlier their representation to the government were turned down. Hearing which, the court said the government should give them a chance to apply for fresh licence, as at present the Delhi government has shortage of public transport. "There should be some proper facility, so that public do not have to suffer. Call all the stakeholders and float a fair scheme," the court said, adding that "if all of you sit together, I know the difficulties raised by the taxi operators will come to an end". The court said the status report of the meeting shall be filed by May 10. The court was hearing a plea filed by Magic Sewa Pvt Ltd which has alleged that certain unlicensed taxi aggregators "have been disdainfully violating" government's notification on fares by charging very low amounts like Rs five per km or as high as Rs 38 per km. Magic Sewa said this was an urgent issue as during the ongoing odd-even scheme, app-based taxi service operators were flouting fare rules and charging exorbitantly from customers. It alleged that unlicensed taxi aggregators "also charge the so-called 'peak time charge' or 'surge price' over and above the normal fares on a day and time of their own choosing. This 'peak time charge' or 'surge price' could be as high as five times the normal fare published by the unlicensed taxi aggregators". It also alleged that app-based cab companies were not complying with the City Taxi Scheme, 2015 or the fares notified under the Motor Vehicles Act. Ola and Uber, however, opposed the contention raised in the petition, saying they have all India permit licence and are not governed by the Delhi government's scheme as this lies in the central government domain. Senior standing counsel Rahul Mehra, appearing for Delhi government, said companies cannot be allowed to charge more than prescribed rates of fare in the shape of 'surge price' or 'peak time charge'. He further submitted that to "regulate auto rickshaws and taxi services, Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) under relevant provisions introduced a scheme called 'City Taxi Scheme 2015' vide notification dated August 26, 2015." Mehra contended that if they comply, "we are ready to hear them and give them license." The court observed that in today's situation we have to find a solution. "If you (Delhi government) have reduced vehicular movement in the capital, then you will have to organise better public transport," the court said, adding that "you (Delhi government and app based taxi operators) put an end to it". The Madras High Court has directed Tamil Nadu government to make efforts to allot within two months the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests cadre post to the first woman Indian Forest Service officer of the state. The division bench, comprising Justice Huluvadi G. Ramesh and Justice K. Ravichandra Baabu, dismissed an appeal of the state government challenging a CAT order directing government to reinstate the officer Aruna Basu Sarcar in the additional APCCF cadre post. Government must make earnest efforts to allot her APCCF cadre post within two months, the court said, dismissing the appeal. The bench did not agree with the argument that a government servant must first join duty at the transferred post. "It is seen that the post of dean (forestry) is not equivalent to the post of APCCF," the court said. The bench did not accept government's claim that pay protection had been extended to her. In its order, the bench said "mere extension of pay protection would not satisfy in any way" and said if she had already applied for leave, it would be treated as earned leave if it is in her credit, or else to treat it as leave without pay. The officer, known for her crackdown on smuggling of sandalwood and redsanders, was first transferred out from her position as additional principal chief conservator of forests (APCCF-Research), and then posted to Tamil Nadu Forest Academy in Coimbatore before being sent to the chief conservator of forests CCF-cadre dean post at TNAU on February 21, 2015. She then went on leave, and later on medical leave, from March 2, 2015. The Central Administrative Tribunal had held that her transfer as University dean would amount to downgrading her position and directed government to reinstate her in APCCF cadre post. Immediately after the relief, Sarcar wrote to the chief minister's cell, stating that she had been shunted out to a subordinate position despite the fact that three APCCF cadre posts were available in the state. Two of them were lying vacant for more than six months, she had pointed out. The state authorities challenged the CAT ruling after waiting out the whole appeal period of three months. Former Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, who heads a high-level committee on border security, is on a three-day visit to Kutch district to review the security along the India-Pakistan border. A top police officer said Gupta and some other members of the committee arrived here yesterday and held meetings with Border Security Force officials. "They also went to the border and took first-hand account of the security. They will leave tomorrow," the officer said requesting anonymity. The Union government formed the committee earlier this month to suggest ways to strengthen the security along the border with Pakistan and address the issue of gaps and vulnerability in the border fencing. It will submit its report in three months. The committee was formed in the wake of the Pathankot airbase attack in January. Hong Kong, the world's eighth-largest trading economy, sees "a good possibility" of importing consumer electronic components from India and will "encourage" local companies to set up assembly plants there with the aim of bolstering economic and business ties. Terming the potential entry as "a win-win situation", It has stressed on stepping up the programme of exchange and understanding between the two countries and signing of the Double Taxation Agreement and Investment Protection Treaty for promotion of trade and investments. Read more from our special coverage on "HONG KONG" Hong Kong finance chief warns of unrest as economy weakens However, on the bilateral trade front, expects a growth in exports to India, but sees imports from India to stay flat. "Yes, there is a good possibility (of imports) of parts and components for making consumer electronics products. Because we are the largest exporter of telephones, mobiles in world. So, we need parts for finished products," Trade Development Council (HKTDC) Deputy Executive Director, Raymond Yip told Indian reporters here. "Because we also trade in products and we don't buy for our 7.3 million people here. We buy actually for 1.3 billion people in China, we buy for the world. We can buy worth $1.4 billion per day for the world." He further said local companies in can also be encouraged to invest in India by setting up assembly plants to tap the big domestic market there in the wake of rising income of the middle class. According to HKTDC, Hong Kong does not produce components itself and imports the same from China, the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia. And this is where India can fit in, Raymond noted. "India excels in making good quality telecom components because of your domestic research and development and the presence of MNCs... Electronics is our biggest industry. Out of $462 billion of our exports, half is electronics," Raymond said. "We could import that from India because you produce some good components because we need components and parts to make products for exports." Hong Kong's total exports to the world last year stood at $462 billion while its imports remained at $518 billion. On the 'Make In India' initiative, he said: "For us, anything which turns into business opportunities is great and of course, we want to sell more products to India." He pointed to some constraints though in terms of import regulations, and tariff, adding that it is being liberalised. HKTDC, established in 1966, is a statutory body dedicated to promoting Hong Kong's trade in goods and services. Asserting that Hong Kong has "big" appetite for trade, Raymond said the country also buys products, including luxury items such as watches, for 60 million tourists comprising 45 million from China. Stepping up his pitch further, Raymond said it is number one market in the world for Swiss watches and Japanese food products. The Sabarimala temple management today told the Supreme Court that the ban on entry of females aged between 10 and 50 years was because they cannot maintain "purity" for 41 days on account of menstruation, prompting the judges to ask how periods could be linked to purity. Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine in Kerala, also claimed the ban was not discrimininatory and based on "reasonable classification". "There is no gender discrimination. There is a reasonable classification by which certain class of women are excluded," senior advocate K K Venugopal, representing the Devaswom Board, told a three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra. "What is the fulcrum of this classification," the bench asked referring to the bar on entry of women of a particular age group. Venugopal said girls and women in the age group are excluded as they cannot maintain purity for a period of 41 days due to the mensuration. "Do you to mean to say that mensuration is associated with with purity of women? You are making distinction based on purity... Now the question is whether the Constitutional principles allow this?" the bench, also comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, said. At the outset, Venugopal said women and men both are allowed entry into the temple and hence, there is no case of gender discrimination and females of a particular age group are not allowed due to the centuries-old custom. There are as many as eight Lord Ayappa temples in Delhi and NCR region and women are allowed inside, he said, adding that the Sabarimala temple is different. Women are allowed inside in Sabarimala also, but they cannot climb eighteen sacred steps on the hill unless they maintain 41 days of purity, he said, adding that the High Court verdict, favouring the practice, is a judgment "in rem" (continuity) and the apex court should not re-examine it by entertaining a PIL. The arguments remained inconclusive and would resume on May 2. The court is hearing a PIL, filed by Indian Young Lawyers' Association seeking entry of women into the Sabarimala temple, located on a hilltop in the Western Ghats of Kerala's Pathanamthitta District. Gender equality is a "constitutional message" and the ban on entry of women of a particular age group into the temple cannot be claimed as a right to manage religious affairs by its management, the court had earlier observed. It had said it would test the "so-called" custom under the provisions of the Constitution. Senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting the court as an amicus curiae, had said "The practice, which keeps women away and prevents them from worshipping the deity of the shrine because of their biology, is derogatory and detrimental to their dignity". The court had also said that denying women the right to enter and pray in the historic temple cannot be justified on the basis of traditions which violated constitutional principle. Recently, Kerala-based organisations -- Hind Navotthana Pratishtan, through its president Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha, and Narayanashrama Tapovanam, through its managing trustee Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha -- had moved the court supporting the PIL seeking entry of women into the temple. The Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education today declared the results of Class XII examinations within a record 25 days, with 78.93 per cent students clearing the test, up by nearly 15 per cent from last year. Board Chairman Balbir Tegta said as many as 1,01,104 candidates appeared in the examinations, of whom 79,411 passed 14,299 were placed in compartment. The pass percentage was 78.93 per cent against 64.64 per cent in 2015. Rahul Sharma of Dharrubal, Mandi and Roshan Lal of Arki, Solan topped in Arts section by securing 471 out of 500 marks. Tammanna Koushal of Dharamshala topped in Commerce scoring 482 marks and Suvrat Sharma of Hamirpur came first in Science bagging 492 marks. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh congratulated the Board for declaring the results within 25 days and said the better performance was due to the maintenance of high standard of education by the government in schools. Board Secretary Shravan Manta said candidates who want to get re-evaluation of their papers done may submit online a sum of Rs 400 as re-evaluation fee per answer sheet and Rs 300 per answer sheet for re-checking by May 9 through school heads. He said off-line applications will not be entertained. India has cancelled the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently after China objected to it. "We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a Home Ministry spokesperson today said without elaborating further. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, "On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation." He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. "May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side," he said. India's decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim- dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking India's bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. India today said persisting "undemocratic systems" of international governance are creating hindrances for effective participation of developing countries in global decision-making processes, as it expressed disappointment that its repeated calls for a conducive environment has met with resistance. "The global development divide of today can trace its origins in an array of historical injustices that have somehow never completely disappeared from the equation," Permanent Representative of India to the UN in Geneva Ajit Kumar said at a session of the Working Group on the Right To Development. Kumar said the global divide is "evident" today in the "persisting undemocratic systems" of international governance where effective participation of developing countries in international decision-making is paved with all kinds of obstacles. "In this regard, our repeated calls for a conducive international environment as well attempts towards greater acceptance and operationalisation of the right to development at the international level have only yielded disappointment and resistance," he said. Kumar called for "strong political will" and "genuine commitment" of the international community to make the right to development a "working reality". Kumar stressed that the challenge of guaranteeing human rights becomes nearly impossible to tackle in the face of unmet human needs. "There seems to be a tacit acknowledgement of this fact in the plethora of internationally agreed declarations, resolutions, decisions and norms on the issue of right to development, however, when it comes to allocation of adequate time and resources to this issue, our collective endeavour at the various UN fora leaves much to be desired," he said. The deliberations in all multilateral fora as well decades of experience of the ground realities have established that any lasting progress towards fulfilling the right to development require equitable economic relations and a favourable economic environment at the international level, apart from the national level policies. He reiterated the centrality of the right to development in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, saying this would require mainstreaming of the right to development in the policies and operational activities of the UN and its various agencies, funds and programs. (Reopens FGN6) Lamenting the UN had not been able to push forward with the reforms, Brazil's envoy to the UN Antonio de Aguiar Patriota - speaking on behalf of the G4 nations of Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan - had said "there was huge expectation that time had arrived for us to move into concrete negotiations, It is unfortunate that the 70th anniversary of the UN was not able to build up momentum with a view to reaching an agreement on this important item." For his visits to India and China, Thomson will be accompanied by the Office of the President of the General Assembly's Chef de Cabinet Ambassador Tomas Anker Christensen and Senior Adviser Meena Syed. Thomson will replace current General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft. Following his election, Thomson had noted that the Assembly's 71st session would bring momentum to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and serve to achieve progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Accusing India of following a "tricky two-sided" policy to "maximise gains at minimum costs", an article in the state media here said India's stand on a negotiated settlement in the disputed South Sea is aimed at securing membership of the China-led SCO grouping. "Indian diplomacy rests on engagement with major world powers instead of clinging to a particular country. By adopting an ambiguous strategy, India places itself in a position that all the major powers woo it, but it never explicitly promises anything regarding the policies of other nations," the article in the state-run Global Times said. "This makes these countries hope about wooing India while not willing to break ties with it due to its ambiguous stance. India has been trying to maximise its interests with minimum costs, which so far has achieved satisfying results," the article 'New Delhi may get dragged into tussles'," said. Referring to the joint statement issued after the April 18 meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, India and (RIC), it said India struck a common stance toward the simmering tensions in the South China Sea (SCS) backing a negotiated settlement to solve territorial disputes. China opposes the Philippines' arbitration under the UN Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS) on the SCS but is open for a negotiated settlement. "Having established a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, China-Russia relations have warmed up in the past two years and Russia has expressed understanding and support for China's stance in the South China Sea. But India's attitude is tricky," it said. "For years, India has remained a prudent yet ambiguous stance over the SCS issue. At a sensitive moment such as now, India expressed the same attitude as China and Russia, indicating a changing state of mind of India," it said. "One possible reason is that India has been striving for full-fledged membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). In July 2015, SCO Ufa summit launched the process of accession for India and Pakistan. "But India's inclusion into the SCO has not been completed. India needs to prove that its accession can play a constructive role for the unity of SCO members and the effect of the SCO," it said. "In addition, what rights India will be entitled to after it enters the SCO will be determined by the existing members. Against this backdrop, India taking a consistent stance with China and Russia in diplomatic matters will facilitate its accession to the SCO and help it better play its role within this regional framework. "This may be part of India's consideration," the article said adding that India at the same time agreed to share military logistics with the US. "By joining the communique in support of China's stance on the South China Sea, India seemingly tries to strike a diplomatic balance at a high level. Yet it doesn't connote any change in India's diplomatic intentions to seek a balance between powers," it said. "India's moves to substantively bolster the US in military cooperation and meanwhile disappoint the latter right before the South China Sea arbitration outcome is released indicates the duality of India's policy. They show that India also takes a two-sided stance in dealing with China," it said. India will host a major conference tomorrow aimed at bringing peace and stability to war-ravaged Afghanistan and speeding up its reconstruction with a focus on boosting investment and enhancing connectivity to the country. The 'Heart of Asia' (HoA) conference, to be attended by officials of a number of countries including Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, is likely to deliberate on a host of issues such a combating challenge of extremism and terrorism. The key elements of HoA process have been to devise a sustained, incremental approach to implementation of the confidence building measures (CBM) in Afghanistan and the officials are set to deliberate on them during the conference. Energy, infrastructure and investment deals to shore up economic growth of Afghanistan may figure in the talks. In HoA process, India has been demanding dismantling safe havens and sanctuaries of terror in the region besides pressing for deeper engagement of various stakeholders for Afghanistan's stability and security. India is against mainstreaming of armed groups without adhering to the red lines. It has also been seeking action on combating the twin scourges of extremism and separatism besides emphasising on disrupting financial and other kinds of support to terrorism. India has also been favouring enhancing connectivity of Afghanistan with regional markets. The first foreign ministers-level meeting of the HoA process was held under the aegis of the 'Istanbul Conference' in November, 2011. It presented a new vision of cooperation and confidence building for the region with Afghanistan at its centre by bringing together Afghanistan and its surrounding region. The conference had agreed that the Istanbul Process on Regional Security and Cooperation for a secure and stable Afghanistan is a non-binding process. India is actively participating in all the six CBMs under this mechanism including counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, disaster management, education and regional infrastructure. The Istanbul process has been consistent with India's vision of achieving lasting stability and prosperity for Afghanistan, anchored in a regional environment that is stable, economically integrated and conducive to shared prosperity. The second ministerial conference was held in 2012 in Kabul while the third in 2013 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The fourth conference took place in Beijing and the fifth conference was held in Islamabad in December last year which was attended by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. India hosted the senior officials Meeting of the Istanbul process in January 17, 2014 in New Delhi. India is set to host the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the HoA Process in the last quarter of 2016. The 14 participating countries in HoA process are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and UAE. The supporting countries include Australia, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Iraq, Japan, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK the US and the EU. Describing the current economic scenario of the country as a "golden age", Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian has asked students to stay away from "gloomy news" and "negativity". "Despite challenges, this is going to be the golden age for developing countries like India, where many economic indicators are very promising", the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) quoted Subramanian as saying in a release. Subramanian was speaking at the convocation ceremony of IFMR at Sri City Special Economic Zone here yesterday. He last week had said that India can achieve economic growth rate of 8-10 per cent in the next three years. "We have released the Economic Survey in February which has said about 7 - 7.75 per cent. In the medium term that includes three years time what we are aspiring and we can achieve is 8-10 per cent growth", he had said. Congratulating the graduating students, he advised them to stay away from "gloomy news" and "negativity" and appealed them not to get "bogged down" by failures. Though he was perceived as a very successful person, Subramanian commented that he crossed many failures like not getting in to IAS and rejection of academic papers, the release said. In a sudden move, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet tomorrow during which the issues dogging the bilateral ties including the Pathankot terror strike will be discussed. Primarily, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will be here on a day-long visit to attend the 'Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process'. An announcement to this effect was made in Islamabad. On the sidelines of the meet, Chaudhry will hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar to review the status of bilateral ties and Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue (CBD), which is stagnant. According to sources,"the focus of the talks would be on the investigation into the Pathankot terror strike and a possible visit by NIA team to Pakistan in this connection." This will be first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year. The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. The meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side, which maintained that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed. Indo-UK Institute of Health is planning to set up a 1,000-bed hospital near here. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has agreed to allot land for setting up the 1,000-bed medical facility, an official release from his office said here today. "The CM has agreed to extend support for setting up hospital in the State. The CM has agreed to allot land near outer ring road of the city," the release said. An MoU will be signed by both the parties after the identification of the land is done, it added. Indo-UK Institute of Health is a collaboration between the two countries in the healthcare sector. An investment of Rs 90,841.16 crore was made in the renewable energy sector in the country during three fiscals to 2015-16, government said today. "Total investment made in renewable energy sector in all states, including Jharkhand and Gujarat, during the last three years is Rs 90,841.16 crore," New & Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. The minister also informed the House that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has provided financial support of Rs 6,541.04 crore towards capital subsidy/viability gas funding/ generation based incentives in the three-year period till March 31, 2016. The maximum investment was in wind energy sector at 46,831.86 crore during the period, followed by solar at Rs 30,440 crore, biogas & bagase cogeneration at Rs 7,382.40 crore and small hydro (up to 25 MW) at 6,186.90 crore. In a separate reply, the minister said that the ministry has released Rs 941.88 crore to the states under schemes for providing solar power to villages in the country. In another reply to the House, the minister said, "During the 12th Five Year Plan Period, against the target of 88,537 MW generation capacity additions from conventional sources, 84,990.7 MW has been achieved as on March 31, 2016." The minister also informed the House that the tentative power generation capacity addition from sources like thermal, hydro and nuclear is 16,654.5 MW during the current fiscal. WHO today asked the South Asian region countries, including India, to scale up anti-malaria efforts, saying robust financial investment and political will are "crucial" to tackle the disease. The WHO South-East Asia, on World Malaria Day, said the region has made progress in its efforts to combat malaria as between 2000 and 2014, achieving an 85 per cent decline in malaria mortality rates. "Between 2000 and 2014, the SEA region achieved an 85 per cent decline in malaria mortality rates with all member countries committed to malaria elimination by 2030 at the latest. In a region where approximately 1.4 billion people are at risk, there is no space for complacency. "To end malaria for good, member countries must reinforce and scale up their efforts now. Sustained and robust financial investment and political will is crucial. This is necessary to make immediate gains and also to eliminate any danger of resurgence," said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia. She said in the last century there were dozens of examples of malaria resurgence around the world, many of them linked to a decline in funding and political will, and history must not be repeated. Noting that the national malaria programmes must be empowered to work across sectors, she said these programmes must possess a broad range of capabilities and must be backed by effective national policies. "Community participation and buy-in is also critical. Many of the people at risk of malaria live in hilly and inaccessible areas. In some cases, they are also mobile. Action must be accelerated in these high-burden areas and among vulnerable groups, with a gradual shift in the response from the national to the local level. "The continued development of new solutions and strategies, including next-generation drugs, diagnostics and vaccines, will similarly play a key role in beating the threat from drug and insecticide resistance," she said. She noted that the emergence in the Greater Mekong Subregion of serious malaria multidrug resistance, including to artemisinin-based combination therapies, has the potential to jeopardise all ongoing efforts in the SEA region and beyond. "Ending malaria for good is an ambitious target. But it is also achievable. WHO remains committed to working with member countries and partner organisations such as the Global Fund and the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance to combat the debilitating disease and to lift its burden from the South-East Asia Region. Israel's Shin Bet security service today accused a Palestinian journalist arrested at the weekend of belonging to a "terror group" after colleagues called for international support for his release. Omar Nazzal, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), was detained by Israeli officials on Saturday at the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan. He was seeking to travel to a meeting of the European Federation of Journalists in Bosnia. The Shin Bet service said in response to an AFP query that he had been recently appointed a director of Palestine Today, a TV channel it declared illegal in February, and was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- a leftist political party Israel accuses of terrorism. "Omar has for years been known to be a Popular Front activist: he was arrested now because of his involvement in current Popular Front activities," Shin Bet said in a written reply. It said he was not detained because of his journalism but over "his involvement in terror group activities". The PJS called yesterday for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene in Nazzal's case. Union officials met an ICRC representative yesterday in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, as journalists held a sit-in protest over the arrest. "We explained to the ICRC that it was imperative to quickly visit Omar Nazzal," Musa al-Sher, general secretariat member, told AFP. The ICRC is the only international organisation allowed to visit Palestinians held by the Israeli authorities. Nazzal's wife told AFP she did not know where he is being held. "I have no idea of his fate since he told me by phone Saturday he was arrested by Israel," she said. The Palestine Today offices in Ramallah were raided in March by soldiers after Israel accused it of incitement. The Palestinian information ministry yesterday again accused Israel of targeting Palestinian journalists, sating that several local radio stations had also been raided in recent months. In March, the International Federation of Journalists said it was "very concerned" by a wave of arrests of Palestinian journalists. To identify rehabilitation and reformation activities that need to be undertaken in the jails of Haryana, a two-day training programme was organised for prison officials in Gurgaon. The 'Training for Prison Programme' is a joint venture between Haryana Prisons and NGO India Vision Foundation. The programme, which was fourth in the series, was led by former IPS officer Kiran Bedi and Yash Pal Singal, Director General of Prisons, Haryana, said an official release. It was attended by 22 prison officials including Superintendents of Jail, Deputy Superintendents of Jail and Assistant Superintendents of Jail, it said. During the programme, Bedi laid emphasis on standardisation of rehabilitation and reformation programmes across prisons. While concluding the training programme, Singal said every prisoner should be involved in educational activities. They should either get education or provide education to other prisoners during their stay inside the jail. Inmates should leave the prison with some additional skills, he added. Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group is constructing a massive new madrassa, spread over about 10 acres outside garrison city of Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province, extending its reach in the country despite a ban by the UN and the US. JeM, led by India's one of the most wanted terrorists Masood Azhar, has ties to al Qaeda and the group continues to operate openly at its base in Bahawalpur, which is also headquarters of the Pakistani army's XXXI Corps. "On a recent visit, a bearded gunman lounged by the entrance of Jaish-e-Mohammad's four-story compound downtown, which also houses an affiliated seminary. Residents and a member of the group said there hadn't been any crackdown-even after India accused Jaish of being behind a cross-border attack in January," the Wall Street Journal reported. A sign outside the JeM complex in central Bahawalpur says it houses a madrassa "under the guidance" of Azhar, who has written a four-volume treatise on jihad, it said. "Outside town, an even bigger Jaish installation is under construction, spread over at least 10 acres just off a highway. A new madrassa, crowned with white domes, loomed over the surrounding farmland," the paper reported. A cleric affiliated with JeM told the Journal, "We don't hide who we are. We are a jihadist group." Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan's population, has seen a far more low-key approach to fighting extremists, run largely by the provincial police. "Operations are only against those that shoot the police or army," Riaz Husain Pirzada, minister of federal-provincial coordination and a member of parliament from Bahawalpur, was quoted as saying by the Journal. It said Pakistan's military spokesman did not respond to repeated requests to comment. A security official said the authorities would confront "all militants in time." Citing a retired senior security official in Punjab, the Journal said members of domestically focused militant groups in the province are taking shelter with JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba to escape counter-terrorism operations. "While there seems to be an increasing recognition that the India-focused groups -- Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e- Mohammad -- represent real risks to Pakistan itself, it is not clear that anyone has settled on whether or how to address them," the paper quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying. The JeM cleric said his group opposes attacks in Pakistan. "We carry out attacks against the infidel in their country," he added. India has blamed JeM for the January 2 attack on a key air force base in Pathankot in which seven security personnel were killed. It has given Pakistan "leads" connecting JeM to the attack and sought strong action against the group. Pakistan had assured India that it was "tracing and sealing" the JeM offices, which has been banned in Pakistan since 2002 and is also labeled a terrorist organization by the US. The UN had banned JeM in 2001. The JNU today slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated three others for varying durations over their alleged role in the controversial February 9 event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had sparked outrage and triggered protests. Based on the findings of a high-level enquiry committee (HLEC), Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and another leader Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15. Umar has also been slapped a fine of Rs 20,000. Anirban has also been barred from JNU campus for a period of five years from July 23. Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gattoo, has been rusticated for two semesters. A penalty of Rs 10,000 has been imposed on JNU students union (JNUSU) joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the union. JNU students union president Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with the controversial event and are out on bail. Their arrests had triggered widespread protests at JNU and many other universities, following which the Opposition had accused the government of attempting to stifle dissent. While Umar and Anirban were blamed for "triggering communal violence" and "disrupting" communal harmony on the campus, Mujeeb was found guilty of participating sloganeering. Kanhaiya was pronounced guilty of indiscipline and misconduct. Those who have been imposed fine of Rs 20,000 each include former JNUSU President Ashutosh Kumar, former general secretary Chintu Kumari, current General Secretary Rama Naga, Aishwarya Adhikari, former Vice President Anant Prakash Narayan and Gargi for "violating" dissciplinary norms. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students -- Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi -- while hostel facilities of Ashutosh Kumar have been withdrawn for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21. In his reaction, Kanhaiya said the punitive action announced by the authorities was "simply unacceptable" and that the students rejected it. The students will hold an "all party" meeting later tonight to finalise future course of action. "We completely reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. These are all innocent students, coming from extremely humble and underprivileged backgrounds," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said. The JNU had constituted a five-member high-level enquiry committee to investigate the controversial event at the campus on February 9 and the panel had found some students guilty of violating disciplinary norms and disrupting communal harmony. on the campus. An official of the JNU said financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students including Kanhaiya. Anirban's punishment is the harshest as he has been debarred from the university for five years. When asked about punishment to Anirban, the official said, "During the period of rustication, the student ceases to exist on rolls of the university but has an option of joining back and re-enrolling in the same course after period of rustication is over. "However, following debarment from the university for a period the student cannot enroll in any course or join any academic activities on campus," the official said. He said while Umar and Gattoo will have the option of resuming their courses once the period of rustication is over, Anirban has been given a window of a week (July 16-23) to complete his thesis. "If he is unable to do so, he will not be able to seek an extension or re-enroll as he has been debarred from university for five years on completion of that week. If his PhD is not completed during this period he will not be able to do it from JNU for five years however he can enroll at some other university," he said. The official said disciplinary measures have been taken for not following university procedures, misinforming the university, misconduct and indiscipline, causing and colluding in the unauthorised entry of persons into the campus, putting up objectionable posters, arousing communal, caste or regional feelings and creating disharmony, blockade or forceful prevention of any normal movement of traffic and violation of security, safety rules notified by the university. The committee imposed the fine on Sharma, who had objected to the event, for blocking traffic on the day it happened. Surprisingly, Aishwarya whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been imposed the financial penalty. "A farce is what this enquiry has been made from day 1 to witch-hunt students and punish them by hook and crook. I want to tell the VC that his friend Appa Rao did the same in Hyderabad university but our friends fought back. We will also do the same," said Umar. A senior university official said, "Based on the report of the high-level committee which arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record, the university has decided to rusticate three students. The report of the five-member panel has underlined lapses on part of administration and taken into account the role of outsiders in the event. However, no action has been taken against any administrative official. "As per the committee findings, application for holding this event circumvented the permission process and the organisers disobeyed the instructions from the administration not to hold it and that amounted to wilful defiance," the JNU official said. Following the preliminary report of the committee, the university had suspended eight students. However, their suspension was revoked when the panel submitted it report on March 11. Slamming the authorities for the action against the students, Shora said,"They are all dedicated activists and this is a conspiracy to crush anti-Modi voices. "Not only will we not remain silent against this anti-people government, we will also challenge this sham of a report. The punishments are all based on one-sided statements from ABVP members, and our repeated calls to conduct a fair enquiry were ignored." Accusing the Vice Chancellor of "taking directions" from the Centre and acting as an "RSS loyalist", she said the students will launch a countrywide campaign to "expose" the government's "anti-student and anti-Dalit" character. "Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," she said. ABVP's Sharma said punishments announced by JNU is a "compromise and not penalty". "Penalising me for blocking traffic for stopping the event is injustice," he said. A stand-off between junior doctors and the UK government over lack of higher payments for working on weekends escalated further today with nearly 50,000 medical professionals planning an all-out 48-hour strike starting tomorrow, which for the first time will include emergency services. The stand-off centres around lack of higher payments for working on weekends, referred to as anti-social hours. The strike will also involve doctors withdrawing emergency services for the first time since the row began last year, with mass resignations and a high court challenge also in the works. Junior doctors are planning two one-day strikes tomorrow and on Wednesday, walking out between 08:00 AM and 17:00 PM (local time) each day. It marks the first time in the history of the country's National Health Service (NHS) that junior doctors have walked out of accident and emergency units, urgent maternity services, resuscitation and mental health crisis teams. "It is not true that emergency care is being withdrawn on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is true that junior doctors won't be providing it, but hospitals across England will be full of senior doctors who will be delivering that care," British Medical Association (BMA) Chairman Mark Porter said. Junior doctors, a term covering nearly 50,000 medical professionals in the UK who are fresh out of medical school as well as those with more experience behind them, have warned that the new contract will affect patient safety by encouraging unsafe shift patterns and also financially hit doctors who work the longest hours. The UK government argues that the current arrangements are outdated and changes are needed to improve standards of medical care at the weekend. "The government has left junior doctors no alternative other than what's happening this week. We have said repeatedly and always said that we will call off the strike if the government will call off the imposition (of the new contract). "By contrast, the government has said, over the weekend, that there is nothing that will get it to call off the imposition," Porter said. UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt has argued that he wants to improve care on Saturdays and Sundays, saying research shows patients are more likely to die if they are admitted during a weekend. "Any further delay (to imposing the contract) just means we will take longer to eliminate (the) weekend effect (of higher death rates among patients admitted to hospital on a Saturday or Sunday)," he tweeted. A delegation of Karnataka MPs led by Union Minister Ananth Kumar today met HRD Minister Smriti Irani and demanded autonomous status for 'CESCK', the Kannada classical study centre. The delegation also requested Irani for shifting the Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Kannada (CESCK) from Mysuru to Bengaluru. "Kannada writers, activists and the people who are interested in the classical language feel that autonomous status should be given to (CESCK)," the delegation said in a memorandum presented to the Human Resource Development Minister. The delegation which also comprised academicians and Karnataka BJP President B S Yeddyurappa, demanded release of adequate funds for reconstructing the CESCK building and giving a fresh push to research activities at the Centre. "We also request you to write a letter to UNESCO to introduce and arrange for teaching classical Kannada in all countries of the world," it added. Katrina Kaif, who made her debut at Cannes Film Festival last year, is skipping this year's edition of the prestigious event due to her film commitments. The 32-year-old "Fitoor" star walked the Cannes red carpet in a scarlett gown last year, earning praise for her look. "Cannes is a fabulous platform for any artist to attend, and I really enjoyed the experience last year. While the brand invited me to attend Cannes again this year, I have had to regretfully decline the opportunity due to prior commitments. "This has been an enormously busy year for me so far, and I am working on some amazing projects which are really keeping me on my toes. Nevertheless, although I will be giving Cannes a miss this year, I wish the lovely L'Oreal Paris ambassadors who will proudly represent India the very best and hope to attend next year," Kaif said in a statement. The actress has recently wrapped up the shooting of her upcoming love story "Baar Baar Dekho" and is currently gearing up for the filming of sleuth drama "Jagga Jasoos" opposite former boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor. The Cannes International Film Festival is scheduled to be held from May 11-21. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sonam Kapoor will be representing the brand at event this year. Members in Lok Sabha today expressed concern over the unprecedented situation due to drought, scarcity of water and the heat wave in large parts of the country. Raising the issue in the Zero Hour, Congress member Mullappally Ramachandran said the devastating drought conditions have affected more than a quarter of the 1.25 billion population. He wanted the situation be declared as a "national disaster" and immediate assistance be provided to the people. "People by and large are in deep distress and they are panicky about the prevailing situation", he said, adding that experts and scientific community opine that the heat wave conditions will persist for quite some time more. "Reports say that we are experiencing the world's fifth deadliest heat wave," he said. He said the entire country was facing acute shortage of water and reservoirs and rivers are drying up. The Supreme Court has expressed dissatisfaction about the way in which such a grave situation is being dealt with by the Union Government. Ramachandran was supported by several members. Sharing their concern, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu suggested that the House should have a threadbare discussion to help tide over the situation. The Lok Sabha today approved a Bill to provide legislative backing to the Regional Centre for Biotechnology and empower it to award masters and Phd degrees, just like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The Regional Centre for Biotechnology Bill, 2016, which was passed by a voice vote, also seeks to provide the status of "national importance" to the Centre for facilitating transfer of technology and knowledge and making it a hub for biotechnology expertise in the Asian region. The legislation would enable the institution to chalk out its own syllabus, as per the changing requirements of the sector. It would also enable other allied institutes of the Department of Biotechnology to be brought under the umbrella of this institute to give academic degrees. The biotech centre is expected to provide highly skilled manpower for research in the area of medicine, agriculture, clean technology, Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan said while replying to a short debate in Lok Sabha. It will be a state-of-the art institution which will promote cooperation at the international level, he said. The Centre, located at Faridabad in Haryana, would be a regional hub for interdisciplinary education, training and research in biotechnology with emphasis on education programmes relevant to the industry, including bio-drug discovery science, nano-science and medicine, imaging techniques, designer crops, bio-engineering and biomaterials, and aims at overcoming the acute shortage of skilled human resources in India, Vardhan said. It would be a hub of biotechnology expertise in the countries in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region, and more generally in the Asia region, and to address human resources needs in the region, he said, adding that the genesis of the bill dated back to a meeting of the UNESCO in 2003. "Biotechnology comes very close when it comes to helping human development in the fields like vaccine, genome research. There is a need for sharing and knowledge at an international level. There is also a need for coordintaion in Asian region," he said. The government through an executive order in April 2009 had established the Regional Centre for Biotechnology Training and Education at Faridabad. The earlier NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had decided to open such an institute. Following this, an agreement was signed between India and UNESCO to set up this institution to train skilled manpower in the Indo-Pacific region. Refuting charges by some members, Vardhan said the Regional Centre was not a symbol of India "kneeling before America or China" but it will be collaborative effort with the member nations of UNESCO. It will help reversing the brain-drain of scientists from India, he said. The Minister said India had a huge potential in the field and in the coming years, bio-technology sector would reach greater heights. Maintaining that genetically-engineered crops were helping raise agriculture productivity, Vardhan cited the example of Bt Cotton and said India has become "the number one producer in the world". With regard to Bt Brinjal, he said the last government tried to introduce it in 2009, but due to opposition from some groups, it was "put into moratorium" till 2013. Opposition on this issue has dwindled since then, "so we are moving towards introducing Bt Brinjal," the Minister said. He also said the government is planning to introduce the bio-technology regulatory authority bill in Parliament soon. "We are not going to compromise on regulatory mechanism". Members who participated in the discussion over the Bill included Shashi Tharoor (Cong), Arun Kumar (RLSP), Dushyant Chautala (INLD), Prahlad Patel (BJP) and Richard Hay (Nominated). Some of the members emphasized the need for reviving ancient scientific knowledge. Maharashtra Government is seeking a loan of Rs 5,000 crore from the World Bank for implementing drought-mitigation steps, from water conservation to changing crop pattern, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said today. He said the government has submitted a proposal with the External Affairs Ministry as per the instructions of World Bank and a meeting was held between officials of both sides when the Maharashtra legislature was in session recently. "We have requested World Bank officials to help us tackle from the specific fund they have created for mitigation," Fadnavis told reporters. The State is seeking Rs 5,000 crore from the world body's mitigation fund, he said. The WB's help is being sought to make Maharashtra, currently reeling under severe water shortage, free of drought, Fadnavis said. The Chief Minister said generally, the process of submitting a proposal and disbursement of loan amount takes about a year-and-a-half but he has requested the World Bank officials to consider their proposal at the earliest. "The World Bank will support 3,000 villages from Marathwada and 2,000 from Vidarbha to make them drought free. We will focus on water conservation works and later decide the crop pattern of drought-prone regions." The scheme will be implemented in Aurangabad, Beed, Latur, Osmanabad and Akola, Buldhana and Amravati districts. Asked about the government's stand on the sugarcane crop, which consumes large quantity of water, Fadnavis said cane farming is sustainable and thus the first choice of agriculturists. "We cannot stop sugar mills (from operating) but we can bring sugarcane crop under drip irrigation." Replying to another question, Fadnavis said municipal corporations have been directed to provide treated sewage water to industries. "Kalyan-Dombilvli and Thane Municipal Corporations have been specifically asked to adopt this system as the industries around these cities use fresh water supplied by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation," he added. Exuding confidence of returning to power after polls, Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee today claimed that her party had achieved majority after the fourth phase of polls. "Today the fourth phase of polls are on. After this phase of polls, we have already attained the majority mark, needed to form the new government. After the results are announced you can check it," Banerjee said addressing a poll meeting here. Over 67 per cent turnout was recorded till 3 PM today in the fourth phase of the West Bengal Assembly election. Banerjee said her government, in the last five years, had undertaken various developmental projects and turned Bengal into a favourite industrial destination. The consortium of banks today alleged in the Supreme Court that Vijay Mallya, who has been in United Kingdom, is not cooperating in the investigation of cases lodged against him and was averse to disclosing foreign assets. Further, in the rejoinder to the affidavit filed by the beleaguered businessman, the consortium said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family is significant for recovering the dues. When contacted, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said, "we have filed a rejoinder to Mallya's affidavit in which it has been stated that he is also not indicating the date of his return to the country." He said the liquor baron has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". The AG said the "non-disclosure" by Mallya does not enable the banks to ascertain his ability to repay. "We have nothing to do with Mallya's claim that he cannot appear personally because of government's action against him," the banks in its affidavit said, adding that instead of providing the material to it Mallya and his companies are preferring to submit them in sealed cover top the apex court. The matter is listed for hearing tomorrow. The rejoinder was filed in response to Mallya's affidavit which had said that banks have no right over the information of his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. Mallya had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. "Overseas assets were not considered while granting loans," he said in his statement. Mallya, however, had said to demonstrate his bonafide and also that of his companies, an aggregate of Rs 1591 crores can be deposited before the apex court. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he will appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. In a rejoinder affidavit to Mallya's reply, the banks had said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family was significant for recovering the dues. Rohatgi had earlier said that the beleagured businessman has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". Mallya had said the banks had no right over information regarding his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. He had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he would appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. A 30-year-old man was bludgeoned to death allegedly by five persons over a petty issue at Talera town here, police said today. Amarjeet Singh's vehicle last night hit a table kept outside a shop and an argument ensued, following which he was battered to death with stones by the shop owner, Bhagwan, and his three sons and son-in-law, SHO of Talera police station, Bhagwati Prashad said. Singh was rushed to Talera community health centre from where doctors referred him to MBS hospital Kota but he succumbed to injuries on the way, he said. All the accused fled after the crime, Prashad said. The body was this morning handed over to the victim's family members after postmortem, he said. An FIR has been registered against the five accused under section 302 (murder) of IPC in this connection, the SHO said. The Maelbeek metro station where 16 people, including an Indian techie, were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber last month re-opened today with Belgians describing it as a symbol of "our determination to fight terrorism." A bomb was detonated on board a train pulling out of Maelbeek station, close to the European institutions, in the morning rush hour on March 22. The attack followed suicide bombs at Brussels airport which also killed 16 people. The reopening of the station early today brought the Belgian capital's underground network back up to full capacity. "We will overcome this too. You get emotional when you come here. You feel it inside. Our government will overcome terrorism," Paul Nemitz, Director, Fundamental Rights and Union Citizeship, European Comission, said at the station. He said his office was just 300 metres from the station. "We will overcome this (terrorism). Life goes on. There is a little fear. We are worried over security but the reopening of the metro station just over a month after the attacks is a symbol of the people's resilience," Tem, a daily metro commuter, told PTI at the Maelbeek metro station. "There is fear that if this does not happen here it will happen elsewhere. But the reopening of the station is certainly a symbol of our determination to fight terrorism," another commuter, Anne Sam den Brent said. Brussels Metro spokeswoman An Van Hamme was quoted by the media as saying that there was no structural damage but "there were a few works that had to be done". Families of the victims were allowed special access to the station on Saturday to mourn the victims, before the official reopening to commuters. Commuters can also leave messages on a tribute wall in the main station entrance. A commemorative art work will eventually replace the tribute wall. The Brussels public transport authority (Stib) said that military and police officers would be present to "ensure the security of the entire network". Security remains high across the underground network, which was hit during the March 22 peak morning travel period. The blast came after suicide bombers had earlier struck Brussels' Zaventem airport departure lounge in the attacks claimed by Islamic State. 28-year-old Indian techie Raghavendran Ganeshan, who went missing after the terror strikes, died in the attack on the metro station. An Infosys employee from Bengaluru, Ganeshan was in a metro train when the metro station was rocked by the explosion. A four-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her neighbour, who also tried to kill her in east Delhi's Kalyanpuri area, police said today. The girl is presently admitted in a hospital and her condition is critical. Meanwhile, the 26-year-old accused has been arrested. The girl lives with her parents, both workers at a private enterprise, and grandmother on the second floor of a building at Kalyanpuri in which the accused too is a co-tenant, police said. The incident took place on Saturday afternoon when the girl was sleeping beside her grandmother and the accused whisked her away to his room. When he allegedly forced himself upon her, the girl screamed following which the accused gagged her. Failing to manage the situation, he then tried to strangulate her, police said. The girl fell unconscious and the accused assumed that she was dead. He first decided to dump her outside the building but there were too many people outside. He changed his plans and went to the girl's house once again to drop her there and secretly return to his own room. But this time the girl's grandmother was awake looking for the child and raised an alarm when she saw the accused carrying her granddaughter, who was unconscious and bleeding from her private parts, police said. Locals held the accused and thrashed him. They also rushed the girl to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where she was admitted in a critical condition. It was the hospital authorities which informed the police. When a police team went to the building, locals handed over the accused to them. He was arrested immediately, charged under IPC sections for rape, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation and provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, police said. A 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted allegedly by a staffer at a government hospital here today. The police arrested the 24-year-old accused employed as a warden at the government hospital in outer Delhi's Mongolpuri area and a case has been registered under relevant sections of IPC and POCSO Act, a senior police official said. The incident took place at around 2 AM, following which police was informed. The girl was attending to her brother who is admitted in the hospital, police said. In her complaint, the girl told police that the accused allegedly convinced her to accompany him to a vacant ward where he forced himself upon her, the official said. The mother of a Florida teen who went missing at sea on a fishing trip with a friend wants the state attorney to force the other boy's family to turn their son's recovered cellphone over to experts in hopes that information regarding their disappearance could be recovered. The cellphone belonging to Austin Stephanos was inside the 14-year-old boys' capsized boat, which was spotted last month in the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda and recovered by the captain of a Norwegian supply ship. The mother of Perry Cohen issued a statement yesterday saying the state attorney's help is needed because Austin Stephanos' father, Blu Stephanos, hasn't given Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigators permission to search his son's iPhone. "This is an open Missing Persons case, and we hope that FWC reopens their investigation and utilizes the expert resources of other government agencies as well as the private sector if necessary to extrapolate the data," Pamela Cohen's statement read. She did not respond to phone and email messages today, nor did Blu Stephanos. The cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were returned to the families. The boat was packed up and is expected to arrive at Port Everglades in May. The boys went missing last July after they went fishing in Jupiter Inlet when an intense storm struck. The Coast Guard searched for a week and the families' volunteer search lasted more than two weeks, but the boys were never found and are presumed drowned. During its search, the Coast Guard did spot the overturned 19-foot boat near Daytona Beach, almost 200 miles from where the boys departed. It was gone when a recovery boat arrived at the location. Mike Edmondson, the spokesman for local state attorney Dave Aronberg, declined to comment, referring all questions to FWC and the Cohen family. FWC spokeswoman Carol Lyn Parrish did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment. This is not the first rift to appear between the families since their sons' disappearance. Last October, Pamela Cohen asked that Stephanos' parents not use Perry's name and likeness while fundraising for their new foundation. India Foods, a part of the $30 billion International, today inaugurated its largest manufacturing plant in Asia Pacific, built at an investment of $190 million here. "The multi-category food campus is expected to reach an annual capacity of 2.5 lakh tonnes of production in three phases by 2020, and employ over 1,600 people in five years," Chandramouli Venkatesan, managing director India, told reporters. To begin with, it will produce approximately 60,000 tonnes of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate annually in the first phase and the company plans to use it for exports later. "Going forward, the company will make this manufacturing facility a hub for exports in Asia," Venkatesan said. The manufacturing plant was inaugurated by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. "Mondelez International's investment in Sri City has brought in world class technology and manufacturing capability, creating jobs and strengthening communities," Naidu said. "The company already has significant commitment to the state and has been partnering with farmers to grow cocoa in Andhra Pradesh over the last two decades," he added. He urged the company to draw up a plan to partner the state to increase supply capabilities for inputs like milk powder and more cocoa production, and also consider setting up an R&D facility here. Mondelez India partners over 1 lakh farmers across four states, and procures 40 per cent of its cocoa requirement from the domestic farmers. The company sees India as a priority market and continues to invest behind brands, routes to markets and people to drive growth. "We have already invested in 40 manufacturing 'Lines of the Future' globally and are building our 'Sites of the Future' at strategic locations like Sri City to accelerate the growth of our power brands," Daniel Myers, executive Vice President, integrated supply chain at Mondelez International said. The Sri City site is spread over 134 acres. In addition to Andhra Pradesh, Mondelez India also operates manufacturing plants in Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead, the White House said today, a year after the nascent Himalayan democracy was hit by a massive earthquake. "One year ago today a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people, injuring tens of thousands more, and leaving millions without homes," said Ned Price, spokesman of the National Security Council, White House. The US government and the American people will continue to extend its friendship and partnership to Nepal as it works together to ensure a brighter, more prosperous, and safer future for all Nepalis, he said in a statement. "Much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead," said Price. Remembering those who perished in the earthquake and its massive aftershocks, he said: "We are humbled by those who risked their lives to save others, including the six United States Marines who perished in Nepal while providing relief to Nepalis in need. "As we honour the victims, we draw inspiration from Nepalis of all walks of life - men and women, young and old, from the mountains, the hills, the plains, and even overseas - who came together after the tragedy to aid the survivors and rebuild their country," he said. The massive temblor that struck Nepal on April 25 last year killed nearly 9,000 people and displaced thousands others, causing widespread devastation. NATO is ten weeks away from launching a naval mission off Libya as part of a controversial US-backed plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe, officials said today. The advanced state of preparations for the operation was revealed by Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti as leaders of the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy met in Germany. Their talks were due to touch on the migrant crisis and instability and Islamist infiltration in Libya. Modelled on an existing NATO operation in waters between Turkey and Greece, the Libya mission is set to be approved by NATO leaders at a Warsaw summit on July 7, Pinotti said in an interview with Italian daily La Stampa. The plan forms part of a broader Italian strategy to stop migrants using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe by flying those with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. The plans have been slammed by refugee and rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what the Catholic leader sees as an arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. But it became clear today that the strategy has already secured US President Barack Obama's approval. "The United States would be supportive of a NATO mission in the central Mediterranean," a senior US official told reporters. Germany has indicated it will support a naval mission to stop more weapons flooding into Libya, but wants it under EU rather than NATO command, officials said. Britain is likely to be uncomfortable with that in the run-up to its June referendum on EU membership. More than 350,000 migrants have reached Italy on boats from Libya since the start of 2014. Aid organisations say over half have a legitimate claim to refuge from persecution or conflict. But this year's influx has been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa, a region the European Union considers safe for people to be returned to. Under Italy's proposals, an existing NATO mission, Operation Active Endeavour, would be "recalibrated" into one overseeing the Libyan coast. NATO's operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey is the first of its kind for an alliance still seeking to define its role in the post-Cold War world. An operation off Libya would be more complicated given the presence in some coastal regions of Libya of Islamic State fighters. The NATO presence could act as a deterrent to traffickers putting to sea with their human cargoes. In the backdrop of a controversy surrounding M S Dhoni, an ally of ruling NDA today suggested in Lok Sabha that celebrities should not endorse a product blindly by becoming the brand ambassador. "The problem is that we have celebrity endorsements. In our country, people just not love and admire celebrities but they worship them and perceive them as Gods and role models," said Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal. Citing protests by home-buyers against property developers in the NCR region, she said when a celebrity is endorsing a product or a brand, people's faith is strengthened. "Celebrities may not have any intent to harm anyone, but because they are promoting a brand they tend to unintentionally or intentionally dictate consumer choices. That is why I feel that they do have a moral obligation," she said. Her comments came against the backdrop of a controversy surrounding Dhoni's endorsement of a builder who is facing attack for delaying delivery of flats in Noida. Dhoni has since quit as the company's brand ambassador. Patel expressed concern that people here have been facing this problem for almost three years wherein the developers and builders are delaying the handing over of possession for three to four years and in certain cases even for longer periods. She appealed to the government to implement as soon as possible the Real Estate Act, recently passed by Parliement, to help home buyers. Observing that the bilateral trade between India and the US has plateaued, two top American Senators today called for jump-starting the economic ties by fast-tracking bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with special emphasis in the defence sector. Speaking at the launch of India-US Trade Initiative by Atlantic Council, a top US think-tank, American Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner called for a special focus in the defence sector and new areas for co-development and co-production. "We can do a lot better. The defence industry can be and should be a major piece for this...Especially for security and economic reasons," Cornyn said in his address. Cornyn along with Warner are the Co-Chairs of the Senate India Caucus, which is the only India specific caucus in the US Senate. Noting that India-US bilateral trade has plateaued now, Cornyn called for taking up steps and initiatives that kick start the bilateral trade. One of them, he said is the US working to make India a member of APEC. A legislation in this regard is pending in the US Senate and the House of Representatives. In his address, Senator Warner called for a focused approach in the defence sector. Praising the Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI), a brainchild of the Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter in his previous capacity at the Pentagon, Warner called for new areas for co-development and co-production. "The amount of bilateral visits (in recent months) in the defence sector is very encouraging," he said as he identified armed drones, aircraft and missile systems as areas for co-development and co-production in the defence sectors. Measures like this he said would help achieve the goal of USD 500 billion in bilateral trade, which has been set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama. Speaking on the occasion, India's Ambassador to the US, Arun K Singh, identified digital economy as one of the most important area of co-operation between India and the US. India, he said, is on a massive infrastructure modernisation drive and has made appropriate changes in its policies to attract foreign direct investment, which has paid huge dividends in the last two years. The Atlantic Council US-India Trade Initiative aims to generate American support for continued economic engagement in India and to forge collaboration on issues of trade and commerce, a media release said. In an effort to leverage, sustain and promote the positive developments in trade relations between the two countries, the initiative will develop policy briefs and strategy papers, convene US-India trade workshops, and host a flagship US-India Trade Conference with policymakers, practitioners and private-sector leaders, it said. The initiative will address seven of the most crucial areas of the US-India trade relationship, including smart cities, infrastructure, defence, financial institutions, insurance, trade agreements, and intellectual property rights, the Council said. Scientists have discovered a new reef system at the mouth of the Amazon River, the largest river by discharge of water in the world. As large rivers empty into the world's oceans in areas known as plumes, they typically create gaps in the reef distribution along the tropical shelves - something that makes finding a reef in the Amazon plume an unexpected discovery. Scientists from University of Georgia (UGA) in US and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on a recent expedition to study the Amazon River plume looked for evidence of a reef system along the continental shelf. The Amazon plume - an area where freshwater from the river mixes with the salty Atlantic Ocean - affects a broad area of the tropical North Atlantic Ocean in terms of salinity, pH, light penetration and sedimentation, conditions that usually correlate to a major gap in Western Atlantic reefs. "Our expedition into the Brazil Exclusive Economic Zone was primarily focused on sampling the mouth of the Amazon," said Patricia Yager, an associate professor at UGA. The team used multibeam acoustic sampling of the ocean bottom to find the reef and then dredged up samples to confirm the discovery. "We brought up the most amazing and colourful animals I had ever seen on an expedition," Yager said. The Amazon River plume and its effects on the global carbon budget converged with the discovery of the reef system to provide scientists a wider view of the reef community, its variation and changes. Microorganisms thriving in the dark waters beneath the river plume may provide the trophic connection between the river and the reef. "The paper is not just about the reef itself, but about how the reef community changes as you travel north along the shelf break, in response to how much light it gets seasonally by the movement of the plume," said Yager. "In the far south, it gets more light exposure, so many of the animals are more typical reef corals and things that photosynthesise for food," she said. "But as you move north, many of those become less abundant, and the reef transitions to sponges and other reef builders that are likely growing on the food that the river plume delivers," Yager said. However, the reefs may already be threatened, researchers said. "From ocean acidification and ocean warming to plans for offshore oil exploration right on top of these new discoveries, the whole system is at risk from human impacts," she said. The study was published in the journal Science Advances. Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have unveiled unique and unexpected behaviour of water molecules that is unmatched by any known gas, liquid or solid states. Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) described a new tunnelling state of water molecules confined in hexagonal ultra-small channels - 5 angstrom across - of the mineral beryl. An angstrom is 1/10-billionth of a metre, and individual atoms are typically about one angstrom in diameter. The discovery, made possible with experiments at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, demonstrates features of water under ultra confinement in rocks, soil and cell walls, which scientists predict will be of interest across many disciplines. "At low temperatures, this tunnelling water exhibits quantum motion through the separating potential walls, which is forbidden in the classical world," said lead author Alexander Kolesnikov of ORNL's Chemical and Engineering Materials Division. "This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are 'delocalised' and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time. "It's one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience," said Kolesnikov. The existence of the tunnelling state of water shown in the study should help scientists better describe the thermodynamic properties and behaviour of water in highly confined environments such as water diffusion and transport in the channels of cell membranes, in carbon nanotubes and along grain boundaries and at mineral interfaces in a host of geological environments. While previous studies have observed tunnelling of atomic hydrogen in other systems, the discovery that water exhibits such tunnelling behaviour is unprecedented. The neutron scattering and computational chemistry experiments showed that, in the tunnelling state, the water molecules are delocalised around a ring so the water molecule assumes an unusual double top-like shape. First principle simulations made by Narayani Choudhury of Lake Washington Institute of Technology and University of Washington-Bothell showed that the tunnelling behaviour is coupled to the vibrational dynamics of the beryl structure. "The average kinetic energy of the water protons directly obtained from the neutron experiment is a measure of their motion at almost absolute zero temperature and is about 30 per cent less than it is in bulk liquid or solid water," Kolesnikov said. "This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes," said Kolesnikov. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Social Welfare Front, comprising three political parties, today announced its candidates for the 18 constituencies for the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. The front, with Welfare Party of India (WPI), Social Justice Movement (SJM) and Ambedkar Youth Movement (AYM), as constituents, has fielded Sahul Hameedh to contest from Thiruvrumbhur-Tiruchirapalli, a transgender from Mettuupalayam in Coimbatore District and woman candidate Jarina Jamal in Alanthur in Kanchipuram district, WPI Tamil Nadu President, S N Sikander told reporters here. WPI will contest nine seats, Social Justice Movement in eight seats and Ambedkar Youth Movement in one seat in Valparai in Coimbatore District, he said. In remaining seats, the front will extend support to those candidates, who are not corrupt and fighting for total prohibition, other than DMK, AIADMK and BJP, SJM Founder president Paneerselvam said. Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up "momentum" in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State (ISIS) extremists. He pressed European allies to match the US with new contributions of their own. Obama's announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of US military engagement, despite the president's professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the US to share the increasing burden. Obama discussed the ISIS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi. The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation, a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War". "Make no mistake," Obama said. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons as before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defence of our way of life," he added. The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the US-led fight in Syria and neighbouring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the US has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own. The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders". He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO. He said, "I'll be honest, sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defence." On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies. President Barack Obama today said the US would send up to 250 more special forces and other military personnel to Syria to help rebels fight Islamic State group jihadists. Obama was in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, and both later met the British, French and Italian leaders to discuss the battle against IS in its self-declared "caliphate" across northern Syria and Iraq. In a speech in the German city of Hanover, Obama hailed NATO partners' progress so far in pushing back IS, which he called "the most urgent threat to our nations". "A small number of American special operations forces are already on the ground in Syria and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas," he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group. "So, given the success, I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum." The US forces will not lead the fight on the ground but provide training and advice to local forces against IS. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons that others before them have, which is: your hatred is no match for our nations, united in defence of our way of life," said Obama. Syrian opposition group the High Negotiations Committee said boosting the US military presence to about 300 would be "a good step" and help "rid our country of this scourge". "But Syria will not be free of terrorism until we see the end of the Assad regime's reign of terror," added HNC spokesman Salem Al Meslet. While most world powers agree that IS -- which has boasted of beheadings and other battlefield atrocities as well as terror attacks in Paris and Brussels -- must be defeated, they have backed different sides in Syria's complex civil war. Western powers have offered some support to moderate rebels, while Russia has sent troops and fighter jets to back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Aiming to end the bloodshed, all sides eight weeks ago agreed a ceasefire, but it has been frayed by escalating violence around Aleppo, with dozens killed by government air strikes and rebel rockets. Obama yesterday pressed for all parties to return to the negotiating table and "reinstate" the internationally-brokered ceasefire -- the clearest indication yet that the White House believes the truce has all but disintegrated. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, put some blame for the lack of progress on the US side. "We came to an agreement with the Americans for them to use their influence on these 'good opposition' groups and to get them to leave, so that no one would hinder the destruction of terrorist groups," Lavrov said. "But despite these promises made by the US, nothing has been done in the two months since." A Western diplomat in Geneva told AFP that the truce deal "is in poor shape, the result very largely of Assad regime attacks on Syria civilians, towns and marketplaces, as well as on the moderate armed opposition". But the diplomat said all parties to the International Syria Support Group which agreed the truce are committed to maintaining it, "and no member believes the cessation (of violence) to be over". - Ground troops 'a mistake' - ============================= Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 with widespread anti-Assad protests, has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has killed 270,000 people. Obama has come under criticism for his handling of Syria's war, with opponents saying he could have done more to stem the bloodshed. But the US president -- who came to power vowing to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan -- has stood firm in his opposition to plunging the United States into another ground war in the Islamic world. In an interview with the BBC, Obama said that "it would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime." Pressure on Obama to end the bloodshed is increasing in the United States, which in is the throes of a fiercely fought presidential election race, and from European allies who want to halt the massive influx of refugees. Many of his critics have called for a safe zone to be established, but Obama has rejected the idea. "As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country," Obama said. President Barack Obama today said the US would send up to 250 more special forces military trainers to Syria to help rebels fight Islamic State group jihadists. Obama was in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, and both were to be joined later by the leaders of Britain, France and Italy in a meeting expected to focus on the fight against the IS in Syria and Iraq. In a speech on transatlantic unity, Obama hailed NATO partners' progress so far in pushing back IS, which he called "the most urgent threat to our nations". "A small number of American special operations forces are already on the ground in Syria and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas," he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group. "So, given the success, I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum," added Obama, speaking in the northern city of Hanover. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training, in assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back." Yesterday Obama had pressed for all parties to the Syrian conflict, including the regime's ally Russia, to return to the negotiating table and "reinstate" an internationally-brokered ceasefire. "I spoke to President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities," Obama said. That was the clearest indication yet that the White House believes the ceasefire has all but disintegrated, as regime and rebel bombardments claimed 26 lives yesterday. Eight weeks into the declared truce between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebels, violence has escalated around Aleppo, with dozens killed by government air strikes and rebel rockets. The surge in fighting and stalled peace talks in Geneva have dimmed hopes for quickly resolving Syria's devastating five-year conflict, which has sparked a major refugee crisis in the region and Europe. The White House has argued that the ceasefire, while imperfect, is worth pursuing and is the only way out of the brutal war But its stance is bringing Washington and its allies into ever more conflict with rebel groups on the ground, which continue to be on the receiving end of regime attacks. Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 with widespread anti-Assad protests, has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has killed 270,000 people and drawn in regional and world powers. Taking advantage of his German visit, President Barack Obama and top US allies are gathering to discuss issues that he says are putting European unity "under strain." Today's meeting in Hannover, Germany, comes on the final day of Obama's two-day visit to push for the conclusion of negotiations on a US-Europe trade deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were joining Obama. In a speech on US-European relations, to be delivered before the meeting, Obama planned to announce the deployment of 250 US military personnel, mostly Army Green Berets, to Syria to assist local forces fighting the Islamic State group. The deployment would bring to 300 the number of US forces battling extremists in the war-torn country. The move will significantly increase the US presence in Syria and comes a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of more than 200 troops to Iraq, where the Islamic State also controls territory, along with the first shipment of Apache helicopters. About 50 US special operations forces have been operating in Syria. The high-level talks between the US and its major European allies come a month after IS militants claimed responsibility for attacks that killed more than 30 people in Brussels, just across the German border. Obama's sessions with leaders during a week of stops in Saudi Arabia, London and Germany focused on the IS threat. Topping the agenda today are efforts to counter IS. Other topics include refugee migration, Syria, Russia, Ukraine and Libya. The leaders are also expected to discuss additional steps by NATO allies to address challenges on Europe's eastern and southern borders, along with efforts to spur agreement on the trade deal. Obama recently said that failure to plan for the fallout in Libya after the toppling of leader Moammar Gadhafi was his biggest mistake as president. Libya since has descended into chaos and become a base for IS. The leaders are likely to discuss how they can work with a newly installed, UN-backed unity government to keep IS extremists from further tightening their grip on the North African country. Obama has said he has no plans to send in ground troops, calling it an unnecessary step that would send the wrong signal. He discussed assistance to Libya during separate meetings with Cameron and Merkel in recent days. At a conference yesterday alongside Merkel, Obama said having the unity government "requires us to do everything we can to encourage it. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's pet odd-even car rationing scheme came for a scathing attack in the Lok Sabha today with an expelled RJD member dubbing it as a plan that would generate corruption. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav contended that the scheme would only help CNG companies and companies manufacturing buses and cars and would hardly reduce pollution. He said Kejriwal has introduced the scheme to gain "cheap popularity". Citing an IIT-Kanpur study, he said the pollution from cars was a mere five per cent and the Delhi government has failed to address other issues which contribute for 95 per cent pollution. This was strongly contested by AAP member Bhagwant Mann, while some BJP members were seen supporting Ranjan's plea. At an all-party meeting convened here ahead of the session, some MPs sought relief from the Speaker saying members were facing inconvenience due to it. Raising the issue at the meeting, TRS leader A P Jithender Reddy said even Parliamentarians like him were facing problems in commuting in Delhi due to the scheme as they had only one car here and only one sticker was issued to them by the Lok Sabha exempting them. His request found some favour from the Speaker who later said that she has asked the Lok Sabha secretariat to work out ways so that MPs do not suffer while commuting. The second phase of the scheme began on April 15 and will go on till April 30. Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will visit India tomorrow to attend the 'Heart of Asia' regional conference where he will meet with his Indian counterpart after bilateral talks were derailed following the Pathankot terror attack. The Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement here that the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process will be held in New Delhi on April 26. "Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will lead the Pakistan delegation to this meeting," it said. In New Delhi, government sources said Chaudhry will also have a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart S Jaishanker. The Foreign Office said Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting "our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan". It said that Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process, which was established in 2011 as a platform to discuss regional issues including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, the Foreign Office statement said. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. The conference had adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled 'Emphasising Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity'. The efforts to resume the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan- based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. Parliament today passed a bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sahajdharis from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies, fulfilling a long- pending demand of the community ahead of assembly elections in Punjab next year. The Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was passed by the Lok Sabha more than a month after Rajya Sabha approved it. Replying to a debate on the bill, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the demand for not giving voting rights to Sahejdari Sikhs was made by Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee members and office bearers. "The SGPC office bearers and members have often demanded that those who are not Sikhs should not be given voting rights (in the election to select elect the members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act). The SPGC General Assembly of 2001 also passed a resolution regarding this. "The High Court has said that a competent legislature needs to pass the bill. Even the Rajya Sabha has passed the bill unanimously," Singh said. The definition of Sehajdhari Sikh has no religious sanction as far as the fundamental tenets of the religion are concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwara Act, 1925 under certain circumstances prevailing then. The Bill proposes to remove the exception given to Sahajdharis in 1944 to vote in elections to select members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act. The Union Cabinet had recently approved a proposal of the Home Ministry to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, with effect from October 8, 2003. The amendment was also carried out by a Home Ministry notification dated October 8, 2003. However, the notification was quashed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on December 20, 2011, leaving it to the appropriate and competent legislature to decide as to whether or not to amend the Act to that effect. Participating in the discussion, Ravneet Singh Bittoo (Cong) said in view of the amendments brought in the legislation, the "Sikh Gurudwaras Act should be renamed as Badal Gurudwara Act". "You are trying to divide families through conspiracy.. You are doing wrong with 70 lakh Sikhs who had voting rights in SGPC for 60 years...You are dividing the already minority community of Punjab into sub-minority community," Bitto (rpt Bittoo) said. Bittoo said the Sikh population in the country was 1.75 crore and the amendment to the Sikh Gurudwaras Act will take away voting rights of 70 lakh Sikhs. He said it will not be proper to amend the Act as there were several cases pending in Courts. As the Congress member criticised the provisions of the Bill alleging that the hefty funds of the SGPC were being misused to organise election rallies of the Akali Dal government, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) members shot back, asking him "not to play politics." Prem Singh Chandumajra (SAD) said there will be no divide within the community with the passage of the bill and alleged that those "trying to stop the amendment" to the Act as they were themselves involved in illegal activities in gurudwaras. Supporting the Bill, BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi said those who did not follow the basic tenets of Sikhism cannot be a part to choose the management that controls Gurudwaras. Maintaining that the SAD government in Punjab was using religion for political gains, Bhagwant Mann (AAP) said "their seats (in Punjab) are diminishing and so they are trying to misuse it". Intervening in the discussion, Union Minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal said the bill dealt with an issue which does not affect any community other than the Sikhs. "Non-Sikhs are not in a position to decide who can vote. It is the Sikh community which can decide. Do not play politics and make a mockery," she said, adding only two per cent of the national population were Sikhs who have sacrificed lives for freedom struggle. Santokh Singh Chaudhary (Cong) charged the Akalis with encouraging separatism and terrorism. Assembly elections in Punjab are scheduled early next year. The Parliament session began today with a face-off between the ruling and opposition benches as the Modi government was slammed over imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. Amid opposition demands for a discussion on the issue, Congress members created ruckus in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, accusing the BJP-led dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. In both the Houses, Congress members stormed the Well. In the Lok Sabha, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi joined party members in raising slogans as Leader of the party in the House Mallikarjun Kharge and some others staged a dharna in the Well as their notice for adjournment motion on the issue was rejected by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. The Rajya Sabha could not transact any business as it was repeatedly adjourned due to the pandemonium. It was finally prematurely adjourned for the day minutes past 3 pm. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, while raising the issue, accused the government of "deliberately provoking" the opposition and "inducing" disruption so that Parliament does not run. He said for the last one year, it has been seen that efforts are being made by the ruling party to create a situation that the House does not function. The senior Congress leader, while pressing for a discussion on the issue, said he had never seen that a government "does things during the session or just days before the session so that Parliament does not function". He said during last winter session, the duly-elected Arunachal Pradesh government was "brought down" and the Centre did not stop till it installed its own government there. Azad said President's rule has been imposed in the past also, but never in such a "crude" way. When he said he wanted to congratulate the judges of the Uttarakhand High Court for "having the guts to fight the Government of India", Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said there should be "no commentary" on the judicial issues. As Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi objected to the raising of the Uttrakhand issue saying the matter was sub-judice, Azad said the Centre "which disrespects the court, cannot be trusted". "Discussion will take place," he asserted, as several Congress members carrying placards stood in the aisle. Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) countered Naqvi saying Leader of the House Arun Jaitley had said in the last session that discussion on issues, even if sub-judice, cannot be prevented in the House. "Apply your own precedents," he said. Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte has widened his lead over rivals despite remarks about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary which sparked protests from diplomats, the Catholic church and women's groups. Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, emerged as the "clear frontrunner" in a survey which research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) released today. The candidate, who has promised mass killings of suspected criminals, saw his support rise from 27 per cent of respondents in March to 33 per cent in April, giving him a nine-point lead over second-placed Senator Grace Poe just two weeks before the vote. The survey was conducted from April 18-20, shortly after a video circulated showing Duterte making the remark about the missionary in a campaign hustings event. Duterte, 71, had told laughing followers that the woman was so beautiful he wished he had been the first in line to rape her -- before she was murdered in a jail riot in his city in 1989. SWS spokesman Leo Laroza said the apparent joke may have dented Duterte's popularity but did not stop him pulling ahead of his arrivals in the poll of 1,800 voters. "Mayor Duterte has been steadily gaining ground. It's a clear lead. The joke could have affected him in such a way that his score could have even been higher had it not been for that news," he told AFP. Francisco Magno, president of the Philippine Political Science Association, said the latest figures showed a substantial voting bloc was attracted to "strong man leadership". It showed marked sympathy for his "one-issue campaign effort" against crime and illegal drugs, he added. The survey also indicated that issues like women's rights and human rights in general were secondary for many. "There is much to be desired about the quality of political education" in the country, Magno said. He said Duterte also benefited from having three rivals splitting the vote. If the anti-Duterte forces were eventually to unite behind one of them, that might determine the election result, said Magno. Current President Benigno Aquino, the son of a former president, is constitutionally limited to a single six-year term. His preferred successor Mar Roxas - the grandson of a former president - trails badly in surveys. The Kurdish rebel movement is ready to step up its fight against Turkey in response to Ankara's crackdown, its leader said. Since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) last year, Turkish government forces have been waging a blistering military campaign against the group in the southeast of the country. leader Cemil Bayik said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "escalating this war". "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach -- of course the will escalate the war," he told BBC in an interview. Erdogan said this month that 355 members of the security forces had been killed in fighting as well as over 5,000 PKK members -- although this could not be independently verified. The PKK has been blamed for a string of attacks in Turkey in recent months, while two bombings in Ankara this year were claimed by a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical splinter group of the rebel movement. The rebels are accused of trying to create a separate Kurdish state within Turkey, but Bayik denied it. "We don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. We don't want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted," he said. The PKK was ready to escalate the conflict "not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well", he added. Erdogan "wants the Kurds to surrender. If they don't surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly - he doesn't hide it," Bayik said. The PKK launched a bloody insurgency against the Turkish government in 1984 seeking independence, beginning a decades-long fight for greater autonomy and rights for Kurds which has left 40,000 dead. It later watered down its demands to seek instead more autonomy with cultural and language rights. Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan called a truce in March 2013, but tensions over the Syrian conflict kickstarted the violence last year. Erdogan has proposed stripping Turkish citizenship from supporters of Kurdish rebels and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is trying to alter Turkey's constitution, to allow prosecutions of pro-Kurdish lawmakers accused of "terrorist propaganda". The Bombay High Court today granted anticipatory bail to producer Rahul Raj Singh, accused of abetting the suicide of actress Pratyusha Banerjee, after observing that prima facie there is no evidence to show that the accused "instigated or intended" the suicide. "From the statements of witnesses, it is clearly seen that harassment and disputes were there between the applicant accused (Rahul) and the victim (Pratyusha). But prima facie, there is nothing on record to show abetment," Justice Mridula Bhatkar said. The court was hearing the application filed by Rahul seeking pre-arrest bail after the sessions court rejected his plea. The high court, while granting his application, directed Rahul to appear before the Bangur Nagar police, which is probing the case, thrice a week for two weeks. "For an offence to be made out under section 306 of IPC (abetment to suicide) there should be instigation, intentional aid or an intent that the person should commit suicide. It is necessary to show whether the accused had mens rea (intention)," the court said. It added that harassment or disputes can be a reason for a person to not like another person and take steps to end his or her life. "For that person, the behaviour of the other person may be the cause of his or her death. However, for an offence of abetment to be proved, there should be evidence to show instigation, provocation and intention," the court said. Justice Bhatkar further said that how a person will react to the situation is unpredictable and sensitivity differs from one person to another. "Under such circumstances, unless the intention of the person held responsible for the suicide is brought on record prima facie, it cannot be said that it is abetment," the judge said. The court in its chamber during the day heard the last telephonic conversation between Rahul and Pratyusha recorded on April 1 an hour before the actress committed suicide. "Throughout the conversation, the applicant accused is asking the victim (Pratyusha) not to take any drastic steps and assured her that he would return home immediately. After perusing all the facts of the case, this court is prima facie of the view that the police can investigate the case without any custodial interrogation of the accused," the court said. The court also struck down the prosecution argument that it was still "confused" if murder charges are applicable on Rahul. "The prosecution argument that they are suspicious and may want to invoke section 302 of IPC against the accused cannot be appreciated at this stage," the court said. Special Public Prosecutor Nilesh Pawaskar, while seeking Rahul's custody, told the court that the police, after an initial probe, were looking into if murder charges were applicable in the case. "We are confused and still seeing if section 302 of IPC is applicable. The probe has revealed that the accused is a drug addict. We want to see if he is also a peddler and had administered drugs to the victim. Several other girls have approached the police saying that they had been duped in the past by Rahul," Pawaskar said. The prosecutor also told the court that the police was also probing if Pratyusha was forced by Rahul to abort her pregnancy. The court, however, said the police does not require the custody of the accused to invoke section 302 in the case. "Why is the police complicating the case? Right now, the offence registered against the accused is under section 306 for abetment. Show me the evidence for this section. Show me mens rea (intention), instigation and facilitation," Justice Bhatkar said. Rahul's lawyer Abaad Ponda argued that Rahul and Pratyusha were happy with each other and had even partied together the night before Pratyusha committed suicide. "On April 1, Rahul had gone out in the afternoon to bring lunch when Pratyusha called him. Rahul berated her for drinking in the day time and told her that he would return soon," he said. Ponda added that the post-mortem report also suggests that Pratyusha committed suicide and that it was not murder. Taking forward the 'Look East' policy of the government, President Pranab Mukherjee will embark on a six-day trip to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and New Zealand this week, his first state visit to the two countries. Terming the visit as 'Act East', a natural extension of the government's 'Look East' policy, the President's Press Secretary Venu Rajamony told reporters it would play a significant role in strengthening India's economic relations with Pacific nations like PNG. The visit is likely to give a push to Indian pharmaceutical companies to set up businesses in the pacific nation after the local government withdrew a ban in January this year. The PNG is looking towards India for enhanced cooperation in the health sector and capacity building in Information Technology, Joint Secretary (South) in External Affairs Ministry Jaideep Majumdar said. PNG, which is the largest Pacafic Island nation, both in terms of population and area, has large natural resources of oil, gas and minerals. The dicussions regarding cooperation in these areas will be taken forward after the conclusion of President's visit, he said. During the second conference of Pacific nations held in India last year, New Delhi had offered radars for coastal surveillance and patrolling craft for maritime security to the PNG, he said. President Mukherjee will be arriving in PNG on April 28 after which he will witness signing of agreements in the fields of health, economic cooperation and Information Technology besides addressing the students and business community. The President will be accompanied by Minister of State for Agriculture Sanjeev Baliyan and a three-member delegation of MPs. About the President's visit to New Zealand, which starts from April 30, he said India traditionally shared close relations with that country. The Indian diaspora of 1,75,000 helps to further cement our ties, he said. The two sides will look at prospects for cooperation in agriculture, dairy, food processing, education and skill development as well as high technology. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had visited India in 2011 and its Governor General in 2008, 2009 and 2011. The last high-level visit from India was by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. India has experienced negative growth in exports due to various factors like stagnation in EU countries, slowdown in China and fall in commodity and crude oil prices, Parliament was informed today. Some of the key reasons for negative export growth in the recent period include fall in global demand and commodity prices, impacting terms of trade for commodity exporters, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. Fall in crude oil prices has resulted in consequent decline in petroleum products' prices as well as export realisations, which are major items of export for India, she said. "EU countries that account for nearly 16 per cent of India's export, are facing stagnation. China is also experiencing a slowdown. The recovery in the US has been moderate and uncertain in terms of sustainability," she said. She added there is also a general slowdown in the world GDP growth and hence in growth of world trade. "Some increase in trade barriers has also been reported," the minister said adding steps have been taken to address the trade deficit through promotion of exports. Declining for 16th straight month in March, exports contracted by 5.47 per cent to USD 22.71 billion. Replying to another question, she said the government continues to engage pro-actively with SAARC countries to strengthen trade and economic relations. "Issues impacting bilateral trade, raised by these countries, are taken up for an early resolution. Bilateral and multilateral trade discussions are held with these countries from time to time, to explore mechanisms for enhancement of cross border trade," she added. The minister also informed that SEZs in Gujarat have witnessed highest exports during April-December 2015. It stood at Rs 1,06,569 crore followed by Tamil Nadu (Rs 55,479 crore) and Maharashtra (Rs 51,777 crore). Total exports from SEZs during the period aggregated at Rs 3,41,684.75 crore. During the last three years and as on April 8, 27 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been notified over an area of 3591.56 hectares, she said replying to another question. Government today placed copies of the proclamation of President's Rule in Uttarakhand in both Houses of Parliament amid objections by Congress members. In Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy also laid a copy of the Uttarakhand Appropriation (Vote on Account) Ordinance. Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Prathibhai Chaudhary laid the copies of proclamation for President's Rule issued by President Pranab Mukherjee on March 27 under Article 356 of the Constitution with regard to Uttarakhand. He also laid the March 26 report of Uttarakhand Governor and the record of proceedings of the Supreme Court arising out of impugned final judgement and April 21 order of the High Court in this regard. Congress, whose members forced repeated adjournments in the House accusing the government of "murder of democracy", reacted sharply to the government placing these documents without listing them in the business. "This is exactly what we have been objecting to. This government has assaulted the Constitution and democracy," Congress leader Anand Sharma said in Rajya Sabha, referring to the documents. On March 27, a day before the scheduled vote of confidence of the state's Congress government, Uttarakhand was brought under President's Rule by the Centre on grounds of "breakdown of governance". The controversial decision came in the wake of a political crisis triggered by a rebellion in the ruling Congress. President Pranab Mukherjee, on the recommendation of the Union Cabinet, signed the proclamation under Article 356 of the Constitution dismissing the Congress government headed by Harish Rawat and placing the Assembly under suspended animation this morning on the recommendation of the Union Cabinet. Rawat challenged the proclamation in the High Court which revoked the President's Rule and ordered floor test in the Assembly on April 29. The central government challenged that order in the Supreme Court which has stayed operation of the High Court verdict till April 27. Karnataka government has joined hands with Samsung and Infosys to develop a programme 'Chetana' to nurture and mentor girl students and acquaintthem with technology. The programme is targeted at girl students who have topped in SSLC exam (Class X) from government schools, a state government release today said. It is proposed to organise a five-day residential camp with variety of activities that would ignite their interest in technology, the release said. The programme will be conducted under the aegis of the Department of Information technology, Biotechnology andScience and Technology. Samsung is distributing laptops to the 'Chetana-Scholars' as part of their Corporate SocialResponsibilityp. During this year, 356 girls who have topped in 2015are being invited to the residential workshop conducted by the department at Infosys Mysuru campus. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is likely to launch the programme on April 28 at Infosys campus. The issue of imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand echoed in the Parliament today with Congress members in both Houses storming the Well and party leader Mallikarjun Kharge staging a dharna in the Lok Sabha. "It is a murder of democracy," Kharge said as the Lower House assembled for the day, telling Speaker Sumitra Mahajan that he has given a notice for an adjournment motion on the issue. Members of JD(U) and AAP were also in the Well along with Congress and AAP leader Bhagwant Mann, who was repeatedly seen pleading with the Chair to allow Kharge to have his say. Mann was also heard expressing concern over the drought situation in several parts of the country and farmer suicides. The imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand has turned into a political controversy, especially after the state High Court stayed the decision last week. On the Centre's plea against that verdict, the Supreme Court has now temporarily stayed the High Court's move. With the Speaker declining to allow him to speak on the issue, Kharge protested and sat in the Well of Lok Sabha while other Congress members continued to raise slogans. Belligerent Congress members in the Lok Sabha were heard shouting slogans like 'Taanashahi band karo (Stop dictatorship)' and 'Modi sarkar hosh mein aao' (Modi government, come to senses). Congress President Sonia Gandhi was also seen protesting. Hundreds of monks of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission have abstained from voting in this West Bengal Assembly election, following a now well- established tradition of not taking sides in political contests. A senior monk of the monastic order, founded in 1897 by Swami Vivekananda, said almost all of them have EPIC voter cards but only for the sake of an identity proof. "For all these years we have been following the instructions of Swamiji not to go beyond spiritual and humanitarian activities. Voting will mean taking sides of a particular politician or party which we don't do," he said. Over the years this practice of staying away from the electoral process has become a well-accepted tradition in Belurmath, the headquarters of the order located only a few km away from the city. Monks said there is no official instruction on voting for them from the top ranks, but all new members of the monastic life have been following it without complaints. Belurmath hosts around 1,500 'Brahmacharis' and 'Sanyasis' living an ascetic life based on the Vedanta philosophy. The Math and the Mission together have 178 branch centres all over India and in different parts of the world. Interestingly, almost 95 per cent of the monks possess voter ID cards. "For the sake of identification and particularly for travelling, almost 95 per cent of us are forced to seek a voter ID card. But we use it only for identification purpose and not for voting," a monk said, adding that Aadhar card have now made things easier for them. During the freedom struggle, the Mission had, however, taken sides as a section of the monks had kept close contacts with freedom fighters of various camps. A number of political revolutionaries had later joined the Ramakishna Order. Among the present generation of politicians both West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are known to keep close contacts with the monks. He considers Swami Atmasthanand Maharaj, president of Ramakrishna Math and Mission Order, as his guru. Polling in Howrah district, where Belurmath is located, was held today. RJD ministers today held a meeting to discuss some of the changes it intends to bring in the Chief Minister Area Development Scheme (CMADS). In 2011, CMADS replaced Local Area Development Fund used by MLAs for carrying out development in their areas. The meeting was held in view of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad expressing concern over frequent fire incidents and looming water crisis in the state due to heatwave conditions prevailing in the state for the past couple of days. Emerging out of the meeting, state cooperative minister Alok Kumar Mehta said some of the changes to the (CMADS) were discussed in today's meeting. "Some of the amendments to CMADS were discussed by the ministers at a meeting convened by Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav...It was also discussed that some of the small, but people-centric schemes should be added in the scheme while some of the schemes should be ousted," Mehta said. Asked about the important people-centric schemes that were discussed, Mehta said there would be partial changes in CMADS after taking into account the opinions of ministers and people's representatives in this regard. Stating that Grand Secular Alliance's seven resolves (Saat Nischay) would be strengthened further, Mehta said there were schemes which were covered under both CMADS and Saat Nischay, hence it was discussed that some of them such as providing electricity, drinking water, drainage, lanes would be removed from CMADS. "This is being done to avoid duplication of schemes which may give rise to irregularities," Mehta, who was accompanied by Minority Welfare minister Abdul Ghafoor, Agriculture minister Ramvichar Rai and Art, Culture and Youth department minister Shiv Chandra Ram, said. Nitish Kumar government had in 2011 substituted the local area development funds by CMADS. CMADS funds would be used for construction of Panchayat Sarkar Bhavan in each panchayat, Anganwadi centres, godowns in panchayats and community centres, besides construction of minor roads, lanes and culverts. The RJD supremo had yesterday drew attention towards looming water crisis and said the government should take up digging of wells at a large scale in the state to overcome the drinking water crisis. Prasad had said four to six wells should be dug in every village keeping in mind the problems being faced by people for getting drinking water. Election authorities today seized Rs 3.39 crore and 245 grams of gold at Krishnagiri in poll-bound Tamil Nadu. Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu, Rajesh Lakhoni told reporters here that authorities in Krishnagiri district inspected the premises of a private school, which falls under Uthangarai constituency. "While Rs 3 crore 39 lakh cash was found, a total of 245 gms of gold coins were also found and seized. The Income Tax Assistant Commissioner, who is the nodal officer, has been directedto the spot for further investigation," he said. Yesterday, electoral authorities and Income Tax officials had seized an undiscolsed amount from a person here, reported to be around Rs four crore. Lakhoni had confirmed the seizure, but said the value of the seizure could be stated only after the cash was counted. He had also said that about Rs 11.33 crore had been recovered after searches at some places in Karur, Coimbatore and Chennai on April 23. Ahead of the May 16 polls, a strict vigil is being maintained by the Election Commission against transportation of unaccounted money, gold and illegal money transactions. Angry over imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, Congress today created ruckus in Parliament, accusing the Modi dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The issue generated heat in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on the opening day of the session with Congress members in both Houses storming the Well and party chief Sonia Gandhi joining them in raising slogans. In the Lok Sabha, Leader of Congress Mallikarjun Kharge and his party colleagues staged a dharna in the Well as their notice for adjournment motion on the issue was rejected by the Chair. "It is a murder of democracy," Kharge said as the Lower House assembled for the day, telling Speaker Sumitra Mahajan that he has given a notice for an adjournment motion on the issue. Members of JD(U) and AAP were also in the Well along with Congress. AAP leader Bhagwant Mann was repeatedly seen pleading with the Chair to allow Kharge to have his say. Amid a noisy protest by the treasury benches, Kharge said the Union government is purchasing MLAs, pressurising MLAs to install BJP government "by killing Costitution." The Speaker reminded Kharge that the matter is before the Supreme Court and hence he should not say anything further. Kharge said he is referring to the action of the central government and not the ruling of Uttarakhand High Court which had revoked the President's Rule. The Supreme Court later stayed the High Court's order till April 27. He said the BJP-government at the Centre celebrates the Constitution Day and birthday of key architect of the document B R Ambedkar, while it has "destabilised" democratically- elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. "There appears to be a great hurry by the NDA to grab power in every state... Don't forget there is Constitution... you could have waited for the March 28 floor test but you imposed President's Rule on March 27," he said. He said the House had recently discussed the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case which is also sub-judice. BJD's B Mahtab said his party has also given notice on the issue. "The matter is in the court. We will wait for the verdict. We are confident that the court will deliver justice. But we are against arbitrary use of Article 356," he said. The Home Minister said the "crisis" in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh has not been created by NDA or BJP. "It is an internal crisis of their party," he said and welcomed Speaker's decision that the issue cannot be raised in the present format as it is under consideration of the apex court. In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the issue accusing the central government of "deliberately provoking" the opposition and "inducing" disruption so that the House does not run. Azad said for the last one year, it has been seen that efforts are being made by the ruling party to create a situation that the House does not function. The senior Congress leader said he had never seen that a government "does things during the session or just days before the session so that does not function". He said during winter session, the duly-elected Arunachal Pradesh government was "brought down" and the Centre did not stop till it installed its own government there. Azad said President's rule has been imposed in the past also, but never in such a "crude" way. When he said he wanted to congratulate the judges of the Uttarakhand High Court for "having the guts to fight the Government of India", Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said there should be "no commentary" on the judicial issues. As Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi objected to the raising of the Uttrakhand issue saying the matter was sub-judice, Azad said the Centre "which disrespects the court, cannot be trusted". "Discussion will take place," he asserted, as several Congress members carrying placards stood in the aisle. Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) countered Naqvi saying Leader of the House Arun Jaitley had said in the last session that discussion on issues, even if sub-judice, cannot be prevented in the House. "Apply your own precedents," he said. Anand Sharma (Cong) said the Centre used proclamation of President's rule to disturb an elected government. "We will discuss it. We will expose you," he said. Right then, Jaitley asked Congress members to debate the issue when the proclamation comes up for discussion. "It will come up for discussion before the House. This will House will have an oppourtunity to discuss it. Therefore, when the proclamation comes up, please disucss it. "But today, you cannot by an alternative motion anticipate a discussion which is to take place when the proclamation comes up. You cannot discuss it at the pre-proclamation stage," Jaitley said. However, Congress members did not relent and several of them trooped into the Well. They raised slogans like 'Modi teri taanashahi nahi chalegi' (Modi, your authoritarianism will not work) and 'Loktantra ki hatya bandh karo' (stop murdering democracy). Deputy Chairman P J Kurien then adjourned the House till noon. When it reassembled, Congress members again raised slogans from the aisle. The House was adjourned by Chairman Hamid Ansari till 2 p.m within a few minutes. Senior IPS officer Satish Mathur has been appointed as the new Director General of the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) of Maharashtra, a police official said here today. The post was earlier held by Vijay Kamble, an IPS officer of 1980 batch, who was posted in October last year. Mathur, who is a 1981 batch IPS officer, is the senior-most serving DG-rank officer. Mathur, who served as the Pune Police Commissioner, was last year promoted to the rank of Director General of Police (DGP), the police official said. Sebi has turned down six applications by various entities including McLeod Russel India, seeking settlement of proceedings against them in cases related to alleged violations of capital market norms. According to the regulator, the settlement applications have been "rejected as they are not found to be in consonance with the Sebi (Settlement of Administrative and Civil Proceedings) Regulations, 2014." "...Pending proceedings in these cases will continue in accordance with law," Securities and Exchange Board of India said in an update of settlement pleas till March 31. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has rejected settlement application of one Ritika Jhunjhunwala for allegedly indulging in fraudulent trading in Gemini Communications matter. Besides, Amit Joshi's plea to settle charges of alleged fraudulent trading and violation of portfolio manager norms has been denied by Sebi. The regulator has refused settlement with McLeod Russel India for alleged violation of insider trading norms and SAST (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations in the matter of McNally Bharat Engineering Company, Williamson Financial Services, Kilburn Engineering, India Foils and Standard Batteries. The organisation has also turned down the application of Kansal Fibers for alleged violation of provisions of SAST norms in Kansal Fibers matter. The markets watchdog has also rejected the application of several entities involved in alleged violation of insider trading rules, provisions of SAST norms and ICDR (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) regulations in case of Ellenbarrie Industrial Gases. It has refused to settle a case involving several entities for violating insider trading norms and provisions of SAST regulation in the matter of Artech Power Products. Relief groups today began their second major aid delivery in a week to tens of thousands of besieged people in central Syria, a Red Cross spokesman said. Thirty-five aid trucks would be delivered to Rastan and surrounding rural areas in central Homs province, said International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Pawel Krzysiek told AFP. ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are delivering aid including food parcels, medicine, diapers and 100 delivery kits for pregnant women. Rastan and nearby villages are home to 120,000 people, half of whom had fled fighting in neighbouring Hama province. Last Thursday, aid groups sent 65 trucks into the town in the largest aid delivery yet in Syria. More than four million people live in besieged or hard-to-reach areas with little or no access to food or medicines. Rebel groups seized Rastan and the vast agricultural land around in 2012. Krzysiek said residents had since received so little aid that they found it hard to believe there would be a second delivery so soon. "We told them we would be back in the coming days and one of them said, 'Yeah, yeah, that's what people said last time... If you manage to enter again, we'll have a party,'" he told AFP. Krzysiek said ICRC and Red Crescent workers would follow-up on health assessments and repairs to the heavily-strained water infrastructure in the town. The ICRC had noted several cases of malnutrition, but the situation was not as "intense" as other besieged towns like Madaya, near Damascus. Madaya became infamous in late 2015 after dozens died of starvation in the town, which is besieged by pro-government forces. "The irrigation areas and farmlands are really the front lines" in Rastan, Krzysiek said. "It's too dangerous to do large-scale cultivation and even if you manage, you cannot sell it." Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has spiralled into a complex, multi-front war. Both government forces and armed rebel groups are accused of war crimes, including the besiegement of civilians. The United Nations has criticised regime forces for denying access for aid groups to enter besieged areas. A seer was seriously injured in an alleged attack by unidentified persons in Datta Akhara area during the ongoing Simhastha (Kumbh) mela, police said today. The seer, identified as Tapasvi Giri, was yesterday found by police with serious injuries on his neck, Additional Superintendent of Police Manish Khatri said. He was admitted in Indore's Government M Y Hospital for treatment and his condition is stable, police said. No report was filed in this connection. However, police have taken cognisance of the incident, the ASP said. Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad president Narendra Giri said the incident was the fallout of a dispute between two groups of seers, and it has now been sorted out. The Akhara Parishad president has also asked the government to improve the facilities at the Kumbh mela site before the second 'Shahi Snan' (royal bath) on May 9. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will arrive in Ujjain today at around 4 PM and hold a meeting with the concerned officials and Akhara Parishad members to sort out various issues pertaining to the month-long mela, which commenced here from April 22. Yemen's warring parties held a fifth day of peace talks in Kuwait today after the UN envoy said "significant differences" still separate them. A UN spokesman said the talks between the government and the Shiite Huthi rebels had resumed after extensive discussions of security, political and humanitarian issues yesterday. "Significant differences in the delegations' points of view remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace and to work intensively towards an agreement," UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement yesterday. Negotiations on a political settlement have made no headway as the two sides are still discussing ways to consolidate a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on April 11. The delegations have agreed to appoint two officials, one from each side, to make recommendations on how to sustain the ceasefire, the envoy said. The government delegation has insisted that the ceasefire should include confidence-building measures, such as opening safe passages to all besieged areas and releasing prisoners. The Iran-backed Huthis are demanding an immediate halt to air strikes that a Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out since March last year in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi, who heads the government delegation, described the negotiations as "impotent" and accused the rebels of avoiding discussion of key issues. Mikhlafi said on his Facebook page that the rebel delegation had backed down several times on proposals they had made. The rebels have insisted that no ceasefire can be established without an end to coalition air strikes. The coalition has said it reserves the right to respond to rebel violations of the ceasefire, with air strikes if necessary. The two sides also differ on the way to tackle other key issues. The government wants the discussions to start with the issue of a Huthi withdrawal from areas they have overrun, including the capital Sanaa, and their surrender of all heavy weaponry. The rebels want the political process and the establishment of a national unity government to come first, sources close to the talks told AFP. The negotiations in Kuwait opened late on Thursday after the delayed arrival of representatives of the Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by President Maithripala Sirisena has rejected the country's main Tamil party's call for a federal solution to the minority community's political independence, saying it is "unconstitutional" and will strengthen "extremism". " Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) is very clear in its policy to oppose a federal solution. Such a solution would be unconstitutional and would lead to disturbances by strengthening extremism", said Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Skills Development and Vocational Training. He said the government would not go beyond the 13th amendment to the Constitution adopted in 1987 on India's initiative. "We will examine the 13A to see what powers remaining to be granted. We can consider that but not a federal solution," Samarasinghe, 60, said. Sri Lanka's main Tamil party TNA-controlled northern provincial council adopted a resolution last week seeking a federal solution to the long-pending issue of political independence for the country's minority Tamil community. The resolution adopted by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) aims to have the federal solution included in the current process of formulating a new constitution for the country. A new constitution replacing the current 1978 constitution is expected to be adopted by early 2017. The Tamil demand for a federal solution dates back to the days when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, came to be granted independence by the British in 1948. Later, the campaign was extended to a separate state demand when the LTTE fought a decades-old war with the government to carve out a separate Tamil homeland. With the defeat of the LTTE in 2009, the Tamil leadership has adopted a softer approach to give up on the separatist demand. Federalism as a solution has never won the approval of the 74 per cent Sinhala majority who fear that it would lead to the division of the country along ethnic lines. A lawyer who was sacked for making the stand of Delhi Government allegedly without instruction on sensitive Satluj-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal case today told the Supreme Court that the Aam Aadmi Party government's ground for his removal was a "blatant lie". Delhi Government had replaced advocate Suresh Tripathy as its standing counsel in the apex court for filing the written submission in the SYL matter claiming that the stand of supporting Haryana in the dispute was taken by him without any instruction. "It is not fair to say that the counsel filed the written submission without instruction. It is a blatant lie," Tripathy's counsel and senior advocate R Basant told a five-jugde Constitution Bench headed by Justice A R Dave, which is hearing the Presidential Reference on SYL dispute. At the outset, the senior advocate said, "why to say he has made the submission without the instruction of the Delhi Government. It is wrong. It affects the career of an advocate," he said before the bench, also comprising Justices P C Ghose, Shiva Kirti Singh, A K Goel and Amitava Roy. However, the bench said nothing sort of that should be spoken before it and the issue should be sorted outside the courtroom. Senior advocate Indira Jaising, who informed the bench that she was appearing for the Delhi Government in the matter, said, "we will see how it will be sorted out. I will put best effort to sort it out." "The decision is not intended towards any individual but it is on the issue. We had filed affidavit. On seeing his (Tripathy's) objection we will see how it can be sorted out," she said. The bench asked both the parties to sit together and settle the issue. Jaising said the stand of Delhi Government was clear that its right of its share of water be protected under the law. "All existing rights be protected. We insist that the allocation to us should come. For us the matter of concern is that the allocation of water should be protected. We are not going into the controversy whether Haryana is right or Punjab is right. "Our earlier affidavit was projecting that we were taking sides," she said. Tripthy's counsel said he will file an application or an affidavit that the submission was made on instructions. Delhi Government on April 18 had told the apex court that it did not subscribe to the views presented by him in the SYL canal case and later filed a fresh submission by withdrawing an earlier one. The apex court then had asked the Delhi government to file an affidavit stating the reasons for filing fresh submissions. "You must file an affidavit. We will consider the written submission and pass appropriate directions," the bench had said. In his submission before the apex court, Tripathy had said that Delhi government is in favour of Haryana in the SYL canal case, even as Delhi Jal Board (DJB) said he did not have any permission from the concerned authority. On April 8, DJB had removed him from its panel for presenting "wrong" submission in SYL canal case in the Supreme Court. Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters as around 50 anti-government demonstrators gathered in a square of Egypt's capital today in defiance of an official ban. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his interior minister had warned on the eve of the planned demonstrations that security forces would deal firmly with protesters. Police had sealed off access to three venues for protests called by the secular and leftist opposition as well as making dozens of arrests over the previous four days. The protesters who gathered in a small square came under tear gas fire after a first police van at the scene was pelted with stones, an AFP journalist said. Several arrests were made and journalists briefly detained until their credentials had been verified. Sisi, who has ruled Egypt with an iron fist and cracked down on all dissent, said yesterday: "Our responsibility is to protect security and stability." His Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar warned that "the security services... Will confront with extreme rigour any attempt to disturb public order". The protest coincides with a public holiday to mark the anniversary of Israel's return to Egypt in 1982 the Sinai Peninsula. In July 2013, Sisi, then the army chief, overthrew Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and launched a deadly crackdown on his supporters. Authorities have since banned all but police-approved rallies and overseen a crackdown that has left hundreds of Morsi supporters dead and thousands imprisoned. Several secular and leftist activists who spearheaded the 2011 uprising against longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak have also been jailed. Thousands of Jewish worshippers attended a prayer ceremony at Jerusalem's Western Wall today as Israel marked the week-long Passover festival amid increased surveillance over tensions with Palestinians. The Wall's administrators said 50,000 people crammed into the vast square in front of the wall to be blessed simultaneously by hundreds of men believed to be descendants of the ancient Jewish priestly caste the Cohanim, who wore prayer shawls draped across their heads and shoulders. "May God bless and protect you, may God shine His face upon you and be gracious on you, may God turn his face onto you and give you peace," they chanted. The blessing is said in individual congregations around the world during every morning prayer, but Passover in Israel gives the faithful the chance to visit the Western Wall for a mass blessing rite. Israeli security forces were heavily deployed in and around the Old City. The wall is located below the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the city occupied and later annexed by Israel. The compound is the third holiest place in Islam. Jews also revere the site as Temple Mount, the site of two ancient Jewish temples, the first of which the bible says was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and the second razed by the Romans in 70 AD. Jews are allowed to enter the mosque compound but not to pray there. They are permitted to worship at the Western Wall -- the last remnant of the second temple. Israeli authorities fear that the festivities which traditionally accompany Passover, which began on Friday, could fuel long-simmering tensions at the Al-Aqsa compound. Two Jews were expelled from the compound today after "breaking the rules of the site", Israeli police said. Thirteen Jews were expelled for similar reasons on Sunday, police said. The Jordanian government on Sunday warned of serious consequences if Israeli "settlers" were allowed to visit the site. In a statement, a Jordanian government spokesman demanded "Israeli occupation authorities immediately stop such moves, deny entry to settlers and Israeli forces into the yards of the holy shrine and allow Palestinian worshippers to enter the mosque". Jordan is the guardian of the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, although Israel controls access. Israel accused Amman of misleading the public about its intentions. "There is no place for such a statement. Israel is acting responsibly and Jordan knows this," an official said. The compound is a major issue between Israel and Jordan, one of only two Arab countries with which Israel has signed a peace agreement. Spicing up shows with memes from social media, comic clips from Tamil movies and innovative advertisements, TV channels supporting various political parties, including ruling AIADMK and DMK have turned a key campaign tool in Tamil Nadu for the May 16 assembly elections. The channels are busy telecasting attacks on each other while showcasing achievements and poll promises of the parties. Jaya Plus TV programme "Nalla Sollrangayya Detailu," anchored by noted Tamil comedian Singamuthu, ridicules DMK and other political parties in the actor's own inimitable style while recalling the "achievements" of the AIADMK regime. Attacking DMK, he asks if the Karunanidhi-led party implemented its poll promises like land to the landless when it assumed power in 2006. Mimicking Vijayakanth, he asks if it was difficult for the DMDK chief and Chief Ministerial candidate of the DMDK-PWF combine to communicate clearly, how come he could aspire for the top job in the State. He says "in one form or the other" all the schemes of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa (like free mixies, grinders) has reached all households. The channel also carries regular promotional programmes like "My Leader" highlighting AIADMK's welfare schemes like low-cost Amma Canteen food chain with catchy phrases like "Sonnathayum Seithom Sollathathayum Seithom" (We delivered what we promised and what we had not promised.) If the pro-ruling party channel has this catch phrase, rivals have come up with a counter. TV channels like Sun aired advertisements captioned 'Sonneengale, Senjeengala' (You promised, did you deliver?) targeting the AIADMK. The ruling party took exception to this and has made a representation to the Chief Electoral Officer to stop its airing. It had claimed that the advertisements violated the election code and the EC has said it would look into it. However, DMK leaders like M K Stalin continue to pose the same question in their campaign trail. Interestingly, Sun channel also mixes up, intersperses the speeches of leaders made on different occasions, giving it a hilarious effect targeting the ruling party. For instance, it shows a clipping in which Jayalalithaa says she brings welfare schemes after thorough thinking (Yosithu Yosithu). Next comes TNCC Chief Elangovan's quip "Yosithu Yosithu Parkiren Ondrun Puriyavillai" (I think repeatedly I do not understand anything.) Pro-DMK Kalaignar TV and Kalaignar Seithigal channels flood viewers with the a string of "achievements" of the previous DMK regime. For example,it chronicled how Karunanidhi gave 1,78,880 acre surplus land from landlords to 1,37,236 landless farmers by enacting the Land Ceiling Act in 1970. Makkal TV,a pro-PMK channel,hits hard at rivals,including AIADMK, DMK and DMDK. It also gives repartees to comments of rival leaders through comical quips from Tamil movies. Also, most channels including Makkal TV invariably have memes from social media ridiculing leaders for their specific comments. Makkal TV has hard hitting serious programming against rivals. For instance, it cited the Sarkaria Commission indictments against Karunanidhi in a recent show and went on to chronicle corruption allegations against Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Showing a DMDK chief Vijayakant's difficult-to- comprehend comments, the channel juxtaposes it with PMK chief Ministerial candidate Anbumani Ramadoss's distinctive promise for good governance and asks "who will be your choice?" Pro-DMDK Captain TV and Captain channels beams programmes with all guns blazing against AIADMK, DMK and other rivals through similar shows. The channels make it a point to repeat-telecast the campaigns of their leaders, besides doing live broadcast of election rallies. A special screening of actor Manoj Bajpayee's upcoming drama-thriller "Traffic" will be organised for superstar Salman Khan who had apparently liked the trailer of the film. Directed by late Rajesh Pillai, "Traffic" is a remake of a 2011 Malayalam film of the same name. Bajpayee, who plays the role of a traffic police constable in the film, said it was nice of Salman who had tweeted about the trailer. "It's overwhelming to see the response the trailer has received. It was very sweet of Salman to tweet about looking forward to watching our film... We are more than happy to arrange a special screening for him," Bajpayee said in a statement. The drama-thriller is inspired from an actual event that happened in Chennai where a doctor couple donated organs of their 15-year-old son who died in a road accident. The young boy's heart was transported to another hospital for a girl who required heart transplant. The journey, which would've taken close to 45 minutes with traffic, was completed in 11 minutes as the police cleared the way and gave green signal for the ambulance to pass. "Traffic", also starring Jimmy Shergill, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Parambrata Chatterjee, Divya Dutta and Amol Parashar, is scheduled to release on May 6. The politics surrounding consumption of beef in India refuses to die down and has caused anxiety even outside the country, with Singapore's former Foreign Minister George Yeo saying he is "troubled" by the nervousness in India over the issue. Yeo, who is now a chancellor of the Nalanda University in Bihar that is being rebuilt as a global institution, writes in a lengthy foreword to veteran journalist Ravi Velloor's new book how he was once advised by a well-wisher to delete a Facebook post that had a picture of him eating beef noodles. The 61-year-old politician said he was "troubled" when a former Congress minister's son advised him to delete the post. "I had uploaded a picture of my wife and I eating pho (Vietnamese beef noodles) in Harvard Square," wrote Yeo. "The son of former Congress leader thought it might elicit a negative response in India to my role as the new chancellor of Nalanda University. "I knew he meant well. I did not follow his advice of course but his nervousness troubled me," he wrote in the foreword to "India Rising: Fresh Hopes, New Fears" which was launched here last week. Yeo said the tolerance and celebration of diversity in the Indian civilisation was an important reason for India's less violent ways. As long as it stays rooted in this tradition, its contribution to the world will be much greater than just the political and economic, he said. Velloor says that the world would have looked at Narendra Modi differently had the ill-fated train that was burnt in 2002 in Godhra, Gujarat, been attacked a 100 kms earlier while it was still in Madhya Pradesh. It also claims that Modi, then a newly-installed chief minister of Gujarat, had reached out to all three neighbouring states for police reinforcements after rioting started but help was declined to him. After that initial stumble, Gujarat had enjoyed a long period of communal peace under Modi, says the book, which was released by Singapore Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong. However, the book - that portrays the rise of India as a global power - says that though there is a growing sense of excitement about the country, its closest friends abroad have started to worry about strains to its secular fabric. Prime Minister Modi has also not done quite enough to assuage the fears of the country's minorities, the book says. Velloor also details other instances when world leaders have shown similar worries. In January, 2015, US President Barack Obama during his second visit to India warned that India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith. Likewise, in November, at an official lunch for Modi, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong drew attention to the contributions of minority groups on the island state, including Muslim emigres from Modi's Gujarat state. Singapore deputy premier Tharman Shanmugaratnam gifted a ceramic vase to Modi after a lecture during the visit, and let drop that the pottery was crafted by the city-state's most eminent Muslim artist, according to the book. Turkey has killed almost 900 alleged members of the Islamic State (IS) group since January through artillery fire and air raids, the state-run Anatolia news agency said today, citing military sources. The country, a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS, has killed 492 "terrorists" since January 9 in air raids, while another 370 were killed in artillery strikes which also destroyed arms depots, the agency said. These figures could not be independently verified. Turkey, which has been hit by attacks blamed on jihadists, including two deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul that targeted foreign tourists, began to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria last summer. Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group in Syria. Turkey began its air strikes following a suicide bombing in July last year blamed on IS extremists, which killed 34 people in the border town of Suruc. In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border from Syria, prompting the army to respond to each strike with howitzer fire. Turkey has deported more than 3,300 foreigners suspected of links to jihadi groups, particularly Islamic State militants, and another 41,000 foreigners have been barred from entering the country as part of its fight against the militant group, a top official said today. Turkish profiling teams have also interviewed 9,500 people upon their arrival in Turkey, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters. Some 2,000 of them were denied entry as a result. Around 2,770 suspects, including 1,232 foreigners, have been caught in police sweeps and 954 of them are being prosecuted, Kalin said. He didn't give further details. Turkish officials have refused to provide a breakdown of the jihadi suspects by nationality or give details on the countries they have been deported back to. Separately, Turkey's state- agency, citing unnamed military sources, said close to 900 alleged IS militants have been killed since January in Turkish artillery and air strikes against the group in Syria. The agency said 492 of the militants were killed in air raids while another 370 were killed by artillery fire. The agency didn't specify how the figures were obtained and it wasn't possible to verify them independently. Turkey, long accused of turning a blind eye to the extremists crossing into Syria, has now taken a larger role in the fight against IS, opening a key air base in southern Turkey to the US-led coalition fighting the extremists and reinforcing its border to prevent infiltrations. Four deadly bomb attacks in Turkey since July have been blamed on IS. Two officials of the Jharkhand State Food Corporation (JSFC) were today suspended after an alleged racket involved in the smuggling of grains to Bangladesh from Sahibganj was busted. On the direction of Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs minister Saryu Roy, the Chairman-cum-Managing Director of JSFC Vinay Kumar Choubey issued the orders of suspension to JSFC's Sahibganj District Manager Bhudev Mandal and Lifting Incharge Gurupad Sutradhar, according to a press release issued by the department. It said the police intercepted four trucks carrying grains last week. While two trucks were caught on the borders of Sahibganj, the other two managed to escape, it said. The release said an alleged racket had been going on in the smuggling of grains across the borders from Sahibganj. Two residents of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) were apprehended by the army when they crossed into the Indian side from Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, a defense spokesman said. The duo were apprehended when they crossed into the Indian side in Naoshera sector of the district yesterday, he said. Both of them have been handed over to police for further investigations, the spokesman added. Two women friends were found dead under mysterious circumstances at Munak Canal in outer Delhi's Begumpur area, police said today. The deceased have been identified as Moni (26) and Nidhi (19), both residents of Rohini area, police said, adding, Moni was married with three children. Nidhi had a motorbike, which was found parked at the bank of the canal, a few metres away from where their bodies were fished out. Police said local residents questioned in connection with the incident told them that they suspected the two of them were "in a relationship" which their families were "not happy about". "Locals further claimed that there were rumours about their friendship as Nidhi preferred dressing like a man and they could be spotted taking bike ride together," an official privy to the investigation said. He further said relatives of both the victims were questioned but so far no specific reason could be ascertained to corroborate the suicide angle. The duo died of drowning on April 19 but no suicide note was recovered by police, a senior official said, adding, an accidental drowning cannot be ruled out. "From preliminary investigation, it seems that there is no foul play. An inquest has been initiated into the matter," DCP (Outer) Vikramjit Singh said. On April 19, Moni's relatives lodged a missing complaint and a search was initiated. Later, the motorbike was found in Begumpur and Moni's body was first spotted on April 19. Nidhi's body was found over 24 hours later. A UK professor plans to undertake a first-of-its-kind global study of failed female suicide bombers languishing in jails around the world to gain valuable insights into what inspires women to carry out terror attacks. Helen Gavin, from University of Huddersfield in northern England, is considered an authority on female aggression and what draws women into terrorism. Her latest study is aimed at finding out why women may be inspired to blow themselves up, taking innocent victims with them. "We see young girls leaving the UK and going to Syria, for example, and we do not know why they have gone and whether they are being radicalised," Gavin told 'Daily Mirror'. "We will be looking at women who have been arrested and convicted of violent crime around the world. We intend to talk to female offenders," she said in reference to her planned research. Any women terrorists interviewed will be those who failed in their objective to carry out suicide bombings, but the researchers still expect to gain valuable insights. Women tend to make ideal suicide bomber recruits for terrorism chiefs because they can easily pass through checkpoints and slip into busy public places without arousing suspicion. Gavin believes clear gender differences can be drawn with a distinction between the urges to "avenge", for a wider cause, and "revenge" for more personal motives. "Although women are just as susceptible to ideological motivation, men seem to be drawn into suicide terrorism for 'avenge' purposes... Whereas women tend to need 'revenge' because they have lost a loved one, often a husband," Gavin said. A recent study found more than 200 women suicide bombers have blown themselves up since June 2014, killing more than 1,000 people in Nigeria, and increasingly in neighbouring Cameroon. In her book 'Female Aggression', Gavin writes most suicide bombers are male, but since the 1980s there has been increased use of women to undertake suicide bombing. Ultratech Cement today reported 10 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 722.56 crore for the March quarter helped by higher infrastructure spending and decline in raw material, energy and logistic costs. The flagship firm of the Aditya Birla group had clocked a net profit of Rs 657.20 crore in the year-ago period. Consolidated net sales rose by 5 per cent to Rs 6,850.46 crore in January-March from Rs 6,516.52 crore in the same quarter of 2014-15, it said in a BSE filing. The firm said "operating costs reduced with operational efficiencies, a judicious fuel mix and fall in fuel prices." Domestic cement grew 15 per cent during Q4 2015-16, while grey cement sales stood at 13.20 million tonnes (MT) against 11.51 MT in Q4 2014-15. White cement recorded sales of 13.12 Lakh Tonnes (LT) as against 12.24 LT and wall-care putty posted sales of 3.85 LT against 3.52 LT during the quarter under review. On acquisition deal with Jaiprakash Associates Ltd (JAL), Ultratech said the acquisition of cement plants in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh with a capacity of 21.20 MT per annum at Rs 15,900 crore (USD 107 per tonne) is expected to conclude in the next "12-13 months". The firm will now approach the fair trade regulator CCI as well as approach the concerned High Courts for the approval of the scheme. On the financing of the deal, the company said it will be done through "20 years Rupee Term loans at Base Rate (covenant free)" among others. The cement maker said with commissioning of the cement grinding plants at Jhajjar in Haryana, Dankuni in West Bengal and Patliputra in Bihar, its cement capacity in India rose to 66.3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). On the industry, Ultratech said January-March displayed signs of recovery in demand with strong growth numbers. However, prices were volatile during the period. For entire 2015-16 fiscal, Ultratech's net sales stood at Rs 25,281 crore up from Rs 24,056 crore in 2014-15. Net profit was higher by 9 per cent at Rs 2,287 crore from Rs 2,098 crore during the same period. The firm declared a dividend of Rs 9.50 per share aggregating Rs 260.71 crore. It will absorb the Corporate Tax on dividend amounting to Rs 53.07 crore, resulting in a total payout of Rs 313.78 crore. On outlook, Ultratech said cement demand is expected to grow 7-8 per cent for 2016-17 on the back of the governments' focus on infrastructure development, housing, smart cities etc. The firm expects pick-up in cement concrete roads, port development as well as increased development activities in UP and Punjab to boost demand. It however, expressed concern on the trend of rising input costs of coal and Petcoke as well as volatility in cement prices. Bangladesh's prominent blogger Imran H Sarker, who has launched protests against the killings of the bloggers and minorities in the Muslim-majority country, has received a death threat from an unidentified caller from the UK, a day after a liberal professor was brutally murdered. "I have been issued a death threat from a number belonging to a code of 'United Kingdom' at 7:12pm on Sunday. It has been said that I will be soon killed," Sarker wrote in a message on his official Facebook page. "Asked about the identity of the person issuing death threat, he avoided responding to my question. He repeatedly threatened to kill me. Then, he disconnected the phone," said the blogger, who has nearly one million friends on his Facebook page. Sarker, also the spokesperson of the Shahbag Movement, was threatened last year along with several others, including Dhaka University Vice chancellor. He led the 2013 protests against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes, prompting authorities to fast-track their trials. He has launched protests against the murders of the bloggers and minorities. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has postponed the date for issuance of notification for civil services examination 2016 without citing any reason. The notification was due to be issued on Saturday. "The civil services examination, 2016 (and the Indian Forest Service (Preliminary) examination, 2016), scheduled to be notified on April 23, 2016, will be notified later," the UPSC said in a note issued today. The civil services examination is conducted by the UPSC annually in three stages--preliminary, main and interview --to select candidates for prestigious Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS), among others. An expert committee, under the chairmanship of former Human Resource Development Secretary and retired IAS officer B S Baswan, constituted by the government is examining various issues related to age relaxation, eligibility, syllabus and pattern of civil services examination. It has got time till August this year to give its report. Defending the decision to cancel the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju today said the leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC) had applied for the travel document in a wrong category, leading to the cancellation of the visa. "He (Dolkun Isa) had given wrong information on why he wanted to visit India. The e-visa application said he wanted to come as a tourist though he was coming here to attend a conference and that is why we had to cancel his visa," the Union Minister of State for Home told reporters here. Rijiju was reacting to question on why India has cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa, a leader of WUC, who lives in Germany and was invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Rijiju, who handles the visa issue in the Home Ministry, said Isa should have applied for Conference visa rather than applying for tourist visa. But he applied for e-visa by giving wrong information, Rijiju said. The Minister said India have to arrest Isa, if he visits here as an Interpol red corner notice is pending against him. In a U-turn, India has cancelled the visa given to the leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently buckling under pressure from China. Beijing had expressed its unhappiness over issuing the Indian visa to Isa. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. Notwithstanding Rising Pune Supergiants' poor run in IPL-9, Sunrisers Hyderabad mentor VVS Laxman considers the debutante side as a formidable unit and said his team will have to put its best foot forward when they clash with them in their IPL match tomorrow. "It goes without saying that (RPS Captain M S Dhoni) Dhoni will be looking forward to use Ashwin against Warner and Shikhar. I believe that Pune has got a very formidable batting line up," Laxman said in a pre-match press conference here. "Lot of people talk about Ajinkya Rahane, Steve Smith, Faf Duplessis being similar. They are all extrordinary T20 players. We cannot at all be complecent or we cannot at all underestimate the batting strength of Pune. We are very mindful," he added. The former Test batsman, however, exuded confidence that SRH can take on any opposition if it sticks to its plans and executes them well. "But, I believe that if we concentrate on our plans and try to execute our plans, then we can do well against any opposition. It's more about concentrating and playing to our strength, while strategizing for each and every oppositon batsman or bowler," he said. Noting that the MS Dhoni-led Pune team would look to bounce back strongly, Laxman said no team can be ruled out as it is still the early part of the long IPL tournament. "I was reading that Fleming was disappointed with the way they started their campaign. But, they got an exceptionally talented side with Captain MS Dhoni leading from the front. I am sure they will look to bounce back strongly. We have seen in the past someone like Mumbai Indians lost lot of the matches and went on to win the IPL. "So, it is just the start of the tournament and no team can be ruled out. I am sure they would like to bounce back. We have seen this in IPL where it's all about momentum. Once you start winning the matches, then you win continuously and once you start losing matches, you start losing consecutively two or three matches. It's all about momentum. Pune will be looking forward to win. That's why it's going to be a very important match against them," he said. After losing to Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders in the first two matches, the Hyderabad side has registered three wins in a row and Laxman said they would like to continue the momentum tomorrow. "SRH has got great depth in its batting with openers David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan and other batsmen, including Eoin Morgan, Moises Henriques, Naman Ojha and Deepak Hooda rising the bar," he said. "In the last two years, we were told we did not have enough fire power in the middle order. Now, if you see, Naman Ojha in the last match had come at number seven, Moises (Henriques) at number six and Deepak Hooda at number five and Morgan at four," Laxman said. "So, I think we got enough depth in our batting. Bowlers like Bipul (Sharma) and Karn (Sharma) can also bat and so does Bhuvneshwar Kumar. So, I think we are very pleased. "But, in T20 format, it's also important that your top 3 batsmen perform and invariably, when that happens, you are always in a comfortable position to pile up a big total or chase a big total. So, the importance of the top three is very crucial," Laxman said. He also complimented the way SRH bowlers, including Bhunveshwar Kumar, Mustafizur Rahman, Barinder Sran have performed in the recent matches. "We are very pleased with the way our bowlers have performed. Especially, if you see the last two games against formidable batting line ups, our bowlers did really well. Not to single out anyone, as a bowling group, I thought, to defend both the teams below 150 was exceptional on good batting wickets. That's something which we want to continue," he said. Laxman said seasoned players Ashish Nehra and Yuvraj Singh, who are recovering from injuries, would be invaluable when they join the team after being declared fit. "To answer when Nehra and Yuvraj comes, both of them are match winners and experienced players. We are fortunate to have both of them. We will try to use their experience. "I am sure both of them are raring to go. But, we have to wait on their fitness. Once, both of them are fit, they will be invaluable to win the matches. It's important to have match winners. We do not want to rely on one or two individuals to win us matches. The more the number, the better for us." Replying to a query, Laxman said Hyderabad's key player Kane Williamson is now fit. The 41-year-old from Hyderabad said captain David Warner does have a big say in team selection and that the playing XI is picked as per team's requirements. "But, I think me, Tom (Moody), Murali (Muralidharan), along with David, we sit down and select the XI and we choose the XI depending on the opposition we are playing and depending on the condition we are going to confront," he said. "But, having said that, I think we want to be as consistent as possible with our selection. I have experienced in the past, if you chop and change with one or two bad performances, it will create a feeling of insecurity within the group which we don't want. "Over the years, we have been very consistent in giving opportunities to each and every individual. Warner definitely has a big say in picking up the XI," he said. Delhi PWD Minister Satyender Jain today said the construction work on the third phase of Barapullah elevated corridor is running three months behind schedule due to several hurdles. Jain, who today visited the site of the project, said work is getting affected due to some issues with a land spreading over 5-6 acres near Yamuna. "DDA had alloted this land to us but later it denotified it, saying that it is a private land, which is causing a delay to the project. We are in talks with the landowner to reach a final conclusion," the minister said. He said besides, two electricity lines are also passing over the site of the project which is also a major hurdle coming in its way. "In view of hot weather, we have decided to defer the shifting of these electric lines for now as it will lead a power shortage in nearby areas. We will shift these two lines in winter so that people won't have to face problems," Jain added. The third phase of the corridor, from Sarai Kale Khan to Mayur Vihar, is likely to be completed by December next year. With its completion, the travel time for motorists driving between east and south Delhi will shrink to less than an hour. Talking about the two BRT elevated corridors which will come up in east-west and north and south Delhi, the minister said that the project is awaiting approval of the authorities concerned. One elevated BRT corridor will be constructed from Anand Vihar to Tikri Border in east-west Delhi while the other will be built from Wazirabad to IGI Airport. Once the projects get approval, they will be completed withing next three years. A century after World War I, an archaeologist exploring ancient tunnels in northeast France made a moving discovery -- thousands of scrawlings by Allied soldiers, notably Australians, as they took a break from the hell of the Battle of the Somme. And now, the public can visit them too. "LR Blake lieut 105t How Btry 7-1-17," reads one, with the help of a torch, carved into the vast underground network in the town of Naours, near Amiens. Translation: Leslie Russel Blake, a lieutenant hailing from near Melbourne and fighting with the 105th Howitzer Battery who left his mark on the chalk walls on January 7, 1917. He was to die in battle the following year and is buried nearby. Archaeologist Giles Prilaux has recorded nearly 3,000 bits of graffiti, mostly etched by Australians from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). They paint a vivid picture of young men sent to join a war far from home, something Australia celebrates every April 25 as Anzac Day to remember compatriots who served on the Western front, including the 11,000 with no known graves. For the past two years, Prilaux and his colleagues at France's National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research (INRAP) have painstakingly scrutinised and logged their finds, looking for clues of what life was like on the nearby Somme battlefields. Going was slow with the poor light in the tunnels said to date back to the third century, which also served as a refuge in a much earlier battle, the Thirty Years' War from 1618-1648. Little by little Prilaux's team found signatures, inscription dates, home towns, units and military serial numbers left by soldiers waging the bloody trench warfare that lasted nearly five months and saw more than a million casualties on both the Allied and German sides. "Mostly (they were) done by Australians, but also Americans, British, and some New Zealanders, Canadians and, on occasion, Indians," said Prilaux. Next came the detective work to unpick the identities and stories of the men who had left their mark in the three kilometre-long tunnels. "Identification is a very addictive job," said Prilaux who first came to the caves in 2014 with the goal of determining their age until he started finding the wartime markings. With help from the National Archives of Australia, Prilaux's team was able to determine that Leslie Russel Blake, for example, was born in 1890 in a suburb of Melbourne and died from shrapnel wounds to his forehead in October 1918. Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from Al-Qaeda militants who held it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed today as a major victory in which over 800 jihadists were killed. The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the Sunni extremists launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shiite Huthi rebels who control the capital. It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama during a visit to Saudi Arabia called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on Al-Qaeda. At the talks, which opened last Thursday, UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said that "significant differences... Remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace". The peace talks and Obama visit have contributed to a change in "strategic priorities", with Al-Qaeda back at the top, according to the Soufan Group consultancy. The jihadists' Yemen-based branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the group's militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla. Further west in Shabwa province, a US drone today struck two vehicles carrying Al-Qaeda militants near the town of Azzan -- from which the jihadists have fled -- killing nine extremists, a provincial official said. The jihadists have planned attacks overseas, including a January 2015 assault on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris. "We entered the city centre and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west," a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of Al-Shihr and its Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukalla's Riyan airport. Troops deployed in Mukalla today and set up checkpoints across the city, security officials said. "The operation resulted... In the deaths of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," the coalition commanders said. Dassault Aviation hopes to seal "one or two" contracts to sell its Rafale planes this year and this would include a much-heralded deal to sell 36 Rafale fighter jets to India, its chief executive said in an interview. "One can hope for on one or two contracts this year, including India," Eric Trappier was reported as saying by magazine Challenges on its Challenges.fr web site. Negotiations for India to buy 36 French Rafale fighter jets are nearing the finish line, the Indian defence ministry said last week, with sources saying the price will be set at around $9 billion. "Significantly progress has been made and I sense a true will to reach an agreement, possibly in the coming weeks," Trappier said of the India talks. Both sides had hoped to wrap up the strategic order during President Francois Hollande's visit for India's Republic Day celebration in January, but hard bargaining on price stalled a final result. Dassault Aviation said in March it was working on deals to also sell Rafale jets to Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. The head of a Panama-based law firm at the centre of a massive leak of offshore financial data on Sunday denied any wrongdoing, and said his firm has fallen victim to "an 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 news outlets as well as the Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Ramon Fonseca, the director of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, specialised 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. 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. Reuters couldn't independently confirm those details. Fonseca emphasised 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 unauthorised 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. - The Sensex fell for a second consecutive session on Monday as worries about increased capex hit heavyweight Reliance Industries , while Cairn India was hit after posting a quarterly loss. Sentiment was also hit as Asian shares skidded ahead of central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week. Caution also prevailed as monthly derivatives contracts are due to expire on Thursday, traditionally marking a volatile period in markets. "There are multiple events including central bank meetings and F&O expiry scheduled for this week so market participants are a bit cautious ahead of those," said Rikesh Parikh, vice-president of equities at Motilal Oswal Securities. The Nifty fell 0.75 percent to 7,839.35 by 0825 GMT, declining for a second session after hitting its highest since Dec. 2 last week. The Sensex lost 0.79 percent to 25,634.93. Among decliners, Reliance Industries fell 2 percent despite posting its highest quarterly profit since December 2007 after the energy firm said it would raise capex by more than expected this fiscal year due to downstream operations and spending on upcoming launch of 4G services. Meanwhile, Cairn India shed 3.6 percent after the oil and gas explorer posted a quarterly loss, hit by an impairment charge. Auto parts maker Motherson Sumi Systems dropped 4 percent after its customer Volkswagen posted a 4.1-billion-euros operating loss because of a diesel emissions test-rigging scandal. On the other hand, Bharti Airtel rose 2 percent after the telecoms company said it would consider a share buyback at its board meeting on Wednesday. (Reporting by Aastha Agnihotri in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) Plant to make ethanol from cellulosic biomass inaugurated at Kashipur The plant is based on indigenous technology, developed by DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Biosciences, to convert lingo-cellulosic biomass to ethanol The plant is based on indigenous technology, developed by DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Biosciences, to convert lingo-cellulosic biomass to ethanol Dr Harsh Vardhan, Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, on April 22, 2016 inaugurated Indias first second-generation (2G) ethanol demonstration plant at Indian Glycols Ltds Kashipur facility in Uttarakhand. The technology demonstration plant, with a capacity to consume 10 tonnes of biomass per day, is based on the globally-competitive indigenous technology of converting lingo-cellulosic biomass to ethanol. It is a feedstock-independent technology developed by DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Biosciences at the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai, supported by Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). Dr Harsh Vardhan said that it is a novel technology suited to both Indian & global needs and is projected to be capable of converting all types of agricultural residues like bagasse, rice straw, wheat straw, bamboo, cotton stalk, corn stover, wood chips, etc to ethanol in less than 24 hours, with optimum product yields. If successfully operated and scaled-up, it will establish India as a major global technology provider in the arena of renewables and reduction in carbon-emissions, besides effecting considerable savings in import of crude oil. Government of India has set a mandate of 5 percent blending of renewable biofuel in both petrol and diesel. While diesel biofuel blending is near zero, the petrol blending today stands at an overall of about 3 percent in the form of first generation (1G) or molasses-based ethanol. While the annual requirement of 1G-ethanol stands at about 500 crore litres, the current total installed capacity is about 265 crore litres. In such a scenario, the targets of 10 percent blending by 2017 and 20 percent by 2020 look remote unless agricultural waste based ethanol, ie 2G-ehanol production technologies are successfully demonstrated. Indias potential for 2G-ethanol production from a mere 10 percent of its non-food and non-fodder agricultural residues, currently estimated to be available in excess of 300 million tonnes, stands at nearly 1000 crore litres of ethanol. Dr K Vijay Raghavan, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, expressed confidence that this technology, with the lowest capital and operating costs, would allow 2G-alcohol to be produced and sold at globally competitive price. The DBT-ICT Centre has already developed designs of plants with capacities of 250-500 tonnes per day. He added, This is an example of how we can work on the challenges the world faces, define them in Indian labs and then strive to solve them for the benefit of the world community in general and India in particular. BS B2B Bureau The UK government's plans to offer a support package to save Tata Steel's UK operations will meet European Union (EU) rules on state aid, Business Secretary Sajid Javid said on Sunday, insisting any deal would not be a bailout or nationalisation. Javid had last week pledged to take a stake of up to 25 per cent in Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales, as well as to inject up to 1 billion pounds of taxpayer loans, in an effort to attract a buyer. Dismissing talk of part-nationalisation which may fall foul of EU rules, Javid told 'The Sunday Times' in an interview: "It will all be compatible with state aid... government can provide financing as long as it's on commercial terms. "I don't envisage having to apply for any exemption or approval from state aid. Whatever we've got in mind is compliant. It's not a bailout; it's not nationalisation. Working within that framework we can see success at the end of the road." ALSO READ: What went wrong with Tata Steel's UK operations "In situations like these nationalisation is rarely the answer. The British steel industry would be in much worse shape had it not been privatised in the first place," said Javid, who had rushed to Mumbai earlier this month to talk to Tata Steel officials to find a way out of the crisis and save up to 10,000 jobs in the steel sector. The newspaper quoted sources to say the government's decision to back Port Talbot was taken by British Prime Minister David Cameron with an eye on the in-out European Union referendum. It is believed that Cameron may be gambling that the European Commission may allow its bending of state aid rules if it helps to keep Britain within the union. But Javid insisted: "This has got nothing to do with June 23. I don't think the referendum changes things one way or the other." The fate of Britain's steel industry has become a hugely significant and divisive issue, on which 15,000 jobs and 25,000 in the wider supply chain hang. Javid said: "There's every reason to think that steel can be a viable business in Europe for commercial operators. It's an important industry economically. I wouldn't want to think that one day Britain becomes a country that has to import all its steel. "For any economy the size of Britain, given our manufacturing base, given aerospace and automotive, these are industries that, one way or the other, rely on steel." The Tata Group had announced last month that it would quit Britain's steel industry entirely, putting the Port Talbot steelworks up for sale as well as its vast Scunthorpe plant, which has since been acquired by Greybull Capital. The exit appeared to catch Javid unaware as he was in Australia with his daughter at the time on an official trip. Javid claimed his intervention persuaded the Indian conglomerate to grant Port Talbot a stay of execution. "A few months back they contacted us. They were considering closing Port Talbot and mixing the rest of their downstream business in with their other businesses in Europe. That clearly alarmed us and we managed to persuade them that it's not in anyone's interest if you just close this hugely important part of your business. "If you believe it's not profitable for you... it might fit in with someone else's business," Javid told the newspaper. The Union Cabinet is likely to give green signal soon to standard bid document which will facilitate auctioning of domestic coal-based four or five Ultra Mega Power Projects, entailing an investment of Rs 30,000 crore each. Cabinet clearance will enable auctioning of the UMPP projects in the current fiscal which include Banka in Bihar and Tilaiya in Jharkhand. "We have already taken out the documents for Cabinet approval. They may come up this week or the next week," Power Minister Piyush Goyal told PTI during his recent visit to the US. Simultaneously, "we are in dialogue" with several states where UMPPs have to be bid out, he said. "The Tilayea UMPP in Jharkhand has to be bid out again. The Banka UMPP in Bihar has to be bid out. There is a project in Andhra Pradesh that would also be bid out. I think there would be one in Cheyyur in Tamil Nadu. Four or five are anvil," the Minister said. The Power Ministry is also in the process of finalising the standard bid document for imported coal-based UMPPs. Once that is done, UMPPs like Cheyyur in Tamil Nadu can go under hammer. Earlier, the bid document for domestic coal could not be put up before the Cabinet due to some legal glitch. Government had planned to float tenders for three UMPPs in 2015-16. In the 2015 Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the government propose to set up five new UMPPs of 4,000 MW each, in the plug-and-play mode. All clearances and linkages would be in place before the projects are awarded by a transparent auction system. This should unlock investments to the extent of Rs 1 lakh crore, Jaitley had said. The government had aborted bidding for Cheyyur (Tamil Nadu) and Bedabahal (Odisha) projects in January last year due to tepid private sector response. The private firms, which had participated in the first round of bidding for both the projects, withdrew their bids citing difficulties in securing finances for these projects. In the case of Tilaiya UMPP, all power procurers have signed the termination notice served by Reliance Power to end the contract for the project. Reliance Power, in August 2009, had won rights to set up a 3,960-MW power plant at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand after bidding a levelised tariff of Rs 1.77 per unit, but couldn't start work on the project as the state government had not provided the required land even after more than five years. Asking bureaucrats to function for a day without their assistants, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan said on Monday it would sensitise them to the travails of 'Aam Aadmi' and help in better discharge of their duties. The outspoken Governor said he wants to introduce a similar system for senior officials at RBI as well wherein they can be asked to discharge some simple banking duties to make them understand difficulties faced by others. One could, as senior officials, try to spend a day doing some task which they ask their assistants to do but without revealing who they are and getting the assistance, Rajan said while addressing bureaucrats in Mumbai at the state secretariat. "Perhaps, then we will have a much better sense of what Aam Aadmi faces and a much greater sympathy for changing the system than we have otherwise," he said while delivering the YB Chavan Memorial Lecture at Mantralaya. He said a lot of officials, including himself, realise that the system is difficult only when they retire or leave the office where they are helped by assistants. Post retirement, the system is much harder to deal with than pre-retirement, he added. Rajan said he is mulling introducing the system within RBI where senior officials will be tasked to do simple things like changing the nominee of a fixed deposit account, which shall make them learn about the difficulties. The remarks come at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is seeking to take special steps to make the bureaucracy more accountable and also assess it on its performance. It is time to nibble into monsoon-related stocks now that the expectations of an above average rainfall this season stand strong. RBI governor Raghuram Rajan also said he would consider more rate cuts if monsoon pans out to be good as forecast by India Meteorological Department and Skymet. However, Deepak Shenoy, Founder, Capital Mind told ET Now it is too early to put money in monsoon-related stocks. "I think from a monsoon perspective, it is a little early to put a lot of money on to the monsoon related stocks but I think if rural demand continues to be strong, then stocks like Hero Motocorp, basically the two-wheeler pack will benefit a lot," said Shenoy. While caution is necessary before riding on monsoon rally, here are six stocks, which experts feel may perform better in the days to come: Vikas Gupta, CIO, ArthVeda Capital 1) Hero Motocorp The company gets 45% of its volumes from rural segment, hence a better monsoon after two successive monsoon failures will be a booster to rural sales. Budget 2016 push on rural economy is also a big positive for the stock. Hero Motocorp is a high quality stock available at attractive EBIT yield of 6 per cent with zero leverage. 2) Rallis India The company has a wide range of offerings in the agricultural inputs space, on top of a vast distribution network, and is a familiar brand among the farmers. The stock of Rallis is Available at an attractive EBIT yield of more than 6 per cent with little debt on balance sheet, and a strong superior capital allocation performance in the past. 3) Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services The company is set to benefit from the uptick in demand for financing from rural areas, given its focus and offerings in the rural space. Surge in sales of tractors, utility vehicles and two-wheelers in the rural markets is likely to push demand for M&M Financial Services loan products. The company also has a good history of superior capital allocation, and is available at an attractive P/E multiple. Jimeet Modi, CEO, SAMCO securities 4) ITC ITC stock is available at lower end of 5 year valuation matrix due to negative stance of the government towards the industry. Because of such pessimism, the stock is available at reasonable valuation. For long term investment, these are ideal situations for above average returns when investments are made during such times. 5) Two-wheeler stocks (Bajaj Auto, Hero Moto and M&M Finance) The two wheeler segment looks promising given that revival of the rural economy will trigger the incremental growth as last year base was low, which is the key reason that will drive above average returns in the stocks. Bajaj Auto, Hero Moto and M&M Finance which also have great potentials to race ahead in case the rural economy thrives on the success of monsoon this year. All of these stocks have the potential to deliver 20 per cent and above in a year's time frame. 6) Dhanuka Agri, Rallis India, Bayer Crop The stocks that can give above average returns could be Dhanuka Agri, Rallis India and Bayer Crop. All these companies have great brands, strong distribution networks and efficient operations, inspite of previous two years of bad monsoons these companies have still maintained their operating efficiencies and protected their market share. Hence once the monsoon sets in, they will be able to capture the incremental growth. The term 'SBC'-appearing on restaurant, telephone and club bills nationwide - refers to the Swachh Bharat Cess, one of 10 levies that go directly to the central government and are expected to reach Rs 1.65 lakh crore ($25.3 billion) this 2016-17 financial year. The Rs 1.65-lakh-crore cess-collection is an increase of 22 per cent from 2015-16 and double the cess collection of Rs 83,000 crore ($12.7 billion) in 2014-15, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of budget data. A warning over the use of these special taxes comes over the last decade, with at least Rs 1.3 lakh crore ($26 billion), or 41 per cent, of cess collected but not used, according to a report from the government's auditor. Tax revenue is expected to increase 8.7 per cent, from Rs 18 lakh crore ($277 billion) in 2015-16 to Rs 19.6 lakh crore ($301 billion, budget estimate) in 2016-17; so cess collection will likely grow faster. Apart from SBC, meant to finance Prime Minister Narendra Modi's favoured programme, other levies - lesser known siblings of taxes -are supposed to finance education, environment, agriculture, infrastructure, sanitation and communication. As states get more money, the centre increases cess, which it does not share. The 14th Finance Commission recommended a transfer of 42 per cent of tax revenue from the centre to the states, up from 32 per cent, stripping some of centre's revenues. To compensate, the Centre has increased cesses, which it does not need to share with the states. "When more money is given to states, the union government will be short of revenue, and it may generate the required from tax instruments like cess, to achieve targeted spending on specific objectives," Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist at Crisil, a ratings agency, told IndiaSpend. A cess is a tax that does not need a new law or act - and Parliamentary approval - and is included in the Finance Act, meaning, through the budget. While cesses for roads and sanitation have largely worked, those for secondary education, telecommunication, and research and development have not. Success stories: Road cess, primary education cess, Swachh Bharat cess A record Rs 73,000 crore ($11.2 billion) was generated in 2015-16 from road cess, an increase of 190 per cent from Rs 25,121 crore ($3.9 billion) in 2014-15. The tripling of road cess - which appears as additional excise duty on petrol and diesel - is due to the 75 per cent drop in global oil prices, the benefits of which were kept by the government to address revenue concerns, as IndiaSpend reported earlier. The estimate of road-cess collection in 2016-17 has increased marginally to Rs 78,000 crore ($12 billion), since there is no prospect of any further decline in global oil prices. The allocation for roads and bridges tripled over this period, from Rs 34,000 crore ($5.2 billion) in 2014-15 to Rs 1 lakh crore ($15.4 billion) in 2016-17 (budget estimates). As much as 90 per cent of the cess collected for primary education was transferred to Prarambhik Shiksha Kosh (Primary Education Fund), a fund specially created for primary education development. Between 2004-05 and 2014-15, Rs 1.4 lakh crore ($28 billion) from the Rs 1.54 lakh crore ($31 billion) collected was used to fund primary education. The Swachh Bharat cess was levied from November 2015 to ramp up toilet construction nationwide - nearly 16 million were constructed over two years, according to the government; 95 million need to be built over the next three - and meet the government's target of making India open-defecation free by 2019. As of February 2016, about 10 million toilets were constructed since March 2015, up from 5.8 million in 2014-15 and five million in 2013-14. Since 2010-11, the government collected Rs.28,000 crore through the Clean Environment Cess (earlier known as the Clean Energy Cess), but less than half the money was transferred to the National Clean Energy Fund to fund research and innovation. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley doubled the clean environment cess - also known as the coal cess - from Rs.200 per tonne to Rs.400 per tonne of coal, lignite and peat. Less than half the cess collected - Rs.39,000 crore ($7.8 billion) from Rs.66,000 crore ($13.2 billion) between 2002-03 and 2014-15 - to enhance communication services in rural regions was utilised. As for the secondary and higher education cess, despite collecting Rs.64,000 crore ($13 billion) over the decade ending 2014-15, no special fund was created - and it isn't clear how the money was used. Government auditor points to irregularities in using cess. Over the last two decades, no more than 41 percentof Rs.3.1 lakh crore ($62 billion) collected through four cesses was used, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The CAG recently critiqued the central government - the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, as well as the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance - for under-utilising cesses collected over the last two decades. Of Rs.5,700 crore ($1.14 billion) collected as research and development cess, Rs 1,228 crore ($246 million), or 21 perccent, was utilised over 18 years, from 1996-97 to 2014-15. "The possibility of the diversion of funds for purposes not mandated under the Finance Act cannot be ruled out," the CAG report said. The last budget also increased service tax from 14.5 percent to 15 percent on select services by levying a 0.5 percent Krishi Kalyan (farmers' benefit) Cess, which the government has promised to spend on agriculture. "The use of cess should be temporary and with a specific purpose. If it is a permanent feature of the tax model, it is nothing but equivalent to a higher tax rate," said Crisil's Joshi. Indirect taxes are levied on both the rich and the poor alike, taxing those meant to be beneficiaries of such taxes. (In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform, with which Abhishek Waghmare is an analyst. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. The author can be contacted at respond@indiaspend.org) (IANS) Seeking a turnaround in its fortunes, Air India is looking to augment revenues rather than trim staff expenses even as it battles tough market conditions and financial woes. The national carrier, which is surviving on a staggered Rs 30,000 crore bailout package, has around 19,000 employees, including over 1,500 pilots and about 6,000 people on contract. A senior official said the airline is looking at various options to increase revenues and that there are no plans to cut down costs related to staff. "Air India's staff is around 12 per cent of the total expenses...It might be an easy way to slash expenditure by withdrawing or doing away with certain perks given to employees but that will not help in the long-term," he noted. The Government-owned airline's annual wage bill stood at Rs 3,100 crore in the 2014-15 fiscal as against Rs 3,600 crore in FY 2011-12 by abolishing productivity-linked incentives as per the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) guidelines. Significantly, the carrier had early last year announced a slew of cost-cutting measures including reduction in reimbursables by 10 per cent and abolition of posts from non-operational areas besides other measures to rein in the spending and return to break-even. The use of expensive hotels or five-star hotels for stay during travel or holding events has been restricted unless it is unavoidable and the budget for such activities has been reduced by 10 per cent as part of the measures...These cost-cutting measures are part of a two-pronged drive to speed up our return to the break-even status," Air India had said. The sale and lease back of aircraft would be a good option that would help in better revenue management. Besides, the focus is on flying more number of people, introducing new routes, improving efficiency and services, the official said. Sale-leaseback is an arrangement in which an owner sells an asset to a leasing firm and, at the same time, leases it (as a lessee) on a long-term basis to retain exclusive possession and use. This frees capital tied up in a fixed asset, while the lender obtains a guaranteed lease. Currently all its 21 dreamliner Boeing 787-800 planes in its fleet are operating under the sale and lease back arrangement. Buoyed by substantial improving in operational performance, Air India expects to have an operational profit of Rs 8 crore in the financial year ended March 31, 2016. It would also be the first time since the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines that the national carrier would be reporting an operating profit. The airline was expected to trim its losses by around 40 per cent to Rs 3,529.80 crore in the last financial year. "Air India is expected to earn operating profit of Rs 8 crore as compared to the operating loss of Rs 2,636.18 crore in the previous year. This is the first time that the company is going to achieve operating profit since its merger in 2007-08," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma had informed Parliament last month. The flag carrier, however, had a total debt burden of Rs 51,367.07 crore, including Rs 22,574.09 crore outstanding on account of aircraft loans, as on March 31, 2015. The national airline was extended Rs 30,231 crore lifeline by the government in 2012 under a turnaround plan stretching over a period of nine years to keep it afloat. The Government has already infused Rs 22,280 crore in the carrier as part of this financial package till the last fiscal. An investment of Rs 90,841.16 crore was made in the renewable energy sector in the country during three fiscals to 2015-16, government said on Monday. "Total investment made in renewable energy sector in all states, including Jharkhand and Gujarat, during the last three years is Rs 90,841.16 crore," New & Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. The minister also informed the House that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has provided financial support of Rs 6,541.04 crore towards capital subsidy/viability gas funding/ generation based incentives in the three-year period till March 31, 2016. The maximum investment was in wind energy sector at Rs 46,831.86 crore during the period, followed by solar at Rs 30,440 crore, biogas & bagasse cogeneration at Rs 7,382.40 crore and small hydro (up to 25 MW) at Rs 6,186.90 crore. In a separate reply, the minister said that the ministry has released Rs 941.88 crore to the states under schemes for providing solar power to villages in the country. In another reply to the House, the minister said, "During the 12th Five Year Plan Period, against the target of 88,537 MW generation capacity additions from conventional sources, 84,990.7 MW has been achieved as on March 31, 2016." The minister also informed the House that the tentative power generation capacity addition from sources like thermal, hydro and nuclear is 16,654.5 MW during the current fiscal. In a bid to make mobile phone handsets an effective tool for self-protection, the government on Monday said no such device will be sold from next year without a single-key panic button. "Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women. I have taken a decision that from January 1, 2017, no cell phone can be sold without a provision for panic button, and from January 1, 2018 mobile sets should have also Global Positioning System inbuilt," Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in New Delhi. The Gazette of India notification dated April 22, said from January 1, 2017 no mobile phone handset manufacturing company shall sell in India: "The feature phones without the facility of panic button by pressing 'numeric key - 5' or 'numeric key - 9' to invoke emergency call and the smart phones without the facility of emergency call button by pressing the same for long time to invoke emergency call or the use of existing power on or off button, when short pressed thrice in quick succession." The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) National Dairy Committee Chairman, Sean OLeary, today claimed that low incomes in times of low milk prices are not inevitable with the right risk management tools. Mr O'Leary was speaking about the issue while launching the 'FCStone:Making Risk Management Work for Farmers Conference' which will take place on Wednesday, 4th May at the Heritage Hotel, Killenard in Co. Laois. The conference aims to focus the dairy industry on developing more tools farmers can utilise to help them manage the periods of low returns which come with price volatility. "I believe this year is showing that our sector is reliant on letting farmers take too much of the market risk. We need to put a lot more effort into developing means of alleviating the burden on farmers. In the short term, this needs to be by way of milk price support, and sharing of margins," Mr O'Leary said. For the longer term, we need an industrys development strategy that includes a suite of tools allowing farmers to smooth out their incomes over peaks and troughs. While part of this tool kit must include flexible finance from banks and responsive farm taxation from government, we will be focusing during the conference on what our industry must do to help farmers cope." Source: www.businessworld.ie The Workers Party have today rejected claims by the Department of Social Protection that criticism of the JobBridge internship scheme is unfounded. Dublin North West Workers Party representative Jimmy Dignam said that media reports into the scheme are, if anything, "conservative and understated." Dignam said that the whole purpose of JobBridge was to promote a low-pay economy by driving down wages and weakening organised labour. He also claimed that figure of 60% of JobBridge participants securing employment within six months of completing the scheme is an insult to the intelligence of workers. "If the figure is anywhere near 60% then it has been achieved through force workers to take up the most low-paid and menial of work in the likes of call centres which are run like battery hen farms and where most end up leaving after no more than a few weeks due to the being overworked, abused and treated like slaves. If that is a success it merely points to the character and lack of empathy of the acting government and in particular of the outgoing Minister," he said. Source: www.businessworld.ie It was announced today that the BDO Development Capital Fund will invest 3million in the Cavan-headquartered Obelisk Group, a specialist in service provision to the telecommunications and utilities sectors since 1996. The investment is backed by matching bank funding which together will drive the expansion in the telecommunications and power infrastructure sectors in both the UK and South Africa where the Obelisk Group is already well established. The BDO Development Capital Fund provides development and growth capital for established, mid-sized and profitable companies to assist them to achieve and accelerate their export-led growth plans. It forms part of the Governments Development Capital Scheme, an initiative under the Action Plan for Jobs through which a total of 225million is being made available to mid-sized Irish companies with significant growth potential. As part of this Scheme, 75million in funds from the Department of Jobs through Enterprise Ireland will be matched with 150million of private sector funding for investments in Irish companies through a series of different funds. Today's combined 6 million investment will enable the Obelisk Group to take advantage of the investment in utilities in all three of the companys markets as they grow to meet the expansion demands of new communication technology and renewable energy generation. The Obelisk Group was founded in Cavan in 1996 by two local entrepreneurs, Colm Murphy and Padraig Brady, to serve the newly emerging Irish mobile telecommunications market. Since then it has delivered approximately 40% of the sectors infrastructure. The company expanded into power infrastructure in 2008, followed by the UK in 2009 and South Africa in 2010. The Obelisk Group now comprises 250 highly trained and experienced engineers and generates annual revenues in excess of 20 million with export revenues currently accounting for 40% of the Groups revenues. Investment Director of The BDO Development Capital Fund, Andrew Bourg said, "The Obelisk Group is a great example of the sort of best-in-class Irish companies that Development Capital looks to support. It has grown, profitably over a 20 year period and has built a strong reputation and team in a range of complementary markets." He added, "It is now poised for exceptional growth with strong macro-economic conditions and positive investment climates in large markets outside of Ireland. We are delighted to be backing the Obelisk team and look forward to assisting them to at least double Obelisk in size over the next 5 years. Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Tech Week 2016 was officially launched yesterday and will run until Saturday. The initiative is organised by the Irish Computer Society and sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland and Salesforce.org and supported by Google and Puca. Over 100,000 primary and post-primary pupils all over Ireland will be taking part in a range of fun activities including the finals of tech competitions that have been running throughout the past year. The highlight of this years Tech Week will be a showcase which takes place in Dublins RDS on Thursday, 28 April. The showcase will include the F1 in Schools finals where pupils use CAD to design and race model F1 cars, the Scratch Coding Final and workshops. Students from LIT (Limerick Institute of Technology) and St. Patricks Girls National School in Limerick will demonstrate the use of Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, Meccano Robot, Tobii Eye Movement, along with more exciting technologies to the young people attending on the day. CEO of the Irish Computer Society, Jim Friars says, "Ireland needs an additional 45,000 new ICT professionals by 2018 to fuel economic growth. Tech Week is about experience. Its about giving students and society a chance to reflect on technology and interact with it in a fun and positive way." He added, "Tech Week provides hands-on opportunities for young people to learn about how computing and related technologies are shaping every area of life. The aim is to stimulate thinking around future opportunities for study and careers in technology, through learning in the wider areas of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The Irish Franchise Awards 2016 took place last Friday at the Radisson St Helens Hotel in Dublin. The Irish franchise industry is now poised for strong growth over the coming years with over 28,000 people now working in the Irish franchise sector. These employees are engaged in the operations of 2,975 different franchise units across a wide range of sectors ranging from retailing and food service right through to an interesting selection of business-to-business and business-to-consumer services. The Irish Franchise Awards 2016 endeavour to recognise excellence in franchising and reward the outstanding achievements of businesses and individuals in the franchise industry. The Irish Franchise Awards celebrate 21 years this year and it is one of the longest running business award ceremonies in Ireland. The judging panel for the 2016 Irish Franchise Awards included Newstalk Business Presenter and former Irish Dragon, Bobby Kerr, Head of enterprise at Dublin Local Enterprise Office, Greg Swift and former CEO of the Irish Franchise Association, Michael Bradley. The winners on the night included: Franchise of the Year (Retail): Supermacs Franchise of the Year (Service): Fastway Couriers Franchisor of the Year: AIL Group Best Indigenous Irish Franchise: Insomnia Coffee Company Best Marketing Campaign: TaxAssist Accountants Best Franchise System and Business Practice: Snap Outstanding Growth Award: Eddie Rockets Franchising Woman of the Year: Mary Dillon of Sherry FitzGerald Countrywide Best Emerging Franchise: Freshly Chopped Best Pilot Franchise System: Right at Home Franchisee of the Year (retail): Eddie Rockets Charlestown Shopping Centre and Clare Hall Franchisee of the Year (Service): Karl Schutte from Home Instead Senior Care Ballsbridge Best Irish Franchise Trading Internationally: BCM Business Cost Management Ltd Special lifetime achievement award: Mr Tony FitzPatrick Chairman of the Irish Franchise Association, David Killeen said, "The awards are an opportunity for us to formally recognise and celebrate the excellent work being done by all franchise operators in growing our sector. We look forward to an all-Ireland Franchise Show in September and we are delighted to see our membership numbers growing." He added, "On behalf of the Association I would like to congratulate all entrants and winners with special thanks to our co-sponsors AIB and award sponsors which include Sage, Home Instead, TaxAssist Accountants, Snap, The Irish Franchise Show, Eddie Rockets, Fastway Couriers, JBM & Merit Solutions, McDonalds and Skillnet." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The Minister for Health should design a joint public and private sector initiative to tackle waiting lists for both inpatient and outpatient treatments according to the The Private Hospitals Association (PHA). The organisation was marking the launch of their policy document at the in Blackrock Clinics ICU today. The Private Hospitals Association (previously known as the IHAI) is the representative body for the independently-funded hospital sector in Ireland. Formed almost thirty years ago, its membership comprises 19 hospitals which provide acute & mental health services throughout Ireland. Recently appointed PHA CEO, Simon Nugent said, "We must focus on three things: Patients, Planning and Partnership. If we all plan together, there is great scope for private hospitals to help the Minister for Health and the HSE tackle the challenges they are facing. Our members can help in the treatment of many waiting-list patients but we can only make a significant impact if we work in close partnership with the public hospitals system." Taking, as a case study, recent media coverage about patients facing long delays for diagnostic tests, Nugent said, "No patient should need to wait longer than three months for an MRI or an endoscopy. We have the equipment. We have the skilled staff. We should just make a plan and clear that backlog." The Association today set out six steps which the incoming Minister for Health should take: 1. Design a joint public and private sector initiative to tackle waiting lists for both inpatient and outpatient treatments including a focus on diagnostics; 2. Move patients more quickly through Emergency Departments by using all available beds in both the public and private sectors; 3. Address the gaps delaying patient treatment by launching a coordinated approach to attracting consultants and other health professionals to work in Ireland; 4. Introduce a new competitive system for commissioning hospital care by 2018; 5. Coordinate planned investment in medical facilities and equipment to avoid duplication, get value and create efficiencies; 6. Establish a task force to boost co-operation between public and private healthcare systems. "The new Government will want to deliver effective, good quality services for all patients. While the quality of care delivered is relevant, the location or provider should not be. The PHAs suggested approach will deliver better patient outcomes, and these should be the incoming Ministers priority," said Simon Nugent. Source: www.businessworld.ie New research from Accenture indicates that the majority (79%) of Irish consumers prefer dealing with human beings over digital channels to solve customer services issues. The Accenture Strategy report, Digital Disconnect in Customer Engagement, is based on the companys eleventh annual Global Consumer Pulse Research, which gauges the experiences and attitudes of 24,489 consumers around the world about marketing, sales and customer services. There were 350 Irish consumers included in the sample. The survey shows that human interaction remains a vital component of customer satisfaction even in the digital age. Almost half (48%) of consumers say they are even willing to pay a higher price for goods and services if it ensures a better level of service. Physical or in-store experiences are also highly valued amongst consumers. Two-thirds (66%) agree that in-store service is the best channel for getting a tailored experience and nearly half (49%) say they are more willing to be sold new or upgraded products when receiving a face-to-face service compared to online. Nearly half (42%) say they would rather go to a store first than use digital channels to get advice on the best products and services. The report also found that 69% of consumers have switched provider in the past year due to poor customer service with retailers, internet service providers and home telephone service providers being the worst offenders. In Ireland, the estimated cost of customers switching due to poor service is $23 billion. Advanced Customer Strategy Lead at Accenture Strategy Ireland, Jim McGowan says, "Companies wrongly assume that their digital-only customers are their most profitable, and that customer service is a cost. Consequently they over-invest in digital technologies and channels and lose their most profitable customers multi-channel customers who want experiences that cover both digital and traditional channels." He added, "A high proportion of Irish customers who had a negative customer service experience wrote about it on social media and they are more likely to seek information about a potential provider on online comparison sites, from people they know or from online discussion forums than they are from traditional marketing sources. So when forming a marketing or engagement strategy, it might be worth prioritising how to use customer experience to generate positive word of mouth over more traditional forms of marketing." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc's Google have reached a deal to withdraw all the regulatory complaints against each other, the companies told Reuters. "Microsoft has agreed to withdraw its regulatory complaints against Google, reflecting our changing legal priorities. We will continue to focus on competing vigorously for business and for customers," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email. Google, in a separate email, said the companies would want to compete vigorously based on the merits of their products, not in "legal proceedings." The companies in September agreed to bury all patent infringement litigations against each other, settling 18 cases in the United States and Germany. "... Following our patent agreement, we've now agreed to withdraw regulatory complaints against one another," Google said on Friday. Google's rivals had reached out to U.S. regulators alleging that the Internet services company unfairly uses its Android system to win online advertising, people with knowledge of matter told Reuters last year. The European Commission also accused Google last year of distorting internet search results to favor its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Britain could have to wait a decade for a free trade deal with the United States if it votes to leave the European Union, U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday in his final salvo of a disputed foray into British domestic politics. Obama has spent the last three days in London urging Britons to stay in the EU as the British public prepares to vote on whether to remain a member of the bloc on June 23. He played on the two countries' close historic ties to warn that from a U.S. perspective, leaving the EU would be a mistake. "It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we're actually able to get something done," Obama told the BBC when asked about the prospect of a post-Brexit trade deal. That added to his warning on Friday that Britain would find itself at "the back of the queue" for a new trade deal with the United States if it departed the EU. Obama's decision to intervene in the EU debate has angered the eurosceptic "Out" campaign, which has argued that Britain could easily negotiate international deals and get better terms outside the 28-nation EU. His high-profile warning built on other recent major interventions highlighting the negative economic impact of an exit, with polls showing largely deadlocked public opinion may be starting to shift in favor of the "In" campaign. Obama's image, one of the most recognizable in global politics, was quickly added to pro-EU campaign posts online under the slogan "Obama thinks the UK is Stronger In Europe." Hillary Clinton, a fellow U.S. Democrat and the frontrunner to become the party's candidate to succeed Obama as president, also wants Britain to stay inside the EU, her campaign team said on Saturday. London Mayor Boris Johnson, de facto head of the "Out" campaign, heavily criticized Obama's comments on trade. "It is ridiculous to warn that the UK will be at the back of the queue for a free trade deal," he told the Mail on Sunday newspaper. "The UK has never been able to do a free trade deal with the US in the last 43 years - because we are in the EU!" Answering such criticism, Obama said that his involvement had been justified because of the two countries' longstanding special relationship, and that he hoped he had been able to persuade some British voters. "The UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU," he said. "We wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market." He said he hoped to conclude talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the United States by the end of his term, although he said it might not be ratified by the U.S. Congress before he leaves office. Obama left Britain on Sunday bound for Germany, where he will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of his closest allies in dealing with a shaky global economy and security crises in the Middle East and Ukraine. Obama also said he hoped his final months in the White House would see the influence of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria reduced. "I do think that we can slowly shrink the environment in which they operate and take on strongholds like Mosul and Raqqa that is the beating heart of their movement." However, he dismissed the prospect of sending ground troops into the region to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states, to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime," he said. But the United States and others should use their international influence to persuade Assad allies, such as Russia and Iran, to broker a political transition, he said. Obama further said the successful creation of a global health security infrastructure that can be used to tackle the threat of diseases such as Ebola and Zika, and putting into effect climate change goals agreed in Paris, were important goals for the last leg of his presidency. "I'm a busy guy," he said. "This whole myth of a lame duck so far hasn't proved to be the case ...I won't get everything done that I want to get done, but I'll get a whole bunch done that makes these next nine months worthwhile." (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Patricia Philips (left) and her daughter, Leslie Philips-Greco, are the dress designers for the Las Donas de la Corte. SHARE Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Patricia Philips and her daughter, Leslie Philips-Greco, are the dress designers for the Las Donas de la Corte. These are some of the designs that were not selected for the coronation this year. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Dress designer for the Las Donas de la Corte coronation Patricia Philips discusses the process of designing the dresses for the coronation. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Dress designer for the Las Donas de la Corte coronation Leslie Philips-Greco discusses the process of designing the dresses for the coronation. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Dress designer for the Las Donas de la Corte coronation Leslie Philips-Greco discusses the process of designing the dresses for the coronation. This is the first year she has used technology in designing the dresses. By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times Leslie Phillips-Greco and her mother Patricia Phillips have shared hobbies, trips, projects and a love for art and design through the years. "She's my best friend," Phillips-Greco, a dress designer, artist and interior designer said. This year they were able to share one more thing they have in common a love for fashion. The mother and daughter designers, worked together and designed the 18 dresses for the 63rd annual Las Donas de la Corte Coronation Pageant. Phillips has been a member of Las Donas de la Corte since 1976 and this is the third time she has helped with the designs, she said. However, this is the first time she was able to work on the designs alongside her daughter. Las Donas de la Corte wardrobe chairman Janet Herbst reached out to Phillips-Greco about two years ago and asked her if she would help create this year's designs. "I knew this project would be a big commitment, so I said I'd do it if my mother could be my assistant," Phillips-Greco said. Phillips-Greco and Phillips came up with this year's theme, "The Court of Culture & Costume in Dance," along with Herbst and wardrobe assistant Sandy McCampbell. "This is the first time my mother and I worked on a Las Donas project together," Phillips-Greco said. "But we have always worked together in life in general. I got my love of art from her. She taught me to appreciate it." The queen and princess and 16 duchesses will be presented during the Buccaneer Days Coronation on Thursday at the American Bank Center Selena Auditorium. The court will also appear on Saturday in the Buc Days Toyota Illuminated Night Parade. The decades-old custom, which began in 1954, includes a holiday tea, the coronation, a queen's luncheon, king's ball and parade, among other gatherings. Families are invited to participate in the annual event. Las Donas' tradition typically is passed down from mother to daughter. Coronation, the formal introduction of the duchesses, is a symbol of honor and pride for families. This year's custom-made dresses feature designs inspired by dances including the Charleston, the Samba, the Pollera, a traditional dance from Panama, and the Cancan among others, Herbst said. And for the first time in the history of the pageant the designs were rendered with computer-aided technology and presented in an original video format for the Las Donas de la Corte membership in June 2015. "We were able to do a lot more research on the theme, history and culture and we did not spend hours at the library like we used to," Phillips said. "The computer just opened a whole world of materials we could use, of fabrics and we were able to put it all together." Phillips-Greco said she used Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Pinterest boards to put together the designs always aided by her mother's input. She said she never thought she would one day be designing the dresses for a pageant she was once a part of. Phillips-Greco was a duchess in 1978 during "The Court Of The Silver Jubilee." "Those dresses that we wore back then were really inspiring," Phillips-Greco said. "I had been away (from Corpus Christi) for so long that when I was asked to do this I felt very honored. And I thought that I would love to do it because I could do it with my mom. " The 18 royal robes, gowns and trains took about a year to design and were worked on between 30 to 40 hours individually each week, Phillips-Greco said. "It was such a joy to be able to work with (my daughter) on this," Phillips said. "We have traveled, we antique, we share so much. We have always done everything together." Herbst said she heard of Philips-Greco artistic abilities through Phillips and knew she had found this year's designer. She said the wardrobe committee carefully selects an artist who can incorporate dress making designs and their artistic talents together. "Dress design and costume design are very much a specialty," Herbst said. "When we heard Leslie was back in town we said 'that's the one.'" Las Donas de la Corte president Sue Madry said the organization will strive to continue to use artists who can use their talent as well as technology to create the dresses. "We have come a long way, and with the technology Leslie used we will be able to showcase extraordinary designs," Madry said. "The bond Leslie and Patricia have is special and vibrant. We have set the stage to continue to use these methods in the future." Las Donas de la Corte has partnered with the Coastal Bend Community Foundation and friends and family may honor duchesses and all participants in the court by donating to the Coastal Bend Day of giving Matching Fund through the foundation at to www.cbcfoundation.org. Twitter: @CallerNatalia IF YOU GO What: Buccaneer Days Coronation When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday Where: American Bank Center Selena Auditorium Cost: $60/tickets available at ticketmaster.com What: Buc Days Toyota Illuminated Night Parade When: 8-10 p.m. Saturday Where: Start at Rose Street, east on Leopard Street to Shoreline Boulevard, ends at Coopers Alley Street Cost: Free Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Ann E. Hodges, special collections librarian and university archivist at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, displays James M. Manning's personal map, a recent acquisition by the university. It was added to the Manning Papers collection, which includes Manning's personal and professional documents, including letters. Manning, one of the first surveyors to work in the Coastal Bend, died in 1872. SHARE Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi recently purchased a rare map of Texas that belonged to James. M. Manning. This is the case the map of Texas was carried in. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi recently purchased a rare map of Texas that belonged to surveyor James. M. Manning. The university's Mary and Jeff Bell Library houses the Manning Collection, which contains his personal and professional documents, including the recently acquired map and letters. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi recently purchased this letter to surveyor James M. Manning from cartographer Jacob de Cordova. The letter was added to the Manning Papers collection, which is housed at the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at the university. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi recently purchased a collection of James. M. Manning's personal and professional documents, including a rare map from 1853 and letters. By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times It is by complete happenstance that a rare original map of Texas ended up in a collection at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "It was an amazing string of coincidences. I have never experienced anything like it in my career of 22 years," said Ann Hodges, librarian and university archivist in the special collections at Mary and Jeff Bell Library. The multicolored printed map belonged to surveyor James M. Manning and dates to 1853. Manning, who died in 1872, was one of the first surveyors in the Coastal Bend, including San Patricio and Nueces counties, according to the library's website. In early March, Hodges was at an annual meeting of historians in Irving. She received an email from a journalist in Indiana who told her about a map of Texas that was recently sold to a Dallas-area auction house. "He said 'A local woman is selling an old Texas map at auction,' " Hodges said. "She found it in a box of stuff she bought for $10 at an estate sale. I couldn't authenticate anything about the map, but the auction house happened to be at the meeting, so I said I would check on it." A few conversations later and Hodges realized what a find the map was and its relevance to the university, which is where the Manning Papers are housed. The Manning Papers consist of about 173 documents from his career as a Deputy District Surveyor in South Texas. The map, drawn by cartographer Jacob de Cordova, is believed to be his personal work map because of an authentic stamp by Cordova and a handwritten note by his wife, Mary A. Manning. James Manning was responsible for adding crucial updates to the 1853 edition of Cordova's map. The item went up for bidding at an auction the following weekend when Hodges was at a meeting in Florida. She made arrangements with Heritage Auctions, Inc., who was conducting the auction, to bid on the university's behalf. Normally a map of this nature would be a hot commodity in the collector's world, she said. About five people were bidding in addition to Hodges. But the university won the bid for the map and for a letter written to Manning from Cordova. As soon as Rick Smith, assistant professor of geographic information science and geospatial surveying engineering, found out about the acquisition, he was immediately fascinated. "The Manning map is the first official map of Texas, and it really set the standard for really all maps that came after it," Smith said. "To have something that historically relevant to Texas history and to land surveying available to our students is phenomenal. It's in amazing condition." The map is not one that was viewed on a wall in a museum, but actually was kept inside a leather bound book. It was likely colored after Manning's death, Hodges said. Not only a tool for students, the map can serve the professional land surveyors in the area and across the state. "Every surveyor has to retrace the steps of every surveyor that came before them back to the original land grant of Texas," Smith said. "If they're going to retrace that history, instead of saying we'll look it up online, I can walk them to the library and say 'Here is the map we've been talking about all semester.' " Land surveyors keep notes on everything, Smith said. They learn early on to always use pencil and never erase. Many field books kept by surveyors are part of the 11 collections housed at the Bell Library. "You never know what will be important so you scratch things out," he said. "Students are able to connect to these historic figures on a very personal level even from something as generic as a map or a deed. That's exciting to see them learning about the history, but also the people involved." James D. Carr, a land surveyor for 19 years, thought he misheard the news about the Manning map when he first heard it. Once he realized that it was true, he was ecstatic. Though he hasn't seen it in person yet, Carr said he has seen photos. He called the map "beyond cartographic standards." "I have the utmost respect and appreciation for pieces of history, maps, that have laid the land that we walk and survey today,"Carr said. Digitizing maps and other documents has made it easier to access the information, but Carr said it only goes back so far. He said researching original maps is key in how modern surveyors create tracts of land to this day. He called them footsteps. "The footsteps can be pictorial, verbal or both," he said. "You would be surprised of how accurate the mathematical components and the descriptive narration of the original surveys are compared to today's methodology and instrumentation." For more information on the Manning map, contact Special Collections at Bell Library at 361-825-4500 or email specialcollections@tamucc.edu. SHARE By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times Texas A&M universities in Corpus Christi and Kingsville are among those which recommended the most restrictions for the state's new "campus carry" law. Students at the Kingsville campus were most concerned about guns in dorm rooms, said Christina Williams, chair of the university's academic and student affairs committee. "(Students) were concerned about how (guns) would be concealed in the rooms," said Williams, a 20-year-old environmental engineering major. "Multiple people don't have a divider (between rooms) and they were not comfortable with the idea." If the Texas A&M system board of regents approves proposals shaped by an A&M-Kingsville task force, which included Williams and representatives from other university groups, students will be allowed to keep guns in their dorm rooms. But to ease any tension, the university will pay for up to 15 gun safes for students, said Randy Hughes, the university's chief of staff. Of the 11 schools in the system, three recommended eight of nine possible campus restrictions for concealed carry A&M-CC was one of them. A&M-Kingsville recommended restrictions in seven of the nine categories be approved by the system board of regents. All other schools recommended six or less. The system announced its proposed recommendations April 13, which included concealed carry restrictions unique to each campus. The recommendations were reviewed by the Texas A&M System Office of General Counsel, approved by Chancellor John Sharp and will be reviewed by the system board of regents on Wednesday. The licensed carrying of concealed handguns will be allowed at A&M university campuses and all other higher learning institutions beginning Aug. 1. House Bill 910, known as "open carry," authorizes firearm licensees to openly carry a handgun in places that allow the carrying of a concealed handgun. Openly carrying a handgun is still prohibited at institutions of higher education in the state. Senate Bill 11, known as "campus carry," authorizes licensees to carry a concealed handgun at institutions of higher education. The law also authorized the institutions to establish rules, regulation or other provisions for the carrying of concealed handguns on campuses. Hughes said a committee of faculty, staff and students contributed to drafting and revising about six versions of the list of restrictions. Since November, the committee also led five forums separately inclusive of the faculty senate, Student Government Association, staff council and a campus wide forum. Prairie View A&M University, Texas A&M International University and A&M-CC are three campuses with dormitories leased and operated by third-party management companies. The companies will decide whether they want to permit campus carry in residential facilities. A&M-CC spokeswoman Ana Nelson said several public meetings since December and input by student groups, the staff council and faculty senate helped shape the recommendations. She declined to elaborate on specific recommendations saying "until the board adopts them, these are just suggestions (the university) made." The university recommended handguns be restricted from science labs at six buildings; the University Health Center and the University Counseling Center; the gym, locker rooms and exercise rooms at the Dugan Wellness Center; and exercise rooms and labs, locker rooms and track at the Island Hall Gym, among others. Pending approval by the system board, visible handguns will be allowed in A&M-CC private offices. An employee, with the president's approval, may ban the concealed carry of a firearm in cases when an "employee has demonstrated that the carrying of a concealed handgun by a license holder in the office presents a significant risk of substantial harm due to a negligent discharge of the handgun." At A&M-Kingsville, visible handguns will be allowed in private offices under the same stipulations and firearm licensees also can openly carry a handgun during student, faculty or staff disciplinary hearings. The law will go into effect for a public junior colleges in the state Aug. 1, 2017. Twitter: @CallerBetty TAMU-CC Open Carry TAMU-K Open Carry SHARE CALLER-TIMES FILE Dr. C.P. Garcia CALLER-TIMES Dr. Cuitlahuac P. "C.P." Garcia (left) talks to a patient in his clinic in San Antonio in 2003. By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times Dr. C.P. Garcia, who was the last living brother of civil rights leader Dr. Hector P. Garcia, died Sunday night in a San Antonio hospital. The 92-year-old medical doctor had a heart attack about six weeks ago, said his niece Cecilia Garcia Akers. Though he was discharged Tuesday, he began experiencing more complications during the week and was readmitted Saturday. "He had a lot of swelling in his legs and developed kidney failure. It was impossible for him to recover," Garcia Akers told the Caller-Times. The doctor continued practicing medicine and participating in the American G.I. Forum until about two years ago when he started suffering mobility issues, she said. Garcia Akers said her uncle, like her father, was a hard worker who fought for civil rights issues. "He was definitely a Garcia," she said. Placido Salazar, a member of San Antonio's chapter of the GI Forum, said he met "Dr. C.P." more than a decade ago and was motivated to join the organization. He said he knew of the Garcia family already from Hector P. Garcia's radio speeches aired in the Valley during his childhood. "Always in the tradition of the Garcia doctors, they didn't care if they got paid or not, they were going to see their patients regardless," Salazar said. Salazar's favorite memory of C.P. Garcia was when he brought a framed photo of him with his forum hat to a visit at the rehabilitation center Garcia was living in. "I walked up to him, he was smiling and laughing and saluting the picture (of himself)," he said. "He always introduced me as his best friend." Salazar said he interviewed C.P. Garcia for a documentary he's making about the GI Forum and the continuing struggles many veterans face. According to Garcia Akers' Facebook page, C.P. Garcia lived in San Antonio with his wife Elizabeth, and daughter Mary Gayle Arambula, and son Adrian Garcia. Other surviving children are Libby Garcia from Pueblo, Colorado, and Damian Garcia from Dallas. He also is survived by his sister Dr. Dalia Garcia, several grandchildren, and numerous nieces and nephews. Twitter: @Caller_Jules DIAGNOSIS 1 Swapna Nayak APAC regional client services director IPG Mediabrands As a 135-year-old brand, Eu Yan Sang has an ageing population on one hand and a younger generation concerned about well-being on the other, as its target audiences comprise two opposing sides of the spectrum. This makes its demographic segmentation a tough task. The brand has also placed most of its eggs in the China basket, tying its brand health with the economic health of China. There are few ad campaigns by the brand that are consistent and memorable. A legendary brand cant continue to flourish purely based on its heritage. It needs a steady stream of brand messages to recruit new customers. From a branding perspective, it is important for the brand to identify key niche segments across all Chinese communities in Asia and develop targeted messagingbe it quality assurance, preventative health benefits or general well-being messages. It needs to engage with these communities by developing customised content. A one-size-fits-all approach wont get the full spectrum of consumers. On the retail front, Eu Yan Sang can go beyond its traditional way of selling OTC drugs and consider creative partnerships with lifestyle brands such as restaurants and health clubs. By doing so, it can position itself as a wellness brand rather than a purely functional traditional Chinese medicine brand. DIAGNOSIS 2 Alex Mucha Director & olfactory composer Curious Consultants The increased emphasis on ecommerce makes sense as a means to constrain the costs of physical premises and open up their brand to a wider audience. Theres a growing interest, especially in the West, in natural herbal treatmentsa positive factor in their efforts to expand beyond traditional markets. However, the brand looks a little tired, unfocused and lacking in appeal to its developing audience: 1 Brand mark: A banal sans-serif typeface and symbol lacking in detailing dont evoke character. The identity is neither modern nor traditional, just dated. 2 Packaging: An uncoordinated plethora of colour schemes, styles and typographics. 3 Social media: A hugely untapped area for the brand. The ecommerce website has no links to any social media channels. There is a Facebook page, but it has only one post. 4 Customer trust: The Bo Ying Compound incident has hurt the brand, highlighting discrepancies in their standards across different countries and an approach to contamination which displays a lack of concern for the customers well-being. But it does present Eu Yan Sang with an opportunity: to set more stringent standard for contamination and apply it unilaterally, showing they place customer safety first. Lourdes appointment comes just weeks after CNN announced a major digital expansion with a US$20 million investment. The company is significantly increasing its global footprint by creating an additional 200 jobs plus enhancing its products and technologies, with a specific focus on mobile and video. It has also made digital investments to enhance CNNMoney and CNN Politics, launch CNN Style, and create the socially distributed video network Great Big Story. Based in Hong Kong, Lourdes will lead CNN Digitals Asia team across editorial content and multiplatform programming for CNNs global audience during Asia's working day. He will work closely with CNNs digital teams in London, Abu Dhabi, New York and Atlanta and as the digital leader in Asia-Pacific, will be responsible for devising and implementing strategies to grow key audiences in the region. Lourdes previously worked at Yahoo! for five years, most recently as editor in chief in Singapore. He also spent more than a decade as a journalist, working at publications like The Star and New Straits Times in Malaysia. Andrew Demaria, vice-president and managing editor of CNN Digital, International, described Lourdes as a perfect fit for the organisation. His experience in co-developing news apps, growing social-media traffic, and working with teams to drive new opportunities will help us realise our vision for the Asia-Pacific region, he added. CNNs three pillars In an interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific, Demaria said that the companys three priority areas for this year and next were mobile, video and global. Andrew Demaria On a global level, there are untapped opportunities that the media organisation has been to take advantage of, even with the growth it has enjoyed of late. Figures provided by CNN, from an Ipsos Affluent Survey findings released in September 2015, showed that CNN is the number one international news brand in Asia-Pacific. The brand lays claim to being the number one multiplatform news brand, with 35 percent monthly reach in the region, 35 percent greater than the next news brand. Its digital channels enjoy 11 percent monthly reach, which is 47 percent more than the next brand. The survey also found that at least three quarters (74 percent) of consumers of competing news brands also consume CNN, while between a half (46 percent) and three quarters (73 percent) of CNN consumers do not view or read competitor news brands. The company also leads the international news genre and is growing in both TV and digital audiences, with an 8 percent year-on-year jump in weekly and monthly TV reach, and 26 percent year-on-year growth in monthly digital reach. Our data, metrics and audience data are indicating that there are still opportunities that we can tap, Demaria added. So were doubling down on areas where weve already had success across all regions globally, and in Asia Pacific we are expanding the team thats already here. The increase in staff count follows the commitment the organisation has made to be a truly global operation. We are taking more of a follow the sun approach, Hong Kong picks up as Atlanta is going to sleep after which its transferred to London then Atlanta again, said Demaria. So were now allocating resources to what our priority of coverage is going to be. The expansion and restructure of editorial operations also comes with a focus on how best to present content across multiple mediums and find its audience on the platforms and devices where they are, at the right time. Were investing heavily to research, and how to engage a lot more with our audiences and optimise performance of our content, he added. Demaria said that the added insights into audience consumption behaviour translate to added value the organisation can bring to its advertisers. From a commercial perspective, Asia is extremely important and comprises a lot of different markets and behaviours we need to understand and capitalise on, he said. In mature markets such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, how do we increase engagement, while in developing markets such as India and China, how do we further our reach and grow our audience. Demaria added that the work the company is doing in native content is also faring well, pointing to a campaign it conducted for airline brand Cathy Pacific as an example. The integrated campaign, which launched late last year, incorporated on-air, digital, branded content and social elements. The centrepiece of the campaign is the sponsorship of a series of six on-air segments called The Trip That Changed My Life, which featured high-profile personalities across various fields share their stories of how they changed careers or paths after a particular trip or journey. CNN Internationals in-house creative agency, TCP, was behind the complementary native campaign that ran across TV and digital assets.The narrative follows architect and designer Usman Haque as he travels from Hong to Kong to London with Cathay Pacific. It was a robust editorial execution combined with extremely engaging audience data-driven native content, said Demaria. He shared that one of the biggest insights garnered from that campaign was tied to the use of behaviourial data tracking for insights. During the campaign, the audience that engaged with the content also showed interest in other related topics. This told me from an editorial stance that if I produced content around these topics they were interested in, that I would get a much more engaged audience for it, he said. And our ad sales teams can approach advertisers with that knowledge and say weve run this campaign but data shows that theres also interest in these other areas, and that creates opportunities. Demaria said that most importantly, it creates something of a full circle for the media publisher and user as well, where engaging with content and the advertising solution attached to it becomes a more natural experience, not a jump or lurch to something else. Were evolving as audience behaviour changes, and well continually see a lot of changes and new ways to engage with audience, he added. In tandem with that, the advertising side will also evolve as they find new ways to connect to the audience they want to reach out to. Head to head with native web brands The organisations increased focus on mobile and social channels reflects its aspirations to have a stronger presence amidst a landscape populated by native web properties such as Buzzfeed. Demaria said that the organisation comes into the fight from a position of strength, and CNN Digital last year has a successful year in terms of metrics and revenue, with a number one position globally for video content. But instead of being happy with status quo, were doubling down on this, he added. And the challenges are really, how do we continue to create effective and engaging storytelling methods and keep pace with the changes. To illustrate, Demaria shared that 18 months ago, having the word drone in a headline would result in stellar traffic and engagement but today, thanks to changing sudience sentiments, one needs to take it out for the same story to do well. So you need to always understand how audience preferences are changing, he added. And take a different approach for TV, mobile and social platforms. Demaria said the new brand has a lot of different competitors in a lot of different spaces, for example going head-to-head with Vox Media for explainer videos, which are increasingly popular as audiences seek more context to developing news stories or The Guardian for its live blog updates when it comes to major breaking news. People are not going to a specific destination, the information is finding them, and they now are not sticking with one media publisher to get what they want, he added. So we need to compete effectively against all these other platforms to consistently deliver to our audience the content they want at the right time and on the right platform. In its quest to be ahead of the curve, the company was recently one of the pioneer orgnisations to sign up for Facebooks Bots for Messenger. Through CNN's bot, users can message topics like "zika virus" or "politics" and CNN will respond with related stories and information on the topic. It's important for media publishers to find new ways to engage, be on new platforms and continue to grow, and this is a space you ignore at own peril, he said. Its also important to be able to experiment, and we are going to do more Facebook Live events, which is in line with CNNs reputation on live reporting." The brand is also active on Snapchat, with Demaria sharing that one of the biggest learnings was the fact that widescreen format video does not work well on the platform and how to best present on a square format must be taken into account. The other thing is that many assume the younger audience doesnt engage or care much about news or global events, but thats where youre wrong, he added. Weve discovered that our younger audience on Snapchat are a lot more interested in news content, they want to be kept informed and we are changing our editorial strategy accordingly to meet that demand. wide player in 16:9 format. Used on article page for Campaign. With discrimination and violence against LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex) individuals in Turkey at "absurd" levels, Amnesty International and TBWA set up this rather absurd situation to force the issue out into the open. Ad Nut always takes 'reality' programmes with a grain of salt, because editing is a powerful and potentially misleading tool. But the reactions of the shoppers as they learn about the supposed sexual orientation of the reptiles speak volumes, and in the end Ad Nut has no problem identifying which creatures seem more disgusting. Ad Nut isn't completely without empathy for people who perhaps have never (knowingly) met an LGBTI person, or whose religion may have brought them up to believe that being anything other than 'normal' is an abomination. However, Ad Nut also believes it is well past time for those intolerant beliefs to be swept asideand happily they have been in many places. Perhaps this video, which has more than 1 million views in its Facebook incarnation, will help Turkey become the next society to truly join the modern world. Food By: Cook Britain With layers of airy sponge and sweet buttercream balanced by decadent coffee and walnut flavours, this cake is simply divine. Read More "I think quite deeply about the friends that I've lost and just those 40 names we saw this morning from the Afghanistan conflict mean a great deal to me because I know those people, I know where they served, I know how they fought and what they fought against so for me that's something quite personal," Mr Roberts-Smith said. "We'd had no breakfast, no morning tea and no lunch and I thought I'd faint, but these wonderful people were coming in and we were grabbing the food and eating it and they were saying [sotto voce], "You do realise that we are not responsible for this, don't you?", because some might think the secretariat had fed them these questions." [Your Business Name] Contact Info Phone: Fax: Email: Web: CAPITOLHILLCUBANS.COM Business Overview Geographic Area Line of Business Brands We Carry Products and Services Discounts Offered Additional Information Business Hours Timezone We Accept 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. In general, automakers limit the availability of long-wheelbase (LWB) variants to large sedans like the BMW 7-Series and the Audi A8. But not in China where consumers seem to be advocates of the saying the bigger the better. After the introduction of LWB mid-size luxury saloons such as the Audi A6 and BMW 5-Series, Audi has extended its offerings with the presentation of the first ever LWB compact sedan, the A4L that boasts a 60 millimeters (2.36 inches) longer wheelbase than the standard model. For the time being, the Chinese-market-only A4L will be available with two engine options, the 2.0 TFSI with 180HP and the 3.2 FSI V6 with 265HP.Manufactured at the VW Groups plant in Changchun, China, the Audi A4L will make its first public debut at the Guangzhou Motor Show on November 18 with Chinese sales following in January 2009. The long-wheelbase version of the Audi A4 is being produced exclusively in China for the Chinese market. With this premium product, we chose to go even further than elsewhere in the world to meet the requirements of our Chinese customers, said Peter Schwarzenbauer, Member of the Board of Management for Marketing and Sales at AUDI AG. Our goal is to export the success of the new Audi A4 to China. With the customized Chinese A4L, which we subjected to rigorous testing in China, we are impressively demonstrating our market leadership in Chinas premium segment, added Schwarzenbauer. Peugeot and its partner and shareholder Dongfeng have launched the new 508 and 308 (called 308S in China) at the Guangzhou Auto Show. Scheduled to arrive in Chinese dealerships in January 2015, the Peugeot 508 is expect to rack up 40,000 sales in its first year on the market. Built at the Wuhan plant, the 508 is largely the same car as the model offered in Europe. The Peugeot 308S is in fact the hatchback version of the 308, with the letter S coming from Supreme, Sport and Smart, according to Peugeot. The model has the ambitious aim of revolutionizing the mentalities of Chinese customers, who are used to buy sedans. The Peugeot 308S is offered with three petrol engines in China: 1.6 THP, 1.2 THP and 1.6 CVVT. All units are fitted as standard with a Stop and Start system. Another Chinese debut is the facelifted Peugeot 3008, which gains larger headlights and a smaller grille than the model sold in Europe, as well as new standard and available features such as an electrically operated panoramic roof, 7-inch touchscreen, color head-up display, electric height-adjustable passenger seat tyre pressure monitoring system and aluminum roof bars. At the Guangzhou Auto Show Peugeot also announced its plans for the Chinese market, where it sold more than 314,000 vehicles in the first 10 months of this year, up 41 percent than in the same period last year. The French carmaker has big ambitions for 2015, expecting 450,000 sales 20 percent more than projected sales for this year. Growth will come thanks to the addition of new dealerships, with the company targeting 530 dealers at the end of next year that would cover 85 percent of the countrys territory (up from 81.5 percent at the moment). PHOTOS Audi chose Chinas Beijing Motor Show to set free its new generation TT RS models in both coupe and Roadster body styles. At the heart of both lies a redeveloped version of the firms 2.5-liter turbocharged inline-five with a new aluminum instead of the current motors steel block, which not only helps shave 10kg or 22 pounds, but its also way stronger gaining 60PS (59hp) for a total of 400PS (395hp) together with 480Nm (354 lb-ft) of peak torque. The blistering five-pot is mated to a standard seven-speed dual-clutch transmission with steering wheel paddle shifts sorry folks, no manual gearbox option and Audis quattro permanent all-wheel drive with a multi-plate clutch that distributes power freely between the axles. Audi claims a 3.7 second sprint from 0 to 100 km/h (62mph) for the Coupe and 3.9 seconds for the slightly heavier Roadster. Just to get an idea of how fast that is, the 540hp Audi R8 completes the same sprint in 3.5 seconds. If the rumors about a Plus version are true, the TT RS will likely if not beat, at least match the base R8 V10s acceleration time. To improve handling, Audis engineering team lower the tuned suspension by 10mm, while also offering the option of a sportier suspension with adaptive dampers in magnetic ride technology. In standard trim, it gets 19-inch alloy wheels and enormous 370mm disc brakes, with 20-inch wheels and carbon-fiber ceramic brake discs offered as an option. Youll be able to tell the RS versions from their lesser TT siblings through the new front bumper with larger vents, the new rear bumper with the trademark RS oval pipes, the side skirts, carbon fiber mirror caps, fixed rear wing, though optionally, you can get both with a more discrete automatically extending boot spoiler, and LED headlamps. Also, for the first time in a series-production Audi, Matrix OLED technology (organic light emitting diode) is used in the rear lights as an option. European sales of the new TT RS models will kick off this fall, with prices in Germany set at 66,400 euros for the Coupe, and 69,200 euros for the Roadster. North American pricing and availability will be announced at a later date. Audi TT RS Coupe Audi TT RS Roadster The new Mazda CX-4 compact crossover, or shall we say, compact crossover coupe, as carmakers like pointing out, has been revealed at the 2016 Beijing motor show. It takes the more conventional looking CX-5 and embellishes it with a 175mm (6.9 in) lower and 78mm (3.1 in) longer body at 1,535mm (60.4 in) and 4,633mm (182.4 in) respectively, while retaining the same width at 1,840mm (72.4 in) and wheelbase at 2,700mm (106.3 in). As you can see from these pictures from Chinese sites Auto163 and Auto Sina, the production CX-4s looks remain close to Mazdas Koeru Concept from 2015 featuring a sporty silhouette accented by a rakish roofline and a slanted rear window, with the Japanese brands familiar grille sticking out from the angular nose. The crossovers interior, on the other hand, is borrowed from the Mazda3 series almost in its entirety, with only a few changes made to the dashboard and center console like the replacement of the conventional handbrake with an electronic unit. The CX-4 will be available in China with two gasoline engines, a 156hp 2.0-liter four, and a 189hp 2.5-liter four paired to a 6-speed automatic transmission and Mazdas Intelligent All-Wheel Drive system. As it stands, the CX-4 will be a China-exclusive model, being initially produced and sold only in that country, though, Mazda officials have said that theyre evaluating other markets too for the near future. Photo Gallery Renault has put an end to teasers, leaks and previews of its new D-segment SUV, the second generation Koleos, by pulling the wraps off its body, during the 2016 Beijing Auto Show. Carrying the same styling language as the latest Megane and Talisman, it has full LED Pure Vision headlights (depending on the version), which are said to be 20 percent more powerful than halogen beam, LED DRLs, LED taillights with Edge Light technology for a bright 3D effect, door protective mouldings, aluminum roof bars and large diameter wheels, up to 19-inch. The 2017 Koleos is significantly larger than the Kadjar, with a total length of 4,670 mm, 1,840 mm in width, a ground clearance of 213 mm and a 2,710 mm long wheelbase, promising to offer a class-leading space inside, with 289 mm of rear knee room. Higher end models will get the R-Link 2 multimedia tablet, Bose premium sound system and a heated steering wheel. Based on the same platform as the Nissan X-Trail, the CMF-C/D, Renaults large SUV features a 44 layout, allowing drivers to shift between 2WD, 4WD AUTO and 4WD LOCK modes and it will be packed with safety features including Active Emergency Braking, Lane Departure Warning, Blind Spot Warning, Safe Distance Warning, Traffic Sign Recognition with Excess Speed Warning, Tiredness Detection, front, side and rear parking sensors, easy park assist, rearview camera and automatic high/low beam headlights. Besides China, where it will act as the companys flagship model, the second-gen Renault Koleos will be eventually introduced in 80 markets, worldwide. The Chinese version will be assembled in Wuhan, China, while the one aimed towards global markets will be put together in Busan, South Korea. PHOTO GALLERY Jonkajtys met with the producer in Warsaw where they agreed to shoot the miniatures/digital hybrid short as a proof of concept for the feature film with a budget of 23,300 euros (100,000 PLN) from the Polish Film Institute. I enjoy being on set and filming real stuff, Jonkajtys said of the projects hybrid approach. I also enjoy building miniatures. Its a good break from the monitor, plus I feel real sets simply look better. They dont age badly on film as CG often does. Initial concepts involved simple boards with pen and paper, which Jonkajtys fleshed out with rough CG models of the sets and characters for animatics. I had every shot animated and edited that way before going on set, he said. That way, I knew exactly what lens to use and what camera motion to achieve during our practical shoot. The miniature factory sets were constructed at 1/6th scale by production designer Jagna Dobesz to match the eventual toy dimensions (which were Barbie-doll sized). The sets were lit and photographed digitally by DP Jakub Jakielaszek on an ARRI Amira and ARRI Alexa Mini with the aid of a motion-controlled slider and occasionally a small crane. The biggest challenge in shooting at that scale was fitting the camera to mimic the angles and compositions I did in the animatic, said Jonkajtys. Jakub and his crew rigged a beautiful lighting setup that gives the unique otherworldly look to the scenes, where the main source of the light were actual LED stripes connected to the miniature conveyor belts. But filming the miniature sets was, of course, only half of the story behind the Teddy Floppy Ear short. The main characters and elements of the toy factory were realized with visual effects by Polish studio Orka, which is also co-producing the feature film (along with T.F.P. Poland and FremantleMedia Polska). Still, Jonkajtys kept his hands dirty at least in one shot from the short the final post-credits scene which involved a miniature build in the directors kitchen and composited CG foreground elements. As a proof of concept, the short allowed Jonkajtys and Orka to experiment, at least to some extent. For example, the team explored the look and animation of the characters, which are based on an original stop motion film and TV series from the 1970s. Even though they are CG in this short, there was no motion blur added to the characters movements, a deliberate nod to the stop motion originals. For the feature, Jonkajtys plans to film the voice actors full body for reference during final rehearsals, and not just them standing at recording booths. This was something he observed from director Gore Verbinskis approach to making Rango. It would still be no costumes and no special lights, but its great reference for the animation. I like working with actors, I would love to see their input in creating these characters, not only as a voice talent, but as fully-fleshed complex beings. The shorts music was composed by Mikolai Stroinski, who is known for the original compositions in the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and sound designer Bartez Putkiewicz of Cafe Ole produced the final mix. Now that the short is out, Jonkajtys has moved onto the feature film. The director faces a challenging time readying for a 2017 production start date. We are working on the final draft for the script now. At the same the storyboards and concept art is happening. Once the storyboarding is completed, I will jump on to many animatic versions of the whole film. This is the crucial part. The film needs to work well in this phase, the phase before we get on set. That turns out to be one of Jonkajtys core strength in his shorts: planning. The director seems to have no fear diving into concept drawings and animatics that serve key roles during filming of the miniatures and at the VFX stage. Its also clear that Jonkajtys loves world-building. I think that Teddy Floppy Ear is a really beautiful story about overcoming shortcomings, friendship, and unwavering hope. All this, spiced up with great character moments, action, robots, fantastic sets, and locations makes me very excited to make create this story, this world. See more of Jonkajtys previous film and visual effects work at his website. Some behind-the-scenes images from the set construction and shoot can be seen below. (Click to enlarge.) Photo: Twitter - FortisBC Still feeling charged up about Earth Day? Electric cars drivers may well be, with the opening of two new charging stations in downtown Kelowna. The City of Kelowna partnered with utility company FortisBC on the project. The stations are located in the museum parking lot at Queensway Avenue and Ellis Street. One stall is for public use, and the second is dedicated to a local car-share program. These charge stations will allow people to park, plug-in and return to a charged vehicle after spending time exploring downtowns many amenities," said aAlf Soros, fleet services manager for the city. The city will be responsible for day-to-day monitoring and the electricity consumption. FortisBC will own the equipment and arrange maintenance. When charging, users wont have to pay for the electricity, but standard parking rates will apply. The city can provide the insight into their residents' needs, while we can provide the technical expertise, access to infrastructure and ongoing support," said Fortis spokesman Mark Warren. The location was chosen because it's central to downtown amenities. The charging stations are Level 2, 240-volt units with a SAE J1772 connector, allowing communication and charging with most common electric vehicles. Photo: Frizzantine Divorce in retirement can be devastating Are you a divorced retiree? Financial settlements from a divorce can have a big impact on your security. The concern doubles when a marriage comes to an end later in life. If divorce in retirement is happening to you, youre not alone. The so-called 'grey divorce' has been identified as a growing 21st century trend. You can tap into your house for extra income Although divorcing later in life poses many challenges, you may have access to financial tools not readily available to people in their 30s and 40s. For instance, if the house is settled on your side of the ledger, you may be able to shore up your finances and enhance cash flow by tapping into the equity of your home. This is done by arranging a reverse mortgage. Instead of selling your house and downsizing or even renting, why not stay in it and receive payments based on its real estate value? says Arthur Krzycki, a director with HomEquity Bank. Accessing the equity in your home with a reverse mortgage like a CHIP Home Income Plan is a simple and sensible way to reduce the financial burden normally associated with divorce. How CHIP works If youre aged 55 and over, you can convert up to 50 per-cent of your home equity into tax-free cash. Unlike other loans on the market, you are not required to service the interest, or repay the principal until you choose to move or sell. You have the option to take a lump sum to pay off your debts or for home repairs and modifications. Or you can schedule monthly advances to enhance your cash flow on a regular basis. Some homeowners do both. Its never too late to bolster your finances by taking money out from your house while continuing to live there. For example, using a reverse mortgage to provide additional cash income could save homeowners from having to sell non-registered investments, or prevent the need to withdraw money from a RRIF above the annual minimum. Both of these strategies will likely have tax implications, so be sure to work with a financial advisor for solutions that fit your needs, adds Kryzcki. Additional information on this option is available at CHIP This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: sestovic Lark Productions is seeking artists for a new CBC series. Lark is now casting Canadian artists for a groundbreaking CBC series that celebrates art in all its forms and are looking for artists from a wide variety of media. Lark Productions is searching for creative, confident, energetic artists looking to showcase their skills and talent on national TV. Lark is looking for everything from painters, sculptors and mixed media artists to tattoo, pinata, graffiti, carving, clothing, and jewellery design, street chalk art, animators and toy or doll artisans. All creative media are accepted. Lark is looking for people who: want an opportunity to showcase your talent on a televised, national stage have basic art skills are enthusiastic to take on an art challenge outside your specialized medium are comfortable on camera and have an outgoing personality arent afraid to get a little competitive. Casting is currently open so apply today by sending your name, photo, bio, contact info and two to three samples of your artistic work to [email protected]. Applicants are also asked to include links to any relevant pages or media articles. Photo: Contributed UPDATED at 9:10 p.m. British Columbia has adopted codes of practice for commercial dog and cat breeders, as the province moves towards regulating the unlicensed and controversial industry. Agriculture Minister Norm Letnick announced Sunday that the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act now recognizes the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association's codes of practice for kennels and catteries as generally-accepted practices for dog and cat breeders. The codes of practice set out minimum standards for housing, ventilation, food and water, care and supervision and record-keeping. "It gives breeders the benchmark by which they should look at all their practices if they're going to breeding in B.C.," Letnick said in an interview. "It also provides the SPCA enforcement officers clear standards that they can look at when they're visiting breeders." Premier Christy Clark announced plans to adopt the codes in February, weeks after the SPCA revealed two mass seizures of sick and neglected animals in alleged animal cruelty cases. She also vowed at the time to work on crafting regulations to licence breeders. Letnick said a consultation paper will be available on his ministry's website starting Monday to allow stakeholders to provide feedback on possible licence or registration requirements by May 20. The general public can also email him with their comments, he added. "We take the health of our animals very seriously," he said, adding that regulations are expected to be in place in 2017. Craig Daniell, CEO of the B.C. SPCA, said his organization already uses the codes of practice as guidelines when investigating breeders, but adopting the codes into law will help officers when bringing cases to Crown counsel. "The courts basically now are obliged to look at the codes of practice as a guide for determining what a generally-accepted practice of animal management is. In terms of prosecuting cases, that will be the real big benefit that we'll see," he said. Daniell applauded the government's plans to regulate the industry and urged it to require regular inspection of commercial breeders. The province said on Sunday that it was considering proactive monitoring and enforcement. "The challenge we have right now is that everything is complaint-driven," Daniell said. "For people who operate puppy mills, they're generally very careful about making sure that no one ever gets on their property. "Having the mechanism to be able to go and do regular inspections, regardless of whether there's a complaint or not, is really the only way to make sure that we ultimately eradicate puppy mills." On Feb. 4, 66 dogs and puppies in Langley were taken into care in what the SPCA alleges was one of the largest puppy mills in B.C. history. Some animals were suffering from infections, broken limbs and missing eyes or ears. On Feb. 16, constables seized 82 cats and dogs from a breeding and boarding facility in Surrey. Two suffering cats had to be euthanized. Photo: David Ogilvie Emergency crews have been called to a motorcycle accident on the Westside Sunday afternoon. Police, fire and ambulance crews responded to the crash on Gellatly Road near the CN dock. The operator of the Harley Davidson crashed on a left-hand curve and landed in the ditch. Witnesses said emergency crews worked on the man for 25 minutes before loading him into an ambulance and taking him to Kelowna General Hospital. The accident happened at around 6:40 p.m. There is no word on the condition of the man or the cause of the accident. The accident scene has been cleared. Photo: CTV A dog was killed and two families are without a home after fire, Sunday, in Burnaby. The fire started about 8:30 a.m. in an apartment complex on Balmoral Street. Flames billowed out the windows. Everybody got out, and we had no injuries but we did lose a dog, assistant fire chief David Graystone told CTV. The damage to the top floor of the one unit is extensive. The suite the fire started in and one below are uninhabitable. Neighbours say a woman lived in the gutted unit with her son and two dogs. The cause of the fire is under investigation. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: The Canadian Press U.S. President Barack Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel. U.S. President Barack Obama says "we can't turn our backs on fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now." Obama was speaking in Hannover, Germany. He credited German Chancellor Angela Merkel for setting that tone and he is calling for every nation to step up and share responsibility for helping those fleeing violence in the Middle East, including the United States. Obama says Europe and the U.S. are more secure when welcoming people of all backgrounds and faiths, including Muslims. Meanwhile, Obama said Europe has sometimes been complacent in its own defence. Obama urged European countries to step up their spending on defence. Obama said he wants good relations with Russia. But he said the global community must keep up sanctions on Russia until it fully implements its commitments under a Ukraine deal struck in Minsk. He said a united Europe is vital to the world, adding it promotes peace and prosperity. Obama said a strong Europe is needed to enhance the world's security, and that Europe and NATO can still do more, particularly in Syria and Iraq. He said all NATO members should be contributing at least two per cent of their gross domestic product to defence. Photo: The Canadian Press An innovative app created by a University of Victoria professor is giving people around the world the ability to experience the vast, diverse beauty of British Columbia's coast. Ecologist Brian Starzomski and his team have catalogued more than 700 species in the Great Bear Rainforest and logged them in a new digital field guide called "Central Coast Biodiversity." Their work can be accessed through a smartphone or tablet app, or on a computer, to help people identify unfamiliar plants and animals. The idea came from a class Starzomski taught at the remote Hakai Institute on Calvert Island, off the West Coast, where he requires students to get out into the wilderness and identify a number of different species. The conservation biologist and his former student, Kelly Fretwell, drew on a large network of academics, students and people living in and around the Great Bear Rainforest to collect photos and information on various species. He says students used to be sent into the wilderness equipped with a shotgun and instructed to bring back specimens for research, but smartphones equipped with cameras have changed that process. "We definitely don't want to set up every student with a shotgun, so we thought 'let's try and do a kind of digital species collection' and 'let's try and do this so people can put this on their phones and identify the species themselves,'" Starzomski said. The free app currently includes an inventory of 210 plants, 80 birds, 120 seaweeds, 190 marine invertebrates, and 20 mammals and reptiles. Each listing has a photo and some information on what the species looks like, where it can be found and what other species may appear to be similar. The entries also note something that is odd or unique, such as the fact that a great way to identify leather star sea stars is to give them a sniff the starfish has a distinct garlic odour, Starzomski said. The digital database also allows anyone with an Internet connection to explore the different species found in the remote area. "Most British Columbians, most Canadians, most people will never visit this place, but it's filled with wildlife, it's filled with beautiful things," Starzomski said. "We'd like to show that off to show people just how special this area is." A small number of traditional paper field guides have gone digital, but they are often narrow in scope, making Starzomski's guide unique. "As far as I know, there's no other digital field guide or app that covers the same breadth of species, certainly not for one jurisdiction like coastal British Columbia," he said. The digital database is envisioned to be an ever-evolving project, with people contributing their own findings, Starzomski said. "We've gotten to the point now where most of the things I know inside out and the people in my lab know inside out, we've taken care of," he explained. "So we're really relying on other people's expertise and goodwill to share their photos and so on with us." Photo: The Canadian Press Nepal's prime minister announced on Monday the start of reconstruction of key heritage sites in and around the capital that were damaged by an earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people and devastated the country one year ago. Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli offered prayers at the 17th century white-walled temple Anantapur, which was damaged in the magnitude 7.8 quake on April 25, 2015, long with more than 600 other historic structures. More than half a million homes were also destroyed, but hardly any have been rebuilt. Nepal has been criticized for delays in reconstruction largely due to bureaucratic bungling of its historic structures and residents' homes despite foreign donors pledging $4.1 billion toward that end. Aid groups have demanded that authorities speed up the process and change some of the laws that have become obstacles. Oli said Monday that work would begin on rebuilding the temple and three other heritage sites in Kathmandu, including the old palaces and temples at Kathmandu's Durbar Square and key sites in the nearby cities of Patan and Bhaktapur. Anantpur is one of the small Buddhist temples, stupas and monasteries surrounding the 5th-century hilltop shrine of Swayambhunath that lies in ruins. The site is also called the "monkey shrine" for the thousands of monkeys that congregate on the spot at the northwest edge of Kathmandu. It is listed among the UNESCO heritage sites. The prime minister said the work would progress swiftly, adding it was a huge task that would require time. He also said construction of private houses have been initiated in 10 districts to mark the anniversary. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, an estimated 4 million people are still living in sub-standard temporary shelters in conditions that pose a threat to their health and well-being. Only 661 families have received the first installment of a 200,000-rupee ($1,868) government grant, getting 50,000 rupees ($467) so far. Out of the $4.1 billion pledged, Nepal has so far received just $1.28 billion. The delay in getting the money has been blamed on the government taking months to set up the National Reconstruction Authority, which was done only in December. Photo: The Canadian Press Serbian Prime Minister and Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vucic An official vote tally has confirmed Serbia's incumbent pro-EU populists won a landslide victory in the country's general election. The tally presented by the state electoral commission Monday also shows pro-Russian nationalists are returning to Parliament. With about 96 per cent of the vote counted, the Progressive Party won 48 per cent and its Socialist coalition partner got 11 per cent in Sunday's vote. Two right-wing parties lagged far behind the Radical Party with 8 per cent and DSS-Dveri with 5 per cent. Three pro-Western opposition parties, the Democrats, the Social Democrats and the new reformist party Dosta Je Bilo (It's Enough) were each hovering slightly above the 5 per cent threshold needed to win seats in Parliament. The results mean that Serbia will continue with its EU membership bid, but with strong pro-Russian opposition. Photo: CTV UPDATE: 6:55 p.m. A small town in B.C.'s central Interior is coping with big city drug and gang trouble that culminated Monday with a shooting that forced the closure of the schools in two communities. Williams Lake, population 11,000, took on the appearance of a major crime scene as a police helicopter hovered overhead, and marked and unmarked police vehicles patrolled downtown streets. RCMP Cpl. Dave Tyreman said police seized a firearm and took one person into custody after the shooting around 4 a.m. Monday. Multiple shots were fired, but no one in the house was hurt, Tyreman said. "The residence there was previously occupied by an individual who claimed to be a gang member," he said. "This residence now actually has a family living there with no criminal connections or criminal ties whatsoever." Mayor Walt Cobb said the shooting was close to three schools in downtown Williams Lake, the satellite campus of Thompson Rivers University and a bus loop. The only elementary school in 150 Mile House, 15 kilometres east of Williams Lake, was also closed for the day, said School District 27 superintendent Mark Thiessen. Cobb placed the blame for the shooting on what he called prolific offenders. "We are dealing with it constantly and we've been working with the province trying to get some resolve to it," he said. Tyreman wasn't able to confirm the recent episodes of violence was gang related but acknowledged rivals are operating in the area. "Is there some kind of conflict going on in the community? Yes," he said. "Is that between prolific offenders or is that for a turf war over the drug trade? At this time it's hard to say." B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Morris said he was in Williams Lake last week to meet with municipal and First Nations leaders, and police about tensions in the area. He said the government is sending specialized police gang units to Williams Lake. "The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit is working in there," said Morris. "We've also got the serious crime folks concentrating on this. We need the full co-operation of the folks in Williams Lake and the outlying communities to help quell this, to help us push it down." Morris said he believes Williams Lake's issues are more connected to rivalries than organized criminal gangs. The former RCMP officer said the shootings could be the result of issues beyond drugs and turf, such as a love triangle. Caribou-Chilcotin Liberal MLA Donna Barnett said two groups from areas outside of Williams Lake have been battling each other for years. Williams Lake council voted earlier this year to support tracking the movement of criminals 24 hours a day by inserting microchips into their arms. The proposal came after local RCMP released video of a 14-year-old boy's bike being stolen at gunpoint in a park. Williams Lake topped Statistics Canada's rankings for violent crime severity in cities with more than 10,000 people in 2014. UPDATE: 2:30 p.m. Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb has some harsh words after a shooting in his community forced a lockdown of schools in the area. He says residents in the Interior B.C. city are frustrated by prolific offenders wreaking havoc. Nothing happens to them. They go to court, and theyre out. They go to court, and theyre out. Its a revolving door, Cobb told CTV News. He said police are doing their best to battle the violence, but fight an uphill battle because thugs are released from custody. Its just ridiculous, and if the courts dont deal with it, then we are going to have to continue with it. The RCMP are as frustrated as we are Im sure, he said. with files from CTV Vancouver UPDATE: 10:10 a.m. Shots fired in Williams Lake resulted in an emergency lockdown Monday morning of the city and nearby 150 Mile House. RCMP in Williams Lake said Monday they received a report just after 4 a.m. that shots had been fired at a home on Western Avenue. "This is believed to be a targeted incident, as the residence was recently occupied by an individual who claimed to be a local gang member but the residence is currently occupied by a family with no criminal connections," said RCMP Cpl. Dave Tyreman in a news release. "Fortunately no one was injured in this incident." However, shortly after officers arrived on scene, another shot was heard from an unknown direction that resulted in "heightened vigilance" by the officers, he said. "As a precaution measure, the Williams Lake RCMP notified the local school district, university, and area residents of the situation and recommended that everyone stay away from the area until further notice," he said. Police have seized a gun and have one person in custody in connection with the incident. They have now given the green light to area schools to carry on with business as usual. ORIGINAL A police "emergency" in the Interior has forced the closure of schools Monday in Williams Lake and nearby 150 Mile House. The area's school district posted a notice this morning saying buses were not running due to the emergency, and parents are being advised not to bring their children to school. Thompson Rivers University is also closed. We've closed all of the schools in the Williams Lake area and our school buses aren't running so we've advised parents to keep their kids at home as if they were in a lock down at school, Mark Thiessen, Superintendent of School District 27, told CTV News. We practice these at schools all the time so we've advised everyone to stay home and closed in. Thiessen said he cannot comment on the nature of the emergency. RCMP have not commented on the closures, but said an update is expected this morning. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: CTV A Halifax man who advocates on behalf of airline passengers argued in Federal Court on Monday that even though he is not overweight himself, he should have the right to file a complaint about a carrier's "discriminatory" practice of bumping obese travellers. Gabor Lukacs told the three-member panel that the Canadian Transportation Agency should hear his complaint about the way Delta Air Lines asks large passengers to move to another seat, take a later flight or buy an additional seat. "The airline is discriminating based on size," he said in court. "It could be eye colour....It's a slippery slope." The agency dismissed his initial complaint in November 2014, finding that Lukacs had no private or public standing in the matter because he wasn't directly affected by it. "Because what we are protecting here are public and societal interests, not individual interests, it doesn't matter whether the complainant is me or someone who is actually large," he said outside court in Halifax. "The question of who the complainant is should be utterly irrelevant because it affects everybody." He referenced the increase in baggage fees that started with one airline and then was adopted by others. Lukacs said dismissing his complaint simply because the issue didn't affect him personally was akin to disregarding someone's concerns over contaminated food just because they weren't made sick by it. He said he has a demonstrated expertise in the area of passenger issues, having filed more than two dozen successful complaints with the agency and, as a result, bringing about improvements to the industry. He says the 46 mentions of his name in agency decisions show that he has a "long-standing, real and continuing interest in the rights of air passengers." The panel reserved its decision to a later date. A lawyer for Delta declined to comment outside the court. Photo: The Canadian Press UPDATE: 11:30 a.m The Kamloops courthouse is back in session after a bomb threat forced a Monday morning evacuation. This morning at 8:50 a.m., the Kamloops RCMP received a phone call stating that there was a device at the courthouse set to go off, says Cpl. Jodi Shelkie. Police and the Sheriff Service immediately evacuated the building. Approximately one hour later, the Police Dog Service Unit along with a bomb-sniffing dog searched the entire building and found no explosives, says Shelkie. The courthouse was reopened to employees and the public at 11:20 a.m. Police are still investigating who called in the threat, adds Shelkie. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Kamloops RCMP at 250-828-3000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. ORIGINAL: 10:45 a.m. Court is not in session Monday morning in Kamloops after a bomb threat spurred an evacuation. Cpl. Jodi Shelkie says Kamloops RCMP received a phone call at 8:50 a.m. that a bomb threat had been called in to the Kamloops courthouse. Police attended the scene and evacuated the building. Emergency personnel are now on scene and the courthouse remains closed as police wait for the Explosive Disposal Unit to give the OK. Shelkie says they do not expect the courthouse to open again until this afternoon. Castanet will have more details as they become available. Photo: The Canadian Press Police fired tear gas and birdshot on Monday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators calling on President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to step down over his government's decision to surrender control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. The violence in Mesaha square in Cairo's Dokki district took place as thousands of police and soldiers were deployed Monday across the Egyptian capital ahead of the planned demonstrations over the islands, a thorny issue which has already sparked the largest protests since el-Sissi assumed power nearly two years ago. Following the arrest of dozens of activists and journalists in recent days, riot police backed by armoured vehicles on Monday took up positions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt's 2011 uprising, They also deployed on the ring road, downtown and at a square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013. Many of the protest organizers' gathering points were sealed off by police, including the doctors' and journalists' unions in central Cairo. Pedestrians near the Press Syndicate were stopped by police, who asked for IDs and about their destination before turning many of them away. Minivans loaded with plainclothes policemen were also deployed in the likely flashpoints. The sheer number of policemen on the streets and fear of arrest prevented protesters from gathering, forcing them to trickle out from designated gathering points to assemble elsewhere. Fearing another round of unrest after years of turmoil, many city residents and shopkeepers were hostile toward the protesters on Monday. However, a group of some 500 protesters led by prominent activists managed to gather at the mostly residential Mesaha square. Their chants of "leave, leave" directed at el-Sissi, echoed across the square, along with "bread, freedom, the islands are Egyptian." Police in full riot gear arrived 10 minutes later and immediately fired tear gas and birshot. The protesters fled and later regrouped in smaller groups at nearby streets. From their apartments' balconies, the square's pro-el-Sissi residents shouted "traitors" at the protesters below and pelted them with water. Later, plainclothes policemen were seen by the AP reporter kicking and slapping protesters they arrested. The AP reporter also saw truckloads of protesters in police custody. "Giving up our land is the final straw," said one protester, 16-year-old Youssef el-Agouza. "He (el-Sissi) has crossed all lines." The military said in a video released late Sunday that troops were deployed to protect "vital and important installations" and deal with anyone who tries to "harm the people's interests or attempt to ruin their happiness" on Sinai Liberation Day, a national holiday marking the completion of Israel's withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982. Egyptian warplanes roared over Cairo to mark Monday's anniversary, but the military kept a low profile on the ground except for areas near military headquarters and the presidential palace. The Interior Ministry said police were out in force to protect "peaceful" citizens who wish to celebrate. Several dozen people waving Egyptian flags celebrated with music and dancing in the upscale district of Mohandiseen. Several hundred el-Sissi supporters also gathered outside the seldom-used Abdeen presidential palace to celebrate the liberation of Sinai. El-Sissi on Sunday urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from the "forces of evil," an apparent reference to the planned protests. Monday's demonstrations are the second wave of protests this month against the decision to give up control of the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. On April 15, about 2,000 people protested in downtown Cairo over the islands. That protest was the largest against el-Sissi since he assumed office in 2014, nearly a year after leading the military ouster of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader. Chants of "leave," and "the people want to bring down the regime" rang out in the downtown area on that day, harkening back to the 2011 uprising that forced autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in power. As was the case for the April 15 demonstrations, the Muslim Brotherhood, the now-banned Islamist group from which Morsi hails, called on its supporters to take part in Monday's demonstrations. Authorities have detained dozens of activists in recent days, with the arrests continuing until just hours before the planned demonstrations. Freedom for the Brave, an activist group, says nearly 100 people have been arrested since last week. On Monday, at least three journalists were arrested downtown, according to Khaled el-Balshy, a member of the Press Syndicate's board. All three were released several hours later. Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, off the southern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo's protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them. The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multi-billion-dollar package of aid and investment to Egypt, fueling charges that the islands were sold off. Photo: Google Street View A Lumby convenience store clerk is unhurt, but emotionally traumatized after being robbed at knifepoint Sunday. Just after 1 a.m. Sunday, a lone man entered the Mac's store in the downtown core, produced a knife and held it to the lone female clerk. Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy said the suspect held the woman for about 10 minutes and stole an undisclosed amount of cash, lottery tickets and cigarettes before fleeing the store. This was a violent robbery where the female employee was forcibly confined and threatened with a knife. Although not physically injured, the employee has been significantly traumatized by this incident, said Noseworthy. She did co-operate, but the fact that he produced a knife and held her at knife point on the floor for a period of time is terrifying. The male suspect is described as 5-foot-6 with a medium build. He was wearing a grey or light brown hoodie, blue or black pants, dark running shoes with a white line on the sole, a dark neoprene mask covering his lower face, sunglasses and black and yellow mechanics gloves. When the man first entered the store, he locked the front door leading police to believe the robbery was well planned. Anyone with information is asked to call the RCMP. Photo: Contributed Chess players who have gathered for 50 years in a West Vancouver shopping mall will be meeting elsewhere in the facility following a protracted stalemate and public outcry over the group's abrupt banishment. Park Royal Shopping Centre manager Karen Donald says players have been offered a new space to be installed on the mall's second floor. Donald says in a statement that she's glad a long-standing tradition is being allowed to continue. On March 22, Donald sent a letter to player Terry Fellows ordering the group to leave the food court by month's end or the mall would contact police. The group received an outpouring of support, and the nearby West Vancouver Presbyterian Church announced it would hold a sit-in protest in solidarity with the players. Fellows says the group is grateful for all the support and commends Park Royal on the resolution. Church minister Glenn Inglis also believes public action inspired the mall's change of heart. "It's wonderful, it really is," he says, adding that next weekend's planned sit-in has been called off. Park Royal has announced there will be a community chess event at the mall later this year. Photo: File photo In a unique move that has shaken up the 2016 U.S. presidential race, Donald Trump's primary opponents have announced they have created an informal alliance against him. The goal of this tag-team is twofold: first, hold down Trump in a few key states to make it impossible for him to grab the delegates he needs for a quick win at the Republican convention, then defeat him on subsequent convention ballots. Here are five key questions about this arrangement, answered. What's the plan? Trump has two opponents left for the nomination. They now intend to co-ordinate efforts. Sen. Ted Cruz will focus on winning Indiana; he will leave New Mexico and Oregon for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. They are doing this two ways. The first is self-explanatory: they will avoid campaigning on each other's turf. But their public statement went an extra step. They instructed allies to follow their lead. Legally, campaigns can't collaborate with richly funded, independent groups better known as Super PACs. This sends these groups a clear message: No advertisements against one another in selected states. How does it work? It's all about keeping Trump from reaching the magic number: 1,237. That's how many delegates it takes to secure the nomination, with a 50-per-cent-plus-one majority on the first ballot in July. It is going to be close. A Canadian Press analysis of the remaining states suggests that if Trump's poll numbers hold up he could find himself along the edge of 1,237 delegates entering the Republican convention. A key wildcard is Indiana. Almost 10 per cent of the remaining delegates will be allocated in that state May 3. And nearly half those Indiana delegates are winner-take-all, meaning they are awarded en masse to whoever finishes No. 1. Can it succeed? Maybe. Trump has a tight lead in Indiana polls. It's 39 per cent for Trump, 33 per cent for Cruz, 19 per cent for Kasich according to an average of polls compiled by the site Real Clear Politics. Should Kasich voters shift as a block to support Cruz, he would win the state, and they would keep Trump from winning a few dozen critical delegates. Can it fail? Several signs point to: Yes. The plan wasn't even a day old Monday, and several cracks had already appeared. For starters, this was announced three weeks after advance voting had already started in Indiana. Even now, it's doubtful Kasich voters will act as a bloc. A Fox News poll suggests Kasich supporters are, in fact, almost as likely to prefer Trump (33 per cent) as Cruz (41 per cent) for their second choice. With such percentages, Trump would almost certainly squeak by. Yet another problem involves messaging: these would-be allies don't have one. Cruz called the agreement momentous. Kasich called it no big deal. Trump's message Monday was way simpler: He said the political system is corrupt and rigged against outsiders like him. What are they saying? Cruz, to reporters Monday: "We're all in on Indiana... It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana, to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump... Donald has been a minority candidate a fringe candidate (who) benefited early in the race by having a multitude of opponents where the opposition to Donald was diffuse... We are seeing the full spectrum of the Republican party uniting... I understand that Donald will whine. That's what he does. Donald is a sore loser." Kasich: "I never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me. But I'm not over there campaigning and spending resources. We have limited resources... I don't have, you know, Daddy Warbucks behind me giving me all this money... I don't see this as any big deal." Trump, to a rally: "If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude. So they colluded. Actually I was happy. Because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are... It takes two guys longtime politicians to try and get together to try and beat Trump." Photo: Contributed British Columbia's highest court has ruled that two federal laws from the previous Conservative government's tough-on-crime agenda amount to cruel and unusual punishment and are unconstitutional. The B.C. Appeal Court has struck down mandatory, two-year minimum sentences for drug trafficking convictions that involve someone under the age of 18 or that occur in a public place frequented by youth. The unanimous decision from the panel says a mandatory-minimum sentence of two years in such instances may be at times "grossly disproportionate" to the crime committed, so breaches an accused charter rights. The ruling is the latest in several cases where courts have overturned mandatory-minimum sentences that are largely the legacy of the former Conservative government. A Supreme Court of Canada decision two weeks ago put an end to minimum sentences for specific drug crime convictions and limits on pre-trial credit in some conditions where bail is denied. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the earlier ruling by saying his government was reviewing the laws around such sentences. Photo: Google Street View A suspect has been identified in a North Okanagan arson, but the culprit will not be facing any charges. Toilet paper and Post-it notes were used to start a fire in the girl's washroom of AL Fortune Secondary School in Enderby last month. The school was evacuated and Enderby volunteer firefighters quickly brought the blaze under control. Fire officials said the bathroom was heavily damaged and smoke filled the school, which was closed for two school days while crews vented the building. Vernon RCMP Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy said they have a suspect, but are not recommending charges and will let the school system hand out the punishment. Photo: Contributed To the Mayor and Council, The recent news of Sharon Simpson evoking the Covenant for the proposed Tourist Information Centre at the foot of Queensway has perhaps provided another opportunity for the City to consider utilizing the Fintry Queen for this purpose. An ideal location for the ship exists immediately to the south of the Queensway boat launch, where a small sandy beach exists today. This sand could be easily removed and the ship could be brought right up to the existing breakwater, directly behind the tourist boat ticket kiosk. Moored close to shore in this manner, she would not extend past the commercial boat pier, and thus not interfere with the Yacht Club or the use of the City's Septic Tank Pump-out Station. Power and sewer are available in the immediate area. The ship would be located mere feet away from the Centre's proposed location, yet outside of the Covenant Lands, unrestricted in its use for retail or other purposes. The Fintry Queen comprises more than 9000 sq ft of useable deck space. The Main Deck is both heated and air conditioned. The Forward Lounge could be a reception area, while the Dining Room could be converted for multiple uses. The Second Deck provides both a Sun Deck and sheltered After Deck, which could be converted into office space. The Top Rear Deck could be accessed for outdoor events and receptions. In essence, the ship is a large floating platform, with three levels, which could be converted and redesigned into most any configuration, at a minimal cost compared to any new building construction. There has been much discussion about the value of a new Tourist Information Centre in this electronic age. What there has also been, is a tremendous amount of public support for the Fintry Queen and for its place as part of Kelowna's history. An iconic ship on the waterfront, would be an attraction for tourists and a focal point for events, meetings and community gatherings. How better to recognize the past than to make it a living part of the City's future. I am convinced that utilizing the Fintry Queen in this manner would garner widespread public support. I am eager to take City and Tourism Kelowna Staff out to the ship for a tour and further discussion. I hope that you will give this opportunity your careful consideration. Andy Schwab Photo: CTV A 20-year-old Vancouver man is lucky to be alive after enduring a brutal beating. Richmond RCMP officers were called just after 5 p.m. on April 21 to Minoru Boulevard where as many as three people were attacking a man. He suffered numerous injuries, including a broken arm and cuts to the head. We believe that this was a targeted attack, says Cpl. Dennis Hwang. "Officers from our Serious Crimes Unit are involved in this active and ongoing investigation. We were quite worried for the victim, as he was in and out of consciousness when we arrived. He is very lucky to be alive. We are looking for any information that can help us find those who are responsible for this horrific attack. Police said the victim, who is known to police, is expected to make a full recovery. The three suspects are described as men who are possibly in their early to mid-20s. Photo: CTV Five dogs were saved from death and flown to B.C. for a new leash on life. The animals, which were destined for slaughter in Southeast Asia, arrived in Vancouver Saturday, to be adopted out to local families. According to CTV Vancouver, a rescue group in Thailand stopped the dogs from being transported to the illegal meat trade, where they would have been packed into tiny cages and often tortured to tenderize the meat before they are killed. The local Vancouver-area group, LEASH worked with the Thai rescue organization Soi Dog to bring the pooches to Canada. Soi Dog Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that helps the homeless, neglected and abused dogs and cats of Thailand and works to end the dog meat trade throughout the region. Each year thousands of dogs are inhumanely transported from Thailand to neighbouring countries, such as Vietnam, where they are butchered. This trade is condemned by the majority of Thailands population. Soi Dog along with the Thai Government are working end the practice. Cassi MacDonald, spokesperson for LEASH, was at YVR to welcome the dogs when they arrived. These guys came from horrible conditions where they were jammed into cages, loaded on to large trucks and headed towards the border, she told CTV. Currently Soi Dog is housing more than 1,200 adoptable canines, which were previously destined for the illegal meat trade. LEASH has committed to bringing eight of these dogs to Metro Vancouver: Buster, Cherish, Trayat, Satia and Woodpecker are the first to arrive. The group is looking for potential adopters who will give these pups a loving home. Until the rescues have been rehabilitated, they will stay with foster families as they adjust to their new surroundings. Interested adopters are asked to visit the rescue agencys website and Facebook page. Photo: RCMP There is still no sign of Caitlin Potts who has now been missing for two months. However, Vernon RCMP Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy said police do not suspect foul play at this time. Potts was last seen on Feb. 22, and made contact with friends on social media Feb. 26, but has not been heard from since. The 27-year-old First Nations woman was reported missing March 1. There was some speculation Potts had moved back to Calgary where her mother lives, but Noseworthy said there is no indication she did so. We are following up on numerous leads. It's been a very active investigation, said Noseworthy, adding police have talked to dozens of people and conducted air and ground searches, but she declined to say where the searches were held. We have gone into all aspects of her online activities and are doing everything we can to find her. It is a matter we are taking very seriously, but we are not prepared to say foul play involved. Noseworthy said Potts has gone missing before, but never for this long. She has a residence in Enderby and no history of mental health issues. Potts is described as about five-foot-three, 150 pounds with brown eyes and black hair. There is also still no sign of Terrence Strynadka who was last seen Feb. 15 near Swan Lake in the North Okanagan. Strynadka is described as a Caucasian male, 63 years old, five-foot-nine, 189 pounds with grey hair, grey moustache and beard and brown eyes Anyone with information on the whereabouts of either person is urged to contact their local police, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS). If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... Semen Indonesia signs cost-cutting deal with Pertamina ICR Newsroom By 25 April 2016 Semen Indonesia (SI) has signed an agreement with oil and gas firm Pertamina that will see the latter provide oil for SIs needs in production, transportation and logistics. The Jakarta Post says the deal could save SI up to IDR1tn (USS$75.7m) and would also involve Pertamina providing assistance in converting SIs operations to gas power. Semen Indonesias president director Suparni said: [The agreement] is to ensure that the company can increase its operations and also to help in the development of new projects. We operate in many regions and consume a lot of energy so Pertamina may assist us in providing fuel, lubricants or even energy to fuel power plants for our new factories. Pertamina president director Dwi Soetjipto, who once held the same role at SI, said: [We will assist] in converting [fuel sources] from oil to gas and also develop the use of geothermal potentials in Aceh. So far, the cement industrys main energy source has been coal, which is not good for the environment. We will help them convert. Published under Italcementi workers presents demands 25 April 2016 The Italian unions Feneal Uil, Filca Cisl and Cgil Fillea representing Italcementi cement workers, have announced a strike in response to the industrial plan proposed by the government, which may result in 415 dismissals this year and further 250 redundancies in 2017. On 14 April, workers at Italcementi declared their intention to strike, arguing that Heidelbergcement, which is in the process of acquiring the Italian cement manufacturer, had failed to address workers concerns. HeidelbergCements business plan requires a reduction of 415 employees at Bergamo, with 250 additional redundancies across the company's Italian production sites, which could take place in September 2017. In a counter-proposal, the unions presented five demands to the deputy minister of Economy and Development, including: scheduling a round table discussion with the old and new owners; maintaining the technical assistance centre in Bergamo; maintaining production site assets and the expected employment levels, at least until the end of the transition period concluding in 2020; providing additional social security protection plan for the entire group. The next meeting with the ministry will be at the beginning of May. Published under Apply This takes you to the NIRSAL MFB window of NYIF Emerson Russell, CEO of ERMC, has been named the 2016 Chattanooga Area Manager of the Year. He will be honored with the award during a luncheon on June 8. Member organizations of CAMOY (Chattanooga Area Manager of the Year) award this annual honor, now in its 31st year, to recognize an executive manager who has made significant contributions to the Chattanooga area. According to Carolyn Stringer, chair of the 2016 CAMOY event, Mr. Russell joins 30 previous recipients of the CAMOY award who truly embody management as a profession. Emerson Russell is a dedicated icon of the American free enterprise system, Ms. Stringer said. He is widely recognized for ethical management practices, efficient training for employees and creating jobs in Chattanooga and beyond as he serves his community through civic, professional and educational leadership. A Chattanooga native, Mr. Russell exhibited entrepreneurial thinking from an early age. Growing up, Mr. Russell spent part of each summer with relatives in rural Sequatchie County. One summer, an uncle approached him about borrowing money to be repaid at the end of the summer. When he was unable to repay the debt, Mr. Russell suggested accepting two pigs instead of the money. He returned to Chattanooga and sold the two pigs at a profit higher than the debt. As a teenager, Mr. Russell worked at Mostellers Garage on Main Street. At 16, he ran his own car lot buying and selling cars, and was soon financing them as well. After developing an interest in law, he began working as a policeman and later attended Texas A&M and became the Citys polygrapher. He launched ERMC as a security company in 1972. The company now offers a full-range of janitorial, maintenance, security and landscaping services to more than 200 companies across the country in industries ranging from aviation and industrial to retail and residential. This bundling of services mentality is unique in the facility services industry. Mr. Russell maintains an open door policy in his company. He is known for empowering employees to think outside the box to accomplish goals and tasks, and remembers employee birthdays and special events with a phone call. Today, Mr. Russell has started or acquired more than 30 companies, and has hired more than 5,000 employees in more than 35 states. Mr. Russells extensive community involvement has supportedTennessee Workforce Investment Board, the SE TN Development District Board, Salvation Army, American Heart Association, TN Private Protection Services Board, the Hunter Worley Foundation, the Shriners, the Masons, the Southeastern Legal Foundation Board and the Chambers of Commerce for Chattanooga and for Catoosa County, GA, The Rotary Club and Siskin Childrens Institute. Mr. Russell enjoys spending time with his five children all of whom work with ERMC or one of Russells other companies, 13 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. The 2016 CAMOY Luncheon celebrates Russells achievementsJune 8 at 11:30 a.m. at the Chattanooga Convention Center. Individual tickets are $45; tables for eight are $450. Contact Valerie Gifford to reserve a spot at 423 634-3563 or valerie.gifford@tvfcu.com. To learn more about the Chattanooga Area Manager of the Year Award, visit www.camoy.org. For the second time in less than a month, the Justice Department has backed off using the courts to force Apple to help it gain access to a locked iPhone in an investigation. On Friday, it told a federal court in Brooklyn that it no longer needs Apple's help in pulling data from a drug dealer's iPhone after someone came forward with a passcode. In California, three and a half weeks ago, the government abandoned a bid to compel Apple's assistance in helping unlock a terrorist's iPhone after a third party sold the FBI a method to crack the device. In both cases the government had asserted Apple was the only one who could provide the technical assistance. Legal analysts and industry lawyers are divided on whether the discovery of alternatives undermines the Justice Department's case in seeking similar court orders in the future. "It's going to be a much tougher putt for the government the next time this happens," said Craig A. Newman, a partner at Patterson Belknap who chairs the firm's data privacy group. "The Justice Department has now shown that workarounds exist without forcing Apple to break into its own devices. Intentionally or not, the bar just got higher and the government will be hard-pressed to argue again that Apple is its only alternative." But Michael Sussmann, a partner at Perkins Coie who represents tech firms, disagreed. "There will be phones the government just can't gain access to, and they'll be able to say truthfully, 'We need the data and we have no way to access it,' " he said. "The fact that in these two cases they found a way in or got lucky won't change that." Nonetheless, said Ira Rubinstein, a senior fellow at New York University School of Law's Information Law Institute, "In future cases, the government may have to show it has exhausted alternative methods of breaking into a locked device." Rubenstein, former associate general counsel at Microsoft, added that the court may wish to hear from independent security researchers before deciding whether to compel an unwilling firm to provide assistance. Since October, when the government sought an order from a federal judge in Brooklyn, Apple has received at least 11 similar court orders directing it to help the government gain access to information on locked iPhones. It objected to the orders and has not heard from the government since. Google also has received orders to help federal agents retrieve data from encrypted cellphones, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. FBI officials said they have recovered more than 3,000 phones in criminal investigations in the past six months. They have been unable to extract data from about 400, or about 13 percent, of those phones. All the orders for assistance cited the All Writs Act, a little-known law that has vaulted into prominence with the Apple case. The Justice Department has cited a 1985 decision that found that the All Writs Act is a source of authority to issue writs "not otherwise covered by statute." Part of the test for granting an order under the law is whether there is any alternative way to achieve the same goal, noted James Garland, a partner at Covington & Burling whose clients include tech firms. "I'm sure the Justice Department was telling the truth when they told the courts they were unable to unlock these phones, so it's not exactly the boy who cried wolf," said Garland, a former senior department official. "But the fact that they subsequently figured out how to do it - without Apple's help - may well give courts pause before issuing similar orders in the future." In Brooklyn, an unnamed individual on Thursday evening provided the passcode to the government, which was then able to gain access to the iPhone, U.S. Attorney Robert L. Capers wrote in a one-paragraph submission on Friday to Judge Margo K. Brodie in the Eastern District of New York. Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said officials were not releasing the individual's name because the investigation is ongoing. Apple stated in a filing earlier this month that the government had made "no serious attempt" to obtain the phone's passcode from the drug dealer. The Silicon Valley firm had no comment on the Brooklyn development. The San Bernardino case had attracted worldwide attention as the first major legal showdown between the government and Apple over gaining access to an encrypted phone. Apple portrayed the Justice Department's effort to force compliance as setting a dangerous precedent. The government rejected that characterization. As we have said previously, these cases have never been about setting a court precedent," Pierce said. "They are about law enforcement's ability and need to access evidence on devices pursuant to lawful court orders and search warrants." Until recently, Sussmann noted, "Apple vs. the FBI was shaping up to be the tech battle of the century." But the government last month backed down from the legal fight in California. Then on Friday, he said, "the second front in that campaign ended with a whimper, too. The government is obviously bringing every non-legal tool and resource to bear on unlocking encrypted iPhones, but these successes can't last and a return to the courts won't be far off." Chicago got international attention, and ridicule, when the City Council on April 26, 2006, approved a ban on foie gras, the fatty livers created by force-feeding ducks and geese. A famous actress-activist told aldermen that the practice was comparable to abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Mayor Richard M. Daley called the ban "the silliest law that they've ever passed." Chicago wasn't a foie gras-free zone for long: The ordinance was repealed in May 2008. Here's how the controversy unfolded. Foie gras and animal rights Advertisement A duck is force-fed with a tube down its throat to enlarge its liver at the Sonoma Foie Gras farm in Farmington, Calif. Several states and cities had banned foie gras by the early 2000s, calling force-feeding abusive. Ducks like this one began gaining sympathizers in the Chicago restaurant business and City Council in 2005. (Peter DaSilva/New York Times) Trotter takes a stand Advertisement Chicago celebrity chef Charlie Trotter brought local attention to the issue of foie gras and animal cruelty when he announced in March 2005 that his famous namesake restaurant would no longer serve the delicacy. Trotter said his visits to foie gras farms convinced him that the force-feeding process causes the birds to suffer. (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune) Foie gras warrior Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, led the anti-foie gras charge in the City Council, saying it caused the "torture of innocent and defenseless creatures." In September 2005, he introduced an ordinace banning the food. (Heather Stone/Chicago Tribune) Foie gras compared with Iraq prison Actress and animal rights activist Loretta Swit appeared at a City Council Health Committee meeting on Oct. 25, 2005, and compared the practice of raising foie gras with the abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. (Heather Stone/Chicago Tribune) Foie gras defender Chef Didier Durand, of now-closed Cyrano's in the River North neighborhood, defended foie gras at the City Council Health Committee meeting on Oct. 25, 2005, insisting "there is no torture" in the production of the delicacy. But committee members approved the ban and sent it to the full City Council for a vote. (Heather Stone/Chicago Tribune) Sacre bleu! No foie gras for you With Ald. Bernard Stone, 50th, temporarily presiding over the meeting, aldermen voted on April 26, 2006 to outlaw the sale of foie gras, ending a months-long culinary battle between goose huggers and gastronomes. (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune) Hizzoner was not pleased Advertisement "The City Council will be sitting in your kitchen to determine ... what you should (eat) on a Sunday after church," Mayor Richard M. Daley complained. He began working on a repeal soon after aldermen approved the foie gras ban. (Bonnie Trafelet/Chicago Tribune) Ban becomes big honking deal The foie gras ban was mocked on "The Colbert Report," and TV food personality and author Anthony Bourdain said it made Chicago look like "some stupid cow town." Restaurants push back Chef Paul Katz of Haray Caray's pours sauce over a foie gras and scallop dish on Aug. 22, 2006, the day the ban went into effect. Some restaurants sold foie gras in protest that day, and the Illinois Restaurant Association filed suit against the city. (Charles Cherney/Chicago Tribune) Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Activists press restaurants Animal rights activists gather in front of Bin 36 restaurant in Chicago on Jan. 28, 2007, to protest the restaurant's continued serving of foie gras. Several restaurants still offered foie gras on their menus in defiance of the new ordinance. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune) Advertisement City targets Hot Doug's Doug Sohn, owner of Hot Doug's, flaunted the foie gras ban by openly offering hot dogs laced with the delicacy. He became the target of Chicago's first foie gras bust on Feb. 16, 2007, and paid a $250 fine the next month. (John Dziekan/Chicago Tribune) Moore tries to salvage ban Allies of Mayor Daley, and aldermen sympathetic to restaurant industry opposition to the foie gras ban, were ready for a repeal within two years. Ald. Moore stood up for his ordinance during a City Council meeting on May 14, 2008. But he was unable to persuade his colleagues they voted to repeal, and Chicago became foie gras-friendly once again. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune) Chef Durand with friend Cheese is the most stolen food in the world. But dont try to sneak away with the raw milk Miranda by Vulto Creamery. The stinkiness will give you away. Luckily you can simply sample its deliciousness -- with the bloomy absinthe-washed rind around a creamy silken paste -- at the Pastoral Artisan Producer Festival, and even meet the maker, Jos Vulto, based in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York, and ask him the poignant story about why the cheese is named after his late wife. Meet more than 100 artisan makers at the sixth annual event Saturday, April 30, at the Chicago French Market in the West Loop, and sample not only cheese, but charcuterie, confections, beer, wine, spirits and more, made locally and globally. If you like what you try, you can buy it too. Plus this year, the event falls on James Beard Awards weekend, immediately preceding the big gala, so a stage show has been added with Beard award-nominated chefs doing demos. Look for Nico Osteria chef Erling Wu-Bower working with Shepherds Way Farms sheep milk cheese from Minnesota, as well as Big Jones' Paul Fehribach, Heritage Tavern's Dan Fox and L'Etoile's Tory Miller, each working with artisan foods. All of them will talk about the importance of sourcing and offer demo dish samples. The festival is free, thanks to the Specialty Food Association, but for the first time, it will accept a suggested $5 donation at the door. Proceeds will benefit Purple Asparagus and the Daphne Zepos Teaching Award, a scholarship fund for aspiring cheese professionals. I met with Pastoral Artisan Cheese Bread & Wine co-owner/co-founder Greg ONeill at the recently refreshed French Market and asked him what the most extreme cheese might be at the festival. He picked the Miranda, and suggested serving it with caramelized onion Potters Crackers made in Wisconsin and now California too. Peter Potter Weber and his mom, Nancy Potter, who owned the New Glarus Bakery in Wisconsin for 25 years, founded the company when they realized the need for better crackers with great cheese. Also featured will be one of the rock stars of the cheese world, Andy Hatch, co-owner and cheesemaker at Uplands Cheese Co. in Wisconsin, who will also speak on a panel discussing "What Is Good Food?" with Good Food Award directors Sarah Weiner and Christine Schantz, Olympia Provisions co-founder Eli Cairo, and Big Spoon Roasters founder Mark Overbay. Hatch makes two kinds of cheese: the firm, nutty Pleasant Ridge Reserve and the coveted Rush Creek Reserve. The latter is what I call my birthday cheese, because a very limited number of strong, meaty cheeses sell out quickly every year in the fall. Do note that the festival runs 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. only, but the French Market and MetraMarket vendors will be open for business as usual too. They include the new and popular Aloha Poke, which may offer a palate cleanser with refreshing fish salad bowls. Pastoral Artisan Producer Festival, 131 N. Clinton St. (Chicago French Market at Ogilvie Transportation Center), pastoralartisan.com/artisanproducerfestival , 800-721-4781. lchu@tribpub.com Twitter @louisachu McDonald's "Big Mac" has historically been pitted against Burger King's "Whopper," but the Chicago area has its own unique ballgame where fast food wars boil down to the Chicago-style hot dog facing up against the Italian beef. The rivalry will shine brightly on Harlem and Lawrence avenues in Harwood Heights when Portillo's opens a 10,000-square-foot restaurant later this year directly across the street from where Buona Beef debuted the chain's first Harwood Heights store, at 7373 W. Lawrence Ave., only six months ago. Advertisement The operators for both restaurant chains spoke highly of each other when asked about whether being in close proximity to the other could present a problem. "They're a giant compared to us, but we have our loyal customer base," said Joe Buonavolanto, co-owner of Buona Beef. "I think people enjoy coming back to us because our beef is made with an original family recipe, and when you walk into our dining rooms we don't hand you a bag full of food." Advertisement Like Buona Beef, Portillo's will have a drive-thru and outdoor patio seating, along with spacious indoor dining space. Aside from hot dogs and Italian beefs, both serve different variations of Chicago-style staples, such as burgers, fries, salads, pasta, and milkshakes. Like Buona Beef, which offers a short menu of wine and beer products, Portillo's also plans to apply for a liquor license to sell beer, according to Portillo's spokesman Nick Scarpino Despite the similarities in the menus and business models, Scarpino said there's room for both restaurants in Harwood Heights. "We think this area can support a Buona Beef and a Portillo's," Scarpino said. "Buona Beef has their signature items, and we have ours there's plenty of room for us both to do well in Harwood Heights." Harwood Heights Mayor Arlene Jezierny said the village doesn't discriminate against competing business uses, but the opening of a direct competitor just a few hundred feet away from Buona Beef has raised some questions among Buona Beef staff. Buonavolanto one of five brothers who helped grow the family business into 17 locations in the Chicago area since his father Joe Buonavolanto Sr. started the chain in Berwyn 30 years ago said he was blindsided when he heard Portillo's was opening. "We bought the property from (the village), so we thought we'd get a courtesy call on this, but they didn't' tell us," Buonavolanto said. "It's not that big of a deal there's a McDonald's and a Burger King on every corner." Jezierny said Harwood Heights sent a written notice to Buona Beef, along with all property owners within a 500-foot radius of the proposed new restaurant, of an April 6 Plan Commission meeting where Chicago-based developer Bradford Real Estate Co. unveiled its plans to build a Portillo's and an Art Van Furniture on the empty 8-acre lot. "It is not the role of the village to select individual users and address competition between them," Jezierny said in an email. "It's commonplace to see competing businesses located next to each other or within a short distance apart." Advertisement When Buona Beef came to town, it agreed to a sales tax deal with the village of Harwood Heights when it purchased the village-owned property where the restaurant opened in October 2015 on the corner of Lawrence and Oketo avenues. The parcel of land previously housed village hall until a new one was built more than 10 years ago on Wilson Avenue. That agreement gives Buona Beef a 50 percent cut of the sales tax generated from the restaurant, up to $200,000, according to the village. Buona Beef had tried to negotiate a $750,000 selling price for the property, according to village attorney Mark Heinle, who told the Pioneer Press last year that the sales tax agreement was a means of compromise. Portillo's is expected to open in a 9,900-square-foot building that resembles a 1950s-style diner sometime by the end of the year, Scarpino said. The restaurant will have 250 seats inside and room for 40 outside on the patio. Buona Beef has a 120-seat indoor dining room and an outdoor patio facing Lawrence avenue that accommodates an additional 40 guests. Six months since opening its doors to hundreds of fans who lined up on opening day for a chance to win a contest offering free beef for a year to the first 100 people to enter the store, business at Buona Beef has been steady, and Buonavolanto said they were "doing well." Keeping in line with a long-running tradition for Buona Beef, all 17 locations will offer customers half-priced Italian beef, sausage, meatballs, and combo meals on May 28 in honor of National Beef Day. The chain plans to add three new locations in Illinois this year, including Algonquin and Frankfort, Buonavolanto said. Advertisement Natalie Hayes is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. Guarded by detectives, Corazon Amurao arrives at the courthouse in Peoria to testify as the state's chief witness against Richard Speck on April 5, 1967. (Harold Norman / Chicago Tribune) Corazon Amurao Atienza has moved on with her life and wants to be happy every day. Fifty years ago she managed to crawl under a bed and hide while Richard Speck methodically stabbed and strangled eight young nurses after telling them he would not hurt them, that he just needed money to get to New Orleans. Advertisement "She is doing very, very well," said William Martin, 79, the former assistant state's attorney who was the lead prosecutor in the case. "She laughs a lot." Martin talked recently in his Oak Park law office about Cora's bravery. He has remained in contact with her all these years. Advertisement Attorney William J. Martin, 79, talks about Corazon Amurao Atienza, the lone survivor of the Richard Speck murders. Atienza was the states key witness when Martin prosecuted Speck in the 1967 trial. Martin and Atienza kept in contact as Martin collaborated with author Dennis Breo, updating the book "Crime of the Century," about the Speck murder case. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) "What she did that night, very few human beings would have the courage to do. She had the guts to move (under the bed), which saved her life," Martin said. The murders happened in a townhouse in the 2300 block of East 100th Street that served as housing for student nurses who worked at South Chicago Community Hospital. Atienza was one of three Filipina exchange nurses who lived there, too, and worked at the hospital. Her roommates and friends were killed by Speck on July 14, 1966, after he broke in armed with a gun and a knife. Speck was captured two days later when an emergency room doctor at Cook County Hospital thought a patient he was treating for self-inflicted gashes looked familiar. The doctor had just had a dinner break and had seen the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer's face. As he was sponging blood off the patient's arm, he saw that the man had a tattoo that said "Born to Raise Hell" that matched the description from the newspaper. He had no doubt. Cook County Assistant States Attorney William Martin, left, watches as witness Corazon Amurao uses a scale model of the townhouse crime scene to detail the murder of eight nurses by Richard Speck, center background, during Specks 1966 trial in Peoria, Ill. (R.K. Davidson) "I was just as amazed as everyone that this despicable person landed on my surgical service that evening," Dr. LeRoy Smith said in an email this month. Despite the horror of what happened, Atienza carries warm memories of her friends, Martin said. "When Merlita (Gargullo) cooked adobo filipino and pancit and they came home from the hospital and smelled the food and they say 'it's good' so we invited them to join us to eat, and they really like it. That was a good time that we had," she told Martin in a recent email. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 20 Pamela Wilkening, left, Mary Ann Jordan, right, and Suzanne Farris, second from right, are shown with other student nurses having fun with a South Chicago Community Hospital School of Nursing banner, circa 1966. (Schmale family ) Atienza, 73, retired about five years ago after many years as a critical care nurse in Washington, D.C. She now spends most of her time with her husband, Alberto, daughter Abigail, son Christian and her six grandchildren. A doting mother and grandmother, she enjoys baby-sitting her grandchildren about twice a week and the constant companionship of her children. Abigail Atienza followed in her mother's footsteps and became a nurse practitioner, and Christian is a certified public accountant. Advertisement Atienza visits the Philippines every three years to see relatives. After Speck's trial she moved back to the Philippines and married in 1969, but she returned to the U.S. about four years later. She began working at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington and then at the Veterans Administration Medical Center. But to this day Atienza suffers nightmares that Speck will come back and kill her. She also had a hard time believing he actually died of a heart attack in prison in 1991 and wonders why she was spared. "I think there was somebody up there who was hiding me from him. God was so nice," she said in an email to Martin. William Martin, shown April 22, 2016, in his Oak Park law office, was the lead prosecutor in the Richard Speck mass murder case. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune) Martin and Dennis Breo are co-authors of a 1993 book called "The Crime of the Century." The book is a detailed account of the months before the crime and ends with the drama of the trial. It is being republished for the anniversary with updated sections, including one about Atienza. It will be available May 10. Atienza did not respond to Tribune requests for an interview. Martin said he'll never forget a key moment in Atienza's testimony during the trail. Advertisement She was petrified of Speck but had the courage to step down from the witness stand, walk up to him and point her finger 2 inches from his forehead. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "This is the man," she said as pandemonium erupted. Corazon Amurao, center, the nurse who survived the massacre of eight of her fellow student nurses, walks between another nurse and William Ruddel, Bridewell jail superintendent, from Bridewell's Cermak Memorial Hospital after a second visit to the building where Richard Speck was being held on July 19, 1966. Amurao had arrived the previous day to identify the killer in person, but Speck was not well enough. On this day, Amurao personally identified Speck as the killer. (Chicago Tribune historical photo / Chicago Tribune) "She showed the indomitability of her spirit by continuing her path as a nurse and dedicating her life to helping others and raising a family, but you can never get something like this out of your life," Martin said. Atienza became friends and learned to play penny-ante poker with the policemen and bodyguards who watched over her for an entire year while she was in protective custody. She still gets a kick out of playing poker at casinos in Nevada with her husband. She appreciates every day of life and wants to be happy all the time, because life is not long, Martin said she told him recently. The murders continue to have a profound impact on American crime and American society, Martin said. Many people are unaware of the case, which was the first random mass murder of the 20th century. Advertisement "It ended an innocence we all had,'' Martin said. "A lot of us never locked our doors but the Speck case changed all that." rsobol@tribpub.com Blue Island resident Lisa Zamora, center, joins dozens of volunteers from different organizations to plant 29 trees along Canal St. in Blue Island on Saturday, April 23, 2016. The Morton Arboretum and Cook County Forest Preserve District, The Nature Conservancy, and other entities are working together to fight tree devastation due to emerald ash borer and related threats, and increase the number of trees in the Chicago region. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) Lydia Scott logged more than 600 miles in her hybrid SUV last year, identifying tree species, measuring them and estimating their maturity on green patches from Chicago's South Side to far-flung Harvard. She is both foot soldier and field general in the most comprehensive tree census of any large U.S. metropolitan area. The review, which also used aerial laser scanning, found that more than 157 million trees are growing in the seven-county Chicago region, a number that translates to about 21 percent of the area covered in trees and shrubs well below the national average of 27 percent. Advertisement All that counting and cataloging reveal a somewhat bleak past for woody plants in the region, which is emerging from the emerald ash borer scourge that experts say will have wiped out 13 million trees by the time it moves downstate. Adding to that devastation is the European buckthorn the area's most dominant tree, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all species an invasive plant that shoves out the state's native oak. The hope is that the specifics of that distressing picture can provide insights for an unprecedented campaign to turn around history. It's called the Chicago Region Trees Initiative, and the goal is to add more woody plants and keep them healthy no matter what threats descend on northeast Illinois. Advertisement Scott, a former assistant public works director, is the campaign's executive director. "It's more than trees," she said one afternoon at Morton Arboretum, the lead organization of the effort and where Scott works as the community trees program manager. "It's really quality of life. You go back to what you learn in grade school about nature as a web. One community is going to impact another community and on around. By working together, we can have a more collective impact." Exactly how the tree initiative will accomplish its goal comes down to a network of 13 lead partners including the arboretum, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Forest Service, Openlands and the Landscape Contractors Association. Overall, almost 200 entities have signed up as partners, Scott said. The initiative has established eight work groups responsible for gathering and crunching data to find more places to plant trees, training public employees and private citizens in forestry and tree stewardship, promoting the campaign and raising money. At the heart of the effort is planting trees to restore the urban and suburban forests in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties. Since its launch in 2013, the Chicago Region Trees Initiative has staffed its work groups and begun offering training. It also has obtained a $400,000 U.S. Forest Service grant, in addition to Morton Arboretum's estimated $400,000 seed money contribution and a $30,000 grant from Bank of America. "We apply for anything we can find," Scott said, adding that the initiative is "starting to show a track record" it can take to larger potential benefactors in the Chicago area. The collective's size also will carry influence across the U.S., she said. "We're hoping that we'll be able to go to some national funders to say that we're really establishing a whole new paradigm for how you think about the urban forest," Scott said. Most municipalities are supportive, Scott said, although one that she declined to name has opted out because it prohibits trees on public property and relies on residents to plant their own. In addition, some town foresters have said they simply don't have the time to devote to the initiative's training and related programs, Scott said. Advertisement Funding is another hurdle, Scott said, as municipalities deal with tight budgets lingering from the recession and the expense of fighting the emerald ash borer. Another challenge is a shortage of trees. When the ash borer prompted towns to devote most of their forestry resources to cutting down ash trees, nurseries were left with trees without buyers and destroyed much of the inventory that was too mature to transplant. Now, as towns look to buy trees, nurseries are still trying to catch up with demand. Scott continues to criss-cross the metro area to garner support. She has met with Illinois State Toll Highway Authority officials to talk about planting trees on back slopes of road corridors, and representatives from Catholic Charities to discuss planting more trees in cemeteries. The working-class south suburb of Blue Island is one municipality that has jumped onboard. On Saturday, six days before Arbor Day, the initiative used part of its Bank of America grant to plant trees on Canal Street. The bulk of that money will fund tree plantings along Western Avenue in the future, Scott said. A few days earlier, Scott gave a presentation at a Blue Island Chamber of Commerce breakfast and found a convert. Her name is Peggy Walsh and she has lived in town for nearly four decades. She said she would love for Scott's plans to become reality. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "I look into Blue Island from other communities and I see a desert," Walsh said after the meeting at the City Hall annex. "The air looks dirty. Why is that? There's not enough trees. When you're around trees, it just feels clean. It just feels fresh. It just feels like home." About 70 miles north is another tree apostle, Laura Bover, an administrative assistant in the Round Lake Public Works Department. Advertisement Watching dead ash trees that "looked like sticks" be replaced with new trees in a Round Lake subdivision a few years ago was a transformational experience for her. She became a tree activist and last fall took a class that Scott taught in part to earn her certification as a tree keeper through Openlands. Now Bover is planning to create a volunteer tree-keeping program in the village. "A little bit at a time, and you can do it," she said. "The important thing is that you start." tgregory@tribpub.com Twitter @tgregoryreports Davon Barrett gathered at a home in West Englewood on Sunday to celebrate and remember. A friend had just gotten out of jail, and it was the birthday of his younger brother who was slain seven years ago, according to family and police. As he sat on the porch in the 2000 block of West 68th Place, someone fired shots from a vacant lot east of Damen Avenue shortly after 11 p.m., police said. Barrett, 38, was hit in the head and died at the scene. Another man, 26, was hit in the chest and killed. Three others were wounded and taken to hospitals, where they were stabilized, according to police. Police sources said someone in the group on the porch may have returned fire. It was the third attack in a week in Chicago where four or more people were shot. Police reported no one in custody. Barrett was the third brother in his family to be shot. Earlier in the weekend, Barrett's other brother Cadavius, 36, was shot and seriously wounded. In 2009, Barrett's brother Martel was killed at 17. "Something's got to be done. Something's got to be done," said their great-uncle Herman Clemons, 57. "It doesn't make sense." When Clemons' phone rang Sunday night, he was expecting to hear that Cadavius had died. Police said the group had gathered at the home of a 23-year-old man who was released from Cook County Jail earlier in the day on a felony gun charge, according to a source and court records. The man was not among the wounded. A law enforcement source said some people in the group may have had associations with a Gangster Disciples faction called Sixth Ward. But Clemons said Sunday was also Martel's birthday. "We can't say it's gang-related," Clemons said. "This is a working young man celebrating his younger brother's birthday. And when Martel got killed he was on the way to school. And when Cadavius got shot, he was partying with his girlfriend." Advertisement The shooting happened a few houses down from where Bishop James Dukes, a South Side pastor, converted a home to a community outreach center in 2013. The pastor moved into the house in 2013 after its previous tenants were targeted by gangs. When Dukes moved in, Chicago police regularly had a squad car parked on the block. His goal was to beautify the block with the help of city services to ward off the criminal element. Dukes said the revitalization project fell apart in the face of budget troubles and bureaucratic complications. Advertisement More than half of the houses on the 2000 block of West 68th Place have been abandoned or have burned down, according to Dukes. The drug trade thrives there, and so do gangs, he said. The area is isolated, surrounded by narrow one-way streets and train tracks to the west, Dukes said. Gang members and drug dealers use the tight network of gangways and alleys to elude the police. "When you're in there, you're in there. The people who live there, they know that," he said. "It's a truly isolated area." If the neighborhood does finally turn around, it's isolation could make it a "safe zone" in West Englewood, Dukes said. "These need to be pet projects. But that type of change cannot be gradual," he said. "Every year they need to see four or five houses being transformed, move communities in." Tribune reporter Jeremy Gorner contributed. Muhammad Salah celebrates with his wife, Maryam, left, and other supporters after a verdict was reached in his trial at the Dirksen Federal Building on Feb. 1, 2007. The Bridgeview businessman, accused of aiding the radical Palestinian group Hamas, was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy, but convicted on the lesser charge of obstruction of justice. Jurors deliberated three weeks before reaching a verdict in the three-month trial. (Kuni Takahashi / Chicago Tribune) A southwest suburban father of five who became an early symbol of the U.S. government's war on terror and galvanized Chicago's Arab-American Muslim community shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks died Sunday. Muhammad Salah, 62, of Bridgeview, died Sunday morning of complications from cancer, said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a member of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview where Salah worshipped. His services Sunday afternoon at the foundation drew a crowd of mourners from across the city and suburbs, Sahloul said. Advertisement "It was like Friday prayer today in the funeral prayer ," Sahloul posted on Facebook. "You can sense that he was not a normal person. He was giant in his life and a symbol of the true faithful. He was a role model to all of us with his humility and steadfastness." While in an Israeli prison on charges of providing support to Hamas, Salah, a Palestinian native, was classified as a "specially designated terrorist" by the U.S. Treasury Department in the 1990s. After 55 days of interrogation, he had pleaded guilty to charges that he provided funding to Hamas extremists a confession his lawyers said was coerced by days of sleep deprivation and physical abuse. Advertisement Released from Israeli custody in 1997, federal prosecutors in Chicago brought criminal charges against him six years later. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft heralded the indictment as a vindication of the USA Patriot Act, the controversial terrorism-fighting tool forged by the Bush administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. A jury acquitted Salah of conspiring to support Hamas extremists. But he was found guilty of obstruction of justice for lying under oath when questioned in a civil suit filed by the family of David Boim, an American student killed in a 1996 Hamas shooting in the West Bank. Salah was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2007. While many like the Boim family and the federal government viewed him as a criminal who sought and trained recruits for Hamas on U.S. soil, many Arab-Americans and Palestinians viewed the mild-mannered man as the face of their own struggle and considered his trial to be an indictment of their religious beliefs. Salah and his supporters always maintained his innocence. "A large Muslim community like Chicago's would not have stood by a criminal," Sahloul said. Salah was born in 1953 on the Jordanian side of Jerusalem, which was then divided between Israel and Jordan. He immigrated to the U.S. and became an American citizen in 1970, three years after the Israeli army captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In the U.S., he earned his GED and trained in computers. He worked as a grocer and sometimes as a car dealer, and also took a course in how to become a security guard. He made his home in Bridgeview, which has a sizable Palestinian population, and became a board member of the Mosque Foundation. In January 1993, Salah was arrested at a checkpoint in Gaza, then under Israeli occupation. He was found with $97,400 in his possession, according to the affidavit. Israeli authorities and U.S. prosecutors said he was aiding and abetting terrorists. Salah's attorney said he was on a humanitarian mission. Israel recently had deported a number of Hamas activists to Lebanon and the money Salah brought to the Holy Land was for the support of the exiles' families, lawyers said. Even though he was acquitted on the terrorist charges, Salah was not allowed to get a job, pay rent, obtain medical care or even buy groceries without approval from the U.S. Treasury Department for 17 years the only resident U.S. citizen then living under such intense scrutiny, his attorneys said. To make a living, he drove a van to transport patients to and from doctor's appointments. Advertisement "He was a pillar of faith and that was always obvious," said Seema Imam, a professor of education at National Louis University and a longtime friend. "The fact is that he had so many challenges in his humanitarian life and he managed to smile ... He certainly never had the justice or the trial that most people are afforded." Those economic restrictions ended in 2012, shortly after he sued the U.S. government to his remove his name from the list of "specially designated terrorists." Friends say after cashing his first paycheck, the first purchase he made was flowers for his wife. "Brother Salah was not wealthy. He did not hold positions. He was not a doctor, lawyer, politician, businessman or community leader, but he was an exemplary simple man," Sahloul said. In a statement Sunday, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago praised Salah's "positive attitude through decades of difficulties, that many people would consider impossible." In a 2006 Chicago Tribune Magazine article, Salah expressed confidence in his ultimate vindication. "I wait for the supreme judge," he said to a reporter one day in court. "That's what keeps me going." Advertisement Salah is survived by his wife, Maryam; five children, Ahmad, Abu Bakr, Salma, Soumayya and Ibrahim; and one grandchild. mbrachear@tribpub.com Twitter @TribSeeker The Fox Valley Orchestra and Chorus performs with the Aurora University Chorale on April 30 and May 1. (Fox Valley Orchestra / Handout) The Fox Valley Orchestra and Chorus will be joined by the Aurora University Chorale for two concerts celebrating "The Genius of Schubert" at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Wentz Concert Hall at Naperville's North Central College as well as 3 p.m. Sunday at the Crimi Auditorium at Aurora University. "Franz Schubert's ability to manipulate harmony is creative, and while he stays within the classic era forms he grew up with, he explores a wide palette of harmonic colors that push those forms to a new height," said Chorus Master Lisa Fredenburgh. "Schubert has a great ability to paint a physical picture with his incredible ability to change texture." Advertisement The Austrian composer, who lived from 1797 to 1828, is often considered one of the most important figures in music's classic/romantic era. "The American public largely knows of the youth of the prodigy (Wolfgang Amadeus) Mozart, but does not often think of the fact that Schubert was writing music that is in the canon of literature at such an early age," Fredenburgh said. Advertisement The concert features Schubert's Symphony No. 3 in D major, written when the composer was 18 years old and still working as a schoolteacher, Fredenburgh said. He had already completed more than 380 compositions by this point in his relatively short life. "The nature of this symphony is clear, architecturally and harmonically it has a positive, youthful quality that one might expect out of such a young composer," she said. "Even minor sections of movements cannot last too long before Schubert transforms them to a major key. There is great rhythmic vitality that is often quite playful." By contrast, the concert's second piece, Schubert's Mass No. 5 in A-flat, is more "mature," completed in 1822. "The text of the Mass necessarily leads composers to consider the juxtaposition of life and death, the ideas of mercy, forgiveness sacrifice and the many ways that joy and sorrow is experienced by the human spirit," Fredenburgh said. "The work is weighty and serious, but not without deep expressions of joy." Soloists for this concert include soprano Michelle Areyzaga, mezzo Martha Kasten, tenor Joshua Baum and bass Aaron Wardell. "The Mass in A-flat is not done often enough it is a work that should be as famous and beloved as Mozart's 'Requiem,'" Fredenburgh said. "There is something truly powerful about this work. I love the idea of contrasting it with the youthful Symphony No. 3, which I think will surprise the audience as they ponder that an 18-year-old wrote it." Combining the Aurora University Chorale with the Fox Valley Orchestra Chorus doubles the size of the choir and gives the university students an opportunity to sing large choral works with an orchestra. Advertisement "Everyone involved in this concert hopes that the listener has the chance to walk alongside the emotional footsteps of a great thinker in the 19th century," Fredenburgh said. "This music should let the audience both as individuals and as a group of hopeful listeners feel what Schubert felt as he approached the form of the symphony as well as the drama and mystery that the Mass text provides." Concert tickets purchased online are $13 for adults, $11 for students and seniors, and $8 for kids 8 and under, plus a small service charge. Tickets purchased at the door are $15 for adults, $13 for students and seniors, and $9 for kids 8 and under. Jen Banowetz is a freelance writer. Fox Valley Orchestra's 'The Genius of Schubert' Concerts When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday Advertisement Where: Wentz Concert Hall, 171 E. Chicago Ave. Naperville and Crimi Auditorium, 407 S. Calumet Ave., Aurora Tickets: $8-$15 Information: 630-891-2526 or www.foxvalleyorchestra.org Steve Kapas of Lets Make Plano, Illinois Great Again speaks during a recent meeting about parks in the city. (Susan Thanepohn / The Beacon-News) Plano's plans for parks were the focus of a recent meeting in the city. The group Let's Make Plano, Illinois Great Again has been pushing for funds to be used on park projects. Advertisement Alderman Melody Herreid, chairman of the Parks Committee, discussed the park budget and upcoming projects. She said a new park is planned near the police department and a senior housing facility which would include areas for shuffleboard, bocce ball and horseshoes, and a shelter that will have tables for chess and checkers. She said $80,000 is in the budget for that project. Advertisement Also, $202,000 has been allocated for work at Foley Park located at Hale and East Larson streets that is supposed to be matched by a $202,000 grant from the state, she said. However, that project is on hold due to the state budget impasse, she said. Herreid also said a park would be built on donated land at the corner of West and Dearborn streets. The committee has allocated $182,000 in the budget for the park, which would feature handicapped-accessible equipment as well as a 12-foot diameter splash pad. Steve Kapas of Let's Make Plano, Illinois Great Again voiced concerns over safety in that area due to increasing traffic. In a show of support for the handicapped-accessible accommodations, the Kapas family offered $500 as a donation for a special swing in one of the existing parks if someone else would provide a matching donation. John Fawver of Plano immediately matched that donation for a second swing. Tamarisk Larsen is new to Plano, and is concerned about park facilities for her family. She said that the planned 12-foot splash pad seems small to her and suggested that the city hold off until they can afford a larger one such as the one in nearby Sandwich. Sandwich has an 1,800 square-foot concrete-surface splash pad. Rosalinda Olszta thought a larger splash pad would be a great idea and asked if the community could do a fundraiser to help cover the cost. Herreid said "I would love to see this community come together to support the parks." Since the committee meeting, citizens with Let's Make Plano, Illinois Great Again have taken up the challenge and are actively working on plans for a fund-raiser to increase the size of the splash pad and to provide contributions toward other park projects in the city. Alderman Bob Hyde told the group, "as chairman of the City Special Events Committee, I would like to make this a reality. (You have) lots of good ideas." Advertisement Susan Thanepohn is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News An unusual proposal came up early in talks over a teacher contract for the sprawling Palatine-area Community Consolidated School District 15: a 10-year contract that would extend to 2026, longer than most educators and administrators had ever heard in contract negotiations. Superintendent Scott Thompson recalled that the local teachers union proposed the idea, and months later it blossomed into reality when the school board approved the decadelong contract this month. Advertisement Since then, few details have emerged about the full cost and scope of the deal, including how much taxpayers will pay over 10 years or whether the district will be able to afford the contract long term. One critic called the deal "insane," and some officials in other school districts expressed caution about pursuing such a lengthy contract. Advertisement District 15 didn't do 10-year projections of its finances prior to the board vote, Thompson said, though it typically does five-year forecasts annually. And when the district recently made public the average teacher salary increases under the new pact ranging from 2.5 percent to 4 percent per year it didn't include what can be lucrative raises given to educators who earn master's degrees and other graduate credits. Those raises, overall, are estimated at $200,000 a year in the district, financial records show, though the figure could be lower depending on circumstances, Thompson said. Total increases in health care costs a big-ticket item remain unclear as well. The district has gotten high marks in financial health ratings by the state, but its most recent financial projections reveal some warning signs as the district prepares to launch the 10-year contract. Between this school year and 2019-20, the district would be deficit spending, meaning spending more than its revenues across all accounts, records show. And fund balances crucial savings that can be used to cover deficits would decline. The district's fund balances have been considered healthy by state standards but not as healthy as hundreds of other school districts, state records show. The district put out a financial report in March stating that it "is greatly concerned with the future of state funding." It gets close to $20 million in state dollars now, about 13 percent of its revenue. But it's not clear what will happen in the future, given the state's continuing budget crisis and potential changes to the way Illinois plans to distribute state dollars to schools. Nevertheless, the district moved forward with the 10-year contract, estimating that the increase in salary costs overall would average less than 1 percent a year a figure achieved in part by hiring new teachers who would be paid less than half the cost of retiring teachers. The calculation excluded increases for obtaining graduate course credits because "there is no way of knowing" when a teacher will get those credits, Thompson said in a written response to Tribune questions. Advertisement "If there are dramatic changes in the economy and funding in the future, the administration would ask the CTC (Classroom Teachers' Council) to renegotiate the contract," Thompson said. He said there is no provision in a draft version of the contract that requires such renegotiation. The district has provided information about some elements of the contract but has not released the full document, saying it's still being compiled and must be reviewed by attorneys prior to making it public. On Friday, Thompson said it could be about a month before the district is ready to release the contract. Tim Millar is a former school board president in District 15 and is now serving on the Palatine village council. He was on the school board when District 15 adopted a four-year contract in 2012 and is critical of the new pact. "From a practical standpoint it doesn't make sense. How can you anticipate what's going to happen in 10 years? You can't," Millar said. "It's insane." Millar said what's happening in the school district is all about politics. That's because a 10-year contract will survive despite turnover that can occur on school boards and influence teacher contract negotiations. Millar also is critical of the district hiring former teachers union president Lisa Nuss, who negotiated the 2012 contract for the union and later became the school district's head of personnel and human services, which is involved in contract negotiations. Advertisement "You make that person the HR director? Really? Who's watching out for the community now?" Millar said. Nuss could not be reached for comment. Current union President Scott Woldman also could not be reached. With more than 12,000 students, District 15 in north Cook County is one of the 20 largest school districts in Illinois. Whether its stature will influence other districts to push for 10-year teacher contracts is far from certain. Elsewhere, school business officials say there are pros and cons to such a long contract. "There's a lot of time and resources that get tied up in contract negotiations. If you know what the plan is for the next 10 years, you're not back at the table," said Susan Harkin, president of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials. She described District 15 as "very courageous" for taking on a decadelong contract. That said, "I don't see it as precedent-setting. I see the value of it, but I don't know if I would have the stomach for it," said Harkin, whose own district has a four-year teacher contract. Some districts have five-year contracts, she said, "but I think five is a stretch for a lot of schools." Advertisement David Hill, treasurer of the business officials organization, said he's dealt with four- and five-year contracts and isn't opposed to looking at 10 years "provided that we have some options if things change." A chief concern, though, is "you have no idea what the economy is going to do," Hill said. District 15 had its own 10-year financial history to look back on before making a decision on a the new contract, district records show. That history reflects a bumpy ride that included deficit spending in four of the 10 years, and reductions in teacher positions and other staffers in 2005-06, after voters failed to approve a school tax increase. This school year, the district adopted another deficit budget in which expenses would exceed revenue. Nonetheless, board members such as Zubair Khan, an attorney who came on the board last year, are positive about the 10-year contract, calling it unique and beneficial to the district. "To me, locking up cost increases ... for 10 years is a good thing," he said. "I wanted our teachers to be paid in a way that makes our district competitive. I wanted to make sure we're getting the best teachers." While the teachers union came up with the idea for the 10-year contract, Thompson said the union compromised on key issues such as keeping an unpopular two-tiered pay schedule designed to pay new hires at lower salaries. The tiers will remain in place under the new contract, but lower-tiered teachers will be able to move into the higher-paid tier after six years, getting what appears to be a modest increase when they make the jump. It's not clear what the salary increases will be following that jump. The district has not released the full salary schedule that outlines pay increases. Advertisement In addition, teachers at a given point will be able to accumulate more sick days from 15 to 24 annually, Thompson said. That's significant because unused, unpaid sick days can be converted to teacher service time and allow educators to retire earlier. That scenario could potentially save the district money because it would replace the retiree with a new, lower-paid teacher. "Any contract is created through compromise," Thompson said. "Neither side gets everything they would desire." Chicago Tribune's Robert McCoppin contributed. drado@tribpub.com Twitter @diane_rado A Chicago woman who was arrested early Saturday on a drunken driving charge in Riverside became so violent during the booking process that police from a neighboring town had to be called in to help defuse the situation, authorities said. According to a news release from the Riverside Police Department, Latoya King, 32, screamed, "All cops must die," while she was being processed at the police station and told officers she would "come back and kill your kids and grandkids." Advertisement One officer who allegedly was punched, kicked and spat upon was treated at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood and released. King, of the 5000 block of Washington Boulevard, was charged with felony aggravated drunken driving, aggravated battery to a police officer, obstruction of identification, resisting arrest, misdemeanor DUI, driving with no valid driver's license and other traffic-related offenses, according to the news release. Advertisement King was stopped by Riverside police about 2:30 a.m. in the 300 block of Addison Road after she was spotted driving 53 mph in a 35-mph zone on Harlem Avenue, police said. Officers said she smelled of alcohol and had a cup with what turned out to be Remy Martin cognac, police said. King, who told police she had been "clubbing," failed field sobriety tests and said she did not know how to spell her last name, according to police. She was taken to the Riverside Police Station, where her blood-alcohol level registered 0.16, police said. The minimum legal level for intoxication is 0.08. After being informed of her blood-alcohol level, King "became extremely violent," according to the news release. While being fingerprinted and booked, she broke away from officers and began kicking and punching a machine, and then started "to violently fight" with arresting officers, police said. She "punched, kicked and spit directly in one of the officer's face, mouth, eyes and nose," according to the release. Personnel from the Lyons Police Department were dispatched to help assist Riverside officers. According to police, King never has had a driver's license. Cultivating local talent for the industrial center in the northwest suburbs was the focus of last week's business appreciation luncheon that featured Democratic Illinois U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley at Pescatore Palace in Franklin Park. "There are two things I hear about constantly as a public official from the business community," Franklin Park Mayor Barrett Pedersen said at the luncheon. "You can guess what number one is: Taxes are too high. But the second one is manufacturers' challenge in finding skilled workers." Advertisement The average age of the skilled manufacturing worker in Illinois is 54 years old, he said. And as these workers age out of their profession, he said the United States has started to rely on importing skilled manufacturing workers, primarily from Eastern Europe, to fill that professional void. "If you've ever gone into one of the manufacturing plants in Franklin Park, you can see people who are 60, 70, even 80 years old," Pedersen said. "They love doing their job, and they're paid a whole lot extra because you can't find people who are younger to take these jobs." Advertisement According to the Illinois Consortium for Advanced Technical Training, about 83 percent of U.S. manufacturers say they can't find local skilled workers to fill the current number of open positions they have. By 2025, it's estimated that there will be 3.4 million skilled manufacturing positions that will need filling. To address this need, engineering, technology and technical programs at Triton College are partnering with manufacturers to train the next generation of skilled workers. Students in Triton's program would apprentice at a manufacturing firm for three years while they are in school to develop their technical skills. Once students graduate with a German DIHK certification from the program, they will be guaranteed a specialist position with a manufacturing firm for five years. The goal is to cultivate employee loyalty and develop a sustainable pool of talent in the Franklin Park region that those manufacturing firms need. The estimated cost of the program for students is $14,000 for the first year and $12,000 for the second and third. While in the program, apprentice students will be able to make $9 an hour during their first year, $10.50 an hour during their second and $12 an hour during their final year in the program. During his remarks at the luncheon, Quigley talked about the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2014. The measure is designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. "This act is going a long way to providing an effective, modern workforce training system," he said. He said the act is an example of the kind of productive bipartisanship that people don't often see anymore in Illinois or Washington, D.C. "With the extremes of both parties, and the polarization that comes with it, [there is] the inability to do more things like this is because it's safer to be on the extremes than in the middle," he said. He went on to say that the act and other type of common-sense measures may not be "sexy" enough to get viewers on CNN, but they are essential for the nation to continue to be an economic leader with first-class infrastructure. Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. Hinsdale High School District 86 is hiring additional staff and contracting with an outside agency to comply with new state legislation regarding out-of-school suspension and expulsions. It's one of several steps being taken by area high school districts as the new law goes into effect beginning this fall. The legislation will limit expulsions and out-of-school suspensions to instances where a student's presence would pose a threat to safety or disrupt other student's learning opportunities. Advertisement Tammy Prentiss, assistant superintendent for student services in District 86, said she believes the law sends the message that schools need to work with all students. It also emphasizes that schools are not only responsible for students' academic skills, but also their mental and behavioral health, Prentiss said. Administrators in other local school districts, such as Lyons Township High School, expect no major changes. Advertisement "We do such a great job of providing support for students," said Brian Waterman, LTHS principal. "There are so many support programs for students prior to (consequences) such as suspension, detention or loss of privileges." In the 2013-14 school year, LT, where combined enrollment at its two campuses is almost 4,000, imposed 153 suspensions involving 115 different students. Last school year, there were 120 suspensions, involving 94 students. As of April 1 this school year, there were 85 suspensions involving 78 different students. "We try to be very proactive and we set expectations very high," Waterman said. When discipline is required, "we try to make it a teaching moment." Under the new law, behaviors that in the past may have resulted in an out-of-school suspension may result in a shorter suspension or an in-school suspension next year. But anything that involves physical confrontation, drug sales or weapons still will be eligible for out-of-school suspension or expulsion. Students will not be suspended for more than three days, expelled or moved to alternative school unless other behavioral and disciplinary interventions have been tried, the law states. What are appropriate interventions and what constitutes a threat to safety or the school's operation is left up to local school officials to determine on a case-by-case basis. "We are still working on crafting all this," said Kathleen Kosteck, assistant superintendent for student services at Elmhurst Unit School District 205. "The law puts in place a lot of things we already do, which is find alternatives to suspensions," Kosteck said. Advertisement She and other District 205 administrators will attend a workshop in June hosted by the Illinois Principals Association titled to find out if there are more ideas they can use. In the 2013-14 school year, 96 students were suspended from York High School for a total of 532.5 days out of school. Last school year, the numbers dropped to 65 students for a total of 254.5 days. As of March 31 this school year, 60 students were suspended for a total of 210 days. Hinsdale District 86 is preparing for more students to serve in-school suspensions in a supervised study and wants to make sure the time they spend there is used effectively. Consequently, the district plans to hire two certified special education teachers, one for Hinsdale Central and one for Hinsdale South, who will oversee the in-school supervised study. The district also will hire two additional paraprofessionals at Central and one at South to serve as instructional aides in the supervised study. In the 2013-14 school year, 146 different students in District 86 received out-of-school suspensions for a total of 563.5 days. Last school year, 176 different students were suspended at both schools combined for a total of 665.5 days out of school. In the first semester of this school year, 53 different students were suspended for 190.5 days. About 4,400 students are enrolled in District 86. The staff in the supervised study also support students who return to school after being hospitalized or homebound due to illness or concussions. Kimm Dever, director of deans at Hinsdale Central, said the biggest changes she expects will be providing services to students while they are suspended and having "re-engagement" plans. The plan may include a meeting with the student, parent, dean and social worker or guidance counselor. Advertisement Schools must monitor whether students have made up the work they missed while suspended. "It's a different mandate," Dever said. "We now have to help facilitate a student getting and completing the work he missed. Before, it was the student's responsibility." District 86 also will have Presence Behavioral Health in Downers Grove do an assessment of students identified with alcohol or drug use problems. The assessment will determine a clinical diagnosis and recommendation for treatment. The district also is arranging for Presence counselors to conduct a substance abuse program at the schools. A weekly two-hour session would be held for four weeks. They would include meeting with the parents, signing an abstinence contract, taking a drug test, discussing self-esteem, reviewing homework and other discussions. The goal is to help students get back on track, Dever said. kfornek@pioneerlocal.com Advertisement Twitter: @kfdoings This article was updated April 25 with correct numbers on the total number of days of suspensions served by students at York High School in Elmhurst. Stay on top of the news all day with the Tribunes web notifications. Well let you know right in your web browser when theres big breaking news happening, and also share our editors top picks so you see the best of what the Tribune has to offer. A funny play about parents and problems comes to North Central College. Students from the North Central College drama department will stage the triple Tony Award-winning comedy "God of Carnage" by Yazmina Reza from Thusday through May 7. It is directed by senior Christopher Corrigan of Naperville. Advertisement Performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 6 and 7 in the College's Madden Theatre. This play is part of North Central's Student Directed Series. Students are invited to submit a proposal to direct their own production. Corrigan's choice of "God of Carnage" is one of three selected for the year. Advertisement "I saw the play when they did it at the Goodman back in 2010," he said. "For me, it's just really funny. It's about these four parents who are trying to deal with a problem and the way they behave and how immaturely they end up behaving. When I first saw the show, I went, 'I know these people.' It was so funny to watch something I knew. The physical comedy elements of the show make me laugh out loud every time." The play takes place in real time, in about an hour and a half one afternoon, he said. There are two sets of parents: Annette and Alan, parents of Benjamin; and Michael and Veronica, parents of Henry. Benjamin hit Henry with a stick and knocked out two of his teeth in a playground tussle, and the grown-ups have come together at Michael and Veronica's house to discuss a course of action. "It quickly spirals out of control and they start attacking each other's jobs, personal lives, marriages, the way they raise their children, and they begin to act like children on a playground themselves," he said. "I think it's hard for anyone to not look at these people and go, 'I've done that' or at least to say, 'I've had an argument with someone just like that.' " His cast is doing well, especially for young people playing older people who happen to be acting like very young people, he said. "Once or twice I've had to tell them, 'That thing you're doing that's a really young thing to do.' Like an actor did a sassy head bob when she told someone off. I'm like, 'That's great, but we would do that. A 40-year-old wouldn't do that," he said. "And none of them have children, so they don't know the pain it feels to see your child get so hurt or to know your child has caused so much harm. But they work super hard, and I think they're hitting the mark right on." Audiences will enjoy the show because it will be easy to relate to, he said. "It's going to be so easy to connect to that situation of having to talk to another parent about an issue with your kids. I think it goes even further like having to have an uncomfortable discussion," he said. "I really do believe that someone is going to be able to point at something or one of the characters as a whole and go, 'Oh, I've done that.' What I like about the show is that it really makes us look at our own behaviors." "God of Carnage" stars Jack Morsovillo of Franklin Park as Michael, Bridget Adams-King of Western Springs as Veronica, Anne Lorentzen of Sequim, Wash., as Annette and John Bihun of Oak Brook as Alan. Advertisement Annie Alleman is a freelance writer. "God of Carnage" When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through May 7 Where: North Central College's Madden Theatre, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville Tickets: $3 to $5 Information: 630-637-7469; Northcentralcollege.edu/show With the scope and penalties of Chinas social credit system being further clarified in 2021, legal and regulatory compliance has become more important than... Activities across China mark 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death One of the films featured at the sixth Beijing International Film Festival, which closed over the weekend, is the 2015 version of "Macbeth," starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and directed by Justin Kurzel. "Even if you have never read the original, you'll still be impressed with the visual presentation," wrote Xu Ruofeng, a Chinese critic reviewing the movie. For the 400th anniversary celebrations of the Bard's death, a flurry of activities in publishing, theater and films is taking place across China, bringing him closer to the Chinese public. Never before have Chinese lovers of Shakespeare had so many ways of approaching his immortal works. Tickets sold out for the filmed stage production of Hamlet, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, and which had limited screenings in selected Chinese cities. Other Shakespearean plays in the National Theatre Live series, such as Nicholas Hytner's Othello and Sam Mendes' "King Lear," will surely be welcome additions to the lineup of the Bard's offerings. Even Coriolanus, a relatively obscure Shakespearean work by Chinese standards, wowed audiences, partly because it stars Tom Hiddleston of Thor fame and partly because a Chinese stage adaptation has put a local spin on it, sinicizing the title to General Kou Liulan. It was directed by stage luminary Lin Zhaohua. Data is not available on how many of the Bard's plays have graced the Chinese stage, but perennial favorites such as "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" obviously have been presented more often than others. However, complete Chinese translations seem easier to compile and publish. RSC initiative The Beijing-based Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press has just come out with a new complete version, supported by the British Council. The bilingual format uses an English-language edition originally authorized by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Chinese translations by eminent scholars including Xu Yuanchong. In recent months, the RSC has also launched its own initiative to translate a new Chinese version specially tailored for the stage. Another sorely needed Chinese translation for the purpose of title projection, which should adhere to the Bard's mantra that "brevity is the soul of wit", would help greatly with touring productions in the original tongue, but has not made it to the agendas of translators or sponsors so far. The most influential version to date is the one by Zhu Shenghao (1911-44), who completed work on 31 of the plays under the direst of circumstances, including poor health and the Japanese invasion of China (he lost his translation manuscripts more than once to Japanese fires). His genius in capturing the essence of the Bard's work could be the single most important factor in making Shakespeare accessible to one-fifth of the world's population. Liang Shiqiu (1902-87) is so far the only Chinese who has translated every piece credited to Shakespeare. But his version is less literary and more verbatim, thus suitable for textual research for non-English speakers. Liang's version was republished this month by Penguin. Fang Ping (1921-2008) was responsible for much of the first complete version that replicated the verse form. Considering the difficulty of translating the Bard's lines, not to mention the ambiguity of some words, there will be no shortage of Chinese translators taking on this daunting task. According to Lu Gusun, a professor of English language at Fudan University in Shanghai, as many as three Chinese versions of Hamlet appeared before 1949, and more have seen the light of day since. President's speech But there is still no ideal equivalent for "To be or not to be", which is arguably the best-known Shakespearean quote in China. (Incidentally, the British Council is sponsoring a campaign for Chinese to share their Shakespearean quotes, which can be from his plays or poems.) Shakespeare's plays have been a staple of Chinese theater or literature students. This year's celebrations are doubly meaningful because China's great dramatist Tang Xianzu died in the same year as Shakespeare, and comparative studies of the two are now in vogue. In October, while giving a speech in London, President Xi Jinping recounted his exposure as a youth to the Bard, saying how he was attracted by the emotions in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Merchant of Venice," "Twelfth Night," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "Othello," "King Lear" and "Macbeth." He also described Tang as the "Shakespeare of the East", adding, "China and Britain can share our celebrations of two literary giants and push the mutual understanding and exchange of our peoples." You are here: Home The Tesla logo is pictured on Feb 5, 2014 in its first Chinese mainland show room in Beijing. [Photo by Hao Yan/chinadaily.com.cn] Tesla has persuaded Bank of China, China Merchants Bank and China CITIC Bank to offer preferential lines of credit to buyers of its Model S90 electric vehicles, it said on Saturday. This is Tesla's latest move to encourage purchases of its cars by Chinese. The company has already built its largest charging network outside the United States in China A spokesperson said Tesla sold 15,000 electric vehicles globally in the first quarter of 2015. No data was given on the China market. Japan's Toshiba Corp is in final talks to replace President Masashi Muromachi, with Senior Executive Vice President Satoshi Tsunakawa a leading candidate as it aims to turn the scandal-hit firm back to growth, a source said yesterday. The source, who is familiar with the matter, indicated Tsunakawa was a top candidate, saying the successor would likely be one of three senior executive vice presidents, and noting that he was not embroiled in the accounting scandal. A company committee is expected to make a final decision after the Golden Week holiday that ends in early May, the source said. Toshiba officials were not available for comment on a new company president. The new president will assume the job after approval at the annual shareholders meeting in June, he added. Toshiba, with business spanning televisions to nuclear power, has said it inflated profits by over 230 billion yen (US$2.06 billion) over about seven years to March 2015. The company is also preparing to write down the value of its stake in US nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse by about 200 billion yen, sources familiar with the matter said last Wednesday. In a sign it was trying to draw a line under the scandal, a company committee met last Wednesday to discuss the resignation of Muromachi, who is also CEO, said other sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. Muromachi has said he will quit after seeing Toshiba on track to recovery. You are here: Home Outstanding loans extended by China's micro-credit companies amounted to 938 billion yuan (US$144 billion) by the end of March, data from the central bank showed on Monday. The volume was down 3.2 billion yuan from the end of 2015. By the end of March, the number of micro-credit companies in China came in at 8,867, the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website. Micro-lenders largely target small companies and low-income groups in need of capital. In recent years, micro-lending companies have become an important channel for medium- and small-sized firms as well as individuals to access funds. The central bank report showed east China's Jiangsu Province had 637 small-credit companies by September, the most of any provincial-level region, followed by Liaoning Province and Hebei Province. You are here: Home China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the Ministry of Water Resources on Sunday evening jointly issued a warning for mountain floods from Sunday night to Monday night. The floods are expected to hit the southeastern part of Tibet, the eastern part of Guangdong and, in particular, the western part of Yunnan, according to a statement. The weather authorities advised close monitoring and precautions. Meanwhile, a separate statement issued by the Ministry of Land and Resources and the CMA warned of high risks of unspecified geological disasters in western Yunnan from Sunday night to Monday night. Heavy rain has lashed south China since last week. Premier Li Keqiang hailed the people of Lushan on Sunday for their "unbreakable spirit" after paying tribute to victims of the 2013 earthquake. He was visiting the county in Sichuan province to inspect reconstruction work four days after the third anniversary of the magnitude-7.0 quake, which claimed 196 lives and injured more than 14,000 people. "The unbreakable spirit of the Sichuan people has helped build new homes, and it will drive them to a better life," the premier said. He paid tribute to victims in front of the Lushan Earthquake Memorial Museum with a minute's silence and placed flowers at a memorial table in which names of those who died in the disaster have been engraved. The quake was the first serious natural disaster Li had to deal with after he took office as premier in March 2013. His plane headed to the region just five hours after the first tremors struck. On Sunday's visit, he inspected new houses, schools, tourism developments and factories. At a branch of Sichuan Rural Credit Cooperative in Longmen township, he said the institute should continue to finance agricultural companies and help develop local businesses. Li also saw innovative models of smart communities and new energy, all made by the students, during a visit to Lushan No 2 Middle School, which was reconstructed in September. The premier said locals must find new ways to build their homes and make a difference for others. Longmen, the epicenter of the quake, was the area worst-hit. However, since then it has been developed into a key national tourism destination, with many survivors running restaurants and hotels. The premier visited two families in the township who he met three years ago. One of them was Gao Quanliang, 47, who told Li about his house, which was rebuilt with government subsidies, as well as the employment and education provided for his family. "The quake crushed our lives when our house collapsed. But your condolence gave us strength to rebuild our home," Gao's wife, Gao Rongzhen, told the premier. The National Foreign Language Teaching Advisory Board in Shanghai yesterday said in a statement that it had filed a report with police concerning online allegations that someone had leaked the answers for a national test for English majors on Saturday morning. Shanghai International Studies University, where the board's office is located, denied that it had leaked to its students the answers to the Test for English Majors-Band 4, an assessment of language fluency for sophomore English majors. It was the first TEM-4 test issued since China last year made it a criminal offense (punishable by up to seven years in prison) to cheat on national exams. Students were told to hand in their mobile phones before the exam began. However, a picture posted on tieba.baidu.com, a communication section on Baidu.com, showed that "answers" had been sent via QQ, an instant-messaging application developed by Tencent, shortly before the written exam started at 8:30am. The post has already been deleted from Tieba but the printscreen version has been widely shared on Weibo. Some Weibo users who claimed they had sat the exam said the posted answers closely matched the test. Some even suspected SISU students had obtained the answers in advance because the office in charge of administering the test is located at SISU, and one of its faculty members led the team responsible for producing it. Many students said the test, the first since the TEM process was reformed last year, was much more difficult than previous ones and complained that it was unfair to honest students if the answers were leaked. Some web users also asked the school to provide an explanation on its Weibo account. A SISU official told Shanghai Daily they found "some of the answers did match the Saturday test," but denied that the school leaked the answers. He said the office administrating the tests for English majors, including Band 4 and 8, is located in the school but run by the Foreign Language Teaching Advisory Board under the Ministry of Education, adding that the questions on the tests were set by a board comprising teachers from several universities, rather than just SISU. The board said the test papers for TEM-4 are always stored in accordance with requirements for the management of confidential state files, and answers to the tests are usually not disclosed within the year, adding that the whole procedure for this year's test was monitored by the authorities. "We noticed that some students and web users had reported suspicions about a leak on Weibo and we reported it to police immediately and asked them to investigate," the board said in a statement. "Members of the public who have information can contact the police or the board by calling +86 (21) 65176788." It added: "We will also take legal action against rumor posters and spreaders." SISU students also denied they had received any answers to the test. "If I had the answers, I would not be so worried that I might fail the exam," said Chen Yujin, a sophomore English major at SISU. Huang Qianxia, Chen's classmate, said at least 80 percent of the answers were the same as her own, but stressed that she did not see the Weibo post before the test. "The so-called answers were not completely correct," she said. The two said SISU students prepared for the test with a book of model tests edited by Zou Shen, a SISU instructor and head of the board responsible for writing the test questions. "It can be bought in bookstores and online by everybody," Huang said. "The only function of the book is to help us to become familiar with the types of questions asked." Some 150 middle school students had a chance to take a close look at the Caihong [rainbow] series unmanned aerial vehicles China's most popular UAVs on the export market at the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA) on April 24, 2016, the country's first-ever National Day of Space Flight. A CH-5 UAV is on display at the CAAA on April 24, China's first National Day of Space Flight. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn] The students from Beijing Yungang Middle School affiliated to the Capital Normal University were briefed on the basic information of the CH-3, CH-4 and CH-5 UAVs, including its design parameters, applications in geological surveillance and antiterrorism warfare, and were later guided on a tour of the aerospace wind tunnels during the CAAA's Open Day. The organization was hoping to bring aerospace science closer to the public. Caihong UAVs are CAAA's star products, their success being built on their outstanding aerodynamic characteristics, a strength of the CAAA. The national aerospace institute has tested almost all of China's aerospace vehicles, and the experience has benefited the development of aeronautic vehicles such as the Caihong drones. Among the Caihong series, CH-4 enjoys the most rapidly rising fame, as online videos has demonstrated their effectiveness against regional terrorism in the Middle East and Africa. The chief engineer of Caihong series, Shi Wen, told the students that the increasing coverage on CH-4 reflected its popularity on the international market principally because of its practicality and cost-effectiveness. "We tend to make flight control and payload control simple, and avoid redundant functions, even at the cost of some payload and speed, so that our customers, both from the military and civil sectors, are drawn to buy our products," said Shi. Caihong drones use piston engines, which feature a lower speed and are seemingly obsolete than the more advanced turboprop engines, which their international rival U.S. MQ-1 Predator drones are equipped with. But Shi Wen explained that Caihong's engine choice was better for the missions it's designed for mostly geological and maritime exploration as well as the close-range, aerial combat support in regional warfare. In such operation environments, altitude or speed are not as important as endurance. "Lower speed may even be an advantage," Shi said, explaining that lower speed makes a drone able to hover above an area longer, which is helpful in gathering more data or attacking enemy targets more efficiently. UAVs are most efficient in the airspace between 5,000 to 6,000 meters, where power loss against the altitude is optimal. At such an altitude, a piston engine is twice as efficient as a turboprop engine in terms of airborne endurance, according to Shi. He also responded to concerns about the risk of being shot by missiles by saying that the altitude of 8,000 meters is "equally dangerous" as 5,000 meters, implying that flying too high is not necessarily an advantage of a drone, even in military uses. Apart from endurance and effectiveness, accessibility, including the user-friendly interface of flight and payload controls, is another reason for Caihong's international popularity, according to Shi. He said that one month is enough to train a Caihong pilot, who is not necessarily capable of flying a manned aircraft. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. An underwear factory has been punished for the sudden death of an underage worker in Foshan City, Guangdong Province in south China, but the public was unsatisfied with the light fines, the China News Service reported on Sunday. A garment factory in Foshan City of Guangdong Province in south China. [File photo] According to the local labor security department, the factory reached a consensus with the dead boy's family and paid the latter 150,000 yuan (US$23,055) in compensation. The factory was also fined 10,000 yuan (US$1,537) by the authorities for employing an underage worker. The dead boy, surnamed Wang, was born in June 2001 in central China's Hunan Province. He was introduced into the Foshan Zhiya Underwear Company by his mother and worked as a sewing machine operator from March 5 to April 10. The 14-year-old was found dead around 6:00 a.m. on April 11 at home. The boy's family claimed that he had worked 11 to 12 hours every day before the tragedy, and the sudden death might be the result of the heavy work load. An official of the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of the Nanhai District of Foshan City said that the bureau had carried out an investigation into the case and found no evidence that the boy had worked overtime. As for public doubt that the fines for the factory were too light, the official said the punishment was decided according to the law. The Provisions on the Prohibition of Child Labor stipulates that the employer of child labor shall be fined 5,000 yuan (US$768.5) per month for each of the children employed. Further investigation will be carried out to check if the factory has committed any other violations of the law, the official said. As Nanhai District is home to many factories engaged in labor-intensive industries, such as garment manufacturing and processing, the local authorities will make a special inspection regarding child labor from April 25. The success rate of test-tube babies is unlikely to be as high as is claimed in overseas markets, including developed countries. Chinese couples in advanced age or with impaired fertility are showing no hesitation to take advantage of the country's newly loosened family-planning policies. One solution is the use of test-tube babies in overseas markets which has been touted by domestic agencies as having a success rate as high as 80 percent. However, experts in the sector are dubious of the high percentage. Pregnancy rates in couples in which both partners are below 35 is approximately 63.2 percent with fresh embryo transfers, while for couples between 38 and 40, the chances may reduce to 50 percent in the same conditions, said Cai Qiang, CEO of Saint Lucia Consulting, a Chinese agency for the provision of overseas medical services information. The consulting firm has partnered with the Cleveland Clinic, one of the famed comprehensive hospitals in Ohio, the United States. Infertility has affected about one eighth of couples throughout China in recent years, a figure about 10 times higher than the infertility rate some four decades ago. However, test-tube babies only show a 30 percent success in domestic hospitals, which forces families in advanced age to seek help from overseas hospitals. In addition to the low success rates of test-tube babies, couples flocking to overseas hospitals to pre-select the gender of embryos are seen as counteracting the rules of domestic hospitals. Cai said agencies in countries dealing with intermediate services between customers and hospitals should not always cater to the demands of their clients by neglecting rules of other countries or taking advantage of the loopholes in the rules. For example, it is officially forbidden in Thailand for the distinction of baby genders during the 10- month pregnancy. And the regulations in the Untie States vary depending on the state. But following traditional medical ethics, it is healthy conditions rather than genders that decide the selection of fertilized eggs, Cai said. "To unconditionally cater for the demands of the customers may not be for the best of their interests. As a medical agency, we should emphasize the safety and health of both mothers and babies," the CEO said. One person died and more than 20 were injured after a bus carrying mainland tourists collided with a gravel truck in Taiwan, according to a tourism source Monday. The accident occurred midday Monday when the bus, carrying a tour group from Jiangsu Province, crashed with the truck on a highway section in Miaoli County and flipped over, said Man Hongwei, head of the Taipei office of the Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Strait. The sole fatality was the local bus driver. The tour guide, also from the island, is in a critical condition, said Man. Among the 26 mainland tourists, three suffered moderate injuries and 21 others sustained minor injuries. Two were unhurt. The injured were taken to three hospitals for treatment. The tourists had been scheduled to stay in Taiwan until April 30. In the past six years, Washington and Manila have been cementing a military alliance, which is reassuring to many Filipinos but leaves some apprehensive - including the leading presidential contenders. On May 9, the Philippines will vote for a new president. Economically, the old designation as the "sick man of Asia" has faded to history. In the near future, the beautiful Catholic-majority country has an economic growth potential at 6.5% per annum. Since 2010, the administration of President Benigno Aquino III, 56, has played a key role in the economic rejuvenation. Nevertheless, poverty rate remains officially over 20% and income equality is high internationally. The 2016 election has been widely debated among some 60 million voting-age Filipinos who represent a youthful nation of almost 100 million people at home and 10 million abroad. In the past, these elections have been mainly about economy, jobs and welfare. Today, foreign and national security is high on the voter agenda. One of the key questions is relations with China, the country's largest importer and third-largest market for exports. With territorial friction, bilateral ties have become strained. 2016 campaigns, new leaders and China friction Last year, President Aquino designated former interior minister Manuel "Mar" Roxas, 59, an ex-New York City investment banker, as his successor to sustain his reforms, which Filipinos call Daang Matuwid ("straight path"). As the leader of the ruling Liberal Party (LP), Roxas and his faith in self-disciplining markets appeal to moderate elites. In the polls, he is fourth with 19%, however. Like Aquino, he stresses the importance of the China arbitration case in The Hague. Currently, the colorful long-term Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, 71, is leading with 30% in polls, with the support of the nationalistic, social-democratic PDP-Laban. His tough stand on crime resonates with most Filipinos, as does his relative economic success in Davao City since the 1980s. In Washington, he has been accused for alleged human rights violations in the anti-drugs efforts, yet geopolitics may loom behind the wariness. Unlike Aquino and Roxas, Duterte would be willing to have bilateral talks with China over the South China Sea. He favors greater economic cooperation with China, has been critical of the US-Philippine alliance and leans closer to China. He has little confidence Washington would honor its defense obligations. Running as an independent, Senator Grace Poe, 47, has slid down to second with 23%, but remains a formidable contender. To the elites, Poe - the illegitimate child of Marcos, according to gossip - is an acceptable compromise between Aquino and Roxas and against "populist" Binay and "wild card" Duterte. She would like to further greater economic, social and cultural exchange with China but supports the arbitration case. She opposed the new cooperation pact to foster US-Philippine military ties, but mainly for procedural reasons. Vice President Jejomar "Jojo" Binay, 73, portrays himself as a popular politician who speaks for the poor and ensures social welfare. Initially, the founder of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) led the race but is now third with 20%, due to allegations of corruption during his terms as Mayor of Makati City. Like Duterte, Binay would be willing to talk directly with China and is open to joint exploration of resources. His reassessment is fueled by simple realities: "China has money, we need capital." Much attention and apprehension has also been focused on the leading vice presidential candidate, Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, 59, the son of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. His campaign has attracted support far beyond the Marcos-dominated northern province Ilocos Norte, including the young, poor and excluded. Bongbong has called on the Aquino administration to drop its "belligerent attitude" toward China on territorial claims in the South China Sea. He expects protracted negotiations, but may be open to bilateral talks. Washington's retreat - and return Since the postwar era, Manila has cultivated close relations with Washington and supported the US through the Cold War, the War on Terror and remains a major non-NATO ally. Between 1947 and 1992, pursuant to the Military Bases Agreement, the US operated major facilities at Clark Air Base, Subic Bay Naval Complex and several smaller installations. A mutual defense treaty was signed in 1951. It was followed by the presidency of Ramon Magsaysay, when the country was seen as one of the least corrupt and most likely to prosper fast in the region. And yet, it was after those early years of independence that the Philippines fell behind the rest of Asia. Much of the economic plunge stems from the era of Ferdinand Marcos (1965-86), which is said to have left a huge legacy of crony capitalism and corruption. To boost his domestic power, Marcos nurtured US relations, which thrived from Nixon to Reagan. It was only in 1984 that the Reagan administration began distancing from the Marcos regime. And after the "People Power Revolution," the Philippine Senate rejected the bases treaty and US forces left the country in 1992. As a fourth-generation politician and Liberal Party leader, Aquino's 2010 election win was buttressed by the legacy of his father, Benigno Aquino Jr, an opposition leader assassinated by Marcos, and his mother Corazon Aquino, the first post-Marcos president (1986-92). Meanwhile, US investment has continued to play a vital role in the economy, while the security relationship rested on the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), which was reinforced by the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). About a decade later, the Obama administration began to execute its pivot to Asia, including the plan to move the majority of US warships to Asia Pacific by 2020, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed in June 2012. While successive secretaries of defense and the White House have said that the aim of the pivot is not to "contain" China's rise in the region, the claim has not been persuasive in Beijing, which has taken its counter-moves in the region. At the same time, President Aquino and his Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario developed a tougher policy framework, which sees bilateral talks with China as largely futile, tried multilateral approach through the ASEAN and took the dispute to the international court, while opting for a defense alliance with Washington. Aquino and Rosario pushed the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which allows US to increase military presence in the Philippines. As the EDCA was followed by the return of US Navy back to Subic Bay, critics said sarcastically, "Everything old is new again." From balancing to hedging: a window of peace? However, the 2016 presidential campaigns suggest that, to a degree, the current policy path may have eclipsed. Naturally, all candidates defend the Philippines' sovereignty, yet most do not stand behind the Aquino-Rosario approach without some qualifications. Until the Aquino administration, Manila sought to hedge between US security assurances and China's economic development. Under the new doctrine, it has allied with the US to balance China - or that's the perception at least. The concern is that one-sided cooperation with the US may result in increasing friction not just with China but Islamic extremism in the Southern Philippines, which would reduce perceived political advantages. Finally, economic cooperation - particularly Chinese capital and infrastructure investment by the AIIB - could significantly accelerate Philippine development. The leading presidential candidates seem to favor a China policy approach that would be less about balancing and more about hedging. True hedging would seek security benefits from the US defense umbrella; economic returns from trade and investment with China; and political advantages from cooperation with both nations. That, in turn, would pave way to a new opportunity window in the Philippines-US-China triangle, which could relieve tensions in Asia Pacific overall. Dr Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has served as research director at the India, China and America Institute (USA) and visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see http://www.differencegroup.net/ The commentary was originally released by China-US Focus on April 22, 2016 Flash Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi stressed on Sunday that his government will never give up any inch of Egypt's lands and "will take all measures to preserve homeland and develop it," state-run MENA news agency reported. "I assure everyone that the state institutions and the armed forces understand the importance of preserving our nation's territories," said the president. Sisi made the remarks in his speech ahead of the 34th anniversary of the Sinai Liberation Day which marks the 1982 withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the Sinai Peninsula. Flash Somalia and the Africa Union are planning new security strategies to help thwart terror threats in the Horn of Africa nation. The Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (SRCC) for Somalia Francisco Madeira held security talks with Deputy Prime Minister Mohamed Omart Arte to thrash out sticking points on security operations in the country. "During the meeting, the two officials discussed how Somali national security forces and those from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) can co-ordinate and collaborate to defeat the terror gang, Al-Shabaab," the pan-African body said in a statement issued in Mogadishu on Sunday. AMISOM which crossed into the Horn of the African nation in 2007 has registered a string of successes against Al-Shabaab militia who had seized much of the central and southern Somalia. Al-Shabaab has said it views the presence of Kenyan troops in southern Somalia as an act of war and have been staging attacks in the East African nation particularly northeast areas bordering Somalia. The group which has teamed up with global terror network Al-Qaida is now vowing an all-out war in AMISOM and Somalia government bases. During the meeting, Madeira said AMISOM was facing some challenges which need to be addressed for the regional force to deliver on its mandate. He said co-ordination between AMISOM and the Somali national security forces was critical in winning the war against Al-Shabaab. "The interaction between AMISOM and the Somali national security forces is the one that is going to decide whether we win or not be able to overcome Al-Shabaab. And if that's not there we are doomed to failure," the AU envoy said. He noted that some of the pressing issues are related to the command and control structures between AMISOM and their Somali counterparts, calling for the need to enhance co-operation and complementarity of the Somali government. Madeira noted that enhancing efficiency between AMISOM and the Somali government had been discussed in Addis Ababa as well as at the UN in New York. He said the war against Al-Shabaab was both political and ideological adding that for AMISOM to succeed, exchange of information was critical. The AU envoy said this would depend on how to better co-ordinate and improve the way AMISOM is pushing the operation forward. He challenged the Somali population to find an approach that makes AMISOM feel that they are committed to take over the security of their country for the regional force to leave. During the meeting, Arte appreciated the support the Somali government has received from AMISOM. "Sometimes there are operational difficulties but we hope that SNA and AMISOM can address them," Arte added. Flash Kenya confirmed Sunday it will resume construction of the security wall along its border with Somalia to help curb cross border incursions by Al-Shabaab militants. Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery said the building of the 700km wall on the Kenya-Somalia border from Mandera in northeast Kenya to Kiunga in the coast will keep out the Al-Shabaab elements from infiltrating the county from Somalia as well as bar unwanted persons from illegally getting into the country. "This fence will help us check on people like Al-Shabaab from crossing to and from Somalia. We will not limit movement of other people," he said when he met group of Marehan clan leaders who are in Nairobi to discuss security issues. Kenyan officials say the security wall whose construction stalled due to lack of funds, will provide a long term security efforts to secure the border, adding that once the wall's construction is completed, it will only be crossed by entering through the appropriate border points. The Islamist group has carried out series of deadly attacks in northeast Kenya and other towns, including the capital city of Nairobi since the East African country sent its military into Somalia in 2011 to fight the Al-Qaida linked group. Mandera town is situated at the Somali border and stretches for about 20km from Border Point One, making it prone to frequent terrorist attacks. Nkaissery assured the Marehan clan which lives along the border with Ethiopia and Somalia in Mandera County the fence will not deter or limit the movement of other people from and to Somalia as perceived. He said there will be entry points with immigration officers at Mandera, Elwak, Liboi and other areas down to Lamu to screen those getting in and out of the country. Nkaissery said designated border points will have police posts, Kenya Revenue Authority officers and other government offices to provide vital services. Nkaissery urged for continued support from local clans and especially the Marehan group for both countries to achieve security and stability. Flash Jordan and France on Sunday discussed ways to revive the currently stalled Middle East peace process between Palestinians and Israelis, the state-run Petra news agency reported. During a meeting in Amman, Deputy Premier and Minister of Foreign and Expatriates Affairs Nasser Judeh discussed with France's Middle East peace process special envoy, Pierre Vimont, the issues concerning the Middle East including the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The envoy's visit aims to brief Jordanian officials about Paris' efforts towards reviving the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks in coordination with Amman following, last week's phone conversation between Amman's foreign minister and his French counterpart. Judeh and Vimont agreed that all concerned parties should work towards providing conducive conditions in order to establish the two-state solution. The minister reiterated Jordan's support towards efforts in favor of the two-state solution, with Palestine becoming an independent state along the demarked borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Judeh also stressed that the Palestinian issue is the key regional issue and will most likely remain so for some time. He then emphasized the need for a just and comprehensive solution in line with the terms of the peace process, international legislative resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. All outstanding issues should be resolved along those lines, said Judeh, "in a manner which safeguards Jordan's top national interests which are associated with these issues, particularly Jerusalem and the refugees." Vimont summarized France's recommendations for resuming the stalled peace process under international auspices, and stressed Paris' interest to coordinate with Jordan on this issue, pointing out that the Kingdom plays a pivotal role in the peace process since its interests are tied to the end solution. Flash The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a national meeting in Pyongyang on Sunday to mark the 84th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army (KPA), the official KCNA news agency reported. Ri Myong Su, chief of the General Staff of the KPA, addressed the meeting, which was also attended by Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, Hwang Pyong So, director of the General Political Bureau of the KPA, and other officials of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, the state and the army. Ri reviewed the creation of the first revolutionary armed forces during the fight against Japanese aggression in 1932 by late top leader of the DPRK Kim Il Sung and how his successor Kim Jong Il further developed the army "onto a new stage." Now the KPA "has greeted the golden age of bolstering up the revolutionary armed forces" under the leadership of Marshal Kim Jong Un, he added. Ri, in his report, lashed out at the United States for introducing strategic weapons to South Korea in their joint military exercises, bringing danger of a nuclear war to the Korean Peninsula and escalating the tensions to an extreme phase. He warned that if the United States and South Korean authorities made nuclear provocations aimed at hurting the DPRK's supreme leadership, the DPRK military would launch a preemptive strike through air, land, sea and underwater operations "without any restriction and without any warning and prior notice." The predecessor of the KPA was the Korean People's Revolutionary Army (KPRA) founded by late top leader Kim Il Sung on April 25, 1932. The KPRA later grew into the regular armed forces, or the KPA, in 1948. You are here: Home Flash Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will pay an official visit to China from April 28 to 29, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced Monday. Lavrov, whose visit is at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, will attend the fifth foreign ministers' meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Beijing, spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing. Flash The United States will send up to 250 more personnel to Syria for the fight against the Islamic State (IS), confirmed U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday during his visit to Germany. In a speech during his visit to the annual Hanover trade fair, Obama said he had approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel to Syria, including special forces, to keep up the momentum against the IS. The new deployment will bring to 300 the number of U.S. forces in non-combat roles in Syria. About 50 U.S. troops were sent to Syria last year, which are reportedly responsible for providing local forces advisory and training services in their fight against the IS. Obama also called for more efforts from European countries and NATO members, adding that he would discuss the fight against the IS later on the day in Hanover while meeting leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Italy. A woman looks at a 3D bioprinter, developed by Revotek, at the launch of the product last October.[Provided to China Daily] Holed up in a shiny glass building in the Chinese city of Chengdu, Y. James Kang spends his days researching ways to repair damaged hearts, livers and brainswith the help of stem cells and 3D printers. The Chinese-born and US-trained biologist set up his healthcare startup, Revotek, in this southwestern city in 2014. At the time, he was attracted by the region's rich local supply of monkeys that were ideal for testing human treatments. In Chengdu, the company has drawn 215 million yuan ($33 million) in funding from a local real estate company seeking to diversify. A few miles from Kang's lab, AllTech Medical Systems has developed and is selling MRI systems intended to compete with multinational giants such as General Electric Co, Royal Philips NV and Siemens AG, which have dominated the market. Its MIT-trained founder, Zou Xueming, chose Chengdu to start his second company after selling his Cleveland-based startup to GE in 2002. AllTech hopes to submit an application to go public by the end of next year, with Zou planning to raise $50 million to $100 million. They are among a string of local businesses that stand to benefit from a push by the Chinese city to attract researchers and venture capital investors. Known for its spicy cuisine and leisurely lifestyle, Chengdu has in recent years attracted the likes of Intel Corp and IBM, which have set up research and manufacturing bases there. More recently, the flurry of investment activity is in response to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's call for innovation and entrepreneurship. China's leaders are seeking new engines of growth as the country's economic expansion hits its slowest pace in 25 years. That's encouraged provinces across the country to create special zones where new ventures can tap funding opportunities and other incentives. While technology startups have been some of the biggest beneficiaries, medical research firms are also getting a boostgiving new life to a Chinese industry that lagged the West for years. Since it was launched in 2014, China's campaign to encourage entrepreneurship has helped create tens of thousands of small companies. In Chengdu, the local government has set up seven start-up focused funds backed by private capital totaling 700 million yuan to promote industries like telecommunications, health and biotech. The science and technology bureau has a dedicated team to help banks assess startups based on the value of their technology and patents. It also has incubators that provide office space and training to new businesses. "There are strong driving forces," in Chengdu, said AllTech founder Zou. "Policies to attract talent, land and tax policies are very favorable." Like Kang's firm, most of Chengdu's startups are many years away from making big profits from their businesses. That means Chengdu's government also has a long wait before it sees major benefits to the local economy. Dozens of Chinese cities are launching similar programs, and these new ventures also offer a window into the rising ambitions of Chinese researchers, many of whom have trained overseas. Kang was among the first batch of Chinese to go back to college in 1977 after the Cultural Revolution, eventually earning his PhD at Iowa State University. His primary research focus now is 3D bioprinting, a new frontier of medicine aimed at creating replicas of human organs. His team has been developing techniques to repair damaged skin, hearts, livers and brains in animals including pigs and monkeys through regenerationa process that involves creating 3D printed structures that can replicate, for example, a layer of skin or a blood vessel. For organs like a damaged heart, a specialized catheter is used to deliver "bio-ink" or stem cells mixed with nutrients and other growth factors. Wang Zuji, president of China Construction Bank, attends the interim results press conference in Hong Kong, China, Aug 31. 2015. [Photo/IC] Average salaries for the managers of State-owned enterprises increased in more than a year since reform of the salary system, although their numbers have fallen. Announced in November 2014, the plan, which took effect on Jan 1 last year, covering 72 key SOEs, would result in an overall decline in the number of bosses at State firms, said Qiu Xiaoping, vice-minister of human resources and social security shortly after the plan's implementation. However, according to the annual fiscal reports of 48 listed SOEs which are included in the plan, their average annual income in 2015 rose to 1.07 million yuan ($165,200) from the 970,000 yuan a year ago. Four companies saw their managers' salaries more than double last year. Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co Ltd provided the highest increase. Its current president, Huang Qingfeng, received a total income of 894,000 yuan last year, while his predecessor Lu Jianzhong only made 205,300 yuan in 2014. Zhenhua's net profit increased 5.04 percent year-on-year to reach 212 million yuan in 2015. Mai Boliang, president of China International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd, received the highest annual income of over 6.37 million yuan last year among all the 48 managers. But this number dropped significantly compared to his 2012 annual income of 9.98 million yuan. The central government's intention to bring down the salaries of SOE managers is not only verified by Mai's declining salary but also in another 18 public companies. The most significant decrease was noticed at Guodian Nanjing Automation Co Ltd. Its general manager Ying Guangwei's annual income last year was only 164,000 yuan, slumped 68.34 percent compared to his predecessor's income one year earlier. Even though the five State-owned commercial banks grew steadily and made a total net profit of over 920 billion yuan altogether in 2015, their presidents' income was all nearly cut in half. Wang Zuji, president of China Construction Bank, saw the biggest decline of 67.79 percent among all five bank presidents. The recent continuous fall in crude oil prices has resulted in contracting incomes at the two giantsSinopec Group and China National Petroleum Corporation last year, with their net profit declining 11.4 percent and 70 percent respectively. As a result the presidents of these two companies saw their annual income drop around 40 percent in 2015. Of all the 48 managers, Gao Guichao, general manager of Yunnan Copper Co Ltd, only received 60,000 yuan last year, which is even less than the annual income of a courier. But the company later clarified that it was only the basic income of Gao while his bonus has not been included. A member of medical staff operates big-screen online diagnostic equipment at a medical center in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. LONG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY Tech firms revolutionize sector by partnering with public hospitals and acquiring private ones Like many people in China, Chen Hua (not her real name), a 60-year-old resident of Guangdong province, used to hate visiting hospitals because she had to wait in serpentine queues every time she required to see a doctor, pay medical bills and buy the prescribed drugs from the hospital pharmacy. But now, she has a better alternative. Chen visits a nearby drugstore where she gets to interact with doctors at big hospitals via video calls. Using online tools, the drugstore people transmit readings of her blood pressure and temperature to the doctors concerned. Chen recently suffered from backache and had an online diagnosis with a doctor from the Guangdong Internet Hospital, which is operated by the Second People's Hospital of Guangdong province. "The doctor prescribed medication online, which I could immediately buy," she said, "Previously, it took me four fours to see a doctor, but now the entire process takes less than 10 minutes." Chen is among a growing number of patients who are benefiting from the country's booming internet-based or online medical services. Technology companies are rushing to revolutionize the sector by partnering with public hospitals and acquiring private ones. Dozens of online or internet-based hospitals have popped up across China since the end of last year. Starting March 29, at least six new internet hospitals have been established in six provinces within a week, fueled by strong support from local governments. Internet heavyweights Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd, as well as a string of startups and local companies, are all eyeing the niche. Jiang Xinwei, an analyst at Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys International, said the domestic internet-based healthcare industry has entered a new stage, after several years of explosive growth in basic online medical services such as making appointments with doctors and paying medical bills. A report by Analysys International said the online healthcare industry was worth 11.3 billion yuan ($1.75 billion) in 2014, up from 5 billion yuan in 2011. The figure for 2015 will likely be 15.7 billion yuan, Analysys predicted. A nurse measures body temperature of patients at a medical center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. LONG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY "By setting up internet-based hospitals, tech companies are finally looking at the key aspects of tele-diagnosis, which promises bigger chances of profitability," Jiang said. Qin Zexi, an analyst at Beijing-based iResearch Consulting Group, said the internet-based healthcare industry will continue to gain steam, thanks to the swift development of the mobile internet technology and the government's intensified efforts to push forward medical reform. "Public hospitals used to be very reluctant to embrace the internet. But now, that has been gradually changed by the government," Qin said. In March, Li Bin, minister for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, called for more widespread use of the internet to direct patients to different medical institutions based on their needs, so as to reduce the pressure on big hospitals and improve the efficiency of medical resources. Unlike other internet-enabled services such as e-commerce which first boomed in rich eastern provinces, online medical service providers have ventured into less-developed western regions from the very beginning. We Doctor Group, which has raised more than $100 million from Tencent, opened an internet-based hospital for northwestern Gansu province earlier this month by teaming up with a local public hospital. "The internet can help expand medical services to secluded villages and remote regions such as Tibet," Liao Jieyuan, CEO and chairman of We Doctor Group, said, adding patients can enjoy video diagnosis, e-prescription and drug delivery service from its platform. Alibaba also moved in the same direction by running a similar project in a village in central Hubei province, hoping to help villagers deal with common and chronic illnesses like hypertension and diabetes. But other players are eyeing the higher-end of the online healthcare market, which includes handling of serious and complicated illnesses by pooling top-level doctors. "Every year, thousands of people travel to top-tier cities, looking for experts to treat diseases which local doctors fail to cure," said Wang Hang, CEO of Haodf, which claims to have 100,000 qualified doctors on its service. "By leveraging the internet, patients can first have a video call with experts to see whether they need to be treated in person. This helps reduce unnecessary transportation costs. Local doctors will also be present to offer the most accurate descriptions of patients' symptoms," Wang said. Haodf inked a deal with the municipal government of Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui autonomous region, earlier this month to build an internet-based or online hospital that connects top-level doctors from big cities with patients and doctors in local clinics. The system can work even better for re-diagnosis, given that experts can offer training and technical guidance to doctors in local clinics, who will then be able to properly treat patients, according to him. Jiang of Analysys International said: "The two models are still nascent, but I am more optimistic about the high-end medical services market because of the enormous demand (for it). And patients of this group are more willing to pay (for such services)." But Tian Junzhang, president of the Second People's Hospital of Guangdong province, thinks it is next to impossible to attract so many experts to offer online diagnosis. "The more renowned a doctor, the less willing he or she is to treat a patient online because it is too difficult and risky to handle complicated diseases through the internet," he said, adding internet-based hospitals by nature are more suitable to deal with chronic diseases which require frequent re-diagnosis. Huang Jinchang, director of the oncology department at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine Third Affiliated Hospital, said, "The key to internet-based services is whether doctors can make accurate diagnosis based on the information they get from the internet and video calls." Huang said time is not a factor because doctors can freely budget their time as long as they adopt an efficient way to treat patients. Currently, he spends 40 minutes to an hour every day answering questions that patients pose online. "Online medical service is a growing trend. But it just complements face-to-face diagnosis, which is still the most efficient way. In the near term, I won't consider shifting to video diagnosis. After all, the technology is not that mature yet," he said. In addition to technological bottlenecks, analysts said the issue of getting internet-based medical services covered by the National Medical Insurance System remains thorny, especially for prescription drugs sold online. Ni Jianwen, vice-president of Alibaba's health business division, said in an interview with Caixin.com that due to the different regional policies, drug sales receipts sometimes are not accepted by local medical insurance authorities, creating difficulties for people buying medicine from online stores. As internet heavyweights scramble to expand the online healthcare sector, a tech company in southwestern Guizhou province is aiming to carve out a unique presence for itself in the fiercely competitive industry. Unlike other internet companies that enter the sector as technology partners, Longmaster acquired a 66 percent stake in Guiyang Sixth People Hospital in 2015 for 155 million yuan ($24 million). Longmaster thus is the controlling stakeholder, not just a software provider to a hospital. "Brick-and-mortar hospitals are the core assets of the entire medical industry. Without a hospital, it is impossible for us to be deeply engaged, let alone revolutionize the sector with technology and service-oriented minds," said Wang Wei, chairman of Guiyang Longmaster Information & Technology Co Ltd. On the basis of the Guiyang Sixth People Hospital, the company launched the Guizhou Internet Hospital last year, which enables local patients to visit nearby drugstores or medical centers where they can be treated online by doctors through video calls. It is different from other platforms where doctors can only offer online medical services in their free time, because these platforms have inked contracts with individual doctors rather than their hospitals. The company has arranged 15 doctors to run the Guizhou Internet Hospital on a full-time basis, he said . "I am a big believer in technology. But when it comes to the online healthcare services sector, the key is to effectively integrate the online and offline medical resources, rather than achieve technological breakthroughs." Zhong Xiuyun, a doctor at the Guizhou Internet Hospital, said the number of daily patients has surged to an average 500 from less than 10 half a year ago as the company gradually set up more than 90 consultation sites at drugstores and other facilities within the province. "By the end of this year, we will be able to offer more than 3,000 daily online diagnoses and the network of consultation sites will be expanded to more than 200 facilities," Wang said. But the company's ambition is not limited to the Guizhou province. Similar to a project initiated by one of its rivals, haodf.com, Longmaster is planning to launch an online platform in May to link nationwide patients suffering from complicated and serious diseases with leading doctors from top-tier cities. Eager to boost its ability to reach more patients, the company acquired 39.net, a leading health information and consultation website in China, for 650 million yuan. The website covers 160 million users, it said. "Many patients travel to top-tier cities to look for experts while many renowned doctors are burdened with the pressure of dealing with minor illnesses," Wang said. "We want to help change that." According to him, the company has so far recruited over 200 medical experts from across China for the online initiative. "The service will be priced between 2,000 yuan and 3,000 yuan, depending on what services consumers want," he said. According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, China's hospitals and clinics provided nearly 5.7 billion clinical treatments during the January-September period of last year, up 2.8 percent year-on-year. Qin Zexi, an analyst at Beijing-based iResearch Consulting Group, said it is important to remain cautious about the role of the internet in handling complicated diseases. "The online video diagnosis model has inherent risks because many patients can't accurately express their symptoms. In the case of complicated diseases, patients' inputs could be potentially misleading without on-site examinations." DHL Supply Chain eyes massive size so it could support industry development An interview with Zou Yin, the low-key chief executive officer of DHL Supply Chain China, is a rare event. He does not grant many these days. Only those executives who are on the lookout for a new job readily offer media interviews, he jokes. He is energetic, handsome, and shy, like people of his ilk from East China. His quick responses to questions suggest Zou's understanding of the logistics business is deep, and that he is very confident about its future prospects. Some Western humor punctuates his discourse, probably a result of his long work experience in Germany. The two paintings in his office indicate his affinity for Oriental aesthetics, particularly traditional Chinese culture. The one behind his back shows mountains under a clear blue sky. The other depicts a vibrant ocean. The two paintings vis-a-vis the room's layout are consistent with fengshui. They symbolize support from back and opportunities ahead respectively, he said. But it would be a folly to attribute the success of DHL Supply Chain in China in the past few years to Zou's office fengshui alone. His deep knowledge of the market and a unique management style are contributory factors. "The logistics industry is highly competitive. So there is no secret recipe. As long as you have good people and you are able to maximize their value, you will win," he said. For Zou, the maturity of his team is his greatest achievement so far. He does not believe in rigid control of employees. Instead, Zou adopts a rather loose management of people. He said he never expects a young person to work for DHL his whole life. What he wants to see is the young employee's value improving during his time with the company. DHL Supply Chain being part of the German group, hierarchy remains important. This means, people at different levels need to work within certain boundaries and abide by certain rules. But in the company's Shanghai office, Zou's door is always open to all employees. As long as an employee has an idea to contribute, he/she is welcome to walk in to Zou's office any time, regardless of his/her level in the hierarchy. "I always feel like I'm a public servant to my colleagues, that I need to solve all of their problems," he said. Logistics is traditionally seen as a low-profile industry. So, it's not easy to attract top talent. "I want to change this. We want to grow to a size by which we can support industry development, to make the industry attractive to candidates in the market," he said. Steady growth is a priority for the company. By 2020 the company expects to have set up another six logistics centers in Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shenyang, Shenzhen and the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, bringing its total national warehousing capacity to 1 million square meters. So, it is targeting business not only from existing customers, who are mostly multinational companies, but Chinese firms. Most of its customers have been clients for more than 15 years. "Out partnerships are probably longer than the average time a new-age marriage lasts now in China," said Zou.. Over the past few years, DHL Supply Chain in China has seen many of its customers, particularly those in the technology and automotive industries, move up the value chain. "We have also seen domestic manufacturers, which are also leading brands, move up the value chain. They are starting to offer really good brands and premium products. They are upgrading their manufacturing capabilities. So, we are adding value to their integrated supply chain operations, particularly for high-end manufacturing industries in the electronics business," he said. Zou said he recently had a chat on the subject with a senior vice-president at a top Chinese telecommunications company based in Shenzhen. It appears Chinese manufacturers are changing their supply chain model, he said. From focusing on a low-cost supply chain model, they are looking for alternatives in the market. They want to hit the ground running in all markets with a new product, he said. They are willing to invest more in supply chain to ensure their products reach consumers in time. "The internet helps bridge the gap between demand and supply. People want products delivered within a very short time. So, more manufacturers have to change their supply chain model, and build it according to demand," said Zou. BIO Year of birth: 1976 Work experience: He has been with DHL for over 12 years, during which time he has held management roles in Europe, the United States and China, covering commercial, strategy, shared services and operations. Education: He graduated from Peking University with double major degrees in chemistry, economics, and a minor in law. He also received an MBA from the University of Oxford. Interests: Badminton, swimming, history and traditional culture. More than 1,200 business leaders from home and abroad gathered in Jinan, East China's Shandong province, on April 22 for the 2016 China Green Companies Summit, organized by China Entrepreneur Club. They shared views on a wide array of topics concerning the current and future business landscape, investment hotspots and sustainable development. Liu Chuanzhi, speaks at the 2016 China Green Companies Summit in Jinan . [Photo/VCG] Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of China Entrepreneur Club and chairman of Legend Holdings Ltd, believes that the combination of artificial intelligence, bio-engineering and the internet will be the next big innovation. He called on Chinese private firms, as well as State-run science and technology institutes, to invest more in the field to prepare for the next decade. NANCHANG - Hongxing Village in east China's Jiangxi province is far from the coldest place in China, but it has become an e-commerce mammoth thanks to warm winter gear. Every morning, Zha Daixiong sits in front of his computer to take orders for down jackets produced in the village. "The annual net income of my company has topped one million yuan ($154,400) since I began selling online in 2012," said Zha. In Zha's village, home to only 821 families, more than 420 down jacket manufacturing companies have appeared in recent years, with more than 1,000 people employed in online jacket sales. The story of Hongxing Village's booming jacket industry was first reported by web portal Sohu.com last week. According to statistics released this week, the village took in 2.5 billion yuan in revenue from jackets in 2015, with more than 1 billion yuan from online sales. On e-commerce platform Taobao, Hongxing's jacket revenue stood at 500 million yuan last year, qualifying it as a "Taobao Village" as defined by Alibaba, the e-commerce giant that runs the site. Alibaba defines a village where more than 10 percent of households run online stores and with annual online revenue of 10 million yuan as a "Taobao Village." By the end of 2015, China had 780 "Taobao Villages," according to Alibaba Vice President Gao Hongbing. From scratch to boom Hongxing's enormous online success started from scratch. The village's down jacket industry started to take shape in the 1980s. For years, the local jacket industry was dominated by big companies due to the heavy costs of running brick-and-mortar stores. Smaller workshops in the village found it hard to market their products without the logistics and sales support of larger companies. "When my grandfather was running the jacket business, he took the clothes across the country in a big van, which was time-consuming and tiring," said Xu Ziyang, who now runs an online store. "When my father took over the business, he struggled to find sales agents to help sell the clothes." "Now it's all online," said 27-year-old Xu. After graduating from Guangzhou University in 2010, Xu returned to Hongxing to market children's down jackets manufactured by his family's company, Chengzhi Clothing Factory. He designed the product page on Taobao and promoted the products. Hard work paid off. Online sales topped 6 million yuan in 2014, accounting for more than 60 percent of total revenue that year. "One of the best things about e-commerce is the slashed costs," a manager of a jacket company with the surname Liu told Xinhua. Liu opened three brick-and-mortar stores in 2011, which generated about one million yuan in revenue that year, but profits were a tepid 150,000 yuan. In 2012, he started selling the clothes online, and by 2013, the annual revenue soared to 2 million yuan. His profits also went up by 20 percent year on year, prompting Liu to give up the three stores and concentrate on online sales. The jacket sales boom also spawned several related industries, including logistics and button production, according to Guo Weishan, Hongxing's village head. In villager Zha Xiaomao's house, samples of buttons, down collars and other accessories hang on the wall. "I make more than 100 types of buttons," he said. "Anything you need for down jackets, you can find it here." The lucrative industry has also attracted some out-of-towners seeking fortune. Yu Xianyun, a resident of neighboring Gongqingcheng City, came to Hongxing in February last year. He rented a house to design down jackets in the village, where competition is heating up. "There are four clothing design companies in Hongxing," he said. Yu said he designs more than 1,000 clothing styles each year for the local garment industry. A fabric company headquartered in southeast China's Fujian Province also set up a branch in the village to cash in on the industry. "We provide more than 100 types of fabrics," said branch head Zeng Huaxian. "Profits from a single piece of fabric are not very high, but we have very high sales volume here." Currently, a total of 85 companies specializing in e-commerce, clothing design and button-making are operating in Hongxing. More than 20 companies were set up by people from neighboring Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, and even some from the northern province of Hebei. The companies have hired some 30,000 locals. Logistics companies have also been popping up. Before 2010, only one company delivered goods to customers. Now there are 12. Outside a Xiongdi Logistics warehouse, Xinhua reporters found a group of employees packing more than 40 parcels. "All of these are down jackets," said the company head. "We deliver about 600 of these parcels each day." Another logistics company, Tiantian Express, delivers more than 1,000 parcels to customers nationwide every day. Obstables ahead obstables Despite the flourishing business, industry insiders see obstacles for Hongxing's future development. "Our biggest concern is a lack of talent," said village head Guo Weishan. Located in rural Jiangxi, Hongxing's living conditions are less desirable than those in big cities, making it difficult to hire qualified people, Guo said. "We are in desperate need of people with expertise in photography and online operations, but it's hard to hire people to work in this remote village," Guo said. "Even though the companies here are willing to hire, it's hard to keep them working here for long." In addition, many of the manufacturers in Hongxing are small, home-based studios, with parents making and processing garments, and children in charge of online sales. Many of these people, Guo said, have no expertise in online finance and marketing, which will harm their future development. Lack of marketing talent has made brand building another issue. In Hongxing, there are more than 100 down jacket brands, but few have much brand recognition in the market, Guo said. In order to address the human resources problem, the village sends young people to big cities such as Beijing and Hangzhou to gain experience. After learning about management and fashion, they return to Hongxing. Local authorities are also helping by setting up industrial parks in cities near the village. Many of the company heads in Hongxing are considering moving to the parks, which have more support facilities. "This way, we will have more talent to help businesses," one company head said. Dakele Chief Executive Officer Ding Xiuhong attends a business event in Beijing, March 1, 2014. [Photo/VCG] The sizzle is beginning to fizzle as smaller players throw in the towel The startup Dakele looked pretty smart when it released a phone in China four years ago. The market was doubling annually, and the company put brand-name components inside a device that cost a fraction of the iPhone. That $160 gadget went on sale just four months after Dakele opened its doors, and soon the company, which translates as "Big Cola," made inroads against Huawei Technologies Co and Xiaomi Corp. Buzz was building for the Dakele 3 model last year, with online reviews calling it the best Apple Inc clone. Then the sizzle started to fizzle. Huawei spent $300 million on marketing, Xiaomi cut prices and clones of the clone appeared. Troubles with a supplier and raising money prompted Dakele to shut down last monthand it likely won't be alone. China's herd of 300 phone makers may be halved in 12 months by competition, a sales plateau and economic growth that's the slowest in a quarter-century, according to executives and analysts. "The mobile-phone industry changed more quickly and brutally than expected," Dakele Chief Executive Officer Ding Xiuhong said on his Weibo messaging account. "As a startup, we couldn't find more strategies and methods to break through." Smartphone sales in China exploded earlier this decade as incomes rose, prices for chips and displays plummeted, and carriers offered arrays of discounts. Shelves were flooded with hundreds of brandsfrom national heavyweights Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi to the smaller Dakele, Tecno Mobile and Gionee. Shipments more than doubled in each of the three years ending 2012, according to researcher Canalys. Xiaomi's valuation rocketed to $45 billion, and the phone maker started selling devices in India, the world's fastest-growing major economy. Lenovo Group Ltd spent $2.91 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility to help make it "a global player". In 2011, only four of the top 10 vendors in China were domestic. Last year, there were eight. Now that wave has crested. Smartphones no longer are novelties in China, and most domestic brands target the mid- and low-price ranges, where buyers don't upgrade as frequently as those for high-end Apple and Samsung Electronics Co phones. Jack Ding has been selling phones and accessories in his shop on Beijing's Third Ring Road for about two years. He has about 20 different models on display, predominantly local brands such as Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE. Yet they're not moving that well. "I don't count on selling phones to make money," he said. During a 20-minute stretch, only one customer came into buy a 120-yuan ($18.50) memory card. China's economic growth also slowed, with last year's rate being the slowest since 1990. China smartphone sales last year grew by 2 percentthe lowest ever recorded by Canalys. In 2011, that rate was 150 percent. The cumulative effect may be that about half of all Chinese vendors get swamped, said James Yan, a Beijing-based analyst at Counterpoint Research. "The market (comprising 300 phone makers) will consolidate to about 150," Yan said. "Some small players will survive but many, like Dakele, will go bankrupt." The TCL booth at a mobile phone expo in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province.[Photo/China Daily] No other major economy in the world is doing as poorly as Brazil. Yet TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd is investing in new hires and wider distribution of its Alcatel brand phones in a plan to gain market share from competitors. The Brazilian unit of the Chinese phonemaker is now selling directly to 50 retail clients and 10,000 stores, compared with 15 clients and 3,500 stores a year earlier, according to Fernando Pezzotti, president of TCL's Alcatel brand in Brazil. It has hired additional sales staff to work with big retail chains in the country, including Magazine Luiza SA and Via Varejo SA's Pontofrio, in an effort to increase in-store sales of phones. "The Brazilians like being connected with a state-of-the-art device," Pezzotti said in a phone interview from Sao Paulo. "We are seeing this moment more as an opportunity than as a crisis. For us, it is time to gain space." In Latin America, TCL's Alcatel is the No 2 phonemaker in terms of sales volume, Pezzotti said, citing data gathered by the company. In Brazil, it's ranked fifth or sixth. "We want to change this scenario," he said. While Latin America's largest economy is expected to shrink 3.8 percent this year, on top of a 3.8 percent contraction last year, the number of mobile-device users in the countrymore than 200 millionremains attractive long-term, Pezzotti said. In the first half of this year, the company plans to introduce a new phone brand with models that cost less than 1,000 reais ($277) each. In the second half, it will debut different ones that cost more than that, Pezzotti said. In all, Alcatel expects to sell 40 million devices in Brazil in 2016, he said. China's TCL had operated globally under the Alcatel OneTouch and TCL brands. In addition to smartphones, the company also makes tablets, wearables, mobile routers and other devices. Alcatel OneTouch was established as a joint venture of France's Alcatel-Lucent and TCL but is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Shenzhen, China-based company. The company has dropped the name OneTouch from its brand and will be just "Alcatel," Andre Felippa, Alcatel's vice-president of marketing for Latin America, said at a news conference last week. KUNMING -- A Thai tourist was killed after a bus rolled over in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Sunday, local authorities said. The accident occurred on a highway in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture at around 9:10 a.m.. The tourist bus rolled over after colliding with a truck and then the road block. One Thai tourist was killed on the spot, and three Thai people and the Chinese driver were injured, according to a statement from the local government. The 48-seat bus was carrying 38 people, including 34 Thai nationals and four Chinese, it said. The injured have been hospitalized. The cause of the accident is being investigated. BEIJING -- China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the Ministry of Water Resources on Sunday evening jointly issued a warning for mountain floods from Sunday night to Monday night. The floods are expected to hit the southeastern part of Tibet, the eastern part of Guangdong and, in particular, the western part of Yunnan, according to a statement. The weather authorities advised close monitoring and precautions. Meanwhile, a separate statement issued by the Ministry of Land and Resources and the CMA warned of high risks of unspecified geological disasters in western Yunnan from Sunday night to Monday night. Heavy rain has lashed south China since last week. KIGALI -- Vincent Hategekimana has worked 33 years with the China Road and Bridge Corporation, a Chinese firm operating in Rwanda. Born in Musanze district, northern Rwanda, Hategekimana is the first born in a family of five. He studied up to Primary Six before dropping out. The 57-year-old joined the Chinese firm in 1982 as a casual labourer who had learned carpentry and construction, and has worked on almost all its major projects in Rwanda ever since. His job involves heading usually 50 to 60 labourers for construction projects. When the 1994 Rwandan genocide broke out, Hategekimana was at the company's offices in Kibuye, western Rwanda. "The genocide happened three months after I had visited home. Information was patchy; I took the next about six months without knowing the fate of my family because of the nature of the situation," he told Xinhua. In Kibuye, Hategekimana helped safeguard his employer's equipment, including lorries, mortar graders and excavators. "We would see people turning up wanting to loot the property, but together with other guards, we successfully protected property, it was very hard," he recalled. When the Chinese returned after the genocide that killed more than 500,000 in about 100 days, they first took the staff who had kept watch on the company's property to their homes to find out the fate of their family members. Today a father of eight, Hategekimana is a resident in Ndera, some 15 km from the capital Kigali. Two of his children have completed university education while others are in secondary school. He himself didn't have much education, but is proud of bringing his children up to university level. He says he loves his job and that one would have a good career "as long as you are a dedicated worker". He describes his Chinese colleagues as very friendly and easy to get along with. The Chinese try to learn the local language Kinyarwanda while they teach local works some basic Chinese used in daily work, Hategekimana said. Fellow workers at the company say Hategekimana has used his experience to guide entrants. One colleague Joseph Sibomana said: "I have seen Vincent involved in all leading projects. I appreciate the fact that he helps guide us." Li Jianbo, the director general of China Road and Bridge Corporation Rwanda, calls Hategekimana a "committed worker". "Hategekimana thinks about how to accomplish a given task without waiting for instructions. He puts in a lot of hard work; he protected company equipment (during the genocide). We are proud to have him as our employee," Li told Xinhua in Kigali. Li said the China Road and Bridge Corporation was proud to be "the first foreign company to return to Rwanda after the genocide" to contribute to the country's reconstruction. "Our mission here is not about business alone but to contribute to helping people and government to grow together and develop the economy," Li said. Premier Li Keqiang visits Lushan county in Southwest China's Sichuan province on April 24, 2016. [Photo/gov.cn] Premier Li Keqiang praised the unyielding spirits, perseverance and endurance of Sichuan people, saying they are optimistic and positive when he visited Lushan county in Southwest China's Sichuan province on Sunday. He walked into a newly-built three-story house that was owned by Gao Pancai, a villager in the county. In the new house, the senior man talked with the Premier about his family's lives before and after the earthquake. Three years ago when Gao's house was destroyed by the earthquake, the premier promised that Gao will get a new house. A new training school for teachers and parents of autistic children opened in Beijing on Sunday. The Tong Yi Shi Jie Education Institute for Autism aims to train 8,000 certified professionals by 2018 as well as provide online training to more than 50,000 people. No official data on the number of autistic children in China is available. However, a national survey in 2006 by the China Disabled Persons' Federation found that about 111,000 children aged up to 6 had been diagnosed with developmental disorders. Most of them were autistic, according to the federation, which said that in recent years the number has continued to rise due to greater awareness of the condition, among other factors. This has resulted in a shortage of professionals trained in the skills needed to teach autistic students, said Wen Hong, chairwoman of the China Association of Persons with Psychiatric Disability and Their Relatives. Specialist programs are available in China, but they differ from most professional training courses, meaning some teachers are better equipped than others to educate children with developmental disorders, Wen said. Tian Huiping, whose son is autistic, founded the Beijing Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism in 1993 after returning to China from Germany. By 2013, the school had helped more than 8,500 autistic children and their families, and trained 1,179 specialized teachers. The Stars and Rain Insitute is also behind the new Beijing school, along with the Chinese Maternal and Child Health Association. "Teaching autistic children is a hard job," Tian said, although she added that conditions for such teachers have greatly improved over the years. Autism care was included in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), the first time it was mentioned in the government's blueprint for social and economic development. On Sunday, six teachers were also awarded by the Stars and Rain Insitute for their work with autistic children. The prize comes with the chance to study in the United States, sponsored by One Foundation, the charity organization. "Many parents of autistic children have a deep concern, which is when we die, how can our babies survive? And how will society treat them?" Tian said. "Since last year, I think I can say I can die in peace because I know someone will protect my son's dignity." An exhibition of environmental achievements on Qinling Mountain was held in Shaanxi History Museum on Friday to mark international Earth Day. The mountain, in central Shaanxi province, is home to a giant panda population that has increased by more than 30 percent in the past decade. It was recognized as a Gift to the Earth by the World Wildlife Fund on April 22, 2003, in a show of thanks and congratulations to the provincial government for its environmental protection efforts. Wan Hui, WWF representative, said these efforts were "highly valued", which is why Qinling was named "the second Gift to the Earth in China, and the 83rd in the world". Protection work on the mountain has been stepped up in the 13 years since it was listed as a Gift to the Earth and these efforts were on show at the exhibition. Shaanxi Daily, sponsor of the exhibition, launched a publication entitled the World of Qinling on Friday, to commemorate Earth Day and to further publicize and promote protection work on the mountain. A competition focused on environmental protection has been launched in Beijing to coincide with Earth Day, which fell on Friday. The activity, dubbed V Blue Beijing, encourages citizens to record what they have done to reduce pollution in their day-to-day lives. It was first held last year, when 100 volunteer organizations and 200 citizens were rewarded for their efforts to normalize the skies above the capital. Among them was Liao Lichun, who organizes volunteers to plant trees in Inner Mongolia. "People don't understand why I gave up my career as a successful entrepreneur to be a tree planter, and they wonder why I ask for volunteers from all over the country rather than hire local laborers at a lower cost," Liao said. "The only explanation I can give is that I want more citizens to have a go and then carry on the good work themselves." To enter the competition, participants can send examples of their environmental work to the official WeChat account for a chance to win a prize. More than 1,000 environmental societies have publicized their volunteer activities via the official WeChat account and are expected to form an environmentally friendly league to further promote their work. The launch ceremony for V Blue Beijing was held on COFCO farm, 38 kilometers outside of the city, where participants were invited to enjoy the pastoral scenery and learn more about environmental protection. President Xi Jinping shakes hand with a villager at Dawan village in Jinzhai county, East China's Anhui province, April 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Insurance coverage and health benefits should be expanded to tackle poverty, said President Xi Jinping during an inspection tour to Jinzhai county, Anhui province, on Sunday. Jinzhai county, once an important Red Army revolutionary base, is among the country's most impoverished counties. During his visit, Xi laid a wreath at the monument of revolutionary martyrs in Jinzhai, visited a Red Army memorial hall and a museum honoring revolutionaries. Xi also visited five homes in Dawan village in Jinzhai and listened to ideas and suggestions of the villagers on poverty-alleviation activities such as photovoltaic power generation, tea planting and developing the fish breeding and poultry sectors. He also sought their views on migration and resettlement. Xi met Wang Nengbao, 68, and learnt that Wang's wife, who suffers from hypertension, has to spend about 3,000 yuan on medicines. Xi said disease and disability often cause poverty, therefore, poverty-alleviation mechanisms should be further improved to cover medical expenses and greater support should be given to poor households in terms of health insurance and the new rural cooperative medical system. Dawan village is not easy to access and to get there Xi had to take one-and-a-halfhour flight from Beijing to Hefei and then another 90 minutes by car before he arrived in Jinzhai county. It took another hour to get to the village. The effort was worth it, Xi told the villagers, as he wanted to know firsthand the real picture of poverty-relief work in rural areas, especially at the revolutionary bases. He also highlighted the importance of taking sustainable measures to relieve poverty and setting up long-term poverty-alleviation mechanisms. Efforts should also be continued in creating files, records and data to help poor households emerge from impoverished circumstances, Xi said. Cargo aircrafts of SF Express at an airport in Shenzhen, south Guangdong province on Jan 30, 2015. [Photo/VCG] SF Express, the largest private express logistics firm in China, is set to build cargo air hub in central China after an airport site-selection report was approved by civil aviation authorities. A freight airport is expected to be built at the town of Yanji, about 75 km east of Wuhan, the capital of central Hubei province, according to Civil Aviation Administration of China. The choice of the airport in Yanji enables it to cover most of the mainland within one-and-a-half hours of air travel time. Industry experts believe the hub, if completed, has the potential to serve SF Express in China the way Memphis serves FedEx or UPS in the US. The Shenzhen-based SF express Group currently has 19 cargo aircraft and leases another 20 and its target is to own 100 aircraft by 2020. It now holds the dominated position in the country's air cargo market, accounting for 20 percent of the total in China. However, SF's size would pale in comparison with that of its major international counterparts. FedEx, for example, owns 650 aircraft and covers more than 220 countries. In China's civil aviation industry, passengers are given priority over cargo and cargo delivery inevitably gives way to passenger transport in some busy airports. Gu Qian, public relations manager at SF Express (Group) Co Ltd, told China Daily last year that the company would like to choose a location in central China so that the project could be included in the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone and support the development of the nation's multinational "One Belt, One Road" trade initiative. The closing ceremony for offshore field operation of China-Vietnam joint inspection in sea area beyond the mouth of the Beibu Gulf was held in Guangzhou on April 23. It welcomed back the Fendou V research vessel which carried both Chinese and Vietnamese experts. Officials from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Land and Resources, and Geological Survey attended the ceremony. Set up in 2012, the Working Group for the Sea Area beyond the Mouth of the Beibu Gulf is aimed at implementing the Agreement on Basic Principles in Guiding the Settlement of tile Maritime Issue between China and Vietnam according to the consensus between the leaders of two parties and countries. China and Vietnam agreed on the program for the joint inspection in the sea area beyond the Mouth of the Beibu Gulf after seven rounds of working group consultations and three rounds of technical experts discussion, and officially launched the four-month offshore field operation on Dec 19, 2015. The successful completion of this field operation fully demonstrates the spirit of handling maritime differences through cooperation of the two sides, which further enhances political mutual trust, and creates a peaceful, friendly and cooperative atmosphere at sea as well as necessary conditions to seek a fundamental and permanent solution to maritime issues. The sea area beyond the mouth of the Beibu Gulf is rich in natural resources. The two sides will learn more about the sea area through this joint inspection, improve the marine scientific research cooperation, lay a solid foundation for joint development and delimitation of the sea area, and bring tangible benefits for both countries and peoples. In the future, the two sides will continue to cooperate closely, implement the consensus between the leaders of the two Parties and countries, actively promote joint development and steadily promote the delimitation of the sea area beyond the mouth of the Beibu Gulf. Draft law on overseas NGOs eases restriction (Xinhua) Updated: 2016-04-25 17:33 BEIJING -- A draft law to regulate NGOs from outside the Chinese mainland, submitted for its third reading on Monday, eases restriction over their operation and activities. The bill was submitted to the bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which runs Monday to Thursday. The NPC Law Committee suggested in a review report that the bill should be put for a vote at this session. The bill regulates the activities of overseas NGOs in China and protects their rights and interests, said Xu Xianming, deputy head of the NPC Law Committee, who elaborated the review report to the lawmakers. Many overseas NGOs have engaged in charity and academic exchanges in China and played a positive role, since the reform and opening-up drive started in the late 1970s. "Since their number has grown fast and activities intensified, it is necessary to have a law to regulate and guide their activities," Xu said. The draft law targets the activities of NGOs founded outside the Chinese mainland. However, exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and research institutes of science and engineering will follow existing regulations. It also removes the restriction of being allowed only one office in the Chinese mainland. They will be allowed to open offices according to operational needs but the number and locations must be approved by the regulatory authority. The bill also deletes the five year limit on operations of representative offices in China. According to the bill, representative offices of overseas NGOs and overseas NGOs carrying out temporary activities in China are forbidden from recruiting members in the mainland without the permission of the State Council. The restrictions on staff and volunteers are removed but tougher rules are imposed on finances including the source of funds, expenses and revenue. They should have their financial reports audited and published. The previous version required a permit if an NGO did not have an office on the mainland but wanted to temporarily operate there. During the readings, lawmakers and experts argued that asking for a permit may hold back international exchanges since a huge number of overseas NGOs have engaged in individual programs in China. The current version changes the permit to reporting. They should report to the regulator 15 days before their program begins while their Chinese partners should obtain approval. The bill allows the police to interview chief representatives and senior executives of overseas NGOs and force the Chinese partner to terminate an cooperation program if it is considered to undermine state security. Overseas NGOs, which engage in illegal activities including those to subvert the state and split the nation, will be blacklisted and banned from operating in the mainland. A few overseas NGOs that have already registered at the civil affairs department will be able to continue operating, Xu said. "The basic principle in drafting this law is to combine the regulation with service so as to facilitate NGO operations in China," he said. Xi stresses ideological construction among judicial staff (Xinhua) Updated: 2016-04-25 19:45 BEIJING -- Chinese President Xi Jinping has called ideological and political construction the top priority for judicial staff and urged capacity building. Xi made the remarks in a written instruction for a national meeting on the building of judicial workforce held on Monday. Xi spoke highly of the achievements that have been made in the building of judicial force since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in late 2012. Meng Jianzhu, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, delivered Xi's instruction at the meeting. Xi said ideological and political construction should be given top priority, and urged judicial staff to innovate, strengthen standardization and become more professional to build a clean and honest judicial force with firm beliefs, dedication to the people, and a sense of responsibility. Capacity building is a key mission and judicial and law enforcement staff's professional quality and expertise should be improved, Xi said in the instruction. Party committees at all levels should strengthen and improve their leadership in political and legal affairs, choose proper leaders for judicial organs, and study and address major issues in a timely manner, Xi added. Xi urged officials to care about judicial and law enforcement staff, establish an occupational insurance system, and strengthen their abilities. Attendees to the meeting stressed the mission to maintain social stability, promote social equity and justice, and guarantee that people live and work in peace. They also agreed to improve the ideological and political quality as well as the abilities of judicial staff to enable them to better fulfill their duties. A Chinese medical worker prepares to vaccinate a young kid at a hospital in Shanghai, China, March 20, 2016. [Photo/IC] BEIJING -- China banned drug wholesalers from selling vaccines and demanded more accountability following a scandal in which millions of dollars' worth of improperly stored vaccines were sold to patients nationwide, according to a decision published recently.Premier Li Keqiang signed a decree on April 23 to release the decision, a draft of which was endorsed at an executive meeting of the State Council, China's cabinet, on April 13.The decision to amend a regulation on managing vaccine circulation and use reformed distribution channels for the country's B-class, or non-compulsory, vaccines.It requires B-class vaccines to be distributed in the same way as A-class ones, which are covered by the national compulsory immunization program.X B-class vaccines must be procured by county-level disease control institutions directly from manufacturers and dispatched to hospitals, all under the organization of provincial-level disease control organs, according to the decision.Virtually all vaccine circulation will occur under official arrangements.The decision also requires disease control organs, hospitals and clinics to keep clear records of their purchases and received inventory.The decision also improves management of cold-chain storage and transportation, prohibiting vaccines from leaving the cold-chain system and requiring regular temperature monitoring.Institutions or hospitals must request storage temperature records upon receiving vaccines, said the decision.China will set up a vaccine tracking system, according to the decision, saying enterprises and user agencies must record information about the circulation and use of vaccines so that even the smallest vaccine package can be pinpointed anywhere in its entire life cycle.All agencies handling vaccines must report vaccines without a clear source or recognizable packaging to drug authorities. These vaccines will be destroyed under the joint watch of drug and health authorities.The decision also heightened accountability. Fines for serious violators, such as those improperly storing and transporting vaccines, will be increased. Government officials will be required to resign from their jobs if they fail to perform their supervision duties well.The decision took effect on April 23. Xi stresses enhanced Internet development for people, country (Xinhua) Updated: 2016-04-25 20:55 BEIJING -- The people of China should be provided with information services that are accessible, affordable and of a high standard, President Xi Jinping has said. Xi made the remarks at a symposium on cyber security and informatization on April 19, at which he called for officials' frequent use of Internet to learn about public opinions and enhanced cyber security. The full text of his speech was made public on Monday. China, although a latecomer to the Internet, has made remarkable achievements in the development of Internet networks and services, Xi said, adding that 700 million Chinese netizens use the Internet to study, work, and access public services. The president said the development of the Internet in China should meet the people's expectations and demands. He called for more investment in Internet infrastructure, especially in rural areas, and said online tools and services should be used to support poverty alleviation campaigns. "More people in poverty should have access to the Internet. They can use it to sell their agricultural products and their children can receive a high-quality education," Xi said. Moreover, the Internet should serve as a new growth driver for the Chinese economy, said Xi. The "Internet Plus" strategy has boosted innovation and entrepreneurship in China, and the information economy accounts for an increasingly larger share of China's GDP. "In the process of informatization, no progress, or even slower progress, means regression. China must improve its information infrastructure and the integration of information resources," Xi said. Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory, and the Chinese military will "take all of any necessary measures to safeguard state sovereignty and security", the Ministry of National Defense said on Monday. Beijing made the response after media reports said six aircraft with the US Air Force embarked on a flying mission in the so-called "international airspace" near the island in the South China Sea on April 19. "We have taken notice of the relevant report," the ministry said on Monday evening in a written reply to a media request. The ministry said: "It needs to be pointed out that the US side, in the name of 'freedom of navigation and overflight', is actually advancing the militarization of the South China Sea." Such actions "pose a threat to sovereignty and security of countries along the sea and sabotage regional peace and stability", the ministry said. "We express concerns and opposition to this," the ministry added. China has become a major market for foreign enterprises to develop intellectual property innovation, according to a senior judge from China's top court. With more frequent economic and trade exchanges, IP disputes involving foreign litigants nationwide rose from 2,840 in 2013 to 5,675 last year. The figures were disclosed by Song Xiaoming, chief judge of a civil tribunal for IP cases under the Supreme People's Court. "Foreign-related IP cases are a key area for IP tribunals in courts, especially administrative ones," Song told China Daily in an exclusive interview ahead of IP Day, which falls on Tuesday. In 2013, 1,143 foreign IP administrative cases were heard by Chinese courts, with the number rising to 4,348 last year, according to the top court. In such lawsuits, government agencies such as copyright administrations at all levels are usually the defendants accused of improper official rulings. Of the IP administrative cases involving foreigners, most were related to patents and trademarks, Song said, adding that those involving business secrets have also risen rapidly in recent years. A report by IP House, a third-party IP institute that analyzed 5,022 verdicts from 5,432 IP cases heard by the Beijing IP Court recently, found that 1,095 were related to foreign litigants. Of the foreign cases, 395 involved US enterprises, 2.7 times more than those from Germany, which was second on the list, the institute said. Among those involving US businesses, 346 were administrative IP cases concerning, for example, trademarks and patents. "The boom in IP disputes should be attributed to our country's strategy of China going global' and bringing in foreign business', as well as to a strong awareness by foreign enterprises, especially those in the US, to protecting their IP rights in China," Song said. He said many US companies have applied to Chinese IP authorities for protection of their patents and trademarks, which is why a large number of disputes concern them. Chen Jinchuan, vice-president of the Beijing IP Court, said the US invests heavily in innovation and applies for patent protection in China the most often. Song said that with more Chinese companies expanding their business overseas, they should pay more attention to protecting their intellectual property in the countries concerned. He said very few Chinese enterprises apply for patent or trademark protection overseas, adding, "As China is calling for the development of high-grade, precise and advanced technology, such innovations should be protected both at home and abroad." Mao Mingqiang, an IP judge from Ningbo Intermediate People's Court in Zhejiang province, said the increase in foreign-related IP disputes is not necessarily a bad thing. "Some Chinese companies have learned a lot from such lawsuits or have later cooperated on business with their foreign litigants," Mao said. China accused the US on Monday of "hyping up" recent military flights around a Chinese island in the South China Sea. It said Washington's motivation was questionable and urged countries concerned to show "restraint" over the territorial issue. Observers said the US is apparently using the timing to expand military deployment in the area. Washington's comments came ahead of a ruling by an international arbitration body in a process launched unilaterally by the Philippines against China's territorial claim in the South China Sea. Asked about a South China Morning Post report on Monday that said China will start constructing an outpost on Huangyan Island this year, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had not heard of the case. "However, I saw media reports that military planes from the US and the Philippines flew over the sea around Huangyan Island," Hua said. She said China has always respected the right to normal and legal flights. "But such high-profile hyping (of the flights concerned) is abnormal, and the motivation questionable." She also said that Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory, and Beijing will "take necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and justified rights and interests". Hua said China does not want to see further provocation by the countries concerned and hopes they will show restraint. The Defense Ministry on Monday also voiced objection to the flights, saying they were being staged under the guise of navigation and flight freedom, but they were actually pushing forward militarization in the South China Sea. The Philippines claims Huangyan Island, which belongs to and is controlled by China. The Japan Times reported on Saturday that six US military aircraft left Clark Air Base in the Philippines on Tuesday last week and conducted "air and maritime situational awareness flights" near Huangyan Island. The aircraft remained in the Philippines after a recent exercise by the two countries that included island-taking scenarios that were apparently targeted at China. The US Pacific Command said in a statement on Friday that six military planes flew last Tuesday through international airspace near Huangyan Island. US warships have stepped up operations around Chinese islands in the South China Sea, including one in October and another in January. Teng Jianqun, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said: "The US military wants to use the Philippine bases to monitor and threaten Chinese islands, including Huangyan Island. This shows that the US is updating its military deployment in the South China Sea." Tao Wenzhao, a researcher of US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US hyping of the flights is "definitely related to the ruling by the arbitration body", which is expected within weeks. During a Southeast Asian tour by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which ended on Sunday, China agreed with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The countries also called on nations outside the region to play a constructive role in the area. The sizzle is beginning to fizzle as smaller players throw in the towel The startup Dakele looked pretty smart when it released a phone in China four years ago. The market was doubling annually, and the company put brand-name components inside a device that cost a fraction of the iPhone. That $160 gadget went on sale just four months after Dakele opened its doors, and soon the company, which translates as "Big Cola," made inroads against Huawei Technologies Co and Xiaomi Corp. Buzz was building for the Dakele 3 model last year, with online reviews calling it the best Apple Inc clone. [Photo by Song Chen and Li Min/China Daily] New copyright regulation and the reach of the internet help China's music industry grow, experts tell Chen Nan. China is now seeing the emergence of a transactional recorded music market. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's annual music report says that music sales in China rose 63.8 percent in 2015, to $170 million, which is "a tremendous increase". "Of all the emerging markets, where licensed streaming services are engaging fans and growing the legitimate industry, China tops the list for record companies," says the report, released on April 12. "Undoubtedly, last year saw lots of good news for China's music market, which has been in the doldrums for many years," says Guo Biao, China's chief representative for London-based IFPI. The country's music market witnessed rampant piracy in the past. But the situation has changed, thanks to a combination of factors. The first is support from the government, which stepped up the pressure for removal of copyright-infringing content. Last July, the National Copyright Administration of China issued a notice, saying that "online music delivery platforms must have all unauthorized musical works removed by July 31, 2015". Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the copyright administration, recently said more than 2.2 million illegal songs had been removed within two months of the notice being issued. George Ash, president of Universal Music Asia Pacific, says: "The government is determined to see this transition succeed. Having seen the success achieved in games and cinema, they recognize music as another sector that can generate significant numbers of jobs, substantial revenue and a bright future for the industry." Another factor has been digital services, led by Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba, which helped to move China's music market to a paid model. Recording artist Prince accepts his award for best male R&B artist at the 2006 BET Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, US, June 27, 2006. [Photo/Agencies] Prince's remains have been cremated and his family and friends attended a private ceremony on Saturday to pay their respects to the late pop superstar at the studio complex where he died in a suburb of Minneapolis, a Prince spokeswoman said. Among those seen entering the Paisley Park Studios complex, where Prince lived in Chanhassen, Minnesota, were his sister, Tyka Nelson, musician and former collaborator Sheila E., his former bass player Larry Graham and model Damaris Lewis. The service came two days after Prince, whose hits included Purple Rain and When Doves Cry, was found dead in an elevator at the complex at age 57. His death shocked millions of fans around the world and prompted glowing tributes from fellow musicians and public figures, including President Barack Obama. "Prince was celebrated by a small group of his most beloved: family, friends and his musicians, in a private, beautiful ceremony to say a loving goodbye," Prince publicist Anna Meacham said in a statement. Meacham said Prince's remains have been cremated and their final resting place will remain private. Plans are under way for a musical celebration of Prince, with details to be announced later, she said. On Saturday, Graham stood at a gate of Paisley Park Studios and thanked some of the hundreds of fans gathered on the lawn outside to show their admiration of Prince, a seven-time Grammy winner whose music blended rock, funk, R&B, jazz and disco. "Prince made us all better musicians and spiritually is the most important thing, but as musician he pushed us and he made us better and we listened deeply," Graham told the fans. Participants in the ceremony handed some fans outside gift boxes that contained items such as Prince-themed apparel and a compact disc of music. An autopsy on Prince was conducted on Friday and authorities are investigating his death. Police said on Friday no signs of suicide or obvious trauma were found in Prince's death. The local medical examiner's office said it could take weeks before autopsy and toxicology results reveal how the groundbreaking performer died. Prince had been on a US tour as recently as last week. But he was briefly hospitalized a week ago, suffering from what his representative told celebrity news website TMZ was the flu, after his plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois. Related: Book cover of The Three-Body Problem. [Photo provided to China Daily] Author Liu Cixin's Nebula award-winning The Three-Body Problem was selected as one of Tsinghua University students' favorite books Sunday. A list of the 10 favorite books was released, commemorating the 21st World Reading Day and the 105th year of Tsinghua University, one of China's top secondary education institutions. A Dream of Red Mansions, one of the four classic literary works of China and Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu, one of the masterpieces of 20th century Chinese literature, were also on the list. The list, which was created based on votes by experts, teachers and students, took five months to compile. Politeria, A Dream of Red Mansions, Ren Jian Ci Hua, A History of Western Philosophy, Fortress Besieged, Peasant Life in China, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ordinary World, The Kite Runner and The Three-Body Problem are on the list. Renowned writer Yang Jiang donated all of her income from publishing and royalties, along with that of her husband Qian Zhongshu, to her alma mater, Tsinghua University, and established a "Read Good Books" scholarship to encourage those who love to read, who read good books and lead in reading. Ninety-four students were each awarded 8,000 yuan ($1,230) this year. Within in them, 50% majored in engineering, 20% in sciences. Those majoring in the arts, who many consider may need to read often, only accounted for 30% of the recipients. Qiu Yong, President of Tsinghua University, speaking at the school's 105th anniversary, encouraged students to read good books. "Reading can let us forget our identities and engage in dialogues with the talented. I hope reading can become another excellent tradition in Tsinghua, along with physical exercise," said Qiu. Qiu donated a set of Ordinary World to freshmen last year, and said that he would recommend works for the list in the future, because it is not "just a personal recommendation, but also the choice of the students of Tsinghua." Related: Three-Body Problem now internatinoal bestseller Mei Baojiu performs in Farewell My Concubine in 2010. ZHANG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY Peking Opera master Mei Baojiu died in Beijing on Monday at age 82. He had been hospitalized from March 31 after falling into a coma following a bronchial spasm. Mei Baojiu was the ninth son of Mei Lanfang (1894-1961), who is considered the most outstanding Peking Opera artist of all time and is credited with bringing Peking Opera to the United States and Europe in the 1930s. Like his father, Mei Baojiu performed as a nan dan (a man playing a female role) a Peking Opera practice forged at a time when women were forbidden to take to the stage. Nan dan's heyday was in the first half of the 20th century, when Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun (1900-76), Cheng Yanqiu (1904-58) and Xun Huisheng (1900-68) dubbed the Four Great Dan established the four Dan styles of Mei, Shang, Cheng and Xun. With his rendition of classic Peking Opera pieces, such as Farewell My Concubine, The Drunken Beauty and Mu Guiying in Command, Mei Baojiu was also Mei Lanfang's only child who performed as a nan dan. Born in Shanghai in 1934, Mei Baojiu started learning Peking Opera at 10 with Wang Youqing. He also learned Kunqu Opera with Zhu Chuanming, one of the best-known performers of the art. Mei Lanfang taught his son himself when he took a break from his tour. When he was 13, Mei Baojiu made his stage debut in Shanghai before starting to tour with his father's Mei Lanfang Peking Opera Troupe when he was 16. Mei Baojiu became head of the troupe after his father died in 1961. Everyone must respect Basic Law Updated: 2016-04-26 07:13 By Ho Lok-Sang(HK Edition) Ho Lok-sang questions the tactics of 'pro-democracy' activists, warning that any challenge to China's sovereignty over Hong Kong will have disastrous consequences 'Pro-democracy" activists have argued that since their campaign for their brand of political reform was not successful, they now have little choice but to advocate self-determination. Most of them have stopped short of calling for independence, but they are now saying they need to seek self-determination outside the framework of the Basic Law. One of the leaders in this camp is Brian Fong of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He claims that the Aug 31, 2014 decision from Beijing was the last straw. He is disappointed that his moderate proposal - one that merely proposed "public recommendation" and not "public nomination" - was rejected. But I also have my own share of frustration. I proposed a moderate political reform package, one that was considered consistent with "international standards" by the panel of international experts that vetted various proposals under the Design Democracy project at the University of Hong Kong. But it was still rejected by the Design Democracy organizers as an option. All three packages presented to the Hong Kong public to solicit their preferences included public nomination. But this was in direct defiance of the Basic Law. The August 31 decision was indeed a disappointment to some Hong Kong people. But rather than being outraged, I waited to see what the SAR government would propose under the terms required by that decree. I was quite pleased with the latitude allowed for aspiring candidates to express their views to the public before the Nominating Committee was to vote. The threshold for entering the race was only 120 votes from the Nominating Committee, while the presence of a ceiling of 240 votes guarantees there would be competition. Prospective candidates could express their views in public. Polls would indicate how popular they are. The committee would take into consideration all the information they had collected to officially nominate two to three candidates for an open election among all eligible voters. However, this political reform package, which would have given the Hong Kong public the first chance ever to elect the Chief Executive, was blocked in the Legislative Council. Although I do not fully agree with the August 31 decision, I can understand why Beijing reacted this way. The "pro-democracy" activists had wanted to put the SAR government and Beijing on the spot by launching an "Occupy Central" movement. They have also threatened to rock Hong Kong to its foundations if Beijing will not yield to their demands. Obviously, Beijing would not accede to such extortion. Instead of learning from their miscalculation, they are now proposing to dump the Basic Law altogether. They argue that the Basic Law has been enacted without consulting Hong Kong people. This is untrue. Hong Kong people including Martin Lee Chu-ming, Reverend Peter Kwong, and Venerable Sik Kok-kwong were on the Basic Law Drafting Committee. Some 180 Hong Kong people were listed in the Basic Law Consultative Committee formed in 1985 to solicit views from the Hong Kong public. Anyone who loves Hong Kong and wants to preserve its core values has to recognize that any attempt to make it a de facto independent place will not be tolerated - not just by the national leaders but by the majority of Chinese people. Indeed, all central government leaders make it their paramount responsibility to preserve the territorial integrity of China and assert sovereignty over its lands. Abandoning the Basic Law, which is enacted by the National People's Congress, will be considered as directly challenging Beijing's sovereignty. Brian Fong cited Lu Ping, then director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, as having said: "How Hong Kong develops its democracy is entirely Hong Kong's prerogative. The central government will not interfere." I am sure Lu Ping meant it when he said it. Yet this must be based on Hong Kong people respecting the national Constitution and respecting the authority of the central government. Lu Ping would never have offered independence. It is unfortunate that since around 2008, some Hong Kong people have increasingly grown distrustful of the central government. This is quite unlike the early post-handover years, when trust in the Beijing government kept increasing. This does not augur well for Hong Kong's future. Both Hong Kong people and the central government need to ask themselves: What can be done to rebuild this trust? Talk of self-determination or independence will not help. The Western media likes to portray China's rule as authoritarian, even dictatorial. But facts speak for themselves. There is rotation of leadership in China, and the mainland has a rigorous system, which ensures a peaceful transition of leadership based on merit. What is even more important is that the Communist Party of China does show considerable ability to learn from past errors. As far as I can see, Beijing does allow Hong Kong to run its own affairs as long as it does not cause problems for Beijing. But challenging Beijing's sovereignty over Hong Kong will surely invite intervention. (HK Edition 04/26/2016 page8) A warehouse storing chemicals and fuel exploded and caught fire in the eastern Chinese city of Jingjiang on Friday, April 22, 2016. [Photo/Sina Weibo] Thousands of residents were evacuated and a firefighter died in Jingjiang, East China's Jiangsu province, on Friday when poisonous and flammable chemicals caught fire. The blaze lasted more than 10 hours. The incident happened one month after the local safety department officials inspected the site, and Beijing News asks whether the inspection was merely a show: Fires in chemical plants and storage houses are especially dangerous as they often cause explosions. After the explosions at a chemicals storage warehouse in Tianjin on Aug 12, last year, safety departments all over the nation strengthened their regulation and supervision of storage facilities for dangerous chemicals. The officials in charge of safety in Jingjiang did this too. On March 10, Zhu Xiaobo, the local official in charge of safety issues, paid an inspection tour to the warehouse where the fire broke out. The local government website even shows he inspected the fire-prevention devices and put forward proposals. But still the fire happened, so of what use was his inspection tour for accident prevention? Did he approve the storehouse's fire-prevention measures? If yes, did he fail in his duty? If no, what were his proposals and were they accepted? That arouses suspicions that Zhu's inspection was nothing but a show. Such shows are rather common: the inspected company prepares everything in advance, the inspector follows a pre-arranged route, applauds everything and gives some advice that does not make any difference. Sometimes the company pays the safety department some money and everything is OK. Yet neither the company nor the safety department has taken any effective measure to ensure safety. The Jingjiang fire suggests how detrimental such shows can be. Senior citizens chat at a retirement home in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua] There are reports that some local governments allow officials at the age of 50, five years younger than the retirement age, to leave their posts and idle away the days until it is time for them to retire; some even get higher pay and more welfare. That's an abuse of power and waste of taxpayers' money, says an editorial on Southern Metropolis Daily: After the phenomenon was first reported in cities of Loudi and Yongzhou in Central China's Hunan province, similar practices have been reported in other cities. A new phrase, "a rest before retirement" has even been coined to describe the phenomenon. The whistle-blowers say that the local governments hope that by offering veteran officials such treatment they will leave their positions allowing them to be taken by younger colleagues. That suggests two things: there are more officials than needed and local governments are using taxpayers' money at will without any legal constraints. Some have claimed that the local governments need to buy the support of these officials for the reform of streamlining government. For example, if a municipal government needs to cut a subsidiary bureau, the leading officials of the bureau might oppose the move; but by allowing these officials to "rest without retirement" with higher pay and better treatment, the local government can press ahead with the streamlining of the government. A smart move. But the problem is that the reform is aimed at cutting administrative costs, and what the local governments are doing actually nullifies that. Taxpayers still need to pay for the redundant officials; they might even need to pay more because the officials get higher pay. Any reform involves redundancies. Tens of millions of workers were laid off in the late 1990s and more might be laid-off in the coming years; they suffered, too, but the reform will continue despite their suffering. There is no reason to treat officials as a special group and protect their interests at the cost of reform. "Rest before retirement" is only one of the privileges local officials enjoy. It is time to accelerate the reform and get rid of all these privileges. The first time I saw China Daily was when I was in high school. Influenced by our English teacher, I often bought China Daily newspaper from a news stall. But as a high school student, it was difficult for me to thoroughly understand the meaning of the news. Though difficult, I still try my best to read through a whole page and check the words I don't know in the dictionary. During that time, I learned much more vocabulary outside of class. And also during that time, I formed the habit of reading China Daily newspaper often. I have to say, due to my habit, my knowledge has become rich and my horizons have widened. In China Daily, I can learn about cultures, customs and news all over the world without traveling there in person. My most favorite section is the Cultural section. I like discovering the differences between Chinese culture with other nations. What do other people in other nations eat every day? Do they eat the same food that we Chinese people eat every day? What kind of festivals do they celebrate? All the above questions will arouse my desire to seek knowledge. So China Daily becomes the first choice for me. I have read many newspapers like China Daily, but I do prefer to reading China Daily; maybe it is because the first impression is the strongest. China Daily has become one part of my life; I read it on the website, on China Daily's official WeChat accounts and also read the traditional newspaper. Now I am working for a foreign company in Beijing, and I never want to give up my habit of reading China Daily. I love China Daily!! Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and G20 Sherpa Li Baodong called on all parties to start implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development comprehensively at a UN debate on Thursday. As the largest developing country, China always put development at the top of its agenda, Li said in the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Thematic Debate on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, at the UN headquarters in New York. In September, President Xi Jinping made commitments that China stands ready to work with other parties to contribute to the 2030 Agenda. China has launched its implementation process and included it in China's mid- to long-term national development program. As president of the G20 this year, China is actively pushing the group to contribute to international development cooperation and the implementation of the 2030 agenda, Li said. "The concept of development runs through the whole design of agenda and outcomes for the Hangzhou Summit, thus serving as an overarching theme in the preparatory work," he said. The summit, to be held in September in Hangzhou, capital city of East China's Zhejiang province, will be marked with two "firsts", according to Li. "It is the first time that the G20 will formulate an action plan on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Upon China's initiative, the G20 is examining ways to support industrialization in Africa and LDCs (Least Developed Countries)," Li explained. "Meanwhile, under China's leadership, the G20 issued its first Presidency Statement on Climate Change, committing to signing the Paris Agreement on April 22 or thereafter, and bringing the agreement into force as soon as possible." Li said that China hopes to make joint efforts with other countries to implement the 2030 Agenda and progress toward common prosperity and development by hosting the summit. Li also held dialogues on preparations for the G20 Hangzhou Summit with Group 77 and other stakeholders from Tuesday to Thursday. He said that China was committed to working with other parties to promote development by encouraging innovation, improving governance, promoting trade and investment, and supporting inclusion and interconnectedness, which will benefit developing countries and their peoples at large. The summit is themed on "building an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy". Lenni Montiel, assistant secretary-general for economic development in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations and UN G20 Sherpa, said the theme and the agenda have been "very well endorsed" by all G20 members. "This Chinese presidency has been praised by everybody in the G20 for the big amount of work in terms of preparation for each meeting," Montiel told China Daily. "It's been impressive the way in which the Chinese presidency has prepared for each single agenda to put on the table. "They have created a very strong line of work on green economy, green financing. This is new," Montiel said. "They have made an incredible effort to the debate, three very important issues: digital economy, the fourth industrial revolution and innovation." Montiel added that having development as a universal concept shows that the G20 is not focusing on short-term priorities anymore and is driving the attention of everybody on long-term issues. As it holds the presidency, China has invited the largest number of developing countries to G20 activities this year, said Wang Xiaolong, sous sherpa and special envoy on the G20 affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We have invited Egypt, Senegal, Chad, Kazakhstan and the Laos as guest countries, and Thailand, the chair of the Group of 77, to participate in the G20 Development Working Group, said Wang. wanglinyan@chinadailyusa.com To celebrate Earth Day on Friday, a primary school in Chongqing holds a 'saving the earth' activity on Wednesday to help students raise awareness of environmental protection. Chen Shichuan / For China Daily UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with President Xi Jinping's special envoy on Thursday on the eve of the Paris Agreement signing ceremony and acknowledged China's contribution to the climate breakthrough. "China played such an important role in making it possible," said Ban. "China has been pushing for energy conservation and emission reduction and promoting South-South cooperation. The country shows its leadership in tackling climate change." Xi's special envoy, Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli, applauded the historical significance of the Paris Agreement and the effort of the United Nations and Secretary-General Ban. High-level officials from nearly 160 countries - including US Secretary of State John Kerry - will sign the agreement at UN headquarters in New York on Friday, which is also International Mother Earth Day. "We believe the signing ceremony will further bring the Paris deal into force," said Zhang. "And China will continue to participate actively in global collaboration to combat climate change and to keep promoting South-South cooperation." Zhang said China, as the largest developing country, recognizes its responsibility, and the country will adhere to a path of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development. China also will build more low-carbon cities, push for zero carbon projects and create a nationwide carbon market, Zhang said. Ban said the UN wishes to increase cooperation with China and together implement the agreement. "China will uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and deepen China's relationship with the UN," Zhang said. After the signing ceremony, China will begin the legal process to join the agreement and will ratify it as soon as possible, said Su Wei, director of the Department of Climate Change of the National Development and Reform Commission. Countries that don't sign the agreement on Friday still will have a year to do so. Those that sign then must have the agreement ratified by their own legislative bodies. At least 55 countries, representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, must ratify the agreement before it can take effect. China and the United States account for 38 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to work toward limiting the increase to 1.5 C. International environmental groups are praising China for significantly increasing the chances that the agreement can take effect before the 2020 deadline. "These signals significantly increase the chance that the agreement will enter into force this year," said Jake Schmidt, director of the International Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is based in New York. Eliza Northrop, a researcher at the World Resources Institute, also said the signing by China and the US will give a major boost to efforts to reach the threshold for entry into force. "It is reasonable to think the entry into force would happen in 2017," she said. "But given the varying timelines for countries to complete their domestic approval processes, the timing of entry into force is uncertain." Samantha Smith, leader of the World Wildlife Fund, said more efforts are urgently needed for the climate change meeting next month in Bonn, Germany, to pick up on issues where the Paris meeting left off. Contact the writers at hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com and zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the opening ceremony of Paris climate deal at the United Nations headquarters in New York, April 22, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] UNITED NATIONS -- Leaders from 171 countries gathered Friday to sign the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, marking the first step toward the pact's entry into force. "I urge all countries to move quickly to join the agreement at the national level so that the Paris Agreement can enter into force as early as possible," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the opening ceremony of the event. Adopted by 196 parties last year in Paris, the pact sets a target of holding the global average rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably below 1.5 degrees. Noting that the window for reaching that target is rapidly closing, Ban called on the global community to "intensify efforts to decarbonize our economies." "The poor and most vulnerable must not suffer further from a problem they did not create." Speaking as a youth representative, 16-year-old Getrude Clement from Tanzania said that "as young people, the future is ours, but this is not the future we want for ourselves." "We are not just sitting and watching our communities suffer. We are leading our communities by taking action, by standing up and speaking up about issues we see in our communities," she said. "Climate change is a big problem for the entire planet, but the children, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, feel most of its effects, now and in the future," she said. The agreement can enter into force 30 days after at least 55 parties that account for at least 55 percent of global emissions take further national steps to ratify it. A key party to the agreement, China has pledged to cut its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels, increase non-fossil fuel sources in primary energy consumption to about 20 percent, and peak its carbon emissions by 2030. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the signing ceremony, announced that China will finalize domestic legal procedures to ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change before the G20 Hangzhou summit in September this year. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (left) shakes hands with UN chief Ban Ki-moon at the UN headquarters in New York, the United States, April 21, 2016. Photo/Xinhua China will formally ratify the Paris Agreement before September, said Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli, who signed the climate agreement on behalf of President Xi Jinping on Friday at a special ceremony at the United Nations. Zhang, Xi's special envoy, also called on all G20 members to give early approval to the agreement. "China will finalize domestic legal procedures on its accession before the G20 Hangzhou summit in September this year," said Zhang to applause from the audience. More than 175 countries signed the agreement on Friday. It was a new record for the most countries to sign an international agreement on one day, which had been set in 1982 when 119 countries signed the Law of the Sea Convention. "Today is a day that I have worked toward since day one as secretary-general of the United Nations and declared climate change to be my top priority. Today you are signing a new covenant with the future," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will step down at the end of this year after 10 years in the post. "Today's record-breaking number of signatures on the climate change agreement sends a powerful message to the international community. It's now time to take action for humanity," said Ban. President says UK would not get preferential treatment over bloc in negotiating new pact A trade deal between Britain and the United States could take five to 10 years to negotiate if Britain votes to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum, US President Barack Obama told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Obama, who is in the final nine months of his presidency, has spent the last three days in London urging Britons to stay in the EU as the British public prepares to vote on whether to remain a member of the bloc. "It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we're actually able to get something done," Obama told the British broadcaster, adding to his earlier warning that Britain would find itself at 'the back of the queue' for a new trade deal with the United States if it left the EU. Obama's visit and decision to intervene in the EU debate has angered the Eurosceptic "Out" campaign, which has repeatedly argued that Britain could easily negotiate deals and get better terms outside the EU. Answering that criticism, Obama said that his involvement had been justified because of the two countries' special relationship, and that he hoped he had been able to persuade some British voters. "My hope is, is that this is something that would have some influence on how voters think," he said. Obama added that Britain would not get preferential treatment over the EU when it came to negotiating a new trade deal. "The UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU," Obama said. "We wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market." He said he hoped to conclude talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - trade deal between the EU and the United States - the end of his term in office, although he said the agreement may not be ratified by the US Congress before he leaves his post. Last nine months Obama also said he hoped that his final months in office would see the influence of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria reduced. "I do think that we can slowly shrink the environment in which they operate and take on strongholds like Mosul and Raqqa that is the beating heart of their movement," he said. However, he dismissed the prospect of sending ground troops into the region to oust the Syrian government "It would be a mistake," he said. But the United States and others should use their international influence to persuade allies of Syria, such as Russia and Iran, to broker a political transition, he said. (China Daily 04/25/2016 page13) Residents of the rural southern Ohio community of Piketon are rattled by a rare major crime that took the lives of eight members of a tight-knit family known in the area as hard workers. Authorities were still trying on Saturday to find out who targeted the seven adults and teenage boy and why. Their bodies were found on Friday at four different homes near Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus. Kayla Hay said she got to know one of the victims, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden, when they both worked as nurse's aides at a nursing home. Hay said she was shocked and saddened when she heard Rhoden was among those killed. "I've never heard her say anything about being frightened or concerned about anything bad happening," said Hay, who described Rhoden as outgoing and friendly. "She was always in a good mood and was very bright, both in her personality and her intelligence," Hay said. All of the victims were members of the Rhoden family. The others were identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. It appeared some of the family members were killed as they slept, including Hanna Rhoden, who was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was 4- or 5-days old, authorities said. The infant, Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby, and one other small child were not hurt. Authorities said none of the injuries appeared self-inflicted. A search for the killer or killers continued on Saturday, and investigators said they had interviewed more than 30 people. Robin Waddell, who owns the Big Bear Lake Family Resort just south of Piketon, said Christopher Rhoden often did work for him as a carpenter and helped out with his excavation business. He said Rhoden was a nice guy whose kids sometimes visited him while he was working. "It's a large family," Waddell said. "There's a lot of them and they've been in this community for generations. So this is affecting a lot of people." Lt. Michael Preston, of the Ross County Sheriff's Department speaks to the media on Union Hill Road that approaches a crime scene, on Friday, in Pike County, Ohio. Shootings with multiple fatalities were reported along the road in rural Ohio on Friday morning, but details on the number of deaths and the whereabouts of the suspect or suspects were not immediately clear.AP (China Daily 04/25/2016 page13) A man in the Republic of Korea watches a TV news program on Sunday showing images of the ballistic missile that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea claimed to have launched from underwater, at Seoul Railway station in Seoul, ROK, on Sunday. AP The Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced on Sunday that it had successfully launched a ballistic missile from a submarine, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. DPRK top leader Kim Jong-un, who witnessed the test, said that submarine-launched ballistic missiles strengthen the underwater operation capability of the navy and that the military is now capable of attacking Republic of Korea forces and the United States at any time. He also urged DPRK scientists and technicians to step up the nuclear program in order to launch nuclear attacks on the US and the ROK. In Seoul, the ROK Foreign Ministry said the launch was in a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and the test-firing came in less than 10 days after the UN urged Pyongyang to exercise restraint following the country's launch on April 15 of a Musudan ballistic missile. Calling the launch a provocation and threat to peace and security in the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia and the world, the ministry said Seoul will take necessary actions at the UN Security Council in cooperation with major powers. This is the second time the DPRK has announced the successful firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. On May 9, 2015, the KCNA reported that Kim watched the test-firing of a newly developed submarine-launched ballistic missile and called it "a success". France said that the launch, if confirmed, would be a new violation of UN Security Council resolutions. A spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said: "We call on the international community to adopt a firm and united reaction." "In particular, France calls on the European Union to unilaterally adopt additional sanctions." he said. Harsher sanctions on the DPRK were adopted in early March by the UN Security Council over the country's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch, which was condemned as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology, in February. DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong, in a rare interview with The Associated Press at the UN headquarters in New York on Saturday, said that it was the US that drove his country to the development of nuclear weapons for self-defense. "If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the entire world as well," he said. A solar-powered airplane landed in California on Saturday, completing a risky, three-day flight across the Pacific Ocean as part of its journey around the world. Pilot Bertrand Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, at 11:45 pm following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight without fuel. The plane taxied into a huge tent erected on Moffett Airfield where Piccard was greeted by project's team. The landing came several hours after the Piccard performed a flyby over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings from below. "I crossed the bridge. I am officially in America," he declared as he took in spectacular views of San Francisco Bay. Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. The trans-Pacific leg was the riskiest part of the plane's global travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way. The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, as well. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavorable weather and a damaged wing. A month later, when weather conditions were right, the plane departed from Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii. The plane's ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds, or about as much as a midsize truck. The plane's wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night. Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or Northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey. The project, which began in 2002 and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, is meant to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. Solar-powered air travel is not yet commercially practical, however, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft. Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco on Saturday. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean.Noah Berger / AP (China Daily 04/25/2016 page15) Women clean the premises of the historic ninestory Dharara tower during the anniversary of the earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Sunday. Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters Frustration mounts as millions still in tents and reconstruction lags Nepal held memorial services on Sunday for the thousands killed in a massive earthquake one year ago, as victims still living in tents accused the government of failing them. The 7.8-magnitude quake killed nearly 9,000 people and some 4 million survivors are still living in temporary shelters, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli laid flowers at a razed 19th-century tower in Kathmandu where hundreds gathered for a somber service, after a minute's silence to remember those killed. Buddhist monks in maroon robes held prayers at a site nearby that was home to a popular temple destroyed in the quake. Trekking guide Govinda Timilsina said his life has been on hold since losing his home, as he waits for help and unable to rebuild himself because of the government's complex rules for qualifying for quake aid. "It became impossible to live in the village, we lost everything," Timilsina, 28, said of having to relocate his mother, wife and three-year-old son from hard-hit Dhading district. "The government rules were so confusing, we were scared we would not get compensation if we started work on our own," said Timilsina, who rents a single room in Kathmandu for his family. Although international donors pledged $4.1 billion to aid Nepal's recovery, political wrangling over control of the funds means most victims have received nothing beyond an initial small payout. Following a hailstorm of criticism, the government has vowed to kick-start reconstruction of schools and hospitals, and speed up handing out the first $500 installment of a $2,000 payout promised to homeless survivors. But in the capital on Sunday, about 20 people dressed in black protested against the government's response to the tragedy, chanting "politicians in palaces, public in tents" and "what happened to reconstruction?" Monumental loss The disaster reduced more than a hundred monuments to rubble and damaged another 560 structures, including many centuries-old temples and stunning royal palaces in the Kathmandu valley that used to attract visitors from around the world. In the historic town of Bhaktapur, many of the traditional brick houses that made it famous have been replaced by gray tents and rusty tin shacks where women like Laxmi Nyapit are now forced to raise their children. "Unless we get help, I don't know how we will ever live in a house again," said the mother-of-three sitting in her tent, which houses a bed and a stove. Nyapit, who has received just $150 from the government, said memorials - including candlelight vigils planned for later on Sunday - meant little. "They have to remember those who died, but first they have to remember us survivors and come here to help us," said the 40-year-old, who earns 35 rupees (32 US cents) a day for knitting gloves. "If our government cared, we would not be living like this after a year." The disaster struck on April 25 but commemorations were being held on Sunday - the quake anniversary according to the Nepali calendar. The quake wrecked infrastructure across the hardest-hit regions of Nepal, damaging more than 1,200 health centers and severing a lifeline for remote, rural communities. Nearly 8,000 schools were destroyed or left unsafe, leaving almost one million children without classrooms. Tired of waiting, some 110,000 families have moved back into homes that remain at risk of collapse. More than 31,000 victims have also rebuilt their own houses, taking out loans or turning to charities for help. On top of the financial losses, pegged at $7 billion, the disaster also delivered a severe blow to Nepal's already weak economy. Growth is now expected to reach just 1.5 percent over the financial year ending in July 2016the lowest level since 2007according to the Asian Development Bank. Carolyn Loughton still carries a bullet in her shoulder from one of the world's worst mass shootings that killed her daughter 20 years ago and galvanized Australia to drastically clamp down on guns. Loughton threw her body over her 15-year-old daughter Sarah, but could not save her from a gunman with two semi-automatic assault rifles who methodically took headshots in a Port Arthur, Tasmania, cafe on April 28, 1996, killing 35 people. In response, the Australian government severely restricted ownership of semi-automatic firearms, pump-action shotguns and other rapid-fire weapons. It also bought back nearly 700,000 guns from the public at a cost of $390 million. Since then, the country has experienced only one case that meets the generally accepted definition of a mass shooting - four deaths in a single event - a 2014 incident in which a farmer shot his wife and three children before killing himself. Now a person living in America is around 10 times more likely to be killed by a gun than in Australia, and President Barack Obama has held up Australia's strict gun laws as a good example after repeated mass shootings in the US. Ceremony planned Today, as Australia approaches the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur tragedy - to be remembered with a ceremony on Thursday - there is renewed debate over guns amid a review of the landmark National Firearms Agreement, adopted after the 1996 attack, and the loosening of some gun-related regulations. The review was recommended after a government inquiry into the December 2014 Sydney cafe siege that left two people and the gunman dead. Gun enthusiasts fear that any changes to the agreement could mean greater restrictions on gun ownership, while gun control advocates say the country is backsliding on its restrictions. Taking center stage in the debate is whether Australia should import the Adler A110 shotgun, a Turkish-manufactured lever-action weapon that can fire eight cartridges in as many seconds. That's almost as fast as a pump-action shotgun. Illegal guns the problem Loughton, now 60, sees the Adler question as a tipping point. She is speaking out for the first time to protect the country's stringent gun laws. "I've probably got 20 years of my life left. I wouldn't have thought that I would ever have to go down this track," said Loughton. "But I have seen and I know more than anybody should ever have to experience, and on my last breath on my last day, I don't want to say I could have done something." Pro-gun activists argue that Australia's real problem is illegal guns. They point out that the Islamic State-inspired gunman in the Sydney cafe siege, Man Haron Monis, never held a gun license and his sawed-off pump-action 12-guage shotgun had not been registered. Authorities could not trace where Monis had obtained it. Sen. David Leyonhjelm, a vocal gun proponent, complains that Australians have become "disarmed victims." Loughton and gun control advocates say they see the erosion of gun controls. They point to relaxed requirements to establish the legitimate need for a gun and decisions by several states to waive a 28-day waiting period for a gun owner to apply for a permit to own more than one weapon. SEOUL - South Korea on Sunday denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), while defending the ongoing annual military drills with the United States. DPRK diplomats have demanded suspension of the joint war games as a prerequisite for Pyongyang's halt of nuclear test. Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that the government strongly condemned the DPRK's test-firing of a ballistic missile from a submarine Saturday in eastern waters off the DPRK's coastal town of Sinpo. Regardless of whether it had succeeded or not, the launch was a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and the test-firing came in less than 10 days after the United Nations urged Pyongyang to exercise restraint following the country's launch on April 15 of a Musudan ballistic missile, the ministry said. Calling the SLBM launch as blatant provocations and threats to peace and security in the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia and the world, the statement said Seoul will take necessary actions at the UN Security Council in cooperation with major countries. As South Korea has repeatedly warned of stronger and sterner response to the DPRK's further provocations, the statement said, Seoul will step up efforts to encourage the international community to put more pressure and sanctions on the DPRK while faithfully implementing the existing UN Security Council resolutions. The statement came hours after the DPRK's official KCNA news agency reported on the country's successful test of an SLBM that was guided by top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un. The KCNA said that the DRPK-style SLBM met all technical thresholds to carry out an underwater attack operation that targets South Korea and the United States. It marked the second time since May 9, 2015 that the DPRK announced its successful test of a ballistic missile from a submarine. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday that the missile, fired from a 2,000-ton DPRK submarine, was ejected from underwater and flew some 30 km for several minutes. But, it said it was short of the flight of at least 300 km required to be seen as a success. Seoul's defense ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Kyun said Sunday that the DPRK's SLBM technology is partially advanced in underwater ejection capabilities, saying Pyongyang was hastening the SLBM development. Moon said the military expected the DPRK to deploy submarine-launched missiles within the next three to four years, but he noted that the deployment date could be brought forward if Pyongyang spends all of its capabilities on the development. Meanwhile, Seoul's foreign ministry dismissed Pyongyang's demand to halt annual military exercises between South Korea and the United States, which the DPRK said will be rewarded with the suspension of its nuclear test. DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong said in a rare interview with The Associated Press at the UN headquarters in New York on Saturday that it is the United States that drove his country to develop nuclear weapons for self-defense. Ri urged the United States to stop military exercises on the Korean Peninsula. In return, the DPRK would cease its nuclear detonation, he said. The South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement that the DPRK must stop linking the annual US-South Korea war games of defensive nature to its nuclear test that is banned under UN Security Council resolutions, calling on Pyongyang to refrain from any further provocative acts. South Korea and the United States kicked off their war games, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, in early March. This year's joint military exercises, which are set to last by the end of this month, are being conducted in a largest-ever scale, involving some 300,000 troops. Pyongyang responded with a barrage of missiles and artillery shells fired into the sea since early March, following its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and the launch of a long-range rocket, which was condemned as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology, on Feb 7. The DPRK has called the war games as a rehearsal for northward invasion. Multiple South Korean government and military sources were quoted by local media as saying that the DPRK had already completed preparations for its fifth nuclear test, forecasting Pyongyang would press ahead with another nuclear detonation before the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress in early May, the first since 1980. Seoul's foreign ministry said the DPRK has already promised to stop nuclear tests under the Sept 19 joint declaration issued in 2005. PYONGYANG - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a national meeting in Pyongyang on Sunday to mark the 84th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army (KPA), the official KCNA news agency reported. Ri Myong-su, chief of the General Staff of the KPA, addressed the meeting, which was also attended by Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, Hwang Pyong-so, director of the General Political Bureau of the KPA, and other officials of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, the state and the army. Ri reviewed the creation of the first revolutionary armed forces during the fight against Japanese aggression in 1932 by late top leader of the DPRK Kim Il-sung and how his successor Kim Jong-il further developed the army "onto a new stage." Now the KPA "has greeted the golden age of bolstering up the revolutionary armed forces" under the leadership of Marshal Kim Jong-un, he added. Ri, in his report, lashed out at the United States for introducing strategic weapons to South Korea in their joint military exercises, bringing danger of a nuclear war to the Korean Peninsula and escalating the tensions to an extreme phase. He warned that if the United States and South Korean authorities made nuclear provocations aimed at hurting the DPRK's supreme leadership, the DPRK military would launch a preemptive strike through air, land, sea and underwater operations "without any restriction and without any warning and prior notice." A bullet train running on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on Nov 24, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - China Railway Cooperation (CRC) is carrying out feasibility studies for high-speed lines on the 2,200 km Chennai-New Delhi route, Zhao Guotang, vice-general engineer of the CRC, said on Saturday. The proposed Chennai-New Delhi corridor could be the second-largest in the world, after the 2,298 km Beijing-Guangzhou line, which was launched three years ago. China has now the world's biggest high speed railway network which stands at a stunning 19,000 km - longer than all of world's high-speed lines put together. With successful experience in the domestic market and advanced technologies, the CRC starts to look for more opportunities in the overseas markets, including India, Malaysia, Singapore and so on. India has tied up with Japan for the country's first high speed railway line which will connect Mumbai and Ahmedabad after Tokyo offered easy loan terms to the South Asian country. China may not offer such easy loan terms but its expertise and technology are compatible with that of India, Zhao said. While China made 10,000 km of high speed tracks in the past decade, Japan made only 350 km, Zhao said, adding that China is capable of building high speed railways faster and better. Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski spoke highly of China's One Belt One Road Initiative, saying that it's the most promising cooperation platform between China and Europe, in his speech given in Beijing today. Waszczykowski is on an official visit to China at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. He arrived Saturday and ends the trip on Wednesday. After visiting Chengdu, capital of southwestern China's Sichuan province, a starting station of the China-Europe railway opened last year, Waszczykowski shared his understanding and expectations on the relationship and cooperation between China and Central and East European countries. He said: "With regard to the economic aspect of EU-China contacts, I would single out the Chinese Belt and Road Initiatives as the most promising platform for cooperation between Europe and the People's Republic of China. Poland highly estimates this major initiative. We view it as a multifaceted project which ambitiously escalates beyond the questions of trade and transportation connectivity between the partnering countries. The Belt and Road introduces a new quality into Europe-Asia relations. If the initiative succeeds, it will work out a new formula of a strategic relationship between our two continents, based not only on the enhanced, comprehensive and mutually beneficial economic cooperation, but also on the advanced dialogue and boosted inter-civilizational trust. "As a strong country of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland is willing to take an active part in forging a synergy of initiatives within the Belt and Road, coupling them with EU projects implemented in the fields of infrastructure and transportation. It is worth mentioning the so-called "connectivity platform" which implies a mechanism identifying common interests and sectors of potential cooperation within the framework of infrastructural and transport policies of the EU and China. I am convinced that the initiative "16 + 1", which bridges the economies of 16 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and China, could contribute considerably to the "connectivity platform" and facilitate the implementation of common projects. "In this context, I would also like to commend the activities undertaken by the summit organized in the "16 + 1" format at Suzhou in China. This summit dotted the i's (infrastructure) and crossed the t's (transportation) by underscoring that EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe, engaged in the project, pursued cooperation within this format according to EU legislation, regulations and policies. The "16 + 1" cooperation thus clearly became portrayed as a valuable complement to the overall EU-China liaison." (Photo : Getty Images) Toyota says China's new rules on emission and fuel is giving the company a hard time to reach quota. Advertisement China's new emission and fuel economy policy is giving Japanese carmaker Toyota Motors a hard time to reach its 2 million vehicles per year quota there by around 2025, the car manufacturer's head said on Sunday. The company is reevaluating its current product line-up to clear regulations and at the same time earn money and reach volume target, Hiroji Onishi, Toyota's head of China operations, said. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "It's becoming difficult to meet China's more and more stringent emissions and fuel economy regulations," he said at a media event ahead of the Beijing auto show. "In order to meet those regulations, we have determined that we need to sell a considerable number of smaller cars, hybrid and other special cars." On Sunday, Onishi announced Toyota Motor's plans to sell heavily electrified "plug-in hybrid" cars in China in 2018. It will release plug-in hybrid versions of the Toyota Corolla and Levin. Fortune reports Toyota is potentially taking advantage of the Chinese government's attempt to change funding from backing electric vehicle production to giving rewards to companies that create new technologies. China aims to have 5 million new energy vehicles running over the next four years to lessen emissions, which could improve air quality. He also shared his belief that minivans have the potential to be the next big hit in China's ever changing car industry. Multipurpose-multiperson vehicles (MPVs) are poised to hit the market after China has finally scrapped its one-child policy. Onishi thinks China's vehicle preference is bound to change as Chinese families become bigger. Although he acknowledged that for now, Toyota do not see the big demand yet, he believes the country is warming to the idea. Toyota's sales in China skyrocketed nearly 41 percent than that of in 2015, selling over 100,000 units. That compared with a 6.3 percent year-on-year increase in February, according to Reuters. Advertisement TagsToyota Motor Corp, china, automobile industry, car market, Beijing auto show (Photo : Getty Images) Alibaba Health ventures with major insurance company to tap potential online health operations in China. Advertisement Alibaba's healthcare subsidiary is setting up a joint venture with a Chinese insurance company, an attempt to tap China's online health insurance operations. Based on a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Alibaba Health Information Technology closed a deal with six other firms to agree on a joint venture to enter China's internet health insurance-related operations. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement With a registered capital of 1 billion yuan ($154 million), this is Alibaba's latest drive towards the country's budding online insurance industry. "Through the joint venture, it [Alibaba Health] will be able to participate in internet health insurance, which is a new and promising business area that will also help align the interests of the participants in the healthcare market," the filing said. The joint venture, however, is still pending and awaits the approval of China's insurance authority, the China Daily reported. Major insurance firm China Taiping Insurance Holdings Co Ltd. holds the largest share of the joint venture with 21 percent. Alibaba Health, Alibaba (China) Technology, and Alibaba-owned private equity firm Shanghai Yunfeng own 40 percent of the shares, while the remaining 39 percent is held by TPL, Yuwell Technology, and Shenzhen Baiyeyuan. Industy experts, on the other hand, were not surprised with Alibaba's move, given that integration of health insurance over the internet has shown strong potential growth. Ma Tao, research director of internet consultancy firm Analysys International, said that Alibaba's new venture is reasonable as the company already has data and technology advantage. Analysys International estimated that the online insurance market in China reached 150 billion yuan ($23 billion), accounting for nearly 6 percent of the country's insurance sales. Advertisement TagsAlibaba, Alibaba Health, Insurance, China insurance regulatory commission, China Taiping Insurance Holdings Co., TPL, Jack Ma, joint venture (Photo : Getty Images) "We think Apple could repeat its same success in India," Morgan Stanley said on its April 20 findings. Advertisement American multinational financial services corporation Morgan Stanley suggested that India could be Apple's next China as the former is predicted to become the world's second biggest smartphone market as early as next year. Apple experienced its fastest sales growth by far in China, reporting an 84 percent increase from last year, Quartz reported. According to Apple's CEO Tim Cook, the country is on its way of becoming "Apple's top market in the world." Like Us on Facebook Advertisement However, a new report from Morgan Stanley suggests that Apple could achieve the same success in India, as the country is poised to surpass the US as the second biggest smartphone market after China by 2017. More tech firms such as Google and Facebook have been competing to get its respective products on display across Indian shelves. According to the report, India's smartphone industry trended almost the same with China's market five to six years ago. For instance, 92 million smartphone units were shipped to China in 2011, while 104 million went to India in 2015. Moreover, the survey from Morgan Stanley revealed that in November 2009, 4.6 percent of its respondents were iPhone owners, while a similar study conducted in January found that 4 percent of Indians were smartphone owners. Between 2010 and 2015, Apple's market share climbed to more than 2, 600 yuan ($400) to 74 percent from just 30 percent in China. "We think Apple could repeat its same success in India," Morgan Stanley said on its April 20 findings. One interesting takeaway of Morgan Stanley's survey of more than 2,600 Indian smartphone buyers is that nearly half do not recognize the brand Apple. In fact, Apple only ranked 10 out of 12 companies in terms of brand awareness. "This means Apple has the most room for upside as our survey shows it could double share in the $400 [smartphone] segment to 40 pecent," Morgan Stanley said. But among its respondents who are willing to buy 2, 600 yuan ($400)-plus worth of smartphone, 41 percent said they will opt for an iPhone, as the brand is "aspirational" with pricetags that are not affordable for most Indians. Furthermore, 21 percent also said they would go for second-hand iPhone rather than buying a non-Apple smartphone, although this would be of less benefit for the company. But report suggests that Apple could still cater to these customers by refurbishing phones for sale in India, according to Quartz. However, to follow China's same path of success in India, Apple needs to establish more presence in India by opening stores, collaborating with local wireless service providers, ramping more local content and software, and boosting marketing strategies. Nevertheless, Apple may already be taking its first step as some reports reveal that the company will receive its regulatory approval to open its first retail store in India soon. Advertisement Tagsapple, Smartphone, India, china, Morgan Stanley (Photo : Getty Images) China, in anticipation of a Hague court ruling on an arbitration case filed by the Philippines, will start reclamation work on Scarborough Shoal which is also being claimed by the Philippines and Taiwan Advertisement China will start reclamation work at one of the contested islands in South China Sea later this year which will include the construction of an outpost and an airstrip to enable its air assets to extend their reach over the international waterway, Chinese maritime experts said. The maritime experts, who have spoken with People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy officials, said Beijing will expedite its work to construct a new outpost at the Philippine-claimed Scarborough Shoal, 230 km off the coast of the Philippines. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Manila claims Scarborough Shoal but China said it took effective control of it in 2012, deploying patrol vessels in the area and driving away Filipino fishermen after a two-month standoff with the Philippine Navy. Overlapping claims Aside from China and the Philippines, Taiwan also has overlapping claims in the Scarborough Shoal. "Beijing will take action to carry out land reclamation at Huangyan Island within this year," said the experts, referring to the shoal. China's initiative to reclaim the shoal came on the heels of Washington's plans to restrain Beijing by establishing its military presence in the disputed waters. Beijing's plans of building a new airtsrip and outpost in the Scarborough Shoal is one of its strategies to make its air presence felt across the disputed South China Sea region. Military planes Already, the PLA military planes can now land at the contested Woody Island with Beijing building more airstrips at the the Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef, according to Chinese military sources. "If China finishes land reclamation at Scarborough Shoal, it can install radar and other facilities for 24-hour monitoring of the US Basa air force base in Pampanga, a province in the Philippines," said the military experts. Permanent Court of Arbitration The upcoming ruling expected to be handed down by the Hague court in June would ratchet up the plans of Beijing to start the buildup immediately in the shoal. The Philippines has filed territorial claims against China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague which ruling is expected to go against Beijing. The Philippines wants the court to rule that China's claims in the contested islands must comply with international laws, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Following the recent US-Philippines war games in Manila last month, the two nations conducted joint patrols in the disputed South China Sea despite China's protest. US Defense Chief Ash Carter, who was in the Philippines during the US-Philippine military exercises dubbed "Balikatan Exercise," said the two allies have agreed that US military troops will have full access to Philippine bases including two air bases in Pampanga, 330km off Scarborough Shoal. Advertisement TagsScarborough Shoal, Permanent Court of Arbitration, unclos, Philippine military bases, PLA, Philippines, land reclamation, South China Sea (Photo : Getty Images) President Barack Obama said China should do more in pressuring North Korea to halt its nuclear tests following Pyongyang's recent submarine-launched missile tests that have raised more tensions in the peninsula Advertisement US President Barack Obama urged China to put more pressure on North Korea in the wake of the recent submarine-launched missile conducted by Pyongyang last week, raising tensions in the peninsula. Last Sunday, Obama called on Beijing to do more in reining in North Korea after the latter's "provocative" weapons test amid the standing sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council against the isolated state. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "North Korea continues to engage in continuous provocative behaviour," Obama said during an interview at the Hanover Trade Fair in Germany. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un hailed his latest ballistic missile test as an "eye-opening success." Disappointment Obama expressed disappointment over China's efforts in dealing with Pyongyang saying that more measures have to be done for the North to halt its nuclear tests and abandon its nuclear programme. "We have cultivated cooperation with the Chinese to put pressure on North Korea. Although it is not where we would completely like it to be," Obama pointed out. Hours after the missile launch, Kim Jong-Un announced that it will unilaterally halt its nuclear tests in the peninsula provided the US will suspend its annual military war games with Seoul. Lies and deceit But Obama dismissed the North's offer saying that such a promise must not be taken seriously given Pyongyang's penchant for lies and deceit. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test," the US president said. Obama emphasized that the US will deal with the North only when it is clear that the isolated state has shown a willingness to abandon its nuclear programme. Military authorities and South Korea are preparing for a possible fifth nuclear test by Pyongyang as a show of force and defiance ahead of the ruling party congress, the first in 36 years, that is slated to convene next month. Advertisement TagsNorth Korea, President Barack Obama, missile tests, nuclear programme, Kim Jong Un, Seoul, ruling party congress, military war games, china (Photo : Adam Berry/Getty Images) A Chinese man's plan to commit suicide was foiled by concerned netizens in an online forum. Advertisement Netizens chatting in an online forum were able to stop a young Chinese man from committing suicide because of heartache, news reports say. The man, named only as Zhang, recently broke up with his girlfriend from Shangqiu, Henan, reports the Dahe Daily. Because of this, the poor 23-year-old planned to take his own life Sunday. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Zhang posted his plans in an online forum where, thankfully, hundreds of netizens were able to try to tell him to stop his plans and change his mind. However, online conversations were not enough as Zhang continued on with his plan and even uploaded a photo of him outside his former girlfriends home with his wrists slashed and bleeding. Alarmed at the photo, two of the forums administrators persuaded Zhang to talk to them on the phone. Zhang agreed to have the phone conversation, and was later persuaded to stop himself from committing suicide. Later, Zhang and the administrators went to his former girlfriends house, and then to the hospital to have his wounds treated. Zhang told reporters that he had acted on impulse, and will not repeat the same mistake again. Zhang also thanked everyone who posted in the online forum, emphasizing how grateful he is for the concern that people had for him even though they did not know him. Public Opinion Matters While the general public in Zhangs story was concerned for his life, bystanders in another suicidal mans story didnt care at all and in fact urged him to kill himself. Earlier last month, a depressed young Chinese man climbed up the Yiling Yangtze River Bridge in Yichang, Hubei province, reports Hubei Television. Unlike Zhang, this man was still undecided whether to kill himself by jumping off the bridge into the river, killing himself in the process. Bystanders who saw him quickly gathered near him, but instead of telling him to stop and go back to safety, they actually pushed to continue, shouting just do it. Police arrived just in the nick of time to stop the man from jumping. He was reportedly depressed because he broke up with his girlfriend, and had some family problems too. He told police that the bystanders shouting provoked him to just get on with it and die quickly. Police said that the general public should avoid giving such comments to people in similar events. Advertisement TagsSuicide, Henan, Shangqiu, online forum, just do it (Photo : Getty Images.) Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday said that China's maritime expansion in South and East China Sea is making world 'greatly worried'. Advertisement Ahead of his state visit to Beijing, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday criticized China over its military and maritime expansion in East and South China Sea, saying that world is "greatly worried" over its provocative actions in disputed maritime territories. "Candidly speaking, a rapid and opaque increase in (China's) military spending and unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas under the aim of building a strong maritime state are having not only people in Japan, but countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the international community worried greatly," Kishida said in a speech addressed to business leaders. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Fumio Kishida is likely to visit China this Friday. He will be discussing a host of issues including those critical of the South and East China Sea with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Outlining his expectations from the visit, Kishida said, "Through candid dialogue with the Chinese side, I want to get the wheel turning to create the Sino-Japanese relations that are suitable for a new age." Kishida's visit to Beijing comes just a few weeks after Japan raised the South China Sea issue at the G7 Summit, infuriating officials in Beijing. China asked Japan not to raise South China Sea issues at the high profile summit, but Tokyo rejected China's demand. Japan is not a party to South China Sea dispute, but offers diplomatic and military support to several claimants in the region to counter China's influence in South China Sea waters. However, Japan and China shares direct territorial dispute over a group of inhabited islands in East China Sea, with both countries staking claim over inhabited islands. Earlier this month, Japan deployed several coast guard vessels to patrol these disputed islands in East China Sea, a move that certainly didn't go well with China. Apart from maritime disputes, China also shares strained relation with Japan owing to legacy of Japan's World War Two aggression. China constantly accuses Japan of not acknowledging wartime aggression committed during World War two. A accusation that Tokyo has rejected time and again. Advertisement Tagschina, Japan, South China Sea, East China Sea (Photo : Twitter/Dolkun_Isa) Beijing considers the Uyghur leader a wanted criminal and a terrorist. Advertisement Chinese dissident leader Dolkun Isa blamed China for the cancellation of his Indian visa. New Delhi cancelled the visa of Uyghur leader on Monday, citing Interpol's red corner notice against him as the reason. "On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation... Maybe because of the Chinese pressure put on the Indian government," Isa said. "But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side." Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Isa also expressed disappointment over Indian authorities' decision to withdraw his visa. He also dismissed the comparision with China's recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader Mazood Azhar. "Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights. China's clear abuse of Interpol's Red Notice issuance is also concerning," he said in a statement issued on Monday. China last week blasted Indian government for granting visa to Germany-based Isa. Beijing considers the Uyghur leader a wanted criminal and a terrorist. "Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Friday. Isa, an exiled Uyghur leader from the volatile Xinjiang region, is heading Munich based World Uyghur Congress, was among the four Uyghur leaders who were expected to meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama during a conference on democracy in Dharamshala later this week. Advertisement TagsIndia, china, uyghur, Dolkun Isa, Dalai Lama (Photo : China Photos/Getty Images) Wangzhou Group's chairman Yang Weiguo has denied all of his company's accusations pertaining to him. Advertisement Wangzhou Group chairman Yang Weiguo, who was reportedly missing, has denied all accusations made to him in regards to a huge amount of money missing from his company, news reports say. Last week, Yang was reported by his own company as missing and taking with him the lump sum of 1 billion yuan ($153 million USD), reports CRIEnglish. In a statement, Wangzhou Group, parent company of Wangzhou Fortune, confirmed that Yang had gone missing, and is believed to have taken the amount of money. It added that the incident was not expected, and that it happened suddenly. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Wangzhou Fortunes investors have been reporting cashflow problems that were happening in the company since April 18. More than 20,000 people have invested more than 2.2 billion yuan (about $338.7 million USD) across the dozens of branches that Wangzhou has in China. Wangzhou has issued a public apology, and said that they have reported the incident to authorities. Both media and police have been looking for Yang since then. Yang, for his part, revealed through a short video that he sent to journalists on Monday that he went on a short personal trip, reports BBC. He said that he is coming back shortly, and rejected all accusations against him. In a letter, Yang said that on April 15, he went on a 10-day trip to Xinjiang province so that he could relax and think clearly as to how he will solve the companys current problems. Although he admitted that he was at fault for not telling the whole company of his travel plans, he said that he was able to notify two of his employees. Yang added that he was stunned to find that he was accused of stealing the money Sunday, only as he was preparing to return home. He said he will cooperate with investigations. Advertisement TagsWangzhou Fortune, Wangzhou Group, Yang Weiguo, money, Fraud (Photo : Getty Images) "They're going to have to do better than that," Obama says. Advertisement President Barack Obama on Sunday turned down North Korea's unusual proposal to suspend nuclear tests if U.S. stops joint military exercises with South Korea. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities," Obama said in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "What we've said consistently is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then we'll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region," Obama added. "But that's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that." Obama's remarks came a day after North Korean foreign minister Ri Su-yong put forward a surprising proposal to Washington on the country's nuclear program. Su-yong said in a rare interview on Saturday that Pyongyang will halt nuclear tests if the U.S. agree to stop its annual military exercises with South Korea. "It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the Democratic People' Republic of Korea or DPRK ( official name of N Korea) and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise," the North Korean official told Associated Press. "If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well." International sanctions and condemnation failed to stop North Korea's nuclear programme. The isolated Asian country reportedly test fired a ballistic missile from an underwater platform off its eastern coast on Saturday. Advertisement TagsNorth Korea, nuclear, Obama, South Korea, US 'Atheist pastor' may be rejected by liberal denomination 25 April, 2016 by Tobin Perry , | TORONTO (Christian Examiner)The United Church of Canada, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, may be close to removing a Toronto minister from her pulpit 15 years after she first told her congregation that she didn't believe in an all-powerful God who gets involved in the everyday lives of people. After obscuring her beliefs for the next 12 years, Gretta Vosper officially "came out" as an atheist in 2013. Now, three years later, The Guardian says, "In the coming weeks, an unprecedented review will be carried out to determine whether Vosper can stay on as a minister." The move comes from a denomination that has historically promoted theological and cultural liberalism. The denomination has allowed homosexuals to lead ministries for decades and ordained women for 80 years. Vosper, who has pastored West Hill United Church in Toronto since 1997, credits the denomination's theological looseness as playing a part in her transition into atheism. And she pulls no punches about what she sees as a betrayal from her denomination as she heads toward losing her pulpit. " ... The ills that the church has and continues to perpetrate can, perhaps, only be overcome by the final demise of traditional Christianity altogether something I doubt, but fervently hope, will happen." "I'm a product of the United church," Vosper said, according to The Guardian. "It taught me to critique the Bible as a human construction ... This means everything that it says is up for grabs, including God." Vosper's Twitter biography says she is "irritating the church into the 21st Century." Vosper sees no conflict between what she understands as the traditional teachings and message of her denomination and her failure to believe in God. Her 2014 book Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief, she writes about the significance and power of prayer even while denying the existence of a deity to hear those prayers. "Prayer, for me, is being attuned to the world, to what is happening within me in response to that world, to my partner, my family, my neighbors," Vosper told FaithStreet.com. According to various reports, Vosper's local church has generally backed her over the past 15 years since she first opened up to them about her atheistic beliefs. In 2008 though, she lost 100 of her 150 church members when she decided to do away with The Lord's Prayer. The evaluation process of Vosper by the denomination has been slow, partially because it has been so unique in the United Church of Canada. "We'd never done it before," said David Allen, the executive secretary of the denomination's Toronto Conference. In May of 2015, Nora Sanders, general secretary of the church's General Council, laid out a review process that could lead to Vosper's dismissal. Of particular concern in the review is whether she is being faithful to her ordination vows, specifically her affirmation of belief in "God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Kevin Flatt, a history professor who has written a book about the United Church, said as far as he is aware the denomination has never disciplined a minister for having liberal theological views. Vosper had been appealing the decision by the denomination to officially put her under review. Last month the United Church rejected her appeal and decided to go ahead with the review. Randy Bowes, chair of the West Hill's board, told the Toronto Star that Vosper's use of the term "atheist" doesn't mean Vosper denies the existence of God. It only means she denies the existence of a "certain kind of God." Despite holding out the possibility of God's existence, Vosper makes clear where she wants her position as an atheist minister to take her denomination and the wider Christian church. "All the good that Christianity once offered the world has, for the most part, been assumed into secular society," Vosper said according to FaithStreet.com. "We have no need of the church to uphold those virtuous offerings teach them, perhaps, but not uphold them. And the ills that the church has and continues to perpetrate can, perhaps, only be overcome by the final demise of traditional Christianity altogether something I doubt, but fervently hope, will happen." Dissenting U.S. civil rights commissioners to colleagues: 'Take a deep breath' 25 April, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner) A week after the U.S. Civil Rights Commission condemned a spate of new state laws which offer religious liberty protections to those who do not wish to support same-sex marriage with their labors and also prohibit biological males from using women's restrooms (and vice versa), two commissioners have issued a scathing dissent to the group's statement. In an 11-page statement emailed to Christian Examiner, Commissioners Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow speaking apart from the Commission rejected the idea that the laws "target members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community for discrimination" under the guise of "so-called religious liberty," as the Commission charged in its statement last week. Please take a deep breath. ... We make this request in response to an overwrought statement that was adopted by majority vote on April 15, entitled, 'The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Condemns Recent State Laws Targeting the Civil Rights of the LGBT Community.' That statement 'strongly condemns' state legislation recently adopted or being considered in Tennessee, Mississippi, and North Carolina as well as an executive action in Kansas. Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear that the statement's signatories have actually read the relevant legislation. We have. Heriot, an Independent and professor of law at the University of San Diego, and Kirsanow, a Republican attorney from Ohio, called on the Commissioners who supported the statement to "please take a deep breath." "We make this request in response to an overwrought statement that was adopted by majority vote on April 15, entitled, 'The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Condemns Recent State Laws Targeting the Civil Rights of the LGBT Community.' That statement 'strongly condemns' state legislation recently adopted or being considered in Tennessee, Mississippi, and North Carolina as well as an executive action in Kansas. Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear that the statement's signatories have actually read the relevant legislation. We have," Heriot and Kirsanow wrote. In particular, the dissenting commissioners took exception to the derisive language used to refer to those with religious beliefs who supported so-called "hate bills" and "anti-LGBT laws." "None of them deserves to be referred to in the derisive terms used by the Commission majority," Heriot and Kirsanow wrote. "Those that deal with religious liberty issues are not merely using religion as a "guise" or "excuse" as the Commission majority alleges. All of them address real issues in reasonable ways; none is simply an attack on the LGBT community." The dissenting commissioners then discussed and defended the recent laws enacted in Tennessee, Kansas, Mississippi and North Carolina. Tennessee was criticized for passing a bill (HB 1840) which allows counselors and therapists to pass on taking patients who "goals, outcomes and behaviors" conflict with their sincerely-held religious beliefs or principles, but only after the therapist has found another therapist or counselor to treat the individual. State law already does not allow a therapist to turn away a patient who is considered to be in imminent danger of harming himself or others. "That anyone would object to this is curious," Heriot and Kirsanow wrote. "Few individuals would want a counselor or therapist who objects to their lifestyle. Should a Muslim be required to counsel a gay man who seeks to persuade another gay man to marry him? Should a Roman Catholic be required to help the owner of an abortion clinic work through the day-to-day stresses connected with his business? Should a Jainist be forced to provide therapy for the owner of a slaughterhouse as he discusses how he sends animal after animal to its death?" "Our colleagues allege that this law 'is part of an alarming trend to limit the civil rights of a class of people.' It seems just the opposite to us. This law decreases the likelihood that a gay individual in need of counseling or therapy will be saddled with a counselor or therapist who disapproves of him." HB 1840 has not yet been signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who has suggested he may veto more bills this term. He has already vetoed a bill that would have made the Bible the official book of the state. In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback is considering a change in state policy that will not allow people to request a change to the gender designation on the state's birth certificate unless the individual can attest to the fact that the gender was recorded incorrectly at birth. This has been attacked as anti-transgender by those who believe the document should be changed to reflect the gender with which the person feels they correspond. "This is thought by the Commission majority to be antitransgender," Keriot and Kirsanow wrote. "But these are birth certificates, not life-style certificates. Kansas has the right to keep records that accurately reflect the facts of a birth. It's about truth. And truth cannot be pro- or anti-LGBT. It's just truth. As much as some individuals born as males may identify psychologically with females, as much as they may exercise their right to adopt female habits and dress, as much as they may undergo surgery and other physiological treatments in order to cause their physical bodies to better resemble females ... indeed as much as we might even support them in those endeavors, they are not in fact members of the female sex (or vice versa). When every cell in an individual's body contains chromosomes identifying that individual's sex, Kansas is not required to pretend otherwise in its official records, especially not retroactively to birth." Both wrote other states could chose to do birth certificates however they wished, but "for our colleagues to suggest Kansas is acting unconstitutionally is Orwellian." Mississippi's new law (HB 1523), signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant April 5, also does not inflict discrimination on the LGBT community, the dissenting commissioners wrote. The law only indicates that wedding planners, photographers, bakers and other wedding services providers cannot be compelled to support with their labor a type of marriage with which they disagree. "Note that the purpose of this legislation is not to deny same-sex couples the opportunity to celebrate their weddings. Such couples have many alternative sources for wedding services. The purpose is to avoid coercing unwilling individuals into participating in something they do not believe in," the dissenting commissioners wrote. "There are many in this nation with sincere religious and moral objections to same-sex marriage. Denying that, as our colleagues do, is simply a way to pretend the issues that face us as a nation are easy. Toleration is all about leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit; it is not about forcing people to take part in other people's lives. Whatever it is that our Commission colleagues are standing up for, it is not toleration," they wrote. The last provision addressed by the dissenting commissioners, North Carolina's HB 2, prohibits biological males from using multi-occupancy female restrooms (and vice versa) and aligns local ordinances with state law on the matter of gender identity and public restrooms in government facilities. North Carolina's Constitution, Heriot and Kirsanow wrote, does not allow local ordinances to supersede state law on labor and employment law, so when the Charlotte City Council created "open bathroom laws" in local businesses and city offices that conflicted with state law, Gov. Pat McCrory and the state legislature acted to avoid a "patchwork" of local ordinances. Both commissioners wrote that they regret "the level of hysteria" associated with HB 2. Rockers Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams announced they would not play shows in the state after the passage of the law. Cirque du Soleil did as well. Ironically, the circus will "continue to perform in parts of the world where homosexuality is illegal," Heriot and Kirsanow wrote. A former counseling student at Missouri State University has filed a lawsuit against the school after it expelled him for his stance of wanting to refer gay couples to other counselors. Andrew Cash, 46, was enrolled in the program in 2007, and during a presentation in 2011 said in response to a question by professor that he will counsel gay individuals separately on a variety of issues, but would refer couples to other counselors whose beliefs were not same as his. His lawsuit states that the school put him on a remediation plan requiring him to undergo counseling sessions and redo two audit courses, against which he appealed. The school ousted him from the program in 2014. Cash was told that his position on referring gay couples to other counselors went against American Counseling Association norms. He is being represented by Thomas More Society at the US District Court in Missouri in the lawsuit where the university's board of governors and officials are defendants. The complaint filed by TMS reads: "[Cash] was targeted and punished for expressing his Christian worldview regarding a hypothetical situation concerning whether he would provide counseling services to a gay/homosexual couple." "[MSU], acting under color of state law, and according to policy and practice, have explicitly and implicitly discriminated on the basis of viewpoint and deprived [Cash] of his rights to freedom of speech and expression secured by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," continued the complaint. Cash has not been able to complete his degree and is barred from working as a counselor. He wants MSU to take him back in the counseling program so that he can graduate from school. "Because of [MSU's] actions, [Cash] has suffered, and continues to suffer, economic injury and irreparable harm. He is entitled to an award of monetary damages, including punitive damages, and equitable relief," the lawsuit states. TMS Attorney Thomas Olp said: "Unfortunately, Missouri State University departed from its mission by denying educational opportunity to Mr. Cash simply because he expressed, in an academic setting, sincerely-held religious beliefs which his advisor deemed hostile to her own and therefore unacceptable." "An educator should not permit her own ideology and agenda to ruin the educational opportunities of her students. We feel the responsibility, on Mr. Cash's behalf, to try to correct this," Olp said. Cash's case is similar to Ward v. Polite, which was filed by an Eastern Michigan University student Julea Ward who referred a potential client seeking advice on a same-sex relationship to another therapist as she could not affirm the relationship during counseling because of her sincerely held beliefs. Ward was expelled from the program, but she appealed the decision in court which ruled in her favor. The court said in a statement: "[She] was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school's affirmation directives in doing so. That is why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices. What more could the [non-discrimination] rule require? Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion does not require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct if the conversation takes a turn in that direction and does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faith-based issues. Tolerance is a two-way street." The 13th North Korea Freedom Week (NKFW) was launched on April 25 at 10 AM in at South Korea's National Assembly, where human rights and refugee organizations from South Korea, the U.S., and Japan were present. The event will run until the 30th, and features a packed agenda. With about 20 organizations participating, this year's NKFW will focus on the role and responsibility of refugees from North Korea after the collapse of the North Korean government. Dr. Suzanne Scholte, who is often known as the 'godmother of refugees,' and the chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, also visited South Korea for the event. Some portions of the week's events include Christian faith-based gatherings, such as the prayer gathering that took place on Monday evening local time at 7:30 PM, focusing on the "freedom, life, and human rights" of the North Korean people. The 'Esther Prayer Movement' will also host another prayer gathering on the 30th at 8 PM at Joong Heung Church in Seoul. A celebratory worship service before the launching of NKFW took place at Sae-Teo Church in Seoul with North Korean refugees. Throughout the week, events such as a presentation on the policy directions and needs after the passing of the North Korea human rights act; a press conference with four refugee women who lost their children in China; a session at the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul hosted by a Japanese refugee organization about the need for solidarity and cooperation to restore human rights in North Korea; and a strategy meeting regarding reunification in the Korean peninsula and the roles of South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. in the process, will be taking place in Seoul. A gallery of photos and artwork -- some created by North Korean refugees -- focusing on the need for human rights in North Korea will also be presented throughout the week. The Tribeca Film Festival, which takes place every spring in downtown New York City, celebrated its fifteenth year this April. Established in 2002 partly as a revitalization measure for the area after the destruction of 9/11, its an overwhelming festival, and critics struggle to keep up (there is no seeing it all; theres mostly a lot of lucky guesses). But a number of films caught my eye that are worth looking forsome are already in theaters, some will be there shortly, and others youll catch on various streaming services throughout the year. Here are my picks. Roger Ross Williams U.S. theatrical release: July 8, 2016 A good candidate for Movie Im Most Likely To Tell My Mom to Watchwhich is a big compliment, because I liked it, too. Life, Animated, which premiered at Sundance in January, tells the story of Owen Suskind, whose onset of autism at age 3 confounded his family, especially because he became non-communicative. Eventually they realized he connected strongly with Disney films; this was the common ground on which they could reach him. Owen is now in his twenties, and as the film opens hes just about to live semi-independently for the first time in his life. Its a touching, life-affirming, often very funny film that also gives a unique insight into autism. Id recommend this to families and churches alike. (Theres a brief scene where Owens brother reflects on the fact that Disney movies dont offer an introduction to sex, but it isnt gratuitous or off-color.) Taika Waititi Awaiting U.S. theatrical release I missed this at Sundance as well, but Im very glad I saw it. Hunt for ... 1 I have seen a man dance holding a translucent scarf, the fabric billowing around his spinning form like a garment made of stars. I have prayed for strangers healing from high-blood pressure and unspecified neurological disorders. I have wept with salt-faced abandon as four women prayed over me; I have walked through a fire tunnel; I have seen a woman bob in Hasidic fashion over the Bible app on her smartphone. I experienced all this at the increasingly famous (and, to some, infamous) Bethel Church, and I did so as an evangelical Christian of Reformed persuasion. My parents named me for the Welsh pastor-theologian Martyn Lloyd-Jones. My father is a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Jonathan Edwards is one of my guiding lights, Wheaton College is my alma mater, and I attend a Presbyterian church in Toronto where I have never heard anyone speak or pray in tongues. Yet Bethel has been on my mind since a friend prayed for my healing at a campground in Wisconsin in 2010. She introduced me to the teachings of Bethels senior pastor, Bill Johnson, and gave me a few of his books. As Bethel grows, you might very well hear from a few people in your congregation who have traveled to Redding to find out if Bethel is realand who come back proclaiming that revival is under way. When I set out for Bethel Churcha hub of a global revival movementI half-expected to discover a rogue organization of hucksters intent on subverting the faith. And I half-expected to discover a community of believers more earnest and devoted to God than anyone Id ever met. In the end, what I discovered in Redding, California, didnt fit either narrative neatly. Bethel Church sits ... 1 You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong. So every president over the past several decades has declared in his annual address to Congress. This is a half-truth in the best of times. Because a new president will be inaugurated in January 2017, there will likely be no formal State of the Union speech next year. Just as well, because it is hard to imagine anyone saying with a straight face that our union is strong. This is not the first time America has faced daunting internal tensions and external threats. But during this years presidential primaries, fear, despair, and dissatisfaction have drawn Americans to would-be leaders who promise radical change to restore our countrys strength. Yet strength is only one part of real health for nations. All truly flourishing communities must also embrace vulnerability. They accept and even seek out meaningful risk for the sake of growth. Great leaders do not just promise strength: they call people to risk as well. But around the world today we see the rise of leaders who offer various forms of authority without vulnerabilitystrength without risk. This is the promise of every authoritarian government and every dictator, and it is increasingly the currency of American political campaigns. One candidate promised to build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexicoand to make Mexico pay for it. Another promised free tuition at public universitiesand to make Wall Street pay for it. These promises have several things in common, and not just that they are entirely unfeasible. They promise goods without a price, protection without effort, and benefits without costsat least to people like us. They depend on extracting ... 1 You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. Announcing the 2016 Winning Titles of the Book of the Year Award Contact: Sarah Bolme, 704-277-7194 CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 25, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA) is pleased to announce the winning titles for the 2016 Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award. Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award honors books produced by small publishers each year for outstanding contribution to Christian life. Book lovers and retailers selling Christian products voted on the nominated titles in each of fourteen categories. "We are proud to continue to recognize outstanding Christian books by small publishers and independent authors," states Sarah Bolme, Director of Christian Small Publishers Association, the sponsor of the award. The winners in each of the fourteen categories are: Fiction 489: A Short Story About Forgiveness, Beyr Reyes, ShadeTree Publishing, 978-1937331702 Historical Fiction Wilted Dandelions, Catherine Ulrich Brakefield, CrossRiver Media Group, 978-1936501236 Romance His Last Hope: A Contemporary Christian Romance, M. A. Malcolm, 978-9769581517 Christian Living Despite Your Circumstances, Candida Sullivan, ShadeTree Publishing, 978-1937331689 Bible Study / Theology Songs from the Heart: Meeting with God in the Psalms, Tim Riordan, GreenTree Publishers, 978-0692213476 Devotional For You My Husband, Melissa Moxley, CrossLink Publishing, 978-0985289669 Biography / Memoir Out of the Darkroom, Into the Light, Tracey Casciano, 978-1512714692 Relationships / Family The Talks, Barrett Johnson, INFO for Families Resources, 978-0615913711 Children's (age 4 to 8) What do you see? What does God see?, Denise D. Brown, db Word Gallery, 978-0991059300 Children's (age 8 to 12) Picture Imperfect, Susan Thogerson Maas, Ashberry Lane, 978-1941720103 Young Adult (age 12+) Edging Through the Darkness, D.L. Koontz, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, 978-1941103968 Gift Book Hungry for God ... Starving for Time, 5-Minute Devotions for Busy Women, Lori Hatcher, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, 978-1941103821 Christian Education Dreams Revealed: Handbook for Biblical Dream Interpretation, Terri Meredith, ShadeTree Publishing, 978-1937331740 eBook Exclusive The Royal Couple, Nicole Taylor The winning titles can be viewed at www.bookoftheyear.net The Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award is sponsored by Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA). A total of 123 titles were nominated for the award categories. About Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA) 500 refugees from Africa drown as their overcrowded boat headed for Europe sinks in Mediterranean Up to 500 refugees from Africa died when an overcrowded ship capsized in the Mediterranean near Libya last week, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The emigrants were reportedly being loaded onto the already-crowded ship from a smaller vessel when the boat sank leaving only 41 survivors. "As they were transferring people from one boat to another, the boat sank. There was hundreds on there and 41 survived," said Bill Passons, AMG International Director of International Missions. "It's another tragic situation and it speaks to the desperate situation that people are in and how they are being taken advantage of. They are traveling in conditions that aren't, in any ways, safe,'' he added. The UNHCR said the survivorsmostly men who came from Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudanwere brought ashore in Greece after they were spotted drifting miles out to sea last April 16, Mission Network News (MNN) reports. "After several hours at sea, the smugglers in charge of the boat attempted to transfer the passengers to a larger ship carrying hundreds of people in terribly overcrowded conditions. At one point during the transfer, the larger boat capsized and sank,'' the report says. The survivors were among a group of people who departed from near Tobruk, Libya on an unseaworthy vessel. The incident is considered one of the deadliest to befall migrants to Europe in months. This year alone, 179,552 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean and Aegean to reach Europe. At least 761 have died or gone missing attempting the journey, reports MNN. Last January, 244 refugees and migrants died on the way to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). "This has happened because many more people are desperate to flee their countries to come to Europe to find a safe haven,'' Eva Cosse, a Greece-based researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRC), earlier told Al Jazeera. "Even though the distance is small between the Aegean Islands and Turkey, currents are strong and overcrowded rubber boats cannot carry that many people... People are wearing fake life jackets; if there is a shipwreck, people drown.'' Cosse suggested "a collective response'' from the European Union to ensure the safe passage of migrants to Europe to prevent further deaths. AMG said it is currently working with refugees in Greece to help meet their basic needs for food, water and shelter. 'Anti-Christian' Law Introduced in India, Fears of Persecution Rise An "anti-Christian" law has recently been legalised in Himachal Pradesh, a mountainous state in the north of India. Missionaries, church leaders and devoted Christians now fear imminent persecution under the law. Lawmakers in Himachal Pradesh had introduced the law, which bans "forced" religious conversions. Under the legislation, any person or persons found to "force" or "induce" someone to change his or her religion could be liable for punishment. Following the implementation of the legislation, there are now concerns over the loose interpretation that could be applied to the law, and particularly that missionaries and Christians in the state, who were preaching the gospel, will now be targeted for persecution, BosNewLife has reported. A major advocacy group in India, the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), said that it was worried that the law could be used "to appease radical Hindus at the expense of the Christian community", according to the BosNewsLife. Evangelical Christians had debated that "forced conversions" are against the teachings of the Bible, as each individual is given the freedom to accept or reject Jesus Christ. The population of Himachal Pradesh is about six million people, with over 90 per cent of them bring Hindu, according to the 2001 India Census. Bangladesh: Islamic State claims machete murder of English professor A professor of English in the north-west of Bangladesh was hacked to death on Saturday in a murder that echoes other killings by Islamic extremists. Islamic State said it was behind the death of Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58. Siddiquee taught at Rajshahi University and was the founder of a music school and a magazine. He was attacked with machetes by at least two men on a motorbike near his house as he left for work. There have been at least six other murders of secular activists and bloggers in Bangladesh during the last year and religious minorities have also been targeted. Hussein Ali, a Christian, was also killed by men on a motorbike in a similar attack last month. Siddiquee's daughter Rizwana Hasin told the BBC her father was not an atheist and she did not know why he was targeted. However, extremist groups are known to be hostile to culture and his musical and literary interests may have been enough for them. Siddiquee is the fourth professor at the university to be killed in recent years. His students held a protest after his death, but hard-line Islamist groups have a significant presence on the campus. Though Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the death, the Bangladesh government has denied that either it or al Qaeda groups have a presence in the country, blaming home-grown militants for the violence. At least five extremists have been killed in shootouts since November as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on Islamists looking to establish a sharia-based Muslim state. Bishop and pastor face church trial for same-sex wedding A pastor and a bishop of the United Methodist Church are facing disciplinary procedures because they officiated at a same-sex wedding on Saturday. Bishop Melvin Talbert and Pastor Val Rosenquist officiated at the service for Jim Wilborne and John Romano. However, the UMC's Book of Discipline prohibits such services in spite of repeated efforts to rewrite it. Talbert, who is 81 and retired, is a long-time campaigner against discrimination and in 1960 spent time in a cell with Martin Luther King. He described his stance as an act of "biblical obedience". Speaking at First United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, he said: "Discrimination is discrimination, no matter where it is, and it's wrong. I hope that what we did here yesterday will be an act of evangelism for people...who are looking for safe places to come because they don't want to be identified with anti-gay [sentiment]." He told the congregation: "Your pastor could have complaints filed against her, and I could, too." He added: "But it's the right thing to do. If it costs us, if there are consequences, so let it be." Rosenquist, the church's senior pastor, said the UMC's Book of Discipline had "institutionalised oppression and discrimination". The church voted last August that it would sanction same-sex marriages whether it violated the UMC code or not. She said of LGBT members: "These folks are our brothers and sisters. It's just a matter of obeying our covenant with one another throughout the church, that we are to minister to all and to treat all the same. I'm just following what I was ordained to do, what I was baptised to do." A statement for the Charlotte Observer from the office of Bishop Larry Goodpaster, who leads the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, said: "We are aware of the wedding at First United Methodist Church on Saturday. Bishop Goodpaster will follow the procedures in The Book of Discipline if a formal complaint is filed." Many US-based UMC ministers and congregations are relaxed about or in favour of same-sex marriage. However, though it has around 7 million members in the US, it it is an international denomination and moves to change its rules meet strong resistance from African countries and others with a conservative tradition. Its General Conference starting on May 10 is to consider petitions repealing prohibitions on clergy conducting same-sex marriages. Christians and Hindus work together after devastating Nepal earthquake: 'God is able to work in such a crisis as this' Steve Collins was a few thousand feet in the air above Nepal when the worst earthquake in 80 years hit the country on 25 April last year. He had lived in Kathmandu for a couple of years but was on his way to a meeting in the Middle East, and didn't hear of the earthquake until he landed in Dubai. Once there, he received a message saying his wife and two children who were sheltering in a church in the capital were safe. Thousands of others weren't so lucky. The 7.8 magnitude quake killed almost 9,000 people, and some 600,000 houses were destroyed. The country has struggled to get back on its feet, and around four million people are still living in sub-standard temporary shelters. While donors pledged more than $4 billion in the aftermath of the disaster, much of that money remains unspent. Nepal's National Reconstruction Authority wasn't set up until seven months after the earthquake and the government has so far failed to help rebuild a single home, leading the British government to resort to giving aid directly to rebuilding projects. Christian development agency Tearfund, meanwhile, will tomorrow become the first international NGO to complete an earthquake-resistant house in Makwanpur, a remote community a few hours outside Kathmandu. In an interview with Christian Today, Collins, Tearfund's Head of Asia, explained that traditional Nepalese houses are made with very heavy walls and held together with cement, often with heavy tiles on the roof. "If and when they come crashing down, they really come crashing down," he said. "And they have big cracks in the wall even if they're still standing, so they don't feel safe." Tearfund has therefore spent the last year training more than 300 local masons in how to incorporate resistant building techniques into traditional styles. The first house will be finished on Tuesday, and there are plans for 639 in total. There is a shortage of skilled labourers in Nepal, and so the newly-trained masons will go a long way in being able to share their skills with the wider community. "It's been an encouraging sign that people who have gone through terrible circumstances have got something within themselves to use," Collins said. "You could see this as almost giving people a sense of purpose, a sense of dignity, even a sense of joy in some circumstances of being able to step out and do something, when before they would have been waiting for help from the outside. That help is still needed, but this community cohesion is in place to allow them to do stuff on their own". One of the most remarkable consequences of the earthquake has been the way communities have overcome previous divisions to work together. Nepal has a predominantly Hindu population, and Christians as a minority often face persecution, though the country's church is the fastest growing in the world. Before the earthquake struck, members of either faith didn't have much to do with one another, but in working together to rebuild their communities, those relationships have begun to be restored. Pastor Prajwak Thakuri, who leads a church in Makwanpur, told Tearfund that the rebuilding efforts have opened up doors in his community. His church has initiated a 'Sangasangai' (meaning 'together') initiative, where they seek to practically meet the needs of those around them. They've worked alongside other locals to rebuild a path that connects their village to the main road, meaning they are no longer cut off from surrounding communities, and are hoping to create a water source for everyone to use. "The work with the community has been really positive. Before the Sangasangai group, the community didn't have much to do with us here and very few people would let Christians into their house," pastor Prajwak said. "This has given us a way forward to work together, and to change the way the community sees us and begins to accept us." "We're seeing people step out and take proactive action," Collins added. "And they're empowered and equipped to do that... In a sense, it's difficult to say there is good coming out of it [the earthquake], because there is so much suffering, but God is able to work in such a crisis as this... and the earthquake has brought visibility to the role that churches can play in their communities. "We're hearing more and more stories of churches doing things in their communities off their own back. Tearfund's partners have been working with churches, looking at the Bible and seeing what Jesus' ministry was. It wasn't just bringing people to the Lord, it had a practical side, so it's widening people's vision and understanding of their role a disciples. Going beyond the church walls and into communities." There are concerns other than building sustainable housing, of course. Thousands of children were left vulnerable to trafficking already a huge issue in Nepal after the earthquake struck; many were orphaned, and others were sold by parents desperate for their children to have a better life abroad. A Sun investigation earlier this year found that Nepalese children were being trafficked into the UK. Tearfund has also therefore been involved in the creation of safe spaces for at-risk children, and raising awareness of trafficking in schools and communities. Collins is adamant that Nepal has a bright future. "There's still a lot of hope," he said. The rebuilding will go ahead a lot faster now masons have been trained and agreements are in place, he added, and the long process of replacing destroyed infrastructure is beginning. The door has also been opened to improve disaster planning for the future. The UK's international development minister, Desmond Swayne, earlier this month reaffirmed Britain's commitment to long-term recovery in Nepal. "Recovering from a disaster is a huge task and it can take decades for countries to properly mend," he said. "The building season in Nepal has now begun." Collins agreed, and said the church, especially, will find its calling in being a source of light for broken communities. The rigid caste system in Nepal means that people are connecting with the message that God loves you whoever you are, he said, and the persecution Christians have faced means the decision to follow Jesus is not taken lightly. "People really do have personal relationships with the Lord, and that enthusiasm is now spilling out as people understand the church, its mission and its role in society," he explained. "It's spilling out into the physical and the social aspects of life people are really serious about what they do, and want to serve in the wider community." Churches need to be more LGBT inclusive to deliver public services - Steve Chalke Churches are not trusted to deliver public services such as education, new research has found. Over a third of Britons said they were concerned churches would use the opportunity to proselytise and over a quarter thought LGBT people would be excluded. The research was launched on Monday and found the majority of the public had serious reservations about church provision of mainstream public services such as healthcare and education. The data was released by Oasis Foundation and called on churches to step into gaps left by government cuts and provide day-to-day services. The report, entitled 'Faith in Public Service', found the majority of the public trusted churches to run complex projects like foodbanks but most did not support Church involvement in more complex services. In an interview with Christian Today, Steve Chalke, the founder and global leader of Oasis said the idea the state should provide healthcare and education was a "thoroughly modern" one. "It was churches would developed the first hospitals," said Chalke. "It is only since the development of the welfare state in the last 60 or 70 years that we have been able to say healthcare is the role of the state. "There are many countries in the world there the state does not do that and in the UK we are now moving away from state-provided services." He said the problem with Church-provided services was it tended to be patchy and the Church needed to be trusted to deliver more universal service. He told Christian Today: "The Church has always been engaged in an agenda far wider than a narrow spiritual one and that is our duty today." Oasis runs over 40 academy schools around the UK. Chalke said he did not think academies were perfect but added: "While I wait for the Kingdom of God to arrive I have a choice to make. Either I say none of this is what I would ideally like and disengage and pray and wait. Or I say none of this is what I would ideally like but I am called to engage." He said he held a "pragmatic" perspective but admitted "there have always been churches who have taken a 'sit-on-your-hands' perspective". The report focused on David Cameron's notion of a "big society" ahead of the 2010 election and argued the church "has a great to offer". Ian Sansbury, director of the Oasis Foundation, said: "That potential is dependent on it becoming more explicitly inclusive, developing a better infrastructure and better articulating its ability to deliver integrated local services." Chalke told Christian Today: "For hundreds of years churches have run schools. We have had this appetite to engage which comes out of our reading of Jesus' teachings. What this report says is if our faith is going to be of public service, there are a whole load of issues we need to address." Chalke is known for his acceptance of LGBT people and for calling the Church to do the same. He told Christian Today some of the issues the wider Church had to grapple with was "our theology, our integrity, and our attitude towards LGBT inclusion. The stance I take on inclusion and LGBT is not divorced from the wider work I do." The report highlighted issues with the Church's integrity and inclusion as primary concerns raised by the public. These were especially promient among young people with 55 per cent and 41 per cent of 18-24 year olds respectively seeing the risks of proselytism and exclusion of LGBT people as barriers to church-led services. House pushes bill to help U.S. fight persecution of Christians worldwide A U.S. House of Representatives committee has adopted a bill that would instil the mandatory training on religious freedom for all American foreign service officers. H.R. 1150, or the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, was adopted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday to provide the U.S. government including the State Department new resources and training to fight the increasing incidents of persecution of Christians and anti-Semitism, Charisma News reports. "My legislation today strengthens our resolve and ensures that every administration integrates and advances religious freedom in its foreign policy objectives and actions," said author Rep. Chris Smith. The bill requires that international religious freedom policies must be integrated into national security, immigration, rule of law, and other relevant U.S. foreign policy priorities. It also creates Designated Persons List of individuals sanctioned for participating or directing religious freedom abuses and expands diplomatic training on international religious freedom for all State Department diplomats. The measure also establishes in the State Department the Religious Freedom Defense Fund and creates a "tier system" for International Religious Freedom reports on countries of particular concern and a special watch listsimilar to the tier system used in the Trafficking in Persons Report. If it becomes a law, it would authorise the U.S. president to take specified actions against foreign persons responsible for committing or supporting systemic violations of religious freedom, or supporting violence or terrorist acts targeting members of religious groups. Under the bill, the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom will report directly to the Secretary of State. Smith said the world is experiencing a crisis in international religious freedom "that continues to create millions of victims; a crisis that undermines liberty, prosperity and peace; a crisis that poses a direct challenge to the U.S. interests in the Middle East, Russia, China and sub-Saharan Africa." India: Church vandalised and pastor and wife doused in petrol A pastor and his wife have been doused in petrol during an attack on their church in India, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports. Two men posing as Christians in need of prayer turned up at Pastor Deenanath's Berseba Church in Karanji Village in the central Chattisgarh State and forced him to let them in. He was made to chant "jai sri ram", or "hail Lord Ram", before he and his wife were doused with petrol in an attempt to force them to convert to Hinduism. Lord Ram is a Hindu deity. The church was also badly vandalised. Bibles, furniture, the public address system, the pulpit and church offerings of fruits were among the damged items. Although local police have been informed, it is believed the two men belonged to a Hindu fundamentalist group from outside the village. Christians in Chhattisgarh State, especially in Bastar district where Karanji Village is located, often face physical violence and social discrimination. According to the Evangelical Fellowship of India, Chhattisgarh ranked second among Indian states for recorded incidences of attacks against Christians in 2015. Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said: "CSW condemns this and all other incidences of targeted violence against religious minorities, which have outraged civil society in India. CSW joins with the people of India in calling for justice and for the fulfilment of the Prime Minister's promise to put a stop to the harassment of religious minorities in India. "We are deeply concerned at the trend of increasing attacks on religious minorities in the country, and especially in Chhattisgarh State, which betray India's pluralistic heritage. The Indian government must follow through on its promises with concrete actions to stem these attacks." NATO, E.U. issue warnings: Terrorists planning attacks on European beach resorts As vacation season heats-up in Europe, the general public particularly those planning to spend their vacation on the beach are being asked to be on the lookout for suspicious-looking people trying to procure necessary items to make chemical, biological or radiological weapons or pose as vendors serving tourists with drinks or beach accessories. The warnings come as NATO and the European Union both confirmed there are "justified concerns" that the Islamic State (ISIS) is attempting to obtain these weapons to attack Western nations, CBN News reports. The warnings were issued after intelligence agencies in Italy and Germany claimed that terrorists are planning a Tunisia-style attack on European beach resorts this summer. "We know terrorists are trying to acquire these substances," Dr. Jamie Shea, deputy assistant secretary general for emerging security threats at NATO, said, referring to ingredients utilised to make chemical weapons. "There is 'justified concern' that they are looking for even more ingredients for their sinister plots," he said. Intel reports say terrorists could launch their attacks in some of the most sought-after tourist destinations in the Costa del Sol in Spain, southern France and both coasts of Italy which are also apparently popular spots for British nationals, the Daily Mail reports, citing credible sources. Undercover operatives in Africa as well as NATO insiders are likewise reporting evidence that the Islamic terror group has "concrete plans" to pose as refugee T-shirt and ice cream vendors and detonate bombs under lounge chairs as well as suicide vests they themselves are wearing, according to CBN News. They are said to be planning to open fire with automatic weapons as ocean-goers frolic in the surf and sand. "It could be a whole new dimension of terror. Holiday beaches cannot be protected," a high-ranking British official was quoted by the Mail as saying. One security expert also said the ISIS threat is likely to "get worse before it gets better." According to intel reports, the perpetrators will be from the radical Islamic terror group based in Africa known as Boko Haram, which has pledged its allegiance to ISIS. Seck Pouye, a Senegalese law enforcement official, noted that since these people travel with visas and documents and are viewed as legitimate business people and traders, it would be very difficult and dangerous for law enforcement officers to trace them. Obama says North Carolina, Mississippi bathroom laws are 'wrong and should be overturned' U.S. President Barack Obama said the new bathroom laws in North Carolina and Mississippi send the wrong signals and should be repealed. Speaking during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Friday, Obama said "the laws that have been passed there are wrong and should be overturned," The Hill reports. "And they're in response to politics, in part; in part, some strong emotions that are generated by peoplesome of whom are good people but I just disagree with when it comes to respecting the equal rights of all people, regardless of sexual orientation, whether they're transgender or gay or lesbian," he said. North Carolina's HB 2 restricts the use of bathrooms according to a person's biological sex and bars local governments from enacting non-discrimination laws. Mississippi's HB 1523 lays down different policies including preventing people from being forced to take part in same-sex marriage ceremonies and letting businesses decide on rules on the use of restrooms, showers, dressing rooms and locker rooms based on their religious beliefs. It protects religious beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman, sexual relations are reserved to such marriage and male or female refers to a person's biological sex. Despite these, Obama said, "I want everybody here in the United Kingdom to know that the people of North Carolina and Mississippi are wonderful people." "They are hospitable people. They are beautiful states, and you are welcome and you should come and enjoy yourselves. And I think you'll be treated with extraordinary hospitality," he added. In response to the bathroom laws, the United Kingdom issued a travel advisory to people going to North Carolina and Mississippi. "The U..S is an extremely diverse society and attitudes towards LGBT people differ hugely across the country. LGBT travellers may be affected by legislation passed recently in the states of North Carolina and Mississippi," the advisory stated. In his reply to Obama, Cameron, who had the chance to visit North Carolina, said, "The guidance that we put out, the Foreign Office, gives advice on travel, and it obviously deals with laws in situations as they are, and it tries to give that advice dispassionately, impartially." He said his government's view is that laws should be passed "to end discrimination rather than to embed it or enhance it." "But obviously, the laws people pass is a matter of their own legislatures. But we make clear our own views about the importance of trying to end discrimination, and we've made some important steps forward in our own country on that front, which we're proud of," he said. Open Doors Conduct Seminars for Persecuted Christians Open Doors is fighting against Christian persecution in India by conducting four-day seminars for Christian pastors, leaders, and other believers. This year, Open Doors is planning to hold 10 more seminars in India. A total of 27 seminars have been already held in India over the past three years, influencing numerous Christian leaders in India. The seminar known as "Standing Strong Through the Storm" is designed to prepare church leaders for persecution since the Bible tells the believers to be ready for persecution and encourage them to remain strong while doing mission. In India alone approximately 4,000 cases are pending in Indian courts involving attacks against Christians. Joseph R. Pitts, a U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania, recently returned from a fact-finding trip to India explained of the hostile treatment that Christians receive although India claims as a democratic government: "Christians in India are a minority group easily targeted and exploited. We are very concerned about the rise of extremism, whether it is Islam, Hindu or Buddhist," he said, "We heard testimonies about 'anti-conversion' laws, which basically are taking away the peoples?religious freedom. This is contrary to what democracy stands for." Dr. Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, said: "Nearly 50 years experience in ministry with the persecuted church has given Open Doors a unique perspective on what it means for Christians to face and live under religious persecution. Our 'Standing Strong Through the Storm' seminars share the experiences of others who have undergone similar conditions and have survived. The Bible has much to say about suffering. Biblical principles combined with real-life stories of contemporary believers bring a great deal of encouragement to Christians facing persecution for the first time." During the seminar, Christians are given an opportunity to share their testimonies. Many people receive grace and strength during this time. Suresh from Gujarat State, where most persecution happens, expressed his gratitude for allowing him to share his own experiences. "The seminar has been timely for my situation and it is good that I could come here for fellowship and encouragement. It does not trouble me that I had to drive for one full day to get here. It is worth the effort. I was feeling alone and hopeless but you have given me hope and assurance." Another church leader, Kim, shared, "The Lord took me to Gujarat to be a witness for Him. I eventually have become a daughter to the villagers where I live for Jesus. Troubles come and they will increase, I know, but I am better equipped after this seminar." Palm Sunday: 10 amazing pictures of Orthodox celebrations around the world Orthodox Christians around the world celebrated Palm Sunday yesterday, in remembrance of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. It marked the start of the Great and Holy Week leading up to Jesus' death on Good Friday, and resurrection on Easter Sunday, also known as Pascha. Non-orthodox Christians celebrate Palm Sunday on a different date, this year on March 20. The day is named so as a reminder that people threw palms on the ground as Jesus rode by, and though traditions vary, most churches hold ritual processions where palm branches are carried into the building. These palms are blessed, and sometimes folded into crosses. Here's a look at some of the celebrations from across the globe: An Orthodox priest blesses believers at a church during a Palm Sunday service in Minsk, Belarus. A Christian Orthodox worshipper holds palm fronds as she attends a Palm Sunday mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. Egyptian Coptic Christians hold candles in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A clergyman distributes pussy willow among Orthodox believers in front of the Bolshoi Theatre in central Moscow, Russia. People raise the Syrian national flag outside Al-Saleeb church in al-Qassaa, in Damascus, Syria. Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians attend mass in the Samaan el-Kharaz Monastery in the Mokattam Mountain area of Cairo, Egypt. Pennsylvania church killing: Man shot dead during 'altercation' in service A church member was shot dead yesterday and another is in custody after an altercation at a church in Pennsylvania. Robert Braxton, 27, was shot in the chest and died during a confrontation described by Montgomery County district attorney Kevin Steele as "a disturbance that escalated into an altercation between two church members". The incident took place at the Montgomeryville site of the Keystone Fellowship church. Three shots were fired during the singing of a hymn, terrifying the congregation. Steele said the shooter, who was also injured in the altercation, has not yet been charged pending an investigation of the circumstances. He said the shooter had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, believed to be a semi-automatic handgun. The church posted a statement on its Facebook page saying: "Our hearts are deeply grieved over the tragic event that occurred Sunday morning, April 24 at our Montgomeryville campus. As a church family, we are shocked and heartbroken over what took place, and our congregation is in prayer for everyone involved." It is holding a prayer meeting tonight in response to the tragedy. The post drew many expressions of sympathy and offers of prayer. Members present at the shooting described it as a "horrific experience". Sheila Dawn Fox said: "It was a scary moment for us this morning, but another reminder of our mortality and the need to be a light and show love in this world!" Kim Oczkowski said: "This was my first time to this church. What a day to choose to come visit!! Praying for the congregation." "My family and I were there," said Marissa Frey. "A horrific experience. Prayers for all involved." Persecution on the Increase in India Gospel for Asia has reported a sharp increase in the "scope and intensity" of persecution in India. GFA correspondents have reported three serious incidents of persecution recently that the charity says "clearly demonstrate the increased boldness of anti-Christian extremists in the country". On March 26, around 40 anti-Christian extremists attacked and beat up a group of 15 students who live and study in a GFA-related home Bible school in Punjab, northwest India. GFA missionary Prakesh Ramteki was attacked on March 18 as he walked home from a nearby village where he had been ministering to the people. On March 25, extremists disrupted a worship service at a GFA-affiliated church, accusing the pastor in charge of forcible conversions of Hindus to Christianity. GFA's President K P Yohannan said that Hindu religious extremists were "determined to do all they can to hurt those who believe and follow Christ". "These minority extremists don't represent India nor the sentiments of the Hindu majority of the land," he said. GFA said that the Hindu extremists "consistently" accuse Christians of forcibly converting people to Christianity and using "allurement" to convince people to receive Jesus as their Saviour. "This is often the accusation when the conversion comes after a healing. However, in most cases, the people come to the missionaries requesting prayer for healing," said the charity. Hinduism has long been regarded by many as India's official religion, but the extremists have become alarmed by the growing number of people leaving the religion, GFA said. Now the Hindu extremists claim that essential to maintaining a cohesive Indian society is the preservation of Hinduism as the country's chief religion. GFA said that the recent reports of persecution were "clear indicators that preaching the Gospel and following Christ are dangerous propositions for the people of India". Attacks on missionaries have "unfortunately become all too common", GFA said, adding that believers were also coming under increasing attack. "We cannot be silent nor ignore what is happening to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ in India," said Yohannan. "We must pray and fast for God to intervene and bring about a heart change and give boldness to His people to love and proclaim the Good News in the midst of persecution." Pope Francis tells teens: 'Happiness cannot be downloaded like an app' Happiness cannot be downloaded like a smartphone app, Pope Francis told teenagers on Sunday as part of a weekend-long celebration of young people in the Vatican. Around 100,000 people aged 13-16 gathered in St Peter's Square for the three-day event that is tied to the Vatican's year of mercy festivities. As part of the weekend youngsters had an opportunity to admit their sins to the 79-year-old pontiff after he spontaneously joined 150 priests hearing confessions on Saturday. "Your happiness has no price. It cannot be bought. It is not an app that you can download on your phones, nor will the latest update bring you freedom and grandeur in love," he said at a special mass on Sunday. "Don't believe those who would distract you from the real treasure, which you are, by telling you that life is beautiful only if you have many possessions," said Francis. "Be sceptical about people who want to make you believe that you are only important if you act tough, like the heroes in films, or when you wear the latest fashions." Sunday's mass followed a Saturday evening concert in Rome's Olympic stadium. Francis sent a video message to the thousands gathered to hear rock and rap musicians: "Just remember that if Jesus is not in your life, it is as though there is no signal." One teenager who had had confession with the Argentine Pope told La Republica newspaper afterwards: "It was the most emotional day of my life." The pontiff's informal tone is cited as one reason he is so popular with Catholic young people. This is combined with the Vatican's active presence on social media. Last month Pope Francis joined Instagram and he is judged to be the most influential tweeter in the world. Pope Francis urges prayer for kidnapped priests in Syria Pope Francis has urged prayer for Catholic and Orthodox priests and bishops held prisoner by extremists in Syria. Speaking before the midday Regina Caeli prayer in St Peter's Square, Francis referred to five priests killed during the Spanish Civil War, who were proclaimed saints the previous day. According to the Zenit news service, he said: "We praise the Lord for these courageous witnesses of His, and through their intercession we pray for the world to be liberated from all violence." Francis continued: "Always alive in me is my concern for brother Bishops, priests and Religious, Catholics and Orthodox, kidnapped for a long time in Syria. May the Merciful God touch the heart of the abductors and grant the release of our brothers, to be able to return to their communities as soon as possible. Therefore, I invite you all to pray, without forgetting the other persons kidnapped in the world." Among those held prisoner in Syria are two Orthodox bishops, kidnapped just over two years ago. Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan Gregorios Yohanna and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Boulos Yazii, both from Aleppo, were kidnapped three years ago on April 22 near the city. Catholic priest Fr Jack Mourad was captured last year but released, while Fr Tom Uzhunnalil was kidnapped in Yemen after an attack on the old people's home where he was ministering and is thought to be still in the country. Addressing an audience of young people at a Youth Jubilee celebration, Francis concluded: "Dear young people, you have celebrated the Jubilee: now you go home with the joy of your Christian identity. Standing, with your head held high, and with your identity card in your hands and in your heart! May the Lord accompany you, and please, pray also for me." 'Sense8' season 2 production: Cast members in Italy after filming in India It looks like "Sense8" season 2 production is well underway, with the cast hopping from one country to another to film scenes for the highly anticipated new season of the hit Netflix series. Although details about "Sense8" season 2 have been sparse, fans could do with cast members keeping them up to speed with the filming via their social media. A recent update by "Sense8" stars Bae Doona, Tina Desai and Miguel Angel Silvestre revealed that the cast and crew are now in Europe, specifically in Paris and Italy, for the production. grazie , dank... And more from sister @desaitina @doonabae A video posted by Miguel Angel Silvestre (@miguelangelsilvestre) on Apr 6, 2016 at 10:18am PDT A photo posted by Doona Bae (@doonabae) on Apr 6, 2016 at 3:26pm PDT Before heading there, the group was in India. The stars also documented their stay there via their Instagram accounts. Indian actor Purab Kohli, for one, teased the "Sense8" season 2 filming experience. "We have just finished our Mumbai schedule for Sense8 and with just enough time to gather our bearings and pack our bags, we are now in Italy for the second leg," the TV personality confirmed to Indian Express. "I love the Amalfy coast where I had spent two beautiful weeks in 2009. Back then, I never thought I would be shooting there one day," he continued. In addition, Doona, who will be back as Sun in "Sense8" season 2, thanked the folks in Mumbai for the warm welcome and also for the badge with a photo of her depicted as a god "with my new eyebrows and sexy fingers." Doona's "Sense8" co-star Brian J. Smith also seems to be happy about his own badge, where he was transformed into a spiritual guru. On the other hand, Silvestre shared photos of him and his castmates who are all-smiles as they explored the beauty of the Elephanta Island and the Elephanta Caves. A release date for "Sense8" season 2 is yet to be determined, although fans naturally expect the new season to drop a year after the first one landed and that's June 2016. However, if the previous reports about how the late renewal of the show pushed back the production and launch, "Sense8" season 2 won't see the light of day until fall. This means that it will be quite a long wait for fans before they see their favorite globetrotters return to the small screen. Tim Farron urges government to accept 3,000 child refugees An extra 3,000 unaccompanied children may be accepted into Britain after a number of Conservative MPs are rumoured to vote against the government in a crucial vote on Monday evening. The home secretary Theresa May has announced her opposition to the move and has reiterated the government's pledge to take an extra 3,000 children from camps around Syria. However she may be overruled when the House of Commons vote tonight on an amendment to the Immigration Bill tabled by the Labour peer Lord Dubs. If passed it would allow 3,000 child refugees in camps around Calais and Europe in to the UK. The Christian leader of the Liberal Democrat party, Tim Farron, has been a long-time advocate of the plans, which are also supported by Save the Children. He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show the government's promise to take an extra 3,000 children from camps around Syria was not enough. Farron estimated there were 30,000 lone refugee children in camps in Europe who were vulnerable to trafficking and abuse. "I've been to the camps, I've seen families absolutely devastated, people who've fled war and persecution, the threat of death for them and their children and they took an enormously risky decision to cross the water the come to Europe. Why? Because what they left behind was riskier still," he said. He added: "My question to every Conservative MP, to Theresa May and to David Cameron, is, 'If you were in the situation of these Syrian refugees, if your children were like these unaccompanied children in Europe now, what would you want other countries to do for you?' The answer is obvious." Krish Kandiah, founder and director of Home for Good, a Christian adoption and fostering charity, said it was time for Christians to act quickly. He told Christian Today: "This is a vital vote that will determine the safety of some of our world's most vulnerable children. "I urge you to tweet your MP or email them to encourage them to back Lord Dubs amendment." Theresa May said the government had put in 10m to help and support for refugee children who are in Europe. The government's refugee resettlement programme has solely targeted those in camps in Syria and surrounding countries, not those in Europe. Dubs' amendment has had a parliamentary device known as "financial priviledge" attached to it. This means if it is defeated by the Commons on Monday evening, it cannot be tabled again in the House of Lords. Yvette Cooper, chair of Labour's taskforce on refugees, said the application of financial privilege to the amendment was "an appalling thing" to do. "It shows they know they have lost the moral argument," she said. Why atheist churches are parasites on true Christianity AW Tozer once wrote: "If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference." There's a church in Toronto where they're determined to find out whether that's true. Its minister Gretta Vosper has been quite open about her lack of faith in a supernatural being for years, though it's only recently that she's called herself an atheist (in solidarity with bloggers in Bangladesh murdered for their lack of faith). But this was a step too far even for the famously liberal United Church of Canada, of which her church is a member, and much to her disgust she's facing a Church review body. Vosper's approach ticks all the boxes in a post-Christian spiritual-but-not-religious world. An entirely one-sided Guardian report into the affair explains that for her, 'God' is a metaphor for goodness and an life lived with compassion and justice. Services at her church emphasise moral teachings rather than doctrine. "The service begins with a nod to the First Nations land on which the church stands and goes on to mention human rights in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Palestine. Global concern is coupled with community-building, with members invited to share significant moments of the past week." One man shares about his weight loss. According to the article, the tipping point for the church was the decision to drop the Lord's Prayer in 2008, resulting in the congregation plunging from 120 to 40 (it's now around 100). However, the ones who are left are all in favour, according to the Grauniad. "West Hill is the future of what religion will be like," says Jim Hyland (65). "We're thinking and saying what the rest of the world is scared to, but moving towards." And recent addition Eve Casavant (44) was "delighted to find the same sort of church she had been raised in, save the burden of belief". "It's like that sense of community without the barriers," she says. "It's a beautiful thing and it is too bad it's not being as embraced as it should be." I wrote recently about Vosper and West Hill, trying my level best to be fair and even doing a bit of philosophy. I applauded her honesty while concluding she was mistaken. But if this is the kind of thing that's being seriously said and written about the enterprise, it's time to call out nonsense for what it is. So here goes: 1. Some religions, like Buddhism, are vague on whether there's a God. Christianity is not one of them. 'Exist' is a tricky word, philosophically (I know, it's complicated) but if you think God is only a metaphor, you aren't a Christian in anything other than a cultural sense like Richard Dawkins. 2. If you aren't a Christian, you shouldn't pretend you are. Don't have "services" for a non-existent God. Don't sing hymns you don't believe. Don't pretend to baptise people into a Church you aren't really part of. And don't keep land and property that was given by people who sincerely believed in the God you don't and use them to propagate beliefs that would horrify them. 3. Christianity is about more than global concern and community-building. It's about grace, forgiveness and redemption. Don't imagine you can keep the form of religion without its reality. It's like keeping the shine without the gold or the sparkle without the diamond. 4. Ditching the Lord's Prayer is incredibly arrogant. Part of being a Christian is that you don't get to choose which bits of it you like and which you don't. By all means argue that's what theology is but accept you stand in a historic tradition and you can't step outside it and still be a Christian. 5. West Hill is not the future of what religion will be like. It exists only as a parasitic growth on real Christianity. It's religion evacuated of power, reduced to a parody of itself, with no resources beyond the collective niceness of its members. 6. Beliefs are not burdens and doctrines aren't barriers. They help to define us. If you get rid of beliefs, you're left with nothing to belong to. And it's by examining our beliefs and probing our doctrines that we develop spiritual and intellectual depth and complexity. If we turn our backs on doctrine, all that defines us is what we used to believe and that's not enough. 7. For goodness' sake, be honest. In England we have Sunday Assemblies, founded by Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, a nice man. He's an atheist who wanted the church experience without the religion bit, and it's caught on but he doesn't call it church. I have no idea what they'd think of you, but they have every right to say the same: don't pretend to be something you aren't. 8. You won't like this, but here it is: what you think is outmoded language about a non-existent God speaks to millions of people around the world. In countries that had left this primitive superstition behind, millions are adopting it enthusiastically. The future of Christianity doesn't lie with those who intellectualise it to the point where there's nothing left in it worth turning up for; it's with those who believe and trust that Jesus is their Saviour, and think it's worth devoting their lives to finding out what that means. Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods 'World's strongest pastor' breaks 25th world record A 53-year-old Lutheran minister has broken a world record for strength by pulling three fire engines in Canada. Rev Kevin Fast, who has already set 24 Guinness World Records, has now added a 25th achievement. Alongside Andrew Younghusband, a Canadian TV personality, he will be crowned with the record for 'heaviest vehicle pulled over 100 ft by a pair'. The three trucks together weighed 82 metric tonnes. This morning Andrew Young & Kevin Fast set a world record for pulling 3 fire trucks of 82550 kg. @Discovery pic.twitter.com/8Q0wTdSWLT Cobourg News (@gbcobourgnews) April 23, 2016 The feat was a stunt for a new Discovery Channel documentary hosted by Younghusband, titled 'Tougher than it looks?'. "We realised if we want to do it [break a world record] we should hook up with someone who's done it multiple times before," Younghusband told Northumberland Today. "Kevin Fast had broken 24 records before today and we wanted to know is it tougher than it looks." After breaking the record, the TV personality said: "It's tougher than it looks if you're a regular person. But if you're a regular person who hooks up with Kevin it's not that tough. "Lets face facts, he did 98 per cent of the work." Fast has been a pastor for more than two decades, and leads St Paul's Lutheran Church in Coburg. He also regularly competes in Highland-style games. "Most people in religious circles find it hard to believe that I do all these feats of strength. A pastor is usually small and weak," he has previously said. "But my parishioners here at the church are always supportive. We are a nice big family and they like to hear about my exploits." He believes his abilities are "a gift from God". "The deal with gifts like this is you have to use them to help people otherwise it would be ungrateful," he added. "So with all my world record attempts I've always tried to raise money for charity." Fast celebrated his 53rd birthday earlier this month by setting a world record for pulling a fire truck using only one arm. Paris' posh Place Vendome, where luxury brands and high-end hotels meet, is home to the Ambassade du Texas the Texas embassy. France was, in 1839, the first country to acknowledge Texas as a republic. The state's short-lived independence still encourages Lone Star State pride today, but the vast majority of Texans don't support the secessionist movement. RELATED: Scandalous oil boom past comes to life in 'Texas Boomtowns' Republicans widely consider secession an embarrassing aside to their platforms, that's why so many are unhappy at the prospect of it being a topic at the 2016 Texas Republican Convention next month. But several district conventions around the state have already stated their favorable position on the issue. "There's almost no chance Texas Republicans will actually vote in favor of seceding, mind younot least because most of the party wants nothing to do with this," the Washington Post's Amber Phillips writes. "But the fact we're even mentioning secession and the Texas GOP convention in the same sentence suggests that the once-fringe movement has become a priority for at least some conservative grass-roots Texans." SEE ALSO: 'Cowboy' artist makes cattle sculptures out of farm tools While it's by no means a priority for the vast majority of Texans, it's still curious that the Republic of Texas' legacy lives on in major international cities today. Click through the slideshow above to see weird facts about the Lone Star State. Tracy Murphree, the GOP candidate for the Denton County Sheriff's Office, posted some questionable statements about transgender people on Facebook, the Dallas Observer reports. According to the Observer, Murphree wrote the following Facebook post on April 22: BATHROOM BRAWL: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump argue over bathroom rights "All I can say is this: If my little girl is in a public women's restroom and a man, regardless of how he may identify, goes into the bathroom, he will then identify as a John Doe until he wakes up in whatever hospital he may be taken to. Your identity does not trump my little girl's safety. I identify as an overprotective father that loves his kids and would do anything to protect them." RELATED GALLERY: The most and least LGBT-friendly cities in Texas The post and its "vibrant" commentary are no longer present on Murphree's page. One person, claiming to be the mother of a transgender child and a Murphree supporter, expressed disappointment in the candidate for being "transphobic." Since then, Murphree has been quiet but the incident was brought up during a LULAC and NAACP-sponsored joint forum of Denton City Council candidates, the Denton Record-Chronicle reported. Mayor Chris Watts said discrimination against anyone or any group would never be allowed. Other candidates mirrored those sentiments. (h/t Raw Story) This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It seems not a week or so goes by without a new viral video or story makes the rounds featuring Houstonians bickering and feuding over a parking spot in the lot adjacent to the Houston Zoo. There's got to be a better way, right? This past weekend the Houston Zoo was busier than ever with visitors making the most of the warm and sunny weather, a sort of reward for dealing with rain and flooding just days before. RELATED: Houston Zoo reinstates 'no gun' signs despite controversy With the exceptional crowds came a new dash-camera video featuring a man saving a spot for another person by standing in the middle of it. Sounds aggravating, no? That's what awaits drivers coming to the Houston Zoo during prime hours anticipating a day of elephants, gorillas and prairie dogs. Zoo representative Jackie Wallace said Monday that they are aware of the issues regarding parking in the lot right outside the zoo but that they cannot monitor or assist anyone with parking. According to Wallace, Saturday saw some 15,000 people visit the zoo. That's not counting the countless others taking in the sights around nearby Hermann Park and also using area parking lots. These free parking lots are part of Hermann Park and are not owned or operated by the zoo, she reminds. Being free means that they are almost always in high demand. There are a couple of options, Wallace says, for those that dont want to brave the free parking lots. We have a parking lot nearby in the medical center with a shuttle that runs on the weekends, Wallace says. It costs just $6 to park in that lot at 7100 William C. Harvin. Be sure to take entrance 35 to the park. The shuttle starts running at 10 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. RELATED: Houston Zoo posts record attendance for 2015 There are a lot of other lots around Hermann Park to check out that dont get as full, Wallace adds. There are a total of six parking lots surrounding the zoo that Wallace can suggest. There may be an amount of walking ahead of zoo patrons, which seems to be the crux of the parking situation around the zoo. Some people would prefer not to walk a few more blocks to get in somewhere that can only really be enjoyed by wait for it walking. It should also be noted that the parking lot outside the zoo is also used by people visiting Hermann Park, the nearby museums and McGovern Lake. Wallace says that there are medical center parking garages that are close by that are open on the weekends. Check for signs, though, that may prohibit zoo parking. Use your best judgement and be courteous to those visiting family. Website ParkMe also has a listing of parking garages nearby to check out if you are stumped. They might not be budget-friendly but they are in convenient walking distance from one of the zoo's two entrances. There could be hourly rates that are cost-prohibitive, however. Taking public transportation to get to the zoo always pays off, Wallace says. Those that ride the MetroRail to see us can get a discount on tickets if they show us a Q Card, Metro bus, or rail ticket at the admission booth, Wallace says. Patrons can save $2 off adult tickets and $1 off childrens tickets. Parking north or south of the Houston Zoo and riding the MetroRail to the zoo might be the best, relatively stress-free option to visit the zoo on busy weekends. It also gives you an excuse to check out some of the sights around the city. Of course those bringing a screaming gaggle of children might disagree. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A vigil has been scheduled Tuesday evening in Shoreacres for a girl presumed dead on what would have been her 16th birthday. Volunteers with Texas EquuSearch who were looking for missing 15-year-old Abigail "Abby" English found a body on Saturday morning at Baywood and Westview in the tiny town on north Galveston Bay. Although an official identification is pending, searchers believe the body was that of Abby, who left her house about 7 p.m. March 22 to walk the dog. The dog came back about an hour later, without its collar and leash, but Abby did not. RELATED: EquuSearch finds decomposing body in wooded area The vigil is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the corner near the spot where the body was found. Searchers said the area is about 200 yards from the home where Abby had lived since November, when the California foster care system placed her with Texas relatives. Local residents who were moved by the girl's sad story organized the vigil, said Shoreacres Alderwoman Nancy Janosky Schnell. "We originally planned it for tonight but then we learned that tomorrow would have been her 16th birthday," Schnell said Monday. "This poor girl never caught one break. Everyone that should have protected her, and the system at large, absolutely failed her." The incident is also highly unusual for quiet Shoreacres. "A girl goes missing and is found dead a month later -- that never happens here," Schnell said. Tim Miller, director of Texas EquuSearch, said Monday he was submitting a request in California to adopt Abby, so that she could have a funeral and burial,"the dignity she deserves," rather than being cremated. "The only thing little Abby wanted in life was her family," Miller said. "I'm going to do everything I can to adopt that baby and put her right beside (my late daughter) Laura. They can talk all the teenage stuff they want to talk." Miller started EquuSearch, a search and recovery group, in 2000 as a result of his daughter's abduction and murder in 1984. Laura Miller was 16 when she disappeared from League City. AUSTIN Tico, the once-homeless dog who gained a modicum of fame for adopting and then guarding a treatment center for sex predators in remote West Texas, has been found dead. Officials with the Texas Civil Commitment Office said Monday the shaggy tan hound was found dead on Sunday near the treatment center in Littlefield, northwest of Lubbock. Foul play was suspected, said Marsha McLane, the agency's executive director. "It looked like he had been mauled," she said. "There were questionable circumstances, yes, but we just don't know what happened." The dog made headlines across Texas last fall after he showed up at the Bill Clayton Treatment Center where more than 200 men officially classified by the state as its worst sex offenders are housed. The center houses the state's civil-commitment program, where ex-offenders are held in state custody in what is supposed to be a treatment program after they complete their prison sentences. A Houston Chronicle story about the dog was a big online hit late last year, and triggered statewide offers of help to pay his room and board. RELATED: Early Christmas for a West Texas pooch The dog was named after the agency's TCCO acronym, and had stayed outside the center following the perimeter patrol vehicle that made its rounds several times each day. Center employees bought it a dog house, and McLane said she kept dog treats in her office for the skittish hound. "He was always on patrol, on point, outside the facility all the time -- through snowstorms and 100-degree summer heat," McLane said. "When they installed a laser fence on the perimeter, he sat and howled until someone came out and drove the perimeter truck around the facility. "He was our official mascot." McLane and other officials said they suspect Tico may have been mauled by coyotes or other other dogs in the area. But after recent reports of dogs being killed at random in Littlefield, in attacks that have mobilized local dog lovers, state officials said they have reported the death for investigation. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A veterinarian that made international headlines last year for posting a photo on her Facebook page of a cat she shot and killed with an arrow is fighting to keep her veterinarian license this week in Austin. Kristen Lindsey and the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners met on Monday in the state's capitol for a hearing to decide if she should remain a veterinarian. The proceedings should last three days. The board's enhancement committee previously recommended that she have her license revoked. She is still able to practice as a veterinarian. She was fired by the animal clinic where she worked soon after the photo went viral. She had been a licensed veterinarian since June 2012. RELATED: Mediation fails to resolve case against vet who shot cat with arrow The 31-year-old posted a photo of the kill on her personal Facebook page with the caption, "My first bow kill (cat smiley face) lol. The only good feral tomcat is one with an arrow through it's head! Vet of the year award...gladly accepted." Once the post was widely distributed, Lindsey soon became the object of much anger in the animal rights community. Later, it was learned that Lindsey claimed she was protecting her own animals from the supposedly rabid feral cat. But residents in the Austin County area who were familiar with the cat named Tiger said he was actually quite friendly and not wild and dangerous as suggested by Lindsey. An Austin County grand jury later found insufficient evidence to prosecute Lindsey on criminal animal cruelty charges. The Austin County Sheriffs Office said it was also unable to determine where and when the killing took place, or the identity of the cat in the photo. Deans at the Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, where she got her degree in 2012, had strong words for Lindsey in the wake of the incident. She later admitted in a deposition that she didn't "necessarily" believe the cat was rabid, but did say that the cat's death was instantaneous and painless. She did not submit the cat for rabies testing. According to Peter Osborne, of Alley Cat Allies, the nonprofit's staff attorney Misty Christo released this statement on Monday: "It was heartbreaking to see the photos of Tiger in the hearing today. A veterinarian who could commit this type of animal cruelty should be kept from ever practicing veterinary medicine again. We're optimistic that the judge will uphold the revocation of Kristen Lindsey's license. She needs to be held accountable for her actions." Alley Cat Allies works to protect cats nationwide. Christo added that were about four pictures shown of Tiger, plus a video that Tiger's pet sitter took of him while he was alive. A Watauga man has been charged with capital murder in the death of his 2-year-old daughter, who died in December. Anthony Michael Sanders was arrested April 15 after he was accused of suffocating his daughter, Ellie, while caring for her and his 5-year-old son at the family's home Dec. 12. SAN ANTONIO-- A man is in stable condition after being stabbed by his son after an argument escalated out of control, according to San Antonio police. Police responded to the incident in the 10,000 block of Millspring on the Northwest Side at about 1 a.m., Sunday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN -- Texas children who have incarcerated parents suffer from trauma and emotional instability at the same magnitude as abuse and domestic violence, according to research study released Monday. The study could carry a significant message in Texas, a state with a historically high-incarceration rate that also has had limited funding for mental-health programs that could divert additional people from the nation's largest state criminal-justice system. "Shared Sentence," the report written by the philanthropy group Annie E. Casey Foundation, states that more than 477,000 Texas children -- 7 percent of the state's child population -- have experienced trauma after being separated from their parents. Nationally, 5.1 million children have been affected, according to the study. According to the report, a child who has a parent behind bars can face increased mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, that hamper educational achievement. Those children are more likely to contend with poor mental and physical health as adults. Laura Speer, one of the report's authors, said research also shows a significant impact on financial stability for families left behind by an incarcerated parent, with a 20 percent decline in income. "The bottom line is that about 65 percent of families have said they cannot meet their basic needs," Speer said. "That means they're unable to pay for basic necessities, food or rent." In recent years, Texas has been working to reduce incarceration rates for non-violent drug offenders, as well as funding more mental-health programs for people in jails and prisons -- although funding for children of felons is not a specific target. Katharine Ligon, policy analyst with the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, said Texas needs to invest more in child-development programs to decrease the number of kids involved in the child welfare system. "This report will provide the opportunity at the next legislative session to talk about smart-on-crime initiatives and implement community based supervision and treatment services to keep families together," Ligon said. The report recommends that state and federal criminal-justice systems develop expanded visitation policies to better maintain parental relationships, to connect more parents with employment opportunities after their sentences end, and to do more to focus resources on high-poverty neighborhoods with access to housing, good schools and key resources. Many ex-felons go to live in those neighborhoods after they serve the prison time, especially in large cities like Houston. "We are calling on states and communities to act now, so that these kids have equal opportunity and a fair chance for the bright future they deserve," said Patrick McCarthy, president and CEO of the Casey Foundation. 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. 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 In 2014, The Center for Investigative Reporting found itself at a crossroads: Cut much of its staff or create a full-time radio show. That was the choice then-editorial director Mark Katches says the organization faced. The burn rate can be a pretty scary thing to witness when there is very little revenue coming in to cover your costs, he adds. You cant just sit still and watch everything go up in flames. The quandary wasnt unique to the nations oldest nonprofit investigative journalism outfit, though the scale was unprecedented. For decades, its small staff fluctuated alongside project-by-project financial support, publishing hard-hitting exposes wherever it could: TV, magazines, books. During the late-2000s surge in nonprofit journalism funding, CIR was able to build a bona fide investigative newsroom that partnered largely with California newspapers and public media. The organization counted about 70 in its ranks by 2012. We went into it with the idea that if you do great journalism, you would build something that would last, says Katches, who came on in 2009. The sad reality was that all of those awards and recognition, all the good journalism we did, wasnt enough in the nonprofit world, where people write checks for two or three years and then move on to the next bright and shiny thing. The predicament left CIR searching for its next chapter. It formally began with a July 2014 press release trumpeting millions in new funding to jumpstart Reveal, an hourlong public radio show and podcast. The announcement commenced perhaps the most intense period of evolution in CIRs long history. CIRs Emmanuel Martinez reports on a drought-stricken California community that relies on water tanks for sustenance. (Photo courtesy of Reveal.) Sign up for CJR 's daily email The organizations goal is to carve out a home for investigative reporting on a medium without a long tradition of it. Its challenge has been to maintain the soul of the organization while carrying out massive internal change. The creation of a self-contained platform for CIRs reporting is a fundamental shift for the nonprofit, which has traditionally relied on outside partners to distribute its work to a broader audience. Now, CIR aims to control its own means of publicationand nurture its own followingwhile creating a megaphone for partners work. So far it has been a selling point for fundraisers, as it gives CIR direct access to a national, mobile-friendly audience. To sustain any type of investigative reporting, it requires you to think differently, CEO Joaquin Alvarado says. Were big enough to do that. Thats our responsibility. CIRs current ambitions carry considerable risks. A weekly publishing schedule is a tight window for projects that take months of reporting, and keeping pace over the long run will require deft coordination with a sprawling web of radio and non-radio partners. The quality and quantity of this outside work will play a large part in determining Reveals fate. Sometimes itd get so tight that wed have to go on unemployment for a while until some grants came in. Some of CIRs team has been skeptical of the wholesale shift in publishing strategies, fearful that managing so many moving parts would inevitably distract from their core work. Roughly 20 staffers have left since 2014, taking firepower to the likes of ProPublica, The New York Times, The Marshall Project, BuzzFeed, Google, Apple, The Guardian, Forbes, and even a few audio outlets. The organization has responded largely by hiring a slew of radio veterans, adding production know-how before Reveal moved to a weekly schedule in January. Were taking a huge percentage of our nonprofit budget and making a huge gamble to make a platform for investigative journalism, says Nathan Halverson, a reporter who joined CIR in 2014 after years in newspapers. It might not work. Reveal might fail. But for me, in my soul, it feels better to be at a place thats trying to do something really big. Indeed, this is the latest iteration of something really big. A few current staffers joke that CIR has been in constant transition. Others who departed recently frame the ongoing transformation as a borderline identity crisis. CIR has never been afraid of change in the way most newsrooms are, says one former staffer, who requested anonymity out of deference to past colleagues. But that also means that it wont really stick to anything long enough to get really good at itand to let people catch up. I feel like we often start these new initiatives and projects, and then we abandon them. The current proposition, Reveal, is at once risky and exciting, and in many ways thats a refreshing combination. But it also raises a broader question that commercial media outlets have debated for much of the past decade: how to square an organizations core mission with its need to evolveand survivein the digital age. Raising money to fund investigative journalism is a Sisyphean task, and CIR has bet that it can innovate its way to financial sustainability. The burden was smaller with past versions of CIR, which, in the decades following its 1977 launch, typically employed less than a dozen. Nonprofit journalism was in its infancy, and funding was scarce. Sometimes itd get so tight that wed have to go on unemployment for a while until some grants came in, says David Weir, one of three co-founders. CIR partnered with outside organizations to produce stories for TV programs like Frontline and magazines like Mother Jones, turning some projects into books. We always tried to adhere to the freelance mantra, which was Sell the same story as many different ways as you can, adds Dan Noyes, another co-founder. The scrappy outfit produced periodic but massive investigations on topics such as the Black Panthers or the export of banned pesticides to the developing world. The objective was to radically alter readers or viewers understanding of an issue. Still, convincing outside donors to support journalism in the 1980s and 1990s was a hard sell, and there have always been strings attached. Even now, outside money often focuses coverage on specific topics, such as criminal justice or the environment. In the mid-2000s, however, philanthropic response to the implosion of print advertising sparked something of a revolution. A spigot of cash opened onto fledgling nonprofits sprouting nationwide, while journalists jettisoned by legacy media provided a deep talent pool from which these new organizations could draw. Today, there are more than 100 of them across the United States. Longtime CIR reporter Trey Bundy has investigated child sex abuse among Jehovahs Witnesses for much of the past year. (Photo courtesy of Reveal.) Just a few giants emerged in this new environment, taking various approaches toward growth. The Texas Tribune has gradually built out its state-focused newsroom with the help of revenue from live events and corporate sponsorships. The Center for Public Integrity attempted to create a daily news operation called iWatch in 2011, though the experiment failed to attract an audience and keep foundations interested. The organization had to lay off about a third of its staff in response, and has since returned to stability with a balance of big projects and quick analysis. ProPublica, widely recognized as best in class, launched in 2008 with a $30 million commitment from the Sandler Foundation. That financial runway provided room to not only attract first-rate talent for the newsroom, but also to establish its brand and diversify funding sources. More sophisticated funders do understand that its necessary to keep the lights on, ProPublica President Richard Tofel says. CIR didnt have such a financial cushion in place in 2009, when it began a period of intense growth. Reveal is a response to the early miscalculation that funders would fall in line quickly enough to sustain that growth. Departures aside, the product has so far succeeded in keeping a much larger version of CIR intact. What theyre doing is historically important and different, says Charles Lewis, who founded CPI in 1989. It also, like any new entrepreneurial thing, presents risks . Starting something is the easy part. Sustaining it is the hard part. The dominoes of change that led to Reveal began to fall in 2008, as the bottom was dropping out of American newspapers and investigative reporting was collapsing around the country. Enter: Robert Rosenthal, former managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle and, before that, executive editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. CIRs new executive director moved quickly to institutionalize a system in which the newsroom, which was just a handful of staffers at the time, would collaborate with partners across media to publish numerous versions of the same story concurrently, maximizing impact in various markets. Rosenthal eventually gained traction with a few big funders, including the Knight and Hewlett Foundations, for a state-focused outfit essentially aimed to plug growing holes in California medias collective enterprise efforts. He also hired Katches, then an investigative editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to lead the project. California Watchs first story, on waste in the homeland security grant system, was published in September 2009 across TV, radio, and digital outlets, not to mention front pages of roughly two-dozen newspapers that combined for 1.8 million subscribers. CIR developed a distribution network from this blueprint, working with partners to localize stories or adapt them for various formats, and charging meager content fees of usually a few hundred bucks per piece. Katches proved an intense and charismatic leader as he built a talent-rich, newspaper-style investigative team within CIR. Staff grew to more than 30 as the organization filled a trophy case full of awards. We started to become a known quantity in California, says Will Evans, who reported for CIR from 2005 to 2008, and then returned in 2011. Youd call and people would actually know who you were. Whereas ProPublica is The New York Times of nonprofits, the Alvarado-led CIR has become its Silicon Valley equivalent. Still, the financial reality of that successCIRs annual budget had ballooned to $4.6 million by 2011wasnt as bright. Key funders walked away, citing a desire for more national focus. The model evolved to follow where the money was, Rosenthal says. As CIR began exploring this shift in 2012, it merged with another local nonprofit, The Bay Citizen, which published Bay Area news and features in The New York Times. Rosenthal helped convince many of The Bay Citizens funders to support this larger, harder-edged organization. All together, the move essentially doubled CIRs revenue and staff overnight, to more than $11 million and 70 employees, respectively. On the rise CIR revenue and expenses over the past eight years Total Revenue Total Expenses Sources: Nonprofit tax forms and CIR internal documents The organization set out on a yearlong strategic planning process, which led to the consolidation of The Bay Citizen and California Watch under the CIR name. It was during this period that Alvarado, hired in May 2012 as the organizations first-ever chief strategy officer, began turning it into something of a laboratory for the delivery of journalism. Whereas ProPublica is The New York Times of nonprofits, the Alvarado-led CIR has become its Silicon Valley equivalent. Were in the Bay Areacrazy is OK sometimes, he says. Alvarado took more active control of the distribution and engagement team, which began experimenting with live events such as investigation-fueled theater productions. The team gradually turned attention away from California Watchs distribution strategy. For Alvarado, relying on publishing partners to reach audiences was an existential threat both to CIR and investigative journalism broadly. If you did not own and control your platform as an individual organizationor as a cohort with the resources and openness to collaborateyou were not going to survive. He worked intensely on a YouTube channel that would curate investigative content from partners, an expensive project that we learned an insane amount from, he says. Along with Susanne Reber, who joined CIR in 2012 after two years heading NPRs first-ever investigations unit, Alvarado began exploring a similar idea in audio. Joanna Lin joined CIR as a California Watch reporter in 2010, and is one of more than 20 staffers whove departed from the organization in the past two years. (Photo courtesy of Reveal.) There was this vacuum for investigative material on public radio, Reber says. While NPR has seen early success with its nascent investigative effort, individual public radio stations dont often have the resources for months-long projects. Podcasts, meanwhile, tend to veer toward explanatory storytelling. Reber and Alvarado believed a CIR-powered program could fulfill unmet demand for deeper reporting. It sounded a little crazy, and it was, Reber says. But it was sitting right there as an obvious strategic play. CIR joined up with the Massachusetts-based PRX to produce a trio of Reveal pilot episodes. The first, released in September 2013, won a Peabody for a segment on how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing painkillers to vets. Two more the following year appeared to further validate the hypotheses. We thought we would have 10 stations carry the pilots, Alvarado says. We actually had 150. Perhaps more importantly, the prospect of a CIR-controlled publishing platform soon excited funders, including the Logan Foundation, to the tune of millions. Staffers were pleased with this early success, though most had been detached from the long phase of experimentation leading up to it. Some bristled at what they saw as new media evangelismjazz handsthat distracted from the core mission. The sentiment was reinforced by confusion over the organizations chain of command. In July 2014, Katches left to pursue his dream of running a regional newspaper, The Oregonian, rather than lead this new vision of CIR. Alvarado was soon after promoted to CEO as Rosenthal gradually moved away from many day-to-day operations. I left because I got a great job offer, but I didnt know where [CIR] was headed, says Ryan Gabrielson, who departed for ProPublica in 2014. He was one of about a dozen staffers who left that year. In the end, Gabrielson adds, CIR was about being experimental in the age of media disruption. It wasnt what I signed up for. Any confusion regarding newsroom leadership was heightened by a formal vaccuum last year, when Katches replacement, Robert Salladay, joined a new project to create a Reveal-branded documentary series. Amy Pyle, who joined CIR in 2012 after a long career in newspapers, took over in the interim and was finally given the editor in chief title in March. The lengthy EIC hiring process was helpful for this organization, in that we all learned a lot about each other, Pyle says. But it also left us in limbo for quite some time. Throughout 2015, Reveal ran on a monthly schedule as CIR began building out the partnership network expected to supply most of the weekly shows content. PRX expanded the programs distribution to numerous new member stations. The newsroom honed more audio-friendly storytelling styles through bootcamps for reporters and editors. It also produced a handful of stories to bank in advance of the January 2016 move to one hour of programming a week. That year was really important for us because it gave us so much time to think about our workflow, says Meghann Farnsworth, managing director for distribution and engagement. But, as with anything, you dont know how its going to be until youre into it. While Reveal is not an NPR-quality listening experience so far, its a remarkably sharp radio program and podcast given CIRs lightning transition. Host Al Letson, part navigator, part passenger, leads listeners through topically themed episodes generally broken down into a few segments apiece. CIR reporters have dropped illuminating stories on the American trapping boom, discrimination in the temporary jobs sector, and religious day care centers, among other topics. The new medium has forced staffers to rethink the way they tell stories at the most basic level. They still publish text investigations on CIRs Reveal-branded website and, occasionally, with outside partners. But the typically data- and document-heavy work must be adapted into more radio-friendly formats to travel over the airwaves. CIR producers sonified Oklahoma seismic data into a crescendoing melody that conveyed how hydraulic fracturing has been tied to a spate of earthquakes in the state. Clip begins at 38:04 In a segment on abuse of foreign aid to humanitarian organizations, CIR reporters went to Malawi to question a key subject, capturing a damning interview on tape. Clip begins at 36:20 In March, each new episode of the podcast was downloaded about 100,000 times, while Reveals back catalogue drew 150,000 additional downloads. More than 250 radio stations also carried the show each week, including in eight of the top 10 markets, and CIR brass say they expect to reach upward of 275 this summer. For a show that is this challenging? Right out of the box thats a really good number, adds PRXs John Barth, who leads distribution efforts. WBEZs This American Life, by comparison, claims more than 500 stations and 2.1 million listeners. The partner network has also born early fruit. In late January, just as the Flint water crisis was drawing national headlines, CIR contracted an entire hour of programming from Michigan Public Radio. Other partners so far have ranged from American nonprofits like ProPublica, to international partners like the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, to public radio outlets scattered across the United States. The question going forward is whether CIR can manage enough partner stories to allow its staffers to continue drilling deep into their own pieces. Reveals content ratioinitially estimated at one-third CIR, two-thirds outside workhas hovered around 50-50 this year. But we dont want to stretch that too far, says Reber, now Reveals executive editor, because we want to make sure our investigations at CIR have pride of place on the show. The organization has five contracts for producing multiple Reveal stories annually, with The Center for Public Integrity, KQED, The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, The Texas Tribune, and Houston Chronicle. The latter two share a full-time staffer with CIR, which hopes to grow this core partner group to eight or 10 organizations. Reber, who is moving to Washington to manage CIRs East Coast partnerships, also plays matchmaker with potential collaborators. We have stuff on the books right now well into the summer and fall, she said in March. And we have stuff that we know will come in 2017. Now the onus will be on them not only to package journalism for various forms of consumption, but also to connect audiences across media so they dont lose anything in translation. Turning this mixture into a cohesive show will largely fall on the shoulders of Executive Producer Kevin Sullivan, poached from NPR and WBURs Here and Now in late 2014. My original concept was to have shows done a month ahead of time, Sullivan says. What Im finding is that is not happening. We are often finishing the show on the day we have to upload them . But theyre in really good shape. The newsroom has set aside funds so it can acquire full hours of programming throughout the year. We want to do something really major once a quarter, either by purchasing a full hour or doing something huge ourselves, adds Sullivan. Thats how weve set up our budget. Of the first 16 episodes on the weekly schedule, one has been a rerun and another a decidedly non-investigative, though interesting, feature on Donald Trump supporters. CIRs investigative team remains huge19 reporters by Pyles count. My focus is to make sure what comes out of our core staff is the hardest investigations we are doing, because we know that the stories partners pitch are sometimes not as heavily investigative as CIR is accustomed to, Pyle says. A lot of it is coming out of radio [outlets], which often has a more exploratory approach. We juggle a lot, and we try to always have another show in the wings in case something falls through. Shed like each of her reporters, at minimum, to gather sound for two segments every year, enough for roughly 30 minutes of Reveal. We also plan to seek out and nurture investigative skills in the radio producers we hire whenever possible, she adds. While the audio-first mentality adds a new degree of difficulty to the CIR newsrooms work, staffers say fears of sustaining an hour-long show each week havent materialized. Ask me another year from now and I might give you a new perspective, says Christina Jewett, a longtime reporter and self-described radio superfan whos jumped into the new medium with vigor. So far I havent felt pressure to produce more. But our metabolism is going to have to change again, to be a little bit more nimble. That will be especially necessary for CIR to also build out its digital presence on RevealNews.org, which internal metrics show averages about 260,000 pageviews each month (Tofel claims ProPublica draws more than 2 million). Jewetts recent investigation into profiteering in Californias worker comp system ran as a 4,000-word piece on the sitea version also appeared in The Sacramento Beeand as a 16-minute segment on Reveal. Jewett penned a sidebar to the story as well, along with a follow-up the next week. Filmmaker Zohreh Soleimani produced and directed a CIR film on tribal marriage custsoms in Afghanistan. The piece appeared on The New York Times website. (Photo courtesy of Reveal.) If you cross-reference the print and radio piece, theres going to be a lot more facts in the print, says Jewett, speaking generally about the formats. Thats the nature of the media. But the emotion you can get with audio storytelling is far more than that of print. That difference ties into a broader critique leveled by some former staffers, who argue that audios narrative-driven style makes it more difficult for stories to highlight systemic flaws. They have a point: Reveal segments typically zero in on a few characters, shaving off some context more easily conveyed visually or through text. Audiences who listen to Reveal without reading CIRs corresponding written stories, which typically reach fewer people online, lose some of that big-picture analysis. But its also true that the trend toward more vivid, character-focused narratives extends across formats. Everybody is aware that all the great documents and data in the world are not going to give you a very interesting piece for digital media, Pyle says. So CIR staffers will continue walking a familiar line to adhere to the old mantra: Sell the same story as many ways as you can. Only now the onus will be on them not only to package journalism for various forms of consumption, but also to connect audiences across media so they dont lose anything in translation. CIRs staff has upped efforts to lead listeners and readers between stories through in-show callouts, social media engagement, and a weekly newsletter, among other tactics. They will soon be doing so without Farnsworth, head of distribution and engagement, who will leave for Vox in May. Taken together, its no small task. But, already, CIR has begun looking toward its next platform. The new project of a small team that includes Salladay is exploring how to adapt CIR stories for the likes of Amazon, Hulu, or Netflixfuller multimedia integration under the Reveal banner. It comes despite the departures of three video producers over the past six months, two of whom say they left largely because they didnt want to pursue radio. We have to acknowledge that Reveal is helping with our survival, Salladay says. You have to adapt. You have to figure out what the next thing is. Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Robert Salladay is leading a new Reveal-branded video project. He is part of a small team working on it. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti. Former New Jersey Chiropractor Accused of Role in Medical Fraud Ring State authorities say a New Jersey chiropractor whose license was revoked more than a decade ago played a role in a medical fraud ring that allegedly stole nearly $4 million from insurance companies. Philip Potacco faces numerous counts, including conspiracy and money laundering, in an indictment made public Friday. The 62-year-old Kinnelon resident would face several decades in prison if convicted on all counts, but his attorney says he plans to plead not guilty. Authorities say Potacco used a medical consulting group to recruit accident victims and people who staged car crashes so he could submit bogus insurance claims. He also allegedly hired a licensed chiropractor to serve as a front man of a practice Potacco himself ran for five years. The states Chiropractic Examiners Board revoked Potaccos license for misconduct in 2002. Oil Spill Fraud Nets Convictions for Florida Father, Daughter A Florida Keys man and his daughter have been convicted of making fraudulent claims for losses stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Both 73-year-old Raul Rioseco and 50-year-old Caridad Rioseco Alejandrez pleaded guilty recently to making false claims. Raul Rioseco has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison. His daughter faces up to 20 years behind bars at sentencing in July in Key West. Federal prosecutors say Raul Rioseco submitted claims based on supposed losses from his lobster fishing business. But evidence showed he had long been retired. He received about $35,900 in phony claims. Caridad Rioseco Alejandrez claimed her tax preparation business had suffered from the oil spill because her commercial fishing customers lost income. Prosecutors said she obtained $55,000 in fraudulent claims. South Dakota Woman Convicted of Burning Bar for Insurance Gets New Trial A woman convicted of setting fire to a bar and grill she co-owned in the South Dakota town of Herreid to get insurance money has been granted a new trial. A jury in February found 42-year-old Lori Brandner guilty of arson, conspiracy to commit arson and filing a fraudulent insurance claim. The American News reports defense attorney Brad Schreiber filed a motion for a new trial, citing concerns over jury instructions. A judge agreed, and granted a new trial for Aug. 3-5. She has been released on bond. Authorities say Brandner and three others set fire to the business on Jan. 21, 2015, and that Brandner later submitted a $310,000 insurance claim. Tyler Ambrust and Ryan Kaelberer, of Minot, North Dakota, were sentenced in February to a year in prison for arson conspiracy. Cheyenne Davis, of Pollock, awaits sentencing on the same charge. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A newspaper analysis has found that while some safety steps have been taken across Texas following the deadly 2013 explosion at a plant in West, tons of the same kind of fertilizer that exploded there can still be found near schools and homes in some towns. The Dallas Morning News says its investigation found that many of the agricultural supply and feed stores that used to stock a lot of ammonium nitrate have stopped selling it and others have implemented safeguards such as moving the chemical out of dilapidated buildings and into fire-resistant concrete structures. But it reports many recommendations by safety investigators have gone unheeded. None of the sites that responded to newspaper inquiries reported installing sprinklers systems. The state does not require them, but the U.S. Chemical Safety Board has said such a system could have stopped the West accident before it became a fatal explosion. And despite calls for keeping stockpiles of ammonium nitrate away from populated areas, in up to eight communities, tons of the chemical still sit near schools, houses, nursing homes and even a hospital, according to the newspapers analysis of state data. Using a state database and inspection reports obtained from the State Fire Marshals Office, the newspaper identified 19 businesses stocking large amounts of ammonium nitrate within a half-mile of schools, hospitals or nursing homes. Though the state does not disclose the names of the businesses, the newspaper identified them by cross-checking location data. According to store employees or local fire officials contacted by the newspaper, 11 of those businesses no longer sell ammonium nitrate. Some said they stopped because there was too much regulatory paperwork or they were worried about liability. Others said they faced pressure from the community. Of the eight remaining facilities, someone with the facility or local fire officials confirmed to the newspaper that four still sell the fertilizer. For three of the facilities, no one responded to requests for comment. The newspaper found that at one facility, trucks and rail cars there were labeled for ammonium nitrate, but the parent company declined to comment. When the West fertilizer plant was built in 1962, it was far from the center of the small farming town about 75 miles south of Dallas. But the community grew northward toward the site, which by 2013 was close to houses, an apartment complex, a nursing home and three schools. On April 13, 2013, a blaze heated up 30 tons of ammonium nitrate. Investigators dont know for sure what detonated the fertilizer, which can also be used as an explosive. The blast carved a crater 10 feet deep and damaged nearby schools. Twelve of the 15 who died were first responders; more than 300 people were injured. A government study found that while 54 percent of the people who went to the hospital after the explosion had been within 1,000 feet of the blast, many who sought medical help had been farther away. When the safety board investigated, it pointed to a lack of regulations about siting of facilities that store and distribute ammonium-nitrate fertilizer and said regulations addressing issues such as buffer zones or barricades, the severity of the casualties and damage experienced in West could have been significantly reduced. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The first time Jason Ebert needed an air ambulance, it saved his life. The second time, it nearly broke the bank. Both times, Montana doctors ordered Ebert flown 150 miles from Bozeman to Billings for treatment. But while insurance covered the first flight, the hospital called a for-profit service the second time, and Ebert got stuck with a more than $27,000 bill. I cant even fathom the difference in price, said Eberts wife, Mandy. As the air ambulance industry has grown, so too have complaints about costs and the lack of regulations. States that try to set rules are met with lawsuits that argue air ambulances specially equipped aircraft, usually helicopters, used to ferry sick or injured people in emergencies fall under the Airline Deregulation Act, which prevents states from interfering with fares, routes and services. Last year, North Dakota lawmakers passed legislation that required air ambulance services to be participating providers with insurance companies that cover at least 75 percent of the states population for inclusion on a primary call list. But last month, a federal judge ruled the Airline Deregulation Act preempted North Dakotas law. The 1978 act was meant to increase competition, reduce rates and improve airline passenger service. But competition among air ambulance providers has the opposite effect. The industry has high fixed costs, including aircraft, pilots and trained medical staff. With increased competition, those costs must be recouped from among a smaller number of flights, leading to higher prices. In Jason Eberts case, his first trip for treatment involved a torn aorta, and he took the flight in a hospital-based air ambulance. Insurance picked up the entire $12,000 tab. The second trip came months later when Ebert felt dizzy, and the Bozeman hospital called a for-profit air ambulance service. That bill came to nearly $40,000, and the Eberts were left responsible for more than half of it. Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and John Hoeven of North Dakota sought to amend the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization legislation to allow states to decide if they want to create rules governing air ambulance rates and services. That effort failed, but Tester will continue to work on the issue, his spokeswoman Marnee Banks said. Patients sometimes dont realize they should ask or might not be capable of asking whether their transportation is in network or how much their insurance will cover. The result can be whopping bills. Some Montana residents have received balance bills of up to $90,000, said Jesse Laslovich, chief counsel for the Montana Auditor and Insurance Commissioners Office. Don Wharton, director of business development for REACH Medical Services, said the large bills are a product of commercial insurance carriers and payers being unwilling to pay the fair market value for the service. Insurance companies and employee benefit managers say air ambulance companies wont reveal actual costs, preventing them from determining a fair payment. Affordability has a huge role in patient access to health care services, said Clare Krusing, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Americas Health Insurance Plans. There needs to be much greater focus on whether the charges for these services are fair and appropriate. Some private air ambulance companies are offering annual memberships for their services for as little as $65. But critics note theres no guarantee the company that sells the membership will be the one that actually transports the covered patient. For-profit companies argue the federal governments Medicare reimbursements are woefully lacking and state Medicaid reimbursements can be even less, meaning they have to charge some patients more to stay in business. The companies say they respond to calls without regard to whether the patient has insurance and write off millions of dollars yearly as uncollectable Rick Sherlock, CEO of the Virginia-based Association of Air Medical Services, said his group supports bills introduced in Congress last year that would require Medicare to pay closer attention to the actual cost of services. The bill also would require companies to disclose their costs. Montana is among the states seeking its own solution. The Montana Legislatures economic affairs interim committee is studying the issue and intends to introduce a bill during its 2017 session. But state legislation likely will be limited in its effectiveness, Laslovich said. We can teeter around the edges, but in dealing with the substance of the problem, were going to need an act of Congress to say air ambulances dont fall under the aviation deregulation act, Laslovich said. Meanwhile, consumers are urged to educate themselves. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently issued a statement advising people to make sure they understand what, if any, air ambulance coverage they have. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. As more than a foot of rain deluged the nations fourth-largest city, inundating homes, shutting down major highways and leaving at least five people dead, Houstons mayor said there was no immediate solution. Heavy flooding has become nearly an annual rite of passage in the practically sea-level city, where experts have long warned of the potential for catastrophe. I regret anyone whose home is flooded again, said Sylvester Turner, the citys mayor, on Monday. Theres nothing I can say thats going to ease your frustration. We certainly cant control the weather. A lot of rain coming in a very short period of time, theres nothing you can do, he added. Scores of subdivisions flooded, schools were closed, and power was knocked out to thousands of residents who were urged to shelter in place. In addition to its location, Houstons gumbo soft soil, fast-growing population and building boom that has turned empty pastures into housing developments all over the citys suburbs and exurbs make it vulnerable to high waters, experts say. Harris County, where Houston and many of its suburbs are located, has seen a 30 percent jump in population since 2000. Its surrounding counties have almost grown more than 10 percent since 2000, according to the Greater Houston Partnership, a business group. Some of the resulting developments include adequate greenspace for water runoff, but not all of them do, said Philip Bedient, an engineering professor at Rice University. Could we have engineered our way out of this? Bedient said. Only if we started talking about alterations 35 or 40 years ago. Samuel Brody, director of the Environmental Planning & Sustainability Research Unit at Texas A&M University, last year called Houston the No. 1 city in America to be injured and die in a flood. Rainstorms last year over Memorial Day weekend caused major flooding that required authorities to rescue 20 people, most of them drivers, from high water. Drivers abandoned at least 2,500 vehicles, and more than 1,000 homes were damaged in the rain. The year before, flash flooding in Houston and suburban counties left cars trapped on major highways. Those storms still pale in comparison to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Allison left behind $5 billion in damages and flooded parts of downtown and the Texas Medical Center, which sits near the Brays Bayou, a key watershed. Bedient has worked with the Texas Medical Center on better preparing its facilities for massive rainfall, including the use of a sophisticated weather alert system that gives the medical center extra time to activate gates and doors that block excess rainwater. Improving the monitoring of specific watersheds and flood-prone areas might give affected residents the extra bit of time they need to save lives and take protective measures. We cant solve this flood problem in Houston, Bedient said. All we can do is a better job warning. Plaintiffs leading a lawsuit against online dating website Ashley Madison over a security breach that exposed the personal data of customers must publicly identify themselves to proceed with the case, a U.S. judge has ruled. Forty-two plaintiffs, seeking to represent users of the website who had their information compromised, had proceeded anonymously against Ashley Madisons Toronto-based parent company Avid Life Media, the ruling released on April 6 showed. The plaintiffs are suing Ashley Madison, a website that facilitates extramarital affairs, for failing to adequately secure their information, marketing a Full Delete Removal service that did not work, and using fake female accounts to lure male customers, according to the ruling. Their action comes after hackers who claimed to be unhappy with Avid Lifes business practices publicly released Ashley Madison customer data last August. Reuters has not independently verified the authenticity of the data, emails or documents. Judge John A. Ross, of a district court in Missouri, wrote in his ruling that being publicly named as an Ashley Madison user amounts to more than common embarrassment, but noted the 42 plaintiffs have special roles in the case that require identification. The plaintiffs are class representatives and may need to testify or offer evidence, unlike class members, those in the lawsuit who do not need participate as actively, Ross wrote. He ruled that the plaintiffs must either identify themselves or proceed as class members, who can remain anonymous. The class for the collective lawsuit has not yet been certified, the ruling noted. There are at least 10 plaintiffs who are publicly named. Avid Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Ethan Lou in Toronto; Editing by Bernadette Baum) Eleven months ago, Houston had a deadly flood. This week, the city had another. Events like these are often called 100-year floods, and that can be misleading. The U.S. government began using the term in the 1960s to describe a flood that has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year, not a chance of happening only once a century. Its statistical probability and that can change over time. Over the span of 30 years, which is the length of many peoples mortgages, there is a once in four chance it is going to happen, said Mari Tye, a project scientist in the mesoscale and microscale meteorological laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Over 100 years, there is a 67 percent chance. And that doesnt take into account other conditions that can alter the outlook, including changing climate or the effects of El Nino or La Nina. Moving Target Thats why the 100-year event is such a moving target, especially in an urban environment, said Chuck Watson, director of research and development at Enki Research, which develops tools to measure hazards. Someone builds a couple of parking lots, and you just turned a 100-year event into a 70-year event because of the impervious surfaces. Asphalt doesnt soak up rain water; it just sends it somewhere else, such as into the house next door. When you add in natural climate cycles, the results are further skewed, Watson said from his office in Savannah, Georgia. One of the influences of El Nino is to send more rain across the southern U.S.. In a situation like that, the chances of a catastrophic flood might rise to one in 20. At least seven people died in Houston in this weeks rain, according to CNN. The bulk of the downpour was Monday, when a daily record 9.92 inches (25 centimeters) fell at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the National Weather Service said. Some areas received more. At least 100,000 customers lost power, the citys light rail was shut and water was over the banks of more than half of its 22 bayous and creeks, which help with flood control. Even Worse If you get that much rain, there is no place for the water to go, said Jill Hasling, who founded the Weather Research Center in the Texas city. The current flood is worse in some ways than the one last May, Hasling said in an interview at the American Meteorological Societys Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Parts of the city that were dry a year ago are inundated now. That flood damaged more than 2,500 homes and killed more than 30 people in Texas and Oklahoma, according to reports at the time. A little more than 35 percent of the state had been suffering some level of drought, but by the first week of June the share had dropped to less than 1 percent, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported. This reveals another problem with trying to quantify extreme events things can always get worse, which makes it difficult to come up with a worst-case scenario. With all our records, we dont know what the most extreme is, because they are rare, Tye said. You make an estimate of the probability and then another storm comes along that is worse. As for Houston, Hasling has some advice: Theres more than one flood a year in Houston. If you live in Houston, buy flood insurance. If you are not in the flood zone, buy it anyway; it will just be cheaper. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. The employee vs. contractor debate has the potential to have a major impact on the insurance industry, according to a pair of experts speaking on the topic on last week at the annual Risk Management Society conference held in San Diego, Calif. Its estimated there are 10 million independent contractors in the U.S. and that 10 percent of those people are misclassified, according to John Zeigler, an attorney with Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin. Thats a huge number of people out there who are working as independent contractors but likely are misclassified, he said, noting that federal and state governments could swoop in with new rules and regulations. The reality is the pressure on the government is becoming that much greater. Zeigler and Stephanie Watts, resolution manager at Gallagher Bassett, held an education session titled The War on Employee Misclassification: Risks and Costs to Employers and Insurers, at the annual RIMS conference for risk management and insurance professionals. Planners of this years conference said more than 10,000 people are in attendance at the conference, with more expected to register in coming days. That would make it the largest conference since 2003, they say. In the session held by Zeigler and Watts, the employer vs. contractor cloud that has arisen by way of the gig economy explosion has created an uneven playing field where one company does things one way and the other company another way. Its also made protections for benefits, including workers compensation, uneven for workers, and has created uncertain risks and exposures for insurers, they said. They also outlined several tests federal and state governments are using to determine whether a worker is an employee or a contractor. One such test was the U.S. Department of Labors economic realities test, which includes the consideration of the following factors: The extent to which the work performed is integral to the employers business; Whether the workers managerial skills affect his or her opportunity for loss; The relative investments in facilities and equipment by the worker and employer; The workers skill and initiative; The permanency of the workers relationship with the employer; The nature and degree of control by the employer. The last one has been key in many legal battles that unfolded in many states. Ultimately when the courts are looking at this they are looking at the right to control and the actual control exercise, Zeigler said. That really, in many respects, is the absolute key factor. Other federal government entities with independent contractor tests include the Internal Revenue Service, which includes behavior control, financial control and the relationship of the parties, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Many states have their own tests. A popular test for many states uses three factors: Is the employee free from directions and controls? Is the work performed outside the usual course of business? Is the individual customarily engaged in independently established trade, occupation, profession or business as the involved service performed? The presenters cited Alexander Vs. FedEx Ground in which the California 9th Circuit Court ruled in 2014 that drivers were not independent contractors despite drivers owning their own vans and being allowed to set their own routes. The court in its ruling used several factors, most notably control. The drivers must wear FedEx uniforms, drive FedEx-approved vehicles, and groom themselves according to FedExs appearance standards, the ruling states. FedEx tells its drivers what packages to deliver, on what days, and at what times. Although drivers may operate multiple delivery routes and hire third parties to help perform their work, they may do so only with FedExs consent. At the end of the day FedEx took a big hit here, Zeigler said. With decisions like this being made all over the U.S., vigilance is becoming increasingly important, Watts said. It starts at the bottom, Watts said. It starts with the agents and brokers writing these policies incorrectly. Zeigler advised paying close attention to a topic that he believes will only become more important to businesses and insurance professionals in the future. The best you can say is you need to be on top of it, Zeigler said. You can look at the patterns, you can look at the trends, you need to look and see where its going. At the conference RIMS and American International Group Inc. announced that William H. McGannon and David Mikulina are the 2016 inductees to the Risk Management Hall of Fame. The hall of fame serves as a means to maintain the history of the field of risk management and recognizes risk practitioners who have made significant contributions to advancing the discipline, according to RIMS. McGannon was considered a risk management pioneer, according to those who bestowed the award on him. He is considered one of the first Canadian risk managers to establish a full-service risk management department that included loss prevention and statistical support at NOVA Chemical Corp. in Alberta. McGannon frequently lectured at the University of Calgary, where he was instrumental in setting up the Chair of Risk Management position and served as executive in residence from 1998 to 2000. He died in 2015. Mikulina is a retired vice president of risk management for Hyatt Hotels Corp., and was a member of the risk management profession for nearly 35 years. He headed the risk management department at Hyatt for 23 years as the organization grew from 130 hotels to 350 hotels worldwide Greenlands massive ice sheet this week started melting freakishly early thanks to a weather system that brought unseasonably warm temperatures and rain, scientists say. While this record early melt is mostly from natural weather on top of overall global warming, scientists say they are concerned about what it means when the melt season kicks in this summer. This however could be temporary. On Monday and Tuesday, about 12 percent of the ice sheet surface area 656,000 square miles or 1.7 million square kilometers showed signs of melting ice, according to Peter Langen, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. It smashed record for early melting by more than three weeks. Thats normal for late May not mid-April, Langen said. Normally, no ice should be melting in Greenland at this time of year. Before now, the earliest Greenland had more than 10 percent surface area melting was on May 5, back in 1990. Even in 2012, when 97 percent of Greenland experienced melt, it didnt have such an early and extensive melt. Langen said the amount of melt now is not the issue, timing is: Its nothing for July, its huge for April. Its disturbing, Langen said. Something like this wipes out all kinds of records, you cant help but go this could be a sign of things were going to see more often in the future. Whats causing this weeks unusual melt is a weather system that is bringing warm temperatures to Greenland and funneling lots of warmer-than-normal rain up from the south, Langen said. The rain and the above freezing temperatures help melt the ice. Greenlands capital, Nuuk, reached 62 degrees (16.6 degrees Celsius) on Monday, smashing the April record high temperature by 6.5 degrees. Inland at Kangerlussuaq, it was 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), warmer than St. Louis and San Francisco. Langen and other scientists said this is part of a natural weather system, but man-made climate change has worsened this. Tom Mote of the University of Georgia said had this natural event happened 20 or 30 years ago it wouldnt have been as bad as it is now because the air is warmer overall and carries more rain that melts the ice faster. Things are getting more extreme and theyre getting more common, said NASA ice scientist Walt Meier. Were seeing that with Greenland and this is an indication of that. This kind of freakish warm spell is another piece in the puzzle, Meier said. One freakish thing every once in a while you might expect. But were getting these things more often and thats an indication of climate change. Langen said the measurements are based on scores of observations from monitors on the ice fed into a computer simulation. NASA normally measures melt with a satellite, but there are problems with the instruments, Meier said. Still, Mote said the satellite, if correct, showed on Monday conditions similar to what Denmark is reporting. Greenland ice sheet melting is one of the more visible and key signs of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels because it is causing seas to rise, putting coastal areas at risk, Meier said. If the entire Greenland ice sheet melted, which would take centuries, it could add 20 feet or more to global sea level, Meier said. But within the next century, Greenland ice melt alone could raise sea level by a couple feet, he said. The concern is things are moving faster than we thought, Meier said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The University of Alabama at Birmingham announced it has developed the first SUV driving simulator laboratory in the world. In the development of this lab, UAB partnered with Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, which provided a full-bodied 2016 Honda Pilot built at their factory in Lincoln, Ala., to be retrofitted with state-of-the-art simulator technology funded by the Alabama Department of Transportation. The technology gives UAB researchers the opportunity to conduct important safety studies involving distracted driving practices. Representatives from Honda, ALDOT and Alabamas Office of the Attorney General joined the UAB team to announce the new initiative at a grand opening this week. The goal of this effort is to facilitate solutions and best practices in motor vehicle-related safety and crash prevention, addressing the major public health problem of highway and traffic-related injuries and death. Data tell us that distracted driving is a factor in nearly 50 percent of car crashes, which translates to one million injury-producing crashes each year, said Despina Stavrinos, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in UABs College of Arts and Sciences and director of the UAB Translational Research for Injury Prevention Laboratory. Ten percent of those crashes result in a fatality. Understanding which factors influence an individuals likelihood to engage in distracted driving is essential to being able to purposefully address this growing problem. With this new simulator, we will be able to gain new information about how drivers participate in distracted behavior, giving us valuable insight that can increase the effectiveness of educational campaigns and improve driving safety. The core of Stavrinos work is the prevention of injury, particularly unintentional injuries like those that result from distracted driving behaviors. She will lead her TRIP Lab in conducting studies with the new simulator. The first study, set to begin in a couple of weeks, will focus on teens and adults over 65, two of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to distracted driving. The simulator is intended to be available to researchers from all appropriate disciplines throughout UAB, other universities in the state and even throughout the southeast. In addition, non-university research scientists will be afforded access to its use and its associated support services. Source: UAB During the life of a Florida claim, risk managers, adjusters or clients often ask, What kind of jurisdiction is Florida for fault? And all too often, the answer given since 2006 is, purely comparative. This is a reference to the 2006 amendment to Floridas Comparative Fault statute, Section 768.81. This answer often is the foregone conclusion because the statute says plainly, the court shall enter judgment against each party liable on the basis of such partys percentage of fault and not on the basis of the doctrine of joint and several liability. Therefore, the assumption is that the claim is analyzed, values are assessed, and litigation strategy is formed and implemented without consideration for joint and several liability. However, there are several scenarios where this answer is incomplete or incorrect. In fact, the correct or complete answer in these scenarios will often lead to completely different evaluations, valuations and strategies. Florida courts have recognized that there are certain types of liability that are different than the usual concept. A very instructive case is Grobman v. Posey, 863 So.2d 1230 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003) which involves vicarious liability. A vicariously liable party is responsible to the plaintiff to the same extent as the primary actor. Both are jointly liable for all of the harm that the primary actor has caused. Similarly, there is the concept of derivative liability. Derivative liability involves wrongful conduct both by the person who is derivatively liable and the actor whose wrongful conduct was the direct cause of injury to another. Derivative liability is similar to vicarious liability in that: a.) there is no cause of action unless the directly liable tortfeasor commits a tort and b.) the derivatively liable party is liable for all of the harm that such a tortfeasor has caused. Although it can be argued that the Posey case predates the 2006 amendment to Floridas Comparative Fault Statute, it is important to note that the pre-2006 version of Floridas Comparative Fault statute was nearly identically worded in its abolishment of joint and several liability for joint tortfeasors but was limited to non-economic damages. Additionally, several cases after 2006 have cited Posey with authority, including a 2012 case discussed later on. So how can this make a difference in defending a claim? Lets take the example of a restaurant. The restaurant is located in a small shopping center and leases its restaurant space from the owner of the center. The shopping center owner hires a security company to patrol the parking lot. One evening, a patron dines at the restaurant, leaves the restaurant, and, while walking to his car, is tragically murdered during an armed robbery. The restaurant is insured, but the small security company is not, and the shopping center owner is in bankruptcy and let his insurance lapse prior to the shooting. Contractually under the lease, the shopping center owner assumed responsibility for security of the parking lot and the known facts suggest that the security company may have failed to follow their post-orders. If the claim against the restaurant is analyzed as a purely comparative claim, then the restaurant faces minimal to no liability under the facts. No one at the restaurant appears to have done anything wrong, and the fault, if any, lies primarily or entirely with the shopping center owner and the security company. However, Florida is not purely comparative in this scenario. Florida law places a non-delegable duty on owners and occupiers of premises, including the duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition. Because the duty is non-delegable even if the owner/occupier hires an independent contractor to carry out the duty the owner/occupier is held vicariously liable for the independent contractors failure to carry out the duty. And if the owner/occupier does something themselves wrong to contribute to the accident or injury, then they are held derivatively liable for the independent contractors failure to carry out the duty. But wait didnt the robbery happen in the parking lot and not within the restaurants leased space? Florida law also extends the concept of a premises to not just the premises itself (such as the leased space), but also known ingresses (entrances) and egresses (exits) to the premises. Therefore, in this example, the parking lot becomes part of the restaurants premises and it owes a non-delegable duty to maintain the parking lot in a reasonably safe condition. Thus, the restaurant can be held vicariously or derivatively liable for the mistakes of the shopping center owner and the security company in this claim. Whats worse is that the claimants attorney, when faced with the fact that neither the shopping center owner nor the security company appear collectible, may choose to sue only the restaurant. At trial, the restaurant will likely be prevented from offsetting its own liability with the comparative fault of the shopping center owner or of the security company. With this knowledge in mind, a good defense strategy could be to work to defend not only the actions of the restaurant, but also those of the shopping center and the security company. It would likely be counter-productive to instead point the finger at these other actors. And this also clearly affects the valuation of the claim against the restaurant. There are numerous other situations under Florida law where vicarious or derivative liability are imposed, including: employer/employee under respondeat superior; dangerous instrumentality; general contractor/subcontractor, principal/agent, product distributor/manufacturer; and inherently dangerous activity. It is also important to consider that if a defendant is subject to vicarious or derivative liability, the defendant has rights to potentially recover from those parties or non-parties they are being held vicariously or derivatively liable for. This could be indemnity rights (vicarious liability) or even potentially contribution rights (derivative liability). In order to preserve those rights, it may be necessary to have a jury determine apportionment of fault between the defendant and various other parties and non-parties. In Continental Fla. Materials, Inc. v. Kusherman, 91 So.3d 159 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012), a plaintiff convinced a trial court that a defendant was not permitted to have a jury apportion fault at trial to various non-parties. The court struck the defendants affirmative defenses and the case was tried without the non-parties on the verdict form for the jury to apportion fault. On appeal this was held to be improper. The court explained: A distinction must be drawn between apportionment of fault and ultimate liability. The former allows the finder of fact to determine to what extent, if any, each party or non-party contributed to the loss or injury. The latter determines who will actually pay for that loss or injury. The combination of both insures responsibility for ones own negligence, and ultimately who will pay and to what extent of the total loss. In other words, simply because a jury apportions fault to various parties or non-parties on a verdict form, does not mean that the defendant seeking the apportionment will necessarily get to reduce their own liability with the apportionment to these other parties or non-parties. However, at least they can use that apportionment to potentially seek indemnity or contribution from those other parties. Going back to the restaurant example, what if the security company or the shopping center did have coverage or assets, but the plaintiff chooses not to sue them? For the restaurant, they would probably want to try to bring the security company or the shopping center into the case with a third-party claim for indemnity or contribution. And, to preserve those claims at trial, they would probably want to seek a jury apportionment of fault to the shopping center or security company. It is important to keep in mind that these are not easy or simple scenarios to digest. And often the results can seem counter-intuitive or unjust. This is one of the reasons the Florida Comparative Fault statute was amended in 2006. But despite the amendment, these scenarios live on and should be kept in mind when handling certain claims. Ryan D. Burns is a shareholder with Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin, a civil defense litigation law firm that represents and advises insurers, self-insured businesses and professionals in a wide range of casualty, health care, professional liability, employment law and workers compensation matters. He may be reached at (954) 847-4950 or rdburns@mdwcg.com. AKRON, Ohio -- Attorneys for the family of Canton firefighter Tonya Johnson said Monday that they plan to sue the Summit County Medical Examiner to get her cause of death changed from suicide to accidental. Canton attorney David DuPlain said in a news conference outside the medical examiner's office that they will file the suit as soon as the final autopsy report is finished in about four more weeks. DuPlain and two-dozen family members and friends took issue with the medical examiner's investigation. "She feared for her safety," DuPlain said. "We feel the medical examiner did not take into account reasonable alternatives for her crossing the road." Johnson, 43, died Feb. 22 after she left an argument with her husband of eight days and walked into rush-hour traffic on Ohio 8. She jumped over the median into the northbound lanes where she was struck and killed by a truck. Akron police and the medical examiner investigated. Eight weeks later, the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. The medical examiner's office released a statement saying that its determination was the result of an extensive investigation with Akron police. The statement said officials will not comment on the matter since it's possible the family could take legal action. Johnson was a Canton firefighter for nearly 18 years. She was a mother of three children and had two grandchildren. DuPlain said the family thinks that Johnson and her husband drove to Cleveland the day of her death to notarize divorce papers after she found evidence that he cheated on her during their nine-day marriage. He said family members found the papers that she ordered in her email. DuPlain said the family would receive more money from her life insurance policy if the medical examiner's ruling changed, but that they had already received the majority of it. One of Johnson's sons, Trevon Boone, said his that mother had a pre-nuptial agreement that called for Johnson's husband to receive nothing if she died and they were not married. The agreement called for him to receive a third of her estate if she died while they were still married, Boone said. "We feel they wanted to just write my mother off and move on," Boone said. "We're here because we want to make them do their job and investigate her death." Three friends and family members spoke with Johnson on the day she died and none of them were asked to give statements to the medical examiner's investigators. Johnson's co-worker Daniel Greer said they spoke and that she never appeared distressed. Her sister Tiffani Walker said that she texted with her sister that day and that her sister planned to pick her up from work. Johnson's cousin Regina Skinner got a call from Johnson about 30 minutes before she died. Skinner said that she could tell Johnson was in some kind of trouble and was asked to pick Johnson up along the northbound lane of Ohio 8. All three said they were never asked to give statements by medical examiner investigators. DuPlain said a medical examiner must have overwhelming evidence to rule a death a suicide and must rule out all other reasonable alternatives. Johnson's children all spoke Monday and said there was no reason for her mother to commit suicide. They said she experienced stress in her life, but was a pillar of the community who lived living life. "She had no reason to taker her life," said her 12-year-old daughter Temaria Johnson. "Everyone loved her. She would never kill herself because she would never leave us here to grow up without her. Yes, she was under a lot of stress and had problems, but my mom was a strong enough woman to handle whatever life threw at her." If you want to comment on this story, visit today's crime and courts comments page. AKRON, Ohio -- A former Kent State University professor accused of meeting a teenage boy for sex in an elementary school parking lot is back in police custody, five months after he was stopped at the Canadian border trying to leave the country. Willie Harrell, 44, was booked in the Summit County Jail about 1:30 a.m. Saturday. He was arrested March 22 in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. He waived his extradition hearing the next day and was sent back to Akron April 15, according to Orleans Parish Magistrate Court records. He is scheduled for a May 2 appearance in front of Summit County Judge Amy Corrigall Jones. Harrell faces a fifth-degree felony charge of importuning. He is accused of meeting the 15-year-old boy on Aug. 26 in the parking lot of Smith Elementary School. The two met online, police said. Harrell admitted to police that he met the boy for sex, according to police reports. Harrell had no pretrial supervision conditions as part of his $25,000 bond that he posted two days after his arrest. He left the area after posting bond. Harrell was stopped trying to cross the border of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, according to court records. Harrell told Canadian authorities that he was trying to leave the country to avoid prosecution in his pending case in Summit County Common Pleas Court, according to a court filing by prosecutors. Harrell also had a device in his car that blocked GPS location tracking, according to court records. He was released to U.S. Border Patrol agents several hours later. Harrell then told U.S. authorities that he was moving to Canada for work and that he planned to return to Akron for all his court appearances. Corrigall Jones issued a bench warrant for Harrell's arrest after being notified. Harrell worked as an associated professor of English at Kent State beginning in 2003, when he made about $42,000 annually. He was fired from the university after his arrest. If you want to comment on this story, visit today's crime and courts comments page. Akron police 4 Akron police are searching for the men who carjacked a 25-year-old man outside an Akron strip club. (File photo) AKRON, Ohio -- A group of five or six men attacked and robbed a Canton man in the parking lot of an Akron strip club, police reports say. The incident happened about 2 a.m. Friday at the El Camaleon strip club in the 1000 block of South Arlington Road. The 25-year-old man told police he walked outside the club and got in his car, a maroon 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix. The man said the men choked him, grabbed the keys from his hand and drove off in his car. They also stole his cellphone and wallet. The man said he didn't recognize any of his attackers. Akron police arrived and interviewed the man, along with the club's manager and other witnesses. One witness told police that one of the robbers told a stripper at the club that he planned to attack and rob the man once he left, according to police reports. A witness also pointed to a man in the parking lot of the strip club and said he was involved in the robbery. The man ran across Lindsay Avenue when police approached. Police chased him until they found him hiding in the backyard of a home in the 900 block of Lindsay Avenue. The man, Elijah Butler, 32, told police that he only ran because he had outstanding warrants for unauthorized use of a vehicle, receiving stolen property and violating probation for his 2013 robbery conviction. Butler spent three years in prison after pleading guilty to robbery after he robbed two men at gunpoint. He was released from prison Dec. 25. Butler was charged in Friday's incident with misdemeanor obstruction of justice. He is not accused in the attack or robbery. If you want to comment on this story, visit today's crime and courts comments page. 2015 Princess 1.jpg Princesses plus the Beast entertained chlldren at the Princess Party at Grindstone Elementary last year. The City of Berea hosts the party each year in memory of Dominique Reyes, a Grindstone student who passed away in 2013. (Linda Kramer) BEREA, Ohio - Kids can dress up at their favorite Star Wars characters or Disney princesses on May 14 and benefit a children's charity, too. The Royalty and Rebels Party will be noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 at Grindstone Elementary School. Children 12 and younger can dress in costumes but it is not required. Refreshments will be served. There will be costumed characters and a special appearance by Chewbacca from the Star Wars films. Salon Front & Center will provide free up-dos for the young ladies. Kids will also enjoy face-painting plus door prizes and raffles courtesy of Pathways Hospice of Berea. Children also can enter to win an autographed picture of Harrison Ford, who portrayed Han Solo in Star Wars. Royalty and Rebels is free but a $5 donation will be requested at the door with all proceeds benefiting the St. Baldrick's Foundation in memory of Grindstone student Dominique Reyes, who passed away in 2013 after battling a rare childhood disease. St. Baldrick's Foundation is a non-profit charity dedicated to funding research into curing childhood cancer. To register for Royalty and Rebels visit www.cityofberea.org or the city's Facebook page - City of Berea, Ohio. Or contact Daune Jaynes at bco@cityofberea.org or 440-826-4891. Royalty and Rebels is a program of Berea's Family & Youth Initiative. BROOKLYN, Ohio -- A fire Monday morning forced an evacuation at the American Greetings headquarters in Brooklyn. The 1,700 employees gathered outside while fire crews battled the blaze that started about 8:40 a.m. near the kitchen. No one was injured. The fire started in the cafeteria that was open for coffee, American Greetings spokeswoman Patrice Sadd said. The kitchen staff was preparing for lunch which starts around 11:15, she said. Smoke was seen coming from the roof. Firefighters had the fire out in an hour, Sadd said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The cost of the damages was not known Monday morning. Employees were sent home for the rest of the day. They will return to work Tuesday. The fire will have no impact on the company's move to its new headquarters at Crocker Park in Westlake in July, Sadd said. No one was injured when a propane tank exploded at the construction site of the new American Greetings headquarters on the south end of Crocker Park last month. Like Chanda Neely on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter: CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio - Missing Juvenile: A Mantua man, 21 faces charges after a South Russell girl, 15, left school and got into his vehicle April 12. She left the high school 11:17 a.m. and was seen on video tape heading to his car. Police were called at 1:58 p.m. when her mother reported her missing. The man had taken the girl to his Mantua home. She was found at 5:49 p.m. in South Russell. The man was charged with interfering with custody and contributing to the delinquency of a minor for providing her with alcohol and drugs. He was released on a $1,000 cash bond. The girl may face delinquency charges. Noise, West Washington Street: An officer was dispatched to a home for a noise complaint 9:54 p.m. April 16. An underage drinking party was in progress. Officers arrested two Chagrin Falls teens, two Highland Heights teens, two Beachwood teens, and one teen each from South Russell, Chardon and Moreland Hills for underage consumption. One was transported to Ahuja Medical Center for evaluation of an anxiety attack. Juvenile Complaint, Cleveland Street: After seeing three boys jump over a fence onto private property 4:38 p.m. April 17, a woman called police. An officer located four boys and advised them against future acts of trespassing. Theft, West Washington Street: A resident reported on April 14 the theft of an American Express credit card that was used to purchase just under $1,000 of merchandise online. The resident was unsure where the card was stolen. Juvenile Complaint, Orange Street: Several boys were skateboarding on the top of the Step North Parking garage and yelling at customers 3:30 p.m. April 16. An officer advised them to clean up the area and leave. Found Property, East Washington Street: An officer found a Penna. driver's license, US currency, and several discount cards on April 13 near Philomethian Street. Attempts were made to contact the driver's license owner. Shares of smartphone giant Apple entered bear market territory, ahead of its earnings announcement due on Tuesday after the bell. Apple's stock was 21 percent off on Thursday from a 52-week high of $134.54, hit on April 28, 2015. A bear market can be considered to be a decline of 20 percent from a 52-week high. Analysts have predicted that the iPhone-maker would likely report a decline in iPhone sales when it reports earnings. S&P Global Market Intelligence senior industry analyst Angelo Zino told CNBC last week he expected a 17 percent on-year decline in sales for the quarter ending in March. In this week's Trader Poll, tell us what's you think is in store for Apple. Mitsubishi Motors is unlikely to issue an earnings forecast for the current financial year when it announces annual results this week, due to uncertainty about the financial impact of its misleading fuel economy data, a person close to the company told Reuters on Sunday. The Japanese automaker is under investigation by the transport ministry after saying last week that it overstated the fuel economy of four of its minivehicle models made for the local market, including ones produced for Nissan Motors. Mitsubishi is scheduled to announce its financial results for the year ended March on Wednesday. The automaker customarily issues forecasts along with the previous year's earnings. A spokesman declined to comment on whether Mitsubishi will issue a forecast for the year ending March 2017. The person close to the company declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. watch now The Seychelles is helping an international investigation into the troubled state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the state's Financial Intelligence Unit on the Indian Ocean archipelago said. Transactions involving 1MDB, which has piled up $11 billion in debt, are at the center of corruption and money laundering investigations in jurisdictions that include the United States, Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates. "The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has been assisting in an international investigation into allegations surrounding the strategic Malaysian fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)," the FIU said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "Detailed information relating to offshore entities registered in Seychelles and other matters were passed to the competent authorities of investigating states," it said. watch now The statement was sent to Reuters by Seychelles president's office on behalf of the FIU. It is the first public acknowledgement that Seychelles has joined the widening investigation into 1MDB, whose advisory board is chaired by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Unverified bank accounts The FIU did not name any entities involved in the investigation. The nation's Financial Services Authority said a search of companies registered in Seychelles would not provide information regarding shareholders or company directors. A Malaysian parliamentary investigation found that $4.2 billion of 1MDB's money is unaccounted for or went to overseas bank accounts whose owners could not be ascertained. Goldman Sachs has gone through a "lost decade" and needs to reconsider its strategy, one Wall Street analyst thinks. "It is not difficult to understand what happened to Goldman Sachs in the past decade. The industry it services was dramatically restructured. The company was not," Dick Bove, vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients. "The company needs to rethink its strategy and consider transformational changes in every aspect of its operations." Bove's report was titled "The Lost Decade," looking into the bank's struggle in a rapidly reforming financial services industry, in which he criticized Goldman Sachs ' leadership and executive pay structure. Bove's comments follow a first-quarter earnings report from Goldman that topped expectations, but missed on revenue as income from trading businesses plummeted. The bank did not respond to a request for comment on Bove's report. Apple may find itself eventually shut out of China, a leading expert on global political risk to corporations said Monday. "It's very possible," Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the Eurasia Group, told CNBC's "Squawk Box," a day before the tech giant was scheduled to release quarterly earnings. "I'd be very surprised in five years' time if we see Apple having the kind of access to the Chinese consumer that they presently enjoy," he said. Bremmer said he could foresee a scenario with Apple having "the kind of issues Facebook presently has in China." Facebook is banned there. "I think people misunderstand the nature of the Chinese tech involvement," Bremmer said, citing the closures in China earlier this month of Apple's iBooks Store and iTunes Movies, just about six months after they were launched. The New York Times reported last week that Apple had apparently thought it had approval from the Chinese government. But regulators flexed their muscle. watch now China will start reclamation at the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea later this year and may add an airstrip to extend its air force's reach over the contested waters, a military source and mainland maritime experts say. A source close to the PLA Navy said Beijing would ramp up work to establish a new outpost 230km off the coast of the Philippines as the US and Manila drew their militaries closer together. An upcoming ruling on territorial claims by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, widely expected to go against China, would also accelerate the plan, the source said. Manila wants the court to declare that Beijing's claims must comply with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the decision could come next month or in June. "Beijing will take action to carry out land reclamation at Huangyan Island within this year," said the source, who requested anonymity, referring to the shoal. watch now "China should regain the initiative to do so because Washington is trying to contain Beijing by establishing a permanent military presence in the region." The US and the Philippines began joint patrols in the South China Sea in March, US defense chief Ash Carter revealed during his latest visit to the region. US forces will also have access to at least eight military bases in the Philippines, with two air bases in Pampanga, 330km from Scarborough Shoal. More from the South China Morning Post : Prince's secrecy continues into the afterlife, with resting place kept private following cremation Alibaba's Jack Ma on China's economy, Hong Kong and the South China Morning Post: full Q&A Hong Kong Polytechnic University move to set up two offshore firms 'contravened guidelines of institution and funding body The atoll is a potential flashpoint in the disputed South China Sea and is claimed by Beijing, Manila and Taipei. Chinese coastguard ships took control of the area after a tense stand-off with Philippine vessels in 2012. With a new outpost in the shoal, Beijing could "further perfect" its air coverage across the South China Sea, the source said. The PLA can already land planes at Woody Island, and two additional airstrips are believed to be under construction at Mischief and Fiery Cross reefs. Baker Hughes shares were also trading lower, down nearly 3 percent, while Halliburton fell nearly 2 percent. Oilfield services giant Halliburton said it delayed first quarter results as it works to resolve regulatory concerns over its planned merger with Baker Hughes, ahead of the Saturday deadline. Halliburton shares fell Monday as analysts said the delay in the company's earnings release may be a sign that its merger agreement with Baker Hughes will be terminated. In a statement to CNBC, Halliburton said: "As previously announced, Halliburton and Baker Hughes agreed to extend the time period under the merger agreement to obtain regulatory approvals to no later than April 30, 2016, after which the parties may continue to seek relevant regulatory approvals or either of the parties may terminate the merger agreement." Baker Hughes declined to comment. Halliburton's postponement "likely reflects that it and/or BHI will likely terminate the merger agreement once it expires on April 30," Jefferies analysts said in a note. Nomura analyst Matthew Johnston warned in a note to investors that Halliburton's delayed earnings "suggests an extension of the deadline may not be in the horizon." The Halliburton-Baker Hughes deal was announced in 2014 but has faced stiff regulatory hurdles. Earlier this month, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit to block the deal, and European Union antitrust regulators could make issue objections to the deal next week. Read More Halliburton says it cut 6,000 jobs in Q1 Halliburton did report a few key numbers on Monday, saying it would cut 6,000 jobs during the first quarter and that revenue fell 40 percent to $4.2 billion. Baker Hughes is due to report on Wednesday, but has not held conference calls since the merger was announced in 2014. Halliburton has gained about 18 percent year-to-date, while Baker Hughes has lost 2.4 percent over the same time period. Cambridge Health Alliance is one of many hospitals that has embraced health-care technology to improve patient care. Still, for doctors and nurses in this hospital network outside Boston, worrying about security when they input data into the system's computers requires a balancing act. "You have the patient interaction, you have the computer, you have security and you're actually trying to think clinically about what to do next," explained Dr. Brian Herrick, chief medical information officer at Cambridge Health. "It has made things more difficult to interact with the patient." By law, Cambridge Health is required to protect patient information. Yet recent ransomware attacks that hobbled systems at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, MedStar Health in Washington, D.C., and others, have made staff here more aware that they could also be targeted. "It's one of our number one concerns, and it certainly has risen," said Herrick. As a result, they've focused on trying to make security measures seamless and easier to use. One method they've adopted is to move away from passwords for user authentication. "Whether it's using a fingerprint or inking your card and eliminating all those things you initially need to think about and [ending] that habit or trend to use the same password across all platforms and applications," said David Ting, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Imprivata, which provides the hospital's IT security. "We've known that to be a bad policy, because if you get one password you can get access to everything," said Ting, who serves on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cybersecurity task force. Howard Dean, a former Democratic presidential candidate and ex-governor of Vermont, issued a stern warning Monday to Sen. Bernie Sanders: Lay off Hillary Clinton, it's only helping Republicans. "[Sanders] has got to stop with the speeches about Goldman Sachs and all this other stuff," Dean told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "Bernie is a deeply committed guy with an ideology. He's going to want to go to the convention ... and going to give a speech about his ideals," said Dean, formerly chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In an interview Sunday, Sanders rejected calls that he leave the race. "We intend to take the fight all the way to California," he said on ABC's "This Week." The California primary is on June 7, the final day of voter contests before the Democratic convention. If you could pick up a college degree for about half the sticker price, you would, right? If so, you've got company. More than 80 percent of community college students say when they start there they expect to continue on and eventually earn a bachelor's degree from a four-year college or university. Yet most students fail in that goal, according to a recently published study by the Center for Community College Research at Columbia University's Teachers College. One-third of the roughly 720,000 students who enrolled in community colleges in 2007 for the first time and were seeking degrees actually transferred to a four-year school, and only 42 percent earned a bachelor's degree within six years far below the 60 percent completion rate for students who started at four-year colleges and universities. Among first-time, degree-seeking community college students overall, only 14 percent managed to earn a bachelor's degree within six years, the study found. "Too many students are failed by the current system of transfer between community colleges and universities," said Davis Jenkins, senior research associate at the center, when announcing the release of the study. watch now For students who complete a four-year degree after starting at a community college, the tactic is clearly a money saver. Tuition, fees, and room and board at community colleges averaged $9,282 for the 2013-14 academic year, according to the Department of Education. Meanwhile, those costs at public four-year schools averaged $18,110, and at private nonprofit four-year schools, it was $40,708. Many community college students face hurdles well beyond tuition. For one thing, community college students tend to be older: some 73 percent of students at two-year public colleges were under age 25 in the fall of 2013, well below the 88 percent of students at public four-year schools and 86 percent of those at private nonprofit four-year schools. Older students are more likely to attend school part time, and to hold down a job while doing so. And about 30 percent of community college students are parents. Low cost and the fact that anyone with a high school diploma can attend make community college "much more attractive to low-income individuals and first-generation students," said Noah Brown, president of the Association of Community College Trustees. "Their parents may not be able to advise them about how college works. They often come in with little to no knowledge of the process." In addition, whatever a student's background, community colleges may do little to help students integrate, Brown said. "Often they are still basically given a course catalog and told, 'Pick some classes.' " The hands-off approach at many community colleges can have several unintended effects. For example, students may wind up choosing courses that do not come together in a major, or whose credits will not be counted toward a degree at a four-year school. That can mean a student who does manage to transfer to a four-year school may need more time there to complete degree requirements, which will eat into the money saved by attending community college. All of this contributes to a community college graduation rate of just 20 percent within three years of enrollment, according to the Department of Education. Certainly, a number of students who do not graduate never planned to go that route, having enrolled to take a few courses to retool their career or for some other reason. But failing to graduate from community college can be just as challenging as not graduating from a four-year school for students who have taken out loans. Some 17 percent of community college students borrow for their education, according to the Association of Community College Trustees, and though the amounts may be small, students who fail to graduate are more likely to default. There is good news for students planning to go the community college route, however. A number of schools are focusing more on helping students complete their associate's degrees and making them better informed about what college entails, Brown said. Things are shifting at the university level as well. The University of Central Florida has relationships with multiple area community and state college campuses, for example. Students who are planning to earn a bachelor's degree when they enroll at community college check a box on their application to sign up for a program called Direct Connect, and they are guaranteed admission if they earn their associate's degree. About 71 percent of Direct Connect students have graduated within six years of transferring, according to Dale Whittaker, provost and executive vice president of the university. UCF has agreements with its partner schools so that they do not duplicate degree offerings, he said. And it recently added university advisors on partner campuses to start advising Direct Connect students once they earn 30 credits, so they avoid taking classes that will not apply to their degree. The university recently won approval for a new campus that will be fully integrated with one of its partners, Valencia College. "We measure our success by who we include rather than who we exclude," Whittaker said. "We remove family income as a predictor of college success. If you do that, then this structure makes a lot of sense." A few flagship institutions are taking similar steps. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a program, albeit smaller than Direct Connect, to help low-income, high-achieving community college students transfer to and graduate from the university. Students who participate in the program enroll at a community college and earn an associate's degree with a grade point average of 3.2 or higher, and UNC officials send advisors to their campuses and bring them to UNC during their time in community college. "We don't want transfer students to feel as if they are walking into a conversation that other people have been having for a couple of years," said Stephen Farmer, vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions. Philips reported a rise in first-quarter sales on Monday but net profits were hit hard due to tax charges incurred after the separation of its lighting business. Koen van Weel | AFP | Getty Images The Dutch electronics giant reported comparable sales growth of 3 percent to 5.5 billion euros and a 14 percent improvement in adjusted earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA) to 374 million euros ($420 million). First-quarter net profit hit 37 million euros ($41.5 million), compared with 100 million euros in the same period a year before, however, with profit "mainly impacted by tax charges related to the separation," Philips said in its earnings statement. It added the Philips lighting separation process was "well on track." Philips Chief Executive Frans van Houten told CNBC on Monday that he wasn't disappointed with the response that the sale has had so far. "We are in this process still, evaluating the various bids as well as considering the possible IPO, we've always flagged that in the second quarter of this year we would come to a conclusion and we hope to shortly do that." "If you look at the first-quarter results, we have 3 percent growth driven by 5 percent growth in our health activities. In Lighting, we have had 27 percent growth in LED so both sides of the house had a very good operational profit improvement," he said. "We had a number of one-off items in the first quarter but if you take those aside, actually our operational profit improvement was more than 50 basis points...so that gives me confidence about the future and it also sets up Lighting very well for its own standalone life." watch now Novartis is discussing options with banks for selling its near $14 billion stake in rival Roche , potentially providing cash for new deals, though a sale is not imminent, according to two people familiar with the situation. Novartis built up its one-third stake in Roche's voting stock between 2001 and 2003 under former chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella, as a basis for a possible merger that never happened. Ever since Vasella's departure in 2013 there has been speculation Novartis would sell its holding, equivalent to around 6 percent of all Roche shares, ending a years-long standoff between the two Swiss rivals. Pushing ahead with a sale now could make sense for current Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez, who is under pressure to improve growth after disappointments with the company's eyecare unit Alcon and new heart drug Entresto. "Sooner or later the stake will be sold and Novartis is talking to banks about how it could be done. But nothing is imminent," one source said. He added a so-called order book process with selected investors would probably be the "cleanest" process for divesting the stake, which is worth some 13.4 billion Swiss francs ($13.7 billion). The second source said Novartis had shown increased interest in planning for such a sale in recent weeks. Novartis, which describes its one-third stake in Roche's voting stock as a financial investment with a strategic component, declined to comment. Roche also declined to comment. Industry analysts said Novartis needed to revitalize its healthcare business following recent difficulties, which could explain the decision to look at the Roche investment as a way to raise cash to acquire new products. "Novartis is in a time of need, having had setbacks with both Alcon and Entresto, and investor sentiment is languishing," said Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson, who sees acquisitions in the biotech or ophthalmology fields as "distinctly possible." "The supply picture is improving. U.S. production is coming down significantly," RBC's head of commodities research told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "The overhang is being eliminated, and so we are talking about a movement to $50" a barrel. The fact that crude futures didn't sell off after major oil producers failed to reach an agreement to cap production last week is another sign the commodity has bottomed, RBC Capital Markets' Helima Croft said Monday. Last week, U.S. crude rose more than 8 percent and international benchmark Brent finished up 4.6 percent. The advances came after Saudi Arabia scuttled a proposed deal among oil producers to freeze production at January levels. The kingdom insisted Iran participate, but Tehran had long said it would not turn off the taps until its output returned to presanctions levels. Croft said top oil producer Russia cannot add much more output, and Iran is likely just 100,000 to 150,000 barrels from its goal, after adding about 400,000 already. "Everybody in this market is pretty much capped out, so when they say they're going to bring it on, there's not much more to bring on at this point," she said. To be sure, Neil Atkinson, head of the oil industry and markets division at the International Energy Agency, told CNBC last week he believes Saudi Arabia and Russia will continue to "pump as much oil as possible." Shares of Perrigo plummeted 18 percent Monday after Joseph Papa resigned as chairman and CEO and the company issued very weak guidance. The company slashed its first-quarter estimates, as well as its full-year outlook, citing drug pricing expectations. "The majority of this change in guidance provided on February 18 is the result of a reduction in pricing expectations in our Rx segment due to industry and competitive pressures in the sector," Perrigo said in a statement. Perrigo's expected earnings per share (EPS) for the first quarter was $1.89, and $9.52 for 2016, according to Thomson Reuters. The drug firm now expects first-quarter EPS of between $1.71 and $1.77, while it sees full-year profits of between $8.20 and $8.60. As the pace of global trade slows, so does support for a pair of deals designed to revive it. With a fresh round of European trade talks getting underway this week, President Barack Obama spent the weekend in Germany trying to counter strong political headwinds at home to his administration's effort to lower trade barriers with Europe. Obama told a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that moving ahead with the so-called Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would boost the U.S. and European economies. The United States is Germany's biggest trading partner. Supporters of the sweeping deal being negotiated with 28 European Union countries say it could add $100 billion a year to U.S. exports. "The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is one of the best ways to promote growth and create jobs," Obama told the German newspaper Bild. But with millions of American voters convinced that global trade has cost the U.S. good-paying job losses, political support for the deal has been fading along with the volume of global trade. For nearly six years, entrepreneurs Daniel Price and Jonny Sitton have been building a business in the United Kingdom that they hoped would garner enough attention to expand to the United States. Over the weekend, they got a royal break. Just before President and Mrs. Obama joined Prince William, Princess Kate and Prince Harry for a private dinner at Kensington Palace, nearly 3-year-old Prince George stayed up past his bedtime to say hello. Lucky for the co-founders of My 1st Years, a personalized baby clothing and accessories brand, Prince George was wearing the $39 robe the pair sent the royals as an older brother gift when his baby sister Charlotte was born. "I was at dinner and saw 165 messages come through nearly at once, and our team just couldn't believe it," Price told CNBC. "It was one of those moments, where you just couldn't write a better script." President Barack Obama, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and First Lady Michelle Obama talks with Prince George at Kensington Palace on April 22, 2016 in London, England Pete Souza | The White House | Getty Images Price and his partner started the business right out of school "on a shoestring budget" back in 2010, Price said. Part of the marketing strategy has been to send personalized baby gifts to famous (mainly British) celebrities, hoping to grab the attention of a potentially powerful new client. Price sent personalized shoes to Victoria and David Beckham when their daughter Harper was born, he said. There was the hamper gifted to Elton John for his son personalized with the words, "Zachary how wonderful life is while you're in the world." Price personally delivered a blanket to 10 Downing Street when David Cameron's son was born that read "a product of the perfect coalition," a nod to the coalition government of the time. "When you haven't got millions to spend on marketing, you need a bit of a break like this," said a jubilant Price. The "Kate Middleton effect" has been well-documented, and remains a strong, ongoing trend. It seems the magic has transferred to the young prince, as he's dressed by his fashionable mother. "Kate Middleton's impact on fashion and brands cannot be understated," said Liz Dunn, founder of retail consultancy Talmage Advisors. "Everything she wears sells out immediately. She also buys off the rack, which makes her choices accessible. There is also some magic to the idea that the girl next door can become royalty and the average person can dress like she does, or in this case, like her son does." Jonny Sitton (left) and Daniel Price of My 1st years Source: My 1st years My 1st Years website now proudly calls the robe "Prince's Personalised Gingham Robe." "Also, the picture of him with President Obama was beyond adorable," Dunn added. Price said his site did crash initially under much heavier than normal traffic after The Daily Mail revealed My 1st Years as the brand behind the royal's robe. The robe sold out in seven minutes, but Price and Sitton have ordered more of their robes, which are manufactured in Turkey and personalized in the U.K. Thomas Peterffy, who made his fortune as a pioneer in electronic and online stock trading, joined CNBC Pro for an exclusive interview about his career and winning business strategies. The billionaire founder of Interactive Brokers Group , an online brokerage powerhouse used by sophisticated investors, spoke at length about how he got into finance after immigrating to the U.S. as a 21-year old Hungarian engineer. During his conversation with CNBC's Mike Santoli , Peterffy discussed the beginning of electronic trading and how he developed his vision to create a centralized place where trades could be both monitored and executed. Peterffy also talked about emerging trends in technology, hedge funds and more in this in-depth discussion. Thomas Peterffy, who made his fortune as a pioneer in electronic and online stock trading, joined CNBC Pro for an exclusive interview about his career and winning business strategies. The billionaire founder of Interactive Brokers Group , an online brokerage powerhouse used by sophisticated investors, spoke at length about how he got into finance after immigrating to the U.S. as a 21-year old Hungarian engineer. During his conversation with CNBC's Mike Santoli, Peterffy discussed the beginning of electronic trading and how he developed his vision to create a centralized place where trades could be both monitored and executed. Peterffy also talked about emerging trends in technology, hedge funds and more in this in-depth discussion. A Swiss-based start-up has raised $72 million and is planning to launch a high-security smartphone next month that could cost up to $15,000. Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev; Israeli venture capitalist Moshe Hogeg; Tal Cohen, a former McKinsey consultant; and Chinese social media firm RenRen were all investors in the round. Rakishev, Hogeg and Cohen are the founders. The company, Sirin Labs, is set to launch an Android smartphone in its yet-unopened London store next month with the price tag likely to be in the $10,000-$15,000 range. Hogeg said that the features rather than price were the focus when the company designed the device. "The first product we are launching is the smartphone which we believe is the most important device, and this phone will be launched at the end of next month and you should expect to see almost in every aspect, very high specs on the product, higher than all of the great mass market phones, combined with software and security features," Hogeg told CNBC in a phone interview on Monday. Security focus Sirin Labs is trying to tap into the growing consumer concern over privacy just weeks after the end of the high-profile tussle between Apple and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the unlocking of an iPhone that belonged to one of the San-Bernardino shooters. Eventually the FBI managed to get into the iPhone, showing that they weren't completely unhackable. BlackBerry used to be the company best-known for their secure devices, but the company's decline in market share has seen a number of other players try to muscle in on the security-focused device space. Both Apple and Samsung have been bolstering their security capabilities while start-ups like Silent Circle are bringing more niche handsets to market. Ulrich Baumgarrten | Getty Images Silent Circle makes the $799 BlackPhone 2 which focuses on keeping users' data secure. Archos and Sikur produce the $850 GranitePhone. And then there are ultra-premium phones on the market such as the $310,000 Vertu Signature Cobra which is laced with gems. Hogeg said that the company is not focused on creating a phone will lots of diamonds on it that look like jewelry, but a secure phone with good technology. "We started the company because of a pain point with our founders many years ago, when he was hacked. If you're phone is hacked your life is hacked. For some people there is a lot of sensitive information in their phones. We wanted to develop a secure phone for that," Hogeg said. Given the price of the device, the likely audience is businesses rather than the everyday consumer with the device unlikely to gain a large portion of market share. Android apps Record-breaking solar-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) has finished the ninth leg of its round-the-world trip over the weekend, after being grounded in Hawaii since last summer. Solar powered plane 'Solar Impulse 2', piloted by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard, flys over the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, after a flight from Hawaii Jean Revillard | Getty Images News | Getty Images On Saturday night, the solar-powered plane touched down at Moffett Airfield, located in California's Silicon Valley, after flying from Hawaii. The flight over the Pacific Ocean lasted over 62 hours and flew more than 4,000km without fuel. Until last week, the solar-powered plane had been forced to take a nine-month break, after it suffered "irreversible damage to overheated batteries", having flown more than 117 hours from the Japanese city of Nagoya, to Hawaii. The plane resumed its journey on Thursday morning in Kalaeloa, Hawaii, and was piloted by the project's chairman, Bertrand Piccard. Tweet of landing The plane started its epic adventure back in early March 2015 in Abu Dhabi, and logged eight historic flights from then until July 2015, including stopping off in China and India. Both Piccard and the project's chief executive, Andre Borschberg, take turns to fly the plane. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs over 5,000 lbs, and is equipped with more than 17,240 solar cells stretched out on its wings, which helps power the propellers and electric engines. Apart from breaking world records, the purpose of Solar Impulse is to look at how solar power and renewable technology overall can be implemented in everyday lifestyles, such as transportation. watch now watch now watch now watch now The journey is expected to continue, travelling on to destinations including New York, Europe and/or North Africa. In March, the project's CEO and co-founder Andre Borschberg told CNBC that future locations may vary, due to the change in weather conditions. Following the landing, Piccard, said in a statement that Solar Impulse 2 highlighted how exploration in today's society was "no longer about conquering new territories" but about finding new options to create a better quality of life on our planet. "(Solar Impulse 2) is more than an airplane: it is a concentration of clean technologies, a genuine flying laboratory, and illustrates that solutions exist today to meet the major challenges facing our society." Obama, who arrived in Hannover on Sunday, has already heaped praise on the German leader, telling German newspaper Bild that Merkel was "courageous" in her response to Europe's refugee crisis and he highlighted the importance of the U.S.' relationship with Europe's largest economy. U.S. President Barack Obama is in Germany on Monday to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders but after pouring praise on the German leader, the country is looking more like the U.S.'s key ally of the over old partner, the U.K. U.S. Barack Obama greets German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the opening evening of the Hannover Messe trade fair on April 24, 2016 in Hanover, Germany. "Germany remains one of America's closest and strongest allies - an indispensable partner not only for our own security and those of our NATO allies, but also for the security, the prosperity and the dignity of people across the whole world," he told Bild in an interview published on Saturday. "With Chancellor Merkel, Germany has raised the stakes and plays an even bigger role on the international stage," he said, with her work to tackle terrorism, reaching a nuclear deal with Iran and On Sunday, Obama attended the Hannover Messe trade show, which showcases industrial technology. This year's partner country is the U.S., with over 250 U.S. companies participating in the show. Obama is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the event. Obama's trip to Germany has not gone without a hitch so far, with thousands of protesters gathering in Hannover on Saturday to protest a planned but unpopular free trade agreement between the U.S. and EU, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Critics of TTIP fear it threaten public services, the environment and consumers. Despite concerns over the secretive nature of trade talks, both Obama and Merkel said on Sunday that they hoped to have an agreement over the trade deal by the end of the year. On Monday afternoon, Obama is expected to meet with Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron. They are expectred to discuss security and humanitarian concerns over Libya and fragile Syrian peace talks. Obama's trip to Germany comes after a brief stay in London last week during which he made a call for the U.K. to remain within the European Union (EU) ahead of a referendum on the subject on June 23. His comments during the visit made for uncomfortable listening at times with Obama saying that if the U.K. left, it should not expect any preferential treatment from its long-term ally. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. There's no business like shoe business. At least for Steve Madden. The shoe business is all he's ever known. "I just plopped into a store at 16, and it was shoes, and that was it," the founder of the company that bears his name said. He started Steve Madden with $1,100 in 1990. "Today we have over $1.5 billion in sales." Steve Madden Source: Steve Madden But this isn't your typical rags-to-riches story. What makes Madden's tale different is that somewhere between the $1,100 investment and the $1.5 billion in sales was a 31-month stint in federal prison for securities fraud tied to "The Wolf of Wall Street." "What did you think of the guy that played me in that movie?" Madden asked with a sly grin. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. So a teenager walks into a shoe store... "I used to work on a stool with a shoe horn hanging out of my pocket," Madden said of his first job on Long Island. "The information I gathered, and the knowledge and experience, was invaluable. It was like going to college." Madden worked in that shoe store for two years "and learned what women want." He then spent years working in a shoe factory learning about design and manufacturing. At 31, he decided to strike out on his own. He was tired of being told what to do, and figured he had better ideas. "I'd be selling the shoes and seeing the voids," Madden said. "It's a business of voids still today. If everybody's making one thing, you can make one thing over here and be the only guy, which is great fun." He scraped together $1,100 and designed his first shoe, called the Marilyn, a clog that looked like a boot when you wore it with jeans. Madden paid the doorman of his apartment building $60 a day to drive him around New York "because I didn't have a license." He sold the shoes out of the trunk of the car for $16 wholesale to retail for $24. "It just caught on." Next came a pair of Mary Janes, which mothers started buying for "sweet sixteens, bat mitzvahs and confirmations." Madden finally hit the big time when he created a new take on platforms inspired by the glitter rock he loved in the 1970s. "Platforms are great because they're anatomically more comfortable," he said. "We did it for fashion, not for comfort, but it worked out." Everything seemed to be working out, even the chain of retail stores Madden opened. What could go wrong? The Wolf of Wall Street Steve Madden Source: Steve Madden "Interesting fellow, very smart guy," is Madden's reaction to hearing the name "We used to be very close friends." Not anymore. Belfort, "The Wolf of Wall Street," persuaded Madden to pretend to own shares in an IPO that Belfort actually owned. It was illegal. "I got involved with these guys, and it was some short cuts and stuff I'm not proud of," Madden said. "At the time we sort of thought it was a gray area of IPOs, but it wasn't." Both men went to prison. Belfort served 22 months, but Madden stayed 31 months. "It made me sharper, it made me more conscious of time," Madden said. It worried him that his business might fail while he was away, that the fashion world would move on. But it didn't worry him that much. Madden wasn't searching the prison library for copies of Vogue. "When you're in prison, you're not thinking about shoe styles. You're thinking about surviving, and you're thinking about your mistakes. You're thinking about your family." Madden was released in 2005 and barred for a time from having any role running his company. He describes a moment when he ran into Martha Stewart shortly after she, too, was released from prison in connection with a stock trading scheme. "I sensed this bond between us, it just was, you know, she made a mistake, and I made a mistake, but the great thing about America is you get second chances." Madden is using his second chance to continue guiding his company, but with a little distance. There is a CEO and management team which he credits with growing sales even while he was incarcerated. "My role is different, I'm more of a cheerleader," said Madden, adding, "that's been an adjustment for me, it's really been actually hard." Does he ever call management to complain about a new shoe? "Every day," he laughed. So after succeeding, then failing, then making a comeback, here is Madden's advice on how to make it. 1. Love what you do "It sounds a little corny, but if you love what you do, the chances are that you're going to be more successful than if you don't," said Madden. "I would advise people: Do not take jobs for the money. When you're starting out, even if it's for less money, find something that moves you, that stirs you, and you will make tons of money down the road, but at first, don't sell yourself out." 2. You've got to do the work "The Beatles in Germany, nobody knows that side," he said. "They played every night, hours and hours in obscurity in Hamburg, and then they became the greatest band in the world." He likens that hard work to his career of serving customers, learning about design and manufacturing, and figuring out the shoe business. 3. It has to be special and priced right "You must always deliver value, no matter what you're doing. If you don't have a product that has value, you're not going anywhere." 4. Just do it The issue is near and dear to me. I came to the U.S. as a kid and was undocumented for over a decade, including some of the years I spent climbing the corporate ladder at Goldman Sachs. The entire time, I was afraid that my secret would be revealed and I would be sent back to Mexico. I had already been separated from my parents for many years while they were trying to set up a life for us in America I didn't want to be separated again. While I am now a U.S. citizen, my sister continues to be undocumented and would benefit from DAPA. In addition to those of us there to support immigration reform, there was also a small group of Tea Party supporters in the crowd they were sitting with their back to the Supreme Court and behind them a mariachi sang the National Anthem before the rally officially began. A Tea Party protester, maybe 60 years old, took off his hat, but didn't get up from his chair. He proceeded to put his right hand over his chest and we both sang, "for the land of the free and the home of the brave." And then it hit me: We both believe in America, and we are both fighting for the future of our country, and when it comes to DAPA, we actually have much in common. Harold Hamm, chief executive of shale oil producer Continental Resources and Mitt Romney's 2012 energy adviser, endorsed U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday, saying he has the "fortitude to make tough decisions." Hamm, who had previously donated to U.S. Senator Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, called the real estate mogul a "business leader's candidate" who has the will to right what he called a series of mistakes from politicians in Washington, including "burdensome government regulations." "The next president of the United States must have the courage, determination and intelligence to disrupt politics as usual," Hamm wrote in a public letter. watch now watch now watch now watch now Governments and businesses must get better at explaining the benefits of international trade deals to the public, the U.S. Commerce Secretary told CNBC on Monday, following protests against a proposed massive transatlantic agreement in Germany over the weekend. "I think that we have to do a better job to counteract voices that are distorting the reality of trade agreements," Penny Pritzker told CNBC at a leading trade fair in Hannover, Germany. Pritzker and U.S. politicians including President Barack Obama have gathered in Germany to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders. The visit has not gone without hitches on Saturday, thousands of protesters gathered in Hannover to protest a planned free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the U.S. known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Joern Pollex | Getty Images TTIP would be the world's biggest bilateral trade and investment deal and could boost the EU economy by 0.5 percent of GDP, according to the European Commission. However, critics of TTIP say it could threaten environmental and consumer standards and public services. Obama, Pritzker and Merkel have all said they hope a deal is passed this year. "We need free and fair trade and we need trade between the EU and the United States that allows businesses to compete on a level playing field I think that TTIP will facilitate fair trade," Pritzker told CNBC on Monday. A large number of U.S. and European companies were in Hannover for the trade fair, including Zurich-headquartered multinational ABB. "We are definitely a supporter of the TTIP movement," ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer told CNBC on Monday. "I see a lot of responsible thoughts going in the right direction. If we do TTIP right, it will help with prosperity," he added. watch now The first design in Switzerlands new bank note series, a 50-franc note, was put into circulation by the Swiss National Bank on April 12. It has been more than 20 years since the last bank note series and the new notes, more modern and more secure than the ones they replace, represent a security overhaul since, as the bank says, the world has undergone a technological quantum leap. Connect with Coin World: The entire series is designed by Manuela Pfrunder and printed by Orell Fussli Security Printing Ltd. using an innovative, three-layer banknote substrate called Durasafe that is different from polymer. The six-note series will be introduced at six-month to one-year intervals and is scheduled to be completed in 2019. Its unifying theme is the many facets of Switzerland. A hand and a globe will appear as central elements of each note. The 50-franc note focuses on the wealth of experiences that Switzerland offers and is expressed by the wind, the notes key motif. The wind holds a paraglider aloft in the mountains and carries the seed of a dandelion, which is held in the hand. The arrows on the globe show the direction of the winds that connect Switzerland with other regions and continents. The arrows are also in the background on the face of the note. The mountain peaks and contour lines represent the countrys varied landscapes. Mountains also appear on the security strip, which shows the Alps and lists the names of the main 13,000-foot peaks in the Swiss Alps, from A for Aletschhorn to Z for Zumsteinspitze. April 25, 2016 A giant space shuttle fuel tank made for an unusual sight Monday (April 25) at the Panama Canal. The 154-foot-long (47 meter) external tank, riding atop an uncovered flatbed barge, entered the famous waterway on its journey to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it will be exhibited with NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour. "We're anticipating making the first part of the canal transit, Gatun Locks, on the [afternoon] of the 25th, overnighting in Gatun Lake and then proceeding through the Pedro Miguel Locks and Miraflores Locks on the afternoon of the 26th," Dennis Jenkins, project director for Endeavour's exhibit at the California Science Center, wrote in an email. According to the documentary team filming the transit, the orange-brown external tank entered Gatun Locks at about 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT; 11:45 a.m. local time). NASA's last existing flight-qualified example, External Tank 94 (ET-94) began its ocean voyage to the Panama Canal on April 12 by coincidence, on the 35th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch in 1981. Leaving the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans where it was built some 15 years ago, ET-94 traveled for two weeks to arrive at the canal. "[The tank] survived the first part of her historic sea voyage with no issues," Jenkins wrote. Webcam view showing the shuttle external tank ET-94 entering the Gatun Locks at the Panama Canal, April 25, 2016. (pancanal.com) ET-94's next leg will be longer. After transiting the canal's six locks a water staircase that will lift its barge 85 feet (25 m) to the height of Gatun Lake and then back down to sea level on the Pacific side the tugboat Shannon Dann will pull the barge, the Gulfmaster I, for the next 17 to 20 days to San Diego. There, ET-94 will clear customs before its expected arrival at Fisherman's Village in Marina del Rey on May 18. Two days later, the California Science Center will throw its annual Discovery Ball fundraiser at the marina to celebrate ET-94's arrival and send it on its way on an overnight road trip to its new home. Leaving on a similar but shorter trek than the one Endeavour took in 2012, the external tank will be driven through the streets of Los Angeles to Exposition Park, where the science center is located. The tank will be parked outside the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Pavilion, where Endeavour is on display today, so that workers can make repairs, restore its flight hardware and prepare it to be mated with the orbiter. Together with a pair of solid rocket boosters, ET-94 and Endeavour will be exhibited in a launch pad-like configuration in the Science Center's future Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center, slated to open in 2019. The vertical display will be the world's only exhibit of a fully authentic space shuttle stack. Guests will be able to rise to the top of the vehicle by way of a gantry-like tower. Map showing the path ET-94 took to transit the Panama Canal and to be delivered to Marina del Rey. (California Science Center) ET-94 is the fifth external tank to cross the Panama Canal and the first to do so on an open-air barge. Four previous external tanks, ETs 23, 27, 33 and 34, traveled by covered barge to California in the early 1980s, when plans existed for a shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base. ET-23 was mated with the orbiter prototype Enterprise for a fit check test at Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) before the west coast launches were canceled in the wake of the Challenger accident in January 1986. The four external tanks were subsequently shipped back to the east coast again by way of the Panama Canal to launch shuttle missions from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For more images, see our photo gallery: Crossing oceans: Photos show shuttle external tank at Panama Canal The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form Drone attacks on Kyiv rattle family of MU Ukrainian student Iranian drones are striking Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. It's where the parents and sister of University of Missouri Ukrainian student Vlad Sazhen live. SHARE By Ted Evanoff of The Commercial Appeal Here's a look at recent business developments in Memphis and the Mid-South: Monogram commits $200K for charity Monogram Loves Kids Foundation has committed $200,000 to charitable organizations. Donations of $500 to $10,000 will occur in regions where Memphis-based Monogram Foods does business. Charitable organizations can obtain an application form at monogramfoods.com. In the Memphis area, $25,000 is being made available for charities. The foodmaker operates in Bristol, Indiana; Chandler, Minnesota; Harlan, Iowa; Martinsville, Virginia; Memphis; Schulenburg, Texas; and Wilmington, Massachusetts. ServiceMaster mobilized for flood When flood waters descended on Houston last week, Memphis-based ServiceMaster Global Holdings said its ServiceMaster Restore unit mobilized 12 franchisees with more than 30 crews, more than 450 dehumidifiers and 2,000 air movers. ServiceMaster maintains a warehouse in Memphis along with a training center for franchisees. Paragon names directors Paragon Bank in Memphis announced two new members have joined its board of directors. Rudi Scheidt Jr. is chairman of Bridge Capital Asset Funding. Anita S. Vaughn is the former chief executive officer/administrator at Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women. Kingdom expands in Atlanta Kingdom Quality Communications of Memphis said an Atlanta office has been opened, headed by Amy Rosenberg. The new office has landed accounts including a Georgia school district. The public relations and advertising firm was founded by Renee Malone and Terrell Gatewood. Regional summit slated The Mid-South Mayors Council on Friday will convene RegionsSmart, a summit of more than 200 leaders from government, economic development and private sectors. The summit will consider the challenges and opportunities facing the Mid-South. The event is scheduled at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts & Education, 203 S. Main, in Memphis. Branding publication lists logo An award-winning logo created by Memphis branding company Tactical Magic for a local video production company has been included in the 9th volume of LogoLounge, the nations leading publication of branding and identity design work. Former Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Bryan Carson, left, watches as the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance board discusses whether to fine the county party for late-filing financial disclosures required by the state. During the meeting, interim party chairman Dave Cambron, second from left, and his wife, auditor Diane Cambron, right, discussed the party's efforts to correct deficiencies in the party's financial controls. By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal The two top officers of the Shelby County Democratic Party, chairwoman Randa Spears and vice chairwoman Deidre Malone, have resigned, citing personal reasons, as the party faces fines of more than $10,000 for two more late campaign finance filings. The resignations of Spears on April 13 and Malone about a month earlier puts the leadership of the party in flux again, more than a year after previous chairman Bryan Carson resigned during an internal investigation into the SCDP's finances. Spears and Malone said their resignations weren't related to the party's challenges. Norma Lester, a commissioner with both the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance and the Shelby County Election Commission, confirmed Monday that the SCDP could be fined up to $10,000 by the state board for filing its year-end finance report, due Feb. 1, more than 30 days late. The SCDP could also face a smaller fine for missing the April 11 deadline to file its first quarter finance report. Both reports were filed immediately after the SCDP became aware it missed the deadlines, she said. She said the board will consider the party's filing history and the justification when deciding whether to assess a fine, and how much it would be. The SCDP had previously been fined $1,500 by the state board three fines of $500 each for the late filings of three reports due in 2013 and 2014. Lester, a Democrat, said she'll recommend leniency for the party, whose treasurer "got busy" and didn't see the notices. "The party doesn't have $10,000 to pay," she said. "I don't know what the party has, but it doesn't have $10,000." The possible fine is another problem for the party, which has been plagued by in-fighting and has put fundraising largely on hold over the past year, even as a statewide redistricting based on the 2020 Census data looms. "The party is kind of in the wilderness," said Shelby County Commissioner Reginald Milton, himself a past vice chair of the SCDP who lost to Spears. Spears said she resigned because of an increase in her responsibilities as an events and volunteer coordinator at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, while Malone said she had agreed to serve a year before devoting her time to her marketing firm, The Carter Malone Group. Spears and Malone acknowledged the challenges they faced over the past year with the party's internal squabbles and record-keeping, but said that didn't factor into their resignations. Instead, they've been focused on getting the party's "financial house in order." "I think sometimes it's like herding cats," Spears said. "But that's nothing new." Malone said Spears' hotly contested election in March 2015 made her job more difficult. "It set up a dynamic that can be quite frankly challenging," Malone said. Milton put the situation more bluntly: "No one knows which clique is in charge of the party." Much of Spears' time has been spent putting the party's financial house in order, which has delayed the SCDP's more aggressive fundraising efforts, she said. "The feeling was, once we get the Bryan Carson situation (resolved), we'd have a big push to the donors," she said. But the party hasn't moved beyond Carson yet. After his resignation last year, an audit of party finances that was presented to a steering committee Feb. 2, 2015, said there had been $6,091.16 in "unsubstantiated activity," including $510 in overdraft fees and out-of-network ATM charges. The party is in ongoing mediation with Carson related to the charges. Carson said Monday he personally paid on behalf of the party a "few grand" in late filing fines, but said he didn't recall how much exactly. Also, separately from the filing fines, he said he paid the overdraft fees charged to the party's bank account as part of the mediation. He declined to comment further about any payments related to the mediation. Longtime Democratic activist Del Gill, who lost the chairmanship election to Spears, said Carson is at the heart of much of the in-fighting. "The elephant in the room is dealing with the issues surrounding Bryan Carson," he said. "That's the issue we've been tied up with for over a year." The party needs to settle on a leader who knows what to do now, said Milton, emphasizing the word "now." "Everything at the end of the day comes down to one basic fact, and that's 'trust,'" he said. "People need to trust people in leadership positions." With the range of the party's challenges, some party organizers including former vice chairman Dave Cambron say they think the party should give up its charter and rebuild from scratch. Cambron, who served as interim chairman following Carson's resignation and whose wife was one of the auditors, said the SCDP was organized as a political action committee, which requires additional and unnecessary record-keeping. He also said a rule that the executive committee's size be based on voter turnout can make the committee too small to function efficiently. "I'm afraid too much time is spent on processes than on useful things like getting out the vote and finding viable candidates," he said. Malone said the talk of giving up the charter was being driven in part by fears over which faction would secure the chairmanship position. Ken Taylor, a Democratic activist who worked for Malone as deputy campaign manager for former Mayor A C Wharton, said another reason to consider giving up the charter and starting a new Democratic organization was to be in a better position to win in the 2018 elections, which will decide which lawmakers oversee the 2020 redistricting. He also said the party needed a new brand, to be more inclusive of younger activists and more open-minded about new ways of winning elections. "What happened is, they're still trying to fight a modern war using bayonets and muskets," he said. But Mary Mancini, chairwoman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, said she hadn't heard anyone suggest that the local party give up its charter, and was quick to dismiss the idea. "That's not happening," she said. The party's executive committee is currently slated to nominate and vote on a replacement for Malone, and perhaps Spears, on June 2. Only a committee member can be vice chair, but anyone can become the new party chair. Second vice chairman and Shelby County Sheriff's Office Lt. Michael Pope is the party's interim chairman. The Shelby County general election and state primary elections are set for Aug. 4. Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan (Dana Edelson/NBC via AP, File) SHARE By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal Tracy Morgan isn't coming to Tunica. Citing Mississippi's controversial "Religious Conscience" law, the Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock television star announced last week he was ditching a planned April 29 show at Horseshoe Casino. The cancellation was the second in the state and the first locally by a performer over the law that allows businesses and government officials to decline service when doing so would violate their moral views. Rock musician Bryan Adams earlier dropped a show in Biloxi. Some ask rhetorically who cares what Tracy Morgan and Bryan Adams do. The answer, apparently, is a lot of people. The short story on his cancellation garnered steady readership and feedback for several days after it appeared, generating much more response than other North Mississippi stories on substantive topics like school funding. All of which is to say, efforts to downplay negative consequences notwithstanding, people are watching, waiting and listening when it comes to news about the measure's negative impact. This tempest in a teapot, as some have called coverage of the law's aftermath, continues to simmer. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition In Sunday's newspaper (see here), I reported on security measures that are commonplace in many houses of worship. The Church Protection Act, which becomes law in Mississippi July 1, allows members of designated security teams to carry guns in churches. Critics fear the law is just the latest effort to legitimize hand guns in places where they were once legally off limits. What leaders of area churches large and small say, however, is that security isn't something Mississippi legislators suddenly invented with this new law. Many churches, such as Brown Missionary Baptist in Southaven, already have security teams in place that include members in the law enforcement field who carry weapons. Other churches, such as the much smaller Graceview Presbyterian, say they plan to consider adding armed security. There are valid reasons to be concerned about the proliferation of hand guns and whether it really makes us safer we should be the safest nation in the world by that reasoning but it's also important to keep things in perspective, especially with hot button topics like this one. Guns in churches? They're already there. School funding As mentioned earlier, a story last week reported on the just-adjourned Legislature's failure to revamp Mississippi's school funding formula. The result is that the state's school districts, including the largest in DeSoto County, will continue to receive less state money than called for in the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. DeSoto Superintendent Cory Uselton discussed what it means for his district, which is using $17 million in reserve funds to cover general fund expenses under the budget approved in June 2015. One of the county's legislators, state Sen. Chris Massey, R-Nesbit, said for that story that a proposal on school funding never took shape during a legislative session that became bogged down on other issues. He said he expects the matter to return to legislators next year. Too late for inclusion in the story were comments from another of the county's legislators, state Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven. So, in the interest of giving Blackwell his say on the matter, this is what he had to say: "Most state agencies received cuts. Despite slow revenue growth, we were able to fund K-12 ... for the coming year at $2.24 billion." Uselton, dealing with his first budget since taking office in January, will no doubt have plenty to talk about with the county's legislative delegation before next session arrives. And finally ... The second installment of our Suburban Voices podcast series appeared last week. Michael Smith, founder of the DeSoto County African American History Symposium, was the guest. He talked about the group's renaming (it's now the North Mississippi Cultural Foundation) and its upcoming Juneteenth celebration at Horn Lake's Latimer Lakes Park. Smith also touches on the "Religious Conscience" law and the debate over Mississippi's state flag. Take about 20 minutes to listen. SHARE Some Shelby County Commissioners just cannot pass up an opportunity to take a shot at Memphis. During a commission committee meeting Wednesday, where commissioners voted 2-3 against a funding request from Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich to pay for additional staff to handle the work generated by the Memphis Police Department's body camera program, Commissioner David Reaves said it is money the city of Memphis should be paying. Reaves groused about the education costs that the "inept government" has dumped on the county. "I'm so sick of them dumping on the county. It just frustrates me to no end how much stuff they dump on us," he said. Commissioner Heidi Shafer contributed that this should be Memphis' problem. "I don't want us to be the first adopters on this. If the city of Memphis wants this adopted, then they need to provide the funding to have it fully implemented." Shafer said. First, taking potshots at Memphis only widens the city-suburban divide, which may be good posturing for garnering suburbanite votes, but does nothing make this community a better place to live. And, adopting Shafer's view should lead to a prorated refund to Memphians for all those millions of dollars in taxes we pay for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office to patrol streets outside the city limits. It is flawed logic the kind of talk that makes Memphians rightly ask what they get for their county property tax dollars. Weirich made the request for $86,057, which would be increased by 75 percent in matching funds for the Public Defender's office, as required by state law. The money would help cover the cost of salary and benefits for five full-time video paralegals, who would review all of the body camera video generated by MPD's program. The money also pays for the materials they would need to do their job. The DA's office handles 180,000 to 200,000 cases a year. The body cameras will produce about 53,000 hours of video evidence that must be reviewed, redacted and "maintained in our office forever," Weirich said. The city is in the midst of a five-year, $25 million project to outfit the Memphis Police Department with body-worn cameras for officers as well as in-car cameras for the cruisers. Mayor Jim Strickland's proposed budget for the 2016-2017 fiscal year includes money for the program, including the Police Department hiring 10 video analysts. So, it is a big stretch to accuse the city of dumping the cost of the project on the county. City and county officials and residents are so busy throwing rocks at each other sometimes that they forget that Memphis is part of Shelby County and that Shelby County includes Memphis. Getting the body camera program up and running is a crucial community issue. The cameras will add more credibility to investigations into allegations of police misconduct and abuse, protect police against false allegations of abuse and give Weirich a county official a significant tool in pursuing criminal justice. We urge the full commission to ignore Shafer's and Reaves' protestations and faulty reasoning when commissioners meet today and approve Weirich's request. SHARE By Kathleen Parker CHARLESTON, S.C. African-Americans in the South can't get a break when it comes to voting, as history can't deny. After all they've endured through slavery, Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, their voices are still treated dismissively by tone-deaf politicians who would ask for their votes. If you're thinking Bernie Sanders, you're partly right. Earlier this month, having lost massively to Hillary Clinton across the Southeast, Sanders commented that the bevy of early Southern primaries "distorts reality." In other comments soon thereafter, perhaps covering for what was obviously a lapse in political acumen, he clarified that those early states are the most conservative in the country. Not really. And not really. While some segments of the South are undeniably conservative, Dixie is also home to a large and reliably Democratic cohort African-Americans. Many of the most liberal people serving in today's Congress were elected by Southerners, and especially black Southerners. The reality is that Sanders failed to earn their votes in part by treating the South as a lost cause. Many took Sanders' remarks as insinuating that the black vote isn't all that important. Adding to the insult, actor Tim Robbins, a Sanders surrogate, said that Clinton's win in South Carolina, where more than half of Democratic voters are African-American, was "about as significant" as winning Guam. Not cool, Mr. Robbins, but you were great in "The Shawshank Redemption." The gentleman from Vermont (black population: 1 percent) and the gentleman from Hollywood failed to charm Southern Democratic leaders, who recently responded with a letter condemning Sanders' remarks. The signatories, including the Democratic Party chairs of South Carolina (an African-American), Louisiana, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, expressed concern that Sanders' characterization of the South minimized "the importance of the voices of a core constituency for our party." The letter writers also pointed out that some of Sanders' victories have been in states that are more conservative than Southern ones, such as Oklahoma, Utah and Idaho. That black voters would prefer a familiar candidate such as Clinton over someone whose personal experience among African-Americans seems to have been relatively limited, notwithstanding his participation in civil rights demonstrations, is hardly surprising. For decades, the Clintons have worked for issues and protections important to the African-American community. But the Clintons, too, have been dismissive toward black voters when things didn't go their way. During the 2008 primaries when it was clear that Barack Obama would trounce Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, Bill Clinton remarked that Jesse Jackson also had won the state in both 1984 and 1988. No one needs a translator to get Clinton's meaning. His next hastily drawn sentence "Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here" did little to distract from the implication that Obama would win because he was black. Not cool, Mr. President. Hillary Clinton got herself into a hot mess when she asserted that President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the Civil Rights Act, which many saw as dismissive of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. She scrambled to explain herself and mitigate the damage, but feelings once hurt are hard to mend. Then again, time is a miracle worker, and all is apparently forgiven. Hillary Clinton is the new black and has been duly rewarded for her loyalty, patience and sportsmanship. She played nice with Obama, crushing her resentment beneath the heel of her sensible shoes and erasing from memory Obama's condescending "you're likable enough, Hillary" during a debate. On the campaign trail, Clinton now tosses rose petals at Obama's feats, promising to carry on his policies not because she necessarily agrees with them, but because it's politically savvy. For his part, the president has all but endorsed Clinton, returning the favor of her indulgence and her husband's vigorous support. The truth is, only Obama could have defeated Clinton for the 2008 nomination, and he probably did win at least partly because he was African-American. The country felt it was time for a black president and Obama's message of hope against a purple-colored backdrop of streamlined unity, baby, was intoxicating. He was a dazzling diamond in the rough world of partisan politics. Clinton shares none of Obama's sparkle, but she has more than paid her dues and African-American voters have rewarded her loyalty. For his part, Sanders not only confirmed African-Americans' concerns about his disconnect from their daily lives, but was also badly mistaken about the South's distance from reality. In the South, black votes matter a lot and no one has understood this better than the Clintons. Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com. SHARE By Michael Lindenberger Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is a machine with a broken off switch, and it's America's terrible, rotten luck to have to watch it play on until its batteries die. His is a shallow campaign, energetically devoted to winning votes on the cheap. He continues to ask the very least of the same America he wants to lead. Thursday morning, the Texan blasted Donald Trump for being soft on the bathroom issue. "Gosh, he thought that men should be able to go into the girls' bathroom if they want to," Cruz told a crowd hundreds strong in Frederick, Maryland. "Have we gone stark raving nuts?" Trump's offending comments? Earlier, Trump had been asked about North Carolina's ghastly law that, among other things, requires people to use a bathroom assigned to the gender that matches the one on their birth certificate. Trump said something eminently reasonable about the discriminatory law that has stirred up a nationwide backlash. "There have been very few complaints the way it is," Trump said. "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble. The problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic punishment they are taking." Trump, working against type, stepped away from the crazy. But Cruz, endlessly on the lookout for the cheap and divisive, saw something besides trouble: He saw opportunity and seized it with self-righteous zeal. "Here is basic common sense. Grown adult men, strangers, should not be alone in bathrooms with little girls," he told the crowd. It's a flimsy, backward argument to begin with. Men and boys, and women and girls, have shared bathrooms for as long as public bathrooms have been in use. Having a transgender woman who was born a male step into a stall next to a girl in a public restroom is not grounds for panic. But for Cruz, it seemed like a chance to make Trump look like an avatar of the fall of Western civilization and maybe a chance for a few extra votes. It's entirely in keeping with Cruz's performance as a senator and as a candidate for president. He has proved himself to be capable of saying nearly anything at any time to win an argument, grab a spotlight or score a vote. Months ago, he was asked why he had stayed so quiet in the face of Trump's outrageous statements early in the campaign. He would say with labored patience that he knew reporters wanted to start a fight, but he was honoring Ronald Reagan's commandment to never to criticize a fellow Republican. Actually, he was just too scared or too crafty to cross Trump too soon, lest he suffer the fate of other candidates who objected, including what had happened to Rick Perry and would soon happen to Jeb Bush. Proof came a few months later, when he (as usual) got outmaneuvered in the Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Frustrated, he lashed out and called McConnell a liar right on the Senate floor, sending shock waves across the capital. No wonder Republican Rep. Peter King of New York told reporters just ahead of the Tuesday's primary that Cruz's performance as senator has led King to believe Cruz would never be able to bring this country together as president. "I hate Ted Cruz and I' think I'll take cyanide if he ever got the nomination," he added. That's only slightly less poetic (and hyperbolic) than Sen. Lindsey Graham's statement at the annual congressional dinner. "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you," he said. He has since lined up behind Cruz, but even so, he's still arguing that John Kasich would be a better president. Cruz has spent his time in the Senate playing the role of obstructionist. When he shut the government down over Obamacare, his own party denounced him as foolish and conceded the effort was futile. But Cruz had a response: It was good for getting votes. I asked him once whether he was worried that his constant positioning as the leader of a movement had left Texas with just one senator willing to do the work they were hired to do. His response: Not at all. The bigger the bombs he sets off in the Senate, the more people back home love him. Now he wants to be president, a job usually understood to be particularly ill-suited for a bomb-thrower. To win, he's asking the mainstream Republican Party to rally to his cause. "Join me now on this journey of less talk and more actions, and real solutions," Cruz he said in Pennsylvania, where he's almost certain to get smashed again this week. Neither party elders nor GOP voters en masse are answering that call. He's so far behind Trump that there is virtually no chance he can catch him before the convention in Cleveland this summer. Instead, he's deployed teams of lawyers looking to scavenge delegates across the country in the hopes that by the summer he'll be able to make with a straight face an appeal for the party to unite behind him. Fat chance. Michael Lindenberger is a member of The Dallas Morning News editorial board. Contact him at mlindenberger@dallasnews.com. SHARE By Ruth Marcus WASHINGTON Into the overheated, under-informed bathroom wars comes a well-timed intrusion of sanity in the form of a decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court's ruling in the case of Virginia high school junior Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, was correct and groundbreaking, with implications beyond the school setting. Yet the decision also creates the legal framework for situations more challenging and perhaps more unsettling than what should be the routine matter of letting people use their restroom of choice. Grimm was born a girl but has changed his name, has undergone hormone therapy, and identifies as a boy. When Grimm and his mother told school officials of this fact, they took it in stride. He used the boys' restroom. No big deal. Then the school board got involved, with community meetings that sunk to predictable levels, with warnings of impending sexual assaults and straight boys donning dresses to infiltrate the girls' bathroom. So Grimm was barred from the boys' bathroom and told to choose between the girls' facilities or a new unisex restroom. For some students, the unisex alternative might have sufficed. To Grimm, it served as a daily reminder of stigma and exclusion. If you scoff, remember what it felt like to be an adolescent, craving acceptance from your peers. Grimm sued, claiming that the policy violated Title IX, the federal law barring educational institutions from discriminating on the basis of sex. But what does sex mean in this context? Is it determined exclusively by reference to genitalia (as the lower court concluded) or, more broadly, by what the student understands himself or herself to be? The Education Department has said schools "generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity." The appeals court, splitting 2-to-1, said that interpretation was entitled to deference, and sent Grimm's case back to the lower court, which also has before it Grimm's claim that his constitutional rights were violated. That seems like the right outcome which puts me, at least on this issue, with Donald Trump. Commenting on North Carolina's offensive and, under the 4th Circuit decision, legally vulnerable bathroom law, Trump said Thursday that people should "use the bathroom they feel is appropriate." Indeed. Just do your business. No peeking over urinal dividers or under stalls to check on your neighbor's biological equipment. What invasion of privacy? What harm? Here's the more complicated part. Although Grimm disavowed interest in using the boy's locker room, the Education Department's reasoning applies in that setting too. Last year, the department intervened on behalf of a transgender Illinois girl who said she wanted equal access to the girls' locker room, and not to be relegated to a separate facility. She wanted as a mom, my heart goes out to her "to be a girl like every other girl." The school district said it worried that allowing her into the locker rooms "would expose female students to being observed in a state of undress by a biologically male individual." The case ended up being settled with agreement involving privacy curtains and accommodations for any girls who wanted additional privacy protections. Transgender rights lawyers say the reality of such encounters turns out to be less problematic than the imagined intrusions. "We're talking about people who also have their sense of privacy and modesty, and who are not going to want to have everyone see an anatomical part of themselves that they feel should never have been there in the first place," said ACLU lawyer Joshua Block, who represented Grimm. Still, the implications of requiring equal treatment lead to some challenging situations. If I had a transgender daughter about to start college, I'd want her to have the same opportunity as every freshman to bond with her roommate. But if I were the mother of that roommate if my daughter called and said her roommate turned out to be a transgender girl I have to admit I'd be unnerved. Even for people of good will, the emergence of transgender rights is going to take some adjusting. And then there is Ted Cruz, who sunk, typically, to lowest-common-denominator ugliness. "Grown adult men strangers should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls," he said, seizing on Trump's comments. As if being transgender is equivalent to a propensity to prey on children. Of the same gender. The country needs a mature discussion of this complex issue, and how to accommodate competing needs. Instead, the campaign drives candidates like Cruz to pander to the worst instincts of the ignorant, and the basest of the base. Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com. Thanks to today's data management platforms (DMPs), brands are becoming more sophisticated in how they collect, store and analyze data in order to improve their customer experience. From Adobe AudienceManager and Core Audience to Oracle-acquired BlueKai and X+1, a growing number of DMP software options with a range of specializations are now available. Wal-Mart was one of the first companies to experiment with data warehousing of transactional data before the aforementioned tools existed. Since then, what companies are doing with the help of well-integrated data and data management platforms has become increasingly innovative. For example, some Walt Disney World Resort guests now wear MagicBands instead of carrying room keys and entrance tickets. When guests book their trips, initial data is collected and stored in an encrypted database, and then the MagicBands use radio-frequency technology to connect guests with their trip necessities. Among the perks, this data allows Disney cast members at the resorts to greet guests personally at different touch points throughout the park. American Express now recommends specific merchant offerings to card members based on their spending behaviors and location, all thanks to sophisticated data management. And a data management platform in the health sector, Health Catalyst, helped North Memorial Health Care of Minneapolis-Saint Paul reduce its elective, early term deliveries by 75% through careful data analysis. Even the media industry is using DMPs to take better advantage of reader data. Let's take a look at a few examples of how. Making advertisers happier. Jon Suarez-Davis, chief marketing and strategy officer of DMP software, Krux, explains, "Media companies are receiving more requests for precise audience data from their advertiser partners. . . . We help them collect and retrieve data from multiple sources, and enable them to use this data to personalize content and advertising experiences through precise audience segmentation and targeting." Creating a more personalized reader experience. Smart use of data and sophisticated data management platforms helps digital publishers to create more personalized experiences for readers that go far beyond allowing them to opt in to the newsletters of their choice. Today, media companies can tailor reader experience as intricately as Amazon tailors shoe shopping. Recommending articles based on similar topics or mentions is a great place to start, but it doesn't stop there. Many media companies encourage readers to spend more time perusing articles or watching videos by using DMPs to ensure that the majority of the content fed to them is catered to their age, interests and recent behavior. Developing a new revenue stream. Suarez-Davis adds, "We're also seeing many publishers and media companies using the Krux Link peer-to-peer data connections platform to create new revenue streams. By taking advantage of Link's secure, policy-managed environment, data owners can make their first-party audience assets available to pre-approved buyers." These deals, which are sometimes referred to as second-party data deals, allow data owners to establish terms and timing for all transactions, and the data owners have control over how their data will be used and by whom. Better predicting what readers want. Analyzing reader behavior using a sophisticated data management platform also helps to inform publications' overall content. Consider on-site search data one part to a collective data whole that frequently helps media entities to better define what to pursue editorially and what to pass on, based on historical data and reader behavior. There are so many interesting ways that brands have used DMPs to customize the customer experience, and the media industry is keeping pace with reader data. The key is for organizations to adopt an iterative mindset so they can benefit from owning well-integrated data about customers or readers. It's all about collecting, analyzing and drawing insights, taking action and measuring effectiveness. Data science may have dominated recent discussions about IT skills in chronically short supply, but it's not the only area facing a shortage. Cloud computing is another big one, and on Monday the OpenStack Foundation launched a new program it hopes will help. The group's new Certified OpenStack Administrator (COA) exam is designed to give cloud professionals a way to prove their worth while also helping employers identify qualified candidates. Originally announced in October at OpenStack Summit Tokyo, the performance-based exam can now be delivered virtually anywhere in the world through the OpenStack Foundation's training marketplace. It is the foundation's first professional certification offering. Cloud computing has challenged companies to re-skill engineers and redefine culture and processes, said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation. OpenStack was among the 10 top-paying tech skills identified by IT careers site Dice earlier this year, earning qualified professionals an average yearly salary of US$138,579. The number of OpenStack job listings doubled in 2015, according to jobs site Indeed.com. A Certified OpenStack Administrator typically has at least six months of OpenStack experience as well as the skills required to operate and manage an OpenStack cloud, the foundation said. Representatives from dozens of training companies around the world -- some of which offer their own certification programs -- helped to define the exam's requirements. Some will bundle the COA exam with their training programs. The exam will be available on a limited basis at this week's OpenStack Summit in Austin, Texas, as well. Intensive training courses will be offered free of charge to registered participants by sponsors including Cloud Foundry, Mirantis, Rackspace, Red Hat, Solinea and SUSE. Microsoft has given users of its OneDrive cloud storage service a 90-day notice that their free allowance will be scaled back from 15GB to 5GB in late July, according to emails and reports from customers. The 67% reduction in free storage space will take effect July 27. On the same day, Microsoft will also eliminate the 15GB free "Camera Roll" bonus it once gave to anyone who asked. The result: Users who formerly had 30GB of free storage will have just 5GB. Those reductions were announced in early November, when Microsoft said it was retreating from its prior promise of unlimited storage for the consumer-grade Office 365 subscriptions, the $70 Personal and the $100 Home plans. Office 365 subscribers will instead have 1TB of storage space for each user. (Office 365 Home allows up to five users; Personal only one.) The shrinking free allotments were also announced in November. At the time, Microsoft said it would enforce the new limits "in early 2016." OneDrive users who asked Microsoft before Jan. 31 to let them keep their 15GB free storage allowance and 15GB 'Camera Roll' bonus received this email recently, confirming the retention of the larger space allowance. In December, however, Microsoft apologized for the clumsy way it had handled the announcement and said then-current users had until the end of January to request that their 15GB Camera Roll bonus and the additional 10GB of standard storage be retained. Microsoft has honored those requests. As part of the storage space cuts, Microsoft eliminated two paid plans that had offered 100GB for $2 per month and 200GB for $4 a month. Instead, it now offers only a 50GB plan for $2 per month. When it broke the bad news to OneDrive users last year, Microsoft said it would give them a 90-day notice before it made the files read-only in accounts that exceeded the 5GB limit. Those users will be able to view and download their files, but will not be able to add new files to the cloud space. Other restrictions were to follow, including a locked account after nine months and possible file deletion after one year. OneDrive users railed against the decision last year, and the news of the July deadline got their hackles up again. "What's the reason for moving from the 15GB to the 5GB as I was very happy with the service until this announcement was made," wrote Deirdre Donohoe in a message posted to the OneDrive support forum. "Does this mean we will have to pay for a service that was once free?" Although Microsoft said the reductions had been triggered by abuse -- in November the company said, "A small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings" -- the decrease of the free allowance could be a financial gain for the company. According to Computerworld's calculations, if Microsoft convinced just 10% of the OneDrive estimated free user base to switch to the lowest-priced paid option, it would record almost $1.1 billion in new revenue annually. Other OneDrive users portrayed Microsoft's changes as bait and switch. "A year ago Windows 10 comes out with OneDrive integrated. The size of free storage was what made it a useful tool to try out and to use," said someone identified as Sid Cheeseburger last week on the support forum. "Had you started with a 5GB limit I'd have known it wasn't for me. A year on and I have just received an email telling me of intended product changes reducing this storage. I feel like I've been lured in, hooked and now had my service snatched away unless I pay. Am I the only one left wondering whether that was Microsoft's intention all along?" Sid said he wouldn't be purchasing additional storage and complained that he had to make new plans. "So once again I'm having my time wasted having to unwind system changes as a result of a Microsoft change of product policy -- after a year," he griped. In December, Microsoft changed the storage allowances for OneDrive for Business, the cloud-based service available to corporate users whose employers subscribed to Office 365. Rather than unlimited storage for all subscribers, Microsoft said it would scale back space to 1TB for all but workers on the more expensive E3, E4 -- since discontinued -- and E5 plans. More information about the changes to OneDrive can be found in an FAQ that goes into detail about how the company will handle accounts that exceed the new 5GB allotment. The U.S. government believes the Internet of Things (IoT) has enormous economic potential across all industries. Its machine-to-machine technologies can reduce automobile-related injuries, usher in an era of precise weather forecasting and automate all types of processes. But what impact will IoT have on jobs? Will it create more than it destroys? And what happens to all the data devices generate? With those kinds of issues at stake, the U.S. Department of Commerce is now seeking public comment on the "benefits, challenges and potential roles for the government in fostering the advancement of the Internet of Things." There are 28 questions, and multiple sub-parts to some questions. It's a long list. The Commerce Department began accepting comments Friday, opening a comment period that lasts until 5 p.m. ET on May 23. The government plans to make the responses -- likely to run into the thousands -- public, resulting in the nation's single largest knowledge dump about the future of technology and where Americans think it should go. The focus on IoT is deceptively broad. Any IoT discussion will likely bring in all its related technologies processes: Robotics, automation on every level, widespread use of artificial intelligence tools, and the collection of incalculable amounts of data about every aspect of life. In sum, the government wants to know how the IoT will impact life, job, security and privacy. Many of the questions are broad, such as: Are the challenges and opportunities arising from IoT similar to those that governments and societies have previously addressed with existing technologies, or are they different, and if so, how? What are the most significant new opportunities and/or benefits created by IoT, be they technological, policy, or economic? And what technological issues may hinder the development of IoT, if any? The government's goal is to map out its policy role, including research, economic development, standards and security and privacy. The U.S. can influence standards, set rules on security and the privacy of data and influence the market through its purchasing power. "It would be good to have a clear policy on IoT from one of the biggest buying centers in the world," said Alfonso Velosa, an analyst at Gartner. Data ownership is another problem waiting to be solved. For instance, a carmaker sells vehicles to a car rental firm. The connected vehicles today can send information back to the auto maker, which may use it for vehicle maintenance. But that data is valuable for competitive and monetary reasons. This is data a car maker could sell to another party, perhaps an insurer. Should it be allowed to? "Right now we don't have any rules about how that data is managed," said Velosa. The government can also help set standards and rules governing security at the device, communications and cloud level. Some of the security rules the government needs to set are obvious, particularly around the ability devices to spy on people, said Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester. But the government needs to think about security and privacy rules now because they "are hard to undo later," said Gillett. Joshua New, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, a Washington-based research group, said there are already bipartisan efforts in Congress to try to develop a national IoT plan. Indeed, in January, Reps. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), launched the Congressional Caucus on the Internet of Things. It has two broad goals: to educate lawmakers about IoT and develop a policy role. In the Senate, lawmakers have their own bill, the DIGIT Act (Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things), which would create a national working group to develop IoT policy recommendations. There is a lot the government can do, said New. For instance, it can bring together cities, public transit agencies and tech firms and help broker agreements on deploying IoT-based technologies. This government involvement could create markets for vendors, encouraging research and investment, he said. The government will take the public comment data and issue a "green paper," which is the name for a tentative government report, not an official statement of policy. (That will come in a subsequent "white paper.") While this is a big project to undertake in the remaining months of Obama administration, considering the bipartisan IoT activities in Congress and widespread interest in the area, "this issue is here to stay," said New. This week marks the annual North American OpenStack Summit, this year being held back where it all began, in Austin, Texas. When OpenStack began, half a dozen or so years ago, it was focused on giving service providers and large enterprises the ability to compete with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Using the open source OpenStack operating system, organizations could build themselves an "Amazon-like" cloud of their own. The initiative has, it must be admitted, been buffeted by some strong headwinds -- too many vendors creating similar offerings, too much venture investment in undifferentiated and immature companies, and too much talk (and corresponding lack of action) all hurt the early days of OpenStack. But since then things have changed: OpenStack now has its own standalone foundation, there is far more maturity around the project and many of those early vendors have gone, leaving behind fewer, but arguably more mature, organizations building businesses on top of OpenStack. Given where we stand today, it is pleasing to see some significant success stories across the spectrum of OpenStack companies -- from standalone pure-play vendors to large existing vendors that have an OpenStack practice to complement their other business. OpenStack is certainly now a thing. A good example of these real-world use cases comes from open source stalwart Red Hat. The company is today announcing that Verizon has recently completed the largest known deployment of OpenStack for its network function virtualization (NFV) needs. This deployment covers five of Verizon's U.S. data centers. The project began in 2015 and created a production design based on a core and pod architecture that provides the capabilities and flexibility necessary to meet what are understandably complex requirements for a telco that needs to deliver agility -- both internally and externally. This is also a pleasing win since last year at the OpenStack summit in Vancouver, there was much talk about the applicability of OpenStack for these sort of telco NFV use cases. Positive, then, for Red Hat to be able to crow at the summit this year about Verizon's successful deployment. According to the company, deployments are currently in progress in additional domestic data center and aggregation sites, with international locations to be deployed over the next several months. The design also will be adopted in edge network sites by the end of the year. It is also a good example of the ecosystem that exists around OpenStack -- Verizon worked with Big Switch Networks, Dell and Red Hat to develop the OpenStack pod-based design that went from concept to deployment of more than 50 racks in five production data centers in less than nine months. That is fast for a telco, and points to the tightening links between discrete OpenStack vendors. "This NFV project is another step in building Verizons next-generation network -- with implications for the industry," said Adam Koeppe, vice president of technology at Verizon. "New and emerging applications are highlighting the need for collaborative research and development in technologies like NFV. We consider this achievement to be foundational for building the Verizon cloud that serves our customers' needs anywhere, anytime, any app." In terms of the various OpenStack technologies utilized for Verizon, the project is based on OpenStack with Red Hat Ceph Storage and a spine-leaf fabric for each pod controlled through a Neutron plugin to Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The multi-vendor deployment leverages Big Switch for SDN controller software managing Dell switches, which are orchestrated by Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The biggest claim to fame for startup Helium, an Internet of Things company that started in 2013, has been perhaps co-founder Shawn Fanning. Fanning, of course, is the serial entrepreneur who developed Napster and started other companies. But Helium is making a name for itself by expanding from its software beginnings to usher companies into IoT with sensors, software and cloud services. Its goal is to improve company productivity by putting the streams of data collected from sensors to action. Helium is releasing new sensors, applications and development tools as it builds out a comprehensive product line. The company's latest product is a new sensor called Helium Green, which can monitor temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, motion, and light. The sensor hardware offers three years of battery life on two AA batteries. It can be plugged into a mesh network of interconnected devices through the emerging IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which is behind Zigbee and Google's Thread protocols. Helium also announced the Pulse monitoring application, which helps keep track of a mesh of sensors. If there's a malfunction or a sensor passes a pre-set threshold, a notification is sent to a smartphone, PC, or tablet. Alerts can also be set up based on historical or current data patterns. Still coming from Helium will be a range of sensors, including one to check air quality. Oil and gas companies have started using these types of sensors to check for carbon monoxide and toxic gases at dig sites, an important employee safety measure. If inconsistencies are found, the sensors will report back to the company. Helium sensors are easy to set up and have flexible functionality, said Rob Chandhok, president and chief operating officer at Helium. It can be hard to manage an army of sensors. Helium is trying to make that easy for customers by bringing transparency to installations at the hardware and software levels, Chandhok said. Helium is also providing a cloud service to make sense of that data. IoT is a broad market, and can be confusing to many potential customers. Gradual exposure to interconnected sensors and cloud-based data analysis is one way to educate and retain customers, Chandhok said. For example, Helium wants to make asset management and monitoring easier through sensors. Sensors could change industries like insurance, which could report on incidents like accidents and ultimately help set policy rates for customers. Helium has already had success in areas like refrigeration. The company's sensors ensure refrigerators in hospitals and restaurants are functioning correctly at the right temperatures. The company is also targeting building installations, which can build asset management systems around sensors. Helium also announced it received US $20 million in funding from venture capital firms including FirstMark Capital, GV, and Khosla Ventures. Microsoft today kicked off a two-for-one deal for its Windows-based smartphones, tossing in a free Lumia 950 when customers buy a $649 unlocked top-tier Lumia 950 XL. The give-away will run until May 1, or while supplies last, Microsoft said on its e-store. Last week, Microsoft told Wall Street that sales of its Lumia devices -- virtually the only smartphones powered by Windows 10 Mobile -- plummeted 73% in the March quarter compared to the year before, falling from 8.8 million in 2015 to 2.3 million in 2016. Revenue from its phone division fell 47%, to $662 million, in the first three months of this year. More to the point of the two-for-one sale, on Thursday, Microsoft's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said, "Sell-through of our Lumia products was weak, and we exited the quarter with relatively high channel inventory." Simply put, poor sales left more than the expected number of devices in stores and warehouses. The buy-one-get-one-free deal may be Microsoft's way of flushing out the current overstock. Buyers in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico will receive a $549 unlocked Lumia 950 when they purchase an unlocked Lumia 950 XL. The latter is Microsoft's top-of-the-line Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, which went on sale in November 2015. The offer is limited to two Lumia pairs per customer. Microsoft's smartphone business continued to drag down the Redmond, Wash. firm's overall revenue outlook. While Hood did not pin a dollar amount to Lumia's impact on the June quarter, Microsoft's final in its 2016 fiscal year, she acknowledged that, "We expect year-over-year revenue declines to steepen in Q4 as we work through our Lumia channel position." In hindsight, her comment was a hint of the two-for-one offer. The company's attempt to compete with Apple, Samsung, and a host of others has been a disaster. Last year, Microsoft wrote off virtually all of its investment in Nokia, the previous manufacturer of the Lumia line. Altogether, Microsoft blew about $10 billion on its venture into smartphones. At the time of the write-down, CEO Satya Nadella said, "In the near-term, we'll run a more effective and focused phone portfolio while retaining capability for long-term reinvention in mobility." With sales of only 2.3 million smartphones over three months, even that retrenchment of expectations now appears overly optimistic. By comparison, Apple sold about 61.2 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2015 -- the most recent March quarter available -- or about 2.3 million every three-and-a-half days. Cllr Ian Bowyer is Leader of the Conservative Group on Plymouth City Council. As voters head to the polls on May 5, they know there is too much at stake to risk a Labour-run council in Plymouth. The future of Devonport Naval Base and HM Dockyard hangs in the balance as local people clearly recognise that Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader spells big trouble for Plymouth a major risk to jobs and prosperity. Corbyns stance on the replacement of Trident is deeply worrying. Scrapping the Trident replacement programme would have enormous implications for the defence of our country and for Plymouth where over 10,000 jobs are dependent on the Devonport Naval Base. Over 685m of spend within our local economy would be lost it would take years for Plymouths economy to recover. High spending, high tax policies will also hurt working people. They damage our local economy which has seen unemployment halve over 2,400 more people in Plymouth now have the security of a regular wage packet. Conservatives in Plymouth want to deliver more jobs and apprenticeship opportunities and build on the increasing business confidence we see within our growing national economy. Our ambition is to grow the Citys population to over 300,000 but we recognise that to do so will need more homes, schools, better roads, leisure, health and retail facilities all of which will need careful planning. Our priorities come from listening to residents: some are local and some are strategic and city wide. These include better rail links which are vital for Plymouth and the entire South West region. We have new rolling stock and faster trains promised for 2018, but we also need a more resilient and reliable line allowing 2 hour journeys to London we cant allow the South West to be cut off again during stormy weather. Locally, it is obvious the City has a growing litter problem we will set up a task group to bring forward a city wide strategy. Our pavement surfaces have deteriorated we will introduce a pavement improvement programme. City motorists are reporting more congestion we will review city traffic light operations to try and smooth traffic flows. We want to explore further the concept of volunteering. Our local election this year has assumed greater importance as, for the first time here in Plymouth, the Council is in no overall control after last years elections. Historically Plymouth has tended to lean one way or the other, Conservative or Labour, and so last years result meant some serious discussions across the two parties were needed. The outcome was an agreed working arrangement which allowed the business of the Council to go forward, with the largest Party (Labour, 28 seats) assuming the executive functions of the Council, with Conservatives (26 seats) running the scrutiny function. This year, as a target Council, we are working hard across the City to reverse this position. The City covers three constituencies and we have formed an umbrella campaign group with the Association Chairmen, the MPs, our Campaign Manager, my Deputy and I. We have overseen the campaign, agreed priorities and issues, and established a clear, consistent branded message across the City to promote the Conservative vision for Plymouth. Our message has been simple we will offer a competent community based Council that delivers public services to the people of Plymouth. We wont forget we are Conservatives we will strive to keep council tax low and balance the books. We wont spend money we dont have or borrow money we cant afford. Conservative Councillors will stand up for Plymouth. This election is all about Plymouth jobs, Plymouth families, and Plymouths economic prospects. Instead of glancing back at Barack Obamas visit, lets look forward to the TV referendum debates. After all, theyre likely to have more of an immediate impact, and perhaps a more decisive one too, on how people decide what to do. This applies especially to the final one the only full debate that the BBC is holding. It takes place on June 21, only two days before the vote itself. It is true that the media is disproportionately interested in itself and that it tends to puff the importance of what it does, and that postal votes will have gone out well before the event takes place. None the less, in a referendum in which a large groups of people will be undecided at the last, or in which their attachement to either view is fragile, the debate is likely to have impact. This will be especially so if the result looks close at the time, or turns out to be. Furthermore, the event will be an exercise in political psychology if one side or the other (more likely Leave) is behind in the polls on the day it takes place. This will raise the stakes for those representing its cause, of which there will predominately be three people two politicians and a businesss person, to match the two politicians and business person representing Remain. Which politicians should each side best put up? Leave Lets start with Leave simply because it has already been claimed that Boris Johnson will be one of the two politicians speaking for it. This is more than a bit high-risk, because the Mayor is an orator, not a debater. The campaign to date has shown him to be uncertain when interviewed in front of the Treasury Select Committee and on the Andrew Marr Show. And although an interview is not a debate, it is not a speech either, since the speaker can be interrupted and challenged. The Obama vist and Boriss interventions have also been a reminder that his judgement is questionable. None the less, the rationale for Leave putting him up is that he is a celebrity and will thus have more reach to watchers than anyone else in its camp and that different rules therefore apply to anything especially controversial that he may say. Boriss presence on the platform would automatically cut out that of the two other main Tory contenders for a place in the team Michael Gove and Priti Patel. The case for Gove is that he is a stellar debater. The case against is that too many voters dont like him. The case for Patel is mainly that she is a woman and Asian, and therefore confounds the stereotypes that some voters expect Leave campaigners to fit. The case against is that she is unproven as a debater at this level (though she has plenty of TV experience). But regardless of which Conservative is on the Leave team, the question that follows is: which other political party will be represented at the debates top table? It must surely be either Labour or UKIP. My hunch is that, since Remains two politicians will undoubtedly be a Tory one and a Labour one, the BBC will strike the same balance in the Leave representation, arguing that Labour got more than twice as many votes as UKIP during last Mays election, and that it should therefore take the other party political place in the team. If so, there is in my view only one contender for it: Gisela Stuart, whose cause as a leading pro-Leave face this site has consistently championed. Admittedly, she is not a household name. But I dont believe that this will matter much, because of another important factor about the TV debating formula: it can create screen stars almost overnight. Brood on what the 2010 election did for Nick Clegg, or the 2015 for Nicola Sturgeon. That last one is also evidence of how TV debates can help to shape the result. The rave reviews which the SNP leader won from the Left, particularly perhaps among the Labour-leaning London-centric elites, helped to frighten Middle England-type voters into the Conservative camp. If UKIP gets the gig instead, its spokesman will surely be Nigel Farage. But my best guess is that he will end up on the Leave supporting panel of politicians, business people, celebrities, etc. Remain The Leave panel might not include a Labour representative, but the Remain one certainly will. One theory doing the rounds is that Downing Street wants it to beJeremy Corbyn. This may sound bizarre, but it makes sense, in one dimension at least. If Labour voters, whose uncertain intentions are key to the result, see the Labour leader on the Remain side then (the logic runs) they will automatically move towards its side. What Corbyn will actually say is less important than what where he sits. One sees the case. But one also sees the counter-argument. The Labour leader is neither the most lucid nor disciplined of debaters. And his emotional commitment to Remain is questionable. Suppose he launches off into an attack on austerity or, more to the point, TTIP? His presence would also be a headache for the Tories. Who on earth would they put up to sit alongside him? The most senior Conservative Remain supporter is George Osborne. But would the Chancellor really want to sit alongside Corbyn? What a hoot that combination would be not to mention a reminder that Remain is no less capable of throwing up alliances between politicians of the centre and those of the extremes than Leave. Remain would be better off with Alan Johnson, a leading force in Labour Remain. It would also be well-advised not to put up Osborne, who though a highly effective debater if also a mechanical one is scarcely more popular with some swing voters than Gove; arguably less so. The Chancellor is in a bit of a bind either way. If he does not go on, he will surely be accused of being frit. But if he does, another problem for the Party rears its head: blue-on-blue fire. While the panels do not necessarily have to put one Labour politician up against another, the Conservatives must be represented on both sides. And Osbornes presence in this instance might guarantee some of the most spectacular blue-on-blue action of all. The Chancellor v the Mayor! Ozza v Bozza! Roll up, roll up, to see the preview of the next Tory leadership contest! I suspect that this will not be allowed to happen, but the blue option isnt easy for Remain. The next most senior and perhaps the most weighty pro-Remain Conservative is Theresa May. But her presence on the platform would help to remind voters of the immigration and security issues, neither of which are turning out to be Remains strongest cards in the campaign. The safe option is to send for Michael Fallon, though this would give rise to claims that two of the Governments most senior pro-Remain Ministers were wimping out. The supporting panels will apparently be a mix of politicians, business people, celebrities and so forth. Their presence will complicates the debate. I suspect they have been conjured into being partly to solve the problem of how to work UKIP and the other minor parties into the debate equation. The event will take place at Wembley arena with six thousand people in the audience. Thats a lot of people, and (I suspect) a lot of atmosphere too. The BBC says that the audience will be split evenly between people likely to vote to Remain and those likely to vote to Leave. One senses Old Firm game-type possibilities. You can apply for a ticket via this link here. SUBSCRIBE Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates straight in your inbox. JNU Rusticates Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya; Kanhaiya Kumar Fined Rs. 10,000 By Countercurrents.org 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org The Hindu has reported that the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration rusticated Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhhatacharya in connection with an event organised in the campus to mark the death anniversary of Afzal Guru on February 9 where some anti-national slogans were allegedly shouted. While Umar has been rusticated for one semester and a fine of Rs. 20,000 imposed on him Anirban has been declared out of bounds from the campus for five years after July 23, 2016. He has been rusticated till the period of July 15. Both of them were arrested by Delhi police on sedition charges and spent about 15 days in Tihar jail under judicial custody. JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was also charged with sedition and arrested in connection with the incident has, however, not been rusticated. The university authorities have imposed a fine of Rs. 10,000 on him. Umar Khalid, rusticated for one semester + 20K fine. Anirban Bhattacharya rusticated till 15 July & from 25 July, out of bounds for 5 years. Another Kashmiri student rusticated for two semesters. Ashutosh Kumar, former JNUSU President, removed from hostel for one year + fine. Chintu Kumari, former JNUSU Gen Sec: 20K fine Rama Naga, current JNUSU Gen Sec: 20K fine Anant Prakash Narayan, former JNUSU Vice-President: 20K fine Aishwarya , current GSCASH representative: 20K fine. Gargi, current JNUSU councillor: 20 K fine Kanhaiyya, current JNUSU President: 10K fine Other organisers fined from 10K to 20K Two ex students declared out of bounds from campus. Anirban Bhattacharya in a Facebook post said that HLEC decision is unacceptable , "Our Decision, simple: UNACCEPTABLE. Down with the fascist witch-hunt of student activists by the administration under the diktats of Nagpur! Reject as per the UGBM mandate the punishments handed down by the administration on the basis of the findings of the farcical HLEC! Right to Dissent Long Live!" Umar Khalid in a Facebook post vowed to fight back the decision. "The JNU administration declares its allegiance to RSS, once again! After allowing police to enter campus to unleash the worst repression on unprecedented in the history of JNU, now the JNU admin has come down with its own list of punishments. Its official now - the recommendations of the farcical High Level Enquiry Commitee have been released to the press in a press statement today by the JNU administration. Punishments include rustication, withdrawal of hostel facilities, fines and even out of bounds orders for some. Interestingly, the statement states punishment to be taken against two ex-students of JNU, who were never even summoned by the admin during the enquiry! A farce is what this enquiry has been from day one made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS. Your friend Appa Rao did the same to our friend Rohith Vemula and his comrades. They fought back, they are our inspiration and so will we. The punishments on students are NOT acceptable to us. Get ready for a fight back!" AISA - All India Students' Association said in a statement that it rejects the farcial enquiry report and will fight back. The statement said, "We completely reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. These are all innocent students, coming from extremely humble and underprivileged backgrounds. They are all dedicated activists and this is a conspiracy to crush anti-Modi voices. Not only will we not remain silent against this anti-people government, we will also challenge this sham of a report. The punishments are all based on one-sided statements from ABVP members, and our repeated calls to conduct a fair enquiry were ignored. The VC is taking directions from the Central govt. He should have acted first as an academician and then as an RSS loyalist. Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes. Students across the country have assured support to us. People from all walks of life are supporting JNU students against this targeting. We will launch a countrywide campaign to expose this government's anti-student, anti-Dalit character. There will be no more Eklavyas. There will be no more Rohiths." CPDR Condemns The Sacking Of An Upright Dalit Judge By Chattisgarh Government By Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), Mumbai condemns the sacking of an upright dalit Judge by Chattisgarh government. Prabhakar Gwal, Chief Judicial Magistrate during his posting at Sukma has been dismissed by the Chattisgarh government for being a pro-poor and pro-adivasi. A young dalit 2006 batch judge, he became known for taking on corrupt officers and for being a thorn in the flesh of the government and the police. He has now been summarily terminated "in the public interest by the Chattisgarh government on the recommendation of the High Court. The government has stated that it is "dispensing with any inquiry since it is not possible to conduct an inquiry". What is Prabhakar Gwals crime or offence according to the High Court of the state and the government? A complaint forwarded by Sukmas Superintendent of Police to the District Judge after getting several letters written by number of police station officers that the CJMs method of working is to obstruct the police which was lowering the morale of the police. His dismissal is the latest in a series of attacks on journalists, lawyers, academicians by the Chattisgarh administration. This was because this upright judicial officer would insist on asking the name, age, village, father's name and all relevant details of those arrested, mostly poor tribals and produced before him. Rather than accepting the regular practice till then of permanent warrants produced by the police that have only the name of the arrestee and no other details, Judge Gwal chose to stick to procedure. He would also make it difficult for the police by asking questions about alleged seizures including of weapons, their activities. When it became obvious that the police could not establish any crime against those arrested, he would conclude that those arrested are ordinary villagers. Judge Gwal would go to the extent of communicating directly to those arrested through a Gondi interpreter in the language which the arrestee understood. This judge was so fearless that he would term the arrests of thousands of people being produced before him as Maoists as fake arrests; he wrote to the District Judge and even Director General of Police Kalluri that the police is implicating innocent people. He went to the extent of issuing warnings to Thanedars that he would send them to jail if they framed innocent people. In short, the BJP-led governments both at the Centre and in Chattisgarh are preparing for an all-out war on the tribals of Bastar and upright judges like Judge Gwal do not fit in their scheme of actions. Whereas for the people of Bastar, such a judge must have been a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak scenario of displacement and large scale repression, Judge Gwal is yet another blow. CPDR condemns the unjust and unconstitutional sacking of Judge Prabhakar Gwal and demands his immediate re-instatement. Dr. Anand Teltumbde General Secretary, CPDR, Maharashtra Date: 24 April 2016. Meddlesome Empire: Obama And Client Britains EU Referendum By Dr. Binoy Kampmark 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Good to see that history, if it does not possess historical cunning, as Hegel rather foolishly observed, has, at the very least, some humour. US President Barack Obama has been busy making it his business to make sure that Britain remains in the European Union after the referendum elections of June. The urging has all the meaning of a Wall Street plea. If Britain leaves, there will be instability. A world of chaos will ensue. Obama in imperial mode has been some sight. Armed with words of condescension, he has treated Britons in a fashion they are rarely used to: being lectured as subjects in need of a good intellectual thrashing. For years, the nostalgic establishment Briton has become the supposedly sagacious backer of US power in various parts of the planet. The US has been assured that it can count on vassal insurance when Washingtons more bizarre imperial failures come to light. The mood from Obama on Friday was, however, not so breezy and confident. He had one target in mind: Brexit, and the consequences that might arise from it. The Vote Leavers campaign favouring Britains exit from EU torpor and pseudo-tyranny took a considerable battering. Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian observed that the Vote Leavers premise of finding that other symbolically appropriate wife the US of the Anglosphere, rather than the more problematic European Continentals was shattered. The Obama White House spelled out that America had no intention of forming some new, closer relationship with Brexited Britain. Should Britain, he suggested in a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, decide to exit the troubled bosom of Europe, it would place the country in the back of the queue when coming to forging a new trade deal with the US. (This, on its own, might not be such a bad thing, given the nasties that lurk within the current trade proposals.) Then came the treading upon an article of faith: Britains incurable obsession with the Second World War. Obama decided to issue a reminder to his hosts on the US gaze upon Europe and a Europe free of internal squabbles. The tens of thousands of Americans who rest in Europes cemeteries are a silent testament to just how intertwined our prospect and security truly are. The papers were full of scornful reproach, though they tended to centre on opinions favouring a departure. Those wanting to leave Europe were a mix of fury and desperation, while those urging a stay vote were happy to allow Obama much leg, and fist room. What is at stake in the debate is not a truly sovereign Britain, so much as who is the best overlord in the business. Former Tory cabinet minister Liam Fox, for one, wished that Obama consider British views on the subject for a change. He proved so keen to force the point he managed to gather a hundred MP signatures for a letter to the US ambassador to the UK urging the White House to keep its nose out of Britannias sacred business. The hegemons views on the subject would have to be silenced. The US, he argued, would never permit a foreign court to overrule the decision of Congress. The president is, of course, welcome to his view when the US has an open border with Mexico, a supreme court in Toronto and the US budget set by a pan-American committee. This otherwise meaningless distinction did shore up one vital point: a foreign power, fraternal, brutal and intrusive, was showing its hand in the domestic affairs of a client state. The noisy anti-EU leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, abandoned any sense of compunction altogether. Mercifully, this American president, who is the most anti-British American president there has ever been, wont be in office for much longer, and I hope will be replaced by somebody rather more sensible when it comes to trading relationships with this country. The Telegraph ran with a dominant headline about the presidents woeful ignorance in the damage the EU is said to be doing to Britains security. Naturally, that allegation came straight from Penny Mordaunt, whose brief on the subject of keeping Obama at bay was made crystal clear during the presidents visit. As Armed Forces minister, Mordaunt has little time for European institutional functions, seeing devils across the continent that need bottling. Mordaunts political pedigree on this point should be noted. Having been reared by experience working for George W. Bush, whose grasp of security issues was always shaky at best, her propensity to see dangers everywhere starts making political sense. It is reactionary to the highest degree, a condition that sees enemies as viral phenomena and liberties as abstractions to be regarded with suspicion. The European Court of Justice, for instance, had an alarming tendency to throw the book of laws at the ability of the US and Britain to share intelligence (read, pinching it from others). Bulk-sharing of intelligence remains an ideological point of contention, never mind the fact that the actual nature of such indiscriminate gathering undermines cardinal principles of efficiency. Obamas view that the EU was actually a vehicle for magnifying British influence was dismissed sheer geopolitical fiction. Unfortunately, signed Mordaunt, this opinion betrays a woeful ignorance of the practical reality of the EUs impact on our security, and the interests of the UK and the US. The storm of disagreement with the current White House approach continued with views that Obama had confused the virtues of collective action and defence through Nato with the integration-at-all-costs-and-damn-the-consequences ideology that too often motivates the EU. What has emerged on this presidential tour is a list of political realities. Imperial centres will lecture their irresponsible satellites; hidden power will eventually manifest itself in speech and warning, and the only thing left, irrespective of which side of the debate one endorses, is that Britain is being roasted by the prong of the EU and the strategic thrust of the United States. Either way, a truly sovereign Britain is hardly likely to eventuate. Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com The 28 Pages And Ties Between The United States And Saudi Arabia By Chandra Muzaffar 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org There is a powerful case for de-classifying the 28 pages of the Report of the Joint Inquiry of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate into 9-11 --- regarded as one of the United States most sensitive documents --- which has been kept under wraps since 2003. The families of the 9-11 victims are demanding that the 28 pages be made public. A number of prominent present and past legislators are making the same plea. In fact, there is a Bill before the US House of Representatives requesting the White House to reveal the document. Well-known public figures and several NGOs in the US have been campaigning for the release of the 28 pages for some time now. Justice for the families of the 9-11 victims demands that the 28 pages be de-classified immediately. Non-disclosure means that the deep pain of not knowing the whole truth about the 9-11 operation will continue to cause anguish to the bereaved families. As Terry Strada, the national co- chair of the 9-11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrrorism put it at a media conference on Capitol hill on 7 January 2015, When former President George W. Bush classified the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry he effectively protected the people who gave financial and logistical aid to at least some of the 19 hijackers while they were here in this country ( the US). He effectively denied the 9-11 victims and survivors, and the American people, the truth about who was behind the worst attack on American soil. By hiding the truth about who financed 9-11, the guilty parties have gone unpunished, free to continue financing terrorist organizations, and, as a consequence, we have witnessed the creation of branches of al-Qaeda, like ISIS, grow at an alarming rate. I am hoping that the release of the 28 pages may persuade the American people to put pressure on the US government to reveal much more about 9-11 than what is currently known. Was there a link between the financiers of the 9-11 operation and intelligence networks in various countries who may have had their own agendas which the hijackers and their immediate backers may not even have been aware of ? Is the War on Terror, launched in the wake of 9-11 by Bush and the neo-cons, and the various acts of terrorism associated with Al-Qaeda, ISIS ( or Daesh) and other such outfits since then, part of the same complex narrative whose real purpose is to perpetuate the US drive for global hegemony ? There are powerful forces who do not want the American people or the citizens of the world to connect all the dots that will tell the real story about 9-11. They are against the release of the 28 pages. The government of Saudi Arabia for instance --- since Saudi citizens are allegedly implicated in the financing of 9-11 in the 28 pages --- has threatened to sell off 750 billion in US Treasury securities and other assets if the US Congress passes the Bill before it. President Obama himself has made it clear that he is against any potential legal action targeting Saudi citizens. Regardless of how the 28 pages saga unfolds in the coming months, Saudi-US ties appear to be undergoing a change. Blind protection of Saudi interests by the US Congress or the White House may be more difficult to come by in the future. The stand adopted by Obama on the Iran nuclear deal , which incensed Saudi rulers, is an indication that the US leadership no longer interprets threats and dangers in West Asia through Saudi lenses. In a recent interview with The Atlantic Obama rejected the idea that Iran is the source of all the problems of West Asia. Less dependence upon Saudi oil may have contributed to this change on the part of the US leadership. There may be two other more compelling reasons. Saudi association with terrorism and its hidebound conservatism,widely discussed more in the Euopean than the US media -- has had some impact upon US elite thinking. The US, it seems, does not want to be weighed down by the Saudi baggage. Equally important, some US foreign policy analysts realize that the pattern of power in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) is changing and Iran is emerging as an influential actor with a decisive role in not only Syria and Iraq but also in Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain, among other states. It makes some sense for a hegemonic power operating in WANA to adjust to this reality. Nonetheless, the US Saudi bond will remain for a long time to come. Saudi Arabia purchases arms on a massive scale from Western powers and counts upon the aura of their military prowess to preserve the House of Saud. The US, on the other hand, views its special relationship with Riyadh as a sort of insurance for the security of Israel. And the security of that state is paramount to Washington as it is to London and Paris. But then is a reset also in the offing in the relations between certain Western powers and Israel? That is a subject for a different occasion. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) Malaysia. 25 April 2016. Sanders Choice By James Rothenberg 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Should Bernie Sanders abandon the Democratic Party, which he's technically not a member of, and make a run of some kind either as an Independent or in amalgamation with Jill Stein and the Green Party? It's a fair question, one many of his supporters will be asking. Understanding that one cannot enter the mind of another person, and that our speculations say more about our own motives and desires than that of the target person, such speculations are justified by our involvement as citizens. Our responsibility as a citizen. There are some reasons why Sanders would not. What comes to mind first is that he said he wouldn't. That he would support the eventual nominee, meaning Hillary Clinton. He'd be going back on his word. There are some businesses and professions where your word is your bond. When all that's needed is a handshake. Politics is not one of these, and it's much more like a business than a profession. This "going back" is no obstacle for any seasoned political storyteller. We should also consider, but not say too much about, his personal economic situation and continuing career trajectory. He certainly does. And then there is THE REASON why he wouldn't and shouldn't. He would siphon off votes from the Democratic Party, playing right into Republican hands. A spoiler. Sanders has said he didn't want to end up like Ralph Nader. So how has Nader ended up? It's common to hear that Hillary possesses extraordinary qualifications for high office, to include her stints as first lady, senator, and state secretary. This differs little from saying, though, that politicians deserve to be politicians. If what counts as "qualifications" are the demonstrable benefits one has provided the American people, then Ralph Nader is, and was, the most qualified candidate in our history. And he's still fighting the good fight. Let's go back to that time in Florida when Gore lost the state, and thus the presidency, to Bush. The margin of victory was 537 votes. Nader, the Green candidate, received 97,488 votes. To some this looks incriminating. But there were other competing parties with a share of votes in excess of the margin. The Socialist Workers received 562. The Socialist Party received 622. And Workers World received 1,804. Would Gore be the default position for these votes? Would the Nader vote would have gone to Gore? Why? This assumes that Gore was politically the closest thing to Nader when there's clearly closer choices. It also insinuates that only major parties deserve our vote, in itself a deep underscoring of the illegitimacy of our democracy. Nader's candidacy was a protest of plutocracy, corporatism, imperialism, and, to a lesser extent, a critique of capitalism itself. The three mentioned parties above were closer and so was a fourth choice. Abstaining. And a fifth choice. Writing someone in. Concentrating on the Democratic Party because the subject is Sanders, the pickings seem pretty easy because of the disarray of the Republican Party. The nominee is either going to be Donald Trump, or Ted Cruz, or whoever they can patch up at the last minute. Right now it looks very much like Trump which means it looks very much like Clinton vs.Trump in the general election. Given that Trump wears his narcissism like a badge, indulges in adolescent behavior without embarrassment, and is capable of sounding outright stupid, the Democratic strategy is to paint the prospect of a Trump presidency as a disaster. Ergo, anyone drawing votes away from Hillary is courting disaster. Yet, an honest coin would tell us that, despite petty vote-pandering differences, there is little to choose from between the parties. For those who are thinking of the Bush neocon-backed illegal Iraqi invasion, it was Democratic collusion that made it possible. The party demonstrated how far political cowardice could go when the pressure mounted to be seen as flag-wavers. They could have laid down on the tracks. That would have been, worth it. The history of our country suggests that political and judicial leadership cannot bring about a just state. It's always been a dishonest coin, siding with the rich over the poor, powerful over weak, white over all other colors, punishing dissidents and whistleblowers, facilitating every war of choice. It is the people themselves, acting independently of presidents, congress, and the courts that have forced change to come about through direct action, protests, strikes, and civil disobedience. The disaster for the citizen is to allow him/herself to rely upon either of these two parties or the courts for justice, including the Supreme Court. With a fitting irony these two highly unlikeable candidates, Clinton and Trump, are in their own way the perfect products of a governing system no longer capable of meeting the needs of its people. James Rothenberg views U.S. foreign and domestic policy from a left perspective. He can be reached at jrothenberg@taconic.net The Future Of U.S-Cuban Relations By Jack A. Smith 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Washington's partial rapprochement with Havana, symbolized by President Barack Obama's recent visit to Cuba, is more advantageous to the United States than the neighboring country it has ostracized, sanctioned and subverted for over five decades. This is not to say that the small island nation of 11.3 million people has gained nothing from President Obama's efforts to mitigate over 56 years of Yankee hostility, beginning overtly a year after the 1959 armed revolution that freed Cuba not only from a vicious dictatorship but 467 years of foreign domination by Spain from 1492, replaced by the U.S. from 1899. It ended with the Cuban Revolution on New Year's Day 1959. Despite Obama's significant visit to Havana March 21-23, his cordial dialogue with President Raul Castro, and the declaration that I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas, the principal contradiction between Washington and Havana has not changed substantially: The Cuban revolutionary government is committed to retain a socialist system, including a measure of private enterprise and foreign investment. The U.S. government is committed to eliminating socialism in the Western Hemisphere, though a modification in methodology now will seek to attain that goal with honey, not acid. It will take a more leftist White House and Congress to allow a truly equal and friendly relationship to develop and that's not on the present horizon. President Castro alluded to U.S. intentions in his opening report to the 7th Communist Party congress April 16 when he noted: " We are not naive nor do we ignore the aspirations of powerful external forces that are committed to what they call the 'empowerment' of non-state forms of management, in order to create agents of change in the hope of putting an end to the Revolution and socialism in Cuba by other means." In this regard, President Obama's Dec. 17, 2014, announcement of Washington's new attitude toward Cuba is instructive: "I do not expect the changes I am announcing today to bring about a transformation of Cuban society overnight." The timing is ambiguous; the transformation to capitalism remains the goal. Castro continued: "We are willing to carry out a respectful dialogue and construct a new type of relationship with the United States, one which has never existed between the two countries, because we are convinced that this alone could produce mutual benefits. However, it is imperative to reiterate that no one should assume that to achieve this Cuba must renounce the Revolutions principles, or make concessions to the detriment of its sovereignty and independence, or forego the defense of its ideals or the exercise of its foreign policy committed to just causes, the defense of self-determination, and our traditional support to sister countries." U.S. press coverage of the party congress what there was of it was slanted against socialism in many cases. The New York Times article from Mexico City April 20 is a case in point. It appeared to be entirely based on oppositional points of view. "Despite a dramatic shift in relations with the United States and tentative economic changes," one paragraph alleged, "the leaders of the Castros generation are in no hurry to make room for new blood. It is a blow to younger Cubans who are eager for a more pluralistic system led by people closer to their own ages and unencumbered by socialist orthodoxies." The article grudgingly mentioned that some younger members "were appointed to senior Communist Party positions." Associated Press staffers in Havana did a fairly good job of objective reporting. Carefully charting a future course for a government in transition and the inevitable integration of a younger generation into leadership is the party's most important responsibility at this time. Those who won the revolution and/or who guided socialist Cuba through extraordinary difficulties imposed over these decades by the depredations of U.S. imperialism and the implosion of the Soviet camp want to get it right. The party will be identifying younger candidates over the next five years who will best implement the medium and long range plans (up to 2030) being worked out during that time. While most of the top posts of the political bureau were unchanged this time, the party selected five younger members in a bid to diversify the leadership. Raul Castro, who will be 85 in June, assumed the presidency in 2008 when President Fidel Castro resigned due to illness. He will step down in two years. No successor has been named but it is assumed that First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, will become the next president. He graduated college as an electronic engineer and served as Minister of Higher Education from 2009 to 2012. Diaz-Canel was elected to his present post in 2013. Future presidents will serve no more than two five-year terms. Both Raul Castro and Ramon Machado Ventura, 85, were reelected to their posts as first and second secretaries of the party. Raul reported as the congress ended "This Seventh Congress will be the last led by the historic generation." He also suggested that by the next congress it would be best for leaders becoming 70 to relax and "take care of grandchildren." Fidel Castro, who will be 90 Aug. 13, spoke briefly on the last day of the four-day congress attended by 1,000 delegates and 260 guests. Now referred to as "the historic leader of the revolution," Fidel received an ovation when he said, obviously referring to himself, "everyone will eventually die, but the ideas of Cuban communists will prevail, as proof that on this planet, if you work with fervor and dignity, the material and cultural goods that humans need can be produced, and we must fight relentlessly to obtain them." President Obama has relaxed several painful penalties imposed upon Cuba, but many more remain. Washington may in time terminate over a half-century of severe economic sanctions, including an international trade blockade, but it will take an act of congress to do so, and that may not be forthcoming for many more years, or until Cuba publicly shreds the red flag. At this point a large majority of Republicans and a lesser number of Democrats are devoted to retaining sanctions.An encouraging sign in the end-sanctions argument is the fact that very large sectors of U.S. business and agriculture desperately want access to the Cuban market which has been deprived of many goods for decades. A majority of the American people (58%) not only favor reestablishing diplomatic relations (while just 24% oppose), but 55% favor the United States ending its trade embargo against Cuba. These polls were taken a few months ago before the Obama family received a popular welcome Havana. Interestingly, and largely forgotten, is that the average American was never enthusiastic about Washington's break in relations with the island. In 1977, for instance, 53% of Americans told Gallup that diplomatic relations with Cuba should be re-established. But Washington's prolonged Cold War of choice and indulging of the wishes of anti-revolutionary Cubans in Florida always took priority. Despite Obama's warm words in Havana U.S. propaganda against the island is continuing. During Obama's days in Cuba the American mass media which invariably echoes Washington's true sentiments regardless of diplomatic camouflage focused primarily on the misrepresentation that the Cuban government disparages "human rights," and that hundreds or many more political dissidents have been in prison for years or "languishing in dungeons across the island," in the words of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. At his joint press conference with President Castro March 21, Obama introduced this theme when he said: "Wherever we go around the world, I made it clear that the United States will continue to speak up on behalf of democracy, including the right of the Cuban people to decide their own future. Well speak out on behalf of universal human rights, including freedom of speech, and assembly, and religion." American presidents have been uttering such hypocrisies for decades as they protect and arm dictatorships and overthrow governments unwilling to serve U.S. interests. Obama asked for questions from the press and CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta then addressed Raul Castro: "President Castro, my father is Cuban. He left for the United States when he was young. Do you see a new and democratic direction for your country? And why [do] you have Cuban political prisoners? And why dont you release them? Castro replied: Give me the list of political prisoners and I will release them immediately." It does not appear that any list was forthcoming. The government denies that dissidents are being held on political grounds; it says some are there for various violations of Cuban law. According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation an independent group opposed to the Havana government there were 80 political prisoners all told in Cuban jails. The Cuban authorities do arrest people engaging in disruptive or illegal demonstrations but in virtually all cases they are released in a few hours. On March 2, three weeks before Obama's visit, Deputy Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken issued a U.S. statement to the UN Human Rights Council that included a condemnation of Cuba. It said in part: "In Cuba, we are increasingly concerned about the governments use of short-term detentions of peaceful activists, which reached record numbers in January. We call on the Cuban government to stop this tactic as a means of quelling peaceful protest." Last week, police in Washington arrested 1,200 people who were nonviolently demonstrating and offering civil disobedience for good causes and no big deal was made of it by the American press. During Obama's stay in Havana a couple of dozen people were arrested for civil disobedience (and released within hours) and the U.S. press went wild with charges of violating human rights. There are many situations where negative U.S. policies and actions against Cuba continue, but only one more will be noted for now the Cuban Adjustment Act. Cuba is a relatively poor country, hardly least because of U.S. sanctions. Washington is continuing its long practice of inducing Cubans to migrate to nearby Florida, legally or illegally, in order to convey to the world the impression they are fleeing their homeland for freedom. It's an old Cold War trick. According to an Oct. 1, 2015, article in Florida's Sun-Sentinel daily paper: "Unlike other immigrants, Cubans are granted entry to the United States just by reaching land. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 enables them to become permanent legal residents a year after they arrive, far faster than any other nationality.... Cuban immigrants are granted immediate access to welfare, food stamps and Medicaid, a practice that has ballooned from a $1 million federal allocation in 1960 to at least $680 million a year today." Many Cubans have migrated since President Obama announced he sought better relations in December 2014, fearing the program would be discontinued. In this the U.S. profits from the Cuban brain drain by offering good salaries to economically struggling doctors, top athletes, college graduates and many other talented people who were educated and trained at state expense in Cuba. Telesur, the leftist Venezuelan news outlet summed up Obama's trip with these words: "It was a victory for an unyielding Cuba, whose people and leaders never surrendered in the face of a decades-long, U.S. onslaught. It marks the first time in 88 years that a U.S. president has touched Cuban soil. It's an admission by the Obama administration that U.S. policy toward Cuba has failed. Yet in spite of all this, some raw wounds in diplomatic relations were not addressed. "Cuba insists that before there is a normalization of relations between the two countries, the U.S. must end its blockade; return the illegally-held Guantanamo Bay; change its immigration policies toward Cuban migrants; stop transmitting radio propaganda into the country and attempting to build an opposition; and finally stop all attempts at regime change. The U.S. president failed to change policy over the illegal blockade, or apologize for the crippling financial damage it has caused over more than half a decade." Just last month, Obama renewed a 20-year-old state of national emergency to continue to administer the blockade against the Caribbean island.... It bans ships and planes from the U.S. from entering Cuban waters or airspace without government permission, and requires the president to annually renew these emergency powers. According to the UN the blockade has cost Cuba more than US$117 billion (a huge sum for this small country), deprived Cubans of life-saving medicines, and caused extra hardships for millions of Cubans. If this isn't a massive attack on human rights what is? The U.S will benefit more quickly and profoundly than Cuba due to its new relationship, particularly in world "leadership" Obama's code word for global hegemony. There are three connected aspects to this observation: 1. The nations of the world are strongly opposed to Washington's bullying, sanctions and other expressions of antagonism toward a much smaller country that has done it no harm. Last October, for the 24th year in a row, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to denounce the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade. The vote was 191 to 2 (U.S. and Israel). By indicating he wanted to "normalize" relations, Obama sought to rid Washington of the repeated embarrassment of global condemnation. The vote probably will continue until Congress scraps all its repressive sanctions but Obama's gesture will alleviate the pressure. 2. For over 100 years the U.S. essentially dominated Latin American and Caribbean nations and top hemisphere inter-regional organizations. This began to change dramatically less than 20 years ago as key governments in the region moved left and more distant from the Yankee overlord. Although it was a founding member of the Organization of American States (OAS), Cuba was banned by the U.S. from attending meetings of this important group for 47 years but was invited to return by a majority vote of all the countries in 2009. Havana's response was that while Cuba welcomed the Assembly's gesture, in light of the Organization's historical record "Cuba will not return to the OAS." Cuba was also banned from the first six meetings of the Washington-backed Summit of the Americas, but strong support from Latin America and Caribbean countries made it possible for Raul Castro to attend in 2015. Since then, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was formally established in 2011 in Caracas, with the initiative of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the support of Cuba. CELAC includes all 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Cuba, and excludes the United States and Canada. Its task is to encourage deeper integration of the countries in the region. Other important new groups that reduce Yankee control are ALBA (an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas) and UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations). The Obama administration has long been aware that the U.S. was losing much of its clout in a crucial region of 640 million people and that the best way to restore some semblance of authority was to publicly declare that Washington would scrap the Cold War with Cuba. In December 2014 Obama announced: We will end an outdated approach [to Cuba] that, for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries." This 55-year policy not only intentionally crippled the economy of a small nation; it was major factor in the loss of U.S. influence in the region. Obama now is working toward regaining its dominant "leadership" south of the border. In an article for the April 2016 issue of The Atlantic magazine, based on various interviews with Obama, Jeffrey Goldberg writes that Obama "cited Americas increased influence in Latin America increased, in part, he said, by his removal of a region-wide stumbling block when he reestablished ties with Cuba as proof that his deliberate, nonthreatening, diplomacy-centered approach to foreign relations is working." Other factors are involved, of course. Many of these left governments are suddenly in economic or political trouble. Raul pointed out in his report to the party congress: "Latin America and the Caribbean find themselves experiencing the effects of a strong, articulated counteroffensive, on the part of imperialism and oligarchies, against revolutionary and progressive governments, in a difficult context marked by the deceleration of the economy, which has negatively impacted the continuity of policies directed toward development and social inclusion, and the conquests won by popular sectors.... This policy is principally directed toward the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and has been intensified in recent months in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil, as well as Nicaragua and El Salvador. Recent setbacks for governments of the left in the hemisphere are being used to announce the end of a progressive historical cycle, opening the way for the return of neoliberalism and demoralization of political forces and parties, social movements and working classes, which we must confront with more unity and increased articulation of revolutionary action." 3. The purpose of better relations with Cuba is geopolitical. First it is to further weaken left regimes in the region (including Cuba) and reverse the erosion of U.S. "leadership" in the Western Hemisphere. Obama feared that further withering away of Washington control in Latin America/Caribbean would negatively impact Washington's strategic global hegemony. Strengthening U.S. world supremacy is the most important element of Obama administration foreign/military policy, the highest priority of which is to contain China's influence in Asia and the world and to isolate Russia. The improvement of U.S. relations with Iran and Myanmar as well as Cuba is part of this project, as are the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership pact with Europe, and the ongoing Pentagon military buildup in proximity to China and Russia. The Cuban people welcomed Obama's stay in Havana because it indicated the Yankee Colossus was reducing its continuous punishment of their country for being socialist and not willing to follow where Washington leads. His speech to the Cuban nation March 22 was very carefully composed. "I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people," he said, artfully avoiding extending it to the Cuban government. He went on: "Having removed the shadow of history from our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe, the things that we as Americans believe. I cant force you to agree, but you should know what I think. Its time to lift the embargo, but even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba." The notion that it is possible for a superpower, after inflicting decades of castigation and pain on a small nation, to remove the "shadow of history" with a few soothing words and a false smile is insulting and absurd. Many Cubans were happy to hear him say, "It's time to lift the embargo," aside from the reality that it's not going to be lifted for many years. But if it ever is ended, Obama warned the Cuban people that they won't realize that potential unless they reorganize their society in a way that satisfies Uncle Sam. In all Obama's many pronouncements in Cuba about U.S. dedication to human rights he never mentioned Washington's intrusions on human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean during the last 60-plus years. They include backing the fascist dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil, and supporting violent regime change in Chile against democratically elected President Salvador Allende. In addition there were U.S. intrusions, invasions, CIA changes in regime, and other American abuses in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Haiti, Guyana, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Grenada, Suriname, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and of course the CIA-organized and President Kennedy-approved disastrous invasion of Cuba April 17, 1961. The CIA and Cubans the agency controlled carried out up to 100 failed assassination attempts on the life of President Fidel Castro. Obama removed Cuba from its list of state of sponsors of terrorism in May. This opened the way toward closer relations. But Cuba never supported terrorism. It defended itself against U.S. terrorism many times. Havana opposed fascist dictatorships in Latin America. It supported those fighting for freedom. Cuba sent its troops to fight and die against the U.S.-backed South Africa's war against Angola. Here is an excerpt from a longer accounting of U.S. crimes against Cuba compiled by Salim Lamrani a decade ago. He lectures at the Paris Sorbonne, and has written several books about Cuba (in French). "U.S. official documents that have recently been declassified show that, between October 1960 and April 1961, the CIA smuggled 75 tons of explosives into Cuba during 30 clandestine air operations, and infiltrated 45 tons of weapons and explosives during 31 sea incursions. Also during that short seven-month time span, the CIA carried out 110 attacks with dynamite, planted 200 bombs, derailed six trains and burned 150 factories and 800 plantations. "Between 1959 and 1997, the United States carried out 5,780 terrorist actions against Cuba 804 of them considered as terrorist attacks of significant magnitude, including 78 bombings against the civil population that caused thousands of victims. "Terrorist attacks against Cuba have cost 3,478 lives and have left 2,099 people permanently disabled. Between 1959 and 2003, there were 61 hijackings of planes or boats. Between 1961 and 1996, there were 58 attacks from the sea against 67 economic targets and the population. "The CIA has directed and supported over 4,000 individuals in 299 paramilitary groups. They are responsible for 549 murders and thousands of people wounded. "In 1971, after a biological attack, half a million pigs had to be killed to prevent the spreading of swine fever. In 1981, the introduction of dengue fever caused 344,203 victims killing 158 of whom 101 were children. On July 6, 1982, 11,400 cases were registered in one day alone. "Most of these aggressions were prepared in Florida by the CIA-trained and financed extreme right wing elements of Cuban origin." Any major Cuban economic gains resulting from less antagonism by the U.S. will take some time to materialize, argued Stratfor March 15: "The majority of U.S. businesses cannot trade with Cuba because of the embargo, which is held in place by several pieces of legislation. The embargo's future will depend on the political mood in the United States. Both houses of the U.S. Congress currently controlled by the Republican opposition would have to pass legislation undoing provisions of the previous acts to end it. This is unlikely to happen during the remainder of the Obama administration, which will not be able to find the consensus needed to pass controversial legislation during an election year. "So the task of normalizing economic relations with Cuba will fall to the next U.S. president, and it will take several additional rounds of negotiations before the subject of lifting the embargo even comes up for serious discussion. The United States and Cuba have yet to settle major outstanding issues, such as compensation to U.S. property owners for assets seized after the 1959 revolution. The Cuban government also does not even minimally meet any of the human rights stipulations laid out in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 for lifting the embargo. Though new legislation could potentially supersede these requirements, it is plausible that lawmakers concerned about Havana's treatment of dissidents could use the topic to stall discussions. Until the embargo is lifted, it is likely that if the U.S. government wants to boost trade and financial transactions between specific U.S. business sectors and Cuba, it will have to loosen existing federal restrictions through the U.S. Department of the Treasury." The White House has already taken some steps in this regard a week before the visit to Cuba, according to the March 15 Wall Street Journal: "The Obama administration unveiled some of the most extensive changes in decades to rules on U.S.-Cuba trade, financial transactions and travel, including a provision that effectively lifts the long-standing ban on American tourists visiting the country. "The new measures, presented March 14, ease restrictions on American financial institutions and significantly broaden Cubas access to the global economy. They allow Cuban citizens to earn salaries from U.S. companies and to have American bank accounts for limited purposes, as well as permit the use of U.S. dollars in financial transactions with Cuba." The White House then voided remaining limits on individual travel to Cuba, which will be a boon for the tourist industry. An article in the April 5 Foreign Affairs online, written from Cuba by Anne Nelson and Debi Spindelman, made some useful observations about Cuba that should be considered by U.S. business leaders who plan to get richer in Cuba: "With the opening (of the new relationship), there promises to be a headlong rush to find, or construct, a Cuba that resembles the United States. But that should not come at the expense of the other Cuba, mysterious and complex, thats well worth exploring. To start with, theres Cubas often overlooked success in indicators of human development. The World Bank reported that in 2013, Cubas life expectancy, at roughly 79 years, exceeded that of the United States for the first time. [Infant mortality per thousand live births in Cuba is 4.2. In the U.S. it is 6 per thousand.] The Cubans are proud of their security, a product of banning guns and severely limiting narcotics trafficking and drug abuse. The countrys system of preventive medicine has been highly effective. Every week, teams of medical students make weekly door-to-door check-ups, effectively curtailing many infectious diseases across the island. In recent weeks Cuba has mobilized its army reserves to fumigate every household in the country to limit the spread of the Zika virus.... "Cubans in both Havana and the rural interior... [are] aware of the advantages they stand to lose in a transition: cities in which drugs are rare and gun violence is unknown, a society that is committed to nourishing and educating all of its children. Cubans are asking how to integrate the most constructive aspects of the U.S. system without inviting its attendant plagues. For its part, the United States, as well as U.S. entrepreneurs seeking to set up shop on the island, should approach Cuba in a spirit of discovery, with much to offer, much to gain, and much to learn." Rafael Hernandez, Cuban political analyst and head of the Temas magazine told China's Xinhua news agency: "We are not rushing towards a free market economy, nor is our government taking us there. This is a gradual process of transformation, economic diversification and development of a nationalist private sector." According to Xinhua: "Havana must reduce its dependence on imports and develop a greater capacity to produce goods. Hernandez said 'The Cuban people have very high expectations and demands from this reform era because their hope is to restore the quality of life they had in the 1980s just before the Soviet collapse.' "He also stressed the next several years will be essential for Cuba to speed up reforms initiated in 2011 and that the Cuban leadership is aware of the importance of implementing key reforms such as putting an end to the country's double currency system, increasing productivity, efficiency and salaries in the state sector and providing a legal framework for private businesses. "Hernandez further said, 'At the same time, the party leadership wants to avoid any chaotic shake-up within its ranks as economic reforms are implemented and the revolutionary leaders hand over power to the younger generation. In the next five years we'll see an articulated, gradual and easy-going generational transition among the top political positions in the country.'" President Obama indicated he would like to visit Fidel if it could be worked out, but it didn't happen. Fidel has been ill for years but he often meets with visitors and writes a frequent column for the daily paper Granma. He went to a children's school and talked to some of the young kids a two weeks after Obama's departure. And just days after Obama and his family arrived back home Fidel published a 1,500-word column titled "Brother Obama." which said in part: "Obama made a speech in which he uses the most sweetened words to express: 'It is time, now, to forget the past, leave the past behind, let us look to the future together, a future of hope. And it wont be easy, there will be challenges and we must give it time; but my stay here gives me more hope in what we can do together as friends, as family, as neighbors, together.' "I suppose all of us were at risk of a heart attack upon hearing these words from the President of the United States. After a ruthless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years, and what about those who have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers blown up in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and coercion? "Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and culture. "I also warn that we are capable of producing the food and material riches we need with the efforts and intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, as this is our commitment to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet." The author is editor of the Activist Newsletter and is former editor of the (U.S.) Guardian Newsweekly. He may be reached at jacdon@earthlink.net or http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com . Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov - Lenin, The Maker Of The Russian Revolution By Gaither Stewart 25 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org PART 1: Lenin on Compromises In Lenins Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, written in 1920 as a polemic against Dutch and British groups in the new Third International meeting that year in its Second Congress in which strategy and tactics were debated. His target was the West European ultra-left communists who had come out against Marxists working in trade unions or running for public office and sitting in bourgeois parliaments In his polemic against them Lenin says it is sad to see people who doubtless consider themselves Marxists forgetting the fundamental truths of Marxism. As Lenin often did, to make his point he cited the brilliant Engels article on the Blanquist Communards who aimed at achieving their aims without any intermediate stations, i.e. without any compromises, which they saw as mere obstacles postponing victory and prolonging the period of slavery to the capitalist class. Lenin pointed out that the successes of the body of German communists were due to their acceptance of the compromises dictated by historical development while they constantly pursue the final aim, the abolition of classes and the creation of a society in which there will no longer be private ownership of land or the means of production. He criticized the Blanquards for wanting to skip intermediate phases and compromises. What childish innocence it is to present impatience as a theoretically convincing argument! Lenin notes that to young and inexperienced revolutionaries as well as petty-bourgeois revolutionaries it seemed incorrect to allow compromises; then he cites British opportunists who reason that if the Bolsheviks may make a certain compromise, why may we not make any kind of compromises. From those two positions he shows that there are compromises and there are compromises. Every proletarian has been through strikes and has experienced compromises when workers had to go back to work either without having achieved anything or agreeing to only partial satisfaction of their demands. The proletarian notices the difference between a compromise enforced by objective conditions such as lack of strike funds and no outside support, extreme hunger and exhaustion which in no way reduces his revolutionary devotion and readiness to continue the struggle and a compromise by traitors like strikebreakers who because of cowardice toady to the capitalists and yield to intimidation, persuasion or flattery. In these days of critical issues and spinning disasters, it is not unusual to find competing groups and interests apparently sharing the same concerns or desired outcomes. There are marriages of convenience where the old Enemy of my enemy is my friend seems to be the preferred strategy. I believe that Lenins discussion here cautions against this type of compromise. Certainly there are those situations where different groups come together (and indeed must come together) to address a common problem, and compromises often come into play. In such situations it is critical to remember what is not negotiable: basic needs and deeply held principles. All too often this is forgotten and the inevitable ensuing power struggle ultimately determines the shape, context, and implementation of the compromise, which makes it no compromise at all. Compromises can be slippery slopes, for each compromise becomes the starting point for future negotiations and compromises. While I am not arguing that we need to be dogged ideologues, I am arguing that close held principles and visions should not be on the compromise chopping block not for any party to the negotiations. In politics however it is a more decision than is differentiating between legitimate compromise in a strike and the traitorous strikebreaker. That, Lenin repeats as he so often does, is the task of party organization and party leaders who through long experience acquire the knowledge and also instinct to resolve political problems, like identifying the mutable dividing line between what is legitimate compromise and what is opportunism. A long process of education, training, enlightenment and everyday experience is required to single out in each separate historical moment the impermissible and opportunistic compromises. Here, Lenin dwells on the impermissible compromise of opportunism in defence of the fatherland when in WWI German socialists backed the predatory interests of its own bourgeoisie in the war, the defence of the bourgeoiss own country also against the revolutionary proletariat and the Soviet movement in Russia. That is, proletarian against proletarian, worker against worker. Lenin saw the defence of bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism as the chief manifestation of impermissible compromises that he said the sum total of which constituted the opportunism that is fatal to the revolutionary proletariat and its cause. Lenin then condemned certain German Lefts rejection of all compromises with other parties. Such views actually condemn the whole of Bolshevism, he points out, which in order to gain power, maneuvered, temporized and compromised with other parties, bourgeois parties included. To refuse to maneuver, to utilize the conflict of interests among ones enemies is this not ridiculous in the extreme? After a Socialist revolution of the proletariat in one country, the proletariat of that country is still weaker than the bourgeoisie because of the latters international connections and the continuous restoration of capitalism by small commodity producers of the country that has overthrown the bourgeoisie. Compromises with mass allies are necessary. Capitalism would not be capitalism if the proletariat were not divided into more developed and less developed strata , by territorial origin, trade, religion, and so on. From this follows the absolute necessity for the vanguard of the proletariat, for its class-conscious section, for the Communist Party, to resort to maneuvers, arrangement and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of proletarians and workers and small masters. The whole point, Lenin concludes, lies in knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise the general level of proletarian class consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win PART 2: Lenin on Tactics of the Democratic Revolution What state of history are we really in? For revolutionists the question is far from academic. In his work Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Lenin discusses a vexing Russian pre-revolutionary problem similar to the problem facing American left radicals today. For Russia of that epoch the question was one of timing and tactics: Was the classical Marxian bourgeois revolution leading to a democratic republic as a first step toward the Socialist Revolution necessary, and even possible, considering the pusillanimous nature of the Russian bourgeoisie at the time? Or could Russia bypass bourgeois capitalism altogether and leap directly from backwardness into advanced socialism? Today, more than a handful of people ask: What will be the nature of the long overdue Great American Revolution? Since the USA and the West are already in well-advanced capitalism, (albeit within only formally democratic republicsmeaning democracies only in form but without substance) the second alternative seems to concern us more today. But is that true? A look at the historical circumstances of Lenins era from our historical point of view can be useful in determining where we really stand today. In the section of his above work dedicated to the bourgeois revolution as in the highest degree advantageous to the proletariat, Lenin finds this to be true and in fact absolutely necessary in the interests of the proletariat. Today we should keep in mind that the proletariat in the USA is not only the former working class (despite the old-fashioned sound of the word proletariat to many, especially to the conservative, neocon imperialistic 0.01 percent), the size of the proletariat has not diminished as it might seem but has grown with the addition of a great part of the former middle class; in fact, around the corner waiting is a whole world consisting of a huge majority of proletarians ruled by a small elite Lenin writes that it is more advantageous for the working class if the necessary social changes occur by way of revolution rather that by reform. That simple affirmation gives much room for thought! Reform, Lenin reminds is, is the route of delay, procrastination and slow decomposition of the putrid parts of the national organism. Moreover, as we see from day to day, in America as well as across Europe, the proletariat, the working man (1) and the impoverished former middle classnot to mention the poor and neglected one hundred million people of the USA, deprived of adequate health care and education, plagued by obesity and encouraged ignorance, and misled by constant and ubiquitous brainwash and false nationalist propagandacould only benefit from the Marxist-Leninist, first phase bourgeois revolution before the determinant Great American Socialist Revolution being debated among Americas potential revolutionaries.(Unfortunately, apparently not among the masses of the brainwashed people, about which however I am inclined to think things are not exactly as we think they are.) Contrary to appearances, todays proletariat has grown with the addition of a great part of the former middle class. The inexorable dynamics of capitalism, always conducive to greater and more intractable inequality, are rapidly destroying this bulwark of the American Dream. In any case, Lenin writes the revolutionary way is the shortcut to a quick amputation, which is the least painful to the proletariat (which I hope we have agreed exists and is growing rapidly), the way of the direct removal of the decomposing parts, the way of fewest concessions to (their) disgusting, vile, rotten, and contaminating institutions. Marxism, Lenin recalls, urges the proletariat not to be aloof to the bourgeois revolution, but to take an energetic part in it and not to allow the bourgeoisie to take command of it. On the other hand, Lenin advises against fears of a complete victory for social democracy in a democratic revolution and of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat for such a victory would arouse the socialist proletariat of Europe which would in turn help us (the USA likewise today!) to accomplish the socialist revolution. In this same article Lenin goes on to discuss the cardinal question of the possibility of holding power against the forces of counterrevolution against which maximum unity is necessary among all revolutionary forces. At this point, the path of the revolution lies not from oppression by autocracy in Russia or our 0.01 per cent today, but from a bourgeois republic to socialism. Lenin hammers home his message that the social democrat (in those times the future Bolshevik) must never for a moment forget that the proletariat will inevitably have to wage the class struggle for socialism (also) against the most democratic and republican bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Hence the absolute necessity of a separate, independent, strictly Class Party of Social Democracy (i.e., communism). Hence the temporary nature of out tactics of striking jointly with the bourgeoisie and the duty of keeping strict watch over our ally, as over an enemy. Lenin intends that the fight against the autocracy (0.01 percent) is a temporary and transient task of the socialists, the negligence of which would be tantamount to betrayal of socialism and of serving reaction. The bourgeoisie is inconsistent, self-seeking, and cowardly in its support of the revolution and will turn against the people as soon as its selfish interests are met. There remains the people, the proletariat and in those times the peasantry, in our epoch the blue collar workers, service workers, and impoverished middle class, etc., to march to the end, i.e. the socialist revolution. The Russian (read also, the American) Revolution will begin to assume its real sweep, will assume the widest revolutionary sweep possible only when the bourgeoisie recoils from it and when the masses come out as active revolutionaries side by side with the proletariat. In order that our revolution may be carried to its conclusion, (we) must rely on such forces as are capable of paralyzing the inevitable inconsistency of the bourgeoisie, i.e. recoiling from the revolution. The proletariat (workers and former middle class) must accomplish the socialist revolution by allying itself to the mass of the semiproletarian elements of the population, in order to crush by force the bourgeoisie. PART 3: LENIN AND THE WORKING CLASS AS THE VANUARD FOR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Above all, due to the grave obstacles it must overcome, the party of the working class must be a party of disciplined, professional revolutionariesnothing short of this can succeed in acquiring and defending peoples power In 1902, Lenin published his long pamphlet What Is To Be Done, his first systematic development of his views on the nature of the revolutionary party. That writing is widely regarded today as one of the most influential political documents of the twentieth century. The following is a look at the main ideas contained in this famous pamphlet, published in Irving Howes collection of writings on socialism/communism. I am obliged to remind readers that in Lenins time of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the words social democracy corresponded to what became socialism/communism. Lenin begins this section of What Is To Be Done with the statement that on the grounds of the pressing needs of the working class for political knowledge and political training, the organization of wide political agitation and consequently of all-sided political exposures are an absolutely necessary and paramount task of activity, if that activity is to be truly social democratic. (Bold italics ours). But, as was Lenins dialectic style, he immediately adds that this kind of organization is insufficient in that it ignores the general tasks of social democracy as a whole. First, he approaches the subject from what he calls the economist or practical aspect. Everyone agrees that it is necessary to develop the political consciousness of the working class, he writes, before posing the question as to how that is to be accomplished? Seen only from the economic point of view, workers are concerned merely with the economic relations between the government and the working class, devoid of a political character. Therefore, he says, if we confine ourselves to the economic struggle, we will never develop the political consciousness of the workers. An encyclopedic reader, and disciplined thinker who strove for grounding everything in the ultimate, incontrovertible reality of events, Leninss insights into the nature of the bourgeois state have not lost their power to explain contemporary developments. The workers, he continues, can acquire political consciousness only from outside the sphere of worker-employers relations. The sphere from which it is possible to obtain this (political) knowledge is the sphere between all classes and the statethe sphere of interrelations between all classes. Therefore, the way for workers to acquire political knowledge is for social democrats to go among all classes of the population, and dispatch units of their army in all directions. ________________________________________ Lenin explains that he expresses himself in this awkward way in order to stimulate the economists to take up their tasks which they unpardonably ignore, to make them understand the difference between trade unionism and social democratic politics, which they refuse to understand. The type of social democratic circles of the period, he charges, was content with its contact with the workers and issuing leaflets about abuses in the factories, government partiality toward capitalists, and the tyranny of the police. Their group discussions reach no farther. No talk about the history of the revolutionary movement or questions of home and foreign policy of the government or the economic evolution of Russia and Europe or the positions of the various classes in society. No one dreams, Lenin remarks, of extending contacts with other classes of society. The leader of such circles is more like a trade union leader than a socialist political leader. It cannot be too strongly insisted that this is not enough to constitute social democracy.The social democrats ideal (leader) should not be a trade union secretary, but a tribune of the people, able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it takes place, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; he must be able to group all these manifestions into a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every petty event in order to explain his social democratic demands to all, in order to explain to everyone the world historical significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat. Before continuing with Lenin and What Is To Be Done, I have to mention my own reactions at this point: it seems we are speaking also of America and Europe, of applying a historical situation to our own contemporary situation. And I must remind readers that the Leninist category proletariat is alive today and in the USA includes both the diminishing workers class and the rapidly growing and ever poorer former affluent middle class, so that Lenins encouragement to reach out to all classes rings super modern. At the point we left off, Lenin asserts the following five points concerning the heart of Leninism: 1. no movement can be durable without a stable organization of leaders to maintain continuity; 2. the more widely the masses are drawn into the struggle and form the basis of the movement, the more necessary is it to have such an organization and the more stable must it be; 3. the organization must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolution as a profession; 4. in a country with a despotic government, the more we restrict the membership of this organization to persons who are engaged in revolution as a profession and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult it will be to catch the organization; 5. and the wider will be the circle of men and women of the working class or of other classes of society able to join the movement and perform active work . At this point, Lenin raises the question whether it is possible to have a mass organization when strict secrecy is essential? He agrees that we can never guarantee the degree of secrecy required but he believes that the concentration of secret functions in the hands of a small number of professional revolutionaries does not mean that they will think for all and that the masses will have no active part in the movement. On the contrary, Lenin affirms optimistically, more and more professional revolutionaries should emerge from the masses after years of training and experience. Lenin speaks of the reading and dissemination of illegal literature that will not diminish because a dozen professional revolutionaries concentrate the secret work in their hand, but it will increase tenfold. On the contrary, Lenin believed, the professional revolutionaries will be no less trained than the police. They will see to organizational matters like the construction of the organization territorially, appointing leaders in districts and towns and factories and institutions, at the same time expanding contacts with other organization such as trade unions, workers circles and circles for the whole population. We must have as large a number possible of such (associated) organizations having the widest possible variety of functions, but it is absurd and dangerous to confuse these with organizations of revolutionists, to erase the line of demarcation between them, to dim still more the already hazy appreciation by the masses that to serve the mass movement we must have people who will devote themselves exclusively to social-democratic activities, and that others must train themselves to become professional revolutionaries. ________________________________________ In this short section of his famous work, Lenin lays out clearly and lucidly his revolutionary tactics for the execution of one of historys greatest revolutions, which had worldwide effects comparable to those of the Great French Revolution a century and a half earlier. In sum, Lenin visualized a workers vanguard led by a small group of professional revolutionaries who dedicated their lives to overthrowing an oppressive state and its ideology by use of and collaboration with the many diverse classes of society and instituting a new classless order. Because of his early death at age 54 we cannot know, we can only speculate as to what kind of a state leader Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, or Lenin, would have become. I personally have come to believe that whatever the circumstances of the succession to Lenin, Stalin did become the right leader for a Russia riddled by civil war, political divisions and anarchy, foreign interventions, an ignorant population, poverty, a nascent industry at a standstill and agriculture in chaos, and the hostility of the surrounding capitalist world with Socialist Russia in their sights. Though the power of the contemporary capitalist state might penetrate deeper into society and into the mentality of the population than in Lenins time via cradle to the grave brainwash, also modern technology offers much to the opposition to capitalist hegemony, both nationally and internationally. PART 4: Lenin on Imperialism and Capitalism First published in 1917, Lenins Imperialism. The Highest Stage of Capitalism, his major theoretical work, shows imperialism as a direct continuation of the fundamental properties of capitalism, a primary manifestation of capitalism in its late stages. ________________________________________ Returning to Lenins definition, we may add that imperialism reflects the same crisis of capitalism, in which it finds itself today: Lenin insists on the significance of the competition among capitalist nations, one against the other, (in a way foreseeing World Wars I and II), while capitalism itself schemes to meet the continuing and the growing demand for new sources of raw materials, new markets, cheap labor, and new avenues for the investment of surplus capital through imperialism. Lenin labels this period the monopoly stage of capitalism. In essence, he considers this development inevitable: imperialism is inherent in the very workings of developed capitalism. Thus, for Lenin, capitalism became capitalist imperialism at a very high stage of its development when some of its attributes began to be transformed into their opposites, when the features of a period of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system began to reveal themselves all along the line. He is referring to the contradictory process of the substitution of capitalist monopolies for capitalist free competition, the latter being the fundamental attribute of capitalism and commodity production. Our contemporary generation has experienced and continues to experience that transition, visible before us in our daily lives, as it accelerates The monopoly, Lenin refers to, is of course the precise opposite of free competition. We have seen in the 20th and 21st centuries the creation of large-scale industry and the elimination of small-scale industry, the process leading then to still larger-scale industry, leading to such a concentration of production and capital that monopoly results: Lenins cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them the capital of a dozen or so banks. At the same time, Lenin notes, although monopoly has emerged from free competition, monopoly does not eliminate the latter, thereby creating a number of acute, intense antagonisms, friction and conflicts. Thus, Lenin concludes that monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system: the monopoly stage of capitalism, or, imperialism. And thus, from the above, his conclusion that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Lenin: The division of such a world is the transition from a colonialism extended without hindrance to (small and feeble, he wrote elsewhere) territories unoccupied by any capitalist power to a colonialist policy of monopolistic possession of the territory of the world which has been divided up (among capitalist imperialist powers. However, dissatisfied with this too brief definition of imperialism, Lenin, the bulldog as his wife Nadezhda called him, expanded the first definition of imperialism into five essential features: 1. The concentration of production and capital developed to such a degree that it created monopolies, which play a decisive role in economic life. 2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creationand the basis of this finance capitalof a financial oligarchy. (Another of Lenins words so fashionable today.) 3. The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities. 4. The formation of international capitalist monopolies, which share the world among themselves. 5. The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed. (Very contemporary thought, except that he did not and could not foresee the degree of ambitious greed of the USA, which would want it all for themselves.) Therefore, imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital have established themselves; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun. Lenin however was not satisfied with this purely economic explanation of imperialism and intends to zero in on the relation between capitalism and the workers movement in other works. But unable to let go the economic aspects of imperialism for the moment he directs his theoretical and dialectical genius to the theories of the German Marxist, Karl Kautsky, who in 1915 attacked the fundamental aspects of Lenins definition of imperialism.. For example, Kautsky insisted that imperialism was not a stage or a phase of economy, but a policy preferred by finance capital and that imperialism cannot be identified with contemporary capitalism. Lenin instead found Kautskys (and that of other German Marxists in general) definition of imperialism as worthless: because of its insistence on the national question in that every major capitalist nation strives to simply bring under its control, or to annex, big agrarian regions. Imperialism seen as annexation is very incomplete, for politically, imperialism is, in general, a striving toward violence and reaction. (Lenin, we recall, is the bulldog dialectician! For Lenin, in general, the characteristic feature of imperialism is not industrial capital, but finance capital. The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agricultural regions, but even highly industrialized regions (as in WWI, Germans desire for Belgium and Frances desire for the Lorraine.) Why? Because since capitalists have already divided up the world, they have to grab for any territory because an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry among capitalist nations for hegemony, also in order to weaken competitors. Such as today: the USA wants to bring to heel Iraq and Syria and Iran in order to weaken Russia. Lenin quotes from Imperialism (1902) by John A. Hopson to substantiate his point: New imperialism differs from the older, first, in substituting for the ambition of a single growing empire the theory and practice of competing empires, each motivated by similar lusts of political aggrandizement and commercial gain; secondly, in the dominance of the financial or investing over mercantile interests. Lenins point is that development of such economic views leads to concentration of the world of imperialism and superimperialism, a capitalist world in a phase in which wars may cease, a phase of the joint exploitation of the world by internationally combined finance capital. For Lenin, this is a departure from Marxism. Such super-or ultraimperialism theories are reactionary in that they serve to distract attention from the depth of existing antagonisms. After first pointing out the major areas of developed capitalism in Europe, the British Empire and the American area, Lenin indicates two areas where capitalism is not developed: Russia and Eastern Asia and other vast areas with a great diversity of economic and political conditions and an extreme disparity in the rate of development. Lenin concluded that such fables as peaceful ultraimperialism as utterly worthless, reactionary nonsense. Thus, Lenin concludes, finance capital, as we see today in the year 2016, has increased and continues to increase the differences in the rate of development (in fact, finance capital halts development) of the various parts of the world economy. So, how else, under capitalism, Lenin asks can the solution of contradictions be found, except by resorting to violence? PART 5 LENINS MAJOR WORK: STATE AND REVOLUTION The state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of order, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution State and Revolution, published in 1918, is the core of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov or Lenins political thought. As if dictated by Lenin fate, the long work was written in 1917, three months before the October Revolution, on the very eve of the revolution which he was instrumental in bringing about and was in fact interrupted by the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Seldom has an aphorism been timelier than Lenins: It is much more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it. In this work of 110 pages in his collected works (73 pages in an English language Ebook format available online), Lenin develops his views on the nature of the state as an instrument of class oppression and the necessity of revolution to change things, after which he proceeds to examine the stages of the transition from capitalism to communism. In the present article about State and Revolution I have used to a great extent the same (often heavy but highly emotional and descriptive) words and expressions and stuck to Lenins style as much as I thought proper. As Lenin farsightedly notedan undermining practice continuing also today perhaps even to a greater degree than in Lenins timethe bourgeoisie, opportunists in the labor movements and I would add the intellectual classes, especially liberal academics, devote much time and effort to adulterating Marxism, omitting, obliterating and distorting the revolutionary side of its teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Therefore, Lenin writes that his first aim in State and Revolution is to resuscitate the real teaching of Marx on the state. The state, Lenin writes in reference to the essence of the words of Marx, is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises to the extent that those class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable. Bourgeois ideologists, Lenin points out, accept the states existence where there are class antagonisms, but revise Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state exists to reconcile classes. Thus, the bourgeois state is the good, its role being to moderate and reconcile the classestoday, for example, to reconcile the differences between the 0.00001 % and the impoverished classes in the USA for whom even food stamps are unnecessary, for whom free health care and proper education are dispensable and besides smack too much of the hated socialism. According to Marx, Lenin writes, the state could neither arise nor maintain itself if a reconciliation of classes were possible. In reality, the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of order, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes; to moderate collisions does not mean (claim petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists) to deprive the oppressed classes of the means and methods of struggle for overthrowing the oppressors, but to practice reconciliation. In the case of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the meaning and role of the state arose and demanded action on a mass scale, But there, Lenin writes just at the time when this was happening, many left-wing Socialist revolutionaries embraced the petty-bourgeois theory of reconciliation of the classes by the state. That is all they wrote about, reconciliation, reconciliation. This petty-bourgeois class is never able to understandprecisely the same todaythat the state is an organ of domination of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode (the class opposed to it). SPECIAL BODIES OF ARMED MEN, PRISONS, ETC. Referring often to Engels, Lenin writes that civilized society is broken up into irreconcilably antagonistic classes, which, if armed would come into armed struggle with each other. However, a state creates a special power in the form of special bodies of armed men (the army and police), and every revolution, by shattering the state apparatus, demonstrates to us how the ex-ruling class aims at the restoration of these special bodies of armed men (Lenin here is apparently speaking of counterrevolutionary action like the Whites in the Russian civil war yet to come after the Bolshevik seizure of power. Foresight!) and how the oppressed class tries to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters, but the exploited. In this case, the army of the oppressed people. The kernel of the Red Army. The army of the post-revolution against the reaction sure to come. THE STATE AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE EXPLOITATION OF THE OPPRESSED CLASS At this point, Lenin concentrates on the power wielded by the states officials, from the shabbiest police servant to the head of the military arm, as explained by Engels who places state officials as organs above society, which permit the dominant class to hold down and exploit at will the oppressed class just as ancient and feudal states were organs of exploitation of the slaves and serfs. However, not only ancient states, but also the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires in France, the Bismarck regime in Germany, the Kerensky government in the Russia Lenin that was about to overthrow, and how much more so in the unrestrained power of those above society (unchecked militarized police and top secret agencies) in the USA today. Bourgeois ideologists, Lenin points out, accept the states existence where there are class antagonisms, but revise Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state exists to reconcile classes. Thus, the bourgeois state is the good, its role being to moderate and reconcile the classestoday, for example, to reconcile the differences between the 0.01 % and the impoverished classes in the USA for whom even food stamps are unnecessary, for whom free health care and proper education are dispensable and besides smack too much of the hated socialism. Engels had written that in the first place, on the assumption of state power, the proletariat puts an end to the state as the state. Engels means the destruction of the bourgeois state by the proletarian revolution. Engels added that the state itself is a special repressive force. Therefore, the special repressive force maintained by a handful of the bourgeoisie for the suppression of the (masses of) proletariat must be replaced by a special repressive force of the proletariat for the suppression of the bourgeoisie (and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat). The reader must not be mislead by Lenins extensive quotes from the work of the great revolutionary Friedrich Engels; he uses them in order to express pure Leninist views. The revolution constitutes the destruction of the state as the state. It is the seizure of the means of production in the name of society, The so-called withering away of the state refers to the period after the socialist revolution. Engels, Marx and Lenin attempt to define the form of society which will replace the crushed bourgeois state as well as the form of proletarian statehood or the democracy that remains after the revolution. But since democracy is also a state it too must eventually go. The bourgeois state is first crushed and done away with, then, what withers away after the revolution is the proletarian semistate. It is the state in general, the idea of the state (as a repressive force, remember, that is to wither away. The whole point of Marx. Engels and Lenin, is the justification, no, the necessity of revolution to change things, since the bourgeois will never, never wither away on its own. It must be crushed and eliminated by a violent revolution.. The idea of the absolute necessity of violent revolution to eliminate the bourgeois state is the heart, the core, of the thinking of Marx, Engels and finally Lenin. TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM TO COMMUNISM Lenin quotes Marx: Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the former into the latter. To this also corresponds a political transition period, in which the state can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. This conclusion is based chiefly on the irreconcilability of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Now the question arises as to how the transition from the old to the new society can proceed. Lenin too writes that the transition from a capitalist to a communist society requires a political transition period, and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin notes in this text that it is said that the class struggle is the main point of Marxism. That is wrong. The theory of the class struggle was created by the bourgeoisie before Marx. The true Marxist extends the class struggle to the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the most perfect distinction between a Marxist and the ordinary petty (and the big) bourgeois. Lenin then asks what the relation is between this dictatorship to democracy. The answer lies in the changes democracy has undergone during the transition to communism. Although we have almost complete democracy in the democratic republic, he says, this democracy is bound by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation. Therefore it remains a democracy for the minority (for an ever more restricted minority in capitalist states today (if what remains for them can be legitimately called democracy), only for the rich, only for the possessing classes, which Lenin compares to the democracy of ancient Greeks limited to slave owners, while in modern times the democracy, in which wage slaves hardly participate, has no meaning. It means nothing to them. Thus, Lenin concludes: democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the richthat is the democracy of capitalist society. Especially the American reader might ponder Lenins conclusion of one hundred years ago. He notes that if one looks at some of the details of the suffrage (residential and registration requirements), the working of the representative institutions, press freedom, etc., we see on all side restrictions after restrictions of democracy, which effectively eliminate the masses from politics and a share in democracy. Marx too, over one hundred years ago, noted the sham and the irony of every few years allowing the oppressed to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and oppress them. So the progress of capitalist democracy does not march smoothly onward to greater and greater democracy. No! Lenin pronounces, Progress marches onward toward communism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat (achieved by violent revolution); it cannot do otherwise, for there is no one else and no other way to break the resistance of the capitalist exploiters. To provide genuine democracy to the poor, for the people, and not for the rich, the dictatorship of the proletariat applies a series of restrictions on the oppressors, on the exploiters. We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage slavery. There is no other way. So the modification of democracy during the transition from capitalism to communism is that it is a democracy used to crush the capitalist antagonists. Democracy for the great majority of people and suppression of the exploiters and oppressors, such are the task of the revolution and the new society. The splendid future society, the Utopian ideal, the worker with head high and shining eyes looking forward to the splendid future depicted on crude early Soviet posters of the time when men and women now freed from the horrors of capitalist oppression and exploitation and indignation have become accustomed to the elementary rules of social life, the time when the state as such can begin to wither away, to modern readers smacks of hyperbolic, old-fashioned propaganda, today, in the time of subtle, cradle-to-the-grave brainwash. And Lenins last words in State and Revolution, written a century ago will sound like a fairy tale to people busy making money, to the elite of capitalist society. It would be preferable if the images created by Marx and Engels and Lenin appeared at least chimerical. It might surprise readers to learn that a recent survey in Russia shows that over fifty per cent of Russians would like a return to the Soviet Union. Most certainly not the elite, but the poor and the exploited and oppressed today in much of the world and I believe also in the USA would perceive hope in such words and images in Lenins State and Revolution. Yes, I believe so. Gaither Stewart, based in Rome is a veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press. This five part series first appeared in Greanvillepost.com SHARE Twenty-five Indiana companies were honored with the Governor's Century or Half Century Business Award. The Governor's Century and Half Century Business Awards honor Hoosier businesses that have remained in operation for a minimum of 100 or 50 consecutive years and have also demonstrated a commitment to community service. More than 1,400 companies from across the state have been recognized during the 25-year history of the award. The Southwestern Indiana business receiving the Century Award was L.H. Sturm Hardware Co. (121 years) of Dubois County. Receiving Half-Century Awards were two other Dubois County firms, Kimball Electronics (54 years) and Schnitzelbank Restaurant (54 years). SHARE If you ask a group of students what class they like the least, it is a safe bet to say that mathematics and science will be at the top of their lists. I know as a young learner, this would have been true. However, the older I get the more I realize that math and science are literally everywhere around me, and the more I understand those subjects, the better I can predict the perceived randomness of our world. In "Black Hole Blues: and Other Songs From Outer Space," author Janna Levin explores the sounds emanating from the universe at large. A researcher of the space- and time-altering astronomical bodies, Levin paints a picture that no scientist could ever see, but rather could hear by use of highly sensitive instruments. Through mathematic equations and numeric computation, scientists have worked to prove what Albert Einstein predicted 100 years ago. Much further back in the history of our civilization, humanity decided on a universal system with which to describe numeric quantities." Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers" relates author Amir Aczel's search across the globe to discover where our use of standard "Hindu-Arabic" numerals began. Aczel takes his readers on a journey throughout the ancient world, down many wrong paths and dead-ends only to culminate in the heart of a Cambodian jungle ruins. This travelogue shares not only a rich cultural history, but also serious mathematic education. This idea of trial and error, of failure before success, has been embraced by schools of many disciplines, including in those schools where we may not expect to find it. Author Stuart Firestein explores the importance of failing in scientific pursuit in "Failure: Why Science is So Successful." The author argues that society has placed the scientific community on a pedestal that has led to a misconception of science as an infallible discipline. Firestein argues that what one finds is sometimes a shot in the dark that leads to much failure before success is discovered. The book argues that failing is a necessary part of any successful endeavor. Others may argue that a well-created system can mitigate some of the need for failure. Nobel Prize winner Alvin E. Roth may make a case in his book "Who Gets What and Why: the New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design." An economist by trade, Roth quantifies a matchmaking market and what that means for those involved. He uses the cases of universities, organ transplantation and love matches as being markets where commodities may not rule. Rather, the author argues that price may not play as great a role within these markets as much as finding the right fit on both sides of the equation. These matching markets are the answer to this dilemma, giving more people the chance to live or work where they are needed, all with a little help of some hidden math. This idea of hidden manipulation can also be an impediment to our world's success. Adam Segal's book "The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age" explores how governments can exploit mathematical values to get the upper hand on rival nations. More and more, future world conflicts are being played out without many of us being the wiser. Infrastructure, economic and political attacks are being perpetrated daily with only those skilled in the digital world able to stop ruin for those clueless as to their existence. Success in the modern world is hinged upon our ability to understand math and science. Without our awareness as to the existence of how and why things work, we will lose out on the shift in global power. Perhaps after reading how important this knowledge is, we can agree that what we think are the boring classes may just be where we can find the most profitability. Sean Davis is the READ Center Supervisor for the Evansville Vanderburgh County Public Library. JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS Emergency crews respond to numerous injuries after at least one person died in a rollover crash on Interstate 69 in Gibson County just north of the Fort Branch/Mackey exit, according to the Gibson County Sheriff's office. One van had a tire blowout in the crash. More than 10 were injured, according to the Indiana State Police. By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press PRINCETON The man behind the wheel of an overloaded van full of immigrant factory workers that crashed on Interstate 69 in Gibson County, killing two, pleaded guilty to the most serious charges against him on Monday. James D. Allen, 30, originally faced 19 criminal charges 18 of them felonies from the rollover crash that killed two people in September. He pleaded guilty to the nine felonies and one misdemeanor. Superior Court Judge Earl Penrod handed down Allen's sentence, which includes 14 years in prison, two years of probation and the potential for work release after two years in prison. The 14-year prison sentence represents seven years each for the most serious charges to which Allen pleaded guilty on Monday two counts of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence causing death. It is likely that only two of the 14 years of Allen's sentence will be served in the Indiana Department of Correction, under a deal reach between defense attorneys and prosecutors. Penrod added a stipulation to the agreement that Allen has to complete a substance-abuse program before he is to be considered for work release. The people Allen was transporting at the time of the crash were Haitian workers living in the Washington, Indiana, area who trying to get to work at the AmeriQual facility in Vanderburgh County. Most, if not all, of those workers were employed through a Washington temp agency. Allen is a Washington resident. Crash investigators said there were 24 people inside the two-decade-old 15-passenger van when it blew a tire and overturned near the Fort Branch exit on Sept. 24, 2015. Two people died from injuries in the crash 60-year-old Gena Moise and 29-year-old Christela Georges and several other passengers were injured. There were no other vehicles involved. At the time of the crash, Georges was 24-weeks pregnant. Before she died, medical personnel at St. Mary's Medical Center successfully delivered Georges' baby. The infant was released from the hospital in January. In the days after the crash, one investigator described the van as "a death trap," and authorities said three out of the four tires on the vehicle had extreme dry rot. All of the vehicle's middle and rear seats had been replaced by wooden benches in an apparent effort to increase the van's capacity, and there were not enough seat belts. The van was owed by Allen's father, Robert Allen, and the father-son duo took turns transporting the workers to and from job sites, according to passengers who were inside the van the day it crashed. Investigators listed the excessive weight from the extra passengers and the deteriorating conditions of the tires as major reasons for the crash. However, a blood test conducted after the crash also showed signs of marijuana in James Allen's system at the time of the crash. According to the probable cause affidavit in the case, Allen reportedly said he smoked about 2:30 a.m. the day of the crash before falling asleep. The crash happened that afternoon about 3:30 p.m. While both Penrod and chief deputy prosecutor Sharon Werne on Monday commended Allen for cooperating with the investigation, both had harsh words for him and his actions that led to the crash. Even though some of the passengers knew about Allen's erratic driving and the poor condition of the van, the vehicle and the Allens were the only way many of them could have employment, Werne told Penrod. No passengers, or anyone on behalf of the passengers, spoke at Monday's hearing. "They weren't really in a situation where they had a lot of choices." Werne said in court. Several members of Allen's family were in the courtroom on Monday. Allen himself twice declined to make a statement in open court, but his attorney, Daniel Moon, said during the hearing that his client "feels great sadness" about the crash. "Obviously, it's not possible to take it back and he realizes that, but he has taken every step that he can now to take responsibility and own up to consequences of the actions he took," Moon said. James Allen notified the court last month that he planned to plead guilty to some of the charges. He was originally charged with two counts of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence causing death, seven counts of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence causing serious injury and nine counts of criminal recklessness. As part of the agreement announced Monday, he pleaded guilty to the nine charges for operating a vehicle while under the influence, but the criminal recklessness charges were dismissed. Allen was also charged with not having a commercial license, to which he pleaded guilty as well. At the time of the crash, he was cited for speeding, following too closely and making an unsafe lane movement. Passengers inside the van previously told the Courier & Press that he was racing other vehicles and ignored pleas from them to slow down before the tire blowout. Officially, the three citations were formally dropped as part of the plea agreement. According to court records, at least four civil lawsuits have been filed against Allen in Gibson County court on behalf of passengers who were inside the van when it crashed. As Penrod noted, Monday's proceedings do not have any bearing on those cases. FILE PHOTO SHARE By Roger Yu, USA TODAY Gannett Co., which owns USA TODAY and more than 100 other media properties across the country, said Monday it offered to buy Tribune Publishing for about $815 million, its second big expansion move since spinning off from its former parent less than a year ago. In a letter to Justin Dearborn, CEO of Tribune, which owns The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and nine other dailies, Gannett CEO Robert Dickey reiterated Monday a private April 12 offer to pay $12.25 per share, a 63% premium to Tribunes closing stock price last Friday. Gannetts deal includes assuming $390 million of Tribunes debt outstanding as of Dec. 31, 2015. The offer price is about 5.6 times Tribunes estimated 2016 earnings before interest, taxes and other items (EBITDA). Gannett estimates about $50 million a year in synergies savings. Gannett owns USA TODAY plus 107 local news organizations including the Detroit Free Press, Cincinnati Enquirer, Des Moines Register, and Arizona Republic. We believe Tribune shares the new Gannetts unwavering commitment to journalistic excellence and delivering superior content on all platforms, Dickey said in a statement Monday. In this respect, the proposed combination of Gannett and Tribune would bring together two highly complementary organizations with a shared goal of providing trusted, premium content for the readers and communities we serve. Dickey said in an interview that since the original offer, he has had several phone calls with Tribunes non-executive chairman, Michael Ferro, and Dearborn. But the letter says Tribune has refused to begin formal negotiations, prompting Dickey to reveal the bid publicly. What were hoping for is to sit down with Tribunes board and work out a transaction. Were confident that, with cooperation between the companies, we can complete due diligence in a very timely fashion and execute an agreement, Dickey said. Shares of Tribune closed Friday at $7.52, up 2.6%. The bid, unanimously supported by Gannetts board, comes less a month after the McLean, Va.-based company completed its $280 million acquisition of Journal Media Group, which includes the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, as well as the Evansville Courier & Press, Henderson Gleaner and the Union County Advocate. Gannett spun off from its former parent in June of last year, retaining the publishing business but not its broadcast assets. At the time of the spin-off, Dickey made it clear that his strategy amid the turbulent print advertising market involved consolidating more media properties to strengthen its position on local reporting and local marketing and advertising. Its 108 newspapers and their affiliated digital properties now comprise the newly created USA TODAY NETWORK, a nationwide news organization that taps into the combined resources of its 3,800 journalists to report on major national as well as local issues, and that focuses heavily on investigative and watchdog reporting. If Gannett were to complete the deal, it would expand the NETWORK in strategic markets by owning dominant newspapers in major metro areas, such as the LA Times, the Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel. Tribune fills a number of geographical gaps for us, Dickey said. We think bringing their publications to the USA TODAY NETWORK strengthens the overall NETWORK. While it owns some of the most august brands in journalism, Tribune has undergone some turbulent changes in recent months. Beset by falling print ad sales, the Chicago-based company reported a net loss of $2.8 million in 2015, swinging from a profit of $42.3 million a year earlier. In February, Ferro, who made his fortunes in technology and health care, paid $44.4 million to buy a 16.6% stake in Tribune to become its largest single shareholder. Soon after the acquisition, Ferro removed Tribunes CEO, Jack Griffin, and replaced him with a longtime associate, Dearborn. We believe Gannett is uniquely willing and able to propel Tribune into the position of strength that will allow its beloved and historic publications and other assets to survive and thrive in this challenging environment, Dickey wrote in his letter to Dearborn. Given the opportunity to benefit from the significant premium and near-term liquidity, we are confident that Tribunes stockholders will embrace our offer. Gannett, which was virtually debt free when it spun off from TEGNA, plans to finance the deal using its existing $500 million line of credit and tapping the debt market for additional funds required. That will leave the companys debt-to-EBITDA ratio at about 1 to 1.5, Dickey said. That is considerably below industry standards, he said. While he will seek savings in duplicative functions, Dickey said the goal isnt to cut back on editorial resources. We have tremendous respect for the employees of Tribune Publishing. Our goal is to write great journalism at every location. And you cant do that without having proper resources. Im committed to investigative, public service journalism. We will always be efficient at our job. I focus on areas that don't impact journalism, he said. FILE- In this March 3, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidates, businessman Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich appear during a Republican presidential primary debate at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) SHARE By Stephanie Wang and Chelsea Schneider, USA TODAY NETWORK, Indianapolis Star Ohio Gov. John Kasich will step back from campaign efforts in Indiana, forging a partnership with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in an attempt to block Donald Trump from earning the Republican nomination for president, the Kasich and Cruz campaigns announced late Sunday. "We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana," Kasich for America chief strategist John Weaver said in a statement. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana," Cruz for President Campaign Manager Jeff Roe said in a statement, "and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead." Kasich was scheduled to visit Indiana on Tuesday, ahead of the May 3 primary. Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, co-chair of Kasich's Indiana campaign, said the candidate cancelled all Indiana events. "Kasich is asking his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz so Trump does not win Indiana, and Cruz will do the same" in Oregon and New Mexico, Brainard told IndyStar, to prevent splitting anti-Trump votes. SHARE By Thomas B. Langhorne of the Courier and Press Candidates in Vanderburgh County's most hotly contested primary election will be invited to pose questions to each other in a Wednesday night debate hosted by the Evansville Courier & Press. Cheryl Musgrave, Alex Schmitt and Brenda Bergwitz, who seek the Republican Party's nomination in County Commissioners District 3, each may ask another candidate one question in the 6 p.m. debate at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library's Central branch. The hourlong debate will be moderated by John Gibson of WNIN, with other questions posed by the Courier & Press Election Center team. Limited seating will be available to the public in the library's Browning Room. In addition, the Courier & Press will live-stream the debate on its mobile app and website. Musgrave, 58, is seeking to regain the seat she occupied from 2005 until July 2007, when then-Gov. Mitch Daniels named her director of the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance. Schmitt, 32, is a first-time candidate running with the support of Mayor Lloyd Winnecke. Bergwitz, 74, is a conservative activist making her first bid for public office. The primary election will be held May 3. Early voting is ongoing. The Vanderburgh County Election Office (Room 214 of the Civic Center) is open for early voting from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays through Friday; from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday; and from 8 a.m. until noon May 2. Five libraries Central, McCollough, North Park, Oaklyn and Red Bank will have early voting from noon to 6 p.m. from through Thursday and noon to 5 p.m. on Friday. Two churches Northeast Park Baptist Church, 1215 N. Boeke Road, and Pleasant Chapel Baptist Church, 1305 W. Florida St., will have early voting from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. ___ CANVASS PODCAST: Indiana Primary Election Preview SHARE Matt Ubelhor Evansville For many years we have elected people to represent us that campaign as conservatives, but when they get elected they lose their way. Many people want a change to someone that will do what they say they will, and some people think that person is Donald Trump. Let us briefly look at what he says and does. trump boldly claims he can't be corrupted since he is self funding his campaign yet he has accepted millions of dollars in contributions from donors. Trump rails against companies that produce their goods in foreign lands yet he has his own line of ties made in China. He says we must not elect Hillary Clinton yet he contributed to her last presidential campaign and even invited her to his latest wedding. When Trump is asked about why his actions don't match his rhetoric he claims that he had no choice since he is a business man. This troubles me. A man that is willing to take the easy route and go against his stated principles in business is even more likely to take the easier path when he is elected to political office. Let us contrast him to Ted Cruz. As Solicitor General of Texas he successfully defended the Second Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court. As senator he has angered both Democrats and establishment Republicans by fighting to stop the President's huge budgets. Moreover, in perhaps his finest hour he and a few brave others fought to defund and block Obamacare, the law that destroyed so many health care plans, while reading the Dr. Seuss classic "Green Eggs and Ham" on the floor of the U.S. Senate. People rightly want a president who will reverse the damage done over the last seven years. Judging by his actions I don't think Trump is that man. That man is Ted Cruz. SHARE Bix Branson Evansville Indiana Senator Vaneta Becker began her career in state government in 1981. Throughout her 35 years in the Statehouse, she has been a dedicated advocate for the most vulnerable population in our state people who are often overlooked, including the elderly, those living in poverty, and those with developmental disabilities and their families. In 2011, Sen. Becker received the prestigious "Lifetime Achievement Award" from The Arc of Evansville. She served as a member of the board of directors of the Arc of Evansville from 1984 through 1988, and through that volunteer experience saw numerous issues and concerns that individuals with disabilities face. More importantly, she recognized the many contributions that individuals with disabilities were making in our community, and she took action to ensure that they were receiving the support necessary to be successful. Sen. Becker has been a tenacious advocate for funding for home and community based services for people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. She was a strong advocate for Indiana's 317 Plan, which ultimately led to the closure of state institutions that housed people with developmental disabilities for decades. With her advocacy, Indiana's 317 Plan significantly expanded home and community based services, providing options for individuals to live in their own home with the support needed. Sen. Becker dedicated herself to ensuring the state invested adequate financial support, which drastically changed lives of thousands of Hoosiers. Sen. Becker also has worked tirelessly to advocate for additional state funding, to get individuals off Medicaid Waiver waiting lists and into services, and to ensure sustainability for services. Her commitment and passion for people with disabilities has been life-changing for countless Hoosier families. We are grateful for Sen. Becker's persistence in advocating for new programs and additional funding. Bix Branson is a board member for The Arc of Evansville. Scott Redding suffered his most difficult race as a Pramac Ducati rider at Jerez, the Englishman languishing down in 19th place as he battled chronic wheelspin. Redding's best lap was two-seconds off the fastest by race winner Valentino Rossi and he admitted to being spooked by memories of his Argentina tyre failure. "No wrong choice," insisted Redding, who was one of four riders to pick the softest rear compound. "The tyre was falling apart. I probably shouldn't say it but it is the truth and it's cost me another race. "The problem was I felt something wasn't right and I didn't want to keep pushing and then the same thing happen as in Argentina. We just checked the tyre and it started to delaminate, blister, chunks coming out. "So we need to fix something or they need to fix something. It just didn't work from the word go and it got worse and worse. The spin was quite aggressive, but what I felt most was that even in a straight line it was spinning. Up into fifth gear it was still spinning. "And when I exit the slow corners and load the tyre hard, I felt like the tyre was squashing and almost like the rim was touching the tyre. So when I saw the state of the tyre - it was the pieces hitting, missing, hitting, missing. "So I was worried. I'm not going to lie. The two fast corners here I could feel it spinning and I knew it wasn't going to be good. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt and kept going to the end and it did stay together. There are pieces missing. But I don't honestly think it would have lasted another five laps." Redding believes he has been the hardest hit by the change to the stiffer construction rear tyres, introduced following his incident in Argentina. "They made a big change that's affected us the most to be honest. Ducati are struggling but the other guys manage to find a bit somewhere. So we need try and figure out something with the bike if it helps. "But you know some of the other guys were spinning a lot more [than me] and we spent all weekend trying to recover spin with electronic, riding style. I daren't think what would have happened if we didn't. "I'm not just blaming the tyre, but there's nothing I could do. We need to sit down with [Michelin] and Ducati and decide what to do to move forward." Responding to Redding's comments, a Michelin spokesman told Crash.net: "There were some tears on Scott's tyre. Nothing any bigger than a coin and the wear on the tyre was no more extreme than we saw on Marc Marquez's winning tyre in Austin. As far as we are concerned there was no safety issue with the tyre at all and the amount of wear was expected after 27 laps in 40-plus degrees around this circuit on a soft tyre. "Regarding the amount of spinning in a straight line, which Jorge [Lorenzo] also mentioned, this is something we need to look into. For example, whether it was an amalgam of the track - because the riders have been saying all weekend that there is very little grip - and the increase in race day heat. But equally it's something we have to learn from. "One big positive this weekend is that we brought five different tyres here - all five were used in the race, in various combinations, and unfortunately Alvaro [Bautista] fell but he was the only faller. And when you compare that with Moto2 and Moto3 it's a good indicator of how well the tyres did work." Sussex News Story Saved You can find this story in My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has revealed the Australian governments national cybersecurity strategy - with 33 initiatives totalling $231 million. The program aims to foster better cybersecurity practices among businesses, as well as the governments own practices. "As your Prime Minister, my highest duty, and that of my government, is to keep Australians safe, said Turnbull. It is no different in cyberspace. Australians expect the government to protect them from cyber-attack and defend our country against sophisticated national security threats. Turnbull said the estimated cost of cybercrime in Australia is over $1 billion in direct costs, but some estimates said the long-term costs could be as high as $17 billion a year. Our cyber security strategy answers the call for national leadership. And it understands that Australias economic security is always placed at risk without strong national security. The plan includes the creation of approximately 100 new specialist jobs, and even more funds to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills in schools. Other government initiatives include: $36 million over five years to improve Australias international innovation and science collaboration $30 million cybersecurity growth centre to promote collaboration and to help develop Australias cybersecurity industry. Childrens eSafety commissioner and former Dimension Data general manager Alastair MacGibbon will become the prime ministers special advisor on cybersecurity. Resellers speak CRN spoke to a number of Australian channel security providers to gauge their thoughts on the governments initiatives. Like most security professionals, SecureWare managing director Adam Barker was happy to see cybersecurity at the forefront of the national agenda. Its fantastic there theres a focus on cybersecurity, and I think Turnbulls had a big play in that, said Barker. Everyone will be talking about Australias offensive capabilities, but I dont think anyone ever believed we didnt have them. What I liked seeing was that there is a focus on business. It used to be just government, but this is leaning towards both business and government. As a South Australian native, Barker said he hopes the governments $39 million Australian Cyber Security Centre will be built in Adelaide. The centre is aimed at facilitating more collaboration between the government and the private sector. We need the centre to focus on enterprise, not just business and government, so Im looking forward to seeing where it is, said Barker. Sententias Tony Vizza also welcomed the announcement, praising the governments commitment to STEM skills. Being dedicated to cybersecurity is always welcome. Theres no doubt in my mind we have problems in how much we spend on it, said Vizza. Sitting through the [Australian Cyber Security Centre Summit] last week and hearing the research seemed to suggest were behind the rest of the world. Our academic engagement is quite poor, and anything that remediates that is very welcome. However, Vizza raised the point that the governments strategy could come undone after the upcoming federal election on 2 July. Theres been a lot of noise over the last six months about this, so Im concerned about how much of it is noise and how much is just confusing businesses with what to do. It would be a good step forward if we could get this passed, but it might not be if theres a change in government. We could be back to square one, but well have to see what [Bill] Shorten brings to the table. Melbourne asset security management specialist IPSec focuses on security for mid-market firms. Director of operations Ben Robson was concerned that there was not enough focus on securing mid-market players. There is a lot of emphasis on scale operations and security of individual businesses, said Robson. Initiatives have always been focused on banks, education providers or individuals, but there is little leadership from the government that covers mid-tier firms. While the government pledged $15 million to provide grants to small businesses to improve their cybersecurity, Robson thinks there may have been an oversight. These organisations hold confidential information and intellectual property the same way as the big guys do but they dont have the same budget. Robson was also wary of how the government plans to recruit new cybersecurity professionals to handle the governments initiatives. The government has pledged and additional $48 million to promote STEM skills in schools. However, this does not address the immediate concerns that cybersecurity presents. If theyre going to be hiring 100 new jobs, where is that going to come from? said Robson. Are they going to pull from existing professionals? If STEM is their plan, its fantastic to foster more talent, but if its not then where are they getting resources and over what time table? This is not an over-resourced sector. Although China last year vehemently denied a cyberattack on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and government officials maintained a stony silence, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that the bureau was indeed a target of attack. In a departure from the tight-lipped posture usually assumed in the wake of a cyber attack, Turnbull verified that the bureau suffered a significant cyber intrusion which was first discovered early last year, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which reported the attack in December. Turnbull said the Department of Parliamentary Services was the target of a similar attack in the last few years. Both organisations worked with the Australian Cyber Security Centre to fix the vulnerabilities. While revealing a $230 million Cyber Security Strategy, the prime minister also acknowledged that Australian government is capable of launching cyberattacks, although under stringent legal oversight. This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com Leading Edge Computers (LEC) resellers have pledged more than $15,000 toward youth cancer through the Sony Foundation. This marks the sixth year since LEC first partnered with the Sony Foundation - which is the charitable arm of Sony Australia - with a focus on youth issues, including severe illness, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, disability and displacement. In a moving speech at this year's LEC conference in Melbourne, Sony Foundation CEO Sophie Ryan discussed 'You Can', its partnership with CanTeen to support young people who have been affected by cancer. According to Sony Foundation, young Australians with cancer are a "forgotten generation", with the incidence of cancer almost three times higher in young people compared to children under 15 years. At the conference, Ryan praised the Leading Edge resellers who have raised money through an annual donation scheme. At the end of the presentation, conference attendees were asked to donate $10 a week $520 per year to the scheme, with some 30 LEC members immediately signing up. A similar number supported the charity last year. The partnership between LEC and Sony arose when Graham Dear, CEO of Leading Edge Buying Groups, heard about the Sony Foundation on the radio. What started as a fundraiser based on LEC stores acting as drop-off points for donated mobile phones evolved into a gold partnership, and since 2010 Leading Edge resellers have raised significant donations for the Sony Foundation. As well as the member pledge, Leading Edge raises money for the charity through other drives; at tonight's awards dinner, it will hold a charity auction to support the Sony Foundation. LEC is currently holding its annual tradeshow conference at the Pullman Hotel in Melbourne. The journalist was a guest of Leading Edge Computers in Melbourne. Channel programs News Xerox Says Company Split Will Be Complete By Mid-2016 Jimmy Sheridan Share this Printer and services giant Xerox is on track with plans to split in two by the end of the year, announcing Monday that it will hire top executives for each firm by the middle of 2016. "The search is well underway, and we have high quality candidates for each key executive role," CEO Ursula Burns said. In January, Burns announced the separation into two publicly traded companies based on its current offerings: a $7 billion organization focused on business process services; the other its legacy, $11 billion document technology business that includes printers, scanners and copiers. [Related: Xerox Channel Chief On How Company Split Will Drive Channel Growth And Software Opportunities] The services business, Xerox Global Services, is ranked No. 7 on CRNs Solution Provider 500 list. During the companys first-quarter earnings call Monday morning, Burns announced that Xerox management has decided that the best transaction structure for the company to separate will be a spinoff of its BPO business, which the company expects will cost between $200 million and $250 million. Also Monday, Xerox, based in Norwalk, Conn., announced the rest of a three-year, $300 million restructuring it expects will save $2.4 billion over the next three years form both ongoing and new initiatives. When the split and restructuring were announced in January, some of its channel partners said they believed those moves would help them due to a stronger focus on the document technology side. "With a split like this, Xerox is going to be able to use the profits from the sale of its devices and spend it on [research and development] for the devices themselves, Steve Jenkins, president of Xerox partner Precision Document Solutions, of Carrollton, Texas, told CRN at the time. Any time you have more R&D dollars coming in, the product is going to get better." During the company's most recent quarter, Xerox spent $126 million of that $300 million restructuring initiative, with all but $2 million of that coming in the form of severance costs related to the layoffs of approximately 4,800 employees worldwide during the first quarter. For the quarter, Xerox reported a 4-percent drop in revenue, to $4.3 billion, over the first quarter of 2015, slightly beating industry analysts expectations of $4.24 billion. However, its net income, weighed down by costs from the company's restructuring and planned separation, plunged 84 percent to $34 million. For the rest of the year, Xerox is maintaining its revenue guidance, forecasting growth of between 2 and 4 percent over last year. For 2015, the company took in about $4.65 billion in revenue. The company's stock fell more than 11 percent by midday on the New York Stock Exchange following the earnings release. For the day, the stock fell more than 13 percent, closing at $9.68. The drop in revenue was driven by a 10 percent plunge on the products side, but softened by a gain in services revenue of about 2 percent, thanks to high renewal rates for services contracts. On the company's conference call, Burns said that although margins and revenue "were a bit lighter than we would have expected," Xerox will rely on its restructuring initiative to help meet its guidance for the full year, with a particular focus on the products side. "If you think about what we have done in the second half of last year, we did none of our restructuring in the document technology business; we did all of our restructuring in the services segment," she said. Windstar Cruises has added six new individuals to its corporate operations, including a new vice president of deployment and revenue operations, vice president of accounting, director of public relations and social media, director of information technology, controller, and risk manager. New staff appointments include: Doug Santoni has been named the new vice president of deployment and revenue operations at Windstar. Santoni is an experienced executive in the travel and transportation industry, with expertise in pricing, strategy, and advanced analytics. Santoni previously held executive roles with Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD, where he led revenue management and pricing for the multi-branded global fleet of cruise ships and was charged with deploying vessels to maximize profitability and support key brand positions. Immediately prior to joining Windstar, Santoni was the pricing executive for Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group in Seattle. He holds a bachelors degree in operations research and a Master of Engineering and Master of Business Administration from Cornell University. As vice president of deployment and revenue operations at Windstar Cruises, Santoni leads a variety of key commercial functions encompassing revenue management, deployment and itinerary planning, product development, and vacation planning via the customer contact center. Peter Beck comes to Windstar as the new vice president of accounting. Beck brings 25 years of financial, accounting, and staff management experience, most recently working at Seattle-based Columbia Hospitality, Inc. as vice president and chief financial officer. Previous positions included serving as vice president and chief financial officer for the Space Needle Corporation, as well as several progressive positions within the finance department of Westin Hotels & Resorts. Beck is a certified public accountant and holds a bachelors degree in business administration from California State University, Fullerton. As vice president of accounting at Windstar, Beck is responsible for overseeing management of the companys financial reporting and accounting functions. Additional responsibilities include managing the budgeting, forecasting, capital planning, and risk management process. Mary Schimmelman joins Windstar Cruises as director of public relations and social media, bringing a passion for cruise travel and a comprehensive background in communications and travel. Most recently Mary served as senior manager of social media marketing for Holland America Line, where she was responsible for establishing and growing the brands overall social media program including content development, multi-channel publishing, partnerships, and integrated marketing communications. Prior to that, Schimmelman was a member of Holland Americas public relations team. She holds a bachelors degree in humanities and communications from Seattle University. As director of public relations and social media at Windstar, Schimmelman is responsible for all aspects of public relations including brand positioning, media relations, corporate communications, special events, issues management, as well as social media oversight including content curation and publishing, marketing integration, community engagement via Windstars vast portfolio of social outlets. Brian Kimmons serves as the new director of information technology for Windstar Cruises and brings 20 years of hospitality information technology experience, including 15 in the cruise industry. Previous positions include working as director of information technology for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, as well as ten years at Silversea Cruise Lines. Kimmons holds a degree in computer science and biochemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Windstar, Kimmons is focused on implementing new corporate information technology standards, as well as providing around the clock support to Windstars vessels in Europe, French Polynesia, and the Caribbean. Gina Smith arrives at Windstar with more than 20 years of experience, bringing an extensive background in accounting and financial systems most recently working as controller at the Bellevue Club in Bellevue, Washington. She holds a bachelors degree in accounting from Seattle University. As Windstar controller, Smith is responsible for providing financial information to the organization, both in reporting company-wide operational results and managing department budgets and financial forecasts. Jay Juang embarks Windstar as risk manager, coming to the company with more than 20 years of risk management roles, most recently as vice president and claims manager at Mitsui Sumitomo Marine Insurance. Juang began his maritime career sailing on container ships, passenger vessels, and supertankers, eventually being promoted to captain. He holds a bachelors degree in marine transportation from New York Maritime College and a Master of Business Administration in insurance from St. Johns University. Juang focuses on managing the Windstar fleets operational risks to provide the best customer experience possible. The U.S. no longer requires Apples assistance to unlock an iPhone 5s phone running iOS 7 used by the accused in a drug investigation, stating that an individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case. The Department of Justice has withdrawn its application in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. DOJ had earlier appealed to District Judge Margo K. Brodie an order from Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, ruling that Apple could not be forced to provide assistance to the government to extract data from the iPhone 5s. Yesterday evening, an individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case, DOJ wrote in a filing to the court late Friday. Late last night, the government used that passcode by hand and gained access to the iPhone. The filing did not provide information on who the individual was and in what capacity he was acting. Jun Feng, the accused in the methamphetamine possession and distribution investigation, provided the passcode to investigators, said The Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter. Feng has already pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced. He had earlier told investigators that he didnt remember the passcode. The filing in the New York court has parallels to another dispute between Apple and the government over assistance in cracking an iPhone 5c running iOS 9 used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino killings in December. In that case in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the government had demanded Apples assistance but later asked the court to vacate its order as it had accessed data stored on the phone, using a tool from a third party. The tool addressed only a narrow slice of iPhones, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey said earlier this month. While it could unlock the the iPhone 5c running iOS 9, the tool does not work on the iPhone 5s or 6, he said. Apple, meanwhile, demanded to know in the New York case whether the government had exhausted all other options to get to the data. Judge Orenstein had ruled that Apple cant be forced to extract data from the iPhone 5s under a statute called the All Writs Act, the same law invoked in the California case. The government's reading of the All Writs Act, a statute enacted in 1789 and commonly invoked by law enforcement agencies to get assistance from tech companies on similar matters, would change the purpose of the law from a limited gap-filing statute that ensures the smooth functioning of the judiciary itself into a mechanism for upending the separation of powers by delegating to the judiciary a legislative power bounded only by Congress's superior ability to prohibit or preempt, Orenstein had written in his order. The governments withdrawal of its demand for Apples assistance in both the New York and California cases leaves unresolved a key legal issue whether the government can compel device makers to help break the encryption and other security in their products, which is an issue of significance both to tech companies and privacy groups. Apple could not be immediately reached for comment. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRIDGEPORT Burned-out factories. Blighted neighborhoods. That was Rashawn Powells first impression of his new home when the University of Bridgeport freshman arrived at the South End school from New Yorks Long Island. It started being very alarming to me, Powell, 18, said last week. You dont really want to see these things as youre coming to a university. Then, Powell entered the well-maintained, 54-acre campus, which abuts the citys beautiful and historic Seaside Park and looks out on sparkling Long Island Sound. Suddenly, on this particular sunny day, Powell knew he had made the right choice when he enrolled at UB. Its getting past that initial aesthetic thats really holding the university back, Powell said. George Estrada, UBs vice president for facilities, said Powells experience is a common one for visitors. You hear that all day long, every day, Estrada said. The minute they hit campus they say, Oh my God, this is gorgeous. Its ignominious bankruptcy well behind it, UB has become an educational institution on the rise. Estrada said the student population of more than 5,400 is the largest since the mid-1980s. A master plan As a result, UB is working on a master plan for expansion, focusing in particular on the schools of engineering and nursing, and on recreational facilities. The plan, being drafted by New York City-based Sasaki Associates, looks ahead five, 10 and 15 years. The goal is for UBs expansion to complement ongoing municipal and public/private redevelopment efforts in the South End, including the replacement of the aging Marina Village housing project and old manufacturing sites. But in the shorter term, the university and city are hoping to partner on what Estrada calls curb appeal. That means making visual improvements to the three main arteries through campus Park and Iranistan avenues and Broad Street to make them more attractive, safer and provide a better link to Bridgeports growing downtown on the north side of the Metro-North tracks. When we have an open house like (last) weekend that attracts 1,000 potential students and families, we want neighborhoods looking clean and safe, Estrada said. If theyre not, there are a lot of universities you can look at as an option. And developers focused on building more housing and luring businesses downtown have often lamented the barrier of run-down neighborhoods that keep many of the 1,200 students living on UBs campus and the money in their pockets at bay. I honestly dont feel that comfortable to walk too far off campus, Powell said. City could contribute $10 million The curb-appeal initiative is loosely identified as the Gateway to the South End in Mayor Joe Ganims most recent budget proposal. The plans are still in the early stages, but would see the city borrow $2 million in the coming year, and possibly as much as $10 million over the next five years, for still unspecified work. It is a way for Ganim to put his money where his mouth is. When he ran for re-election last year having served as mayor from 1991 to 2003, Ganim, a UB alumnus, pledged to forge a closer personal relationship with the school than then-incumbent Mayor Bill Finch. Ganim one night last week delivered a speech on campus about working more closely with UB for the benefit of the university and the city. And Ganim touted the gateway project as a main attraction. As he spoke on one of the towering librarys top floors, Ganim acknowledged the panoramic views of the city and the sea out the windows. He also acknowledged the need to leave potential students and other visitors to the university and Seaside Park with a good impression. When they come in, if they get to see this view, (they say), Where do I sign? Who wouldnt? Ganim said. Over the winter, Ganim and then-Economic Development Director David Kooris traveled to New York City for a briefing and dinner with Sasaki representatives, UB trustees, university president Neil Salonen and Estrada. The university is bordered on the sides by Broad Street and Iranistan Avenue, with Park Avenue running through the middle of campus to the granite Perry Memorial arch marking Seasides main entrance. A renewal project is born One of the things we talked about in that strategic meeting was, I call it The Gateway to the university, Ganim said. In some ways, its looked at as the gateway to the South End. Estrada, who formerly ran the citys public facilities department, said Park Avenue is the oldest streetscape in the city. And while the university and city have invested in some new sidewalks over the years, Estrada said it is time to focus on more work new plantings, esplanades, traffic islands before it gets to where you have half-flowering trees and the islands begin to crumble. But Iranistan Avenue and Broad Street are also key, not just Park Avenue, Estrada said. Surveys conducted by Sasaki found that Broad Street is the most heavily used route to UB. We didnt even know that, Estrada said. As for Iranistan Avenue, the street has had little capital investment south of the railroad tracks, Estrada said. Powell, the UB freshman from Long Island, was in the audience when Ganim spoke at the library and introduced himself to the mayor afterward. I honestly feel like he has a plan, Powell said. Its the execution that everyones waiting for. Talking about it is one thing. Putting it into place is another. Ganim had previously assured his audience, Were on it. Is it happening fast enough? Never for me, the mayor said. But were getting there. brian.lockhart@scni.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 3 of 3 FAIRFIELD - Victoria Sweet, former historian and associate professor of medicine at the University of California, will deliver the commencement address at Sacred Heart Universitys 50th Undergraduate Commencement exercises. The ceremony takes place at 10 a.m., Sunday, May 15, at 10 a.m. She will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree. At the same ceremony, Brad Evans, senior adviser at Morgan Stanley, will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. BRIDGEPORT It was hard to tell from the loud ruckus in the lobby of the Golden Hill Street courthouse Monday just who was there to support whom. Bernard Brandon had just been arraigned before Superior Court Judge William Holden on murder charges in connection with the fatal shooting of Javoni Patton on Feb. 11. A large crowd had gathered for the arraignment, and when they got outside the courtroom there was a lot of screaming and yelling. Judicial marshals quickly ordered the crowd outside the building, where the hubbub continued up and down Golden Hill Street. There were no arrests. In the meantime, Holden ordered the 32-year-old Brandon who is charged with murder, criminal possession of a gun, possession of a gun without a permit and having a weapon in a motor vehicle held in lieu of $1 million bond, and the judge continued the case to May 10. Police said Brandon shot Patton in the chest, hand and thigh after the two got into a dispute about gambling debts. They said Brandon was the last person to have called Patton before the victim was found lying in the street at the intersection of Stratford and Connecticut avenues. When detectives went to talk to Brandon, they said, the first thing they noticed was a tattoo of a handgun on his right forearm. Police said Brandon admitted he had an argument with the victim at a Jamaican gambling club on Park Avenue, and that he called Patton later to meet at what became the murder scene. But Brandon claimed he didnt shoot Patton, and that another man nicknamed Outlaw did. (Brandon) was rolling a blunt when Outlaw exited the vehicle and shot Patton numerous times with a revolver, police said Brandon told them. But police said Brandon apparently didnt anticipate that he would be recorded by surveillance cameras. Police said they said they were able to see Brandon as he got into his car alone outside his home and drove alone to the murder scene. PHILIP OJISUA / AFP/Getty Images New Haven Ambassador Samantha Power, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obamas Cabinet, will be the 2016 Class Day speaker at Yale University. The Class Day lecture to the graduating Yale College Class of 2196 takes place at 2 p.m., Sunday, May 22, on Old Campus. Berlin, Windber and North Star bring plenty of momentum into Week 10 Check out what we learned in Week 9 of the high school football season across Somerset County. 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. Lifestyle | Daily Life | News | The Sydney Morning Herald Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later. Dismiss A mother said she feels lucky to be alive after her ex-boyfriend ruptured her liver in a horrific bonfire night attack. Jackie Forshaw, 37, from Liverpool, has spoken out after being left with 'car crash' type injuries after Paul Ross, 40, repeatedly hit, bit and stamped on her ribs. The mother-of-two was found covered in blood on his living room floor after the ordeal was heard over the phone by an operator. Scroll down for video Police officers said the victim was frozen with fear when they found her and described Ross's (pictured) home as looking like 'a scene from a horror movie'. He was jailed for nine years at Liverpool Crown Court Police officers said the victim was frozen with fear and described Ross's home as looking like 'a scene from a horror movie'. Judge Anil Murray jailed the 40-year-old for nine years - saying he might have killed his victim. Jackie, who has been left psychologically scarred by the attack, agreed. 'I could easily have died that night. I know I'm lucky to be here,' she said. Tragically, she entered her relationship with Ross after breaking up with another violent man. She said: 'Before I started seeing Paul, I had an abusive partner and he stepped in as someone who would look after me and protect me. I never dreamed he would hurt me.' The couple met through Jackie's brother as teenagers and were friends for years. Jackie came out of the abusive relationship over the summer of 2014 and Ross stepped in to look after her. The couple met through Jackie's brother (above) as teenagers and were life-long pals. Jackie came out of an abusive relationship over the summer of 2014 and Ross stepped in to look after her Jackie says: 'I confided in him about my problems and he was horrified that I'd been badly treated. He vowed to protect me. I thought he'd be the last person to ever attack me.' They started dating and at first their relationship went well. Jackie says: 'Paul and I shared the same sense of humour. We had fun together, going out and cooking nice meals. 'I had just lost my mum to cancer and Paul's mum had recently died too. We had a lot in common.' But in October last year, Ross attacked Jackie after an innocent play-fight went wrong. She says: 'He made a grab for me, as a joke, and I caught him on the elbow by mistake. He exploded punching me hard three times and biting my cheek. I was in agony. I didn't know what had hit me.' Jackie ran to a neighbour's home for help but Ross thought she had gone to another house and smashed a window there. Jackie was taken to a women's refuge and Ross was arrested, charged and released on bail with an electronic tag. She says: 'I couldn't bear it at the refuge and so I went back to my own home.' But Ross still had a key to her home and let himself in at around 11.30pm on Bonfire Night. Jackie says: 'I was sitting on the bed, chatting to a friend on the phone. Paul rushed into the room and hit me so hard in the head that I went flying across the room.' He then punched her repeatedly in the face with car keys in his fist. He dragged her onto the landing, slammed her head into a window ledge and dragged her by the hair down the stairs and outside, yelling 'watch what happens now'. Jackie, pictured as a teenager, thought she and Paul had a lot in common and were soulmates Jackie, pictured here as a teenager, grew up around Paul as he was a friend of her brother's Ross then frogmarched Jackie to a waiting taxi. The taxi driver recalled that Ross had blood on his hands when he paid the fare. Once inside his home, Ross punched Jackie, stamped on her ribs repeatedly and bit her, until she passed out. Ross then received a phone call from the company monitoring his electronic tag at around 1.50am. He spoke calmly, but failed to replace the receiver properly, and the operator notified police. When police arrived, they found Jackie naked and covered in blood. Ross claimed he had rescued his victim from an attack by an ex-boyfriend. Jackie still lives in fear of Ross and has said that she is dreading the day that he leaves jail But officers noted injuries to his knuckles and fingers and also found cocaine and cannabis plants. Jackie had a broken nose, fractured jaw and eye socket, fractured ribs, a black eye and multiple bruises. Her liver was split for several centimetres, causing internal bleeding. A consultant surgeon said this was potentially life threatening and 'more commonly seen in severe injuries arising out of road traffic collisions'. She was in hospital for eight days and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ross appeared before Liverpool Crown Court earlier this week and admitted assault causing actual bodily harm, criminal damage, causing grievous bodily harm with intent, possession of cocaine and production of cannabis. His previous convictions include wounding and battery. Judge Murray said it was a sustained attack on a vulnerable victim, involving 'gratuitous degradation', and as well as jailing him for nine years, he imposed an indefinite restraining order. Eve Lom, 67, is the original 'superfacialist', with an A-list clientele. Eve launched the high-end cosmetics company that carries her name in 1985. Divorced, she lives in London and France. When I sold my bestselling skincare range in 2000, I continued as a facialist. I was one of the first therapists to pioneer a facial with lymphatic drainage, but I sensed there was more I could do with the body as a whole. A few years after the sale, a lady in her mid-50s came to see me. While I was tucking her into the treatment bed, she explained about the lower back pain she had been enduring for the past five years. Eve Lom, 67, is the original 'superfacialist', with an A-list clientele As I moved my hands gently over her ankles and feet, I felt an extraordinary sensation. My hands were glued to her legs until they started lifting up off the bed and curling into a lotus position. As I worked, she explained the terrible ordeal of giving birth 30 years ago to a breech-position baby. Not only had she endured a painful labour, she had felt humiliated, ashamed and guilty when the doctor urged her to keep pushing as he had a date that night. At this point her body was ready to go through what we call a 'somato-emotional' release. Tearful feelings, painful emotions that were buried 30 years ago poured out of her. While I still offer my classic facials from a spa in London, I get very excited by the way I'm able to help people with chronic aches and pains The lady went home exhausted, her pain dissipated. It was my lightbulb moment. In my late 50s, I became a student again. I began to study cranio-sacral therapy, a form of very gentle manipulation of the head, neck, spinal cord and tailbone, which helps to detect and correct imbalances in the body. While I still offer my classic facials from a spa in London, I get very excited by the way I'm able to help people with chronic aches and pains. The author and broadcaster suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life. Oscar Wilde famously wrote:Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. Luckily, in my experience, there are as many second marriages that redress the wrongs of the first as compound them. But there is no doubt that love second time around is full of complications. Novels can be a guide to the pitfalls of the second marriage, though, and the best example of this is Daphne du Mauriers 1939 Rebecca Novels can be a guide to the pitfalls of the second marriage, though, and the best example of this is Daphne du Mauriers 1939 Rebecca. The nameless young heroine is swept up by the worldly widower Maxim de Winter, whom she meets in the South of France. He takes her off to live at Manderley, his stately home in Cornwall where he lived with his first wife, the Rebecca of the title. The second Mrs de Winter feels she is a very poor substitute for Rebecca and does everything she can to imitate her husbands first wife. While it may feel like a victory when you stop being the other woman and become the wife, as Minty does in Elizabeth Buchans novel The Second Wife, the reality can be a lot less appealing than the fantasy What she doesnt realise is that Max hated Rebecca. The book is very astute about the shadow that a former partner casts over a marriage. Another novel that deals with the baggage remarried spouses bring to a relationship is Before She Met Me, by Julian Barnes. Graham Hendrick is an academic who, after 15 years of a miserable marriage, finally finds happiness with Ann, an actress. He is wildly in love with his new wife: He envied the things she touched. He was contemptuous of the years he had spent without her. He felt frustrated at not being allowed to be her, not even for a day. Ann loves him in return, but Graham is tormented by retrospective sexual jealousy of Anns past loves, both on-screen and off, and his obsession threatens to ruin his new happiness. Its a darkly comic book but it contains a very important lesson about how important it is to look forward, not back. The financier Sir James Goldsmith said that when a man marries his mistress he creates a vacancy. While it may feel like a victory when you stop being the other woman and become the wife, as Minty does in Elizabeth Buchans novel The Second Wife, the reality can be a lot less appealing than the fantasy. You couldnt reasonably make a case for the return of Breton stripes - theyve never really been away. Theyre a permanent summertime fact of middle-class life. And thats absolutely fine with me, for I confess Im a Breton fanatic of the first stripe. The first nautical T-shirt I can remember wearing was at the age of eight on a bucket-and-spade holiday in Paignton, Devon. I dressed my own children in them for as long as they didnt have a choice in the matter. Sarah Mower's super-chic French friend Caroline de Maigret demonstrating just how fashionable Breton stripes will be this summer. Caroline is in her 40s, a mother, model and co-author of the book How To Be Parisian Wherever You Are Show me that iconic blue-and-white stripe on just about anything and Ill buy it - rugs, cushions, curtains, plates, mugs, bedclothes - our house is embarrassingly full of it. Surprising, perhaps, for someone like me who has a double-life criticising haute couture. For the just-off-to-Waitrose look so adored by British mummies has not exactly always been beloved by the fashion pack. Too ordinary. Too middle-of-the-road. Too accessible? This season, however, something has shifted. While idly flicking through Bodens online catalogue a few days ago, my finger froze mid-swipe. There was my super-chic French friend Caroline de Maigret wearing a pink-and-white striped T-shirt with chipper children clambering over her among sand dunes. To have netted de Maigret, who is French fashion cool incarnate, to epitomise this years Breton-wearing woman is a bit of a coup for Boden. Caroline is in her 40s, a mother, model and co-author of the book How To Be Parisian Wherever You Are. With her long hair and fringe, strong nose and rangy looks, shes the kind of woman who exudes good-humoured confidence and intelligence - and never overdresses - in that unapologetic French way that causes admiration in the eyes of any woman. Coco Chanel was the first to co-opt sailor tops, bell-bottoms and nautical caps into her wardrobe while she was floating around the Mediterranean on the Duke of Westminsters yacht in the Thirties Well, if Caroline de Maigret is not afraid to be seen in a Boden striped T-shirt, then neither am I. (Especially its 34.50 glitter spot version.) Design-wise, the French association is subliminal, but still there. After all, the Breton stripes history begins in French fishermens seafaring kit. Coco Chanel was the first to co-opt sailor tops, bell-bottoms and nautical caps into her wardrobe while she was floating around the Mediterranean on the Duke of Westminsters yacht in the Thirties. The aristocratic British were swift to adopt it, followed by preppy Americans. A couple of American Vogue ex-colleagues of mine have just set up a company, La Ligne, which is based entirely on nautical stripes applied to fashion and homewear. Meredith Melling and Valerie Boster are fortysomething working mothers, and they, too, appreciate the importance of such a wearable classic for everyday life. The best low-cost ones I ever found were from Uniqlo (I cant remember how much they were at the time - not more than 12 a go) in alternating blue, red and white stripes. But it has stupidly stopped stocking them. So where do I buy mine now? J. Crew (brand name no coincidence) has a variety of stripey T-shirts that Im considering buying in bulk (from 34.50, jcrew.com). Breton-stripe tops are still in constant rotation in my wardrobe. I wear them under blue blazers, black jackets, with jeans and trainers, with navy tailored trousers and heels, Parkas and camel coats. I lucked out with the inexpensive Uniqlo Bretons, which have proved indestructible five years on, but I wouldnt buy any old 12 T-shirt just because it had a stripe on it. Experience proves its not worth touching T-shirts with anything synthetic in them - they always deteriorate in a few washes Experience proves its not worth touching T-shirts with anything synthetic in them - they always deteriorate in a few washes. Likewise, anything that is too thin, skimpy or drapey never passes my quality-control tests for durability and semi-smartness. Better to look for companies that have been in the Breton-stripe business for years, such as French heritage brand Orcival (its brilliant tricolour version, 58, matchesfashion.com is a particular favourite) or Agnes B (70, agnesb.co.uk) and Petit Bateau (72.50, petit-bateau.co.uk). Ill also be stocking up from our homegrown Seasalt (29.95, seasaltcornwall.co.uk). Outfitters to everyone from babies to grandmothers, and the go-to shop on a million cross-generational summer holidays, all its clothes are designed in Cornwall. Lets fly the flag for that. WHAT'S NOW AND HOW TO DO IT - THE NEW SMOKY EYE The latest way to do a smoky eye is with crayons. Softer on the skin around the eye area, these are so simple to use The latest way to do a smoky eye is with crayons. Softer on the skin around the eye area, these are so simple to use. Make-up artist Liz Pugh suggests trying warm browns, which are more flattering than black. Eyeko Me and My Shadow Waterproof Shadow Liner Crayons (15, eyeko.com) come in shades of chocolate and bronze. Liz advises using one colour smudging it on the lid, and a little under the eye. For a paler colour try Rosie For Autograph Cream Eyeshadow Stick (12.50, marksandspencer.com) in Almond Eyes, or Burberry Eye Colour Contour Smoke and Sculpt Pen (23, burberry.com) in Rosewood. Or for a treat try the super-soft By Terry Ombre Blackstar (29, Space NK) in Frozen Quartz, a suits-all, warm brown. Left, By Terry Ombre Blackstar (29, Space NK) in Frozen Quartz, a suits-all, warm brown, middle Burberry Eye Colour Contour Smoke and Sculpt Pen (23, burberry.com), right, Rosie For Autograph Cream Eyeshadow Stick (12.50, marksandspencer.com) CAN HAND GELS RUINS YOUR SKIN? To keep busy hands clean when were out and about, many of us reach for a hand sanitiser the easiest and most effective way of keeping germs at bay. But the high alcohol content in some gels often irritates and stings, especially if you have eczema-prone skin, according to Dr Alexis Granite from the Cadogan Clinic. She recommends limiting their use. You could also try gentler options such as Cuticura Kinder Hand Gel (1.49, superdrug.com). It is alcohol and fragrance-free with aloe vera and chamomile to moisturise the skin. Lanolips Antibacterial Hand Cream (9.18, lookfantastic.com) has antibacterial ingredients and lanolin to moisturise and soothe cracked skin. For very dry hands try Balance Me Super Moisturising Hand Cream with shea butter (14.50, balanceme.co.uk). Its rich in essential fatty acids and vitamins. THREE OF THE BEST...BLUSHER STICKS In your 50s Laura Mercier Bonne Mine Creme Color in Pink Glow (26, Space NK) has a sheer formula that doesnt look cakey on the skin. Blend in with your fingers for a brighter complexion. In your 60s Try a multi-use product such as Estee Lauder Pure Color Lip And Cheek Multistick (27, nationwide) to save time in the morning. It works great as a creamy blusher, with antioxidants to nourish the skin. In your 70s Dab a little of Cliniques Chubby Stick Cheek Colour Balm in Roly Poly Rose (19, Clinique.co.uk) along the apples of your cheeks. The subtle rose shade lifts the complexion and hides wrinkles. RACE YOU THERE! Jo Malones new Nashi Blossom cologne (from 44, jomalone.co.uk ) is bursting with the heady, romantic scent of white musk and nashi blossom Nothing says spring is fully in swing like a new, fresh fragrance. Jo Malones new Nashi Blossom cologne (from 44, jomalone.co.uk) is bursting with the heady, romantic scent of white musk and nashi blossom a flower from Asian pear trees. Even if floral scents arent usually your first choice, this perfume is balanced with top notes of light, citrusy lemon, making the fragrance less sweet and more crisp. Available online and arriving in stores at the end of this week, this unusual polka- dot bottle with a pretty green lid is a must-have for beauty collectors. THE A-LIST ANTI-AGEING OIL French skincare favourite Lierac is now available in the UK, with the beautiful Kristin Scott Thomas, 55, as the new face of the brand Premium Elixir Sumptuous Oil (right, 65, look fantastic.com ) French skincare favourite Lierac is now available in the UK, with the beautiful Kristin Scott Thomas, 55, as the new face of the brand. Its star product, is the Premium Elixir Sumptuous Oil (right, 65, look fantastic.com), which helps to minimise the appearance of wrinkles and pigmentation. Packed with argan, sesame and almond oils, it absorbs quickly and left my skin looking radiant. THIS WORKS Want big hair that lasts all day? Try the new High Rise Volume range from Redken Want big hair that lasts all day? Try the new High Rise Volume range from Redken. The Duo Volumizer (in salons, redken.co.uk) is a styling cream and gel. Apply to damp hair, dry as normal and your hair will look much fuller. SHAMELESS INDULGENCE The fabulous Tom Ford Soleil Color collection, with luxury gold and ivory coloured packaging, hits the shelves in Selfridges this Sunday The fabulous Tom Ford Soleil Color collection, with luxury gold and ivory coloured packaging, hits the shelves in Selfridges this Sunday. Available in store and online, some of the most impressive products include the Soleil Contouring Compact in The Afternooner (78), a pretty highlighting, bronzing and blusher trio, and the summery-scented Shimmering Body Oil (70) with particles of gold and platinum leaf ideal for adding colour to pasty, winter legs. Relax and revitalise both body and mind on one of these fabulous fitness breaks MEXICAN MAKEOVER Relax and revitalise both body and mind on one of these fabulous fitness breaks Wake up and head to a yoga class on the beach. This programme at Tulum on the Mexican Riviera Maya includes a mix of yoga and toning sessions. There are also excursions to Mayan ruins, bike tours and salsa classes. INSIDER TIP: Flop in the hammocks by the natural swimming hole. DETAILS: Six nights from 1,854 in a private room, bikinibootcamp.com. Price includes meals, work outs, and three spa treatments. Return flights to Cancun from 647, virgin-atlantic.com. BALEARIC BODY FIX The new Body Re-set holiday, in Santa Eulalia on Ibizas quiet east coast, is especially for women The new Body Re-set holiday, in Santa Eulalia on Ibizas quiet east coast, is especially for women and offers a full body and mind re-boot. Exercise is personalised with everything from core conditioning to Pilates. INSIDER TIP: The hotels Clarins spa offers an Essence of Ibiza exfoliating and massage treatment. DETAILS: A week from 22 to 28 May, 2016, from 1,985 including five days fitness classes, six nights in Aguas de Ibiza Hotel with breakfast and lunch plus final dinner, thirtyeightdegreesnorth.com. Flights to Ibiza from 104 in May, britishairways.com. HIGHLANDS HEALTH KICK This retreat on a Scottish Highlands estate boasts movement classes by the Alladale River This retreat on a Scottish Highlands estate boasts movement classes by the Alladale River, walks on the Atlantic coast and in dunes on Achmelvich beach. Theres even a female-friendly version of the Highland games! INSIDER TIP: Watch the catch being brought in from remote Loch Glendhu then enjoy a fish supper at Kylesku Hotel, kyleskuhotel.co.uk. The brands have been criticised as cashing in on the A number of restaurants have been accused of using Anzac Day as an excuse to make money and cashing in on the day of remembrance. Social media users have criticised companies who are branding their products with the word Anzac or using the day to promote their products and services. Melbourne doughnut company Bistro Morgan has been ridiculed for its 'Anzac doughnut' after posting a picture of the dessert on Instagram. Scroll down for video Hashtag food porn: Bistro Morgan have been critcised on social media for their Anzac Day themed doughtnuts Appropriate? Another company, Chicho Gelato, were advertising their 'Anzac cookie sandwiches' on Twitter 'Sickening': People on Twitter felt that the use of the word Anzac when selling food or products was inappropriate The doughnut is filled with golden syrup custard and topped with an Anzac biscuit and was being sold exclusively on Sunday 24 April. 'To celebrate ANZAC Day tomorrow, we've created a special ANZAC Cookie Doughnut available exclusively today,' the brand wrote on Instagram. 'The anzacs did not f***ing die for this,' Twitter user Dan Nolan said in response to a picture of the doughnuts. '#ANZAC's fought and died so that food porn could be a hashtag. Sickening,' another user Jazzy wrote. Going too far? Other cafes have advertised Anzac biscuits 'stacks' filled with nutella or Anzac Day themed cheesecakes Divided: Although some people were unhappy with the prevalence of Anzac themed food, others were happy to eat the special desserts on sale Zero respect: Some companies were nearly shameless in trying to sell their services using the term Anzac Day Other companies have also developed their own Anzac Day food specials, with a Chico Gelato creating an Anzac biscuit ice cream sandwich and Piccolo restaurant selling an Anzac Day Cheesecake. It's not just restaurants and cafes that trying to cash in on the day, with numerous bars and clubs advertising 'Anzac Day Eve' parties. Online store The Sun Cat is advertising Anzac Day themed t-shirts that are printed with the words Lest We Forget and an image of a digger, cross and poppy. Cashing in: Online store The Sun Cat has advertised Anzac Day themed t-shirts bearing the words 'Lest we forget' Breaking the law: The word Anzac is actually protected by legislation, and it is illegal to use it in a commercial context without permission from the Minster for Veteran's Affairs 'Inappropriate': Last year supermarket chain Woolworths faced backlash for their 'Fresh in our memories' Anzac campaign But as some social media users pointed out, the use of the word Anzac is protected by legislation. The Department of Veteran's Affairs states companies cannot use the word to sell products or services. 'Permission from the Minister for Veterans Affairs is generally required to use the word "Anzac" in a commercial context,' the department's website states. Supermarket chain Woolworths learnt this lesson last year, when they launched a campaign called 'Fresh in our memories' about the Anzacs, with the company's branding and logo. Toddlers often surprise their parents with their behaviour... from drawing all over themselves - or the walls - to suddenly forgetting how to sleep. Now one Australian company,Mildly Witty Milestones, has decided to see the humour in the otherwise exhausting moments and released a range of cards celebrating these milestones. Photos have emerged on social media of cheeky toddlers in front of the cards, which are described as the 'wittiest, fanciest, schmanciest baby + toddler milestone cards.' Sleep regression: Australian company, Mildly Witty Milestones, has decided to see the humour in the otherwise exhausting toddler milestones and released a range of cards celebrating them #Gastroexpectedsoon: Another giggling toddler was snapped playing near the toilet bowl One toddler was pictured teary-eyed yet smiling in front of one of the cards which read 'Hello sleep regression' with the hashtag #100%effectivecontraception. 'Nice one Ruby, siblings are overrated! #sleepregression+ #teething,' the caption said. Another giggling toddler was snapped playing near the toilet bowl. 'This s**t is going straight to the floor': Another cute snap was of a little girl sitting in her highchair with food scattered all around her Cheeky: Photos have emerged on social media of cheeky toddlers in front of the cards, which are described as the 'wittiest, fanciest, schmanciest baby + toddler milestone cards' 'I have an unhealthy obsession with the toilet,' the card said, with the hashtag #gastroexpectedsoon. One toddler was seen crawling around the living room and the card held in front of her said 'Today I officially start my terrible twos. Happy 2nd birthday.' Another cute snap was of a little girl sitting in her highchair with food scattered all around her. Happy 2nd birthday: One toddler was seen crawling around the living room and the card held in front of her said 'Today I officially start my terrible twos' 'This s**t is going straight to the floor, #mumscookingsucks,' the card read. 'And then she had the nerve to serve something other than chocolate,' the picture was captioned. To celebrate one of the high points, one little girl was photographed in an adorable pink tutu and matching pink and silver feather headband. #Fashionicon: One little girl was photographed in an adorable pink tutu and matching pink and silver feather headband 'I picked today's outfit, #fashion icon,' her card said. On the website for the cards, they are described as 'the most risque, potty-mouth, un-lame milestone baby and toddler cards.' 'Mildly Witty Milestones are cards for hilarious mums and dads. What you won't find are any annoying hashtags or giant panties,' they wrote. Raw: 'Mildly Witty Milestones are cards for hilarious mums and dads. What you won't find are any annoying hashtags or giant panties,' the company wrote 'Speaking of annoying hashtags, dont forget to #mildlywitty. Unlike your annoying, barron friends we love Facebook and Instagram baby spam. Heck, we might even give you a like.' The graphic designer/illustrator behind the relatable cards is Marie O'Neill, from Brisbane, Queensland, who shares a range of her work on her Facebook page. A mother-of-three claims a Jetstar flight attendant told her to 'cover herself up' while she tried to pump breast milk on a flight. Natalie Jane Sawyer, from Queensland, posted on the airline's Facebook page on Monday after she claims she was approached by a flight attendant on a flight from Brisbane to Townsville. In her post, Mrs Sawyer claimed a crew member asked if she had a 'cover to cover herself up because people would be coming down the aisle to go to the bathroom'. Queensland mum Natalie Jane Sawyer posted a status on Facebook on Monday after being approached by a flight attendant while pumping breast milk On the flight from Brisbane to Townsville Mrs Sawyer was told to cover up because people would be coming down the aisle to go to the bathroom A Jetstar spokeswoman Emma, responded to the post, saying she was sorry to hear that Mrs Sawyer was upset with the way staff handled the situation Mrs Sawyer said she was wearing a pumping bra so no part of her breasts could be seen and had a shirt on over the bra. She was also sitting in a row alone and pumped while the seat belt sign was on: 'It shouldn't matter anyway if I was covered because legally I have a right to pump anywhere anytime I want,' she wrote in her post. 'If I feel the need to cover up I will do so and not because people have to walk down the aisle to the toilet.' A Jetstar spokeswoman Emma, responded to the post, saying she was sorry to hear that Mrs Sawyer was upset with the way staff handled the situation. She posted a link to a feedback form while adding: 'We do train all staff to be professional and friendly at all times so it's disappointing if this isn't the level of service you received,' Emma said. 'Customers are also free to breastfeed on board whenever they need to.' Mrs Sawyer said she was wearing a pumping bra so no part of her breasts could be seen and had a shirt on over the bra. She was also sitting in a row alone and pumped while the seat belt sign was on Mrs Sawyer responded to the spokeswoman, saying that the words couldn't be excused by a friendly smile and nice demeanour. 'She made me feel like I was doing something dirty rather than something normal. I felt like I should just go hide in the toilet,' Mrs Sawyer said. Facebook users posted their support for the mum of three and voiced their disappointment at the behaviour of the flight attendant: 'Jetstar I hope you educate all your staff on the legalities of breastfeeding and the rights breastfeeding mums have,' wrote one user. Another commented: 'This is so disappointing that organisations and some people still don't understand the legislation that protects breastfeeding mothers.' Mrs Sawyer wrote that the flight attendant 'made me feel like I was doing something dirty rather than something normal. I felt like I should just go hide in the toilet' Facebook users posted their support for the mum of three and voiced their disappointment at the behaviour of the flight attendant The Jetstar spokeswoman responded to Mrs Sawyer saying customers are free to breastfeed on board whenever they need to A Jetstar spokesman spoke to Daily Mail Australia about the situation, pointing out their clear policy on breastfeeding: We want all mothers to feel welcome and respected when breastfeeding onboard our flights and deeply regret the offence caused by our crew members remarks. Well work with our crew and remind them of our breastfeeding policy to prevent this from happening to other mothers. The post went viral and social media users had a mixed response to it Haddas Ancliffe, 21, from the Gold Coast, Queensland, caused a stir on social media in February after sharing a photo of herself breastfeeding her son Jonah at a wedding. And now the stylish mother-of-one, who goes by the name Dahsi on social media, has shared a photo of herself proudly rocking a crop top and posing confidently. 'I rocked this look, tummy out and everything. So glad I'm not concerned with "flaws" showing anymore, I can finally enjoy summer clothing,' Mrs Ancliffe wrote on Instagram. Scroll down for video Confidence: Haddas Ancliffe, a stylish mother-of-one, has shared a photo of herself proudly rocking a crop top and posing confidently Proud: 'I rocked this look, tummy out and everything. So glad I'm not concerned with "flaws" showing anymore, I can finally enjoy summer clothing,' Mrs Ancliffe wrote on Instagram Raw: Mrs Ancliffe, 21, from the Gold Coast, Queensland, caused a stir on social media in February after sharing a photo of herself breastfeeding her son Jonah at a wedding 'It's getting colder in Australia now but for you guys on the other side of the world, enjoy your sun dresses, crop tops and shorts that squish your cute marshmallow thighs out when you sit down! 'You deserve to bask in the warmth of the sun as much as anyone else.' The natural beauty posed in the same outfit a number of times and thanked her fans for their support. Shining bright: The natural beauty posed in the same outfit a number of times and thanked her fans for their support Rock it: 'It's getting colder in Australia now but for you guys on the other side of the world, enjoy your sun dresses, crop tops and shorts that squish your cute marshmallow thighs out when you sit down!' She wrote Natural beauty: The young mother was praised by a number of her followers for her raw post 'I'm shining even brighter now,' she wrote on one picture. The young mother and aspiring blogger was praised by a number of her followers for her raw post. 'You're so beautiful and such an inspiration to me,' one woman wrote. 'Confidence is beautiful and you are beautiful dahs,' another said. Inspiration: The young mother and aspiring blogger was praised by a number of her followers for her raw post 'Confidence is beautiful': 'You're so beautiful and such an inspiration to me,' one woman wrote 'Inspiration. You look BEYOND stunning.' Mrs Ancliffe also uses her blog as a platform for 'self expression and open sharing' and a place to share information about her 'life, adventures, discoveries and notions.' Mrs Ancliffe, who has 24,700 followers on Instagram, has always been open about her relationship and has shared numerous photos of herself breastfeeding and went viral after sharing a photo of her breastfeeding at a friend's wedding. Not the first time: Mrs Ancliffe, who has 24,700 followers on Instagram, has shared photos of her post-baby body in the past 'Just me and my baby having a drink (Gotta do what you gotta do, wedding or not),' Mrs Ancliffe wrote on the photo with the hashtag #normalizebreastfeeding. The photo showed the glamorous mother breastfeeding Jonah while dressed up for the wedding and sipping on her own glass of water at the same time. The image received over 5,100 likes and over 480 comments - some positive, some less supportive and slamming Mrs Ancliffe for over sharing. Mrs Ancliffe defended her post and asked: 'How can people not been ok with this but ok with a girl in a skimpy thong bikini or less?' Happy as she is: 'I can honestly say I am not ever going to try to get my body back,' she wrote Standing strong: 'My body did the most incredible thing a human body could do and it should only ever be loved and appreciated for it. I am beautiful, screw what mainstream society says, I'm sexy too!' She said She has also shared unedited photos of her post-baby stomach in the past, to inspire women to be proud of their bodies. 'It's covered in stretch marks, has a little sag and is nowhere near as flat as it used to be,' she wrote alongside one picture, 'There's so much pressure in our society for mothers to "get their bodies back" and you feel a constant shame if you're not working out to do that, but I can honestly say I am not ever going to try to get my body back.' 'My body did the most incredible thing a human body could do and it should only ever be loved and appreciated for it. I am beautiful, screw what mainstream society says, I'm sexy too!' She then promised to 'post lots of saggy, stretchy tummy pictures' in hopes that 'in some way it would make it easier for others to feel comfortable in their skin.' A mother who gave birth to her son three months prematurely has donated a record-breaking amount of breast milk to help other babies in need. Despite initially struggling to pump milk for son Cash after he was born in January, Mikah Duncan, 28, from Texas, went on to give a whopping 15 gallons (58.8 litres) to the Children's Hospital of San Antonio. Doctors encouraged Mikah to produce breast milk to help Cash thrive after he was born at 25 weeks gestation weighing just 2lbs. Scroll down for video Mikah Duncan has made a record donation to a milk bank in Austin, Texas, after producing too much milk When her son Cash was born three months premature in January this year, doctors encouraged her to pump milk to help him thrive She struggled to even pump enough milk to fill a syringe at first but persevered and went on to produce enough to help Cash as well as other premature babies in her state At first the new mother only produced a syringe worth of milk but kept at it every two hours around the clock and slowly started to pump more. Eventually the hospital had enough and instructed Mikah to start storing the milk at home. Cash was discharged April 19 and the excess milk was then donated by the hospital to the Mother's Milk Bank in Austin to benefit premature infants in the region. Mikah said: 'When Cash was first born, I couldn't even hold him. Pumping milk was all I could do to help. 'It was so hard to produce any milk, but the nurses encouraged me and cheered when I brought them even a tiny amount. 'I just kept trying and I was determined to provide Cash with breast milk. When the hospital had enough milk for Cash, it encouraged Mikah to start storing it at home When little Cash was finally discharged on April 19, the Children's Hospital of San Antonio donated it to the Mother's Milk Bank in Austin It is now helping other premature babies like Cash whose mothers are struggling to produce breast milk 'At one point, the nurses told me I should start storing the milk at home because they had plenty in the NICU freezer. 'I had no idea that I had brought in that much milk.' Mikah is glad she can help other babies whose mothers might not be able to pump. She added: 'It can be stressful having a baby in the NICU (neonatal intensive-care unit) and I can understand how they might not be able to pump.' When Cash was first born, weighing just 2lbs, he was so small that his mother's wedding ring fitted around his tiny wrist But he is now thriving and was discharged from hospital a week ago, and is just shy of 7lbs - doctors are 'very happy' with his progress Mikah is now glad that she has been able to help other premature babies like Cash, as she says giving birth in the NICU can be 'stressful' making it challenging for mothers to produce milk In a sweet photo taken of the premature baby, tiny Cash is so small his mother's wedding rings fit around his wrist. In another photo, healthy Cash cuddles with his father, Christopher, as he is discharged from the hospital. Mikah said: 'He's doing wonderful, growing fast, just shy of 7lbs. He had his first doctor's appointment Tuesday and he did great. Parents have taken to Facebook to tell tales of how their toddlers have accidentally booked holidays, bought cars, and even done the shopping on their phones. In the worst case of a child letting loose on a tablet, one jet-setting kid playing with her mum's laptop accidentally booked some flight tickets. Ella O'Connor, aged 18 months, managed to tap in the right keys to buy return flights from Fuerteventura with Ryanair. Ella O'Connor, aged 18 months, managed to tap in the right keys to buy return flights from Fuerteventura And mum Ashleigh O'Connor decided to find some cheap outbound flights to complete the trip rather than pay the fees to cancel the tickets to give the family a winter break in the sun. Ashleigh, 23, from Reddish, Stockport said: 'I was browsing flights with Ryanair on the laptop and she managed to confirm our names with random letters and even paid via PayPal in euros. 'Once I'd received the confirmation and realised what she'd done I called them and they told me I had 48 hours to change the names to correct ones free of charge or I could cancel for a fee. 'I had a quick look around and ended up getting a bargain outbound flight and a cheap apartment so we decided it must have been fate and off we went. 'We had a fabulous time. I had to pay a small exchange fee as she'd bought the flights in Euros but altogether the holiday cost me around 700.' Rachel Turner Gilks' son Alex Daines (pictured), now five, bought a Rover car in an eBay auction after he accidentally became the highest bidder playing with her phone Ella's not the only tot to inadvertently buy something for their unsuspecting parents. Rachel Turner Gilks' son Alex Daines, now five, bought a Rover car in an eBay auction after he accidentally became the highest bidder playing with her phone. The 28-year-old from Cheadle Hulme said: 'It happened when Alex was two and I only realised when the seller messaged me asking when I was coming for it. 'He was furious as well because it was a bid only auction and I had the highest bid so he had to start all over again.' The mum-of-five added: 'I can't remember exactly how much he bid but it was over a 1,000 because he said if I came and got it that day I could have it for 1,000. 'I felt really mean saying I didn't need a car. But I couldn't even drive at that point.' Felicity Sadler-Kean says her one-year-old daughter Minnie has been 'a terror' buying all kinds of things off the internet when messing with her phone. Felicity Sadler-Kean says her one-year-old daughter Minnie has been 'a terror' buying all kinds of things off the internet when messing with her phone Her haul has so far included a space hopper, a Tesco Hudl tablet, 18kg of brown rice, 12 jars of peanut butter, 22kg of teddy bear stuffing, a Justin Bieber cutout and a bottle for a rabbit hutch. Felicity, 29, also from Cheadle Hulme, said: 'I've just begged a seller to let me cancel an order from eBay of a 6ft cardboard cutout of a Womble. 'You would think I'd learn not to leave my phone around or put a passcode on it.' Sarah Heanz's eight-year-old son, Harrison, has been in trouble recently after he notched up a 230 iTunes bill. The 36-year-old mum-of-three, from Bramhall, said: 'My cheeky monkey decided it would be a good thing to pay for gems on the mobile phone game Clash of Clans. 'He is eight so technically he should have known better but said he'd done it because he thought the money would come out of his bank. Yeah right. Sarah Heanz's eight-year-old son, Harrison, has been in trouble recently after he notched up a 230 iTunes bill 'When I reviewed the purchases, he'd bought 16 bundles that came to around 280. I was furious. Luckily Apple were very accommodating and following a call they refunded me the full amount. 'They also talked me through the whole process of securing my account and introducing child settings so my son could no longer make any purchases. 'Because I'm a mean mum, I've not told him about my refund as I felt his guilt should be part of the punishment 'He finally is now allowed to use the device much to his delight - but I know he is very aware of what he has done and would not do it again. The joys of parenthood.' Irene Croft almost ended up with a 130 G Plan sideboard she didn't even want when her son Yuri managed to bid for it on eBay using her phone Irene Croft almost ended up with a 130 G Plan sideboard she didn't even want when her son Yuri managed to bid for it on eBay using her phone. The 36-year-old, also from Cheadle Hulme, said: 'I was browsing through eBay looking at G Plan style units and left my phone on the table for 20 seconds while going into the kitchen. 'I came back to "you are the high bidder" on something I really didn't want. 'I think the "suggested amount" button on eBay is to blame, as he wouldn't have been able to type in an amount. A dad's hilarious account of taking his baby on holiday abroad for the first time is sweeping Facebook after resonating with thousands of parents. Matt Coyne, 41, from Sheffield, documented how his fears about heading overseas with six-month-old son Charlie matched up to reality. The frank and comical post - which covers topics such as sitting next to non baby-friendly people on the plane and their stroller being destroyed in the baggage hold - has now attracted 45,000 likes, 14,500 shares and 10,000 comments. Scroll down for video Matt Coyne, 41, from Sheffield, took his six-month-old son Charlie abroad for the first time earlier this month His Facebook post about how his fears of holidaying overseas matched up to reality has had 45,000 likes, 14,500 shares and some 10,000 comments The family went on a week-long holiday to Cyprus and apart from a few 'challenges' they had a great time Matt, who has been with partner Lyndsay Cooper for 20 years, also compared changing a nappy in the an aircraft toilet cubicle to a round of 'The Cube' - while applying Charlie's sun lotion was like 'wrestling a seal that has just left a massage parlour'. But writing on his ManvsBaby Facebook page, he said the challenges were a small price to pay for what was an 'incredibly special' time making memories. On returning from the week-long holiday to Cyprus, he wrote: 'One or two people were a bit judgey about the idea of taking a six-month old away. "So, you're taking him on holiday?" Yeah. "Abroad?" Yeah. "Somewhere hot?" Yeah. "On an aeroplane?" 'By which point I was tempted to answer: "No, me and Lyns will be going on the plane, but we thought we'd get Charlie there by driving him to Dover and firing him out of a f*****g cannon". What I actually said was: "It'll be fine". And you know what? It was.' The post focused on topics such as sitting next to non baby-friendly people on planes to their stroller being destroyed in the baggage hold. Pictured: Matt with Charlie as a baby Matt also complained about 'pointless' baby passports and said: 'Charlie could have sailed through passport control with a drawing of Gregg Wallace on the back of a beer-mat and it wouldn't have cost us 50-odd quid' Talking about things he had learnt while holidaying with his 'tiny human', Matt said he quickly realised his packing checklist was 'roughly the same amount of stuff that the Nazis took to invade Poland.' He went on: 'Don't take an expensive pram on a flight. The moment you check-in and that pushchair disappears behind that rubber curtain it is collected by two WWF wrestlers who smash it against a wall for half-an-hour...before it is transferred to the runway, where they reverse the plane over it a couple of times before placing it in the hold. 'At your destination, for some bizarre reason, you have to collect whatever is left of your pram (a wheel) from a baggage carousel that's f*****g miles away (I'm sure our stroller ended up closer to the airport we'd just left).' One of Matt and Lyndsay's other concerns was being sat next to someone on the plane that wasn't tolerant of a small baby. One of the challenges on the holiday was Charlie trying to eat the sand when he hit the beach The pitfalls of applying sunscreen to a tiny child and heading to the beach also formed part of Matt's musings He said: 'We hoped to be sat next to a kindly old Angela Lansbury-type, with a soft spot for babies. In the end we got sat next to a woman who had a face like a cat's a**e being burned at the stake. 'To be honest, we didn't care. After six months we're developing a thick skin for this sort of c***. Some people have a problem with babies, whether they're sat next to them in a restaurant or on a flight. 'These people are what my dear old nan used to call "a*******s". Also, I suspect that if the woman in question had greeted us with a smile, rather than a roll of her eyes, we'd have been more inclined to tell her that she'd come back from the toilet with her skirt stuck in her tights, and was showing everyone her a***.' On the issue of baby changing facilities, Matt said: 'Changing a baby in a plane toilet is like the hardest round on 'The Cube'. 'Basically, imagine trying to carve a turkey in a phone-box...now half the size of the f*****g phone box, and arrange for an incontinent d******d to bang on the door every five seconds.' Charlie, pictured here with Matt's partner of 20 years, Lyndsay Cooper, is six months old and Matt said he thoroughly enjoyed the trip to Cyprus Speaking of the trials of applying sun cream to his son, the dad said: 'Charlie was in less danger from the sun than he was from me juggling him like a bar of soap' Matt also complained about 'pointless' baby passports and said: 'Charlie could have sailed through passport control with a drawing of Gregg Wallace on the back of a beer-mat and it wouldn't have cost us 50-odd quid.' But he pointed out that his and Lyndsay's concerns about the heat were unfounded. 'It turns out taking a baby to a hot country is fine - people in scorching climates have babies quite a lot, so it's a bit daft for us to think that if we take a baby to a sunny place they will suddenly burst into flames, like someone's opened the curtains on a vampire. 'It's just common sense - shade, avoiding midday and applying factor thrumpteen sun cream.' But he admitted that applying sunscreen presented it's own challenges. He said: 'Let it dry off before picking them up or anything, otherwise its like wrestling a seal that's just left a massage parlour. 'Charlie was in less danger from the sun than he was from me juggling him like a bar of soap.' But despite the many challenges taking a baby abroad presented, Matt said it was worth every minute Matt said he also learnt that sandy beaches were a bad idea with a baby and that it would have been easier to get 'a squid to wear a bum-bag' than get Charlie to wear sunglasses and a hat. But he ended the post on a positive note. 'For all its p**** little challenges, to spend time together, away from our newly destroyed home, was incredibly special. 'I will always remember Charlie's face as he curled his toes in the sand for the first time. His delight at being pushed around a hotel pool on the back of an inflatable crocodile. 'And, his fascination as we sat on a bench, hand-feeding a sparrow some crisps, overlooking the deep blue of the Mediterranean sea.' Speaking to MailOnline, Matt said: 'A lot of new parents are discouraged to take a baby on holiday, especially abroad. 'One or two people reacted to us taking a six-month-old away as though we were planning a mission to Mars rather than a week half-board in Cyprus. It's not the first time that one of Matt's honest posts on parenting has gone viral - in January, this one about becoming a dad for the first time had 55,000 likes and 35,000 shares 'I try to be as honest as I can be on the Man vs Baby blog...so I don't sugarcoat it. But ultimately I wanted to share our experience, that taking a baby on holiday isn't without stress and hassle, but its worth it.' It's not the first time that one of Matt's honest posts on parenting has gone viral - in January, his musings on becoming a dad for the first time had 55,000 likes and 35,000 shares. In it, he compared nappy changing to being in a Formula One pit crew, childbirth to a scene from a horror movie and said every baby looked like one of the Mitchell brothers. A woman who has been crowned Britain's loudest snorer said she has tried every trick in the book to stop her noisy bedtime habit. And now Jenny Chapman, 67, from Peterborough, has finally found something that can reduce the 111 decibel sound of her snores. Called the 'mute' it is a device inserted into the nostrils that is used by Olympic cyclists such as Chris Froome to increase air flow through the nasal passage. Scroll down for videos Jenny Chapman, who has been crowned Britain's loudest snorer, appeared on today's This Morning However, such is the gravity of Jenny's snoring, she admits it hasn't cured her, much to the disappointment of her long-suffering husband Colin, 69. Speaking on today's This Morning Jenny said: 'It is two plastic rings you stick up your nose to open up nasal passages. It hasn't stopped my snoring but has reduced it so might work for some not in my league.' Jenny's 'league' is creating noises that have been proven to be louder than a the roar of a low flying jet and could drown out the sound of a spinning washing machine, tractor or speeding express train. It was discovered that Jenny's snores can reach 111 decibels when she attended a clinic which tried - and failed - to rid her of the condition. Jenny's husband Colin said his wife sounds like an elephant and a roaring lion when she is sleeping Jenny told Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby nothing has cured her snoring but one product has helped reduce the 111 decibel sound she makes The grandmother admits the noises she makes at night are 'horrendous' while her husband of more than 30 years said 'the nicest way of summing it up' is 'very jungle-ly.' He explains: 'My wife has many different types of snoring, most of them relate to animals in the jungle. There's the elephant, one like a lion's roar, another is a ship's fog horn.' This Morning presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield both expressed their sympathy for 'poor Colin' but Jenny said: 'Everyone says poor Colin but he is not that hard done by.' She said they always start the night off sharing a bed but then one of them will often move to the spare room. The retired bank worker met her husband when she was in her early 30s and became step mother to his three sons from a previous relationship. Colin and Jenny have found worldwide fame thanks to her noisy sleeping habit with film crews coming from Japan to capture her snoring Jenny, pictured sleeping, admits the sounds she makes is 'horrendous' and it has been proven to drown out the noise of a spinning washing machine and a low flying jet Jenny said she and Colin often end up sleeping in separate beds for a better sleep Jenny previously told MailOnline that when they first started living together, the boys became alarmed at noises permeating from the master bedroom. 'On the first morning, Colin came downstairs and the boys said "Dad, you weren't half snoring last night", assuming it was him. I had to say: "Er, sorry lads, but it was me. I have been known to snore".' Indeed, Jenny has been told she has snored since the age of nine when the elder sister she shared a room with regularly tried holding her nose to get her to stop. But she admits it has got worse as she has become older, exasperated by her age and penchant for the odd drink of alcohol. Jenny jokes that she is an 'ambidextrous' snorer so lying on her back doesn't help, and neither have the dozens of throats sprays, nasals strips and mouth guards she has tried over the years. She added that she has ruled out surgery as she has heard it is painful and not always successful. 'I had a friend who was snoring again after six months so I don't think it is worth it,' she explained. So instead the couple have been embracing the worldwide attention her loud snoring has brought them. Jenny revealed to Phillip and Holly that they have appeared on US chat shows and had a film crew from Japan come to their home. A plus-size fashion blogger has penned a powerful essay hitting out at critics who claim she shouldn't wear crop tops or other figure-hugging ensembles on her size 24 body as she encourages women to dress their curves any way they see fit. Maui Bigelow, the 38-year-old Georgia-based founder of the blog PHAT Girl Fresh, spoke out against the idea that plus-size women can't wear certain fashion trends because of their size in an essay for The Curvy Fashionista, noting that many female insecurities stem from society's restrictive beauty ideals. 'At a size 24, with quite a few rolls and giggly parts; I can honestly say, I wear what I want,' she wrote. 'Why? Because this is my body and I love every inch of it and because I love it; I dress it accordingly.' Spreading confidence: Fashion blogger Maui Bigelow (pictured) has penned a powerful essay hitting back at those who say plus-size women shouldn't wear crop tops On her blog and social media pages, Maui often posts photos of herself rocking crop tops, pencil skirts, and belted dressed that show off her figure. 'I have not always felt confident, and I can honestly say that I have my moments now; I think all women do,' she told Daily Mail Online. 'However, I have always loved the beauty that I saw in women who looked like me so it was not as hard for me to be confident. 'You can't see the beauty in something or someone in your image without appreciating that same beauty in yourself.' In her essay, Maui recalled recently wearing a crop top and 'showing a little skin' while out with friends when a plus-size stranger tried adjusting her clothes, telling her that they can't be showing their stomachs. In the images she posted on her Instagram page from that night, Maui can be seen proudly wearing a black spaghetti strap crop top paired with a long pink and black patterned skirt. Be proud: The 38-year-old from Georgia said she loves every inch of her body, so she dresses it accordingly Maui explained that the woman's unsolicited advice got her 'heated', and she immediately replied: 'Maybe you cant show your belly but I can show mine.' 'This exchange bothered me because despite the considerable growth of the plus-size community, there is still this sort of ignorance, projection, and shaming present,' she wrote. 'What makes it even worse? That it is coming from one of us.' Maui noted that while the plus-size community has had a growing presence in the fashion industry in recent years, it is the changing attitudes of curvy women that has helped spread body positivity. 'We have released ourselves from the box that society placed us in and begin to absorb our absolute truth; we are fabulous, beautiful and capable of doing and being whatever we desire, right now at the size that we are,' she said. Overstepping: Maui recalled wearing this crop top and skirt out with friends when a plus-size stranger tried to adjust her top, telling her that they shouldn't show their stomachs Style maven: Maui, who is the founder of the plus-size fashion and lifestyle blog PHAT Girl Fresh, often shares photos of herself posed in form-fitting clothes that show off her size 24 figure Maui told Daily Mail Online that she wrote the post in hopes of inspiring other women like herself because she hates that society dictates the rules about what is appropriate for plus-size women to be wearing. However, despite her overwhelmingly positive message, Maui said the response to her essay has been mixed so far. 'There are those who applauded me because they know the importance of spreading the message of self-love and body positivity,' she explained. 'Than there are those who have tired to shame me by calling me all kind of mean and hateful names. 'The ignorance and hate further prove my point that there is much work to do.' 'Plus-size' is a term that Maui said she uses with pride because it is a work that connected women and created a 'sisterhood of sorts'. Self-love advocate: Maui said she wrote the essay in hopes of inspiring other women like herself to feel confident in whatever they want to wear 'I think that we can one day get to a place where all women love themselves wholeheartedly but it starts with us,' the blogger said 'This word open doors and encouraged women to be bold and colorful because so many other women who are bold and colorful use it,' she said. 'I feel that deserting the word is equivalent to deserting a community of women who cling to it for support and that makes me sad.' Maui explained that while the plus-size community is now better represented in the media, there is still work to be done as there are so many women being shamed and bullied on the internet because of their bodies. 'I think that we can one day get to a place where all women love themselves wholeheartedly but it starts with us,' she said. 'We have to stop shaming one another and learn to appreciate our differences.' Maui said the first step for any woman who wants to embrace her curves is to 'get to know her body and herself'. Terry Richardson has turned the camera lens on his twin boys, sharing a rare photo of his newborns just a few days after posting a picture of girlfriend Alexandra 'Skinny' Bolotow using a breast pump. The 50-year-old photographer and first-time father took to Instagram on Sunday to post a precious photo of his one-month-old son's Rex and Roman modeling matching black sunglasses. 'Future's so bright we gotta wear shades,' he captioned the image of his boys cuddled together wearing complementary white onesies. Doting dad: Controversial photographer Terry Richardson took to Instagram on Sunday to share this adorable photo of his one-month-old twins Rex and Roman wearing sunglasses 'Hard-working mama': The 50-year-old paid to his 33-year-old girlfriend Alexandra 'Skinny' Bolotow on Friday by posting this photo of her pumping breast mil for the twins Terry's 33-year-old girlfriend Alexandra gave birth to Rex and Roman on Saturday, March 19, and she has quickly taken to motherhood. The photographer kicked off the weekend by sharing a candid photo of Alexandra pumping milk, wearing a a black bustier that attaches to her electric breast bump and allows her to go hands-free. The first-time mom posed in the twins' nursery with her hands on her hips as she modeled neon green Richardson World sweatpants. 'Hard-working mama and sweats from @richardsonworld TGIF,' Terry captioned the image on Friday. Happy: The first-time father is pictured taking his newborn twin sons for a visit to the doctors in New York last month Proud father: Terry took to Instagram on National Doctors' Day to share this photo of Dr George Mussalli and Dr Jaqueline M. Worth holding Rex and Roman on the day of their birth A month ago, Terry paid homage to the doctors who delivered his twin boys, sharing a snapshot of New York City-based obstetricians Dr George Mussalli and Dr Jaqueline M. Worth holding his son's Rex and Roman on the day of their birth. 'It's National Doctors Day and what better opportunity to say how obsessed I am with these two, Dr Worth and Dr Mussalli of @villageobstetrics, two of the kindest, funniest, most attentive, and compassionate doctors. Thank you so much for the incredible care and for bringing these boys safely into the world! [sic]' he wrote. The proud father's tribute came just a week after he announced the birth of his twins on Instagram,sharing a sweet picture of Alexandra cradling her newborns. 'Watching this woman rock it through an insane delivery and push out our babies was the most intense, inspiring, exhilarating, and humbling experience of my life,' he captioned the photo. 'So blessed and grateful for this sweet family. Double the love: Terry announced that his girlfriend gave birth to twins on Saturday, March 19, by sharing this sweet photo on Instagram Growing family: Terry revealed in October that and he and Alexandra were expecting twins 'Welcome to the world Rex + Roman. March 19th, 2016 6:23pm and 6:35pm, 6lbs 1 oz and 6lbs 10oz.' The day before her delivery, Terry shared a revealing photo of his heavily pregnant girlfriend posing in her bra and underwear as she gave the camera two middle fingers. 'TGIF I think someone is very happy to be at the end of their pregnancy!' he captioned the picture of the her bulging baby bump. Terry started documenting the pregnancy online after the couple announced that they were expecting twins. Most of the photos he shared, however, were less than traditional - which is not such a surprise for those who have followed his career. 'TGIF': Terry took to Instagram on March 18 to share a photo of his heavily pregnant girlfriend giving the middle finger to the camera while wearing only her bra and underwear. The twins were born the next day Whips and chains: Terry photographed Alexandra wearing a prenatal cradle support strap and shared the 'bondage' image with his fans The photographer first confirmed his girlfriend's pregnancy this fall by posting a picture of the announcement featured in New York Post's Page Six on his Instagram page. 'Babies' first Page Six shout out!' he wrote. 'We weren't planning to make this news quite so public quite so soon, because we are very cautious after going through some very difficult and heartbreaking losses, and always afraid of jinxing it, but since the cat is out of the bag... 'Skinny and I are very excited to let you guys know that we are expecting TWINS in the spring!!! 'This has been a difficult journey and we are so thankful to be surrounded by so much love and support from our friends and family, and some incredibly smart doctors! 'I'm sure the kids will be excited to use this as a Throwback Thursday one of these days!' Alexandra has stood by Terry's side among many alleged scandals, starting as his intern while a student at New York University before dropping out to become his full-time assistant. While she was an intern in 2004, she was photographed performing oral sex on the photographer while wearing a tiara labeled 'slut'. 'Hump day': Alexandra posed for this image not long after they confirmed that they are expecting Fall day: The couple are pictured walking around New York City's West Village in November, when Alexandra's bump was just beginning to show prominently Other explicit photos of her that were taken by Terry appear in his 2005 book, Kibosh. After the famed photographer received countless accusations of sexual misconduct by multiple models, for which he was never actually charged, Alexandra came to his defense. 'I think part of being a strong woman is owning the decisions that youve made in your life,' she told New York magazine for their cover story on the photographer in 2014. 'Trying to put the onus onto someone else for your own decisions is really cowardly and kind of dishonest.' Terry has photographed countless celebrities, including Beyonce and Miley Cyrus, however, the photographer, who is known to many as 'Uncle Terry', has been accused of pressuring models into posing for sexually explicit photoshoots and performing unwanted sexual acts with him on set. The photographer has continued to deny the allegations, writing on his blog that he was 'really hurt by the recent and false allegations of insensitivity and misconduct'. What do you get for the mom who has everything? Well, if anyone would know, it's Gwyneth Paltrow. From the looks of her website and Instagram, the 43-year-old mother-of-two sure seems to have it all, from pricey skincare products to even pricier fashion accessories. But in case you were wondering what she'd still like for Mother's Day, Gwynnie has pulled together a luxe list packed with travel must-haves, designer favorites, and even some haute high-tech gear. Scroll down for video Gwyneth Paltrow released a Mother's Day gift guide, offering hints about what she might get mom Blythe Danner (right) Can they see to Mexico? One of the most outrageously-priced items on the list is this set of Hermes binoculars, for $10,100 High-tech: She also microseconds some gadgets, like this $65 portable charger Hint, hint: Daughter Apple, 11, and son Moses, 10, might be too young to buy these for mom just yet There are more than a few hints for Apple, 11, and Moses, 10, should they have access to a family credit card for the upcoming holiday though Gwyneth's mom Blythe Danner may be expecting a few of these goodies, too. Gwyn divided her guide into three lists: one for 'Globe-Trotting Moms', one for 'Just-for-you-moms' who like personalized gifts, and one for mothers who prefer experiences, like cooking classes. The Globe-Trotting Mom guide seems particularly great for Gwyneth, who just got back from a family holiday in Peru. It seems, though, that her trip to the Machu Picchu wan't complete without the views provided by a pair of $10,100 Hermes binoculars, which she recommends as a gift. Picture-perfect: This pricey $699 camera could come in handy for amazing Instagram pictures Traveling in style: Inexpensive luggage tags and passport protectors won't do; Gwyneth likes picks by Smythson for $115 (left) and Louis Vuitton for $500 (right) On-the-go: She said this $325 Pierre Hardy pouch is great for organizing during the day and transforms into a cute clutch at night Top-notch: The jetsetting mom seems to settle for nothing but the best for her travel gear 'Not juts for bird watching,' she jokes about the incredibly pricey piece. In other tech, she likes a $699 camera by Fujifilm, $300 Beats by Dre pink wireless headphones, and a $65 Bump wall charger and portable backup power bank. For the plane ride, she recommends getting your mom a $115 Smythson luggage tag, a $325 Pierre Hardy pouch that measure about a foot long which she says it great for organization but also works as a 'go-with-everything clutch', a $495 Horne blanket and pillow set, and a $40 Slip silk eye mask. Finally, she gets to the fashion, since this Oscar winner wouldn't be caught dead in a sloppy travel outfit. Sleeping on the plane: She likes this $40 silk eye mask for blocking out light Luxe looks: She also suggests getting a $495 Horne blanket and pillow set (left) and $375 3.1 Phillip Lim flats Nothin' but luxe: This weekender bag by Eddie Harrop will set shoppers back $1,235 Some of her favorite pieces are a $1,235 Eddie Harrop weekender bag, a $1,295 Michael Kors Collection gray cashmere sweater, and $375 3.1 Phillip Lim flats. Most of her travel essentials seem to have been picked for their day-to-night appeal, implying that Gwyneth is a light packer and a smart one, too, since she also likes Raden's $295 carry-on suitcase that links to an app that enables weight checks and location sensors, in addition to charging your phone. The least expensive item on her list? A $16 pack of RMS Beauty make-up remover wipes she sells on her website. Her list of personalized items doesn't skimp on expensive stuff, either. It includes several pieces of pricey jewelry, including a $10,500 Hoorsenbuhs bracelet with pave white diamonds. All the jewels! Gwyn recommended several personalized pieces of jewelry, including this $10,500 Hoorsenbuhs bracelet, which features pave white diamonds Generic game sets? Psh! Only a $135 monogrammed backgammon set will do Write on: She included these $345 correspondence notes, which Khloe Kardashian also put on her Mother's Day gift guide Fashion faves: An $800 Bottega Veneta wallet (left) and $1,795 Burberry trench (right) also made it on the list There's also a $3,350 rose gold and diamond Walter's Faith ID tablet, a $1,285 Jennifer Meyer nameplate necklace, a $1,650 Ariel Gordon name necklace, and a $1,600 Finn necklace. But jewelry's not the only thing that can be personalized. She also offers up suggestions of a monogrammed backgammon set by Mark & Graham for $135, a $149 bath robe by the same brand, Red Bliss correspondence notes that cost a whopping $345 and also showed up on Khloe Kardashian's gift guide (though Khloe favored a $90 version). Rounding out the list are a few more fashion favorites, all of which cost a pretty penny: A Burberry trench coat for $1,795, a Bottega Veneta for $800, and a Louis Vuitton passport holder that costs $480, which Gwyneth says makes 'going through security significantly more enjoyable'. We'll have to take her word for it. It's the ultimate indulgence and now the traditional red velvet cake has undergone a (liquid) makeover as baristas infuse the flavour into their lattes. Jumping on the trend is Sydney cafe The Local MBassy who described their red velvet latte as tasting like: 'a warm marshmallowy cupcake in liquid form'. The beautiful-looking drink, which is deep red in colour, sent coffee and cake lovers in to a caffeine-fueled frenzy. Scroll down for video Delicious: Red velvet lattes are rising in popularity, combining coffee and a cake Winter warmer: The delicious-looking drink is said to taste like 'a warm marshmallowy cupcake in liquid form' Flavour explosion: The drink has sent social media users in to a frenzy, as they scramble to get their head around just what it would taste like Many speculated just how The Local MBassy made the indulgent drink, but the cafe kept their cards close to their chest. 'It takes us 30 minutes to prep this red velvet marshmallowy goodness,' they wrote, before saying the latte was made from 'fairy dust + perfectly steamed milk'. But a recipe for a red velvet latte posted online said vanilla, cocoa powder, red food colouring and cream were what made the drink so good. 'Fairy dust + perfectly steamed milk': Sydney cafe The Local MBassy have kept just how they make the red velvet latte a secret Decadent: A recipe online says the drink is made using vanilla, cocoa powder, red food colouring and cream Sweet treat: It takes Sydney cafe The Local MBassy 30 minutes to prepare the red velvet latte The red velvet trend is just the latest in a string of uniquely flavoured brews. Daily Mail Australia previously reported a number of cafes were offering beetroot lattes: the perfect balance between coffee and superfoods. Melbourne cafe Real Food Organic makes the latte using 'organic beetroot powder' and almond milk. 'High in antioxidants, perfect for recovering from a hard gym sesh or if you're starting to get the flu,' they wrote on Facebook. Veggie packed: Beetroot lattes have also risen in popularity in Australian cafes A healthy hit: A number of cafes offer the beetroot creation, and promote the drink as the perfect balance of caffeine and superfood Taste the rainbow: Melbourne's Matcha Mylkbar cafe also sells beetroot-infused coffee, which they make with freshly pressed beetroot juice, fresh ginger and original almond mylk Mushroom mocha? The trend has gone as far as to include mushroom lattes made with chaga mushrooms and vanilla spiced almond mylk and served with a side of agave Red, yellow, green: The Silva Spoon Tea and Coffee Emporium in Maroochydore offers coffee with added nutritional value The cafe also sells beetroot banana bread. Melbourne's Matcha Mylkbar cafe has jumped on the trend, with a beetroot-infused coffee made with freshly pressed beetroot juice, fresh ginger and original almond mylk. They even took things a step further with a mushroom latte made with chaga mushrooms, vanilla spiced almond mylk and a side of agave. Fancy: Other creative coffees include turmeric almond lattes, vanilla soy matcha lattes and lattes made with beetroot and ginger Zhang Cheng, 33, lived with a tumour so big it made him look heavily pregnant for a decade. He has now finally had the growth removed A Chinese man who lived with a tumour so big he looked heavily pregnant for a decade has finally had the two-stone growth removed from his stomach. The 33-year-old said he let the mass increase for 10 years as he believed it could be treated with traditional remedies. Eventually it had grown so huge it weighed 2st 5lbs (33lbs or 15kg) - and made him appear as though he was expecting a child. The hospital did not reveal the name of the man, who lives in Leshan, a city in Chinas south-western Sichuan Province, and so the local media dubbed him Zhang Cheng. He originally went to the doctors in 2004 when his stomach felt uncomfortable - and a lump was found in 2006. Its not known if the tumour is cancerous - but it is believed it is benign otherwise medics would have removed it as a matter of emergency. After it swelled to the size of a beach ball doctors said the mass was pressing on his internal organs and his bowels - which could potentially be fatal. Despite going to various hospitals across China, other medics told him an operation to remove it would be risky, so he was repeatedly sent home, his sister told Chengdu Business Daily. Eventually, the family raised the money to have the tumour cut out at the Military General Hospital in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. Dr Dai Ruiwu, lead surgeon at the hospital, carried out the complicated six-hour operation - which required the help of experts from three clinical departments. As the growth had been pressing on Mr Cheng's internal organs for years, Dr Ruiwu said he needed to be kept in intensive care afterwards. His sister told local newspaper: 'Because our family is poor, my brother missed several opportunities to treat the illness. After the mass swelled to the size of a beach ball doctors said it was pressing on his internal organs and his bowels - which could potentially be fatal. They removed it in a 'risky' six-hour operation Mr Cheng is being kept in intensive care after the operation as the 33lb (15kg tumour) had been pressing on his organs for so long. He first went to the doctor in 2004 complaining of a pain in his stomach We have visited many other hospitals in the past, doctors said the success rate was low so we were sent home.' His sister added that before the operation, he was eternally single single as women were put off by his 'pregnant' stomach. The news comes after earlier this month MailOnline reported on the story of a Peruvian woman who had a 2st 5lbs (33lbs or 15kg) tumour removed after it had been growing for 13 years. Irianita Rojas Rasma, 22, from north-eastern Peru, looked pregnant due to the mass - which caused her constant pain and meant she had to leave both school and her job. They have spoken of their pride at their late son's 'huge legacy' His kidneys were given to adult man 233 miles away in Leeds Teddy, who had a healthy twin, died from anencephaly hours after birth He was here for only the briefest of times - just 100 minutes. But in those few precious moments with parents Jess Evans and Mike Houlston, Teddy helped change the course of countless lives. Since Teddy, who was a twin, became Britain's youngest organ donor two years ago, his parents know of eight lives his story has helped to save. But the true figure is almost certainly countless more because in the year after the Cardiff couple went public with their decision, 100,000 extra donors came forward. Tiny Teddy Houlston (left), was born beside his healthy twin Noah (right), became Britain's youngest donor after his kidneys and heart valves were removed just 100 minutes after he was born It's a legacy that is an endless source of pride for the couple, who on Friday marked the second anniversary of baby Teddy's death while celebrating his surviving twin, Noah, turning two. They visited Teddy's grave with Noah, Jess' four-year-old daughter Billie, Mike's parents John and Lynne Houlston, his sister Ann-Marie and brother Martin. Surveyor Mr Houlston, 31, said: 'It's a legacy that nobody can put numbers on. 'It's a huge legacy that we're massively, massively proud of.' The pride means that, though the couple said Friday was be a day of mixed emotions, the mood was also one of celebration more than sorrow. Teddy had anencephaly, a rare, fatal condition that prevents the normal development of the brain and the bones of the skull. Almost all babies with anencephaly die before birth or within a few hours or days after birth. The couple were told during pregnancy that their son would be born with a fatal brain condition, but were determined that his life would not be wasted. Until the extraordinary moments following Teddy's birth 12 months ago, Miss Evans and Mr Houlston were just like any other expectant couple. Born just minutes apart, twin boys Teddy and Noah lie side by side, sharing a special moment with their mother before Teddy passed away. Noah, who was born healthy, turned two on Friday The pair were childhood sweethearts and had rekindled their relationship in their 20s, before going on to have a daughter, Billie, now aged three. Then, in 2013 after a trip to Amsterdam, during which the couple became engaged, Miss Evans learned she was expecting twins. They found out the babies were boys and decided to name them after one another: Teddy Noah Houlston and Noah Teddy Houlston. However, medics soon delivered some devastating news. Teddy was suffering from anencephaly, a rare condition meaning he would likely not live for even one day after birth. The condition usually begins in the early stages of pregnancy and means the neural tube which forms the baby's skull does not fold over the top of the head. This means the baby will be born without a brain, or spinal chord. Those with the condition are usually blind, deaf, unconscious, and unable to feel pain. Parents Jess Jones and Mike Houlston pictured with their children Noah, now two, and Billie, four, The couple were offered the option to abort their son, but they never considered it. Speaking on ITV's This Morning, Mr Houlston said: 'We didn't want to hear any of that. It was never an option for us. We were determined that Teddy was going to have that place in our family.' So they asked medics in Cardiff to carry out pioneering surgery on their baby. Hours later, Teddy's kidneys and heart valves had been removed and his organs had been transported 233 miles away, where they were given to a man suffering from renal failure. It's a huge legacy that we're massively, massively proud of Mike Houlston, 31 Last December brought fresh tragedy and joy again for the couple. They lost their friend Stuart Bates, 43, and his son Fraser, seven, after they were hit by a car. Before their deaths the Bates family, from Llanishen in Cardiff, discussed going on the donor register because of Teddy's story. Mr Bates' wife Anna-Louise donated Fraser's organs. In the same month a baby girl named Hope became Britain's youngest donor after her parents Emma Lee and husband Drew read about Teddy's story. 'It's not just about Teddy now,' said Mr Houlston. 'It's the spider web effect where those two babies there have saved eight lives and that spider web out of the families that will be touched by it.' Teddy's story has already seen the couple raise more than 14,000 for charity 2 Wish Upon a Star, which aims to improve bereavement services for parents who lose babies or children. TEDDY'S TEDDY: HOW THEIR SON'S TREASURED HEARTBEAT LIVES ON When Miss Evans was 30 weeks pregnant, she and Mr Houlston visit a local hospital in Penarth where they heard Teddy's heart beating. Knowing how precious that sound was, Teddy's parents decided to find a way that they could keep that heartbeat forever. Miss Evans and Mr Houlston pictured on This Morning with daughter Billie, son Noah and the blue teddy which contains a recording of Teddy's precious heartbeat So the couple had the recording stitched inside a cuddly blue teddy bear. Now, when the teddy is squeezed, Teddy's heartbeat can be heard. The blue teddy bear now has pride of place in Noah and Billie's toy box. Advertisement WHAT IS ANENCEPHALY? RARE BRAIN CONDITION WHICH AFFECTS BABIES Anencephaly occurs between the third and fourth weeks of pregnancy. During that time, the neural tube is supposed to close and fold over to form the brain and spinal cord of the fetus. This process fails to occur in anencephalic pregnancies, resulting in the absence of a large portion of the brain, skull and scalp. Babies born with anencephaly are usually blind, deaf, unconscious and unable to feel pain. They are usually stillborn but in rare cases they may survive longer. The rate of anencephaly is one or two per 10,000 births. A baby with anencephaly lacks the telencephalon, which is the part of the brain responsible for cognition Advertisement In fact Miss Evans, 29, now works as an events organiser for the charity. The couple said they have been overwhelmed by the generosity of the reaction to their son's story. His mother was committed to organ donation early in life - through a personal experience involving her mother Debbie Carr. She believes stories like Teddy's are helping to shift attitudes towards the NHS Organ Donor Register. Teddy's kidneys saved the life of a patient with renal failure, who the couple have since exchanged letters with. They have also become friends with organ donation nurse Angharad Griffiths, who guided them through the process. 'You'll always get some people that it's not the right decision for. You're never going to convince them otherwise and that's fine,' said Miss Houlston. 'It's not for everyone and we've always said that. But I think the awareness that has been brought about in the last year or so has just been amazing.' The couple will go on raising funds through a bike ride and two running events this year and will pay for a room to be decorated and opened in Teddy's memory at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. The room will be used for bereaved parents. Visit 2 Wish Upon a Star or register to be an organ donor HERE. It doesn't really surprise me that the UK is facing a major donated sperm shortage and many clinics are relying in imported sperm to keep up with demand. I was a prolific sperm donor when I was a young medical student, keen to help couples who couldn't conceive and happy to receive the beer money that was bestowed by way of compensation. But I wouldn't do it now following the implementation of a 'right to know' law - that any child conceived by my sperm could have the right to know my name and last known address when they turned 18. What about my right to privacy? I was 21 when I first became a sperm donor. I went to lectures with all the rest of my year group, most of the lectures were pretty boring, but one struck home. Demand for sperm donation has increased with more same-sex couple and people delaying parenthood. But there is a national shortage of donors The lecturer was a flamboyant and successful gynaecologist, and this week his subject was fertility. Watching the slides flick by I was amazed to see up on the screen the technical guts of a process that usually happened, in my experience, in the back of my Ford Escort. It was surprising when you saw all the complications that the avid little sperms ever met the eggs they were destined for. But for some people that wondrous encounter never happened. Our lecturer painted a picture for us of some of his most distressed patients, women who longed for babies, but whose partners were sub-fertile. Some men, I learned, produce no sperm at all, or sperm so defective that it was impossible for them ever to fertilise an egg. At this point the lecturer looked over his glasses at the rows of students taking notes obediently. We put down our biros. 'Which is why there is always a need for sperm donors,' he told us. 'If any of you are interested, please let me know after the lecture.' At the end of the lecture, students flocked around him like pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Sperm donations can help people with fertility problems to become parents but an anonymous doctor and former donor says there is no way he would do it after the rules changed in 2005 I hesitated at the back of the crowd, listening to them as they questioned him. They were enthusiastically collecting more and more information, but none of them had responded, as I had, to the need he had described so movingly. Eventually my turn came. But how could I broach the subject? I chose my moment as he was leaving the lecture hall, when I could catch him alone in the corridor. He looked me up and down, like the Oliver Reed character in Gladiator assessing a new specimen. Then,'Yes, yes' he said, 'Come to my office on Saturday morning, so we can check things out.' SPERM DONATION: THE RULES Before 2005, men who donated their sperm for fertility treatment could remain anonymous and their offspring were only entitled to get basic physiological details of their 'dads'. During this period, donating sperm was an unusual way for men to earn a little pocket money. However new laws were put in place allowing children the right to find out the identity of their biological parents, when they reach 18, which will be from 2023 onwards. The rules changed so children conceived via sperm donation could trace their biological fathers The change means that children conceived using donor eggs or sperm will be able to trace their biological parent in the same way as children who are adopted. While children will be able to access more information about the donor's genetic origins, they will have no financial or legal claim. They will have to ask the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to release the information. The donor is not be able to trace a child. In 2014, a new national sperm bank was set up in response to a huge rise in demand, particularly from same-sex couples and older women wanting children. But a year later, it only had nine donors on its books, thought to be in part caused by the rule changes. In the UK the rules on donation only allow sperm from one donor to be used in ten different families, meaning some of the donors will have created vast extended families of half-brothers and half-sisters. Advertisement I came. The checks were satisfactory. He opened his diary, 'Can you do next Tuesday, five o'clock? Payment in advance if you wish.' He took out his wallet and handed me five pounds, useful for a medical student, but not my motive. I'd met some nurses who confided in me their fertility problems, and I'd found them appealing and sympathetic. Maybe my genetic material was about to merge with theirs. Tuesday arrived, at five o'clock I was given a small plastic container and shown the loo. No erotic magazines or videos then, just my imagination. Fortunately I had had sex with my girl friend the night before, and the morning, so there were memories to draw on. I drew on them. I'm not sure what went wrong. Maybe the container slipped, maybe my eyes were shut and I misjudged the distance or the velocity, but the precious glupe hit the floor tiles having completed an unscheduled aeronautic phase. It probably wasn't etiquette to try and scrape it into the container, and who knew what floor cleaner residue would be scraped up with it if I tried, which wouldn't do much for the lady who was arriving for her appointment with my DNA in ten minutes time. I was used to exams, and deadlines but this one was tight. I managed to produce a fresh sample, but I came out of the cubicle red-faced and gasping as if I'd just set a new 100 meter record. For some idiotic reason I confided the experience to a close friend, who swore he would keep my confidence. Like hell he did, it was round the whole year in a matter of minutes, and the jokes at my expense went on for months, ('a pull on the pud pays for the food', not sophisticated stuff). Still I persevered, and my efforts paid for me to run my car, though I never worked out how many miles it achieved to the sperm. My more mercenary girl friends tried to calculate ways they should share in the profits. 'Maybe if you used a sterile condom I could take it to the sperm bank and get the fee.' After I graduated, occasionally I had to collect similar samples from patients. It was a difficult subject to broach, so I followed the accepted practice and avoided eye contact, attempting to multitask, write up my notes, while instructing the patient, 'now we just need a sample in here' and with my free hand placing a sterile container on my desk. Once I had just finished writing a sentence when I looked up, saying, 'Any problems?' only to find the patient prepared and poised to launch his sample into the receptacle on my desk. 'Not in here,' I yelled, feeling like William Tell's son with an apple balanced on his head. My own aim had been erratic, what would his be like? And I was in his line of fire. Now all of us sperm donors have dried up, literally. As a happily married father of two, I am relieved that I donated before 2005 and children conceived using my donated sperm do not have the right to know their parentage. After all, only a minority of them, a discontented minority, feel all their problems in life would be resolved if only they knew who their father was. Babies born through sperm donation can now trace their father when they turn 18 (file image) putting many off The majority are perfectly happy with the man they call Daddy, to whom they are not biologically linked, but who loves them as a father. In any case they are not unique, as the cliche has it, it's a wise child who knows his own father, studies have shown that at least 20 per cent of children are not actually sired by the man named on their birth certificates. Maternity, they say, is a matter of fact, paternity a matter of opinion. As a former sperm donor, I would be frankly horrified if some angst-ridden 20-year-old turned up on my doorstep asking to meet his half-sisters. It might sound lacking in compassion on my part, but my deal was done to help a desperate couple have a baby. In Sweden, where they passed a similar law allowing donors to be identified, the result was a considerable drop in donors. In the UK, numbers of donors fell steeply after the law was changed. Certainly for my part, if that had been the deal, all bets would have been off, and my glupe would have stayed safely in my testicles to fight another day. Justice for a few has meant fewer donors, and less chance of happiness for the many. A 43 year old Turkish woman became convinced her husband of 20 years was cheating on her because of a large cyst in her brain, doctors have revealed. The unnamed patient became suddenly suspicious of her husband's infidelity, and started looking through his phone and personal belongings. They say following an issue with her daughter having to change schools, she also had trouble sleeping and became anxious and irritable, doctors said. The unnamed patient became suddenly suspicious of her husband's infidelity. Following an MRI scan, doctors say a large cyst in her brain was to blame for the psychotic attacks. A RARE BRAIN CYST Porencephaly is a rare disorder of the central nervous system and involves a cyst or a cavity filled with cerebrospinal fluid in the brains parenchyma. Porencephalic cysts are very rare, her doctors said, and are typically diagnosed in infants before their first birthday, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. These cysts may be congenital or acquired. Clinical manifestations such as paresis, seizures, mental retardation, learning disability and psychiatric symptoms are all possible from porencephalic cysts. Advertisement Following an MRI scan, they say a large cyst in the decision making part of her brain was to blame for the psychotic attacks. 'Her MRI scan demonstrated an extensive porencephalic cyst in the right medial frontal lobe with mild mass effect on the parenchyma,' they wrote in the journal BMJ Case Reports. 'Cyst presence in the right frontal lobe might explain the difficulty in handling stress and also might be associated with late onset psychosis.' 'The patient was diagnosed with late onset brief psychotic disorder after detailed evaluation.' The team concluded that surgery was not an option for the woman - who was instead treated with drugs. 'The patient had no previous psychiatric or neurological history. She had no drug and no family psychiatric history,' they said. 'A problem with her daughter changing schools because of poor educational performance was the only triggering event. 'Her symptoms started at the time.' 'On mental state examination, the patient was tired-looking and self-care was fair, whereas cooperation and orientation were full. 'She expressed referential and paranoid delusions about her family. 'Her attitude was subjectively anxious and suspicious but objectively blunted and she lacked insight about her condition.' 'Her MRI scan demonstrated an extensive porencephalic cyst in the right medial frontal lobe with mild mass effect on the parenchyma,' doctors wrote in the journal BMJ Case Reports. Noyan last saw the patient about a month ago, and said that she is doing very well, according to Livescience. Smoothing down her suit for the first day of a new job as a sales executive, little did Klara Dollan know that, eight hours later, she would give birth to a healthy 7lb baby girl. With no morning sickness, back pain or visible baby bump, there was nothing to hint that Klara, 22, was pregnant. Although she hadn't had a monthly bleed, that wasn't surprising, as she was on the Pill continuously. So when she started to have cramps early that morning she presumed she was simply having a painful period. Determined to make a good impression at her new direct marketing firm, she endured the 40-minute commute from her house in Cricklewood, north-west London, to Waterloo, stood through a two-hour meeting, and only then did she have to leave, as the waves of pain became more and more debilitating. Klara Dollan, 23, gave birth to baby Amelia on the first day of her new job. She didn't know she was pregnant But when Klara got home, she discovered she had left the keys to her flat on the kitchen table. 'I was desperate to get in and even tried kicking the front door down, but there are two security locks,' she says. She called a locksmith, but had to wait two hours for him to arrive. 'Every so often there'd be this pain so bad I had to grab hold of the bannister,' she says. 'The pains then stopped, but I couldn't stand still - I had to keep walking around, going up and down the stairs of my building.' When she finally got into the flat she shares with her mother, she changed into pyjamas, but felt unable to sit still. 'I spent the next hour and a half walking back and forth from the bathroom to my room. The only place I felt comfortable was sitting on the toilet. The pain suddenly became so bad I said to myself: I don't care, I'm going to have to scream. I heard a knock at the door and managed to drag myself off the toilet and open it - by this point I was bleeding heavily. 'My neighbour came in and I asked her to call an ambulance. Then I had this extremely painful urge to push: that's when the head came out. My neighbour was in the corridor and I was screaming: It's a baby, oh my God! It's a baby. ' The mother-of-one was barely showing. Pictured in a body con dress at seven months pregnant Within minutes, Klara was cradling her daughter. 'Out of instinct, I grabbed a towel and wrapped her up in it. I couldn't believe I had a baby in my hands. I was in complete and utter shock,' she says. The ambulance arrived and a quick visit to hospital confirmed Klara and her baby were in excellent health. That left the difficult task of breaking the news to her mother, who was at work. 'I broke down in tears on the phone. I told her I had given birth to a baby and there was silence. 'Then she said: How is that possible? I saw you this morning and you weren't pregnant. ' How indeed? After all, the average women gains between 22lb and 26lb during pregnancy. About a third of this is due to the baby - the rest is down to an increase in muscle in the womb, blood volume and fluid levels, and the body storing fat to make breast milk. So even women with the neatest of bumps end up with some thickening of their waistline. Klara, who is 6 ft tall and weighs 10 st, gained just under 28lb over the course of the pregnancy - going up only one jeans size. Five months before the birth, she'd separated from her boyfriend of two and a half years, Kris, and put the weight gain down to comfort eating. 'I'd put on a bit of weight in most places, but I have a photo of myself in a bodycon dress at seven months pregnant and you wouldn't know it,' she says. 'The only thing I would say is I noticed the top half of my stomach was very hard when I touched it, about a month before the birth. 'Most women at nine months are huge - my mum gained nearly six stone with me. One in 450 pregnant women in the UK don't know they're expecting until halfway through the pregnancy 'I asked the midwife how it was possible - she said it had happened to plenty of women before, but mainly those who are overweight. My GP said I was not the first pregnancy like this he had dealt with.' Indeed, Klara's story is not that rare. One in 450 pregnant women in the UK don't know they are going to have a baby until week 20 of their pregnancy (half-way through), and one in 2,500 women are oblivious to the fact until they go into labour. It's a phenomenon known as cryptic pregnancy. 'It'll be happening every week somewhere in the UK,' says Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard, a clinical senior lecturer and spokesperson for the Royal College of General Practitioners. In her 20 years as a GP, Dr Stokes-Lampard has seen half a dozen cases of this sort. 'These are often women who are very busy, leading crazy lives and so they often miss the signs that they are expecting.' I broke down in tears on the phone. I told her I had given birth to a baby and there was silence. Then she said: 'How is that possible? I saw you this morning and you weren't pregnant' Cryptic pregnancies typically affect either young women, who have never experienced a pregnancy, or women who believe they've gone through the menopause and who choose not to use contraception. Women with erratic menstrual cycles are also more likely to miss signs they are expecting. This is especially true among women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), where small cysts grow on the ovaries; the hormone imbalance often leads to irregular or non-existent periods. Yet there are some women who will continue to have monthly bleeds throughout their pregnancy. In this case, a scan at the local GP may be the only method of confirmation. 'I had one case in my own family, who already had three young children, and was a busy professional,' says Dr Stokes-Lampard. Throughout her pregnancy, she had occasional bleeds and thought these were periods, so was caught unawares when she went into labour. 'She complained of an upset stomach one morning and three hours later called her husband to tell him she was in hospital, having given birth to a perfectly healthy 8 lb baby. She had gained some weight, but otherwise, had no symptoms at all.' Women who are on the Pill continuously will not have monthly bleeding, which can mask the fact they are pregnant. As Klara was a regular swimmer, she had been taking the combined oral contraceptive pill, Microgynon, with no break to avoid having periods. Furthermore, women may simply not expect to find they are pregnant if they are taking the Pill - but then those taking it religiously can still become pregnant. Klara believes she became pregnant while on holiday with Kris when she was on antibiotics and vomited Eight in 100 women can get pregnant while on the Pill - 'not because of problems with the Pill, but with the taker, either because they've missed the Pill, thrown up or had diarrhoea,' explains Nitu Bajekal, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist for the NHS and at Spire Bushey Hospital in North London and founder of the Women for Women's Health website. Having an upset stomach or taking any medication such as antibiotics can reduce absorption of the Pill and extra precautions should be taken for at least a week afterwards. Klara believes she became pregnant while on holiday in Latvia with Kris when she was on antibiotics and vomited several times. For any woman, giving birth when you have no idea it's likely to happen can have profound effects. 'Pregnancy is nine months where a woman can adapt to what they're going to be facing,' says Professor Ian Jones, director for the National Centre for Mental Health, Cardiff. 'Having a baby unawares is an even more significant life event than giving birth.' Professor Jones says women who experience cryptic pregnancies are more at risk of mental health issues such as postnatal depression, anxiety and even post-traumatic stress disorder. 'As a parent without that nine months of preparation, one can only imagine how much more of a life event it is,' he says. 'It must be an incredible shock.' And it can affect the mother and baby's physical well-being, too. 'If a woman sails through the pregnancy without knowing it, it implies she hasn't had morning sickness or any other related issues,' says Dr Stokes-Lampard. 'However, she also won't have had the benefit of antenatal care or health screening [for conditions such as high blood pressure, a possible warning sign of pre-eclampsia]. That does increase the risk of complications.' But despite the shock of the birth, Klara is adjusting well to life with two-month-old Amelia, with the support of her family and Kris, who thought Klara was joking when she first told him the story. Klara says initially she was worried people might think she knew she was pregnant and was hiding it. As she says: 'My mum had a lot of miscarriages before me, so I always thought I would have the same problems. David had surgery to remove the prostate and felt very sore and tired for a couple of weeks About half of men aged from 40 to 70 will experience some degree of erectile dysfunction. David Storton, 57, a restaurant manager who lives with his wife in Dorset, suffered problems after prostate cancer treatment and has since undergone surgery to restore sexual function, as he tells ANGELA EPSTEIN. THE PATIENT Having always enjoyed good health, eight years ago I had blood in my urine every time I went to the loo. My GP reassured me it was likely to be an infection and gave me antibiotics, but the problem continued. A few weeks later, I went back to my GP, who suggested it might be a prostate problem - though there was no suggestion it was anything serious since I was only 49 and had no family history of cancer. I had a blood test to check for prostate specific antigen, a protein produced by the prostate gland. If you have raised levels it could mean you have an infection or even cancer. To my enormous relief, my results were normal. But since the bleeding continued, I was referred to hospital for a rectal examination. I still didn't think it could be anything serious - I was fit, slim and didn't smoke or drink. So I was pole-axed when I was told I had prostate cancer. The good news was that the cancer was contained within the prostate gland, so my specialist said I could be treated with radiotherapy or surgery to remove the prostate. The other option was to wait to see what happened, as prostate cancer can be slow growing. I decided on surgery, as I'd then know for sure that the cancer had gone. I was warned that I might suffer temporary incontinence and there was also the risk of erection problems, but I feared the cancer more, so I felt it was worth it. And anyway, I was still young and told myself it was unlikely that I would suffer. My wife of 25 years agreed that, above all, the most important thing was to know the cancer had been removed. I had the surgery on July 13, 2008, and for a couple of weeks I felt very sore and tired, so sex wasn't a concern. As for incontinence, I was never really troubled by it. But he found himself unable to get an erection when he was ready to become intimate with his wife again After my three-month check-up I felt ready to become intimate with my wife again, but I found myself unable to get an erection. What's more, though I could feel sensation, my penis felt constantly cold and painful, as if there wasn't enough blood getting through. My consultant said this often happened and we tried a series of treatments, such as Viagra - a drug that increases blood flow to the penis. Unfortunately, this didn't make any difference. I was then given Caverject, a drug that's injected directly into the side of the penis, where it is supposed to dilate the arteries and allow blood to flow in. I also tried the medication as a suppository into the opening at the tip of the penis. As well as having no effect, both options were incredibly painful. After several months of this, I started to feel angry - and emasculated. I wanted that part of my life to return to normal. I'm ashamed to say I wasn't the easiest person to live with - I felt moody and annoyed all the time. Even though I'd been warned this might occur, I didn't expect it to happen to me. After medication didn't work, he came across penile implants - where they surgically place a pump inside the penis to produce an erection. 'It sounded dramatic, but by that stage I was willing to try anything' My wife and I had always enjoyed an active sex life and I wasn't prepared for this part of our marriage to be over - even though she was patient and supportive. In despair, I scoured the internet for some miracle solution and it was then I came across penile implants - where they surgically place a pump inside the penis to produce an erection. It sounded dramatic, but by that stage I was willing to try anything. Further research led me to consultant urologist David Ralph, who specialises in erectile problems, and through my GP I got a referral to see him at University College Hospital in London a few weeks later. Mr Ralph reassured me that the implant would suit my situation - I was otherwise healthy and had exhausted all other options. I waited three months to have the operation as an NHS patient in July 2013. The surgery involves having two cylinders implanted inside the penis. 20% Of relationships are affected by erectile dysfunction Advertisement These are attached to a tiny pump that's put into your scrotum - squeezing this by hand moves fluid from a small chamber inside the pelvis into the cylinders, creating the erection. You deflate the device by pressing the deflate button on the pump. I had to have a general anaesthetic and stayed in hospital overnight. The day after the surgery I felt quite swollen and bruised, but not in much pain. I was told to wait six weeks for it to heal and then I began practising inflating the penis - it worked within seconds. I'm so pleased to say my sex life has been fully restored as a result. Yes, you have to wait a moment or two for it to inflate, but I can behave and perform like a man - with no side-effects. Cancer makes you re-evaluate your life and I realise I had a brush with death. But you have to feel alive, too. And now I can say I do. THE SURGEON David Ralph is a consultant urological surgeon at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Men suffer erection problems for all sorts of reasons, including illnesses such as diabetes, through injury such as a pelvic fracture or as a result of treatment for prostate cancer. Problems occur because of damage to the erectile nerve, which encourages blood flow into the penis to create an erection. He can now behave and perform like a man - with no side-effects (file photo) The nerve runs on either side of the prostate. Sometimes it can be spared in prostate cancer surgery, but not always - it depends on the extent of the cancer. For men who suffer erection problems with a medical cause that is unlikely to improve naturally or with medication - as happened with David - surgery can be a great solution. I carry out about 300 implants a year - an estimated 700 men in Britain have this operation annually. The operation takes about an hour-and-a-half under general anaesthetic. To begin, we make a 2 in incision into the scrotum for access to the base of the penis. Then a smaller incision is made on the left and right side of the penis and we place what's known as a dilator at the base of the penis, pushing tissue aside to create a space about 1cm wide. After that we take the implant itself - a cylinder, which will be a length and girth appropriate to the patient - and insert it into the space we've created. The incisions are stitched up with dissolvable stitches. The pump part of the device is then inserted under the loose skin of the scrotal sac, between the testicles. The reservoir - a spherical silicone prosthesis holding 60 to 100 ml of saline - is placed inside the pelvis through the same incision in the scrotum. To work the implant, the scrotum has to be squeezed about ten times, allowing it to fill with fluid, which rushes into the cylinder. The patient can ejaculate as normal. When sex is over, it is deflated with the switch in the scrotum. During the operation, we check this works and then close the incisions with dissolvable stitches. The implant itself should last ten to 12 years. It's available on the NHS for any erection problem. For men like David, it means they can start living a full life again. The procedure, which is available on the NHS, costs about 10,000 privately. WHAT ARE THE RISKS? The risks of this operation include post-operative bleeding and infection, which affect in 1 per cent of cases. The patient has to refrain from sex for a month to six weeks after the operation to allow healing. Operating the pump requires manual dexterity, so isn't good for someone with arthritis or other problems with their hands. Professor Christopher Eden, consultant urologist at Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, says: 'The inflatable implant lasts only ten years and replacing it, or even just removing it, involves another general anaesthetic. For more than 20 years, neurologist Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan has specialised in treating patients with 'psychosomatic illnesses' - where physical symptoms including pain, seizures, even paralysis, are triggered by emotional states. She has recently written a compelling account of her experiences, and how those affected can be helped. Last night her book won the prestigious Wellcome Book Prize. Here, we publish an extract... Camilla was slight. Surrounded by a team of doctors and surgeons, she could easily have appeared diminished. But she maintained a rare sort of dignity. A psychosomatic disorder is a condition in which a person suffers from significant physical symptoms - causing real distress and disability - but there is no disease or physical cause that can be identified She had grown up well balanced and confident. After university she took a job in a City law firm. Hard work gained her high respect. She married Hugh, a college friend, and took six years off to care for their two children, then retrained to work as a family lawyer. But on a work trip to Cumbria, Camilla fell ill. She had just left a meeting when her head felt light. A wave of nausea struck and she thought she might faint. Her right hand began to tremble. Within a minute, her left hand was trembling. She laid her head against a wall as she felt the shaking become more violent. It spread to her legs so she was half-slipping from her chair with all four limbs flapping. Her heart was pounding. Camilla tried to ask for help, but no words would come. She was rushed to hospital and suffered several more convulsions. A doctor said she had suffered a seizure and that she may have a brain tumour. After six days, she was transferred to a London hospital for brain scans. 'For six days, I believed I had a brain tumour. I was so relieved when we got the scan result,' Camilla told me. 'And now... I wish it had been a tumour.' Dr O'Sullivan (pictured) is a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology in London None of the brain-scan results had been conclusive. But eventually the doctors were convinced she had epilepsy and started her on drug treatment. But Camilla's seizures kept occurring, increasing in intensity and stealing her independence. She'd been referred to me because a colleague thought her seizures were not epileptic, but psychological. Camilla's neurologist had become concerned by the condition's intractable nature and referred her for video telemetry, a test that diagnoses the cause of seizures. The patient is restricted to a hospital room where they are under constant video surveillance. Small painless metal discs attached to their head make a round-the-clock recording of their brainwave - or EEG - pattern. During that admission, Camilla suffered several seizures. However, there were no changes in her EEG pattern that would suggest epilepsy. The neurologist told her: 'I'm sorry, but I think the original diagnosis was wrong. 'The attacks we have seen are not due to epilepsy; they are non- epileptic attacks which have an emotional cause.' None of the brain-scan results had been conclusive. But eventually the doctors were convinced she had epilepsy and started her on drug treatment. But Camilla's seizures kept occurring, increasing in intensity and stealing her independence Camilla's seizures were psycho-somatic. A psychosomatic disorder is a condition in which a person suffers from significant physical symptoms - causing real distress and disability - but there is no disease or physical cause that can be identified by medical tests or physical examination. They are medical disorders like no others. They don't obey any rules. They can affect any part of the body. In one person they might cause pain, but psychosomatic illness can also manifest in more extreme ways: as paralysis, convulsions or almost any sort of disability. Psychosomatic disorders are physical symptoms that mask emotional distress. The nature of the physical presentation of the symptoms hides the distress at its root, so it is natural that those affected will automatically seek a medical disease to explain their suffering. They turn to medical doctors, not to psychiatrists, to provide a diagnosis. Up to one third of people seen in a general neurology clinic have neurological symptoms that can't be explained. An emotional cause is often suspected. It is common for patients to react angrily when they are told that the cause of their symptoms is psychosomatic. This is often a defence mechanism, as they try to protect themselves against the fact that their physical symptoms do not have a physical cause. Anger will often dissipate with time. But patients also often go into denial, refusing to accept the cause of their symptoms is emotional. This is a far greater barrier to recovery. Camilla had been referred to me for a second opinion because she would not accept her neurologist's conclusion. She says these are medical disorders like no others, don't obey any rules and can affect any part of the body I have become a specialist in this area. In my first consultant post 20 years ago, I ran a service whose main purpose was to investigate people with epilepsy who were not getting better with standard treatment. It transpired that 70 per cent of the people referred to me did not have epilepsy. Their seizures were occurring for psychological reasons. I admitted Camilla for further video telemetry and studied the results. I sat with her and Hugh, and said that I agreed her seizures were psychosomatic. She responded by saying: 'I still don't believe it. I'm not that sort of person. I'm happily married with two beautiful children. 'My life has never been so full or rewarding. I've had times in my life way harder than now, why didn't it happen then?' Camilla had fixed me with an emotionless gaze throughout our conversation. She challenged me to back down: 'Do you understand how humiliated this makes me feel?' For Camilla this diagnosis was more like an insult than an explanation. I tried to reassure her, saying: 'This could happen to anyone. It's an illness, it needs attention and treatment.' One extreme way that the body can respond to emotional upset is to produce blackouts and convulsions, such as those Camilla was experiencing. This sort of convulsion is known as a dissociative seizure. 'For Camilla this diagnosis was more like an insult than an explanation' (file photo) The seizures are real, but they arise in the subconscious rather than being due to a brain disease. Dissociation means that a sort of split has occurred in the mind. Your conscious mind separates from what is happening around you. That detachment means that one part of you doesn't know what the other is doing. It's not deliberate. You can't make yourself unconscious any more than I can deliberately blush or produce tears. When a patient receives a diagnosis of dissociative seizures within days or even weeks of their onset, their seizures often disappear almost the instant the diagnosis is delivered. But Camilla's pattern was set. She had lived with the belief of a diagnosis of epilepsy for nearly two years. Now that diagnosis was being taken away. 'I need to keep you in hospital while I withdraw your epilepsy drugs,' I told her. 'Can I ask that you do one thing while you're here? Will you see the psychiatrist, just to explore all the avenues?' It is common for patients to react angrily when they are told that the cause of their symptoms is psychosomatic 'But nothing is bothering me,' Camilla replied. 'You may be right, but there is very little to lose by having one meeting,' I said. Camilla continued to struggle to believe her seizures were not due to epilepsy, but she carried her doubt calmly and with dignity. Her evenness unsettled me. I wanted her to shout at me, to give me a display of emotion I could understand and to which I could react. But if there was something hidden, Camilla could not reach it, and nor could I. On the day she was due to go home, I met her and her husband for one final conversation. 'Is there anything more you'd like to ask before you leave?' I asked. 'Just what I always ask,' said Camilla, laughing. She continued: 'If this is true, why is it happening to me?' 'Sometimes I think it is useful to think of the very first attack,' I replied. 'Sometimes that is the one that tells us the most. It might have been triggered by something. 'Your first seizure happened on a work trip in Cumbria, didn't it? Can you think of anything that happened there, even something small?' 'I had a very successful meeting. There was nothing.' She says in one person they might cause pain, but can also manifest in more extreme ways: as paralysis, convulsions or another disability At that point, Camilla's husband seemed to wrinkle up his face as if he were confused. 'Darling,' he said. 'You know that wasn't the very first collapse?' Two years into their marriage, their life was interrupted by the unplanned arrival of their first son, Henry. Camilla took a year's maternity leave. She loved spending time with Henry, marvelling at all the little changes. Her return to work had been reluctant. One Saturday, when Henry was 18 months old, Camilla had arranged to meet another mother in the park. At the entrance, she stopped to say hello to another friend. As she talked, Camilla could see the mother she had come to meet pushing her daughter on the swings. Henry must have seen them, too, because he started to scream and strained to be released from his buggy. Camilla told him to shush and turned the buggy to face away from the park. As she said goodbye to the first friend and her child, the buggy rolled into the middle of the road and toppled over, trapping Henry beneath. Her friend screamed and Camilla turned to see the buggy disappear beneath the wheels of a car. It took the fire brigade 20 minutes to free Henry. At the hospital, Camilla stood at the door of the emergency room watching as paramedics failed to resuscitate her son. That night she had a seizure for the first time. When I had asked Camilla how many children she had, she had not told me about Henry. She had not forgotten him, but her loss was behind her. That's what she would have said. Until, that is, she found herself standing in a meeting in Cumbria and Henry had popped into her mind. The meeting had gone well. She had negotiated successfully on behalf of a mother and child whose home life was not safe. She was feeling happy until she thought of Henry. 'I helped save that child, but I couldn't save my own.' She pushed the thought quickly from her mind. Five minutes later she had her second seizure. Camilla had consigned her pain to a place in her brain that she could not fully access. Her pain was locked in a box in her head. The seizures protected that box. Only when their secret was revealed did the seizures disappear. It took time. The day of our conversation she had several more attacks, but in the weeks that followed they became fewer. Camilla later underwent cognitive behavioural therapy and within two months made a full recovery. Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan is a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. City police failed to identify a body and end a womans frantic search for her missing husband after an accident victim was left at a hospital mortuary. Despite carrying an identity card in his pocket, the dead man was left for a month. Authorities have issued notices to cops from west Delhis Vikaspuri police station who bungled two cases by 'dumping' the deceased, who died in a road accident, inside a cold chamber and made no effort to put a name to the body carrying an I.D and other personal articles. City police failed to identify a body and end a womans frantic search for her missing husband after an accident victim was left for a month at a hospital mortuary The matter came to light when former chief minister BC Khanduri from Uttarakhand, the deceaseds native state, requested Delhi Police to conduct an inquiry. The probe revealed gross negligence and carelessness by the cops, including the then station house officer, at every step. As many as 2,558 unidentified bodies were found on the citys streets between January 1 and October 15 last year, police told the Delhi high court during a hearing on the condition of the citys mortuaries. According to police, Prem Singh was celebrating his sons naming ceremony on November 4. The child was ill and was taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital in Hari Nagar area. One person identified as Aseem Ballyan went to the hospital by car for taking the infant, the inquiry report said. After coming home, Prem Singh consumed liquor with Aseem Ballyan. But, when Singh didnt return to his residence, his wife, Manju, lodged a complaint with police on November 5. She again went to the police station the next day but was turned away by the cops. I used to visit Vikaspuri police station from 8 am to 9 pm almost six days a week, Manju told Mail Today. There was a time when officers refused to recognise me. Cops also asked the man standing at the gate to ask me to leave. The report says the police station got a call about an accident on November 5. It registered a case saying an unknown person was hit by a vehicle and had been admitted to the DDU Hospital in critical condition. Here, the investigating officer didnt check the articles kept in the victims clothes, didnt flash a wireless message and also didnt check missing person records of Vikaspuri police station, the probe findings say. Prem Singh died on November 11. About a month later, the investigating officer in the accident case checked his belongings on December 7 and found an identity card, after which the family was notified. According to Pushpendra Kumar, deputy commissioner of police, west district, the department will act against the cops over their negligent behaviour after receiving their replies. On the basis of the inquiry report, we have issued show-cause notices to the cops, he said. But Manju, whose search finally ended, is now facing allegations of killing her husband from her in-laws. I have left Vikaspuri area fearing that cops may arrest me in a false case. My in-laws also told all my relatives that I have killed my husband and that is why I left home, she said. Chief Justice of India TS Thakur broke-down in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing a national judicial conference on Sunday morning. The emotional CJI went on to launch an unprecedented attack on the present and earlier governments for often blaming the judiciary for mounting backlog of cases, which touched an alarming 3.14 crore, but at the same time doing nothing to improve the number of judges and increasing the number of courts despite repeated pleas from the judiciary. The ratio at present is 10 judges for 1 million people while the Law Commission had way back in 1987 recommended increasing it to 40. Chief Justice of India TS Thakur broke-down in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing a national judicial conference While India had just 7,675 judges, the actual requirement today was 40,377. Thakur said an extraordinary situation has arisen where it was contemplating bringing back and putting into service retired judges to dispose cases on a war footing and bring down pendency. Explaining why he turned emotional, the CJI at end of his 30-minute speech at the conference said: If nothing else has worked in terms of the improving the condition of the judiciary, an emotional appeal may perhaps. Talking to media-persons, CJI later admitted that being emotional is his weakness. One should not be emotional. PM Modi, who was not scheduled to speak as per the programme, was forced to do so following the CJIs emotional outburst Justice JS Kehar (who is likely to be the next CJI) is a strong man. He will not be emotional, Thakur said. Several speeches and promises have been made that judges population ratio will be improved. Several debates also happened in Parliament. But nothing really appears to be coming. Therefore not only in the name of the litigant, the poor litigant people who languish in jails but also in the name of development of the country.. its progress I beseech you to rise to the occasion and realise that it is not enough to criticise. You cannot shift the entire burden to judiciary, Thakur said. In a direct attack on the NDA regime, Thakur said the government wanted FDI, people to come from abroad and Make In India, invest in India but reminded that those whom it was inviting were concerned about the ability of the judicial system of the country to deal with disputes that may arise in connection with such investment. So efficiency of the judicial system is virtually connected with the development of the country, he said looking at the PM who was in rapt attention. If you compare the performance of Indian judges with that of the other countries, in the US nine judges of the SC decide 81 cases a year and an Indian judge alone handles an average of 2,600 cases. When judges come from abroad and watch us work, they are amazed. They cannot understand how a judge can work under such stressful conditions. Yet people have faith that we are doing our best, he said in a choked voice. Modi, who was not scheduled to speak as per the programme, was forced to do so following the CJIs emotional outburst. Keshav Prasad Maurya recently took over as UP BJP chief The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) will not be fighting the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections over the contentious issue of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Keshav Prasad Maurya, who recently took over as UP BJP chief, told Mail Today in an exclusive interview, that the upcoming polls in UP will be fought on the slogan of development. Though he was closely associated with the temple movement and the gauraksha campaigns, Maurya aims to steer clear of the communally-sensitive and divisive issue. His elevation as the UP BJP chief was expected to give a fillip to the RSS-BJP cadre as he is considered a hardliner who was groomed in the Sangh tradition. We are committed to build the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya. As the UP BJP chief and as a Ram bhakt (devotee of Lord Ram), I firmly believe that a Ram temple should be built there. "The BJP has no confusion over the issue keeping in mind the sentiments of crores of Ram bhakts. Nothing else can be built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. "But it is a matter of faith and not our electoral agenda. The poll agenda is set: We shall go into these elections on the plank of development and the failures of the past governments to provide that, said the BJP chief. Keshav Prasad Mauryas elevation as the UP BJP chief, however, is expected to give a fillip to the RSS-BJP cadre. After the downfall of Kalyan Singh, several state presidents came and went in UP, how will Maurya gather the pieces and stitch a credible organisation? Maurya, who is considered close to the RSS, chose to answer the question obliquely. After the announcement of my name as the new head of the party in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has got united from the booth level to the top. This unity will continue and through this united front we shall form the next government in the state, said Maurya, who shares the trajectory of his life with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a former chaiwala. Maurya told Mail Today that the party would be addressing the failures of the Samajwadi Party (SP) government with the people, and would highlight the achievements of the Centre in the past two years. The state government failed the people of Uttar Pradesh on all counts: corruption, misappropriation of funds, crumbling law and order situation. They even failed to use funds given by the Centre. The electorate are just waiting for polls to show how they puncture the cycle of the Samajwadi Party, he said. The party, said Maurya, had planned to take the achievements of the Centre to the people through a booth-centric strategy. The Supreme Court on Monday slammed the Maharashtra Police for coming up with new pre-conditions, and trying its best to prevent reopening of Mumbais nearly 200 dance bars. Despite the courts order issued six months ago to grant licences to the bars, it is allegedly being delayed by the police. The apex court reminded the Mumbai DCP (licensing), who had been summoned to the court, that it was better for women to perform in dance bars than begging on streets or indulging in unacceptable activities. 'You have to change your mindset. Regulation is different from prohibition,' said Supreme Court while slamming the Mumbai Police You have to change your mindset. Regulation is different from prohibition. This is about dance performance and if it enters the realm of obscenity, it should be prohibited." It is better for women to perform in dance bars than begging on streets or indulging in unacceptable activities, said Justice Dipak Misra. Misra explained his views to the official and Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, who represented the Mumbai Police. You are saying you do not want to see the bars opened to ensure that the dignity of women is protected. But then is closing a workplace the option? No, said Justice Misra. As many as 154 bar owners have complied with nearly two dozen conditions, which includes contentious ones such as installing CCTVs at the entrance and exit and no showering of notes. The police had imposed new condition that alcohol cannot be served at the place from where the performance is being watched. The judges rejected the condition that no bars should be set up within the radius of a 1km of a religious structure or an educational institution. The new rules, which have now been notified also, says: Anything which arouses the prurient interest of the audience, consists of a sexual act, lascivious movements, gestures for the purpose of sexual propositioning or indicating the availability of sexual access to the dancer or in the course of which the dancer exposes her genitals or if a female is topless will not be permitted. As the bench sought an explanation on the new definition of obscenity, ASG Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, said: We have only said dance cannot be obscene. The bench then retorted: That is what we have also said. Obscenity is anyway prohibited under section 292 of the IPC. What is there to bring in a new Act? When will you comply with our previous orders? Dance bar is not like liquor trade. Dance bars are permissible, subject to certain regulations. Senior advocate Jayant Bhushan, appearing for the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, alleged that Maharashtra has not complied with the direction to grant licences to dance bar owners within ten days after they complied with the modifications and urged the court to summon the responsible officer. Who would have thought it. After all the dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund, Bank of England and others over the havoc to be visited on Britains economy by the uncertainty over the European Union referendum, the pro-Europe CBI has delivered a shard of light for the Leave campaign. In the three months to April, just as the referendum debate was gathering momentum, the CBIs gauge of output from Britains factories moved up from minus two to plus one, its best reading since July. In other words, the turbulence and uncertainty caused by the collapse of commodity prices and Chinas economic slow down looks to have been a bigger cause of concern for industrialists than the fear engendered by the prospect of leaving the EU. Indeed, the fall in the sterling exchange rate looks to have been helpful to manufacturers who report that investment intentions are strong. The CBI report goes on to argue that given the expected pick-up in exports it is likely that firms will be seeking to increase capacity. No solution: Riot police clash with anti-establishment demonstrators in front of parliament in Athens, Greece last year. The country's ongoing debt crisis is one of several serious problems faced by the EU Relying on any one survey is a mistake, but coming as it does from a pro-EU group par excellence it must be given credence. One of the great untold stories of the referendum campaign is the appalling state of the euroland economy. It was an underlying theme at this months IMF meetings in Washington. The Funds financial stability report drew attention to the 900billion (700billion) of non-performing (a posh name for rotten) loans on the books of Europes banks. The problems are not confined to Italy, although they are worst there. Many of Germanys regional savings banks also are stuffed with bad loans. Moreover, Germany, the IMF and Greece are limbering up for the annual dust up over Greeces debt overhang. At the core of the problem is the unwillingness of Germany to accept that the only way Athens will ever have the headroom to return to health is if Berlin recognises that the time has come for a debt relief that pushes repayment obligations so far into the future that they no longer impact on recovery. Stagnation in the eurozone, forecast to grow by just 1.5 per cent this year, which is barely enough to deal with shocking unemployment levels, is one of the principle causes of the precarious state of the global economy. And this has been going on since the euro crisis of 2009-10 long before anyone started to worry about Brexit. Hopefully the underlying fissures in the eurozone, which encompasses 19 of Europes 28 members and the larger part of its gross domestic product, will become more embedded in the referendum debate. A soon to be published book called Europe Isnt Working, under the Yale imprint, written by my former colleagues Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, clinically examines the fault-lines in the eurozone and how lone voices of the Left who disapproved at the time have been proven correct. The jobless rate in the UK is 5.1 per cent, in the United States it is 4.9 per cent and in Japan it is 3.3 per cent. In the eurozone countries it is 10.3 per cent. Project fear doesnt say much about that. Safari Bob We know from the financial crisis how effective Bob Diamond can be at marshalling capital when it is needed. Some of the Middle East sources of funds are the subject of a long-running Serious Fraud Office inquiry which Barclays has failed to shut down. None of this has dented Safari Bobs ambitions in Africa. His Atlas Mara group already has swallowed Nigerias biggest bank and is considered respectable enough to receive a $25million (17million) grant from Americas foreign aid arm, US Aid, for loans for young entrepreneurs, financial training and leadership development. Diamond is reported to be working through his American vehicle Atlas Merchant Capital and private equity giants Carlyle Group on a bid for Barclays Africa, which operates in ten countries including South Africa. A potential problem for Diamond and his partners is the insistence, up until now, that the government in Pretoria maintains a substantial stake in the South African bank Absa. That is among the main reasons that Barclays latest chief executive Jes Staley decided to sell. Tying up so much capital in a bank in which you can only extract a proportion of the profits does not make great economic sense. Perhaps African bank supervisors will take a more lenient view of Atlas Merchant and Carlyle as they seek to pull off one of the biggest takeovers in the continents history. Front page Is tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times as well as big city newspapers in Baltimore and Orlando, finally going to find a safe harbour? It has been in nowhere land since the company was bought for a whopping $13billion (9billion) by real estate mogul Sam Zell almost a decade ago before going into Chapter 11. Now it is being bid for by US Today publisher Gannett, which already owns 100 titles across the US, for a relatively modest $815million (563million) including debt. Jupiter Fund Managements affable, vice-chairman Ed Bonham Carter resents the so-called star manager culture within his industry. He says: People who are exceptionally talented are often not normal people. Their make-up is quite often different. So managing egos can be difficult. Does Ed, 56, have anyone in mind? His prickly ex-boss, Jupiters buccaneering founder John Duffield, 76, (right) has certainly never been accused of hiding his light under a bushel. Raffish Italian tycoon Flavio Briatore is bringing his Monaco restaurant-cum-nightclub Twiga to London. Im told medallion man Flavio, 66, who for a time boldly squired model Naomi Campbell, has just dried the ink on a deal for a prime spot on Sloane Street near his clothing emporium Billionaire Couture. What can we expect inside? Lots of flashy Russians hosing down half-naked young women with champagne, sighs my weary catering source. Still, Id better pop in when it opens, just to check. Sainsburys chief finance officer John Rogers is as vigilant with his own finances as he is manning the purse strings at the embattled grocer. Perusing Sainsburys company report, I notice the beancounter, 46, takes advantage of the firms Share Purchase Plan, which allows employees to squirrel 115 of their pre-tax salary towards company stock. Rogers pre-tax monthly take-home is a princely 56,000 (675,000 a year) Still, every little helps, as Sainsburys wouldnt say. Management consultant-turned-shirt maker Nick Wheeler has paid himself 16million after his firm Charles Tyrwhitt reported bumper profits. Whats his secret? Perhaps its the silver-maned Old Etonians dogged commitment to customer relations. Each shirt comes with his email address printed on the label. Surely it cant be his private address, I ask, pushing the send key. Moments later, Wheeler, 51, pings back curtly: Depends what your emails about! City law firms Allen & Overy and Freshfields part of the Square Miles so-called magic circle of elite legal outfits are scoffing humble pie. CPP directors last night abandoned a courtroom bid to stop Hamish Ogston seizing power The founder of scandal-hit credit card firm CPP appears to have won a battle to sack its board and regain control. Directors last night dramatically abandoned a courtroom bid to stop Hamish Ogston seizing power after it became clear the odds were against them. Ogston set up the firm in 1980 and made 120million when it floated on the London Stock Exchange six years ago. CPP was fined 10.5million in 2012 for misleading customers into buying worthless insurance for debit, credit and store cards. Ogston failed to take the company private and stepped down as a director in 2013. He has since sought to use his 42 per cent stake to get rid of chairman Roger Canham, chief executive, Stephen Callaghan, and two non-executive directors. Schroders, with a 10 per cent stake, proposed Cable & Wireless Communications chairman Sir Richard Lapthorne, deputy chairman Mark Hamlin and former executive Nick Hooper to replace them. But the board said they didnt have the experience or qualifications. They said Ogston was backed by Schroders due to his investments with one of its affiliates. The board applied for an injunction to stop Ogston voting. But yesterday they abandoned the move after investor Phoenix Asset Management decided to abstain in the vote. In the money: CRH boss Albert Manifold has received a rise in his basic salary and a bonus boost Building materials giant CRH is the latest blue-chip company to anger shareholders over high levels of boardroom pay. The company has awarded its chief executive, Albert Manifold, an 8.5 per cent rise in his basic salary and a big increase in potential bonus payments. But investor group Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has recommended that shareholders vote against the plan at the firms annual general meeting on Thursday. Manifold saw his total pay packet at CRH rise from 3.3million in 2014 to 4.3million last year. He has been handed an 8.5 per cent rise in his basic pay to 1.1million for 2016. CRH has said he could get a bonus worth 225 per cent of his basic salary this year, up from a potential maximum of 150 per cent last year. Manifold could also get 365 per cent of his basic pay through the companys performance share plan, up from a maximum of 250 per cent previously. It means that the maximum he could earn through these three aspects of his pay has jumped 50 per cent to 7.5million. This is a considerable year- on-year increase, said ISS. In addition, the short and long-term performance targets have not been made significantly more challenging than what applied previously to reflect the higher awards. 'As a consequence, a vote against the remuneration policy is considered warranted. A handful of companies are expected to be given bloody noses this week over fat-cat pay including Schroders, Shire, Barclays and Weir on Thursday and AstraZeneca on Friday. Smith & Nephew and Anglo American are among the blue-chip firms to have already suffered at the hands of an investor backlash so far this year. But the most dramatic rebellion was at BP where just over 59 per cent of shareholders rejected a pay package of almost 14million for chief executive Bob Dudley. Figures from ISS show an average of 5.8 per cent of votes have been cast against remuneration reports and policies so far this year up from 3.9 per cent last season. Tata Steels UK operations are on the brink of being broken up and sold separately as fears grow that no buyer will take on the business as a whole. Indian owner Tata decided earlier this month to pull out of Britain after rejecting a 100million rescue plan because it was unaffordable. It said its main plan was to sell the business as one. But sources say it is running a dual process which could see its operations split up. It has 14 separate UK operations, involving steel production, distribution and research. Split-up: Tata Steel is reportedly talking to investors with a view to selling off individual parts of its UK operations A number of buyers are thought to be interested in hiving off some of the more profitable elements. But a break up would potentially be a disaster for thousands of workers because less attractive parts of the business could be left on the shelf. A source said: The starting point and the strong preference is for the business to be sold as a whole, but Tata is also talking to individual investors about selling parts, as well. It is understood that a group of specialist metals producers calling themselves Albion Steel is interested in parts of the business. Last week Tata issued a sales memorandum that was distributed to 190 potential buyers. Investment bank Standard Chartered was appointed to run the sale process and a handful of interested parties have publicly stepped forward. Senior managers at Port Talbot, led by boss Stuart Wilkie and backed by billionaire Sir Terry Matthews, want to stage a management buyout. Metals tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, whose Liberty House recently bought two Scottish steel mills from Tata, said he is interested in other Tata assets. But Gupta said attempts to buy the whole of Tata Steel UK would fail. I dont understand why someone thinks they can do what Tata couldnt, he has said. Tata is one of the best companies in the world with all their financial firepower, and they couldnt make it work. The third interested party is Greybull Capital, which recently bought Tatas Scunthorpe plant. It is running its slide rule over Tatas speciality steel arm, which coats steel with chemicals to stop it corroding, and employs 2,000 workers. Standard Chartered spent last week trying to galvanise interest from Asian buyers. The next stage is for interested parties to sign a confidentiality agreement. They will then be sent confidential information to help them calculate a value for the business. A spokesman for the firm said: Tata Steel continues to be open to interest from credible investors for its UK business. Britains steel industry has been devastated by a flood of cheap imported steel which has mainly come from China due to a slow down in its economy. Owner said dog probably fought back and bit the alligator Florida trappers caught an 8-foot-4-inch alligator Sunday that was believed to have injured a retired police dog. The dog, a 7-year-old Belgian Malinois named Arek, was previously in the service of the Palmetto police department. It was bitten by an alligator in its owner's backyard on Wednesday. Owner Chris Leister, a St. Petersburg police officer who lives in Palmetto, said he realized something was wrong when he heard a splash and a yelp from the water behind his home. Retired police dog Arek gazes at the alligator that went on the attack Wednesday and was later captured. The alligator is likely to be killed for its meat and hide by the trappers that caught it See you later, alligator: Retired K-9 Arek barks at the alligator that caused a 3-inch gash in its front right leg Palmetto resident and St. Peterburg police officer Chris Leister walks with his dog, Arek, a former K-9 and now the family pet '[Arek] comes from behind the bushes and he's got this big rip and tear on his paw,' Leister told the Bradenton Herald. The veterinarian who treated Arek, Dr. Dana Walstad, told the Herald the dog suffered a 3-inch-wide tear on its right front leg and was treated with antibiotics. 'All in all, for a gator attack and what Chris described as the size of the gator... Very lucky dog. It could have gone much worse,' Walstad said. 'We washed out the injuries because the gator mouth is so dirty and there's a lot of difficult bacteria to get rid of.' Leister said he believes the alligator tried to drag the dog underwater. He said trappers theorized that the former K-9 bit its attacker back because an alligator that big would not easily let go. After the attack, Leister called in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee, which issued a permit for trappers to hunt the crocodilian suspect. After being attacked by an alligator that was later captured, Arek rolled happily in the grass despite its injured leg Arek, a 7-year-old Belgian Malinois, was previously in the service of the Palmetto police department A veterinarian said Arek was lucky to survive, and that the dog suffered a 3-inch wound to its front leg Chris Leister poses with his pet and former K-9 officer Arek, in Palmetto, Florida on the day of the attack After days on the loose, the alligator was finally rounded up Sunday, My News 13 reported. Leister circulated pictures to local news media showing the defeated alligator with its front legs tied behind its back, its neck tethered with rope, and its face and jaws bound with red adhesive tape. Behind the alligator, the wounded dog is seen sitting attentively, its front leg still wrapped in bandages. It was unclear from local reports what the would happen to the alligator, but according to a FWC website, it's likely the reptile will be given a death sentence. '[A captured alligator] becomes the property of the trapper. In most cases, the alligator is killed and processed for its hide and meat.' Advertisement When the ground beneath Laxmi's tiny feet began to shake, the one-year-old lost her balance and fell into the flames of an open cooking stove. She cried out in agony when her mother Kanchi Tamang scooped her into her arms and ran as their house in Nepal's Dhading district collapsed around them. Laxmi, now two, and her family were the lucky ones - they survived the deadly earthquake which struck exactly a year ago. But without access to proper medical care for her severe burns, the youngster's wrist is now bent at a 90 degree angle and her fingers are no more than stumps. 'At first, I hadnt realised what had happened to her,' Kanchi said. 'When she cried out, all I could do was pick her up and run outside. Moments later, my house collapsed. The aftershocks were so strong, I couldnt even walk properly.' Painful: Laxmi Tamang was just one year old when the earthquake stuck and she lost her balance, causing her to fall into a cooking stove Untreated: Without access to proper medical care, Laxmi's wrist is now bent at a 90 degree angle and her fingers are no more than stumps Care: 'Laxmi is very sweet and shes friendly and you can play with her and make her laugh, but as soon as you get near her hand she gets really upset,' Dr Lynch (right) told MailOnline Volunteer: Dr Lynch has been part of the VSO emergency medical team in Dhading since February and will remain in Nepal until August She was rushed to a hospital in the capital Kathmandu, but 20 days later the family was told she was too far down the overstretched doctors' waiting list to be seen. She left having not received treatment for her horrific injuries. The family was living in the dirty Alchidada displacement camp in Dhading Besi, 50km north east of Kathmandu and needed a miracle. It came in the form of Harry Lynch, a British doctor volunteering with international development organisation VSO, who found them living in squalor, covered in angry, red rashes with only rags for clothes to protect them from the elements. Speaking to MailOnline on the first anniversary of last year's devastating earthquakes, Dr Lynch, from London, told MailOnline: 'I found Laxmi with a major burn on her right hand, caused when she fell into a cooking stove when the earthquake struck. 'In normal circumstances she would have received urgent care, but the emergency services were so overwhelmed that it wasnt until several days later until she received any medical care, by which time the damage was substantial. 'Laxmi and her family waited for 20 days in a hospital in Kathmandu for treatment on her hand until they were told they were still too far down the waiting list to be seen, so they had to return to their local hospital in Dhading. 'After spending another 10 days at Dhading Hospital, they were discharged and ended up just living in a camp, not really knowing what would happen to Laxmi. It was pure chance that they were around on the day that I went to visit the camp and saw her hand.' Road to recovery: Laxmi's mother Kanchi Tamang (pictuerd together) scooped her daughter up and ran as their house began to collapse Shy: The 32-year-old doctor from London said Laxmi was more shy 'than a normal kid and she did have a slightly sad look in her eyes' Shelters: Laxmi's family are among around 400 people who are now living in the displacement camp in Nepal's Dhading district Unwell: Every member of the family at the displacement camp suffered from some medical condition - including rashes and conjunctivitis The 32-year-old paediatrician added: 'Laxmi is very sweet and shes friendly and you can play with her and make her laugh, but as soon as you get near her hand she gets really upset. She was more shy than a normal kid and she did have a slightly sad look in her eyes. 'It was quite nice that when you tickled her tummy she laughed. When she cried out, all I could do was pick her up and run outside. Moments later, my house collapsed Kanchi Tamang, Laxmi's mother 'The skin (on her hand) is not really intact so it must be really itchy and sore the whole time. Of course, she is in conditions where they cant clean it, they dont have access to dressing. Shes been living like that for a year. 'Where her wrist is bent, she cant unbend it at the moment. That makes doing things difficult and it just looks really uncomfortable. 'Its caused by untreated burns. If there had been simple things like wrapping, water and keeping infections out then the skin would have been more flexible.' Dr Lynch, who has been working at Dhading District Hospital, has been treating little Laxmi and referring her for further medical care, but she needs to go under the knife to make a real difference to the damage a lack of medical treatment has caused. 'The creams and stuff will make it more comfortable it might prevent more tension but she needs an operation,' he told MailOnline. 'I suspect with a minor operation, her wrist can be made to move freely again. There is also the possibility that cuts can be made into her hand so that she is able to use the bones in her palm as fingers, giving her almost as much function in both hands as she had before. 'Although the treatment she needs is relatively inexpensive, the impact it could have on her life will be huge.' Vital work: Dr Lynch, who is volunteering in Nepal, helps nine-year-old Geeta at Dhading District Hospital after she collapsed at her home Emergency: Dr Lynch shines a light into Geeta's eye at Dhading District Hospital after she suffered a seizure and collapsed at her home Uncertain: The future for thousands of children remains uncertain a year after a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake stuck on April 25 Tough choices: 'Washing your clothes is a difficult decision because you are either using up drinking water or you are infecting it,' Dr Lynch told MailOnline Her family had been languishing at the displacement camp, unaware that Laxmi was entitled to free treatment until Dr Lynch took her under his wing. Kanchi Tamang said: 'It was paediatrician Dr Lynch who first took a real interest in Laxmi. He discovered her while doing his rounds at the camp. 'He has been treating her ever since. At first, I felt really hopeless when I saw my daughters hand, but since Dr Lynch has been looking after her, I feel Laxmi will be ok. 'We lost everything, but when someone cares, it means the world to us.' The family are among hundreds of thousands of people who were left homeless by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake on April 25 and the 7.3-magnitude aftershock on May 12. Almost 9,000 people lost their lives and more than 22,000 were injured, while some 800,000 houses were destroyed or damaged. Families, like Laxmi's, are still waiting for a slice of a huge aid fund people around the world donated to help the desperately poor Himalayan nation. Wrangling between political parties over control of the funds has meant that most victims have received nothing beyond an initial small payout. Survivors: Deu Maya Tamang with her surviving daughter and son in the camp in Dhading, Nepal. Her other daughter was five years old when she was crushed to death at home during the April 2015 earthquake Home: Sapana Tamang, Asha Tamang and their six-month-old son James Tamang in their shelter at the displacement camp in Dhading Family: A girl carries her newborn baby brother in a basket on her back at the camp in Dhading, which is home to hundreds of people New life: This newborn baby at the camp never witnessed the horror of last year's earthquakes but must live with the effects of it An estimated four million people are still living in sub-standard temporary shelters, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Dr Lynch added: 'Laxmi's future is really unknown which is very upsetting for her mother, she doesnt know how long they are going to be there. 'That particular family the children are quite well nourished, but they are wearing rags. Washing your clothes is a difficult decision because you are either using up drinking water or you are infecting it. 'Everyone in the family had a rash and then two in the family had conjunctivitis. Every single person in the family had something medically wrong with them. They were filthy. 'The sense of inequality between someone like Laxmi and people back home in the UK is quite obvious and leaves you wishing something could be done to bring standards up. 'The coming monsoon will also be challenging for the people living in the camps.' Destruction: Families are still waiting for a slice of a huge aid fund people around the world donated to help the poor Himalayan nation Disatser: Almost 9,000 people lost their lives and more than 22,000 were injured in the earthquake. Pictured: Military personnel and volunteers carry an injured woman into Dhading District Hospital on April 27 Dr Lynch has been part of the VSO emergency medical team in Dhading since February - providing neonatal life support and resuscitation training to nurses in his hospital and in rural areas. He explained that tremors continually strike, bringing back terrible memories of the two earthquakes and prompting people to run from buildings into the relative safety of open spaces. Disgraced tycoon Asil Nadir (pictured) was accused of 'buying his way to freedom' last night as he jetted off to Turkey to serve out the rest of his jail sentence there Disgraced Polly Peck tycoon Asil Nadir has been released from a Turkish prison just one night after he was transferred from the UK. The Turkish-Cypriot businessman, 74, was jailed for ten years in 2012 for stealing 29million from Polly Peck, a once-failing textiles company which he transformed into one of Britain's most successful firms in the 1980s. He was flown from London to Istanbul on Thursday evening after British authorities accepted his request to serve the rest of his sentence in Turkey. And a court ruling said Nadir would be released on probation and serve the rest of his sentence outside prison because there was no need to monitor him. His sister thanked Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for their efforts in her brother's transfer and release, Turkish media reported. Nadir was yesterday accused of 'buying his way to freedom'. The crook secured the extraordinary prison transfer deal after handing over 5million to devastated investors in his collapsed empire. He hopes to celebrate his 75th birthday next month in his homeland in northern Cyprus and is already negotiating a move from mainland Turkey. Once there he expects to serve the remainder of his term under 'house arrest' in his 3million villa on the Mediterranean island. The decision to release him from a British prison came less than four years after he was jailed for a decade at the Old Bailey. His conviction followed a complex trial and 22-year Serious Fraud Office inquiry that is estimated to have cost taxpayers more than 20million. Last night, news of his release provoked anger among investigators and some of the tens of thousands of investors left out of pocket in 1990. One retired police officer involved in the original inquiry said: 'People will say he has bought his way to freedom. It was always on the cards. 'I don't think he has ever been truly sorry for what he did. His behaviour has disgusted those who have seen first-hand the misery he left behind.' Nadir was escorted onto scheduled Turkish Airlines flight TK986 from Heathrow Airport to Istanbul yesterday evening. Nadir (pictured several years ago in Cyprus) was flown from London to Istanbul on Thursday evening after British authorities accepted his request to serve the rest of his sentence in Turkey He has spent the last few days at Wandsworth Prison in South London, waiting for confirmation from the Ministry of Justice that the deal will go ahead. In addition to the 5m compensation, he paid a further 2million to cover the 1,987,743 Legal Aid bill he racked up during his trial. The size of the bill provoked outrage as he spent the trial living in a 23,000-a-month mansion and arriving at court in a chauffeur-driven car. His glamorous second wife Nur, 43 years his junior, wiled away the time shopping in designer West End stores and riding horses before leaving the country when he was jailed. Her mid-trial birthday present from her husband - a Range Rover Vogue - had a personal number plate AN02NUR, standing for 'Asil Nadir love to Nur'. It is also understood that he has abandoned any prospect of appealing against conviction or sentence and gave up his British passport. Nadir returned to Britain from his home in Northern Cyprus to 'clear his name' in 2010 after fleeing in 1993 before he went on trial. Nadir (pictured many years ago in Cyprus), who transformed Polly Peck into one of UK's most successful companies, was yesterday accused of 'buying his way to freedom' In August 2012 he was convicted of stealing 28.6million from his Polly Peck International textile empire. The jury found he raided the company to pay for his multi-million property empire, racehorses, antiques, fast cars and jewellery. Giving him two years to settle a 5m compensation bill, Mr Justice Holroyde rejected his claims of poverty. But the fraudster escaped a colossal potential compensation claim of 61million for pensioners and shareholders who lost their life savings. Nadir left under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. This allows foreign criminals convicted of crimes in the UK to be forcibly removed to serve their sentences overseas. Usually they must have at least six months to serve. The idea is that they will serve their sentences back home, with the taxpayer no longer paying to house them. It costs around 40,000 a year to keep a prisoner behind bars in the UK. A Whitehall source defended the move, saying: 'Rather than having him squandering UK taxpayers' money, we would sooner have him off our books. 'Sending him back is a win-win we have got the money he owed and he is not costing us any more money.' A court ruling said Nadir (pictured several years ago) would be released on probation and serve the rest of his sentence outside prison The decision to release him from a British prison came less than four years after he was jailed for a decade at the Old Bailey (pictured) Nadir should now serve the remainder of his prison term in a Turkish jail but the final decision on his exact conditions rests with the authorities over there. His solicitors Bark & Co took to Twitter after his release to crow: 'Wishing our client Asil Nadir all the best, on his return home. Currently in the air.' A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'It is right that foreign criminals are properly punished but not at the expense of British taxpayers. 'This Government is committed to removing foreign criminals to their own countries. President Xi Jinping has warned that China must be on guard against foreign infiltration through religion and must stop 'extremists' spreading their ideology. Mr Xi said China must also 'manage the internet' to promote the Communist Party's religious theories and policies. 'We must resolutely resist overseas infiltration through religious means and guard against ideological infringement by extremists,' Mr Xi told a two-day national working conference on religion. A veiled Muslim Uighur woman walks passed a statue of Mao in Xinjiang province. The Uighur people of Xinjiang province have been Muslim since the 16th century but have recently clashed with the forces of the atheist Chinese state The ruling Communist Party says it protects freedom of religion, but it keeps a tight rein on religious activities and allows only officially recognised religious institutions to operate. President Xi said Communist Party members must adhere to Marxist principles and remain 'staunchly atheist'. The Falun Gong sect has been banned in 1999 and thousands of its members are believed to be in prison. Last year Falun Gong supporters claimed China harvested livers, kidneys, corneas and even hearts from some of the prisoners and sold them to wealthy transplant tourists. But Beijing believes the biggest danger now is from Islamists, especially in the Xinjiang region in the far west, where hundreds of people have been killed over the past few years in violence between the indigenous Muslim Uighur community and Han Chinese settlers. See more of the latest news from China as President Xi Jinping warns of foreign infiltration Last year there were violent clashes between police and Muslim Uighurs after the state banned civil servants, students and teachers from fasting during Ramadan and ordered restaurants to stay open Uighurs have been predominantly Muslim since the 16th century. But China has banned overt signs of religious observance, like veils and beards. Last year a government crackdown on fasting during the month of Ramadan led to the deaths of 18 people after Chinese Muslims attacked police with knives and bombs at a traffic checkpoint in Kashgar. Critics say Chinese President Xi Jinping (pictured) has built up something of a personality cult. He is known as Xi Dada, or Big Daddy Xi Some Chinese Christians say the authorities are also limiting their activities and have taken down crosses on churches in Zhejiang province. The authorities said crosses were removed because they violated regulations against illegal structures. Protests broke out in 2014 in the city of Wenzhou, which has a large Christian minority, over the government's cross demolition campaign. An elderly Chinese woman holds her rosary as she prays at a Catholic church. There are believed to be 100 million Christians in China, compared to 88 million members of the Communist Party In January the authorities said a Christian pastor was being investigated for suspicion of embezzling funds. The investigation came after the pastor opposed the campaign to remove crosses. Last month Christian lawyer Zhang Kai was freed after being arrested in August on the eve of a meeting with David Saperstein, a US envoy researching religious freedom. Mr Zhang was released after the intervention of US Secretary of State John Kerry. Forest Ranger Scott Van Laer (pictured), an 18-year search and rescue professional, is obsessed with finding hidden crash sites in the six-million-acre Adirondack Mountains in New York state Hidden among the rugged mountains, spruce thickets and mossy bogs of New York's six-million-acre Adirondack Park lie the remnants of dozens of planes that have met their doom over the decades. They include single-engine private planes, military jets and commercial aircrafts. Some are well-known, like the Air Force B-47 bomber that crashed into Wright Peak in 1962, leaving wreckage visited by hikers to this day. Others have nearly vanished, leaving little but scraps of canvas and rusted steel beneath ferns and fallen trees. Forest Ranger Scott Van Laer, an 18-year search and rescue professional, has made it his mission to tell their stories. He's an aviation archaeologist, also known as a 'wreck chaser'. What started as a work assignment to update a list of crash sites has become an off-duty obsession involving hundreds of hours poring over FAA and military crash records, interviewing old-timers, networking on web message boards and hiking to remote crash sites. 'This is one of the first planes I looked for,' Van Laer said as he bushwhacked through dense woods and beaver marsh on a recent Sunday. He was in search of a Cessna 207 'Skywagon' that crashed in 1970 in the Jay Mountain range of the northeastern Adirondacks. 'Turns out I looked totally on the wrong mountain. That's because the crash list was put together by a ranger in the '80s before GPS. It wasn't precise.' This time, Van Laer was accompanied by local resident Jim Beaton, who had visited the site soon after the crash. Van Laer photographs pieces of a Cessna 207 that crashed into an Adirondack mountainside in 1970 in New York Van Laer is writing a book about Adirondack plane crashes to be published next year and has documented 200 sites Beaton led the way to the white and yellow shards of fuselage, wings and tail scattered through the swath of forest where Harvey Shaw, a former Air Force pilot, crashed in heavy fog and died. Van Laer documented the site with photographs and GPS readings. In addition to cataloging crash sites for the Department of Environmental Conservation, Van Laer is writing a book about Adirondack plane crashes, which he expects to publish next year. He has documented more than 200 crashes in the region, with wreckage remaining in the woods from about 50. Laer is documenting dozens of plane crash sites in the Adirondack Mountains with plans for a book for fellow 'wreck chasers' and hikers He has visited about two dozen sites. Some, long forgotten in remote areas, took multiple trips to find. 'One I'm still looking for is a Connecticut National Guard plane that went down in the Moose River Plains in 1956,' he said. 'The pilot dragged himself for 36 hours with a broken leg until some loggers saved him.' Some sites hold military history. One is on Blue Ridge in the central Adirondacks, where a U.S. Army C-46 transport plane crashed in 1944 during a night training mission, killing the three people on board. Despite an intense search, the wreckage wasn't found until nearly a year later by someone searching for a different lost aircraft. 'A group of wreck chasers found it about 15 years ago and put a plaque on the wing and hung a flag,' Van Laer said. 'Now a few people go to it every year.' As he searches for sites, Van Laer often seeks out surviving relatives to see if they want to visit the wrecks. The Adirondacks is the final resting place for many airplanes. This image shows crash survivors and rescuers from 1935 In 2014, he led a pilot's son to wreckage of a Cherokee 140 on Iroquois Mountain on the 45th anniversary of the crash. 'That one was celebratory because his father survived,' he said. One wreck remains a mystery. The twin-engine jet of an Atlanta developer crashed shortly after takeoff from Burlington, Vermont, in January 1971. A search ranging from the eastern Adirondacks to the Vermont side of Lake Champlain was fruitless. The jet and five men on board are still missing. After Van Laer happened to meet the pilot's daughter on a wreck-chasing message board, he organized a search in Lake Champlain in 2014 involving state police divers and private contractors with a mini submarine. This aerial view shows the spot in Pine Mountain where a passenger plane with four aboard slid to a forced landing, Dec. 28, 1935 Van Laer has documented 50 crashes that still have wreckage in the woods and hiked to visit 12 in person He helped family members organize another private search last year. 'That one's been tough,' Van Laer said. 'I really want to help bring closure to the family.' The pilot's niece, Barbara Nikitas, of Beverly Hills, California, said Van Laer is a godsend for a family that longs for answers after 45 years. A prominent Dutch journalist has been detained by Turkish police while on holiday - a week after she criticised President Tayyip Erdogan in print for clamping down on dissent. Columnist Ebru Umar, who is of Turkish descent and an outspoken critic of Erdogan, was detained by police overnight in Turkey where she was on holiday. She tweeted on Sunday that she had been released but was not allowed to leave the country. In the free newspaper Metro last week, Umar called Edogan a 'dictator' and criticised a Turkish consular official in the Netherlands for asking all Turks there to report incidents of insults against Erdogan in the country. The call was widely criticised and later withdrawn. Columnist Ebru Umar (pictured), who is of Turkish descent and an outspoken critic of Erdogan, was detained by police overnight in Turkey where she was on holiday A prominent Dutch journalist has been detained by Turkish police while on holiday - a week after she criticised President Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) in print for clamping down on dissent Erdogan is known for his readiness to take legal action over perceived slurs. At his behest, prosecutors in Germany are pursuing a comedian for mocking him. Critics say Erdogan uses the courts to stifle dissent. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who joined the criticism of the Turkish official's call, said he had spoken with Umar after her arrest. 'Had telephone contact with Ebru Umar last night,' he said on his official Twitter account on Sunday. A Dutch foreign ministry spokesman said of her detention: 'We are aware of this and we are following the situation closely. We are in contact with her.' On her official Twitter account, Umar tweeted overnight: 'Police in front of the door. No joke.' She later tweeted that she was being taken to a police station in Kusadasi, a resort town on Turkey's Aegean coast. 'Free but under country arrest,' she said in a tweet on Sunday afternoon, her first since her arrest 15 hours earlier. Umer's Twitter feed showed she had recently engaged in spirited exchanges with her critics on Twitter. She reposted a tweet from someone claiming to have reported her to the police. Erdogan (pictured) is known for his readiness to take legal action over perceived slurs. At his behest, prosecutors in Germany are pursuing a comedian for mocking him Insulting the president is a crime in Turkey punishable by up to four years in jail, but the law had previously been invoked only rarely. Since Edogan became president in 2014, prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases against people for insulting him, the justice minister said last month. Those who have faced such suits include journalists, cartoonists, academics and even school children. Erdogan has said he is open to criticism, but draws the line at insults. Germany has decided to allow prosecutors to pursue a case against a German comedian who mocked Erdogan. This decision has angered many Germans, who see it as a sop by Chancellor Angela Merkel to an authoritarian leader. Last year, Turkey deported another Dutch journalist after she was detained on suspicion of aiding Kurdish militants. Born in The Hague to Turkish parents, Umar has been an outspoken critic of militant Islam, first in columns for the website of Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a radical Islamist in 2004 after making films critical of the religion. After thousands of Australians attended dawn services across the country, they are continuing to commemorate Anzac Day throughout Monday. Many are attending marches including a large one in Sydney, while others are using the day to reflect on those who fought for their country. Some have even taken to social media to share photographs of family members who served in the defence forces. Scroll down for video Lozza shared this photograph of her an an older family member who served in the Royal Marines Sienna posted this photo of her Great Uncle Jack Cribb, who fought on the Kokoda trail in 1942 In Townsville, Queensland, men on horseback marched through the streets on Anzac Day Thousands of Australians are commemorating Anzac Day on the 101st anniversary of the Gallipoli landing A woman named Sienna posted a photo of her Great Uncle Jack Cribb, who fought on the Kokoda trail in 1942, while another social media user shared a photograph of her an an older family member who served in the Royal Marines. Peter Cawdron posted a photo of his local service where there were: 'kids laughing, babies crying, adults listening and learning. Christian, atheists, Sikh and Muslims remembering.' In Townsville the march featured servicemen on horseback marching through the streets in honour of Anzac Day. David Sutherland posted this photo of a series of war medallions Pupils from Boronia K-12 College in Victoria created this mosaic in honour of the Anzacs Bennet Morgan shared this image of his great uncle Darden, who 'died of wounds' (left) while Necia Armstrong paid tribute to his own 'Anzac Hero' (right) Ingleburn RSL in Sydney's south-west turned off its poker machines for Anzac Day Schools across the country have also paid tribute to fallen soldiers and those still serving with Stockton Public School walking in their local march. Photos of war medallions and fallen family members were also shared widely by those paying tribute to soldiers past and present. Earlier thousands of Australians and New Zealanders attended dawn services despite some rain in Tweed Heads in far-north NSW and Currumbin on Queensland's Gold Coast. Students from Stockton Public School in NSW walked in their local march Hundreds of people braved the rain at Tweed Heads in far-north NSW despite some rain Since Nicole Mittendorff's disappearance on April 13, anonymous users on local web forum Fairfax Underground have called her a 'sl*t', 'w***e' and 'ugly'. She was found dead on Thursday A Virginia fire department in investigating reports of bullying after a female firefighter commited suicide. Remains of Nicole Mittendorff, a 31-year-old from Woodbridge, were found in Shanandoah National Park on Thursday, and a note was recovered from the woman's car was found just days earlier, state police said. The content of the note has not been released. Since her disappearance on April 13, anonymous users on local web forum Fairfax Underground have hurled insults toward the woman, calling her a 'sl*t', 'w***e' and 'ugly'. Users made similar comments about other women in the fire department as well, according to ABC News. Fairfax County Fire Chief Richard Bowers released a statement about the comments on Sunday. He said the 'department can not and will not tolerate bullying of any kind'. 'We will thoroughly investigate this matter and take any appropriate actions needed,' he said. 'However, right now we ask that we be allowed to grieve the loss of one of our own.' Searchers looked for Mittendorff in Shenandoah National Park after her car was found on April 16 in a parkling lot at the national park. Mittendorff's remains were discovered in the park Thursday, more than a mile from where her car was found. She worked as a paramedic and firefighter with Fairfax County Fire and Rescue. Mittendorff's sister, Jennifer Clardy Chalmers, released a statement saying, 'We believe that Nicole has been found and is finally coming home, however not in the way we anticipated. Remains of Mittendorff, a 31-year-old from Woodbridge, were found in Shanandoah National Park on Thursday. Mittendorff is pictured above with her husband, Steven Mittendorff is a firefighter and a paramedic in Fairfax County, Virginia. Friends and family knew something was wrong when she didn't show up to her job on Friday 'This is not the positive outcome that we continued to hope and pray for over the past week. ... We thank everyone for their time, dedication and support in our search to find Nicole and ask that you keep our family in your prayers in the challenging days ahead.' Mittendorff went missing after phoning in to work sick and leaving the home she shared with her husband. A park spokesman said: 'At approximately 2:00 p.m. a ground team of National Park Service and Virginia State Police personnel discovered a body in a remote location more than a mile from the Whiteoak Canyon parking area and about 330 yards from the trail in treacherous rocky terrain. National Park Service and Virginia State Police are currently still processing the scene,' said a statement from Shenandoah National Park. Earlier on Thursday, the Facebook page Find Nicole said: 'Our hearts are broken. We thank you for your support and ask that you keep our family in your prayers in the challenging days ahead.' Those close to Mittendorf previously said she is 'extremely dedicated to her job'. On the lookout: The Virginia State Police recovery team helped search for Mittendorff in Shenandoah National Park Found: Her abandoned car was later found in the Virginia National Park. Police say that inside of the car was a suicide note Her family also wrote on Facebook that Nicole downloaded documents onto her cellphone before she went missing and that her wireless provider is now cooperating with the investigation. Just what the documents include has not yet been revealed. A vigil was held at 7.30pm Wednesday night at Fire Station 32. At a Tuesday press conference, Nicole's husband Steve Mittendorff broke down in tears as he read a statement directed at his wife. 'Sweetheart, I love you. I am praying for you. I'm not sure where you are but know that we are all looking for you. And I look forward to your safe return,' he said. Family say the last time they heard from her was on Wednesday, April 13, by text. Mittendorff was also an athlete, ran avidly and frequently explored trails to train for triathlons and other events, her family said. For confidential support in the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255. For confidential support in the UK call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90, visit a local Samaritans branch or see www.samaritans.org. Miami Coast Guard spent 12 hours trying to coax a bungling adventurer out of his homemade inflatable bubble after already warning him not to attempt his 'life-threatening' 3,500 mile ocean journey. Endurance athlete Reza Baluchi, 44, was given a written warning by the Coast Guard not to attempt the five month trip, which they deemed too dangerous, last week. But Baluchi ignored this and launched his homemade hydro pod bubble from Pompano Beach, Florida on Saturday, bound for Bermuda via the Caribbean. Scroll down for video An endurance athlete who was attempting a 'life-threatening' five-month journey by 'running' in an inflatable bubble has been thwarted at its first leg. Pictured, Coast Guard attempt to coax Reza Baluchi out of the bubble Reza Baluchi, 44, (pictured) was given a written warning by Miami Coast Guard not to attempt the journey, which they deemed too dangerous, last week A day later the adventurer agreed to to be voluntarily rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. Baluchi now faces a possible fine of up to $40,000 or jail time of up to seven years for ignoring their letter of warning. This is the second time the 44-year-old had to be rescued by the Coast Guard in his inflatable, the last time being in October 2014 when he had attempted to journey 3,000 miles from Florida to Bermuda. Mark Carney, a public service specialist at Miami Coast Guard told DailyMail.com that it took 12 hours to coax Baluchi out of his bubble this time round. He said: 'We were on the scene at 2 am Sunday and a rescue boat stayed with him until about 2 pm that afternoon. 'We were trying to plead with him and coax him off the bubble but it took 12 hours before he finally agreed.' Baluchi's journey planned to cover 3,500 miles by 'running' in his hand made hydro pod bubble to the Bermuda Triangle This is the second time the 44-year-old had to be rescued by the Coast Guard in his inflatable, the last time being in October 2014 (pictured) when he had attempted to journey 3,000 miles from Florida to Bermuda The Coast Guard tweeted about the 2014 rescue and how it had placed an enormous financial burden on taxpayers Baluchi now faces a possible fine of up to $40,000 or jail time of up to seven years for ignoring their letter of warning Letter of warning from Miami Coast Guard to Beluchi Carney said that one of the requests made by the Coast Guard in their April 15 letter was that he have an escort vessel with him at all times on the journey. But this, among other stipulations required, were ignored by Baluchi. Carney was also on duty back in 2014 when Baluchi had attempted a similar journey. The USCG Southeast tweeted at 5 pm Sunday: 'Adventure runner's voyage ends after he violated a USCG order not to embark on his seagoing journey' According to his website, Baluchi's journey planned to cover 3,500 miles by 'running' in his hand made hydro pod bubble to the Bermuda Triangle. His five month journey at sea, began in Pompano Beach, Florida after which he was due to heading north to Jacksonville then east, to Georgia, to Bermuda Triangle, then Puerto Rico, to Haiti then Cuba and back to Key West, then finally returning to North Ocean Park in Pompano Beach. The daredevil planned to equip himself GPS, satellite phone and video camera to record his journey. He will bring a White House flag to display in every destination He was to survive on 'protein bars, tuna, sea water purified through a filter, Gatorade and chewing gum for sea sickness'. At the last destination, Baluchi had planned to sprinkle ashes from ground zero in each ocean. He was to survive on 'protein bars, tuna, sea water purified through a filter, Gatorade and chewing gum for sea sickness'. The daredevil also planned to equip himself GPS, satellite phone and video camera to record his journey. He will bring a White House flag to display in every destination. Despite these provisions, he still not meet the requirements ordered by the Coast Guard. Carney added: 'We want him to do what he wants to do but we want to him to do it safely and by following instruction. A sex offender has had his curfew lifted by a judge so he can party at Glastonbury. Harry Webb, from Swindon, was under the influence of drink and drugs when he sexually assaulted a woman who had fallen asleep at his home after a night out. The 21-year-old was spared jail for the attack, but was given an 8pm to 6am curfew by Judge Peter Blair QC at Swindon Crown Court on Friday. However, when Webb's lawyer explained that the defendant had already booked and paid for a 'family outing' at the music festival, his curfew was lifted from June 21 to June 27. Harry Webb, from Swindon, was under the influence of drink and drugs when he sexually assaulted a woman who had fallen asleep at his home after a night out. He avoided prison and was handed an 8pm to 6am curfew Webb and his family are said to be regulars at the festival, which is attended by around 175,000 people each year. The barmaid he assaulted, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told The Sun: 'I don't know what the judge was thinking of but clearly it wasn't me. I feel so let down. 'What Harry Webb did has changed my life. But he's just had a slap across the wrist and been allowed to live his life as normal. 'He'll be swanning around at Glastonbury watching his favourite bands as if nothing has happened. It doesn't make sense.' Judge Blair refused to apologise to the woman when approached by the newspaper yesterday. He did say that he will explain his decision if she wrote to him asking for answers. When Webb's lawyer explained that the defendant had already booked and paid for a 'family outing' to Glastonbury music festival, his curfew was 8pm to 6am lifted from June 21 to June 27 to allow him to go Webb and his family are said to be regulars at Glastonbury festival, which is attended by around 175,000 people each year. Webb (left) is part of an acoustic indie rock band called Who Cares? from the Swindon area Webb admitted indecently assaulting his victim while she was asleep and he must now register as a sex offender. Judge Blair handed him a 12-month suspended prison sentence and the three-month curfew, after describing the woman as being 'devastated' by the attack. Webb is a part-time musician who plays guitar in Swindon-based acoustic band Who Cares?. The band, comprising of Webb and two friends, describe their sound as young, fresh and acoustic, producing chilled originals with emotional content and beautiful guitar/percussion. Playing at local events in the Wiltshire area, they incorporate their own songs with covers of songs by rock bands such as Deaf Havana, You Me At Six, A Day to Remember and The GooGoo Dolls. It is not known whether Who Cares? will perform at this year's Glastonbury, but the festival will be headlined by Adele, Coldplay and Muse and will also star big acts including Ellie Goulding, Skepta, Madness and James Blake. This year's Glastonbury Festival will be headlined by Adele, Coldplay and Muse and will also star big acts including Ellie Goulding, Skepta, Madness and James Blake Around 175,000 people attend the Glastonbury Festival each year. The Webbs are said to be regulars As the presidential circus moves on, Barack Obama has left the Prime Minister and the Remain camp squirming with pleasure. Indeed, he has done everything they asked of him and more. Not only did he make the highly questionable claim that EU membership magnifies the UKs influence. He even parroted Number 10s language, warning that a UK outside the EU would be sent to the back of the queue for a trade deal with the US (note the English usage queue, rather than the American line). True, he retreated a little yesterday, saying all he meant was that it could take five or ten years for an independent UK to reach a trade agreement. But even if this is true (a big if), hasnt his interference left a grossly misleading impression? As the presidential circus moves on, Barack Obama has left the Prime Minister and the Remain camp squirming with pleasure Leave aside that Mr Obama wont be around to decide anything after he stands down next January. Listening to him, anyone might think countries without formal trade deals are barred from exchanging goods and services, or that UK-US commerce would dry up if we pulled out. But the truth is that the EU has never had such a deal with America (though Brussels is working on a draft, which Germanys economy minister admitted yesterday may come to nothing). This has never stopped countries, in or out of the EU, from trading with the US under World Trade Organisation rules. Ask any Briton who uses Google, Amazon or an Apple iPhone or any American airline using Rolls-Royce engines or New Yorker buying British music or clothes. Indeed, if Britain were to pull out, nothing would change about our trading relationship with America except that wed be free to negotiate bilateral terms that suit us, rather than Brussels. As for security cooperation, even Mr Obama now admits this wouldnt be affected by our withdrawal. Meanwhile, EU politicians press ahead with plans for a federal superstate which, should we vote to remain, will suck us ever more deeply under Brusselss sway not just for five or ten years, but as far ahead as anyone can see. After Mr Obamas meddlesome visit, the question remains unchanged: is this what we really want? Mays migrant muddle What a sorry figure Theresa May cut yesterday, tying herself in knots as she claimed she does have control over Britains borders, but that limiting immigration is a different matter! Yes, the Home Secretary may be right that we turned away 6,000 criminals from the EU over the past five years. But she didnt add how many thousands more we let in, under Brussels rules requiring us to show they pose a genuine and present threat before we can slam the door. More to the point, she couldnt explain how these controls are powerless, under official projections, to prevent 3million more migrants flocking here by 2030, piling yet more pressure on public services. When this paper writes of border controls, we mean the right to decide who and how many may settle here something we wont have while we remain in the EU. If Mrs May means something else, shes disturbingly out of touch. The NHS on trial With 125,000 appointments and operations cancelled, the Mail is horrified by junior doctors threat to call a two-day, all-out strike from tomorrow. Such blackmail demeans their profession. But with lives at stake, shouldnt the Health Secretary seriously consider the cross-party plan for trials of his contracts before imposing them nationwide? If such pilots do indeed cut weekend death rates, wont this destroy any excuse for further strikes? Huge swathes of the Green Belt may be eaten away as developers as the number of houses planned to be built on the protected land rose by a quarter to 275,000 houses last year. The number of homes to be built comes despite government promises in the Tory election manifesto that the Green Belt was precious and paramount. In its report The Green Belt under siege, the Campaign to Protect Rural England said that planning policy is being weakened through loopholes. The report said the 275,000 homes is 50,000 more than 2014, and 200,000 more than in March 2012. Huge swathes of the Green Belt have been eaten away as developers as the number of houses built on the protected land rose by a quarter to 275,000 houses last year Green belt boundaries are also being changed to allow more construction allowing the fastest rate of growth of new dwellings for two decades. In a step seen as a precedent the Green Belt, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark gave the go-ahead to build 1,500 new homes on land designated as Green Belt between Gloucester and Cheltenham. Planning rules normally only allow building on the ribbon of Green Belt land around towns and cities, designed to stop urban sprawl, in very special circumstances. But despite conceding the plans would be harmful to the Green belt and lead to a loss of the essential characteristic of openness he concluded they would bring a substantial benefit. Other moves that the CPRE said weakens protection of the green belt are proposals in the governments planning policy consultation to release small sites in the Green Belt for starter homes. Some 11 local authorities have also made changes to the boundaries of the green belt to allow development. Under pressure by the government to set and meet high housing targets, councils are allowing Green Belt to be released for building on through what the CPRE claim is a misuse of an exceptional circumstances clause. Three local authorities Bradford, Durham and Northumberland claim that economic growth justifies allowing exceptional change in use of Green Belt land. Green belt land was designated in 1955. The idea was to stop cities sprawling, and to ensure places for recreation around our cities. The number of homes built comes despite government promises in the Tory election manifesto that the Green Belt was precious and paramount Paul Miner, planning campaign manager at the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), said: Councils are increasingly eroding the Green Belt to meet unrealistic and unsustainable housing targets. The Government is proposing to encourage further development in the Green Belt. Our Green Belt is invaluable in preventing urban sprawl and providing the countryside next door for 30 million people. We need stronger protection for the Green Belt, not just supportive words and empty promises. To build the affordable homes young people and families need, the Government should empower councils to prioritise the use of brownfield sites. Brownfield land is a self-renewing resource that can provide at least 1 million new homes. In the run-up to the general election, David Cameron said: Green belt land is extremely precious. Protecting the lungs around our cities is paramount for me. A DCLG spokesman said: There are no plans or policy to relax the strong protections that prevent inappropriate development on the Green Belt. Ministers have repeatedly been clear that demand for housing alone will not justify changing Green Belt boundaries. Councils are already expected to prioritise development on brownfield sites with 90% of brownfield sites expected to have planning permission by the end of this parliament. David Camerons decision to delay a cap on social care costs will leave pensioners an average of 22,000 worse off by the end of the decade, official figures suggest. Under the flagship pledge, ministers were set to impose a cap of 72,000 on the amount over-65s and the disabled would have to pay for their care needs from this month. But last year ministers announced the policy had been delayed for four years and would not be introduced before 2020. David Camerons decision to delay a cap on social care costs will leave pensioners an average of 22,000 worse off by the end of the decade, official figures suggest Now an analysis of official figures by Labour MP Emma Reynolds has revealed the staggering cost to individual pensioners. The data suggests that by 2019/20, some 38,000 people would have benefited from the cap and that the cost of the policy to the public purse would have been 850million. That suggests those who would have benefited from the cap and a linked means test that year will be an average of 22,368 worse off. Miss Reynolds, a former shadow communities and local government secretary who resigned when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, said the delay was a shameful broken promise. She added: It was a cast-iron commitment in the Tory manifesto and it should be honoured. It is devastating news for the many thousands of older people and their families who have been trying to plan for the future. They would have benefited if the cap had come into force this month. The delay means that people with modest savings will not get the help originally promised. Under the current system, if people are very poor they get their care free, if they are very rich they can afford it. Emma Reynolds, (pictured) a former shadow communities and local government secretary who resigned when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, said the delay was a shameful broken promise The majority of older people in the middle will continue to be hit hard. Many will have to sell their homes or use their savings to cover sky-high care costs that few can afford. In their manifesto, the Tories had promised to bring in the cap this month to ensure dignity and security for the elderly. The idea was that no one would have to pay more than 72,000 towards the cost of their care although bed and board charges of about 10,000 a year were not included in the cap. Currently anyone with assets of more than 23,250 must pay the full cost of care. The lack of a cap means anyone with even a modest nest egg may not be able to pass on anything to their children. The Government was accused of betrayal when it sneaked out the announcement of a four-year delay in the cap just weeks after making the pledge. Critics said middle-class pensioners would have to bear the catastrophic costs of care, resulting in many more people having to sell their homes. The delay will force thousands of families to take out loans from their local authority under a scheme that was introduced last April. These potentially crippling loans are repayable upon the persons death. A Department of Health spokesman said last night: The Care Act came into force in April and introduced the biggest reforms to social care in over 65 years now people should not be forced to sell their home to pay for care in their lifetime. We delayed the introduction of the cap on care costs system until April 2020 in part because of representations from the body that represents councils across England. Any money that local authorities may have already spent will have helped improve systems and provided people with information and advice to help them identify the best option for their future care. Heightened security and heavy rain at Gallipoli this year have not stopped large crowds from flocking to the 2016 commemorations. As the pilgrimage began government officials were also quick to deny the Lone Pine service was not dropped from the Anzac Day schedule because of the heightened alert in place on the peninsula. Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan said that following a review of last year's centenary commemorations at Gallipoli it was decided to shift the Lone Pine service to August 6 each year. Scroll down for videos Visitors from Australia and New Zealand gather at Anzac Cove to attend the dawn ceremony marking the 101st anniversary of the First World War battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey. A stormy downpour started at 7.30pm local time on Sunday as those attending Monday's dawn service made their way to the north beach Heightened security concerns at Gallipoli this year were not the reason a Lone Pine service was dropped from Anzac Day commemorations and moved to the 'appropriate' August 6 date A woman watches a big screen showing historic footage while waiting for the Dawn Service as part of the ANZAC Commemorative Service to begin in Eceabat, Turkey Australians and New Zealanders trooping in for Anzac commemoration site at Gallipoli for the dawn service got a soaking on arrival. Numbers are expected to be well down on last year's centenary commemorations A man sleeps while waiting for the Dawn Service as part of the ANZAC Commemorative Service to start in Eceabat, Turkey - high security and heavy rain have not deterred Australians making the pilgrimage Thunder, lightning and rain are greeting Australians and New Zealanders as they arrived at the Anzac commemoration site on the Gallipoli Peninsula However, he also rejected claims that concerns about hygiene and lack of facilities at last year's Lone Pine event were a factor in the decision. Mr Tehan said that August 6 was deemed more appropriate - the date in 1915 when Australian troops launched an offensive against dug-in Turkish troops at Lone Pine where some 800 Australians died. Another 1500 were wounded that day and seven Victoria Crosses were won. Mr Tehan said a special centenary service was held at Lone Pine on August 6 last year and it was decided it was fitting to continue that as a tradition into the future. 'So what we will now have on the Gallipoli Peninsula is two commemorations,' he said. The minister said a wreath-laying ceremony would continue to be held each year at Lone Pine on the day before Anzac Day. He denied a claim that poor hygiene and lack of facilities at last year's Lone Pine service were a factor in the decision and also denied that security concerns following terror attacks in Turkey this year played a part in the decision. Security has been boosted for this year's Anzac service at Gallipoli, with international-airport style screening in place including restrictions on liquid, aerosol or gel products and inspection of electronic devices. ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers march together during an international service in Canakkale, Turkey On the eve of Anzac Day Turkish soldiers march during an international service marking the 101st anniversary of the World War One battle of Gallipoli at the Turkish memorial in Canakkale, Turkey On Sunday Seven News quoted a Turkish government security official saying information had been received suggesting a planned terror attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop did not respond directly to the report of specific threats but said travel advice for Australians visiting Turkey remained under close review. 'The overall level of advice for Turkey, including the Gallipoli peninsula, remains at exercise a high degree of caution,' Ms Bishop said. New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee, who also laid a wreath at Lone Pine on Sunday, told reporters he'd heard of the report but Turkish authorities had not relayed information about a specific threat. 'We work very closely with Turkish authorities and would expect that if there's substance to it that we'll know about it in due course,' he said. 'I can say that things feel very secure here, the Turkish authorities I think are doing a splendid job in making sure that we're all kept safe.' David Lowe, 61, from Charters Towers in Queensland attended Sunday's wreath-laying and said his first Gallipoli visit had been on his bucket list as something he had to do. 'It's an emotional thing, I think it's an Aussie thing that you have to come here and make that connection,' Mr Lowe said. Mr Lowe said walking along the gravestones at the Lone Pine cemetery he was struck by the young ages of so many who had fallen. 'I had a tear in my eye and I'm sure I'm going to shed a few more tears before I leave here.' The entire police force - consisting of only four people - in the small town of Green Mountain Falls suddenly quit their respective positions because of their newly-elected mayor. Police chief, Tim Bradley, announced his resignation on Thursday, April 14, with the three other officers following pursuit, according to FOX 21. A source told the station that the entire department quit over policy and unhappiness with the new mayor, who was sworn in Tuesday night. The small town of Green Mountain Falls no longer has any police officers (pictured) as the entire force -consisting of only four people - suddenly quit because of their newly elected mayor Police chief, Tim Bradley, announced his resignation on Thursday, April 14, with the three other officers following pursuit. A source told FOX 21 that the officers quit over policy and unhappiness with the new mayor Residents were informed about the situation at a town hall meeting Ann Pinell, a resident of the 700-person town, told the station that she hopes to 'get another marshal' in place of the one who resigned. Newly-elected mayor, Jane Newberry told FOX 21: 'In an election year there's always some people who choose to stay and some people who choose to go and I think that happens at every level of government.' Newberry said she learned of the pending resignations when she attended an emergency meeting and executive session. The resignations were announced after the session, and the board voted to pay Bradley $12,000, Newberry told the Colorado Springs Gazette. Newberry said Bradley is pursuing other opportunities, adding that despite the officers' resignations, the town isn't 'without police coverage'. Newberry added that 'there's no reason anybody needs to worry' because one advantage of being a small community is that 'we all look out for each other'. She added that as soon as budgets are in place the town will hire replacements Though the town is home to 700 people that number can reach as high as 1,200 in the summer. Newberry said since they have no officers that they will enlist the help of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. She told FOX 21 that residents 'should absolutely feel safe' as she has 'every confidence in El Paso County Sheriff's Office'. Newberry added that 'there's no reason anybody needs to worry' because one advantage of being a small community is that 'we all look out for each other'. Jackie Kirby, a spokeswoman for the El Paso County Sheriffs Office, told the Gazette that the agency has for years provided dispatch service for Green Mountain Fallss police and fire departments. 'We will answer calls for service there just like we would with any other district in the county,' she said. A town meeting summary states the acceptance of Chief Bradley and his staff's resignations, but residents are still wondering what happened. The El Paso sheriff's office will do their normal amount of patrolling unless there's a need for more. Barack Obamas dire warnings about Brexit were unravelling last night as he admitted the US would do a trade deal with the UK and our defence and intelligence special relationship would be unchanged. Downing Street and the Remain campaign were delighted on Friday night when the US president said the UK would be at the back of the queue if it voted to quit the Brussels club. His remarks went much further than expected and triggered claims, later denied, that he had been reading from a No. 10 script. But the Out campaign yesterday seized on an apparent clarification from Mr Obama, who said that he had simply meant an independent Britain would not be able to do a trade deal faster than the EU. Scroll down for video Barack Obamas dire warnings about Brexit were unravelling last night as he admitted the US would do a trade deal with the UK and our defence and intelligence special relationship would be unchanged It also emerged that there are major stumbling blocks in the EU and the US reaching a trade deal of its own with the Germans warning one may never be struck. This means there is no queue for Britain to be at the back of, Eurosceptics said. In an interview with the BBC, it was put to the president that his remarks had been interpreted as meaning that all other applicants for a trade deal with the US would then take precedence over the UK. Mr Obama replied: They are wrong to do that. My simple point is, is that its hard to negotiate trade deals. It takes a long time, and the point is that the UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU. We wouldnt abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market, but rather it could be five years from now, ten years from now before we were able to actually get something done. JAMES SLACK'S ANALYSIS: OBAMA'S THREATS AND LEAVE'S RESPONSE On Friday Barack Obama issued a series of extraordinary threats over the potential consequences of Brexit. Here, we spell out the response of Leave campaigners who say the US president changed his tune over the weekend. Obamas claim: The UK would be in the back of the queue for any trade deal. Response: Mr Obama was accused of backtracking after he clarified Fridays remarks. He said he had simply meant that the UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU. Justice minister Dominic Raab pointed out there is no queue to be at the back of since the US is only in talks with Brussels. Claim: Maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but its not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done. Response: The deal between the EU and the Americans known as TTIP is stalled and could even collapse. Germanys economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, has said negotiations will fail if the US refuses to make concessions, adding: The Americans want to hold fast to their Buy American idea. We cant accept that. They dont want to open their public tenders to European companies. For me, that goes against free trade. Mr Raab argues that, if the US wants to put pressure on the European Union, it could quickly strike a deal with a newly independent UK. Claim: Intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism work will be far more effective if it extends across Europe. Response: On the UK/US special relationship on defence and intelligence, Mr Obama yesterday admitted to the BBC that: They wouldnt be affected in the sense that our intelligence teams work extremely close, our militaries work extremely closely together. Relations between UK spies and US intelligence agencies have nothing to do with EU membership. The EUs own Frontex Agency has warned of the danger of jihadists exploiting the EUs open borders and the migrant crisis to sneak into the continent and plot atrocities including two of the Paris attackers. Advertisement Justice minister Dominic Raab said the president had backtracked on his original back of the queue claim. He pointed out that, given the US was not in talks about a trade deal with anyone other than Brussels, there was no queue to be at the back of. Mr Raab added that, with talks between the US and Brussels stalled, striking a quick deal with the UK could help America to force the EUs hand. In another boost for Leave, Mr Obama said there would be no change to the special relationship on intelligence gathering under which MI5, MI6 and GCHQ share secrets with their US counterparts. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton also said Britain should not vote to leave. The presidential hopefuls adviser Jake Sullivan said: She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong EU. And she values a strong British voice in the EU. A unique nuclear training facility in Nevada is set to welcome its first foreign students in almost 20 years of existence. The 10-acre T-1 area, which belongs to the Nevada National Security Site, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, opened in 1998 to teach American personnel how to respond to nuclear emergencies. Since then, about 180,000 firefighters, technicians, police officers and public safety workers have visited the site to learn how to prevent attacks, use radiation detection devices and what to do if a nuke does go off. T-1 will train its first batch of foreign students, elite European cops, as part of a $500,000 pilot program funded by the US Department Of Defense, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Scroll down for video The T-1 training area (pictured), which belongs to the Nevada National Security Site, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will welcome its first foreign students in September The site (pictured) opened in 1998 to teach American personnel how to respond to nuclear emergencies. Since then, about 180,000 firefighters, technicians, police officers and public safety workers have visited it T-1 (pictured) housed a major nuclear test in 1955, called Apple-2, during which officials tested how various types of buildings would react to a blast The program, dubbed Project Mercury, will see a small contingent of foreign officers from Interpol train at the facility. Some of them will be from Eastern Europe and will train alongside police officers from the US, the newspaper wrote. The first foreign trainees are due to arrive to the site in September. 'This training is important because the next biggest threat across the country is expected to be an explosive device, probably laced with radioactive material,' training supervisor Brian Richardson told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. T-1 housed a major nuclear test in 1955, called Apple-2, during which officials tested how various types of buildings would react to a blast. The Federal Civil Defense Administration released a short film, titled Operation Cue, to describe and explain the test at the time. In it, houses and other structures seem to disintegrate during the explosion - although parts of them remain standing. More than 60 years after the nuclear test, the levels of radiation at the site make it safe to use for training - and give students a chance to learn how to use radiation detectors (file picture) More than 60 years later, the levels of radiation at the site make it safe to use for training - and give students a chance to learn how to use radiation detectors. The site was redesigned after 9/11 and now includes more than 20 training venues, including a crashed 737 airliner, a helicopter, trucks, buses and derailed train cars. 'Before I came to this class, I had no idea what a Geiger counter looked like, or how to read it, adjust it or anything,' North Carolina investigator Troy Williams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Several terrorist organizations are trying to build a dirty bomb or steal nuclear weapons, Richardson told the newspaper. The US Department Of Defense is working on several programs to reduce nuclear threat across borders and bring countries together to prevent attacks. This includes keeping terrorists from smuggling nuclear materials and moving them from one country to another. T-1 spreads on 10 acres and was redesigned after 9/11. It now includes more than 20 training venues, including a crashed 737 airliner (pictured), a helicopter, trucks, buses and derailed train cars Police officers from Eastern Europe will train alongside US personnel at the site (file picture) as part of a $500,000 pilot program funded by the US Department Of Defense Labour has translated election leaflets into Polish to woo a citys booming immigrant community while sending out different messages on its pamphlets in English. Cards pushed through doors are promising an 8-an-hour minimalna stawka minimum wage and a crackdown on niesprawiedliwa polityka imigracyjna, or Britains unjust immigration policies. In a controversial attempt to lure Poles to the ballot box, the leaflets vow to protect taxpayer-funded benefits for migrants pledging 100 procent ochrony kredytu podatkowego, or 100 per cent defence of tax credits. Target: Labour has been accused of divisive campaigning in targeting Peterborough's Polish community in the upcoming local elections. Above, Labour candidate Sadiq Khan's campaign for London Mayor They go on to say Down with destroying our NHS! and insist that under Labour the UK stays in EU. By contrast, the pamphlet in English does not mention the NHS or immigration. Instead it promises to tackle crime, keep areas clean and tidy and give locals a voice in the council. Critics accused Labour of resorting to divisive tactics in Peterborough to win support in next months local elections, in which EU citizens are allowed to vote. The 5x3inch cards are a direct attack on David Camerons pledge to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. And local politicians warned that the pamphlets could stoke acrimony in neighbourhoods that have already suffered unrest linked to the influx of migrants. The citys Polish population has grown significantly since the expansion of the EU in 2004. There are now some 6,666 Poles there 3.6 per cent of the 183,600 population, drawn to the area by agricultural and factory jobs. Last night Conservative local MP Stewart Jackson said: This is a cheap and divisive tactic that should have no place in an election campaign. The Polish language leaflets in Peterborough say Down with destroying our NHS! and insist that under Labour the UK stays in EU There is something deeply disturbing about leaflets aimed at a particular group of people which seems to encourage them to claim benefits if they vote Labour. This will appal most of my constituents But Tadeusz Stenzel, chairman of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, an umbrella organisation for 60 Polish groups, said: We encourage the Polish electorate to get involved and discuss the most pressing local issues ahead of the vote. Local reaction was mixed. Bus mechanic Jemma Lunnon, 25, said: It makes sense for Labour to try to make Polish people feel welcome, which may sway them to vote for them. But Brian Norkett, 43, an ambulance service worker, said: No matter what audience it is aimed at it [the leaflet] should be the same. Labour initially declined to comment on the leaflets. But local activists said later that an election leaflet with identical wording to the Polish one had been printed in English and distributed. KFC launched an investigation after a TV programme discovered bacteria from faeces in a cup of iced water. A researcher at the BBC was served the drink at the fast food chain's restaurant on Martineau Place in Birmingham. The results were examined by Dr Margarita Gomez Escalada at Leeds Beckett University for the third series of Rip Off Britain: Food. A researcher at the BBC was served the drink at the fast food chain's branch on Martineau Place in Birmingham The results were examined by Dr Margarita Gomez Escalada at Leeds Beckett University for the third series of Rip Off Britain: Food She said: 'We found high levels of bacteria in the ice. The presence of faecal coliform suggests that there's faecal contamination either on the water that made the ice, or the ice itself, and so it increases the risk of getting sick from consuming this ice.' In a statement KFC told the programme that it was 'extremely disappointed' by the ice test results adding that it had 'immediately launched an investigation'. KFC also said they were undertaking 'a retraining programme with all team members on our standards for touch point cleaning and procedures'. The restaurant chain added that it takes 'food safety and hygiene extremely seriously'. The BBC One programme was investigating food hygiene standards in branches of several big name takeaways and coffee shops. The team took a number of samples in establishments that had recently scored a zero rating in official inspections, meaning `urgent improvement' is required. Undercover researchers visited a branch of Costa in Loughborough, the Chicken Cottage in Hampstead, a Cafe Nero in Bath, the Wimpy in Basildon, and a KFC in Birmingham. The swabs were then sent to a lab for analysis. Rip Off Britain: Food presenters Angela Rippon (left), Gloria Hunniford (centre) and Julia Somerville (right) While the results from most of the samples turned up only low and harmless levels of bacteria, that wasn't the case at the KFC branch in Birmingham which, only weeks earlier, had temporarily closed for a deep clean following its zero rating. Samples from all the public areas tested such as tables, serving areas and doors came back clean. Rip Off Britain presenter Angela Rippon (left) found that on a street in London's Soho with 34 restaurants, only nine displayed their hygiene rating But in each establishment visited, the Rip Off Britain team had also asked for a cup of tap water with ice, as that can be an good indicator of standards behind the scenes. All the establishments the team visited have now been reinspected under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, and in each case, environmental health officers gave them scores of either four, or the maximum five. These hygiene ratings are often seen displayed on green stickers on the doors or windows of restaurants. Everywhere that serves food, whether it's a restaurant or takeaway, has to be officially inspected, and serious hygiene failings can lead to prosecution. But in England and Scotland, there is no obligation for establishments to display their score meaning those that score badly may choose not to do so. In Wales, all businesses must by law display the sticker that shows their hygiene rating in a prominent place. Rip Off Britain presenter Angela Rippon found that on a street in London's Soho with 34 restaurants, only nine displayed their hygiene rating. She said: 'If every restaurant had to put their food hygiene rating in a prominent position, you could decide whether or not that was a restaurant you wanted to walk into or walk past. It would certainly be so much easier for customers'. Catriona Stewart, head of the Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme, said the Food Standards Agency is assembling the evidence that it hopes will persuade the Government such a move is necessary, so that it can introduce legislation requiring all establishments to display their hygiene ratings. David Cameron could be defeated in the Commons today over the governments policy on taking in child refugees. At least 12 Tory MPs are said to be considering backing a Labour amendment demanding that the UK admits more unaccompanied young people who have fled to Europe from war-torn parts of the Middle East. The amendment to the immigration bill, backed by the House of Lords last month, commits Britain to take in 3,000 lone child refugees who are already in Europe. David Cameron could be defeated in the Commons today over the governments policy on taking in child refugees Ministers attempted to buy off the rebels last week by reiterating a pledge to admit 3,000 more migrants by 2020, mostly children. But they insist these will come from camps in the Middle East and North Africa. Heidi Allen, Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire, said the government needs to do more to address the refugee crisis The Prime Minister believes that helping those who have already travelled to Europe will encourage more to make the perilous journey. But Heidi Allen, Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire, said she disagreed. Writing on her website, she said the government needs to do more and insisted she will work tirelessly with my colleagues to ensure the UK plays its part in addressing the humanitarian crisis we are facing. The amendment was tabled in the Lords by Lord Dubs, who was saved from the Nazis and brought to London in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport programme. He has led a parliamentary campaign to take in youngsters from camps near Calais and elsewhere in Europe, who he says are hugely vulnerable to exploitation, sexual violence and disease. With the governments Commons majority just 18, a rebellion by a dozen Tories could be enough to inflict defeat. Conservative MP Dan Poulter said he was considering the merits of the Dubs amendment. There is a crisis right here in Europe, right now, that needs addressing, he said. While it is right that we should help those in camps in the Middle East and north Africa, we also need to help those who have already arrived on our doorstep in Europe. This would be consistent with Britains historic approach of providing refuge and asylum to those in greatest need. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron added: The government has tried to muddy the water with a concession that will not help a single child who is alone and vulnerable in Europe. The orphan children I have met need help and hope. Our government can offer that. Warning comes at Brexit campaign tries to get back on front foot after Barack Obama's high-profile intervention Justice Secretary Michael Gove has warned that the UK faces a migration 'free for all' unless it breaks away from Brussels Britain faces an immigration 'free for all' unless we cut ties with Brussels, Michael Gove has warned. The Justice Secretary delivered the stark warning about flows from potential new members such as Turkey and Albania as the Leave campaign fought to regain the initiative in the referendum battle. Barack Obama rocked Brexit supporters with the strength of his dramatic intervention on the crucial issue during a state visit last week. London Mayor Boris Johnson also triggered a race row after suggesting that the US President's Kenyan heritage tainted his view of the UK. But prominent Leave figures are attempting to get back on the front foot with a series of interventions on migration. The counter-offensive came as: Ex-Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith defended Mr Johnson's reference to the US president's ancestry Theresa May gave a luke-warm endorsement of EU membership after admitting free movement eroded the government's ability to control migration David Cameron flew to Germany for a summit with leaders including Mr Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel In an article for The Times, Mr Gove insisted potential new members of the EU such as Turkey and Albania pose a 'direct and serious threat' to public services like the NHS, and social harmony. He also warned that the NHS will be put under an 'unquantifiable strain' by the influx of migrants and refugees an open door policy would continue to allow. 'The EU response to the migration crisis is a Five Nations free-for-all with an invitation to Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Turkey to join the Union. 'Because we cannot control our borders - and because our deal sadly does nothing to change this fact - public services such as the NHS will face an unquantifiable strain as millions more become EU citizens and have the right to move to the UK. 'We cannot guarantee the same access people currently enjoy to healthcare and housing if these trends continue. 'There is a direct and serious threat to our public services, standard of living and ability to maintain social solidarity if we accept continued EU membership.' In a tetchy interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Duncan Smith admitted that London Mayor Mr Johnson's jibe about Mr Obama's 'part-Kenyan ancestry' making him anti-British had been 'clumsy'. But he insisted it was 'absurd' to suggest that Mr Johnson was racist. 'I think there is nothing worse that demeans politics than when another politician jumps up and down and in losing any kind of argument wants to hurl a kind of name like 'racist' at people,' he said. 'I find that absurd.' Mr Duncan Smith went on: 'He simply referred to some of the reasons as why he may have a particular lack of regard for the UK that's what he said... 'I know Boris very well and in no way can you describe him as that (racist). 'He has fought against this time and time again, as I have, any kind of racism. 'He was trying to illustrate, I think, and you may say it was something clumsy but it was an illustration of the reality that he is the president of the US, that this president came over to the UK, and in essence he actually ended up lecturing the United Kingdom, British citizens as to what they should do in the upcoming referendum.' Eurosceptics are desperate to regain the initiative after Mr Obama warned it would take up to a decade for a post-Brexit Britain to cut a trade deal with Washington. The President said that the UK would have to go to the 'back of the queue' in negotiations. The Remain side also seized on an admission by Leave campaigner and justice minister Dominic Raab that UK citizens may need visas to visit the continent after a withdrawal from the EU. Pressed on The Sunday Politics whether Britons would need visas to travel to France or Germany, Mr Raab said: 'Or some other kind of check.' Eurosceptics are desperate to rescue referendum initiative from Barack Obama by putting immigration at the top of the agenda following the US president's insistence Britain stays in the EU Mrs May - who supports a Remain vote - is due to deliver a less than full-hearted endorsement of Britain's membership in a speech later. Branding the UK's attitude towards the union as a 'defensive crouch', she will make clear she wants a block on Turkey joining the bloc. 'Do we really think now is the time to contemplate a land border between the EU and countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria?' she will say. Yesterday she conceded that the EU's free movement rules made it harder to hit the government's target for reducing net migration to the UK below 100,000 a year. It is currently running at more than 300,000. 'Yes, free movement makes it harder to control immigration, but it does not make it impossible to control immigration,' she told the the BBC's Andrew Marr Show. Ms May, who insisted that border control and immigration were two separate things, also acknowledged migrants would look at the rises in the national living wage when making a decision on whether to come to Britain. With Mr Obama's interventions dominating the campaign in recent days, Ukip leader Nigel Farage dismissed the president's claim that Britain would have to wait a decade for a trade deal as 'rubbish' as he pointed out that Australia managed to complete one in two years. As the debate grew increasingly bitter, prominent Labour MP Chuka Umunna accused Mr Johnson of being 'unfit' to be prime minister after his remarks drawing attention to Mr Obama's Kenyan heritage. Home Secretary Theresa May yesterday made her first major speech of the campaign since backing Mr Cameron's Remain stance, admitting on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'Yes, free movement makes it harder to control immigration, but it does not make it impossible to control immigration' 'This man is simply not fit to hold the office that he clearly aspires to, which is the prime minister of our country. This kind of divisive rhetoric is indefensible,' the MP told Sky's Murnaghan. Mr Farage also criticised the London mayor's remarks for 'playing the man, not the ball'. Insisting he had not sought to 'scare' Britons into rejecting Brexit, Mr Obama moved to explain his comments that Britain would be at the 'back of the queue' regarding trade deals. Mr Obama told the BBC: 'My simple point is that it's hard to negotiate trade deals. It takes a long time. 'We wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market, but rather it could be five years from now, 10 years from now, before we were able to actually get something done.' Samoa is assessing the damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Amos after the storm battered the island on Saturday night. Cyclone Amos was forecast to hit Samoa as a category four storm, but it weakened to a category three as it got closer to land. Despite the weaker than expected storm, damage has been reported to some roads, and heavy rain has brought flooding. The island of Savai'i was reported to be the worst affected, according to Samoa Meteorological Service director Mulipola Titimaea. The ABC reports between 100300 millimetres of rain fell across Savai'i causing flooding. Winds of 120 kilometres per hour buffeted the country, but no deaths have been reported. Tropical Cyclone Amos battered the islands on Saturday night, but not as strong as originally forecasted The storm was weaker than anticipated, going from a category 4 to a category 3 as it approached land Aid Worker Clare Shave (far left) along with her team assessed the damage left by the storm. The island of Savai'i was reported to be the worst affected with heavy rain and flooding 63 people were evacuated from their homes in the middle of the night due to weather warnings, but have since returned to their homes Daily Mail Australia spoke with Clare Shave from the New Zealand Red Cross who was on the island during the storm. She, along with 30 Red Cross staff and volunteers assessed the damaged caused by the cyclone after it had passed: 'The main damage appears to be crop damage, for families which depend on their plantations, this will be an issue for them in the coming weeks,' says Ms Shave. 'I saw a radio station that had its satellite blown off, but mostly it appears to be minimal damage.' 'People were evacuated from their homes into other people's houses, but they've all returned to their homes today,' she added. 'They were evacuated in the middle of the night which was stressful, but the priority was their safety.' In total, 63 residents were evacuated from their homes, due to the weather warnings, but Ms Shave points out that they had been prepared for a lot worse: 'The Red Cross was busy doing preparations against the worst and people were boarding up homes and doing things, luckily Amos passed further north than expected.' A team of about 30 Red Cross Workers and Volunteers were on the island during the storm. They assessed the damage and provided help during and after the cyclone Pictures capture the damage caused by the cyclone. Flooding and fallen trees have affected much of the country but overall damage has been minimal A fallen tree pictured here has knocked over power lines. There had been an outage of power in some areas, while winds reaching 120 kilometres per hour A flash flood warning has been extended until Monday in America Samoa, but they cancelled hurricane warnings Samoa Meteorological Service director Mulipola Titimaea told Pacific Beat that they were thankful the damage was manageable. 'Most of the damage was mainly our plantations, some bananas and uprooted trees. And also there was an outage of power in some areas,' the ABC reports. Residents of Samoa and American Samoa have expressed surprise at the forecasting, which had forecasted the cyclone to arrive nearly a whole day after it actually hit the islands. Lord Sugar has launched a blistering attack on the Labour leadership under Jeremy Corbyn branding them lunatics. The businessman, who used to be one of the partys most prominent supporters, said: Militants, Trots, anti-Semites and terrorist sympathisers all seem to have been welcomed into Labour with open arms. He urged Londoners not to vote for Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan, saying he had single-handedly wrecked the party by helping Mr Corbyn win the leadership. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, pictured with his advisor Seumas Milne are seen by Lord Sugar as the 'lunatics who have truly taken over the asylum' due to his supporters who condone terrorists and anti-Semites Lord Sugar called on Londoners to boycott Sadiq Khan's campaign because he nominated Corbyn for leader Lord Sugar, pictured, described Khan's policies for London as straight out of Corbyn's 'little red book' Mr Khan was one of the MPs who nominated Mr Corbyn, this enabling him to get on the ballot paper despite having little support in the parliamentary party. Lord Sugar, previously one of Labours biggest donors, was elevated to the House of Lords by Gordon Brown in 2009. But he resigned from the party just days after Ed Milibands election defeat blaming its negative stance on business. In an article for the Sunday Times, he wrote: Under Corbyn, the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum. He said Mr Khan was the politician most to blame because he nominated Mr Corbyn for the leadership. Khan has single-handedly wrecked the Labour party, and now hes turning his finely-honed judgment on the great city of London, he wrote. Khan ran Ed Milibands leadership campaign. He was in the room when Miliband turned on people like me, attacking the countrys largest employers as predators. So was Corbyn, who famously called Britains businesses the real enemy. Lord Sugar then said of Mr Khan and Mr Corbyn: Be under no illusion, they are two peas in a pod. He said he was incredulous that despite Mr Corbyns crazy plans to print money to pay for public spending, and the Christmas card list that includes Hamas and the IRA, Mr Khan has no regrets about helping him to the top job. And he described Mr Khans policies as a wish list straight out of Corbyn and Livingstones little red book. He was celebrated as a trailblazer - the first Papua New Guinean to graduate from an Australian university with a medical degree. But Dr Wilson Pakalu, 37, is now disgraced after he was convicted of the aggravated indecent assault of a female patient. A tribunal ordered his medical registration cancelled on Friday after hearing how Dr Pakalu violated a young mother-of-three in his care in 2013. Dr Wilson Pakalu is pictured on right. The first person from Papua New Guinea to get a Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery qualification from an Australian university, a tribunal ordered his registration be cancelled on Friday The patient, who cannot be named for legal reasons, presented to Parkes Hospital, in the New South Wales central-west. The 27-year-old was suffering abdominal pains and unusual menstrual bleeding and feared her IUD birth control device had become dislodged. She was left alone in a room with Dr Pakalu who said he would 'have a look' and perform an examination, the tribunal heard. As he put on gloves and inspected her private parts, he told her 'it's a bit dry isn't it.' He then massaged her private parts for 40 to 50 seconds. As he did this he laughed nervously and said 'natural lubrication is better' as the patient lay 'frightened' on the bed. In a bid to get him to stop, the patient told him told him he would need to use medical lubricant. 'I was sexually assaulted as a child that won't work. You will need to lubricate'. The tribunal heard Dr Pakalu then 'seemed shocked', stopped, left the room and, to her relief, returned with a registered nurse. The victim called the hospital later to ask if what Dr Pakalu had done to her was 'normal' and a nurse assured her it was not. 'I really don't know how to explain in words how much my life has been turned upside down,' the patient said in a victim impact statement. 'I made a stand so my daughters and other unsuspecting women are safe. He can't be allowed to do this again'. The patient had visited Parkes Hospital Emergency Department where she was examined by Dr Pakalu Dr Pakalu was charged and pleaded guilty to aggravated indecent assault in September 2015 Dr Pakalu was charged and pleaded guilty to aggravated indecent assault. A magistrate gave him a 12 month suspended sentence. On Friday, the tribunal ordered his medical registration be cancelled by the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Authority (AHPRA). He may not ask for the decision to be reviewed for two years. The panel said it was 'in many ways tragic that this practitioner... who is held out as a role model to so many young Papua New Guineans, has transgressed in this way'. The tribunal recommended PNG authorities be alerted. Police say teen was killed in retaliation for shooting death of 21-year-old Investigators said a teen, 18, was killed in a drive-by shooting in The suspect fled on foot and police said no arrests have been made Police said the shooting may have been captured on store surveillance A campaign worker said a man came up behind the 21-year-old and shot him 'execution style' in the head The young man was speaking with Rabb about his campaign and possibly working the polls on Tuesday A 21-year-old man was shot twice in the head while talking to Pennsylvania House candidate Chris Rabb A 21-year-old man was shot and killed 'execution style' while talking to Pennsylvania State House candidate, Chris Rabb (pictured) A young man was shot and killed 'execution style' while talking to a Pennsylvania State House candidate about his plans to work the polls on election day. The 21-year-old was speaking with Democratic candidate Chris Rabb, who is running for the seat in the 200th District, when someone opened fire on him. Police said the young man was shot twice in the head and he was pronounced dead at the scene. A volunteer with Rabb took down the man's number and as Rabb and his volunteer walked away a gunman opened fire, according to police. Chris Visco, a campaign worker, told WPVI-TV: 'One of the people that was with (Chris) handed him a piece of literature, took his phone number, and another young man came up behind him and shot him execution style in the head.' Rabb managed to pull his volunteer to safety into a nearby store and neither Rabb or his volunteer were hurt. The incident happened around 3.30pm on Sunday as Rabb was talking to the victim about the upcoming primary. The unidentified man also expressed interest in volunteering for Rabb's campaign. Police said the 21-year-old was shot twice in the head and he was pronounced dead at the scene (pictured) Four hours later, police said an 18-year-old man was shot and killed in Philadelphia around 7.30pm in retaliation for the shooting death of the 21-year-old victim. The 18-year-old was shot dead and a 17-year-old boy was wounded in a drive-by shooting. The campaign manager told NBC10 Rabb was 'beyond devastated' by the shooting and he was later interviewed by homicide detectives. Police said the gunman from the earlier shooting fled on foot. They also believe the shooting may have been captured on store surveillance video. The suspect, who killed the 21-year-old man, was described as a six-foot-tall black male, who was wearing a light-gray hoodie. A motive for the shooting remains unclear and no arrests have been made. Police have not released the names of any of the victims. The suspect, who killed the 21-year-old man, was described as a six-foot-tall black male, who was wearing a light-gray hoodie He also made a thinly-veiled swipe at the divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump He also said Europe had previously been 'complacent' about its defence President Obama plans to send up to 250 more U.S. troops to Syria to help fight Islamic State militants - while also warning Europe it must stop being 'complacent' over its defence. The additional troops, who will deploy in phases, will bring the total American presence on the ground to 300 but didn't specify when the troops will be sent. It came as he today urged European leaders to meet their NATO defence spending targets and admitted they had in the past been complacent about their own defence. Scroll down for video U.S. President Barack Obama told the crowd in Hanover, Germany today (pictured) that Europe had been complacent about its own defence in the past as he agreed to send 250 troops to Syria He almost took a swipe at Donald Trump, warning that divisive rhetoric and discrimination can drive members of minority communities towards extremism Obama and Merkel look at a gripping device on show at the Hannover Messe Industrial Trade Fair today After delivering the keynote address at the fair, Obama took time to shake hands with audience members Obama visited the fair as a guest of Merkel, who is currently hosting him during his trip through Europe The two leaders are given a demonstration at the Weidmuller booth. The company specialises in industrial technology He also took a thinly-veiled swipe at the divisive anti-immigrant rhetoric of Republican Donald Trump, warning that marginalizing minorities can drive them towards extremism. The new deployment to Syria aims to accelerate recent gains against ISIS and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of U.S.-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory from the hardline Sunni Islamist group. While Obama has resisted putting U.S. troops into Syria - where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people - he sent 50 U.S. special operations forces to Syria last year in what U.S. officials described as a 'counterterrorism' mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war. 'Given the success, I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum. 'They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back.' In a thinly-veiled attack on Trump, Obama said that when it comes to demonizing minorities, loud voices get attention. Describing a 'defining moment', Obama says inequality and other trends have created concerns and anxieties in the U.S. and Europe that are legitimate and mustn't be ignored. But Obama says they shouldn't lead to a mentality where people blame their problems on each other. Obama is decrying a mindset of singling out people who look or pray differently, whether it's immigrants or Muslims. Obama says that's the kind of politics that the European system was set up to work against. 'In the last century, just twice in 30 years, the forces of empire and intolerance and extreme nationalism consumed this continent and cities like this one were largely reduced to rubble,' he said. 'Tens of millions of men and women and children were killed.' Mr Obama said it was a 'brave new world' after testing virtual reality headsets at the Hannover trade fair alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel Mrs Merkel is hosting the US President in Germany on the latest leg of his farewell tour. Mr Obama has used the visits as an opportunity to strongly endorse continued British membership of the EU Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel inspect a satellite as they toured the technology trade fair The two leaders share a joke as they toured what is the world's largest industrial technology trade fair today A special forces police officer stands guard over the state motorcade Obama used to travel to and from the event Merkel welcomes British Prime Minister David Cameron for an informal meeting with Obama and US leaders French President Francois Hollande also attended the meeting, where the discussions centred around defence, security and the ISIS threat Merkel greets Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi as he arrived for the meeting in Germany today Obama also suggested European leaders do more to help carry the NATO defence burden. 'Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence,' he said. Underlining that NATO has to 'bolster our frontline allies in Poland, in Romania and in Baltic states' while also 'meet the threat of its southern flank', Obama urged members of the alliance to increase their defence capacities. 'That's why every NATO member should be contributing its full share of two percent of GDP towards our common security. Something that doesn't always happen,' he said. Obama's host country and Europe's economic heavyweight Germany has been frequently criticised for spending well below the target on defence capabilities. Obama urged Europe's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, which he said creates wedges among populations, and other issues including education for young people and equal pay for equal work for women. SYRIAN REBELS WELCOME U.S. PLEDGE FOR MORE TROOPS An alliance of Syrian armed groups fighting ISIS said it welcomed U.S. plans to send as many as 250 additional American personnel to Syria. The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, is the main Syrian partner of the U.S. and its allies in the battle with ISIS. 'Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support,' SDF spokesman Talal Silo said, suggesting they also needed guided anti-armour missiles. He described the partnership between the U.S. and SDF as 'strategic', adding that any extra support was welcome. 'So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware, and this is something we were promised,' he said. Advertisement 'If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way. 'This is a defining moment and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe,' Obama said. 'If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue.' He also paid tribute to Merkel for setting a tone that encouraged nations to step up and share responsiblity for taking in migrants fleeing war in the MIddle East. Obama said: 'We can't turn our backs on fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now.' Wrapping up his trip to Europe, this afternoon he is holding informal discussions with Francois Hollande of France, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The discussions are expected to touch on a wide range of topics, including the battle against ISIS, the civil war in Syria and the ongoing migration crisis stemming from that war. Speaking in Germany on the latest leg of his farewell tour, the US President also praised the EU for ending centuries of war in Europe. And he claimed the 'entire world' needs a 'united Europe' days after making a forceful case against Brexit while on a visit to London. Obama's repeated interventions on the referendum have infuriated campaigners who want Britain to vote to leave the European Union on June 23. In a speech at the Hannover trade fair, he said: 'The United States and the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe.' Mrs Merkel is hosting the U.S. President in Germany on the latest leg of his farewell tour. Mr Obama has used the visits as an opportunity to strongly endorse continued British membership of the EU. Obama's visit to Germany comes after a brief stop in London during which he campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU An incredible larger-than-life sculpture of a poppy carrying 'the sands of remembrance' has been put on show as Australians come together for Anzac Day. The centre of the giant steel flower is filled with 4,000 tiny vials which contain sand from the beach in Albany, Western Australia, where our troops departed for Gallipoli. They also contain a pine needle with genetic ties to the original Lone Pine - which has been entrenched in Australian legend since the Gallipoli campaign. Scroll down for video Gary Grant's sculpture of a poppy has been placed in Sydney's Circular Quay for Anzac Day The vials are being handed out to the public with a photo of the poppy containing the words 'In the sands of our remembrance grows the soul of our nation' the ABC reports. The sculpture was created by Gary Grant who says the special vials give the sculpture its significance. 'Albany Historical Society have been able to provide for us the sand from the exact point where our Gallipoli soldiers left the wharf, to the shore line. So it's X marks the spot, that sand we have in each vial,' Mr Grant said. 'Also in the vial is the pine needle which comes from Yarralumla nursery in Canberra, and its direct ancestor is the original lone pine, so people are taking away with them the actual DNA from the very initial point of the Gallipoli campaign to the climax of it.' The poppy contains vials filled with sand from the beach in Albany, Western Australia, where our troops departed for Gallipoli Mr Grant will be signing and authenticating each vial handed out on the day. The sculpture which is 1.5 metres in diameter will be returned to Sydney for Remembrance Day commemorations later this year. Tara Brown has defended 60 Minutes' involvement in the botched kidnapping of Sally Faulkner's two young children in Lebanon this month. In an interview with the Nine Network program aired on Sunday night after the crew and Ms Faulkner returned to Australia following their imprisonment in Beirut, a teary-eyed Brown recalled what was going through her head during questioning in the foreign country. 'I thought: "We're journalists, we're doing our job and they will see reason, they will understand that".' Scroll down for video A teary-eyed Brown said she did not believe it would get so bad when they originally faced questioning Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner returned to Australia on Thursday night without her children Lahela, five, and Noah, three (pictured with her baby to a different father, and her mother) 'We are here just to do a story on a very desperate mother, and I thought that reason would prevail and it didn't,' she told presenter Michael Usher. Brown told Usher it had gone 'terribly', but said Ms Faulkner 'knows in her heart she's tried everything to get them [the children] back'. 'In her opinion, she had no choice but to do this.' Usher said the mother is 'probably in a worse situation' now than she was prior to the botched abduction. 60 Minutes presenter Michael Usher admitted the Nine Network crew had made 'mistakes and failures' which saw their team, including Tara Brown as well as Ms Faulkner, imprisoned for two weeks (Usher and Brown pictured) The episode also revealed that 60 Minutes is doing some 'soul searching' following the drama, and admitted they made mistakes when they tried to snatch Lahela, 5, and Noah, 3. Usher said the 'mistakes and failures' had been 'the subject of a lot of soul searching here at Channel Nine' Usher confirmed an internal investigation is underway, saying: 'there's one thing we want to state very clearly from the outset: we made mistakes.' He said the 'mistakes and failures' had been 'the subject of a lot of soul searching here at Channel Nine'. Usher said the chain of events were 'complex and distressing' which had gone 'badly wrong'. A review commissioned by the network began on Friday and will investigate the editorial approval and actions of the crew involved in the story. 'Over the past two weeks we've been limited in what we could say,' Usher said. 'In the next few weeks we'll share in detail what we know about this whole sad scenario and our role in it.' The 60 Minutes presenter said there was 'relief' when their team was returned to their families, who landed with Ms Faulkner. Father of the children, 32-year-old Ali Elamine, is still pressing charges against Briton Adam Whittington, who was allegedly in charge of the operation, as well as Craig Michael and two Lebanese people involved. A Lebanese policeman prevents Brown from looking towards journalists while escorting her from a Lebanese courthouse to Baabda Prison for women in Lebanon on April 18 Ms Faulkner is reunited with her partner Brendan Pierce (left) and mother, brother and baby to Mr Pierce (right) The moment Brown and Ms Faulkner were freed from prison after two weeks behind bars 'I'm so amazed at how she's held up and how strong she's been because ultimately she's lost everything, you know? She's lost her babies,' Brown said. Ms Faulkner told 60 Minutes she felt 'numb' following the 'surreal' incident. She was reunited with her baby, her mother, her partner Brendan Pierce, and brother Simon. 'I'm really proud of you, you're so brave,' Ms Faulkner's mother told her. 'I had to try,' Ms Faulkner responded. Her ex-husband agreed to drop the abduction charges if she relinquished custodial rights to their children. Brown and 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice arrive at Sydney International Airport on Thursday night 32-year-old Ali Elamine with five-year-old Lahela (right) and three-year-old Noah (left) 32-year-old Ali Elamine with five-year-old Lahela (right) and three-year-old Noah (left) Ms Faulkner was released on bail on Wednesday along with Ms Brown and her crew, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson, sound recordist David Ballment. They could still face further charges though they have returned to Australia. The children will now live in Lebanon with their father, but Mr Elamine insisted that Ms Faulkner would be able to visit. She shared an ice-cream with Lahela and Noah before leaving the country. Mr Elamine said 'the visit was good' and that all 'enjoyed it'. The charges against the Child Abduction Recovery International team members have not been dropped. Ms Faulkner with their two children in happier times. The Brisbane mother returned to Australia without the children after her botched attempted at getting them back Sally Faulkner (pictured) was released on bail after relinquishing custodial rights to the children 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice is reunited with family on Thursday night after landing back in Sydney 60 Minutes cameraman Ben Williamson is reunited with family on Thursday night after spending two weeks in a Lebanese prison cell Two people needed hospital treatment after suspected drug overdoses at the weekend Midnight Mafia dance festival at Sydney Olympic Park. A man, 19, was taken to nearby Concord Hospital by ambulance at about 12.10am after being treated by paramedics. More than two hours later a young woman was also rushed to hospital after reportedly suffering an overdose. Scroll down for video Two people overdosed on drugs at the all-night Midnight Mafia dance festival A man, 19, was taken to nearby Concord Hospital by ambulance at about 12.10am after being treated by paramedics and later a young woman was also rushed to hospital after reportedly suffering an overdose The male patient was released a few hours later - it's still unclear what type of drug they had ingested. NSW Police say 18 charges were laid for drug offences during the operation at the dance party which drew more than 9500 partygoers. A Police Drug Dog operation was conducted at the event, which ran between 8.30pm Saturday and 6am Sunday. The condition of the woman who was transported to hospital at 2.30am is unknown. Police report that they searched 111 people, and detected drugs on 18 revellers. There were 16 charges laid of 'possess a prohibited drug' (12 for the possession of MDMA) and two cannabis cautions issued. Documents seized in the raid that killed a top ISIS oil executive last year have revealed details on how the terror group ran its $1million-a-day oil operation. Paperwork reviewed by the Wall Street Journal shows ISIS oil man Abu Sayyaf had a job not unlike other oil executives - except he was also faced with issues like factoring slave ownership into salary negotiations, and repairing oil wells damaged in U.S. airstrikes. A U.S. State Department official has said that more information was obtained from the documents seized in the raid against Abu Sayyaf than from 'any Special Forces operation in history.' Scroll down for video An undated picture seized in the raid against Abu Sayyaf's Syrian compound in May 2015 shows the ISIS oil executive counting large stacks of cash. Documents reveal ISIS's oil operation is largely cash-based Left, a file photo shows Syrian petroleum being drilled from wells in Kurdish-controlled Rimelan district. Right, ISIS fighters march in Raqqa, the terror group's main stronghold in Syria Spreadsheets retrieved in the raid showed ISIS's total natural resource revenues in the six months that ended in February 2015 amounted to $289.5 million - and Abu Sayyaf's operation in the Deir Ezzour and al-Hasakah provinces in north-eastern Syria contributed to 72 percent of those revenues, the Journal reported. Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian who had his headquarters in the al-Omar field in Deir Ezzour, was known as a fearsome boss, who would threaten to relocate workers to oil fields in Iraq, where bosses were thought to be even worse, said Ibrahim, a 36-year old former oil worker interviewed by the Journal. But other means of intimidation were much more sinister, Ibrahim said: 'You go to work and you find someone beheaded.' Abu Sayyaf was killed on May 16, 2015 in a nighttime raid against his compund in north-east Syria Apart from illuminating documents, archaeological and historical objects including ancient coins (pictured) were discovered during the raid against Abu Sayyaf's compound Abu Sayyaf, who was given custody in September 2014 of the American aid worker Kayla Mueller after she suffered as ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's sex slave, was killed on May 16, 2015 in the nighttime raid against his compound in Deir Ezzour. Under the direction of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf set up a system where private buyers would line up with trucks at oil fields, pay in cash for crude oil, and transport it in their own trucks, according to the Journal. As the Daily Beast reported in December, the truckers would then sell the crude oil at a profit to local, makeshift refineries. There, fuel was produced to be sold at roadside pumping stations or in bulk to other smugglers, who go on to sell it in more populated areas. U.S. aid worker Kayla Mueller was briefly held by Abu Sayyaf prior to her death in February 2015 In the end, the 'greater amount' of ISIS-produced oil was purchased by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. '[Assad's regime and ISIS] are trying to slaughter each other and they are still engaged in millions and millions of dollars of trade,' said Adam Szubin, acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence with the Treasury Department, Reuters reported in December. Some of the ISIS-produced oil also ended up in Turkey, the Treasury Department claimed. The large profits ISIS made from oil prompted the U.S. to heavily target the group's oil infrastructure in its air raids. The campaign successfully dented ISIS's oil profits, making it less profitable today than taxation, the Journal reported. However, even after U.S. air strikes destroyed 30 percent of ISIS's oil infrastructure, the terror group still makes about $1 million every day from selling oil, and the corporate structures set up under Abu Sayyaf remain intact, according to the Journal. The terror group maintains its oil operation in part by offering handsome salaries to skilled oil workers: more than three times an average Syrian salary - $50 per month - for an accountant, and about eight times an average salary for a drilling technician. It also factors in how many slaves and dependents a worker has when deciding salaries, the Journal reported. One somewhat unorthodox culinary couple have grown a garlic that tastes as good as ever - but comes free of the recognisable after taste It is one of the quintessential quandaries of those on the dating scene: to eat or not to eat garlic with your meal. While it may taste fantastic it will leave a lingering aroma will most likely leave your partner running for the hills if you breathe anywhere near them later on in the night. Now in news that will certainly come as a breath of fresh air, those days may just be on the verge of becoming a thing of the past. One culinary couple - a construction engineer and a commercial lawyer - have grown a garlic that tastes as good as ever - but comes free of the recognisable after taste and odour. Known as Aglione, the bulb is a little milder in flavour but almost entirely odourless. Appropriately nicknamed 'the kissing garlic', cultivators Alessandro Guagni and Lorenzo Bianchi are hoping fellow Italians will fall in love with the reborn food gem, last produced in large quantities almost half a century ago. Speaking to The Guardian, Guagni said: 'We thought this was a typical example of Italian excellence that has been forgotten. 'The taste is very good and very light so we thought about the possibility of reintroducing it to the market.' Garlic is a vital ingredient in many cuisines, but none more so than it Italy. However, many cooks are reluctant to use it in high quantities because of concerns that it can be indigestible and, more importantly, be a direct cause of bad breath. Guagni and Bianchi - weekend farmers who grow their crop on land Bianchi owns in the Marche region, near Tuscany - see their bulbs as a solution to this. They are now keen to see some of the country's finest chefs invest in their product. A couple whose three-day-old baby was mauled to death by the family dog made two unsuccessful 911 calls before getting frustrated and driving the boy to the hospital themselves on Thursday. The parents waited 28 seconds before hanging up their first call, then tried again and waited 34 seconds before giving up, police said on Saturday. San Diego Police operators are understaffed, according to officials. They said 73 calls came in between 7.15pm and 7.45pm, which is when the parents called. Animal Services released this photo of Polo, the two-year-old American Staffordshire terrier-mix that killed a child on Thursday. The child's parents tried calling 911 twice before giving up and driving the child to the hospital themselves 'Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family in this very tragic case. We know every second counts in an emergency,' Lt. Scott Wahl of SDPD said in a statement Saturday. The couple were in bed watching TV with their newborn son and dog around 8pm Thursday night in San Diego's Mira Mesa neighborhood when the mother coughed. The coughing startled the dog and it unexpectedly bit the baby, Sgt. Tu Nguyen said. He said the parents pulled the animal off and took their only child to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. San Diego Police said that their operators are understaffed and the 73 calls came in during the half an hour span the couple tried to call 'At this time, we're looking at this as nothing more than a tragic incident,' said Nguyen, a member of the child abuse unit. 'Its such a horrific, tragic case,' Nguyen added, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. An autopsy is underway to determine the cause of death. Animal control officers took the 2-year-old dog, a neutered male American Staffordshire terrier-mix named Polo, into custody, said Dan DeSousa, deputy director of the county Department of Animal Services. The dog will be held in quarantine for 10 days to determine whether it has rabies. Two Ontario men set a Guinness World Record after they pulled three fire trucks that weighed a total of 90 tons. Reverend Dr Kevin Fast and the host of Canada's Worst Driver, Andrew Younghusband, set the record for the heaviest vehicle pulled more than 100 feet by a pair. Fast, who has previously set 24 Guinness World records, was contacted by the Discovery Channel's Tougher Than It Looks?, a show that travels around the world to catch tough feats on camera, according to the Toronto Sun. Reverend Dr Kevin Fast (right) and the host of Canada's Worst Driver, Andrew Younghusband (left), pulled three fire trucks that weighed total 90 tons and set the Guinness World Record for heaviest vehicle pulled over 100 feet by a pair Younghusband (pictured) told the Toronto Star that their feat is 'tougher than it looks if you're a regular person' but he said 'if you're a regular person who hooks up with Kevin it's not that tough' When the men started to pull the trucks, they pulled but they weren't moving. Fast then unbuckled himself from the harness and walked away, only to find out that the air brakes were on for one of the trucks, which made it impossible for them to move. Younghusband, who at that point thought it was over for the record, told the Toronto Sun: 'When we tried and went nowhere my heart broke. I exerted myself almost completely and then learned the air brakes on one of the fire trucks were still on.' The men started again and moments later faced yet another obstacle. After the front bumper crossed the finish line people started yelling the pull was complete - but it wasn't and Fast said he stood up but the adjudicator, Kimberly Patrick, from Guinness World Records in New York told them they still had 'another four feet to go'. Once the tires crossed the finish line, the record was complete. Younghusband told the Toronto Star that their feat is 'tougher than it looks if you're a regular person' but he said 'if you're a regular person who hooks up with Kevin it's not that tough'. Fast (center right) and Younghusband (center left), had nearly exerted themselves when they first started pulling the trucks before stopping and realizing that the air brakes were on for one truck. Adjudicator, Kimberly Patrick (center) from Guinness World Record in New York Fast said he thought the pair would have done the pull quicker, but noted that 'a lot went wrong but finally it went right'. The two completed the pull as a part of Discovery Channel's Tougher Than It Looks? He added that he was trying his hardest but said that Fast had done '98 per cent of the work' as he was 'along for the ride'. Fast told the Toronto Sun that he thought the pair would have done the pull quicker, but noted that 'a lot went wrong but finally it went right'. He said he was just happy to cross the finish line. 'We did it and that's all that matters at this point.' Fast's greatest achievement was pulling a 208.1-ton CC-177 Globemaster III - a feat that earned him a world record and raised a whopping $65,000 for charity. A volunteer firefighter has been charged with arson after a brush fire in New Hampshire last week destroyed 190 acres and forced the evacuation of 17 homes. David Plante, 31, from Stoddard, New Hampshire, will appear in court in the town of Keene later on Monday. He has been charged with one count of arson but more charges are expected. David Plante, 31, (pictured), has been charged with one count of arson but it is thought more charges may follow. He worked as a volunteer firefighter in the town of Stoddard, New Hampshire Plante remains in custody after refusing to meet with a bail commissioner. The fire started on Thursday in Stoddard, 40 miles west of the state capital of Concord. Nobody was injured and the fire was brought under control on Friday after a National Guard helicopter was brought in to douse the flames from the air. A National Guard helicopter was deployed to tackle last week's fire. It is pictured scooping up water from a lake which was then used to douse the flames from above On Friday the state's governor Maggie Hassan told the Union Leader newspaper: 'It's devastating. The notion that somebody would do that intentionally to our natural resources and putting lives and property at risk as well is deeply concerning.' Last week's fire was the latest in a series of brush fires in and around Stoddard. Police have not said what led them to Plante. A surviving premature twin was mistaken for her dead sibling, causing a delay in resuscitation following a caesarean delivery at a private hospital, a coronial investigation has heard. Brisbane's Mater Hospital staff members had moved Elsie Robertson to an open cot after confusing the infant for her twin who died in the womb at 23 weeks, The Courier Mail reported. During the pregnancy, doctors labelled Elsie as 'twin two' while her deceased twin was identified as 'twin one'. But when Elsie was born showing no signs of life, the obstetrician handed her to a nurse with the words 'twin one'. The bungle caused up to four minutes delay before staff had realised the mix-up. A surviving premature twin was mistaken for her dead sibling, causing a delay in resuscitation following a caesarean delivery at a private hospital, a coronial investigation has heard (stock image) Deputy State Coroner John Lock said Dr Len Yared had actually meant Elsie was the first twin he delivered during the caesarean section. Elsie was initially placed on the resuscitation trolley but was soon moved to an open cot following the miscommunication. Shortly after, a midwife walked in and told a nurse: 'I'm sorry but this is the baby you should be resuscitating.' The baby 'responded reasonably quickly' when staff began resuscitation but her fight for survival lasted for just 10 hours before her life support was switched off on October 8, 2012. Brisbane's Mater Hospital staff members mistaken Elsie Robertson for her dead sibling in 2012 (stock image) Infant Elsie was initially placed on the resuscitation trolley but was soon moved to an open cot (stock image) WHAT IS TWIN-TO-TWIN TRANSFUSION SYNDROME? Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome is a disease of the placenta that affects identical twin pregnancies. The placenta is shared, typically unequally, by the twins. As a result one twin may have a share too small to provide the necessary nutrients to grow normally or in some cases, survive. The condition can prove life-threatening for both unborn babies. The donor twin can suffer decreased blood volume, which leads to slower than normal growth than it's co-twin, and poor urinary output causing little to no amniotic fluid. The recipient twin can become overloaded with blood, putting excess strain on its heart, to the point where it can develop heart failure. TTTS can occur at any point during pregnancy, and the stage at which it happens can determine how severe the twins will be affected. Source: TTTS Foundation Advertisement Mr Lock determined Elsie died from E.coli sepsis a virulent bacterial infection which attacks the system and triggers blood poisoning after suffering twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Despite some delay caused from the confusion, medical experts have claimed an immediate resuscitation following the premature birth would not have prevented her death. 'The expert opinions were consistent in that they considered such delays were minor and/or insignificant in respect to any contribution to the ultimate cause of death,' Mr Lock said. An inquest into the baby's death will not be held but the investigation findings were released earlier this year as a matter of public interest. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mater Hospital for comment. Crews later pulled out the truck and no major injuries have been reported Truck was there to pump out water from the garage that had been flooded A tanker truck fell through a massive hole after the top of a parking garage collapsed in Houston. Incredible footage shows the large truck swallowed up by a hole on Friday after the ground gave in. The garage, located west of the city, was filled with water after a week of heavy flooding that left eight dead in the Houston area, ABC 13 reported. The tanker truck had been brought to pump out the water in the parking garage. Scroll down for video The tanker truck (pictured) got trapped after it fell through the top of a parking garage in Houston on Friday It appeared that the truck became too heavy for the structure as water filled it, the network said. Crews pulled out the truck by 6:30pm on Friday and no major injuries were reported. The truck's driver was inside at the time and was taken to the hospital for a check-up according to the Houston Chronicle. A sign next to the parking garage said the structure could not support vehicles heavier than 4,400 pounds, ABC 13 reported. This is the average weight of a sedan, whereas weight limits for trucks in Texas range from 25,000 to 81,400 pounds depending on the size of the vehicle. The truck can contain up to 5,800 gallons of water according to KHOU. The garage, located west of the city, was filled with water after a week of heavy flooding that left eight dead in the Houston area. The truck (pictured) had been brought to pump out the water with a hose Donald Trump launched a series of attacks on his two remaining Republican rivals Monday morning, calling them 'weak and desperate' after they announced a strategic pact to deny him votes in the coming weeks. Trump said in astatement issued just before 1 o'clock in the morning that the CruzKasich pact smacks of 'collusion,' a loaded term commonly applied to 'price fixing' that illegally coordinates and manipulates commercial markets. Republican Party rules, however, don't prohibit strategically ganging up on a front-runner and the GOP's leadership may welcome the move if it weakens Trump, who has been a thorn in the establishment's side since he launched his campaign in June 2015. Trump also called it 'sad' that 'two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months,' and then turned a common Cruz talking point back on his challengers. SAD! Donald Trump is lashing out at Ted Cruz and John Kasich after their campaigns announced a coordinated strategic partnership designed to deny him primary victories and delegates Cruz spokesman Ron Nehring admitted to CNN Monday that a Cruz win on the first ballot at the convention is "not going to happen," event though Cruz has said previously the ultimate goal was to win an outright majority of delegates. 'A smart political campaign is one that adapts to the strategic realities that are on the ground today. When we set out this campaign our goal of course was to reach a flat out majority at the convention. That was always the goal it was the best scenario for us But thats not going to happen,' Nehring said. Nehring said Trump 'cant consolidate the base going forward' and therefore shouldn't be the nominee. 'We want to make sure that by some accident by some fluke of the rules whereby Donald Trump could gain more delegates than he has earned the share of the vote he doesnt become the Republican nominee and lead this party to a disaster," he said. 'COLLUSION': Trump framed the Cruz-Kasich partnership as an illegal business deal after they said they will coordinate primary strategies to deprive him of delegates needed to win the Republican nomination DYNAMIC DUO? Kasich (left) and Cruz (right) will each pull out of states where they're weak in order to give the other a clear field to challenge Trump's dominance The Texan has said repeatedly that Trump shouldn't be the Republican presidential nominee because two-thirds of GOP voters chose other candidates in their state primaries and caucuses especially because the field was as large as 17 candidates in the early going. That number, though, is higher for Cruz and Kasich. 'Approximately 80% of the Republican Party is against him,' Trump said of Cruz, adding that '85% of Republican voters are against Kasich.' And, he claimed, the 'millions of new voters he has attracted to the Republican primary process 'will drop out if I am not in the race.' Cruz and Kasich issued near-simultaneous statements Sunday night while much of institutional Washington was watching 'Game of Thrones,' outlining an power-sharing agreement that's highly unusual in modern American politics. The Kasich campaign will give Cruz 'a clear path in Indiana'. In return, the Cruz campaign will 'clear the path' for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico, Cruz's press release read. Trump first responded to the arrangement on Twitter shortly before midnight: 'Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!' 'Lyin' Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad!' he later added. BATTLE PLAN: The Kasich campaign will give Cruz 'a clear path in Indiana', and in return, the Cruz campaign will 'clear the path' for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico Ohio Gov. John Kasich's campaign said Sunday night that it is pulling out of Indiana to clear the field for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who is in turn stepping aside in Oregon and New Mexico where Kasich is stronger. 'Lyin' Ted Cruz and 1 for 38 Kasich are unable to beat me on their own so they have to team up (collusion) in a two on one. Shows weakness!' Trump tweeted Monday morning. 'Shows how weak and desperate Lyin' Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can't stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses,' a second tweet read. The digital moment marks the first time Trump has applied a derogatory nickname '1 for 38 Kasich' to the candidate who had been a minor irritant in the race. '1 FOR 38 KASICH': The Ohio governor's hail-mary gambit has earned him a nickname from Trump, who already calls Cruz 'Lyin' Ted' and the Democratic front-runner 'crooked Hillary' Clinton Cruz has been 'Lyin' Ted' for nearly two months. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton turns up Frequently in Trump speeches as 'crooked Hillary.' The arrangement does not address the five Northeastern state set to vote on Tuesday, where Trump is expected to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. Kasich and Cruz had already retreated to Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to halt the former reality television star's unlikely rise. 'Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans,' Cruz's campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement explaining the new plans. 'Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation,' he added. Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, said: 'Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee.' TRY ME: Trump warned in a statement that the 'millions' of new voters he has attracted to the Republican primary process 'will drop out if I am not in the race.' The announcement marks a sharp reversal for Cruz's team, which aggressively opposed coordinating anti-Trump efforts with Kasich as recently as late last week. And it only applies to Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico - three of the 15 states remaining on the Republican primary calendar. The announcement came less than 48 hours before voting begins across five Northeastern states where the New York billionaire leads in many polls. Trump campaigned on Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Speaking to several thousand people in an airplane hangar in Hagerstown, Maryland, on Sunday evening, Trump stressed repeatedly that he expects to win the 1,237 delegates needed in the first round of voting to stave off a contested convention. 'I only care about the first. We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth,' said Trump. As Kasich backs out of Indiana, Cruz promised to not compete in primary contests in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. 'We will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Gov Kasich is performing well,' Weaver said. As recently as three days ago Kasich's campaign announced investments in Indiana, including the opening of two offices and the creation of a campaign leadership team. His campaign on Sunday night canceled a town hall and gathering in Indianapolis scheduled to watch the results of Tuesday's primaries. Like Cruz's campaign, Kasich's campaign encouraged allied super PACs and other outside groups to 'honor the commitments'. In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly denounced the GOP's presidential nominating system as 'rigged'. That criticism is likely to intensify in the coming days. There was far less drama on the Democratic side Sunday. Underdog Bernie Sanders rallied thousands of voters in two New England states, seeking momentum even as he offered mixed signals on how hard he would push his differences with front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator largely steered clear of Clinton at a Rhode Island park, but hours later ramped up his critique before more than 14,000 supporters in New Haven, Connecticut. Sanders reiterated his call for Clinton to release transcripts of lucrative Wall Street speeches she delivered after leaving the State Department in early 2013. 'This campaign, unlike Secretary Clinton's, has not raised $15 million from Wall Street and millions more from other special interests,' he said as the crowd booed at the mention of Clinton's name. Clinton eyed victories in four or five of Tuesday's contests, which would all but cripple Sanders' White House bid. The former secretary of state went to two Philadelphia church services attended largely by African-Americans ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania, Tuesday's top delegate prize. She declined to attack her Democratic rival by name in the morning appearance and a subsequent stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, focusing on the GOP candidates. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz downplayed tensions between Sanders and Clinton, whose rivalry has become increasingly nasty in recent weeks. Wood fragments unearthed by archaeologists in what is now Cross County, Arkansas could be the remains of a large wooden cross that the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto erected on top of a hill in 1541. Tuesday's finding is the result of an archaeological process that began in 1966, the Arkansas Archaeological Survey wrote in a news release. That year, University of Arkansas archaeologists were dispatched to the top of a mound in the former Native American village of Casqui - which is now the Parkin Archaeological State Park - to clean up holes left by looters. Wood found in Arkansas may be remains of cross left by Spanish explorer in 1540s https://t.co/jh31SuRtIP #ArkDG pic.twitter.com/odoJ6rFPqJ AR Democrat-Gazette (@ArkansasOnline) April 24, 2016 Engraving depicting Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his troops, deep in Native American territory as he discover the Mississippi River, 1541 While doing so, the researchers found a large wooden post, which seemed consistent with what was known about de Soto's Christian cross. A sample of the post was collected and stored in the University's museum, where it remained largely forgotten until the 1990s. The large wooden cross was said to have been erected by de Soto on July 4th, 1541, as the Spanish conquistador was fighting his way through southeastern United States on a 1539-1542 expedition. In 1992, Dr. Jeffrey Mitchem, the Parkin site archaeologist for the Arkansas Archaeological Survey, ordered a carbon-14 dating of the wooden post sample, which revealed it originated between 1515 and 1663 - 'in the right ballpark,' as the Survey put it in its news release. Since then, many excavations have taken place in the area, and the dig at the top of the mound where the post was found received funding last year. The Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto erected a wooden cross in Arkansas during a raiding expedition through southeastern United States During this week's dig, the archaeologists exposed the wooden post that was spotted in 1966, and found that it was partly burned, and made of bald cypress. Further down in the ground, shards of Native American pots were discovered. The wood exhumed during the recent dig will be sent to a cypress tree ring-expert, who will use the growth rings to determine the date. If the answer is 1541, it's a match, researches said. 'This is a very exciting development. The combination of the wooden post segment and the undisturbed large post hole both point to a strong presumption that this is de Soto's cross from 1541,' Dr. Mitchem said. Nicholas Vernage (pictured), now 51, killed Sgt Alan King when he confronted him during a robbery in Walthamstow, north east London, in 1991 A triple killer who murdered a police sergeant is being routinely released from jail into the public domain, it has been revealed. Nicholas Vernage, 51, killed Sgt Alan King when he confronted him during a robbery in Walthamstow, north east London, in 1991. Days earlier he knifed his girlfriend, Lorna Bogle, to death raging that she failed to write to him when he was in prison, stabbing her 21 times in the hands, back and chest. Three days after that he murdered Javaid Iqbal, 37, a part-time mini-cab driver, who tried to take him on when he discovered him burgling his home. Vernage was given five life sentences for his crimes, which also included stabbing two other police officers after telling a friend how much he hated the force, adding: 'All I want is to kill coppers.' However, he is now being allowed supervised leave from prison - with officers now worried he is being prepared for full release. Sgt King's widow Monica told The Sun: 'It's disgusting.' The 65-year-old added that her husband's killer was 'pure evil'. Vernage - who is kept in an undisclosed medium security unit - was loading a loot of stolen gear into a car when he was approached by father of four Sgt King. Vernage was given five life sentences for his crimes, which also included stabbing two other police officers after telling a friend how much he hated the force, adding: 'All I want is to kill coppers' (stock photograph) He killed him in a brutal knife attack. The Police Federation said: 'The Home Secretary promised life would mean life for murdering a police officer. President Obama has said it was his daughters who helped him understand the value of marriage equality for same sex partners. Speaking during a town hall event in London Saturday, he explained how he had initially felt that labels for same-sex couples didn't matter as long as they had the same rights. But, Obama explained: 'I have to confess my children generally had an impact on me. Scroll down for video President Obama has said it was his daughters (Sasha (R) and Malia) who helped him understand the value of marriage equality for same sex partners Speaking during a town hall event in London Saturday (pictured) he explained how he had initially felt that labels for same-sex couples didn't matter as long as they had the same rights 'People I loved who were in monogamous same-sex relationships explained to me what I should have understood earlier, which is it was not simply about legal rights but about a sense of stigma, that if you're calling it something different it means that somehow it means less in the eyes of society.' He went on to praise activists for reaching out to those who didn't initially support marriage equality and framing the debate for them as one about 'family values.' Same sex became legal in America on June 26 last year, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state-level bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. Over the course of his London visit, Obama was been quizzed on other LGBT rights issues, including the North Carolina 'bathroom bill'. Maria Munir, a University of York student who is running for a council seat in Watford, Greater London, came out as a non-binary person while asking a question, imploring the President to do more for transgender rights, particularly gender neutral toilets. The student said: 'Im coming out to you as a non-binary person, I dont fit Im getting emotional (there was applause from the crowd) because I come from a Pakistani Muslim background which has cultural implications. He went on to praise activists for reaching out to those who didn't initially support marriage equality and framing the debate for them as one about 'family values.' Pictured: Celebration on June 28 after same sex marriage was legalized Same sex became legal in America on June 26 last year, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state-level bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The debate over gendered restrooms has centered around North Carolina's House Bill 2, passed on March 25, which ordered public schools, government agencies and public college to designate bathrooms by biological sex stated on a person's birth certificate. Many protested the passing (pictured) 'I know that in North Carolina people are being forced to produce birth certificates to prove your gender to go to the toilet. 'We dont recognise non-binary people under the UK Equality Act so if I am discriminated against I have no rights. 'Ive been working for the last nine months to raise these issues even though Im still at university and running for local elections at Watford.' Special forces commandos are preparing for a deadly two-headed attack against IS militants in Iraq and Libya. Hundreds of crack troops from both the SAS and SBS will lead assaults on a key Islamic State held city. They will join with regiments from France and the US in launching the ground and air attacks aimed at not only regaining the area, but cutting off extremist forces from their Syrian stronghold in the country's capital, Raqqa. British Special Forces are preparing for a deadly two-headed attack against IS militants in Iraq and Libya. Hundreds of crack troops from both the SAS and SBS will lead assaults on a key Islamic State held city American B-52 bombers flew to an airbase in Qatar last week ahead of an aerial bombardment against the northern Iraqi city of Mosul The SAS and SBS commandos will join with regiments from France and the US in launching the ground and air attacks aimed at not only regaining the area, but cutting off extremist forces from their Syrian stronghold in the country's capital, Raqqa The ultra-secret plot will get under way within weeks, with the SAS leading the charge accompanied by 70,000 Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers. American B-52 bombers flew to an airbase in Qatar last week ahead of an aerial bombardment against the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Their attacks will be coordinated with help from the SAS, whose soldiers will go into battle wearing emergency chemical warfare clothing. The RAF will offer their support to the offensive. Several Tornado bombers and Typhoon fighters will target any IS convoys trying to flee. A well-placed military source told The Mirror: 'Our people have been at the forefront in dismantling IS across northern Iraq and Syria and are already preparing the ground for the battle to recapture Mosul.' The RAF will offer their support to the offensive. Several Tornado bombers (pictured) and Typhoon fighters will target any IS convoys trying to flee Recent RAF orchestrated air strikes in Iraq and Syria have killed an estimated 25,000 IS militants. Special Boat Service (SBS) troops will take charge of the offensive against IS fighters on the Iraqi coast, where oilfields have recently been targeted. The assault will include the use of Predator drone strikes and F-15 Strike Eagle fighters. It is hoped the two-pronged, simultaneous attacks on both Iraq and Libya - where IS are keen to expand - will be a major blow to the extremist group. With a record-breaking 8.6million people visiting Hawaii last year, the state's tourism agency has launched a campaign drumming up support for the economic boom. Videos created by the Hawaii Tourism Authority feature Honolulu chef Mark Noguchi talking about his family members' jobs in hospitality and closing the 30-second clip by saying: 'Take care of tourism. It's a family business.' But not everyone is pleased about the influx of visitors, with critics complaining about the increased traffic as well as the exploitation of low-paid workers. Scroll down for video The Hawaii Tourism Authority has created a video campaign featuring Honolulu chef Mark Noguchi talking about his family members' jobs in hospitality Hawaii attracted a record-breaking 8.6million visitors last year, but some locals are complaining about the tourism industry's exploitation of low-paid workers and the increased congestion (file photo, Waikiki beach) Hawaii is trying to maintain the momentum of incoming tourists as the state charts its fourth-straight year of record breaking numbers. Industry officials attribute the growth to an increase in flights and Hawaii's enduring popularity with global travelers. The campaign is aimed at showing tourism helps a broad cross-section of the state, not just those who work in hotels or at other jobs directly in the industry, said Leslie Dance, an executive at the Hawaii Tourism Authority. People sometimes forget how important tourism is and start lamenting there are too many people around, particularly when business is good, she said. 'It's just a tendency for people to start complaining,' Dance said. 'And so the thing is, let's remind everybody again.' For Amanda Corby Noguchi (left), an event planner who appears in the video alongside her husband Mark Noguchi (right), tourism is a way to teach people about Hawaii Hawaii is trying to maintain the momentum of incoming tourists as the state charts its fourth-straight year of record breaking numbers (file photo, Kailua Beach) Rena Risso, a 30-year-old who was born and raised in Kailua, said: 'I can't even take my kids to the beach on a weekend because it's so crazy' (file photo taken in Honolulu) But not everyone in Hawaii is on board. Critics say the industry offers poorly paid jobs and exploits Hawaiian culture. But many complaints are about increased traffic and congestion. Rena Risso, a 30-year-old who was born and raised in Kailua, understands the positive aspects of tourism, but she believes they're outweighed by the negatives. 'I think, as far as the local's point of view, it's humbug,' she said after an early morning walk. 'I can't even take my kids to the beach on a weekend because it's so crazy.' The tourism agency should do more than promote 'uncritical support for the growth of tourism,' said Jonathan Osorio, a professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He also said the tourism bureau should consider the long-range effects of continued growth on Hawaii's resources and society. 'The admonishment that we should take care of tourism because it's a family business is a slick seduction that wants to avert the public's attention from the industry's abuses,' Osorio said in an email. Henry Maumalanga, left, plays ukulele while hanging out with friends at a park in Honolulu, Hawaii. He said: 'A lot of tourists come here just because of the aloha spirit and all of that. And we got to show it.' The second clip shows Renee Kimura of Kimura Lauhala Shop discussing how tourists support the Big Island store her great-grandfather founded over a century ago. The next video will be filmed on Kauai. People should be reminded of tourism's benefits so they'll treat visitors well and encourage them to come back, said Henry Maumalanga, a hotel security guard who lives in Honolulu. 'A lot of tourists come here just because of the aloha spirit and all of that. They hear about all that kind of stuff,' he said. 'And we got to show it.' For Amanda Corby Noguchi, an event planner who appears in the first video alongside her husband, tourism is a way to teach people about Hawaii. Her husband, for example, has taken visiting friends and other travelers to fishponds and taro patches in Heeia to show them how organizations are reviving traditional forms of Hawaiian agriculture. Dr Ben White quit as a training doctor while being interviewed on Good Morning Britain A junior doctor resigned from his post live on television this morning after insisting he and his colleagues have been 'backed into a corner' by health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Dr Ben White quit as a training doctor while being interviewed by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain. He said: 'I have taken the decision that I am resigning as a trainee doctor to focus on a legal campaign to fight the contract on behalf of my patients and on behalf of the NHS.' Asked why it had come to this, he was visibly upset and said: 'I really feel like we have been backed into a corner and there's not a lot of sense coming out of the Government's side of things. 'We have to put patients first and we can see at the moment the understaffing and the underfunding in the NHS.' Dr White, 33, was on ITV's flagship breakfast programme to discuss tomorrow's junior doctor strike. Medics will leave A&E departments, maternity units and cancer wards at 9am on Tuesday in protest at the Government's plan to rip up their contracts and impose new hours and pay. Today, more than 12 leading doctors wrote to David Cameron, urging him to step in 'at the 11th hour' to break the stalemate between junior doctors and the Government - preventing tomorrow's 'damaging' strike. London based Dr White has been an ardent campaigner against Mr Hunt's proposed changes to junior doctors' terms and conditions. His announcement live on Good Morning Britain left host Piers Morgan visibly shocked The letter - signed by presidents of royal colleges and faculties - said the current stalemate between the Government and junior doctors threatens the whole NHS by 'demoralising' a group on whom the future of the healthcare system depends. It asked Mr Cameron to being both parties back to the negotiating table to initiate 'honest debate' about the 'serious difficulties the NHS faces'. 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. The Government insists the changes, which will see doctors' basic pay rise to compensate for the reduction in overtime payments, are the only way to ensure that patients can receive just as good treatment at weekends as they do during the week. 'LOOK TO THE FUTURE': DR BEN WHITE'S EMOTIONAL RESIGNATION IN FULL I've taken the decision, well I will do so today, to resign as a training doctor to focus on a legal campaign, legal proceedings to fight the contract, to fight on behalf of patients and fight for the future of the NHS. And I feel that I've got an obligation to do that on behalf of my patients I really feel like we have been backed into a corner and there's not a lot of sense coming out from the Government's side of things at the moment. We all feel like it's been a long six months. We have to put patients first and we can see at the moment the understaffing and the underfunding that's taking place in the NHS - an A&E had to call in the military recently to staff it, in my hospital we had more admissions in 24 hours than we've ever had before. This isn't being listened to - we have to look to the future, I think. Advertisement Dr White is part of the legal campaign launched by Justice for Health - an organisation made of a group of doctors But most doctors have rejected Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's claims, saying that the contract will put further pressure on overstretched services and encourage many medics to quit or emigrate. Hospitals were last night making last-minute preparations by shuffling staff and cancelling procedures. A total of 12,711 non-urgent operations and 112,856 outpatient appointments have been cancelled. London-based Dr White assured patients that if they are unwell they should go to hospital as consultants would be covering emergency care. He expressed his sympathy for people who have had their operations cancelled but insisted that the strike concerned the safety of patients. He said: 'If I had had an operation cancelled as a result of the strike I would be very annoyed or worse - there's a chance I could have been harmed as a result of having an operation cancelled. 'We are sorry for that.' He later tweeted: 'I'm not stopping being a doctor for good and hope I can return when we've seen Government act reasonably and come up with a plan.' Dr White took part in a demonstration outside Jeremy Hunt's office earlier this week, asking the health secretary to come out and discuss his proposed new contract Last week he shared an open letter to the health secretary and Prime Minister David Cameron on Twitter, listing six points he was keen for the pair to take on board Dr White, who is originally from Greater Manchester, is currently a gastroenterologist at Newham General Hospital in East London. He is in his fourth year of specialist training, having qualified as a doctor around 2010. Doctors at his level earn around 38,000 in basic pay, while it is said to cost the taxpayer roughly 600,000 to train them. Dr White is part of the legal campaign launched by Justice for Health - an organisation made of a group of doctors. They argue that the 'decision to impose' the contract by Mr Hunt was not lawful as he failed to undertake proper consultation before the decision. It is separate from the British Medical Association's challenge. The 33-year-old has been an ardent campaigner against Mr Hunt's proposed changes to junior doctors' terms and conditions. The 33-year-old has campaigned against Jeremy Hunt's (pictured) proposed contract changes Hospitals were last night making last-minute preparations by shuffling staff and cancelling procedures. A total of 12,711 non-urgent operations and 112,856 outpatient appointments have been cancelled Last week he shared an open letter to the health secretary and Prime Minister David Cameron on Twitter, listing six points he was keen for the pair to take on board. One read: 'Stop saying this is all about pay and Saturdays, and therefore that we are greedy and lazy. 'We provide all of the out-of-hours doctoring in the NHS and it is deeply wrong to suggest we don't. 'We routinely stay later than normal hours and accept this is part of the job. Also, we never asked for a pay rise in the first place.' It was retweeted more than 1,500 times. Battle-weary ISIS fighters are trying to dodge frontline duty by getting doctors to write them fake sick notes, a report has found. Morale has fallen to its lowest level in the terror group's rank-and-file after a drop in wages and territorial defeats. In recent months, it has been forced to cut all salaries by half, slash benefits and ration electricity, after air strikes hit their oil and cash reserves. Scroll down for video Battle-weary: ISIS fighters are trying to dodge frontline duty by getting doctors to write them fake sick notes as morale plunges after a drop in wages and territorial defeats in the face of U.S.-led coalition air strikes In its report, the Center for Combating Terrorism (CTC), said: 'The personnel shortages were evidenced by an Islamic State document that emerged last year. 'Issued in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria, the document indicates that a number of Islamic State members had been seeking false medical reports from doctors in order to avoid frontline duty.' The U.S. military's think tank said ISIS had issued an amnesty for deserters in October 2015, such was their concern about falling numbers, it was reported by The Daily Mirror. Over the last year, its income has dropped by around 30 per cent as a result of Coalition air strikes, making it far harder to fund its military operation and maintain order in the territory it controls. Over the last year, its income has dropped by around 30 per cent as a result of air strikes by the U.S.-led Coalition and Russia (above), making it far harder to fund its military operation and control its territory The CTC report said: 'The reasons for financial strain on the Islamic State overlap to a degree with the causes of problems of cohesion in the Islamic State's ranks, such as reduced border access to Turkey, tougher border policies, and coalition airstrikes. 'These strikes have most recently targeted Islamic State "cash storage" points and the oil industry.' To make up the shortfall, the jihadists have been forced to introduce a range of taxes including a levy on satellite dishes and anyone trying to leave a city. Fines for not being able to answer questions correctly on the Koran have also been introduced and ISIS is also taking cash as an alternative to corporal punishment penalties. Revenue fell to $56million a month in March from $80million in the middle of last year, according to analysis by research group IHS. Advertisement The Anzac Day dawn service at Gallipoli has taken place without incident amid boosted security by Turkish authorities. A sudden thunderstorm on Sunday night had attendees rushing for cover but the bad weather passed, and the dawn service went ahead with mainly clear skies. Security was tightened this year with airport-style screening taking place, armed Turkish police and soldiers standing guard at checkpoints into the Gallipoli sites. Australian Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan, who gave an address at the service, praised the Turkish government for doing an 'outstanding job' making sure Australians and New Zealanders could commemorate Anzac Day in a safe way. 'It's gone without incident which is very relieving for everyone,' AAP reports. Scroll down for videos Many came to show their respect for what was done. One attendee, Mr, Johnson, 63, hopes the younger people will keep coming back to mark the occasion Visitors from Australia and New Zealand are pictured at the dawn ceremony marking the 101st anniversary of the World War One battle of Gallipoli, at Anzac Cove Visitors wore ponchos in the early hours of this morning as they waited for the dawn service at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli Visitors from Australia and New Zealand gather at Anzac Cove to attend the dawn ceremony marking the 101st anniversary of the First World War battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey. A stormy downpour started at 7.30pm local time on Sunday but the weather cleared in time for the dawn service Security was tightened this year with airport-style screening taking place, armed Turkish police and soldiers standing guard at checkpoints into the Gallipoli sites Australians visit Ariburnu Memorial following a dawn ceremony on April 25, marking the 101st anniversary of the World War One battle of Gallipoli, at Anzac Cove in the Gallipoli peninsula in Canakkale, Turkey Australians and New Zealanders trooping in for Anzac commemoration site at Gallipoli for the dawn service got a soaking on arrival. An estimated 1200 or more Australians and New Zealanders attended, many sleeping out overnight in front of the main stage above the Aegean Sea Thousands attend the Dawn Service as part of the ANZAC Commemorative Service to start in Eceabat, Turkey - high security and heavy rain have not deterred Australians making the pilgrimage 2016 was the first trip to Anzac Cove for Queenslander George Johnson, 63, who was impressed with Monday's dawn service at North Beach which went off without a hitch amidst boosted Turkish security measures: 'I came to show my respect for what was done and why we're still here,' Mr Johnson told AAP after the service. 'I just hope the younger people keep coming back and keep it all happening. Without them it won't happen will it?' Mr Johnson was one of an estimated 1200 or more Australians and New Zealanders who attended the dawn ceremony, many who slept out overnight in front of the main stage above the Aegean Sea Mr Tehan delivered the first address following Aboriginal and Maori tribute performances. He spoke of the more than 11,000 Australians and New Zealanders who died in the eight-month-long ordeal that was the Gallipoli campaign. He also highlighted the successful evacuation of more than 93,000 allied troops from the peninsula in December 1915. Mr Tehan said a special centenary service was held at Lone Pine on August 6 last year and it was decided it was fitting to continue that as a tradition into the future. The minister said a wreath-laying ceremony would continue to be held each year at Lone Pine on the day before Anzac Day. He denied a claim that poor hygiene and lack of facilities at last year's Lone Pine service were a factor in the decision and also denied that security concerns following terror attacks in Turkey this year played a part in the decision. Security has been boosted for this year's Anzac service at Gallipoli, with international-airport style screening in place including restrictions on liquid, aerosol or gel products and inspection of electronic devices. Posing for a photo after the dawn ceremony. The Anzac Day service at Gallipoli took place without incident amid boosted security by Turkish authorities Australians visit Ariburnu Memorial following a dawn ceremony marking the 101st anniversary of the World War One battle of Gallipoli, at Anzac Cove in the Gallipoli peninsula in Canakkale, Turkey Thousands of Australians and New Zealanders attend a dawn service on Anzac Day in Gallipoli on April 25, 2016, to mark the 101st anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in World War I Pictured second from the right, Australian Minister for Veteran's Affairs Dan Tehan speaks during the Dawn Service as part of the ANZAC Commemorative Service Wrapped up warm in coats, hats and Australian flags. Australian Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan praised the Turkish government for doing an 'outstanding job' making sure Australians and New Zealanders could commemorate Anzac Day in a safe way ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers march together during an international service in Canakkale, Turkey On the eve of Anzac Day Turkish soldiers march during an international service marking the 101st anniversary of the World War One battle of Gallipoli at the Turkish memorial in Canakkale, Turkey On Sunday Seven News quoted a Turkish government security official saying information had been received suggesting a planned terror attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop did not respond directly to the report of specific threats but said travel advice for Australians visiting Turkey remained under close review. 'The overall level of advice for Turkey, including the Gallipoli peninsula, remains at exercise a high degree of caution,' Ms Bishop said. New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee, who also laid a wreath at Lone Pine on Sunday, told reporters he'd heard of the report but Turkish authorities had not relayed information about a specific threat. 'We work very closely with Turkish authorities and would expect that if there's substance to it that we'll know about it in due course,' he said. 'I can say that things feel very secure here, the Turkish authorities I think are doing a splendid job in making sure that we're all kept safe.' David Lowe, 61, from Charters Towers in Queensland attended Sunday's wreath-laying and said his first Gallipoli visit had been on his bucket list as something he had to do. 'It's an emotional thing, I think it's an Aussie thing that you have to come here and make that connection,' Mr Lowe said. Mr Lowe said walking along the gravestones at the Lone Pine cemetery he was struck by the young ages of so many who had fallen. 'I had a tear in my eye and I'm sure I'm going to shed a few more tears before I leave here.' Members of the New Zealand Army attend the dawn service at the Auckland Museum A woman carries a photo of a loved one lost in war during the ANZAC parade. Marking the centenary of the Gallipoli landings in Sydney on April 25, 2016. Thousands attended moving dawn services and parades in Australia, marking April 25, 1915 when the Anzacs stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula Friends and family take the time to remember those lost in war. Thousands ignored terror threats and thunder storm to mark the occasion at Anzac Cove in Gallipolli A man is being treated by paramedics after he collapsed on railway tracks in Melbourne and was narrowly missed by an oncoming train. The man collapsed onto the tracks on the Craigieburn line on Monday just before midday. Victoria Police spokesman Senior Constable Alistair Parsons said a medical issue caused the man to fall onto the tracks as the train was arriving at Craigieburn railway station. A man collapsed on the railway tracks in Melbourne and was narrowly missed by an oncoming train The ABC reported the man managed to roll out of the way of an oncoming train. He ended up between the platform and the train and has no serious injuries. Ambulance Victoria spokesman Paul Bentley said the man was freed and paramedics treated him at the scene. Mr Bentley said he had been taken to the Northern Hospital in a stable condition. The man collapsed onto the tracks on the Craigieburn line on Monday just before midday Victoria Police said a medical issue caused the man to fall onto the tracks as the train was arriving at Craigieburn railway station The man reportedly managed to roll off the tracks out of the way of an oncoming train Hillary Clinton has rejected an endorsement from multi-billionaire businessman Charles Koch after he declared she might make a better president than any of the GOP candidates. Yesterday Mr Koch, a Republican party donor branded Donald Trump and Ted Cruz 'terrible role models' and said a Clinton presidency could be better for the GOP. In the revealing interview with ABC News, he also said it was 'possible' that Clinton would be a better alternative than anything the Republicans offer. Hillary Clinton, left, who has rejected an endorsement from multi-billionaire businessman Charles Koch, who said she might make a better president than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz However, since the interview the Democratic candidate has taken to Twitter to slam Mr Koch for his declaration and the businessman's stance on climate change. She wrote on her official account: 'Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote.' Clinton's comments on Mr Koch's position on climate change come after claims three years ago that he was involved in a secretive funding organization to undermine the science of global warming. In the interview broadcast yesterday, Mr Koch appeared to praise Clinton but added: 'We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way.' Clinton's comments on Mr Koch's position on climate change come after claims three years ago that he was involved in a secretive funding organization to undermine the science of global warming Clinton snaps selfies with supporters during a campaign stop at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut In a scathing attack on Trump and Cruz, Mr Koch said he could not back either candidate unless they backtracked on some of their controversial policies. The businessman singled out Cruz's vow to carpet bomb ISIS in the Middle East and Trump's ban on Muslim immigrants as policies he could not support. 'That's gotta be hyperbole, but I mean that a candidate - whether they believe it or not - would think that appeals to the American people. This is frightening,' Mr Koch said. 'What was worse was this "we'll have them all registered",' he added as he lambasted Trump's plans on Muslims. 'That's reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I mean, that's monstrous as I said at the time.' He also laid into the tit-for-tat nature of this cycle's Republican presidential race, which has seen Trump and Cruz engage in a row in Twitter over each other's wives. 'These personal attacks and pitting one person against the other - that's the message you're sending the country,' Koch said. 'You're role models and you're terrible role models. So I don't know how we could support them.' In a scathing attack on Trump and Cruz, Koch said he could not back either candidate unless they backtracked on some of their controversial policies In the interview on ABC news, Mr Koch also said that Mrs Clinton's husband Bill, pictured, was a better president than George W. Bush The party donor also said neither he, his brother David Koch nor their firm Koch Industries had given any money to either campaign. He added that Bill Clinton may have been a better president than George W. Bush 'I mean [Clinton] wasn't an exemplar,' Koch said. 'But as far as the growth of government, the increase in spending. It was 2.5 times [more] under Bush than it was under Clinton.' As a Donald Trump supporter, Nedal Tamer feels he's in the minority among Muslim-Americans, comfortable with his choice yet somewhat confounded that he doesn't have more company. Small numbers of Muslims find comfort, not concern, in Trump's strong stance on immigrants. They see it as proof that the Republican presidential front-runner could better contain extremists than other candidates. 'People have the wrong idea, even Arabs and Muslims,' said Tamer, 40, who works in real estate and construction and lives in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, which is known for its large Arab and Muslim population. 'I like the fact that he's a little nuts. He's got the good heart, he cares about America.' Nedal Tamer feels that, as a supporter of Donald Trump, he is in the minority among Muslim Americans. He's comfortable with his position, yet a little confounded that he doesn't have more company In heavily Arab and Muslim Dearborn, many support Democrat Bernie Sanders (left), far fewer supported Republican frontrunner Donald Trump (right) The discomfort that many Muslims have with the outspoken billionaire businessman comes from his suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering the United States. Trump also has said the U.S. should stop the flow of refugees from countries where the Islamic State group has a significant presence. For some, it's hardest to reconcile Trump's statement that 'Islam hates the West.' The Associated Press spoke to a number of Muslims who back Trump, some of whom declined to be interviewed. Tamer was born in Lebanon and immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1990s from the United Arab Emirates. He said Trump is speaking about extremists, such as the Islamic State group and those it inspires, not all followers of the religion. 'Many times, Trump has said, 'Not all Muslims' he's not talking about all Muslims,' said Tamer, a Republican. 'He says there are certain people. ... We've seen what's happening. I don't think anybody would agree with what ISIS is doing,' Tamer said, using an acronym for the extremist group. 'He says, 'We have to stop ISIS now, immediately.' ' In heavily Arab and Muslim Dearborn, many support Democrat Bernie Sanders, and people in those communities helped turn the tide toward him last month in the state's primary. A small number of Muslims find comfort, not concern, in Trump's strong stance on immigrants seeing it as proof he could better contain extremists than other candidates Nedal Tamer is interviewed inside a house he is renovating in Dearborn, Mich. Tamer feels that, as a supporter of Donald Trump's bid for the presidency, he is in the minority among Muslim Americans Sally Howell, an associate professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of several books on Arabs and Muslims in Detroit, described them as a small demographic overall but certainly a factor in Sanders' Michigan victory over rival Hillary Clinton. It helped that he came to Dearborn to court them. 'It's not all about the Middle East (issues) it was young people, people who care about bread-and-butter issues: the economy, health insurance, quality of schools and policing,' she said. 'They were the swing vote in Michigan. Any group can claim that, but I think Arabs and Muslims considered themselves to have really made the difference.' That's not stopping some Muslims from organizing on behalf of the GOP and, by extension, Trump. Last fall, Saba Ahmed founded the Republican Muslim Coalition in the nation's capital and seeks to establish a presence nationwide. 'We will be supporting whoever the Republican nominee ends up being. And we are hopeful of Trump's business background, and that he would be able to use that to turn the economy around,' she said. Ahmed, a lawyer, said she has a lot of Muslim friends who are Democrats. But in her view, 'Islamic values align with Republican values,' and her list includes opposing abortion and backing traditional marriage. She acknowledges that coalition members are 'very much concerned' by some of Trump's 'very absurd comments,' but counters that some of what he says is 'overblown.' 'Trump knows he can't win the general election with that type of hatred and those types of comments,' she said. 'So going forward, things will look different.' Some Arabs and Muslims not in the Trump camp have expressed tentative support for his comments related to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has said he would attempt to be 'neutral,' though he recently told a gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he is 'a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel.' Osama Siblani, publisher of the influential Arab American News, said Trump's supporters Muslim or otherwise believe he is an 'independent thinker' who 'will do the right thing at the end of the day.' Siblani added that Trump has business enterprises all over the world, including in Arab Gulf nations, which supporters believe should mute concerns over Islamophobia. Still, Trump is neither Siblani's personal preference nor his paper's. The Dearborn-based publication, which supported George W. Bush in 2000, has endorsed Sanders. 'I believe Trump is playing on ignorance and cashing in on fear,' Siblani said. Both Ahmed and Tamer said their pro-Republican or pro-Trump positions have led to disagreements and even arguments with other Muslims, but Ahmed said that merely speaks to wide diversity among followers of Islam. Hopes are growing that a deal to allow up to 3,000 Chagos islanders back to the tropical paradise they were forced to leave 50 years ago could be closer after David Cameron and Barack Obama discussed the issue over the weekend. The islands, in the Indian Ocean, were cleared of their inhabitants when the massive Diego Garcia air base was leased to the US by Britain in return for a $11m (7.65m) discount on buying Polaris nuclear missiles. A Downing Street spokesman told Mail Online on Monday: 'The PM raised the issue of the British Indian Overseas Territory with the President in the context of the governments ongoing review of resettlement. 'We are currently considering responses to the recent public consultation and will set out next steps in due course.' MP Henry Smith handing in a petition at 10 Downing Street with members of the Chagos island community, many of whom live in his Crawley constituency. David Cameron discussed the issue with Barack Obama at the weekend The lease runs out in December this year and supporters of the Chagossians' campaign believe a deal could be in the offing which would allow them to return. Many of the Chagossians ended up living in Crawley, West Sussex, because it was close to Gatwick airport, where many of them landed from Mauritius. Crawley's Conservative MP Henry Smith asked Mr Cameron last week if he would be bringing up the subject of Diego Garcia with President Obama during his visit. Residents of the island of Diego Garcia (pictured) were removed in the 1960s and 70s to make way for a US military base. They now hope to return to the island, located in British Indian Ocean Territory Mr Cameron confirmed he would and Mr Smith told Mail Online: 'Obama will not president after January and Cameron is not seeking re-election at the next election and I think it would be a good legacy for both of them to allow the right to return of these people.' Ben Fogle, patron of the UK Chagos Support Association, agreed and said Mr Cameron and Mr Obama should 'seize this opportunity to make history and end half a century of injustice suffered by the Chagossian people'. Foreign Office Minister James Duddridge said recently in a reply to a parliamentary question: 'We have been clear that we want to see US presence continue. 'No decisions have yet been made about whether and when to have discussions with the US about their continued presence on Diego Garcia.' The Chagos Islands are a tiny archipelago in the Indian Ocean but they are strategically located. The Diego Garcia air base was used during US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conspiracy theorists also claimed the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 was taken there Mr Smith said: 'I can understand the need for the US to retain the air base but people live around military bases all over the world and there is no security risk with them returning to their homeland. 'In fact there is an irony in that the bases are supported by civilians from the Philippines who are usually brought in on six-month contracts.' Last week Mr Cameron said: 'The National Security Council and the Cabinet have been looking at the situation of the Chagos islanders and reviewing all the options for how we can help with their future. Those discussions have taken place and obviously we need to come to a conclusion about the best way forward.' In 2000 the High Court ruled that Chagossians were wrongly evicted and should be able to return to their homes in the archipelago, with the exception of Diego Garcia itself. Chagos Islanders, supported by Labour MP John McDonnell, protesting outside Parliament back in 2008. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also supported their right to return to the islands But four years later the government used the royal prerogative - exercised by ministers in the Queen's name - to nullify the decision. The Chagossians have continued to appeal to the courts and last year the UK Supreme Court heard an appeal that focused on a feasibility study into how difficult it would be to allow the Chagossians to resettle in the islands. The Foreign Office meanwhile commissioned a new feasibility study from KPMG which found they could be resettled for as little as 66m. Diego Garcia's position makes it an ideal location for US operations in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian sub-continent. It was used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US want to retain it Although most of the Chagossians in Britain were born in the UK and have never set foot on the islands around 98 per cent have said they are in favour of returning to the archipelago, which is officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. Mr Smith said: 'The figure of 66m is a drop in the ocean really. The US have benefited and the least they can do if facilitate the right to return. They have a moral duty and the financial capability to right a decade-old wrong.' Stefan Donnelly, chairman of the UK Chagos Support Association, told Mail Online: 'Nearly all US military bases around the world have civilian populations nearby. 'Diego Garcia has around 1,000 civilian support staff. Most of them are on temporary contracts from the Philippines but there is no reason why Chagossians could not do most of those jobs.' Chagos islanders protesting in London in 2008 (pictured), when the government won an appeal against a ruling that allowed displaced islanders to return to their Indian Ocean home He pointed out that many of the islands which were abandoned by the islanders, such as Ile Boddam and the Salomon Atoll, are about 100 miles away from Diego Garcia and he said it made no sense to ban people as a security risk. Sabrina Jean, chairman of Chagos Refugees UK, said: 'We are still waiting for the UK Supreme Court judgement after the hearing in June 2015 but we are hopeful.' Ms Jean was born in Mauritius, shortly after her parents were forced to leave the island of Peros Banos in 1973, and she says most second and third generation Chagossians want to return, although some want to visit first before deciding. She said the island used to have a vibrant economy based on farming and fishing and she said there was no reason why it could not flourish again, especially considering the US air base. The islanders were forced out between 1965 and 1973 after a behind-closed-doors deal between British prime minister Harold Wilson and President Lyndon Johnson. Under the terms of the 1966 lease the US have an option to extend the lease for 20 years in December 2016. Daniel Knox, 29, from Manchester, (pictured outside court) has been fined after being caught using fake plates and having no insurance A playboy dubbed 'The Ferrari man' for showing off his 115,000 convertible around town to get free drinks has been fined after being caught using fake plates and having no insurance. Father-of-one Daniel Knox, 29, from Manchester, regularly drove his red California convertible around Manchester city centre fitted with a fraudulent number plate '1 DK' created in a garage as a 'vanity' project. Knox came to attention of police after a traffic warden saw his car parked up on a double yellow line outside the Living Room bar and after running a check on the plates discovered they in fact belonged to a Rolls Royce. Officers were called and impounded the vehicle before towing it away on a flatbed truck. It emerged the owner of the actual plates, worth 40,000, lived in Preston, Lancashire, and had been receiving speeding and parking fines intended for Knox and his Ferrari. When asked by a court why he had bought the Ferrari and had the fake plates made up, Knox said: 'When I went into Manchester with the car and the plate, clubs, bars and restaurants wanted the car outside the premises so people would photograph it and then circulate the pictures via Instagram and social media. 'I got free entry and a booth in the seating area with free drinks for the people I was with. The car was quite well-known around Manchester. At Manchester Magistrates Court Knox was fined 850 for fraudulently using a registration mark and permitting the use of a vehicle with no insurance. He was also ordered to pay 550 prosecution costs and a victim surcharge of 52. He no longer owns the Ferrari. The court heard that on October 4 last year Knox's 2011 Ferrari, which retails at around 155,000 when new, was snapped speeding on the A62 in Manchester at 3am. A speeding ticket was sent to the legitimate owner of the '1 DK' plate, with Knox later claiming his false version had been made up at a garage. Knox, who runs the Carmovers dealership in Glossop, Derbyshire, bought the Ferrari on finance in Northern Ireland six weeks before it was seized. It emerged the owner of the actual plate, worth 40,000, lived in Preston, Lancashire, and had been receiving speeding and parking fines intended for Knox and his Ferrari. Pictured, a police speed camera image of Knox's Ferrari caught speeding on the A62 near Manchester It was purchased in his girlfriend's name because 'it looks a lot better' when it is sold, he said. Knox paid the fines sent to the Rolls Royce owner when he was booked by police. Prosecuting, Vincent Yip told Knox: 'There is no way of tracing this car back to you. You could park anywhere you want - double yellow lines - and not have to pay a parking ticket.' Addressing the bench, Mr Yip added: 'He has used the plate for vanity reasons and also to avoid prosecution for speeding tickets and parking fines. 'This is a man who sought to deceive people on multiple levels. 'Not only the police and council, but potential buyers of the car and the owners of the club who are in one form being deceived.' In his defence, Knox said the '1 DK' plate was made up as a 'show plate' to take to supercar meet-ups and for use when parked outside bars. Prosecutor Vincent Yip told Knox: 'There is no way of tracing this car back to you. You could park anywhere you want - double yellow lines - and not have to pay a parking ticket.' Pictured, Daniel Knox leaving Manchester magistrates court He said: 'I bought it for promotional reasons to get interest in my business and to sell cars off the back of it. It makes customers a lot more comfortable to buy other vehicles off me when I have that in stock. ''1 DK' is a show plate. That's its purpose. I didn't know it was registered. 'I don't deal with the exchange of plates as I'm dyslexic. 'It definitely wasn't fraud, it was a total mistake and I'm well aware of how much I shouldn't have done it. 'It was silly and stupid but there was no intention there whatsoever to gain anything or cause anybody harm. 'His lawyer Fiona Wise said in mitigation: 'He is a foolish young man but one who hasn't troubled the court in his life and won't in the future.' Sentencing Chair of the Bench Harry Brett said: 'Your version of events was not totally credible. 'As a car dealer you should have been fully aware of changing number plates and the use of false number plates and this can only have been undertaken with an attempt to deceive.' Comes after pilot reported drone hitting his BA flight into Heathrow Police considering using 'death rays' to stop drones flying above airports Police chiefs are considering using military-strength 'death rays' to shut down drones which fly into restricted London air space. It comes as officers from the Metropolitan Police continue to investigate an incident last week which saw the pilot of an Airbus A320 reporting the plane had been hit by 'a drone'. The incident took place above Richmond Park as it approached Heathrow airport, with 137 people on board. The plane was at 1,700ft at the time - the legal maximum height for UK drones is 400ft. Officers from the Met Police continue to investigate an incident last week which saw the pilot of an Airbus A320 report the plane had been hit by 'a drone' as it approached Heathrow (file picture) In the last year alone the number of near misses has increased dramatically with pilots flying into Heathrow, City, Gatwick and Stanstead airport reporting seeing the remote controlled drones. The Evening Standard reports that the National Police Chiefs' Council would not reveal specific details about counter measures being tested, but confirmed they were 'working with partners to better understand the threat posed by drones and to develop an appropriate technical response'. One of those measures is believed to be an anti-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system, which the government has already trialled using military-grade technology which is used in Afghanistan. The portable system can spot small, slow-moving drones up to four miles away using radar. A military-grade camera then tracks it before jamming the radio signals that control it with a 'death ray', making it impossible to fly. Police chiefs are considering using military-strength 'death rays' to shut down drones which fly into restricted London air space above airports The whole process using the 700,000 device can take as little as 15 seconds Last year the Daily Mail reported the device enjoyed a successful trial at Londons Remembrance Sunday parade. The system was installed on the roof of Scotland Yard, close to where the commemoration took place the first time it has been deployed by police in the UK. The equipment was designed and built by a British consortium and can detect, track and intercept small unmanned aerial vehicles. The device was trialled amid mounting concern that terrorists could use drones to launch attacks using explosives or chemical or biological material - but it could end up being used to prevent drones flying into restricted airspace. Following the success on Remembrance Sunday, a source said at the time: The Met really liked how the trial went and it worked with the rest of the security operation. Mark Radford, chief executive of one of the trio of firms, Blighter Surveillance Systems, told The Standard: 'It allows us effectively to take control of that drone to control whether we force a crash landing or return it home to the take off site so the police or security forces can intercept the operator. 'One of the scenarios is use at airports and in urban areas.' A young woman was stabbed and stripped naked before her body was thrown into a blowhole in a remote national park at a notorious fishing spot north of Sydney. Homicide Squad detectives have been called in to investigate the suspected murder of the woman. She is Asian, aged between 20 and 35 and about 170cm tall. Her body was seen floating face down at Snapper Point in the Lake Munmorah State Conservation Area, on Sunday morning at about 10.30am. Scroll down for video Homicide Squad detectives (pictured) have been called in to investigate the suspected murder of the woman A woman's body has been found floating face down in a notorious blow hole at Snapper Point in the Central Coast 'It is a fairly lonely and remote place, Detective Inspector Gary Jubelin of the NSW Homicide Squad said on Sunday. 'Our first priority is to identify the woman and then establish how she ended up in such a lonely place and who is responsible at this stage it's a real mystery. The Westpac Rescue Helicopter winched a crewman into the water to assist the officers in the removal of the body. Police are still waiting for the autopsy to be completed to determine the cause of death - the woman has not been identified Her body was seen floating face down at Snapper Point pictured) in the Lake Munmorah State Conservation Area, on Sunday morning at about 10.30am Police attached to Tuggerah Lakes Local Area Command have since established a crime scene and commenced an investigation. Police are still waiting for the autopsy to be completed to determine the cause of death - the woman has not been identified. Police are appealing for information from the public as they continue their investigations. In particular, police would like to hear from anyone who has visited the National Park in recent days. Anthony Lanier Kelly, 36, has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Melinda Searight, 42 A mother-of-three was beaten to death in her home, while her daughters got ready for school in their rooms. Melinda Searight, 42, from Irondale, Alabama was killed by her boyfriend, Anthony Lanier Kelly, 36, after he hit her in the head with an unidentified weapon on Friday. He then told her children that he would be spending the rest of his life in jail, before fleeing the house. Police were called to the apartment complex at just after 6am on Friday morning after reports of a domestic incident. Ms Searight was found unresponsive on her bedroom floor, and pronounced dead at the scene after being repeatedly struck in the head. According to Ms Searight's mother, Doris Doss, the eldest daughter, 15, heard the couple arguing while she was getting ready for school with her 13-year-old twin sisters. Shortly after, Kelly came into the girl's room and said: 'I guess I'm going to spend the rest of my life in jail.' Talking to Alabama Local, Ms Doss explained that she received a call from the 15-year-old at around 6.30am. She said: 'I was at work and she called me screaming. She said grandma, she's bleeding from the head.' The daughters then called 911 and were taken in by neighbours at another apartment. Ms Doss is still unaware as to why the incident happened. The pair had dated in 2010 but had recently rekindled their romance and Ms Doss said she had never known them to get into a 'physical altercation.' However, Kelly handed himself in to law enforcement officers on Friday evening at the county jail and was then handed over to Irondale police. He was formally charged with murder on Saturday. Ms Searight was found unresponsive on her bedroom floor, and pronounced dead at the scene after being repeatedly struck in the head Police have confirmed that Ms Searight died after she was repeatedly hit in the head. They are yet to identify the weapon, but her family suspect that she may have been killed with an implement that Ms Searight carried round with her for protection, which they described as a martial-arts-like steel ball wrapped in cording and attached to a chain. Talking to the paper, Detective Sergeant Michael Mangina, gave a message of reassurance. He said: 'This was not a random act and I do not believe the public is in any danger.' Visibly upset friends and family gathered outside Ms Searight's second-story apartment on Friday morning. Ms Searight's mother, Doris Doss, (pictured) said the eldest daughter, 15, heard the couple arguing while she was getting ready for school However, Ms Doss said she was struggling to come to terms with her daughter's death. She said: 'She was a beautiful, smart, intelligent girl. Hamid Khazaei, 24, died 13 days after a cut on his leg became infected on Australia's offshore immigration detention centre Manus Island A gravely ill asylum seeker's evacuation from a detention centre was delayed by 30 hours because an official had gone home for the day without checking his emails, it has been claimed. Hamid Khazaei, 24, died 13 days after a cut on his leg became infected on Australia's offshore immigration detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island. The Iranian suffered three heart attacks went into the early stages of brain death before he was moved to Australia for medical treatment. It took almost five hours for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to respond to the initial evacuation request, ABC's Four Corners is set to reveal. And when Mr Khazaei was moved on 26 August 2014, it was to Port Moresby hospital in Papua New Guinea, rather than directly to a Brisbane hospital, as suggested by a senior doctor. Dr Stewart Condon, who is now the president of Medicins San Frontieres Australia, has spoken of his frustration that his recommendation was ignored. 'That's certainly something that I strongly felt about some of these cases, that our recommendation to move to Port Moresby was inadequate,' Dr Condon said. 'Knowing the level of medical care available in Port Moresby and knowing that many of the similar cases we worked around the world would move to a place like Brisbane.' An inquest previously heard that doctors on Manus started treating the 24-year-old with intravenous antibiotics for the infection on August 23. But the antibiotics available on Manus Island were unable to stop the infection and it rapidly progressed to septicaemia. By the time doctors recommended for him to be transferred, he was already delirious and suffering from deteriorating lung function, counsel assisting the coroner, Emma Cooper, previously said. The Iranian suffered three heart attacks went into the early stages of brain death on Australia's offshore immigration detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island (pictured) Mr Khazaei was pronounced dead at Brisbane's Mater Hospital on 5 September 2014 after a week on life support. The delay in action, which came about after an official failed to check his email, has been labelled as 'pathetic' by Australian Medical Association president Dr Brian Owler. Mr Khazaei had been detained on Manus Island since September 6 the previous year, after about a month in detention on Christmas Island. His death is being investigated by the Queensland coroner with a pre-inquest hearing scheduled for June 10 this year. Advertisement Prince Harry has laid a wreath during a dawn service at Wellington Arch to mark the start of Anzac Day commemorations in the UK. Thousands of people waited in the dark before the start of proceedings, which marked 100 years since the day was first marked in London. Anzac Day has been commemorated in the capital since the first anniversary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli in 1916, when King George V attended a service at Westminster Abbey. Scroll down for video Prince Harry pictured at Wellington Arch this morning where he laid a wreath in memory of Australian and New Zealand servicemen The Prince looked solemn as he laid down the wreath of poppies in tribute to those who lost their lives at Gallipoli in World War One Anzac Day was originally created to honour the fallen at Gallipoli but has since been extended to commemorate every man and woman from Australia and New Zealand who have fought in wars The Prince stands alongside saluting military officials as the memorial ceremony continues at the Hyde Park Corner monument Prince Harry, who served in Afghanistan on two tours of duty, is seen wearing his medals as he pays his respects to the fallen Since then, the services have become an important moment for thousands of expatriate and visiting New Zealanders and Australians, who honour the sacrifices of their countrymen and women in all wars. Harry laid a wreath at the memorial at Hyde Park Corner, followed by the New Zealand and Australian high commissioners and other dignitaries. Addressing the gathered crowds, Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the UK, said: 'When we reflect on Anzac Day we imagine the Gallipoli landings, what it must have been like, at dawn on the water, in sight of that rugged shoreline - and a collectively held breath, a leaden silence about to be broken. 'We consider the enthusiasm, the courage, and the heroism of the Anzac troops - ordinary men fighting for God, King and empire, for their mates, for adventure, for a world without war.' Prince Harry, left, also took some time to talk to the Very Reverend John R Hall, Dean of Westminster, about the day's importance He was then introduced to Westminster Abbey dignitaries by the Very Rev Hall, centre, before the memorial service began The Prince and the Dean formed part of a procession through the abbey to start the service with a large congregation watching on Prince Harry, left, sat at the front of the abbey, listening to the readings and in participating in the hymns and prayers He added that the full meaning of Anzac Day was best encapsulated in an open letter from Australian poet Banjo Patterson to the Anzac troops in the Dardenelles in 1915. It starts: 'Australia takes her pen in hand. To write a line to you, to let you fellows understand. How proud we are of you...' Harry will later attend a parade at the Cenotaph, where he will lay a wreath on behalf of the Queen, and a service of commemoration and thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey. Later in the morning, at the wreath laying and parade service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, Harry will lay a wreath on behalf of the Queen. The Prince, left, went on to Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath, right, on behalf of his grandmother The Queen at a remembrance service The Prince respectfully bowed his head during a solemn moment while members of the armed forces saluted the memories of lost soldiers Anzac Day has been commemorated in the capital since the first anniversary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli in 1916, when King George V attended a service at Westminster Abbey. Since then, the services have become an important moment for thousands of New Zealanders and Australians, who honour the sacrifices of their countrymen and women in all wars. The day's events concluded at the historic church with a commemoration and thanksgiving service. It was led by the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, the Dean of Westminster, and incorporated an Act of Remembrance and a reading of Kemal Ataturk's words from Anzac Cove by the Turkish Ambassador to the UK, Abdurrahman Bilgic. A war veteran gives a high five to a boy as he participates in the annual Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) parade in Sydney Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Australia for parades and services honouring current and former servicemen and women, such as this crowd in Sydney Harry sat at the front of the abbey, listening to the readings and in participating in the hymns and prayers. Earlier he attended a ceremony at the Cenotaph, where he laid a wreath on behalf of the Queen. Up to 400 people took part in the parade, including members of veterans' associations, service and ex-service personnel and their families. Crowds lined the streets to watch the ceremony which and fell silent to mark one minute of silence after the Last Post was sounded. Schoolchildren from Australia and New Zealand read prayers at each service, and the national anthems of the UK, Australia and New Zealand were also featured. Mother Nicola said she'd consider having fifth baby if James wasn't match Abby, now 11, hasn't relapsed and James' cells are at a Melbourne hospital James was born in 2008 and family have received backlash for decision If treatment did not work, stem cells from baby could be harvested for Abby During chemotherapy her parents discussed option of having another child A couple who decided to have another baby to potentially provide a lifesaving stem cell transplant for their daughter with leukaemia, have said they would 'do anything' to save their child's life. Abby Walker, from Melbourne, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in July 2006 when she was just two-years-old after suffering nose bleeds, back pain, lethargy and bruising. After watching their little girl undergo an intensive round of chemotherapy Nicole and Jim Walker began to discuss the option of having a second child to harvest cord blood stem cells from in case Abby's treatment failed. 'A lot of people believe that maybe you're playing God, playing with the stem cells, but I believe that anyone would do anything to save their child if put in that position,' Mr Walker told the ABC's Australian Story on Monday night. Scroll down for video A couple (pictured with daughter Abby and son James) who decided to have another baby to potentially provide a lifesaving stem cell transplant for their daughter with leukaemia, have said they would 'do anything' to save their child's life Abby Walker (pictured with baby brother James in 2008) was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in July 2006 when she was just two-years-old Even though senior oncologist, Dr Peter Downie said the toddler had an 80 per cent chance of survival after chemotherapy, the couple, who already had three children including Abby, decided to continue with their 'backup plan'. 'If they have the child and the stem cells are not a match and they've done that specifically, what happens now? Do you do it again?' Dr Downie told the program. 'It's not just a question of, you know, squirting the stem cells in. It doesn't work like that. 'It's still a very intensive program and then there's the risk that the new stem cells don't work or that they can even reject the person.' The Walkers, originally from Coatbridge in Scotland, said they always hoped to have a fourth child, but Abby's condition meant the process was 'hurried'. The stem cells were harvested when baby James was born on May 5, 2008 and are currently stored at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. Dr Downie said there was only a 25 per cent chance James' cells would match Abby's. After watching their little girl undergo an intensive round of chemotherapy Nicole and Jim Walker (pictured) began to discuss the option of having a second child to harvest cord blood stem cells from in case Abby's treatment failed The Walkers, originally from Coatbridge in Scotland, said they always hoped to have a fourth child, but Abby's condition meant the process was 'hurried' Even though she is now in remission, Abby (pictured), now 11, continues to see a doctor once a year to monitor for any lasting cognitive issues caused by chemotherapy Abby (pictured with friends) has a very slim chance of relapse and is currently cancer-free Doctors will only test them if Abby relapses and requires a transplant in the future. Mr Walker said he does not want to 'tempt fate' by finding out if James' cells are a match with Abby's. But Ms Walker would like to know for 'peace of mind'. The couple have received a share of backlash for their choice to have James in the circumstances, but continue to stand by the decision. 'There were a few people who were against it, the fact that this baby may be brought into the world and made to think that it was born just in order to help Abby,' Ms Walker said. 'There were a few people who were against it, the fact that this baby may be brought into the world and made to think that it was born just in order to help Abby,' Ms Walker (right) said The stem cells were harvested when baby James (pictured) was born on May 5, 2008 and are currently stored at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne Doctors will only test the stem cells if Abby relapses and requires a transplant in the future Neither parent know if James' stem cells are a match with Abby's (pictured) and Mr Walker does not want to 'tempt fate' by finding out Mr and Ms Walker (pictured) have received a share of backlash for their choice to have James in the circumstances, but continue to stand by the decision Ms Walker said if Abby were to relapse and James' cells were not a match, she would consider having a fifth child. 'I can't see any more children in the foreseeable future. I think four is plenty. But if it did come down to it and Abby needed a transplant and the other three were not suitable then I would consider another baby,' she said. Abby, now 11, continues to see Dr Downie once a year to monitor for any lasting cognitive issues caused by chemotherapy. Dr Downie said he would be 'gobsmacked' if the 11-year-old's cancer was to return. Abby, now 11, continues to see Dr Peter Downie (pictured) once a year to monitor for any lasting cognitive issues caused by chemotherapy Dr Downie said he would be 'gobsmacked' if the 11-year-old's cancer was to return Ms Walker said if Abby were to relapse and James' cells were not a match, she would consider having a fifth child Jeremy Corbyn faces the prospect of leading Labour to its worst local election defeats in opposition in 34 years, a polling expert warned today. The Labour leader is behind in the polls and is expected to lose scores of seats - with professor John Curtice warning being behind by four points nationally would suggest 220 losses. A ComRes poll published earlier this month suggested the Tories were on 35 per cent compared to Labour on 30 per cent. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, left at the weekend, faces losing as many council seats as Michael Foot, pictured right at a Labour conference, did in 1982 - the worst performance in opposition in 34 years Michael Foot lost 225 seats in his second year as Opposition leader in 1982, a year before he lead Labour to a devastating general election defeat in 1983. In his first year as Opposition leader - more comparable to Mr Corbyn's current position - Mr Foot gained almost 1,000 seats in May 1981. Opponents of Mr Corbyn could cite poor results as a reason for Labour to change its leader just seven months after the left-wing veteran's improbable landslide win. Labour is also expected to face setbacks in Scotland and Wales at next Thursday's elections. Sadiq Khan is on course to provide the only bright spot for Labour as polling suggests he is comfortably ahead in the race for London's City Hall. Professor Curtice told the Telegraph Mr Corbyn faced a stiff challenge partly because he was defending seats last contested in 2012 - a year Labour enjoyed big leads in the wake of George Osborne's 'omnishambles' Budget. He said: 'Given that Labour are currently still behind in the polls, albeit less than a few weeks ago, it seems almost inevitable that Labour will lose council seats on May 5th. 'Such an outcome will simply confirm that as yet at least, Mr Corbyn has yet to find a formula that makes Labour look as though it could return to power.' Analysis by Professor John Curtice suggests if Labour is four per cent behind on May 5, it will lose 220 seats while if it is two points behind it will lose 170 seats. Even if he pulls level, Mr Corbyn faces 120 losses Former shadow defence minister Kevan Jones told the paper: 'This would be very grim news for the Labour party and a tragedy for hundreds of hard working Labour councillors whose fate the national leadership would have to take some responsibility for.' THE WORST LABOUR LEADER EVER? HOW CORBYN AND FOOT COMPARE Jeremy Corbyn Michael Foot Seats change Up to 220 losses? 988 gains (1981) 225 losses (1982) April poll Con 35, Lab 30 Con 30, Lab 38 MPs defending 232 of 650 269 of 635 The table shows council seats which changed hands at the first local elections fought, the April polling in the first year after election as Labour leader and the number of Commons seats won by Labour at the previous general election Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, a senior member of the 2015 intake, warned last week that a failure to make progress would mean 'remedial action' was necessary. He told the House magazine: 'I've always said that as a party from top to bottom, from the leadership right through to our grassroots, we have to be judged by our results and, you know, if results are not going the right way you have to examine why that is and take remedial action on it because that's what we're elected to do. 'There's absolutely no doubt that if we win big and do really well moving into 5 May and 23 June then there's no doubt your leadership is strengthened, your party is strengthened, there's wind in our sails and you move forward from there. A former Auschwitz guard who denies being involved in the murder of 170,000 Jews would 'probably' have worked on the ramps where arrivals were chosen to live or die, a trial has heard. Studies into Reinhold Hanning's unit at the notorious death camp show the 94-year-old would have been on duty when trains packed with victims arrived, his trial in Detmold, Germany, was told. The claims were made by Nazi expert Stefan Hordler who was brought in to testify about the kind of tasks Hanning might have performed. Scroll down for video Reinhold Hanning (pictured), 94, who denies murdering 170,000 Jews would 'probably' have worked on the dreaded ramps where arrivals were chosen to live or die, a trial has heard Hanning is accused of being complicit in the genocide of 170,000 people during his service as a guard at Auschwitz in occupied Poland during the Second World War. He has not said a word in court during the trial which began in February as prosecutors said what occurred in Auschwitz where at least 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazis. Prosecutor Andreas Brendl said: 'He was a part of the system that made the camp function.' Now Hordler's evidence may force him to speak. 'The deported people arrived on freight trains at the ramp and were sorted: some were killed in the gas chambers, the others were assigned to forced labour,' he said. 'It is very likely that he was a member of the unit that was on the ramp. His company was very active in the so-called Hungary-action when, from may until July 1944, more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and 300,000 of them were murdered.' Studies into Reinhold Hanning's unit at the notorious death camp (pictured in 1945) show the 94-year-old would have been on duty when trains packed with victims arrived, his trial in Detmold, Germany, was told He was an SS Unterscharfuehfrer - junior squad commander, roughly translating to a lance corporal in the British Army - from 1943 to 1944. In a handwritten CV he produced for his superiors while at the camp, he wrote: 'From the day of my release from apprenticeship I worked in a factory. I joined the Hitler youth on 20.4.1935. On the 25.7.1940 I joined as a volunteer in the Waffen-S.S.' The Waffen S.S. was the fighting arm of the organisation. As a soldier on active service he took part in the invasions of The Netherlands and France, and later fought in Yugoslavia and Russia. His CV continued: 'I was wounded in the east on the 20.09.1941. On the 21.1.43 I was transferred to the S.S at Auschwitz.' There he worked, according to the indictment of the prosecutor in Dortmund, as a camp guard. He has admitted to being there but, through his lawyer, denies participation in genocide. In July last year 94-year-old former Auschwitz camp book keeper Oskar Groening (pictured) - responsible for collating and shipping back to Berlin the possessions of the dead - was found guilty of participation in the murders of 300,000 people and sentenced to four years in jail In July last year 94-year-old former Auschwitz camp book keeper Oskar Groening - responsible for collating and shipping back to Berlin the possessions of the dead - was found guilty of participation in the murders of 300,000 people and sentenced to four years in jail. Groening never denied being at Auschwitz and admitted to the world it was an extermination camp where inmates were not expected to survive. He has not served a day behind bars as legal wrangling over the sentence and his advanced age continue. Photographer had been with the Monterey Bay Whale Watch team as group tried to spot Advertisement This is the astonishing moment a hungry killer whale toyed with a seal and sent it flying into the air, before snapping it up for its lunch. The massive mammal was pictured bursting out of the water with its catch in Monterey Bay, California, by photographer and whale enthusiast, Jodi Frediani. The 67-year-old had been on a whale watching tour with other sightseers when she spotted the whale thrashing beneath the water. Scroll down for video Making a splash: This is the astonishing moment a hungry killer whale toyed with a seal and sent it flying into the air, before snapping it up for its lunch However, she never expected the killer creature to dramatically leap into the air with its kill. Describing the incredible event, Jodi from Santa Cruz, California, said: 'After watching a humpback whale breach for an hour, we headed off to look for killer whales. 'We were lucky and found them in three scattered groups over the Monterey Submarine Canyon. Seal-ing the deal: The massive mammal was pictured bursting out of the water with its catch in Monterey Bay, California, by photographer and whale enthusiast, Jodi Frediani Killer instinct: The 67-year-old had been on a whale watching tour with other sightseers when she spotted the whale thrashing beneath the water Airborne: Jodi from Santa Cruz, California, said the group had been watching a humpback whale breach for an hour before heading off in search of some killer whales Fin dining: The whale watching group saw the male whale bring one of his powerful flippers out of the water as he rolled on his side tossing a seal in front of him 'Before we knew it, the group we were watching started thrashing about below the surface. 'Next we saw the male bring one of his powerful flippers out of the water as he rolled on his side tossing a seal in front of him. 'Then this whale brought its whole tail out of the water with a female northern elephant cradled on its flukes. Hungry: The whale brought its whole tail out of the water with a female northern elephant seal cradled on its flukes Helpless: The killer whale repeatedly tossed the seal in the air before it finally grabbed the seal by its rear flippers and tossed her one last time Seafood supper: Jodi explained that stunning a prey animal is done as part of a hunting lesson for the juveniles in the group, who are often allowed to make the final kill of the stunned animal 'The poor seal was then tossed through the air. 'This happened again, and finally the killer whale grabbed the seal by its rear flippers and tossed her one last time. 'Stunning a prey animal like this is done as part of a hunting lesson for the juveniles in the group, who are often allowed to make the final kill of the stunned animal. 'This is the second time I've been fortunate to witness this.' Flipped out: The dramatic photos show the poor seal look stunned as it is pulled out of the water by the powerful whale Lying in wait: The pair create quite a splash before the whale returns to the depths of the water The dramatic photos show the poor seal look stunned as it is pulled out of the water by the powerful whale. The pair create quite a splash as the whale repeatedly tosses its prey and returns to the depths of the water. However, the seal continues to spiral helplessly through the air before it lands back in the sea - ready to be eaten by its hungry captor. Final moments: The seal continues to spiral helplessly through the air before it lands back in the sea ready to be eaten by its hungry captor Defenceless: The northern elephant seal is the second largest of the species at 13 feet and weighing around 2,000kg The northern elephant seal is the second largest of the species at 13 feet and weighing around 2,000kg. However, the aquatic mammal looked tiny in comparison to its whale predator. For, killer whales are expected to grow to up to 32 feet and weigh more than 5,000kg. They mainly feast on marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even other whales. A British woman has been left paralysed after being crushed by a horse in a horrific riding accident in Egypt but her family are hoping to raise the money to fly her home. Olivia Fairclough, 31, from Stockton-on-Tees, broke her back when a horse fell on top of her. Miss Fairclough, who was working in Cairo, has been in hospital for a fortnight but her plight was made worse because her travel insurance ran out a few weeks before the accident. Olivia Fairclough (pictured) was a keen horse rider. She suffered a freak injury when a horse crashed on top of her in Cairo, Egypt Her family have been fundraising at a rate of 150 an hour but need 2,500 for an operation in Egypt, 26,000 for an ambulance and 1,000 for other expenses. Her brother Trevor said: 'The horse bolted and knocked her to the ground before it crushed her. 'She woke up screaming and she couldn't breathe or feel her legs. She was taken to hospital in Cairo - her back is broken, but they won't do anything until the money is paid upfront. Olivia Fairclough's brother said she was 'stable' in hospital but not in a good condition. He said she had a lot of pain in her ribs which made it difficult for her to talk on the phone, so they are communicating mainly through Facebook 'She has broken ribs, damage to her spinal cord and a punctured lung. We believe she is going to be wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life. He said she was 'scared' but very grateful to those who had donated money to bring her back to Britain. Mr Fairclough and his parents Grace and Brian have so far raised 23,000 through a Go Fund Me page which was advertised through Facebook. He said: 'It's overwhelming. People, complete strangers, have really come together. It's amazing and just goes to show, what with social media now, you're not completely alone. 'The response has been phenomenal - but we're not out of the woods just yet.' Miss Fairclough went on holiday to Sharm el-Sheikh last year and 'completely fell in love with the place,' according to her brother. Olivia Fairclough (pictured) moved to Egypt last year to get a job in a hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh. But after the downturn in the tourist industry she moved to Cairo and worked in a stables She got a job as a receptionist at the Hilton Hotel but after the tourism industry was hit by the fears of terrorism she moved to Cairo and got a job working in a stables. Mr Fairclough said he sister was 'very bubbly' and excited about her job as she had always loved horses. He said: 'She really is a people person and was teaching kids English while she was over in Cairo. She'd work with disabled children at the stables.' Olivia Fairclough, pictured with her father Brian. Her brother said Olivia felt very isolated and was 'petrified at the thought of becoming permanently paralysed' Mr Fairclough said her family had been 'completely blindsided' by the accident and added: 'You don't think anything like this will ever happen to you and then you get a knock-out punch like this. It's really hard.' Mr Fairclough is flying out to Cairo this week and said he hoped his sister could have an operation she needed later this week. A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'We have visited a British national in hospital in Cairo, Egypt, and will continue to support them however possible.' Buffalo bull mauled one of the lionesses who reportedly died two days later Advertisement This is the moment when a heroic buffalo came to the rescue of a damsel in distress after the cow came under attack from two lionesses. The lions had initially stalked a buffalo calf and the mother had charged at the lions to save her young one, but found herself outnumbered during the battle in Okavango Delta in Botswana. Photographer Wim van den Heever describes how he watched the lions attempting to take down the cow a number of times, but that she was finally 'saved' by a bull from the herd. In a dramatic turn of events, a protective macho buffalo steps in, scaring the lions away and nearly mauling the injured lioness to death - saving the mother's life. Mr van den Heever said the lioness crawled out of the mud and died two days later. Wim, 43, said: 'The bull came and chased the female lions off the mother buffalo, trying to injure them. 'Luckily they escaped, but while he chases them he sees the injured female lion and really finishes her off, by mauling her and pushing her into the mud. I've never witnessed anything like this.' Pick your battles: An attacking buffalo headbutts a lioness during the fierce battle in a river delta in Botswana Outnumbered: The female buffalo had stepped in to protect her calf from the hungry lionesses, but found herself under attack Come at me bro: The lionesses had initially stalked and injured a buffalo calf in Okavango Delta in Botswana Launch: The lionesses went after the calf and its mother as they grazed with the herd of buffalo Two against one: After catching and injuring the young buffalo, the calf's mother came to its rescue Bad move: Despite her heroic efforts to save her young one, the female buffalo soon found herself outnumbered as two lionesses attacked Futile fight: The buffalo was attacked several times by the hungry lionesses before she was 'saved' Struggle: One of the lionesses jumps into the back of the buffalo as other animals watch on Saving grace: In a dramatic turn of events, a protective macho buffalo steps in, scaring the lions away from the female Time to go: The lioness appears to realise that the tables have turned as she makes a run for it Hit: The male buffalo charges at the lioness, mauling it with its horns, and dragging it in the mud Ya filthy animal: One of the lionesses emerges from the water covered in mud and injuries This is the shocking moment 'drunken maniac' driver Ivan Rapsys smashed his speeding BMW into the wall of the Birkenhead tunnel. The 29-year-old can be seen undertaking and swerving between lanes in a series of highly dangerous moves as he races from Wirral towards Liverpool. After narrowly missing a bus, he ploughs the car into a wall in a crash that could have been lethal to both him and other drivers. Reckless: This is the shocking moment 'drunken maniac' driver Ivan Rapsys smashed his speeding BMW into the wall of the Birkenhead tunnel No thought for others: The 29-year-old can be seen undertaking and swerving between lanes in a series of highly dangerous moves as he races from Wirral towards Liverpool Rapsys, of Kirkdale, Merseyside, was twice the legal limit as he drove through the tunnel at around 7pm on Sunday, November 22. Paul Blasbery, prosecuting, said Rapsys was captured on CCTV driving close to the rear of a Fiat car and impatiently passing into the nearside lane. Rapsys then undertook and accelerated past the Fiat before crossing back into the lane in front of it, causing the Fiat to brake. Mr Blasbery said: 'He then drove at a fast speed overtaking a number of vehicles on the inside until he reached a right hand bend. 'The defendant then starts to lose control and the vehicle starts to fishtail.' When asked by police what happened, Rapsys replied: 'Something happened to my vehicle, I couldn't steer it.' The officer could smell alcohol and Rapsys conceded: 'I had a drink this afternoon'. Rapsys was breathalysed and found to have 76 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Losing control: After narrowly missing a bus, he ploughs the car into a wall in a crash that could have been lethal to both him and other drivers Heading for disaster: 'He then drove at a fast speed overtaking a number of vehicles on the inside until he reached a right hand bend. 'The defendant then starts to lose control and the vehicle starts to fishtail' Smashing into the wall: Rapsys was breathalysed and found to have 76 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes He later told police he was driving at 45mph and thought the speed limit was 40mph, whereas it is in fact 30mph. Neil Gunn, defending, said it was fortunate the Rapsys, who works as mechanic, did not injure anyone. He said: 'He is, aside from this incident, a thoroughly decent and hard working individual. 'He lost his family at an early stage in his life. He moved initially from Ukraine to Lithuania and has been in this country for the past eight years..' Jailing him for six months, Judge David Aubrey, QC, said: 'You drove like a maniac. In my judgement, you drove like a drunken maniac. 'It was a miracle that no-one was seriously injured let alone fatally injured. 'One second or two seconds thereafter I have no doubt there would have been a serious collision.' The Wirral-bound lanes were closed for around an hour causing tailbacks while recovery crews moved the BMW. Judge Aubrey also banned Rapsys from the road for two years, which will begin when he is released from prison, after he admitted dangerous and drink driving. Careering away: Jailing him for six months, Judge David Aubrey, QC, said: 'You drove like a maniac. In my judgement, you drove like a drunken maniac But they 'deemed the fines served' because he has mental health problems Magistrates in Westminster ordered him to pay 100 for each assault He was convicted of three counts of assault in absence in March Pensioner also used trolley as battering ram to hit Waitrose duty manager A Frenchman who bombarded supermarket staff with wedges of Camembert has escaped punishment. Suspected shoplifter Bernard Conche, 67, launched the attack in a branch of Waitrose in Chelsea, London, when security guards spotted him loading up his trolley. He then used his trolley as a battering ram to hit duty manager Kimberly Taynor, 31, as he tried to evade capture. Bernard Conche, 67, pictured, was fined at Westminster Magistrates Court for attacking staff at a Waitrose in Chelsea, London, with wedges of Camembert The attack happened at Waitrose in King's Road, Chelsea, pictured, which Conche was previously banned from Conche failed to attend trial over the attack, but was convicted in absence of two counts of assault by beating and one count of assaulting an officer in the course of his duty on 16 March. He had already been banned from the Waitrose shop in Kings Road, Chelsea, before he was spotted loading up his trolley with French cheese on 20 November last year. The Frenchman eventually turned up for sentence after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Sporting wellington boots, Conch mumbled incoherently in French as he waited in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court. District Judge Grant Snow handed fined him 100 on each count, but deemed the fines served because Conche has mental health problems. He ordered the pensioner to stay in touch with his local mental health services, and he is still barred from Waitrose on the Kings Road. Prosecutor Ian Beeby said: The defendant was asked to leave the store by Miss Taynor and he had thrown some 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. Conche used a trolley as a battering ram to hit duty manager Kimberly Taynor, left, and kicked security guard Shah Nawaz, right, in the shins during the assault Police were called and one of the officers was kicked in the chest as he was being placed in the police van. The court heard Miss Taynor was hurt when Conche lifted his trolley into the air and slammed it down on her right ankle. Security guard Shah Nawaz, 33, was kicked in the shin as Conche started spinning his trolley around in front of shocked shoppers. Three members of staff managed to take Conche into an office but the Frenchman kicked PC Jonathon Stanley in the chest when officers tried to put him in the police van. A British oil tycoon accused of keeping a harem of model lovers in Spain has been charged with mistreatment and wounding and warned he faces more than 12 years in jail if convicted. Multi-millionaire Shoja Shojai, 58, made headlines nearly two years ago after being arrested and accused of fathering a string of children with lovers who told police he had kept them against their will at his mansion in Marbella. Spanish police discovered invites to House of Commons lectures in his name when they went to his Arab-style palace in the Costa del Sol resort following a domestic violence claim by one of the women. Shoja Shojai (pictured) made headlines nearly two years ago after being arrested and accused of fathering a string of children with lovers who told police he had kept them against their will at his mansion in Marbella He counter-attacked by insisting he had been framed as part of an elaborate ruse masterminded by an ex-mistress to steal millions of pounds worth of clothes, Persian rugs and jewellery while he was in custody. Today Shojai, now thought to be living in London after leaving his Costa home, was facing an embarrassing trial in Spain after being officially accused of a string of crimes against five of the women who pressed charges against him. State prosecutors in Spain have issued an indictment against him accusing him of forcing the women 'into non-desired sexual practices', obliging them to take antibiotics and the morning after pill, and making them watch violent films in front of their children. His alleged victims include his Danish wife and mother of two of his children, a student from Turkmenistan who Shojai met in London when she was 20 and has a five-year-old girl with and a 21-year-old wannabe model from Kazakhstan who aborted his child. State prosecutors say in their indictment, submitted to a specialist court in Marbella: 'The accused, Shoja Shojai, had simultaneous sentimental relationships with several women from different countries he met in London or Spain, who he courted and once he'd won their confidence, moved to Marbella where they lived until March 27 2014. 'The accused maintained a relationship of domination, submission and mentoring towards all of them during their time in Spain, depriving them of money, forcing them into non-desired sexual practices and making them taking oral contraceptives or the morning after pill as well as antibiotics and other substances to relax them. Police discovered invites to House of Commons lectures in his name when they went to his Arab-style palace (pictured) in the Costa del Sol resort following a domestic violence claim by one of the women Today Shojai, now thought to be living in London after leaving his Costa home (pictured), was facing a trial after being officially accused of a string of crimes against five of the women who pressed charges against him 'He also forced them to watch violent films in front of their young children, imposing conditions on them which included not speaking only smiling and making sure they were always smiling in social gatherings and not crying or showing their emotions.' The women he is accused of mistreating by state prosecutors include three he fathered five children with. They say he assaulted a Russian beauty he met in London at their Marbella home in March 2014 as well as hurting their young son by pulling him out of bed and dragging him into another room by his leg. He allegedly threatened to kill his lovers' close relatives unless they had sex with him, causing them post-traumatic stress injuries. One of his alleged victims, a 27-year-old woman, told a specialist who interviewed her after she went to police: 'He told me a week after we met in London, 'I've found what I needed with you'. 'On our third date he invited me out for dinner and when we were alone in his car he came onto me to have sex. 'I didn't know what to do. I felt forced, I didn't know how to react. It was as if I had been drugged.' State prosecutors have issued an indictment against Shojai (pictured) accusing him of forcing the women 'into non-desired sexual practices', obliging them to take antibiotics and the morning after pill, and making them watch violent films in front of their children Police reportedly found date rape drug Rohypnol during a search of Shojai's property after the women complained of suffering headaches and being made to take drugs including anti-depressants Police reportedly found date rape drug Rohypnol during a search of Shojai's property after the women complained of suffering headaches and being made to take drugs including anti-depressants. Nine alleged mistresses living at the luxury mansion, most in their twenties, made initial statements accusing Shojai of luring them to Spain under false pretences and subjecting them to emotional abuse and threats of physical violence to keep them there. His wife also said he relied on his mistresses and their families' money to keep up the pretence he was wealthy. A date for his trial on two charges of wounding and six of mistreatment against five of the women and his son by one of his mistresses, has yet to be set. State prosecutors want him jailed for a total of 12 years and three months if he is convicted of all charges. Shojai denied mistreating the women emotionally or physically during a police quiz and rubbished claims he had slept with all nine. He went on to claim in a press conference he organised at his house after his release on bail that one of his ex-lovers lied he had assaulted her so she could con the other women into emptying his luxury Marbella mansion of valuables while he was in custody. Nine alleged mistresses living at the luxury mansion, most in their twenties, made initial statements accusing Shojai of luring them to Spain under false pretences and subjecting them to emotional abuse and threats of physical violence to keep them there Speaking shortly after his release on bail from the sumptuous living room of his rented 6,500-a-month palace in Marbella, the Iranian-born tycoon said: 'The idea I had a harem is madness The claims formed part of a separate investigation. It ended with a judge shelving the probe after finding no evidence of wrongdoing by the women, although the decision is being appealed. The state prosecution indictment is the result of an intense investigation lasting almost two years. Shojai, whose whereabouts in London is unknown, is expected to plead innocent when the case comes to trial at a court in Malaga. Speaking shortly after his release on bail from the sumptuous living room of his rented 6,500-a-month palace in Marbella, the Iranian-born tycoon said: 'The idea I had a harem is madness. 'I have slept with three of my female accusers including my wife but I've been seeking a divorce from her for many years and my sexual relationship with the other two women was over long before my arrest. 'The other women were simply friends of theirs who worked with them in the fashion business and had their own homes and came and went from my house when they wanted. Barack Obama today declared the European Union is one of the 'greatest achievements of modern times' as he continued his blitz against Brexit. Speaking in Germany on the latest leg of his farewell tour, the US President praised the EU for ending centuries of war in Europe. And he claimed the 'entire world' needs a 'united Europe' days after making a forceful case against Brexit while on a visit to London. Mr Obama's repeated interventions on the referendum have infuriated campaigners who want Britain to vote to leave the European Union on June 23. Scroll down for video Mr Obama said it was a 'brave new world' after testing virtual reality headsets at the Hannover trade fair alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel Mrs Merkel is hosting the US President in Germany on the latest leg of his farewell tour. Mr Obama has used the visits as an opportunity to strongly endorse continued British membership of the EU In a speech at the Hannover trade fair, Mr Obama said: 'The United States and the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe.' Obama's plea in a speech capping a week-long trip came days after he made a forceful argument against Great Britain leaving the European Union. The possibility of Britain leaving the EU, along with the terrorist threat and tensions among nations grappling with the influx of refugees fleeing Syria and other nations, have raised questions about the strength of European Unity. In remarks set to infuriate some in Germany, Mr Obama praised Mrs Merkel's decision to welcome migrants and refugees. He said: 'We can't turn our backs on fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now. Mr Obama said the way Europe handles its strains amount to a 'defining moment.' 'What happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe,' he said. The President used the VR headset to create graphics which he could interact with his hands at the tech fair in Hannover Mrs Merkel also tested the devices, which were on display alongside a string of other gadgets Mr Obama's speech came ahead of a G5 meeting joined by David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian premier Matteo Renzi. Following the meeting, a No 10 spokesman said the talks had covered Syria, Libya, Russia and Ukraine, and the migration crisis. He said: 'On Syria, where the Prime Minister led the discussion, they agreed on the importance of all sides respecting the Cessation of Hostilities and encouraging political talks to end the war. 'On Counter-Daesh, they agreed on the need to maintain momentum and continue coalition efforts to defeat and degrade Daesh in both Syria and Iraq, including through online counter-extremism activity. 'They agreed it was vital to give full support to the new Government of National Accord in Libya. The Prime Minister in particular made the case for seeking to work with the new Libyan government to build the capacity of the Libyan coast guard to help stem the flow of illegal migration across the Mediterranean into Europe. 'They welcomed the steps that had already been taken to implement the EU-Turkey deal on migration, including the resettlement of the first Syrian refugees in Europe and the first refugees returned to Turkey, agreeing it would be important to ensure new returnees were processed swiftly. 'On Russia/Ukraine, they agreed on the importance of continuing to encourage Russia to behave responsibly and in accordance with international law, and to fully implement Minsk.' David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian premier Matteo Renzi sat down for round table talks on a host of international issues today The senior politicians discussed Libya, Syria, Russia and the migration crisis during their talks at the Herrenhausen Palace, Hannover Mr Cameron had further talks with Mrs Merkel and Mr Renzi in the margins of the meeting. Earlier, Mr Obama toured the Hannover trade fair with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to view high-tech inventions and meet developers. The leaders learned about minicomputers that send data from a car to the cloud, a sensor that mimics a gecko's feet to pick up objects and ultra-light prosthetics created for para-Olympian cyclists. They also saw an electric vehicle battery charger that maker Phoenix Contact says can give a car battery 100 kilometers worth of charge in just five minutes. And Mr Obama has tried on virtual reality glasses made with what developer Ifm Stiftung dubs the smallest 3D camera in the world. With the glasses on his face and cameras snapping photos, Obama reached out as if shaking an invisible hand. Mrs Merkel and French President Francois Hollande shared their usual warm greetings as the G5 leaders gathered at the Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover He said: 'It's a brave new world.' David Cameron, left, and Italian premier Matteo Renzi, right, were also personally greeted by Mrs Merkel on the steps of the palace Speaking in London on Friday, Mr Obama defended his right to comment on Britain's June 23 poll despite claims from Leave campaigners that he was being 'hypocritical' and had 'double standards'. The President insisted his remarks, which have been long planned by Mr Cameron's In campaign, were not a 'threat' to Britain. Mr Obama said as a 'friend' of Britain he had to be 'honest' about the impact of a Brexit vote. And he insisted that if Out campaigners would continue to be 'ascribing actions' of the US after Brexit, they should hear from the President. He said: 'And on that matter, for example, I think it's fair to say that maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it's not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done. 'The UK is going to be in the back of the queue.' See more of the latest Melbourne news at www.dailymail.co.uk/melbourne The principal of Melbourne Girls Grammar said she was ' A group of 'high achieving' students from a prestigious girls school have avoided criminal charges after being caught with ecstasy and cannabis at their formal. The trio from Melbourne Girls Grammar, aged 17 and 18 years old, were issued with formal cautions by Victoria Police. One of the students from the South Yarra school was expelled and two others were suspended over a drug scandal at the school's Year 12 formal at The Park in Albert Park on Friday. Ecstasy and cannabis was found in one of the girl's bags after principal Catherine Mission became concerned with suspicious activity in the toilets. The trio from Melbourne Girls Grammar, aged 17 and 18 years old, were issued with formal cautions by Victoria Police Another was was understood to have been carrying a 'significant' number of pills, the Herald Sun reported. All three girls attended a police station with their parents and received formal cautions, a police spokesman confirmed. 'It's a formal alternative in prosecution of minor cases. It's like a warning,' the spokesman said. The formal cautions mean the three students will not have their involvement in the incident publicly recorded. Ecstasy and cannabis was found in one of the girl's bags afterthe principal became concerned with suspicious activity in the toilets, while another was understood to have been carrying a 'significant' number of pills The formal was held at The Park event facility near Albert Park lake on Friday evening 'It's a formal alternative in prosecution of minor cases. It's like a warning,' the police spokeswoman said. Ms Mission previously said she was 'extremely disappointed' in the three students who were immediately 'isolated' and sent home from the lakeside event facility. 'We are extremely disappointed and saddened that this situation has occurred but we stand by our decision to take immediate action, as we will not compromise on student safety,' Ms Misson said. The school, which charges fees of $32,736 a year, has a strict no drug policy. The two students who will return to Melbourne Girls Grammar will do so under special conditions. A 16-year-old boy charged with planning an Anzac Day terrorist attack had spoken to an Islamic State recruiter over a previous bomb plot before he was arrested near his home - which was used as a daycare centre. The apprentice electrician was arrested one street away from his home in western Sydney on Sunday after police allegedly intercepted him trying to source a gun on the internet. He has been on the counter-terrorism team's radar for more than a year following a probe into a Melbourne terrorism plot, which was uncovered on the eve of Mother's Day, the ABC reported. The boy was observed talking online with ISIS recruiter Neil Prakash, who was alleged to have had contact with some of those accused of plotting an Anzac Day terror attack in Melbourne last year. Counter terrorism officers raided the 16-year-old's house on Sunday and arrested him nearby just after 3pm. Police said they found extremist propaganda in the boy's home The boy was observed talking online with ISIS recruiter Neil Prakash (pictured), who was alleged to have had contact with some of those accused of plotting an Anzac Day terror attack in Melbourne last year Prakash, who has been in Syria fighting with Islamic State since 2013, is understood to be behind a string of failed terrorist plots in Victoria last year. The Australian reported that Prakash wanted the 16-year-old to co-ordinate an attack so that it coincided with a planned Melbourne bombing. The boy's Auburn home was raided last year and he was signed up to a government-funded deradicalisation program. On Sunday, the boy was reportedly intercepted on an online chat site talking about obtaining a firearm and using it for a terror attack on Anzac Day. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that the home, which he lived in with his Lebanese parents, his older sister and a younger brother, was used as a family daycare centre for children. Upon searching his family home, police did not find any weapons or explosives but they did uncover extremist propaganda, 9News reported. A small shed behind the garage at the home has a sign, saying: 'This room is BANNED. Children DO NOT ENTER.' The Sydney teenager was charged with terror-related offences. He was allegedly planning an attack for Anzac Day (above is the Martin Place service) and tried to get a gun Police presence has been increased across the state following the arrest of the teenager. Above are officers at Martin Place in central Sydney The boy, who is no longer at school, is believed to have played rugby league for a local football club. Police have charged him with doing an act in preparation or planning for a terrorist act, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. The Australian-born teenager's case was heard on Monday before Parramatta Children's Court where his lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, did not seek bail. The boy was not in court and his case was adjourned until Tuesday when Mr Khatiz said there would be a bail application. The boy was charged with one count of acts in preparation for or planning a terrorist act, which carries a maximum penalty of a life imprisonment. Police say he was acting by himself and no one else was involved. The 16-year-old first came to the attention of authorities in May last year after he was observed communicating with Prakash. He is also believed to have spoken to a Sydney boy who has since been charged under Operation Appleby with preparing a terrorist attack, along with five alleged members of a terrorism cell. The boy was enrolled in a secret and intensive intervention program run by the AFP, NSW Police and Victorian Police. The boy was taken to Auburn Police Station (pictured) and he appeared at Parramatta Children's Court He was given a gym membership, taken to English-language sermons at a mosque and received regular visits and phone calls from community contact police who checked in on his welfare. Speaking to The Australian, the boy's father said he 'almost fainted' when he heard of his son's activities. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said it was 'really concerning' to see a 16-year-old charged with the offence. 'We will be suggesting that there was a proposed attack to happen on this day [Monday] and that being Anzac Day, it is very, very concerning,' he said earlier on Monday. Comm Scipione would not reveal which suburb the boy had targeted but he did confirm the attack was planned for Sydney. He also urged families heading to Anzac Day services not to be deterred by the incident. 'The risk from this particular threat has been thwarted... Do not let an event like this stop you from going out,' Comm Scipione said. 'So, please, don't be perturbed. We are doing absolutely everything we can to keep people safe. This threat has been dealt with. Enjoy your day. 'People shouldn't have concerns that this person may have other associates out there that may have been joining in the threat. 'We believe it was one person by himself and at this stage we are satisfied.' Comm Scipione would not reveal which suburb the boy had targeted but he did confirm the attack was planned for Sydney. Above are spectators watching the march in Sydney He also urged people not to be deterred by the latest threat as it was safe Comm Scipione said NSW Police had increased their presence around the state following the arrest. 'At this stage it is a noticeable increase... we are not leaving anything to chance at the moment,' he said. Comm Scipione said counter terrorism police were forced to act on Sunday afternoon in order to ensure public safety. 'Clearly we have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar,' he said. 'I want to assure the NSW community that our counter terrorism capability is such that we were able to move quickly to prevent harm. 'The age of the individual is obviously a concern for us, and it remains a measure of the ongoing task facing law enforcement and the community.' AFP State Manager Sydney Office Commander Chris Sheehan said family and friends are vital when it comes to connecting with those young people who may be susceptible to carry out criminal acts that attract significant penalties. More police at Martin Place on Monday. Police say no one should be deterred by Sunday's incident NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said: 'We have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar' 'A cohesive society and social inclusion is critical in driving a counter-narrative to extremist ideology,' he said. 'Yesterday's [Sunday] activity is another example of the effectiveness of the cooperative nature of the JCTT. We will disrupt to ensure the safety of the community, and follow that up with thorough investigations to identify criminal behaviour. 'In Australia and around the world, the age of people radicalised is getting younger, with online grooming tactics similar to those used by sexual predators,' he said. Comm Scipione also urged family members to keep their eyes on changes in behaviour in young people. 'It is important for families to stay on top of what's happening, particularly as they see changes in behaviour and we know all of the things,' he said. 'We've spoken about them before - the fact that people will become loners, that they step away from their normal friends, that they wouldn't engage in the things they normally do, sporting commitments and the like. 'So, it is those things that would cause you to be concerned as a parent, particularly if you are seeing them spend a lot of time online and doing it in secret and all of the things that we know would trigger your concerns, please bring it to our notice.' Justice Minister Michael Keenan admitted he was concerned about Anzac Day services being the target of terror attacks following the arrest of a Sydney teenager. 'It's very disturbing when Australians are out there commemorating what is a very important national day for us, some people would think that's an appropriate time to target those services - I'm very worried about that,' he told ABC radio on Monday. Advertisement Thousands of men have gathered for the priest's blessing at the Western Wall in Jerusalem a day after ultra-Orthodox Jews blocked attempts by women to take part for the first time. A bid by a Jewish women's group to challenge tradition was curtailed yesterday after a decision by Israel's attorney general. The plan was the latest by the Women of the Wall group to push for equal prayer rights at the site, the holiest location where Jews are currently allowed to pray. Yesterday, around 50 women gathered on the plaza leading to the wall amid Passover celebrations to pray, although without carrying out the full blessing. Jewish men take part in the Cohanim prayer (priest's blessing) during the Passover holiday at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday. Thousands of Jews make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the eight-day Passover holiday which commemorates the exodus of Israelites from slavery in Egypt some 3,500 years ago and their plight by refraining from eating leavened food products Jewish men, draped in prayer shawls, take part in the Cohanim prayer (priest's blessing) at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem Ultra-Orthodox Jews cover their heads with prayer shawls as they recite the Priestly Blessing during the high holiday of Passover They prayed under heavy police guard as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys in dark suits looked on and harangued them. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's decision on Thursday prohibited the first-ever 'women's priestly blessing' at the wall because it did not conform to local custom. The ultra-Orthodox establishment that oversees the Western Wall strongly opposed the bid, viewing it as a desecration under their strict interpretation of Jewish law. It had been unclear whether the women would defy the AG's ruling, but on Sunday they said police asked them to sign a document committing to not conduct the blessing, which they did. They were also kept in a cordoned-off area around 50 metres from the wall itself. Previous prayers by Women of the Wall have led to harassment and abuse by ultra-Orthodox worshippers. The traditional benediction sees male descendants of the Cohanim priestly caste bless congregations during daily morning prayers Traditional: The prayer, which is performed twice a year, is only spoken by the Cohanim, the high priests of the ancient temples Jewish men, draped in prayer shawls, take part in the Cohanim prayer (priest's blessing) during the Pesach (Passover) holiday in Jerusalem Covered in prayer shawls, Israeli ultra-orthodox Jewish men of the Cohanim Priestly caste participate in a blessing during Passover Anat Hoffman, a member of Women of the Wall said: 'In order to get our buses in, we signed that we will not raise our hands in the air, we will not bless the people of Israel and we will not put our (prayer shawls) over our heads. 'It's pretty demeaning and shows I think how grotesque and absurd the system is.' Police did not respond to a request for comment. The traditional benediction sees male descendants of the Cohanim priestly caste bless congregations during daily morning prayers. A mass blessing was held today at the Western Wall to mark Passover. It involves the raising of hands in a form similar to the 'Vulcan salute' Leonard Nimoy borrowed from Judaism for his 'Star Trek' role as Mr Spock. A grant from Nimoy's estate financed bus transportation for Sunday's event, Women of the Wall said. Those conducting the blessing also cover their heads with prayer shawls. The Pesach (Passover) holiday commemorates the exodus by Israelites from slavery in Egypt some 3,500 years ago Controversies: The ultra-Orthodox establishment that oversees the Western Wall strongly opposed a bid by a group of women to take part in the blessing, viewing it as a desecration under their strict interpretation of Jewish law Women on Sunday wore pins in the shape of the hand gesture and at least one made the sign discreetly during prayers. The rabbi who oversees the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitz, called the gathering a 'provocation' and argued that the blessing they wanted to carry out had never been done 'by any (Jewish) community in the world'. He also said their actions 'desecrate the sanctity' of the site. One 40-year-old ultra-Orthodox woman at the plaza called what the group was doing 'very, very dangerous'. 'Because we have one God, and he says what to do,' the mother of 11 said. Shaina Lidd, a 21-year-old American teaching English in Israel, took part and said she hoped a full women's priestly blessing could happen soon. 'In the future, I hope to see that happen one day, hopefully next year,' she said. 'But I'm still happy that we got to be together and pray.' Israeli members of the liberal Jewish religious group Women of the Wall spread open their Tallit, a traditional Jewish prayer shawl for men, as they pray at the Western Wall plaza outside the women's section in Jerusalem's Old City. They were banned from conducting the first-ever women's Priestly Blessing for the Jewish feast of Passover after a decision by Israel's attorney general The plan was the latest by the group, Women of the Wall, to push for equal prayer rights at the site, the holiest location where Jews are currently allowed to pray. Around 50 women gathered on the plaza leading to the wall amid Passover celebrations and held prayers, though without carrying out the full blessing The women prayed under heavy police guard as a crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys looked on and harangued them Women of the Wall has also been pushing for an egalitarian prayer space at the wall, where men and women currently pray in separate areas. The government in January approved an agreement to create such a space, but ultra-Orthodox parties have come out strongly against it and more discussions are being held. The Western Wall, in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is believed to be among the last remnants of the second Jewish Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The hill above the wall is revered as the site of the temple itself. It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary. It is now the location of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the Dome of the Rock. Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there to avoid provoking tensions, with Israel having occupied east Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised internationally. Boris Johnson was accused of becoming the 'Donald Trump' of British politics today after triggering a race row over Barack Obama's visit. The London Mayor faced accusations of 'racism' on Friday after claiming the US President got rid of a Winston Churchill statue as a 'snub' and claimed it was a 'symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire'. Writing exclusively for MailOnline, Chuka Umunna today said the remark was a 'disgraceful slur' and 'straight out of the playbook of that other blonde bombshell seemingly keen on Brexit - Donald Trump'. Slide me Boris Johnson, pictured right, was told today he was becoming more like the 'other blonde bombshell' Donald Trump, pictured left, after his attack on Barack Obama Mr Umunna, who is part Nigerian, said: 'The British people are interested in what the leader of our closest ally has to say, regardless of where his parents are from.' Mr Johnson today sidestepped questions about the row, which continued to dominate the Brexit debate a day after Mr Obama flew out of Britain to Germany. Mr Obama enraged the Brexit campaigns by warning Britain would be at the 'back of the queue' for a trade deal following a Brexit vote. Asked if he regretted his tone, Mr Johnson said: 'I think it is absolutely ridiculous that the UK is now being told it has to go to the back of the queue for any free trade deal.' He added: 'For us to be bullied in this way, I don't want to exaggerate, for people to say we are going to be unable to cope on our own is absolutely wrong.' Told he faced accusations of 'dog-whistle racism', he replied: 'Look, I think the crucial thing is what kind of future is there for this country outside the EU. 'We've been told we have to go to the back of the queue. That seems to me to be ridiculous when you consider the real reason we haven't been able to do a free trade deal with the United States in the last 43 years is we are part of the EU.' In a tetchy interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Iain Duncan Smith admitted that London Mayor Mr Johnson's jibe about Mr Obama's 'part-Kenyan ancestry' making him anti-British had been 'clumsy'. Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary, today blasted Mr Johnson's 'disgraceful slur' in an exclusive column for MailOnline But he insisted it was 'absurd' to suggest that Mr Johnson was racist. 'I think there is nothing worse that demeans politics than when another politician jumps up and down and in losing any kind of argument wants to hurl a kind of name like 'racist' at people,' he said. 'I find that absurd.' Mr Duncan Smith went on: 'He simply referred to some of the reasons as why he may have a particular lack of regard for the UK that's what he said... 'I know Boris very well and in no way can you describe him as that (racist). It emerged last week David Cameron had ordered diplomats in Washington to reach out to Mr Trump in case he wins the White House in November. Mr Johnson has faced repeated comparisons to the Republican front runner in recent weeks as Mr Trump has edged closer to winning a nomination for the White House race The Prime Minister slammed Mr Trump at 'divisive, stupid and wrong' last year in the wake of controversial remarks about stopping Muslims entering America. Responding to a petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from visiting Britain, Mr Cameron said he opposed an outright ban but told MPs: 'If he came to visit our country I think he would unite us all against him.' There are fears in Government the remarks could leave the 'special relationship' between Britain and America on ice were Mr Trump to enter the White House in January. Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's ambassador to America, has been told by No 10 to prioritise building links with the foreign policy advisers in Mr Trump's team. The government could settle the junior doctors dispute with less than three weeks' worth of British contributions to the EU, a Cabinet minister has insisted. Commons leader Chris Grayling said the 350million a week handed to Brussels could be used to pay for introducing a seven-day health service. The claim threatens to broaden the Tories' bitter row over Brexit into another key policy area - with Mr Grayling effectively breaking ranks with colleagues over how to handle the strikes. Junior doctors are due to walk out again tomorrow, and for the first time the action will include emergency care. One medic, Dr Ben White, dramatically resigned from his job live on television earlier saying he wanted to focus on fighting plans to impose a new contract. But Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is due to make a statement to MPs on the crisis later, has refused to back down on cuts to additional pay for working some weekend hours. Dr Ben White, left, dramatically resigned live on television saying he wanted to devote himself to fighting the government's planned contract Mr Grayling said: Getting to a proper seven day NHS could make a real difference to this country. 'It would be so much easier to pay for that change if we took back control of our 350 million a week contribution to the EU and spent it on our priorities. 'For example, the money at the heart of the current doctors dispute is just 5 per cent of our overall annual contribution. We shouldn't be spending billions on the EU that could make our NHS better and help deal with its current challenges. The Remain campaign also need to explain how they would provide enough money and doctors to cope with the 3 million migrants they want to see come to Britain in the next fifteen years if we stay in the EU. The NHS is already running to keep up with the demands placed on it by the huge influx of people into the country and by the ageing population. Leave campaigners are trying to regain the initiative in the battle over EU membership after President Barack Obama's dramatic plea for the UK to stay in last week. In other referendum developments today: Justice Secretary Michael Gove warned that the UK faces an immigration 'free for all' unless we cut ties with Brussels Ex-Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith defended Boris Johnson's suggestion that the US president's Kenyan heritage made him anti-British Home Secretary Theresa May gave a luke-warm endorsement of EU membership after admitting free movement eroded the government's ability to control migration David Cameron flew to Germany for a summit with leaders including Mr Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel Dr Ben White sensationally quit as a training doctor while being interviewed by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain. He said: 'I have taken the decision that I am resigning as a trainee doctor to focus on a legal campaign to fight the contract on behalf of my patients and on behalf of the NHS.' Asked why it had come to this, he was visibly upset and said: 'I really feel like we have been backed into a corner and there's not a lot of sense coming out of the Government's side of things. 'We have to put patients first and we can see at the moment the understaffing and the underfunding in the NHS.' Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House, has suggested the 350m weekly funding handed to the EU could pay for the junior doctors dispute to be settled Dr White, 33, was on ITV's flagship breakfast programme to discuss tomorrow's junior doctor strike. Medics will leave A&E departments, maternity units and cancer wards at 9am on Tuesday in protest at the Government's plan to rip up their contracts and impose new hours and pay. 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. The Government insists the changes, which will see doctors' basic pay rise to compensate for the reduction in overtime payments, are the only way to ensure that patients can receive just as good treatment at weekends as they do during the week. But most doctors have rejected Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's claims, saying that the contract will put further pressure on overstretched services and encourage many medics to quit or emigrate. Hospitals were last night making last-minute preparations by shuffling staff and cancelling procedures. A total of 12,711 non-urgent operations and 112,856 outpatient appointments have been cancelled. 'LOOK TO THE FUTURE': DR BEN WHITE'S EMOTIONAL RESIGNATION IN FULL I've taken the decision, well I will do so today, to resign as a training doctor to focus on a legal campaign, legal proceedings to fight the contract, to fight on behalf of patients and fight for the future of the NHS. And I feel that I've got an obligation to do that on behalf of my patients I really feel like we have been backed into a corner and there's not a lot of sense coming out from the Government's side of things at the moment. We all feel like it's been a long six months. We have to put patients first and we can see at the moment the understaffing and the underfunding that's taking place in the NHS - an A&E had to call in the military recently to staff it, in my hospital we had more admissions in 24 hours than we've ever had before. This isn't being listened to - we have to look to the future, I think. Advertisement A mother has spoken about the moment she rescued her three-year-old daughter from their submerged car after it flipped onto its roof and plunged into a creek. Erica Morris, 25, lost control of her car on a dirt road through Woolooga, near Gympie, north of Brisbane, while driving her two young daughters and a friend to a birthday party. The car landed on its roof in Running Creek on Saturday morning and was fully submerged in a few seconds. Three-year-old Syndal was trapped inside the rapidly-filling the car for three minutes before her mother could pull her free. Erica Morris, 25, lost control of her car on a dirt road through Woolooga, near Gympie, north of Brisbane, while driving her two young daughters and a friend to a birthday party The car landed on its roof in Running Creek on Saturday morning and was fully submerged in a few seconds 'She was blue, she wasn't breathing, she was completely lifeless,' Ms Morris said. 'I had it in my head as I was walking to shore that I've just lost my little girl.' The mother said she threw her over her shoulder and started hitting her back because she did not know the proper CPR technique. 'We were half way to the shore when she whimpered and I swear to god it was the most amazing sound I ever heard,' she said. Syndal spent the night in hospital after swallowing huge amounts of water and suffering grazes. Her older sister Alexiah also suffered a number of cuts and bruises. The cause of the crash is under investigation. Three-year-old Syndal (pictured) was trapped in the car for three minutes before her mother could pull her free Alexiah also suffered a number of cuts and bruises after the crash on Sunday Erica Morris, her two daughters and a friend left Gladstone on Saturday morning, headed to a birthday party in Brisbane Newspaper publisher Gannett is offering to buy Tribune Publishing Co. - and all its debt - for approximately $388.3 million. Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, is valued at around $815 million, including about $390 million of outstanding debt. Founded in 2014, the company has seen a steady decline in net income due to drops in ad revenue and debt it inherited from the companies it merged. Gannett Co., publisher of USA Today, is offering $12.25 in cash for each Tribune share. That's a 63 per cent premium to Tribune's Friday closing price of $7.52. Sale? Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times (offices in LA, California, pictured), Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, is valued at around $815 million, including about $390 million of outstanding debt In a news release, Gannett said Tribune is so far resisting the offer, which was first floated on April 12, and its executives are refusing to engage in deal talks. Last month Tribune announced a reorganization, naming each of its newspapers' editors as dual editors-in-chief and publishers. In February the Chicago-based company named Justin Dearborn as its new CEO, replacing Jack Griffin less than two years after he joined the business. When Tribune was formed in August 2014, with Griffin at the helm, he said he planned to snap up smaller daily papers to boost the firm's fortunes and offset their inherited debt. However, by December that year, the firm's income had slumped by 54 per cent. Despite attempts to revive circulation and lure readers to the company's many newspaper websites, the loss of advertising revenue was too great. 'A combination with Tribune would rapidly advance Gannett's strategy to grow the USA Today Network,' Gannett Chairman John Jeffry Louis said in a news release. 'The combined organization would offer Tribune employees a broad range of advancement opportunities within a larger organization with the financial strength to meet the industry challenges we all face,' Gannett Chief Executive Robert J. Dickey added. Red Dwarf actor Stuart Luis (pictured), 44, was 'haunted' after discovering his family member hanged at a family party five years ago, an inquest has heard A troubled actor who worked on Red Dwarf and zombie film 28 Days Later took his own life after being tormented by the spirit of his dead relative, an inquest has heard. Stuart Luis, 44, was 'haunted' after discovering his family member hanged at a family party five years ago. In the days before his death, he told his wife he had voices in his head, waking her up to say 'spirits were fighting for his soul'. The talented mime artist had even spoken to a spiritual healer just days before he was found dead near East Croydon railway station. Today, Croydon Coroner's Court heard how, five years earlier, Mr Luis had found - and tried to resuscitate - one of his relatives hanged at a party in Poland. Wife Monika told the hearing: 'Since I met him, he was very spiritual and he was always trying to find the answer to life. 'But I think the situation at the party had a massive influence on his mental health.' The hearing was told how, instead of going to the doctor about his mental health, Mr Luis hired a spiritual healer to visit him on December 22. The 50-per-hour healer Evelyn Brodie, who works in south London and Brighton, said he had described feeling 'haunted' about the incident in Poland and that a spirit had attached himself to him. She said in a statement that she had 'cleansed' his home and that he was feeling better, 'looking forward to his break'. CCTV stills showed Mr Luis in East Croydon station after midnight on Christmas Eve, purchasing a ticket which would lead him onto the platform. His body was seen on the tracks by a driver on a train approaching the station at around 9am, who alerted emergency services. The inquest heard he was likely hit by another train during the early hours, but the driver may not have realised. The mime artist appeared as a vampire thug in Blade 2 (pictured) alongside Wesley Snipes After his death, friends paid tribute to the 'unique friend' and 'born performer' who starred in numerous shows. He is pictured left in Blade 2 and right as a mime Mr Luis's mother Jill Luis said she 'did not really know his state of mind and how bad it was', as he mentioned only once, around a year ago, a dream Jill described as 'awful'. After his death, friends paid tribute to the 'unique friend' and 'born performer' who starred in numerous shows over a two-decade career including CBeebies. He also played a cave-dwelling monster in 2005 horror movie The Descent, a vampire in Blade 2 and appeared on the cover of Time magazine. The talented mime artist had spoken to a spiritual healer just days before he was found dead near East Croydon railway station (pictured) Recording a verdict of suicide, assistant coroner Jacqueline Devonish said: 'He was troubled by spirits and very wrapped up in understanding the meaning of life. 'He did not seem to have recovered since the suicide of the relative.' Waleed Aly has hit out at the writer and producer of the controversial upcoming film about the Port Arthur massacre after he suggested there were 'conspiracies' surrounding the 1996 tragedy. Melbourne filmmaker Paul Moder appeared on Channel Ten's The Project on Monday to defend his choice to create the movie without the support of the victims and said there is much 'controversy, conspiracy and agenda' around the incident as the case never went to trial. Aly pointed out considering Martin Bryant confessed to the killings, there was no need for ballistics evidence and suggested the producer was 'building [his own] conspiracy theory'. 'That's how you build a conspiracy theory, you try to inject doubt where there isn't any,' Aly said. Scroll down for video Waleed Aly (pictured) has hit out at the writer and producer of the controversial upcoming film about the Port Arthur massacre after he suggested there were 'conspiracies' surrounding the 1996 tragedy Melbourne filmmaker Paul Moder appeared on The Project to defend his choice to create the movie without the support of the victims and said there is much 'controversy' around the incident as the case never went to trial 'If there was a defensible case in this case it would have run a trial and those discrepancies - if they even exist - would be discussed and judge would rule on them. 'But the fact that someone can say in a case, where there was a conviction and really no debate who did this, "oh look there was a discrepancy over here", that's the stuff of a conspiracy theory.' Mr Moder said 'a lot of people out there don't agree' with Aly's view and the host interrupted to tell him they are in 'no position to say so' as the case did not go to trial. Earlier in the program Aly made mention to a post on Mr Moder's Facebook referring to Bryant's 'alleged' crimes'. 'What is that meant to mean? I mean he is convicted, there is no allegedly about it,' Aly asked. Mr Moder said 'a lot of people out there don't agree' with Aly's view and the host interrupted to tell him they are in 'no position to say so' as the case did not go to trial Aly pointed out considering Martin Bryant (pictured) confessed to the killings, there was no need for ballistics evidence and suggested the producer was 'building [his own] conspiracy theory' Gunman Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded another 23 in a mass shooting at Port Arthur in Tasmania between 28 and 29 April in 1996 Mr Moder said his aim is to hold the victims and their families in the 'utmost respect'. The filmmaker has come under fire for allowing the graphic retelling of the event to go ahead, even though he does not have permission from the victims. Filming for the project is due to start later this year and the script for mass murderer Martin Bryant is reportedly in its final stages. A former Marine sniper who infamously urinated on the corpses of Taliban soldiers helped foil his girlfriends alleged murder-for-hire plot by leading her ex to fake his own death. Joseph Chamblin was one of four soldiers recorded urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in 2011 and faced a special court-martial before losing rank after the video surfaced the following year. But now, he is credited with helping save the life of his girlfriends ex-boyfriend. Laura Buckingham, 30, a veteran who served two tours of Iraq, was arrested for criminal attempt to commit first-degree murder in February. Scroll down for video A former Marine sniper who infamously urinated on the corpses of Taliban soldiers helped foil his girlfriend Laura Buckingham's (left and right) alleged murder-for-hire plot Buckingham, of Kingston, Tennessee, was caught after she allegedly gave $3,000 to an undercover agent to kill Sutherland,The Daily Beast reports. But before that, the former Marine corpotal allegedly repeatedly asked Chamblin to make Sutherland go away so she could have custody of their three-year-old son. When Chamblin began to fear that she was serious about the plot, he decided to record some of their conversations which he then handed over to police. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation launched a sting operation in February, with a member of the team going undercover. I want him gone, she reportedly told the undercover agent. I want him out of the picture. Sutherland, 31, who is from Indiana but lives in Louisville, Kentucky, co-operated with cops to stage photos of his death inside a parking garage before the hitman reportedly returned to show the pictures to Buckingham. Joseph Chamblin began dating Buckingham (pictured together) in April last year after he returned home to Tennessee following the urination incident in Afghanistan Joseph Chamblin was one of four soldiers recorded urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan When they brought me down to the police station and told me about this, the first I said is, Im being punked, Sutherland told The Daily Beast. And when he found about the fee his ex-girlfriend allegedly paid to have him killed, Sutherland added: Are you f****** kidding me? My lifes only worth $3,000? But what is worse for Sutherland is not the price of his life, but that the mother of his child let a man she thought was an assassin near her son. When the guy went to show the photos of my dead body my sons right there, he added. The fact that she would let a hired killer into the house while my son is there hurts me more than taking an attempt on my life. Sutherland now has custody of their son. And he was told by Chamblin that the job was originally offered to him. Instead, he went to authorities. Chamblin told Sutherland that his response to Buckingham was: I dont think that would be a very good idea. But I might know someone, though. Meanwhile, Chamblin said he went to authorities because he began to fear for himself and his children. Chamblin left the Marine Corps in 2013 as a sergeant and returned home to Tennessee where he had a remodeling and construction business, according to The Daily Beast. In April last year, he started dating Buckingham and they eventually moved in together in Kingston. She left her job at a bakery without notice and joined Chamblin in Tennessee and was pregnant with his child. Buckingham allegedly repeatedly asked Chamblin to make her ex Bradley Sutherland (above) go away so she could have custody of their three-year-old son Chamblin (left and right, with Buckingham) says that when he began to fear that she was serious about the plot, he decided to record some of their conversations which he then handed over to police But since moving to Tennessee, Buckingham had also been driving to Louisville every Sunday to exchange custody of her son with Sutherland, WATE reported. She complained that the drive had become a financial burden and feared Sutherland may fight for full custody. According to an incident report, she wanted Sutherland dead and then to have Chamblin take the fall for it if something did go wrong. But Chamblin, who says he and Buckingham have now cut all ties, confided in authorities about his girlfriends plan because he feared for his and his childrens safety. An order of protection has been issued against Buckingham for both Chamblin and Sutherland. 'If she makes bond, I and my children will be in danger of repercussions,' Chamblin wrote in an affidavit, according to the Sentinel. 'She has threatened me in the past.' Buckingham is currently in jail on a $150,000 bond facing a charge of criminal attempt to commit first-degree murder Sutherland is grateful and says his actions took guts. I owe the guy my life, Sutherland told The Daily Beast. Authorities arrested Buckingham on February 24 and she is currently in jail on a $150,000 bond facing a charge of criminal attempt to commit first-degree murder. '[Buckingham] acted with intent to complete a course of action that would constitute the offense of premeditated murder by hiring and paying another to kill Bradley Sutherland and thereby taking a substantial step toward the commission of that offense,' the Roane County Sheriff's Office said. But one of Buckingham's relatives says she had 'very bad PTSD' that led to at least two suicide attempts. The family member claims that she had become more isolated since she began dating Chamblin. 'When she was around him she picked up ideas that were kind of foreign to what we knew about her. She would get standoffish and he was getting her to cut-off with her family I think,' the unnamed relative told the Daily Beast. 'I don't know if he had something to do with pushing her over the edge, to want somebody deadit's crazy. 'I truly think her boyfriend was encouraging her and then of course things went down where she was contracting with an undercover cop.' After the notorious urination incident, Chamblin wrote a book called 'Into Infamy: A Marine Sniper's War.' 'I didn't see anything wrong with it, he told the Military Times in 2013. Her mother says she can also negotiate stairs and move without help Three months on, she is playing in her yard and walking on her own She then showed signs of life by squeezing her mother's hand Doctors were even preparing to have her organs harvested for donation A 14-year-old girl shot in the head during an Uber driver's deadly rampage in Kalamazoo says one of her goals is to do cartwheels again. Abigail Kopf's heart had stopped and doctors were preparing to harvest her organs after she was caught up in the mass shooting in southwestern Michigan on February 20 that left six people dead. She showed signs of life by squeezing her mother's hand as she lay in a hospital bed. Now, just three months after the horrifying shooting, she has made an inspirational recovery and is already playing in the yard of her family home with her sister. Scroll down for videos Abigail Kopf, 14, (left and right with her mother) hopes she will be able to do cartwheels again after she was shot in the head during the deadly Kalamazoo rampage on February 20 The teenager described herself as a 'warrior princess' in the interview just a week after she was released from hospital following intensive treatment She told ABC's Good Morning America in a segment broadcast Monday that she's a 'warrior princess.' Her mother, Vicki Kopf, says her daughter can walk, negotiate stairs and move well on her own. Mary Free Bed Hospital says Abigail was released last week from a rehabilitation center after intense treatment. Abigail spent six weeks at the Grand Rapids facility and a couple of weeks in another hospital. Her family posted pictures of her walking again with a smile on her face. She still faces a surgery on her head in May and is forced to walk around wearing a helmet. Uber driver Jason Dalton is charged with murder and attempted murder in the apparently random attacks. He faces a May 20 hearing on whether the case goes to trial. Shortly before she was released from rehab, Kopf said in a video produced by the rehabilitation facility that she's excited to see friends and pets, including her pig, Hamlet. Her physical therapist Joe Winegar said in the YouTube video: 'We're trying to get her so she can go to school and can help mom and dad in the house. Just three months after the horrifying shooting, she has made an inspirational recovery and is already playing in the yard of her family home with her sister. While mother Vickie Kopf applauded her daughter's perseverance in the face of near-death. She said: 'She's an amazing kid especially when you're told that she might be brain dead or she might not make it. 'To see her walking and talking and doing therapy the way she is it's amazing.' She added: 'She was shot almost two months ago and she's eating, walking and talking and almost running down the hallways now. The nursing staff have been tremendously wonderful. Uber driver Jason Dalton is charged with murder and attempted murder in the apparently random attacks. Authorities initially said the girl had been killed along with six other people. She was in the front passenger seat of a vehicle parked outside a Kalamazoo-area restaurant when she was struck once in the head by a bullet. Hospital staff began discussing the prospect of harvesting her organs for donation when she squeezed her mother's hand. Mother Vicki Kopf described that moment as 'breathtaking' and 'a miracle on its own,' reported the station WWMT. Uber driver Jason Dalton (left) is charged with murder and attempted murder in the apparently random attacks (scene pictured right) Speaking on the YouTube video, father Gene Kopf said: 'It was bad luck that it happened, but it was good luck that it happened near a trauma center, it was good luck that it was cold that night, it was good luck that she was found quickly and that the bullet took the path that it did. Some of it is sheer dumb luck but a lot of it is skill on the medical field. He also spoke out about America's 'gun violence epidemic' and said that something 'must be done' about a problem that 'no other developed country has. Craig Maher who is facing federal charges after being accused of making arrangements to buy a child for sex A computer programmer is facing federal charges after being accused of making arrangements to buy a child for sex. According to Butler County Sheriff Office Craig Maher, 39, from Fairfield Township in Ohio, admitted that he wanted to drug and sexually assault a child aged between four and 14 while taking photographs. It is also alleged that he was willing to pay up to $500 to perform the sex acts and is also charged with attempting to sell or buy child pornography. If convicted of the charges, Maher could face a maximum of 30 years in jail. According to the Dayton Daily News, the investigation into Maher began when authorities were contacted by an informant who told them he was seeking a young girl to have sex with. The informant then set up a meeting with Maher at a McDonalds restaurant on Dixie Highway in Hamilton, Ohio. There he was shown a picture of a young girl, who is now an adult, and he described her as cute. The informant and Maher then discussed payment and arrangement were made to meet up with the young girl. Scroll down for video However, last week, police raided Maher's home and he was arrested and charged. Officers worked in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and authorities in Cincinatti. Courtesy WCPO 9 As part of an operation, an informant had told Maher to meet them at a McDonalds on Dixie Highway in Ohio, picture, where they could discuss prices Sergeant Jason Owens, from the Homeland Security told NBC4i: 'He was willing to pay, to rape a little girl and now he can pay the price of going to jail for his intentions. 'His ultimate goal was to adopt a child so he could have sex with her whenever he wanted. This investigation does not stop here, and we have a lot of work to do.' He wrote movingly at the weekend of finding love again Wofford said their families accepted them but he never believed gay marriage would be made legal in the United States But five years later he met his new partner and the couple fell in love After she died from leukemia in 1996, he thought he'd never find love again Former Pennsylvania senator was married to his wife for almost fifty years This is Harris Wofford's long-term partner - who the former senator will marry following his moving op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday. Interior decorator Matthew Charlton, 40, has been in a relationship with the 90-year-old ex-senator for 15 years after meeting him in the wake of the death of Mr Wofford's wife. The former Pennsylvania senator went public with the second love of his life at the weekend, when he told how he fell for a man after being married to a woman for 48 years. He wrote: 'Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall straight, gay or in between. Second love: Former Senator Harris Wofford, right, wrote movingly at the weekend about how he fell in love with 40-year-old Matthew Charlton after the death of his wife. The pair have been in a relationship for 15 years First love: The 90-year-old Wofford was married to his wife Clare for 40 years and they had three children together before she died of leukemia in 1996 (The two are pictured on their wedding day in 1948) 'I dont categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness.' Mr Wofford lost his wife Clare to leukemia in 1996, They married in 1948 after meeting while he was serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Second World War. The pair went on to have three children together and she even gave up her job to become his all-out campaigner, his 'best critic' and 'best friend'. 'Our romance and adventure continued for five decades,' Wofford wrote. Sadly, that adventure came to an end on January 3, 1996 when Clare died from acute leukemia. At the age of 70, Wofford was left heartbroken and sure he would 'never again feel the kind of love Clare and I shared'. But he was wrong. Five years later, he met Mr Charlton by chance while swimming off a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Chance meeting: The pair met in Mr Charlton;s native Florida on the beach at Fort Lauderdale. Mr Harris says they instantly 'clicked' And despite being decades apart in age, he said they instantly 'clicked.' The couple fell in love and Wofford, said he did not label himself as 'gay' or 'straight', he was simply happy to have found love for a second time. 'To some, our bond is entirely natural, to others it comes as a strange surprise, but most soon see the strength of our feelings and our devotion to each other. We have now been together for 15 years,' he wrote in the Times Now Wofford, who was succeeded in office by Senator Rick Santorum, is planning to marry his new partner on April 30 - something he never believed he'd be able to do. 'For a long time, I did not suspect that idea and fate might meet in my lifetime to produce same-sex marriage equality. My focus was on other issues facing our nation, especially advancing national service for all. Seeking to change something as deeply ingrained in law and public opinion as the definition of marriage seemed impossible. 'I was wrong, and should not have been so pessimistic.' He said that he feels 'lucky' to be in an era when marriage 'is not based on anyones sexual nature, choices or dreams. It is based on love.' Wofford was born to a wealthy and prominent Southern family who relocated to Scarsdale, New York. As a child he accompanied his grandmother on a trip around the world including India where he became fascinated by Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, New Republic reported. He returned to school where he founded the Student Federalists which called for a united world government. The popularity of the organization led to Newsweek predicting Wofford would become president one day. After serving in Army Air Corps during the Second World War, he became inspired by the civil rights movement and became the first white student to enroll at Washington's Howard University Law School since female suffragists attended in the 1910s. Wofford also became aware of Martin Luther King Jr. to whom he began writing to discuss Gandhi's non-violent approach to civil disobedience. The pair later met and Wofford became an adviser to the famous activist. He was also persuaded to join John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign after Kennedy called on him to help him win the 'Negro vote.' Wofford, a Pennsylvania senator from 1991 to 1995 and an adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., met his wife Clare while serving in the U.S. Air Forces during the Second World War After Kennedy's win he took a job in administration and went onto help Sargent Shriver found the Peace Corps. But he never considered running for office himself until decades later. It was in May 1991, after the former senator John Heinz was killed in a plane crash, that Hofford was appointed to the position by Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey. He would lose the re-election in 1996 but that would not stop Wofford's fight for civil rights. In 2005 he met Barack Obama. The two became good friends and during his presidential campaign, when Obama was under fire for inflammatory remarks by his former pastor, it was Wofford he chose to introduce him before making his now-famous race speech in Philadelphia. A four-year-old boy was forced to call 911 after his ex-military father shot his mother dead and then turned the gun on himself. Veteran Kerry Anderson, 36, killed wife Jessica, 32, at their Graham, Washington, home on Saturday while their three young children were inside. Police say the father-of-three, who had been working for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) then shot himself. The youngster told the dispatcher he found his parents lying on the floor following a 'problem' in their home. Veteran Kerry Anderson, 36, killed wife Jessica, 32, (pair pictured left and right) at their Graham, Washington, home before turning the gun on himself while their three young children were inside. Their four-year-old son was forced to call 911 after he found his parents lying on the ground Police believe the ex-service member had recently been fired from his job at a Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital and was suffering from PTSD His five-year-old brother and four-month-old sister, were not hurt in the shooting. Mrs Anderson died at the scene while her husband was taken to hospital in a critical condition. He died a short time later. The couple's three children are now being cared for by their relatives. Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told KOMO News they believe Mr Anderson had been recently fired from a hospital job and suffered from PTSD. One person wrote on Facebook: 'I'm so saddened to hear that fellow Oki and Dragon family member Kerry Anderson has passed away. R.I.P. brother! My heart is hurting because you just never know what a person is going through. 'Please please please if you are suffering fron PTSD seek help, because you are worth it and deserve to live a good life. 'Father in heaven please surround his three babies with your love and protection. My condolences also go to his wife's family. My God this is just so sad.' A spokesman for the VA told Daily Mail Online: 'Kerry Andersen was an employee of the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in Seattle. 'We extend our heartfelt condolences to all who may have been affected by this tragedy. At this time we have few details or information to provide in order to allow local law enforcement to proceed with the investigation. 'VA is assisting local employees with Employee Assistance Program (EAP) resources as needed.' Daily Mail Online has also contacted Pierre County Sheriff's Department for comment. This is the heartwarming moment a two-year-old girl who has been deaf and blind since birth sees and hears her mother for the first time following 'miracle' surgery in the U.S. Nicolly Pereira, who is from Brazil, is seen gurgling with delight as mother Daiana, 26, comes into view for the first time before the little girl throws her arms around her mom's head for a cuddle. Meanwhile Daiana is left speechless and in floods of tears as she is overwhelmed by a moment she had dreamed of for so long. Nicolly Pereira, two, was born with infant glaucoma which left her deaf and blind but is now able to see and her mother Daiana, 26, thanks to 'miracle' surgery carried out in Miami Pereira told the Miami Herald: 'The only word that can be used to describe the feeling is "God". My daughter is free now. She now shines more than before. 'She has now become a reference for people who didnt believe in miracles.' The little girl was born with infant glaucoma, a rare genetic condition that affects around 1 in 10,000 children and causes excess fluid to build up inside the eye, distorting vision. INFANT GLAUCOMA: WHAT IS IT? Infant glaucoma is a rare genetic condition that affects around 1 in 10,000 children born each year. The primary form of the disease, where it is not cause by another condition, occurs when the system for draining fluid from the eye does not develop properly. This causes pressure build-up inside the eye, which distorts or significantly reduces vision. While the condition can be treated in most cases, it typically requires complex surgery on the eye. Source: The Glaucoma Foundation Advertisement Since being born Nicolly had undergone seven unsuccessful surgeries in her home country of Brazil, with doctors telling her distraught mother there was nothing more they could do to help her. With no other options left, Pereira turned to social media where she appealed for donations to help her daughter, eventually managing to raise $17,000 to pay for treatment at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami. While most children with the condition are able to see something, by the time Nicolly arrived in Miami her condition was so severe she was unable to detect light at all. Pressure inside a normal human eye is between 10 and 20 millimeters in Mercury, or mm Hg. When doctors examined Nicolly's eyes the reading came back as 50mm HG. A fluid buildup in her ears also stopped her from hearing, meaning she was also unable to talk, and never learned to walk because she could not see the world around her. Before her operation Nicolly (left and right) was unable to see, hear, talk or walk because of a fluid buildup in her eyes and ears that medics in her home country were unable to fix Mother Daiana raised $17,000 in order to fly Nicolly to America for surgery last month, and was pictured breaking down alongside doctors after being told the operation was a success Initially doctors thought they had made a mistake by agreeing to take her case, so severe were her symptoms, but decided to press ahead with treatment. After two years of only being able to communicate through touch, it took doctors in Miami just three and a half hours to restore her vision and hearing. Now Nicolly can hear her mother's voice, has learned to sing - twinkle twinkle little star being her favorite nursery rhyme - and can stand up on her own. She can also see, though her vision is not perfect and she has to wear glasses in order to correct her nearsightedness. Doctors at Bascom told the Herald that Nicolly is still recovering from her surgery, and added that her eyesight will continue to improve, but said there is no way of knowing how it will end up. Nicolly will require follow-up care in Brazil, with medics from Bascom providing training in the latest techniques for treating the illness. Nicolly is due back in Bascom in a year for another exam. Nicolly (pictured with her mother and doctors) is now able to see, hear, talk, sing and stand on her own thanks to the surgery, though has to wear glasses for her nearsightedness President Barack Obama warned European countries today that they'll have their own Donald Trump to deal with if they don't resolve the economic problems their nations face. 'Unfortunately, in the vacuum, if we do not solve these problems, you start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way,' Obama said Monday in Germany. Obama warned of 'a creeping emergence of the kind of politics that the European project was founded to reject -- an us versus them mentality that tries to blame our problems on the other, somebody who doesnt look like us or doesnt pray like us.' That includes immigrants, Muslims, 'or somebody who is deemed different than us,' Obama said. Scroll down for video President Barack Obama warned European countries today that they'll have their own Donald Trump to deal with if they don't resolve the economic problems their nations face Obama looks on as German?Chancellor Angela Merkel tests VR goggles when touring the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany today Obama gave a speech after the trade show in which he spoke indirectly about Donald Trump The outgoing U.S. president did not speak about Trump directly but his remarks today are in line with past criticisms he's made of the Republican front-runner for president. Obama's Hannover, Germany, address following a trade conference was aimed at promoting a 'united Europe' that is represented by the countries' participation in the European Union. The U.S. president reflected on economic trends across advanced economies in the world and said, those 'concerns and anxieties are real. They are legitimate. They cannot be ignored, and they deserve solutions from those in power.' The world cannot respond to those challenges by pitting people against each other, he said. Using America's political situation as an example, Obama said, 'You see increasing intolerance in our politics. And loud voices get the most attention.' 'So this is a defining moment. And what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe,' he told Germans. Obama said, 'If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress thats been made over the last several decades, then we cant expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue. 'Instead, we will be empowering those who argue that democracy cant work, that intolerance and tribalism and organizing ourselves along ethnic lines, and authoritarianism and restrictions on the press -- that those are the things that the challenges of today demand.' At a news conference on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked for her take on Obama's possible successor, Trump, and his interest in scaling back NATO and she declined to engage. 'I concentrate on the task ahead for 2016. I'm quite busy with that -- thank you very much,' she said. Adding: 'And I'm looking with great interest at the American election campaign.' At a news conference on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked for her take on Obama's possible successor, Trump, and his interest in scaling back NATO and she declined to engage Obama later stated, in response to a question from a German journalist, that he doesn't envy Merkel's position, and he's glad the U.S., unlike Germany, has term limits for its executive. 'I love this job. It is an extraordinary privilege, and I wake up every day knowing that what I do matters, and that I can help somebody somewhere, both inside the United States and around the world,' he said. The U.S. president said he agrees with the Founding Fathers and believes the baton must be passed every eight years. He said his 'goal between now and the time I leave is to make sure that when I turn over the keys to my office, that the desk is clean, and if the world is not completely tidy, that at least it's significantly better off than the way I found it.' And he chimed in on the refugee crisis in Europe and said of Merkel, 'She is on the right side of history on this. 'And for her to take on some very tough politics in order to express not just a humanitarian concern but also a practical concern, that in this globalized world, it is very difficult for us to simply build walls, she is giving voice I think to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them,' Obama said, making another reference to Trump and his platform. Julie Bishop has hit back at claims she did not do enough to prevent the botched child abduction in Lebanon, with her office accusing mother Sally Faulkner of ignoring the Foreign Minister's advice. The Brisbane mother started a change.org petition in November last year begging Ms Bishop to intervene and help bring her two children back home to Australia safely. At the time, Ms Faulkner claimed she had been 'pleading for months for Julie Bishop to pick up a phone to the government in Lebanon, but all I've heard is silence.' But a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Ms Faulkner only made contact once in November 2015 and revealed the mother ignored attempts for further discussion. Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner (pictured with her newborn baby Eli) has been accused of ignoring the Australian government's advice Ms Faulkner started a change.org petition in November last year begging Ms Bishop to intervene and help bring her two children back home to Australia safely This comes days after Ms Faulkner, reporter Tara Brown and her 60 Minutes crew were bailed over the failed kidnapping plot in Beirut. They all spent two weeks in jail over the attempt to snatch back Ms Faulkner's two children Lahela, five, and Noah, three, from her estranged husband Ali Elamine's family. Channel Nine is set to air another segment on the operation, but the content has yet to be determined because of legal restrictions on the footage, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. In her November petition, Ms Faulkner said her two children were 'stolen' by her ex-husband seven months previously. She claimed the Australian government was 'not bothering to help me find them' because 'parental child abduction isn't technically criminalised in Australia'. But a spokeswoman for the Foreign Minister told news.com.au there were no records of Ms Faulkner contacting the Office of the Foreign Minister, or the Foreign Minister directly. 'Consular officers made several attempts to make follow-up contact with Ms Faulkner, reaching her on 17 December and informing her of the Attorney-General Department's ability to assist child custody matters,' the spokeswoman said. At the time, Ms Faulkner claimed she had been 'pleading for months for Julie Bishop to pick up a phone to the government in Lebanon, but all I've heard is silence' A spokeswoman for Julie Bishop (pictured) said there were no records of Ms Faulkner contacting the Office of the Foreign Minister, or the Foreign Minister directly The Australian mother also posted an emotional video pleading with the government to help her 'It was made clear that the Australian Government cannot intervene in foreign legal systems, just as we would expect foreign governments not to intervene in ours.' The spokeswoman said consular officers spoke with Ms Faulkner about her options and gave her a DFAT contact number and email. Ms Faulkner was also encouraged to make contact if she required consular assistance. The Shadow Attorney-General is understood to have contacted the Attorney-General George Brandis on behalf of Ms Faulkner on 3 December 2015. Ms Faulkner was told about the possibility of setting up a joint commission which could have helped mediate the child custody matters. But she does not appear to have taken up this opportunity. During Sunday night's 60 Minutes, Ms Faulkner cried as she remembered how her daughter gave her a Barbie ring on their last meeting in Beirut. This comes days after Ms Faulkner, reporter Tara Brown and her 60 Minutes crew were bailed over the failed kidnapping plot in Beirut Ms Faulkner spent two weeks in jail over the attempt to snatch back her two children Lahela, five, and Noah, three, from her estranged husband Ali Elamine's family Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner returned to Australia on Thursday night without her children Lahela, five, and Noah, three (pictured with her baby to a different father, and her mother) 'Lahela, she looked at me and said: 'Mummy will you take my ring?' She gave me her little Barbie ring, she said: 'This is so you don't forget me',' Ms Faulkner recounted. She said her heartbreak at having 'to say goodbye to my babies' comes 'in waves'. She had spent the flight from Beirut 'bawling my eyes out and then I'm kind of alright one minute and then all of a sudden it floods back'. She said she felt 'numb because it feels so surreal'. Ms Faulkner has been reunited with her newborn baby Eli with partner Brendan Pierce, her mother Karen and brother Simon. 'I'm really proud of you, you're so brave,' Karen mother told her. 'I had to try,' Ms Faulkner responded. 60 Minutes presenter Michael Usher admitted the team had made mistakes and confirmed an internal investigation is underway. 'There's one thing we want to state very clearly from the outset: we made mistakes,' Usher said. He said the 'mistakes and failures' had been 'the subject of a lot of soul searching here at Channel Nine'. Mr Usher said the chain of events were 'complex and distressing' which had gone 'badly wrong'. Ms Faulkner reportedly posted on Facebook on Sunday, saying: 'Tonight on 60 Minutes a quick mention of the home coming from this week. A teary-eyed Brown said she did not believe it would get so bad when they originally faced questioning 'Then on Wednesday 4th of May is a 90 minute special about what really happened.' But a Nine spokeswoman said: 'We haven't made a decision on what the show will be or when - not sure why she (Faulkner) said that bit - but we will be telling her story soon'. The spokeswoman said the network had not made the editorial decisions around content 'because we are still not across what material we have from Beirut that is still being resolved'. Tara Brown has defended 60 Minutes' involvement in the botched kidnapping of Ms Faulkner's two young children. She said: 'I thought: 'We're journalists, we're doing our job and they will see reason, they will understand that.' 'We are here just to do a story on a very desperate mother, and I thought that reason would prevail and it didn't,' she told presenter Michael Usher. Brown told Usher it had gone 'terribly', but said Ms Faulkner 'knows in her heart she's tried everything to get them [the children] back'. 'In her opinion, she had no choice but to do this.' Usher said the mother is 'probably in a worse situation' now than she was prior to the botched abduction. The episode also revealed that 60 Minutes is doing some 'soul searching' following the drama, and admitted they made mistakes when they tried to snatch Lahela, 5, and Noah, 3. A Lebanese policeman prevents Brown from looking towards journalists while escorting her from a Lebanese courthouse to Baabda Prison for women in Lebanon on April 18 The moment Brown and Ms Faulkner were freed from prison after two weeks behind bars A review commissioned by the network began on Friday and will investigate the editorial approval and actions of the crew involved in the story. 'Over the past two weeks we've been limited in what we could say,' Mr Usher said. 'In the next few weeks we'll share in detail what we know about this whole sad scenario and our role in it.' The 60 Minutes presenter said there was 'relief' when their team was returned to their families, who landed with Ms Faulkner. Father of the children, 32-year-old Ali Elamine, is still pressing charges against Briton Adam Whittington, who was allegedly in charge of the operation, as well as Craig Michael and two Lebanese people involved. 'I'm so amazed at how she's held up and how strong she's been because ultimately she's lost everything, you know? She's lost her babies,' Brown said. Ms Faulkner told 60 Minutes she felt 'numb' following the 'surreal' incident. She was reunited with her baby, her mother, her partner Brendan Pierce, and brother Simon. 'I'm really proud of you, you're so brave,' Ms Faulkner's mother told her. 'I had to try,' Ms Faulkner responded. Her ex-husband agreed to drop the abduction charges if she relinquished custodial rights to their children. Brown and 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice arrive at Sydney International Airport on Thursday night 32-year-old Ali Elamine with five-year-old Lahela (right) and three-year-old Noah (left) Ms Faulkner was released on bail on Wednesday along with Ms Brown and her crew, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson, sound recordist David Ballment. They could still face further charges though they have returned to Australia. The children will now live in Lebanon with their father, but Mr Elamine insisted that Ms Faulkner would be able to visit. She shared an ice-cream with Lahela and Noah before leaving the country. Mr Elamine said 'the visit was good' and that all 'enjoyed it'. government says this is still cheaper than to house them Norway is offering to pay asylum seekers a 850 'expenses bonus' if they take up their offer to return to their home countries. The Norwegian government already offers 20,000 NOK (1,681) to refugees and migrants to apply for a voluntary return, and the new offers is in addition to the original offer. The reason for the bonus, taking the total payment to returning asylum seekers to 30,000 NOK (2,523), is the rising costs of housing new arrivals, Norway's Integration Minister said. Incentive: The Norwegian government already offers 1,681 to refugees and migrants to apply for a voluntary return, and the 850 is in addition to the original offer, taking the total payment to 2,523 The new 850 bonus will be offered to the first 500 applicants on a first come, first serve basis in order to speed up returns. 'We need to entice more to voluntarily travel back by giving them a bit more money on their way out,' Integration Minister Sylvi Listhaug said according to The Local. 'This will save us a lot of money because it is expensive to have people in the asylum centres,' Norway's Directorate of Immigrations (Utlendingsdirektoratet - UDI) said a family of four could expect to receive around 80,000 NOK (6,727) to return to their home country. The new bonus will be on offer for six weeks to asylum seekers who arrived in Norway before April 1st and have not overstayed. Helping hand: The government hopes that the new incentive will speed up the process of convincing asylum seekers with no valid claim to return to their home countries The UDI told the Local that they hope to speed up repatriation of asylum seeking migrants with no protection claim in Norway. Norway saw 31,145 people apply for asylum in 2015, almost three times as many as in 2014. One-third of the asylum-seekers were Syrians, followed by Afghans, Iraqis and Eritreans. The UDI said just over half of the asylum-seekers were adult men, 15 percent were adult women and 33 percent were minors. About 5,300 of the minors were unaccompanied, most of them from Afghanistan. Officials project that up to 60,000 people could apply for asylum in Norway, one of Europe's richest countries, in 2016. Former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson today warned the PM the Brexit 'genie' was out of the bottle A former Cabinet minister today compared David Cameron to the English Civil War king who was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell. Owen Paterson said the Prime Minister was like Charles I, who lost touch with the English counties and lost his head as a result. The former Environment Secretary vowed to continue the Brexit battle even if Mr Cameron's Remain campaign wins the EU referendum on June 23 - warning 'you can't put the genie back in the bottle'. But Mr Paterson insisted his statement did not amount to admission of defeat with eight weeks until referendum day. In a speech in central London Mr Paterson warned that the UK would be relegated to the status of a 'colony of Europe' if it remained within the EU as the other countries in the bloc moved to a closer political union. He said a narrow victory for Remain would have meant millions of voters supporting Leave, showing that anti-EU sentiment was a 'very respectable' mainstream opinion rather than a view held by 'nutters' on the fringes. 'Up to now, leaving the EU has been seen to be the preserve of nutcases, cranks and odd members of the right-wing of the Tory Party,' he said. 'If it is that close - I personally think we are going to win - millions of people from right across the country from every class and occupation will have stated that they want to leave the European Union. 'You won't put that genie back in the bottle.' He accepted that a second referendum would be unlikely in the short term because 'I can't see any other Government wanting to go near this for some time' but it could not be ruled out: 'It depends how big a mess the Europeans make of it, doesn't it?' The former environment secretary said Eurosceptic feeling was strongest outside the capital - suggesting that the politicians at Westminster failed to recognise the strength of feeling. 'The further you go from London, the stronger the feeling is,' he said. 'I do get the slight sense it's a bit like the Civil War when Charles I sadly completely lost touch with what was happening in the counties. ' David Cameron, right, was compared to Charles I, left, during Mr Paterson's speech today. The Civil War king was beheaded during the English Civil War If the country did vote Leave there would be a 'huge party' on June 24, Mr Paterson said - the date of his 60th birthday. But there would not be a rush to trigger the divorce from Brussels, despite the Prime Minister's insistence that he would begin the two-year Brexit process straight away. 'I think it would be absolutely idiotic because we don't have the bones of a settlement,' he said. 'It seems sensible to me to immediately appoint committed ministers to go and talk to our European neighbours and begin to work out the bones of a settlement.' Advertisement Matt LeBlanc speeds across the desert in the latest promotional trailer for the new series of Top Gear - but co-presenter Chris Evans is nowhere to be seen. In the slick new teaser clip - which was released today - and after a brief struggle while attempting to get into the vehicle, the 48-year-old former Friends actor races through the Moroccan desert in a bright orange Ariel Nomad. The 40-second clip also shows American LeBlanc shouting 'this is too fun' as a motorbike leaps over the top of his vehicle at top speed. In the teaser clip which was released today the 48-year-old former Friends actor races through the Moroccan desert in an Ariel Nomad The clip began with a clearly frazzled LeBlanc hilariously attempting to climb into the unusual vehicle - with little success initially. However, after several attempts, and with much grunting and groaning LeBlanc triumphantly manages to clamber behind the wheel. Since it was released last night the clip has been viewed more than 40,000 times - and has garnered a mixed reception from fans, with 3,100 'thumbs up' on YouTube and 3,788 'Thumbs down'. Le Blanc will co-host the revamped motoring show with Chris Evans, racing driver Sabine Schmitz, YouTube star Chris Harris, F1 pundit Eddie Jordan and motoring journalist Rory Reid. The new series is expected to air in May, but a date is yet to be announced. They replace former hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, who presented the BBC show for 13 years. The trio are currently filming their as yet unnamed rival motoring show for Amazon Prime. Yesterday Clarkson has revealed the hardest part of making the new motoring show is naming it. Writing in his weekly column in the Sunday Times the Yorkshire-born presenter said: 'When I first signed up with Amazon Prime to make a new motoring show I knew all sorts of problems lay ahead. 'There was one problem, however, that I hadn't even considered. And it has turned out to be the biggest of the lot: Choosing a name.' In the column he wrote that he was worried if they opened up naming the show to the public as a competition, they might find themselves in the same situation as a new polar research vessel which was recently named RRS Boaty McBoatface following an online vote. Clarkson added that in order to avoid the inevitable 'Cary McCarface' he and the team were wracking their brains trying to come up with a name which is not either already taken or legally contentious. The 40-second clip also shows American LeBlanc shouting 'this is too fun' as a motorbike leaps over the top of his vehicle at top speed The bike leaps over Le Blanc's car during the slick 40-second clip which was released today ahead of the show's expected launch Meanwhile production of the BBC's Top Gear has been plagued by controversy. The now infamous donut stunt at the Cenotaph led to reports Evans and LeBlanc had fallen out. Last month Evans sought to play down his role in the filming of the sequences, in which fellow presenter LeBlanc and a stunt driver filled Whitehall with smoke and burning rubber by wheel-spinning in the shadow of Britain's main war memorials. A source close to the show told The Sun: 'Since the Cenotaph their relationship has deteriorated. Chris thinks Matt has severely damaged the brand. Behind the scenes it is very frosty between them.' But Evans moved quickly to deny a rift between the show's two frontmen. He tweeted: 'Just been on the phone to Matt Le Blanc to confirm we are "at war" as reported in The Sun today. He says, "sure, whatever.." Why I oughta!' Politicians and a former Army chief had condemned the BBC for arranging the 'gravely disrespectful' sequence yards from Britain's main war memorial. The new series of the BBC's Top Gear is expected to hit the air in May but an exact date is yet to be announced A rather dusty LeBlanc grimaces at the camera after creating a dust cloud as he raced through the Moroccan desert in the latest clip Meanwhile production of the BBC's Top Gear has been plagued by controversy. The now infamous donut stunt at the Cenotaph led to reports Evans and LeBlanc had fallen out Last time the BBC released a teaser clip fans of Top Gear gave a rather damning verdict on the new series. More than 50,000 people went online to give the trailer a thumbs down on the programme's YouTube channel. Many unhappy fans bemoaned the Americanisation of the show and said the new presenters - Evans, LeBlanc and Sabine Schmitz- were not as funny as Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Clarkson was sacked from Top Gear after punching a producer on the show in a row about steak, although he has now officially apologised to producer Oisin Tymon - after settling a six-figure claim. Clarkson flew into a rage after being told he could not order a sirloin steak after a day of filming in March last year, calling Mr Tymon a 'lazy, Irish ****' during a confrontation at a hotel in North Yorkshire. The fracas led to him being sacked from Top Gear, with Hammond and May jumping ship shortly afterwards in support of their friend. The clip began with a clearly frazzled LeBlanc hilariously attempting to climb into the unusual vehicle - with little success However, after several attempts, and with much grunting and groaning LeBlanc triumphantly manages to clamber behind the wheel When a brain-damaged man was fired from Walmart after nearly 20 years as a cashier, thousands of people in West Plains, Missouri, rallied behind him and spread stories of his kindness until the 52-year-old's story went viral. Frank Swanson was fired for 'excessive' price matching after he sold a jug of iced tea for a discount of 80 cents without verifying the competitors' price. Swanson, who was known for his enthusiastic and friendly service, was also accused of slowing down the line by hugging his customers, the News Leader reported. Scroll down for video Frank Swanson (center), was fired from Walmart for 'excessive' price matching after he offered a customer a jug of sweet tea for $1.98 instead of $2.78 without verifying the discount Swanson (pictured left at his job) was fired just two weeks before his 20th anniversary at the store. He was a beloved figure in West Plains, Missouri, and was known for giving his customers hugs (right) Swanson was fired earlier this month, just two weeks shy of his 20th anniversary at the store, after he sold a jug of iced tea for $1.98 instead of $2.78. His employers had previously reprimanded Swanson for the 'inappropriate' hugs, but he began asking customers for permission, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported. A spokesperson for Walmart said: 'Letting an associate go is never easy. For this associate, point-of-sale policies had not been followed in some instances. 'A recent violation of those policies moved the associate to the final step of our discipline process, resulting in his dismissal.' According to store policy, the customer was supposed to bring in the competitor's ad to verify the discount, but Swanson simply took her word for it. The News Leader reported Swanson would memorize mark downs at other stores each week to help out his customers. Swanson even went to the neighboring town after he was fired to obtain proof that another store was offering the tea for $1.98, according to the Kansas City Star. His sister Babbi Marsh defended Swanson, telling the West Plains Daily Quill: 'He never let anyone walk out without paying for their merchandise. What he was told was that he was being let go for excessive price matching.' The 52-year-old fell out the back of a pickup truck when he was in the eighth grade, suffering a traumatic brain injury that caused partial paralysis and an intellectual disability Residents in West Plains were shocked to hear Swanson had been fired, and hundreds of supporters turned up at a rally outside Walmart to offer free hugs in his honor (pictured) Dawn Haviland told the Leader: 'I was actually behind someone in line who was short on money once. Frank pulled out his own wallet and paid for it so they wouldnt have to take something back' (pictured, Swanson with a supporter at the rally) Residents in West Plains were shocked to hear Swanson had been fired. They shared anecdotes of Swanson's kindness as others organized a rally outside Walmart to offer free hugs in his honor. About 400 people attended. Dawn Haviland told the Leader: 'I was actually behind someone in line who was short on money once. Frank pulled out his own wallet and paid for it so they wouldnt have to take something back.' Another customer Jenn Harper called Swanson 'a sign of hope' and told KSPR: 'If you were having a bad day at Walmart, he would light up your whole trip.' The 52-year-old fell out the back of a pickup truck when he was in the eighth grade, suffering a traumatic brain injury that caused partial paralysis and an intellectual disability. Swanson became a beloved figure around town, and his brother Drexel Swanson wrote in a Facebook post: 'My brother doesnt have a mean bone in his body. 'His purpose in life since his accident has always been to make other people feel good and to bring a smile to their face'. Thousands showed their support for Swanson online and the story reached Jimmy Fallon, who mentioned the cashier in his monologue on The Tonight Show. Even as Swanson's fans expressed their outrage, flooded Walmart with complaints, and vowed to boycott the store, the 52-year-old maintained his positivity, defending his former coworkers and bosses as his friends. Swanson, who has already been hired to greet customers at a neighboring supermarket, will challenge his termination under the Missouri Human Rights Act, lawyer Benjamin Stringer told the Star. A young alcoholic shown drinking himself to death on Louis Theroux's latest documentary has been sober for six months and is holding down a job, MailOnline can reveal today. The plight of Joe Walker, 32, reduced viewers to tears as he was shown walking out of hospital, covered in blood, to buy vodka after being told his alcoholism would kill him. The former university medical researcher, whose late mother had struggled with alcoholism, was among several alcoholics followed by Louis Theroux for latest BBC film 'Drinking to Oblivion', shown on BBC2 last night. Moving on: Joe Walker, 32, left, was the star of Louis Theroux's new documentary on alcoholic: 'Drinking to Oblivion' - MailOnline can reveal that Joe has now been sober for six months and is back in work Emotional: Viewers described the despair and joy as they saw Joe in the edge of death - and later recovered Joe's battle with drink moved many viewers, who watched in horror as he gave up drink only to relapse catastrophically. In one emotional scene in A&E, the paralytic 32-year-old shared a tearful hug with Louis Theroux and says: 'I don't want to be a drunk - I am dying as a person'. Minutes later he then decides to walk out of hospital to buy booze even though he knows it could kill him. He said: 'I like the sensation of it (vodka) going down my throat and I want to experience that for one last time. That's why I'm leaving'. At the end of the documentary he meets Mr Theroux in a pier in Brighton where he says he is trying to rebuild his life and is staying off the drink 'for now'. MailOnline can reveal today that Joe has been sober for the six months since the documentary was filmed and is also back in work. A friend said: Six months into his recovery, Joe is doing well and happy in life. 'He has been receiving a lot of love and support from family and friends and is grateful for people caring about his wellbeing. Joe is looking forward to the future'. After last night's show social media was full of people wishing him well in his recovery. Lucy Ryan tweeted: 'Feel very moved by Joe's story. If he's reading these tweets, keep going pal! You can do it. #DrinkingToOblivion #LouisTheroux' Kathryn Forro said: 'That was hard 2 watch & glad I did. Alcoholism not black & white but Joe's story showed there is light #DrinkingToOblivion #LouisTheroux Drama: After giving up booze Joe is shown after another relapse outside Kings College Hospital in south London, topless and covered in blood - Mr Theroux and a doctor have to help him up Needing help: Mr Walker was drinking himself to death and would sink two bottles of vodka every day after struggling with work and a break-up - shown here being helped into A&E by the documentary maker Emotional: Joe sobbed as he hugged Louis - but moments later he would walk out of A&E looking for vodka and admitting it would probably kill him Natalie Dye wrote: 'Incredible insight by LouisTheroux into the hell that is alcohol addiction #DrinkingToOblivion. Moved to tear by Joe. Everyone should watch @sparklymrsc said: 'Watching #DrinkingToOblivion .. So hope #joe turns things around. He has a future ahead of him'. Joe had described how he turned to drink after problems at work and in his love life. It was also revealed his late mother had struggled with alcoholism. The former Kings College medical education employee lost everything to alcohol including his job and his girlfriend and spent months drinking two bottles of vodka a day in bed before collapsing in the street. He said: 'I didn't get the job I wanted and along with a break-up I though s*d it. I think I must have collapsed in the street and somebody obviously thought this guy needs to go to A&E. 'I was drinking myself to death and there was something in me that didn't want to die'. Days later he was released from hospital and Mr Theroux met him at his London flat, where the curtains are stained with blood from a head wound. Moved: Twitter was full of messages of support for Joe - and many will be pleased that he appears to have turned his life around He says this is a reminder to him to stay sober. But weeks later he relapses and is found drunk, topless apart from a coat wearing blood-stained jogging bottoms. Louis Theroux is shown helping to carry him into King College Hospital in South London, covered in blood, after relapsing. After telling doctors he wants detox he is warned that this is his last chance before he decides to leave the hospital in tears looking fore alcohol. He says he wants to down vodka and sleep in the park he was staying in after being thrown out of his flat. After his final relapse it emerged that he had left London and moved in with his father at his family home in Brighton. Victims were treated in hospital for injuries that aren't life-threatening Wagner and the two students were taken to hospital, where he died The teenage gunman who arrived at his school dance with a high-powered rifle and shot two students was bullied for years, according to his former classmates. Jakob Wagner, 18, was shot dead by a police officer who was already at the scene at Antigo High School in Wisconsin on Saturday evening. Wagner shot two students, a male and a female, as they left the building at around 11pm before he was stopped. Investigators have not discussed a possible motive for the attack, but school officials have said it appeared Wagner intended to go into the dance and start shooting randomly. Meanwhile, friends and classmates have revealed Wagner was bullied for years by fellow students and had been dating a current student at the school, who ended their relationship last month. Scroll down for video Jakob E. Wagner (pictured) arrived at Antigo High School in Wisconsin around 11pm on Saturday night and opened fire on two students before he was shot dead by police Emily Fisher said Wagner had been bullied throughout middle school and it continued in high school, although to a lesser extent, with students calling him names, mainly due to his bad hygiene. 'He was bullied a lot,' Fisher, 19, who graduated from Antigo High School last year, told the Wasau Daily Herald. Fisher added that the pair had been in the same art class during their senior year, during which Wagner often talked about guns and created replicas for class. 'Ever since we were younger, he was one of the kids you kind of watched out for,' she said. 'If someone was going to shoot the school, we thought it was going to be him.' 'I think we all knew he was bullied,' another student, Katie Arrowood, told CBS News. 'We did kind of bond because we were bullied by a lot of the same people and kind of in the same ways.' Wagner (left) died in hospital after being shot by police at the scene. He recently posted a picture of this Airsoft rifle on his Instagram page One student, who did not want to be named, revealed Wagner had been depressed after his break-up with his girlfriend. Wagner was a 'kind' and 'nerdy' person, she told Fox6, and loved cats. She also said that she believes the victims had been randomly selected simply because they were among the first ones to leave the building. Another friend of the 18-year-old described him as a 'good kid' who loved video games, hanging out with friends and music. Dakotta Mills said he had known Wagner since sixth grade and considered him a foster brother. He says Wagner was raised by his mother and grandparents. Mills says Wagner was interested in guns and wanted to become a hunter, and had gone through a hunter safety course a few years ago. But he wasn't sure Wagner could afford a gun. Dylan Dewey said Wagner had been dating a girl at the school but that she had broken up with him last month. Dewey described Wagner as an 'all-around good guy' and said he generally seemed happy. But on Saturday evening, Wagner arrived at the school armed with the rifle and shot two students in the leg before he was gunned down by an officer. School officials do not think Wagner targeted his victims, but believe that he had been planning to enter the prom and start shooting randomly. Two Antigo police department vehicles sit in front of the entrance to Antigo High School on Sunday Nikita Deep, 16, embraces a family friend at Antigo United Methodist Church following a morning service in Antigo, Wisconsin, on Sunday 'We have no reason to believe at this point it was targeting anybody specifically,' interim district administrator Donald Childs said on Sunday, adding that the shooting at the entrance happened 'from some distance.' He added that Wagner did not graduate with his class from Antigo High School last year and was continuing to work on his diploma. Antigo Police Chief Eric Roller said several police officers were at the scene providing security for the event and quickly stopped the threat by shooting the suspect. The injured students and Wagner were taken to hospital. The bullet grazed the female student's leg and she was later released. The male student was undergoing surgery after a bullet hit his leg, but his injuries were described as not life-threatening. Langlade County Coroner Larry Shadick said Wagner died shortly after 1am on Sunday morning in the intensive care unit at a Wausau hospital. 'Two students who were attending prom festivities were shot as they exited the building,' Roller said. 'City of Antigo officers who were patrolling the parking area heard shots fired, and one of those officers was able to fire upon the shooter stopping the threat to additional attendees.' Antigo Police Chief Eric Roller said several police officers were at the scene providing security for the event and quickly stopped the threat Wagner died shortly after 1am Sunday morning in the intensive care unit at a Wausau hospital He added: 'The officer's immediate response prevented further injuries and possible casualties.' The officer in question has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard protocol, as the Division of Criminal Investigates whether the use of force was justified, WSAW reports. Police put the prom on lockdown until a search of the area could be completed and students huddled inside the gym for hours before authorities could safely escort them from the dance. After an initial investigation, police believe Wagner was the lone shooter and officers are conducting a search of his home seeking information, Roller said. Sonia Reed, whose son Matthew attended the prom, said that she had been on the school's campus earlier on Saturday evening for a pre-prom procession. She estimated that there were more than 100 students at the prom. 'I didn't see anything suspicious,' she told WSAW. 'I didn't feel any bad vibes. It seemed like it was going to be a normal prom. She found out about the shooting when another mother called her to tell her that police were at the school and had a person 'down'. Wagner's relationship to the victims and the motive for the attack is not known, Police Chief Eric Roller said The Unified School District of Antigo said Wagner had approached the school with a high-powered rifle and a large ammunition clip. In a statement, the district said in a statement that 'quick actions' taken by police and district staff to secure the building 'prevented what might have otherwise been a disaster of unimaginable proportions, and we are extremely grateful for their well-rehearsed response.' In a statement, Governor Scott Walker said the actions of the Antigo Police Department 'undoubtedly saved lives.' Police had been stationed to patrol the parking lot at the high school dance in Antigo, a community of about 8,000 people about 150 miles north of Milwaukee. Secretary of State John Kerry said the Navy ship could have opened fire on the Russian military jets that buzzed around it Last week, Russia accused US of intimidation for sailing guided missile destroyer USS Cook near Baltic border Two highly advanced US fighter jets flew to Romania on Monday in a show of strength to deter Russia's intervention in Ukraine. The F-22 Raptor fighter jets with sophisticated sensors allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected landed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in southeast Romania. President Barack Obama promised in 2014 to bolster the defenses of NATO's eastern members, unnerved by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and the Kremlin's backing for pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Scroll down for video Two US F-22 Raptor fighter jets with sophisticated sensors allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected flew to Romania on Monday as a show of strength against Russia The F-22s are almost impossible to detect on radar and are so advanced that the U.S. Congress has banned Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad President Barack Obama (left) promised in 2014 to bolster NATO's eastern members, unnerved by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea (right, Vladimir Putin) Russia-backed separatists have been fighting government troops in Ukraine since April 2014, leaving at least 9,100 dead. The conflict has left many neighboring countries in Central and Eastern Europe jittery about Russia's intentions in the region. U.S. Ambassador Hans G. Klemm blamed 'the aggression by Russia' for bringing 'so much instability to this part of the world over the past two to three years'. 'We're here today to demonstrate our capability to take the F-22 anywhere needed in NATO or across Europe. We want to ... actually fly the aircraft and train with our NATO allies,' said Squadron commander Daniel Lehoski. The F-22s are almost impossible to detect on radar and are so advanced that the U.S. Congress has banned Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad. The U.S. has deployed 12 of them at a British base in eastern England. 'The increased size of the 2016 deployment ... allows U.S. Forces to assert their presence more widely across the eastern frontier,' said U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Major Sheryll Klinkel. 'We want to be able to operate out of multiple locations. We want to be able to keep our adversary guessing where we're going to go next.' The West is seeking to strengthen the defenses of its eastern flank and reassure eastern European NATO members - such as Poland, the Baltic states and Czech republic which spent decades under Soviet dominance - without provoking the Kremlin by stationing large forces permanently. The US fighter jets, which arrived from Britain, will leave Romania later Monday. They are part of the Operation Atlantic Resolve, a U.S. commitment to NATO's collective security and regional stability. Last week, a USS Donald Cook (pictured on April 12) sailed near Russia's border in the Baltics, prompting accusations of intimidation as Russia warned their military would respond to future incidents Secretary of State John Kerry said the Navy ship could have opened fire on the Russian military jets that buzzed around it (pictured, A Russian Sukhoi Su-24 attack aircraft makes a very low altitude pass by USS Donald Cook) Tensions are rising and Russia says the NATO build-up is stoking a dangerous situation. Just last week, a US naval destroyer USS Cook sailed near Russia's border in the Baltics, prompting accusations of intimidation as Russia warned their military would respond with 'all necessary measures' to any future incidents. The United States has said the guided missile destroyer was on routine business near Poland when it was harassed by Russian jets. 'We were in international waters,' a NATO diplomat reported Lute as telling Grushko during the NATO-Russia council meeting. Secretary of State John Kerry said the Navy ship could have opened fire on the Russian military jets that buzzed around it. However, in recent months ISIS has attempted to recruit its fighters Somalia has previously been dominated by the Al-Qaeda allied al-Shabaab If true, it would be the group's first attack within the east African country An African Union vehicle was bombed by ISIS, the terror group has claimed ISIS claims to have bombed an African Union vehicle on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, marking what would be its first attack in the country. Reports of the bombing - which if proven genuine would be the first attack by ISIS's newly developed cell in an area previously dominated by Al-Qaeda - emerged online today. The vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device in the Taridish area on the outskirts of the city, according to SITE Intelligence Group. Somalia has long been dominated by the al-Shabaab military group (pictured), which is now domestic competition from ISIS It was not clear if there were casualties or how many people may have been injured in the attack. However, it comes only a few months after several high profile defections from Al-Qaeda to ISIS's burgeoning Somalia wing. The group has released several propaganda videos recently imploring al-Shabaab fighters - who have been aligned to Al-Qaeda for several years - to break ranks and join them. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) was created as a peacekeeping forces designed to quell the al-Shabaab insurgency and help establish a transitional government within the country. ISIS has also used propaganda videos to try and tempt al-Shabaab officers and soldiers to leave the Al-Shabaab. Speaking fluently in English, one of the fighters, most likely of Somali origin, urges people in his homeland to turn against al-Shabaab and join a small number of ISIS fighters who have rebelled against al-Shabaab and are now fighting for ISIS. The video is titled 'A message to our brothers in Somalia', with the scripted speech relayed by both an English fighter and another Somali speaker. An Engish speaking fighter then says: 'To the mujahideens in al-Shabaab, we call upon you to put aside your pride and arrogance and your blind following of your leaders who lack wisdom. He then threatens al-Shabaab fighters, asking them what they will say on the day of judgement when questioned by Allah. 'Fear Allah in dealing with the Muslims. Fear Allah for spilling the blood of the Muslims who have given Bayah (allegiance). Authorities have arrested the husband of a woman whose body was found in a well in south-central Kentucky. The Wayne County Sheriff's Office says 29-year-old Joseph Jones was arrested Saturday on charges of murder, domestic violence and tampering with physical evidence in connection with the death of 28-year-old Rachel Jones. Rachel Jones' body was found at the bottom of a well in the Jonesville community near Monticello on Friday morning, after police received an anonymous tip. Scroll down for video Joseph Jones (right) was arrested on Saturday, a day after his wife Rachel's (left) dead body was found at the bottom of a well Jones, 29 (pictured), is being held on charges of murder, domestic violence and tampering with physical evidence Above, the well where Rachel's body was found Friday morning, after police received an anonymous tip The fire department tried to pump water into the well to bring the victim's body to the surface. When that failed, someone had to repel into the well and carry the body out. It is still unclear how and when the woman died. An autopsy will be performed to determine a cause of death. Meanwhile, the victim's husband is being held at the Wayne County Detention Center. When Rachel's body was first found on Friday, authorities said they were looking for Joseph and that he may be armed and dangerous. 'The only thing that comes to mind is that it's sad. First thing that comes to my mind,' Trooper Lloyd Cochran said. According to photo on Facebook, Rachel appears to be the mother of a young boy. Palestinian Jamal Owda, 26, (pictured) will argue he cannot be extradited for alleged people smuggling because being held in a Greek prison would breach his human rights A Palestinian asylum-seeker allegedly behind a people smuggling gang accused of trafficking 100 Syrian refugees a day into Europe will argue he cannot be extradited because being held in a Greek prison would breach his human rights, a court heard today. Palestinian Jamal Owda, 26, was one of 23 people held in raids across Europe in December over an operation authorities claim could have made up to 7 million since 2013 by preying on desperate civilians fleeing the civil war. He was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by National Crime Agency officers at an asylum shelter in Liverpool. Westminster Magistrates' Court in London today heard he is applying for asylum in the UK. Greece is seeking his extradition to stand trial over the alleged smuggling operation it says was based in the country and if found guilty he could face up to 20 years in prison. But his lawyer said today that prison conditions in the country may breach Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to life. Amelia Nice told the hearing the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had investigated Greek prisons. She said: '[The committee's] report says things are not getting better, they are getting significantly worse, so it becomes an Article 2 case.' She added that Owda's legal team was trying to arrange for an expert to independently inspect a Greek prison before a full hearing in the case. She also said: 'Subsequent to extradition one of the issues is that he is likely to be sent back to Palestine. 'It might be open to argument that there is a risk extradition will result in deportation that may... result in human rights breaches.' The court also heard Owda suffers from unspecified mental health problems. The December raids saw 13 other alleged members of the gang arrested in Greece, seven in Austria and two in Sweden, the NCA said at the time. Owda (pictured) was one of 23 people held in raids across Europe in December over an operation authorities claim could have made up 7 million since 2013 by preying on desperate civilians fleeing the civil war During the raids police found 17,500 hidden in a speaker in Owda's room. Owda is accused of helping over 50,000 migrants enter Greece from Turkey every day for at least 16 months. Owda, said to be the gang's mastermind, allegedly used an asylum hostel near Sefton Park in Liverpool as a base while claiming asylum after entering the country in the back of a lorry in 2014. Most of the people in the smuggling network were Greek nationals whose work was co-ordinated by an Albanian working closely with Owda, police said. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court via video link from HMP Wandsworth for a short review hearing today. He was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by National Crime Agency officers at an asylum shelter in Liverpool (pictured) and Westminster Magistrates' Court in London heard he is applying for asylum in the UK District judge Elizabeth Roscoe said: 'I understand that you may be raising similar issues as are being raised in the asylum claim. 'But what has been raised in the asylum claim is surely a matter between Mr Owda and the Home Office. They process the asylum claim. 'I think you have to get on and prepare this case. It may be that it cannot be heard if the asylum decision has not been reached. 'But if asylum is refused, the court would expect this hearing to be very shortly afterwards.' Owda, who spoke through an Arabic interpreter and wore a grey prison issue jumper, was remanded in custody until the next hearing. Greece is seeking his extradition to stand trial over the alleged smuggling operation it says was based in the country and if found guilty he could face up to 20 years in prison. Pictured, the asylum centre were he was arrested The father of one of the two 14-year-old boys lost at sea last year has agreed to turn over his son's iPhone to investigators after the other teen's family filed a legal challenge. Florida boys Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen vanished on a fishing trip nine months ago, and their capsized boat was found 100 miles off Bermuda last month. Austin's iPhone was recovered from the boat and was severely damaged after eight months submerged in sea water. But until now, the boy's father had refused to let state investigators inspect the phone in case it jeopardized his chance to recover the data. He cited the recent controversy over Apple's refusal to help the FBI unlock the functioning iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook. The decision had infuriated Perry's family who insisted that the phone could hold vital clues as to what happened in the boys' final hours on board the boat and even filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop officials in Florida from handing the iPhone to Austin's parents. Now it appears Blu Stephanos has had a change of heart after he announced that will now share whatever information is found on his son's recovered cellphone with Perry's family and law enforcement. Scroll down for video Clues? Perry's family have appealed to Austin's family to hand over their son's iPhone to investigators - who have now relented Friends Austin Stephanos (left) and Perry Cohen (right) went missing on July 24 last year after setting out on a fishing trip from Jupiter, Florida, but never returned Mr Stephanos told the Palm Beach Post that while he is doubtful the phone has survived months of salt water damage, 'but I am not giving up hope.' Austin and Perry's capsized boat was found 100 miles off the coast of Bermuda with an intact iPhone on board last month - nine months after the boys were last seen. The phone was taken by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) and was due to be handed back to Mr Stephanos after he refused to sign consent forms allowing investigators to try to access its data. The phone spent eight months submerged in seawater and does not currently work, but the father claims he has been in touch with Apple, who he says is willing to help in attempts to recover any information left on the phone, such as final messages or calls the boys tried to make. Experts say the phone could contain key clues as to what happened, including the boat's location, speed and direction. It may also contain the last messages the boys may have tried to send and any pictures they may have taken. Mr Stephanos said he had been working with Apple 'who seems willing to help us try to get the phone operational again.' 'That would be the first order of business, since Austin's phone has been submerged in salt water for over eight months,' he said. 'We've also had an IT expert access the phone's Cloud backup and, unfortunately, found that it had never been enabled.' Mr Stephanos added that he had not wanted to scare off Apple by handing the phone over following the phone company's refusal to cooperate with the FBI over one of the San Bernadino terrorist's locked phones. A boat on the way to Norway spotted the 19-foot Seacraft about 100miles off the coast of Bermuda, and Stephanos' iPhone was among the personal items recovered from the boat 'In light of the recent San Bernardino incident involving attempts by the FBI to retrieve data from a locked iPhone, we felt that it would be best to avoid the pressures of having these efforts played out in the media,' Mr Stephanos said. 'We didn't want to do anything publicly that might jeopardize the cooperation of the manufacturer. Unfortunately, I feel that the recent publicity and wild speculation may have done just that. 'Of course, any relevant information that might be retrieved from Austin's phone will be shared with the Cohen family and the proper authorities. 'To me, this phone represents a connection with my son, so I thank you all for your continued support and understanding in this very sensitive, and very personal, matter,' he said yesterday. Mr Stephanos' decision came just one day after the Cohen family filed a lawsuit against the FWC and the Stephanos family, calling for an injunction stopping the FWC from handing the phone Austin's parents. According to the lawsuit, they feared that other family may try to access the iPhone, which they say could accidentally lead to all of it data being wiped. 'I don't know his last moments and it's haunting and it's terrifying,' Perry's mother, Pam Cohen, told WPBF. 'I miss him dearly and would do anything to get him back.' 'It's the largest search and rescue that the U.S. Coast Guard conducted in modern day time. So the fact that eight months later, two vital pieces of information and evidence has been recovered ... why the investigation wouldn't be reopened to look into that and find the answers, it doesn't make any sense,' she added. Ms Cohen believes that Austin's phone may reveal any last calls or text messages the boys tried to make, as well as any photos or videos they took while on the fishing trips. But she said that the FWC have asked for the consent of Mr Stephanos, Austin's father, numerous times but he will not give permission for the phone to be accessed. 'Blu Stephanos has said no he will not sign the consent form and that he is demanding the phone to be returned to his possession,' Ms Cohen said. The family of Austin Stephanos (left) were initially confident he and Cohen are still alive. The families used a GoFundMe page to raise almost $500,000 for a private search, but that was called off after it failed to yield any new evidence Cohen (left) grew up on the water fishing and is a strong swimmer, his family said. They hope to learn more about what happened to their son through the recovered iPhon Austin and Perry were last seen at about 1.30pm on July 24 when they went on a fishing excursion without adult supervision. The pair had stocked up on $110 worth of fuel for their 19-foot white single-engine boat and did not return to shore that night. After just two days, the U.S. Coast Guard found the teens' 19-foot boat capsized some 67 miles off the shore of Daytona Beach. However, the boat then drifted away and was not found until it was discovered by a boat headed to Norway. The ship's crew found the 19-foot Seacraft vessel about 100miles off the coast of Bermuda on March 18. Personal items, including Austin's iPhone, were found and handed over to the FWC. The U.S. Coast Guard first recovered the teenagers' 19-foot boat just two days after they went missing in July (pictured), but the towing company was unable to find it when they tried to bring it to shore Family members expressed the hope that they would learn more about what happened to the two boys, who were both experienced fishermen. Ms Cohen wrote on her Facebook: 'This is an open Missing Persons case, and we hope that FWC reopens their investigation and utilizes the expert resources of other government agencies as well as the private sector if necessary to extrapolate the data from the recovered iPhone'. Items missing from the boat - including a white Yeti cooler and life jackets - gave the impression that the boys made improvised flotation devices, while a missing engine cover suggested they may have tried to work on the engine. Also missing were a translucent Plano tackle box and a pair of white Royal brand fishing boots. Two life jackets and a boat cushion were later found off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, but they could not be linked to the missing teens. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission confirmed the boat belonged to Stephanos, and his iPhone was recovered on board The Coast Guard and volunteers called off the search after they combed through more than 25,000 square miles of ocean in one week. The families used a GoFundMe page to raise almost $500,000 for a private search, but that was also cancelled after it failed to yield any new evidence. The boys' families were initially very confident they would find the boys alive, with Ms Cohen saying: 'I have 100 per cent faith they'll find our boys.' Cohen's stepfather Nick Korniloff agreed, saying the family were 'people of the water'. He told CNN's New Day: 'I know that we've trained them correctly - we've taught them the respect of mother nature and the power of the sea. 'We've raised these kids right. Our optimism comes from the faith we have. They are strong kids. They are survivors.' A father and 11 relatives are among 23 people killed by eating poisonous sweets he had bought to celebrate the birth of his son in Pakistan. Dozens fell ill in the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab province after eating the baked sweets, which officials believe may have been contaminated with pesticides. The confectionery, understood to be ball-shaped 'laddoos' which are eaten at special occasions in Pakistan, were distributed among friends and family after the birth. A father and 11 relatives are among 23 people killed by eating poisonous sweets he had bought to celebrate the birth of his son in Pakistan. Many were also left needing hospital treatment (pictured) But celebrations turned out to be short-lived when ten people died on the same day. According to the BBC, they were purchased by Sajjad Hussain, a villager in Layyah district. He and 11 relatives were among those killed while a number of people remain seriously ill in hospital. 'The death toll from consumption of the sweets has now risen to 23, and 52 people are still being treated at various hospitals,' local police official Munir Ahmed told AFP on Monday. He said the dead included the baby boy's father and seven of his uncles. The confectionery, understood to be ball-shaped 'laddoos' (pictured) which are eaten at special occasions in Pakistan, were distributed among friends and family after the birth Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the district, confirmed the incident, adding three people - two brothers who run the bakery and a worker - had been arrested. The worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix. 'There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated, and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safe keeping,' said Bukhari. 'A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture,' he said, but added that police were awaiting for the results of laboratory testing. Butchered: Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of Bangladesh's only LGBT magazine, has been hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants at an apartment in the capital Dhaka A US embassy worker who ran Bangladesh's only LGBT magazine has been hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants at an apartment in the capital Dhaka. Xulhaz Mannan, editor of the transgender magazine Rupban, and his friend Tanay Majumde were killed by three people who posed as couriers and attacked them with sharp weapons. One person was also injured in the attack at an apartment in the Kalabagan neighborhood, police said. Mannan, a USAID worker, had worked as a U.S. Embassy protocol officer. Marcia Stephens Bloom Bernicat, the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, paid tribute to her colleague in a statement calling Mannan 'a dear friend'. She also slammed the 'senseless act of violence' and called on the country's government to track down his murderers. 'I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka,' Bernicat said in a statement released on Monday. 'Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the U.S. Embassy. He was a dear friend. 'Our prayers are with Xulhaz, the other victim, and those injured in the attack. 'We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the Government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders.' Mannan has been behind an annual Rainbow Rally, which since 2014 has been held on April 14, Bengali New Year. But police this year banned the event as part of widespread security measures. Ahead of the banned rally earlier this month, Mannan said they had received threats from Islamists who posted messages online. 'They have even set up an online group to threaten us,' he said. His death comes two days after a liberal and free-thinking professor, Rezaul Karim Siddique, was hacked to death in the northwestern city of Rajshahi. It was the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and liberal activists that has left the country reeling. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack through its news agency, saying the 58-year-old professor who wrote poetry and fiction had been murdered for 'calling for atheism'. But Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan rejected the terror group's assertion and said 'local militants' were responsible for the murder. The LGBT community has been heavily persecuted in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Mannan (left) ran the transgender magazine Rupban (right) and also organised an annual Rainbow Rally which this year had been banned by police as part of widespread security measures Mr Mannan was killed by suspected Islamist militants at an apartment in the capital Dhaka (file picture, above) But in recent years some activists have tried to increase awareness and rights. Following Saturday's attack, hundreds of students and teachers marched on Rajshahi University's campus and blocked a highway, demanding justice. Amnesty International condemned the killing and said those responsible must be brought to justice. The attack somes two days after a liberal and free-thinking professor, Rezaul Karim Siddique (pictured), was hacked to death in the northwestern city of Rajshahi 'The vicious killing is inexcusable and those responsible must be held to account,' Amnesty's South Asia director, Champa Patel, said in a statement. 'This attack sadly fits the gruesome pattern established by Islamist extremist groups in Bangladesh who are targeting secular activists and writers. 'The authorities must do more to put an end to these killings. 'Not a single person has been brought to justice for the attacks over the past year.' Advertisement A once-proud minesweeper which Prince Charles captained during his Royal Navy career is now lying half-submerged in a Merseyside dock. Once a bastion of British maritime history, HMS Bronington is docked in Birkenhead, but has sunk at its stern, leaving it resting on the bottom of the dock. The Prince of Wales captained the ship for 10 months from February 9, 1976 and was said to be 'a popular skipper' who 'got on with everyone'. HMS Bronington has been in Gillbrook Basin for some two years since the closure of the Warships Preservation Trust, which took ownership of it in 2002. The world-class naval warship, which was launched in 1953, has since fallen into disrepair - and at one stage even had a tree growing out of it. HMS Bronington is docked in Gillbrook Basin, West Float, Birkenhead and has sunk at her stern, leaving her resting on the bottom of the dock 'A popular skipper': The Prince of Wales captained her for 10 months from February 9, 1976. Price Charles is pictured here taking the final salute before leaving HMS Bronington A young Prince Charles (right) on board the minesweeper HMS Bronington on November 12, 1976, which he took command of in February of the same year According to local ship expert Phil Owen, the decking of the ship is in bad condition and she has a history of letting in rainwater. After its Navy service, the ship was bought by The Bronington Trust, a registered charity with the Prince as its patron, and he later visited his old command. The Prince has been approached several times by interested parties to help save the vessel, according to Mr Owen. He said: 'If he was to turn around and say 'I will save my ship' then everyone would come out of the woodwork. 'She could be used for so much more. The ship is quite unique. Restoring her would be an experience for apprentices and navy personnel. 'She could be the centre of something bigger.' Mr Owen added that Prince Charles was thought of as a good captain by his crew on the Bronington, saying: 'I have yet to see anyone have a bad word about him, everyone got on with him.' HMS Bronington has been in Gillbrook Basin for some two years, but it has become neglected and fallen into disrepair Prince Charles left the Navy for good in December 1976 - seen here waving goodbye to HMS Bronington with a toilet seat round his neck The once proud ship sails up the River Mersey en route to the Historic Warships Museum in Birkenhead - but it is a different picture now The Prince ended his service aboard the Bronington by being wheeled off it in a wheelchair 'because his command had aged him' and, in a bizarre naval tradition, with a toilet seat hanging around his neck. Mr Owen monitors much of the shipping in the Mersey on his blog and had been keeping an eye on the 440-tonne 'Bronnie' - one of the last Ton Class minesweepers left in the world. A spokesman for Peel Ports said: 'Peel Ports assumed responsibility in 2006 when the previous owner went into administration and since then have worked to secure the vessel's future by seeking to transfer ownership to credible interested parties, without success. 'During that time, we regularly pumped water out of the vessel until she became unsafe to access and have since continued to maintain her moorings.' The interior: At one stage the former world-class warship had a tree growing in it. It is now one of the last Ton Class ships left in the world Fallen into disrepair: In its glory days, the Prince ended his service aboard the Bronington by being wheeled off it in a wheelchair 'because his command had aged him' The Prince has been approached several times by interested parties to help save the vessel, according to local ship blogger Mr Owen A rescue dog who was hailed a hero for saving up to seven lives in the aftermath of the Ecuador earthquake has died from exhaustion. Dayko, a four-year-old white Labrador, formed part of the fire service and helped the team by sniffing out survivors in the rubble who may not otherwise have been noticed. However, a combination of heat, dehydration and the huge effort put into the rescue mission took its toll on the brave pup and he died on Friday. Scroll down for video The four-year-old white Labrador formed part of the fire service and helped the rescue mission by sniffing out survivors in Pedernales, Ecuador Dayko had been working in Pedernales, in the north west Ecuadorian province of Manabi. The area was one of the most badly damaged following the disaster and 654 people have so far been found dead. And Dayko worked tirelessly to stop the death toll from rising. However, the dog, who had national and international certifications, sadly died in the early hours of Friday morning. The medical team tried everything they could to revive him but despite their efforts did not succeed. Dayko's death was announced by the fire service on their Facebook page. A combination of heat, dehydration and the huge effort put into the rescue mission took its toll on the brave pup and he died on Friday The dog, who had national and international certifications, sadly died in the early hours of Friday morning In an emotional post, the crew wrote: 'We regret to inform you that today the [fire service] is in mourning because [we] just lost Dayko who participated in the work of searching in Pedernales, the dog with national and international certifications, passed away in hours In the morning [sic]. 'This four legged friend gave his life in the line of duty. Thank you Dayko for your heroic efforts in Pedernales and in various emergencies where you were present. 'You held high the name of the K9 unit.' The medical team tried everything they could to revive Dayko (right) but despite their efforts did not succeed The mourning team said: 'Thank you Dayko for your heroic efforts in Pedernales and in various emergencies where you were present' The fire service praised Dayko in the emotional Facebook post and said that he gave the K9 unit a good name The post has already received more than 15,000 likes and has been shared by over 8,000 people. Alongside attracting many adoring comments on social media, local news teams have also praised Dayko as they claim he gave his life for his work. And his death is not in isolation, as it has been revealed than many other rescue dogs have sustained injuries during the searches. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the Ecuadorean coast on April 16 and the country continues to suffer from aftershocks. It has now been confirmed as the deadliest quake in South America since one in Colombia in 1999 killed more than 1,000 people. He wrestled Mohebbi from shop and detained him while waiting for police This is the moment an incredibly brave delivery driver risked his own life to tackle an armed robber holding up a Chinese takeaway. Josef Gunar, who was described by a judge as a 'very brave and gallant gentleman', raced into the shop in Enfield, North London to take on gun-wielding Mahmoud Mohebbi, 37. After grappling with the robber and removing him from the premises, Mr Gunar then detained him while waiting for police to arrive at the scene. Shocking CCTV footage showed Mahmoud Mohebbi, 37, pointing the gun at takeaway owner Nanshang Chen Mohebbi, who had donned a mask and gloves, demanded money on September 9 last year, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard Mohebbi had donned a mask and gloves before entering the Rainbow City takeaway armed with a blank-firing revolver. Shocking CCTV footage showed Mohebbi pointing the gun at owner Nanshang Chen and demanding money on September 9 last year, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard. 'Mr Chen was about to submit when Josef Gunar, delivery driver for the restaurant, intervened selflessly and with no regard for his personal safety to tackle Mr Mohebbi,' said prosecutor Max Hardy. 'He had been sitting in his car and noticed Mr Mohebbi behaving suspiciously outside the restaurant before going in.' Mr Gunar wrestled Mohebbi into the street who pleaded: 'Please, brother, let me go, my children are very hungry, please let me go.' Firearms officers attended soon after to find the gunman still being restrained. Josef Gunar was captured on CCTV racing into the building in Enfield to take on the armed robber Mr Gunar risked his own life by grappling with the robber and removing him from the Rainbow City takeaway The gun, which Mohebbi confessed was fake, was tested following his arrest and found to be an Italian-made BBM Olympic 6 blank-firing.22 calibre revolver. The firearm had been painted black over its original orange to disguise it. Inside there were five unfired blank cartridges, which were found to be in working order. Mohebbi initially claimed he had been coerced into committing the robbery but that basis of plea was dismissed by Judge John Lafferty. Accepting Mohebbi was 'having a hard time in prison' the judge felt that five years was the shortest jail sentence possible he could pass taking into account his guilty pleas. Mr Gunar was also singled out for praise in an address delivered after Mohebbi was sent down. Mr Gunar wrestled Mohebbi into the street who pleaded: 'Please, brother, let me go, my children are very hungry, please let me go' The takeaway driver detained Mohebbi while waiting for police officers to arrive at the scene in North London Judge Lafferty said: 'Mr Gunar did not simply call the police as he might have been expected to do. 'He got out of his car and he entered the takeaway because his employer was in there being threatened by Mr Mohebbi with what he thought was a real firearm. 'Mr Gunar is a very brave and gallant gentleman. He could easily have sat on the other side of the street and discharged his civic duty by calling the police.' Mohebbi, of Flat 5, Collinson Court, 1B, The General's Walk, Enfield, was jailed for five years for attempted robbery with two years concurrent for possessing an imitation firearm. An order for the forfeiture and destruction of the weapon was granted. Mr Gunar was singled out for praise in an address delivered by Judge John Lafferty after Mohebbi was sent down Nearly 22,000 passengers are now arriving in London during the morning rush hour peak Londoners are travelling to work in conditions that would be illegal for farmyard animals, research revealed today. The situation is likely to worsen, with the Transport for London (TfL) predicting that the network will have to deal with more than 330 million more journeys per year. Nearly 22,000 passengers are now arriving in London during the morning rush hour peak - forcing commuters to be crammed in carriages with five people per square metre - conditions that would not be acceptable for transporting sheep, cattle and pigs under animal welfare regulations. Rules for transporting livestock give chickens 70 per cent more space, cattle have 23 per cent more room, pigs 30 per cent more and sheep and goats have 123 per cent more space, according to an analysis of Department for Environment data. Livestock transporters must give a cow at least one square metre, but TfL research found that up to five people are crammed into the same space during the busiest times on the Tube. On average there are around four million passenger journeys on the Tube every day. Zac Goldsmith, the Tory candidate for Mayor of London, said the 'shocking figures' figures exposed the desperate need for investment in the capital's transport network. Today he promised to be the 'champion for commuters' by spending 1.5billion on the Tube network to increase capacity by 33 per cent if he wins next week's election to replace Boris Johnson as London Mayor. He promised to invest the money on the busiest lines - the District, Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines, which together make up nearly 40 per cent of the London Underground network. Mr Goldsmith said his Labour rival Sadiq Khan was wrong to focus on an 'experimental fares policy' that he claims would take 1.9billion out of the transport system, starving it of much-needed investment. Mr Khan has pledged to freeze TfL fares for the full four years of his term in City Hall if he wins the May 5 election. Rules for transporting livestock give chickens 70 per cent more space, cattle have 23 per cent more room, pigs 30 per cent more and sheep and goats have 123 per cent more space, according to an analysis of Department for Environment data On a visit to Waterloo station today, Mr Goldsmith said: These shocking figures shed new light on the scale of the problem Londoners faces. The situation is now critical with the number of commuter journeys set to increase by 330 million each year, we need to urgently stand up for London's commuters by investing in services to reduce delays and overcrowding. That would all be put at risk by Sadiq Khan, whose 1.9 billion black hole in the transport budget will be a disaster for London. Khan is the political representative of the trade union bosses. Ill be the champion for commuters. According to an analysis of Department for Environment figures, pigs are given the same space as four underground commuters under transportation regulations and it also reveals that two sheep are given more space than three Tube passengers. Meanwhile one underground commuter in the morning rush hour is given the same space as 15 chickens. Ted Cruz cast aside howls of protest from Donald Trump and started campaigning in Indiana Monday after reaching a controversial deal with rival John Kasich that cleared away competition. 'Well we are all in on Indiana,' he told reporters in the state, where he is holding a series of events today. 'After a discussion with the Kasich campaign we made a decision about allocating resources. Governor Kasich decided to allocate his resources elsewhere. I think that made sense for both camps,' Cruz said rejecting Trump's accusation of 'collusion.' 'This is entirely about the will of the people,' Cruz said. Bye bye Kasich: After pact, Cruz has the field to himself in Indiana to try to take on Trump one-on-one Defensive: Ohio governor John Kasich played down the significance of the pact. 'I'm not campaigning in Indiana and he's not campaigning in these other states. That's all it is,' Kasich said WHO GETS WHERE? CRUZ WILL CAMPAIGN IN: Indiana KASICH WILL CAMPAIGN IN Oregon, New Mexico AND WHERE'S LEFT FOR THEM TO FIGHT OVER? Nebraska, West Virginia, Washington, California, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota Advertisement Cruz made his comments hours after his and Kasich's campaign revealed that they made a deal that the Ohio governor stay out of Indiana and Cruz clearing out of Oregon and New Mexico to allow each man an opportunity to hold down Trump's delegate total potentially denying him enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. Campaigns always make strategic decisions about where to deploy resources, but it is highly unusual to make a deal and announce it publicly. Cruz defended it was 'good for the country to have a clear and direct choice.' Cruz predicted that Trump would 'scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine.' Trump fired of a furious statement early Monday morning saying: 'Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are.' 'We're focusing our energy on the state of Indiana and Gov. Kasich is focusing his energies elsewhere,' said Cruz. 'I don't doubt that Donald Trump is going to scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine some as well, Cruz added. 'That has been Donald's pattern.' Trump blasted the pack between his two rivals as 'collusion' Cruz has largely abandoned the five states that vote Tuesday where he is trailing in the polls. Yet he laced into Trump for not having the guts to come to debate him in Indiana, which holds its primary May 3. 'Yet Donald Trump continues to cower in Trump Tower,' Cruz riffed. 'Donald is fond of telling everyone what a strong, tough man he is,' Cruz goaded. 'Well he can demonstrate his strength by not hiding in Trump Tower.' Earlier, Kasich defended the pact not so much by attacking Trump but by minimizing its significance. 'All you gotta do is get the right number of delegates and you win. If you can't get the right number of delegates, you don't win, and the delegates who were selected through the Democratic process get to choose. What's wrong with that?' he said while campaigning at a Philadelphia diner. This is the moment a rider was thrown from the back of her horse - because it got spooked by a Google Street View car. The scene unfolded in images which showed the horse and its rider making their way towards the Google car, before the horse then gets spooked and suddenly turns to run away. As it pulled off the single track road onto a field, the rider was thrown off the horse and is seen lying on her side on a patch of grass - with the bay horse running off into the distance. The images, which were spotted online this week, were captured on Google street view in a rural area of Finland called Sievi in October 2009. It is thought the driver stopped to check the woman was okay, as the following image shows the horse being led back to the road and the stricken rider stood on her feet. The Google Street View car recorded the rider and horse as they travelled towards the vehicle on a dirt road As the pair approached the car, its mapping cameras recorded the horse comfortably cantering past the field But when the car got close, the horse reared up, obviously terrified by the approaching vehicle As the rider tried to control her horse, the car's cameras recorded the animal turning and fleeing The horse then shot off through the field as the rider desperately tried to hold on for dear life Advertisement Incredible photographs charting the illustrious career of a decorated Royal Navy hero have gone up for auction. The stunning collection spanning the career of Captain Basil M Peck MBE throughout his service from 1906 until 1947, features photographs taken aboard world-class naval warships including HMS Powerful, HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Renown, and HMS Courageous. With dramatic scenes from boats struggling against dangerous swells, to accidents out at sea, the collection also includes views of Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition ship departing Melbourne in 1910, close-up views of a torpedo being launched, and images of the Italian liner Ausonia burning in Alexandria harbour. The lot of 150 images, expected to fetch between 400-600, will be auctioned on May 10 by Chales Miller Ltd, the only specialist house in London dedicated to the sale of maritime and scientific collectables. Life's a beach: A photograph of a member of the WREN - the Women's Royal Naval Service - in Alexandria in June, 1944 Charting the illustrious career of a decorated Royal Navy hero: Lot number 66 shows in vivid detail the landing of the Kaiser at Portsmouth in November 1945 Lot number 13: The crew from the world-renowned battleship H.M.S Courageous looking at a crashed aircraft The stunning collection spanning the career of Captain Basil M Peck MBE, features dramatic scenes out at sea - such as this plane crash off H.M.S Courageous The lot is sure to be of interest to those with a fascination in maritime history. Here, the crew can be seen examining a crash on board H.M.S Courageous The aircraft carrier H.M.S Courageous: All of the pictures follow Captain Peck's service from 1906 until 1947 Never before seen pictures from British maritime history: Lot 126, Fiji shows the 'Panitive expedition from Pegasus, with captives' Launching a torpedo off H.M.S Courageous. HMS Courageous was the lead ship of the Courageous-class cruisers built for the Royal Navy during the First World War Lot 107: Unseen images of Captain Scott's Terra Nova departing Melbourne on October 17, 1910, for the Antarctic A photograph from 1909 shows crew members weighing the anchor by hand on board the warship, H.M.S Powerful The lot of 150 images, expected to fetch between 400-600, will be auctioned by Chales Miller Ltd, the only specialist house in London dedicated to the sale of maritime and scientific collectables A postcard album is just one of the lots being auctioned, featuring 50 annotated photo postcards of naval interest Making the Christmas puddings on H.M.S Courageous. All of the image give a glimpse into what life was really like on board the world-class warships Dramatic scenes show the Ausonia sinking in Alexandria Harbour on October 24, 1935 The crew photographed raising their hats on board H.M.S. Courageous at the Jubilee Review in 1935 The crew aboard H.M.S Courageous, with Captain Peck in the middle centre. The albums span his career from 1906-1947 Just one of the photographs shows the intricate details on a ship decorated with flags for the 1935 Jubilee Review Pre WW2 test flights taken off from H.M.S Courageous: Courageous was decommissioned after the war, then rebuilt as an aircraft carrier during the mid-1920s and could carry some 48 aircraft Bernie Sanders may not win a single state on Tuesday, putting the Democratic nomination far outside his grasp. His campaign says there's a 'zero' percent chance he'll leave the race, regardless of the outcome in the five northeastern states that cast ballots tomorrow, as it still believes he can beat Hillary Clinton by winning the most votes. Aides are not blind to the challenge, however, and they're now pursuing a strategy that relies on Sanders running the table in May and June and claiming he has the momentum and should therefore be the nominee. And if all else fails, a senior Sanders aide indicated there's still hope that Clinton will take a nuclear-sized hit before the summer convention and the progressive senator will emerge at the nominee as part of the fall out. Bernie Sanders may not win a single state on Tuesday, putting the Democratic nomination far outside his grasp. But he's refusing to drop out It's wishful thinking on the part of Clinton's opponents, both Republican and Democrat, that her campaign will collapse under weight of her previous transgressions. A 13-hour grilling on Capitol Hill before the House's Benghazi committee last fall did little to hurt her national numbers as many Republicans had hoped. The FBI has an open investigation into her use of a private server and email system while she served as America's chief diplomat, but Washington insiders ultimately believe she won't be prosecuted. As Clinton's repeatedly said, she never sent nor received information that was classified at the time, and no evidence has turned up to negate her statements. And while the FBI acts independently of the White House, the perception is the agency's director, who serves at the pleasure of the president, is unlikely to make an example out of the Democratic Party's preferred Oval Office occupant. Still, the Sanders campaign believes Clinton's numbers could drop so low, Democrats lose their appetite for her to represent them in November, making way for a Hail Mary attempt at having the senator selected as the nominee by party officials, members of Congress and other establishment types that make up the party's 712 superdelegates. Of course, the Vermont senator would prefer to defeat Clinton fair and square. Mathematically, it's improbable. She's more than 225 pledged delegates ahead of him. Sanders needs to win nearly six in 10 voters in the remaining states to pull off an upset. And he'd still need to convince a majority of superdelegates to switch their vote. If all else fails, a senior Sanders aide indicated there's still hope within the senator's camp that Clinton will take a nuclear-sized hit before the summer convention, and Sanders will emerge at the nominee as part of the fall out Democratic polling firm, Public Policy polling, released surveys this morning of three states that vote on Tuesday and found Sanders ahead by four in one, Rhode Island, down by two in another, Connecticut, and behind by 10 in Pennsylvania. His prospects are even worse in Maryland, where Clinton polls 20 points ahead of him on average, Real Clear Politics' data shows. The only poll of Delaware, conducted by Gravis last week, has Clinton up by seven. Sanders' chief strategist told Tad Devine told MSNBC on Sunday there's a 'zero' percent chance the senator will end his campaign even if he goes 0 for 5. The candidate acknowledged to CNN's Jake Tapper yesterday that his road ahead is filled with pot holes, but it's not a dead ender. 'I'm not going to tell you that it's easy,' the senator told him. 'What polls seem to be showing is that many of the states yet to come, including California, our largest state, we have a real shot to win.' California votes on June 7 along with New Jersey and four other states, doling out a total of 694 pledged delegates. The candidate acknowledged yesterday that his road ahead is filled with pot holes, but it's not a dead ender. He's seen here earlier today in Connecticut - a state he may unexpectedly win tomorrow The anticipated winner of that state's primary, Clinton will celebrate with her supporters there before she tackles other states with May contests. Sanders has his sights on the May 10 contest in West Virginia and will hold his election night event tomorrow near Marshall University in Huntington Four additional states vote in May, and Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam and the District of Columbia will also have their say before the nomination process comes to a close. Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver insisted last Wednesday in New York to MSNBC that the senator was likely to win all of the May contests and go into the final stretch with the momentum. The campaign believes that plus the fact that Sanders does better in general election polling against Republicans who could be on the ticket will be enough to persuade superdelegates they should take Sanders' side in the intra-party battle. Next up on the calendar is Indiana, a state where independents are allowed to vote in the primary, a good indicator for Sanders. Clinton will rally her supporters there tomorrow as Pennsylvania votes. The anticipated winner of that state's primary, she'll come back to Philadelphia in the evening to celebrate with her supporters before she tackles other states with May contests. Jack Susianta, 17, from Hackney, who died after jumping into a canal at Walthamstow Marshes, east London A policeman who stood on the side of a canal where a teenager drowned as he tried to flee from officers has told an inquest they thought he was 'deliberately' evading them when he went underwater. Jack Susianta, 17, from Hackney, east London, died in July last year when he jumped into the canal at Walthamstow Marshes. Witnesses have claimed that police refused to enter the water to save him but the Metropolitan Police have denied this, saying one officer risked his life and entered the canal. And today St Pancras Coroner's Court heard how the teenager did not look like he was in difficulty and had refused help before he drowned. PC Tom Griffiths told the hearing that he saw Jack go underwater and believed it was in a 'deliberate act' to evade him and fellow officers. He added that is was a 'sad, unfortunate truth' that police were unable to save him. While his colleague PC Richard Hughes said he believed the teenager might have 'fought us off in the water'. The inquest jury had previously heard that Jack had suffered a psychotic episode, smashed through a window at his family home and fled in just a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks. The teenagers mental state also meant he feared the police were not the real police. PC Griffiths and PC Hughes, of the Metropolitan Police Territorial Support Group (TSG), described trying to capture Jack on the marshes before he jumped into the canal. Speaking at St Pancras Coroners Court, PC Griffiths said: 'I think its just a sad, unfortunate truth that we were not able to save him. 'Thats the responsibility we feel but unfortunately I dont think we could have done anything differently.' PC Griffiths, who said he was not a strong swimmer, said he had been unaware Jack was under the delusion that the police were not real, but added it would have made no difference. Police search for Jack's body in the canal last year after he drowned. An inquest today heard police thought he was deliberately evading them when he went under water Emergency services at the scene after the teenager died. Witnesses have claimed that police refused to enter the water to save him but the Metropolitan Police have denied this, saying one officer risked his life and entered the canal He added: 'Its an unfortunate Catch-22 - our primary role is to get him to safety, if they dont believe that we are police officers we cannot just withdraw because we would never find him.' Describing the moment Jack drowned, he added: 'He did not thrash down. He really slowly sank down, it looked like he was trying to go underwater. 'I thought maybe he was going to swim down river. 'I saw him in the water, he was treading water and he did go under a couple of times. To me it looked like he was going down to swim underwater - it looked like a deliberate act. 'He did that a couple of times but he did not look like he was in difficulty at any point.' Meanwhile PC Hughes, who described himself as being unable to swim the length of a pool, said he assessed the risk of trying to save Jack as 'too dangerous.' He told the court: 'I thought if if dived in the water and got near to him - he did not want to be rescued. An inquest jury had previously heard that Jack had suffered a psychotic episode, smashed through a window at his family home and fled in just a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks 'I thought he might have tried to fight us off in the water.' Asked if all TSG officers should be required to swim, PC Griffiths said that the unit rarely dealt with incidents in the water and all police officers would have to be trained to make it an effective policy. He also denied claims the search operation was uncoordinated. Suggestions that officers should have tried other methods to rescue the teenager, such as forming a human chain, may have been considered but there were risks, he added. He explained: 'Just because we did not do them does not mean we did not consider them. 'Its our job to consider these contingencies - members of the public dont think about these contingencies because theres an emotional response.' The jury heard it took around nine minutes between the time Jack jumped into the canal at 3.50pm and an officer, PC Richard Wilson, requesting permission to go in after him. The London Fire Brigade were first called at 3.53pm before the constable asked to enter the water at 3.59pm, which was approximately four minutes after Jack was last seen to have submerged. PC Anthony Daly, another officer from the same unit involved in the search, said he believed it was already too late by that time. He explained: 'The length of time Jack had been submerged, he could not have survived. Several minutes - that's too long for somebody to hold their breath. Floral tributes are left at the scene after Jack's death. The jury heard it took around nine minutes between the time Jack jumped into the canal at 3.50pm and an officer, PC Richard Wilson, requesting permission to go in after him PC Daly, who said he could swim but was not a 'strong swimmer', said he had used a police-issue throw line for Jack to grab hold of, but the teenager swam away from it. He said he was asked by a member of the public why he had not tried to go into the canal to help the teenager. PC Daly added: 'I said it was too dangerous for me to go into the water. 'As a person seeing someone in that position, who clearly needs help, it's horrible. Your natural instinct - you want to help. 'You are considering what you can do in that situation. Emotionally you're like "I've got to help" but you've got to take time to think. 'I don't believe me entering the water to try and help him would have been productive at all. 'I don't know what my abilities are in that situation - I imagine I would struggle very greatly with a body underwater that's potentially obstructed.' Asked if he thought he had been right not to do so, he told jurors: 'I believe I made the right decision not to enter the water.' Charles and David Koch, the right-wingers Democrats most love to hate, won't bring their network of conservative donors to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. And Charles, the more outspoken of the two billionaire brothers, now says Hillary Clinton could 'possibly' be a better president than Donald Trump. 'Why go?' Koch said, telling ABC News that his 'Freedom Partners' coalition of deep pocketed politicos won't attend the July event. 'We're not interested in politics. Were interested in moving us towards a culture and policies that will enable people to improve their lives.' SITTING IT OUT: Billionaire conservative donor Charles Koch said he and his brother David won't bring their network of deep-pocketed donors to the Republican National Convention this year 'WHY GO?': Koch told ABC News that he's not interested in electing a Republican for the sake of electing a Republican COULD IT BE HILLARY? Koch said it's 'possible' another Clinton could be better for the country than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz The Kochs are Democrats' favorite walking caricatures of conservative special-interest donors, steering hundreds of millions of dollars into the politicla process to drive a free-market agenda and earning a torrent of ad hominem attacks along the way. Their names have been mentioned on the floors of the House and Senate, invoked in campaign issue ads, and pilloried on websites, despite the presence of left-wing donors including globalist George Soros and environmental crusader Tom Steyer whose political contributions dwarf theirs. Still, the potential absence of Charles Koch's funds from the presidential race doesn't bode well for a Republican victory, and could hamper the GOP's efforts to win down-ticket Senate and House contests. Koch and his brother put an estimated $407 million in play during the 2012 election cycle, a number they reportedly plan to more than double this time around. He hinted in an ABC 'This Week' interview on Sunday, however, that he's not happy with the Trump-ward direction the GOP is tilting, saying he could conceivably throw his support behind Hillary Clinton in the fall. 'It's possible' a second Clinton presidency could be better for the country than a Republican White House, he said, while steering clear of mentioning any names. 'We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way,' he said. 'But on some of the Republican candidates ... before we could support them, we'd have to believe their actions will be quite different than the rhetoric we've heard so far.' Clinton pushed back, aware of how progressives view the Kochs as politically nuclear. MISPLACED: Koch railed against Trump for advancing the idea of a national database of Muslims something The Donald was thought to have suggested but never did NOT CRUZING TO VICTORY: Koch said he can't get behind the Texas senator's proposal to 'carpet-bomb' the ISIS terror army NO THANKS: Hillary Clinton sought to distance herself from the Kochs as soon as one of them tossed her a backhanded compliment 'Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote,' she tweeted. Koch's strongest indication that he's staying off the Trump train came during a discussion of the Republican front-runner's positions on radical Islamic terrorism. Trump once suggested the creation of a government database to track Syrian refugees, a comment that was conflated into a proposal for a national Muslim registry. 'This isn't Nazi Germany. I mean, that's monstrous as I said at the time. So, obviously we totally oppose that," Koch told ABC on Sunday, referring to the non-proposal. And he lashed out at Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who is chasing Trump, saying that his vow to carpet-bomb the ISIS terror army is a bridge too far. 'That's gotta be hyperbole, but I mean that a candidate - whether they believe it or not - would think that appeals to the American people. This is frightening,' Koch said. Koch seemed resigned to accepting the trajectory of the GOP primary process, however. He said while House Speaker Paul Ryan was 'better on the issues' than any of the surviving Republican contenders, it would be appropriate to have a 'white knight' snatch the nomination away from people who have been running for the White House for a year or more. 'I dont see how he could win,' Koch said of Ryan's chance at the nomination. 'If he did, I mean, that would create the impression this whole thing is rigged, which that's the opposite of the direction we want to go.' Ex police officer Darren Bromley (pictured outside Liverpool Crown Court) 'deliberately and repeatedly' abused his position by turning up at the homes of three prostitutes while he was on duty A married ex-police officer who 'deliberately and repeatedly' abused his position by turning up at the homes of three prostitutes while he was on duty has avoided jail. Darren Bromley, 40, used Greater Manchester Police resources to track down the sex workers before trying to 'get into the lives and homes'. The court was told how Bromley first came across the women in Manchester city centre before making contact with them during shifts under the pretence that he was carrying out investigations. In a bid to distract himself from marital problems, he phoned one women nearly 30 times, while telling another that he would arrest her unless she 'kept him sweet'. The former officer - described as 'family orientated' - persisted in his behaviour in the belief that the women would not complain because of their 'lifestyle', the court was told. But he was caught when social workers saw him turning up at one of the women's homes in his police uniform and asked the woman about his bizarre behaviour. The former officer has now been sentenced to 15 months in prison, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to three counts of misconduct in a public office. Passing sentence, Judge Clement Goldstone QC said Bromley 'shattered' the women's trust. He said: 'You deliberately and repeatedly abused your position as a serving police officer. 'You shattered their trust in the police. By your conduct, you brought the reputation of your colleagues and GMP into disrepute. 'When your marriage got into difficulties you used the opportunity of contact with street workers as a way to resolve your domestic difficulties.' Liverpool Crown Court was told how Bromley, who joined the force in 2001, met the women in the Piccadilly area of Manchester where he approached them in his police vehicle before asking for their names and addresses. He then accessed and viewed their police records including custody and intelligence records. After that, Bromley, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, continued to manipulate the force systems to track down information about the women, before turning up at their homes unannounced. The court was told that there was no 'sexual or physical contact' and that he was 'unable to articulate his intentions' when visiting at the addresses. But he covered his tracks by telling bosses he was dealing with an incident that involved looking for a male suspect. The married officer, whose 22-year-long relationship has since broken down, was said to have been a 'well regarded' officer in the force and did not fall under suspicion until he was rumbled by social workers. Miss Anya Horwood, for the prosecution, said: 'The prosecution take the view the real mischief that this defendant has committed, is he has spent his time when being paid by the public, using the computer and various police radios to contact these complainants, one of them 28 times by telephone. 'There were no legitimate policing purposes involved. He is unable to articulate his intentions but accepts contemplating formulating a relationship.' The court was told that the women had been fearful that he may arrest them. Referring to a ten-minute visit which Bromley made to a second woman, Miss Horward said: 'He told her his name was Paul. She felt she should, in her words, "keep him sweet" because he might arrest her.' The 40-year-old used resources at Greater Manchester Police HQ (pictured) to track down the sex workers before trying to 'get into the lives' in the hope their 'lifestyle' would stop them complaining The court was told how Bromley, who approached one of the women in the city's red light district, also made 28 calls to one of the women. Miss Horwood added: 'She said that he complained when she didn't answer telephone calls and was fearful that he would arrest her. 'She said he would park his car a short distance away, when he was with her his police radio would ring on a regular basis and he would ignore these calls.' When Bromley was caught in 2014, the court heard that he seemed 'surprised' and told them he was making inquiries relating to trouble with youngsters. Miss Horwood said: 'After the defendant left she (complainant) explained to the social workers about the defendant's behaviour and regular attendances at her home. 'All of the visits were during his hours of duty. Because of what she told police, investigations continued. They revealed visits to the home addresses of two other sex workers. These again when on duty and no legitimate purposes.' The court was read extracts from the complainants' Victim Personal Statements which detailed how the former police officer's offending had impacted upon them. One woman, who suffered with mental health issues, said she had taken an overdose of drugs and alcohol. The woman spoke of her vulnerability, adding that she later realised the officer abused his position and took advantage of her. The court was told how Bromley, who approached one of the women in the city's red light district, also made 28 calls to one of the women (stock image) She said that as a result of Bromley's offending she felt unable to trust the police and was unable to settle at home if she saw or heard a police car near her home. Another said that she had been concerned that she would not be believed. The third added that Bromley would turn up at her address without any warning and spoke of his 'arrogance'. Defending, his barrister Lisa Roberts QC said Bromley had done the right thing by resigning. She said that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, officers refuse to go, adding: 'He could have taken that path - he did not. She added that he 'had lost his good name in the profession that he loved' and was a man 'incapable of articulating what was his motivation in contacting these women other than he was lonely at the time, he sought some form of solace and contact with them'. After the hearing, chief superintendent Annette Anderson, head of GMP's Professional Standards Branch, said Bromley's 'inexcusable actions' fell well below the expected standards of professional behaviour. She said: 'He let everyone down, both those that the police are there to protect and those who work selflessly to deliver policing across Greater Manchester. 'Our role is to uphold the law and to protect our communities. 'It is my hope that the thorough investigation and the outcome in this case sends out a clear message that we will not accept anything but the highest of standards from all of our officers.' When Kelly Hyles was brought to America by mother Anetta aged just 11, she knew she had been given an amazing opportunity to improve her life. While Anetta worked two jobs a day to provide for her daughter, Kelly woke herself up at 5.30am in their New York home before traveling an hour and a half to school, then spent her evenings in tutoring classes or volunteering at Mount Sinai hospital. And her dedication was repaid last month when she received acceptance letters from a total of 21 colleges, including all eight Ivy League schools. Scroll down for video Kelly Hyles (left with mother Anetta, and right), who came to America from Guyana in 2009 aged 11, has been accepted into 21 colleges including all eight Ivy League schools Hyles received acceptance letters from (clockwise from top left) Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania after graduating with a 99.63 GPA Kelly told People: 'I was really happy. I'm still in disbelief. I am so grateful.' Mother Anetta added: 'By the first one I was in tears of joy, I am screaming and shouting, "Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus." I was so happy and excited the tears just run out.' Hyles received acceptance letters from Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Hyles woke herself up at 5.30am each day and traveled an hour and a half in order to go to school while her mother worked two jobs She was also accepted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University, while Stanford has placed her on its waiting list. Hyles' journey began in 2009 when mother Anetta decided she had to move to America in order to provide a better life for her daughters, particularly Kelly, who had always been top of her class. The family came to Brooklyn, where Hyles was enrolled at the prestigious High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College of New York. In order to support her daughter , Anetta worked each night as a nurse's aide until 7am, before traveling to her second job as a health care aide, which started at 8am. In total she worked 15 hours each day. That left Hyles responsible for waking herself up at 5.30am and traveling more than an hour and a half by bus and subway in order to get to school, across the city in Harlem. After classes finished, Hyles either took part in tutoring lessons to help bump up her grades, or traveled to Mount Sinai hospital where she volunteered in one of the biology labs. While still at high school, Hyles also voluntarily took and passed a series of college-level classes. All her effort meant Hyles achieved a remarkable 99.63 GPA, acing nearly every test and assignment with perfect grades, and graduating as valedictorian. Anetta (left) said Hyles (right) was always top of her classes back in Guyana, which convinced her that she needed to come to America to give her daughter better opportunities Hyles, a keen student of biochemistry, says she wants to study to become a neurosurgeon. While she has not decided on a college so far, she said she is leaning toward Harvard Hyles now wants to visit each university before making a final decision, but says her initial instincts are leading her towards Harvard. A keen student of biochemistry, Hyles wants to study to become a neurosurgeon. According to Guyanese Girls Rock, a charity that helped support Hyles' education, she became interested in the subject after a relative developed Parkinsons. Dogs are said to be man's best and most loyal friend - and in the case of Pero the sheepdog, the old saying is certainly true. The lovable black and white pooch made an incredible 240-mile journey back to his owner after he was handed over to another farm for a trial. Pero was taken to his new home in Cockermouth, Cumbria, by farmer Alan James from the country village of Penrhyncoch, Wales, at the beginning of March. Scroll down for video Black and white sheepdog Pero (pictured) was taken to his new home in Cockermouth, Cumbria, by farmer Alan James from the country village of Penrhyncoch, Wales, at the beginning of March At the beginning of April, Pero went missing. Twelve days later Mr James was shocked when he opened the front door to find his missing sheepdog 200 miles away from where he was meant to be. Pictured: A map showing the distance Pero travelled to be back with his owner But on April 8, Mr James received a phone call to say that four-year-old Pero had gone missing while herding sheep, and was nowhere to be seen. The homesick herder had miraculously navigated his way home on an epic journey that averaged 20 miles a day Twelve days later the father-of-five was shocked when he opened the front door to find his missing sheepdog 200 miles away from where he was meant to be. The homesick herder had miraculously navigated his way home on an epic journey that averaged 20 miles a day. Mr James, 54, said: 'It was amazing but we have no idea how Pero did it. 'He must have a Sat-Nav in his brain.' 'A sheepdog can go all day and cover a lot of ground. But it is a mystery how he found his way here. 'We don't know how he was fed or if he hitched a lift. 'But it was incredible when he turned up on a doorstep.' He added: 'We would love to solve the mystery of how he managed it.' Mr James and his wife Shan, 47, were so taken aback by Pero's loyalty that they decided to welcome him home for good. Mrs James said: 'He was very excited to be back both with the family and the other dogs. Mr James (pictured) and his wife Shan, 47, were so taken aback by Pero's loyalty that they decided to welcome him home for good Mrs James said: 'We would love to know if anyone along the route saw a mystery black and white sheepdog' 'We have a lot of dogs and a friend knew the farmer in Cockermouth was looking for a dog that could round sheep and follow a quad bike. 'We thought Pero would be ideal for the job. We let him go on a trial at the beginning of March. 'We were then told that Pero had disappeared on April 8, and was nowhere to be seen. 'But then last Wednesday evening my husband Alan went out to check on the animals after supper and there was Pero on our doorstep. 'It was a bit of a shock, and the dog was going crazy after seeing Alan. 'It's a total mystery as to how Pero has managed to find his way back to us. We know that dogs can find their way home, but 240 miles is a long way to travel.' Mrs James said she believes the black and white sheepdog must have somehow persuaded good Samaritans to feed him on his way home, as he didn't appear to be malnourished. She said: 'When he came back, he wasn't hungry or weak, so he must have managed to find food somewhere. 'He must have stopped in places along the way. Algerian feminists have responded furiously to the controversial French 'Hijab Day' held last Wednesday at an elite Paris university. The backlash came as Sciences Po university invited classmates to wear the Muslim head scarf for a day to raise awareness of treatment of hijab-wearing women. One woman said they wanted to 'scream my revolt' against the day while another questioned why veiled women's rights should be highlighted over the plight of non-veiled women around the world. Scroll down for video The invitation from Hijab Day's Facebook page to the event which intented to highlight the discrimination women who wear the Muslim headscarf face on a daily basis - but which came under fire from Algerian feminists The Hijab Day event was held in the wake of Prime Minister Manuel Valls' controversial statement that he wished to ban all forms of religious headscarves at French universities. Marieme Helie Lucas, the Algerian founder of Secularism Is A Womens Issue, argued that 'the right to veil' in France was already 'well defended'. She claimed more focus needed to given to non-veiled women who were being abused around the world, citing Nigerian girls who were 'forcibly converted, veiled and sold as slaves' by the militant Islamic group Boko Haram' and Iraqi women 'at the hands' of ISIS or 'Daesh'. She wrote on The Alliance for Workers' Liberty website: 'Who, today in France, defends the right not to veil, when it is needed? Ms Lucas added: 'Who defended it when Algerian women were slaughtered by armed fundamentalist groups in the 1990s? Who does what today for the Nigerian girls forcibly converted, veiled and sold as slaves by Boko Haram and who are still held by them. Or for the Iraqi women at the hands of Daesh? She added: 'Why so many voices for veiled womens rights and so few for non-veiled ones, be they Muslim believers or not?' Hijab Day organiser Laetitia Demaya said the event was designed to 'raise awareness, open the debate and give the floor to women who are often debated on in public but rarely heard' Meanwhile, Lalia Ducos, President of the Womens Initiative for Citizenship and Universal Rights (WICUR), added that by considering veiled women the 'only "representatives" of Islam' people ran the risk of discriminitating against Muslim women who do not veil. She spoke of the Algerian women killed by fundamentalist groups during the Algerian civil war in the 1990s, with the death toll - including men - estimated to be 200,000 people. She wrote: 'In the name of all the Algerian women who were assassinated for refusing the dress code diktat, I want to scream my revolt against this "day" organized by the very students who are supposed to become the elite in our country. 'It is not acceptable that veiled women be discriminated against, however, by confusing religion and culture, by considering veiled women as the only "representatives" of Islam, one runs the risk of discriminating against the vast majority of Muslim women who do not veil and who struggle for the separation between religion and politics, i.e. for secularism, and for the universality of rights.' Ms Ducos added: 'The veil is conceived of, first and foremost, as a flag that makes fundamentalists more visible: it is mostly political, just as the clothes worn by those men mimicking the Taliban are. 'Islamist fundamentalism is a totalitarian ideology that manipulates Islam towards political ends.' One Algerian sociologist argued that 'the right to veil' in France was already 'well defended' and that more focus needed to given to non-veiled women who were being abused around the world The women's comments come nearly a week after Hijab Day - which the day's Facebook page stated would help students taking part to 'experience the stigmatisation experienced by veiled women in France'. 'It is to raise awareness, open the debate and give the floor to women who are often debated on in public but rarely heard,' said Laetitia Demaya, one of the organisers. Philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy tweeted: 'Hijab Day at Sc Po. When will there be a sharia day? Stoning? Slavery?' 'This is a provocation and we denounce the religious character of the event,' Carla Sasiela, the head of the UNI student union, told The Local. Her group said the event is a 'total contradiction of the values of the Republic and the respect for women's rights'. Writing on its Facebook page, the student wing of the far-right National Front (FN) criticised an initiative coming from a 'Parisian middle class disconnected from social reality'. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls made the recent controversial statement that he wished to ban all forms of religious headscarves at French universities One woman wrote: 'In the name of all the Algerian women who were assassinated for refusing the dress code diktat, I want to scream my revolt against this "day" organized by the very students who are supposed to become the elite in our country' 'This initiative is particularly nauseating when women all over the world are fighting to throw off their shackles. In Iran, for example, women have acid thrown in their faces if they don't wear the veil,' it said. The university distanced itself from the initiative in a statement on Twitter, saying the fact it was taking place on the campus 'should not be interpreted as support.' Sciences Po university distanced itself from the initiative on Twitter, saying the fact it was taking place on the campus 'should not be interpreted as support' (File photo of Muslim woman in a hijab) Sciences Po's Hijab Day was held just days after France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he wants all forms of Muslim headscarves to be banned in universities. In an interview with the daily newspaper, Liberation, Prime Minister Valls said France should 'protect' French Muslims from extremist ideology. He said the headscarf, when worn for political reasons, oppresses women and is not 'an object of fashion or consumption like any other.' Asked whether to outlaw headscarves in universities, Mr Valls is quoted as saying 'it should be done, but there are constitutional rules that make this ban difficult.' The wearing of full-face veils in public spaces has been banned under French law since April 2011. The 2010 'Act prohibiting concealment of the face in public space', applies not only full-face veils or burqas worn by some Muslim women, but all face-covering headgear, including masks, helmets and balaclavas. The only exceptions are when ordered otherwise under French law - such as motorbike helmets while riding or for work requiring the face to be covered for health and safety reasons. Michael Huskey, 10, (pictured) and his seven-year-old cousin from Fort Mill, South Carolina, made up that a black man tried to abduct them because they wanted to skip school Two white boys made up that a black man tried to abduct them because they wanted to skip school. Michael Huskey, 10, and his seven-year-old cousin Jayden, lied about the kidnapping attempt in Fort Mill, South Carolina, on April 11 so they could miss classes. Their parents were initially horrified after the children said the imaginary suspect tried to grab them as they walked to Pleasant Knoll Elementary School. They also insisted he had pliers and a knife on him. But the youngsters' plot was foiled after they were interviewed by police, and their stories didn't match up. Police did find a knife near the spot the boys said they were taken, but they never saw a suspect. Sheriff's spokesman Trent Faris told The Herald: 'After interviews with witnesses, talking with the two boys involved and through the boys' own confession, detectives discovered there was no attempted kidnapping on the morning of April 11, 2016.' Husky's mother, Terrie Ruff, did an interview with the newspaper just hours after the apparent kidnapping. She said that her son ran up to the house hysterically crying and saying: 'Mama, mama, somebody just tried to get us!'' Ruff then went on to say she was proud of her son for telling his cousin to apparently run away. But now she has punished him. When asked about the hoax, she said: Its just a lot to take in right now and trying to be a mom.My nerves are stretched. I dont really want to talk about it.' The boy also spoke to local news station WBTV in the aftermath. He told them he thought he was going to get hurt if he didn't escape. Pleasant Knoll Principal Grey Young said the school was put on lockdown following reports of the attempted abduction. Scroll down for video Huskey walks along the section of the road where he told police the imaginary suspect tried to grab him. In local TV reports after the reported incident, he described how he told his cousin to run away Husky's mother, Terrie Ruff (right), initially said she was proud of her son for protecting his cousin, but now she has punished him After learning the claims were fake, he sent an email to parents saying he was glad the students were not harmed. He added:' In this case, our students made a mistake, but as their school family, we support their learning and understanding and will use this experience as a teaching point when talking with all students about decision-making and how to respond accordingly.' Faris said an adult who falsely reported such an incident would probably be charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200 or up to 30 days in jail. However her told The Herald they wouldn't be filing charges against them. 'It's a good lesson for everybody,' Faris said. 'Never is it a good time to falsely accuse anyone of any crime. ... We hope these boys learn their lesson.' Police cars are seen at the spot where the alleged attempted abduction took place near Huskey's home Their parents were initially horrified after the children said the imaginary suspect tried to grab them as they walked to Pleasant Knoll Elementary School (pictured). But the youngsters' plot was foiled after they were interviewed by police, and their stories didn't match up Video has emerged of a rousing fight a Denny's server had in the middle of the restaurant with two customers, after an argument broke out about their respective sons. The fight was recorded inside one of the diner chain's stores in North Carolina. The server, who is not named, is seen in the clip screaming at the man and woman who are filming: 'My son is not a bully ... get out! Get out of here now! Your son is ugly!' 'Get out of here now!': Video has surfaced from inside a Denny's restaurant in North Carolina of a server angrily ordering some customers out of the store The server is seen in the clip screaming at the man and woman who are filming inside the store in North Carolina: 'My son is not a bully ... get out! Get out of here now! Your son is ugly!' The video, which first appeared on LiveLeak, goes for just 1.5 minutes, however has amassed 30,000 views since it was uploaded. It begins with the waitress being asked by the people filming: 'So we can't eat here because your son is a bully?' The waitress replied: 'And you are calling him a fat a--? Who is the adult?' The server then gets even madder and starts yelling when the customers reiterate: 'You son is a fat a--.' She later responds: 'Well your child is ugly, and you are retarded.' Scene: The fight was recorded inside one of the diner chain's stores in North Carolina. Pictured here is a file photo of a Denny's restaurant At the end of the video the server suggests that the fight will resume later that day by saying: 'I'll show you b--- when I get home, honey.' The customers then reply: 'So now you're threatening us?' The Daily Mail Online contacted Denny's for a comment about the incident on Monday but a spokesperson was not immediately available. David Heinsen raped an eight-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome and has now admitted having 650,000 child pornography images on his computer - including one of her A 70-year-old man jailed for 40 to 60 years for raping an eight-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome has admitted having 650,000 child pornography images on his computer - including one of her. David Heinsen, from Nashville, Michigan, admitted torturing and raping the young girl in 1989 after a picture of him abusing her was found among his sick collection of child porn. Heinsen is a former neighbor of the girl and was caught when his son found the huge haul of vile images on his wife's computer. His wife, who had been married to him for 35 years when she turned him into the police last July, has not spoken to him since. Cops tracked down the girl after finding an image with the title 'Exposed in the Kitchen, Starring Eight-Year-Old (girl) June 1989', MLive reported. The photograph showed Heinsen torturing and molesting the girl, but he could not be charged with torture because the statute of limitation had long expired. The father-of-six immediately co-operated with police and explained how he had viewed child porn for 50 years, saying he had a 'particular attraction' to girls aged between 10 and 12 years old. He described in detail a number of times he had assaulted young children, including the girl with Down's Syndrome. Officials had long been convinced that the mentally disabled girl, who is now in her 30s, had been abused as a child because of her behavior around some women. She touched other women inappropriately and choked herself and other people but could not explain why. 'Child Protective Services (CPS) investigated but never substantiated any abuse by anyone in her family,' assistant attorney Tessa Hessmiller said at Heinsen's sentencing in February. 'No one knew it was Heinsen abusing her until investigators discovered the negatives in his home in 2015, after [the girl's] family had long since fallen apart under the pressure of the allegations surrounding the CPS investigation.' Heinsen (pictured in court last year) admitted torturing and raping the young girl in 1989 after a picture of him abusing her was found among his sick collection of child porn Heinsen was sentenced in February to 40 to 60 years in prison after admitting to first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a child under the age of 13. He will be sentenced again today after admitting to a federal charge of receipt of child pornography, following the discovery of the 650,000 indecent images and 5,000 videos on his computer. He faces between five to 20 years in jail, which will run concurrently to his 40 to 60 year state sentence. Ms Hessmiller has asked to the court to order Heinsen to pay $12,000 for counseling that his victim may need once her mother can no longer care for her. 'Her mother is afraid that when she is no longer able to care for her daughter, then her daughter could regress to the point of acting out and reliving the trauma,' the attorney said. Defense attorney David Kaczor said Heinsen was abused as a child, saying he was forced to engage in oral sex and masturbation when he was 12 years old. 'He will die in prison,' Mr Kaczor said. 'The only real question is whether he will die in the Michigan Department of Corrections or in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. 'In either institution, his life will be spent in isolation as he avoids all of the inmates who, based upon his conviction, believe that he should not be allowed to live with them. His prison incarceration will be spent in a prison within a prison.' Collins on state's most wanted list and considered armed and dangerous Orlando J Collins on Kansas most wanted list was at the Country Club motel Two of three federal agents injured during a fiery weekend shootout at a Kansas motel have been released from the hospital. The news comes as investigators attempt to identify a body found inside the suspect's charred motel room. Two deputy marshals were treated and released after sustaining gunshot wounds during the Saturday night confrontation in Topeka, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service's headquarters in Washington. The FBI said one of its agents also received non-life-threatening injuries, though that person's medical status wasn't clear Monday. Members of a fugitive task force were trying to arrest 28-year-old robbery suspect Orlando J. Collins at the Country Club Motel when they came under fire as they approached one of the lodging rooms, the FBI said. A fire then erupted in that room before spreading through the motel. Bridget Patton, a spokeswoman for the FBI's regional office in Kansas City, Missouri, said she was not immediately aware of what sparked the blaze. Collins, (pictured left) who was being sought on a federal robbery warrant and was believed by police to have a penchant for arson during a recent crime spree, was on the state's most wanted list and considered armed and dangerous. Right, a photo Collins posted on his Facebook of a collection of guns Two of three federal agents injured during a fiery weekend shootout at a Kansas motel (pictured) have been released from the hospital She said the local fire marshal and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were handling that matter. Collins, who was being sought on a federal robbery warrant and was believed by police to have a penchant for arson during a recent crime spree, was on the state's most wanted list and considered armed and dangerous. Shawnee County's coroner, Charles F.K. Glenn, declined on Monday to publicly discuss efforts to identify the body, telling The Associated Press only that 'we are working on it.' The FBI has declined to confirm whether Collins was arrested. Topeka police said Collins was suspected of a March 30 armed holdup and of shooting at an occupied home. Less than a week later, Collins was identified as a person of interest in connection with an attempted robbery of a grocery store and a holdup of a convenience store less than a half-hour apart, police said in a news release. They said unspecified evidence found in a 1996 Audi burning at a car wash linked him to those crimes. Then last Friday, police said, Collins was identified as someone sought for questioning for allegedly using a gun to rob a tobacco store, then stealing a 2011 Nissan Sentra that was parked outside. The car later was found abandoned and ablaze. Smoke rises from a fire at a motel following the Saturday shootout in Topeka. Authorities say gunshots were exchanged with federal agents, and firefighters worked to douse the fire Aftermath: A Topeka police officer looks back at the scene Sunday following the fiery shoot-out A Staffordshire bull terrier found feasting on the body of his dead owner has been assessed by the animal expert who trained the Queen's corgis. The 'dangerous' dog, known as both Buster and Butch, was scrutinised by behavioural 'pioneer' Dr Roger Mugford who describes the animal as a pet suitable for a 'domestic environment'. In footage of the test, Dr Mugford is seen walking the canine around on a lead as it wags its tail and receives a pat on the back. Affection: During the clip the dog is given pats on the back and strokes by animal expert Dr Roger Mugford Earlier this month, the dog was ordered to be put down by District Judge Wendy Lloyd after it was deemed too dangerous to members of the public. Both Merseyside Police and the owner's family supported the decision, but campaigners were outraged by the move and have taken legal action. Dr Mugford claims to be Britain's leading animal psychologist and treats them from his Company of Animals centre, based on a 100-acre working farm in Surrey. On the centre's website, a biography page claims he has worked with the Queen's beloved dogs, although it does not explain when or which ones he treated. During the dog's risk assessment clip, filmed at a Merseyside Police kennel, the doctor is seen scanning it for an identification chip and walking it around on a lead. The canine seems calm and happy to be showed attention by its handler receiving words of encouragement and strokes. Speaking to the camera, Dr Mugford, whose centre claims to have helped around 80,000 animals, says: I think this really is as much as we can say about this dog, he would seem to me be suitable for living in a domestic environment, living in a home ones hopes forever.' Royal pets: On his website behavioural 'pioneer' Dr Mugford claims to have trained the Queen's corgis Tests: Dr Mugford is also seen scanning the dog for its identification chip at Merseyside Police's dog kennel The animal expert then turns to the dog and says: We wish you the very best young man.' Discussing the physical condition of the nine-year-old canine, he adds: 'Somebody has taken very good care of this dog. For a dog of this age, hes in pretty good shape. The incident-free video is positive for supporters of the campaign to keep the animal alive, a project which has already been boosted by the pet being awarded a temporary reprieve. The decision was made after solicitors acting for Freshfields Animal Rescue Centre and the Senior Staffy Club, based in Worcester, lodged an appeal. James Parry, representing the organisations, said there had been a 'great deal of public support' which meant the destruction order should be reconsidered. Walkies: The dog, known as both Buster and Butch, seems content as he is led around the kennel area Condition: Dr Mugford says that the dog is in good shape for his age and that he had clearly been taken care of He argued that the dog had not attacked the owner and had effectively just resorted to cannibalism, as humans might do in the same situation. Mr Parry told the Liverpool Echo: 'We believe the tests applied to check on the animal were not appropriate and outdated. The 'alpha-role' was adopted by the doghandler, anticipating the dog was going to bite him - it's an outdated tactic. 'Dogs are scavengers by nature, but when they can't get food, they will get anything that is available to them, as was in this case.' However, police say that after a lengthy period in its kennel the dog 'remained aggressive' in specific situations, including a tendency to bite when rolled on its stomach. His remains were found just hours after the deadline expired for the $6.5million ransom the group demanded in November Ridsdel was kidnapped last September along with another Canadian and a Norwegian by the Muslim terror group Abu Sayyaf Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Monday that John Ridsdel (pictured) of Calgary, Alberta had been murdered by terrorist in the Philippines Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered Monday night in the southern Philippines belong to one two Canadians taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September. Trudeau identified the victim as John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta and said his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this 'heinous act.' 'I'm outraged by the news that a Canadian citizen, John Ridsdel, held hostage in the Philippines since September 21, 2015, has been killed at the hands of his captors,' Trudeau said. 'This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage.' Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel's head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief Supt. Junpikar Sitin said. Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of three men - two Canadians and a Norwegian - they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by 3pm Monday. Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming Abu Sayyaf militants, who have been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. 'This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate,' Amin said by telephone. Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees, also including a Filipino woman who was kidnapped with them, as the Abu Sayyaf's deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said. The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos (the equivalent of $6.5 million USD) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands. Ridsdel pictured on the right in a hostage video recorded by the group. Ridsdel was kidnapped last September along with another Canadian and a Norwegian by the Muslim terror group Abu Sayyaf Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of three men - two Canadians and a Norwegian - if a ransom was not paid by 3pm Monday Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel's head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief Supt. Junpikar Sitin said. Above, the location of Jolo The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month. 'Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue,' the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III. About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said. In militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant positioned a long knife on Ridsdel's neck. Two black flags hung in the backdrop of lush foliage. The abductions highlight the long-running security problems hounding the southern Philippines, a region with bountiful resources that also suffers from poverty, lawlessness and decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies. The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south. It was being run by Mexicans who were staying in a Investigators revealed they found a marijuana growing operation in three of the four houses where the shootings took place are gathering evidence in a bid top track down the gunman Prosecutors are investigating a Facebook threat that mentioned one of the eight family members killed execution-style by a rampaging gunman in Ohio. The message was directed at Christopher Rhoden Jr, 16, who was slayed along with seven relatives in a spree of shootings across four rural locations in Pike County on Friday. What was said in the message and who sent it has not been revealed. The post is just one piece of evidence prosecutors have gathered as they continue their bid to track down the gunman. The development in the case comes after authorities also revealed the area where the Rhodens were murdered has historic ties to Mexican drug cartels. Scroll down for video Prosecutors are investigating a Facebook threat that mentioned one of the eight family members killed execution-style by a rampaging gunman in Ohio. The message was directed at Christopher Rhoden Jr, 16, (pictured) who was slayed along with seven relatives on Friday In August 2012, a major marijuana growing site with more than 1,200 plants was discovered. Police also found two abandoned campsites where Mexicans were believed to have been staying. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said he was aware of the social media threat. The content of the message and the sender have not been disclosed It's not known whether the operation is linked to the slayings, or whether there are still ties to cartels in the area. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told CBS News: 'I'm aware of the Facebook threat. 'Every piece of information is valuable and our investigators are certainly taking that into consideration.' On Sunday it was revealed the Rhoden family were involved in drugs and were growing marijuana. Detectives uncovered marijuana grow operations in three of the four houses where the victims were shot dead. Police were also scouring woodland around the rundown area for any further drugs, where confederate flags fly and locals wear T shirts proclaiming their Red Neck beliefs. Police believe there may be further evidence of drug production by the Rhoden family and are examining whether the massacre was fueled by a turf war. Despite the unearthing of cannabis operations, Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader stated that the family were not known to him through criminal activity and he had been an officer in the area for more than 20 years. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said: Marijuana has been found in three locations at crime scenes. They were grow operations. He said the murders had been well planned and amounted to a pre-planned execution. He added: This is not your case where someone's got mad at someone and shot them. It was a sophisticated operation. And those who carried it out were trying to do everything that they could do to hinder the investigation and their prosecution. The development in the case comes after authorities revealed the area where the Rhodens were murdered has historic ties to Mexican cartels. Above, an aerial view of one of the scenes on Friday Husband-to-be Frankie Rhoden and his fiancee Hazel Gilley, 20, were among those killed Friday in Piketon, Ohio, according to the Morning Ledger Tragic: Grandmother-to-be Dana Lynn Rhoden (left), 37, and her son, 16-year-old Chris were also murdered, according to the Morning Ledger. Victims Chris and Frankie are brothers Reader added: 'This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened.' The eight victims were Christopher Rhoden Sr, 40, his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence 'Frankie' Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. Reader said it was evident that it was only members of the family who were targeted and the general public were not likely to be threatened. He added: 'Im a member of that community, its very emotional to find out that 8 people in your community have been murdered.' Eighteen pieces of evidence were being examined for DNA clues, DeWine said, but he would not reveal what they were. Police also refused to reveal what type of gun or bullets were used and whether they had identified a suspect. Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed between 50 and 60 people in hopes of finding leads, and a team 38 people is combing wooded areas around the shooting scenes to ensure no evidence was missed, Reader said. Five search warrants have been issued and seven of the eight autopsies have been completed. Police are also looking at claims by Rhoden family members that twenty-year-old Frankie Rhoden felt threatened by rivals jealous of his $3000 demolition derby car which he used to enter competitions, as first revealed by Daily Mail Online. More than 100 members of the Rhoden family, some of whom live in rundown houses and trailers dotted around the area were advised to arm themselves by Reader for their own safety. Devastating: Hanna May Rhoden (pictured left and right) was killed Friday in the Piketon shooting that has rocked the small community, according to the Morning Ledger. Her Facebook page says she was already a mother to one child He warned members of the Rhoden family: If you are fearful arm yourself although he later said he was not directly asking them to defend themselves with guns. He added: I have told the Rhoden family to be armed. If any other citizen feels that they are in jeopardy, I would advise them to do the same. Many of the Rhodens have been taking shelter in a local church and were described by witnesses as being 'scared for their lives'. Members of the family of the slain victims previously put forward the theory that jealousy or a dispute over Frankie Rhoden's $3,000 car could be behind the murders. Frankie Rhoden, 20, who was gunned down with his fiancee Hannah Hazel Gilley, also 20, was said to have spoken about bitterness between him and other competitors. He had competed several times in his 1990s model Ford Crown Victoria car in local derbies and had told of angry rows with other competitors. He had used his car to smash up the vehicles of other drivers, with the last car standing being declared the winner, in several local rallies. Kenneth Rhoden (left), 44, and Chris Rhoden Sr (right), 40, were named as victims in Friday's murders. Chris Rhoden Sr is the father of Chris Rhoden Jr, who was also killed in the massacre Johnny Gambill, whose wife Lorretta was first cousin to Dana Lynn Rhoden, 37, said: Some of us have been talking about the jealousy that Frankie had faced over his car. It was worth more than $3,000 and that made some people jealous around Piketon. Gambill, a trash collector, added: ' My wife had spoken to Dana about it and we feel today that could be the reason because there aint nothing else that seems what it could it be. The Rhodens are good people who live for each other and there is no reason why anybody should want to do this. They are all very close. There is no drugs reason or money reason. Everybody is peaceful around here normally. There aint never been anything at all like this. The whole thing is so shocking and if the car was the reason then that is so disgusting and incredible. But there were people jealous about him and his car. Russ Clark, who runs Smash It Demolition Derbys locally with his brother Tim, said Frankie Rhodens car was worth more than many of the cars used in tournaments. Gary Rhoden (pictured above in an undated photograph), 38, was named as one of eight family members killed in Pike County on Friday He told Daily Mail Online that most cars were valued at around $500 to $1000 with high end cars worth from $2000 upwards. The victims car would easily be worth $3000 he added. Demolition derbies are popular across the Midwest, and Frankie Rhoden had featured his car in local demolition derbies. The events are popular in the area and attract thousands of spectators, but competitions are governed by strict rules and drivers have to wear safety helmets. Gambill added: The whole thing is horrible. The Rhodens are good people and I hope the police catch the people who did this soon.' But he insisted that the massacre should not give credence to calls for stronger gun laws to be introduced in the United States. He added: Guns dont kill people, it is people. I have got guns because I go hunting, but I would never point one at anybody. In a 911 call following the shootings, a woman sounded out of breath as she frantically told a dispatcher, 'I think my brother-in-law's dead ... There's blood all over the house.' 'There's blood all over the house. My brother-in-law is in the bedroom and it looks like someone has beat the hell out of him,' she said. Before weeping into the phone, she says it looked as though someone else was dead too. The distraught woman said two men, Chris Rhoden and Gary Rhoden, at 4077 Union Hill Road appeared to be dead during the call that was placed at 7.49am Friday. She drove to the house and discovered the horrific scene. 'I think they are both dead,' she said. In a second 911 call that was received, a man said: 'I just found my cousin with a gunshot wound.' Members of the family of the victims suggested that jealousy or a dispute over a $3,000 demolition derby car (pictured) driven by Frankie Rhoden could be behind the murders. The dispatcher asks, 'Is he alive?' The man replied and said 'no, no'. Local Pastor Phil Fulton, whose church housed up to 100 Rhoden family members and allied relations, said: The people who did this are evil, sick, hideous. He said he had seen the family members together and they were weeping and in fear for their safety. Daily Mail Online was able to reach the family at the church, but they were too upset to talk and asked, through police and church officials, for photographs of them not to be published because of safety fears. Police have established that the killer or killers are still at large and not among the eight victims. The horrific massacre has rocked the small community to its core. Authorities spoke to 100 of their relatives and friends gathered at a church on Friday. During a news conference on Friday evening, DeWine said authorities have interviewed more than 30 people and will talk to more of them as the investigation continues. 'We will continue until the case is solved. We do not know whether we're talking about one individual or two or three or more,' DeWine added. No person of interest has been apprehended and investigators are looking at different theories. They believe the killers targeted the family specifically, and DeWine said there was no indication of a threat towards the rest of the community. The rest of the family has been in touch with the sheriff's office for their protection. Kimberly Newman, Victim Advocate and Program Director for the Adams County Victim Assistance Program, told reporters that the family is expressing gratitude for the support and prayers they've received. 'The Rhoden family would like to thank everyone for all the outpouring of prayers and support for their family,' the statement reads. 'They ask that you continue to keep them in their prayers. They want to thank all law enforcement from Pike County and all surrounding counties for their immediate response.' A teenage girl stabbed her brother Mario Aguirre (pictured) to death during an argument A teenage girl stabbed her older brother to death because she was trying to protect their mother during an argument, her family said. Police arrived at the home at Telegraph Square Lane and Oakwell Lane in Harris County, Texas, at 10.30pm on Sunday to reports of a stabbing. Officers found a 19-year-old man dead inside the house. He was identified by family members as Mario Aguirre, Click2Houston reports. Family members said Aguirre had been arguing with his mother about her husband. His 16-year-old sister, who is reportedly called Angie, allegedly intervened and accidentally stabbed him, they told the station. Priscilla Aguirre, another of the victim's sisters, said: Its crazy.' She added: 'I just know that he got stabbed and he died. I couldnt believe it,' a friend of Aguirres, who did not want to be named, told ABC13. 'Im with him every day. He was a good man, he really was. Harris County Homicide Division is investigating the incident. The 16-year-old girl has been taken in for questioning but it is not clear what charges she may face. Police arrived at the home in Harris County at 10.30pm on Sunday to reports of a stabbing An autopsy found a three-year-old girl died from pneumonia because she was so severely malnourished and weighed just seven more pounds than she did two years ago. Jourdin Smiths death in December was ruled a homicide by the states medical examiners office. Her parents, Fort Bragg soldier Octavia Bennett-Smith, 27, and Jamarkus Smith, 26, both of Fayetteville, North Carolina, were charged with first-degree murder on Friday. Scroll down for video The toddler's parents, Fort Bragg soldier Octavia Bennett-Smith (left) and Jamarkus Smith were charged with first-degree murder after the medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide The autopsy report said Jourdin likely would have survived if she'd been properly fed and brought in for medical care. It also said the child weighed just seven more pounds than she did when she visited a doctor two years ago. It also noted she had cuts and bruises on most of her body and injuries consistent with sexual abuse. Her parents were initially charged with felony child abuse after police arrived at their home on December 1 last year and found the girl unresponsive, ABC11 reports. Smith was also charged with two counts of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of statutory sex offense. Her parents were initially charged with felony child abuse after police arrived at their home in Fayetteville (above) on December 1 last year and found the girl unresponsive After his initial arrest, he was held at Cumberland County Detention Center on a $3million bond. He is now being held without bail, as is Bennett-Smith. Police are now also investigating the death of another of the couple's children. Officials at the 9/11 memorial in New York said Monday that one of their security guards shouldn't have stopped a North Carolina middle school choir from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza. Some 50 students from Waynesville Middle School in western North Carolina were at the 9/11 memorial last Wednesday and had just started singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' when a guard told them to stop. 'The guard did not respond appropriately,' a museum spokeswoman, Kaylee Skaar, said. 'We are working with our security staff to ensure that this does not happen again with future student performances.' Move along: A group 50 students from Waynesville Middle School in western North Carolina were at the 9/11 memorial last Wednesday and had just started singing when a guard told them to stop Scene: This is the moment one of the guards approaches a teacher who was conducting the choir and asked her to stop Teacher Martha Brown told Fox News on Monday that a different security guard had given the OK for her students to sing. But the second guard 'said, 'You just can't do this, you've got to stop now.'' Brown said. 'So we very reverently and quietly stopped what we were doing and complied with his request and quietly exited the park.' Video posted by an adult on the school field trip sparked outrage and led to an invitation for the students to sing the anthem live on Fox. The woman who posted it to Facebook, Connie Shepherd Scanlon, wrote in a caption: 'WMS chorus singing @ Twin Towers Memorial. They stopped them half the way thru. You can't sing the National Anthem. So sad this is happening everywhere. They sounded great. God Bless America!' Strict: Groups wishing to perform at the 9/11 Memorial must pay $35 for a permit Brown and principal Trevor Putnam joined the students for their performance at the school. Brown said her students learned from the experience. 'We turned it into a teaching moment and taught them that even if you don't agree with it, or understand it, you must respect authority,' she said. Putnam echoed the sentiment in an interview with The Associated Press. 'The lesson learned here is always to respect authority,' the principal said. 'And I'm so proud of our kids for conducting themselves the way they did.' Groups wishing to perform at the Sept. 11 memorial are supposed to pay $35 to apply for a permit, a requirement that the North Carolina group was not aware of. Safari attraction boasts of chance to 'get up close' with its 1,500 animals Slept for the night before guarding meeting of the G5 group of countries Dealing with rubberneckers on the autobahn is one thing, but being woken by a giraffe poking its head through their window was an altogether different experience for these policemen. Around 250 officers were sleeping in their vans at the Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, northern Germany, before a meeting of the G5 group of nations in Hanover. But those who ended up in the giraffe enclosure found themselves to be objects of fascination for the normal residents - who decided to have a peek inside their vehicles. Around 250 officers were sleeping in their vans at the Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, northern Germany, before a meeting of the G5 group of nations in Hanover But those who ended up in the giraffe enclosure found themselves to be objects of fascination for the normal residents - who decided to have a peek inside their vehicles The Police Department was forced to billet officers in the safari park because of a shortage of accommodation prior to Angela Merkel's meeting with President Obama and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy The Police Department was forced to billet officers in the safari park because of a shortage of accommodation prior to Angela Merkel's meeting with President Obama and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. With hotels and barracks already full with their colleagues from abroad, the officers had to spend a night among the animals. Serengeti Park has 1,500 animals roaming free in grounds designed to resemble their natural habitat. For the giraffes, which are natives of Africa, this is a landscape of open grassland and patches of woodland. With hotels and barracks already full with their colleagues from abroad, the officers had to spend a night among the animals Serengeti Park has 1,500 animals roaming free in grounds designed to resemble their natural habitat Appropriately, given what the officers' went through, the park's website boasts of the chance to 'experience a real adventure... up close with wild animals' Visitors usually move around the park in safari vehicles, with protective rails keeping the animals in view, but largely out of reach. Appropriately, given the officers' experience, the park's website boasts of the chance to 'experience a real adventure... up close with wild animals'. This guy needs a lawyer: Joshua Tackett, 29, was charged with a DUI Friday evening after he crashed his car outside the police station in Kensington, New Hampshire. He was wearing this T-shirt A New Hampshire man was charged with driving under the influence Friday evening after Kensington police say they found him crashed outside their police station wearing a 'This guy needs a beer' T-shirt. Joshua Tackett, 29, who lives in nearby Seabrook, is alleged to have smashed his car through a stone wall and two other objects before it came to a rest,The Smoking Gun said. Photos show his car badly mangled, with huge dents and scrapes in the left-hand doors, a twisted hood and mangled front-left wheel arch. Tackett was driving southbound on Amesbury Road in a Chevy Cruz when he crossed the dividing line into the northbound lane, boston.com reported. He drove through a stone wall and a granite post, but continued until he hit a utility pole and getting caught up in its guide wires. As it happens, that left him snagged right outside Kensington Police Department's headquarters, where officers picked him up. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with 'This guy needs a beer' written across it, and two thumbs-up pointing at his head. Remarkably, Tackett only had a few scrapes in the crash, and turned down medical treatment. Cops arrested him for drunk-driving and booked him into the local jail. Speed, as well as drink, was a factor in the crash, they said. He was bailed on $750 and is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge in Brentwood. Tackett's mugshot shows him grinning in his T-shirt, but Kensington police were not amused. 'He's incredibly lucky he wasn't seriously injured and fortunate another vehicle wasn't traveling northbound at the time or it could have been catastrophic,' Police Chief Scott Sanders told the New Hampshire Union Leader. A Navy officer was bashed by a group of men while returning home from an Anzac Day Memorial Service on Monday afternoon. The 24-year-old, who has asked not to be identified, was in full uniform on a train heading towards Sydney's south-west when he approached a group of men who were 'consuming alcohol and harassing the other commuters'. The officer asked the men to stop drinking and control their behaviour, but one of the men took offence and punched him in the face as he was leaving the train at Glenfield station. A Navy officer, 24, was punched in the face in Sydney following an Anzac Day Memorial Service on Monday The man's partner Emma Novotny (left) has described the event, and urged witnesses to come forward His partner Emma Novotny has described the event, claiming there was a loud group of men 'openly drinking, swearing, and disrespecting Anzac Day in front of veterans and families with young children.' Ms Novotyn told Daily Mail Australia there were five people - one female and four males - drinking and swearing on the train. 'They were just swearing at us, and the war veterans that were sitting in the carriage,' she said. 'They were disrespecting Anzac Day.' The serving officer was in full uniform and returning from an Anzac Day Memorial Service She said her partner stepped in, and as the pair got off the train at Glenfield station he was punched in the face by an attacker. Ms Novotny said the attackers escaped and urged anyone with any information about the attack to contact police, and thanked those who stopped to help. 'If there were any witnesses, or anyone has any information as to who this man is can you please contact Macquarie Fields police. He had told a bunch of men to stop drinking and harassing people on the train before he got off at Glenfield station (pictured) 'Thank you. To the people who stopped and gave their assistance, thank you so much,' she wrote on social media. 'The officer suffered a bloody nose but did not require any treatment,' NSW Police said in a statement. Police said the man is described as as Caucasian in appearance, about 160cm tall with a large build and brown thinning hair. A 100-year-old woman evicted from her apartment now has a new home in the Southern California desert, after a newspaper reported on her plight and motivational speaker Tony Robbins - along with a local congressman - joined in helping her. Evelyn Heller lost a trial in which her Palm Desert landlord sought her eviction on grounds she had loud, disruptive arguments with one of her daughters. When the story ran, Robbins and U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz contacted the newspaper, which put them in touch with each other. Ruiz sent social workers to help Heller find a new apartment and Robbins donated $24,000 - $1,000 a month for two years. To the rescue: Millionaire philanthropist Tony Robbins helped down-on-her-luck great-grandmother Evelyn Heller find a new home after she was evicted earlier this month The 100-year-old lost an eviction trial earlier this month. She is seen here leaving Palm Springs courthouse She now lives in La Quinta, where Ruiz, his wife, and Robbins visited her Friday, The Desert Sun reported. In a video posted to Robbins' official Facebook page, he is seen going into Heller's new place and congratulating her. 'You gorgeous thing, you!' Heller says in the video. 'I'm just so excited to see. It was such a crazy thing - the whole damn thing/' Robbins then replied: 'I felt bad for you and I wanted to help.' An overcome Heller then says: 'How wonderful. You don't know how amazed I am.' On top of the money given to her by the multimillionaire philanthropist, Heller also received helf from socials, who searched for apartments that she would be able to afford, The Desert Sun reported. Heller was offered $1,000 per month to help her pay her rent for the next two years, by Tony Robbins, the multi-millionaire motivational speaker with a long history of charitable giving Heller was booted out of her home after losing a brief trial at the Palm Springs Courthouse on April 1. However she now has a new home in La Quinta, which Robbins went to visit Friday (pictured) 'I wanted her to not have to worry forever,' Robbins, who has a long history of charitable giving, told the newspaper of his donation to Heller. 'At this stage in her life, it's a joy for me to give her that sense of stability and security.' His donation comes in response to learning of her circumstances in a Desert Sun story published on April 2. 'I knew I wanted to help her,' he said of when he learned of her story in the newspaper. 'Something always can be done, it's just a matter of people caring enough to do it.' Her story in the newspaper also drew in offers from several individuals offering small donations to helping her to move or finding her a place to live, according to the Desert Sun. A Georgia man even offered to let her live in his spare bedroom free of charge while a local nursing home said she could skip their waiting list. Multimillionaire philanthropist and motivational speaker Tony Robbins (pictured in October 2015) has donated $24,000 to a 100-year-old California woman who was evicted from her apartment earlier this month On Twitter he wrote, 'I hope this inspires us all to remember we can do so much more,' in reference to his kind gesture Now no longer facing a life on the streets, Heller is thankful for the unexpected help. 'I'm grateful. What more can I say?' she told the newspaper. 'Strangers have been wonderful to me. That's the story.' On April 1, the Palm Desert woman was evicted after her landlord claimed she was too noisy fighting with her daughter and had two weeks to vacate the space, the Desert Sun reported. Deep Canyon Desert LLC's reason for the eviction was because of frequent noisy verbal disputes between the great-grandmother and her daughter, according to the newspaper. Heller was also accused of having an apartment that was in 'deplorable conditions,' the Desert Sun quoted an apartment complex manager as saying. During her eviction trial, she represented herself and the centenarian was ordered 'to pay $616 in prorated rent and more than $800 in court and attorney's fees,' according the newspaper. She was unable to hear the judge's ruling, and was later informed of what happened by a deputy, according to the Desert Sun. When learning of the ruling she said, ''What? What kind of ridiculous thing is that? But I don't have any money.' Deep Canyon Desert LLC was the landlord for apartments at 45200 Deep Canyon Road (pictured) where Heller was evicted. The landlord claimed she was too noisy fighting with her daughter William Windham represented the landlord and told the Desert Sun: 'I've evicted people off of their death beds and regretted every second of the trial. 'But my job is unfortunately to set my feeling aside and do what my clients ask me to do.' Following news of his good deed, Robbins, 56, tweeted: 'I hope this inspires us all to remember we can do so much more!' The author made headlines in February after swooping in to help nuns who faced possible eviction from a soup kitchen that they used to feed the homeless, writing them a check for $25,000. Lawyers for the nuns and landlord, with help from Robbins, reached a deal allowing the nuns to stay for a year at their current rent. Chalice Renee Zeitner has been found guilty of fraud after she faked cancer so she could get a state-funded abortion in Arizona An Arizona woman who faked cancer to get a $6,000 state-funded abortion has been found guilty of fraud. Chalice Renee Zeitner told her obstetrician that she had cancer and her pregnancy put her life in further danger. The 30-year-old even said there were deadly tumors all over her body that put the fetus at risk. But her plot unraveled when prosecutors opened an investigation into her claims last year. Attorney Adam Schwartz told jurors in opening statements that she genuinely believed she had cancer and did not set out to defraud anyone. But the jury ignored his claims and convicted Zeitner on 11 charges including fraudulent schemes, identity theft, theft, attempted theft and forgery. The verdict was reported by the Maricopa County Superior Court on Twitter. Schwartz said at the start of the trial: 'The requirement is that she did this knowingly and intentionally. 'The fact is that Ms. Zeitner did genuinely believe she had cancer in 2009 and 2010.' According to attorneys for the state, Zeitner told her doctor in 2010 that she was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for cancer and that her fetus had been exposed to radiation. After a specialist found her fetus was healthy, they say Zeitner didn't give up the alleged scheme and forged a letter from another doctor that stated her pregnancy had to be terminated to save her life. Zeitner (pictured being led into custody following her arrest in May 2015) told her obstetrician that she had cancer and her pregnancy put her life in further danger. The 30-year-old even said there were deadly tumors all over her body that put the fetus at risk The Arizona health care program in which Zeitner was enrolled covers the cost of abortions in limited circumstances, such as when a mother's life is endangered. Prosecutors say she never mentioned cancer when she applied. Zeitner allegedly claimed before her abortion that she had stage IV cancer in her abdomen and lower spine and told her obstetrician that she was scheduled to resume cancer treatment at a hospital in Boston. Zeitner's plot unraveled when prosecutors opened an investigation into her claims last year. Her defense lawyer insisted that she genuinely believed she had cancer Her abortion occurred 22 weeks into her pregnancy. Investigators say the scheme was discovered a year after the April 2010 abortion when a doctor who performed a C-section during Zeitner's subsequent pregnancy found no signs of cancer. Another doctor who was listed on medical records as having treated Zeitner for cancer later said he never treated her. Zeitner was arrested in May 2015 in Georgia, where she was living in an assumed name. The state estimates that more than $6,000 was spent on health care related to her abortion. She is also accused of using a fake identity on social media to convince her boyfriend to set up a fundraising website for her cancer treatments. She faces a trial May 25 in a separate case in which she is accused of defrauding a charity for military veterans and the leader of a second charity in 2012. She allegedly persuaded one charity to buy $7,700 worth of tickets for a gala with the promise of returning the money and providing a portion of the event's proceeds. Planes have to have water for the crew on board under federal regulations in case of delay Pilot threatens to deplane the aircraft to get the airline's attention - then does A fed-up American Airlines pilot kept his plane waiting on the tarmac for more than 30 minutes so that the thirst-hit crew could get some bottled water The pilot first calmly announced reason for the delay at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, then got extremely cranky when the water failed to arrive. Parched and fed-up, the American Airlines pilot urged passengers to 'get on the Twitter' and vent to his bosses. All off: Passengers on board the plane which suffered an hour's delay before the pilot decided to deplane Passengers on a flight from Washington to Indianapolis were treated to a bizarre reason for a flight delay: the pilot and crew wanted some bottled water. The Embraer E170 jet operated by Republican Airlines for American came in from Atlanta, where water evidently was in short supply. After waiting on the tarmac at DCA for more than an hour, the pilot went rogue. 'If you aren't happy with all this just get on the Twitter and all the social media and let all your friends know how the flight went today,' he announced. He said that if he didn't get water, he was going to deplane the aircraft, saying this would get the airline's attention. 'They only had a little bit for everybody you can't do that,' the pilot explained afterward. Regional jet: An Embraer E175 similar to the plane which was delayed At 4:15, after a delay of close to an hour, the pilot carried through his threat and de-boarded the aircraft. 'We're not leaving any sooner than another 15 mins. So if you want to go get something to eat anything you want I promise not to leave for another 15 minutes. 'We'll figure out what's going -- why it take so long to get some drinking water,' he fumed. The thirsty crew explained that there was just one bottle left in their supply not enough to handle long delays on the tarmac like the one the pilot helped prompt with his act of civil disobedience. Another crew member explained that the water rule was a federal regulation. A small plane carrying three people crashed into a residential neighborhood in Pompano Beach, Florida, Monday afternoon. The plane, which crashed around 3pm, caused one home to catch fire and caused serious damage to two other backyards, according to Pompano Beach Fire Rescue officials. The three victims, one female and two males, were transported to nearby hospitals with severe burn injuries, and were in critical condition on Monday evening. Authorities haven't released the identities of the victims but one person suffered severe burn injuries and had to be airlifted to the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Burn Center, according to WSVN. A small plane (pictured) carrying three people crashed into a residential neighborhood in Pompano Beach, Florida, Monday afternoon The plane (top center), which crashed around 3pm, caused one home to catch fire and caused serious damage to two other backyards (pictured), according to Pompano Beach Fire Rescue officials Firefighters (bottom right) work to put out flames and hotspots where the plane crashed into the roof of one home (pictured) before landing near a pool of another Sandra King, a fire rescue official, told WSVN that the aircraft appeared to have plowed into the corner of a roof on one of the homes. It then landed near the pool of another home. King said the aircraft 'struck at least one house on the way down before it crashed. No one was injured in that house.' The Federal Aviation Administration told the station that the pilot was practicing takeoffs and landings when the incident occurred. The FAA confirmed that the aircraft was a Hawker Beechcraft 76 that took off from the Pompano Beach Airpark just moments before it crashed. Residents tried to douse the flames with whatever they had on hand, including water hoses. Eleven fire rescue units arrived, and the firefighters were able to put out the flames as well as hot spots, according to WSVN. Fire Chief of Pompano Beach Fire Rescue, John Jurgle, told WSVN that two of the victims were found outside of the plane and the third victim appeared to have been ejected from the plane. 'Thirty to 40 per cent of their body is burnt, so, those are significant burns,' said Jurgle. King told WSVN that all three of the victims on board the plane 'are in critical condition'. A homeowner was in the property at the time of the crash but didn't suffer any injuries. Residents (pictured) tried to douse the flames with whatever they had on hand, including water hoses Eleven fire rescue units (pictured) arrived to the scene and the firefighters were able to put out the flames The victims, one female and two males, are in critical condition. Authorities haven't released the identities of the victims but one person suffered severe burn injuries and had to be airlifted to a specialist burn center A man whose daughter and three grandchildren were among eight family members who were slaughtered as they slept today claimed a road rage incident may have been behind the massacre. Leonard Manley, 64, said he was angered by law enforcement revelations that marijuana 'growth operations' were found at three of the four death scenes. In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online, he said he knew nothing about the dope installations uncovered at the homes, but said his family had been riven by tensions and recriminations since the beginning of the year. His daughter Dana Rhoden, 37, and her children Christopher Rhoden, 16, Hanna Rhoden, 19, Clarence 'Frankie' Rhoden, 20 were all murdered in last Friday's massacre, along with four other relatives. One of them - Hannah Hazel Gilley, 20, was Frankie's fiancee. SCROLL DOWN FOR EXCLUSIVE VIDEO Speaking out: Leonard Manley, 64, tells Daily Mail Online he has not been listened to by law enforcement despite losing his daughter and three grandchildren in the Piketon, Ohio, massacre Prosecutors are investigating a Facebook threat that mentioned one of the eight family members killed execution-style by a rampaging gunman in Ohio. The message was directed at Christopher Rhoden Jr, 16, (right). He and his mother Dana Rhoden (left) were killed along with six other relatives Husband-to-be Frankie Rhoden and his fiancee Hannah Hazel Gilley, 20, were among those killed Friday in Piketon, Ohio, according to the Morning Ledger Devastating: Hanna May Rhoden (pictured left and right) was killed Friday in the Piketon shooting that has rocked the small community, according to the Morning Ledger. Her Facebook page says she was already a mother to one child And he said that his grandson Christopher had been involved in a furious row a month ago with a woman on a highway, close to the scenes of the murders, he said. The teenager was 'slapped by a woman' in the incident and his mother had insisted police file charges of assault at a court at Waverley, Ohio, he said. He claimed the charges were dropped without explanation and that he had brought up the possible motive in a meeting with Piketon sheriff Charles Reader and Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine. It was DeWine who confirmed the marijuana discovery. Manley said the officials had not given the consideration to the road rage retribution that he had hoped for. Raising his fist and putting his forefinger onto his thumb in the shape of a zero, he said: 'That's what they gave me backthey didn't want to hear nothing.' He added: 'I asked the sheriff's department about the incident that happened a month ago about my grandson when a 40-year-old womanhit him in the face. 'He had bruising all down his face.' He said his daughter Dana, Christopher's mother, went to court, but the case did not result in convictions against the offender. But threats were made afterwards against his daughter and his son, he said. The threats had been recorded on a cell phone and would be made available to the investigators, he said. The development in the case comes after authorities revealed the area where the Rhodens were murdered has historic ties to Mexican cartels. Above, an aerial view of one of the scenes on Friday Members of the family of the victims suggested that jealousy or a dispute over a $3,000 demolition derby car (pictured) driven by Frankie Rhoden could be behind the murders. Still under investigation: The scenes of the eight murders in Piketon, Ohio, are still being examined by law enforcement Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said he was aware of the social media threat. The content of the message and the sender have not been disclosed Detectives are following several lines of inquiry including claims that bitterness against one of the victims involving a $3,000 demolition derby car may have fueled tensions. They disclosed the discovery of marijuana cultivation at three of the four crime scenes. It was confirmed that there were two pit bulls in one of the houses and that in another chickens were being bred for illicit cock fighting and gambling operations. But asked if his family was made up of drug dealers, Manley, a tree feller, replied: 'No.' He added that his grandson made a living by working on cars and his daughter was not involved in drugs at all. 'I didn't know anything about it [drugs]. We were a loving family.' Fighting back tears, he said: 'My daughter would give you the shirt off her back. Everybody loved her. She didn't deserve this. 'She loved her kids. She would have died for them. She worked everyday. 'The rest of the family [her children] all seemed to be goodbut I don't know about the rest of them [the other victims].' He said he had been shocked to learn of police referring to three marijuana operations at three of the four homes where the murders took place. 'I would fight anybody tooth or nail. My daughter's name is being dragged through the mud and I don't want it. Some of the police are a bunch of b***holes,' he said. 'If I have to, I am going to be find me a better lawyer to make them take their words back. I was shocked [when I heard about the drugs].' Asked what would be his message to the killers, he said: 'If they can live with it, I can too. But it's going to be on their conscience for the rest of their lives... It's going to be on my conscience for the rest of my life.' His church pastor Phil Fulton said: 'Leonard is a good and honest man. 'I feel very much for him and his family. This has been a terrible thing to happen and I feel for them all. 'They are rightly scared and nobody really knows why this happened. I have known them for years and I have never seen any drugs on them.' The other extended family members who died were Hannah Gilley, 20, Christopher Rhoden, Sr, 40, Christopher Rhoden, Jr., 16, Gary Rhoden, 38, and Kenneth Rhoden, 44. Hannah Gilley and her fiance Clarence each had a son from previous relationships. Their children were in their home but spared by the shooter. Leonard's daughter Hanna had a baby girl four days before the massacre with the gunman also sparing the baby's life. The attacks remain unexplained but DeWine, the state attorney general, has said that police are aware of a threat made on Facebook to Christopher Roden Jr. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told CBS News: 'I'm aware of the Facebook threat. Gary Rhoden (pictured above in an undated photograph), 38, was named as one of eight family members killed in Pike County on Friday Kenneth Rhoden (left), 44, and Chris Rhoden Sr (right), 40, were named as victims in Friday's murders. Chris Rhoden Sr is the father of Chris Rhoden Jr, who was also killed in the massacre Community in mourning: A memorial to the victims of the Rhoden family massacre 'Every piece of information is valuable and our investigators are certainly taking that into consideration.' On Sunday it was revealed the Rhoden family were involved in drugs and were growing marijuana. Detectives uncovered marijuana 'grow operations' in three of the four houses where the victims were shot dead. Police were also scouring woodland around the rundown area for any further drugs. Police believe there may be further evidence of drug production by the Rhoden family and are examining whether the massacre was fueled by a turf war. Despite the unearthing of cannabis operations, Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader stated that the family were not known to him through criminal activity and he had been an officer in the area for more than 20 years. However it was also revealed that in August 2012, a major marijuana growing site with more than 1,200 plants was discovered. Police also found two abandoned campsites where Mexicans were believed to have been staying. It is unknown whether the operation is linked to the slayings, or whether there are still ties to cartels in the area. Police have refused to reveal what type of gun or bullets were used and whether they had identified a suspect. Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed between 50 and 60 people in hopes of finding leads, and a team 38 people is combing wooded areas around the shooting scenes to ensure no evidence was missed, Reader said. Five search warrants have been issued and seven of the eight autopsies have been completed. More than 100 members of the Rhoden family, who live in rundown houses and trailers dotted around the area were advised to 'arm themselves' by Reader for their own safety. A search for a missing girl in Louisiana has come to a tragic end after her body was found dumped in a drainage ditch on Sunday. Authorities say Jorion White, 16, was reported missing on Friday after she was last seen in her home in Kenner around 9.30pm Thursday. The St Charles Parish Sheriff's Office said she was reported missing Friday after her family realized she didn't attend school Friday at Bonnabel Magnet Academy High School where she was a junior. Her body was found around 4pm on Sunday dumped in water along St Rose Avenue, which is only a few miles away from her home, police say. Authorities say Jorion White, 16 (pictured left and right), was reported missing on Friday after she was last seen in her home in Kenner around 9.30pm Thursday. Her body was found Sunday The St Charles Parish Sheriff's Office said Jorion (pictured with a friend) was reported missing Friday after her family realized she missed school Friday at Bonnabel Magnet Academy High School where she was a junior St. Charles Parish sheriff's chief of investigations Major Rodney Madere told the New Orleans Advocate that foul play is suspected. Several people have been questioned since she went missing, he added. The St Charles Parish Coroner, Dr Brian Brogle, used her dental records to confirm her identity Monday afternoon. A manner of death for the teen has not been determined yet and toxicology test results are pending. Katrice Reid, a family friend and Jorion's godmother, told the newspaper that White 'smiled constantly, read inspirational books like Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, and cooked customized Pillsbury cookies for loved ones'. Katrice Reid, a family friend, told the newspaper that White (above) 'smiled constantly, read inspirational books like Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, and cooked customized Pillsbury cookies for loved ones' 'She was just sweet all-around,' Reid told the Advocate. 'She stayed inside she did what she was supposed to do. 'My baby was left on the side of the road. It don't look good, where she was found, and how she was found. 'She was 16 years old. Her life was cut completely short.' The St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office asked anyone with information about White's death to call Detective Joseph Dewhirst at (985) 783-1135 or (985) 783-6807. Sir Philip pocketed 400million from the 164-store chain before presiding over its decline and selling it for just 1 City fat cats have carved fortunes out of failed retailer BHS while leaving its workers in the lurch, it emerged last night. Sir Philip Green pocketed 400million from the 164-store chain before presiding over its decline and selling it for just 1. Another 25million has gone to the new owners, led by a twice-bankrupt former racing driver. He is said to have splashed out on a yacht, ski holiday and a luxury car as BHS headed for disaster. MPs have pledged to investigate, saying they will go after anyone guilty of impropriety. Richard Fuller, a Tory, said the collapse showed the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'. Labour accused Sir Philip of extracting hundreds of millions of pounds and making off 'to his favourite tax haven'. He and his associates have taken as much as 1billion out of BHS if property deals and other transactions are included, according to the Financial Times. A high street fixture for 88 years, BHS has gone into administration with debts of 1.3billion. A 571million deficit in the pension fund leaves 20,000 past and present staff facing 10 per cent cuts to retirement payouts. The meltdown means: 11,000 staff face the dole and a hard-up old age, some telling of betrayal by 'thieving b******s'; Pensions watchdogs are probing the situation and are examining Sir Philip's role; The owners are facing questions over where the 25million went. Sir Philip, who has just bought a 100million megayacht, has offered 80million half in loan form to help bail out the pension fund. But the Pensions Regulator is expected to push for more, perhaps several hundred million pounds. Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS for 1 from Sir Philip, under the umbrella of a consortium called Retail Acquisitions, insists 'no one is to blame' for the collapse. The 48-year-old has been made personally insolvent three times and there are serious questions as to why Sir Philip decided he was fit to buy such a major institution. Scroll down for video City fat cats have carved fortunes out of failed retailer BHS while leaving its workers in the lurch Another 25million has gone to the new owners, led by a twice-bankrupt former racing driver. He is said to have splashed out on a yacht, ski holiday and a luxury car as BHS headed for disaster The former racing driver has been through an individual voluntary arrangement and two bankruptcies. He was probed by the Department for Business over the collapse of a holiday home development on the Isle of Wight that left business partners with losses running into the millions. On the failure of BHS, he said: 'No one is to blame. It was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio.' However, his team took more than 25million out of the business in the 13 months they ran it. Sources said the payments included 2.8million in management fees, 2.1million in salaries and wages, 11million in legal and professional fees and 10million in interest payments. POTENTIAL PROBLEMS FOR BHS CUSTOMERS AND WORKERS What will happen to my BHS gift vouchers? Shoppers who have BHS vouchers or gift cards will still be able to use them at BHS shops, despite the firm falling into administration. Although they are still valid they may only be used for 50 per cent of the value of a purchase. For example, to use a 10 voucher, a customer would need to buy at least 20 worth of products in a shop. Consumer group Which? advised customers to spend the vouchers as 'quickly as possible'. I want to exchange an item Items purchased from BHS in the 35 days prior to April 22 can be exchanged for goods to the same value or less. Refunds are only accepted on faulty items. Refunds and exchanges for items that are not faulty will no longer be possible on goods purchased after April 22. What about the company's pension scheme? The pension scheme, which has a shortfall of up to 571million, will eventually be taken on by the Pension Protection Fund which is funded by a statutory levy on all of Britain's final-salary pension schemes. Around 8,000 or so former employees who are already drawing a pension will continue to get their promised benefits, but their annual rises will be capped at 2.5 per cent. Around 13,000 who are yet to retire will lose 10 per cent of their pension payments. Advertisement Former associates of Mr Chappell have described him as a 'great bull*******' and questioned his ability to run a national chain. Angela Eagle, Labour's business spokesman, said Sir Philip had left others to plug a 571million pensions black hole. She said: 'If the worst happens the liability will be covered by the pensions protection scheme and BHS staff will get only 90 per cent of the pension they've worked so hard for and saved for. 'But Philip Green seems to have got much more out of BHS for himself and his family than that. 'BHS staff and the public will understandably want to know whether the former owner who took so many millions of pounds out of the business will have to pay his fair share of the liabilities which accrued during his stewardship.' Business minister Anna Soubry told MPs: 'If there is any suggestion of impropriety, we will come after people.' The Pensions Regulator has announced it will use all its powers to ensure Sir Philip, who is said to be worth 3.5billion, does not dodge his responsibilities to BHS staff. A spokesman said: 'We can confirm that we are undertaking an investigation into the BHS pensions scheme to determine whether it would be appropriate to use our anti-avoidance powers.' The responsibility for paying BHS pensions goes to the Pension Protection Fund, which raises cash through levies on other company schemes. Staff at the company's flagship store in Oxford Street believe that both Sir Philip and Mr Chappell were at fault. One unnamed woman sales floor manager said she had cried herself sick at the prospect of losing her job. 'Most people are blaming Philip Green for this for the downfall of the business. We had one thieving b****** and now we've got another,' she said. Sir Philip bought BHS for 200million in 2000 and in subsequent years paid dividends to himself and colleagues estimated at more than 400million. BHS largely funded this windfall by taking out huge loans and by selling assets. Business recovery expert, Nick Hood of the Opus Group, said: 'This is a business that has been seriously underinvested in over a long period of time. It lost 416million in the six and a half years up to the point where it was sold. 'Retail these days is all about heavy investment in staying up with the trend, online offerings, mobile offerings. None of this happened at BHS. This is another retail business that hasn't stayed up with the times. You have got 11,000 jobs at risk here and the pensions of 20,000 people. It is a disaster.' He said Sir Philip, 64, would not be able to walk away unscathed. 'Officials will be looking very closely at the situation and it is in a position to issue contribution notices to people who have been connected to that fund,' he added. A firm of administrators, Duff & Phelps, has been appointed to take over and the stores will remain open for now. It is believed the chain will be broken up with some stores sold off piecemeal. Mr Chappell insists that he had a successful track record as an entrepreneur. Gin palace: Sir Philip Green has just bought this 100million megayacht, and has offered 80million half in loan form to help bail out the BHS pension fund Bankrupt twice... but he still took home 25million By Ruth Sunderland On the deck of the tall ship Lord Nelson in Southampton Harbour six months ago, BHS owner Dominic Chappell looked as though he did not have a care in the world. His chubby face was split by a huge grin as he pledged to hand over 25,000 to charity on behalf of the High Street chain though, even as he beamed with self-satisfaction, it was hurtling towards ruin. 'He seemed like a lovely chap, and yes, we did get our money shortly afterwards,' said Duncan Souster, chief executive of the Jubilee Sailing Trust, which helps disabled people take to the sea. Mr Souster is one of the lucky ones: not everyone who has done business with Chappell would share the view that he is 'a lovely chap'. Nor, for that matter, has the BHS owner always honoured his financial obligations. However worthy the cause, his 11,000 employees at BHS may baulk at their employer handing over cheques to charity as they are left facing uncertainty over their jobs and their pensions. But just who is Dominic Chappell? When Sir Philip Green, the former owner of BHS, sold out to him last year for a token 1, the City was utterly baffled. Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS for 1 from Sir Philip, under the umbrella of a consortium called Retail Acquisitions, insists 'no one is to blame' for the collapse A firm of administrators, Duff & Phelps, has been appointed to take over and the stores will remain open for now Few had heard of the 49-year-old former public schoolboy with a taste for racing cars, ski slopes and yachts, or of his investment company, Retail Acquisitions. But it soon became clear that Chappell had arrived at BHS with a trail of creditors behind him not to mention a secret investment company set up in Panama shortly after he took over the retailer. He has been insolvent no fewer than three times: once through an Individual Voluntary Arrangement that allows debtors to avoid going bust by reaching agreements over their borrowings, and twice through bankruptcy. He has also had three County Court Judgments against him for personal debts. It emerged last night that under his stewardship more than 25million has been transferred out of BHS and into his Retail Acquisitions company over the past year. This sum includes nearly 5million for management fees and salaries to Chappell and his associates. It also includes an 8.4million loan made by BHS to Retail Acquisitions, around 1.5million of which went to Chappell. These revelations will incense BHS staff and suppliers who are owed money. Former business associates, however, say the latest disaster is all too predictable. 'I am not at all surprised at what has happened at BHS. When I heard he had taken over, I gave him about a year,' says one man, whose business lost heavily in a marina development on the Isle of Wight that resulted in Chappell's second bankruptcy in 2009. The Island Harbour Marina development went under owing 24million to Anglo Irish Bank. 'He would arrive in his helicopter and we would have to chauffeur him to our office. He did me a lot of damage fortunately my business was strong enough.' His chequered finances have not, however, prevented Chappell from enjoying all the trappings of a tycoon. Shortly after taking over BHS, he bought a yacht, Maverick 5, as well as taking delivery of a Range Rover and having a ski-ing holiday with wife Rebecca in the upmarket Austrian resort of Kitzbuhel. He is understood to live in a substantial rented house in Dorset and to have put in several offers to buy lavish local properties. Chappell was brought up in Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey and went to the 11,550-a-term Millfield school in Somerset. He claims to have been a racing driver and to have driven in the Le Mans 24-hour race. His chequered finances have not, however, prevented Chappell (pictured standing under the blue flag) from enjoying all the trappings of a tycoon. Shortly after taking over BHS, he bought a yacht, Maverick 5 His financial misfortunes started early. He became insolvent for the first time at just 29 in 1996, when he entered an Individual Voluntary Arrangement. He claimed this happened because he gave a personal guarantee to a Formula One team that failed. In late 2005, he was bankrupted by estate agent Foxtons over an unpaid fee related to the sale of a 1.2million flat in Fulham, south-west London. He was discharged a year later. Yet another business failure came when his father Joe's property company went into administration in 2008. Dominic is listed as a director between 1993 to 2005 and the firm was finally dissolved in 2013 owing 230,000 to taxpayer-backed Lloyds Bank. His fellow directors at the time of the BHS takeover include 77-year-old Keith Smith, who is remembered in City circles for his time as a director of broker Nabarro Wells, where he acted as an adviser to a firm called Langbar, one of the most notorious frauds in the Square Mile in recent years. Nicky Morgan is facing another humiliating U-turn over plans to remove all schools from local authority control as she battles a backbench rebellion. The Education Secretary is discussing a range of concessions to placate Tory rebels over her pledge to force every school to become an academy. In what would be a major climbdown for the Government, it is understood that she could allow the best-performing councils to run their own academy chains. Nicky Morgan, pictured on April 19, is facing another humiliating U-turn over plans to remove all schools from local authority control as she battles a backbench rebellion Some councils could also be allowed to keep powers to force academies to take vulnerable pupils or those with special needs, and direct them to expand to meet demand for new places. The row-back would be a humiliation for Number 10 after David Cameron said he wanted to make local authorities running schools a thing of the past. George Osborne announced last month that all schools in England would have to become academies within six years. This would be the latest in a string of climbdowns for the Education Secretary, who earned herself the nickname Ms U-turn thanks to a number of changes of heart on policy since taking over from Michael Gove two years ago including scrapping a series of guidelines set out by her predecessor. Yesterday, teachers leaders said the concessions would blow out of the water the Governments plans to stop councils running schools. Up to 40 Tory MPs are thought to oppose the plans, which they say would mean severing good schools from well-performing councils at unnecessary cost. Mrs Morgan listens in during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London. In what would be a major climbdown for the Government, it is understood that she could allow the best-performing councils to run their own academy chains One rebel described the policy as a f****** poison while Paul Carter, chairman of the County Councils Network, has called for ministers to think again. Yesterday, Tory MP David Davis urged the Government to rethink its one size fits all approach, which he said risked undermining its success so far. Yesterday, Tory MP David Davis (pictured on his way to the BBC Andrew Marr show) urged the Government to rethink its one size fits all approach Suggested concessions include allowing the best-performing local authorities to run their own academy chains. Until now, ministers have said council education officials would have to leave their jobs to set up chains. Councils could also be allowed to keep much of their existing powers to tell academies to provide more places by expanding, or to take vulnerable children. Many Tory rebels do not think the suggested concessions go far enough and are continuing to push for academy conversion to be non-compulsory. Some fear rural schools may have to close because there would be little financial incentive for multi-academy trusts to take them on. A spokesman for Mrs Morgan refused to comment on the conversations, which are understood to be ongoing. A Government source said: Of course we continue to engage with MPs and councillors to address concerns but the policy remains all schools becoming academies by 2022. Academies are state schools which are independent of council control and can set their own budget, admissions policy, length of school day and curriculum. Almost two-thirds of the 3,381 secondary schools in England are academies, but just 2,440 of 16,766 primary schools have changed status. Yesterday Mrs Morgan said she would press ahead with forcing all schools to convert, adding: I will not be the Secretary of State that leaves the job of making our schools as strong as possible undone. However, responding to questions from Tory MPs, she conceded talented individuals in local authorities could help run academies. Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said yesterday: These concessions totally blow out of the water the Governments key drive to make local authorities running schools a thing of the past. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said allowing local authorities to run their own multi-academy trusts was an absurd proposition. The Royal Navy could be deployed to train Libyan coastguards in how to tackle people smugglers, it emerged yesterday. David Cameron told a summit of world leaders in Germany that he wanted to 'build the capacity' of the coastguard operating from the war-torn country. Officials said this could involve sailors and Royal Marines being sent to train them in the waters just off Libya in the Mediterranean Sea as part of plans to stem the flow of migrants. The Royal Navy could be deployed to train Libyan coastguards in how to tackle people smugglers David Cameron told a summit of world leaders in Germany that he wanted to 'build the capacity' of the coastguard operating from the war-torn country They could also be provided with funding to 'boost their capacity' to actively patrol the Libyan waters, which European navies cannot currently operate in. A Number 10 spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister in particular made the case for seeking to work wsith the new Libyan government to build the capacity of the Libyan coast guard to help stem the flow of illegal migration across the Mediterranean into Europe.' Mr Cameron joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Barack Obama, and Italian and French leaders in Hanover yesterday. They discussed how to tackle Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and the migrant crisis. Officials said Nato was ten weeks away from launching a naval mission off Libya as part of a US-backed plan to close the migrant route to Europe across the Mediterranean. US warships could be drafted in to help European countries if the plans are approved at a Nato summit in Warsaw in July. A senior US official said: 'The United States would be supportive of a Nato mission in the central Mediterranean.' Officials said this could involve sailors and Royal Marines being sent to train them in the waters just off Libya in the Mediterranean Sea as part of plans to stem the flow of migrants Nato's involvement could be seen as an admission that the EU has failed to tackle the migrant crisis on its own and needs support from countries such as the US Some of the 108 migrants disembark at Lampedusa's harbour from the Aquarius ship of the humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee, in Lampesusa earlier last week Currently there are ships from European member-states, including Britain, operating as part of Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean. There is a Nato mission in the Aegean sea, operating off the coast of Turkey, and there are plans to 'blur the lines' between the two missions. Nato's involvement could be seen as an admission that the EU has failed to tackle the migrant crisis on its own and needs support from countries such as the US. Before the talks, President Obama described European nations who had not committed to spending 2 per cent of national income on defence - the Nato target - as 'complacent'. He announced he would send another 250 more US special forces and other military personnel to crush Islamic State in Syria. Mr Obama said the fight against IS was 'the most urgent threat to our nations'. One badly exhausted man is helped after disembarking at the Italian island of Lampedusa More than 1,000 European criminals jailed in Britain are still here because they were not deported on their release, new figures reveal. Offenders including rapists, robbers, paedophiles and drug dealers have been released back into communities. Home Office data proves the number of criminals from Europe who are still in Britain, having served their time in jail, was 1,167 at the end of last year. Instead of being locked up until being thrown out, they are released at risk of absconding and potentially putting the public in danger. Meanwhile, separate statistics published by the beleaguered Whitehall department showed there were 4,217 such foreign national offenders awaiting deportation from Britain, up by 1,502 since 2010. More than 1,000 European criminals jailed in Britain are still here because they were not deported on their release. Meanwhile some are avoiding deportation by applying for asylum, like Jamal Owda, pictured Foreign EU criminals are automatically considered for deportation if they serve a prison term, irrespective of the length. MPs and criminal justice experts yesterday said the Home Office had been inexplicably negligent in failing to get a grip on the system for booting out convicts from overseas. The figures are another blow for Home Secretary Theresa May who has been unable to meet her flagship pledge to reduce net migration the growth of the UK population to under 100,000. It currently stands at 323,000. Leave campaigners argued the figures once again highlighted how EU membership meant Britain had lost control of its borders. It is the first time the number of European Economic Area criminals those from the 27 other EU nations plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway who are awaiting deportation has been published. The figure was uncovered in Parliamentary answers. Tory MP David Davis, a leading Eurosceptic, said: Its very disappointing that hundreds of foreign nationals who have broken the law, gone to prison and should be deported are back in the community, no doubt claiming benefits and free housing. We need to send a tough message that anyone who wants to break the laws of the UK should abide by our rules, or else. This is another good reason to leave the EU. Of the 4,217 criminals due to be thrown out, 2,748 are still behind bars because they are mid-sentence. A total of 302 have completed sentences and are in immigration removal sentences or, if they are high risk, detained in prison at an average cost of about 100 a day. And 1,167 have been released from jail on to Britains streets. In about one in five cases, more than a year has elapsed since the criminal walked free. Most of them have challenged their deportation orders in courts and tribunals, many using controversial human rights or asylum laws despite facing removal to a European country. Others did not have travel documents so could not be removed immediately and other offenders have refused to board planes. David Green, of think-tank Civitas, said: The fact they arent [deported] is inexplicable negligence by the Home Office. And Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said: Allowing them to remain in the country in this way risks the possibility that they will offend again. So many are from EU countries and these ought to be the first to go. In total, about 5,800 foreign national offenders from across the world are living in the UK waiting to be deported. But the Home Office said it was getting a handle on the problem and had removed almost 5,600 foreign national offenders in the past year, including 3,310 who were from European countries. Immigration minister James Brokenshire said: Any foreign national who poses a threat to the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. Incredible footage has emerged of a man eating his own camera's memory card after being caught filming under women's skirts. The woman was riding on the metro in Nanjing, eastern China, when she caught the pervert using special equipment to film up her skirt, the People's Daily Online reports. Thousands of people have commented on the woman's post which was uploaded to China's Twitter-like Weibo on April 21. Tough on the teeth: The man upon being caught by the woman decided to eat his own memory card In the video, the woman can be heard saying: 'Delete the pictures, delete them. Look everybody, here is a pervert who takes upskirt pictures of women.' She uploaded the video to Weibo under the name 'Xiao Cha Cha A' on April 21 saying: 'I was on my way home after dinner and bumped into a pervert on the metro! 'He took upskirt pictures and had a full range of equipment. He attached the video camera to his black briefcase and controlled the camera using his mobile phone. 'I had tried to block his view a few times but he kept on taking them. I must expose him!' The woman's post has had thousands of comments on her post. Boco wrote: 'Well done! It should be done like this! The man looks like he works in IT'. Yi Fan Saverin said: 'We need more brave women like her.' While Cai Yiming said: 'This is a wrong example. What if she enraged him, it would have been a different ending. In the video, you can see nobody stepping forward to help the woman.' Now that's a quick getaway! As soon as the subway doors open, the man makes a run for the exit The suspect turned himself in to the police on April 22 after the Nanjing Public Bureau posted a message on its Weibo account looking for eyewitnesses of the incident. According to local reports, the suspect is surnamed Qiao. The 31-year-old man is unemployed and had been detained in 2014 for taking upskirt shots of female commuters. On April 22, 'Xiao Cha Cha A' posted a follow-up message on her Weibo account. Advertisement The X-planes were a celebrated part of post-war aviation, helping Nasa break the sound barrier and create more efficient plants. Now, the agency is reviving its historic 'X-plane' division to make commercial flights dramatically cleaner, quieter, and even faster. The details of Nasa's plan were originally outlined in President Obama's federal budget for 2016 and now the agency has unveiled more information about New Aviation Horizons in a blog post. Scroll down for video The X-planes were a celebrated part of post-war aviation, helping Nasa break the sound barrier and create more efficient plants. Now, the space agency is reviving its 'X-plane' division to make flights cleaner, quieter, and even faster. The details of Nasa's plan were originally outlined in President Obama's budget for 2016 and now the agency has unveiled more in a blog post. New Aviation Horizon poster pictured Goals of the scheme include showcasing how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75 per cent less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than today's jets perhaps even when flying supersonic. Concepts pictured 'History is about to repeat itself,' explained Jim Banke, Nasa Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. 'There have been periods of time during the past seven decades - some busier than others - when the nation's best minds in aviation designed, built and flew a series of experimental airplanes to test the latest fanciful and practical ideas related to flight. 'And now, Nasa's aeronautical innovators once again are preparing to put in the sky an array of new experimental aircraft, each intended to carry on the legacy of demonstrating advanced technologies that will push back the frontiers of aviation.' Goals of the scheme include showcasing how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75 per cent less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than today's jets - perhaps even when flying supersonic. Thanks to recent results coming out of six years of technology demonstrations done with other government agencies, industry and academia, Nasa says it's now ready to enter X-plane territory. Pictured is a demo which successfully completed tests of flaps that can be changed to different angles during flight, reducing drag and noise A version of a hybrid wing body aircraft concept, pictured, has turbofan engines on top of the back end, flanked by two vertical tails to shield people on the ground from engine noise This truss-braced wing concept could be another subsonic X-plane design. Improving the flow leads to reduced fuel use and emissions, and less noise during takeoff, approach and landing A HISTORIC FLIGHT: THE X1 The Bell X-1, Nasa's first 'x-plane,' was the first aircraft to break the sound barrier Beginning in 1946, two XS-1 experimental research aircraft conducted pioneering tests at Muroc Army Air Field in California. These early tests culminated on October 14, 1947, in the first piloted flight faster than Mach 1.0, the speed of sound. The XS-1 was the first high-speed aircraft built purely for aviation research purposes. The model was never intended for production. The research techniques used in the X-1 program became the pattern for all subsequent X-craft projects. The NACA X-1 procedures and personnel also helped lay the foundation of America's space program in the 1960s. The X-1 project defined and solidified the post-war cooperative union between U.S. military needs, industrial capabilities, and research facilities. The flight data collected by the X-1 tests provided a basis for US aviation supremacy in the latter half of the 20th century. Advertisement The initiative was announced in February as part of the President's budget for the fiscal year that begins 1 October and the plan is to design, build and fly the series of X-planes during the next 10 years. 'If we can build some of these X-planes and demonstrate some of these technologies, we expect that will make it much easier and faster for U.S. industry to pick them up and roll them out into the marketplace' said Ed Waggoner, Nasa's Integrated Aviation Systems Program director. And thanks to recent results coming out of six years of technology demonstrations done with other government agencies, industry and academia, Nasa says it's now ready to enter X-plane territory. The demos included advancements in lightweight composite materials that are needed to create revolutionary aircraft structures. They also tested an advanced fan design to improve propulsion and reduce noise in jet engines, designs to reduce noise from wing flaps and landing gear, and shape-changing wing flaps. Researchers predict the technology could save the airline industry $255 billion accrued during the first 25 years after being put into service. 'We're at the right place, at the right time, with the right technologies,' said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for Nasa's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. 'The full potential of these technologies can't be realized in the tube-and-wing shape of today's aircraft,' he explained. 'We need the X-planes to prove, in an undeniable way, how that tech can make aviation more Earth friendly, reduce delays and maintain safety for the flying public, and support an industry that's critical to our nation's economic vitality.' One of the first X-planes is expected to be a hybrid wing body shape, where the familiar tube-and-wing instead becomes a wing that blends into the body. It flies the same speeds as commercial transport aircraft. Engines are on top of a fuselage that is itself revolutionary because of the shape and what's required to build it to withstand the stresses of flight. For the past decade, Nasa and partners have studied the performance and benefits of the hybrid wing body configuration using computers, wind tunnels and even subscale unpiloted flight tests. A lot of data is already in hand to inform an X-plane that will test the highest number of advanced technologies. Other X-planes will demonstrate specific technologies related to ultra-efficient subsonic aircraft designs in flight possibilities include very long but narrow wings, forms of electric propulsion, a double-wide fuselage, or engines embedded into the vehicle. And in a world 'first,' another X-plane will be a business-jet-sized supersonic vehicle that burns low carbon bio-fuels and generates such quiet sonic booms that people on the ground will barely hear them. The New Aviation Horizons X-planes will typically be about half-scale of a production aircraft, although some may be smaller or larger, and are likely to be piloted. The X-15 took Nasa from supersonic to hypersonic, setting unofficial records for speed (Mach 6.7) and altitude 354,200 feet. The latest demos included advancements in lightweight composite materials that are needed to create revolutionary aircraft structures. The X-5 was the first plane with a swept wing design, so the planes could change position at any moment. The latest 10-year plan includes major field tests in collaboration with airlines, airports and the Federal Aviation Administration to continue improving air traffic flow in the air and on the ground at airports. Nasa will continue major field tests with the FAA, airports and airlines of software tools that improve aircraft positioning in the air and on the ground to reduce fuel use, noise and delays Design-and-build will take several years, with vehicles going to flight starting around 2020 depending on funding. The 10-year plan also includes major field tests in collaboration with airlines, airports and the Federal Aviation Administration to continue improving air traffic flow in the air and on the ground at airports. Improving the flow leads to reduced fuel use and emissions, and less noise during takeoff, approach and landing. And Nasa will continue researching and testing technologies that could be used to safely integrate unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, into the airspace. 'This is an exciting time for the entire Nasa Aeronautics team and for those who benefit from aviation, which, frankly, is everyone,' Shin said. 'With this 10-year plan to accelerate the transformation of aviation, the United States can maintain its status as the world's leader in aviation for many years to come.' The X-31 program tested the idea of using thrust vectoringdirecting engine exhaust as a form of steering. Nasa will continue researching and testing technologies that could be used to safely integrate unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, into the airspace Initially aimed at the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, the gloves could For people living in a world without sound, sign language can make sure their points of view are heard. But outside of the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, this gesture-based language can lose its meaning. Now a pair of entrepreneurial technology students in the US has designed a pair of gloves to break down the communication barriers, by translating hand gestures into speech. Scroll down for video US inventors have designed a pair of gloves, called 'SignAloud', which translate the gestures of sign language to spoken English. The gloves (pictured) use embedded sensors to monitor the position and movement of the user's hands, while a central computer analyses the data and converts gestures to speech Called 'SignAloud', the gloves use embedded sensors to monitor the position and movement of the user's hands. Using this information, the gloves transmit the data via Bluetooth to a computer which analyses the movements and checks them against a library of gestures. The system is based on machine learning algorithms that learn from a catalogue of signing examples. In practice, if a hand gesture is a match then the appropriate sound is spoken by the computerised voice through a speaker. In a demonstration video, inventors Thomas Pryor and Navid Azodi can be seen signing with the gloves, while a computerised voice translates the movements, saying: 'Hello, my name is Thomas and this is Navid. We are inventors in the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize competition.' In a demonstration video (still pictured), inventors and students at the University of Washington Thomas Pryor (left) and Navid Azodi (right) can be seen signing with the gloves, while a computerised voice translates the hand gestures to spoken English HOW DOES SIGNALOUD WORK? 'SignAloud' uses embedded sensors in a pair of gloves to monitor the position and movement of the user's hands. The information is transmitted via Bluetooth to a PC that analyses the movements and checks them against a library of hand gestures. Using machine learning algorithms the system learns from a catalogue of examples of sign language. In practice, if a hand gesture is a match then the appropriate sound is spoken by the computerised voice through a speaker. Advertisement The two University of Washington students recently picked up the $10,000 (6,920) top prize for their innovative design, which currently translates from American Sign Language to English. 'Many of the sign language translation devices already out there are not practical for everyday use. Some use video input, while others have sensors that cover the user's entire arm or body,' explained Pryor. 'Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses.' According to the team, the primary audience for the device is the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and those interested in learning and working with American Sign Language. However, the designers believe the gloves could find uses in other fields, such as monitoring stroke patients during their rehabilitation, or for gesture control and improved dexterity with virtual reality technology. The two University of Washington students recently picked up the $10,000 (6,920) top prize for their innovative design (pictured), which currently translates from American Sign Language to English Other groups have been working on similar technology. In 2012, researchers in Ukraine were awarded first prize in the Microsoft Imagine Cup for a similar gesture to speech system. Called EnableTalk, the concept design used sensors in gloves and a mobile device to translate the hand gestures. More recently a collaborative group from New Zealand and Malaysia showed progress on a sign to text program which translated gestures from Malaysian Sign Language to multiple languages. In 2014, the team behind the Automatic Sign Language Translator (ASLT) said its early stage technology could be economical enough for mass production and for use on mobile devices. Forty years ago, Stephen Hawking famously announced black holes evaporate and shrink because they emit radiation. This so-called 'Hawking radiation' was a revolutionary theory, but due to the fragile nature of the escaping radiation, has been difficult to prove. Now, two separate groups of researchers have discovered evidence to back up Hawking's claims - and their discoveries could finally help win the eminent physicist a Nobel Prize. In 1974, Stephen Hawking announced black holes evaporate and shrink because they emit radiation. This so-called 'Hawking radiation' was a revolutionary theory but due to the fragile nature of the escaping radiation, has been difficult to prove. Now, two groups of researchers have discovered evidence to back up the claims There has been a long standing belief that when a black hole dies, everything inside is destroyed. Hawking's theory states that black holes should have the ability to thermally create and emit sub-atomic particles until they are completely depleted of their energy, known as Hawking radiation. He also suggested that black holes arent completely black and they do not live forever. In his 1974 announcement, Hawking explained how the strong gravitational field around a black hole can affect the production of matching pairs of particles and anti-particles, as is happening all the time in empty space, according to quantum theory. WHAT IS HAWKING RADIATION? Stephen Hawking announced that black holes should have the ability to thermally create and emit sub-atomic particles until they are completely depleted of their energy, known as Hawking radiation. This also suggested that black holes arent completely black and they do not live forever. Hawking explained how the strong gravitational field around a black hole can affect the production of matching pairs of particles and anti-particles, as is happening all the time in empty space according to quantum theory. If the particles are created just outside the event horizon of a black hole, then it is possible that the positive member of the pair may escape - observed as thermal radiation emitting from the black hole - while the negative particle may fall back into the black hole, and in this way the black hole would gradually lose mass. Source: The Physics of the Universe Advertisement If the particles are created just outside the event horizon of a black hole, then it is possible the positive member of the pair may escape - observed as thermal radiation emitting from the black hole - while the negative particle may fall back into the black hole. In this way, the black hole would gradually lose mass. Last year, Jeff Steinhauer, professor of physics at the Technion University in Haifa, recreated the conditions of a black hole in a lab, made of sound and studied how particles behave on the edge of the 'hole'. This edge is the equivalent of an 'event horizon.' During experiments he found that the energy that makes up sound waves did in fact 'leak' out of the black hole, as Hawking predicted. More recently, Chris Adami, professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University and his colleague Kamil Bradler from the University of Ottawa, developed a new theory that allows them to follow a black hole's life cycle over a long period of time. They suggest that information and everything else behind the event horizon isn't obliterate - but slowly leaks out during the later stages of the black hole's evaporation. The researchers combined Hawking radiation with mathematical tools and high-performance computers to create a simulation showing when information enters and leaves a black hole. During this year's Reith lectures, Professor Hawking said he expected to win a Nobel prize if the theory could be confirmed. Theorists tend to only receive the Nobel Prize after their theories have been confirmed by experiment. For example, Peter Higgs only recently received the prize for his work into the Higgs Boson Last year, Jeff Steinhauer, professor of physics at the Technion University in Haifa, recreated the conditions of a black hole in a lab, made of sound, and studied how particles behave on the edge of the 'hole'. The results of his research, showing the particles escaping the 'event horizon' are shown While many calculations suggested everything simply vanished, this idea 'violates cherished laws of physics and created one of several paradoxes about evaporating black holes that has never been solved'. WHAT ARE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES? Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around. How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times biggger than the sun, collapses into a black hole. Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes. Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses. Advertisement 'The issue was never laid to rest because Hawking's calculation was not able to capture the effect that the radiation, called Hawking radiation, has on the black hole itself,' said Professor Adami. 'Physicists assumed that the black hole would shrink in time as the Hawking radiation carries away the black hole's mass, but no one could verify this through mathematical calculations.' This study counteracts a long standing belief that it was impossible for all quantum information to stay hidden inside the black hole while it shrunk to minute sizes - meaning everything inside would be destroyed. But the duo did not have to create the theory of quantum gravity, instead they just used Hawking's theory 'with a twist'. This allowed them to fully understand how a black hole would interact with Hawking radiation. 'To perform this calculation, we had to guess how a black hole interacts with the Hawking radiation field that surrounds it,' Professor Adami explained. 'This is because there currently is no theory of quantum gravity that could suggest such an interaction. 'However, it appears we made a well-educated guess because our model is equivalent to Hawking's theory in the limit of fixed, unchanging black holes.' 'While our model is just that - a model - we were able to show that any quantum interaction between black holes and Hawking radiation is very likely to have the same properties as our model,' Dr Bradler said. The most recent study suggests information and everything else isn't vaporised in a black hole. Instead it slowly leaks out during the later stages of the hole's evaporation. Researchers combined Hawking radiation with mathematical tools to create a simulation showing when information enters and leaves a black hole The idea of 'Page curves' was reproduced, which many black hole physics have been searching to prove. This theory, named after University of Alberta physicist Don Page, predicted the curves that show the quantum information first entering, then exiting the black hole. And D Adami's and Dr Brandler's produced the first calculation that recreated similar curves. During this year's Reith lectures, Hawking said he expected to win a Nobel prize if the theory could be confirmed using 'micro black holes'. Alfred Nobel's originally set up the Nobel Prize for inventions that 'help mankind', rather than theories. Theorists tend to only receive the Nobel Prize after their theories have been confirmed by experiment. For example, Peter Higgs only recently received the prize for his work into the Higgs Boson, despite the fact the theory was developed in the 1960s. Scattered on the floor of a cramped, claustrophobic cave chamber, they lay undisturbed for up to two million years in the pitch black before being discovered by a group of anthropologists. Now the fossilised remains of a mysterious early human species called Homo naledi are causing a controversy over whether they had been deliberately placed within the cave. If proven to be the case, it could have profound implications for the evolution of culture in early humans as burial of the dead was previously thought have emerged mainly in our own species. Scroll down for video A recently discovered species of early human, Homo naledi (reconstruction pictured) may have buried its dead by dropping them into an inaccessible cave. However, new research has cast doubt on these claims and some researchers suggest the bones may have previously been in another area of the cave Researchers who discovered Homo naledi in the Rising Star cave 30 miles (48km) from Johannesburg in South Africa, believe they may have disposed of their dead within the cave. The alignment of some of the bones suggests they had fossilised where they had been lain just after death. Scientists leading the excavation, which was published last September, suggested Homo naledi may have dropped their dead down a 'chute' from the surface into the cave. WHAT WAS HOMO NALEDI? Analysis of a foot showed Homo naledi's feet share many features with a modern human foot, indicating it is well-adapted for standing and walking on two feet. However it differed in having more curved toe bones or proximal phalanges. Analysis of the hand revealed a unique combination of anatomy that has not been found in any other fossil human before. The wrist bones and thumb show anatomical features that are shared with Neanderthals and humans and suggest powerful grasping and the ability to use stone tools. However, the finger bones are more curved than most early fossil human species, such as Lucy's species Australopithecus afarensis, suggesting that H. naledi still used their hands for climbing in the trees. Advertisement This would mean a primitive human which stood a little under 5ft-tall (1.5 metres) and had a brain the size of an orange may have had a far more advanced culture around death than believed possible. But new research is suggesting the story may be even more complicated than the anthropologists could have imagined. Analysis of the sediment and rock suggests there was never a direct opening to the underground fossil site from above. Indeed, some of the bones found on top of those that were aligned as they would be in the body were far more jumbled, and most of the remains show signs of erosion. A new theory published in the Journal of Human Evolution instead suggests the 1,550 bones found in the cave, belonging to at least 15 individuals, were brought into the cave through another entrance. Dr Aurore Vale, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, said the bones may have initially been in another part of the cave. She suggests that water instead carried the bones and perhaps even body parts deeper into the cave to where they were found known as the Dinaledi chamber. She also points to modifications seen on the fossilised bones that have been attributed to beetles and snails such as the giant African land snail. While the bones appear to have been damaged by these creatures, they would not have been found living so deep inside the caves as there was no vegetation there for them to live on. The bones were located in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa's Gauteng province in a remote chamber that can only be accessed via several steep climbs and fissures (arrangement of fossils pictured) Researchers said the bones showed signs they had been damaged and moved by snails and beetles, but these creatures would only have existed closer to an entrance of the cave. This suggests the bones may have once been closer to the surface and were buried in a collapse or swept there by water HOMO NALEDI: WHAT WE DO - AND DON'T - KNOW ABOUT THE SPECIES Named Homo naledi, the species has been assigned to the genus Homo, to which modern humans also belong. It is not yet clear how more than a dozen H. naledi skeletons - ranging from babies to elderly individuals - ended up in a remote region of a large cave. The researchers have not ruled out the possibility of the bodies having been disposed of in the cave deliberately, or a catastrophic 'death trap' scenario in which the humans entered the cave and all died of an unknown cause. The age of the the skeletons are also yet to be determined. 'Some of Homo naledi's features, such as its hands, wrist and feet, are very similar to those of modern humans. 'On the other hand, the species' small brain and the shape of its upper body are more similar to a prehuman group called australopithecines'. Advertisement Writing in the journal, she said: 'This raises serious questions about the veracity of the hypothesis that fresh, complete bodies were deliberately disposed into the Dinaledi Chamber.' The fossils were originally discovered by cavers exploring the subterranean Rising Star caves when they stumbled across part of a skull and some bones in 2013. Professor Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand, then led a team to excavate the fossils. However, the chamber in which they were found was so small and the entrance so tight that Professor Berger had to recruit a group of young women who were small enough to get inside. Together they filmed, photographed and documented the whole process while Professor Berger directed from the surface. In total they recovered 1,550 bones which they identified as an entirely new species. Attempts to date the bones accurately have been difficult and estimates range from 20,000 to two million years old. Homo naledi has been found to share many features similar to the early Australophithecus species that lived more than three million years ago. But it also had some distinctive features seen in the Homo species. Analysis of the bones (pictured) indicates the extinct species may have been uniquely adapted for both tree climbing and walking, while also being capable of precise manual manipulation There are already some clues about how these early humans may have lived. Researchers who worked on the excavation say Homo naledi appeared to have unique shoulder features. Unlike other species of Homo naledi's shoulder blades appear to have been positioned low behind the chest, which would have been better suited to climbing trees than running, according to ScienceNews. Homo naledi's hands were also built for climbing and gripping stones according to research published in October last years. H. naledi's overall body plan is illustrated right and an how it compares to Homo species such as H. erectus (centre) and australopithecines such as Lucy (far left) Researchers who worked on the excavation say Homo naledi appeared to have unique shoulder features. Scientists say that many more examples of the new species may lay uncovered in the remote cave system Homo naledi may shed light on the transition from australopithecines (fossil pictured) - that emerged around four million years ago - to humans. Some of Homo naledi's features, such as its hands, are very similar to those of modern humans. But the species' small brain are more similar to a prehuman group A reconstruction of Homo naledi's lower body has also allowed researchers to reconstruct how it would have walked. In a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Atlanta earlier this month, Professor Berger and his colleagues said they would have had a bipedal stride much like humans. Professor Berger said: 'From mid-thigh down it looks like a human - long legs and human like feet. 'It is really a combination we haven't seen before in the fossil record.' Speaking at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, his colleague Zach Throckmorton added: 'These characters suggest Homo naledi was well-adapted to a striding bipedal gait. Peering inside the cave: The chamber, situated down a narrow 40ft (12 metre) chute, measures around 30 feet (9 metres) long and just a few feet wide, National Geographic reported 'Given the anatomy of the upper limb, Homo naledi demonstrates co-existence of both bipedalism and climbing adaptations in one hominin taxon.' However, following their discovery, perhaps the most controversial claim made by Professor Berger and his colleagues was what Homo naledi were doing in the cave. Speaking at the time of the announcement in September last year, Professor Berger said: 'This species of non-human hominin was deliberately disposing of its dead. 'Taking a dangerous journey into this deep chamber to place its dead or drop its dead into a place that was inaccessible. 'This is something that prior to this we thought was unique to humans and perhaps identified us but now it doesn't.' However, many anthropologists expressed doubt at these claims. Scientists said that the mixture of features in H. naledi (pictured) highlights the complexity of the human family tree and the need for further research to understand the history and ultimate origins of our species Professor Francis Thackery, an evolutionary biologist also at the University of Witwatersran, told Talk Radio 702 that his research suggests there may have been another entrance to the cave. He believes the bones may have been placed closer to this entrance and then became sealed in by a roof collapse or perhaps even living individuals became trapped by the rock fall. He said: 'To carry these 15 carcasses in complete darkness through a very narrow route in complete darkness raises questions. 'I think in the past there could have been a second entrance. The bones were located in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa's Gauteng province, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, in a remote chamber that can only be accessed via several steep climbs 'Dolermite rock that is quite soluble in geological time. 'There could have been a second opening and there was a collapse and these 15 individuals had been trapped.' He added he had studied the bones themselves and found black spots on them that he believes are marks of manganese dioxide left by lichen that grew on them in the past. This, he believes, suggests the bones may have been in a part of the cave that was closer to an entrance where there was light as lichen needs sunlight to grow. However, speaking to MailOnline, Professor Berger said that regardless of whether there was another entrance to the cave, it still would have been difficult for the remains to get in there. He said there are no other remains of animals in the cave, which means the Homo naledi were using it almost exclusively. He added the evidence for lichen growth was also still speculative. He said: 'Whatever the entrance was, it would have to conform to the same restrictive criteria - only allowing one species of animal in, over time, while not allowing externally derived sediments into the cave and restricting access to predators and scavengers. 'So if there were another entrance, it would have to be nearly if not equally as restrictive as the one we use now. 'I can understand the discomfort - we have spent more than a hundred years of this field seeing the unique behaviours of humans as being due to a big brai. 'Its not going to be easy to convince everyone that complexity is not driven by a single organs size alone - despite the evidence.' Would you like a drone with your cocktail? The world's first cafe using the tiny domestic unmanned aircraft as servers has opened in a Dutch university. The pop-up drone cafe will be serving up all weekend as part of celebrations for the 'Dream and Dare' festival marking the 60th anniversary of the Eindhoven University of Technology. The drone (pictured), nicknamed Blue Jay, resembles a small white flying saucer. It has a luminescent strip for eyes, flies to a table and hovers as it takes a client's order. The customer then points to the list to signal what they would like. The cafe is offering four different alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails The 20 students behind the project, who spent nine months developing and building the autonomous drone, aim to show how such small inside craft could become an essential part of modern daily life. 'It has potential as a useful tool for human kind. We see it as the next mobile phone. You choose and you programme it like you want,' student and project leader Tessie Hartjes told AFP. BLUE JAY, THE 'WAITER' DRONE The drone, nicknamed Blue Jay, resembles a small white flying saucer. It has a luminescent strip for eyes, flies to a table and hovers as it takes a client's order. The customer then points to the list to signal what they would like. The cafe is offering four different alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, which are either bright blue or green - the same colour as the drone's 'eyes.' The drinks are picked up and carried by a set of pinchers underneath the drone, in a bid to show that these aerial machines could be used to carry out delicate missions such as delivering medicines or even helping to track down burglars. Advertisement The drone, nicknamed Blue Jay, which resembles a small white flying saucer with a luminescent strip for eyes, flies to a table and hovers as it takes a client's order, who points to the list to signal what they would like. 'The blue eyes of the first drone load' up by scanning the list to register the order, said Hartjes. 'Once it's fully loaded, then the order is ready and another one comes with the order in a cup in the grip.' The cafe is offering four different alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, which are either bright blue or green - the same colour as the drone's 'eyes.' The drinks are picked up and carried by a set of pinchers underneath the drone, in a bid to show that these aerial machines could be used to carry out delicate missions such as delivering medicines or even helping to track down burglars. Each drone has cost about 2,000 euros to build, in a project funded by the university which the students say aims 'to give a glimpse of the future'. Thanks to sensors and a long battery life they can fly inside buildings and navigate crowded interiors, unlike other drones, which rely on a GPS system. Robo-butlers are becoming more popular. Last year, Cornell University designed a robot that serves food and drinks and helps its owner tidy up. In this image, the robot scans the area and notices that its owner is carrying a pot of food and heading towards the fridge. The robot then automatically opens the fridge door 'The Blue Jay is an intelligent bird that lives in complex, social environments,' the students say in a video presenting their work. They believe the drone's applications could be endless: as extinguishers to put out fires, alarm systems to warn of intruders or mini-servants which would respond to commands such as 'fetch me an apple.' 'We believe that one day, domestic drones will be a part of society. One day, a drone could be a friend,' says one of the students in the video presentation. In 2013, a beer-pouring robot that can read body movements and anticipate when a person wants another drink was developed by American students. Researchers from Cornell University used Microsoft Kinect sensors and 3D cameras to help the robot analyse its surroundings and identify its owner's needs. Bad to the bone or just misunderstood? There has been a long history of people falling for inmates and criminals and now a study has found the phenomenon may be more common than thought. According to a new study of prison guards and other correctional workers, the attraction is felt more by females than males, and hardly ever has a happy ending. A new study of the lesser known sexual behaviour of hybristophilia, in which individuals find themselves lusting after those who have committed a criminal act, found it affects more female staff than male, and hardly ever has. Stock image The official term for lusting after people with a criminal record is known as hybristophilia and has been studied by Dr Philippe Bensimon at the University of Montreal. The behaviour is best demonstrated in cases of infamous serial killers in the US, such as Charles Manson and Ted Bundy who are widely known to have received fan mail of a sexual nature from women. For those working in correctional facilities in the US, hybristophilia is said to affect almost 4 per cent of prison workers, which includes not only prison guards, but psychologists, social workers, nurses, teachers, and other professionals. Those workers who act on their desires can be punished under US law, with the broad description of sexual misconduct incorporating everything from romantic relationships to obscenity directed at an inmate. 'It's taboo. All penal institutions, without exception, are affected by this phenomenon, but prison administrators try to deny its existence: they don't even talk about it in staff training,' explained Dr Bensimon. The research found that of more than 300 high profile cases in the US and Europe, women were more affected by the behaviour than men. This skewed proportion may be due to the roles in which women work in prisons, such as doctors or psychologists, which could lead to emotional bonds forming. Stock image FALLING FOR INMATES Hybristophilia is a lesser known sexual behaviour in which individuals find themselves lusting after those who have committed criminal acts. In US correctional facilities, it may affect almost 4 per cent of prison workers, which includes not only prison guards, but psychologists, social workers, nurses, teachers, and other professionals. A study of more than 300 high profile cases in the US and Europe found women were more affected than men. Researchers explain this skewed proportion may be due to the roles in which women work in prisons, such as doctors or psychologists, which could lead to emotional bonds forming between staff and inmates. The study finds that in order to tackle the problem, prison administrators should recognise the problem and provide training to staff. Advertisement In a study published in the journal Deliquance, justice et autres questions de societe, the researcher focused on more than 300 cases of the phenomenon in the US and European media over a ten-year period, from 2005 to 2015. For all of the instances, the prison workers were dismissed from their roles and some even from their professions entirely. The study found women were more affected than men, with over 70 per cent of cases of sexual misconduct in US correctional system involving female staff, despite them making up less than half of the prison workforce. According to Dr Bensimon, this skewed proportion may be due to the roles in which women typically work, which could lead to emotional bonds forming between staff and inmates. 'This is possibly explained by the fact that women occupy mainly professional positions,' he said. 'For example, in Canada, many correctional facilities for men are mostly made up of women clinicians, including criminologists, psychologists, and nurses.' Male inmates opening up to female workers, such as a nurse or psychologist, could create 'risk areas' in which both parties are vulnerable, potentially exacerbating the situation and any feelings, explains the researcher. The study explains how, owing to the unequal nature of prison, such relationships are doomed to fail, with serious consequences for both parties. 'The inmate involved is usually transferred to another facility with the label "manipulator" and "possible threat to the institution's security" on his record,' wrote Bensimon. The study found over 70 per cent of cases of sexual misconduct in US correctional system involved female staff, despite them making up less than half of the prison workforce. Those workers who act on their desires can be punished under US law. Stock image While for the staff member, in addition to losing their job, being outed can lead to social stigma and potentially the breakup of their family. According to Bensimon, the root of the problem may be in the imbalance rooted in the employee's personality. In order to tackle the problem, he explains that prison administrators should recognise the problem and provide training to staff. 'Feeling attraction for an inmate is not an ethical transgression in itself, but responding quickly and appropriately to control it is the ethical and professional responsibility of all correctional workers,' concludes Dr Bensimon. Bouncing your baby on your knee as you listen to music wont just make him giggle, it could also give his brain a boost. A study found that brain regions key to music and speech were sharper in nine-month-old boys and girls who had attended musical play sessions. This could make it easier for them to learn to speak and, eventually, even to learn foreign languages. Researchers have found exposing infants to music early on could potentially give them a mental boost. In a small study of 39 babies, scientists found brain regions key to music and speech were sharper in nine-month-old boys and girls who had attended musical play sessions. Stock image The US researchers said that exposure to the rhythms of music may make it easier for youngsters to make sense of the ever-changing world around them. Study author Patricia Khul said: Infants experience a complex world in which sounds, lights and sensations vary constantly. The baby's job is to recognise the patterns of activity and predict what's going to happen next. Pattern perception is an important cognitive skill, and improving that ability early may have long-lasting effects on learning. Music-themed play sessions, such as Monkey Music, are popular in Britain with middle-class parents keen to give their babies the best start in life. Music-themed play sessions are popular in Britain with middle-class parents keen to give their babies the best start in life, but there has been a lack of clear evidence that they are beneficial. Stock image PLAY US A TUNE... Researchers have found exposing infants to music early in life could potentially give them a mental boost. In a small study of 39 babies, scientists at the University of Washington found brain regions key to music and speech were sharper in nine-month-old boys and girls who had attended musical play sessions. The babies were given a test designed to show how well they processed sounds, by playing them a series of musical and speech sounds as they sat in a brain scanner. Scans of those brain regions involved in processing sound, attention control and pattern detection revealed that both groups of babies noticed when the patterns changed. But the musical babies were seen to have a much stronger response, which could offer them an advantage if they are able to better recognise sound patterns. Advertisement However, until now, there hasnt been clear evidence that they are beneficial. Dr Khul, of the University of Washington, studied 39 babies who attended three play sessions a week in her lab. Half played in time to music, with their parents bouncing them on their knees or helping them shake maracas or tap a drum. The others played with blocks, cars and other toys in sessions that were active and sociable but didnt involve music. After a month of music or play classes, the youngsters underwent a test designed to show how well they processed sounds. This involved playing them a series of musical and speech sounds as they sat in a brain scanner. The sounds followed a set pattern but occasionally, the notes or syllables were disrupted. Scans of brain regions involved in processing sound, attention control and pattern detection showed that both groups of babies noticed when the patterns changed. However, the brains of the babies in music classes reacted much more strongly, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports. Scans of brain regions involved in processing sound, attention control and pattern detection revealed that both groups of babies noticed when the patterns changed. But the musical babies were seen to have a much stronger response, which could offer them an advantage. Stock image This, say the researchers, suggests the musical play made it easier for them to detect patterns in sounds something that could be useful in learning musical instruments and foreign languages as they grow up. Dr Kuhl said: Music experience has the potential to boost broader cognitive skills that enhance children's abilities to detect, expect and react quickly to patterns in the world, which is highly relevant in today's complex world. She added that while various studies have linked playing an instrument to a boost in brainpower, it was possible that children with certain wiring are more likely to become musicians. The latest research shows that being exposed to music brings benefits whether or not a child has a musical talent. Hacked data from more than 1.1m members of an 'elite' dating site has been sold online, it has been claimed. The controversial site, BeautifulPeople.com, was hacked in November and details including sexual preferences, income, addresses and 15 million messages between users were stolen. Now it has been claimed by Forbes the data has been sold online to a mystery buyer. Scroll down for video The controversial site, BeautifulPeople.com, was hacked in November and details including sexual preferences, income, addresses and 15 million messages between users were stolen. WHAT IS BEAUTIFULPEOPLE.COM? BeautifulPeople.com describes itself as 'an exclusively beautiful community, founded for the purpose of creating personal and professional relationships.' BeautifulPeople has been described as an 'elite online club, where every member works the door'. BeautifulPeople is the first community of its kind. To become a member, applicants are required to be voted in by existing members of the opposite sex. Members rate new applicants over a 48 hour period based on whether or not they find the applicant 'beautiful'. Should applicants secure enough positive votes from members, they will be granted membership to the BeautifulPeople community. 'The vote is fair and democratic,' the site says. Advertisement BeautifulPeople.com describes itself as 'a playground for the aesthetically blessed'. It has hit the headlines repeatedly for its selection process, where members of the opposite sex must vote in new members. Troy Hunt, an Australian security expert who runs the website HaveIBeenPwned.com, told Forbes the data has been traded online, though he doesn't know where or for how much. The contact who handed Hunt the data operated in 'data trading circles', he said. Other leaked data included weight, height, job, education, body type, eye colour and hair hue, as well as email addresses and mobile phone number. 'We're looking at in excess of 100 individual data attributes per person,' Hunt told Forbes. 'Everything you'd expect from a site of this nature is in there.' The firm has previously said the data was not from its live server system. 'There has been no new breach of our systemm' the site told dailymail.com via email. 'This vulnerability was widely reported in November of 2015 with 35,000 vulnerable MongoDB servers affecting businesses large and small. 'The data said to be accessible on the 'dark web' is the same data as the two security researches accessed and downloaded in the December 2015 breach. 'The breach involves data that was provided by members prior to mid July 2015. No more recent user data or any data relating to users who joined from mid July 2015 onward is affected.' However,t he firm sais it was making users affected aware of the potential sale. 'All impacted members are, of course, being notified once again. The data does not contain any credit card information and user passwords are encrypted. 'The privacy and security of our members is of paramount importance to us and this matter is being investigated.' Computer security expert Graham Cluley told Dailymail.com the hack could have serious consequences. 'It appears this is far more serious than the firm first admitted, and it turns out these are real users. 'As we saw from Ashley Madison, there is enormous potential for harm for blackmail, ID theft and credit card fraud. To become a member, applicants are required to be voted in by existing members of the opposite sex. 'This information isn't freely available, and I think credit card information will be a way for the hackers to monetise this. 'Dating sites are a big target - Ashleymadison is one of the most damaging hacks that's ever occured, and the black mail continues today.' Cluley also said he was not surprised that some of the email addresses in the latest hack appeared to be from people's work accounts. 'I think people are less worried about their boss finding out they signed up to these sites than their partner. On its website, it claims over 700 couples have been married through the site. 'Everyone on the site is attractive, so there is a lot of chemistry between members as seen at the regular events and parties hosted through BeautifulPeople.com,' it says. 'Many of our members have been 'discovered' and have secured lucrative positions in TV, modeling and acting careers. Last year the firm hit the headlines recently when it ejected 3,000 members for letting themselves go. The site obsessed with beauty faced an ugly backlash after thousands of people have started trolling the site in a bid to take revenge on their elitist policies. ASHLEYMADISON.COM Cheating spouses website AshleyMadison.com, facing hackers' threats to leak clients' nude photos and sexual fantasies, said it is heartened by some initial public response that sees the site as a victim. The website's Canadian parent, Avid Life Media, confirmed a breach of its systems that has put the real names, credit card information and other details of as many as 37 million customers at risk. Avid Life said it has since secured the sites and closed unauthorized access points. The dating website company has hired Toronto-based cybersecurity firm Cycura to investigate the breach, first reported by the KrebsonSecurity blog, and is working with police to trace those behind the attack, spokesman Paul Keable said. AshleyMadison.com, which uses the slogan 'Life is short. Have an affair,' has been planning to raise up to $200 million through an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. The breach comes about two months after dating site Adult FriendFinder was compromised. That site has an estimated 64 million members. Advertisement In an attack coordinated via social media, uglies wanting to take revenge on the site have been using fake profile pictures to become members of the exclusive dating community before then attempting to subvert the system by voting in 'ugly' people and voting out any good-looking potential members. The 'Ugly' troll attack originated in Russia where over 2,700 applications were made to the site in a few hours. Over half of these were fake profiles and part of the 'ugly troll army'. Similar coordinated attacks have come from the United States and the United Kingdom with 1,435 U.S. 'trolls' removed from the site and 400 from the UK in the past few days. Elitist dating site BeautifulPeople.com is facing a backlash from 'ugly' trolls after removing 3,000 members for letting themselves go. Uglies wanting to take revenge on the site have been using fake profile pictures to become members of the exclusive dating community before attempting to subvert the system 2,700 of the recent surge in fake profiles were from Russia, where the revenge campaign began Greg Hodge, the managing director of BeautifulPeople.com, said: 'We had large spikes in numbers applying to join the site using profiles which immediately raised the suspicions of our administrators. 'Initially the scale of applications from specific geographical areas Russia, the United States and the UK in particular caused concern, when we examined the applications in more detail, we noticed a large number of what appeared to be fake profile pictures. 'We then traced this back to various social media sites calling for an attack on our site.' In response the site has introduced new measures to verify profiles and wannabe members must now take a webcam picture of themselves holding up a piece of card with their name and date written on it 'People had come together on forums such as Reddit to discuss the site and how they could hijack it by creating the fake profiles.' The site introduced a system of validated membership in 2012, whereby entrants are encouraged to take a webcam picture of themselves holding up a piece of paper with their name and date handwritten on it to prove that their pictures are genuine. Validated members get a 'verification stamp' on their profiles. Prior to the attack this feature was optional, but the makers have been forced to make profile verification mandatory. BeautifulPeople.com is the first dating site to force all users to prove they are genuine. Hodge said: 'Fake profiles are the number one problem in the online dating market today. 'We have always led the field in combating this. In taking this next step, we believe we will all but eliminate disingenuous profiles on our site and set the example for the online dating market as a whole. Online daters do not want their time wasted with fraudulent profiles.' The creators of BeautifulPeople.com are husband and wife duo Genevieve and Greg Hodge He added: 'Having an exclusive dating site is not without controversy. There will always be a degree of jealousy from those who don't make the cut. 'Thankfully, through swift action by our administrators, vigilant members and the introduction of an extra level of verification has meant that we have been able to root out the attackers and ensure that our site remains beautiful and exclusive.' Entry to BeautifulPeople.com is only possible after passing a democratic rating process, where members of the opposite sex vote 'Yes definitely', 'Hmm yes, O.K', 'Hmm no, not really' and 'NO Definitely NOT' based on photographs and a brief profile submitted by new applicants. After the recent cull, over 800,000 members remain on the site, representing 190 countries and almost every ethnic and cultural background. Advertisement CERN is preparing for another run at colliding particles together to unlock the secrets of the universe. Nobody knows what the facility might reveal with its collisions, which are mini-versions of the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists hope they could top their discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 - a particle which helps explain how the universe got its mass. Now, incredible images from inside the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, have provided a glimpse into its inner workings. Scroll down for video There are a large variety of magnets in the LHC. However the big ones are the main dipoles (pictured). These move particles around the 27 km circumference of the collider. They generate powerful 8.4 tesla magnetic fields more than 100,000 times more powerful than the Earth's magnetic field. A superconducting coil allows the high currents to flow without losing any energy to electrical resistance The facility features series of accelerators, the largest of which is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is built inside a tunnel more than 17 miles (27km) long It took thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians decades to plan and build the machine, which continues to operate at the very boundaries of scientific knowledge. The machine is housed underground, deep beneath the border separating France from Switzerland, and it's already made some significant discoveries. In 2012, scientists at CERN discovered the Higgs boson. And last month, they announced that they'd found a new class of particles known as pentaquarks. Scientists now want to shed more light on 'dark matter', thought to make up some 96 percent of the stuff of the universe. They also hope to reveal new details about super-symmetry, or SUSY, under which all visible particles have unseen counterparts. A detailed view of a section of an LHC dipole magnet is shown here. Dipole magnets, one of the most complex parts of the LHC, are used to bend the paths of the particles. There are 1232 main dipoles, each 15 metres long and weighing in at 35 tonnes. If normal magnets were used in the 27 km-long LHC instead of superconducting magnets, the accelerator would have to be 120km long to reach the same energy After colliding, the particle beams are separated again by dipole magnets. Other magnets minimize the spread of the particles from the collisions. Pictured is view of a section of a LHC dipole magnet producing tool in the Large Magnet Facility or LMF in Building 180 at CERN Pictured is a view of an LHC dipole magnet. Thousands of 'lattice magnets' on the LHC, similar to the one shown, bend and tighten the particles' trajectory. They are responsible for keeping the beams stable and precisely aligned. Dipoles are also equipped with sextupole, octupole and decapole magnets (not shown in this image). These help correct for small imperfections in the magnetic field THE HIGGS BOSON The Higgs boson was a key missing piece in the jigsaw for physicists in trying to understand how the universe works when it was discovered in 2012. A fraction of a second after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, an invisible energy field called the Higgs field formed. A boson is a type of sub-atomic particle. Every energy field has a specific particle that governs its interaction with whats around it. The Higgs field is a kind of cosmic treacle and as particles pass through it, they picked up mass, giving them size and shape.Without it, particles would simply whizz around space in the same way as light does. Advertisement The new images at CERN take you Inside the accelerator where two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. Each machine boosts the energy of a beam of particles, before injecting the beam into the next machine in the sequence. In the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is the last machine to be used particle beams are accelerated up to the record energy of 4 TeV per beam. 'Linac 2, the first accelerator in the chain, accelerates the protons to the energy of 50 MeV,' CERN writes on its website. 'The beam is then injected into the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB), which accelerates the protons to 1.4 GeV, followed by the Proton Synchrotron (PS), which pushes the beam to 25 GeV. 'Protons are then sent to the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) where they are accelerated to 450 GeV. 'The protons are finally transferred to the two beam pipes of the LHC. The beam in one pipe circulates clockwise while the beam in the other pipe circulates anticlockwise.' It takes 4 minutes and 20 seconds to fill each LHC ring, and 20 minutes for the protons to reach their top energy of. The LHC started up again at the end of last year for the first time in 27 months. It marked the start of season two at the LHC, opening the way to new discoveries, that will run for three years The first signs of a particle heavier than the Higgs boson were seen at during experiments at the end of last year. When particles are bunched together, they are more likely to collide in greater numbers when they reach the LHC detectors. Quadrupoles help to keep the particles in a tight beam In this image, supervisor, Nicolas Bourcey inspects quadrupole in the New Technologies for Future Magnets Building 927 A general view as staff work in the Large Magnet Facility or LMF in Building 180 at CERN. There are are 1,232 main dipoles magnets, each 15 metres long and weighing 35 tonnes. Powerful magnetic fields generated by the dipole magnets allow the beam to handle tighter turns A general view as staff work in the Large Magnet Facility. These magnets may have helped the Large Hadron Collider find a 'groundbreaking' new fundamental particle. If confirmed, the particle - possibly a very heavy variation of the Higgs boson - could change our understanding of how the universe works An overhead view of the four beam lines: T8, T9, T10 and T11 as well as the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets or CLOUD experiment being run at CERN in The East Area Hall, building 157. The CLOUD experiment uses a special cloud chamber to study the possible link between galactic cosmic rays and cloud formation The facility features series of accelerators, the largest of which is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is built inside a tunnel more than 17 miles (27km) long. A detailed view of a section of an LHC dipole magnet is shown here Staff work on the ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals) project, a physics experiment aimed at studying neutrinos. Many theories in particle physics predict the existence of a so-called 'sterile' neutrino, which would behave differently from the three known types and, if it exists, could provide a route to understanding the mysterious dark matter Unexplained by the Standard Model of particle physics, its existence might lead to the discovery of a whole new set of particles and possibly even a fifth fundamental force. 'It would be something completely beyond the Standard Model, and the tip of an iceberg of a large new set of particles,' Professor John Ellis, theoretical physicist at Kings College London told MailOnline, 'if it exists!' Two other detectors at CERN, ATLAS and CMS, are searching for new physics by counting particle decays that ended up in two photons, and found a potential new particle. If it turns out to be real, and not a blip, this would be a huge discovery. THE STANDARD MODEL OF PARTICLE PHYSICS The Standard Model says everything in the universe is made from the most basic building blocks called fundamental particles, that are governed by four forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear. The forces work over different ranges and have different strengths. But the Standard Model has left some questions unanswered for years, so scientists are keen to break free of it and find new theories using the facilities at CERN. It can't explain gravity, for example, because it is incompatible with our best explanation of how gravity works - general relativity, nor does it explain dark matter particles. The quantum theory used to describe the small particles in the world, and the general theory of relativity used to describe the larger objects world, are also difficult to reconcile. Nobody has managed to make the two mathematically compatible in the context of the Standard Model. According to the Big Bang theory, matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts at the start of the universe and so they should have annihilated each other totally in the first second or so of the universe's existence. This means the cosmos should be full of light and little else. But because it isn't there must have been a subtle difference in the physics of matter and anti-matter that has left the universe with a surplus of matter and that makes up the stars we see, the planet we live on and ourselves. Advertisement Engineer, Bertrand Fornes works on a Instrumentation superconducting coil in New Technologies for Future Magnets Building 927. The superconducting coil allows high currents to pass through the magnet without losing any electrical resistance Pictured is CERN building 40 with its scale photo of The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment which is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). CMS has a broad physics programme ranging from studying the Standard Model (including the Higgs boson) to searching for extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter To avoid colliding with gas molecules inside the accelerator, the beams of particles in the LHC must travel in a vacuum as empty as interstellar space. Pictured is a view of a vacuum chamber used for molding in New Technologies for Future Magnets Building 927 The accelerator complex at CERN is a succession of machines that accelerate particles to increasingly higher energies. Each machine boosts the energy of a beam of particles, before injecting the beam into the next machine in the sequence. Pictured is an overhead view of the four beam lines: T8, T9, T10 and T11 as well as the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets or CLOUD experiment being run at CERN Last month, the BBC went inside the vast complex 328 feet (100 metres) beneath Geneva, Switzerland, with six GoPro cameras strapped together in a cube, and came out with a panoramic video. The innovative video allows viewers to click around, seeing what it is like to stand in the largest machine in the world. The video starts off at the CMS detector, one of the four at the LHC, and moves through the circular tunnel where particles are accelerated to close to the speed of light using almost 10,000 magnets. CMS, which stands for Compact Muon Solenoid, was one of the detectors that was used to discover the Higgs boson in 2012. It is a general-purpose detector with a broad physics programme ranging from studying the Standard Mode, including the Higgs boson, to searching for extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter. It has the same scientific goals as the ATLAS experiment, but it uses different technical solutions. A detailed view of a section of an LHC dipole magnet with cold mass and vacuum chamber in the Large Magnet Facility. This is one of the most complex piece of equipment at the LHC The left image shows one of the machines in the Crystal Laboratory and on the right is a general view of the one of the four beam lines: T8, T9, T10 and T11 being run at CERN in The East Area Hall, building 157 Engineers, Bertrand Fornes and Dominique Cote lift a superconducting coil in New Technologies for Future Magnets Building 927. After the beams collide in the detector, enormous magnets aid the measurement of particles. For example, physicists look at how charged particles bend in the magnetic field to determine their identity Pictured is one of the machines that was developed to measure 67 different parameters for each crystal in the Crystal Laboratory. The crystals are an essential part of the electromagnetic calorimeter, which is used to measure the emerging energies of the emerging particles A general view inside The Globe of Science and Innovation. Measuring 27 metres high and 40 metres across, the Globe is an visual landmark both day and night. The 'Universe of Particles' exhibition on the ground floor takes visitors on an immersive journey into the world of particles, up to the Big Bang A section of an LHC dipole magnet with cold mass and vacuum chamber in the Large Magnet Facility. Charged particles are deflected by the magnetic field in the detector, and their momentum can be calculated from the amount of deflection Engineer, Ahmed Benfik inspects the vacuum chamber used for molding in New Technologies for Future Magnets Building 927. The LHC is among the largest in the world. The insulating vacuum, equivalent to some 10-6 mbar, is made up of an impressive 50 km of piping, with a combined volume of 15,000 cubic metres, more than enough to fill the nave of a cathedral A detailed view of the blackboard with theoretical physics equations in chalk by Alberto Ramos, Theoretical Physics Fellow and visitor, Antonio Gonzalez-Arroyo from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Staff work in the Large Magnet Facility or LMF in Building 180. Here design, construction and measurements of superconducting and normal conducting magnets are made for the CERN accelerator complex Staff work on the ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals) project, a physics experiment aimed at studying neutrinos. This is the world's largest liquid-argon neutrino detector. A neutrino is a sub atomic particle with no electric charge, and so difficult to detect Magnets are an integral part of almost all modern particle accelerators and researchers at CERN are constantly working to make them stronger. Pictured is the main facility in which the magnets are constructed A general view of the CERN Control Centre or CCC. Scientists say the LHC at CERN could help them revise something known as the 'Standard Model' which explains how particles in the universe work A 25-man stag group from Scotland was kicked off a flight before take-off after allegedly displaying drunken behaviour and 'intimidating cabin crew with foul and abusive language'. The Jet2 flight was about to leave Prague International Airport for Glasgow when airline staff raised the alarm. The police were called and the men were removed from the plane. A Jet2 flight from Prague to Glasgow was grounded until 26 men who were part of a stag group returning to Scotland were escorted from the plane The incident caused the flight to be delayed by almost two hours on Sunday, according to the Daily Record. The Boeing 737 was scheduled to leave the Czech Republic at 6.50pm, arriving in Scotland at 10.20pm, but didn't land until midnight as a result of the delay. A spokesperson for Jet2 told MailOnline Travel: 'Jet2 last night (April 24) offloaded a stag group of 25 males from its Prague to Glasgow flight due to their disruptive behaviour. 'The decision was made to offload the rowdy group as they were boarding, due to their offensive attitude and continued use of foul and abusive language. 'Police were called to escort the party off the aircraft after some of the men reportedly became abusive and intimidating towards our cabin crew.' Phil Ward, managing director of Jet2.com, added: 'Our Onboard Together initiative supports our crew to take appropriate action to stamp out disruptive passenger behaviour on our flights, in order to protect both customers and fellow colleagues. 'Many of our customers on this flight were concerned about the group's behaviour which is why we took decisive action to stop them from travelling. We will not let an unruly few stop people from having an enjoyable flight experience.' One passenger took to Twitter to describe the flight home as being a 'nightmare' after a stag party were escorted from the plane The Boeing 737 was scheduled to leave the Czech Republic at 6.50pm, arriving in Scotland at 10.20pm, but didn't land until midnight as a result of the delay JET2'S ZERO TOLERANCE TOWARDS MISBEHAVIOUR Jet2.com has already put in place a series of measures under its 'Onboard Together' programme, to educate passengers about the effects of alcohol at high altitude, and to outline its policies. It has empowered its staff to take decisions quickly regarding disruptive passengers including verbal and written warnings and, ultimately, the ability to divert the aircraft to the nearest airport to off-load particularly offensive people before flying remaining passengers onto their holiday destination. Measures also include banning disruptive passengers for life, handing them over to the police, issuing a bill for the cost of the diversion and taking legal action, post travel. Advertisement Details of the incident were shared on the Facebook page of the Daily Record, which said the group removed from the plane were Scottish. Some comments left on the site by passengers alleged that the airline didn't handle the situation in the correct manner. Leigh Rodgers, who claims there were 26 people removed from the flight, wrote: 'Absolute joke. Totally over the top on Jet2's behalf and all that resulted is 26 boys left stranded and all the rest of us three and a half hours delayed.' And Alan Peacock added: 'Blown out of proportion. She kicked two guys off for having an unopened can. Air hostess dealt with the situation abysmally.' Marina Fraser from Glasgow was also on the flight, which she described as a 'nightmare' when posting on Twitter. 'Nightmare trip home from Prague last night. Stag party delay Prague to Glasgow flight after being booted off plane,' she wrote. Last year, Jet2 handed lifetime bans to about 50 travellers who were abusive or disruptive towards staff and fellow passengers, and stopped nearly 500 people from travelling. The zero-tolerance campaign was launched after the airline suffered a number of diversions or delays due to unruly passengers. Under tougher rules Jet2 has threatened to send a 3,500 bill and pursue legal action against passengers whose behaviour results in a diversion. In January, MailOnline reported on how an 'aggressive woman' who forced a flight to Newcastle Airport to divert to Ireland was banned for life and fined almost 7,000. The 42-year-old from Sunderland received a lifetime ban from Jet2 and has been fined 6,800 for costs incurred after a flight from Tenerife to Newcastle was diverted on New Year's Day. Flight LS518, which was carrying 161 passengers and six crew, was en route from Tenerife to Newcastle when it had to land at Shannon Airport in the West of Ireland after the passenger was verbally abusive to crew and became increasingly disruptive as the flight progressed. To protect the safety of everyone onboard she was offloaded and handed over to the local police. The monolithic boulder was formed millions of years ago, and was originally worshipped by Tahamies Indians The steps are the only way to reach the top of the attraction but the panoramas are said to be well worth the effort Advertisement Its certainly not boulder dash. There really is a staircase in the crack of a 650ft rock in Colombia and the views from the top are incredible, if youre fit enough to endure the 650 steps up there. They have been wedged into a huge crevice in the 10-million-ton El Penon de Guatape rock in Colombia, and mean the rock has become a bizarre look-out post across a mesmerising landscape. Scroll down for video Boulder dash: The 10-million-ton El Penon de Guatape in Colombia features stone steps embedded in a large crevice Between a rock and a hard place: If youre fit enough to endure the 650 steps, the views from the top are said to be well worth the effort Reward: There are even a few religious relics and souvenirs at the top, along with a few food outlets and a three-storey lookout tower El Penon de Guatape includes an outdoor area at the top so guests can relax and fully appreciate the sights before they make their descent The steps are the only way to reach the top of El Penon de Guatape, which is also known as Piedra de Penol or La Piedra, but once tourists reach the top, the spectacular views are said to be worth the effort. The experience has become a popular attraction in Guatape, with guests forking out a small fee to zig-zag to the top and look out over beautiful islands nestled in the surrounding lakes. If this wasn't reward enough, there are religious relics and souvenirs at the top, along with a three-storey lookout tower and a few food outlets. While the rocky Guatape attraction is safer than it looks, it had a precarious beginning. In the 1950s a group of friends spent five days scaling the gigantic rock using just planks of wood strategically placed in the crack that stretches from its base to its tip. Thankfully this was later replaced by the more sturdy masonry visible today which, from a distance, looks like a giant stitch holding the split stone together. In the 1950s a group of friends spent five days scaling the gigantic rock using just planks of wood strategically placed in the crack that stretches from its base to its tip Unique design: The 1950s wooden staircase was replaced by the more sturdy masonry visible today, which, from a distance, looks like a giant stitch holding the split stone together Rock on: The incredible Colombian tourist attraction is located just a couple of hours' drive from the nearby city of Medellin While it may look vertigo-inducing in photographs, the attraction has glowing reviews on TripAdvisor. User Amanda P, who rated the experience as 'excellent', wrote: 'I was scared I would be too tired to climb up, but it was very doable - tiring, but manageable. 'The view is amazing, 360 degrees of pure beauty. And you can hang around up there for a while as they have restaurants and shops.' Meanwhile Alex D from London said: 'Amazing, amazing view from the top... Just a bit of serious effort required to get up there. 'Beware the climb, even though it is walled in so you never feel right on the edge, it is not necessarily for those who don't feel comfortable with heights.' The experience has become a popular attraction in Guatape, with guests forking out a small fee to zig-zag to the top and look out over beautiful islands nestled in the surrounding lakes While it may look gravity-inducing in photographs, the attraction has glowing reviews on TripAdvisor, with the majority of guests rating it as 'excellent' The monolithic rock is said to have been formed millions of years ago, and was originally worshipped by Tahamies Indians who used to live in the region. Keen-eyed visitors will notice that on the northern face of the rock are two large painted white letters, G and a half-formed U. According to Wikipedia there was a dispute about whether Guatape or El Penol owned the boulder. Guatape residents tried to stake their claim to the landmark and began to paint their name on it. This was quickly spotted by El Penol residents, who were said to have interrupted the act before it was completed. A U.S-bound plane was forced to make an emergency landing after 'smoke was detected in the lavatory'. The Pakistan International Airlines aircraft was en route to New York from Manchester Airport when an indicator signalled possible smoke in the toilet. As the Boeing 777 was flying over Northern Ireland, the captain radioed Air Traffic Control for permission to make an unscheduled landing at Shannon Airport. The Pakistan International Airlines aircraft en route to New York from Manchester when an indicator flashed of possible smoke in the toilet It had set out from Manchester at 1.37pm on Saturday for its six-and-a-half-hour journey to New York, but landed in Northern Ireland less than two hours later. According to the Aviation Herald, the decision was taken due to the 'lavatory smoke indication, and that the crew said there had been 'an indication only, there was no confirmation of actual smoke'. And AirLive.net, who monitor and report on aviation news on Twitter, says that the plane was forced to 'dump fuel' before landing at Shannon after 'smoke in the lavatory'. When an emergency or diversion is required for an aircraft, the standard procedure is often to reduce the weight in order to make a safe landing. So the plane is forced to burn off fuel by circling, or if the emergency is more serious, it will have to release the fuel into the air, usually over water. Posting on Twitter, it was claimed that the plane had to burn fuel before diverting to Shannon Passengers were forced to endure a seven-hour delay to their flight to New York in the U.S. The plane, with 205 passengers on board, made a safe landing at Shannon Airport, where it was met by emergency vehicles. There were no injuries reported from the emergency landing, but the passengers were hit by a delay of seven hours to their journey. She is one of the most iconic characters to have graced EastEnders. And Dame Barabara Windsor has been pictured filming her last scenes as Peggy Mitchell with on-screen son Phil aboard a boat on the River Thames. The 78-year-old actress and her co-star Steve McFadden were joined by executive producer Dominic Treadwell Collins as they got to work with the crew to capture Peggys final moments on the BBC One soap. Scroll down for video One last time: Dame Barabara Windsor has been pictured filming her last scenes as Peggy Mitchell The long goodbye: The 78-year-old actress was seen with on-screen son Phil aboard a boat on the River Thames Dame Barbara was dressed to impress as she sported a floral print dress and large brow coat, though she changed into a pale fur collar coat to film scenes onboard the river cruise. Her locks were styled into a large beehive while Steve was seen sporting a beige bucket hat and a dark grey suit. Peggy returned to Walford in January to reveal the cancer is back, I'm dying. Dame Barbara had told bosses she wanted her character to be killed off because she is leaving the show permanently. Fond farewell: Dame Barbara and her co-star Steve McFadden got to work with the crew to capture Peggys final moments on the BBC One soap A sad day: Dame Barbara was dressed to impress as she sported a floral print dress East End style: Dame Barbara teamed black and leopard print trainers with her large brow coat Her last hurrah: Dame Barbara later changed into a pale fur collar coat to film scenes on board the river cruise And in dramatic scenes, Peggy was seen breaking the news to her son Phil - who was visibly drunk. The former Queen Vic landlord - who had breast cancer in a storyline in 1996 - then locked herself in the bathroom and was inconsolable. Giving her reasons for quitting the soap, the 78-year-old actress said it wasn't for a lack of love for EastEnders. She said: Everyone knows I love 'EastEnders' and that will never change. Peggy is a character close to my heart but I made the decision a while ago that I need to say goodbye to Peggy once and for all as otherwise she will always be there, urging me to go back and that is something I need to shut the door on. Her men: Dame Barbara and Steve were joined by executive producer Dominic Treadwell Collins as they filmed the sceces Sun's out: Her locks were styled into a large beehive while Steve was seen sporting a beige bucket hat and a dark grey suit Her final storyline: Peggy returned to Walford in January to reveal the cancer is back, I'm dying She added: After thinking long and hard about it, I realised that it is time for me and the audience to say our final farewells to the lady who I have loved for many years and I thought that whilst the guvnor, who I adore, is still in charge I want him to be the one to oversee it. But the veteran star confessed she has been secretly plotting her exit for months as she told the Daily Mirror: I am grateful that Dominic has accepted my decision and together, since late last summer, we have been secretly plotting Peggy's last scenes. And her departure is set to feature a spooky surprise as Pat Butcher rises from the dead for her friend's passing. The eccentric matriarch - portrayed by Pam St Clement - is expected to make her return to Albert Square four years after she dramatically popped her clogs - to feature in the former pub landlord's (Dame Barbara Windsor) forthcoming emotional exit scenes. Her choice: Dame Barbara had told bosses she wanted her character to be killed off because she is leaving the show permanently Trouble child: And in dramatic scenes, Peggy was seen breaking the news to her son Phil - who was visibly drunk A source told The Sun newspaper: Viewers can expect lots of surprises for Peggy's final episodes. They are not to be missed and will go down in EastEnders history. It's believed Pat will reappear as an eery hallucination for her friend Peggy - similar to a 'back from the dead' cameo she made in the 2014 'Children in Need' special - just as the bossy matriarch is losing her battle with breast cancer. The pair, who became the two leading ladies of Albert Square, were known for their rocky relationship but, towards the end, managed to develop an unbreakable bond. Pat broke hearts in 2012 when she passed away in a New Year's episode - dedicated to her - in the soap shortly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It's back: The former Queen Vic landlord had breast cancer in a storyline in 1996 Who's that: And her departure is set to feature a spooky surprise as Pat Butcher rises from the dead for her friend's passing It's time: Giving her reasons for quitting the soap, the 78-year-old actress said it wasn't for a lack of love for EastEnders Moving on: Dame Barbara explained, 'Everyone knows I love 'EastEnders' and that will never change' Meanwhile, Pat isn't the only familiar face set for a return as Peggy's favourite son Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) and daughter Sam Mitchell (Danniella Westbrook) will also rush to their mother's death bed just before she passes. Ross - who was last seen on the programme in late 2006 sent fans into a meltdown when he announced he'd been handed his script for his forthcoming scenes and was running through the plot. Uploading a photograph of the script on Instagram, he wrote: Spending time getting ready for Walford #EastEnders @bbceastenders #mitchellsreunited (sic). Bowing out: She continued, 'Peggy is a character close to my heart but I made the decision a while ago that I need to say goodbye to Peggy once and for all ... that is something I need to shut the door on' Get your running shoes on! Elsewhere, Dame Barbara went underground at Regents Park Tube Station on Tuesday to call on women across the UK to join Cancer Research UKs Race for Life My Kitchen Rules judge Pete Evans has tied the knot with model Nicola Robinson. Opening up about their wedding to New Idea magazine, 41-year-old celebrity chef Pete and his 39-year-old New Zealand born love revealed the intimate affair was held at their farm in New South Wales, complete with 'butterfly bridesmaids, four-legged guests and paleo cake'. 'We didn't write vows, we chose to do what we call "winging it",' Nicola revealed of the pair's nuptials. Scroll down for video Official married: My Kitchen Rules judge Pete Evans has tied the knot with model Nicola Robinson 'We shared our deepest hopes, dreams and promises from our hearts.' The pair, who grace the cover of the latest issue of New Idea magazine, were quite the coordinated couple on their big day. Both Pete and Nicola wore white for their nuptials, with Nicole's stunning dress teamed with a floral crown and veil. Her balayage tresses were worn out in bouncy curls, and a few additional snaps revealed the intimate moments the couple shared on their big day. Nuptials: Appearing on the cover of New Idea magazine, the celebrity chef and his New-Zealand born love are seen posing at their wedding, which included 'butterfly bridesmaids, four-legged guests and paleo cake' Barefoot Nicole made her way down the aisle on horseback, with Pete's daughters Chilli, 11, and Indii, nine, joining her for the ride. The gorgeous young girls wore beautiful white tutus on the day, as well as floral headpieces to go with the relaxing theme of the wedding. The pair's nuptials come after the celebrity chef proposed last year while they were on holiday in New York. Confirmation: On Sunday evening Nicola took to Instagram to share a snap of her beau, along with the simple hashtag, '#husband' On Sunday evening Nicola took to Instagram to share a snap of her beau, along with the simple hashtag, '#husband'. And it didn't take long for a string of congratulatory messages to flow through from fans in the comments section. Meanwhile Pete has two daughters from a previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger, Indii, nine, and Chilli, eleven. 'Not long now': Pete shared this photo of Nicola on a dark horse five weeks ago, hinting the nuptials were just around the corner Loved-up: The pair met in in Adelaide four years ago and she has been a driving force behind his paleo lifestyle and helping to fine tune his 6ft 3ins physique with her healthy eating Nicola has formed a close relationship with his daughters and is credited with turning the chef's life around. The pair met in in Adelaide four years ago and she has been a driving force behind his paleo lifestyle and helping to fine tune his 6ft 3ins physique with her healthy eating. Last year they put their plans of Easter nuptials on hold and had since been planning to wed in a private ceremony on their farm in Brisbane. His three angels: Pete regularly shares snaps of Nicola and his daughters Indii and Chili from a previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger The big question: The pair's nuptials come after Pete proposed to Nicola while they were on holiday in New York last year Fitting in: Nicola has formed a close relationship with his daughters and is credited with turning the chef's life around They sold more than ten million records during their six years together and picked up two BRIT awards before they disbanded in 2013. And former JLS member Marvin Humes has revealed that the famous foursome headed back into the studio together after a heavy night out. The group - Jonathan Benjamin Gill (JB), Aston Merrygold and Oritse Williams - reunited for his 31st birthday last month, and the X Factor alumni confessed that the band ended up performing together in an impromptu session after a night out. Scroll down for video One more shot: JLS star Marvin Humes has revealed that the famous foursome headed back into the studio together after a heavy night out Speaking to the Daily Star, he explained: 'We went to this club called Tape in West London and another friend of ours Dallas Austin, this R&B producer, has a studio inside and we ended up in the studio together again.' Marvin - who is married to The Saturdays' Rochelle Humes - added: 'It was weird being back in there together after so long.' Asked about a possible reunion between the band, he explained that any immediate plans were unlikely but remained hopeful about the future. 'I don't know what will happen in our future as we are all focused on our individual projects but never say never,' he explained. The boys are back! (L-R) Marvin, Oritse Williams, Jonathan Gill and Aston Merrygold reunited for Marvin's 31st birthday last month, and the X Factor alumni confessed that the band ended up performing together JLS were originally formed by Oritse and shot to fame after they appeared on the fifth season of The X Factor in 2008 where they came second to Alexandra Burke. In April 2013, JLS released a statement on their official website announcing that they would be splitting up after releasing their greatest hits collection and completing their third and final arena tour. Marvin - who hosts his own show on Capital FM - recently announced his return to music with the launch of LuvBug, an electronic dance music trio consisting of himself, producer The White N3rd and songwriter JKAY. Starting out: JLS were originally formed by Oritse (second left) and shot to fame after they appeared on the fifth season of The X Factor in 2008 where they came second to Alexandra Burke Speaking to the Official Charts Company about his new venture back in 2014, he explained that there were several differences between his new group and JLS. 'Its different because youre working later hours in nightclubs!' he said. 'Usually wed be just in a nightclub partying but this time Im behind the decks. I dont have to do as much promo/press now.' He continued: 'Its a bit of a different world but I still loved the whole experience of JLS and Im loving being a part of LuvBug now.' He is a character who plays a ongoing role in the intrigue in George RR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire book series. But that was not enough to save Prince Doran Martell from meeting a grisly fate after learning he had been betrayed by his own family in the explosive series six debut episode of Game Of Thrones on Sunday. The uncommonly generous ruler of Dorne was stabbed through the heart by his brother Oberyn's paramour Ellaria Sand as she lectured him on his weakness. Snake in the grass: The Red Viper's paramour Ellaria Sand stabbed his brother Prince Doran Martell to death in the explosive debut episode of Game Of Thrones on Sunday He was assassinated just after learning Princess Myrcella Baratheon had been murdered, despite him giving her safe passage back home to King's Landing in the care of her father and uncle Jaime Lannister. After one of her daughters, who are known as the Sand Snakes, killed his bodyguard by knifing him in the back, she took her chance to kill the man who had shown her mercy in the previous season. As she gloated over Doran's dying body, she said: When was the last time you left this palace? You dont know your own people. See more of the latest Game of Thrones news and spoilers as season six debuts Message in a bottle: The ruler of Dorne is shocked to discover Princess Myrcella had been murdered A woman scorned: But after her daughter took care of his bodyguard Ellaria launched her deadly attack Straight through the heart: Doran grimaced, perhaps disgruntled his scheme in the books would never emerge on screen Elia Martell raped, murdered you did nothing. Oberyn Martell butchered, you did nothing. Youre not our prince.' And in a twist that would surely have enraged her lover the Red Viper, when he asked about his son Trystane she told him: 'Your son is weak just like you and weak men will never rule Dorne again.' A seeming composite of several characters in the novels, Ellaria's blood-thirsty behaviour is certainly in stark contrast to her portrayal in the books, and this latest development is sure to raise a reaction among fans of the series. Unwise move: He was probably regretting granting his nieces and their mother mercy the previous season Sands of time: Unlike her character in the books she revelled in the bloodshed she had caused Final insult: As he lay dying he was told his son would also be getting assassinated Meanwhile two of the Red Viper's bastard daughters go to Trystane's chambers, and after telling him they are there to kill them, he reluctantly agrees to fight them one at a time to the death. Unfortunately for him, just as he readies himself for his first duel he is stabbed through the head from behind with a spear, a move which echoed the death of his uncle, not to mention the girls' father, at the hands of Gregor Clegane. At the same time drama was unfolding in Dorne, the fallout from the death of Jon Snow, who was brutally stabbed to death by his own men in an attack that had fans anguishing for the past 12 months over whether he will return, was also covered. Not hungry: He initially told them he was not wanting a meal before they told him they were going to kill him 'You're family I don't want to hurt you': Chivalrous Trystane tries to dissuade them but they are not interested Duel to the death: He foolishly accepts their challenge to one-to-one combat 'Stick them with the pointy end': The Sand Snake had obviously learned Jon Snow's words of wisdom well, though she did not fight fair Strange turn of events: Given his love of family it is unlikely their father the Red Viper would have approved Game Of Thrones fans learned he is definitely dead - for the moment - after his lifeless body was discovered by Ser Davos Seaworth. He and some men loyal to the former Lord Commander of the Night's Watch decided to take his body to a remote room, while the quick thinking Onion Knight makes sure they also bring along Jon's loyal direwolf Ghost. In the episode, titled The Red Woman, it was thought the Lord Of Light priestess Melisandre, who goes by that very moniker, could use her powers to bring him back to the land of the living. Bad for troop morale: Lord Commander of the Night's Watch Jon Snow was found by Ser Davos after he was murdered by his own men Wings of the dragon? His blood seemed to leave an ominous sign on the snow Definitely dead: His friend and fighting companion Eddison Tollett closed Jon's eyes as he lay Lady in red: Fans were hoping Lord Of Light priestess Melisandre would revive Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones Plan B: While this could happen in the future, for now they are hoping Eddison can get outside and get reinforcements She had previously conveniently arrived back at The Wall just after the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch had been murdered, and it was shown in season three her god's power could be used to revive the dead after Beric Dondarrion, who was slain by Sandor Clegane, was brought back to life by the priest Thoros of Myr. Whether this will come to pass is still unsure however, as she seemed surprised he was dead at all, telling Ser Davos: 'I saw him in the flames, fighting at Winterfell.' Meanwhile the Onion Knight tried to hold off the attention of the Ser Alliser Thorne, who was seemingly keen to capture Jon's body and butcher the faithful few inside. He swore the men would be spared and that the Onion Knight could go free, and that he could even take the Red Woman with him if he wanted. A man of his word: Trustworthy mutineer Ser Alliser Thorne promised he would not butcher Jon's guards Old hand: Ser Davos promised he would discuss the generous offer with his friends as he played for time A dire situation: Jon's wolf Ghost did not seem entirely convinced by the claim either What a coincidence: The traitor had brought along some armed men as he negotiated peace With Eddison Tollett previously escaping to seek help, perhaps from the wildlings Jon had helped rescue, Davos stalled him for time, promising to talk over the offer with the other men. He tells them: 'Boys I've been running from men like this all my life. In my learned opinion...' But before he can even finish they promise they will fight with him to the finish, as they knew their cause is hopeless. Picture of health: Lord Of Light priestess Melisandre looked remarkable considering she lives in medieval times That's magic: Her amulet glowed as she removed it from her youthful neck That really is magic: And once she had taken off her enchanted jewelry she turned into an old crone No wonder she needs a nap: The transformed Red Woman headed to bed for some beauty sleep However Ser Davos tells them they have a powerful ally in Melisandre, telling the skeptical warriors, 'You haven't seen her do what I've seen her do.' A strange sequence then gave further insight into her character, showing her praying in front of a fire before stripping off and removing a charmed amulet, which shows she is really a wizened old woman. In other business at Castle Black, Ser Alliser managed to win over the troops with surprising ease after admitting he and his fellow officers had just killed their Lord Commander. Water they doing: Sansa and Theon waded through freezing waters to escape Ramsay's men Unconvincing liar: Greyjoy tried to persuade the men that he had left Sansa behind Going to the dogs: The hounds easily sniffed her out despite his claims however At a rowdy assembly he explained: 'Jon Snow was going to destroy the Night's Watch. He let the wildlings through our gates as no Lord Commander has before. He gave them the very land on which they reived and raped. Jon Snow did what he thought was right.. but what he thought was right was the end of us. He forced a terrible choice on us and we made it.' In another action packed moment, it seemed for sure Sansa Stark and Theon Greyjoy were going to be captured by the men of their tormenting captor Ramsay Bolton. After seemingly escaping across a freezing river, just as they relaxed inside a fallen tree they heard the horses and hounds approaching. Theon failed in an attempt to lead the hunting party away, but when they approached Sansa some figure galloped through the trees to lead an unlikely rescue attempt. Taking a winter fall: Brienne Of Tarth rode to the rescue and took the men by surprise Snow bother: She was able to easily dispatch a few men before running into trouble Arise Sir Podrick: And her squire proved to be adept at sword play even though he had to be saved by Theon A touching moment: She failed to protect Renly and Catelyn Stark, but it could be third time lucky with Sansa Brienne Of Tarth and her squire Podrick Payne showed off all their fighting skills as they fought on foot and horseback to tackle the larger party, eventually overcoming the odds. And Theon again stepped up to save the day as it seemed Podrick was sure to get skewered after being bested in a sword fight, fatally stabbing the rogue warrior from behind. Sadly for the quartet it seems they area heading for yet more trouble, as after swearing fealty, Brienne decided they should ride north to seek aid from Sansa's big brother Jon at Castle Black. Ramsay, who had earlier mourned the death of his lover Myranda before having her fed to his hounds, was shown being wise to the move in the teaser for the following week. He is certain to move hell and earth as he chases her down in a bid to make certain his inheritance of his father Roose's title, as he was told he will lose it if he cannot bear an heir with his fleeing bride. Haven't they heard of the Geneva Convention? Daenerys Targaryen is not being dealt with in the most chivalrous of manners by her Dothraki captors Coming full circle: She was once again presented to a Dothraki khal for his approval 'Chop her head off': His jealous wives did not want him to sleep with the show's resident sexbomb Doh: He promised to not touch her after learning she had been married to Drogo but said she must go to live the rest of her days as a widow at a temple Fans also saw Daenerys Targaryen get flogged by her Dothraki captors, before she finally revealed her identity to the horde's khalasar. As she was force marched to their camp, some warriors spoke of all the unchivalrous things they wanted to do with her, not realising she could understand every word they say. They would also whip her whenever she stumbled, to ensure she kept up her marching pace. After she was presented to the group's leader, he initially seemed certain to rip her clothes off, as he boasted he wanted to have a child with her. Before he could however she announced her identity, much to the shock of all present. To the rescue: Her infatuated bodyguards Ser Jorah and Daario had fortuitously ended up where she landed Burnt offerings: But the dead ram suggested a dragon had been roaming around nearby Eagle eyes: The ageing knight may be afflicted with Greyscale but he can spot a clue at 100 meters Ring of truth: He found the bauble Daenerys dropped in case someone came looking for her Upon learning she was the widow of Khal Drogo he promised she would not be harmed, though to her dismay she learned she would be taken a temple to live with the wives of dead warlords, thwarting her plans to take the Iron Throne. However she could soon be saved, as the ever-faithful Ser Jorah Mormont, whose Greyscale disease is getting worse, is on her trail, and discovered the ring she dropped in the hope a scouting party would come to her rescue. Meanwhile everyone's favourite imp Tyrion Lannister was trying to get to grips with controlling the mutinous city of Meereen. Thing certainly got off to a less than auspicious start after he and fellow outcast Varys rush to the harbour to discover their queen's fleet had been set alight. Only here for the banter: Varys mocked Tyrion's upper class walking style as they took stock in Meereen Eunuch relationship: Tyrion struck back by mocking Vary's manhood as their journey continued Ruining a nice walk: But the jolly dwarf wryly remarked they would not be sailing to Westeros any time soon when they discovered their fleet had been set alight Tyrion ruefully remarked, 'well she won't be sailing to Westeros any time soon,' as he watched their ships go up in flames. However the teaser for the following week suggested he will soon be unchaining Daenerys' dragons as he bids to turn the tables on the mysterious Sons Of The Harpy. And the now blind Arya was shown being given a beating as she begged for money. Her old sparring partner The Waif threw her a stick and challenged her to a duel, as what seems to be the latest stage of her training in the ways of the Faceless Men continued. Begging bowl: Glum Arya was adjusting to life as a newly blinded beggar There's hope yet: Her time with the Faceless Men seems to be just beginning after her old trainer The Waif came to visit Sense of unfairness: She was struggling to duel without her vision in her latest trial Thwack: She will no doubt one day laugh at their duelling days when she is a fully trained assassin She is yet to master her other senses however, and was given quite the thrashing as she wildly swung at her opponent, who told her she would be back the next day so they could fight again. And while King's Landing was fairly quiet for once, Cersei was reunited with Jaime and their incestuous dead daughter Myrcella, whose death had caused so much violence back in Dorne. Her brother and lover then vowed they would take back, 'Everything theyve taken from us were going to take back and more.' A picturesque location: Fans could enjoy the view as nothing much happened at King's Landing this week Another failed mission: Self-styled Kingslayer Jaime Lannister returned from yet another disastrous expedition Drinking to Oblivion Rating: People talk to Louis Theroux. His deceptive air of slow-wittedness convinces interviewees that theyre smarter than he is, and tougher. While he mumbles and apologises, his victims cant see how hes making them look like fools. Hes the human equivalent of an elephant pit. He lures people on until they plunge into his trap. Its a trick that worked superbly with shameless self-promoters such as politicians Neil and Christine Hamilton, and he came closer than most to unmasking Jimmy Savile as a depraved predator. Scroll down for video Aurelie told Louis if she stopped drinking 'it would be like taking the roots out of a tree, it would never work' But Theroux and his subtleties were wasted on the alcoholics in Drinking To Oblivion (BBC2). Drunks will talk to anyone. It isnt just that booze loosens the tongue the cases Theroux saw washed up at A&E in Kings College Hospital in London felt they had so little left to live for, they might as well answer his questions honestly. Lying was a waste of energy that they didnt have to spare. And it felt as though Theroux wasnt eager to waste much energy either. This was a superficial, formulaic documentary that selected its targets and visited them once a week or so, for a month, like a health visitor dropping in to take blood samples. Theroux looked for articulate drunks, the ones still capable of self-analysis. It wasnt surprising that he found them: in my experience, chronic alcoholics are often intelligent and reflective people the stupid ones usually find a quicker way to kill themselves. Aurelie, a 44-year-old Frenchwoman who had started drinking champagne at 13 and now needed a six-pack of super-strength cider every day just to stop the shakes, was the most philosophical of the three, with a broad streak of Parisienne poetry. REPEAT OF THE WEEKEND Elizabeth At 90 (BBC1) featured even more of the Queens joyous home movies on its second showing. As Charles narrated, I thought (not for the first time) how much he loves being a TV presenter. Now we know why he grew up performing on camera. Advertisement The cider tasted like petrol, she agreed, but said she was like a rat in a cage till I have my first drink. She wasnt afraid of dying: You get what you deserve. Its hard to imagine what crimes she could have committed to deserve her boyfriend, a park-bench drunk and a vile man who constantly abused and berated her. Aurelie had self-loathing but no self-pity. Joe, a former medical researcher, had both to an exalted degree. It was painful to watch him staggering through the streets in bloodstained shorts, bare-chested under his car-coat, but it was more disturbing still to see this 32-year-old man squealing like an injured rabbit because his girlfriend had left him. The one valuable insight the programme produced was that deeper mental illnesses often underlie alcohol addiction. But the general shallowness of the show was revealed by the case of an antiques dealer and two-bottles-of-vino-a-day guy, who had liver disease and was told he might be dead within three months. What happened to him? We werent told. It appeared Louis didnt have the energy to find out. The Mystery of The Crossrail Skulls Rating: Its a pity he lacked the indefatigable application of the forensic archaeology teams in The Mystery Of The Crossrail Skulls (C4), as they toiled to discover why hundreds of skulls are being discovered in Londons foundations. Dozens were found during the construction of tunnels for the capitals new rail link. But theyve been turning up for centuries: when work was done at the Bank of England in the 1920s, builders dug up nine of them. Just the skulls, no other bones... which is creepier than whole skeletons. Even more disturbing was the Banks decision to donate eight to the British Museum and keep the ninth for their private collection. Does that mean its in a vault, guarding the gold? Or on the governors desk, perhaps with an inkwell set into an eye socket? A skull is uncovered at the Bedlam burial ground where it is believed over 20,000 Londoners were buried between 1569 and 1738 The real pleasure of this documentary came from the methodical way it pieced together solutions. Some of the skulls, we learned, had been washed downriver from Roman graveyards. But one row of skulls, lying at intervals along a ditch, had probably been heads hung as trophies from trees by Celtic soldiers. They rotted, fell to the ground and lay there for two millennia. Gwyneth Paltrow received lap dances from boyfriend Brad Falchuk during a star-studded birthday party also attended by her ex-husband Chris Martin. Brad, 45, gave Gwyneth, 43, personal dancing attention on Saturday at Kate Hudson's birthday held at her home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, according to an article on Sunday by Us Weekly. 'Brad dressed like a construction worker and gave Gwyneth lap dances. They were having lots of fun!' a source said. Lap dance: Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk, shown on Thursday in Los Angeles, enjoyed a private show together on Saturday at Kate Hudson's party Coldplay frontman Chris, 39, and Gwyneth in March 2014 announced their 'conscious uncoupling' as they separated after 10 years of marriage and two children together and she later filed for divorce in April 2015. Kate celebrated her 37th birthday with a 'hot mess' wedding-themed bash with an A-list guest list. 'They had a photo booth outside with real cans of Heineken surrounding the frame. There were loads of chips, beer, donuts and a Fatburger truck,' the insider said. Friendly exes: Chris Martin also attended Kate's birthday party held at her Pacific Palisades home Good friends: Gwyneth and Kate are shown together in October 2015 in Los Angeles Good times: Kate and friends including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were messy brides Taking to Instagram ahead of the bash, she treated her four million Instagram followers to a glimpse into the party, snapping a selfie as she prepared to party the night away. Peering out beneath her golden tresses, Kate looked ready and raring for a party as her beauty transformation looked nearly complete. Also bringing the glamour on the evening was Demi Moore, who opted for a classic all black ensemble. Birthday beauty: Kate decided to mark her 37th birthday in style with an A-list studded party at her Pacific Palisades home in California on Saturday Three brides: Rachel Zoe shared a photo of Kate with her bride pals Artsy photo: Demi Moore and daughter Rumer Willis celebrated along with Kate Some night: Kate shared a photo on Instagram after the hot mess party Layering up in a satin duster coat, the 53-year-old looked effortlessly chic as she headed into the bash. Flashing a hint of her toned pins, she opted for a flattering midi skirt, whilst she elongated her lithe frame with a pair of patent Louboutin court heels which she teamed with black ankle socks. Chris also dressed up for the occasion, adding a splash of colour to his crisp black shirt with a vibrant blue satin tie. Drinking up: Kate also shared a birthday snap of herself and Jen Meyer enjoying a glass of wine How to make a party last ten days: The birthday girl ensured the night would be one to remember as she hosted the festivities with an A-list guestlist that included Demi Moore and Chris Martin, who was chatting outside to Alexander Skarsgard and his girlfriend Alexa Chung That's a wrap: Layering up in a satin duster coat, the 53-year-old looked effortlessly chic as she headed into the bash. Flashing a hint of her toned pins, she opted for a flattering midi skirt and cream top ensemble Amazing from all angles: Demi's classic all-black ensemble was timeless, yet she added a quirky twist to her outfit by donning a pair of ankle socks with her toweringly high patent court heels Refusing to stray from his signature fashion calling card, the Coldplay frontman, 39, concealed his shaggy brunette locks with a snug beanie hat. Seeming in good spirits, Chris loitered outside the home whilst chatting to Alexander Skarsgard and his girlfriend Alexa Chung before heading inside for the party. Kate was no doubt looking forward to celebrating her birthday in style after warming up for the event on Tuesday morning. Leggy lady! Alexa showed off her tanned and toned pins in a denim playsuit whilst she slipped her feet into a pair of chunky black sandals. Meanwhile, Chris got comfortable by removing his baby blue tie Keeping it casual: Chris dressed down his crisp black shirt and trousers with a fitted beanie hat whilst he strode into the party carrying what appeared to be a little gift under his arm Looking all-white! Milla Jovovich was a classic beauty in a lace white top whilst a large flower tucked behind some ear added some effortless glamour to her chic and summery ensemble The delighted star shared a video of her birthday surprise on Instagram saying: 'Well this is one way to start your birthday!' In the video, Kate finds three hunky men waiting in her sitting room wearing nothing but jeans. The shirtless bunks then proceeded to serenade the actress, who was so overwhelmed she could barely even look at their muscle bound bods. Furry nice! Rachel layered up in a black bolero jacket which complemented her myriad of satin jewel encrusted bracelets and rings, which also matched her glittering neckline Suited and booted: Cash Warren looked dapper in a silver velvet suit that he teamed with a V-neck white top She previously told of how they wanted to expand their brood 'sooner rather than later'. And a year after welcoming her first child, it has been claimed Lara Bingle and Sam Worthington may be ready for baby number two. According to OK! Australia, the couple are eager to have another child with model Lara hopeful for a daughter this time around. Scroll down for video Family: Lara Bingle and her husband Sam Worthington are ready to expand their brood a year after their first son Rocket's birth, it has been claimed 'Sam and Lara have been talking about this for months now. They agreed wen they got engaged that they don't want a big age gap between their kids,' a source claimed to the magazine. They added the couple would like to give their one-year-old son Rocket a little sister. 'It's no secret that Lara's desperately hoping for a baby girl,' they said. Daily Mail Australia has contacted representatives for the star for comment. Proud: The couple recently celebrated their son's first birthday with Lara sharing this snap on Instagram to mark the occasion In October Lara, 28, opened up about how the couple wanted more children during a visit to Australia. Appearing on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O Show, she said they were eager not to waste time in expanding their family. Asked if she would like more, she said: 'Sooner rather than later. Maybe like four. I have one brother and Sam has one sister so I think like a bigger family! Clucky: Last year Lara said she and her husband were eager to have more children 'sooner rather than later' Embracing it: Lara has frequently spoken about how motherhood has changed her life for the better Sams sister has three kids which I just love and its just like a big family, youre like a big team its awesome!. The pair tied the knot in an intimate wedding in Melbourne last December when Lara was six months pregnant. Sharing details of their special day, she said: 'We just popped in to Melbourne and got married in a house there.' It was the first time the beauty had spoken openly of their marriage after skirting around questions on their relationship for months. Loved up: The pair married in Melbourne last year when Lara was pregnant with Rocket She has walked the runways for top fashion houses including Marc Jacobs and Victoria's Secret - so it's safe to say, Jessica Hart knows a thing or two about makeup. And on Monday, the Australian beauty revealed her secret beauty weapons, allowing her fans to achieve her enviable glowing complexion. The 30-year-old posed for a close-up for her Eco-friendly LUMA cosmetics range, radiating her typical luminous shine across her flawless complexion, as she shared with fans the products she had used. Scroll down for video So that's how she does it! Jessica Hart was her typical luminous self as she posed for a campaign shot for her Eco-friendly LUMA cosmetics range, radiating an enviable glow across her flawless complexion The former Victoria's Secret model opted for a less is more approach, wearing light dewy, pearlescent makeup from her own range, which made her twinkling blue eyes pop. Exuding girl-next-door-beauty, the cosmetics entrepreneur accentuated her striking features with illuminating highlighter swiped across her cheeks, some bronzer, a stroke of mascara and a coating of pink lipstick which drew attention to her famous gap-tooth grin. Her blonde locks were worn down, cascading effortlessly over her shoulders, with her blunt fringe swiping her brows. Enteprenuer: Launched in 2014 after two years of development, Jessica's LUMA makeup collection is not only made up of 99% natural ingredients, but is also extremely effective Launched in 2014 after two years of development, Jessica's LUMA make-up collection is not only made up of 99% natural ingredients, but is also extremely effective. In the past, the Eco-friendly range has officially sponsored the Pink Hope Charity's Bright Pink Lipstick Day to raise awareness for breast and ovarian cancer risk. Jessica's make-up brand, Luma Cosmetics, is starting to gain momentum after being stocked in 300 stores. It must work! Jessica's makeup brand, Luma Cosmetics, is starting to gain momentum after being stocked in 300 stores Speaking to Collective Hub magazine recently, she admitted that she wanted to create a naturally derived product that enhanced features - not covered them up. She explained: 'I wanted it to be all natural. [Women] don't look twice when it comes to chemicals and fragrances and it's so close to your face.' Having walked the runways for top fashion houses including Marc Jacobs, Victoria's Secret, Sonia Rykiel and Rag & Bone - the beauty knows a thing or two about makeup. 'I've touched and played with so much make-up in my time and I know it doesn't have to be necessarily be expensive or good,' she told the monthly publication. 'I knew what would work and I knew what I wanted.' Experienced: Jessica has walked the runways for top fashion houses including Victoria's Secret The runway sensation recently celebrated her 30th birthday in the Bahamas surrounded by her family and friends. Her model sister, Ashley Hart took to her Instagram to wish her a happy birthday in an extended birthday post taking the opportunity to describe the unbreakable bond the sisters share, while calling her big sister her main inspiration in life. Jessica currently lives with her beau Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos III in New York's trendy East Village. Genetically blessed: The runway sensation recently celebrated her 30th birthday in the Bahamas surrounded by her family and friends including sister Ashley Hart In the wake of the 101st anniversary of Anzac Day television presenter Erin Molan has opened up about her father Major General Andrew James 'Jim' Molan's commitment to Australia and countries abroad. While speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Monday the 32-year-old labelled her childhood as 'unique' as she remembered the days she worried about her father as he fought in war battles overseas. 'We were just so lucky because dad always came home and that wasn't the case for a lot of people,' she said. Reliving the moments: In the wake of the Anzac Day television presenter Erin Molan has opened up about her father Major General Andrew James 'Jim' Molan's commitment to Australia and countries abroad Miss Molan went on to explain that she first became aware of her father's sacrifice during her early teenage years. 'The first time I really clicked to what he was doing was when he was in East Timor [1998]. The war had broken out over there and he was one of the first people on the ground,' she said. 'I remember seeing on the news the area where people were running out and being shot at. Seeing those images and knowing dad was over there and part of it was horrible.' Service: General Major Molan served the country for 40 years and retired from the Defence Force in July 2008 Positive thoughts: While speaking to Daily Mail Australia the 32-year-old said she and her two siblings 'were just so lucky because dad always came home and that wasn't the case for a lot of people' The Channel Nine journalist went on to add that the Iraq-based war in 2004 also made her more wary of the circumstances as Mr Molan took on the position as the Chief of Operations who led and controlled the troops on the ground. 'Iraq was also a big one because I was 15-16 when he went over for a year. You watch the news every night and you see the death toll rising and it was hard,' Miss Molan said. 'We also couldnt communicate, so we would go weeks and weeks without speaking to him on the phone to make sure he was okay and it was hard watching mum [Anne] go through that as well.' While claiming to be a 'proud Australian' watching on as her father served the country, Miss Molan admitted she feared the worse would come one day. Worried: But while claiming to be a 'proud Australian' watching on as her father served the country, Miss Molan admitted she feared the worse would come one day Scared: She said she feared he wouldn't come home because she 'always knew he was noble and brave' and that he 'wouldn't think twice' if he had the option to save someone 'Dad's just the most impressive man. I always knew he was noble and brave and that is the type of man he is, so that was always my fear,' she confessed to Daily Mail Australia while she ventured down to Canberra for a public service. 'If it meant helping someone else or saving someone else dad wouldnt think twice and I sometimes wished he wasnt so noble and brave but now it makes me so proud.' Miss Molan added that she now finds herself overcome with emotion whenever she attends the annual Dawn Service each year. 'I feel pride and sadness and I also get quite emotional at the Dawn Services,' she explained. Touching: Miss Molan added that she now finds herself overcome with emotion whenever she attends the annual Dawn Service each year, saying: 'I feel pride and sadness' True story: Since retiring from the force Mr Molan has released a novel, Running The War in Iraq, which concentrates on his experience as Chief of Operations in Iraq during 2004 to 2005 'It is a time to reflect and think about the people who have given up their lives and the families that they left behind. It makes me really sad.' General Major Molan retired from the Australian Defence Force in July 2008 after serving for 40 years. Since departing the force he has released a novel, Running The War in Iraq, which concentrates on his experience as Chief of Operations in Iraq during 2004 to 2005. He has also become an ambassador, alongside his daughter Miss Molan, for Defence Care who provide services to all personnel and their families. Tom Hanks attended the German premiere of his film A Hologram For The King on Sunday in Berlin. The 59-year-old looked dapper in a black blazer and matching hued trousers with a patterned scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. The actor was joined at the premiere by his co-stars Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Alexander Black as well as the director Tom Tykwer. Scroll down for video Regal: Tom Hanks and Sarita Choudhury attended the German premiere of his film A Hologram For The King on Sunday in Berlin The movie star chose to pair his dark hued suit with matching dress shoes, adding a navy and white scarf for a pop of color. Tom plays the character Alan, who travels to Saudi Arabia to propose a business idea to the local government. The comedy-drama, which is based on the Dave Eggers novel, was released on April 22 in the US. Sarita, who plays Zahra in the film, looked lovely in a mint and gold hued gown featuring color block detailing. Strike a pose: The 59-year-old looked dapper in a black blazer and matching hued trousers with a patterned scarf wrapped loosely around his neck Looking good: Sarita, who plays Zahra in the film, looked lovely in a mint and gold hued gown featuring color block detailing Good times: The actor was joined at the premiere by Sarita, director Tom Tykwer and co-star Alexander Black The Blindspot actress stunned in the calf-length dress, which featured a snakeskin pattern near the hemline. Sarita paired the colorful look with pointed black heels and a chunky bangle. The starlet wore her raven locks half up half down with matte pink lipstick and defined brows. Having a blast: Tom smiles while posing with Sarita, Tom, co-star Sidse Babett Knudsen and Alexander Focused: On Friday, Tom attended the Tribeca Talks Storytellers in New York City dressed in a dark hued suit Catching up: Two days earlier, he walked the red carpet for the premiere of A Hologram For The King with the Tribeca Film Festival founder Robert De Niro in the Big Apple On Friday, Tom attended the Tribeca Talks Storytellers in New York City dressed in a dark hued suit. Two days earlier, he walked the red carpet for the premiere of A Hologram For The King with the Tribeca Film Festival founder Robert De Niro in the Big Apple. The movie stars shook hands and shared a laugh before posing on the red carpet together. Fear The Walking Deads survivors finally learned on Sunday's episode that they were headed to mysterious Victor Strands fortified home in Mexico. Flight 462 survivors Alex and Jake however dont appear to be heading there with them. Strand cruelly cut them adrift in their life raft after they managed to survive a plane crash and escape a zombie hoard. Morality play: Madison Clark tried to save airplane crash survivors on Sunday's episode of Fear The Walking Dead The third episode of the second series was titled Ouroboros after the ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail. The AMC show began with the plane crash survivors struggling for survival in a life raft at sea. One of the survivors fell into the water and emerged with a zombie bite and was instantly beaten to death with a paddle by another male survivor. Later in the dark the same man tried to kill a sick boy, Jake, in the belief he was also a zombie but was himself dispatched by female survivor, Alex. LIfe raft: Charlie was tending to burned Jake and protecting him after the survived the crash of Flight 462 Web series: Survivors from the Flight 462 crash opened the episode titled Ouroboros It was the first time on the show for survivors from the related Flight 462 web series in which Alex was previously identified as Charlie. Onboard the Abigail yacht the power went down and Travis volunteered to go underwater to fix the mechanical problems. Down in the darkness Travis discovered that a zombie - one of the men from the life raft - was blocking an intake on the yacht, before it suddenly came to life. Getting romantic: Madison and Travis were interrupted when the power went out Down below: Travis went below the boat and found a zombie blocking the intake valve Back on the ship Travis went to work emptying filters that were full of pungent slime, with Strand urging him to get it done quickly. On deck the group spotted the debris form the plane crash as Alicia and Nick urged Madison to let them go on shore and collect supplies. Madison relented and told them to collect warm clothes to fight off the cold out on the water. Working on it: Victor Strand barked at Travis to repair the ship quickly Floppy hat: Alicia Clark went on the scavenging trip and her brother Nick found a white floppy hat for her It will be warmer in Mexico, Daniel Salazar told her mysteriously. Madison and Daniel then spoke privately and Daniel told her that Strand had a destination in mind for them all. He has from the start, I found some charts, a map with a location in Baja, said Daniel urging her to ask him as she was more diplomatic. Mexico getaway: Daniel Salazar told Madison about Strand's destination being Mexico Family first: Daniel urged his daughter Ofelia to keep some matter just between them I am not known for my diplomacy, said Madison as the rest of the group headed for shore in an inflatable boat. There they searched the wreckage that was strewn with charred and twisted bodies as Daniel urged them to be quick in their scavenging and to stay within sight. But Christopher Manawa did not take his advice and soon sneaked away from the group on his own and found the plane's fuselage. Scavenger hunt: Daniel and Nick searched for useful items among the Flight 462 wreckage Inside the aircraft he discovered several zombie passengers and one living survivor. Back on the Abigail, Madison confronted Strand about Mexico. Where the hell are you taking us? Where are we going? she demanded as Strand reminded her he had saved Nick from the death camp. Candid conversation: Madison confronted Victor about the yacht's destination I gave you and your family safe passage on my boat and you still don't trust me? Are we not friends? he asked her aggressively. Strand explained that near Rosarito in the Baja region of Mexico was a range of hills where there was a safe house full of supplies. It is the only safe place and the only sound plan, he told her. Sound plan: Victor assured Madison that he had a safe place east of Rosarito in Mexico Let me make it simple we are coming with you, all of us, Madison shot back as she told Strand they had to trust each other. If you even look wrong at any one of my family, I will throw you overboard, she added. You re not a killer, he said shaking his head in disbelief. Bold statement: Madison promised Victor that she would throw him overboard if he looked wrong at her family On the shore, Daniel suddenly realized that Chris was missing and went in search of him. Back in the plane Chris released the badly injured survivor from his seat as the man begged for help and pleaded with him to end his life. Chris obliged and beat the man to death with a metal tool. Helping hand: A Flight 462 survivor asked Chris Manawa to put him out of his misery On the Abigail, Madison told Travis about Strands fortified home in Baja. He just came up with this? Now he has a magical house in Baja? said Travis suspiciously as Madison told them they did not have a choice. On shore, Daniel was approached by Alex who ran past Daniel and warned him they are coming as dozens of zombie passengers approached. On the run: Alex came out of nowhere and urged Daniel and the others to run Nick then saw a zombie in a pit being eaten by crabs and just as he was walking away he lost his footing and fell into the hole. In a fight for his life he knifed the zombie in the temple but as he looked up another zombie fell into the hole with him. Alicia found Chris and they had to fight for their lives as they withdrew from the beach. Crab fest: Crabs were going to town on a zombie stuck in a pit Good move: Nick slipped and fell into the pit and stabbed the zombie in the head with a newly found knife With the group battling zombies on the edge of a cliff a blood-covered Nick showed up and began dispatching walkers. With Nick appearing to communicate with the zombies, he told them he was okay and they launched the inflatable back to the Abigail with the life raft now in tow. Madison told the group about the plan to go Strands place until things clear. On the move: A group of zombies moved toward the survivors Face to face: Nick unwittingly figured out how to mask himself from becoming a zombie target Family reunion: Alicia hugged her brother Nick as he came to her rescue Things will never clear, Nick told them gloomily. Strand refused to let the two new survivors go with them but Alicia refused to leave them behind. Are you people really debating this? Alex asked in horror. Bloody mess: Nick doubted if things would ever clear The humanity: Alex couldn't believe they were debating whether to help her and Jake Travis jumped in and insisted they would tow the pair to San Diego to give them a chance at survival. It doesn't have to be like this, we can bring them on Alicia told her mother. This is the best I can do, Madison whispered back as they launched the life raft with a tow rope to hostile glares from Alex. Stood firm: Victor refused to let the two new survivors come aboard his yacht Best deal: Madison assured Alicia that towing them was the best deal she could get Tough call: Travis looked none too happy about the development This is the worst, itll never hurt more than right now and every day it will be a little better, Alex told Jake as she glared up at the Abigail. This is the worst it is going to be,' she assured him. But she was wrong as Strand rushed down and severed their tow rope cutting them adrift in the ocean. Fear The Walking Dead continues next week on AMC. Lil' Kim looked totally unrecognisable in a collage of selfies she Instagrammed while in Miami on Sunday. There's no doubt the 41-year-old Grammy winner has undergone a Michael Jackson-style transformation of her skin colour, nose shape, and quality of wig since 1997. And to drive the point home, the surgically-enhanced diva also shared three retro snaps of her old face alongside ex-boyfriend The Notorious B.I.G. Scroll down for video 'Miami Heat!' Lil' Kim looked totally unrecognisable in a collage of selfies she Instagrammed while in Miami on Sunday Nearly 20 years later: There's no doubt the 41-year-old Grammy winner has undergone a Michael Jackson-style transformation of her skin colour, nose shape, and quality of wig since 1997 It's hard to believe it's the same Lil' Kim - born Kimberly Jones - we saw in the 2001 Lady Marmalade music video. On Saturday night, the Brooklyn-born ex-con shared an after-hours video of herself with personal assistant Noel Noel and pal Bryant McKinnie. The 4ft11in Queen Bee - who prefers fuzzy filters on social media - seemed to have stretched back shaped eyes, sparking rumours she has had a face lift. Lil' Kim's face wasn't so 'pulled' during her outing at Brinks 5th Year Anniversary Party in Los Angeles on March 31. 'Happy Sunday!' And to drive the point home, the surgically-enhanced diva also shared three retro snaps of her old face alongside ex-boyfriend The Notorious B.I.G. (R) 'We wanna itchi gitchi yaya!' It's hard to believe it's the same Lil' Kim - born Kimberly Jones - we saw in the 2001 Lady Marmalade music video The diminutive rapper will spend her evening hosting Yolo Sundays at Club Climaxxx in Miami alongside 30 exotic dancers. Last month, the former Dancing with the Stars contestant dropped her 10-song mixtape Lil Kim Season on Datpiff, but she hasn't released a full album since 2005's The Naked Truth. The Mine rapper said that her career hiatus had everything to do with having daughter Royal Reign with rapper Mr. Papers. '#aboutlastnight': On Saturday night, the Brooklyn-born ex-con shared an after-hours video of herself with personal assistant Noel Noel and pal Bryant McKinnie Double take: The 4ft11in Queen Bee - who prefers fuzzy filters on social media - seemed to have stretched bacck eyes, sparking rumours she has had a face lift A month ago: Lil' Kim's face wasn't so 'pulled' during her outing at Brinks 5th Year Anniversary Party in Los Angeles on March 31 'U ready to turn up 2nite?' The diminutive rapper will spend her evening hosting Yolo Sundays at Club Climaxxx in Miami alongside 30 exotic dancers 'For a long time, my focus was my baby,' Lil' Kim revealed to Billboard last month. 'I wasn't thinking about music at all, and my focus was just raising my baby. Now that she's 19 months and she's going to be two this summer, she's motivating me to do music again. We play music all the time and she's always dancing.' The single mother-of-one will honour the late Biggie Smalls at the Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour happening May 20-21 at Brooklyn's Barclays Center. New music: Last month, the former Dancing with the Stars contestant dropped her 10-song mixtape Lil Kim Season on Datpiff, but she hasn't released a full album since 2005's The Naked Truth 'For a long time, my focus was my baby': The Mine rapper said that her career hiatus had everything to do with having daughter Royal Reign with rapper Mr. Papers After having tied the knot with celebrity chef Pete Evans, model Nicola Robinson says she's certainly open to starting a family with the My Kitchen Rules judge. Speaking to New Idea magazine, the 39-year-old said: 'Id be over the moon if I was to find out I was pregnant...' The New Zealand-born stunner, who already enjoys time with her man's two daughters Indii and Chilli, continued: 'But I feel so privileged to be a stepmum, and also a mum to our four-legged kids, so if motherhood isnt meant to be, Ill graciously accept whatever the future holds'. Scroll down for video Family plans: After having tied the knot with celebrity chef Pete Evans, model Nicola Robinson says she's certainly open to starting a family with the My Kitchen Rules judge Nicola was previously married to millionaire Warriors league club owner, Eric Watson, though they didn't have children together. Meanwhile Pete's two girls, nine-year-old Indii and 11-year-old Chilli, are from his previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger. And there's no doubt Nicola has formed a close relationship with them. In fact, during Pete and Nicola's recent nuptials held on their farm in northern New South Wales, Nicola was accompanied down the aisle by Indii and Chilli. Future plans: Speaking to New Idea magazine, the 39-year-old said: 'Id be over the moon if I was to find out I was pregnant...' Stepmum: Nicola already has quite a close bond with Pete's daughters Indii, nine, and Chilli, 11, from a previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger The young girls joined Nicola on the back of a horse while Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu's song Wuken played. In an interview with New Idea magazine, the couple opened up about their wedding, which was complete with 'butterfly bridesmaids, four-legged guests and paleo cake'. 'We didn't write vows, we chose to do what we call "winging it",' Nicola revealed of the pair's nuptials. 'We shared our deepest hopes, dreams and promises from our hearts.' The pair, who grace the cover of the latest issue of New Idea magazine, were quite the coordinated couple on their big day. Both Pete and Nicola wore white for their nuptials, with Nicole's stunning dress teamed with a floral crown and veil. Official married: My Kitchen Rules judge Pete nand model Nicole recently tied the knot at their farm in northern New South Wales Confirmation: On Sunday evening Nicola took to Instagram to share a snap of her beau, along with the simple hashtag, '#husband' Her balayage tresses were worn out in bouncy curls, and a few additional snaps revealed the intimate moments the couple shared on their big day. The pair's nuptials come after the celebrity chef proposed last year while they were on holiday in New York. On Sunday evening Nicola took to Instagram to share a snap of her beau, along with the simple hashtag, '#husband'. And it didn't take long for a string of congratulatory messages to flow through from fans in the comments section. The pair met in in Adelaide four years ago and she has been a driving force behind his paleo lifestyle and helping to fine tune his 6ft 3ins physique with her healthy eating. Last year they put their plans of Easter nuptials on hold and had since been planning to wed in a private ceremony on their farm in Brisbane. The big question: The pair's nuptials come after Pete proposed to Nicola while they were on holiday in New York last year Television star: Pete is well known to fans as a judge of Channel Seven reality show My Kitchen Rules alongside fellow celebrity chef Manu Feildel They've been inseparable since finding love on The Bachelor. And as Sam Wood and Snezana Markoski's wedding approaches, it seems the pair are still every bit as smitten as when they first met. The genetically blessed duo couldn't keep their hands off one another as they spent a day with friends at a winery over the weekend, cuddling up and holding hands as they enjoyed glasses of wine in the sun. Scroll down for video Love is in the air! Snezana Markoski and Sam Wood were every bit as smitten with each other on Saturday as when they first met during a trip to a winery with friends Snezana was typically stylish for the occasion, dressing her petite frame in some skinny jeans and a white blouse. The 35-year-old beauty wore her raven locks worn loosely and in slight curls, pinning some behind her ear as she and Sam made their way around the grounds. She stuck to a simple make-up look with some dark eyeliner which enhanced her Macedonian look. Happy: The 35-year-old's couldn't seem to tear themselves away from one another during the relaxed outing Thumbs up for love! Sam offered a wide grin as he balanced his stunning fiancee on his lap during the lunch Sizing up: Sam towered over his lady love despite her tall stilettos as the pair enjoyed a private conversation Selfie time: Snezana held the camera up to pose for a snap with her beau to document the day out The mother-of-one finished off her outfit with some black patent stilettos, her only accessory being her sparkling diamond engagement ring. Sam showed off his impressive muscles in a skintight grey sweater and jeans. The fitness expert added some sunglasses to his ensemble and stuck with simple brown shoes. He kept a close eye on his lady lover, helping her over gravel as they walked around hand-in-hand. Follow me! Sam led Snezana by the hand as they made their way into the location to meet friends Charming: The former Bachelor was the perfect gentleman, reaching to open the door for Snezana as they made their entrance Having fun: The loved-up couple chatted away with their friends while enjoying some glasses of wine Once inside the pair couldn't seem to tear themselves away from one another. Snezana took a seat on her beau's lap, draping her arms around his neck and posing for selfies as their friends carried on chatting around them. A little while later the former science student engaged in some girl talk with a friend, craning in her high heels to take photographs of their day out with her iPhone. At one point she seemed unable to stifle her laughter after sharing a joke with the woman. Not present was Snezana's daughter Eve. Beauty: Snezana wore her raven locks loose around her shoulders in slight waves and sported minimal make-up Style: The mother-of-one showed off her svelte figure in some skinny jeans and an elegant white blouse Bottoms up! Snezana giggled away with friends while clutching a glass of rose in one hand Bride to be: Snezana was in high spirits as she chatted with female friends while sipping away What's so funny? The brunette beauty could hardly contain her amusement as a friend regaled her with a story Relaxed: The beauty seemed to be enjoying the day out with her husband-to-be and group of friends The couple's day out comes after their recent move to a new home in Melbourne, their first together with Eve and Sam's dog Hendrix. The reality TV stars bought the property last year after deciding that Snezana would relocate from Perth to be with Sam. It came after their engagement in Tasmania, with Sam popping the question during a family holiday. Success: Sam's fitness program has already won thousands of fans around the world since its launch Good times all round! The 35-year-old was in just as jovial a mood as his partner as they laughed with friends Transition: Snezana recently relocated from Perth to be with her partner as they plan their future Snezana was the first contestant introduced to Sam on series three of The Bachelor and was a strong contender for his heart throughout the competition. She was announced as the winner in a dramatic finale which saw Lana Jeavons-Fellowes come second. Speaking of their wedding plans earlier this year, Sam did not rule out the possibility that their nuptials may be filmed for another reality show. Priorities: The former science student spoke in the past of wanting to ensure her daughter had a strong relationship with Sam Picture perfect: The mother-of-one seemed determined to capture their outing in photograph 'If you'd have asked me before The Bachelor we would have said that would be ridiculous but it's opened our eyes,' he said on The Today Show earlier this year. Gracing the cover of Men's Muscle & Strength earlier this month, he described the brunette as his 'inspiration'. 'She is a strong and passionate woman and I gain inspiration from her every day,' he said, speaking of how she had helped him launch his 28 fitness program. Come with me: Snezana carried an elegant black clutch bag with her otherwise simple outfit Tobey Maguire was on daddy duty on Saturday as he took his two children out for lunch in Los Angeles. The 40-year-old actor kept it low-key in a dark sweater and sweatpants as held hands with daughter Ruby, nine and son Otis, six. The Seabiscuit star kept his children close by his side as he dropped his car off with the valet. Scroll down for video Out and about: Tobey Maguire was spotted out on a casual outing with family in Los Angeles on Saturday Tobey, who is married to jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer, sported a beard and covered his eyes with stylish shades. The outing came days after Charlize Theron admitted she didn't get along with the actor when they filmed 1999 period drama The Cider House Rules. In a revealing interview for V magazine the 40-year-old star explained to James Franco: 'Tobey and I had a bit of a rough time. I mean, we're good now. It was a difficult movie...' Doting dad: The 40-year-old actor held hands with daughter Ruby, nine and son Otis, six Low-key: The family outing came days after a new interview Charlize Theron did with V magazine where she talked about clashing with the actor during their filming together in 1999 '[We] had a bit of a rough time. I mean, we're good now. It was a difficult movie..' the actress revealed about the experience with her co-star The Oscar-winning actress, who stars in upcoming The Huntsman: Winter's War, was then asked by Franco how she dealt with the lack of chemistry considering that the duo played onscreen lovers. She replied: 'There really is real power in substitution. The thing is, as an actor, you cant just rely on one method. 'Every day is completely different for a completely different reason. Whether its the weather, or the writing isnt there, or you dont get along with your castmate, you have to be able to go to something else thats just as powerful. Does it make it as enjoyable? Probably not.' No chemistry: Charlize said that she had to picture she was falling in love with someone else to be able to work with Tobey as her onscreen lover The mother-of-two said that working on the Lasse Hallstrom-directed flick with someone she didn't click with was a good learning tool for her. 'I love Tobey. Im kind of glad we had that experience on that movie. It teaches you different things. It taught me that I could fall in love with somebody in my head while looking at someone else. Franco tried to get Charlize to dish on who she was picturing in her head but she wouldn't divulge. 'That I cant share with you. I had to. We had some really intimate moments. Tobey and I didnt feel that way about each other, so I had to figure something else out.' she explained. Meanwhile, it was announced last year that actor Tom Holland would step into the shoes of the role that launched Tobey into stardom. The actress was interviewed by James Franco for the publication and said 'I love Tobey. Im kind of glad we had that experience on that movie. It teaches you different things,' Holland is set to star as Spider-Man in the upcoming franchise reboot as Peter Parker/Spidey. It was also revealed earlier this year that 19-year-old Disney Channel star Zendaya has landed a role in the highly anticipated film. 'She was among the actresses whove quietly been testing for roles, and I hear she will play a character named Michelle,' reported Deadline. The reboot, titled Spider-Man: Homecoming - will be directed by Jon Watts and is set for a July 2017 release. She made an impression on Ex On The Beach with her feisty personality. And Jemma Lucy is back to her fiery best as she took to Twitter on Sunday to hit out at trolls blasting her for an alleged fling with Gary Beadle. The 27-year-old reality star was attacked by defenders of Charlotte Crosby who was reportedly dating her Geordie Shore co-star when he enjoyed his dalliance with Jemma. Scroll down for video Hitting back: Jemma Lucy is back to her fiery best as she took to Twitter on Sunday to hit out at trolls blasting her for an alleged fling with Gary Beadle Last week sources told The Sun that Charlotte was quitting the MTV reality show after she discovered the affair - much to the chagrin of her fans, despite her representative denying the claims. As Jemma's Twitter account flooded with messages in defense of the Sunderland born beauty after which the tattoo model blasted those sending the abuse and blocked some of her 37,700 followers. She penned a note reading: 'No one knows f*** all stop tweeting me getting boringggggggg u bunch of lolz'. The inked up beauty then revealed she had taken to replying to her trolls due to the fact she had a drink, as she responded to the Tweet: 'dont knw why u bother to reply to these trolls!' by saying: 'Had a beer haven't I'. Lashed out: The 27-year-old reality star was attacked by defenders of Charlotte Crosby who was reportedly dating her Geordie Shore co-star when he enjoyed his dalliance with Jemma Last week it was thought Gaz's actions were the final straw for Charlotte who reportedly called the show's producers in a foul mood after finding out her co-star had been unfaithful. During her call, it's claimed the reality star insisted on handing in her notice and has told her friends that she is done with Gary for good - yet her rep is adamant she remains on the show. 'Gaz bedding Lucy came as a total shock to Charlotte's system - she's devastated,' a source told the publication. They added: 'What's making it worse is that she knows their romp will be shown on TV later this year and she won't be able to avoid it. 'She is very, very upset and angry with Gary right now - and she thinks quitting Geordie Shore is the only way she'll ever truly get to move on with her life.' Done for good: Charlotte and Gary have been famously on and off for the past five years, but it seemed the two were starting to become the real deal following their last reconciliation Jemma and Charlotte have a tumultuous history after the glamour model accused the Newcastle native of stealing her man. When news of Charlotte and Gary's romance first broke, Jemma instantly took to Twitter to slam their relationship - and Charlotte in particular. 'She nicked my fella but has always been pure nice to my face. 'I don't f**k about ! I'm the nicest girl ever until I get pushed then that's it sorry,' she wrote. The Geordie Shore stars have been famously on and off for the past five years, but it seemed the two were starting to become the real deal following their last reconciliation. Untrue? Contrary to reports, a rep for Charlotte said that the beauty will not be quitting the show Though Charlotte did confess to Star magazine just weeks ago that it's unlikely the she and Gary would have made it as far as they have without the reality series. 'It's the show that's kept us together. If me or Gary left, we'd be over. We would never speak to each other again. It'd be so much easier,' she admitted. Contrary to reports, a rep for Charlotte told The Mirror earlier today that the beauty will not be quitting the show. She's a proud mother to baby daughter, Coco, 13 months. And Terri Seymour looked every inch the doting mummy as she and her adorable little one attended the Safe Kids Day event to promote children's safety at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, California on Sunday. The TV presenter, 42, opted for a low-key look for her day out, showcasing her slim frame in casual denim jeans and a cream coloured top. Two peas in a pod: Terri Seymour looked every inch the doting mummy as she and her adorable little one attended the Safe Kids Day event to promote children's safety at Smashbox Studios in Culver City on Sunday Like two peas-in-a-pod, the pair wore matching colours with Coco dressed in a floral dress and cream bolero and booties to match mum's top. The Extra host - who is the ex-girlfriend of music mogul Simon Cowell, wore strappy flats, a gold ring and dark shades as she carried her pride and joy around the event. Terri kept her beauty look natural, not overwhelming her skin with layers of make up and wore her long chocolate-brown locks in soft beachy waves. Low-key look: The TV presenter, 42, opted for a low-key look for her day out, showcasing her slim frame in was casual denim jeans and a cream coloured top Terri had her hands full with the young tot - holding a rubber duck in case her daughter tired of balls she had found in the ball pool. The Culver City event turned into a family outing when Terri's toyboy beau Clark Mallon made an appearance, wearing a plain black shirt and loose-fitting blue jeans. Terri tweeted: 'I'm joining @SafeKids today to celebrate kids, prevent injuries and save lives. Flower power: Like two peas-in-a-pod, the pair wore matching colours with Coco dressed in a floral dress and cream bolero and booties to match mum's top Posting a picture of herself and Coco she added: 'Someone had fun today! Thank you @SafeKids #Coco #SundayFunday.' The presenter welcomed Coco to the world in March 2015 and took to Twitter to share the tot's name. She tweeted: 'Can't believe Coco Seymour-Mallon is three weeks old! Clark and I are madly in love with her and happily hibernating.' Terri told HELLO! that her former flame Simon - who she remains close to and has a son Eric with girlfriend Lauren Silverman - was excited to hear the news. Family outing: Terri's toyboy beau Clark Mallon made an appearance, wearing a plain black shirt and loose-fitting blue jeans She said: 'He said it was perfect timing with his son Eric being so young and he hoped I would have a baby girl so he could set her up with Eric and they could date. 'How perfect would that be, he said. Typical Simon.' The loving parents dreams might be becoming a reality after Simon's son Eric, planted a kiss on Coco's face last month at her first birthday. Pride and joy: The presenter - who previously dated Simon Cowell - welcomed Coco to the world in March last year and took to Twitter to share the tot's name Ajay Rochester has taken yet another indirect swipe at Michelle Bridges over her obesity comments. The former Biggest Loser Australia host is giving away her hot pink size 22 dress on Instagram, in a bid to promote curves and for people to be happy at any size. Taking a swipe at Biggest Loser Michelle her former colleague Ajay remarked in part of her post: Getting skinny won't make you happy but getting a free almost new dress surely will! Scroll down for video Hitting back: Ajay Rochester (L) is giving away her size 22 dress on Instagram, in a bid to promote curves and for people to be happy at any size, while taking a dig at Michelle Bridges over her obesity comments Sharing a picture of herself in her colourful frock, she said it was part of a competition for her fans. I'm giving away this gorgeous panel dress from Yours Clothing UK I've only worn it once (pictured here) but it is now too big for me, Ajay started her post. Will ship to anywhere in the world. It's roughly a size 20-22 UK/aus (sic) but is stretchy and super comfy and of course sexy as hell! Standing up for her beliefs: Ajay hasn't held back from sharing her views in recent days Share your #happyatanysizestories and I will pick my favorite and send this dress to you. 'Post them in the comments below with #happyatanaysize Then I will do a new one after that, she wrote, adding the hashtags sexy at any size and happy at any size,and drop the plus. Getting skinny won't make you happy but getting a free almost new dress surely will!,using hashtags including curves, curvy,and eff (sic) your beauty standards. Cheeky! Ajay on Sunday, shared more snaps of bare bottom on Instagram (pictured) after her last picture of her derriere was removed from the site On Sunday, Ajay shared pictures of her bare bottom on Instagram - that have since been removed - to hit back at Michelle after her comments on obesity. She was retaliating at TV trainer Michelle who said 'morbidly obese people can't be happy' in a controversial interview with Australian Story. The first snap of her derriere has since been removed but days ago Ajay launched another in 'protest' asking why Kim Kardashian's skin-showing images are allowed while hers aren't. Snap happy: Kim Kardashian is known for sharing nude shots online 'Just wondering how Kim K's (sic) oil slicked a***, boobs and vagina were allowed all over Instagram but my juicy bottom is not!,' Ajay began her post at the weekend. After mentioning the E! reality star, Ajay then added the hashtags 'body positive' and 'protest', before adding: 'These are the lying down shots we took before choosing to use the juicy bent over shot. Have to say I do love my bottom.' She then added the hashtags: 'happy at any size,' 'fit,' 'curves,' 'curvy,' 'happiness,' and 'big butt'. Taking a crack: The former Biggest Loser Australia host Ajay Rochester, said she did so in 'protest' and asked why Kim Kardashian's skin-showing images are allowed and not hers 'She can kiss my fat happy a***!' Ajay shared a snap on Tuesday of her bare bottom as a literal rebuttal to Michelle's controversial statements Former colleagues: Michelle Bridges and Ajay worked together on The Biggest Loser Australia, with Ajay the host and Michelle a trainer (seen at an event in 2007) 'Michelle Bridges can kiss my fat happy a***!' Ajay wrote alongside the image as she added the hashtags: 'Drop the plus' and 'Happy at any size.' But the snap was removed from her social media, with the media personality saying 'some people found my rather large buttocks offensive'. Michelle and Ajay worked together on The Biggest Lose Australia, with Michelle as a trainer. Ajay this week also spoke to 2Day FM's hit 104.1 Rove McManus and Sam Frost with claims Michelle had 'bullied' her while on the show. 'She's a bad, nasty piece of crap': Former Biggest Loser host Ajay claimed on Thursday that she was 'bullied' by Michelle while hosting the weight loss show 'Working with her was horrible, it was like being at high school and being bullied every single day,' she said, having worked with Michelle on the weight loss show from 2006 to 2009. 'She was one of those mean girls.' One such incident, claims Ajay, was when she walked past Michelle who laughed and apparently called out 'cankles'. 'She's a bad, nasty piece of crap,' she finished. She's the Australian TV personality who is currently based in Los Angeles. But it looks like Ajay Rochester may have been living in Hollywood for too long, with the starlet mixing up ANZAC Day with Australia Day on Instagram on Monday. Sharing an image of a meat pie from Garlo's Aussie Pie Shop, the 47-year-old reportedly wished fans a 'Happy Straya Day!' according to the Daily Telegraph. Scroll down for video 'Happy Straya Day!' Ajay Rochester wished her fans on social media a happy Australia Day on Monday, despite the fact that it was actually ANZAC Day (Pictured in 2013) She quickly amended the post, changing the caption to 'Happy Anzac Day!', but not before users on the social media site slammed her for the faux pas. 'It's not Australia Day. It's a day of remembrance..........LEST WE FORGET,' wrote one user. Another said: 'I usually love your posts but this is a bit disrespectful.' After enraging and offending her followers, Ajay attempted to explain herself by revealing that she had been 'working and driving' as she posted the Instagram note - despite the fact that texting and driving is a finable offense in California. 'Happy Anzac Day!' The 47-year-old quickly amended the caption, which was alongside a photo of a meat pie from Garlo's Aussie Pie Shop 'It's not Australia Day. It's a day of remembrance..........LEST WE FORGET:' Fans were quick to slam the former Biggest Loser star for her mistake 'This is disrespectful:' Fans weren't shy about venting their outrage at Ajay's blunder Not content to stop herself there, the former Biggest Loser host continued to defend herself as she claimed that there was more celebrating going on during ANZAC Day than remembering those who have lost their lives. 'And as far as I saw my entire life there was plenty of celebrating and not so much remembrance going on every Anzac Day!' she wrote. The blonde reality star didn't stop there, slamming those who criticised her as 'trolls' before claiming that she was actually out 'delivering food to the homeless' when the incident took place. 'I was working and driving:' Ajay made an excuse for the faux pas by claiming that she was driving whilst posting the social media update - which is a finable offense in California 'Unleash the trolls........ What a sad ANZAC day you must be having if you're spending your time doing this. Lest we forget!,' she ranted. She continued: 'Go hang a wreath somewhere! Do something that makes a difference. I was out delivering food to the homeless. Simple typo in a rushed moment not even in oz right now!' After her defensive outburst, the Sydney-born celebrity finally changed her tune and became less combative. 'I would never do anything to offend those who have lived, died and survived fighting for our freedoms,' she wrote. Ajay continued: 'My son actually wants to join the marines- it's all he talks about and whilst being proud I am also scared of what that might be. 'You don't have to die to make a sacrifice for freedom.' 'Unleash the trolls........ What a sad ANZAC day you must be having if you're spending your time doing this. Lest we forget!' Ajay quickly got into a fight with the followers who had taken issue with her mistake She's known for her retro style and enviable curves. And Daisy Lowe showed she's not afraid of showing off her incredible body in a saucy Instagram snap she shared on Monday. The 27-year-old posed nude for the picture, which she captioned: 'Monday... I'm ready for you.' Scroll down for video Saucy snap: Daisy Lowe shared a cheeky nude picture of herself on Instagram to banish the Monday blues Although she was wearing nothing, the model posed in 1960s style smoky eye make up. Her 'bedhead' hair look added to the retro vibe. Daisy was last spotted out and about at the Kate Spade New York flagship store launch in London on Thursday night, looking fabulous in a nautical-themed dress. Splash of colour: Model Daisy looked lovely in a blue and white dress as she attended the launch of the Kate Spade New York new flagship store in London on Thursday night The brunette beauty teamed her Kate Spade dress with a leather jacket, red Christian Louboutin heels and a 'Flavour Of The Month Admit One' ticket clutch bag. She shared a photo of herself reclining on one of the loungers in the store on her Instagram, writing: 'Sunning myself in the gorgeous bright new @katespadeny store #ukxokatespadeny.' Also in attendance at the party was supermodel Jourdan Dunn and actresses Naomie Harris, Rose Leslie and Natalie Dormer. Mixing it up: Daisy teamed her Kate Spade dress with a leather jacket, red Christian Louboutin heels and a 'Flavour Of The Month Admit One' ticket clutch bag 'Sunning myself': Daisy shared a photo of herself reclining on one of the loungers in the store on her Instagram Daisy is still dating musician Thomas Cohen, widower of her late friend Peaches Geldof, despite rumours last month they had split up. The pair are relatively low-key and stay away from red carpet events, although they have been photographed together out and about in London. While Daisy is a regular on the capital's showbiz circuit, Thomas has two young sons to care for so usually is at home with them. Stylish: When it comes to fashion parties in London, you can always count on Daisy to put on a sartorial show Low-key romance: The 27-year-old is dating Thomas Cohen, but the pair rarely attend public events together Last week, Thomas posted a photo of Daisy on his Instagram page, while Daisy lovingly referred to him as her 'man crush Monday' a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, Daisy recently spoke out on her dislike of the word 'plus-sized' to refer to curvier models. She told Glamour magazine: 'It would be lovely for there to be more of a variation of sizes, shapes and ethnicities. What I'd really love is to just get rid of the phrase "plus-size". 'I'm so grateful that I model at a time where "plus-size" models are being championed, but they're still called "plus-size" which is actually quite a stigma in itself. It's just healthy, curvy women.' Making an exit: Daisy recently spoke out on her dislike of the word 'plus-sized' to refer to curvier models She never fails to hit a stylish note when it comes to an outfit on the red carpet. And the same went for Dame Helen Mirren, 70, as she arrived at New York City's JFK Airport on Sunday afternoon. Looking timelessly chic as she strolled through the terminal, the Oscar-winning actress injected a bold bolt of colour to her all-black ensemble with a bright yellow leather handbag. Scroll down for video Keeping it casual: Dame Helen Mirren, 70, kept it casual as she arrived at New York City's JFK Airport on Sunday afternoon Waving and smiling as she wandered out into the Big Apple, the silver screen star ditched her heels in favour of a pair of black and cream Chanel ballet pumps. Helen was wrapped up for spring weather in a black coat, which she wore unbuttoned to reveal skinny jeans and a tailored white shirt. The talented thespian kept her accessories simple for her flight and showcased her naturally striking looks with minimal make-up and a subtle rouge to her lips. Not so mellow yellow: Looking timelessly chic as she strolled through the terminal, the Oscar-winning actress injected a bold bolt of colour to her all-black ensemble with a bright yellow leather handbag Helen has been in New York filming her latest movie Collateral Beauty alongside actor Will Smith. The actress and Will were seen with co-stars Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Edward Norton, Naomie Harris, Michael Pena and Jacob Latimore as they recently posed for a fun selfie. The picture posted to Will's Facebook read: 'I think I'm going to need a longer arm soon! Honored to be working with the amazing group of actors! #CollateralBeauty.' Will plays advertising executive Howard Inlet, who falls into a deep depression following a personal tragedy, whilst Helen stars as an actress hired by his colleagues as part of a plan to break him out of his dark spell. Plenty to smile about: Waving and smiling as she wandered out into the Big Apple, the silver screen star ditched her heels in favour of a pair of black and cream Chanel ballet pumps Earlier this month, actress was busy promoting her latest film offering, Eye in The Sky. Helen looked incredible in a striking navy lace top and skirt as she arrived at the Curzon cinema in London's Mayfair for the premiere. Playing a colonel in British military intelligence, Helen's character is given the responsibility to give the order to send a drone strike on a terrorist safe house in Nairobi. The film was the last for her late co-star and friend Alan Rickman who played a British general. Alan died from cancer at the age of 69 in January. What a squad! Helen has been in New York filming her latest movie Collateral Beauty alongside Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Edward Norton, Naomie Harris, Michael Pena and Jacob Latimore She has an exciting few months ahead as she makes her return to EastEnders. And Danniella Westbrook's personal life is also flourishing as she enjoys her relationship with toyboy boyfriend George Arnold, 24. The 42-year-old admitted in an interview with Good Morning Britain on Monday that even the 'grief' she receives on social media about the couple's age difference, cannot dampen her feelings. Scroll down for video The look of love: Danniella Westbrook, 42, gushed about her romance with her toyboy boyfriend George Arnold, 24, during an appearance on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday The Celebrity Big Brother star chatted to Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan on GMB, where talk soon turned to her blossoming romance with George, who she started dating last year. Danniella told the presenters: 'I'm really happy with George. He may be 24 but he is 44 in his mind. He's completely different.' The actress added though that she receives a lot of criticism on social media about the couple's age difference: 'I get so much grief on Instagram, people say "he looks like your son" because my son is 19,' she explained. Romance: The Celebrity Big Brother star chatted to Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan on GMB, where talk soon turned to her blossoming romance with George, who she started dating last year Looking great! After her morning interview, Danniella celebrated with George as they headed to a London spa, with the blonde showing off her bikini body in a skimpy pink and black two-piece 'A woman last night on Instagram said "I would never go out with a boy the same age as my son" and I said "That's okay darling because nobody is asking you to, so don't worry about it." I'm quite happy,' she pointed out. After her morning interview, Danniella celebrated with George as they headed to a London spa, with the blonde showing off her bikini body in a skimpy pink and black two-piece as the pair enjoyed their romantic day together. While talking on GMB, Danniella showed off a sparkling diamond ring on her engagement finger after previously admitting to Closer Magazine that the couple will marry this year and start trying for a baby. Exciting time: While talking, Danniella showed off a sparkling diamond ring on her engagement finger after previously admitting that the couple will marry this year and start trying for a baby Age is just a number: Danniella told the presenters: 'I'm really happy with George. He may be 24 but he is 44 in his mind. He's completely different' Grief: The actress added though that she receives a lot of criticism on social media about the couple's age difference: 'I get so much grief on Instagram, people say "he looks like your son" because my son is 19' It's set to be a busy 2016 though as the blonde is also making her return to EastEnders, as Sam Mitchell. The mother of two, who hasn't been on the BBC soap for six years will reprise the role that turned her into a household name for the funeral of her mum Peggy Mitchell, played by Barbara Windsor. 'I'm super excited, and to have the original Mitchells back together will be great,' she told GMB. 'I did Celebrity Big Brother to prove I was employable again. I went in there to come out an actress. I'd like to come back full-time and I'd love Darren Day to come in as my husband - he's a fabulous actor. I think he'd fit right in.' Chic: The actress looked smart in a monochrome ensemble for her morning interview Piers Morgan was full of praise for Danniella during the interview, with the actress admitting that she now appreciates what the media have done for her career. 'It's my own fault,' she said of being tabloid fodder. 'And you have to remember, I've made a lot of money out of the papers over the years. I've sold a lot of stories. 'But if it wasn't for people like [Piers Morgan] covering my life, I probably wouldn't be here today. People slate journalists but when you play this game, you have to own up to what you've done. 'You don't realise that though until years later. But you can't just invite the press into your home for glossy magazine shoots and then be unhappy when they report on the negative stuff.' Carmine and Lauren and Tasia and Gracia have been revealed as the two teams who will go head-to-head in the grand final of My Kitchen Rules on Tuesday. And in a preview for the forth-coming grand final, which aired on Monday, Carmine is seen geeing up Lauren as they battle the determined sisters for the $250,000 prize money. With a hefty prize on the line, tensions heat up in the kitchen as Carmine announces confidently: 'We're going to take it out tonight.' Scroll down for video It's on! Carmine and Lauren (pictured) and Tasia and Gracia have been revealed as the two teams who are in the grand final of My Kitchen Rules on Tuesday with the former vowing to win However, Lauren is less confident and admits while cooking: 'I just don't know if we are going to make it.' The sisters, however, are determined to put up a fight, with Tasia saying: 'We're just that close to winning.' If the preview is anything to go by, it seems the contestants have plated up impeccable dishes, with judge Manu Feildel saying the food is 'magical,' while Pete Evans describes one recipe as 'faultless.' Can they do it? The sisters however, refuse to not lose without a fight, with Tasia (L) saying: 'We're just that close to winning'. Gracia is seen on the right Impressed: If the preview is anything to go by, the contestants have plated up impeccable dishes, with Manu Feildel (L) saying the food is 'magical,' while Pete Evans (R) is seen describing one recipe as 'faultless' Ejected lawyer Zana Pali is seen cheering on the surviving teams from the balcony over kitchen HQ, as the family and friends of the contestants whoop and cheer. Carmine and Lauren are in the grand final after beating mother and son team Jordan and Anna. Jordan burst into tears as he realised he and his mother failed to make the cut and wished Lauren and Carmine well, saying: 'The bitter sweetness of it is that we leave, but knowing you guys get to follow your dreams makes it pretty incredible.' Lauren and Carmine impressed the judges, getting 46 out of 60 for their three-course meal. Anna and Jordan earned a total score of 36 out of 60 for their dishes. Relieved: Carmine is seen here with his hands in the air after whipping up some food Tense! Ejected lawyer Zana Pali is seen cheering on the surviving teams from the balcony over kitchen HQ, as the family and friends of the contestants whoop and cheer He's got a cameo in one of the most anticipated films of the year, alongside a stellar cast. And on Monday Rylan Clark shared a first look at his scene for Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, Instagramming a still from the movie which sees him share screentime with Joanna Lumley. The This Morning presenter looks dapper in an air steward uniform in the snap, as he joked about his lines from the film. Scroll down for video Cameo: Rylan Clark shared a first look at his scene for Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie on Monday, Instagramming a still from the movie which sees him share screentime with Joanna Lumley The photo sees Rylan dressed in a red waistcoat and a tie and shirt as he wheels a drink and food trolley down the plane aisle, with a look of concentration on his face. 'First little look of me in @AbFabMovie ... Chicken or beef? .... #AbFabMovie,' he captioned the snap. In December an excited Rylan tweeted a photo as he posed with Joanna and Jennifer Saunders on the set of their big screen adaptation of the TV classic. Ready for take off: In December the ex X Factor star tweeted a photo from the movie's set with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Ab Fab: The Movie hits screens later this year, with a whole host of familiar faces set to star in the big screen adaptation of the TV classic British talents Alesha Dixon, Dawn French and Lily Cole are the latest stars to join the cast. In new stills for the upcoming motion picture released last week, Dixon brings the glamour while Dawn and Cole appear to be having an awkward chat. Bringing the glamour: Alesha Dixon was revealed as the latest star to give a cameo appearance in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie in new stills released last week Providing the laughter: Dawn French and model Lily Cole have also joined the celebrity line-up for the comedy While it's unclear what Alesha's appearance in the film entails, one thing that is for sure is that it's a showstopper. In the frame, Dixon, 31, is seen beaming from ear to ear as she models as stunning semi sheer sequinned one sleeved gown. Meanwhile, Dawn, who also serve as executive producers on the flick, and Lily are far more casual. With French pulls as pouts, Cole has a concerned look plastered on her face. I'll drink to that! Daisy Lowe takes the plunge in black while Lara Stone takes it easy with a glass of champagne Friends in high places: Stella McCartney is seen consoling Eddie (Jennifer Saunders) in another frame Models unite: Jourdan Dunn, Suki Waterhouse and Alexa Chung also help to bring the wow factor to the highly anticipated comedy film Definitely one to watch the Ab Fab film sees Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley reunite as their alter-egos Patsy and Eddie. The film, which has been promised since 2011, sets out to prove that the duo are still living the high life; shopping, drinking and clubbing their way around Londons trendiest hotspots. Though in an uncharacteristic fall from grace, Patsy and Eddy find themselves embroiled in a media storm when they're blamed for a 'major incident' at a fashion launch party. With paparazzi constantly on their tail, they flee to the French Riviera and without any money, hatch a plan to make their escape permanent. Serving up some serious sass! Dame Joan Collins also looked fabulous as she sat poolside Diving in on the action: Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage also makes an appearance Champagne darling? Supermodel Kate Moss was first captured shooting scenes back in November 2015 Something to shout about! Lulu donned a sporty ensemble as she chatted with Bubble (Jane Horrocks) Cameos include supermodel Kate Moss, but the cast also sees Julia Sawalha return as Saffy, Jane Horrocks as Bubble and June Whitfield as Mother. Abbey Clancy, Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage, Ella Eyre, Foxes, Graham Norton, Gwendoline Christie, Jeremy Paxman, Jerry Hall, Dame Joan Collins, Ozwald Boateng, Pam Hogg, Perez Hilton, Tinie Tempah and Wanda Ventham also have some screen time. As well as starring in the film, Saunders wrote the script, which was directed by Mandie Fletcher, produced by Jon Plowman and Damian Jones. The film hits cinemas in the UK on July 1, 2016 with US and Australia release dates of July 22 and August 11, respectively. Dressed to impress! Former Dragon's Den star was also pictured on set, and looked particularly glamorous in a glitzy floor-length gown and fur coat Kim Zolciak has revealed that her dog Sinn is doing well after he was rushed to the animal hospital for emergency surgery. The 37-year-old told fans on Instagram on Monday that the pooch was recovering following an operation to remove 10 rocks that he had accidentally eaten. Kim shared a picture of her husband Kroy Biermann cuddling Sinn as he lay on a blanket, wearing a cone. Scroll down for video 'Sinn is on the mend': Kim Zolciak gave fans an update on her dog on Monday, revealing that he was doing better after an operation to remove 10 rocks that he accidentally ate 'Sinn is on the mend! After they removed 10 rocks alllll BIGGER than a golf ball!! Some the size of a tennis ball,' the reality star wrote. 'It's the same Emergency vet that took care of my Chanel, they are fantastic. So thankful.' The update came two days after Kim shared a picture of Kroy sitting on the floor of the vet's office and cuddling Sinn as he awaited surgery. She captioned the sad snap: 'Thank you guys for all your sweet comments. Sinn in is surgery now to remove the rocks he ate! 'We [heart] Sinn so much': The 37-year-old had revealed on Sunday that the beloved pup needed emergency surgery 'We [heart] Sinn so much and know he will be back to himself in know time. Prayers please'. Sinn was recently seen on a beach vacation in Florida with Kim, Kroy and their children. She shared several pictures of them playing on the beach, and along with one she wrote: 'Best thing we ever did was rescue Sinn!!' My little Princess today: Kim took her youngest daughter Kaia to Disney on Ice over the weekend, along with her husband and three sons on Saturday Sunday Funday! The family looked over the moon as they all posed with Elsa and Anna from Frozen It seems her fans have come out to support the television personality as several commented on the photo. One read: 'Praying for Mr. Sinn. He's a strong boy I'm sure!!' Another user wrote: 'Poor Sin! Prayers for him and his daddy Kroy!' The day before Sinn's surgery Kim looked in high spirits as she had a family day out to Disney on Ice on Sunday with four of her children and her husband, 30. He BFF: Sinn was recently seen on a beach vacation in Florida with Zolciak The reality TV star took to Instagram to gush about her incredible day out with Kroy Jagger Jr, aged four, Kash Kade, aged three, Kane Ren, aged two, and daughter Kaia Rose, also two. Clearly enjoying the trip Kim posted a photo on Instagram of her, her husband their children and the characters Anna and Elsa. She captioned the image: 'Soooo much today at Disney on Ice Frozen! It was incredible! So wish I could ice skate! They were so kind to invite my kids backstage #SundayFunday #ThisIsAsGoodAsAFamilyPhotoWillGet.' He recently tied the knot with ex-glamour model Nicola Robinson. And on Monday My Kitchen Rules star Pete Evans took to social media to gush over his beautiful bride, publicly calling her his 'wife' for the first time since their farmyard nuptials. 'Nutrition Mermaid is the bees knees!' he captioned a photo of Nicola wearing a beekeeper's suit and referring to her Instagram handle. 'She's the bees knees!' Pete Evans playfully gushed over new wife Nicola Robinson, jokingly sharing an image of her in a beekeeper's suit to social media The 41-year-old then gamely added the hashtag '#wife'. The hashtag was in response to one that Nicola had posted on her own account, sharing a photo of a sleeping Pete and captioning it '#husband.' This week the couple opened up about their wedding to New Idea magazine, with the TV chef and the 39-year-old New Zealander revealing that the intimate affair was held at their farm in New South Wales, complete with 'butterfly bridesmaids, four-legged guests and a paleo cake'. 'We didn't write vows, we chose to do what we call 'winging it',' Nicola revealed of the pair's nuptials. Official married: My Kitchen Rules judge Pete Evans has tied the knot with model Nicola Robinson 'We shared our deepest hopes, dreams and promises from our hearts.' The pair, who grace the cover of the latest issue of New Idea magazine, were quite the coordinated couple on their big day. Both Pete and Nicola wore white for their nuptials, with Nicole's stunning dress teamed with a floral crown and veil. Her balayage tresses were worn out in bouncy curls, and a few additional snaps revealed the intimate moments the couple shared on their big day. Nuptials: Appearing on the cover of New Idea magazine, the celebrity chef and his New-Zealand born love are seen posing at their wedding, which included 'butterfly bridesmaids, four-legged guests and paleo cake' Barefoot Nicole made her way down the aisle on horseback, with Pete's daughters Chilli, 11, and Indii, nine, joining her for the ride. The gorgeous young girls wore beautiful white tutus on the day, as well as floral headpieces to go with the relaxing theme of the wedding. The pair's nuptials come after the celebrity chef proposed last year while they were on holiday in New York. Confirmation: On Sunday evening Nicola took to Instagram to share a snap of her beau, along with the simple hashtag, '#husband' On Sunday evening Nicola took to Instagram to share a snap of her beau, along with the simple hashtag, '#husband'. And it didn't take long for a string of congratulatory messages to flow through from fans in the comments section. Meanwhile, Pete has two daughters from a previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger, Indii, nine, and Chilli, eleven. 'Not long now': Pete shared this photo of Nicola on a dark horse five weeks ago, hinting the nuptials were just around the corner Loved-up: The pair met in in Adelaide four years ago and she has been a driving force behind his paleo lifestyle and helping to fine tune his 6ft 3ins physique with her healthy eating Nicola has formed a close relationship with his daughters and is credited with turning the chef's life around. The pair met in in Adelaide four years ago and she has been a driving force behind his paleo lifestyle and helping to fine tune his 6ft 3ins physique with her healthy eating. Last year they put their plans of Easter nuptials on hold and had since been planning to wed in a private ceremony on their farm in Brisbane. His three angels: Pete regularly shares snaps of Nicola and his daughters Indii and Chili from a previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger The big question: The pair's nuptials come after Pete proposed to Nicola while they were on holiday in New York last year Fitting in: Nicola has formed a close relationship with his daughters and is credited with turning the chef's life around She has been playing to sold-out crowds during a gruelling three-month tour of Australia and New Zealand. And non-stop performing appeared to have taken its toll on comedy queen Dawn French as she landed back on UK soil on Sunday. The 58-year-old looked tired following a 24-hour flight from Down Under as arrived at Gatwick Airport in London. Scroll down for video Back on British soil: Dawn French arrived back in London after touring Australia and New Zealand since the beginning of 2016 She hid her eyes behind big shades while making a casual turn in a colourful top and denim jacket while hauling her own luggage through the terminal. The funnywoman was joined by husband Mark Bignall and her 24-year-old daughter Billie - whose father is Lenny Henry - after they had joined her for part of her antipodean adventure. After returning to her home in Cornwall, Dawn made it clear that she was overjoyed to be back in Britain. She tweeted fans: 'Hello Cornwall. How I have missed you.' Hinting that the famously hot Aussie weather may not have suited her, she added: 'This is the air I belong in.' Over ti: The 58-year-old looked tired following a 24-hour flight from Down Under as arrived at Gatwick Airport No airs and graces: She hid her eyes behind big shades while making a casual turn in a colourful top and denim jacket while hauling her own luggage through the terminal Family trip: The funnywoman was joined by husband Mark Bignall and her 24-year-old daughter Billie - whose father is Lenny Henry - after they had joined her for part of her antipodean adventure Home sweet home: After returning to her home in Cornwall, Dawn made it clear that she was overjoyed to be back in Britain by tweeting that the Cornish air was where she belongs While enjoying a First Class flight, she uploaded a snap of her TV screen on the plane, writing: 'I'm comin home, I've done my time......' The star had been performing her acclaimed tour 30 Million Minutes, all about her life and rise to fame. The star had received the shock news of her peer Victoria Wood's untimely death from cancer while in New Zealand and took to her social media to pay tribute to another titan of UK female comedy. She wrote: 'All of us, bow down to Vic Wood. There will never be another. Fact.' The Dinnerladies creator passed on Thursday following a six month battle with the disease. She was aged 62. Advertisement His extensive film repertoire has left him well-versed in movies depicting the horrors of the twentieth century. So Brad Pitt was able to throw himself into character as he filmed scenes for new World War II drama, Allied (previously referred to as Five Seconds Of Silence) in Southern England on Monday. Braving the rain, the 52-year-old actor put on a harrowing display as he crawled over to co-star Lizzy Caplin next to a fighter jet, who had previously been filmed carrying a gun across the airfield. Scroll down for video Not all plane sailing: Brad Pitt threw himself into character as he filmed scenes for new World War II drama, Allied (previously referred to as Five Seconds Of Silence) in Southern England on Monday. Braving the rain, the 52-year-old actor crawled over to co-star Lizzy Caplin Wrapped up in a grey trench coat, the father-of-six looked inconsolable as he leant over her, wrapping her in his jacket as she lay motionless on the ground. Kneeling beside the 33-year-old actress, Brad burst into tears as he peered out through the heavy rain, which appropriately mirrored the tragic nature of the scene. Ever the professional, the World War Z star stayed in character as the camera rolled before quickly jumping up and towelling off between takes. Soaked through: Lizzy also played her part to perfection, striding out in the adverse weather conditions and laying on the damp mud-ridden ground without complaint. Clad in a scarlet coat, she was unmissable as she filmed her scenes Caught in the act: Wrapped up in a grey trench coat, the father-of-six looked inconsolable as he leant over her, wrapping her in his jacket as she lay motionless on the ground. Committing to the character, Brad seemed distraught as he filmed his scenes with her Lizzy also played her part to perfection, striding out in the adverse weather conditions and laying on the damp mud-ridden ground without complaint. Clad in a scarlet coat, she was unmissable as she filmed her scenes, managing to maintain her sense of style even whilst soaked through and sporting a mop of sodden chestnut tresses. Brad and Lizzie are believed to play siblings in the upcoming historic thriller, which is set in 1942. Lady in red: Lizzy managed to maintain her sense of style even whilst soaked through and sporting a mop of sodden chestnut tresses, happily laying down and soaking herself even further in order to get the scene finished Man of the era: His leading roles in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and David Ayer's Fury saw him bring the horrors of the Second World War to life, so Brad seemed in his element as he wrapped up in his fourties ensemble and posed by a fighter jet The previously untitled film sees Brad's character, Max Vatan, fall in love with French agent Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) during a mission to kill a German ambassador holed up in Casablanca. According to uinterview, 'the two ultimately marry and start a family but Max soon learns that Marianne is likely a Nazi spy'. The film - which is based on a true story - is directed Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future) and also stars Jared Harris (Lincoln) and Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey). Allied is slated for release later this year on November 23. Help a sister out: Brad and Lizzie are believed to play siblings in the upcoming historic thriller, which is set in 1942. The previously untitled film sees Brad's character, Max Vatan, fall in love with French agent Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) Out soon: The film - which is based on a true story - is directed Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future) and also stars Jared Harris (Lincoln) and Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey). Allied is slated for release later this year on November 23 Whilst Brad looks set to be working in England for the foreseeable future, he won't have to make do without his family as they reportedly moved into an eight-bedroom, 14,700-per-month rental house in Surrey at the end of February The Oscar-nominated actor shares six children with his wife Angelina Jolie: Maddox, 14; Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, nine, and seven-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. As reported by Us Weekly, The Jolie-Pitt's new family home is described as a 'beautiful, White House-style' home in the well-heeled county, an area popular with commuters to London. In addition to eight-bedrooms, the spacious estate has an indoor pool and gym, and is close to the River Thames. April showers: Brad appeared to be taking the horrific weather conditions in his stride as he stepped out with his head held high whilst the clouds opened and rain poured from the sky, appropriately given the tragic nature of the scenes Angelina and Brad previously looked to buy a home in London, but were unable to find a property with enough privacy and security. In 2012, they rented the Whornes Place estate in London for $24,000 a month, while Angelina filmed Maleficent and Brad worked on The Counselor. The couple previously made their home at the stately Chateau Miraval estate and winery in the south of France, which they bought for $60 million. Making moves: The authenticity of the film was clear to see with the fighter jets and traditional car out on the set Soldering on: Brad chatted with his fellow actors and members of the cast and crew between takes when the rain eased off overhead He has been busy hopping from city to city on the promotional tour for his film A Hologram For The King. And Tom Hanks didnt show any signs of fatigue as he made his way to the British premiere of the flick held at Londons BFI Southbank on Monday evening. The Hollywood legend was in great spirits as he pulled fun poses on the red carpet whilst joined by his co-stars Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Alexander Black. Scroll down for video Busy man: Tom Hanks didnt show any signs of fatigue as he made his way to the British premiere of the flick held at Londons BFI Southbank on Monday evening Tom cut a dapper figure once again as he sported a black suit with a dark lilac shirt and dotted tie. Meanwhile Sarita, who plays Zahara in the film, stepped onto the red carpet in an on-trend lazer cut dress which perfectly accentuated her slim physique. She added height to her look with black heels and while her dark locks were perfectly styled. Tom plays the character Alan, who travels to Saudi Arabia to propose a business idea to the local government. The comedy-drama, which is based on the Dave Eggers novel, was released on April 22 in the US. Looking good: The Hollywood legend was in great spirits whilst joined by his co-stars Sarita Choudhury Hey there: The actor was seen pulling fun poses on the red carpet as photographers took snaps For the fans: The acting icon was sure to stop and sign autographs for fans The premiere comes shortly after Tom revealed his like to collect old type writers. The 'Saving Mr. Banks' actor has over 50 devices which were made in the 1940s and loves to use them for his correspondence. He told the New York Post newspaper's Page Six column how much he loved the machines as he explained: Takes a repair guy a month to get them working, and I write my letters on them. I own over 50. Stylish look: Sarita, who plays Zahara in the film, stepped onto the red carpet in an on-trend lazer cut dress which perfectly accentuated her slim physique Leggy lady: Electric violinist Linzi Stoppard looked stylish in a lacy lilac mini dress Chic couple: Alexander Black and Ellen Daniels were also seen making a stylish appearance on the carpet While he loves the old-fashioned way of writing his letters, Tom is also an avid user of social media and recently used Twitter to thank a man who had found and returned his lost credit card. He posted: A guy named Tony found my credit card on the street in NYC and returned it! Tony! You make this city even greater! Thanx. HANX (sic) And in October, the actor turned to the site again in a bid to help reunite a female college student with her ID card. He posted a picture of the card - with the young woman's details concealed - and wrote: Lauren! I found your Student ID in the park. If you still need it my office will get to you. Hanx. Well- heeled: Sidse Babett Knudsen kept thing simple with a black jumpsuit and peep toe heels Suit you: Tom Tykwer and Will Merrick also posed on the red carpet Cool blue: Christy Meyer also opted for a lazer cut dress which she teamed with black heels She is known for being one of the most beautiful actresses in the world even as she pushes 50. And Halle Berry showed that even the most gorgeous women can have their off days. The 49-year-old actress had a nasty blemish on her chin as she arrived at Heathrow Airport in London on Monday. Even she can have a bad day! Halle Berry had a nasty looking blemish on her chin as she touched down at Heathrow Airport in London on Monday She looked very stylish despite the unflattering mark on her face as she dressed casual cool for the flight from Los Angeles. The Oscar-winning actress wore a long, tan wool jacket over a flowy black top as she made her way through the international airport and travel hub. Halle also sported a pair of indigo-wash ripped skinny jeans and a pair of black leather booties featuring gold studs and buckles on them. Fashionable flyer: Despite the mark on her face, the 49-year-old actress looked very stylish for the occasion Looking good: She sported a long, tan jacket over a flowy black top, ripped jeans and black leather booties with a gold detailing Not bothered: She didn't seem to be too concerned about the blemish as she appeared to not cover it up with make-up She accessoried the look with a pair of large, brown designer aviator shades and a pair of gold strud earrings. Her short, highlighted brunette tresses were worn down and dishevelled as she did not opt to cover up the blemish with make-up but she did have a swipe of shiny lip. The Monster's Ball star was not alone on the outing as she was joined by her adorable two-year-old son Maceo Robert Martinez. Touching down: Her short brunette tresses were dishevelled as she had a pair of brown designer aviator shades on her face Little man: She was joined on the trip by her two-year-old son Maceo Not seen on the outing was Halle's eight-year-old daughter Nahla Ariela Aubry or her estranged husband Olivier Martinez. Just last month, Halle and the 50-year-old French actor looked more than just friendly exes during a family holiday in Mexico. Halle was seen lounging next to the actor with her hand on his bare chest and right over his heart while he gazed back at her adoringly. While neither have commented on whether their relationship status has changed since when they announced they were getting a divorce late last year, People have revealed that the French star is not ready to give up on their marriage. Hand-in-hand: Halle's adorable son clutched on to his mother's hand as they walked through the international terminal and travel hub A source told the magazine: 'If Halle wants to call [the divorce] off, Olivier would be fine with it because he never wanted the divorce in the first place.' A second source reiterated that point with People: 'When they first filed for divorce [last October], things were not good. However, the anger went away and Olivier is just very upset about the divorce. He never wanted the divorce and still doesn't.' But before fans get too excited about a reconciliation, yet another source told the magazine nothing has changed and 'as always they are friends'. The end of the world is nigh, and Sydneys most beloved landmark may well be first to crumble if the latest instalment in the futuristic X-Men franchise is anything to go by. In a new three minute trailer for the appropriately titled X-Men: Apocalypse, the Australian citys Sydney Opera House is seen collapsing as the buildings of the Central Business District lie in smoky ruins. But the havoc isnt restricted to New South Wales; in a further catastrophic scene the iconic Brooklyn Bridge splits in two, leaving toppling cars and their doomed passengers at the mercy of the icy Hudson River. Scroll down for video Not over till the fat lady sings: The end of the world is nigh, and Sydneys most beloved landmark may well be first to crumble if the latest instalment in the futuristic X-Men franchise is anything to go by This apparent collapse of humanity is caused by En Sabah Nur, AKA Apocalypse an immortal God-like mutant who has awakened from hibernation after thousands of years with the aim of remoulding the modern world in his own bleak, dystopian vision. As he himself declares in a stark, hoarsely commanded manifesto to his disciples: 'From the ashes of their world, we'll build a better one!' X-Men: Apocalypse follows the huge success of its predecessor, X-Men: Days of Future Past a prequel that traces the origins of Marvel heroes Charles Xavier, played here by Scottish actor James McAvoy, and Magneto, played by the increasingly popular Michael Fassbender. 'From the ashes of their world, we'll build a better one!' Oscar Isaac plays the destructive Apocalypse in the forthcoming film Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence also returns as the shape-shifting anti-hero Mystique, while Oscar Isaac - still riding high off the success of his key role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens - plays destructive mutant Apocalypse. Elsewhere Australian actress Rose Byrne makes her second X-Men appearance as Moira MacTaggert - a CIA agent originally characterized as a geneticist and mutant expert in the original comic book series. The new trailer ends with a teasing close up of a hand wielding ominous steel claws - a reference to Wolverine, the legendary character played by another Australian, rugged actor Hugh Jackman. Look who's back: Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence also returns as the shape-shifting anti-hero Mystique While the film prepares for staggered international release dates throughout May - it will premiere in Australia on May 26 - Jackman is currently working on his seventh and final film as the grizzled mutant. The Australian actor announced in May that his latest appearance in what has been a career defining role will be his last, 15-years after making his debut as Wolverine in 2000 smash The X-Men. But while details surrounding the new film remain vague, Hugh, 46, revealed his much-loved character will be raising an already lofty bar during its more violent moments. 'I must admit I was quite heartened by a number of people saying please dont make it the last,' he told Sydney Confidential. 'But Im really excited about this last one and if youre a comic book fan then the words beserker rage came up a lot. If you know Wolverine youll understand.' The term refers to the boiling anger experienced by Wolverine when resisting the temptation to retaliate against an assailant - thus increasing his already significant body strength and pushing him into a seemingly psychopathic state of consciousness. Teen on terror charge as Australia, New Zealand honour war dead Australian police charged a teenager on Monday over a "truly chilling and disturbing" planned attack on an Anzac Day service, as people across the nation and in New Zealand honoured their war dead. Reports said the 16-year-old had tried to get hold of a gun over the weekend, and was believed to be planning to target the solemn ceremonies that mark the anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign during World War I in which thousands died. "This is a truly chilling and disturbing scenario, and is a sad reflection of the current terror threat landscape in Australia," Justice Minister Michael Keenan said. War veterans take part in the Anzac parade to mark the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, in Sydney, on April 25, 2016 Peter Parks (AFP) The youth, who has not been named, has been charged with one count of doing an act in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act. He did not apply for bail and his lawyer told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation he would defend himself against the charge, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Speaking to journalists in Perth, Keenan said the international security situation had deteriorated over the past 18 months because of the rise of the so-called Islamic State group, and Australia was not immune. He said while there was no indication there would be more arrests in relation to the alleged plot, officials were concerned about the young age of the suspect. "Unfortunately this is part of a pattern that we have been observing where younger and younger people are targeted and incited to go and commit an act of terror," he said. Police said security had been increased for services to mark Anzac Day, which is named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and remembers all servicemen and women. "Our level of security at Anzac Day is always high," New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters in Sydney. "We have increased it and at this stage it's a noticeable increase." - Ill-fated - Thousands attended moving dawn services and parades in Australia on Monday, marking April 25, 1915 when the Anzacs stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey, in an ill-fated World War I battle. More than 10,000 died in the campaign, which failed in its military objectives but has become an important part of national identity in both countries. In New Zealand, tens of thousands turned out for the Anzac Day dawn services, with Governor-General Jerry Mateparae saying it was important to honour those who perished at Gallipoli. "Anzac Day has become the focal point for New Zealanders and Australians to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of all involved in military conflict," he said. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Australia's WWI involvement on the Western Front, in France and Belgium -- where more than 46,000 lost their lives, and where New Zealand soldiers also fought. France marked Anzac Day by announcing plans for a memorial in Wellington to commemorate their wartime bond with New Zealand. "France places great value on the significance of this memorial to celebrate the relationship between our two countries, the enduring friendship that unites us and the common memories we share, of which the First World War was a major example," the French ambassador Florence Jeanblanc-Risler said. New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione (R) and state Premier Mike Baird speak to the media in Sydney, in 2015 William West (AFP/File) Burundi minister targeted in grenade attack Burundi's Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife were lightly injured Sunday in a grenade attack as they were leaving a church in the capital Bujumbura, the city's mayor told AFP. "A grenade was thrown in the car park of the Healing of the Souls church in Nyakabiga," mayor Freddy Mbonimpa said, referring to a neighbourhood in the city-centre. "They were very lightly injured by the explosion and their vehicle was badly damaged. They only had a few scratches and were discharged after treatment in a hospital," he added. Heavily armed police patrol the streets in Bujumbura on April 12, 2016 The mayor said "armed criminals" were behind the attack, a term used by Burundian officials to refer to members of rebel groups opposed to President Pierre Nkurunziza. Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term, which he went on to win in July 2015, with violence leaving more than 500 people dead. More than 270,000 people have fled the country. Numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks since the start of the crisis. New Zealanders honour war dead Tens of thousands of New Zealanders turned out Monday for the 100th ANZAC Day dawn services honouring their war dead on the anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in World War I. "The First World War helped shape our nation and our shared values. It cemented our ties with other countries, in particular our kinship with Australia," Prime Minister John Key, who attended a service at the national war memorial in Wellington, said. On April 25, 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key speaks at the Chamber of Commerce March 30, 2016 in Washington, DC Brendan Smialowski (AFP/File) More than 10,000 servicemen died in the campaign which failed in its military objectives but gave rise to the legacy of courage and close friendship that binds the two countries. Governor-General Jerry Mateparae, who attended the Wellington dawn service, said the act of remembering helped steer people towards building a better, safer world. "On this day 100 years ago, New Zealanders first gathered together to honour their loved ones who had perished at Gallipoli. "Since then, Anzac Day has become the focal point for New Zealanders and Australians to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of all involved in military conflict." The nine-month battle saw German-backed Ottoman forces resist the Allied troops trying to seize the peninsula on the western edge of Turkey to break through to take Constantinople and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Despite the tragic outcome, the later actions of New Zealanders "on the perilous North Sea, and on the fields of France -- were true to the Anzac spirit of bravery, compassion and comradeship established at Gallipoli," said Key. France marked ANZAC Day by announcing plans for a memorial in Wellington to commemorate their wartime bond with New Zealand. Obama calls for 'reinstated' Syria truce as more die in Aleppo US President Barack Obama has called for Syria's warring parties to reinstate a troubled ceasefire, as regime and rebel bombardments killed 26 civilians in the flashpoint city of Aleppo. Eight weeks into the declared truce between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebels, violence has escalated around Aleppo, with dozens killed by government air strikes and rebel rockets. The surge in fighting and stalled peace talks in Geneva have dimmed hopes that the ceasefire would lay the groundwork for finally resolving Syria's devastating five-year conflict. A Syrian man evacuates an area following a reported airstrike on April 22, 2016 in a rebel-held neighbourhood of Aleppo Ameer Alhalbi (AFP/File) On Sunday, Obama said he had spoken to his Russian counterpart -- a key Assad ally -- to try to shore up the truce. "I spoke to President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities," he told reporters in Germany. The president was Monday set to announce plans to send up to 250 more military trainers to Syria, intensifying US assistance to rebels, a senior administration official said. An EU spokesperson also issued a statement urging the US and Russia as brokers of the ceasefire "to bring the maximum influence to bear in order to end these breaches of the agreement". After at least 27 civilian deaths were reported in regime bombardments across Syria on Saturday, a fresh barrage of air strikes hit Aleppo on Sunday. Twelve civilians died when a strike hit an open-air fruit and vegetable market, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. An AFP photographer saw a man in a bright-blue cap carrying a shell-shocked, bleeding and barefoot young boy. - 'Attack on Geneva process' - The Observatory said four more civilians died Sunday in strikes on other opposition neighbourhoods, and in Aleppo's western government-held parts, 10 civilians including a woman and two children were killed by rebel rocket fire. Emergency responders, known as White Helmets, told AFP they were "exhausted" by the past three days of bombing in Syria's second city. "We're back to working 24-hour shifts after we started working shorter hours because of the truce," one volunteer said. Also Sunday, rockets fired into Turkey from an area of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group killed one person and wounded 26, Ankara's deputy prime minister said. The wounded included six Syrians. While officials have yet to declare the ceasefire dead, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the escalating violence in Aleppo and elsewhere meant it had effectively collapsed. Peace negotiations due to run in Geneva until Wednesday have faltered after Syria's main opposition group last week suspended its official participation in the talks. The High Negotiations Committee walked away in frustration at the devastating humanitarian situation on the ground. "The Assad regime's bombing offensive is not only a brutal attack on Syrians, but an attack on the Geneva process that is the only possible pathway to peace," HNC spokesman Salem al-Meslet said Sunday in an emailed statement. The truce was part of the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 with widespread anti-Assad protests. It has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has killed 270,000 people and drawn in regional and world powers. - Ground troops 'a mistake' - In an interview with the BBC aired Sunday, Obama warned Western governments should not send troops to topple Assad's regime. "Syria has been a heartbreaking situation of enormous complexity, and I don't think there are any simple solutions," he said in London. "It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime." He urged all parties "to sit down at the table and try to broker a transition". Obama first urged Assad to step down in August 2011 but has resisted calls by critics to use American military force to end the Syrian regime's rule. Washington did, however, launch air strikes in mid-2014 against the Islamic State group after it seized large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq. A reported air strike by governement forces hit the rebel-held neighbourhood of Sakhur in Aleppo on April 24, 2016 on a third day of renewed deadly violence in the battered city Ameer Alhalbi (AFP) Volunteers evacuate people from a damaged building after a reported airstrike on April 23, 2016 in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Tareeq al-Bab in Aleppo Ameer Alhalbi (AFP) US President Barack Obama speaks during the official opening ceremony of the Hanover industry Fair at the Hannover Congress Center HCC in Hanover, on April 24, 2016 Ronny Hartmann (AFP) Yemen govt forces retake key port city from Qaeda Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from Al-Qaeda militants who held it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed Monday as a major victory in which over 800 jihadists were killed. The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the Sunni extremists launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shiite Huthi rebels who control the capital. It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama during a visit to Saudi Arabia called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on Al-Qaeda. Forces loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni president take part in an operation to drive Al-Qaeda fighters out of Zinjibar on April 23, 2016 Saleh Al-Obeidi (AFP/File) At the talks, which opened last Thursday, UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Monday welcomed reports of "real improvement in the situation". On Sunday, he had said "significant differences... remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace". The peace talks and Obama's visit have contributed to a change in "strategic priorities", with Al-Qaeda back at the top, according to the Soufan Group consultancy. The jihadists' Yemen-based branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the group's militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla. Further west in Shabwa province, a US drone on Monday struck two vehicles carrying Al-Qaeda militants near the town of Azzan -- from which the jihadists have fled -- killing nine extremists, a provincial official said. - 'No resistance' - The jihadists have planned attacks overseas, including a January 2015 assault on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris. "We entered the city centre and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west," a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of Al-Shihr and its Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukalla's Riyan airport. Troops deployed in Mukalla on Monday and set up checkpoints across the city, security officials said. "The operation resulted... in the deaths of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," the coalition commanders said. The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of any civilian casualties. Mukalla is one of a number of southern cities that Al-Qaeda had overrun since the Saudi-led coalition launched its military intervention in March last year when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile after the Iran-backed rebels seized much of the country. - Fragile ceasefire - Government forces recaptured Huta, another provincial capital further west last week. But they had to retreat from Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, after an Al-Qaeda car bomb killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 as they were entering the city on Sunday. The counter-offensive against the jihadists has come as a fragile April 11 ceasefire between pro-government forces and the rebels firms up. Washington has been waging a drone war against AQAP since November 2002, when it killed the suspected mastermind of an October 2000 bombing of a US destroyer that killed 17 sailors in the southern port of Aden. In April last year, a US air strike killed AQAP commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video, outside the presidential palace in Mukalla where the jihadists had set up base. Last month, an air strike on an AQAP training camp in Hajr, west of Mukalla, killed more than 70 jihadists, provincial officials said. During its year-long rule in Mukalla, AQAP imposed its strict interpretation of sharia law forbidding consumption of the mild narcotic qat, a mainstay of Yemeni social life, and demolishing the tombs of revered Sufi mystics. More than 800 jihadists killed in an assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla AFP (AFP) Forces loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni president show off their weapons on a road in Abyan province on April 23, 2016 Saleh Al-Obeidi (AFP) Forces loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni president patrol a street in the southern city of Lahj on April 24, 2016 during an operation to drive Al-Qaeda fighters out of the southern provinces Saleh Al-Obeidi (AFP) Former Prince engineer wants vault music released The sound engineer who helped create Prince's legendary vault stuffed with decades of unreleased songs believes his secret horde should be opened up and made available to historians, scholars and fans. "For me personally, I'd say why not?" Susan Rogers told AFP in a telephone interview. "Music is an expression of life and let's hear these expressions of Prince's life." Until recently, its existence was shrouded in mystery, part of the myth that built up around Prince. The sound engineer who helped create Prince's legendary vault stuffed with decades of unreleased songs believes his secret horde should be opened up and made available to historians, scholars and fans Fabrice Coffrini (AFP/File) But its fate has become a hot topic of conversation since his unexpected death at age 57 last week. The question of future releases is likely to be thorny as Prince had no surviving children, no current wife, no living parents and fiercely guarded his creative control. It is also not known if he left a will. "I think that it would be nice for historians and fans and scholars if someone went through that material," said Rogers, who worked as Prince's sound engineer from 1983-1987. "I'd like to see the music put in the hands of the people who knew him best artistically and that would be the musicians who worked with him through different eras." Rogers suggested that musicians with whom he worked in the 1980s and 1990s be allowed to finish unreleased songs in the style that they worked back then. "I think that would be lovely," she said. Regardless of whether Prince wanted his music to see the light of day, Rogers believes there should be a debate. "Maybe the artist is not thinking clearly about his legacy; there's a moral issue there and it's something we should be talking about." It was Rogers who started the vault, collecting his tapes and starting to catalog them while Prince was working on "Purple Rain." - Perhaps a cloud - A temperature-controlled storage room was then added to plans for Paisley Park. The weather-proof room had a door from a bank vault complete with a combination lock, Rogers said, and was filled with analogue tapes. When she last saw the vault in the 1990s it was full. She hopes the analogue has since been transferred to digital but doesn't know how much material is still under lock and key. "Perhaps the vault is now in a cloud somewhere. I have no idea." Rogers knows firsthand the talent that drove one of the most innovative artists of his generation, the boy from an underprivileged background in north Minneapolis who became a multimillionaire and won his first record deal at just 19. Working for him in 1983 was "my dream come true," she said. His capacity for work was prolific. They could be in the studio for 24 to 48 hours at a time, even 96 hours on one memorable occasion. Prince did not use music notation or write music formally. Instead, he would work through his ideas by recording. "If he wasn't taking care of conducting business... or if he wasn't dating or seeing someone socially, which would be less often than you might think, for the most part, Prince had an instrument in his hands and he was playing music," she said. On tour, he would sound-check for hours, perform, then play a secret all-night after-party or go into a studio or a mobile truck and record all night. "Four hours of sleep in those days was a full night's sleep to him." She silences any suggestion that Prince ever used recreational drugs. - Make you laugh - "Prince was philosophically, morally and physiologically opposed to recreational drug use," she said. He coped through any bout of illness by taking medicine and never pausing to rest or to stop work. If he was taking pain medication as reports suggest, Rogers said it would have been only so he could continue to work. "That may have covered symptoms of just how ill he actually was." She remembered him as compassionate and warm, and while he worked quickly and efficiently, he could "really make you laugh." Rogers recalls a time when the crew was talking about someone being "an asshole," when Prince walked in. "And Prince said let's get something straight, there's only one asshole around here and it's me!" "If he was paying you, you were available to him 24-seven. We worked Christmas, we worked New Year's Eve, we worked Thanksgiving," she said. The end came in 1987, after one night when Prince couldn't get hold of her because she was out on a date. "He was really angry about that," she said. "I couldn't do it any more. I just couldn't." She last saw him in the late 1990s. "Every time I saw him after I left, it was warm and affectionate and I realized how much I deeply, deeply cared about him." But it was his creative output and the fact that he did it alone, which stands out for her. "That was extraordinary and will not be equaled any time soon," she said. Key dates in the career of American musician and pop star Prince Paul DEFOSSEUX (AFP) Prince performs on stage during a concert in Paris in 1987 Bertrand Guay (AFP/File) China to build on disputed Scarborough Shoal this year: report Beijing will start construction this year on a South China Sea islet within the Philippines' claimed exclusive economic zone as it seeks to project its power in the disputed waters, Hong Kong media reported Monday. China will establish an outpost on Scarborough Shoal, 230 kilometres (143 miles) off the Philippine coast, the South China Morning Post newspaper cited an unnamed source close to the People's Liberation Army as saying. Beijing claims nearly all the strategically vital sea, despite completing claims from several Southeast Asian neighbours, and in recent months has developed contested reefs into artificial islands, some topped with airstrips. Chinese surveillance ships are seen off Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea Philippine navy (DFA/AFP/File) Manila claims Scarborough Shoal but says China took effective control of it in 2012, stationing patrol vessels in the area and shooing away Filipino fishermen, after a two-month stand-off with the Philippine Navy. The SCMP cited the source as saying construction at the outpost would allow Beijing to further perfect its air coverage across the South China Sea, suggesting it plans to build an airstrip. At a regular press briefing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was not aware of the report but the area was China's "inherent territory". Beijing will "adopt the necessary measures to resolutely protect China's sovereignty and legitimate rights and interests", she said. The report comes ahead of an international tribunal ruling, expected within months, on a case brought by the Philippines over the South China Sea. It also follows an announcement by the US and the Philippines that they would launch joint naval patrols in the sea. The construction plans were likely to be accelerated in light of the upcoming ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, the newspaper cited the source as saying. China should regain the initiative to do so because Washington is trying to contain Beijing by establishing a permanent military presence in the region, the source said. Washington has sailed ships close to islands claimed by Beijing, accusing China of militarising the South China Sea and deploying missiles in the area. Hua said the recent patrol flights in the area by the Philippines and the US were "deserving of suspicion", urging "some countries" active in the region to exercise restraint and "make cooperative efforts with China". Beijing admits building military-capable airstrips and deploying unspecified weapons on some of the islands, but insists US patrols have ramped up tensions. As well as China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have claims to parts of the sea, which are home to some of the world's most important shipping lanes and believed to sit atop vast oil reserves. Fears mount in quake-hit Nepal as tourists stay away Former guesthouse owner Tenzing Lama remembers when foreign tourists thronged Nepal's Langtang valley, trekking through the breathtaking Himalayan wilderness and soaking up the tranquility. But the massive earthquake that ripped through Nepal one year ago killing almost 9,000 people, obliterated the valley, part of the country's oldest national park, along with the tourism industry on which it relied. Villagers have since returned to the valley and started the Herculean task of clearing trails and rebuilding homes and guesthouses flattened in a massive quake-triggered avalanche. Nepalese workers rebuild a tea-house in the village of Langtang Prakash Mathema (AFP) But as is the case in the rest of the country, trekkers and backpackers have so far stayed away, leaving already desperate locals facing an uncertain future. "Every family here depended on tourism. One hundred percent of our economy came from that," said Lama, 45, who grew up in Langtang village which was decimated by the avalanche that sent huge blocks of ice barrelling through the valley. As a boy, Lama often saw foreigners passing through his village, where they would sometimes stop for a meal or an overnight stay, sharing chocolates with local children, during days-long trekking expeditions. By the time he built his own guesthouse in 2000, the valley was enjoying a tourism boom, with Langtang village alone hosting dozens of lodges that served up everything from Nepali staples of lentils and rice to trekker favourites like apple pie. When the avalanche struck on April 25, killing his brother, niece and nephew and burying hundreds of neighbours and friends in rubble, Lama and other survivors were evacuated to Kathmandu until the valley was deemed safe. The disaster killed 283 locals and 43 foreign visitors in the valley, according to police. Many villagers like Lama have since taken rebuilding matters into their own hands, carrying sacks of supplies along steep, hilly paths and repairing trails and lodges on their own. "I had nothing left... but then, as time passed, I thought I should go back, I should try and rebuild my life, my guesthouse," the father-of-four told AFP. - Terrified trekkers - When the earthquake struck, triggering avalanches and landslides, many backpackers were stranded for days in remote, mountainous areas accessible only by helicopter. Terrified foreigners fled the Himalayan nation and many prospective tourists cancelled bookings, even avoiding popular trekking routes such as the Annapurna trail, which escaped the carnage unscathed. The industry's annual revenues fell by 32 percent in 2015, according to the Nepal Tourism Board, dealing a devastating blow to the economy of the already impoverished country. Nepal relies on tourism for around four percent of its gross domestic product, with the industry providing 3.5 percent of employment. Tour operators say their businesses are unlikely to recover this year. "When you lose 85 percent of your business... basically that's 85 percent of your cash flow that's gone," said Ashok Pokharel, president of the Nepal Association of Tour Operators. In a bid to lure visitors back, authorities decided to hand out free mobile SIM cards to backpackers ahead of this year's spring trekking season, hoping to reassure them that they would be helped if disaster struck. The government also called in international experts from Miyamoto, a US-based firm, to assess the safety of the Everest and Annapurna trekking routes in the months following the quake. Engineers ruled that both routes were largely unaffected and safe for travel. In the Kathmandu Valley, masons have begun to repair quake-hit historic monuments in an effort to restore and preserve Nepal's rich architectural heritage, which dates back to the fifth century and remains a key tourist attraction. "The government is rebuilding -- a few sites are already built and a few are being built (and) will be completed in one to three years", said Nepal Tourism Board CEO Deepak Raj Joshi. But far from the capital, Langtang shows little sign of government activity -- other than an army checkpost at the bottom of the main trail -- and few visitors have come back despite cleared trails and a handful of new or restored guesthouses. In his village, Lama surveyed the rubble-covered landscape where his eight-room lodge used to stand, and wondered whether his gamble would pay off. "We will somehow rebuild our guesthouses, we will borrow money, we will do whatever we need to do. But what if the tourists don't return?" "Where will we go then?" Nepalese porters haul merchandise on their backs near the village of Langtang Prakash Mathema (AFP) Nepalese workers rebuild a tea house in Langtang valley in Nepal's Rasuwa district Prakash Mathema (AFP) Nepalese villager knits as she sits outside a temporary dwelling in the village of Langtang Prakash Mathema (AFP) Mmules carry bundles of products near a buried village in the Langtang valley in Nepal's Rasuwa district Prakash Mathema (AFP) Six African nations could be malaria-free by 2020: WHO Six countries in Africa, the continent where malaria is most widespread, could be free of the disease by 2020, according to a WHO report published Monday to mark World Malaria Day. One of the goals of the World Health Organization's 2016-2030 programme against malaria is to wipe out the disease in at least 10 countries by the end of this decade. "WHO estimates that 21 countries are in a position to achieve this goal, including six countries in the African Region, where the burden of the disease is heaviest," the Geneva-based organisation said in a statement. South Africa could be one of six African countries that could be free of malaria by 2020, according to a WHO report Alexander Joe (AFP/File) These countries are Algeria, Botswana, Cape Verde, Comoros, South Africa and Swaziland. In South Africa the elimination of malaria is a public health objective. The country registered 11,700 cases of the disease in 2014 -- down from 64,000 in 2000 -- with most diagnoses coming from areas bordering Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. "Through targeted action and cross-border collaboration, South Africa has the potential to eliminate malaria by 2020," the WHO report said. The other countries the organisation believes could achieve this objective are China, Malaysia and South Korea, eight Latin American nations (Costa Rica, Belize, El Salvador, Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador and Suriname), as well as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Timor-Leste and Nepal. Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus eradicated malaria in 2015, according to a WHO report published earlier this month. Some 214 million people suffered from malaria last year of which 438,000 died from the disease, according to the organisation. Nine out of 10 deaths from the disease in 2015 came from sub-Saharan Africa, the report said. Rape comment Philippine president candidate 'is frontrunner' A Philippine presidential candidate whose comments about rape provoked an international outcry has emerged as the "clear frontrunner" in the latest opinion survey, pollsters said Monday. Rodrigo Duterte sparked revulsion among women's groups, diplomats and the Catholic church when he told an audience that as the local mayor, he should have been at the front of the queue when an Australian missionary was attacked in a 1989 jail riot. But far from damaging his prospects in next month's presidential vote, the remarks appear to have had little effect, with the latest opinion poll giving him a nine-point lead over his nearest rival. Philippine presidential front-runner candidate Rodrigo Duterte, seen during a campaign rally in Manila, on April 23, 2016 Noel Celis (AFP/File) Analysts say Duterte's profanity-laced campaign resonates in a chaotic, high-crime society with limited opportunities for a vast underclass working for a tiny elite. Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, is the "clear frontrunner", research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) said Monday of its poll. "Mayor Duterte has been steadily gaining ground. It's a clear lead. The joke could have affected him in such a way that his score could have even been higher had it not been for that news," SWS spokesman Leo Laroza told AFP. More than 50 million people in the mainly Catholic nation are qualified to vote on May 9, when Duterte will face off against four other candidates, including the preferred successor of popular outgoing president Benigno Aquino. Duterte is hailed locally as "Dirty Harry" and has boasted of operating death squads in Davao targeting criminals -- a policy he has promised to introduce nationwide if elected. In a debate Sunday, he even vowed to kill his own children if they ever took drugs. -- 'Strongman leadership' -- The survey of 1,800 people, which was carried out in the days after Duterte's rape comments gained widespread publicity, showed his support rate had risen to 33 percent in April, up from 27 percent in March. Francisco Magno, president of the Philippine Political Science Association, said the latest poll showed a substantial voting bloc was attracted to "strongman leadership". It showed marked sympathy for his "one-issue campaign effort" against crime and illegal drugs, he added. It also indicated that issues like women's rights and human rights in general were secondary for many. "There is much to be desired about the quality of political education" in the country, Magno told AFP. Duterte also benefited from having three major rivals splitting the vote, said Magno, noting that if the three coalesced behind one candidate they might have a chance of stopping him. Current President Aquino, the son of a former president, is constitutionally limited to a single six-year term. His preferred successor Mar Roxas -- the grandson of a former president -- trails badly in surveys. Despite dramatic economic growth under Aquino, analysts say Duterte's appeal stems from popular disenchantment with the political elite in a nation where one in four still lives in poverty. Women's rights advocate Ana Maria Nemenzo said Duterte's ranking in the latest survey reflected poorly on Philippine culture. "The culture of rape is very much prevalent, it is deep-seated in our machismo system. You can see the men seem to lap up this kind of talk," she told AFP. Nemenzo, head of WomanHealth Philippines, said that despite two female presidents in the past, the reaction to Duterte's "debasing" remarks showed the country still had far to go. "If Duterte wins, it's going to be a tragedy, not only for the women's movement, but for our country," she added. Philippine presidential candidates, (from L) VP Jejomar Binay, Senator Miriam Santiago, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, Senator Grace Poe, and former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, seen after a presidential debate in Dagupan City, on April 24, 2016 Manila Bulletin (Pool/AFP) Trump blasts Cruz-Kasich team up plan as 'collusion' Republican presidential rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich have joined forces to deny frontrunner Donald Trump the party's nomination, a controversial move on the eve of Tuesday's critical primaries in five US states. Embracing the ancient Sanskrit proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Cruz and Kasich unveiled their late-in-the-game ploy, prompting the celebrity billionaire to accuse them of "collusion" and declare the bid an act of desperation. With Trump poised to extend his lead in Tuesday's primaries, Texas Senator Cruz and Ohio governor Kasich agreed late Sunday to what amounted to a non-aggression pact in later primaries. Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz (R) and John Kasich (L) launch a team effort to deny Donald Trump (C) the party's nomination, a late-in-the-game bid the billionaire frontrunner dismissed as an act of "desperation" Kasich will forego vigorous campaigning in Indiana, which votes on May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories in those states. The deal would give Cruz a chance to consolidate support in Indiana, a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to win the nomination outright. "We're focusing our energy on the state of Indiana and Governor Kasich is focusing his energies elsewhere," Cruz said at a campaign stop in Borden, Indiana. Cruz justified the teaming up succinctly: "If Donald Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton wins" the November election and Republicans lose control of the Senate, he said. - 'Pathetic' plan - Trump erupted at news of the deal, unleashing criticism on Twitter and assailing the pair at a campaign rally Monday. "You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude." "Actually I was happy," Trump added, "because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are." Kasich's campaign said the aim was to open the Republican nominating convention in July in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate. The Ohioan insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton. But his remarks also hinted at how his alliance with Cruz was already fraying. "I've never told them not to vote for me" in Indiana, he told reporters as he ate breakfast at a diner in Philadelphia. "They ought to vote for me." "What's the big deal?" he added. "I'm not campaigning in Indiana, and he's not campaigning in those other states. That's all." He also noted his need to be frugal with campaign resources, saying he did not have "'Daddy Warbucks' behind me giving me all this money." Both candidates acknowledge their only hope of winning lies in keeping Trump, 69, from gaining the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright. If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him on subsequent rounds. Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump on the first ballot, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds when they are free to vote for whomever they choose. Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him. But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio. Trump has pointed to the bid to stop him as evidence that the primary system is "totally rigged." - 'Terrible role models' - Cruz, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of stopping Trump, has already begun searching for possible vice presidential options. His campaign chairman Chad Sweet confirmed to CNN Monday that Cruz was vetting several potential vice presidential candidates, and that businesswoman Carly Fiorina, herself a former White House hopeful, "absolutely" was among them. In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a chaotic convention fight would almost surely damage Republican prospects in November. The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters. Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them. Raising eyebrows among Republicans, Koch added it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president. Trump is favored to win the states that vote Tuesday -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Clinton is expected to prevail over her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. Texas Senator Ted Cruz (C) and Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) shake hands as Donald Trump looks on following the CNN Republican Presidential Debate in Miami, Florida on March 10, 2016 Rhona Wise (AFP/File) US Primaries: latest poll Kun Tian, Gillian Handyside (AFP) US Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz campaigns at the Weinberg Theater in Frederick, Maryland on April 21, 2016 Win McNamee (Getty/AFP) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in a hangar at Rider Jet Center on April 24, 2016, in Hagerstown Molly Riley (AFP) Anzac Day honours heroes of WWI's Western Front Some 3,000 Australians marked Anzac Day on Monday with a sombre dawn service in northern France to honour their forebears who fought in the Battle of the Somme a century ago. "Today we come together... to commemorate all who served on the Western Front and to remember those who never made it home," Australian Air Force chief Leo Davies said. The faces of the fallen were projected onto the imposing tower of the Australian National Memorial, which honours nearly 11,000 soldiers with no known graves. People attend an Anzac day memorial for the Australian and New Zealanders soldiers killed in combat in the World War I battle of the Somme, in Villers-Bretonneux, on April 25, 2016 Francois Nascimbeni (AFP) A sole bagpipe wailed as dignitaries including French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and the governor general of Australia, Sir Peter John Cosgrove, laid wreaths at the monument of the cemetery at Villers-Bretonneux. "The presence of so many of you underscores the strength of our friendship," Le Drian told the crowd, which also included scores of French people. Doug Morgan, music director at Saint Peter's College in Adelaide who led 50 students to the event, said: "We've had amazing reception here. The local people are very hospitable, and still very grateful for what the Australians did." The Battle of the Somme, which lasted nearly five months, saw more than a million casualties on both the Allied and German sides and came to symbolise the futility of World War I. Each of the 141 days of trench warfare took an average toll of some 8,500 casualties, but for all that the Western Front shifted no more than a few kilometres. For the Australian volunteers, the sacrifice began with a sea journey lasting up to four months. The spirit shown by the Anzac troops has long been seen as critical in forging a national identity in Australia as well as in New Zealand, both fledgling nations at the time. Anzac Day commemorates the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25, 1915, at the start of an eight-month campaign against the Ottoman Empire in which 8,700 Australians and nearly 2,800 New Zealanders died. The battle of Gallipoli, in modern-day Turkey, is generally seen as a devastating military failure for the Allied powers against the German-backed Ottoman forces, who managed to resist the attempts to break through towards Constantinople. Now synonymous with valour, Anzac Day is a public holiday in both Australia and New Zealand, also honouring veterans from other conflicts, including South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Iraq. - 'Hell on earth' - Held across Australia, the Anzac dawn service has its origins in a military practice known as "stand-to", in which soldiers are woken before dawn to avoid the vulnerability that comes with the early light, which is notorious for playing tricks on the eyes. "It was emotional, and it was quite educational to learn about what the Australians did on the Western Front," said Craig Rogers, an Australian defence researcher, after the ceremony. "Coming out on a morning like this in the cold is a small sacrifice compared to what those people did for us." The history also runs deep in the community in northern France where so many lost their lives. "My father was born in a village near here," said Jean-Louis Delauney, whose grandfather survived a chlorine gas attack during the Battle of the Somme. "My whole childhood was affected by World War I." Monday is the 98th anniversary of the battle that liberated the town of Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens. "It puts it all in perspective to come here," said Australian Peter Crowle, 69, whose grandfather died in the battle. "The conditions they were subjected to were hell on earth." People attend a dawn service marking Anzac Day in Gallipoli on April 25, 2016, to mark the 101st anniversary of the ill-fated campaign in World War I Australian soldiers march during the ANZAC parade to mark the centenary of the Gallipoli landings in Sydney on April 25, 2016 China mulls tighter control of foreign charities: report Chinese legislators are considering a new draft of a controversial law requiring foreign non-profit organisations to report activities to government agencies while curtailing the recruitment of supporters, state media said Monday. The law on overseas non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was delayed after an outcry from charities and concerns from foreign governments that it gave wide-ranging discretionary powers to police amid a domestic crackdown on civil society. A draft of the bill -- covering foreign charities, business associations and academic institutions in China -- has been submitted to a legislative session being held this week, the official Xinhua news agency said. At least 1,000 foreign non-governmental organisations are thought to operate in China Mark Ralston (AFP/File) The rubber-stamp National People's Congress is controlled by the ruling Communist Party and if the measure is put to a vote it is certain to be approved. Xinhua indicated that the law's third draft preserved features which previously triggered concerns, including a requirement that NGOs "partner" with a Chinese government-controlled agency and report activities to authorities. It said government partners of foreign NGOs would be required to report any "temporary activities" to authorities at least 15 days in advance, without giving further details. Chinese police would have the right to cancel any activities they judge a threat to national security, and would be empowered to "invite for talks" the heads of foreign NGOs in China, it said. It added police could add any foreign NGO they judged to promote "subversion of state power" or "separatism" to a "not welcome list" which would ban them from the country. Overseas NGOs would also be forbidden from recruiting "members" in mainland China, Xinhua said, barring special permission from the State Council, China's cabinet. It was not specified whether that included local staff. The Global Times newspaper, which is close to the ruling party, cited a Chinese NGO official as saying the law's "engagement" of police was unlikely to change as the measure had been drafted with "national security" in mind. At least 1,000 foreign NGOs are thought to operate in China, including development charities such as Save the Children, advocacy groups such as Greenpeace, chambers of commerce and university centres. China's state-run media in recent years have accused such organisations of undermining national security and trying to foment "colour revolution" against the ruling party. China in January arrested and deported a Swedish human rights activist who had trained Chinese lawyers, and foreign NGO staff working on legal issues report an increasingly restricted environment. President Xi Jinping has in recent years overseen a crackdown on civil society, with scores of lawyers, academics and activists detained and dozens jailed. Several have been charged with "separatism" or "inciting state subversion" for what their lawyers say is merely the expression of critical opinions. Xinhua said a legal committee had suggested the draft bill should be voted on this week by the NPC Standing Committee, which approves legislation when the full house is not in session. South Sudan rebel chief set finally to return to Juba After a weeklong delay, South Sudan rebel chief Riek Machar is finally expected back in Juba on Tuesday to join a unity government being formed to end more than two years of civil war. A rebel statement said Machar, who is to be sworn in as first vice-president alongside his longtime arch rival, President Salva Kiir, "will be arriving today in Juba April 26, 2016". He was expected to land at about 2 pm (1100 GMT), depending on the weather and flight operations, said spokesman William Ezekiel. South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar Ashraf Shazly (AFP/File) Machar, who was originally due back in the city on April 18 under a peace deal, is expected to head immediately from the airport to the presidential palace to be sworn in. His delayed arrival infuriated the international community after the months of negotiations spent on getting the rivals to return to the same city and share power in the world's newest country. Ensuring they work together in a unity government, and that the thousands of rival armed forces now in separate camps inside the capital keep their guns quiet, will be an even bigger challenge. Top rebel military commander Simon Gatwech Dual returned this Monday, in a key step forward in the floundering peace process. "We are one South Sudan," Dual shouted, waving a walking stick in the air as he marched off the plane. He was welcomed by top government army commanders, surrounded by heavily armed troops from both the government and rebels. - Deep suspicion - Both sides remain deeply suspicious, and fighting continues with multiple militia forces unleashed who now pay no heed to either Kiir or Machar. His return was stalled by arguments that at one point, in a country awash with weapons, came down to the a dispute about just over two dozen rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that the force guarding Machar are allowed to have. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes in the conflict, which has reignited ethnic divisions and been characterised by gross human rights abuses. The economy is in ruins, over five million people need aid and two million have fled their homes. Over 180,000 people are crammed into UN peacekeeping camps across the country, too terrified to venture outside the razor wire fences for fear of being killed. Tensions are high, and the days ahead will be critical. "We need the guns to stay silent and give people time -- both as official warring parties and as individuals -- with one another in coming days," said Casie Copeland from the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank. Suffering is on an epic scale. Parts of the country, especially the devastated oil producing northern Unity region, have been pushed to the brink of famine. There are huge expectations Machar's arrival means the myriad of problems will be solved swiftly -- but there will be no quick fix. - 'Best chance yet' - Diplomats note gloomily that while Machar's return is the "best chance yet", the deal imposed under intense international pressure only sees the country go back to the status quo that existed before his July 2013 sacking as vice president that precipitated the war. The agreement has already been repeatedly broken with months of fighting since it was signed, and its key power sharing formula in ruins after Kiir nearly tripled the number of regional states. South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup. The conflict has torn open ethnic divisions and been characterised by human rights violations. It has included the abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls, massacres of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, murder, mutilation and even cannibalism. South Sudan is one of poorest countries on the planet, and had some world's worst indicators for development, health and education even before over two years of war. Machar has over 1,500 armed troops in the capital, while government forces have officially just over double that. All other soldiers have to remain at least 25 kilometres (15 miles) outside the capital. The threat of violence at a local level remains enormous, with multiple militia forces unleashed and out of control. Machar and Kiir are decades-old rivals and even if they can work together both must also rein in powerful hardline field commanders. South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup AFP (AFP/File) A displaced women searches for her belongings in a burnt and looted area in Malakal, South Sudan, in February Albert Gonzalez Farran (AFP/File) The civil war in South Sudan has torn open ethnic divisions and been characterised by human rights violations Samir Bol (cds/AFP/File) 23 dead in Pakistan after eating poisoned sweets At least 23 people have died and dozens of others fell ill in central Pakistan after eating sweets which police suspect were tainted with pesticides, officials said Monday. Umar Hayat, a resident of the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab province, bought the baked confectionery on April 17 to distribute among friends and family after the birth of his grandson. But their celebrations turned out to be short-lived when ten people died on the same day. A shopkeeper arranges sweets at a wholesale market in Lahore, Pakistan on April 14, 2015 Arif Ali (AFP/File) "The death toll from consumption of the sweets has now risen to 23, and 52 people are still being treated at various hospitals," local police official Munir Ahmed told AFP on Monday. He said the dead included the baby boy's father and seven of his uncles. Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the district, confirmed the incident, adding three people -- two brothers who run the bakery and a worker -- had been arrested. The worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix. "There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated, and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safe keeping," said Bukhari. "A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture," he said, but added that police were awaiting for the results of laboratory testing. Burundi general killed as ICC opens probe into atrocities A top Tutsi general was gunned down in Burundi on Monday, as international prosecutors announced they were launching a preliminary probe into a litany of atrocities in the troubled central African nation. A wave of unrest, targeted assassinations and alleged torture has left hundreds dead and forced more than 270,000 to flee the country since last April, and some analysts warn Burundi may be on the brink of a new civil war. General Athanase Kararuza, a security advisor to one of Burundi's vice presidents, was killed along with his wife in a gun and grenade attack as they were dropping their daughter off at school in the capital Bujumbura. A Burundian policeman guards the scene of the shooting in Bujumbura, on April 25, 2016 Onesphore Nigigira (AFP) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon led international condemnation, saying: "All such acts of violence serve no purpose other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi." A family source said Kararuza's daughter was seriously injured but her life was not in danger, contradicting a Burundian security source that earlier said she too had died. Kararuza was a former commander of the African Union-led peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic. It was not clear who carried out the assassination. "Those who killed my colleague General Kararuza and (carried out) other similar attacks are trying to sow divisions in the army and the police," presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe wrote on Twitter. On Sunday a police colonel, also a Tutsi, was seriously wounded in an attack, while Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife had a close escape from a grenade assault as they left church. - ICC probe - The latest spasm of violence in a country with a troubled ethnic history was triggered when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided last year to run for a third term in office. His move sparked weeks of street protests and a failed coup, but he went on to win an election in July that was slammed as anti-constitutional by civil society and the opposition. Shortly after Monday's killing, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court announced she was launching a preliminary probe into the crisis. Fatou Bensouda said she had warned that "those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable". Her office had reviewed reports "detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances". "All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said. The initial probe is aimed at determining whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a full-blown investigation, which could result in charges against any alleged leaders of the violence. The European Union described Mkapa's announcement as a "step in the right direction". Former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa said he wanted to relaunch moribund peace talks in May. - 'Civil war has begun' - The international community -- still traumatised by the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people died, mostly Tutsis -- has grown increasingly alarmed by the unrest in Burundi. There have been calls to avert a possible genocide and a repeat of its 1993-2006 civil war, which left some 30,000 people dead. The EU has even suspended its aid to Burundi's government, a vital lifeline for a country the IMF deems the world's poorest with a per capita annual income of just $315.2. The opposition, as well as civil groups and some of Nkurunziza's own supporters, accuse him of violating the constitution and the Arusha peace deal that ended the civil war. While Tutsis are the most vocal critics of the president's power grab, the current crisis is above all political in origin, with the anti-Nkurunziza front cutting across ethnic lines. Over the past year, numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility. Robert Besseling of intelligence firm Exx Africa warned Burundi was already sinking into a new civil war. "Rival sides in the conflict have become entrenched and violence has become more brutal," he said. "In fact, in many ways, a civil war has already begun given the ethnic tinge to the most recent violence, especially in the countryside." Burundian security officers secure the scene of a grenade attack that killed Tutsi General Athanase Kararuza in Bujumbura, on April 25, 2016 Onesphore Nibigira (AFP/File) The attack took place in the Ghosha neighbourhood of the capital Bujumbura Burundi General Athanase Kararuza led the African Union-led mission to the Central African Republic in 2014 Italy says NATO three months from Libya naval mission NATO is three months from launching a naval mission off Libya under a controversial plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe and begin mass repatriations, Italy said Monday. The advanced state of preparations was revealed by Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti as leaders of the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy prepared to meet in Hanover, Germany for talks expected to touch on the migrant crisis and instability and Islamist infiltration into Libya. Modelled on an existing NATO operation in waters between Turkey and Greece, the Libya mission is set to be approved by alliance leaders at a Warsaw summit on July 7, Pinotti said in an interview with Italian daily La Stampa. Migrants pictured after being rescued off the coast of Sicily by the Italian Navy on April 11, 2016 The plan forms part of a broader Italian strategy to stop migrants using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe by flying those with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. The plans have been slammed by rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what he sees as its arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. More than 350,000 migrants from all over the world have reached Italy on boats from Libya since the start of 2014. Aid organisations say over half the arrivals have a clear right to refuge in Europe from persecution or conflict and many more have asylum claims worthy of proper consideration. The boat people arriving this year have however been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa -- a region the European Union considers generally safe for people to be returned to. "At the NATO level we have asked for Operation Active Endeavour to be recalibrated from an anti-terrorist operation in the Eastern Mediterranean to one which oversees the Libyan coast," Pinotti said, adding that the idea had been positively received. Asked if she expected a green light at the Warsaw summit, Pinotti replied: "Yes, certainly for the coordination of missions in the Mediterranean. At this summit the proposal should become an effective decision." - Appalling conditions - NATO's operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey is the first of its kind for the alliance. An operation off Libya would be more complicated given the country's instability and the presence in some coastal regions of militants allied to the Islamic State group. The NATO presence could act as a deterrent to traffickers putting to sea with their human cargoes. But it is thought unlikely they would seek to turn boats back on the model Australia has adopted in recent years. "It is worth remembering that Libya is not party to the Geneva convention and that conditions in its detention centres are appalling," said Libya expert Mattia Toaldo. "I don't think NATO will turn boats back but I do think Italy will start flying people home direct from Sicily." Pinotti said she would be seeking support for this "difficult" option at the Hanover talks involving US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Europe's four biggest powers. "This is the road to follow, combined with respect for human rights and support for countries of origin to handle the repatriated," she said. Any repatriations depend on readmission agreements being concluded with individual countries -- something African leaders showed little enthusiasm for at a summit with their EU counterparts in Malta last year. Libya's fledgling national unity government last week offered to enter into a Turkey-style deal with Italy to take back migrants, but such an accord is seen as a distant prospect because of the rights and safety issues. Italy is preparing to lead a UN-backed peacekeeping force into Libya, if and when the new government is deemed to have obtained sufficient authority to ask for international help in stabilising the country. Pinotti said Italy and several allies were prepared to guarantee the security of the force, expected to be around 6,000 strong. War crimes court opens preliminary probe into Burundi crisis The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said Monday she was opening a preliminary probe into violence in Burundi, which has been engulfed in a deep political crisis for a year. ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she had been following events closely since April 2015 when the central African country was thrown into turmoil by President Pierre Nkurunziza's announcement that he would run for a third term. She said she had "repeatedly called upon all involved to refrain from violence, warning that those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable". Burundi has been plagued by violent street protests and regular killings during a year of political crisis Landry Nshimiye (AFP/File) Her office had reviewed reports "detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances," she said in a statement. "All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said, referring to the tribunal based in The Hague and set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes. "I have decided therefore to open a preliminary examination into the situation in Burundi since April 2015." The initial probe is aimed at determining whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a full-blown investigation by ICC prosecutors which could result in drawing up charges against those believed to be responsible for the violence. Burundi will be the eighth preliminary probe under way at the ICC, while a full investigation has been opened into bloodshed in a further 10 countries. Nkurunziza won his third term as president in the July 2015 election with subsequent violence leaving hundreds of people dead, while hundreds of thousands have fled. ICC prosecutors believe in Burundi "more than 430 persons were reportedly killed, at least 3,400 people have been arrested and over 230,000 Burundians forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries," Bensouda said. The opposition, as well as civil groups and some of Nkurunziza's own supporters, accuse him of violating the constitution and the Arusha peace deal that ended Burundi's 1993-2006 civil war. - New civil war? - In a sign of the continuing violence, a Tutsi general and security advisor to the vice president was killed Monday in an attack by heavily-armed men in the capital Bujumbura, security sources said. General Athanase Kararuza was dropping his daughter off at school in the northeastern Ghosha district, the high-ranking security source said. Kararuza, his wife and daughter were killed in the attack. Kararuza, who had also served as deputy commander of an African Union-led peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic until late last year, had been recently named as advisor to Vice President Gaston Sindimwo, also a Tutsi. An estimated 300,00 people died in the civil war pitting the then Tutsi-dominated army against Hutu rebels. Under the Arusha peace deal, there must be strict parity between the two ethnic groups. But Robert Besseling of Exx Africa, a specialist intelligence company, warned that a year into the crisis, the country stood on the brink of a new civil war. "Rival sides in the conflict have become entrenched and violence has become more brutal," he said in a statement. "In fact, in many ways, a civil war has already begun given the ethnic tinge to the most recent violence, especially in the countryside." The country was thrown into turmoil by President Pierre Nkurunziza's announcement that he would run for a third term Francois Guillot (AFP/File) Protesters opposed to the Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza's third term in office gather by a burning barricade during a demonstration in Bujumbura in May 2015 Carl de Souza (AFP/File) Afghan leader demands anti-Taliban action from Pakistan Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Monday threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refuses to take action against the Taliban, in a new hardline stance after a brazen insurgent attack left 64 people dead. The assault last Tuesday on a security services office in the heart of Kabul appeared to be the deadliest on the Afghan capital since the Islamists were ousted from power in 2001. It cast a pall over international efforts in recent months to jumpstart Pakistan-brokered peace talks, which stalled last summer after the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani urged Pakistan to launch a military operation against the Taliban's "sanctuaries and leadership" Wakil Kohsar (AFP) "I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan parliament. "But we want Pakistan to fulfil its promises... and take military action against their sanctuaries and leadership based on its soil. If they can't target them they should hand them over to our judiciary. "If we do not see a change, despite our sincere efforts for regional cooperation, we will be forced to turn to the UN Security Council and start serious diplomatic efforts." Ghani's remarks reflect his frustration after he expended substantial political capital since coming to power in 2014 in courting Pakistan in the hope of pressuring the militants to the negotiating table. The Pakistani government recently admitted, after years of official denial, that the Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country. "Ghani is clearly running out of patience with Pakistan," Kabul-based analyst Mia Gul Waseeq told AFP. "His risky and ambitious diplomatic outreach to Pakistan has failed to yield results." Ghani vowed a tough military response against the insurgents and pledged to enforce legal punishments, including executions of convicted militants. "The time for amnesty is over," he said. "For the Taliban who are ready to end bloodshed, we have left the door open for talks. But the door will not be open forever." Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rebuffed Ghani's remarks, reiterating that the group would press on with their jihad until the "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan ends. The Taliban earlier this month announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan. The announcement came even after a four-country group comprising Afghanistan, the United States, China and Pakistan held meetings since January aimed at ending the drawn-out conflict. Last Tuesday's attack, which also left nearly 350 people wounded, was seen as the opening salvo in this year's Taliban offensive, widely expected to be the bloodiest in 15 years. Afghan security personnel inspect the site of a Taliban car bomb attack in Kabul on April 19, 2016 Shah Marai (AFP/File) Nepal marks quake anniversary with prayers and tears Nepal's prime minister joined Buddhist monks at a prayer ceremony Monday to mark the start of rebuilding of five ancient monuments destroyed in an earthquake that killed thousands and devastated the country's rich cultural heritage. The ceremony at the seventh-century Swayambhunath Temple complex came exactly a year after the quake struck, although the main commemorations for the dead were held Sunday, the anniversary by the Nepali calendar. One of the Buddhist temples at the spectacular hilltop complex, a UNESCO world heritage site, was completely destroyed by the 7.8-magnitude quake. Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli (C) attends a ceremony to lay a foundation stone to rebuild a temple destroyed in the earthquake a year ago, on April 25, 2016 in Kathmandu Prakash Mathema (AFP) Rebuilding work began Monday on that and four other monuments, including a temple in the historic town of Bhaktapur and two wooden pavilions once used for royal ceremonies that crumbled in the quake. "They are treasures given to us by our ancestors... it is our responsibility to hand them down to the next generation the way they were handed down to us," said Bhesh Narayan Dahal, director general of the government's Department of Archaeology. "We will begin reconstruction of other monuments as well, work has been slow but now it will pick up pace," Dahal told AFP. About 700 monuments require rebuilding or repair. Many are major tourist draws, including Swayambhunath, known as the "Monkey Temple" because of the animals occupying the steps leading up to it. While restoration work has begun on a handful of temples, including the fifth-century Changu Narayan complex, officials say it will be years before Nepal's rich architectural heritage can be fully restored. The rebuilding of houses has been even slower to start, and on Sunday protesters marched on government offices to demand faster reconstruction efforts. The Red Cross says four million victims are still living in flimsy shelters after the disaster, which killed nearly 9,000 people, including hundreds of Nepalis and tourists who died in a massive quake-triggered avalanche that destroyed the entire village of Langtang. - 'I felt heartbroken' - Dozens of foreign trekkers travelled to Langtang Monday for a memorial service and paid tearful tribute to victims, many of whose bodies were buried so deep under debris that they have never been recovered. Buddhist monks led the service that was attended by around 100 people, including villagers who have returned to Langtang to rebuild their lives. "Someone said I lost my mother, another said I lost my daughter or son or wife or father... Some people spoke, others couldn't speak because they were crying," said guesthouse owner Palsang Tamang, who also took part in the ceremony. Survivors unveiled a marble wall inscribed with the names of those killed, including Tamang's daughter. "I felt heartbroken, I lost my daughter and so many other family members. We prayed for them. We hope they all find peace and are in heaven," he told AFP. On Everest, mountaineering teams caught up in the tragedy observed a minute's silence at 11:56 am -- the time the earthquake hit -- in memory of their fallen colleagues. The mountain suffered its deadliest ever disaster when the quake triggered an avalanche that killed 18 people. "This was an opportunity to remember those who died, those who were injured and the many people who worked so hard to rescue and treat the 100 patients," Rachel Tullet, base camp manager for Jagged Globe, said in a blog post. Nepal has issued 289 permits to mountaineers for the brief spring climbing season, which lasts from mid-April to May, and many have begun to ascend the world's tallest peak. "Tourism has suffered after the quake, but we did not see much impact (on Everest)," said tourism chief Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal. A spokesman for Nepal's National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), which is overseeing rebuilding, told AFP that work would soon start on schools and hospitals across quake-hit districts. The disaster damaged about 8,000 schools and 1,200 health centres and Nepal's government has come under fire for doing little to rebuild classrooms or rural medical facilities that are a lifeline for remote communities in hilly regions. Rebuilding work has begun on the Swayambhunath Temple complex and four other monuments Prakash Mathema (AFP) Nepalese workers rebuild a teahouse in the Langtang valley where the quake triggered a massive avalanche that destroyed an entire village Prakash Mathema (AFP/File) Young Saudi prince holds power beyond his years Saudi Arabia's hard-charging Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman holds unusual power for a man of just 30, so much so that diplomats have nicknamed him "Mr Everything". The main public figure behind Monday's unveiling of a vast plan to restructure the kingdom's oil-dependent economy, the son of King Salman has risen to among Saudi Arabia's most influential figures since being named second-in-line to the throne last year. Prince Mohammed, seen as the standard-bearer for a new generation of Saudi royals, is in charge not only of the country's economic policy but also the military as defence minister. Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman answers questions during a press conference in Riyadh, on April 25, 2016 Fayez Nureldine (AFP) The prince has amassed "extraordinary power and influence very quickly" since his father took the throne last year after the death of King Abdullah, said Frederic Wehrey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "He's clearly very bright, very intelligent, very on top of all his briefs" and has significant influence on the 80-year-old monarch, one Western diplomat said. Among his most prominent positions is chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, set up last year to coordinate economic policy. Mohammed also chairs a body overseeing state oil giant Saudi Aramco. As defence minister, the prince supervised the kingdom's military intervention in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition 13 months ago launched air strikes against Iran-backed rebels in support of the embattled government. In a profile and interview released this month, Bloomberg Businessweek said the prince works 16-hour days and draws inspiration from the writings of Winston Churchill and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". It was the latest interview in which the prince has spoken at length about economic plans for the kingdom, where officials are traditionally tight-lipped. - He is 'one of the citizens' - On Monday, he stood before journalists, many of them from overseas, and seemed relaxed as he politely answered questions for about 50 minutes. Wearing typical Saudi attire -- sandals, a crisp white thobe and headdress -- he leaned on a white podium and sometimes rubbed his eyes, replying in Arabic to questions posed in English. A law graduate from Riyadh's King Saud University, the dark-bearded prince with a receding hairline is the father of two boys and two girls and -- unlike other members of the royal family -- has only married once. He told Bloomberg that although Islam allows for multiple marriages, modern life does not leave the time. Mohammed spent years working for his father when he was governor of Riyadh and from 2013 after Salman was named crown prince. "He has a reputation for being aggressive and ambitious," Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who directs the Brookings Intelligence Project in Washington, has said. Observers last year pointed to an emerging power struggle between Prince Mohammed and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 56, the interior minister and first-in-line to the throne. At his Monday press conference, a comment that "the name of Mohammed bin Salman will be remembered in the future" prompted a self-effacing response from the deputy crown prince. "I am one of the Saudi citizens," he said, "and also the Saudi citizens will be remembered in the future." India cancels visa for Chinese Uighur activist India has cancelled a visa it gave to an exiled Uighur dissident, an official said Monday, after China protested and described him as a "terrorist" wanted by Interpol. Dolkun Isa, a Germany-based activist from China's Xinjiang region, was due to attend a conference on democracy next week in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile and home of the Dalai Lama. "His (Isa's) visa has been cancelled, that is all we can confirm at this point," home ministry spokesman K.S. Dhatwalia told AFP without giving a reason for the move. Dolkun Isa is an exiled Uighur activist now a German citizen living in exile in Munich Last week India had granted Isa a tourist visa, reportedly in retaliation for China blocking its request to add Masood Azhar, head of the Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, to a United Nations' sanctions blacklist. Beijing reacted angrily to New Delhi's move, describing Isa as a wanted "terrorist". "Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said last week. Xinjiang is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, many of whom say they face cultural and religious repression, and the area is regularly hit by violence which Beijing blames on Islamist separatists. Isa, now a German citizen and chairman of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress that represents the rights of Chinese Uighurs around the globe, said he was disappointed by India's latest decision. "I express my disappointment on Indian authorities' cancellation of my visa," he said in a statement on the group's website. "I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regrets that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy." Prime Minister Narendra Modi's political opponents criticised the apparent flip-flop, with many accusing his government of buckling under Chinese pressure. UN warns funding crunch threatens aid to S.Sudan refugees UN agencies warned on Monday that an acute funding shortfall is hampering their work in assisting thousands of South Sudanese refugees who have fled to neighbouring Sudan. South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011, but two years later it descended into a brutal civil war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. More than 50,000 South Sudanese have fled into Sudan since January to escape the violence and food shortages across the border. South Sudanese refugees cook food at a camp run by the Sudanese Red Crescent in the western part of Sudan's White Nile state on January 27, 2014 Ashraf Shazly (AFP/File) The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Children's Fund and the World Food Programme said they were facing a shortfall of more than $400 million which was affecting their work. "Our resources are being stretched at a time when needs are quickly growing," the UNHCR's Sudan representative, Mohamed Adar, said in a joint statement with UNICEF and the WFP. "Further shortfalls in funding will hamper our ability to continue providing assistance for the existing South Sudanese refugees in Sudan, while also responding to the emergency needs of new arrivals." The UNHCR said its humanitarian requirements for 2016 were only 18 percent funded, "leaving over $128 million in unmet needs". UNICEF and WFP said limited resources were hampering refugees' access to even basic needs. "UNICEF is gravely concerned it may have to cut back on crucial lifesaving water, sanitation, nutrition, health and protection assistance" to more than 100,000 children from South Sudan, UNICEF said, adding it was facing a shortfall of $105 million. The WFP, for its part, said it was facing a 12-month funding shortfall of $181 million. In total, 678,000 South Sudanese refugees are currently being hosted in neighbouring countries with 221,000 in Sudan, the UN agencies said. - Thousands more expected - More refugees are expected to arrive ahead of the rainy season in South Sudan, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a separate statement. "A total of 93,000 South Sudanese refugees are anticipated in East Darfur by the end of June, with an additional 7,000 in South Darfur," it said. Until recently, the Sudanese government did not give them the status of refugees, instead according them many of the same rights and benefits as Sudanese citizens. But Khartoum ended that policy last month and said South Sudanese should be classified as "foreigners" as punishment for Juba's alleged support for rebels battling Sudanese troops in the border region. One of the world's least developed nations, South Sudan erupted into conflict in December 2013, pitting President Salva Kiir against his former deputy Riek Machar. The conflict has been marked by gross human rights abuses, including ethnic massacres and widespread rape. At least 50,000 people have been killed, 2.4 million have been forced from their homes and 2.8 million need emergency food to survive. Under an August peace deal, Machar had been due to return to Juba on April 18 to forge a unity government with Kiir. But to the dismay of international donors, he had yet to return on Monday and fighting was still continuing in some areas. Bangladesh says IS group not behind professor's murder Bangladesh on Monday rejected the Islamic State group's assertion it was behind the murder of a liberal professor and said "local militants" were responsible. Rezaul Karim Siddique was killed on Saturday by attackers wielding machetes, the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and liberal activists that has left the country reeling. The IS group claimed responsibility for the attack through its news agency, saying the 58-year-old professor who wrote poetry and fiction had been murdered for "calling to atheism". A man holds a portrait of Bangladeshi professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, who was hacked to death by unidentified attackers in Rajshahi on April 23, 2016 Md. Abdullah Iqbal (AFP) "Local militants are committing the murders using name of the IS," said Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan in response. He also rejected claims of worsening law and order in the mainly Sunni Muslim country, which has suffered a recent spate of murders of minorities and foreigners as well as of bloggers and activists. "Murders are happening everywhere in the world," Khan told reporters. "The law and order situation in Bangladesh is better than many developed countries," he added, calling the murders "isolated incidents". The IS has in recent months claimed responsibility for the killing of Christians, Hindu priests and members of the minority Sufi, Ahmadi and Shiite faiths in Bangladesh. The local branch of Al-Qaeda has also claimed the murders of secular bloggers and activists, including the killing this month of a 26-year-old atheist law student who had mocked Islam on his Facebook page. Bangladesh police, however, said they suspect banned local Islamist outfits, the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Ansarullah Bangla Team, of being behind the killings. "We have already identified some suspects involved in previous killings and incidences of attacks," Khan told reporters. On Sunday police arrested a student from Rajshahi University where Siddique taught, although the hunt was still on for other suspects. Police said the unidentified student of public administration was a member of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Bangladesh's largest Islamist opposition party Jamaat-e-Islami. Pressure mounts on Bangladesh after gay activists murdered Pressure mounted on Bangladesh Tuesday after two leading gay rights activists were hacked to death, the latest in a series of chilling attacks on intellectuals, writers and religious minorities for which only a handful of people have been convicted. At least six men carrying machetes and guns entered an apartment building in Dhaka on Monday night and killed Xulhaz Mannan, editor of a magazine for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, and fellow activist Mahbub Tonoy. Rights groups said the latest killings and the murder on Saturday of a liberal university professor appeared to show the attackers were expanding their range of targets. They demanded justice and greater protection for minority groups in the conservative Muslim-majority nation. Relatives and friends attend funeral prayers for Bangladeshi activist Xulhaz Mannan in Dhaka on April 26, 2016 Rehman Asad (AFP) "The brutal killing today of an editor of an LGBTI publication and his friend, days after a university professor was hacked to death, underscores the appalling lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country," said Amnesty International's South Asia director Champa Patel. LGBTI is an extended initialism for the group, including people who are intersex. "While the Bangladeshi authorities have failed to bring these violent groups to justice, the attackers have expanded their range of targets to now include a university professor and LGBTI activists." Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the murders, saying the two men had worked to "promote homosexuality" in Bangladesh. "They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land since 1998 with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies," said the group's Bangladesh arm Ansar al-Islam in a statement issued on Twitter. However national police chief A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque told reporters the killing of Mannan, 35, and 25-year-old Tonoy bore the hallmarks of local Islamists. "The character of the murders is similar to the previous blogger killings. Therefore, it might have been done by the same group," Hoque said. The attack had been "planned extensively" and the victims were followed for days, he added. US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the killings of Tonoy and Mannan, who worked for the US government aid organisation USAID. Both had received threats from Islamists over their championing of gay rights. "Deplore brutal murder of @USAID local staff member and another Bangladeshi advocate in Dhaka. Those responsible must be brought to justice," Kerry tweeted. - Creating fear and hatred - In the last month alone, four people have been murdered in Bangladesh for their liberal or secular views, among them a 26-year-old online activist known for his anti-Islamist opinions. Last year four secular bloggers and a publisher were hacked to death. A number of Christians, Hindus and Sufi, Ahmadi and Shiite Muslims have also been killed since last year in the officially secular but mainly Sunni Muslim country. No one has yet been convicted over those deaths despite a number of arrests. Last year a court sentenced two students to death for the 2013 murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider, the first of a string of attacks targeting secular writers. Another six people were convicted on lesser charges related to Haider's death. The Islamic State group has claimed a number of the killings, most recently that of a professor hacked to death in the northwestern city of Rajshahi. Ansar al-Islam has also said it was behind the murders of secular bloggers and writers. But the Bangladeshi government rejects those claims. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday blamed the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist ally, Jamaat-e-Islami for the deaths of the two gay activists and accused the groups of trying to destabilise the country. "The BNP-Jamaat nexus has been engaged in such secret and heinous murders in various forms to destabilise the country," Hasina said. "Such killings are being staged in a planned way." Bangladeshi media criticised the government's claims, saying it had a duty to protect minorities whoever was behind the attacks. "It doesn't matter whether they are from transnational terrorist groups like IS as they have claimed, or part of locally based militant networks, as the government argues," said the Dhaka Tribune daily in an editorial. Activist Mannan's magazine, Roopbaan, was launched two years ago and has become a platform for promoting the rights of LGBT people in Bangladesh, where homosexual acts are illegal. The group's annual Rainbow Rally held on April 14, Bengali new year, was cancelled this year as part of widespread security measures imposed by police. Ahead of the planned rally, Mannan told AFP that Islamists had posted death threats online. The bodies of two gay rights activists who were hacked to death are brought down from an apartment in Dhaka, on April 25, 2016 Rehman Asad (AFP) Bangladeshi journalists and onlookers gather outside the apartment in Dhaka where the latest killings took place, April 25, 2016 Munir Uz Zaman (AFP) Bangladeshi professor Rezaul Karim Siddique was hacked to death in in the northwestern city of Rajshahi Md. Abdullah Iqbal (AFP) Thousands of Jews throng Jerusalem 'priestly blessing' Thousands of Jewish worshippers attended a prayer ceremony at Jerusalem's Western Wall on Monday as Israel marked the week-long Passover festival amid increased surveillance over tensions with Palestinians. The Wall's administrators said 50,000 people crammed into the vast square in front of the wall to be blessed simultaneously by hundreds of men believed to be descendants of the ancient Jewish priestly caste the Cohanim, who wore prayer shawls draped across their heads and shoulders. "May God bless and protect you, may God shine His face upon you and be gracious on you, may God turn his face onto you and give you peace," they chanted. Jewish men draped in prayer shawls take part in the Cohanim prayer (priestly blessing) at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on April 25, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP) The blessing is said in individual congregations around the world during every morning prayer, but Passover in Israel gives the faithful the chance to visit the Western Wall for a mass blessing rite. Israeli security forces were heavily deployed in and around the Old City. The wall is located below the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the city occupied and later annexed by Israel. The compound is the third holiest place in Islam. Jews also revere the site as Temple Mount, the site of two ancient Jewish temples, the first of which the bible says was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and the second razed by the Romans in 70 AD. Jews are allowed to enter the mosque compound but not to pray there. They are permitted to worship at the Western Wall -- the last remnant of the second temple. Israeli authorities fear that the festivities which traditionally accompany Passover, which began on Friday, could fuel long-simmering tensions at the Al-Aqsa compound. Two Jews were expelled from the compound on Monday after "breaking the rules of the site", Israeli police said. Thirteen Jews were expelled for similar reasons on Sunday, police said. The Jordanian government on Sunday warned of serious consequences if Israeli "settlers" were allowed to visit the site. In a statement, a Jordanian government spokesman demanded "Israeli occupation authorities immediately stop such moves, deny entry to settlers and Israeli forces into the yards of the holy shrine and allow Palestinian worshippers to enter the mosque". Jordan is the guardian of the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, although Israel controls access. Israel accused Amman of misleading the public about its intentions. "There is no place for such a statement. Israel is acting responsibly and Jordan knows this," an official said. The compound is a major issue between Israel and Jordan, one of only two Arab countries with which Israel has signed a peace agreement. Jewish men take part in the Cohanim prayer (priestly blessing) at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on April 25, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP) Jewish men, draped in prayer shawls, lift the Torah as they take part in the Cohanim prayer (priest's blessing) at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem on April 25, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP) US approves billion-dollar arms deal with Australia The United States government on Monday approved a deal for US firms to sell its close ally Australia $1.22 billion in air-to-air missiles and support equipment. The main contractor for the major shipment will be Arizona-based arms giant Raytheon, which produces the AIM-120D medium-range missile. Up to 450 of the weapons will arm the Royal Australian Air Force's FA-18 Hornet and F-35 Lightning fighters and the EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jet. A Royal Australian Air Force FA-18 Hornet performs during the Australian International Airshow at the Avalon Airfield near Lara southwest of Melbourne on February 27, 2015 Paul Crock (AFP/File) This will give the "RAAF additional air-to-air intercept capability and increase interoperability with the US Air Force," the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said. IS suicide bomber hits Baghdad shops, killing seven A suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group ripped through shops in eastern Baghdad on Monday, killing at least seven people, Iraqi security and medical officials said. The blast in the Shiite majority area of Baghdad Jadida also wounded at least 32 people, started fires in some shops and scattered debris across the street. White smoke poured from a series of shops that sold perfume, and the partially burned remains of a car sat in the street nearby. Security forces and emergency personnel gather at the site of a suicide bombing in the Baghdad Jadida area of the Iraqi capital on April 25, 2016 Haidar Mohammed Ali (AFP) The Islamic State issued a statement claiming the attack. IS frequently carries out suicide bombings in Iraq, both as part of military operations and targeting civilians. The jihadist group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, although Iraqi forces have since regained significant ground from IS. US backs NATO blockade of Libya to close migrant route The United States on Monday offered its backing for a NATO naval operation off Libya in support of a controversial Italian plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe. "Barack Obama said he was willing to commit NATO assets to block the traffic in human beings and the people smugglers that we refer to as modern slavers," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told reporters after meeting the US president and the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in the German city of Hanover. The talks touched on the migrant crisis as well as instability and Islamist infiltration in Libya, a departure point for 350,000 people who have set sail to Italy since the start of 2014. Italian navy personnel and rescued migrants ride in a boat after a resuce operation off the Libyan coast, in the Mediterranean Sea on January 27, 2016 Handout (MARINA MILITARE/AFP/File) Italian defence minister Roberta Pinotti had earlier revealed that preparations for a naval blockade are already advanced, with approval expected when NATO leaders meet on July 7 in Warsaw. US officials confirmed that Washington is fully on board. The White House said Obama and the other leaders want to learn from efforts to shut down Europe's other major migrant conduit -- the route from Turkey to Greece -- to plan the operation. NATO already has an operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey. The influx to Greece has also sharply dropped since March 20, when a deal between Turkey and the EU came into force that will see migrants sent back -- but the agreement has come under heavy criticism on human rights grounds. The leaders "urged NATO and the EU to draw on their experience in the Aegean to explore how they could work together to address in an orderly and humane way migrant flows in the central Mediterranean", the White House said. - Germany seeks EU command - The naval action envisaged is part of a broader Italian strategy to stop people using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe. This will involve flying migrants with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. Those plans have been slammed by refugee and rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what the Catholic leader sees as an arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. Germany has said it supports naval action to combat trafficking of weapons as well as people, but wants it under EU rather than NATO command. "The USA is fully engaged and ready, in connection with the migration route from Libya to Italy, to share responsibility if necessary," Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Hanover. "However, we now have a European mission, EUNAVFOR, also called Sophia, which is working quite well." Aid organisations say over half the boat people arriving in Italy have a clear-cut right to refuge from persecution or conflict and many more deserve proper examination of their asylum applications. But this year's influx has been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa, a region the EU considers safe for people's return. - 'Appalling conditions' - Under Italy's proposals, an existing NATO mission, Operation Active Endeavour, would be "recalibrated" into one overseeing the Libyan coast. Any operation would be complicated given the presence of Islamic State fighters in some coastal regions of Libya, but the NATO presence could deter traffickers from putting their human cargoes to sea. It is unlikely, however, that the operation would seek to turn boats back on the model Australia has adopted in recent years. "It is worth remembering that Libya is not party to the Geneva convention and that conditions in its detention centres are appalling," said Libya expert Mattia Toaldo. "I don't think NATO will turn boats back but I do think Italy will start flying people home direct from Sicily." Any repatriations depend on readmission agreements being concluded with individual countries. African leaders showed little enthusiasm for that at a summit with their EU counterparts in Malta last year but Brussels' vast aid budget means it has plenty of leverage if needed. Libya's new national unity government last week offered to sign up to a Turkey-style deal with Italy to take back migrants. Such an accord had been seen as unlikely because of rights and safety concerns, but Renzi said Monday he did not see why it could not happen. Italy is preparing to lead a UN-backed peacekeeping force into Libya if the unity government consolidates power sufficiently to be able to ask for outside help without facing a domestic rebellion. Migrants and refugees: the routes to Europe Kun TIAN, Thomas SAINT-CRICQ (AFP) Libyan coastguard escorts tens of illegal migrant after their boat started to sink of the coastal town of Garabulli, east of Tripoli, on July 17, 2014 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File) TTIP trade deal: what you need to know It would be the world's biggest ever trade deal, linking the United States and European Union, two giant economies which are home to 850 million people. Despite its vaunted economic benefits, however, many people on each side of the Atlantic are either deeply suspicious or flat-out opposed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Three key questions: Protesters wearing masks of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama pose during a rally against the TTIP transatlantic trade deal on the eve of Obama's vist to Hanover on April 23, 2016 John MacDougall (AFP/File) - What are the benefits? - The pact, negotiated largely behind closed doors since 2013 with many of its details still undisclosed, aims to topple regulatory and tariff barriers to trade and investment between the United States and Europe. If the two sides reach an ambitious and comprehensive deal, it could give an economic boost of 120 billion euros ($135 billion) to the EU and 95 billion euros to the United States by 2027, according to a 2013 study by London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. "To be clear, this does not mean that the result of the agreement will be just a single, one-off GDP bonus of 214 billion euros in 2027. The gains it predicts are much greater because they in fact represent a permanent increase in the amount of wealth that the European and American economies can produce every year, as a result of the more open markets and more aligned regulatory systems agreed under the TTIP," it said. A European family of four would see its annual disposable income increase by an average of 545 euros a year as a result of the deal, says the study, funded by the European Commission. - What are the concerns? - Critics say it would amount to a giveaway to big corporations, coming at the expense of jobs, consumers and the environment. Even in export powerhouse Germany, which counts the United States as its biggest trade partner, there is suspicion about the deal with tens of thousands of people demonstrating in Hanover at the weekend to voice their opposition. Only one in five Germans thinks the pact would be a good thing, and one in three rejects it completely, according to a survey published this month by German foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung. In the United States, by contrast, only 18 percent of respondents were opposed, it said. People are worried about possible lowering of product standards, consumer protection and the labour market, the foundation said. Other opponents cite a threat to the protection of geographic indications, such as champagne. One source of concern is a provision for settling rows between companies and countries -- so-called investor state dispute settlement (ISDS). The European Union says it would allow a company to sue a state for compensation if, for example, a new law discriminates against foreign firms. But an alliance of opponents, Stop TTIP, argues that it would let investors sue for any action that damages their profit expectations. "ISDS can be used to undermine environmental standards, to prevent regulation or to pocket taxpayers money," says Stop TTIP spokesman Karl Baer. - Why the rush? - After meeting with German Chancellor Merkel in Hanover on Sunday, US President Barack Obama said a deal is possible by the end of this year, although ratification will likely take longer. If talks drag on into 2017, "political transitions" in the United States and Europe could delay it for much longer, warned Obama, who leaves office in January next year. In the United States, leading Democrat and Republican contenders for the White House have criticised aspects of the deal in the run-up to November elections. There is similar opposition among many in Europe, where both Germany and France hold elections in 2017. Opponents of a proposed transatlantic trade deal (TTIP) hold inflatable letters reading 'Stop TTIP' during a protest rally on the eve of US President Barack Obama's visit to Hanover, Germany on April 23, 2016 John MacDougall (AFP/File) French mayor seeks to block Saudi-funded mosque The mayor of Nice secured a green light Monday to sue the French state in a bid to block the opening of a Saudi-funded mosque in the southern city. He has accused the building's owner, Saudi Arabia's Islamic Affairs Minister Sheikh Saleh bin Abdulaziz, of "advocating sharia" and wanting to "destroy all of the churches on the Arabian peninsula". "Our intelligence services are worried about this place of worship," said the mayor, who represents France's centre-right The Republicans party, warning against "unregulated foreign funding". The En-nour Institute mosque in Nice, southeastern France, pictured on April 25, 2016 after its construction was completed in November Valery Hache (AFP) Estrosi received approval Monday from the council in the south coast city to take the central government's regional representative -- Prefect Adolphe Colrat -- to court over the issue. Estrosi, mayor since 2008, said that the project which was initiated under his predecessor in 2002 was unauthorised. Colrat recently gave conditional approval for the Nicois En-nour Institute mosque to open after construction, which began in July 2012, was completed in November. He said that the mosque should not be subject to any foreign influence and called for it to be a beacon of Muslim worship in Nice and the region. Opposition councillor Patrick Allemand accused Estrosi of "feeding populism". "It is a stigmatising approach, you point the finger at a whole community," he said. Tear gas, arrests as Egypt protesters defy ban Egyptian police fired tear gas at protesters in Cairo who defied government warnings and held a rally Monday calling for the "downfall" of the regime, quickly scattering them and making arrests. A coalition of leftist and liberal groups had called for the protest, ostensibly against the handing over of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. But in a country where most protests are banned, the gesture was aimed more at defying what activists call the heavy-handed rule of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Egyptian riot police fire tear gas towards protestors as they demonstrate on April 25, 2016 in Cairo Mohamed El-Shahed (AFP) In the lead-up to the protest, police arrested dozens of activists over the past week, in some cases raiding their homes. By Monday morning, police had closed off a street leading to the Journalists' Syndicate, where the protesters had announced they would gather, and deployed in force in central Cairo. Instead about 50 activists, including leading leftist dissidents, gathered suddenly at a square in central Cairo chanting against the government. "The level of (government) panic shows that they don't feel secure. And they believe the only option is repression," said Leila Seif, a prominent dissident whose activist son Alaa Abdel Fattah is jailed. Shortly after she spoke, an armoured police van careered into the square, and an officer fired tear gas after a few protesters hurled rocks at them. The protesters scattered into side streets. Police chased down people and arrested them, filling three vans with detainees, including several journalists. Sisi and his interior minister had warned on the eve of the planned demonstrations that security forces would deal firmly with protesters. Sisi, a former military chief, had said on Sunday: "Our responsibility is to protect security and stability." His Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar warned that "the security services... will confront with extreme rigour any attempt to disturb public order". Sisi was adulated by millions of Egyptians who opposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, whom the army overthrew in 2013. Morsi's overthrow unleashed a brutal crackdown on Islamists that killed hundreds of protesters and an Islamist militant insurgency that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers. The crackdown has extended to liberal and leftists activists, who hoped the handover of the Straits of Tiran islands to Riyadh earlier this month could help ignite protests against Sisi. - Growing discontent - Several dissidents who had led the 2011 uprising against veteran president Hosni Mubarak are now in jail. "There is diminishing support for him (Sisi) from many sectors that supported him for many reasons, ending in the sale of the islands," said Gamal Eid, a rights lawyer, in a phone interview. After years of unrest that has decimated the economy, many Egyptians say the country needs a firm hand and they have little patience with protesters they consider troublemakers. But there have been signs of growing discontent, which has apparently unnerved the government, said H.A Hellyer, a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "The Egyptian state indicated a fear of widespread disruption today that did not pass, partly due to the crackdown authorities in Cairo engaged in," he said. "But none of that has ended the current of dissension against authorities," he added. At least 19 civilians dead in rebel shelling of Aleppo: monitor At least 19 civilians were killed and 120 wounded in rebel bombardment of Syrian government-held districts of the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, a monitoring group said. "Shells fired... by rebel groups at districts under regime control left 19 dead, including three children, and 120 wounded," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head, Rami Abdel Rahman. The official SANA news agency reported 16 dead and 86 wounded by "fire from the terrorist groups Al-Nusra Front (Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda) and its allies" on at least five residential districts. Smoke is seeing rising on a main road in the Salihin neighbourhood of Syria's northern city of Aleppo following a reported air strike on April 24, 2016 Karam al-Masri (AFP/File) The Observatory also reported four people including a child killed by regime fire into rebel-held neighbourhoods of the city. Since Friday, at least 86 civilians have been killed in the divided city in artillery, rocket and air strikes. Several districts of the city, once Syria's commercial hub, have also seen sporadic fighting between government forces and rebel groups. Rebel-held neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo have had their water and electricity supplies cut by bombardment, an AFP journalist said. Head of foreigner dumped in southern Philippines: police The head of a foreign man was dumped on a remote southern Philippine island on Monday, authorities said, hours after a ransom deadline passed for two Canadians and a Norwegian held hostage by Islamic militants. Police said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of Manila that is one of the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf militant group. "We found a head in a plastic bag," provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP. Police said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of Manila that is one of the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf militant group Jez Anzar (AFP/File) He said the head belonged to a caucasian man, but emphasised it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details. Canadian tourists John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Jolo. Six weeks after the abduction, Abu Sayyaf gunmen released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting demanding one billion pesos ($21 million) each for the safe release of the three foreigners. The men were forced to beg on camera for their lives, and similar videos were posted over several months in which the hostages looked increasingly frail. In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree aged in his late 60s, said he would be killed on April 25 if a ransom of 300 million pesos was not paid. The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organisation that operates from Jolo and nearby islands. It is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s. The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State jihadists that is causing carnage in the Middle East and has carried out deadly attacks in Europe. Canadian executed by Islamic militants in Philippines: Trudeau Islamic militants in the Philippines have executed a Canadian hostage, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday, after the Filipino authorities said they had found the head of a foreign man on a remote island. "I'm outraged by the news that a Canadian citizen, John Ridsdel, held hostage in the Philippines since September 21, 2015, has been killed at the hands of his captors," Trudeau said. "This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage." This photo released by Eastern Mindanao Command on September 22, 2015 shows Canadian tourists John Ridsdel, who was kidnapped by gunmen on September 21 on Samal island Ridsdel, fellow Canadian tourist Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Filipina Marites Flor, and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) from Jolo. Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen from the Abu Sayyaf militant group released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners. The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail. In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s, said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of $6.4 million were not paid. Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island around 1,000 kilometers south of Manila that is one of the Abu Sayyaf group's main strongholds. "We found a head in a plastic bag," provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP. He said the head belonged to a white man, but emphasized it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details. Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute Ridsdel's killers, and that efforts were underway to obtain the release of the other hostages. Canadian opposition parties also expressed outrage over the killing. Ridsdel was a friend of Bob Rae, who preceded Trudeau as leader of Canada's Liberal party. The former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine prior to retiring. - 'New Somalia' - The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird-watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organization that operates from Jolo and nearby islands. It is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s. It is blamed for the nation's worst terror attacks, including the bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that killed more than 100 people, as well as the kidnappings of dozens of foreigners in the southern Philippines and across to Malaysian Borneo. The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State group causing carnage in the Middle East and have carried out deadly attacks in Europe. However, analysts say the Abu Sayyaf is mainly focused on lucrative kidnappings for ransom, rather than waging an ideological war or creating a violent Islamic caliphate. The United States deployed special forces advisers to provide training and intelligence to Filipino troops from 2002 to 2014, which led to the killing or arrest of many Abu Sayyaf leaders. After the US forces pulled out, however, the Abu Sayyaf launched a series of increasingly bold kidnapping raids, as well as deadly battles with Filipino troops that show it remains a major threat in the south. The recent kidnapping spree prompted Indonesian Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan to warn the region was in danger of becoming a "new Somalia," referring to pirates operating from the African country who have bedevilled international shipping in nearby waters. A Philippine soldier picks up the headband of a militant, adorned with the logo used by the Islamic State group, during an operation in Butig Town, on March 1, 2016 Mark Navales (AFP/File) Ghana, Togo boost security after attack warning Security has been beefed up in Accra and Lome following a leaked intelligence report that indicated Islamist militants were likely to launch their next attacks in Ghana and Togo. In Ghana's capital, there has been an increased visible police presence in public places such as malls and beaches, while officers in plain clothes are also patrolling. Upmarket hotels such as the five-star Kempinski, Moevenpick and La Palm Royal Beach have likewise introduced measures such as thorough searches of vehicles and extra security guards. In Ghana's capital, there has been an increased visible police presence in public places such as malls and beaches, while officers in plain clothes are also patrolling Chris Stein (AFP/File) Nearly 200 kilometres (125 miles) east in Lome, guests at places such as the Sarakawa hotel and the Ibis are subject to checks while the government has urged the use of surveillance cameras. The precautions have been put in place after a leaked report from Ghana's National Security Council Secretariat warned of a possible attack similar to those recently in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. The alert said Ghana and Togo were "the next targets" and called for greater vigilance at borders and screening for visitors from "high risk" countries. For the attack on the Grand-Bassam resort in Ivory Coast in March, heavily armed gunmen entered from Mali in a Niger-registered 4x4 and hid their weapons in the petrol tank. Nineteen people were killed. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility, as well for a similar strike in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou, in January that left 30 dead. - Cooperation - Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama on April 15 said no country in West Africa was immune from attack and called for the public to be alert. Police said "adequate measures" have since been put in place "to forestall any terrorist attacks or disturbances". "All the requisite operational strategies, including intelligence gathering and tactical deployment of personnel have been unfolded to nip any breach of the peace in the bud," it added. "In view of this, the police is seeking the co-operation of the general public in the fight against the scourge of terrorism and other violent crimes." As such, people in both countries are having to get used to more frequent vehicle checks, bag and body searches as well as identity checks. "Those in charge of private security guard companies should know we're working together," Togo's security minister Colonel Yark Damehame has said. "These are our orders," said one police officer at the main entrance of the Sarakawa hotel on Lome's waterfront. "We're searching all the vehicles that enter the hotel." - Climate of fear - Upmarket hotels and venues popular with Westerners and the wealthy have increasingly become targets for Islamist groups since the Mumbai attacks in November 2008. Then, 10 gunmen stormed three luxury hotels, a popular tourist restaurant, a Jewish cultural centre, and a railway station in India's commercial capital, killing 166 in a siege that lasted nearly three days. In 2013, Shebab fighters attacked the Westgate mall in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. At least 67 were killed. The Grand-Bassam attack was similar to one on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia, in June last year that killed 38; AQIM also killed 20 at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali. At the West Hills Mall in Accra, senior high school student Matilda Nimako said she was now apprehensive about coming to the venue. "I just want to quickly grab food here and leave," she told AFP. "If it wasn't for all this terror thing I would have eaten here. "Even my friend said I should wait for her but I won't wait here. I will cross over to the other side of the street to wait." Some businesses, too, say the climate of fear is affecting trade. "I think the news about the terror attacks is not helping us," said Kwame Anim, who runs a small cosmetics stall inside the Accra Mall. Anim said he had seen his takings plummet since the report. "People are just afraid to come to the mall," he said. An Ivorian soldier stands guard at the site of a jihadist shooting rampage on March 18, 2016 at the beach resort of Grand-Bassam Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama on April 15 said no country in West Africa was immune from attack and called for the public to be alert Alberto Pizzoli (AFP/File) Most senators urge Obama to boost defense aid to Israel A large majority of US senators on Monday urged President Barack Obama to expand defense-related aid to Israel by signing a "robust" commitment to help Washington's Mideast ally combat mounting security challenges. Eighty-three of the chamber's 100 members signed the letter to the president highlighting the need to negotiate an enhanced memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Jewish state. "In light of Israel's dramatically rising defense challenges, we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge," wrote the 51 Republicans and 32 Democrats. A large majority of US senators urged President Barack Obama to expand defense-related aid to Israel by signing a "robust" commitment to help Washington's Mideast ally combat mounting security challenges Brendan Smialowski (AFP/File) "Unfortunately, Israel faces a variety of threats which require increasing the resources devoted to its defense," they wrote, citing extremist group Hezbollah positioning up to 150,000 rockets and missiles to Israel's north and how the Sinai has become a "lawless haven" for militant Islamist groups. Washington is seeking to hammer out a new 10-year defense aid package for Israel. The current MOU expires in 2018. "We urge you to conclude an agreement with Israel for a robust new MOU that increases aid," senators said in the letter, led by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons. Senator Ted Cruz, currently battling with billionaire Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, has signed on, but independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who is challenging Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race, has not. The United States currently provides some $3.1 billion in annual military aid to Israel, based on the pact signed in 2007 by Obama's White House predecessor George W. Bush. The new deal would allow Israel to maintain a technological advantage over its Arab neighbors in the midst of mounting regional instability. "Given the extraordinary levels of weapons pouring into the Middle East, Israel could quickly find itself on the wrong end of the regional military balance," the senators warned. Five things to know about the Abu Sayyaf Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic militant group from the southern Philippines notorious for abducting foreigners, beheaded a Canadian hostage on Monday. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was "outraged" by the killing, and authorities were trying to free another Canadian still being held along with a Norwegian man and a Filipina. Here are five facts about Abu Sayyaf: Members of a police commando escort suspected Al Qaeda-linked group Abu Sayyaf member Sambri Kamlon in a police camp in Zamboanga, Philippines on September 21, 2012 Stringer (AFP/File) Origins The group is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 100,000 lives in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines since the 1970s. It was established in the 1990s with funds from a relative of former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Abu Sayyaf's strongholds are the Muslim-populated islands of Jolo and Basilan in the far south of the Philippines, about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila. Methods Sallying forth in fast boats from the islands, the Abu Sayyaf snatches local and foreign victims, demanding ransom payments for their freedom. Hostages, many of them Western tourists but also Christian missionaries and locals, are then hidden among sympathetic Muslim communities on Jolo and Basilan. Victims are often murdered if ransoms are not paid -- the Abu Sayyaf beheaded an American man in 2002, as well as a Malaysian last year. US help The United States lists the Abu Sayyaf as a "foreign terrorist organisation". From 2002-2014, the US deployed Special Forces advisers to train and provide intelligence to Filipino troops, which led to the killing or arrest of many Abu Sayyaf leaders. US assistance was scaled back after the Pentagon concluded the group, originally with about 1,000 fighters, had lost the ability to launch international attacks. Rising threat Since then, Abu Sayyaf has launched a series of raids on foreigners and locals, as well as engaged in battles with Filipino troops that have killed dozens from both sides. A German couple abducted off their yacht in 2014 was released after six months, with a ransom of more than $5 million believed to have been paid. In September last year, gunmen seized two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipina from a Philippine resort island. When an April 25 deadline for a ransom of three million pesos ($6.3 million) passed, the severed head of Canadian John Ridsdel was dumped in a Jolo street. Fourteen Indonesians and four Malaysians have been abducted from boats in waters near the southern Philippines over the past month, an unusual expansion of operations against sailors and away from targets along the coast. Black flags In recent years, several Abu Sayyaf units, along with other small armed groups in the south, have publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that holds vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. IS, known for its black flag and brutal interpretation of Islamic law, has acknowledged them and cited the Abu Sayyaf in its communiques and news reports. Philippine authorities and security analysts say the pledges are just ploys to draw attention and potential funding from IS. They say the Abu Sayyaf is less interested in Islamic ideology than in getting rich from kidnappings. Artillery fire hits Iraq town despite ceasefire: officials Artillery fire killed a civilian on Monday despite a ceasefire in a flashpoint northern Iraqi town that has been hit by deadly fighting between Kurdish and Turkmen forces, officials said. Fighting broke out at the weekend in Tuz Khurmatu between the autonomous Kurdish region's peshmerga forces and Turkmen members of the Hashed al-Shaabi militia umbrella organisation for the second time in six months. "Clashes were renewed sporadically in Tuz, but it was not like yesterday," said Mohammed Koja, the deputy governor of Salaheddin province where the town is located. Kirkuk provincial Governor, Najm al-Din Karim and Hadi al-Amiri, who is in charge of the Shiite Muslim Badr Brigades, speak to the press during the laters visit to the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu on April 24, 2016 Marwan Ibrahim (AFP) Koja said that mortar rounds and rocket fire had killed one person and wounded four. A police colonel confirmed the toll but it was unclear which side killed the civilian. The initial clashes between Turkmen and Kurdish forces began at around midnight Saturday and continued into Sunday. Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr militia, announced at a press conference on Sunday afternoon that a ceasefire deal had been reached. But a witness in the town said gunfire and periodic explosions could still be heard. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the Joint Operations Command to take "all necessary measures" to end the clashes, a statement from his office said. And he urged the leaders of the forces involved to "focus efforts against the common terrorist enemy represented by the Daesh gangs", the statement said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group. Both the peshmerga and the Turkmen fighters are battling IS, which overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014. But Kurdish forces and the Hashed al-Shaabi are vying for influence in some areas, a contest that has led to violence in Tuz Khurmatu. The latest fighting came after unrest in Tuz Khurmatu last November that began as a dispute at a checkpoint escalated into clashes inside the town. Dozens of homes were burned, and the town has been split between Kurdish and Turkmen areas, with neighbourhood minority residents moving back across the ethnic divide. Baghdad turned to the Hashed al-Shaabi, which is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, to help stem the jihadists' 2014 advance and later push them back. Kurdish forces also battled the jihadists in the north, but have largely fought independently of federal troops. US detaining more migrants at Mexico border: officials The number of people caught trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico rose in the first months of this year compared to the same period last year, officials said Monday. The US authorities detained 33,335 people in March, up 11 percent from the same month in 2015, the US Border Patrol said, providing no explanation for why. Detentions in October and November were similar to levels in the same months of 2013, when the number of attempted entries spiked, especially by unaccompanied minors. US Border Patrol officers keep watch along the border fence separating the US and Mexico in the town of El Paso, Texas on February 17, 2016 Mark Ralston (AFP/File) That wave triggered an outpouring of concern for the children among Americans, prompting the government to take emergency measures to look after them in mid-2014. Many of the migrants come from Central America, a region plagued by poverty, street gangs and drug-related violence. Australian teen charged with plotting alleged terror attack SYDNEY (AP) A teenager was charged with plotting a terrorist attack on an Australian Veteran's Day ceremony, police said Monday, the second year in a row authorities say they have thwarted an attack linked to the national holiday. The 16-year-old boy was charged with one count of planning a terrorist act after being arrested at his home in western Sydney on Sunday, one day before Australians across the country gathered at ceremonies to mark ANZAC Day. The annual holiday commemorates the April 25, 1915, Gallipoli landings in Turkey the first major military action fought by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I. Police believe the teen was acting alone, and he had previously been on authorities' radar, New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said. The teen's home was searched, but Scipione declined to say if anything was seized. He would not release any other details. In court documents, police accuse the teenager of trying to get a gun over the weekend as part of the alleged plot. His case was adjourned until Tuesday. He could face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. This is the second year in a row that police say they have stopped an attack on an ANZAC Day ceremony. Last year, police in Melbourne arrested five teenagers on suspicion of plotting an Islamic State group-inspired attack intended to coincide with the city's ANZAC service. The age of the Sydney suspect was troubling but unsurprising, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said. "Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern that we have been observing, where younger and younger people are targeted and incited to go and commit an act of terror," Keenan told reporters in Perth. The Latest: Pilot tells of difficulties of long solar flight MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) The Latest on a solar plane that landed in California after crossing the Pacific (all times local): 5:30 p.m. One of two Swiss pilots taking turns to fly a solar-powered airplane around the world says the journey is not only a demonstration of the importance of renewable energy but also of the many challenges the human body can endure. Solar Impulse 2 flies over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on Saturday, April 23, 2016. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Pilot Bertrand Piccard completed a risky, three-day flight across a great expanse of the Pacific Ocean while sleeping only 20 minutes at a time inside the plane's tiny cockpit with no heat or air conditioning. He also had to keep constant contact with the Europe-based control center. Piccard said he uses self-hypnosis to keep his energy up and puts heating pads inside his shoes and gloves for warmth. He said he has no complaints about the ready-made meals he can warm up with a special heat packet. They can include risotto, chicken curry and potatoes. Piccard and the plane known as Solar Impulse 2 landed in Northern California late Saturday night after a 62-hour nonstop flight without fuel from Hawaii. ___ 11:45 p.m. A solar-powered airplane on a journey around the world has landed in California, completing a risky, three-day flight across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii. Pilot Bertrand Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, south of San Francisco, at 11:45 p.m. Saturday following a 62-hour, nonstop flight without fuel. The aircraft started its journey in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China and Japan. The plane is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation. The trans-Pacific leg is the riskiest part of the plane's global travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco, Saturday, April 23, 2016. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco, Saturday, April 23, 2016. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco, Saturday, April 23, 2016. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco, Saturday, April 23, 2016. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco, Saturday, April 23, 2016. The solar-powered airplane, which is attempting to circumnavigate the globe to promote clean energy and the spirit of innovation, arrived from Hawaii after a three-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Couple whose baby was mauled by dog gave up on 911 calls SAN DIEGO (AP) Police in San Diego say a couple whose 3-day-old baby was mauled to death by the family dog made two unsuccessful 911 calls before getting frustrated and driving the boy to the hospital themselves. Police Lt. Scott Wahl tells KNSD-TV (http://bit.ly/1rtmFak ) Saturday that the parents waited 28 seconds before hanging up their first call, then tried again and waited 34 seconds before giving up. Police say the family has their condolences and they too are frustrated by slow 911 response times. They say their operators are understaffed and that 73 calls came in during the half-hour span when the parents called. This photo provided by the San Diego County Department of Animal Services shows a male American Staffordshire terrier-mix named Polo, in their custody after it mauled to death a 3-day-old boy, police said Friday, April 22, 2016. The parents were in bed watching TV with their newborn son and dog Thursday night when the mother coughed. The coughing startled the dog and it unexpectedly bit the baby, Sgt. Tu Nguyen said. (San Diego County Department of Animal Services via AP) Police say the couple was in bed with the baby Thursday night when the dog was startled and attacked the baby. The child was declared dead at the hospital. ___ Death toll rises to 32 in Mexico petrochemical plant blast MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexico's state oil company says that searchers have recovered four more bodies from a petrochemical plant wrecked by a huge explosion on the country's Gulf coast, raising the death toll to 32. Petroleos Mexicanos said in a statement Sunday that rescuers with dogs had reached some of the area's most affected by Wednesday's blast and had located more bodies. It said all the workers in the plant that day have been located. The company said more than 130 people in all suffered injuries when the explosion rocked the plant in Coatzacoalcos, 600 kilometers (370 miles) southeast of Mexico City. A plume of smoke rises over the State oil company Petroleos Mexicanos' petrochemical plant in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, Wednesday April 20, 2016. An explosion ripped through a petrochemical plant on the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, killing 3 people, injuring dozens and sending flames and a toxin-filled cloud into the air, officials said. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez) Pemex has said the explosion happened after a leak but has not determined the source. The Clorados 3 plant of Petroquimica Mexicana de Vinilo produces the hazardous industrial chemical vinyl chloride. Slaying of 3 deaf women in Haiti highlights vulnerability LEVEQUE, Haiti (AP) The three friends had spent the day stocking up on food in the Haitian capital when they left for their village, setting off on the 20-mile trip home by foot because the minibuses known as tap-taps weren't running after a bridge collapse. Their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch along the way. They had been beaten, stabbed and burned, and relatives who identified them in a morgue said their tongues were cut out in an apparent act of ritualistic savagery. The women's family and friends suspect they were targeted because they were deaf in a country where experts say a pervasive stigma isolates people with disabilities such as deafness and can spark superstitions leading to horrific cruelty. Disabled women and girls are particularly vulnerable. This April 17, 2016 photo shows Micheler Castor, who is deaf, holding a picture of him with his wife Jesula Gelin, who's also deaf, with their children at his home in Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. Castor's wife was beaten, stabbed and burned to death along with two of her deaf friends as they walked home from the capital to their village. Relatives who identified them in a morgue said their tongues were cut out in an apparent act of ritualistic savagery. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) Due to cultural prejudices and the weakness of the justice system, past crimes against disabled citizens have been largely ignored. But the slayings of Jesula Gelin, Vanessa Previl and Monique Vincent have galvanized Haitians with disabilities and prompted rare public protests by their advocacy groups. Outrage is particularly acute in the village of Leveque, where the women lived in a community of 168 homes established by U.S. religious organizations for deaf people displaced by the 2010 earthquake. Gelin's husband, Micheler Castor, now struggles there to raise their six kids alone. "I can't understand it," Castor, also deaf, said in sign language of his 29-year-old wife's killing. "She served the Lord and was a good wife and mother." Advocates for the disabled in Haiti say they hope what happened can chip away at the obstacles to justice and social inclusion faced by these most vulnerable citizens of the hemisphere's poorest nation. Around the globe, treatment of the disabled varies widely from country to country, but discrimination and barriers to inclusion are commonplace. Those problems are most severe in the developing world, where the World Health Organization says 80 percent of disabled people live. "This case is very important. The disabled have made advances in Haiti, but there's still far, far too much stigma and impunity," Michel Pean, a blind activist who was Haiti's first secretary of state for the integration of disabled people. With pressure from that government agency, police have arrested three members of a family suspected of murdering the deaf women. Investigators say two women and a man are in custody, while the two men who are the main suspects are still being sought. "We won't rest until we get them all," said Jentullon Joel, police commander in Cabaret, where the women were butchered in a cinderblock house off the main road. The three women often prayed together, sold rice and popcorn in their community and regularly went to Port-au-Prince to buy supplies. Gelin and her two unmarried neighbors, both in their 20s, might have stayed overnight in the capital if they had known the bridge was out. But as darkness fell, they tried walking home instead. Neighbors around the Cabaret property where they were killed said they didn't hear any commotion that night. Associated Press journalists found the house locked from the outside, a skinny dog growling in the yard. Joel said one suspect told investigators that the deaf women were killed by her husband because the family feared that they were werewolf-type creatures called "lougawou," their disabilities the product of a hex. Nicole Phillips, a human rights lawyer representing the victims' families, said the trio only felt safe approaching the house in Cabaret that night because one of the deaf women was apparently a distant relation of a person who lived there. There's another suspected superstitious motive that detectives are investigating. Some soothsayers claim they can mystically increase chances at winning bets at ubiquitous Haitian lotteries if they are brought body parts like tongues from fresh corpses. "I believe they picked them to cut their tongues to play the lottery," Castor signed in his tiny home, shaking his head beneath a poster of the Ten Commandments and holding a well-worn family photo showing his wife. Whatever the motive, the killings have left many shocked and shamed in Haiti, where advocates estimate that roughly 10 percent of the population, or about 1 million people, have some disability. Although life has never been easy for Haiti's disabled, the 2010 earthquake that toppled buildings across Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas increased awareness and empathy for amputees as it greatly expanded the disabled ranks with those who lost limbs. There has been some progress making more public buildings accessible to disabled people and strengthening rehabilitation therapy. But some Haitians believe other disabilities are contagious or caused by a hex. Those who are deaf, blind, or developmentally or mentally disabled are still marginalized and face neglect and abuse. They are routinely called "cocobe" a Haitian Creole insult that implies they are worthless. Haiti has legal protections for the disabled on paper, but the laws are poorly implemented. Disabled Haitians have few opportunities to work and too many youngsters with disabilities languish out of sight at home instead of going to school. Some impoverished parents abandon disabled kids outside state institutions or farm them out as domestic servants. Kathryn Montoya, a U.S. woman who founded a ministry called the Haiti Deaf Academy, said locals initially protested the relocation of deaf families to Leveque in 2012. Since then, hearing villagers have learned some sign language and interactions have improved. "The greatest challenge is to have Haitians understand that deafness is not a curse or a disease, that deaf people are just as intelligent as hearing people and often even smarter," Montoya said from the U.S. state of Idaho. Deaf residents of Leveque feel so vulnerable after the women's slayings that a number are considering abandoning their homes. They now sleep with machetes by their beds. "I'm afraid that what happened to them could happen to me," hearing-impaired Fedeline Saint Previl said below a hilltop church where other deaf residents prayed in near silence. ___ David McFadden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmcfadd This April 19, 2016 photo shows a neighborhood for the deaf in the Leveque community of Cabaret, Haiti. Kathryn Montoya, a U.S. woman who founded a ministry called the Haiti Deaf Academy, said locals initially protested the relocation of deaf families to this community in 2012. Since then, hearing villagers have learned some sign language and interactions have improved. Three deaf women from this community were brutally murdered as they walked home from the capital, a 20-mile trip. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 17, 2016 photo shows the names of the months in French and sign language inside a classroom for deaf students in Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. The brutal killings of three deaf women from this community have left many shocked and shamed in Haiti, where advocates estimate that roughly 10 percent of the population, or about 1 million people, have some disability. Relatives who identified them in a morgue said their tongues were cut out in an apparent act of ritualistic savagery. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 19, 2016 photo shows Venita, who's deaf, serving rice for breakfast to Wilmine, right, Jessica, center, and Bradley, three children of her friend Jesula Gelin in Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. Venita is a family friend since the 2010 earthquake, and started caring for her friend's six children after Gelin was brutally murdered along with two other deaf women. Venita, herself a mother of three adults who live in the capital, moved in with the children and their father after living by herself in the same neighborhood. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 19, 2016 photo shows Adamson Castor, right, the son of slain deaf woman Jesula Gelin, bathing with a friend in an irrigation channel on a banana farm near Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. The farm's irrigation system is Leveque's only source of water for cooking and cleaning. For drinking water, residents buy from a vendor who passes in a truck, but those who can't afford to buy water get it from the channel and add bleach. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 19, 2016 photo shows residents walking to a bannana farm's irrigation channel to collect water near Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. Three deaf women from this community were brutally murdered as they walked home from the capital, a 20-mile trip. The women's family and friends suspect they were targeted because they were deaf in a country where experts say a pervasive stigma isolates people with disabilities such as deafness and can spark superstitions leading to horrific cruelty. Disabled women and girls are particularly vulnerable. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 17, 2016 photo shows the empty home of Vanessa Previl, a deaf woman who was brutally murdered with two of her friends as they were walking home to Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. The three friends had spent the day stocking up on food in the capital when they left for their village, setting off on the 20-mile trip home by foot because the minibuses weren't running after a bridge collapse. Their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch along the way. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 17, 2016 photo shows Jacques Wilson, who is deaf, giving a Bible lesson in sign language to children at a school before a Mass for deaf residents in Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake in Cabaret, Haiti. Three deaf women from this community were brutally murdered as they walked home from the capital. Jentullon Joel, police commander in Cabaret,0 said one suspect told investigators that the deaf women were killed by her husband because the family feared that they were werewolf-type creatures called "lougawou," their disabilities the product of a hex. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 17, 2016 photo shows residents praying during a Mass for deaf residents at a church in Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake, in Cabaret, Haiti. Disabled Haitians have few opportunities to work and too many youngsters with disabilities languish out of sight at home instead of going to school. Some impoverished parents abandon disabled kids outside state institutions or farm them out as domestic servants. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) This April 19, 2016 photo shows the hand sign for "I love you" painted on the wall of a home where a deaf woman lives in Leveque, a community where a group of deaf people relocated after the 2010 earthquake, in Cabaret, Haiti. Due to cultural prejudices and the weakness of the justice system, past crimes against disabled citizens have been largely ignored. But the slayings of three deaf women from this community has galvanized Haitians with disabilities and prompted rare public protests by their advocacy groups. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) New president of Laos visits Vietnam to boost ties HANOI, Vietnam (AP) The newly elected president of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachit, is visiting Vietnam to boost ties between the communist neighbors. Vorachit told his Vietnamese host, General-Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, that it was a great honor to visit Vietnam on his first overseas trip to meet Vietnam's leaders who are "extremely close and trustworthy friends" of Laos. Trong, who was elected to a second five-year term in January, said Vorachit's visit will boost bilateral relations between two of the world's last remaining communist countries. The 78-year-old Bounnhang Vorachit was elected president of the single-party state last week after he was appointed leader of the country's Communist Party at its five-year Congress in January. Laos, a poor, landlocked country with a population of just 7 million, will have a higher-than-usual profile this year because it is its turn to hold the annual chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as the organization grapples with territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. SOUTH CHINA SEA WATCH: Tussle over plane; Russia backs China Tensions in the South China Sea are rising, pitting China against smaller and weaker neighbors that all lay claim to islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters rich in fish and potential gas and oil reserves. China's recent construction of artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago, complete with airstrips and radar stations, and U.S. patrols challenging Beijing's vast territorial claims, have caused concern that the strategically important waters could become a flashpoint. A look at some recent key developments: ___ In this Dec. 24, 2015, photo, provided by Filipino fisherman Renato Etac, a Chinese Coast Guard boat approaches Filipino fishermen near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Filipino fishermen said they've seen more Chinese coast guard ships than usual around the contested Scarborough Shoal, which China effectively took over in 2013 after a tense standoff with Philippine vessels. (AP Photo/Renato Etac) EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a weekly look at the latest key developments in the South China Sea, home to several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region. ___ CHINA DEFENDS MILITARY PLANE LANDING China says the United States is overblowing a humanitarian emergency mission that involved one of its military planes landing on an artificial island which also happens to be one of three recently built military outposts with long runways. The Y-8 transport aircraft made a trip to Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys to evacuate three injured construction workers, according to the Ministry of Defense. State Department spokesman John Kirby questioned the need for a military aircraft, citing concern that China keeps militarizing the disputed region. He said the injured workers were involved in infrastructure improvements of a military nature. "One could argue that it's just another sign that the Chinese are willing to keep militarizing the effort in general," he told reporters. China's Defense Ministry said it was completely within the mission of the People's Liberation Army to rescue people and carry out construction activities and deployment of defense facilities on related islets and reefs in the Nansha Islands, the Chinese name for the Spratlys. ___ FISHERMEN REPORT MORE CHINESE SHIPS; U.S. FLIES FIRST MISSION FROM PHILIPPINES Filipino fishermen say they've seen more Chinese coast guard ships than usual around the contested Scarborough Shoal, which China effectively took over in 2013 after a tense standoff with Philippine vessels. Although fishermen have been complaining they're being driven away by Chinese ships, the Philippine Department of Defense said it could not confirm an increase in Chinese presence at the shoal, 145 miles (230 kilometers) from Luzon island. Meantime, the U.S. Air Force flew its first mission over the Scarborough area as part of a new Air Contingent force stationed in the Philippines. It involved four A-10C Thunderbolt jets and two Sikorsky HH-60 helicopters. The mission: establishing air and maritime "domain awareness" and "assuring all nations have access to air and sea domains throughout the region in accordance with international law," according to a U.S. military statement. Free navigation "is extremely important, international economics depends on it free trade depends on our ability to move goods," said Col. Larry Card, commander of the Air Contingent, part of stepped-up U.S. assistance to its Philippine ally. ___ RUSSIA, SOME ASEAN NATIONS BACK CHINA; BRITAIN STANDS BY U.S. As China and other claimants await the ruling of a U.N. tribunal on a case filed by the Philippines that challenges Beijing's vast territorial claims, world and regional players are lining up behind one side or the other. China has refused to take part in the proceedings at the U.N. Court of Arbitration, and it's not clear how the ruling can be enforced. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Moscow, said Russia is against any interference from third parties a reference to the U.S. " or any attempts to internationalize these disputes." Russia repeated China's position that "only parties can resolve their dispute through direct talks." Britain, on the other hand, says it will stand alongside the U.S. in supporting the ruling. Hugo Swire, British minister of state for the Foreign Office, told a Washington think tank that growing tensions in the South China Sea are driven by China's assertive actions. He said any ruling by the court should be binding on both parties. In Southeast Asia, which is broadly divided between pro- and anti-China blocs, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing had reached a consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos its traditional allies on the South China Sea issue. The four countries say territorial disputes are not an issue between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and should be resolved by parties directly. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said earlier that the case filed by the Philippines is an attempt to deny China's sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and "an abuse of international law." ___ U.S. ADMIRAL DENIES RIFT WITH THE WHITE HOUSE The Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Harry Harris has denied reports of differences with the White House in strategy over the South China Sea. Navy Times reported on a gag order issued to military commanders for comments about the South China Sea in the run-up to the nuclear summit in Washington that included China. Harris said in a statement that "any suggestion that the White House has sought to 'tamp down' on my talking about my concerns is patently wrong." He said that during recent congressional testimony and press engagements in Washington, "I was very public and candid about my concerns regarding many issues in the Indo-Asia-Pacific to include the fact that China's militarization of the South China Sea is problematic." ___ LAST WORD "The United States and Vietnam share the interest in maintaining peace and stability in the region. So does China. But its massive land reclamation project in the South China Sea and increasing militarization of these outposts fuel regional tension and raise serious questions about China's intentions." U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on a visit to Hanoi. ___ Associated Press writers Hrvoje Hranjski in Bangkok, Christopher Bodeen in Beijing, Tran Van Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report. ___ Follow Hranjski on Twitter at twitter.com/hatbangkok FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2011, file photo, a Chinese Y-8 plane flies during a joint military exercise in Jhelum, Pakistan. China says the United States is overblowing a humanitarian emergency mission that involved a Y-8 transport aircraft landing on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys to evacuate three injured construction workers, according to the Ministry of Defense. (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash, File) FILE - In this April 18, 2016, file photo, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stands with Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after a meeting in Moscow, Russia. Speaking on the South China Sea, Lavrov, meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Moscow, says Russia is against any interference from third parties _ a reference to the U.S. _ or any attempts to internationalize these disputes. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File) FILE - In this Dec. 19, 2015, file photo, President Barack Obama, right, is greeted by Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Harry Harris after arriving at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Harry Harris has denied reports of a disconnect with the White House in strategy over the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Nepal has done little to protect itself from next 'big one' KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) Last year's massive earthquake in Nepal killed nearly 9,000 people, yet could have been much deadlier. It was spared not by disaster preparedness, but by the calendar. It hit on a Saturday. Most children were out of school, and most adults were working in their fields, rather than in the hundreds of thousands of buildings that were damaged or destroyed. The Himalayan country can't count on that kind of luck next time, but since it's in the middle of a highly active seismic region, it can count on another major quake at some point. Yet experts say Nepal and neighboring India have a long way to go to implement earthquake-safe building practices. FILE - In this April 29, 2015 file photo, an aerial view of the city is seen from a helicopter in Kathmandu, Nepal. A year after a set of devastating earthquakes plunged Nepal into chaos and economic decline, one question remains on everyones mind: what if it happens again? Scientists have been warning Nepal and other Himalayan countries for years that quake risks in the region are high. But while citizens are preparing for the worst by building sturdier homes and stockpiling emergency supplies, experts say officials still have a long way to go in preparing for possible, if not probable, disaster. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File) Nearly a year after the disaster, Nepalese authorities have yet to announce new building codes. "I haven't seen any significant initiative or change that would help the next time," said Mattias Bryneson of the Plan International aid agency. The government has said more than 8,000 schools were damaged or destroyed in last year's quake. Still, "similar types of schools are still standing in other parts of Nepal," Bryneson said. If a quake hit tomorrow and affected those areas, those schools could also collapse. The next high-magnitude quake "is going to be a massive, huge disaster for Nepal," Bryneson said. Similarly, Nepal also faces the threat of quake-triggered landslides, of which there were at least 3,000 last year, burying villages, blocking roads and ruining farmland. The April 25 quake killed nearly 9,000 people in Nepal while damaging or destroying almost 800,000 homes. Another 102 people were killed on the Indian side of the border, where some 13,000 houses were badly damaged. The Himalayas are result of smashing and buckling between the tectonic plates on which India and China sit. Since the 7.8-magnitude struck on April 25, 2015, in the central district of Gorkha, Nepal has been rattled by constant aftershocks. Other quakes have hit nearby, most significantly a Jan. 4 rattler of magnitude 6.7 in the northeast Indian state of Manipur, and a 6.9-magnitude temblor on April 13 centered in the hills of neighboring Myanmar. Seismologists warn there are several places across the Himalayas that are overdue for a "big one," possibly much stronger than last year's quake. Some Nepalis are still afraid of moving back inside heavy buildings. Mahila Prajapati has lived with his family in a tin shed since their home crumbled in last year's quake, killing his uncle. "I don't know if I will ever be able to move into brick-and-concrete house again. I saw many people crushed underneath piles of bricks. I still get nightmares," Prajapati said. When he does go into buildings, the first thing he checks for is stairways and exits. Others who have started rebuilding, mostly without government help, are doing what they can to make sure their homes are earthquake-safe. They are opting to build with bamboo and wood, more flexible and lighter than the stone and brick buildings that crumbled last year, causing most of the 8,856 deaths. They are building structures with fewer stories. And engineers must now sign documents declaring homes they plan to build are safe, or they won't be issued building permits. "I am putting in more iron rods in the pillars, and have decided to limit the floors to two," Kathmandu resident Narayan Maharjan said as he was shopping in a hardware store for supplies to rebuild his family home. "I will be able to sleep better knowing my family is safe." Though Nepal's long-dysfunctional government has much room for improvement in building safety, last year's quake did give it more experience in handling the logistics of search, rescue and immediate humanitarian aid. "The earthquake was a big experience for us, and now we are better prepared for another disaster," said Mahesh Dahal of the country's National Emergency Operation Center, set up in 2010 with U.N. funding to foster coordination among relief agencies. Since last year's quake, Nepal has set up five regional warehouses stocked with food and emergency supplies, as well as offices in all 75 district capitals. The Red Cross has started training stonemasons, carpenters and community members in earthquake-resistant building techniques. But even that has stalled, since the agency must wait for still-unannounced building regulations. "We are hoping that the government's priorities and perspectives on reconstruction will soon be clear so that we can help people to rebuild and get their lives back on track," Max Santner, head of the Nepal office for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said in a written statement. In India, builders still routinely flout building codes and use substandard materials, leading to disasters like the deadly collapse not earthquake-triggered of an overpass under construction in Kolkata on March 31. Settlements are still being constructed on marshlands which are considered less stable on soggy, shifting ground and overcrowding continues to be a potential problem for emergency vehicles should they be deployed. "The government is in deep slumber on this front, and its approach is very bureaucratic," said seismologist B.S. Bali, a professor at the University of Kashmir, in the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed Himalayan region surrounded by India, Pakistan and China. "We don't want to create fear, but the stress is building under the Himalayas, and an earthquake of magnitude 8 or 9 is already overdue." Kashmir also has a history of devastating quakes, including a 2005 temblor of magnitude 7.6 that killed more than 80,000 people and left another 3 million homeless. "It's appalling that the government continues to be muted in its response despite impeccable research suggesting that the Kashmir Himalayas are a dangerously active seismic zone," seismologist M.I. Bhat said. "There's no policy for ensuring construction of earthquake-resistant buildings." India also makes it difficult for scientists to study the quake potential, by refusing to share data with other nations, though seismologists say they already have enough to be clear about the risks. "The political attitude to earthquakes in India has traditionally been to ignore future seismic risk if it gets in the way of progress, but to do whatever is considered needed if it doesn't," said geologist Roger Bilham, a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder who was denied an Indian visa in 2012 after conducting earthquake research in the country. Meanwhile, India is fighting an insurgency in the portion of Kashmir it holds. In 2013, it published an advisory telling Kashmiris to be prepared for possible nuclear war with neighboring Pakistan by building bomb-proof basements and collecting two weeks of food and water rations. "It's funny. The government wants you to be prepared for such a possibility, but it's missing its duty in preparing for the reality" of an earthquake, said Mohammed Abdullah, who teaches political science at one of Srinagar's state colleges. ___ Aijaz Hussain reported from Srinagar, India. FILE - In this May 2, 2015 file photo, a Nepalese boy stands outside his village with a signboard asking for help in Pauwathok village, Sindhupalchok district, Nepal. A year after a set of devastating earthquakes plunged Nepal into chaos and economic decline, one question remains on everyones mind: what if it happens again? Scientists have been warning Nepal and other Himalayan countries for years that quake risks in the region are high. But while citizens are preparing for the worst by building sturdier homes and stockpiling emergency supplies, experts say officials still have a long way to go in preparing for possible, if not probable, disaster. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File) FILE - In this April 29, 2015 file photo, a house on the higher reaches of mountains destroyed in the earthquake is seen from a helicopter near Dhadingbesti in Nepal. A year after a set of devastating earthquakes plunged Nepal into chaos and economic decline, one question remains on everyones mind: what if it happens again? Scientists have been warning Nepal and other Himalayan countries for years that quake risks in the region are high. But while citizens are preparing for the worst by building sturdier homes and stockpiling emergency supplies, experts say officials still have a long way to go in preparing for possible, if not probable, disaster. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File) FILE - In this April 29, 2015, file photo, Nepal army soldiers queue up to get into an Indian Air Force helicopter to be dropped off at higher reaches of mountain to help evacuate earthquake victims in Dhadingbesti, Nepal. A year after a set of devastating earthquakes plunged Nepal into chaos and economic decline, one question remains on everyones mind: what if it happens again? Scientists have been warning Nepal and other Himalayan countries for years that quake risks in the region are high. But while citizens are preparing for the worst by building sturdier homes and stockpiling emergency supplies, experts say officials still have a long way to go in preparing for possible, if not probable, disaster. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File) FILE - In this April 30, 2015 file photo, earthquake survivor Pemba Tamang is carried on a stretcher after being rescued by Nepalese policemen and U.S. rescue workers from a building that collapsed five days ago in Kathmandu, Nepal. A year after a set of devastating earthquakes plunged Nepal into chaos and economic decline, one question remains on everyones mind: what if it happens again? Scientists have been warning Nepal and other Himalayan countries for years that quake risks in the region are high. But while citizens are preparing for the worst by building sturdier homes and stockpiling emergency supplies, experts say officials still have a long way to go in preparing for possible, if not probable, disaster. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File) Focus shifts to bullying after Wisconsin prom shooting ANTIGO, Wis. (AP) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Monday called for a discussion on how to deal with bullying in schools after friends of a gunman who wounded two people outside a high school prom said the 18-year-old had been bullied. Authorities have not revealed a motive for the shooting outside Antigo High School in northern Wisconsin and declined to comment Monday on whether bullying may have been a factor. Police fatally shot former student Jakob E. Wagner after he opened fire on students outside the school Saturday night, authorities say. Wagner's mother, Lorrie Wagner, told The Associated Press that her son "wasn't a monster." Nikita Deep, 16, embraces a family friend at Antigo United Methodist Church following a morning service Sunday, April 24, 2016, in Antigo, Wis. According to police Jakob E. Wagner, 18, opened fire with a high-powered rifle outside of the a prom at Antigo High School late Saturday. Deep is class president at the school and was involved in the coordination of the prom. (Jacob Byk/The Marshfield News-Herald via AP) NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT "If anything, I hope it shines light on bullying and how deeply it affects people," she said, before ending the interview. Former classmate Dakotta Mills, who said he had known Wagner since sixth grade, told The Associated Press that he had "some rough spots now and then" and that he had witnessed him being bullied. Another former classmate, Emily Fisher, told the Wausau Daily Herald that students ganged up on Wagner and called him names, in part because of poor hygiene. The bullying started in middle school, Fisher said, and continued through high school. Walker, a Republican, said authorities should address bullying and mental health, as well as teaching students how to resolve disagreements peacefully rather than impose new limits on firearms. He said that if there were a ban on rifles in Wisconsin, "you wouldn't have hunting here." At a news conference Monday, authorities said they couldn't confirm that Wagner had been taunted by fellow students or say whether it was a possible motive in the shooting. "I can't get into the specifics on that," Antigo Police Chief Eric Roller. He added, "That's still part of the investigation." However, Roller said it didn't appear that the victims had been specifically targeted. The state Department of Justice has taken over the case because it involves a police shooting. Agency spokesman Johnny Koremenos said in an email that it was too early to offer a motive or provide other details of the investigation. Roller said the officers' response "saved lives by stopping the threat" in that the suspect "didn't end up inside a building that was full of prom-goers." Wagner arrived on a bicycle armed with a rifle and opened fire as two couples were leaving the dance, Roller said. One 18-year-old male student was struck in the leg and a bullet grazed his date's thigh. The other couple wasn't struck. Two officers were stationed in front of the school and one quickly shot the gunman. The couple who wasn't shot helped the 18-year-old male victim by wrapping a necktie around his leg as a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding, Roller said. The victim's family requested privacy, but said in a statement that their son was doing well after a long surgery. They thanked everyone who helped and asked that people "pray for the family of Jakob Wagner. "As much as we are struggling through this event, we cannot imagine the grief they are experiencing at this time," the statement read. Roller said no weapons were recovered aside from the rifle. He declined to describe the weapon further or say how many rounds of ammunition Wagner was carrying. Principal Tom Zamzow, wearing a burgundy T-Shirt that read "Antigo Pride" in bold white letters, said that classes were back in session Monday and that attendance was normal. Counselors were on campus to help students. A school official told AP on Sunday that Wagner had not graduated as scheduled last May, but Zamzow said Monday that he was a graduate. ___ Associated Press writer Doug Glass contributed to this report from Minneapolis. ___ Follow Greg Moore at https://twitter.com/writingmoore ___ This story corrects 'Antioch' references to 'Antigo.' White House set to release secret pages from 9/11 inquiry WASHINGTON (AP) The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States." Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. President Barack Obama has hinted the administration might soon release at least part of the documents, noting that James Clapper, national director of intelligence, has been reviewing the classified pages. FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2012, file photo Bob Graham speaks in Gainesville, Fla.. The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. Graham and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. Graham says an Obama administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents, a disclosure that comes at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. (AP Photo/Phil Sandlin, File) The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. "I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available," Graham told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a "preliminary police report." "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating," the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said Friday. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner." The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. Still, protecting U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations also was believed to have been a factor. Speaking of the Clapper review, Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said "when that's done we'd expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information." Neither the congressional inquiry nor the subsequent 9/11 Commission found any evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. But Graham, the relatives of victims and some lawmakers think there is reason to further probe possible Saudi links. Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. Al Thumairy was later denied entry into the United States in May 2003 after the State Department alleged that he might be involved in terrorist activity. Roemer also wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers. "We did not discover ... Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks," Roemer said. But he added: "We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. ... Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for al-Qaida. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. That's why we need to continue to get to the bottom of this." An Internet site pushing to get the documents released, 28pages.org, points to another document declassified in July 2015 that outlined ways in which the commission could examine possible Saudi links. That 47-page document lists several pages of individuals of interest and suggests questions that could be pursued. One name is suspected al-Qaida operative Ghassan al Sharbi. Al Sharbi, who was taking flight lessons in the Phoenix area before 9/11, was captured in 2002 in the same place in Pakistan as Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaida trainer who was apprehended and waterboarded dozens of times by U.S. interrogators. The document said that after al Sharbi was captured, the FBI discovered some documents buried nearby. One was al Sharbi's pilot certificate inside an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, although it's unclear whether the license had been mailed by the embassy or if the envelope was simply being reused. A CIA inspector-general report in June 2015 said there had been no reliable information confirming Saudi government "involvement with and financial support for terrorist prior to 9/11." But it said also that people in the CIA's Near East Division and Counterterrorism Center "speculated that dissident sympathizers within the government may have aided al-Qaida." The rest of the chapter, titled "Issues Related to Saudi Arabia," is blacked out. A bill directing the president to release the 28-page chapter was introduced in the Senate, and nearly three dozen Republicans and Democrats in the House are backing a similar resolution. Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote Obama last week saying they don't think releasing the chapter will harm national security and could provide closure for the victims' families. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the pages and said this past week that while he wants to see them declassified to end speculation about what they say, releasing them will not quell the debate over the issue. A Washington ritual: Pentagon, Congress at odds over bases WASHINGTON (AP) The Pentagon thinks it has a winning argument for why Congress should allow a new round of military base closings. The case goes like this: The Army and Air Force have vastly more space for training and basing troops than they need, and trimming the surplus would save money better used to strengthen the military. Congress, however, has its own logic: Closing bases can hurt local economies, which can cost votes in the next election. Besides, some lawmakers say, the Pentagon has cooked the books to justify its conclusions or at least has not finished doing the math. Lawmakers are fiercely protective of bases in their district or state and generally prefer to ignore or dismiss any Pentagon push to close them. Nearly every year the Pentagon asks Congress for authority to convene a base-closing commission. The answer is always the same: not this year. FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2014, file photo, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work speaks at the Pentagon. The Pentagon thinks it has a winning argument for why Congress should allow a new round of military base closings. Spending resources on excess infrastructure does not make sense, Work wrote leaders of the relevant congressional committees on April 12. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File) And probably not anytime soon, either. In a little-noticed report to congressional leaders this month, the Pentagon offered a detailed analysis the first of its kind in 12 years that concludes the military will have an overall 22 percent excess of base capacity in 2019. The Army will have 33 percent surplus, the Air Force 32 percent and the Navy and Marine Corps a combined 7 percent, the report says. Base capacity is the total amount of acreage or work space available to support military forces at places such as a training range, an air base, a weapons storage site or an office building. "Spending resources on excess infrastructure does not make sense," Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work wrote leaders of the relevant congressional committees on April 12. The letter was meant to support the Obama administration's case for a bipartisan base-closing authority, known as a Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC). This mechanism, meant to take politics out of the process, was used during the 1990s and again in 2005, but not since. The Pentagon has not said a lot publicly about its latest pitch to Congress for another commission, perhaps because it sees little chance of success. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said last week that the House version of the bill that authorizes military spending for the coming budget year will stop the Pentagon's base-closing campaign in its tracks. The bill unveiled Monday will allow studies to answer the committee's questions about excess base capacity, but rejects the Pentagon's plea for another round of closures in 2019. In Thornberry's view, the Pentagon is selling a half-baked argument. "I'm not interested in sales brochures," he said as the committee had sought but didn't receive a Pentagon analysis of the force structure in 2012. "I'm interested in objective data that leads them to think there is too much infrastructure." The data is fairly clear, even if Thornberry doesn't believe it is objective. It is derived from a type of study, called a parametric analysis, which the Pentagon had not done since 2004. The new analysis compares base capacity to the expected shape of the military in 2019, when the next BRAC would be held. It found a big mismatch: 22 percent more base capacity than will be needed for the military that is envisioned for 2019. By that time the Army is scheduled to be even smaller than today, shrinking from about 475,000 active-duty soldiers to 450,000. The study calculated the amount of surplus base capacity in the aggregate, not by individual bases. So it does not point to any particular bases as candidates for shuttering or downsizing. The study concluded that reducing the overall surplus by about 5 percent would produce savings of $2 billion a year. The savings would be partially offset by an estimated $7 billion in closure costs, including the expense of environmental cleanup, during the first six years. Military commanders do not like to get drawn into the debate about base closings, but they recognize that surplus capacity has financial implications. Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza, commander of the Army's 1st Corps, headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, sees a national review of base capacity as a way to search for savings that could be used to improve "readiness," or the combat preparedness, of his and other forces. "I do think it's viable to examine, base by base, where we have infrastructure ... that perhaps is not being utilized properly," he said in a telephone interview. "If done correctly, and if we do it honestly and openly, then perhaps it's worthy of a discussion to look at our facilities and see where we could have some cost-saving measures." The Pentagon may have to wait at least another year before Congress is willing to open the door to base closings, but it has some limited authority to act on its own. The study sent to Congress hinted at this by stating that BRAC is the fairest approach to resolving the surplus problem. "The alternative is incremental reductions" as the Pentagon cuts spending at military installations. Those spending cuts, it added, "will have an economic impact on local communities without giving them the ability to plan effectively for the change." ___ Test finds Chernobyl residue in Belarus milk GUBAREVICHI, Belarus (AP) On the edge of Belarus' Chernobyl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning "Stop! Radiation," a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk. Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nation's food safety limits. That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm use and in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin. The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding "impossible," insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits. In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, a radiation warning sign is placed near the check-point 'Maidan' of the state radiation ecology reserve inside the 30 km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, some 370 km ( 231 miles) south-east of Minsk, Belarus. The sign is placed in two kilometres distance of Nikolai Chubenok farm. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 2,200-square-kilometer (850-square-mile) ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems mean Chernobyl's troubles can be consigned to history. "There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation?" said Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm just 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of the shuttered Chernobyl site, and two kilometers (a mile) from the boundary of a zone that remains officially off-limits to full-time human habitation. Chubenok says he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese on site. His milk is part of the Milkavita supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90 percent of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. The World Bank identifies Russia as the major market for Belarusian food exports, which represent 15 percent of the country's export economy. Since rising to power in 1994, President Alexander Lukashenko the former director of a state-owned farm has stopped resettlement programs for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone and developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock. The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians closest to the plant had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living nearby left voluntarily. One of the most prominent medical critics of the government's approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship. Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply. "We have a disaster," he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. "In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country." The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture. The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium. The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognized unit of measurement for radioactivity. The Minsk lab informed the AP that the milk sample contained 37.5 becquerels. That radioactive isotope is, along with cesium-137, commonly produced during nuclear fission and generates most of the heat and penetrating radiation from nuclear waste. When consumed, scientists say strontium-90 mimics the behavior of calcium in the human body, settling in bones. Milkavita chief engineer Maia Fedonchuk rejected the findings. "It's impossible. We do our own testing. There must have been a mix-up," she said, adding they test samples from every batch of milk they receive from Chubenok and do an "in-depth" analysis every six months. She said the plant's own lab analysis indicates its overall milk supply contains an average of 2.85 becquerels per kilogram. A person who answered the telephone at the press office of the Belarusian Emergency Situations Ministry, which is tasked with dealing with the fallout of the nuclear disaster, said they would not comment on the AP's findings. Health officials say the danger level posed by low levels of radioactive isotopes depends greatly on length of exposure and individual physiology. Notably, the regional free-trade bloc that includes Belarus and Russia permits higher levels of strontium-90 in goods of up to 25 becquerels per kilogram, still lower than that detected in the AP-commissioned test. The question is whether anyone in authority is positioned to identify the true level of risks in produce from farms on the frontier of Belarus' prohibited zone. The deputy director of Belarus' Institute of Radiobiology, Natalya Timokhina, said Belarus permits food producers to conduct their own food safety monitoring and lacks the lab equipment necessary to identify the presence of americium, which is estimated to be present in about 2 percent of Belarus' top soil and is expected to remain a health risk for another 270 years. "One-time ingestion of contaminated food is not very dangerous," Timokhina said. "What's dangerous is the accumulation of radionuclides in the body." Ausrele Kesminiene, a doctor in the cancer research unit of the World Health Organization, said the consumption of radioactive food is linked chiefly to the development of cancer in the thyroid, a gland in the neck that produces body-regulating hormones. Thyroid cancer is typically not fatal if diagnosed early. WHO officials say they are dependent on reports from sister agencies in Belarus to alert them to cancer clusters or other signs of unresolved Chernobyl-related dangers. Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said the agency had no authority to regulate or oversee food safety even products exported to other countries because that is a domestic responsibility. "Radiation effects and the development of cancers and the effects on the region are something which go on over a long, long period. So we haven't seen the end of it," Hartl said. "Undoubtedly there is going to be some increase in cancers." Hartl said WHO officials have not received "any red flags" from Belarus. Environmentalists critical of Belarus' Chernobyl cleanup record says that's hardly surprising, since the government has funded no machinery to scrutinize corrupt practices in the food industry. As a result, they say, no Belarusian food maker has ever been prosecuted for using ingredients or producing goods containing excessive levels of radioactive materials. Irina Sukhiy, founder of the Belarus ecological group Green Network, said workers in food-industry factories have confidentially told her that ingredients and products are blended to dilute the impact of potentially radioactive ingredients from Belarusian suppliers bordering Ukraine. Such alleged mixing, she said, reduces the level of potentially carcinogenic isotopes in dairy products and processed meat below "the allowable dose, but it is still hazardous to health." The division of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry responsible for cleaning up the consequences of Chernobyl says that the rate of thyroid cancer in children runs 33 times higher than before the nuclear blast. It says thyroid cancer rates run several times higher in adults. Farmers working both on the edge of, and inside, the prohibited zone say they see no obvious signs of nuclear dangers, have been given no guidelines on reducing the risk of permitting radioactive isotopes into the food chain, and aren't worried about this. Chubenok, the dairy farmer, said he had never heard of the sorbent substance Ferocin, known as Prussian Blue, which farmers in Ukraine feed their cattle to accelerate the removal of the cesium-137 isotope from their digestive tracts. A tractor driver on one of his neighboring farms, where an abandoned village has been demolished to make way for fields of grain, says he's never seen an official testing for radiation levels in the soil. But Leonid Kravchenko said there was no reason for alarm. "Nobody's in danger," he said. Driving toward Chernobyl and into the nearby Radioecological Reserve required AP journalists to negotiate painstaking government permission. Inside the zone, Belarus has authorized an experimental farm to operate for the past decade. Today it contains 265 horses, 56 cows and apiaries buzzing with honey bees. The farm director, Mikhail Kirpichenko, said he's permitted to pursue commercial ventures, including the sale last year of 100 horses to a Belarusian manufacturer of kumys, a popular beverage in swathes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Kumys is produced from fermented mares' milk. "We're not afraid of radiation. We've already gotten used to it," said Kirpichenko, who suggested that his horses had to pass a basic eyesight test to confirm their good health. "Horses aren't being born with two heads or without legs. There are no such mutations," he said. "This Chernobyl syndrome passed long ago." ___ Associated Press reporters Jim Heintz and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, Pietro DeCristofaro in Geneva and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this story. In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, farmer Nikolai Chubenok stands near horses in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, horses wait to be fed at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, horses walk at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, farmer Nikolai Chubenok stands near horses at a farm in the village of Vorotets,on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) In this photo taken on Monday, April 11, 2016, a worker feeds horses at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) In this photo taken from the footage on Monday, April 11, 2016, a worker feeds cows at a farm in the village of Vorotets, on land, just 45 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion and fire on April 26, 1986, belched a cloud of smoke infested with radioactive particles over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Obama boosts Islamic State fight, asks Europe to do the same HANNOVER, Germany (AP) Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up "momentum" in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own. Obama's announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the president's professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden. Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi. U.S President Barack Obama speaks at the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday April 25, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War." "Make no mistake," Obama said. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life." The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own. The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders." He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: "I'll be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense." On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies. He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany. "These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them," Obama said. The new deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel. Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions. He did say, "As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces." Obama's troop announcement was called "a good step" by Salem Al Meslet, spokesman of the High Negotiations Committee, the main Syrian opposition group. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said it was "a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient." Obama's call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign. Amid what he described as "unsettling times," Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation block. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria. "Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now," Obama said. "We have to uphold our values, not just when it's easy but when it's hard." The migrant crisis was a central focus as Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya. "With the NATO mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration," Merkel said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce. Obama, in the CBS interview, said he told European leaders that the migration problem was putting a strain on European politics, advancing "far-right nationalism" and encouraging the breakup of European unity. He added that the situation "in some cases is being exploited by somebody like Mr. Putin," the Russian leader. Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said in his speech he saw Europe facing a "defining moment." He urged the continent's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women. "If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way," Obama said. ___ Superville reported from Aerzen, Germany. Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Hannover and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Reach Kathleen Hennessey on Twitter at http://twitter.com/khennessey and Darlene Superville and http://twitter.com/dsupervilleap German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as U.S President Barack Obama tests VR goggles when touring the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) U.S. President Barack Obama boards Air Force One on his departure from the Hannover, northern Germany, airport Monday, April 25, 2016 after a two-day official visit to Germany where he opened the Hannover Messe industrial fair and met with the government heads of Germany, Britain, France and Italy. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer) From left, British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande, meet at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover, Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, from left, President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Minister President of Lower Saxony Stephan Weil, are seated in the front row before the opening ceremony of the Hannover Messe Trade Fair Opening Ceremony in Hannover, Germany, Sunday, April 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, chat after the opening of the Hannover Messe industry fair in Hannover, northern Germany, Sunday, April 24, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer) PICTURED: Editor selections from the past week in Asia One 8-year-old Nepali girl has been getting around on a prosthetic leg after hers was crushed during the massive earthquake that struck a year ago. The April 25, 2015, disaster took the lives of 9,000 people and toppled hundreds of thousands of homes, but little rebuilding has taken place amid government malaise and bureaucratic bungling. China, meanwhile, is becoming a nation of urban dwellers, with authorities saying that more than 55 percent of the population lives in towns and cities. In this July 24, 2015 photo, Khendo Tamang, 8, in yellow, stands by the bedside of her best friend Nirmala Pariyar, also 8, as she cries in pain during treatment on her amputated right leg in the Bir Trauma Center in Kathmandu, Nepal. Losing a leg each in the massive Nepal earthquake in 2015, they were both taken to Bir Hospital and Kathmandu's main trauma ward where they spent the next three months with surgeries and physical therapy with their new prostheses. During this time the girls' friendship grew and have become inseparable. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File) In other images from around Asia last week, supporters in the Philippines cheered the motorcade of front-running presidential candidate Mayor Rodrigo Duterte ahead of May 9 elections there. In India, a woman crushed stones in a quarry, protected from the sun's blazing heat by a small tarp. Countries around the world marked April 22 as Earth Day to try to increase awareness about the state of the world's environment. In the vagaries of weather, heavy rains caused flooding in Sri Lanka and in Indonesia, where a woman waded through streets outside of Jakarta, and drought-like conditions in India affected millions in 12 states. ___ This gallery was curated by Associated Press photo editors Karly Domb Sadoff in Bangkok. In this Saturday, April 23, 2016 photo, Nepalese people release balloons in memory of those who died in last years devastating earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal. The April 25, 2015, earthquake, killed nearly 9,000 people. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File) In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo photo, a woman talks on her phone while standing along a walkway at an office building in central Beijing. China is increasingly becoming a nation of town and city dwellers, with more than 55 percent now living in urban areas, the government said Thursday. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, people are reflected on the electronic board of a securities firm in Tokyo. Asian stocks fell Friday after Wall Street broke a three-day winning streak and declined. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, File) In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, supporters cheer as the motorcade of front-running presidential candidate Mayor Rodrigo Duterte passes by at Silang township, Cavite province south of Manila, Philippines. Duterte made a remark Tuesday, April 12, 2016, at a campaign rally that he "should have been the first" to rape an Australian missionary who was assaulted and killed by prisoners in 1989. The comment by Mayor Duterte of southern Davao city sparked a storm of criticism ahead of the May 9 election.(AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File) In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, a Filipino worker riding on top of a vehicle dodges campaign posters hanging across the streets of Manila, Philippines. Campaign posters can be seen on almost every corner of the city as the country prepares to vote for a new president and other officials during the May 9 elections. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File) In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, an Indian woman crashes stones in a stone quarry on the outskirts of in Gauhati, India. Countries around the world annually recognize April 22 as Earth Day with hopes in urging local action and increasing awareness about the state of the world's environment. (AP Photo/ Anupam Nath, File) In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, a newly installed golden finial glitters in late afternoon sun at Humayun's tomb, an UNESCO World Heritage site, in New Delhi, India. A 24-carat gold finial has been installed atop the tombs dome after the original was damaged by a thunderstorm on May 30, 2014 at the 16th century tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun. (AP Photo /Tsering Topgyal, File) In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, a Sri Lankan farmer sets fishing net in his inundated paddy field due to heavy rains in front of a stone quarry in Nawagamuwa, a suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File) In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, an Indonesian woman wades through a flooded street in Bekasi, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia. Heavy downpours combined with poor city sewage planning often causes heavy flooding in parts of greater Jakarta. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim, File) Spanish king meets with parties in last bid to snap deadlock MADRID (AP) Spain's king began talks with political party leaders Monday in a final bid to break a four-month deadlock in finding a candidate capable of forming a government and avoiding a new election. King Felipe VI first met with Pedro Quevedo of the small New Canarias group. He will finish the two days of meetings Tuesday when he holds talks with the leaders of the four most voted parties, ending with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Spain's Dec. 20 election ended the country's traditional two-party system with strong showings for two new parties. But no party won a majority of seats in the 350-seat Parliament and since then none of them have been able to muster enough support to form a government. FILE - In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016 file photo, Spain's King Felipe VI walks with Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, left, during the annual Pascua Militar Epiphany ceremony at the Royal Palace in Madrid, Spain. Spain's king is meeting Monday and Tuesday with the country's political parties following four months of political paralysis in a last-ditch effort to install a government and avoid sending voters back to the ballot box. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File) By law, if no government is in place by May 2 the king will dissolve Parliament and another election will be held June 26. Polls suggest new elections are unlikely to break the stalemate with no party forecast to obtain a majority. Thus, fresh elections could mean more months of political paralysis as parties again attempt to reach a deal. Rajoy's conservative Popular Party came in first in the December vote with 123 seats but lost the majority it held since 2011. Rajoy later told the king he wasn't in a position to be a candidate for premier as he lacked sufficient outside support. The king then called on Pedro Sanchez of the second-placed Socialists, with 90 seats, to try. Sanchez struck a deal with centrist newcomer Ciudadanos, which has 40 seats, but was unable to convince the new far-left Podemos party, which controls 69 seats, to join him or allow him to govern by abstaining from a confidence vote. Sanchez lost two parliamentary confidence votes last month. Rajoy insists his party should head a government and wants Sanchez to support an unprecedented coalition of the country's first and second parties. The Socialists, however, reject any pact with Rajoy. FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 22, 2016 file photo, Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy looks down as he talks to journalists during a news conference at the Moncloa Palace following his meeting with Spain's King Felipe VI, in Madrid. Spain's king is meeting Monday and Tuesday with the country's political parties following four months of political paralysis in a last-ditch effort to install a government and avoid sending voters back to the ballot box. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File) India revokes visa for Germany-based Uighur activist NEW DELHI (AP) India has revoked a tourist visa given to a Germany-based ethnic Uighur activist to attend an upcoming conference at the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India, an official said Monday. Indian Home Ministry spokesman K.S. Dhatwalia refused to say why the government had decided to cancel the visa for Dolkun Isa, who is on a Chinese terrorist list. Isa told Indian TV news channel TimesNow that the government notified him Saturday that the electronic visa given to him earlier this month had been revoked. He said there was no explanation, but speculated it may have been because of Chinese pressure on the Indian government. The government in Beijing did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment. China's leaders are concerned about violence in the far western region of Xinjiang, which is home to the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), a mostly Muslim ethnic Turkic minority that has chafed at Beijing's heavy-handed rule and restrictions on language and religious practices. Hundreds of people have died in violent attacks that the government blames on militant Islamic separatists. Beijing has long been wary of independence-minded militants in Xinjiang and has kept tight controls over the region. It began labeling the militants terrorists in 2001 in a bid to win international support for the struggle against the militants. Scholars have argued that China's stifling policies in the region including restrictions on beards and veils have marginalized the Uighurs and fueled militancy. Tsering Tsomo, executive director of the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, expressed disappointment at the revocation of Isa's visa. The center is one of the organizers of this weekend's interfaith leadership conference that Isa had been planning to attend in Dharmsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is headquartered. "We just wanted a small group of like-minded people to come and exchange their views in a free and democratic manner," Tsomo said in a statement Monday in Dharmsala. "The aim was to help improve the human rights situation in China." The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, has been living in Dharmsala since he fled Tibet in 1959. Beijing accuses him of seeking to separate Tibet from China. But Tibetans and the Dalai Lama say they simply want a high degree of autonomy under Chinese rule. ___ On campaign trail, Clinton finds comfort zone at churches PHILADELPHIA (AP) Sunday mornings at Baptist churches fall right into Hillary Clinton's comfort zone. "This is the day the Lord has made," Clinton said recently at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, New York, as sunshine streamed through the stained-glass windows and hit the packed pews. "Being here at this church with these beautiful people, knowing how grateful I am for this spring day. I feel blessed and grace is all around us." Black Baptist churches may not seem like an obvious match for Clinton, a white Methodist from the Chicago suburbs. But the Democratic presidential candidate, who has been criticized for her tentative, sometimes awkward political skills, often seems most at ease in houses of worship. It's where she's shared her faith for many years and earned a loyal following. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks, Sunday, April 24, 2016, at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) "One thing not a lot of people really understand about her is the central role of faith in her life," said Mo Elleithee, Clinton's spokesman in her 2008 White House campaign. Clinton points to her faith as having sustained her through hard times and informing her approach to public service. Her days in Arkansas, coupled with her strong religious beliefs, have helped her connect to churchgoers in black communities, where she enjoys overwhelming support. Democratic rival Bernie Sanders has visited churches, too, during the campaign, but doesn't have the same rapport from the altar. "The first time I ever walked into a black church with Hillary, she knew exactly where she was, you could see an exhale from her, a big smile came on her face, she didn't just step into the building, she stepped into worshipping with them," said Burns Strider, director of faith and values outreach during Clinton's 2008 campaign. "I must have done that a hundred times with her." Clinton visited two churches in Philadelphia on Sunday, two days before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. At Triumph Baptist Church and African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, she pledged to seek criminal justice reform and fight for tougher gun regulations before the largely African-American congregations. "We as a people have to start showing each other more respect, more kindness more love," Clinton said, repeating a campaign mantra. "I am grateful for this chance to be with you and I would be honored and humbled to have your vote on Tuesday." Visits to churches have prompted some of Clinton's most candid, intimate moments. On a recent trip to the Holy Ghost Cathedral in Detroit, Bishop Corletta Vaughn referenced Clinton's strength in dealing with husband Bill Clinton's infidelities. In response, Clinton spoke about the story of the prodigal son, alluding to, as she often does, a version written by Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and writer. She said what the parable "teaches us is to practice the discipline of gratitude every day." According to Vaughn, Clinton's remarks showed a "deep reservoir of faith." "I've been in the faith business for 42 years," Vaughn said. "I know one who is authentic and genuine. Her language speaks of her faith. ... When she started talking about the prodigal son, you didn't learn that this morning." Strider, who emails with Clinton most days about Scripture and faith, said she has seemed more willing to talk about religion during this campaign than in the past. He said Clinton had "to recognize that she's not using her faith for other means. That was really valuable for her to understand that she was actually showing her faith which could lead others to make more rational choices." Seeking to organize religious voters for Clinton, Strider founded a group called Faith Voters for Hillary about two years ago. While he is no longer directly involved, he said the group has an active online presence and over 300,000 people in its database. Still, some black pastors question Clinton's hold on religious voters. Darrell Scott, the senior pastor of New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, has endorsed Republican Donald Trump and helped organize a meeting with Trump and black clergy last year. "She's very, very liberal. This is what I don't understand about the pastors. Christians, by nature, should be conservative," said Scott, who serves as CEO of Trump's new National Diversity Coalition. "She's the absolute wrong choice for a voter of faith." Trump's efforts to win over black churchgoers have been mixed. At that November meeting last year, some pastors criticized Trump for racially-charged language, though others emerged offering support. Clinton reflected on her faith journey during a speech before the United Methodist Women's Assembly two years ago. She spoke warmly about her childhood church in Park Ridge, Illinois, where her mother taught Sunday school and a young Clinton helped to clean and prepare the altar for services. She also remembered her father's nightly prayers, her grandmother's hymns and the charismatic youth minister who introduced her to the idea of "faith in action." "I loved that church," Clinton said. "I loved how it made me feel about myself, I loved the doors that it opened in my understanding of the world." FILE - In this March 13, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sings during service at Mount Zion Fellowship Church in Highland Hills, Ohio. Black Baptist churches may not seem like an obvious match for Clinton, a white Methodist from the Chicago suburbs. But the Democratic presidential candidate, who has been criticized for her tentative or even awkward political skills, often seems most at ease in these churches where she has shared her faith for many years and earned a loyal following in the process. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks Sunday, April 24, 2016, at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, center, and Pastor James S. Hall Jr. listen to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speak, Sunday, April 24, 2016, at Triumph Baptist Church in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) In this April 17, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at Grace Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Black Baptist churches may not seem like an obvious match for Clinton, a white Methodist from the Chicago suburbs. But the Democratic presidential candidate, who has been criticized for her tentative or even awkward political skills, often seems most at ease in these churches where she has shared her faith for many years and earned a loyal following in the process. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves as she arrives to speak, Sunday, April 24, 2016, at Triumph Baptist Church in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) In this April 10, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at Mount Moriah AME Church during a campaign stop in New York. Black Baptist churches may not seem like an obvious match for Clinton, a white Methodist from the Chicago suburbs. But the Democratic presidential candidate, who has been criticized for her tentative or even awkward political skills, often seems most at ease in these churches where she has shared her faith for many years and earned a loyal following in the process.(AP Photo/Bryan R. Smith, File) Critics of Trump in GOP Senate fact check his foreign policy WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate's leading Republican voices on national security are assembling an indictment of Donald Trump's worldview by soliciting rebuttals from U.S. military leaders that challenge the accuracy and legality of the GOP presidential front-runner's most provocative foreign policy positions. Over the past few months, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, two of Trump's sharpest GOP critics, have used their posts on the Senate Armed Services Committee to fact-check Trump's claims. Without mentioning the bombastic billionaire's name, they've asked senior officers who testify before the committee about waterboarding extremists, the consequences of targeting terrorists' families, and whether NATO and America's other key alliances have become obsolete. FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2016, file photo, Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, and committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., speak at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Graham and McCain are assembling a harsh critique of Donald Trumps worldview by soliciting rebuttals from U.S. military leaders that challenge the accuracy and legality of his most provocative foreign policy positions. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) Connecting the threads over weeks of hearings would produce a record of remarks that could be strung together and used by opponents of the presidential candidate. To demonstrate his fitness to be commander in chief, Trump is planning to tone down his brash personality and deliver a foreign affairs address on Wednesday the first in a series of policy speeches. He also is planning a separate speech on the military, telling The Associated Press in a recent interview that people may be surprised by "how well I'll handle matters relative to the military." Omitting Trump's name from the conversation allows the generals and admirals questioned by the senators to stay apolitical and out of the 2016 presidential campaign. But it's obvious that McCain, the committee's chairman, and Graham, who waged an unsuccessful bid for his party's White House nomination, are asking about positions Trump has staked out that have rattled the Republican Party and unnerved U.S. allies. Aides to the senators said there's no coordination or strategy between the two. But McCain and Graham are close friends and foreign policy hawks. It's not unusual to see them together on the floor of the Senate, hammering the Obama administration over the Iran nuclear deal, the civil war in Syria or troop levels in Afghanistan. Graham also wrote the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford. Without citing Trump's name, he inquired about the billionaire's pledge, if elected, to bring back the use of waterboarding which causes the sensation of drowning and worse against captured militants. Congress has outlawed waterboarding along with other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump also said he would order the military to kill family members of militants who threaten the U.S., a position he has since retreated from after being heavily criticized. Dunford responded to Graham last week in a carefully worded letter that said violating the laws of war "diminish the support of the American people and the populace of Democratic states, including allies who might otherwise support or participate in coalition operations." Graham, a retired Air Force lawyer, has called Trump's foreign policy "gibberish" and "ill-conceived." Graham half-heartedly endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for president because Cruz is "not completely crazy." McCain, an ex-Navy fighter pilot and the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, hasn't wavered from his position that he will support the Republican nominee. But he's bristled over what he's called Trump's "uninformed and dangerous statements on national security issues." Examples of McCain's and Graham's fact-checking approach were on display this past week. On April 19, when the Army general selected to lead U.S. forces in South Korea testified before the committee, McCain seized the opportunity to undermine Trump's suggestion that the U.S. withdraw its forces from the South because Seoul isn't paying enough to cover the cost of the American military presence. "Isn't it the fact that it costs us less to have troops stationed in Korea than in the United States, given the contribution the Republic of Korea makes?" McCain asked Gen. Vincent Brooks. Yes, Brooks said, telling McCain the South Koreans pay half, or $808 million annually, of the U.S. presence there. Brooks added that the South Koreans are footing the bill for more than 90 percent of a $10.8 billion project to build a base where U.S. troops will be stationed. Two days later, Trump's claim that NATO is irrelevant and ill-suited to fight terrorism came under the microscope. As president, Trump has said he would force member nations to increase their contributions, even if that risked breaking up the 28-country alliance. Responding to a series of questions from Graham, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, picked to be the top American commander in Europe, assured the committee of NATO's critical importance to the U.S. Breaking up the alliance, Scaparrotti warned, would benefit Russia, the Islamic State group and even the Taliban in Afghanistan. The issue of torture is personal to McCain, who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for more than five years and badly abused by his captors. During a committee hearing in February, McCain asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if he agreed that information gained through waterboarding and other methods of torture came at too high a cost for the United States. "I do," said Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general. "Isn't it the fact that this is - American values are such that just no matter what the enemy does, that we maintain a higher standard of behavior? And when we violate that, as we did with Abu Ghraib, that the consequences are severe?" said McCain, referring to the prison scandal in Iraq. "Yes, sir," Clapper responded. Afghan president calls on Pakistan to battle Taliban KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Afghanistan's president on Monday called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. Ashraf Ghani made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the Taliban, the leadership of which is widely believed to be based in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar, near the border. In this photo released by Afghanistan's Presidential Palace, President Ashraf Ghani speaks during a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. He made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the capital that killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Afghan Presidential Palace via AP) Ghani said there are "no good or bad terrorists, they are just terrorists," and that "Pakistan must understand that and act against them." Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States have been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban in recent months, but have made little progress. "We don't expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said. "What we want is for Pakistan, based on the four nations' agreement, to keep its promises and launch military operations against insurgents." Dawa Khan Menapal, deputy spokesman to the president, said that there has been no contact with the Afghan government regarding the peace talks from the Pakistani side. "We have made our decision and the decision was announced by the president today," he said. "Now it is Pakistan's turn to fulfill their promise according the decision of the four nations meetings." Islamabad has denied past allegations that it aids the Taliban and says its influence over the group has been overstated. Pakistan has been waging a military offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal region since 2014, But critics have long accused it of fighting its own insurgents while covertly supporting groups that attack neighboring Afghanistan and India. In a surprise twist three relatively senior Taliban representatives living in self-imposed exile in the Middle Eastern state of Qatar arrived in Pakistan for meetings at least initially with Pakistani intelligence officials, according to two diplomats, neither of whom wanted to be identified by name or nationality because they feared the revelation would anger Pakistan. Two of the Taliban officials who arrived here were identified as Shahbuddin Dilawar, an ethnic Pashtun, who was a charge d'affaires in Islamabad during the Taliban's rule and Jan Muhammed Madni who served as the Taliban's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. The identity of the third Taliban official was not immediately known. The Taliban have maintained an office in the Qatari capital of Doha for several years although it was officially closed down after the Taliban demanded to be recognized as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Kabul has steadfastly refused to allow the Taliban to be recognized under that banner saying it would be tantamount to recognizing them as a government-in-exile. ___ Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report. In this photo released by Afghanistan's Presidential Palace, President Ashraf Ghani, center, prays during a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. He made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the capital that killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Afghan Presidential Palace via AP) In this photo released by Afghanistan's Presidential Palace, President Ashraf Ghani speaks during a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. He made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the capital that killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Afghan Presidential Palace via AP) In this photo released by Afghanistan's Presidential Palace, President Ashraf Ghani kisses an Afghan flag as hew inspects the honor guard ahead of a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. He made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the capital that killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Afghan Presidential Palace via AP) In this photo released by Afghanistan's Presidential Palace, President Ashraf Ghani speaks during a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. He made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the capital that killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Afghan Presidential Palace via AP) In this photo released by Afghanistan's Presidential Palace, President Ashraf Ghani, center, arrives for a joint meeting of the National Assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2016. Ghani has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. He made the remarks during an address to parliament a week after a Taliban assault on the capital that killed 64 people and wounded another 340. (Afghan Presidential Palace via AP) The Latest: Obama meeting with European leaders HANNOVER, Germany (AP) The Latest on President Barack Obama's visit to Germany (all times local): 2:40 p.m. Wrapping up his trip to Europe, President Barack Obama is huddling with President Francois Hollande of France, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and German chancellor Angela Merkel test VR goggles when touring the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (Christian Charisius/dpa via AP) The five leaders are making quiet conversation around a large table as they pose for photographs before the meeting, but the talk will soon get serious as the leaders are expected to touch on a wide range of topics, including the battle against the Islamic State group, the civil war in Syria and the ongoing migration crisis stemming from that war. ___ 12:15 p.m. President Barack Obama says "we can't turn our backs on fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now." Obama is speaking in Hannover, Germany. He is crediting German Chancellor Angela Merkel for setting that tone and he is calling for every nation to step up and share responsibility for helping those fleeing violence in the Middle East, including the United States. Obama says Europe and the U.S. are more secure when welcoming people of all backgrounds and faiths, including Muslims. ___ 12:00 p.m. President Barack Obama says Europe has sometimes been complacent in its own defense. Obama is urging European countries to step up their spending on defense during a speech in Hannover, Germany. Obama says he wants good relations with Russia. But he says the global community must keep up sanctions on Russia until it fully implements its commitments under a Ukraine deal struck in Minsk. ___ 11:55 a.m. President Barack Obama says a united Europe is vital to the world, saying it promotes peace and prosperity. Obama is making the case that a strong Europe is needed to enhance the world's security, and he says that Europe and NATO can still do more, particularly in Syria and Iraq. Obama says all NATO members should be contributing at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product to defense. ___ 11:50 a.m. President Barack Obama says he's sending up to 250 more troops to Syria to "keep up this momentum" against Islamic State group. Obama is speaking at a trade fair in Hannover, Germany. He says the additional troops won't be leading the fight on the ground, but they'll be "essential." He says their goal will be to drive IS back from territory. Obama says existing U.S. special forces in Syria have been critical in lending expertise to local forces. Obama says some of the additional troops he's sending will be special forces. The president's announcement brings to 300 the number of U.S. forces battling extremists in war-torn Syria. ____ 11:40 a.m. President Barack Obama says when it comes to demonizing minorities, loud voices get attention. Obama is alluding to American presidential candidate Donald Trump in a speech in Hannover, Germany. He says this is a defining moment. Obama says inequality and other trends have created concerns and anxieties in the U.S. and Europe that are legitimate and mustn't be ignored. But Obama says they shouldn't lead to a mentality where people blame their problems on each other. Obama is decrying a mindset of singling out people who look or pray differently, whether it's immigrants or Muslims. Obama says that's the kind of politics that the European system was set up to work against. ___ 11:30 a.m. President Barack Obama says that there's never been a better time for the world. He says if someone had to choose a moment in time to be born, it would be today. Obama is speaking at a trade fair in Hannover, Germany. He says there is still enormous suffering and tragedy, but people are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful and prosperous era in human history. He notes that people are living longer and are better educated. He says it has been decades since the last war between major powers and that the economy has lifted billions out of poverty globally. In the end, he says, people should take confidence "in our ability to shape our own destiny." ___ 11:20 a.m. As President Barack Obama tours the Hannover trade fair, hundreds of people are demonstrating outside against job cuts at the American technology and consulting company IBM. Some 200 IBM workers staged a noisy rally on the edge of the fairground Monday to protest against the measures they say will cost 900 jobs in Germany. Demonstrators held up placards reading "Profit, profit, profit, where's the human?" and "We are family? One IBM. Find the mistake." A union leader called on protesters to "be loud maybe the president will hear you." Obama is in Hannover to promote American business at the world's largest industrial trade fair. IBM Germany didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. ___ 9:30 a.m. President Barack Obama is putting in a few good words for the "spirit of innovation" that he says turns ideas into jobs and growth. He commented Monday before setting out on a tour of the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade show, taking place in Hannover, Germany. The U.S. is sponsoring this year's show and Obama says it's another chance to urge people to buy "Made in America." Obama is touring exhibits with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as part of their dual push for a U.S.-European free trade pact. The tour opens Obama's final day of a six-day, three-country trip. He's also due to deliver a speech in Hannover and meet with European leaders before returning to Washington. 9:45 a.m. President Barack Obama is something of a technology geek and he is in his element at the Hannover Messe. Obama and his host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are checking out high-tech inventions and chatting with developers at the massive industrial technology trade show. The leaders are learning about minicomputers that send data from a car to the cloud, a sensor that mimics a gecko's feet to pick up objects and ultra-light prosthetics created for para-Olympian cyclists. They've checked out an electric vehicle battery charger that maker Phoenix Contact says can give an car battery 100 kilometers worth of charge in just five minutes. And Obama has tried on virtual reality glasses made with what developer Ifm Stiftung dubs the smallest 3D camera in the world. With the glasses on his face and cameras snapping photos, Obama reached out as if shaking an invisible hand. He says, "It's a brave new world." The combo shows U.S. President Barack Obama, bottom, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they test VR goggles when touring the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (Christian Charisius/dpa via AP) U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel tour the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) Pro-EU populists win landslide victory in Serbian election BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) An official vote tally has confirmed Serbia's incumbent pro-EU populists won a landslide victory in the country's general election. The tally presented by the state electoral commission Monday also shows pro-Russian nationalists are returning to Parliament. With about 96 percent of the vote counted, the Progressive Party won 48 percent and its Socialist coalition partner got 11 percent in Sunday's vote. Two right-wing parties lagged far behind the Radical Party with 8 percent and DSS-Dveri with 5 percent. Serbian Prime Minister and Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vucic, reacts during a press conference after claiming victory in parliamentary elections in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, April 24, 2016. Initial unofficial results show that the incumbent pro-EU populists have swept Serbia's parliamentary election, leaving pro-Russia nationalists far behind.(AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) Three pro-Western opposition parties, the Democrats, the Social Democrats and the new reformist party Dosta Je Bilo (It's Enough) were each hovering slightly above the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in Parliament. The results mean that Serbia will continue with its EU membership bid, but with strong pro-Russian opposition. Japan to raise nuke safety check competency per IAEA review TOKYO (AP) Japanese nuclear regulators said they will revise laws, nearly double inspection staff and send some inspectors to the U.S. for training to address deficiencies cited by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced the plans Monday in response to an IAEA evaluation of Japan's nuclear safety regulations since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The report was submitted to the government last week. The IAEA review, its first since the Japanese nuclear authority's establishment in 2012, was conducted in January to determine whether the country's new regulatory system meets international standards. The IAEA report said even though Japan has adopted stricter safety requirements for plant operators, inspections are reactive, inflexible and lack free access. The report noted that the nuclear authority has made efforts to increase its transparency and independence. FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2016 file photo, Philippe Jamet, right, Commissioner of France Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) and Integrated Regulatory Review Service (IRRS) Mission Team Leader and Juan Carlos Lentijo, left, Deputy Director General and Head of the IAEA Department of Nuclear Safety and Security, speak prior to a press conference with Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority in Tokyo. Japan has improved its nuclear safety regulation since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but it still needs to strengthen inspections and staff competency, a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, led by Jamet, said Friday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File) The authority's commissioners met Monday and decided to give inspectors greater discretion and free access to data, equipment and facilities. Current on-site checks have largely become a choreographed routine. Inspectors' requests for access to data and equipment outside of regular quarterly inspections are not mandatory, and there is no penalty for plant operators that fail to meet safety requirements. Inspections also tend to be limited to a checklist of minimum requirements. The IAEA report came as nuclear safety concerns increased among the Japanese public following two powerful deadly earthquakes in southern Japan. Three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant suffered meltdowns in March 2011 following a massive earthquake and tsunami. A series of investigations have blamed safety complacency, inadequate crisis management skills, a failure to keep up with international safety standards, and collusion between regulators and the nuclear industry as the main contributing causes of the disaster. The authority plans to revise laws next year and enact them in 2020 to implement the IAEA's recommendations, officials said Monday. The authority also said it would increase the size and competency of its staff. The IAEA urged Japan to develop training programs and step up safety research and cooperation with organizations inside and outside the country. Japan plans to send five inspectors to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year for training in nuclear safety inspections. The trainees will be sent to NRC regional offices and its technical training center in Tennessee, according to Shuichi Kaneko, an authority official. "We look to the U.S. as a model," he said. "We are finally beginning to catch up, though a framework is not there yet." While the 1,000 U.S. inspectors are given two years of training, Japan has only 150 staffers who receive just a two-week basic course, Kaneko said. He said on-site inspections at each plant in the U.S. average 2,000 hours a year, and only 168 hours in Japan. The authority plans to start hiring more staff next spring and eventually increase its staff by at least 100 to adapt to increased inspection needs, Kaneko said. Theoretically, to match U.S. safety inspection levels, Japan would need at least 250 inspectors. Japan largely ignored an IAEA review in 2007 that concluded that its inspection system was inadequate. ___ This story has been corrected to say previous IAEA review was in 2007 instead of 2008. ___ Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at twitter.com/mariyamaguchi Poland's ex-leaders say new govt is demolishing democracy WARSAW, Poland (AP) Three former Polish presidents and other prominent former leaders are accusing the right-wing government of demolishing the country's democracy and its international standing. They are also urging lawmakers and other politicians to disregard what they call the "draconian" new legislation the government is proposing. The appeal Monday on the front page of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily added to the current political conflict in Poland. It was signed by former presidents Lech Walesa, Aleksander Kwasniewski and Bronislaw Komorowski, as well as former Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski and six others, representing a wide political spectrum. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo reacted by saying that victorious fall elections have given her government the mandate to introduce sweeping reforms. The appeal shows that "these people do not want to accept the free choice that the Poles have made," Szydlo said. The authors of the appeal said the ruling Law and Justice party "has no intention of abandoning this path of demolishing the constitutional order" that is "paralyzing the work of the Constitutional Tribunal and all of the judicial authorities." The tribunal, a top court that has the power to block new legislation if it is not in line with the Constitution, is at the heart of a heated conflict that is also debated by European Union leaders. The ruling party that controls the government, the presidency and the parliament, has changed the rules by which new members are appointed to the court. It wants to have influence over the court while making sweeping changes to the nation's legislation, state-owned companies and budget. It asked all Poles to follow the constitution in "daily work and activity" and that all ruling party politicians attached to state and democratic values should "refuse participation in their destruction." "An attempt by the Law and Justice to create its own (legislative) order represents an usurpation of power," the authors said. Saudi Arabia outlines reform plan for oil-addicted economy RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) Saudi Arabia unveiled a bold reform plan on Monday aimed at weaning the country off its "addiction" to oil in a bid to prepare the next generation of Saudi leaders for the domestic pressures of youth unemployment and revenues eroded by lower oil prices. The project, which includes plans to float a stake in the world's largest oil company, Aramco, and set up one of the world's biggest government investment funds, is meant to provide a blueprint for sweeping reforms to steer the OPEC kingdom away from its decades-long reliance on cheap-to-produce oil. King Salman said in a televised announcement that the Cabinet approved the plan, known as Vision 2030, and called on Saudis to work together to ensure its success. FILE- In this Monday, June 15, 2015 file photo, a Saudi man walks at the Tadawul Saudi Stock Exchange, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. King Salman announced the approval for the "Vision 2030" plan in a short televised announcement on Monday in which he called on Saudis to work together ensure its success. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) But it was left to the king's powerful son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to spell out details in an interview aired shortly after the announcement on Saudi-owned broadcaster Al-Arabiya. The 30-year-old second-in-line to the throne also serves as the country's defense minister and chairs a committee to oversee economic policymaking. That committee, the Council on Economic and Development Affairs, has been focused on reorienting the kingdom away from its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, creating jobs and boosting foreign investment. The plan is ambitious. Beyond selling state assets, it includes trimming government perks, like the estimated $61 billion spent annually on energy subsidies that Saudi citizens have become accustomed to and which have helped secure political patronage for the Al Saud ruling family. Just this week, the king sacked the country's water and electricity minister after complaints by citizens online over how increases in water tariffs had been implemented. The Internet is one of the few spaces where people can discuss sensitive issues since there are no political parties and protests are banned. Though the plan stresses the importance of Saudi women in the economy and expanding their job opportunities, it contained little to suggest the kingdom would accelerate its cautious pace of social reforms. Women were granted the right to vote and run in local council elections for the first time last year, but are still banned from driving and need the approval of a male relative usually a husband or father to travel abroad. Lower oil prices pushed Saudi Arabia into a budget deficit of nearly $100 billion last year and a projected deficit this year of $87 billion. Despite efforts to limit reliance on its main export, oil accounted for more than 70 percent of the state's revenue in 2015. Masood Ahmed, International Monetary Fund director for the Middle East and Central Asia, said the plan's objective of diversifying the economy away from oil is "exactly the kind of transformation that an economy like Saudi Arabia needs." "I think the real issue is going to be how to make sure that these very sensible and ambitious objectives can be translated into real changes," he said. In Monday's wide-ranging interview, the deputy crown prince described the kingdom as having an "addiction to oil" that had hurt development in other sectors and said a planned partial initial public offering of the state-owned oil giant Aramco was part of the reform program. "The vision is a road map of our development and economic goals," he said. "Without a doubt, Aramco is one of the main keys of this vision and the kingdom's economic renaissance." He put the estimated value of Aramco at more than $2 trillion and said less than 5 percent would be offered to public shareholders. Subsidiaries of the company would also be part of the share sale, he said. The Aramco shares would be listed on the Saudi stock exchange, the Tadawul, and on an international exchange, possibly in the United States. Aramco boasts the world's largest oil reserves and produces some 10 million barrels of crude a day, giving it outsized influence over world energy markets. It traces its history to a 1933 agreement between the kingdom and the Standard Oil Company of California to develop the country's oil reserves, and has been known as Aramco an acronym for the Arabian American Oil Company since 1944. The Saudi government took full control of the company in a series of buyouts that ended in 1980. The prince also outlined plans to develop Saudi Arabia's $160 billion public investment fund and turn it into a $2 trillion sovereign fund that would go into developing the kingdom's cities. It would include cash generated from the Aramco IPO, an existing $600 billion in reserves, and state-owned real estate and industrial areas estimated to be worth $1 trillion, he said. Jason Turvey, Middle East economist for Capital Economics, said that because plans for the fund reflect a shift of balance sheets rather than any new assets, it will not reduce the government's dependence on oil revenues. "We don't buy into Mohammed bin Salman's assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer be dependent on oil by 2020," he wrote. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch report said the changes under King Salman may herald a much more assertive role for royals in energy policy and cautioned that the concentration of power with the deputy crown prince "could raise a succession risk going forward." Another major obstacle facing the Saudi monarchy is unemployment, currently at 11.7 percent. The kingdom said it plans to reduce that to 7 percent by 2030 and to boost the private sector to alleviate pressures on the government to absorb its growing workforce. More than half of Saudis are under the age of 25, and in coming years millions will be looking for work and affordable housing. Currently, 70 percent of Saudis work in the public sector, where the government spends heavily on wages. The deputy crown prince said another way to drive up non-oil revenue is by boosting the kingdom's own military production. Saudi Arabia was the world's third-largest arms buyer last year, with purchases of more than $87 billion, yet only 2 percent was for locally-produced weaponry. Vision 2030 sets out a goal of localizing more than half of Saudi Arabia's military spending and creating a military industries holding company that would be initially fully owned by the government. ___ Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this report. Follow Aya Batrawy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ayaelb . FILE- In this Monday, May 14, 2012 file photo, Prince Mohammed bin Salman waits for Gulf Arab leaders ahead of the opening of Gulf Cooperation Council, as known as GCC summit, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. King Salman announced the approval for the "Vision 2030" plan in a short televised announcement on Monday in which he called on Saudis to work together ensure its success. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File) Latest: Mother of accused prom shooter: Son no monster ANTIGO, Wis. (AP) The Latest on the shooting outside a northern Wisconsin high school during prom (all times local): 5:30 p.m. The mother of a man accused of shooting two people outside a Wisconsin prom says her son "wasn't a monster." Two Antigo police department vehicles sit in front of the entrance to Antigo High School, Sunday, April 24, 2016, where an 18-year-old gunman opened fire late Saturday outside of a prom at the school. The shooter wounded two students before a police officer who was in the parking lot fatally shot him, authorities said Sunday. (Fred Berner/Antigo Daily Journal via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Lorrie Wagner talked to The Associated Press briefly outside her home in Antigo on Monday. Police say her son, 18-year-old Jakob Wagner, shot and wounded two people with a rifle Saturday night before he was killed by police outside Antigo High School. Lorrie Wagner said she had just come from a funeral home to make arrangements for her son, a former Antigo High student whom she called "my baby." She said she hoped his death "shines light on bullying and how deeply it affects people." At least two of Jakob Wagner's classmates said he was bullied. Police haven't said what they think caused Wagner to carry out the shooting. ___ 3:30 p.m. A police chief in northern Wisconsin says an 18-year-old gunman killed by police after opening fire on young people coming out of a prom in northern Wisconsin arrived on a bicycle armed with a rifle. Chief Eric Roller said at a news conference in Antigo on Monday that Jakob E. Wagner opened fire as four people were leaving the dance. Two people were wounded. Roller said the two people who weren't hit tended to the two shooting victims, tying a necktie around a wounded male student's leg as a tourniquet. The wounded male student's family released a statement through Roller saying their 18-year-old son is "doing well" after coming through "a long surgery." They also asked for privacy. ___ 3 p.m. The police chief in a northern Wisconsin town where a gunman wounded two prom-goers before being killed by police says his officers prevented a larger tragedy. Chief Eric Roller at a news conference Monday afternoon in Antigo said their response "saved a lot of lives" by preventing the shooter from ending up inside the dance. Roller said his department regularly trains for "active shooter situations" and that officers regularly staff school events. Roller also said 18-year-old Jakob E. Wagner arrived on a bicycle armed with a rifle and that investigators didn't recover any other weapons. He didn't reveal a suspected motive for the shooting. ___ 1:15 p.m. The parents of one of two students wounded by an 18-year-old gunman who was killed by police outside a Wisconsin high school say their son is doing well after a long surgery to repair his injuries. A statement Monday from the wounded male Antigo High School student's parents says the 18-year-old has come through a long surgery and will recover with time and effort. He and his girlfriend were shot Saturday night when Jakob Wagner opened fire outside the school during prom. Police say an officer on patrol shot and killed Wagner. The wounded male student's parents released a statement through Antigo police saying they were thankful for their son's girlfriend and two other friends on the scene who acted bravely and calmly in light of the circumstances. Authorities said the girlfriend suffered a graze wound. ___ 10:20 a.m. Gov. Scott Walker is calling for more discussion about bullying in the wake of a shooting outside a high school prom in northern Wisconsin. Authorities say 18-year-old Jakob E. Wagner shot and injured two prom-goers outside the school with a high-powered rifle before police killed him Saturday evening. Asked about gun control Monday, Walker told reporters the bigger issue is how to deal with individuals like Wagner. He says he has heard news reports that Wagner was bullied and that rather than imposing more controls on firearms, authorities should address bullying and mental health, as well as teaching students how to resolve disagreements peacefully. Walker says he doesn't think he's heard anyone talk about banning rifles in Wisconsin, saying, "if you did, you wouldn't have hunting here." ___ 6:45 a.m. Students are heading back to classes at a northern Wisconsin high school where a teenager shot two people during prom before he was killed by a police officer. Administrators at Antigo High School say it's important that students have access to support from counselors and others who will be available at all the district's schools Monday. Officials say there will be a heightened police presence around the high school over the next few days. Authorities say 18-year-old Jakob E. Wagner was armed with a high-powered rifle and shot two prom-goers outside the school Saturday night before he was killed by police. A school district administrator said it appeared Wagner intended to go into the dance and start shooting randomly. Officials say the two shot by Wagner are expected to recover. ___ 1:12 a.m. Officials are praising the response to a shooting that wounded two people who were leaving a high school prom in northern Wisconsin. Police say 18-year-old Jakob E. Wagner wounded two prom-goers outside the school Saturday night before he was killed by police. Investigators have not discussed a possible motive. But the interim district administrator said it appeared Wagner intended to go into the dance and start shooting randomly. Gov. Scott Walker says in a statement that the actions of the Antigo Police Department "undoubtedly saved lives." Dad of missing Florida teen fisherman will share phone data FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) The father of a Florida teen who went missing at sea while on a fishing trip with a friend said Monday he will share whatever information is found on his son's recovered cellphone with the other boy's family and law enforcement. Blu Stephanos issued a statement to the Palm Beach Post saying that the phone belonging to his son Austin Stephanos has salt water damage, so he doubts information can be retrieved, "but I am not giving up hope." He said he would share any information received with law enforcement and the family of Perry Cohen. The 14-year-olds went missing last July when their boat capsized off the Florida coast during a severe storm. Their bodies were never recovered, but a Norwegian cargo ship spotted their 19-foot boat near Bermuda last month and recovered it. Onboard were the phone and some fishing gear. FILE - This file combination made from photos provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows Perry Cohen, left, and Austin Stephanos. Cohen and Stephanos were last seen Friday afternoon, July 24, 2015, in Jupiter, Fla. A cellphone belonging to Austin Stephanos was inside a boat spotted in the Atlantic Ocean in March 2016 by the captain of a Norwegian supply ship. The mother of Perry Cohen issued a statement Sunday, April 24, 2016, saying the state attorney's help is needed because Austin Stephanos' father, Blu Stephanos, hasn't given Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigators permission to search his son's iPhone. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP, File) The statement came one day after Cohen's parents filed for a restraining order, asking a judge to ban the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission from giving the phone to the Stephanos family before it can be examined by law enforcement. The FWC is the lead agency handling the investigation and has the phone. That hearing is pending, said Guy Rubin, the Perry family's attorney. He said his clients have had no formal communication with the Stephanos family about the phone, so "I am not sure what their intentions are." FWC spokesman Rob Klepper issued a statement Monday saying that since this is not a criminal investigation the agency would turn over the phone and other items to the respective families. Any retrieval of information from Austin Stephanos' phone would only be done with his family's permission, Klepper said. The cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were recovered from the boat. The phone was shipped ahead to FWC, but the boat and other personal effects were crated and are expected to arrive at Port Everglades next month. Robert Heller, a digital forensics expert in Texas, said the phone could contain the boat's location, its speed, its direction, distress text messages the boys tried to send, photos they took and other information, assuming it wasn't damaged beyond repair. Even if FWC turns over the phone to the Stephanos family, Heller suspects investigators will download its data for safekeeping, if it is accessible. "If they didn't make a forensic record, then shame on them," he said. The Coast Guard searched for a week and the families' volunteer search lasted more than two weeks. During its search, the Coast Guard did spot the overturned boat near Daytona Beach, almost 200 miles from where the boys departed but it was gone when a recovery boat arrived at the location. This is not the first rift to appear between the families since their sons disappeared. Last October, Pamela Cohen, Perry's mother, asked that Stephanos' parents not use her son's name and likeness while fundraising for their new foundation. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the fishing gear and other personal effects have not been returned to the families. ___ Austria re-imposes controls on its border with Hungary VIENNA (AP) Austria has re-imposed controls on its border with Hungary, with police checking vehicles at the main regular crossings and soldiers patrolling other stretches of the border. Police say the controls that began Monday are meant to ensure that no one crosses illegally and to prevent the smuggling of migrants into Austria and other EU nations. They have reported more such smuggling attempts into Austria since countries along the Balkan migration route closed their borders to migrants earlier this year. Before that, tens of thousands of migrants seeking better lives in prosperous EU countries came through Hungary and then through Austria until Hungary sealed its borders last September with razor-wire fences. Migrants walk past graffiti at the port city of Piraeus, Greece on Monday, April 25, 2016. Around 3,500 migrants remain in Piraeus using tents, a warehouse and a terminal passenger building for shelter, as over 50,000 stranded refugees and migrants remain in the country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Austrian police did not say how long the new border controls would remain. An Afghan boy plays between tents as the Merchant Marine Ministry is seen in the background at the port city of Piraeus, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Around 3,500 migrants remain in Piraeus living in tents, a warehouse and a terminal passenger building, as over 50,000 stranded refugees and migrants remain in the country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Afghan migrants play cards outside their tents under a bridge at the port city of Piraeus, Greece, on Monday, April 25, 2016. Around 3,500 migrants remain at Piraeus living in tents, a warehouse and a terminal passenger building, as over 50,000 stranded refugees and migrants remain in the country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) A woman sits inside her tent at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Afghan migrants use an outdoor water tap to wash their clothes in the port city of Piraeus, Greece, on Monday, April 25, 2016. Over 3000 migrants in Piraeus continue to sleep in tents, a warehouse and a terminal passenger building, as over 50,000 migrants remain in the country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Afghan migrants use an outdoor water tap to wash in the port city of Piraeus, Greece, on Monday, April 25, 2016. Over 3000 migrants in Piraeus continue to sleep in tents, a warehouse and a terminal passenger building, as over 50,000 migrants remain in the country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Migrants and refugees gather near their tents set on the tracks of a railway station turned into a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) A pot over a bonfire was placed on the tracks of a railway station turned into a makeshift camp, crowded by migrants and refugees at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Migrants and refugees line-up for a food distribution at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) A man walks on the tracks of a railway station turned into a makeshift camp crowded by migrants and refugees at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) A woman holding a baby walks past a tent adorned with a writing "we are human" at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Monday, April 25, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Delaware high school resumes classes after student's death WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) Classes at Howard High School in Delaware are set to resume after a 16-year-old student was killed in a fight at the school. Wilmington City Councilwoman Sherry Dorsey Walker tells The News Journal (http://delonline.us/1rcaAGb) that Monday marks the first day of regular classes since Thursday, when Amy Joyner-Francis died after a fight in one of the school's restrooms. She says grief counselors will be available for students. Students returned to school Friday for a shortened day for similar counseling. Wilmington police say the sophomore was involved in a fight with several female students. Police have not disclosed a possible motive and no charges have been filed in the case. A community meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at Stubbs Elementary School, which is next to the high school. ___ This story has been corrected to show Howard High School is in Delaware, not Maryland. ___ The Latest: Merkel says leaders discuss support for Libya VIENNA (AP) The Latest on the flow of migrants into Europe (all times local): 7:00 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she, U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of France, Britain and Italy have discussed ways of supporting the fragile unity government in Libya and the possibility of expanding military efforts to stop the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean. In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan, center, meets with refugees and migrants during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) Speaking after talks in Hannover on Monday, Merkel said that NATO was already patrolling for smugglers in the Aegean Sea, between Greece and Turkey. She emphasized there were no "concrete proposals" for a similar mission off Libya and that a European Union operation in the Mediterranean had been working "quite well." But, she said, Obama has assured the European leaders the U.S. was prepared to also "take responsibility with regard to the Mediterranean route from Libya if necessary." ___ 6:45 p.m. Greece's coast guard says authorities in the western Greek port of Patras have arrested a truck driver after finding 11 migrants hiding in a compartment hidden in the vehicle's cargo of oranges. The coast guard said Monday the 58-year-old driver was arrested the previous day on suspicion of attempting to smuggle the migrants abroad. Patras is Greece's main port for ferries to and from neighboring Italy. Nearly 54,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece since Europe closed its land borders to the massive refugee flow heading north to the more prosperous countries of central and northern Europe. ___ 6:30 p.m. Greece's coast guard says it rescued a total of 304 refugees and migrants at sea in eight separate operations over the last week, from April 18-25. The coast guard said Monday it had also arrested one suspected migrant smuggler and seized four boats used to ferry people to the Greek islands from the nearby Turkish shore. The number of refugees making the short but often dangerous crossing from Turkey to the eastern Aegean islands has dropped significantly since a European Union-Turkey deal came into effect last month. Under the deal, those arriving from March 20 onwards face being returned to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece which few want to do. The deal has been heavily criticized by human rights groups, who say it violates the rights of refugees and that Turkey is not a safe country to return them to. ___ 5:15 p.m. Queen Rania of Jordan has visited refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos, which has been one of the main gateways into Europe for people fleeing war, poverty and persecution at home. Rania visited the Kara Tepe camp on Monday, a municipal-run facility hosting more than 800 people. Jordan is currently home to more than 1.2 million Syrians. Rania says aid organizations had voiced "deep concern" over the recent European Union-Turkey deal under which those arriving on Greek islands after March 20 face deportation back to Turkey. She says it is "absolutely crucial for us to look for legal alternatives and more safe and effective pathways to Europe and to areas of safety." She also says authorities need to search for sustainable, long-term solutions to the migrant crisis. ___ 2:35 p.m. Poland's Interior Ministry says it will send 120 border guards, police and migration bureau officers to Greece to help protect the European Union's borders under the mass inflow of refugees. A communique on the ministry website said Monday that due to the "continuing migration crisis in Europe," 60 Border Guard officers and 40 police officers with the necessary equipment will soon support Europe's border protection agency, Frontex, in securing Greece's border, which is also the EU's external border. A further 20 experts of Poland's Office for Foreigners will help with processing the migrants' requests for asylum. Poland is refusing to accept any refugees, citing security concerns after deadly attacks in France and Belgium. Warsaw argues support should be offered to refugees in camps nearest to their home countries. ___ 2:10 p.m. Austria has re-imposed controls on its border with Hungary, with police checking vehicles at the main regular crossings and soldiers patrolling other stretches of the border. Police say the controls that began Monday are meant to ensure that no one crosses illegally and to prevent the smuggling of migrants into Austria and other EU nations. They have reported more such smuggling attempts into Austria since countries along the Balkan migration route closed their borders to migrants earlier this year. Before that, tens of thousands of migrants seeking better lives in prosperous EU countries came through Hungary and then through Austria until Hungary sealed its borders last September with razor-wire fences. Austrian police did not say how long the new border controls would remain. In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan helps an elderly woman during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan looks at a child during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan, center, meets with refugees and migrants during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan, center, meets with refugees and migrants during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty's Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan, center, touches an injured baby during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty's Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan, center, listens to refugees and migrants during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) In this picture provided by the Office of Her Majesty's Press Department, Queen Rania of Jordan, center, looks at a baby during her visit to Kara Tepe municipality camp in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Office of Her Majesty Press Department via AP) From left, British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande, meet at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover, Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, from left, start their G-5 meeting in Herrenhaus Palace in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Michael Kappeler/pool photo via AP) Image of Asia: Respect for fallen soldiers on Anzac Day In this photo by Wong Maye-E, a catafalque guard rests with his weapon reversed as a form of respect at a dawn commemoration of Anzac Day for Australians and New Zealanders in Singapore. The day marks the 101st anniversary of New Zealand and Australia's first military action in World War I, the attempt to capture Gallipoli. In Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed solidarity with Turkey after recent terror attacks there, as part of his official address at the national Anzac Day ceremony in the capital, Canberra. Backlash greets plans for Muslim cemeteries across US DUDLEY, Mass. (AP) On the site of a long-idle dairy farm, leaders of a local mosque hope to build a final resting place for about 500 Muslim families to the dismay of many residents of this quaint town in central Massachusetts. In arguments cemetery developers and activists decry as thinly veiled bigotry, neighbors say they fear burial practices could contaminate groundwater because Muslims traditionally do not embalm bodies and bury their dead without coffins. They also cite concerns about noise, vandalism and increased traffic on the narrow road where the cemetery would be built. One resident said he worried he would have to put up with "crazy music" like the Islamic call to prayer. Similar sentiments have been expressed by people in communities around the country where Muslim cemeteries have been proposed, including Farmervsille, Texas; Walpole, Massachusetts; Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and Farmington, Minnesota. In this April 12, 2016 photo, Amjad Bhatti, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester, poses inside the mosque in Worcester, Mass. He and other leaders of the mosque are hoping to build a Muslim cemetery on farmland in Dudley, Mass., but residents are vigorously opposing the project. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) In some cases, opponents have succeeded in defeating the new cemetery projects, while in others, Muslim groups have appealed and judges have cleared the way. In Farmersville, near Dallas, some residents were openly hostile during meetings on a proposal to build a Muslim cemetery on a 35-acre site just outside the city. Farmersville is not far from Garland, where police fatally shot two Islamic State followers last year after they opened fire outside a cartoon contest lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. "People don't trust Muslims. Their goal is to populate the United States and take it over," Barbara Ashcraft said during a meeting in August. "You're not welcome here!" another man yelled, according to news accounts. City leaders were so bombarded with complaints that they published an informational guide on the city's website, assuring residents that there is "no training facility planned for this site ... no terrorist activity associated with this site ... no plans for a mosque at this site." Diane Piwko, a Farmersville resident and business owner, said she worries the cemetery proposed for prime property overlooking a lake won't be maintained and will become an eyesore at the entrance to the city. "I am not basing any of my decision on why I'm against the cemetery on religion," she said. "I base it on bad business practices." Muslim leaders have been taken aback by the level of resistance. "We were absolutely flabbergasted, to be honest, to see that kind of opposition," said Ismail Fenni, a representative of Al-Marhama Islamic Burial, which wants to build a cemetery in Walpole, south of Boston. "All we're trying to establish is a place for a final resting place for the loved ones of the Muslim community members," he said. "No other activity is going to be happening in a cemetery except what is customary for a cemetery." There are relatively few dedicated Muslim cemeteries around the country, so many Muslim communities use sections of other cemeteries to bury their dead. In Dudley, the proposal from the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester has been met with angry comments at local meetings. "You want a Muslim cemetery? Fine. Put it in your backyard, not mine," Daniel Grazulis said during a zoning meeting in February, drawing a round of applause. Jason Talerman, a lawyer for the Islamic Society, said he believes the opposition is rooted in Islamophobia. "They like to say it under the guise of, 'Oh, we're just trying to protect our water supply,' but it's thinly veiled," he said. Desiree Moninski, who lives across the street from the site, once farmed by her grandparents, said she and other opponents have legitimate concerns that have nothing to do with Islam. "I grew up here. It's farmland, and I'd like to see it stay that way," she said. "A lot of people moved here because it's peaceful and quiet. I just don't want a cemetery here, period. Any kind of cemetery. It doesn't matter what kind." In January, a Minnesota judge overturned a local board's denial of a permit for a cemetery near Farmington. In his written ruling, Judge David Knutson called the denial "arbitrary and capricious." The judge said the proposal was rejected despite a "lack of any justification based on the health, safety and general welfare of the local residents." In West Pennsboro Township, Pennsylvania, a local board rejected a plan for a cemetery proposed last year by the Bosniak Islamic Cultural Center of Carlisle. A judge quickly overturned that ruling. Douglas Cwienk, a hydrogeologist who testified for the Muslim group proposing the Pennsylvania cemetery, said that Muslim burial practices are unlikely to contaminate wells or groundwater, and that not embalming is better for local groundwater in most cases. (Jewish tradition also prohibits embalming.) In Dudley, Muslim leaders have agreed to bury bodies in coffins or concrete vaults to appease residents on contamination concerns. Muslim families in the area currently bury their dead in a cemetery in Enfield, Connecticut about 60 miles away. Amjad Bhatti, president of the Islamic Society, said some of the comments have hurt because he considers the U.S. his home after moving from Pakistan 20 years ago and raising his family here. "They belong to this land now," he said. "This is our country." In this April 12, 2016 photo, Amjad Bhatti, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester, poses inside the mosque in Worcester, Mass. He and other leaders of the mosque are hoping to build a Muslim cemetery on farmland in Dudley, Mass., but residents are vigorously opposing the project. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) In this April 12, 2016 photo, Amjad Bhatti, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester, poses outside the mosque in Worcester, Mass. He and other leaders of the mosque are hoping to build a Muslim cemetery on farmland in Dudley, Mass., but residents are vigorously opposing the project. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) In this April 12, 2016 photo, Desiree Moninski, walks on land located across from her house in Dudley, Mass., which is the site of a proposed Muslim cemetery, a project vigorously opposed by area residents. Regarding the land once farmed by her grandparents, Moninski said she and other opponents have legitimate concerns that have nothing to do with Islam. "I grew up here. It's farmland, and I'd like to see it stay that way," she said. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) USA Today owner Gannett bids for LA Times publisher Tribune NEW YORK (AP) Newspaper publisher Gannett wants to buy Tribune Publishing for more than $388 million, a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. But Gannett said Monday that Tribune has refused to start "constructive discussions" since it first offered to buy its rival earlier this month. Tribune confirmed Monday that it received the unsolicited offer and said it "will respond to Gannett as quickly as feasible." Gannett wants Tribune so that it can expand its USA Today Network, an effort it launched late last year to unite USA Today with its more than 100 local daily newspapers . The network helps the company share stories more easily between USA Today and its smaller papers, such as the Detroit Free Press and The Des Moines Register. Earlier this year, the company remade the logos on all its local newspaper front pages and websites to say that they are "a part of the USA Today Network." The Chicago Tribune Tower, center, can be seen on Michigan Avenue, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Chicago. Newspaper publisher Gannett says it wants to buy rival Tribune Publishing for more than $388 million, in a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) Buying Tribune would give Gannett 11 more major daily newspapers, including the Orlando Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant. As more people get their news online, print media companies have been buying up newspapers and websites to fight falling advertising revenue and reduce costs. Earlier this month, Gannett completed a $280 million buyout of Journal Media Group. That deal added 15 newspapers to Gannett's portfolio, including the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Both Gannett and Tribune were spun off from larger media companies that owned TV stations, a move to protect the accelerating growth of broadcast advertising from the falling fortunes of newspapers. A Gannett takeover of Tribune could mean cost-cutting, shedding jobs and adding USA Today inserts into papers instead of national news sections, said media analyst Ken Doctor. Gannett, which is based in McLean, Virginia, said it offered $12.25 in cash for each Tribune share. That's a 63 percent premium to Tribune's Friday closing price of $7.52. Gannett valued the total deal at about $815 million, which includes about $390 million of debt. The offer comes after a shake-up at Tribune. Last month, the Chicago-based company announced a reorganization that named each of its newspapers' editors as dual editors-in-chief and publishers. Most media companies keep those roles separate in order to avoid business interests affecting editorial content. In February, Tribune named Justin Dearborn as its new CEO, replacing Jack Griffin less than two years after he joined the business. The changes came months after Tribune received a more than $44 million cash infusion from a firm controlled by Chicago investor Michael Ferro, who is now chairman of Tribune. Gannett said Monday that CEO Robert Dickey talked about a possible deal with both Ferro and Dearborn. Shares of Tribune Publishing Co. jumped $3.98, or 53 percent, to close Monday at $11.50. Gannett Co. shares rose $1.02, 6.5 percent, to close at $16.79. ___ AP Technology Writer Mae Anderson and AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman also contributed to this story. FILE - This file photograph taken July 14, 2010, shows Gannett headquarters in McLean, Va. Newspaper publisher Gannett said Monday, April 25, 2016, that it wants to buy rival Tribune Publishing in a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) Chicago Tribune and other newspapers are displayed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Chicago. Newspaper publisher Gannett said Monday that it wants to buy Tribune Publishing for more than $388 million, in a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato) FILE - In this Oct. 5, 2015, file photo, pedestrians walk past the Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles. Newspaper publisher Gannett said Monday, April 25, 2016, that it wants to buy rival Tribune Publishing in a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File) The top of the Chicago Tribune Tower can be seen on Michigan Avenue, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Chicago. Newspaper publisher Gannett says it wants to buy rival Tribune Publishing for more than $388 million, in a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) Anti-Trump pact unites his rivals on eve of 5 primaries BORDEN, Ind. (AP) Declaring the Republican presidential contest at "a fork in the road," Ted Cruz and John Kasich defended their extraordinary new alliance on Monday as the party's last, best chance to stop Donald Trump, even as the New York billionaire surged toward another big delegate haul. Trump, the Republican front-runner, lashed out at what he called collusion by desperate rivals, intensifying his attacks on the GOP presidential nomination system on the eve of Tuesday's round of primary elections in the Northeast. "If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island.. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude." Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Monday, April 25, 2016, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (AP Photo/Mel Evans) "It shows how pathetic they are," he said of his Republican rivals. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland hold primaries Tuesday along with Rhode Island. Cruz, a Texas senator, and Kasich, the Ohio governor, announced the terms of an unprecedented agreement late Sunday night to coordinate primary strategies in three of the 15 remaining primary states. Kasich will step back in the May 3 Indiana contest to let Cruz bid without interference for voters who don't like Trump. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in subsequent contests in Oregon and New Mexico. The arrangement does not address Tuesday's primaries, where Trump is expected to add to his already hefty delegate lead. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to keep him from amassing enough delegates to seal his nomination and avoid a contested national convention in July. Ignoring the Northeast on Monday, Cruz insisted, "We are at a fundamental fork in the road," as he campaigned in Indiana. "It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump," the fiery conservative told reporters. "That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice." The plan carries risks especially as Trump bashes a "rigged" nomination system. Some would-be Cruz supporters in Indiana agreed with Trump's criticism. "That's kind of sneaky," said Joe Conder, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer from Scottsville, who is deciding between Cruz and Trump. "It's more about politics than getting things done." Kasich sent mixed messages as he addressed the pact for the first time while campaigning in Philadelphia. Asked what Indiana voters should do next week, the Ohio governor urged them to vote for him. "I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me," Kasich said just 13 hours after promising to give Cruz "a clear path" in Indiana. He said he had simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana. Trump is the only Republican candidate who can clinch the GOP presidential nomination before his party's national convention. Yet his path is narrow. The front-runner needs to win at least four of the five Northeastern states on Tuesday. He enters the day with 845 delegates, 392 short of the 1,237 needed to represent his party in the general election in November. Eliminated from reaching that total in the primaries, Cruz and Kasich can only hope to block Trump from reaching a majority and a first-round convention victory and thus force a contested convention where delegates could select a different nominee. "It is now abundantly clear that nobody is getting to 1,237," Cruz declared Monday. "We are headed to a contested convention. And at a contested convention, Donald Trump is in real trouble." Trump was also the target on the Democratic side as Hillary Clinton eyed Tuesday primary victories she hoped would all but seal her victory over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The former secretary of state ignored Sanders as she campaigned in Delaware, assailing Trump as being out of touch with average Americans. "If you want to be president of the United States, you've got to get familiar with the United States," Clinton said. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of." ___ Peoples reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronayne in Manchester, New Hampshire, Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia, Jill Colvin in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Catherine Lucey in Wilmington, Delaware, contributed to this report. Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz orders ice cream with his daughters Caroline, right, and Catherine during a campaign stop at Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor in Columbus, Ind., Monday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) FILE - In this March 10, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich, right, speaks as Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, listens, during a Republican presidential debate sponsored by CNN, Salem Media Group and the Washington Times at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. Declaring the Republican presidential contest at "a fork in the road," Cruz and Kasich defended their extraordinary new alliance on April 25 as the party's last, best chance to stop Donald Trump, even as the New York billionaire surged toward another big delegate haul. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) The family of Tamir Rice is set to receive $6million from the city of Cleveland after lawyers settled a wrongful death suit over the 12-year-old's fatal shooting by a white police officer. Mother Samaria Rice is set to receive $250,000, sister Tajai Rice will also be given $250,000, while $5.5million will be paid directly to the estate of Tamir Rice. An order filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland on Monday says the city will pay out $3 million this year and $3 million the next. Tamir Rice's family are set to receive $6million from the city of Cleveland after attorneys agreed to settle a wrongful death suit brought over the 12-year-old's 2014 shooting by a while police officer The wrongful death suit claimed officers and dispatchers who were involved in Tamir's 2014 shooting acted recklessly when dealing with the youngster, who was gunned down while playing with a toy gun close to his family home. The lawsuit was filed two weeks after his death, but it was not until March this year that both parties agreed to enter settlement talks. Subodh Chandra, attorney for the Rice family, told Fox 8: 'The City of Cleveland has agreed to payment of $6million to settle the federal civil-rights lawsuit involving the tragic death of Tamir Rice. 'Although historic in financial terms, no amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a life. Tamir was 12 years old when police shot and killed hima young boy with his entire life ahead of him, full of potential and promise. 'In a situation such as this, there is no such thing as closure or justice. Nothing will bring Tamir back. 'His unnecessary and premature death leave a gaping hole for those who knew and loved him that can never be filled. Samaria Rice, Tamir's mother (pictured in 2015), will receive $250,000 as part of the deal, while another $5.5million will be paid directly to her son's estate Tajai Rice, Tamir's sister (pictured center on the Today show) will also receive $250,000. The money will be paid in two lumps sums of $3million this year and next year 'Regrettably, Tamirs death is not an isolated event. The problem of police violence, especially in communities of color, is a crisis plaguing our nation. 'It is the Rice family's sincere hope that Tamirs death will stimulate a movement for genuine change in our society and our nations policing so that no family ever has to suffer a tragedy such as this again.' Under the terms of the settlement, neither the city nor any of the defendants admit wrongdoing in the boy's death. Officer Timothy Loehmann fatally shot Tamir in 2014 after he was called to reports of a man waving a gun and pointing it at people The settlement is one of the largest reached in recent years amid a spate of wrongful death claims against major city police forces. In September last year Baltimore agreed to pay $6.4 million to the family of Freddie Gray who died in police custody from a spine injury. In July of the same year New York City agreed to a $5.9million settlement over the death of Eric Garner who also died in police custody after he was filmed being placed in a chokehold. Tamir was shot to death close to his family home in Cleveland in November 2014 while playing outside with a non-lethal pellet gun. Police had received a call from a man drinking at a bus stop nearby who told call-takers that there was a boy waving a gun around and pointing it at people. The man added that the gun was unlikely to be real and the person involved was a juvenile, but the call-taker never passed that information to dispatchers. Instead junior patrolman Timothy Loehmann, 26, and trainer Frank Garmback, 46, were sent to a high-priority call of a man waving a weapon. After arriving at the scene, Loehmann said he opened fire after he saw the boy reach for what he believed to be a deadly weapon. The gun had its tell-tale orange tip removed, which officers often rely on while judging weather a weapon is real. Video of Tamir's death shows a police cruiser skidding to a stop and Loehmann firing within two seconds of opening the car door. Tamir wasn't given first aid until about four minutes later, when an FBI agent trained as a paramedic arrived. The boy died the next day. A grand jury declined to bring charges against the officers, branding the incident a 'perfect storm of human error', but found no crime had taken place. A federal civil rights investigation is pending. CCTV of the shooting shows Loehmann shot Tamir (pictured with the pellet gun) within two seconds of arriving on the scene, and that the boy was not given first aid until four minutes after being shot The shooting raised questions about how police treat black people, spurred protests around Cleveland and helped spark the creation of a state police standards board to lay out rules about use of deadly force in law enforcement. Tamir's mother, Samaria Rice, had alleged that police failed to immediately provide first aid for her son and caused intentional infliction of emotional distress in how they treated her and her daughter after the shooting. The officers had asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. Loehmann's attorney has said he bears a heavy burden and must live with what happened. The settlement comes two years after the city settled another lawsuit connected to the killings of two unarmed black people in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire at the end of a 2012 car chase. Cleveland settles lawsuit over Tamir Rice shooting for $6M CLEVELAND (AP) The city on Monday reached a $6 million settlement in a lawsuit over the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy shot by a white police officer while playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center. An order filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland said the city will pay out $3 million this year and $3 million the next. There was no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement. Family attorney Subodh Chandra called the settlement historic but added: "The resolution is nothing to celebrate because a 12-year-old child needlessly lost his life." FILE - In this Nov. 25, 2014, file photo, demonstrators block Public Square in Cleveland, during a protest over the police shooting of Tamir Rice. The city of Cleveland has reached a settlement Monday, April 25, 2016, in a lawsuit over the death of Rice, a black boy shot by a white police officer while playing with a pellet gun. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File) The wrongful death suit filed by his family and estate against the city and officers and dispatchers who were involved alleged police acted recklessly when they confronted the boy on Nov. 22, 2014. Video of the encounter shows a cruiser skidding to a stop and rookie patrolman Timothy Loehmann firing within two seconds of opening the car door. Tamir wasn't given first aid until about four minutes later, when an FBI agent trained as a paramedic arrived. The boy died the next day. Tamir's death has fueled the Black Lives Matter movement that firmly took root in 2014 after Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City died at the hands of police. Grand juries declined to indict officers in those two deaths and in the shooting of Tamir. A trial is pending for a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Brown's family. Garner's family received a $5.9 million in a settlement with New York City last year. In the Rice family lawsuit, Samaria Rice had alleged that police failed to immediately provide first aid for her son and caused intentional infliction of emotional distress in how they treated her and her daughter after the shooting. The officers had asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. Loehmann's attorney has said he bears a heavy burden and must live with what happened. Tamir's estate has been assigned $5.5 million of the settlement. A Cuyahoga County probate judge will decide how the amount will be divided. Samaria Rice, Tamir's mother, will receive $250,000. Claims against Tamir's estate account for the remaining $250,000. Tamir's father, Leonard Warner, was dismissed in February as a party to the lawsuit. Chandra said the Rice family remains in mourning over Tamir's death. "The state criminal justice process cheated them out of true justice," Chandra said. A somber Mayor Frank Jackson said at a news conference Monday that "there is no price you can put on the life of a 12-year-old child." He said the shooting "should not have happened" but didn't elaborate. Jackson said a use-of-force committee is examining the circumstances of the shooting to determine if Loehmann and his training officer, Frank Garmback, should be disciplined. Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, said in a news release that the Rice family should use part of the settlement to educate children about the dangers of handling real and replica firearms. Loomis said something positive must come from the "tragic loss." The officers had responded to a 911 call in which a man drinking a beer and waiting for a bus outside Cudell Recreation Center reported that a man was waving a gun and pointing it at people. The man told the call taker that the person holding the gun was likely a juvenile and the weapon probably wasn't real, but the call taker never passed that information to the dispatcher who gave Loehmann and Garmback the high-priority call. Tamir was carrying a plastic airsoft gun that shoots nonlethal plastic pellets. He'd borrowed it that morning from a friend who warned him to be careful because the gun looked real. It was missing its telltale orange tip. The settlement comes two years after the city settled another lawsuit connected to the killings of two unarmed black people in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire at the end of a 2012 car chase. Cleveland settled a lawsuit brought by the families of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams for $3 million. The fatal shootings of Russell and Williams were cited by the U.S. Justice Department in an investigation into excessive use of force by Cleveland police and helped lead to a court-monitored consent decree aimed at reforming the department. Nepalese temple, 4 other sites receive funding totaling $1M NEW YORK (AP) The World Monuments Fund announced grants Monday totaling $1 million for five historic sites, including a 16th-century Nepalese temple destroyed in last year's massive earthquake. It comes one year to the day after the Char Narayan temple was decimated by the magnitude-7.8 earthquake, which claimed 9,000 lives, injured 22,000 people and destroyed 600,000 homes. The temple, located in the main square of the city of Patan, will be 90 percent rebuilt with salvaged pieces and seismically retrofitted, the New York-based preservation group said. In this May 3, 2015 photo provided by the World Monuments Fund, soldiers help rescue materials from the Char Narayen Temple that was destroyed in a massive earthquake, in Patan, Nepal. One year to the day after the earthquake claimed 9,000 lives, the New York-based preservation group, the World Monuments Fund, has announced grants totaling $1 million for five historic sites, including the 16th century temple that will be 90 percent rebuilt with salvaged pieces and seismically retrofitted. (Rohit Ranjitkar/Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust & World Monuments Fund via AP) The other sites receiving funding are: Arch of Janus, one of the remaining buildings of the ancient Roman marketplace Forum Boarium. The arch has been off-limits to the public since 1993, when a car bomb exploded nearby. The funding will support a complete restoration of the monument. A 19th-century gatehouse in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park, the oldest and largest public park in Latin America. The gatehouse, which once served as an entrance to a military school, will be transformed into a museum and orientation center; The cloistered convents of Seville, Spain, built between the 13th and 17th centuries, Many struggle to keep up with maintenance costs. The fund will work with the city's tourism office to create a guidebook highlighting the historic significance of the 15 convents that exist. And a section of the 14th-century Convent of Santa Ines will be adapted for public use as part of a pilot program. Moseley Road Baths, an Edwardian swimming complex in Birmingham, England, threatened with closure because of lack of government funds. They are the oldest of only three historic baths in Britain. The funding will help support the complex's advocacy programs. All five sites were included last fall on the organization's 2016 World Monument Watch list of historic and cultural places threatened by neglect, overdevelopment or social, political and economic change. The funding for the five sites is provided by American Express, a longtime supporter of the fund. This 3013 photo provided by the World Monuments Fund shows the Char Narayen Temple in Patan, Nepal that was destroyed in 2015 in a massive earthquake. One year to the day after the earthquake claimed 9,000 lives, the New York-based preservation group, the World Monuments Fund, has announced grants totaling $1 million for five historic sites, including the 16th century temple that will be 90 percent rebuilt with salvaged pieces and seismically retrofitted. (Rohit Ranjitkar/Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust & World Monuments Fund via AP) Brian Stokes Mitchell returns to Broadway in 'magical' show NEW YORK (AP) Brian Stokes Mitchell jokingly sings a bluesy rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" by the time he reaches his dressing room on the fourth steep floor of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. "And she's BUY-ing a stairway to HEA-ven," he warbled between some huffs and puffs, still managing a wide smile despite the challenging climb. At the top, he's a gracious host: "You want anything? Food? Water? Oxygen?" The flights are punishing once, much less the estimated 10 times a day he and his fellow actors must endure. "I think we may climb a few Mount Everests by the time the show is over," he said, preparing to eat dinner. FILE - In this Oct. 5, 2009, file photo, actor Brian Stokes Mitchell attends the 2009 National Arts Awards presented by Americans for the Arts in New York. Mitchell's new show explores the groundbreaking 95-year-old musical "Shuffle Along." (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File) Mitchell, 58, finds himself in the same theater where he made his Broadway debut in 1988, when his dressing room was on the second floor. He's up with the stars now, and his new show explores the groundbreaking 95-year-old musical "Shuffle Along." That musical was one of the first Broadway shows starring, written and directed by African-Americans. Director and writer George C. Wolfe has reframed the new one as a musical about the making of a musical. Mitchell, who plays co-book writer F.E. Miller, is part of an astonishing collection of Broadway stars including Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Brandon Victor Dixon and Joshua Henry, plus a talented ensemble of young people. "It is the most amazing company maybe that I've ever worked with and I've worked with some amazing companies," said Mitchell. "Like I say, there's not a turd in the punch bowl." Then he laughs: "You sure you don't want some chicken?" The show is the first time Mitchell has pulled on his tap shoes since he appeared in "Jelly's Last Jam" in the early 1990s, having replaced Gregory Hines as Jelly Roll Morton. Back then, Savion Glover was his co-star; now he's choreographing. "I would lose 5 pounds in water weight each time doing that show. After that show, I retired my tap shoes. I said, 'You know what? I'm going to leave those to the people who really, really do this well,'" he said. When he got the call about the new "Shuffle Along," Mitchell worried what a quarter-century had done to his abilities. He also wondered how his Achilles tendon, which had popped 10 years ago, would handle the new stress. "What I found out is my feet are still pretty good but my brain is slow. Especially watching these kids do it," he said. "I mean, I was never able to pick it up as fast as they are, especially now." Mitchell won a Tony for "Kiss Me Kate" and got nods for "Man of La Mancha," ''Ragtime" and "King Hedley II." He's adored on Broadway for his warmth and his stories, lending his talent to all kinds of causes and leading The Actor's Fund since 2004. Jonathan Kent, who directed Mitchell in "Man of La Mancha," said he leaned on his star's experience during the white knuckle ride of helming his first Broadway musical. "He was so wonderfully supportive and generous. I think of him with such admiration and fondness," said Kent. "He's a supreme craftsman, too. I learnt so much from working with him." Mitchell took a step back from Broadway while his son, Ellington with his wife, Allyson Tucker was growing up. He did concerts instead, giving him the freedom to make his own hours. Now his son is 12. "He doesn't need me quite in the same way that he did. It was just time to do a Broadway show. I put it out there in the universe. I said, 'You know, I think it's time to do another Broadway show.' And literally two weeks later is when George called me. Ask and ye shall receive." So despite the hike up four flights of stairs, Mitchell said he's happier than he's been in a long time, in a company of professionals telling a key story of Broadway's past. "When I did 'Ragtime' it was a company like that. There was a sense that something very magical was going on. If you're lucky, you maybe get one magical show in your life," he said. "Well, here's another magical show." ___ Online: http://shufflealongbroadway.com ___ Outdoors artist Terry Redlin dies after battle with dementia BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) Outdoors artist Terry Redlin has died in South Dakota after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 78. Redlin died Sunday night in a care center in the Watertown area due to "complications from a nine-year struggle with dementia," Redlin Art Center Executive Director Julie Ranum told The Associated Press. When Redlin retired from painting in 2007, his son, Charles Redlin, said his father suffered from exposure to a chemical found in paint. FILE - In this June 8, 1999 file photo, outdoors artist Terry Redlin is seen at his gallery in Watertown, S.D. Redlin Art Center Executive Director Julie Ranum tells The Associated Press that Redlin died Sunday night, April 24, 2016, of complications from a nine-year struggle with dementia in a care center in the Watertown area. He was 78. (Val Hoeppner/The Argus Leader via AP, File) NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT Redlin is known for his paintings of wildlife and outdoors scenes. In the 1990s he was named American's most popular artist in annual gallery surveys conducted by U.S. Art magazine. His depictions of ducks, deer and rustic cabins decorate everything from coffee mugs to jigsaw puzzles. The Redlin Art Center museum features more than 150 of his original oil paintings, as well as many prints, sketches and childhood drawings. The gallery has drawn more than 3 million visitors since it opened in 1997. Redlin also was known for his conservation work. Over 17 years, his art donations to Ducks Unlimited raised more than $28 million for wetlands projects. The Terry Redlin Environmental Center opened in Watertown in 2010, with exhibits on native ecosystems, wetlands and the prairie. Redlin earned a degree from the St. Paul School of Associated Arts and worked 25 years in the commercial art business before becoming a wildlife artist. He got his break in 1977, when one of his paintings appeared on the cover of The Farmer magazine. In 1981 and 1985, he won the Minnesota Duck Stamp competition, and also won the 1982 Minnesota Trout Stamp contest. He's been honored by Ducks Unlimited as its national artist of the year and by the Minnesota Waterfowl Association as a conservationist of the year. The National Association of Limited Edition Dealers has three times presented him with its Lithograph of the Year award. An elementary school in Sioux Falls was even named for him. Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Monday requested that flags in South Dakota be flown at half-staff on the day of Redlin's funeral, which was not immediately scheduled. "Terry Redlin was an iconic South Dakota artist," he said. "For many South Dakotans, Terry's work brought to life our fondest memories of our state's outdoor heritage and rural roots. He has left a legacy in Watertown and throughout the nation, and Linda and I extend our deepest sympathies to the Redlin family." ___ Eastern Poland to have regional defense troops this year WARSAW, Poland (AP) Poland's defense minister says he has signed documents to create a nationwide territorial defense, and its first units will be launched in the east of the country this year. Antoni Macierewicz said Monday three brigades, or some 18,000, unarmed troops will be ready to help secure mass events and vital installations, organize emergency evacuations and provide logistical support to the armed forces. He did not specify whether they would be paid. The so-called territorial defense will comprise grassroots initiatives of citizens concerned for their security and high school students training to be police officers, firefighters and others. They will be trained in the use of weapons, army tactics and first aid. The Latest: Sanders notes he has always faced long odds WASHINGTON (AP) The Latest on the presidential nomination race on the eve of primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland (all times local): 9:15 p.m. Bernie Sanders is facing long odds heading into Tuesday's primaries, but he's reminding voters that he began his campaign nearly a year ago with little support for or belief in his candidacy. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign rally at Fitzgerald Fieldhouse on the University of Pittsburgh campus, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) The Vermont senator says that while "no one dreamed we could go anywhere," he has won 16 states by "telling the truth." Actors Susan Sarandon and Kendrick Sampson also spoke at the rally at Drexel University in Philadelphia, attended by hundreds inside the college's athletic center and thousands more outside the building. Sanders reiterated what he sees as his major differences with Clinton, including campaign finance, trade and support for a carbon tax. He told the audience that his candidacy is asking people to "think outside of the status quo." __ 9:05 p.m. Hillary Clinton says she will aim to have a Cabinet that is half women if she is elected president. During an MSNBC town hall Monday evening, host Rachel Maddow asked Clinton if she would match a pledge that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made and kept to appoint women to half of his Cabinet positions. Clinton says, "I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, and 50 percent of America is women." __ 9 p.m. Hillary Clinton says she didn't set any conditions for supporting Barack Obama when she exited the primary race in 2008 and says she hopes "we will see the same this year." During a MSNBC town hall Monday night, host Rachel Maddow asked the Democratic presidential candidate if she would consider adopting any of Bernie Sanders' platform to win over his supporters should she become the nominee. Clinton says she is "winning because of what I stand for and what I've done and what our ideas are." Clinton says that when she lost the nomination to Obama in 2008, "I didn't say, you know what, if Senator Obama does X, Y and Z, maybe I will support him." __ 5:33 p.m. Hillary Clinton recalled learning to shoot a gun on Monday, as she stressed her support for stronger firearms laws in western Pennsylvania. Before about 800 people a community college in Youngwood, Clinton said she learned how to shoot at her grandfather's lake cottage near Scranton. "I've gone hunting, I've gone skeet shooting, I understand the important role that guns play in so many people's lives," said Clinton. She also has been adamant about finding ways to cut down on gun violence. On the eve of five more presidential primaries, Clinton continued her attacks on Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. She made just one reference to primary opponent Bernie Sanders, questioning his plan to provide free tuition at public universities. ___ 5:23 p.m. John Kasich heads to Oregon newly free of competition from Ted Cruz, thanks to the deal they worked out to stop Donald Trump. But many of Oregon's voters already know more about Cruz than they do Kasich, thanks to an oversight from Kasich's campaign. Kasich's team never submitted his biography to the secretary of state's office, which prints out a voter pamphlet each year bearing information on each candidate. This year, the pamphlet includes Kasich's name followed by an asterisk indicating that he didn't submit any information. Cruz and Donald Trump, meanwhile, each get a full column explaining their positions and personal histories. Kasich's campaign late Monday sent out a statement saying the Ohio governor is on the ballot in Oregon "and the campaign will do its part to educate voters about why they should vote for him the primary." ___ 4:04 p.m. A top Ted Cruz aide says the campaign has identified a "short list" of possible vice presidential candidates. A spokeswoman for Carly Fiorina swiftly confirmed that the former business executive is among those being considered for the running mate slot. Campaign manager Jeff Roe says on Twitter that Cruz's team is going through the "normal processes" for picking a running mate. He did not identify others on the short list. Fiorina dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year and endorsed Cruz. The Weekly Standard first reported that she was being vetted as a possible vice president. Cruz mathematically has no chance of getting the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination. Instead, he's trying to block front-runner Donald Trump from crossing the delegate threshold and push the Republican race to a contested convention. ___ 3:12 p.m. Donald Trump mercilessly mocked rival John Kasich in Rhode Island Monday, labeling his eating "disgusting" and calling him "stubborn" for remaining in the race. Speaking in front of a rally crowd in Warwick, Trump says of Kasich that "I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion." He continued: "This guy takes a pancake and he's shoving in his mouth." That's not presidential, Trump added. The billionaire developer was referring to Kasich's morning conversation with reporters while eating. Trump said he'd been watching television with his youngest son Barron when Barron told his father, "'Daddy look.' I said, 'Don't watch! Little bites, little bites.'" Trump also called Kasich stubborn and compared him to a child for refusing to exit the race when he has no chance of winning without a contested convention. He also took aim at Ted Cruz, saying: "when he's under pressure he's like a basket case." ___ 1:38 p.m. Donald Trump is railing against a deal reached by rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich to divvy up a series of upcoming contests to maximize their chances of halting Trump's march to the GOP nomination. "It's collusion," Trump says of the deal, speaking at a rally in Rhode Island. Trump says that, "if you collude in business or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude." But Trump says he's actually OK with the decision because it demonstrates his rivals' weakness. "It shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are," he says. ___ 1:08 p.m. Hillary Clinton took aim at Donald Trump in Delaware Monday, saying the Republican front-runner should come out of his towers and "actually talk and listen to people." Before more than 800 people at a Wilmington theater, Clinton did not mention her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders and focused instead on Trump and the Republicans. She noted contrasts on climate change, minimum wage and abortion rights. In some of her toughest comments, she suggested Trump was out of touch with average Americans. "If you want to be president with the United States, you've got to get familiar with the United States," Clinton said. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of." Clinton did not mention Sanders, even when she spoke about gun laws, an area where she frequently attacks his record. Clinton is campaigning on the East Coast in advance of primary elections Tuesday in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. ___ 12:18 p.m. Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is calling off two planned public events in Indiana after his agreement to stand aside for Ted Cruz in the state. Kasich had planned Tuesday events in Indianapolis and Noblesville for Tuesday, but he announced a deal Sunday to give Cruz "a clear path" for Indiana's May 3 primary. Kasich Indiana campaign spokesman Pete Seat says the Ohio governor will still travel to Indianapolis on Tuesday for a private fundraising event. Kasich said Monday in Philadelphia that he isn't telling Indiana Republicans to not vote for him. He says he simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana. ___ 12:11 p.m. Donald Trump is adding Chris Christie's former campaign manager to his expanding team. The GOP front-runner's campaign announced Monday that it has hired Ken McKay to serve as a senior adviser to its delegate operations team. McKay previously managed the New Jersey governor's presidential campaign. Christie has since become one of Trump's most prominent endorsers. The hire comes as part of Trump's major campaign staff overhaul over the last few weeks. Trump is trying to stave off an effort by his rivals to prevent him from amassing the delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot at the national convention. He's also brought on Rick Wiley, who managed former rival Scott Walker's campaign, and several former aides to Ben Carson. McKay has also held roles with the Republican National Committee and Republican Governors Association. ___ 12:02 p.m. Hillary Clinton got a pop-themed introduction Monday in Delaware by Sen. Tom Carper, who invoked the Donna Summer song "She Works Hard for the Money." Carper sought to get a crowd of over 800 gathered in Wilmington to recite a version of the lyrics to the 1983 hit with him. "She works hard for the money," he said. "So hard for the money. She works hard for the money. So we better treat her right." "Tomorrow we're going to treat her right tomorrow?" Carper asked the crowd. "She will treat this country right." Clinton's income has been a subject of campaign discussion because rival Bernie Sanders has made an issue of the hundreds of thousands of dollars Clinton has been paid for speeches to Goldman Sachs and other big firms. Clinton has staunchly denied the implicit charge that that the money has influences her public policy-making decisions. ___ 12:01 p.m. No matter what happens in Tuesday's primaries, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is "going all the way to the convention," says his campaign manager. Jeff Weaver told reporters in Connecticut Monday there's no benchmark the presidential campaign must hit in Tuesday's five-state primaries in order to remain in the race, saying their "supporters will stand with us all the way to the end." Asked whether he expects a contested national Democratic convention, Weaver said, "Absolutely, 100 percent." He added that Sanders intends to lead his campaign "all the way to the end." Nearly 2,000 supporters turned out for a morning rally at a downtown Hartford riverfront park where Sanders did not hold back from criticizing party front-runner Hillary Clinton. Sanders took issue with Clinton's paid speeches on Wall Street and for not supporting a 15-an-hour minimum wage. ___ 11:45 a.m. Ted Cruz is shrugging off suggestions that his non-compete arrangement with John Kasich in Indiana and other states is a political Hail Mary. The Texas senator told reporters Monday in Borden, Indiana, that instead "there is desperation on the Trump side." He argued that Republican front-runner Donald Trump knows he won't be able to get enough delegates to the Republican National Convention to win the party's nomination and "is in real trouble." Cruz and Kasich are focusing on states where they can be successful, thus preventing Trump from clinching the nomination. Kasich is clearing a path for Cruz in Indiana and Cruz is doing the same for the Ohio governor in Oregon and New Mexico. Cruz is focusing on Indiana's May 3 primary, saying Trump's campaign is "scared of Indiana." ___ 11 a.m. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is urging people in Indiana to vote for him, despite his agreement to stand aside in that state. That's the Republican presidential candidate's message about 13 hours after he announced an arrangement to give rival Ted Cruz "a clear path" in Indiana, which holds a primary election next week. In exchange, Cruz is to give Kasich a clear path in Oregon and New Mexico. The arrangement is designed to prevent front-runner Donald Trump from clinching the nomination. Kasich addressed the matter publicly for the first time as he campaigned in Philadelphia on Monday. Kasich says of Indiana voters, "I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me." He says he simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana. He's also playing down the significance of the extraordinary arrangement. He says, "It's not a big deal." Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton smiles during a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, at City Hall in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump signs an autograph for a supporter after speaking at a campaign rally at West Chester University, Monday, April 25, 2016, in West Chester, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives for a during a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, at City Hall in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) PICTURED: Highlights of the 2016 race for the White House The candidates in the race for the White House are making their case to voters across the country in a fight to win the Republican and Democratic nominations. Here's a look, as seen in the images made by Associated Press photographers on the campaign trail. ___ See the latest AP photo galleries: http://apne.ws/TXeCBN Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton meets with attendees during a campaign stop, Sunday, April 24, 2016, at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) The Archive: Top photo highlights from previous weeks: http://apne.ws/13QUFKJ ___ Follow AP photographers on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP/lists/ap-photographers Follow AP Images on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Images Visit AP Images online: http://www.apimages.com Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., addresses a gathering of supporters during a campaign rally on New Haven Green in New Haven, Conn., Sunday, April 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, record his arrival in a helicopter during a campaign rally in Hagerstown, Md., Sunday, April 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks Sunday, April 24, 2016, at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, signs autographs at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, Sunday, April 24, 2016, in Terre Haute, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., addresses supporters during a campaign rally on New Haven Green in New Haven, Conn., Sunday, April 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Watch for 'widow-makers:' fires create gaps in Pacific Crest CABAZON, Calif. (AP) Vast wildfires have created lengthy gaps in Southern California sections of the famed Pacific Crest Trail, which hikers must bypass via shuttles or alternate routes to avoid dangerous conditions like unstable trees and loose rocks. Long-distance backpackers are taking alternate routes around the closures for fear of incurring fines, including taking private shuttles, public buses, or hiking alternate routes, the Press-Enterprise reported Sunday, (http://bit.ly/1SEUHRv ). The U.S. Forest Service said that no one has been fined. FILE - This July 16, 2013 file photo a water tender makes his way back to the the Mountain Fire near Lake Hemet. Vast wildfires have created lengthy gaps in Southern California sections of the famed Pacific Crest Trail, which hikers must bypass via shuttles or alternate routes to avoid dangerous conditions like unstable trees and loose rocks. (Frank Bellino/The Press-Enterprise via AP) To get around a 15.5-mile gap caused by a wildfire last year in the San Bernardino National Forest, hikers are driven from the Whitewater Trail House in Cabazon to Big Bear Lake or nearby Onyx Summit on State Route 38, where the trail reopens. They can take private shuttles, public buses, or alternate hiking routes. About 14 miles of the trail approaching the mountain town of Idyllwild are closed three years after a blaze scorched more than 27,000 acres. Each year, thousands trek sections of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from Mexico to Canada. Some of the adventurers who often take on nicknames for their journeys aren't thrilled with the idea of getting into a van after retreating into the wilderness. Last week in Idyllwild, Bruce "Man in Black" Cornish of San Diego planned to research an alternate hiking route to bypass the closed section while waiting for friends. At 59, he retired early from a job as an eighth-grade science teacher to hike the entire route after dreaming about the trip for 20 years. "The philosophy of this trail is, 'Hike your own hike,' " he told the newspaper. "If people want to hitch ahead, that's cool. It's just not for me." Danger in the unstable areas can come from falling branches dubbed "widow-makers," dead giant trees with weak roots that can fall and crush hikers, the U.S. Forest Service said. Loose rocks, debris including rolling logs, flash floods, trailside stump holes and slippery ash can also pose a danger. Crews are working to remove charred trees and fill in holes to make the trails passable again. While some hikers are impatient for the work to finish, others don't mind catching an occasional ride. "I know some other people who are what we call 'purists' want to hike every inch of the trail," said Robert "Bobcat" Donnellan, 38, of Asheville, N.C., sitting at a picnic table outside the Whitewater home where he was staying April 13. "I personally don't care." ___ Information from: The Press-Enterprise, http://www.pe.com A look at properties owned by Gannett and Tribune Publishing Newspaper publisher Gannett said Monday that it wants to buy rival Tribune Publishing for more than $388 million, here's a closer look at each company and what it owns. GANNETT Location: McLean, Va. 2015 revenue: $2.89 billion Flagship publication: USA Today Other papers: More than 120 publications in the U.S. and U.K. including the Detroit Free Press, The Tennessean and The Des Moines Register. Recent moves: Gannett moved all of its television companies into a separate company, Tegna, last summer. It completed the acquisition of Journal Media Group for $280 million in April, giving it newspapers including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee. TRIBUNE PUBLISHING Location: Chicago 2015 revenue: $1.65 billion Flagship publication: Chicago Tribune Other papers: 11 daily newspapers including Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant; smaller papers including Red Eye in Chicago and Spanish language newspapers Hoy and El Sentinel 9/11 memorial: Security guard shouldn't have silenced choir NEW YORK (AP) Officials at the Sept. 11 memorial said Monday that one of their security guards shouldn't have stopped a North Carolina middle school choir from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza. "The guard did not respond appropriately," said the spokeswoman, Kaylee Skaar. "We are working with our security staff to ensure that this does not happen again with future student performances." Some 50 students from Waynesville Middle School in western North Carolina were at the Sept. 11 memorial Wednesday and had just started singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" when a guard told them to stop. A rose is left behind, inserted into an engraved name at the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Monday April 25, 2016. Placing items in the memorial is among the rules posted for visitors. Recently security guards stopped a middle school choir from North Carolina from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza, enforcing a rule against musical performances without a permit. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Teacher Martha Brown said Monday that a different security guard had given the OK for her students to sing. But the second guard said, "You just can't do this. You've got to stop now," Brown said. "So we very reverently and quietly stopped what we were doing and complied with his request and quietly exited the park." Video posted on Facebook by an adult on the school field trip sparked outrage and led to an invitation for the students to sing the anthem live on Fox News. Brown and Principal Trevor Putnam joined the students for their performance at the school Monday. Brown said her students learned from the experience. "We turned it into a teaching moment and taught them that even if you don't agree with it, or understand it, you must respect authority," she said. Putnam echoed the sentiment. "The lesson learned here is always to respect authority," the principal said in a telephone interview. "And I'm so proud of our kids for conducting themselves the way they did." Crystal Mulvey, a parent who accompanied her daughter on the school trip, said she was shocked that the guard interrupted the national anthem because "it's kind of a sacred song to us." But she added, "On the flip side, I completely understand following rules." Striking a balance between remembering those killed by terrorists and rebuilding a bustling commercial district has been a challenge ever since the twin towers were toppled in 2001. Tourists paying their respect to the dead now share the memorial plaza with neighborhood residents and office workers from the new World Trade Center towers lunching under the trees. Sept. 11 memorial officials say groups wishing to perform on the crowded plaza are supposed to pay $35 to apply for a permit and obey a list of rules, such as no amplified sound and no interfering with the flow of traffic. Brown said she was not aware of the permit requirement. Visitors to the memorial had mixed feelings about the rules. "To me, the children's singing was in remembrance of people who had a soul. It was reverence for their lives so they're not forgotten," said Gwendolyn Tucker, herself a security guard from Los Angeles. But, she added, "the guards have to keep it orderly." ___ Associated Press writer Verena Dobnik contributed to this report. ___ Online: http://bit.ly/1Nudksd Visitors listen to a tour guide during a visit at the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Monday April 25, 2016. During a visit, posted signs provide rules for the memorial. Recently security guards stopped a middle school choir from North Carolina from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza, enforcing a rule against musical performances without a permit. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Visitors, left, to the National 9/11 Memorial taking photos are ushered away from a grassy area by a grounds official, Monday, April 25, 2016, in New York. Security guards stopped a middle school choir from North Carolina from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza, enforcing one of its many rules for visitors. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) A miniature flag is left behind inserted into an engraved name at the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Monday, April 25, 2016. Officials at the Sept. 11 memorial said that one of their security guards shouldn't have stopped a North Carolina middle school choir from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza. Officials say groups wishing to perform on the crowded plaza are supposed to pay $35 to apply for a permit and obey a list of rules, such as no amplified sound and no interfering with the flow of traffic. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) A posted sign of rules stands in a walkway at the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Monday April 25, 2016. Officials at the Sept. 11 memorial said that one of their security guards shouldn't have stopped a North Carolina middle school choir from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza. Officials say groups wishing to perform on the crowded plaza are supposed to pay $35 to apply for a permit and obey a list of rules, such as no amplified sound and no interfering with the flow of traffic. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) A security guard calls for a rider to dismount his bike during a visit at the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Monday April 25, 2016. Recently security guards stopped a middle school choir from North Carolina from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza, enforcing a rule against musical performances without a permit. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Illinois governor signs $600M university funding package SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation authorizing $600 million in emergency funding to keep major Illinois universities operating until fall. The Republican signed the bill Monday after a debate last week over the temporary spending plan in the General Assembly. The package includes $170 million for the Monetary Award Program, a needs-based grant that colleges doled out this past school year without state reimbursement. Rauner and Democrats who control the Legislature have been unable to agree on a plan for the budget year that began July 1. In a statement Monday, the first-term governor said the law doesn't solve the crisis but is "a first step toward compromise." He wants business reforms and union-power curbs while working with Democrats to reduce the deficit. ___ The bill is SB2059. A Pennsylvania appeals court has rejected Bill Cosby's attempt to halt his criminal case because of what he called a decade-old deal not to prosecute him. The state Superior Court ruled on Monday that the criminal sex-assault case against Cosby can proceed. Cosby, 78, faces trial over a 2004 encounter at his home with Andrea Constand, a then-Temple University employee who says she was drugged and molested by the comedian. Cosby says they engaged in consensual sex acts. A Pennsylvania appeals court has rejected Bill Cosby's attempt to halt his criminal case because of what he called a decade-old deal not to prosecute him. Cosby is seen leaving court in February Former prosecutor Bruce Castor said he promised he would never prosecute Cosby and urged him to testify in the woman's civil lawsuit. Cosby did testify, but a new district attorney who replaced Castor arrested Cosby after his testimony was released. In the lengthy deposition, taken over four days in 2005 and 2006, Cosby acknowledged a series of affairs and said he had obtained quaaludes to give to women he hoped to seduce. The decision on Monday paves the way for Cosby to return to court for a preliminary hearing. Cosby, 78, faces trial over a 2004 encounter at his home with Andrea Constand, a then-Temple University employee who says she was drugged and molested by the comedian He has not yet entered a plea in the case, but remains free on $1million bail posted after his Dec 30 arrest. Cosby is meanwhile locked in a number of legal battles around the country with women who accuse him of sexual assault or defamation. He has countersued some of them, including the Pennsylvania accuser. His lawsuit accuses her of breach of contract for talking to police who reopened the case last year, given the confidential settlement of the lawsuit she filed against him after Castor turned down the case. Castor re-emerged in the case last fall as a key defense witness who said he had made a deal that Cosby would never be charged. Castor last year was running to return to the district attorney's office. He was defeated by Steele. Cosby acknowledged in the deposition that he gave Ms Constand the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl before engaging in sex acts with her at his home near Philadelphia. He calls the encounter consensual. Constand, who had sought career advice from Cosby, left her job with the Temple women's basketball team that spring. She returned home to Toronto and began training to become a massage therapist. A year later, she contacted police to report the alleged sexual assault. Thirteen other women came forward by the time she settled her lawsuit in 2006 to say that Cosby had also molested them. Cosby in the deposition described a long history of womanizing, including extramarital affairs with several of the accusers. However, he said he never assaulted anyone or gave them drugs unknowingly. Trump's path: He needs big night to stay on track to clinch WASHINGTON (AP) Donald Trump needs another big night Tuesday to stay on track to clinch the Republican presidential nomination by the end of the primaries. Five states are voting. Trump can afford to lose only one. There are a total of 172 delegates up for grabs. If Trump can win Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware, he can walk away with 92. He can pick up even more if things go just right in Pennsylvania's quirky delegate primary. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses supporters at a campaign event at Crosby High School in Waterbury, Conn., Saturday, April 23, 2016. Trump must follow up his win in New York with another big night on Tuesday to stay on track to clinch the Republican nomination for president by the end of the primaries. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) He can afford to lose Rhode Island because the delegates are awarded proportionally, so even the losers can get delegates. Trump's path to the nomination is narrow. By no means is it a sure thing. He heads into Tuesday's contests with 845 delegates. That's 392 short of the 1,237 needed to win the Republican nomination. Trump's rivals, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, cannot win enough delegates in the campaign's home stretch to clinch the nomination. Their only hope is to block him and force a contested national convention in July, with no candidate arriving with a majority. In their effort to stop Trump, Cruz and Kasich have formed an extraordinary alliance, Kasich has agreed not to campaign in Indiana's May 3 primary, and Cruz has agreed not to campaign in Oregon and New Mexico, which vote later. Trump can afford to lose Oregon and New Mexico, which award delegates proportionally. Indiana, however, is especially important because the winner can collect all 57 of the state's delegates, or at least a large majority. Trump needs to win 58 percent of all remaining delegates to reach the magic number by the end of the primaries on June 7. What follows is not a prediction, but a plausible path for Trump to stay on track Tuesday. ___ PENNSYLVANIA Pennsylvania is the biggest prize, with 71 delegates at stake. But the state's unique ballot could make it hard for anyone to win a big majority. The statewide winner gets 17 delegates. The other 54 three from each congressional district are directly elected by voters. But their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidate they support. These 54 delegates will go to the convention as free agents, free to support the candidate of their choice. Trump and the other candidates have recruited supporters to run as delegates. But most people will be voting blind, perhaps choosing a local official whose name they recognize. Let's say Trump wins the 17 statewide delegates, and seven of his supporters are also elected as delegates. Trump's running total under this scenario: 869 delegates. ___ MARYLAND Maryland has a total of 38 delegates. The statewide winner gets 14, and the winner of each congressional district gets three. If Trump can win the state and a majority of the congressional districts, he might pick up 32 delegates. Trump's running total: 901. ___ CONNECTICUT Connecticut has a total of 28 delegates. The statewide winner gets 13 if he gets more than 50 percent of the vote. Three delegates to go the winner of each congressional district. The New York real estate mogul needs to win his neighboring state. If he does well, he might get 22 delegates. Trump's running total: 923. ___ RHODE ISLAND Rhode Island has 19 delegates. They are awarded proportionally, so even the losers can get some, as long as they get at least 10 percent of the vote. Trump could lose Rhode Island and still get five delegates. Trump's running total: 928. ___ DELAWARE Delaware has 16 delegates and all of them go to the statewide winner, increasing the importance of this small state. If Trump loses Delaware, he has to make up the 16 elsewhere. If he can win Delaware, he can win a total of 99 delegates in all of Tuesday's states, including the extra ones in Pennsylvania. Trump's running total: 944. ___ LOOKING AHEAD If Trump can pull off a day like this on Tuesday, he would still need 58 percent of the remaining delegates to reach 1,237 on June 7. Five states vote that day, including California, with 172 delegates at stake. Trump will have to win big in California to clinch the nomination that day. How big? That depends on how he does in the contests between now and then. California's delegate rules are similar to those in Connecticut and Maryland. But California is a large and diverse state, with 53 congressional districts. The statewide winner gets only 13 delegates. The other 159 are awarded according to the results in individual congressional districts. You win a district, you get three delegates. The more delegates Trump can win before June 7, the more room for error he will have in California. ___ Trump's path: What he has to do on Tuesday to stay on track WASHINGTON (AP) Donald Trump needs another big night on Tuesday to stay on track to clinch the Republican nomination for president by the end of the primaries. Five states vote. Trump can only afford to lose one. There are a total of 172 delegates up for grabs. If Trump can win Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware, he can walk away with 92 delegates. Trump can pick up even more if things go just right in Pennsylvania's quirky delegate primary. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses supporters at a campaign event at Crosby High School in Waterbury, Conn., Saturday, April 23, 2016. Trump must follow up his win in New York with another big night on Tuesday to stay on track to clinch the Republican nomination for president by the end of the primaries. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Trump can afford to lose Rhode Island because the delegates are awarded proportionally. Even the losers can get delegates. Trump's path to the nomination is narrow, and by no means a sure thing. He heads into Tuesday's contests with 845 delegates. Merkel hints at further military effort in Libya after talks HANNOVER, Germany (AP) German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that she, U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of France, Britain and Italy discussed ways of supporting the fragile unity government in Libya and the possibility of expanding military efforts to stop the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean. NATO is already patrolling for smugglers farther east, in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, and Obama had assured the European leaders the U.S. was "prepared to also take responsibility with regard to the migration route from Libya to Italy if necessary," Merkel said. She emphasized, however, that the five leaders didn't discuss "concrete proposals" for a NATO mission off Libya during their hour-long meeting in Hannover, and that a European Union mission in the Mediterranean had been "working quite well." From left, British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande, meet at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover, Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) The White House said in a statement that the leaders had urged NATO and the EU "to draw on their experience in the Aegean to explore how they could work together to address in an orderly and humane way migrant flows in the central Mediterranean." A senior Obama administration official added that the U.S. would be supportive of a NATO mission in the central Mediterranean. But the official added that the U.S. would defer to NATO to announce the details of such a mission if and when it were to occur. The official wasn't authorized to discuss internal deliberations publicly and requested anonymity. With the flow of people across the eastern Mediterranean slowing sharply due to the NATO patrols and an EU agreement to return illegal migrants to Turkey, officials say it is likely that those trying to reach Europe will increasingly try to set off from Libya again. The route has seen a number of mass drownings over the past year of migrants packed into unseaworthy boats. Germany refused five years ago to back the international military campaign against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, but since his toppling Berlin has been pushing hard to stabilize the North African country, in part to prevent it becoming a hub for people-smugglers and extremist groups such as the Islamic State. Merkel said the leaders agreed "we will all do whatever we can together to strengthen" the unity government in Libya, but did not go into specific details. During a recent trip to Tripoli, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered to provide the unity government with 10 armored cars worth 3 million euros ($3.38 million) to help protect top officials from assassination. Juergen Hardt, a German lawmaker and the government's coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, said recently that Germany might also consider assisting the new unity government in driving Islamic State out of Libya. "We'd end up paying the bill too if we didn't help this (unity) government gain recognition and sovereignty in its country," said Hardt, whose country took in the overwhelming bulk of migrants to Europe last year. "I wouldn't rule out that an approach like the one targeting IS in Syria could be found and that Germany would play a similar role as in Syria, that's providing airborne reconnaissance and support for those who carry out airstrikes," he told The Associated Press in an interview. German military help for the new Libyan government could go beyond air support, he added. "The training effort that we're involved in with the Peshmerga in northern Iraq is a model that is conceivably transferable to reliable forces for the new Libyan government, and that could be done in a neighboring country," Hardt said. _____ Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report. German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as U.S President Barack Obama tests VR goggles when touring the Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial technology trade fair, in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. Obama is on a two-day official visit to Germany. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and taly's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, clockwise from left, start their G-5 meeting in Herrenhaus Palace in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Michael Kappeler/pool photo via AP) U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, from left, start their G-5 meeting in Herrenhaus Palace in Hannover, northern Germany, Monday, April 25, 2016. (Michael Kappeler/pool photo via AP) Pipeline developers vow to fight New York permit rejection ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) Developers of a 124-mile pipeline designed to transport natural gas to the Northeast from Pennsylvania's shale fields said Monday they'll challenge New York's rejection of a critical permit. The Constitution Pipeline Company said the denial letter from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation includes "flagrant misstatements and inaccurate allegations" and is driven by politics rather than science. The DEC on Friday denied a water quality permit, saying the project fails to meet standards that protect hundreds of streams, wetlands and other water resources in its path. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project in December 2014, conditioned on the state permit. The company, a partnership formed by Cabot Oil & Gas, Williams Partners and Piedmont Natural Gas Company, can appeal the state decision to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Spokesman Christopher Stockton said the company is considering that option. "In spite of NYSDEC's unprecedented decision, we remain absolutely committed to building this important energy infrastructure project, which will create an important connection between consumers and reliable supplies of clean, affordable natural gas," the partners said in a joint statement. Among other things, DEC said Constitution failed to provide site-specific plans showing how deep the 30-inch pipeline would be at each of the 251 streams along its route. Constitution said Monday that it provided detailed drawings and profiles for every stream crossing, including depth of the pipe. "Constitution Pipeline worked closely with NYSDEC staff for more than three years to ensure that water quality measures are met before, during and after construction," the partners said, adding that the company agreed to fund about $18 million for wetland preservation and $8.6 million for migratory bird habitats. In response to Constitution's assertions Monday, DEC said its denial letter outlined a number of failures to present adequate information for the state to determine water quality standards would be met. AP Explains: GOP battles bailout perception on Puerto Rico WASHINGTON (AP) Debt-ridden Puerto Rico faces a $422 million bond payment deadline Sunday with no sign Congress will act in time to help. Further complicating lawmakers' efforts to steer the U.S. territory away from economic collapse are ads airing nationwide that claim the legislation amounts to a financial bailout, even though the bill has no direct financial aid. Some House conservatives have latched onto that argument, making it difficult for Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to garner enough support for the bill. Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, says he is reworking the bill, and a new version could come as soon as this week. In this April 13, 2016, file photo House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., pauses during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Debt-ridden Puerto Rico faces a $422 million bond payment deadline May 1 with no sign Congress will act in time to help. Further complicating lawmakers efforts to steer the U.S. territory away from economic collapse are ads airing nationwide that claim the legislation amounts to a financial bailout even though the bill has no direct financial aid. House conservatives have latched onto that argument, making it difficult for Ryan, to garner support for the bill. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) It's unlikely to come in time for Puerto Rico to avoid default on the nearly half-billion-dollar debt payment. The AP explains Puerto Rico's debt crisis, what's happening in Congress and the outside forces. ___ PUERTO RICO'S IN BAD SHAPE Puerto Rico's government is running out of money. Agricultural revenue has diminished and federal tax incentives that lured manufacturers were phased out by Congress a decade ago. The territory's financial problems grew worse as a result of setbacks in the wider U.S. economy, and government spending in Puerto Rico continued unchecked. Borrowing covered increasing deficits and bonds were sold on special terms. More than 200,000 people have left Puerto Rico in the past five years, reducing the island's tax base. Those left behind have struggled with higher taxes and utility bills that have forced businesses to close or lay off workers. Foreclosures are skyrocketing and the island's unemployment rate of 12 percent is the highest compared with any U.S. state. ___ IT'S ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION Ryan is lobbying his House Republican caucus to support the legislation, which would create a control board to help manage the island's $70 billion debt and to oversee some debt restructuring. Ryan says Congress is staunchly opposed to a bailout, but the U.S. could ultimately be responsible if Congress doesn't act soon to prevent collapse. Some lawmakers are claiming the opposite. "This could be a first step toward a bailout," said Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, a GOP member of the House Natural Resources Committee, which will have to approve the bill before it moves to the floor. Creditors who are owed money are spending millions to lobby on the bill and have hired former lawmakers to push their case. In some cases they are battling each other. Former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., represents a group that hold bonds that are backed by a portion of the territory's sales tax, and he has been asking lawmakers to support the House bill. Those bondholders stand to benefit if the territory's economy and sales thrive because of restructuring. Gregg says the bill "treats creditors fairly and does not use taxpayer dollars." Former Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., represents a group of general obligation bondholders opposed to the bill. In an email to former colleagues obtained by The Associated Press, Mack wrote: "The legislation is pure and simple a BAILOUT on the backs of taxpayers, retirees and savers ... Some in leadership have decided to try and pull the wool over the House GOP Conference's eyes." Bishop, the Utah lawmaker supporting the measure to help Puerto Rico, says "the goal is to make sure that everyone is paid, and not just a few people are paid." ___ ADS CREATE ANGST Some of the ads run by the Center for Individual Freedom have specifically targeted Bishop and Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, the bill's sponsor. New ads that started Friday feature a Puerto Rican bondholder named Theresa who says she will lose her life savings if the House bill becomes law. The group is organized as a politically active nonprofit that doesn't have to disclose its donors. As of last week, the group had spent an estimated $1.9 million so far this month, according to advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG. The Alexandria, Virginia-based group was founded in the late 1990s by tobacco industry leaders seeking to fight government restrictions on smoking. In the years since, it has evolved to aid Republican politicians and take up conservative causes such as balancing the federal budget and fighting donor disclosure laws at the state level. The group's chairman is Tony Fabrizio, a longtime, well-known Republican pollster and strategist. Bishop says he thinks most of his colleagues won't be convinced by the ads. "The ads are so over the top that it's hard for people to believe them," he said. Bishop canceled a scheduled April 14 session to finalize the bill after Fleming and others made it clear they wouldn't support the legislation and the ads from the Center for Individual Freedom raised doubts within the caucus. While some Republicans are on board, others said they were wary it could set a precedent for financially strapped states. Bishop has also continued negotiations with Democrats, Puerto Rican officials and the Obama administration. In the Senate, Republicans say they are waiting to see what happens in the House. ____ France calls on Panama for tax transparency PARIS (AP) France's finance minister has called on Panama to provide "total transparency" regarding exchange of tax information. "Transparency must concern previous and future requests, including those linked to the Panama Papers information", Michel Sapin said in a written statement following a meeting with his Panamanian counterpart, Dulcidio de la Guardia, Monday in Paris. De la Guardia expressed his government's will to make progress on the issue, according to Sapin's statement. France this month placed Panama on a list of countries that are uncooperative in sharing financial information. The move came in the wake of the so-called Panama Papers revelations, a leak of millions of documents detailing the offshore accounts of people and companies. Evicted Southern California centenarian gets new home LA QUINTA, Calif. (AP) A 100-year-old woman evicted from her apartment has a new home in the Southern California desert after a newspaper reported on her plight and motivational speaker Tony Robbins and a local congressman joined in helping her. The Desert Sun newspaper (http://desert.sn/1WiZBWQ) says on April 1 Evelyn Heller lost a trial in which her Palm Desert landlord sought her eviction on grounds she had loud, disruptive arguments with one of her daughters. "I have four grandsons, but I don't want to be dependent on them," Heller told the judge at the time. "I can't be a burden to my family. They don't have room for me. That happens in life." This April 22, 2016 photo Tony Robbins, a celebrity motivational speaker and philanthropist, kisses the hand of Evelyn Heller, 100, in her apartment in La Quinta, Calif. Heller was on the verge of homelessness after being evicted from another apartment on April 1, but found a new place to live thanks to social workers and a donation from Robbins. Robbins and a local congressman joined in helping her. (Gabby Ferreira/Palm Springs Desert Sun via AP) RIVERSIDE PRESS-ENTERPRISE OUT; NO SALES; NO FOREIGN; MANDATORY CREDIT When the story ran, Robbins and U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz contacted the newspaper, which put them in touch with each other. Ruiz sent social workers to help Heller find a new apartment and Robbins donated $24,000 $1,000 a month for two years. She now lives in La Quinta, where Ruiz, his wife, Monica Rivers, and Robbins visited her Friday. Rivers brought a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup. "That's wonderful!" Heller said, inviting them in. "How sweet of you." Robbins arrived a few minutes later and the group spent 20 minutes chatting. "I don't know how anyone my age can have a bigger day than today," Heller said. "I just don't know how." The benefactors sought to reassure her that she would be looked after. "You have a lot of people who are going to keep an eye on you now," Ruiz said. The congressman, a physician and Democrat representing California's 36th District, told the newspaper as he left that Heller represents a larger problem. "I think our seniors are struggling. Their social security isn't going far enough. Some of them don't have family or friends," he said. "And it breaks my heart." ___ Information from: The Desert Sun, http://www.mydesert.com/ Brazil's Senate chooses presidential impeachment commission RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) Brazil's Senate on Monday was determining the 21 members of a commission that will recommend whether or not to move forward with impeachment proceedings against embattled President Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff is facing impeachment over allegations her administration violated fiscal laws, in what her foes say was a bid to prop up flagging support through government spending. Brazil's first female president has insisted the procedure amounts to an attempted coup against her. Expected to be dominated by pro-impeachment senators, the commission is slated to vote in early May on whether to recommend the continuation of the impeachment process. In this April 18, 2016 photo, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff pauses during a press conference where she spoke about the impeachment proceedings against her, at the Planalto presidential palace, in Brasilia. Rousseff appeared on the verge of losing office after a congressional vote to impeach her and signs suggested only tenuous support for her in the Senate, which will decide whether to remove her amid a political and economic crisis. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Whatever their recommendation, another vote will follow a few days later on the floor of the Senate. If 41 of the 81 senators vote in favor of the impeachment, Rousseff will be suspended for up to six months pending a "trial" in the Senate that will decide whether to permanently remove her from power. The impeachment proceedings come as Brazil is grappling with the biggest recession in decades, an ongoing corruption probe that has ensnared top politicians and prominent businessmen and also an outbreak of the Zika virus. The country's showcase city, Rio de Janeiro, is also gearing up to host the Olympics in August. Rousseff's once-overwhelming public support has eroded with the onslaught of bad news, with her approval ratings dipping into the single digits in recent months. While polls have suggested broad public support for her impeachment, they've also pointed to widespread trepidation about who might replace her. The impeachment proceedings have been spearheaded by the speaker in the lower house, who is facing money laundering and other charges in connection with the sweeping corruption probe at the state-run oil company, Petrobras. Vice President Michel Temer, the first in line to substitute Rousseff if she's suspended, has also been mentioned in connection with the scandal, though he is not facing charges and has denied any wrongdoing. A new poll Monday showed people overwhelmingly favored the hypothetical resignation of both Rousseff and Temer, followed by new presidential elections. Just over 60 percent of respondents said that scenario would be the best way out of the crisis, although no such solution is stipulated under Brazil's constitution. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they would prefer to see Rousseff continue her mandate, while just 8 percent of respondents said Rousseff's impeachment, followed by her substitution by Temer, would be their preferred solution. The Ibope polling agency conducted interviews with 2,022 people in 142 cities nationwide on 14-18 April. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points. Bernie Sanders looks to press on to the convention HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Bernie Sanders' campaign chief is vowing his candidate will stay in the Democratic race until the summer convention, even as Hillary Clinton looks to lock down her commanding position for the party's nomination with a strong performance in a five-state round of contests Tuesday. Clinton has the chance of a clean sweep or at least multiple victories Tuesday that would probably foreclose Sanders' already narrow path to the nomination. But the Vermont senator's campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said the millions of dollars flowing to Sanders and the boisterous rallies show that his "supporters will stand with us all the way to the end." Asked whether he expects a contested national Democratic convention, Weaver told reporters in Connecticut, "Absolutely, 100 percent." Weaver said, "This is a powerful movement he's built and we're going to take it to the convention." Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waves as he leaves a campaign rally at Fitzgerald Fieldhouse on the University of Pittsburgh campus, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) Both Democrats spent the day before the Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island contests campaigning on the East Coast. Clinton looked beyond her rivalry with Sanders and went after Republican front-runner Donald Trump as a man out of touch on wages, climate change, national security and the lives of everyday people. "Come out of those towers named after yourself and actually talk and listen to people," Clinton told a Delaware crowd, as if talking to him. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of and then go back in on that big jet and go back to your country club house in Florida or your penthouse in New York." She was addressing more than 900 people in a Wilmington theater. At a Hartford rally with more than 1,800 people, Sanders drew distinctions with Clinton on the minimum wage, his call for a carbon tax to address climate change, fracking and more. "We cannot afford to poison our water," he said. "Secretary Clinton does not agree. In fact, as secretary of state she pushed fracking on countries all over the world." Sanders said he would phase out fracking as president. Sanders moved on to a rally at a field house on the University of Pittsburgh campus, where he told a crowd of more than 1,000 that young and poorer people need to vote in higher numbers if anything is to change. "That means every person here has got to understand that you are very, very powerful people if you choose to exercise that right," Sanders said. Politicians "don't listen to people if they are not involved. They listen to people who contribute hundreds of millions of dollars." Tuesday's contests offer 384 delegates, who will be divided proportionally based on the outcome. After her New York victory, Clinton has a lead of more than 200 delegates won in primaries and caucuses. Including superdelegates, Clinton's lead stands at 1,944 to 1,192 for Sanders, according to an Associated Press count. That means she has 82 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination. Clinton planned a primary-night rally Tuesday in Philadelphia, the city where the party's nominee will accept the nomination in July. ___ Lucey reported from Wilmington, Delaware. Associated Press writers Ken Thomas in Hartford and Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report. Democratic presidential candidate shakes hands with attendees during a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., gestures during a campaign rally in Hartford, Conn., Monday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waves to supporters during a campaign rally in Hartford, Conn., Monday, April 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Attendees cheer as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Ammon Bundy questions authority of feds to prosecute him PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) Lawyers for Ammon Bundy revealed plans to contest the authority of the federal government to prosecute their client for the takeover of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon. Attorney Lissa Casey says in court papers that a forthcoming motion to dismiss the case will challenge the federal government's assertion that it has ownership of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. "The federal government relinquished the land when it was previously deeded and homesteaded, thus relinquishing jurisdiction," Casey wrote. Moreover, she said, the defendant intends to argue the government largely lost the right to own land inside Oregon once statehood was achieved. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has twice ruled that the government owns the land in question, presenting an uphill climb for the attorneys. "We look forward to Ammon Bundy's attempt to re-litigate 200 years of jurisprudence regarding the property clause, and the 1935 Supreme Court case that specifically established the American people's ownership of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge," Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement posted on the organization's website. Bundy and his followers seized the refuge Jan. 2 in a protest over federal land policy and the imprisonment of two local ranchers who set fires. A Jan. 26 traffic stop led to Bundy's arrest and the shooting death of occupier Robert "LaVoy" Finicum. A September trial has been scheduled for Bundy and the more than two dozen others who took part in the takeover that eventually ended in February. Bundy pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and gun charges. Bundy's lawyers presented the basics of their argument while asking a federal judge to extend the deadline for filing motions to dismiss the case. Casey said evidence must be produced regarding chain of title and actions or inaction of the government. "Given the complexities of the evidence involved, it is not a simple legal argument that can be briefed and expedited for the Court," she wrote. Bundy's views on the federal government should get an extensive airing at his upcoming trial. Though often described as anti-government, Bundy has said that's not the case. He said the federal government has a responsibility to protect the states from outside invaders. When critics pointed out that his company got a $530,000 loan through the Small Business Administration, he noted that he's only opposed to federal policies that go against the people's will. AP Interview: Georgia prime minister vows course toward West WASHINGTON (AP) The prime minister of Georgia vowed that his country would continue moving on a pro-Western course and pledged to hold an honest parliamentary election this fall. In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Giorgi Kvirikashvili said that the future of this post-Soviet nation lies with the European Union and NATO. "There is a very clear will of (the) Georgian people ... to be pro-Western, pro-European," Kvirikashvili told the AP. Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, during his interview with the Associated Press in Washington, Monday, April 25, 2016. Kvirikashvili says his country will continue moving on a pro-Western course and is vowing to hold an honest parliamentary election this fall. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Kvirikashvili was in Washington to meet with Vice President Joe Biden and other officials, as well as to promote Georgia as a regional hub for business and investment. Kvirikashvili is a close ally of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in banking, mining and metals in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and whose party ousted the government of President Mikhail Saakashvili in 2012. The new government has continued reforms aimed at economic, political and military integration with the West, signing a key trade and political agreement with Brussels and pushing for NATO membership. But it also sought to restore economic relations and ease tensions with Moscow after a five-day war with Russia in 2008 ended in two breakaway provinces declaring their independence from Georgia. "This does not mean that we do not need to try to normalize relations with Russia, with our neighbor, but not at the expense of Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereign decisions," Kvirikashvili said. "The sovereign decision of (the) Georgian people is to be pro-European." Kvirikashvili said the government is committed to holding a clean parliamentary vote in October, in which his Georgian Dream Party will have to battle falling support ratings and face off with Saakashvili's supporters and other parties. Saakashvili himself left Georgia in the face of corruption charges and is now serving as a regional governor in Ukraine. "Our aim is to have one of the freest and fairest elections in the recent history of Georgia," he said. Kvirikashvili sought to dismiss criticism that Ivanishvili, a reclusive tycoon who served as prime minister for a year until he stepped down in 2013, was still governing this small South Caucasus nation behind the scenes. "Ivanishvili is (the) founder of the party Georgian Dream. He is an important person," Kvirikashvili said. "But in our major decisions, in our daily work, the government is absolutely independent." Ivanishvili's name figured in the so-called Panama Papers revelations, a leak of millions of documents detailing the offshore accounts of people and companies. According to the investigation, Ivanishvili owned a company based in the British Virgin Islands, though it is unclear what the company was used for. Kvirikashvili said the Georgian government needs additional information to look into this matter. "Mr. Ivanishvili was always inclined to have transparent business and to comply with all the requirements of transparency," Kvirikashvili added. Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, during his interview with the Associated Press in Washington, Monday, April 25, 2016. Kvirikashvili says his country will continue moving on a pro-Western course and is vowing to hold an honest parliamentary election this fall. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) The Latest: Dad of teen lost at sea will share phone data TEQUESTA, Fla. (AP) The Latest on the recovery of a cellphone from a boat belonging to two Florida teens who went missing last summer (all times local): 3:30 p.m. The father of a Florida teen who went missing at sea with a friend says he will share whatever information can be retrieved from his son's cellphone with the other boy's family. FILE - This file combination made from photos provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows Perry Cohen, left, and Austin Stephanos. Cohen and Stephanos were last seen Friday afternoon, July 24, 2015, in Jupiter, Fla. A cellphone belonging to Austin Stephanos was inside a boat spotted in the Atlantic Ocean in March 2016 by the captain of a Norwegian supply ship. The mother of Perry Cohen issued a statement Sunday, April 24, 2016, saying the state attorney's help is needed because Austin Stephanos' father, Blu Stephanos, hasn't given Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigators permission to search his son's iPhone. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP, File) Blu Stephanos issued a statement to the Palm Beach Post saying that the phone belonging to his son Austin Stephanos has salt water damage, so he doubts information can be retrieved, "but I am not giving up hope." He said he would share any information received with law enforcement and the family of Perry Cohen. The Cohen family sued this week to block release of the cellphone by law enforcement to the Stephanos family until it is examined by law enforcement. Guy Rubin, the Cohen family's lawyer, said the family has not had any contact with the Stephanos family about its plans. The cellphone was inside a boat spotted in the Atlantic Ocean last month by the captain of a Norwegian supply ship. The cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were onboard. The boys went missing last July. __ 8:30 a.m. The mother of one of two Florida teens who went missing at sea is asking the state attorney to get involved in a feud over the other boy's cellphone. The cellphone belonging to Austin Stephanos was inside a boat spotted in the Atlantic Ocean last month by the captain of a Norwegian supply ship. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were will be returned to the families. The boat was packed up with the personal effects and is expected to arrive at Port Everglades in May. The cellphone was shipped ahead. The boys went missing last July. The Palm Beach Post (http://pbpo.st/1StY23G ) reports the mother of Perry Cohen issued a statement Sunday saying the state attorney's help is needed because Austin Stephanos' father hasn't given Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigators consent to search his son's iPhone. ___ Top aides to South Sudan rebel leader Machar arrives in Juba UNITED NATIONS (AP) The United Nations says a plane carrying the chief of staff for South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar and 126 of his followers has arrived in the capital Juba, hopefully "a harbinger" of Machar's impending arrival to become vice president in a unity government. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the U.N. has been asked to facilitate Machar's return and confirmed that a private plane with 127 member of Machar's SPLA-in Opposition landed in Juba on Monday afternoon. Dujarric said he could not confirm a report that Machar will arrive in Juba on Tuesday. Civil rights attorney, federal judge Horace Ward dead at 88 ATLANTA (AP) A civil rights lawyer who became Georgia's first black federal court judge has died. Retired U.S. District Judge Horace Ward died Saturday at age 88. Funeral arrangements are pending, said Alfonso Dawson Mortuary funeral director Andre Hannah in Atlanta. Ward challenged segregationist practices at the University of Georgia in the early 1950s. FILE - In a June 14, 2012 file photo, Judge Horace Ward, center, the first African American ever to serve on the federal bench in Georgia, stands with former President Jimmy Carter, left, and Judge Nathaniel Jones, right, after an award ceremony recognizing President Carter in Atlanta. Retired U.S. District Judge Horace Ward, a civil rights lawyer, died over the weekend of April 23-24, 2016, at age 88. Ward challenged segregationist practices at the University of Georgia in the early 1950s. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File) He had earned degrees from Morehouse College and Atlanta University, which later became Clark Atlanta. But his application to the University of Georgia law school was rejected in 1951, despite his qualifications. He launched a legal challenge against the university that helped pave the way for the civil rights movement. Ward, from LaGrange Georgia, went on to earn a law degree from Northwestern University. He returned to Georgia in the late '50s and helped in another desegregation push that led to UGA admitting two black students, Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter. Holmes later became the first black student to be admitted to the Emory University School of Medicine and Hunter now known as Charlayne Hunter-Gault __ went on to become an award-winning journalist. Ward served in the Georgia Senate between 1965 and 1974 and was appointed to the federal bench in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. US presses Vietnam on detentions ahead of Obama visit WASHINGTON (AP) The United States pressed Vietnam Monday over a recent spate of detentions of government critics and pushed for other progress on human rights ahead of a visit next month by President Barack Obama. Senior officials of the two governments held an annual dialogue on human rights in Washington. It's an issue which remains a drag on improving relations between the former enemies. Tom Malinowski, U.S. assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, said last year saw a sharp decline in arrests and prosecutions for peaceful dissent in Vietnam. But he told The Associated Press there has been an increase in detentions of activists and bloggers this year, which was raised during Monday's "open and candid" discussions. He said the U.S. side "expressed our hope that this would be addressed and that some of the longstanding cases of concern would be resolved." Vietnam's delegation was led by Vu Anh Quang, director general of the Department of International Organizations at the Foreign Ministry. The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Obama will visit Vietnam in May, becoming the third consecutive U.S. president to do so, four decades after the end of the Vietnam War. The U.S. and Vietnam have deepened ties in recent years as Washington looks to widen its circle of friends in Southeast Asia and finds common cause with Hanoi in countering a rising China. Vietnam is also a member of the U.S.-backed regional trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that was signed in February. Vietnam recently adopted some laws to improve legal protections for citizens and has agreed to allow independent labor unions, currently forbidden, under a labor agreement that takes effect once TPP is ratified by both nations. But the ruling Communist Party still brooks no dissent. According to a recent State Department report, Vietnam held about 95 political prisoners at the end of 2015. Human Rights Watch says that during the last week of March, Vietnam convicted seven bloggers and rights activists and sentenced them to prison. Among the individual cases of detainees raised by the U.S. on Monday was Nguyen Van Dai, a prominent human rights lawyer who was arrested in December on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda. In 2007, Dai was sentenced to four years on a similar charge. Malinowski said the U.S. was also closely watching Vietnam's progress on legal reforms. Voters testify in Arizona presidential primary challenge PHOENIX (AP) Voters dismayed with Arizona's problematic presidential primary voiced frustrations with long lines and registration issues Monday during a hearing for a court challenge to have the election results thrown out. Testimony came in the wake of the March 22 election where Arizona's most populous county drastically cut polling places. The move emboldened Tucson resident John Brakey, elections integrity activist to sue Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and all 15 counties. In a courtroom packed with elections officials and onlookers, voters described waiting in long lines and arguing with elections about problems with their party affiliation. CORRECTS FROM DIANE TO DIANNE- Dianne Post, a poll worker in Phoenix testifies about voting problems with Democrat ballots during the presidential primary election in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Ariz., on Monday, April 25, 2016. John Brakey, from Tucson, Ariz., is challenging the outcome presidential primary election, contending that long lines in Maricopa County suppressed the vote and statewide voter registrations problems led to illegal vote counts. (Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool) "The judge is going to have to extrapolate and see how that is a representative example of the variety of similar things that happened to people," said Michael Kielsky, Brakey's attorney. Alisa Wolfe, A Pima County voter, said her voter registration was improperly changed from Democrat to independent. Ed Higgins, a Maricopa County voter, testified that he had to vote provisionally after the motor vehicles division turned in his change of party affiliation a day too late. "It was voter suppression," he told the Associated Press before testifying. "This is widespread fraud, this is election fraud." A poll worker who was on duty during the election testified the computer system checking in voters would not allow her to give the correct ballots to 36 Democratic voters. "By the third time I said 'Oh no, this is a problem,'" said Dianne Post, who also counted about 20 other voters that were listed in the wrong party. Attorneys for the state and several Arizona counties took steps to dismiss the lawsuit before the hearing began, but Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Gass rejected the requests. They were also quick to point out that a computer scientist, who testified about various hacking methods, had no knowledge of the current voting system that Maricopa County uses. Assistant Attorney General James Driscoll-MacEachron declined comment for the story. The hearing is set to reconvene Tuesday. Driscoll-MacEachron and attorneys for the counties are expected to call their own witnesses and offer arguments to prove that Brakey's case does not rise to the level of misconduct needed to discount the election results. A separate lawsuit was filed last week in federal court by the state and national Democratic parties and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It seeks greater court oversight of voting location choices in Maricopa County and a ban on failing to count otherwise-valid ballots cast in an incorrect precinct. The county has acknowledged it made mistakes in operating the primary by dramatically cutting the number of polling places and widely underestimating Election Day turnout. The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an inquiry into whether the county violated voting-rights laws. ___ This story has been corrected to show a poll worker testified that the computer system checking in voters would not give the correct ballots to 36 Democratic voters. Attorney Michael Kielsky and AUDIT-AZ founder John Brakey, right, stand in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Ariz., on Monday, April 25, 2016. Brakey sued Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and all 15 counties after the presidential primary election. He contends long lines in Maricopa County suppressed the vote and statewide voter registrations problems led to illegal vote counts. He wants the results decertified. (Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool) Attorney Michael Kielsky and AUDIT-AZ founder John Brakey, right, stand in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Ariz., on Monday, April 25, 2016. Brakey sued Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and all 15 counties after the presidential primary election. He contends long lines in Maricopa County suppressed the vote and statewide voter registrations problems led to illegal vote counts. He wants the results decertified. (Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool) Police did not fire at teen who killed officer, then himself GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) Authorities say no officers fired at a teen who killed a South Carolina police officer last month and led them on a nearly mile-long chase on foot before killing himself. Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller held a news conference Monday to release details from the state police report on the March 18 death of officer Allen Jacobs. Miller says Jacobs and his partner were trying to stop 17-year-old Deontea Mackey because they thought he had a gun illegally. Miller says Jacobs chased Mackey, who turned after rounding a corner and shot seven times. Jacobs was hit by four bullets. The chief says Mackey ran for 10 minutes, calling his mother after he was cornered and then killing himself. Small plane crashes into Florida house with 3 aboard POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP) Officials say three people were injured when their small plane crashed into a Florida home. Pompano Beach Fire Rescue spokeswoman Sandra King was quoted by the Sun Sentinel (http://goo.gl/vEvvig) that no one inside the house was injured when the plane hit it Monday afternoon. King said one woman and two men were inside the Hawker Beechcraft 76, and they were all in critical condition. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said in an email that the pilot was practicing takeoffs and landings from nearby Pompano Beach Airpark when the crash occurred. A person is transported to the hospital after a plane crashed into a house in Pompano Beach, Fla., Monday, April 25, 2016. (Carline Jean/The South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) SOUTH FLORIDA OUT; NO MAGS; NO SALES; NO INTERNET; NO TV The Sun Sentinel reports that the plane is registered to Florida Aviation Academy, which runs a flight school at the airpark. The National Transportation Safety Board will determine the crash's cause. Capitol Hill Buzz: News media barred from cheetah briefing WASHINGTON (AP) Cheated out of a cheetah. The House Foreign Affairs Committee brought a live cheetah to the Capitol on Monday, but news reporters and photographers were initially denied access to the big cat the fastest land mammal in the world. "This is a closed briefing," said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the committee's chairman. The panel, like others in Congress, "holds closed briefings for staff to learn about and discuss issues within our jurisdiction," Fritz said. A cheetah named Adaeze rests with handlers, including Laurie Marker, executive director of Cheetah Conservation Fund, left, after an event with the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, April 25, 2016. Adaeze lives at the Leo Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, Conn. (AP Photo/Matthew Daly) A few dozen Capitol Hill staffers entered the committee's meeting room in the Rayburn House Office Building while a half-dozen photographers stood outside the door, which was soon locked. At the end of the hourlong briefing, the committee opened the doors. A cheetah named Adaeze (pronounced ah-DAY'-zah) was lying on a table. The big cat was born in captivity and lives at the Leo Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, Connecticut. The event was held in conjunction with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, a Virginia-based group that works to save cheetahs from hunters, trappers and other threats. There are fewer than 10,000 wild cheetahs left worldwide, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, a 90 percent decrease since 1900. Laurie Marker, the fund's executive director, said the briefing was intended to raise awareness of threats to the cheetah and build support for bills to increase penalties for wildlife trafficking and boost support for wildlife rangers. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., co-sponsored a Senate measure and attended Monday's briefing. "People know about poaching of elephants and rhinos, but it happens with big cats, too," said Flake, who has met with Marker in Namibia. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote on the bill on Thursday. The House passed a Royce-sponsored bill last fall that aims to hold foreign governments accountable by "naming and shaming" the worst violators of anti-poaching laws. Parents of missing Mexican students slam government probe MEXICO CITY (AP) The parents of 43 missing students who disappeared in September 2014 accused Mexico's government on Monday of lying to them, planting evidence and not adequately investigating the case. The parents' comments came a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticizing the investigation, saying suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students' bodies were not correctly investigated. The 43 students at the radical teachers' college of Ayotzinapa have not been heard from since they were taken by local police in late 2014 in the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state. The government says corrupt police turned them over to a drug gang, which killed them and burned their remains in a dump in the town of Cocula. Parents reject that conclusion and experts say there is no proof of it. Spokesman Felipe de la Cruz, center speaks on behalf of parents of some of 43 missing students during a press conference to give the families' response to a report issued Sunday by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group in Mexico City, Monday, April 25, 2016. There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to the report. The group also complained the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for and criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) On Monday, parent Mario Cesar Gonzalez said prosecutors had lied and planted a bag of charred bone fragments in a river near the garbage dump where the students were allegedly burned. Tests have linked the fragments to only one of the students, with a possible link to another. The group of experts said the bags of bone fragments were found at a different spot and time than authorities had said, and that outside experts weren't immediately allowed access to the site. "They were the ones who planted the evidence in the San Juan river," said Gonzalez, the father of missing student Cesar Manuel Gonzalez. Cristina Bautista, whose son Benjamin Ascencio is among the missing students, said the "government started lying to us from the start." The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group says that a study of 17 of the approximately 123 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, including, in some cases, dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes. Human rights activist Mario Patron of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez center said the torture allegations "endanger efforts to find the truth." The Mexican government recently released documents suggesting investigations had been opened against police and military personnel, but authorities have not answered requests about whether anyone has been arrested or charged. Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, said authorities were investigating complaints filed by 31 people who said they had been tortured; he said six criminal cases had been opened, and had that three involved employees of the attorney general's office. Betanzos called the case "the most exhaustive investigation in the history of Mexican law enforcement." The group of experts also complained that the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for; it criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete. For example, the report said, the roadblocks set up on local highways around the city of Iguala on the night of the disappearances were far more extensive than previously thought. The roadblocks were apparently coordinated by the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel to trap rivals; the gang may have thought the students were part of a rival cartel. The report criticized the forensics investigations of human remains and evidence of fire at the garbage dump in Cocula, saying that prosecutors had provided little evidence there ever could have been a fire a big enough at the site. President Enrique Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account that the federal attorney general's office "will analyze the whole report, to aid in its investigations." Relatives of 43 missing students, accompanied by their spokesman and human rights activists, take their seats during a press conference to give the families' response to a report issued Sunday by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group in Mexico City, Monday, April 25, 2016. There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to the report. The group also complained the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for and criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Spokesman Felipe de la Cruz, center, chants along with parents of some of 43 missing students during a press conference to give the families' response to a report issued Sunday by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group in Mexico City, Monday, April 25, 2016. There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to the report. The group also complained the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for and criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Parents hold pictures of their missing children during a press conference by families of some of 43 missing teachers college students, in response to a report issued Sunday by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group in Mexico City, Monday, April 25, 2016. There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to the report. The group also complained the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for and criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) A man holds up a photograph of a missing student with a caption reading "We are missing 43," during a press conference by the parents of missing teachers college students in response to a report issued Sunday by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group in Mexico City, Monday, April 25, 2016. There is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested in the disappearance of 43 students, according to the report. The group also complained the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for and criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Voters weigh in on Cruz-Kasich deal to block Trump WASHINGTON (AP) The Republican presidential campaign trail is crackling with talk of a partnership and pancakes. The Associated Press asked voters in Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico how they felt about Cruz and Kasich striking an extraordinary accord to avoid competing with each other in an effort to block Trump's relentless but not yet successful march toward the Republican nomination. Under the agreement announced late Sunday night, Kasich won't compete in Indiana, while Cruz bows out of the contests in Oregon and New Mexico over the next six weeks. The idea is to keep Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the party's presidential nomination. Trump huffed that his rivals are concerned that Trump is poised for big gains when five states vote on Tuesday. Their deal, he complained repeatedly Monday, is dishonest. And Americans shouldn't want a guy for president who eats pancakes the way Kasich does, Trump groused. Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, shakes hands during a town hall at Thomas farms Community Center Monday, April 25, 2016, in Rockville, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Here's a look at how voters in the trio of states divvied up by Cruz and Kasich view their deal. ___ OREGON "For Oregon, we're not going to make a big difference in things. It doesn't bother me at all (Kasich-Cruz teaming up).....Whoever gets the nomination I'll support. It's all theater, I think they all do this for drama and put out press releases." --Craig Herman, 66, Oregon City resident, registered Republican voter. "I don't feel there's one candidate that even comes close to representing anything I stand for. I'm mixed on a lot of things, I'm pro-choice, I'm also pro-guns...As for Cruz and Kasich teaming up to take on Trump, I think it just adds one more chapter to the circus of the Republican Party." --Rickey Story, 37, resident of Milwaukie, Ore., and a registered Independent voter. ___ NEW MEXICO Silly," is how Ed Kasados, 78, described the Cruz-Kasich pact. The Los Ranchos de Albuquerque resident says he sees Kasich as the most qualified candidate, but acknowledges that the agreement won't help the Ohio governor win the GOP nomination. Kasados says that as a registered Democrat he can't vote for him in the primary, and intends to vote for "anybody but Hillary" in the general election. Billy and Joan Mondragon, an Albuquerque couple, said they like Kasich because he is an experienced and down-to-earth candidate. They don't trust Trump and say they're skeptical that the agreement between Cruz and Kasich would lead to the nomination for either of them. "I think they're doing whatever they can to beat Trump, but I'm not sure it's going to make a difference," Joan Mondragon said. ___ INDIANA "Kind of sneaky," is how Joe Conder, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer from Scottsville, Indiana, described the Kasich-Cruz deal. He said he's undecided between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump but that the announced deal didn't make the Texas senator look good. He said he would vote for a "three-legged, brain-dead, orangutan as long as it was conservative." Iraq war veteran Michael Thielmeier, 28, said he already had one signed copy of Cruz's autobiography and brought another to a rally Monday morning in Bordon to get it autographed for his daughters, ages 1 and 4. He said the deal is "not something I expected, but at the same time, I do see Trump as a being a total failure as a president and also as the nominee and if that's what has to be done, I feel like that's a strategy (Cruz) has to take to get across his vision." "I see it as being smart, calculated, knowledgeable," Thielmeier said. "I don't see it as an insider deal, I see it as a surprise but that's not the same thing." ___ DONALD TRUMP: "It's collusion," Trump says of the deal, speaking at a rally in Rhode Island. "If you collude in business or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude," Trump says. But Trump says he's actually OK with the decision because it demonstrates his rivals' weakness. "It shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are," he said. Besides, Trump said, Americans shouldn't want a president who holds a news conference while eating pancakes. "I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion," he said. ___ Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman in Washington, Kristena Hansen in Portland, Oregon, Mary Hudetz in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Will Wiessert in Scottsville, Indiana, and Jill Colvin in West Chester, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report. ___ Puerto Rico senators reject amended debt moratorium bill SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) Senators in Puerto Rico say they will not approve an amended bill that would exclude certain bonds issued by the government from a debt moratorium. A caucus of senators from Puerto Rico's ruling party said Tuesday that the bill is not consistent with the $70 billion debt restructuring that the U.S. territory is seeking from Congress. The amended bill sought to exempt general obligation bonds and others from a recently approved law that allows the governor to declare a debt moratorium amid a dire economic crisis. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla had repudiated the amendments sought by a majority of representatives. Trapped! Vegan restaurants struggle with humane pest control MIAMI (AP) Even the wellbeing of rats, roaches and spiders are a concern for animal activists. But they also pose ethical dilemmas for owners of vegan restaurants who need to keep those pests out of their kitchens while trying to abide by no-kill values. Melanie Cochran, owner of The Wild Cow Vegetarian Restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, was adamant about not using traditional pest control services when it first opened. For a few years she was able to keep pests at bay, but when the restaurant developed a problem, she called an exterminator even though she said it went against her vegan principles. "We have to focus on the bigger picture. Vegan restaurants need to stay in business as a way to put a dent in the dominance of the factory farm system. We want to show people that it is possible and easy to reduce one's meat intake, or even eliminate it entirely," she said. In this April 8, 2016 photo, desserts are displayed on a counter at the The Wild Cow vegetarian restaurant in Nashville, Tenn. As more fine dining meat-free restaurants are cropping up, their animal activist owners are struggling with humane ways to kill unwanted pests while also remaining true to their values. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) "We always have to make tough decisions and remind ourselves of our priorities, even when it comes to things like using flea killer on a flea-infested dog. Any vegan who claims to not harm animals in any way is either a liar or in denial." Most restaurant owners agree that closing off small entry spaces, keeping a clean kitchen and other preventive measures are the first line of defense. But that isn't always enough, especially when factoring in weather, neighboring businesses and other things beyond a restaurant's control. The issue is cropping up more frequently as the meat-free, dairy-free trend has proliferated. There are no detailed figures on the number of vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the U.S., but the market for vegetarian food products grew from $646 million in 1998 to over $2 billion in 2009, according to the analyst group Mintel. The animal rights group PETA even has issued guidelines on humane ways for restaurants to deal with pests: orange peels to ward off flies, bay leaves to keep roaches away and rags soaked in peppermint oil to deter rodents. Glue traps are a no-no because they can cause an animal a painful death when they break a limb or chew it off to escape. Some measures seem impractical or time-consuming for a busy restaurant. Spiders should be caught in a jar and released somewhere safe, humane rodent traps should be checked hourly. PETA acknowledges that sometimes more aggressive methods are necessary if the circumstances are dire. "It all depends on the situation, the time of year and what's happening outside. But for the most part natural deterrents rarely work if you have a serious problem," said chef Rich Landau of Vedge restaurant in Philadelphia. Paul Curtis, an entomologist for Memphis-based exterminator Terminix, once visited a restaurant in Florida that seemed to follow everything on the checklist for a pest-free kitchen. Yet it still would occasionally get surges of hundreds of roaches. After carefully documenting the times of the day and year when the surge came, Curtis found his answer. "When there was a lot of rain and the sewer system got full it would push roaches up ... into the facility. So it wasn't a failure on anybody's part," said Curtis, who fixed the problem by closing off a sewer drain. In another case, health officials threatened an Arkansas restaurant with closure because of an infestation of flies that eventually was traced to deliveries from a fruit and vegetable supplier. That kind of investigation is "probably the most overlooked and beneficial element of a considerate pest management program," Curtis said. Miyoko Schinner, founder of a California-based vegan cheese line, agrees that pest control can sometimes fall into a grey area. "What we call pests might very well be very close to creatures you would otherwise try to rescue as a vegan, for example, rats that have undergone various procedures in labs. But put that very same rat in a restaurant kitchen, and he becomes a pest," said Schinner, who rescues farm animals on her ranch in West Marin. If your business is in the country, "you can release the creature in a field or forest," she said. "But if the business is in an urban setting, your solution simply becomes someone else's problem, and they may or may not be as compassionate." In this April 8, 2016 photo, Andrew Locke, center, and Matthew McCord, right, prepare orders at The Wild Cow vegetarian restaurant in Nashville, Tenn. As more fine dining meat-free restaurants are cropping up, their animal activist owners are struggling with humane ways to kill unwanted pests while also remaining true to their values. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) In this April 8, 2016 photo, Melanie Cochran is shown in her vegetarian restaurant, The Wild Cow, in Nashville, Tenn. As more fine dining meat-free restaurants are cropping up, their animal activist owners are struggling with humane ways to kill unwanted pests while also remaining true to their values. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) In this April 8, 2016 photo, Melanie Cochran works at the cash register in her vegetarian restaurant, The Wild Cow, in Nashville, Tenn. As more fine dining meat-free restaurants are cropping up, their animal activist owners are struggling with humane ways to kill unwanted pests while also remaining true to their values. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) Trump mocks rival Kasich's 'disgusting' eating habits WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) Republican Donald Trump took aim at rival John Kasich's table manners Monday, labeling his eating "disgusting" and calling him "a stubborn guy who eats like a slob." Especially offensive to the GOP front runner was Kasich's on-camera consumption of pancakes, which he suggested was unpresidential. "This guy takes a pancake and he's shoving in his mouth. It's disgusting. Do you want that for your president? I don't think so," said Trump, who later said his youngest son, Barron, had called him over to the television to watch. "I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion," Trump added, saying later that his youngest son, Barron, had called him over to the television to watch. Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks during a town hall at Thomas farms Community Center on Monday, April 25, 2016, in Rockville, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) He said, "'Daddy look.' I said, 'Don't watch!'" said Trump, who said he's been trying to teach his son to always take, "Little bites, little bites." Later at a rally in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Trump again zeroed in on the footage of Kasich, describing him "shoving pancake - I never saw anything like it. It's pouring out of his mouth and the cameras are on him." "That's not presidential, I can tell you," added Trump, who has shown no signs of toning down his rhetoric, despite assurances by senior aides to Republican leaders that he would be evolving. Trump has been arguing that Kasich should drop his presidential bid because he has no mathematical path to the nomination without a contested convention. "This is just a guy who's a stubborn guy who eats like a slob and shouldn't have press conferences while he's stuffing stuff down his throat," he says. Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf issued a statement that did not respond directly to Trump's comments. But he said that, "Day in and day out Donald Trump demonstrates why he loses to Hillary Clinton in every poll and why he would give Democrats control of the White House, the Senate and the Supreme Court." Call for tax-raising powers to drive on the Northern Powerhouse Politicians and business leaders are demanding to be able to raise taxes in order to drive on the Northern Powerhouse. They have set out a 10-point plan calling on the Government for more bold changes they say are necessary to turn the Northern Powerhouse from "rhetoric to reality". Their plan for the North is being launched at a Parliamentary reception for MPs and ministers on Monday evening. The dossier also advocates giving responsibility for the Northern rail network to a new body The Building the Northern Powerhouse: Next Steps for Transformation dossier calls for new tax-raising powers so local authorities can invest in regional infrastructure and boost local economies. It also advocates giving responsibility for the Northern rail network to a new body, to ensure rail remains a top priority. And the group has demanded new investment funds for the North, backed by financial products such as City Bonds, to provide capital to be spent on projects. Chairman of the Rail in the North All Party Parliamentary Group Jason McCartney said: "It is great to see this private sector initiative responding to the Chancellor's plan to promote wealth creation across the North." The Colne Valley Conservative MP added: "Rebalancing the UK economy in the face of challenging global market conditions will play a key part in underwriting the nation's future prosperity." The report echoes calls from more than 2,000 business leaders who recently attended a Northern Powerhouse Conference in Manchester. The event's managing director Keith Griffiths said: "These businesses haven't got it wrong, many have waited decades to have an opportunity to deliver once-in-a-lifetime change and progress for the region. May call to quit ECHR signals differences at top of EU Remain campaign Differences have emerged at the top of the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union, after Home Secretary Theresa May used her first major intervention in the referendum debate to argue that Britain should stay in the 28-nation bloc, but pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Mrs May's comments appeared to put her at odds with Prime Minister David Cameron, who has previously said he is seeking to reform the Convention, but rules nothing out if this proves impossible. Asked whether Mrs May was speaking on behalf of the Gov ernment, the PM's official spokeswoman would say only that she was "setting out her views as Home Secretary". Home Secretary Theresa May delivers a speech on Great Britain, Europe and our place in the world at One Birdcage Walk in Westminster, London. Brexit campaigners said that Britain could not ditch the Convention - which is operated by the separate Council of Europe - without breaching EU treaty obligations. And Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron accused the Home Secretary of using the referendum debate to further her claim to be next Conservative leader. Meanwhile, US president Barack Obama followed up his warnings on the economic risks of Brexit with an appeal for a "united" Europe to help drive global security, democracy and prosperity. Speaking in the German city of Hanover ahead of a summit with Mr Cameron and other EU leaders, the American leader acknowledged that European unity involved "frustrating compromise", but hailed the multinational union as "one of the greatest political and economic achievements of modern times". A retreat from European unity and the reconstruction of the "barriers and walls" which divided the continent in the 20th century would risk halting progress towards democracy and tolerance elsewhere in the world, the president warned. " A strong, united Europe is a necessity for the world because an integrated Europe remains vital to our international order," he said. Mr Obama's intervention came as Brexit's biggest hitters sought to regain the referendum initiative by putting immigration at the top of the agenda. Justice Secretary Michael Gove warned the UK faces a migration "free-for-all" constituting a "direct and serious threat" to public services unless it breaks away from Brussels. Writing in The Times, the Justice Secretary warned that the possible future accession of countries like Turkey and Albania would mean public services like the NHS facing "an unquantifiable strain as millions more become EU citizens and have the right to move to the UK". Former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said immigration was "out of control", while London mayor Boris Johnson said that Mr Cameron had achieved "two thirds of diddly squat" in negotiations for a special deal for Britain on free movement and other key demands. But Mrs May insisted that "nobody should think" Brexit is the "single bullet that is suddenly going to solve all our immigration problems". While free movement rules "mean it is harder to control the volume of European immigration", they "do not mean we cannot control the border," she said, in a speech in London. "Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores," said Mrs May. By contrast, the ECHR adds nothing to UK prosperity and "makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals", she said. "Regardless of the EU referendum, my view is this: if we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn't the EU we should leave, but the ECHR, and the jurisdiction of its court," said Mrs May. Downing Street said any discussions on new EU members were "years away" and that the UK had a veto over future enlargement. Mr Cameron's renegotiation deal ensured that different transitional rules would be applied to nationals of any future member states, said the PM's official spokeswoman. Mrs May appeared to signal a break with the UK's long-standing support for Turkish membership, asking whether now was the right time "to contemplate a land border between the EU and countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria". Former cabinet minister and EU commissioner Lord Mandelson said the Vote Leave campaign had "hoisted the white flag on arguments around the economy" and was now running a "Ukip-lite strategy centred on immigration". Former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson became the first prominent supporter of Brexit to suggest that the European question may not be settled by a victory for Remain on June 23. While insisting he expected the Leave camp to win the national vote, the former environment secretary said that even a narrow victory for Remain would mean millions of voters supporting Leave, showing that anti-EU sentiment was a "very respectable" mainstream opinion rather than a view held by "nutters" on the fringes. "You won't put that genie back in the bottle," said Mr Paterson. The US president was speaking at the start of the G5 summit in Hanover Michael Gove, one of Brexit's two biggest hitters, is aiming to put immigration at the top of the agenda BHS administration threatens 11,000 jobs and 164 stores High street retailer BHS has collapsed into administration, putting 11,000 jobs at risk and threatening the closure of up to 164 stores. It is the biggest retail failure since Woolworths went bust in 2008. Administrators Duff & Phelps said last-ditch talks to find a buyer for the firm over the weekend had failed, adding: "In addition, property sales have not materialised as expected in both number and value. BHS has been a mainstay of the high street for decades "Consequently, as a result of a lower-than-expected cash balance, the group is very unlikely to meet all contractual payments. The directors therefore have no alternative but to put the group into administration to protect it for all creditors." It added that BHS would continue to trade as usual while potential buyers are sought. The company's owner, Dominic Chappell, said he will continue to work with the administrators to "find a solution post the administration". Speaking to the Press Association, Mr Chappell said: "No-one is to blame. It was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio. "In the end, we just couldn't reach an agreement with Arcadia over pensions." BHS was bought last year by a consortium called Retail Acquisitions, headed by Mr Chappell, for 1 from retail entrepreneur Sir Philip Green, the owner of the Arcadia retail empire. BHS has debts of more than 1.3 billion, including a pension fund deficit of 571 million, which proved a major stumbling block in the rescue talks. Sir Philip is reported to have offered 80 million towards the cost of BHS pensions, though the regulator could still pursue further payment from the retail billionaire and has opened an official investigation into company's pension scheme liabilities. Labour has accused the businessman of extracting "hundreds of millions of pounds" from the high street chain and taking off to "his favourite tax haven". Shadow business minister Angela Eagle said Sir Philip, a "vocal supporter of the Conservative Party", had left others to plug the hole in staff pensions. Asking an urgent question in the House of Commons, Ms Eagle said: "BHS staff and the public will understandably want to know whether the former owner who took so many millions of pounds out of the business will have to pay his fair share of the liabilities which accrued during his stewardship. "It's right that the pensions of working people are covered in the event their employer goes under, but in this situation it appears that this owner has extracted hundreds of millions of pounds from the business and walked away to his favourite tax haven, leaving the pensions protection scheme to pick up the bill." The Pensions Regulator confirmed it was investigating the BHS pensions scheme to determine whether it would be appropriate to use its anti-avoidance powers. The shopworkers' trade union Usdaw said taxpayers should not be left to pick up the pensions bill. General secretary John Hannett said: " The Government needs to intervene now to protect taxpayers from picking up the bill for redundancy payments and safeguarding the Pension Protection Fund." Rival retailer Sports Direct is understood to want to acquire some of BHS's 164 stores, but will only do so if it does not have to take on any pension liabilities. It is thought that up to 30 other retailers may look to buy either a slimmed-down version of the business out of administration or pick over its store estate. However, experts warned that it was "unlikely" a buyer for the business in its current form would be found. Scottish voters urged to rally in defence of UK's EU membership Scotland could hold the key to keeping the UK in the European Union and businesses must "stand up and be counted" to prevent an exit, a leading Liberal Democrat peer has warned. Lord Menzies Campbell, head of the European Movement in Scotland, said Scottish businesses need to "get off the sidelines" in the Brexit debate. Treasury analysis on the cost of an EU exit says the UK's national income could be 6% smaller - the equivalent of 4,300 a year per household - by 2030. Sir Menzies Campbell looked to rally the Remain camp More than 330,000 Scottish jobs are dependent on EU exports, almost half of Scotland's international exports go to the EU and Scotland attracts more foreign investment than anywhere in the UK outside London, Lord Campbell said. He said: "It is vital that Scottish businesses get off the sidelines and ensure that they raise their concerns over an exit and highlight what the bigger picture of our EU membership means to them. "As part of the largest single market in the world, our businesses are able to trade freely across the 28 nations of the EU and we are a focus for inward investment, in part due to our membership of the EU. "However, the Scottish Chamber of Commerce has already highlighted how 'fragile' the Scottish economy is and withdrawal from the EU will damage our economic recovery. "With the vote so close across the UK, Scotland could hold the key to the outcome of this referendum and it is vital that all who recognise our future as EU members stand up and be counted. G5 summit to focus on migration, security and trade The migrant crisis, security fears, and trade deal delays will dominate a summit of the EU's biggest nations and the US. Monday's meeting of the G5 group of countries, which consists of America, Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, is expected to discuss deploying naval patrols in Libyan waters to try to halt the flow of migrants from war zones in Africa and the Middle East. The two-hour gathering in Hanover, Germany, will also give Prime Minister David Cameron the chance to again emphasise the Remain camp's view that British influence is bolstered by its membership of the EU ahead of the June 23 Brexit vote. Prime Minister David Cameron, pictured with US president Barack Obama at Downing Street, will get the chance to stress the Remain camp's view that Britiain should stay in the EU German chancellor Angela Merkel said America and the EU needed to work together to deal with common threats. "All of the security issues on the very doorstep of Europe can only be solved by joint trans-Atlantic efforts," Ms Merkel said. US president Barack Obama will be at the summit, along with French president Francois Hollande and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi will also be at the meeting, where the breakdown of the Syrian ceasefire will also be a major concern. Security issues following the terrorist atrocities in Paris and Brussels were also likely to feature, along with moves to try to restore civil order to Libya after the chaos that has gripped the county since the British-French-American military intervention there to topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Mr Obama said he stood by the use of force, despite what was seen as recent criticism of Mr Cameron for becoming "distracted" after the fall of the dictator. "I still believe it was the right thing for us to intervene. I do believe that it was important to plan and resource what would happen next. We didn't do it as effectively as we should have. The fact that we have a government of national accord obliges us to encourage it," Mr Obama said. The massive Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal that the US president is keen to see completed before he leaves office in January will also feature in the Hanover talks. The host German city has been the site of major anti-TTIP demonstrations at the weekend as protesters fear the agreement would damage the environment and drive down labour standards. Mr Obama stressed he would like to make serious progress on TTIP while he is still in the White House. "I run my portion of the race and then I pass the baton to the next person. Man held for 'people smuggling' fights extradition over Greek prison conditions The alleged head of a people smuggling gang accused of trafficking 100 Syrian refugees a day into Europe will argue he cannot be extradited because being held in a Greek prison would breach his human rights, a court heard. Palestinian Jamal Owda, 26, was one of 23 people held in raids across Europe in December over an operation authorities claim could have made up to 10 million euro (7 million) since 2013 by preying on desperate civilians fleeing the civil war. He was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by National Crime Agency officers at an asylum shelter in Liverpool and Westminster Magistrates' Court in London heard on Monday he is applying for asylum in the UK. Jamal Owda pictured during his arrest in Liverpool Greece is seeking his extradition to stand trial over the alleged smuggling operation it says was based in the country. But his lawyer said today that prison conditions in the country may breach Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to life. Amelia Nice told the hearing that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) had investigated Greek prisons. She said: "(The committee's) report says things are not getting better, they are getting significantly worse, so it becomes an Article 2 case." She added that Owda's legal team was trying to arrange for an expert to independently inspect a Greek prison before a full hearing in the case. She also said: "Subsequent to extradition one of the issues is that he is likely to be sent back to Palestine. It might be open to argument that there is a risk extradition will result in deportation that may result in human rights breaches." The court also heard Owda's suffers from unspecified mental health problems. The December raids saw 13 other alleged members of the gang arrested in Greece, seven in Austria and two in Sweden, the NCA said at the time. Nicola Sturgeon warns Westminster over Royal Navy vessels order Nicola Sturgeon has insisted it would be "unconscionable" for the UK Government to go back on its commitment to build vital Royal Navy vessels on the Clyde. The SNP leader and First Minister spoke out as she met unions at the BAE Systems yards in Govan and Scotstoun to hear their concerns regarding the order to build new Type 26 frigates. Ms Sturgeon visited the yard as Labour and the Liberal Democrats also insisted it would be a "betrayal" if Westminster altered the order for the 13 ships. Nicola Sturgeon met union officials at the BAE Systems yard in Govan to hear their concerns regarding the order to build new Type 26 frigates In the run-up to the referendum vote in 2014, pro-UK campaigners had insisted the work would not come to the Clyde yards if Scots voted for independence. While Ms Sturgeon said it would be a "complete betrayal of these yards" if the order was scaled back or delayed, she refused to say if she would consider it a significant enough change in circumstances as to trigger a possible second referendum. Fears were raised after it emerged in March the current demonstration phase of the project was being extended to "further mature the detailed design of the Type 26 ships and to manufacture key equipment for the first three ships". BAE Systems said then the Ministry of Defence was still committed to buying eight of the advanced anti-submarine warfare ships. GMB Scotland secretary Gary Smith said: ''We've gone from the upper Clyde workforce being promised the manufacture of 13 Type 26 frigates in 2014, for that to be cut to eight frigates last year. ''We've gone from promised investment that would secure thousands of skilled jobs and hundreds of apprenticeships for a generation, only to be told to prepare for redundancies.'' Speaking outside the Govan yard, Ms Sturgeon said: "Promises were made about orders to these yards and promises were made about jobs at these yards, and I think it is absolutely vital now these contracts are delivered. "These yards have been through some really difficult times with a reduction in the workforce and they thought that that was all part of the process of getting themselves into shape for the Type 26 and securing a level of employment here. "If there is anything happening that puts that at risk, I think that is unacceptable, so I want to listen directly to the unions about the concerns they have and then I will, as necessary. raise these with the UK Government. " I think it would be unconscionable for the UK Government to go back on the promises that were made to these yards." When asked if that would be considered a material change in circumstances from 2014 - one of the criteria the SNP says needs to be met before another vote on independence can take place - she stated: "T his is about jobs and securing jobs in an industry. It would be a complete betrayal of these yards if there was any u-turn or going back on on promises made. "That's why it's really important we make sure that doesn't happen and the first step in that is to hear directly from the unions, to understand what is making them so concerned." Scottish Secretary David Mundell said: " The UK Government is absolutely committed to shipbuilding on the Clyde, and to the Type 26 programme, which is a very significant investment. "Over the next decade we will spend around 8 billion on Royal Navy warships. We will also build two new offshore patrol vessels on the Clyde, maintaining Scottish shipbuilding capability ahead of the start of the Type 26 build. "There will continue to be shipbuilding jobs on Clydeside for years to come and that is only because Scotland is part of the UK." Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said: " We need to know that the Government remains committed to building at least 13 Type 26 frigates on the Clyde and that the promised upgrade of the facilities there will be carried through. "If the Tory government delivers anything short of what they promised, then it will be a deep betrayal to the workers on the Clyde and their families." Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, said: " There are serious concerns about the future of the orders at the yard and it's important that the Conservative government gives an absolute commitment to them. "The Tories need to end the feast and famine of orders so the workforce can be maintained at a steady level." The Unite union also called on the Government to honour its commitment. Pat Rafferty, the union's Scottish secretary, said: "The UK Government is behaving dishonourably in failing to live up to promises made in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum." Unite national officer Ian Waddell stated: "Our stewards are clear in their determination to make sure the UK Government keeps its promise and will use everything in their armoury to defend the UK's historic ability to design and build its own warships. "Defence ministers in Westminster should not underestimate their anger or the feeling of betrayal which has resulted from the government's backtracking and BAE's review. "Our stewards today have signalled that they will not stand by and allow shipbuilding on the Clyde to be hollowed out and the UK stripped of its ability to make its own warships." In the House of Commons, defence minister Philip Dunne claimed construction of the Type 26 frigates is ''on track'', also noting ''nothing has changed'' since last November when the Government announced it would reduce the number of frigates from 13 to eight. Mr Dunne said: ''I understand the strong interest in the timing of the award of the contract to build Type 26 global combat ships, and I also understand that reports of delays create anxiety. ''But let me assure the shipyard workers on the Clyde - this Government remains absolutely committed to the Type 26 programme and to assembling the ships on the Clyde and is working closely with BAE Systems to take the Type 26 programme forward, ensuring that it is progressed on a sustainable and stable footing.'' ' Scottish Greens co-convener Patrick Harvie said: "It's clear that the UK Government must urgently clarify the timescales involved for the upcoming work. Labour to force Commons vote over plans to merge fire and police services Labour will force a vote in the Commons today aimed at blocking controversial Government plans to merge fire and police services. The party said its move comes as new figures show a rise in fire deaths, warning that budget cuts to the Fire and Rescue Service have gone too far. Labour will call on the Government to commit to a statutory independent Fire and Rescue Service, with added responsibility for flooding, as opposed to the Policing and Crime Bill being used to legislate for Police and Crime Commissioners elected in May to run the fire service. Labour are opposing plans to merge the fire service with police forces Labour said government figures showed almost 300 people died in fires across England in 2015, an increase of 21% on the previous year, the largest rise since figures were released in 2001/02. Andy Burnham, shadow home secretary, said: "Emergency services cannot keep communities safe if ministers keep cutting the police and cutting the fire service too. "These figures show that the Government's cuts have already gone too far. Labour will stand up for public safety - it is no time to be throwing fire in with the police." Labour quoted warnings from fire chiefs from the six largest cities outside London that budget cuts of 50% over 10 years risk causing further casualties as response times deteriorate, stations close and investment in fire prevention is scaled back. Kurdish forces to keep areas taken from Syrian govt forces truce BEIRUT, April 24 (Reuters) - Kurdish security forces will keep territory taken from pro-government forces during a rare three-day outbreak of violence in a city in northeastern Syria, a truce announced by Kurdish authorities on Sunday indicated. The fighting in Qamishli, near the Turkish border, disturbed a largely peaceful coexistence there between the Kurds' Asayish internal security forces that control most of the city and pro-government forces holding the airport and part of its centre. During the fighting that broke out last Wednesday and was halted late Friday afternoon, Asayish forces seized the main prison and several government-controlled positions in the city. The truce, which seemed to be holding on Sunday, headed off possibly wider fighting between the pro-government forces and the Kurds, whose YPG militia is an important ally in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State on other fronts in Syria. A copy of the truce agreement seen by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "each side will keep the territory under its control". Kurdish authorities and media said this meant territory taken from government control would not be returned. The agreement said that employees of the Syrian state must not be threatened, deprived of their salaries or recruited into joining "local protection units that belong to the regime". Damascus maintains a strong administrative presence and still pays government employee salaries in Qamishli, one of the largest cities in Hasaka province in Syria's far northeast corner adjoining Turkey and Iraq. Both sides also agreed to free prisoners taken during the clashes, the agreement said. Syrian Kurdish regional interior minister Canaan Barakat, speaking in Qamishli on Sunday to announce the terms of the truce, said 17 civilians, 7 Asayish members and 3 YPG members had been killed in the clashes. The Britain-based Observatory, which tracks the five-year-old war in Syria, said 22 members of Syrian government forces died and 80 were taken prisoner. It said 23 civilians died during government shelling of Kurdish-controlled areas. The agreement said the structure of pro-government forces stationed in Qamishli would be reviewed and Damascus would no longer interfere in local society, but provided no further information elaborating on these measures. Compensation would be paid to civilians who lost relatives or suffered material damage in government shelling, it added. The truce also stipulated the state of emergency in the city should be lifted. The Observatory said life is slowly returning to normal but the main market remained closed. Syrian Kurdish forces now dominate wide areas of northern Syria and have set up their own government there. Syria has become a patchwork of areas controlled by the government, an array of rebel groups, Islamic State militants, and Kurdish militia. Austrian police clash with Italians protesting Brenner border checks BRENNER, Austria, April 24 (Reuters) - Austrian police used batons and pepper spray to repel Italian marchers who were protesting on Sunday against plans for tighter anti-migrant checks at the Alpine Brenner Pass border. Scuffles broke out when several hundred protesters, including some leftist politicians, tried to breach police barriers at the border where Austria has said it will toughen controls in response to unprecedented migrant flows into Europe. The marchers wore orange life jackets in a sign of solidarity with the thousands of African and Asian migrants who have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean, and brandished a large banner with the slogan 'People Over Borders.' One demonstrator was arrested, prompting a sit-down protest in front of the police lines by fellow marchers demanding his release, but no injuries were reported. Austria said this month it would introduce tougher controls at the pass from June 1 at the latest. Italy says the plan breaches EU rules on the free movement of people. The EU said last week it was assessing the complaint. The Brenner Pass is the most important Alpine crossing for heavy goods traffic and the controls, if introduced, would slow Italy's main transport link to Germany, its top trading partner. However, the protesters on Sunday were driven by humanitarian concerns over migrants fleeing war and hunger in the Middle East and Africa, not commercial ones. They carried symbolic, purple "World Passports" and chanted slogans against the deportation of migrants. Police charge Australian teenager with planning ANZAC terror attack SYDNEY, April 25 (Reuters) - Australian police have arrested and charged a teenager with a terrorism offence related to planning an attack at Monday's commemorations of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli during World War One. The 16-year-old boy was arrested near his Sydney home on Sunday and will appear before a children's court on Monday, police said. The offence carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. ANZAC Day, April 25, is a major annual holiday in Australia and New Zealand marking the date of the first Gallipoli landings in 1915, in which large numbers of Australian and New Zealand troops fought and died. Dawn services and military parades are held around the country, with the largest drawing crowds of tens of thousands in Sydney and Melbourne. "We have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar," New South Wales state Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said in a statement. "The age of the individual is obviously a concern for us, and it remains a measure of the ongoing task facing law enforcement and the community." Scipione later told a press conference police believed the boy was acting alone. "The risk from this particular threat has been thwarted," he said. Several teenagers have been arrested in Australia in recent years and charged with terrorism offences, including five young men who police alleged were planning an attack at last year's centenary ANZAC day celebrations. Obama sends more Special Forces to Syria in fight against IS By Roberta Rampton HANOVER, Germany, April 25 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since its civil war began, but the move was unlikely to mollify Arab allies angry over Washington's cautious approach to the conflict. The deployment of up to 250 Special Forces soldiers increases U.S. forces in Syria roughly sixfold and is aimed at helping militia fighters who have clawed back territory from Islamic State militants in a string of victories. Defence experts said giving more fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support could shift the momentum in Syria. But a senior member of the Saudi royal family who asked not to be identified dismissed the decision as "window dressing." In announcing the deployment, Obama emphasized the importance of sustaining the gains made in the fight against Islamic State, although he cautioned that the U.S. forces would not be spearheading the battle. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back," he said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, using an acronym for Islamic State. Obama was speaking on the last stop of a foreign tour that also took him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and her rival, Bernie Sanders, voiced support on Monday for the deployment. "These Special Forces will continue to provide critical support to local forces on the ground who ultimately must be the ones to win this fight," Clinton's campaign said in a statement. The former secretary of state previously called for a tougher approach to fighting Islamic State militants, including more air strikes and Special Forces. Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, said during an MSNBC town hall: "I think what the president is talking about is having American troops training Muslim troops, helping to supply the military equipment they need, and I do support that effort." The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in Iraq and Syria, but its effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a multi-sided civil war has raged for five years. A Russian air campaign launched in Syria last year has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the United States. Rising tensions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies, which have privately criticized the Obama administration's security policy toward the region, also have complicated the U.S. effort in Syria. U.S. Republican Senator John McCain called the move overdue but insufficient. "Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria to which this administration has borne passive witness," said McCain, who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump did not mention the deployment during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. He plans to address foreign policy in a speech on Wednesday in Washington. CLOSE AIR SUPPORT Washington's main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, which wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. But the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG. "Presumably these (extra U.S. forces) are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria," said Tim Ripley, defence analyst and writer for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly magazine. The deployment will include medical and logistics support personnel, officials said, and U.S. support for the American forces in Syria will be staged out of northern Iraq. Their goal will be to help screen and equip Arab fighters seeking to join up with the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. officials say Arab fighters will be crucial to future operations against Islamic State in traditionally Arab parts of Syria. But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obama's announcement but said it still wanted more help. "Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support," SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. "So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware." The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State "scourge", but said Washington should do more to fight Assad. If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river. That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey, which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas. THE RACE FOR RAQQA U.S. Special Forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience in Hanover, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls Mosul in Iraq in addition to Raqqa and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. "Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more," Obama said. European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission. Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where at least 250,000 people have been killed in the civil war. In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS But Washington's lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favour of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West, including the United States. Washington and Moscow have sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad's government and many of his foes to begin last month. Those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire. Obama, Merkel and the leaders of Italy, Britain and France on Monday called on the parties in the Syrian war to respect the agreement to cease hostilities and make peace talks work, the White House said in a statement after the Western leaders met. China, Hong Kong stocks fall on rising risk concerns SHANGHAI, April 25 (Reuters) - China and Hong Kong stocks fell on Monday morning, as growing concerns over risks in debt and commodities markets on the mainland curbed investor risk appetite. The blue-chip CSI300 index fell 0.6 percent, to 3,156.01 points by the lunch break, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.8 percent, to 2,935.03 points. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index lost 0.6 percent, while the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index declined 1.2 percent. Investors are getting increasingly nervous about China's debt market, which has witnessed a slew of defaults this year, including those by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Risks are also building in China's commodities market, where feverish trading in products such as rebar - a reinforcing steel bar used in concrete - led to regulators' crackdown on speculation. Investor anxiety further deepened on Monday when state media reported another scam in China's risk-laden shadow banking sector involving about 1 billion yuan ($154 million). Jian Yi, executive partner at fund manager Winsor Capital, said he expects more and more defaults in the credit market, as well as more scams exposed in China's online finance sector. "My fear is a worsening of the situation, which could spread to other markets such as real estate," Jian told a financial conference over the weekend. He added that despite apparent ample liquidity, "there could also be a negative chain of reaction that threatens to trigger a spasm of liquidity and destruction in value." Shares fell across the board in China and Hong Kong, with resource shares among the biggest decliners. The Hong Kong-listed shares of Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co dropped more than 3 percent after the company reported its worst quarterly loss on record. Bucking the broader trend, shares of Chinese developer Evergrande Real Estate Group jumped 4 percent in Hong Kong, after it said it would buy a stake in state-owned property company Calxon Group. Romania - Factors to watch on April 25 BUCHAREST, April 25 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Monday. DEBT TENDER Romanian debt managers tender 600 million lei ($150.56 million) worth of March 2021 treasury bonds, series RO1521DBN041. M3 Romania's central bank will release M3 money supply data for March. CEE MARKETS Serbian stocks and the dinar gained on Friday, amid expectations Sunday's elections will keep a reform-minded government in power. Other Central European assets fell, with the zloty plunging to an eight-week low against the euro. For the long-term Romanian diary, click on For emerging markets economic events, click on For an index of all diaries, click on Indonesia to set up "crisis center" after Philippine kidnappings - minister JAKARTA, April 25 (Reuters) - Indonesia will set up a crisis center, headed by President Joko Widodo, to handle security situations involving its citizens overseas, a senior minister said on Monday, following recent abductions of Indonesian sailors in Philippine waters. The center will include senior ministers and military and police chiefs and will be designed to respond quickly to situations that could have a "strategic impact", chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters. "We hope this will be (operational) as soon as possible," he said. Since coming to power in 2014, Widodo has placed maritime security for the Indonesian archipelago high on his government's agenda. Indonesia has voiced fears that a surge in piracy in the waters between Indonesia and the Philippines could reach Somalian levels and has told vessels to avoid danger areas. Up to 18 Indonesians and Malaysians have been kidnapped in three attacks in recent weeks on tugboats in Philippine waters by groups suspected of ties to the Abu Sayyaf militant network. Haiti says election could drag on for months, protests grow PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 24 (Reuters) - Haiti's repeatedly postponed presidential election may not happen until October, President Jocelerme Privert said on Sunday, as street protests erupted on the day the impoverished Caribbean nation missed an agreed date for a run-off vote. Speaking to reporters as Haiti missed the deadline, Privert suggested the country should now choose its next president at the same time as an Oct. 30 deadline for a senate election. "Does the country have the financial means to organize two elections?" he said to reporters when asked about the likely date for the vote. Although the April 24 deadline for the election was widely seen as unrealistic, thousands of protesters took to the streets on Sunday to demand the chance to cast their votes. Haiti has been in political turmoil since a first-round presidential vote in October was questioned by losing candidates. PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - April 25 SOFIA, April 25 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. TRUD - Bulgarian truck drivers are likely to call of their planned blockade on the Bulgarian-Greek border over East Orthodox Easter, after tour operators and the government said the losses from the blockade will hit mainly Bulgarian tourists, sources familiar with the plans said. -- Bulgaria ethnic Turkish MRF party chose Mustafa Karadayi to lead it, after the party forced out the previous leader for openly supporting Turkey in its row with Russia over the downing of a Russian warplane. (Trud, Telegraph, Sega, Standart, Monitor, Capital Daily, 24 Chasa) Saudi-led coalition says kills more than 800 militants in Yemen DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - More than 800 al Qaeda militants were killed in an offensive by Yemeni government forces and its Arab allies in the group's main stronghold in the port city if Mukalla, the Saudi-led coalition said. The coalition said in a statement carried by Saudi state news agency SPA late on Sunday night that many militants fled the Hadramout provincial capital they had held for a year after the offensive by supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi backed by Saudi and Emirati special forces. Yemeni forces seize main oil terminal from al Qaeda By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN, April 25 (Reuters) - Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold. The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focused their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile. The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries. A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10. The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move toward peace. In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla. About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused. In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants. Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other. DEATHS A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight. "It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone. A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed. Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighbouring province of Shabwa. Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city. AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port. The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance. Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night. The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week. Indonesia OPEC governor: no urgency to freeze output with oil at $45 ABU DHABI, April 25 (Reuters) - Indonesia's governor to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Monday that oil at $45 a barrel was "not bad" and that there would be no urgency to freeze output if crude remained at that price. Despite failure to reach a deal to curb oil output and support prices at an April 17 meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers, crude prices have maintained a general upward trend since hitting a 12-year trough in mid-January. Front-month Brent crude was trading at $44.75 per barrel at 0752 GMT, down 36 cents, or 0.8 percent, from its last settlement as traders took profits after three weeks of gains. "The price is $45, which is not so bad," Widhyawan Prawiraatmadja told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy event in Abu Dhabi. "If it stays that way, there's no need to freeze output. There's no urgency." Prawiraatmadja said an oil price of $50 to $60 was "probably ideal, but still relatively cheap". The Southeast Asian nation, which rejoined OPEC as its 13th member in December last year, needs $50 crude to sustain its oil and gas industry. "Perhaps the more ideal situation is if OPEC can actually engage non-OPEC to come into some kind of agreement while also pushing (the global) economy to grow," he said. IRAN Prawiraatmadja said nothing had yet been signed on a deal for Indonesia to import liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Iran, noting that some impediments remained such as being able to pay for the products. While sanctions imposed on Iran due to its nuclear programme were lifted in January, separate sanctions imposed by the United States on financial transactions remain in place, hampering attempts to do business with the Islamic Republic. "It's not quite a deal yet - the understanding is you can make it happen once you are able to execute it. "The difficulty is the transaction, as it's not always easy to get the banks to do it." Prawiraatmadja declined to comment on the quantities of LPG Indonesia would import, except to say the country would take "whatever they have, provided that it is at better terms than with other sources". Britain's FTSE falters, led by miners By Kit Rees LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - UK shares declined on Monday, led by falls in mining companies and oil and gas stocks as investors voiced concerns about whether commodities-related assets could sustain a recent rally. Miners have rallied, with the sector gaining over 60 percent since the end of January. But persistent concerns about a slowdown in China's economy, the world's biggest metals consumer, have made investors sceptical about further gains. "There's a little bit of trepidation now as to how confident people are in emerging markets," Augustin Eden, research analyst at Accendo Markets, said. "A lot of this rally has been built on renewed confidence in China and maybe a feeling that, fundamentally, the declines we have seen up until the end of January were potentially overdone," he added, saying investors had been taking profits on the miners. The mining index was down 3.4 percent, set for its third daily loss in a row, with Anglo American, BHP Billiton , Rio Tinto, Glencore and Antofagasta dropping between 2.4 percent and 5.1 percent as the price of copper fell. Oil companies also weighed on the index, with both BP and Royal Dutch Shell down over 2 percent, collectively taking around 12 points off the index after the price of oil declined. The blue chip FTSE 100 index was down 0.7 percent at 6,266.99 points by 0825 GMT, putting it around 2.4 percent below a year high of 6,427.32 hit last Thursday. Tobacco-maker Imperial Brands benefited from a broker upgrade from Goldman Sachs, which raised its rating on the stock to "buy" from "neutral", sending the shares up 2.3 percent. Outside the blue chips, clothing retailer Ted Baker climbed 4 percent after Jefferies upgraded the stock to "buy" from "hold" partly on valuation grounds. It also cited a healthy order book, differentiated business model and continued international expansion. ADVISORY- Reuters plans to replace intra-day European and UK stock market reports with a Live Markets blog on Eikon (see cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets for site in development). In a real-time, multimedia format from 0600 London time through the 1630 closing bell, it will include the best of our market reporting, Stocks Buzz service, Eikon graphics, Reuters pictures, eye-catching research and market zeitgeist. Breaking news and dramatic market moves will continue to be alerted to all clients and we will continue to provide a short opening story and comprehensive closing reports. If you have any thoughts, suggestions or feedback on this, please email mike.dolan@thomsonreuters.com. Quake hits off southern Mexico coast, no damage reported MEXICO CITY, April 25 (Reuters) - An earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mexico early on Monday but there were no immediate reports of damage. The quake, around 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Suchiate in the state of Chiapas, was originally registered as a magnitude 5.9 tremor by the U.S. Geological Service. It later revised that to 5.6. Luis Felipe Puente, head of Mexico's emergency services, said via his Twitter account that the earthquake was felt lightly in parts of Chiapas. There had not yet been reports of damage, he said. PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Apr 25 MOSCOW, Apr 25 (Reuters) - 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 - The Russian ministers of education, finance and culture are most criticised by Russian Internet users among Russia's cabinet members, the paper writes citing a recent poll. - The Russian government has increased tariffs for cargo traffic inside Russia for foreign companies, the paper reports. - Kuwait Petroleum plans to purchase up to 1.5 million tonnes of LNG per year from Russian gas producer Novatek , the paper reports. - The number of people investing in mutual investment funds in Russia rose by 5 percent in 2015, the paper writes citing central bank data. - Prices for smartphones sold by Russian mobile phone retailers dropped by an average of 24-25 percent in March, the paper writes. KOMMERSANT www.kommersant.ru - Russia's Industry Ministry is developing a national standard of radio communication for government bodies, using a technology of "cognitive radio", in line with an order by President Vladimir Putin, the paper writes. - Russian internet portal Yandex will launch a service for automatic moderation of pictures which users post on social networks and dating websites. It will use artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies to filter pictures, the paper says. RBC www.rbcdaily.ru NWR creditors raise pressure on Czech government in rescue talks PRAGUE, April 25 (Reuters) - Coal miner New World Resources said on Monday it was in default on part of its debt and would have to consider filing for insolvency at its main operating business unless the government and creditors agree on the firm's restructuring by Friday. The company, which employs 13,000 staff in the Czech Republic, has been hit by weak demand and low prices and has been in talks on a restructuring or sale. The government has been reluctant to provide aid that would benefit NWR's shareholders but also fears insolvency could lead to a collapse of the mining group, which would hurt the broader economy. NWR said that unless there was an agreement by Friday it would have to consider the timing of a filing for the insolvency of OKD, its main operating business, and a shut down of OKD's mining operations. The default on a 35 million euro ($39.40 million) credit facility was triggered by the expiry on April 22 of a waiver on debt conditions provided by creditors. The creditors had previously extended the waiver but decided not to do that again. "This expiry means that certain members of the group are now in default under their financial obligations - obligations that are guaranteed by (NWR production subsidiary) OKD," NWR said. NWR is controlled by a group of bondholders, known as AHG, which holds 60 percent of voting rights and about two thirds of the company's debt. They have called for government assistance. AHG had agreed to waive the debt conditions if there was a framework agreement between AHG and the government by last Friday. NWR said the situation could lead to cross-defaults. The firm has two bonds, an 8.0 percent 2020 paper with 334 million euros outstanding, and 4.0 percent convertible bond worth 150 million. AHG's members are Ashmore Investment Management Limited, Gramercy Funds Management LLC and M&G Investment Management Limited. AHG said on Sunday it had offered to sell the company, cleared of about 400 million euros in debt, to the state for less than 150 million euros. Court acquits Deutsche Bank's Co-CEO Fitschen in trial over Kirch case By Jorn Poltz MUNICH, April 25 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank's co-chief executive Juergen Fitschen has been acquitted of charges of misleading a court in connection with the 2002 Kirch media empire collapse, closing a painful chapter after 14 years of legal wrangling. The presiding judge said on Monday that he found no evidence of the prosecution's allegations that Fitschen and his co-defendants gave misleading evidence in an earlier trial in connection with the Kirch bankruptcy. "The alleged criminal offences could not be proved," judge Peter Noll said. The prosecution can appeal the ruling. Along with the Kirch lawsuit, Deutsche Bank has been dealing with a string of other legal issues, which have cost Germany's flagship bank billions of euros in fines, settlements and legal costs and contributed to its record loss in 2015. This has also been a distraction for management who are attempting to overhaul the bank to revive profitability. Leo Kirch, who died in 2011, had blamed former Deutsche Bank chairman Rolf Breuer for triggering his group's downfall by questioning its creditworthiness in a 2002 television interview. The Kirch case became one of Germany's most acrimonious corporate disputes. Deutsche Bank settled a civil suit in February 2014 in a deal costing about 925 million euros ($1.05 billion). Munich prosecutors had accused Fitschen as well as his predecessors Rolf Breuer and Josef Ackermann and other former senior managers of misleading an appeals court to avoid paying damages sought by media mogul Leo Kirch. Fitschen and his co-defendants, who, if convicted, could have faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, denied the charges from the beginning. Etruscan stone could help unravel enigma of one of Italy's first civilisations By Isla Binnie FLORENCE, Italy, April 25 (Reuters) - A rare inscription found on a stone unearthed near Florence is exciting archaeologists who say it may help reveal the secrets of the Etruscans, one of Italy's earliest and most enigmatic civilisations. The Etruscans flourished in central Italy 2,500 years ago but their culture and language were assimilated into the Roman empire. They left behind lavish tombs, pottery and statues but tantalisingly few written documents and patchy evidence of their daily lives. Etruscans usually wrote longer texts on perishable linen or wax, so archaeologists excavating in Tuscany's Mugello Valley were delighted when they found a 200-kilogram sandstone slab, inscribed with more than 100 characters, in the foundations of a buried temple. The stone has been painstakingly cleaned and, although the inscription is yet to be formally deciphered, experts are starting to understand its full significance. "It's an Etruscologist's dream to find something like this," said Gregory Warden, an archaeology professor whose team had been excavating for 20 years before the find. It seems to be "a sacred text that may reveal to us parts of the belief system of the Etruscans". The stone could yield a new perspective because it was found in a religious sanctuary rather than one of the burial sites from which archaeologists have gathered most of their understanding of Etruscan life. It lay flat in the temple's foundations but appears to have stood upright previously, leaving unanswered questions about its original function. A careful cleanup, applying paper pulp and distilled water, seems to have already revealed the names of the two most important gods in the Etruscan pantheon: Tina and Uni, equivalent to the Roman Jupiter and Juno or Greek Zeus and Hera. It would be "just wonderfully exciting" if the presence of the names is confirmed, Warden said, adding, "I don't know anything like that anywhere." Unlike many ancient relics which are found out of context, having been illegally dug up or moved from Italy's archaeological sites, the researchers hope the stone can document local history in the tract of land between modern Fiesole and Bologna, once major Etruscan cities. "Acquiring new knowledge and an asset for the area is as good as it gets for us, for the state," said Susanna Sarti, an official at the regional archaeological authority. Bulgarian competition watchdog raids OMV offices in fuel pricing probe SOFIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's competition regulator said on Monday it had raided the offices of the local subsidiary of Austrian oil group OMV as part of its investigation into possible cartel agreements. Bulgarians complain of high fuel costs despite a plunge in global oil prices and a call by Prime Minister Boiko Borisov for the competition authority to speed up its market investigation. The Commission for Protection of Competition said in a statement its staff were carrying out a spot inspection at the offices of OMV Bulgaria. In February the watchdog opened an inquiry covering seven fuel retailers over possible price-fixing and into Lukoil's Bulgarian oil refinery for possible abuse of its dominant market position. OMV was not immediately available for comment, but the Bulgarian Petrol and Gas Association, which represents all the investigated companies, has said there are no cartel agreements between any of its members. The commission had already raided the Bulgarian offices of Lukoil Bulgaria, Royal Dutch Shell, Rompetrol and Hellenic Petroleum earlier this month. Nis Petrol, controlled by Russia's Gazprom Neft and Bulgarian Petrol are also being investigated. Syrian government says bomb near Damascus struck hospital GENEVA, April 25 (Reuters) - The Syrian government's chief negotiator said on Monday that an explosion south of the capital had struck a hospital, killing some patients evacuated last week from two rebel-besieged towns in the northwestern province of Idlib. Bashar Ja'afari told reporters on arrival for talks with U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura: "The explosion that the terrorists carried out in the area of Sayeda Zeinab today centred on a hospital that treated injured from Foua and Kefraya brought." "...It took the lives of tens of innocents. So while we had a diplomatic dialogue here, they (the opposition) decided to withdraw (from the talks), you can see that these people are nothing but terrorists." Bulgarian competition watchdog raids OMV offices in fuel pricing probe SOFIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's competition regulator said on Monday it had raided the offices of the local subsidiary of Austrian oil group OMV as part of its investigation into possible cartel agreements. Bulgarians complain of high fuel costs despite a plunge in global oil prices and a call by Prime Minister Boiko Borisov for the competition authority to speed up its market investigation. The Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) said in a statement its staff were carrying out a spot inspection at the offices of OMV Bulgaria. In February the watchdog opened an inquiry covering seven fuel retailers over possible price-fixing and into Lukoil's Bulgarian oil refinery for possible abuse of its dominant market position. "OMV Bulgaria renders full assistance and cooperation to CPC during the inspections," OMV's spokesperson told Reuters by email, adding that "OMV Bulgaria does not comment on ongoing investigations". The Bulgarian Petrol and Gas Association, which represents all the investigated companies, has said there are no cartel agreements between any of its members. The commission had already raided the Bulgarian offices of Lukoil Bulgaria, Royal Dutch Shell, Rompetrol and Hellenic Petroleum earlier this month. Nis Petrol, controlled by Russia's Gazprom Neft and Bulgarian Petrol are also being investigated. ICC to investigate past year's deadly violence in Burundi By Thomas Escritt AMSTERDAM, April 25 (Reuters) - The international war crimes court will investigate outbreaks of violence in Burundi that have killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee abroad since a political crisis erupted a year ago. The office of the U.N. human rights high commissioner estimates at least 430 people have been killed there since last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a bid for a third term in office and then won a disputed election in July. At least three armed rebel groups have since emerged in the country. Announcing a preliminary examination by the International Criminal Court, its prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said on Monday she had seen reports of killings, disappearances, imprisonment, torture and rape. "All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said. "...At least 3,400 people have been arrested and over 230,000 Burundians forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries." Western powers and regional states fear Burundi could slide back into the ethnically charged conflict that characterised its 1993-2005 civil war. Opponents accuse Nkurunziza of violating Burundi's constitution and a peace agreement that ended the civil war by running for a third term. The president and his supporters cite a court ruling that said he could run again. In the latest incident in the resulting cycle of violence, gunmen on Monday killed an army general who was a senior advisor to the first vice president, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters. At the weekend, a Burundian army officer being held captive by a rebel group was handed back to his unit, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. Preliminary examinations at the ICC, based mainly on publicly available information, can last months or years before leading to a possible full investigation. Only then can criminal charges be brought against individuals suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Thailand plans to speed up sale of 11.4 mln T of stockpiled rice BANGKOK, April 25 (Reuters) - Thailand plans to accelerate the sale of the remaining 11.4 million tonnes of rice in government stockpiles over the next two months, the country's rice management board said on Monday. The world's second-biggest rice exporter after India has been reducing stocks left over after the end of a rice-buying scheme under the previous, civilian government. The military government which took control following a May 2014 coup has auctioned off 5.05 million tonnes of rice worth $1.53 billion through several tenders since taking power. The government has previously said it aims to clear the stockpile by the end of 2017. The commerce ministry said it would try to sell as much rice as possible in the next two months. "Now is an ideal time to start selling ... because there is demand in the market," commerce ministry permanent secretary Chutima Bunyapraphasara, who is also secretary of the rice management board, told Reuters. "The government is trying to time it so that the government auctions do not have an impact on the market price," she said. Chutima said the remaining rice stocks were worth over 100 billion baht ($2.85 billion). Thailand has about 100,000 tonnes of what the commerce ministry has called "good grade" rice in state warehouses. The remaining stocks include 7.5 million tonnes of "substandard" rice for human consumption, 1.5 million tonnes of rice earmarked for industrial use, and 2.4 million tonnes of spoiled rice. Military parades, dawn services as ANZAC Day commemorated LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - With dawn services and military parades, tens of thousands of people gathered in different countries on Monday to commemorate the ANZAC landings on the shores of Gallipoli during World War One. ANZAC Day, on April 25, marks the first major battle involving troops from Australia and New Zealand in Gallipoli, Turkey in 1915. While the campaign against the Ottoman Turks was ultimately unsuccessful, the day has since become a major annual holiday in Australia and New Zealand and one of remembrance for both countries' troops who have served and died in war. Marking 101 years since the arrival of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on a narrow Gallipoli beach, soldiers from both countries marched to the beat of drums at a dawn service at ANZAC Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula. Australian Minister for Veterans Affairs Dan Tehan and New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee paid their respects by laying wreaths. Thousands of people attended dawn services in Wellington and Auckland while in Sydney Australian military personnel past and present marched by flag-waving crowds. In Thailand, where ANZAC Day is observed to also remember those who served and died during the Japanese Occupation in the early 1940s, Australian and New Zealand nationals gathered at a memorial service in the western Kanchanaburi Province. In France, a dawn service was held at Viller-Bretonneux to mark those who lost their lives on the Western Front during World War One. Iran in talks with Russia on heavy water sales - RIA MOSCOW, April 25 (Reuters) - Iran is conducting talks with Russia about sales of heavy water, Russia's RIA news agency quoted an Iranian foreign ministry official as saying on Monday. Heavy water is a component of making nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. It is not radioactive. U.S. begins F-22 fighter deployment to reassure NATO allies facing Russia MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania, April 25 (Reuters) - T he United States began its biggest European deployment of F-22 fighters with a visit to the Black Sea in an exercise aimed at beefing up military support for NATO's eastern European allies who say they face aggression from Russia. President Barack Obama promised in 2014 to bolster the defences of NATO's eastern members which were spooked by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and the Kremlin's use of pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. A U.S. KC-135 refuelling plane flew with two F-22 Raptor fighters from Britain to Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu air base on the Black Sea, a Reuters reporter accompanying the mission said. The United States has deployed 12 F-22s, which are almost impossible to detect on radar and so advanced that the U.S. Congress has banned Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad, at Lakenheath, a British base in eastern England. The West is seeking to bolster the defences of its eastern flank and reassure eastern European NATO members which spent decades under Russian dominance, without provoking the Kremlin by stationing large forces permanently. But tensions are rising and Russia says the NATO build-up is stoking a dangerous situation. UK retailer BHS close to collapse with 11,000 jobs at risk By James Davey and Kate Holton LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - British department stores group BHS was placed into administration on Monday, putting the 88-year-old retailer in danger of disappearing from the high street and placing 11,000 jobs at risk. Once a mainstay of the British high street, BHS has been in decline for years, unable to keep up with demand for fast fashion, online sales and improved customer services. BHS employs about 8,000 people, while a further 3,000 contractors work with the company's 164 stores. Going into administration, a form of creditor protection, means it is Britain's most high-profile retail casualty since Phones4U in 2014 and Woolworths in 2008. It could also increase scrutiny of BHS's former owner Philip Green, the billionaire retail boss who sold the firm for one pound last year to a collection of little known investors called Retail Acquisitions. He bought it for 200 million pounds in 2000. With a pension deficit of 571 million pounds ($828 million), the pensions regulator is investigating whether BHS's previous owners sought to avoid their obligations. "The group will continue to trade as usual whilst the administrators seek to sell it as a going concern," said Philip Duffy and Benjamin Wiles, managing directors of restructuring firm Duff & Phelps who have been appointed joint administrators. Analysts see little prospect of a buyer emerging for the whole of BHS, given the difficulty Green had in finding suitors. They say the most likely scenario is that BHS's assets will be sold off piecemeal and a source close to the administration process said more than 30 expressions of interest for various parts of the business had already been received. Ultimately, analysts think it likely that the BHS name, like Woolworths before it, will depart from Britain's shopping districts. "SERIOUS QUESTIONS" BHS had in March won the support of its creditors for a rescue plan that gave it big cuts to its rent bill. However, saddled with over 1 billion pounds of debt, including the pension deficit, BHS failed to raise the additional funds it required, particularly from planned asset sales, to meet all its contractual payments, prompting the administration process. The regulator has said it now wants to investigate how the pension scheme was run. BHS had been engaged in a 23-year recovery plan to pay down the deficit, a plan that has been criticised by pension consultants for being too long. "Let us see what conclusions the regulator comes to ... If there's any suggestions of impropriety we will come after people," Business Minister Anna Soubry told parliament. Angela Eagle, business spokeswoman for the opposition Labour party, said Green had "serious questions to answer". "BHS staff and the public will understandably want to know whether the former owner ... will have to pay his fair share of the liabilities which accrued during his stewardship." Green could not be immediately reached for comment. Independent pensions consultant John Ralfe said BHS represents a crucial test case for the Pension Regulator. "The regulator will want to lay down a marker and make it absolutely clear that you can't sell a subsidiary with a pension deficit for a pound and for that not to have any consequences," he said. The scheme is now in the hands of the industry levy funded Pension Protection Fund (PPF). With a surplus of 3.6 billion pounds the PPF can afford to take on the BHS scheme but such a move can lead to members losing a proportion of their income. Bulgaria's BEH agrees 535 mln euros loan financing SOFIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Bulgarian state energy firm BEH has signed a 535 million euro ($602 million) bridge loan with three international banks which is to be refinanced by a global bond issue within a year, a senior BEH official said on Monday. J.P. Morgan Securities, Bank of China and Banca IMI, the investment arm of Intesa Saopaolo, have already provided the bridge financing, BEH Chief Executive Petio Ivanov told a news conference. BEH needs the proceeds to press ahead with a deal with U.S. firms AES and ContourGlobal, under which the two thermal power producers will lower the price at which they sell their output to public power provider NEK, a unit of BEH. Ivanov said the size of the bond, earlier considered to be about 650 million euros ($731 million), would depend on the demand for such an issue on the global markets. "Our plan is to go out at the global markets as soon as possible, but what is more important is to find the favourable moment. We will seek to raise at least what is needed to cover the bridge financing, but the final amount will depend on the demand at the market," Ivanov told reporters. A source, familiar with the arrangement, said J.P. Morgan and Banca IMI would be lead managers of the pending bond, while Bank of China will participate only in the bridge loan. BEH has sought to raise the debt since May 2015 but the process hit a snag after lenders demanded state guarantees. Bulgaria's finance ministry has declined to extend such guarantees before the huge deficits in the energy system are properly addressed. In September, credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded BEH's long-term rating to BB- with a negative outlook, predicting weak credit ratios due to a widened tariff deficit at NEK. U.S. accuses both sides in South Sudan of blocking peace By Denis Dumo JUBA, April 25 (Reuters) - Washington accused both sides in South Sudan's two-year conflict of blocking peace efforts and protested, rebels said, by pulling funding for a flight to return their leader Riek Machar to the capital. Underlining growing international frustration over months of delays and wrangling, the U.S. State Department said South Sudan's government had as recently as Saturday refused to give landing permission to planes carrying Machar. Machar himself, the United States said, had obstructed arrangements by arbitrarily asking for more forces and heavy weapons to precede his arrival. Machar's return to join a unity government with his foes, originally scheduled for early last week, was meant to seal a peace deal signed in August to end fighting that has killed thousands and forced a million to flee their homes. "Given the actions by both sides to prevent or delay his return, it is now time for the parties to assume primary responsibility for facilitating the return of Riek Machar to Juba," the State Department said late on Sunday. Washington, which was a major player in the accord that eventually secured South Sudan's secession from Sudan in 2011 and has been a donor ever since, said its future engagement would depend on the leaders' involvement in the peace process. "Despite the best efforts by South Sudan's neighbors, the Troika (Britain, the United States and Norway), United Nations Mission in South Sudan, China, the African Union, the European Union and, most importantly, by South Sudanese advocating for peace, leaders on both sides have blocked progress," read the statement. Kiir's sacking of Machar as his deputy in 2013 triggered fighting between their supporters that spread across the impoverished, oil-producing country, often along ethnic lines between Kiir's dominant Dinka ethnic group and Machar's Nuer. They signed the peace deal under pressure from the United States and the United Nations, which threatened sanctions. But distrust, exacerbated by past splits during South Sudan's long wars with Sudan, runs deep William Ezekiel, spokesman for Machar's SPLM-IO group, said the United States's decision to withdraw funding for a charter flight would delay the return for yet another day. "Right now, we are still working on the issue and probably by tomorrow the first vice president will arrive in Juba," he told Reuters. Egypt tourism revenue down 66 pct in Q1 2016 DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Egypt netted just $500 million in tourism revenue in the first quarter of 2016, down from $1.5 billion a year earlier, a tourism ministry adviser told Reuters, highlighting the country's struggle to kickstart a key dollar-earning industry. Egypt's tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy and critical source of hard currency, has been struggling to rebound after the political and economic upheaval triggered by the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. Tourism revenue has also taken a heavy hit since a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board in what President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called an act of terrorism. Islamic State said it planted a bomb on board. More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011. In the first quarter of 2016 just 1.2 million tourists travelled to Egypt, down from 2.2 million a year earlier, said economic adviser to the ministry of tourism Adla Ragab. Egypt aims to attract 12 million tourists by the end of 2017 through a plan that includes increasing the presence of national carrier EgyptAir abroad, tourism minister Yehia Rashed said in a recent interview with Reuters. "Many European airlines have halted flights to Sharm El Sheikh. It's too early to say what the long-term impact of the Russian plane crash will be," said an analyst at hotel industry consultants STR. The torture of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, whose body was dumped on the side of a road in February, has also damaged Egypt's image abroad. Egyptian intelligence and police sources told Reuters the police had custody of Regeni at some point before he died, but Egyptian officials have strongly denied any involvement in Regeni's death, saying he was never in their custody. U.S. accuses South Sudan sides of blocking peace, warns over support By Denis Dumo JUBA, April 25 (Reuters) - Washington accused both sides in South Sudan's two-year conflict of blocking peace efforts and protested, rebels said, by pulling funding for a flight to return their leader Riek Machar to the capital. Underlining growing international frustration over months of delays and wrangling, the U.S. State Department said South Sudan's government had as recently as Saturday refused to give landing permission to planes carrying Machar. Machar himself, the United States said, had obstructed arrangements by arbitrarily asking for more forces and heavy weapons to precede his arrival. Machar's return to join a unity government with his foes, originally scheduled for early last week, was meant to seal a peace deal signed in August to end fighting that has killed thousands and forced a million to flee their homes. "Given the actions by both sides to prevent or delay his return, it is now time for the parties to assume primary responsibility for facilitating the return of Riek Machar to Juba," the State Department said late on Sunday. In one possible sign of progress, Machar's chief of staff, General Simon Gatwech Dual, flew into in Juba on Monday, accompanied by the 195 soldiers and the weapons the rebel leader had asked for. But he did not say when Machar would follow. "NO MORE WAR" "I am happy that I am in Juba. Our coming is to implement the peace process and we are not going back to war," he told reporters at the airport, but did not take questions. Washington, which was a major player in the accord that eventually secured South Sudan's secession from Sudan in 2011 and has been a donor ever since, said its future engagement would depend on the leaders' involvement in the peace process. Kiir's sacking of Machar as his deputy in 2013 triggered fighting between their supporters that spread across the impoverished, oil-producing country, often along ethnic lines between Kiir's dominant Dinka ethnic group and Machar's Nuer. They signed the peace deal under pressure from the United States and the United Nations, which threatened sanctions. But distrust, exacerbated by past splits during South Sudan's long wars with Sudan, runs deep. William Ezekiel, spokesman for Machar's SPLM-IO group, said the United States' s decision to withdraw funding for a charter flight would delay the return for yet another day. "Right now, we are still working on the issue and probably by tomorrow the first vice president will arrive in Juba," he told Reuters. Iran in talks with Russia on heavy water sales MOSCOW/DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Iran is holding talks with Russia to sell it about 40 tonnes of heavy water from its nuclear programme, Iran's deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. Under last year's landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, Tehran is responsible for reducing its stock of heavy water which is a component of making nuclear weapons and producing nuclear energy. It is not radioactive and the nuclear deal gives Iran the right to sell, dilute or dispose of it under certain conditions. Abbas Araqchi, who is also a top nuclear negotiator, was quoted by the Fars agency as saying late on Sunday that the United States had been the first buyer of Iranian heavy water and some other world powers, including Russia, were now showing an interest. "We are negotiating with Russia to sell 40 tonnes of heavy water," he said. The Russian Foreign Ministry later confirmed Moscow was considering the purchase. In January Iran removed the core of its Arak heavy water nuclear reactor and filled it with cement as required under a nuclear deal. The United States, Russia and China have agreed to participate in the redesign and the construction of a modernised reactor. Qatar Airways talks to Boeing after further Airbus A320 problems -CEO DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways is speaking to Boeing to secure substitute aircraft after further problems were discovered with the Airbus A320neo, the airline's chief executive said on Monday. South Africa's ANC to sue Malema over threat to take up arms JOHANNESBURG, April 25 (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Monday it would sue opposition politician Julius Malema after he threatened to remove President Jacob Zuma's government with the "barrel of a gun". Malema told Al Jazeera television on Sunday that the ANC used violence to suppress dissent, citing an incident last year when members of his radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party were ejected from parliament after heckling Zuma. "We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun," said Malema, Zuma's one-time protege and former ANC youth leader. "Part of the revolutionary duty is to fight and we are not ashamed if the need arise for us to take up arms and fight," Malema said. EFF protest marches were often met with violent resistance by security forces, he said. The ANC said it would pursue legal action against Malema. "These remarks are a call to violence, are inflammatory, treasonable and seditious and should be treated with extreme seriousness," the ANC said in a statement. "The ANC calls on state authorities to urgently investigate this matter and act against such conduct." South Africa is holding local government elections on August 3. The EFF and main opposition Democratic Alliance are expected to make inroads into majorities held by the ANC in large metropolitan areas, including the capital Pretoria. Malema has accused the ANC of failing to redress the inequality between blacks and whites since Nelson Mandela swept to power on a wave of optimism at the end of apartheid in 1994. The EFF was launched in 2013 and won six percent of the vote in national elections the following year. It has pledged to curb white economic power by nationalising mines and seizing land. Military parades, dawn services as ANZAC Day commemorated LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - With dawn services and military parades, tens of thousands of people gathered in different countries on Monday to commemorate the ANZAC landings on the shores of Gallipoli during World War One. ANZAC Day, on April 25, marks the first major battle involving troops from Australia and New Zealand in Gallipoli, Turkey in 1915. While the campaign against the Ottoman Turks was ultimately unsuccessful, the day has since become a major annual holiday in Australia and New Zealand and one of remembrance for both countries' troops who have served and died in war. Marking 101 years since the arrival of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on a narrow Gallipoli beach, soldiers from both countries marched to the beat of drums at a dawn service at ANZAC Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula. Australian Minister for Veterans Affairs Dan Tehan and New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee paid their respects by laying wreaths. Thousands of people attended dawn services in Wellington and Auckland while in Sydney Australian military personnel past and present marched by flag-waving crowds. In London, Britain's Prince Harry laid a wreath on behalf of Queen Elizabeth at the Cenotaph war memorial after attending a commemorative dawn service. In Thailand, where ANZAC Day is observed to also remember those who served and died during the Japanese occupation in the early 1940s, Australian and New Zealand nationals gathered at a memorial service in the western Kanchanaburi Province. Earlier in the day, former Australian prisoners of war had returned to the Hellfire Pass memorial for a dawn service to remember those forced to worked in harsh conditions to build the Thai-Burma railway track during World War Two. The Hellfire Pass holds part of the infamous railway track. In France, a dawn service was held at Viller-Bretonneux to mark those who lost their lives on the Western Front during World War One. South Africa's MTN pays former CEO $1.6 million after resigning over Nigeria fine JOHANNESBURG, April 25 (Reuters) - South Africa's MTN paid its former chief executive officer Sifiso Dabengwa 23.7 million rand ($1.6 million) after he resigned over a record fine imposed on the company by Nigerian authorities. Dabengwa quit in November after Nigerian authorities imposed a $5.2 million fine on MTN's Nigerian unit in October. He was awarded a total payout of 40.6 million rand, MTN said in its annual report on Monday. Non-executive chairman Phuthuma Nhleko was then named executive chairman of Africa's biggest mobile phone group for a period of six months, to help resolve the fine. MTN has since managed to negotiate the penalty down to $3.9 billion but is still hoping to reduce it further. MTN's share price has been down almost 20 percent since October when the fine was imposed. The stock had fallen 1.21 percent at 145.59 rand by 1407 GMT. Last year, Nigeria imposed a deadline on mobile operators to cut off unregistered SIM cards, which MTN missed, amid fears the lines were being used by criminal gangs, including militant Islamist group Boko Haram. Qatar Airways deal to buy Meridiana stake dependent on staff cuts By Matt Smith DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways is in advanced negotiations to buy a 49 percent stake in Italian airline Meridiana, but a deal is dependent on restructuring and job cuts, the CEO of Qatar Airways said. The Middle East carrier is also considering taking a 25-49 percent stake in Morocco's Royal Air Maroc, although it was focused on the possible Meridiana acquisition for now, said Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker. Qatar Airways holds a 10 percent stake in British Airways parent IAG and has been open to making further investments to help expand its reach. Meridiana, which offers flights to and from the island of Sardinia and other destinations in Italy and abroad, is under a government-sponsored restructuring plan to help turn it round. "Partnering with Meridiana would only make Meridiana prosper, grow and actually increase the working population of Meridiana," Baker told reporters. "But for the initial period there will be some pain on the part of employees," he added. He did not comment on the potential cost of a stake in Meridiana which is owned by the Aga Khan, a tycoon and spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims. The airline was asking labour unions to agree to 900 job cuts -- nearly half its workforce -- as part of a planned partnership with Qatar Airways, a person involved in the talks told Reuters in February. Baker said Qatar was talking to both the staff and the unions about a deal, adding that if it reached an "amicable settlement" on the restructuring of the company it would partner with the airline. "We have to decide either yes or no by the end of June," he said. The potential value of the deal was not Baker said Qatar's resources were already stretched by one potential acquisition, so the airline would wait for the Meridiana deal to conclude before examining Royal Air Maroc. Talks had yet to start between Qatar Airways and Royal Air Maroc, but "there is an understanding between the two governments that Royal Air Maroc needs help and Qatar Airways' help would be very welcome," said Baker. Russian ambassador denies Moscow supporting Taliban KABUL, April 25 (Reuters) - Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan denied on Monday that Moscow was giving its backing to the Taliban in its fight against Islamic State militants who have established a growing presence in the east of the country. Russia, which in February gave the Western-backed government in Kabul 10,000 Kalashnikov automatic rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition, was discussing two potential helicopter deals and had proposed increasing intelligence cooperation, ambassador Alexander Mantytskiy said. "We do not provide any assistance to the Taliban," he told reporters in Kabul, through an interpreter. Russia's position has been the subject of much speculation since President Vladimir Putin's special envoy to Afghanistan said last year that its interests "objectively coincide" with those of the Taliban over their common enemy, Islamic State, widely known in Afghanistan as Daesh. Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s and cooperation with NATO ended in 2014 over tensions in Ukraine. However, Mantytskiy said Russia's approach had not changed and it would continue its support to strengthen Afghanistan's defence capacity, through training and other means. Afghanistan's acting Defence Minister Masoom Stanekzai is expected to attend a security conference in Moscow this week, with the two potential helicopter deals on the table. One option could see a maintenance contract signed for two helicopters already in service with Afghan forces while a second option would involve the sale of three new Mi-35 helicopters but Afghanistan had not yet indicated which deal it preferred, Mantytskiy said. Russia supplied 63 Mi-17 military helicopters to Afghanistan and provided maintenance and training under a former agreement with NATO but shipments ended in October 2014 after the agreement ended over the standoff in Ukraine. It also cleared the way for India to supply three of its own Russian-made Mi-25 helicopters to Afghanistan by giving the necessary approval for the transfer. Mantytskiy rejected Afghan media reports that Moscow was actively cooperating with the Taliban, which carried out one of its biggest attacks in Kabul last week, killing at least 64 people and wounding hundreds of others. He said that Russia, like several other countries, did have contacts with the Islamist movement. "Our interest with the Taliban regarding the fight with Daesh do coincide but no type of information exchange between Russia and the Taliban takes place," he said. "Our contacts with the Taliban are aimed at inviting the Taliban to the negotiating table," he said. "Russia has no hidden agenda in Afghanistan." He said Moscow was concerned about the increase in fighting in northern provinces of Afghanistan that border former Soviet Republics including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well as by the spread of Islamic State militants in the region. Fnac fires final $1.3 bln shot in Darty bid battle By Dominique Vidalon PARIS/JOHANNESBURG, April 25 (Reuters) - French retailer Fnac raised its offer for Darty on Monday to around 900 million pounds ($1.3 billion) in a final bid to win Europe's largest electronics goods chain in a battle with South Africa's Steinhoff. Steinhoff, which has amassed a 20.4 percent stake in Darty, said in the immediate aftermath of Fnac's offer that it was considering its options. Fnac, declaring the offer its last, said it would pay 170 pence per Darty share in cash, up from 153 pence previously, and that it had the backing of shareholders accounting for 40.38 percent of Darty's capital. Steinhoff's latest offer was 160 pence a share in cash, valuing Darty at about 860 million pounds. At 1415 GMT, Darty shares were up 8 percent at 171 pence, suggesting some investors still expect more. The stock earlier touched 173 pence, the highest since 2010. Darty said on April 21 its board would carefully consider offers and provide further advice to shareholders in due course. Last week, the rival bidders entered into an hectic showdown with five new offers in less than 24 hours that lifted Darty shares by more than 23 percent on April 21. Darty shares have now more than doubled in value from about 81 pence before Fnac first approached Darty in September. Darty earns 70 percent of its revenue in France but has 400 stores across Europe and competes with Media-Saturn, owned by Germany's Metro, and Britain's Dixons. Darty would help Fnac to reduce its reliance on declining or highly competitive markets, such as CDs and books. Fnac's offer includes an option for Darty shareholders to receive Fnac shares if they prefer. For Steinhoff, Darty would help it bulk up in Europe, where it makes more than two thirds of its 9.8 billion euros ($11 billion) of annual sales, as its domestic market deteriorates. Steinhoff's European brands include Conforama in France, Bensons for Beds and Harvey's in Britain, and Abra in Poland. Darty trade unions said on April 22 they backed Steinhoff's offer which they saw as more positive for jobs than Fnac's. Steinhoff, which counts billionaire entrepreneur Christo Wiese as an investor and board member, is valued at 21 billion euros on Frankfurt's stock market. Fnac has fresh firepower after Vivendi, which is led by French billionaire Vincent Bollore, said it would buy 15 percent of the company, boosting its capital by 159 million euros. Serbian watchdog urges re-elected leader to take tough action on economy By Aleksandar Vasovic and Ivana Sekularac BELGRADE, April 25 (Reuters) - Serbia's newly re-elected Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic must take urgent action to tackle loss-making state-run companies, cut up to 35,000 government jobs and keep a tight grip on public spending, the country's fiscal watchdog said on Monday. Vucic, a former hardline nationalist who now wants to take Serbia into the European Union, won four more years in power on Sunday, securing another absolute majority in parliament. The government-appointed Fiscal Council cautioned that there must be no let-up in the austerity policies that Vucic's government followed over the last two years to reduce a big budget deficit. "There should be no slackening on ... public sector wages and pensions," council chief Pavle Petrovic told a news conference. The number of government employees must be cut, he added. "We are talking about 30,000 or 35,000 people." Vucic, who called Sunday's election two years early to seek a mandate for negotiations to join the EU, won 48 percent of the vote, the same as in 2014, according to nearly complete results from the Electoral Commission. His conservative Progressive Party will retain its absolute majority in the 250-seat parliament, although its strength will fall to 131 from 158 seats because more parties reached the five percent threshold needed to get in to parliament. Bojan Pajtic, head of the opposition Democratic Party, told Reuters his party had complained to the Election Commission over the government's tight grip on the media during the campaign and of numerous irregularities including vote-buying and non-existent voters. International observers, including the Council of Europe and the OSCE, said fundamental freedoms were respected, although there was biased media coverage, undue advantage for incumbents and a blurring of state and party activities. PAINFUL REFORMS Serbia, which has 18 percent unemployment, will have to undertake painful economic reforms both to qualify for EU membership and to meet the terms of a 1.2 billion euro ($1.35 billion) standby loan agreement with the IMF. Petrovic reminded Vucic of the government's promise not to extend protection from creditors for a group of big state-owned companies, including the RTB Bor copper mine and coal mine operator Resavica, beyond May 31. "By then, the remaining 11 companies will lose protection from creditors. That means either privatisation or bankruptcy," Petrovic said. Analysts think Vucic will probably continue to govern in coalition with the Socialists, who came second with 11 percent of votes, to broaden his support. If so, the splintered opposition will be led by ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, acquitted by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague last month of war crimes during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. The Radicals, who won 8 percent of the vote, oppose Vucic's pro-EU policies and instead demand an alliance with Russia. Zoran Stojiljkovic, political science professor at Belgrade University, said the elections were called to cement Vucic's power before more unpopular austerity measures. The EU was not an issue for most voters, he said. "The main issues for most are poverty, unemployment and corruption." Danish government ally, eyeing UK, urges referendum on EU ties COPENHAGEN, April 25 (Reuters) - Denmark should consider holding a referendum on its relations with the European Union, a key ally of the country's minority government said on Monday, as Britain prepares to vote on June 23 on whether to leave the 28-nation bloc. Like Britain, Denmark has negotiated several exemptions from EU laws, most notably from having to join the euro currency. The British referendum comes after Prime Minister David Cameron renegotiated some terms of Britain's EU membership, including curbs on EU migrants' access to some welfare benefits. Denmark should try to win similar concessions from the EU if Britons vote to stay in the bloc, said Kristian Thulesen Dahl, leader of the populist Danish People's Party, the largest of the three parties supporting the minority government in Copenhagen. If the Danish parliament is unable to agree on the matter, "then why not ask the Danes to decide on the matter via a referendum," Thulesen Dahl said in a blog. If Britain votes to leave the EU, Thulesen Dahl said he thought London would forge an accord with the EU based on close cooperation, adding that this would also "most likely" be an interesting position for Denmark. "Other countries may find it attractive as well," he said without elaborating. He stopped short of calling for a British-style In-Out referendum on Denmark's EU membership. The Danish People's Party says it is not opposed to Denmark's EU membership but calls for less interference by Brussels in Danish affairs. The party holds 37 seats in Denmark's 179-seat parliament, three more than the ruling Liberal Party, giving it a strong hand in negotiations with the government. Driven up the wall by Trump, Mexico looks to recast image in US By Dave Graham MEXICO CITY, April 25 (Reuters) - At first, Mexico's government did its best to ignore Donald Trump. Then it likened him to Adolf Hitler. Now it has appointed a new ambassador to come up with a better plan. Fed up with the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination labeling Mexico as a cradle of drug-runners, job poachers and rapists, the government is sending in respected diplomat Carlos Sada to lead a fightback. Mexico's new ambassador in Washington, Sada acknowledges his country has neglected its image across the border and aims to fix that with PR and media campaigns, and by lobbying prominent U.S. companies, lawmakers and civic leaders. "We need to do a more thorough job so that people understand what (Mexico) contributes," he said after he was sworn in at Mexico's Senate on Thursday. Sada's strategy includes underscoring Mexico's importance to the U.S. economy, although it centers on defending the rights of Mexican citizens in the United States and promoting Mexican culture. That focus has fed doubts over whether the government is trying hard enough to win over its most important audience: American voters. "It's vital to improve Mexico's image and protect our people, but that's not enough to change the hateful trend that Trump and other xenophobes before him have stirred up," said Gabriela Cuevas, an opposition lawmaker who chairs the Senate's foreign relations committee. "They don't understand the extent of the damage Trump has done," she said, urging the government to be more aggressive in mobilizing powerful U.S. interests against Trump's attacks. Claiming Mexico is "killing" the United States on trade, Trump has threatened to disrupt bilateral commerce worth some $500 billion a year, and promises to deport millions of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America. To finance a border wall to keep migrants out, he has controversially proposed blocking billions of dollars in remittances sent home by Mexicans in the United States. The measures would pose a serious threat to Mexico's economy, but for months Mexico's government disregarded Trump, hoping his candidacy would fizzle out. "It's the ostrich policy: head in the sand," said Agustin Barrios Gomez, the head of Fundacion Imagen Mexico, a group dedicated to promoting Mexico's image abroad. Mexican officials say U.S. politicians and officials urged it to keep a low profile to avoid aggravating tensions, and played down the real estate magnate's chances. "The Republicans told us, 'We'll deal with Trump'," one senior Mexican government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. When Mexico eventually did respond, President Enrique Pena Nieto compared the brash billionaire' s campaign to the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Mexican officials wince with embarrassment when reminded of the comment, arguing it was tactless and went too far. EMPTY EMBASSY As Trump railed against Mexico, the government should have made a concerted effort to remind key players in the United States that the two nations' economic interests are closely intertwined, diplomats and business leaders say. But over a dozen serving and former senior Mexican officials and lawmakers consulted by Reuters said it did not. "They haven't so far, but I do see the intention to do it again," said Jaime Serra, a former trade minister who headed Mexico's negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada in the early 1990s. Trump has not been the only one to criticize Mexico. His Republican rival Ted Cruz also supports a border wall, and backs mass deportations of illegal immigrants. Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders has, like Trump, taken a protectionist line on jobs and says NAFTA was a mistake. Mexico's cause was not helped by Pena Nieto leaving his diplomatic mission in Washington without an ambassador for six months just as Trump was warming up. And his eventual choice surprised many: Miguel Basanez, an old friend who had never worked in the diplomatic service. "It was a bad decision from the start," said a senior lawmaker inside Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "They didn't grasp the size of the problem." Basanez was cast aside this month, just seven months into the job. For Basanez and now Sada, the task of promoting Mexico in the United States is complicated by problems at home. Mexico's reputation has been hurt by relentless drugs violence, conflict-of-interest scandals in government and the apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by a drug cartel working with local police. Accountants, journalist face tax leaks trial in Luxembourg LUXEMBOURG, April 25 (Reuters) - Two former employees of accountancy giant PwC go on trial in Luxembourg on Tuesday along with a French journalist, accused of leaking details of corporate tax deals that have fuelled global demands for reform. The case, coming 18 months after revelations dubbed LuxLeaks sparked accusations the Grand Duchy conspired with multinational companies to deprive other EU states of tax revenue, has drawn strong criticism from civil rights and media groups who argue the men are whistleblowers in need of protection. Analysts say the Luxembourg authorities face a dilemma between defending confidentiality within financial institutions on whose customers the tiny state's economy depends and avoiding damage to its public image that could discourage business. Antoine Deltour, a French citizen like the other defendants, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012. Prosecutors say that data, as well as material allegedly supplied by the second former PwC employee Raphael Halet, was later used in the LuxLeaks revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle called Perrin's indictment an affront to press freedom. "For a founding member of the EU to bring charges against a journalist in relation to reporting that is clearly in the public interest shows a lack of respect for the important role journalism plays in holding the powerful accountable," he said. "For a country to also charge two alleged whistleblowers shows Luxembourg has not yet caught up with public opinion." The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros ($1.4 million). Luxembourg has a law protecting whistleblowers but it is limited to exposing illegality, such as corruption and money laundering. The government and companies involved say that the practices in this case were legal. Luxembourg, with a population of just 540,000, has come to depend heavily on financial services since the decline of the coal and steel industries on which it previously relied. Michel Maus, professor of tax law at Brussels university VUB, said judges in the case would need to strike a balance between upholding secrecy laws and protecting Luxembourg's reputation as a financial centre in the long term. "If they come down hard on the defendants, they will deter future whistleblowers," said Maus. "But it is in the interest of Luxembourg financial system to be transparent, otherwise it will become internationally isolated in the longer term." Jean-Claude Juncker, who was Luxembourg's prime minister for 19 years and is now president of the European Commission, has rejected criticism of his country's past practices and has backed new EU rules to make corporate taxation more transparent. Islamic state claims responsibility for a car bomb explosion in Damascus AMMAN, April 25 (Reuters) - Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for detonating a car laden with explosives near a Syrian army checkpoint in the capital on Monday, a news agency close to the militants said. State media earlier reported at least five were killed when a car bomb exploded near a Syrian army checkpoint in the Sayeda Zeinab area, south of Damascus. Amaq news agency affiliated to the militants did not give details beyond saying the group was responsible for the bombing, the third such bombing attack this year. Hungary c.bank under fire over its foundations' contracts By Krisztina Than and Gergely Szakacs BUDAPEST, April 25 (Reuters) - A Hungarian opposition party asked state prosecutors on Monday to examine a possible misuse of public funds by foundations set up by the central bank, in a case seen as a test of transparency and the role of the bank's head, an ally of the prime minister. The six educational foundations, established in 2014, are a pet project of Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy, whom Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called his "right-hand man". They have received nearly 1 billion euros of central bank funding, investing most of the money in Hungarian government bonds, whose income pays their running costs. The foundations have denied any wrongdoing. The Hungarian National Bank (HNB) says the foundations are now separate legal entities that operate independently of the bank. The opposition leftist Egyutt party's move follows a ruling by Hungary's constitutional court late last month to strike down a law that would have restricted financial scrutiny of the foundations, forcing them to publish hundreds of contracts. The contracts include support for various educational and media projects and for the large-scale construction and renovation of real estate belonging to the foundations. The Egyutt party said it had asked prosecutors to investigate an unnamed individual on suspicion of mishandling public funds in media content deals, which granted about half a billion forints ($180,832) to a Hungarian media firm called New Wave Production Kft. "We believe these contracts were overvalued," Viktor Szigetvari, chairman of Egyutt, told Reuters. Egyutt has also called on Matolcsy to resign. PUBLIC FUNDS In a statement posted online on Saturday the foundations said all of their contracts "were concluded lawfully" and denied any squandering of public funds. New Wave also said the contracts it had been involved with adhered to the law. In a separate statement in reply to Reuters' questions, the central bank said: "The rights of the HNB as founder do not include making or influencing ... decisions linked to ... the activities of the foundations." Matolcsy, a former finance minister under Orban who became bank governor in 2013, is chairman of the board of trustees at one of the foundations and a member of the board of trustees at another. His close relationship with Orban has been key to the direction of Hungary's often unconventional economic policies. Transparency International, a Berlin-based global non-governmental organisation, said it also wanted Hungary's chief prosecutor to investigate a possible misuse of public funds. "The Hungarian constitution and other laws say that public funds and the national wealth should be devoted to serving public tasks," said Miklos Ligeti, Transparency International's head of legal affairs in Hungary. UN envoy says war goals in Iraq obscuring humanitarian crisis By Shadia Nasralla GENEVA, April 25 (Reuters) - A U.N. human rights envoy said on Monday Iraq was being run by a failed government and warned foreign powers not to be "complicit" in its neglect of the plight of normal Iraqis. The United Nations' deputy high commissioner for human rights said both Baghdad and its international supporters were too focused on defeating Islamic State and had no strategy for mending the country after that. "It is beholden on the international community, that rightly focuses on the military action, to have ... comparable investment in non-military relief," Kate Gilmore said after a week-long trip to Iraq. "The international community must not allow itself to be made complicit with the failed leadership of Iraq," she said, and urged Iraqi politicians to fight corruption, reform the judiciary and foster reconciliation. "The first thing the politicians of Iraq have (to do is) to set aside their differences and form urgently a coherent, competent government of national unity," Gilmore said. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced an overhaul of the government in February, but disputes and protests have slowed progress. "There is political paralysis in Iraq. There is no government in Iraq," Gilmore said. The rise of Islamic State, which is fighting government forces for control of northern and western Iraq, has exacerbated a sectarian conflict, mostly between Shi'ites and Sunnis, that emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A car bomb in a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim district of eastern Baghdad on Monday killed at least 11 people and wounded 39, the third such blast in four days in the capital. Meanwhile, the war with Islamic State has created more than 3.4 million internally displaced people (IDPs), many living in camps without access to medical care, water and clothes, as foreign money disappears into the pockets of local officials, Gilmore said. "Corruption (is) something that the international community can take braver, bolder and stronger steps to address ... the negotiations that are taking place with the government can't just be about a military strategy," Gilmore said. "In terms of people caught in IDP camps, the international community is failing. The humanitarian budget ... in Iraq is grossly underfunded and people with nothing are paying the cost of that." Suspected Islamists kill Bangladeshi gay activist working for US embassy By Ruma Paul DHAKA, April 25 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants hacked to death a leading Bangladeshi gay rights activist employed by the U.S. embassy and a friend in an apartment in Bangladesh's capital on Monday, police said. The killings took place two days after a university professor was slain in similar fashion on Saturday in an attack claimed by Islamic State. Five or six assailants went to the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Rupban, Bangladesh's first magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people, and attacked him and a friend with sharp weapons, Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sordar said. They entered the apartment disguised as couriers, he said, quoting witnesses. The assailants also wounded a security guard. Witnesses said the attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest)" as they fled the scene. Mannan was employed by the U.S. embassy, working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Depertment in Washington said. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States was "outraged" by the "barbaric attack." He called Mannan, "a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI rights - human rights, actually." "LGBTI" stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex. A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, Ned Price, said the United States strongly urged the Bangladeshi government to ensure the perpetrators were brought to justice. Other attacks took place in the country on Monday, but it was not immediately clear whether those assaults were carried out by Islamist militants. Two men on a motorcycle shot dead a former prison guard in front of Kashimpur jail, on the outskirts of Dhaka, said Khandakar Rezaul Hasan, chief of the local police station. A teacher was hacked to death in the southwestern district of Kustia, police said. The Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted. Five secular bloggers and a publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh since February 2015. A group affiliated with al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the killing of a liberal Bangladeshi blogger this month. Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the killings of two foreigners and attacks on mosques and Christian priests in Bangladesh since September. The government has denied that Islamic State or al Qaeda groups have a presence in the country and said homegrown Islamist radicals are behind the attacks. Portugal's fiscal commitment, EU dialogue support rating -DBRS By John Geddie LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - Portugal's commitment to fiscal targets and a healthy relationship with its European partners are important supports for the credit rating it needs to remain eligible for ECB bond buying, a senior DBRS official said on Monday. The Socialist government last week approved its long-term budget plan, which meets all agreements with its left-wing allies and reduces the deficit in line with EU commitments. DBRS will on Friday review Portugal's last remaining investment-grade rating. The ECB requires one of its four recognised agencies - DBRS, Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch - to rank a country investment grade before it will buy its bonds under its 1.5 trillion-euro bond-buying scheme. In February, DBRS said it was "comfortable" with its BBB (low) 'stable' rating on Portugal. "It appears that the government is committed to the fiscal programme and there is a healthy dialogue with the European Commission," Fergus McCormick, head sovereign analyst at DBRS, told Reuters. "Those are two very important elements to our rating and our outlook." McCormick made his comments before Reuters reported that the European Commission is considering penalising Portugal and Spain for missing budget deficit reduction targets. He added that a reversal of some austerity measures from the new left-leaning coalition was of concern but reiterated that DBRS had taken a very measured approach to downgrades of euro zone countries in the past. Kurds and Shi'ites clash in northern Iraq despite ceasefire TIKRIT, Iraq, April 25 (Reuters) - Clashes between Kurdish and Shi'ite Turkmen fighters in an Iraqi town late on Monday cut the main road from Baghdad to the north for the second day in a row and threatened to undermine a ceasefire agreement reached by military leaders a day earlier. The violence in Tuz Khurmatu, 175 km (110 miles) north of the capital, is the latest and most severe flare-up of tensions that have been brewing since Islamic State militants were driven back from the town in 2014. Shi'ite paramilitary leaders and Kurdish peshmerga commanders had brokered a truce on Sunday to end fighting that killed at least 12 people on both sides, but it broke down before sunset on Monday. Police sources in the town said shops were closed and the streets deserted. No casualties were reported at area hospitals, likely because the roads were considered too dangerous for travel. Peshmerga tanks shelled Shi'ite Turkmen districts, while Shi'ite fighters launched mortar fire and sniped at predominately Kurdish areas, the police said. Five buildings in Shi'ite neighbourhoods had been burned. A Kurdish peshmerga fighter in Tuz Khurmato told Reuters his forces had been instructed to observe the ceasefire, but that armed Kurdish residents of the town were attacking Shi'ite Turkmen positions. "Now you can hear the sound of RPG (rocket-propelled grenades) and rockets," he said, the sound of small arms fire audible in the background. The clashes began late on Saturday when members of a Shi'ite militia hurled a grenade into the house of a Kurdish commander and his guards responded by firing RPGs, security sources said. The tensions in Tuz Khurmatu risk further fragmenting Iraq, a major OPEC oil exporter, as it struggles to contain Islamic State, the gravest security threat since a U.S.-led invasion toppled autocrat Saddam Hussein in 2003. Efforts to push back the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents have been complicated by sectarian and ethnic rivalries, including a contest for territory which the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad claims but the Kurds want as part of their autonomous region in the north of the country. Canada PM condemns 'cold-blooded murder' of Philippines hostage By Andrea Hopkins and Manuel Mogato KANANASKIS, Alberta/MANILA, April 25 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned on Monday the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder." John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting. "The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act." Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall. "Obviously there was talk of money involved, but not by the government of Canada or by the government of Norway, but certainly by the families attempting to do what they could to free the four," said Bob Rae, a former federal politician and longtime Ridsdel friend. "But it's been an awful process, just horrendous," he told Canadian television. In a statement, Ridsdel's family said they were devastated his life had been "cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home." Ridsdel, Hall and the other captives, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21. Ridsdel's former employer described him as gregarious, adventurous and warm. "We are in profound shock, disbelief and sorrow to have lost our former colleague and close friend," Calgary-based mining company TVI Pacific said in an emailed statement. Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country's prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants. Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict. Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew. Syrian government says submitted amendments to U.N. envoy's peace proposal GENEVA, April 25 (Reuters) - The Syrian government delegation said that it proposed amendments to a peace proposal from the U.N. Special Envoy and would hold talks with him again on Tuesday. Syrian ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters after two meetings with U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura in Geneva on Monday: "Today we submitted constitutional amendments to the paper submitted to us by the Special Envoy and we consider such amendments to be an integral part of this paper. Congo police fire teargas, arrest opposition supporters KINSHASA, April 25 (Reuters) - Police fired shots and teargas to break up a crowd before a political rally by opposition leader and potential presidential candidate Moise Katumbi in Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, an official and the opposition said. Katumbi said in a statement that police had arrested people close to him, and that others had been injured in the incident in the city of Lubumbashi. But government spokesman Lambert Mende said police intervened to disperse people who were blocking roads, preventing normal traffic. No rally had been scheduled, he said. Political tension is high in Congo, where opponents of President Joseph Kabila say he is trying to cling to power beyond the end of his mandate in 2016. More than 40 people were killed in violent protests over the issue in January 2015. Since then, authorities have arrested dozens of critics of Kabila on what the United Nations and human rights groups say are trumped up charges. Katumbi said the confrontation with police took place as he was about to speak at a rally. It was the second time opposition supporters had been tear-gassed in a week. "My message to the authorities is clear: nothing can weaken our peaceful combat for democracy," Katumbi said. "Repression, intimidation and relentless only reinforce our actions." Mende said everyone who had been arrested had been released except four of Katumbi's bodyguards who had not been authorised to work in Congo. "The shots were used to disperse the crowd," Mende said. Opposition parties endorsed Katumbi last month as their candidate for a presidential vote set for November although the businessman has yet to say he will run. U.N. chief condemns assassination of Burundi brigadier general By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS, April 25 (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the assassination on Monday of a Burundian brigadier general who had served with the African Union and U.N. peacekeeping missions in Central African Republic. Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza and his wife and daughter were killed in the country's capital Bujumbura, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. Kararuza was a military adviser in the office of Burundi's vice president. Dujarric said Kararuza's death followed several instances of politically motivated assassination attempts in Burundi in recent weeks, including an attack on Sunday on Martin Nivyabandi, Minister of Human Rights, Social Affairs and Gender and attacks on prominent members of the security forces. "All such acts of violence serve no purpose other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi. The Secretary-General urges that a rigorous and prompt investigation of these events is undertaken," Dujarric said. "(Ban) calls on all political leaders, including those in exile, to firmly renounce the use of violence in pursuit of political agendas and commit to an inclusive and genuine dialogue," he said. Tit-for-tat attacks between President Pierre Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won re-election in July. The U.N. says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled. The international war crimes court will investigate the outbreaks of violence in Burundi, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said on Monday. More than two decades after the 1994 genocide of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus by the Hutu majority in neighboring Rwanda, the United Nations is under growing pressure to show it can halt the bloodshed in Burundi. Rwanda and Burundi have a similar ethnic makeup. More than 100 migrants arrested in Niger near Algerian border NIAMEY, April 25 (Reuters) - Niger's security forces have arrested more than 100 people in the Sahara desert who were trying to illegally cross the country's northern border into neighbouring Algeria, security sources said Monday. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the arrests, which took place on Saturday, concerned 122 women and children found in a single truck. Local media said 150 people had been arrested. An estimated 100,000 people passed through Agadez last year, a city in the centre of the West African state and a major hub for sub-Saharan migrants aiming to reach North Africa and Europe. Authorities believe more will come through this year. A security official said the truck had bypassed Assamaka, the final desert checkpoint in Niger before the border with Algeria, and was found by a customs patrol car. "The patrol immobilised the truck, discovered the migrants on board and gave the alert," said the official. Giussepe Loprete, IOM's mission head in Niger, said the migrants had been returned to Agadez on Sunday, where they were staying at an IOM centre before the organisation would facilitate their returns to their areas of origin. Venezuela court blocks another opposition tactic to oust Maduro CARACAS, April 25 (Reuters) - Venezuela's Supreme Court shot down on Monday one of the opposition's main tactics to oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro with a ruling that any constitutional amendment to reduce the presidential term could not be retroactive. Having won control of the legislature last year due to public ire over an economic crisis, the opposition coalition is seeking to remove Maduro via popular pressure, constitutional reform or a recall referendum. However, government-leaning institutions are thwarting it at every turn: the National Election Council is dragging its feet on the referendum, and the Supreme Court is striking down measures passed by the opposition in parliament. In its latest judgment, the court said that while modification of the six-year presidential term was viable in principle if approved in a referendum, "it cannot take effect retroactively or be applied immediately." That decision, which came even before parliament had formally proposed an amendment, will add to opposition frustration at government stalling tactics and accusations that institutions are in the pocket of Maduro. The 53-year-old former bus driver and long-serving foreign minister narrowly won election in 2013 to replace his mentor Hugo Chavez but his popularity has tumbled amid a recession. Opposition leaders have called for a march to the election board on Wednesday to demand paperwork in the first step toward seeking the nearly 4 million signatures needed to trigger a recall referendum. Venezuela's constitution allows elected officials to be recalled through such a vote halfway through their term. Should Maduro lose a referendum and leave office this year, there would be a new presidential election, opening the door for the opposition. Were he to depart in the last two years of his term, the vice president, currently Socialist Party stalwart Aristobulo Isturiz, would take over. "The recall referendum has to be this year. If it's not this year, there's no point," said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who narrowly lost to Maduro in 2013, outlining plans for Wednesday's rally. Brazil to ask Congress to pass Paris climate deal -minister NEW YORK/SAO PAULO, April 25 (Reuters) - Brazil's government will ask legislators this week to ratify the Paris climate agreement, the environment minister said late on Sunday, even as President Dilma Rousseff faces possible impeachment and lacks majority support in Congress. It is unclear if Congress would back the pledges of a government that may soon be removed from office. Many lawmakers have left the governing coalition after Rousseff was charged with breaking budget laws to boost her reelection bid in 2014. She has denied the charges. The government hopes the treaty will be ratified before the next global climate meeting in November, minister Izabella Teixeira said in a phone interview in New York, where she took part in the United Nations signing ceremony for the treaty on Friday. "We have a political crisis," Teixeira said. "It is something I've never seen in my life. (But) I am confident Brazil will not backslide on climate policies during this time." More than two-thirds of Brazil's lower house voted two weeks ago to recommend that the Senate open an impeachment trial against Rousseff. If the Senate votes on May 12 to put her on trial, as expected, she would immediately be suspended from office for the period of the proceedings. "The country has a commitment that goes beyond any specific government," Teixeira said, adding that she hoped legislators would approve the treaty. Under its Paris commitments, Brazil pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Fifty-five countries representing 55 percent of global emissions need to ratify the agreement for it to become effective. First a disclaimer - I have turned cynical after being witness to all-round deterioration in standards of public behaviour. So, when I first saw the news about Chief Justice of India choking on his words and wiping tears while addressing an august gathering of chief ministers, chief justices - both former and serving, Union Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda, senior Union Law and Justice Ministry officials, other dignitaries, the media and of course the Prime Minister of India, I thought that Justice TS Thakur was "doing a Modi" on the Prime Sevak of the country. On the dais, Modi downward, everyone must have had a Zuckerberg-like sensation when the Facebook top honcho could do nothing but look impassively as into the crowd at the Facebook Townhall just seven months ago. On his part, Modi deviated from the script and besides offering a one-on-one meeting (what did he say? Alag se mil ke baat cheet kar lete hain? I hope he didn't say this because the phrase has a different connotation and every Indian knows what this means!), the prime minister recalled his intervention as Gujarat chief minister. Modi recounted that he attended these conferences as the representative of the western state - he did not hide his disdain for such conclaves - and in those sessions suggested that courts and judges cut down on their holidays to reduce pendency of cases. In his interaction with the media, CJI Thakur retorted that judges do not go on holidays to the hills but spend the time writing copious judgements. How does one make sense of what transpired on Sunday and had the nation riveted on it till the incident was overtaken by events of greater dramatic value? Was CJI Thakur adding prestige to the office he holds or did he belittle the institution by a public breakdown? Chief justice Thakur addressing a conference of chief ministers and high court chief justices in presence of the PM . Photo: PTI Let's take up first things first. It is not rare for public figures to display emotions while speaking in public meetings or even in semi-public gatherings (like conferences, media interaction etc.,) In January this year American President Barack Obama cried while addressing a press conference on gun culture and violence it begot in the country. A debate was sparked: is it good for President (we can extend this to prime minister and other public figures in India) to be emotional or not? There cannot be a closure on the debate though most agreed, and rightly, that men do cry sometimes but when and how this gets triggered, differs from person to person, situation to situation. So was CJI TS Thakur justified in his breakdown? Could he had have chosen another way of expressing pent up emotion and frustration at what he perceives as indifference of the political class to the crisis in judiciary and acute pendency of cases? I clearly have no real problem with CJI Thakur displaying his softer side but I do hope that his public tears are not dismissed as a publicity device and instead evoke empathy. The incident needs to evoke not just compassion but must also arouse anger because it drawn attention to the deficiencies of the judiciary and the causes. So what does the CJI say in between tears and chokes? To begin with, his speech is a severe indictment of the government (Modi Bhakts please note before trolling, this is not indictment of just one government but all previous ones too) for stalling appointment of judges to the High Courts and doing nothing to increase the number of courts and judges. The numbers are sheer: 434 judicial vacancies in the High Courts; a 1987 Law Commission report warned about India slipping into grossly inadequate ratio of judges to population; former CJI Altamas Kabir's letter; to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking steps to increase judges' strength over five years to at least 50 judges per million. And much more - we can fill up this website with the numerical deficiency and the imperfections in judiciary, but that would hardly serve any purpose. Despite tom-toming how his government has gone about attempting to repeal outmoded laws on an occasions where the focus was not on it, Modi has spoken about looking beyond the night and seeking solutions. But judiciary is not the only institution in crisis. The Indian health sector, education, and bureaucracy in general terms are witnessing grave challenge. From the political system to the quality of our doctors, teachers, lawyers, chartered accountants, scientists, call centre executives and even politicians, there is overall decline in quality. The judicial system is actually not just witnessing a deficiency of numbers but also quality. What then is the way in which Modi and the CJI, if and when they sit for a tete-a-tete, are going to address the decline in the quality of judges. When I say this, I am not referring to the handful of judges in the apex court or the correspondingly larger assembly in High Courts (though many legal luminaries say that the rot begins at the top) but in the lower courts which continue to be the extremely arbitrary because such behaviour provides opportunities for decisions influenced by lucre and other means. India, on April 23, cancelled the visa which was granted to Chinese dissident leader Dolkun Isa earlier in the month. Dolkun, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leader, was supposed to visit Dharamsala and take part in a conference being organised by the US-based "Initiatives for China" on April 30 and meet the Dalai Lama. Though the cancellation of visa is being touted as an embarrassment for India and a case of buckling under pressure from China, it may not be the case. The Indian government can be faulted on two counts. Firstly - and though this may be unbelievable - before issuing the e-visa, it did not verify that Isa was on Interpol's Red Corner Notice. But this theory of there being a technical glitch cannot be believed because India must have checked the credentials of someone like Isa, who is considered a "terrorist" by China. It must have known that it would have to withdraw the visa if China objects to it on the ground of the Red Corner Notice. MHA sources say E-visa to Dolkun Isa has been cancelled because he has an Interpol Red Corner notice against him. Claim no Chinese pressure. Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) April 25, 2016 Moreover, India issued tourist visa instead of business visa to Isa, knowing fully well that he was coming to address a conference. The Centre must have known that he was coming to address the controversial conference. It cannot be so naive that it will overlook this aspect of diplomacy. In spite of this, the Indian government issued the visa to the dissident Chinese leader, though it was aware that China would object to it and raise the issue with Interpol, forcing India to withdraw the visa. The BJP-led NDA government at the Centre is facing flak now. Dolkun Isa episode is a self-inflicted humiliation. Mercifully, wiser heads prevailed, not prickly & immature new warriors of our diplomacy Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) April 25, 2016 Dolkun Isa given visa by our government to prove a point to China. Mr.Doval, surely a red corner notice on him could have been checked. Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) April 25, 2016 What an embarrassing botch-up by Indian govt on Chinese Uyghur rebel Dolkun Isa's visa. Clueless or spineless? Abhijit Majumder (@abhijitmajumder) April 25, 2016 Modi Ji is ending his 2 years as India's PM with some more egg on his face. His U-turns have made a mockery of India.https://t.co/buuER0fKAP Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) April 25, 2016 However, those trying to put the Narendra Modi government in the dock over this issue may be off the mark. Because, it may eventually turn out that this step was neither a blunder on the part of India, nor was there any technical glitch. Chinese dissident leader Dolkun Isa. On April 1, China vetoed the UN's bid to declare Pakistan national and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar a terrorist. And within days, India issued the visa to Isa (on April 6). Hence, in all likelihood, this episode may turn out to be a calculated and strategic step by the government to settle a deal with China. Hope U turn on #Uyghur leader on the condition tht #China changes stand on #Masood azhar. Otherwise its a let down. https://t.co/9dpLQijcfD alka saxena (@alka_saxena1) April 25, 2016 Or, the following may have been the Modi government's objective, in which it has largely been successful: 1. It has exposed China's double standards on terrorism. While the communist country vetoes any move to have the JeM chief declared a terrorist, it protests when importance is attached to its own "terrorist" Isa. 2. India's purpose has been achieved. It has hit China where it hurts. The Modi government should not be seen to be taking things lying down. As India gears up to host the "Heart of Asia" conference in Delhi on April 26, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani addressed a joint session of the Parliament to make a historic speech, lambasting Pakistan for its failure to bring Taliban to negotiations. He termed the "enemies of Afghanistan" as "alien hireling groups like Daesh, al Qaeda, murderous groups of Haqqani and parts of Taliban who enjoy shedding their countrymen's blood and continue the war and terrorism." He has repeated many times in the past that Afghanistan does not want to fight anyones proxy war anymore. Ghani reiterated that terrorism is an international problem and hence needs to be fought together. Referring to his predecessor Hamid Karzais releasing of some Taliban leaders, he said that the "time for unjustified amnesty" is over, calling on the execution of those involved in terror activities. Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani lashed out at Pakistan He also acknowledged his failure when he said that for the last one year he tried for peaceful solutions, but will also use all resources to defend the country. Criticising Pakistan, he said that Afghan government will no longer seek Islamabad's help for peace talks, but expects them to take military actions against those using their soil for terror activities, noting that there is no distinction between "good" and "bad" terrorists. He added that Afghanistan will be forced to register a formal complaint at UNs Security Council against Pakistan, if it does not change its policy. Despair after latest attack in Kabul The mood is still gloomy in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan after the April 19 blasts in the heart of the capital that killed 64 and injured 347 others in what has come to be known as "Spring Offensive" that Taliban spearhead each year after a slight lull during winters. It also sends out a clear message that Taliban is in no mood of a negotiated peace deal with the national unity government in Kabul, which is anyway weak and appears disunited. In any case why would Taliban even bother to talk to a government that many observers fear might implode from within very soon? Even if some factions of Taliban are willing, there are way too many groups; the latest attack is believed to have been carried by the Haqqani network, so far not part of the negotiation. And then there is looming fear of spread of ISIS. President Ghanis address, broadcast live on television, has given some hope. In many ways he spoke what people were waiting to hear from their leader. His promise of electoral reforms and timely holding of the parliamentary elections, besides long-term security and financial planning was appreciated by many on social media. Despite apprehensions in several quarters, 2014 had given new hopes after first peaceful transition in the recent history of the country, despite the delay due to corruption charges in the second round. There was also a new-found nostalgia for the outgoing President Hamid Karzai, who led Afghanistan through very difficult times. Economic stagnation, rising unemployment and deteriorating security situations, etc. have trampled all expectations as many people are once again fleeing the country due to uncertainty. Growing opposition and speculation of implosion? Surely Taliban and their violent attacks are not the only reasons for the despair as Afghans in general are feeling let down by their national unity government (NUG). Only weeks ago, US secretary of state John Kerry was forced to once again visit Kabul and meet President Ashraf Ghani and chief executive officer Abdullah Abdullah to save fragile agreement between the two Afghan leaders for a unity government. Things have not been smooth between the two rivals-turned-allies as they appear to have disagreements over almost every issue. In fact, many people expressed their surprise on social media on the ominous absence of the CEO from the Parliament on April 25 during an important address NUG has failed to appoint the crucial defence minister till date. Government has not been able to find replacement for the director of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) since the last head, Rahmatullah Nabil, resigned over his differences with the president. In his speech, Ghani promised to introduce candidates for both posts within a few days to the Parliament and urged the members for support. Meanwhile, politicians who lost out in the last elections or who have had their differences with the current government have started mobilisation and are consolidating their positions while demanding dissolution of the NUG and a fresh election. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the voice of dissent is coming from inside the government itself. The presidential special envoy for good governance, Ahmad Zia Massoud, younger brother of former Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, considered the "Lion of Panjshir", has been giving statements against stalemate. He is fast emerging as an important voice now, although till elections he did not have much influence among masses, even Tajiks, who saw Abdullah, old associate of his late elder brother, as their leader although he is half Pashtun. Some of the old guards and former warlords led by Ustad Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, who was one of the presidential candidates in the first round in 2014, announced the formation of opposition group, Afghanistan Protection and Stability Council, a few months back. Umer Daudzai, former interior minister, Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, former finance minister and others have retracted their support to the NUG and are now part of opposition that is demanding fresh election. When the country does not have enough money to generate employment, the demand of burdening it with another election can spiral into another decade of instability and conflict. All this has fuelled speculation over whether the NUG would be able to survive beyond September, 2016 by which it was decided to call a Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) for constitutional amendments to convert the ad hoc post of CEO to the office of the prime minister. Worst humanitarian crisis since 2001: What went wrong in Afghanistan? Following the NATO drawdown, Afghanistan is undergoing its worst humanitarian crisis and the civilian casualty was highest last year since 2001, according to Jean-Nicolas Marti, the outgoing head of the International Red Cross. Most Afghans are tired of three decades of conflict and are scared of replay of 1990s when civil war broke after the withdrawal of the USSR. Ordinary citizens seek only peaceful survival unlike elites who have greater stakes. Afghan elites benefitted most in the last two decades; besides plum posts, many of them won lucrative business contracts in past one decade and their children went abroad to study in Ivy League universities. Some of them returned back and have easily managed to secure top government posts with handsome salaries and easy access to powers although they are still in their late twenties and early thirties. From becoming ministers and their deputies to advisors in the Afghan National Security Council. Representation by young blood, after all, is not such a negative thing in a country where nearly 70 per cent of the population are below 30 years. Despite bold speech and threats, the fact is even the combined NATO forces could not win over Taliban in 15 years although they did have initial successes. The latest attack by Taliban is a sign of how strong different factions are still even after 15 years of "war on terror" and billions of dollars of international aid meant at stabilising the conflict-ridden country. Anand Gopals fascinating book, No Good Men Among the Living: The Taliban and the War through Afghan Eyes captures beautifully the follies America committed, often putting faith in wrong and corrupt warlords and how it missed opportunities when several senior Taliban leaders were willing to surrender. This is perhaps one of the most critical phases in transition of Afghanistan. With foreign aid gradually drying up, the country needs to learn to stand on its own, and maintain its security. Of course they would still need long-term financial, logistic and security support, but the country needs to manage the driving seat on its own. In October there is a crucial Brussels Conference on Afghanistan where about 70 countries and international organisations will attend the summit and will renew their pledges to Kabul. Long way to peace? With all its faults, the NUG appears to be the best bet with a former academician and author of Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World leading the country. He has taken some commendable measures on economic front, and has a vision to make Afghanistan a "roundabout" in the "Heart of Asia" connecting west, south and central Asia for trade and commerce as it used to be. The Istanbul Process or "Heart of Asia" conference, initiated in 2011 in Turkey, aims at exactly that. After last years fifth ministerial level conference in Islamabad, the April 26 secretary level talks hence assumes greater significance as this may never be possible unless regional players and international community stop playing strategic games and cooperate for sustained peace and stability. The biggest test for the current government in Kabul remains fighting corruption and convincing all armed groups to come to the negotiating table. In this it needs the support of the foreign players, most importantly, the USA and China who could force Pakistan to stop playing double games with Taliban. Besides, within the country, political leaders as well as the Parliament must not indulge in petty politics at such a crucial juncture. While acting united to put pressure on Taliban for negotiation, Afghan politicians must not let the country slide into chaos. Karzai, as former president, too must shun political ambition and should act as a peace broker rather than another power centre. The vibrant civil society that has emerged in the last one decade too must realise that without a stable state, they cannot really function. Hence, instead of confronting the already fragile government, they too need to play a more constructive role. NUG too must also act in the larger interests of the nation and respect the terms of the agreement. The political deficit within the country is a big concern and to effectively tackle it, the government needs to be more accountable and effective. Ghani and Abdullah may have divergent views on everything else, but they agree on one thing: to continue the coalition government. When TS Thakur, the honourable chief justice of India, broke down in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a conference on Sunday (April 24) in New Delhi, it was a sign of the desperate state that our judiciary finds itself in. It is quite difficult to believe that there is a backlog of three crore cases in India. Three crore is more than the population of Australia or more than the population of Netherlands and Cuba put together! We need some drastic measures that can clear this mind-boggling backlog. Certain things that could be considered... 1. A ten-year plan to increase the strength of the judiciary five-fold India has just 13 judges per million of its population. That's a very low number, while most developed countries have 50 and some even more than 100. What this means is that the first thing the government has to do is increase the number of judges. What stops the government from launching a ten-year plan that will ensure five times more judges than we have now? Expand the Supreme Court with the best high court judges. Expand the high courts with the best sessions court judges. Expand the sessions courts with the best lawyers. Increase the number of national law schools to get even more lawyers into the system. Raise the number of private law colleges and get in foreign legal firms if necessary. We need to fast-track the filling up of vacancies at every level: law students, lawyers, magistrates and judges. 2. Keep courts open 365 days a year You can't do this right now because there is a severe shortage of judges. But it should be a long-term goal. We are still caught in the pre-liberalisation era where it was okay to shut offices after sunset and have skeleton services on weekends. Why can't the Supreme Court have special benches across India so that the poorer citizens can have greater access? Today the Indian citizen is active 24X7 and many services are open round the clock, round the year. Why can't we do the same with the judiciary? Why can't the courts be open 365 days a year like many other services? We should also have a special "night shift magistrate" in every town that can handle emergency cases and not have people waiting till the courts open. We need out of the box solutions to escape from the mess we are in. Instead of having a "lady justice" who is blindfolded, it is better to have one with her eyes open and arms free 24 hours a day. 3. A committee to counter stalling tactics Shortage of judges is one problem, but the way certain lawyers stall cases is another. Someone is absent. Dates are missed. Medical emergencies crop up. There is some problem with paperwork. And so on and so forth.There is no great mystery in this and any average judge can tell you the modus operandi. It is time this "open secret" was addressed head on. Have a committee of retired judges to find out the problems that lead to the stalling of cases, their remedies and go ahead and implement them. 4. Fast track and "direct to Supreme Court" cases There are some cases you know will go through the circuitous route of the sessions court, high court, Supreme Court and the presidential appeal process. This could take decades. Why waste so many court hours and get so many judges to look into the matter? For instance, the case involving 26/11 Mumbai attacks convict Ajmal Kasab. The Arushi-Hemraj double murder case. The Salman Khan hit-and-run case. There are certain cases which are destined to be high profile, high pressure and waste everyone's time. Such cases should be identified and sent straight to a fast track court. After that the appeal should go straight to the Supreme Court. The sessions court and high court can be totally bypassed. There are many ordinary citizens who are satisfied with a sessions court and can go no further. They should have greater priority over the high profile cases which in any case end up disregarding both the sessions court and high court to end up in the Supreme Court. Also, why can't the Supreme Court have special benches across India so that the poorer citizens can have greater access? Why does everyone have to go to Delhi for the final appeal? That also wastes a lot of time. 5. Modernisation of courts This is also important. When everything is being modernised, why should the courts be left far behind? Our courts should be fully digitised and technical experts should be brought in to streamline the whole process right from when a person files a case, to updating it, to the final verdict. We can even have a group of editors to condense all verdicts and not be bogged down by long, rambling final judgments. What if our judges wore a military uniform? Would that increase efficiency? Desperate times call for desperate measures. 6. Overhaul of archaic laws When we got independence in 1947, we retained a lot of archaic laws which made little sense then and make even littler sense now. Some laws which may have made sense then do not now. We have to do a major overhaul of "de-Britishising" of the system. For example, we have Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that criminalises homosexuality. The number of gays in India is now very high as compared to 1947, but how many convictions do you hear about? Hardly any. It is used more as a tool of harassment. Why have such things? Britain came out with the Sexual Offences Act 1967 that ended up decriminalising homosexuality. And here we are clinging on to a British relic even in 2016. Time to let go of all these British relics. 7. Treat judicial appointments like any other government post The citizens of India elect MPs and MLAs to represent them. The MPs and MLAs of the party/coalition that has a majority in the legislature forms the government. Elected governments appoint senior officials. But in the case of the judiciary, judges appoint themselves. Where in the world does that happen? The US president is free to appoint anyone to the US Supreme Court. Such a system has served the US well. There are many vacancies which are currently left unfilled in India as a result of the executive-judiciary tussle. There is need to treat judicial appointments like those to any other government post and ensure that vacancies in the judiciary is filled promptly. 8. Non-acceptance of flippant cases If you are a powerful citizen with a lawyer with good connections, then you can get any kind of cases admitted in court, which may, however, be thrown out at a later stage leading to a lot of time being wasted. There should be clear guidelines issued to all judges on not accepting flippant cases. Postscript Dr Bhagawan Singh Gyani (Preetam) who had become the president and commissioner of the Revolutionary Ghadar Party had described Rashbehari Bose as follows: Revolutionary individuals are rare and of the following categories: There are those who rebel against conditions and environments personal, social, economic and natural. They complain, whine and grumble and even occasionally protest, refusing to go along with the established order. Under pressure, however, they will compromise, give up the struggle, submit and follow the crowd. There are revolutionaries who are made of sterner staff. They are ready and willing to suffer and sacrifice whether for an ideal, for the country or a deep conviction. They seldom, if ever, are discouraged and usually work alone or in small circles. There are revolutionaries who are sages in their perceptions and scientific in their attitude and genius in organising. They construct a clear pattern of a new nation, they possess a unique capacity for fashioning a social order, step by step, as they go along. They work together, coordinate their plans and benefit from each others association. They learn in the light of their own mistakes and particularly by the mistakes of others, and they do not hesitate to alter or modify their plans if by so doing they may realise their objective with dignity, efficiency and ease. They possess a volatile personality, adaptable to any condition and always move ahead in spite of obstacles. Our Shri Rash Behari Basu belonged to this (the third) category of revolutionists. (Two Rebels Meet, Dr Bhagawan Singh Gyani (Pritam) p. 515, [10]) Rashbehari Bose with his wife in Japan. We have spoken of Rashbehari Bose, the fierce, the unyielding revolutionary in our previous articles [4], [13]. Here, we describe the statesman in him. After his revolutionary attempts from India and East Asia failed, he bid his time for the earliest opportunity. In this piece we describe how he used his sojourn in Japan to spread the message of civilisational India, communicate the pain of her slavery, her exploitation by a foreign nation and raise awareness of the ongoing freedom struggle. In the sequel, we describe how he tirelessly built up contacts among the highest echelon in Japan, kept himself abreast of the developments in India, continuously organised and assisted the Indians living in Japan, particularly the students and freedom fighters who took refuge there, and sought to inform India about Japan so as to initiate an alliance when the time is ripe. He also championed the cause of Asian solidarity, partly out of conviction, partly because of its potential to bind the two ancient civilisations with a common sense of belonging. He prepared as best as he could for the coming events, including attempting to anticipate the events to occur in India and elsewhere, so that the country would be best poised to strike to win freedom from the British. He therefore acted as Indias unofficial ambassador in every capacity. It is these non-military activities, engaged in in a period spanning over two decades in Japan that provided the foundations for his last onslaught the Indian National Army. Vallabhbhai Patel had once publicly undermined revolutionaries (the naval mutineers in particular) as a bunch of young hotheads messing with things they had no business in pp. 134-135, [14]. Even worse, acclaimed political commentators had abused revolutionaries as idiots. Revolutionary Sachindranath Sanyal has written: And among these critics those who are extremely knowledgeable and cautious they do not hesitate to call these revolutionaries as idiots. The wise editor of the established monthly periodical Modern Review of India had said in reference to the revolutionaries if there are even some Indians who are armed revolutionaries, then Indians would surely need to doubt their wisdom and intellect pp. 167-169, [9]. Far from what such cynics believed, the revolutionaries who had lived long enough had showed themselves to be capable of outstanding statesmanship and possessing of superlative intellectual abilities. The multi-dimensional personality of Rashbehari, as borne out by this article and its sequel, is a case in point. Section A: The propaganda war A subjugated nation needs to fight its freedom struggle on multiple fronts, one of which is enlisting support for its cause in foreign land, and thereby build international pressure on the occupier forcing it to reduce its repressive actions. On June 10, 1933, Subhas Chandra Bose had articulated the need for propaganda as follows: Thanks to British propaganda, India has been portrayed before the world as a country full of internal conflicts in which peace has been preserved by the might of England. India certainly had her internal conflicts in the past, as every other country has. But these conflicts were solved by the people themselves. That is why Indian history from the most ancient times abounds in instances of mighty empires like that of Asoka the Great, under the aegis of which peace and prosperity reigned throughout the land. But the conflicts of today are permanent in character and they are artificially engineered by the agents of the third party in our country. And I have no doubt in my mind that real unity among the Indian people can never be achieved as long as British Rule exists in India. Though we cannot expect anything from any political party in England, it is exceedingly important and necessary for our purpose that we should organise international propaganda on behalf of India. This propaganda must be both positive and negative, on the negative side we must refute the lies that are told about India consciously or unconsciously by the agents of Great Britain throughout the world. On the positive side we must bring to the notice of the world the rich culture of India in all its aspects as well as India's manifold grievances. It goes without saying that London must be an important centre for this international propaganda. It is to be regretted that till quite recently the Indian National Congress did not realise the value and the necessity of international propaganda. But we now hope that our countrymen in the days to come will realise in an increasing degree the value of international propaganda. There is probably nothing which I admire so much about the Britisher as his skill in propaganda. A Britisher is a born propagandist, and to him propaganda is more powerful than howitzers. There is one other country in Europe which has learnt this lesson from and that is Russia. And it is not surprising that Britain dislikes Russia and is even afraid of her for having discovered the secret of her (Britains) success. There is so much of hostile propaganda carried on in this world against India by British agents that if only we could state the real condition of India and her grievances against Britain, we would at once get a large measure of international sympathy. I will now mention some of the points in connection with which active propaganda is necessary throughout the world: (1) Ill-treatment of political prisoners in India and the transportation of long-term political prisoners to the unhealthy Andaman Islands, where recently two of them have died as a result of hunger strike. (2) Extreme vindictiveness displayed by the Government in the matter of issuing passports to Indians. (It is not known outside India that innumerable Indians have been refused passports for going out of India, while Indians living abroad have been refused passports for returning to India.) (3) The systematic practice of aeroplane bombing in India, particularly in the North-Western Frontier, for terrorising helpless villagers. (4) The strangling of India's indigenous Industries; including the shipbuilding industry; by Great Britain during her rule in India. (5) The popular and widespread opposition in India to any scheme of Imperial Preference, including the Ottawa Pact. (The world should be informed that India never accepted the Ottawa Pact, but that it was forced down our unwilling throats). (6) The popular opposition in India to any proposal for a tariff truce, since India urgently wants protection for her infant industries. (7) The fixing of the exchange rate arbitrarily by England in a manner that is prejudicial to India's interests. The world should know how Great Britain has robbed India of crores of rupees merely through the manipulation of the exchange rate. (8) Further, the world should be told that Great Britain has saddled India with a heavy public debt for which Indian nationalists refuse to accept any responsibility. As early as in 1922 the Indian National Congress at its Gaya session gave notice to the Government that it would refuse to accept any responsibility for this public debt. It is a matter of common knowledge that the debt was incurred not for India's benefit, but for the interests of British imperialists. pp. 257-259, [16]. Subhas Bose had wished to set up unofficial embassies throughout the world, utilising the legacy of Vittalbhai Patel p. 36 [15], worth more than 1,00,000 rupees bequeathed to Subhas Bose for national work p. 304 [3]. Patel was one of the few Indian political leaders who was interested in foreign propaganda p. 365 [3]. Sachindranath Sanyal had written: The leadership of India has not understood even today the benefits of spreading awareness about India in Europe and USA, because if they did they would surely have paid attention to it. In this manner, to secure their interests, how much money the English spent in propaganda, this our political leadership has not yet observed, for this reason whenever some Indians publicize abroad that India wanted to be free, then the leadership of India sing paeans to the virtue of British rule p. 145, [9]. *** Section A: Rashbeharis positive and negative propaganda in Japan Unknown to Subhas Bose and possibly Sanyal, the other Bose had embarked on the path of propaganda on behalf of India about eighteen years back. Rashbehari Bose had conducted both positive and negative propaganda, focusing on both the cultural contributions of India to the world and political repression in and economic exploitation of India by the British. Rashbehari had arrived in Japan in June, 1915, and on November 27, 1915, he organised a meeting at the famous Seiyoken hotel at Ueno Park, Tokyo p. 6, [8] p. 550, [10], which was attended by large parts of Japanese gentry (top ranking politicians, editors, writers, public men) p. 550, [10]. Georges Ohsawa has written about the meeting: The address of Lala Lajpat Rai moved all the Japanese invited. Every speaker attacked violently English cruelty in India, p. 6, [8], which constitutes negative propaganda. Sabarwal has written: The late Hugh Byas, an Englishman, who was then the editor of the American owned Japanese Advertisor, compared Lalajee to Lloyd George as an orator and a statesman in his report of that function which appeared in his paper next morning p. 550, [10]. The conference was so effective that we learn from Ohsawa: Alarmed by this news (of the banquet and speeches) the British embassy requested the Foreign Minister of Japan for the deportation of all Indian revolutionaries in Japan. ..The next morning Lala Lajpat Rai escaped to the U.S.A. Bose and Gupta were summoned to the police station and handed over a deportation order. They must go out of the country within five days pp. 6-7, [8]. Rashbehari went into hiding in Japan to escape deportation, and the order was subsequently rescinded, thanks to sustained efforts of the eminent Japanese [4]. Rashbehari attended conferences all over Japan, stressing the old ties between India and Japan, the Indian culture, the India life, the British cruelty and the union of all Asiatics. He also periodically travelled to Korea, eg, in 1934, influencing the cultural and intellectual circles there p. 33, [8]. Zen-ichi Suzuki has described the impact of Rashbeharis speeches as follows: Frequently I gave lectures at the same stage along with Mr Bose. At that time Mr Bose delivered a fervent speech with tearful eyes, by which all Japanese audiences were charmed p. 48, [10]. He became widely known as Sensai (meaning teacher, In Japanese) to his Indian followers and admirers, and to most Japanese who had given him this popular title (SA Iyer, p. 443 [10]). A prince of the imperial family of Japan had attended a lecture by Rashbehari Bose in 1923. In Rashbeharis own words, In 1923 I was invited by the commanding officer of that regiment to deliver a lecture on India and at that time I had the honour of making the acquaintance of His Highness (Prince Chichibu, second son of the Emperor who passed away in 1926), who came forward and shook hands with me and heard with rapt attention what I said about the present condition of India [7]. Rashbehari wrote extensively in Japan, mostly in Japanese, but also in English and Bengali (only a few). The books he wrote in Japanese are 1) Panoramic Views of Asian Revolution (1929), 2) Wits and Humours of India (1930), 3) India Oppressed (1933), 4) Stories of Indian People (1935), 5) India in Revolution (1935), 6) Victories of Young Asia (1937), 7) India Crying (1938), 8) Bhagavata Gita (1940), 9) Tragic History of India (1942), 10) Speaking on India (1942), 11) Dawn of Independent India (1942), 12) Struggle for Independence (1942), 13) Ramayana (1942), 14) Translation of Rabindranaths Sesher Kabita, The Last Song (1943), 15) India of Indians (1943), 16) Bose appeals (1944) p. 34, [8]. We could not access the contents of these as they have not been translated. From the names, it appears that 2), 4), 8), 13) 14) would be positive propaganda, while 3), 5), 7) 9) 12) would be negative propaganda. Rashbehari is also known to be closely associated with the Asian Review magazine, which started in February, 1920. Many articles had appeared in Asian Review on India until 1921, November, including the English translation of Sagar-Sangeet, a poem written by CR Das, articles on Motilal Roy (with his picture) and his ashram, on Rabindranath, on major political events of India (and the world). They were likely penned by Rashbehari who preferred to remain anonymous as he was not naturalised in Japan then. Most of these have not been translated to English or any Indian language yet. (Introduction, [5]). Rashbehari had also arranged for the translation of Subhas Boses book The Indian Struggle to Japanese p. 257, [1]. We enumerate other instances of positive and negative propaganda next. Section B: Positive propaganda Rev Nikki Kimura, who had worked as a lecturer on the topic of Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist history for about 15 years in Calcutta University, starting from 1915, appointed by Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, had written about Rashbehari: He endeavored to introduce to us stories of India, or Indian religions and political news of India. Particularly he paid keen attention to the movements of Mr Gandhi and introduced to us his famous books. Also he introduced to Japan Indian ancient cultures p. 11, [10]. Rashbeharis former pupil and life-long associate, Mr Zen-ichi Suzuki, the director of Shin-Nihon Kyogi-Kai, Tokyo, has described Rashbeharis contributions on raising awareness about India in Japan as follows: Several hundred thousands or several millions of Japanese people are well acquainted with the name of Rashbehari Bose and they feel sympathy for him. Even now, many Japanese would call to their minds the name of Rashbehari Bose against the words of Indian independence movement. It will not be too much to say that Mr Rashbehari Bose is only one person among Indians, excepting Buddha, who gave to Japanese deep impressions and acquired the public sympathy p. 48, [10]. On July 9, 1922, Rashbehari had written to Sachindranath Sanyal from Tokyo as follows: When I came here first, the Japanese had little knowledge in the state of affairs in India. It is chiefly through our efforts and sacrifices that today every Japanese is closely following the trend of event in India. I have got many Japanese friends, from the cabinet ministers down to lawyers, MPs, journalists and students. Many books in Japanese about Gandhi and Indian movements have been published, and the papers and magazines are regularly carrying articles on India. This month a professor in the Tokyo Imperial University, published a voluminous book in Japanese on India. Next month I am engaged to deliver lectures on Indian situation for three daysToday most of the young men here are staunch advocates of Asian independence. Even older men and responsible officials are in sympathy with the new awakening noticed from Persia to China pp. 132-133 [9]. Section B.1: Encomiums on Indian leaders Rashbeharis positive propaganda also included encomiums on contemporary Indians even when he did not share their worldview. This is again consistent with what an ambassador does, seeks to represent his country in a manner that would enhance its image the most in a foreign land, regardless of his individual opinions on the issues. He was for example nothing but laudatory on his public postures on Mohandas Gandhi, regardless of serious ideological differences with the latter. On August 22, 1922, he wrote in The Standard Bearer on the non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhi: Finding themselves unable to remain under the rule of Whites long, Gandhi and his followers made their appearance in India. Gandhi was arrested by the British authorities and thrown into prison, but the ideas that he has implanted deeply in Indian mind cannot be so easily removed. The Indians to the number of 300,000,000, who are in sympathy with the ideas of Gandhi, are determined not to stop their movement until independence is attained p. 359, [10]. As president of the Indian Independence League, he issued the following statement on Gandhi in the occasion of Gandhis successful termination of Poona fast in September, 1932: Indians all over the world are overwhelmed with joy at the news from Poona this morning that Mahatma Gandhi has successfully concluded the three weeks fast which he had imposed upon himself as a protest against the British reign of terror in India. Three weeks ago when Mahatma Gandhi began this penance to rouse the conscience of the world against the British oppressors of India, he declared that he desired to survive the ordeal. At his advanced age, and with his health considerably impaired by six months of prison life, Mahatma Gandhijis move was a source of grave concern to the Indian people and their friends all over the world, and even the doctors who attended on him expressed serious doubts as to whether he could survive. But survive he did, and in the most triumphant fashion, thanks to the formidable spiritual force within that frail form, and the Divine grace of Almighty God. I consider the miraculous triumph of Mahatma Gandhi and the devastating blow he inflicted on British power in India in the past three weeks, as an unmistakable message of victory to the Indian people a message of victory in Indias battle for independence. For nearly seven months, Indian nationalists all over the country have been waging a relentless war against the British. True to the spirit of Mahatma Gandhis ideals, Indian patriots fought the British with clean weapons and on a nobler plan of combat. India met Britains ungodliness with godliness; India met Britains untruth with truth; India met Britains cunning and craft by frankness and simplicity; India met Britains terrorism and frightfulness by bravery and patient suffering. Indian nationalists exposed to the world the sheer brute force, which is the basis of British rule in India. Unarmed India defied the organised violence of the British and is still defying the British. From behind the British prison walls at Poona, Mahatma Gandhis heart bled for his four hundred million compatriots helpless victims of the ruthless campaign of murder and loot launched by the bloodthirsty British. And, on February 10, Mahatmaji resorted to the only weapon at his disposal, as a prisoner of the British, to register his protest against British barbarism. While India and the world counted the hours and days, anxiously awaiting the news of Mahatma Gandhis condition, the heartless British remained unmoved. While India and the world hoped and prayed for Gandhis survival, the callous British hoped and prayed for Gandhijis death. While the entire right-thinking world expressed its sympathy for Mahatma Gandhi and Indias cause and the British prepared to group for the murder of Gandhiji and the destruction of Indian National Congress. The British Viceroy turned down with contempt the demand of the Indian nation for the release of Mahatma Gandhi; the British Viceroy even went to the extent of dismissing three influential Indians whose names he exploited in the most unscrupulous manner when these Indians pressed the Viceroy to save Gandhijis precious life. But Gandhiji has survived the fast; and the British Viceroy and his accomplices in the crimes against India, have been disappointed. Mahatma Gandhis triumphal emergence from this fast is not only a victory for the spiritual force which inspires Gandhiji; it is a victory for India; it is a victory for Indias cause and righteousness. It is a victory that should stimulate the confidence of the Indian people in the greater triumph against the evil force of British imperialism that is now imminent. It is a victory that should spur the Indian nation to the supreme sacrifice in the fulfilment of Mahatma Gandhis lifes mission. I consider this day of successful termination of Mahatma Gandhis fast as an important milestone in the victorious progress of Indias battle for independence. On this auspicious day, the day on which our revered leader, Mahatma Gandhi, has scored a signal victory over the British enemies of India, I would like to express my grateful appreciation of the kind sentiments of all friends of India in the hour of crisis that the Indian people have just overcome. To the mighty Axis powers and their Allies, who support the Indian Nation in its fight against the common Anglo-American enemies, I wish to express the heartfelt gratitude of Indians at home and abroad. And to the great Japanese nation that has pledged all-out assistance to India in her battle for independence, I, on behalf of Indians of East Asia, convey Indias debt of gratitude to the Japanese government and the invincible armed forces of the Nippon, and reaffirm the determination of the Indian people to fight shoulder to shoulder with their Japanese brethren until Anglo-American power in Asia is annihilated. In the past three weeks of Indias trials and tribulations, in the period of anxiety and suspense just over, the words of sympathy and reassurance of aid to India by responsible spokesmen of the Japanese Government and Nation, have been a source of immense gratification and encouragement to the Indian people. On this day of Gandhijis triumph against the British enemies of India, I would urge my compatriots, at home as well as abroad, to plunge themselves wholeheartedly into this final battle for Indias independence and to achieve the lifes mission of our revered leader, Mahatma Gandhi. To them, I would stress once again that the odds are in our favour. The British in India have just suffered a grave defeat and the Indian Nation has just won a spiritual victory over the British enemy. This is our opportunity to strike the final blow. Let us unite, let us have faith in ourselves and let us be ready for the supreme sacrifice. That was Gandhijis message to India; it was to send out this message that Gandhiji offered to sacrifice his life. Let every Indian respond to Mahatma Gandhis call. Let every Indian soldiers, officials, workers and peasants let every Indian rise against the British and wipe out the last trace of that satanic regime which was determined to murder Mahatma Gandhi and to crush the Indian nation. Almighty God has willed that India must be free; Almighty God has willed that Mahatma Gandhi should live to lead a free India pp. 215-218 [10]. The question that naturally arises is how much of Rashbeharis adulation for Gandhi is sincere, and how much is a public posture. It is important to bear in mind that Rashbeharis chosen path to freedom had substantially diverged from the almost dogmatic insistence of Gandhi that India attains her freedom through non-violence. To be specific, Gandhi was not rigid on non-violence per se, but only on that the Hindus must not resort to violence against any aggressor. Gandhi had campaigned to recruit Indians to fight for British during the First World War, while Rashbehari was in contrast seeking to overthrow the British through an armed rebellion. Gandhi had also extended his support to the Khilafat movement of pan-Islamists of India with the full knowledge that it was not tied to non-violence. In contrast, Rashbehari had started his political life as a revolutionary. He had never denounced violence as an illegitimate means towards freedom. With the objective of calling for an armed revolution in India, Rashbehari had formed the Indian Independence League (IIL) in Japan in 1924, and became its founder president p. 561, [10]. We learn from Nedyam Raghavan, who had closely interacted with him in 1942: As to our leaders, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and others, he (Rash Behari) displayed great respect and regard. He seemed to feel, however that being within India their fight for freedom had necessarily to be limited and circumscribed. He was, I am sorry to say, no believer in non-violence, and on more occasions than one he reiterated his conviction that violence and non-violence should go hand in hand in the liberation of our country. To him, both were legitimate means to achieve a legitimate end p. 438, [10]. Raghavan here is commenting on Rashbeharis display of respect and regard for Gandhi and Nehru, but also pointing out that Rashbehari felt that their fight for freedom was limited, and testifying to Rashbeharis conviction as to the necessity of violence. The INA would declare war on Britain and America under the leadership of his successor, Subhas Chandra Bose. Rashbehari became much more unequivocal about his ideology in a letter that he had written to Subhas Bose on January 25, 1938 who he possibly perceived to have shared his ideological persuasion. In the letter that was not meant for public consumption, he articulated his conviction that India could only be emancipated through might, and not through education nor sanitation. Note that Gandhi had strongly championed social work by Congress members leading to diversion of manpower and other material resources from the freedom struggle, and had himself observed multiple fasts against untouchability. He went on to ridicule the fetish for non-violence expressed through self-deceiving sanctimonious phrases one can not but conclude that in that letter he was castigating all that Gandhi stood for (emancipation through non-violence, social work involving sanitation etc). Ironically, the letter never made it to Subhas Bose, as it was intercepted by British intelligence pp. 253-257, [1]: It is of course possible to admire an individual while disagreeing with his views in part, but the disagreement in this case was fundamental. So at least part of Rashbeharis public deification of Gandhi was public posturing directed towards promoting Indias image abroad. Gandhis movements had received tremendous international media coverage, mostly through some generous covert assistance provided by the British [8], and the coverage bestowed on him a saintly aura leading to popularity among the masses. For instance, we learn from Rashbeharis communication to the Standard Bearer on January 23, 1923, of the following report on Gandhi that appeared in the Japanese managed The Osaka Mainichi: Although poles apart from one another in their characters, Gandhi, Kemal and Mussolini belong to the same category of men, who have suddenly risen to fame and power, in the post-war history of the modern world. Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian national independence movement, is now in prison on the charge of sedition, but he carries with him the whole nation of India. Kemal Pasha, the Turkish Napoleon, is holding the destiny of his country in the grip of his fingers. Signor Mussolini, the leader of the Fascist Party, is wielding such power that by the indefinite adjournment of the Parliament, he has practically been made the dictator of Italy. By far the most significant personality among the three national heroes is Mahatma Gandhi, in the sense that he is not only a political leader, but a spiritual apostle, whose doctrine of non-resistance and non-violence the whole people of India are accepting like sheep following the shepherd. While the two other heroes have obtained power by means of force and military prowess, Indian hero, almost against his will, has done so by means of the spiritual force of his wonderful personality. At any rate the rise of these three leaders in their respective countries shows that the world is, after all, a place where hero-worship never ceases to exist pp. 374-375 [10]. Rashbehari acted as a force multiplier on publicity for Gandhi realising that owing to Gandhis connection with Indias freedom movement his popularity would bring to the forefront the cause of Indias freedom, as also mobilise the Indians of East Asia towards the freedom movement. Rashbehari wrote a biographical article on Veer Savarkar in March and April 1939 issues of Japanese Magazine Dai Ajia Shugi (Greater Asianism) to commemorate his release from British captivity in 1937. He quoted national leaders like Rajagopalachari, Subhas Bose, MN Roy to show how Savarkars release was welcomed across the spectrum, and summarised their views as: If I put together views of influential persons on Savarkar as mentioned above, Savarkar is heroism, valor, adventure, and epitome of patriotism. To praise him is to praise the spirit of sacrifice. He is the one who always kept the fire of Indias freedom burning; he is a patriot who risked his life for the freedom of India in the early 20th century and is a founder exponent of the doctrine of cultural independence in the current times. Rashbehari subsequently provided a biographical sketch of Savarkar, and went on to summarise his views on Hindu nationalism and the import of military: 1) It does not make sense to take all Indian as one. In Turkey, Turkish are nationals. In India, Hindus are nationals, and who believe in other religions are minorities. He (Savarkar) defined Hindus as those who have faith in the area around the Indus River. 2) Like it or not, army is necessary. The nations gain respect with guns. Peace without guns does not exist. We need to use international help for us. Independence is much more important than ideology. First we need to be strong to be independent. It is not important whether Japan which conquers China is right or wrong. The world takes care of its own countries. You must not count on help from any other country. He concluded the article by saying If you agree with Savarkar, you will have political power, and he has a strong position in the Indian independence movement [11]. (The original article in Japanese and its translation in Sanskrit was shared with us by Ranjit Savarkar, Chairman of Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak.) *** Section B.2: Popularising Indian cuisine in Japan In the 1920s, Rashbehari became an executive in the Nakamurya bakery owned by his father in law p. 59, [10], [2], introduced Indian-style curry Indo Karii there p. 6, [2], and set up a supply-chain for receiving the ingredients [6]. As Russel and Cohn have observed, Though more expensive than the usual curry, it became quite popular, with Rashbehari becoming known as Bose of Nakamurya. It is still one of the most popular curry restaurants in Tokyo p. 6, [12]. Japanese residents have written blogs about the Indo karii of Shinjuku Nakamuraya as late as 2011; the dish was served there at least until then [2]. Nakamurayas website apparently carried pictures of Rashbehari and Toshiko, wearing a saree, draped Bengali style [6]. Section C: Negative propaganda Rashbehari had exposed the economic exploitation of India in the following article titled India: A Blood Bank: Blood banks are the rage in India, at any rate with the British authorities. That is nothing surprising. The British are experts in creating blood banks all over the world and using the life-blood of other nations to transfuse new blood into the economic life of their island country. Only lately have the British started opening blood banks in India for the transfusion of blood into the victims of air raids etc. in times of emergency. But, for two hundred years, the entire sub-continent of India has been serving as one colossal blood bank for the forty million British, five thousand miles away. Before the advent of the British, India was the richest country in the world. To-day, Indias four hundred millions have been reduced to living skeletons, to famine and poverty, pestilence and starvation under the benign British rule. The British vampires have sucked the life-blood of India to rejuvenate themselves and, even after two centuries of this deadly blood-sucking, the British are still determined not to let go their deadly grip on Indias throat. Wholesale pillage was the normal business of the British East India Company in India. Loot of all visible wealth and the systematic destruction of Indian industries likely to compete with the British commercial ventures were the common devices of the British to bleed India white. After establishing themselves as the bandit rulers of the country, the British in India took on the mantle of respectability but still carried on the pillage. They continued their exploitation of India by more refined but nevertheless ruthless methods. This new phase of British exploitation of India took the subtle form of special commercial privileges, monopoly of capital industries, discriminative duties, and the throttling of Indian industries and shipping and coastal traffic. Besides all these there are even to-day payments to the British Treasury for naval defence, payments to the British army of occupation in India and the consequent obligation for enormous pensions payable to British civil and military servants. That is not all. There is the arbitrary exchange fixed between the pound and the rupee. Under this head alone, India loses two pence on every rupee remitted to England as capital of saving or in pensions or salaries. By these means, the British vampires are sucking the blood of India, just as unscrupulously though not so barefacedly as did the agents of the East India Company who plundered India wholesale. The British know that this blood-sucking is soon coming to an end. They are therefore intensifying their nefarious endeavours to extinguish Indias economic life altogether. That is why the British recently misappropriated 199 million pounds of Indias funds kept with England on trust. And the British have threatened to drain 60 million pounds more of Indian money before the end of the month. Not content with all these, the British vampires have been plundering the starving Indian peasants for well over three months by extorting the so-called `collective fines. In the first three months of the Indian revolution, the British have plundered Indian villagers to the tune of one crore forty-five lakhs of rupees (14.5 million rupees). The British have thus mercilessly created for themselves the biggest blood bank in the world in India, where four hundred million human beings are made to bleed so that forty million Britishers may roll in luxury and dominate the rest of the world as well. But these four hundred million Indians ought to be thankful now for small British mercies! The British have generously come forward to open slam blood banks in odd corners of India, of course with the blood that able-bodied Indians would provide, and most likely for transfusion to British victims of air raids and other incidents of war pp. 210-212, [10]. Rashbehari had exposed the political hypocrisy and racial discrimination of the British in a scathing article titled India Rules Herself, again during the Second World War: The hypocritical British imperialists and their Indian dupes move heaven and earth to convince Indian patriots that Britain means to give complete independence to India after the war, of course. The British freely promise also virtual independence immediately. They are so sincere about this offer that they cannot understand the unwisdom of Indian leaders who spurn such a generous offer, of course with the contempt it deserves. As proof of their sincerity, the British and their dupes point to the many ways in which the British treat India as an independent country. At least once a week, the British authorities, from the Secretary of State for India down to the Governor of a petty little province in India, point to the eleven Indian members of the British Viceroys Executive Council as against only three British members. So Indians are asked to believe that after all India is being governed by Indians. On the surface, this argument is quite convincing indeed. But, scratch that surface, and you see the British hypocrisy underlying it. Quite true, eleven Indian members against three British is an overwhelming majority for Indians and the Indians must be controlling the Government of the country. Is that not virtually independence? ask the British hypocrites. But the vital question is: What can these poor, misguided eleven Indian renegades do against the wish of the autocratic British Viceroy and the three British members who control the defence, the finances and transportation of the country? The British Viceroy still has enough powers to ignore the existence of the eleven Indian members of his Council on all vital issues. In the name of defence in war-time, the British commander-in-chief can and does control everything from the armed forces down to the sale of the salt, sugar and kerosene, the barest necessities of the poorest villager; and he can control everybody except the Viceroy. In the name of war-time economy, the British finance member can and does control every cent of the income and expenditure of the entire country. All his eleven Indian colleagues, including Sir Feroze Khan Noon, the much-boosted first Indian Defence Member, have to go to their British colleagues with a begging bowl in hand for every cent they want for their Departments. The so-called Indian Defence Member has nothing to defend except his own cosy job and Rs. 6000 monthly salary; in his spare time he can defend the tyrannical rule of his British masters who have given him the cosy job and Rs. 6000 salary. The real defence of India is solely vested in the British commander-in-chief. So much for the hypocritical British claim that India is now ruled by Indians. How could you expect the greedy British to part with even an iota of real power to Indians? They are in India as its rulers and exploiters, and they mean to stay in India as rulers and exploiters, that is, until Indians themselves drive the British out of India. The British will never trust Indians with important positions for fear that one day their domination of India may be jeopardised. Meanwhile, they will go on trying to fool Indians and the world with their hypocritical talk of Indians governing their own country. Do you want any more proof of this British hypocrisy? Here is the latest. The British Viceroy has appointed a Committee to enquire into the working of the Postal and Telegraphic arrangements for the Defence Services. But, who is to be the Chairman of this committee? An Indian? Oh, Lord, no. Not by any chance. How could you expect the liberal British who have already given virtual independence to India, how could you expect these generous British to give more independence to Indians, how could you expect them to trust an Indian with a job that is even remotely connected with the defence of his own country? No, that is too much to expect of the hypocritical British. Have not the British already appointed an Indian, Sir Feroz Khan Noon, as Defence Member, although he is only allowed to inspect barracks and look after military hospitals? Even the job of enquiring into the postal and telegraphic arrangement for the defence services cannot be given to an Indian. It can only be given to a Britisher. So, it has been given to a Britisher, and to a retired official at that. India is governed by Indians, India is virtually independent, that is, if you are taken in by British hypocrisy. Bande Mataram pp. 212-214 [10]. References: [1] Subhas Chandra Bose, Congress President, Speeches, Articles, and Letters January 1938-May 1939, Collected Works of Netaji, Vol. 9, edited by Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugato Bose [3] Subhas Chandra Bose Indian Struggle [4] Saswati Sarkar, Jeck Joy, Shanmukh, Dikgaj Rashbehari Boses second war from East Asia battleground Japan and Singapore http://www.dailyo.in/politics/rashbehari-bose-sachindranath-sanyal-japan-revolutionary-china-indian-freedom-struggle-second-world-war/story/1/9745.html [5] Rash Beharir Atma-katha O dushprapya Rachana, edited by Amal Kumar Mitra [6] http://indianfoodreviews.blogspot.in/2013/11/curry-and-freedom-fighter-rash-behari.html?m=1 [7] Rashbehari Bose, Anachronistic Admiration, Standard Bearer, May 1927, Vol-1, No-1, Pages 55-57 [8] JG Ohsawa The Two Great Indians in Japan [9] Sachindranath Sanyal Bandi Jiban [10] Rashbehari Basu His Struggle for Indias Independence, Editor in chief, Radhanath Rath, Editor Sabitri Prasanna Chatterjee, Biplabi Mahanayak Rash Behari Basu Smarak Samiti [11] https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6910465149498857638#editor/target=post;postID=1825410271313671015;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname [12] Jesse Russel, Ronald Cohn: Rashbehari Bose [13] Jeck Joy, Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh, Dikgaj ``The legend of Rashbehari Bose and the forgotten Hindu-German conspiracy http://www.dailyo.in/politics/rashbehari-bose-hindu-muslim-riots-partition-1947-mahatma-gandhi-independence-hindu-german-conspiracy-ina/story/1/8230.html [14] BC Dutt Mutiny of the Innocents, Sindhu Publications Pvt Ltd, Bombay-1, 1971 [15] Subhas Bose, The Alternate Leadership, Speeches, Articles, Statements and Letters, June 1939-1941, Collected Works of Netaji, Vol. 10 GRIMSBY - England - In anticipation of Labour's return, rather prematurely, chavs have been taking to the streets once again. Chavs had their heyday from 1997 2010 and were championed by Labour, fulfilling the destiny of any Marxist entity that sub-humans can be up top too. It was an iconic time. Chavs would roam the High Streets of Britain smacking people in, vandalising everything, burning down OAPs houses and robbing the local chippy. As a social sub-class movement they were a force to be reckoned with, Professor Giles Malvern, at Cambridge university, told the Mirror. Cracks are already being felt in the governments taxpayer and Goldman Sachs funded campaign to keep Britain in a failing EU that has nothing much going for it. With Obama back in America licking his wounds after being savaged for his heavily scripted meddling speeches, and the EU being inundated with even more migrants crossing into the continent from Libya and Greece, the augurs do not bode well. Speaking today on the Andrew Marr show, the Home Secretary admitted that free movement makes it harder to control immigration and I understand why people are concerned about immigration. It has an effect on public services and jobs. Theresa Mays speech at the 2015 Conservative conference further reinforced the trepidation over mass unfettered immigration into the UK: Even if we could manage all the consequences of mass immigration, Britain does not need net migration in the hundreds of thousands every year The evidence from the OECD, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee and many academics shows that while there are benefits of selective and controlled immigration, at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero. So there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last decade. Neither is it true that, in the modern world, immigration is no longer possible to control The numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change. In 2015 the Home Secretary said that EU migrants should have to have a job offer to enter the UK, but David Camerons supposed renegotiation omitted this stipulation and all EU migrants who come to the UK can just say they are looking for work. Under EU law ECR I-745 it is illegal to refuse entry to anyone within the EU borders. Thousands of people are pouring into the EU borders daily. The primary routes are through Greece and Italy, however there are new routes opening up from Russia and the Black Sea. Once in the EU, they have the right to make their way into the UK when they become registered by the authorities within the European Union. Not only is the EU making it harder to deport dangerous criminals from the UK, but the head of Europol even admitted, Jihadists and dangerous terrorists are flowing into the continent and into the UK. More than a quarter of a million people came to the UK from the EU over the last twelve months a city the size of Newcastle which adds to the pressures on our NHS and other public services. The only way to take back control of our borders and have a fair immigration policy is to Vote Leave on 23 June. LONDON - England - In her speech today, the Home Secretary Theresa May has questioned whether it is right to allow Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey to join the EU. Theresa May argued that they were countries with poor populations and serious problems with organised crime, corruption, and sometimes even terrorism. We have to ask ourselves, is it really right that the EU should just continue to expand, conferring upon all new member states all the rights of membership? Vote Leaves Iain Duncan Smith agreed with the Home Secretary: The Home Secretary is right to warn of the dangers of countries like Albania and Turkey being allowed to join the European Union. If these countries are let into the EUs open border system it will only increase the pressure on our NHS, schools and housing. It will also vastly increase the risk of crime and terrorism on British streets. After the Home Secretarys powerful intervention, is the Prime Minister now going to make clear that the UK no longer supports their bid to join the EU? If he does not, will he make clear why he disagrees with his own Home Secretary? Following the Home Secretarys comments today there are key questions the Prime Minister must answer. Will the Prime Minister commit today to veto EU expansion to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey under all circumstances? Does the Prime Minister accept the Home Secretarys comment that it is a bad idea to welcome countries that have serious problems with organised crime, corruption, and sometimes even terrorism? Does the Government accept that giving 88 million persons the right to enter the UK will place a major burden on the NHS? Does the forecast of an extra 3 million net migrants by 2030 take into account future EU accessions? Michael Gove MP added a few words after the Home Secretarys admission: The EU response to the migration crisis is a Five Nations free-for-all with an invitation to Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Turkey to join the Union. Because we cannot control our borders and because our deal sadly does nothing to change this fact public services like the NHS will face an unquantifiable strain as millions more become EU citizens and have the right to move to the UK. We cannot guarantee the same access people currently enjoy to healthcare and housing if these trends continue. There is a direct and serious threat to our public services, standard of living and ability to maintain social solidarity if we accept continued membership of the EU. The telecom venture of RIL, however, launched services for its employees late December and later extended them to their families and friends, taking the overall consumer base to a little over 5 lakh. Reliance Jio, whose commercial launch has been inordinately delayed, on Friday denied any technical glitches behind the hold-up and said network optimisation is taking time as it wants to ensure a seamless and foolproof rollout with a couple of million users. At the last AGM, company Chairman Mukesh Ambani had said the commercial launch would happen by December, which was then postponed to March. The telecom venture of RIL, however, launched services for its employees late December and later extended them to their families and friends, taking the overall consumer base to a little over 5 lakh. Asked about the delays in commercial launch, Reliance Jio's Strategy and Planning head Anshuman Thakur said, "There is no reason for the delay. It's first time that the LTE technology is being tested on such a large scale anywhere in the world. "As it needs a lot of optimisation, which will lead to some disturbances in services, we want to ensure that once commercially launched the service is seamless. In fact the only delay is network optimisation. Also, we want to have a larger user-base of say a couple of millions at least (up from the present 0.5 million) to do the rollout." But he parried a query on what is preventing them from ramping up the user-base. As against the national average of 150MB data usage, for Jio customers, who are getting free service now, it is 18GB and the highest usage come from states like Assam and Jharkhand, Thakur told reporters. The average voice usage is over 250 minutes within the first month of test-rollout. In a statement earlier in the day, Ambani, without proffering a timeline, said, "Jio will launch commercial operations in the coming months and it is test-programme has established smooth operations of all aspects of the network over half a million users. The initial feedback is very encouraging and has established smooth operations of all aspects of the network." RIL Group Deputy CFO V Srikanth said the parent RIL will be investing over Rs. 60,000 crores in capex in Jio this fiscal, an amount which is over and above the Rs. 1 trillion it has pumped in since bagging licence in 2010. At the Group level, the capex will be higher by Rs. 30,000 crores at Rs. 1.5 trillion. The company has an equity capital of Rs. 45,000 crores while the debt component is around Rs. 33,000 crores. On the number of Lyf branded mobile handsets, he said they have already sold over 1.5 million units since November. Asked whether Rel Jio will be bidding for the spectrum auctions in July, Thakur said the company is yet to take a call. Thakur said of the over Rs. 60,000 crore capex for the telecom vertical, some money will be spent on widening the network coverage to 90 percent as planned from the present 70 percent of the population. He further said the company has around 90,000 telecom towers now, half of which owned by the RIL and rest on lease. At 90 percent network coverage, the number of telecom masts will be over 1 lakh. Some money, which is yet to be finalised, will have to be paid to RCom for sharing its towers as well, he said but declined to quantify it. The company has already made an advance payment of Rs. 2,800 crores to Reliance Communications (RCom), Thakur said. Reliance Jio holds 751.10 MHz of liberalised spectrum across the 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2300MHz bands. In addition, RJIL has entered into agreements with RCom for change in spectrum allotment in the 800MHz band for nine circles and sharing of spectrum in the 800MHz band across 17 circles. "This arrangement will be extended to the balance circles as well subsequent to pending approvals from the government, such that RJIL will have pan-India spectrum in the 800MHz band in addition to 2300MHz band," the company added. Earlier this week, Reliance Jio launched a new 8,100 km cable system, the Bay of Bengal Gateway, which provides direct connectivity to Southeast Asia and West Asia, then onward to Europe, Africa and the Far East seamlessly. Rapper French Montana has revealed in an interview that he still shares a special kind of bond with his ex Khloe Kardashian, and that the two remain friends two years after the two split. Were gonna be friends forever, me and Khloe. We got a special kind of relationship. Thats one of my best friends, French told People magazine. When the two broke up, Khloe had said at the time, Its nothing against French. I jumped into something because I was just, like, lonely and destructive. He also said that he hoped Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick got back together, adding that they were his favourite couple. Relatives of Rajesh said that an NRI from Kollam was taken into custody for the murder. Thrissur: Rajesh, 26, a native of Nattika in Thrissur, who was working as an electrician in Kuwait, was stabbed to death near his residence at Abbasiya in Kuwait City on Saturday. He was working in Kuwait for six years. Relatives of Rajesh said that an NRI from Kollam was taken into custody for the murder. According to them Ansar, who lived in a room next to Rajesh, quarrelled with him and stabbed. Rajesh is survived by his father, mother Sheela and younger brother Vishnu. His elder brother Sreeraj had died in a bike accident on Valappad Beach Road here on December 31 last year. New Delhi: India has cancelled the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently after China objected to it. Read: India issues visa to Uyghur 'terrorist' Dolkun Isa, China fumes "We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a Home Ministry spokesperson today said without elaborating further. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Read: Has India hit back, given visa to China terrorist? Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, "On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation." He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. "May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side," he said. Read: Visa denial is India's effort to maintain bilateral relations with China: Dolkun Isa India's decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking India's bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." Read: Omar Abdullah hits out at govt for cancelling visa to Chinese dissident Jakarta: Indonesia will set up a crisis center, headed by President Joko Widodo, to handle security situations involving its citizens overseas, a senior minister said on Monday, following recent abductions of Indonesian sailors in Philippine waters. The center will include senior ministers and military and police chiefs and will be designed to respond quickly to situations that could have a "strategic impact", chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters. "We hope this will be (operational) as soon as possible," he said. Since coming to power in 2014, Widodo has placed maritime security for the Indonesian archipelago high on his government's agenda. Indonesia has voiced fears that a surge in piracy in the waters between Indonesia and the Philippines could reach Somalian levels and has told vessels to avoid danger areas. Up to 18 Indonesians and Malaysians have been kidnapped in three attacks in recent weeks on tugboats in Philippine waters by groups suspected of ties to the Abu Sayyaf militant network. Abu Sayyaf, which has posted videos on social media pledging allegiance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, has demanded 50 million pesos ($1.1 million) to free the hostages, but the Indonesian government has said it does not intend to pay the ransom They were arrested while they were heading towards Achham in search of a person accused of murdering a doctor in Punjab, the report said. (Representational image) Kathmandu: Five Indian police personnel, including an inspector, were arrested in Nepal on Monday after they entered the country in the pretext of searching a criminal, a media report said. The five were arrested by Nepal police from Sanagaun. The plain-clothed policemen were carrying arms, according to the National News Agency of Nepal. They were arrested while they were heading towards Achham in search of a person accused of murdering a doctor in Punjab, the report said. An AK-47 rifle and its 25 round of ammunition, a pistol and its 12 rounds of ammunition were seized from them, it said. The city residents may get water only twice a week with the reservoirs supplying water to the city fast drying up owing to scorching summer. At present, water is supplied thrice a week. Water is sourced to Bengaluru from four major reservoirs - Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS), Kabini, Hemavathi and Harangi - all in Cauvery basin. Cumulatively, these four reservoirs have a storage capacity of 114.57 tmcft. At present, the four dams together have 11.80 tmcft of water and the storage was 25.35 tmcft during the corresponding period, last year. Considered the lifeline of Bengaluru, the KRS could store 49 tmcft of water. This dam supplies water to Mysuru and Mandya districts also. The worrying factor this year is that the present storage in KRS is only 6.68 tmcft compared to 12.45 tmcft during the corresponding period last year. The situation in the other three reservoirs is also no better. While 3.65 tmcft of water is available in Hemavathi, Kabini and Harangi have 1.06 tmcft and 0.57 tmcft water respectively. Thus, there has been a major dip in the water levels in the dams which supply water to Bengaluru, which apparently leads to drop in supply to the city. Crisis looms large On the other hand, the water consumption in the city has gone up by 30% in the last two months, according to Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB). The decrease in water availability and the increase in demand may lead the city to a water crisis shortly. BWSSB Engineer-in-Chief Krishnappa told Deccan Herald that an emergency meeting of the Board of Directors of BWSSB would be called to chalk out measures for mitigating water crisis in the city. He said that usually pre-monsoon showers bring down water consumption and recharge groundwater. However, there has been no rains in March or April this year, and if the situation continues, the BWSSB may reduce the frequency of water supply to twice a week. BWSSB Chairperson T M Vijay Bhaskar, however, was confident that there wont be any water shortage till June end. The city requires 1.5 tmc- ft of water per month and a total of 11 tmcft of water is available from the four reservoirs. Even if we deduct loss due to evaporation and infiltration, water would still be sufficient to city, he claimed. When asked about the water scarcity in 110 villages that were added to the BBMP in 2007, the chairman only said the Board would supply water to these areas through tankers, if required. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today hit out at the Centre for cancelling the visa given to a Chinese dissident. "What was all that chest thumping earlier?" Omar asked on Twitter after India decided to withdraw the visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa apparently after protests by China over the issue. "For the last few days we were treated to lots of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this Govt is the 1st (first) to stand up to China," the National Conference leader said. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Isa was granted a tourist visa to travel to India this week for the conference in Dharamsala, which Tibetan leader-in-exile the Dalai Lama is also expected to attend. China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will visit India tomorrow to attend the 'Heart of Asia' regional conference where he will meet with his Indian counterpart after bilateral talks were derailed following the Pathankot terror attack. The Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement here that the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process will be held in New Delhi on April 26. "Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will lead the Pakistan delegation to this meeting," it said. In New Delhi, government sources said Chaudhry will also have a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart S Jaishanker. The Foreign Office said Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting "our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan". It said that Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process, which was established in 2011 as a platform to discuss regional issues including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, the Foreign Office statement said. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. The conference had adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled 'Emphasising Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity'. The efforts to resume the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan- based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. The Delhi government has given additional charge of its main recruitment board to controversial bureaucrat Rajender Kumar, principal secretary to the Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who is facing a CBI probe over alleged corruption. Kumar has been given the additional charge of Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) that recruits government staff ranging from teachers to office assistants and other subordinate staff. Deputy Secretary (Services) M K Sharma issued the order in which Kumar was given the selection Boards assignment. The competent authority is pleased to order that Rajendra Kumar, IAS, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister and holding additional charge of Principal Secretary (Services) shall hold the additional charge of the post of Chairman (DSSSB)..., said the order. Kumar also holds the additional charge of principal secretary (services). After searches in Delhi Secretariat in December, the CBI registered a case against him for alleged criminal conspiracy. Soon after, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal put his wait behind Kumar and accused the Centre of harassing his government. Kumar, a 1989 batch IAS officer and IIT alumnus, is accused of favouring certain companies in awarding government contracts from 2007-2014 during the Congress government . He was appointed Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister in February 2015. Kumar is known to be close to Kejriwal as he has worked for the Chief Minister even in his past 49-day stint. In an apparent bid to connect to the electorate ahead of next years assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, BJP ministers virtually stormed the state during Prime Minister Narendra Modis Man ki Baat on the radio on Sunday. As many as 14 union ministers and national BJP president Amit Shah were present in different parts of the state. They listened to the radio broadcast with the people and also addressed public meetings on the occasion. Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani, who was in Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, distributed radio sets among the people and also announced welfare projects for the electorate. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh flagged off a Dhamma Chakra Yatra in Varanasi and vowed to build the tallest statue of Lord Buddha at Kushinagar, where the latter had died. Election bugle BJP chief Amit Shah, who was in Ghaziabad, virtually sounded the election bugle and said that the state would develop at a faster pace if BJP came to power after 2017 Assembly elections. Shah, while addressing a public meeting, also listed the works done by the Narendra Modi government during its tenure so far. He said that the party had fixed a target of winning 265 plus seats in Uttar Pradesh in next years assembly elections. The NDA ministers slammed the Akhilesh Yadav regime in UP saying that the law and order situation in the state had worsened during his tenure. There, however, were reports that at some places the union ministers were found to less enthusiastic. Union minister of state Sanjiv Baliyan was seen taking rest at a guest house at Vrindavan during the 'Man ki Baat' broadcast. UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya was seen dozing at the stage, which he shared with Shah at Ghaziabad. Another union minister Ram Shankar Katheria left midway the boradcast while another minister Uma Bharti did not turn up at the venue in Jhansi, according to the reports. The Islamic State terrorists are demanding doctors to give them sick notes in a bid to escape fighting on the front line, according to a new report by the US military. "Now some militants are so disillusioned they are looking for any way they can to get out of the fighting," a report by the US military's think-tank, the Centre for Combating Terrorism (CTC) said. The militants are reportedly struggling to keep fighter morale up as the group struggles to deal with territory losses, military pressure, financial problems and poor management. "This was reflected on a wider level when the Islamic State issued a general amnesty for deserters at the beginning of October 2015. The personnel shortages were also evidenced by an Islamic State document that emerged last year," it said. Issued in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria, the document indicates that a number of Islamic State members had been seeking false medical reports from doctors in order to avoid front line duty, the Daily Mirror reported. Much of the terror group's problems with personnel stem from their inability to pay wages. "The reasons for financial strain on the Islamic State overlap to a degree with the causes of problems of cohesion in the Islamic States ranks, such as reduced border access to Turkey, tougher border policies, and coalition airstrikes,' the report said. "These strikes have most recently targeted Islamic State 'cash storage' points and the oil industry." They have been forced to slash their fighter's wages - and many have quit in disgust at their treatment, the report said. Earlier this year it was reported that ISIS has been forced to cut the salaries of its murderous fighters by half. The militants now get the equivalent of just 100 pounds a month because of "exceptional circumstances", according to a document released by Bayt al-Mal, the Treasury Ministry of ISIS. Two persons, including a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, were brutally murdered in a flat here by unidentified killers who entered the building impersonating as courier officials, the latest in a series of brutal attacks on bloggers and intellectuals in Bangladesh. Julhash Mannan, a cousin of Moni, and his friend Tanay were murdered at the flat in capital's Kalabagan, the Dhaka Tribune reported quoting deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten. Baten said armed assailants in guise of courier company officials entered the flat on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 7 PM and killed Mannan, 35, a former protocol officer of the US embassy and his friend. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city. Defending the decision to cancel the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju today said the leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC) had applied for the travel document in a wrong category, leading to the cancellation of the visa. "He (Dolkun Isa) had given wrong information on why he wanted to visit India. The e-visa application said he wanted to come as a tourist though he was coming here to attend a conference and that is why we had to cancel his visa," the Union Minister of State for Home told reporters here. Rijiju was reacting to question on why India has cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa, a leader of WUC, who lives in Germany and was invited for the conference being organised by US-based 'Initiatives for China'. Rijiju, who handles the visa issue in the Home Ministry, said Isa should have applied for Conference visa rather than applying for tourist visa. But he applied for e-visa by giving wrong information, Rijiju said. The Minister said India have to arrest Isa, if he visits here as an Interpol red corner notice is pending against him. In a U-turn, India has cancelled the visa given to the leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently buckling under pressure from China. Beijing had expressed its unhappiness over issuing the Indian visa to Isa. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries." A group of students at an Ivy League University near here protested a performance by one of its white graduates, accusing her of 'cultural appropriation' as she performed Hindu music and meditation at an event on campus. 15 students protested outside Carrie Grossman's performance last week titled 'An Evening of Devotional Music' of Hindu chants, questioning her on whether her performance constituted cultural appropriation, a report in the university paper The Brown Daily Herald said. The performance had been advertised as an "intimate evening of inquiry, music and meditation" on a Facebook post of the event. Grossman tried to respond to the protestors saying she had discovered chanting on a visit to India and had "found (chanting) very powerful and very healing," the report said. As she began describing her experience with Hindu chanting, the students questioned on her appropriation of Hindu culture. "How does your whiteness impact how you engage with these cultures?" one student asked. Another student said that Grossman's website used "disturbing and appropriative language" because it says that she "enjoys... pretending to be a Vedic priestess." Before Grossman's performance, student leaders of the Contemplative Studies Departmental Undergraduate Group (DUG) had said in an opening statement regarding the protesters that "We see ourselves, as well as anyone that engages in the fruits and perils of globalisation that are running their course, as responsible for a constant and critical examination of our behaviours, beliefs and attitudes," the report said. The DUG leaders also said that while they had planned the event with good intentions, they "humbly acknowledge that those intentions do not preclude harm and hurt that we may have inflicted." The student protestors, who continued asking questions while Grossman performed, were told by audience members to be quiet and some even told the protestors to leave. The students were "asked to leave by the deans or to stay if we wanted" due to their constant questions, a student protestor Sohum Chokshi said in a Facebook message. As Chokshi exited, he announced that the protesters would hold their own 'kirtan' outside the room. After her performance, Grossman and several members of the audience joined the protesters outside the hall for a question-and-answer session. "What is your working definition of cultural appropriation?" an Indian-origin student Aanchal Saraf said to which Grossman replied that she defined it as using elements of other cultures "in your own way." Later, Grossman apologised for not understanding the consequences of her action or the offence that they would cause. Saraf responded, "You saying that it wasn't intended to be harmful doesn't make it an apology." Saraf said Grossman should use her "privilege to make structural change. You as a white person are protected," Saraf said adding that she wanted Grossman to leave with that message because "that's what radical love looks like." Political analyst Ashish Nandy today tendered an "unconditional apology" in the Supreme Court for a 2008 article written in a national daily which had led to the registration of an FIR against him for allegedly portraying Gujarat in bad light. The apex court, which took on record the content of Nandy's apology, quashed the FIR lodged by Ahmedabad Police on a complaint by V K Saxena, currently Chairman of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC). In his letter, Nandy "deeply regretted" that his critical analysis of the outcome of the Gujarat Legislative Elections held in December, 2007 had "hurt the sentiments of many". Saxena, who is also the President of Ahmedabad-based NGO, National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), had filed the complaint against Nandy for his article namely, "Blame the Middle Class" which was published on January 8, 2008 in the national edition as well as local editions of a daily. A Bench comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra disposed of the appeal filed by Nandy against the 2010 decision of Delhi High Court refusing to quash criminal proceedings by Gujarat Police for allegedly promoting communal disharmony. The bench passed the order in presence of writer's senior advocate Kapil Sibal and Saxena's senior counsel Mahesh Jethmalani after going through the draft of the apology letter in which the noted author also regretted that his article caused "pain" to many which was "not intentional". "I tender my unconditional apology for any hurt that my article has caused and reiterate that it was not intentional and was against my own beliefs and principles," he said. Taking note, the bench said, "In view of the aforesaid letter giving unconditional apology for having published in the editorial page Ahmedabad edition, on January 8, 2008, and by consent of the senior counsel appearing on behalf of the parties, we quash the FIR registered against petitioner (Nandy). The special leave petition stands disposed accordingly." Nandy had earlier contended that the FIR was registered out of malafide intention and aimed at penalising him for expressing his bonafide views. Gujarat government had been seeking the nod of the apex court to continue with the investigation to a "conclusive end" into the FIR against him under section 153A (promoting communal disharmony) and 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) of the IPC. The state government had said Nandy's petition seeking quashing of criminal proceedings against him be dismissed as "the FIR in the instant case prima facie discloses the offence under sections 153A and 153B of the IPC." The apex court on January 4, 2011 had stayed the verdict of Delhi High Court which had refused to quash criminal proceedings initiated against Nandy by Gujarat Police. The High Court in its September 1, 2010 order had directed Nandy to submit his grievances before a court in Ahmedabad. The NGO, NCCL, had alleged that the article written after the 2007 assembly polls had projected the state in bad light and promoted communal disharmony. The state government had maintained that the FIR in this case prima facie disclosed the offence under the Code of Criminal Procedure and the court should not interfere and allow the investigation to be completed. After spreading cheers and feeding destitutes in India and Pakistan, Robin Hood Army (RHA), a volunteer-driven initiative, launched its new chapters in Indonesia and Malaysia recently. The organisation that feeds the hungry and homeless by getting surplus food from restaurants, feels that anyone who has the real urge to be the change is welcome to make a difference. After launching successful chapters in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, we realised that the process is transferable and with right amount of guidance anyone can start a new chapter, Neel Ghose, founder of the Robin Hood Army tells Metrolife. The idea of giving back and helping the less fortunate in your free time is something which most people can easily relate to. We thought we would share our experience and spread our story to more people around the world, he adds. According to World Food Programmes, the food assistance branch of the United Nations, hunger statistics, Asian continent has the most hungry people two thirds of the total, so Ghose was clear the change has to be first brought in this region. They have an active social media presence and that is how Mayank Mehta touched base with Ghose and shared his interest in leading RHA's Indonesia chapter. Though the hunger problem is not as stark as in India, food security is definitely something which can be improved in Jakarta especially amongst children and the labour class. My Facebook newsfeed would be flooded with inspiring stories of what my friends have been up to in the RHA, so I thought why not get things started here too, says Mehta. Ever since they began this initiative from the capital in 2014, RHA has grown from a two-member team to a 3,500 army that has fed more than 500,000 homeless people across 23 cities in India and Pakistan. This army comprises young professional who are looking to give something back to the society. Now we have to be really careful when it comes to choosing a chapter leader. It is a well-thought out process. Anyone who has a reasonable amount of network, good at execution and enthused about the idea is fit to lead a chapter, says Ghose. Kim Chang, who is spearheading the RHA Malaysia team, feels that as a country they have made significant economic progress, but there are still inequalities leading to hunger. So she hopes to do her part to alleviate hunger. Ever since their inception, many such independent organisations have mushroomed in the city and Ghose doesnt see them as competition. It is a great idea to have many people thinking in the same direction. The more we have, the faster we will be able to bridge the hunger gap, he says. Bees find nectar and tell their hivemates; flies evade the swatter; and cockroaches seem to do whatever they like wherever they like. But who would believe that insects are conscious, that they are aware of whats going on, not just little biobots? Neuroscientists and philosophers, apparently. As scientists lean increasingly toward recognising that animals are conscious in one way or another, the question becomes: Where does consciousness end? Andrew B Barron, a cognitive scientist, and Colin Klein, a philosopher, at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, propose in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that insects have the capacity for consciousness. This does not mean that a honeybee thinks, Why am I not the queen? or even, Oh, I like that nectar. But, Andrew and Colin wrote that the honeybee has the capacity to feel. Christof Koch, the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, USA, and Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, have proposed that consciousness is nearly ubiquitous in different degrees, and can be present even in nonliving arrangements of matter, to varying degrees. They say that rather than wonder how consciousness arises, one should look at where we know it exists and go from there to where else it might exist. They conclude that it is an inherent property of physical systems in which information moves around in a certain way and that could include some kinds of artificial intelligence and even naturally occurring nonliving matter. At the most basic level, consciousness is awareness, Andrew and Colin say. A robot vacuum moves around and responds to information from the external world when it is stopped by a wall, for instance. But the vacuum does not have any experience, Colin says. He and Andrew propose that it may well feel like something to be a honeybee, or another insect, although what that feeling is, no one knows. They make their case this way: Other scientists have argued that a part of the human brain called the midbrain can, on its own, give a person lacking more advanced parts of the brain simple awareness. The insect brain does something similar to the midbrain in absorbing information from the environment, from memory and from the body to organise its activity. If the insect brain does the same job as the vertebrate midbrain, then the insect has the capacity for awareness. If this line of reasoning is correct, Andrew and Colin say, a robot built with artificial intelligence that could integrate sensory data, memory and body awareness would have the capacity for the minimal level of consciousness they describe. By the same token, plants do not have any structures that would allow for awareness, says Andrew, nor does a simple animal like Caenorhabditis elegans. Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher at the City University of New York who writes about consciousness, said in an email that he found Andrew and Colins argument plausible. But, he said, there could be many different kinds of awareness and insects might be aware of motion, for example, but were not good candidates for feeling pain, unlike octopuses and crabs. Insects might have subjective experience, he wrote, but not of a kind that has a lot of ethical consequences. Andrew emphasised that the article was intended simply to propose a hypothesis rather than offer a proven conclusion. Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered tonight along with a friend in his flat here by suspected Islamists, in the latest audacious attack on high-profile bloggers and intellectuals in the Muslim-majority country. Julhash Mannan, the editor of 'Roopban' - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Fahim were killed by armed assailants who entered the flat impersonating as courier company officials, Deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten said. Mannan, 35, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni and ex-protocol officer of the US embassy, was known for his gay rights activism. Tanay, the other victim, was also a LGBT activist. "Three persons came this evening and claimed they had a courier for Mannan. When I went up and told him (Mannan) this, he said that he was not expecting any such parcel," said Parvez Mollah, a security guard of the building in Kalabagan. "As I came down and told them this, they insisted that I allow them to meet him (Mannan)," Mollah said. When the guard objected, they stabbed him leaving him injured in the left eye and left arm. The assailants then rushed to Mannan's flat on the second floor and stabbed him and his friend indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star. The two died immediately on the spot. Mannan's body was found lying at the entrance of the house while Tanays body was found inside. The killings came two days after the grisly murder of liberal university professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern Rajshahi city. The attack was claimed by the ISIS. Quoting local residents, several TV news channels reported that the assailants also hacked one policeman when they were leaving the scene. Citing witnesses, private Jamuna TV said the attackers shouted Allah-o-Akbar (God is great) and fired blanks to create panic as they left. Mannan along with his friends launched 'Roopbaan' two years ago. They also organized an annual rainbow rally since 2014 on April 14, Bengali New Year. The rally was banned this year due to security reasons. US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat condemned the killings, saying she was devastated by the brutal murder. "We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," the US envoy said in a statement issued this evening. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. Bangladesh's prominent blogger Imran H Sarker, who has launched protests against the killings of the bloggers and minorities in the country, last evening received a death threat from an unidentified caller from the UK. Sarker recently grabbed the media focus by criticising the arrest of senior pro-opposition journalist Shafik Rehman, who has been accused of plotting abduction and murder of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son in the US. He led the 2013 protests against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes, prompting authorities to fast-track their trials. Dalit leaders have demanded that Mangalore International Airport be named after Architect of the Constitution Dr B R Ambedkar. Speaking at an SC/ST grievances meeting at the city police commissioners office in the city on Sunday, Dalit leader Anand made this demand. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Shantaraju suggested them to submit the demand in writing so that it could be forwarded by the city police commissionerate to the deputy commissioner. Sumitra Umesh Naik from Konaje complained that the investigating officers have not issued a copy of the report to her on the investigation being conducted on her case, involving conspiracy by her neighbours. DCP (Crime) Dr Sanjiv M Patil said the investigation report is awaited as the case is also filed at the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission. Shantaraju directed the Konaje police station inspector to register an FIR on the alleged casteist remarks made by some people about Sumitras husband Umesh, if they are cognisable. Dalit leaders Anand and Parvathi from Chembugudde said miscreants have become a headache in Ullal. The miscreants are pelting stones at houses and are behaving indecently, they charged and requested the DCP make arrangements for effective night patrolling in the area. Giving out information on a specific query, ACP (Traffic) Uday Nayak said 325 cases have been booked against the vehicles for overspeeding and 461 cases for shrill horns, last month. Members of BJP will stage a protest against the state government for failing to reopen Mysore Sugar Factory (MySugar), on April 30. Addressing press persons, here, BJP farmers wing president G M Ravindra said, vested interests were trying to shutdown the factory completely. The factory is the lifeline of thousands of sugar cane farmers. The BJP, along with sugar cane growers, will stage a protest in front of the Deputy Commissioners office. As the factory did not start crushing the cane, 12,000 farmers and their family members are affected. The government should pay Rs 3,000 per tonne of sugar cane to farmers, he demanded. Ravindra said, farmers and people were suffering due to scarcity of water, following drought, but the State government was busy, playing with the lives of farmers in the name of modernisation of canals. The government should pay a compensation of Rs 30,000 to farmers per acer of farmland, he demanded. BJP leaders H Honappa, K S Mallikarjun, T S Vivek and Krishna were present. Memorandum to DC Members of Mysore Sakkare Karkane Kabbu Oppigedarara Sangha, on Monday, warned of taking out a semi-naked bike rally on May 10, if MySugar fails to pay sugar cane transportation charges to the growers. After submitting a memorandum to the deputy commissioner, sangha president S Krishna said, the factory had agreed to procure 7,74,450 tonnes of sugar cane from growers. But as the factory has not started crushing sugar cane, many growers are transporting their produce to other factories. Till now, growers have transported 2,88,758 tonnes of sugar cane to other factories. But no factory pays transportation charges. So, the growers are suffering loss as they are selling sugar cane at Rs 1,200 per tonne. Hence, the MySugar should pay Rs 1,000 as compensation per tonne of sugar cane, Krishna demanded. The state government had released Rs 201.97 crore for the development of MySugar between 2008 and 2012. But, there has been no progress due to various irregularities. The government should conduct an inquiry through Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the irregularities, he said. Krishna said, the sangha members, along with sugar cane growers, would take out the bike rally and stage a protest in front of Chief Minister Siddaramaiahs house in Bengaluru. Russian attack submarines, the most in 2 decades, are prowling the coastlines of Scandinavia and Scotland, the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic in what Western military officials say is a significantly increased presence aimed at contesting US and NATO undersea dominance. Admiral Mark Ferguson, the US Navys top commander in Europe, said last fall that the intensity of Russian submarine patrols had risen by almost 50% over the past year, citing public remarks by the Russian navy chief, Admiral Victor Chirkov. Analysts say that tempo has not changed since then. The patrols are the most visible sign of a renewed interest in submarine warfare by President Vladimir V Putin, whose government has spent billions of dollars for new classes of diesel and nuclear-powered attack submarines that are quieter, better armed and operated by more proficient crews than in the past. The tensions are part of an expanding rivalry and military buildup, with echoes of the Cold War, between the United States and Russia. Moscow is projecting force not only in the North Atlantic but also in Syria and Ukraine and building up its nuclear arsenal and cyberwarfare capacities in what US military officials say is an attempt to prove its relevance after years of economic decline and retrenchment. Independent US military analysts see the increased Russian submarine patrols as a legitimate challenge to the United States and NATO. Even short of tensions, there is the possibility of accidents and miscalculations. But whatever the threat, the Pentagon is also using the stepped-up Russian patrols as another argument for bigger budgets for submarines and anti-submarine warfare. US naval officials say that in the short term, the growing number of Russian submarines, with their ability to shadow Western vessels and European coastlines, will require more ships, planes and subs to monitor them. In the long term, the Defence Department has proposed $8.1 billion during the next 5 years for undersea capabilities, including 9 new Virginia-class attack submarines that can carry up to 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles, more than triple the capacity now. Were back to the great powers competition, Adm John M Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said in an interview. Last week, unarmed Russian warplanes repeatedly buzzed a Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea and at one point came within 30 feet of the warship, US officials said. Last year some of Russias new diesel submarines launched 4 cruise missiles at targets in Syria. Putins military modernisation programme also includes new inter-continental ballistic missiles as well as aircraft, tanks and air defence systems. To be sure, there is hardly parity between the Russian and US submarine fleets. Russia has about 45 attack submarines about 2 dozen are nuclear-powered and 20 are diesel which are designed to sink other submarines or ships, collect intelligence and conduct patrols. But Western naval analysts say that only about half of those are able to deploy at any given time. Most stay closer to home and maintain an operational tempo far below a Cold War peak. The US has 53 attack submarines, all nuclear-powered, as well as 4 other nuclear-powered submarines that carry cruise missiles and Special Operations forces. At any given time, roughly a third of Americas attack submarines are at sea, either on patrols or training, with the others undergoing maintenance. US Navy officials and Western analysts say that American attack submarines, which are made for speed, endurance and stealth to deploy far from US shores, remain superior to their Russian counterparts. The Pentagon is also developing sophisticated technology to monitor encrypted communications from Russian submarines and new kinds of remotely controlled or autonomous vessels. Members of the NATO alliance, including Britain, Germany and Norway, are at the same time buying or considering buying new submarines in response to the Kremlins projection of force in the Baltic and Arctic. But Moscows recently revised national security and maritime strategies emphasise the need for Russian maritime forces to project power and to have access to the broader Atlantic Ocean as well as the Arctic. Russian submarines and spy ships now operate near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some US military and intelligence officials that the Russians could attack those lines in times of tension or conflict. Russia is also building an undersea unmanned drone capable of carrying a small, tactical nuclear weapon to use against harbours or coastal areas, US military and intelligence analysts said. And, like the United States, Russia operates larger nuclear-powered submarines that carry long-range nuclear missiles and spend months at a time hiding in the depths of the ocean. Those submarines, although lethal, do not patrol like the attack submarines do, and do not pose the same degree of concern to US naval officials. Existential threat Analysts say that Moscows continued investment in attack submarines is in contrast to the quality of many of Russias land and air forces that frayed in the post-Cold War era. In the Russian naval structure, submarines are the crown jewels for naval combat power, said Magnus Nordenman, director of the Atlantic Councils trans-Atlantic security initiative in Washington. The US and NATO havent focused on anti-submarine operations lately, and theyve let that skill deteriorate. That has allowed for a rapid Russian resurgence, Western and US officials say, partly in response to what they say is Russias fear of being hemmed in. I dont think many people understand the visceral way Russia views NATO and the European Union as an existential threat, Ferguson said in an interview. In Naples, at the headquarters of the US Navys European operations, including the 6th Fleet, commanders for the first time in decades are having to closely monitor Russian submarine movements through the maritime choke points separating Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, the GIUK Gap, which during the Cold War were crucial to the defence of Europe. Navy officials express concern that more Russian submarine patrols will push out beyond the Atlantic into the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Russia has one Mediterranean port now, in Tartus, Syria, but Navy officials here say Moscow wants to establish others, perhaps in Cyprus, Egypt or even Libya. If you have a Russian nuclear attack submarine wandering around the Med, you want to track it, said Dmitry Gorenburg, a Russian military specialist at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington. This month, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency christened a 132-foot prototype drone sea craft packed with sensors, the Sea Hunter, which is made with the intention of hunting autonomously for submarines and mines for up to 3 months at a time. We are not quite back in a Cold War, said James G Stavridis, a retired admiral and the former supreme allied commander of NATO, who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. But I sure can see one from where we are standing. Admitting that Indias balance of trade with China was heavily tilted in Beijings favour, the government on Monday said it was not possible to boycott imports from that country. It is just not possible to completely boycott one country and say I will import all my goods from everywhere else. If imports are happening, we will have to see as to what are the reasons, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Lok Sabha. She, however, said that the government was taking measures to ensure dumping of goods from China do not hurt certain sectors and the domestic industry. Elaborating she said, India has already banned milk and milk products, certain mobile phones which do not follow security codes. Wind operated electricity generators, which are also originating from China, have also come under the countervailing duty investigation. Of Indias total bilateral trade of $65.16 billion with China last year, the trade deficit was at $48.68 billion. In other words, there were much more imports from that country than exports. Increasing trade deficit with China can be attributed primarily to the fact that Chinese exports to India rely strongly on manufactured items to meet the demand of fast expanding sectors like telecom and power, while Indias exports to China are characterised by primarily and intermediate products, the minister said. To a question on Chinas imports smashing Indias small and medium industries, the Commerce Minister said that steps were taken in that direction as MSMEs are the largest job creators in India. Complete ban of import from any country is not possible now due to WTO rules, even if we have problems diplomatically, territorially or militarily, she said. The city police on Monday said vengeance could be the motive behind the brutal murder of an elderly couple on Coles Road in Pulakeshinagar. The murder, which is suspected to have happened on Friday, came to light on Sunday when one of the tenants complained about foul smell emanating from the third floor of the complex where the couple resided. The police detained several people, including the victims relatives, tenants and debtors for questioning. The couple had received some cheques but they had bounced. They had lodged complaints against some of their debtors. Parvatharaj, 61, and his wife Chandrakala, 55, had been stabbed 25 times. All this indicates the assailants had a strong revenge motive, said a senior police officer. There was no intention of gain as all the valuables in the house were intact. It is, however, not known if any property documents have been stolen, added the police. There was a property dispute with family members. The victims were into real estate business and had even lent money on interest. We are probing the murders from all possible angles, City Police Commissioner N S Megharik, who visited the crime scene, said. The couples son Kiran Kumar, working in the US as a software engineer, is expected to reach Bengaluru on Tuesday. Once he arrives, we will find out if any valuable is missing from the house. The postmortem will be conducted at Bowring Hospital after Kiran arrives, DCP (East) N Satish Kumar said. The police have accessed the CCTV footage from all the locations within one kilometre radius of the crime scene to trace the assailants. Sadique, who has taken the second floor on rent, said: There was a religious procession on April 22 and Chandrakala came down for a puja. She spoke to me while going upstairs. I did not see her after that. I noticed foul smell emanating from the couples house and sent a voice mail to their son Kiran Kumar. He requested me to see if the house was locked. We informed the police as the house was locked from outside. The denotification of 541 acres of land in Arkavathi Layout in 2014 has now reached the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). Ramamurthy Gowda, an activist who had filed the complaint with the Lokayukta, has gone to the ACB with the same accusation. The complaint accuses Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of denotifying 541 acres of valuable land in Arkavathi Layout despite knowing that it was in violation of the guidelines laid down by the Karnataka High Court. Though there was no provision for denotifying land after final acquisition, the chief minister pressured the officials to pass the order, the complaint states. The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has allotted 8,756 sites. Of them, many allottees started construction of houses. Before the order for denotification was issued, BDA Commissioner Sham Bhatt T issued No Objection Certificates to certain lands. There is no scope for NoC after notification under 6 (1). I have given instances of denotification in the names of deceased persons, Gowda said. As per the complaint, the denotification was done on the pretext of a High Court ruling that categorically barred denotifying land used for the layout. The High Court had framed six guidelines for denotification but the authorities exploited these guidelines and denotified all the 541 acres of land, the complaint said. According to Gowda, acting on his complaint, the Lokayukta had issued a notice to the chief minister under the Lokayukta Act. The complaint with the Lokayukta was in the stage of further scrutiny. Now, there is no Lokayukta and no Lokayukta police. The note sheet in the files in the Lokayukta office suggests that the acts of the chief minister amount to an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, Gowda said. He also submitted 1,732 documents on denotification to the ACB. Rs 20 lakh worth of heroin was seized during a police raid on Hegganahalli main road in Kamakshipalya, west Bengaluru, recently. Sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) arrested three men during the raid that was based on a reported tip-off. The suspects are Somashekhar, 38, a resident of Jnanaganga Nagar, Chethan, 24, from Maruthinagar, and Shivaraju, 24. The sleuths also seized two motorcycles and three mobile phones from them. The seized heroin weighed 2.2 kg. A case has been registered at the Kamakshipalya police station. Two stuck in elevator Panic prevailed at the Multi-Storied Building (MS Building) on Ambedkar Veedhi on Monday after two men got stuck in an elevator for 15 minutes. Fire personnel rescued Ashwathanarayana and Hanumanthu from the elevator on the fourth floor in the 3rd block of the building. The incident occurred at around 1.45 pm when the two men entered the elevator to reach the ground floor. The elevator got stuck immediately and both started banging on the door for help. The fire personnel who were rushed to the spot rescued the duo by forcing the elevator door open. Mohammed Shafi Armar, a suspected recruiter for the Islamic State (IS), is believed to have been killed in a US drone strike in Syria. But intelligence officials have not confirmed whether the man who died in the strike was indeed Shafi, a native of Bhatkal. Officials quoted an unconfirmed report from their US counterparts as saying that Shafi was among those killed in the attack on an IS facility in Syria. Shafi, who was believed to head Ansar-ul-Tawhid (AuT), a group composed of IS, IM and Tehrik-e-Taliban ranks, is considered to be the man behind radicalisation of Muslim youth in India to join the IS. He came in the news in January 2016 when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested 14 men from across the country for being in direct touch with him. The arrests were made in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Tumakuru and Mangaluru. The NIA believed Shafi was urging the men to do something spectacular. Shafis elder brother Sultan Ahmed Armar, also known as Sult, Mulla and Maulana, was said to be a close associate of Indian Mujahideen (IM) leader Yasin Bhatkal. Shafi is said to be the second of three children, who all grew up at Haji Manzil at Nawayat Colony in Bhatkal. He had left for Dubai 10 years ago and was elusive ever since. Sources said that his family in Bhatkal had no confirmation about his death until Monday evening. Sultans name first come up during the interrogation of Yasin Bhatkal, who was arrested in 2013. Sultan was believed to have undergone training in North Waziristan, Pakistan. Following Yasins arrest, some IM operatives reportedly severed their connections with Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Shafi and other IM associates were suspected to have joined the IS later. Sultan was killed in March 2015 in a similar air strike in Syria and Shafi replaced him. In an additional charge sheet filed in 2015, the NIA cited an e-mail chat in which Shafi disclosed his desire to be sent to Syria. He also expressed his desire that India face large-scale, continuous violence, like Iraq and Syria. The charge sheet named 20 suspected IM operatives led by Yasin Bhatkal. Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani on Monday said the Centre will take all steps to grant autonomous status to Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Kannada (CESCK) at the earliest. After meeting a delegation comprising Union ministers and Members of Parliament from Karnataka, Kannada writers and activists, the minister told reporters that as the ministry had to follow certain norms before granting autonomous status to the CESCK, all actions were being taken to meet the demand at the earliest. On the demand for shifting of CESCK from Mysuru to Bengaluru, she said though the Karnataka government had sanctioned 3 acres land at Bengaluru University to build permanent campus for organisation, the ministry has asked the Karnataka government to provide temporary accommodation to house the body in the IT city till it gets permanent structure. She also assured of releasing adequate grants for the building and research activities. The Centre had accorded classical language status to Kannada in 2008 and the CESCK was set up in the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru, with a plan to translate classical Kannada texts into other Indian languages, English and select European languages. The CESCK has agreed to shift the institution from Mysuru to Bengaluru as desired by the Karnataka government. Union Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, Chemical and Fertilizer Minister Ananth Kumar, Minister of State for Heavy Industries G M Siddeshwara, BJP Karnataka unit president B S Yeddyurappa, MPs Shiva Kumar Udasi, Ramesh Jigajinagi and Shobha Karandlaje, Kannada Development Authority Chairman L Hanumanthaiah, scholar M Chidananda Murthy, Kannada Sahitya Parishat president Manu Baligar and Kannada activist R N Chandrashekar were present. Truckloads of soil is being dumped into the wetland of the Devarakere Tank in the Isro Layout near Banashankari in Bengaluru South over the last fortnight. The Devarakere Samrakshana Vedike has pulled down the tanks fence to let in the trucks with soil. Many apartment buildings have already come up on the feeder canal that connects the tank with Janardhanakere tank and the Vasanthapura Kalyani (temple tank). The stormwater drain division of the BBMP has reduced the 20-feet-wide canal to a mere three feet, with land grabbers taking over the encroached land. While apartments choke the flow of water into the tank, the Vedike is adding to the damage by dumping huge quantities of soil on the wetland of the tank. Vedike president Harish Gowda said the work was being carried out with the Member of Parliament Local Area Development fund and it is being supervised by Vasanthapura ward corporator Shobha Gowda. We have dumped 500 truckloads of soil to build a library, two gazebos for the elderly people, a Rangamandira, a playground and a watchmans room. We filled the wetland because it had become a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other insects. Our intentions are honest. We want to develop this tank and make it useful for everyone, said Gowda. He claimed that the BBMP itself has given permission to carry out work. When he was told that the lake was in the custody of BDA, he said there was no malafide intention behind their activities. However, this has enraged retired scientists of ISRO, who live in the area. Fearing backlash from those indulging in the act, a scientist said on condition of anonymity that dumping soil could be an attempt to construct residential buildings on the pretext of developing it. Whatever is happening with Devarakere is blatant violation of rules. The office bearers of the Vedike have no idea what the wetland means and what its significance is in maintaining the water table of the tank, said the retired scientist. BDA executive engineer Shivashankar said he was not aware of the dumping at the tank wetland and added that the BDA had nothing to do with it. I have asked the assistant executive engineer to visit the spot and submit a detailed report, he said. The much-awaited meeting of the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will take place in New Delhi on Tuesday on the sidelines of a multilateral conclave. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart A A Chaudhry will meet on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia conference a multilateral forum of the countries supporting reconstruction of war-ravaged Afghanistan. Officials in New Delhi on Monday said that the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan was among the top diplomats of many countries attending the meeting of the senior officials of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process being hosted by India. He will also have bilateral meetings with leaders of other delegations, including his host Foreign Secretary of India, added the officials. A meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry was scheduled to take place in Islamabad on January 15. They were expected to discuss modalities and timeline of the formal bilateral dialogue after its resumption, as announced by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her counterpart Sartaj Aziz on December 9 last year again on the sidelines of a Heart of Asia ministerial conference. The meeting, which would have marked restart of the bilateral dialogue after a two-year-long hiatus, was, however, deferred in the wake of the January 1-4 attack on an Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab. New Delhi blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed for the attack and asked Islamabad to act against the terror organization led by Moulana Masood Azhar. Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia process reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Pakistan government stated in Islamabad on Monday. Former chief minister and BJP leader Jagadish Shettar has termed Chief Minister Siddaramaiahs drought tour a sham and the tour was for the heck of it. There is no seriousness - neither among the ministers, nor the officials, he told the media here on Monday. He also criticised the NEKRTC for offering concessions in bus fares to villagers wanting to migrate to towns or cities in search of jobs. The government should instead be addressing migration by creating jobs in the districts affected by drought. He demanded that the government release Rs 10 crore each to all Assembly constituencies for lake desilting. Shettar demanded that the government set-up call centres at both the state and district levels to address the drinking water needs. Attacking the government for transferring honest and upright officers in a bid to protect corrupt officers, Shettar reiterated his demand for the ouster of Bangalore Development Authority commissioner Sham Bhat. Taking exception to the transfer of senior IAS officer T M Vijay Bhaskar from the Urban Development Department, he said that the officer was targeted for merely discharging his duties. Shettar said that Bhaskar had written to Bhat on April 16 seeking the implementation of the H Shashidhar committee report on the illegalities in allottment of alternative sites. Bhaskar was transferred shortly after he wrote to the BDA commissioner. It is however not surprising to see the government trying to protect a corrupt officer, for, several persons, including chief ministers sons friend are beneficiaries, he added. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the proposed Cabinet expansion and reshuffle has been postponed by a month due to the prevailing drought in the state. Siddaramaiah told reporters after reviewing the drought situation and relief works in Belagavi district at Suvarna Vidhana Soudha on Monday that once the drought eases, he would visit Delhi to get a green signal for the expansion from the party high command. To a query on persisting demands for a Cabinet expansion and reshuffle and on senior legislators pressing for their inclusion in place of incompetent ministers, Siddaramaiah said, All ministers in my government are efficient. In view of the acute water shortage, the districts legislators urged the chief minister to arrive at a compromise formula with Maharashtra for water release from its reservoirs in dire situations. Under the formula, both states can release water in equal quantities from their respective reservoirs at times of distress. Several taluks in Belagavi are totally dependent on River Krishna for their water needs while Maharashtra has been demanding release of water from Almatti Dam to the meet the needs of Jat, Solapur and others towns in Maharashtra. Siddaramiah said necessary steps would be taken to facilitate a discussion between officials of both states. In connection with the demand for taking a delegation to Maharashtra to impress upon it to release the rest of the 3 tmcft of water, he said he has written and even spoken to his counterpart in Maharashtra seeking release of water. Soon after they get an appointment, a delegation will be taken there, he said. Siddaramaiah also rubbished remarks of former chief minister Jagadish Shettar who had termed his tour of drought-hit areas an eye-wash. Andhra Pradesh employees at the secretariat and other directorates located in Hyderabad have agreed to shift and work from new capital Amaravati on Monday. The decision comes after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu declared several goodies including a 5-day week. A 30% hike in house rent allowance for all those who will be shifting their home to Amaravati, Naidu declared after he inaugurated office space at the interim secretariat in Velagapudi village in Amaravti during the early hours on Monday. The government will be building 5000 houses for the employees within a year. 5000 more will be built in phases, Naidu said. Reacting positively the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat Employees Association representative U Murali Krishna has said the employees will be shifting their base from here to Amaravati by June as desired by the chief minister. We were not averse of shifting to Amaravati, but many employees have settled here for years. Their children are studying here, so 5-day week is a welcome offer, he added. In March a delegation of employees who met the Municipal Administration Minister P Narayana and Chief Secretary S P Tucker had expressed shock over the tiny size of the office rooms being built at the interim secretariat. The battle over Uttarakhand on Monday moved to Parliament with the Congress staging a sit-in protest in the Lok Sabha and stalling proceedings in the Rajya Sabha over the Modi governments unconstitutional decision to impose the Presidents Rule in the hill state. Congress leaders rushed to the well of the Lok Sabha after Speaker rejected the notice stop all work in the House and take up the discussion on the action of the Centre to topple democratically elected state government. Home Minister Rajnath Singh rejected the charges levelled by the Congress. He told the Lok Sabha that the developments in Uttarakhand were creation of the internal problems of the Congress. These problems are neither created by the BJP nor by the NDA government, Rajnath Singh said. Earlier, Congress leaders stormed the well of the Lok Sabha raising slogans against the Modi government. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge was seen seated on a stair leading to the Speakers seat in the House, while members of the Congress, JD (U) and the IUML were seen squatting on the floor in the well of House and raising slogans. It is a murder of democracy. If the Union government tries to destabilise state governments, there would be no democracy left, there will be no Constitution, we also need not come to the House, Kharge said. In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad accused the Modi government of creating a situation ahead of Parliament session to ensure derailment of the proceedings. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury rejected the government contention that the Uttarakhand issue was sub judice and hence cannot be discussed in Parliament. Addressing a press conference, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the party would stall proceedings in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday over the Uttarakhand issue. Chinese dissidents seeking democracy in the communist country will go ahead with their proposed meet in India this week, but New Delhi advised them to avoid media glare. New Delhi has not yet asked the organisers of the conference to call it off, but has advised them to keep it low-profile, avoiding media as much as possible. The conference will be held at Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The Dalai Lama, the icon of movement against Chinas occupation of Tibet, will receive the delegates and address them. Yang Jianli, chief organiser of the conference, arrived in Dharamshala on Monday. Sources told DH that the Indian government has advised the organisers through Dalai Lamas office and the Tibetan government-in-exile to keep the event low key, ostensibly to avoid hurting sensitivities of China. Yang, a 1989 Tiananmen Square activist, is among the most prominent exiled pro-democracy dissidents of China. He lives in the US and runs the organisation Citizen Power for China, which is organising the conference in Dharamshala from April 28 to May 1. He arrived in New Delhi from Taiwan and reached Dharamshala on Monday. Earlier conferences The Citizen Power for China earlier organised similar conference in Boston, California, Taipei and Washington DC. This is the first time it is being held in India. Yangs organisation claimed that the annual conference had become the single most important united forum for planning and pursuing a peaceful transition to democracy in China. Apart from Chinese pro-democracy activists, the participants will include representatives of the Chinas ethnic and religious minorities like Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Muslims and Buddhists, as well as delegates from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. In the wake of strong protests by Beijing, New Delhi has cancelled the visa issued to Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa, who was dubbed as a terrorist by China. Indian geologists have found a rich new source of strategically important rare earth elements in Rajasthans Barmer district. Laboratory analysis of the source rocks show the quantity of rare earth metalsneeded in the nuclear and space sectors as well as in wind energy, defence, chemicals and electronics industrymay be of commercial interest. Out of the 18 exploratory projects worldwide, the concentration of these minerals at the Indian site comes at the third spot. In view of the high concentration of the rare earth elements, the felsite dykes of Phulan and the adjoining areas of Siwan Ring Complex area (Barmer district) form a potential area for detailed exploration for rare earth elements, researchers from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) have suggested in a report. Rare earth elements are a set of 17 chemicals, which occur naturally in trace quantities, but are industrially important because of their critical roles in various applications. The only commercial source of rare earth materials in India is monazite beach sands of Kerala, which is mined by the Indian Rare Earths Limited for extracting the rare earth materials for the nuclear sector. Other industries rely on import from China. With 95% of worlds rare earth taking place in China, the communist country controls the global trade on these minerals. As Chinas internal demand spiked up, Beijing squeezed the supply since 2010, compelling India to explore new sources.The area identified in Barmer district have high concentration of at least four out of 17 rare earth elements besides having other important minerals like zirconium, niobium, silver, thorium and uranium. The rare earth concentration is very high in three out of the seven dykes that the team studied. While the GSI scientists refused to talk, others are upbeat about the new source. Its good news. Since the GSI has discovered the new source, it may be possible for private companies to take a mining lease to carry out commercial exploration. Our requirement is increasing, B K Mishra, director of Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Bhubaneswar told DH. India has cancelled the visa issued to Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa, amid pressure from China, which termed him a terrorist. Isa, who hails from Xinxiang in China but lives in exile in Munich, Germany, received an email from the Government of India on Saturday. The email informed the executive chairman of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) that the visa issued to him on April 7 has been cancelled in view of the new factors that came to the notice of the Government of India. New Delhi also rejected the visa application of Isas colleague and WUC vice-president Omer Kanat, without citing any reason. DH first reported on April 21 that New Delhi had granted visa to Isa to visit India and attend a conference at Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh from April 28 to May 1. Ilshat Hassan, president of Uyghur American Association, however, is likely to visit India and take part in the conference, which will also be attended by representatives of other marginalised ethnic and minority communities of China as well as the exiled Chinese dissidents demanding democracy in the communist country. New Delhis move to cancel the electronic tourist visa issued to Isa came after protests from Beijing. China last Thursday stated that Isa was a terrorist having a Red Notice issued by Interpol against him and it was the due obligation of all relevant countries to help bring him to justice. Isa on Monday told DH from Berlin that he was disappointed by the cancellation of his visa, but recognised and understood the difficult position that the Indian government had found itself in. New Delhis decision to issue a visa to Isa was seen as a response to Chinas move to block Indias proposal to impose United Nations sanctions on Pakistan-based terrorist Moulana Masood Azhar. India suspects that the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief played a key role in planning the attack on the Pathankot airbase in January. Isa, however, rejected any comparison or association with the issuance or cancellation of his visa with Chinas stand on Azhar at the UN Security Council. Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimize my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights, said the front-line leader of the Uyghurs struggle for greater political and religious freedom in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. He was jailed repeatedly for his activism against Chinese rule in what Uyghurs call East Turkestan. He fled China in 1997, sought asylum in Europe and finally became a citizen of Germany in 2006. Beijing got the Interpol to issue a Red Notice against Isa, alleging that he was a terrorist and the vice-president of separatist East Turkestan Liberation Organisation. Chinas clear abuse of Interpols Red Notice issuance is also concerning, said Isa. Dr. Joely Nelson slumped from a living room chair onto a pillow on the hearth of the fireplace, her face scorched from the heat, her dead body riddled with drugs. A fellow anesthesiologist found her there after Nelson, 44, failed to show up for work at a Vail Valley Medical Center facility. He said she was depressed, upset about having a long-term disease and had killed herself. Avon police and a medical examiner agreed that she died, probably intentionally, of a drug overdose. The hospitals safety manager told police she doubted the syringes and pills around her could have come from Vail Valley. But a hospital report to the state showed Nelson had removed fentanyl, a powerful narcotic, and another drug illegally. The autopsy found cocaine and narcotic drugs in her blood. She died with old and new puncture marks in her legs. So how did the Vail hospital inform the public about the death of a drug-addicted anesthesiologist in February 2014? It didnt. As in hundreds of other drug-theft cases, hospital patients never learn if someone who treated them was involved. Other hospitals can be left uninformed as well. Colorado hospitals from Craig to Englewood have been duped by applicants with a history of drug addiction. In Colorado, hospital workers who get caught stealing powerful narcotics often arent reported to police or to federal authorities. Unless the state takes formal action against them, their names dont show up on licensing disciplinary lists. There is little to keep a small but dangerous number of doctors, nurses and surgical technologists from moving from hospital to hospital, taking with them their addictions and risks to patients. Even when they get fired, they can keep their licenses and their histories secret by promising to enter treatment. In a review of state health, licensing board and police records, The Denver Post found cases in which hospital employees worked for years in Colorado despite recurring thefts and even convictions sometimes while participating in addiction treatment programs. Almost always, the thiefs identity is protected. Hospitals have managed to keep secret the names of employees passed out with needles in their arms and blood on bathroom walls, of staffers who stole hundreds of vials of fentanyl, of nurses leaving patients in pain by stealing their medicine. In August 2010, a drug-addled staffer at Poudre Valley Hospital passed out while a patient was being put onto the operating table, state records show. At Denver Health Medical Center, a nurse resigned in November 2013 after she was seen with needles, syringes and a tourniquet stuffed in her bag, her pupils constricted after she collapsed on an empty patient bed. She was sent home in a taxi. All of these cases occurred after Kristen Parker, a Colorado surgical technologist, infected hospital patients with hepatitis in 2008 and 2009 by injecting herself with fentanyl and leaving behind dirty needles. In a review of 416 state reports on missing or stolen drugs from Colorado hospitals during the last six years, The Post found: At least two hospital workers, including Nelson, died of drug use. In January 2010, Amanda Cornstubble, 29, also was found dead in her bed by her parents, a syringe and tourniquet at her side. Police found nine empty vials of hydromorphone in her Denver apartment, the same painkiller that Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver later found she likely stole while working there. When hospitals report missing or stolen medicines to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, state investigations often show no calls to police or the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. In 222 confirmed drug diversion cases, hospitals referred just 123 to local police, according to state reports listing facility responses. Only 70 showed a referral to the DEA. The Post inquired about 24 egregious cases involving employee syringe use and thefts of multiple drugs from hospitals. Police departments were unable to locate reports in 19 cases, in part because health department reports dont name offenders. Dozens of theft cases involved traveling nurses hired from contract agencies to work at multiple hospitals. In some cases, hospitals simply asked the agencies not to send the nurses back to them. Nursing board records show people with felony records and histories of drug addiction still manage to get new jobs in Colorados health care system. The state health department almost never finds fault with hospital responses except when reports are late. Dirty little secret On the streets, the opioid epidemic has turned into a subject of national alarm. Opioid-related deaths have tripled since 2000. In February, President Barack Obama requested $1.1 billion to combat the problem. Black-market dealers have heightened the dangers by lacing heroin with fentanyl, creating an extremely potent but deadly high. At the same time, the very system designed to treat this epidemic has been struggling with its own drug abuse cases. Its kind of a dirty little secret that has gone on around the country. Its got to stop, said John Burke, president of the International Health Facility Diversion Association. Often the health facilities dont report it properly. If they dont, the person may easily go to another facility and continue their ways,said Burke, a former police commander who investigated drug thefts at Cincinnati hospitals. Its not just the people who did this. Theres a breakdown in supervision. This year, surgical tech Rocky Allen caused an interstate uproar after Swedish Medical Center in Englewood reported he stole fentanyl, causing the hospital to offer free blood tests to about 2,900 patients. Allen carries an unidentified bloodborne illness. Patients were tested for HIV and hepatitis. Allen had been court-martialed for fentanyl theft while stationed in Afghanistan, yet managed to find surgical tech jobs and get fired from hospitals in Washington, California and Arizona before Swedish hired him. Allen was arrested on federal charges in February and has pleaded not guilty. In March, an agency nurse, Kimberly Burgans, was charged with stealing fentanyl from St. Anthony Summit Medical Center. Those public disclosures are the exception in Colorado, where hospitals that catch employees with narcotic medicines routinely fire them but rarely inform patients or the public. Hospitals report drug diversions to the health department, which issues one-page public reports that, under state law, never name the employee even if a drug theft is confirmed. Even other hospitals are not entitled to their names. The state Board of Nursing tracks disciplinary records by name, not by reporting hospital. Police departments say they cant always confirm that they handled a call from a hospital without a name and case number. The upshot: Its difficult to track how police departments and licensing boards treat hospital employees who commit drug thefts on the job. The privacy of the perpetrators gets protected even when there are massive drug thefts or evidence that employees have risked patients health by injecting themselves with narcotics at work. The Post succeeded in identifying dozens of health care workers who stole drugs, sometimes repeatedly, by matching drug theft reports the hospitals filed with other public records. But even extensive sleuthing yielded no results in many cases. In March 2015, for example, Denver Health Medical Center found a registered nurse had locked himself in the bathroom of the staff lounge. He was sitting on the toilet with his head between his legs. A bloody syringe lay in the toilet. The nurse was taken to an emergency room. Afterward, he admitted he had taken fentanyl from a patients IV line and that he had a history of drug diversion. He denied contaminating any patients. Denver police provided a copy of its case report, deleting the hospital employees name because the district attorney did not file charges. In the case of Nelson, the anesthesiologist who died of a drug overdose, Dr. Edgar Downs, a retired dentist, became so concerned that he requested a Colorado Board of Pharmacy investigation, its records show. He thinks Nelson, while severely addicted, injured him during his spinal fusion surgery at Vail Valley Medical Center in late 2013, leaving him with acute pain in his neck that required him to be transferred to an emergency room five times, court records show. But Vail Valley Medical Center succeeded in getting an injunction in Eagle County from District Judge Russell Granger barring Downs from further disseminating his concerns through the media. The hospital claimed his allegations would cause undue reputational harm. When The Denver Post asked to review court records in that case, Granger sealed the case. The Colorado Supreme Court rejected Downs appeal of the injunction. Vail Valley Medical Center declined to discuss Nelsons death. Hospitals differ in response Federal regulations require reporting thefts and significant losses of controlled substances to the DEA. They recommend calling local law enforcement and licensing boards as well. While significant is not defined, the regulations urge facilities to err on the side of caution and report it to DEA and local law enforcement authorities. The state reports on drug diversions show hospitals differ greatly in their responses. From March 2013 to the end of 2015, Swedish Medical Center reported to the state that nine staff members had resigned or been fired for drug diversions. State health department reports indicate that just one case was referred to local police and none to the DEA. Swedish fired Daniel Morrison after he admitted diverting hydromorphone from May through June 2014 from the hospital while working there as a nurse. But the state health department report shows the hospital didnt report those thefts to the police or DEA. The hospital did notify the board of nursing, which allowed Morrisons nursing license to remain active after he entered into drug treatment. He also holds a nursing license in Connecticut. The Denver Post was able to identify Morrison from a lawsuit questioning the hospitals drug diversion protocols after Rocky Allens arrest. He declined comment. Swedish questioned the completeness of the state reports. We are compliant in our documentation and notification of regulatory and investigative agencies, said Nicole Williams, the hospitals spokeswoman. The state requires hospitals to report missing or stolen drugs electronically. They are asked if they notified police and licensing boards and any other entity or agency. Mark Salley, a health department spokesman, said its summary reports on drug diversion investigations could fail to mention hospital calls to the DEA because the state does not specifically require that. Englewood police said no report on Morrisons theft was made. In contrast, Presbyterian/St. Lukes Medical Center in Denver took a much more aggressive stance, reporting even unsubstantiated allegations that included just one missing pill to police. It filed 48 drug diversion reports with the state in the last three years, far more than any other hospital. The hospital said only five of those investigations confirmed drug diversions. In some cases, the hospital did not confirm a diversion if an employee blood test was negative for unprescribed drugs. Of the 222 confirmed drug diversions in the states hospitals during those six years, hospitals made referrals to all three reporting entities the DEA, local police and state licensing board in only 49 cases, according to state health reports. Hospitals also differed in their approaches to testing employees caught with drugs and needles. In Fort Collins, Poudre Valley Hospital offered more than 200 patients blood tests in December 2013 when an employee who had been infected with hepatitis C, an infectious liver disease, was suspected of stealing intravenous painkillers. In Lone Tree, a staff member at Sky Ridge Medical Center in 2013 found a syringe with a needle on a toilet paper roll after a registered nurse left the bathroom. The nurse tested positive for fentanyl and was fired, but was not tested for any communicable disease, according to the state report. Yet the health department found the facility acted appropriately and did not question its decision to forgo a disease check. Treatment over revocation In 169 of the confirmed drug diversions, hospitals reported the case to the licensing board, which can revoke a nurses license to work, state records show. But the Colorado Board of Nursing gives nurses who steal drugs to feed an addiction a chance at redemption. Nurses addicted to drugs can keep their license if they agree to enter a program that monitors their drug use and treats their addictions. Shaun Fitzsimmons pleaded with a manager at Denver Health Medical Center to spare his nursing license by letting him enroll in treatment when he admitted to stealing oxycodone during a shift in 2011. An audit of his drug dispensing at Denver Health determined he removed 485 doses of narcotics, including morphine, over 13 months that could not be accounted for. Hospital officials told police Fitzsimmons likely deprived patients in severe pain of their medications, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor drug possession charge. Yet he received no adverse licensing action. After his arrest, he was hired as a nurse at the Medical Center of Aurora and later moved to California, where he holds a nursing license. Fitzsimmons said he completed drug treatment and submitted to drug testing and monitoring for nearly four years. He said hes had no relapse. Its a very, very difficult program, he said. Davene Riesmeyer was a repeat offender. The state nursing board allowed her to hold a license despite her being found unconscious in 1993 in a call room at Swedish, fentanyl and other controlled substances coursing through her body. Riesmeyer relinquished her license after she pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obtaining controlled substances by fraud and deceit. She had tested positive for the use of painkillers in 2000 while employed at Rose. But in 2006, the nursing board reinstated her license with her promise to enter another drug treatment and monitoring program. Her license remained active despite spotty compliance with drug screening she had promised to do. In June 2013, Riesmeyer was found unconscious in her car in a parking lot of her health care employer in Arapahoe County. She had injected the anesthetic and sedative Propofol through a catheter she inserted in her arm. She was arrested that same day for driving under the influence and unsafe driving, a criminal charge that resulted in probation. Riesmeyer reached a final agreement with the board to relinquish her license several months later 20 years after her first drug theft. She declined to comment. Only about 60 percent of the nearly 250 nurses in Colorado who annually receive addiction help or other counseling from Peer Assistance Services, the group tasked with rehabilitating them, actually complete the program, state data show. About 10 percent dont comply with the terms of the program and another 30 percent drop out. Those deemed unsafe to practice nursing are referred to the state nursing board for possible revocation. He just lied Even when cases are reported to police and criminal charges are filed, it can take months, even years, for the nursing board to take final action. In March 2012, the Memorial Hospital in Craig fired Richard Dickerson Jr., a registered nurse anesthetist who had just arrived from Kansas. Dickerson had been found incoherent in an operating room standing over the anesthesia cart after administering an IV drug to himself, state records show. He had blood on his clothing and shoes. Blood was splattered on the floor, shower and walls of a bathroom, with syringes on the counter. Hospital officials notified Craig police, who searched Dickersons motel room and found vials of painkillers, syringes and a letter from the Kansas Nurse Assistance Program alerting him that he needed to be monitored due to his recent diagnosis of opioid abuse. Dickerson then returned to Kansas, where he ran afoul of the law again, this time while working at a hospital there. He was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to drug possession charges. He relinquished his Colorado license in December 2013. He just lied on his application, said Jennifer Riley, a spokeswoman for the Craig hospital. She suggested that hospitals should be required to notify licensing boards even when an employee agrees to drug abuse treatment because its too easy otherwise to conceal the past. Hospitals often tell employees caught with narcotics that if you do the treatment, this will not affect your nursing license, she said. The Centura Health hospital system has reported at least twice to the state since 2010 that it needed a better way to track drug dispensing by nurses provided by contract agencies at one of its hospitals. After David Laumeyer, an agency nurse, was busted by police for dealing meth, Centura determined numerous drug dispensing irregularities by him at its St. Anthony North Hospital in Westminster and Parker Adventist Hospital. Laumeyers suspicious drug withdrawals from the hospitals started in 2010. About a year later, after another agency drug theft surfaced at Parker, Centura once again said the tracking of agency nurses still needed to be fixed at that hospital. Drug diversion remained an issue, though, and Centura promised to the state in June 2015 that it would come up with a comprehensive, standard policy for all of its hospitals for monitoring and reporting drug diversions, which was supposed to take effect that September. The Burgans case at Centuras Frisco hospital emerged after that. In a statement, Centura said its hospitals had separate drug monitoring systems until last year, but they now use the best auditing software on the market. We wish we could promise to make diversion attempts go away, but in reality we can promise two things, Centura said. Attempts to divert painkillers will continue, and so will the determination of Centura Health to find them and report them. Even nurses with felony guilty pleas to drug offenses on their rap sheets continue to find nursing work in Colorado, records show. Terrala Marie Butler-Perry still had a registered nurse license after pleading guilty twice, in June 2004 and March 2011, to a felony drug charge. Employed as a director of nursing at Wheatridge Manor Care Center, a nursing home, she showed signs of impairment so severe in October 2012 that her superiors asked her to submit to a drug test. She tested positive for opiates and other controlled substances and was arrested on drug diversion charges again. The state nursing board revoked her license in February 2014, nearly 10 years after her first guilty plea to a drug charge. David Olinger: 303-954-1498, dolinger@denverpost.com or @dolingerdp; and Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747, cosher@denver- post.com or @chrisosher How The Post reported this story: The Denver Post obtained all reports from Colorado hospitals concerning drug diversions since 2010 from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The newspaper used these reports to build a database showing how many incidents each hospital reported, how many were confirmed as employee or patient drug diversions and how often the state investigative summaries showed calls to licensing boards, police and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. The Post then turned to licensing board, police records and other sources to identify some of the hospital employees who had been fired for drug thefts. If voters approve a ballot initiative pushed by grocery stores allowing them to sell full-strength beer and wine at multiple locations, its almost certain to undermine existing liquor stores and maybe a lot of them quickly. Thats the spur that Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, hopes will prod liquor stores into supporting a legislative compromise that gives grocery stores only some of what they want but enough so they pull the plug on their amendment. Steadman is no shill for grocery chains. He flatly opposes their initiative but fears it might have the inside track to victory in the fall, given evolving consumer attitudes. So then why should grocery stores and their campaign vehicle, Your Choice Colorado, sit down with Steadman, too? Because victory is hardly certain, the campaign could cost them tens of millions, and a phased-in process that gets to a similar destination ought to be attractive in its own right. Thats Steadmans theory anyway, and we wish him luck. Both sides have arguments that must be taken seriously, and a compromise acceptable to both could also be the fairest solution. The grocery stores tout consumer convenience and the fact that most states allow full-strength beer or wine sales in groceries. But the liquor stores rightly worry about the impact. As Steadman explains, People need to understand that all of the liquor stores today have been required by Colorado law for like 80 years to be independent small businesses. They can only have one liquor store license per owner. To change that overnight Im afraid theyd become very vulnerable to competitive pressures. Currently, grocery chains get a license for one store. Steadmans proposal would give them an additional five right away (for beer, wine and spirits). It would also allow them to acquire more by buying out two existing licenses and consolidating them into one so long as no other liquor outlet was within 2,500 feet of a new location. Liquor stores would similarly be free to acquire new licenses, as well as sell a wider array of products. And the entire industry would be further unshackled after 10 years. The plan is fairly complex, and some of it will almost surely fall by the wayside or should if serious negotiations ensue. For example, should state law really dictate the minimum sale price of a liquor license? Surely not. Nor would it make sense to mandate that stores dedicate a percentage of shelf space to craft beers. Given how beer drinkers have flocked to craft beverages in recent years, it would be madness for grocery stores to give that market short shrift. We havent taken a position on the grocery industrys proposed amendment. That will happen later this year. But like a lot of ballot measures, theirs would bring big changes quickly, when a gentler, more deliberate approach is often the best way to enact reform. To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail. Just when the Rockies righted their pitching ship, the tide turned again Sunday. Right-hander Jordan Lyles lasted just 2 innings against the division-leading Los Angeles Dodgers. And now Colorados rotation is off its orbit. It was unacceptable, Lyles said. Lyles sideways start started a week of rejiggering. Jorge De La Rosa, who was set to start Monday, instead was bumped to Tuesday because of stomach flu, the team said. Chad Bettis will instead start Monday on normal rest. But that was manager Walt Weiss third option. Were talking about bumping him back a couple days, Weiss said before Sundays game, a 12-10 loss to the Dodgers. That was one of the scenarios. We have a Plan B well kick around. Plan A was to move De La Rosa to Wednesday, let long-reliever Chris Rusin pitch Monday and keep Bettis on his regularly scheduled Tuesday. Rockies Mailbag: Pose a question for Patrick Saunders But Rusin was called into duty Sunday in relief of Lyles. And De La Rosa remained too ill to pitch Monday, Weiss Plan B. Estevezs debut. In his big-league debut Saturday, 23-year-old right-hander Carlos Estevez blew through the Dodgers for two hitless innings. But he stopped long enough to savor the scene. After my last warm-up pitch, I walked around the mound, looked up everywhere. And I took a deep breath and said: This is it. Heres where I wanted to be, Estevez said. It was really exciting to play in front of so many people. Estevez said he was surprised the Rockies called him up so soon this season, but he was prepared. And at 6-foot-4, 210 pounds, Estevez fills the need for a hard-throwing reliever. CarGo cares. Carlos Gonzalez dived into the stands down the right-field line Sunday chasing a flyball. But when he tumbled over the wall, his spikes clipped a young girl. The last he saw of her, she was bleeding from the head. I called the trainers over to her, Gonzalez said. They said she is fine. Ill try to give her a little present. Footnotes. Charlie Blackmon (turf toe) ran the bases in spikes for the first time Sunday. Best-case scenario is well see him in Arizona, Weiss said of the Rockies next road trip, starting April 29. Catcher Nick Hundley (concussion) played seven innings in a Triple-A rehab game in Las Vegas and had an RBI single. Hes likely to be activated Monday. Nick Groke, The Denver Post Looking Ahead Pirates LHP Jeff Locke (0-2, 7.24 ERA) at Rockies RHP Chad Bettis (2-0, 3.33), 6:40 p.m. Monday, ROOT; 850 AM Bettis, the Rockies best pitcher so far this season, has thrown the most innings (24 ) and has the lowest ERA and WHIP (1.027 walks and hits per inning). In his last outing, a six-inning loss at Cincinnati, he got through six innings without a walk. Bettis was scheduled to start Tuesday, with an extra day of rest after a team day off last week. But the Rockies moved him up to help Jorge De La Rosa (stomach flu). Tuesday: Pirates RHP Gerrit Cole (1-2, 2.70 ERA) at Rockies LHP Jorge De La Rosa (1-2, 9.87), 6:40 p.m., ROOT Wednesday: Pirates LHP Jon Niese (3-0, 4.24) at Rockies Jon Gray (0-0, 9.00), 6:40 p.m., ROOT Thursday: Pirates RHP Juan Nicasio (2-2, 4.50) at Rockies RHP Tyler Chatwood (2-2, 3.47), 1:10 p.m., ROOT SAN FRANCISCO Jurors who threaten to derail trials by researching them on Google or posting comments about them on Twitter are often dismissed with nothing more than a tongue-lashing from a judge. But that may soon change in California. Legislation supported by state court officials would authorize judges in some counties to fine jurors up to $1,500 for social media and internet use violations, which have led to mistrials and overturned convictions around the country. As jurors and judges have become more technology savvy in recent years, the perils of jurors playing around with their smartphones have become a mounting concern, particularly in technology-rich California. A 2011 state law made improper electronic or wireless communication or research by a juror punishable by contempt. Supporters of the latest California measure say a potential fine would give teeth to existing prohibitions against social media and internet use and simplify the process for holding wayward jurors accountable. Its disruptive of the judicial process, and there ought to be a fairly simple and convenient way for a judge to sanction a juror based on the order that the judge has given, said Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park, who authored the legislation. But critics question whether it will have any practical effect on jurors who are constantly on sites such as Facebook and Twitter and suggest judges vet the social media activity of potential jurors before seating them. If you have an internet addict who just cant psychologically stop, you may want to excuse that person, said Paula Hannaford-Agor, who studies juries at the National Center for State Courts. Brian Walsh, a judge in the Silicon Valley county of Santa Clara, said a fine could also change the dynamic between judges and juries. You want to present the jurors obligations to serve as an inviting opportunity to participate in the democratic process, he said. One could consider it counterproductive to be laying out all the penalties a juror can incur if they blow it. It is not clear exactly how many times jurors social media or internet use has affected trials. But anecdotal evidence suggests it is more than sporadic. Eric Robinson, co-director of the Press Law and Democracy Project at Louisiana State University, said he used to track cases of juror social media or internet misconduct using news accounts and other sources, but there were so many it got to be more trouble than it was worth. Those are the ones we hear about, he said. Im sure it happens a lot more. An Arkansas court in 2011 threw out a death row inmates murder conviction in part because of tweets. One said Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken. Another said Its over less than an hour before the jury announced its verdict. A New Jersey appeals court in 2014 tossed the heroin possession conviction of two men after a juror was accused of searching the defendants names online and finding information about their criminal records. A California appeals court in January cited juror internet research in throwing out a fraud conviction against an investment firm CEO. The juror looked up a case involving an accountant the defendant blamed for the fraud. Judges warn jurors against using social media and the internet, and have the power to hold them in contempt if they violate those rules. Greg Hurley, a lawyer who studies juries at the National Center for State Courts, said he is unaware of any state that fines jurors outside the contempt process. California judges say the contempt process can be time-consuming and is rarely invoked. A juror facing contempt has a right to an attorney, and the court could get bogged down in a lengthy formal hearing. So judges often opt to replace a wayward juror with an alternate to keep the proceedings moving. Historically, contempt has been something judges are told, Dont do, said J. Richard Couzens, a retired judge from Californias Placer County who now rotates through courts around the state. You have to follow so many rules to institute a contempt process. Couzens, a member of the judicial committee that recommended the fines legislation, said he dismissed a juror years ago in a theft case for using a cellphone to figure out the value of a stolen item. The fine would be similar to a traffic citation, making it relatively easy to dispense, Couzens said. Judges could mention it when warning jurors against internet and social media use, said Steve Austin, presiding judge in Californias Contra Costa County. At the very least with the sanction, it would be a good thing youd be able to tell the jurors, he added. The legislation initially called for giving all state judges the power to fine wayward jurors. But it was scaled back after legislators expressed concern that it could dissuade potential jurors from serving. The bill now authorizes the judiciary to select some county courts for a five-year pilot program, which a legislative analysis said could save participating courts money. It is before the full assembly. The Colorado Supreme Court will not hear the case of a Lakewood baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. That decision effectively upholds a ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals that found Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips cannot cite his religious beliefs or free-speech rights in refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips attorneys, who asked the states high court to hear the case, said they are evaluating all legal options. If Phillips attorneys continue to pursue the case, one option may be requesting the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. In 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins were turned away by Phillips while trying to buy a custom wedding cake. Mullins and Craig planned to marry in Massachusetts and wanted a cake to celebrate in Colorado. Phillips told the couple that he would not make them a wedding cake because of his religious beliefs. We all have a right to our personal beliefs, but we do not have a right to impose those beliefs on others and discriminate against them, Ria Tabacco Mar, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. We hope todays win will serve as a lesson for others that equality and fairness should be our guiding principles and that discrimination has no place at the table, or the bakery as the case may be. Colorado law bans discrimination in a public place on grounds of sexual orientation. In December 2013, administrative law Judge Robert N. Spencer said offering the same services to gay couples as heterosexual couples did not violate Phillips rights to free speech nor does it prevent him from exercising his religious freedom. Five months later, Colorados seven-member Civil Rights Commission went further and required Phillips to submit quarterly reports for two years showing he was working to change discriminatory practices. The appeals courts rulings in August affirmed Spencers ruling and the Civil Rights Commissions order. In their ruling, the appeals judges found that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act does not compel the cake shop owner to endorse any religious views. Instead, it prohibits Phillips from discriminating against customers based on their sexual orientation. In their appeal, Phillips attorneys asked the Colorado Supreme Court to decide whether Phillips religious beliefs about marriage are being violated. They also asked the justices to consider whether forcing Phillips to create an artistic expression that is against his religious beliefs violates his free speech rights. The states high court, which selects the cases it hears, declined to take up the case. We asked the Colorado Supreme Court to take this case to ensure that government understands that its duty is to protect the peoples freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally, not force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living, Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom said in a statement. Jack, who has happily served people of all backgrounds for years, simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use his artistic talents to promote a message and event with which he disagrees, and that freedom shouldnt be placed in jeopardy for anyone. The U.S. Supreme Court also selects which cases it hears. Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or @jsteffendp By Yuras Karmanau 25 April 2016 GUBAREVICHI, Belarus (AP) On the edge of Belarus Chernobyl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning Stop! Radiation, a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk. Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nations food safety limits. That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the worlds worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm use and in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin. The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding impossible, insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits. Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 2,200-square-kilometer (850-square-mile) ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems, suggest that Chernobyls troubles can be consigned to history. [] One of the most prominent medical critics of the governments approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship. Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply. We have a disaster, he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country. The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture. The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium. [] The division of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry responsible for cleaning up the consequences of Chernobyl says that the rate of thyroid cancer in children runs 33 times higher than before the nuclear blast. It says thyroid cancer rates run several times higher in adults. [more] Grenoble, France April 25, 2016 - As an unavoidable technology for IoT, the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol is designed to enable very low-power consumption devices. To save power, designers of BLE ICs need to implement a wake-up system, sufficiently accurate from a time tracking point-of-view, to ensure that paired devices operate in the same time-window. The higher the clock drift, the earlier a slave device needs to wake-up, thereby wasting significant power consumption over time. Dolphin Integrations oscillator IPs, specifically designed for the Always-On Domain, provide unprecedented optimization capabilities to BLE designers needing to find the best compromise between ultra-low power consumption, low BoM cost, high accuracy of frequency setting and fast power-up. Discover our low frequency oscillators The qOSC-XTAL-LP-32k-co.01 crystal oscillator IP consumes as little as 50 nA at 32.768 kHz without requiring any external capacitor. It is also designed to reach a high accuracy of frequency, as good as 50 ppm, through a guided addition of capacitors. This crystal oscillator IP is provided either stand-alone or as part of an ultra-low power Real Time Clock (RTC) IP, the RTC-32k-CAL.01, and can be complemented with the fully integrated qOSC-RC-LP-32k-co.01 RC oscillator IP which operates at 32 kHz with ultra-low power (70 nA) and fast wake-up time (200 us). Low-power IC designers may ensure at once the fastest startup time and accurate time tracking by combining the high-accuracy crystal oscillator (qOSC-XTAL-LP-32k-co.01) with the fast wake-up RC oscillator (qOSC-RC-LP-32k-co.01). Such oscillator and RTC IPs complement the panoply of Low Power IPs from Dolphin Integration to achieve power consumption as low as 0.5 uA for a feature-rich always-on domain. They are designed to operate as low as 0.55 V @ 55 nm uLP/uLP eF to enable a single and extremely low voltage operation for the whole always-on domain with low power awakening triggers, low quiescent voltage regulators. About Dolphin Integration Dolphin Integration contributes to "enabling low-power Systems-on-Chip" for worldwide customers - up to the major actors of the semiconductor industry - with high-density Silicon IP components best at low-power consumption. The "Foundation IP" of this offering involves innovative libraries of standard cells, register files and memory generators. The "Fabric IP" of voltage regulators, Power Island Construction Kits and their control network MAESTRO enable a flexible assembly with their loads. They especially star the "Feature IP": from high-resolution converters for audio and measurement applications to power-optimized 8 or 16 and 32 bit micro-controllers. Over 30 years of experience in the integration of silicon IP components, providing services for ASIC/SoC design and fabrication with its own EDA solutions, make Dolphin Integration a genuine one-stop shop addressing all customers' needs for specific requests. It is not just one more supplier of Technology, but the provider of the DOLPHIN INTEGRATION know-how! The company strives to incessantly innovate for its customers success, which has led to two strong differentiators: state-of-the-art panoplies of Semiconductor IP components for high-performance applications securing the most competitive SoC architectural solutions, a team of Integration and Application Engineers supporting each users need for optimal application schematics, demonstrated through EDA solutions enabling early performance assessments. Its social responsibility has been from the start focused on the design of integrated circuits with low-power consumption, placing the company in the best position to now contribute to new applications for general power savings through the emergence of the Internet of Things. Team Of Rajinikanths 2.0 To Head To Bolivia Helios Towers Tanzania is planning to further expand its network of telecommunications towers across Tanzania. The company has announced a US$95 million upsizing of its syndicated term loan facility, led by Standard Bank Group, in order to fund the growth. Over the past five years since launching in Tanzania, Helios said the local market has seen the number of telecom base stations increase by approximately 5,500. During the same period the number of towers has only grown by 2,900, due to increased tower sharing. Helios has taken on a leading role in this trend in Tanzania, acquiring and upgrading 2,068 operator towers for colocation, and building over 1,000 multi-tenant towers. This increased level of sharing highlights the impact that [Helios] has had on driving efficiencies and reducing the environmental impact of delivering the telecommunications services needed to facilitate development in emerging economies, the company said. Helios said the new financing package highlights investor willingness to back telecoms infrastructure in Africa, building on the successes in the sector over recent years. The continued support of our lenders re-emphasises the appetite of investors for this market, and we thank them for their continuing backing. The new [loan] facility in Tanzania will help us expand tower sharing solutions across the country and meet new demand for tower sharing, benefiting both the citizens and the environment, said Kash Pandya, chief executive officer (CEO) of Helios Towers Africa - parent of Helios Towers Tanzania. Helios reputation for operational excellence and client-focused service make any investor and customer confident in their growth and outlook, said Nina Triantis, Standard Banks global head of telecoms and media. This transaction demonstrates once again our continued support to infrastructure development in Africa through our excellent understanding and serving of the needs of our clients due to our sector knowledge and our on-the-ground presence in 20 sub-Saharan countries. The Android Marshmallow v6.0.1 update for the Samsung Galaxy S5 includes the standard set of updates that come with Marshmallow such as Google Now on Tap, Doze and more Samsung has reportedly started rolling out the Android Marshmallow v6.0.1 update for the Galaxy S5 smartphone. According to Sammobile, the update has the firmware version G900IDDU1CPD1 and comes with the standard set of features included with Marshmallow, such as Google Now on Tap, Doze, improved app permissions and more. Users should soon be notified about the updates availability. However, they can also manually check for the update by going into Settings > About Device > Software Update. Samsung launched the Galaxy S5 back in 2014, and initially ran on Android Kitkat v4.4.2. The device came with a 5.1-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, and IP67-certified water resistant body. By comparison, the new Samsung Galaxy S7 comes with IP68-certified water resistance. The Galaxy S5 isnt the only smartphone that Samsung is updating to Marshmallow. Back in February, Samsung announced that it was rolling out the update for Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The update widened the edge panel from 260 pixels to 550 pixels, which enables more content to be displayed. It also shows contact names below user photographs, whereas earlier, it only showed a small photo icon. In addition, the Apps edge panel now allows users to add ten apps, instead of five. Branded hotel owner, developer and asset manager Action Hotels brought some stability to its finance department on Monday, announcing the appointment of Andrew Lindley as its finance director. The AIM-traded company confirmed Lindley was taking over on 1 June from Katie Shelton, who had been acting as interim CFO. Lindley was previously vice president finance of Africa for Movenpick Hotels and Resorts, responsible for a portfolio of 25 hotels across Africa and cruise operations in Egypt. He began his career in the hospitality industry with Forte Group, and subsequently MacDonald Hotels. Lindley then worked with 20:20 Mobile Group in senior finance roles in the UK and the UAE, before returning to hotels in 2013 as CFO of Abjar Hotels International - a hospitality company with a portfolio of franchised and managed hotels in Dubai. "I am delighted to welcome Andrew Lindley to our senior management team as finance director, said Action Hotels CEO Alain Debare. Andrew brings with him a significant amount of financial skills and experience of hospitality and the Middle East. I have no doubt he will make a valuable contribution to the team as we accelerate our roll out of hotels in the Middle East and Australia, Debare added. Think-tank now sees two 25bp hikes, instead of four Yellen won't move before 23 June vote; risk of chaos on global markets Fed to hike aggressively in 2017 The US central bank was set to continue tightening policy in 2016 and 2017, analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics said, even as it took an axe to its very short-term forecasts for further Fed action. Part of their rationale lay in the extreme worry among US authorities that Britons might vote to exit the European Union when they vote in referendum on 23 June. "We have to recognize that a June hike is now less likely, not least because the U.K.s referendum on its membership in the European Union comes just eight days after the FOMC meeting. The intervention of President Obama in London on Friday and the open letter by eight former U.S. Treasury Secretaries urging Britons to stay in the EU makes it very clear that the administration is extremely nervous of the potential consequences of Brexit," they said in a research note sent to clients. "US administration is extremely nervous of the potential consequences of Brexit" Blinding glimpse of the obvious needed Only if the domestic evidence for action was exceptionally strong and it became blindingly obvious the UK would opt to remain in the EU would Dr.Yellen, the Fed chair, risk moving only a week before chaos might descend on global markets. Thus, the think-tank's revised forecasts now called for two additional 25 basis point rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, in September and December, to end the year at 0.875%. However, by self-admission they remained more aggressive than other Fed-watchers, forecasting further 25bp hikes in March, April and June of 2017 and followed by 50bp hikes in September and December, to finish at 2.625%. That is more than 1.875% which the Federal Open Mart Committee itself is expecting, where as financial markets were discounting rates would lie at just 0.8%. By waiting until September, rate-setters in Washington DC would also have a better idea of what transpired in the US economy in the second quarter and how the outlook was shaping up for the following quarter. Nonetheless, Pantheon Macroeconomics was relatively-bullish on second quarter gross domestic product growth, anticipating the economy would expand at a 3.5% clip. Seasonal factors impacting first quarter growth would wash out and foreign trade and inventories would present much smaller drags, it predicted. Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. Xiaomi 3 smartphone China-based vendor Xiaomi Technology on September 5 unveiled Xiaomi 3 (third-generation) smartphone in Beijing for launch in the China market in mid-October 2013. Xiaomi 3 has two versions. One is equipped with Qualcomm-developed Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor to support WCDMA and CDMA 2000, and the other Nvidia-developed Tegra 4 quad-core processor to support China Mobile's TD-SCDMA. The smartphone features a 5-inch 1920 by 1080 IPS touch screen, 2GB RAM and 16GB/64GB ROM, a 13.0-megapixel rear camera. The 16GB Xiaomi 3 will sell for CNY1,999 (US$327) and 64GB model CNY2,499. Samsung OLC SSD Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing the industry's first 4-bit (QLC, quad-level cell) 4-terabyte (TB) SATA solid-state drive (SSD) for consumers. Based on 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND with performance equivalent to the company's 3-bit design, Samsung's QLC SSD is expected to bring a new level of efficiency to consumer SSDs, Samsung said. With its new 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND chip, Samsung will be able to efficiently produce a 128GB memory card for smartphones that will lead the charge toward higher capacities for high-performance memory storage. Typically, as data stored within a memory cell increases from three bits to four, the chip capacity per unit area would rise and the electrical charge (used to determine information from a sensor) would decrease by as much as 50% making it considerably more difficult to maintain a device's desired performance and speed. However, Samsung said its 4-bit 4TB QLC SATA SSD maintains its performance levels at the same level as a 3-bit SSD, by using a 3-bit SSD controller and TurboWrite technology, while increasing drive capacity through the use of 32 chips, all based on 64-layer fourth-generation 1Tb V-NAND. The 4-bit QLC SSD enables a sequential read speed of 540 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 520 MB/s, and comes with a three-year warranty. Samsung plans to introduce several 4-bit consumer SSDs later in 2018 with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities in the widely used 2.5-inch form factor. No power, no hot water, bedbugs at apartment towers near Downtown Residents at the Latitude Five25 apartment towers on the Near East Side said they've had no hot water, no power at times. The city is going to court. Ball Corp and Rexam to sell some assets to Ardagh Group for about $3.42 bn Beverages can makers Ball Corp and Rexam Plc have agreed to sell some assets to Luxembourg-based Ardagh Group for about $3.42 billion in order to get regulatory approval for their proposed merger. Ball Corp and Rexam have entered into an agreement with Luxembourg-based producer of glass and metal products Ardagh Group to sell certain metal beverage can assets, support locations and functions in Europe, Brazil and the US for around $3.42 billion. The deal includes seven Rexam metal beverage can manufacturing plants and one Rexam end plant in the US, eight Ball Corp's beverage can manufacturing plants, two end plants and two Rexam beverage can manufacturing plants in Europe, two Ball Corp's beverage can manufacturing plants in Brazil, and certain innovation and support functions in Bonn, Germany; Chester, UK; Zurich, Switzerland; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Chicago and Elk Grove, Illinois, in the US. These divested assets had 2015 revenues of approximately $3 billion and EBITDA of approximately $375 million. Post sale, the merged Ball Corp global metal beverage business will operate 75 metal beverage manufacturing facilities and joint ventures, as well as various support locations globally, including 26 metal beverage manufacturing facilities in North and Central America, 21 in Europe and Russia, 14 in South America, and 14 in Asia, Middle East and Africa. Post closing of the proposed merger, Ball Corp will remain listed in the New York Stock Exchange and domiciled in the US with global headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado. In February last year, Ball Corp, a US company famous for producing glass canning jars and beverage cans, agreed to buy UK can-maker Rexam Plc for approximately 4.3 billion ($6.6 billion) aiming to create a global titan in the industry. The European Union antitrust watchdog, the European Commission (EC) had said in July that the merger could increase the prices of aluminum cans and bottles, giving Ball and Rexam about two-thirds of production plants located in Europe. The EC had extended its deadline to rule on the deal until 22 January 2016 and in February Ball Corp said that it expects to close the deal in the first half of 2016, after receiving EC's conditional European approval for the deal. London-based Rexam is a global consumer packaging company engaged in manufacturing aluminum and steel cans for beverages, soft drinks, beer and energy drinks. The company has around 38 manufacturing units spread across the world and has around 8,000 employees. Colorado-based Ball Corp, founded in 1880, is a leading provider of metal packaging for beverages, foods and household products, and aerospace and other technologies and services to commercial and government customers. It employs around 14,500 people worldwide and reported sales of $8.6 billion in 2014. Ball, Rexam and Crown Holdings are the 'big three' players in the global beverage can market with each having a share of around a fifth of the global market. The combination of Ball and Rexam would create the world's biggest can-maker with revenues of approximately $15 billion. ISA launches programme to accelerate deployment of solar energy worldwide The International Solar Alliance (ISA) on Friday launched a programme to accelerate massive deployment of solar energy, at varied scales, across member countries of the alliance. French minister of environment and the current president of the United Nation's Conference of Parties for climate action (COP21) Segolene Royal and India's minister of state for power, Piyush Goyal, jointly launched the programmes under the ISA at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday. Ministers and representatives from over 25 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Namibia, Uganda, Nigeria, Peru, Djibouti, Surinam, Zambia, Bolivia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Mali, India, the USA and France participated in the ISA side event. Member countries agreed to take concerted action through targeted programmes launched on a voluntary basis, to better harmonise and aggregate the demand for financing for solar power projects so as to lower the cost of finance and facilitate the flow of more than $1,000 billion investment in solar assets in member countries. Since mature solar technologies are currently deployed only at small scale and need to be scaled up, the ministers discussed future solar technologies and capacity building, through strategic and collaborative solar R&D, to improve the efficiency and integration of solar power as well as increase the number of solar applications available. A common buyers market for solar finance, technology, innovation, capacity building etc will lead to higher quality, lower costs, products better tailored to needs, collaborative innovation, technology ownership, and a more balanced dialogue with all stakeholders. This will empower solar-rich countries, lying fully or partially between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn, which share common challenges and opportunities, it was felt. As an initial step, ministers agreed to start analysing and sharing the needs, objectives, and obstacles to deployment at scale along the value chain, for those applications for which they seek the benefits of collective action under the alliance. They will now design innovative programmes leveraging initiatives from the ground. The event also saw the launch of two programmes of the ISA - `Affordable finance at scale'; and `Scaling solar applications for agricultural use'. While announcing the programmes, Piyush Goyal expressed confidence that these programmes will serve the interests of the farming communities in the prospective ISA member countries and ensure that there is sufficient flow of affordable finance for solar projects. ISA will provide a vibrant platform to bring together countries with rich solar potential to aggregate demand for solar energy globally, thereby reducing prices, promoting collaborative solar R&D and capacity; and facilitating the deployment of existing solar technologies at scale, he added. The International Steering Committee of ISA, which met in New York on 21 April, had approved the programmes on agriculture and finance. Prospective member countries will begin work at the earliest and the process of implementation will be reviewed at the Founding Conference of the ISA scheduled to be held in the near future in New Delhi. Alongside the event on International Solar Alliance at the UN headquarters, the Interim Administrative Cell of International Solar Alliance (ISA Cell) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) declared their intention to promote solar energy globally. Major areas identified for working jointly included: Development of synergies with ongoing UNDP programmes and projects on solar energy in and across ISA member countries; Creation of complementary linkages with ongoing global and regional efforts in the field of solar energy; Strategic cooperation in programmatic and technical expertise, and facilitating the participation of the wider UN system towards the creation of innovation hubs in and technology transfers between ISA member countries; Support for the establishment of knowledge management systems as well as electronic networks and/or e-portals for the sharing, creation and management of knowledge on solar energy; and Strengthening the development of ISA's institutional structure, and enhancing its capacity development efforts through the support of training programmes. In addition, both sides decided to work in other areas and themes as jointly decided. The event also saw the exchange of a joint declaration identifying the areas of cooperation among ministers and ministerial representatives from around 25 ISA countries. Goyal said the joint declaration is a new beginning and will help in leveraging and expediting solar energy development and deployment in ISA countries. The areas identified under joint declaration will be reviewed at the Founding Conference of the ISA scheduled to be held in the near future in New Delhi, Goyal stated. Time. Perspective. Me-mories. Emotions. What ifs. Family. Courage. And thirty years. Looking forward, it seems an awfully long time. Looking back, maybe not so much. Angela ODonnell makes herself comfortable in the corner seat of the sofa in the sitting room at the family home in Leck, overlooking Letterkenny, as an overcast April Monday evening falls to darkness. In the middle seat is her oldest son, Philip, and across from her, her husband, Joe, fills the perch in front of the television. Above the open fire hangs a family portrait of Joe and Angela and their seven children. It was taken on the occasion of Sharons confirmation, a week before the fire. In a few days, the ODonnell family will attend a special Mass in memory of their four children - Sharon (14), Joanne (11), Adrian (3) and Kevin (13 months) - and their babysitter, Noreen ODonnell, who died in the blaze at the family home. Angela pauses for a moment as she prepares to articulate where shes at with the passing of time, and the unimaginable loss she and her family have carried for the last three decades. Sometimes it feels like a hundred years ago. And other days it seems like yesterday, she says. While April 26th is a date forever ingrained since 1986, there are many other times and triggers that bring the four lost children to the forefront of her mind. There are birthdays, theres Christmas and family gatherings, Angela adds. Philip offers his take about how the passing of time has shaped his view on things. There are people who went to school with Sharon and Joanne, and its when you see them up the town with their children, or when you attend a wedding, you think about them, he states. Angela offers: You wonder what might have been. That never leaves you. You wonder what they might look like. You wonder what the boys would be doing. All these things go through your head. She says it never takes an anniversary to prompt the memory of the tragedy, which, she says, is so crystal clear in her mind. It never takes a special day or a special time. She explains that they are sort of prepared for an anniversary, or birthdays, because they are aware they are approaching. But its the day you are not thinking about anything that it just hits you. Youre in here tidying up and you look at the picture and you think, is that real? That recent tragedy in Buncrana and the fire tragedy last year in Dublin are triggers that bring it all back. I was out in Bridie and Thomas Keyss earlier this evening and was sitting talking to the two of them. Thomas looked over at me and said, Do you know what, I just think Im looking at your Sharon. We werent even talking about the children at the time. Their names would often come into the conversation, she says. Joe recalls what he heard when people were there to support and guide him and his family in the early days. People who survived tragedy or disaster were told it would get easier. And it does. For the first months and years you just never ever thought it would get better. But it does. You do learn to live with it, and cope with it. I was talking to somebody recently about the days the coffins were in the mortuary and he said there was no doubt about it, God was there that day. The feeling of peace and serenity that was there was something special. Letterkenny was a much smaller town when the terrible tragedy struck. Despite its growth, it has, for many including Angela, remained a small town to a large degree. Its still very parochial. Townies are townies. This town at the time was unbelievable to us and you never forget that, Angela adds. Sean and Sadie Doherty, another couple Joe and Angela are close to, took the ODonnell family in, the morning of the fire. We had literally nothing. We had no clothes. Within a couple of hours, we had everything we needed in terms of material things. The only thing that was missing was the children, she says. In the initial aftermath of the tragedy, Philip, who was 13, remembers not wanting to be involved in anything that was happening. I didnt want anything to do with anything that was going on - didnt want to be near removals or funerals. I suppose my thinking was, if I dont get involved this isnt happening. I was coaxed to go to the mortuary. Tommy Keys was with me in the house and he eventually got me talked into the car. I then went down into the chapel. Something happened that evening in the chapel. I cant explain it. I came out of the chapel feeling different, I dont know what it was. From wanting to have no part in it to coming home and asking if I could carry a coffin was a big change. Where that came out of, I dont know. Ive retained that sense of peace and contentment since, he explains. I would have been very angry about the whole thing, too, Philip adds. He says it wasnt until his son, Matthew, was born five years ago, that he realised the effect the loss of his four siblings had on his parents. The tragedy, Philip says, had possibly even a greater impact on him when he became a father. Coming up to the anniversary I found myself asking myself how I would cope if something happened to Matthew, he says. According to Angela, her second son, Paddy, who was aged eight at the time, has never spoken about the fire. Thats the way hes coping with it. Having said that, he would head down to the graveyard on his own and would tell no one where hes going. Its 23 years since the ODonnells moved to Leck, just across the road from the cemetery where Kevin, Adrian, Joanne and Sharon rest in peace. People say to me we were mad when we moved out here so near the graveyard. But it wouldnt really matter where youd go - youre always close to them. No matter where you go in the world, you take your memories with you. The one thing people can never take from you is your memories. The children all had their wee different personalities. Invariably, the conversation and the eyes in the room all turn to the family portrait. We hadnt even got the photograph when the fire happened, Joe remembers. Dermot Donohue took the picture and the first time we saw it was when he took it out to us after the fire. It was great to have a picture of us all together and a coincidence that it was taken just a week before, he adds. Angela agrees. I wouldnt be gospel-greedy or anything like that. I do what I have to do. But I would be in here and I could find myself standing in front of the picture saying the Hail Mary. I could find myself driving along in the car and thinking about them and saying the Hail Mary. Funny its always the Hail Mary comes into my mind. I suppose thats my comfort prayer, she reveals. You can only grieve on your own, Joe comments. There are days Id be good and Angela would be bad, or there are days when Im bad and shes good. You can create a resentment. I think that was the most important thing to realise about grief. A lot of cliches help as well. The late Mrs Coyle from Wolfe Tone Place told me: Its a poor house that God doesnt call on. And youre definitely a millionaire. Its wee things like that that make you sit up and think about the whole thing, Joe states. Adds Angela: I could have blamed Joe, or Joe could have blamed me. But there was no point in blaming anybody. There was no one to blame. It was a tragic thing that happened. We were still a family; we still had three boys and were still a family. And you had to get on with living for them, really. And then we were lucky when Noreen came along. Noreen was born the year after the fire. Noreen brought us a lot of happiness and a lot of joy. I suppose it was a bonus that she was a girl. Noreen was named after Noreen ODonnell, the babysitter who perished with the four siblings Noreen never saw. It was Joseph (Joe Joe, the youngest of the three surviving children, who was six at the time) who told Noreen all about Sharon, Joanne, Adrian and Kevin. Life in the ODonnell household is lived with the one-day-at-a-time approach. Always. Were very lucky, happy and content, Angela says. Were very content, thanks be to God. Were luckier than most to have that and its something you cant buy. Sure what do you want - a bite to eat, a welcome at the door and a bit of heat. We embrace life every day and enjoy it. We have three grandchildren now and we enjoy them. An anniversary Mass to mark 30 years since the tragedy will be held in the Church of the Irish Martyrs on Saturday morning at 11 oclock. We are making it a wee bit special because its 30 years. Some of Sharons friends and Joannes friends are coming and will do readings and prayers of the faithful. Its nice for them to remember, as they do all the time. You go down to the graveyard and theres always a wee bunch of flowers there. All the family and friends are gathering for it and anyone who wants to come to the Mass is very welcome. As the days draw closer to the anniversary, Angela says she still has the same feelings she had back then. Its as vivid now as it was 30 years ago, really. I dont think that will ever change. We had good friends and family to support us and help us get there. Without that it would have been a lot harder. Time. Perspective. Decency. Dignity. Humility. Hope. And the future. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. St. Eunans Cathedral in Letterkenny was filled to capacity to celebrate the golden jubilee Mass for Bishop Philip Boyce on Monday night. He was joined by the Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown and retired Bishop Seamus Hegarty. Bishop Boyce was ordained Bishop of Raphoe on October 1, 1995 in St. Eunans Cathedral. His previous ministry of three decades was spent in the Carmelite Order in Rome. Among the sixty strong clergy was Father Michael Brown who introduced the young Philip Boyce to life in the Carmelite Order. The homily was delivered by Canon Austin Laverty who reflected on the life and times of Bishop Boyce over the past fifty years. Bishop Boyce, who was joined by his own family members, returned thanks as the ceremony concluded and said he was very appreciative of the support from the entire diocese and his own community. In his homily Canon Laverty PP, Ardara spoke about the Book of Job in the Bible. He recalled that a professor in Maynooth had described it as a nucleus of history with fictitious embellishments for didactic purposes. He said that in later years, he came to realise that there was a basis for truth in what was being told and that Jesus has used his imagination on some of the stories. What has that got to do with the event that we have come together this evening to celebrate? he said. Downings Im quite sure that if you met the right story teller in Downings, he could very easily tell you that when Father Philip Boyce came home after his ordination, there were tar barrels lit all the way from Milford to Downings pier.a nucleus of history.yes to let you know that something very important had and was taking place, he said. Canon Laverty said that it was important to remember and to celebrate this event. So our first duty is to congratulate Bishop Philip as he celebrates 50 years as a priest in the service of the Lord and its right that we should have the opportunity to celebrate, he said. Canon Laverty said that Bishop Philip Boyce obtained his secondary education at Castlemartyr in County Cork. He said that he had often wondered why Bishop Boyce had joined the order of Discaled Carmelites. But the man responsible was a Father Michael Brown who persuaded him that Carmelite Order was the right place for him. He made his first profession as a member of the Carmelite order on the 19th of September 1959 - that was a major step on his faith journey - a journey that began in Baptism and that journey reached another milestone on the 17th of April 1966 when he was ordained a priest and its that special milestone that we are remembering and celebrating this evening. Im sure he hoped to live a quiet life as a member of the Carmelite community, but once again destiny stepped in and he found himself teaching in the Teresianum in Rome and specialising in the spirituality of Cardinal Newman. But that was not to be the end of the story, because in 1995 somebody in Rome came along to him and said we want you to be Bishop of Raphoe and that had been his destiny and his cross ever since, he said. He said that at the preface to the Mass of Ordination, priests are to renew, in Gods name the sacrifice of human redemption, to set before their children, Lord, the Paschal Banquet, to teach your people in charity, to nourish them with the word and to strengthen them with the Sacraments. Thats the CV of the priest and even more so of a Bishop and thats what he was to give an account of to the Lord on the day of judgment and thats scary, not the kind of job description that is guaranteed to give you overly peaceful sleep, he said. He told those gathered that Bishop Boyce has spent the last fifty years trying to follow the real Jesus and that he was sure that, at times, this may have been a difficult task. But lets leave Calvary to the one side just for today and celebrate Resurrection, celebrate Easter, celebrate fifty years of service to the Lord and to His Church and let's say this evening, well done, good and faithful servant. You can say with St. Paul, I have run the race. I have kept the faith and may you have many more years of health and contentment in the service of the Lord, and we hope that it wont be very long until you can relax and enjoy your retirement and leave that that particular cross to someone else, he concluded. Parish of Mevagh A large crowd from the parish of Mevagh attended as well as members of the congregation from every parish in the diocese and further afield. A native of Downings, Bishop Boyce harbours a great love for the Irish language. He was born on January 25th, 1940. He was educated at Derryhassen school and later at Castlemartyr Carmelite College, Co. Cork. He joined the noviciate of the Discaled Carmelites in Loughrea, County Galway, making his first profession in 1959. Having completed philosophical studies in Dublin, he studied theology at the Teresianum in Rome, where he was ordained on April 17, 1966. During his twenty years on the teaching staff of the Pontifical Theological Faculty of the Carmelites in Rome, he taught spirituality and dogmatic theology, and for many years was engaged in the work of formation of students preparing for the priesthood or doing postgraduate studies. Reflecting on his fifty years of dedicated ministry, Bishop Boyce thanked the people of the diocese for their support throughout his time as Bishop. He urged any young man who would like to join the priesthood to do so without trepidation. He is wished health, peace and happiness in his ministry. Louise Price was busy at her kitchen table drafting publicity for the June 2016 Tir Connell Stone Festival, when I called to ask what sparked her interest in building and restoring dry-stone walls. Like many others, I wondered how she had got into this traditional male world and how she became involved in organising stone festivals in Donegal. I started going to Inis Oirr in the Aran Islands, she told me, because I love drawing and painting the stone walls there, then I went to their annual Stone Festival and learned how to build them as well. The walls on the islands are crucial for preserving soil, sheltering animals and creating micro-climates for plants, but there is a crisis now because the walls are falling into disrepair. Louise explained her passion for working with stone as feeling a strange transformation, because you develop a personal relationship with the stones - when choosing a stone - you pick up one piece and you just know it wont fit there but youll set it aside and then you remember it for somewhere else - its like doing a big puzzle. It is also a very social activity and it requires teamwork to construct a wall. She explained that the walls are built from both sides, the stones are chosen to fit together, both outside and inside, interlocking so that the height and breadth are kept aligned. The wall has to bind to be strong. The distinguishing feature of the dry-stone wall is that it is built without mortar - its stability comes from placing the stones in direct contact like a 3D jigsaw - and that allows wind and rain to go through the spaces in between. Louise got to know stone masons on Inis Oirr and worked with them to restore an old house, where she developed a big interest in natural building using traditional materials and methods. During journeys to and from Galway, they often talked about having a Stone Festival in Donegal. The first restoration task they undertook in Donegal was repairing a stretch of dry-stone wall alongside Mountcharles pier. The existing wall had belonged to the Cunningham Estate for over 300 years, but it had fallen into disrepair because of neglect, and the ravages of the sea. Stone for the restoration came from a local demolished stone house - beautiful ochre, grey and white cut sandstone which would have been used for landfill or broken up for road foundations. When local people saw how this newly restored stretch of wall enhanced the area - and I recommend a visit - the Mountcharles Heritage group continued restoration work on the wall. This is Louises vision for the future - to inspire people and communities, to raise awareness, and to encourage young people to develop the skills needed to conserve this important heritage. She is passionate in her belief that the dry-stone walls of Donegal should be documented and protected, and that we underestimate how special and desirable this living-heritage is to visitors. She has proof of this in the range of people from all over the world - she lists Australia, Nepal, France, Austria - who attend the Tir Connell Stone Festival in Glencolmcille. They have stone-carving workshops and learn the history of the area while restoring the walls alongside Irish people. Louises enthusiasm for this ancient part of our landscape heritage is inspiring, as is her practical, can-do attitude. This is not her job but her passion, which she fits into her everyday life of homemaking and other artistic projects. This centenary year, 2016, there will be a special, iconic, collaborative sculpture to be unveiled during the festival. A large-scale map of Ireland made up of 32 counties each carved out of its own local stone - Antrim black polished basalt; Cavan green granite; Kerry red marble etc. As Louise says, Ireland has an astounding variety of geology and stone masons with astonishing skills. Information is on dswai.ie and Facebook Tirconnell Stone Festival. Bridie McElroy was a wonderful mother, loyal to her friends and kind to all who knew her. The mother of eight was buried on Monday, April 18th after 10am Mass at Requiem Mass at St. Eunans cathedral in Letterkenny. The Mass was very well attended with many people from the town and from further afield in attendance. Bridie, 87, nee Kilcoyne came to Letterkenny in 1951. A clever and hard working individual, she worked in Larkins Bakery for many years as a book keeper and later as a telephonist in the old Letterkenny exchange. Bridie would have been a well known and respected figure in the town. She lived at 87 Lower Main Street in Letterkenny and often would be seen in that area of the town going about her daily business. She never moved from her original Letterkenny address and would have been exceptionally well known by many people and businesses in the area. She always had a kind word for those who spoke to her and was always willing to lend a helping hand and offer advice. Bridie was originally from Charlestown in County Mayo. However, Letterkenny town proved to be her home over the years. She was described by one man who knew her as: a lovely, kind, ordinary Irish mother. She was also very faithful to church and had a strong belief in God. She was predeceased by her husband Philip, who died fourteen years ago. She was also predeceased by her sister, Brannie whom she was exceptionally close to. She is survived by her eight children, Gerard, Eugene, Martin, Paul, Mairead, Patrice, Bernadette and Dervla. She is also survived by fifteen grandchildren and her brother in law, Joe McElroy. She will be sadly missed by her family, a wide circle of friends and all those who knew her. Halloween creatures owls, crows and bats all live at Crossroads, and that makes us very happy, for these scary animals make a positive contribution to the habitats of the preserve. We don't even mind black cats, IF they are kept indoors. Feral and outdoor cats are exceedingly harmful to wildlife ... and that's not a superstition! But to tamp down superstitions, we at Crossroads will spend the week demystifying Halloween creatures. On October 28, 2022, at 6 p.m. will be our Evening with Owls. The Open Door Bird Sanctuary will be at Crossroads, offering a one-hour presentation followed by the opportunity to meet and greet live birds. Learn all about owls and the other incredible birds in the care of the Sanctuary! Down through the centuries, in many cultures throughout the world, owls have been associated with evil and death. Truth is, owls probably are not smart enough to be evil. But researchers agree that owls are about as dim as the nighttime forests in which they hunt. Owls don't need to be smart. They have everything else going for them. They are muscular. They fly silently. Their huge eyes enable them to see in the dark. Their beaks and talons are strong and wickedly sharp. But their sensitive ears are what make owls extraordinary hunters. Most people assume that the plumicorns (a.k.a. "horns) of an owl are its ears. Not so. The actual ears lie under feathers on the sides of the head, and they aren't symmetrical. Because one ear is higher than the other and the ears are unequal in size, sound is different from different directions, helping owls locate prey, which they do almost unfailingly, even in total darkness. Owls do not smell their prey. As with most birds, the sense of smell is insignificant, if it exists are all. Great Horned Owls frequently prey on skunks. Enough said. But well-developed intelligence? Researchers have observed owls beating their wings on bushes to try to flush out little birds. Is this learned behavior? Is it problem-solving? Maybe. For the most part, owls do not have a lot of problems to solve. They appropriate abandoned nests of other birds, so they don't need building skills. They are stealthy by nature, and they pounce on and usually catch anything they hear, so they don't need hunting techniques. In spite of ghost stories, legends of American First People, and superstitions from Europe and India, hooting owls do not foretell impending death, although their nocturnal calls are spooky. We hear them now and then this time of year, but we will regularly hear those eerie calls at Crossroads in January or February. In contrast to owls, crows are noisy all year round and they are amazingly intelligent. They can learn. They can remember. They can solve problems. They can even identify individual humans. And they detest owls, though whether this is innate or learned behavior is not clear. Those curious about crows will want to attend the Crossroads Book Club on Wednesday, October 26, at 10:00 a.m. This month, the book Crow Planet, Essential Wisdom for the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt will explore the fascinating world of these remarkable birds. The program is free and open to all, whether or not they have read the book. So bring the family to our program on owls, learn about crows at the Crossroads Book Club, or learn about bats at our pre-school Junior Nature Club on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. or our Family Science Saturday program at 2:00 p.m. Costumes are encouraged but not required at Junior Nature Club and Science Saturday, and adult visitors are welcome. Ronald Moede was born on December 21, 1934, in Rio Creek, WI. The son of the late Fred and Emily (Hanamann) Moede, he married Bonnie Neinas in Brussels on June 4, 1960, and they were married for 62+ years. He was a life-long resident of Rio Creek and was an innovative dairy farmer. He owned and managed a large dairy operation, Meade Manor Farms, which had been homesteaded by his grandfather, August Moede, in 1895. The log cabin home, barn, and herd grew to become one of the larger dairy farms in Kewaunee County under his guidance. Upon his retirement, it evolved into Meade Manor Pet Clinic, a vet service for small animals, but the land continued to flourish and produce. Ron graduated from Casco High School, Class of 1952 and Graham School for Cattlemen, Kansas. He was a member of the Wisconsin Holstein Breeders, Kewaunee County Holstein Breeders, and the National Holstein Association. He was a charter member of the Algoma FFA Alumni. His family exhibited champion dairy cattle at local, state, and national dairy cattle shows. In 1984, in Madison, the Wisconsin FFA named him Outstanding Farmer and in 1995, he was named and honored at the Wisconsin State Fair as a Century Farmer. He served as an elder in his church for many years as well as a trustee and various committee appointments. In his younger days, he was active in dartball and also high school sports. He received the Algoma Honorary Chapter Farmer Award, and the Unified Board Business Award. In his retirement, he drove school bus for 15 years for the Algoma School District and was a member of the Great Lakes Sports Fishermen. A hobby later enjoyed was his chicken farming. He raised a small flock of chicken, and he enjoyed passing out extra eggs to friends and relatives when the supply was greater than the family could handle. He was an avid sports fan and he and Bonnie attended both Packers Super Bowl games in 1996 and 1997, and also the Milwaukee World Series in 1983. He enjoyed hunting and fishing, both here and in upper Michigan and Minnesota. He even got Bonnie to go along with him to Lake of the Woods on the Canadian border to do some ice fishing. He held Packers season tickets since 1960 and at the time they bought their tickets they were allowed to pick out where they wanted to sit on the sidelines --there were no end zone seats yet-- and the tickets cost $5.00 a piece! He traveled through most of the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii as well as traveling to the Caribbean and Europe. He enjoyed a summer place in Door County for 20 years. He told many stories of farming with his dad and the fact that at the age of 12, he had his own team of horses to work with on the farm. Responsibility came early as he was left in charge whenever it was necessary for his parents to be gone for a few days. He learned to drive a truck at an early age and often drove himself to school in 8th grade and parked the vehicle a few doors down at a relatives. This was because chores need to be done before and after school. The first tractor purchased was in 1937. In his retirement, he had it restored and displayed in local fairs and tractor shows. He would tell of shocking grain and threshing crews traveling from neighbor to neighbor and the wonderful table his mother would set full of food. A vivid memory was the day WWII ended. The whole neighborhood and working crew quit in the early afternoon (unheard of) and celebrated With beer and music! Even the clergy arrived and joined in. It was a day to remember! In his lifetime he went from horses and the depression, to the digital age and unimagined luxuries. There was no electricity and no running water in his youth and now he had wireless phones, computer screens in his vehicles, along with heated steering wheels and heated seats. Who would have thought that back then. Ron is survived by his wife Bonnie; son Robert (Debbie Harms) Moede; grandson Michael and granddaughter Megan; siblings, Terry (Jane) Moede, Paul (Roxie) Moede; sisters-in-law, Diane Fontaine, Sheila (Don) Baudhuin; and brothers in-law, Dan (Mary) Neinas. He was preceded in death by his parents, Fred and Emily Moede; sister, Marilyn (Arno) Schneider; father- and mother-in-law, Herman and Madeline Neinas, and brother-in-law, Gary Fontaine. Visitation will be held at Kinnard Funeral & Cremation Services Algoma, on Friday, October 7, 2022, from 4-7:30 pm with a prayer service at 6:30. Visitation will continue on Saturday, October 8th at St. Johns Lutheran Church Rankin, from 9-11:00 am. Funeral service will be held at 11:00 am with Dr. Rev. Christopher Jackson officiating. Burial to follow in Evergreen Cemetery. Online condolence message may be shared at KinnardFCS.com. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Kewaunee County 4-H Dairy Fund and the Projection Screen Fund at St. Johns- Rankin. A 30-year-old Florida man died and five others were injured after a two-vehicle crash Saturday night about 15 miles south of Enterprise, a news release from the Alabama State Troopers said. Rickey Adam McNutt, of Davenport, Florida, was killed when his vehicle collided head-on with a 2004 Ford on Coffee County Road 651 around 11:04 p.m. McNutts vehicle caught fire after the crash. The driver of the 2004 Ford and four other passengers were transported to a local hospital for treatment. Because of the fire, state troopers delayed release of McNutts name on Sunday, pending confirmation from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. A Dothan woman remains wanted for bail revocation in connection to the fatal stabbing of her former boyfriend. Tareka Green Stoddart, 38, has been wanted for over a month after a local judge revoked her appeal bond for the felony manslaughter charge a jury found her guilty of last year. Houston County Sheriffs Capt. Bill Rafferty confirmed deputies were still looking for Stoddart. Dothan police arrested Stoddart on Aug. 2, 2013, and charged her with felony murder in the stabbing death of 41-year-old Chad Thomas Clayton. A jury found Stoddart guilty of a lesser felony manslaughter charge in May of 2015. Stoddart said she fatally stabbed Clayton in the chest with a screwdriver in self-defense in the 800 block of North Cherry Street on July 19, 2013. He died from his injuries about two weeks later. District Attorney Doug Valeska argued at trial how Stoddart murdered her former boyfriend, and her past history of violence with him showed she had the intent. Valeska reminded jurors of evidence, which showed Stoddart had stabbed and cut Clayton on three prior occasions before the fatal screwdriver stabbing. No charges were ever filed in the other stabbings. Circuit Court Judge Larry Anderson sentenced Stoddart to serve 16 years in prison, but agreed to an appeal bond in the case while the Alabama Criminal Court of Appeals considered her appeal. Stoddart was released from custody after she posted a $20,000 appeal bond in June 2015. Court records show Anderson issued an order to revoke the appeal bond on Feb. 9, 2016, granting a request from the Houston County District Attorneys Office. The request cited Stoddarts failure to report to the probation office for weekly drug screenings in accordance with her appeal bond requirements. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Tareka Stoddart can call the Houston County Sheriffs Office at 334-677-4808. 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. Risk Sharing and Macroprudential Policy in an Ambitious Capital Markets Union Speech by Vitor Constancio, Vice-President of the ECB,at the Joint conference of the European Commission and European Central Bank on European Financial Integration and Stability,Frankfurt am Main, 25 April 2016 Ladies and gentlemen, An integrated and developed capital market is of key relevance to the European financial system and the economy as a whole. In my speech today, I would like to provide a foundation for this statement from two interlinked perspectives. First of all, well-functioning capital markets are particularly beneficial for an area like the euro area if they lead to what economists call financial risk-sharing. At the same time, however, the process of financial integration and capital market development that can enhance such risk-sharing may be accompanied by the emergence of new financial stability risks that could undermine the envisaged benefits. Therefore, in order to reap the benefits of a true Capital Markets Union (CMU), we need to provide the conditions under which capital markets can flourish, whilst at the same time making sure that regulatory and supervisory measures keep financial stability risks in check. In order to make progress on how this balance can be struck, I shall first review the case for cross-country risk-sharing via capital markets, review the evidence for the euro area and consider how it can be enhanced. Next, I shall discuss the threats to financial stability that can be associated with complementing a more bank-based financial system, like the European one, with strengthening capital markets. Third, I shall let you know my views on which macroprudential policy reforms should be considered. The benefits of financial risk-sharing for the euro area One of the main reasons why financial integration is beneficial is that integrated financial markets help support constant consumption growth in good and in bad states of the world.[1] Consumption smoothing between countries, also known as risk-sharing, can increase welfare by hedging consumption against country-specific risks. In theory, in a perfectly integrated world, full risk-sharing can be achieved where consumption in regions or countries grows at a constant pace and is insensitive to local fluctuations in income and wealth. Normally, high levels of risk-sharing are achieved across jurisdictions within a country, or within a federation that represents a functioning political, economic, and monetary union. For example, evidence suggests that three quarters of shocks to per capita gross product of individual states in the United States are smoothed, with about 40 percent smoothed by insurance or cross-ownership of assets, a quarter smoothed by borrowing or lending, and one-eighth smoothed by the federal transfers and grants. In other words, the contribution of markets is five times higher than the contribution of fiscal tools.[2] Regions within federations in Europe exhibit high levels of risk-sharing, too. For example, in pre-unification Germany, virtually all shocks to per capita state gross product were smoothed. However, due to less developed capital markets than in the United States, the largest portion 50 percent was smoothed through the federal tax transfer and grant system, and 36 percent were smoothed through financial markets.[3] For countries in a monetary union such as the euro area, risk-sharing is particularly important because the single monetary policy is unable to address asymmetric shocks. With disjoint business cycles across countries, idiosyncratic shocks to EMU member states need to be insured through robust market or fiscal mechanisms. Reducing the volatility of aggregate consumption through various risk-sharing mechanisms can provide significant welfare gains for countries hit by specific shocks. And, by reducing internal divergences and facilitating macroeconomic adjustment, risk-sharing can be beneficial for the monetary union as a whole. At this point it is quite clear that, in the foreseeable future, a number of mechanisms that have the potential to improve risk-sharing across countries will not progress quickly in Europe. For example, labour mobility will likely remain below levels achieved in common-language federations such as the United States or Germany. Similarly, building a European supra-national system of taxes and transfers to mimic the United States or the situation within some European countries is, at present, not a realistic prospect. Finally, the rules on fiscal deficits imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact will continue to set limits on national governments for smoothing large shocks. For these reasons, it is more pressing than ever to boost Europes risk-sharing potential through financial market mechanisms. First, cross-border holdings of productive or financial assets can provide members of a currency union with insurance against idiosyncratic shocks. Second, well-functioning credit markets can contribute to smoothing consumption against relative income fluctuations, especially if most cross-border lending takes the form of direct lending to households and firms rather than of wholesale lending and borrowing in interbank markets.[4] The conclusion is that greater progress in risk-sharing in the euro area would require significantly more developed and integrated capital markets, as well as more banks operating at a pan-European level. Quantitatively, the risk-sharing benefits of integrated financial markets can be large. By far the most important source of risk sharing are cross-regional and cross-border asset holdings, that is, various forms of equity holdings and firm ownership claims. Financial integration in Europe was expected to be greatly facilitated by the introduction of the common currency. However, in the years since the introduction of the euro, progress in capital markets and credit markets integration has been uneven. At present, the cross-border ownership of assets in the EU is still limited, despite the fact that the single currency in the euro area reduced some of the information barriers and transaction costs. Corporate financing through bond and equity markets is much more limited in Europe too, with banks being the undisputed primary source of funding for firms. For all these reasons, the overall contribution of markets to risk-sharing has, on average, been somewhat limited.[5] Chart 1 demonstrates the contribution of various factors to risk-sharing over time. It shows that after the adoption of the euro, smoothing through factor income flows resulting from cross-border ownership of assets increased substantially, yet it remained on average below US levels. The notable exception is a brief period in the early-to-mid 2000s when capital markets smoothed between 30 and 40 percent of country-specific shocks to GDP. The contribution of capital markets declined substantially during the financial crisis and especially during the sovereign debt crisis. The contribution of credit markets has been lower, and it became even negative during the financial crisis when the European banking sector was particularly heavily hit. At present, almost 80 percent of the idiosyncratic shocks to a countrys economy remain unsmoothed, and changes in relative prices contribute the most to risk-sharing. Contributions of various channels to risk sharing in EA, 1991 present[6] To speed up the process of capital markets and credit markets integration, two initiatives have emerged in Europe: the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union (CMU). The Banking Union aims at a sustainable and deep integration in banking markets, through single supervision, joint resolution and common deposit insurance. Risk-sharing is particularly fostered through direct cross-border bank lending, emphasising the importance of the European Commissions recent initiative on fostering retail financial services. The CMU, in turn, aims at mobilising capital by creating deeper and more integrated capital markets in the EU. Ideally, the CMU should achieve the completion of the single market for capital within a common-currency union. This completion is vital to reap the full benefits of risk-sharing across borders and not be limited by border effects from past institutional legacies. Overcoming these border effects is to be achieved through regulatory and non-regulatory actions, including the harmonisation of key legislation related to financial products. While the regulatory and non-regulatory actions will be instrumental in capturing market-provided risk-sharing, deeper capital markets have a particularly high potential to smooth risks across national borders. Consequently, we need an ambitious CMU which requires a concrete roadmap in terms of goals and milestones. Broad objectives such as capital market development, deepening financial integration and achieving risk-sharing should be at par with specific proposals such as facilitating funding for corporates in general and for SMEs in particular. Key areas such as securitisation, insolvency regimes, securities holders rights and tax legislation need to be prioritised. All these are important to ensure equal treatment of users of capital markets across Member States, the very essence of a CMU. Financial stability implications of enhanced risk-sharing and other aspects of capital market development This brings me to the second part of my talk, where I would like to discuss the financial stability implications of enhanced risk-sharing. Indeed, financial integration and the further development of non-bank financing may also create new financial stability risks. At a general level, greater integration can exacerbate the size and speed of cross-border contagion. International risk-sharing and cross-border contagion can be two sides of the same financial integration coin.[7] This explains why taking a macroprudential perspective on the financial system is extremely important for addressing potential new sources of systemic risk. With respect to the banking sector, the further development of capital markets increases competition and may incentivise banks to take on more risk to maintain profitability.[8],[9] To ensure that there are no unintended financial stability risks, we need to strengthen the European macroprudential regulatory toolkit for banks under the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD IV)/Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). The European Commissions review of the CRR/CRDIV will provide an opportunity to revise and complement the current macroprudential toolkit for banking at the European level. It should entail, firstly, ensuring that instruments currently available are more targeted and overlaps are eliminated; secondly, broadening the toolkit with additional instruments such as the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), Leverage Ratio (LR), Loan-to-Value (LTV)/Loan-to-Income (LTI) and Debt-Service-to-Income (DSTI) ratio; and thirdly, streamlining the process for notification or information procedures both in the EU and within the SSM, by revising in particular Art 458 CRR. This would simplify the co-ordination mechanism, ensuring that macroprudential authorities can decide and implement the measures in an effective, efficient and timely manner. Moreover, the strong growth of non-bank financing creates new risks in a part of the financial system that is much less regulated. In particular, the investment fund sector has grown rapidly over the past few years. Between end-2009 and the first quarter of 2015, assets managed by investment funds other than money market funds almost doubled from 5.4 trillion to 10.5 trillion. Excluding valuation and reclassification effects, the sector has grown by 30 percent since 2009.[10] Importantly, this rapid growth comes together with increased risk-taking. Funds have shifted their asset allocation from higher- to lower-rated debt securities, increased the average residual maturities of debt securities holdings and continued to expand their exposure to emerging markets.[11] In addition, the interconnectedness of the fund sector with the financial system, the wider use of synthetic leverage, and the increasing prevalence of demandable equity imply that the potential for a systemic impact would increase, should the investment fund industry come under stress. Therefore, I want to clearly state that the financial regulatory reform has to be completed and extended through further efforts to contain risks in the shadow banking sector and to strengthen macroprudential policies. Developing the macroprudential framework beyond banking Please allow me to elaborate on three important aspects of this task, namely tools to address the excessive use of leverage by investment funds, tools to address liquidity risks, and a framework for macroprudential margin and haircut requirements. As regards leverage in investment funds, we need to ensure that the use of leverage remains within acceptable limits. Highly leveraged funds can create and amplify systemic risk. When leverage is created through derivatives exposures or repo and securities lending transactions, margin calls or increasing haircuts on collateral can trigger a deleveraging by funds.[12] Notably, such a margin spiral[13] can even occur when funds are closed and investors cannot redeem their shares at short notice. To the extent that many funds are forced to sell assets in less liquid markets and at substantial discounts, this can reinforce price falls in financial markets and become a risk of systemic nature.[14] In order to curb the use of leverage by investment funds in the EU, it is useful to distinguish between funds that are subject to the regulatory framework of the Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities (UCITS) Directive and those subject to the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). In principle, all UCITS-funds have restrictions on the use of balance sheet and synthetic leverage. In practice, however, funds applying more complex investment strategies can calculate their use of leverage based on the Commitment Method or a Value at Risk (VaR) approach, resulting in a less stringent limit for synthetic leverage. Therefore, it is important that we examine the use of leverage by these UCITS-funds, and address any existing shortcomings in the UCITS regulations. As for the alternative investment funds that operate under the AIFMD, there are no hard limits for the use of leverage. Importantly, national competent authorities do have the power to impose leverage limits under the AIFMD, but no authority has exercised this power so far. In order to put this potentially powerful macroprudential tool into practice, we need to develop an operational framework at the EU level. In this context, let me highlight three important issues. First, the use of leverage within the banking system and the existing leverage ratio for banks may not always be a useful benchmark for all types of funds. Unlike bank capital, investment fund shares of open-ended funds can be an unstable source of funding when investors can withdraw their equity at short notice.[15] Second, an assessment of liquidity risk by funds should be part of the assessment of leverage. Indeed, the risk of redemptions by investors on open-ended funds can be closely related to the use of leverage. Third, the framework should have a clear macroprudential perspective, providing authorities with the guidance and flexibility to set limits for groups of funds, where necessary to address a too many to fail risk.[16] Even if investment funds are small and thus not too big to fail, they may be systemic as a herd, and pose a risk to financial stability due to common exposures to the same type of shock.[17] Next to tools addressing excessive leverage, we need to develop tools targeting liquidity in non-bank financial institutions. With regard to investment funds, liquidity spirals remain a risk.[18] Such spirals could be triggered if funds were to be confronted with high redemptions[19] or increased margin requirements, as these could result in forced selling on markets with low liquidity. To address such risks, guided stress tests could be developed jointly by ESMA, ECB and ESRB, together with national competent and macroprudential authorities, and additional intervention powers for competent authorities to deal with large scale redemptions should be discussed. As regards the latter, the UCITS directive already provides member states with the option to allow competent authorities to require the suspension of the repurchase or redemption of units in the interest of the unit-holders or of the public. We should explore whether this provision can be effectively used for macroprudential purposes. Finally, the creation of leverage via derivatives and securities financing transactions (SFT) and the pro-cyclical effects of margin and haircut-setting practices in these transactions would also need to be addressed. Macroprudential authorities should be given the power to set floors on haircuts and margins on derivatives and SFT at the transaction level. Furthermore, they should be able to change these in a time-varying manner. The current margin and haircut-setting practices stimulate the build-up of leverage via these transactions in good times when there is a tendency to under-price risk and amplify deleveraging in bad times. While a number of policy measures aimed at limiting the pro-cyclical effects of margin and haircut-setting have already been adopted or are underway, none of these steps envisage their time-varying implementation by macroprudential authorities. This new macroprudential framework could build on the current regulatory frameworks and policy recommendations as applicable to derivatives and SFTs at EU and global level. These frameworks include the FSB policy recommendations for haircuts on non-centrally cleared securities financing transactions, the BCBS-IOSCO margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). , Standardised margin and haircut schedules exist within these frameworks, and could form the basis for setting macroprudential margins and haircuts. For example, macroprudential authorities could build on the standardised FSB/BCBS-IOSCO haircut and margin schedules, which offer a transparent means of calculating initial margins as well as explicit numerical haircut values that can be set as floors to haircut and margin calculated with internal models. Concluding remarks Let me conclude. Europe needs to further integrate and develop its capital markets, and substantially so. In the absence of other cross-country risk-sharing mechanisms for the time being, this has a lot of promise for insuring European households and firms against national business cycle fluctuations. We need to be determined and ambitious in pursuing a Capital Markets Union that will deliver these benefits. This means to provide the conditions under which capital markets can flourish across the euro area and EU and at the same time, to design a regulatory and supervisory framework under which financial stability risks are under control. I am now looking forward to the upcoming discussion of the highlevel policy panel, that it will give us further food for thought on how to create a long-term vision for CMU, thus striking the right balance between the two dimensions I have discussed. The European Commission on Wednesday charged that Google breached EU antitrust rules by seeking to maintain and expand the dominance of its Android operating system. A competitive mobile Internet sector is increasingly important for consumers and businesses in Europe, said the ECs antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager. Based on our investigation thus far, she continued, we believe that Googles behavior denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players, in breach of EU antitrust rules. Throttling Competition In its statement of objections, the commission alleged Google violated EU antitrust rules in the following ways: Requiring manufacturers to preinstall Google Search and Googles Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps; Preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on Android open source code; and Giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively preinstall Google Search on their devices. Googles business practices may lead to a further consolidation of the companys dominant position in general Internet search services, the commission noted. Those practices may affect the ability of other mobile browsers to compete with Google Chrome. They hinder the development of operating systems based on Android open source code and the opportunities they would offer for the development of new apps and services, the commission said. Internet Explorer Redux The commissions action is a response to complaints it has received from Googles competitors in Europe. In 2013,FairSearch Europe, a group that includes Oracle and Nokia, filed a complaint with the EC about Android. In 2014,Aptoide also filed a complaint. Consumer Watchdog is another group supporting an investigation into Googles Android dominance. This is the same kind of thing that Microsoft did when it bundled its browser in with its operating system, said John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdogs Privacy Project. While Google makes Android freely available, its got strings that come with it that unfairly favor Googles apps if youre going to use the Android software, he told the E-Commerce Times. Consumers can go and find other apps and install them, Simpson added, but that gives Google a leg up on Android devices. Unfortunate Action Google is not stifling the Android marketplace, according to Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with theInformation Technology & Innovation Foundation. This is an unfortunate action because it does not seem like there has been any consumer harm from the allegations and there is strong competition in the mobile OS environment, he told the E-Commerce Times. It is hard to see how Google can lock out any competitors since the switching costs of installing a new app are so minimal 30 seconds to download and install a rival app, Castro said. One reason Android enjoys widespread popularity is its openness, he explained, which allows for experimentation while also providing standardized features across platforms for users. It would be unfortunate if the EU punishes Google for actions it takes that create better consumer experiences because it believes these actions are anticompetitive, Castro said. This would create a risk, he continued, that tech companies would design products to meet arcane competition regulations rather than consumer needs. U.S. Probe Since the Europeans announced theirinitial probe into Googles Android monopoly last year, there have been murmurs of a similar investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In September, for example, Bloomberg reported that the FTC had reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether or not Google was stifling access to Android by its competitors. That wouldnt be the first time the FTC probed Google. It looked into Googles search dominance in 2011 and 2012. That investigation ended in 2013 with Google changing some of its business practices. However, last year The Wall Street Journal reported that the commissionignored the advice of key staffers to sue Google because they believed it was doing harm to consumers and innovation. The FTC completely blew its investigation on the search monopoly, Consumer Watchs Simpson said. They completely failed to do their job there. In 2014, Google spent US$16.8 million on lobbying in Washington, he added. You dont spend money like drunken sailors on lobbying unless you see results. Verizon reportedly is planning to make a formal first-round bid for the core assets of Yahoo when the company begins fielding offers on Monday. Verizon, whose CEO last month confirmed his companys interest, reportedly is working with executives of its AOL subsidiary and three financial advisors to put together a bid by the April 11 deadline. The package will include an offer to buy the core Web business along with Yahoo Japan, according to the Bloomberg report, which puts a value on the business of less than US$8 billion. Verizon is expected to have at least one major competitor. Google executives are considering a bid for Yahoo, and Time also may be a suitor, according to the Bloomberg report. Yahoo declined to comment on the report, spokesperson Rebecca Neufeld told the E-Commerce Times. The company did not plan to provide any updates until the Strategic Review Committee either reached an agreement with a prospective buyer or decided not to pursue an offer, she confirmed earlier this week. Google also declined to comment for this story. Verizon Plays Catch-Up The agreement could help Verizon build upon its legacy base of loyal AOL subscribers, who trend toward the more seasoned Web users MSN and Yahoo competed for a generation ago. The deal makes sense in that Yahoo needs a suitor and by acquiring it, Verizon could consolidate what you would call the Webs most established or traditional users, observed Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. Its not as potentially profitable as some of the younger groups, but its more steady and loyal, he told the E-Commerce Times. Yahoo would give Verizon an immediate boost in its Web traffic numbers, with more than 1 billion monthly visits to Yahoo sites monthly, noted Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research. Communication companies like Comcast and Verizon are trying to monetize the bit delivery service with media that can deliver more margins or thats the theory, he told the E-Commerce Times. This is Verizons attempt to catch up and possibly surpass some of its main rivals in the Internet of Things space, after having failed to capitalize on the explosions of smartphones and app and content distribution, suggested Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research. Also, like the rest of the telcos, Verizon is deploying network function virtualization and software-defined networking to modernize their service delivery infrastructure, he told the E-Commerce Times. Despite Yahoos missing out on offering cloud services to compete with rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft, the company has had a good deal of experience operating its own cloud services at scale, noted Teich. The firm also is doing a good deal of research in big data analytics, as well as machine learning and deep learning, he pointed out. Remember that data collected from IoT endpoints feeds into cloud-based big data analytics engines and machine learning is starting to be aimed at gleaning deeper insight from large amounts of IoT data, Teich said. Yahoos Best Chance Yahoos downward spiral appears to have accelerated under CEO Marissa Meyer, who was brought in to turn around the struggling company. Yahoo has failed to develop any major new technology products in recent years, drawing heavy criticism from its own investors for what they see as a top-heavy, overpaid management team and bloated workforce. That sentiment led to its actively considering strategic alternatives. A review of Yahoos deal book revealed a financially distressed firm whose revenues were expected to drop 15 percent to $3.5 billion in 2016, on profit of only $750 million, representing a 20 percent decline, according to a Re/code report. If its bid should be accepted, Verizon would replace Mayer with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. Verizon EVP Marni Walden would oversee a combined Yahoo and AOL. 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Zak S. DHAKA - Of the 41 persons who faced criminal charges following the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex in Bangladesh, just two remain in prison complex owner Sohel Rana and an inspector from Dhaka's Civil Development Agency. Of the remaining 39 at least half have yet to surrender to the court, including the Spanish owner of the Phantom Tac factory, with the rest having been released on bail by the courts. (Photo: Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, making a speech in Cape Town on October 8, 2008. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has urged people to not be afraid to speak out against injustice while the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and his wife were receiving a special award from the man who is one of his successors in leading the Anglican church in southern Africa. The Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, presented the Anglican Church's Archbishop's Award for Peace to Tutu and his wife Leah on April 22. Tutu, supported by clerics like Makgoba, was a thorn in the side of the apartheid authorities in the 1970s and 1980s during the height of the struggle against South Africa's racist ideology of apartheid.. More recently he has been an outspoken critic of corruption under South African President Jacob Zuma. The president was in exile during the latter part of the struggle against apartheid and was a high ranking officer in the armed wing of the African National Congress, which led the struggle and is now the governing party. "When there is injustice, you can't help it even when the consequences of speaking up are as dire as they used to be under the apartheid system. You say 'tough luck, I just have to speak or I will die,'" said Tutu who said he never expected the award. He added, "[Otherwise] I will maybe still be alive physically, but I will not be alive in my spirit." "At 84, Tutu's age was visible in his slow shuffle to the altar and the time he took to sit and rise from his seat during the service," South Africa's News24 commented. The Arch, as he is popularly known in South Africa, said afterwards getting the award that both he and his wife were both very humbled and with characteristic Tutu humour he thanked his dark complexion for hiding his blushing. "I hope that it can help to inspire others to know that even when it seems that no one is noticing, yet yes, people notice and people appreciate you." Previous recipients of the award include South Africa's Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda. Makgoba said that, with a Bible verse in mind, he had looked at the principles and values of service to humanity, loving God, and walking humbly. "There is no one better than the Tutus to be honoured in that way and indeed it is the church that is privileged and honoured to have bestowed this award upon them," Makgoba said. Archbishop Makgoba has strongly criticised some of the actions of the South African government delivering his words during a graduation ceremony at the University of Witwatersrand during which he received an honorary degree March 31, Times Live reported. "We live in a society based on fear. Our members of Parliament are too scared to hold the executive properly to account," he said in reference to President Zuma, who has been accused of corruption a number of times. "Those in the executive or in public service who are alleged to have been approached by a well-known family living not too far from here and who have allegedly been offered blandishments in return for business favors have been too afraid to speak out about it. (REUTERS/John Stillwell)Kate Middleton and Prince William kiss at the balcony of the Kensington Palace after their wedding ceremony. The rumors about Kate Middleton's pregnancy were reinvigorated once again when a fresh batch of rumors revealed that the Duchess and Duke of Cambridge are expecting twins. There is no official statement from the Palace yet, but speculations may not be true especially with the royal couple's busy schedules to fulfill their duties and take care of their two children. Kate and William's toddlers, Prince George, 2, and Princess Charlotte, 1, may be having a twin sibling soon. According to reports, Kate is rumored to be pregnant for a few weeks now. The royal couple, apparently, did not expect the surprising news. However, there are several proofs that could easily debunk the renewed rumors. One proof is her wardrobe choice during her trip with William in India and Bhutan. She wore tight jeans and body-hugging dresses that did not show a baby bump. Plus, Queen Elizabeth is also someone who would not approve of Kate travelling to faraway places. It can be remembered that Gossip Cop debunked the earlier pregnancy rumors in a statement in February. The Palace exclusively told Gossip Cop that they never made any confirmation regarding such reports. Thus, the reports and rumors about the Duchess of Cambridge's pregnancy are not true. The news outlet also emphasized OK! magazine starting the rumor in October of last year, which contradicts its claim last month that the Duchess is already "almost 12 weeks" pregnant. Earlier this month, the royal couple visited Taj Mahal, as a part of their India and Bhutan visit, 24 years after Princess Diana set foot in the place. Before arriving, the Cambridge's communication secretary Jason Knauf released a statement, according to E! Online, that Prince William is lucky to visit the place where "his mother's memory is kept alive by so many who travel there." "Twenty-four years on from her visit to the Taj, the duke and the duchess are looking forward to seeing this beautiful place for themselves and creating some new memories as they say thank you to the people of India at the conclusion of this tour," Knauf added. Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o... Spending time in the shiny white halls of the education reform manse, you could be forgiven for believing that urban school districts are on the way out, something garish and anachronisticthe Betamax at a digital-streamers convention. Similarly, time spent in the halls of many district central administrations (and teachers union offices) might leave you wondering when this annoying and ungodly charter-privatization-corporate-reform fad will pass so we can all just get on with public districts work. Both positions miss the point. Districts do indeed have a vital role to play in the urban landscape of public education, but that role bears little resemblance to the mantle of monopoly so many districts still wear, despite reluctantly ceding so many children to the charter sector. If districts do indeed have the right to exist despite what apocalyptic relinquishers have to say, what is their new role? What does district 2.0" look like in Philadelphia, where 67 percent of the citys students are enrolled in traditional public schools (and where I recently served as deputy superintendent)? Or in Detroit (47 percent)? Washington (56 percent)? Newark, N.J. (72 percent)? There are two critical tasks for 2.0 districts: They must become deeply specialized in some, but not all, areas of schooling, with a steadfast focus on academic gaps in the citywide system. They must also become deeply porous at the community and school levels in order to nurture an inclusive and comprehensive citywide system. In both areas, the district must work hard to take full advantage in new ways of all the benefits of its size. Big is not inherently bad. A complacent monopoly culture that has settled for failure is bad. A model of schools and schooling that ignores new research about students and learning is also bad. A districts size itself is neutral. Under good management that knows how to benefit from scale, a large size can be a vehicle for much good. Districts as specialists, not generalists. Districts need to be really good at the highly complex science of teaching. But districts no longer have the resources to be good at instruction within every school model and for every group of children, so they must specialize. The growth of the charter sector gives districts permission to get really good at some things, as opposed to remaining mediocre and stretched doing many. This specialization can be thought of similarly to the creation of business lines, with leaders and teams dedicated to distinct school types and student groups. There are three areas of specialization on which 2.0 districts need to focus, all of which represent gaps in the existing system: Districts must rise to the opportunity of reaching the hardest-to-serve students. As the field struggles to gain a better appreciation of toxic stress, academic deficits, and other differentiated and special needs, districts cannot wait on others to solve these problems. Districts remain the de facto operators of schools of last resort; theyve got to specialize here, even at the expense of other work, if needed. Big is not inherently bad. A complacent monopoly culture that has settled for failure is bad." Districts need to innovate in small ways. Given their access to capital, their high number of schools (and thus potential pilot sites), and their potential to scale insights quickly, districts are ideally situated to act as cities education research-and-development hubs. This is particularly the case in cities where the charter sector is not fulfilling this promise. Neighborhood-preference schools should also be an area of specialization. Yes, families want quality choices; and yes, recent family surveys in New Orleans and Chicago have again illustrated that a majority of families select schools, in large part, based on their proximity to home. Since many jurisdictions do not allow neighborhood preferences for charter schools, and all cities seem a long way off from great schools in every neighborhood, districts have an obligation to focus on neighborhood schools, which are key to meeting community needs, building community partnerships, creating flexibility around student mobility, and so on. Districts as deeply porous. The second major role 2.0 districts have to play situates them as big, important partners in creating and sustaining inclusive, collaborative, and integrated citywide systems. In an era of complex governance, increased fragmentation, and reduced budgets, districts need to be at the forefront of ensuring the most coherent possible use of tax dollars across education sectors, city agencies, and community-based organizations to meet the needs of all children and reduce duplicative and irrational waste. This porousness relates to collaborative system-level partnerships. Local education agencies can cooperate to educate students on long-term suspension or provide low-incidence special education services. Districts can partner with health-service agencies to place social workers in schools. They can also partner with community colleges, nonprofits, charter providers, city employment agencies, and others to ensure alternative graduation pathways for all students. They can commit to so-called universal enrollment systems, data sharing, and common accountability systemsall of which can ease the work of families as they navigate the new dual-sector public school world. In these ways, districts need not demand decisionmaking rights or make isolated decisions; rather, 2.0 districts can operate as good partners and anchors for innovative, voluntary collaborations to solve complex problems. Porousness has another benefit. In an era of diminishing resources, 2.0 districts must look for the in-kind funding provided by partners to supplement their own direct spending. In addition to these two primary and existential specialization areas, there are other benefits of being a scale operator of schools that 2.0 districts can leverage. Districts are still typically the biggest player in town and, as such, have the ability to leverage their outsize economies of buying and selling for the good of all. For example, districts can take the lead on placing downstream pressure on teacher-training institutions to improve. What does this mean a 2.0 district will not do? Districts will stop trying to centrally manage all school types for all students, including shared professional development and uniform staffing of principal supervisors. They will also stop spending resources equally in the interest of fairness, trying to provide all things to all schools. More controversially, 2.0 districts might need to stop directly managing magnet schools and selective-admissions schools. If they stratify systems, let these schools manage themselves like charter schools, allowing 2.0 districts shepherd precious management resources for the benefit of their priority, specialty schools. To accomplish the change to 2.0, district leaders will need to manage well and meet high standards, particularly as the Every Student Succeeds Act sustains a federal focus on equity and promotes more innovative, local control. District leaders will need to work hard to shift suspicious, beleaguered cultures and will need the courage to stop acting as if teachers were inconvenient guests (as opposed to MVPs on the team). They need to stop wondering how to engage the community and start ceding some decisionmaking rights to parents. Many have already started down this path, including leaders in Denver, Philadelphia, and Washington. Each of these cities is an imperfect example, but their leaders have acknowledged that the monopoly is over and the time for reinvention is now. The district is dead. Long live the district. Despite the thousands of dollars spent on glossy PR, both pro and con, over the Vergara v. California case, last weeks decision by a state appeals court to uphold teacher job protections hinged on a far less flashy factor: the arcana of California constitutional law. From the beginning, both sides in the polarizing case acknowledged that it would probably end up before the states supreme court, and those gears are already cranking, with the plaintiffs planning to seek review there. But regardless of which way any future decision goes, the fallout from the appeals decision has made several things clear. First, it is unlikely to stop legal challenges to Californias teacher-employment laws, although future lawsuits could well take a different tack. Second, there appears to be little appetite among either party to strike a legislative compromise to rework portions of the laws in question. And finally, although the new ruling has been billed as a win for the teachers unions, Vergara has already brought significant attention to the sometimes counter intuitive processes by which teachers are hired, fired, and assigned. As a result, unions are likely to continue to face pressure to come up with or accept changes. We have to be the people who offer solutions, and for years weve been content to say no, what we wont put up with or tolerate, said Jennifer Thomas, the president of the San Jose Teachers Association. Were at a place where saying no just wont do anymore. A Vitriolic Debate Filed four years ago on behalf of nine California students, the Vergara suit sought to overturn three key aspects long considered sacrosanct by teachers unions: the timeline for granting teachers tenure, the rules for dismissing teachers for performance, and layoff procedures that prioritize teacher seniority. It claimed they violated poor and minority students constitutional rights to an equitable education. Eventually, the lawsuit came to embody a decade of tumult over so-called education reform, with all the players in sight: wealthy backers, a powerful teachers union in opposition, and students sharing heart-wrenching stories of neglect. There was also an intense amount of vitriol. Vergara deepened tensions between teachers unions and groups that have been calling for changes to employment policies, split researchers and policy advocates, and even led to the unions calling for the resignation of a U.S. Cabinet-level officialand a Democrat at that. In June 2014, Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu handed a complete win to the plaintiffs. But in its April 14 decision, the appeals court reversed course. In essence, that court said, its likely, even probable, that the statutes in question result in poor-quality teachers in some California schoolsbut that administrators, not the statutes themselves, are responsible for how, and to which students, those teachers are assigned. The courts job is merely to determine whether the statutes are constitutional, not if they are a good idea, Presiding Justice Roger Boren wrote on behalf of the three-judge appeals panel. To a much greater extent than the trial courts decision did, the appeals court delved into the nuances of constitutional law in rendering its decision. The Vergara lawsuit is a facial challenge, meaning it alleged that the laws on their face are unconstitutional because they inevitably harm students. Since overturning laws wholesale can carry sweeping effects, such a challenge typically carries a high burden of proof for the plaintiffs. In its ruling, the appeals court seemed to suggest that an as applied constitutional challenge to the statutes might be more appropriate. That approach assumes the laws are neutral and, instead, targets how theyre implemented. And it may be how critics of the laws conceive any future challenges, said Hailly Korman, a former education litigator. But, she added, an as-applied constitutional challenge is hardly a cakewalk. Though it varies greatly due to the different constitutional protections each state affords, courts often want to see an intent to discriminate against certain groups in an as-applied challenge, not merely a disparate impact, she said. California courts tend to be more sympathetic to disparate-impact claims, but any such suit would still require much evidence about how specific districts grant tenure and assign teachers, and to show how they inflict constitutional harm on students. And that means such challenges might have to proceed district by district, or even school by school. I think in a state like California, you have so many people contributing in very small ways to this ultimate phenomenon, it is very hard to amass evidence of the turning points where ordinary decisions become constitutional problems, said Korman, now a principal at Bellwether Education Partners, a consulting firm. Josh Lipshutz, a partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the high-powered Los Angeles firm representing the Vergara plaintiffs, said his team knew that bringing a facial challenge to the laws would be difficult. But in his view, the evidence in the case is incontrovertible, and the court erred in striking down the facial challenge by pointing to administrative middlemen as the key problem. If the statutes are trapping the ineffective teachers in the system, someone has to put them somewhere, he said. Its sort of a red herring, to blame the local districts for not better matching these teachers."Lipshutz said bringing an as-applied challenge to the laws could be a possibility, if his team proves unsuccessful with the state Supreme Court. No Legislative Movement Teachers unions, for their part, have largely celebrated the ruling, saying that it affirms the laws as currently written. "[The April 14] ruling reversing Treus decision overwhelmingly underscores that the laws under attack have been good for public education and for kids, and that the plaintiffs failed to establish any violation of a students constitutional rights, said Eric Heins, the president of the California Teachers Association, in a statement. But in strongly worded language, the court called school districts staffing arrangements deplorable, calling out not just administrators decisions, but also how theyre influenced by teachers preferences and collective bargaining. And that means those factors will continue to invite scrutiny, say experts who follow teacher policy. Research has documented meticulously that needy students and students of color get worse teachers, however definedwhether defined by years of experience, paper credentials, or level of teaching effectiveness. Vergara thrust those inequities firmly into the limelight, and it could be difficult to put that genie back in the bottle, said Katharine Strunk, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Southern California. The court really calls out the district-level policy and the collective bargaining agreements. Because of the way they are playing out at the local level, kids are not being treated well or equitably, she said. That is quite a statement. Since Vergara was filed, there has been little sign of compromise between the teachers unions and those who support revisions to Californias teacher job-protection statutes. A recent proposal, introduced by assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, a Democrat, would allow districts to take up to three years, rather than the current two, to grant tenure and require due process hearings brought over performance to be conducted by an arbitrator. The CTA opposes the bill, and a spokesman for Students Matter, the nonprofit that funded the Vergara lawsuit, said only that the group has been engaged in ongoing conversations with Bonillas office. Charles Taylor Kerchner, a professor at Claremont Graduate University who studies institutional change in public education, thinks the teachers unions arent doing themselves any long-term favors by not supporting some legislative changes, and by neglecting to use Vergara to engage in broader conversations about how to improve the teaching profession. (Kerchner also writes an opinion blog on edweek.org.) These are relatively technical, minor fixes, he said. They could be agreed to over an afternoon with a beer in Sacramento. A Fresh Start? But now that a legal Sword of Damocles isnt hanging over the teachers unions, some observers remain optimistic that they and districts could begin to take a fresh look at the teacher policies together. Ideally, said William Koski, a Stanford University law professor, the ruling will lead to more productive conversations about ways of balancing both protections for teachers and the real disparities students face with regard to access to quality teaching. The teachers unions are deft if they get out in front of this and say, Lets make sure our members are protected and supported, while giving assurances that no tenure decisions are going to harm students, he said. Its a point of view shared by Thomas, the San Jose union president. She backs such changes as teacher peer review and, potentially, instituting a longer time to document whether teachers should be granted tenure. But those reforms should be a matter of local experimentation, and will require some difficult changes, such as fixing outmoded teacher-evaluation systems, she said. The harder reality is that we are going to have to push through bitter and broken relationships in some districts to reach a place for a fresh start, she said. Were going to have to organize our communities for support, acknowledge that stopped clocks are right twice a day, and make common sense changes to address what isnt working. All of that leaves the state Supreme Courts course of action still a mystery. Even if it decides to review the appellate courts decision, some scholars believe that the Vergara plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail. The court of appeals opinion is very, very sound and well-reasoned. I think its going to be an uphill battle, Koski said. On 9 May 1950, Robert Schuman presented a proposal on the creation of an organised Europe, a plan which would be indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the Schuman declaration, is considered to be the beginning of what is now the European Union. Today, the 9th of May has become a European symbol (Europe Day) which, along with the flag, the anthem, the motto and the single currency (the Euro), identifies the political entity of the European Union. Europe day is the ideal occasion to carry our activities and festivities to bring Europe closer to its citizens and also unite people of the Union closer to one another. This year, May has been chosen as month of Europe and various activities related to Europe will take place in and outside of the European Union. As the spirit of European Union is at the heart of the EIBs activities, we will be present in the Europe Day festivities in both Luxembourg and Brussels, gladly participating in the event with a stand manned by a group of employees from various departments. Seize the opportunity to get to know us better, visit our stand, ask questions and test your knowledge on the EIB by completing our quiz. Stay updated on all activities by regularly checking our website or by following us on facebook and twitter. We look forward to meeting you! Europe Day Festivities Schedule Luxembourg: Saturday, 21 May 2016 Place dArmes, Luxembourg City Centre 11:00 18:00 Brussels: Saturday, 28 May 2016 Building of the European Council, Rue de la Loi 175 11:00 17:00 Network Housing Group The European Investment Bank has agreed to provide GBP 1 billion for new social housing investment across the UK in partnership with the Housing Finance Corporation (THFC). The expanded Affordable Housing Finance programme will help to alleviate shortages in affordable housing and accelerate construction of new build social housing. The new engagement represents the largest ever support for social housing by the European Investment Bank anywhere in Europe and follows the successful allocation of a previous GBP 500 million loan, signed in December 2013, under the Affordable Housing Finance initiative, to registered providers of social housing in the UK. The 30 year long-term EIB loan will be matched by THFC, and benefit from a government guarantee, and support GBP 2 billion of overall investment in new social housing and urban regeneration schemes by housing association across the country. Over 20,000 new affordable homes backed by EIB are expected to be built under the initiative and local housing associations expected to build new affordable properties range from some of the largest London based housing associations to community based associations in areas as diverse as Glasgow, Wigan, Scarborough, Bradford, and Cambridge. The European Investment Bank has a firm commitment to supporting investment in social and affordable housing across the UK, where we provide nearly half of overall EIB support for social housing in Europe. This record new backing builds on a successful partnership with THFC and the EIBs strong track record of providing nearly GBP 2 billion for investment in social housing by more than seventy housing associations across the country. Local investment under this initiative will improve lives, create jobs and cut heating bills in homes across the UK. said Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice President. Piers Williamson, Chief Executive of THFC and AHF said: Affordable Housing Finance, working in partnership with Government, is sourcing some of the most cost-effective long-term finance ever utilised by Housing Associations to underpin the delivery of badly needed affordable homes, across Great Britain. We completed the first drawdown under this facility yesterday for GreenSquare Housing Association at a long term rate of 1.93% or 0.27% below the UK Governments own funding rate. GreenSquare's Chief Executive, Howard Toplis, said: This funding is great news for people in need of housing across Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, who are going to benefit from our ambitious new homes development programme. We are delighted that we have achieved this loan rate, which we understand is a record low. We can now confidently embark on our development programme to build 1,000 homes in the next five years, helping us to not only increase the number of new good quality, affordable homes across our areas of operations, but also allowing us to add value to the wider communities where we have homes. In excess of 70 housing associations have already applied for financing under the new Affordable Housing Finance initiative and others are expected to be assessed in the coming weeks. GBP 500 million has already been signed earlier this year with the remaining GBP 500 million to be signed in the coming weeks. The new EIB support was formally announced during a site visit by Jonathan Taylor, Vice President of the European Investment Bank and Piers Williamson, Chief Executive of The Housing Finance Corporation to a housing regeneration programme in South Kilburn managed by Network Housing Group and backed by the Affordable Housing Finance programme. We are delighted to see the strong association between THFC and the European Investment Bank continuing. Competitively priced funding from the EIB, through THFC, has played a key part in supporting Networks major development programmes, including our 229 home regeneration of South Kilburn Phase 2. Its great that more housing associations and, ultimately, more people in housing need will now benefit from their continued collaboration. said Helen Evans, Chief Executive, Network Housing Group. The European Investment Bank has provided more than GBP 4.2 billion to support investment in social housing and urban renewal across the UK since 1998. Most social housing lending has been in partnership with THFC and since 2014 the EIB has worked directly with leading housing associations, such as Sanctuary Housing. Lending by the EIB in the UK last year totalled GBP 5.6 billion and supported long-term investment in 40 projects across the country. This represented the largest annual engagement since the start of EIB lending in the UK in 1973 which has supported nearly GBP 16 billion of overall investment. El Faro has now revealed that in February, 2014, Arena party leader Ernesto Muyshondt met with leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. That meeting is proof that Arena has acted with a double standard. From 2013 onward, it based its electoral campaign on a brutal attack on the FMLN for negotiating the so-called truce with the gangs in 2012. Back then, Muyshondt accused the president of betraying the victims of violence and giving in to the gangs. Today he says that dialogue within the law will be necessary to reinsert gang members in society and bring an end to the violence. Two kinds of rhetoric. Two standards. That Arena campaign, led by its presidential candidate, Norman Quijano, was partly to blame for the decision of the Funes government to end the dialogue with the gangs and allow the truce to die. The government had promised social investment and reinsertion, but that never happened, and the murders began to increase again. Arenas hypocrisy cornered the hypocritical strategy of Funes, who never publically acknowledged the negotiations with the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. In a country profoundly wounded and filled with victims, the importance of appearances and the fear of losing votes prevailed, and led to the breaking off a dialogue which, as we now know, was seen as necessary by both the government and the opposition. It is urgent that the poses and double standards end, once and for all. In 2015, with 6,657 homicides, El Salvador was the most violent country in the world, yet the decision makers here are more concerned with their polling numbers than with saying what they really think and carrying out an integrated strategy which, based on an understanding of the gangs roots, would help to make them less violent and get their members reinserted in society all this without renouncing the role of the police in applying the law, pursuing the gangs and retaking the neighborhoods they currently control. We assume that Muyshondt isnt the only politician who has been in dialogue with gang members, just as the so-called truce wasnt the only instance of dialogue between the government and the gangs. It is known that during the administration of Francisco Flores, the National Public Security Council (CNSP) was in constant dialogue with jailed gang leaders on the subject of improving conditions in the prisons and developing strategies to prevent violence in troubled communities Years later, the Saca administration combined what was known as Super Mano Dura (Super Iron Fist) with a semi-secret but official dialogue with Barrio 18. Those contacts, which eventually came to nothing, were recognized both by the then-leader of Barrio 18, Carlos Ernesto Mojica Lechuga Viejo Lyn, and by the then-president of the CNSP, Oscar Bonilla. In addition, the leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha say that they had secret conversations with the Saca administration. Finally, it is false to claim that the State doesnt negotiate with the gangs. It does this every day when it negotiates plea bargains with their members and does this, to be sure, with questionable standards, and with no success at reducing impunity. There is no doubt that Arena must admit its lies and tell the truth. But right now it is the FMLN and the Sanchez Ceren administration which have the greatest responsibility. It would be hypocritical for the left to use Muyshondts meeting as a political weapon, since the FMLN, like Arena, negotiated in secret with the gangs. The current president was vice president in the Funes administration, and David Munguia Payes, who headed the dialogue process, is now the Minister of Defense. Benito Lara was Minister of Security in 2015, when the current government increased the repression. When the government took office in 2014, he told El Faro that he would be willing to sit down and dialogue with gang leaders if that would contributed to carrying out his security strategy. Above all, it would be irresponsible of the FMLN to use Arenas current striptease to further its political goals. In the past year the Sanchez Ceren government has been obsessed with showing its most merciless and populist side on security-related issues; during this year it has allowed the police to make summary executions almost a modus operandi. Now it has launched a simplistic campaign in favor of emergency measures which would only make things worse. To go down that path is to seek benefit from the victims pain and take advantage of people's fears, instead of truly dealing with the causes of those fears. For the government to label Arena as an accomplice of the gangs, and present itself as the scourge of criminals as Flores and Saca did, with disastrous results in terms of the number of murder victims would be vile, and wouldnt help it carry out the true political task which Salvadorans have given it. It was El Faro which, in 2012, revealed that the first FMLN government had negotiated a reduction in homicides with the gangs. Now El Faro does the same with Arena, revealing that it sought not just election-related favors but also a permanent dialogue if it had won the 2014 presidential election. Hopefully now, with both parties having seen their shameful deeds exposed, theyll begin to be sincere, to speak without double standards about the blood thats being shed every day and push for real solutions which take into account the complexity of the gang phenomenon, and which dont amount to a cynical simplification of the problem. Over the last 20 years, the left and the right have both used and ignored the deaths of Salvadorans in their quests to win elections. In the name of all that is responsible and decent and humane, it is time for this to stop. *The original version of this article was published in spanish in March 14th 2016. Bart Simpson For President By Dr. Robert Owens That ultimate symbol of mischievous scamp Bart Simpson in Season One of the longest running show in TV history when caught red-handed offered up one of his signature phrases, "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, there's no way you can prove anything." This came to mind when I was thinking about Hillary "They'll Never Indict Me" Clinton and her morally challenged obviously corrupt character. Donald Trump has said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." Hillary could say, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't get indicted." Everyone in the country knows that if any of us common people did one hundredth of what she has done in the email scandal alone we would have already been indicted along with the ten year Navy Vet indicted for taking a selfie on a submarine. The Obama Justice Department is not going to indict Mrs. Clinton no matter what the FBI recommends. She is above the law and she knows it or as she infamously said in the Benghazi hearing with regard to our four dead heroes, "What does it matter now?" As a person who has been involved with and has closely followed the American political scene for more than fifty years this is the first time in my personal memory or Historical knowledge that a potential candidate for one party has promised to prosecute a potential candidate of the other party if elected. As Secretary of State, Hillary's accomplishments include the failed reset with Russia and of course her debacle in Libya. As a United State Senator what did she accomplish? In eight years she only sponsored three inconsequential laws: S.3145, which designated a portion of U.S. Route 20A, located in Orchard Park, N.Y., as the "Timothy J. Russert Highway," after the former "Meet the Press" host. S. 3613, which renamed the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2951 New York Highway 43 in Averill Park, New York, as the "Major George Quamo Post Office Building." S. 1241 which made the brick house of 19th century female union leader Kate Mullany a national historic site. Her major accomplishment is that she married a man who became the most ethically challenged president in American History. As the wife of Bill Clnton she was deeply involved in smothering the serial bimbo eruptions which grew out of his long history of having affairs, sexually harassing women who worked for him, and assaulting others. This is the person who portrays herself as an advocate of women's rights. To highlight just one of her hypocritical faux stances for women's rights look at her advocacy for equal pay. The Clinton Foundation pays women executives 38% less than their male counterparts. During her time in the Senate she paid women 72 cents for every dollar she paid men. According to public records her current campaign pays women staffers less than she pays men. So much for putting your money where your mouth is! Looking back once more to the email scandal that Hillary so nonchalantly dismisses if as she maintains she never received nor sent any classified material during her entire term as our Secretary of State my question is, what was she doing besides traveling the world at our expense? Was she out of the loop and merely Secretary of State in name only? It is inconceivable that anyone could be the Secretary of State and not send or receive any classified material. That is beyond belief and a lie so transparent it shows total contempt for those it is meant to fool. In the current election the Great Impresario likes to label people. In many ways it is an effective form of political shorthand. It sums up the thoughts, accusations, and beliefs about a person and brings them crashing in whenever they hear the catcall. Lyin Ted and Little Marco have taken their toll picked up and repeated by the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and their pet FOX. Now we have Crooked Hillary. The others were just effective. This one seems appropriate. If Hillary wins the presidency it will be a watershed just as the election and then re-election of her husband was. As his marked the end of public morality hers will mean the end of the rule of law. It will become evident to anyone observant enough to note the sunrise that enforcement of the bewildering lattice of laws and regulations are only aimed at the common folk not at our masters. If such a legally challenged individual can fool enough of the people all the time to sit in the oval office it reminds me of what Bart said to Homer after it was revealed he had cheated on an important test, "I cheated on the intelligence test. I'm sorry. But I just want to say that the past few weeks have been great. Me and you have done stuff together. You've helped me out with things and we're closer than we've ever been. I love you, Dad. And I think if something can bring us that close it can't possibly be bad." Doing bad things for good purposes is the operational rational of Progressive Liberalism. The ends justify the means was the operational rational of all the megalomaniac dictators of world History. Please explain the difference. Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com 2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens Home Smelling blood in the political water By Paul Driessen The great white environmentalist sharks smell blood in the water. It's gushing from mortally wounded US coal companies that the Obama EPA has gutted as sacrifices on the altar of "dangerous manmade climate change" prevention and other spurious health, ecological and planetary scares. Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and other once vibrant coal producers have filed for Chapter 11 protection, shedding some $30 billion in shareholder value and tens of thousands of jobs in their companies and dependent industries. The bloodletting has left communities and states reeling, union pension funds and 401k plans empty, and the health, welfare, hopes and dreams of countless families dashed on the rocks. President Obama promised to bankrupt coal companies with punitive regulations, and he kept his word. Hydraulic fracturing did play a role. It made natural gas abundant and inexpensive, and gas-fueled power plants increasingly attractive for utilities that were forced to shutter modern coal-fired units that provided reliable, affordable power, emitted little harmful pollution, and had years of useful life remaining. However, as economist Stephen Moore noted, coal's demise wasn't "a result of free market creative destruction. This was a policy strategy by the White House and green groups. They wanted this to happen." "This was what EPA's Clean Power Plan rules were all about," Moore adds. "The EPA set standards that by design were impossible to meet, and even flouted the law that says the regs should be commercially achievable.' This was a key component of the climate change fanaticism that pervades this White House." To this president, the EPA and the Left in general, he concludes, "the families whose lives are ruined are collateral damage to achieve their utopian dream of saving the planet." It's a Climate Hustle. It is today's equivalent of New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief and Stalin apologist Walter Duranty's favorite line: "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." But after tens of millions of broken human "eggs," where are the communist and green utopia omelets? 40,000 elderly Europeans died this past winter, because they could no longer afford adequate wintertime heat, after EU climate policies sent electricity rates "necessarily skyrocketing" more than 40% since 1997. Millions die every year in Africa from lung, intestinal and other readily preventable diseases, while President Obama tells Africans they should forego fossil fuels and rely on wind, solar and biofuel power, because "if every one of you has got a car and a big house, well, the planet will boil over." Meanwhile, Mr. Obama joined Chinese, Indian and other world leaders in signing the Paris climate treaty on Earth Day, ignoring the requirement for Senate ratification. The hypocrisy and insanity are boundless. The treaty will obligate the United States and other developed nations to slash their fossil fuel use, carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth. China, India and other developing economies are under no such requirement, unless and until it is in their interest to do so. For them, compliance is voluntary and it should be. They simply cannot afford to eliminate fuels that supply 85% of all global energy and are their ticket out of poverty and into the world of modern health and prosperity that we enjoy, thus far. In fact, while unaccountable EPA bureaucrats are shutting down US coal-fired generators, these countries have built over 1,000 coal-fired power plants and plan to build 2,300 more 1,400 gigawatts of new electricity. China and India account for 1,077 GW of this total. They are also lining up for free energy technology and billions of dollars a year from developed nations for climate change "reparations." That is why poor countries signed the Paris treaty. It has nothing to do with preventing climate change. But none of this has stopped the environmentalist sharks from starting a fossil fuels feeding frenzy. The bloodied American coal companies have them churning the water, chomping for more. They've launched a "keep it in the ground" movement, to make hydrocarbons off limits forever. In fact, environmentalism is morphing into an anti-hydrocarbons climate movement that claims every weather event and climate blip is unprecedented, a harbinger of Armageddon and caused by our using oil, gas and coal to power modern civilization and improve human health and living standards. Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle tallies 350.org and 20 other climate coalitions, comprised of 467 separate organizations, just in the USA. Funded and directed by Rockefeller and other wealthy liberal foundations, they increasingly rail against "dangerous manmade climate change" as an "existential threat" to humanity and planet. President Obama is totally onboard. His policy and regulatory agenda confirms that. So are Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and most of an increasingly far-Left Democrat Party. Sanders flatly opposes all "fracking" and has introduced legislation to keep America's abundant fossil fuels locked up in perpetuity. Clinton opposes all fossil fuel energy extraction from federal lands, wants to block fracking by imposing countless regulatory obstacles, and intends to make the United States 50% dependent on renewable energy by 2030. As president, they would achieve this by executive decree. The consequences would be disastrous: enormous acreage, water, fertilizer, pesticides and fuel devoted to producing biofuel, millions of birds and bats butchered by wind turbines to generate electricity, millions of jobs lost, millions of families sent into fuel poverty as energy costs rocket upward. For what benefits? The rest of the world will continue using hydrocarbons. That means, even assuming CO2 now drives Earth's climate, ]implementing EPA's draconian Clean Power Plan would keep average planetary temperatures from rising an undetectable 0.03 degrees Fahrenheit, and seas from rising an imperceptible 0.01 inches, by the end of the century. (Oceans have already risen 400 feet since the last nature-driven ice age ended and all those mile-high glaciers melted.) See CFACT's Climate Hustle movie on Monday! The "keep it in the ground" crowd doesn't care about this or the mounting death tolls resulting from their anti-fossil fuel policies. The typical voter or street protester probably hasn't thought it through. But the leaders have. They're just callously indifferent. It's one more depressing example of "the well-intentioned but ill-informed being led around by the ill-intentioned but well-informed." Politicians, environmentalists, alarmist scientists and renewable energy industrialists have built a $1.5-trillion-per-year Climate Crisis industry that gives them research grants, campaign cash, mandates, huge subsidies and vast regulatory power to eliminate conventional energy; make electricity rates skyrocket; fundamentally transform economic systems; control lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties; and redistribute the world's wealth. Poor, minority and working class families will suffer most. The ruling elites don't care. They will do well, travel often, keep their pensions and get still wealthier. Climate rules, deprivation and "sustainability" are for the Little People. This entire system is based on the unproven bald assertion that fossil fuels are causing dangerous and unprecedented weather and climate disruption carbon dioxide has replaced the complex natural forces that drove drive climate change in previous centuries there is no longer any room for debate over these "facts" and the only issue still open to discussion is what to do to avert "imminent catastrophe." We "skeptics" challenge these claims. We point out that Earth's temperature, climate and weather have always changed in response to powerful natural forces, and differ little today from what they have been for the past 50-150 years. We say the problem is not climate change, but policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change. We threaten the Climate Crisis Establishment, and its money and power. That's why they want to shut us up and shut us down by prosecuting us for "racketeering," and denying us our constitutional rights to speak out about policies that affect our lives. It is a disgraceful, un-American return to Inquisition tactics and fascist book burnings. We must all take a stand, fight back and assert our rights. Otherwise, our children face a grim future. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org and http://www.ClimateHustleMovie.com/) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. Home Decadence, not Donald, destroying GOP By Dr. Peter Morici Decadence, not Donald Trump, is defeating the Republican establishment in the primaries. The dominant wings of the national partyneo-conservatives, as represented by Jeb Bush, John Kasich and several others, and the Tea Party, as represented by Ted Cruzare simply clueless to the economic and cultural forces transforming America. Globalization and technologyfair and unfair trade, legal and illegal immigration and automation and artificial intelligence are destroying jobs, lowering wages and rendering obsolete the skills of millions of prime working age Americans. Coupled with lower birth rates among whites and the absolute failure of educational institutions to keep up with the times, these are creating a poorer, more unequal and radically more ethnically and religiously diverse electorate. Ivy League and elite state university graduates jump to six figure jobs in engineering, law, finance and the like, while the much larger army of diplomates from non-descript private and state colleges are often not decently prepared for entry-level professional and managerial positions still available in our slow growing economy. For example, working as an insurance claims adjuster, managing a clothing department at Macy's or teaching grade school. Too many end up loaded with debt and selling smart phones, serving coffee or no job at all. For high school graduates, conditions are even worse. Most don't qualify for burgeoning opportunities in medical, technology and other fields. Consequently, 23 million adults between 25 and 54too old for college and too young to be retiredare neither working nor looking for work. They simply live off relatives and government benefits. With robots having the potential to replace 90 percent of all occupationsfrom carpenters to dentists by 2030, the enormous challenge of preparing most Americans for meaningful and decent paying work is only beginning. America no longer has a cultural or political centerthe white, Christian, two-parent family aspiring to suburban serenity and accomplishing middle-class securityis fast becoming a minority. That's why John Kasich prevails only in Ohio and Ted Cruz cannot win primaries outside a few southern and western-rural states or quite white Wisconsin. Campaign talk of tax cuts, free trade, bans on abortion and gay marriage, and repealing Obamacare may appeal to the keepers of right-wing orthodoxy at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference but simply has little resonance with voters earning too little to pay meaningful federal income taxes, or afford more expensive necessities at Wal-Mart, a decent home or health insurance without a $5000 deductible. History teaches that frustrated expectations and rising inequalityfalling average family incomes alongside twenty-something Wall Street traders and software developers earning vast sumsis a highly combustible combination. The man on the white horse usually provides the matchoften in the form of nationalism and scapegoats. Enter Donald Trump with tough talkand little substanceabout leveling the playing field with China, closing the border with Mexico, banning Muslim immigration and rude remarks about successful women. Those appeal to economically disenfranchised white males and women who depend on them, and who compose just enough of Republican primary voters to give him a plurality of delegates in Cleveland. Hillary Clinton has demagoguery of her own to cobble a majority in the general election. Appealing to disparate fragments of the voters by defending affirmative actionwhich sentences blacks to dependency on liberal white politiciansoffering debt free collegewhich would do little to fix college curriculums that don't impart marketable skillsand promising to destroy an already fast disappearing gender gap in opportunity young women are getting 60 percent of the college degrees and often earn more than young men. Clinton rallies supporters to end white male preference, while Trump seeks to resurrect it. Neither, if elected, will take the country forwardjust leave it more disaffected and dividedbut the Republican establishment remain clueless and indifferent to the ground shifting beneath its feet. Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist. He tweets @pmorici1 Escape From The New World Order By Michael Moriarty Here, this report on The New World Order, begins with the voice of John F. Kennedy leading the American people to increased alertness about the dangers of conspiracy yes, a "secret society", a plot to create The New World Order. Yes, there are massively creepy secrets about Bohemian Grove, The Illuminati, the Skull and Bones Fraternity of Yale and, yes, the conglomerate obsession for the men of these organizations: The New World Order. The above mentioned documentary, relatively old by now, was dated for publication in 2011. Nothing of any major importance about The New World Order has changed. Just the more shamelessly criminal second term of President Barack Hussein Obama. The heart of this endlessly long and repetitive, New World Order conspiracy? Hitler tried his own version of A New World Order with Nazi Germany. Stalin mostly dreamed of owning all of Europe as Hitler did. Meanwhile, the American banking system? And the American business ethic? American economic giants like Standard Oil funded both sides of World War II. The same thing occurred with the war in Vietnam. The so-called "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" was a fraud, perpetrated by the American propaganda machine to justify President Johnson's full entry into the Vietnam War. While, at the same time, President Johnson lifted trade restrictions upon the Soviet Bloc, knowing full well that Communist Russia was providing 80 % of North Vietnam's war supplies. Who profits from both sides of the Vietnam War? The Rockefellers financed factories in the Soviet Union which the Soviets used to manufacture military equipment sent to Vietnam. Utterly insane and increasingly self-defeating rules of engagement were sent down from the highest level in order to postpone any decisive victories or defeats in The Vietnam War. As is said in this documentary: "The Vietnam War was never meant to be won! Just sustained!!" A war for profit killed 58 thousand Americans and three million Vietnamese. According to this documentary's point of view, the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, was a pretext to establish a world-wide conflict which is still being sustained for the purposes of profit. Wealth for what JFK warned us about: The Military-Industrial Complex; and that giant lobby's monetary dependence upon the "Free World's" banking system. In short: the American Treasury Department. Still to this day, a privately run business, owned by privately run banks. All three major wars of the 20th Century: World War I, World War II and Vietnam? Instigated deliberately by the war profiteers which obviously included the delusional Adolf Hitler. Now we have the increasingly suspicious fallout from the 9/11 attacks upon the Twin Towers. The slow but steadily creeping hands of governmental power being wrapped around America because of 9/11?! The Patriot Act!!!!! Because of such laws, the American public no longer has any legal protection from governmental invasions of almost any kind. To wit: one more, profoundly ironic addition to The Patriot Act: The North American Union! To what then are we to be "Patriotic"? America? Or The North American Union? And, ultimately, The New World Order? All being created by what is now known of as "The Investment Class". Who are they? The wealthiest of the human race and their increasing faith in a New World Order." Why? Control. New World Order control over the entire earth and the entire human race. The North American Union is, in truth, a total removal of sovereignty from America, Canada and Mexico; and the creation of a new North American currency: The Amero. The Rockefellers knew of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center 11 months before it actually happened. According to the Rockefellers at that time, "The Event" would allow America to invade the Middle East to control its oil. It will be entitled a "War on Terror". A "Terror" that will never end. The "Terrorists" like ISIS will, as witness Obama's deliberately lame and ineffectual efforts with ISIS, never be destroyed. A new version of the hoped-for and "Endless Vietnam War". Now it is "The Endless War On Terror"! The Media will convince the American People and the World that this war is based upon real conflict when "The Conflict" has been deliberately manufactured. This New World Order is at least 40 years old, but the inspirational idea for it can be seen upon the American dollar. Some say the New World Order is the creation of "The Masons"! Some say "The Illuminati"! Whatever it is?! It is Godless and utterly unconstitutional and therefore, as far as I am concerned, utterly illegal. What will combat and destroy this New World Order in the end? The indomitability of the Judeo-Christian Civilization. And The Eternal Truths of its guidebook, The Holy Bible. The New World Order has been successfully making fools out of everyone, including their own major operatives. Either the stupidest or most cunning of which is President Barack Hussein Obama. He has either been sold a bill of goods, most likely by The United Nations, that Islamic Law will be instituted as the guiding principles for The New World Order, or he has been ordered to play at being Muslim when he is most actually more Communist than anything else. A New World Order has always fulfilled the dreams of both Islam and the International Communist Party. Obviously Communism and Islam have joined forces to complete the job of destroying Judeo-Christianity and what is left of the Free World. For his entire second term, President Obama has been openly, shamelessly and criminally defying and breaking almost every rule, every American right and regulation contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Secretly, behind closed doors, both the Clintons and the entire Bush Family in short, The New World Order Establishment are cheering Obama on, applauding the "fundamental transformation of the United States of America". It is Obama's job to shamelessly break American law! The New World Order Congress of America, both Republicans and Democrats, will not impeach President Barack Hussein Obama. Why? Obama is doing the dirty work required to ultimately fulfill the demands of The New World Order and, if necessary, deliberately drive traditional Americans into an inevitable Second American Civil War, during which The New World Order Board of American Directors hope and obviously trust that its American opposition will be destroyed. If the American opposition to this New World Order is not destroyed? And if they defeat The New World Order? It is entirely possible that the Bushes, the Clinton's, the Obamas and men such as George Soros will be hung as traitors. Soros already has one arrest warrant from Vladimir Putin's Russia for the equivalent of treason. Meanwhile, all of Islam and its major spokesperson, the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, are being sold a bill of goods that, indeed, Islam will not only have at least a 50 percent say in the decisions of the United Nations and the New World Order, it will be running what used to be all of the world's democracies. Of course, once this New World Order is fully constructed, there will be neither any democracies nor theocracies left on the Earth. Why? The New World Order will destroy any semblance of either democracy or theocracy around the world, including Islam. Christianity and Judaism, Israel particularly, must be destroyed by The New World Order. That is why a Muslim, Barack Hussein Obama, was deliberately made the President of the United States: to empower the likes of Iran and Iran's main objective to destroy Israel. Once all of Judeo-Christianity is weakened if not totally destroyed, then the victors are The Illuminati and their symbols: The All-Seeing Eye (CBS uses it), The Owl, Fire (torch of The Statue of Liberty, The Olympic Torch and Standard Oil's Logo), The Pentagon, No. 666, The Skull (Yale's Skull and Bones as eternal home for The Bush Family) Snakes ("Don't Tread On Me), The Obelisk (The Washington Monument) and, finally, The Monarch Butterfly. The depth of infiltration by these miraculous operatives for an ultimately Godless New World Order?! Who'd have guessed it but Pope Francis of the Catholic Church is now selling The New World Order. The true anti-Christ would just have to appear as a Pope of the Catholic Church. The Anti-Christ is empowered by people think that he actually is The Christ's Second Coming. The Vatican, like all of Islam, has either been sold a "piece of the New World Order" or the salesmen, like Barack Obama and Pope Francis, are decreasingly veiled Communists. Certainly Obama and Pope Francis are neither Islamic nor Christian in any way. Opposition to the New World Order? Presently individual freedom's only possible hope? Most ironically: the increasingly Christian but still dictatorial Vladimir Putin of the neo-Soviet Union and the mildly Presbyterian bully, Donald Trump, plus their growing friendship and alliance. They both most obviously see the New World Order potential for death to what Donald Trump lives for, The Free Market! Trump would die without anyone to compete with. A President Donald Trump is America's best and, at this point, only hope of escaping The Illuminati's diabolical campaign to force the freest and most powerful nation in the world, The United States of America, into an obedient membership in the United Nations' New World Order. God, Trump and Putin willing, that hell on earth will never happen. 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 In defense of liberty By Mark Alexander In the first days of January this year, the statist regime now occupying the executive branch set out to make good on its primary goal for 2016 the implementation of additional firearm eradication policies. In October of last year, Barack Obama announced his primary objective for his last year in office: undermining the Second Amendment on the pretense of "solving" America's "gun problem." He directly referenced confiscation of guns as the centerpiece of that agenda, asserting that "other countries have been able to craft" gun control laws, such as "Great Britain and Australia." Of course, the UK and Australia have confiscated almost all guns with dubious results. Notably, Obama insisted, "We should politicize this," and he set about to do just that with more vigor than at any time in his previous seven years. His New Year's resolution to target guns began with a highly promoted faux "town hall meeting" to launch his anti-2A agenda. Contrary to his previous prompt to "politicize" the issue, he lamented that gun control "has become one of our most polarized, partisan debates." "The gun lobby," he caterwauled, "may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they cannot hold America hostage. ... We can find the courage to cut through all the noise and do what a sensible country would do." "We can find the courage"? To disarm ourselves? Fellow Patriots, there's a term that describes those who cede their right to keep and bear arms: sheep. And for the record, a "sensible country" and a disarmed citizenry are mutually exclusive terms. Throughout history, disarming citizens has resulted in everything but civilized or sensible countries. In fact, only one nation has ensured by its law of incorporation, that an armed citizenry is the only way to both ensure and sustain a civilized and sensible government. Of all the historic days on our American Patriot's calendar, one above all others is devoted to the battle for Liberty April 19th, 1775, which saw the opening salvos of the American Revolution. I celebrated Patriots' Day last week, the anniversary of the first armed confrontation between our American Patriot forefathers and armed enforcers of an oppressive government. It is no small irony that the first shots of the Revolution were fired in response to an order to confiscate weapons. General Thomas Gage, Royal military governor of Massachusetts, dispatched a force of 700 British Army regulars, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, with secret orders to arrest Tea Party leader Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Provincial Congress president John Hancock and merchant fleet owner Jeremiah Lee, and to capture and destroy arms and supplies stored by the Massachusetts militia in the town of Concord. But a silversmith named Paul Revere and his Patriot allies Samuel Prescott and William Dawes spoiled the raid, riding into the night ahead of the British to warn the Sons of Liberty. Consequently, in the early morning of April 19th, those British regulars were met first by a small band of 77 militiamen farmers and tradesmen on Lexington Green. Being greatly outnumbered, their militia captain, John Parker, told his men to disperse. However, Smith ordered his men to fire on Parker's men because they refused to lay down arms, killing eight of the militiamen. It was later in the day as the British moved up the road and were completing their search of Concord that they were met again by militia this time a much larger contingent of 400 who had formed at Concord's Old North Bridge under the command of John Buttrick. The British fired first, killing two and wounding four. But it was there that American Patriots returned the first shots in defense of Liberty, and in fact overwhelmed their oppressors. The militiamen, joined by John Parker's men, chased the Redcoats 20 miles back to Boston. The historical details of that day are of great interest to those of us who study such momentous events. But what is most notable about that day, and about the battles which followed over the next eight years, is that American Liberty would never have been won were it not for our Forefathers' understanding of the most fundamental right of self-defense. That right would be codified in Article Two of our Bill of Rights, appended to our Republic's Constitution, specifying that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." To that end, I offer the following thoughts from our Founders on the relationship between Liberty and the most essential of all civil rights, that of self-defense. "The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. ... The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any... Kingdoms of Europe ... are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison "The Constitution shall never be construed ... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." Samuel Adams "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense..." Alexander Hamilton "To disarm the people ... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." George Mason "[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." Zacharia Johnson "Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." Thomas Paine "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Joseph Story "Let him candidly tell me, where and when did freedom exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle in human affairs interposed, no nation ever retained its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse ... The great object is, that every man be armed. ... Everyone who is able may have a gun." Patrick Henry "The foundation of everything is ... that the people will form an equal representative government ... that the people will be universally armed. ... A people that legislate for themselves ought to be in the habit of protecting themselves." Joel Barlow "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed." Noah Webster In his Commonplace Book (1776), Thomas Jefferson cited the words of Cesare Beccaria from his seminal work, On Crimes and Punishment (1764): "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Of course, the relationship between arms and Liberty long precedes the American Revolution. Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote, "There exists a law ... inborn in our hearts ... that if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." And Aristotle wrote, "Those who possess and can wield arms are in a position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not." The recorded history of the last century runs blood red with every encounter between a violent statist regime and its citizens who had no ability to defend themselves. In 1911, Turkey confiscated guns. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. In 1929, the Soviet Union confiscated guns. From 1929 to 1953, an estimated 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. In his Edict of March 18, 1938, Adolf Hitler wrote: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall." Germany confiscated guns in 1938, and from 1939 to 1945, more than 13 million Jews and others, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. In Communist China from 1949 to 1955, some 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Cambodia implemented gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million wealthy and educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. In the Western Hemisphere, Guatemala implemented gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Oh, and did I mention Obama's friends in Cuba...? Uganda implemented gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Total number of defenseless people rounded up for extermination in the 20th century: 56 million. And a final insight from an individual who is the personification of peace, Mahatma Gandhi. In his "Autobiography of the Story of My Experiments with the Truth," he wrote, "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." Thomas Jefferson observed: "History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." But ... only if citizens have some knowledge of that history. Mark Alexander is the executive editor of the Patriot Post. Home Theoretical rights, multiculturalism, and marginality -- the Polish-Canadian case (Part Four) By Mark Wegierski The concept of a Polish-Canadian literature is rather problematic. There is a greater presence in terms of all of the varieties of writing carried out by emigres and Canadians of Polish descent, but they still do not amount to much on the Canadian literary, journalistic, and academic scene. While writings in the Polish language may have been more common among various types of emigre authors, these could be called "Polish literature in Canada" which had virtually no impact on Canadian society as a whole. In earlier years, the most prominent Polish-Canadian writer in English was probably Eva Stachniak (an emigre author). Canadian-born authors have included Chuck Konkel; Apolonja (Pola) Kojder; and Helen Bajorek-Macdonald. Among the most notable authors of wartime memoirs in English are Aleksander Topolski; Lilka Trzcinska-Croydon; and Kon Piekarski. Andrew J. Borkowski is the child of a Polish immigrant father, whose collection of short stories, Copernicus Avenue (Cormorant Books, 2011), is a slightly fictionalized version of Roncesvalles Avenue (in the Parkdale-High Park area of Toronto). It won the prestigious Toronto Book Award in 2012. Aga Maksimowska's book Giant (Pedlar Press, 2012), is a story of a Polish girl who comes to Canada at the age of 11 in 1989 (much like the author herself did). It was nominated for the 2013 Toronto Book Award. In 2013, Jowita Bydlowska has published a memoir, Drunk Mom (Doubleday, 2013), but its Polish or Polish-Canadian content is minimal. Jowita is the longtime partner of Russell Smith, a well-known Toronto writer and raconteur. While Ania Szado's gloomy first novel, Beginning of Was (Penguin Canada, 2004), had some Polish elements, there is no Polish content in her second novel, Studio St-Ex (about Antoine Saint Exupery in New York) (Viking, 2013). Further advances in technology could perhaps weaken the trends to total assimilation that certain earlier technologies have made possible. However, the arrival of new technologies that could perhaps assist fragment-cultures, has probably come too late for the Polish-Canadian community. Also, immigration from Poland has now slowed to small trickle. A combination of circumstances, such as the "demographic low" in Poland, and ready access to Western European countries for Poles, suggests that there will never again be major Polish immigration to Canada. There are also some new initiatives underway the Poland in the Rockies Conference, the Quo Vadis Conference, a Polish-Canadian students' coordinating body (PISK), and a Young Polish-Canadian Professionals Association. So one can perhaps see some stirrings of renewal. The community has shied away from publishing discussions in English, and from trying to construct an "intermediary" Polish-Canadian identity. The result of this is that the community -- beyond those persons who arrive as immigrants (and may relate through the Polish-language community newspapers) -- is largely deprived of a public voice and setting for intellectual reflection in regard to its place in contemporary Canadian society, as well as its possible future in Canada. Considering that Canada is today officially a multicultural society, this attenuation comes at a rather unfortunate time. Despite the expansive but theoretical guarantees of various rights, the community has become attenuated because of various socio-cultural factors, and cannot be seen as flourishing. It is suggested that paying greater attention to social and cultural factors of a given community is more important for gauging its place in a given society, than looking primarily at juridical rights that are often theoretical. 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. Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher. Home Has Egyptian President Abd el Fattah el Sisi lost his charm? By Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah Things are getting tough in Egypt for Abdel Fattah el Sisi who is suffering from a steep fall in popularity and open criticism in recent months. The latest events to spark the unparalleled attacks against Sisi's tenure are the agreement to cede the two islands of Tiran and Sanafir, commanding the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, to Saudi Arabia and the questions arising from Egypt's behavior in the case of the death of the Italian student Giulio Regeni, a PhD student at Girton College, Cambridge, who was researching Egypt's independent trade unions. Abducted in Cairo, Regeni was found a few days later in a ditch with marks of severe torture on his body, allegedly the work of the Egyptian secret service. Most of the Egyptian press and opinion makers did not comment on the Regeni case but limited themselves to reporting factually the deteriorating relations with Italy. The Italian government recalled its ambassador for consultations following the stuttering explanations given by the Egyptian government relating to the case. But the transference of sovereignty of the two islands to Saudi Arabia has been the issue met with open anger and protests. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have disputed the sovereignty over the two islands of Tiran and Sanafir commanding the maritime traffic to Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Whether Tiran and Sanafir islands belong historically to Saudi Arabia or to Egypt is not the purpose of this paper. However, in a well-documented presentation, the Egyptian government said the case was a restoration of usurped sovereignty to Saudi Arabia, and in Sisi's words, "We have returned to Saudi Arabia its rights." It is an accepted historical fact that in 1950 "under the prevailing circumstances of hostilities facing Israel, Egypt had invaded with Saudi benediction" (as stated by the official Egyptian version) and taken full control of the Tiran and Sanafir islands to use them as military outposts. The strategic position of the islands was twice put into practice when President Nasser of Egypt ordered in 1956 and then again in 1967 a maritime blockade denying Israeli ships, as well as all ships bound to and from Israel, to pass through the Straits of Tiran. It appears now, according to information released by the Egyptian government following the announcement made by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that the islands were part and parcel of the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Negotiations had been conducted in 11 rounds of meetings between the disputing sides during the presidential tenures of Hosni Mubarak, Muhammed Morsi, and finally Sisi in order to reach the decision to return the two islands to Saudi Arabia. The official explanations did not appease public opinion in Egypt. Short of accusing Sisi of betrayal, his critics reproached him for in effect selling the islands to Saudi Arabia in return for lavish economic assistance. Ahmad Sayyed AlNajjar, chairman of the prestigious state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper wrote, "The homeland is not a room for rent or a travelling station" AlNajjar added on Facebook, "Umm Rashrash (the Arab name for Eilat) remains a stolen jewel, and I am deeply convinced that we will get it back one day. From all our border areas, Sanafir and Tiran appear as a jewel Egypt defended with outstanding courage and shed blood and souls in order to keep the straits that command the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba in dire times of destiny. I say goodbye to our untouchable national borders because they are the blood and flesh of Egypt and the map of the heroic deeds of its people and the frontiers of its existence forever." Egyptians charged their once-popular president, Sisi, of surrendering the islands to win the Saudis' favor. One cartoon showed the Sphinx wearing a Saudi kaffiya; On Twitter, a popular hashtag was "I feel like selling what to Saudi Arabia? " A media prominent person, Jaber AlQarmouty, stated that Sisi lost popularity because of his decision to hand over the two islands to Saudi Arabia and added, in a very unusual statement addressed to Sisi, "If the matter continues in this pattern, it is not going to be in your interest" Turning to the issue of Regeni and the disastrous state of tourism following the ISIS terrorist bombing of a Russian civilian aircraft over Sinai, AlQarmouty referred to the Egyptian government's bumbling press statements, "I doubt you agree with the Regeni and the Russian airplane files!" Politicians were quick to react and to accuse Sisi of a loss of legitimacy and that the act may even contradict the newly voted constitution. Others argued that the issue was "too important not be presented in a referendum according to article 151 of the constitution." Amro AlShubaki, a political commentator, added that the executive branch should not be given "an open check while deputies in parliament should fulfill their role in controlling the actions of government and its legislation in introducing a motion of non-confidence in the government because of misbehavior." No doubt that Sisi's decision to cede the islands to Saudi Arabia became in the hands of the opposition a hatchet to throw against him in order to expose his shortcomings since the beginning of his tenure as president. His bitter opponent living in exile in the Emirates, General Ahmad Shafik, once a presidential candidate, published a pamphlet in which he pointed at Sisi's failures in running Egypt's foreign policy. Shafik pointed at Egypt's failure to stop Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam on the Nile and the deterioration of Egypt's relations with "the Italian people." Shafik asked what caused such a situation and wondered whether the shortcomings were the result of slow governmental decision-making or the result of Sisi's own decision-making. Mocking Sisi's arguments against his predecessor Morsi, Shafik asked to "go back to the people before making any decisions." In the end, Shafik published a correction to his statement most probably under Saudi pressure justifying the Egyptian decision to cede the islands to Saudi Arabia. Facing the growing anger against his policy, President Sisi, unlike in the past, chose to confront his detractors in an open speech in which he defended his policies and pointed at his opposition as being part of those who want to harm Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. Sisi concluded that the Egyptian army was the sole defender of Egypt while he had no political inclinations at all. Furthermore, Sisi declared that in any case the parliament will have to debate the issue; it is up to this institution to accept or to reject the agreement with Saudi Arabia. Sisi is well aware of the many criticisms against his regime: His battle against the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists and the Jihadists is ongoing. The Egyptian army, though scoring successes in Sinai, has not yet eliminated the presence of ISIS and its franchisees from the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt has yet to solve the problem of thousands of its citizens being harassed by militias in Libya. The issue of the repartition of the Nile waters has not been solved with Ethiopia. Moreover, reports have been circulating about Sudan's intention to raise the issue of the "Halayeb Triangle," a swath of land (20,580 square kilometers) north of the 22nd parallel that demarcates the official border between the two states along the Red Sea and claimed by Egypt as part of their sovereign territory. The impression Egypt is giving is that it is almost blindly backing Saudi policy, be it in Yemen, Syria, Turkey and Iran. There has been full coordination in foreign policy with Saudi Arabia: Egypt has adopted the Saudi initiative to establish a pan-Arab military force to face Jihadism. For the first time since the Yemen war in the mid-sixties, Egypt has agreed to send expeditionary forces to fight the insurgents in Yemen. Egypt dealt with the terrorist bombing of a Russian plane in a very unprofessional approach. While first denying that the plane had been the object of a terrorist bomb to avoid frightening away tourists, the Egyptian Authorities stuck to their position well after it had been established that a bomb had been planted in the plane by one of the airport employees. As a result, relations with Moscow soured and tourism continues to suffer. The same unfortunate behavior characterized Egypt's response to the Italian queries after the death of Giulio Regeni. It is a well known fact in Egypt that the secret police has been arresting hundreds (some say even thousands) of opponents to the regime. People linked to any sort of criticism of the regime have disappeared suddenly. Freedom of speech has suffered severely under laws that stipulated that no information about incidents of terrorism would be published if they contradicted the official version given by the government. In this regard, the activity of Regeni who was writing a research paper about Trade Unions in Egypt (a very highly sensitive issue in Egypt) could not fit with the regime's attitude towards such organizations. Instead of giving a plausible explanation, the Egyptian government chose to tell the Italians different versions of facts that led to Regeni's death, all rebuffed by the Italians investigators. The straw that broke the camel's back was the refusal of Egypt (because of a clause in the Constitution, so it was argued) to hand over to Italy the record files of all cellular communications in the area Regeni frequented. In his speech, Sisi tried to minimize the damage to the relations with Italy and claimed that he had ordered full transparency in the investigation. Finally, Sisi has not succeeded to solve Egypt's economic crisis. Were it not for the financial assistance pledged in billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, Egypt would be in a very difficult position. Saudi Arabia has offered Egypt billions of dollars in aid since 2013. However, tumbling oil prices and the war effort in Yemen have required Saudi Arabia to refit its economic policies and rethink its financial assistance to Egypt, thus opening a debate about the future of relations between the two countries. The present visit of the Saudi monarch and the billions pledged by him to Egypt together with the announcement about the islands have created the impression that Sisi was compelled to hand over the islands in return for Saudi aid. Because of the two countries' tumultuous past relations, critics find it hard to believe the validity of an alliance between a military regime in Egypt and a Wahhabi Saudi feudal tribal monarchy that conducted confrontational policies, at times problematic and at times openly hostile. Almost two years since his election, Sisi has lost much of his luster. Sisi is no longer criticism-proof. He is no more the "wonder kid," the magician with the magic wand, the man whose portrait used to be printed on candy boxes and loafs of bread. He is no more compared to Nasser as he was at the beginning of his presidential campaign. His opponents are either in jail, waiting for trial or on the run in other Arab states. Criticism against his regime is widespread today. Sisi's reactions show that the criticism has taken a toll on him. He has become intolerant to an extent that during his last speech he forbade the audience to ask questions, claiming that he was the only one allowed to speak, igniting instantaneous reactions in the social networks and protests in the streets. State television stopped live transmission immediately after Sisi's reaction, which became an issue of free expression in Egypt. The hashtag "speech does not need permission" trended on Twitter, with Egyptians mocking the fact that Sisi had invited people to a debate in which only he aired his views. "This is a country, not a school, and those are two islands, not two cheese sandwiches," tweeted one commentator. In this reality, political reforms and western-style democracy are far from being the focal subject of conversations. Newspaper editors no longer hide their disappointment as the crackdown on dissent has spread from the Muslim Brotherhood to liberal and secular activists. Sisi could not have dreamt that less than two years after taking office he would be confronted by protesters defying government orders against demonstrations against the regime and chanting "the man who sold the land should go" like the chants five years ago calling for a different president to "go away!" The regime's reaction has been firm and unequivocal. Sisi understands very well that his ill-advised island decision has been "hijacked" by the Muslim Brotherhood and the liberal opposition in order to slam his regime and to force him to resign. Since the decision on the islands has been made public, hundreds of Muslim Brothers and "liberal" opposition members have been arrested, and repressive measures have been adopted to contain any major protest against the regime. At this point, protests have been waged in different areas in Egypt. It is too early to assess whether the protests are going to grow and become uncontrollable. Among all the decisions Sisi made in the last two years, the one to cede the islands to Saudi Arabia might become the decision with the direst consequences to his regime. There is one sentence that depicts the Egyptian regime's situation today. It will uncompromisingly fight for its survival. Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, a special analyst for the Middle East at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence. Home BEER-SHEVA, Israel... April 25, 2016 - Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have developed an innovative anti-biofilm coating, which has significant anti-adhesive potential for a variety of medical and industrial applications. According to the research published in Advanced Materials Interfaces, anti-adhesive patches that are developed from naturally occurring biomaterials can prevent destructive bacterial biofilm from forming on metal surfaces when they are immersed in water and other damp environments. "Our solution addresses a pervasive need to design environmentally friendly materials to impede dangerous surface bacteria growth," the BGU researchers from the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering explain. "This holds tremendous potential for averting biofilm formed by surface-anchored bacteria and could have a tremendous impact." The anti-adhesive could be used on medical implants, devices and surgical equipment where bacteria can contribute to chronic diseases, resist antibiotic treatment and thereby compromise the body's defense system. The prevention of aquatic biofouling on ships and bridges is one of the industrial applications. is. ### The BGU researchers who participated in the study from the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering are Dr. Karina Goldberg, Prof. Noa Emuna, Prof. Dorit van Moppes, Prof. T. P. Vinod, Prof. Robert Marks, Prof. Ariel Kushmaro, and Prof. Shoshana Malis Arad. Profs. Marks and Kushmaro are members of BGU's Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, and are also visiting researchers at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This work was supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation under the CREATE program: Nanomaterials for Energy and Water Management; a Levi Eshkol scholarship from the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and by a Shimona Geresh award. K. Golberg, N. Emuna, T. P. Vinod, D. van Moppes, R. S. Marks, S. M. Arad and A. Kushmaro*. 2016. Novel Anti-Adhesive Biomaterial Patches: Preventing Biofilm Using Metal Complex Films (MCF) Derived from a Microalgal Polysaccharide. Advanced Materials Interfaces (2016-03). DOI: 10.1002/admi.201500486 About American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion's vision: creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University's expertise locally and around the globe. With some 20,000 students on campuses in Beer-Sheva, Sede Boqer and Eilat in Israel's southern desert, BGU is a university with a conscience, where the highest academic standards are integrated with community involvement committed to sustainable development of the Negev. AABGU, which is headquartered in Manhattan, has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://www.aabgu.org BETHESDA, MD - In commemoration of National DNA Day, the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) hosted the 2016 DNA Day Essay Contest to encourage high school students and teachers to learn about human genetics concepts beyond the standard curriculum. This year, ASHG awarded first place to Stella Ma, a junior at James Madison Memorial High School in Madison, Wis. Jillian Pesce, a junior at Smithtown High School East in St. James, N.Y., won second place in the contest. Dhruv Sharma, a junior at the United World College of South East Asia, Dover Campus, in Singapore, Republic of Singapore, and Alexis Schneider, a junior at Upper Dublin High School in Fort Washington, Pa., tied for third place. "As human genetics continues to grow as a science, its clinical and societal implications are expanding," said Michael Dougherty, PhD, Director of Education for ASHG. "We were pleased by how comprehensively this year's essays described the latest genetic tests and by students' thoughtful consideration of the issues surrounding them." National DNA Day, celebrated annually on April 25, commemorates the discovery of DNA's double helix structure and the completion of the Human Genome Project, two key milestones in the field of genetics. Each year since 2006, ASHG has run a DNA Day Essay Contest to challenge students to examine, question, and reflect on important concepts in human genetics by writing an original essay. Winning essays use well-reasoned arguments to show a grasp of topics that are not always well-covered in high school biology courses. This year, the contest invited students to describe a currently available genetic test for a condition or disease that does not cause symptoms until adulthood. Entrants were then asked to defend or refute a recommendation from ASHG's 2015 position statement on pediatric genetic testing, which urged adolescents to defer genetic testing for adult-onset conditions until adulthood because of the potential impact of receiving this complex information during a formative life stage. Students from 44 U.S. states and 23 non-U.S. countries submitted essays to the contest this year. Human genetics specialists belonging to ASHG and its leadership read and evaluated entries for their scientific accuracy, creativity, and overall writing quality. "We received a record number of essay submissions this year, which speaks to a growing public interest in human genetics and the questions it raises," said Joseph D. McInerney, MS, Executive Vice President of ASHG. "Through this contest and the Teen Genes Video Challenge, we hope to encourage young people to explore genetics and express their unique perspectives on its impact." ASHG will award monetary prizes to winning students as well as their teachers. In addition, the contest sponsor, Embi Tec, will award MiniOne Systems for classroom electrophoresis to the teachers. Ma, whose essay described testing for hereditary breast cancer, will receive a $1000 prize. Her science teacher, Ms. Cindy Kellor, will receive a $1000 grant from ASHG to purchase new genetics laboratory equipment for the biology classrooms at James Madison Memorial High School, as well as five MiniOne Systems. Pesce, whose essay described testing for Huntington disease, will receive a $600 prize. Her science teacher, Ms. Maria Zeitlin, will receive a $600 grant for genetics materials and three MiniOne Systems. Sharma, whose essay also described testing for hereditary breast cancer, and Schneider, whose essay also described testing for Huntington disease, will each receive a $400 prize. Their science teachers, Ms. Pippa Haley and Mrs. Megan Gallagher, respectively, will each receive a $400 grant for genetics materials and one MiniOne System. Honorable mentions were awarded to ten students, each of whom will receive a $100 monetary prize. The recipients of honorable mentions, listed alphabetically, are: Ilan Bocain, a freshman at YULA-Boys School in Los Angeles, Calif. Zanzan Brink, a junior in the Oregon Health & Sciences University Partnership for Scientific Inquiry program in Portland, Ore. Sanjana Eranki, a junior at Smithtown High School East in St. James, N.Y. Norah Gordon, a sophomore at Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, N.J. Zoe Klein, a junior at Northern Secondary School in Toronto, Ontario Stacy Okin, a junior at North Shore Hebrew Academy High School in Great Neck, N.Y. Elizabeth Phelan, a junior at The Davidson Academy of Nevada in Reno, Nev. Sarah Sachar, a junior at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Md. Arjun Somayazulu, a sophomore in the Oregon Health & Sciences University Partnership for Scientific Inquiry program in Portland, Ore. Ruojia Sun, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York, N.Y. ### The European Society of Human Genetics, which partners with ASHG on several initiatives, ran a similar essay contest this year, also aimed at high school students. For details on the 2016 contest winners, including photos and excerpts from winning essays, see: http://www.ashg.org/education/dnaday_winners_2016.shtml. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Thin films of crystalline materials called perovskites provide a promising new way of making inexpensive and efficient solar cells. Now, an international team of researchers has shown a way of flipping a chemical switch that converts one type of perovskite into another -- a type that has better thermal stability and is a better light absorber. The study, by researchers from Brown University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could be one more step toward bringing perovskite solar cells to the mass market. "We've demonstrated a new procedure for making solar cells that can be more stable at moderate temperatures than the perovskite solar cells that most people are making currently," said Nitin Padture, professor in Brown's School of Engineering, director of Brown's Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation, and the senior co-author of the new paper. "The technique is simple and has the potential to be scaled up, which overcomes a real bottleneck in perovskite research at the moment." Perovskites have emerged in recent years as a hot topic in the solar energy world. The efficiency with which they convert sunlight into electricity rivals that of traditional silicon solar cells, but perovskites are potentially much cheaper to produce. These new solar cells can also be made partially transparent for use in windows and skylights that can produce electricity, or to boost the efficiency of silicon solar cells by using the two in tandem. Despite the promise, perovskite technology has several hurdles to clear -- one of which deals with thermal stability. Most of the perovskite solar cells produced today are made with of a type of perovskite called methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3). The problem is that MAPbI3 tends to degrade at moderate temperatures. "Solar cells need to operate at temperatures up to 85 degrees Celsius," said Yuanyuan Zhou, a graduate student at Brown who led the new research. "MAPbI3 degrades quite easily at those temperatures." That's not ideal for solar panels that must last for many years. As a result, there's a growing interest in solar cells that use a type of perovskite called formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI3) instead. Research suggests that solar cells based on FAPbI3 can be more efficient and more thermally stable than MAPbI3. However, thin films of FAPbI3 perovskites are harder to make than MAPbI3 even at laboratory scale, Padture says, let alone making them large enough for commercial applications. Part of the problem is that formamidinium has a different molecular shape than methylammonium. So as FAPbI3 crystals grow, they often lose the perovskite structure that is critical to absorbing light efficiently. This latest research shows a simple way around that problem. The team started by making high-quality MAPbI3 thin films using techniques they had developed previously. They then exposed those MAPbI3 thin films to formamidine gas at 150 degrees Celsius. The material instantly converted from MAPbI3 to FAPbI3 while preserving the all-important microstructure and morphology of the original thin film. "It's like flipping a switch," Padture said. "The gas pulls out the methylammonium from the crystal structure and stuffs in the formamidinium, and it does so without changing the morphology. We're taking advantage of a lot of experience in making excellent quality MAPbI3 thin films and simply converting them to FAPbI3 thin films while maintaining that excellent quality." This latest research builds on the work this international team of researchers has been doing over the past year using gas-based techniques to make perovskites. The gas-based methods have the potential of improving the quality of the solar cells when scaled up to commercial proportions. The ability to switch from MAPbI3 to FAPbI3 marks another potentially useful step toward commercialization, the researchers say. "The simplicity and the potential scalability of this method was inspired by our previous work on gas-based processing of MAPbI3 thin films, and now we can make high-efficiency FAPbI3-based perovskite solar cells that can be thermally more stable," Zhou said. "That's important for bringing perovskite solar cells to the market." Laboratory scale perovskite solar cells made using this new method showed efficiency of around 18 percent -- not far off the 20 to 25 percent achieved by silicon solar cells. "We plan to continue to work with the method in order to further improve the efficiency of the cells," said Kai Zhu, senior scientist at NREL and co-author of the new paper. "But this initial work demonstrates a promising new fabrication route." ### Other authors on the paper were Mengjin Yang from NREL and Shuping Pang from CAS Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DMR-1305913, OIA-1538893) and the Department of Energy (DE-FOA-0000990). Note to Editors: Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476. The crucibles that bore out early building blocks of life may have been, in many cases, modest puddles. Now, researchers working with that hypothesis have achieved a significant advancement toward understanding an evolutionary mystery -- how components of RNA and DNA formed from chemicals present on early Earth before life existed. In surprisingly simple laboratory reactions in water, under everyday conditions, they have produced what could be good candidates for missing links on the pathway to the code of life. And when those components joined up, the result even looked like RNA. As the researchers' work progresses, it could reveal that much of the original chemistry that led to life arose not in fiery cataclysms and in scarce quantities, but abundantly and gradually on quiet, rain-swept dirt flats or lakeshore rocks lapped by waves. In turn, their work could increase our understanding of the probability of life's existence elsewhere in the universe. The research from the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution, headquartered at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is generously funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation and NASA. The recent results were published on April 25, 2016 in Nature Communications. Pursuing the origins specifically of RNA, the close chemical relative of DNA, a research team led by Nicholas Hud, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the CCE, worked with a pair of potential chemical ancestors of the nucleobases of RNA. For roughly half a century, scientists have hypothesized that life, which uses DNA to store genetic information, was preceded by life forms that used RNA very broadly. And RNA may have had a precursor, proto-RNA, with different but similar nucleotides (the "N" in RNA). "Early Earth was a messy laboratory where probably many molecules like those needed for life were produced. Some survived and prospered, while others eventually vanished," Hud said. "That goes for the ancestors of RNA, too." Using two molecules known as barbituric acid and melamine, the researchers formed proto-nucleotides so strongly resembling two of RNA's nucleotides that it is tempting to speculate that they are indeed their ancestors. The two ingredients would have been readily abundant for reactions on a prebiotic Earth, Hud said. "And they would have been well suited for primitive information coding," he added. Because of the resemblances and properties, some scientists already have speculated on an ancestral role for melamine and barbituric acid. But the CCE scientists are careful not to jump to that conclusion just yet. "To claim ancestry, we would have to show a mechanism by which these nucleotides we made in the lab could turn into the existing nucleotides in RNA," said Ram Krishnamurthy, Hud's collaborator from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. "It's a complex path that we'd have to at least design on paper, and we're not there." Nonetheless, he's exited about the results. "There are umpteen possibilities of how that mechanism could have happened. Barbituric acid and melamine may have been place holders that dropped out and allowed adenine and uracil to come together with ribose." Figuring out how adenine and uracil (nucleobases found in RNA today) combined with the sugar ribose (corresponding to the "R" in RNA) could answer one of the great questions of chemical evolution. The formation of nucleotides from possible proto-nucleobases and ribose marks a significant advancement in research on the origin of life. Nucleobases have been combined with other sugars in past studies, but the efficiency of the reactions discovered in this study is much greater than those of that past. "We're getting close to molecules that look the way life may have looked in early stages," Krishnamurthy said. A series of surprises added to the reactions' scientific significance. First, they occurred quickly and the resulting nucleotides spontaneously paired with each other in water, forming hydrogen bonds like the Watson-Crick base pairs that create the "ladder-rung" pattern inside RNA and DNA helixes. Then the monomers formed long, supramolecular assemblages that look like strands of RNA when viewed with a high resolution microscope. There has been no reported chemical reaction so far that has produced existing components of RNA under commonplace circumstances that spontaneously form Crick-Watson pairs in water. And up until now, there had also been no report of a similar pair of nucleotides, like those produced with barbituric acid and melamine, behaving in a like manner, making this another first. "It works even better then we thought," Hud said. "It's almost too easy." There was one small caveat. "The reaction does not work as well if barbituric acid and melamine are present in the same solution before reacting with ribose because their strong attraction for each other can cause them to precipitate," Hud said. So, the scientists completed the reaction involving barbituric acid separately from the one involving melamine. But that should not have proven prohibitive on prebiotic Earth. Barbituric acid and melamine nucleotides could have been formed in separate locations, even in the same pond. And they could have very well been plentiful. "These reactions are exceptionally productive, especially if you compare them to analogous reactions with existing RNA components, which do not produce any nucleotides under the same conditions," Hud said. If melamine and barbituric acid formed their respective nucleotides (C-BMP for barbituric acid and MMP for melamine) in separate puddles on the early Earth, then rain could have easily washed the components together, where they would have rapidly assembled into what could have been a precursor to proto-RNA. "The question is: Can these self-assemblies make the transition into what makes up life today," Krishnamurthy said. The researchers hope their work will help expand the scientific community's approach to chemical evolution. "If you want to look at what brought about these properties of life you have to go back and consider all the other molecules that would have been present and see how they would have facilitated the molecules that are present in life today," Krishnamurthy said. Their work also could serve as a basis for important practical applications, such as the creation of DNA or RNA-like polymers that could spawn production of advanced materials and therapeutic agents. The chemical reactions that produce the barbituric acid and melamine nucleotides don't require the use of enzymes and extreme parameters like high heat and pressure. Reminiscent of click chemistry, they could contribute to safe, cost-effective and abundant industrial production. ### In addition to those already named, the paper's authors include Brian J. Cafferty, David M. Fialho and Jaheda Khanam, all from Georgia Tech. This research was supported by the NSF Centers for Chemical Innovation Program and the NASA Astrobiology Program under the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution under grant number CHE-1004570. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF or NASA. AMES, Iowa - Martin Thuo likes to look for new, affordable and clean ways to put science and technology to work in the world. His lab is dedicated to an idea called frugal innovation: "How do you do very high-level science or engineering with very little?" said Thuo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State University and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. "How can you solve a problem with the least amount of resources?" That goal has Thuo and his research group using their materials expertise to study soft matter, single-molecule electronics and renewable energy production. A guiding principle is that, whenever possible, nature should do part of the work. "Nature has a beautiful way of working for us," he said. "Self-assembly and ambient oxidation are great tools in our designs." One of the latest innovations from Thuo's lab is finding a way to make micro-scale, liquid-metal particles that can be used for heat-free soldering plus the fabricating, repairing and processing of metals - all at room temperature. The discovery was recently reported online in the journal Scientific Reports. Thuo's co-authors all have Iowa State ties: Simge Cinar, a postdoctoral research associate; Ian Tevis, a former postdoctoral researcher who's now chief technical officer at an Ames startup called SAFI-Tech; and Jiahao Chen, a doctoral student. Ask about the discovery and Thuo says Iowa State is just the place for a new development in soldering technology. Back in 1996, a research team led by Iver Anderson of the Ames Laboratory and Iowa State's department of materials science and engineering patented lead-free solder. That patent expired in 2013. But at its peak, the technology was licensed by more than 50 companies in 13 countries. Thuo is hoping his heat-free soldering technology is just as useful. To try to help make that happen, he's worked with Tevis to launch SAFI-Tech. Thuo said the company plans to locate to the Iowa State Economic Development StartUp Factory when it opens in the ISU Research Park later this year. The project started as a search for a way to stop liquid metal from returning to a solid - even below the metal's melting point. That's something called undercooling and it has been widely studied for insights into metal structure and metal processing. But it had been a challenge to produce large and stable quantities of undercooled metals. Thuo's research team thought if tiny droplets of liquid metal could be covered with a thin, uniform coating, they could form stable particles of undercooled liquid metal. The engineers experimented with a new technique that uses a high-speed rotary tool to sheer liquid metal into droplets within an acidic liquid. And then nature lends a hand: The particles are exposed to oxygen and then an oxidation layer is allowed to cover the particles, essentially creating a capsule containing the liquid metal. That layer is then polished until it is thin and smooth. Thuo's research group proved the concept by creating liquid-metal particles containing Field's metal (an alloy of bismuth, indium and tin) and particles containing an alloy of bismuth and tin. The particles are 10 micrometers in diameter, about the size of a red blood cell. "We wanted to make sure the metals don't turn into solids," Thuo said. "And so we engineered the surface of the particles so there is no pathway for liquid metal to turn to a solid. We've trapped it in a state it doesn't want to be in." Those liquid metal particles could have significant implications for manufacturing. "We demonstrated healing of damaged surfaces and soldering/joining of metals at room temperature without requiring high-tech instrumentation, complex material preparation or a high-temperature process," the engineers wrote in their paper. Thuo and the Iowa State Research Foundation Inc. have filed for a patent on the technology. Thuo supported the project with faculty startup funds from Iowa State and funds from a Black and Veatch faculty fellowship. The project also included imaging work at the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tevis, of the SAFI-Tech startup, said the company is still testing the liquid-metal technology for electrical conductivity and mechanical reliability. He said the company is also developing the technology for product demonstrations. Thuo said the project is a good example of his frugal approach to science: it should be practical, sustainable, inexpensive and all about innovating and solving problems. ### BATON ROUGE - NASA has awarded a Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, or LaSPACE, research team at LSU a grant to develop an instrument that would fly into a thunderstorm to measure how lightning can produce high energy gamma-rays. The student-led project called, Correlation of Terrestrial gamma flashes, Electric fields and Lightning strikes, or COTEL, is one of 39 projects selected by the NASA Office of Education through the Undergraduate Student Instrument Project, or USIP, program. COTEL has been awarded a $200,000 grant. The USIP program is intended to build scientific, technical, leadership and project management skills among undergraduate students by involving them in a full-cycle project from the design and development through launch and recovery of a flight instrument relevant to NASA's mission. In addition to LSU, students at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge Community College and River Parish Community College will also participate in the COTEL project. The proposed COTEL instrument will include an electric field detector, gamma-ray detector and lightning detection system to be launched using a sounding balloon into a thunderstorm cell to measure the electrical and radiation environment up to 100,000 feet. According to LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy Professor T. Gregory Guzik, who is the faculty project lead and director of the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, "This is a great training opportunity for our students, who will be involved from start to finish in a real NASA-funded project." LSU undergraduate students have been involved since long before the award was announced in early April. During the fall 2015 semester, a student team was established. With mentoring from LSU faculty and staff, the team conceived of the COTEL project proposal that was submitted to NASA last November. "After several weeks of sifting through project ideas, consulting with our advisors and conducting background research, our student team participated in creating a project proposal with the potential to contribute to the scientific understanding of the Earth's atmosphere. We were very lucky to have the opportunity to work first hand on a real proposal to a prestigious agency, despite the challenging learning curve and time constraints. Now that we've been successfully funded, we're looking forward to putting our ideas into action over the next year and a half," said Victor Fernandez-Kim of Baton Rouge, COTEL student team leader. LSU students who are also currently involved in the COTEL project are David Bordelon of Metairie, La., Jordan Causey of Gonzales, La., Joshua Curtis Collins of LaPlace, La., Allen Davis of Spanish Fort, Ala., Kyle Alexander Hamer of Lafayette, La., Brad Landry of Lockport, La., Adam Majoria of Baton Rouge, Connor L Mayeux of Amite, La. and John Samuel Reid of Denham Springs, La. The COTEL student project complements another project, TETRA-II, recently awarded by NASA EPSCoR to LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy Professor Michael Cherry to measure gamma-rays from thunderstorms using an array of detectors on the ground. These so-called Terrestrial Gamma Flash, or TGF, events have been observed by Earth-orbiting satellites since 1994, but the TETRA-II and COTEL projects will be the first to study TGF events from the ground and within thunderstorms. The student team is currently in the process of recruiting members, with an expectation that project activities will ramp up during the summer when preliminary payload designs will be started. The team is expected to work with a NASA engineer during payload definition and development. These designs will be implemented as prototype systems that will be tested during the spring 2017 thunderstorm season. "One of the major problems the students will need to solve is how to safely fill and launch a weather balloon in the vicinity of a thunderstorm. That is an issue that both NASA and I will be paying very close attention to," Guzik said. Upon successful completion of prototype testing, the student team will develop a final version of the payload. This payload will then provide new measurements of the electric field intensity as well as gamma-rays emitted by lightning in the storm as a function of altitude up to 100,000 feet within and above a thunderstorm. These data will be used to help constrain models of how TGF events are generated. ### Researchers in Simon Fraser University's School of Mechatronics Systems Engineering are tackling the world's water crisis by pulling water out of the air. Professor Majid Bahrami, the recipient of a 2016 Canada Clean50 Award, has spent the past three years working with his PhD student, Farshid Bagheri, to find a sustainable answer to the world's growing water needs. Their result is the patent-pending Hybrid Atmospheric Water Generator (HAWgen), which generates clean drinking water from the atmosphere through the integration of sorption, refrigeration and water filtration systems. The system provides water generation even in hot and dry conditions and uses both waste heat and renewable energy sources. Developed in Bahrami's Laboratory for Alternative Energy Conservation at SFU's Surrey campus, the atmospheric water generation technology will be marketed through their company, WATERGENICS Inc. The company was recently shortlisted for a BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) 2016 Technology Impact Award in the most-promising pre-commercial technology category. Winners will be announced on June 7. The company is cited for "being positioned to introduce the next generation of atmospheric water generation technology, and products in both custom-engineered systems and proprietary standard off-the-shelf solutions." The HAWgen is the latest venture for Bahrami, whose research focuses on improving the efficiency of heating and cooling systems for use in vehicles, electronics and buildings. He plans to target the product for applications in various resource industries, such as mining, oil and gas and even disaster relief, as well as consumer use, by the end of 2017. "Our vision is for this technology to not only make a difference as we face the ongoing issue of global water shortage, but to do so sustainably for future generations," says Bahrami. The technology will also play a role in the City of Surrey's newly unveiled BioPod Initiative, a regional hub for agri-tech innovation, where researchers can test high tech solutions to improve the efficiency of year round food production. The HAWgen will be central to providing a sustainable source of water for plant growth in the facility. "Majid has earned more than $10 million from funding agencies for his alternative energy research," said Uwe Glasser, dean of SFU's Faculty of Applied Sciences. "He is creative and clearly a leader in this important area. As a faculty member, he has provided an opportunity for many undergraduate and graduate students to challenge themselves and push the boundaries of their knowledge in sustainable energy." Fast Facts: The HAWgen system is environmentally friendly. Bahrami says the water is sustainable because whatever is extracted from the atmosphere's nearly 13 trillion cubic meters of renewable fresh water is replenished naturally, thanks to ocean evaporation. The HAWgen is able to generate water in nearly all climates, unlike more conventional atmospheric water generators--those rely on hot and humid environments and can fail when humidity drops. The HAWgen can handle dry climates and can be powered by sustainable energy sources. It works by pre-conditioning the incoming air stream using an adsorption system, then channeling it into a refrigeration unit for condensation. The generated water is then filtered. The researchers' pre-market prototype can generate up to five times the amount of water per day than conventional atmospheric water generation systems. ### About Simon Fraser University As Canada's engaged university, SFU is defined by its dynamic integration of innovative education, cutting-edge research and far-reaching community engagement. SFU was founded 50 years ago with a mission to be a different kind of university--to bring an interdisciplinary approach to learning, embrace bold initiatives, and engage with communities near and far. Today, SFU is Canada's leading comprehensive research university and is ranked one of the top universities in the world. With campuses in British Columbia's three largest cities - Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey - SFU has eight faculties, delivers almost 150 programs to over 35,000 students, and boasts more than 135,000 alumni in 130 countries around the world. Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities A new series of films produced by ethnographic filmmaker Sarah Betcher explores traditional Alaskan indigenous uses of wild plants for food, medicine and construction materials. The "Ties to Alaska's Wild Plants" project was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Betcher and principle investigator Steffi Ickert-Bond, the Herbarium curator at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. The videos have been published online in a variety of locations and are accessible for free. "We want to make sure people know that they are available to anyone who can find them useful," Betcher said. "Inupiaq people, anyone who is interested in ethnobotany and scientist with an interest in botany who want to learn about the cultural uses of plants. This medium helps people remember the information more than just reading about it." Betcher finished the first film in the series to honor Tlingit elder Helen Watkins, who passed away this winter. It features footage filmed in Juneau, Alaska of Watkins processing the devil's club plant to make beads, medicinal powder and infused salves and oils. The post has already received more than 2,500 views on the museum's YouTube channel. Most of the films document Inupiat traditions, but Betcher said there is interest in expanding the scope to explore the traditional uses of plants in other cultures and communities throughout northern latitudes. The idea for the series came when Betcher, who has a background in conservation biology and spent many years as an interpretive ranger, took an ethnobotany class at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The class took place in Kotzebue and included students and elders from Point Hope, Ambler, Norvik and different villages. Each day, an elder shared traditional uses of plants with the participants. Betcher said these are cultures that have taught these traditions orally. The people learned it by watching family members. "That is what I love about documenting that through film because you are a little bit closer to recording it in a way that mirrors a traditional way of learning," she said. "You can watch that person processing the plant." Ickert-Bond said the project is timely, especially in the face of climate change and the loss of traditional knowledge. "We wanted to bring the information particularly to Alaska Native youths in their communities," she said. "This was in response to concerns from the elders that the knowledge is not being transmitted. Video is useful in this day and age and an easy medium to feature in museums, exhibits and in classrooms." Betcher said the films can provide researchers with a context for culture, place and a way of life, which can be very helpful in framing a topic. "I worked with an ice scientist who was just starting her doctorate. She was able to discover what was important to Alaska Native people and how they use the natural world before choosing a topic for her research." The films are archived on the museum's website at bit.ly/uamnethnobotany. ### A five-year study by an international team led from the University of Leicester has found a way of 'reversing' symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's - using fruit flies as test subjects. The researchers have demonstrated that genetic and pharmacological approaches can be used to lower levels of toxic metabolites in the nervous system and thereby alleviate several symptoms of neurodegeneration. The study, led by Dr Carlo Breda who works in the laboratory of Professor Flaviano Giorgini at the University of Leicester, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. The research was performed in close collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USA), led by Prof Robert Schwarcz, with Dr Korrapati Sathyasaikumar and Dr Francesca Notarangelo contributing. Other University of Leicester colleagues that contributed are Prof Charalambos Kyriacou, Shama Idrissi, Jasper Estanero, Gareth Moore, and Dr Edward Green. Professor Giorgini, of the internationally acclaimed Department of Genetics at Leicester, said: "Our research is focused on better understanding the mechanisms that contribute to onset and progression of disease symptoms in neurodegenerative disorders. These are diseases in which specific populations of nerve cells within the brain die, leading to severe problems in movement and cognitive deficits in patients. "The two most common neurodegenerative disorders worldwide are Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The treatment options for these diseases are limited, and to date no cures exist. Our hope is that by improving our knowledge of how these nerve cells become sick and die in the brain, we can help devise ways to interfere with these processes, and thereby either delay disease onset or prevent disease altogether." The newly published research utilized the common laboratory fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster in order to explore the role of specific metabolites in the kynurenine pathway that cause loss of nerve cells in models of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases. Past studies by the Leicester team and others have shown some of these metabolites are toxic to nerve cells, and their levels are increased in these diseases. In the past the researchers have found that they can use genetic approaches to inhibit (or "mute") the activity of two critical enzymes in this pathway - TDO and KMO - which lowers levels of the toxic metabolites and reduces nerve cell loss in a fruit fly model of Huntington's disease. In the current study they have uncovered how inhibiting these two enzymes improves "symptoms" in flies because of increased levels of a "protective" kynurenine pathway metabolite known as kynurenic acid which counteracts the effects of the toxic metabolites. Professor Giorgini said: "There is a fine balance between levels of "good" and "bad" metabolites that occurs in the kynurenine pathway. In disease, it shifts towards the "bad", and by inhibiting TDO or KMO, we shift it back to "good". For example, we find that if we inhibit either TDO or KMO in Huntington's flies we reduce loss of neurons. In Alzheimer's or Parkinson's flies we see extension of the shortened lifespan exhibited by these flies, and we also reverse the defects they have in movement. We have even used a drug-like chemical to inhibit TDO and found that this also alleviates 'symptoms'." Dr Breda said: "There is considerable interest in developing drugs that 'turn down' these enzymes, so our hope is that our work could lead to drugs to treat these devastating disorders in the future. Neurodegenerative disorders are devastating diseases with limited treatment options. The major risk factor for these diseases is aging - and as our society is becoming longer lived, we are facing dramatic increases in the number of individuals suffering from these disorders." Professor Giorgini added: "We are excited by these results, as they suggest that TDO and KMO inhibition could be a general strategy employed to improve symptoms in a myriad of neurodegenerative disorders, not just Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Indeed, five years ago we first showed that these manipulations could improve "symptoms" in Huntington's disease model flies, so our next step is to validate our work in mammalian models and ultimately to see if such drugs could be helpful to patients in clinical trials" Aspects of this work were supported by CHDI Foundation, NIH, and Parkinson's UK. Commenting on the research Claire Bale, Head of Research Communications at Parkinson's UK, says: "Parkinson's is a progressive neurological brain condition, with symptoms emerging when 70% of nerve cells in the brain have been lost. "Unfortunately current treatments are only able to tackle the symptoms of the condition, but cannot slow or stop the degeneration of these cells. "This research which focuses on protecting brain cells, such as those lost in Parkinson's, by targeting proteins in the kynurenine pathway, could provide a turning point in the fight against this condition - which currently has no cure. "There is a lot of potential in harnessing the power of protective proteins to prevent brain cell loss, and Parkinson's UK is exploring this by investing in a clinical trial of GDNF, a protein which may also support the survival of brain cells. "Research such as this continues to help open doors to further discoveries into treatments, which one day could tackle the underlying cause of the condition which affects 127,000 people in the UK." ### Media enquiries Professor Flaviano Giorgini can be contacted at fg36@le.ac.uk or ring University of Leicester press office on 0116 252 2415, email pressoffice@le.ac.uk For Parkinson's UK Please contact: Laura Conn, Senior Media & PR Officer, Parkinson's UK: lconn@parkinsons.org.uk, 020 7963 3927. Out of hours: 07961 460248 About Parkinson's UK Every hour, someone in the UK is told they have Parkinson's. It affects 127,000 people in the UK - which is around one in 500 of the population. Parkinson's is a degenerative neurological condition, for which there currently is no cure. The main symptoms of the condition are tremor, slowness of movement and rigidity. Parkinson's UK is the UK's leading charity supporting those with the condition. Its mission is to find a cure and improve life for everyone affected by Parkinson's through cutting edge research, information, support and campaigning. For advice, information and support, visit http://www.parkinsons.org.uk or call our free, confidential helpline on 0808 800 0303. 'A key finding of our study is that we can improve "symptoms" in fruit fly models of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease by feeding them a drug-like chemical' -Dr Carlo Breda, University of Leicester 'This research which focuses on protecting brain cells, such as those lost in Parkinson's, by targeting proteins in the kynurenine pathway, could provide a turning point in the fight against this condition - which currently has no cure' - Claire Bale, Head of Research Communications at Parkinson's UK Photographs of Professor Flaviano Giorgini available to download at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/95hh99gdwcky36p/AACzki3o27009WhYHZ7NMcJoa?dl=0 Captions available in Dropbox - all images credit to University of Leicester. For the first time in history, researchers have isolated the parts of the human genome that could explain the differences in how humans experience happiness. These are the findings of a large-scale international study in over 298,000 people, conducted by VU Amsterdam professors Meike Bartels (Genetics and Wellbeing) and Philipp Koellinger (Genoeconomics). The researchers found three genetic variants for happiness, two variants that can account for differences in symptoms of depression, and eleven locations on the human genome that could account for varying degrees of neuroticism. The genetic variants for happiness are mainly expressed in the central nervous system and the adrenal glands and pancreatic system. The results were published this week, in the journal Nature Genetics. Genetic influences on happiness Prior twin and family research using information from the Netherlands Twin Register and other sources has shown that individual differences in happiness and well-being can be partially ascribed to genetic differences between people. Happiness and wellbeing are the topics of an increasing number of scientific studies in a variety of academic disciplines. Policy makers are increasingly focusing on wellbeing, drawing primarily on the growing body of evidence suggesting that wellbeing is a factor in mental and physical health. VU Amsterdam professor Meike Bartels explains: "This study is both a milestone and a new beginning: A milestone because we are now certain that there is a genetic aspect to happiness and a new beginning because the three variants that we know are involved account for only a small fraction of the differences between human beings. We expect that many variants will play a part." Locating these variants will also allow us to better study the interplay between nature and nurture, as the environment is certainly responsible -- to some extent -- for differences in the way people experience happiness." Further research is now possible These findings, which resulted from a collaborative project with the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, are available for follow-up research. This will create an increasingly clearer picture of what causes differences in happiness. Professor Bartels points out that "The genetic overlap with depressive symptoms that we have found is also a breakthrough. This shows that research into happiness can also offer new insights into the causes of one of the greatest medical challenges of our time: depression". The research effort headed by professors Bartels and Koellinger is the largest ever study into the genetic variants for happiness. It was successfully completed thanks to the assistance of 181 researchers from 145 scientific institutes, including medical centres in Rotterdam, Groningen, Leiden and Utrecht, and the universities of Rotterdam and Groningen. VU Amsterdam Ever since it was founded in 1880, VU Amsterdam has been known for its distinctive approach to knowledge. VU is an open organization, strongly linked to people and society. We ask and expect our 23.000 students and over 4.500, researchers, PhD candidates and employees to look further -- to look further than their own interests and their own field, and further than what is familiar and further than the here and now. VU is looking further. ### NOTE TO EDITORS The research is published in Nature Genetics Genetic variants associated with subjective well-being, depressive symptoms and neuroticism identified through genome-wide analyses. For more information you can contact Meike Bartels. The largest ever study of global genetic variation in the human Y chromosome has uncovered the hidden history of men. Research published today (25 April) in Nature Genetics reveals explosions in male population numbers in five continents, occurring at times between 55 thousand and four thousand years ago. The study, led by Dr Chris Tyler-Smith of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, analysed sequence differences between the Y chromosomes of more than 1200 men from 26 populations around the world using data generated by the 1000 Genomes Project. The work involved 42 scientists from four continents. Dr David Poznik, from Stanford University, California, first author on the paper, said: "We identified more than 60,000 positions where one DNA letter was replaced by another in a man with modern descendants, and we discovered thousands of more complex DNA variants. These data constitute a rich and publicly available resource for further genealogical, historical and forensic studies." Analysing the Y chromosomes of modern men can tell us about the lives of our ancestors. The Y chromosome is only passed from father to son and so is wholly linked to male characteristics and behaviours. The team used the data to build a tree of these 1200 Y chromosomes; it shows how they are all related to one another. As expected, they all descend from a single man who lived approximately 190,000 years ago. The most intriguing and novel finding was that some parts of the tree were more like a bush than a tree, with many branches originating at the same point. Dr Yali Xue, lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, explained: "This pattern tells us that there was an explosive increase in the number of men carrying a certain type of Y chromosome, within just a few generations. We only observed this phenomenon in males, and only in a few groups of men." The earliest explosive increases of male numbers occurred 50,000-55,000 years ago, across Asia and Europe, and 15,000 years ago in the Americas. There were also later expansions in sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, South Asia and East Asia, at times between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago. The team believes the earlier population increases resulted from the first peopling by modern humans of vast continents, where plenty of resources were available. The later expansions are more enigmatic. Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, from the Sanger Institute, added: "The best explanation is that they may have resulted from advances in technology that could be controlled by small groups of men. Wheeled transport, metal working and organised warfare are all candidate explanations that can now be investigated further." All of the samples and data from the 1000 Genomes Project are freely available for use by other scientists and interested investigators. ### Notes to editors Publication: Poznik GD et al. Punctuated bursts in human male demography inferred from 1,244 worldwide Y-chromosome sequences is published in Nature Genetics 25 April 2016 DOI: 10.1038/ng.3559 The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally. Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease. http://www.sanger.ac.uk The Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. We support bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine. Our investment portfolio gives us the independence to support such transformative work as the sequencing and understanding of the human genome, research that established front-line drugs for malaria, and Wellcome Collection, our free venue for the incurably curious that explores medicine, life and art. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk The acquisition of trading platforms Hotspot and 360T by Bats Global Markets and Deutsche Borse respectively last year were bold statements of intent by exchange operators to grab a larger chunk of the trillions of dollars traded in FX every day. Alan Schwarz, FXSpotStream However, while consolidation in the venues supporting FX trading can be expected to result in exchanges becoming more involved in the FX space, any actual market structure change is likely to take a long time to materialize, according to FXSpotStream CEO Alan Schwarz. The FX market continues to do a good job of addressing regulatory requirements and meeting the demands of market participants, he says. We have seen a shift in the FX market looking to trade more on a disclosed basis. Our business has continued to see year-on-year growth because there is a move taking place from exchange-like anonymous trading to bilateral, fully disclosed trading between counterparties. Unlike trading on an exchange, the relationship via FXSpotStream is transparent and trading with the liquidity providing banks is on a fully disclosed basis. Nuances Kevin McPartland, head of market structure and technology research at Greenwich Associates, believes that discussion of migration from OTC to exchange fails to take account of some of the nuances of the FX market and that the future lies in venues that support multiple trading models. There are a host of non-exchange electronic trading venues that allow clients to trade with each other in a variety of ways, he says. Kevin McPartland, Greenwich Associates On the question of whether there is a discernible shift towards fully disclosed trading, McPartland refers to both central limit order book (CLOB) and request-for-quote (RFQ) having their merits. Despite observations made by the likes of TeraExchange that order book platforms offer a democratic marketplace through transparent, firm and executable prices corporates have remained reluctant to abandon the RFQ model. The key question for CLOB platform providers continues to be not why market participants have migrated to alternative models but rather when they will be in a position to win new business for products that are most suited for order books, such as the benchmarks and plain vanilla products. RGQ offers liquidity on demand and identification of counterparties, whereas CLOB is faster and its anonymity can be helpful, says McPartland. But we are now seeing demand for a solution that provides the best of both worlds by enabling trading in an order book format while maintaining a bilateral relationship with counterparties. Regulation According to James Sinclair, CEO of MarketFactory, options and other derivatives are moving closer to an exchange model due to the direct effects of regulation and the increased costs of compliance in OTC markets. He refers to CME FX options as an example, noting they are effectively options on futures. However, the situation in the spot market is more complicated some aspects are becoming closer to an exchange, others are moving further away, he says. FX has its own market structure that is hard to fit into the OTC/exchange paradigm. James Sinclair, MarketFactory One of the fundamental reasons why the market does not become centrally cleared, says Sinclair, is that a cleared model carries the cost of insurance against both settlement and market risk. CLS insures you against settlement risk but not the market risk, he adds. Counterparts still find it cheaper to self-insure against market risk in case of a counterparty default than to pay the extra cost of a fully cleared solution. A senior platform source observes that growth in exchange-traded products has largely come from futures traders who have looked for diversification and added FX as another asset class. Very little business has moved from OTC some banks have added exchanges as additional liquidity sources to cover risk, but that is really the only business that has crossed the divide, the source says. OTC has become more exchange-like in that the largest banks have continued to extend their internalization of flow, so each now runs an order book trading structure internally. However, our source also points out that the tightening of credit has reduced the number of prime brokers in FX and costs have risen so the nearest thing that the FX OTC market has to centralized clearing has actually reduced its volume and capacity, he concludes. The 1966 Wistar Institute conference remains, fifty years later, a pain in the master narrative of Darwin advocates. According to their favored story, doubts about the evolutionary mechanism are the exclusive domain of, first of all, those seeking to uphold a particular interpretation of Genesis and, second, the scientifically ignorant. Today marks the anniversary of the conferences opening, April 25 in Philadelphia. Certainly, so goes the cherished story, there would be nothing fundamental to debate about if you got together, say, a meeting of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians from MIT, Harvard, the University of Chicago, plus stellar scientific intellects like Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar, University of Paris mathematician Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, and others. In fact, as Discovery Institutes Dr. Paul Nelson recounts in a brief video released today, when precisely such a group got together at Wistar, there was a lot to argue about: It looks like the math is not going to cooperate with Darwinism, was the message the mathematicians and physicists delivered to their biologist colleagues. As Paul says, the official monograph that followed the conference Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (1967) features transcripts of the conversations and one can all but hear the attendees tossing chairs at each other. You can get a copy from Amazon for $199.99. The 52 listed participants also include Loren Eiseley, Murray Eden, Stanislaw Ulam, William Bossert, Ernst Mayr, Richard Lewontin, and C.H. Waddington. No debate about Darwinism, you say? A third feature of the master narrative, somewhat contradictory of the second, is that whatever scientific controversy there may once have been about evolutionary theory, its all died down by now. Well thats not true either. Dr. Nelson notes that the upcoming Royal Society meeting, New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives, to be held in November of this year, will likely replay the drama of Wistar. And as I mentioned on Friday, Science Magazine last week reported on a new $8.7 million project funded by the Templeton Foundation devoted to an evolution rethink that has the more rigid Darwinists squawking in protest. Undisputed scientific facts dont need to be rethought. Whats changed since 1966 is that challenges to Darwinism have multiplied and grown enormously in scientific sophistication, matched by the heightened defensiveness of Darwin apologists. The mathematical challenge, like the others, remains without a convincing answer (see here and here). Thats why in replying to critics, Darwinists overwhelmingly content themselves with storytelling, insults, and invective. Photo: Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, via Wikicommons. International students studying in Canada could find themselves fast tracked to residency if they want to work in the country after graduations.Immigration minister John McCallum confirmed that the government is looking at a number of options, including giving more points to students under the express entry programme which currently prioritises skilled workers."I think the best source of immigrants for Canada is international students because they know French and English, because they know Canada, because they're educated, because they're young. We should court them. We should encourage them to come here," he said.He explained that there will be changes to the way international students are assessed under the express entry programme and an announcement on what they are can be expected soon."Stage one, which I hope would be soon, would be to give more points to the students, and stage two, further down the road after more study, would be to do other things to improve express entry," he added.Meanwhile, international students planning to study in Canada this year are being reminded that they will be required to have an Electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA) to fly into the country.Study permit holders from visa-exempt countries who received their permit on or before July 2015 have been required to have the document since March although they will be able to board a flight until the end of September during a leniency period.Applicants who were issued with an initial study or work permit on or after August 2015 should have been issued automatically with an eTA along with their permit.However, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), pointed out that an eTA will not be automatically renewed for study permit renewal applications, so people who wish to exit and re-enter Canada by air will need to ensure that their eTA is still valid."If your eTA has expired, you will need to apply for a new one as soon as you can and before the eTA leniency period ends on 29 September 201," the spokesman said.Potential students are also being reminded that there are now new rules to reduce the potential for fraud or misuse of the student study programme aimed at protecting Canada's international reputation for high quality education and improve the services available to genuine students.This means that they must be studying at a designated learning institution (DLI), including institutions that are designated by provinces and territories on the basis of meeting minimum standards.Students must be actively pursuing their studies while in Canada but full time international students enrolled at designated institutions in certain programmes can work part time off campus and full time during scheduled school breaks without a work permit. The highest income tax rate is 39.6 percent. A single person pays that on taxable income over $450,050. A couple pays it on income over $466,950. Earn an additional $1,000, and the U.S. Treasury claims $396 of it. Only 1 percent of households pay anything like that rate. So the other 99 percent of us dont face such punishment, right? Wrong. Our tax system is a despicable, stinking swamp. It is quite possible for a person who earns far less than $450,000 a year to experience an effective tax rate that is higher than 39.6 percent. Indeed, you can be a worker at the edge of having a living wage and pay taxes at a higher rate than someone in the top 1 percent. Dont believe me? Pay attention. I will demonstrate. The issue here is what economists call the marginal tax rate. Its not the average tax rate. Its not the total tax bill. Its what a worker will lose to taxes and required payments when she earns additional money. The cause of the problem is simple. While our politicians argue passionately about federal income tax rates, the reality is that we face a mash-up of several kinds of taxes or required payments on income. You can see how ridiculous our system is by considering the tax burden on a worker who earns $15 an hour and has the good fortune to work 2,000 hours, bringing in $30,000 a year. The first tax to be paid is the employment tax, 15.3 percent for an independent worker. (Some will say the tax rate is half of that, 7.65 percent, because employers nominally pay half, but the reality is that it is called an employment tax for a reason: It is a tax on labor.) The second tax is the federal income tax. A single worker gets $10,350 tax-free because of the $6,300 standard deduction and $4,050 personal exemption. The next $9,275 is taxed at 10 percent. The remaining $10,375 is taxed at 15 percent. That gives a tax bill of $2,484, an average rate of 8.2 percent. Additional income is taxed at 15 percent. Add the two taxes, and youve got a marginal rate of 30.3 percent. But thats not all. The same worker also must buy health insurance. Without a subsidy, it would cost $265 a month. That $30,000-a-year income level, however, gets a premium subsidy of $57 a month. Now lets see what happens when that worker earns an additional $100 a month. As before, the worker will pay 15.3 percent in employment taxes and a federal income tax of 15 percent on the additional income. But the workers health insurance subsidy drops to $41 a month, a loss of $16 a month. That, in effect, is an additional tax of 16 percent. So the worker earns an additional $1,200 a year but 46.3 percent is immediately lost to basic government costs. Meanwhile, that top-end worker pays at 39.6 percent because the employment tax is far behind and the full health insurance rate was paid long ago. What the high-income worker experiences is a 39.6 percent marginal tax rate. What the lower-income worker experiences is a 46.3 percent marginal tax rate. So lets ask a question: What are the remaining hopefuls for president proposing to do about this absurdity? You can compare candidate platforms on the Tax Foundation website. Visit it, and you will find that four of the hopefuls want to dicker around with current income tax rates. Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, predictably, want to raise income tax rates on higher incomes. Sanders would even have two new brackets that exceed the 46.3 percent rate the $30,000 worker pays. Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Donald Trump, equally predictable, want to reduce income tax rates. These hopefuls are not proposing real change. They are offering to drain, or fill, different areas of the stinking swamp. They are still playing three-card monte with a voting public that never wins. And our tax system will still be a stinking swamp. Only one remaining hopeful advocates fundamental change. He proposes a radical and simple flat tax with a big deduction. More importantly, he wants to replace the employment tax with a value-added tax. The largest tax most workers pay would no longer be taken from paychecks. That hopeful is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Hes talking about fundamental change in an intolerable system. Is anyone listening? Questions about personal finance and investments may be sent by email to scott@scottburns.com. Visit assetbuilder.com to comment on any of his articles, to find referenced Web links or to discuss personal finance topics on his forums. Both Zachary House and Jesse Cano had received disturbing news when they visited their doctor. Both were overweight, and both, according to their doctors, needed to make big changes, or neither would live to see their children grow up. Cano has two kids, so the admonition hit home. For House and his wife, who were hoping to have children, the threat was more vague, yet still disturbing. The warnings prompted both men to take the first steps toward living a healthier lifestyle: applying for and being accepted into the most recent edition of the Slim Down Showdown, H-E-Bs long-running, health-improvement competition. Each year for the past six years, Slim Down Showdown has challenged 30 contestants 15 H-E-B employees and 15 customers to learn how to eat better and exercise right. The goal is to improve health measurements such as weight, body fat and cholesterol. During the 12-week program, contestants attend a healthy living fit camp, learn how to cook healthy meals, contribute to a Slim Down Showdown blog and participate in community events such as food demonstrations, zumbathons and 5K races. Over the course of this years program, participants lost a combined total of 879 pounds, logged more than 30 million steps and wrote 1,100 blog posts. During a recent end-of-the-program makeover reveal at the Convention Center, House and Cano were crowned grand prize winners and each was awarded $10,000 based on overall health improvement, program participation and fan engagement. House, director of communications at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, won in the customer category by losing 22 pounds and 7 percent body fat while on the program. He has lost a total of 55 pounds since first speaking with his doctor. Cano, H-E-B central checkout operations manager in Corpus Christi, won in the employee group by losing 42 pounds and 8 percent body fat. Carlos De La Garza of New Braunfels and Jabbar Al Tameemi of San Antonio both won $5,000 as, respectively, community and employee healthy heroes. When House saw his doctor he weighed about 300 pounds. He told me that losing 100 pounds would be a good start, he said. The very idea sounded impossible, but he decided to give it a go and, along with wife Bethany, bought a bike and started riding. Still, it wasnt until he was selected as a Slim Down Showdown contestant that he began learning all it would take to improve his health. Id never thought about food before, he said. Lunch was whatever fast food sounded good. And Bethany and I also enjoyed trying new, high-end restaurants. There wasnt a lot of home cooking at our house. Cano, who for many years was a single dad, also did a lot of eating out with his two kids. I grew up on fatty Mexican food, he said. I didnt know any better. The Slim Down Showdown, both say, taught them a lot about food and eating right. Cano, for example, was thrilled to realize he could still enjoy food even if it was healthy. He was happy when his kids realized this, too. My first night back home we had burgers, he said. But the burgers were made with lean ground beef instead of the fatty stuff. And we had carrots instead of french fries. The kids loved it. House said he was most surprised about what didnt happen during the competition. I never got a long list of foods I couldnt eat, he explained. Instead, I was taught that I needed to be more aware of what I was putting into my body, and to eat in moderation. Both men say that, since completing the program, they feel better mentally and physically. Cano, who has type 2 diabetes, is almost entirely off insulin and takes only one pill a day now. House said his doctor recently told him he is no longer pre-diabetic. And, he said, he also feels smarter and more alert. It feels like a cloud has been lifted from my brain, he said. Im also sleeping better, and Im not snoring. My wife likes that, for sure. To learn how to apply to the 2017 Slim Down Showdown, visit heb.com/slimdown rmarini@express-news.net Twitter: @RichardMarini Setting it Straight: This story has been changed to correct information about Zachary House being the contestant who weighed 300 pounds when his doctor told him that losing 100 pounds would be a good start. WASHINGTON Anxious to turn the GOP race back onto friendlier ground in the Midwest, Ted Cruz telegraphed the importance of Indiana last Thursday at the states annual Republican spring dinner. The state of Indiana is going to play a pivotal role in this election, Cruz said. The entire country, their eyes are on the state of Indiana, the men and women in this room. While the public face of the campaign still dwells on winning rural states such as Indiana, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota, strategists behind the scenes talk of an unpredictable war of attrition for delegates. The media is laser-focused on states, and we are laser-focused on delegates, said Katie Packer, a Republican strategist and founder of Our Principles PAC, which has spent more than $4.4 million since January to thwart GOP front-runner Donald Trump. Cruz also has been campaigning in five Northeastern states that go to the polls Tuesday. One is Pennsylvania, with a bonanza of 71 delegates. But with Trump favored to dominate all five, Cruz is jumping ahead this week to Indiana. Cruz acknowledges that there are not enough states or delegates left for him to win the GOP nomination outright. The overriding campaign strategy, instead, has turned to making sure that Trump cannot reach the 1,237-delegate majority to clinch it either, forcing a contested convention where the U.S. senator from Texas will have the upper hand with longtime party activists. We are headed to a contested convention, Cruz said Wednesday, making his strategy explicit in a radio interview in Philadelphia. At this point, nobody is getting 1,237. Donald is going to talk all the time about other folks not getting to 1,237; hes not getting there, either. None of us are getting to 1,237. There is little margin for error on either side. Trump, riding a wave of momentum after his overwhelming win last week in New York, is looking ahead at the upcoming raft of favorable Mid-Atlantic state primaries, including Pennsylvania, which has a trove of unbound delegates who run separately from the candidates. The morning after Trumps New York victory, his campaign released a memo asserting that he is on a path to winning 1,400 delegates before the GOPs national convention in July. Some outside analysts also handicap the race for Trump, noting that Cruzs dismal third-place showing in New York exposed a glaring weakness outside of his conservative base of tea party activists and evangelicals. Cruz really is perceived as a real conservative and cannot make any traction even among more moderate Republican conservatives, said Duke University political scientist John Aldrich. That also could apply to California, the biggest prize of all, which looms large June 7, the last day of primary voting. Trump is favored there, as well. In a response to the Trump delegate claim, Packers group put out a memo Thursday calculating that the billionaires 1,400-delegates boast would entail winning 82 percent of the remaining pledged delegates. Until now, Trump has been averaging 47 percent of the delegate haul. To get to the magic number of 1,237, Trump needs to win about 60 percent of the delegates between now and June 7. Trump has to sweep everything, pretty much, said Rick Shaftan, a GOP strategist who runs the pro-Cruz Courageous Conservatives PAC. Even if Trump could win the vast majority of the 15 upcoming primaries, proportional rules that assign delegates by congressional districts including in Indiana allow Cruz to cherry-pick pockets of strength and deny Trump delegates. Even if Trump wins Indiana, there are still ways to stop him after that, said Our Principles PAC adviser Tim Miller, a former spokesman for the Jeb Bush campaign. Indiana rates as one of the only toss-up states left on the GOP primary schedule. A Wisconsin-style win for Cruz would finalize that Trump cant get to 1,237, Miller said. While the popular vote wins and while state victories create welcome headlines, Cruz strategists emphasize that it is the actual delegate counts that tell the real story. With demographics similar to Wisconsin, the state that Cruz called a turning point, Indianas 57 delegates represent a prime opportunity to significantly erode Trumps margin of victory, no matter which way the state as a whole tilts when it holds its primary May 3. It looks like very strong territory for us, seeing the parallels between Indiana and other states where we have done well, like Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas, said Laura Barnett, a spokeswoman for two Keep the Promise PACS that support Cruz. You see the connection he has with voters in those states. Like Wisconsin, Indiana gets a primary date to itself, meaning the state will be the focus of the campaigns attention for an entire week, after Tuesdays primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. In those states, strategists say, Cruz needs only to finish respectably. Good showings by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who remains in the race, also could deny Trump needed delegates on the Eastern Seaboard. Cruz has made clear that he is devoting significant resources to the Hoosier State, where a network of volunteers already is on the ground. He stopped at an Indianapolis delicatessen Thursday and then met with uncommitted Republican Gov. Mike Pence, a die-hard conservative who had met with Trump the day before. At the state GOP dinner in Indianapolis, Cruz promised to become part of the furniture in Indiana: Heidi (his wife) and I are going to spend a lot of time here in Indiana working to earn your votes, barnstorming the state, holding town halls, holding rallies, asking for your support. Cruz can expect to get some help in Indiana, both from #NeverTrump groups and the Club for Growth, a free-market group run by former Indiana Congressman David McIntosh. Back on rural, conservative turf, Cruz also found a target of opportunity last week in Trumps remarks dismissing North Carolinas new law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that match their birth gender. At a town hall on NBCs Today show, Trump said the law was unnecessary. There have been very few complaints the way it is, Trump said. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble. In a reprise of a fight over a failed gay rights ordinance in Houston, Cruz released a Web video Friday suggesting that Trump would let grown men use bathrooms with little girls, accusing him of caving in to the PC police. The bathroom issue highlights Cruzs effort to reposition himself as the only true conservative in the race, harkening back to his campaigns original template for winning the GOP nomination. If conservatives continue to unite around our campaign in the weeks and months ahead, Donald Trump will never earn the majority of support required to become the nominee, Cruz spokeswoman Alice Stewart wrote in an email to supporters Thursday. While Cruz focuses on denying Trump a clear majority in advance of the convention in Cleveland, Trump has continued to complain of a rigged system that could see him winning the most votes and delegates, only to be outmaneuvered by Cruzs insider delegate operation. Most Republican delegates become unbound if no hopeful wins a majority on the first or second ballot. Cruz has been working assiduously state by state to ensure that the people selected as delegates are his loyalists, regardless of how their states voted. Theyre party regulars; theyre activists, said Miller, the former Bush campaign spokesman. And by and large, they dont like Donald Trump. The danger facing Cruz could be a wave of popular revulsion if Trump can make the case that the hopeful with the most votes deserves to win, even if he does not get a majority of the delegates. Anticipating the potential fallout, GOP leaders meeting in Florida last week laid the groundwork in a public relations battle. Addressing the party Friday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus recalled the contested convention of another century: It took Abraham Lincoln three ballots to get a majority in 1860. kevin.diaz@chron.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Four years after four mentally disabled men died in a fire at a boarding home, prompting San Antonio to pass a tougher safety ordinance for such facilities, the number of homes has dwindled from an estimated 120 to only eight licensed ones. Some of the eight homes two more are in the process of obtaining a license are almost full. Together, they provide a capacity of fewer than 100 beds in a city where an estimated 5,000 people a year might need such housing, mostly those with serious mental illnesses, who make up the majority of boarding home tenants. Bexar County, which now also regulates boarding homes, has no licensed ones. The boarding home shortage that predated passage of the regulations has only grown worse, advocates said. The scarcity has also placed some local mental health workers in an ethically queasy position, they say: namely, having to routinely provide vulnerable clients with information about unlicensed boarding homes, a necessity now that only a handful of operators have stepped up to get the required permit. City officials said they were unaware of this situation until it was brought to their attention by the San Antonio Express-News last week. Its not clear how many unlicensed homes are operating in the city, but one hospitals list suggests that it may be more than 70. The city has closed 12 unlicensed ones since the ordinance passed because they posed an imminent threat to residents. More Information San Antonio boarding home requirements (partial list) Fire and safety systems, including interior sprinklers, smoke detectors, arc-fault circuit interrupters and fire evacuation plans Kitchen inspections, food handler certifications and overcrowding limits Maximum of six residents in a single-family zoning district Operator must comply with property maintenance code requirements If you suspect an illegal boarding home is operating, call (210) 207-8511. See More Collapse Its become an ongoing challenge for us because there are fewer and fewer accessible and affordable housing options for the population we serve, said Juanita Rodriguez, a clinic program director with the Center for Health Care Services, the county mental health agency that serves people who are low-income or indigent and live on government disability payments. Boarding homes used to be monitored by the state, but that oversight stopped in 2010. The city had the authority to license them starting in 2009, but efforts to do so got bogged down in fair housing issues and other conflicts. According to the city, an estimated 121 boarding homes were operating with little oversight before the City Council passed the ordinance in 2012. With the new licensing requirements, some boarding home operators have simply closed shop, Rodriguez said. One provision that drew much criticism and debate required operators to install indoor sprinkler systems, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars but are highly rated for saving lives. When helping clients find housing, case managers provide lists that include both licensed and unlicensed homes, Rodriguez said, as well as word-of-mouth knowledge. The workers dont recommend the unlicensed homes, she added, but they do transport clients to the properties and let them tour the homes and decide on their own. This makes it difficult for the consumer, she said. Licensed homes are more expensive, up to $1,000 a month, which our clients, who have limited incomes, cant afford. And when a patient elects to go into an unlicensed home, it falls to us as the mental health provider to make sure theyre OK and getting what they need, and to report to the authorities if the home is neglectful or unsafe. It makes our job all that much more difficult and adds an extra burden. Roderick Sanchez, who heads the citys department of development services, which oversees the team that monitors boarding home compliance, said he was unaware that the eight licensed facilities werent meeting the needs of those who might require such housing. We havent heard that this population is not being served, Sanchez said. I havent heard that theres a deficit or a lack. When told by the Express-News that the centers caseworkers are regularly providing clients with information about unlicensed homes because there arent enough licensed ones, or because permitted homes charge too much, he seemed surprised. Thats really unfortunate, Sanchez said. When we put (the ordinance) together, we talked to a lot of different people and tried to strike the right balance between safety and having enough homes to meet the demand. But absolutely this concerns us. We shouldnt be sending people to homes that arent safe. Finding a home not easy Boarding homes provide room and board to three or more disabled or elderly tenants, along with transportation, laundry and help with self-administering medication. They dont provide skilled or nursing care, such as that found in assisted living facilities. Homes with one or two residents are not regulated by the ordinance. Prior to the regulations, which became effective March 1, 2013, most boarding homes charged about $700 a month or less. Liza Jensen, head of the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that for families that call her group, the biggest challenge is finding housing for a loved one. When patients are discharged from psychiatric units at area hospitals, family members are handed a list of boarding homes, she said, that vary from hospital to hospital. And theyre told, Its your responsibility to check it out and make sure the environment is OK, Jensen said. Theyve shifted the responsibility to the family member, who is already overwhelmed. At Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital, which provided the Express-News with a list of San Antonio boarding homes, some licensed and more than 70 unlicensed, patients who are being discharged from the behavioral health unit are directed to homes on the list that have a good reputation. We used to just hand patients the list, but now we try to say, Here are the top three (homes), you might want to investigate, said Cristina Molina, director of outpatient services. Here are the ones where youll get all your meals, where youll be taken to appointments, where youll be treated well. We know these are the better homes, because patients have told us what really goes on. Still, there arent enough good-quality boarding homes in San Antonio, Molina said. Too many operators go into business for profit reasons vs. patient well-being, she said. Our patients get $600 to $700 a month (in disability payments), and these operators just take it, she said. A handful of boarding homes on the Methodist list were labeled licensed, though they dont appear on the citys list of permitted homes a discrepancy Molina couldnt explain. However, some boarding homes that the city says are licensed arent identified as such on the Methodist list. Rodriguez, with the Center for Health Care Services, said another challenge is that many boarding home operators dont want to lease to the mentally ill, a population that can have problematic behavior, preferring instead to serve only the elderly or those with intellectual disabilities, such as autism or Down syndrome. If a (mentally ill) client (gets sick) and has to go to the hospital, many times a boarding home says they cant return, so that even further limits the options, she said. Not necessarily better Carol Laues 31-year-old son Jarod Laue, who has schizophrenia, has been in and out of various boarding homes, before and after the ordinance took effect. At his last one, where he stayed for several months and which was licensed by the city, the operator didnt maintain supervision in the home when residents were there, Laue said, even though thats required under the ordinance. They had four guys sleeping in one bedroom, so of course there were issues, she said. My son and his roommate were asked to leave. Now Jarod lives with a roommate at an apartment, where the biggest issue is cost, Laue said. He pays $620 for his half of the rent, out of his $975 disability check. He must pay for his own food and doesnt get the kind of help provided at a boarding home. I havent seen that (the ordinance) has made it any easier for us in finding housing for our son, and whats out there has not been any better, she said. The citys Sanchez speculated that tons of boarding home operators now serve only two clients, so they dont fall under the boarding home ordinance. In 2014, Bexar County, anticipating a flood of operators fleeing city regulations, also adopted a host of boarding home requirements, including mandatory sprinkler systems. Since then, three homes have applied for permits, two have been closed by the operators and seven are under investigation. The feared influx never materialized, said Laura Jesse, a county spokeswoman. The biggest challenge has been identifying homes, she said, adding that many calls about illegal boarding homes turn out to be personal care homes with only two tenants. Sanchez said that the horror of what happened in 2012, when four men died of burns and smoke inhalation at the boarding home where a second-story exterior staircase had been removed during renovations, motivated city leaders to come up with the tougher law. We dont want (a fire) to happen again, so it was necessary to make these homes safe and decent places to live, Sanchez said. The ordinance is a success because those people are now living in safe places. But, he added, we are willing to sit down and tweak it if need be to accommodate more folks. We dont want to sacrifice safety, but if its not working, if folks have concerns, then by all means were willing to sit down and see what we can do. Life in a licensed home After the city passed its ordinance, boarding home operator Tara Henderson spent about $50,000 to update her Northeast Side facility to meet the new requirements. She pays $1,000 every year to renew her permit with the city, a process that requires an inspection. It is a lot of work, and its highly expensive, she said. Juan Bernal moved into the home on Mystic Sunrise in January. Most of his $713 monthly disability check goes toward the rent Henderson had to raise it from $600 to $650 to make up for the money she spent to meet the city regulations. But Bernal said he is happier here than he was at a previous boarding home, which was as clean as his new home and $50 cheaper, but that owner was too strict. I like this here a lot, said Bernal, who said he has struggled with suicidal feelings, depression and anxiety. Its real good people who own it. Most weekdays, he goes to day centers and does activities. In the afternoons and evening, he spends time with his housemates, watching TV or cuddling with the house dog, Keezy. All the tenants are required to keep their rooms clean and make their beds. Henderson provides their meals and laundry service. The clients medications are stowed in a padlocked cabinet. She and her house manager, Brad Hamilton, arent licensed to physically administer the medications, but they watch the tenants take the pills. All of her residents have some kind of mental disability. But for all the work shes put into it, the suburban house has three residents and is half full. She has talked with the city about how to better advertise for more. Henderson admits shes choosy about whom she allows to live in the home. Because theres little legal protection for boarding home operators, she tries to maintain a calm environment, particularly after confrontations with a previous tenant. Sometimes, tenants just dont want to abide by her rules, preferring the streets. Theyre in and out quick, Henderson said. But she also believes that shes losing out on business because clients are regularly referred to unlicensed facilities, which might be cheaper but also less clean and with less oversight. Many of her clients, including Bernal, came to her after having lived in unlicensed facilities. Across town, Debbie Ruiz said she gets calls every day, from hospitals or the city, asking if there are available beds in the boarding home she helps manage at 903 W. Craig Place, off Blanco Road. Residents pay based on their incomes, what they can afford, unless they want a private room, which costs $1,000 a month, she said. A bright orange sprinkler system pipe, mounted on the ceiling, snakes through the rooms of the home, an old apartment building, and large exit signs hang above the doors. Like Hendersons, the 22-bed facility isnt always at capacity. Federico Padua, the operator, said his boarding home has empty beds because of the type of people who show up at his doorstep those whose mental illness seems to pose a threat. We dont take people who are off their (psychiatric) medication, or if they are not well-controlled on their medication, because they try to intimidate other residents, he said. The hospitals, they discharge people without medication or with inadequate medication. Thats the biggest reason were not at capacity. Caught three times Nancy Murrah, owner of the two-story white boarding home that caught fire in 2012, killing the four residents, has proved a tenacious scofflaw of boarding home regulations. Prior to the states discontinuation of boarding home regulation in 2010, her property at 309 W. Norwood Court the site of the fire was regularly found to have multiple health and safety violations by state inspectors. After the fire, city officials determined Murrah had removed an exterior second-story staircase during renovations, neglecting to obtain the required city permit. They also found she had not gotten a required certificate of occupancy, a sort of forerunner of the ordinance that would at least have triggered electrical, plumbing and fire inspections. A mere week after the fire at Amistad Residential Facility, as investigators were still picking through the ashes, the city learned through the Express-News that Murrah had opened a second illegal boarding home, a yellow bungalow at 827 W. French Place, near San Antonio College again without the required certificate of occupancy. They shut her down. And as recently as a few weeks ago, the city acting on an anonymous tip learned that Murrah was operating a third illegal boarding home in a garage apartment behind her mothers house at 934 W. Rosewood. Wed been monitoring her on and off through the years, since the fire, said Mike Shannon, assistant development services director for the city. Weve known shes been living (at Rosewood) for a while, and we inspected the property several times. The city knew that she had two clients living in the apartment, he said. Upon learning that her resident count might have gone from two to three triggering the ordinance the inspection team got a warrant after Murrah refused to let them in the apartment. The city determined that she had three clients, Shannon said. They were living there but eating in the main house. In addition to lacking a certificate of occupancy, Murrah didnt have a license. Again, Murrah was housing vulnerable clients without sprinklers, Shannon said. Sprinklers are crucial, Sanchez said, because those with mental disorders are often heavily medicated when they sleep, making such equipment a life-saving feature. The city issued Murrah a notice of violation and moved the residents to other facilities. She now must go to court, where a judge will decide any penalty. Nothing in the ordinance provides for enhanced fines or other consequences for repeat violators, Shannon said. Well present the facts of this case, the history, and hopefully the judge will take that into consideration, he said. The San Antonio Police Departments homicide unit investigated the Amistad fire, but there was not enough evidence to support criminal charges, according to an SAPD spokesman. The case was forwarded to the Bexar County district attorneys office, but no indictments were issued, the spokesman said in an email. The case was closed. Meanwhile, Murrah has placed the renovated property on West Norwood Court up for sale. The listing price is $170,000. mstoeltje@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate As president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association for almost a decade, Mike Helle has lobbied city leaders, defended officers accused of misconduct and sometimes sparred with community activists or the police chief. Helle said he prefers to work behind the scenes representing the unions 2,000-plus members. But his advocacy has been fierce, and in the past year, not exactly in the shadows. The unions open warfare with City Hall over its contract has been apparent to any San Antonian who watches TV commercials. And last month, Helle engineered a union no confidence vote against Police Chief William McManus over the discipline of an officer who shot an unarmed man. The conflict with McManus also has centered on the departments policy defining when police can use deadly force. Helle told his members the chief wants to change that standard. McManus called that a lie. Helle, 50, is a detective and once worked undercover in the departments repeat offender program. He is nearing 27 years on the force. But his full-time job is the union. Im the type of person, its either in you or its not, when you see something thats not right, you speak out when its not really popular to do so, Helle said. He appears to retain broad support among officers, though a few are wondering if the union is making too many enemies. For years, city officials said they wanted to rework the police contract so officers would contribute to their health care plans, which the city long has paid for in full. Other city workers, except for uniformed personnel, pay health care premiums. The unions refusal has been bolstered by an evergreen clause that cements the now-expired contract in effect until 2024 unless both sides agree to a new one. Before a city lawsuit failed to overturn that provision the citys appeal is pending the union went after City Manager Sheryl Sculley, targeting her in political campaign-style TV spots. Negotiators then reached a consensus over health insurance and wages but have been at a stalemate over the length of the next evergreen clause. More recently, the union has criticized Mayor Ivy Taylor. Helle said he had mostly good working relationships with both Sculley and McManus until 2013. He said Sculley launched her attack on police and fire department employee benefits that year. That first punch, make no mistake about it, was thrown by the city manager, Helle said. And if you think about it, I have been the only person probably in her career that has stood up to her and punched her back. In a statement, Sculley said health care costs for uniformed employees have been growing faster than city revenue for 10 years. We see our future and the financial collision course were on if police officers and firefighters dont contribute their fair share toward health care like every other worker in San Antonio, the statement said. Weve all seen this coming, including Mike Helle. In 2009, Sculley proposed letting existing officers keep their current benefits and applying the same health care benefits as our civilian employees to newly hired officers, but Helle refused, the statement said. As long as he gets what he wants, Mike Helle is happy, Sculley said. And the union has gotten what they want for more than 25 years. Now that the city is determined to change the contract we are seeing a different side of him. Taylor declined a request for an interview. Deadly force Helle worked to persuade the unions 2,164 members to cast ballots of no confidence against McManus, and 1,944 of them did so March 23. Only 43 voted against the proposal. Helle also called for McManus to resign. The union, like many across the country, already was firmly on one side of a national debate over when officers can be justified in using deadly force. To many observers, the vote seemed a direct repudiation of McManus public acknowledgment that the primacy of officer safety can lead to shootings that erode community trust in police. McManus had addressed that issue before. But Helle said concerns among rank-and-file officers boiled over when McManus threatened to fire Officer John Lee, who had killed an unarmed man he was trying to arrest Feb. 4 on felony warrants that included a firearms charge. Lee said he thought Antronie Scott, 36, was holding a gun when he turned suddenly. It was a cellphone. Helle said McManus rushed to judgment on the Lee case and took shortcuts in what should be a careful departmental procedure and officers saw it as a message that McManus would not back them in situations where the courts have. It caused some officers to push for the vote, he said. Several officers interviewed for this report agreed. McManus called the union action vicious, scorned the idea that he doesnt care about officer safety and said he would not resign. Community and civic leaders have backed him and have slammed Helle and the union. Helle called the vote unprecedented but said backing officers investigated for using deadly force always has been part of his job. In the immediate wake of such incidents, the officers first call might be to his wife, to let her know hell be late. The second call might well be to Helle. Sometimes, youre in shock after a critical incident, Helle said. Theres quite a bit of unknown, and certainly theres isolation. The officer hasnt had anything to eat or drink and has to get his thoughts together. Im just there to ease that transition. Solid support, with critics Helles support by the rank and file appears to be based on his willingness to go toe to toe with city officials. He kind of takes care of the guys, you know? said George Felan, a former officer who retired in 2015. He does a lot of dealing with the chief and the city, although lately, the chief doesnt give a (expletive). Some union members, asking for anonymity, say they believe that Helle hasnt been in the citys face enough. But he has a tough job, others say. Ive seen him stressed because hes getting it from both sides. You just cant please everybody, said Billy Hunt, who retired from the San Antonio Police Department in 2013 after 34 years and once supervised Helle. Why he does it? I dont know. But I think he does it well. One officer, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, called Helle dishonest and divisive, capable of freezing out members who dont agree with his agenda or tactics. Hes gone after so many people, and has failed in every attempt, and now hes destroying the rank and file by going after the chief of police, the veteran officer said. Hes made enemies out of everybody, and ultimately were still without a contract. Hes not achieving anything. Ostracism of dissenters was suggested by the circulation of a Fiesta medal featuring the number 43 with a slash through it, apparently aimed at the 43 officers who voted for McManus. Helle said he had nothing to do with it. Noting there are many good officers, community activist Taj Matthews criticized Helle and the union for doing everything it can to get (officers) off, even those clearly in the wrong. And anyone who goes against Helle and the union, or who tries to be more even-handed such as McManus will end up a target. Its almost like he and the union have made a practice of bullying not only this community, but this city, Matthews said. Youre going to fight the chief because he wants to come up with a solution for our community? You should want to improve the relationship with the community. Helle shrugs off the criticism. Since the union formed in 1946, he has been the only president to win four consecutive terms, and anyone can start a recall petition, he said. Asked if the union always backs officers even when misconduct seems clearly established, Helle conceded: The perception from outside might appear that way. Have we had police officers indicted? Yeah, Helle said. But did you see me chanting, No, he shouldnt go to jail? No. But he should get due process. Partner was killed The oldest of four siblings, Helle was born at McGuire AFB in New Jersey. His father retired as a Navy lieutenant commander. The military brought the family to Texas. Helle graduated in 1983 from Carroll High School in Corpus Christi, worked for H-E-B, met and married his wife, Anna, and one day went on a ride-along with a friend in the Corpus Christi Police Department. He joined a reserve program on that department and was hired by SAPD in 1989, working dog watch (graveyard shift) patrols on the West Side followed by stints in the traffic investigations division, the evidence unit and the repeat offender program unit. His union involvement began in the mid-1990s, when his partner, Officer Fabian Dominguez, asked him to share shift director duties with him. Dominguez was shot and killed in 1995 as he responded to a burglary. Helle has served as union treasurer, and he won the presidency in his first try, in 2008. Alongside his career, he raised two sons and a daughter. Amid the regular ups and downs of police work, some incidents of his time on the force stand out. In 1991, he rear-ended a motorist who suddenly stopped on Culebra Road as Helle, driving an SAPD vehicle on duty, helped chase a burglary suspect. The motorist sued over her injuries, and the city settled the case for more than $26,000, court records show. In August 1992, while on duty, Helle shot and killed a 21-year-old man who had broken into a closed nightclub in the 1300 block of Culebra. Newspaper accounts said Helle saw the man through a broken window in the business and told him to stop and get on his knees, but the man reached into his waistband and pulled out a dark object. It turned out to be a can of Mace. It looked like part of a gun, Helle said in an interview. He was cleared in the shooting. A year later, an hour or so into his shift, he heard an e tone over the police radio, which alerts officers to a reported shooting. It was at his own house. Imagine the horror, Helle said. Its a part of our life we wish would have never happened. One of his sons, John, then 3, had found a gun under a pillow and accidentally shot himself in the abdomen. He survived Helle credits medical staff at University Hospital and it scared the living (expletive) out of me, he said. John Helle and his brother now are SAPD officers. On Feb. 2, 2007, Mike Helle was off-duty in his personal vehicle when it was hit in a five-car pileup on Interstate 10. He was in intensive care for several days, with broken bones and bad cuts on his face and his body. He spent weeks recovering and thought he would be medically retired. There wasnt the support from the (union) leadership I thought there would be, he said, prompting his decision to run for the presidency the next year. The union under his leadership has helped the spouses of injured officers financially and with moral support, he said. The membership also has paid for lodging for spouses of out-of-town officers in San Antonio for surgery or medical procedures. Its not enough to say its a brotherhood, he said. We need to make a point that we are there for our guys. The San Antonio police contract permits the union president to work full time on union matters. Helle is paid about $73,000 a year by the city and does not get paid overtime if he responds after hours for union business. The union pays him a monthly $500 stipend. Im available 24/7, Helle said. I think Im grossly underpaid. The stipend comes from union dues, according to partial union records obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. The average officer pays about $108 a month which is split among SAPOA, its benevolent fund, its political action committee, and the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the records show. By comparison, Patrick Lynch, the president of the largest union representing New York police officers, draws two salaries one from the city and one from the union, with both in the mid-$60,000 range, the New York Post reported in 2010. A lot of my job is mitigating many of the departmental I wouldnt say grievances, but issues and work through those so we avoid contractual grievances, Helle said. I get a broad spectrum of issues we have to troubleshoot and resolve. Its not just a hard job because of the city the membership, he notes, can be fickle. You always have to make the bar of expectation of delivery of service and customer service higher than the previous guy, he said. We always have room for improvement. But I always want to make sure that this administration Im a member of is remembered for, Hey, this guy really took care of us. gcontreras@express-news.net News Research Director Mike Knoop contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN Life outside the governors mansion has proven profitable for Rick Perry. The former Texas governor made more than $365,000 in total compensation in 2015 for serving on the corporate boards of two firms that are part of Republican mega donor Kelcy Warrens vast energy empire, according to regulatory filings. The filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission detail publicly for the first time the value of Perrys compensation for his role as a non-employee director at two pipeline companies. His compensation for 2015 included more than $107,000 cash and $255,000 in stock awards and hes already been given shares worth $100,000 for each company this year as part of annual equity awards. Perry was appointed to a board position at Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners in early February 2015, roughly two weeks after he officially wrapped up serving 14 years as governor, the longest stretch in state history. Regulatory filings also show Perry accepted another board position the following month with Sunoco Logistics Partners, an appointment that had not previously been reported. The two companies are part of a network that fall under the umbrella of Energy Transfer Equity, which is led by Warren. The Dallas oil and gas billionaire plunked $6 million into several super PACs that supported Perrys failed presidential bid last year. Both companies declined through spokespeople to comment on Perrys appointment or his compensation packages. Steve Werner, a professor of management at the University of Houstons Bauer College of Business, said tapping the former governor of a state rich in oil and gas makes perfect sense for the two pipeline firms. You could look at it from a negative viewpoint where this is a way of gaining influence. That would raise a question of whether the ex-governor has any influence, said Werner, who has written a book on managing human resources in the oil and gas industry. The realistic view is this is somebody that knows about the inner workings of government and one thats well versed in the oil industry. In filings, the two companies said Perry was selected because of his vast experience as an executive in the highest office of state government and because he had been involved in finance and budget planning processes throughout his career in government. Corporate board directors are selected to represent shareholder best interests and to essentially look over managements shoulder to make sure they are running the company correctly, said Steve Hall, a founding partner and managing director of independent compensation consulting firm Steve Hall and Partners. And, Hall said, its not out of the ordinary for ex-politicos to land on corporate boards. Several former U.S. senators have ended up with positions in corporate boardrooms. Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson joined the boards of several private companies, and ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also served on boards or as an adviser to at least 15 companies and nonprofits. Bush resigned all of his corporate and nonprofit board positions in the lead up to his run for president. When youre dealing with regulatory agencies and other government bodies, its always nice to have somebody on your board that knows those inner workings, said Hall, whose firm specializes in executive compensation and corporate governance. Youre getting the expertise of this person. Its not just the number of hours youre sitting in front of a boardroom or a stack of paper. Along with his corporate board pay, Perry reported earning $250,000 in 2015 for consulting from a company headed by San Antonios Peter Holt, another major Perry campaign donor. Perry also reported retirement income of more than $130,000 from his tenure as governor, according to a personal financial disclosure report filed with the Federal Elections Commission last week. For his corporate positions, Energy Transfer Partners reported paying Perry $82,420 in cash and shares worth $154,400 at the time they were awarded. The board position at Sunoco Logistics Partners netted Perry $25,000 cash and shares valued at $101,250. The shares do not fully vest until 2020, according to regulatory filings. Perry also gets an annual equity award of shares worth $100,000 from each company. Those shares also dont fully vest until five years after they were awarded. Hall, the compensation expert, said Perrys pay packages fall in line with the industry standard for non-employee directors, noting that neither Energy Transfer Partners nor Sunoco Logistics Partners were among the top companies for director pay in the energy sector. Theres nothing out of the ordinary with his compensation, said Hall, whose firm studied director pay at 600 companies in 2014, including at the two where Perry serves as a director. What you typically find is there are no special deals for directors. If youre a director this is basically what you get. drauf@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If it werent for all the snow cones, micheladas and cans of Modelo in the arena at Charro Ranch on Sunday, an onlooker might be forgiven for thinking he or she had somehow traveled through time. Girls and young women in traditional Mexican gowns guided their horses in an elaborate dance, all while seated sidesaddle, performing the escaramuza. The bright dresses made patterns against the dirt as they brought their horses into formation in circles, lines and swirls. It was the annual A Day in Old Mexico and Charreada, hosted by the San Antonio Charro Association, which helped draw another Fiesta to a close. In addition to the old-world equestrian themes, there were folklorico performances, live mariachi music and plenty of Fiesta-style food and drinks. After two weeks of Fiesta, I was real tired, King Antonio told the crowd. But after coming out here today, I think I would go for another week. The annual Mexican rodeo event is a chance for many to see a piece of history. We come every year. I love knowing that American rodeo originated from the teachings of the Mexican vaqueros. It might look different, but its that tradition and sportsmanship continued, said George Davila, a former Army serviceman and a platoon leader at The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps veterans get involved in serving their communities. Its a privilege to watch. Many in the arena had riding in their blood. In the opening ceremony, several charros rode with sons planted on their saddles in front of them, some so young they looked as though they only recently had learned to walk, let alone ride. Ive been involved since I was a kid, since 1971. I started at the age of 5 and was actually competing at 14 or 15, said Rodrigo Gaona, the son of a charro and the father of an escaramuza rider. Some families here have been charros for three generations. Im second generation, but probably sixth generation in my family, as far as riding horses goes, he continued. The original stands that I remember were made of wood. There were six rows of bleachers, Gaona said, adding that the Asociacion de Charros de San Antonio hopes to expand to a larger arena, hopefully a covered area. The need for more space was clear Sunday, as onlookers packed the bleachers to capacity, spilled out into the stairs and perched under the railing around the arena to catch the show. For some riders, the crowds enthusiasm makes the work worthwhile. People tell you to keep it up, that theyre proud of you, said Julieta Granados, 19. You wear the dress with pride. The group is like a family, said her friend Rachel Sanchez, who is 16 and began riding when she was 10. They practice three times a week if there is a competition soon, or if there isnt, twice a week. When he addressed the crowd, King Antonio thanked the charros for helping avert disaster during the 2001 Fiesta Flambeau Parade, when the horses drawing the carriage of the 51st King Antonio, Edward K. Kopplow, got spooked and tried to bolt toward the sidewalk. Charros in the parade calmed the horses before anyone was hurt. It was a reminder that despite the sunshine and the carnival air, the events of the Charreada are not without their dangers. For some, thats all part of the fun youth doesnt stop them from throwing themselves into charrerias riskier events, such as the jinteo de yeguas, an event in which the charro rides a bucking mare. It wasnt my day today, but Ill ride again another day. Its OK, as long as Im alive, said 16-year-old Gabriel Olivares, who was thrown from and kicked by a horse in the arena Sunday. He said he still prefers riding horses to bulls. You cant be scared. You just have to get on and stay on, he continued. He wiped at the blood on his lower lip. Its all just a part of the sport. fioannou@express-news.net Twitter: @obioannoukenobi This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate By October, a San Antonio Water System plant under construction since 2014 will show whether it is worth its salt. SAWS offered a tour recently of the desalination plant, which will turn brackish, or somewhat salty, groundwater into drinkable water. When operations begin in six months, the facility in South Bexar County will be able to treat up to about 4.4 billion gallons of water annually. Thats roughly equivalent to the amount of water used by almost 100,000 people a year. SAWS hopes that by 2026, it can expand the capacity to more than 11 billion gallons annually, but that is still uncertain. Im excited from San Antonios perspective because we will have the largest brackish desalination plant in the country, said state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee who has toured nearly all of Texas 44 large desalination plants. Most of San Antonios water does and still will come from the Edwards Aquifer. For the desalination plant, SAWS will tap the lower part of the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. Though the water there is salty, it is about 25 times less salty than seawater, SAWS has learned from drilling production wells near the plant at its Twin Oaks property. Construction on the plant is proceeding on schedule. From the beginning, SAWS officials wanted the interior design to tell a story of how the utility obtains and treats the water it provides to 1.6 million customers, spokeswoman Anne Hayden said. Its a place where people can learn about water, she said. So many people take water for granted. But theres not a lot of thought about what happens, how does the water get to you? SAWS is already showing visitors the plant, which has impressed some of the utilitys strongest critics of the Vista Ridge project, a proposed 142-mile pipeline from Burleson County. Some believe that SAWS should scuttle the pipeline deal and rely on a combination of desalination, conservation, rainwater capture, stormwater reuse and other local water supplies, said Alan Montemayor, a local Sierra Club member who joined other members on the tour recently. It was technically fascinating to see all the equipment and buildings, and I know all were gratified to see how much attention the design team had paid to aesthetics, education and general forward thinking, he said in an email. In 2013, plans for the desalination plant gave SAWS a useful bargaining chip when negotiating with Abengoa Vista Ridge, the company originally selected to finance, build and operate the pipeline, SAWS board chairman Heriberto Berto Guerra Jr. said in December. When SAWS had narrowed a list of potential water suppliers to just Abengoa, the company balked at the idea of taking on all the risk of Vista Ridge, Guerra said. He told SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente to put out a news release saying the utility would go all-in on desalination. I knew there was a limit to desalination, Guerra said. I knew we needed to get a pipeline, no ifs, ands or buts. But what happened is this forced Abengoa. It scared them. It forced Abengoa to come to the table. Abengoa ended up signing a contract with SAWS in 2014 to build Vista Ridge, but its parent company in Spain ran into severe financial problems by late 2015. The SAWS board is now expected to approve an Abengoa plan to sell most of its stake in the pipeline to Garney Construction of Kansas City, Missouri. Despite all the recent focus on Vista Ridge, SAWS Twin Oaks site has become the most crucial source of water for San Antonio after the Edwards. Surrounded by cattle, farm fields, oak trees and wildflowers, the property has plenty of tanks, pipes, pumps, basins and treatment equipment poking up from the ground all used by SAWS to tap the sandy Carrizo-Wilcox. The utility draws fresh water from below the ground there and uses it as an underground water bank through its aquifer storage and recovery technology. Visitors to the desalination plant can already see exterior walls made from blocks of sandstone and limestone, chosen to represent the Carrizo-Wilcox and the Edwards, respectively. Inside, a dark-colored entrance gives way to a more brightly colored corridor, representing salty water becoming clean. Workers have laid spackling compound on one wall in multiple layers and colors to evoke local geology. Across from the wall will hang a mural of water photos taken by SAWS employees. The plant includes a conference room to host visitors. It has a laboratory space where guest doctoral students or outside scientists can do research related to desalination or other water issues. Visitors can look through windows to see the equipment where desalination actually happens. They can watch as a handful of engineers controls the flow of water out of the ground. We really wanted to make sure this is visible to the public, so whoevers touring this plant can see whats happening, SAWS water planner Richard Donat said. SAWS will run the brackish water through reverse osmosis on a massive scale. A central room holds stacks of high-quality plastic vessels, each filled with membranes used to separate salt and water. SAWS is building its desalination capacity in phases, and already at the plant, it has most of what is needed for the first two phases. Enough space remains in the building to add more membrane trains for the second and third phases. Phase One will cost $192.7 million, of which $109.5 million SAWS borrowed from the Texas Water Development Board. Phase Two will cost $158.5 million to add another 4.4 billion gallons per year by 2021. The third phase may be a bit trickier. SAWS wants to add 2.2 billion gallons per year by 2026 at a cost of $60.2 million, but the utility lacks water leases and well permits for that phase, Hayden and Donat said. In the past, SAWS has had trouble getting the permits it wants from rural groundwater conservation districts, which are accountable to residents who can oppose a utility leasing local water supplies. The negative with desalination is once you get to (11.8 billion gallons), then Ive got to go into another county, and they wont even let us have the salt water, Guerra said. In this case, the district is the Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District, which includes Frio, Atascosa, Wilson and Karnes counties. Across the state, interest in brackish water desalination is growing, with Larson calling it a new horizon in Texas. The state water board estimates that aquifers in Texas hold a combined 2.7 billion acre-feet of brackish groundwater, more than 77 times the amount held in lakes. If true, that means an ocean of somewhat salty water is below Texans feet, still to be tapped. Groundwater desalination is expected to produce only 70,000 acre-feet of water in 2020, according to the states draft water plan. AUSTIN - Gov. Greg Abbott has been known to spark an uproar when he wields one of his most important powers, that of appointing people to guide state agencies and universities that affect Texans lives. You can bet thats just what hes aiming to do. Look no further than his choice of pension-reform advocate Josh McGee of Houston to head the Pension Review Board. As my colleague David Saleh Rauf and I reported in our recent analysis of Abbotts appointments, the Texas AFL-CIOs Ed Sills compared the choice to appointing Godzilla to guard Tokyo. The AFL-CIO, law enforcement and firefighter groups worry that public employees defined-benefit retirement plans will be endangered by McGees concerns over their viability. Defined-benefit plans are great for workers, and can be a costly obligation for employers, because they guarantee a certain payment upon retirement. McGee has said workers should get the pensions theyve been promised, and regardless, he doesnt have the power to change agency pension plans as board chairman. His appointment nonetheless has the power to shape the conversation on pensions in a way that a lower-key nomination wouldnt, heightening the chance that the Legislature will take a strong look at the matter. Its going to generate a great discussion on the policies, Abbotts former appointments director, Luis Saenz, told me before leaving the governors staff. That prospect absolutely was part of the goal in appointing McGee, Saenz said, calling his experience unmatched and citing concerns over the financial health of public pension plans. As Josh, as Governor Abbott and other legislative leaders have said, some of these pensions that are out there arent going to be able to meet the long-term needs of those pension recipients, and so theres been people who say we may need to look at other options, Saenz said, while adding that no one has ever advocated changing the pensions that workers have in hand. Theres probably a few other appointments that weve made with people ... that are qualified and that are going to be able to drive a discussion in a certain way, Saenz said. Texas AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rick Levy was unimpressed. I can think of a lot of ways to start a discussion other than putting somebody whose entire public policy focus has been to eliminate the very thing that he is supposed to oversee and regulate, Levy said. Labor advocates also are concerned over Abbotts appointment of Julian Alvarez III of Harlingen as the labor representative on the Texas Workforce Commission, a three-member panel whose other two slots are for representatives of employers and the public. The AFL-CIO said Alvarez, who was a chamber of commerce president, cant logically fill the bill for workers. When you come from a place thats so different from those whom youre charged to represent, its really difficult to be an authentic representative, Levy said. I think every prior governor has understood the importance of at least having the voice of working people at the table. Alvarez said he is supportive of workers and is focusing on ensuring a skilled workforce for good jobs. He said that was what he worked to do with the Rio Grande Valley Partnership chamber group. He also pointed to his past as a state trooper and with Texas State Technical College, touted his fathers union membership and even has signed up with the Texas State Employees Union. The appointments of Alvarez and McGee are just two that have come under scrutiny among hundreds by Abbott so far. As weve reported, Abbott often has tapped white people and men in his appointments, although Saenz said the governor pushed for diversity. About a quarter of his appointees have been campaign donors. Thats all common for governors, who make about 3,000 appointments in a four-year term. Sen. Kirk Watson, an Austin Democrat who serves on the Nominations Committee, praised the Republican governor and Saenz for close communication with senators who consider appointees confirmation. He said diversity is an issue that should be looked at, but its a bit early to judge Abbotts overall record. We all have a preconceived idea, and not inappropriately, that there are going to be certain qualifications for somebody (an appointee) who does X job, Watson said. If they dont on their face have those qualifications .... theres a really special obligation to make sure it is an experiment that works. pfikac@express-news.net Twitter: @pfikac This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate H-E-B is the new owner of almost an entire city block next to its headquarters, adding to its growing presence in the south part of downtown. The San Antonio-based grocery chain has bought two properties over the last two months that span nearly the entire block at the northeast corner of South Flores Street and Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, according to county property records. The city of San Antonio still owns a row of parking spaces along Cesar E. Chavez. The properties, which cover a total of 1.1 acres, are across the street from H-E-Bs South Flores Market, which became downtown San Antonios first full-fledged grocery store when it opened in December. The properties are a block north from the site where H-E-B is spending $100 million to expand its corporate campus, which stretches more than 20 acres next to the San Antonio River. H-E-B doesnt have any immediate plans for the two properties, spokeswoman Dya Campos said in an email. When H-E-B bought the first of the properties in March, Campos told the Express-News the land will be used for an addition to our existing footprint of our corporate headquarters. The properties, which the Bexar Appraisal District assessed at $2.8 million this year, are currently home to two one-story buildings with two parking lots. An auto repair company is leasing one of the buildings. H-E-Bs expansion of its headquarters will add a culinary school and test kitchen, several mixed-used buildings and a new office building, the Express-News previously reported. The company is expected to move about 1,600 workers to the campus by 2030, doubling its workforce in the urban core. We think that we can help make South Flores and the San Pedro Creek a great street and a great redevelopment area in the city, perhaps like another Southtown, H-E-Bs chief operating officer, Craig Boyan, told the Express-News in 2013. So far, the company has completed a visitors center and a pedestrian and bike trail on South Flores as part of the expansion, Campos said. rwebner@express-news.net @rwebner Post-Brexit replacement to the Common Agricultural Policy The Tenant Farmers Association has issued a draft of a potential agricultural policy that could be put in place in the event that there was a vote to leave the EU at the forthcoming Referendum on 23 June. Volatility of farm gate prices is the new reality for UK sheep farmers and is prompting some producers to be more innovative in attempts to add value to sheep meat and other products. To highlight potential options in this area, the National Sheep Association (NSA) has announced that a key seminar at NSA Sheep 2016, held this July at the Three Countries Showground, Malvern, Worcestershire, will be Adding value by maximising the marketplace. The seminar will consider prime lamb, genetics, wool and mutton, with four speakers chosen to highlight the benefits of each argument. Mutton - the forgotten meat Bob Kennard, NSA Make More of Mutton Project Manager and author of Much Ado About Mutton, is keen to promote the undervalued meat as a viable option at the seminar. He says: "Mutton is a real lost icon of British cuisine. In the Victorian period it was more popular than beef. "Its great meat and quality mutton carcases can provide a premium for struggling livestock farmers, particularly in the hills. "There is real potential for mutton, but it is not without its challenges. Producing a quality product and finding alternative routes to market is key. "Farmer-retailers, or going through the artisan butchery or catering sector, means there is a whole range of potential outlets. "The time is right, as a sufficient number of consumers are looking for a quality product with a good story behind it." 'Genetics an area that should be of real focus' Dr Liz Genever, AHDB Beef & Lamb Senior Beef and Sheep Scientist, will be speaking on the RamCompare project and the value of genetics to improve flock performance and maximise margins. She says: "At a time when the marketplace isnt as buoyant, people need to focus on areas where they can make marginal gains, and genetics is an area that should be of real focus. "It can potentially be less than 100 difference between the purchase of a ram with known superior genetics, which we know can result in improved growth rates in its lambs, compared to a ram that looks well. "These genetically superior rams result in an additional 3 to 5 margin per lamb. "If the ram has the longevity to last three or four breeding seasons, you can very quickly make a return on your investment. 'New and innovative solutions the answer' Also speaking will be Ian Buchannan from the British Wool Marketing Board on the value of wool, and John Richard, Hybu Cig Cymru Meat Promotion Wales, on the value of prime lamb. Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, is looking forward to the discussion: "In order for many to survive the turbulent market, new and innovative solutions may be the answer to add value on-farm. "The seminar programme at this years event is meant to educate and challenge, encouraging farmers to maximise their current system and thrive, despite the challenges facing the industry." In addition to reducing poverty and hunger, agriculture can play a crucial role in making the response to climate change responsible and more effective, Maria-Helena Semedo, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Deputy Director-General for Natural Resources said today. Agriculture can help reduce the impact of climate change; thus fostering resilience among communities, she said during a High-Level Thematic Debate on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN Headquarters. Semedo was in New York to attend the signing ceremony of the Paris Climate Change Agreement as well as other high level events. Some 175 countries today signed the historic accord - agreed last December in the French capital - at a ceremony at UN headquarters hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Agreement recognizes "the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the impacts of climate change". It also highlights the need to "increase the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience in a manner that does not threaten food production." Impact on agriculture Agriculture is one of the main sectors of the economy that is severely affected by climate change. The recent El Nino phenomenon is a testimony to that, Semedo noted. The support for the agreement comes at a time when some 60 million people around the world are being affected by the El Nino climate event. It is important to note that the rural poor and small holder farmers are severely affected by climate change threats, Semedo stressed. Role of farmers During speaking engagements at various high level events, the FAO Deputy-Director General reiterated the crucial role of family farmers in poverty and hunger eradication. Poverty and hunger have similar causes and are often bound together - and must therefore be tackled together. "Support to end extreme poverty, hunger and all other forms of malnutrition by 2030 - the key of SDGs 1 and 2. Nearly 80 percent of the extreme poor and hungry people live in rural areas, so let's empower rural actors, small holders, rural women, youth, and indigenous peoples in our collective action," said Semedo. British beef and lamb farmers are a step closer to a 60 million a year export boost, following further talks between the UK and the USA to negotiate a deal to access the lucrative American market. Visiting the US as part of a worldwide initiative is a campaign with the sole purpose to champion British food and drink. The Environment Secretary met with her American counterpart, United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in Washington to discuss next steps in securing access to the US market. The UK submitted a 1,000 page dossier last week to the US Department of Agriculture, detailing the safety and quality of British beef and lamb. Secretary Vilsack committed to study the paperwork rapidly ahead of agreeing a timetable for inspections of UK beef and lamb plants. The approval of British plants would be a major breakthrough in recognising the quality and safety of European meat, allowing farmers to start exporting British beef to the United States 300 million consumers for the first time since restrictions on beef imports from the EU were lifted in 2014. The restrictions on lamb are expected to be lifted in early 2017. The National Farmers' Union believes accessing the lucrative US beef and lamb markets would be hugely advantageous for British livestock farmers. Last October NFU President Meurig Raymond was in the US pressing USDA trade officials to open up lamb and beef trade. Following his return he urged the Secretary of State to go to Washington to resolve outstanding US concerns. Confidence for British livestock sector NFU livestock board chairman Charles Sercombe said: "Re-opening the US beef and lamb market to UK imports would be an important confidence building measure for the British livestock sector. "The US is potentially a huge and affluent market that has strong links to the UK as we share history and language. "Securing access is one thing but building the market is another. We know we have a great product and story to tell and that our grass-fed beef and lamb is up there with the best in the world. "The NFU asks that all those interested in selling beef and lamb in the US are afforded as much help as they need from the UK Government, AHDB and producers to market the product to US consumers. "We are currently well placed to exploit any US/EU trade deal and negotiating on our own could delay access. "We call on the UK Government and authorities to resolve any technical issues as soon as possible and to involve the whole supply chain. "This might involve inspections to processing facilities. Timetables need to be as short as possible. Lamb in 2017 is encouraging - lets not let a lack of ambition or Government support hold this up or delay it. "However, average lamb consumption per head in the US is relatively small so targeting our promotion of both UK beef and lamb will be critical identifying the right consumers and areas of the US will be important. "Strategic planning should start now which involves talking to retailers, food service and import agents." Americans and homesick Brits can toast William Shakespeare's 400th birthday on St George's Day with a quintessentially British gin and tonic or a pint of Yorkshire ale. This comes as US exports of the UK's favourite beverages reached a record 361 million last year, Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss said at an event in Chicago today. More than 220 million pints of ale, including from Yorkshires Ilkley Brewery and Aberdeenshires Brew Dog, were shipped to the States in 2015 worth a record 164 million. This is up 35% since last year. Enough gin to pour 580 million gin and tonics was enjoyed in the US last year as exports rose 9% to a record 159 million in part thanks to a UK revival led by fashionable artisanal producers like Sipsmith and Hoxton. And sales of English sparkling winewhich is now rivalling the very best French champagnehave helped boost overall wine exports to the US by 23%. During a special event to mark the Queens 90th birthday, and champion British drink, the Environment Secretary toasted the industry for their hard work breaking into the lucrative American market, bringing jobs and investment back to the UK. British beers becoming drinks of choice for many Speaking during the event, Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss said: "Business is booming for our iconic drink brand in the States. "From our world class gins to beloved ales, its fantastic to see brands so synonymous with British culture becoming the drinks of choice in bars, clubs and restaurants across the US. "We already export nearly 2 billion of food and drink here every year but we can do a whole lot better. "I want to give our food and drink entrepreneurs every opportunity to drive up these figures, delivering jobs and prosperity back home. "Through remaining in a reformed EU we have a much greater chance of making this a reality." English wine is fast growing Miles Beale, Chief Executive for the Wine and Spirits Trade Association (WSTA) who organised the event said: "English wine is a fast growing industry with bold ambitions to boost production and open up new export opportunities. "Following the first ever English roundtable, hosted by Elizabeth Truss, the industry set targets of a 10-fold increase in wine exports and double production by 2020. "Like English wine our British gin is also experiencing a boom. "We have seen an incredible rise in the number of distilleries set up in the last year with record breaking sales reaching 1 billion. "This is a massive achievement for our Great British gin and English wine makers. "They are rightly very proud to be making exceptional quality British products now sought after at home and across the world." With 300 million consumers the US is the UK's biggest gin market, closely followed by Spain and Germany. The UK's successful alcohol industry already makes hundreds of millions a year from 35 free trade deals struck by the EU with over 50 countries. EU membership also means access to a market of 500 million people without tariffs or restrictions. The free trade transatlantic partnership (TTIP) deal, currently being negotiated through the EU, could also help secure market access for thousands more UK food and drink companies, boosting exports to the United States by 500 million. Around 60 University of Cardiff students were shown around Bayer and NIAB oilseed rape and wheat variety trials at Callow in Herefordshire this week. The event was part of Bayers ongoing agricultural education programme to promote agriculture as a career of choice, and help train future farmers. "Its invaluable for biology students to have access to this type of training from industry experts," says Jonathon Harrington, visiting lecturer in BioSciences at the University of Cardiff. "In 2015, I was invited to talk to students on genetics but it soon became apparent that most of them had never been on a farm let alone had an idea of the importance of genetics in agriculture. "Today they were able to see at first hand the efforts being made by plant breeders to develop new varieties suitable for a range of agronomic situations here in the UK." Plant breeding is a key technology to help increase crop production levels to those required to feed a growing world population, explains Adrian Cottey, Bayers Northern European Seeds Manager. "But it is often a misunderstood technology. Today was a great opportunity for students to learn more about plant breeding, and how it will help both in the future, and on farms today." Also on the agenda was learning more about tomorrows oilseed rape and wheat varieties, and the characteristics that help growers grow successful crops. Encouraging young people into a career in agriculture and training new entrants is a vital role companies like Bayer can play a part in, says Mr Cottey. "Its why we our keen to be involved and help organise days like this as part of our agricultural education programme. "In addition to working with universities and agricultural colleges, other activities include helping farmers with training materials for hosting farm visits, in conjunction with Farming and Countryside Education (FACE)." Red Tractors sugar beet and cereals assurance standards combined with UK legislative requirements have achieved Silver level equivalence with SAI Platforms Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) 2.0. For the past eight years, all the sugar beet supplied to British Sugar has been Red Tractor farm assured. By working together as an industry the two organisations are driving sustainable agriculture that promotes environmental protection, embraces creating a quality product and drives safety in the efficient production of sugar beet. Laurence Matthews, Red Tractors Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Board Chairman, said: "The worlds biggest food and drink brands are scrutinising their supply chains more than ever before. "Its becoming imperative that companies such as British Sugar, who supply these brands, can demonstrate sustainable sourcing policies. "Not only does this achievement mean that British Sugar continues to be a great supporter of sugar beet grown in the UK, it also demonstrates that Red Tractors growers produce a quality product to standards that major brands recognise as sustainable." Simon Leeds, Grower Engagement Manager for British Sugar said: "This is great news for the UK sugar beet industry and recognises the outstanding work being achieved by our growers. "At British Sugar we are proud of our sustainability track record and will continue to drive our work to build efficient, productive and responsible value chains working with all our partners." Red Tractor was established in 2000 and has grown to become the UKs biggest farm and food standards scheme, covering all of animal welfare, food safety, traceability and environmental protection. Around 3,400 growers supply British Sugar factories with 7.5 million tonnes of sugar beet each year, which it processes into over 1 million tonnes of sugar. The UK sugar beet industry has focussed efforts towards minimising the use of inputs which has resulted in 90% reduced insecticides, 50% reduced active ingredients (pesticides) and 40% reduced nitrogen fertilisers. 95% of the UK crop is rain-fed with minimal effect on irrigation water supplies and application energy. Over the past 10 years, British Sugar have invested over 300 million to improve efficiency and competitiveness. The European Commission has prepared an additional EU contribution of 414 million to address both the immediate and longer term needs of people affected by agricultural crises. European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica is today opening a High Level Event in Brussels on "Innovative Ways for Sustainable Nutrition, Food Security and Inclusive Agricultural Growth", where he will propose 414 million of new money to support those countries most affected by the current food security crisis caused by El Nino and other factors. This funding comes on top of the 125 million already mobilised in December 2015, bringing the EU's total contribution to 539 million. European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides stated: "El Nino is having devastating consequences around the globe with 41 million people struggling to meet their food needs. "The EU is taking action and this new support will allow us to step up our efforts and continue our support for the most vulnerable." Commissioner Mimica said: "This proposed new funding aims at combining short-term lifesaving support with strengthening long-term resilience to food crises by addressing the root causes of fragility and vulnerability. "We can build on the past successes gained under our existing resilience initiatives to step up our efforts and provide a global response to this food security crisis which is currently affecting so many across the world". The mobilisation of this package requires further Commission proposals and approval by EU Member States. What is El Nino? This extreme phenomenon is characterised by rising temperatures of surface sea water, which interact with the atmosphere and cause different extreme events, from floods to droughts. While El Nino has global effects, it is particularly affecting large regions of Africa with both floods and droughts. This strongly impacts food security, health, and access to water and hygiene conditions of millions of people living in already vulnerable regions. 41 million people - out of the 80 million suffering from food crisis this year are living in El Nino-affected regions (Latin America and Caribbean, Southern, Central and Eastern Africa, as well as few Asian and Pacific countries). A farmer has died after being attacked by a bull in County Tyrone. The Health and Safety Executive (HSENI) said it was investigating a "fatal incident" in the Augnacloy area. Nigel Murray was attacked in a field near Aughnacloy on Saturday. His funeral will take place on Tuesday. Insp Keith Jamieson said: "After consultation with the vet and members of the family, police shot the bull as it posed a risk." A PSNI spokesman said the incident happened in a field in Aughnacloy on Saturday. "The office of the Police Ombudsman has been informed of the incident." The Northern Ireland Health and Safety Executive is the circumstances around the man's death. A new pilot scheme opens today, providing a more efficient and effective way of farmers informing beekeepers of their intention to apply insecticide nearby. BeeConnected's pilot will pave the way for a nationwide launch later in year. Current best agricultural practice, as advocated by farm assurance schemes and the UK code of practice for pesticide use, requires that notification takes place to minimise the risk to bees of spraying. The traditional system of notifying Spray Liaison Officers (SLOs), who acted as go between the farmers and beekeepers, has not always been straightforward. 'Automatically notified of beehives in the area' Chris Hartfield, bee health specialist at the NFU said: "This is a great opportunity for all farmers across the Hertfordshire region. "Once they register for BeeConnected they will be automatically notified of beehives in their area and will be able to update their communications with beekeepers accordingly." BeeConnected plans to operate on a very simple, yet efficient, two-way communication process: farmers in Hertfordshire are invited to register, identify their fields and, in just a few simple clicks, inform local beekeepers when they intend to spray an insecticide in particular fields. Similarly, beekeepers across the region are encouraged to register and plot the location of their hives, whether permanently or temporarily placed. Beekeepers will receive a notification when a farmer within their locality (up to a maximum of 5km) is undertaking a spray event within that vicinity. The beekeeper will then be in an informed position to decide what action, if any, to take. The notification system is being promoted by the Voluntary Initiative (VI) who have worked closely with the Crop Protection Association, British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) and the National Farmers Union (NFU). The development of the site has been funded by the CPA. 'Farmers are committed to responsible use of pesticides' Richard Butler, Chairman of the VI said: "Were delighted to support this initiative. "Farmers are committed to responsible use of pesticides and protecting pollinator health, this is a simple tool that supports them in that aim. The website offers various levels of communication between farmers and beekeepers, including the ability to remain anonymous if they wish. Tim Lovett of the BBKA added: "BeeConnected is an important step forward in communication between farmers and beekeepers. "The scheme is based on a proposal put forward by the BBKA to bring spray-alerting into the 21st century. "The launch of BeeConnected is most timely and we hope that all beekeepers in Hertfordshire will register and take part." It is anticipated that the Hertfordshire pilot will last for 5 weeks with a national launch in September 2016, to coincide with autumn spraying. The Tenant Farmers Association has issued a draft of a potential agricultural policy that could be put in place in the event that there was a vote to leave the EU at the forthcoming Referendum on 23 June. TFA Chief Executive George Dunn said: "The opinion of the Tenant Farmers Association is that without a credible plan for what a post-EU Britain would look like, it cannot advocate a vote to leave the EU. "However, we have promised our members that we will keep this under review as new information becomes available in advance of the Referendum. "Sadly, whilst there has been significant amounts of rhetoric, soundbites, claim and counterclaim from both sides of the campaign this has provided rather more heat than light. "The TFA has therefore decided to publish a draft, post-EU agricultural policy for consultation to assist the debate and in the hope that there will be a better level of analysis of the impact on UK agriculture of either a vote to cease to be or remain a member of the EU. "As I travel around the country, many farmers in their heart of hearts would like to see Britain leave the EU. "They find it attractive to consider a future of self-determination, of clear policies which would deliver a vibrant and prosperous agricultural industry, resilient against volatility and proudly supported by our own Government. "However, they simply do not trust that British politicians would ever deliver such a vision and are therefore more likely to vote to remain within the EU. "Perhaps the choice to leave would be made easier if they knew that this would also lead to a change in Government to deliver a pre-agreed agricultural policy for Britain. "However this is not on offer. "The debate about our membership of the EU has got to be more than about subsidy payments. "We should be looking at many other areas including developing fairer supply chains, ensuring protection against inappropriate trading practices, creating a proper and progressive farming ladder and protecting the British brand. "The TFAs draft policy addresses these and other areas," said Mr Dunn. Presidents of the farm organisations and agri-cooperatives from across Europe united in Brussels to warn of the unprecedented crisis hitting EU agricultural markets & called on the EU for immediate solutions to tackle it. Copa President Martin Merrild said: "The situation is not sustainable. Measures agreed by the EU to improve the situation have had little impact. "The market especially for beef, pork and dairy is continuing to worsen, fueled by the Russian ban on EU farm exports. Pork prices are lower that they were eleven years ago. "It is unacceptable that farmers are paying the price of the political dispute with Russia. "Re-opening this market is a priority. Farmers & agri-cooperatives are also more exposed to market forces and they need access to market data so that they can plan ahead and hedge against risks". He continued: "To make it worse, the EU Commission is moving ahead with opening up the EU market to imports from the Latin American Trade bloc Mercosur, which would have a catastrophic impact on the EU agricultural market, especially beef. "These imports do not meet the EUs high environmental and quality standards and there are still serious concerns about safety aspects of meat production in these countries and their use of antibiotic growth promoters which is banned in the EU. "We want a level playing field. Imports to the EU must meet our high production standards. The EU must also step up action to find new markets and boost promotion measures for our produce. "This crisis shows the importance of having a truly common agriculture policy. "In the future, we need a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that is common in all member states and ensures our competitiveness as the current CAP is incapable of this. "Theres something definitely wrong when the price of milk is lower than the price of water." Importance of a well-developed food chain Cogeca President Thomas Magnusson went on to underline the importance of getting the food chain working properly again so that farmers get a better return from the market and are not squeezed unfairly. "The European Investment Bank (EIB) also needs to start delivering in order to develop the right financial instruments to help farmers invest in their businesses and improve competitiveness. "Agri-cooperatives can help farmers get a better price for their produce and can assist them on new innovative techniques but they need the support to ensure this. "Immediate solutions from the EU must be found to tackle this unprecedented crisis which has been hitting farmers and agri-cooperatives for years. "They are vital not only to solve hunger and malnutrition but also to maintain attractive rural areas and biodiversity". Copa & Cogeca are set to hold a workshop to start debating the future of the CAP in May. Young farmers across Europe share a high risk from volatility and the brunt of current low commodity prices but are on track with ideas for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. Members of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA) gathered in Brussels this week to discuss the current market crisis with European industry and government representatives. Delegates questioned the effectiveness of the current CAP regarding volatility, European global competitiveness and input to the next CAP reform. Tools to manage volatility, intermediary insurance schemes, biofuels and the environment were high on the agenda. Hopes for new EU global markets and support from the European investment Bank for individual farmers were also talked about. Richard Bower, NFYFC and NFU Next Generation CEJA representative said: "Its clear that European young farmers are discussing the same issues across the member states and we are focussed on CAP 2020. "Our discussion provided a tangible exchange of thoughts among young farmers across the EU. "We have previously discussed insurance policies but this was not the direction of travel suggested when we met Commissioner Hogans representatives last year. "It shows how quickly policy can change and we are in a good position to shape our future." The National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs (NFYFC) has received support from the NFU to help retain their membership of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA) and currently shares its membership with the NFU Next Generation Policy Forum. This enables NFYFC CEJA representatives to attend pan-European working groups, seminars and conferences in a bid to influence policy makers and industry to put young farmers needs and aspirations high on their agenda. With over 25,000 members and 644 clubs, the NFYFC is one of the largest rural youth organisations in the UK and head of a nationwide body of Young Farmers Clubs located throughout England and Wales dedicated to supporting young people in agriculture and the countryside. Their memberships comprise young people aged between 10 and 26 years from a variety of backgrounds, who live or work in rural areas. Legal ruling set to have implications for farm inheritance rows Is Wawa coming to Fayetteville? Heres what we know. Wawa, a Pennsylvania-based convenience store chain that residents have long clamored for, could be coming to the area. In the past few months, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Time magazine have all featured stories on professional reinvention changing course at some point during ones career. Its a timely topic as employers increasingly adapt to talented individuals needs or wishes to work differently, in terms of time, place and subject matters. Some changes can be dramatic, such as going from a city health care practice to becoming a butcher in the countryside. Other re-inventions can be less dramatic and involve staying in the same job at the same company but taking on an entirely different additional responsibility. Some CCOs with legal training are already doing this by taking on corporate secretary duties. Other compliance officers are participating in internal audit activities, to get hands-on controls assessment experience. One emerging corporate need is particularly well-suited to the CCOs skill set: Cyber-Governance Czar or Czarina. Cyber-governance, in simple terms, is the corporate (or organizational) governance that applies to an entitys cybersecurity activities. Its the human overlay to the technical aspects of cybersecurity protection. And it can be the missing element identified in countless cyber breaches. As the forensic specialists and regulators do the lessons learned analysis after remediation and clean-up, the vast majority of root causes trace back to human error. There are gaps or miscommunications about who was responsible for what. Basic preventive techniques were not employed, etc. And there was no single point of responsibility to identify that these basic non-technical problems existed. What do CCOs generally do now concerning their existing scope of work? (1) They identify, analyze and operationally apply standards and leading practices through programs consisting of policies, practices, protocols, controls and communications in various forms. (2) They interact with all levels of the organization. (3) They periodically report to senior management and the board on programmatic status and developments, as well as specific compliance trends, and (4) They investigate and remediate when there are identified instances of non-compliance including working with outside professionals and regulators. All four functions apply to a U.S. cyber-governance context. With respect to (1), cybersecurity leading practices and de facto standards (including both non-technical and relatively straight-forward technical elements) are found in the widely followed NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework) and SANS (SANS Institute The CIS Critical Security Controls for Effective Cyber Defense) frameworks. Some immersion into basic IT is involved, but the beauty of the NIST standard in particular is that it is written to be understandable by non-IT persons. Through applying these cybersecurity frameworks on top of a U.S. Sentencing Guidelines effective compliance program construct, one can create a cyber-governance program that is tailored to your organizations unique facts and circumstances. If followed, the existence of this program and the CCO as the single point of responsibility can be persuasive in supporting the high ground position of being a proactive good corporate citizen in the event of a cyber breach. Take another look at the activities listed in (2) though (4). The additional cyber-governance role essentially mirrors what the CCO is already doing, albeit with a new and timely subject matter. Cybersecurity risk is now rated as matching or exceeding overseas bribery risk as the top of mind issue in many board and executive surveys. CCOs looking for intellectual challenge (and increased compensation, if not heightened attention from headhunters) may want to consider taking on a cyber-governance role. A re-invention possibility may be at your fingertips. ____ Worth MacMurray is the U.S. General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of GAN Integrity Inc. in McLean, Virginia. He can be contacted here. Ofek Ron is the man in charge of the Vegan Festival production in Tel Aviv. We spoke to him about his personal journey into veganism and why the festival is such a popular destination with vegans from all around the world. Ofek Ron Please tell us about why and when you decided to go vegan. Four years ago, I saw the video of Gary Yourofsky and immediately understood that we are hurting animals for no good reason. I immediately became vegan. You are in charge of the Vegan Fest Production; can you tell us a little bit about what that entails? Vegan Fest is for the vegan community. I believe that vegans around the world have a lot in common and are willing to meet new people with the same ideologies. Vegan people from all over the world don't have a place to truly celebrate their way of life except for a vegan festival and that is why it is so successful. Since we started our Vegan Fest, vegans began to communicate with each other and make new friends. I feel very honored to be a part of it. Vegan Fest brings the best artists, cooks, yoga teachers, restaurants, shops and lecturers to a wide variety of shows in front of 15,000 attendees. The festival is one of the biggest in the whole world and we are proud to see it growing year after year. Can you tell us about Buzz Productions and Vegan Friendly, which you represent? Buzz Productions (www.buzzpro.co.il), founded by Ophir Penso and me, is a festival production company who specializes in initiating events that focus on very important issues. For instance, Buzz is the producer of the yearly Animal Rights Protest with 15,000 people in the heart of Tel Aviv. The Vegan Future Organization, which is also known for its leading project - 'Vegan Friendly' - was established in September of 2012, by Omri Paz, the organization's director. Omri decided to 'go vegan' just a few months earlier, after being exposed to the horrors of the animal product industry. He then decided to act on saving animals by promoting veganism in Israel. In less than two years, this non-profit organization has led and initiated numerous projects in a wide variety of fields, promoting veganism in Israel and marching it forward with giant steps. All this would not have been possible without the help of many volunteers who wanted to take part and help the cause. 'Vegan Friendly' believes that in order to make veganism into an accessible and common way of life in Israel, it will be necessary to make it 'mainstream'; meaning that it must be accessible, available, popular and known to the public. What can people who haven't been there before expect from Vegan Fest? In five words: To have their best experience. What is your personal highlight of the day? To get up in the morning and to be so sure that I'm living my life. Tel Aviv holds the highest percentage of vegan restaurants per capita in the world; so where do you most like to dine? Tanat - a vegan Ethiopian restaurant with a unique vibe. Why do you think Tel Aviv has one of the highest vegan populations in the world? I think that there are two main reasons: First, Israelis are very open and they are not afraid to express their thoughts to each other. An Israeli vegan is very likely to convince his friend to become vegan. Second, Israelis spend a lot of time on the Internet and Facebook. Facebook is the main influencer today for the vegan world. Why are people willing to travel so far for this particular festival? As of today, there are no international vegan lifestyle events besides Vegan Fest. I believe that vegans just want to celebrate and Vegan Fest is the biggest vegan gathering that accommodates this celebration. You are very active on social media, so how important is it to you to communicate veganism through your personal channels? The main reason that veganism is rising is because of Facebook. Our competitors are the meat and dairy industries and they have billions of dollars for advertising through all media avenues; Facebook still gives us the opportunity to get shares from the community about our content. Those shares are a critical reason for the rising popularity of veganism. What is next for you? To copy the Vegan Fest on every single continent, so it'll be possible for every vegan person in the world to have this amazing experience. by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on If America's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was meant to be a silver bullet for African economies, it hasn't worked for Botswana. AGOA which came into force in 2000, was extended for another 10 years last year.Only two out of the 13 Botswana companies that signed to take up preferential trade opportunities with the US through the AGOA at its inception have prospered through the trade deal. If America's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was meant to be a silver bullet for African economies, it hasn't worked for Botswana. AGOA which came into force in 2000, was extended for another 10 years last year. Only two out of the 13 Botswana companies that signed to take up preferential trade opportunities with the US through the AGOA at its# Botswana's Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Vincent Seretse said the majority of local businesses had failed to reap AGOA benefits in the last 15 years due to lack of diversity in export products, the Africa News Agency has reported.He was addressing delegates at a US Embassy-sponsored seminar aimed at appraising local businesses on new amendments to the AGOA legislation,Seretse said the two companies that had consistently benefited from AGOA were in the textile and clothing sectors, while 11 others which were part of the inaugural programme had fallen out due to lack of diversification and the sale of products that were not competitive enough to sustain their presence in international markets.The Minister said the inability of local companies to benefit from the preferential trade agreement had led to a trade imbalance which had ballooned to 38 million pula ($3,5 million) between 2004 and 2014.I support the development of a new strategy (to improve bilateral trade) because Botswana has not been able to fully benefit from AGOA in the past 15 years, Seretse said.The new government initiatives to improve national export capabilities include the National Exports Strategy, Industrial Development, the Economic Diversification Drive and the Private Sector Development Programme.However, the Botswana Exporters and Manufactures Association (BEMA) has called on the government to introduce incentives like duty drawbacks, rebates on sourcing of raw materials for the 6,400 AGOA product lines.Although Botswana companies are eligible to supply goods from eight sub-sectors that include agriculture, machinery, minerals, metals, forestry, transport and electronic products, only two companies in the textile and garment manufacturing industry remained active participants in the AGOA programme.Most of the local companies fell out of AGOA citing high transport and logistics costs incurred in delivering products to the market, inadequate capacity and stringent US regulations, especially on sanitary and agricultural products, the report said. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India A group of global investors that has advocated for commitments from apparel brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh to remediate the workplace health and safety failures that cost over 1,100 people their lives at the Rana Plaza factory in 2013, has voiced concern over delays in the implementation of remediation plans.The investor group, known as the Bangladesh Investor Initiative represents 139 institutional investors from North America and Europe with collective assets valued at over $3 trillion. A group of global investors that has advocated for commitments from apparel brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh to remediate the workplace health and safety failures that cost over 1,100 people their lives at the Rana Plaza factory in 2013, has voiced concern over delays in the implementation of remediation plans. The investor group, known# In a statement, the group which is part of the New York-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility coalition, expressed concern over the pace of progress to remediate the issues identified by inspections conducted by both the Accord on Fire and Building Safety and the Alliance for Worker Safety.The Accord on Fire and Building Safety has completed more than 1,600 factory inspections and the Alliance for Worker Safety has inspected about 650 factories, which has resulted in the identification of hundreds of corrective action plans, including the installation of fire doors and sprinkler systems and structural changes such as adequate safety exists.More than 1,000 factories are behind schedule with remediation of the over 1,350 corrective action plans that have been developed. Investors have urged companies to work with their suppliers to ensure full compliance with these critical remediation plans.In addition, the investors are concerned that the Safety Committees so integral to systemic reform of the sector have not been established, and that workers are not able to elect their representatives to the committees. According to the investors, this undermines the ability of the committees to independently identify and address threats to worker safety without interference from management.David Schilling, ICCR Sr. Programme Director for Human Rights and Resources, said, In the aftermath of Rana Plaza, an unprecedented number of investors and companies coalesced around the urgent need to restructure the Bangladesh apparel sector to safeguard the lives of workers. Progress has been made on many fronts, but we are concerned that implementation of the identified actions is taking too long, and democratically elected worker representatives to safety committees have yet to be formed."While we commend the Accord, companies and others that have supported improved factory working conditions three years after the Rana Plaza tragedy, we are concerned about the lack of timely remediation. Through ICCR's Bangladesh Investor Initiative, we will continue to shine a light on the Bangladesh garment sector and needed steps to address systemic issues in apparel sourcing practices," said Lauren Compere, Managing Director, Boston Common Asset Management.The Bangladesh Investor Initiative has called on companies to commit sufficient financial resources and provide commercial terms that enable factories to complete remediation, and to report on the nature and amount of financial support. Robert Graham, a US based fashion brand and a subsidiary of Differential Brands, has appointed Andrew Berg, former Sr Vice President - menswear of Theory, as its president. Berg has an experience of 20 years with leading brands like Theory, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren and Gap. He was responsible for profit and sales growth of the men's division at Theory across its retail, wholesale and e-commerce channels, according to a press statement released by the company. He also elevated the brand positioning and introduced new products within the brand. Commenting on the appointment, Michael Buckley, CEO of Differential Brands said, Andrew has spent his career working alongside the best merchant leaders in the industry. We are thrilled to welcome Andrew Berg to Robert Graham. We are confident that we have the leader in place to execute our premium omni-channel vision for the future. Robert Graham, a US based fashion brand and a subsidiary of Differential Brands, has appointed Andrew Berg, former Sr Vice President - menswear of Theory, as its president. Berg has an experience of 20 years with brands like Theory, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren and Gap. He is in place to execute the company's premium omni-channel vision for the future.# Under Andrew's direction, we look forward to Robert Graham continuing to build brand awareness and maximise the explosive growth potential of its Consumer Direct channel and department store and specialty store relationships, as well as executing its playbook for international expansion, he said. On an additional note, Berg said, I believe Robert Graham is uniquely positioned to become one of the leading premium lifestyle brands, and I am thrilled to be joining the organisation as president to spearhead the charge. I am looking forward to working closely with Robert Graham leadership team and the board of directors at Differential Brands Group in building this product-led brand, he added. (MCJ) Fibre2Fashion News Desk Personalised 3D printed fashion - manufactured within 24 hours - is the end goal of a new project led by UK's Loughborough University that's set to change the way we shop for clothes.Dr Guy Bingham, Senior Lecturer in Product and Industrial Design, has teamed up with global textile and garment manufacturer the Yeh Group, to embark on landmark work in 3D textile printing that could revolutionise how clothes and footwear are made, the University announced on its website. Personalised 3D printed fashion - manufactured within 24 hours - is the end goal of a new project led by UK's Loughborough University that's set to change the way we shop for clothes. Dr Guy Bingham, Senior Lecturer in Product and Industrial Design, has teamed up with global textile and garment manufacturer the Yeh Group, to embark on landmark work in 3D# The 18-month project, known as 3D Fashion, will see Dr Bingham - a world leader in his field - produce 3D wearable, full size, Additive Manufacturing (AM) textile garments and footwear - with design input from a major fashion house.Advancements in AM textiles have made it possible to produce 3D printed garments directly from raw material, such as polymer, in a single manufacturing operation. This technology not only has the potential to reduce waste, labour costs and CO2e, but can modernise clothing production by encouraging localised manufacturing and production.Currently, garment manufacture generates 1.8 million tonnes of waste material - equivalent to 70kg or 100 pairs of jeans per UK household, with 6.3 billion m of water used in the process - equivalent to 200,000 litres per year per household.Dr Bingham said: With 3D printing there is no limit to what you can build and it is this design freedom which makes the technology so exciting by bringing to life what was previously considered to be impossible.This landmark technology allows us as designers to innovate faster and create personalised, ready-to-wear fashion in a digital world with no geometrical constraints and almost zero waste material. We envisage that with further development of the technology, we could 3D print a garment within 24 hours.Printing clothes using AM will revolutionise the fashion industry worldwide by opening up digital manufacturing to the masses via online retail, bringing a much needed update to techniques and processes. This modern approach to clothing production helps meet the growing demand for personalised apparel and footwear which through 3D printing can be produced in a sustainable and ethical way.David Yeh, Managing Director, Tong Siang (Yeh Group), said: 3D Fashion supports the Yeh Group vision of direct polymer to garment manufacture. The Yeh Group is always striving to cut out unnecessary waste and resource use, and support the industries goals of faster to market, creating a manufacturing technology that brands and retailers can install closer to their customers. This is all with no compromise to performance. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has commended Indian's economic growth said that his country was keen to boost investments in India by which the two countries can contribute significantly in helping the world economy by keeping up their growth momentum.First of all, we both need to grow our own national economies. On this front, we want to commend India for doing a good job in promoting economic growth, Wang told PTI in Moscow. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has commended Indian's economic growth said that his country was keen to boost investments in India by which the two countries can contribute significantly in helping the world economy by keeping up their growth momentum. First of all, we both need to grow our own national economies. On this front, we want to commend# Wang, who was in Moscow to attend Foreign Ministers' meeting of RIC (Russia, India, China) grouping, also said reform of the global financial system is key to protect the interest of developing countries and boost the recovery of the global economy.We need to join hands in playing a positive role in improving the global economic and financial governance because that will help protect the interests of the developing countries. It will also help the world economy to embark on a path of strong recovery, Wang said.He said China was optimistic about the prospect of deeper relationship between the two countries. Of course, we will be happy to invest more in India. There is no doubt about it, he added.After witnessing nearly three decades of close to double-digit growth, China has been hit by a slowdown, making way for India to replace it as the fastest-growing major economy of the world.But despite the slowdown, the Chinese economy remains much bigger than that of India in terms of the overall size. China clocked 6.9 per cent growth in 2015 while India is estimated to have grown by 7.3 per cent.The IMF has projected Indian economy to grow at 7.5 per cent in 2016 and 2017. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India Intertek, a UK based textile testing, inspection and certification company, opened the country s largest one-stop textile testing laboratory comprising a textile flammability laboratory, a new chemical laboratory and upgraded textile testing capabilities in Leigh, UK. This one-stop textile testing laboratory was added to the companys 30-year-old site in Leigh. It will support its UK based, international manufacturers and retailers of protective clothing, childrens clothes, fashion apparel, sportswear, home articles like - curtains, duvets, pillows and sofa covers and shoes and footwear. The laboratory will conduct testing, inspection and certification on its clients products including flammability testing, fire analysis and chemical testing. Intertek, a UK based textile testing, inspection and certification company, opened the country's largest one-stop textile testing laboratory comprising a textile flammability laboratory, a new chemical laboratory and upgraded textile testing capabilities in Leigh, UK. It will support its UK based, international manufacturers and retailers.# It will enable Intertek to support the evolving needs of retail and textile industry customers significantly over the next few years, while maintaining employment in the Leigh area. Commenting on the new laboratory, Andy Burnham, Shadow Home Secretary and MP for Leigh (who officially opened the laboratory) said, I am proud to open this new modern facility which maintains a link with Leighs past in textiles. I fully support what Intertek has done here. By creating a world class facility in Leigh, Intertek is bringing more businesses from across the world to the north-west of England, helping to support local jobs and build business, he added. On an additional note, Rob van Dorp, CEO - UK & Eire, Intertek said, This new Centre of Excellence will support our UK customers design and quality processes, enabling them to meet their customers quality and safety expectations and to protect their global brands. (MCJ) Fibre2Fashion News Desk The PHD Chamber of Commerce has said that India's economy could surpass the Reserve Bank of India's growth projection of 7.6 per cent for 2016-17.It said India's GDP could touch nearly 8 per cent on the back of robust private consumption, which has benefited from lower energy prices and higher real incomes, PTI has reported. The PHD Chamber of Commerce has said that India's economy could surpass the Reserve Bank of India's growth projection of 7.6 per cent for 2016-17. It said India's GDP could touch nearly 8 per cent on the back of robust private consumption, which has benefited from lower energy prices and higher real incomes, PTI has reported. Going ahead, growth# Going ahead, growth in India is projected to notch up to 8 per cent in 2016-17. Growth will continue to be driven by private consumption, which has benefited from lower energy prices and higher real incomes.Further, with the revival of sentiment and pick-up in industrial activity, a recovery of private investment is expected to strengthen growth in the coming times, it said.According to its estimate, India's share in world GDP has doubled from 1.43 per cent in 2000 to 2.86 per cent in 2015.India's GDP stood at $477 billion in 2000 and increased to $2,091 billion in the year 2015, showing more than four-fold increase over a period of 15 years, PHD Chamber President Mahesh Gupta said.The BRICS nations account for about 42 per cent of the world's population, a quarter of the world's land area and a combined GDP of above $16 trillion.The BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) also contributed a significant share in the world GDP which increased from 8.27 per cent in 2000 to 22.53 per cent in 2015, Gupta said. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India Wow! This is the first word that came to our mind when we saw this damn beautiful picture of Jhanvi Kapoor with actress mother Sridevi against the backdrop of snow-covered mountains. And we have to say this, that they both look mesmerising together. Sridevi married producer Boney Kapoor in the year 1996. She is blessed with two daughters- Jhanvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor. Click On View Photos To See Jhanvi's Stunning Pictures Sridevi and Boney Kapoor worked together for the first time in 1984, when Boney signed Sridevi for the role of Seema for his movie Mr India opposite Anil Kapoor. In an interview to a leading website, Sridevi revealed that for Boney Kapoor it was love at first sight but he formally proposed her in 1993. Such A Beautiful Young Lady! Navya Naveli Nanda Spotted With Friends, Also See Her Hot Pictures After giving many superhit movies to Bollywood, Sridevi Kapoor took a break from the industry to take care of her two stunning daughters. Rumour has it that both Jhanvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor have plans to join the Hindi film industry. And we know that both the girls will rule Bollywood one day. But before that happens, Sridevi wants them to finish their education. However, in one of her interviews, Sridevi had also mentioned that every star kid these days wants to become an actor. Both Jhanvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor are stars in their own way, already. Their Instagram accounts have made them very popular, just like their parents. And obviously, we are not complaining! Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter, Navya Naveli Nanda is enjoying her life to the fullest. Her party pictures keep going viral on the social networking sites. In her new picture, she is having fun with her group of friends and as always looking super cute....don't forget to see that wide smile on her beautiful face. The star kid has become really popular; all thanks to her gorgeous looks. Navya studies at the Sevenoaks school along with Shahrukh Khan's kids, Suhana Khan and Aryan Khan. And rumour has it that soon after pursuing her studies, she might debut in Bollywood. Click On VIEW PHOTOS To See Navya's Hot Pictures Navya Naveli Nanda is very famous among young girls as they all love her fashion sense. Not so long ago, she was in news because of her pictures with a mystery man. The two were spotted spending quality time together. Earlier, there were strong rumors of Navya Naveli dating Shahrukh Khan's son Aaryan Khan and that they broke up. Original Loverboy Of B'Wood: Akshay Kumar's Rare Pictures With Alleged Ex Raveena, Shilpa, Priyanka But a source revealed to BOC that Aryan and Navya are just good friends, who love to hang out together, "Shahrukh Khan's son Aryan Khan and Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda are currently pursuing their studies at the Seven Oaks School in London. They are therefore clicked together at many an event. The two youngsters apparently love to party and hang out with friends.'' Shweta Bachchan's stylish daughter Navya Naveli Nanda was in India recently. The diva visited Taj Mahal in Agra with her close friends. A lot has been speculated about the Balika Vadhu actress Pratyusha Banerjee's death. It is still not clear whether the actress committed suicide or it was a murder. Pratyusha's boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh was booked for the abetment to suicide, but was given interim bail. According to the recent reports, the public prosecutor claimed that the late actress hinted about her suicide during her last call with Rahul. In today's hearing, the Bombay High Court judge, Justice Mridula Bhatkar has decided to hear the three-minute long recording of her telephonic last call with Rahul. Read on to know what the public prosecuter has to say and the latest updates on Pratyusha's case ... There were also reports that said that the actress was under the influence of alcohol while committing suicide. The final medical report stated that 135mg of alcohol traces was found in her blood, which meant she consumed more than the average limit of alcohol. It was thus assumed that this amount of alcohol led the actress to lose control and hang herself! Pratyusha Banerjee Was Drunk Before Committing Suicide Meanwhile, the Bombay High Court granted an anticipatory bail again, to Rahul. It has to be recalled that Pratyusha's mother Shoma Banerjee had filed a petition to transfer the case to the Crime Branch. But, the court has also refused to transfer the case to the Crime Branch. The court has also asked the Mumbai Police to report the progress made in the case. Well, it has to be seen what the court has to say after hearing the last telephonic conversation between Rahul and Pratyusha. Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank) became the countrys first bank to raise dollar-denominated Basel III compliant capital on Friday with a $500 million 10.5- non-call 5.5-year deal. The Reg S transaction brings welcome diversity to Malaysias credit universe, which has recently been long sukuk and corporate issuance and short conventional dollar and bank issuance. However, the deals Basel III status meant it was not popular with domestic bank treasuries as it attracts full capital deductibility. As a result, the peak $2.6 billion order book did not have the traditional domestic bank investors underpinning many Malaysian deals although syndicate bankers said some participated. The final order book closed at the $1.8 billion level with roughly 100 accounts. Pricing was initially pitched at 280bp over Treasuries (G-spread of 268bp) before the Baa2/BBB rated deal was priced at par on a coupon of 3.905% to yield 255bp over Treasuries. There is a one-time issuer call option at par in year 5.5, subject to prior written approval from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM). After the first 5.5 years, pricing is re-set to 254.2bp over five-year dollar mid swaps. At 255bp over Treasuries, A3/A-/A- rated Maybanks new deal has offered a 38bp pick-up over UOBs A2/A+ rated 3.5% September 2026 deal (callable in 2021). This was trading at 217bp over Treasuries on Friday or 209bp on a G-spread basis. Syndicate bankers calculated fair value at 260bp over Treasuries, implying a 5bp new issue premium. We think this the right level since theres normally a 40bp to 45bp differential between UOB and Maybanks old style tier 2 deals, said one. Maybanks BBB+/BBB+ rated 3.125% September 2022 issue (callable in 2017) was trading on a G-spread of 180bp on Friday. But the old style Tier 2 is highly illiquid given it was issued four years ago. UOBs 2.875% October 2022 deal (callable in 2017) was trading at 91bp on Friday. Final stats show that 90% went to Asia and 10% to Europe. By investor type, funds took 40%, followed by insurers on 27%, banks 13%, private banks 10% and pension/sovereign wealth funds 4%. Malaysia and Singapore also have similar rules on capital treatment. In Malaysias case the point of non-viability (PONV) is determined by the central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia and the deposit insurance regulatory PIDM. Write-down is permanent and irrecoverable. Unlike Korea, pre-emptive capital injections are not allowed in Singapore or Malaysia. In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore can decide to make a public sector capital injection is needed. Likewise, BNM, PIDM or any federal or state government can decide that a capital injection is required. At the end of 2015, Maybank had an overall capital adequacy ratio of 17.7% compared to 16.2% in 2014 according to S&P Capital Market Intelligence data. Its Tier 1 ratio stood at 14.5% at the end of 2015, up from 13.8% in 2014. The bank also reported almost flat growth in 2015, with net profits rising only 1% to M$6.9 billion on the back of higher loan loss allowances (M$1.68 billion, up 320% year-on-year), higher impairment allowances (M$329 million) and higher expenses (M$10.2 billion). Joint bookrunners for the bond deal were Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Maybank Kim Eng. This article has been updated since first publication with final distribution stats. S&P Ratings recently placed its China sovereign rating on negative outlook. Will this affect the ratings on Chinas state-owned enterprises (SOE)? The sovereign outlook revision had a slight negative impact on our SOE ratings. We revised the outlook on 20 SOEs that we classified as government-related entities (GREs) or those with parent groups that are GREs. The ratings on these entities are closely linked with the sovereign rating because of the very high extraordinary government support, group support, or stand-alone credit profile (SACP). The outlooks on the ratings on 31 other SOEs were not affected because their government support and group support is moderate or lower, and the SACP of these entities is weaker. Can SOEs be rated above the sovereign? Not likely. SOEs' predominantly domestic operations, high linkages with the government, and likelihood of negative interventions mean that they would have the same or higher default risk in the event of a sovereign default. Does a negative outlook on the sovereign indicate weaker support from the central government? No. The extraordinary government support for the SOEs is not affected by the sovereign outlook revision. The central government continues to have strong financial capacity via state-owned banks to provide timely support to SOEs if they come under financial distress. The central government's debt level and the banking system's level of nonperforming loans remain modest. Why is S&P expecting the default risk of Chinas SOEs to increase? Supply-side reform signals a shift in policy to support Chinas SOEs. We believe the government has greater tolerance to allow struggling SOEs to close and be liquidated. Given the large number of struggling companies, the government's finances are probably insufficient to bail out every troubled company. Also, the government has budgeted funds for laid-off workers. Lenders are heeding this policy change and tightening credit to sectors that are targeted for capacity reduction. SOEs in targeted sectors for capacity consolidation and owned by provinces or local governments with weak financial capacity could be more vulnerable to default. Can SOEs adequately service their debt? SOEs debt servicing capacity has deteriorated steadily, with debt leverage above five times which is the highest category for financial risks in our assessment. A significant portion of cash flows are consumed by interest servicing, with lenders keeping companies afloat by rolling over their debt. SOEs dominate capital intensive and cyclical sectors like metals and mining, transportation, and capital goods. The outlook for leverage reduction remains poor for these sectors as weak top line is not fully offset by cost cutting and capex reduction. Has there been meaningful progress with SOE reforms? Progress has been very slow. The government announced the reform agenda in 2013 and the blueprint for SOE reform was released in September 2015. The blueprint is vague and leaves room for various interpretation and implementation. While the central government is pushing ahead with SOE reform, local governments are more timid as they balance conflicting objectives of preserving growth, tax revenues, and employment against SOE efficiency and financial risks. The key to the reform is to improve company performance. On this score, the continued deterioration of the SOEs' financial risks has reached a critical level with liquidity stresses that have led some steel companies to default on their debt in recent months. The framework for reform is a long-term remedy for the structural and institutional problems including management and staff who are appointed by the ruling Communist party. A clearer separation of management and party would be necessary for SOEs to be innovative and make commercially oriented decisions. Click for full view What about the recent mergers of SOEs and their impact on reform? Mergers have created larger groups but their financial position has not improved. There are no concrete plans to reduce leverage or improve efficiency. Closures of unprofitable businesses, asset sales or privatization are not part of the plan. The anti-corruption campaign by the party's disciplinary committee has cast a long shadow on any SOE management looking to sell assets. Without concrete plans or drastic measures, we believe, the misallocation of capital in the SOE sector will be prolonged. On a positive note, the mergers will create some synergies. Examples include centralized purchasing, reduction of duplicated investments, and improved bargaining position due to a larger operating scale. Mergers within the same industries are more likely to benefit from these synergies than mergers of conglomerates. In the past six months, the central government has announced that 12 SOEs will be merged into six separate groups in shipping, railway locomotive, construction, and mining. The number of central SOEs was reduced from over 110 at the end of 2014 to 106 at the end of 2015. A number of SOEs in food, tourism, building materials, and construction are being readied for merger by the end of 2016. The number of central SOEs will likely be below 100. The government has proposed a debt-for-equity swap for corporate debts. Would this improve the credit profiles of SOEs? Yes. The debt-for-equity swap essentially exchanges bank debt for an equity stake. It's a recapitalization that reduces a companys debt load and enables highly leveraged corporates to recover their financial standing and provides room to make investments. This proposal is still being studied by a number of government agencies, and it is not intended to save struggling companies with limited prospects for recovery. In our view, the debt-for-equity swap is usually part of a debt restructuring for distressed companies. It would not happen in isolation without the agreement of other creditors and shareholders. The central government is pitching the proposal as a "win-win" solution for corporates and banks. What are the implications of the debt-for-equity swap for creditors? The impact is negative. When creditors are not paid in full, payment terms are altered or all creditors are affected, we could consider the swap to be a debt restructuring and possibly a distressed exchange. This will depend on whether lenders and investors have options other than to accept the debt restructuring or face non-payment. We view any delay or less-than-full payment by an issuer as potentially constituting a default. The author is Christopher Lee, Managing Director for Corporate Ratings at Standard & Poor's Ratings Services. China Renaissance has won regulatory approval to set up a joint venture securities company in Shanghai to develop its presence on onshore capital markets, having already firmly established its offshore credentials. Fully licenced Huajing Securities will offer a range of services including stockbroking, IPO underwriting, proprietary trading, and wealth management, the Beijing-headquartered boutique bank said on Monday. The aim is to provide a "one-stop" shop of fundraising options for Chinese companies that spans both onshore and offshore markets, including those seeking to switch between the two. Huajing Securities will help more [Chinese] companies under the new economy to return to the A-share market, China Renaissance's chief executive officer Bao Fan said in a press release. China Renaissance will hold a 49% stake in Huajing Securities through Hong Kong subsidiary Maxson Securities and will have day-to-day operational control, a spokesperson for the bank told FinanceAsia. Shanghai Enlight Investment Holdings, the parent firm of Shenzhen-listed film and television production company Beijing Enlight Media, and Wuxi Qunxing Equity Investment Management will own the remaining 46.1% and 4.9%, respectively. Set up in 2004, China Renaissance has fast become a major player in Chinas buoyant technology sector, helping a batch of prominent companies including JD.com to go public in New York or in Hong Kong, as well as providing advisory services on finance and major M&A deals such as last year's merger of online duo Meituan and Dianping. However, it has yet to tap into China's massive onshore securities business. It has also not taken full advantage of the ongoing wave of Chinese take-privates as companies listed abroad look to return home, drawn by the prospect of higher valuations, better trading volumes, and a less demanding regulatory environment. Although it has helped some Chinese firms to de-list from US markets and forged strong ties with them, it has missed out on the re-listing side of the equation by not having an A-share licence. Last year, 28 US-listed Chinese firms announced plans to de-list their shares in deals worth $33 billion, while another nine Chinese companies have announced similar plans so far this year in deals worth $6.2 billion, according to Dealogic data. A-share team China Renaissance set up a new A-share team last April to pursue Chinese companies listed overseas and usher them back to China to raise capital through new listings and other transactions, as part of its strategy to grow into a fully fledged investment bank. The bank also signalled its intention to recruit experienced professionals from the upper ranks of Chinas leading brokerages houses. We expect the A-share market to become a principal focus of our investment banking activitiesand the recent trend of go private bids to gain momentum as more companies see the strategic merit in this move, Bao said in a statement at the time. Dubbed the Onshore Capital Markets Solutions team, China Renaissances A-share unit currently has about 15 people and is headed by Wei Shanwei, a former CEO at Ping An of China Securities (Hong Kong). Wei joined the boutique bank last July and reports directly to Bao. Huajing Securities is the second JV that has won regulatory approval under the aegis of a long-running but recently revised free trade agreement between Hong Kong and mainland China the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement. The new entity follows in the footsteps of Shengang Securities, which was set up by three Hong Kong investors, including Mason Financial Holdings, plus 11 mainland Chinese firms. Last month it too was given the green light from the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The latest CSRC approval hints at the Chinese regulators growing willingness to gradually open up the countrys still-tightly controlled onshore securities industry and offer a broader choice of investments to domestic investors. Late last year, HSBC and Bank of East Asia said they were joining forces with state-backed Shenzhen Qianhai Financial Holdings to set up fully-licenced JV securities firm based in the Qianhai economic zone of Shenzhen in the southern Guangdong province. UBS and Goldman Sachs have had a far longer presence on the mainland. But many Western banks have struggled to make money in China or have fallen out with their partners, particularly those banks without operational control of the partnership. One example is Morgan Stanley, which set up CICC, Chinas first Sino-foreign securities JV, in 1995 with China Construction Bank but gave up management control in 2000 and had no real influence on the business. Miriam Rozen, a Financial Planning contributing writer, is a staff reporter at Texas Lawyer in Dallas. Follow her on Twitter at @MiriamRozen. Ive learned to pay attention to the first 30 seconds when I visit a firm. In the approximately 350 offices I have visited, my first impressions are generally neutral to positive. On occasion, though, a few offices strike an exceedingly positiveor negativenote. Why does this matter? Although Im not overly influenced by aesthetics, and much of that first impression is subjective, I think an advisors ability to stand out can be what turns a prospect into a client or sends him or her across town to a competitor. DeBoer presidents outer office (Image: DeBoer Financial Group) When a First Impression Goes Wrong To protect the guilty, let me describe a fictitious officeone that combines all the worst characteristics Ive seen: I arrive at an office whose exterior features no landscaping and a cramped gravel driveway. The entrance of the converted house has a rusty door opening to reveal a stained 1980s-style carpet. Three white cats immediately start rubbing against my black pants, while the odor of a litter box lingers. The makeshift reception desk is missing a receptionist, while the areas low ceiling, dingy beige walls, and stuff old magazines and bric-a-brac create a sense of claustrophobia. (Could the thigh-high stacks of paper betray a hoarder?) Its clear that the offices vintage furniture has lived a full life, and water running in the bathroom and kitchen can be heard throughout the house. Once Im finally greeted by a human, the walk to the conference room reveals more frayed rugs and dirty curtains, along with a two-inch rim of dirt around the baseboards and furniture. Dont underestimate the effect a positive environment has on your employees and you. Thankfully, this isnt a real place, yet each of these characteristics is not as unusual as you might think. Advisors often dont see the gradual erosion of their office environment nor realize the effect it can have. Some who cater to blue-collar clients even take pride in what they perceive as the folksiness of their office. But research tells us that it takes seven seconds to form a first impression. More importantly, its hard to change a negative first impression. That means the dingy office that provides excellent service faces an uphill battle. What can we learn from this? Lets consider the opposite end of the spectrumoffices that present an exceptionally positive experience. Seizing the Office Space Opportunity A lease coming up for renewal frequently presents an opportunity to reinvent your office space. The two firms below certainly seized this chance to actualize their vision. Jeffrey DeBoer of DeBoer Financial Group in Roseville, Calif., moved into his office in 2015 after extensive planning and design. Although the one-story building looks like a home in a residential area, its actually one of several buildings within a professional office park. DeBoer and his team named their space The Experience, a clear indication that clients come first. DeBoer's exterior (Image: DeBoer Financial Group) Indeed, the firms clients are like family, so DeBoer wanted the office to feel both comfortable and classy. Review meetings, for example, are held in a den-like room with a leather upholstered sofa and chairs, a coffee table, and a monitor, mounted above the fireplace, where statements, financial plans, and reports can be presented. It doesnt stop there; the firm strives to offer creative, intimate client events, such as an Iron Chef competition, which had the DeBoer team and clients donning aprons in the offices cafe and dining room. As DeBoer explains, It is important for all of us to work together in an environment that we truly enjoy. It has made a world of difference to be able to work out in the gym, cook breakfast together as a team, or share a bottle of wine in the dining roomall without leaving the office. Another advisor who took his office space to the next level is William Leeb of Financial Council Inc., in Towson, Maryland. Leebs firm was considering leaving the space they had occupied for more than 30 years, but Leeb rightly questioned the value of taking on a daunting and expensive move. What a third-party consultant helped Leeb understand was that his office did not in any way communicate the firms vision for clients: Plan Well, Retire Well, Live Well. DeBoer's kitchen (Image: DeBoer Financial Group) So, Leeb assembled a group of enthusiastic team members who created a wish list for their new space, such as having the right technology in all the right places. The team also focused on articulating precisely what they wanted clients to say when they entered the space. From design of the floorplan to interior decor, the project quickly evolved into an exciting investment in the businesss future. Financial Council moved into the new space in 2012, in the midst of Hurricane Sandy. Any move is hectic, though probably none more so than this one, but what the firm experiences now is a calmer environment which benefits both clients and employees. Once you step inside the glass doors, you feel a sense of openness that continues all the way through the extensive greenhouse glass of the reception area to the exterior of the building. Client feedback tells Leeb they nailed it. Clients still havent stopped talking about how peaceful it is and how comfortable it makes them feel, Leeb says. It has also made a tremendous difference in the overall mood of our staffand on me. Today, I can say with confidence that our office space communicates our vision: Plan Well, Retire Well, Live Well. Lessons Learned What can you take away from these stories as it relates to your own office space? Look at your space with a critical eye. Sometimes we dont see whats in front of us. Ask a third party for an honest opinion. Ask yourself how important the office space is to you. If youre a small advisor planning to retire in five years, you may not care. But if your firm is built to last, controlling the message your office conveys is an opportunity you need to take. Keep it clean. Make sure you have a good cleaning service and that the environment reflects the same care that you take with your clients financial future. Excel on service. Although great space will never compensate for lousy service, it can set the stage for you to provide exceptional service. Your space can convey your vision only if you have one. Be sure to clarify your firms purpose, vision, and clientele. Above all, dont underestimate the effect a positive environment has on your employeesand you! Joni Youngwirth is managing principal, practice management at Commonwealth Financial Network, member FINRA/SIPC, an independent broker/dealerRIA. HKTDC Communication and Public Affairs Department Joe Kainz Tel: +852 2584 4216 Email: joe.kainz@hktdc.org HONG KONG, Apr 24, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - The 31st Hong Kong Houseware Fair and the seventh Hong Kong International Home Textiles and Furnishings Fair concluded yesterday. The two fairs, organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), ended their four-day run successfully by welcoming a total of more than 47,000 buyers from 114 countries and regions. Around 29,000 buyers visited the Houseware Fair, while over 18,000 buyers attended the Home Textiles and Furnishings Fair. Attendance from the Chinese mainland, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Argentina saw satisfactory growth.Watch our fair video here: https://youtu.be/IieqPNw8ScUBuying missions, business matching services create opportunities"With the uncertainties surrounding the global economy, the fairs have provided an important platform for enterprises to seek new orders and source competitive products," said HKTDC Deputy Executive Director Benjamin Chau. "We noticed that buyers are particularly interested in unique and original designs, and branded products are also sought after. We have also strived to provide a more effective trading experience and create more business opportunities for the industry by organising buying missions and offering business matching services." This year, the HKTDC organised 125 overseas buying missions comprising more than 7,000 buyers to help exhibitors tap into more markets.Arnaud Franquenk, Branding & Export Manager of French exhibitor Prodige, said he had met two important buyers from the Chinese mainland through the HKTDC's business matching service. "This is our first time to exhibit at the Houseware Fair," he said. "We are keen to develop the Asia-Pacific markets through the fair. Buyer response has been very positive. We have met several potential customers from the Chinese mainland, New Zealand and the UK."Industry cautiously optimistic about prospectsTo understand the latest trends and developments of the houseware market, the HKTDC commissioned an independent on-site survey, interviewing more than 520 buyers and exhibitors. The survey found that the respondents are cautiously optimistic about market prospects. Thirty-two per cent of respondents said they expect overall sales to grow this year, while 45 per cent expect sales to remain steady. In terms of pricing, 22 per cent of respondents expect prices to increase in the coming year, while 60 per cent predict that they will remain unchanged. As for the growth prospects of different regions, the respondents regard the Chinese mainland as the most promising market, followed by North America and Korea.The survey also sought respondents' views on product trends. Most respondents expect simple and trendy designs, and multi-functional products to lead the market in 2016. The survey also found that the industry favours Hong Kong as a sourcing hub and trading platform; 91 per cent of respondents expect the volume of products sold via Hong Kong to increase or remain unchanged this year, up 11 percentage points compared to the findings in last year's survey. Almost all (99%) respondents expect the volume of products sourced via Hong Kong to increase or remain the same in 2016, up 14 percentage points over the previous year.Creative products shine in a sluggish marketIn today's lacklustre market environment, creative and distinctive designs are key to helping brands stand out. Local silicone kitchen gadgets manufacturer DAKA, an exhibitor in the Hall of Elegance where renowned houseware brand names converge, is known for its original designs. This year, the company used the fair to showcase an array of new products, some of which received a "Red Dot Award". Jesse Emery Chow, DAKA's Business Development Director, said they had met 50 per cent more clients in the first two days of the fair this year compared to last year. He had also met new buyers from Europe, Japan and the US, including two potential distributors from France and Japan.Another exhibitor at the Hall of Elegance, Japanese brand Interform, which is known for its unique clocks, indoor lighting and bathroom products, had previously halted its export business due to unfavourable external economic conditions. This year the company attended the Houseware Fair as part of its strategy to restart its export activities. Kenji Fujiwara, the company's Overseas and Product Development Division Manager, said they had been busy meeting with buyers from Australia, France, New Zealand, Norway, the US and South America, who were very interested in their in-house designed products.Many buyers said they attended the concurrent fairs to source new products. Italian household products retailer Galileo has an annual turnover of about EUR 100 million. The company has been sourcing at the fairs for a number of years. Buyer Raffaella Moscardino said she always found interesting new products at the fairs every year, and this year was no exception. She said she had found several mat suppliers from India and had already placed orders for fragrance sets with several exhibitors. Ms Moscardino said she expected to spend US$500,000 or more on different products.New brand name collections stimulate market demandNew inspirations from top brands help to stimulate market demand. Having enjoyed good results at last year's Home Textiles and Furnishings Fair, PT Indah Jaya Textile Industry from Indonesia, returned this year to the Hall of Glamour to showcase a new collection of high-quality towels from its luxury brand Terry Palmer, targeting the hotel industry. Tenti Aizah, the company's Marketing Manager said they had successfully attracted serious buyers from Hong Kong, the Philippines, the UK and Australia.Buyers also use the fairs to seek out new suppliers to expand product lines. Charatpong Chotigavanich, Vice President of Marketing of T.S. Gen Co., Ltd., which operates more than 20 retail shops in Thailand, said he had found around 20 potential suppliers of various products, such as bedding, bedroom decor and bathroom items. He expected to place orders worth between HK$600,000 and HK$1 million to serve the company's business expansion needs.Gifts & Premium Fair, Printing & Packaging Fair to open on WednesdayFollowing the Houseware Fair and Home Textiles and Furnishings Fair, the 31st Hong Kong Gifts & Premium Fair and the 11th Hong Kong International Printing & Packaging Fair will open on Wednesday (27 April) and continue through 30 April at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and the AsiaWorld-Expo, respectively. The two fairs will gather more than 4,700 exhibitors from 36 countries and regions, showcasing an assortment of trendy gifts, printing products and related technologies to meet the diverse needs of industry players.Fair WebsitesHong Kong Houseware Fair: http://www.hktdc.com/hkhousewarefairHong Kong International Home Textiles and Furnishings Fair: http://www.hktdc.com/hkhometextilesfairPhoto Download Link:hktdc@sharepoint: http://bit.ly/1rrYtoKTo view press releases in Chinese, please visit http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/tcAbout HKTDCA statutory body established in 1966, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is the international marketing arm for Hong Kong-based traders, manufacturers and services providers. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China and throughout Asia. The HKTDC also organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in overseas markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdcTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdcLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Japan will on Monday release March figures for corporate service prices, highlighting a light day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. Producer prices are expected to hold steady at 0.2 percent on year. Japan also will see final February readings for the leading and coincident indexes; the previous scores were 99.8 and 110.3, respectively. Singapore will provide March numbers for consumer prices, with forecasts suggesting an increase of 0.3 percent on month and a decline of 0.7 percent on year. That follows the 0.1 percent monthly decline and the 0.8 percent yearly contraction in February. Finally, the markets in New Zealand and Australia are closed on Monday for ANZAC Day and will re-open on Tuesday. 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. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global OConnect, China's top O2O cross-border e-commerce service provider will make its first appearance in Middle East market through launching a showroom in Dubai on April 28th, after successfully operated such affairs in Russia and China. Global OConnect is an offline business partner of OSell E-commerce platform. This partnership builds on the mission of linking global retailers and Chinese manufacturers together, and providing them with import and export support on both custom clearance and goods delivery fronts. Global OConnect plays an essential role in this business model through building showrooms overseas where local retailers, after finding products online, are able to see and feel the products of interest with their own eyes and hands before deciding on an order. Kevin Fenn, founder of Global OConnect, is excited about this milestone step the company will take, "We're the bridge between Chinese suppliers and global retailers. Online business is populating the global business sphere. However, people still trust better when they see the goods they will buy. And they'd prefer to be less troubled with all the procedures in trading. Global OConnect is just what they need. We've had success with Russia market and we look forward to continuing the success in Middle East." Global OConnect was established in Chongqing, China in 2015. The business concept is in answer to the demands Chinese businesses have of going abroad. Global OConnect functions as a trade fair but differences to traditional fairs. With Global OConnect, Chinese products are shown every day in a showroom built in overseas cities along the One Belt One Road economic zone; and a warehouse at the back of the showroom to accommodate ordered goods before being shipped. When visitors to Global OConnect showroom walk through each booth, high technology embedded in the exhibition installations will capture data for improving of user experiences. In addition, the company can provide businesses with logistical and financial assistance with its own dedicated logistic teams and system of credit guarantee and payment collection. Global OConnect is strategically targeting at those small and medium businesses as in recent years they've grow to take 80% of total trading volume. Global OConnect's inauguration to Dubai will no doubt bring closer the two economies in regards of trading. China-made products will have a smooth path paved for them to go abroad; while retailers in the United Arab Emirates and the larger Middle East market will have easy access to high quality goods at reasonable prices. Showa Denko Develops High-Strength Version of ST60 Aluminum Plate Showa Denko Public Relations Office Phone: 81-3-5470-3235 TOKYO, Apr 25, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Showa Denko ("SDK"; TSE:4004) has developed "ST60-HSM"* aluminum plate, a new grade product of ST60-series aluminum plates which boast high thermal conductivity and high strength. ST60-HSM has attained high strength equivalent to A6061** aluminum alloy, while maintaining the same bendability and thermal conductivity as existing grades of ST60 series have. SDK started to manufacture samples of ST60-HSM under potential customers' specifications this April, aiming to go into quantity production as early as possible.SDK developed the first product of ST60-series aluminum plates in 2001. ST60 series is equal to pure aluminum in thermal conductivity and heat radiation capacity, and A5052*** aluminum alloy, which is widely used as material for frames, in strength. Since their launches, ST60-T3, that features high-bendability, has been used as heat sink, and ST60-T8, that features high-strength, has been used mainly as metallic base panels and parts for smartphones.In recent years, manufacturers of mobile devices including smartphones and tablets tend to apply metal enclosures to high-end and middle-range products in order to give them enhanced rigidity and better designs. Moreover, these manufacturers expressly prefer to apply aluminum enclosures in order to take advantage of attractiveness of anodized surfaces. Though previously launched grades of ST60 series have already been applied to enclosures for mobile devices, SDK developed ST60-HSM this time in order to meet increasing need for stronger aluminum enclosures. ST60-HSM, samples of which we started to manufacture, is as processable as ST60-T3, while having more strength than ST60-T8. ST60-HSM's tensile strength is equivalent to that of A6061, which has higher tensile strength than A5052 aluminum alloy. By putting ST60-HSM on the market, SDK aims to expand adoption of ST60 series as enclosures for mobile devices.In the field of materials for electronic devices, end-product manufacturers desire casing components with light weight, high strength and efficient heat radiation in order to enclose downsized and more integrated parts and instruments. SDK will continue meeting customers' expectations with its alloy designing and aluminum processing technologies cultivated over many years.Press release (PDF): http://www.sdk.co.jp/english/news/15030/12589.htmlNotes:* HSM is an abbreviation of High Strength Metal.** A6061: A6000-series aluminum alloys contain magnesium and silicone as additives. They have high strength, excellent anticorrosiveness and machinability to be used as frames. A6061 aluminum alloy contains copper and other metals as additives to enhance strength, and shows further strength after solution, hardening and aging treatments.***A5052: A5000-series aluminum alloys contain magnesium as an additive. A5052 aluminum alloy has medium strength among aluminum alloys, and known as standard material. A5052 has excellent anticorrosiveness, seawater resistance, and weldability, and is used as material for ships, automobile parts, interior and exterior finishing materials.About Showa Denko K.K.Showa Denko K.K. ("SDK"; TSE:4004,US:SHWDF) is a major manufacturer and marketer of chemical products serving a wide range of fields ranging from heavy industry to the electronic and computer industries. The Petrochemicals Sector provides cracker products such as ethylene and propylene, the Chemicals Sector provides industrial and high-performance gasses and chemicals and high-purity gases and chemicals for the semiconductor industry, and the Inorganics Sector provides ceramics products such as alumina, abrasive, refractory and graphite electrodes and fine carbon products. Today, the Aluminum Sector provides aluminum materials and high-value-added fabricated aluminum, the Electronics Sector provides HD media, compound semiconductors such as ultra high-bright LEDs and rare earth magnetic alloys, and the Advanced Battery Materials Department (ABM) provides lithium-ion battery components. For more information, please visit www.sdk.co.jp/english/.Source: Showa Denko K.K.Contact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Cabinet office is set to release final Japan leading economic indicators for February at 1:00 am ET Monday. The preliminary reading for leading index was 99.8 in February. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 124.97 against the euro, 160.42 against the pound, 113.79 the Swiss franc and 111.18 against the U.S. dollar. 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. MEMPHIS (dpa-AFX) - Dutch package delivery company TNT Express NV (TNTEF, TNTEY), which is being acquired by U.S. peer FedEx Corp. (FDX), reported Monday that its firs-quarter net loss attributable to equity holders of the parent was 14 million euros, narrower than last year's loss of 19 million euros. Operating loss was 1 million euros, compared to loss of 11 million euros last year. This result included one-off charges of 10 million euros, of which 4 million euros related to the FedEx offer. Adjusted operating income was 9 million euros, an improvement of 8 million euros from last year. Reported revenues of 1.587 billion euros declined 2.2 percent from 1.622 billion euros last year, negatively impacted by fewer working days. Underlying revenue growth, adjusted for currency effects, lower fuel surcharges and working-day effect, was 4.2%. Looking ahead, TNT reiterated its outlook agenda and guidance for 2018/19, as presented during the capital markets day on February 18. The company expects to achieve structural improvements from 2016 onwards and to see the full benefit of the Outlook strategy from 2018/2019. TNT expects continued economic volatility in some markets outside Europe, especially in Brazil. TNT anticipates restructuring charges of about 30 million euros in the second quarter. The company further said that closing of the FedEx Offer to acquire TNT is anticipated in the first half of calendar year 2016. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The New Zealand dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Monday. The NZ dollar fell to a 1-week low of 1.6423 against the euro, from Friday's closing value of 1.6362. The kiwi dropped to 76.05 against the yen, from last week's closing value of 76.59. Against the Australian and the U.S. dollars, the kiwi edged down to 1.1247 and 0.6841 from last week's closing quotes of 1.1240 and 0.6851, respectively. If the kiwi extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.68 against the euro, 73.00 against the yen, 1.13 against the aussie and 0.67 against the greenback. 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. 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 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Regulatory Environment and Impact Analysis- Sterile Packaging Market Standards & Regulations, Regional & National Regulatory Bodies - Market Analysis & Forecast to 2020" report to their offering. The market for sterile medical packaging is estimated to grow from USD 26.55 Billion in 2015 to reach USD 35.07 Billion by 2020, at an estimated CAGR of 5.72%. The sterile medical packaging market has been growing in accordance with the growth in the packaging industry. Factors such as increasing aging population, growing demand from the healthcare sector, and the popularity of using reliable packaging are driving the demand for sterile medical packaging. The growing demand in the sterile packaging market highlights the need to implement an efficient regulatory framework. The European regulatory framework is stronger, effective, and organized. Countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K. have been considered for the study. The EU has implemented standards & regulations such as Medical Device Directive, which is applicable in the European Union and eliminates the trade barrier and significantly improves the processes involved in the sterile medical packaging industry. On the basis of key regions, the market for sterile medical packaging is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). The Asia-Pacific region is projected to be the fastest growing region, by 2020. This is mainly due to emerging economies in China and India, coupled with rising consumer spending power and the growing middle-class population. The regulatory framework in the sterile packaging market is complex and varies from region to region. However, in order to avoid confusion among manufacturers and ease the trade barrier, continuous efforts are made to harmonize the multiple standards and regulations to form global standards. The report studies and covers sterile packaging regulations and legislations in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and RoW. The regions have been further studied based on laws prevalent in the top countries. The countries studied in the report include the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, China, Japan, India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Market Overview of Sterile Medical Packaging 5 International Governing Bodies 6 Regulatory Framework for Sterile Medical Packaging in North America 7 Regulatory Framework for Sterile Medical Packaging in Europe 8 Regulatory Framework for Sterile Medical Packaging in Asia-Pacific 9 Regulatory Framework for Sterile Medical Packaging in RoW 10 Appendix Governing Bodies International Governing Bodies American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) ASTM Committee F02 International Organization of Standardization (ISO) U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) International Medical Device Regulatory Forum (IMDRF) Key Governing Bodies in the U.S. FDA Key Governing Bodies in Canada Health Canada (HC) Key Governing Bodies in Mexico Federal Commission for the Protection Against Sanitary Risk (COFEPRIS) Key Governing Bodies in Germany Federal Ministry of Health German Institute for Standardization (DIN) Key Governing Bodies in the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Department of Health (DH) Association of British Healthcare Industries (ABHI) The British Standards Institution (BSI) Key Governing Bodies in France National Agency for the Safety of Medicine and Health Products (ANMS) Key Governing Bodies in Italy Ministry of Health (MOH) Italian Medicines Agency Key Governing Bodies in China China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) Key Governing Bodies in Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) Key Governing Bodies in India CENtral Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) Key Governing Bodies in Australia Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) Key Governing Bodies in Brazil National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) Key Governing Bodies in Argentina National Administration of Drugs, Foodstuffs, and Medical Technology (ANMAT) Key Governing Bodies in South Africa Medicines Control Council (MCC) For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/jgpk7c/regulatory Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 DJ DGAP-Regulatory: TMK Announces Tender Offer Results via Alfa Capital / CITI / JPM PAO TMK / Miscellaneous - Urgent Priority TMK Announces Tender Offer Results via Alfa Capital / CITI / JPM 25-Apr-2016 / 13:38 CET/CEST Dissemination of a Regulatory Announcement, transmitted by EquityStory.RS, LLC - a company of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ITS TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS (INCLUDING PUERTO RICO, THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS, GUAM, AMERICAN SAMOA, WAKE ISLAND AND THE NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS), ANY STATE OF THE UNITED STATES, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (THE 'UNITED STATES') OR TO ANY U.S. PERSON (AS DEFINED IN REGULATION S UNDER THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (EACH A 'U.S. PERSON')) OR TO ANY PERSON LOCATED OR RESIDENT IN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE IT IS UNLAWFUL TO DISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT. OTHER RESTRICTIONS APPLY (SEE 'OFFER RESTRICTIONS' BELOW). 25 April 2016 TMK ANNOUNCES TENDER OFFER RESULTS On 13 April 2016 TMK Capital S.A. (the 'Offeror') launched an invitation to eligible holders of the outstanding U.S.$500,000,000 7.75 per cent. loan participation notes due 2018 (the 'Notes') issued by, but with limited recourse to, the Offeror for the sole purpose of financing a loan to PAO TMK (the 'Borrower') to tender their Notes for purchase by the Offeror for cash (the 'Tender Offer'). Capitalised terms used in this announcement but not otherwise defined have the meanings given to them in the Tender Offer Memorandum dated 13 April 2016 (the 'Tender Offer Memorandum'). The Tender Offer expired at 4:00 p.m. (London time) on 22 April 2016. As at the Expiration Time, an aggregate nominal amount of Notes equal to U.S.$177,453,000 has been validly tendered in the Tender Offer. The Offeror hereby announces that it has accepted for purchase an aggregate principal amount of Notes equal to U.S.$177,453,000 as set out in the table below: Description of the Notes Common code/ISIN Outstanding principal Aggregate principal Outstanding principal amount on launch of the amount of Notes Accepted amount following Tender Offer for Purchase settlement of the Tender Offer U.S.$500,000,000 7.75 058521159/ U.S.$408,820,000 U.S.$177,453,000 U.S.$231,367,000 per cent. Loan XS0585211591 Participation Notes due 2018 All the Notes validly tendered for purchase have been accepted in full without pro-ration. The Offeror will also pay the Accrued Interest Amount in respect of all Notes accepted for purchase. The expected Settlement Date for the Tender Offer is 28 April 2016. Contact Details: THE JOINT DEALER MANAGERS Alfa Capital Holdings (Cyprus) Limited Themistokli Dervi 5 Elenion Building, 2nd Floor P.C. 1066, Nicosia, Cyprus Telephone: +357 22470900 Email: dhadjisavvas@alfacapital.com.cy Attention: Dinos Hadjisavvas Citigroup Global Markets Limited Citigroup Centre, Canada Square London E14 5LB United Kingdom Attention: Liability Management Group Telephone: +44 20 7986 8969 Email: liabilitymanagement.europe@citi.com J.P. Morgan Securities plc 25 Bank Street Canary Wharf London E14 5JP Telephone: +44 20 7134 2468 Attention: Liability Management Email: em_europe_lm@jpmorgan.com THE TENDER AGENT Lucid Issuer Services Limited Tankerton Works 12 Argyle Walk London WC1H 8HA Tel: +44 20 7704 0880 Attention: Thomas Choquet Email: tmk@lucid-is.com THE OFFEROR TMK Capital S.A. 2. Boulevard Konrad Adenauer L-1115 Luxembourg Grand Duchy of Luxembourg THE BORROWER PAO TMK 40, Bld. 2A, Pokrovka Street, 105062 Moscow, Russian Federation OFFER RESTRICTIONS THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES OR IN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE IT IS UNLAWFUL TO DO SO. United States The Tender Offer is not being made and will not be made, directly or indirectly, in or into, or by use of the mails of, or by any means or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce of, or of any facilities of a national securities exchange of, the United States or to, or for the account of benefit of, any U.S. person. This includes, but is not limited to, facsimile transmission, electronic mail, telex, telephone, the internet and other forms of electronic communication. Accordingly, copies of this Announcement and/or the Tender Offer Memorandum and any other documents or materials relating to the Tender Offer is not being, and must not be, directly or indirectly, mailed or otherwise transmitted, distributed or forwarded (including, without limitation, by custodians, nominees or trustees) in or into the United States or to, or for the account of benefit of, a U.S. Person and the Notes cannot be tendered in the Tender Offer by any such use, means, instrumentality or facility or from or within or by persons located or resident in the United States or by any U.S. Person or any person acting for the account or benefit of a U.S. Person. Any purported tender of Notes in the Tender Offer resulting directly or indirectly from a violation of these restrictions will be invalid and any purported tender of Notes made by a person located in the United States, a U.S. Person, by any person acting for the account or benefit of a U.S. Person, or by any agent, fiduciary or other intermediary acting on a non-discretionary basis for a principal giving instructions from within the United States will be invalid and will not be accepted. Each holder of Notes participating in the Tender Offer will represent that it is not a U.S. Person, is not located in the United States and is not participating in the Tender Offer from the United States, or it is acting on a non-discretionary basis for a principal located outside the United States that is not giving an order to participate in the Tender Offer from the United States and who is not a U.S. Person. United Kingdom The communication of this Announcement and/or the Tender Offer Memorandum and any other documents or materials relating to the Tender Offer is not being made, and such documents and/or materials have not been approved, by an authorised person for the purposes of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (the 'FSMA'). Accordingly, such documents and/or materials are not being distributed to, and must not be passed on to, the general public in the United Kingdom. The communication of such documents and/or materials is exempt from the restriction on financial promotions under section 21 of the FSMA on the basis that it is only directed at and may be communicated to (1) those persons who are existing members or creditors of the Offeror or other persons within Article 43 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended, and (2) to any other persons to whom these documents and/or materials may lawfully be communicated. France The Tender Offer is not being made, directly or indirectly, to the public in the Republic of France ('France'). Neither this Announcement nor the Tender Offer Memorandum nor any other documents or materials relating to the Tender Offer has been or shall be distributed to the public in France and only (i) providers of investment services relating to portfolio management for the account of third parties (personnes fournissant le service d'investissement de gestion de portefeuille pour compte de tiers) and/or (ii) qualified investors (investisseurs qualifies) other than individuals acting on their own account and all as defined in, and in accordance with, Articles L.411-1, L.411-2 and D.411-1 of the French Code Monetaire et Financier, are eligible to participate in the Tender Offer. This Announcement, the Tender Offer Memorandum and any other document or material relating to the Tender Offer has not been and will not be submitted for clearance to nor approved by the Autorite des marches financiers. Italy None of the Tender Offer, this Announcement, the Tender Offer Memorandum or any other documents or materials relating to the Tender Offer have been or will be submitted to the clearance procedure of the Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa ('CONSOB') pursuant to Italian laws and regulations. The Tender Offer is being carried out in the Republic of Italy as exempted offers pursuant to article 101-bis, paragraph 3-bis of the Legislative Decree No. 58 of 24 February 1998, as amended (the 'Financial Services Act') and article 35-bis, paragraph 4 of CONSOB Regulation No. 11971 of 14 May 1999, as amended. Qualifying Holders can tender some or all of their Notes pursuant to the Tender Offer through authorised persons (such as investment firms, banks or financial intermediaries permitted to conduct such activities in Italy in accordance with the Financial Services Act, CONSOB Regulation No. 16190 of 29 October 2007, as amended from time to time, and Legislative Decree No. 385 of September 1, 1993, as amended) and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations or with requirements imposed by CONSOB or any other Italian authority. Each intermediary must comply with the applicable laws and regulations concerning information duties vis-a-vis its clients in connection with the Notes or the Tender Offer. Russia Neither this Announcement, nor Tender Offer Memorandum nor information contained therein nor any other document or materials relating to the Tender Offer is an offer, or an invitation to make offers, to sell, exchange or otherwise transfer securities in the Russian Federation to or for the benefit of any Russian person or entity and does not constitute an advertisement or offering of securities in the Russian Federation within the meaning of Russian securities (MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires April 25, 2016 07:38 ET (11:38 GMT) laws. Information contained in this Announcement, or Tender Offer Memorandum, or any other document or materials relating to the Tender Offer is not intended for any persons in the Russian Federation who are not 'qualified investors' within the meaning of Article 51.2 of Federal Law No. 39-FZ 'On the Securities Market' dated 22 April 1996, as amended (the 'Russian QIs') and must not be distributed or circulated into Russia or made available in Russia to any persons who are not Russian QIs, unless and to the extent they are otherwise permitted to access such information under Russian law. Grand Duchy of Luxembourg Neither this Announcement nor the Tender Offer Memorandum has not been approved by and will not be submitted for approval to the Luxembourg Financial Services Authority (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier) for purposes of a public offering or sale in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Accordingly, the Tender Offer may not be made to the public in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, directly or indirectly, and neither this Announcement nor Tender Offer Memorandum nor any other circular, prospectus, form of application, advertisement or other material may be distributed or otherwise made available in or from, or published in, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg except in circumstances which do not constitute a public offer of securities to the public, subject to prospectus requirements, in accordance with Luxembourg law of 10 July 2005 (as amended) on prospectuses for securities. General Neither this Announcement nor the Tender Offer Memorandum nor the electronic transmission thereof constitutes an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell Notes (and tenders of Notes for purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer will not be accepted from Qualifying Holders) in any circumstances in which such offer or solicitation is unlawful. In those jurisdictions where the securities, blue sky or other laws require the Tender Offer to be made by a licensed broker or dealer and any Joint Dealer Manager or any of its affiliates is such a licensed broker or dealer in any such jurisdiction, the Tender Offer shall be deemed to be made by such Joint Dealer Manager or such affiliate, as the case may be, on behalf of the Offeror in such jurisdiction. 25-Apr-2016 The EquityStory.RS, LLC Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap.de/ukreg Language: English Company: PAO TMK 40/2a Pokrovka 105062 Moscow Russia Phone: +7 495 775-7600 Fax: +7 495 775-7601 E-mail: tmk@tmk-group.com Internet: tmk-group.com ISIN: US87260R2013 Category Code: MSCU TIDM: TMKS Sequence Number: 3111 Time of Receipt: 25-Apr-2016 / 13:37 CET/CEST End of Announcement EquityStory.RS, LLC News Service 457345 25-Apr-2016 (END) Dow Jones Newswires April 25, 2016 07:38 ET (11:38 GMT) TULSA, OK -- (Marketwired) -- 04/25/16 -- Today, Limitless Venture Group (OTC PINK: LVGI) announced it has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with United Foods, LLC, located in Scottsdale, AZ, to distribute its HempCore Health Products. Joe Francella, CEO, stated, "This is the distributor and agreement we have all been waiting for. We have been working on the terms of this agreement for quite some time and are very excited to see the next phase begin for our HempCore Health products. This distributor is very aggressive and will do an excellent job in promoting and selling our HempCore Health products." United Foods has purchased ALL the remaining inventory of HempCore Health "Joint Relief " and "Relax", which has been shipped to their Scottsdale, AZ, warehouse where they will begin their marketing campaign. They have also placed an additional order for HempCore Health "Healthy Heart", "Fibered Up", and "Brain Boost" to complete our product line-up. Mr. Francella added, "We have just updated these products to make them the best products on the market for their respective purposes." The payment has been made in-full up-front for the entire order and manufacturing of these products will begin as soon as our manufacturer can obtain all the required ingredients and labels. Mr. Francella further stated, "This alliance frees us from having to spend most of our energy and resources on sales and marketing and we can now fully focus on research and develop of new and exciting products and markets." Under the terms of this agreement, United Foods will be placing bulk orders for future HempCore Health products, also paying in-full up-front. They will be marketing HempCore Health in the greater Phoenix, AZ, area and branch out from there. They will also manage and distribute HempCore Health products through the Amazon Website, while optimizing the functionality of that service, as well as through the Hempcorehealth.com website. We expect the Amazon website to be completed very soon as well as a major updating to our hempcorehealth.com website. The structure of this agreement has lead to an immediate revenue stream for Limitless Venture Group Inc. We are now in a position to start implementing a growth strategy and will continue to bring shareholder value to the company. About Limitless Venture Group Inc. Located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Limitless Venture Group Inc. is a full service brand development company specializing in beverage, supplement and healthy lifestyle products. Limitless acts as a brand incubator, bringing products from concept to reality, and then releasing them as standalone companies. Limitless Venture Group Inc. has internationally recognized formulators, in-house graphics department, in-house web design team, and full support staff for marketing and distribution chain development. Limitless Venture Group Inc.'s proprietary product line consists of SLAM Infusination, HempCore, and Limitless Health. For further inquiry on Limitless Venture Group Inc. products: www.lvginc.com Forward Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts, including, without limitation, statements that relate to the Company's expectations with regard to the future impact on the Company's results from new products in development, may be seemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects", "intends", "plans", "may", "could", "should", "anticipates", "likely", "believes" and words of similar import also identify forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are based on current facts and analysis and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determined and assumptions of management. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of the release. Except as may be required under applicable law, we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this release. Contact Information Limitless Venture Group Inc. Joseph Francella C.E.O. (918) 671-9935 joefrance@aol.com ATLANTA, GA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/25/16 -- The Staffing Group, Ltd. (OTC PINK: TSGL) (the "Company"), an emerging public company specializing in leveraged buyout transactions and restructurings with a focus on verticals within the 115 billion dollar U.S. staffing industry, today issued the follow letter to shareholders: Dear Shareholders, It is my pleasure to provide details regarding our recent acquisition and insight into expectations for future growth. Platform Acquisition: On April 1, 2016, we completed the asset purchase of four office locations from Labor Smart, Inc., our largest shareholder. These offices will continue to operate under the laborSMART brand pursuant to a licensing agreement we entered into with Labor Smart, Inc. in 2015. On an annualized basis, we project 2016 topline revenue and EBITDA from these acquired office locations to exceed $7.5 million and $800k respectively. This is in addition to the laborSMART branded office location we opened in Montgomery, AL through our 51% controlled subsidiary, Staff Fund I, LLC. Acquisition Pipeline: On February 11, 2016, we announced plans to acquire a North Dakota industrial staffing firm. Pending final due diligence, we anticipate a closing of this acquisition in the 3rd quarter of 2016. This potential acquisition will carry a similar deal structure consistent with our capital allocation strategy: 1/3 stock, 1/3 cash, and 1/3 seller carried debt with a total acquisition multiple of 3.64 or less times EBITDA. In addition, we maintain that due to the upside opportunity of this Platform Acquisition, we will require the completion of our $5 million private placement for future working capital prior to closing this transaction. We continue to build a pipeline of potential acquisitions that achieve our goal of achieving annual revenues of $75 million within the next 3 years. While we have completed our first Platform Acquisition, we seek to acquire additional premium brands within the light industrial staffing industry with scalable business models, in addition to bolt-on acquisitions. Key's to Future Success: Source a high volume of acquisition targets; close quickly on the best Acquire profitable, cash generating businesses with diverse customer bases Retain the best sales, management, and operations talent from each acquisition Protect, leverage, and enhance our balance sheet and cash flow with each transaction I am ecstatic about what is to come and what has already transpired this year. This solid plan will enable us to gain profitability quickly and build a solid foundation for rapid growth. I look forward to updating you on our continued success well into the future. Sincerely, Kimberly Thompson Chief Executive Officer The Staffing Group, Ltd. About The Staffing Group, Ltd. The Staffing Group, Ltd. is executing an aggressive buy-and-build strategy through the acquisition and integration of small to medium sized staffing businesses with focus on the light industrial, engineering, manufacturing and construction staffing space. The Company believes the light industrial staffing segment is ripe for consolidation and will seek accretive acquisitions that will drive annual revenues to $75 million within the next 3 years. Safe Harbor Statement This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of The Staffing Group, Ltd.., its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may", "would", "will", "expect", "estimate", "can", "believe", "potential", and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond The Staffing Group, Ltd.'s ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. More information about the potential factors that could affect the business and financial results is and will be included in The Staffing Group, Ltd.'s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Contact Information: The Staffing Group, Ltd. Investor Relations 678-881-0834 ir@staffinggroupltd.com LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Top Companies & Connectivity Solutions For Fleet Management, Logistics, Tracking, Routing & Navigation For Fuel Efficiency, Driver Monitoring, Safety, Diagnostics & Predictive Analytics The latest report from business intelligence provider visiongain offers comprehensive insight into the global commercial vehicle telematics market. Visiongain assesses that this market will generate revenues of more than $13bn in 2016. The commercial vehicle telematics industry is undeniably one of the fastest growing sectors in the commercial vehicles sector. Now: TomTom Telematics will be highlighting the latest developments in connected fleet management systems at this month's CV Show. This is an example of the business critical headline that you need to know about - and more importantly, you need to read visiongain's objective analysis of how this will impact your company and the industry more broadly. How are you and your company reacting to this news? Are you sufficiently informed? Questions answered by this report How is the commercial vehicle telematics market evolving and what is driving and restraining the market dynamics? How will each one of the commercial vehicle telematics submarket segments grow and which technologies will prevail? How will the national commercial vehicle telematics markets change by 2026 and which geographical region will lead the CVT market? Who are the leading commercial vehicle telematics players and what are their prospects over the forecast period? And what are the trends in the commercial vehicle telematics market? We break down the most important subsegments within the commercial vehicle telematics market but also the key connectivity type's, service providers', countries' and player's competitive positioning and characteristics that will make them lead this specific market. To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com How this report will benefit you Read on to discover how you can exploit the future business opportunities emerging in this sector. Visiongain's new study tells you and tells you NOW. In this brand new report you find 201 in-depth tables, charts and graphs, and trends - all unavailable elsewhere. The 174 page report provides clear detailed insight into the global commercial vehicle telematics market. Discover the key drivers and challenges affecting the market. By ordering and reading our brand new report today you stay better informed and ready to act. Report Scope 201 tables, charts and graphs analysing the CVT market Overview of the commercial vehicle telematics market by connectivity and service provider type Global commercial vehicle telematics market forecast 2016 - 2026 and analysis of drivers and restraints Global forecasts of 7 individual commercial vehicle telematics submarkets by connectivity and service provider type covering the period 2016 - 2026 Global forecast of commercial vehicle sales and major trends for the period 2016 - 2026 Global commercial vehicle shipments with telematics forecast and analysis for the 2016 - 2026 Forecast of the global penetration of commercial vehicle telematics systems for the 2016 - 2026 Analysis of the commercial vehicle telematics technologies which are expected to become mandatory in major regions Commercial vehicle telematics forecasts and analysis of the 12 leading national markets for the period 2016-2026. In greater detail, we provide: The Status of the commercial vehicle telematics market in 2014-2015 including: - The most notable developments in telematics for commercial vehicles - Overview of the M&A within the commercial vehicle telematics market - Examination of the commercial vehicles market during 2005-2015 Segmentation of the commercial vehicle telematics market into 2 types submarkets: - By type of connectivity into embedded, integrated and tethered solutions - By service provider into OEM hardware, aftermarket hardware, telematics services, and connectivity services submarkets Market value forecast of the global commercial vehicle telematics market (revenues $bn) throughout 2016 to 2026 coupled with: - Analysis of the micro, macro and regulatory drivers of growth in the market - Identification of the restraints & the challenges that the market faces until 2026 Market Value ($bn) Forecast 2016-2026 of the two submarkets along with: - Individual examination of drivers and restraints of each secondary submarkets - Allocation of submarket shares in the global commercial vehicle telematics market for 2016, 2021, and 2026 respectively Market value forecast ($bn) of the commercial vehicle telematics market in the 12 leading national markets: United States, Canada, Brazil, Germany, UK, France, Italy, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Russia Forecast for sales of commercial vehicles during 2016 to 2026 allocation of regional market shares in sales of CV for 2016, 2021, and 2026 Forecast of smartphone and tablet shipments 2016-2026 to support the growth of telematics in commercial vehicles SWOT analysis of each one of the individual commercial vehicle telematics submarkets Profiles of the leading companies within the commercial vehicle telematics market comprising 12 leading aftermarket telematics providers & and 4 leading OEM telematics providers for commercial fleets: - Analysis of their role in the CVT market and overview of their portfolio (up-to-date) with regards to telematics hardware - Company financials (Group Revenues, Profits) - Assessment of their subscription revenue and number of telematics subscribers (where available) Conclusions How will you benefit from this report? Keep your knowledge base up to speed. Don't get left behind Reinforce your strategic decision-making with definitive and reliable market data Learn how to exploit new technological trends Realise your company's full potential within the market Understand the competitive landscape and identify potential new business opportunities & partnerships Who should read this report? Anyone within the commercial vehicle logistics and fleet management industry Aftermarket Companies for Connected Vehicles Automotive Safety Systems Companies Connectivity Solution Companies, Collision Avoidance Systems Companies Telematics Solution Companies Diagnostics Companies V2X Safety and Security Companies Road Safety Authorities Telecommunication Companies Business intelligence analyst Competitive intelligence analyst Business operations manager Product development manager Business development managers Marketing managers Technologists Suppliers Investors Banks Government agencies Contractors Visiongain's study is intended for anyone requiring commercial analyses for the commercial vehicle telematics value chain and leading companies. You find data, trends and predictions. Buy our report today Commercial Vehicle Telematics Market 2016-2026: Top Companies & Connectivity Solutions For Fleet Management, Logistics, Tracking, Routing & Navigation For Fuel Efficiency, Driver Monitoring, Safety, Diagnostics & Predictive Analytics. Avoid missing out by staying informed - get our report now. To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com To request an exec summary of this report please email Sara Peerun at sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com or call Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 6100 Or click on https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1621/Commercial-Vehicle-Telematics-Market-2016-2026 List of Companies Mentioned in this Report Actia ADSI Ltd Aeromark Ltd AGM Telematics Limited AirIQ Inc Airmax Remote APD Communications Limited Aplicom Oy Apple ASL Advanced Systems Private Limited Aspire Tracking Limited Asset Monitoring Solutions Astra Telematics Limited Astrata Group AT&T AutoAlert Limited AutoLogic Systems Ltd Automatrics Limited Automotion Security Autotrac Axscend Ltd BAIC Batrak Ltd Blue Sky Network Blue Tree Systems Bowmonk BOX Telematics Ltd BPW Btrack Solutions Ltd ByBox Field Support CarrierWeb Carrotech Caterpillar Causeway Technologies Celtrak Ltd Chameleon Cisco Systems Inc. CMS SupaTrak Ltd Cobra Automotive Technology Cobra UK Connekt Continental AG Coordina Copiloto Satelital Crystal Ball Ltd c-vista Ltd DAF Trucks Daimler Fleetboard GmbH Daimler FleetBoard UK Limited Daimler Group Daimler Trucks Danaher Corporation Davra Networks Diamond Track DigiCore Holdings Limited Directions Ltd Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles Dongfeng Motor Driveshield Installations limited ETS Business Solutions Ltd Eurowatch Exactrak Facebook Fiat FindWhere Fleet Technology Fleetcor Technologies Fleetlogis Ltd FleetM8 Ltd Fleetmatics Group PLC Fleetwyse FLS - Fast Lean Smart FollowUs Ford Motors Francisco Partners Frotcom UK Future Data Systems Garmin Ltd General Motors Glencore Google GpsGate GreenRoad Technologies UK Ltd Grupo UDA Hands 3 Communications UK Ltd Hardcat HaulTech I.D. Systems IBM ID Systems Inc Idem imetrik Inmarsat plc Interactive Communications Isuzu Isuzu Commercial Truck of America Itty Bitty Donuts Ituran Iveco I-Vision Kinishi - FleetSure Leversedge Telecom Services LiveTrak Locafix Ltd. Lysanda Ltd MAN Fleet Management MAN SE Masternaut Limited Matrix Telematics Mercedes-Benz MG Fleet Solutions Michelin Microlise Ltd Microsoft MiX Telematics Europe Limited MiX Telematics Ltd. Mobil Information Systems UK Mobile Installation Solutions Ltd MyDrive Solutions Navman Wireless UK Navstar.co.uk Networkfleet Nokia Northgate Vehicle Hire Novacom Europe Novatel Wireless Omnitracs LLC OnixSat OnStar LLC Oracle ORBCOMM Pathfinder Vehicle Systems Pear Track Systems Ltd Phil Oliver Solutions Pinpointers Telematics Pointer Telocation Qualcomm Enterprise Services (QES) Qualcomm Inc Qualcomm Telematics Quattro Telematics Ltd RAC Remote Asset Management Risk Technology Road Tech Computer Systems Limited Roadnet Technologies Roadsense Technology Limited Royal Mail RSG Engineering Limited RTL Telematics Safetrac Solutions Ltd Sage SAP Sascar Satrack Scania SE Scorpion Automotive Ltd SecureSeal Systems Limited Seven Telematics Simplytrak Skyguard SmartDrive Systems Summit Partners Tag Guard Limited Tastets System Tata Group Telegesis Teletrac Teletrack Telkom Telogis Inc Telular Corporation Thames Water The Chameleon Group Thermo King TIP Trailer Services TomTom Business Solutions TomTom N.V. Toyota Tracker Network (UK) Ltd Trackershack Trackitnow Trackyou Limited Trafficmaster Plc TrakM8 Transics International Trimble Navigation Limited Twitter Ubisense Ltd. Unisto Verizon Communications Inc Vista Equity Partners Vodafone Volkswagen Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Finance Volvo Group Volvo Trucks V-SOL Limited VT Solutions VW Group WABCO Trailer Telematic Service Webtech Wireless Wireless Matrix WirelessCar AB Worldline (ATOS) Xata Corp. Xiamen King Long Xlocate Zhengzhou Yutong Media contact Sara Peerun sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/25/16 -- San Marco Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: SMN) has closed its private placement announced March 15, 2016. Originally proposed to raise $150,000, the placement was significantly over-subscribed and raised gross proceeds of $439,550 by the issuance of 8,791,000 (formerly 3,000,000) units at $0.05 per unit. Finders' fees of 7% were paid by the issuance of 391,370 shares to qualified finders in respect of a portion of the units sold. Each unit consisted of one common share and one non-transferable warrant, each warrant exercisable to purchase a further share for a period of three years at $0.05 per share in the first year, $0.10 per share in the second year and $0.15 per share in the third year. After the four month restricted resale period expires on August 22, 2016, the expiry of the warrants may be accelerated if the closing price of San Marco's shares equals or exceeds, for 15 consecutive trading days, $0.10 per share in the first year, $0.20 per share in the second year or $0.30 per share in the third year and San Marco gives notice to the warrant holders advising, and issues a news release announcing, within two trading days after such 15 day period, that the warrants will expire in 20 trading days. Robert Willis, CEO commented; "We are extremely grateful to receive the financial support to not only initiate the San Marco / GlobeTrotters partnership field work, but also to continue reviewing and evaluating additional opportunities. We look forward to providing our shareholders with a continual flow of news regarding results of field work which has been initiated. " The proceeds from the placement will be used for acquisition and exploration of mineral targets in the state of Sonora, Mexico under San Marco's recently announced alliance with GlobeTrotters Resource Group Inc. and for general working capital. About San Marco San Marco Resources Inc. (www.sanmarcocorp.com) is a Canadian mineral exploration company with a portfolio of three promising projects in mining-friendly Mexico, including the Cuatro de Mayo Project in Sonora State on which the Company is currently active, and an alliance with GlobeTrotters Resource Group Inc. pursuant to which they will jointly initiate a state-wide effort to generate and acquire new high potential and overlooked mineral targets in Sonora State, Mexico. San Marco has a committed management team with extensive experience in Mexico and a proven track record of building shareholder value. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: San Marco Resources Inc. Robert Willis, B.Sc.,P. Eng CEO Cell: 604-813-2606 rwillis@sanmarcocorp.com VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - The European markets fell at the start of the new trading week, following the release of the weaker than expected German business confidence data. Investors also began the week in a cautious mood, ahead of central bank meetings in the U.S, Japan. The prices of most commodities were also under pressure Monday, on concerns over risks in debt and commodities markets after the official Xinhua News Agency reported another scam in China's risk-laden shadow banking sector involving about 1 billion yuan of investor funds. However, gold stocks climbed on their safe haven appeal. The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks decreased 0.75 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, lost 0.55 percent. The DAX of Germany dropped 0.76 percent and the CAC 40 of France fell 0.52 percent. The FTSE 100 of the U.K. declined 0.78 percent and the SMI of Switzerland finished lower by 0.36 percent. In Frankfurt, Deutsche Bank dropped 4.32 percent and Commerzbank surrendered 2.11 percent. E.ON declined 2.75 percent and peer RWE weakened by 2.31 percent. ThyssenKrupp decreased 3.71 percent and Salzgitter lost 1.98 percent. In Paris, EDF sank 11.07 percent after delaying a final investment decision on its contentious Hinkley Point nuclear project until September. Societe General declined 2.55 percent and BNP Paribas fell 2.40 percent. Credit Agricole also finished down by 2.27 percent. Technip dropped 2.71 percent and Total closed lower by 0.47 percent. In London, fashion retailer Ted Baker jumped 6.42 percent and Imperial Brands, formerly Imperial Tobacco, gained 3.07 percent on brokerage upgrades. Ashtead Group finished higher by 2.70 percent, after Bank of America Merrill Lynch upgraded its rating on the stock to 'Buy' from 'Underperform.' Mining stocks were under pressure due to falling commodity prices. Anglo American dropped 7.33 percent and BHP Billiton tumbled 5.80 percent. Glencore fell 4.20 percent and Rio Tinto weakened by 4.16 percent. Drug maker Novartis rose 0.27 percent on a report the Swiss drug maker plans to sell 13.5 billion Swiss francs stake in its rival Roche. Consumer electronics giant Philips Electronics fell 4.12 percent in Amsterdam after saying it is considering an initial public offering of shares for its lighting division. German business confidence weakened unexpectedly in April as firms were less satisfied with their current situation, survey results from the Munich-based Ifo Institute showed Monday. The Ifo Business Climate indicator dropped to 106.6 in April, while economists expected the gauge to rise to 107 from March's score of 106.7. British industrial order books improved marginally in April, the Industrial Trends Survey from the Confederation of British Industry showed Monday. The order book balance rose unexpectedly to -11 percent in April from -14 percent. It was forecast to fall to -17 percent. New home sales in the U.S. unexpectedly decreased in the month of March, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Monday. The report said new home sales fell 1.5 percent to an annual rate of 511,000 in March from a revised rate of 519,000 in February. The decrease surprised economists, who had expected new home sales to climb to a rate of 522,000 from the 512,000 originally reported for the previous month. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de TUSTIN, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/25/16 -- Logomark -- the industry-leading promotional products supplier -- is pleased to announce its 12 Weeks of Summer Campaign, which will run from May to July 2016 and offer weekly new product releases, promotions and prizes, including a dream trip for two to Southern California. "Logomark's 12 Weeks of Summer program is a fun way to show our appreciation to our customers and announce our exciting new product releases," says Scott Pearson, Logomark executive vice president - CRO. "We encourage everyone to check out our new products being released each and every week this summer as well as to enter to win some fabulous prizes!" To enter for the chance to win a dream trip for two to Southern California; a visit to the Logomark facility in Tustin, Calif.; dinner with Logomark CEO Trevor Gnesin and his executive staff; as well as two days of fun in the sun. There is no purchase necessary to enter, simply sign up for early NEW product announcements here, beginning on May 1st - July 31st. To win one of three customizable beach cruisers, follow Logomark on Instagram, post a fun summer photo with a Logomark product and tag your post with #12WeeksOfSummer. All winners will be selected the first week of August. Customers who call in to place orders during the 12 Weeks of Summer campaign will also be eligible for random spot giveaways. Follow Logomark on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for weekly product launches, or sign up for its sneak peek email program to preview these new products in advance. Throughout the duration of the campaign, Logomark will also be raising funds for the Independent Living Resource Center (ILRC), a non-profit organization, which has been committed to helping people with all kinds of disabilities -- physical, mental and developmental -- for the past 30 years. In order to raise $5,000 for the ILRC to purchase beach wheelchairs, Logomark employees will be selling $5 phone wallets (with the IRLC logo); and 100 percent of the proceeds will go towards the cause. To donate directly to the cause, visit www.ilrc-trico.org. For more information, please visit www.logomark.com. ABOUT LOGOMARK: Founded in 1993, Logomark is a premier supplier of personalized gift and promotional products for the North American and global advertising specialty market. The company is a certified member of the Quality Certification Alliance, ensuring standards that deliver the highest levels of product safety. Providing more than 3,000 top-quality products in diverse categories, Logomark persistently reinvents the promotional products industry exceptional product selections, innovative solutions and unequaled customer support. Logomark offers a complete line of products, an easy-to-use mobile app, an award-winning website and is ranked 8th in product searches on the industry's leading search platform. For more information on the company's broad line of quality promotional products, please call 800-789-4438 or visit www.logomark.com. Technavio has announced the top six leading vendors in their recentglobal light rail marketreport. This research report also lists 33 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. Competitive vendor landscape The global light rail market is moderately competitive because of the presence of a moderate number of vendors manufacturing rolling stocks. Many European and Chinese companies have strong market positions. Some of the leading vendors in the market are Alstom, Bombardier Transportation, China CNR, China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock, CJSC Transmashholding, CAF, GE Transportation, Hitachi, Hyundai Rotem, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, and Siemens. These players have a vast geographical presence with respect to the rail supply and its infrastructure business. "The market is characterized by its capital-intensive nature, which requires high initial investment cost. The key differentiating element in this industry is the contract fulfillment and project cost offered by companies," says Sharan Raj, a lead analyst at Technavio for logistics Request sample report: http://goo.gl/p01yHQ Top six light rail market vendors Alstom Alstom was founded in 1928 and is headquartered in Saint-Ouen, Paris, France. The company designs, supplies, and provides services to rail transport products and systems in France and worldwide. It also offers integrated power plants and related services and equipment for wide variety of energy sources, as well as technological solutions to reduce emission. In February 2016, the company plans to supply 26 CITADIS tram kits to Cital, a joint venture between Entreprise Metro d'Alger (EMA), Alstom, and Ferrovial, for assembling at its plant located in Annaba Province, Algeria. This supply contract was ordered to Cital by EMA for Setif Province, Algeria. Bombardier Bombardier was founded in 1942 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. The company designs, manufactures, and sells transportation equipment. As of December 31, 2015, the company recorded revenue of USD 18.17 billion and employs around 70,900 people worldwide. It invested USD 1.79 billion on R&D in FY2015. The company, through its transportation segment, provides light rail vehicles to the urban rail sector. It provides a comprehensive product portfolio that ranges from 100 to 70% low floor trams and light rail vehicles. So far, it has delivered 3,500 light rail vehicles and trams to clients in more than 20 countries globally. CAF CAF was incorporated in 1917 and is headquartered in Beasain, Spain. The company engages in manufacturing and marketing of rolling stock and railway components such as high-speed trains, metros, trams and LRV's, regional and commuter trains (diesel and electric), locomotives, axles and components primarily in Spain. CAF offers broad range of products and services related to transportation including light rail vehicle and tram-trains, commuter trains, metros, trams and light metros, traction systems and converters, and energy storage systems. The company has vast experience in the manufacture and implementation of urban transport systems like Urbos solution. This solution includes a range of trams, light rail vehicles, and tram-trains for passengers and commuters within city and nearby places. CRRC CRRC was formed in 2015, with the merger of China CNR Corporation (CNR) and CSR Corporation (CSR) and is headquartered in Beijing, China. It is a state-owned firm, which supplies rail transit equipment and related technologies. The company's business activities include R&D, design, manufacture, and related technical services for urban rail transit vehicles, railway rolling stock, engineering machinery as well as consulting services. It operates 46 wholly-owned and partially-owned subsidiaries located globally. The company under its rolling stock product category provides light rail vehicles. It develops and manufactures mass transit vehicles that provide low-level access along with low noise and comfort for the passengers and commuters. Its light rail vehicle features with aluminum floor, automatic drive, and bolsterless bogie. Mitsubishi Electric Mitsubishi Electric was established in 1921 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company manufactures and markets electrical and electronic products and systems worldwide. Its products are used in energy and electric systems, industrial automation, information and communication systems, electronic devices, and home appliances. The company provides a wide array of product offerings to the diverse end market. For the transportation sector, it provides rolling stock systems, station facility systems, transportation planning and control systems, communication system, as well as power supply and electrification systems. Siemens Siemens was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The company is a multinational conglomerate with core activities in the fields of energy, healthcare industry, and infrastructure sectors. It focuses on the areas of digitalization, electrification, and automation. The company produces energy-efficient and resource-saving technologies. It provides systems for power generation and transmission and medical diagnosis. In addition, the company specializes in infrastructure and industry solutions. The company offers integrated mobility solutions through its mobility division for sustainable solutions in the railway sector. It provides balanced and comprehensive rail-based solutions, like light rail, trams, and metro services for passengers and commuters. Browse Related Reports: Global Smart Railways System Market 2015-2019 Railway Infrastructure Spending Market in China 2015-2019 Global Energy Management Market in Railways 2016-2020 Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425005536/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com (All amounts in EUR)Q1 2016: Pro forma financial results-- - Revenue for Q1 2016 totaled 233.9m [Q1 2015: 244.1m of which discontinued operations were 6m]. -- - EBIT* was 35.2m or 15.1% of revenue for Q1 2016 [Q1 2015: Adj. EBIT** 35.2m 14.4%]. -- - The order book was at 339.9m at the end of the Q1 2016 [Q1 2015: 289.3m].Pro forma financial results include MPS for the full quarter. Pro forma Q1 2016 is compared to pro forma Q1 2015 to show more representative future indicator than the consolidated accounts.Order intake was robust and was on pro forma basis 254 million in the quarter. The order intake is well bal-anced both geographically and between product groups. Large Greenfields were secured in India, U.S., Brazil and Europe during the quarter. Cash flow and operational performance was strong and net debt/EBITDA is 2.9x at the end of the quarter, which is within the range of the targeted capital structure.The year began on a good note for Marel with the operations of MPS positively impacting on profitability and performance. Pro forma revenue was 234 million with EBIT of 15%. Taking into account the order book and delivery time of projects to customers, increase is foreseen in revenue over the course of the year.Management reaffirms guidance of modest organic revenue growth and increase in EBIT* between years compared with last year pro forma result of 977 million revenues and adjusted EBIT of 133 million.Q1 2016: Consolidated financial results-- - Revenue for Q1 2016 totaled 220.6m [Q1 2015: 209.3m]. -- - EBITDA for Q1 2016 was 38.2m or 17.3% of revenue [Q1 2015: Adj. EBITDA** 36.9m or 17.6%]. -- - EBIT* for Q1 2016 was 31.1m or 14.1% of revenue [Q1 2015: Adj. EBIT** 23.8m or 11.4% of revenue]. -- - Net result for Q1 2016 was 13.8m [Q1 2015: 12.6m]. Earnings per share were 1.93 euro cents in Q1 2016 [Q1 2015: 1.73 euro cents]. -- - Cash flow from operating activities before interest and tax in Q1 2016 was 27.9m [Q1 2015: 39.5m]. -- - The order book was at 339.9m at the end of the quarter compared with 178.0m at the end of Q1 2015 [Q4 2015: 180.9m].Marel's consolidated accounts include MPS for two months and are compared to Q1 2015 Marel stand alone.Arni Oddur Thordarson, CEO: "The year 2016 has kicked off well. I would like to welcome the MPS team on board. Our first steps as a united team are promising. We have maintained the momentum with excellent orders received in the quarter of 254 million, our operational results are strong with a pro forma EBIT of 15% and we enter the future with a record order book of 340 million.We can already see the positive effect that MPS is having on our operations. We are now a full line provider of solutions and services in Poultry, Meat and Fish. Marel Meat is now accounting for 33% of total revenue with best in class profitability. Taking into account the order book and the upcoming delivery time of projects to customers, we foresee an increase in revenues over the course of the year. We reaffirm our guidance of modest organic revenue growth and increase in operational results between years compared with the 2015 pro forma result of 977 million in revenue and adjusted EBIT of 133 million".MPS is part of Marel's official consolidated financial accounts since January 29, 2016. Integration of the two companies is on track. Marel provides pro forma financial results to help investors make comparisons of Marel's operating results from one financial period to another. Pro forma results are considered a better future indicator than consolidated accounts and give better reflection of the underlying business performance.Markets Marel is the leading global provider of advanced processing systems and services to the poultry, meat and fish industries. Marel management has adjusted how it views and manages the business and serves the customer needs. Since January 1, 2016, further processing previously reported as an, industry, will operate as a business unit within Marel that works across Marel Poultry, Marel Meat and Marel Fish. Marel will focus on providing standard solutions as well as full line offerings throughout the value chain from primary and secondary processing through further processing.The change from four to three operating industry segments does not have any impact on consolidated reve-nue, operational profit or net result.Remko Rosman, former CEO of MPS has now joined the Executive Team of Marel as the new Managing Di-rector of Marel Meat. David Wilson, former Managing Director of Marel Meat will lead Marel's activities in fur-ther processing as Managing Director.Marel has a commercially strong product portfolio stemming from its continuous focus on innovation and strategic acquisitions. Marel has enjoyed success and growth in primary and secondary processing and will now focus on seizing the growth in the further processing of Poultry, Meat and Fish.Marel Poultry Marel Poultry had a good start to the year with record order intake. Marel Poultry generated 124.4 million in revenue and EBIT of 17.8 million (14.3% of revenue) in Q1 2016. Marel Poultry accounted for 53.2% of Marel's revenue in the quarter. Projects were well distributed geographically and between different product groups and sizes, including large projects in the U.S. and Hungary. Primary and secondary processing is delivering good results while further processing is still lagging in profitability.During Q1, Marel Poultry participated in the IPPE Show in Atlanta where the sale of the 500th SensorX bone detection system was signed and all the latest state of the art poultry processing systems were on display. Marel also participated in VIV MEA in Dubai during the quarter where Marel's stand attracted customers from emerging markets.Marel Fish Marel Fish generated 31.5 million in revenue and EBIT of 2.3 million (7.4% of revenue) in Q1 2016. Marel Fish accounted for 13.4% of Marel's revenue in the quarter. Order intake in salmon is in line with expectations while whitefish and on-board solutions are underperforming. Refocusing of onboard solutions in Seattle is ongoing.Marel Fish exhibited all its latest solutions and equipment for the salmon industry at the Salmon ShowHow that was held in Progress Point, Denmark in February. Marel Fish also exhibited at the Seafood Expo North America in Boston and the CFIA in France during the quarter.Marel Meat Marel Meat includes MPS from January 29, 2016. In total, Marel Meat generated 76.5 million on pro forma basis in revenue and EBIT* of 13.6 million (17.8% of revenue) in Q1 2016. Marel Meat accounted for 32.7% of Marel's revenue in Q1 2016. Order intake and volume is at a good level and the pipeline is promising. Marel with MPS on board is a leading global provider in the primary and secondary processing of meat. The plan is to step up investments in further processing to capture growth going forward.During the quarter Marel Meat participated in the IPPE Show in Atlanta, Anuga in Germany, the CFIA exhibition in France and organized the 5th Meat ShowHow in Progress Point.Financial itemsCash flow Marel returned a healthy cash flow from operations with operational cash flow before interest and tax being 27.9 million for Q1 2016 compared with 39.5 million at Q1 2015. Cash flow fluctuates with timing of orders. Cash flow related to interest and finance costs are high due to payment of upfront fees and other fees related to refinancing. These fees are capitalized and amortized over the expected lifetime of the facility.In Q1 2016, Marel sold 10.8 million treasury shares for a total amount of 16.3 million to shareholders and the employees of MPS, as part of the acquisition price. Marel now holds 20.1 million treasury shares.Financing and reporting In Q1 2016 Marel entered into a 670 million loan facility agreement with eight international banks: ING bank, Rabobank, ABN Amro,Nordea, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Landsbankinn and UniCredit Bank. The facility converts the previous facility into an all senior facility, extends the term to 2020 as well as provides funds for the acquisition of MPS. As a result of the acquisition, net interest bearing debt increased during Q1 2016 and amounts to 486 million at the end of the quarter, compared with 161.7 million at the end of Q1 2015 ago. The balance sheet remains healthy and the total net leverage ratio is 2.9 at the end of Q1 2016 and remains below the targeted range of 3x Net debt/EBITDA.As a result of the acquisition of MPS, approximately 245 million of goodwill is recognized. Furthermore, ap-proximately 200 million is recognized as intangible assets broken down into three main items, technology of approximately 54 million, customer relationships of approximately 118 million and order backlog of approxi-mately 24 million. The amortization of the purchase price allocation in Q1 2016 was 4.5 million: 2.9 million re-lated to the fair value lift up on the order backlog and1.7 million of amortization of identified intangible assets. The order backlog will be fully amortized mid-2017 and the other identified intangible assets will be amortized straight line over a 20 year period. The amounts recorded are provisional; the period during which adjustments are permitted is limited to 12 months from the date of acquisition.Outlook Management reaffirms guidance of modest organic revenue growth and increase in EBIT* between years compared with last year pro forma result of 977 million revenues and adjusted EBIT of 133 million.A commercially strong product portfolio and focused market approach together with tailwind in the market has driven strong revenue growth in recent quarters. The industry that Marel operates in has a history of 4-6% annual growth and it is expected that average annual growth will remain at that level in the long term. Marel's aim is to continue to grow faster than the market by leveraging its market presence and with continuous in-vestments in innovation.Mid- and long-term, the company believes its innovative products and global presence in the poultry, meat and fish segments will secure good growth and increased profitability. Results may vary from quarter to quarter due to general economic developments, fluctuations in orders received and deliveries of larger systems.Presentation of results, April 26, 2016 Marel will present its results at an investor meeting on Tuesday, April 26, at 8:30 am (GMT), at the Company's headquarters at Austurhraun 9, Gardabaer. The meeting will also be webcasted at marel.com/webcast.Publication days of Consolidated Financial Statements in 2016-- - 2nd quarter 2016 July 27, 2016 -- - 3rd quarter 2016 October 26, 2016 -- - 4th quarter 2016 February 1, 2017Release of financial statements will take place after market closing on the aforementioned dates.For further information, contact: Audbjorg Olafsdottir, Corporate Director of Investor Relations and Communications, tel: (+354) 563 8626 / mobile: (+354) 853 8626.Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=558022 TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/25/16 -- Brionor Resources Inc. ("Brionor" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: BNR) is pleased to announce the results of its Special Meeting of Shareholders held today. With regards to the matters proposed: 1. The sale of the Company's Pitt Gold Project (the "Project") to First Mining Finance Corp. ("First Mining") was approved (99.968% of votes cast). 2. The Company received approval (93.599% of votes cast) for, if deemed appropriate by the Board of Directors of the Company, the consolidation of its issued and outstanding common shares on the basis of one (1) post-consolidation share for not more than four (4) pre-consolidation common shares. With the approval by shareholders of the sale of the Company's Pitt Gold Project to First Mining Finance Corp now complete (for full details please see Press Release dated March 7, 2016), closing of the transaction is expected to occur on April 27, 2016 and remains subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company at this time also wishes to announce that it has terminated its acquisition of Atala Resources Corp. ("Atala") under the terms as previously contemplated (for full details please see Press Release dated February 20, 2013). The Company and Atala continue to evaluate alternatives for a revised transaction, but at this time no agreement is pending. Brionor is a junior mining exploration company with a portfolio of exploration projects in Quebec. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Brionor Resources Inc. Lewis Lawrick President & CEO 647-478-5307 TORONTO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AuRico Metals Inc. (TSX: AMI) ("AuRico" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Environmental Assessment Certificate application (the "Application") for its Kemess Underground Project has been screened and formally accepted for detailed review by the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office ("BC EAO"). AuRico is making revisions and reformatting the Application to integrate the clarifications and additional information provided by AuRico during the screening period. The BC EAO will initiate the 180-day review once AuRico has submitted the revised Application - expected to be in approximately two weeks. The BC EAO is managing the environmental assessment in a Substituted Process on behalf of British Columbia and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. About AuRico Metals AuRico Metals is a mining royalty and development company whose producing gold royalty assets include a 1.5% NSR royalty on the Young-Davidson Gold Mine, a 0.25% NSR royalty on the Williams Mine at Hemlo, and a 0.5% NSR royalty on the Eagle River Mine - all located in Ontario, Canada. AuRico Metals also has a 2% NSR royalty on the Fosterville Mine and a 1% NSR royalty on the Stawell Mine, located in Victoria, Australia. Aside from its diversified royalty portfolio, AuRico owns (100%) the advanced Kemess Gold-Copper Project in British Columbia, Canada. AuRico Metals' head office is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Cautionary Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information as defined under Canadian and U.S. securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. The words "expect", "believe", "anticipate", "will", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "budget" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements related to the Company's outlook and key deliverables on Kemess over the next 12 months. These statements are based on a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management at the time of making such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements and the factors and assumptions underlying them in this document include the timing of the government decision in response to the Company's environmental assessment application. Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. Such statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including assumptions about: the timing and ability to obtain provincial and federal approval of the environmental assessment application, the number of comments or questions raised by partners or the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office, and additional studies required in order to address concerns raised and the results of those studies. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. For further information: Chris Richter, President and Chief Executive Officer, AuRico Metals Inc., +1-416-216-2780, chris.richter@auricometals.ca Helium, a San Francisco-based Internet of Things (IoT) analytics company, closed $20m in Series B funding round. The round was led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), with participation from Khosla Ventures, FirstMark and Munich RE/Hartford Steam Boiler Ventures. In conjunction with GV General Partner Andy Wheeler will join Heliums Board of Directors. The company will use the funds to introduce the Helium IoT platform at scale in several industries. Founded in 2013 and led by Amir Haleem, CEO, Helium provides companies with an analytics platform to monitor and learn from physical things in their environment. The platforms smart sensors deployable in minutes are built for the most demanding enterprise requirements with applications in trials with various customers in the healthcare, food and beverage, transportation and grocery industries, including restaurant chains and hospitals. The company also announced today a new environmental smart sensorHelium Green, which that monitors temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, light and motion, and the Helium Pulse application for web and mobile, which enables remote monitoring and alerting to allow companies to control Helium smart sensors, program alert parameters, and create business value based on those insights. FinSMEs 25/04/2016 Plug and Plays innovation platform, Plug and Play IoT, has just accepted 25 startups to join the fourth batch of its program. The startups were selected by new corporate anchor partners Fujitsu, Caterpillar, Panasonic, Honeywell, and SOMPO Digital Lab, along with Philips Lighting, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Mercedes-Benz, SC Johnson, and Munich Re. Among the others, the batch includes the following companies: Angee, an intelligent home security system taking care of a familys safety, connecting to members via mobile devices, and adapting to their routine. The company was backed on Kickstarter in November 2015 and is currently preparing the product for market launch. Aquadation, which provides Automated Self-Leveling Residential Home Foundation Repair System using IoT sensors, Cloud Computing and Buried Micro-drip Irrigation Technology. BeeHex, a 3D food printing company led by Anjan Contractor, Chintan Kanuga, Jordan French, Ben Feltner and Pei-Ling Lee. A patent-pending pneumatic technology makes pizza and confectionery hardware for commercial kitchens, theme parks and the event management and food catering industries. Based in Sunnyvale, California, BeeHex is backed by Plug & Play Ventures. BreezoMeter, which delivers dynamic, real-time air quality data to allow municipalities, smart cities and businesses to make informed decisions on their wellbeing. It has over 50M daily users in 28 countries. ElectrIQ, which offers an all-in-one home energy management system that intelligently monitors energy consumption and sustainably reduces home energy costs. Sentio Solutions, which provides a smart wristband that leverages proprietary algorithms to recognize and track human emotions, and personalized recommendations based on advanced psychological techniques to allow users to develop positive emotional habits and improve wellbeing. Kwik, an ordering solution for any brand which includes interfaces to any payment & delivery services as well as to the existing e-commerce system of the brand. Natural Machines, which makes Foodini, the 3D food printer to print all types of foods. Nearable, which creates a Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) location network. oneID, an identity lifecycle management for IoT. Oxie, a smart, wearable air purifier. PRS Medical Technologies, which designs and manufactures support surfaces for seat cushion pressure reduction benefits. Reality Analyticsm, which uses advanced, patented artificial intelligence techniques to detect real-world events in sensor and signal data so apps and devices can take action. Ripples, which makes Ripple Maker, a machine that creates coffee ripples from any image or text atop the foam layer of coffee beverages. Scenseit, which develops an IoT platform for indoor air quality & scent control to allow existing and new emerging IoT verticals to deliver new advanced products. Swiftly, a San Francisco, CA-based maker of data-driven software apps focused on improving urban mobility. Timeli, an Asset Performance Intelligence solution specifically targeted to asset intensive industries like Utilities, Process manufacturing, Oil & Gas and other verticals. Titanium Falcon, whose first product is a smart ring for mobile gaming and VR called Talon, which allows wearers to swipe fingers to play games or control apps on devices such as phones, tablets, VR headset, smart TVs, etc. TRX Systems, which delivers infrastructure-free location, tracking, and status-monitoring of personnel in indoor and other environments without accurate GPS. Vyooit, an on-demand live POV platform for immediate visual feedback within the Enterprise and between Enterprise and consumers. Launched in 2006, Plug and Play Tech Center is a global technology accelerator and venture fund which includes entrepreneurs from 24 countries. With over 350 startups and 300 corporate partners, Plug and Play provides active investments with 180 Silicon Valley VCs, and more than 365 networking events per year. Companies in the community have raised over $3.5 billion in funding, with portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club, PayPal, SoundHound, and Zoosk. The directon of the PnP IoT program is Phillip Vincent. FinSMEs 25/04/2016 Vijay Mallya, the embattled liquor-baron, is facing more troubles with Rajya Sabha Ethics Committee, on Monday, recommending termination of his Parliament membership. Mallya has been given a week to respond to the panels recommendation. Mallyas MP status was supposed to expire in June, 2016. Mallya, facing charges of Rs 9,000 crore loan default to a clutch of 17-banks and financial irregularities, moved to UK on 2 March. Last week, the government had revoked Mallya's passport on the request of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after the agency found evidence of fund diversion by Mallya with respect to the Rs 900 crore IDBI Bank loan default case. The industrialist is also facing non-bailable arrest warrants (NBW) against him on charges related to cheque bouncing. Banks are chasing Mallya since he had furnished personal guarantees to banks against the loan facilities extended to his now-defunct airline, Kingfisher, grounded in 2012. The loan became a Non-Performing Asset (NPA) in 2012. In an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court last week, Mallya had said that banks have no right to seek his foreign asset details. The liquor-baron also blamed the haste of Indian government in revoking his passport, thus creating impediments in the whole process and endeavor. Earlier, Mallya had offered to pay Rs 4,000 crore to banks but banks rejected the offer. In their reply to SC on Monday, banks said Mallya has failed to comply with the SC directions. Mallya will move his plea in SC tomorrow. Mallyas record in Parliament Mallya has been an MP twice--first in 2002 and in 2010. Going by the data (on his second term that started in mid-2010 and ending mid-2016) on the website of PRS Legislative shows that Mallya has an attendance of 30 percent. The number of debates he participated is nil. Mallya has asked 216 questions against the national average of 312 and state average of 234. Of the questions Mallya asked, 29 were starred and 187 unstarred. A starred question is one which gets an oral answer in the House and the member can have supplementary questions. Only 20 such questions are allowed in a day. Unstarred questions get a written reply that is tabled in the House. Only 235 such questions can be asked in a day. Number of private member bills moved by Mallya is again nil. But the national and state averages are also a minimal 1.2 and 1.1. This is not surprising given such bills are rarely passed and made into laws. A further break-up of the data shows that Mallya's lowest attendance was in Winter Session of 2013 - just 10 percent. The highest was in Monsoon Session of 2010 - 77 percent. It has to be noted that this was soon after his induction into the Upper House. According to MPLADS website, Mallya had received Rs 14.22 crore funds (with interest) under member of Parliament local area development scheme (MPLADS), of which he has utilised Rs 10 crore. New Delhi: Snapdeal-backed PepperTap has decided to shut down its cash-burning grocery delivery operations and instead focus on expanding its logistics business. Citing issues like high customer acquisition costs and poor app integration with partner stores, PepperTap CEO Navneet Singh said the company was "losing cash on every order" and has decided to "preserve a large amount of the investor capital" than "be at the bottom of the abyss". "We couldn't shake off the feeling that we were walking (not racing like some other companies) towards the edge of a cliff hoping that things will get better before we reach the abyss... The unique challenges of this business are not solvable in the short term and certainly not solvable without massive injections of capital. We would have to confront this issue sooner or later," Singh said. PepperTap, which is controlled by Nuvo Logistics, has raised USD 40 million so far and counts e-commerce major Snapdeal, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Ru-Net, Beenext and JAFCO Asia among its investors. Last year, it had also acquired Bengaluru-based delivery startup Jiffstore for an undisclosed amount. When contacted, a Snapdeal spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. The decision to shut operations will result in about 150 job losses. "We have about 200 people. While about 50 are being absorbed in the logistics business, we will have to let go of the others. We are offering compensation packages with upto three months of salary depending on the seniority and tenure of the employee," he said. The company will now focus on expanding the logistics business. "We are already working with many e-commerce firms and have a strong reverse logistics operations. In the next few months, we will focus on strengthening our forward logistics," Singh said. Nuvo has a presence in 32 cities in the country and works with e-commerce players like Snapdeal, Patym and Shopclues. According to industry analysts, hyperlocal delivery startups like PepperTap, BigBasket and Grofers have been feeling the heat of a slowdown in investment as they operate on wafer-thin margins and end up losing money on every delivery. PepperTap was already scaling down operations in certain cities. "The most logical thing to do to solve all three of these problems simultaneously, was to halt operations in some cities. We decided on this list by looking at the size of our customer base in each city, and the pain we would cause to all stakeholders by shutting them down. Relatively new cities with a small customer base were selected for closure," he said. In a blog, Singh said described his journey as "a roller-coaster with ups and downs in equal measure". Set up in September 2014, the company was processing about 20,000 orders on an average daily by October 2015 and was the "only business in town to be operating on a 100 per cent inventory-less model". "We were going to revolutionise grocery shopping. No more queues, no more parking hassles, no more bickering with sabzi-wallahs. We would bring the existing inventory of local stores online to our app and then deliver customer orders through our super-optimal, well-trained delivery fleet for a minimal charge," Singh said in the blog. He added that customers also seemed to love the app with local stores on its platform witnessing improving sales by an average of 30-40 per cent. "In the race to pepper the whole country with PepperTap, we had brought too many stores online far too quickly.... To keep enticing customers to buy from our platform, we were spending a lot of time and energy to devise clever sales and discount schemes... This was not hugely problematic in itself, we had money in the bank and investors were on board with this plan," Singh wrote. However, the "harshness of a pessimistic funding environment globally also started creeping in", which Singh said found the company at "the toughest node in the decision tree yet". "At this point, we were forced to ask ourselves whether our continuing to operate in the grocery delivery space was not, in fact, doing a massive disservice to our current investors and employees," he added. plans to offer a support package to save Tata Steel's UK operations will meet European Union (EU) rules on state aid, Business Secretary Sajid Javid said today, insisting any deal would not be a bailout or nationalisation. Javid had last week pledged to take a stake of up to 25 per cent in Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales, as well as to inject up to 1 billion pounds of taxpayer loans, in an effort to attract a buyer and save up to 10,000 jobs in the steel sector. Dismissing talk of part-nationalisation which may fall foul of EU rules, Javid told The Sunday Times in an interview: "It will all be compatible with state aid... government can provide financing as long as it's on commercial terms. I don't envisage having to apply for any exemption or approval from state aid. Whatever we've got in mind is compliant. It's not a bailout; it's not nationalisation. Working within that framework we can see success at the end of the road." "In situations like these nationalisation is rarely the answer. The British steel industry would be in much worse shape had it not been privatized in the first place," said Javid. Last week, he returned from his second visit in a month to Mumbai, where he met Tata chairman Cyrus Mistry to flesh out details of the government support package. The newspaper quoted sources to say the government's decision to back Port Talbot was taken by British Prime Minister David Cameron with an eye on the in-out European Union referendum. It is believed that Cameron may be gambling that the European Commission may allow its bending of state aid rules if it helps to keep Britain within the union. But Javid insisted: "This has got nothing to do with June 23. I don't think the referendum changes things one way or the other." The fate of Britain's steel industry has become a hugely significant and divisive issue, on which 15,000 jobs and 25,000 in the wider supply chain hang. Javid said: "There's every reason to think that steel can be a viable business in Europe for commercial operators. It's an important industry economically. I wouldn't want to think that one day Britain becomes a country that has to import all its steel. For any economy the size of Britain, given our manufacturing base, given aerospace and automotive, these are industries that, one way or the other, rely on steel." The Tata Group had announced last month that it would quit Britain's steel industry entirely, putting the Port Talbot steelworks up for sale as well as its vast Scunthorpe plant, which has since been acquired by Greybull Capital. The exit appeared to catch Javid unaware as he was in Australia with his daughter at the time on an official trip. Javid claimed his intervention persuaded the Indian conglomerate to grant Port Talbot a stay of execution. "A few months back they contacted us. They were considering closing Port Talbot and mixing the rest of their downstream business in with their other businesses in Europe. That clearly alarmed us and we managed to persuade them that it's not in anyone's interest if you just close this hugely important part of your business. If you believe it's not profitable for you... it might fit in with someone else's business," Javid told the newspaper. NEW DELHISaudi Aramco is considering proposals to buy stakes in Indian oil refining and petrochemical projects, India's Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Monday, as the world's biggest oil exporter seeks outlets for its oil. India, the world's third-biggest oil consumer, imports almost 80 percent of its crude requirements, mostly from Middle East nations. In the first quarter, Saudi Arabia was India's biggest exporter of oil, sending about 889,000 barrel per day (bpd) to the country, or about 21 percent of the total. Pradhan earlier this month met with Saudi Aramco chairman Khalid al-Falih and sought Saudi investment in a planned 1.2 million bpd refinery on India's west coast, the expansion of the Bina refinery and a petrochemical plant at Dahej, he said today. "All the three we have offered to Saudi. The two sides will decide on the proposals in a time bound manner," Pradhan told Reuters, meaning there are deadlines for reaching investment decisions. Saudi Aramco did not respond to an email from Reuters seeking comments. Three Indian state refiners - Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS), Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL.NS) and Bharat Petroleum Corp BPCl.NS - plan to build the 1.2-million bpd refinery on the country's west coast at a cost of more than 1 trillion rupees ($15.02 billion) to meet the country's growing fuel demand. Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd is expanding the capacity of the Bina refinery in Central India by 30 percent to 156,000 bpd while OPAL, majority owned by Oil and Natural Gas Ltd (ONGC.NS), is building a petrochemical plant in Western Gujarat state. Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser last month said his company will is looking to expand its downstream investments in China, Malaysia, India, Vietnam and Indonesia. Saudi Aramco's expansion into refineries in major markets help guarantee demand for its crude oil exports amid intensifying global competition. India will be the most important driver of world energy demand growth in the years to come with its oil consumption rising by 6 million bpd to about 10 million bpd by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. In the fiscal year to March 2016, the country's fuel demand surged at its highest pace in at least 15 years. ($1 = 66.5843 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Nidhi Verma and Nigam Prusty; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. New Delhi: Former telecommunications minister A Raja attended Parliament Wednesday, a day after he was released from Tihar Jail after getting bail in the 2G spectrum case. The DMK MP reached the Lok Sabha post noon after question hour was over. As cameras clicked away, Raja, who walked out of prison Tuesday evening after 15 months, did not respond to questions from the media. Giving him bail, the court had said that he could not visit his former office, the department of telecommunications, or his home state Tamil Nadu without permission. Raja resigned as minister on 14 November 2010 after the Comptroller and Auditor General reported that his 2008 decision to allocate 2G spectrum on a first-come-first-served basis had caused the exchequer a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The CBI arrested him on 2 February 2011. IANS The Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Monday penalised Kanhaiya Kumar by imposing a fine of Rs 10,000 for violating disciplinary norms in connection with the 9 February event at the university. Supporters of Kanhaiya, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya have been rusticated from the university as well. Speaking to Hindustan Times, a senior university official said, "A fine of Rs 10,000 has been imposed on Kanhaiya. Umar and Anirban have been rusticated for one semester each while Gattoo has been rusticated for two semesters." HLEC set up by #JNU suspends Umar Khalid for one semester; Rs 20,000 fine imposed on him. https://t.co/qUNBgGJ5Sd NewsX (@NewsX) April 25, 2016 Based on high level enquiry committee (HLEC), the university administration has also taken strict action against 14 other students including Mujeeb Gattoo who were present during the event where slogans praising Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru were allegedly raised. Umar Khalid has been rusticated from the university for one semester, by a panel which probed a controversial event on Kashmir held in the campus, officials told IANS. According to NewsX, a fine of Rs 20,000 has been imposed on Khalid. The university also rusticated Mujeeb Gattoo, a Kashmiri student who was found shouting anti-national slogans on February 9, for 2 semesters. Anirban Bhattacharya has been rusticated till 15 July. The panel has prohibited them from pursuing any course for the next 5 years. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students -- Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi -- while hostel facilities have been withdrawn for Ashutosh Kumar for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21. A high-level committee constituted by the university to probe the February 9 event found ABVP member Saurabh Sharma, who had objected to the event, "guilty" of blocking traffic on the day of the event and penalised him with Rs 20,000. Surprisingly, Aishwarya Adhikari, whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been imposed the same penalty. "Based on the report of the high-level committee which arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU Security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record, the university has decided to rusticate three students," a senior university official told PTI. "While Anirban Bhattacharya has been rusticated till 15 July, he will not be able to pursue any course or participate in any activity on campus for next five years, Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters," the official said. Other students who were slapped with a fine of Rs 20,000 are Rama Naga, Ananth Kumar, Sweta Raj, Rubina and Chintu Kumari. Two other persons Banojyotsna Lahiri and Draupadi Gosh has been made out of bound from campus for five years, The Times of India reported. On the evening of 9 February, 30 minutes before the scheduled start of a cultural event organised by the Democratic Students Union (an ultra-leftist group) to protest against the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, the university administration of Jawaharlal Nehru University cancelled the event. Dozens of students gathered on the Sabarmati lawns including Kashmiri students to protest against the cancellation and raised slogans. Umar Khalid, who was one among them, has been penalised for alledged pro-Afzal sloganeering. Khalid and Bhattacharya had allegedly raised "anti-India" slogans. The two Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students surrendered before police on Tuesday outside a gate of the university after a case against them was registered at Vasant Kunj police station. Kanhaiya was arrested on 12 February, three days after the controversial event and around 10 days later, Umar and Anirban resurfaced on the University campus before surrendering to police. The police had interrogated Kanhaiya, Khalid and Anirban together for a day after which they identified as many as 22 persons who allegedly participated in the JNU event. Both Kanhaiya and Umar had argued before a Delhi court that they never raised any anti-national slogans and claimed that video footages showing them raising these slogans were "false and doctored". While Umar and Anirban were found guilty of triggering communal violence and disrupting communal harmony on campus, Mujeeb was found guilty of participating in the sloganeering. The report of the five-member panel had also pointed out lapses on part of administration and taken into account the role of outsiders into the event. However, no action has been taken against any administrative official. "As per the committee findings, application for holding this event 'circumvented' the 'permission process' and 'the organisers disobeyed the instructions from the administration' not to hold it and that amounted to 'willful defiance'," the JNU official said. He said disciplinary measures have been taken for not following university procedures, providing misinformation to the university, misconduct and indiscipline, causing and colluding in the unauthorised entry of any person into the campus, putting up objectionable posters, arousing communal, caste or regional feelings and creating disharmony, blockade or forceful prevention of any normal movement of traffic and violation of security, safety rules notified by the university. Based on the preliminary report of the committee, the university had suspended eight students, however, their suspension was revoked when the panel had submitted it report on 11 March. Kanhaiya Kumar, JNU Student Union's President, alleged that on his way to Pune from Mumbai, a man tried to "strangulate" him on board a Jet Airways flight on Sunday. Yet again, this time inside the aircraft, a man tries to strangulate me. Kanhaiya Kumar (@kanhaiyajnusu) April 24, 2016 The passenger, who allegedly strangled Kanhaiya, denies all claims of any attack and said it was a 'cheap publicity' stunt by the JUNSU president, adding "My hand just happened to brush his neck as I was trying to balance myself on an aching leg. I do not know him personally though I have seen his pictures," reported Hindustan Times. The Mumbai Police said that the student leader was involved in a tussle with a fellow passenger when the aircraft was on the tarmac at the Mumbai airport. After Kanhaiya brought the issue up with Jet Airways officials, they off-loaded Kanhaiya and the assailant, identified as Manas Deka from the aircraft. Kanhaiya's companions were also asked to get off the flight, reported the Hindustan Times. Kanhaiya, agitated with Jet Airways deplaning him, tweeted the following: Basically @jetairways sees no difference between someone who assaults nd d person who is assaulted. They will deplane you, if you complain. Kanhaiya Kumar (@kanhaiyajnusu) April 24, 2016 Manas Deka, a TSC employee, was returning to Pune from Kolkata. The Kolkata-Mumbai-Pune flight halted at Mumbai for half an hour, according to a report in The Indian Express. Described as a 'strong BJP supporter' in Kanhaiya's tweet, Deka denied being a BJP supporter and even said that he has never voted in his entire life, added The Indian Express report. According to Deka's statement, he "accidentally tripped" on Kanhaiya as there was little space to walk and that he "immediately apologised," said The Indian Express report. Deka further added that three or four more passengers, who he believes were Kanhaiya's companions, started to accuse him of trying to strangle Kanhaiya and this prompted the student leader to join in the outcry. Manas Deka, works in TCS, a strong BJP supporter assaulted me inside the aircraft. Is assault the only tool you have, to fight dissent? Kanhaiya Kumar (@kanhaiyajnusu) April 24, 2016 The Hindustan Times report said that the Maharashtra government has ordered a probe into the matter. The report added that a non-cognisable complaint was registered against Deka first and then by Sunday afternoon, a complaint against Kanhaiya was also registered. A senior police official, speaking to Hindustan Times said that it was one of Kanhaiya's associates that filed the complaint against Deka and further added that Kanhaiya also refused to undergo a medical examination to assert the strangulation. Maharashtra's minister of state (home) Ram Shinde, said that Kanhaiya was trying to malign BJP's image and added that he had been provided full security on the aircraft, reported Hindustan Times. The report added "Kanhaiya Kumar was travelling with three other persons. He had been allotted a window seat and thus, while crossing over apassenger who was seated in the middle, he got into a fight with him. The other passenger did not even know this man was Kanhaiya Kumar and he, too, is alleging he was beaten up by the student leader," Shinde said. Jet Airways issued an official statement which said that some guests "have been off-loaded at Mumbai airport in the interest of operational safety." Kottayam: For the first time in its history, the 1000-year-old mosque at Thazhathangady, famous for its rich architecture and wood carvings, has thrown open its doors for Muslim women in Kerala. Women were allowed to enter the mosque on Sunday to take a look at its famed architecture. Thousands of Muslim women, including tourists, flocked to the mosque from various parts of Kerala and abroad. The move comes at a time when the demand for permitting women at places of worship is gaining ground. "This is a 1000-year-old mosque. Our women had not seen it so far and had a great desire to visit the holy place. So the mosque committee decided to allow women to visit it on 24 April and 8 May", Advocate Nawab Mulladom, President of the mosque committee, told PTI. The mosque was not opened for "any celebrations or for offering prayers. It was only to allow women to see the place", he said, adding the men were asked to leave the mosque before the women were allowed in. Muslim women wore their traditional attire during the visit. Fathima, one of the lucky ones to enter the holy place, said, "Standing before many historical mosques, I had always wanted to enter and offer worship. But I was afraid of even expressing that desire. I am happy that such an opportunity has come now". The Juma Masjid is a mosque situated at Thazhathangady, one of the Heritage Zones of Kerala, in Kottayam town. Situated on the banks of the Meenachil river, the mosque is famous for its rich architecture, wood carvings and beauty. The mosque, considered the oldest in India, is also known as the 'Taj Juma Masjid'. It has a square inner courtyard, an exquisitely carved wooden gabled roof, a traditional bathing area and lovely latticed windows, making it resemble a king's palace. New Delhi: The Supreme Court collegium will respond next week to government on the revised memorandum of procedure, a document to guide appointment of judges to the apex court and the high courts, Chief Justice of India T S Thakur said on Sunday. He said the document, prepared by the government to enhance transparency in judicial appointments, will be sent back to the Centre next week with the comments of the SC collegium. Thakur said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who headed the Group of Ministers to draft the memorandum, had spoken with him on whether the collegium was ready with its response. He said Swaraj was abroad and the SC judges were busy with their retreat at Bhopal and the Chief Minister-Chief Justices conference. "Now she is back. We will meet her and give our comments," he said addressing a press conference on the decisions taken at the conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts held here. On whether the judiciary was 'okay' with the text of the memorandum, Justice Thakur said the core of the document, based on a Supreme Court judgment, will remain "unaltered" that the collegium will make a recommendation. "Things like the number of judgments a candidate has delivered are contributory in nature," he said, adding that judiciary is ready for the new document. "We have no problems". A day before Holi, the file relating to the draft MoP was sent to the CJI. The collegium consists of CJI and four senior judges of the apex court. If the draft is ratified, it would be put in public domain by the Department of Justice in the Law Ministry. If changes are suggested, then the Law Ministry would have to redraft it. The NDA government wants both the Centre and state governments to have their say in recommending candidates for appointment to the higher judiciary. While delivering its verdict on ways to make the collegium system more transparent, the apex court had asked the government to rework the MoP in consultation with the states and high courts. The CJI said the collegium has now cleared all proposals sent to it in six weeks. While 145 judges were either elevated as permanent judges in the high courts or were appointed as additional judges, 169 proposals were still pending with the government, he said. He wondered why the government was delaying the appointment of judges when there was a huge backlog of cases. Responding to a question on the delay in clearing names, Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda said verification by the Intelligence Bureau takes time. The CJI was of the view that IB should be asked to submit its report in a fixed timeframe. "The Director, IB should depute more men. The government is very resourceful. In fact there is no system to track the recommendations made by the collegium. We should have a system to know where the recommendation is. We don't know whether a secretary is sitting on it or it is with the PMO or Law Ministry," he said. He said most of the appointments were not fresh in nature. Additional judges have been made permanent judges in most cases. Which means that no fresh appointments were made against vacancies. "How much time does it require when there is an avalanche of cases," he had said this morning in his address while referring to delays in appointing judges. The CJI said 50 per cent of the recommendations made by the high courts were rejected by the collegium as "we have raised the bar". Referring to suggestions, including that from the Prime Minister, that judiciary should cut down on its vacations, he said, "we don't go to Manali. Judges of constitutional benches write their order...When one side is ready, the other is not. Ask the Bar if they are ready," he said. Trust our lawmakers not to compromise on small comforts. Trust them not to bother about the message they convey to people at large with their actions either. Parliamentarians cut across party lines on Monday to express their reluctance to follow the odd-even formula under implementation on Delhis roads. Many argued that they should be exempt from odd-even when Parliament is in session. Monday was the day for cars with odd numbered plates but many lawmakers used their private cars with even numbers to reach Parliament. Actor-MP Paresh Rawal was considerate enough to issue an apology to Delhiites and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. He even paid the fine of Rs 2,000. It was the MPs' first experience with the second phase of odd-even, which came into force on 15 April as Monday was the first day of the Budget session after a break of more than a month. The Delhi government had arranged six special buses to ferry lawmakers to Parliament during the duration of the odd-even. However, these were not of much use as many members decided to use their own cars. The success of the road rationing experiment requires voluntary cooperation. If leaders are supposed to lead by example, ours were certainly giving a poor account of themselves. Kejriwal wont be happy. Our venerable leaders may have their genuine reasons to feel uncomfortable with the AAP governments experiment to curb air pollution in the city, but their reluctance to comply certainly sends a wrong signal to the residents of Delhi. The residents have to face several problems while commuting taxis and autos charging extra, an extremely hot weather but they have not complained much. This is an idea they supported wholeheartedly in January and they are prepared to give it another try. But now, thanks to the MPs, they might think,Why do we follow odd-even when our leaders dont? If they see no sense in the experiment, there must be something to it. Our leaders must give serious thought to the impact of their actions on the law-abiding public. Violating the rule and paying the fine for it does not amount to exemplary conduct. Tomorrow, a whole lot of people could make it a standard practice. There are enough people in Delhi who can afford a fine of Rs 2,000 a day for six/seven days. The residents of Delhi are making a sacrifice for a bigger cause they are making the city better for their elderly and the future generations. The odd-even experiment may not be the total solution not even a good one as many experts would say for the massive air pollution problem in the city but the residents are giving it an honest try. Their effort should not be made to look frivolous. Its time our lawmakers set the right example. Many of them did by using the bus provided by the Delhi government. It would be nice if others followed without hesitation. New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday said her state needs special care and attention as people there are still nursing "old wounds inflicted by misfortune and tragedy" as she sought support and cooperation to tide over the challenges in bringing it back on the path of development. As a Chief Minister, Mehbooba said, her prime objective will be to restore the balance and put Jammu and Kashmir firmly on the path of development. "I will leave no stone unturned in bringing back smiles on the faces of the people of the state," she said at the annual Joint Conference of Chief Ministers of the States and Chief Justices of the High Courts, at Vigyan Bhawan, in New Delhi. The conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended among others by Chief Justice of India Justice TS Thakur and Union Law Minister Sadananda Gowda. Mehbooba said years of political strife in J-K has resulted in huge loss of life and property and setback to the development process. The government, along with other mainstream political parties is trying to fight the ideological battle politically, administratively and legally, she said. "J-K needs special care and attention for which she sought the support and cooperation from all the people in the country. J-K is too sensitive state and the government cannot afford to get distracted by issues which seem to trivialise its special position in India," the Chief Minister said. She said her task becomes difficult when certain groups in other parts of the country try to challenge the special relationship of J-K with the rest of the country. "Such acts, besides wasting our energy, send negative signals and vitiate the peaceful atmosphere in the state," she said, adding that "people of J-K are still nursing old wounds inflicted by misfortune and tragedy". The Chief Minister said this not only aggravates a feeling of distrust in the state but also discredits the mainstream parties in the eyes of the voters who put their faith in their representatives under difficult circumstances. Responding to the observations made by Mehbooba, Justice Thakur welcomed her participation in the conference after taking over as the Chief Minister of the state. "The whole country is behind you and realises the difficult situation you are facing in your state," he told the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister said she has full faith in the wisdom of the country's judicial system, which has proved time and again its sensitivity to the special needs of the state. She thanked the Chief Justice for judicial interventions made from time-to-time, especially fast-tracking the clearance of insurance claims of people devastated by the 2014 floods. Mehbooba also batted for setting up of a National Law University in J-K to impart training and education to students and researchers to improve the quality of justice delivery system in the state. J&K is one of the states which does not have a National Law University yet, she said. Referring to the proposal sent by the state government in this regard, Justice Thakur highlighted the need for establishing national law universities in all states to improve quality of legal education. He, however, requested the state governments not to procrastinate release of grants, which in any case do not exceed Rs 2 to 3 crore, as this gives rise to demand for bringing all national law universities under Central regime. The Chief Minister also agreed to consider positively the suggestion of Justice Thakur to create posts of Secretaries of Legal Aid at district-level. New Delhi: In a significant step to tackle mounting cases, a conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts on Sunday adopted a resolution to invoke a constitutional provision to appoint retired judicial officers as ad hoc judges. Chief Justice of India TS Thakur announced that the conference adopted a resolution that Article 224 A will be invoked to allow chief justices of high courts to appoint retired judicial officers as ad hoc judges. "There is a provision in the Constitution. It means that it is meant to be invoked," he said. Article 224 A of the Constitution states that the Chief Justice of a high court, with the previous consent of the President (Centre), request any person who has held the office of a judge of that court or any other high court to sit and act as a judge of the high court for that state. There are nearly 3 crore cases pending before the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, the 24 high courts and various subordinate courts. He said these ad hoc judges will tackle criminal cases where appeals have not been heard for the past five years. These judges will be appointed for a period of two years or upto the time they attain the age of 65. The CJI said these judges can also preside over 'holiday courts' on Saturdays and Sundays. The conference also resolved that vacancies will be filled up in lower courts and the cadre strength will be increased by 10 per cent per annum till the review of the cadre strength is carried out in the near future. According to latest Law Ministry figures, the approved strength of the subordinate judiciary is 20,214 with 4,580 vacancies. The approved strength of the 24 high courts is 1,056 and the vacancy was pegged at 458 as on March one. In the apex court, there are six vacancies against the sanctioned strength of 31 judges, including the CJI. The destruction in Australian waters hogs the world's headlines. On 20 April, scientists announced that 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef had turned white. Weve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, its like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once, Professor Terry Hughes, convenor of Australia's National Coral Bleaching Taskforce, said in a press release. The El Nino Southern Oscillation's trail of havoc isn't limited to the Pacific alone. Its fingers of climatic mayhem reach into the Indian Ocean too. Corals are engineers of the reef, building hard white structures of calcium carbonate. They host algae called zooxanthellae that paint a psychedelic riot of colours on the white canvas. The algae are also the corals' power houses, producing energy by photosynthesis. The symphony between algae and coral creates a tropical undersea paradise that's home to numerous life forms. Coral reefs are to oceans what rainforests are to land. When seas heat up, corals self-destruct by spitting out their algae. Without the resident artists, reefs turn ghostly white. If the waters cool down soon, corals take their algae housemates back and survive. If not, they die. It's akin to the trees of a rainforest dying en masse. A team of six researchers from Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation's Oceans and Coasts Programme rapidly assessed how much of the Lakshadweep reefs are bleached, what kinds of coral are affected, and when the bleaching began. Every coral they've seen is pale. Reefs in shallow lagoons, no more than three metres deep, are white and many are dying. Even though winter waters ought to be cool, the average surface temperature this January was as warm as an April day. Since then it has climbed steeply. In April, the temperature breached the critical threshold above which corals bleach. If this trend continues, the reefs of the Lakshadweep are in big trouble. This is the second consecutive year of El Nino. We expected the bleaching last year but the temperatures cooled off just in time, says Rohan Arthur, a field biologist with the foundation. This year is much much worse. In April, the seas were unusually calm and so the temperature within two metres reached 35C. This is ridiculously high, Arthur exclaims. At 33C, oxygen in the water gets depleted and fish start to gasp for breath. The monitoring team found scores of dead triggerfish, snappers, groupers and others floating on the surface, stuck in the reef, or washed up on the shore. Even at 32 metres deep, the water was 31C warm. These high temperatures held for at least five days when the team moved on to other atolls. The year 1998 was a bad one for Lakshadweep's reefs. About 90 percent of the coral bleached, according to Arthur's rough estimates. He and his team have monitored developments since then. Despite the severity of bleaching, the reefs recovered over time. This is surprising as the islands hold many more people per square kilometre than most rural areas in mainland India. Traditionally, fishermen fished the reefs for food. In the 1980s, a government-sponsored programme exhorted them to target the more profitable tuna that lives in the deep sea. The lack of fishing aided the reefs' recovery. Surgeonfish and parrotfish graze on algae that could choke corals. Groupers, triggerfish and snappers control coral predators like sea urchins and crown-of-thorn starfish. Arthur says this balance of herbivores and carnivores was critical to the recovery of reefs. Lakshadweep is the perfect example of high density of people and high resilience of coral reefs, says Arthur. Other places with high resilience are uninhabited atolls in the middle of the Pacific. However, since 2010, when a similar bleaching event occurred, the reefs have struggled to recover. Declining tuna catch forced fishermen to turn to reef fish to survive. Besides, large boats with cold storage facilities on-board spend several days fishing in these waters. Even before the corals have had a chance to recoup, they are being hit once again. There's little we can do in the short term, says Arthur. In the medium term, in the next few years, it will be critical to ensure that the reefs are not fished, given how important fish are to the recovery processes of these reefs. The team heads back to the Lakshadweep islands in early May to continue its surveys until the monsoon arrives. The El Nino system is weakening across the Indian Ocean, but it will be weeks before the waters cool off. This is a turning point right now, says Arthur. What happens over the next couple of weeks can determine the trajectory of the reefs for the next 10 years. The only things that can save the reefs, Arthur says, are an early monsoon and choppy seas. Patna: Slamming the Nitish Kumar government for banning toddy in line with prohibition in Bihar, on Monday Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ramvilas Paswan threatened to launch an agitation from June if restrictions were not lifted. "The Dalit Sena will agitate at the districts and blocks on 20 June to be followed by a rally at the Gandhi Maidan in August if the state government does not remove restrictions on sale of toddy at public places and release the arrested toddy sellers," he said while addressing a dharna on the issue at Gardanibagh locality in the state capital. The Union Minister sat on dharna with toddy sellers for nearly an hour to protest against the ban on toddy at public places in the state. Describing the cultivation of palm trees and sale of toddy as primary source of living for a sizable Pasi community to which he himself belongs, Paswan charged the Nitish government with jeopardising livelihood of the Pasi people and of the potters who supply earthen pots used for fetching toddy (juice of palm trees). Paswan, the LJP supremo, asked the state government to grant industry status to toddy to make it an organised business and asked RJD chief Lalu Prasad to prevail upon the Chief Minister to rollback the decision to ban sale of toddy at public places. 12:43 (ist) Manohar Parrikar explains AgustaWestland deal: "AgustaWestland chopper was 100 cCore. We had to test the helicopters in Indian conditions. The other two vendors didn't agree to do so and conducted the test outside the country. this was against the clause in the country. Out of the 6 vendors who were given tenders, AgustaWestland Italy was also one of the vendors. But AgustaWestland UK took over the tender. Only AgustaWestland got the concessions. They created a single vendor situation. In 2008, the price oh AW101 was 15 million Euros and oin 2010, it was listed as 27 million. Benchmark cost given by CNC(Contract negotiations committee) was 6 times higher than that of AoN (Acceptance of Necessity) There was no explanation for this.In 2012 February, then the government had written to the embassy through the MEA. The government even went to the investigating agency but nobody wrote to the company. This deal should have stopped in 2012. But yet, 3 helicopters were delivered in December 2012 and we accepted it. In January 2013, Chief exec of Finmenccancia was arrested, Within hours our defence minister wrote to CBI immediately. If he wasn't arrested, they would not have taken this up. After the CBI took it up, in Feb 2013, there was a notice issued to stop the deal. Legal action forced the termination of the deal, it was not a proactive step, it was forced. Bank guarantee needed to be revoked and that was done. When the Milan Court argued, they said that 166 Euros could be returned and the money for the 3 helicopters will not be returned. I am not making allegations, but it is our Endeavour that we will take action. Defence Ministry initiating procedure to blacklist AgustaWestland. If that is our job, why is the Congress worried? " Kolkata: Ham radio is the only mode of communication for polling and security personnel during the ongoing assembly polls in some remote corners of West Bengal which have been left untouched even by mobile phone towers. Armed with solar-powered batteries and ham radio handsets, a team of licensed ham radio operators were agents of last mile connectivity between North 24 Parganas district control room at Barasat and those on the field. "This is the first time that ham radio operators are being used in the election process to provide connectivity. We are very proud and are doing it free of cost as a service to the nation," Ambarish Nag Biswas of West Bengal Radio Club (amateur club), told PTI. They have set up their equipment and infrastructure in 47 polling premises, each manned by a licensed amateur ham radio operator. Most of such unconnected areas are in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sundarbans archipelago, famous for its tigers and mangrove forests. Tanusree Batabyal, returning officer of Hingalganj Assembly constituency, said some islands were so remote that poll personnel had to cross two rivers on boat and then take a motorised van to reach polling booths. "There are no mobile towers and sending a team to pass on a message to the control room will take lot of time. So these radio operators are our only help to be in constant touch," he said. Even polling personnel had to start travelling two days ahead of polling day to cross geographical barriers. Most of these villages are without electricity also and radio batteries have to be charged with solar panels. Ham radio uses radio frequency spectrum to exchange messages with other radio operators. Each one of them are assigned a call sign for identity. At the Barasat control room, a team of four operators are stationed to receive and send all messages. Biswas, an engineer by profession and ham radio operator by hobby, said they were passing to and fro voice messages in between district control room and polling officials. "We passed on a message to the control room about an EVM which malfunctioned. A replacement was sent later on so that polling could go on smoothly," he said. The youngest in his team is his 15-year-old daughter Saborni Nag, who is also a licensed amateur radio operator. All others are housewives, doctors, school students or working professionals who share a common passion for radio. The equipment was provided to them by the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Amateur Radio (NIAR). Since the Sundarbans belt is a coastal river, criss-crossed by a complex network of rivers and creeks, proper reception of all kinds of radio signals can be tricky at times. "So we are using three types of signals - VHF, UHF and HF radio frequency," Nag said. The 47 polling premises where they are providing there services are in Hingalganj, Madhyamgram, Minakhan, Swarupnagar, Baduria, Haroa and Sandeshkhali. PTI Win or lose the 29 April floor test in Uttarakhand, the Congress party is sure that it has already won the perception game. Sources within the party said that the BJP has lost face in the entire episode involving the imposition of President's Rule in the state. The party is looking forward to the floor test with some anticipation. A victory will give the Congress party a high moral ground vis-a-vis the BJP. And, itll be advantage Congress in the Uttarakhand Assembly polls due early next year. Despite the Supreme Courts recent stay on the 21 April Uttarakhand High Court decision quashing the imposition of Presidents Rule in the state of Uttarakhand, the Congress party is confident of winning the trust vote on 29 April. However, ahead of the number test, it wants to keep it's fingers crossed. For the Congress, the SC stay is just a hiatus for the party in the ongoing crisis. The SC stay is not a final judgment. Lets wait till 27 April. Were confident of our victory and of the principles of justiciability of Article 356. The Presidents Rule will be quashed based on the doctrine of the landmark SR Bommai case, said Randeep Surjewala, Congress chief spokesperson. In the process, the dishonesty of the Modi government and its conspiracy to dislodge an elected government will also get exposed and justice will be upheld, Surjewala said. Immediately after the Uttarakhand High Court quashed Presidents Rule, BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya had said in a press conference that the BJP would win the floor test on 29 April, and thereby it would be proved once and for all that the Harish Rawat government was in minority. BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya symbolizes the BJPs true mindset politics of muscle and money power to topple an elected government. They blatantly exhibit arrogance of disrespecting peoples mandate. But, they will be defeated, added Surjewala. While, the Uttarakhand legislators are now busy in fine tuning its strategy to combat the numbers game on 29 April, sources within the party say that the Congress is ahead in the perception battle. In the ongoing crisis, the Congress has gained public sympathy and it is now clear that the BJP has been trying to topple the present government by hook or crook, a source from Uttarakhand said. However, Chief Minister Harish Rawat may not be worried about the outcome of the SCs decision on 27 April or the outcome of the floor test due to a strategy of his own. According to sources, Rawat wants to leverage this element of public sympathy to his advantage during the forthcoming Uttarakhand Assembly elections. The Centre may have got a breather with the stay of the High Court decision but it will not be easy to pass the judicial scrutiny when the matter will be taken up for consideration based on merits. The floor test on 29 April wont go in BJPs favour. Even if the nine rebel legislators are allowed to vote, the Congress will issue whip against them for disqualification," a Congress leader from Uttarakhand said on conditions of anonymity. "Were confident of making it through. Gradually, the people of the state are beginning to understand the conspiracy of the BJP and theres a lot of public sympathy for us, the Congress leader said. New York: Singing of kirtans at an Ivy League university has drawn protests from a section of Indian students. Unlike in the protests against yoga the demonstrators this time were not religious fundamentalists, but students spewing leftist rhetoric at Brown University. They protested a non-Indian white woman singing kirtans, asserting that only those born Hindu should sing the religious hymns, according to media reports. The performance by Carrie Grossman, who has adopted the Hindu name Dayashila, was disrupted Thursday by protesters claiming that by singing kirtans she as a white person was wrongly "appropriating" elements of Hinduism. They used radical leftist terminology like white privilege, structural change and "radical love" to oppose what they called "cultural appropriation" by a white person. "Cultural appropriation," according to those who protest it, happens when people use or performs elements from a culture not their own. Many in the audience confronted the protesters, who eventually left the event and staged a sit-in outside. "Several audience members turned around and asked them to be quiet," The Brown Daily Herald reported. "In addition, some of the audience members stood up and moved to where the protesters were sitting to ask them to leave." Rajan Zed, the president of US-based Universal Society of Hinduism, called the protests at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island state, "sad and inappropriate." "Color of the person should not matter in devotional singing and anybody should be able pay respectful homage to Hindu deities through kirtan or other forms," Zed said. "Kirtan offered means to connect to the heart, to the divinity that lies within." He asked Brown University president Christina H Paxson and chancellor Thomas J. Tisch to "make sure that such unreasonable interruptions did not happen at the Hindu events on the campus in the future" and to hold a formal inquiry into the disruption. The Herald reported that Grossman, a Brown University alumna, told her audience that she discovered kirtans during visit to India and "found (chanting) very powerful and very healing." Describing her mission to spread the singing of kirtans, Grossman writes on her website about her experience in the third person: "At the altar of her instrument she called out to the divine and unburdened her heart. This process was profoundly healing and, the more she did it, the more she felt drawn to share her sound with the world." She has produced a recording, "Soma Bandhu," that features hymns like "Om Nama Shivaya," "Jai Ma" and "Sarve Bhavantu." Although the protesters used radical leftist rhetoric, their agenda appears to be a form of selective opposition to conversions or religious interactions - in effect, banning those not born Hindu from singing Hindu religious hymns or participating in rituals. Christian fundamentalist also oppose non-Hindus participating in Hindu cultural or health practices. From New York to California, some Christians have protested yoga practice in schools. Most recently fundamentalists in Georgia protested against the namaste greeting during yoga. However, similar protests are not held by those claiming to be against "cultural-appropriation" when non-Christians sing Christian hymns or participate in Christian observances. Most of those in a picture published by Herald of the demonstration against the kirtan performance were white and African American, with few Indians. Wearing bindi or pottu by non-Indian women have also been crticised as "cultural appropriation." In the face of protests, the Contemplative Studies Departmental Undergraduate Group, which organised the kirtan, issued an apology saying that they "humbly acknowledge that those intentions (in arranging the event) do not preclude harm and hurt that we may have inflicted," the Herald reported. Ironically, Anchal Saraf, one of the protesters with an Indian name quoted in the media, was a signatory to a petition demanding freedom of expression at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Freedom of expression in US universities is under threat not from the government, but from students and faculty. At elite universities like Yale, students have in the past year explicitly protested freedom of expression on campuses and tried to silence professors and students not conforming to their version of liberal or radical views. Even media faculties are not immune despite freedom of expression being at the core of journalism. Last year, a journalism teacher at University of Missouri, who supported an African American student protest, instigated an attack on an Asian American photographer trying to record it in a public place that guaranteed his constitutional rights. Marib: Yemeni troops backed by Arab coalition air strikes killed more than 800 members of Al-Qaeda in an attack on a southeastern provincial capital held by the group for the past year, the coalition said Monday. Pro-government forces recaptured an oil terminal as well as the city of Mukalla, which was considered a jihadist stronghold, military sources said. "The operation resulted... in the death of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," Arab coalition commanders said in a statement published by SPA, the official Saudi news agency. The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of civilian casualties. The operation was part of a wider offensive aimed at securing parts of the country captured by jihadist militants who have exploited a 13-month war between Gulf-backed loyalists and rebels supported by Iran. It coincides with UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait after a ceasefire entered into effect on 11 April, but from which jihadists groups are excluded. "We entered the city centre (of Mukalla) and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west" towards the vast desert in Hadramawt and Shabwa provinces, a military officer told AFP by phone from the city the jihadists seized last April. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents of Mukalla, home to an estimated 200,000 people, had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Yemeni military sources said Emirati military vehicles were used in the operation and that troops from the Gulf country, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition, were among the forces that entered Mukalla. AFP could not immediately confirm these reports from officials in the United Arab Emirates. The Arab coalition battling rebels in Yemen since March 2015 carried out air strikes against Al-Qaeda positions in Mukalla to pave the way for the ground troops, military sources said. Troops also recaptured Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal in Shehr further east, the sources said. Earlier Sunday, military sources said pro-government forces seized Riyan airport and an army brigade headquarters Al-Qaeda had held for a year on Mukalla's outskirts. Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is regarded by Washington as the network's most dangerous branch, and has carried out deadly attacks on the West in the past. Last month, a US air strike on an Al-Qaeda training camp in Hadramawt province killed dozens of fighters in a major blow to the jihadists. A provincial official in Shabwa said jihadists also fled from the town of Azzan on Sunday which they seized in February. Bomb kills seven troops As the anti-jihadist offensive gained momentum, a bomb-laden vehicle exploded Sunday, killing seven soldiers and wounding 14. They were in a convoy entering another southern jihadist stronghold Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, said military sources, blaming Al-Qaeda for the attack. The coalition, led by Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, has deployed Apache helicopters to support loyalists fighting on the ground. Forces loyal to internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government have retreated from Zinjibar after entering it late Saturday, an officer in Abyan told AFP. "The withdrawal was decided following information that Al-Qaeda was preparing other car-bomb attacks against our troops," added the officer who requested anonymity. Coalition-backed forces have also driven militants from Aden, the southern city declared by Hadi as Yemen's temporary capital after the Shiite Huthi rebels overran Sanaa in September 2014. And last week, government forces expelled AQAP militants from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj. When US President Barack Obama met Gulf leaders on Thursday in Saudi Arabia, they discussed the wars in Yemen and Syria. During the visit, Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's closest advisers, urged all warring sides in Yemen to participate "constructively" in the Kuwait talks that began on Thursday, saying that a political solution would "allow for a focus on AQAP in Yemen". Hanover: US President Barack Obama will on Monday announce plans to send up to 250 more military personnel to Syria, according to a senior administration official, intensifying US assistance to rebels as a ceasefire falters. "Obama, tomorrow will announce that he has authorized up to 250 additional forces deploying to Syria," the source said, adding that the president would confirm the deployment in a speech in the northern city of Hanover. US troops in Syria are mandated to advise and assist Syrian rebel and anti-Islamic State forces. Obama is currently in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The pair will be joined on Monday by leaders from Britain, France and Italy, a meeting called at Obama's request and which looks set to focus on the fight against the Islamic State group. "The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said the official. Obama is set to announce the decision at the Hanover trade fair before the meeting with European leaders. On Sunday, Obama pressed for parties to the Syrian conflict to return the negotiating table and "reinstate" a faltering internationally-brokered ceasefire. "I spoke to (Russian) President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities," Obama told a news conference in Germany. That was the clearest indication yet that the White House believes the increasingly troubled ceasefire has disintegrated as regime and rebel bombardments claimed 26 lives yesterday. The White House has argued that the ceasefire, while imperfect, is worth pursuing and is the only way out of the brutal five-year war. But its stance is bringing Washington and its allies into ever more conflict with rebel groups on the ground, which continue to be on the receiving end of regime attacks. Pressure on Obama is increasing in the United States, which in is the throes of a fiercely fought presidential election race, and from European allies who want to halt a massive influx of refugees. PRIPYAT, Ukraine For residents of Chernobyl, a three-day evacuation turned into a thirty-year exile. On the morning of April 26, 1986, no one could yet tell that a meltdown in reactor 4 of the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine was poisoning the air with so much deadly radioactivity that it would become the world's worst nuclear accident. Now, as some survivors returned to their hometown of Pripyat on the eve of the anniversary, memories of confusion and sacrifice abound. "I barely found my apartment, I mean it's a forest now - trees growing through the pavement, on the roofs. All the rooms are empty, the glass is gone from the windows and everything's destroyed," said Zoya Perevozchenko, 66. She only realised something might be wrong that day 30 years before when her husband, Valeriy, didn't come back from his night shift as a foreman at the stricken reactor. She left her apartment in Pripyat, a model Soviet town built in the 1970s to house Chernobyl workers and their families, to look for him. "I remember thinking 'Goodness it's hot' and some people were in masks. But they didn't explain things to us straight away, it was all secret. And the kids were running about barefoot in the puddles," she said. She found her husband in a local clinic. He had received a fatal dose of radiation that had burnt the skin on his face bright red. He was airlifted to Moscow for treatment, but died 45 days later - one of the 31 to die of acute radiation sickness in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Perevozchenko and her two young daughters ended up in Kiev, where they still live. Returning to Pripyat, she found it hard to reconcile the memories of her life there with the derelict ruins of a town abandoned for three decades. INVISIBLE POISON Elena Kupriyanova, 42, was only 12 when she was evacuated from Pripyat, which lies in the 2,600 square km (1,000 square mile) 'exclusion zone' that has remained largely uninhabited by law since the disaster. "It's very painful that so many people's (lives) were destroyed, that such a beautiful, new town was abandoned. It's hard on the soul," she said. Her family and most of the town's 50,000 other residents were transported out of the area in buses on April 27 and told to pack only the bare essentials because they would only be away for three days. They took their documents and a small suitcase. "It was so hot, such beautiful weather. All the fruit trees were in bloom and I thought - what do they mean 'radiation'? It's so nice outside, you can't see anything," Kupriyanova said. What irks Valentina Yermakova, 64, is that many of the belongings they left behind have disappeared. While it is forbidden to remove anything from the radioactive zone, a large amount of portable items have been smuggled out by illegal trophy-hunters and scrap-dealers. "We locked our apartment when we left. The looters wouldn't have been able to walk in, so they broke the door down," she said. "You go in and it's not that you want to cry, it's more that you get silent and numb from everything you see. The pain, it clenches inside you." But Yermakova, whose husband worked in the plant and died several years later from causes relating to radiation, said even though Pripyat is in ruins it still feels like home. "Walking around, you recognise everything - here's Lenin Street, there's the shop "Rainbow" - it was a small town, we know the streets by heart." (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Kuwait City: Yemen's warring parties held a fifth day of peace talks in Kuwait on Monday after the UN envoy said "significant differences" still separate them. A UN spokesman said the talks between the government and the Shiite Houthi rebels had resumed after extensive discussions of security, political and humanitarian issues on Sunday. "Significant differences in the delegations' points of view remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace and to work intensively towards an agreement," UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement on Sunday. Negotiations on a political settlement have made no headway as the two sides are still discussing ways to consolidate a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on 11 April. The delegations have agreed to appoint two officials, one from each side, to make recommendations on how to sustain the ceasefire, the envoy said. The government delegation has insisted that the ceasefire should include confidence-building measures, such as opening safe passages to all besieged areas and releasing prisoners. The Iran-backed Houthis are demanding an immediate halt to air strikes that a Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out since March 2015, in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi, who heads the government delegation, described the negotiations as "impotent" and accused the rebels of avoiding discussion of key issues. Mikhlafi said on his Facebook page that the rebel delegation had backed down several times on proposals they had made. The rebels have insisted that no ceasefire can be established without an end to coalition air strikes. The coalition has said it reserves the right to respond to rebel violations of the ceasefire, with air strikes if necessary. The two sides also differ on the way to tackle other key issues. The government wants the discussions to start with the issue of a Houthi withdrawal from areas they have overrun, including the capital Sanaa, and their surrender of all heavy weaponry. The rebels want the political process and the establishment of a national unity government to come first, sources close to the talks told AFP. The negotiations in Kuwait opened late on Thursday after the delayed arrival of representatives of the Houthi rebels and allied forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Hebron (Israel): Israeli authorities released on Sunday 12-year-old Dima Al-Wawi, the youngest prisoner in Israeli jails, after serving a sentence of four and a half months. Eassa Qaraqe', Head of Palestine Liberation Organization Detainees Affairs Commission, told Xinhua that Israeli authorities released Al-Wawi near the Jbara military crossing, beside the West Bank city of Tulkarem, and that she headed to her hometown close to Hebron, southern West Bank, Xinhua reported. Qaraqe's said Al-Wawi is "a witness of Israeli crimes against children," accusing Israel of being the only state which has legalized the arrest of children and minors, "breaching all laws and legislation." The weary and obviously frightened Al-Wawi was warmly welcomed by her family members and Palestinian officials. In Israel, the country's prison service confirm the release, yet has declined to comment on the move. Israeli forces arrested the 12-year-old child on 9 February in her school uniform after checking her and discovering a knife in her possession. Israeli military court subsequently sentenced Al-Wawi to four and a half months in jail and fined her 2,000 U.S. dollars. Over 400 Palestinian children are currently detained in Israeli jails, according the Palestinian Prisoners Club. Hanover, Germany: US President Barack Obama hailed Chancellor Angela Merkel on a visit to Germany as being on the "right side of history" with her welcoming refugee policy, but critics on Monday slammed his praise as hollow lip service. Speaking in the northern city of Hanover, Obama said the embattled Merkel had "demonstrated real political and moral leadership" in letting in more than 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery. "What's happening with respect to her position on refugees here, in Europe, she's on the right side of history on this," he said. "She is giving a voice to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them." While the reticent Merkel blushed at the glowing praise, German officials and commentators charged that Obama's administration had done little to help her as Europe struggles with its biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Influential news weekly Der Spiegel slammed Obama's comments as "hypocritical given the American role in this drama". It noted that while 137,000 people had received refugee status in Germany last year, the United States -- whose population is four times greater than Germany's -- had accepted around 70,000. 'Can't turn our backs' Obama heaped accolades on Merkel again Monday in a speech on transatlantic relations, saying she had "eloquently reminded us that we can't turn our backs on human beings". But the United States has only pledged to take in 10,000 Syrians this year. "It is a pity that the chancellor could not turn to (Obama) when she needed help with the refugee crisis," Spiegel wrote on its website. "Then maybe she would not have needed (Turkish President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan," it said, referring to a highly controversial deal Merkel brokered with Ankara to stem the flow of Syrian asylum seekers into the EU. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was more diplomatic in expressing a sense of disappointment. "Of course on the one hand, we are happy to hear Germany being praised for assuming the responsibility we have in tackling the refugee crisis or, shall we say, minimising immediate suffering as hundreds of thousands were on the move last year," he told public broadcaster ARD. "But of course we would hope for more support around the globe. That is why we are talking to the Americans. We are also talking to the Canadians and the Brazilians." Obama's backing comes as the conservative chancellor, in power for a decade, has seen support for her Christian Democrats slip to 33 percent -- the lowest level in five years. At the same time, support for the rightwing populist anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged to around 14 percent. There was a time German leaders might have hungered for such praise from a US president, when West Germany during the Cold War was beholden to Washington for its security. 'Shattered illusions' But conservative daily Die Welt indicated that the tables had long since turned, with Washington now looking more to Berlin as the go-to European power for help in the globe's hotspots. It called Obama's farewell visit to Germany "a sign of respect" for Merkel "who, for the Americans, has become a lonely anchor of stability in a crisis-hit Europe". Berlin's daily Morgenpost said this shift had been difficult for Germans, who had looked with enormous hope to Obama when he took office in 2009. "There was euphoria that a new spirit would infuse the European-American relationship," he said. "Today the boss at the White House is sitting on a pile of shattered illusions. His relationship with Chancellor Merkel has a new sobriety too... In reality the German-American relationship consists of a long to-do list. "The best defence against disillusionment is scaling back expectations and staying realistic. Anything else would be nostalgia." For her part, Merkel touted her "friendly, close, trusting cooperation" with Obama but declined invitations by reporters at their joint press conference to share in the exuberance about their seven-year relationship. "There is no time to take stock," she chided. "The future with this president is more important at the moment than the past." Marib: Yemeni troops backed by Arab coalition air strikes killed more than 800 members of Al-Qaeda in an attack on a southeastern provincial capital held by the group for the past year, the coalition said Monday. Pro-government forces recaptured an oil terminal as well as the city of Mukalla, which was considered a jihadist stronghold, military sources said. "The operation resulted... in the death of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," Arab coalition commanders said in a statement published by SPA, the official Saudi news agency. The operation was part of a wider offensive aimed at securing parts of the country captured by jihadist militants who have exploited a 13-month war between Gulf-backed loyalists and rebels supported by Iran. It coincides with UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait after a ceasefire entered into effect on April 11, but from which jihadists groups are excluded. "We entered the city centre (of Mukalla) and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west" towards the vast desert in Hadramawt and Shabwa provinces, a military officer told AFP by phone from the city the jihadists seized last April. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents of Mukalla, home to an estimated 200,000 people, had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Yemeni military sources said Emirati military vehicles were used in the operation and that troops from the Gulf country, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition, were among the forces that entered Mukalla. AFP could not immediately confirm these reports from officials in the United Arab Emirates. The Arab coalition battling rebels in Yemen since March 2015 carried out air strikes against Al-Qaeda positions in Mukalla to pave the way for the ground troops, military sources said. Troops also recaptured Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal in Shehr further east, the sources said. Earlier Sunday, military sources said pro-government forces seized Riyan airport and an army brigade headquarters Al-Qaeda had held for a year on Mukalla's outskirts. Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is regarded by Washington as the network's most dangerous branch, and has carried out deadly attacks on the West in the past. Last month, a US air strike on an Al-Qaeda training camp in Hadramawt province killed dozens of fighters in a major blow to the jihadists. A provincial official in Shabwa said jihadists also fled from the town of Azzan on Sunday which they seized in February. Bomb kills 7 troops As the anti-jihadist offensive gained momentum, a bomb-laden vehicle exploded Sunday, killing seven soldiers and wounding 14. They were in a convoy entering another southern jihadist stronghold Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, said military sources, blaming Al-Qaeda for the attack. The coalition, led by Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, has deployed Apache helicopters to support loyalists fighting on the ground. Forces loyal to internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government have retreated from Zinjibar after entering it late Saturday, an officer in Abyan told AFP. "The withdrawal was decided following information that Al-Qaeda was preparing other car-bomb attacks against our troops," added the officer who requested anonymity. Coalition-backed forces have also driven militants from Aden, the southern city declared by Hadi as Yemen's temporary capital after the Shiite Huthi rebels overran Sanaa in September 2014. And last week, government forces expelled AQAP militants from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj. When US President Barack Obama met Gulf leaders on Thursday in Saudi Arabia, they discussed the wars in Yemen and Syria. During the visit, Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's closest advisers, urged all warring sides in Yemen to participate "constructively" in the Kuwait talks that began on Thursday, saying that a political solution would "allow for a focus on AQAP in Yemen". United Nations: The UN Security Council echoed international condemnation Sunday of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test by North Korea, while US President Barack Obama dismissed Pyongyang's offer of a nuclear moratorium. Saturday's test, personally monitored by supreme leader Kim Jong-Un, was the latest in a series of provocative moves by Pyongyang that have further fuelled tensions on the divided Korean peninsula following the North's fourth nuclear test back in January. There are growing concerns that Pyongyang is building up to a fifth nuclear test ahead of a key political gathering early next month. The Security Council said the SLBM launch marked a "serious" violation of UN resolutions aimed at curbing the North's nuclear drive, and urged Pyongyang to refrain from any further provocations. A proven SLBM capability would take North Korea's nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack. Kim Jong-Un hailed the test as an "eye-opening success" that underlined the country's ability to strike South Korean or US targets "anytime". South Korea's defense ministry said the missile, fired from a submarine in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), flew around 19 miles (30 kilometers) and demonstrated clear technological progress from previous tests. Quick deployment Deployment could begin in three to four years if Pyongyang dedicates enough resources to the project, ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told reporters. Hours after the launch, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-Yong, speaking in New York, said Pyongyang would be willing to halt further nuclear tests if Washington announced an end to its joint military exercises with Seoul. The annual drills always raise tensions on the Korean peninsula, with the North condemning them as provocative rehearsals for invasion The United States had flatly rejected the same moratorium offer made by the North in January last year, and Obama, currently on a visit to Germany, was equally dismissive this time around. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test," the president said during a joint press briefing with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "They're going to have to do better than that," he added. South Korea also waved off what it described as a "ridiculous attempt" to link sanctions-violating nuclear tests with regular military exercises. Clear and present threat At the same time, Obama warned of the very real dangers posed by North Korea's continued weapons testing, including the recent SLBM launch. "Although, more often than not, they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time," he said. "We take it very seriously, so do our allies and so does the entire world," he added. North Korea's state television showed pictures of the missile, emblazoned with the name "North Star," trailing a large plume of smoke as it soared out of the water. It also showed what it claimed were underwater images of the missile being ejected from the submarine, using key "cold launch" technology. Experts have suggested that the North's previous SLBM tests were conducted from a submerged platform. North Korea is currently gearing up for a rare and much-hyped ruling party congress -- the first in 36 years -- at which Kim is expected to take credit for pushing the country's nuclear and missile weapons program to new heights. In recent months, the North has claimed a series of significant technical breakthroughs, including success in miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile and testing an engine designed for an inter-continental ballistic missile that could reach the US mainland. DHAKA Suspected Islamist militants hacked to death a leading Bangladeshi gay rights activist employed by the U.S. embassy and a friend in an apartment in Bangladesh's capital on Monday, police said. The killings took place two days after a university professor was slain in similar fashion on Saturday in an attack claimed by Islamic State. Five or six assailants went to the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Rupban, Bangladesh's first magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people, and attacked him and a friend with sharp weapons, Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sordar said. They entered the apartment disguised as couriers, he said, quoting witnesses. The assailants also wounded a security guard. Witnesses said the attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest)" as they fled the scene. Mannan was employed by the U.S. embassy, working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department in Washington said. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States was "outraged" by the "barbaric attack." He called Mannan, "a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI rights - human rights, actually." "LGBTI" stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex. A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, Ned Price, said the United States strongly urged the Bangladeshi government to ensure the perpetrators were brought to justice. Other attacks took place in the country on Monday, but it was not immediately clear whether those assaults were carried out by Islamist militants. Two men on a motorcycle shot dead a former prison guard in front of Kashimpur jail, on the outskirts of Dhaka, said Khandakar Rezaul Hasan, chief of the local police station. A teacher was hacked to death in the southwestern district of Kustia, police said. The Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted. Five secular bloggers and a publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh since February 2015. A group affiliated with al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the killing of a liberal Bangladeshi blogger this month. Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the killings of two foreigners and attacks on mosques and Christian priests in Bangladesh since September. The government has denied that Islamic State or al Qaeda groups have a presence in the country and said homegrown Islamist radicals are behind the attacks. At least five militants have been killed in shootouts since November as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on Islamist militants looking to establish a Muslim state based on sharia, or Islamic religious law. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Jonathan Oatis) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Damascus: A bomb blast in a Damascus suburb that is home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Syria killed eight people on Monday, according to a pro-government TV station and an activist-run monitoring group. Syrian state TV said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed vehicle at a military checkpoint at the entrance to the Sayyida Zeinab suburb. Syria's Al-Ikhbariya TV station showed footage of a slight depression on a road near a checkpoint where the bomb was said to have gone off. The wreckage had already been removed. Al-Manar TV, run by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, said eight people were killed in the blast. The Shiite militants have a heavy presence in the suburb. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist-run monitoring group, gave the same toll. Syrian state TV said five people were killed and 20 wounded. The heavily guarded shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the daughter of the first Shiite imam Ali and granddaughter to the Prophet Muhammad, receives thousands of Shiite pilgrims each year. Allies of the embattled Damascus government have mobilised Shiite fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon to fight on the side of President Bashar Assad's forces on the grounds of defending the shrine and preserving the country's religious plurality. A previous bombing in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb, claimed by the Islamic State group, killed some 130 people in February. The Syrian uprising began with mostly peaceful protests in 2011, but a brutal government crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency eventually plunged the country into a full-blown civil war. The fighting has killed more than 250,000 people, according to the United Nations, which stopped tracking casualties several months ago. Ankara: Turkey has killed almost 900 alleged members of the Islamic State group since January through artillery fire and air raids, the state-run Anatolia news agency said Monday, citing military sources. The country, a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS, has killed 492 "terrorists" since January 9 in air raids, while another 370 were killed in artillery strikes which also destroyed arms depots, the agency said. The figures could not be independently verified. Over 3,300 IS suspects have thus far been deported, Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for the Turkish presidency, said on Monday, adding that the government has imposed an entry ban on nearly 41,000 foreign nationals. "They are made up of people suspected of ties with the Daesh terrorist organisation," he said, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group. Turkey has in recent months cracked down on alleged IS sleeper cells throughout the country. Kalin said a total of 2,770 people had been detained -- 1,232 of them were foreign nationals. Out of the detained, 954 suspects were formally arrested pending trial, he added. Turkey, which has been hit by attacks blamed on jihadists, including two deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul that targeted foreign tourists, began to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria last summer. Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group in Syria. Turkey began its air strikes following a suicide bombing in July last year blamed on IS extremists, which killed 34 people in the border town of Suruc. In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border from Syria, prompting the army to respond to each strike with howitzer fire. Kalin said Turkey had not yet received intelligence to ascertain if the border town was deliberately targeted by the IS group. "There is a chaotic war on the Syrian side," he said. "Some of (the rockets) might be landing (in Turkey) by mistake and some might be fired deliberately." Dhaka: Two people including a pro-LGBT editor of a magazine were hacked to death by unidentified assailants in Bangladesh on Monday, the media reported. A police official said at least five machete-wielding assailants forcibly entered the house of Zulhas Mannan who used to edit "Rupban" -- Bangladesh's first magazine for the LGBT community -- in Dhaka's Kalabagan area, Xinhua news agency reported. The assailants stabbed the people there indiscriminately, leaving two including Mannan and his friend Tanoy dead and two including a security guard critically injured, said the official who did not wish to be named. He said the assailants managed to flee the scene immediately on motorcycles. The motive behind the attack could not be immediately known. Monday's attacks occurred days after suspected extremists killed a university professor in Bangladesh's Rajshahi district. Rajshahi University's English department professor A.F.M. Rezaul Karim Siddiquee was hacked to death on Saturday morning by unidentified assailants. A number of liberal writers, bloggers and publishers in Bangladesh have been killed or seriously injured in attacks by Islamist extremists since 2013. digital and print publisher. digital and print publisher. We are Americas largest We are Americas largest The brands you love. The experiences you want. Cheniere Energy (LNG 1.09%) -- through its master limited partnership Cheniere Energy Partners (CQP 1.89%) -- put the United States firmly on the global LNG map when it exported its first LNG cargo to Brazil from its Sabine Pass liquefaction facility. While that's definitely a matter of pride, the real question is: Is Cheniere Energy Partners built to last? Can it flourish in the fiercely competitive global LNG market? Problems galore in the LNG market Global demand for liquefied natural gas has been slowing down, just as it has been for crude oil, thanks to slowing economic growth across the globe. In the lucrative Asian markets, for example, natural gas prices -- and by default, LNG prices -- are indexed to crude oil prices. As oil prices tumbled, so did natural gas prices. In February, Asian spot LNG prices fell to $5.98/MMBtu -- from nearly $20/MMBtu in 2014. Below is a table showing how LNG import prices have fallen during the last two years in Japan, a major importer of natural gas. In addition, mild weather patterns in cold countries ensured that natural-gas demand didn't get to spike, which could've potentially pushed up prices. However, of greater consequence is the medium-term supply situation brewing in the global LNG market. In the face of slowing global LNG demand, vast amounts of capacity in natural-gas liquefaction and export are expected to come online from Australia between 2017 and 2019. While all the pessimism exists at the macro level, Cheniere Energy Partners' highly visible and stable cash-flow growth during the next three years makes it an attractive long-term investment -- especially for income-seeking investors. What projects constitute Cheniere Energy Partners? Unlike its general partner Cheniere Energy, which is betting on multiple projects, the bread and butter of the MLP, Cheniere Energy Partners, is the Sabine Pass Liquefaction facility, or SPL. The other revenue arms are the Creole Trail Pipeline, and the long-existing Sabine Pass regasification unit. Of the three, the Sabine Pass Liquefaction facility -- with six proposed liquefaction trains -- is expected to be the proverbial cash cow. The first train, Sabine 1, commenced commercial exports in late February, while the second train should follow suit in a few months. Of the remaining four, three are actively under construction and are expected to come online between 2017 and 2019. Each train is expected to deliver a massive 4.5 million tonnes per annum, or MTPA, of LNG. The construction of the sixth and final train is yet to receive the green signal via a final investment decision, or FID. What makes the cash flows stable and highly visible? Each of the five liquefaction trains are backed by "take-or-pay" fixed-fee contracts with investment-grade customers. The beauty of fixed-fee contracts is that they makes the MLP's cash flows virtually independent of underlying commodity prices. More importantly, these contracts are locked for a period of 20 years with no price reopeners, or other negotiation clauses that may threaten the long-term visibility of the cash flows. Of the total 22.5 MTPA of LNG that'll be processed in the five liquefaction trains at the Sabine Pass Liquefaction facility, 20 MTPA -- or nearly 89% of the total volumes processed -- are locked through "take-or-pay" contracts. Commercially speaking, there's $2.9 billion in annual fixed-fee revenue for the taking, as described in the following slide. In addition, the customers are reputed and are expected to honor the long-term contracts. The Foolish bottom line Cash flows generated from the two liquefaction trains that would be operational by the end of 2016 will likely not be enough to offset costs incurred until now. However, it would be a different story once the remaining three trains come online by 2019. In other words, Cheniere Energy Partners will, in all probability, struggle to remain cash-flow positive over the next two or three years. However, that shouldn't deter investors, especially dividend investors, from jumping in right now because the long-term cash flow growth visibility is high. Additionally, the MLP refinanced its debt in February, which means no debt obligations are present until 2020. The $2.8 billion debt refinance itself bears testimony that lenders have full faith in Cheniere Energy Partners despite the overall oil and gas industry facing unprecedented headwinds in raising capital. Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) and Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD) are both giant midstream companies. Kinder Morgan has a market capitalization of $37 billion and owns an interest in or operates 84,000 miles of pipeline. Enterprise Products Partners sports a market cap of $48 billion and owns more than 48,000 miles of pipeline. Although they're both large, Kinder Morgan and Enterprise Products Partners have experienced divergent fortunes over the past few quarters. Because of debt market volatility that has made raising growth capital difficult, Kinder Morgan cut its dividend by 75% late last year. Enterprise Products Partners, on the other hand, raised its dividend because of its strong coverage. Given the crude rally in recent weeks, which stock is the better buy? Enterprise Products Partners is better if energy prices remain depressed If energy prices stay depressed, Enterprise Products Partners is the safer bet. Enterprise has a better balance sheet, with a debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio of 4.2, versus Kinder Morgan's 5.6. Enterprise is also a good bet to raise its dividend over the next few years if prices stay low. Because of its low leverage, long-term contracts, and efficient operations, Enterprise has raised its cash distribution for 46 straight quarters. Enterprise had a distribution coverage of 1.3 for 2015, and management has said it plans to raise the distribution by $0.015 per quarter for reach of the next four quarters. Given Enterprise's strong finances and management's previous track record of execution, Enterprise's current quarterly dividend of $0.39 per share, which translates to 6.5% yield at current prices, is very attractive, particularly in today's low-yield environment. In contrast, Kinder Morgan is unlikely to raise its dividend anytime soon, because its management is more focused on growth projects and controlling the company's debt. Kinder Morgan is better if energy prices rally If crude prices rebound to $60 per barrel or higher and natural gas prices rebound, Kinder Morgan has more upside. Kinder Morgan has a more ambitious growth program, with the company planning to spend $18.2 billion in growth capex over the next five years in an effort that managements expects to yield approximately $2.2 billion of incremental EBITDA. Enterprise, by contrast, has about $6.6 billion major capital projects planned from the beginning of 2016 to the end of 2018. Both companies have enterprise values of around $70 billion to $80 billion. If energy prices rise, the market will probably look more favorably on growth capital expenditures and won't care as much about higher debt-to-EBITDA ratios. If that occurs, the capital market could open up to Kinder Morgan more and allow Kinder Morgan to raise its dividend if external financing becomes affordable again. Enterprise Products Partners is the winner, though Given that energy fundamentals are on an upward trajectory, Kinder Morgan has more upside under current conditions. US. crude production is currently falling at a rate of around 100,000 barrels per day per month, and and total global demand is expected to grow 1.1 million barrels for 2016. The International Energy Agency has said that crude prices "may have bottomed out," and crude prices are substantially higher than where they were in the middle of February. If current trends hold, the oversupply situation could dissipate by early to mid-2017, and crude prices could trade for $50 to $60 per barrel or higher.Under that scenario, the market would view Kinder Morgan more favorably, and investors could send Kinder Morgan stock up more than Enterprise's. On a book valuation level, Kinder Morgan is also cheaper than Enterprise. At its current price, Kinder Morgan trades for 1.08 times book value, versus Enterprise's 2.3. Given that energy fundamentals could reverse if OPEC fails to freeze production or U.S. production proves to be more resilient than expected, however, Enterprise Products Partners is the better all-around pick. With its low debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio and its 46 straight quarters of dividend raises, Enterprise Products Partners is more conservatively run than Kinder Morgan and its management has greater credibility. Given Enterprise's 1.3 times dividend coverage and the company's low sensitivity to crude price fluctuations, Enterprise will likely continue to pay its attractive dividend. In times of industry stress, being more conservative, having greater credibility, and paying investors a stable dividend helps Enterprise retain its value better. Enterprise will also do well if energy prices rise. If energy fundamentals improve, many investors that sold out of Enterprise on the fear that the sector troubles could precipitate a Kinder-Morgan-like-growth-capex crisis might buy back in for the safe yield, and send Enterprise's stock higher. Many well-known consumer-goods stocks have produced immense long-term returns from their stocks, and among the best performers are cigarette giant Altria Group (MO 2.11%) and beverage behemoth Coca-Cola (KO 1.60%). A big part of the success of these two companies has been their dividend history, which has included an inexorable rise in the amount that Altria and Coca-Cola pay their shareholders over time. With the stock market recently having climbed back toward new highs, investors are looking for good deals in the market, and they want to know which of these two dividend stocks could be a better fit for their portfolios. Let's take a closer look at Altria Group and Coca-Cola, comparing them on a number of metrics to see which one looks more attractive under current conditions. Stock performance and valuation Both Altria and Coca-Cola have posted good gains over the past 12 months. Since April 2015, Altria is the clear winner, giving shareholders a 21% total return including dividends. Coca-Cola has done a good job as well, but its 12.5% total return lags behind Altria's. When one stock climbs at a faster pace than another, many investors mistakenly assume that the faster-riser's shares must have gotten overvalued. Looking at some simple valuation metrics, however, that doesn't appear to be the case with these two stocks. Using trailing earnings, Altria Group shares trade at about 23 times earnings. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has a trailing earnings multiple of 27, and so even the slower pace of share-price growth hasn't given Altria a chance to catch up with Coca-Cola. Investors don't foresee that dynamic changing in the near future. Looking at forward earnings projections, Coca-Cola shares trade at a multiple of almost 22. That compares to just 18 for Altria. Neither of these stocks is particularly cheap on a simple valuation basis, but Altria gets the nod for being the better value right now. Dividends Altria Group and Coca-Cola have very strong reputations as dividend stocks, and their reputations have been well-earned. In terms of current yield, Altria has a slight edge, paying 3.7% of its current share price in annual dividends. Coca-Cola doesn't lag too far behind, however, with a current yield of 3.1%. Both companies pay about 80% of their earnings to shareholders in the form of dividends, showing their commitment to returning capital to shareholders and their appreciation of the value of dividend income for their investors. In addition, both Coca-Cola and Altria have long histories of boosting their payouts regularly. Coca-Cola has put together a track record of annual dividend increases that stretches back for 54 years, and its most recent increase in March added 6% to its quarterly payout, now amounting to $0.35 per share every three months. Altria's history of rising dividends goes back 46 years, although it has been complicated by the fact that the tobacco giant has also made spinoffs of former subsidiaries like Kraft Foods and Philip Morris International. Its September increase boosted its payout by 9% to $0.565 per share on a quarterly basis. With dividends, Altria's slight yield advantage offers a reason to pick it over Coca-Cola, but both look strong. Growth Both Altria Group and Coca-Cola are mature companies, and so many see their growth opportunities as being relatively limited. Yet the companies themselves are working hard to try to find new sources of growth. Altria has been able to use strong pricing in the smokeable products category to keep its earnings rising at a pace that's consistent with the company's long-term goal of 7% to 9% bottom-line growth. Yet Altria also sees cigarette alternatives as a key growth industry, with its MarkTen brand having made considerable progress in building market share and capturing its share of the fast-growing e-cigarette and e-vapor markets. The impending acquisition of SABMiller by Anheuser-Busch InBev could also give Altria some growth opportunities because of Altria's substantial minority stake in SABMiller and its exposure to the beer market. Coca-Cola has had trouble finding ways to grow, and carbonated soft drinks have been a big drag on its results. In its most recent quarter, revenue fell 4%, pulling net income down 5%, and earnings fell by $0.01 per share from the previous year's first quarter. Water, juice, and other non-carbonated beverages posted solid 7% unit case volume growth, but soda sales were flat, and the company's namesake cola saw sales fall in North America, Europe, and the Eurasia-Africa division. In response, Coca-Cola has turned to strategic alliances to try to find new growth. Investments in energy-drink company Monster Beverage allowed Coca-Cola to profit from allowing its partner to take advantage of its distribution network, and the partnership with Keurig Green Mountain put Coca-Cola into the many homes that will buy the new Keurig Kold product in the coming years. Yet those partnerships haven't yet paid off in Coca-Cola's results. Both Altria Group and Coca-Cola have some opportunities for growth, but the combination of a higher dividend yield and a cheaper valuation make Altria look like the better buy right now. Coca-Cola needs to prove it can turn itself around fully before investors will feel as confident as they should about the beverage stock's future prospects. Investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners is in merger discussions with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. in a deal that would reflect the dire conditions on Wall Street particularly among medium-sized banks, and the potential for new restructuring business arising from the shakeout in the U.S. energy industry, the FOX Business Network has learned. People with direct knowledge of the matter say if terms are reached between the New York-based Perella Weinberg and the Houston-based Tudor Pickering, a deal could be announced in the coming weeks. These people add that both sides might decide on entering into some type of joint venture instead of an outright merger and talks could also break down. A spokeswoman for Perella Weinberg declined to comment; Tudor Pickering didnt return repeated calls for comment. The combination would unite two former Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) partners; Peter Weinberg, one of the founding partners of Perella Weinberg, and Robert Tudor, the chief executive of Tudor Pickering. Both were members of the last partnership class to run Goldman before it became a public company in 1999. But people with direct knowledge of the matter say economics, rather than personalities, has been driving the discussions as both firms grapple with a continued sharp slowdown in mergers and acquisition activity that has squeezed Wall Street over the past year, hitting mid-sized firms particularly hard. According to the publication Mergers & Acquisitions, deal activity for January 2016 was the Worstfor mid-market M&A in 25 years, and the deal crunch deepened in March. Meanwhile, Perella Weinberg, led by long-time banking impresarios Joe Perella and Weinberg is in need of restoring the firms once vibrant business of restructuring companies that are in bankruptcy or headed there, following the tumultuous departure of their expert in that area, Michael Kramer. Kramer, who was fired from Perella Weinberg in 2015 for alleged violations of his employee agreement, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against his old firm for back-pay and damages. Perella Weinberg has countersued Kramer and several former partners for violating their non-compete clauses and siphoning restructuring business to their new firm. Tudor Pickering is seen by some people inside Perella Weinberg as a way to gain entry to restructuring deals in Kramers absence given the Houston-based firms expertise in the oil and gas industries. With the decline in oil and commodity prices, these debt-burdened outfits are looking to enter into deals that would repair their balance sheets. But Perella Weinberg also has broader aspirations in any deal with Tudor Pickering; The firms expertise in the clubby business of energy deal making would drive revenues if and when the oil prices recover. Tudor Pickering, meanwhile, will have access to Perella Weinbergs wider array of businesses, which includes advising top companies on corporate finance and shareholder activism in addition to middle-market investment banking activity. Im sure that Perella Weinberg is looking to get into energy restructuring given whats happened to that industry, said one banker. But Tudor Pickering might not be a great fit; Restructuring is a niche business and Tudor specialized in energy M&A, which has dried up. Neither Perella Weinberg nor Tudor Pickering ranked among the top 20 banks for deals $1 billion or under during the first quarter of 2016, according to Thomson Reuters, after failing to make the list for all of 2015. Alphabet 's Google recently launched the second developer preview for Android N, the newest version of its mobile operating system. The changes in the OS, which will be officially launched later this year, reveal a lot about Google's mobile strategy and how it will widen its moat against rivals like Microsoft and Facebook . Let's discuss the three key changes which could matter the most to tech investors. Image source: Pixabay. 1. It's more like WindowsAndroid N will let developerscreate apps which work in split-screen environments on phones and tablets. It also offers a desktop-style "freeform" mode which enables apps to be freely moved around in individual windows with mouse support. Both features make Android look and feel more like Windows, and were clearly added with bigger productivity tablets and 2-in-1 devices in mind. Google is doing this because Microsoft's Surface and its 2-in-1 followers dominate a rapidly growing niche between the sluggish tablet and laptop markets. Research firm IDC estimates that the global market share of all Windows tablets (slate and 2-in-1s) could more than double from 8.4% in 2015 to 17.5% in 2019. Google launched the Pixel C 2-in-1 Android device last year to tap into that growth, but it faredpoorly against Microsoft's Surface 3 in most reviews. Apple launched the iPad Pro for the same reason, but the jury's still out on whether or not it can compete as a productivity device. By adding split-screens and multi-window displays to Android N, Google likely hopes that it can throttle Microsoft's growth in 2-in-1s and gain a foothold in the enterprise market. It also complements its long-rumored planto merge Chrome OS and Android into a single operating system. Google's Pixel C. Image source: Google. 2. Android's "3D Touch"Android N also adds support for pressure-sensitive screens, similar to Apple's "3D Touch" feature in the iPhone 6s. The OS already features special app and menu launching options which react based onhow hard a user touches the screen. This means that the next generation of Android devices and apps should tap into that feature, and we could see more cross-platform iOS and Android apps with "3D Touch." This could be good news for Analog Devices , which supplies Apple with the microcontroller that controls the 3D Touch display. Orders from Apple helped Analog's consumer electronics unit post triple-digit year-over-year sales growth in the last two quarters of 2015, however thosegains have started fading this year due to slowing orders of iPhones. But if Android OEMs also buy microcontrollers from Analog to add pressure-sensitive screens, sales could soar again. 3. Focusing on virtual realityGoogle has already ventured into virtual reality with Cardboard apps and 360-degree YouTube videos, and Android N will add eventighter support for VR apps. The preview contains references to "VR Listener" and "VR Helper" apps, which will likely automatically optimize a smartphone when it is being used in a VR headset. The OS also includes a permissions warning stating that an app can run while "using applications in virtual reality mode" -- indicating that Google expects more VR apps to reach the Play Store. Google Cardboard. Image source: Google. Expanding that ecosystem can help Google widen its moat against Facebook, which already runs its own VR app store, Oculus Home, for its Oculus Rift headset. Google likely considers Oculus Home as a major threat in the fledgling VR market, so simplifying VR app development for Android might help the Play Store successfully evolve from a mobile storefront to a VR one. Google is also reportedly developing an upgraded plastic Cardboard headset for phones and a stand-alone VR headset which doesn't require a phone, PC, or console. Big mobile changes aheadAndroid N's new features reveal that Google is defending its turf against its most formidable foes. The OS is becoming more like Windows to counter the popularity of the Surface, it's supporting pressure-sensitive screens to keep up with Apple, and it's gaining more VR features to hold Facebook at bay. Those are all smart moves, but the future of Android N will ultimately depend on how well Google's OEM partners can implement all these features in their new devices. The article 3 Things Investors Must Know About Alphabet Inc.'s Android N originally appeared on Fool.com. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fools board of directors. Leo Sun has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Apple, and Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft. 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: Apple. According to a research note from respected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via MacRumors), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is on track to see a steep decline in iPhone shipments during 2016. The analyst cites three major factors driving what he expects to be a double-digit decline in iPhone shipments for the year. The first is that the market for high-end smartphones has gotten more aggressive. Indeed, Apple's flagships are now being outdone in significant ways compared to what competitors are doing (display quality, device thickness, camera quality, etc.), quite often at lower price points, too. Next, Kuo blames "time needed for commercialization of new user experience technologies." It isn't clear to me what Kuo means by this, but I suspect that he may be referring to the fact that Apple is sometimes slow to adopt interesting features and technologies, at least compared to peers. Finally, Kuo argues that the iPhone is in need of a dramatic overhaul in terms of industrial design/form factor. The iPhone 6s family looks largely like the iPhone 6 family, and current rumors suggest that the iPhone 7 won't be much of a departure in the looks department from the current iPhone 6s. Could fiscal 2017 be another bad year for Apple?At this point, I think investors have mostly written off fiscal 2016 as a bad year for the iDevice maker. It's clear that the iPhone 6s phones weren't good enough to convince users to upgrade, and for a while, all eyes have been on iPhone 7 as the product that will allow Apple to turn it all around in fiscal 2017. However, according to Kuo, the iPhone 7 won't have "many attractive selling points." Given that he is well-known for being plugged into Apple's supply chain, this claim is very hard to dismiss. Execution issues at Apple? The fact that Apple is getting outgunned by lesser-known China-based smartphone players in terms of both sales growth and, in some cases, features appear to be a reflection of execution issues. A company that lives and dies by providing customers with best-in-class user experiences, and as a company that has, by far, the highest average selling prices in the industry, there is no excuse for the its products being anything less than the best. However, Apple's current flagships are behind in terms of display performance/quality, camera performance, and arguably even form factor. To be blunt, it would seem that the iPhone 7 that is being described in the press is the phone that should have been launched in late 2015 and the massively redesigned 2017 iPhone Kuo has mentioned repeatedly should be what Apple is putting out this year. How can Apple course correct?The best way for Apple to "course correct" would be to shorten the lifecycle of the upcoming iPhone 7. This phone should be in the market until, perhaps, the June time frame. At that point, it would make sense for Apple to jump-start iPhone sales with the brand-new, redesigned model. If Apple really wants to get fancy, it could commit to shorter, nine-month product cycles. This would require it to invest more in technology/product development teams to support an accelerated schedule, but the incremental spending would likely be peanuts compared to the potential for an acceleration in revenue growth. The article Apple Inc. Drops the Ball; iPhone Sales Set to Plunge originally appeared on Fool.com. Ashraf Eassa has no position in any stocks mentioned. 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. It was a rough week forNetflixshareholders. Netflix stock plunged 13.8%, with most of that coming after the undisputed champ of premium streaming offered up weak subscriber guidance for the current quarter. It's certainly disappointing to see Netflix follow up a record first quarter with guidance calling for just 2.5 million net additions during the second quarter. That would be the worst showing for Netflix in two years, but it wasn't the only thing holding the stock back. Amazon.com crashed Netflix's party a day before it was set to report quarterly results. Amazon began offering the unlimited video streaming catalog that it makes available to Amazon Prime subscribers at no additional cost -- Prime Video -- as a stand-alone monthly service. Folks can now pay $8.99 a month for Prime Video. That undercuts Netflix at $9.99 a month, but price hasn't necessarily been a deterrent for subscribers in the past. Netflix's most popular plan that offers high-def streaming on two concurrent screens has gone from $7.99 to $8.99 to $9.99 a month over the past two years, and it hasn't slowed the influx of new customers. In fact, we've seen Netflix's global subscriber base grow from 48.4 million to 81.5 million since its initial price hike two years ago. Even if we narrow the focus to the slower growing and more mature U.S. market -- where the price hikes have had the most widespread impact -- we've seen the streaming user base grow by 32% over the past two years. If the arrival of HBO Now, Sling TV, and countless other streaming platforms haven't slowed Netflix down it seems highly unlikely that Prime Video as a monthly service will fare any better. The arrival of Prime Video as a more direct competitor, rather than just a side perk for folks feasting on two-day shipping from the leading Internet retailer, isn't as problematic as it might seem. A year of Prime Video on a monthly basis is actually more than Amazon Prime on an annual basis. Selling Prime Video by the month actually improves the value proposition of Amazon Prime, and that's likely the goal behind this move. Even under the scenario that Prime Video becomes a legitimate challenger for primetime eyeballs, unlikely as it may seem, it could motivate Netflix to do something that it should be doing already. A big selling point for Amazon's video platform over Netflix is that it also allows folks to rent new releases on a piecemeal basis. You can pay $5.99 to stream The Revenanton Amazon's service between episodes of Transparent or old HBO shows, a movie that is unlikely to be available on Netflix for years. If Prime Video gains traction it could lead to Netflix following suit, and with more than 81.5 million subscribers worldwide -- and counting -- there's a lot of money to be made by Netflix if it can offer its users more than just the content in its digital smorgasbord. As for the subscriber forecast, it's not as shabby as it seems. Netflix routinely underestimates its magnetism, and the second quarter is a seasonally slow period for the platform. The sell-off may have been warranted given the weak guidance, but it's not so bad with the ceiling getting higher as rate hikes for its longest users set to kick in as early as next month. The article Can Netflix Bounce Back After Last Week's 14% Drop? originally appeared on Fool.com. Rick Munarriz owns shares of Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon.com and Netflix. 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. Source: Disney. The past few months have served up some of Disney'smost dramatic price increases in the history of its flagship resort in Florida. Things started late last year, when annual pass holders were hit with a roughly 15% increase for comparable passes. That was followed in February by an 18% spike in prices for single-day tickets. Then came a string of costly upgrades to the theme park experience. Guests could pay 75% morefor premium parking spaces. They could also spend$149 per personto enjoy the Magic Kingdom on select nights after it closes to the general public or $69 a head for an exclusive morning experience before the park opens. All of these new offerings are optional, of course, and intended to be purchased by a sliver of its guests. However, Disney quietly increased fountain and bottled beverage prices at its theme parks -- something that will nickel and dime the pocketbooks of many if not most of its park guests. Soft drinks went from $2.99 to $3.29, a 10% uptick. Bottled water went from $2.75 to $3.00, a 9% increase. In a move that will incense parents, Disney saved most of its larger increases for kid-friendly beverages, including juices and milk. Bottled apple juice prices rose 18%, with milk prices up a whopping 35%. It's probably a good time to remind guests that water fountains are everywhere at Disney World, and restaurants do offer ice water at no cost. However, a visit just got a bit more expensive for folks counting on soda, milk, and juice to help fuel what can often be a long day at the park. Coca-Cola has had pouring rights at Disney World since the resort's inception, and this increase does make Coca-Cola's products more expensive inside the resort. Coca-Cola doesn't just handle the namesake carbonated beverages. Coca-Cola's brands include the Dasani bottled water and Minute Maid juices served throughout the property. However, it's highly unlikely Coca-Cola will be seeing any benefit from this increase. Coca-Cola reported quarterly results last week, and North American pricing has been flat over the past year. It's Disney that will be squeezing more money out of every thirsty park guest. Patrons will pay, of course. They are captive guests. You don't see movie theaters or concert venues taking it any easier on quenching the thirsts of their customers. However, with Disney already recently raising prices to get into its parks -- and with a couple of notable regional amusement park operators, including Holiday World in Indiana and Lake Compounce in Connecticut, offering free fountain beverages -- it seems like one price increase too many at Disney World. Shareholders may benefit from the move in the near term, but there are long-term ramifications for trying to milk too much money out of its guests. The article Disney World Rolls Out Its Sneakiest Price Increase Yet originally appeared on Fool.com. Rick Munarriz owns shares of Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Coca-Cola and Walt Disney. 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. Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, said it offered to buy Tribune Publishing Co but the publisher of the Los Angeles Times refused to begin constructive talks. "We therefore are prepared to consider all alternatives to complete this transaction," Gannett Chief Executive Robert Dickey said in a letter to Tribune Publishing's board. Gannett said it had offered $815 million including assumption of $390 million of debt. The offer of $12.25 per share represents a premium of about 63 percent to Tribune's Friday closing price. "Continuing to refuse to engage in a dialog with us will only serve to delay the ability of your stockholders to receive the value represented by our all-cash offer," Dickey said. Tribune Publishing could not be immediately reached for comment. Tribune spun off its publishing assets into Tribune Publishing in 2014, and renamed the parent company, which houses its broadcasting and digital assets, Tribune Media. Tribune Publishing's shares have lost half of their value in the last nine months. Gannett's shares have gained 16 percent in the same period. (Reporting by Sai Sachin R and Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) When you think of disruptive companies, Verizon probably doesn't leap to mind. That's where you'd be dead wrong. According to a flurry of recent reports, the U.S. telecom behemoth is quietly working behind the scenes to completely overhaul its FiOS cable TV service, a move that could trigger a tsunami of innovation long overdue in an industry long defined by poor service and frustrated consumers. Image source: Verizon. Verizon's FiOS overhaul As was originally noted by Light Reading, Verizon has filed a series of documents with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) detailing its FiOS overhaul plans. Specifically, Verizon plans to develop a "video set-top box" powered by the OnCue technology it acquired from Intel in early 2014. Additional reporting claimsVerizon plans to totally overhaul the software powering the service. In addition to Verizon's core cable content, the new set-top box will somehow integrate third-party streaming services like Amazon and Netflix, while also providing easy access to digital content from Verizon's wholly owned AOL subsidiary. It isn't immediately clear whether the project, codenamed "Mallard," will leverage an app-based user interface, the direction tech and telecom companies believe the industry will ultimately head. Project Mallard has reportedly been years in the making at Verizon, in no small part because the engineering underpinning its efforts involves a drastic shift in technology, much to Verizon's benefit. Verizon's coming changes also involve a shift from the traditional QAM delivery method to an Internet-based delivery system like those used by Amazon and Netflix.The technical differences in and of themselves don't matter for investors. What's worth noting, though, is that Verizon could significantly reduce its bandwidth costs by using this new programming delivery technique, making the service overhaul attractive to consumers and investors alike. Interesting timingAs mentioned earlier, reports claim Verizon has been developing the updated FiOS product for some time. And while there's no reason to think otherwise, the timing of its FCC application does coincide favorably with a recent "unlock the box" debate roiling the cable industry. Earlier this week, the White House publicly endorsedthe FCC's recent proposal to "unlock the box," the industry tag line describing regulatory efforts to break the long-standing link between consumers' cable boxes and cable service. The move has proven highly incendiary among major cable providers including Comcast , Time Warner Cable , AT&T, and Verizon. Interestingly, recent word of Verizon's project "Mallard" could be interpreted as a real-world manifestation of the cable industry's argument to maintain the status quo. As stated on the website of the Future of TV Coalition -- which receives direct or indirect support from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and Verizon-- the cable industry is in the midst of a drastic technological renaissance. Per the website, "a federal mandate clearly is not needed to bring choice to a market that is brimming with unprecedented innovation and consumer choice. The video marketplace is evolving rapidly and now offers digital apps that allow viewers to access their entire television package without a set-top box." Despite no concrete evidence connecting the two storylines, Verizon's move seems to support the cable industry's argument that innovation will indeed occur without deregulation hastening it. On the other hand, Verizon's Mallard project could simply be the company's attempt to beat its competitors to the punch. The telecom giant could well realize that the FCC's "unlock the box" proposal is likely to pass, and to compete against likely coming products from Alphabet and Apple, it will need to make sweeping changes to its own offerings. Either way, Verizon's tact of preparing for the future seems eminently more preferable to the howling lobbying efforts from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T's lobbying wing. The article Is Verizon Feeling the Pressure From Alphabet's "Unlock the Box" Campaign? originally appeared on Fool.com. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Andrew Tonner owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A and C shares), Amazon.com, Apple, Netflix, and Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. 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. 2015 was not kind to mining equipment makerJoy Global -- or to Caterpillar , either. Over the course of 12 long, hard months, Joy Global shares lost 74% of their value. More diversified Caterpillar stock still suffered a 26% decline in market capitalization. (Yes, that adds up to 100% -- but it's just a coincidence.) At least one analyst, however, believes that 2016 is shaping up to be a much better year for both of these commodities industry suppliers. The newsBright and early Monday morning, Goldman Sachs sounded a cheerful note on the future for both Joy Global and Caterpillar stock, removing sell ratings previously attached to each security, and upgrading both to neutral. Why not buy? Well, for one thing, the prices aren't quite right. Priced at roughly $21 per share today, StreetInsider.com quotes Goldman as predicting Joy Global shares will rise only a few bucks to $24 by year end. Caterpillar, which Goldman Sachs says is worth $78 a share...costs more than $78 today. And yet, Goldman Sachs is still clearly optimistic about both stocks. Why? Three reasons. A truckload of profits from CAT stock? Maybe. But there's a big reason to be cautious. Image source: Caterpillar. Reason No. 1: China"The breadth of the China construction recovery is broadening," says Goldman Sachs. And "with mining equipment share of total capex budgets at trough," Goldman thinks there's nowhere to go but up from here. By Goldman's estimation, capital spending on mining equipment in China is currently "50% below normalized," and in a cyclical industry like machinery (and commodities, and machinery that mines commodities), Goldman expects to see Joy Global's fortunes, and Caterpillar's as well, improve as early as 2017. With 100% growth needed to return to normal, there's a lot of room to rise. Reason No. 2: Also ChinaGoldman estimates that China accounts for about 36% of direct sales of "commodity machinery" globally. Now, that doesn't mean that Joy Global and China get 36% of their sales from China. (In fact, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, Caterpillar only does about 19% of its business in the Asia-Pacific region, while Joy Global's Chinese sales were less than 12% of total sales the last time this information was broken out.) Still, China is a big part of both companies' business. Reason No. 3: You guessed it -- ChinaAnd because China doesn't just produce its own commodities, but is a big importer from abroad, direct sales are also only part of the picture. Goldman estimates "commodity export countries" make up 20% of the market, and S&P Global data confirms that Australia alone, for example, produces 15% of Joy Global's revenues. A revival of Chinese demand for commodities such as coal and iron would therefore likely boost sales of mining equipment to countries that feed China's demand for these commodities. The most important thingAll that being said, and as bullish as Goldman Sachs is on Chinese growth (where spot iron ore prices have grown 20%since February), the analyst still isn't recommending that you buy either Joy Global or Caterpillar -- and that's another important point in this story. China aside, Goldman worries that "Machinery end markets in the Americas (63% of sales) ... are over-supplied." S&P Global data show North and South America accounting for nearly 57% of Caterpillar's business. Joy Global, too, is heavily dependent on the state of American mining, deriving 32% of revenuefrom here at home. Without the prospect of growing sales in an oversupplied home market, there's a ceiling on how fast either company can grow in the short term. Meanwhile, Goldman notes that valuations "are at the high end of the historical range" for both Joy and Cat. Currently, Joy Global shares are unprofitable and trading for more than 47 times next year's projected profits. Caterpillar shares look a bit more reasonable, selling for a 22 P/E today, and for 22.2 times forward earnings. On the other hand, most analysts still see Caterpillar growing earnings at less than 1% annually for the foreseeable future. That's pretty miserly growth to be paying 22 times earnings for. So long story short? Goldman Sachs finds the China story encouraging enough to remove its sell rating on Joy Global and Caterpillar stock. Me, I'm not convinced they don't have farther to fall. The article Joy Global and Caterpillar Stock Upgraded: 3 Reasons to Buy the Hype originally appeared on Fool.com. Fool contributorRich Smithdoes not own shares of, nor is he short, any company named above. You can find him onMotley Fool CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handleTMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 297 out of more than 75,000 rated members.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. There was one big story in solar last week: the potential divorce of the co-sponsors of 8point3 Energy Partners. I've covered that here, and will discuss it more in the coming week as I talk to those involved in making decisions about the future of the yieldco. But for my weekly recap, there was some interesting research that may have a big impact on solar stocks over the next year or two. And two tech giants may even make their mark on solar energy. Image source: SunPower. Big tech bets on microgrids Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are joining with investment firm Allotrope Partners to build a microgrid investment fund that will help bring electricity to developing regions around the world. Between 2018 and 2020, the fund expects to deploy around $50 million in India, Indonesia, and East Africa. Microgrids have an opportunity to transform the energy landscape in developing regions that don't have access to electricity. Transmission lines are expensive to buildout, but if solar and energy storage can be built cost effectively to serve communities it will be a big win for the industry. And partners like Facebook and Microsoft, which have a vested interest in getting electricity to people around the world, could help advance these efforts by financing needed capital investments. The U.K.'s solar growth National Grid (NYSE: NGG) came out with some interesting information last week, saying 2.4 GW of distributed solar was added in the U.K. between February 2016 and February 2017 and another 1.5 GW is expected in the next year. The U.K. isn't exactly a hotbed for solar activity, but it's growing as an important market. As more markets become multi-GW markets for the solar industry, there are more opportunities for businesses to fill niches in each region, and more stability as they're less dependent on a single market. So, while the U.K. may not seem like a big solar hotspot, it's a key place for distributed solar energy. Maybe 2017 won't be so bad after all A couple of months ago, I wrote that projections in the solar industry were that installations may fall from 74 GW in 2016 to 69 GW globally in 2017. Last week, GTM Research upped that estimate and said that they expect installations to grow to 85 GW this year. The driver of the increased projections is a new flood of Chinese installations in the first half of 2017 and India's solar market doubling in the past year alone. And as the cost of solar energy falls, the opportunity for the industry only grows. In fact, new projections from GTM Research suggest that solar energy could fall below 2 cents per kWh by the end of this year. That would truly be a game changer for the energy industry. 10 stocks we like better thanWal-MartWhen investing geniuses David and TomGardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter theyhave run for over a decade, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tomjust revealed what they believe are theten best stocksfor investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart wasn't one of them! That's right -- theythink these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click hereto learn about these picks! *StockAdvisor returns as of April 3, 2017The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned. Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Travis Hoium owns shares of 8point3 Energy Partners and SunPower. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook and National Grid. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. SpaceX landed a rocket on a ship at sea. Now what will they do for an encore? Image source: SpaceX. Four months after landing its first space rocket on land, and just a couple of weeks after landing its first rocket on water, SpaceX has momentum -- but is running out of "first" things to do. But what the company may soon lack in quality, it aims to make up in quantity. With the wind at its back and its long quest to land a rocket safely on its drone barge now complete, SpaceX will now turn its attention to upping the tempo on space launches, potentially putting a payload in orbit as often as once every two weeks. Specifically, according to SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX plans to put no fewer than 18 payloads into space by the end of 2016 -- then accelerate that tempo to 24 launches in 2017. And even then, SpaceX won't be finished. Long-term, Shotwell has laid out a path to increasing the number of rocket launches by 30% to 50% per year. At that rate, SpaceX could be launching a rocket a week by 2020. Meanwhile, over at archrival United Launch Alliance (the joint venture formed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin in 2005), they're ramping down operations -- and laying off workers. A study in contrast Last week, ULA announced plans to lay off as many as 375 employees this year, then lay off perhaps 500 more workers in 2017. The reason, quite simply, is cost. Flying a combination of Atlas V rockets built by Lockheed Martin and Delta IVs manufactured by Boeing, ULA has so far been unable to match the low prices SpaceX offers on its launches. In a recent presentation at the University of Colorado, (ex-)ULA executive Brett Tobey lamented the fact that ULA's cost structure prevented the company from quoting prices lower than $125 million on its space launches, and admitted that when all costs are factored in, the company usually has to charge something closer to $200 million. In contrast, SpaceX's published price list advertises rocket launches for as little as $61.2 million. To better compete with its rival, ULA is thinning out its payroll and streamlining its product offerings. In addition to the 875 layoffs contemplated (about 25% of the workforce), ULA has announced plans to retire first the Delta IV from its fleet, and then eventually remove the Atlas V as well. Going forward, the company sees its new Vulcan rocket (still in development) as the future. According to CEO Tory Bruno, if the company can "simplify the product offering," it should be able to cut costs, and conceivably reduce prices to as little as $99 million a launch. A study in mathNow here's the problem: Admittedly, $99 million is a whole lot cheaper than $125 million (or $200 million!). But it's still a long mile from the $61.2 million that SpaceX is charging for a similar service. And $99 million is going to look similarly expensive when weighed against the likely $77 million cost of an Ariane 6 rocket launch byAirbus joint venture Airbus Safran Launchers, once that rocket begins operations in 2020. Ariane even says it will be able to offer a 2-in-1 rocket launch option on its new Ariane 64 heavy lift rocket, which could result in per-payload costs as low as $62 million per launch -- but let's not even go there, because ULA's got troubles enough as it is. Similarly, let's not mention the fact that SpaceX is floating the idea of cutting its own rocket launch costs by 30% when utilizing "used," reusable rockets. The simple fact of the matter is that right now, today, SpaceX is already offering prices far below the best prices that ULA hopes to be able to offer eventually. Why do I get the feeling that ULA's next memo to employees is going to read: "Layoffs will continue until morale improves"? The article SpaceX Surges, and United Launch Alliance Announces Mass Layoffs originally appeared on Fool.com. Rich Smithdoes not own shares of, nor is he short, any company named above. You can find him onMotley Fool CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handleTMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 315 out of more than 75,000 rated members.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. Volkswagen described the T-Prime Concept GTE SUV as a concept vehicle, but it looks like a close preview of the next-generation Touareg. Image source: Volkswagen. After dropping hints last week, Volkswagen showed off a new plug-in hybrid SUV in Beijing on Monday. The Volkswagen T-Prime Concept GTE is almost certainly a preview of the next-generation VW Touareg. It follows several other recent VW "concept" SUVs, as the company continues to signal that it wants to be a major player in the booming global market for car-based crossover SUVs -- as well as a leader in the movement toward electrified vehicles. What Volkswagen said about its new concept SUV"The T-Prime Concept GTE concept car is a premium class sport utility vehicle," the company said in a statement on Monday. Teslas may feature gianttouchscreens, but VW's iscurved. Take that, Elon Musk. Image source: Volkswagen. "This plug-in hybrid all-rounder gives a first glimpse of Volkswagen's future flagship," the company stated. What it means for Volkswagen and its CEOAfter months of terrible headlines related to the company's diesel-emissions scandal, CEO Matthias Mueller needs to give Volkswagen investors and stakeholders a vision of a positive future. This SUV concept builds on a couple of themes that have become very important for VW since Mueller took the top job last fall. First, it's obviously an SUV. That may not seem like a big deal, but the VW brand's current SUVs have struggled to get traction in the U.S. and China, where SUV demand has been booming. Adding more and better SUVs to its product line is probably the best near-term way for VW to find global sales growth. In fact, SUV sales (or the lack thereof on VW's part) are probably the biggest reason why General Motors was able to out-sell VW in China last year. Shanghai GM has two big hits in the Baojun 560 and Buick Envision SUVs, introduced last year -- and while sibling Audi's SUVs have done well, the VW brand has no direct counter for either. Second, the T-Prime Concept GTE is a plug-in hybrid, with a claimed electric-only range of 50 kilometers (31 miles). That's not exactly world-beating range, but it's probably enough to help the vehicle's prospects in China, where plug-in vehicles are often exempted from rules that limit other vehicles' access to major cities. (The rules are an effort to combat smog, which has become a public health problem in cities like Beijing.) This graphic shows the T-Prime Concept GTE's plug-in hybrid powertrain. Image source: Volkswagen. Volkswagen's statement on Monday emphasized its renewed commitment to electrified vehicles: But there's more to it than China. As we've seen with VW's Audi and Porsche brands, the VW Group is making a serious commitment to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Not only is it making a bid to challenge Tesla Motors directly, it's also making a play for market share in China as the Chinese government pushes its domestic auto industry toward electrification. So will it sell?The VW brand faces a hard road in the United States. I'm not sure anything other than time, a relentless commitment to quality and value -- and a good resolution to the diesel emission mess -- will help the brand's prospects here. Given that, I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for VW to become a major SUV player in the United States. But the U.S. isn't the only place where VW is struggling to hold market share as more and more buyers turn to SUVs. The T-Prime Concept GTE isn't a ground-shaking product, but it's a step ahead of the current Touareg in both styling and technology. If it's priced right, it should help the German giant's efforts in China. The article Volkswagen Seeks to Change the Subject With a New Plug-in SUV originally appeared on Fool.com. John Rosevear owns shares of General Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. 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: Xerox Corp. What:Shares of Xerox Corp. fell as much as 13.6% Monday after the company announced mixed first-quarter 2016 results and weaker-than-expected guidance. So what:Quarterly revenue fell 4.2% year over year, to $4.28 billion, notably including a 1% increase in services revenue to $2.5 billion, and a 10% decline in document technology revenue, to $1.6 billion. That translated to a 16.9% decline in adjusted net income, to $231 million, or $0.22 per share. Analysts, on average, were anticipating slightly higher adjusted earnings of $0.23 per share on slightly lower revenue of $4.24 billion. Recall in late January Xerox unveiled a plan to separate into two independent, publicly traded companies: an $11 billion document technology company, and a $7 billion business process outsourcing company. At the time, Xerox told investors it expected the transition to be complete by the end of this year, along with a transformation program anticipated to deliver $2.4 billion in savings over the next three years to both companies.Xerox confirmed today that the separation is still on track to be complete by the end of this year, and that it has determined the "optimal transaction structure" is a tax-free spinoff of the business process outsourcing segment. As such, Xerox will incur one-time separation costs of roughly $200 million to $250 million this year, as well as total restructuring and related costs of $300 million. Now what:Looking to the current quarter, Xerox anticipates adjusted earnings per share of $0.24 to $0.26, near the low end of analysts' estimates for earnings of $0.26 per share. For the full-year 2016, Xerox expects adjusted earnings per share of $1.10 to $1.20, which is well above analysts' expectations for earnings of $1.11 per share. To Xerox's credit, its bottom line in Q1 did fall within management's guidance, which called for adjusted earnings per share of $0.21 to $0.24. But apart from remaining on track with its separation and making expected progress in reducing costs, there was hardly anything inspiring about today's report -- especially as the company works to offset continued economic pressure from developing markets on the document technology business. Unless Xerox can show more solid progress toward returning both its primary businesses to sustained, profitable growth, I remain content continuing to watch it from the sidelines. The article Why Xerox Corp. Stock Plunged Today originally appeared on Fool.com. Steve Symington 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. Rep. David Jolly, (R-Fla.), discussed his proposed legislation to stop direct solicitation by members of Congress Monday on the FOX Business Network. Congress members reportedly spend as much as 30 hours a week making fundraising calls in an effort to raise at least $18,000 per day. We all know about the amount of money in politics. This is about the amount of time it takes to raise that money and the fact that you have a part-time Congress in a full-time world spending all their days shaking down the American people for money and not doing the job they are there for, Jolly told Stuart Varney. Jolly says it is a bipartisan issue that needs to be addressed. It is the only thing Republicans and Democrats agree on in Congress; that fundraising is the main business and the first priority. He explained that along with introducing the bill, he is also walking the walk by pledging to no longer directly solicit contributions, even if it costs him his Senatorial bid. Thats the shame of the system right now, that money buys politics, money buys votes. I took the pledge, when I introduced the legislation, I took the pledge to no longer directly solicit contributions. I believe in this, Im putting it all on the line, begging the American people to push Congress to pass the Stop Act. If at the end of the day I lose an election because I got outspent, well my wife and I are just fine with that, Jolly said. The congressman weighed in on the amount of time soliciting contributions takes away from the job members of Congress were elected to do. Every hour spent doing something other than your day job, youre cheating the taxpayers. Theyre paying you $174,000 do your job. With the 2016 presidential race in full swing, former WWE CEO and former Republican Connecticut senatorial candidate Linda McMahon, weighed in on the latest twist: Ted Cruz and John Kasich coordinating their strategies in an effort to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination. Well clearly politics makes strange bedfellows. I think were seeing that for sure. Some say this is the last throw down for these guys, theyve got to get together in order to stop Trump, McMahon told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo. On whether she is expecting a contested Republican convention, McMahon said, I am. I think Donald is making the hardest push that he can, but with this collusion now, I call it collusion, with Cruz and Kasich well just have to see. McMahon then weighed in on the top issues for Connecticut voters leading into that states primary. Whats most important, and it remains and has been even when I ran in 2010 and 2012, is the economy and its jobs. Its the fact that even though the percentage of unemployment is better over the last couple of years there is still more people out of work and the economy in Connecticut is tough, the governor is getting ready to lay off 2,500 state employees, we have a $900 million deficit, said McMahon. Today, McMahon is focusing on a new business venture: Womens Leadership Live. Its to train women to be successful however they determine success, if theyve left the job market and are coming back, if theyre starting a company, if theyre in mid-level management and aspire to go to the c-suite, its our goal to help them to do that, McMahon said. She is also aiming to eliminate a common mistake many women make when aspiring to achieve leadership roles. I think that women dont support each other well enough. I found that when I was running. Women really dont support each other well enough, whether its in a company, whether its in a community, whatever it is, we need to get behind our women managers and leaders. But the women leaders need to step up also and be an example for that leadership, said McMahon. McMahon also reflected on the sudden death of former WWE wrestler Joan 'Chyna' Laurer. Its always a loss when youve had someone come up in the ranks like Joanie, she was kind of in the forefront of womens power position in the WWE, so shell be missed, McMahon said. Rosario Dawson says she's "grateful" following her arrest in Washington, D.C. on Friday. The "Daredevil" actress was arrested for crowding, obstructing or incommoding after crossing police lines during the Democracy Spring rally at the U.S. Capitol, ET has confirmed. While she was not handcuffed, Dawson was given a ticket for a $50 fine and was processed on site. Click here to subscribe to FOX411s YouTube channel "This is a tremendous issue and I'm really grateful that I could be here and be a part of it," the 36-year-old actress told reporters following her arrest. "I wanted for me, personally, to be in solidarity with the people who put themselves on the line." WATCH: Caitlyn Jenner Flips Her Position on Hillary Clinton, Faces Protests on 'I Am Cait' Dawson, who wore a leather jacket painted with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' face on it, attended the nonviolent protest to "end the corruption of big money in our politics," Democracy Spring explains on their website. "These are really important issues and the people really need them, and we're putting ourselves on the line for what a lot of people across America and across the planet really want to be able to see happen in America," Dawson explained. "Which is one person, one vote and to take the money out of politics, so we can have fair elections with real progressives." Dawson said she was warned multiple times that she would be arrested and suggested that the cops may not have wanted to arrest her because they knew she was a celebrity and would draw attention. Still, in the end, she said, "The police were really great with us and really lovely, I have to say that is not the case for so many people." MORE: Who the Celebs Are Rooting for to Be the Next President of the United States The outspoken actress, who was previously arrested in 2004 for protesting former President George W. Bush, has been documenting the rally via Instagram. Following her release, she simply tweeted, "Sit in, sit down, stand up... Whatever it takes! #NotMeUs #VoteTogether #DemocracySpring #DemocracyAwakening" Meanwhile, Sanders has slammed the "obscene" $350,000 Hillary Clinton campaign fundraiser hosted by George Clooney. Find out what he had to say in the video below. Erin Andrews and a hotel owner settled her lawsuit on Monday under confidential terms. The sportscaster sued the Marriott hotel at Vanderbuilt University for $75 million after a stalker filmed her through a peephole in 2008. "This litigation is over," Andrews' attorney Randall Kinndard told The Tennessean. "Erin Andrews is satisified with the settlement, the terms of which are confidential." Andrews was awarded a $55 million verdict by a jury in March. The jury ruled Andrews' stalker owed her $28 million while the hotel owner and operator, West End Hotel Parners and Windsor Capital Group owed her $27 million for negligence. The settlement was reached hours before lawyers were expected to return to court to ask the hotel companies to pay a larger settlement. Chronic conditions appear to be causing a poorer quality of life for childhood cancer survivors, according to a new study. Young adults who survived cancer as children had health and wellbeing comparable to that of people nearly two decades older than them, researchers found. "Our study is the first to use a summary measure of health-related quality of life to understand how overall well-being of adult childhood cancer survivors compares with individuals without a cancer history," said lead author Jennifer Yeh of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. While more than 83 percent of children diagnosed with cancer today will go on to live at least another five years, 40 percent of survivors face severe ongoing health problems, Yeh and her colleagues write in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. For the new study, the researchers compared the overall wellbeing of 7,105 childhood cancer survivors, ages to 18 to 49 years, with 372 of their siblings and 12,803 people in the general population. To assess wellbeing, the researchers used participants' survey responses to assign them a score that ranged from 0 to 1, with 1 representing perfect health. Childhood cancer survivors had a score of about 0.77, compared to a score of about 0.81 in the general population and among the siblings. The scores for cancer survivors ages 18 to 29 were similar to scores for 40- to 49-year-olds in the general population, the researchers found. "We found that the presence of chronic conditions was largely responsible for the difference in health-related quality of life between survivors and the general population," Yeh told Reuters Health in an email. Past research has found that adult survivors of childhood cancer are prone to many health conditions, including weak bones, cardiovascular disease and general frailty. In the current study, survivors who reported no chronic conditions had the same score as the general population - about 0.81. However, survivors' scores eroded as they reported more and more chronic conditions. "Survivors with chronic conditions report lower health-related quality of life than individuals without a history of cancer," said Yeh. "However, survivors without chronic conditions are similar to the general population in terms of well-being. Our findings are very encouraging for the latter set of survivors." Since the data is limited to people in early to middle adulthood, Yeh said, they can't say how survivors will fare as they get older. But their results suggest that survivors experience accelerated aging. However, she added, it's encouraging that siblings of cancer survivors had similar health to the general population. It suggests, she said, "the cancer experience itself has minimal spillover effects on sibling long-term health." Alzheimers remains one of the costliest yet most mysterious conditions in the United States, where an estimated 5.1 million Americans are living with the incurable, progressive disease. But researchers at The Rockefeller University have found that manipulating a protein pathway linked with Alzheimers helped improve memory impairment in mice a finding that offers hope for new treatment in humans. Memory loss is the hallmark symptom of the disease. Scientists with the Fisher Center for Alzheimers Research Foundation at The Rockefeller University used a complex set of imaging technologies and experiments to identify an early trafficking protein pathway (COPI) that affects amyloid precursor protein (APP), which precedes the formation of amyloid plaques. Previous research on Alzheimers have targeted this plaque, but scientists havent successfully identified a way to halt its progression. There is currently no cure or effective treatment for the disease. Through two separate studies published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences involving biochemical models and an animal model researchers observed that manipulating this pathway to moderate COPI helped reduce amyloid plaques, resulting in improved memory function in mice. These findings are significant as they provide further explanation of the creation of amyloid plaques, a primary symptom of the disease, and that the manipulation of this pathway leads to improvement of some memory impairments, which can lead to future Alzheimers treatments that slow the progression of the disease, Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Greengard, director of The Fisher Center for Alzheimers Research, said in a news release. The Fisher Center for Alzheimers Research, a nonprofit thats aiming to find a cure for Alzheimers, funded the study. Study author Marc Flajolet, an associate professor in Greengards lab, told FoxNews.com that APP must go through several processing steps to release the toxic peptides amyloid beta, which then aggregates and forms the plaque thats problematic in Alzheimers disease. He said his teams findings differ from previous studies on this progression because they focused on interfering with the pathway at an early rather than late stage. Most studies carried out till now were targeting the very late steps of this whole multi-step process, and we thought, Lets look at the very early steps and maybe well have more chances to modulate this pathway, Flajolet said. We found that was not only the case for amyloid plaques, but that it also worked in this animal model for memory. A promising improvement by targeting COPI earlier rather than later is now, potential treatments in clinical trials may be less inclined to induce cancer an effect that some studies suggest may occur during later interference with the pathway, he said. [Researchers] were solving one problem and introducing cancer on the other side, Flajolet said. We hope with this new approach we wont have those kinds of problems, or at least they wont be as bad or as strong. Alzheimers is the most common form of dementia and according to the Alzheimers Association, the number of new annual Alzheimers cases and other dementias is projected to double by 2050. The estimated value of care for patients, $217.7 billion in 2014, is expected to nearly triple by 2050. MAUMEE, Ohio (AP) Funeral homes go out of their way to help grieving families. Someone welcoming you at the door. The soothing voice of a calm and polite funeral director. All these can be helpful. Maison-Dardenne-Walker Funeral Home in Maumee is trying to take that care to the next step. Now when you walk in, Zoey comes prancing toward you looking to offer some puppy love. The 6-month-old miniature-golden doodle is in training to be a therapy dog, and started coming to the funeral home in December to give comfort to hurting families. "She hears the door and greets people right away," said Shawn Diller, funeral home director. "We had a widow bring toys back with her. A lot of time (Zoey) is with kids and will lay on the floor right next to someone." Diller takes Zoey home at night. He said some families have made special requests for her time. Zoey recently returned from obedience training to ensure she behaves and doesn't jump on people. If Diller says "place," Zoey won't move until she is told "release." Funeral home employees who meet with clients quickly try to decipher whether the family would like a dog around. Zoey can go to an apartment above the funeral home if Diller believes a family may not welcome a dog, but that has yet to happen. Zoey cost $1,200 and the obedience training was $1,800. Diller plans to pursue training that will lead to Zoey getting a comfort-dog certification. "Every time I would go in there she took so many pains away from me, just holding her," widow Donna Wagner said. "It really did help; it helps tremendous." In December she was at the home for the funeral of her husband of 58 years. She said Zoey made it easier. It was as if Zoey knew she was hurting and just wanted to give her a hug, she said. The success of therapy dogs at nursing homes and hospices inspired Diller to get a dog. He also said the practice is becoming a trend in funeral homes. When he decided to get a dog, Diller called a colleague in Columbus for advice. "They told us it was very successful from family reactions," he said. "They also made suggestions on breeds and the right obedience schools." The four months have gone so well, Diller is excited for Walker Funeral Homes to get a second dog for the Sylvania location. "I would pick her up, and she'd nestle in my arms," Wagner said. "I could just feel my tension and depression going away for a while. She was that lovable." Crib, car seat, baby wipe warmerthere are so many things expectant parents need to buy. Here's something else for the shopping list: a baby-naming consultant. And "the ultimate exercise in personal branding," as Quartz puts it, is not cheap. Swiss branding firm Erfolgswelle, for instance, charges more than $29,000 to choose the perfect moniker for a soon-to-arrive bundle of joy, Bloomberg reports. Agency head Marc Hauser says his team spends about 100 hours coming up with the perfect name, which includes verifying there's no trademark on the name and consulting historians to determine whether a potential name has "an aggravating past." He uses his own nameMarcas an example, saying his firm wouldn't suggest it because it's linked to an ancient Roman god of war. If you'd rather squirrel away that 30 grand, say for a college fund, New York-based My Name for Life will help you name junior starting at several hundred dollars. If a baby namer knows what they're doing, "it's worth every penny," Albert Mehrabian, who wrote The Baby Name Report Card, tells Bloomberg's Polly Mosendz. (He gave her name a B-, and here he explains why "Chad" scores a 98 but "Bud" scores a 2.) Quartz quips that instead of paying, you could just turn to your in-laws, who "will probably be happy to provide you with loads of advice for free." Or maybe for something sweeter: In October the New York Times reported on cases in which would-be grandparents have given their own kids everything from $10,000 to the promise of a family business in exchange for the right to name their grandchild. (Here are some free suggestions for unusual baby names.) This article originally appeared on Newser: Buy Your Kid a Name for $30K More From Newser U.S. health and safety officials issued new guidelines on Friday to help protect workers from exposure to Zika, a mosquito-borne and sexually transmitted virus that causes the birth defect microcephaly and other neurological disorders. The new rules, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, urge employers of outdoor workers to inform them of the risks of exposure to Zika through mosquito bites and to train them on how to protect themselves. Specifically, employers are asked to provide insect repellents and encourage their use, and to urge workers to wear clothing that protects their hands, arms, legs and other exposed areas. It also urges employers to consider providing workers with hats with mosquito netting to protect the face and neck. The guidelines also call on employers to remove standing water from work sites to reduce mosquito breeding grounds. They also ask employers to consider reassigning female workers who are pregnant or may become pregnant and male workers whose partner is pregnant or may become pregnant to indoor jobs to reduce their risk of mosquito bites. The guidelines encourage the workers themselves to wear insect repellant and protective clothing and to empty standing water on job sites. For health care workers, the guidelines call for the use of standard infection control precautions to prevent exposure to Zika from infected blood. For mosquito control workers, the guidelines urge them to follow the same precautions as for other outdoor jobs, and to use extra protective clothing when entering areas with dense mosquito populations. They also should follow standard precautions while handling insecticides. Finally, for business travelers, the two agencies urge employers to allow flexibility in required travel to areas with active Zika transmission. In particular, it recommends delaying travel for pregnant women or those who may become pregnant or male workers with pregnant partners or partners who may become pregnant. Upon returning to the United States, travelers from an areas with Zika transmission should protect against mosquito bites for three weeks to prevent passing Zika to mosquitoes that could spread the virus. U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, which causes temporary paralysis in adults. China and Taiwan are locked in a spiraling controversy over conflicting concepts of citizenship, with enormous implications both for them and the United States. The timing of the dispute is especially significant, as Taiwan prepares for next months inauguration of Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (and Taiwans first female president). The DPP has long advocated explicitly declaring Taiwan independent from the mainland, rather than continuing its current ambiguous status, Although extraditing alleged international phone scammers may not initially seem the stuff of high-stakes diplomatic statecraft, the stakes are high and figure in the much broader ongoing dispute across the Strait of Taiwan. Beijing struck first in Kenya, where Chinese and Taiwanese swindlers allegedly extorted money from mainland Chinese by masquerading as police calling about illegal conduct. Almost certainly because of Chinese threats to withhold substantial amounts of economic assistance, Kenya deported 45 Taiwanese citizens to China, even though they had been acquitted of phone fraud. Taiwan immediately complained that its citizens rights were violated by not being sent to their home country. Just days later, Malaysia returned 20 Taiwanese (apparently part of the same scam) to Taiwan, which promptly released them because of insufficient evidence, thereby eliciting Chinese complaints. The ostensible dispute is whether China or Taiwan should have primary jurisdiction to investigate the phone scammers. Just beneath the surface, however, is the highly sensitive issue of citizenship, and how foreign governments treat Taiwans citizens and Taiwan itself. Taipei emphatically rejects Beijings claim that it is merely a province of China, and that its citizens are therefore really citizens of China itself. Now a free-spirited democracy, Taiwan is still formally called the Republic of China (as Chiang Kai-sheks Kuomintang government was known when it fled to Taiwan in 1949, defeated in a decades-long civil war by Mao Tse-tungs Communists). Beijing has seized the deportation issue to fire a shot across Tsais bow, to warn the president-elect that Chinas patience is limited. Xi Xinpings regime did not want the DPP to defeat the ruling Kuomintang, with which it shares the one China view that Taiwan and China should ultimately be reunited (although with significant differences on how, when, under what circumstances). Mainland Chinese intervention in Taiwans politics has backfired more often than not, but the Communists have nonetheless persisted in trying to shape Taiwanese thinking to their advantage. Intimidating the incoming Tsai, known already as far more cautious than many other DPP leaders, is thus par for the course. The real issue is whether there is more coming, perhaps in the form of the Chinese equivalent of the 3:00 A.M. wake-up call to Taiwans new government after Inauguration Day. America also has much at stake. Chinas belligerent behavior in the South China Sea has escalated from building man-made islands to bolster Beijings territorial claims to constructing air and naval facilities on these islands. China already has a provincial capital for the region, and is proceeding rapidly to change the South China Sea from international waters into a Chinese lake before President Obama leaves office. Xi, like Russias Vladimir Putin in Eastern Europe, is testing how far it can push Obama before it meets real resistance. And for Xi, squeezing Taiwan is important in advancing Chinas aim to achieve in the East China Sea what it is already doing to the south. Beijing does not want actual hostilities, but believes it can achieve its central objectives by threats and pressure alone. In response, America should immediately engage in more extensive and assertive freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. Moreover, Washington should launch far more active diplomatic efforts to induce Southeast Asias other territorial claimants to resolve their competing claims and thereby present a united front to Beijing. With Taiwan, the United States should consider significant steps to upgrade its diplomatic relations. Washington should make clear that it considers Taiwan to be an independent, democratic society that has the full right to reject a forced merger with China, no matter what the aging rhetoric about one China. In January 2017, Americas new president will face Beijings ongoing efforts to run its own extortion campaign against Taiwan. If the Obama administration fails to support Taiwan in responding appropriately to Chinas assertive, nearly belligerent actions on deportations and many other issues, the new president will have even graver problems to solve. This is not a case where America should simply tote up its investments in Taiwan and on the mainland and go with the bigger number. This is a matter of resisting Chinese efforts at establishing hegemony in East and Southeast Asia not only at the expense of its near neighbors, but of the United States as well. The U.S. is taking the fight to ISIS from the air and on the ground. The battle has been long and hard and shows no sign of ending, only of shifting shape. The nature of the wars America is fighting is changing. And so are the people who fight them. And as the U.S. looks for an advantage in the conflict, could it be that women in uniform offer one? As former Marine and current Ph.D. researcher Kyleanne Hunter writes, if the purpose of infantries is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy, then women are key to successfully defeating ISIS. ISIS is not about to come out onto a battlefield and fight U.S. forces; instead, a hallmark of the fight is their ability to hide in and among civilians. Syrian women and women in the Kurdish Peshmerga have proven able to locate and offer intelligence on the places where fighters hide, usually nested among civilian populations. And theyre hardly alone. In 2011 Special Operations Command recruited female American soldiers to become part of history and join Army Rangers and Navy SEALs out on combat operations in Afghanistan. The idea was that women could gather information and understanding and knowledge that remained out of reach to male soldiers by speaking and interacting with half the population which they could not reach: women. They would be part of something called cultural support teams, a team of soldiers chosen for their fitness, skill and adaptability to join the kinds of combat operations experienced by less than five percent of the U.S. military all while women remained officially banned from ground combat. My book, Ashleys War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (Harper, April 21, 2015) tells their story. Each night these soldiers gathered information that saved the lives and limbs of both Afghan and American forces alike. Like the night that Kimberly, a military police officer, went out on a combat mission alongside a skeptical SEAL team. They didnt know why she was there or what value she brought to the mission until she helped them locate the intelligence item they were seeking wrapped up in a babys wet diaper. Or the night Isabel, another member of the team, received an award from the Rangers when information an Afghan woman in the compound shared with her helped to confirm that the man whose home they were in was indeed the insurgent they were seeking. In terms of closing with the enemy, a storied retired general told me recently of a member of Al Qaeda who was targeting Americans and Iraqis. The U.S. general sought out a female member of another American special operations team one that has included women for a number of years she turned out to be instrumental in locating and getting U.S. forces near the militant leader. Already women are involved in the special operations fight against ISIS. And they are able to get closer to the enemy precisely because they are unexpected. And effective. When it comes to destroying ISIS, the U.S. needs the best people in the right roles. Recent news stories have focused on the women who are leading and serving on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier who are part of the fight against the militant group. And as U.S. military leaders note often and as former Marine Hunter underscores, destroying" ISIS isn't just about killing fighters. The battle will not be won simply by counting the number of ISIS fighters killed. Part of the fight against ISIS is defeating the ideas that underpin the terror group and countering the violent extremism that has taken root. Part of the fight is also learning about what is happening inside homes and communities even in the heat and heart of war. As American women have shown on the battlefield in Afghanistan, they already have been up close and making a difference in the fight, even if few of us even knew they were there. Republican presidential rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich -- one waging a no-holds-barred stop-Trump campaign, the other battling to remain relevant into the GOP convention -- tried to make the case Sunday night during a Fox News town hall that despite Donald Trump's impressive primary wins that have him at the doorstop of the Republican nomination, he still can't beat Hillary Clinton. Kasich touted two recent polls that have him edging out Clinton in a November match up. He also said he was the candidate that would appeal to Democrats too because he has a positive approach. I havent gone to the bombast. I havent said we have the apocalypse around the corner, he said. I think we can bring people together and raise this country. Kasich also said hes hearing from primary voters in states that have already voted that they are having second thoughts about supporting current Trump and want Kasich to be the partys nominee instead. Cruz, who also said he could beat Clinton in the general election, challenged Trump to a debate in Indiana ahead of its primaries, saying people deserve a debate." Both candidates agreed that Americans have a right to know whats in the 9/11 report, and say 28 pages of sealed documents- which some suspect show a Saudi connection to the Sept. 11 attacks should be declassified. Get it out there, Kasich said. President Obama recently said he would make a decision as early as June on whether to declassify the pages. Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have refused to unseal the documents, claiming it would jeopardize national security. Critics say the reluctance is a calculated move to hide Saudi Arabias involvement in the attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. Both candidates made their comments at Americas Town Hall 2016, with Fox News anchors Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum. The town hall also featured Cruz as well as political panelists that previewed the five upcoming high-stakes primaries this week. The two-hour event in Philadelphia Sunday night comes just two days before Pennsylvanias primary where Trump is hoping to collect enough pledged delegates to lock up the GOP nomination and avoid a contested convention in July. In addition to Pennsylvania, primary contests will also be held on Tuesday in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island. In all 502 delegates will be up for grabs in total 118 for Republicans and 384 for Democrats. In Pennsylvania, Republican primary rules leave 54 of its 71 Republican delegates unbound meaning they are up for grabs at the national convention in Cleveland. Trump needs 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination. He currently has 845 delegates. Cruz is in second with 559 and Kasich has 148. The Republican Partys delegate selection and convention procedures which Trump has railed against in recent weeks even as he continues to rack up victories also was a hot topic. Mike Puppio, a delegate candidate for Pennsylvanias 7th congressional district, said delegates like him are going to be guided by the will of the people, but noted that the system currently is not representative of the people but needs to be. Listen, we need to unite and beat Hillary Clinton, he said. Thats the key for Republicans. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is looking for a sizeable win against challenger Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Tuesdays primary comes a week after voters in New York gave Clinton a double-digit win over Sanders. Unlike the more complicated rules for the Republican primary in Pennsylvania, Democratic allocations are much more straightforward with the states 210 delegates awarded proportionally based on the popular vote. According to the Fox News delegate tracker, Clinton has 1,941 delegates compared to Sanderss 1,191. To win the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs 2,383 delegates. President Barack Obama will send an additional 250 military personnel to Syria to help local forces fighting the Islamic State group, increasing to 300 the number of U.S. forces battling extremists in the war-torn country, administration officials confirmed Sunday. Obama was expected to announce his decision Monday during a speech in Hannover, Germany, at the close of a weeklong trip, where IS was a focus of his meetings with world leaders in Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and Germany. The move will significantly increase the U.S. presence in Syria and comes a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of a similar number of troops to Iraq, where Islamic State militants also control territory. About 50 U.S. special operations forces are already operating in Syria. Most of the additional 250 personnel will also be special operations forces, largely Army Green Berets. The group will also include an unknown number of medical and logistical troops to provide them with support. Senior U.S. officials have been touting the success of the forces in Syria, including their ability to generate critical intelligence that gives the U.S.-led coalition a better view of what is happening on the ground, including efforts to target insurgents. In a sign of Obama's reluctance to use of force, Monday's announcement will cap a trip during which the president advocated diplomacy over military intervention. Asked last week whether he planned to increase special operations forces in Syria, Obama did not answer directly. But he said he'd had discussions with an adviser about options should a fragile cease-fire break down. "None of the options are good," he said in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. "It has been my view consistently that we have to get a political solution inside of Syria and that all the external actors involved have to be committed to that as well as the actors inside of Syria. ... The sooner we can end fighting and resolve this in a political fashion, the better." Obama has said he remains opposed to large-scale U.S. military intervention in either Iraq or Syria. But he has incrementally deepened U.S. involvement in both countries. The increase of U.S. troops in Syria has been discussed for weeks, including rumblings last week when Carter announced sending an additional 217 U.S. troops to Iraq, the first major increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in nearly a year. Eight Apache helicopters were also being sent to Iraq for the first time to help fight against the Islamic State group there. Both moves were carried out to help Iraqi forces as they prepare to retake the key northern city of Mosul. The deployment brought the total authorized troop total to just over 4,000. Obama re-entered Iraq in June 2014 with an initial contingent of 170 soldiers serving Iraqi forces as advisers in June 2014, in response to the Islamic State group's seizure of much of the northern and western part of the country. Obama's decision on Syria was first reported Sunday by The Wall Street Journal. John Kasich and Ted Cruz made the extraordinary announcement late Sunday of their intentions to coordinate campaigns in order to deny frontrunner Donald Trump a sweep of important primaries in three states -- but it remains far from clear whether the ambitious strategy will pay off. The two campaigns released simultaneous statements, announcing that Kasich would pull out of Indiana to give Cruz a clear run in Indianas primary on May 3, while the Cruz campaign said it would clear the path for Kasich in Oregon, which votes May 17, and New Mexico, which votes June 7. Kasich adviser Charlie Black told FoxNews.com that its not a new strategy, and makes sense considering the limited resources available. Its not a new strategy, as you go through these campaigns, people coordinate their efforts. Its not the first time its been done, Black said. Since we have limited resources, and we both have the goal to stop Trump getting to 1,237 it makes sense to pick the states where one is better than the other. The strategy was encouraged in March by 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney as part of an effort to force a contested convention in July and to stop Trump from getting the nomination. The first test of the strategy will be in Indiana on May 3. The latest Fox News poll shows Trump with a comfortable eight-point lead over Cruz in Indiana. Trump holds 41 percent of voters, while Cruz has 33 percent, with Kasich trailing with 16 percent. On paper, that math appears to work for Cruz and Kasichs strategy. If just more than half of Kasichs voters moves to Cruz, and very few move to Trump, then the Texas senator will win the state, and a greater share of the 57 delegates available. Oregon has 28 delegates up for grabs, while New Mexico has 24. Therefore, if the strategy works in the three states, it would make Trump's prospect of hitting 1,237 extremely narrow. However, David A. Caputo, Professor of Political Science in New Yorks Pace University, told FoxNews.com that the assumption that some of that vote wont leak to Trump is flawed. The assumption is that Indiana voters are largely conservative, therefore when Kasich is out, voters will go to Cruz. I would argue, however, that some of that vote goes to Trump and so that strategy going forward may not work, Caputo said. As a wider strategy, Caputo says the transferability of votes that the two campaigns are assuming exists may not be there after all, and that it could even have unintended consequences. I think it could have a boomerang effect. If Im a Kasich supporter and told to vote for Cruz, I may just think wait a minute Im for the candidate but I dont like being told what to do and they might go and vote for Trump instead, Caputo said. Black said the alternative would be better for Trump. If each campaign has limited resources and you spread them thinly across all the states, then Trump gets an advantage from that, he said. GOP strategist Ron Bonjean said the move was a broader sign that the campaigns were struggling in their fight to stop Trump, and called it a desperate move. "This feels like a desperate move to keep the Cruz and Kasich campaigns alive with the hopes that either one of them might prevail in a contested convention, Bonjean told FoxNews.com. Its an admission by Cruz that his campaign cannot create the momentum or sustain itself without the Kasich campaign because there is simply too much ground to cover and not enough resources. Lisa Boothe, president of High Noon Strategies -- a political communications firm -- said the move was unprecedented." "It underscores how divided the Republican Party is that two presidential candidates would join together in such an unprecedented open fashion to stop Donald Trump from getting the nomination, Boothe told FoxNews.com. She added that the move may even help Trump's narrative: Donald Trump's message that the system is rigged has worked to his advantage and this only adds fuel to the fire." Kasich sought to tone down the implications of the strategy Monday, telling reporters in Philadelphia it was no big deal and a recognition of the realities of the campaign. I didnt spend resources in the state of Wisconsin. I dont have Daddy Warbucks standing behind me, giving me all this money, Kasich said as he tucked into a plate of eggs at a diner. Im not campaigning in Indiana and [Cruz] is not campaigning in New Mexico, thats all it is. No big deal. The presidential campaigns of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced late Sunday that they were coordinating their efforts in three upcoming primary states in an extraordinary attempt to prevent Republican front-runner Donald Trump from clinching the GOP nomination before this summer's convention. In a pair of simultaneously released statements, the campaigns announced that Kasich would pull out of Indiana to give Cruz "a clear path" ahead of that state's winner-take-all primary May 3, while the Cruz campaign will "clear the path" for Kasich in Oregon, which votes May 17, and New Mexico, which votes June 7. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," Cruz's campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead." The arrangement marks a sharp reversal for Cruz's team, which aggressively opposed the idea of a coordinated anti-Trump effort as recently as late last week. Yet it underscores a bleak reality for the billionaire businessman's Republican foes: Time is running out to stop him. Trump responded on Twitter shortly before midnight Monday. A statement from the Trump campaign called the move "a horrible act of desperation from two campaigns who have horribly failed." The Kasich campaign confirmed to Fox News that it had canceled two Indiana campaign events scheduled for Tuesday. As recently as three days ago Kasich's campaign announced investments in Indiana, including the opening of two offices and the creation of a campaign leadership team. Campaign manager John Weaver said in his statement that the Kasich team hoped to perform well in Oregon and New Mexico, which Weaver said were "structurally similar" to northeastern states where Kasich performed well earlier in the cycle. "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland," Weaver added, "where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee." The announcement came less than 48 hours before voting begins across five Northeastern states where the New York billionaire is poised to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. Trump campaigned Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Trump needs 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination. If he falls short, the national Republican gathering in July will evolve into a rare contested convention. At a rally in Hagerstown, Md., Trump stressed repeatedly that he expects to win the 1,237 delegates needed in the first round of voting to stave off a contested convention. "I only care about the first. We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth," said Trump. Even before the plan was announced, Cruz had all but abandoned the Northeastern states in favor of Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Both Cruz and Kasich had cast the state as a critical turning point. "Keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland," Kasich's campaign said Sunday. "We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana." Indiana will award 57 delegates to the winner of its primary. Oregon and New Mexico have 28 and 24 proportionately awarded delegates at stake, respectively. Fox News' Dan Gallo and the Associated Press contributed to this report. The U.S. is supplementing its ground and aerial assaults on ISIS with a cyber-attack campaign, opening up a new, high-tech front in the war against the Internet-savvy terror group. President Obama was scheduled Monday to address future efforts against ISIS at a conference in Germany with several European leaders, The New York Times reported. One of those efforts is the burgeoning cyber war. We are dropping cyberbombs, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work told The Times. We have never done that before. Though the cyber assault is the latest tact taken in the effort to destroy the terror group, details of the program have been vague, and its effectiveness is tough to evaluate. The National Security Agency has conducted phone surveillance on ISIS for years, The Times reported, but the NSAs military counterpart, Cyber Command, had not trained its sights on ISIS until recently. Now, secret tech weapons employed against more traditional U.S. adversaries such as Iran and North Korea will be deployed against the Islamist group. Our cyber operations are disrupting their command-and-control and communications, Obama said after an April meeting at CIA headquarters in Virginia. The operations objective is to upset ISIS efforts to attract new recruits and spread propaganda. Officials also hope to stymie electronic cash transfers. By talking publicly about the program albeit in little detail the administration hopes to psychologically affect ISIS command structure, making them question the integrity of their communications. Its also hoped that lower-level extremists may be scared off by the knowledge that someone may be monitoring them. U.S. Cyber Command is based out of Ford Meade, Md., and the East Coast facility began shifting its focus to ISIS after some prodding from Defense Secretary Ash Carter, The Associated Press reported. Late last year Carter told cyber commanders they had 30 days to bring him options for how the military could use its cyber warfare capabilities against the group's deadly insurgency across Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Officials said he told commanders that beefing up cyber warfare against the Islamic State group was a test for them, and that they should have both the capability and the will to wage the online war. But the military cyber fight is limited by concerns within the intelligence agencies that blocking the group's Internet access could hurt intelligence gathering. Officials said Carter told commanders that the U.S. must be able to impact Islamic State operations without diminishing the indications or warnings U.S. intelligence officers can glean about what the group is doing. On Jan. 27, Carter and Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Fort Meade for an update. Officials familiar with Carter's meetings said the secretary was frustrated that, as Cyber Command has grown and developed over the past several years, it was still focused on the cyber threats from nations such as Iran, Russia and China, rather than building a force to fight more agile insurgents. "He was right to say they could be more forward leaning about what they could possibly do against ISIS," said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "You could disrupt their support networks, their business networks, their propaganda and recruitment networks." However, Lewis added, the U.S. needs to be careful about disrupting the Internet to insure that attacks don't also affect civilian networks or systems needed for critical infrastructure and other public necessities. U.S. officials have long been concerned by militants' ability to use the Internet as a vehicle for inspiring so-called lone wolf attackers in Western nations, radicalized after reading propaganda easily available online. "Why should they be able to communicate? Why should they be using the Internet?" Carter said during testimony before the defense appropriations subcommittee. "The Internet shouldn't be used for that purpose." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Monday unleashed blistering personal attacks against Ted Cruz and John Kasich, in response to what he called their collusion in joining forces to try and stop him winning the Republican nomination -- even targeting Kasichs eating habits "disgusting." Trumps new campaign strategist Paul Manafort had promised a more presidential Donald Trump, and there had been some signs of that, with him talking about Senator Cruz rather than insulting references to Lyin Ted. But the billionaire campaigning in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reverted to the same Trump textbook of name-calling and outrageous behavior. At a rally in West Chester, Pa., Trump questioned how Republicans at the nominating convention in July could allow Cruz to become the party's presidential nominee with less delegates and "millions" of fewer votes. How do you explain how that gets done?" Trump asked the crowd. "You are going to have a revolt." Trump, in fact, has gotten roughly 8.8 million votes, compared to roughly 6.4 million for Cruz. In Rhode Island, earlier Monday, the focus of Trump's ire was largely on a comment Sunday night by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns that they will coordinate strategies to give Cruz a clear run in Indiana on May 3, and Kasich a clear path in Oregon on May 17, and New Mexico on June 7. Trump blasted the move as "collusion." You know, if you collude in business or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail, Trump told a boisterous crowd in Warwick, R.I. In politics youre allowed to collude. Actually I was happy, as it shows how weak they are, it shows how pathetic they are. Trump mocked his rivals responses to questions as "stuttering and stammering," and called Cruz a basket case under pressure. But his choicest remarks were saved for Kasich. Trump labeled the Ohio governor as "1-for-41," a reference to his only winning one contest in 41 tries, and attacked his eating habits on the campaign trail. .@RealDonaldTrump, we were looking for some Trump steaks for the governor, but no one seems to sell them anymore. pic.twitter.com/zS5eLtfHOc Team Kasich (@TeamJohnKasich) April 25, 2016 He has the news conference all the time when hes eating. I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion, Trump said. Im always telling my young son, Barron, always with my kids, all of them, Id say children, small little bites. This guy takes a pancake and hes shoving it in his mouth, its disgusting." "Do you want that for your president?" Trump asked the crowd. "I dont think so." At another campaign event Monday in West Chester, Pa., Trump took another shot at at the Ohio governor's eating habits. "Kasich is a stubbon guy, he is a slob," he said. The Kasich campaign was quick to react to Trump's attack, tweeting out a not-so-flattering image of the frontrunner eating a steak. On Sunday night, Trump called his two rivals mathematically dead and totally desperate in a tweet, while a statement from the campaign called the Kasich/Cruz strategy "a horrible act of desperation from two campaigns who have horribly failed." The Cruz and Kasich campaigns made their announcement immediately after each appeared on a Fox News town hall from Philadelphia Sunday night, where each tried to make the case that Trump was incapable of beating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for the White House but that polls show that each of them could. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," Cruz's campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead." The arrangement marks a sharp reversal for Cruz's team, which aggressively opposed the idea of a coordinated anti-Trump effort as recently as late last week. Yet it underscores a bleak reality for the billionaire businessman's Republican foes: Time is running out to stop him. The Kasich campaign confirmed to Fox News that it had canceled two Indiana campaign events scheduled for Tuesday. As recently as three days ago Kasich's campaign announced investments in Indiana, including the opening of two offices and the creation of a campaign leadership team. Campaign manager John Weaver said in his statement that the Kasich team hoped to perform well in Oregon and New Mexico, which Weaver said were "structurally similar" to northeastern states where Kasich performed well earlier in the cycle. "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland," Weaver added, "where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee." Polls show voters in five Northeastern states are poised to add to the New York billionaire's already overwhelming delegate lead. Trump campaigned Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Trump needs 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination. If he falls short, the national Republican gathering in July will evolve into a rare contested convention. He currently has 845 delegates, while Cruz has 559 and Kasich 148. Even before the plan was announced, Cruz had all but abandoned the Northeastern states in favor of Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Both Cruz and Kasich had cast the state as a critical turning point. "Keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland," Kasich's campaign said Sunday. "We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana." Indiana will award 57 delegates to the winner of its primary. Oregon and New Mexico have 28 and 24 proportionately awarded delegates at stake, respectively. Fox News' Dan Gallo and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up "momentum" in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own. Obama's announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the president's professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden. Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi. The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation -- a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War." "Make no mistake," Obama said. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life." The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own. The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders." He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: "I'll be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense." On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies. He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany. "These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them," Obama said. The new deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel. Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions. He did say, "As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces." Obama's call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign. Amid what he described as "unsettling times," Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation block. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria. "Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now," Obama said. "We have to uphold our values, not just when it's easy but when it's hard." The migrant crisis was a central focus as Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya. "With the NATO mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration," Merkel said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce. Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said he saw Europe facing a "defining moment." He urged the continent's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women. "If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way," Obama said. The Obama administration reportedly is ready to release at least part of a 28-page chapter from a congressional report into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that has been kept secret since publication. The Associated Press reported Sunday that the White House was "likely soon" to declassifiy the documents which some say contain evidence of a Saudi connection to the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry that produced the report, told Fox News earlier this month that he had been informed that the White House would decide whether to declassify the documents within one to two months. Obama has hinted the administration might soon release at least part of the documents, noting that James Clapper, national director of intelligence, has been reviewing the classified pages. The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States." Graham, who has pressed for the documents to be made public, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. "I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available," Graham told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a "preliminary police report." "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with -- all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating," the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said Friday. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner." The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. Still, protecting U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations also was believed to have been a factor. Speaking of the Clapper review, Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said "when that's done we'd expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information." Neither the congressional inquiry nor the subsequent 9/11 Commission found any evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. But Graham, the relatives of victims and some lawmakers think there is reason to further probe possible Saudi links. Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. Al Thumairy was later denied entry into the United States in May 2003 after the State Department alleged that he might be involved in terrorist activity. Roemer also wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers. "We did not discover ... Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks," Roemer said. But he added: "We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. ... Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for Al Qaeda. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. That's why we need to continue to get to the bottom of this." An Internet site pushing to get the documents released, 28pages.org, points to another document declassified in July 2015 that outlined ways in which the commission could examine possible Saudi links. That 47-page document lists several pages of individuals of interest and suggests questions that could be pursued. One name is suspected Al Qaeda operative Ghassan al Sharbi. Al Sharbi, who was taking flight lessons in the Phoenix area before 9/11, was captured in 2002 in the same place in Pakistan as Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda trainer who was apprehended and waterboarded dozens of times by U.S. interrogators. The document said that after al Sharbi was captured, the FBI discovered some documents buried nearby. One was al Sharbi's pilot certificate inside an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, although it's unclear whether the license had been mailed by the embassy or if the envelope was simply being reused. A CIA inspector-general report in June 2015 said there had been no reliable information confirming Saudi government "involvement with and financial support for terrorist prior to 9/11." But it said also that people in the CIA's Near East Division and Counterterrorism Center "speculated that dissident sympathizers within the government may have aided Al Qaeda." The rest of the chapter, titled "Issues Related to Saudi Arabia," is blacked out. A bill directing the president to release the 28-page chapter was introduced in the Senate, and nearly three dozen Republicans and Democrats in the House are backing a similar resolution. Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote Obama last week saying they don't think releasing the chapter will harm national security and could provide closure for the victims' families. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has read the pages and said this past week that while he wants to see them declassified to end speculation about what they say, releasing them will not quell the debate over the issue. "As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty," he said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. While Donald Trump and Hillary Clintons rivals plot intricate delegate strategies in the hope of keeping their campaigns alive into July's conventions, the respective Republican and Democratic presidential front-runners are staying true to a simple strategy that's brought them to the brink of nomination -- playing to their loyalists. Trump, in the days before Tuesday's primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, has made several stops in deep-blue Connecticut and Maryland, staging his rallies in voter-friendly communities like Eastern Shore, Md., and blue-collar communities like Waterbury, Conn. Clinton, meanwhile, is focusing on major cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia to bolster her support among African-Americans and other loyal voters, while making time to fund-raise in affluent Fairfield County, Conn., where many Wall Street executives call home. Republican strategist Joe Desilets points out that such strategies are the result of a lot of numbers-based, behind-the-scenes efforts. Presidential campaigns have far more extensive polling than we see publicly, and they know what their voters look like in terms of demographics, vote history, geography and other metrics, Desilets, a partner at the firm 21st and Main, said Monday. Where they hold their rallies and events and which voters they contact to turn out is most often based on where they can find these pockets of voters. Trump and Clinton go into Tuesdays primaries with essentially double-digit leads and a total 504 delegates at stake -- 384 for Republicans and 120 for Democrats. Trump now has 845 delegates and is trying to get 1,237 to secure the nomination before the partys July nominating convention. The billionaire businessman already faced a tough challenge in reaching that magic number in the remaining 15 state contests. But primary rivals Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich late Sunday made Trumps task even harder with an announced plan to defeat him in Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico. Kasich will pull campaign resources out of Indiana to give Cruz "a clear path" in the states winner-take-all primary May 3, while the Cruz campaign will "clear the path" for Kasich in Oregon, which votes May 17, and New Mexico, which votes June 7, the campaigns said in separate releases. The Trump campaign called the move "a horrible act of desperation from two campaigns who have horribly failed." Kasich has just 148 delegates, and his only hope of winning the nomination is through multiple rounds of balloting at the convention. And a big night for Trump on Tuesday will essentially put Cruz in the same situation. Cruz, who did well in caucuses across the South and has 559 delegates, campaigned little in the Northeast, where his brand of conservativism is less popular. And in recent days, he has spent considerable time in Indiana. The eyes of the entire nation are on the state, Cruz said Monday at a rally in Borden, Ind. The Indiana primary is going to have greater impact on the direction of country. Kasich has campaigned across the five states, including a stop Monday at a Philadelphia diner in which he told potential voters that the Cruz alliance is designed to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president. However, the former congressman has also picked his spots, for example choosing the Annapolis area for a Maryland stop, trying to appeal to the many military voters who retired there after working at the U.S. Naval Academy. Clinton has 1,941 delegates toward securing the party nomination with 2,383, while rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has 1,191 delegates. Sanders strategy toward defeating Clinton has perhaps been more difficult than that of the GOP rivals. His and Clintons messages, which include more economic prosperity of the underclass, are essentially similar and have sent both of them into more urban areas to win votes. **Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.** Buzz Cut: Two big questions for Cruz, Kasich pact Weekend warrior: Cruz grabs more delegates Bern out after Tuesday? Libertarian-leaning Koch ponders Hillary over Trump Catch a tiger by the, um, tongue? TWO BIG QUESTIONS FOR CRUZ, KASICH PACT Is the coordinated effort between Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich a nick-of-time counteroffensive that could keep Donald Trump from capturing the Republican nomination? Or is it another too-little-too-late scheme that will go the way of other bids to block Trump through strategic voting? After all, the primary map is littered with the bleached bones of others who tried to organize the majority of the party to stop Trump. The answer depends on two things: Whether the Cruz/Kasich pact can last all the way until the California primary on June 7, and how long Trump is able to keep voters focused on the nominating process itself. The answer to the first one depends entirely on the initial success of their campaigns tontine. If Cruz comes up short in Indiana next week, it will be every man for himself and, almost invariably, a Trump nomination. The second unknown about the media and voter narrative, though, is not nearly so clear cut. Trump needs to keep talking about delegate process and party rules. It keeps his base enflamed and keeps scrutiny off of him and on his party, just where he wants it. Lets say Trump meets or exceeds expectations and not only wins large pluralities in the five blue states voting Tuesday, but snags 100 or so delegates of the 172 up for grabs. (Dont even get us started on Pennsylvanias delegate process well save that for your field guide on Tuesday.) That would put Trump at 942 delegates. More importantly, it would put him on a path to finish with something like 1,170. Thats even if he doesnt get any boost from a second straight week of coverage about elections wins and the allegedly adumbral nominating process. Now, we know that things wont stay exactly the same. Trump could start racking up massive wins or he could face sudden setbacks. But lets assume the status quo for the sake of our discussion. That would put Trump just 67 delegates shy of the goal line when the voting ends on June 7, 40 days before the convention. Under that scenario, Trump would need the support of just half of the unbound delegates who will arrive in Cleveland as free agents. Trumps claim Sunday that he was not interested in any ballot other than the first is aimed directly at these self-directed delegates. Its also rooted in reality: Trumps team knows that if he falls short on the first ballot, he will face mass defections and likely defeat. By suggesting he would withdraw from the process after the first ballot is a meaningless threat in a practical sense, but it increases the leverage against those poor souls who are already subject to enormous pressure, unprecedented scrutiny and even, some say, threats. Many of those unbound would like to wait and see until the voters are done or even withhold their votes on the first ballot to see how things are shaping up. Trump is saying that either they vote for him on the first round or he will walk out. And now that Trump has augmented his public threats and denunciations with the kind of private, professional delegate nuzzling others use, its silly to think he couldnt squeeze 60 or 70 delegates out of those unbound. Especially if he hammers home the idea that he is being cheated. The system Trump is railing against has actually been quite good to him. Aside from limits on debates and a compressed primary schedule designed to shield the partys frontrunner this cycle, longstanding delegate allocation rules have helped Trump turn 38 percent of the vote so far into 47 percent of the bound delegates. As Nate Silver pointed out, the claim that polls show overwhelming support for the candidate with the most delegates getting the nomination depends a great deal on how the question is asked. The alleged outrage among voters is not nearly so widespread as coverage would suggest. But the Trump attacks combined with relentless, often facile, reporting on the GOP process may be enough to drive these convention kingmakers to support him, even if they would prefer another candidate. Cruz and Kasich need more than to just coordinate their campaign targets. They need to get the focus back on to Trump and off of these desperate delegates. If its a referendum on Trump, the underdogs might be able to pull it off. If its a referendum on the party itself, theyre sure losers. Cruz, Kasich make electability arguments at town hall - Neither Cruz nor Kasich can win the GOP nomination outright, but in a Fox News town hall Sunday hosted by purveyors of political excellence Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum, both candidates argued that Trump cant win the general election. In what has become mantra of both candidates, Kasich and Cruz both argued that they perform better against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton than the GOP frontrunner. Weekend warrior: Cruz grabs more delegates - WaPo: Ted Cruz dominated the race for delegate seats at weekend Republican meetings nationwide, further positioning the senator from Texas to wrest the GOP presidential nomination from Donald Trump if the contest is decided on later ballots at the Republican National Convention. [GOP delegate count: Trump 845; Cruz 559; Kasich 148 (1,237 needed to win)] WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE Happy birthday to Ella Fitzgerald, who would have turned 99 today. Born in Newport News, Va. in 1917, Fitzgerald was raised in Yonkers, New York by a single mother until she was orphaned at age 15. Living in Harlem with her extended family, Fitzgerald fell in with bad company and landed in reform school. But she got back on track and by age 18 was ready for her big break: an amateur night performance at the Apollo Theater. Her career would span six decades and earn her the moniker the first lady of song. Composer Ira Gershwin said of her: I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them. Her duets were incomparable. Her mastery of the Cole Porter songbook was unmatched. She could sing the blues to break your heart. And gospel? Oh, yes. Fitzgerald died in 1996 at age 87, five years after her final performance. POLL CHECK Real Clear Politics Averages National GOP nomination: Trump 42.3 percent; Cruz 30.3 percent; Kasich 22.3 percent National Dem nomination: Clinton 49.3 percent; Sanders 46 percent General Election: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +8.4 points Generic Congressional Vote: Democrats +2.3 BERN OUT AFTER TUESDAY? NPR: Bernie Sanders has come a long way, but the Vermont independent is running out of friendly states. Tuesday is no different, as all but one of the contests (Rhode Island) in these Northeast states are closed primaries. In other words, independents cant vote. And thats a big problem for Sanders. One analysis found that as much as 40 percent of Sanders vote total was coming from independents, as of a month ago. Three of Tuesdays states Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania also have significant non-white populations in Democratic primaries. That plays to Hillary Clintons strengthPut another way: Hillary Clinton could lose every single remaining state and still be the nominee as long as Sanders doesnt beat her by an average of 59 percent in each and every remaining contest. (And thats to say nothing of superdelegates. With superdelegates, Sanders needs about three-quarters of all remaining delegates.) And a new poll backs that up - A new poll from Brown University shows Hillary Clinton beating Bernie Sanders by 10 points in the Ocean State, despite Sanders outperforming her in other New England states. Sixteen percent of Democratic voters are undecided between the two. Bernie aides trying to set the Democratic agenda - NYT: Even as his chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination slip away, Senator Bernie Sanders and his allies are trying to use his popularity to expand his political influence, setting up an ideological struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party in the post-Obama era. Aides to Mr. Sanders have been pressing party officials for a significant role in drafting the platform for the Democratic convention in July, aiming to lock in strong planks on issues like a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, breaking up Wall Street banks and banning natural gas fracking. Libertarian-leaning Koch ponders Hillary over Trump - Time: When asked if it was possible that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could be preferable to another Republican, Koch told ABCs Jonathan Karl: Its possible. Koch was critical of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump during the interview, saying that there are terrible role models among those vying for the GOP nomination. However, he said he is not yet ready to endorse Hillary Clintons candidacy. We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way, Koch said. [Dem delegate count: Clinton 1941; Sanders 1191 (2,383 needed to win)] CATCH A TIGER BY THE, UM, TONGUE? News Channel 9: Its not unusual to see a cat roaming the neighborhood now and then, but this particular cat caused quite a scene. I see something run into the bushes, it was really big, and Jonathan hopped out of the car was like Im gonna go catch it, said Erin Poole. I see the collar and leash. I just walked up to it, and it ran up to me and started kissing me in the face and licking me, said Jonathan Gessner. Gessner and Poole said they couldnt believe their eyes or their luck, not only finding a tiger roaming the streets, but a friendly one. But now Conroe, Texas police would like a friendly word with the tigers owner. Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Sally Persons contributed to this report. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here. Ancient stone blocks depicting Queen Hatshepsut have been discovered on Egypt's Elephantine Island, providing insights into the early years of her reign, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities announced this week. The blocks may have been part of a building that served as a way station for an ancient Egyptian deity. On several of the blocks, Queen Hatshepsut was represented as a woman, according to the Ministry, suggesting that the blocks and building it came from were erected during the early part of the first female pharaoh's reign, which lasted from 1473 B.C. to 1458 B.C. Later in her reign, the queen was depicted as a male. Mentions of Queen Hatshepsut were erased and monuments bearing her image were defaced after her death, and her female figure was replaced with images of a male king: her deceased husband Thutmose II. It is believed that her co-ruler and stepson/nephew Thutmose III ordered the change. [Photos: The Beautiful Sarcophagus of an Egypt Pharaoh] It was unusual for a woman to become pharaoh of Egypt. As Egyptologist Ian Shaw noted in his book "Exploring Ancient Egypt" (Oxford University Press, 2003), "In the history of Egypt during the dynastic period (3000 to 332 B.C.) there were only two or three women who managed to rule as pharaohs, rather than wielding power as the 'great wife' of a male king." And she was a builder: In his National Geographic feature on Hatshepsut "The King Herself," Chip Brown wrote about her legacy, and said she was "one of the greatest builders in one of the greatest Egyptian dynasties." During her reign, Hatshepsut erected and renovated many temples and shrines to the gods. In fact, the newfound blocks likely were part of a previously unknown building of Queen Hatshepsut that was discovered this year by the German Archaeological Institute, said Mahmoud Afify, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, in the Ministry of Antiquities' statement on Facebook. In previous excavation seasons at the same site, members of the Swiss Institute also discovered some blocks that may have come from the same building. The building would have served as a way station for the festival barque of the god Khnum, said Felix Arnold, field director of the Elephantine Island mission. In ancient Egypt, "barques," or sacred boats, were used to help carry the dead to the afterlife. Based on the discoveries thus far, in the same statement, the Ministry of Antiquities described the building's construction as a chamber for the barque of the god Khnum, which is surrounded by pillars on all four sides. "On the pillars are representations of several versions of the god Khnum, as well as other gods, such as Imi-peref 'He-who-is-in-his-house,' Nebet-menit 'Lady-of-the-mooring-post' and Min-Amun of Nubia," according to the Ministry statement on Facebook. "The building thus not only adds to our knowledge of the history of Queen Hatshepsut, but also to our understanding of the religious beliefs current on the Island of Elephantine during her reign." Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. JERUSALEM The grandchildren of one of the earliest Jewish victims of the Nazis are laying claim to a jewel of Israel's top museum: the world's oldest illustrated Passover manuscript. The descendants of a German Jewish lawmaker say the famed Birds' Head Haggadah, a medieval copy of the text read around Jewish dinner tables on Passover, was stolen from their family during the Nazi era and sold without the family's consent 70 years ago to the predecessor of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem an act the family calls a "long-standing illegal and moral injustice." The medieval manuscript, which tells the biblical tale of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, has long vexed scholars with its peculiar drawings of Jewish figures with bird-like heads. Now, a new page in the manuscript's history is being written, as a high-profile American attorney who restored looted masterpieces by artist Gustav Klimt to their Jewish heir a courtroom drama made famous in the recent Hollywood film "Woman in Gold" is taking on the case. The manuscript is currently displayed behind glass in a darkened room at the special exhibit at the Israel Museum ahead of the weeklong Passover holiday, which begins Friday. The family wants the manuscript to remain at the museum, but it demands the museum pay compensation and rename the manuscript after the family, or face a lawsuit. "We want a compromise," said Eli Barzilai, 75, who lives in Jerusalem. He is leading the restitution demand in Jerusalem on behalf of his cousins in the United States and Berlin. He said the manuscript is so rare, its value is priceless. The Art Newspaper, which first reported the ownership claim, said the family is seeking "less than" $10 million, but neither Barzilai nor the family's lawyer would cite a figure to The Associated Press. "If we go to court," he said, "there's no turning back." Barzilai, who is spending Passover on a tour of China with his wife, said his lawyer and the Israel Museum had exchanged documentation regarding the Haggadah, and that Barzilai would meet museum staff for the first time in May. The museum said in a statement that it "looks forward to meeting with Mr. Barzilai, following its several suggestions that he do so, and to learning about whatever new information and documentation he has and to sharing what the Museum knows with him." In an email exchange provided by Barzilai's lawyer, the museum's lawyer acknowledged the Marum family's ownership of the Haggadah "for a period of time up until 1933." Written in southern Germany around 1300 by a scribe identified only as Menahem, the Bird's Head has long been a riddle. Marc Michael Epstein, Vassar College professor and author of the book The Medieval Haggadah, called it "as mysterious as the Pyramids of Giza, the monoliths of Easter Island, or Mona Lisa's smile." Much of the enigma surrounds its strange illustrations of Jewish figures. Epstein believes the heads on the figures are those of griffins, a beloved mythical creature, and the drawings were meant to offer a positive representation of Jews while skirting a biblical prohibition against depicting human likenesses. Barzilai says the 14th-century Haggadah was a wedding gift from his grandmother's family to his grandfather, Ludwig Marum, a lawyer from the German town of Karlsruhe who served in Germany's parliament and opposed Hitler. The Nazis paraded Marum and other opponents across town before taking them away. Marum was later killed at the Kislau concentration camp. A Jewish lawyer named Shimon Jeselsohn who worked with Marum managed to flee and eventually moved to Israel after World War II. One day, he read in the newspaper about a special Haggadah purchased by the Bezalel National Museum, the forerunner to the Israel Museum. Jeselsohn recognized it as the Birds' Head Haggadah. Marum had kept it in his law office, Jeselsohn said in his memoirs. Curious as to how the manuscript ended up in Jerusalem, Jeselsohn began making inquiries. The museum director told him a Jewish immigrant from Karlsruhe brought it after the war. When Jeselsohn asked the immigrant where he got it, he said a Jewish doctor had given it to him. But when the doctor denied it, the immigrant offered no further explanation, and Jeselsohn grew suspicious. He wrote to Barzilai's aunt, Elisabeth, who had survived World War II and moved to New York, to update her about the Haggadahs journey. After a visit to Israel in 1984 to see the Haggadah at the Israel Museum with Barzilai, Elisabeth wrote to the museum that she believed the immigrant who had brought it to Jerusalem "had no right to sell it," but that the Marum family wanted it to remain at the museum "for the benefit of the public." For years, the family did not act. Dominique Avery, Elisabeth's daughter, says her late mother thought she had no recourse to retrieve the manuscript and she deferred to Barzilai. After Barzilai heard a speech last year at the Israel Museum by E. Randol Schoenberg, the lawyer who retrieved the Klimt paintings, Barzilai enlisted the lawyer's help. The family's demands are delicate, because they are leveled at the leading museum of a country that gave refuge to Holocaust survivors and that has long seen itself as a caretaker of the cultural artifacts of Holocaust victims. "The Israel Museum should be even more sensitive to the claimant's side," said Schoenberg. The museum said it has in recent years restituted 18 works looted during World War II, and is in the process of restituting three more works. There are two researchers dedicated to combing through the museum's collection for looted objects, the museum said. Why Barzilai waited until his 70s to pursue the manuscript is another question mark in the story. Barzilai spent his childhood with an adopted family, and only learned as a teenager that he had been adopted and that his biological parents had perished in the Holocaust. It was too painful a truth to bear, he said, and he wanted to forget his connection to the Marum family. "We were two separate identities," he said. Even when he accompanied his aunt Elisabeth to see the Haggadah, he said he took no special interest in the manuscript. Through his quest to reclaim the Haggadah at this stage in his life, Barzilai says he has reclaimed a part of himself. "The Haggadah," Barzilai said, "was a trigger." WARSAW, Poland A historian in northeastern Poland says the moss-covered ruins of a German World War II bunker may hide Russia's precious Amber Room, a national treasure that went missing during the war. The 18th-century Amber Room, made of amber panels and gold leaf, was fitted into Russia's Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, where it remained until it was looted by Germany's Nazis in 1941. Tests in September by earth-penetrating radar in the woods near the Polish village of Mamerki suggest there's a small room at the base of a bunker that was the German army's wartime headquarters, according to the head of Mamerki Museum, Bartlomiej Plebanczyk. The bunker is located about 62 miles from Russia's Kaliningrad region which was the German region of Koenigsberg during the war and where the Nazis brought the Amber Room in 1941. Plebanczyk told TVN24 on Friday that he is "almost certain" that the crumbling concrete bunker hides the Russian treasure. He has informed local Polish authorities in the town of Wegorzewo, who will now decide what to do. Wegorzewo Deputy Mayor Andrzej Lachowicz told TVN24 authorities will try to see what's in the bunker. "If not the Amber Room, then maybe some other treasure," Lachowicz said. The British heavily bombed Koenigsberg in 1944. The current whereabouts of the Amber Room is unknown. In a project that took decades, Russian authorities reconstructed a replica of the Amber Room at the same palace. According to Plebanczyk, a resident claimed right after the war that he saw German trucks bring heavy cases to the bunker. In the 1960s, residents said they saw a top Nazi, Erich Koch, brought to the site from a Polish prison where he was jailed for wartime crimes. Koch was a top official in Koenigsberg until 1945 and authorities believed he knew the treasure's whereabouts, Plebanczyk told The Associated Press. Last year, other Polish explorers said they had located another Nazi German treasure: a gold train that reportedly went missing at the end of the war in Walbrzych, in what is now southwestern Poland. Some search work was done but no train has been found so far. The search has attracted thousands of tourists to the region. A number of artifacts from the doomed ship Titanic were auctioned in the U.K. Saturday with the sextant used by the captain of rescue ship Carpathia selling for just under $97,000. The sextant belonged to Carpathia's Captain Sir Arthur Rostron and was sold to a UK phone bidder by auction house Henry Aldridge & Son. The sextant had a pre-sale estimate of $58,000 to $72,900. The Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. ship's time on April 14 1912 and sank just over two hours later with the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Rostrons swift response to the sinking is credited with saving over 700 people. Related: Sextant used in rescue of Titanic survivors up for sale This is without doubt one of the most important pieces of Titanic memorabilia due to the integral part Sir Arthur played in the rescue of the surviving 705 men, women and children, said Henry Aldridge & Son, in a press release. The first letter written onboard the Titanic, penned just hours before the ship embarked on its doomed maiden voyage, was sold to an Internet bidder for just over $91,000. The letter was written on April 10 1912 before Titanic set sail from Southampton for New York. The author, Paul Danby, wrote the note while visiting his wifes uncle Adolphe Saalfeld, who was a passenger on the ship. The letter had a pre-sale estimate of $14,500 to $21,700. Three photos and a handwritten note detailing the grisly discovery of Titanics last lifeboat were sold for $6,800. The lot had a pre-sale estimate of between $2,900 and $4,300. Related: First letter written onboard the Titanic up for sale The three photos were taken on May 13, 1912, almost a month after Titanics sinking, and show crewmembers from RMS Oceanic attempting to recover one of the doomed liners lifeboats. Inside the lifeboat, thought to be the last to leave the sinking ship, were the decomposing bodies of three Titanic passengers. One photo shows a boat from Oceanic being lowered, another shows the boat approaching the drifting lifeboat. A third picture shows Oceanic crewmembers on the Titanic lifeboat. A handwritten account of the lifeboat recovery by an unidentified Oceanic passenger describes the gruesome discovery of three corpses. One corpse was wearing a dinner jacket and the bodies of two Titanic firemen were wedged under the lifeboats seats, it explained, adding that one corpses arms came off in the hands of the Oceanics boarding officer. A womans ring was also found on the lifeboat, according to the note. Related: Titanic artifacts reveal gruesome discovery of tragic ship's last lifeboat Last year a cup presented by Titanic survivor Molly Brown to the captain of rescue ship Carpathia sold for $200,000 in a major auction of Titanic memorabilia held by Henry Aldridge & Son. A photo purportedly showing the iceberg that sank the Titanic also sold for $32,000 in the auction. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers Thermal imaging has been a crucial life-saving tool for rescue service workers for decades, but until recently, the technology hasn't been particularly easy to use. That's why a company called Scott Safety decided to put a thermal intelligence system directly in the sightlines of their brand new firefighter mask. The in-mask thermal images provide real-time data so that firefighters can find potential victims through the smoke and heat of a roaring blaze. Scott Sight uses a lightweight, 8.5 ounce camera with a display integrated directly into the firefighter mask. Thermal images are fed at nine frames per second into the mask itself, but as part of a peripheral display so as not to obscure the firefighters' view. Increasing visibility in dark or smoky conditions is a huge benefit for firefighters, since conditions can be so hostile and unpredictable. Scott Sight also moves thermal imaging from handheld devices directly into the mask, so firefighters can keep their hands free to execute life-saving rescues. Related: Australia built a $225K robotic water cannon to keep human firefighters out of harm's way The ability to locate rescue targets more efficiently and save civilians faster just increases safety for all the humans involved, regardless of whether they're doing the saving or being saved. Individualized, all-environment visibility will help teams of firefighters cover more ground more quickly in dangerous fire situations, all while locating potential victims and moving out of harm's way without having to stop to check external equipment readings. More from Digital Trends: Two scientists propose using lasers to cloak Earth from aliens Well-traveled enough to know a location on sight? Well, Google is For the Scott Safety team, creating a display that enhanced firefighters' abilities without obstructing their field of view (or interfering with other equipment) was paramount. "One of the key challenges we faced was to create an adjustable, sleek design that wouldn't interfere with the firefighter's personal protection equipment, field of view or scene hazards," said Kim Henry, Scott Safety director of growth initiatives. Future adaptations of the Scott Sight firefighter mask are already in the works at Scott Safety, and it's safe to assume they'll continue to beef up the mask's high-tech imaging abilities. A 21-year-old man was shot and killed "execution style" in Philadelphia on Sunday while talking to a candidate for the Pennsylvania House. Police said the the unidentified 21-year-old man was shot while speaking to Democratic candidate Chris Rabb about the state's upcoming primary. Police said the gunman shot the victim twice in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A spokesman for Rabb's campaign, Chris Visco, said the the victim told Rabb that he was planning to work the polls on Tuesday. "He was talking to a voter, a nice young man who works the polls on election day. They were talking about the election. The young man was interested in Chris' campaign and his candidacy for the 200th," Vicso told WPVI-TV. "One of the people that was with (Chris) handed him a piece of literature, took his phone number, and another young man came up behind him and shot him execution style in the head," he told the televison station. Rabb is running for a seat in the 200th District, and was canvassing the area at the time. Visco told Philly.com that Rabb and another campaign worker - both of whom witnessed the shooting but were not injured - were still speaking with detectives Sunday evening and were in shock. "The [victim] had been shot, execution-style, blood gushing everywhere," Visco told Philly.com. He added that he spoke with Rabb Sunday night, who was 'devastated." Police told Fox 29 the shooter appears to be a black man, described as 60 wearing a light grey hoodie. A motive for the shooting remains unclear. No arrests have been made. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from Fox29.com. Click for more from Philly.com Click for more from 6abc.com. Two tone-deaf security guards at the 9/11 Memorial got tough with some wide-eyed middle school kids visiting the city for the first time from their small town in North Carolina because they sang The Star-Spangled Banner. You have to stop. This is considered a public demonstration! one guard barked at the patriotic teens, their Waynesville Middle School music teacher, Martha Brown, told The Post. The guards insisted the group needed a permit to sing, according to Brown. Some of the students were very upset and confused. I told the children, This is a place where you need to respect authority even if you dont understand it, she said. The choir was wrapping up a whirlwind field trip to the Big Apple with a somber visit to the 9/11 Memorial on Friday, and had launched into their lilting version of the national anthem when the two guards cut them off. Click to read more from The New York Post. The execution-style killing of a Philadelphia man who was speaking to a political candidate about volunteering for his campaign led to a retaliatory shooting that left one teenager dead and another wounded, police said late Sunday. "We do believe these are two rivaling factions,' Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross told reporters. "What they're fighting over we haven't pinned that down right now, but we are not going to let this pass us by, by not assuming that it's gang related because everything suggests that it is." The first shooting took place at around 3:30 p.m. in the Cedarbrook section of the city. Witnesses said the unidentified 21-year-old victim was talking with Chris Rabb, a Democratic candidate for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives when someone approached the victim from behind and shot him. Chris Visco, Rabb's campaign manager, told Philly.com the victim had told Rabb he was going to be a poll worker during Tuesday's primary election, but also expressed interest in volunteering for Rabb's campaign. Visco added the victim died with a piece of Rabb campaign literature in his hand. "One of the people that was with (Rabb) handed him a piece of literature, took his phone number, and another young man came up behind him and shot him execution style in the head," Visco told WPVI. Police say the victim was pronounced dead at the scene. Rabb was able to pull his volunteer to safety in a nearby convenience store. They were not injured. The second shooting took place at approximately 7:30 p.m. about a quarter-mile from the scene of the first shooting. Police said an 18-year-old man was shot in the back and a 17-year-old boy was grazed by a bullet in a drive-by shooting. The 18-year-old was taken to a hospital, where he later died. The 17-year-old was expected to recover. No arrests have been made in either shooting. Police described the suspect in the afternoon killing as a black man standing approximately six feet tall and wearing a light gray hoodie. He was seen running from the scene. As in the first shooting, police did not release the names of the victims in the later shooting. It was not immediately clear whether either victim was a suspect in the first shooting. "I'm somewhat exasperated by this," Ross told reporters Sunday night. "It speaks to what we deal with across this city and [in] cities across the nation, with retaliatory violence, and the manner [in] which particularly young people handle their grief, and their retribution. And it's ridiculous." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from Fox29.com. The parents of two teenagers who vanished months ago while fishing off the coast of Florida engaged in a new legal battle over a recovered iPhone, with one family filing a restraining order Sunday to keep the phone away from the other family before law enforcement could examine it. Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos disappeared last July. Each was 14 at the time. Their bodies were never found, but a Norwegian cargo ship spotted their 19-foot boat near Bermuda last month and recovered it. Onboard were Stephanos' phone and some fishing gear. One day after the Cohen family filed the restraining order, Blu Stephanos, Austin's father, promised to share the phone's data with investigators and both families. Speaking to the Palm Beach Post, Blu Stephanos said salt water had damaged the phone badly, making it unclear whether any information could come out of it. Still, he added, "I am not giving up hope." This is not the first rift to appear between the families since their sons disappeared. Last October, Pamela Cohen, Perry's mother, asked that Stephanos' parents not use her son's name and likeness while fundraising for their new foundation. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission took the phone after crews recovered it. The restraining order would have prevented the Stephanos family from taking it before investigators. A court hearing is pending, said Guy Rubin, the Perry family's attorney. He said his clients have had no formal communication with the Stephanos family about the phone, so "I am not sure what their intentions are." FWC spokesman Rob Klepper issued a statement Monday saying that since this is not a criminal investigation the agency would turn over the phone and other items to the respective families. Any retrieval of information from Austin Stephanos' phone would only be done with his family's permission, Klepper said. The cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were recovered from the boat. The phone was shipped ahead to FWC, but the boat and other personal effects were crated and are expected to arrive at Port Everglades next month. Robert Heller, a digital forensics expert in Texas, said the phone could contain the boat's location, its speed, its direction, distress text messages the boys tried to send, photos they took and other information, assuming it wasn't damaged beyond repair. Even if FWC turns over the phone to the Stephanos family, Heller suspects investigators will download its data for safekeeping, if it is accessible. "If they didn't make a forensic record, then shame on them," he said. The Coast Guard searched for a week and the families' volunteer search lasted more than two weeks. During its search, the Coast Guard did spot the overturned boat near Daytona Beach, almost 200 miles from where the boys departed but it was gone when a recovery boat arrived at the location. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Infamous former University of Missouri professor Melissa Click suggested in a newspaper profile published Sunday that she was fired because of her race. This is all about racial politics, Click said in the Chronicle of Higher Education article. Im a white lady. Im an easy target. Click was fired from her position as an assistant professor of communications in February, and her appeal of the decision was denied in March. She achieved national attention after video footage of her assaulting a student journalist went viral. Later, video emerged of her yelling profanities at a police officer. Im a white lady. Im an easy target. Melissa Click Her confrontation with a student journalist attempting to cover campus protests in November was caught on the journalists camera. Im not a superhero, Click told The Chronicle. I wasnt in charge. When it got out of control, I was the one held accountable. Her incident with police in October, during a protest at the universitys homecoming parade, was caught on an officers body camera. Am I going to be one of those people who stands and watches another brutal moment against black people, or am I going to step in and make sure theyre safe? Click said she asked herself before stepping between the police officer and a protester. Black people love me, shes quoted as telling a reporter. Click said the media treated her unfairly, and if she were to write a headline for her story it would have been Favorite Professor Fights to Support Black Students on Campus in Dangerous Situation. I believed at some point, somebody would care about the truth of what I was doing, Click said. I am a woman who made some mistakes trying to do what she thought was right. Solar energy is finding its way into innovations big and small all over the world -- and the sky's the limit. On Sunday, the Solar Impulse 2, an entirely solar-powered experimental airplane, was flown from Hawaii to California, successfully crossing the Pacific Ocean. The 62-hour flight was piloted by Solar Impulse co-founder and chairman Bertrand Piccard. Piccard and his co-founder Andre Borschberg are attempting to fly around the world utilizing only solar power. The duo began their journey in Abu Dhabi last spring, and in July, after a record-breaking 117 hours and 52 minute-long solo flight from Japan to Hawaii, the plane -- a one-seater with a 72-meter wingspan -- had to be grounded to fix its damaged battery pack. Related: 7 Clean-Tech Companies That Solve More Than Environmental Problems Solar Impulse isn't the only innovator in the application of clean energy to aerospace technology. Last week, NASA laid out some of its goals for the development of the latest X-planes -- to "burn half the fuel and generate 75 percent less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than todays jets." Here's a glance at some more of the ways solar technology is making an impact in a wide range of industries, ranging from architecture to animal conservation. Travel Bair175 | Wikimedia Commons George Airport, located in Western Cape Province in South Africa, is Africa's first solar-powered airport. Forty percent of the airport's electricity comes from the panels that were installed for nearly $1 million. Some 600,000 travelers fly in and out of the airport every year. Officials in Africa are looking to equip eight more airports with the technology. Last year, the Cochin International Airport Limited in Kerala, India, became the first airport in the world to be solar powered. Fashion paulinevandongen.nl Designer Pauline van Dongen has made an assortment of solar-powered garments, including a winter parka, jacket, dress, and most recently, a stylish shirt. The wearer of the T-shirt can use the power of the sun absorbed by the clothing to charge a mobile phone within two hours. Related: Elon Musk: A Carbon Tax Is the Only Way to End World's Dependence on Fossil Fuels Migration patterns Shutterstock of all manner of rare and sometimes endangered creatures National utilities Shutterstock This week, Singapore announced that the country's commercial and industrial entities are now able to purchase solar-generated power from the national power grid in an effort to cut down on environmental emissions. Related: Why We Don't Want to See a Total Solar-Panel Eclipse Over Nevada Architecture Kyocera build the world's biggest installation of floating solar panels Less than 24 hours to several big primaries that could further narrow the field.. Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island voters head to the polls tomorrow.. were calling it Super Tuesday the Battle for the East. Major news on the GOP side late yesterday.. Ted Cruz and John Kasich will coordinate their campaigns in an effort to deny Donald Trump the nomination before the convention. Both mens hopes rest on a contested convention. What it means is that Cruz will campaign harder in Indiana with Kasich giving up on that state. Cruz will not campaign in Oregon and New Mexico.. giving Kasich a better chance there. Donald Trump was tweeting up a storm about it last night: @realDonaldTrump: Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! @realDonaldTrump: Lyin' Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad! And Cruz has racked up some pretty substantial delegate wins versus Trump. Ed O'Keefe writes in the Washington Post: Ted Cruz dominated the race for delegate seats at weekend Republican meetings nationwide, further positioning the senator from Texas to wrest the GOP presidential nomination from Donald Trump if the contest is decided on later ballots at the Republican National Convention. In some instances, Cruz supporters won delegate seats in states that Trump won, meaning that in most cases they will be required to vote for the businessman on a first ballot, but if Trump fails to win the nomination in that first round, the Cruz supporters could switch to the senator on subsequent ballots. The Trump campaign has assured supporters that it will begin performing better in such settings, but it still seems more focused on winning most of the remaining 15 contests through June and securing the 1,237 delegates needed before the convention in Cleveland. Meantime, the pressure is growing on Sanders to get out of the race as the delegate math is impossible and most of the primaries in the next few weeks favor Clinton. But Sanders is so far showing no sign of going quietly. Nicholas Confessore writes in the New York Times: Even as his chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination slip away, Senator Bernie Sanders and his allies are trying to use his popularity to expand his political influence, setting up an ideological struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party in the post-Obama era. Aides to Mr. Sanders have been pressing party officials for a significant role in drafting the platform for the Democratic convention in July, aiming to lock in strong planks on issues like a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, breaking up Wall Street banks and banning natural gas ''fracking.'' Amid his unexpectedly strong showing in the Democratic primaries, Mr. Sanders has tapped his two-million-person donor list to raise money for liberal congressional candidates in New York, Nevada and Washington State. And in the waning months of Barack Obama's presidency, Mr. Sanders's allies are testing their muscle against the White House, mounting a public attack on the president's housing secretary, Julian Castro, over his department's sales of delinquent mortgages to banks and private equity firms. Clinton and Trump are trying to pivot to target each other in a preview of the general election contest: Cathleen Decker writes in the Los Angeles Times, As Tuesday's quintuple primaries near, the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns appear to be moving in tandem for the first time. Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are targeting each other with an eye to November's general election and are mostly ignoring their party challengers. Behind them, their rivals are still aiming at the front-runners in a desperate effort to gain ground before the primary season spirals further out of their control. Lots of campaign events during our hours today: 1000EDT -- OH Gov Kasich makes a retail stop at the Penrose Diner, Philadelphia, PA. LIVE via Baby Pool 1030EDT -- SenTed Cruz holds a rally. Huber's Plantation Hall, Borden, IN. LIVE via LiveU 1300EDT -- Donald Trump holds a rally. Crowne Plaza Hotel, Warwick, RI. LIVE 1400EDT -- OH Gov Kasich holds a town hall meeting. Thomas Farms Community Center, Rockville, MD. LIVE via LiveU 1400 EDT -- Sen Ted Cruz makes a retail stop at Zaharakos Ice Cream Shop, Columbus, IN. LIVE via LiveU 1000EDT -- Sen Sanders holds a rally featuring Jim Dean. Mortensen Riverfront Plaza, Hartford, CT. LIVE via LiveU 1115EDT -- Hillary Clinton holds a "get out the vote" event. World CafA Live at the Queen, Wilmington, DE. LIVE via LiveU 1430EDT -- Sen Sanders holds a "get out the vote" event. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. LIVE via LiveU President Obama breaking news this morning in Germany. He announced an additional 250 troops will be heading to Syria to fight the Islamic State. 50 Special Ops forces are already on the ground. Hes also ordering the U.S. to attack ISIS computer systems.. President Obama meets with several EU leaders today before heading home. The Brussels subway station attacked by terrorists March 22nd will reopen today. 32 died in the attacks on the station and on the Brussels airport. Breaking merger news, Gannett has offered to buy Tribune newspapers (L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune) for $815 million. We get a ton of earnings this week including Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. Today is Xerox. We also get a read on new home sales. Airbus delivers its first American made A321 today. For more news, follow me on Twitter: @ClintPHenderson Recently, Leah Busque, the founder and CEO of TaskRabbit, a platform that connects consumers with freelance labor who take care of everyday errands or chores, announced she was stepping down from her role and Stacey Brown-Philpot, the company's COO, would be taking over. Busque launched the company -- which has a presence in 19 cities around the country -- eight years ago, and told Entrepreneur that she had been weighing the decision with Brown-Philpot for nearly a year. Related: Where to Find the Confidence to Make the Challenging Decision "I knew that if I ever did transition it would only be at a time when I felt like there were key leaders in the company who were ready to step up and take the reins and continue to scale to the next level, she says. That was a big factor in my decision around timing." This coupled with the fact March was the companys biggest month to date and strong first-quarter results made her feel this was the moment to make the jump. Related: 7 Keys to Making the Right Decision the First Time and Every Time But even with all the confidence in the world, it still remains a significant choice. "Deciding about where you spend your time, energy and passion to ensure your baby is going to thrive, grow, develop and scale into the company it is meant to be, that's no small decision, says Busque. Busque's experience, and dilemma, is one that any business owner can relate to. Read on to see why four other founders decided to take on different roles within their companies and why they made that decision. Nasty Gal Founder Sophia Amoruso Rich Polk/Stringer | Getty Images What happened? In January 2015, Amoruso stepped down from her role as the online retailer's CEO, handing over control to Sheree Waterson, who had previously been the company's president and chief product officer. Amoruso's exit followed the success of her book #GirlBoss and the opening of the company's first brick-and-mortar location, but also after slowed sales and layoffs of 10 percent of the ecommerce platform's employees. What she said: In a company blog post, Amoruso explained the impetus behind the move, writing "Over the course of the past year, its become evident that I am the brand connector -- both to the world at large, to influential individuals and organizations, and to our customer. And its also become resolutely clear that I and Nasty Gal are ready for a move Ive been thinking about for going on two years now. As you know, part of being a #GIRLBOSS (and just a decent human being) is about playing to your strengths. Ive been wondering for a while now if the CEO role is one that I want -- and the one that Im best at." What now? Amoruso remains the company's executive chairman. In addition to those duties, she is the host of the GirlBoss Radio podcast, and her second book, titled Nasty Galaxy, also the name of the Nasty Gal company blog, will be published in October. Zynga co-founder Marc Pincus Bloomberg | Getty Images What happened? In July 2013, amid sizable layoffs of the social gaming site's staff and less than stellar performances for several of the companys titles, founder Marc Pincus stepped down as CEO, electing to stay on as both executive chairman and chief product officer. Don Mattrick, formerly of Microsoft, was hired on as CEO. What he said: In a company blog post about the move, Pincus wrote, "As I reflect on the past six years, I realize that Ive had the greatest impact working as an entrepreneur with product teams, developing games that could entertain and connect millions. Ive always saidthat if I could find someone who could do a better job as our CEO Id do all I could to recruit and bring that person in. Im confident that Don is that leader." What now? In April 2015, Mattrick left his role as CEO and Pincus returned to the position. But last month, Pincus announced he would again become executive chairman and turn the reins over to someone else -- this time to Frank Gibeau, who joined the company after 25 years at Electronic Arts. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey Fairfax Media | Getty Images What happened? Ten years ago, the social-networking site was founded by Jack Dorsey, Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass. Dorsey was initially the CEO of the startup, but was ousted in 2008 which led to Williams taking on the role. Williams was in turn fired and replaced by then COO Dick Costolo in 2010. But with slowing user growth, a declining stock price and criticism leveled at Twitter's leadership for how it dealt with harassment, Costolo stepped down as CEO in July of 2015. Dorsey then became interim CEO. What he said: In a company statement Dorsey was quoted as saying The future belongs to Twitter thanks in large part to Dick Costolos dedication and vision. Dick has put a world-class team in place and created a great foundation from which Twitter can continue to change the world and grow. We have an exciting lineup of products and initiatives coming to market, and I look forward to continuing to execute our strategy while helping facilitate a smooth transition as the Board conducts its search. What now? Dorsey was reinstated as the company's CEO in October 2015, and is now the CEO of both Twitter and online-payments startup Square which he co-founded in 2009. Though some changes that have been instituted, like the new algorithmic timeline, haven't been so positively received. Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren Bloomberg | Getty Images What happened? Launched in 2000, co-founder Jon Kraft was initially the company's CEO until fellow co-founder Tim Westergren took over from 2002 to 2004. In 2004, Joe Kennedy was named CEO and held that position until he unexpectedly announced he would be leaving the company in March 2013, two years after the music streaming platform's IPO. Brian McAndrews held the role from 2013 to 2016, leaving the business among concerns about the company's able to compete with Spotify and Apple Music. Westergren, who had remained on the company's board throughout, was tapped to take over. What he said: Westergren said of the transition in a company statement, We are pursuing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a massive, vibrant music marketplace. We have the audience, the technology infrastructure, the monetization engine and most importantly the right team with the passion and commitment to do it. Im 100 percent committed to Pandoras growth strategy, as is our executive team and Board. What now? Westergren started back in his former position at the end of March. TV may not be the grand monarch of the advertising world that it once was, but its still a heavyweight on the chessboard of advertising influence. With that said, Lyft today launched its first national television commercial. For a mobile-technology, sharing economy tech startup looking to reach its next consumer on the boob tube is a comment both on the explosive growth of ridesharing and the continued relevance of television marketing. The 60-second Lyft spot, embedded below, features a young-ish, hip professional woman in casual officewear getting stuck in a traffic jam of comic proportions. There is a mound of cars, junkyard style, a giraffe and a zebra. Oh, and every single car stuck in the traffic jam is occupied by one person -- a point meant to hammer home the notion that driving in a car by yourself is a terribly old fashioned and slightly backwards way of getting to work. Our despondent princess climbs atop the mountain of cars and orders a Lyft car. The rideshare driver appears instantly in the commuter lane, and the similarly hip, young professional lady greets our heroine with the most friendly of all greetings, and the two drive off together into the happy glory that is ridesharing. It seems quite the sacrifice to leave your car to the buzzards because of a traffic jam, but alas, I suppose this is television. Perhaps our princess will come back for her car later. Or perhaps I ought to not be so literal about a TV commercial. Related: Uber and Lyft Will Collaborate With Public Transportation So You Don't Have to Own a Car They are featuring an any woman behind the wheel -- that can appeal to a wide swath of humanity -- and juxtaposing that with the crazies out there. She is then picked up safely by another any woman -- and off they go, says Corey Elliott, vice president of research at Williamsburg, Va.-based media advertising revenue analysis company Borrell Associates, in an email with Entrepreneur. They are emphasizing not having to deal with the madness and letting someone else worry about it. The goal of the commercial is to get our grand, glorious car culture to begin to entertain the possibility that there is a better way. Parking tickets, little fender benders, learning how to drive, having to do car repairs culminating in this mountain of cars that really bring to life the frustration and the circus that we have allowed our lives to become when we are so driven by cars, says Kira Wampler, the chief marketing officer of Lyft, in a behind-the-scenes video (embedded below) about the process of making a commercial. We are bringing this commercial to life as part of helping people better understand our vision and our mission, which is really fundamentally every seat, every car, every driver, says Wampler. The tagline for the ad campaign is, Riding is the new driving. The boob tube may not seem like the most logical place for a mobile-first tech company to be spending ad dollars. Lyft declined to share just how much the commercial cost, but it will air on national networks ranging from Comedy Central to MTV to ABC Family. You can be sure thats a pretty penny. There are many opportunities to capture consumer attention, and TV advertising certainly still is relevant when delivering a broad message, says Traci Gregorski, the senior vice president of marketing at Market Track, a Chicago-headquartered advertising market research firm, in an email with Entrepreneur. Related: What This On-Demand Startup CEO Thinks the Sector Should Really Be Called And people do watch television commercials. More than 60 percent of respondents of a survey of 1,000 consumers that Market Track conducted two weeks ago about TV viewing habits reported that they watch commercials, says Gregorski. Often, television watchers who do keep the commercials on are multitasking during the ads, but they are watching them. Traditional advertising such as TV continues to be relevant because of its broad reach, says Gregorski. And the reach of television is particularly noteworthy this year because of the race for the White House. It is a hot year for TV. Not many people have noticed, but there seems to be an election of some sort going on, says Elliott, sarcastically. Seriously, people tend to watch more TV during an election year, so it is not crazy at all to go there to seek new users. Also, while some television watchers may have seen Uber commercial spots in specific regions of the country in response to local regulation battles, the Lyft commercial is the first national television ad in the ridesharing space. They also have that magic benefit of being first to the space, says Elliot. Related: For 100 Years, General Motors Was All About Cars. Now, It's All About People. To be sure, being on television shouldnt replace digital advertising for Lyft. It is fair to say that people still watch traditional TV, but streaming and online viewing is increasing very quickly, says Gregorski. Advertisers realize its not an either/or but an and if they want to increase their chances of capturing the attention of a wide audience by being everywhere they are. In a time when marriage vows seemed made to be broken, James and Rita Wagar defied the norm. Their love is eternal -- James made sure of that. The proof -- as if proof was needed -- came to Rita on Tuesday in a package. Inside was a gold, heart-shaped necklace, the diamond-studded pendant engraved with her name and that of her beloved James. The 79-year-old New Jersey grandmother was confused: James, her husband of 55 years, had died weeks earlier in their Farmingdale, N.J., home, nearly five months after being diagnosed with a fast-moving incurable form of leukemia. In early March, doctors told the retired pharmaceutical executive that he only had a short time to live -- maybe days. Unbeknownst to his family, he immediately ordered the necklace, with the couple's names and birthstones, to be delivered to his Rita after his death. "He wanted to make sure that my mom got that after he was gone," Alba Flynn said of her father, whom she described as the "pillar of our family." "They had this love affair like no other, right up until the end," Flynn said. "When my mom saw the necklace, she said, 'I'll wear this forever. I'm never taking it off.'" After receiving his undergraduate business degree from Fordham University in 1956, James was drafted into the Army, and was honorably discharged in 1964. He went to work for Allstate Insurance Co., where he fell in love with a vivacious, brunette secretary named Rita Cosenza, a 23-year-old beauty whose father had emmigrated from Italy. The couple married on May 28, 1960, and had four children: Peter, Alba, Paul and Anthony. While meeting the demands of his young family, Wagar worked to get advanced degrees from New York University and Harvard. He would go on to become vice president and treasurer of Carter-Wallace Pharmaceuticals, where he retired from in 2001. "He provided for everybody," said the 52-year-old Flynn, of Colts Neck, N.J. "My father was Irish-American and my mother came from an Italian family that always put family first. He loved that about her," Flynn said. "He also loved her innocence." The couple's favorite pastime was visiting Florida and Disney World each year -- and bringing along their 10 grandchildren. Now that James is gone, Rita has moved into an assisted living home -- but in the gold heart hanging from her neck, her beloved is always near. "She doesn't speak of him like he's gone," Flynn said. Cristina Corbin is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaCorbin. Tinder has an image problem it cant simply swipe away. The popular app is often viewed as a shameless hookup tool, not as a benevolent, respectable conduit through which deep, lasting human matches are made, as co-founder Sean Rad has long tried to spin it. Now, in his latest move, it appears the controversial CEO is positioning Tinder as a vehicle for female empowerment. Rad recently awarded a University of Nebraska Omaha junior a $20,000 full-year scholarship after she was threatened to be booted from her sorority, Chi Omega. The grounds for her near-expulsion: donning a shirt displaying the sororitys letters in her Tinder profile pic. Related: Tinder's Sean Rad: Be Real, Be Vulnerable and Confide in Your Co-Workers The student, Shannon Workman, was told by Chi Omegas executive committee that her Tinder photo breached its Human Dignity code. They just dont think that Chi Omega should be involved with that site, she told Buzzfeed, of the committee members who initiated the process to revoke her membership. They informed Workman of their plans to penalize her during an emergency meeting, which she cut short by walking out in protest. She did, however, take down the profile photo in question. News of Workmans looming dismissal, which also prompted her to resign, presented Tinder with a so-called probortunity, an opportunity born of a problem. In this case, a prime branding probortunity. Speaking up on behalf of a user who took part in a sorority is on-brand for Tinder, as its deeply rooted in the Greek system, Sean Rad told Entrepreneur this morning. Sorority and fraternity members were our earliest adopters and that demographic is still one of our most active user groups today, Rad said, pointing out that Tinder was launched at the University of Southern California through the Greek system. When we found out what Shannon was going through, we wanted to help and turn the experience into a positive one. Related: What You Can Learn From 'Glamour's' Brand-Tarnishing Amy Schumer 'Plus Size' Gaffe Rad also noted that this is the first time Tinder has offered a scholarship to anyone. We have paid interns at Tinder, but its the first time we reached out to someone whose story inspired us and asked them to be part of the team, he said. [Workmans] actions showed a depth of leadership and courage that is admirable and something we value as part of our company culture. We always want to stand up for our users who stand up for us. Whatever you do, college kids, dont stop Netflix and chilling via Tinder, just because the viral app has a bad rap. On top of offering to pay for Workmans entire senior year, Rad went a step further. He offered the student a paid internship at Tinders trendy West Hollywood, Calif., headquarters. She is considering both offers, but has yet to make up her mind. In the meantime, she sounds an awful lot like an ideal brand ambassador. I do stand up for Tinder because I dont think theres anything wrong with it, she told Buzzfeed. Some people use it for hookups but I dont, and a lot of great things happen through Tinder. Related: Tinder Co-Founder Sean Rad on the Hot Dating App's Viral Success David Gerzof Richard, branding expert and founder and president of Boston-based tech PR firm BIGfish Communications, said Rads scholarship offer is a branding homerun. This is a brilliant, heads-up move by Tinder, he told Entrepreneur. The company has taken a lemon of a situation experienced by one of its users and turned it into lemonade for both that customer and the Tinder brand. Better yet, Gerzof Richard, also a marketing professor at Emerson College, said, is the flurry of press Rads strategy quickly stirred up. The main message conveyed through that coverage being: Tinder is a good guy. Tinder has your back. The man who shot two students outside of a Wisconsin high school prom on Saturday was socially awkward and bullied because of his poor hygiene, a former classmate told The Wausau Daily Herald. Jakob Wagner, 18, fired his high-powered rifle hitting two students outside of Antigo High School before police shot him. Wagner later died from his injuries. The two students survived. Friends said Wagner was a senior at the high school in 2015, but administrators said he did not graduate with his classmates and was continuing to work on his diploma. Ever since we were younger, he was one of the kids you kind of watched out for, 19-year-old Emily Fisher told The Daily Herald. If someone was going to shoot the school, we thought it was going to be him. As authorities search for a motive in the shocking attack, Fisher painted Wagner as a troubled student who endured years of harassment. He was bullied a lot, said Fisher, an acquaintance of Wagner, though not a self-described close friend. The tormenting began in middle school and lasted through high school, she said. When Fisher gave Wagner the occasional car ride home, Wagner talked about guns and weapons. He even made models of them in art class. A school administrator said Wagner may have intended to go into the school dance on Saturday and begin shooting. But police got to Wagner before he could carry out the plot. "Officers were in the parking lot patrolling the activities and heard the shots and an officer immediately fired upon the shooter, stopping the threat," Antigo Chief of Police Eric Roller said. Wagner was then taken into custody and died at a hospital. Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement that the actions of the Antigo Police Department "undoubtedly saved lives." The Unified School District of Antigo said the "quick actions" taken by police and district staff to secure the building "prevented what might have otherwise been a disaster of unimaginable proportions." As classes resumed on Monday, administrators said students would have access to support from counselors and others. Officials said there will be a heightened police presence around the high school over the next few days. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Pakistan's prime minister on Monday vowed to eliminate perpetrators of terror following the Sunday suicide bombing that targeted Christians gathered for Easter in the eastern city of Lahore, killing 70 people and injuring around 300. In response to the attack, the military reportedly arrested dozens in raids in eastern Punjab, where several deadly militant organizations are headquartered. And in Lahore, forensic experts sifted through the debris in the park where the suicide attack took place. The bomb had been a crude devise loaded with ball bearings, designed to rip through the bodies of its victims to cause maximum damage, counter-terrorism official Rana Tufail said. He identified the suicide bomber as Mohammed Yusuf, saying he was known as a militant recruiter. Meanwhile, Pope Francis condemned the deadly bombing, urging prayers to God to "stop the hands of violent people sowing terror and death. The pope, speaking to the faithful in St. Peter's Square, said many of the victims were women and children and that Pakistan should "make every effort to restore security and serenity" to Pakistanis, particularly religious minorities in the largely Muslim Asian nation. Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the breakaway Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which has sworn allegiance to ISIS, told The Associated Press late Sunday that the suicide bomber deliberately targeted Christians celebrating Easter in the park. The mostly-Muslim country has a small Christian community, accounting for less than two percent of Pakistan's total population. The same militant group also took responsibility for the twin bombings of a Christian church in Lahore last year. But most of those killed Sunday were Muslims, The Associated Press reported. Of the dead, 14 have been identified as Christians, Lahore Police Superintendent Mohammed Iqbal said. Another 12 bodies have not yet been identified, he added. Shama Pervez, widowed mother of 11-year-old Sahil Pervez who died in the blast, was inconsolable during funeral prayers Monday. Her son, a fifth grader at a local Catholic school, had pleaded with her to go to the park rather than stay home on Sunday, and she said she finally gave in. The U.S. State Department did not respond Monday to a query as to whether it regarded the attack as one specifically targeting Christians. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Lahore bombing, saying that in targeting a park filled with children, the attack "revealed the face of terror, which knows no limits and values." France expressed its "solidarity in these difficult moments" to the authorities and the people of Pakistan and underlined "the inflexible will of our country to continue to battle terrorism everywhere." The attack underscored both the precarious position of Pakistan's minorities and the fact that the militants are still capable of staging wide-scale assaults despite a months-long military offensive targeting their hideouts and safe havens in remote tribal areas. As the country began observing a three-day mourning period on Monday, riots erupted for a second day in the capital of Islamabad when extremists who have been staging a protest since Sunday surged toward the Parliament and other key buildings in the city center. The demonstrators set cars on fire, demanding that the authorities impose Islamic law or Sharia. The army was again deployed to subdue the rioters. Extremists had marched into the city on Sunday in protest of the hanging of policeman Mumtaz Qadri in February. Qadri was convicted for the 2011 murder of Governor Salman Taseer, who was defending a Christian woman jailed on blasphemy charges. Taseer had criticized Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws and campaigned against them. The army deployed Pakistan paramilitary Rangers as well as about 800 additional soldiers from neighboring Rawalpindi to Islamabad, to protect the center, which houses main government buildings and diplomatic missions. Prime Minister Sharif, meanwhile, cancelled a planned trip to Great Britain on Monday and held a high-level security meeting. In recent weeks, Pakistan's Islamist parties have been threatening widespread demonstration to protest what they say is Sharif's leanings toward the West. They have also denounced provincial draft legislation in Punjab outlawing violence against women. Sharif also this month announced recognition of holidays celebrated by the country's minority religions, recognizing the Hindu festival of Holi as well as Easter. The Associated Press contributed to this report next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 A former journalist accused of belonging to al-Shabab has been executed in Mogadishu, Somalia for the killings of five Somali journalists. Official said Monday that Hassan Hanafi Haji, who was extradited from Kenya last year on the request of the Somali government, was executed by firing squad at a police academy in the capital. Firing squad remains the only execution method in Somalia. The crisis in Afghanistan has escalated to a new level of urgency, the outgoing head of the International Red Cross said Sunday, citing a record number of civilian casualties and evacuations of war wounded. In an interview with The Telegraph, Jean-Nicolas Marti said the drawdown of NATO forces has led to a rise in fighting. The Red Cross says the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit a record high for the seventh consecutive year in 2015, with more than 11,000 innocent men, women and children killed or wounded, Reuters reports. Marti told The Telegraph that in 2015, the number of war wounded grew by 30 percent from the year before. At least 600 war wounded have been evacuated in the first three months of 2016 alone, and the total is expected to exceed the 2015 figure before the summer fighting season begins, the newspaper added. The ICRC would never call for a military operation, Marti said. But before they pull out altogether, I do think they should think twice about that. The Red Cross has urged peace talks in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have said that they will come to the negotiating table only after western forces leave the country. Around 10,000 NATO troops remain in Afghanistan and have promised to stay until the country is stabilized. Meanwhile, Afghans make up the second largest group of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe behind Syrians, as an estimated one million people have been displaced in the conflict, Reuters reports. Afghan civilians also have had a harder time getting access to health care, as attacks against medical facilities and staff have jumped 50 percent in the last year, Reuters reports. Even if NATO said at the end of 2014, 'Mission accomplished,' that schools have opened, women have their rights back, it doesnt look to be the case a year and a half afterwards, Marti said. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Violence in Syria continued for the fourth straight day to chip away at what remains from a cease-fire that has effectively collapsed, leaving at least 28 people dead Monday in reciprocal shellings between government forces and opposition in the country's largest city while a bomb blast disrupted a relative quiet in a Damascus suburb that is home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines here. At least 20 people were killed in the shelling on Aleppo, pro-government media and activist-run monitoring groups said; while eight died when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-packed vehicle at a military checkpoint in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab. In the past week, nearly 150 people have been killed in northern Syria and near Damascus, marking a major escalation that has seen a fragile truce take a downward spiral to levels of violence unseen since the Feb.27 cease-fire, engineered by the U.S. and Russia, took hold. The cease-fire doesn't include the Islamic State group and its rival al-Qaida branch in Syria, the Nusra Front. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. The Aamaq news agency, linked to the extremist group, said fighters detonated an explosives-packed vehicle at a gathering of government troops in the suburb of Sayyida Zeinab. The Syrian pro-government Al-Ikhbariya TV station showed footage of a slight depression on a road near a checkpoint where the bomb was said to have gone off. The wreckage had already been removed. Al-Manar TV, run by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, said eight people were killed in the blast. The Shiite militants have a heavy presence in the suburb. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist-run monitoring group, gave the same toll. Syrian state TV said seven people were killed and 20 wounded. The heavily guarded shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the daughter of the first Shiite imam Ali and granddaughter to the Prophet Muhammad, receives thousands of Shiite pilgrims each year. Allies of the embattled Damascus government have mobilized Shiite fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon to fight on the side of President Bashar Assad's forces on the grounds of defending the shrine and preserving the country's religious plurality. A previous bombing in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb, claimed by the Islamic State group, killed some 130 people in February. Meanwhile, violence raged for the fourth straight day in Syria's largest city, the deeply contested Aleppo. The government news agency said rebel shelling of government-held neighborhoods left 16 people dead. The Observatory put the number at 19, including three children. The group said 120 people were injured. Also, government shelling of rebel-held areas in the city left at least 3 killed, including a 6-year old girl. The Observatory said four were killed in the government shelling on the al-Jazamati neighborhood. Aleppo, Syria's largest city and onetime commercial center, has been bitterly contested since 2012. Opposition groups control the eastern part of the city but have been boxed-in by government forces, and are now linked to the surrounding area by a single narrow corridor to the northwest. The government and its opponents exchanged blame for violations that have left over 70 people dead in Aleppo alone since Friday. A government airstrike on a vegetable market in neighboring Idlib province left at least 44 people dead last week. The U.N. envoy leading indirect talks in Geneva between the warring parties warned that the cease-fire was in trouble but said he would continue the latest round of talks until Wednesday, despite an opposition walkout. Despite the violence, de Mistura said there was "modest but real" progress in delivering humanitarian aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas-- one of the main intentions of the cease-fire agreement. On Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it is delivering its second humanitarian aid convoy in as many weeks to an opposition-held town under siege in central Syria. ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek says Monday's aid convoy to the town of Rastan, in Homs province, includes 35 trucks carrying food, delivery kits for pregnant women and anti-lice shampoo. The delivery is being carried out in partnership with the U.N. and the Syrian Red Crescent. The town has been under siege since January. It received its first batch of humanitarian aid in over a year on Thursday. The population of Rastan has doubled to 120,000 because of the influx of people fleeing nearby fighting. The Syrian uprising began with mostly peaceful protests in 2011, but a brutal government crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency eventually plunged the country into a full-blown civil war. The fighting has killed more than 250,000 people, according to the United Nations, which stopped tracking casualties several months ago. Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, and nearly a year before terrorists killed 130 in coordinated strikes that rocked the City of Light, French security officials rejected an Israeli company's offer of terrorist-tracking software that could have helped them flag the deadly terror cell, a security expert said. The offer of data-mining technology that would allow French authorities to connect all the dots in the Islamist extremist community was made to the Directorate-General for Internal Security, Frances main intelligence agency. It is used to analyze and match up fragmented intelligence reports from several national and international databases, giving counter-terrorism agents the most up-to-date information on potential terrorists available. The overture was rejected. The goods are boycotted in European supermarkets. But when they are in trouble they run to Israel for help. Daniel Sharon, Israeli security expert French authorities liked it, but the official came back and said there was a higher-level instruction not to buy Israeli technology, a well-placed Israeli counter-terror specialist familiar with the technology and the company behind it told FoxNews.com. The discussion just stopped. The Israeli source declined to name the company or detail the technology, which has been shared with the U.S. and other nations on good terms with Israel, other than to say it scans databases from multiple agencies and Interpol and pinpoints high-risk people. But he believes it could have given French authorities a chance at stopping the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris, and possibly the coordinated bombings in Brussels that killed 32 on March 22. Government agencies struggling to foil terror attacks need access to technologies that allow them to connect their data fragments, making it possible to handle daily data challenges, the source said. With this system, all data can then be easily navigated, processed and represented by employing a set of powerful analytic tools and unique algorithms. The offer followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge to work closely with Europe on enhancing security in the wake of the Brussels attacks, taken in Israel as a call for intelligence and technology sharing. In Paris or Brussels or San Bernardino or Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, terror must be condemned equally and it must be fought equally," Netanyahu said. "Israel stands ready to cooperate with all the nations in this great struggle." No official reason was given for Frances rejection of the offer, and the source acknowledged it could have been triggered by legitimate concerns about hacking vulnerability. Yet many suspect politics was to blame. The European Union has blamed Israel for everything that is happening in the Middle East and stopped cooperation in regards to military, law enforcement and intelligence training and banning university cooperation which [generates] much of the technology to fight terrorism, said Itamar Gelbman, a former IDF Special Forces and who is now a counter-terrorism consultant. DGSI did not respond to requests for comment and a European Union official told FoxNews.com that there is no formal French, or wider EU ban, on purchasing technology products made in Israel. However, tensions between the European Union and Israel have heightened in recent years, primarily over claims the Jewish State illegally occupies Palestinian territories. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long divided the international community. Human rights groups routinely condemn Israel for repressing and harshly retaliating against Palestinian aggression, while Israel remains staunch that it acts in self-defense and to protect its people. Kamal Nawash, an American attorney and president of the Free Muslims Coalition, noted that Europes tough stance against Israel and hesitation in making technology purchases is an example of the global community sending a message to Israel that its treatment of the Palestinians is unacceptable. Israel would be wise to change its treatment of Palestinians by providing them with civil and human rights and pursuing a desegregation policy in general, Nawash said. Otherwise, Israel may experience the same fate as South Africa during the apartheid era with all the countries of the world boycotting Israel. The recent spate of terror attacks on European soil could bring about a resurgence in investment with Israeli tech and intelligence companies, given its undisputed status as a global leader in the field. Israel has been facing terror threats since its inception in 1948, said Gilles Perez, manager of HLS & Aerospace Unit at the Israel Export Institute. In the 1970s, it was Israels national airline that pioneered the concept of an undercover security officer on every commercial flight long before it was adopted by other countries after September 11, almost 40 years later. Security at airports, such as Zaventem Airport in Brussels, where last month's bombing occurred, has long been an area of Israeli expertise. But intelligence, such as the system offered to French officials, could be even more crucial, said Col. Eran Lerman, former deputy chief of Israels National Security Council and senior IDF Military Intelligence division director. However, the key to successful security has to be intelligence, in the broader sense of the word, Lerman told Homeland Security Today. "For too many years, for very good reasons, Europeans have neglected the need for effective intelligence measures. Israel-based security training expert Daniel Sharon said that since the Brussels attacks last month there has been particular interest in airport and aviation security prevention concepts, interest that transcends popular protest. The goods are boycotted in European supermarkets, Sharon said. But when they are in trouble they run to Israel for help. Less than a week after the attacks in Brussels, Belgian law enforcement bought advanced surveillance and rapid view technology from Israeli company BriefCam. The technology is already in use at the Statue of Liberty and various U.S. airports, said President and CEO Dror Irani. Israels tech and security sector has long been an incubator for anti-terror solutions, say experts. The more France and Europe in general are threatened, the more willing they may be to work with companies based in the Jewish state. Israel is leading the field in counter-terrorism technology, but its not a popular country, said Ari Zoldan, CEO of technology and e-commerce firm Quantum Network. It is unlikely that Israel will suddenly become popular, but the need for better national security will force people to work with Israeli solutions. Egyptian authorities filed a police report against Reuters after the news agency reported last week that police detained an Italian student the night he disappeared. The police report, which was filed on Friday, accuses Reuters of publishing false news aimed at disturbing public order and spreading rumors to harm Egypts reputation. The Reuters story cites anonymous police sources as saying that Egyptian officers arrested young doctoral student Giulio Regeni before transferring him to a security compound. The students body was found on a desert road in Cairo on February 4, bearing signs of torture. In response to the backlash, Reuters released a statement defending its reporting. We stand by the story published on 21 April, 2016 regarding the detention of an Italian student, Giulio Regeni. The story did not state who is responsible for his death, and is consistent with Reuters commitment to accurate and independent journalism, David Crundwell, a Reuters senior vice-president said in a statement. The countrys actions against Reuters are the latest in a series of Egyptian crackdowns on journalism and free speech. Egypt recently tried and retried three Al-Jazeera journalists who were also accused of publishing false news. Two defendants, Baher Mohammed and Mohammed Fahmy, were eventually pardoned, and a third, Peter Greste, was deported. These reports and threats are disturbing and come against a backdrop of increasing intolerance of independent journalism. The Egyptian authorities should repeal broad laws that make criminal prosecutions for spreading so-called false news possible, Sherif Mansour, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the Guardian. According to the committees most recent survey, Egypt is the worlds second largest jailer of journalists, with 23 currently behind bars. Click for more from The Guardian. Fighting for the cash-strapped Islamic State doesn't pay very well, but terrorists can boost their monthly salaries if they have wives, kids and sex slaves, according to terror documents uncovered Friday. A wage voucher showed that one worker, identified only as al-Jiburi, received a base salary of just $50 a month, but got $50 bonuses for each of his two wives and another $35 for each of his six children, the Washington Post reports. His monthly haul came to $360, but the document also said any sex slave would entitle him to $50 more per month. "The documentary evidence confirms the current coalition approach has brought about significant losses for the Islamic State and put it under pressure on multiple fronts," Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a British scholar who obtained the papers, wrote in the CTC Journal, which is published by the Combating Terrorism Center in New York. Al-Tamimi added that the documents do not reflect bonuses paid to fighters on the front lines, but five months ago, ISIS announced a 50-percent pay cut for its militants. The U.S-led coalition has left a severe dent in the terror group's finances, ISIS leaders say. The documents in al-Tamimis collection came from Syrian and Iraqi towns that were freed from ISIS control within the last six months, the Post reports. One document bans fighters from using ISIS vehicles for joyriding, describing it as "an unjustified waste of resources. "It has therefore been decided to direct all brothers not to use vehicles except by permission," the document says. Another document says electricity in homes will be scaled back to keep military bases powered around the clock. Click for more from the Washington Post. Islamic extremists in the Philippines beheaded one of three Western hostages taken captive months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Monday. Bob Rae says former Calgarian, among 4 held hostage in Philippines, was killed https://t.co/Bd9UXqV0Eq pic.twitter.com/dWvFUOEOcN CBC News (@CBCNews) April 25, 2016 The Abu Sayyaf terror group had issued public threats to kill one of the hostages, demanding $6.5 million for each of them by Monday afternoon. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed the death of 68-year-old John Ridsdel of Calgary, saying, "This was an act of cold-blooded murder." The terrorists were thought to be holding more than a dozen hostages, including another Canadian, a Norwegian and a Filipino woman, as well as 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month. The head was recovered on Jolo Island in the jungle province of Sulu. The kidnappers reportedly took Ridsdel last September from a marina on southern Samal Island. Ridsdel is the former chief operating officer of mining company TVI Resource Development Inc., a company officer told CBC News. Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, calling it a "barbaric act." Military forces were moving to rescue the abductees as the ransom deadline approached. "Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue," the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which President Benigno Aquino III had ordered. About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, police said. In militant videos posted online, Ridsdel, along with Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor, were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant aimed a long knife on Ridsdel's neck. Two black flags hung in the background. The abductions highlight the long-running security problems hounding the southern Philippines, a region with bountiful resources that also suffers from poverty, lawlessness and decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies. The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south. The army has weakened the group, but analysts say its ransom and extortion earnings helped it survive. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Palestinian leaders have offered up an unlikely candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize: A man serving five life sentences for murder. Marwan Barghouti, who founded al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and is called the Palestinian Mandela, was convicted in 2004 of five counts of murder including a 2002 attack at a Tel Aviv seafood market in which three civilians were killed. While in prison, he has toyed with running for president and polls suggest he would win if it were up to the voters. But a Nobel Prize? [Barghoutis] candidacy is essentially a call to recognize the legitimacy of the prisoners' struggle... and also a response to the claims and Israeli terms that do not recognize the legitimacy of their struggle, and treat them as 'terrorists and criminals, Issa Karake, head of the Palestinian Liberation Organizations Commission of Prisoners' Affairs, said earlier this month. The West Bank-ruling Fatah considers Barghoutis arrest an abduction, and has suggested he should have enjoyed diplomatic immunity because he was previously a member of the Palestinian Authority parliament. The Palestinian Authority has claimed for years that they have a right under international law, confirmed by a UN resolution, to kill Israeli civilians in all places and at all times, said Itamar Marcus, of Palestinian Media Watch. Accordingly, those Palestinians who have killed Israelis are said to have done something positive and heroic. Palestinian murderers of Israeli civilians are presented as heroes and role models. Marcus noted that the victims of the murders Barghouti, 57, was convicted of ordering would not help make his case to the Nobel committee. ? Yoela Hen, a 45-year-old Israeli woman who was murdered at a gas station in the suburbs of Jerusalem in January 2002. ? Eli Dahan, Yosef Habim and police officer Sgt.-Maj. Salim Barakat, who were killed during a shooting and stabbing attack at a restaurant in Tel Aviv in March 2002. ? Tsibouktsakis Germanus, a Greek monk who was gunned down in his car on June 12, 2001. The PA and Fatah have recruited many of their leaders to campaign for Barghouti. "We, the Palestinian people, support this initiative, and we think this initiative carries several messages... a judicial message, which is a response to the Israeli claims accusing the prisoners of being terrorists and criminals," Karake said on April 12 according to Official PA TV. Click here for more from Palestinian Media Watch A team of hackers supporting the Islamic State terror group announced Sunday it had stolen the names, phone numbers and other personal information of State Department employees, releasing some screenshots in a message vowing to "crush" the United States. The hackers, known as the United Cyber Caliphate, made the announcement in a statement labeled "Wanted to be killed." Part of it reads, "Your system failed to Tackling [sic] our attacks. Now we will Crush you again," according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. On Friday, the hackers claimed they accessed the personal details of some 18,000 Saudi security workers. Earlier last week, analysts said the ISIS-linked group posted the names of more than 3,500 New Yorkers, claiming, "We want them dead." There was no immediate response from the State Department. President Obama was set to discuss the war on ISIS, including the corresponding cyber fight, during a conference with European leaders in Germany Monday. One of Guantanamo Bays most dangerous and longest-held terror suspects is a Saudi national who knows how to fly planes and build sophisticated bombs, speaks fluent English and remains committed to killing Americans, say former U.S. officials who dealt with Ghassan al Sharbi face-to-face. Revelations last week that Al Sharbis flight training certificate, tucked into a Saudi Arabian Embassy envelope, had been found in 2003 among a trove of documents buried in Pakistan following his arrest there, raised fresh questions about the Kingdoms possible involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Although Al Sharbi, who trained with several of the 9/11 hijackers at an Arizona flight school, did not take part in the attacks, he is seen as one of the most lethal and committed terrorists held at the military base. In my view, Ghassan al Sharbi was one of the most dangerous men held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, said retired Army Maj. Gen. Jay Hood, who oversaw the detention facility. I knew him well and my assessment is informed by a number of direct interactions I had with him between 2004 and 2006. He is extremely intelligent, well educated, and committed to a violent Islamic ideology. In my view, Ghassan al Sharbi was one of the most dangerous men held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay. Army Maj. Gen. Jay Hood Al Sharbis record, training, testimony and connections to the Al Qaeda terror network that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have largely been kept secret, but some details were quietly released last year in a top-secret report called Document 17 that was declassified by the FBI. The report alluded to the discovery of his flight certificate inside an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, buried outside a Pakistani safehouse where he was captured by local forces on March 28, 2002. Information about the certificate was released in a 47-page work plan prepared for the FBI in June 2003 but not declassified until last July. Born in Saudi Arabia, the 41-year-old terrorist is particularly dangerous, military officials and government documents said, because he speaks fluent English, has a degree in electrical engineering from an American university, took flying lessons with the 9/11 terrorists who crashed a plane into the Pentagon and is a proficient bomb maker. No photo is available of Al Sharbi, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since June 19, 2002. The Guantanamo Review Task Force suggested in 2010 that Al Sharbi be prosecuted for war crimes, but that hasnt yet occurred in the nearly 14 years hes been held by U.S. forces. I suspect he is still being held because he is being considered by the Military Commissions for prosecution, Hood said. But I also suspect that those in the Intelligence community realize the potential threat he would pose as an operational planner and leader to any violent Islamic group. He is extraordinarily committed to his religion, and to using violence to combat capitalism in the Western world. The Obama administration has released dozens of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, which once held more than 600 terror suspects but now holds around 80. Al Sharbi ranks with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad as one of the facilitys longest-held and most dangerous residents, according to Brian McGlinchey, director of 28Pages.org, a website that supports the movement to declassify documents believed to link top Saudi officials to the 9/11 hijackers. Hes been deemed a high-risk individual who allegedly attended a training camp in Afghanistan and is a self-proclaimed bomb-maker, said McGlinchey, a former Army officer whose website was the first to report on Al Sharbis flight certificate being found. Other detainees told interrogators Al Sharbi had been seen talking to Usama bin Laden, was very proficient with weapons and had been selected for specialized remote control detonation training. Al Sharbi was captured in Pakistan in 2002 along with Abu Zubaida, whom the U.S. government at one time believed was a top Al Qaeda lieutenant but later concluded was not. Al Sharbi has never hidden his terrorist intentions. I am your enemy, I will fight the United States. Period, he told a military judge, according to Paul Rester, who headed military intelligence, interrogation and analysis at Guantanamo on and off from 2002 until 2010. He was very forthcoming and very determined, said Rester. He was not in the planner-organizer echelon, he was in the executor-operator echelon. He made bombs, had direct ties to Bin Laden, and had sway over others because of that tie. He was extremely important to his terrorist network because he was well-trained and could make things work. The buried documents, which were recovered by the FBI, included manuals on bomb-making and other explosive devices, and are included among thousands of items confiscated from suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo that filled a 2,000-square-foot room. Born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1974, Al Sharbi lived in Arizona from 1998 to 2000 while studying electrical engineering at Mesa Community College and then at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., in the months preceding 9/11. One of the founding members and president of the Islamic Student Society at Embry Riddle, he abruptly left the school in August 2001, and traveled to Pakistan with stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. Known in Al Qaeda circles as the electronic builder, government reports say he was trained and taught others to produce circuit boards for use in remote-controlled car bombs, IEDS and other detonation devices that would be used to kill American soldiers and to help build remote-control devices that could be placed in the United States and detonated by a mobile phone from Pakistan. In 1999, Al Sharbi and another suspected Al Qaeda operative were involved in an incident that caused a Washington-bound flight to be diverted and was mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report. The other man, who was flying with Al Shari, tried to enter the cockpit, which the commission concluded may have been an intelligence gathering operation to test in-flight security measures in preparation for the attacks that would come two years later. Since he first entered Guantanamo, Al Sharbis behavior has been generally non-compliant, often showing signs of aggression, according to a report Hood completed while head of the facility. The 2004 report detailed an incident in which Al Sharbi assaulted a guard and numerous cases in which he led fellow detainees in creating disturbances. It has been determined that the detainee poses a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies, Hood wrote. In his own testimony before a military tribunal in 2006, Al Sharbi, who goes by several alias including Abdullah al Muslim, Abu Muslim, Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al Shirbi and Abdullah al Sharbi, said he must defend the Islamic nation. I came here to tell you I did what I did and I'm willing to pay the price," he said, according to a Reuters pool reporter. "Even if I spend hundreds of years in jail, that would be a matter of honor to me. "I fought the United States; I'm going to make it short and easy for you guys: I'm proud of what I did." The Obama administration has pledged to close Guantanamo Bays detention camp and release, return to their country of origin or place the remaining detainees in facilities on U.S. soil. His proposal continues to garner opposition from military leaders and Republicans, who say releasing some of Americas most dangerous enemies will lead to more American lives lost. A top official says Turkey has deported 3,300 foreigners suspected of links to jihadi groups, particularly the Islamic State militants, and another 41,000 foreigners have been barred from entering Turkey as part of the country's fight against the militant group. Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also says Monday that Turkish profiling teams have interviewed 9,500 people upon their arrival in Turkey. Some 2,000 of them were denied entry. He says some 2,770 suspects, including 232 foreigners, have been caught in police sweeps and 954 of them are being prosecuted. Turkey, long accused of turning a blind eye to the extremists crossing into Syria, has now taken a larger role in the fight against ISIS. Four deadly bomb attacks in Turkey since July have been blamed on ISIS. Card Connections Latest Designs Ensure Dads Rule on Fathers Day April 25, 2016 // Franchising.com // Leading greeting card publisher and franchisor, Card Connection, has launched its new Fathers Day range. The 36 new designs will be delivered to more than 12,000 retailers across the UK by Card Connections network of self-employed franchisees in-time for Fathers Day. The selection means there is a card to suit all ages and tastes, confirms Michael Johnson, managing director, Card Connection. From humour, to cute, to sentiment, the range has something for every dad. In addition to our in-house styles, this year, we have also included licenced designs featuring the ever popular character Boofle, plus a Minions Dads Rule card which are sure to appeal to a broad demographic. The new range will be supplied to our National Accounts such as Costcutter, WH Smiths Motorway Services, NISA, BP and Spar plus our independent retail customers and merchandised by our franchisees on a consignment basis, explains Johnson. This means retailers only pay for what they sell. For larger stores a specially developed Fathers Day display unit is available on loan, to show off the selection to its best advantage, encouraging consumers to browse and buy. Card Connection is part of UK Greetings, which is a subsidiary of American Greetings Inc., one of the largest greeting card publishers in the world and has limited vacancies for franchisees that are keen to run an expanding business. Since the franchise network in the UK is complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee. These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at 7k + Stock + Card Connection fee with earnings potential in excess of 50k per annum. Territories currently available include: Bath, Coventry, Bournemouth, Northampton, Liverpool, Bradford, Brighton, Plymouth, Edinburgh and Ireland South. For further information about franchises for sale, please see: www.card-connection.co.uk About Card Connection Card Connection is one of the UKs most successful card publishers and is the market leader in the franchised distribution of greeting cards. The company was established in 1992 and became a Full Member of the British Franchise Association in 1995. It now distributes greeting cards to around 13,000 outlets through its network of 67 franchisees. www.card-connection.co.uk SOURCE Card Connection Contact: Mel Betts Grapevine PR Ltd 01544 318546 melanie.betts@grapevinepr.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Druxy's Famous Deli Awarded CFA Franchisees' Choice Designation OTTAWA, ON - (Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Druxy's Famous Deli is pleased to announce that it received the 2016 Franchisees' Choice Designation at the 25th annual Canadian Franchise Association national convention in Ottawa, Ontario. This is the fourth year in a row since joining the Franchise Choice designation program in 2013 that Druxy's deli owners endorsed the company for its systems and leadership. The prestigious award, launched in 2011, is based on an annual Canadian Franchise Association survey, where franchisee owners rate various aspects of the business model, including business planning and marketing, training and support, and the relationship between the franchisor and franchisee owner. "This is an important awards program for us. It helps us examine the strength of our franchisee partner relationships and the effectiveness of our systems and programs," said Bruce Druxerman, President of Druxy's Inc. "As one of Canada's longest running deli franchises, it's rewarding to know that our deli heritage and authenticity, combined with our innovations at the store level, are appreciated by our deli owners." The awards also act as an indicator for franchise candidates investigating new opportunities, helping them shortlist companies by identifying which brands score well with current owners. As part of the due diligence process, Druxy's encourages prospective franchisee owners to speak to existing deli owners about their experiences. "I've owned a Druxy's deli for over 15 years. One thing that has always impressed me is the genuine support and experienced advice we get from management to help us succeed," said Ezio Melaragno, franchisee owner of the Druxy's at The Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. "Part of the reason we've been around for so long is because we are constantly looking for ways to improve," added Peter Druxerman, Vice President of Marketing at Druxy's Inc. "Being a multi-year winner of this award proves that we are successfully serving the needs of our deli owners and their customers by staying ahead of the curve when it comes to providing fresh and healthy fast food alternatives." "My brothers and I offer benefits to our deli owners that are unique in the industry," said Harold Druxerman, Vice President of Finance at Druxy's Inc. "The support from head office is unparalleled as we know the day-to-day realities from personal experiences, having operated fifty Druxy's restaurants for 15 years before creating our franchise model. The Franchisees' Choice award reinforces that this uniqueness is meaningful and we want to thank our deli owners for the vote of confidence." About Druxy's Famous Deli Druxy's Famous Deli was founded in 1976 by Bruce Druxerman with the goal of using the traditional deli format to offer fresh and healthy sandwiches, salads, soups, bagels and coffee to office workers in the downtown core of Toronto. Bruce was soon joined by brothers Harold and Peter and together they expanded the chain across Southern Ontario to 44 delis that include 11 hospitals and the Royal Ontario Museum. It is the focus on preparing traditional deli sandwiches from briskets of beef sliced steaming hot to order that truly differentiates Druxy's in the market place. This dedication to deli tradition permeates Druxy's operation from the quality of their product and personalized service to their choice of locations. SOURCE Druxy's Famous Deli Contact: Harold Druxerman Harold@druxys.com 416-637-5970 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Firenza to Bring Pizza Like Never Before to Louisville, Kentucky April 25, 2016 // Franchising.com // FAIRFAX, Va. Firenza, a chain that offers custom, made-to-order pizzas, will soon be delighting diners in the Louisville area. Firenza has awarded a unit to local entrepreneurs Stanford and Gbemisola Obi, who will bring the concept to the Louisville area. Company plans call for having as many as 10 area locations over the next several years. We are happy to have Stanford and Gbemisola join the Firenza family," said Firenza co-founder and CEO Dave Wood. "As we continue our expansion across the nation, its highly crucial for us to have franchise partners who share the same vision and will help elevate the brand to the next level. Stanford and Gbemisola own and operate a national franchise concept and were looking to expand their business portfolio. We feel very fortunate to have found a chain thats not only dedicated to high quality products and service but is also extremely poised for explosive growth, said Obi. Firenza simply offers todays demanding customers what they crave - originality, speed of service, customization and premium products - in a sophisticated and highly welcoming environment. Touting Pizza Like Never Before, Firenza offers fresh-baked pizzas with unlimited toppings per customers choice, for one low price. The pizza dough is made in-house daily from a special blend of flours for just the right texture and then hand-stretched to order. Customers can pick and choose from nearly 40 toppings six signature sauces, seven cheeses, nine meats and 17 veggies and watch their customized pies assembled right in front of them. For those customers who dont want to create their pizzas from scratch, Firenza also offers eight, chef-inspired signature pizzas. Once the 10-inch or 15-inch pizzas are assembled, theyre baked in an open flame stone-hearth oven and guaranteed to be done in under five minutes. Firenza also features fresh custom salads, oven baked meatballs and wings plus beer, wine and Coca Cola products. About Firenza Founded in 2015, Firenza is a new concept in the burgeoning fast-casual pizza segment that creates Pizza Like Never Before! Developed by a team of franchise executives and proven franchisees with more than 100 years collectively of restaurant business development experience, Firenza specializes in truly hand-crafted and made-to-order, stone hearth-baked pizzas that can be customized with nearly 40 toppings. For more information, please visit http://www.firenzapizza.com. SOURCE Firenza Contact: Natalie Passarelli Franchise Elevator PR (847) 239-8171 npassarelli@franchiseelevator.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Long John Silvers Brings Aboard New Corporate Crew Members LOUISVILLE, Ky. - April 25, 2016 - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Long John Silvers, the worlds largest quick service seafood company, has welcomed several new members to their corporate team in the last quarter. The new hires join the already influential team as the company continues to grow to better market its customers. It is an exciting time at Long John Silvers and we need a team with energy and passion, said Krista Foster, Senior Director of Human Resources. These are top notch professionals who understand our commitment to quality and our customers. Long John Silvers newest members include: Laura Clay Training Specialist Keiysha Cook Financial Analyst Kendall Hobbs Manager, Planning and Development Tara Stephenson Franchise Business Consultant Karen Wantland Senior Manager, Brand Communications Kimberly Warren Manager, HR About Long John Silvers Long John Silvers is a classic American brand founded in 1969, and stands today as the nations largest quick-service seafood chain with more than 1,100 franchised restaurants in the U.S. and Asia. Long John Silvers is famous for its pure, wild-caught Alaskan whitefish thats hand dipped in the restaurant and cooked to golden perfection. All wild-caught fish served at Long John Silvers is sourced from a U.S. fishery that has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council since 2005 and certified as responsibly managed under the Global Trust/ASMI FAO-based standards. Learn more at www.ljsilvers.com. SOURCE Long John Silvers Contact: Katrina Gallagher RunSwitch PR 502-472-6003 Katrina@RunSwitchPr.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Pizza Patron Seeks Franchisees for Secondary and Tertiary Texas Markets DALLAS, TX - (Marketwired - Apr 25, 2016) - Pizza Patron, widely known for its PIZZA POR PESOS program, announced today that it is looking to partner with franchisees to develop secondary and tertiary Texas Markets. Company officials say they are particularly interested in developing out cities such as El Paso, Midland, Odessa, Abilene, Temple and Killeen. Pizza Patron closed approximately 30 percent of its units in 2013 and then suspended franchise sales in January 2014. During this period and the years following, the company continued to increase overall company sales. 2015 represented the best year in company history and Pizza Patron relaunched its franchise program in January of 2016. "The past three years have been spent creating a strong company culture focused on adherence to a tried, true and proven system," said Victor Vazquez, vice president of Business Development for Pizza Patron, Inc. "Shuttering franchising for a couple years was the best decision we ever made, as now our company has never been healthier and we have an incredibly strong and committed franchise group in place." Vazquez says the company is seeking franchise partners and investors looking to capitalize on the brand's history and experience. Potential franchisee candidates include seasoned restaurateurs with multi-unit experience and qualified owner operators that are solely devoted to their Pizza Patron business and who are already part of the fabric of the local community they will serve. Including a franchise fee of $20,000, the initial investment to own and operate a Pizza Patron restaurant starts as low as $211,100. With a decade of franchising experience, Pizza Patron plans to add around a dozen new restaurants this year with a strategy to double growth each year for the following four to five years. "In 2015, we experienced the highest sales in the company's 30 year history," said Vazquez. "Additionally, our new restaurant prototype has been extremely successful and affords our franchisees more real estate opportunities and high visibility." The new restaurant prototype is a freestanding 1,200 sq. ft. building featuring a pick-up window. The new structure and design have been well received by consumers and is an attractive real estate option for developers in every market. For more information on Pizza Patron franchise opportunities, please contact franchise sales manager Isaiah Melendez directly at 972-982-0176 or visit ownapizzapatron.com. About Pizza Patron Since 1986, Pizza Patron has been committed to making its promise of "Mas Pizza. Menos Dinero." a reality for every customer. From the beginning, the brand has been recognized for its 'fresh-dough' pizza, its low prices and its trademark "friendly, bicultural service." In 2007, the company drew international media attention with its PIZZA POR PESOS program when it began accepting Mexican Pesos at all of its restaurants. In 2012, the company's PIZZA POR FAVOR promotion that gave free pizzas to anyone who ordered in Spanish sparked international news coverage and lively debate throughout the U.S. Today, Pizza Patron is the leading Mexican pizza brand in the U.S. and remains dedicated to bringing its unique experience to life with every pizza made, and in every community it serves. Website - www.pizzapatron.com Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pizzapatron Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/pizzapatron SOURCE Pizza Patron Contact: Sandy Bell Phone 972-800-1745 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Galust Sahakyan made a statement on the day of the remembrance of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. As Armenpress was informed from the Public Relations and Media Department of the National Assembly of Armenia, the statement reads as follows, Dear compatriots, today is the regular anniversary of one of the most tragic pages of our peoples history, 1915 Armenian Genocide, which is a continuous reminder to everybody and continuous demand from everybody, a reminder on the fact that more than a century ago a gravest crime directed to mankind took place; and a demand that the justice still awaits for its inevitable hour. More than hundred years ago in Ottoman Turkey an organized crime borne from xenophobia at state level was perpetrated towards Armenians, which is not only still unpunished, but an attempt is made to justify it through denialism. However, this is the very case, when the crime has no statute of limitations, when the memory does not become shorter by the influence of time, when in course of time the justice becomes more demanding. The 1915 Armenian Genocide was the climax of the Armenophobia, a phenomenon, which is today laid in the basis of the state policy of both Turkey and its godchild and sponsor Azerbaijan. The Anti-Armenianism is the certain manifestation of xenophobia against one nation, Armenians by the Turkish authorities, who are those who actively support and encourage also today not only in our region. The mania of committing violent acts, massacres and carrying out deportations by which at present different terrorist groups are guided, have become a threat of committing nowadays genocides. Meanwhile, if the Armenian Genocide were condemned with its authors and consequences fundamentally and without imposing upon geopolitical interests, then that threat would not exist; the genocides committed following the Armenian Genocide with other, more modern methods, but without change of handwriting, with the drive of the same inhumane instinct would be prevented. The brutalities committed at the end of the last century on the basis of xenophobia took place in the present Azerbaijan's cities of Baku and Sumgait full of Armenians, when the Azerbaijani organized mob killed or subjected to violence the citizens of Armenian origin, when in the village of Maragha of Nagorno Karabakh Republic the Azerbaiajani army massacred almost the whole population, when a few days ago the same army with the supporting mercenary, with more remote goals again in the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, repeated the same 'handwriting' towards the civilians: children and elderly people. These are cases that together with the 1915 Armenian Genocide should not be only condemned in the form of the strongest punishment, judgment; otherwise the best Conventions and the theses on human rights remain on the paper, the history in the role of recorder, and the international community of the one who condemns from the distance. Dear compatriots, we shall not ask or expect condemnation and recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but we shall drive the international community to such attitude. We shall do it continuously more organized, becoming a stronger country, showing our togetherness in practice and not only in war times or at the moment of danger, what we once again showed a few days ago, but also in peaceful days. We were able to oppose the culture of living and winning to the culture of genocide characteristic to the essence of our inimical and intolerant neighbour, which is the pledge of our force. We shall continue to confidently live and traditionally win. That will the best trump in the moral and legal plane on the way of the universal recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, and our compulsion to all those, who hesitate or manoeuvre in that process, who still think that through genocide it will be possible and it is possible to inhibit the Armenian people's development in the history. We have earned that trump, and we shall distinctly use it today, tomorrow and in the further future, use it in Armenia, in Artsakh and in Diaspora for the benefit of our world spread, but united people. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Innovative aloft Brand Forges Ahead in Indonesia with the Signing of Aloft Jakarta Simatupang aloft Jakarta Simatupang Will Bring a Vibrant Social Scene and Tech-Forward Mindset to Hyper-Connected Global Travelers in the Countrys Bustling Capital JAKARTA, Indonesia - April 25, 2016 - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) today announced the signing of aloft Jakarta Simatupang. Owned by PT. Anugrah Karya Bangsa, the hotel marks the fourth aloft hotel in Indonesia and the third aloft in Jakarta. Set to open on 1 January 2020, the hotel will bring its passion for live music and innovation to Indonesias bustling capital. We are thrilled to sign another aloft hotel in Jakarta as we forge ahead with our vigorous expansion plans in Southeast Asia, said Charlie Dang, Regional Vice President, Southeast Asia, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Asia Pacific. A booming area in terms of trade and tourism, Indonesia is a major draw for both leisure and business travelers. Not only are we are strengthening our partnership with PT. Anugrah Karya Bangsa, we are also leveraging their local expertise to bring alofts passion for live music, design, and tech-forward mindset to the next generation of travelers in Indonesia. Designed with todays savvy global traveler in mind, aloft Jakarta Simatupang will feature 180 loft-inspired guestrooms and suites with the brands signature offerings, including the ultra-comfortable plush signature bed, an oversized showerhead, custom amenities by Bliss Spa, fast and free WiFi, and LCD TVs all to maximize work and play. The hotel will also offer three dining and social spaces for guests to munch, mix, and mingle, including an all-day dining restaurant, rooftop bar, and a grab & go bar. Additionally, aloft Jakarta Simatupang will boast over 700 square meters of state-of-the-art meeting spaces, including a ballroom, four smaller meeting rooms, and a pre-function area. For guests to recharge and unwind, the hotel will provide its signature Splash swimming pool and Re:charge gym. We are excited to work with Starwood once again, Francisco Oetama, Managing Director, PT Dua Cahaya Anugrah. With our local experience and knowledge of property development and Starwoods management expertise, strong brand platform, and powerful guest loyalty rewards program, we look forward to a continued fruitful partnership, bringing to life the many offerings of the aloft brand. As the largest city in Indonesia, Jakarta is the countrys economic, cultural, and political center with a population of over 10 million. aloft Jakarta Simatupang will be ideally situated along Jl. T.B. Simatupang at its junction with Jl. Ampera Raya Road in South Jakarta, which currently houses many office buildings. The hotel is located approximately 45 minutes drive from the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Indonesia is one of Asias most popular tourist destinations with tremendous growth opportunities for the hospitality sector and our brands, said Rajit Sukumaran, Senior Vice President, Acquisitions and Development, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Asia Pacific. We continue to see high demand for hotels across all price points and are thrilled to add the aloft Jakarta Simatupang to our strong portfolio in the region. aloft Jakarta Simatupang will mark the third aloft brand pipeline hotel in Jakarta behind the 140-key aloft Jakarta Kebon Jeruk (September 2017) and the 160-key aloft Jakarta Wahid Hasyim (December 2017). Additionally, Starwood is accelerating growth in Indonesia with the recent openings of Four Points by Sheraton Bali, Kuta; Four Points by Sheraton Bandung; Sheraton Grand Jakarta Gandaria City Hotel; and The Hermitage, A Tribute Portfolio Hotel, which is Southeast Asias first Tribute Portfolio hotel. The Westin Jakarta is also set to open in the third quarter of 2016. These properties join Starwoods dynamic portfolio that also encompasses the companys Le Meridien, The Luxury Collection, The St. Regis, and W Hotels brands. For more information, please visit www.alofthotels.com/experience About aloft Hotels With more than 100 hotels now open in 16 countries around the world, Starwoods aloft brand delivers a fresh approach to the traditional staid hotel landscape. For the always on next generation of traveler, the aloft brand offers a tech-forward, vibrant experience and a modern style that is different by design. For more information, please visit www.alofthotels.com. aloft, like all brands within Starwood's portfolio, is proud to offer the Starwood Preferred Guest program, the industrys richest loyalty program. To learn more, please visit www.spg.com. About Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with nearly 1,300 properties in some 100 countries and over 180,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences under the renowned brands: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Tribute Portfolio, Four Points by Sheraton, aloft, Element, along with an expanded partnership with Design Hotels. The Company also boasts one of the industrys leading loyalty programs, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Visit www.starwoodhotels.com for more information and stay connected @starwoodbuzz on Twitter and Instagram and facebook.com/Starwood. SOURCE Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Media Contact: Ashley Chapman Global Communications, aloft Hotels 212-380-4015 Ashley.chapman@starwoodhotels.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Starwood Hotels Reimagined Extended-Stay Element Brand Gains Significant Momentum in North America Leading the Way as Starwoods Eco-Innovation Lab, Element is on Track to More Than Double its Dynamic North America Portfolio by the end of 2018 STAMFORD, Conn. - April 25, 2016 - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) today announced it will significantly expand its Element Hotels portfolio in North America due to soaring demand for the stylish, sustainable brand. On track to more than double its North America footprint over the next three years, Element will open another 22 hotels across the U.S. and Canada by 2018 including debuts in Philadelphia, Charleston and Nashville. Element Hotels is experiencing unprecedented growth momentum throughout North America, as well as in a number of key global markets, due to the widespread appeal of the brands distinct lifestyle positioning, said Brian McGuinness, Global Brand Leader, Specialty Select Brands for Starwood. Sustainability is no longer optional; its become a requirement among a growing number of travelers worldwide, and Element is the perfect choice with its clean, modern design and eco-conscious programming. Over the past 12 months, Element has opened new hotels in Boston, Miami, Fargo, Bozeman, Basalt, and Vancouver. The brand will pick up even more momentum in North America by entering numerous new markets by the end of 2018, including Chandler, Ariz.; San Antonio, Texas; Moline, Ill.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Bentonville, Ark.; and Huntsville, Ala. The brand will also triple its portfolio in Texas from two hotels to eight hotels by the end of 2018. Demand is also on the rise for dual-branded hotel developments featuring Starwoods Aloft and Element brands in key metropolitan markets. Across North America, Starwood will open Aloft and Element hotel projects in Syracuse, N.Y. (Aloft 2016, Element 2018); Austin, Texas (2017); Dallas, Texas (2017); Redmond, Wash. (2017); and Charleston, S.C. (2018). Element is seeing tremendous success as conditions for new hotel development continue to improve and owners and developers embrace the versatile brands emphasis on smart, sustainable living, said Allison Reid, Senior Vice President of North America Development, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. The innovative Element brand has consistently outperformed its competitive set by offering an entirely fresh perspective on reimagined lodging, and we expect it will continue to grow rapidly in both urban and suburban markets throughout North America and beyond. New Element hotels slated to open by the end of 2018 include: Element Calgary Airport (Alberta, Canada) September 2016 Offering 142 rooms and more than 2,300 square feet of meeting space, Element Calgary Airport is a convenient shuttle ride away from Calgary International Airport (YYC) and within close proximity of the citys downtown. Guests will enjoy Calgary Tower views and easy access to top attractions, including the Glenbow Museum, the Flames Scotiabank Saddledome, the Calgary Zoo and the Calgary Stampede. Element Chandler Fashion Center (Chandler, Ariz.) January 2017 Element Chandler will be situated next to the Chandler Fashion Center, one of the largest malls in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. The brands first hotel to open in Arizona, Element Chandler will feature 107 rooms and 600 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Easily accessible from both Santan Freeway and Loop 101 Price Freeway, the hotel is 10 minutes from Wild Horse Pass, 20 minutes from Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), and less than 30 minutes from downtown Phoenix and Arizona State University. (Alberta, Canada) September 2016 Offering 142 rooms and more than 2,300 square feet of meeting space, Element Calgary Airport is a convenient shuttle ride away from Calgary International Airport (YYC) and within close proximity of the citys downtown. Guests will enjoy Calgary Tower views and easy access to top attractions, including the Glenbow Museum, the Flames Scotiabank Saddledome, the Calgary Zoo and the Calgary Stampede. (Chandler, Ariz.) January 2017 Element Chandler will be situated next to the Chandler Fashion Center, one of the largest malls in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. The brands first hotel to open in Arizona, Element Chandler will feature 107 rooms and 600 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Easily accessible from both Santan Freeway and Loop 101 Price Freeway, the hotel is 10 minutes from Wild Horse Pass, 20 minutes from Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), and less than 30 minutes from downtown Phoenix and Arizona State University. Element Dallas Love Field (Dallas, Texas) February 2017 Element Dallas Love Field will anchor a new upscale mixed-use development just one mile from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL) and the Dallas Medical District. Part of a dual-branded hotel complex, the 91-room Element Dallas Love Field will share facilities with Aloft Dallas Love Field, including 6,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor swimming pool and a state-of-the-art fitness center. The hotel boasts a prime location with West Love, a 37-acre mixed-use development close to downtown Dallas, the Dallas Medical District, the Design District, the shops and restaurants at Dallas Market Center and AT&T Stadium all nearby (Dallas, Texas) February 2017 Element Dallas Love Field will anchor a new upscale mixed-use development just one mile from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL) and the Dallas Medical District. Part of a dual-branded hotel complex, the 91-room Element Dallas Love Field will share facilities with Aloft Dallas Love Field, including 6,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor swimming pool and a state-of-the-art fitness center. The hotel boasts a prime location with West Love, a 37-acre mixed-use development close to downtown Dallas, the Dallas Medical District, the Design District, the shops and restaurants at Dallas Market Center and AT&T Stadium all nearby Element Huntsville (Huntsville, Ala.) March 2017 Element Huntsville will join The Westin Huntsville just west of downtown and easily accessible from Interstate 565. The 150-room Element will be a key component of Huntsville's Bridge Street Town Centre, a mixed-use outdoor lifestyle center with more than 70 upscale shops and full-service restaurants. Close to the University of Alabama (Huntsville) and Redstone Arsenal Military Base, the hotel is also convenient to several corporate offices including Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Raytheon Company. Element Huntsville will offer 800 square feet of meeting space and share amenities with the Westin, including a pool, fitness center and parking. (Huntsville, Ala.) March 2017 Element Huntsville will join The Westin Huntsville just west of downtown and easily accessible from Interstate 565. The 150-room Element will be a key component of Huntsville's Bridge Street Town Centre, a mixed-use outdoor lifestyle center with more than 70 upscale shops and full-service restaurants. Close to the University of Alabama (Huntsville) and Redstone Arsenal Military Base, the hotel is also convenient to several corporate offices including Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Raytheon Company. Element Huntsville will offer 800 square feet of meeting space and share amenities with the Westin, including a pool, fitness center and parking. Element Moline (Moline, Ill.) April 2017 Element Moline will transform the historic ORourke Building as part of Molines ongoing efforts to revitalize and reinvigorate its riverfront and downtown. The building will include 5,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and cafe space. Element Moline will offer 90 rooms, 900 square feet of meeting space and proximity to the headquarters of Deere & Company, the U.S. Department of Defense, Rock Island Arsenal, Alcoa, United Healthcare, Kraft Foods and top area attractions such as the iWireless Center and John Deere Pavilion. (Moline, Ill.) April 2017 Element Moline will transform the historic ORourke Building as part of Molines ongoing efforts to revitalize and reinvigorate its riverfront and downtown. The building will include 5,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and cafe space. Element Moline will offer 90 rooms, 900 square feet of meeting space and proximity to the headquarters of Deere & Company, the U.S. Department of Defense, Rock Island Arsenal, Alcoa, United Healthcare, Kraft Foods and top area attractions such as the iWireless Center and John Deere Pavilion. Element Redmond (Redmond, Wash.) May 2017 The 124-room Element Redmond will open along with the 150-room Aloft Redmond just outside the campus for Microsoft Corporations world headquarters. The Aloft and Element hotel development will be located within Esterra Park, a campus-style, master-planned development with 1.2 million square feet of commercial office space, 1,400 residential units and a Link light-rail station slated to open in 2023. Easily accessible from the I-5 Freeway, the hotels are close to both Redmonds shopping district and downtown Bellevue. Aloft Redmond and Element Redmond will face a common courtyard and each feature separate branded lobbies. Shared facilities will include 6,500 square feet of state-of-the-art meeting space, an outdoor pool, a fitness facility and parking. (Redmond, Wash.) May 2017 The 124-room Element Redmond will open along with the 150-room Aloft Redmond just outside the campus for Microsoft Corporations world headquarters. The Aloft and Element hotel development will be located within Esterra Park, a campus-style, master-planned development with 1.2 million square feet of commercial office space, 1,400 residential units and a Link light-rail station slated to open in 2023. Easily accessible from the I-5 Freeway, the hotels are close to both Redmonds shopping district and downtown Bellevue. Aloft Redmond and Element Redmond will face a common courtyard and each feature separate branded lobbies. Shared facilities will include 6,500 square feet of state-of-the-art meeting space, an outdoor pool, a fitness facility and parking. Element Austin Downtown (Austin, Texas) August 2017 The dual-branded Aloft and Element Austin Downtown hotel development will include a restaurant and bar with outdoor dining along historic Congress Avenue. The 270-room Aloft and 144-room Element will be walking distance to the live music venues, restaurants and shops in the citys renowned 6th Street Entertainment District. Also nearby are the Warehouse District, the 2nd Street District, the Austin Convention Center, the University of Texas Austin campus and the Texas State Capitol Building. The hotels will share amenities including a beautiful street-level terrace overlooking Congress Avenue, an oversized 24-hour fitness center and approximately 3,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, ideal for both business meetings and social gatherings. (Austin, Texas) August 2017 The dual-branded Aloft and Element Austin Downtown hotel development will include a restaurant and bar with outdoor dining along historic Congress Avenue. The 270-room Aloft and 144-room Element will be walking distance to the live music venues, restaurants and shops in the citys renowned 6th Street Entertainment District. Also nearby are the Warehouse District, the 2nd Street District, the Austin Convention Center, the University of Texas Austin campus and the Texas State Capitol Building. The hotels will share amenities including a beautiful street-level terrace overlooking Congress Avenue, an oversized 24-hour fitness center and approximately 3,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, ideal for both business meetings and social gatherings. Element Palmdale (Palmdale, Calif.) October 2017 Element Palmdale will be just five minutes from downtown Palmdale and close to attractions such as Blackbird Airpark Museum and Air Force Flight Test Historical Museum. The largest city in Antelope Valley, Palmdale is approximately one hour from Los Angeles, Burbank and Pasadena. The 123-room Element will offer more than 800 square feet of flexible meeting space, a 24-hour fitness center and all the brands signature amenities. (Palmdale, Calif.) October 2017 Element Palmdale will be just five minutes from downtown Palmdale and close to attractions such as Blackbird Airpark Museum and Air Force Flight Test Historical Museum. The largest city in Antelope Valley, Palmdale is approximately one hour from Los Angeles, Burbank and Pasadena. The 123-room Element will offer more than 800 square feet of flexible meeting space, a 24-hour fitness center and all the brands signature amenities. Element Fort Lauderdale Downtown (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) December 2017 The 150-room Element Fort Lauderdale Downtown will anchor a new upscale lifestyle center at the heart of the citys central business district. It will be part of a dual-hotel development along with the 209-room Fort Lauderdale Downtown, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel. The hotels will share more than 12,000 square feet of meeting space and other amenities and will be part of a mixed-use complex with 14,000 square feet of street-level retail space. (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) December 2017 The 150-room Element Fort Lauderdale Downtown will anchor a new upscale lifestyle center at the heart of the citys central business district. It will be part of a dual-hotel development along with the 209-room Fort Lauderdale Downtown, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel. The hotels will share more than 12,000 square feet of meeting space and other amenities and will be part of a mixed-use complex with 14,000 square feet of street-level retail space. Element Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pa.) January 2018 The first-ever W and Element dual-branded hotel development, W Philadelphia and Element Philadelphia will occupy a 51-story skyscraper directly across from Philadelphia City Hall. The 460-room Element Philadelphia will feature a 1,400 square foot breakfast and lounge area, a fitness center and 431 square feet of branded meeting space. Walking distance from both Suburban Station and the Broad Street entrance to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the hotel is also close to top city attractions such as the Avenue of the Arts, Liberty Bell, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the galleries, restaurants and boutiques along Walnut Street, Chestnut Street and Rittenhouse Row. (Philadelphia, Pa.) January 2018 The first-ever W and Element dual-branded hotel development, W Philadelphia and Element Philadelphia will occupy a 51-story skyscraper directly across from Philadelphia City Hall. The 460-room Element Philadelphia will feature a 1,400 square foot breakfast and lounge area, a fitness center and 431 square feet of branded meeting space. Walking distance from both Suburban Station and the Broad Street entrance to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the hotel is also close to top city attractions such as the Avenue of the Arts, Liberty Bell, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the galleries, restaurants and boutiques along Walnut Street, Chestnut Street and Rittenhouse Row. Element Nashville West End (Nashville, Tenn.) January 2018 Element Nashville West End is slated to open in 2018 in a prime location at oneC1TY, just minutes from Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Centennial Park, HCA, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the nightclubs and entertainment venues downtown and on Music Row. Located at the entry to oneC1TY Nashville off the 28th / 31st Avenue Connector just 15 minutes from Nashville International Airport (BNA), the hotel will feature 169 rooms, 560 square feet of meeting space and all the brands signature amenities and services. (Nashville, Tenn.) January 2018 Element Nashville West End is slated to open in 2018 in a prime location at oneC1TY, just minutes from Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Centennial Park, HCA, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the nightclubs and entertainment venues downtown and on Music Row. Located at the entry to oneC1TY Nashville off the 28th / 31st Avenue Connector just 15 minutes from Nashville International Airport (BNA), the hotel will feature 169 rooms, 560 square feet of meeting space and all the brands signature amenities and services. Element San Antonio Airport (San Antonio, Texas) March 2018 Element San Antonio Airport will be located at the intersection of Highway 281 and Wurzbach Parkway, just one mile from San Antonio International Airport (SAT). The hotel will feature 123 rooms, 838 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Nearby attractions include the historic Alamo, San Antonio Zoo, and the shops and restaurants along the downtown Riverwalk. (San Antonio, Texas) March 2018 Element San Antonio Airport will be located at the intersection of Highway 281 and Wurzbach Parkway, just one mile from San Antonio International Airport (SAT). The hotel will feature 123 rooms, 838 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Nearby attractions include the historic Alamo, San Antonio Zoo, and the shops and restaurants along the downtown Riverwalk. Element Katy (Katy, Texas) March 2018 Ideally located within the Houston energy corridor, Element Katy will feature 135 guest rooms, 2,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. The new Element is part of the new Grand Crossing development, a mixed-use complex that will include residential units, offices, restaurants and shops, as well as parks, two ponds and a network of walking trails. The hotel will offer convenient access to the offices of numerous corporations, Katy Mills Mall and the LaCenterra at Cinco Ranch development. (Katy, Texas) March 2018 Ideally located within the Houston energy corridor, Element Katy will feature 135 guest rooms, 2,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. The new Element is part of the new Grand Crossing development, a mixed-use complex that will include residential units, offices, restaurants and shops, as well as parks, two ponds and a network of walking trails. The hotel will offer convenient access to the offices of numerous corporations, Katy Mills Mall and the LaCenterra at Cinco Ranch development. Element Syracuse Inner Harbor (Syracuse, N.Y.) April 2018 Part of an Aloft and Element hotel development, Element Syracuse Inner Harbor will offer a convenient location just a short walk to Destiny USA Center, a major shopping and entertainment destination. Guests will enjoy easy access to nearby attractions including Armory Square, a historic and refurbished area of the city containing shops and restaurants; the Everson Museum of Art; the Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology; and Washington Square Park. Featuring 123 stylish, sustainable rooms and suites and 470 square feet of meeting space, the hotel will be just over one mile from downtown Syracuse, approximately two miles from both Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University. (Syracuse, N.Y.) April 2018 Part of an Aloft and Element hotel development, Element Syracuse Inner Harbor will offer a convenient location just a short walk to Destiny USA Center, a major shopping and entertainment destination. Guests will enjoy easy access to nearby attractions including Armory Square, a historic and refurbished area of the city containing shops and restaurants; the Everson Museum of Art; the Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology; and Washington Square Park. Featuring 123 stylish, sustainable rooms and suites and 470 square feet of meeting space, the hotel will be just over one mile from downtown Syracuse, approximately two miles from both Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University. Element Charleston Historic Downtown - (Charleston, S.C.) May 2018 Element Charleston Historic Downtown will open at 600 Meeting Street within the citys newest lifestyle center as part of an Aloft and Element hotel development. The 86-room Aloft and 88-room Element will share an expansive rooftop deck and pool area, a 24-hour fitness center and 2,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. The new lifestyle center will also include 40,000 square feet of premium office space and a rooftop restaurant and bar with sweeping views of the Cooper River and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Guests will be within walking distance of the citys historic center, the open-air Charleston City Market, the Charleston Museum, and the boutiques, galleries and restaurants on King Street. - (Charleston, S.C.) May 2018 Element Charleston Historic Downtown will open at 600 Meeting Street within the citys newest lifestyle center as part of an Aloft and Element hotel development. The 86-room Aloft and 88-room Element will share an expansive rooftop deck and pool area, a 24-hour fitness center and 2,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. The new lifestyle center will also include 40,000 square feet of premium office space and a rooftop restaurant and bar with sweeping views of the Cooper River and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Guests will be within walking distance of the citys historic center, the open-air Charleston City Market, the Charleston Museum, and the boutiques, galleries and restaurants on King Street. Element Dallas East (Dallas, Texas) July 2018 Element Dallas East will transform a seven-story medical office building located at the corner of Gaston Avenue and Hall Street, just across from the Baylor University Medical Center campus. A short drive from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL), the hotel is close to the shops and restaurants in Uptown Dallas, the Design District, Oak Lawn, Victory Park and Dallas Convention Center. The 151-room Element will offer 3,754 square-feet of meeting space, a state-of-the-art 24-hour fitness center and an outdoor pool. (Dallas, Texas) July 2018 Element Dallas East will transform a seven-story medical office building located at the corner of Gaston Avenue and Hall Street, just across from the Baylor University Medical Center campus. A short drive from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL), the hotel is close to the shops and restaurants in Uptown Dallas, the Design District, Oak Lawn, Victory Park and Dallas Convention Center. The 151-room Element will offer 3,754 square-feet of meeting space, a state-of-the-art 24-hour fitness center and an outdoor pool. Element Spring Valley (Spring Valley, N.Y.) September 2018 Element Spring Valley will boast a prime location in the Spring Valley Marketplace. Easily accessible from I-87, I-287 and the Garden State Parkway, the new Element will feature 87 rooms, 500 square feet of meeting space and all the brands signature services and amenities. Nearby attractions include the Palisades Mall, the Shops at Nanuet, the campuses of several colleges and universities, and numerous businesses, including Pfizer Corporation. As the first major hotel brand to mandate that all properties pursue sustainable certifications, Element is recognized as an industry leader in the eco-space and offers travelers a fresh, completely reimagined hotel experience. Element Hotels feature natural light, modern design, healthy options and eco-minded sensibilities. Guests can fuel their day with the healthy RISE breakfast and wind down with the RELAX evening wine reception both complimentary. Spacious studios and one-bedroom suites feature a fluid design of modular furniture, flat-screen LED televisions ranging from 40 to 65 inches, large desks with open shelving, and custom-designed closets. Rooms also include fully equipped kitchens and the signature Heavenly Bed, while spa-inspired bathrooms feature an invigorating rain shower and dual-flush toilet. Staying on the move is easy with complimentary bikes to borrow and a state-of-the-art 24-hour fitness center. Fast and free WiFi is available throughout every hotel. Additionally, the Element brand continues to fuel growth worldwide. Following openings in Amsterdam, London and Jiangsu, China, Element is set to debut in London and Tanzania in 2017, and open two more hotels in China, three in the Middle East and two more in Canada by the end of 2018. For more information, visit www.ElementHotels.com or connect on Facebook. About Element Hotels Element Hotels is made to order for guests in the know and on the go. Its bright design defies convention, bathing guest rooms and public spaces in natural light. Stylish and sustainable throughout, Element offers extended stay comfort with a conscience and lots of signature amenities from its healthy RISE breakfast and RELAX evening reception to saline swimming pools, spacious fitness centers, bikes to borrow and electric vehicle charging stations. Starwoods latest brand innovation, Element made history in 2008 as the only major hotel brand to pursue LEED certification for high-performance buildings brand-wide. To date, there are 22 Element Hotels worldwide, with 19 in North America, two in Europe, one in Asia Pacific with new domestic and international hotels in development. Visit www.ElementHotels.com or connect on Facebook. SOURCE Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Media Contact: Ashley Chapman Element Hotels Global Communications (212) 380-4015 Ashley.chapman@starwoodhotels.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The NKR Defense Ministry informs that the Azerbaijani side made more than 120 ceasefire violations in the line of contact, Armenpress was informed by the Press Service of the NKR Defense Ministry. The NKR Defense Army statement reads: "During the night of April 24-25 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire agreement more than 120 times by firing various caliber weapons, invlcuding 60mm (3 shells), 82mm mortars (4 shells), 17 grenade launchers (57 shells) and ZU-23-2 antiaircraft weapon (11 shots) along the entire contact line. The adversary also effectively used SPIKE anti-tank guided missile (1 unit) in the northeastern (Martakert) direction of the contact line. As a result of punitive actions of NKR Defense Army forces the actions of the adversary were repressed". YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Defense Ministry informs that the Azerbaijani side violated ceasefire 38 times, Armenpress was informed about this by the Department of Information and Public Relations of the Armenian Defense Ministry. The Armenian Defense Ministry statement reads: On April 24 and throughout the morning of April 25 38 ceasefire violations were recorded in the southeastern direction of Armenia-Azerbaijan state border. The Azerbaijani side opened irregular fire at Armenian positions by using various caliber weapons and sniper rifles. The adversary also fired RPG-7 grenade launcher. The Armenian Armed forces continue monitoring the situation in borders and conducted countermeasures only in case of strict necessity. According to the information provided by the NKR Defense Army during the night of April 24-25 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire agreement more than 120 times by firing various caliber weapons fired 60mm (3 shells), 82mm mortars (4 shells), 17 grenade launchers (57 shells) and ZU-23-2 antiaircraft weapon (11 shots) along the entire contact line. The adversary also effectively used SPIKE anti-tank guided missile (1 unit) in the northeastern (Martakert) direction of the contact line. As a result of punitive actions of NKR Defense Army forces the actions of the adversary were repressed. WASHINGTON The Obama administration soon will likely release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers. The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The former Democratic senator from Florida says an administration official told him intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a longtime American ally. Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a preliminary police report. There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met withall kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said Friday. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner. The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. Protecting U.S.Saudi diplomatic relations also was believed to have been a factor. Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obamas deputy national security adviser, said Obama asked National Intelligence director James Clapper to review the papers for possible declassification. When thats done wed expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information, Rhodes told reporters in Riyadh last week where Obama met with King Salman and other Saudi leaders. The White House says the 28 pages did not come up during discussions. Neither the congressional inquiry nor the subsequent 9/11 Commission found any evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. But Graham, the relatives of victims and some lawmakers think there is reason to further probe possible Saudi links. Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. Roemer also wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers. We did not discover ... Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks, Roemer said. But he added: We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. ... Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for al-Qaida. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. 28pages.org, a site pushing to get the documents released, points to another document declassified in July 2015 that outlined ways in which the commission could examine possible Saudi links. The 47-page document lists several pages of individuals of interest and suggests questions that could be pursued. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the pages and said last week that while he wants to see them declassified to end speculation about what they say, releasing them will not quell the debate over the issue. As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty, he said. COLUMBUS, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Sunday that the slayings of eight family members in rural southern Ohio was a pre-planned execution and he expects the investigation will be lengthy. The Friday killings at four different homes near Piketon was a sophisticated operation, DeWine said at a news conference in the small community that has been on edge since the seven adults and one teenage boy were found shot in the head. This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened, said Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader, saying most were targeted while they were sleeping. Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed more than 30 people in hopes of finding leads in the deaths. The victims were identified Saturday as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence Frankie Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. It appeared some of the family members were killed as they slept, including Hanna Rhoden, who was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was 4- or 5-days old. The baby, Hannah Gilleys 6-month-old baby and one other small child were not hurt. Since the slayings, authorities have refused to discuss many details of the crime, including any evidence or the search for the assailant or assailants. Investigators sought tips and gave people a number to call if they had any details about the crimes. A Cincinnati-area businessman also put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway. The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away, said the investigations leader, Benjamin Suver, a special agent in charge with Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Associated Press writers Kantele Franko in Piketon, Lisa Cornwell in Cincinnati, and Albert Stumm in Philadelphia contributed to this report. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. A solar-powered airplane on a mission to fly around the world landed in California, completing a risky, three-day flight across a great expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Pilot Bertrand Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, at 11:45 p.m. Saturday following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight from Hawaii without fuel. The plane taxied into a huge tent at Moffett Airfield where Piccard was greeted by the projects team. You know there was a moment in the night, I was watching the reflection of the moon on the ocean and I was thinking Im completely alone in this tiny cockpit and I feel completely confident. And I was really thankful to life for bringing me this experience, Piccard said at a news conference after he landed. Its maybe this is one of the most fantastic experiences of life Ive had. The landing came hours after Piccard made a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators below watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings. Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. The trans-Pacific legs were the riskiest part of the planes travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. The planes wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night. Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey. The adventure continues, Piccard said. The story is not finished. The project, which is estimated to cost more than $100 million, began in 2002 to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. SEOUL, South Korea North Korea said Sunday that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a dagger of destruction. South Korea couldnt immediately confirm the claim of success in what marks Pyongyangs latest effort to expand its military might in face of pressure by its neighbors and Washington. Hours before the announcement, South Korean military officials said the North fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast. The Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectile traveled about 19 miles Saturday evening. Thats a much shorter than the typical distance of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which can fly at least 186 miles. A successful test from a submarine would be a worrying development because mastering the ability to fire missiles from submerged vessels would make it harder for outsiders to detect what North Korea is doing before it launches, giving it the potential to surprise its enemies. While South Korean experts say its unlikely that North Korea currently possesses an operational submarine that can fire multiple missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on such technology. In a typical example of overblown rhetoric, the Norths Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un observed from a test facility as the ballistic missile surged from a submarine and spewed out a massive stream of flames as it soared into the sky. It said the missile met all technical thresholds. The KCNA report said that after the test Kim declared that the North now has another strong nuclear strike method and also the ability to stick a dagger of destruction into the heads of its enemies, South Korea and the United States, at any time. The KCNA report didnt say when or where the recent test-firing took place. South Korean officials said the launch on Saturday took place near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems. The North last test-launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Dec. 25, but that test was seen as failure, the Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The North first claimed of a successful submarine-launched missile test in May last year. U.S. Strategic Command, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, said its systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan. A statement from Strategic Command added that the missile launch did not pose a threat to North America. U.S. military forces remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security, it said. The U.S. State Department said that in response to Saturdays launch, it was limiting the travel of North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his delegation to U.N. functions in New York, where they are attending a U.N. meeting on sustainable development. The U.S. noted launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers. Maloney and Turtle cautioned that it is too early in this research to come to conclusions about the long-term outcomes of the patients who went into remission. The results are really encouraging and really exciting and, particularly, the short-term data is really exciting but we need more time and more research to work out what the longer-term implications of this work are, Turtle said. I was going to go out fighting Kleinhofers cancer story began unobtrusively with a little bump on the top of her head. She assumed it was a cyst. It was not. In August 2010, at age 36, Kleinhofer got a call at her office in human resources at the University of California San Francisco telling her that she had ALL. From that world-shattering moment, Kleinhofer plunged into two exhausting years of chemotherapy. It bought her just a year and a half of remission. The standard chemo regimen no longer worked, so Kleinhofer enrolled in a clinical trial of an experimental chemotherapy at Stanford. Meanwhile, her doctors began to pursue a transplant of blood-forming stem cells from bone marrow. In a transplant, a patients cancerous blood and immune system is destroyed with chemotherapy and radiation and then replaced with healthy cells from a donor. But Kleinhofers route to a transplant was blocked when a donor match fell through and another couldnt be found. She, her doctors and her family tried to figure out what was next and stay optimistic that they would find another option. You really dont know how strong you are until something happens to you, Kleinhofer said. No matter what, no matter where the journey led, I was going to go out fighting. I thought I would do everything I could, even if my life ended short. Kleinhofers doctor had once mentioned another possible option: getting her on a trial of CAR T cells. Throughout the chemo trial and search for a donor match, Kleinhofers mother, Janet Perucca-Kleinhofer, began to look into that unfamiliar concept, with increasing excitement. It just makes so much sense, using ones own body to help fight cancer, Perucca-Kleinhofer said. Kleinhofer and her mother insisted on pursuing an immunotherapy trial after the transplant match evaporated. Kleinhofers California medical team sent out letters to investigators across the country asking if she might be eligible to enroll in their studies. In the end, there was just one that seemed to be a possibility: the Fred Hutch CAR T-cell trial. Like little Pac-Mans Like Kleinhofer, all of the trial participants had severe disease that had relapsed or was not yielding to treatment, and they had endured anywhere from one to 11 rounds of chemotherapy; 11 of them had even already had a transplant. Patients who enroll on this trial are extremely sick, Turtle said. Theyve been through all conventional treatments that are available and likely to help them. Many of them have failed prior transplant, failed prior clinical trials. Some of them, despite their poor prognosis, are quite well when you look at them and talk to them, but others are really very, very sick and have a very short life expectancy. As Kleinhofers family counted down the days until they could travel up to Seattle to try to enroll her on the trial, I would tell you I was terrorized, Kleinhofers mother, Perucca-Kleinhofer said. It was the waiting would we get in in time? She made it. In the fall of 2014, Kleinhofer travelled to Seattle and met with Maloney, who explained the CAR T-cell strategy and the risks of participating in the trial. She decided to enroll. If youre willing to take that chance, you just have to accept that Well, I dont know how Im going to react, the doctors dont know how my bodys going to react, Kleinhofer said. But youre going to try. Because your hope is that this might be your cure. And thats what you hold on to. To get ready for procedure, the team began engineering Kleinhofers extracted T cells. They used a specialized virus to deliver genetic instructions into the cells for making a CAR, or chimeric antigen receptor, a synthetic molecule that allows T cells to recognize and kill cells bearing a particular marker. In this case, the CAR T cells were targeted to a marker called CD19 that is found on the surface of certain blood cells, including leukemia cells. Two weeks later, after being multiplied to the billions in the lab, Kleinhofers new CAR T cells were ready to be infused back into her, prepared to search out and destroy her cancer. On Nov. 19, 2014, it was CAR T-cell day. The engineered cells were delivered to the infusion room at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in a cooler, and the bag of clear liquid was hung up on an IV pole. Kleinhofer, her mom, and her boyfriend, Benny Juarez, all wore their Choose Hope T-shirts. Nurses who had heard there was a CAR T-cell infusion going on popped into the room to watch something most of them had never seen before. Everyone was smiling for photos. The nurses were excited. Dr. Maloney was excited. There was a lot of excitement about this type of treatment. You dont see that excitement when you go in for chemo the sense that this is a new technology, Juarez said. It took less than an hour to empty the CD19-targeting CAR T cells into a vein in Kleinhofers arm. The cells were like little Pac-Mans, was how I imagined them, going around and eating up cancer cells, she said. The path to remission The CAR T-cell infusion Kleinhofer received was unique to this trial a careful one-to-one mixture of helper (CD4) and killer (CD8) T cells, both engineered with a CD19-specific CAR that was designed and tested in the lab of trial investigator Dr. Stanley Riddell at Fred Hutch. As their names imply, the helper T cells assist the killer T cells in their mission to eradicate cells bearing the CD19 marker. In other CAR T-cell trials, Maloney said, investigators take whatever they can get, meaning that the specific T cells engineered with a CAR are random, and each participant could get a different mixture of the two types of cells. By creating a CAR T-cell product with a defined composition of helper and killer cells, the researchers were able to link the dose of cells a patient received with what they experienced afterward. You cant work out how to go forward if you dont have any correlations between what you put into the patient and what happens to the patient, Turtle said. If theres an element of random effect in the dose of the stuff youre giving or other things youre doing, its very hard to make improvements. Low, medium and high doses of cells all seemed to cause remissions. The CAR T cells were effective at eliminating cancer cells anywhere they appeared, the researchers reported, whether in the bone marrow or in masses throughout the body. Of the two participants cited in the study who didnt go into remission, both had relatively little cancer in their marrow at the start of the trial. One of these ended up getting a transplant, relapsing, and rejoining the trial and achieving remission after getting a higher T-cell dose. Many participants experienced side effects after receiving the cells, the researchers reported. The most common side effect in the first two weeks after infusion was a condition called cytokine release syndrome, which is characterized by high fever and low blood pressure. Half of the participants also experienced confusion or other serious neurological side effects, almost all of which were temporary. The people who were more likely to experience the most severe side effects were those who had the most cancer in their bone marrow initially and those in whom the CAR T cells multiplied most profusely after infusion, the researchers reported. In addition, the first two participants on the trial who received the highest dose of cells experienced severe toxicities, and one of these died. (A total of two patients died on the study.) Toxicity [from this therapy] can be severe. And were getting a handle on it, and we hope to make it safer, and indeed, I think we have made it safer, Maloney said. In response, the researchers changed their approach: No more participants received the highest dose level, and participants with the greatest tumor burdens were assigned to receive the lowest dose of CAR T cells. This seemed to help. Kleinhofer said that for her, the toxicities of CAR T-cell treatment were relatively easy compared to what shed already been through from chemotherapy, which caused everything from long-lasting fatigue to skin abscesses to heart damage. A few days after her CAR T-cell infusion, she was hospitalized for five days with cytokine release syndrome, during which time her blood pressure plummeted and she had fevers that soared to around 102, with chills and full-body aches. Shed wake up in the morning with her hospital gown drenched from sweat, and her thinking was cloudy. But it was temporary. Really, a week later, I felt really well. I had a lot of energy, and I actually even went and saw a couple of Seattle sights I went to see the Space Needle for a couple hours, and the Ferris wheel, Kleinhofer said, referring to the Great Wheel on the city's downtown waterfront. Which is really unheard of when you do regular chemo regimens. You dont have the energy or ability to do that. The best Christmas gift Kleinhofer spent another week in the hospital in December 2014 for a bacterial infection she contracted due to her chemo-weakened immune system. It was during that week that she learned the results of her CAR T-cell infusion. We received the awesome news that I had been placed in remission. No cancer evidence was found. And I had a chromosome abnormality that was gone, which was awesome, Kleinhofer said. So it was perfect. It was really the best Christmas gift for me and my family. New Synthetic Opiate Found in South Florida, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab Responds ( April 24, 2016 ) West Palm Beach, FL -- According to Broward Palm Beach New Times, a new and dangerous synthetic opiate called W-18 has been discovered in South Florida following the arrest of a man convicted of distributing the deadly painkiller, Fentanyl. While the man in question was only charged in relation to the Fentanyl in his possession, officers also confiscated W-18- a substance which had only been rumored to exist in the United States before the arrest. Previously W-18 was only found in Canada, with Canadian officials suspecting it was being imported from China. The synthetic opiate is used to boost the effects of lower quality heroin, also attributing to the increase in heroin overdose deaths across the country. West Palm Beach Drug Rehab, a leading provider of heroin rehab in West Palm Beach, is intimately aware of the dangers posed by heroin, especially when adulterated with unknown substances. The recent influx of heroin-related deaths in West Palm Beach is attributed to heroin diluted by Fentanyl and other substances. The revelation that the dangerous synthetic opiate W-18 may be among them is deeply concerning. A representative of West Palm Beach Drug Rehab comments: "In the wake of Flakka's decrease throughout South Florida, heroin use has once again increased, and with it, adulterating substances like Fentanyl, and now, W-18. The inherent danger of these substances is that they are not understood. Their interactions and the way one will react cannot be predicted, leading to tragic and preventable deaths. It is nearly impossible to know if these substances have been added to heroin, thus increasing the danger even further." About West Palm Beach Drug Rehab 33401: West Palm Beach Drug Rehab offers a peaceful and calming atmosphere to facilitate recovery from substance abuse in sunny South Florida. Serving people from across the United States, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab utilizes a combination of holistic and traditional methods personalized to meet the individual needs of client. Group dynamic therapy begins as early as the medically-assisted detoxification stage of treatment, fostering a supportive, healing community. Additionally, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab provides individual therapy sessions, art and animal therapy options, yoga, meditation, and acupuncture, as well as access to a full gym and spa services. For more information about West Palm Beach Drug Rehab visit http://westpalmbeachdrugrehab.org/ or call (561)513-5749. For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Matteson Partners Taking On New In-House Legal Recruitment Clients (Mon 29th May 17) Huong Nghiep A Au Vocational Guidance School Launches New Major (Thu 25th May 17) FSP unveils new Industrial and Gaming power solutions at COMPUTEX 2017 (Wed 24th May 17) The Best Free Keylogger of 2017 Has Been Announced by the Official Remote Keylogger (Tue 23rd May 17) The Remote Keylogger Development Team Announces An Update to the Official iPhone Keylogger (Thu 11th May 17) CaptureStream Announces its New Streaming Video Recorder and Downloader (Mon 8th May 17) YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Keeping in the center of attention the medical care and services of citizens who were wounded as a result of military operations in the contact zone in Artsakh, the Armenian Ministry of Health convoked a regular consultation. As Armenpress was informed by the Ministry of Health of Armenia, Armen Muradyan instructed the heads of the relevant department of the Ministry to be consistent with the organizational issues of the wounded persons medical care. The Minister also stressed the importance of the organization of future rehabilitation of the wounded persons. The Minister instructed also to continue to convoke medical councils with the involvement of leading experts in case of necessity. The Ministry of Health of Armenia is ready to coordinate every question related to the health of the wounded persons. For any problems, complaints or other issues call Hotline service of the Ministry of Health (+374 10) 52-88-72. As a result of recent events in the Karabakh-Azerbaijan conflict zone, currently 7 citizens appealed to the Ministry of Health, and 4 to the State Migration Service of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Development of Armenia to receive medical treatment. Alcohol Returns to Panama City Beach After Spring Break Ban, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab Responds ( April 24, 2016 ) West Palm Beach, FL -- According to Florida Politics, Panama City Beach has lifted the ban of alcohol sales and consumption on April 1st, following the end of spring break tourism season throughout March. This decision to ban beer, wine, and liquor for the first time was met by opposition, but reportedly lead to a decrease in crime. There was also a significant decrease in local business, including a more than 50 percent decrease in hotel reservations which has been blamed on the alcohol ban. Police reports state that the number of service calls dropped to 6,409 from 13,301 in 2015; arrests made during the ban totalled 547, where during the same time last year there were 1,332. Spring breakers have threatened to travel elsewhere next year should the ban return, but Bay County Commissioner Mike Thomas stated that tax revenues could still exceed last year's earnings despite the dip in income. West Palm Beach Drug Rehab provides alcohol rehab in West Palm Beach, and understands the correspondence between alcohol consumption and criminal activity. Because of the thorough understanding regarding alcohol and inhibitions, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab concurs with the decision of Panama City Beach to ban alcohol for the month of March. Despite lost revenue, the decision ultimately averted criminal activity and needless trouble for the people of Panama City. A representative of West Palm Beach Drug Rehab commented: "While it is understandable that the business owners and employees working within Panama City are upset regarding lost revenue, the damaged caused to the city and beach by drunken spring breakers warrants the ban imposed by the city. Popular tourist attractions frequented by spring break vacationers often fall victim to damages and criminal activity directly related to alcohol abuse. While loss revenue in an undesirable consequence of this decision, the overall protection the ban provides for the residents, businesses, and visitors is enough reason for most to endure the inconvenience." About West Palm Beach Drug Rehab 33402: Combining holistic and traditional treatment methods, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab works tirelessly to bring relief and healing from substance abuse to each and every client. The dedicated medical staff and empathetic, devoted mental health professionals work in tandem to uncover the deep-seated, underlying causes of substance abuse. Committed to full revival in mind, body, and soul, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab provides a variety of therapies, yoga, meditation, access to a gym and salon services. Beyond treatment, clients of West Palm Beach also attend sporting events, concerts, barbeques, and other weekly activities. For more information about West Palm Beach Drug Rehab visit http://westpalmbeachdrugrehab.org/ or call (561)513-5749. For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Matteson Partners Taking On New In-House Legal Recruitment Clients (Mon 29th May 17) Huong Nghiep A Au Vocational Guidance School Launches New Major (Thu 25th May 17) FSP unveils new Industrial and Gaming power solutions at COMPUTEX 2017 (Wed 24th May 17) The Best Free Keylogger of 2017 Has Been Announced by the Official Remote Keylogger (Tue 23rd May 17) The Remote Keylogger Development Team Announces An Update to the Official iPhone Keylogger (Thu 11th May 17) CaptureStream Announces its New Streaming Video Recorder and Downloader (Mon 8th May 17) Mother Supplies Heroin to Daughter Who Overdosed in Prison, Cincinnati Drug Rehab ( April 24, 2016 ) Cincinnati, OH -- According to Cincinnati.com, a mother has plead to second degree charges of conspiracy to distribute heroin resulting in death. The Covington mother, Kimberly Mullins, has previously supplied her daughter with heroin while she was incarcerated; however, when her daughter, 25 year old Jaime Green died of a heroin overdose while in the Kenton County Jail on September 4th, 2015, the lethal dose was traced back to Mullins. She was not alone in the operation: her co-defendants, 36 year old Lisa Lattimore and 40 year old Lynette Ball, also pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute heroin. All women involved face sentences of 20 years to life. Facilities offering heroin rehab in Cincinnati see these types of situations everyday. As such, Cincinnati Drug Rehab often encounters friends and family members who act as enablers under the false belief that they are helping to alleviate suffering. Rehabilitation is for both, the person living with a substance abuse disorder and those around them, heroin rehab provided by Cincinnati Drug Rehab focus on healing one's self as well as teaching support over enabling behavior. A representative of Cincinnati Drug Rehab comments: "While this is definitely a tragedy, the unfortunate truth is it is not as uncommon as we would like to believe. Empathy and sympathy sometimes leads to enabling behavior, such as supplying addictive substances as a means of avoiding the negative effects of withdrawal. Despite knowing the risks, poor decision making and manipulation can create an enabling situation. This is how addiction destroys families and communities- by undermining our relationships. Unfortunately this case ended in death and lifetime imprisonment. This tragedy should serve as a cautionary tale." About Cincinnati Drug Rehab 45201: A representative of Cincinnati Drug Rehab comments: "While this is definitely a tragedy, the unfortunate truth is it is not as uncommon as we would like to believe. Empathy and sympathy sometimes leads to enabling behavior, such as supplying addictive substances as a means of avoiding the negative effects of withdrawal. Despite knowing the risks, poor decision making and manipulation can create an enabling situation. This is how addiction destroys families and communities- by undermining our relationships. Unfortunately this case ended in death and lifetime imprisonment. This tragedy should serve as a cautionary tale." Through the support and encouragement of the mental health care professionals at Cincinnati Drug Rehab, clients receive personalized treatment which combines the most effective traditional and holistic methods to facilitate long-term healing and sobriety. Clients of Drug Rehab Cincinnati are exposed to a number of therapy methods including art, music, and animal therapies to help determine the most effective means of identifying and alleviating underlying causes of substance abuse. Cincinnati Drug Rehab is available to residents of all 50 states in the U.S., and provides services beyond treatment, such as access to a full gym, spa and salon services, and weekly events. For more information, visit http://cincinnatidrugrehab.org/ or call (513) 679-5055. For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Matteson Partners Taking On New In-House Legal Recruitment Clients (Mon 29th May 17) Huong Nghiep A Au Vocational Guidance School Launches New Major (Thu 25th May 17) FSP unveils new Industrial and Gaming power solutions at COMPUTEX 2017 (Wed 24th May 17) The Best Free Keylogger of 2017 Has Been Announced by the Official Remote Keylogger (Tue 23rd May 17) The Remote Keylogger Development Team Announces An Update to the Official iPhone Keylogger (Thu 11th May 17) CaptureStream Announces its New Streaming Video Recorder and Downloader (Mon 8th May 17) Step Change Media The New Name In Web Design, Digital Marketing & SEO In Cardiff Step Change Media launch in Cardiff, this new and exciting agency offer services including; web design, branding, social media management and are experts in SEO. Visit the website today and get a FREE SEO blueprint for your bsuiness. -- Step Change Media announces the launch of its new website. This firm is based in Cardiff and serves the local business community but has a national spread with clients all over the UK. The experts at Step Change Media have a wide range of digital marketing and web design skills ready to offer. Website Design If a business is to succeed, it needs a solid online presence and this begins with having the right website to market a business. At Step Change Media, the team of experts who will help design the right website, complete with social media links, a store finder and a blog for businesses of all industries. A website is like a mobile office and this is why websites are designed to draw customers in. Step Change Media's skills and experience will ensure a businesses site has a high conversion rate. In effect, visitors to a site do not just look around and leave but they buy products and come back for more. SEO Services Search engine optimisation is one of the strong points at Step Change Media. Experienced experts help market sites effectively knowing all the secrets of SEO marketing. Depending on specific needs, Step Change Media offer local SEO services or national SEO services. Helping get the right articles and online videos to market a business. In addition, Step Change Media can help get a high page rank easily with effective link building strategies. The best part of the deal is that this does not run any risk of getting on Google's black list because the strategies are completely white hat. Social Media Marketing One of the best things about social media marketing is that a business can reach millions of customers if used the right way. Companies probably already have a social media presence but Step Change Media can help transform this presence to a huge market. Industry experts can do this by creating attractive content that will appeal to millions of individual and corporate clients. Interacting and relating with potential clients on social media platforms. This is a great way to get more customers and stay in touch with existing customers. Print Services The Printing department at Step Change Media can provide colourful and beautiful brochures for a company. Step Change Media also design quality flyers and posters. These posters and flyers are sure to create awareness and bring a business more customers. Other Services offered the services below: E-Commerce Web Apps Branding The Step Change Media Team The people behind this innovative company is James Watkins. James is an SEO specialist but he also has over 15 years experience in sales and marketing. With over 30 years experience in the media industry trusting him to take a business to the next level is easy. Contact: Step Change Media The Gate Keppoch Street Roath Cardiff UK CF24 3JW 029 2221 5521 info@stepchange.agency http://cardiff.stepchange.agency/ For more information about us, please visit http://cardiff.stepchange.agency/ Contact Info: Name: James Watkins Organization: Step Change Media Address: The Gate Keppoch Street Roath Cardiff UK CF24 3JW Phone: 029 22215 5521 Release ID: 112024 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Power4Patriots Officials Commend Solar Plane Operators A plane powered only by the rays of the sun is attempting to fly around the world to demonstrate the importance of solar power. Power4Patriots officials recommend installing solar panels and wind turbines to keep the electrical flow going when the grid fails. -- A solar-powered plane has resumed its trip around the world, according to the Associated Press. Power4Patriots officials applaud this daring effort to highlight the importance of renewable energy through the flights of Solar Impulse 2. They also warn Americans that due to the vulnerability of the U.S. electrical grid, homeowners need to be prepared for a shutdown caused by extreme weather or an electromagnetic pulse. "This isn't science fiction or fantasy," said 4Patriots Partner Allen Baler said. "The likelihood of a lengthy blackout in America is quite real when you consider how frequently our electrical grid is being attacked. And when it occurs, it could be much worse than the results of Hurricane Sandy because it could last for an extended period of time. Only those who are prepared for it will be able to handle it." Baler says the best way to keep electricity flowing during blackouts, and reduce monthly power costs, is to become independent of the power grid by learning how to generate electricity through the installation of solar panels and wind turbines. The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 recently left Hawaii and was heading toward California in the latest leg of its around-the-world journey. The trip began in Abu Dhabi in March 2015 and has made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds, and its wings are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. At night, the plane runs on stored power. Consumers who purchase already-made solar panels and wind turbines for their residential and commercial properties spend three to four times as much as those who make their own. Installing solar panels and a wind turbine at one's home will cut energy costs by as much as 75 percent. Power4Patriots was created as a way to allow anyone to become independent of high power bills and outages. Cost-effective and uncomplicated, Power4Patriots teaches people how to build their own, environmentally friendly sources of energy. Power4Patriots is a recently updated series of videos and manuals describing how to build solar panels, wind turbines, water heaters and solar heaters. The system includes six videos demonstrating how to build a solar panel, including choosing the right materials, finding the right site for the system and avoiding costly mistakes, as well as two instruction manuals with step-by-step, illustrated directions. It also includes four videos and two instruction manuals detailing how to build a wind turbine. "On average, the costs are under $200 to build a solar panel and under $200 to build a wind turbine," Baler said. "The time commitment to build a solar panel ranges from two to four hours, with the first one requiring more time than subsequent panels. A wind turbine requires a handful of hours to build." Power4Patriots is a series of videos and manuals that teach do-it-yourselfers how to build solar panels, wind turbines, water heaters and solar heaters. Cost savings are up to 75 percent. For more information about us, please visit http://www.power4patriots.com Contact Info: Name: Tim Boyle Email: timm.boyle@4patriots.com Organization: 4Patriots LLC Source: http://marketersmedia.com/power4patriots-officials-commend-solar-plane-operators/112037 Release ID: 112037 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) With SMBs Falling Behind, AZBS Strives to Raise Awareness About Network Security Company's new public awareness campaign aims to help small and medium companies better understand the stakes and how to remain secure, AZBS reports -- AZBS, Inc., a leading provider of IT Consulting for Businesses in Chicago since 1994, launched a new public awareness campaign focusing on network security. With determined digital attackers worldwide even more regularly targeting small and medium businesses, ensuring that a given company's IT assets are protected has become a basic requirement. Through the new AZBS public awareness campaign, SMB leaders throughout Chicagoland will have the opportunity to learn more about what they can do to better secure their own organizations. Those interested can also sign up for a free, no-risk security assessment at www.azbs.com. "With larger companies shoring up their defenses, cyber-criminals are even more regularly targeting small and medium businesses with their probes and attacks," AZBS Service Coordinator Katie Keith said, "Last year saw a significant increase in SMB IT breaches, with many of these events resulting in expensive damage to the victims and their business relationships. We're committed to making sure that companies of all sizes throughout the Chicago metropolitan area understand the importance of taking security seriously. Between our new public awareness campaign, our free security assessments, and our other services, we hope to make a real difference." The newest edition of PWC's "Global State of Information Security" survey found that 2015 saw a nearly 40% increase in reported IT breaches compared to the year before. All told in 2015, according to the Identify Theft Resource Center, at least 169 million personal records were stolen through such attacks, with an average associated cost of $154 per individual piece of information, in IBM's estimation. Even while the volume of attacks and the associated stakes are rising so rapidly, though, many small and medium businesses remain unprepared. Networking equipment giant Cisco's latest Annual Security Report included the unfortunate finding that only 29% of SMBs made appropriate use of industry-standard tools like automated patching of security issues and security-focused configuration assessment, a sharp decline from the level of 39% revealed the year before. The new AZBS campaign will help address this issue by improving public awareness of these facts and others, as well as ways of ensuring that IT assets remain secure from the attacks of criminals. As a leading provider of Managed IT Services for Businesses in Chicago, AZBS always emphasizes security in a fundamental way, thereby adding another important layer of value to its offerings. With free security assessments available now to those who sign up at the company's website, AZBS is committed to helping small and medium businesses throughout the Chicago metropolitan area address their security needs and other IT challenges. About AZBS, Inc.: Proving since 1994 that technology can make doing business simpler, AZBS, Inc., offers a full range of IT services and consulting to clients throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. For more information about us, please visit http://www.azbs.com Contact Info: Name: Katie Keith Organization: AZBS, Inc. Phone: 312-474-9400 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/with-smbs-falling-behind-azbs-strives-to-raise-awareness-about-network-security/112059 Release ID: 112059 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Continuous Networks Unveils New Firewall-as-a-Service Option New service offering transforms a traditionally onerous capex into affordable opex while delivering state-of-the-art network security, Continuous Networks reports -- Continuous Networks, a leading NJ IT Support company, announced the immediate availability to clients of its new firewall-as-a-service, or FaaS, offering. Turning a traditionally burdensome class of capital expenditures into affordable operational expenses, the new Continuous Networks FaaS enables best-in-class network security in an especially accessible way. With full remote management of the cloud-based firewall solution, Continuous Networks can monitor and respond to threats that might otherwise endanger the business-critical IT assets of clients. "A strong, well-designed firewall is an absolute necessity for businesses today, because it serves as the front line in the defense against attackers," Continuous Networks Chairman and CEO Jason Silverglate said, "Unfortunately, many businesses find it difficult to line up the capital expenditures required to buy a new firewall device. Our new firewall-as-a-service option is already making things a lot easier for clients, while assuring them of the best security the industry can provide. With this new important new option now being available, we invite all who are interested to contact us for a free consultation." Whether in the form of specialized software running on a general-purpose computer or as a specialized device designed from the ground up for the task, a firewall assesses and regulates network traffic. Deciding whether connections from particular endpoints or of certain kinds are authorized to proceed further into a corporate network or to exit from it, a firewall always plays a fundamental role in ensuring IT security. Unfortunately, acquiring a suitable firewall device has traditionally been expensive, with products sold by leading vendors like Cisco and Juniper often carrying price tags of five or six figures. This has left many businesses torn between the need to provide for security and the difficulty of arranging the associated capital expenditures, a dilemma that can become dangerous if not successfully resolved. The new Continuous Networks firewall-as-a-service option addresses this issue directly and in a way that will make excellent sense for clients of all focuses and organizational scales. With all traffic heading for or leaving a FaaS-equipped network proceeding through a cutting-edge cloud-based firewall, clients enjoy the greatest possible security, including automatic updates and real-time monitoring. At the same time, the FaaS model means that the large capex obligations traditionally associated with firewalls are transformed into cost-effective, easily satisfied ongoing opex payments instead. As one of New Jersey's leading IT specialists for nearly twenty years, Continuous Networks regularly delivers innovative, effective solutions of this kind. 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For more information about us, please visit http://www.continuous.net Contact Info: Name: Jason Silverglate Organization: Continuous Networks Address: 333 Meadowlands Parkway, Suite 405 Secaucus, NJ 07094 Phone: 973-572-1066 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/continuous-networks-unveils-new-firewall-as-a-service-option/112073 Release ID: 112073 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) PM Logos Introduces Three Logo Design Packages For Business Owners Each package has been carefully designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, reports www.pmlogos.com. -- PM Logos, a professional logo design service provider based in Ahmedabad, India and serving clients around the world, has recently introduced three logo design packages for business owners. The packages have been carefully crafted so that they collectively cater to businesses of every size. Those who would like to learn more about PM Logos and get a glimpse of the Custom Logo Design packages the company offers should visit their website at www.pmlogos.com. Pratik Mevada, a representative of PM Logos, stated "We are passionate about our craft and about helping business owners. In order to assist them in creating a new face for their company and building a solid brand, we aim to offer a Logo design service that is both high-quality and affordable. To help us accomplish that goal, we are now offering package deals for business owners. Based on the size of the business and their logo design needs, business owners can choose from three different packages that feature a range of prices and benefits. This allows business owners to better manage their investments by selecting the package that best fits their budget." 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Our mission has always been to take care of our clientele, and offering these packages is just one more way that we can help them build an amazing brand that will allow them to stand out in the marketplace." About PM Logos: PM Logos is a logo design service provider that creates high-quality affordable logos. With 5+ years of graphic design experience and over 500 projects under their belt, the PM Logos team aims to create logo packages that fulfill the specific needs of business owners so that they can have confidence in their brand as they build their business. 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It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Thousands of Armenians gathered in Times Square, New York on April 24 to demand the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Armenpress reports, amny.com informs about this. Many people wore T-shirts commemorating the Armenian Genocide and several people held signs, like End Denial. A grandchild of the Armenian Genocide survivor, 50 year old Violette Dabaghian stressed the importance of continuing the struggle for justice by their kids. I tell it to them all the time, you just cant forget, it happened, she said. Everyone is here to hear what the American government has to say and its really powerful. Lots of people share your feelings and understand, still remember the genocide, Lusine Hakobyan said. Senator Charles Schumer called it an outrage that the genocide wasnt recognized as it should be. Schumer said, speaking to the crowd: Every time genocide occurs we say never again and we must. The Statue of Liberty stands for something, and one of the things it stands for is remembering the genocide done to the Armenian people, US Senator said. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. National Assembly MPs want to have a private meeting with the Defense and Foreign Ministers of Armenia in order to get answers about the ongoing steps for strengthening the security system between Armenia and Artsakh. Armenpress reports, the proposal of holding a meeting with Ministers was offered by the head of ANC faction Levon Zurabyan, head of Prosperous Armenia faction Naira Zohrabyan, OEK faction MPs Hovhannes Margayan and Mher Shahgeldyan, independent MP Khachatur Kokobelyan, head of Heritage faction Zaruhi Postanjyan. Vice-President of the National Assembly Eduard Sharmazanov recalled that during the four-day war a private meeting was held in the Parliament with the participation of First Deputy Minister of Defense Davit Tonoyan and Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan who gave comprehensive answers to all questions of MPs. In response to this, the head of Prosperous Armenia faction Naira Zohrabyan noted that if MPs need a private meeting with the Ministers, this means that they did not receive comprehensive answers during that meeting. Therefore, we join the proposal of holding a private meeting in the National Assembly. Yes, there are issus that cannot be publicized, however, the explanation of those issues is very important for us, said Zohrabyan. Head of the RPA faction Vahram Baghdasaryan informed that from the very start of the April four-day war a decision was made to establish a commission during the meeting with the participation of the heads of all factions in the National Assembly. The commission will involve the heads of all factions and the presidents of Parliamentary standing committees. This commission should discuss the current situation and the issues related with it. In case of necessity, we will apply to the National Assembly leadership to hold a private meeting with Prime Minister, Foreign and Defense Ministers and ask them the questions of our concern, said Baghdasaryan. Standard Life has had several approaches from other financial adviser businesses wanting to sell their firm to their 1825 financial planning business, according to the companys managing director, corporate, retail & wholesale. Speaking at the ABIs Transforming Long Term Savings conference on 19 April, Barry ODwyer said: One of the most interesting consequences of doing an acquisition is it has provoked interest from other firms that want to talk to us. Were always in talks with other adviser firms, and I would expect further acquisitions in due course. The company so far has 70 financial planners, and recently announced the acquisition of Baigrie Davies and Almary Green. The target is to gain 150 advisers, all of whom will become restricted and be asked to use the Standard Life wrap for new investments. He said: I dont expect restricted advice to take over the market by any stretch. Independent advice will continue to be provided by small local firms. National firms are more likely to be restricted its ensuring you have consistency; it becomes very difficult to allow individual advisers to choose every product from the market. Also at the conference, Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said there was a case for introducing default guidance for pensions Responding to a question from Steve Lowe, director of external affairs at Just Retirement, on how the UK could avoid repeating mistakes made in countries such as the US and Australia, Mr Smith said: Relatively few people are actually accessing pensions, but more and more will access them. There is a case for increasing the muscularity of that advice. Previously, the Treasury has considered proposals for a pension help voucher system like a form of financial legal aid to help consumers pay for financial guidance. Joanne Segars, chief executive of the Pensions and Lifetime Association, agreed the industry needed to do something a bit more muscular when it comes to advice. Fewer than half of people are prepared to pay for advice, and people dont want to pay, she said. While the Council of Mortgage Lenders may be no more this time next year, its chairman is confident the trade bodys representation in 2017 will not be materially different from what it is today. Leeds Building Society chief executive Peter Hill addressed the CMLs annual lunch on Friday (22 April), which he pointed out could be the trade bodys last in its current form. Earlier in the month, the CML revealed three quarters of its membership voted in favour of a proposed trade body merger, along with similar bodies including the British Bankers Association, Payments UK and the UK Cards Association, which are still subject to votes on incorporating their current activities. Mr Hill explained the recommendation and the resulting vote were clear the merger is contingent on the final design meeting a very precise set of criteria: Under the new model, the Mortgage Council [his term for the new body] will have sufficient powers and headroom to represent the mortgage lending community as effectively as the CML does; The Mortgage Council will be able to develop and deliver member services, including services for associates, as the CML currently does, and; The Mortgage Council will be appropriately represented on the governing body of the new organisation. Having received a mandate from the membership, we have now embarked on the hard work in making sure the delivery lives up to expectations, he told the 620-strong audience. Given the conditions we have specified, in substance I dont expect our trade body representation in 2017 to be materially different from now. Mr Hill continued the CML still has a very full agenda which includes an expanding research programme, with development of a further vision for our data services. He promised to be working closely with the Financial Conduct Authority on the review of competition in the mortgage sector and post-MMR thematic reviews, along with assisting the Bank of England on the long-term prudential framework for lending. And we are embracing the knotty policy challenge of developing a framework for lending to older borrowers in safe and effective ways. These are the issues which matter to our membership and these are the issues that will take priority for the CML board and executive team as the trade association merger progresses in the background. Once the members of all the trade bodies have completed their own decision-making processes, if all the trade bodies agree on the proposal to amalgamate, the Financial Services Trade Association Review team will decide on the operational aspects of integration. The merger was first suggested by an independent review last year, following pressure from Barclays, Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, Co-operative Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, RBS, Santander, TSB and Virgin Money. Lenders said they wanted to review the current trade body setup in order to cut costs and avoid duplication of work, with former Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards leading the investigation. peter.walker@ft.com Lets shake things up how about I tell you the age-old theory that risk rewards the brave is all nonsense? Contrary to the axiom of financial theory that investors are rewarded for bearing risk (as measured by beta), it appears that, in UK retail investment at least, low-risk funds have actually outperformed riskier peers over time. So what is this anomaly, I hear you ask? Is it persistent? And the key question does it imply that fund managers should focus on risk management rather than outperforming the benchmark? To test the theory, I decided to plot the performance of all 270 funds in the Investment Association (IA) UK All Companies sector against their beta relative to the FTSE All-Share index. Contrary to traditional financial theory, the graph showed a negative relationship between beta and returns over a 10-year period. This trend is stronger still when looking at two- and five-year periods. When you look at the performance of the underlying funds and break down the IA UK All Companies sector every year by decile, ranked by beta you have a clear indication that over the past five years an investor putting money into the lowest-beta funds would have significantly outperformed both their peers and their benchmark. One should not be surprised by this result, as growth has strongly outperformed value in recent times. The outperformance of low-beta stocks does not entirely explain why low-beta UK equity managers typically outperform Last years stellar performances from the likes of Imperial Brands, SABMiller, Reckitt and BT help highlight how low-beta stocks can actually generate strong returns and outperform the wider market. Nor is the low-beta anomaly a phenomenon that has arrived recently as a result of this era of loose monetary policy. It was first observed as early as 1970, and empirical evidence has been accumulating since then. There are three popular theories to explain its existence. The first states that investors who demand high returns are leverage constrained and choose to increase their expected return by over allocating to high-beta stocks and under allocating to low-beta stocks. A second stems from behavioural finance. Investors irrationally use high-volatility stocks as lotteries; in this framework, they are implicitly willing to accept lower expected returns by paying a premium to gamble with high-volatility stocks. Another plausible behavioural theory attributes the anomaly to analysts optimism about more volatile stocks. Equity analysts tend to produce high-growth forecasts for high-volatility stocks; this can push up their prices and correspondingly reduce future returns. Nevertheless, the outperformance of low-beta stocks does not entirely explain why low-beta UK equity managers typically outperform. Portfolio construction has an equal role to play, as the average return of a portfolio is not simply the average sum of the constituents. Portfolio-level effects, such as rebalancing and compounding, must also be taken into consideration. Dividends, for example, contribute a substantial part of the outperformance of the low-beta strategy. It makes sense as low-beta boring stocks must compensate by offering larger dividends; maturing businesses with high visibility in earnings pay dividends whereas growing firms do not. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The four-day war in early of April removed both sides from Nagorno Karabakh negotiations, Director of the International Secretariat of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau Giro Manoyan said this during an interview in Armenpress press hall. According to him, Azerbaijan failed in the military front and wanted at any cost to subvert the negotiations. Azerbaijan today tries to say that the ceasefire regime is no longer determined by the 1994 agreement, but by the recent oral agreement reached in Moscow. When Azerbaijan announces that the agreement is bilateral, it tries to remove Karabakh from the possible negotiation process. Azerbaijan is not satisfied with the negotiation process since there is an important principle in it on peoples right to self-determination, which it interprets saying that self-determination should be within the borders of Azerbaijan, however, no one understands it. Therefore, Azerbaijan is not satisfied, said Giro Manoyan. According to him, the Armenian side has something to do since the peaceful settlement does not mean only negotiations, it can also mean the international recognition of Artsakh independence. The international community can say Azerbaijan, enough, and recognize the independence of NKR, this is also peaceful settlement. By saying peaceful settlement you should not understands only negotiations under it, especially when Azerbaijan does not want to negotiate. If we work in a right way, it can also be against Azerbaijan. Therefore, we should not wait for negotiations in the near future, sad Giro Manoyan. There are no negotiations at this moment, however, it doesnt mean that Armenian side has nothing to do. According to Manoyan, it should be the recognition of Artsakh independence. Armenia should conduct serious works towards the recognition of Artsakh in different platforms, and if it succeed and Asrtakh will have diplomatic representation in several countries such as in Armenia, interstate agreements will be signed with Artsakh, so that will be the pressure on Azerbaijan. The Armenian President announced during the war days that he instructs Foreign Ministry of Armenian to prepare strategic cooperation agreement with Artsakh. This work should be completed, not to be stopped. Armenia must show that the war changed the situation, said Giro Manoyan. Providers are in talks to standardise how their newly beefed up independent governance committees work, after the bodies released scathing criticisms of the companies pension charges. Life companies are concerned variations in their products for different target markets mean a simple comparison by the ICGs of product features, in order to determine if they are fairly priced, would not be appropriate. IGCs have taken centre stage in recent months, as they released inaugural reviews recommending deep cuts or the scrapping altogether of hefty charges on older pension products, forcing providers to act. Since last February, the FCA made ensuring legacy pensions are good value for money the responsibility of ICGs, which became mandatory for all providers from pension freedom day last 6 April. The bodies must report failure to follow their recommendations directly to the regulator. In the notes to its IGC report, Standard Life was among the providers to suggest an industry-wide benchmarking system for IGCs. The company is leading talks on the issue, its head of employer and trustee proposition said, with an aim to have a measure in place by this year. Speaking to FTAdviser, Alan Ritchie said: There are a group of people working together - pretty much all of those providers that have had an ICG report - but its early stages. Im being particularly proactive myself as are some other providers to get a group together to start defining what such benchmarking would include and to take. Peter Glancy, head of industry development at Scottish Widows, said the company is actively engaged in initiatives to create a means of benchmarking value for money across its products and services. We are conscious different products have been developed for different target markets, so a simple comparison of product features would not be appropriate, Mr Glancy said. For an ICG benchmark, providers would seek a meaningful definition of value for money from customers, he said, within the context of how closely products and services are meeting their particular needs and expectations. Steve Webb, director of policy at Royal London confirmed the provider is taking part in such discussions. A spokesperson for Zurich said the company has not yet taken part in any discussions. In calling for more standardisation of ICGs, Mr Ritchie said the reports were all very different from each other, with the shortest at four pages and the longest - Standard Lifes - at 48 pages. You can see differences in how people have described and measured value for money, he said. There was always going to be a diversity in the IGC reports in the first year, what will be interesting to see now is what happens next. Some of the IGC reports are very impressive and have genuinely focused on things that affect the members outcome and do seem to have worked with providers to enhance member outcomes in certain areas. Brussels must do more to help producers ride out the slump in agricultural commodity prices, European farm leaders have warned. Immediate solutions were needed to tackle the unprecedented crisis that had hit agricultural markets, said European farm umbrella organisation Copa-Cogeca. The situation is not sustainable, said Copa president Martin Merrild. Measures agreed by the EU to improve the situation have had little effect. See also: Ministers meet to assess EU farm crisis measures The market especially for beef, pork and dairy was continuing to worsen, fuelled by the Russian ban on EU farm exports, said Mr Merrild. Pork prices were lower that they were 11 years ago, he added. It is unacceptable that farmers are paying the price of the political dispute with Russia. Re-opening this market is a priority. Farmers and agricultural co-operatives are also more exposed to market forces. They need access to market data so they can plan ahead and hedge against risks. Opening EU markets to Latin America Mr Merrild said he was concerned that the EU Commission was moving ahead with opening up the EU market to imports from the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur. Beef imports that failed to meet the EUs high environmental and quality standards would have a catastrophic effect, he said. Copa-Cogeca is calling on Brussels to step up action to find new markets and boost promotion measures for a range of EU farm products. In the future, we need a CAP that is common in all member states and ensures our competitiveness. The current CAP is incapable of this, said Mr Merrild. Theres something definitely wrong when the price of milk is lower than the price of water. Improved returns Cogeca president Thomas Magnusson said it was important that farmers received a better return from the market and were not squeezed unfairly by the food chain. The European Investment Bank needed to start delivering the right financial instruments to help farmers invest in their businesses and improve competitiveness, he said. Farm co-operatives can help farmers get a better price for their produce and can assist them on new innovative techniques, but they need the support to ensure this. Immediate solutions from the EU must be found to tackle this unprecedented crisis that has been hitting farmers and farm co-operatives for years. They are vital not only to solve hunger and malnutrition, but also to maintain attractive rural areas and biodiversity. Brussels insists it is doing all it can to help ease the price pain felt by farmers. In March, it announced 13 measures aimed at helping growers and livestock producers through the crisis, with a special focus on the dairy, pigmeat, fruit and vegetable sectors. See also: UK unlikely to benefit from EU cashflow measures EU farm commissioner Phil Hogan said: The commission has mobilised more than 1bn [0.78} over two years, including the 500m [390m] support package from September 2015. We stand by our farmers and provide through the daily implementation of the CAP and the use of exceptional measures full support and assistance to safeguard our agricultural model. The measures activated were highly adjustable so member states could use them to the best of their capacities depending on their specific national situation. The package of measures was followed by a trade mission to China and Japan, where Mr Hogan visited Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo to help facilitate agri-food trade. The visit to Japan ended with a G7 meeting of agriculture ministers in Niigata. It followed the introduction of new promotion rules for EU agricultural products, which provide an increased budget for promotion and a simpler application system. China and Japan are particularly important markets for the EU agri-food sector, which have shown considerable growth in recent years, said Mr Hogan. More than 40 Gaffney High students will compete for titles in the 2023 Miss Cherokeean Pageant being held this Saturday, Oct. 22. The pageant will begin at 6 p.m. in ... How should you pay for short-term financial goals? As you go through life, you will likely have longand short-term financial goals. But how will your strategies for meeting your long-term goals differ from those needed for your short-term... Story Highlights Obama holds 34-percentage-point edge over Congress thus far in 2016 Only George H.W. Bush enjoyed similar edge over Congress Obama approval remarkably high relative to U.S. satisfaction PRINCETON, N.J. -- With President Barack Obama's job approval rating up nearly three percentage points in the first quarter, he continues to maintain a wide lead in approval over the popularity-challenged U.S. Congress. In fact, if maintained, the 34-percentage-point gap between Obama's 49% average job approval rating thus far in 2016 and the 15% average approval rating for Congress would be the widest of Obama's presidency, and one of the largest Gallup has measured since 1981. Congress approval was on the historically low side when Obama took office in 2009, related mainly to the troubled economy at the time. However, since then, his yearly job approval averages have managed to stay in the 40s while Congress' ratings have sunk to record-low levels. As a result, the gap between the two has averaged 30 points over the course of Obama's presidency and has not fallen below 27 points in any calendar year. Obama's popularity edge over Congress is far from typical for recent presidents. George W. Bush's approval rating averaged 12 points higher than congressional approval across his two terms in office, from 2001 to 2008. Bill Clinton held an 18-point advantage over Congress in job approval from 1993 to 2000, while Ronald Reagan held a 13-point lead between 1981 and 1988 (with no congressional ratings in 1984 and 1985). Only George H.W. Bush matches Obama in outperforming Congress in public approval, according to Gallup polling between 1990 and 1992. However, that is partly a reflection of Bush's extraordinarily high ratings stemming from the first Iraq War in the second and third years of his term, as well as image problems for Congress stemming from the "Keating Five" and the House banking scandal. Obama Also Soars Above U.S. Satisfaction Since the start of his presidency, Obama's average job approval rating has also been running substantially higher than Americans' average level of satisfaction with the nation, ranging from 18 to 30 points higher each year. Thus far in 2016, the gap between Obama's approval rating (49%) and public satisfaction with the direction of the country (26%) is a healthy 23 points. That compares with an average 12-point premium for George W. Bush and 10-point approval leads for Clinton and Reagan. The only other president who consistently logged much higher job approval ratings than the prevailing level of U.S. satisfaction was George H.W. Bush. However, even his average 21-point job approval premium falls short of Obama's. Bottom Line Obama entered office with a significant advantage in popularity over Congress. But that gap has persisted long past his honeymoon period and could well emerge as one of the defining features of his presidency. However, it's not just Congress' low ratings that account for Obama's relatively high approval. He also receives higher approval than one would expect given Americans' low satisfaction with the direction of the country. Obama's ability to outperform both congressional job approval and public satisfaction with the U.S. may be related to his personal popularity. Most recently, Gallup found 53% of Americans viewing him favorably. However, Obama's favorable rating is not unusually high relative to his job approval, at least compared with past presidents. The more important factor could be the extraordinarily high job approval he receives from Democrats, reflecting the strong political polarization in the country. This gives Obama a solid "floor" that keeps his job approval from falling too low, even while just 10% of Republicans approve. And that contrasts sharply with congressional ratings, which are poor among both parties, ensuring that the overall ratings for Congress remain low. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. Survey Methods Obama's job approval ratings reviewed in this article are based on annual aggregates of data from the Gallup U.S. Daily tracking survey. The aggregates include roughly 150,000 interviews each year with a random sample of adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, interviewed by landline and cellular telephone. For annual results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Congressional approval and U.S. satisfaction results are based on combined data from Gallup's monthly Gallup Poll Social Series surveys. These aggregates generally include at least 12,000 interviews each year with a random sample of adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, interviewed by landline and cellular telephone. For annual results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily and the Gallup Poll Social Series work. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Armenia should become a center of the struggle against genocides, Director of the International Secretariat of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau Giro Manoyan said this during the interview in Armenpress press hall . Two major ceremonies were held in Armenia, the one is Against the Crime of Genocide Global forum and the other is Aurora Prize ceremony which is welcoming. Speeches, views and remarks prove that Armenia can become a center of struggle against genocides said Giro Manoyan. To the question how well Armenian people succeed these years to bring the issue of the Armenian Genocide in international level, Manoyan stated that they did not succeed completely, however, we can say that we are on that path. We should show that not only its own issues, but rather the struggle against genocides is in the interests of Armenia. In recent years our diplomatic sections sends clear message to the international community, Giro Manoyan said. It is going to be a discussion on the Armenian Genocide issue in Germany in June which Giro Manoyan considers important. He expressed the hope that Germany will join the list of countries that recognized the Armenian Genocide. Referring to the statement by the US President Barack Obama on April 24, Giro Manoyan stated that the US President did not correctly used the opportunity of making a speech on April 24 which is regretful and discreditable to himself. You cite others, the Pope, quote the words of Obama citizen, but do not say the word genocide. It is unclear. I think that Obama still has time and can fulfill his campaign promise, said Giro Manoyan. He emphasized that during the last year Armenian people managed not only to focus on the issue of recognition, but also on repatriation. This is the main issue, and several works have been done towards that issue, however they are not enough, there is a need to continue these works, Giro Manoyan added. Referring to the Turkish Presidents statement, Manoyan said that they ignore the violence that their state committed against Armenia, they continue their denial policy. They ignore the fact that the crime had been planned by their state. Referring to the view that some countries use the issue of the Armenian Genocide for their own interests, Manoyan said: All should pursue their interests, we should not be disappointed with that, it is normal, we should pursue our interests too. ga-bonn.de organizes ride search : Get where you need to go despite Wednesdays strike Symbolfoto Foto: dpa Bonn For those who dont know how they will get to work, school or an important appointment on Wednesday, heres an alternative. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Commuters will be hindered greatly on Wednesday due to the strike of Verdi union transportation workers. People have to get to work, to school and other appointments and arent sure how they will manage. General Anzeiger wants to help you stay mobile with a Mitfahrzentrale (ride search) alternative. Heres your chance to organize and help each other out. Who has a place free in their car? Who needs a ride? State wide strikes of the workers union Verdi will include both Cologne and Bonn local public transportation. No trams or buses will be running within the cities. Cologne/Bonn airport, Dusseldorf airport and Dortumund airport will also be affected. If you are not familiar with the German system of Mitfahrzentrale, it is a system where you can either offer to provide a ride or seek a ride somewhere. Bonns newspaper, the General Anzeiger (of which GA English is a part), has set up a ride search system on their Facebook page. It is easy and quick to use - and for everyone! If you cant write in German, then try it in English. Many Bonners are competent in English and are very supportive of the international community. Heres a chance to come together and hopefully get where you need to go! Here are the basics you need to get started: Go to the General Anzeiger Facebook ride search page: https://www.facebook.com/events/233146710383539/ To participate, click on Teilnehmen or Discussion and write down your ride search or offer BIETE = a ride to offer, SUCHE = looking for a ride An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. On April 25, the NA Deputy Speaker of the Republic of Armenia Eduard Sharmazanov received the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the Parliament of the Republic of Iraq Hassan Hamdan and the delegation led by him. As Armenpress was informed by the Department of Public Relations and Information of the National Assembly, the NA Deputy Speaker Eduard Sharmazanov welcomed the visit of the delegation to Armenia, who was here to take part in the second Global forum Against the Crime of Genocide. Eduard Sharmazanov highlighted the development of relations with the Kurdish and Yazidi peoples and the joint struggle in the most important activities of preventing genocides, noting that the genocide perpetrated towards the Armenian people by Turkey more than a century ago today continues already in the Near East. Touching upon the policy of Turkey and the Islamic State in the region, the NA Deputy Speaker has noticed that the so-called 'Islamic State' has no commonness with Islam. He has noted that there are countries in the region which try to give religious coloring to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, but it has no connection with the reality. The NA Deputy Speaker expressed his concern about the actions being committed towards the Kurdish and Yazidi peoples in the Near East and condemned all the phenomena of the genocidal policy. Thanking the NA Deputy Speaker for the reception the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the Iraqi Parliament Hassan Hamdan conveyed to him the greetings of the Iraqi Parliament and expressed support for the Genocide occurred to the Armenian people more than 100 years ago and noted that they understand quite well the Armenian peoples pain, as today that genocidal policy is pursued in the Near East. In the course of the meeting the sides also touched upon the issue of the national minorities: Eduard Sharmazanov has informed that as a result of the Constitutional amendments made in Armenia the representatives of the Yazidi, Kurdish, Assyrian and Russian national minorities will be represented in the next parliament. The members of the delegation thanked Eduard Sharmazanov for showing care to their compatriots by the Armenian authorities and giving them second motherland. The interlocutors highlighted the strengthening of the friendship between the Armenian and Kurdish peoples and the idea of opening the history from the new page, sharing the same opinion that the black pages of the history serve as a consequence of Ottoman Turkeys pursued policy. Users seek refunds as Apple's iBook, iTunes services blocked in China News oi -GizBot Bureau People using Apple's iTunes Movies and iBook services in China have sought refunds for the purchases after reports of blocking of these services surfaced, a media report said on Friday. Cupertino-based Apple is yet to issue a broad statement to its customers in China about the status of the services but several users said that they have been unable to connect to the movie service and iBook since last week, Los Angeles Times reported. "We hope to make books and movies available again to our customers in China as soon as possible but would not elaborate on why the services were unavailable," a Beijing-based Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report. The Chinese government has not issued any statement on the matter either. Meanwhile, Apple's technical assistance and account service representatives in China said they have not received any official notice from the company that the services had been blocked or shut down. But they offered to arrange refunds on purchased content, the report added. Manage your health on your smartphone with these 5 health-focused apps! On September 30 last year, Apple launched its music service as well as iTunes Movies and iBooks in China. The company introduced Apple Pay in China in February. The iTunes Movie service allows fans to rent or purchase movies while on iBook a variety of free and paid books are also made available. Source: IANS Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications '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. Strikes Continue Against ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 24, 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 aircraft conducted four strikes in Syria: -- Near Manbij, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, and an ISIL anti-air artillery system. -- Near Mar'a, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, and an ISIL bomb. Strikes in Iraq Bomber, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 24 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government: -- Near Baghdadi, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL weapons caches, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL bomb factory, and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIL tunnel system and an ISIL generator. -- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed three ISIL fighting positions. -- Near Fallujah, five strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL bunker, and three ISIL trench systems. -- Near Habbaniyah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL weapons cache, and an ISIL trench system. -- Near Hit, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun and an ISIL recoilless rifle. -- Near Kisik, four strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas, four ISIL improvised explosive devices, an ISIL observation camera and suppressed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL mortar position. -- Near Mosul, four strikes struck an ISIL modular refinery and an ISIL headquarters and destroyed an ISIL assembly area and two ISIL vehicles and damaged an ISIL vehicle. -- Near Ramadi, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position. -- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle. -- Near Sultan Abdallah, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units, an ISIL bomb and weapons facility and destroyed six ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL mortar system, and 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. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike. 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address DoD Must Change to Confront Changing Face of War, Dunford Says By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity LONDON, April 24, 2016 Today's presence of cyber, space and ballistic-intercontinental missile capabilities have changed the character of war, and the U.S. military must adapt to confront these challenges, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. During a flight from Cairo to here yesterday, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford discussed the need to make changes in the department in order to improve the military's command and control system. In the current system, the defense secretary is the person responsible for joint integration, said Dunford, noting the secretary holds the authorities to integrate the combatant commands. The chairman said there are certain areas where a delegation of responsibility -- even if not authority -- should come to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The chairman can then do on the secretary's behalf "some things that integrate our forces today in a way that we didn't need to 10 or 15 years ago," Dunford said. The chairman highlighted the Korean Peninsula as an example. More than a decade ago, he said, there was the likelihood that if conflict broke out on the peninsula it would be limited to a ground war in that area only. Today, that's no longer the case, Dunford said. "My whole argument about transregional, multidomain, multifunctional fight is recognition that the character of war has changed, not the nature, but the character," he said. "It's changed because of cyber capabilities, space capabilities, ballistic missile capabilities, intercontinental missile capabilities." New Capabilities These new capabilities make it unlikely that any new conflict in the world will be isolated to one geographic area, Dunford said. If a fight breaks out on the Korean Peninsula today, he said, it will likely quickly involve not just U.S. Forces Korea, but U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Strategic Command. And it probably wouldn't be the only conflict going on in the world, said Dunford, who added that the list of the world's current security concerns is illuminating. There's the fight against violent extremism, he said, as well as security challenges in Europe with Russia. And, there are security challenges on a day-to-day basis with Iran, the chairman added. "You have multiple combatant commanders that are all dealing with those challenges," Dunford said. "There has to be a common operational picture, a common intelligence picture and a framework within which the secretary can make decisions about prioritization and allocation of resources in real time in a crisis." Joint Staff Changes The military does that now in what the chairman calls a sub-optimal way. "The character of war has changed so we should adapt to the character of war, and by changing the organizational construct of the Joint Staff," he said. Doing so, the chairman said, will position the department to better manage today's and tomorrow's security situations. "We're talking minutes of decision-making space," Dunford said. "Can we do it today? Sure. But I would argue if we can cut the decision space down from six minutes to four, that's actually geometric, and the implications are profound. It increases the probability that the American people would be safe." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir stated that he visited the region with peace calls. France being Armenias friendly country, wishes it to live in peace and prosperity since the war resulted in large number of losses of soldiers and civilians, Armenpress reports, the Minister said adding that he urges the two sides to restart the negotiations. Harlem Desir ensured that France and the remaining Co-Chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group conduct efforts for the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement. We conduct all our efforts with our US and Russian partners in order to implement the Madrid principles which are the non use of force, peoples right to self-determination and territorial integrity. Peace should be based on these three principles, France Minister of State for European Affairs said this stating that the maintenance of ceasefire regime and the establishment of investigative mechanisms are priority. Minister informed that during the meetings with the Armenian President and the Foreign Minister he highlighted that France with all its efforts stands with Armenia. I will voice my calls for peace also in Baku tomorrow during the political meetings, said Minister Desir. China reaches consensus with Brunei, Cambodia, Laos on South China Sea issue People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 09:15, April 24, 2016 VIENTIANE, April 23 -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Saturday that China has reached a four-point consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos on the South China Sea issue. The four countries agreed that the territorial disputes over some islands, rocks and shoals in the South China Sea are not an issue between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole which should not affect the development of China-ASEAN relations, Wang told a press conference. They agreed that the right enjoyed by sovereign states to choose on their own ways to solve disputes under the international law should be respected. They opposed any attempt to unilaterally impose an agenda on other countries. The four countries also agreed that territorial and maritime disputes should be resolved through consultations and negotiations by parties directly concerned under Article 4 of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). They believed that China and the ASEAN countries are able to jointly maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea through cooperation. Countries outside the region should play a constructive role in this regard, they agreed. Laos is the last leg of Wang's three-nation visit, which has taken him to Brunei and Cambodia. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Egypt president warns of action against anti-government protests Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 2:46PM Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has warned that security forces will respond firmly to planned anti-government demonstrations over his decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia. "I see there are people calling once again for damage to (Egypt's) security and stability," Sisi said in a televised speech on Sunday, adding, "Our responsibility is to protect security and stability, and I promise Egyptians that no one will terrorize them again." He also called on people to defend the country against the "forces of evil" a day before the protest, noting that the North African country should remain stable and that efforts to degrade it "won't be successful" if people stand united. Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar also said that the country's "security and stability... constitute a red line and no attempt to damage them will be tolerated." "Security services... will confront with extreme rigor any attempt to disturb public order," he added. The remarks came as people are expected to take to streets across the country on Monday, in defiance to a ban on unauthorized protests, to express their opposition to the president's recent decision to hand over the control of two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Protests against the agreement first broke out on April 15, with protesters setting out from 30 mosques in Cairo after Friday prayers. Egyptian police have made dozens of arrests, including 56 people in Cairo, over the past few days ahead of the Monday protests. The Egyptian government has been under fire since it announced in a statement on April 9 that the islands of Tiran and Sanafir fall within the territorial waters of Saudi Arabia based on a maritime border agreement signed with Riyadh the previous day. Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the opposition Egyptian Popular Current, has already filed a 10-page complaint at a Cairo administrative court over the contentious deal. He said he had documents that prove the islands are Egyptian territory and cannot be transferred to Saudi Arabia. Tiran Island is located at the entrance of the Straits of Tiran, which separate the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aqaba. Its strategic significance lies in the fact that it is an important sea passage to the major ports of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel. Israel briefly took over the island during the Suez Crisis in late 1956, and once more between 1967 and 1982 following the Six Day War. Sanafir Island is in the east of Tiran Island, and measures 33 square kilometers (13 square miles) in area. The ownership of the two islands was handed to Egyptian control in 1982, when Tel Aviv and Cairo signed the so-called Camp David peace accords. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Senior Taliban commander killed in east Afghanistan Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 7:48AM A senior commander of the Taliban militant group has been killed during an operation conducted by security forces in Afghanistan's eastern province of Parwan. "During a special operation of Afghan National Police, deputy Taliban so-called district governor for Shinwari district of Parwan Province, named Alamuddin, was killed," the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement. According to the statement, the operation was carried out in the Daraz Gard village of Shinwari on Saturday evening. "Alamuddin was involved in many terrorist and destructive activities in this district and other areas of Parwan," the statement said. The Taliban has not made any comment about the incident so far. Parwan is among the volatile provinces in Afghanistan where anti-government militants are actively operating and carrying out acts of terror against civilians and security forces. Afghanistan faces a security challenge years after the United States and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but many areas in the country are still beset with insecurity. There are currently some 10,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan despite the end of the US-led combat mission on December 31, 2014. The forces, mainly from the US, are there for what Washington calls a support mission. NATO says the forces focus mainly on counter-terrorism operations and training Afghan soldiers and policemen. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama Urges More Pressure On IS As Ends London Visit April 24, 2016 by RFE/RL U.S. President Barack Obama has wrapped up a visit to London by urging the West to continue applying pressure on the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in the Middle East. Speaking on April 24, Obama said he believes the territory the IS group holds can be slowly shrunk and that it can be driven from its stronghold cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. The United States leads an international coalition that is bombing IS in Iraq and Syria. Obama also said it would be a mistake for the United States, Britain, or any other Western states to use ground troops to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He said that instead Western countries can apply international pressure upon other parties, including Iran and Russia, to help broker political transition in Syria. Obama also spoke about Britain's upcoming referendum in June on whether to leave the European Union. He told the BBC that quitting the EU would leave London out of a new trade deal Washington is negotiating with the bloc. "The U.K. would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU," he said. Obama also said that by leaving the EU, the United Kingdom would "have less influence in Europe and as a consequence, less influence globally." Part of the reason for Obama's visit to Britain has been to let the British public hear reasons why he feels leaving the union would be harmful for London. Obama is due to fly later in the day to Hanover, Germany, where he will visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The U.S. leader's visit to Hanover is ostensibly to open the northern German city's industrial trade fair, where the United States will be a partner nation for the first time. After joining Merkel for a tour of the fair on the morning of April 25, Obama and the chancellor will attend a summit that will include the leaders of France, Italy, and Britain. Obama's meeting with Merkel as well French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and British Prime Minister David Cameron will focus on counterterrorism efforts following attacks in Paris and Brussels, the White House has said. The talks will also include the fight against IS militants in Iraq and Syria, the European refugee crisis, and Libya. Obama's visit to Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign journey where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as key to defeat IS militants, offset Russian aggression in Ukraine, and grow international trade. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/us-uk-obama-visit- london-increase-pressure-on-is/27693499.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama Arrives In Germany To Boost Trade April 24, 2016 by RFE/RL U.S. President Barack Obama has arrived in Germany to push for a new EU-U.S. trade pact and take part in a summit with key European leaders on issues including security. Obama flew in to Hanover, where he will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and together open the city's industrial trade fair on April 25. The United States is participating in the annual trade fair as a partner nation for the first time. Later on April 25, Obama and the German chancellor will hold a summit conference that will include the leaders of France, Italy, and Britain. Obama's meeting with Merkel as well as French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and British Prime Minister David Cameron will focus on efforts to agree on details of a new U.S.-EU trade pact. Negotiators in Washington and Europe are trying to finalize key parts of the new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal before the end of the year. Proponents of the deal say it would boost trade by lowering import tariffs and harmonizing regulations between the two sides. But European labor unions, nationalists, and green groups have lobbied hard against the deal, claiming that it will drive down wages and weaken environmental standards. The White House says Obama's summit with the four European leaders will also address counterterrorism efforts following attacks in Paris and Brussels, the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria, the European refugee crisis, and Libya. Obama arrived in Hanover from London on April 24, where he urged the West to continue applying pressure on IS. Speaking on April 24, Obama said he believes the territory the IS holds can be slowly shrunk and it can be driven from its stronghold cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. The United States leads an international coalition that is bombing IS in Iraq and Syria. Obama also said it would be a mistake for the United States, Britain, or any other Western states to use ground troops to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He said that instead Western countries can apply international pressure upon other parties, including Iran and Russia, to help broker political transition in Syria. Obama's visit to Germany is the last stop on a six-day foreign journey where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as key to defeat IS militants, offset Russian aggression in Ukraine, and boost international trade. With reporting by AP and Reuters Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/us-germany- obama-hanover-visit/27693767.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Polls Close In Serbian Parliamentary Elections As Vucic Eyes Victory April 24, 2016 by RFE/RL Polls have closed in Serbia's parliamentary elections that are expected to hand victory to Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, who urged voters to endorse his drive toward the EU while maintaining close ties with Russia. Following a sluggish start, the pace of voting picked up in the April 24 elections, with some 47.7 percent of the country's 6.7 million voters having cast their ballots two hours prior to the closing of the polls. Total turnout was expected to surpass the 53 percent threshold registered in Serbia's 2012 parliamentary elections. "I am almost certain that we will carry on our European integration process and we will have to speed up the process of [EU] accession," Vucic said as he cast his vote on April 24. "And of course, preserve our traditional ties with our friends [Russia] in the east." After voting, Vucic wrote on Twitter, "We fought honestly, I expect Serbia to choose the future." Early unofficial projections based on exit polling indicated Vucic's center-right Serbian Progressive Party would capture more than 50 percent of the vote. An initial projection by the independent CeSID monitoring agency based on a small sample of votes said Vucic's party is set to win around 56 percent of votes cast in the election. The left-leaning Socialist Party of Serbia was set to remain the second-biggest party in parliament, while the ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, acquitted last month of war crimes by a UN tribunal in The Hague, is set to be the third-largest party in parliament, CeSID projected. The first results in the election -- Serbia's third in four years -- were expected before midnight local time. Vucic called the vote two years ahead of schedule and says that he needs a stronger mandate than the 131 seats that the Serbian Progressive Party now controls -- just over half the 250 seats in parliament. Formerly an ultranationalist who supported the idea of a Greater Serbia, Vucic now presents himself as a pro-European reformer. Vuvic and his governing coalition partners narrowly missed securing a two-thirds majority in the 2014 vote, when they won 158 seats. He says a stronger mandate would help him achieve his stated goals of bringing Serbia closer to European Union membership and bolstering the economy by pushing through reforms required by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Opinion polls suggested just days before the election that Vucic's party could win about half of the ballots -- enough to take more than half of the seats under a system in which only parties that receive at least 5 percent of the vote are awarded seats. In addition to a possible two-thirds majority with coalition partners, political analysts will be watching closely to see if Vucic strengthens his party's presence and can control a majority on its own. They also will be watching to see if there are gains by Vucic's current governing coalition partner, the Socialist Party of Serbia, which is running on a separate ticket. Formed by the late Slobodan Milosevic and led by Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, the Socialists were projected to receive 11.3 percent of the April 24 vote. Currently, the Socialists control 25 seats, making it the second-largest party in parliament. But the Socialists have opposed the large-scale privatization of loss-generating state firms called for by Brussels as a condition of closer EU integration, and that the IMF has made a condition of a 1.2 billion-euro ($1.35 billion) loan. In fact, the Socialists' opposition to privatization deals has caused tension with Vucic, who has said he needs a good review in May from the IMF on Belgrade's reforms or it would be "very difficult" for him "to be the prime minister." The Social Democratic Party of Serbia, led by ethnic Bosniak politician and Trade Minister Rasim Ljajic, rounds out the current governing coalition with nine seats in the National Assembly. The Social Democrats are a part of the Alliance For a Better Serbia -- a coalition that also includes the Liberal Democratic Party of Serbia and the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina. Opinion polls suggest Serbia's splintered centrist and left-leaning opposition groups will come close to surpassing the 5 percent mark needed to get into the legislature. Among current opposition politicians, polls showed two blocs hovering just above the threshold. One is a conservative anti-NATO group that links the Democratic Party of Serbia and Dveri. The other, called Fair For Serbia, is a centrist group of parties led by former Democratic Party leader Boris Tadic and Cedomir Jovanovic. Ultranationalists and pro-Russian parties that have not had representation in parliament since 2012 also hope they will be able to gain seats. Opinion surveys suggest they could win a total of about 10 to 15 percent of the vote. The one most likely to clear the 5 percent threshold is the Radical Party led by Seselj, a former deputy prime minister who spent 11 years in a UN detention center during his war crimes trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In March, The Hague-based court found Seselj not guilty on all of the war crimes charges against him arising from the 1990s Balkan wars. Seselj, whose core ideology is based on the goal of creating a Greater Serbia, has himself publicly burned EU and NATO flags. He has also campaigned for closer ties with Russia rather than the EU, saying that would help Serbia overcome its "economic misery." Vucic, a former Seselj ally, said as he cast his ballot in a rainy Belgrade suburb that he "not going to make any compromise" with right-wing parties. The head of Serbia's Government Office of Kosovo, Marko Djuric, said that polling stations will be open in Serb-inhabited areas of Kosovo. More than 110 countries recognize the independence of mostly ethnic Albanian Kosovo, but Belgrade insists it remains a province of Serbia. Kosovo's constitution allows for dual citizenship for the Serbian community. In previous Serbian elections, the government in Pristina did not allow Serbia's Election Commission to organize balloting within Kosovo. But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reached a deal with Pristina that will allow the organization to collect the votes of Kosovo Serbs. The OSCE carried out a similar role in Kosovo for Serbia's 2012 and 2014 parliamentary elections. With reporting by RFE/RL's Balkan Service, dpa, Reuters, AP, AFP, and B-92 Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/serbia-vucic-seeks- more-power-in-early-elections/27693341.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Defense Without People: Norway Cuts Personnel in a Military Shake-Up Sputnik News 17:59 24.04.2016(updated 18:19 24.04.2016) Members of the Norwegian military and opposition politicians have reacted furiously to reports that the government proposes to make cuts to the country's armed forces, particularly in the north of the country, NRK reported. The Norwegian government, a center-right coalition comprised of the Conservative Party and the Progress Party, has come under fire after the leak of defense reforms which propose to cut the number of armed forces and close several bases. According to a report from Norwegian broadcaster NRK, the defense ministry intends to close nine military bases and cut the number of military personnel by 1,500. Most of those affected will be ground troops, but some coastal defense units and maritime territorial troops are also facing cuts. The reports have been met with an uproar by representatives of Norway's armed forces and opposition politicians keen on saving local jobs in the areas they represent. Pal Nygaard, head of the ground forces' union, said that the reforms will have "dramatic consequences" for defense. "We will be completely paralyzed if the current government goes ahead with such a project. Our ground forces have one brigade; if the second and supporting departments are disbanded, we lose the brigade as a system," he told NRK. Norway's Officer's Association told NRK that the greatest cuts concern ground forces based in the north of the country. In the region of Troms, 900 members of the armed forces are thought to have been deemed surplus to requirements. "They are our busiest units. I don't understand the logic, I don't understand how such a decision can be taken," Colonel Bjorn Tore Woll, spokesman for Norway's Officer's Union, told NRK. "It seems that we are supposed to have a defense in which there are no people, just technology. It's very bad." "I really want to call for a national protest. I think that the people just don't understand how this can affect the army's ability to carry out its functions. Things are getting so bad, that we won't have any kind of army," he said. Maria Serafia Fjellstad is a member of the Venstre (Liberal) opposition party, and Mayor of Harstad, a municipality in Troms on the island of Hinnoya. She told NRK that the area stands to lose 200 military staff. "If the leak from the Ministry of Defense is correct and the plan goes ahead, about 200 jobs could be lost in Harstad," she complained. "The main thing is not that Harstad will lose jobs, but that they are jobs of the armed forces, which are supposed to protect our country from danger. Given the current dangers, it is not right and not clever to dismantle the defense in the north, where we are facing the greatest dangers," Fjellstad said. Eivind Stene, a member of the Harstad branch of the Progress Party, part of Norway's ruling coalition since 2013, said that Norway is in need of greater military support in the north in order to deal with the challenges of illegal migration. "Taking into account the new threats that we are facing, the activity that is going on in the North and the increasing tension in the world, particularly the flow of migrants, it is important that the defense of northern Norway is strengthened," he said. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Armenia Will Never Give Up Fight to Get Turkey to Recognize Genocide Sputnik News 16:02 24.04.2016(updated 16:17 24.04.2016) Commemorating the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian officials said that Yerevan will continue to push for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and for the restoration of truth and justice over the Turkish crime that resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million civilians, the expulsion of over half-a-million more. The Armenian leadership, including President Serzh Sargsyan and Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, flanked by religious leaders and foreign guests, gathered at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex in Yerevan on Sunday to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Speaking to reporters on Sunday after paying tribute to the victims, Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said that Armenia will continue to fight for the restoration of justice, emphasizing that "Turkish authorities must recognize the Armenian Genocide, the 101st anniversary of which we marked today." "The sooner the Turkish leadership thinks about accepting the truth, the better. The world also has work to do regarding this issue," he added. "It was the first genocide of the 20th century, and needs to be condemned by the whole world. This is the only way for the struggle of preventing genocides. We, by condemning this crime and commemorating the memory of the victims, must build our motherland in the future, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh, the second Armenian Republic." "The process will be considered done when the Turkish leadership and Turkish people accept the genocide committed by their ancestors," Abrahamyan said. The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by over two dozen countries, including Russia. A century ago, together with France and Britain, Russia plainly called the events "a crime against humanity and civilization." Numerous ceremonies are being held in Moscow and in other Russian cities to commemorate the sad occasion, with many of Russia's large Armenian community of three million participating. Last year, speaking on behalf of the 100th anniversary of the genocide, Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that the event was "one of the greatest tragedies in human history," and that "the events of 1915 shook the entire world." "Russia," Putin said, "felt these events as its own grief," and played a key role in securing international condemnation for the violence inflicted against the Armenian people. "Russia remains resolute in what has always been its consistent view that there is not and cannot be any justification for mass murder of any people." Today, Putin emphasized, "the international community must do everything possible to ensure that these tragic events never happen again, so that all peoples can live in peace and harmony and do not have to know the horrors that arise from religious enmity, aggressive nationalism, and xenophobia." According to Armenian estimates, about 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were systematically killed, and over 600,000 driven from their homes, by the Ottoman government during and after the First World War. Modern-day Turkey, the successor of the Ottoman Empire, has refused to use the word genocide to refer to the massacre, saying that Turkish nationals were also among the victims. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Yerevan Accuses Baku of Overnight Border Shelling Sputnik News 12:10 24.04.2016(updated 12:53 24.04.2016) Armenia's border was shelled 18 times overnight by Azerbaijani armed forces amid reached ceasefire, the Armenian Defense Ministry said Sunday. YEREVAN (Sputnik) Armenia's border was fired at 18 times overnight by Azerbaijani forces despite a negotiated ceasefire, the Armenian Defense Ministry said Sunday. "On the night of April 24, the Azerbaijani armed forces have again violated the ceasefire regime on the border with Armenia. The Azerbaijani side opened indiscriminate fire of firearms of different caliber 18 times in the direction of Armenian positions in the northeast," the ministry's statement reads. According to the statement, Armenian forces only responded out of necessity. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's Defense Ministry said Azerbaijan had been shelling the disputed region's positions since mid-Saturday. According to Baku, the ceasefire regime along the contact line with Azerbaijan was violated 108 times by Armenian forces in the past 24 hours. Violence in Azerbaijan's breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population escalated early this month. Baku and Yerevan have accused each other of provoking hostilities. A ceasefire was achieved on April 5, following days of clashes that led to numerous casualties on both sides. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama: Ground Troops in Syria 'Would Be a Mistake' by VOA News April 24, 2016 U.S. President Barack Obama said he would not consider sending ground troops into Syria, and said there needs to be more than just a military effort in order to solve the country's problems. "It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain ... to send in ground troops and overthrow the [President Bashar al-] Assad regime," Obama said during a wide-ranging interview with BBC television that aired Sunday. In lieu of direct military confrontation, Obama said the international community should apply pressure to Russia and Iran, "who, essentially are propping up Assad," to broker a deal with Syrian rebels to form a new transitional government. Obama called the war in Syria a "heart-breaking situation of enormous complexity." "In order for us to solve the long-term problems in Syria, a military solution alone and certainly us deploying ground troops is not going to bring that about," he said, in an exclusive interview with British television. While ruling out a full-on invasion, Obama said the U.S.-led coalition would continue airstrikes against Islamic State targets in places like Raqqa and Mosul "to try to isolate those portions of the country, and lock down those portions of the country that are sending foreign fighters into Europe." In doing so, he said it would slowly shrink the amount of territory held by IS. Obama called the situation in Syria one that is "transnational in nature," and chided those countries who haven't taken part in trying to solve the issue, but still "want the United States to do something about it." "You can't have it both ways," he said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Edward Nalbandian received French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir on April 25. Harlem Desir informed Nalbandian that after participating in events in Paris dedicated to the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on the eve, he left for Yerevan to pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide at Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex, Armenpress was informed from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia. Edward Nalbandian stated that Armenia highly appreciates the firm stance of France on the Armenian Genocide and the fact that France legally recognized the Armenian Genocide back in 2001. He added that Armenian recall with gratitude French President Hollandes participation in events dedicated to the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. Edward Nalbandian introduced the results of the large-scale military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh to his interlocutor and in that context highlighted the international efforts to overcome those results, to exclude similar developments in the future and to create favorable conditions for negotiations aimed at exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict. The sides stated that the conflict can have no military solution. The interlocutors agreed that the creation of mechanisms investigating incidents has become a priority. Harlem Desir assured that France, as an OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair, will continue to actively engage in the peace process of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Edward Nalbandian and Harlem Desir discussed issues on the agenda of Armenian-French relations. Darfur Votes to Keep Five-State System by VOA News April 24, 2016 Nearly 98 percent of voters in Sudan's western Darfur region have voted against reuniting the five separate states in the war-torn region, according to the electoral commission overseeing the referendum. Darfur referendum commission chief Omar Ali Jamaa said Saturday 3.2 million of Darfur's 3.5 million registered voters cast ballots in the election, which was monitored by international observers including the Arab League and the African Union. Major rebel and opposition groups, who believe uniting the region would give the people there more autonomy, boycotted the vote and accused the Khartoum government of fudging the result numbers. "These results reflect the fraud the Sudanese government continues to employ in all of its elections. It's the falsification of the will of the masses," said Jibril Bilal, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of Darfur's two main rebel groups. "These results are not real nor logical. We don't acknowledge the referendum, which most of Darfur boycotted." The rebel groups argued that displaced people could not vote in the election and residents in three of the camps for displaced people in central Darfur protested against the referendum. The referendum, which took place April 11-13, came as part of a peace process to end conflict that has raged in the region for 13 years and cost the lives of more than 300,000 people, according to the United Nations. The U.S. Department of State also raised questions over the legitimacy of the vote, saying it could not be considered credible "under current rules and conditions." Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes related to the genocide in Darfur has insisted the election was free and fair. Some material for this report came from AFP and Reuters. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Austria's Far Right Leads in Presidential Vote, Runoff Expected by VOA News April 24, 2016 Exit polls show the candidate of Austria's anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party winning the first round of presidential elections, gathering more than 35 percent of the vote and leaving five rivals far behind, including nominees of the ruling governing coalition. With more than 50 percent of the vote tallied Sunday, both candidates from the ruling coalition, center-left Social Democrat Rudolph Hundstorfer and centrist People's Party nominee Andreas Khol, were shown with about 11 percent of the vote. The projected win by Norbert Hofer is his party's best showing since its founding in 1945 and is widely seen as reflecting rising voter alarm over Europe's migrant influx and dissatisfaction with the European Union's role in the crisis. If the projections hold, a second round runoff will be held May 23. Hofer would face either of the independent candidates, Green Party nominee Alexander van der Bellen or Independent Irmgard Griss, a former Supreme Court judge hoping to become Austria's first female president. Incumbent President Heinz Fischer, a 77-year-old Social Democrat, was barred by law from seeking a third six-year term. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Humanitarian aid delivered to Haiti through Denton Program By Senior Airman Tom Brading, 315th Airlift Wing Public Affairs / Published April 25, 2016 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFNS) -- Members from the 701st Airlift Squadron delivered humanitarian aid to Port-au-Prince on April 21 as part of ongoing Denton Program efforts. Two C-17 Globemaster IIIs were filled with 32 combined pallets as they transported more than 170,000 pounds of humanitarian aid to Haiti. "Our role in the Denton mission is supporting the delivery of the cargo and supplies," said Capt. Ed Sutton, a 701st AS pilot. "It's a rewarding experience to be a part of relief efforts to areas like Haiti or anywhere else in the world that may need it." The Denton Program creates an opportunity for private organizations to utilize space available on U.S. military cargo aircraft to transport goods to countries in need. The cargo moved under the Denton Program generally includes medical supplies, education supplies, furniture, vehicles, agricultural supplies, machinery, and clothing to support relief efforts and development projects. The supplies delivered by the 701st AS will be used by nongovernmental organizations throughout Haiti. Haiti is a developing country that has experienced its share of natural disasters. Currently, 1.5 million Haitians are threatened with malnutrition -- double the estimated number last year -- due to a three-year drought in the Caribbean region. "Crops are being lost, rivers have dried, and children from villages in the mountains are being left unattended in Port-au-Prince, because their parents believe the children's survival is greater in the city alone than with them in dry rural areas," said Pacius Gueston, the Haiti Christian Development Project director. "This aid will save many lives." Orphaned as a child, Gueston was raised by a nun in Haiti and taught the importance of education and work ethic. After attending college in the United States, he returned to Haiti to give back to the people that needed support. Today, 70 percent of the estimated crops on the Caribbean island have been lost due to an ongoing drought, creating food instability for more than 3.6 million individuals. With farming being the primary source of income for Haitians, the drought has created more financial instability. Many agencies are working together to combat these issues, but more work still needs to be done. Kathy Cadden, president and founder of the nonprofit Operation Ukraine, is another face on the ground in Haiti welcoming service members, like those in the 701st AS, during the offload of humanitarian supplies. "We'll make great use of the donated food and supplies," said Cadden, who estimates she'll oversee more than 8,500 dry meals and 3,500 cooked meals to be made for children. "We're very thankful for everything the donors and the military have done." Since 1998, the Denton Program has overseen more than 5 million pounds of humanitarian supplies sent to more than 50 countries across the globe. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address F-22 Raptors arrive in Romania By Tech. Sgt. Ryan Crane, U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa / Published April 25, 2016 MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (AFNS) -- Two F-22 Raptors and one KC-135 Stratotanker arrived at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base on April 22. The F-22s and approximately 20 supporting Airmen are from the 95th Fighter Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. The KC-135 is from the 916th Air Refueling Wing deployed from Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina. "Today, I would like to highlight this deployment as a demonstration of our promise to support Romania and the rest of our NATO allies," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the Third Air Force commander, said during a press conference. "Romania is one of our strongest allies." This is the largest F-22 deployment to Europe to date and is partially funded by the European Reassurance Initiative, which provides support to bolster the security of our NATO allies and partners in Europe while demonstrating the U.S. commitment to regional and global security. The F-22s will remain at Mihail Kogalniceanu AB for a brief period of time before returning to Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, to continue their training deployment. "Today, we rapidly deployed these aircraft, along with a KC-135 Stratotanker, here to showcase our flexible response and our range of capabilities," Ray said. "These aircraft have the ability to project air dominance quickly, at great distances, to defeat any possible threat." The F-22 deployments to RAF Lakenheath and Mihail Kogalniceanu AB prove that European bases and other NATO installations can host fifth-generation fighters while also affording the chance for familiarization flight training within the European theater. "It's important we test our infrastructure, aircraft capabilities, and the talented Airmen and allies who will host these aircraft in Europe," said Gen. Frank Gorenc, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa commander. "This deployment advances our airpower evolution and demonstrates our resolve and commitment to European safety and security." This F-22 forward deployment is conducted in coordination with Romanian allies and is a demonstration of the United States' continued commitment to the collective security of NATO and dedication to the enduring peace and stability of the region. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Military Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Iraq, Syria From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 25, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria Attack and ground attack aircraft conducted three strikes in Syria: -- Near Manbij, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Mara, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL supply cache and an ISIL vehicle bomb. Strikes in Iraq Attack, fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 11 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government: -- Near Baghdadi, a strike struck an ISIL staging area. -- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIL tunnel system. -- Near Fallujah, five strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL staging area and destroyed three ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL mortar positions, an ISIL bulldozer, an ISIL front-end loader, an ISIL recoilless rifle and three ISIL bed-down locations. -- Near Mosul, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL anti-air artillery pieces and an ISIL vehicle. -- Near Sinjar, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position. -- Near Waleed, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit. 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. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said. Coalition nations 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USS Whidbey Island Completes Amphibious Exercise Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160425-09 Release Date: 4/25/2016 11:39:00 AM By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Nathan R. McDonald, USS Whidbey Island Public Affairs LITTLE CREEK, Va. (NNS) -- Dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island arrived in Little Creek after completing its Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit exercise, April 24. Whidbey Island, along with Amphibious Squadron 6, Marines of the 22nd MEU, amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, and amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio, comprise the Wasp ARG. ARGMEUEX is the first graded exercise an ARG and embarked MEU undertake in preparation for deployment. "We received fantastic training", said Cmdr. Ethan Rule, Whidbey Island commanding officer. "We brought our team from a rudimentary level -- integrating with the PHIBRON, the Marines and ourselves and raised the bar significantly. We've seen significant improvement across the board from all departments." The training completed during ARGMEUEX is designed to test every facet of interoperability between Sailors and Marines. The Whidbey Island blue-green team worked together to carry out flight and amphibious operations, maritime interdiction exercises and damage control drills. For the embarked Marines, adjusting to life on the ship and working side by side with Sailors proved to be a smooth transition. "We try to help each other out and build camaraderie," said Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Elijah Gregory, who is assigned to the 22nd MEU. Whidbey Island will participate in Composite Unit Training Exercise this summer, the final assessment before a scheduled deployment. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Wasp ARG Completes Amphibious Training Exercise Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160425-04 Release Date: 4/25/2016 11:18:00 AM By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Wilkes, USS Wasp (LHD 1) Public Affairs ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The Wasp Amphibious Readiness Group completed its Amphibious Ready Group Marine Expeditionary Unit Exercise (ARGMEUEX), April 24. ARGMEUEX is the first event that is officially evaluated by Commander Carrier Strike Group 4. The exercise provides an opportunity for the Wasp ARG, made up of Commander Amphibious Squadron (COMPHIBRON) 6, amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1), amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD 17), amphibious dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41) and Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), to build on the relationships and routines developed during previous underway periods and training evolutions. "ARGMEUEX gives us an opportunity to rehearse missions we will be asked to do once we deploy," said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Cory Martin, executive officer, 22nd MEU. "The training we do early on during these work-ups will better prepare us for conducting a full spectrum of operations." During the exercise, Sailors and Marines worked together to conduct flight operations, noncombatant evacuation exercises, simulated raids and visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) drills. ARGMEUEX enables Sailors and Marines to integrate, communicate and operate together effectively. "Many of the challenges we will face on deployment are similar to the ones faced during ARGMEUEX," said Capt. Kurt Kastner, commanding officer, USS Wasp. "These missions will require full blue-green integration and this will challenge the entire team." The last milestone scheduled for Wasp ARG's deployment workup cycle is Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX). The three-week graded exercise will demonstrate the Wasp ARG's ability to operate in unison through all its mission areas in preparation for deployment. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Harry S Truman CSG Completes Major OIR Milestone Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160425-02 Release Date: 4/25/2016 8:21:00 AM By Mass Communication Specialst Seaman Anthony Flynn, USS Harry S. Truman Public Affairs ARABIAN GULF (NNS) -- Strike aircraft from the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group have dropped 1,134 pieces of ordnance in support of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), more than any aircraft carrier involved in the operation to defeat ISIL. Truman and embarked Carrier Air Wing 7 began strike operations in support of Operation Inherent Resolve upon their arrival to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in late December. "Warfighting is the priority, and I am very proud of the effort and team work it took to reach this milestone. That said it is more about keeping the pressure on ISIL. The weapons delivered are obviously critical in that endeavor," said Rear Adm. Bret Batchelder, commander, Carrier Strike Group 8. To date, Carrier Strike Group 8 has employed over 580 Tons of explosives on ISIL targets and have disrupted and destroyed weapons storage facilities, training facilities, and financial infrastructure. "While we have seen major accomplishments during our time here, to include this one, the goal has not changed. We have driven ISIL out of over 40 percent of their controlled territory and will continue to pursue them. We will deny them safe haven to operate, and ultimately, the coalition will defeat them," Batchelder said. The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is deployed in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations supporting OIR strike operations in Iraq and Syria, maritime security operations, and theater security cooperation efforts in the region. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Outside intervention tears up ASEAN solidarity People's Daily Online By Liu Zhun (Global Times) 18:23, April 25, 2016 China has reached consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and ASEAN. The agreement between Beijing and key ASEAN members emerged prior to the impending result of the international arbitration filed by the Philippines against China over the South China Sea disputes. Expected to be announced in May, the case has made choppier waves in the sea. Manila and Washington are aggressively pushing for a favorable result. ASEAN, as a regional bloc, is deemed as a game changer in the dispute by some rival claimants such as the Philippines and outsiders such as the US. They are eager to make the group speak in one voice and form a united front against China. But ASEAN has never signed up to be a solitary political coalition to meddle into the sea spat. The claim of certain ASEAN members in the South China Sea doesn't qualify the entire organization as a competitor in the territorial dispute. Some ASEAN countries which do not have direct maritime conflicts with China have no reason and are unwilling to be put in the same boat as the Philippines and the US. Washington and Manila's constant efforts to draw ASEAN into the complications do not pay off as expected, so they blame China for dividing the bloc. China's endeavor to solve disputes through bilateral dialogue, in a bid to ease tensions and pursue negotiations, has always been distorted by Washington as sowing discord. ASEAN's solidarity is a guarantee for regional peace and stability, which, however, cannot be kept by inviting external mechanisms and players inside. The South China Sea arbitration and US intervention are two major factors that have complicated the situation and will result in prolonged instability. For years, China has prudently kept its promises of not complicating the regional situation, and appealed for a direct negotiation with other claimants, an approach that is also recognized by international law. China also sticks firmly to the policy of cooperating comprehensively with ASEAN. So far, there is still wiggle room for China and each claimant to sit at the negotiating table, but first, they should be aware of the US' true intent to stir the troubled waters for its own benefits. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama Calls For EU Unity, More Collective Defense Spending April 25, 2016 by Eugen Tomiuc U.S. President Barack Obama has called on Europe to uphold its political unity and strengthen its contribution to the continent's collective defense. "The entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe," Obama said in a landmark speech on transatlantic unity in the German city of Hannover on April 25. Obama's impassioned plea for European unity came days after he spoke forcefully in London against the United Kingdom exiting the European Union in what's been dubbed a "Brexit.". The possibility of Britain leaving the EU after a June referendum, the threat posed by terrorism, and an ongoing refugee crisis have tested European unity. "This is a defining moment, and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe," Obama said. "If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue," he said. Obama contrasted the prosperity of today with the wars and hardship of the last century, saying that the strong ties between Europe and the United States are even more important amid today's fast global integration. Obama enumerated the recent achievements of EU-U.S. cooperation, mentioning "pulling the global economy back from the brink of depression," the deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program, and the climate-change agreement reached in Paris last December, which he called "the most ambitious deal in history to fight climate change." Obama also urged European NATO members to contribute their full share to the alliance, saying that "Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defense." He said he will insist at a July NATO summit in Warsaw that all members of the alliance must take responsibility for security. Obama also called on European leaders to keep sanctions in place on Russia over its role in the war in eastern Ukraine until Moscow implements its obligations under the Minsk agreement. "We must not allow borders to be redrawn by brute force in the 21st century. So we should keep helping Ukraine with its reforms to improve its economy, consolidate its democracy, and modernize its forces to protect its independence," Obama said. He underlined that NATO has to bolster its "front-line allies in Poland, in Romania, and in the Baltic states" while also meeting "the threat of its southern flank," urging members of the alliance to increase their defense capacities. "That's why every NATO member should be contributing its full share of 2 percent of GDP towards our common security -- something that doesn't always happen," he added. Germany, Obama's host country and Europe's economic powerhouse, has been frequently criticized for spending well below the target on defense capabilities. Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against the extremist group Islamic State. He said the United States would send up to 250 more special-forces military trainers to Syria to help rebels fight IS, which he called "the most urgent threat to our nations." Obama also cited a need for balance between security and privacy, touching one of the sore spots in the relationship between Germany and the United States. Documents disclosed in 2013 by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden embarrassed the Obama administration, revealing that even German Chancellor Angela Merkel's own telephone conversations had been tapped by the U.S. side. Obama said that while surveillance programs remain an effective weapon in the fight against terrorism, he acted to reform such programs to ensure they are "upholding our values like privacy." "By the way, we include the privacy of people outside of the United States. We care about Europeans' privacy, not just Americans' privacy," he added. Obama also credited Merkel, who was sitting in the audience, for welcoming refugees. Obama said that Merkel, who has been facing criticism from other EU members for her stance and has seen the support for her Christian Democratic Union slip to its lowest levels in years, "demonstrated real political and moral leadership" in accepting more than 1.1 million people fleeing war and misery. "What's happening with respect to her position on refugees here, in Europe -- she's on the right side of history on this," Obama told the audience. He decried an "us-versus-them" mentality that breeds animosity toward immigrants, Muslims, and others. Obama's speech came as some German officials and commentators have claimed that his administration has done little to help Merkel as Europe struggles with its biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Obama confirmed in Hannover that the United States would take in 10,000 Syrians this year. Obama and Merkel later met with Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss the fight against IS in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee crisis. With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and dpa Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/obama-european-unity- nato-defense-russia-sanctions/27695322.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The sole power that was able to prevent Azerbaijan from committing genocide was the Armenian army. The army brilliantly fulfilled its duty. Spokesperson of the Defense Ministry of Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan mentioned about this in a lecture at YSU headlined The comparative of arms stockpiles of Armenia and Azerbaijan. We have heard many analyses of the April war. There is still time for scientific analyses. It was a blitzkrieg by nature, precise and with far-going goals. We have already checked a lot of things, the adversary had put huge tasks in front of itself, particularly, make distracting strikes which would be followed by the main strike from the centre. Our troops carried out uncompromising struggle; they prevented any serious advancement which confused the enemy. Their plans for the strike from the center were exposed and it did not happen, Armenpress reports Hovhannisyan saying. In the words of the Defense Ministry spokesperson, the war must be scrutinized in detail. What happened after and prior the war needs serious study. We witnessed a historical moment when a genocide attempt was made for eliminating Armenians , he stated. Artsrun Hovhannisyan mentioned that all the soldiers fought until the last breath, non of the retreated. In several occasions our soldiers could have retreated and no one would blame them for it, but retreating from the battlefield is not the nature of Armenians, he said. To the question if there were problems in terms of intelligence, Artsrun Hovhannisyan excluded its possibility. Intelligence can gather information on approximate measures or logic of the operation, but it cannot predict the entire operation. Intelligence services had been informed what was going on, that is why the units passed from conservation into defense, he stated. Obama to Deploy More Special Forces Troops to Syria by Mary Alice Salinas April 25, 2016 President Barack Obama is ordering a significant increase in the number of U.S. Special Operations Forces in Syria and is urging European nations to ramp up their contributions to the coalition fighting Islamic State. Speaking at an industrial trade fair Monday in Hannover, Germany, Obama says up to 250 additional personnel will join a team of about 50 U.S. troops in Syria. Their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL [Islamic State] out of key areas, Obama said. Earlier this month, the United States announced the deployment of an additional 200 troops and several Apache attack helicopters to Iraq, where they will help government forces there take back IS-held territory. The additional U.S. troops will not be leading the fight on the ground, Obama pointed out, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back. Europe urged to step up In remarks directed at the people of Europe, Obama called on Americas European partners to step up their efforts for our collective security. These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens so we need to do everything in our power to stop them, he argued. None of us can solve this problem by ourselves. Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO can still do more, he said. Obama also stressed the importance of a strong, prosperous and united Europe. A united Europe, once the dream of a few, remains the hope of the many and the necessity for us all, he told a large audience. Talks with European leaders After his remarks, Obama met with his counterparts from Germany, Britain, France and Italy. The leaders discussed a broad strange of issues, including the agenda for a NATO summit that will be held in Warsaw in July. The agenda included talks on ways the United States, Europe and NATO partners can increase cooperation to combat Islamic State, confront a migration crisis in Europe, and Russian aggression in Ukraine. "The leaders agreed that the implications of irregular migration to Europe posed a severe challenge that needed to be addressed in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, reflecting the values that Europe and the United States share: this implies ongoing NATO and EU activities as well as efforts to tackle the root causes of flight and migration," a White House statement said after the talks. On Syria, it said the leaders "shared the growing concern that the increasing violations of the agreed cessation of hostilities by the regime and the continued obstruction of humanitarian access undermine efforts to bring relief to the Syrian people." The leaders also welcomed continued progress by the U.S. -led coalition that has been fighting Islamic State, according to the White House. Earlier, Obama toured the Hannover Messe fair grounds along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The event is known as worlds largest industrial technology fair. Obama touted U.S. innovation and called for more international cooperation on trade and commerce. Trade agreement The two leaders expressed support for a landmark free-trade agreement between the United States and European Union, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Well see more partnerships, more trade and more jobs for our people on both sides of the Atlantic, Obama said. We both want to shape innovation. We want to be forward looking in this world of tomorrow. Supporters say the pact will boost the global economy and help smaller businesses compete on the world market. But opponents argue the accord would give multinational companies too much power at the expense of consumers and workers. Joshua Fatzick contributed to this report in Washington NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghan Leader Demands Removal of Taliban from Pakistan by Ayaz Gul April 25, 2016 Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has demanded neighboring Pakistan evict fugitive Taliban leaders from its soil and hand them over to Kabul for trial. In a hard-hitting speech to a rare joint session of parliament Monday, Ghani said Pakistani leaders promised they would use force against Taliban leaders who refuse to end the war and join Afghan peace talks. He went on to assert that insurgent leaders continue to use their "centers" in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta for directing violence in Afghanistan. "It is our exception that if Pakistan is unable to take action against them as per its commitments to the four-nation group, then they should be handed over to our Islamic courts so they are tried and punished for their crimes," Ghani said. He was referring to a so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group, comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, which has been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban since the beginning of this year. Taliban refusal At the end of February, the four-way dialogue announced that an initial round of Afghan peace talks would be hosted by Pakistan in early March. But the Taliban, in a last-minute announcement, refused to attend and instead launched its annual spring offensive in Afghanistan. "Today, I want to make it clear that we do not expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the peace talks," Ghani said, attracting a huge applause from the lawmakers. The Afghan leader made the speech a week after a Taliban bomb and gun assault in Kabul killed nearly 70 people and wounded about 350 others. The insurgent group claimed responsibility, saying it was part of its spring offensive. The deadly raid outraged Afghans and prompted demands for Ghani to abandon the policy of engaging in peace talks with the Taliban and instead step up military operations against the insurgents. Afghan officials alleged the militant Haqqani network, based in Pakistan, plotted last week's assault in Kabul with the help of the neighboring country's intelligence agency. Islamabad has rejected the allegation. Speech to legislators In Monday's speech, Ghani did not completely rule out talks with those Taliban groups who denounce violence and cut ties to terrorist groups. "The (Taliban) faction involved in death and destruction in Afghanistan is being guided by its slave-like leadership in Peshawar and Quetta who enjoy inflicting bloodshed and destruction on the people of Afghanistan. They do not possess welfare and prosperity plans for Afghans nor do they worry about respecting their wishes and needs," he said. U.S. officials have previously criticized Pakistan for allowing the Taliban to operate inside their borders. "We have consistently expressed our concerns at the highest level of the government of Pakistan about their continued tolerance for Afghan Taliban groups such as the Haqqani network operating from Pakistani soil," U.S State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters Friday. Trudeau said Washington again pressed Islamabad after the Kabul attack to follow up on its expressed commitment not to discriminate between terror groups regardless of their agenda or affiliation by undertaking concrete action against the Haqqanis. The Taliban was quick to react to Ghani's Monday speech. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected as fraudulent and fictitious" Ghani's assertions. "The (Afghan) nation is not blind, people understand who the slave is and who works as mercenaries for the interest of others," he said. Mujahid added the Taliban will not end its "jihad' until "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan is ended and an "Islamic system" is implemented in the country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address ICC Opens Preliminary Probe Into Burundi Violence by Lisa Bryant April 25, 2016 The International Criminal Court says it is opening a preliminary probe into the violence that erupted last year in Burundi. International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda says the probe is not an investigation and offered no timeline of how long it will last. But in a statement announcing her decision Monday, she said she has been closely tracking the uptick of violence in the central African nation that has been a member of the Hague-based court since 2004. "My office has reviewed communications and reports about killings, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence as well as cases of enforced disappearances. Because all these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC, I have decided to open a preliminary examination into the situation in Burundi since April 2015," Bensouda said. Burundi's political crisis was triggered last year when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a disputed third term. Bensouda said at least 430 people have been killed, 3,400 have been arrested and more than 230,000 Burundians have fled the country. On Monday, a high-ranking general and his wife were reportedly killed while dropping their daughter off at school. Human Rights Watch International Justice Advocacy Director Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner welcomed the ICC announcement, but said it is only a first step. "We hope the announcement that it is opening a preliminary investigation in Burundi is really a wake-up call to those who commit or order these crimes to be committed that there will not be impunity anymore for grave human rights violations," Mattioli-Zeltner said. The United Nations last week accused Burundi's security services of torturing and illegally detaining several hundred people this year. Last month, the European Union suspended aid to the Burundian government over the political crisis. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Release of Classified Pages on Foreign 9/11 Support Imminent by Chris Hannas April 25, 2016 Nearly 15 years after terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a farm field in Pennsylvania, 28 pages detailing foreign support for the attackers could soon be made public. Only a select group of U.S. officials have read the highly classified document, which has been locked in a secure area of the U.S. Capitol building since a joint congressional committee crafted it in 2002. Bills in both the Senate and House of Representatives and people who helped write it are calling for its release. Despite its classified status, those familiar with the chapter have made enough allusions to its connections with Saudi Arabia for people to wonder about what exact link the document may suggest. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was a part of the joint committee, said Sunday during an interview on NBC's Meet The Press the pages should be released to end debate over what they contain and let the American public make up its own mind about the contents. When asked if the release would have a high-level negative impact, Graham said yes. Saudi citizens He said whether the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens, had any outside help is the most important outstanding question related to the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. "I think it's implausible to think that people who couldn't speak English, had never been in the United States before, as a group were not well-educated, could have done that," he said. "So who was the most likely entity to have provided them that support? And I think that all of the evidence points to Saudi Arabia." Former President George W. Bush ordered the 28 pages to be classified and not included in the 828-page congressional report that was released to the public. His successor, Barack Obama, has ordered his intelligence team to review the chapter, and Graham said he hopes the text will be made available when a decision is made by June. Last week, Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said he expects "there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information." But Rhodes did not speak to the timing and cautioned that the work of the joint congressional commission and the subsequent 9/11 Commission have given a "definitive statement" determining that Saudi Arabia did not have an intent to support al-Qaida. Obama visit U.S.-Saudi relations have come under heightened focus with Obama's visit there last week and his public criticism that the kingdom is not doing enough to address terrorism in its own region. Another member of the congressional commission, former Representative Tim Roemer, said last week that the group "did not exonerate the Saudis," and that the pages should be declassified. "The Saudis won't relish the renewed spotlight, and it could strain relations with a valued ally with whom we have sometimes experienced a turbulent partnership," Roemer wrote in RealClearPolitics. "But we have more to fear from secrecy and conspiracy theories than pursuing transparency and truth, and the 9/11 families deserve to have the fullest possible record available from past investigations." The 9/11 Commission Report, which was published in 2004, calls Saudi Arabia a "problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism." In addition to citing a cooperation failure among U.S. security agencies, the report notes a failure in U.S.-Saudi cooperation in sharing intelligence information or disrupting al-Qaida's finances. 9/11 hijackers It also offers varied explanations as to why so many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. The report said Ramzi Binalshibh, a Guantanamo Bay detainee described as the "coordinator" of the attacks, explained the choice of the hijackers as a deliberate message to the Saudi government about its relationship with the United States. But the next paragraph cites 9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Shaikh Mohammed denying that theory. Instead, Mohammed says the number of Saudis involved in the attacks was a reflection of the high percentage of recruits in al-Qaida training camps who came from Saudi Arabia. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kim Jong Un Provides Field Guidance to Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station No. 3 Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS) Pyongyang, April 23 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, first chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, provided field guidance to the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station No. 3 successfully completed as a gift of loyalty which young people, masters of the youth power, presented to the 7th Congress of the WPK. He shook hands with commanding officers one by one, praising them for having done a lot of work. Our reliable young people of Mt. Paektu have completed the project in the run-up to the congress of the party, thus carrying out the order given by me four months ahead of schedule, he said, adding that another fresh legendary tale about youth was created in the wake of last year in the land of Mt. Paektu where the Juche revolution started. He looked round the Exhibition of the Paektusan Hero Young People's Feats. Looking at exhibits one by one there, he said that merely watching the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station brings the image of leader Kim Jong Il to my mind. The completion of the power station No. 3 made it possible to implement his behest, he stressed. He noted with deep emotion that what pleased him was the appearance of young people as heroes of the times and giants who performed heroic feats as desired by Kim Jong Il rather than the creation of the capability to solve the problem of electricity in Samjiyon County. In order to know how great the WPK's idea of attaching importance to the youth is and how rosy the future of the youth power is, everybody should visit the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station, he said, emphasizing that the power station is not only an electricity-generating base but also a center for education eloquently proving the validity and vitality of the party's idea of attaching importance to the youth and in what perseverance our young people created the fresh spirit of the times. Saying that a huge man-made lake appeared in the land of Mt. Paektu after the construction of the dam of the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station No. 1, he named the lake the "Paektu Hero Youth Lake". He went round the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station No. 3. By completing the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Stations Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in a matter of a year, the iron fists of the heroic youth which have grown strong under the loving care of the party hit hard the heads of the U.S. imperialists and their followers hell-bent on their moves to ratchet up sanctions against the DPRK and stifle it on the principle of self-reliance and self-development. The revolutionary soldier spirit and Kanggye spirit were created in the period of the Arduous March, forced march and the Paektusan hero youth spirit was done in the present difficult period, a clear proof of the just leadership of the great leaders and the WPK that trained young people as reserves, advancing group and wing of the party as required by the developing revolution assuming protracted nature from the very day the party was founded, he noted. The completion of the power station proved once again that party's determination precisely means a reality and practice, young Koreans are creditably playing a vanguard role in translating the party's determination into reality and their strength is inexhaustible, indeed, he said, adding that he felt irrepressible urge to meet all of them and they did a lot of work. He requested the commanding officers to convey his wish for their good health to them. He gave an instruction to hold with splendor a ceremony of commissioning the power station to strikingly demonstrate the indomitable mental power and spirit of young Koreans. He gave on the spot an instruction related to the ceremony and personally assigned a new militant duty to be fulfilled by the Paektusan Hero Youth Shock Brigade. He was accompanied by Secretary Choe Ryong Hae, Department Director Ri Il Hwan and Vice Department Director Jo Yong Won of the WPK Central Committee. -0- (2016.04.23) NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Detects, Tracks North Korea's Possible Missile Launch Sputnik News 21:24 23.04.2016 North Korean missile, launched from submarine, did not pose any threat to North America, according to the US Strategic Command. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US military have detected the possible missile launch from the North Korean submarine, the US Strategic Command said Saturday. Earlier in the day, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said as quoted by local media that the North fired a ballistic missile from a submarine off the country's east coast. "US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan at 4:29 a.m. CDT [09:29 GMT]," one of the US Defense Department's commands said in a press release. According to North American Aerospace Defense Command, the North Korean missile did not pose any threat to North America, it added. "The men and women of USSTRATCOM, NORAD and US Northern Command, and US Pacific Command remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security," the press release stressed. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated after North Korea successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test in early January and put a satellite into orbit a month later, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community. On April 14, Yonhap reported citing government and military sources that North Korea had allegedly deployed one or two Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles (also known as Rodong-B or BM-25) on its eastern coast. The following day, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the North appeared to have tried a missile launch, which ended in a failure. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea Ready to Halt Nuclear Tests If US Stops Drills With South Korea Sputnik News 23:24 23.04.2016(updated 00:30 24.04.2016) North Korea reportedly said it would halt nuclear tests if the United States stops military exercises with South Korea. North Korean foreign minister said that the country would halt nuclear tests if the United States stops military manoeuvres with South Korea, Associated Press reported. "Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests," Ri Su Yong told the Associated Press in an interview. Earlier, South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the North fired a ballistic missile from a submarine off the country's east coast. The US Strategic Command also reported that the US military have detected the possible missile launch from the North Korean submarine. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated after North Korea successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test in early January and put a satellite into orbit a month later, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community. Ri Su Yong arrived in New York on Friday for an official UN ceremony that saw over 160 countries sign up to last year's climate change deal. Speaking at the UN sustainable development forum in New York, Ri Su Yong again said that, the North's nuclear tests were "aimed at defending itself from the nuclear threat by the U.S.," and warned Washington against exerting military and economic pressure on the nation. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USSTRATCOM Detects, Tracks North Korean Submarine Missile Launch U.S. Strategic Command Public Affairs 4/23/2016 OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. -- U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan at 4:29 a.m. CDT. According to North American Aerospace Defense Command, the missile launched from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America. The men and women of USSTRATCOM, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Pacific Command remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security. USSTRATCOM's mission is to conduct global operations in synchronization with other combatant commands and appropriate U.S. government agencies to detect, deter and prevent strategic attacks against the U.S., its allies, and partners and to be prepared to deliver warfighting capability to defend the nation. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kim Jong Un Guides Underwater Test-fire of Strategic Submarine Ballistic Missile Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS) Pyongyang, April 24 (KCNA) -- Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army (KPA) Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and first chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, guided on the spot the underwater test-fire of strategic submarine ballistic missile. At the observation post he was briefed on the plan for the test-fire and gave an order for it. As soon as the order was issued, the submarine submerged as low as the maximum depth of waters for launching and fired the ballistic missile. The test-fire was aimed to confirm the stability of the underwater ballistic launching system in the maximum depth of waters, flying kinetic feature under the vertical flight system of the ballistic missile powered by the newly developed high power solid fuel engine, the reliability of the phased heat separation and the working accuracy of nuclear detonating device of warhead at the preset altitude. It fully confirmed and reinforced the reliability of the Korean-style underwater launching system and perfectly met all technical requirements for carrying out the Juche-based underwater attack operation. He noted with great satisfaction that Juche Korea had access to one more means for powerful nuclear attack as required by the strategic intention of the Party Central Committee. He highly praised the officials, scientists and technicians in the field of national defence science and munitions factories for having successfully rounded off the technology of underwater launching of ballistic missile from a strategic submarine at a higher level. The successful test-fire would help remarkably bolster up the underwater operational capability of the KPA navy, he said, adding that it is now capable of hitting the heads of the south Korean puppet forces and the U.S. imperialists anytime as it pleases. This eye-opening success constitutes one more precious labor gift the defence scientists and technicians are presenting to the great leaders and the motherly Party. He called on the reliable defence scientists and technicians to uphold through scientific practices the Party's strategic intention to react to nuclear weapons in kind. He urged them to step up the project for bolstering the nuclear force to mount nuclear attacks on the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet group of traitors any time when the Party is determined to do. He had a photo session with the defence scientists and service personnel of the navy who took part in the test-fire in celebration of the successful day. -0- (2016.04.24) NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea missile launches getting serious, US official says Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 3:43PM North Korea's recent test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile indicates that Pyongyang is "getting very serious" with its missile program, says a US official. "North Korea's sub launch capability has gone from a joke to something very serious," an unnamed US official was quoted as saying by CNN on Sunday. "The US is watching this very closely." The comments came shortly after North Korea announced the "successful" test, boasting of its growing ability to target the US and South Korea with a "dagger of destruction." The North says it has conducted a number of successful submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) tests. Washington also slammed the test, warning Pyongyang that such activities go against resolutions by the UN Security Council. "We closely monitor North Korean activities and the situation on the Korean peninsula, especially North Korean military activities," US State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. "Launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further destabilize the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and international obligations," he added. The US and China pioneered tougher sanctions against North Korea following its fourth nuclear test in January and a ballistic missile launch the next month. The country threatened the US with a nuclear strike last month upon more US provocations. Pyongyang accuses the US of plotting with regional allies to topple its government, saying it will not relinquish its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea. Another 'failed' test Meanwhile, the South Korean Defense Ministry announced earlier Sunday that North's submarine-launched ballistic missile failed after flying 30 kilometers (18 miles) in the Sea of Japan. If true, this is much shorter than the average range of submarine-launched missiles as they can fly a typical distance of at least 300 kilometers (186 miles). Pyongyang's last submarine-launch of a ballistic missile, which took place on December 25, was also a failure, according to the South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff. North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong told the Associated Press on Sunday that his country would halt its nuclear tests if the US ends its annual military exercises with the South. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Armenia Seyran Ohanyan received Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Piotr Switalski on April 25. Minister Ohanyan informed the Ambassador on the large-scale military operations waged by Azerbaijan against NKR and the current situation on the frontline. The Defense Minister drew the attention of the Head of the EU Delegation on the fact that Azerbaijan continues provocative measures on the contact line of Karabakh-Azerbaijan opposing troops irrespective of the verbal armistice agreement. In this context the Defense Minister of Armenia highlighted the creation of confidence building mechanisms on Armenian-Azerbaijani border and Karabakh-Azerbaijan contact line, as well as rapid installation of mechanisms for the preservation of the ceasefire. Seyran Ohanyan also attached great importance to the imperative of addressed condemnation by the international community to the side that escalates the situation and wages attacks. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Defense Ministry of the Republic of Armenia, the interlocutors also discussed issues of Armenia-EU relations. Seyran Ohanyan highly appreciated the support rendered by the EU for the reforms in the state administration sphere, particularly in the sphere of human rights and fight against corruption, hoping that the effective cooperation between Armenia and EU and the active dialogue in all possible aspects will be continuous. Ambassador Piotr Switalski highlighted the interactions with Armenia in the sphere of security and defense, expressing conviction that there are all prerequisites for deepening and leveling up those relations. Obama Calls Pyongyang's Possible Ballistic Missile Test 'Provocative' Sputnik News 20:46 24.04.2016 US President Barack Obama said that Washington cooperates with Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang in reference to the missile tests. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) US President Barack Obama has labeled the possible launch of a ballistic missile from a North Korean submarine a "provocative" act. The South Korean military said on Saturday it detected a North Korean submarine fire a ballistic missile off the eastern shore. "What is clear is that North Korea continues to engage in continuous provocative behavior, that they have been actively pursuing a nuclear program, an ability to launch nuclear weapons. And although more often than not they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time they engage in these tests," Obama said at a Sunday press conference in the German city of Hannover, broadcast by the US TV channels. Washington cooperates with Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang in reference to the missile tests, he added. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated after North Korea successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test in early January and put a satellite into orbit a month later, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea Sends 300 Multiple Rocket Launchers to Southern Border Sputnik News 05:57 24.04.2016(updated 11:49 24.04.2016) South Korea's military reported that North Korea has deployed some 300 multiple launch rocket systems along its southern border, putting Seoul within a striking distance. MOSCOW (Sputnik) North Korea has deployed some 300 multiple launch rocket systems along its southern border, putting Seoul within a striking distance, South Korea's military told local media on Sunday. North Korea has reportedly been stationing missile launchers along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 2.5-mile-wide strip of land separating the two countries, since 2014. "The new rockets will increase the number of MLRS and long-range artillery along the DMZ to over 600," a source told South Korea's Yonhap news agency. According to the agency's information, the North could fire simultaneously some 9,000 rockets across the border. It cited military experts who said the South does not have anti-missile systems that can intercept these threats. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea: Submarine Ballistic Missile Launch 'Remarkable Success' Sputnik News 03:36 24.04.2016(updated 03:58 24.04.2016) North Korea admitted that it conducted an underwater missile test launch, saying it was a "remarkable success". MOSCOW (Sputnik) North Korea admitted on Sunday that it conducted an underwater missile test launch a day before, saying it was a "remarkable success," the state-run North Korean news agency KCNA said. The South Korean military said Saturday it had detected a North Korean submarine fire a ballistic missile off the eastern shore, prompting France to call for additional EU sanctions on Pyongyang. The Korean agency said the ballistic missile launch "fully confirmed the reliability of the underwater launch system and satisfied all the technical requirements for carrying out an offensive operation." Korea's leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch and was pleased with the result, the statement added. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated after North Korea successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test in January. The North maintains that it needs atomic weapons as a deterrent to prevent an invasion from the United States. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Security Council strongly condemns firing of ballistic missile by DPR Korea 24 April 2016 The United Nations Security Council has strongly condemned the firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile yesterday by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), reiterating that such activities increase tension in the region and beyond. "This incident constituted yet another serious violation by the DPRK of UN Security Council resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013) and 2270 (2016)," said a press statement issued today by the 15-member body. The members of the Security Council emphasized that the DPRK's development and testing of new ballistic missile capabilities, even if launches are failures, is "clearly prohibited" by these resolutions. In this context, the Council reiterated its serious concern, as expressed in resolution 2270 (2016), that such ballistic missile activities contribute to the DPRK's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and increase tension in the region and beyond. The members of the Council reiterated that the DPRK "shall refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, including to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program and in this context reestablish its previous commitments to a moratorium on missile launches." In light of these recent violations, the Council emphasized the importance of the work of its Committee established pursuant to resolution 1718 (2006), and urged all Member States to redouble their efforts to implement the measures imposed in all relevant Council resolutions. The members of the Security Council particularly emphasized the need to strengthen implementation of the measures imposed in resolution 2270 (2016) and reiterated their call to Member States to report to the Council on concrete measures taken to effectively implement the provisions of that resolution. In addition, the Council reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in North-east Asia at large, expressed their commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation, and welcomed efforts by Council members as well as other States to facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue. The Council agreed that it would continue to closely monitor the situation and take further significant measures in line with its previously expressed determination. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Security Council Condemns North Korean Missile test by Brian Padden April 24, 2016 The United Nations Security Council has condemned North Korea for its submarine launched ballistic missile test Saturday, calling it "another serious violation" of existing U.N. resolutions. In a statement issued Sunday, the Council said these missile activities "contribute to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems," while increasing global tensions. The statement also warned that the Security Council will "take further significant measures" against the North, just weeks after imposing tough new sanctions to pressure Pyongyang to comply with existing U.N. mandates. Pyongyang's state-run KCNA news agency said the latest test, which was personally monitored by leader Kim Jong Un, proved the reliability of its submerged launching system. However, South Korea called the test a failure, noting that the missile traveled only 30 kilometers before falling into the sea. The flight was well short of the minimum 300 kilometer range for the type of missile tested, and one Seoul government source said the missile's engine malfunctioned shortly after it was launched. Obama dismisses N. Korean offer Earlier, U.S. President Barack Obama said it is "clear that North Korea is actively engaged in provocative behavior." During a visit to Germany, Obama also dismissed a North Korean offer to impose a moratorium on nuclear tests if the U.S. suspends annual military drills with South Korea. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test," Obama said. Obama's comments came shortly after North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong told the Associated Press his government is prepared to halt its nuclear related testing in exchange for an end to U.S. participation in the annual military training. North Korea is considered to be in the early stages of developing a submarine based missile launch capability. It has attempted three SLBM tests in the last year. All were believed to have been failures, even though KCNA claimed otherwise, and - according to analysts - videos of past launches were edited to make them appear successful. SLBM development Analysts say with each test, Pyongyang is correcting past mistakes and coming closer to developing a dangerous new capability to strike its enemies in the region and even target the U.S. mainland. Melissa Hanham at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California said that still photographs of Saturday's test seem to indicate the submarine based missile has now been upgraded to use solid fuel. "A solid fuel SLBM would mean they could launch more easily and quickly with potentially less risk to their sub," Hanham told VOA via Twitter. Analysts from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies posted a video analysis of Pyongyang's last submarine missile test in January to prove it was an explosive dud and not the great success claimed by North Korea. Future threat North Korea maintains one of the world's largest submarine forces, with approximately 70 underwater vessels. Most of these submarines, however, are old, built with 1950s technology and powered by diesel electric, which means they can only stay submerged and hidden from radar for a few days at a time. Since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, the North Korean military has accelerated efforts to modernize its submarine fleet, according to Jane's Intelligence Review, a global security journal. Pyongyang likely overstated the results of its SLBM capability to enhance Kim's image within the country as it prepares for a rare and major ruling Workers Party congress in early May. The country's last major party congress was held in 1980. And there has been speculation the North Koran military was under pressure to quickly conduct a successful test after a midrange land based missile launch ended in catastrophic failure earlier this month. Analysts say North Korea's primary strategic goals for developing missile launch capabilities from submarines are defense related. Having an underwater nuclear arsenal would give Pyongyang a "second strike" capability if the U.S. or South Korean forces attempted a preemptive attack against its land based missiles, according to analysts. Developing an SLBM capability that is fitted with a nuclear warhead also would give North Korea the ability to strike the U.S. mainland. The U.S. Strategic Command says Pyongyang's submarine missile launch "did not pose a threat to North America.'' In a statement, it said that U.S. military forces" remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security.'' NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address KPA, Creator of People's Wealth Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS) Pyongyang, April 25 (KCNA) -- The Korean People's Army has played a big role in creating people's wealth, holding aloft the slogan "Let the People's Army take charge of both national defence and socialist construction!" The servicepersons have built a number of edifices for the prosperity of the country and people's happiness. After the Fatherland Liberation War, they performed great feats in reconstructing Pyongyang City and building the vinalon factory. Among monumental edifices representing the era of the Workers' Party is the West Sea Barrage. In the period of the Arduous March, the forced march, they built the Anbyon Youth Power Station and performed great feats in sprucing up the whole country by carrying out large-scale land realignment. They are now playing a key role in all fields of building a thriving and highly civilized socialist nation. Recently, the Munsu Water Park, Rungna People's Pleasure Park, Mirim Riding Club, Okryu Children's Hospital, Masikryong Ski Resort, Yonphung Scientists Holiday Camp, Unha Scientists Street, apartment houses for educators, workers' hostel of Kim Jong Suk Pyongyang Textile Mill and Songdowon International Children's Camp took their shapes thanks to their devoted efforts. Last year alone, they completed many edifices, including Mirae Scientists Street and the Sci-Tech Complex, which are conducive to make the people enjoy the highest quality of civilization on the highest level. -0- NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kim Il Sung's Feats for Bolstering DPRK's Defence Capability Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS) Pyongyang, April 25 (KCNA) -- Today marks the 84th anniversary of the Korean People's Army. On this occasion the DPRK people look back on the undying feats President Kim Il Sung performed to bolster up the country's defence capability. Kim Il Sung founded the Anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla Army (later Korean People's Revolutionary Army) on April 25, 1932, as the driving force for the Korean revolution. After liberating Korea from Japan's colonial rule, he saw to it that the Pyongyang Institute, the Central Security Officers Training School and other military academies were established as early as possible. And he developed the KPRA into the Korean People's Army (KPA), modern and regular armed forces, on February 8, 1948. Under his commandership the KPA won in the 1950-1953 Fatherland Liberation War against the U.S. imperialist aggressors and thus brought about the beginning of a decline for the U.S. imperialism. After the war, he had wisely led the KPA to play a pivotal role in bolstering up the national defence capability and reliably discharge its honorable mission in the confrontation with the U.S. imperialists. He made ceaseless inspection of military units, giving primary attention to the strengthening of the army. He also attached importance to the strengthening of the country's militia. In mid-January 1959 when visiting a village in South Phyongan Province, he matured his plan to found a new type of militia. Then he reorganized the self-defence corps into the Worker-Peasant Red Guards, putting up the slogan "Rifle in one hand and hammer or sickle in the other!" And he founded the Young Red Guards in September 1970 and guided it to discharge its mission as part of the militia. In order to turn the country into an impregnable fortress, he saw to it that strong defences were built not only in frontline areas but also other parts of the country. Meanwhile, he set forth a unique line of simultaneously carrying on the economic construction and the defence building and further developed the nation's self-reliant defence industry so as to realize on a higher level the work for modernizing the entire army, putting all the people under arms and turning the whole country into fortress. The President's feats for the strengthening of the country's defence capability are now shining more brilliantly under guidance of supreme leader Kim Jong Un. -0- NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Newspapers Praise Feats Performed by Peerlessly Great Persons of Mt. Paektu in Building Army Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS) Pyongyang, April 25 (KCNA) -- Leading newspapers here Monday dedicate editorials to the 84th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army. The editorials say that the founding of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army by President Kim Il Sung on April 25, Juche 21 (1932) was a historic event to be specially recorded in the history of building the revolutionary armed forces. The founding of the revolutionary armed forces of Juche made it possible to fully ensure the leader's guidance over the overall Korean revolution and provided a sure political and military guarantee for triumphantly advancing the revolutionary cause of Juche and Songun, the newspapers note. Rodong Sinmun says the Korean People's Army (KPA) having the anti-Japanese legendary hero as its supreme commander has demonstrated its might as the powerful revolutionary Paektusan army in terms of idea, spirit, mode of activities and fighting method since its birth. It goes on: The President's idea of building the army and his leadership over it served as guidelines and lifeline for all military and political activities of the KPA and his warm comradeship and love for comrades-in-arms were the basic source of bolstering up its combat capability. Leader Kim Jong Il was the peerlessly brilliant commander as he developed the KPA into the army of the leader and the party both in name and reality with his outstanding and tested Songun politics and Songun revolutionary leadership. His Songun leadership for more than half a century was characterized by his most ardent loyalty and moral sense of obligation towards the President and adorned with the legendary stories about how he ushered in a great heyday of increasing the military muscle by successfully carrying forward the feats the President performed in building the army. The heroic KPA is now strikingly demonstrating its might as the army devotedly defending the leader at all times and the invincible army of the party as it is under another peerlessly illustrious commander. Minju Joson says the glorious history of the Korean revolutionary armed forces is brilliantly recorded with the undying feats of the illustrious commanders of Mt. Paektu. It is the great pride and honor of the Korean people to have the powerful revolutionary Paektusan army which has grown to be a pillar and a main force of the Juche revolution and is fully demonstrating its might before the whole world, the newspaper concludes. -0- NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US unable to confront Iran: Commander IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Yazd, April 24, IRNA -- The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said in this central province on Sunday that the US cannot confront Iran. Speaking in a local gathering, Fadavi said the US does not have the power and strength to attack Iran. He said the enemies have not been able to hurt the Islamic Iran after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution 37 years ago. 'The enemies are seeking to sow discord among the Islamic courtiers and have done their best to meet that end,' the commander added. 'After 26 years of imposed war against Iran, today the US is fully aware that it can not confront the Islamic revolution and is confident about the Iranians' power and confronting strength,' he said. The commander reiterated that the US is fully aware that the losses of raging a war against Iran is more that its benefits. 9060**1771 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran pursues legal channels to take back frozen assets: 1st VP Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 5:24AM Iran's First Vice President Es'haq Jahangiri slams a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States granting about two billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets to the families of victims of a 1983 bombing in Beirut. "The Iranian administration will definitely use all legal means to regain the fund and the US knows that the administration can do that," Jahangiri said in a meeting with managing directors of Iranian state and private banks on Saturday. The court on April 20 ruled that about USD 2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran. Jahangiri said the US court's decision amounted to stealing the Central Bank of Iran (CBI)'s funds which had mainly been kept in European banks. He added that the US carried out such a measure under a baseless excuse and made an accusation against Iran. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said on April 21 that the ruling has mocked international law, adding that it "amounts to appropriation of the Islamic Republic of Iran's property" in the United States. In 2012, the US Congress passed a law that specifically directed the US-based Citibank to turn over the Iranian assets to families of victims of the Beirut bombing. Iran argues that Congress is intruding into the business of federal courts over the case. Tehran has long rejected allegations of involvement in the Beirut bombing. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan gave an interview to Bloomberg over the recent eruption of violence in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone. War can break out at any moment in the Caucasus flashpoint of Nagorno-Karabakh and theres little prospect of talks to resolve the conflict, "Armenpress" reports the president of Armenia said. A Russian-brokered truce may not be enough to prevent fighting on an even larger scale after four days of war between Azeris and Armenians this month that involved several hundred tanks and 30,000 artillery rounds, Serzh Sargsyan said in an interview Saturday at the presidential residence in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Its unreasonable for Armenia to resume peace talks with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory without security guarantees because the situation is entirely different now, he said. On the one hand wed be talking somewhere while, on the other, military officials would be engaging in war here to try to settle the conflict, he said. The clashes in early April were the worst since a cease-fire 22 years ago halted a war that claimed 30,000 lives and created 1 million refugees, and ended with the victory of Armenia. International mediators have failed to negotiate a lasting peace since then in a conflict that threatens to destabilize a region flanked by Russia, Turkey and Iran, while also potentially disrupting a new energy corridor between central Asia and Europe. Azerbaijan, the former Soviet Unions third largest oil producer, has attracted more than $50 billion from BP Plc and its partners in recent years. BPs oil pipeline which carried 720,000 barrels per day from Baku to the Mediterranean last year runs fewer than 30 miles from the conflict zone at one point. Amid intense international diplomacy to avert war, Sargsyan met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Yerevan on Friday. Lavrov didnt bring any new proposals because he realizes very well that it doesnt make sense to talk about negotiations immediately after a four-day war, Sargsyan said. Battles raged along the full 200-kilometer (124 miles) length of the front line as Azerbaijan tried to punch through to Nagorno-Karabakh itself and then issue an ultimatum to the Armenian-held enclave, he said, adding that the Armenian side had no precise information what would happen on April 1. If we had such information, Azerbaijanis would bear much more losses and the few meters that remained under their control would not happen. Sargsyan, 61, stated that Azeri troops took very small pieces of land in the north and south of the contact line that had no strategic importance for Armenian forces, who didnt try to reclaim them to avoid additional losses of life, Sargsyan said. Azerbaijani subversive units started to work by 3 oclock at night by our time. As it turned out the next day, or better to say some hours later, the subversive units had infiltrated into our back and were approaching Talish village where they encountered our patrol groups and clashes erupted. From now on, the Azerbaijanis started the onslaught along the front line. This is what had happened. Our northern units were unable to entirely turn to defense on the first day of the clashes. Only imagine what kind of shelling was going on in that small area which was directed not only at the front line units but also the place of permanent stationing of troops and civilian population and there was a necessity to shelter those people. A few hours later, at around 6:30 similar attacks started along the entire contact line with the application of a great number of tanks, artillery, UAVs, helicopters, but the Defense Army had already managed to turn into defense as a result of which Azerbaijanis could not progress in any place, President Sargsyan said. I do not take these 4 days a ceasefire violation. I assess this as a 4-day war, because a ceasefire violation can be considered such a situation when one or a number of shootings are heard and when the weapons previously used, are applied. But during these 4 days very large and destructive weapons were used, such as Smerch, TOS, Israeli UAVs, and Turkish made large caliber weapons, and all types of artillery, even 152 mm. Who can speak about ceasefire violation if 100s of tanks were participating in the operation? President Sargsyan said, adding that the military operations were stopped after the Russian Chief of General Staff called his Armenian counterpart and told that Azerbaijanis are ready to stop firing. The Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia left for Moscow where a meeting took place between the Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani Chiefs of General Staffs, where a verbal agreement was reached to stop firing. Serzh Sargsyan stated stop firing but not establish ceasefire regime as, in his words, the ceasefire regime had been established back in 1994 and was reinforced with another document in 1995. But the troops have not withdrawn, artillery and tanks remain on the frontline, and at any moment the same can reoccur, maybe in a larger scale, the Armenian President said. While the chief of the defense staff in Moscow mediated the cease-fire talks, theres no place for Russian peacekeepers in the conflict zone to separate the two sides, Sargsyan said. Talk of deploying Russian forces wasnt entirely without grounds in previous peace negotiations, though I dont see any such opportunity now, he said. If there are no negotiations, how can Russian forces appear in Karabakh or between Azerbaijani and Karabakh forces? Sargsyan said. Russias pursuing a balanced policy between Armenia and Azerbaijan while seeking to avert large-scale military conflict, he said. The Nagorno-Karabakh situation is very fragile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Monday. Armenia has a mutual-defense pact with Russia and hosts its allys only military base in the region, though Armenians protested this month outside the Russian embassy in Yerevan over weapons sales to Azerbaijan. Russia will continue selling weapons to Armenia and Azerbaijan as theyre both our strategic partners, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said, the Tass news service reported April 8. Flush with cash before oil prices collapsed, Azerbaijan boosted military spending 10-fold over the last decade to as much as $4.8 billion last year, more than Armenias entire state budget. Armenias defense budget rose threefold over the same period to $447 million, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Sargysan said Russian, U.S. and French mediators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe must put in place confidence-building measures before any new peace talks, and particularly an investigation mechanism for violations of the cease-fire that would pinpoint exactly which party was responsible. Armenia also requires assurances that these kinds of violations will not happen again, he said. The president disclosed that hed been willing to withdraw Armenian forces from five districts and allow in peacekeepers as part of 2011 negotiations with Aliyev in the Russian city of Kazan. The Russian, U.S. and French presidents urged both leaders to sign the agreement, which would also have postponed a final decision on Nagorno-Karabakhs status, but Aliyev refused, Sargsyan said. That was the time when Azerbaijan was enriching itself with oil money and talking about the size of its military budget, Sargsyan said of the failed 2011 talks. What took place now should have been expected. US afraid of Iran's deterrence power: Commander IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Yazd, April 25, IRNA -- America is afraid of Iran's deterrence power, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said on Sunday. Speaking in a local ceremony, he added that Iran has never attacked US interests but they have tested Iran's power during their attacks and they have experienced various failures in their plots for the Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Syria. Saying that the US is Iran's major enemy, Fadavi underlined that America is afraid of Iran's deterrence power. Iran's deterrence power has been experienced by the US in the past 37 years and they are afraid of Iran's power, the commander added. Since Iran has been demonized by US officials, US sailors who entered Iranian waters illegally were really frightened of Iranian soldiers when arrested, he said. 9191**1664 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kurdish, volunteer fighters halt clashes in north Iraqi town Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 5:58PM Iraqi Kurdish and volunteer fighters have reached an agreement to cease hostilities in a disputed town north of the country. Hadi Ameri, the commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), said on Sunday that paramilitary fighters had reached a deal to end the fighting in Tuz Khormato in Salahuddin Province. Ameri said the senior figures from the two sides will "sit down imminently" to discuss the terms of an agreement which is meant to calm down the situation in the city located about 130 miles (200 kilometers) north of Baghdad. "We are against any conflict involving Turkmens, Kurds and Arabs in Tuz Khormato and reject military solution," said Ameri who reportedly traveled to the city after fighting surged between the Kurdish peshmerga forces and Shia fighters. The fighting on Sunday came after two neighbors, a Kurd and a Shia Turkmen, became involved into a quarrel only to trigger a wider military confrontation in the city, said Karim al-Nouri, the spokesman for PMF. The official accused the Kurds of using tanks and shelling homes belong to Turkmen residents. The pledge for cessation of hostilities came after Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the Joint Military Command to "take all the necessary military measures to control the situation in Tuz Khormato and to avoid the consequences." The city, mainly dominated by Shia Turkmens, was once under heavy attacks by Daesh, a Takfiri group which controls territories in north and west of Iraq. An extensive operation by the PMF and allied military units secured the area although clashes have continued since then between the Shia force and Kurdish fighters over the control of the town in Iraq's Salahuddin province. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Volunteer forces clash with Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 9:58AM Iraqi volunteer forces engaged in clashes with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in the northern part of the war-hit country during the late hours of Saturday. At least nine people were killed and 30 others wounded during the fighting in the town of Tuz Khurmatu that broke out when a small explosion near the positions of the two sides sparked shootings between the communities in neighborhoods across the town. The violence also cut a strategic road between the capital, Baghdad, and the northern city of Kirkuk, security sources said. The death toll from clashes, which continued on Sunday morning, is expected to rise because snipers were preventing people from carrying the injured to hospital. The two sides' delegations are scheduled to hold discussions in Tuz Khurmatu later on Sunday to try to settle the dispute as military reinforcements are reportedly gathering outside the town. Iraq has been engaged in the fight against the Takfiri Daesh terrorists since the summer of 2014, when the militants took control of the major city of Mosul in the north and some other areas in the country. Both the Peshmerga and volunteer fighters have assisted the army of Iraq in the battle. The allied forces have managed to liberate several cities and towns from Daesh over the past months. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UK may take military action in Libya if requested Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 3:41PM The United Kingdom has raised the possibility of using military force in Libya to help legitimate Libyan authorities bring the security situation in the country under control. British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Sunday that he could not rule out sending troops to Libya if requested by Libya's government. "It wouldn't make sense to rule anything out because you never know how things are going to evolve," Hammond told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. Hammond added that the UK would consider military airstrikes and naval support for a Libyan-led attack on Daesh in Sirte, and that the future use of ground troops cannot be ruled out. Daesh took control of Libya's northern port city of Sirte in June 2015, making it the first city to be governed by the Takfiri militant group outside of Iraq and Syria. News outlets have reported that the special forces unit of the British Army, the SAS, is already operating in Libya, while it has also been suggested that up to 1,000 British troops could be sent to help train a new army. The refusal by the British government to rule out military action in Libya is reportedly meant to promote the unity government formed for the country and led by Fayez Seraj, its prime minister. Libya plunged into a political and security vacuum after militias backed by NATO forces toppled long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The Daesh terrorist group has taken advantage of the chaos, boosting its presence in the violence-wracked country and recruiting militant fighters from among members of local tribes, as well as enlisting former military personnel belonging to the ousted Gaddafi regime. Since August 2014, when militias seized the capital city, Tripoli, Libya has been divided between two governments; one is run by the rebels in the capital and the other, which is internationally-recognized, is stationed in the far eastern Libyan city of Tobruk. The unity government led by Seraj was formed out of an agreement by the two rival governments last December. It has been endorsed by the United Nations (UN). It has, however, had difficulty taking over. NATO has also expressed willingness to provide military help in case Libya needed reinforcement to restore security. The new unity government is also expected to stop the flow of refugees fleeing from war and persecution to Europe. Another major task ahead of the government is restoring the country's oil industry, dilapidated by the violence and destruction. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Seoul Condemns Pyongyang's Submarine Missile Launch, Threatens Response Sputnik News 13:30 24.04.2016 South Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said that North Korea's new test-firing is a clear violation of the UN Security Council resolution. TOKYO (Sputnik) South Korea has condemned North Korea's recent underwater test launch of a ballistic missile and pledged to take retaliatory measures if Pyongyang continues to violate UN resolutions, the country's Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said Sunday in a statement. Earlier in the day, Pyongyang confirmed that it tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile off the eastern coast the day before, stating that the test launch was a "remarkable success." "Regardless of the success or failure, North Korea's new test-firing is a clear violation of the UN Security Council resolution [The government] will take necessary actions in close cooperation with major countries if North Korea makes additional provocations," Cho said. The South Korean Defense Ministry said Pyongyang may deploy submarine-launched ballistic missiles in the next three to four years for actual combat use, having made progress in underwater ejection capabilities. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated after North Korea successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test in early January and put a satellite into orbit a month later, violating UN Security Council resolutions and triggering condemnation from the international community. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia's 'Revolutionary' Hypersonic Weapons Second to None Sputnik News 13:51 23.04.2016 The development of hypersonic weapons in Russia is something that makes US defense officials feel extremely uneasy, according to the American news website Washington Free Beacon. US defense officials are alarmed that Russia has continued to develop hypersonic weapons while the US has lagged behind, the American news website Washington Free Beacon reported. The remarks came after a source said that the Russian Strategic Missile Forces had carried out a successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch involving a hypersonic glide vehicle. The test launch was performed earlier this week using an RS-18A (NATO codename: SS-19 Stiletto) strategic ballistic missile from a missile deployment area in the Orenburg Region in the country's east. "Russia conducted a flight test of a revolutionary hypersonic glide vehicle that will deliver nuclear or conventional warheads through advanced missile defenses," the Washington Free Beacon quoted US military officials as saying. Recalling that this was the second such test in Russia, the Washington Free Beacon quoted Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza as saying that "the Department of Defense has nothing to offer on this." Apart from Russia, China and the United States are also developing hypersonic missiles, including gliders and "jet-powered vehicles that travel at extreme speeds." While China successfully conducted six tests of its DF-ZF hypersonic glider, "a US Army hypersonic missile blew up shortly after launch in August 2014," according to the Washington Free Beacon. "Hypersonic missiles are being developed to defeat increasingly sophisticated missile defenses. The weapons are designed for use in rapid, long-range strikes," the website said. It also cited Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin as saying that hypersonic weapons are of paramount importance and that "whoever is first to achieve" more progress in their development would "overturn the principles" of how wars are waged. Additionally, the Washington Free Beacon referred to Rep. Mike Rogers, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, who voiced concern about the matter. "I'm troubled that Russia and China continue to outpace the US in the development of these prompt global strike capabilities," he said. He was echoed by former Pentagon strategic forces policymaker Mark Schneider, who said that the US hypersonic weapons program compares poorly to the Russian one in terms of scale and technological characteristics. "US programs involving hypersonic vehicles are modest by comparison. I would be surprised if we actually deploy one. If we do, it will likely be conventional. Russian hypersonic vehicles will likely either be nuclear armed or nuclear capable," he pointed out. He also quoted Russian state media as saying that a hypersonic cruise missile is now being developed for Russian naval vessels, such as the fifth generation Husky missile submarine, which has yet to be constructed. The Russian hypersonic anti-ship missile Tsirkon is due to enter service already by 2018, Rogers said, adding that the yet-to-be-completed Russian next-generation stealth bomber PAK DA will also be armed with air-launched hypersonic missiles. According to the Washington Free Beacon, hypersonic speed ranges between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or 3,836 miles per hour to 7,673 miles per hour, something that will certainly pose a serious challenge for arms manufacturers. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi king dismisses utilities minister over price hikes Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 12:22PM Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has dismissed the kingdom's water and electricity minister amid growing anger over unpopular increases in the utilities' prices. King Salman issued a decree on Saturday, sacking Abdullah al-Hussayen, the official SPA news agency reported. The Saudi king appointed Agriculture Minister Abdel Rahman al-Fadli as the acting minister for water and electricity. The kingdom has reduced subsidies on water, electricity and fuel as part of the reforms adopted last December to cope with low oil prices and the ensuing budget deficit. Last month, al-Hussayen reportedly told people angry at high water bills to get permission to dig their own wells. Earlier this month, the Arab News Daily said that the Shura Council was "unconvinced" when its members criticized Hussayen for the price hikes. Also in December, the Finance Ministry said in a statement that the country would be running a budget deficit of $87 billion in 2016, which will be its third annual shortfall in a row. Riyadh is also projecting spending next year at 840 billion riyals ($224 billion), the statement added. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is responsible for the economic reforms, is expected to announce plans on Monday for diversifying the kingdom's economy that depends on oil for 70 percent of state revenues. He, however, said earlier this month that the ministry's new water tariff was not satisfactory. He added, "Now, we are working diligently on reforms within the water ministry so that things will be in accordance with the agreed plan." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi King Fires Utilities Minister Amid Outrage Over Price Hikes by VOA News April 24, 2016 King Salman of Saudi Arabia has fired the country's water and electricity minister following massive public backlash over a price hike on utilities. The move Saturday comes less than six months after the government cut subsidies on water, electricity and other utilities. Abdullah al-Hussayen will be replaced by Abdel Rahman al-Fadhli, Saudi Arabia's current agriculture minister. The Saudi government announced the steep cut in utility subsidies in December as oil prices dropped around the world and it needed to rein in spending. Anger at rising water prices As prices of water began to rise, Saudis became increasingly vocal on social media about their displeasure, and the Consumer Protection Association asked the government to rethink its decision. In March, Hussayen responded to the public outcry by instructing citizens to get permits and dig their own wells to offset the rising water bills. Earlier this month, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the ministry's decision to raise utilities prices "unsatisfactory." "Now, we are working diligently on reforms within the water ministry so that things will be in accordance with the agreed plan," he said in an interview with Bloomberg, though he did not provide further details. The oil-dependent country is attempting to diversify its economy, which currently relies on oil for about 70 percent of state revenues, and Prince Mohammed is set to announce plans for a post-oil future during an event Monday. Some material for this report came from AFP. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Militant attacks kill 12 civilians across Syria Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 1:22PM Militants have launched fresh rounds of attacks on civilians and security forces across Syria, killing at least 12 and injuring a number of others. The Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen TV said that rounds of shelling by militants on two residential neighborhoods in the northern city of Aleppo left 11 people dead, including women and children. The report said the rocket attacks targeted al-Neel Street and the New Aleppo neighborhood, saying fatalities came mainly due to the destruction of houses in those areas. Syria's official SANA agency said rocket shells also fell in al-Hamadaniyeh neighborhood of Aleppo, inflicting losses on private and public properties. It said the attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and other armed groups operating inside and near Aleppo. SANA said militants from Nusra and the so-called Ahrar al-Sham group also launched rounds of mortar attacks on al-Sqeilbiyeh city and al-Jaberiyeh village in Hama province, again in north Syria, killing one civilian and injuring four others. It said four of the shells hit residential neighborhoods, while the other 10 fell in the surroundings of the cities and villages located in the northwestern countryside of Hama. The attacks came one day after four residential neighborhoods of Aleppo and two in and around the capital Damascus were targeted by militants, leading to four deaths. Syrian officials say the attacks show lack of seriousness in the opposition to respect a truce deal which is currently holding in the Arab country. The ceasefire, which was brokered by the United States and Russia in late February, was meant to facilitate ongoing peace talks in Switzerland between the government and the foreign-backed opposition. The deal excludes al-Nusra Front and Daesh. Damascus and militant groups involved in the ceasefire have been trading accusations of truce violation. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syria Ceasefire Backed by 71 Settlements Sputnik News 23:38 24.04.2016(updated 23:50 24.04.2016) The Russian Defense Ministry said that the number of Syrian settlements that signed up to the US-Russia-brokered ceasefire has reached 71. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The number of Syrian settlements that signed up to the US-Russia-brokered ceasefire has reached 71, the Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday. "The total number of settlements, the leaders of which had signed reconciliation agreements, has reached 71," the Russian center for reconciliation said in a bulletin. A US-Russia-brokered ceasefire came into force across Syria on February 27. It was supported by Damascus, as well as by dozens of opposition groups on the ground. The Islamic State (Daesh) and the al-Nusra Front terror groups, both outlawed in Russia, are not part of the deal. The Ceasefire has largely been holding in parts of Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry noted, adding the regime was breached 13 times in the past 24 hours. "The ceasefire regime has been observed in most provinces of the Syrian Arab Republic. Within last 24 hours, 13 ceasefire violations have been registered (Damascus 5, Latakia 3, Homs and Aleppo 2 for each)," the Russian center for reconciliation said in a bulletin. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. It is necessary to recognize the independence of Artsakh to ensure the security of Nagorno Karabakhs people. MEP, head of EU-Artsakh friendship group Frank Engel told about this in a press conference at Armenpress media hall. After the 4-day war of early April, this is the first time I visited Stepanakert. I believe that it is better if I get acquainted to the situation on site. And the impressions I had in Artsakh confirmed my concerns. The war waged by Azerbaijan is a consequence of hatred that has been propagated by Azerbaijani authorities for years. The situation grows more complex considering Turkish involvement in all these, Frank Engel said. He mentioned that at the moment negotiations and discussions are stalled as the situation dictates so. The MEP believes that now the issue must urgently be put on the table with a focus of recognition of Karabakhs independence. The international community is obliged to protect the people of Artsakh. The aspiration of Azerbaijan is to ruin the NKR and everything that exists there. From now on no one must have any doubts that Azerbaijan was the aggressor. The murder of the elderly people, cutting off their ears, beheading soldiers, and the act of proudly disseminating the photos by Azerbaijanis evidencing all these is a blatant proof who was the aggressor. Currently people commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and we must clearly understand that another genocide may occur, the MEP said. In his words, all these events lead to a conclusion that the people of Artsakh are endangered and that can be prevented only by recognizing the independence of Artsakh. Frank Engel stated that he will make efforts together with his college MEPs for the recognition of Artsakhs independence. Al-Nusra Front Focusing Powers Near Syria's Aleppo City Sputnik News 23:28 24.04.2016(updated 23:53 24.04.2016) he Russian Defense Ministry reported that al-Nusra Front jihadist group continues focusing its powers northwest of Syria's Aleppo city and in northeastern parts of the Latakia province. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Al-Nusra Front jihadist group continues focusing its powers northwest of Syria's Aleppo city and in northeastern parts of the Latakia province, the Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday. "According to information received from civilians, Jabhat al-Nusra [al-Nusra Front] terrorist group continues concentrating its forces to north-west of Aleppo and in northeastern regions of the Latakia province," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website. The ministry also reported that Ahrar al-Sham militants shelled settlements in Syrian Latakia province, as well as army positions in the province of Aleppo. "In the Latakia province, militants of Ahrar al-Sham grouping, which had claimed to belong to the opposition, carried out shelling with mortars and multiple launch rocket systems against Sandran, Beit Smaira and Shmaisa," the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation said. According to the bulletin, Ahrar al-Sham militants also attacked positions of the government troops in suburbs of Sheikh Maqsood and Salah al-Din cities in Aleppo province with small arms and mortars. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Jaysh al-Islam Shells Cities in Damascus Province Sputnik News 23:26 24.04.2016(updated 23:43 24.04.2016) The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Jaysh al-Islam militant group shelled several cities in Syria's Damascus province on Sunday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The Jaysh al-Islam militant group shelled several cities in Syria's Damascus province on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said. "Armed formations of Jaysh al-Islam opposition grouping, which had claimed to belong to the opposition, carried out shelling with mortars against Jaubar, al-Sakhiayh, Harasta, Duma and Kabun in the Damascus province," the Russian center for reconciliation said in a bulletin. Russia has been mediating a ceasefire in parts of Syria since February. More than 50 armed groups have signed up to the truce with the government, although the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State (Daesh) terror groups are not part of the deal. The ministry also reported that formations of the Free Syrian Army militant group shelled towns in the Syrian province of Hama and positions of the government forces in the Homs province. "Formations of Free Syrian Army performed mortar shelling against Tell al-Tut in the Hama province, and positions of the government troops near Teir Maala and Tell al-Dahab in the Homs province," the Russian center for reconciliation said. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian Army Bags Key Homs Province Oilfields From Daesh Terrorists Sputnik News 09:40 24.04.2016(updated 14:57 24.04.2016) The Syrian Army and the country's National Defense Forces launched fresh attacks against Daesh strongholds in the central province of Homs, forcing the terrorists to retreat from their positions. The Syrian Army and the country's National Defense Forces (NDF) in Homs province in central Syria, prompting jihadists to retreat, the Iranian news agency FARS reported. FARS quoted military sources as saying that the Syrian troops attacked Daesh forces in the territories between the recently-liberated cities of Quaryatayn and Palmyra and along the strategically important Palmyra-Raqqa highway, in an assault that lefty dozens of terrorists dead and many more wounded. "A number of hilltops have been recaptured in the Bardeh Mountains and the government forces have started to fortify their positions in the newly-captured lands," the sources said. The new attacks came shortly after reports that the Syrian Army and the NDF have considerably advanced against Daesh terrorists in the eastern part of Homs province, restoring security to more regions near Palmyra and deploying their troops near part of Homs Province which is considered the most energy-rich region in the country. Quaryatayn, to the west of Palmyra, was liberated earlier this month; in August, 2015 Daesh terrorists captured the town, abducted 320 of its citizens including 60 Christians, and destroyed a 1,500 year-old Christian monastery. According to the sources, "the Syrian government forces pushed the ISIL terrorists back from a long chunk of Palmyra-Raqqa the highway and have positioned their forces around the Arak oilfields." "The rapid advances of the Syrian Army and popular forces against Daesh in the eastern part of Homs province will end the terrorist group's rule over the oil and gas fields," the sources added. Syria has been mired in a civil war since 2011, with forces loyal to the country's President Bashar Assad fighting a number of opposition factions and extremist groups, including Daesh and the Al-Nusra Front, which have been blacklisted as terrorist organizations by many countries, including Russia. In February 2015, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2268, endorsing a Russia-US agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria; the ceasefire came into force shortly thereafter, on February 27, and fighting throughout much of the country subsided. However, Daesh and the Al-Nusra Front were not included in the truce. Between September 30, 2015 and March 14, 2016, the Syrian Army's anti-terror efforts were backed by an extensive Russian air campaign. During that period, more than fifty Russian warplanes, including Su-24M, Su-25 and Su-34 jets, conducted precision airstrikes on Daesh and Al-Nusra targets in Syria at the behest of President Assad. However, on March 14 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian Aerospace Forces unit had fulfilled its mission in Syria and that its withdrawal would begin the following day. Nonetheless, Russian air power was used by Assad's forces in the liberation of the ancient city of Palmyra. Moscow will maintain a military presence in Syria, although a deadline for a complete pullout has not yet been announced. Putin also indicated that Russian forces will remain at the port of Tartus and Hmeymim Airbase. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey president needs thicker skin against criticism: EU official Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 4:53PM A senior EU official suggests Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs to develop a "thick skin" against criticisms amid growing crackdown on critical media by Ankara. Donald Tusk, the European Council president, made the remarks during a recent visit along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a refugee camp at Gaziantep near the Turkish-Syrian border . "As a politician, I have learned and accepted to have a thick skin, and I have no expectation that the Press will treat me with a special care - quite the opposite," Tusk said, adding, "The line between criticism, insult and defamation is very thin and relative, and the moment politicians decide which is which can mean the end between freedom of expression, in Europe, in Turkey, in Africa and Russia, everywhere." Recalling his own imprisonment in the 1980s for opposing Poland's communist government, Tusk said that he "was imprisoned for being critical of the regime - and if I remember well, my good friend President Erdogan had a similar experience 15 years later for expressing his views." The remarks come at a time when EU's top brass face huge criticism over the body's inaction on the freedom of speech restrictions in Turkey. Merkel is especially targeted after she decided last week to allow German prosecutors and courts probe into an alleged insult by German satirist Jan Boehmermann against President Erdogan. Meanwhile, Turkey on Sunday also briefly detained a Dutch journalist for a tweet deemed critical of Turkish President Erdogan. Ebru Umar, a columnist of Turkish origin, tweeted early on Sunday that police were at her door and that she was being taken to a police station in Turkey's western resort of Kusadasi. A court in Istanbul has recently held another hearing for two Turkish journalists the opposition Cumhuriyet daily's editor-in-chief Can Dundar and Cumhuriyet daily's Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul who had accused the government of aiding terrorists in Syria. Many rights groups from across the globe have been calling on Western countries to press Turkey on the issue of human rights. Trials for insulting Erdogan have multiplied since he was elected to the presidency in August 2014, with approximately 2,000 such cases currently open in Turkey. The developments also come as EU officials are accused of compromising on freedom of expression in order to ensure Turkey's continued co-operation to tackle the refugee crisis. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has recently urged the leaders of the European Union to get a correct understanding of the desperate situation of refugees at the Turkish-Syrian border and rethink a controversial deal they reached with Turkey for deportation of the asylum seekers. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address New clashes kill three army soldiers in east Ukraine: Kiev Iran Press TV Sun Apr 24, 2016 12:56PM The Ukrainian military has announced the death of three of its soldiers in a fresh wave of clashes with pro-Russia forces in the country's troubled east. "As a result of hostilities, three Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another six wounded over the past 24 hours," Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for Kiev's military, said on Sunday. Accusing the pro-Russia forces of increasing attacks against the Ukrainian military and using heavy weapons, Motuzyanyk said the situation along the front-line "had escalated again." Conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine after people in the country's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea voted for unification with Russia in March 2014. The West brands the development as Moscow's annexation of the territory. The US and its allies in Europe also accuse Moscow of having a major hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, a charge that Moscow denies. Ukraine's eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations later in April 2014 to crush pro-Moscow protests there. The crisis has left around 9,200 people dead and over 21,000 others injured, according to the United Nations. In September 2014, the government in Kiev and the pro-Russians signed a ceasefire agreement in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk in a bid to halt the clashes in Ukraine's eastern regions. They agreed on 12 points, including pulling back heavy weapons, releasing prisoners, setting up a buffer zone on the Russia-Ukraine border, and allowing access to international observers. The warring sides also inked another truce deal, dubbed Minsk II, in February 2015 under the supervision of Russia, Germany and France. Since then, however, both parties have on numerous occasions accused each other of breaking the ceasefire. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama: Russia Sanctions Must Remain Until Moscow Complies With Minsk Deal April 24, 2016 by RFE/RL U.S. President Barack Obama says he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agree that Ukraine-related sanctions targeting Russia should only be lifted if Moscow complies with a deal to end fighting between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists. "Sanctions on Russia can and should only be lifted once Russia fully complies with its commitments under the Minsk [peace] agreement," Obama told an April 24 news conference in Hanover after meeting with Merkel during the last leg of a six-day foreign trip to shore up U.S. alliances. Merkel said that the cease-fire was not stable and that she and Obama had discussed implementation of the February 2015 peace deal brokered in Minsk to end to the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 9,100 since April 2014. "Unfortunately, we do not have any stable cease-fire yet and we must make progress in the political process," Merkel said, adding that she and Obama "discussed very detailed steps to be taken next in this regard." The Kremlin has repeatedly blamed Kyiv for failing to implement the Minsk agreement. Obama also offered words of support to the new Ukrainian government under Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman, who earlier this month replaced the embattled Arseniy Yatsenyuk amid stalled reforms that have frustrated Kyiv's Western allies and creditors. "We welcome the formation of a new government in Ukraine, which we encourage to continue the political, economic, and energy reforms that can deliver progress for the Ukrainian people," Obama said. Obama arrived in Germany earlier in the day to push for a new EU-U.S. trade pact and take part in an April 25 summit with key EU leaders. The White House says the summit with Merkel and the leaders of France, Britain, and Italy will also address counterterrorism efforts following attacks in Paris and Brussels, the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, the European refugee crisis, and Libya. Speaking at the news conference, Obama made a plea for the warring parties in Syria to return to peace talks and "reinstate" a cease-fire. He said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have escalating bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. "We remain deeply concerned about the upsurge in fighting in Syria over the last several days, and we continue to agree that the only real durable solution is a political solution that moves Syria towards an inclusive government that represents all Syrians," Obama said. He spoke of a "tragic humanitarian crisis" in the war-torn country and said he continued to believe in a political solution to the fighting there, noting that he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to try "to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities." With reporting by Reuters and AP Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ russia-ukraine-obama-merkel-sanctions- remain-until-minsk-deal/27693954.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Chernobyl's Ring Of Fire: Signs Point To Rising Risk April 24, 2016 by Christian Borys Canadian scientist and leading Chernobyl researcher Dr. Timothy Mousseau says the potential for fresh catastrophe is hidden in the forests of the exclusion zone around the site of the world's worst nuclear accident. Decades of extensive studies have led Mousseau to warn that a bolt from the blue, or the strike of a match, could lead to forest fires that send clouds of toxic, radioactive fallout spewing into the skies above Europe. Two acts of suspected arson caused "large fires" in the 30-kilometer no-go zone around Chernobyl in the past year that burned long, fed by peat bogs, but "weren't particularly hazardous in terms of radioactivity," Mousseau says. But he adds that "there was a third fire last year that made its way through part of the 'red forest,' which is the most contaminated part of the exclusion zone." "It was relatively small, so they contained it fairly quickly, but it's the type of thing that has the potential to do serious harm if it had spread much more," Mousseau says. "The radioactivity that is contained in the woods would be put back up into the atmosphere, and depending on which way the wind was blowing, and whether it was raining or not, would be redeposited somewhere else." His and other research into the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that began on April 26, 1986, suggests that the toxic plume from a major fire could carry caesium-137, strontium-90, or iodine-131 across Europe, depending on which way the wind is blowing. "If you look at the map of Europe from the original disaster, you'll get an idea of just how heterogeneous the deposition was," Mousseau says. "At the time of the accident, there was this huge fire for 10 days and the plume actually penetrated into the stratosphere, allowing radionuclides to be transported for thousands of miles." The risk is compounded by the effects of a warming planet as well as the accumulation of dead leaves, fallen logs, or dry grass. "This dead organic matter on the surface of the soil is highly radioactive," Mousseau says. "When it dries out, it becomes a big fire hazard and this fuel load is what generates catastrophic forest fires." Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/chernobyl-ring-of- fire-signs-point-to-rising-risk/27693798.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. An event dedicated to the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide took place near the monument Our victims in the Republic Square, Strasbourg on April 24. Armenpress was informed about this from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia. Armenia 's Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Armen Papikyan, Deputy Mayor of Strasbourg, other officials, representatives of NGOs and the Armenian community were present at the event, who paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. In his speech Armen Papikyan particularly referred to Armenias century-old struggle against denialism, stating that in the 21st century Armenia has assumed an important role in fighting against genocides and crimes against humanity. The Permanent representative of Armenia to CoE also touched upon the recent aggression of Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh and in that context stated that the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is now repeated in the Middle East by militant groups and the Azerbaijani forces against the civilians and servicemen of Artsakh. Armen Papikyan expressed deep sorrow for the fact that the international community does not fully realize the seriousness of the general threat stemming from the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem, considering the state policy of anti-Armenianism and denialism in those countries, and the gradually growing violation of human rights, freedom of speech, European values and other democratic principles. In his speech Deputy Mayor of Strasbourg Rafik-Elmrini reconfirmed the unconditioned faithfulness to Armenia and the Armenian people, putting a strong emphasis on inadmissibility of the denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey, as denialism impedes reconciliation opportunities, engendering new crimes against humanity in different corners of the world. As several companies from around the world of telecoms share their Q3 results, here is a financial round-up with all of the key points. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan had a phone conversation with the US Secretary of State John Kerry. The conversation took place upon the initiative of the American side. The interlocutors discussed the situation in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone after the gross ceasefire violation by Azerbaijan. President Sargsyan stated that the unreasonable steps of Baku have greatly damaged the peace process. As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Staff, the US Secretary of State reconfirmed the full support of the USA for the peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The sides stated that the peaceful settlement of the conflict has no alternative and it is necessary to find mechanisms for mutually acceptable solution based on the fundamental principles. The role pf the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs was highlighted since it is the only internationally authorized format. --- GoAugie.com --- Augustana track and field return from a busy previous weekend to compete in the Red Raider Open hosted by Northwestern College.running for the first time this season in the 100-meter hurdles finished in first crossing the line at 14.82.came in third with season best time of 15.14.finished first in the women's long jump with a jump of 5.56 meters (18 feet, three inches).came in second in the women's triple jump with a jump of 10.88 meters (35 feet 8.5 inches).finished in second in the men's 110-meter hurdles crossing the line at 14.94.Moos finished in second in the women's 200-meter dash with a time of 25.59.came in fourth with a time of 25.97.came in third in the women's 400-meter dash with a time of 1:01.67.finished in sixth with a time of 1:01.99.came in eighth crossing the line at 1:03.38.finished in third in the women's 100-meter dash crossing the line at 12.62.came in third in the women's high jump clearing the bar at 1.53 meters (five and a half feet).came in fifth in the men's high jump clearing the bar at 1.76 meters (5 feet, 9.5 inches).On Friday,finished in first in the men's 5000-meter run crossing the line at 15:04.27.came in third with a time of 15:17.00.finished in fourth crossing the line at 15:27.94.finished in seventh with a time of 15.41.31,came in eighth with a time of 15:43.52 andcame in ninth with a time of 15:47.09.The women's 4x800 meter relay team ofandfinished in second crossing the line at 9:25.81.The men's 4x800 meter relay team ofandcame in fifth with a time of 8:05.67.finished in fifth in the men's hammer throw with a throw of 47.64 meters (156 feet, three inches).placed fifth in the women's pole vault clearing the bar at 3.05 meters (10 feet).Augustana will have another busy weekend next weekend at they compete in the Drake Relays, the Kip Janvrin Invitational and the NSIC Multi Events. Last August as raindrops started to fall on the city, a Danville utility truck drove onto the lawn of the Sutherlin Mansion to remove the Third National flag of the Confederacy from a monument that had stood for two decades. That monument itself was a compromise from an earlier time. A city police officer removed the flag moments after Danville City Council passed an ordinance 7-2 that restricted what kinds of flags could fly on city-owned property. The flag removal ignited a controversy in Danville and spurred flaggers to protest by erecting several types of Confederate flags near roads in the Dan River Region. Danville won the first time the case went to court, but that has been appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court. This year, we asked candidates for Danville City Council, Would you vote to put the Third National Flag of the Confederacy back on the monument located on the lawn of the Sutherlin Mansion? Sheila Baynes I was an outspoken supporter of removing the Confederate flag from city owned property and I will not support putting it back. Council was correct not to give in to threats and intimidation. Larry Campbell We have bigger issues than this. We have an education system that is not meeting standards, we have an unemployment rate that is greater than the state average, we have a crime issue that needs to be tackled, we have homeless families, displaced workers and unengaged citizens. So lets move on weve made a stance on this issue, now I have bigger problems to handle. Most of the people that bring the flag up arent from Danville lets move forward. Robin M. Dabney Danville City Council serves as a legislative form of government establishing rules, ordinances, and policies for the betterment of public health, public safety and the welfare of citizens. On Aug. 6, 2015, City Council voted to adopt a city ordinance to ban the Confederate flag from all city-owned flag poles. As this ruling stands, any information I provide will be personal opinion not directive. Since the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History currently leases the Sutherlin Mansion (the museum requested the flag be taken down from the Sutherlin Mansion in 2014), the matter is considered resolved and not political unless the courts rule otherwise. As Ive always stated, the matter should have been resolved among all parties prior to a final decree to avoid future disputes as we are now experiencing. Philip Haley No! It is time we move beyond the flag issue. We need to focus our attention on bigger issues like workforce development, job creation, infrastructure, education and fiscal responsibility. It is important to remember and learn from history but that can be accomplished without placing the flag on the lawn of the Sutherlin Mansion. Jim Lindley Danville City Council voted to remove the flag in August 2015. As a result of the handling of the removal of the flag, a lawsuit was filed that now has the issue tied up in the Virginia Supreme Court. The determination on the flag is out of the hands of City Council. Trina McLaughlin Many never noticed the flag at Sutherlin Mansion, and I will be honest I never paid attention to it until the issue came up. If the issue is presented to City Council, I will vote no to putting in back outside of Sutherlin Mansion as long as the city owns that property. Working and speaking with youth regarding this issue, many of our younger citizens would rather have that one little flag up at the mansion than the bigger flags waving in almost every corner of our city. Rev. Thomas Motley No, I would not. Sherman Saunders No. I consider the matter closed. Fred Shanks During the debates over the past two years on whether to keep the Third National flag of the Confederacy flying at the Last Capital of the Confederacy, I have maintained the opinion along with many other citizens that there is no place more appropriate to have that Third National flag displayed. The Sutherlin Mansion was purchased by the city in 1914 to preserve the historical significance of the Sutherlin Mansion as the Last Capital of the Confederacy. Private citizens purchased the building to save it from further disrepair and demolition. Those citizens along with the Daughters of the Confederacy expended a great deal of sweat and cash to save the building, and agreed to sale it to the city with the stipulation that the city government agree and promise that that building would remain a museum of the Civil War. With that understanding, agreement and promise, the city took title to the property. In 1994, after much discussion, debate and compromise, the city government passed a resolution and signed a compromise agreement, approved by City Council to erect a monument that consisted of an obelisk, a flagpole and a flag, the Third National Flag. Over the past two years, the debate of whether to honor those two agreements (1914 and 1994) has centered almost exclusively on whether or not the Third National flag should be flown on city-owned property. The opponents say no, the proponents say of all places, there is no place more appropriate to have that a historically correct Third National flag displayed over the historically significant Last Capital of the Confederacy. Why it has taken us 102 years to figure this out is utterly amazing. The Civil War is the most studied period of American history, and one of the most studied periods of all time. Virginia was the front line of a majority of the war, and Danville was part of that history. Danville has failed miserably to capitalize on the tourist attraction that could be realized by marketing its Civil War history the Sutherlin Mansion, the railroads, the prisons, the hospital, the river and the fortifications. Entrusting these assets to a real museum, that would market Danville as part of the Virginia Civil War Tour is a hidden jewel. So yes, I would hope to see a real Civil War museum, not owned by the city of Danville, with the historically correct Third National flag flying on the Civil War monument, operating on Main Street and claiming our citys rightful place in history and in tourism. This would not only open up the substantial opportunity of increased tourism, but also eliminate the substantial annual cost of $100,000 per year paid by the citizens of Danville for upkeep and maintenance. Lee Vogler This was a tough issue that City Council has dealt with for almost two years. There are strong emotions on both sides of the issue. It wasnt an issue that I brought to City Council but ultimately had to vote on. In the end, I couldnt justify flying that flag on property and a flagpole that is owned by the Danville city government and paid for by the taxpayers. The city classifies the grounds at the Sutherlin Mansion as a public park, no different than Ballou Park or Dan Daniel. Most people wouldnt think it would be appropriate to fly the Confederate flag in those places. I know there are some who believe the flag should be allowed to fly, whether its government property or not. I understand that and respect their right to believe that. I also respect the rights of people to fly whatever flag they choose on private property. City Council made a decision regarding flags and government property and the vote wasnt close. I know this vote upset many in our community but it has been upheld in court. When Im out in the community, the majority of people I hear from are ready to move forward, whether they agreed with the original vote or not. There are many important issues facing our city and votes that will be taken in the next four years. We need our citizens and our leaders to come together to face these issues. That will not happen if we continue to be dragged back into battles from the past. I know there are those who disagree with the vote I took and for those who believe flying the Confederate flag is the most important issue in Danville, I may not have their support, but I stand by the vote I took, because in my heart I believed it was the right thing to do. Madison Whittle The current council has made the decision and we have to abide by the law. People were hurt on both sides. I would like to see us move on and spend our time re-building relationships and dealing with issues to help our region prosper. Companies from around the world watch what is going on in Danville, and if we want to be successful in recruiting these companies, then we must show a positive attitude and that we are working together. YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Vladimir Hakobyan, Press Secretary of Armenias President, issued a statement over the rescue and investigative activities conducted at the scene of the bus explosion in Yerevan. Armenpress reports that according to the statement, the President of the Republic is regularly briefed on the process of the works. President Sargsyan has assigned the Police of the Republic of Armenia to reinforce patrol service. Ministry of Health takes all the necessary measures for providing the injured with medical aid. We call on the public to avoid spreading unconfirmed information, reads the statement. According to the preliminary information 2 people were killed and 7 other are injured. An alarm call was received at 21:51, April 25 that an explosion occurred in a bus N63 on Halabyan Street in Yerevan. Strategic US$1.1 billion combination creates a diversified mid-tier base metals company Transaction consolidates a 100% ownership of the high grade upper zone of the Timok Copper Project Timok development is underpinned by Nevsun's strong balance sheet and operating cash flow Combined company has significant exploration exposure in two prolific mining districts Significant benefits to both Nevsun and Reservoir shareholders Expedited Development of Timok. The Timok Project will be expedited to production for the benefit of all stakeholders. Premium value. Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on April 22, 2016, the consideration represents a premium of 124% over the trading price of Reservoir shares on March 2, 2016, the day prior to receiving notification of the ROFO and a 35% premium to the 20 day VWAP. Increases long-term exposure in Timok. Through Nevsun's funding of Global Reservoir's ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% stake and operatorship of the Upper Zone. Strong balance sheet and cash generation to fund Timok's growth potential. The transaction offers shareholders exposure to cash generated from the Bisha mine, a high grade mine which generated US$120 million of operating cash flow in 2015, and pro-forma US$300 million in cash to fund development. Strong operating team to advance the Timok project. Nevsun's management team has demonstrated the ability to develop and bring a mining project into production on time and under budget. Nevsun has invested over US$430 million in a three-phase development of the Bisha mine, all on-time and under budget. Increased capital market profile. Nevsun's shares are liquid with a strong institutional shareholder base. Completion of the arrangement should result in further increases in trading liquidity and a broader depth of major institutional shareholders. On strategy for diversification. The transaction delivers on the company's stated goal to diversify geographically through a strategic transaction. Attractive deployment of capital. The transaction puts Nevsun's cash balance and ongoing cash flow generation capacity to use in an attractive development project with a high projected return. High quality asset. The Upper Zone, a high grade copper-gold development project, is in a historic mining jurisdiction with excellent local and regional infrastructure. Increased growth potential. The Upper Zone significantly increases Nevsun's growth profile. In addition, the Lower Zone, a joint venture with Freeport, represents further upside in the potential large-tonnage porphyry style mineralization. Strategic partner. The combined company forms a strategic long-term partnership with Freeport, a leading copper and gold producer. VANCOUVER, April 24, 2016 - Nevsun Resources Ltd. ("Nevsun") (TSX: NSU) (NYSE MKT: NSU) and Reservoir Minerals Inc. ("Reservoir") (TSX Venture: RMC) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine their respective companies. The combination creates a diversified mid-tier base metals company with a cash producing operating asset in Bisha, a high grade open pit copper-zinc mine, and 100% ownership in the upper zone of the Timok Copper Project in Serbia ("Upper Zone"), a high grade copper and gold development project. The combined company will be well funded with Nevsun's existing strong balance sheet and operating cash flow and positioned to deliver value via Nevsun's highly successful development team.Under the terms of the arrangement agreement announced today, Nevsun has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding common shares, and restricted share units of Reservoir on the basis of two (2) common shares and $0.001 in cash for each Reservoir common share pursuant to a Plan of Arrangement under the British Columbia Business Corporations Act for a total value of approximately US$365 million. Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on April 22, 2016, the consideration represents a premium of 35% to Reservoir's 20-day volume weighted average price (VWAP). The transaction will allow both Reservoir and Nevsun shareholders to participate in the ongoing cash flow generation of the Bisha mine, the growth potential of the Timok Copper Project, and significant exploration potential at both Bisha and Timok. Upon completion of the arrangement, current Nevsun shareholders will own approximately 67% of the combined company and current Reservoir shareholders will own the remaining 33%.Concurrently, the two companies have also entered into a funding transaction comprised of a private placement for 19.99% of Reservoir's outstanding common shares and a loan transaction. Nevsun has subscribed for 12,174,928 common shares of Reservoir at a price of C$9.40 per share, for a total subscription price of CAD$114,444,323 (US$90,296,571), increasing Reservoir's total shares outstanding to 60,905,093, and provided an unsecured cash loan of US$44,703,429 to Reservoir. The combined funding transaction provides US$135,000,000 in financing to enable Global Reservoir Mineral (BVI) Inc. ("Global Reservoir"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Reservoir to exercise its right of first offer ("ROFO") in respect of its joint venture with Freeport International Holdings (BVI) Inc. ("Freeport") in the Timok Copper Project. Upon Global Reservoir closing the exercise of the ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% interest in the Upper Zone and a 60.4% interest in the lower zone of the Timok Copper Project ("Lower Zone") under two joint venture agreements with Freeport and will become the operator of the project. Freeport may increase its ownership in the Lower Zone to 54% under the terms of the original Timok JV agreement, with Global Reservoir holding the remaining 46%. Upon completion of the combination, Global Reservoir will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the combined company."This transaction diversifies Nevsun's asset base, putting our cash balance to work in a strategic and high return investment that will deliver significant value to our shareholders," said Mr. Cliff Davis, Nevsun's President and Chief Executive Officer. "The Upper Zone, with its high grade copper-gold resource and nearby infrastructure in a mining friendly jurisdiction, adds significant growth to Nevsun. With ongoing cash flow generation from our Bisha mine, we have the financial strength and proven technical ability to move the Timok project forward in a timely manner. We look forward to working with all stakeholders and Timok's highly capable partner in bringing the project into production.""This is an excellent outcome for Reservoir and its shareholders, delivering premium value, and most importantly will expedite the development of the Timok Copper-Gold Project to the benefit of all stakeholders," said Dr. Simon Ingram, Reservoir's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Reservoir's Board of Directors determined that this transaction is the best funding alternative for our shareholders to fund the Timok ROFO. Nevsun is a proven mine developer with the technical experience and strong balance sheet to enable Timok development. Reservoir shareholders retain exposure to the development potential of Timok and also gain exposure to the operating Bisha mine's cash flow and additional exploration potential. The combined company will be in a strong position to efficiently advance the Timok project to production."The Timok project represents four exploration permits in the highly prospective Timok Magmatic Complex in eastern Serbia, near the world class Bor and Majdenpek mines. The Timok project centres on the Cukaru Peki deposit, which includes the Upper Zone (characterized by massive and semi-massive sulphide mineralization) and the Lower Zone (characterized by porphyry-style mineralization). Refer to Reservoir's April 19, 2016 news release announcing the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Timok JV Project and Cukaru Peki deposit. The Timok project is a joint venture with Freeport governed by a joint venture shareholders agreement.Freeport is currently the Timok Project operator and is fully funding the project. Following exercise of the ROFO, Global Reservoir will be appointed the operator until completion of the combination and until the occurrence of certain events, will advance the development of both the Upper Zone and the Lower Zone in accordance with approved budgets and work programs. Global Reservoir will have the sole right to propose budgets and work programs relating to the Upper Zone and for certain agreed Lower Zone work, and Freeport will have the sole right to propose budgets and work programs relating to the Lower Zone, subject to specified exceptions. Until the delivery of a feasibility study, Global Reservoir will fund 100% of the Upper Zone development costs, as well as US$20 million of agreed Lower Zone work. Global Reservoir and Freeport will fund 28% and 72% of all other Lower Zone development costs, respectively.The directors and management of both Nevsun and Reservoir have entered into agreements pursuant to which they have committed to vote their respective common shares, in favour of the arrangement. In addition, Nevsun, following completion of its subscription for Reservoir common shares will own 19.99% of Reservoir's outstanding common shares.Major shareholders of Nevsun have expressed support for the transaction.The arrangement has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Reservoir and Nevsun.The Boards of both Nevsun and Reservoir have received fairness opinions from independent financial advisors, and recommend their respective shareholders vote in favour of the arrangement.The implementation of the arrangement is subject to certain customary closing conditions, including the approval of two-thirds of the votes cast by Reservoir's common shareholders and option holders at a special meeting, approval by a majority of votes cast by Nevsun shareholders at a special meeting, approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange and court approval. Completion of the arrangement is also conditional on the successful exercise by Global Reservoir of its ROFO in respect of the original Timok joint venture agreement.Post closing, the Nevsun Board will include two directors from Reservoir. The arrangement is expected to close late in the second quarter of 2016.The terms and conditions of the arrangement will be disclosed in a further detail in an information circular to be mailed to Reservoir shareholders in advance of the special meeting of Reservoir common shareholders to approve the arrangement. A copy of the arrangement agreement, the information circular and related documents will be filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities and will be available under Reservoir's profile at www.sedar.com.Scotia Capital Inc. is acting as financial advisor to Nevsun and has provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Nevsun that the arrangement is fair from a financial point of view to Nevsun shareholders. Stikeman Elliott LLP is acting as legal advisor to Nevsun and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is advising Nevsun with respect to U.S. securities matters. Canaccord Genuity and Natural Resources Global Capital Partners are acting as financial advisor to Reservoir and Canaccord Genuity has provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Reservoir that the arrangement is fair from a financial point of view to Reservoir shareholders. Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP is acting as legal advisor to Reservoir.Nevsun and Reservoir will hold an investment community conference call and webcast April 25, 2016 at 6:00 a.m. Vancouver / 9:00 a.m. Toronto, New York / 2:00 p.m. London. Conference call details are as follows:North America: 1 888-231-8191 / 1 866-865-3087 / 1 647 427-7450UK: 0800 051-7107 (toll free)Other International: +1 647 427-7450Conference ID: 99383803To Access Webcast:http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1181319&s=1&k=44AC7C99A26A06D9D46D8A84DDC37B5BPlease call/log-in 10 to 15 minutes before the conference call starts.A presentation accompanying the conference call will be available from the Nevsun (www.nevsun.com) and Reservoir (www.reservoirminerals.com) websites.The conference call will be available for replay until June 30, 2016, by calling 1 855-859-2056 / +1 778-371-8506 and entering passcode 99383803. Nevsun Resources Ltd. is the 60% owner of the high grade Bisha Mine in Eritrea. Bisha has over 9 years of reserve life, generating revenue from both copper and zinc concentrates containing gold and silver by-products. Nevsun has a strong balance sheet with over US$400 million in cash, no debt and pays a peer leading quarterly dividend. Nevsun is well positioned to grow shareholder value through exploration at Bisha and acquisition of additional mining assets. Reservoir Minerals Inc. is an international mineral exploration and development company run by an experienced technical and management team, with a portfolio of precious and base metal exploration properties in Europe and Africa. The Company operates an exploration partnership business model to leverage its expertise through to discovery.This news release contains forward-looking statements and/or forward-looking information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimated," "potential," "possible" and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions or results "will," "may," "could" or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are statements concerning the Nevsun's and Reservoir's current beliefs, plans and expectations about the future including but not limited to the arrangement and related transactions, Nevsun's commercial production, Bisha's future production of copper and related cash flows, and development of the Timok project and related costs. These statements are by their very nature inherently uncertain. The actual achievements of the combined company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation, the risks that: (i) the conditions to completion of the arrangement will not be satisfied, including approval by Reservoir's and Nevsun's shareholders, court approval and successful exercise by Reservoir of the ROFO; (ii) an event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the arrangement agreement will occur; (iii) the retention of employees and other personnel will be adversely affected by uncertainty surrounding the arrangement; (iv) the companies will be unable to successfully integrate their operations following completion of the arrangement; (v) any of the assumptions in the historical resource estimates turn out to be incorrect, incomplete, or flawed in any respect; (vi) the methodologies and models used to prepare the resource and reserve estimates either underestimate or overestimate the resources or reserves due to hidden or unknown conditions, (vii) exploration activities or the mine operations are disrupted or suspended due to acts of god, internal conflicts in the country of Eritrea or Serbia, unforeseen government actions or other events; (viii) operations will be disrupted due to equipment or power failures, uncertainties in the copper minerology, metallurgical recoveries or concentrate grades, or other or other events; (ix) Nevsun is subjected to any hostile takeover or other unsolicited attempts to acquire control of Nevsun; or * are associated with the speculative nature of exploration activities, periodic interruptions to exploration, failure of drilling, processing and mining equipment, the interpretation of drill results and the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, changes to exploration and project plans and parameters and other risks are more fully described in the Nevsun's Annual Information Form for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, which is incorporated herein by reference. Nevsun's and Reservoir's forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, expectations and opinions of management on the date the statements are made, and neither Nevsun nor Reservoir assume any obligation to update such forward-looking statements in the future, except as required by law. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on Nevsun's or Reservoir's forward-looking statements and the forward-looking information presented here. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements and Nevsun's business can be found in Nevsun's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015, which is available on the Company's website (www.nevsun.com), filed under Nevsun's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on EDGAR (www.sec.gov) under cover of Form 40-F. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements related to Reservoir and its business can be found in Reservoir's Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended November 30, 2015, which is available on the Company's website (www.reservoirminerals.com) and filed under Reservoir's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). Neither TSX Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Additional Information This announcement is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to buy nor the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. Nevsun expects that the securities to be offered in the arrangement will be issued in a transaction exempt from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") pursuant to Section 3(a)(10) of the U.S. Securities Act. SOURCE Nevsun Resources Ltd. For further information, Reservoir shareholders should contact:Scott A. Trebilcock, Chief Development OfficerTel +1 604 623-4700Email strebilcock@nevsun.comChris MacIntyre, VP, Corporate DevelopmentTel +1 416 346-7660email chris@reservoirminerals.comMedia Inquiries:Longview Communications, Trevor ZeckTel +1 604 694-6037Email tzeck@longviewcomms.ca Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Noram Ventures Inc. (TSX-V: NRM) (Noram or the Company) is pleased to announce it has entered into an agreement to acquire 201 mineral claims comprising 3,998.18 acres, in Clayton Valley, Nevada. The two non-contiguous claim groups (the Li Group Claims) are located in the same geological formation as, Rockwoods and Lithium Xs operations. Noram will pay USD$ 100,000 for the 201 mineral claims, by way of a promissory note to the vendor and a net smelter returns royalty (NSR) of 2.5%. The definitive agreement and transfer of tenure is expected to be completed in 10 days. In addition, Noram will pay up to USD$ 90,000 to the Bureau of Land Management and the State of Nevada, with respect to fees on the claims. To view the graphic in its original size, please click here Highlights: Within 2 km to largest Lithium Producer in USA; Albemarle Corporation. Albemarle Corporation has been in continuous production of Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide products from Clayton Valley brines since 1967. Two Target Horizons, Lithium potential contained within beds and brines. Close to infrastructure (power, transport and labor). Project is situated adjacent to Lithium Xs North block (recently acquired permits to drill*). Within 11km of Pure Energys holdings (NI 43-101 Inferred Resource of 816,000 Tonnes Lithium Carbonate**). * Lithium X press release March 23, 2016. * *(N I 43-101 Inferred Resource of 816,000 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate, [Pure Energy press release, July 29, 2015]). Why is Clayton Valley important to Lithium production? Clayton Valley is a region well documented for lithium bearing brines and significantly rich beds. Clayton Valley is home to the only lithium producer in the USA; Albemarles Silver Peak Lithium Brine Operation which has been producing been Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide products since 1967. The Li Group Claims Project is located within the Clayton Valley and only 2 km from the Albemarle Operation. Currently, Lithium X and Pure Energy have begun exploration work within Clayton Valley and several other companies are actively engaged in pursuing acquisitions. Geology The geology is considered to comprise a sequence of sediments with strata composing aquifer systems which hosts and produces lithium rich brine. Multiple wetting and drying periods during the Pleistocene resulted in the formation of lacustrine sediments with salt beds and lithium rich brines forming in the sediments within the Clayton Valley basin. These deposits form the Esmeralda Formation which has clay bearing siltstones near the base to fine grained lacustrine sediments near the top. Up to six aquifers have been identified within the basin. It appears that lithium is ubiquitous throughout the area with hot springs and aquifers to the north of the town of Silver Peak containing lithium of approx. 40ppm. The Esmeralda Formation has been reported to contain from 350 to 1,171 ppm lithium (USGS open file report 82-415). During the mid-to late 1970s the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) evaluated lithium deposits and resources around the world. During the course of the program they drilled 22 holes in Nevada and Arizona including seven drill holes in the Clayton Valley Basin. The USGS holes drilled closest to the Li Group Claims Project reported 1.3 and 1.7 parts per million (ppm) lithium in the brines and 287 and 364 ppm lithium in the sediments. Pure Energy has identified lithium concentrations of up to 400ppm in brines in two aquifers on their Clayton Valley claims which are located to the south of the Li Group Claims. Pumping tests resulted in approx. 9 liters per minute at 225ppm lithium in their test well CV-1. Pure Energy reported a N.I. 43-101 Inferred Resource of 816,000 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate (Pure Energy Minerals press release, July 29, 2015). In regards to infrastructure, sources of power and water are located less than 10 km from the Li Group Claims Project. Labor and supplies are available at Tonopah, Las Vegas or Reno which are local and regional mining and supply centers. Mark Ireton, President, said, Lithium prices have risen significantly since 2015. Demand is forecast to continue to expand for lithium and graphite and Noram expects to play a significant role in Green Energy Revolution through the development of lithium and graphite deposits, development of New Processes and through Strategic Alliances. The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Michael Collins, P.Geo., who is a Qualified Person with respect to the Li Claim Group Property as defined under NI 43-101. About Noram Ventures Inc.: Noram Ventures Inc. (TSX-V: NRM) is a Canadian based junior exploration company with interests in lithium and graphite claims, and a goal of becoming a low-cost supplier for the burgeoning lithium battery industry. The Companys primary business focus since formation has been the exploration of mineral projects that include the Clayton Valley lithium project in Nevada and Jumbo graphite property in British Columbia. Norams long term strategy is to build a multi-national lithium-graphite dominant industrial minerals company to produce and sell lithium and graphite into the markets of Europe, North America and Asia. For further information, please visit www.noramventures.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS /s/ Mark R. Ireton President & Director Direct: (604) 761-9994 ### 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. This news release may contain forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release includes statements regarding, among other things, the completion transactions completed in the Agreement. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, regulatory approval processes. Although Noram believes that the assumptions used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, including that all necessary regulatory approvals will be obtained in a timely manner, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. Noram disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws. Greg Lytle (604) 839-6946 info@noramventures.com To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/noram04252016.pdfSource: Noram Ventures Inc. (TSX Venture:NRM) Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2016 Filing Services Canada Inc. -Option to acquire 100% of a Strategic Lithium Project -Project is situated in the Clayton Valley area of Nevada -Clayton Valley hosts North America's largest Lithium Carbonate production operations derived from Lithium Brines -Objective to develop an economic Lithium Brine Project -Due diligence under way/exploration planning in progress -The company has a well-diversified project portfolio of Platinum Group Metals and Lithium Projects (GREEN METALS in Canada and at the U.S.A.) -The company's 100% owned River Valley PGM resources is one of the largest undeveloped primary PGM resources in Canada (http://pfncapital.com/s/Home.asp) April 25th, 2016 Vancouver, Canada / TheNewswire / Pacific North West Capital Corp. ("PFN", the "Company") (TSX.V: PFN; Frankfurt: P7J.F; OTCQX: PAWEF announces that is has acquired, through option, a lithium brine project in Clayton Valley, Esmeralda County, Nevada. The company is near completion of its due diligence period with regard to the agreement. Ongoing forward plans for the project will be released after the due diligence period is complete. Announcements concerning the technical aspects of the project and the terms and conditions of the agreement will be forthcoming. Once the due diligence is completed, the project location and technical overview of the project in the Clayton Valley area of Nevada will be explained. Management previously announced (April 6th, 2016, April 14th, 2016, April 21st, 2016) that PFN is developing a Lithium and Rare Earth Division. The Company's management team has added an additional "green metal, GM" to its existing Platinum group metals (PGM's) division. These new age metals, Lithium, PGM's and Rare Earths, have robust macro trends with surging demands and limited supply. Going forward, this new division will explore for the minerals needed to fuel the demand for energy storage and other core 21st Century Technologies. Nevada the Lithium Hub Clayton Valley is located in Esmeralda county of Nevada host to the Albemarle Corporation's Silver Peak Lithium Mine and brine processing operations. The mine has been in operation since 1967 and remains the only brine based Lithium Producer in North America. The new project acquisition in Nevada will allow the company a project in an area that is well known for its Lithium Carbonate Production. Clayton Valley is a centralized location in Nevada with highway access, power infrastructure, water and local labor. The company's new lithium brine project will be approximately 3.5 hours away from Tesla's Gigafactory, which has a planned annual lithium-ion battery production capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours per year by 2020. The company's new project is also 3 hours north of the Faraday Electric Car Factory to be operated in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clayton Valley was one of the few locations globally known to contain commercial-grade lithium-enriched brines. The company is planning a detailed exploration program on its Clayton Valley lithium project for upcoming exploration season. Nevada Building a Future for Green Energy Manufacturing The Nevada government is actively embracing the Lithium Energy market and future ventures. In March 2016 the Nevada Board gave final approval to the Faraday Futures $1 Billion dollar electric car factory in North Las Vegas. Once this plant is operating it is estimated that it will create over 4500 jobs for the area. Tesla received over $1.25 Billion in tax incentives from the Nevada government to start up their $5 Billion Giga-factory in Reno, Nevada. The Nevada government is backing the new growth in the lithium- ion battery and electric car market. Future projected market growth will also increase the need for lithium-ion batteries. At present, the Clayton Valley area produces 4% of the world's Lithium Carbonate production. About The Company's Lithium Division The company's new Lithium Division will focus on the acquisition, exploration and development of Lithium Projects in Canada. In the United States the company will use its wholly owned U.S.A subsidiary to acquire and develop projects in active mining camps in Nevada, Arizona and California. The recent addition of the "Lithium One Project" in southeastern Manitoba (PFN April 24th, 2016 news release) has given the company a strategic opportunity for hard rock Lithium mineralization in Canada. The project is located 8.5 kilometers south of the Tanco Mine Site, North America's richest and longest operating hard rock mine for tantalum, lithium and cesium. Lithium and Platinum group metal prices have improved dramatically in recent months. Lithium supplies remain in deficit relative to their demand. Both metals groups are used for the expanding worldwide automobile industry (conventional and electric). In the case of PGM's, demand is increasing for autocatalysts, a key component for reducing toxic emissions for automotive, gasoline and diesel engines. In regards to Lithium, there is an ever increasing demand for batteries in cellphones, laptops, electric cars, solar storage, wireless charging and renewable energy products. About the company's Platinum Group Metals Division Achievements to date and future plans for River Valley are outlined below as follows: 1.PFN currently has 100% ownership in the River Valley Project, subject to a 3% NSR, with options to buy down 2.Completed exploration and development programs on the River Valley property include more than 600 holes drilled since year 2000 and several mineral resource estimates and metallurgical studies; 3.Results for the current (2012) mineral resource estimate are below; 4.2015 drill program confirms new high grade T2 discovery Click Image To View Full Size 5.Exploration and development plans outlined for 2016 6.Ongoing strategic partner search for River Valley project 7.Results for the most recent Metallurgical Testwork Study are summarized below: - Prepared by Tetra Tech (Wardrop) - High Confidence: Measured plus Indicated = 72% of total - Reported on PdEq basis: Pd=40% & Pt=20% of the payable metals - Pd to Pt ratio = 2.5:1; Cu to Ni ratio = 3:1 - High Grade potential, particularly in the north part of River Valley deposit - Resources under evaluation for development potential as open pit mining operation Click Image To View Full Size Click Image To View Full Size 8.Results for the 2015 discovery drill program on the T2 target are as follows: -Drill hole intercepts much higher than the average grade of current mineral resource estimate -Possible new mineralized zone at the north end of the River Valley deposit -Show potential to take the River Valley PGM Project in a new direction -More drilling required Click Image To View Full Size 9. Exploration and Development Plans for 2016 -Mineral prospecting and geological mapping on surface -Drill programs targeted to add more higher grade -Geological interpretation and 2D/3D modelling of all drill and surface results -Application to the OPA's Junior Exploration Assistance Program (JEAP) for 33% refund of all exploration expenditures up to $300,000. -Strategic Partner Search for River Valley For further information, please see the press releases dated Apr 6th, 2016, April 14th, 2016, April 24th by visiting PFN's website at www.pfncapital.com, or email us at info@pfncapital.com On behalf of Management and the Board of Directors, I wish to thank our shareholders for their patience and continued support over the last 5 years as we look forward to a strong recovery in the Junior Mining industry. QUALIFIED PERSON The contents contained herein that relates to Exploration Results or Mineral Resources is based on information compiled, reviewed or prepared by Dr. Bill Stone, Principal Consulting Geoscientist for PFN. Dr. Stone is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical content. Further Information: Tel: +1.604.685.1870 Fax: +1.604.685.8045 Email: info@pfncapital.com, or visit www.pfncapital.com Suite 101 - 2148 West 38th Ave., Vancouver, BC, V6M 1R9 On behalf of the Board of Directors " Harry Barr " Harry Barr Chairman and CEO 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. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements. This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may differ materially from actual future events or results and are based on current expectations or beliefs. For this purpose, statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements include statements in which the Company uses words such as "continue", "efforts", "expect", "believe", "anticipate", "confident", "intend", "strategy", "plan", "will", "estimate", "project", "goal", "target", "prospects", "optimistic" or similar expressions. These statements by their nature involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially depending on a variety of important factors, including, among others, the Company's ability and continuation of efforts to timely and completely make available adequate current public information, additional or different regulatory and legal requirements and restrictions that may be imposed, and other factors as may be discussed in the documents filed by the Company on SEDAR (www.sedar.com), including the most recent reports that identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake any obligation to review or confirm analysts' expectations or estimates or to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved. ALS Class 16-C graduates Congratulations to the Airmen of Class 16-C, who graduated from Airman Leadership School April 21. ALS is a six-week course designed to prepare senior airmen to assume supervisory duties, offering instruction in the practice of leadership and followership, written and oral communicative skills, and the profession of arms. Students gain understanding of their role as military supervisors and how they can contribute to the overall goals and mission of the Air Force. Senior airmen must complete ALS to assume the rank of staff sergeant. Goodfellow Air Force Base Class 16-C graduates are: 17th Communications Squadron: Senior Airman Faith N. Ellis Senior Airman Riley S. Krogh (Academic Award winner) Senior Airman Jamien M. McWilliams 17th Comptroller Squadron: Staff Sgt. John C. Moore (John L. Levitow Award winner) 17th Contracting Squadron: Staff Sgt. Ryan E. Keller 17th Security Forces Squadron: Senior Airman Jonathan P. Wade Laughlin Air Force Base graduates are: 47th Civil Engineer Squadron: Senior Airman Tyler L. England Senior Airman Stephanie F. Zenn 47th Medical Support Squadron: Senior Airman Oviel Acosta Mariscal 47th Operations Support Squadron: Senior Airman Sarah J. Nolen 47th Medical Operations Squadron: Senior Airman Emily H. Holder 47th Security Forces Squadron: Senior Airman Jonathan A. Mansfield Texas Air National Guard graduates are: 147th Operations Support Squadron Squadron: Senior Airman Angela R. Matthews (Commandant Award winner) 147th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron: Senior Airman Sandra E. Welch Soba noodles will be on the menu at Adam Liston's winter noodle bar at the Hotel Windsor. Photo: Supplied It's just a sliver of vacant land in Chinatown now. But by September, chef Adam Liston hopes to be grilling yakitori in his new 60-seat Korean-Japanese-Chinese restaurant, Honcho. The two-level restaurant, a collaboration between Liston and Hotel Windsor owners the Halim Group, has been designed by architect Kerstin Thompson. It will be built off site and assembled on the scrap of land between Rosa's Kitchen and Longrain in Punch Lane. Taking pride of place in the kitchen will be a $50,000 custom-built uber-grill, which can spit roast, cook yakitori and smoke. Adam Liston's katsu sando (crumbed pork sandwich). Photo: Supplied Honcho, derived from the Japanese word "hancho", meaning leader of the pack, will also have a raw bar serving Japanese and Chinese-inspired seafood dishes such as ocean trout sashimi with pickled ginger and saltbush. The drinks list will highlight sake and shochu and Japanese beers. While it's being built, Liston will keep his chops up with a winter noodle bar at the Hotel Windsor, from June until the end August. It will serve noodle dishes and snacks such as katsu sando, Liston's take the Japanese crumbed pork cutlet sandwich, which gained a cult following at his previous restaurant, Northern Light. Honcho, at 18 Punch Lane, Melbourne, is expected to open for lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday from September. Louisa Allan and Shuki Rosenboim are to open Very Good Falafel in Brunswick in May. Photo: Penny Stephens After three years hawking their dips, sauces and falafel wraps at Melbourne's farmers' markets, pals Shuki Rosenboim and Louisa Allan Shuki and Louisa are set to open a falafel bar called Very Good Falafel in Sydney Road, Brunswick in the first week of May. Louisa's dad, Graham, is a farmer who grows chickpeas at Wycheproof in the Mallee; Shuki's mum, Tikva, moved from Baghdad to Israel in the 1950s. When Shuki and Louisa met a few years back in a Brunswick share house, there could only be one result: hummus. Their falafel are Israeli-Iraqi style, Louisa explains, made from chickpeas and fresh herbs and served in spongy pita pockets from Vinuage Bakery in Moorabbin: "Though I can't give away our secret ingredient!" Louisa Allan and Shuki Rosenboim at the Melbourne University farmers' market, where their falafels are in high demand. Photo: Penny Stephens Also on the menu at the 20-seat shop will be sabih another Israeli-Iraqi pocket, of fried eggplant, potato, hummus and chilli and daily salads (think eggplant, freekeh and caramelised onion; or harissa-spiced roast potato). While Shuki and Louisa make a bit of a dent in her dad's chickpea crop, most are dried for export: "There's a big market in Bangladesh," says Louisa. Expect demand to soar at 629 Sydney Road (near the Brunswick IGA) soon, too. Scott Jetson and James Sharp, the duo behind The Wine Crowd. Photo: Jil Hogan The Canberra wine scene continues to grow in leaps and bounds, and new local company The Wine Crowd hopes to boost it even more. In this case two is a crowd, with duo Scott Jetson and James Sharp behind the venture which aims to get people more interested in wine, and help promote boutique wineries. They have plans for wine events, dinners, education sessions, and even a Canberra wine festival for later this year. The pair met when they were studying at university in Canberra. After long periods living interstate for work, they noticed the shift in the culture when they moved back. "We came back to Canberra, and after being here for another year and a little bit we were like 'oh wow the culture's changed significantly'. Canberra's really defining its culture and social scene as well, so just coming back to it was quite awesome," said Jetson. "There's some pretty exciting and special wines." Working with wine is a natural fit for Sharp who has strong family ties to the McLaren Vale wine district and developed a love of good wine at an early age - he was raised to appreciate a heavy shiraz. But Jetson had never been a wine drinker until much later on. "It's never been in my family. I was born in Tassie, but never was aware of the amazing wines that come from there until quite later," he said. Advertisement "I used to call myself a self-proclaimed beer connoisseur I had a big palate for beer, but I didn't know anything about it really. Then I got into wine, and we went on tastings, we went on tours, and I started to appreciate different flavours, different aromas. Then I did a bit of work in Sydney in the industry, putting on events and it just grew significantly in a short period of time." Both are still working at their day jobs, but wanted to "try something else and go on a new adventure". "We want to create this community of people that just love, were intrigued, and were curious about wine and to enhance the wine culture in Canberra," said Jetson. As well as events for the public, Jetson and Sharp are also distributing wines with a focus on boutique wineries. "We approached some boutique wineries and said, 'how can we support you guys because you're making amazing wines, other people need to see it'," Jetson said. "With boutique producers, they don't always have the capacity to really do anything themselves to get their name out, cause they're busy in the winery and the vineyard." The Wine Crowd will launch with a party at the new Bar Rochford on Thursday April 28 from 4pm. On top of tastings of wines in their portfolio, there will be cold meats and canapes from Bar Rochford's kitchen, and winemaker Adrian Brayne from Tumbarumba will be on hand to talk all things wines. Tickets to the launch are $20 and available at thewinecrowd.com.au. SHARE Startup seminar for veterans, spouses A two-day training event, "Boots to Business ReBoots," is planned for Wednesday and Thursday this week at no cost to participants, and includes a provided lunch. The seminar is designed for military veterans interested in starting a business, and will begin at 8:30 a.m. both days at Angelo State University's Small Business Development Center, downtown at 69 N. Chadbourne St. "Veterans have the character, discipline and skills needed to succeed as small-business owners and entrepreneurs," said Dezaray Johnson, SBDC business training coordinator. The program provides participants with an overview of business ownership as a career vocation, an outline and knowledge of the components of a business plan, a practical exercise in opportunity recognition, and an introduction to available public and private resources. This Introduction to Entrepreneurship course is open to all veterans and service members including the National Guard and Reserves, and their spouses. Advance registration is requested at www.boots2business.org/Reboot/ or 325-942-2098 or www.sbdc.angelo.edu. Harrison Roofing wins for coliseum Harrison Roofing Co., Inc., 1317 S. Hill St. won a Duro-Last Project Award for Best Use of Custom Prefabrication for their work on the Foster Communications Coliseum roof. The custom prefabricated roofing system had about 4,500 linear-feet of field seams, which saved about 9,600 linear feet of field seaming when compared to a typical roll good single ply roofing system, according to a news release from Duro-Last. "This is the first time in years, this building hasn't leaked," said Jeremy Harrison, vice president of Harrison Roofing. Apples abound in gift to food bank LUBBOCK The United Family, owners of several supermarkets including Albertson's, delivered 140,224 pounds of apples to eight food banks in West Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth and Eastern New Mexico in their "Take a Bite Out of Hunger"donation campaign. Locally, the Concho Valley Regional Food Bank in San Angelo took delivery of 11,929 pounds worth of apples. The donation increased by more than 100,000 pounds this year, in celebration company in its 100th anniversary year. "As The United Family celebrates a century of service, our continued participation in the Take a Bite Out of Hunger program allows us to demonstrate our commitment to those in need in our communities," said Joseph Bunting, produce director for The United Family. "We are proud to stand with these food banks as they seek to eliminate widespread hunger." Energy Alliance loses 84,000 jobs WICHITA FALLS Even though oil prices increased 28 percent recently, the crunch in the job market, and virtually every other economic indicator, points to more tough times in the industry. Karr Ingham, petroleum economist who authors the Texas Petro Index, announced last week at the 86th Annual Meeting and Expo of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers that 84,000 oil and gas jobs have been lost in Texas during the 16 consecutive months of decline in the TPI. In addition to the decline in jobs, the drilling rig count, well completions, and drilling permits are all down, too, Ingham said, and advised against reading too much into the oil price jump. "First, it may or may not be the real deal; prices increased in part on the hope that some agreement might be reached between producing countries elsewhere in the world on production limitations and that's a prickly proposition," said Ingham. "And second, price increase now produces a change in other oil field indicators later, and indeed most other components of the index continued to decline in March." West Texas Intermediate crude oil averaged $34.58 per barrel in March, nearly 28 percent more than the monthly average of $27.08 in February. The Texas Petro Index is a service of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, the nation's largest state association of independent oil and gas producers. SHARE What's the American "establishment"? The word is used all the time now, usually very, very loosely and usually in ways to disparage anybody who stands for something the speaker does not like. The term, of course, applies to people who have heaping helpings of power when it comes to public policy, and, yes, that would include the very rich and large corporations. They do have influence enhanced with donations, for instance, to the Clinton Foundation or for speeches that pay thousands of dollars a minute. When Donald Trump dished out goodies to liberal politicians who crossed his path, was he doing it as a civic duty? "Crony capitalism" is not a phrase devoid of meaning, and neither is the word "lobbyist." You'd have to have your eyes closed to think large industries would not try to maximize profits with a big, fat, everywhere government intruding into virtually every other thing they do. But sometimes the politicians slap corporations around, maybe as a practical matter, maybe to accommodate their ideological druthers or maybe to satisfy their constituents. The voters do count for something among establishmentarian politicians. The folks out there can be tricked, of course, but sometimes they aren't and turn sour, which bodes poorly for re-election opportunities. And trying to please constituents is the main reason some politicians heed the National Rifle Association. Despite contrary prattle, its power does not come so much from the offerings of gun manufacturers as from the millions of citizen cheerleaders. These are people who believe in gun rights and themselves pay for the NRA's political activities. So instead of just moneyed interests at work, we have activist individuals coalescing for some good they believe in, and you see it, too, in the environmental lobbyists. They have whopping power, enough to help instigate a war on coal or delay a Keystone XL Pipeline. Unions also a huge part of the establishment get their way on a host of issues. The establishment also includes an incredibly powerful component of the federal bureaucracy. It takes legislation passed by Congress and fills in the blanks to the tune of tens of thousands of pages of regulations and then it's harder to start a business or make money from one or fill out tax forms. There are obviously vital regulations, but a few years ago a couple of economists did a study demonstrating how regulations over a period of more than 50 years have resulted in an economy with a gross domestic product something like $39 trillion less than it could be. We shouldn't neglect the academic elite who tend toward a liberal ideology and have more than a little say in Washington, D.C. Richard K. Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal about how some of these folks are guiding us in strange directions. He said economists should know about Keynesianism's failures, the perils of central planning and the dangers of "growing redistributionist welfare states" but apparently don't. They thus have been part of the crowd helping to give us "Obamacare." So, anyway, why is it that a presidential candidate such as Sen. Bernie Sanders would describe himself as anti-establishment? Doesn't he also want more regulation and lots more governmental health care spending and manipulation? He is actually part of the establishment more precisely defined, although, it needs to be said, he would alienate the academic elite if he actually got elected. If he then fulfilled his pledge of free public universities, private colleges would die. Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Contact him at speaktojay@aol.com. SHARE The following editorial appeared in Tuesday's Chicago Tribune: Between the loose cannon Donald Trump and the ultraconservative Ted Cruz, Republicans have been doing their best to give the presidential election away. But it's worse than that: They are doing their best to drive voters into the Democratic fold for years to come. With their targeting of Muslims, hostility to immigration reform, rejection of climate-change science and opposition to same-sex marriage, the two threaten to sharply narrow the party's slice of the electorate. The question is: Will the Democrats accept the favor? It's easy to overlook how they are putting their own political future in peril. Bernie Sanders is not likely to win the nomination, but his robust challenge to Hillary Clinton makes it plain that the Democratic Party has shifted leftward just as Republicans marched the opposite way. Sanders, remember, is a self-styled democratic socialist who always ran as an independent because he considered the Democrats insufficiently progressive. At the outset, he was considered this year's Dennis Kucinich a preachy gadfly with no chance of winning. Yet he has come out ahead in 17 state contests ... In the process, he has exposed major weaknesses in Clinton's appeal. Though he is the older candidate, his support skews young. Sanders leads among men and whites, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found, but his most notable feat is beating Clinton among Democratic voters younger than 50 by a 2-to-1 ratio. This is the party base of the future. He also rouses more fervent ardor than she does. Even if Clinton wins this time, there is a leftward riptide that she will have trouble resisting, on the campaign trail or in office. Not that she's trying very hard. Her husband recaptured the White House for the Democrats after three consecutive losses by candidates perceived as too liberal on big issues such as taxes, crime and communism. Bill Clinton was a master of playing to the center, providing an attractive option to independents and "Reagan Democrats." Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 with a similar approach. Barack Obama followed suit in 2008, stressing his support for more troops in Afghanistan, the conservative pedigree of his health care reform and the sanctity of the Second Amendment. But Hillary Clinton is doing something very different, in an obvious effort to appease the Occupy Wall Street faction. Eight years ago, she strongly identified with her husband's record. This year, she has said the 1994 crime bill he signed was too harsh, rejected a Pacific trade agreement she had previously lauded and endorsed a $15 minimum wage enacted in New York. She has also tried to sound like populist firebrand Elizabeth Warren on banking issues. ... So it looks as though there will be a gaping hole in the middle of the political spectrum, with centrist voters forced to choose between an increasingly liberal Democratic Party on the one hand and, on the other, Trump or Cruz who are anathema even to relatively moderate Republicans, much less independents. The last Republican to win, George W. Bush, called himself a "compassionate conservative." George H.W. Bush emphasized his own "kinder and gentler" approach. Adjectives such as that have gone out of style in the GOP. But the Democrats also have contributed to the polarization. Sanders has nothing good to say about capitalism. And it's hard to imagine Clinton echoing what President Clinton said in 1996: "The era of big government is over." Looking at the two likely Republican nominees, centrist Americans ask: "What about us?" So far, the Democratic response is: "What about you?" In his State of the Union address last year, President Obama called for free tuition for community college students nationwide. The idea has gone nowhere in Congress. But free tuition plans have since sprung up in about two dozen states and localities -- and some of them will soon get their own financial aid package.On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to announce that the Obama administration will offer a total of $100 million in grants for free community college programs. The money will go to regional partnerships between colleges, employers and nonprofits that create such programs where student aid and workforce development are closely linked. The White House has already convened meetings in nine states.Obama's rejected free tuition proposal was inspired by initiatives in Tennessee and Chicago . Months after his presidential push, Oregon became the second state to adopt a similar approach and has since signed up more than 12,000 students to attend community college tuition-free this fall.That puts a good-sized dent in the population of 70,000 Oregonians between the ages of 16 and 24 years old who are neither working nor in school, said state Sen. Mark Hass, who sponsored the free tuition bill."These kids don't necessarily need to go to Stanford," he said. "But they need some training to become a welder or a medical assistant."Even where higher education spending is being cut, free community college is being made a priority. In Kentucky, for example, the state budget -- which Gov. Matt Bevin has until Wednesday to sign or veto -- slices higher education spending by 4.5 percent but sets aside $25 million to create a free tuition plan for qualified students.Like most of the new programs, Kentucky will offer students "last dollar" assistance. That means they're expected to apply for federal Pell grants and other financial aid, but will also receive any additional help they need to bring their tuition bills down to zero."We just think it's one of the best investments we can make in our students and our future workforce here in Kentucky," said state Rep. Tommy Thompson. "When you talk to many managers at manufacturing facilities in Kentucky, they universally speak of the shortage of skilled workers."The goal of many of these programs is not only to expand access for students but also to ensure that they attain skills that are useful to employers in their area. That was made clear in Minnesota.Legislators in the state started off with the goal of offering two years of community college free to all students, creating in essence a K-14 system. But the version that ended up passing last year created a pilot program limited to recent high school graduates who come from households with incomes below $90,000 and have to pick from a list of specific occupational degree or certification programs."It's really to get recent high school grads into college right away in a vocational program and hopefully into the job market in a high-demand field," said Ginny Dodds of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.As with other financial aid programs, the biggest criticism aimed at free tuition is that it will subsidize students who would be going to college anyway. Even Hillary Clinton, who supports the idea of free community college, has mocked her Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders' free, four-year tuition plan."I don't think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trumps kids to college," Clinton said during a debate last year.But administrators at colleges that have started their own free tuition programs say they're appealing to an entirely different breed of student. In Milwaukee, for example, most people who enroll at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) are in their 30s. But last fall, 3,000 current high school students applied for a free tuition program designed specifically to attract them. Those who completed their financial aid requests now have until May 1 to score at least 16 (out of 36) on the ACT college admissions test.As is generally the case with other programs across the country, students in the MATC program have to attend school full-time and maintain a passing grade point average. They also have to perform community service work and take advantage of mentoring and tutoring programs.Superintendents in the Chicago area say attendance has already improved among freshman students who hope to qualify for free tuition at Harper College in Palatine."We aren't asking them to be 4.0 students, but we are asking them to complete their work and meet certain standards," said Michele Smith, Harper's assistant provost.Among the 7,000 freshman in the three high school districts that feed into Harper, 4,600 have signed up. If they keep their grades up, don't miss too many days of school, perform community service hours and are ready to start college without remediation, they can look forward to a free ride in the fall of 2019.That's important not just for those students but the future of their communities. Colleges like Harper and MATC mostly serve low-income students, many of whom are the first in their families to receive any sort of higher education."We want to create a college-going attitude in our community," said Smith. During the last month, the NFACD has exploded onto the political scene by arresting Attorney-General Ano Pala, Supreme Court Justice Bernard Sakora, and the prime ministers lawyer, Tiffany Twivey, for corruption, fraud, and perverting the course of justice. Headed up by Chief Superintendent Matthew Damaru, the NFACD is the chief anti-corruption agency in Papua New Guinea, operating as a police agency within the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. BACKSTABBING, factionalism, and dramatic abuses of power led the battle to combat corruption in Papua New Guinea take on Shakespearean proportions last week as the National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate (NFACD) locked horns with high profile government figures, including the Attorney General and Prime Minister Peter ONeill. The arrests come on the heels of a two-and-a-half year struggle to carry out an arrest warrant against prime minister ONeill himself. ONeill won power in August 2011 partially on the basis of his anti-corruption stance and his promise to establish both an Independent Commission Against Corruption and Task Force Sweep, charged with the task of targeting corruption at the highest levels. Seemingly as a surprise to ONeill, the Task Force did their job, and their discovery of ONeills alleged corruption in June 2014 led him to shut the agency down. ONeill is alleged to have authorised the Finance Departments fraudulent payment of $A30 million to the PNG law firm Paul Paraka Lawyers, apparently in return for work performed for government. Task Force Sweep issued arrest warrants for ONeill and his finance minister James Marape. Arguing that the allegations were unfounded and politically motivated, ONeill obtained court orders including a stay issued by the same Justice Sakora who was arrested last week preventing the task force from questioning or arresting him or Marape in connection with the fraud. Along with disbanding Task Force Sweep, ONeill replaced then Attorney-General Kerenga Kua and Police Commissioner Geoffrey Vaki with two of his loyalists, Ano Pala and Gari Baki. The government also suspended chief magistrate Nerrie Eliakim, who had issued the warrant against ONeill, ostensibly on unrelated grounds. The NFACD picked up the threads dropped by Task Force Sweep. It allegedly found further evidence of corruption among senior government figures, issuing a warrant in July 2015 for the arrest of treasury secretary Dairi Vele. NFACD Chief Superintendent Damaru also ended up bringing contempt charges against new Police Commissioner Gari Baki for allegedly convincing a magistrate to stay the Vele warrant. Baki responded by issuing an arrest warrant for Damaru. Damaru hired Australian lawyers Greg Egan and Terence Lambert to fight the charges, who then mysteriously found themselves issued a travel ban by the PNG Department of Immigration again, on apparently unrelated grounds. The travel ban was overturned and Damarus warrant was stayed, leaving the NFACD determined to fight another day. The stalemate surrounding the ONeill arrest warrant, and popular discontent about perceptions of ONeills behaviour, provide a tense backdrop to the NFACDs activities last week. The arrests of the attorney-general, Justice Sakora, and the Prime Ministers lawyer have pitted two rival factions within the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary against each other, Montague-Capulet style those loyal to police commissioner Gari Baki, versus those loyal to the NFACD. Immediately following the arrests, police commissioner Gari Baki issued a directive suspending Damaru and his deputy Timothy Gitua on 16 April 2016, on the grounds of failing to obtain approval for an unrelated investigation in Chimbu Province. Damaru has since produced evidence claiming that the investigation was properly approved. He quickly appealed to the PNG National Court with the help of Greg Egan, who was able to obtain a successful result despite ONeills recent machinations in forcing Damaru to seek approval from the Attorney-General the same Ano Pala who was arrested last week in order to continue using his Australian lawyers. Damaru has now had his suspension set aside, freeing him up to continue the investigation. On arriving back at NFACD headquarters, however, he found that Bakis officers had changed the locks. Neither he nor his officers could gain access to their own office, with Baki's officers informing Damaru we dont care about the court orderwe will investigate the judge who granted those orders. Following the stay of Damarus suspension, Baki has ordered the temporary closure of the NFACD, assuring media that the directorate will stay closed until he sees accountability. Baki further claims that the suspensions are unrelated to the ONeill warrant, arguing that I have taken steps to assume control of the erratic and out-of-control National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate. For now, Damaru appears to remain barricaded out of his temporarily defunct office, whilst former Attorney-General Kerengu Kua, former Chief Justice Sir Arnold Amet, and many social media commentators are calling for Commissioner Baki to step down. Former Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare has publicly called upon ONeill to submit to the rule of law and cooperate with the NFACD. ONeill and Marape have spent the last month in an unsuccessful crusade against their potentially imminent arrests, with the PNG Supreme Court handing down a decision two weeks ago denying ONeills attempts to gain a court order preventing the NFACD from investigating the Paraka matter further. Whilst ONeill overwhelmingly defeated a vote of no confidence against him in October 2015, time may be running out, as O'Neill's increasingly convoluted attempts to avoid answering questions on the Paraka matter are causing many Papua New Guineans to run out of patience. With his attorney-general under arrest and a Mexican standoff taking place within the police force, the future of public confidence in his administration may rest on ONeills ability to face the public with frankness and transparency about the Paraka affair. Perhaps ONeill would do well to heed the words of the immortal Bard, corruption wins not more than honesty. Sally Andrews is the Indo Pacific Fellow at Young Australians in International Affairs The decision by Virginia's Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, to reinstate the voting rights of almost a quarter of a million convicted felons could reverberate into the general election.McAuliffe, who has close ties to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, on Friday used his executive power to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who have served their sentences _ many of them blacks, a core Democratic voting bloc.McAuliffe's move circumvented the state's GOP-controlled Legislature and immediately sparked complaints."We will ensure everyone with freedom to live in our communities has the right to participate in the democratic process," McAuliffe said on Twitter.State laws vary on the right to vote for ex-felons. Across the country, about 5.85 million people with felony convictions are prevented from casting ballots, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.Virginia has some of the strictest laws when it comes to voting rights for felons.The nonpartisan Sentencing Project estimates that 1 in 5 blacks in Virginia is disenfranchised.McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, served as chairman of Clinton's failed 2008 presidential campaign.Long considered a Republican bastion, Virginia has turned more purple in recent years. President Barack Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012.Virginia has liberal pockets in its northern and coastal regions. It is more reliably Republican in rural areas farther south and around the state's large military bases.Clinton won the state's Democratic primary over rival Bernie Sanders last month with more than 64 percent of the vote. A Texas appeals court delivered a big loss on Thursday to a group of home health agencies and parents of children with disabilities who sued the state over payment cuts to in-home therapy providers.The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals ruled the groups lawsuit, which sought to block a roughly $350 million budget cut ordered by state lawmakers to a publicly financed therapy program, was invalid for lack of jurisdiction. The justices also overrode a lower courts decision that temporarily blocked state officials from implementing the cuts, which were scheduled to take effect in October 2015.The reduced payments to therapists were ordered by the Legislature last year but were temporarily halted by a state district judge on the grounds that they might irreparably harm children. Speech, physical and occupational therapists argued they would be forced to stop treating children under the states current two-year budget, which includes a roughly 25 percent cut to the amount of money some pediatric therapists are paid by Medicaid, the joint federal-state insurer for the poor and disabled.Dan Richards, the lead attorney challenging the state, said he was extremely disappointed with the ruling and would ask federal health officials to intervene.The case is dismissed at the state level," he wrote in an email, "so we will follow the courts order and immediately seek intervention by federal regulators of the Texas Medicaid program so children can continue receiving life-altering therapy services.About 60 percent of the payments to therapy providers are financed by the federal government, while roughly 40 percent of the funding comes from the state.The appeals court affirmed the states argument that the challenge from therapy providers was a baseless attempt to force the state into paying them more.Home health agencies do not have a vested right in a particular level of Medicaid rates, the state argued, according to the appeals courts summary of the case.A spokesman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees Medicaid, declined to comment on the ruling on Thursday. It was not immediately clear when the state would move forward with the reduced payments, which have been tied up in court for eight months.Dena Dupuie, who joined the home health agencies lawsuit on behalf of her daughter, said the ruling would devastate families of children with disabilities. The lawyers suing the state have argued as many as 60,000 children would lose access to services because therapy providers would be put out of business by the reduced rates.What is going to happen to those 60,000 children, including my own? she asked.The appeals court ruled only on the question of whether home health agencies were entitled to sue. The justices did not rule on the merit of the claim that children would be denied services.But the state has argued that children will still be able to find therapy providers even if Medicaid pays those providers less money.Superior HealthPlan, an insurer that operates in Texas Medicaid, testified last week in lower court that the payment cuts will not harm childrens access to care.Superior studied this rate cut independently of the state and is absolutely convinced that theres going to be adequate access to the network, said Jim McClendon, a lawyer for the company. From suburban Chicago to rural Vermont, the heroin epidemic has hit communities across the country. As federal policymakers grapple with ways to curb the number of fatal overdoses, state and local officials have started ramping up access to a lifesaving drug.If administered properly and quickly, naloxone can resuscitate a person experiencing respiratory or central nervous system failure from an opioid overdose. In January, the National Association of Counties, the National Governors Association, the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors reached an agreement with Adapt Pharma to sell Narcan, the companys nasal spray form of naloxone, to public agencies at a 40 percent discount.Sallie Clark, the president of the National Association of Counties, says shes been hearing from elected officials on every level about how bad the epidemic is. We want to give people help, but we cant do that if theyre not alive. She hopes that the discount will remove a cost barrier preventing some localities from purchasing the drug.When it came on the market in the 1970s, naloxone was primarily used by EMTs and ER doctors, but thats quickly changed given the scope of the current epidemic. Several cities have authorized pharmacies to sell it without a prescription.The Colorado Springs Police Department started requiring officers to carry the spray last October, and has seen at least one successful resuscitation as a result. It truly is amazing to watch the drug work, says Cmdr. Thor Eells. You encounter someone virtually dead, spray them in the nose, and within seconds they are cussing and yelling at you.The opioid epidemic is unique because the lifesavers are often not doctors but pharmacists, school nurses or police officers. Were often the first responders in these situations, says Eells. It can take up to eight minutes for an ambulance to get to someone, and thats a long time if youre not breathing. Nineteen states now have programs that equip cops with Narcan, and several states require school nurses to keep it stocked.Delaware is one of those states. School nurses have equipment for cardiac arrests and for diabetic shock. Why shouldnt we have naloxone readily available? asks Becky King, a Wilmington-area school nurse and a member of the executive committee of the National Association of School Nurses. If I came across a kid passed out in a bathroom and didnt have it on me, I would be sick.For many in public health, theres a larger goal in making naloxone widely available. We want to change the standard of care and reduce the stigma that naloxone carries, says Jennifer Koziol, manager of the Prescription Drug Overdose Prevention Program in Rhode Island, another state that requires school nurses to keep the drug stocked. Were telling anyone with an opioid prescription to get it.Thats at odds with the views of those opposed to widespread naloxone distribution, who worry that it will discourage people from getting help for addiction if they know they can be saved from an overdose. But opioids are respiratory depressants whether theyre being used for pain or recreation, and King thinks the public deserves to be equipped to deal with that.Eells agrees. The numbers of people dying from overdose just keep rising, he says. As a cop, if we can even just help to stabilize those numbers, that will be a victory for me. Three officials responsible for maintaining safe water in Flint tinkered with evidence, tweaked testing and misled county and federal officials, helping to set in motion the contamination of the city's drinking water with lead, according to criminal charges filed by Michigan's chief law enforcement official Wednesday."These charges are only the beginning and there will be more to come. That I can guarantee you," Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette told an afternoon news conference in downtown Flint.Schuette's office filed charges against Mike Glasgow, 40, of Flint, the city's laboratory and water quality supervisor; Mike Prysby, 53, of Bath, a Michigan Department of Environmental Quality official; and Stephen Busch, 40, of DeWitt, the Lansing district coordinator for the DEQ's Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance.The charges were authorized by District Judge Tracy Collier-Nix in a Flint courtroom Wednesday morning.The cases against two state officials and one city manager mark the first criminal charges in the Flint water crisis, an environmental calamity that sent a known neurotoxin coursing through the city's water system, resulting in elevated lead levels in homes and businesses and sickening many who live in this economically battered blue-collar city.Despite official assurances, many residents of this city of 100,000 still today refuse to bathe or shower in the water, much less drink from their taps. Many are using filters during this federal state of emergency.The public health disaster has also drawn global attention, from local officials to presidential candidates, who raised questions about how the state oversees financially distressed cities as well as ensures environmental protections for some of its most vulnerable communities.Andy Arena, a former Detroit FBI chief and the lead investigator on the state's criminal investigation led by Schuette, called the ongoing probe the largest in the history of the state. Wednesday's charges against relatively low-level government officials are only the tip of a broad and deep investigation into government misconduct related to Flint's water, prosecutors said.The criminal charges arrived in the wake of a critical report from a task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder that concluded the Flint catastrophe was a direct result of "government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice." Additional state and federal criminal probes are ongoing as well as a number of civil lawsuits seeking everything from safe water immediately for the city, to millions of dollars in damages.Officials charged criminally on Wednesday "had a duty to protect the health" of Flint residents and "they failed to discharge their duties," Schuette said,The attorney general said there were no "targets" for his continuing investigation but said nobody has been ruled out. He declined at the news conference to say whether his team anticipating interviewing Snyder as part of his probe."Everything's on the table," he said.Schuette, a Republican who is widely expected to run for governor in 2018, initially resisted the idea of his office investigating the Flint water crisis. But in January, he nevertheless opened an investigation, tapping Arena and Royal Oak attorney Todd Flood to head the probe.At the press conference, Schuette rejected the idea that his investigation could be hamstrung by the fact that he and the governor hail from the Republican Party."Our system of justice applies to everyone," he said. "No one is above the law," adding "we will go where the e-mails take us," a reference to the hundreds of thousands of pages of internal government e-mails disclosed by the Snyder administration in response to the crisis.Snyder, whose administration appointed Flint's powerful emergency managers on duty during the onset of the water crisis, called the charges deeply troubling."I have said all along that bureaucrats making bad decisions failed the people of Flint. The charges filed today raise what happened to a whole new level and we take that very seriously," Snyder said in a statement Wednesday."I have fully supported the efforts of these investigations. I have demanded more answers about what happened because the people of Flint and all of Michigan deserve to know the truth." Snyder said. "We will vigorously pursue any evidence of wrongdoing and we will hold people accountable."Snyder earlier Wednesday told reporters that "we've got a lot of wonderful people working for the State of Michigan," and "let's not let the possible situation of a handful affect all 47,000."Documents associated with the charges paint a picture of local and state officials willfully providing false information as part of a series of events that led the city to switch its drinking water supply without adding the necessary corrosion controls to prevent lead from leaching into the water.But missing from the criminal complaints is the answer to a question haunting Flint: Why would anyone intentionally help poison a city?"I'm not looking for motive," Schuette told reporters Wednesday. "I'm looking for the truth."Officials believe the city got artificially low lead readings because it didn't test the homes most at risk -- those with lead service lines or other features putting them at high risk for lead. Glasgow signed a document saying the homes Flint used to test tap water under the federal Lead and Copper Rule all had lead service lines -- a statement investigators allege was false, according to sources familiar with the investigation.It was also Glasgow who wrote an April 2014 e-mail to the DEQ saying the Flint Water Treatment Plant was not ready to start treating Flint River water later that month, as scheduled, and it would do so over his objections. Glasgow told lawmakers at a recent hearing in Flint he never got much of a response to that e-mail, and the plant started treating the water anyway.Prysby was a recipient of that Glasgow e-mail complaining the plant was being rushed into operation. Glasgow also testified it was Prysby who told him the Flint Water Treatment Plant did not need to use corrosion-control chemicals in treating the Flint River water, and that it could instead conduct six-month studies to determine whether lead levels in the water warranted adding the chemicals.Busch sent a February 2015 e-mail to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official saying the Flint Water Treatment plant was using "optimized corrosion control" when in fact it was not using corrosion controls. A report by the state auditor general later said Busch believed that performing six-month rounds of testing to determine if the chemicals were needed constituted a corrosion-control program.It was also Busch who warned before the switch to the Flint River from the Detroit system in April 2014 that making such a change would create many challenges in treating the water.The charges announced Wednesday include felonies of misconduct in office and conspiracy related to tampering with evidence.Busch faces three felonies and two misdemeanors; Prysby faces four felonies and two misdemeanors, and Glasgow faces one felony and one misdemeanor.Maximum sentences for each of the felonies range from 4 to 5 years in prison with fines ranging from $5,000 to $10,000.Prysby faces six criminal counts: two charges of misconduct in office and one count each of conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence, engaging in a treatment violation that violates the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act and engaging in a monitoring violation that violates the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act.The five charges against Busch are misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence, engaging in a treatment violation that violates the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act and engaging in a monitoring violation that violates the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act.Glasgow was charged with two counts of tampering with evidence and willful neglect of office. He has been on paid administrative leave since Tuesday, said Stacy Erwin Oakes, chief legal counsel for Flint.Prysby and Busch have been suspended without pay, said Melanie Brown, spokeswoman for the Michigan DEQ. Mark Kriger, a Detroit attorney representing Busch, said "I don't think it is appropriate to comment on pending charges. I believe the appropriate forum to address the charges is the courtroom."Busch and Prysby pleaded not guilty in 67th District Court in Flint during their arraignments on charges on Wednesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear when Glasgow would appear.A judge ordered a $10,000 personal recognize bond for Busch and Prysby, both lifelong residents of Michigan. They are due back in court on May 4.Representatives for Prysby could not immediately be reached for comment.Robert Harrison, an attorney for Glasgow, described his client as an honest, decent person who has faithfully served his city."Mike strongly opposed the transfer of the source of water for the City of Flint from the Detroit Water System to the Flint River. Criminal charges against Mike are difficult to understand, given what Mike did in this case," Harrison said in an e-mail. "Not only was Mike strongly and publicly opposed to the transfer of the water system away from the Detroit system, but Mike voluntarily met with, and spoke with numerous investigators."According to the complaint, some of the defendants willfully and knowingly misled officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Genesee County Health Department. Prysby faces an additional misconduct charge for allegedly authorizing a permit for the Flint Water Treatment Plant when he knew the plant was deficient in its ability to provide clean and safe drinking water.The defendants manipulated monitoring reports and lead testing, the complaint alleges. Accused officials also failed to require the city to add corrosion-control chemicals to Flint's new water supply, according to the complaint.Officials incorrectly told residents to "pre-flush" their taps before taking water samples for lead testing, skewing results, court documents say. Prosecutors also accused the defendants of removing test samples that should have been included when calculating whether the lead levels in Flint's drinking water exceeded the federal action level of 15 parts per billion.Glasgow was charged with neglect of duty after prosecutors accused him of failing to perform the duties of a certified water treatment plant operator, the complaint says.Several local leaders pushing for more state and federal aid for Flint applauded the investigation and charges Wednesday."Let me say that I support and I know that others support these investigations. We expect the facts will determine the outcome. ... It's my hope that anyone who had any part in the decisions that led to this terrible crisis will be held accountable. ... Hopefully, we'll see more of this," U.S. Rep Dan Kildee (D.-Flint) said."Although this brings us another step closer to the truth, it's still important to understand why and how people made such tragic decisions. My community is still struggling, and justice cannot truly be served until the citizens of Flint receive a more urgent response to this crisis." Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich (D -- Flint) said in a statement.Flint's mayor, who was swept into office last fall after voters' disgust with the ongoing water crisis, said Wednesday she would watch the criminal investigations closely."The community of Flint has suffered from this man-made water disaster for two years now. I feel it's important and necessary for those who played a part in this crisis to be held accountable," Mayor Karen Weaver said in a statement. "There is plenty of blame to go around, from state policies that cut revenue sharing to cities such as Flint (where we have lost $63 million in the past 15 years), to state budget cuts that the U.S. EPA said diminished the ability of the state's water quality enforcement operations."She added that she was "not here to make judgments on anyone, but I do want the facts, and I think the citizens of Flint deserve that."Flint's water became contaminated with lead in April 2014 when the city, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its drinking water source from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit water system to Flint River water treated at the Flint Water Treatment Plant. Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials have acknowledged a disastrous mistake when they failed to require the city to add corrosion-control chemicals as part of the treatment process. A Flint engineering report said corrosion controls would have cost $50,000, which is $137 a day.The corrosive water caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures. Although Flint reconnected to Detroit water in October, after state officials acknowledged the lead-poisoning problem after months of denials, the risk remains because of damage to the water infrastructure system.Officials also still are exploring possible links between the river water and a Legionnaires' outbreak.The state and city are now treating the pipes with higher levels of phosphates in an effort to build up a protective coating that will prevent lead from further leaching. Having more water flowing in the system would help that process, and that's one reason Snyder and other state officials want Flint residents to start using their taps again.In addition to the state criminal investigation, county and federal officials said their efforts will continue."Federal law enforcement agencies have been working on a parallel investigation cooperatively with the state but independently. We will continue to explore any violations of federal law," said Gina Balaya, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's office. On Friday, in the morning, at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC, Administrator of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia attended and officially opened the 11th Annual Scientific Meeting of Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy Conference. Following, at Kangaroo Point Park, the Administrator attended the official unveiling, dedication and handover ceremony for The Canon Garland Memorial ANZAC Day Origins where His Excellency addressed guests. In the evening, at Suncorp Stadium, the Administrator and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended the National Rugby League match between the Brisbane Broncos and the Sydney Rabbitohs. On Sunday, in the afternoon, at St Stephens Presbyterian Church, Ipswich, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC, Administrator of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended the 150th anniversary celebration service of the Central Church Ipswich. On Monday, in the morning, at the Shrine of Remembrance, ANZAC Square, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC, Administrator of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia attended the Anzac Day Dawn Service where the Administrator addressed guests and laid the first wreath. Following, at the Cathedral of St Stephen, Brisbane, the Administrator and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended the Anzac Day Mass, and then, attended the Anzac Day Parade, where the His Excellency read the First Resolution and reviewed the Parade. In the afternoon, at the United Service Club, the Administrator attended the Anzac Day Lunch. In the evening, at the A.I.F. Memorial Lodge, the Administrator attended the Freemasons Queensland Anzac Memorial Service and laid a wreath. A speech delievered by His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC, Administrator of the Commonwealth of Australia, at the 2016 Anzac Day Dawn Service of Remembrance, ANZAC Square, Brisbane: As we gather in peaceful pre-dawn darkness, in reflection, we honour the hundreds of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders heeding the call to arms throughout our nations histories. By our united presence, we solemnly commemorate those who have fallen; we pay tribute to those injured in conflict; we gratefully acknowledge all who have served, and continue to serve our country in the armed forces. Last year we marked the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli. It was then one hundred years since the beginning of an eight month, ill-conceived, and bloody campaign. There were 26,000 Australian casualties. It was a military failure. However the sustained, heroic deeds of the Aussies and Kiwis on that rugged Turkish peninsula so profoundly captured public imagination, that the Anzac Spirit that spirit of courage, fortitude and mateship, of honour and service before self is said to have been born. It was a spirit the people of our nations would seek to preserve through a powerful and enduring evocation of remembrance, which we call Anzac Day. In Queensland, a public meeting was called for the 11th of January 1916, presided over by Brisbane Alderman George Down. There the citizens decided that the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landing would be suitably commemorated henceforth in Queensland, and to that end the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee was formed. And so, one hundred years ago today, in 1916, just a few hundred metres from where we gather this morning, a column of more than 6,000 veterans and troops left Roma Street and marched down lined City streets. Later that night, at a Citizens Celebration at Exhibition Hall, one minutes silence was maintained at 9pm sharp. Similar commemorations were held elsewhere in Queensland, as they were in London, and in Egypt where much of the Anzac Force was waiting to deploy to the Western Front and where, at church parades, diggers who had been at the Gallipoli landings proudly displayed red ribbons above their left breast pockets. But that century ago, the Anzacs involvement in the Great War in Europe was just beginning. The first Australian arrivals in France, from Egypt, had happened only a month earlier, in March. The Australian forces were soon to be bloodied in one of the major battles of the Great War, the Somme offensive, conducted between July and November that year. In that July, in the first major action by the Australians on the Western Front, 7,000 diggers attacked entrenched German positions at Fromelles in France, resulting in 5,500 casualties, including 2,000 dead tragic carnage, in just one day, on just one advance. The bloodshed continued, and between late July and early August a century ago, the First, Second and Fourth Australian Divisions engaged in fierce fighting with German forces at Pozieres in France - at a cost of 23,000 Australian casualties. And in the thick of this fighting were many Queenslanders. The 26th Battalion was raised at Enoggera in April 1915 and initially served at Gallipoli. The Battalion then deployed to France where it mounted the first assault by Australian troops on a trench on the Western Front, in June 1916. It fought its first major battle around Pozieres two months later. In a conflict which saw so many heroes, singling out one individual for mention is to offer but one example of the courage, determination, grit and selflessness of so many. One such exceptional soldier was a Brisbane surveyor, a gifted athlete who had played rugby for Queensland, Captain Vivian Stewart Cooper DSO MC of the 26th Battalion. There is an image for us all to see. At Pozieres, in August 1916, Captain Cooper earned that Distinguished Service Order for his conspicuous gallantry in action. In a ferocious fight, he repulsed a determined enemy attack on his position, killing many and personally taking as many as twenty prisoners. Two years later, again displaying disregard for his own personal safety, and against tremendous odds, he led attacks on a number of enemy machine gun posts, resulting in a large number of enemy dead and the capture of 30 guns. For this action, he was awarded the Military Cross. Captain Cooper Brisbane surveyor and talented Queensland rugby player, gallant soldier: Captain Cooper survived the war, and returned home rightly as a hero. He was a courageous Anzac whose actions exemplified the very finest qualities of the more than 416,000 Australians and 100,000 New Zealanders who fought for Empire that century ago. As we well know, the War to End all Wars did not achieve that objective. In the ensuing century, Australia committed almost a million men and woman to the global conflict of World War Two. Soldiers, sailors and airmen then served in conflicts in Korea, Malaya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Australia has also, since World War Two, contributed personnel to more than fifty United Nations and other multilateral peace and security operations. Now, Anzac Day is not just about remembering the past. Today I pay particular tribute to our dedicated and professional Defence personnel 2,200 currently, overseas, supporting Australias interests, in places including Afghanistan, throughout the Middle East and as far afield as South Sudan, and in operations protecting our nations borders and offshore interests all of these people putting themselves in harms way every day, around the world. And just as Queenslanders have never forgotten the bravery of the men who stepped ashore in that cold dawn at Gallipoli, more than a century ago, today we continue to keep in our minds these Service men and women, operating now so far away from home and family. And in honouring, as we do this year, a centenary of beneficial work by what we now know as the Returned & Services League of Australia, the RSL, we must rededicate ourselves to acknowledging and supporting, as does the RSL so well those who have returned from conflict, plagued by injuries, both physical and psychological. Heartbreakingly, psychological injuries can be just as devastating as physical injuries. We must never forget veterans with war wounds which are not readily visible, or their families and friends. My people, Queensland, Australia, our central mission today is to give thanks to all who have served, and serve, in our Defence Forces. And so, gathered now as a community united in honour of sacrifice, a community deeply committed to a cohesive society positively aligned, we continue today that great unbroken Anzac Day project of remembrance, the project solemnly embarked upon and entrusted to us all, 100 years ago. And we progress that cause, when we remember, with immense gratitude, the enormous sacrifices made by so many, to help protect the way of life on which we depend, and which we value, so very greatly. Lest we forget. Description GIS - 25 April, 2016: Enterprise Mauritius is leading, for the first time, a delegation of 22 industrialists from the manufacturing sector for a promotional campaign in Australia. Thus, Mauritius will be showcasing from 27 April to 5 May 2016 a wide range of products namely apparel and accessories, jewellery, fruit pastes and jams, and frozen pastries. This will be a unique opportunity for Australian buyers to discover the Savoir faire of the Mauritian manufacturers. Mauritius has over the last four decades, diversified its economy through the development of a number of sectors such as manufacturing, tourism, financial services and ICT. Today the country is a well-known exporter to European Union and the USA. For the Australian campaign, Enterprise Mauritius has chalked three major promoting events in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. From 27 to 28 April, participants will showcase their Made with Care products at the Melbourne Business to Business Expo Fair. This important fair is being organised by the Australian Business Forum where more than 150 exhibitors coming from China, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia will be present. More than 5,000 professionals including buyers, sourcing directors and other major stakeholders will be visiting. Enterprise Mauritius will be organising Buyers Sellers Meetings in Sydney and Perth from 2 to 3 May and 4 to 5 May respectively. The Australia Africa Chamber of Commerce, the New South Wales Business Chamber, and the Chamber of Commerce of Western Australia are all providing support to ensure that these promotional events are successful. This promotional campaign is in line with Enterprise Mauritius strategy to diversify exports to new markets like Australia, Africa and Russia. Further, exports to Australia are showing a constant increase averaging more than 30% over the last years. Enterprise Mauritius is now putting all efforts to connect participants with major distribution channels in Australia, and hence position Mauritius as an alternative reliable sourcing destination for Australia. The Ambassador of Australia in Mauritius, Mrs Susan Coles, and the Ambassador of Mauritius to Australia, Mr Patrick Cavalot, are also collaborating to make the campaign successful. Through this initiative, the partnership and bilateral relations between both countries will be further strengthened. Description GIS - 25 April, 2016: Mauritius and France will further collaborate to strengthen both bilateral relations and friendly ties between the two countries as well as reinforce both economic and social development. Mauritius and France will further collaborate to strengthen both bilateral relations and friendly ties between the two countries as well as reinforce both economic and social development. This was at the fore of discussions on 22nd April 2016 by the President of the National Assembly of France, Mr Claude Bartolone, during a courtesy call on the Prime Minister, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, at the Treasury Building in Port Louis. In a statement, Mr Claude Bartolone, lauded the initiative of Mauritius with regards to the signing and ratification of the Paris Agreement adopted at the 21st Meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This, he said, demonstrates the similarities between the two countries to environmental issues and climate change. The President of the National Assembly of France also expressed interest and shared the same vision of the Prime Minister, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, for both countries to strengthen partnership in their future endeavours which according to him will open new avenues of cooperation with regards to economic exchanges in the Indian Ocean given Mauritius proximity with Reunion Island. He also dwelt on reinforcing cooperation in the field of medicine, and in the fight against terrorism whereby he expressed his sincere gratitude as well as that of the Government of France for the support of Mauritius with regards the recent terrorist attack in France. The only place Ive seen mention of the sorry affair is in Hamish McDonalds column in The Saturday Paper. Not even the ABC seems very interested, despite the efforts of its PNG correspondent, Eric Tlozek. At least the New Zealanders think its newsworthy. I dont read the Murdoch tabloids but even the Fairfax Press seems muted. The latter seems happy to report on Dame Carol Kidus change of heart about the Paga Hill development but have pointedly ignored the impending collapse of civil society in PNG. In the past they have both been more than happy to contribute their uninformed and sensational two bobs worth over things Papua New Guinean. THE curious silence from both the Australian media and government about the latest shenanigans in Port Moresby is most puzzling. I suspect that what is happening with the Australian media is a kind of ennui and torpor. Events like this occurring in other countries would precipitate widespread unrest, protests, riots and civil action but in PNG nothing ever happens. Instead there is meek acceptance of their politicians atrocities and life goes on. Theres not much news or anything sensational in that sort of tepid reaction. Its not worth reporting and is consequently ignored. The Australian governments non-response is a different kettle of fish. It is a mixture of myopia and an uncomfortable sense of complicity in something that has turned out to be very nasty indeed. The myopia is caused by the present pre-occupation of Australian federal politicians with surviving an unusual and uncertain forthcoming election. The complicity is related to the Pacific Solution and the Manus Island detention centre. Some commentators have described the advantage earned by agreeing to host the asylum seekers as a masterstroke by Peter ONeill. In reality it was a gift that landed unexpectedly in his lap from a desperate prime minister trying to hang onto his job. There is little doubt that the deal has hamstrung Australian diplomacy. Their attack dog has been effectively chained up and whenever it whimpers it gets hit over the head with the Manus stick. It has now slunk into the back of its kennel and gone to sleep. For two countries that are supposed to be friends it is a strange way to run a relationship. With respect to Manus, and indeed Nauru, the point about trying to get into Australia by boat has now been well and truly made. Its time for a bit of compassion. Maintain the boat turn-back policy by all means but do away with the misery of the detention camps. A one-off gesture of compassion by closing the camps and either swiftly repatriating or resettling the inmates would do a lot to restore Australias international reputation. And Im sure it would go down well with the voting public. Im also sure that the Manus Provincial Government could make good use of the new transit centre outside Lorengau. It could be turned into a government administrative centre or a high school campus for off-island students. Do that and ONeill will lose the big stick he uses to thump the Australian attack dog over the head every time it stirs. Maybe then hell see sense and realise its all over for him and his crooked mates. Description GIS - 25 April, 2016: Government is pursuing its efforts to address the problem of squatting in an efficient and effective manner with the remittance of letters of intent to a batch of 34 squatters from Vallee Pitot in a ceremony held on Friday 22 April 2016 at the Lunch Room of the National Assembly, Port Louis, in the presence of the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Housing and Lands, Mr Showkutally Soodhun, and other personalities. In his address, the Vice-Prime Minister reiterated that Government is dealing with the issue of squatting with all the considerations that it warrants while at the same time being firm and resolute in the actions to combat illegal occupation of State land. Soon, Port Louis will be free of squatters with the regularisation of the 322 squatters present in the Capital, said Mr Soodhun. According to Mr Soodhun, a number of variables have been accounted in deciding to regularise, in situ, the situation of squatters who have constructed concrete houses on State land. These are namely, the squatters financial incapacity to build another house, availability of existing infrastructure in the region and social cost to Government in the event of demolition. The Vice-Prime Minister also stated that the letters of intent provide squatters with security of tenure and render them eligible for loan facilities. It is recalled that out of the 322 squatters in Port Louis, 106 families are being regularised in situ, while 24 are being relocated in Batterie Cassee, Roche Bois, 10 at Monseigneur Leen and 182 in Pointe aux Sables. A drawing of lots exercise was carried out on 30 November 2015 for the allocation of lots to the squatters in Tranquebar for their relocation to Pointe-aux-Sables. A second similar exercise took place on 15 April 2016 for all the other squatters in the region of Port Louis. Government Information Service, Prime Ministers Office, Level 6, New Government Centre, Port Louis, Mauritius. Email: Website: Description GIS 25 April 2016: Mauritius is among the first fifteen countries to have signed and ratified the Paris Agreement adopted at the 21st Meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change. The instrument of ratification was also deposited during the Ceremony for the Opening for Signature which was held on 22 April 2016 at the UN Headquarters in New York. Mauritius is among the first fifteen countries to have signed and ratified the Paris Agreement The above statement was made by the Minister of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms and Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development, and Disaster and Beach Management, Mr Alain Wong at a press conference this morning in Port Louis, in the presence of the French Ambassador, Mr Laurent Garnier, and the UN Resident Coordinator and UN Development Programme Resident Representative, Mr Simon Springett. According to the Minister, the signing and ratification of the Paris Agreement, testifies Governments will in tackling climate change issues and emphasises the commitment of Mauritius in support of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) which are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Moreover, he announced that the Climate Change Bill is almost finalised. For his part, Ambassador Garnier expressed his appreciation with regards to how the Government has embarked on dealing with climate change issues. He recalled that out of the first fifteen countries who have signed and ratified the Paris Agreement last week, thirteen were SIDS. He also hoped that the measures to deal with climate change would be implemented before 2020. As for Mr Springett, the signing of the Paris Agreement is a landmark achievement in the fight against climate change, adding that it is also a collective attempt to address the issue. Description GIS - 25 April, 2016: Sweden has solicited the support of Mauritius for the United Nations Security Council election to be held in 2017 at the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly. Sweden has solicited the support of Mauritius for the In this context, Mrs Lena Hjelm-Wallen, Special Representative of the Swedish Prime Minister, paid a courtesy call on the Prime Minister, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, this morning at the Treasury Building in Port Louis. In a statement Mrs Lena Hjelm-Wallen, expressed satisfaction with her meeting with Prime Minister Jugnauth which she qualified as very cordial and positive. She pointed out that Sweden and Mauritius already share close collaboration in various spheres and that Sweden is looking forward for Mauritius to support its candidacy to the UN Security Council. Cost and Procedures What's Ahead (TNS) The El Paso Independent School District is among a small number of districts across the country outfitting their police officers with body cameras and now the Socorro district is looking to follow suit.District administrators and parents generally support the use of body cameras, but they and several advocacy organizations believe a balance must be struck to keep students and police accountable while also protecting students' right to privacy.It is a delicate balance, said Matt Simpson, policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas The body cameras are good tools, but you dont want to violate everyones privacy. In these cases involving juveniles, it is how (the video footage) is stored and who gets to see it. Policies will be key to handling who sees the videos, who has access to the footage and how they are stored."El Paso ISD has equipped all 43 of their officers with the body cameras. The district has been using the cameras since December.Victor Araiza, EPISD's chief of police, said student privacy is a key concern they are working to protect and that the cameras will not violate any of students' rights.The expectation of privacy is very significant to us and that why we are not recording things we are not normally involved in, Araiza said. If an incident is reported to us, the officer would be there anyway. Like a theft or any crime reported, we would take photos of the scene and collect evidence, and it is no different with the body cameras.He said that there's an expectation of privacy in the bathrooms and changing rooms, and that the video cameras don't change that. He added that policies are in place regarding that matter.A small number of school districts throughout the country have begun equipping its security and police officers with body cameras, including one in Houston and another in Iowa, according to several media reports. There is no data on how many school districts across the country use or are in the process of acquiring body cameras.The Houston Independent School District launched a four-month pilot program in 2015 which issued body cameras to more than two dozen officers, according to a news release from the district. By the 2015-16 school year, the district equipped about 210 officers with body cameras."It is a challenging issue, especially in the context of a school," the ACLU's Simpson said. "Most of the footage they will get will involve minors and that is something they need to be sensitive about and take every step necessary to protect the students' right to privacy.The cameras purchased by El Paso ISD are small a little bigger than a pager and are attached to the officers uniform shirts. A flap hides the cameras lens when it is off, and when officers are investigating a criminal offense on campus, the flap is lowered and video begins to be record.We were seeing the national trends across the country and we wanted to assure the community that we are being as transparent as possible," Araiza said. "We have a lot of interaction with students, obviously, and there are instances that occur that we want to make sure both sides are represented. It can easily be done by a cell phone, but these cameras cannot be manipulated by the officer. They can only record and then it goes into a secure database.The footage is then stored in an internal storage system that is part of the district's information technology department.Every officer must undergo two hours of training on the use of the devices and when the cameras should be turned on, Araiza said.The cameras brought by El Paso ISD cost more than $500 each. The money came from the districts general fund, officials said.Obviously, we wanted something that was going to be reliable," Araiza said. "We wanted something that has good images and audio."We are very confident in these cameras and they are very rugged," he continued. "So we budgeted for a little more of a quality product that we could utilize and give us the confidence that it is going to work and be reliable.Some El Paso district parents said they support the use of the cameras as long as strict procedures are in place to protect students' privacy.I dont object to them, said Rene Aguilar, whose children attend El Paso ISD schools. I dont think itll impact student privacy. It's hard to say students have privacy in a public school when they are surrounded by thousands of students. I dont think privacy is that big of a deal. Unless they are walking into restroom or locker rooms without any prior warning, any kind of recording should not be used in those situations. They should only be used for official type of situations.Erica Martinez, who has children ranging from elementary to high school in El Paso ISD schools, said she believes privacy is really not an issue considering students are already recording events with their cell phones.I am in complete agreement with the cameras because it holds the officers accountable and the students, too, Martinez said. As for privacy, when I went to school 20 years ago, we didnt live our lives for everyone to see. But given the fact that we have social media now, everyone puts everything out there to begin with, so privacy is not really an issue. Students already take videos of incidents and post them on Facebook. The kids put up everything already.The Socorro ISD is currently working on equipping their officers with cameras.The districts board of trustees on Tuesday unanimously approved applying for a grant from the U.S. Department of Justices Body Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program.The competitive grant gives law enforcement organizations up to $20,000 to buy the body cameras, a data storage system and training. The application for the grant is due by April 27. If approved for the grant, the district would have to match the $20,000.We are still in the research phase as far as for what equipment is best for our department and the location and storage type, Socorro ISD Assistant Superintendent of Administration Marivel Macias said.The district is looking to buy cameras for all of its 40 police officers.It is just for transparency, Macias said. This is something our chief of police was looking into and I know other law enforcement agencies, including El Paso police and El Paso sheriffs, have been looking into. ... It was just something that will benefit our officers and students.Macias said the body cameras are similar to surveillance cameras already in place at the district's schools and should not impact student privacy.We have safety cameras in all of our buildings, and we have policies on how we store the footage and who is able to obtain certain footage, Macias said. So we feel very comfortable that we will be following those same policies we have, and we will be updating them as we go along.Araceli Urquidi, who has a student in Socorro ISD, said she welcomes the body cameras not only to keep children from misbehaving, but to keep law enforcement in check.A lot of police take advantage of kids, dont allow kids to be themselves, Urquidi said. They go after them, target certain types of kids.She added that student privacy will not be an issue due to the growing presence of social media.I dont think it would invade student privacy, with technology now, theyre publishing everything on the internet; Instagram, Facebook, Urquidi said.Socorro ISD parent Andres Ballesteros said he doesnt have an issue with the cameras themselves, but doesnt think they are necessary.I think its good, he said. But Ive never seen anything happen out of the normal. I talk to my son and hes never had no problems or kids getting out of hand.Officials from both the El Paso County District Attorneys Office and County Attorneys Office said they do not anticipate any legal issues will develop with the body cameras being used by school district police officers, but said safety measures must be taken to protect the footage.El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza said keeping records safe is a key concern when dealing with privacy issues involving juveniles.I dont handle juvenile law, but in general with juveniles, the issue is who gets to see the video, Esparza said. I think those are issues that raise concerns, because now we are talking about youngsters in high school and elementary schools."Ralph Girvin, El Paso County Attorneys Office Juvenile Unit Division Chief, said the video could become part of a juvenile's record.In general, what you are going to have is when an officer begins recording them and then takes the student in to custody, those recordings become juvenile records, Girvin said. So that body camera footage is now part of juvenile records and by law would have to be confidential. The biggest issue is who has access to videos.Araiza said the footage recorded by El Paso ISD officers is only evidence that will be seen by department staff and will be made available to the court administrators if the recorded incident turn into court cases.Both El Paso and Socorro ISD officials are avoiding using the cloud to store the footage and keeping to internal database storage.The storage we are looking at is internal storage not cloud-based, Macias said. We feel very strongly that, if we are awarded the grant, it is one of the major items that we are looking at. We already have safety systems in place as far as our cameras at every school, so we will be using that as our foundation for our policies and procedures to keep the data safe and on who can view the footage.El Paso ISD is not the first district in the region to use body cameras.The Canutillo Independent School District was using a security company that used body cameras to patrol its campuses, but the practice was stopped since a policy was not in place, Canutillo ISD Governmental Relations Coordinator Rene Leon said.Our security officers patrolling our schools previously had cameras, but our security coordinator at the time decided against the use of body cameras as the district did not have its own policy on the use of the cameras, Leon said.There were no known issues when the cameras were being used, Leon said.We believe it protects all the parties involved the officers, the students and the parents, Leon said. It gives a recording of the situation as it is happening. It answers questions after cases or incidents are brought up.Privacy also played a part in the district's decision to stop using the cameras, Leon said.The Canutillo ISD Board of Trustees at a March 22 meeting unanimously approved looking into starting their own police department. Leon said the body cameras may be discussed again in the future after the new security department is created.Clint ISD also does not have a police force, but rather a security department. District spokeswoman Laura Cade said the department is not considering at this time using body cameras.Ysleta ISD officials could not be reached for comment. Settlements ins and outs Labor policy and the on-demand economy The real issue Question of responsibility Uber, the popular ride-hailing app, just announced it has settled two class action lawsuits in California and Massachusetts in which drivers sought classification as employees and entitlement to overtime pay and more transparent handling of tips.Under the terms of the settlement, which you may read here , Uber will pay $84 million to be distributed among a class of 385,000 drivers (and $16 million more if the company goes public). In return, the drivers will not pursue their claim to be employees.Uber will also make it clear that tips are not included in the price users pay and will revise its procedures for delisting drivers to give longer notice and greater transparency, including adding an appeals process. And the company will assist the creation of drivers' councils and meet with them quarterly.So what does all this mean?Many people who work in todays flexible labor markets or the gig economy have issues similar to Uber drivers. They worry about where benefits will come from, how to track their compensation, how to share the benefits if the startup they work for makes it big, how to communicate with management and what labor laws apply to them.The recent Uber settlements do not settle these big issues and questions, which Ive been writing about for years. They dont even settle them for Uber drivers.Let me address a few of the biggest question marks.Federal district judges in Oakland and Boston will now hold hearings on the fairness of the settlement. Approval is not a foregone conclusion.A quarter of the settlement, $21 million, will go to the lawyers. A few thousand drivers who drove the most miles during the period in question will get a few thousand dollars apiece. Most drivers will receive only a few hundred dollars. Its not clear whether this will seem fair to the judges.For comparison, a judge in 2015 rejected a proposed $324.5 million settlement in a case in which the government found that Apple, Adobe, Intel and Google conspired not to hire each others' employees, victimizing some 64,000 Silicon Valley employees. The judge, who cited a previous case in which far more was paid out per employee, later approved a higher settlement of $415 million.More recently, a federal judge this month rejected a proposed $12.25 million settlement involving Uber rival Lyft, saying the deal short-changed drivers and didnt fall within the range of reasonableness.So the judges are not guaranteed to sign off on a settlement just because the lawyers are happy with it. The Silicon Valley case involved well-compensated employees who probably lost large sums when their companies illegally locked them out of the job market.Uber involves less well-compensated employees and smaller sums, but might, for that reason, invite even more careful scrutiny of the settlement.Not at all. That issue will come up in other litigation. The settlement is not a precedent.For example, the Internal Revenue Service could audit Uber and decide, as it did with Microsoft in 1990 , that the drivers are actually employees for whom taxes should have been withheld.The National Labor Relations Board is already investigating Uber . Should the Teamsters ( who are interested in organizing Uber drivers) file charges claiming that Ubers assistance to the new drivers' councils violates federal labor law, the board would have to decide whether the drivers are employees.Employees have a legal right to form unions and negotiate set wages without employer interference. By contrast, the ability of an association of independent contractors to try and set wages is not protected by labor law and may even violate antitrust law.In administrative proceedings like these, there would be no involvement by lawyers who anticipate millions in legal fees and thus have incentives to reach settlements, as in the Silicon Valley case and that of Uber. Such deals are much better for lawyers than for employees.Good question. Americans seem to be the only people in the world who think that employees who havent been paid minimum wage or who are victims of discrimination should have to go to a general court rather than an administrative agency or specialized labor court. Canadians call our system the American litigation model and have devoted a lot of energy to making sure they dont follow it.A few more cases like Uber might lead employer and union advocates to join forces on administrative remedies that would be faster for workers and cut out the lawyers. Im not aware of any such talks ongoing, so I cant be too specific about what kind of deal might emerge.But it would be hard to find defenders of the current practice of huge class action suits in which millions of dollars are wagered on the uncertain reactions of a jury. It is like adding a random function to a program. Not in my opinion . Most agree that the line between the two is vague and easy to manipulate.Many people think we need a third, intermediate category (like dependent contractor, or independent employee In reference to this, earlier in the Uber litigation, the judge in California observed that the case would require the jury to decide into which of two round holes to put this square peg. At one time I thought a third category might be a good idea, but I now think it would only invite further strategic manipulation by those who hire labor, and longer jury trials to sort it out.This settlement makes quite clear that Uber drivers are employees. Uber alone controls the listing and delisting of drivers, how they are evaluated and (most importantly) how they are compensated. Perhaps ironically, the settlement will actually help support a future ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that the drivers are in fact employees.Of course they can set their own hours, but this is entirely compatible with employee status. So the Uber case does not seem to me to show the need for a new category. It shows that the good old category of employment still works.Well, OK, maybe Uber drivers are employees. But isnt the choice between employee and independent contractor still a very old-fashioned debate to be having?Absolutely. The real issue isnt who is an employer. The ultimate issue is who is responsible for making sure that employee wages are paid and other employment laws complied with.State legislation increasingly imposes such legal responsibility on employers, even when they arguably dont exercise control over an individuals actual work the traditional index of employer-employee status.For example, a California court held that the retailer Forever 21 was the joint employer of the workers in the contractor factories that make its clothing, even though it has no control over hours, pay or anything else.Massachusetts, New Jersey and other states use definitions of employment that include just about any hiring of people. California law says that customers of staffing agencies, even if they are not employers of those staff, are still responsible for payment of wages and workers compensation insurance.These examples dont yet add up to a coherent theory of responsibility to make sure that labor standards are observed. But they do show that such responsibility has begun to burst the boundaries of the traditional employment relationship.Debates in employment law increasingly concern these issues of responsibility, rather than classification.Should Wal-Mart, like Forever 21, be responsible for working conditions in the factories that make the goods it sells? Should this be a legal responsibility?Retailers and garment manufacturers in the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh , including Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch, agreed to such legal responsibility after the collapse of Rana Plaza , but most U.S. retailers and manufacturers prefer to work with other organizations whose commitments are not legally enforceable.It doesnt yet appear to make much difference to workers in Bangladesh whether the customers for their clothes accept legal, or only moral, responsibility for building safety, though differences may emerge in the future.These issues are difficult, but clear thinking about them requires moving beyond the old idea that only the employer with control of work has such legal responsibility.As I said, I believe that Uber drivers are employed by Uber, and that the National Labor Relations Board will soon come to the same conclusion. But, even if I am wrong, it may not matter whether or not they are formerly employees if the law decides that Uber is responsible for observing employment law even for the independent contractors it hires. (TNS) Another iPhone battle has come to an apparently anticlimactic end.On Friday, the Department of Justice said in a filing that it would no longer seek a court order to compel Apple to help it unlock a Brooklyn drug dealers iPhone.In a letter sent to Judge Margo K. Brodie of the Eastern Distict of New York, who had been considering the government request, U.S. attorneys said that an unnamed individual had provided the devices pass code and that the government used that pass code by hand and gained access to the iPhone.An Apple spokesman said the company had no comment. In previous court filings, Apple had disputed the agencys need for its assistance.In another high-profile case, involving an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, the FBI ended up paying more than $1 million dollars to a technical expert who provided a method to bypass Apples built-in security protections, according to Director James Comey . In that case, too, the government had sought Apples assistance, which the company refused to provide.As we have said previously, these cases have never been about setting a court precedent, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said. They are about law enforcements ability and need to access evidence on devices pursuant to lawful court orders and search warrants. ... Because we now have access to the data we sought, we notified the court of this recent development and have withdrawn our request for assistance.Pierce said the agency would not reveal the identity of the person who provided the pass code.While this particular case appears over, more are likely to emerge, increasing calls for new legislation that clarifies whether law enforcement can seek court orders to get tech companies assistance in unlocking phones.In a hearing before a House of Representatives subcommittee Tuesday, Amy Hess, the FBIs executive assistant director for science and technology, said that the agency had not been able to access data on about 13 percent of the pass-code-protected smartphones it had seized as evidence in the past six months. A smart city program in Singapore integrates sensors, cameras and data analytics into the daily life of citizens in an unprecedented way. Developed by the governments National Research Foundation, private-sector companies, universities and other government agencies, much of the data collected is run through an online platform called Virtual Singapore that shows how the country is functioning in real time.Singapore is doing it at a level of integration and scale that no one else has done yet, Guy Perry, an executive of the Los Angeles engineering design firm Aecom, told The platform contains the dimensions of buildings, their construction materials, placement of windows, and includes an online map of the nation that allows users to view closed-circuit TV footage, check flooding levels and monitor open parking spaces. Today the system is used by the government to identify when people are smoking in non-smoking areas or littering from high-rise housing. Plans to expand the program will extend the systems capabilities further, sometimes sharing the data with private companies.The data-fueled map will allow the government to see where public transit riders are gathering so they can decide where buses should be routed.Data collected could also be used to model things like how skyscrapers might affect wind-flow patterns throughout the city or wireless signals, or map the potential spread of infectious diseases. The system could also be used to predict how crowds might react in an emergency, such as a bomb exploding in a shopping mall.Mandatory satellite-linked devices in the vehicles of all residents will help the government charge tolls more precisely, scale charges to the distance driven by each person, or allow dynamic pricing based on road conditions.Sensors deployed in homes by private companies will show if an elderly family member stops moving and monitor health by recording toilet usage. F1 needs to turn a revolutionary corner in order to revive the spectacle of the past. That is the view of Gerhard Berger, speaking just a few days before F1's end-of-April deadline for agreeing a set of different technical rules for 2017. The latest rumours are that, in addition to wider tyres and more downforce, the sport might slightly relax its fuel usage limits but Berger, an F1 legend, warns that it all might not be enough. "It's all just fine-tuning," said the former Ferrari and McLaren driver. "Look at MotoGP with 270 horse power on two very narrow tyres -- the difference between power and grip is huge," Berger told motorsport-magazin.com. "Another example is the 80s, when we (F1) had 1400hp and probably half the downforce of today -- these were things that you really had to master." But that doesn't mean Berger thinks F1, whose turbo V6 engines are now approaching 1000hp, should simply reverse its 2017 blueprint and slash downforce. "No, that would be totally wrong," he said. "I would change the ratio. "If you calculate the average downforce we had at that time and then look at how much power we had, it may well be that (now) we need 2000hp. I think it's the (power to grip) ratio that has to change," Berger added. (GMM) April 25, 1936 The Bureau of Biological Survey is considering the establishment of a migratory waterfowl refuge which would cover 3,000 to 15,000 acres in Cayuga, Seneca and Wayne Counties, and a refuge of at least 3,200 acres in Oswego and Jefferson Counties. These refuges would form links in the chain of refuges from the Gulf of Mexico along the Atlantic Seaboard to Canada, to accommodate the wildfowl which use this passage. The Oswego-Jefferson County refuge would be called the "Lake Ontario Marsh Refuge," and the Cayuga, Seneca and Wayne County refuge has been tentatively named the "Montezuma Marsh Refuge." April 25, 1961 Virginia will get back two battle flags captured by New York State units during the Civil War. Gov. Rockefeller signed a bill Monday authorizing the return, as part of the observance of the 100th anniversary of the war, of a flag of the State of Virginia and a guidon of the Fifth Virginia Cavalry. The flags now are in the state Bureau of War Records. April 25, 2006 Captain Dan Wiles of Skaneateles has sailed the waterways of the Erie Canal for many years. His boat, the Emita II, makes daily runs through the canal throughout the summer. During the off season, Wiles travels around sharing the history of the canal with historical societies, he said. Wiles has gained extensive historical knowledge of the New York canal system through his daily chartered tours given by Mid-Lakes Navigation, a company that has been owned by his family since the 1960s. Today, according to Wiles, the canal system is largely driven by tourism. April 25, 2011 Brownie Ainsley Saraceni, 7, of Baldwinsville, tried on a hoop skirt with the help of Seward House Museum Education Director Jennifer Haines during Victorian Girl Day in the portrait gallery of the museum Tuesday. Brownie troop members Marlee Lateo, 7, and Reese Carr, 8, of Clyde, made calling cards at the Seward House Museum. Brownie and Girl Scout troops visited the museum to learn about the Victorian era. New England and the Mid-Atlantic, including the Chesapeake Bay, have a long and storied history of fishing. Fishing continues to define our culture today, with lobsters, sea scallops, crabs, and a variety of fish filling our menus and attracting tourists from all over the world. New Bedford, Massachusetts, is consistently among the highest value ports in the United States, thanks to the lucrative scallop fishery. Recreational fishing is a popular pastime, contributing billions to our economy. Many fishermen still fish in the same places and for the same species as their ancestors hundreds of years ago. We are also dedicated to conserving, protecting, and rebuilding endangered and threatened marine and anadromous species in rivers, bays, estuaries, and marine waters off New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Our work helps ensure the survival of protected marine mammals, sea turtles, and fish for future generations. Our work to maintain sustainable fisheries and protect marine life is a joint effort of the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office and Northeast Fisheries Science Center, offering sound science to help inform management decisions in an ever-changing environment. To find out more about our work, read our 2020-2023 New England and Mid-Atlantic Regional Strategic Plan. An Elbridge man was allegedly involved in forging multiple prescriptions through an Auburn doctor's office, according to the Auburn Police Department. Gary B. Thurston, 38, of 120 Dobbin Lane, Elbridge, is facing multiple felony charges after he was picked up on a warrant April 22. Due to regulations around the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the ongoing investigation, police were not able to release which doctor's office the alleged crimes occurred or whether Thurston was an employee of the office. Police said the New York State Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement is involved with the investigation. Thurston is charged with first-degree identity theft, second-degree forgery, first-degree falsifying business records and computer trespassing. He was arraigned Monday morning and remanded to the Cayuga County Jail on $2,000 cash bail, $4,000 bond. His bail was posted Monday afternoon. Thurston is scheduled to appear at 9:30 a.m. April 27 for a preliminary hearing in Auburn City Court. A Geneva couple has been arrested following a New York State Police investigation into the theft of returnable bottles and cans from the Waterloo Little League field. Kenneth Wells, 28, and Samantha Wells, 22, have been charged with several counts of third-degree burglary. Authorities say the pair allegedly entered a donation shed several times last fall and removed bags of returnable containers. After stealing the containers, they took them to a redemption center to obtain a cash refund. According to police, the bottles and cans collected at the shed are used to help fund Waterloo Little League programs. After the couple was arrested, they were arraigned in Town of Waterloo Court. They were remanded to the Seneca County Jail in lieu of bail. OWASCO When the beeps of her smoke detector woke Lynn Smith up at 5:30 in the morning Saturday, March 5, she was in denial. Congrats to the winners. Photo: Regis Duvignau/Reuters/Corbis Following the now-standard announcement from Michelin last week of its ostensibly affordable Bib Gourmand restaurants in New York, the storied tire company today unveiled its annual, and much-debated, list of starred restaurants in the city as well. Somewhat interestingly, the company decided to wait and unveil the full list late today, at 5 p.m. (Many chefs, however, jumped on Twitter early to relay the news of their stars after they heard from Michelins reps yesterday and this morning.) Anyway, the list, as it always does, leans heavily on fine-dining spots and hews closely to last years selections. There are no huge shocks, but there are some notable changes. The biggest news is that the Modern has been bumped up to two stars under executive chef Abram Bissell, who took control of the kitchen earlier this year after Gabriel Kreuther left. Kreuther, meanwhile, now has one star to show for the cooking at his own, brand-new eponymous restaurant. And Atera, which went through a chef shuffle of its own, retains its two-star standing now that Ronny Emborg has taken over for Matthew Lightner. Tempura Matsui midtowns luxe tempura tasting bar has also been added to the list of starred restaurants. And Uncle Boons, the Thai restaurant thats basically impossible not to love, now has a star to show for itself, too, (though Zabb Elee has been bumped out of the star list). Williamsburgs tiny Semilla, a veggie-focused tasting counter that has found plenty of fans, also gets a star, as does the Finch in Clinton Hill, and the new Bowery wine spot Rebelle. Finally, alas, Daniel Boulud will have to wait at least one more year to get the third star back at Daniel, which still has two. Now heres the full list: Three Stars (Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey) Chefs Table at Brooklyn Fare Eleven Madison Park Jean-Georges Le Bernardin Masa Per Se Two Stars (Excellent cuisine, worth a detour) Aquavit Atera Blanca Daniel Ichimura Jungsik Marea The Modern Momofuku Ko Soto One Star (A very good restaurant in its category) Ai Fiori Aldea Andanada Aureole Babbo Batard Betony Blue Hill Bouley The Breslin Brushstroke Cafe Boulud Cafe China Cagen Carbone Casa Enrique Casa Mono Caviar Russe Del Posto Delaware and Hudson Dovetail The Finch Gabriel Kreuther Gotham Bar and Grill Gramercy Tavern Hirohisa Jewel Bako Juni Junoon Kajitsu Kyo Ya La Vara Luksus Meadowsweet The Musket Room M. Wells Steakhouse Nomad Peter Luger Picholine (which is now closed) Piora Pok Pok Ny Public Rebelle The River Cafe Rosanjin Semilla Somtum Der The Spotted Pig Sushi Azabu Sushi of Gari Sushi Yasuda Take Root (which is currently closed for renovations but should reopen later this fall) Telepan Tempura Matsui Tori Shin Tulsi Uncle Boons Wallse ZZs Clam Bar Update: Here are the 2017 Michelin stars for New York. New York doesnt embrace chefs who come here without going all in. Photo: David Mercado / Reuters Its difficult to keep track of Claus Meyers many, many New York projects. Since leaving Denmark, where he co-founded the restaurant Noma (perhaps youve heard of it?) and literally helped define the philosophy behind New Nordic cuisine, Meyer has moved here to open both a food hall and a restaurant (Agern) at Grand Central Terminal, a Danish-style bakery in Williamsburg, a commissary kitchen and coffee roastery in Long Island City, a culinary school and restaurant to serve the low-income Brownsville community, and a project to introduce children to more adventurous foods. Even more surprising: Hes working on all of these projects right now, simultaneously. Grub sat down with Meyer to discuss what drives him, how he manages the risk (and the finances) of these endeavors, and why hes in New York for the long haul. When did you decide that you wanted to conquer the New York restaurant scene? Well, I never thought about this as being about conquering New York, really. Im not really an emperor kind of person! Its more that I want to spread joy and address issues that seemed to be unaddressed. I like to find win-win scenarios between the organization and the society. So I never came to conquer New York, though I want to do something great. But I didnt know what it was before I arrived. Im not sure I really know it yet, but at least Ive found a couple of things that I feel, for me, make sense to address. I think about how my grandchildren will remember me. I also want to contribute to the process of setting a new standard of how we treat people in this industry. And then, of course, if Im able to be successful, I also have an obligation to do more. Why start with Grand Central? I wasnt really sure what Grand Central Terminal was, and then I heard it was a train station. I was like, If I ever come to America, then probably I wouldnt sign on to a big property in a train station! But then I looked up Grand Central Terminal, and I realized that it was not a very normal train station. And I came here and I fell a little bit in love with the space. The scale of Grand Central also intensifies the risk. I could have stayed home. On the one hand, Im pretty adventurous. Im also very good at finding challenges. Im not good at building ten-year plans. Im very much present in the moment, and I always see new opportunities that are just around me. But Im very driven by gut feeling, and intend to play a lot of things in life by the heart. And when this opportunity came about, I said, Well! And that was three years ago. I just turned 50, and I had kind of gotten my company back under control and found a good leadership team. My oldest daughter and my wife have always been in love with New York. So with all these reasons, I said, Lets do it! Or, lets try to do it. You coined the phrase New Nordic, which took off in a major way in New York. How do you feel about the state of Scandinavian food in this city? Do you think that its done well, or has it gotten too far away from your thesis? Im very proud of what we started back in 2003. But I would like to make a couple of revisions. When people speak about the New Nordic, there seems to be a lot of confusion. On one hand, you can see that the New Nordic regime is now fashionable something that, for a certain amount of time, has conquered the attention of the entire world of food. It is obviously a belief system and an ideology. And it is also a certain expression on the plate a certain way to cook the food, or not to cook it. A certain flavor profile when you eat it. But the meaning of the New Nordic regime was never for it to be a label that should live forever. We invented the New Nordic regime in order for that to be a vehicle that you ideally bring these ideas and bury in the manifesto into peoples lives. And I think thats it. Before 2003, I thought nobody would cook this type of food. You are totally right by saying that a lot of restaurants in New York, actually, they dont cook classic American food, or French food. A lot of young chefs are very inspired by this juicy, vegetable-driven, colorful, kind of raw and fermented, light cuisine. But what is more important, I think, is that, whereas until 2003, the idea of a chef was basically a cook who would try to win as many Michelin stars and just create stunning, artistic, delicious food. To be a role model in society to take the responsibility of things like biodiversity, sustainability, and health into consideration was pretty uncommon. I think the main idea that we sold to the world was this idea that you have to have responsibility as a chef, and you can actually be somebody changing the destiny of your people by finding the relationship between the food industry and the farmers, the fishermen, and the suppliers. And that can mean the world. Of course, we didnt do that alone, but we have definitely done our part. And Im proud of that. How does it feel to still have Noma co-founder preceding your name when youre no longer involved? Is that something you want to distance yourself from? No, Im fine. I mean, I dont know. Maybe itll be the most important thing Ive ever made in my life, I dont know. Im happy with being associated with a restaurant that I conceived of, so I have nothing against that. Does being in New York change your outlook on cooking? I found out in 2008 that you can remove the word Nordic from the equation. The whole manifesto, the whole thinking, the whole What does it take to create a great food culture? it makes sense outside and without the word Nordic. So what we have come to do here is not just to throw all of our ideas, and all of our ingredients, against people in Vanderbilt Hall. We want to celebrate where we are. Were not going to hang up flags out there, or walk around with Viking helmets. Also, with Vanderbilt Hall in particular, its been a space of the public for so many decades. It would be an insult if we just showed up with something extremely eccentric, dogmatic, and highly New Nordic. That kind of food, and ingredient sourcing, can get quite expensive. How are you managing to make this accessible for the masses? Its a serious challenge. Vanderbilt Hall is not a very cheap place to build in, with all the rules and regulations. The fact that there is a lot of grains and vegetables involved in the food gives us a fair chance of coming up with something that is accessible for a lot of people. There will also be meaty stuff, like a hot-dog station with different dogs and some lingonberry ketchup and beetroot creme brulee. You know, very nice stuff. And there will be warm sandwiches with smoked brisket and horseradish, and a roast-pork sandwich with crackling skin and red cabbage. We will buy a lot of produce and a lot of meat of a very high quality, because I want people to feel that they have a moment of luxury. But luxury is not about lobster or beef loin. When you see the menu, you will see that there are many cheaper ingredients involved. Youve made some high-powered hires Untitleds Katie Bell, the Dutchs Chad Walsh, Wassails Rebecca Eichenbaum. Howd you pull that off? Im also helping out a couple of great chefs in the city to get their own restaurants. What I want to do more than anything is to see people grow. I love to see people not just thrive but grow. And I have a lot of people who have grown around me; Rene Redzepi is maybe the most prominent one he was a random sous-chef at a random restaurant, and now hes something different. So I think that its fair to say, without bragging, that I have a certain capacity for creating environments where people grow, and I think that idea has been pretty well conveyed. The raspberry Danish from Meyers Williamsburg bakery pop-up. Photo: Paul Wagtouicz Beyond Grand Central, youve got the bakery in Williamsburg, the community restaurant to serve the low-income Brownsville community, the fine-dining program for kids am I missing something? Our commissary in Queens, which will grow micro-berries and include a whole-animal butchery and a salmon smokery. Weve also got a dairy girl thats coming in from Denmark a blonde girl will make our whole dairy program. That sounds like a Disney movie. How, and why, are you doing this all at once? For me, doing business is not really about building revenue. Its not about building profits; its about doing something purposeful. I also basically hate the idea in being in direct competition with anyone else. I want to do things kind of without competition. And I want to do something that will be perceived of by New Yorkers as sophisticated and great. In Denmark, you cannot use the word great. People think you are an asshole. Thats the law nobody can stand out. One of the beautiful things here in America is that people are allowed to have dreams, and to achieve something great, so I like the idea of being unpredictable and going about this in a way that seems somehow generous. Also, one thing that I have heard and learned is that New York doesnt embrace chefs who come here without going all in. Out-of-towners have historically been met with tepid enthusiasm. I want to make sure that people understand that Im here for real. And its a long-term commitment. But of course youre right. Im stressing my team out. And I havent even told you everything. There are three projects that havent been announced yet. Do tell! I can say that Ill be helping great chefs in the city get their own restaurants, and the third one is a collaboration between one of these chefs and myself. I bet youre working Fredrik [Berselius] from Aska. Thats a very fortified guess, but its unofficial, so I cant tell you. How are you financing all of this? I came here with a bit of money myself, and then I have some pretty good business partners. But we have to start picking up some revenues. I havent got a fucking plan, but I think if we really manage to be the best of ourselves in this collaboration, we can maybe do this great thing together. Youre also paying your staff a $15-an-hour minimum wage and offering health insurance and paid maternity and paternity leaves. I like to believe that we can afford to pay people a living wage. I really think that it is beneficial for the company. I cant guarantee to my investors that this will be profitable in the short term, but I truly believe that by giving people more, we will have the best staffers who will smile and stay, which will eventually make the company more profitable. How many people are working for you in New York? With the food hall, 400. Have you experienced any culture shock since moving here? Mostly in a positive way. Today I had a wonderful experience, for instance. I was biking down Sixth Avenue, and I had a meeting at Joes because were also setting up a coffee roastery and I was definitely going in the wrong direction. There are cars all over the place, and bikes coming against me. I entered into a narrow passage between two cars, and then another man on a bike came into that passage. He reacted quickly and withdrew. In Denmark, I would have seen ten fuck fingers, and he would have been screaming at me. But here, I raised my hand and he gave me a high-five. I feel energized here. But on the dark side, I find a lot of bureaucracy and administrative complications. Liquor license, all that stuff. Wood permission, fire brigades. How do you structure your days? I dont. Well, how do you manage the anxiety of having so many peoples livelihoods depend on you, in a time of transition? I try to always have an alternative in terms of money, and have more resources than the concept demands. And without going into a long story, I felt when I was young boy that I was let down by life, because my grandmother who meant everything to me died when I was 14. My parents divorced, and I didnt see my father for five years. My mother became an alcoholic. All the adults that I, in a way, counted on kind of disappeared, but I didnt collapse as a human being. Of course it impacts you deeply in your psychological makeup, but I kind of had enough love in the early years to get over it. In my adult life, though, I have hated the concept of letting people down, so I know deep inside me that I wont let these people down. I hate the idea of letting anyone down. This could be an exception where I underestimate this challenge, but normally I dont bring myself into a concept where I cannot live up to the expectations on the other side. Te Company Photo: Tirzah Brott/New York Magazine Tearooms are not known for their food. Youve had one crustless sandwich and lackluster scone, youve had em all or so the thinking goes. Well, that thinking became obsolete when Elena Liao and her husband, Frederico Ribeiro, opened their tiny West Village tearoom, Te Company, last fall. Rather than traffic in trendy matchas, Liao made the oolongs of her native Taiwan her mission, sourcing directly from farmers, brewing each pot with laser focus and effortless grace, and spreading the gospel of this overlooked category to anyone willing to listen. So we hope Liao wont take offense at what we have to say next: Te Company should be a destination for anyone who loves food, serenity, and neighborly spirit, even if a cup of tea isnt his or her cup of tea. This superb snuggery is a haven for contemplation and delectation, and though tea is the theme, its far from the only draw. Liao and Ribeiro infuse their four-table room with style and true hospitality, extending from the browsing library dedicated to Bonnie Slotnick, whose cookbook shop long occupied the space, to the classic jazz, to the Te Etiquette posted in the bathroom ( please take your phone calls outside. Feel free to text as much as youd like.). Its owners say that Te Company is no restaurant, but that doesnt stop Ribeiro from stalking the farmers market and changing his small posted menu accordingly, or garnishing each intricate plate at his minuscule station behind the counter as if he were still a ninja sous-chef at Per Se. A Portuguese native who has cooked in Spain, he exhibits a distinct Iberian influence in most of his so-called snacks, which range from sliced chorizo iberico to the tortilla de patata that has become his signature. This is no simple wedge of potato omelette, but a custardy marvel of tortilla technique the Greenmarket fingerlings finely cut and confited, combined with eggs, then cooked just long enough for the edge to set. Its finished, as many of Ribeiros dishes are, with flaky sea salt and good Spanish olive oil, and then garnished with colatura-tossed olives and Basque peppers, say, or, on another occasion, a blanket of purple edible flowers that perfectly color-coordinate with the border of the Vista Alegre plate. Ribeiro makes his own whole-wheat sourdough from Anson Mills flour and charges $5 for it worth every cent, considering the crisp-chewy crust and cool, creamy crumb. For his tableside take on acorda a alentejana, the Portuguese bread soup, he pours a stream of boiling water into a bowl containing a poached egg, garlic-rubbed toast, fresh mint, and an a la minute pesto of cilantro, garlic, and bacon fat. You think, as with nearly everything Liao or Ribeiro delivers to your table, that its too beautiful to eat, until you venture a spoonful and discover the clear, pure flavors inhabiting the still life, the punch of garlic and the herbal aromatherapy that rises from the bowl, the surprising heft lent by the bacon fat and bread. Although Ribeiro doesnt shrink from rarefied ingredients (sliced lobes of poached shad roe with dandelion and horseradish; nuggets of smoked eel buried beneath a wheel of beet tartare), even the simplest preparations excel. An off-menu salad materialized as a mound of baby mustard greens camouflaged by a blizzard of shaved ricotta salata and broccoli rabe flowers, with a cache of toasted walnuts and a bit of heat from a piri-piri-laced dressing. Its a salty, spicy, sweet showstopper, an exaltation of the tender leaves of spring. And because this is a tea shop, there are sweets: a light, extra-tender muffin (sweet potato currently) and a pineapple-Linzer cookie enlivened with lime zest, yuzukosho, and salt. About that tea: Even if youre a certified cortado addict, you cant avoid being swept up in Liaos passion. Listening to her descriptions of buds and leaves and fermentation levels and altitudes, and sampling a soothing pot of something light and floral, or more heavily oxidized and toastier, its impossible not to fall under the sway of both the seductively diverse oolong and the welcoming, unfailingly delicious Te Company itself. Another lovely spot for those who like to surround themselves with new and vintage cookbooks while sipping tea (or coffee) and tucking into tasty foodstuffs is Archestratus Books & Foods, which opened last fall in Greenpoint. The chief difference between this place and Te Company is that Archestratus is a functioning bookstore, as opposed to a former one, and the cooking is Sicilian Grandma rather than nouveau Portuguese. The woman who curates the shelves and stirs the pots is Paige Lipari, professional book-buyer (formerly of McNally Jackson) and self-taught cook (she bakes a mean jasmine S cookie). Inspired by a trip to the old ancestral home in Alcamo, Sicily, and a desire to master the recipes of her nonagenarian nonna, Lipari combined her twin passions under one roof, and the results are terrific like a Kitchen Arts & Letters with an actual kitchen. The shop, with its 4,000-plus food-themed books, from all the of-the-moment Ottolenghis to fun classics like Peg Brackens The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book, is a bustling social center and a browsers paradise. Every time the Underground Gourmet stops by for a cookie and a quick look around, we get sucked in by some fascinating title, like Alain Passards The Art of Cooking With Vegetables, with his own illustrations, or some superb kitsch like Paul Newmans 1985 opus Newmans Own Cookbook (sample celebrity-pal recipes: Robert Redfords lamb chili, Tony Randalls veal chop, and Gene Shalits spaghetti carbonara). All that perusing can work up an appetite. During the day, you can satisfy it with one of Liparis excellent baked goods (try the mortadella biscuit, or a pistachio-lace cookie). But on Thursday nights, Lipari goes all out and hosts her Sicilian blue-plate special dinners in the cafe space opposite the open kitchen at the back of the store. The menu varies depending on the mood of the cook. One winter evening, it was a hearty slab of lasagna with meatballs, house-baked focaccia, and broccoli rabe, and, like Sunday supper at Grandmas, it hit the spot. Once a month, the blue-plate specials give way to personal-pizza night, which has become so popular Lipari sets up additional communal tables between the bookshelves. You choose up to ten toppings from a list of 24, which makes anyone who selects plain old tomato and mozzarella a bit of a party pooper. The winning combo at our table the other night was potato, fig, Gorgonzola, honey, and peperoncino. The potatoes were softly cooked, the figs and honey nice counterpoints to the salty cheese. If the crust was a bit stiff and overly crunchy, it was still the best pizza weve ever had in a bookstore. Te Company 163 W. 10th St., nr. Seventh Ave. S.; 929-335-3168 Prices: $5 to $16. Open: Tuesday to Sunday, but currently closed until May 7. Ideal Meal: Tortilla de patata, trout-roe-and-kombu toast, any seasonal salad. Note: Ribeiro cooks a monthly Dinner at Bonnies tasting menu. Scratchpad: Two stars for the refined seasonal cooking, one for the excellent oolong, and one more for the cozy quietude, impenetrable by even the worst traffic ruckus. Archestratus Books & Foods 160 Huron St., nr. Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint; 718-349-7711 Prices: Pastries, $3 to $6; blue-plate-special dinners, $15 to $20. Open: Wednesday to Sunday; dinner Thursday only. Ideal Meal: The menu varies, just like your Nonnas. Note: A small selection of wine and beer is available. Scratchpad: One star for the homey Sicilian cooking and the cookies, one for the winning communal vibe. *A version of this article appears in the May 2, 2016 issue of New York Magazine Remember the Phone Biz, which was announced by erstwhile Sony brand VAIO back in February this year? Well, the device is now available for purchase, although currently only in Sony's home country of Japan. The 5.5-inch, Win10-powered handset went on pre-order last month, and shipments have now begun. If you missed the pre-order opportunity, you'll be glad to know that phone is also available for purchase from the VAIO store. What's worth mentioning is that the Phone Biz is listed on VAIO's website for JPY 59,184 (around $535), which is different (and considerably up) from the JPY 50,000 ($430) price tag that the company revealed when the device was announced. For those in the US, sadly, the company has already confirmed that it currently has no plans to launch to device in the country. Source | Via Haiti - Politic : Installation of the new DG of CONATEL Friday, Jacques Evelt Eveillard, the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications has proceeded to the installation of the engineer Jean Marie Altema as new Director General of the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL). He replaces the outgoing Director Jean-Marie Guillaume, who spent 15 months in office. In his installation speech, Jean Marie Altema stressed "[...] The regulation becomes increasingly complex with the advent of new services, new operators and new players in the ecosystem of electronic communications. The evolution of the telecommunications market requires a fruitful dialogue between all stakeholders, to ensure the integration of the needs of consumers, operators and public authorities [...] The current legal framework is obsolete, it date October 12, 1977. Major projects await us in this area so that the technology sector is endowed with juridical-legal instrument able to ensure its growth and to help the development of other sectors, such as education, health, agriculture, trade, culture and many other [...] [...] I am fully aware of the extent of my new responsibilities and convinced that it is together we will enable the CONATEL to successfully overcome the great challenges of the moment. I pledge today to work with rigor and discipline to deliver tangible results. I register the sector's regulatory activities in a transparent and non-discriminatory framework. Each regulation will be the subject of debate and discussion to arrive at the relevant decisions and accepted by the population. [...] We have no magic wand, the task will not be easy, but I'm sure with your effective collaboration, this institution will make the difference and meet its mission of regulating the telecommunications sector in Haiti. Nothing great is done without passion. I am passionate about information technology. I firmly believe that technology can help in socio-economic development. [...] It is with great humility that I solemnly undertake to do everything possible to help create an environment conducive to innovation and effectively meet the enormous demands of the time [...]" HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Justice : Excessive zeal or political-judiciary maneuver ? Me Danton Leger, the new Government Commissionerconvened former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and former Minister of Economy and Finance Wilson Laleau, to appear before him, respectively on 25 and 26 April 2016. In a note of protest, professors from different faculties of the State University of Haiti, rivate universities of the country and members of civil society, express their deep concern "facing the judiciary lynching campaign and mediatic orchestrated by the Government Commissioner of Port-au-Prince, Me Danton Leger [...] who convened for Monday, April 25 the former minister Wilson Laleau under the pretext of collecting information on cases in no way falling under a Government Commissioner skills [...]" These professors point out that the Government Commissioner "has no legal provisions for convening a former Minister who was acting within its powers unless it is seized by a debet order having acquired authority of the thing sovereign and definitively judged or for a criminal case and even there, in the absence of flagrante delicto, in accordance with Article 37 of the Criminal Instruction Code this falls within the jurisdiction of a magistrate duly seized [...]" adding that otherwise "any offense committed by former Ministers in the exercise of their functions, the 1987 amended Constitution only gives the competence to the High Court of justice in Articles 186 and 188 to ask investigative actions and to put them in charge." For his part Me Pierre Michel Brunache part of the defense counsel of Laurent Lamothe [which is not under a ban to leave the country, unlike Wilson Laleau] also insists that his client is liable only to the High Court of Justice, recalling that the Government Commissioner can not put the public action against his client only with a debet order and that Laurent Lamothe who is currently abroad, will not be show to this convocation on Tuesday, April 26th. Me Salim Succar, another lawyers of Laurent Lamothe, argues that "Me Danton Leger, knows very well that a prime minister as part of his duties is not justiciable in ordinary courts. Sections 186 and 188 of the Constitution provides for the impeachment procedure or instruction of a Prime Minister." What a debet order ? The debet order can be defined as a legal decision of the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSC / CA) attesting that the management of handling public funds is irregular. Article 19 of the Decree of 23 November 2005 on the organization of the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes says: "The decision which engages the financial responsibility of Accountant of law or fact either in noting embezzlement, misappropriation, theft or extortion either by finding acts harmful to the Treasury or to the financial interests of local governments and autonomous bodies takes the title of debet order." HL/ TB/ HaitiLibre Published on 2016/04/24 | Source Song Joong-ki was mentioned in "2580". Advertisement MBC "Current Affairs Magazine 2580" took a look at what direction Hallyu tourism was headed in the foreign market thanks to dramas like "Dae Jang Geum" and "Descendants of the Sun". Foreign fans have been visiting Korea to visit the tracks of Korean stars. Thanks to "Descendants of the Sun", the city of Taebaek has decided to rebuild the set of the drama to contribute to tourism. Other locations like Camp Greeves have been pouring down with requests of tourists' visits. Those Chinese tourists who have been there have been thrilled after being in the room where Song Joong-ki used as his waiting room. Chinese tourists say Song Joong-ki is known as the 'ideal husband' type. Published on 2016/04/24 | Source "Descendants of the Sun" is landing in Japan on the 21st of June. The drama has been finalized to star on the Japanese CS Channel on the 21st of June at 11PM. This is the second official landing of the drama in prior to Hong Kong Viu TV. Advertisement Japan has been fanatic about "Descendants of the Sun" ever since the beginning. The conservative swing in Japan had led to the decrease in Korean dramas being broadcast locally but Hallyu has re-ignited thanks to "Descendants of the Sun". The export price, which dropped to less than 10,000 US dollars, has been brought back up by "Descendants of the Sun" and all 16 episodes have been sold for 2 billion won. Local fans have been posting requests for translations in their SNS and blogs. Since the confirmation, fans have been anticipating June and hoping that the drama won't be edited the way it did in China. However, there are words of concerns that the anticipation might not be as high anymore since the story's ending is already out. However, like the English public television BBC mentioned, one of the main reasons why "Descendants of the Sun" became such a big deal in Asia is because of the 'military' element. It's different from the typical and trendy romance. "Descendants of the Sun" may truly become the cause of re-ignition of the Hallyu Wave. Meanwhile, NEW and KBS foreign marketing claims that no other place has confirmed broadcasting "Descendants of the Sun" besides Hong Kong and Japan yet. China has another level of review to go through. Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up New Ad-free Subscriber Login Email Password Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password. Stay logged in Help High Country Audubon Offers Grant for Bird Research High Country Audubon Society (HCAS) is pleased to announce a grant opportunity to support bird research in the High Country of North Carolina. HCAS is the local chapter of the National Audubon Society and Audubon North Carolina, serving Watauga, Ashe, Wilkes, Alleghany and Avery counties. The Sue Wells Research Grant will award up to $500 to a high school or college student to support research or field work in ornithology, or in an area of study that will directly benefit birds or bird habitat in this area of North Carolina. Only undergraduate or graduate students currently enrolled in degree-seeking programs or high school students may apply. The Sue Wells Research Grant was created in 2012 to support local students involved in bird research in the High Country. The first award went to Jessica Krippel, a Master of Science student at Western Carolina University. Jessica used her grant to support her research of song sparrow mating success. In 2013 HCAS selected Morgan Harris, a graduate student at Appalachian State University, as the recipient of the Sue Wells Research Grant. Morgan looked at reproductive pressures on local eastern bluebirds resulting from tree swallows moving into their territories. Appalachian State University student Angela Langevin was selected in 2014 and will be studying the interactions of the Western North Carolina cliff-nesting avian community with the cliff-face ecosystem they inhabit. She is a graduate student in ASUs Biology program. In 2015 Kristen Content was awarded the grant for her work looking at the relationship between behavior and avian stress hormones of tree swallows. Kristen is also a student at Appalachian State University. The late Sue Wells was a driving force in the creation of High Country Audubon Society and served on the Board of Trustees until 2010. Sue was also instrumental in creating the National Bird-Feeding Society and led the movement to help make backyard bird feeding the successful hobby it is today. Grant information and application are available at http://www.highcountryaudubon.org/suewellsresearchgrant.html Applications are due by July 1, 2016 and the winner will be announced at the July 19 at the HCAS monthly membership meeting. Vocal Music Scholarships Available Through Watauga Arts The Watauga County Arts Council is once again offering a grant and scholarship initiative designed to promote training in the vocal arts. In 2015 the Council developed the new funding program to encourage the art of singing in the High Country. These scholarships and grants are open to individuals of high school age, adult vocalists, vocal teachers, and schools. The Arts Councils scholarship award program was first developed in 1985 and for twenty years annually assisted local individuals in the pursuit of artistic training in a variety of disciplines. In subsequent years the program continued to provide scholarships for summer arts camp participants and, in 2013, was broadened to also include applicants of any age who needed financial assistance to participate in the Arts Councils various tuition based programs and activities. This past year, three benefit concerts have been held to help raise funds to assist students specifically with the costs of music lessons. In 2015 the Arts Council expanded its scholarship and grant program to include vocal music development and performance. Using funds raised through the annual Celebrate Singing event which is held in the late fall of each year, this initiative is designed to meet a need within the High Country community for the development of opportunities to support vocalists of all kinds. Applications for funding in the range of $100 to $500 will be considered. The Arts Council will consider granting awards to individuals to attend workshops, as well as to vocal music teachers who wish to continue developing their skills, and to vocal music programs in schools to help expand or improve their offerings. Scholarship and grant application forms are available at the WCAC office at 377 Shadowline Drive in Boone, on their website at www.watauga-arts.org, and by email requests sent to [email protected]. The application deadline is Wednesday, May 18th. Funding for these scholarship programs is raised through special events and from designated donations. Donations to the scholarship fund of the Arts Council are always welcomed and encouraged and can be made online at www.watauga-arts.org or by mailing a check to 377 Shadowline Drive, Boone, NC. For more information on these and other programs, contact the Arts Council at 828-264-1789 or by email to [email protected]. Torch: A Forum for Reasoned Discourse: May 9 at Sagebrush The monthly meeting of Torch: A Forum for Reasoned Discourse will be held Monday, May 9th at the Sagebrush Restaurant in Boone. Those attending may choose from a $10 menu at 11:30 am and enjoy the presentation at noon. The topic this month is Promoting the General Welfare: Preaching vs. Policy presented by Roland Moy as the sixth in an annual series examining issues of the American political economy and a followup to his 2015 topic Aspects of Liberty: Cornerstone, Manipulation and Inequality. Guests are welcome to attend. Financial Literacy Workshop for Teens and Young Adults May 4 The Watauga County Public Library would like to invite you to join us for the next in a series of Financial Literacy Workshops for teens and young adults on May 4th from 5:00 pm 7:00 pm. Amber Mellon, Lecturer in Mathematical Sciences at Appalachian State University will be presenting. Moneytopia, an online game, will be used as a fun tool to introduce teens to real-life applications of financial skills. The following skills will be emphasized: budgeting, saving, smart spending, minimizing credit card use, and establishing financial goals. Food will be served at the event! To learn more visit http://arlibrary.beta.libguides.com/smart_investing , or call us at (828) 264-8784 ext. 2. Weekly Events at Lost Province Brewing Co. Monday April 25 Family Night-Buy any regularly priced pizza and receive one free kids meal. Tuesday April 26 Oyster Roast. $12 gets you a bucket of one dozen oysters and house made saltine crackers. Featuring oysters from Jarret Bay, Carteret Co., NC. Wednesday April 27 Off Beer and Wine Specials. 7pm-9pm Trivia Night: Beginning at 7pm, Lost Province will be hosting Trivia Night with John Fortenberry. Compete on your own or on a team! The competition gets started at 7pm so come a little early for a pizza and a pint and get your seat! Thursday April 28 $3.00 Thursday-$3.00 pints on all Lost Province brewed beers (except high gravity). College Night 7:00pm-International Trvia with iPALS. iPALS is a friendship program that promotes cross-cultural understanding between new international and U.S. students at Appalachian. iPALS is led by Appalachian students interested in providing a welcoming environment for new international students and cultivating friendships with students from other cultures. Friday April 29 Tapped at 5pm, we feature something fun and new every Friday. Get it while it lasts; there is only a limited amount! 7:30pm-Closing Live Music: The Klee & Mike Show is an acoustic duo featuring Klee Liles on guitar and vocals and Michael Robertson on percussion and vocals. Having played together for over 20 years, Klee and Michael have a built a huge repertoire of pop/rock songs ranging from well-known to obscure, from both artists you know and love and performers you may not know quite as well. http://www.kleeandmike.com/ Saturday April 30 7:30pm-Closing Live Music: Boones own gypsy band Swing Guitars has been active for almost a decade performing acoustic Hot Club style jazz in area restaurants, music festivals and civic concert series. Playing a mix of gypsy jazz standards, swing classics, originals and modern jazz tunes, the acoustic group focuses on the music of Django Reinhardt and other early jazz pioneers. Guitarists Andy Page, Jim Schaller and Jay Brown along with Ben McPherron on bass are experienced musicians widely known to High Country music fans. An evening with Swing Guitars promises a variety of sounds perfect for socializing, eating, drinking and dancing! Sunday May 1 Lost Province Sunday: Residents of The Lost Province (Watauga, Ashe, Avery and Alleghany) receive 10% off food with verification of residency. Mabel UMC Yard Sale May 7 Mabel United Methodist Church Yard Sale 5932 Old US Hwy 421 Zionville NC 28698 Saturday, May 7, 2016 7am-2pm Lots of treasures! Breakfast & lunch items for sale along with baked goods. Proceeds will benefit the Church Benevolence Fund. Call Gloria Walters ( 423-460-1303 ) or Diane Terry (828-297-6120 ) for information or directions April 30 Author Visit: Eva Nell Mull Wike Saturday, April 30, 11 am Meeting Room, Watauga County Public Library Author Visit: Eva Nell Mull Wike, author of Fiddler of the Mountains Storyteller and author Eva Nell Mull Wike, PhD., travels to Watauga Library to present her book, Fiddler of the Mountains Attuned to the Life and Times of Johnny Mull. In the authors own words: My book won the North Carolina Historical Society Award and it comes with a CD of my Uncle Johnnys music. You may view it and read reviews on AMAZON.COM. The music was restored in the National Recording Studio in Rome, Georgia, from the old acetate records which were recorded in Canton, Ohio in the 1940s & 50s. It all seems like some kind of a miracle that I accidentally got my Uncle Johnnys personal photos from a dear friend who had worked with Johnny up in Canton, in the 1950s. I no sooner got the photos from him, til a few days later he upped and died during open-heart surgery in Atlanta! About the same time, the Ohio landlady sent me the old acetate records which had been stored away in her closet for decades! Then just a few days later, her son called me to say that she had passed away. So in between sad times, I got down to business and wrote Johnnys story. And dog-on if my book didnt win the North Carolina Society of Historians AWARD! Copies of the book will be available for purchase, and each copy includes a CD of rare music performed by mountain fiddler Johnny Mull. Persons with special needs please contact the Library five or more days before the event so that reasonable arrangements may be made. Thanks to the Friends of the Library for sponsoring our events. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket Deanna Ballard, Republican State Senator nominee for the 45th Senatorial District, was selected on April 23, to serve and complete the term of retiring State Senator Dan Soucek. Republican leaders from Ashe, Alleghany, Avery, Caldwell, & Watauga counties met Sat., April 23, and unanimously selected Ballard to serve in the short session of the General Assembly. The meeting was moderated by A.J. Daoud, and Ballards name was unopposed when the time came for nominations. It was great to see everyone in full agreement across the five-county region. There is no doubt in anyones mind that Deanna is the best fit for the job, said Nathan Miller, vice-chairman of the Watauga County Republican Party. The nomination has been forwarded to Gov. Pat McCrory for review. If in agreement, McCrory will officially appoint Ballard to serve as State Senator when the General Assembly reconvenes this week. It would be an honor to serve the citizens of North Carolina in this capacity, said Ballard, after hearing the results of Saturdays meeting. If approved by Gov. McCrory, I will work hard to represent the values of our district in Raleigh and am grateful for the support and confidence placed in me. Ballard is prepared to serve as the 45th districts state senator through the remainder of the term and will run for reelection this coming November. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket Last autumn, the Finnish Embassy in Warsaw asked me, if I could contribute some nature-themed poems for the Wiersze w Metrze project organized by the city of Warsaw. The aim of the project was to celebrate the diversity of languages by displaying poetry from different parts of Europe in the Warsaw subway in Polish translation. Of course, I accepted the offer. It sounded exactly like an opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime. I was given about a week to send the finished texts for the project. Ive always felt it fairly easy to write poems about nature, as nature has never been far from where Ive lived. A week was a short time to write new material, but certainly enough. When writing the poems, I had to consider the fact that they were to be translated. Non-Finnish readers might not understand allusions specific to Finnish culture, and various words for snow might be impossible to translate. Thus, I chose to use nature as a setting for different emotions, rather than a subject or a theme. One doesnt have to be Finnish to regard nature as a place of relaxation and introspection, though some cultures do see nature as a place of danger instead. On the international World Poetry day on March 21st, a poetry reading event was held at the Zamek Ujazdowski, a center of modern art. I performed the three poems I had written for the project in original Finnish, and my performance was followed by two actors reading the Polish translations by ukasz Sommer. A total of seven European poets performed that evening, arguably the most prominent of them being Ana Blandiana from Romania and Kyriakos Charalambides from Cyprus. For a poet like me, who has yet to have their first book published, performing abroad and having poems translated into another language has special significance. First of all, it validates the time and effort put into learning the craft of communicating in a way that resonates in the reader or the listener. Second, it inspired me to challenge myself more both as a writer and a performer. If the possibility arises, Ill perform internationally again someday perhaps in Poland, perhaps somewhere else. In the 2010s, contemporary poetry isnt confined to the printed page. Live performances of poetry and campaigns such as Wiersze w Metrze in Warsaw are organized to bring poetry before new audiences. Even though poetry isnt a profitable genre from a publishing standpoint, its potential to move and excite audiences is tremendous. If emotions have value of some kind, then so does poetry. JUHANA HENRIKKI HARJU The Centre is committed to ensuring the entire country remains inhabited. I would seek to gain a competitive advantage through de-centralisation rather than centralisation, he stated in his speech before the party council of the Centre on Saturday. Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre) has come under criticism for estimating that de-centralisation could be used as a means to promote the competitiveness of Finland. A competitive advantage through de-centralisation? How on earth? Hannu Oskala (Greens), a councillor at the City of Helsinki, writes on his blog on Puheenvuoro. No matter how much you digitise, roll out broadband services to every hut at a high cost and imagine that some kind of a virtual gadget will enable half of Finland to work remotely, after work you would still end up in your one-horse town with its handful of citizens, an S-market and a pizzeria. No new economic activities will be created there. If they were, they would have been already, he slams. Antti Rinne, the chairperson of the Social Democratic Party, and Ville Niinisto, the chairperson of the Green League, drew attention to the remarks of Sipila about the proposed incorporation of the state transport network. Sipila has mixed things up. The Infra Ltd proposed by the Centre in the run-up to the elections was to only make investments. They are now proposing that all transport assets be incorporated, Niinisto commented on Twitter. Rinne, in turn, said he is unconvinced by the rationale of the proposed incorporation. Our criticism is not directed only at the incorporation but especially to the ramifications of the incorporation on the daily lives of people. We question the Government's reasons for the incorporation because there is no need to incorporate. It is a question of an ideological choice by the Government, he says in a press release. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Martti Kainulainen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi Episcopal nuns honored for saving Bat Cave land Grassy Creek Cascades are part of the land conserved by the Community of the Transfiguration. [PHOTO BY CMLC] The Community of the Transfiguration, a 118-year-old order of Episcopal nuns, was honored Sunday for its role in conserving 368 acres along the Broad River in Bat Cave. Related Stories The Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy presented its 2016 Lela McBride Award to the Cincinnati, Ohio-based order during the CMLCs annual Land Lovers Picnic at Camp Pinnacle. The award, named for Lela McBride, a community leader and founder of Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, honors people who have made significant contributions to land conservation and stewardship in the region. In 2015, the Community of the Transfiguration placed 410 acres into conservation easement and conveyed title to 368 of the conserved acres to CMLC. The property is located in Bat Cave along the Broad River and its tributaries. The land will be managed as a teaching and research reserve for the use of students and researchers from local schools, colleges and other educational programs. Currently, Warren Wilson College faculty members are instructing students on the property. Warren Wilson College professor J.J. Apodaca and his students have used the property to gather data for his work on the genetics of the green salamander (Aeneus aneides), which is endangered in North Carolina. The Sisters conservation ethic set a high standard for CMLC to follow in creating an outdoor classroom, CMLC Land Protection Director Tom Fanslow said. Sister Teresa Martin, Superior of the Community of the Transfiguration, accepted the award on behalf of the order. This beautiful and pristine land has been and continues to be a great gift to us, she said. Above all we want to see it protected and gently used in a way that will honor it and will give back a new vision for the larger community. Beginning in the early 1900s, the Society of the Transfiguration began to acquire tracts of mountainous land in the Bat Cave area, primarily to provide relief to distressed farmers who needed help to keep their arable land and to provide opportunities for employment. For many decades, the sisters have maintained a retreat house on the property, which members of the order visit for quiet rest and spiritual rejuvenation. The order will retain ownership of 42 acres immediately surrounding the retreat house, land that is now permanently conserved with a conservation easement granted to CMLC. The Hickory Nut Gorge Teaching and Research Reserve will not be open to the general public but will be made available to educational organizations by arrangement with CMLC. In a study completed by CMLC in 2006, the Transfiguration property ranked as the number one priority for conservation in terms of its beneficial impact on protection of water quality in the Upper Broad River watershed. The property provides habitat for rare species such as the green salamander (Aneides aeneus) and the tri-colored bat (Perimyotis subflavus). The project was made possible with the generous support of Fred and Alice Stanback, Donald and Lisbeth Cooper and the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund as well as the Community of the Transfiguration. A woman who used a pram to shoplift groceries went out stealing only three days after a court had ordered a probation report on her for another offence. Sinead Lennon (35) had been on bail with the report pending when she stole again, a court heard. Judge Bryan Smyth agreed to further adjourn the case for an updated report before he decides on a penalty. Passed The court heard Lennon went to the Fresh supermarket in Smithfield at 2.15pm last November 13 and put groceries and cosmetics worth 37 into her pram. She passed all points of payment and left the store but was later identified. She attended the Bridewell Garda Station by appointment and was arrested and charged. The court heard that in another incident, last February, Lennon went into Marks and Spencer on Mary Street and stole various items of clothing worth 425. She hid them on her person and left the shop without making any attempt to pay, a garda said. Lennon was stopped outside by security staff, the goods were recovered and the gardai were called. Lennon had a large number of previous convictions and knew she was facing a possible custodial sentence, her barrister Edel Gilligan said. Judge Smyth said on a previous date that Lennon pleaded guilty to a number of charges and a probation report had been ordered. Ms Gilligan asked the judge to adjourn the case for eight weeks. She said the accused had a young child who was with a friend waiting outside the courtroom. Victims "Three days after she had her case adjourned to assist her, she is out again re-offending," Judge Smyth said. "She can't have it every way - she either wants to cooperate, and that means not re-offending, or she doesn't. "There are victims in relation to the offending. It's not all about Ms Lennon." Lennon, with an address at Smithfield Gate, North King Street, in Dublin's north inner city, pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court to two counts of theft. The judge adjourned the case to a date in June for an updated probation report. Lennon was remanded on continuing bail. Supporting the young victims of Chernobyl has become a life's work for Adi Roche. The Cork woman established Chernobyl Children International (CCI) in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster 30 years ago. To date, it has raised more than 100m for cardiac programmes, day care centres and other services for children in Ukraine and Belarus and brought 25,000 children to Ireland for rest and recuperation. "Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say, 'It's definitely 30 years'. When I look back, it sort of went by in the blink of an eye," Ms Roche told the Herald. Generations "While the impression is that it is a past event which happened a long time ago and probably poses no threat now, the reality is very different. "The word 'Chernobyl', which wasn't known to anybody before 1986, is a word which has now come into our language. "Only 3pc radiation was expelled into the atmosphere at the time, leaving behind 97pc which is still there. "One of the issues that makes Chernobyl relevant today is exactly that point - how can we contain that 97pc of radioactivity that is there and how can we make the site safe for generations?" To mark the 30th anniver- sary, Ms Roche has been invited to speak at the United Nations tomorrow, when she will call for speedy measures to make the area safe for generations to come. She is also going to request that April 26 be named UN Chernobyl Day. "People realise with Chernobyl that it's a different type of tragedy. It's different because it has this very long, deadly legacy that shadows into future generations because of the genetic issues. "What we're doing for the 30th anniversary is saying Chernobyl is, sadly, for ever." Ms Roche said Ireland has been a torch-bearer in offering support and aid to those affected by the disaster. "The people of Ireland have opened their hearts, their homes, their purse strings," she said. "There's not a crossroads, a town, a city in Ireland that isn't doing something to commemorate the 30th anniversary or to prepare for groups of children coming in the summer. "I just think that is extraordinary despite our economic climate, despite the fact that we actually don't have a sitting government, that people still get on with the work in hand. "The fact that I've been invited to speak at the highest platform of the world is recognition of Ireland's role in this issue." She also commended her 'twin', Ali Hewson, who is a board member of the charity. Together they worked on the Oscar-winning documentary Black Wind, White Land: Living With Chernobyl in 1993. "Ali has been a stalwart all these years," said Ms Roche, who remains humble about her own work. "I am an ordinary citizen and I want to be able to be that voice for the voiceless. I carry a heavy load going to the UN because it's a huge, enormous task to actually be able to encapsulate in one single speech all of the anguish and the suffering many of these people feel." Exactly 100 years after the first shots were fired in the 1916 Rising, the centenary was celebrated with reverence but with dancing in the streets too. Silence fell in Arbour Hill church as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told how the bodies of the executed leaders had arrived for burial there, "still warm and dripping with blood before being hurriedly put into a common grave". Sacrifice President Michael D Higgins' wife, Sabina, appeared to wipe tears from her eyes as she sat in the church, contemplating the depths of their sacrifice. The event felt special and even more emotional than the lavish spectacle at the GPO at Easter, relatives said afterwards. Dr Martin called on all Irish people to never betray the ideals of 1916. There was a minute's silence after Mr Higgins laid awreath and stood in reflection at the graveside. Two hours later, Merrion Square became a living 1916 pageant as the People's Parade prepared to march to the GPO, with thousands taking part. Chief patron of the citizens' initiative was artist Robert Ballagh, who had criticised the State commemorations. Damian Dempsey told the crowd he would try to sing his song about James Connolly "without crying". There was a video message from Panti Bliss and Frances Black sang the Foggy Dew. Vintage cars and bikes, replica cannon and horses towing old bread carts filled the streets as north Dublin paid tribute yesterday to the men and women of 1916. Fingal and the surrounding areas played a vital role during the Rising 100 years ago. Descendants of those who fought in the rising took part in a cycle retracing their relatives' steps before commemorations got under way in Swords. Then, Rothaiocht na mBan, a group of female cyclists in period dress, rode past on High Nelly bikes before a special parade. Joanne Moody, from Volunteer Ireland, was one of those to take to the saddle. "This was their transport and they are very heavy," she said. "It's how they got around and how each battalion knew what was going on." More people gathered in the park where an exhibition told the story of Fingal 100 years ago and the fight for Irish freedom. Recycled Children from Swords Youth Service in military uniforms re-enacted a scene from outside the GPO using three cannon they made from recycled materials. "It's great to hear the new Irish kids talking about 1916 with European or African accents," said youth worker Ger Robertson. Police in Spain have launched a fresh crackdown on the Kinahan cartel and carried out arrests, raids and searches as fears of another gangland hit mount. On Saturday, only a day after the funeral of Martin O'Rourke, the innocent man shot dead by a gunman targeting one of the Hutch gang, Spanish police set up armed checkpoints near Daniel Kinahan's villa on the Costa del Sol. Pressure They are reported to be monitoring various properties and made a number of arrests as authorities in both Spain and Ireland increase the pressure on gangland criminals. Attention has also been focused on airports. It has emerged that a brother of David Byrne, the Kinahan lieutenant who was shot dead in the Regency Hotel attack on February 5, was arrested at Dublin Airport in recent days. James Byrne, who is not involved in the crime war, was later released and flew to Malaga. He was previously seen by the Herald confronting armed officers as the Byrne family homes were raided by the Criminal Assets Bureau and gardai in the wake of the killing of Eddie Hutch Snr on February 8. Gardai seized luxury cars worth more than 500,000 in last month's crackdown on mob assets, when 12 homes and six businesses were raided in a massive garda operation targeting the Kinahan cartel. The raids took place at addresses in the Raleigh Square, Kildare Road and Windmill Road areas of Crumlin. James Byrne threatened gardai and members of the media before the situation calmed down and officers allowed him leave. Meanwhile, crime boss Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch is reported to have vowed to continue his war with the Kinahan cartel by declaring it will not be over until "the last man is standing". Threat He is said to have made the promise when gardai last month warned him that he was still under threat from the cartel. The Monk has spent time in the UK and Spain since his brother, Eddie, was gunned down at his north inner city home. A female relative of The Monk is said to have fled the country over fears she could be on the Kinahan hitlist. The girlfriend of the intended target of the attack that killed innocent man Martin O'Rourke on April 14 is also believed to have left Ireland in fear. Harper's dramatic HR sends Phillies to first World Series since 2009 The reigning NL MVP hit a go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth inning to give the Phillies a 4-3 win over the Padres Nothing goes right for Edgewood in long trip to East Central Such collusion would be illegal in many industries, the Republican presidential front-runner said, but it's illustrative of "everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system." Under the arrangement outlined late Sunday, Kasich, the Ohio governor, will step back in the May 3 Indiana contest to let Cruz bid for voters who don't like Trump. Cruz, a Texas senator, will do the same for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. The arrangement does not address the five Northeastern states set to vote Tuesday, where Trump is expected to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to halt the billionaire's rise. "It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head to head contest with Donald Trump," Cruz told reporters as he campaigned in Indiana on Monday. "That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice." Kasich sent mixed messages, however, as he addressed the pact for the first time while campaigning in Philadelphia. Asked what Indiana voters should do next week, the Ohio governor just 13 hours after the arrangement was announced urged them to vote for him. "I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me," Kasich said in a Philadelphia diner. He said he simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana. The announcement marks a sharp reversal for Cruz's team, which aggressively opposed coordinating anti-Trump efforts with Kasich as recently as late last week. And the agreement applies only to Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico three of the 15 states remaining on the Republican primary calendar. As Kasich backs out of Indiana, Cruz promised he would not compete in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. Cruz's campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement explaining the new plans that Trump would be soundly defeated by the Democratic nominee, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," he said. Added Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee." Trump was set to campaign in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania on Monday, two of the five states hosting primary contests on Tuesday. Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland are also voting. Speaking to several thousand people Sunday evening in Maryland, Trump stressed repeatedly that he expects to win the 1,237 delegates needed in the first round of voting in Cleveland to stave off a contested convention. "I only care about the first," he said. "We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth." The Delhi chief minister is lending political muscle to the liberal middle class and building an ideologically flexible party that can potentially take votes from both the BJP and the Congress without threatening regional parties It looks like Arvind Kejriwal has decided to get out of the confines of Delhi politics and reiterate that he is a national politician that Narendra Modi has to reckon with. Consider his and partys actions and rhetoric in recent weeks. The Delhi government ran advertisements about its programmes in dailies in Delhi and Mumbai, leaving many to wonder why the latter would be interested in what his government is doing in the capital. AAP will reportedly contest all seats in Goa and it is strengthening its Gujarat unit ahead of 2017 polls perhaps in an effort to build on the momentum of an anticipated win in Punjab polls next year. Kejriwal has interspersed these with unambiguous, caustic commentary on national politics. In an interview to the Economic Times, he declared on record that the entire JNU controversy was set-up by the BJP to polarise, to divide the society. When asked for views on central governments schemes like Make in India, Stand up India, Kejriwal mocked them with monikers of his own, Sit down India, Sleep India. Kejriwal also faulted the PM for allowing a Pakistani joint investigation team to visit Pathankot, saying The nation wants to know what prompted the Prime Minister to kneel down before Pakistan. Read | Arvind Kejriwal: Delhis chief micromanager, thoughtful tactician Clearly, Kejriwal is finished contending with Delhis Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung. Why bother anymore with the cats paw when it is time to take on the big cheese? Kejriwals new offensive says something about the current political juncture in India and the space the AAP leader is trying to carve out for himself. First, the context: Two years into his tenure as Prime Minister, Modis prospects look unclear. The economy is not doing well; job creation is sluggish, theres widespread agrarian distress and water scarcity and the education system is a source of despair for the middle class and the elites. The BJP is not expected to do well in the state elections ahead, barring Assam, and will struggle to beat a resurgent Mayawati in UP next year. There is therefore an opportunity created by NDAs lacklustre performance. The opposition space, however, lacks coherence with the Congress in disarray and regional parties preoccupied with their own turf. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has sounded the bugle with his call for a Sangh-mukt Bharat but Kejriwal is arguably better placed to be the battering ram for the opposition without necessarily contradicting Nitishs ambitions. The AAP leaders belligerence is prompted by some factors and may have the following effects: First, BJPs majoritarian, anti-liberal, anti-minority agenda is offering Kejriwal the chance to win back support from liberal middle class, including sections of the media. AAP had lost support from this constituency last year owing to Kejriwals spat with Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan last year that saw both sides briefing against each other, eventually leading to an unpleasant parting of ways. But by extending support to Hyderabad Central University students following Rohith Vemulas suicide and initiating legal action against three TV channels for airing doctored videos of JNU protests, Kejriwal is signalling that he is willing to provide political muscle to liberal causes. This is important for liberals who are being exhausted by the BJP as it moves from one polarising initiative to another via nationalist posturing in campuses and articulating a variety of anti-Muslim positions. Many in the cities, including women who find their lifestyles policed, are bound to appreciate his counter to the BJPs cultural agenda. Read | Two young IT professionals power AAPs social media blitzkrieg Kejriwals anti-BJP politics also conveys that he is offering a form of opposition that the Congress is unable to provide at the moment. This is because Kejriwal has none of the weakness Rahul Gandhi has, for instance. He is not encumbered by foreign parentage which the BJP exploits effectively about the Congress leader. As an upper-caste Hindi belt politician, Kejriwal can adopt nationalist slogans and take a hardline position on Pakistan in ways Gandhi struggles to convincingly. Also Kejriwal has excellent argumentative skills in Hindi, depriving Modi of the advantage he has over the Gandhis. Thus while Modi avoids being cross-examined by the Indian media, Kejriwal grants extended interviews. The media on its part realises that pitting a grim, steely insurgent with a sense of humour against a remote, formidable Hindutva icon makes for good, profitable theatre. And this is where Kejriwals location in Delhi comes in handy. Traditionally, capturing political power in India was about summoning support in the provinces and directing anti-establishment energy towards the capital. Kejriwal does it the other way around. He is based in Delhi and is able to tap into the capital-centric media and get the kind of attention that even Nitish struggles to conjure. Moreover, as an IIT-graduate with a penchant for technocratic governance Kejriwal will keep coming up with catchy initiatives to keep himself in the news, as with the odd-even scheme. He has announced plans to bring government schools on par with private schools and has said there will be no shortage of free medicines at Delhis government hospitals. The AAP leaders visibility is thus likely to grow with such measures; analysts have already pointed to parallels between him and Indonesias president Joko Widodo, a pro-poor, anti-corruption campaigner who propelled himself into higher orbit via high-profile roles as mayor of Solo and then governor of the capital, Jakarta. Read | Kejriwal launches mobile app for maintenance of Delhi govt schools With an assured national visibility, Kejriwal can position himself as a sensible centrist to attract a variety of constituencies. He can rail against crony capitalism but also point out that he is a baniya who is not opposed to business coming out in support of jewellers protesting excise duty on jewellery items. Likewise, he can attend Sri Sri Ravi Shankars world culture festival much to the chagrin of environmental activists indicating his keenness to not let BJP monopolise religio-business networks. This ideologically capacious character can help him attract both BJP and Congress voters without threatening regional parties. What helps his cause further is the rounded political machine that he is nurturing. The AAP has a combative social media presence and has spokespersons who can both argue policy minutiae and match decibels with BJP counterparts on TV. All this is bound to interest opportunists in other parties, including demoralised Congress cadres. Purists will regret that AAPs mode of recruitment compromises his clean politics but Kejriwal may have reconciled to the trade-offs he needs to make in an entrepreneurial political culture, in order to counter the BJP. Read | Slice of pie for every aadmi in AAPs Delhi Budget What then do AAPs national ambitions mean for Opposition unity? How will Nitish Kumar and others react to Kejriwals rise? Of course no one knows; both are used to dominating in their domain and their cooperation will depend on the context in 2019. The best case scenario for non-BJP forces in the event of a hung parliament then would be for Kejriwal to defer to Nitish seniority, while using his own authority and clout to enforce unity among opposition ranks. In some ways, ensuring opposition coherence will be the ultimate test of the transformative politics that Kejriwal espouses. Theres some way to go before that. For now, the BJP is still the party to beat in India. But it faces anti-incumbency in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and is expected to lose in UP. The outcomes are not clear but Kejriwal seems most alert to opportunity at hand and is pro-actively generating political possibilities rather than just passively waiting for the BJP to trip up. sushil.aaron@hindustantimes.com SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa and DMK supremo M Karunanidhi filed their nomination papers on Monday. Jayalalithaa filed her nominations from R K Nagar constituency. She is the sitting MLA of the constituency. Banking on her governments five year achievements in various sectors, including social welfare and infrastructure, Jayalalithaa is leading the charge of her party workers even as she eyes a successive term. Chennai:Jayalalithaa files her nomination from RK Nagar constituency for upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls pic.twitter.com/XaFN1MAXHB ANI (@ANI_news) April 25, 2016 The leader has also been critical of DMK, targeting it on issues like family rule, inter-state river disputes and law and order. DMK chief Karunanidhi also filed his nomination on Monday afternoon at his native Tiruvarur, a constituency he wants to represent for a consecutive term in the 234-member state assembly. Braving age and related health issues, the 93-year-old leader hit the campaign trail on Saturday, hitting out at the Jayalalithaa government while billing his party as the right alternative. DMK Treasurer MK Stalin will file his nomination for his Kolathur constituency on April 27. DMDK leader Vijayakant and MDMK founder Vaiko are also scheduled to follow suit this week, tentatively on the same day. Vijayakant and Vaiko are contesting from Ulunthoorpet and Kovilpatti, respectively. DMDK has aligned with Vaiko-led Peoples Welfare Front (PWF) for the elections. Meanwhile, top leaders of BJP and Congress from Delhi, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi, are slated to address election rallies in the state in May. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will also undertake campaign with his party striving to put up a good show in alliance with DMK. The party had won five seats in the 2011 Assembly polls as part of the DMK alliance. Top left leaders such as Sitaram Yechury of CPI (M) and B Sudhakar Reddy (CPI) are also expected to address election rallies in May. The BJP is a national party but it lacks friends in Tamil Nadu. Vaikos MDMK, Vijayakanths DMDK and Anbumani Ramadoss PMKparties that were part of the 2014 NDA combine have left the alliance. Despite this, the state leadership is upbeat about the polls. BJP state president Dr Tamilisai Soundrajan tells Viju Cherian about why the alliance broke up, why the party backs prohibition and why five years of J Jayalalithaa was bad for Tamil Nadu. Excerpts: BJP is fighting polls without the NDA partners it had in the 2014 elections. Why is it so? In 2014, we formed a anti-AIADMK, anti-DMK alliance and we wanted it to continue in this election as well. At that time, Modi was projected as the PM candidate and everybody accepted it. This time, many in the alliance wanted to become CM candidates. We tried to work a formula, saying that to defeat Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi what we needed was a strong combine where the CM candidate will be selected after the polls. We tried to keep the combine but it did not work. How do you rate the five years of AIADMK government? I cannot give it pass mark. A pass mark can be given only for TASMAC (Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation that controls sale of liquor), because thats the only wing this government has focused on. The government is not that of a common man. Jayalalithaa is a virtual CM you can see her online, she inaugurates schemes onlinebut the people are offline. What is the BJPs view on prohibition in Tamil Nadu? We are for total prohibition because we do not want to fill the exchequer by killing people. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif, who made her Cannes International Film Festival red carpet debut last year as the ambassador of cosmetic brand LOreal Paris, will be skipping the prestigious film gala this year due to prior commitments. Disappointed at having to give a miss to the film fest that acts as a fabulous platform for an artist, Katrina says it has been an enormously busy year for me so far that is keeping her on her toes, but she hopes to be part of the film gala next year. Read: Never give up on your dreams, says Katrina Cannes is a fabulous platform for any artist to attend, and I really enjoyed the experience last year. While the brand invited me to attend Cannes again this year, I have had to regretfully decline the opportunity due to prior commitments, Katrina said in a statement. The actress is busy with Anurag Basus upcoming comedy-drama Jagga Jasoos, also starring Ranbir Kapoor. She also has Baar Baar Dekho lined up. The actress added: This has been an enormously busy year for me so far, and I am working on some amazing projects which are really keeping me on my toes. Nevertheless, although I will be giving Cannes a miss this year, I wish the lovely LOreal Paris ambassadors who will proudly represent India the very best and hope to attend next year. Katrina was praised by one and all for her sartorial choices and confident stride on the red carpet last year. Indian stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sonam Kapoor will be representing the brand at the event this year. Nawazuddin Siddiqui doesnt believe in sticking to the stereotypes he does one masala film with Salman Khan and follows it up with Anurag Kashyaps noir thriller. Take a deep, hard look at him as real-life serial killer Raman Raghav in Anurag Kashyaps upcoming film, Raman Raghav 2.0. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. The filmmaker released the first look of the film on Sunday which literally shows blood flowing on Mumbais streets and followed it up with Nawazs look. With bloodshot red eyes and bloodied lug wrenches sticking out of his head, he looks every bit the psychopathic killer he is supposed to be portraying. Read: Anurag Kashyaps next on a serial killer is getting a Cannes screening And here comes the first look of RAMAN RAGHAV 2.0 @Nawazuddin_S pic.twitter.com/tHmaVttbmX Anurag Kashyap (@anuragkashyap72) April 25, 2016 Teaser Poster number 1 of "Raman Raghav 2.0" pic.twitter.com/kIPP70WNqT Anurag Kashyap (@anuragkashyap72) April 24, 2016 And the teaser poster no. 2 of " RAMAN RAGHAV 2.0" pic.twitter.com/APSWoWDL9F Anurag Kashyap (@anuragkashyap72) April 24, 2016 Vicky Kaushal of Masaan fame plays a cop in the film. The film is based on notorious serial killer Raman Raghav, who went on murder spree in Mumbai in the 1960s. After he was arrested, Raghav admitted that he had killed 23 people in 1966 and a dozen in 1968. Police believes the number could be higher. The movie will premiere at the 69th Cannes International Film Festival. Earlier Nawaz and Anurags Gangs of Wasseypur opened at the prestigious film festival. Dassault Aviation hopes to seal one or two contracts to sell its Rafale planes this year and this would include a much-heralded deal to sell 36 Rafale fighter jets to India, its chief executive said an interview. One can hope for on one or two contracts this year, including India, Eric Trappier was reported as saying by magazine Challenges on its Challenges.fr website. Negotiations for India to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets are nearing the finish line, the defence ministry said last week, with sources saying the price will be set at around $9 billion. Significantly progress has been made and I sense a true will to reach an agreement, possibly in the coming weeks, Trappier said of the India talks. Both sides had hoped to wrap up the strategic order during President Francois Hollandes visit for Indias Republic Day celebration in January, but hard bargaining on price stalled a final result. Dassault Aviation said in March it was working on deals to also sell Rafale jets to Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. The packet of your dear noodle and the bottle of soft drink may soon go through another layer of safety checks. Apart from the testing done by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the Indian food safety regulator is set to test the packaging standards of foodmakers such as Pepsi, Dabur and Nestle. The idea is to ensure that the packets, bottles, cans or wrappers do not release toxins into the food under different temperatures and conditions. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is planning to have its own set of packaging standards in addition to the present one, which it has adopted from BIS. At present, FSSAI does not test packaging. We dont know how much ground-level testing is actually being done on food packets, so primarily, we need to do that before finalising our own set of guidelines, said Pawan Agarwal, CEO of FSSAI told HT. The regulator is also consulting a panel of scientists from Hyderabad-based Indian Institute of Packaging. The new standards may increase the frequency of checks and make companies more accountable. Today, the food packet has no label to tell us that what material and grade it is using. We want manufacturers to make the packaging process more transparent, Agarwal said. Migration of toxins into food due to bad packaging is a serious concern. Agarwal wants the regulator to have a dedicated approach towards putting standards for safe packaging in place. We will also ask the states to follow the norms. Anyone licensed under us will be regulated through checks. It would include both domestic and multinational food giants, said Agarwal, admitting that having separate packaging norms is a late realisation for the authority. The FSSAI, which is perusing norms followed in Europe, the US and other developed nations, wants the new norms to match global standards. Agarwal said the new norms will be backed with strong scientific research with a dedicated team working only on this. The government is examining a proposal to fully ban foreign direct investment (FDI) in the tobacco sector as part of the broader strategy to reduce consumption of health hazardous products and check illicit fund flow into the segment. The commerce and industry ministry, which is piloting the move, has circulated a draft cabinet note seeking views from various ministries, top government sources told HT. Currently, India does not allow FDI in manufacturing of cigars, cigarettes of tobacco and tobacco substitutes. FDI is, however, allowed in technology collaboration in any form, including licensing for franchise, trademark, brand name and management contract. Once implemented, the new policy would prohibit FDI even in these areas resulting in a total ban on overseas funds in the tobacco sector. The focus is on cutting down the consumption and production of tobacco-related health hazardous products, an official, who did not wish to be identified, told HT. The proposal to ban FDI is part of this overall plan, the official said. Emails sent to tobacco companies ITC and Godfrey Philips did not elicit any response. India is signatory to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which places the onus on the government to initiate steps to cut tobacco consumption. The government has been progressively increasing taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products aimed at making this costlier and wean people away from the harmful products. A new rule, under which all tobacco manufactured products are required to carry larger pictorial health warnings covering 85% of the packaging space, kicked in from April 1. The move triggered howls of protest from the industry with tobacco companies arguing the rule will encourage illicit trade. Existing pictorial warnings at 40% of the front of the pack are adequate to warn and caution consumers, companies said. According to WHO estimates, nearly a million people die in India annually due to tobacco. The economic burden attributable every year to tobacco-related diseases is about Rs 1,04,500 crore, about 75% of Indias food subsidy budget. India is ranked 136 of 198 countries according to the international status report on Cigarette Package Health Warnings, 2014 and countries ranked after 143 do not display pictorial health warnings at all. A 16-year-old girl was allegedly confined and raped inside a changing room by a nursing orderly at Sanjay Gandhi hospital in Outer Delhis Mangolpuri on Sunday night. Manjeet (25), who works as a nursing orderly in the hospital, was arrested from the spot. A case of rape was registered after the girls examination confirmed sexual assault, DCP, Outer, Vikramjit Singh confirmed. In a statement to the police, the girl alleged that she was sleeping on the couch in the ward where her brother is admitted, when Manjeet came to the room and dragged her to the changing room. The incident was reported around 2am. The girl alleged Manjeet gagged her and dragged her to a room adjacent to the ward and locked it from inside. She alleged he forced himself on her and then raped her. He opened the door, after another attendant passing by the corridor who heard the noise raised an alarm, an investigator said. Also read: Delhi rape cases show that the State needs to go beyond policing According to the police, the attendant heard the girls voice from inside the room and suspecting trouble, informed the hospital authorities. The hospital authorities knocked at the door but no one answered. The girl then started shouting for help. It is then that they informed the police. As Manjeet opened the lock and tried to escape, he was nabbed and handed over to the police, a senior police officer said. The girl said she was sexually assaulted inside the room. She was taken for a medical examination that confirmed rape. We have recorded a detailed statement of the girl and have registered a case in the matter. The CCTV footage of the hospital has been accessed. We are trying to find a grab where Manjeet is seen dragging the girl to the room. The investigation in the matter is on, a senior police officer said. A 76-year-old retired vice-principal of a government school was found murdered at his home in northwest Delhis Satyawati Colony near Ashok Vihar Phase-III on Sunday morning. The police suspect that the elderly man was murdered for resisting robbery. The entire house was found ransacked and cash and jewellery missing. His limbs were tied with a rope. Some injury marks on his body suggested he had fought with the robbers before they tied his limbs, hit him on the head and strangulated him with a piece of cloth. The body was found lying on the floor of the store room on the ground floor, said the police. Though robbery appears to be the prime motive behind the murder, investigators have not ruled out a property dispute. The entry to the house was friendly that hinted the involvement of someone known to the man, the police said. Pratap Singh Dahiya retired as vice-principal from a government school in Keshavpuram sixteen years ago. He was registered as a senior citizen with the local Bharat Nagar police station. He lived with his wife, Narayani Devi, who is a retired principal from a government school in Bharat Nagar. Dahiya had been living alone for the past six months. His wife had gone to the US to stay with their two sons and a daughter settled there. The couples other daughter lives in Rohini in northwest Delhi. Vijay Singh, deputy commissioner of police (northwest), said the crime came to light at 9.28 am on Sunday when Dahiyas domestic help, Babli, found the main door ajar. She went inside and found her employer lying motionless on the floor. The woman raised an alarm and alerted neighbours, who called the police control room, said Singh. A police team immediately reached the spot along with a crime investigation team. The entire house was ransacked. We did not find any signs of forced entry into the house. Some key evidences have been found at the crime scene. We are examining them for clues, he said. A senior police officer said Dahiya was last seen alive on Saturday around 5 pm by his neighbours. His neighbour SP Singh had invited him to attend a religious function organised at his home on Sunday morning. Around 9 am, Singh repeatedly rang Dahiyas mobile phone to remind him of the function, but his calls went unanswered. Presuming that Dahiya might be sleeping, Singh did not check on him. It was the domestic help who discovered the body, the officer said. A constable from the local police station met Dahiya on Thursday during his routine visit to meet registered senior citizens in his territorial jurisdiction, the officer said. There were fewer challans issued for violations in the second round of odd-even compared to the same period in first edition. Despite challenges and hot weather, more people followed the rule, said transport minister Gopal Rai. But transport department sources said it was because enforcement teams at the borders were asked to send back violators, instead of challaning them. Delhi Police figures also suggest that violators are mostly challaned in central Delhi and not in the outskirts. Government data showed 6,768 persons were challaned for violation in the first 10 days of the first phase, while the figure reduced to 5,814 in the second phase. A transport department official said 120 vehicles, each carrying a six-member team, were hired for odd-even enforcement. The government spent at least ` 20,000 per day on each vehicle, he said. But the teams focus has shifted. First it was surge pricing and now auto drivers, we have been asked to take action against other violations, said a transport department official. This distracted the teams from challaning violators of odd-even rules, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A mobile application to facilitate daily maintenance of government schools in Delhi was launched on Monday at the Thyagaraj Stadium in New Delhi by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and deputy CM Manish Sisodia. The mobile app will be used by school estate managers to file complaints and inspection reports on the day-to-day maintenance of school infrastructure. The app will be available with each estate manager who will conduct school inspection daily before 9 am and report problems, if any, to the person concerned. They will then file the Action Taken Report via the mobile app to the directorate of education and the education minister by 11 am everyday, Atishi Marlena, advisor to the education minister, said. She said the app will be made available to the public after three months to enable them keep track of schools on real-time basis. The estate managers are appointed by school principals for the upkeep of the school infrastructure like buildings, sanitation, safety and security. The Delhi government cleared the proposal to hire estate managers after principals of schools complained that they were not able to focus on educational matters due to duties of school maintenance as well. A school principal is supposed to provide academic leadership but he was pre-occupied with other works. Therefore, the government felt that the principals needed to be freed of daily upkeep and maintenance work and gave them the powers to hire estate managers on their own, Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, said. He, however, clarified that the principals would be held responsible for the maintenance of school infrastructure. Estate managers have been appointed in 650 schools and the remaining schools will be covered in the next two to three months. Some estate managers were using the app for the last five weeks on a trial basis, during which 7,320 complaints ranging from sanitation to daily maintenance were resolved. The mobile app has been developed for free by a Bangalore-based IT company, Mindtree. Meanwhile, Arvind Kejriwal reiterated his governments commitment to bring government schools on par with private ones. Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) reportedly tried to attack Delhi University professor GN Saibaba at Ram Lal Anand College on Monday. This was the third attempt to attack him. Saibaba escaped unhurt as almost 100 college students formed a human shield around the teacher. The teachers trying to save Saibaba had a scuffle with the protesters. The authorities called the police to prevent the situation from getting out of hand. Saibaba, an English teacher with 90% disability, began visiting his college after the Supreme Court granted him bail. His suspension is yet to be revoked but the colleges governing body has constituted a one-member committee to consider his reinstatement. Saibaba was suspended from the college after he was arrested by the Maharashtra police for allegedly having links with the Maoists. They were outsiders, who did not want me to visit the college. They also oppose my reinstatement, said Saibaba. Chhatrapal Yadav, Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) joint secretary, who was leading the protest, said Saibaba shouldnt visit the college as he hadnt got a clean chit. We have told him not to come to college repeatedly, but he doesnt listen. There are serious allegations against him . He comes to the college to turn students into naxalites, said Yadav. Alarmed, the RLA staff association has passed a resolution against the incident. We condemn the principals inaction. He didnt act when outsiders were attacking Saibaba and senior teachers. We demand that the committee decide on his reinstatement soon, said Rakesh Kumar, secretary, RLA staff association. A similar protest took place on Friday, when Saibaba had gone to attend the college annual day. The Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) is set to lift the ban on wearing veils and headscarves during the central medical examination as was earlier demanded by a number of organisations. According to sources, in a meeting held on Saturday to review the preparation for the May 1 examination, invigilators were asked to ensure they do not hurt religious sentiments by objecting to burqas. Sources said that guidelines regarding this are likely to be issued on Tuesday. On February 12, HT had reported that the government was likely to lift the ban. The ban on long sleeves and veils was introduced and upheld by the Supreme Court after the test taken by over 6,00,000 candidates last year was cancelled and re-conducted amid reports of cheating with the use of electronic devices and microphones stitched to candidates clothes. In the guidelines issued to invigilators accessed by HT, the CBSE removed scarves and advised students to wear half-sleeves not having big buttons or any badge, brooches, etc, which could be used to hide the communication device, bluetooth, camera etc. A senior official said those wearing full-sleeved garments would be frisked separately. The CBSE is conscious not to hurt any religious sentiments. All our efforts are to prevent any unfair means, said a senior official requesting anonymity. In an earlier information bulletin, items like scarves, rings, bracelets and pendants were on the list of barred items. The new guidelines say these objects will be carefully checked. The Campus Front of India (CFI), with students and parents, will hold a protest at HRD ministry office regarding the dress code that does not permit wearing scarves and full-sleeved garments. Read: CBSEs exam dress code for AIPMT puts Muslim aspirants in a spot SC refuses to allow headscarves, full-sleeve shirts in AIPMT retest SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) announced the results of the first-ever aptitude test for Secondary School Certificate (SSC) students on Monday. However, initially students were unable to view the results online as the website crashed owing to heavy traffic. More than 15, 47,253 students from across the state had taken the online aptitude test conducted in February. The results of the test were declared on the Institute of Vocational Guidance and Selection (IVGS) website at 1 pm but students complained that they are having trouble logging onto the website. I have been trying to access my results since 1pm but I am getting an error message on the site, said Varada Risbud, an SSC student from Thane who had taken the exam. Once it showed that the server was down, on refreshing the page further it asked me to enter my seat number but the site crashed again after that. Read more: Soon, school students can take test to know which career to choose However, the Maharashtra state board authorities said they had not received any complaints from students so far. We have received more than 25,000 hits on the IVGS website since the results were announced, said Gangadhar Mhamane, chairperson of the state board. Mhamane added that the website could have slowed down as too many students were logging in at the same time. We advise students to try checking the results after a few hours, right now, the website could be experiencing problems because of heavy traffic, he said. Read more: Maharashtra state boards first aptitude test results today Students will also receive a full copy of the test results along with their SSC mark sheets in June. A counselling helpline-8275100001-will get activated from May 3 onwards, where students can call for any further queries or guidance based on the results. For information on colleges, courses, scholarships, admission process and entrance tests students can log on to www.mahacareermitra.in How to check your results: Go to the website of institute of vocational guidance and selection. There is a link at the top of the middle column of the page. If you click the link a new page opens where you will need to login with your seat number. The results will be displayed on the screen. OR You can directly check your results by clicking here and logging in with your seat number. Your result will be displayed. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON While the perfect swimsuit is your best friend when hitting the sand, great beachwear is a must for staying laid-back yet stylish at all times. That long-running beach staple, the sarong usually worn tied around the hips should be banished to the back of wardrobe for 2016, as floaty dresses, tunics and playsuits are hot looks this season. This Malibu-print pink and blue beach dress is made from sheer fabric and has a split at the thigh. It has beaded detail on the chest and crisscrosses the neck and back with straps for a glamorous touch. (AFP) Sarongs are certainly practical beach cover-ups for hiding a multitude of sins when strolling on the sand, but they cant match beachwear garments on style and sophistication. This season, beach dresses flirt playfully with sheer fabrics and sport details that nod to catwalk style. With a definite boho vibe, theyre perfect for days at the beach. Plus, unlike sarongs, beach dresses are a great way to change looks on different days of a holiday. Made from imported Italian silk, this tunic is great for the beach or for a chic summer look about town. It can be worn as a standalone garment or over a swimsuit. (Shan) The playsuit is another popular option for 2016, seen in plenty of beachwear brands collections. These all-in-ones are easy to put on, and can take you from beach to town with comfort and style in the blink of an eye. As well as being this years hottest beachwear items ready to accessorize as much as you like playsuits and dresses are a great way to stay chic when retreating to a restaurant or grabbing a cocktail. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. In a first, the 1000-year-old mosque at Thazhathangady in Keralas Kottayam district has thrown open its doors for Muslim women in Kerala. Women were allowed to enter the mosque on Sunday to take a look at its famed architecture. The move comes at a time when the demand for permitting women at places of worship is gaining ground. This is a 1000-year-old mosque. Our women had not seen it so far and had a great desire to visit the holy place. So the mosque committee decided to allow women to visit it on April 24 and May 8, advocate Nawab Mulladom, president of the mosque committee, told PTI. The mosque was not opened for any celebrations or for offering prayers. It was only to allow women to see the place, he said, adding the men were asked to leave the mosque before the women were allowed in. Muslim women wore their traditional attire during the visit. Fathima, one of the lucky ones to enter the holy place, said, Standing before many historical mosques, I had always wanted to enter and offer prayers. But I was afraid of even expressing that desire. I am happy that such an opportunity has come now. The Juma Masjid, famous for its rich architecture and wood carvings, is situated at Thazhathangady, one of the heritage zones of the state. Six electoral trusts together disbursed Rs 177.40 crore to 19 political parties during the fiscal 2014-15, with the BJP receiving the maximum donation of Rs 111.35 crore, as per a new report citing latest disclosures. The report by rights group Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said electoral trusts received a total amount of Rs 177.55 crore from corporates and individuals and distributed Rs 177.40 crore (99.92%) to various political parties. The BJP, the Congress, the NCP and the CPM were the four national parties that got contributions from the six electoral trusts during fiscal 2014-15. The BJP was the recipient of the maximum amount of Rs 111.35 crore from three electoral trusts followed by the Congress with Rs 31.65 crore from three electoral trusts. Also Read | Political donations up 151% in 2015, BJP tops list The CPM received a total of Rs 2.35 lakh from Triumph Electoral Trust during fiscal 2014-15, but the party did not declare the same in its donations report to the Election Commission of India (ECI). According to the rules formulated by the government, electoral trusts are required to donate 95% of their total income to registered political parties in a financial year. Electoral Trusts sole purpose is to fund registered political parties in a transparent manner. Satya Electoral Trust received total contribution of Rs Rs 141.78 crore while Progressive Electoral Trust got Rs 25.14 crore, Janpragati Electoral Trust (Rs 4.02 crore), Bajaj Electoral Trust (Rs 3.05 crore), Triumph Electoral Trust (Rs 3.028 crore) and Samaj Electoral Trust (Rs 0.525 crore). Satya Electoral received the highest amount of Rs 141.78 crore from corporates and distributed Rs 141.75 crore (99.98%) to various political parties. Satya Electoral donated 75.66%, or Rs 107.25 crore, to the BJP while Triumph Electoral donated 66 per cent, or Rs 2 crore, of its total income to the party. The six electoral trusts made contributions to 15 recognised regional parties which include the BJD, the INLD and the AAP, among others. Total donations received by the regional parties from electoral trusts was Rs 27.58 crore. Satya Electoral gave Rs 5 crore to the INLD, but the party has not filed its donations report to the ECI for fiscal 2014-15. Indiabulls Housing Finance had contributed the maximum amount of Rs 40 crore to Satya Electoral Trust, which formed 22.53% of the trusts total donations followed by DLF, which donated Rs 25.01 crore and constituted 14.08% of total donations. Tata Steel contributed the maximum amount and donated Rs 14.134 crore, which formed 56.19% of total donations to Progressive Electoral Trust, followed by Tata Sons, which donated Rs 4.74 crore and constituted 18.85% of total donations. The visa granted by India to Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa to attend a conference in Dharamsala was aimed more at sending a signal to China after it blocked a move to sanction Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar at the UN. Isa, a German national who is part of the World Uyghur Congress, has blamed China for the sudden withdrawal of the visa by India. Reports have suggested the development was linked to Beijing pointing out there was an Interpol red corner notice against the activist. However, the Interpol red corner notice has never been enforced though Isa has been on a Chinese list of wanted terrorists since 2003. In March this year, Isa travelled to Washington at the same time as President Xi Jinping and received an award from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The Chinese were understandably angry and served a demarche to the US state department for allowing Isa into the country. The grant of a visa to Isa, and its subsequent cancellation, was more about India getting its message across without losing any ground, said Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. India has not lost anything, Kondapalli told Hindustan Times, despite the perception in some quarters that the cancellation of the visa was a climb-down. If India had allowed Isa to visit Dharamsala, he said, the consequences for Chinas national security policy would have been shattering. Beijings policy lists separatism, extremism and splittism linked to Taiwan, Xinjiang and the Dalai Lama as key challenges and any Indian move to let Isa into the country could have been emulated by other nations, Kondapalli said. Experts believe behind-the-scenes negotiations led to the withdrawal of Isas visa, but only after India had made its point. Isa has lived in exile since 1997 and became a German citizen in 2006. In 2009, Isa was detained for two days when he arrived in South Korea to attend a meeting and then released. Isa was allowed to visit the US for the first time in 2012 after he was barred in 1999 and 2006. China has accused Isa of being involved in terrorist activities but experts note there is nothing in the public domain to substantiate this allegation. They also point out that the World Uyghur Congress, which was founded by Isa, gets about 40% of its budget from National Endowment for Democracy, a body funded by the US Congress. Its hardly likely that the US will fund an organisation that is involved in terrorism, said an expert who did not want to be named. This, the expert said, was probably the reason why the Interpol red corner notice against Isa was never enforced. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The ongoing Assembly elections in West Bengal and the forthcoming polls in Tamil Nadu led to thin attendance in the opposition benches in Lok Sabha on Monday. While not one out of 37 AIADMK MPs was present in the house, a few Parliamentarians of the 34-member-strong Trinamool Congress that included Ratna De Nag were seen attending the Lok Sabha proceedings on the first day of the session. BJP MP from Tamil Nadu and Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan and party MP from West Bengal and Union minister Babul Supriyo were also not present in the House during Question Hour. The six-phase West assembly election is underway in West Bengal while the single-phase Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu will take place on May 16. However, a sizeable number of MPs from Kerala, where assembly election is also due on May 16, participated in Mondays proceedings in Lower House. A BJP MP made a strong pitch in Lok Sabha on Monday for putting a stop to running commentary by the judiciary against other organs of the state, an apparent reference to the stinging remarks by Uttarakhand high court against the President over imposition of central Rule in that state. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Arjun Ram Meghwal frowned upon the tendency of judges to make running commentary during case hearings which finally become law of the land. Meghwal underlined that the makers of the Constitution have ensured separation of powers among the various organs and law-making is the job of Parliament. Read | Rajya Sabha adjourned over Uttarakhand uproar But now what we see that comments are passed against Parliament, the speaker and even the President. This should not happen. There should be a check on it and they should observe restraint, he said amid thumping of desks by several ruling party members. Meghwal did not specify but he was apparently referring to the comments by the Uttarakhand high court against the President while hearing a petition against imposition of central rule on the state recently. Read | SC stays Uttarakhand HC order which set aside Presidents Rule in state The high court had said that even the President can err. At one point, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge was trying to say something to which Meghwal said he should be heard as he is not resorting to politics. AIMIMs Assaududdin Owaisi was seen protesting the remarks made by Meghwal. The UPA II had brought a bill -- The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill -- which sought to check verbal remarks against any Constitutional body. The bill went to the Union cabinet repeatedly for changes but finally lapsed following the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha. Read | Modi govt to brazen it out in Parliament over Prez rule in Uttarakhand Chief Justice of India TS Thakur on Sunday pulled up the government for setting up commercial courts without augmenting the judicial infrastructure in terms of judges strength, support staff, building and other facilities, putting an additional burden on the existing manpower and infrastructure. Addressing the annual Conference of Chief Justices and Chief Ministers, the CJI said this practice would not serve the purpose of enhancing Indias image in the global arena as at present business litigants were forced to rub shoulders with petty and dreaded criminals in the court premises. Noting that India was growing at a higher rate and foreign direct investment was increasing, the CJI said: Those who are investing are concerned about the ability of our judiciary to deal with their cases. The efficiency of judiciary is vital to development. Lauding the initiative to set up commercial courts, the CJI, however, said: Simply putting the old wine in a new bottle will not serve the purpose. He suggested that retired judges, who had integrity and clean image, should be hired for 2-3 years as part of the efforts to dispose of cases pending for more than 10 years. High court judges are not here looking for post-retirement benefits but to devise means to make access to justice a reality, Justice Thakur said in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, law minister DV Sadananda Gowda and a large number of judges. The CJI said he was amazed to see a commercial court in Dubai where the infrastructure and environment in courts was better suited for corporate litigants. Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda, who delivered the inaugural address, and Chief Ministers and High Court Chief Justices are attending the day-long the conference. Justice Thakur said he and the CJs had meetings in the past two days and had come up with solutions to several problems facing the judiciary. The Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Bill, 2015 was passed by Parliament in December 2015. After the Act was notified on January 1 this year, Commercial Divisions were set up in those high courts which were already exercising ordinary original civil jurisdiction such as Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Himachal Pradesh high courts. Commercial Divisions exercise jurisdiction over all cases and applications relating to commercial disputes. The Commercial Divisions have territorial jurisdiction over such area on which they have original jurisdiction. Commercial Courts, which are equivalent to district courts, were set up in states and Union Territories where the high courts do not have ordinary original civil jurisdiction. On the eve of the second leg of Budget session of Parliament, Congress said it will work with like-minded opposition parties and try to put government in the dock on a variety of issues including Uttarkhand developments. Party leaders also indicated that an adjournment motion on the Uttarkhand issue would be brought in the Lok Sabha tomorrow and plans are also afoot to embarrass the government in the Rajya Sabha on the matter. When the Government has to be held to account and to be exposed, that is the duty of the Opposition. Parliament has every right to discuss the Uttarakhand development. Let us not forget that Article 356 has been abused, the authority of the Government has been abused to topple the popularly-elected Government, partys deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told reporters in New Delhi. He was dismissing BJPs assertion that the Uttarkhand issue cannot be raised in Parliament as it was subjudice. I can only sympathize with the BJP leaders and Ministers who have said it, for their bankruptcy on this matter, he said. Taking a dig at the ruling party, another party leader Kapil Sibal remarked Babri Masjid is a matter which is subjudice for the last 26 years. How many times, has it been raised in Parliament by the BJP? So when it comes to Babri Masjid, it is not subjudice, when it comes to Uttarakhand, it is subjudice. The unfulfilled election promises of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have emboldened even a tinpot like JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar to criticise him, the Shiv Sena said on Monday. Modi had made tall pre-elections promises: return of black money lying abroad, creating 20 million jobs every year, achhe din, and other things. After becoming the prime minister, he failed to deliver. So now people like Kanhaiya Kumar can talk of selling off Modi on OLX (online auction site), the Sena said in an edit in the party mouthpiece Saamana. Read more: In-flight drama: Police unlikely to continue probing Kanhaiya scuffle Referring to the allegation made by Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president that Modi has time to travel all over the world but not to the drought-hit areas of Marathwada, Shiv Sena said the question has great resonance for the people of that region. Read more: Kanhaiya Kumar predicts social revolution in India The party questioned Kanhaiya Kumars standing as a critic of the government and said it did not agree with his criticism. Nevertheless, the BJP must do some serious soul-searching on who is responsible for breathing life into the entity called Kanhaiya Kumar, said Shiv Sena. Read more: Wrong to label Kanhaiya anti-national, BJP may lose youth support: Thackeray While it was proper on Kanhaiya Kumars part to highlight the plight of Marathwada people, the Sena wondered, who is behind him and making him talk on all these issues. It will not help to strangle him, as his voice will not be subdued. Nobody has come forth to smother Owaisi who arrogantly refused to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Does Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar have the guts to throttle Pakistan for the Pathankot incident, the Shiv Sena asked. On Sunday, following the alleged attack on Kanhaiya Kumar in a Jet Airways plane at Mumbai airport, Sena President Uddhav Thackeray had said at a meeting in Nashik it was wrong to label him anti-national. If youth are branded anti-national in this manner, they will not be able to work for the country and the BJP would forfeit youth support, he had cautioned. Lok Sabha members, including those from the BJP, on Monday strongly demanded a ban on the import of Chinese goods, since they said substandard materials from the communist country were harming Indias small and medium enterprises. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said any blanket ban on imports from a country is just not possible under the World Trade Organization norms. She, however, assured members that adequate steps are being taken to safeguard the interest of Indian manufacturers and consumers. We are not soft-pedalling, but we are examining things professionally, she told the members. The issue was raised vociferously by Bhola Singh, a BJP parliamentarian from Begusarai in Bihar, who said: While we can show a big heart culturally and be accommodating to China, the same cannot be said about the economic and trade relations. He said there was no justification in soft-handling China in commercial relations as the trade deficit between India and China was growing even otherwise. The commerce minister agreed that the trade deficit with China has been growing, but said that the government was taking steps against dumping. I wish to inform (the house) that where reason and facts show that dumping is happening, safety standards are being violated, we have stopped imports, she said, adding that import of Chinese milk products has been banned after irregularities were detected. On Chinese imports, we have taken specific actions. Import of parts of mobile phones have been stopped as certain parts used in them were unacceptable. Wind-operated electricity generators imported from China are under investigation, she said. Vocal Biju Janata Dal member Tathagatha Satpathy supported the BJP member and demanded the ban on Chinese imports. China has smashed Indias small and medium enterprises as crooked importers are importing substandard things from China, he said. On the ban on Chinese mobiles, the Biju Janata Dal member offered to go with the minister to Khan market in Delhi and show her how Chinese mobile handsets are available in abundance. These are available in Delhi, Bhubaneshwar and all small towns, he said. The minister, however, countered him, saying she never spoke of a blanket ban on mobile phone sets from China. She clarified that only those not meeting international standards and with no proper labelling of international numbers are not being allowed to be imported. Blanket ban on a country is just not possible under the WTO norms, Sitharaman said. Culturally we will remain friends with China; economically, we will take adequate steps, she added. --IANS nd/tsb/vt Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) chief Kuldeep Bishnoi met Rahul Gandhi on Monday to discuss the merger plan of his party with the Congress. The HJC was formed in 2007 after the Congress preferred Jat leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda to veteran Bhajan Lal as the Haryana chief minister in 2005. Lal, a non-Jat, had till then served the state thrice as its CM. Bishnoi had tied up with the BJP in 2014 Lok Sabha elections but lost to Indian National Lok Dals Dushyant Chautala from Hisar. However, the two parties snapped their ties a few months later over the seat-sharing issue ahead of the state elections. Since then, the Congress has been trying to woo Bishnoi and the merger process has now been set in motion after his meeting with Gandhi. Rahulji has given his complete blessings. We will formally announce our merger with Congress tomorrow, the HJC chief said after the meeting in which Bishnois wife Renuka and brother Chandra Mohan were also present. The merger will help the Congress consolidate among non-Jats at a time when the state is divided on caste lines following the violent quota agitation. Calling the proposed merger unconditional, Bishnoi said the two parties have come together to oust the BJP from Haryana. For its part, the Congress maintained that the formalities are still being worked out. Talks are going on, party general secretary in-charge of Haryana affairs Shakeel Ahmed told HT. Police are unlikely to continue probing a scuffle that allegedly occurred between student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar and a co-passenger on a Mumbai-Pune flight on Sunday morning. Police have filed a non-cognisable complaint in the case, relegating it to a category that does not require further investigation. A friend of Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union, said they were assaulted while en route to Pune after taking part in a meeting at Chembur, Mumbai, on Saturday evening. The Sahar police, after listening to the two sides, filed complaints from both Kumar and his alleged assailant as non-cognisable cases. They will have to approach the courts if they want further action to be taken. We can also initiate suo moto action after approaching the court if anything further needs to be done. But he (Kumar) neither offered a statement nor allowed us to perform a medical test, said Baburao Mukhedkar, senior inspector with Sahar police, on Monday morning. Read: Kanhaiya says cops hiding truth behind assault, takes on Modi govt Kumars non-cognisable complaint a copy of which is with HT states that he and his friends were on a Jet Airways flight to Pune around 10.10 am when a fellow-passenger, Manasjyoti Deka, allegedly pushed one of them while trying to reach the window seat. This resulted in an argument, which culminated in Deka reportedly a software services firm employee allegedly catching Kumar by the neck. After the incident, the Jet Airways crew requested everybody involved including Kumar, his friends and Deka to deplane. The student leader left for Pune by road while a friend lodged a non-cognisable complaint under section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the IPC on his behalf. Deka also filed a complaint against Kumar and his companions. India has cancelled a visa granted to a prominent Uyghur activist to attend a conference in Dharamsala after protests from China, official sources said on Monday. The electronic visa granted to Germany-based Dolkun Isa, described as a terrorist by China, was cancelled after checks showed there was a red corner notice issued for him by Interpol. The visa issued on April 16 was cancelled on April 23, the sources said. ANI quoted sources in the home ministry to say that the visa had been cancelled. Some quarters had perceived the visa granted to Dolkun, a leader of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), as a response to China blocking Indias bid to sanction Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar at the UN Security Council. Chinas foreign ministry had reacted angrily to the granting of the visa, telling Hindustan Times in an email statement on Thursday: Dolkun Isa is a terrorist on red notice of Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is a due obligation of relevant countries. The conference to which Dolkun was invited will be held between April 28 and May 1at Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and this added to Beijings unease. The meet is being organised by US-based Citizen Power for China. The group is led by Yang Jianli, who was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The organiser of the event, Tenzin Ninjey, earlier said China is wrong in describing Dolkun as a terrorist. Dolkun Isa is a peace activist. There is no comparison at all with terrorist Masood Azhar, he told ANI. (With inputs from agencies) The Jawaharlal Nehru University rusticated students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for a semester and fined union leader Kanhaiya Kumar Rs 10,000 on Monday, saying they disobeyed norms in organising an event where anti-national slogans were allegedly chanted. Authorities rusticated a Kashmiri PhD student -- Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters and imposed an additional fine of Rs 20,000 on Khalid, a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Historical Studies. Khalid, Bhattacharya and Kumar are out on bail after being arrested on sedition charges following a controversial February event in JNU commemorating Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, where anti-national slogans were allegedly chanted. Read: Kanhaiya says man tried to strangle him on plane, cops dismiss claim JNU students union (JNUSU) joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the union and a PhD student in neuroscience, was fined Rs 10,000. Names of Khalid, Bhattacharya and Gattoo will be taken off from university rolls for the period of rustication and they wont be able to avail hostel facilities. The university also barred Bhattacharya from the premises for five years starting July 25, 10 days after his rustication period ends. This means the final year PhD student at Centre for Historical Studies wont be able to pursue any courses at JNU. The university imposed financial penalties on 14 other students and said two former students wont be allowed to enter the premises. The students arrests in February triggered a wave of protests that catapulted the students to national limelight with the media live-telecasting speeches of Kumar a PhD student at the Centre for African Studies. The controversy also galvanised the Opposition that accused the government of attempting to muzzle dissent. A high-level university committee found the application for the February 9 event circumvented the permission process and the organisers disobeyed the instructions from the administration not to hold it and that amounted to willful defiance. Read: Kanhaiya Kumar predicts social revolution in India Officials said disciplinary measures were taken for many charges including not following university procedures, providing misinformation, arousing communal, caste or regional feelings and creating disharmony among students. But JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora said the punishments were based on one-sided statements from ABVP members. The committee was rejected in the universitys general body meeting also. We completely reject this farcical report as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry, she said. JNU constituted a five-member high level inquiry committee to investigate the incident. The committee found some students guilty of violating disciplinary norms and disrupting communal harmony on campus. The incident in the JNU campus on 9 February 2016 involving some students to hold Poetry Reading event on the theme A Country without a Post Office did not have the approval of the administration and as it was alleged later some participants in the event indulged in objectionable sloganeering, the university said in a statement. It said the committee arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record. Hostel facilities were withdrawn for former JNUSU president Ashutosh Kumar for one year and the campus made out of bounds for two former students. Aishwarya Adhikari, whose name was not mentioned in the committees eight-page report given to students, was fined R 20,000, along with JNUSU general secretary Rama Naga, Anant Prakash Narayan and Gargi Adhikari. Read: Kanhaiya says cops hiding truth behind assault, takes on Modi govt JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Sunday predicted a social revolution in the country when hunger and deprivation will unite the masses irrespective of their caste, creed or religion. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the second consecutive day during his two-day visit to Maharashtra, Kanhaiya Kumar said the Bharatiya Janata Party was attempting to divide the country along caste-communal lines without solving the core issues. Hunger is common to all. Where are the promised jobs, food and water for the masses? This hunger will unite the people one day and they will march on the streets, Kanhaiya Kumar said at a rally in Pune. Dwelling on a wide range of issues confronting the country, the Jawaharhal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president posed questions about the Modi government squandering public resources for giving huge media ads, his radio programme Mann Ki Baat and television publicity. First it was their own Mata (mother), then gaumata (cow), and now it is Bharat Mata. They want to decide what the people will eat, what festivals they will celebrate, what they can wear. Who gave you this right, he asked. Stop giving these jumlas (false promises) to the people. They want jobs or unemployment allowance, social security, and complete abolition of caste system in the country, as B.R. Ambedkar envisioned, Kanhaiya Kumar said. The student leader alleged that after making top-level changes in various central universities, the National Book Trust, Indian Council of Historical Research and other organisations, the RSS-BJP will try to change Indias Constitution and convert the national tricolour into a saffron flag in their attempts to bring in a single-religion rule in India. However, this will not succeed. We will not allow them to succeed in their nefarious intentions. Instead of the Constitution, we will uproot Manuvad from India. Ours is a struggle for our rights, for equality and a progressive caste-less society, he said. Invoking Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, whose 146th birth anniversary was celebrated two days ago, he proclaimed that if you kill one Rohith Vemula, many more will take birth since this was a struggle between right and wrong, the classes and the masses and deprived sections of society. Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula had committed suicide in the University of Hyderabad after alleging caste discrimination in the institution. Kanhaiya Kumar criticised the manner in which the educational budget in the country was drastically slashed and said academics would soon be available only to those who can afford it, the rest will be forced to remain angutha chhap (illiterate). Instead of formulating policies which can benefit the masses, the present leadership is busy changing names of various institutIons or individuals heading them. Is this the reason they were elected and sent to parliament? he asked. Kanhaiya Kumar -- who claimed that an attempt was made on his life aboard a Jet Airways flight on Sunday morning -- addressed a huge gathering of Leftists, youths and Dalits, besides several prominent personalities at a packed Bal Gandharva Hall, which was guarded like a fortress. Among those who attended the event were actor Amol Palekar, Sandhya Gokhale, Prakash Ambedkar, Smita Govind Pansare, Mukta Manohar, Kiran Moghe, Bhalchandra Kango, Jitendra Awhad and teeming crowds of several thousands more outside the hall and on the adjacent roads. The Madras High Court has directed Tamil Nadu government to make efforts to allot within two months the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests cadre post to the first woman Indian Forest Service officer of the state. The division bench, comprising justice Huluvadi G Ramesh and justice K. Ravichandra Baabu, dismissed an appeal of the state government challenging a CAT order directing government to reinstate the officer Aruna Basu Sarcar in the additional APCCF cadre post. Government must make earnest efforts to allot her APCCF cadre post within two months, the court said, dismissing the appeal. The bench did not agree with the argument that a government servant must first join duty at the transferred post. It is seen that the post of dean (forestry) is not equivalent to the post of APCCF, the court said. The bench did not accept governments claim that pay protection had been extended to her. In its order, the bench said mere extension of pay protection would not satisfy in any way and said if she had already applied for leave, it would be treated as earned leave if it is in her credit, or else to treat it as leave without pay. The officer, known for her crackdown on smuggling of sandalwood and redsanders, was first transferred out from her position as additional principal chief conservator of forests (APCCF-Research), and then posted to Tamil Nadu Forest Academy in Coimbatore before being sent to the chief conservator of forests CCF-cadre dean post at TNAU on February 21, 2015. She then went on leave, and later on medical leave, from March 2, 2015. The Central Administrative Tribunal had held that her transfer as University dean would amount to downgrading her position and directed government to reinstate her in APCCF cadre post. Immediately after the relief, Sarcar wrote to the chief ministers cell, stating that she had been shunted out to a subordinate position despite the fact that three APCCF cadre posts were available in the state. Two of them were lying vacant for more than six months, she had pointed out. The state authorities challenged the CAT ruling after waiting out the whole appeal period of three months. Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has sought the backing of the entire nation in helping tide over the difficult challenges confronting the state, which had pegged it back on the development index as compared to other states. Speaking at the annual conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts in New Delhi on Sunday, Mufti said that as chief minister, her prime objective will be to restore the balance and put her state firmly on the path of development. Participating in the structured discussions on improving justice delivery system in the country, she said years of political strife in Jammu and Kashmir resulted in huge loss of life and property, not to mention the setback to the development process in the state, which needs special care and attention. Mufti said that Jammu and Kashmir is too sensitive a state and the government cannot afford to get distracted by issues which seem to trivialise its special position in India. Mufti said her task becomes difficult when certain groups in other parts try to challenge the states special relationship with the rest of the country and question the same which is part of the Indian constitution. Such acts, besides wasting our energy, send negative signals and vitiate the peaceful atmosphere in the state, she said, adding people in Jammu and Kashmir are still nursing old wounds inflicted by horrific tales of misfortune and tragedy. She noted that this not only escalates a feeling of distrust in the state, but also discredits the mainstream parties in the eyes of the voters. Responding to her observations made by Mehbooba Mufti, Chief Justice of India TS Thakur said: The whole country is at your back and realises the difficult situation you are facing in your state. He also dwelt at length about the liberties of people and said access to courts is a fundamental right which cannot be denied to any one, howsoever frivolous his petition may be. The chief minister said she has full faith in the wisdom of the countrys judicial system, which has proved time and again their sensitivities to the special needs of the state. She thanked the CJI and admired various judicial interventions made from time-to-time, especially in fast-tracking clearance of insurance claims of the people devastated by the colossal floods of 2014. She also batted for setting up of a National Law University in the state to impart training and advanced education to students and researchers so that quality of justice delivery system improves. Jammu and Kashmir is one of the states which dont have a National Law University yet. The Delhi government on Monday started a special shuttle service for Members of Parliament to enable them to attend the Budget session. The shuttle service has been launched in view of the request by some Parliamentarians seeking exemption from Kejriwal governments odd-even traffic plan which has entered the second week. Delhi transport minister Gopal Rai said that six special DTC buses for MPs, saying there was no need for them to be exempted from the traffic-rationing scheme. DTC spcl shuttle services to ply from following points 9 AM onwards: 3-3 buses from North Avenue and South Avenuevia Ashoka Road,Akbar Road AAP_ (@AapKaGopalRai) April 24, 2016 The driving restrictions aimed at cleaning the citys toxic air came up for discussion on Sunday at an all-party meeting called by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to discuss the agenda of the session that is to begin on Monday, sources said. Read | Odd-even shadow on Parliament, some MPs want exemption The MPs are not exempted in the Delhi governments car restriction scheme. The second phase of the odd-even scheme started on April 15 and will continue till April 30. On Sunday, Rai had said: I appeal to all parliamentarians to follow the odd-even rule and also do car-pooling with other MPs. Three special buses for MPs will leave from North Avenue and South Avenue via Akbar Road and Ashoka Road, respectively, the minister said, adding that the city government will run more buses, if required. The minister also spoke to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and sought her co-operation to make the scheme a success. The Opposition on Monday mounted an attack on commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman for allegedly allowing China to dump sub-standard products in India. Even though Sitharaman reiterated that import of certain Chinese items like certain types of mobile phones and steel products had been banned, opposition leaders blamed the government for not placing a complete ban on all Chinese products. China has completely smashed the Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, but the India government has been giving out the message: Please come and trample upon us, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) member Tathaghata Satpathy said. The issue was raised during Parliaments Question Hour by BJP leader Bhola Singh, who wanted to know why India continued to suffer financial losses by allowing China to dump sub-standard goods. China is facing an economic crisis and a growing economy like India can also get into trouble if things continue like this, Singh said. Sitharaman explained that a complete ban on Chinese products was not possible because of the World Trade Organisations (WTO) rules. This is regardless of problems India may have with any country at the political, diplomatic or military levels, she said. Indias trade deficit with China was at $48.68 billion during 2015-16 (April-February), with a total bilateral trade of $65.16 billion. Pakistan foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry will make a day-long visit to New Delhi on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Heart of Asia grouping, setting up an opportunity for talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar. Chaudhry will travel to the Indian capital on Tuesday morning and return home the same day, sources in the Pakistan high commission said. Jaishankar and Chaudhry are expected to meet before the Heart of Asia conference begins at Hyderabad House in the afternoon. Without naming India, a statement issued by the Foreign Office in Islamabad said the Pakistani delegation will hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the Heart of Asia meet. The two foreign secretaries will discuss bilateral issues. The Pathankot investigation will come up for discussion and they will also talk about the proposed dialogue process and how to move ahead, said an Indian government source. This will be the first high-level contact between the two countries since the January 2 terror attack on Pathankot airbase, which was blamed by India on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed. A Pakistani Joint Investigation Team visited India this month to probe the attack that killed seven security personnel. Pakistan has dismissed media reports that the JIT found no evidence of JeMs involvement in the attack and said its investigation is continuing. Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit had created a flutter recently by saying the bilateral talks process was suspended but sources said there had been back channel contacts, especially at the level of the National Security Advisers. A meeting between the foreign secretaries on the margins of the Heart of Asia meet will give India and Pakistan an opportunity to discuss how to take forward the comprehensive dialogue process announced when external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj visited Islamabad in December. India will also raise the issue of a visit by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe the Pathankot attack. We have almost completed our probe in India in connection with the Pathankot attack. We are now waiting for the green signal from the government to go to Pakistan to complete investigation there as well. Our preparation for the visit is complete, said NIA chief Sharad Kumar. Read | Why are India and Pak struggling to take bilateral talks forward? The second part of the Parliament session, which begins today, is all set to be a stormy one with the Opposition parties closing ranks to raise the issue of imposition of Presidents rule in Uttarakhand. However, the government has listed a heavy agenda for the session, including passage of 13 bills in the Lok Sabha and 11 in the Rajya Sabha. Discussion on demands for grants of various ministries, consideration and passing of the Railways Appropriation and Finance Bills along with GST, Factories, Compensatory Afforestation and Enemy Property Bills are the main agenda of the session. Meanwhile, the Congress Rajya Sabha strategy meeting will take place in the Parliament at 10 a.m on Monday. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan held an all-party meeting on Sunday to ensure smooth functioning of the Parliament but the Uttarakhand developments are likely to overshadow proceedings with the opposition demanding a debate on the issue while the government appears keen to avoid it as long as the matter is before the court. At an all-party meeting convened by her here, Mahajan made a strong pitch for the sessions smooth functioning. All parties have promised they will cooperate to ensure a fruitful and functional session, she said later. But opposition parties, led by the Congress along with a number of regional parties including Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Biju Janata Dal (BJD), seemed to have geared up for taking on the BJP-led dispensation with all their might for its misuse of the Constitutions Article 356. Since February, the central government has dismissed Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. However, minor differences surfaced among the opposition parties on the rules under which the debate could be held. Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said his party will move an adjournment motion under rule 56 in the house and expressed happiness that several other parties were in support. BJD leader Bhartuhari Mahtab, however, said his party wants a debate under rule 193 -- implying the house proceedings need not be suspended and the debate can be held in time agreed upon by all sides and decided by the chair. Government sources, meanwhile, said the possibility of acceptance of an adjournment motion is remote as no motion which seeks to raise discussion on a matter pending before any statutory tribunal or statutory authority performing any judicial or quasi-judicial functions can be raised under rule 56. Members from Trinamool Congress, another regional party, did not attend Sundays meeting as the party MPs are tied up in the ongoing electioneering in West Bengal. The new session of parliament begins on April 25 since the budget session was prorogued last month to facilitate the promulgation of an ordinance to meet the financial requirements of Uttarakhand, where central rule was imposed on March 27. Government sources said they were ready to discuss all issues in both houses, including drought and imposition of central rule in Uttarakhand -- but with a rider. We are ready to discuss all issues provided they do not clash with matters that are sub-judice, a source quoted a government representative as saying at the meeting. Mahajan too said: The issue of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand is sub-judice. I dont think it can be discussed before April 27. BJD leader Mahtab also demanded a debate on water scarcity. At the meeting I also pointed out that the problem in most parts of the country has moved beyond drought. What we face today is water scarcity and, therefore, more detailed and proper debate should be held on water scarcity. The session, to be treated as a fresh one, will continue till May 13. Normally, the budget session is split into two sessions. This time, it will be an entirely new session as both houses of parliament were prorogued to facilitate constitutional requirements of Uttarakhand, said a parliamentary official. Ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Rajiv Pratap Rudy represented the ruling side at the meeting. During the session, government sources said, efforts to get the support of opposition parties for the passage of key legislations, including the long-pending Goods and Services Tax Bill, are expected to yield positive results. Issues pertaining to the Ishrat Jahan case and the Malegaon blast may figure prominently, especially in the Lok Sabha, BJP leaders said. Congress Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma has given a notice for the suspension of Question Hour to discuss the Uttarakhand issue. Meanwhile, some MPs from states where electioneering is at its peak have complained about the timing of the parliament session. With election process on in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, it is natural that MPs from these states will be campaigning for their respective parties and candidates. I think the timing of this session is not suitable, said Communist Party of India-Marxists P. Karunakaran. . Taking a dig at Narendra Modi for his poll campaign in north eastern states, the Shiv Sena on Monday said the Prime Minister should have taken out time to visit drought-hit Marathwada as well. The Sena also said that though the PM has become a global leader now, people of India need him the most. Modi has become a global leader now and he is going across the world as the Prime Minister of India. People of this country are reeling under drought and are dying of hunger and thirst. The feeling among the people is that he should stay in the country and worry for the people, an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana said. India needs to be saved to save our global leadership, it said. It would have been good if Modi had taken out time to spend two days in Marathwada, which is reeling under severe drought, the Sena said. Modi is campaigning for elections in West Bengal and Assam. But people of Marathwada will not forget that he did not hear their cries, it said. Attacking the government, the ruling alliance partner said BJP needs to introspect as to who is responsible for the making of Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU Students Union leader. Kanhaiya Kumar is not capable enough to comment on Modi. But, BJP needs to introspect on who is responsible for his making, it said. Kanhaiya had hit the headlines after being arrested on charges of sedition in the aftermath of an event on the JNU campus during which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised. The JNU student leader had recently come down heavily on the Modi dispensation, terming it a government of selfies and jumlas as he pushed for enactment of a law to prevent caste-based prejudice in educational institutions. The Sena also reminded Modi that the promises he made before elections, like bringing acche din in the country, getting black money back and generating two crore jobs every year, have not been fulfilled as yet. Ratna doesnt remember how long she has been working at Texports Creations, a garments factory in outer Bengalurus Peenya industrial area. She travels six kilometres every day and earns Rs 6,500 a month, most of which goes in paying her rent. Her husband died a decade ago but she managed to put her two daughters through college. Most of the money for their education and household expenses came from her provident fund. I took breaks from my job every five years to get my provident fund (PF) amount - about 20,000 rupees or so to pay for school fees, domestic expenses like rent advances, etc, she tells HT. So if we dont get double PF (employer and employee contribution) then there is nothing left for us. Ratna is among the 100,000 garment factory workers who came out on the streets of Bengaluru on April 19 to protest against the governments proposed changes in the PF withdrawal scheme. They violently clashed with police and blocked highways. Over a hundred vehicles were burnt and 43 policemen were injured. Over 80 workers and bystanders also sustained injuries and the loss to industry from the three-day closure was estimated around Rs 1,500 crore according to industry sources. The unprecedented protests forced the government to roll back the proposed changes that barred workers from withdrawing their entire retirement fund in case of unemployment of two months or more. Every month, salaried individuals contribute 12% of their pay to the PF and the employer matches this, creating a fund that is pivotal for low-income workers in a country with no formal social security net. Out of 950 women in our factory, not even four or five have continuous service of 5 or 10 years. So when we read that the government has changed the rules, we were very upset, says Ratna. Bengaluru has about 700 garment factories where an estimated 1.2 million workers are employed. Around 90% of these workers are women, who report at work at 8.30am and leave around 6.30pm, travelling as much as 200 kilometres daily. In a notification issued in February, the labour ministry said individuals will be able to withdraw only their contribution to the fund and the interest earned on it, and not the employers contribution. There are women who work for a few months, accumulate their PF and resign so that they can pay their childrens fees. We tolerate much injustice and exploitation, this was the last straw, says Bharathi, who works for a factory that produces coats for Raymonds. To survive and make ends meet, Ratna stitches petticoats at home. Many women do domestic work before reaching the factory, others string flowers or make agarbattis, she says. This kind of pace cannot be kept up for long, so there is usual high attrition of workers. This benefits factory owners, who are saved from having to pay workers their gratuity. They say that they wont pay us double PF. We are not going to agree, even if we die, says Anasuyamma. Her co-workers Asha and Pavithra sit around with severe head injuries. Two others cannot speak as the police hit them on the mouth and face. The simmering discontent drove the protests that saved the PF of 50 million Indians. But the struggle isnt over. Workers say the government has booked thousands of protesters and policemen are roaming the roads near the factories where the women work. We cannot take any more injustice, madam, says Anasuyamma. The nine rebel Congress MLAs told the Uttarakhand high court on Monday that they only wanted chief minister Harish Rawats removal, but they didnt defect. The dissident MLAs told Justice UC Dhyani that they were not against the Congress and only wanted to clean it up as they felt that the regime under former chief minister Harish Rawat did not show the party in a good light. The MLAs, who have challenged their disqualification by speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal, told the court that they had joined the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and added that they had differentiated themselves from the BJP when they signed the memo sent to the governor seeking division of votes. Appearing for the MLAs, senior advocate CA Sundaram argued that dissenting against the government by a member of the ruling party was part of a healthy democracy and would not amount to leaving the party or defection. Sundaram said the CM and the speaker are assuming that the government and party are the same and if this view was accepted then it would be a death knell for democracy. Then no member of ruling party would be able to criticise the government, he said. Deserting a government or a leader/ chief minister (by a member of a ruling party) does not amount to leaving the party or defection. Even under the 10th schedule of defection means deserting the party and not dissent, he argued. I am dissenting against choice of CM. This is an essential part of intra-party democracy. You cannot disqualify someone for speaking against the CM, he contended and added that the only overt act they committed was to ask the governor to dismiss the government and CM which would not amount to giving up membership of the party. As Congressmen we continue to say that this government under this CM (Rawat) must be changed. We are saying change the CM from within the party. They (Congress) will not lose the right to form another government under another CM, he said and questioned whether it means that we have left the party. Read | Ukhand crisis: As Cong pushes for their exit, rebel MLAs move HC Sundaram said they had only objected to the speaker not following the procedure that the majority (26 BJP and nine Congress MLAs) wanted and that cannot be said to mean that the nine gave up party membership. He alleged that the speaker was biased towards the Rawat government as he showed undue haste in disqualifying the nine MLAs before the floor test scheduled for March 28 and was also defending the government and the CM in court. India cancelled a visa granted to prominent Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa to attend a conference in Dharamsala after angry protests from China, officials said on Monday. The electronic tourist visa given to Germany-based Isa, described as a terrorist by China, was withdrawn after checks showed there was an Interpol red corner notice for him. Some quarters had seen the grant of a visa to Dolkun as a response to China blocking Indias bid to sanction Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar at the UN Security Council. Read more: Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa disappointed by visa withdrawal, blames China The visa issued to the leader of the World Uyghur Congress on April 16 was cancelled on April 23, officials said. A senior home ministry official said the visa was cancelled because of violation of norms. An electronic tourist visa on arrival is granted for four purposes - for coming as a tourist, meeting friends, for casual business and medical inquiries. But Isa was coming here to attend a conference. Once has to apply for a conference visa for that, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Read more: India does a U-turn, cancels visa to Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa Asked about the governments response if Isa applies for a conference visa, the official said the government may consider it but it will take into account the violation of norms. Chinas foreign ministry had reacted angrily after the visa was granted, telling Hindustan Times in an email statement last week: Dolkun Isa is a terrorist on red notice of Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is a due obligation of relevant countries. After getting the visa, Dolkun had written to the Indian mission in Munich and sought an assurance that he wouldnt be arrested on his arrival. The conference to which Dolkun was invited will be held between April 28 and May 1at Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and this added to Beijings unease. Read more: China fumes after India issues visa to Uyghur terrorist The meet is being organised by US-based Citizen Power for China. The group is led by Yang Jianli, who was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Other Uyghur activists are expected to attend the event. On Monday, Dolkun expressed disappointment at Indias decision to withdraw the visa and blamed China for blocking his plans to travel to other countries. I remain disappointed with the final decision, but I am hopeful that positive steps may be taken to maintain Indias relationship with the Uyghur community, Dolkun said in a statement emailed to Hindustan Times. Dolkun, who was granted asylum by Germany in the late 1990s, said China has prevented him from travelling to other countries. This is not the first time that I have faced difficulties in my international travels to advocates (sic) Uyghur rights. In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratisation in Asia, to which I was an invited guest, he said. With the cancellation of the visa, India has apparently avoided a diplomatic situation with China in the run-up to President Pranab Mukherjees visit to Beijing and Guangzhou in May. Dolkun belongs to Xinjiang in Chinas remote northwest, a region that has seen frequent violence between the local Uyghur population and government forces. Exiled Uyghur activists say the violence is a result of Beijings hardline policies and a reaction against the governments efforts to subsume the unique local culture. Dolkun took exception to the comparison in media reports between him and Pakistan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar. The Uyghur leader said he is a peace activist. He added: Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to de-legitimise my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights. A consortium of banks told the Supreme Court on Monday that Vijay Mallya, who is reportedly in Britain, is not cooperating in the investigation of cases lodged against him and was averse to disclosing foreign assets. Further, in the rejoinder to the affidavit filed by the beleaguered businessman, the consortium said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family is significant for recovering the dues. When contacted, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said, We have filed a rejoinder to Mallyas affidavit in which it has been stated that he is also not indicating the date of his return to the country. He said the liquor baron has not agreed to deposit substantial amount as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide. The A-G said the non-disclosure by Mallya does not enable banks to ascertain his ability to repay. We have nothing to do with Mallyas claim that he cannot appear personally because of governments action against him, the banks said in their affidavit, adding that instead of providing material to it, Mallya and his companies prefer to submit them in sealed cover to the apex court. The matter is listed for hearing on Tuesday. The rejoinder was filed in response to Mallyas affidavit that said that banks have no right over the information of his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. Mallya had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets and added that his three children, wife -- all US citizens -- dont have to disclose their assets. Overseas assets were not considered while granting loans, he said in his statement. Mallya, however,was told to demonstrate his bonafide and that of his companies, an aggregate of Rs 1,591 crores can be deposited before the apex court. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose all assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad by April 21, while seeking an indication from him when he will appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a substantial amount with it to prove his bonafide that he was serious about meaningful negotiations and settlement. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday hit out at the Centre for cancelling the visa given to a Chinese dissident. What was all that chest thumping earlier? Omar asked on Twitter after India decided to withdraw the visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa apparently after protests by China over the issue. For the last few days we were treated to lots of self-congratulatory chest thumping about how this Govt is the 1st to stand up to China. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) April 25, 2016 Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha too took a dig at the government on Twitter. All those who were prematurely celebrating Mr Modi's muscular machismo on foreign policy, please have a white-egg omelet. #DolkunIsa Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) April 25, 2016 I repeat , foreign policy, is alien to Narendra Modi. He thinks it is like a kite flying competition. A sorry mess. https://t.co/85SrR9iE32 Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) April 25, 2016 Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based Initiatives for China. Isa was granted a tourist visa to travel to India this week for the conference in Dharamsala, which Tibetan leader-in-exile the Dalai Lama is also expected to attend. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation. He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side, he said. Indias decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim- dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking Indias bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. Chinas unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. In a first, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will suspend two chief engineers, blacklist and file first information reports (FIRs) against six contractors and two third-party auditors for irregularities in construction of roads in the city. The action comes after the report on an inquiry into the construction of 34 roads in the western suburbs in 2014-15 concluded the work was carried out using sub-standard material, and was shoddy in most cases. The report claims the extent of faulty work is in the range of 38% to 100%. The officers and the third-party consultants, who were to keep a check on quality, also failed to perform their duty, it states, indicting the entire roads department of the civic body for malpractices and irregularities. The whole administration has failed to supervise and monitor the road repair work, states the report. Civic chief Ajoy Mehta had ordered a probe into road repair works in October 2015, after mayor Snehal Ambekar wrote a confidential letter to him, alleging malpractices and corruption in the work. On Monday, Mehta submitted the 115-page report to Ambekar. The repair work of all 34 roads was carried out by six contractors -- RPS Infraprojects, Relcon Infraprojects, KR Construction, J Kumar, RK Madhani and Mahavir Infrastructure. The probe covered Malad Reservoir road, Khadakpada road and Guru Govindsingh Road in Andheri (East), Wasri Hill road and Jaichand Karwa road in Goregaon, among others. According to the report, the sub-base of the road was filled with soil, instead of concrete and other material. The third party auditors -- SGS consultancy and IRS -- ignored the shoddy work and gave green light to the work done by the contractors, states the report. Ashok Pawar, who was then the chief engineer of roads department and is currently with the building maintenance department, and UM Murudkar, who was the chief engineer of the vigilance department, have been held guilty of failing to supervise and monitor the work. Murudkar is already under suspension over the alleged irregularities in desilting of stormwater drains. It is a complete departmental failurethe officers ranging from sub-engineers, assistant engineers, executive engineers and deputy chief engineer are responsible for malpractices, said the report. According to a source, the civic body has spent Rs25 crore to Rs30 crore on these 34 roads. The action on other officers will be taken in phase-wise manner, so it does not affect the ongoing road repair work. While the Shiv Sena refrained from commenting on the development, BJP group leader Manoj Kotak said, We had demanded the inquiry. Now, the citizens will get to know who is responsible for the shoddy road work. In a return to strikes, jewellers have declared a three-day strike from Monday against the Centres decision to impose 1% excise duty on gold items. They are even thinking of a Bharat Band on April 28. We have decided to go on strike from April 25 to April 27 following a call from the All India Jewellers Association. We will keep our shops closed and participate in rallies and protests in Delhi. Our demand of rollback of 1% excise duty is still on our agenda, said Rajender Verma, president, Noida Jewellers Welfare Association. On Monday, all jewellery shops in Noida remained closed in support of the strike and city jewellers also participated in a rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, senior Janata Dal (united) leader Sharad Yadav, and Congress leaders Digvijay Singh, Sachin Pilot and Raj Babbar also participated in the rally. Earlier, jewellers had gone on strike for 44 days. The strike had begun on March 2, a day after the Centres 1% excise duty came into effect, and ended on April 13. We had postponed the strike, not called it off. We had to postpone it due to some reasons and now we are back with our demand. This time we will launch a much more aggressive strike, including a Bharat Bandh. We will continue till the Centre agrees to withdraw the excise duty on gold products, said Verma. The All India Bullion Jewellers Goldsmith Federation (AIBJGF), which held a meeting in Delhi on Sunday, will decide the future course of action on the evening of April 27. AIBJGF is the apex and joint body of gold traders of India. All associations trading in gold and ornaments at any level are members of this association. We will follow all the commands of the association, said Ram Avtar, a jeweller. Endorsing the demand raised by BJPs Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy and Union food-processing minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Avtar Singh Makkar on Monday asked the Centre to make the Operation Bluestar files public. Recalling the army raid on the Golden temple in June 1984 to flush out armed militants, Makkar claimed in a press release issued here that armys field guns and tanks ha killed thousands of innocent Sikh devotees and demolished the Akal Takht, highest temporal seat of Sikh faith. More innocent Sikhs were massacred in the 1984 riots. If the files related to this episode are made public, people can know the entire truth, he said. The community still carries the scars of the two episodes but hasnt received justice yet, said Makkar, adding: Congress leader Jagdish Tytler, one of the prime accused in anti-Sikh riots, who claims himself to be innocent, will be exposed once the files are out. Days after sanitation workers of the municipal corporation ended their strike in the city, there seems to be no change on the ground as heaps of garbage can be seen on prominent streets of the city. A visit to posh areas of the city presented a dirty picture on Sunday. Banned polybags and other household as well as commercial refuse were seen strewn across Lawrence Road. The entire stretch along Nehru Shopping Complex was in a deplorable state. Waste material was disposed of outside shops, on pavements and also along the road divider. Ajay Sharma, who owns a sweetmeat shop on Lawrence Road, said: We have become used to seeing garbage on the streets. Although things have improved, sanitation remains a major concern. Gautam Arora, who manages a store, said being a posh area, Lawrence Road is expected to be cleaner than other parts of the city. However, there is filth all around as a lot of people visit the place regularly, he said. Even the Lawrence extension road that houses multiple eating joints remains filthy. Heaps of garbage can be seen lying on both sides of the road, making it difficult for visitors and commuters to pass this stretch. Subash Sharma, owner of an eatery, said: Although sanitation workers do come to collect garbage, the number and frequency should be increased. Residents said the area needs a designated dumping ground. Manish Gaba, a businessman, said: The area needs more dumping grounds, as there is hardly any space to throw waste material. Collective efforts have to be made by residents as well as the authorities. The situation at another prime location, Ranjit Avenue, is no different. The commercial market in B-block that houses a number of business outlets and offices lacks sanitation. Ashutosh, who works at a multinational company having its office in the area, said: The authorities are not concerned about the area. With more than 30,000 posts of regular teacher vacant in the Punjab government schools, chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday met different groups of unemployed and contractual teachers and assured them of hiring and regularisation, respectively, in a phased manner. The aggrieved unions of people still looking for work after clearing the teacher eligibility test (TET) and the contractual teachers who are in job but paid poorly said that the talks with the government had failed, since there was no clarity on the employment roadmap, and now they would go on protest. We conveyed to them (contractual teachers of different categories) that the state had given a representation to the Centre for regularising their service, as we are bound to follow the Right to Education (RTE) Act, said education minister Dr Daljit Singh Cheema, who also attended the 3-hour meeting. The teacher unions were dissatisfied with the response of the education minister that the process to recruit 4,500 teachers was on. They demanded regular jobs for the thousands of unemployed TET-passed youth, since there were 30,000-odd vacancies. Could climb water tanks, block traffic The TET-pass union that represents more than 20,000 unemployed, eligible candidates for regular teaching jobs on Sunday announced that on May 1, it would protest against the Akali-BJP government at all district headquarters, and on May 8, hold a sudden action programme in Bathinda, which as unions state president Raghbir Singh has hinted after the meeting could be anything from climbing water tanks to blocking traffic. The other groups in the meeting included education service providers, who get Rs 7,500 a month each, and the contractual elementary trained teachers (ETTs) hired in the past 10-to-12 years under the scrapped Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), who draw Rs 5,000 a month each. The EGS teachers had brought village children to school between 2004 and 2009 but received a paltry honorarium of Rs 1,000 a month. They were then given elementary-teacher training in the year 2011-12 to be hired on contract for a monthly pay of only Rs 5,000. Jagtar Singh Hawara, a convict in the Beant Singh murder case, has approached the Punjab and Haryana high court seeking clubbing of all pending cases against him in one state. Hawara, who is lodged in a Delhi jail, has submitted that besides shifting all cases to one state, he should also be shifted to that state so that he might be tried and the cases decided expeditiously. Listing out 25-odd cases registered in the late nineties and the first decade of 2000, Hawara submitted that he should be provided with a list of all criminal cases as he was not aware as to how many cases were pending against him. Most of the cases remain pending without meaningful proceedings, the non-trial is because the petitioner could not be regularly produced in courts concerned, he has submitted seeking the high courts intervention. The high court has sought the response of Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana by July 4. Hawara is one of the convicts in the Beant Singh assassination case of August 31, 1995 outside the civil secretariat in Chandigarh. A trial court had in July 2007 awarded death sentence to accused Hawara and Balwant Singh Rajoana. Shamsher Singh and Gurmeet Singh were awarded life sentence and Lakhwinder Singh and Nasib Singh were awarded 10 years imprisonment. A gang of five held a womans two granddaughters, aged 7, at gunpoint as she helpless watched them loot cash and jewellery worth Rs 50 lakh from her house in Ludhiana district on Sunday. Lad Kaur told police the men barged into the house at Partap Singh Wala area on Humbran road around 2.30 pm when four maids and a driver were present. She said she did not raise the alarm as four robbers held the children hostage and the fifth remained on guard outside. Kaur said the robbers also thrashed the driver and tried to flee in her car, but they failed as the vehicle did not start off. Kaur said she was too scared to call the cops even after the robbers left, because they had threatened to kill the children if she did so. The police rushed to the house after being called by one of Kaurs relatives and filed a case against unidentified men. They said the house had a CCTV camera installed but the robbers took away the recording device. Station house officer of Haibowal police station, sub-inspector Jarnail Singh, said the robbers will be arrested soon. Kaur and her family moved to Ludhiana from Mumbai only two weeks ago. Her two daughters have gone back. Just days after 141 of its students were shifted out after a long legal battle, the Chintpurni Medical College and Hospital, Pathankot, has been hit by another crisis, which could perhaps be its last. The only batch of students left in the college has also moved court, demanding they be adjusted in recognised medical institutes. The students shifted from the college and adjusted in nine other institutions were from Chintpurnis first MBBS batch inducted in 2011-12. They had moved high court questioning the validity of their degrees in view of the college managements failing to get recognition from the medical council of India (MCI). Now, 101 students, of the 2014-15 batch, are worried for the same reasons. The junior students have told the high court that the MCIs most recent inspection report, dated March 16, had found the college 100% deficient in terms of faculty. They also said their future was at stake as classes were not being held regularly and their practical experience was nil as the college hospital was defunct. The students also told the court that Punjab National Bank was moving ahead with selling Chintpurnis properties because the college had defaulted on the Rs 100-crore loan for setting up the campus. They even provided as evidence a letter written by the bank to Pathankot deputy commissioner, asking him to take possession of the college campus. The students said the bank had also approached MCI, asking them to shift students from the college so that the campus property could be taken over. The batch of 101 students was inducted after three years as Chintpurni struggled to get MCI permission for admissions. It was also the last as the college has yet to be allowed further admissions due to MCIs adverse reports. The high court, which heard the petition on April 22, directed the state government, the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, which governs the states medical colleges, and the MCI to file their replies by the next hearing on April 26. College trouble A year after being set up, college was allowed to admit 150 MBBS students. 141 joined in 2011-12 batch. College failed to get due recognition for 2012-13 and 2013-14 sessions due to deficiencies in facilities In 2014, 141 students moved court to be shift out. The college was , however, granted permission to enrol second batch in 2014-15 after intervention by Supreme Court The college was again denied permission for admissions in 2015-16 session In March, 2015, 141 students were finally adjusted in nine other medical colleges. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Mocking the law-and-order situation, a few Shiv Sena leaders opened fire in the air from their licensed weapons as a tribute to their slain companion, Durga Prasad Gupta, in the presence of police at the cremation ground at Khanna on Monday. The police remained a mute spectator to the incident. Family and relatives paid last respects to the leader under heavy police security. There was tension in the area after the incident. Read: Shiv Sena leader shot dead in Khanna When contacted, Rajiv Tandon, chairman, Shiv Sena, Punjab, said their leaders had opened fire in the air as a mark of tribute to their companion, who was gunned down at Lalhedi Chowk by two assailants on Saturday evening. Tandon said they would announce a Punjab bandh in case the assailants were not arrested in this week. The organisation would also take Guptas ashes to different parts of the state, he added. Read: Mixed response to bandh call in Khanna over Shiv Sena leaders killing Tandon said that last year, the Shiv Sena had organised a programme at Mandi Gobindgarh, following which the organisation leaders received threats. Around two months ago, miscreants had set ablaze Guptas office near Lalhedi Chowk at Khanna. He said had the police taken the matter seriously, Guptas life could have been saved. When contacted, Khanna SSP Satinder Singh said the police would take action against the leaders who had opened fire in the air. Meanwhile, the police recovered the motorcycle used by the assailants in the crime from near the railway tracks on Sunday. During investigation, the police found that the bike was stolen. The SSP said the police would give further details after completing the investigation. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A home guard jawan allegedly shot himself dead with his service rifle at his place of duty in Chohal village on Monday morning. The police, however, claimed that he was killed in a misfire while cleaning his weapon. 55-year old Maha Singh, a native of Badera Rajputana village in Himachal Pradeshs Amb tehsil apparently shot himself around 5.45 am in the changing room near Chohal check post when two of his colleagues were out. On hearing the shot, the colleagues rushed inside and found Maha Singh dead in a pool of blood. They revealed that they all were on night duty at nearby Adamwal village and had been shifted to Chohal post early in the morning. Singhs colleagues revealed that he was involved in a land dispute in his native village and was upset due to prolonged litigation.The police said they would proceed further only after getting a statement from the aggrieved family. Deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Sameer Verma said that it appeared to be a case of misfire. We did not recover any suicide note from the spot, he said. Meanwhile Sadar police took the body in custody and informed deceased s family. The Parliament on Monday passed the bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sehajdharis Sikhs (gradual adopters) from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies. Ahead of assembly elections in Punjab next year, the Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016, was passed by the Lok Sabha more than a month after Rajya Sabha approved it. Presidents nod is now pending for it to become an Act. Replying to the debate on it, Union home minister Rajnath Singh said the demand for not giving voting rights to Sehajdari Sikhs was made by the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee (SGPC) that often demanded that those who are not Sikhs should not be given [the] voting rights. The SPGC general assembly of 2001 also passed a resolution regarding this. The Union cabinet had recently approved the amendment with effect from October 8, 2003. It had earlier been carried out by a home ministry notification on that date, but was quashed by the HC on December 20, 2011, leaving it to the legislature to amend the Act. The definition of Sehajdhari Sikh has no religious sanction as far as the fundamental tenets of the religion are concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 under British rule. The bill proposes to remove the further exception given to Sehajdharis in 1944 to vote in the elections. Read: Amarinder says SGPC Act amendment unfortunate; will divide community Read: Badal thanks Parliament, Centre for SGPC Act amendment Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu, however, said in the House that the Sikh Gurudwaras Act should be renamed Badal Gurudwara Act, taking a jibe at Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son and deputy Sukhbir Singh Badal. The latter heads the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) which controls the SGPC for several years now. You are trying to divide families through conspiracy...You are doing wrong with 70 lakh Sikhs who had voting rights in SGPC for 60 years... You are dividing the already minority community of Punjab into a sub-minority community, he said. Troops of 87 Battalion of Border Security Force (BSF) on Monday arrested a Pakistani national near the international-boundary fence in Tarn Taran. Intruder Aheel Ahmed (27) is from Narang Mandi village in Pakistans Sheikhupura district. The BSF caught him around 9am and handed him over to police, to whom he disclosed in the preliminary interrogation that Pakistani drug smugglers had sent him over to look for gaps in the Indian border security. He said his village was close to the zero line and the three smugglers who had forced him to infiltrate carried 20-kilogram drug each, besides firearms, and their Indian contacts were to pick up the contraband. He said this was his second illegal border crossing, though we suspect that he has done it many times, said Khalra additional station house officer Sahib Singh. The US-based organisation Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) will file a defamation suit there against Punjab Congress president and former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh for accusing it of playing into the hands of Pakistans spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In response to SFJs filing of a case of torture in Canada that forced Amarinder to cancel his Toronto and Vancouver visits, the Amritsar MP had on April 23 stated that the SFJ was playing into the hands of the anti-India forces like the ISI to embarrass India and project as if rights violations was the norm of the day in the country (India) like some dictatorships in different parts of the world. Rebutting, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal adviser to the SFJ, said in a statement emailed to HT on Monday: SFJ is an independent human rights advocacy group with a mission to promote Sikhs right to self-determination and is seeking a referendum in the state of Punjab. Must read: Amarinder Singh cancels Canada visit following torture case against him Read also: Ban on Capt rallies wrong, will take up matter in House: Chandumajra The defamation suit will be filed in the Federal Court of California, a state that Amarinder is scheduled to visit during his tour of the United States aimed at wooing Punjabi NRIs ahead of the assembly polls due early next year, it is learnt. Californias defamation law provides that an organisation can bring a case against an individual as long as statements are reasonably understood to refer to the organisation in question; and in this case Amarinder openly named and accused SFJ, noted the group. Amarinder had also urged the government of India to rise above political considerations and take up the matter with the Canadian government at the highest level. The earlier case, filed in Canada, pertains to the alleged torture of a Sikh man when Amarinder was the Punjab CM. Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced Rs 20 crore for development works in Panchkula district with Rs 10 crore for the rural areas and Rs 10 crore for the urban areas. Khattar was addressing a vikas rally in Sector 16, Panchkula, on Sunday. Among the new projects, Khattar said a law college and a Haryana Roadways depot will come up on 4.5 acres of land, along with a workshop in the Phase 2, Industrial Area. He said the HUDA booths will be allowed to build additional floors to discourage encroachment on the public land. Long-pending railway underpass in Sector 19 will be taken up with the railways and commercial activities will be legalised in the Industrial Area. He reiterated earlier announcements of the medical college and NIFD in Panchkula, for which sites have already been chosen. MLA Gian Chand Gupta said earlier the district had suffered a stepmotherly treatment, but now under the BJP rule it should be developed as mini capital of Haryana. He demanded an underpass to connect Sectors 20, 21 and 25. Besides, he said the city needed an underpass at Sector 19 railway crossing, dispensary in sector 15, upgradation of schools in villages. He said with the coming of BJP government in the state the corruption had decreased. Khattar said he will look into the charter of over 60 demands raised by the local MLA. While speaking on the occasion, Ambala MP Ratan Lal Kataria demanded sending Panchkulas name for Smart City and setting up a university of international-standards. Meanwhile, Congress described CMs rally as flop show. Vice-president of the Haryana Pradesh Mahila Congress Ranjeet Mehta said, The name vikas rally is good. The progress has happened, but only in complaints of people, increase in the number of stray dogs and potholed roads. She also raised the issue of hoardings, which could be seen across the city, in violation of the advertising rules and incur losses for the local civic body. Hundreds of parents gathered at Company Bagh on Sunday to protest against the loot by private schools and apathy of the state government and the district administration towards their plight. Parents who have been agitating for the past one week against malpractices of private schools warned the district administration to take the issue seriously. They said if the district education officer (secondary education) Satinder Bir Singh fails to check exorbitant fee being charged by schools, they will return to streets to raise their voice. The Punjab Parents Association, too, announced a dharna outside the deputy commissioners office after their meeting with the administrative officials. Holding placards and hoardings highlighting names of schools, the parents, many of whom were accompanied by their kids, said high-headedness on part of private schools will not be tolerated. Parents speak up against schools A parent, on the condition of anonymity, said Excelsum High School (formerly Step-by-Step High School) was charging heavy fee every year under different heads, like infrastructure charges, IT charges, annual charges, technology charges, activity charges, and, surprisingly, parenting workshop charges. The total amount comes out to Rs 30,000, he said. Recently, the school also hiked the transportation charges by 90%, he said, questioning if this was justified. Association president Hardev Singh said in the name of development, schools are charging exorbitant fee. Why should we be paying for every development of the school. There are schools that charge for art and craft classes, dance classes and smart classes. We are being fleeced while the administration is sleeping. Deputy commissioner Varun Roojam should have announced a fixed fee hike for the district in the first meeting itself. Now that he has assured us that the matter will be resolved within the next week, he should keep the promise or be ready to face consequences, he said. Rahul Sharma, whose child is studying in Holy Heart Presidency, said: Education has become an expensive affair. Today, my child is in the kindergarten and till the time she reaches Class 10, I wont be able to bear the rising fee. It has to be checked. Parents also accused DAV Public School, Spring Dale Senior School, DAV International School, Bhawan SL Public School and Sri Ram Ashram Senior Secondary School of levying unreasonable fee. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Looking into the allegations of gang-rapes at Murthal during Haryanas Jat agitation, a woman police officer from the neighbouring state was here on Monday to record the statements of taxi drivers who claimed to be eyewitnesses to the violence. One of the taxi drivers told deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Sukhwinder Kaur from Karnals womens cell that protesters had intercepted them in Haryana, vandalised their vehicles, and pelted these with stones. The eyewitnesses to violence claim to have seen injured women in torn clothes running for their lives from the scene. However they claim to have not witnessed any gang rape. The Haryana DSP had turned up at the Shimlapuri police station, where she recorded the statements of four eyewitnesses and the victims. She declined to share any details with the media, saying it was not the right time, since the matter was under investigation. Read: Murthal molestation witness says attacked during Chandigarh-Delhi trip Read: Another FIR lodged against alleged gang rapes by Jat agitators Sources said some of the victims had reported the crime to Haryana Police, who traced some by their vehicle registration numbers that security cameras had captured. The Haryana DSP summoned the victims and the eyewitnesses from Ludhiana and the surrounding areas. Some of the eyewitnesses said on the condition of anonymity that the agitators had trapped them on the highway to Delhi and pelted their vehicles with stones. Shimlapuri station house officer (SHO) inspector Balwinder Singh confirmed that the woman officer had recorded statements at the police station. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Bombay high court has decided to hear a recording of Pratyusha Banerjees last call to boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh after the public prosecutor claimed the TV actor hinted her suicide during the conversation. Pratyusha killed herself earlier this month and a case of abetment was filed against Rahul based on her mothers complaint. During the hearing of the case on Monday, justice Mridula Bhatkar of the Bombay HC decided to hear three-minute recording of her last call with Rahul Raj Singh. The public prosecutor claimed that the actor told Rahul during the phone call that she will commit suicide. Read: Report confirms Pratyusha Banerjee was drunk at the time of suicide Hindustan Times had earlier reported that according to a Forensic Science Laboratory report, Pratyusha was under the influence of alcohol at the time of her suicide. Reportedly, the 24-year-old actor was in debt and often used to drink. The polices investigation revealed that a day before the actor committed suicide, Rahul and Pratyusha had organised a party, which was attended by some friends. The day Pratyusha committed suicide, Rahul had yelled at her for consuming alcohol in the afternoon, said a police source. On April 1, Pratyusha, who rose to fame for her role as Anandi in Balika Vadhu, allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself inside her flat in suburban Goregaon. Two days later, a case under IPC sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 504, 506 (criminal intimidation), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of IPC was registered against Rahul following a complaint lodged by her parents. SPOILER ALERT! Game of Thrones tied up many loose ends and left us at a cruel cliff-hanger in the first episode of season 6, which was probably also the best opening to the series so far. First, we address the elephant in the room: The Red Woman. But of course, something big is going to happen to you in an episode if its titled after you. Game of Thrones: Twitter owns the Season 6 premiere. #NoSpoilers Game of Thrones: 5 people we want alive this season and 5 we want dead Melisandre is revealed to be a woman who has definitely seen a few centuries go by. She is hundreds of years old, and makes herself look younger through an illusion (a la Mother Gothel). Yes, we knew she could do magic but now we know she is more importantly experienced. Perhaps Jon Snow does have a chance. How she does it, though, is still unknown. Could it be the choker? What was that vial? But Davos has made up his mind to seek her help, and we are more positive about this than we were before. The titular Red Woman gave us plenty of speculation fodder. (HBO) It was heartbreaking to hear Cersei talk about her dead daughter. Her rare reveals of humanity come only when her children are in danger. And now, after what happened to her last season, she is more intent on bemoaning her loss than plotting revenge against the Sparrows. Indira Varma has a more prominent role this season. (HBO) The Sands overthrow the entire Dorne royalty in just a few very bloody seconds. Looks like they will not be contained anymore (notice how Indira Varmas name now appears earlier on in the credits). Also, it seems as if Daenerys is out of trouble for now, though one cannot trust the new Khal to keep his word. The new Khal cannot be trusted. (HBO) Sansa finally accepted Briennes services in a scene that reminded us a lot of Catelyn. What happens to Jon? We will have to wait for another week at least. Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @soumya1405 SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Bombay High Court today granted anticipatory bail to producer Rahul Raj Singh, accused of abetting the suicide of actress Pratyusha Banerjee, after observing that prima facie there is no evidence to show that the accused instigated or intended the suicide. From the statements of witnesses, it is clearly seen that harassment and disputes were there between the applicant accused (Rahul) and the victim (Pratyusha). But prima facie, there is nothing on record to show abetment, Justice Mridula Bhatkar said. The court was hearing the application filed by Rahul seeking pre-arrest bail after the sessions court rejected his plea. The high court, while granting his application, directed Rahul to appear before the Bangur Nagar police, which is probing the case, thrice a week for two weeks. TV producer and actor Rahul Raj Singh at Bangur police station in Mumbai on Tuesday in connection with the investigations in Pratyusha Banerjee suicide case on April 19. (PTI) For an offence to be made out under section 306 of IPC (abetment to suicide) there should be instigation, intentional aid or an intent that the person should commit suicide. It is necessary to show whether the accused had mens rea (intention), the court said. It added that harassment or disputes can be a reason for a person to not like another person and take steps to end his or her life. For that person, the behaviour of the other person may be the cause of his or her death. However, for an offence of abetment to be proved, there should be evidence to show instigation, provocation and intention, the court said. Read: Did Pratyusha tell Rahul Raj Singh on phone that shell commit suicide? Justice Bhatkar further said that how a person will react to the situation is unpredictable and sensitivity differs from one person to another. Under such circumstances, unless the intention of the person held responsible for the suicide is brought on record prima facie, it cannot be said that it is abetment, the judge said. Pratyusha was found dead at her home on April 1. (PTI) The court in its chamber during the day heard the last telephonic conversation between Rahul and Pratyusha recorded on April 1 an hour before the actress committed suicide. Throughout the conversation, the applicant accused is asking the victim (Pratyusha) not to take any drastic steps and assured her that he would return home immediately. After perusing all the facts of the case, this court is prima facie of the view that the police can investigate the case without any custodial interrogation of the accused, the court said. Follow @htshowbiz for more President Ashraf Ghani on Monday signalled a major shift in Afghanistans policy on the Taliban, saying he expects Pakistan to battle the militant group instead of bringing it to the negotiating table. In an address to a joint session of parliament a week after a Taliban suicide attack in Kabul killed 64 people and injured 340, Ghani asked Islamabad to take action against all militant groups using Pakistani soil to target Afghanistan. The leadership of the Taliban is based in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar, from where they coordinate and launch attacks in Afghanistan, he said. I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table despite having relied on it in the past to do so, Ghani said. But we expect them to launch a military operation against their sanctuaries and leadership based on their soil. If they cant target them they should hand them over to our judiciary. There are no good or bad terrorists, they are just terrorists and Pakistan must understand that and act against them, Ghani said. He warned that Afghanistan will approach the UN Security Council and other world bodies to lodge complaints if Pakistan doesnt act. The doors to peace will be open only to factions of the Taliban who are ready to end bloodshed, Ghani said. But he added that the door will not be open forever. The Taliban will suffer in the battlefield and eventually request for peace talks, he said. The Afghan government, he added, has ended its efforts in calling for peace and will now use all its resources to defend the country. The time for unjustified amnesty has ended and terrorists will be executed, he said. Ghani described the enemies of Afghanistan as alien hireling groups like Daesh, Al Qaeda, the murderous Haqqani Network and some Taliban who enjoy shedding their countrymens blood. Afghanistan has seen a major spike in violence since the Taliban launched their annual spring offensive earlier this month. Ghanis remarks reflected his frustration after he expended substantial political capital since coming to power in 2014 in courting Pakistan in the hope of pressuring the Taliban to the negotiating table. The Pakistani government recently admitted after years of official denial that the Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country. Britains annual rich list unveiled on Monday has a distinctly Indian flavour with two India-born brothers - Reuben and the Hindujas - grabbing the top two slots as some of the UKs super-rich suffered the worst hammering of their fortunes following the steel industry crisis. Mumbai-born tycoons David and Simon Reuben have topped The Sunday Times Rich List 2016 with a fortune of 13.1 billion pounds, followed by the Hinduja brothers at 13 billion pounds. The Reubens were born in India to a wealthy Iraqi-Jewish family before moving to Britain in the 1950s and made their fortune in metals and property. This year they have increased their fortune by 3.4 billion pounds to jump to the top slot from last years fifth position. Their mouth watering collection of London property includes Millbank Tower, the John Lewis Partnership HQ in Victoria and shops in Sloane Street. The list goes on. They own London Oxford Airport and London Heliport and were a leading investor in Metro Bank, which floated last month at 1.6 billion pounds, the newspaper notes. Famously wary of debt, David, 77, and Simon, 74, keep a large proportion of their wealth in liquid assets, such as cash and bonds, and cautiously value their properties at cost. Overseas property and a metals operation add 300 million pounds, while the hidden value in their London portfolio and their Global Switch stake take the Reubens, who live in Switzerland, to 13.1 billion pounds, it adds. Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, who head the Hinduja Group, hold on to their second rank from last year with an unchanged fortune. The old War Office in Londons Whitehall was bought for 300 million pounds by the Hinduja family in March on a 250- year lease. They plan to turn it into a hotel worth 1 billion, it noted. However, another Indian tycoon did not have a similarly fruitful year with Lakshmi N Mittals steel empire taking a hit from the global industry crisis and losing nearly three- quarters of his wealth. The 65-year-old ArcelorMittal chief held the top slot on the list back in 2008 with a whopping 27.7 billion pounds, which is now down to just 7.12 billion this year. He slips to 11th on the list from 7th last year. The guys at the top who are feeling the pain this year are often hit by a cocktail of plunging stock markets, low oil prices and the crisis in the steel industry sometimes by all three, said Robert Watts, compiler of the 2016 list. NRI steel tycoon Lord Swraj Paul and family are also among those hit by the steel crisis, with their fortune registering a 66 per cent drop to 740 million pounds, to be ranked 154th this year compared to 44th in 2015. Canadian hostage John Ridsdel, a former mining executive, has been executed by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, a Canadian government official confirmed on Monday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will give a statement about Ridsdels execution at 1800 GMT, on the sidelines of a cabinet retreat in Alberta, a spokeswoman told reporters. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by Islamist militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. The army would not immediately confirm whether the head was that of one of four people for whom the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf had demanded a ransom. They are two Canadian men, including Ridsdel, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the centre of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. The spokesman said Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21. Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that countrys prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants. Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict. Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato in Manila and Andrea Hopkins in Kananaskis, Alberta,; Editing by Martin Petty, Ed Osmond and David Gregorio) A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday in a commercial area in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians, officials said. The attack in the capitals eastern Shia-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood also wounded at least 38 other people, a police officer said. Police earlier said it was a parked car bomb. A medical official confirmed the causality figure. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which controls key areas in the countrys west and north. Commercials and public places in Shiite-dominated areas are among the most frequent targets for the militants seeking to undermine government efforts to maintain security inside the capital. The group has recently increased attacks in and around Baghdad as government forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes have pushed IS back on a number of fronts in recent months, clawing back territory seized by the extremists during their sweep across northern and western Iraq in 2014. Late Saturday night, suicide attacks targeted security forces in two Baghdad suburbs, killing 14 people and wounded dozens. A day earlier, a suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in a southwestern suburb killed 13 worshippers and wounded 35 others, a police officer said. Rescuers have recovered the bodies of four more people killed after a petrochemical plant explosion that spewed a toxic cloud into the air last week, bringing the toll to 32. The bodies were found on Sunday in one of the most difficult areas to access at the plant in the town of Coatzacoalcos, in the eastern state of Veracruz. DNA tests will be needed to identify the bodies of six people killed in Wednesdays blast at the plant co-owned by the state oil company, Pemex, and a private company, Mexichem. More than 100 people were also injured in the explosion, though most have already been discharged from hospital, authorities said. Workers have complained that leaks occurred prior to the accident and the tragedy could have been avoided had this problem been addressed. Pemex has acknowledged that a gas leak was behind the explosion but the circumstances are still being investigated. A blast at the same plant 25 years ago killed at least six people, although local media insist the number is much higher. In recent years, there have been several deadly mishaps at Pemex installations, such as accidents at plants or gasoline explosions in pipelines tapped by criminal groups trafficking fuel. Even its headquarters -- a skyscraper in the heart of Mexico City -- was hit in January 2013 by a blast caused by a gas buildup, killing 37 people. A year after the worst earthquake in Nepals history struck at four minutes to mid-day on April 25 last year, the Himalayan nation is remembering the 9,000 victims of the 7.8-magnitude quake and a second tremor 17 days later. Nepals Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli joined Buddhist monks at a prayer ceremony on Monday to mark the start of rebuilding at five ancient monuments destroyed in an earthquake that killed thousands and devastated the countrys rich cultural heritage. Much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead, the White House said on Monday, a year after the nascent Himalayan democracy was hit by an earthquake. One year ago today, a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people, injuring tens of thousands more and leaving millions without homes, said Ned Price, spokesperson of the National Security Council, White House. Much of the hard work of rebuilding Nepal still lies ahead, said Price. Swayambhunath Stupa before and a year after the earthquake. (Gurinder Osan/Raj K Raj/HT Photo) While restoration work has begun on a handful of temples, including the fifth-century Changu Narayan complex, officials say it will be years before Nepals rich architectural heritage can be fully restored. Bhaktapur before and a year after the earthquake. (Gurinder Osan/Raj K Raj/HT Photo) The rebuilding of houses has been even slower to start and on Sunday, protesters marched on government offices to demand faster reconstruction efforts. The Patan Durbar Square before and a year after the earthquake. (Gurinder Osan/Raj K Raj/HT Photo) The Red Cross says four million people are still living in flimsy shelters after the disaster. Bhaktapur, before and a year after the earthquake. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo) Hanuman Dhoka in Kathmandu before and a year after the earthquake. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo) The Durbar Square in Kathmandu before and a year after the earthquake. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo) Dharahara Tower before and a year after the earthquake. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo) The Durbar Square before and a year after the earthquake. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo) Though yet not beaten by the steadily mounting pressure from the US-led coalition, the Islamic State (IS) is feeling the pressure and is having trouble paying and mobilising its fighters. A new report by a US military think tank, the Centre for Combating Terrorism, found fighters seeking false medical reports to escape frontline duties. Citing a seized IS document, the report said that a number of IS members had been seeking false medical reports from doctors in order to avoid frontline duty. The outfit issued several mobilisation calls to save threatened strongholds, such as the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, which, the report said, pointed to manpower problems. It added that a general amnesty issued in October 2015 for deserters showed the depth of the groups manpower problems. The report, which is based on internal IS document collected over a period of time, also show financial problems resulting in cuts in perks and pay. The clearest example was a salary cut of 50% announced for all fighters in a Raqqa province document issued sometime in November-December 2015, the report said. In a late 2015 document, IS boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi admitted to hardships the IS was facing on account of the numerous forces arrayed against it. He spoke about an increase in seditions and tragedies but was confident of overcoming them, calling them the lot of the victorious sect in every era. All this, however, does not mean that the threat is even close to over. The documentary evidence confirms the current coalition approach has brought about significant losses for the IS and put it under pressure on multiple fronts, but any predictions of its collapse are premature, said the report. Unidentified miscreants on Monday evening stabbed to death a local staff of USAID and his friend in an apartment in Bangladeshs capital Dhaka. Mohammed Iqbal, officer-in-charge in Dhakas Kalabagan area, said Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a protocol officer of an American ambassador to Dhaka, was killed along with his friend Tanay Majumder. Details about Majumder are unclear, and police said Mannan was a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, a leader of the ruling Awami League party. Iqbal said Mannan was an editor of Bangladeshs first gay rights magazine Roopbaan, which was launched in 2014 to promote gay rights. A security guard, Mohammed Parvez Mollah, who was also injured in the attack, told reporters that five to six youths came to the apartment, posing as courier service staff. They hit Mollah with sharp weapons. He was being treated at the state-run Dhaka Medical College Hospital. He said the killers were young and carried bags on their shoulders, and one of them had a pistol in his hand. It was not immediately clear as to who were behind the killing, but police suspected radical Islamists. The latest killings took place two days after unidentified men hacked to death university professor Rezaul Karim Siddique in northwestern city of Rajshahi. The attackers chanted Naraye Takbir, Allahu Akbar as they fled the scene, local media said, quoting witnesses. Reacting to Mondays killing, US Ambassador to Bangladesh Marcia Bernicat said: I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka. Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the US embassy. He was a dear friend. We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders, she said. The Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the killing of the professor, according to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, but Bangladesh authorities have denied that the group exists in the country. . Four more people have been found dead after last weeks explosion at a petrochemical plant in southeastern Mexico, raising the death toll to 32, state oil giant Pemex and Mexican plastic pipe maker Mexichem said in a joint statement. The vinyl petrochemical plant in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz is a joint venture between Pemexs petrochemical unit and majority owner Mexichem. Pemexs CEO has said that last weeks blast was caused by a leak but he did not how the leak had happened exactly. It was the latest in a series of fatal accidents at the company. Revenue from a Beatrice High School plant sale this week will fund student scholarships, a field trip and the purchase of future plants. Students will sell perennials and annuals from 3:45-6 p.m. Thursday and Friday in the school commons. We usually sell out on Thursday, BHS science teacher Joan Christen said. The plant sale operates on a first come, first served basis. No pre-ordering is available. Six-inch plants will be for sale at $5 each, with the exception of petunias at two for $5. Plant varieties include coreopsis, dwarf Shasta daisy, echinacea, penstemon, osteospermum, and several colors of geraniums. Twelve-inch hanging baskets of spider plants, German ivy and Boston ferns will be for sale from $10 to $20 each. Several of the varieties are new to growers this year, while many others are new to BHS, Christen said. Students of the special topics science class and two botany classes, several of which are in the BHS Science Club, planted the plugs in the 6-inch pots. They also groomed and cared for the plants and cleaned the schools greenhouse over the past several weeks and will lead the sale this week, Christen said. Proceeds from this weeks sales will fund the purchase of plants and materials for next years spring plant sale and the December poinsettia sale. Revenue will also funnel into scholarships and an overnight trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, which students in the science classes and Science Club are eligible to apply for and attend. BHS students of science classes plucked yellow leaves from plants as a group in the school greenhouse last week. They said plants are fun and that plants are like people; you have to care for them. Lots of high schools, especially our size, dont have an awesome greenhouse like this, said BHS senior Trinity Fakler. Its really good to have this hands-on experience. Christen said any leftover plants are donated to local assisted living facilities. Armed men launched near-simultaneous assaults on police in the Pacific resort of Acapulco, leaving one attacker dead and an officer wounded and terrifying residents in what has become one of the worlds deadliest cities. The attacks Sunday night targeted local federal police headquarters in a beachside tourist quarter and a hotel across town where many of its agents are lodged. The citys coastal boulevard was temporarily closed due to the firefight, and restaurants, bars and stores sealed their doors with customers inside to avoid getting caught up in the violence. Two security officials said an attacker was killed and his body recovered in a vehicle that was left behind, while an officer was wounded in the leg. They were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Guerrero state attorney general Javier Olea told journalists the attacks may have been a response to recent detentions of drug cartel leaders but did not give more details. However one of the security officials told The Associated Press that a hypothesis links the violence to the capture hours earlier of the suspected local leader of a group working for the cartel of the Beltran Leyva brothers. Elsewhere in the state, a journalist was gunned down at the door of his home in the colonial city of Taxco on Monday morning. Francisco Pacheco Beltran, 49, a print and radio correspondent and editor of the newspaper Foro de Taxco, was shot in the head and chest by an unknown assailant as he was preparing to take his children to school, according to an official at the state prosecutors office who was not authorised to discuss it publicly. It was not immediately known if authorities suspect he was targeted due to his work. Guerrero is one of the hottest flashpoints for drug violence in Mexico. Acapulco, once a favorite among Hollywood stars and legions of American tourists, has seen a rash of killings blamed on warring gangs in recent years. The violence has also spilled into neighbourhoods frequented by travelers, including the killings of roving vendors at the beach and bags containing dismembered bodies that were dumped near the seaside promenade. In 2015, the city of about 700,000 residents registered 902 killings. In January-February of this year there were 139 homicides, higher than during the same two months last year but lower than at the peak of violence last summer. Earlier this month the US government prohibited its workers from traveling to Acapulco in response to the violence. Most of the surrounding state of Guerrero is also off-limits for US employees. Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar wasnt detained after the Pathankot attack in India and his banned group was consolidating its presence in Pakistans Punjab province by building more centres, a media report said on Monday. Soon after the January 2 strike on the Pathankot airbase in Punjab, Pakistani officials had said Azhar, who is believed to have masterminded the cross-border assault, was placed in protective custody. However, a senior unnamed Pakistani security official told The Wall Street Journal that he wasnt detained but was within reach, if needed. The report in the Journal said there were few signs in Bahawalpur, the JeMs stronghold in southern Punjab, that the group was being targeted by security forces in a drive launched against militant groups after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people in Lahore on Easter Sunday. The JeM, with ties to al Qaeda, continues to operate openly at its base in Bahawalpur, a city of 600,000 that also is the headquarters of the Pakistan armys XXXI Corps. A bearded gunman lounged by the entrance of Jaish-e-Mohammads four-storey compound downtown, which also houses an affiliated seminary. Residents and a member of the group said there hadnt been any crackdown even after India accused Jaish of being behind the Pathankot attack, the report said. Outside town, an even bigger Jaish installation is under construction, spread over at least 10 acres just off a highway. A new madrassa, crowned with white domes, loomed over the surrounding farmland, it said. We dont hide who we are. We are a jihadist group, said a cleric affiliated to JeM. The cleric said his group opposed attacks in Pakistan. We carry out attacks against the infidel in their country, he said. A sign outside the JeM complex in central Bahawalpur says it houses a madrassa under the guidance of Azhar, who has written a four-volume treatise on jihad. Another of his books Forty Diseases of the Jews says there is a global alliance of the enemies of Islam, including Israel, India and the US. Operations are only against those that shoot the police or army, Riaz Husain Pirzada, minister of federal-provincial coordination and the MP from Bahawalpur told the Journal. The breeding grounds remain, the madrassas are still being financed, said Pirzada, whose father was assassinated by Sunni Muslim jihadis who target the Shia minority. An unnamed retired senior security official said members of domestically focused militant groups in (Punjab) are taking shelter with Jaish and Lashkar-e-Taiba to escape counter-terrorism operations. A Western diplomat said while there seems to be an increasing recognition that the India-focused groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad represent real risks to Pakistan itself, it is not clear that anyone has settled on whether or how to address them. India blames the JeM for the Pathankot attack that left seven security personnel dead and has provided Pakistan leads connecting the militant group to the assault. A Pakistan joint investigation team recently visited India to gather evidence. New Delhi also protested when Beijing, a close ally of Islamabad, blocked Indias bid to sanction Azhar at the UN security council. Read: Pak foreign secy to visit Delhi, bilateral talks set to be revived A Philippine presidential candidate whose comments about rape provoked an international outcry has emerged as the clear frontrunner in the latest opinion survey, pollsters said Monday. Rodrigo Duterte sparked revulsion among womens groups, diplomats and the Catholic church when he told an audience that as the local mayor, he should have been at the front of the queue when an Australian missionary was attacked in a 1989 jail riot. But far from damaging his prospects in next months presidential vote, the remarks appear to have had little effect, with the latest opinion poll giving him a nine-point lead over his nearest rival. Analysts say Dutertes profanity-laced campaign resonates in a chaotic, high-crime society with limited opportunities for a vast underclass working for a tiny elite. Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao, is the clear frontrunner, research institute Social Weather Stations (SWS) said Monday of its poll. Mayor Duterte has been steadily gaining ground. Its a clear lead. The joke could have affected him in such a way that his score could have even been higher had it not been for that news, SWS spokesman Leo Laroza told AFP. More than 50 million people in the mainly Catholic nation are qualified to vote on May 9, when Duterte will face off against four other candidates, including the preferred successor of popular outgoing president Benigno Aquino. Duterte is hailed locally as Dirty Harry and has boasted of operating death squads in Davao targeting criminals -- a policy he has promised to introduce nationwide if elected. In a debate Sunday, he even vowed to kill his own children if they ever took drugs. Strongman leadership The survey of 1,800 people, which was carried out in the days after Dutertes rape comments gained widespread publicity, showed his support rate had risen to 33 percent in April, up from 27 percent in March. Francisco Magno, president of the Philippine Political Science Association, said the latest poll showed a substantial voting bloc was attracted to strongman leadership. It showed marked sympathy for his one-issue campaign effort against crime and illegal drugs, he added. It also indicated that issues like womens rights and human rights in general were secondary for many. There is much to be desired about the quality of political education in the country, Magno told AFP. Duterte also benefited from having three major rivals splitting the vote, said Magno, noting that if the three coalesced behind one candidate they might have a chance of stopping him. Current President Aquino, the son of a former president, is constitutionally limited to a single six-year term. His preferred successor Mar Roxas -- the grandson of a former president -- trails badly in surveys. Despite dramatic economic growth under Aquino, analysts say Dutertes appeal stems from popular disenchantment with the political elite in a nation where one in four still lives in poverty. Womens rights advocate Ana Maria Nemenzo said Dutertes ranking in the latest survey reflected poorly on Philippine culture. The culture of rape is very much prevalent, it is deep-seated in our machismo system. You can see the men seem to lap up this kind of talk, she told AFP. Nemenzo, head of WomanHealth Philippines, said that despite two female presidents in the past, the reaction to Dutertes debasing remarks showed the country still had far to go. If Duterte wins, its going to be a tragedy, not only for the womens movement, but for our country, she added. An Indian eatery in North East London has been shut down after health inspectors discovered overwhelming smell of rat urine and droppings across its premises and on food containers. The Hackney Council was granted an emergency order to close Bombay Munch in Dalston district, after environmental health inspectors said it posed a serious risk to health. It is unacceptable for food premises to disregard their duty to protect the health and welfare of their customers, said Cathy Gallagher, Hackneys assistant director of planning. We carry out regular inspections across the borough as a matter of course and following reports from the public. If levels of hygiene are found to be below acceptable levels, legal action is taken to ensure that people are kept safe, Gallagher was quoted as saying by the Evening Standard. An investigation found fresh rat droppings in the eatery room used to store and prepare food while staff used traps to control the spread of vermin. The officers said they were overwhelmed by the smell of rat urine during an inspection and added plastic takeway containers were contaminated with faeces. A heavily gnawed flour sack was also found on the floor in a food room and droppings were found on shelving. The council was granted permission on Friday to close the eatery using a Hygiene Emergency Prohibition Order at Stratford Magistrates Court. The eatery will remain shut until work is completed by the officers and it is given a certificate to trade again. The US Air Force on Monday flew in two F-22 Raptor fighter jets to Romania as a show of strength to deter Russian intervention in Ukraine. The fighter jets landed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, near the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania. A U.S. statement says they possess sophisticated sensors allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected. The fighters also have a significant capability to attack surface targets. Russia-backed separatists have been fighting government troops in Ukraine since April 2014, leaving at least 9,100 dead. The conflict has left many neighboring countries in Central and Eastern Europe jittery about Russias intentions in the region. US ambassador Hans G Klemm said the US and Romania, a NATO member since 2004 that has a population of 19 million, were seeking to improve the defense of Europe, the defense of the North-Atlantic Alliance, to improve the security in South Eastern-Europe ... as a result of the aggression by Russia that has brought so much instability to this part of the world over the past two to three years. Romanian Air Force chief of staff Maj. Gen. Laurian Anastasof voiced concerns about Russias presence in the region. He said that if a Russian plane took off from an air base in Crimea and went 100 kilometers (62 miles) beyond Crimeas borders that can trigger worries of the (NATO) alliance. Anastasof said that if an unidentified aircraft comes within 20 miles (32 kilometers) of Romanias airspace, NATOS procedure obliges us to scramble planes up in the air, a scenario that had already happened four times this year. He said no Russian plane had come close to Romanias airspace. The US fighter jets, which arrived from Britain, will leave Romania later Monday. They are part of the Operation Atlantic Resolve, a US commitment to NATOs collective security and regional stability. The Hillary Clinton campaign on Sunday indicated continuity in US relations with India if the Democratic front-runner is elected president, going back to the start of the upswing in bilateral ties during the administration of her husband President Bill Clinton, which his successors built upon. As secretary of state, Clinton built a strong relationship with India and her counterpart, the foreign minister, and the prime minister, her campaign chairman John Podesta said at an event to reach out to the Indian American community in Maryland ahead of primaries in the state and four others on Tuesday. He said Clinton laid the foundation of a relationship with India that he, as advisor to President Obama, was able to work on to deepen the relationship with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi to get a(n) outcome in the Paris negotiations that respected the development position of India and (yet) made the future to be one of an ambitious goal of producing more clean energy globally and to deal with the challenge of climate change. While their terms didnt overlap, Modi and Clinton did try and strike up a relationship when the prime minister visited the US first time after taking office in 2014. He met Clinton and her husband privately in New York. Podestas remarks Sunday were extremely significant as this is the first time in the history of US presidential elections that a major campaign felt compelled to present a detailed vision for relations with India, which has so far remained a peripheral poll issue, acknowledged, - actually griped about- only for its technology companies shipping away American jobs through outsourcing. And now extensive remarks by Podesta, who was once a senior advisor to President Obama and chief of staff to the former president Bill Clinton, who ended Indias international isolation over its 1998 nuclear tests with a high-profile visit in 2000. As Clintons campaign chairman, he is also likely to play a large role in staffing her administration if she is elected president. Podesta indicated there will be a strong presence of Indian-Americans in her administration if she wins, holding up as proof her past record when she hired several members from the community during every major position she held, starting as the first lady, then senator and, her last, secretary of state. Podesta also lashed out at Republican front-runner Donald Trump for his remarks about call centres in India, which some have said were offensive as they seemed to mock Indian accent, when that is not as explicit as claimed. Responding to questions from reporters Podesta also said Clinton fully supports comprehensive immigration reforms bill, which, he didnt point out, sought substantially higher cap for H-1B visa (from the present 85,000 annually) that American employers use to hire highly skilled foreign workers. Germany-based Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa expressed disappointment on Monday at Indias decision to withdraw a visa granted to him to attend a meet in Dharamsala, blaming China for blocking him from travelling to other countries. After China protested against the grant of the Indian visa to Dolkun and pointed out that there was an Interpol red corner notice for him, official sources said on Monday that the travel document had been cancelled. I remain disappointed with the final decision, but I am hopeful that positive steps may be taken to maintain Indias relationship with the Uyghur community, Isa said in a statement emailed to Hindustan Times. Dolkun, who was granted asylum by Germany in the late 1990s, said China has always attempted to prevent him from travelling to other countries. Read | India does a U-turn, cancels visa to Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa This is not the first time that I have faced difficulties in my international travels to advocates (sic) Uyghur rights. In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratisation in Asia, to which I was an invited guest, he said. China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular. With the cancellation of the visa, India has apparently avoided a diplomatic situation with China in the run-up to President Pranab Mukherjees visit to Beijing and Guangzhou in May. Dolkun, branded a terrorist by China and wanted on terror charges, had been granted an electronic visa to attend the Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference in Dharamsala at the end of this month. Beijing had reiterated its stand that he is a terrorist wanted by the Interpol. Dolkun Isa is a terrorist on red notice of Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is a due obligation of relevant countries, Chinas foreign ministry had said. Read | China stifling Xinjiang with new laws: Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa Dolkun, who is a leader of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), belongs to Xinjiang in Chinas remote northwest. The region has seen rioting and frequent violence between the local Uyghur population and government forces. Exiled Uyghur activists say the violence is a result of Beijings hardline policies and a reaction against the governments efforts to subsume the unique local culture. Dolkun acknowledged that his visa could have been cancelled because of the controversy generated by media reports about his planned visit to Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The Indian (government) had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press. Following numerous reports, Indian authorities then proceeded to rescind the visa on April 23, 2016, he said. I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy. Read | China fumes after India issues visa to Uyghur terrorist Dolkun took exception to the comparison in media reports between him and Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. The granting of the visa to Dolkun had been interpreted by some as Indias retaliation against Beijing blocking New Delhis move at the UN to ban Azhar. The Uyghur leader said he is a peace activist. He added: I also reject any comparison or association to Chinas recent veto (of the move) by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee (to sanction) Pakistani militant leader, Mazood Azhar. Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to de-legitimise my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights. He also thanked the people of India for their determined solidarity and commitment to rights activists like myself who wish to continue to develop and support dialogue among peoples of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from al Qaeda militants who held it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed on Monday as a major victory in which over 800 jihadists were killed. The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the Sunni extremists launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shiite Houthi rebels who control the capital. It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on al Qaeda. At the talks, which opened last Thursday, UN envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, on Monday welcomed reports of real improvement in the situation. On Sunday, he had said significant differences... remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace. The peace talks and Obamas visit have contributed to a change in strategic priorities, with al Qaeda back at the top, according to the Soufan Group consultancy. The jihadists Yemen-based branch, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the groups militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla. Further west in Shabwa province, a US drone on Monday struck two vehicles carrying al Qaeda militants near the town of Azzan -- from which the jihadists have fled -- killing nine extremists, a provincial official said. No resistance The jihadists have planned attacks overseas, including a January 2015 assault on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris. We entered the city centre and were met by no resistance from al Qaeda militants who withdrew west, a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla. The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of al Shihr and its Mina al Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukallas Riyan airport. Troops deployed in Mukalla on Monday and set up checkpoints across the city, security officials said. The operation resulted... in the deaths of more than 800 al Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled, the coalition commanders said. The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of any civilian casualties. Mukalla is one of a number of southern cities that al Qaeda had overrun since the Saudi-led coalition launched its military intervention in March last year when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile after the Iran-backed rebels seized much of the country. Fragile ceasefire Government forces recaptured Huta, another provincial capital further west last week. But they had to retreat from Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, after an al Qaeda car bomb killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 as they were entering the city on Sunday. The counter-offensive against the jihadists has come as a fragile April 11 ceasefire between pro-government forces and the rebels firms up. Washington has been waging a drone war against AQAP since November 2002, when it killed the suspected mastermind of an October 2000 bombing of a US destroyer that killed 17 sailors in the southern port of Aden. In April last year, a US air strike killed AQAP commander Nasser bin Ali al Ansi, who claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video, outside the presidential palace in Mukalla where the jihadists had set up base. Last month, an air strike on an AQAP training camp in Hajr, west of Mukalla, killed more than 70 jihadists, provincial officials said. During its year-long rule in Mukalla, AQAP imposed its strict interpretation of sharia law forbidding consumption of the mild narcotic qat, a mainstay of Yemeni social life, and demolishing the tombs of revered Sufi mystics. Data presented at a European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Austria suggests that there might be a massive lake hidden underneath Antarctic ice. Scientists believe that this lake could contain ancient life forms that have been preserved for millions of years. In 2013, a team of Bowling Green University scientists discovered more than 3,500 DNA sequences spanning bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes and life forms never before seen on Earth after making their way deep into the two-mile Antarctic ice of Lake Vostok. Lake Vostok is the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica, measuring at least 149 miles long and 31 miles wide. However, experts dismissed the findings due to doubts regarding the samples and methodology. Now, a new discovery reveals another massive lake - second only to Lake Vostok - under the Antarctic ice sheet, suggesting that the earlier dismissal might have been preemptive. Satellite images revealed grooves on the surface of ice that resemble those present on other subglacial bodies of water. "We've seen these strange, linear channels on the surface, and are inferring these are above massive, 1,000-kilometer-long channels, and there's a relatively large subglacial lake there too," said Martin Siegert, a member of the team that discovered the possible lake and a researcher from Imperial College London. The lake measures approximately 62 miles long and 6.2 miles wide and possesses long canyons and channels that reach out from the region for more than 21 miles, making their way to the eastern Antarctic coast on Princess Elizabeth Land. "It's the last un-researched part of Antarctica, so it's very exciting news, but it's still tentative pending full confirmation," said Bryn Hubbard of the University of Aberystwyth. Siegert said that collaborators from China and the United States have gathered aerial ice-penetrating radar data from the region that will help shed light on the features that lie underneath the ice. "We're meeting in May to look at the data," he said. "It will be a very good test of our hypothesis about the lake and channels." The presence of subglacial lakes under Antarctic ice is important not only for the discovery of new life forms on Earth but also for advancing our understanding of the relationship between Antarctic ice sheets and climate change. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Police say a 21-year-old man was shot and killed in Philadelphia's Cedarbrook section Sunday afternoon just after speaking with a state House candidate about volunteering on his campaign. The shooting occurred around 3:30 p.m. in the 1400 block of Vernon Road. "Somebody walked up and deliberately shot someone with every intent of killing them," said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross. The victim was reportedly talking to Chris Rabb, an adjunct professor at Temple University's Fox School of Business, who is now a candidate for Pennsylvania state representative in the 200th District, when the suspect came up from behind and opened fire, hitting the man twice in the head. The suspect then fled the scene, heading south on Fayette Street. Rabb "was talking to a voter, a nice young man who works the polls on election day," said Rabb campaign spokesman Chris Visco. "They were talking about the election. The young man was interested in Chris' campaign and his candidacy for the 200th." Visco continued, saying that the victim died with a piece of campaign literature in his hand. He was initially supposed to be a poll worker for Tuesday's primary, but after speaking with Rabb outside a convenience store Sunday, he expressed interest in volunteering on the campaign. The victim was pronounced dead at 3:48 p.m. Police investigating the incident have more to worry about than just the initial shooting, however. Just four hours later, at 7:30 p.m., another man reported to be 18 years old was shot, while a 17-year-old was grazed by a bullet in a drive-by shooting. Both men were taken to the hospital where the 18-year old died and the 17-year-old is expected to survive. Due to the time of the killing and the fact that it took place on the 8000 block of Temple Road - just around the corner from the first shooting - police believe this second shooting may be in retaliation to the first. Therefore, they're investigating the possibility of a gang rivalry being at play. "I'm very frustrated by the fact that we were not able to prevent this second homicide," said Philadelphia Police commissioner Richard Ross. "We do believe that these are two rival factions. What they're fighting over we haven't pinned that down right now." Police have yet to release the identities of the victims, and no arrests have been made in either shooting. The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the homicide unit at (215) 686-3334. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Ghosts and mystery took stage at the Homestead National Monument of America on Sunday and Monday. Catherland is billed as a new Nebraska ghost musical and is supported by the Nebraska Arts Council, Nebraska Cultural Endowment, Fiends of Lied, the Rural Futures Institute at the University of Nebraska, and Friends of Homestead. The play tells the story of a Susan, an emerging writer, who faces a difficult life change. Looking for answers, she and her husband flee to Red Cloud, Nebraska, birth place of her idol, Willa Cather. There, mystery unfolds with visits from Cathers ghost and the ghost of a local girl, who disappeared one year prior. We packed it yesterday, said Homestead park ranger Susan Cook of the performance on Sunday afternoon. It was wonderful. ... Its very meaningful. It brought out a lot of emotions in people. People loved it. A third performance was scheduled later Monday for Ruth Hill Elementary School fourth graders of Lincoln. Becky Boesen, the writer of the play, said Catherland is targeted at young adults and adults, but it was exhilarating having fourth graders fill the audience on Monday. I really enjoy presenting work that is challenging to youth, Boesen said. Children generally take away even more from play productions than adults do. ... These kids did great. They relaxed and naturally responded. ... Kids are the best reminders for adults for letting go, experiencing the ride and living in the moment. The production features several references to Cathers My Antonia. One of our goals was to make this work just as enjoyable for someone with or without reference to Cather, Boesen said. The show Monday was the last of a small tour for Catherland. One year ago, Boesen said the production premiered at the Red Cloud Opera House, owned by the Willa Cather Foundation. Boesen is an employee of the Lied Center for Performing Arts, a playwright, actor, director, producer, and an adjunct faculty member at Doane College. She wrote the song lyrics and narration, which largely guide the play, as well as the dialogue. David von Kampen produced the music for the play. Recalling her inspiration for the play, Boesen said I was teaching three years ago in Red Cloud, and I had the song Dog Days are Over by Florence and the Machine blaring in my car as I was driving through the town and I thought, Wouldnt it be wild to write a contemporary play involving Willa Cather? A year later, the idea was formed between Boesen and von Kampen. There is a timeless quality to being an artist in Nebraska, Boesen said. Theres something very special about the creative freedom that we have here that you cant get anywhere else. This play is an ode to that. Boesen said she is in the process of revising the play. Three or four theaters across the country are interested in the production, she said. We hope the next step will be workshop productions of Catherland, Boesen said. The play is a part of the Lied Center for Performing Arts Arts Across Nebraska initiative, which strives to provide quality arts programs to Nebraska residents, especially youth. The National Parks Service is celebrating its 100 year anniversary this year in a variety of ways, including its Arts Afire initiative, which brings more arts to national parks. It is a fun and engaging way to teach about the Homesteads themes through the arts, Cook said. Future arts events at Homestead National Monument of America include the Tallgrass Prairie Fiddle Festival on May 28 and Homestead Days in mid-June. For the first time ever, scientists have used "network theory" to create a visual to the movement of dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era, revealing an unusual journey from Europe. The findings also support previous studies that suggested that dinosaurs continued to migrate around the world after Pangaea split into individual land masses separated by ocean. "We presume that temporary land bridges formed due to changes in sea levels, temporarily reconnecting the continents," said Alex Dunhill, a researcher from the University of Leeds and first author on the study. "Such massive structures - spanning, for example, from Indo-Madagascar to Australia - may be hard to imagine. But over the timescales that we are talking about, which is in the order of tens of millions of years, it is perfectly feasible that plate tectonic activity gave rise to the right conditions for such land bridges to form." The team took advantage of the Paleobiology Database, which contains every documented and available dinosaur fossil, and cross-mapped fossil records from the same families but different continents over various periods of time. The end result is a visual that shows how the dinosaurs migrated. In order to control for the fact that some parts of the world have more robust fossil records than others, the team compensated by applying a filter to the database records in order to only count the first instance of a dinosaur family connection between two continents. Not only do the findings support the continued migration of dinosaurs after continental splitting, they reveal that all of the connections between Europe and other continents during the Early Cretaceous period were outward, meaning no new dinosaur families were coming into Europe while others were leaving. "This is a curious result that has no concrete explanation," Dunhill said. "It might be a real migratory pattern or it may be an artifact of the incomplete and sporadic nature of the dinosaur fossil record." Although network theory is typically used in computer science disciplines to analyze internet data, it has recently made its way into the realm of biology research. "Network theory has been studied in physics for a number of years, however it is finally permeating into other disciplines," said James Sciberras of the University of Bath and co-author of the study. "This idea that most things can, and should, be considered in the context of the whole system will lead to some exciting new findings in a wide range of fields." The findings were published in the April 25 issue of the Journal of Biogeography. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Governor John Kasich make moves to stop Donald Trump's momentum, the GOP frontrunner is making moves of his own and has reportedly hired another veteran political operative to help him win the delegates required to secure the nomination. Ken McKay will join as a senior adviser for Trump's campaign on the team led by convention manager Paul Manafort. A formal announcement is expected later Monday. Trump's focus for this recent acquisition is to offset the damage Cruz has done to getting the necessary 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination by June 8, which would lead to a brokered convention if successful. At this point, its impossible for Cruz to win the nomination through conventional methods, but he has successfully stymied Trump's efforts somewhat by taking advantage of the local convention process to acquire delegates in states that have already held primaries and caucuses. Furthermore, the hire is a sign of Trump's efforts to add experienced GOP strategists to his inner circle who can hopefully navigate the workings of the Republican Party as it slowly unites against him. McKay, who worked as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's presidential campaign manager, is the third campaign manager of a former rival to work under Trump's banner. A week and a half ago, Trump picked up Rick Wiley, who managed Scott Walker's campaign before the Wisconsin governor left the race in September. And in late March, he picked up Ed Brookover, who was Ben Carson's campaign manager before the neurosurgeon dropped out. McKay is an experienced adviser who has seen plenty of success throughout his career. He ran gubernatorial races in Rhode Island for Donald Cariceri in 2002 and 2006, winning both. He also helped Florida Republican Rick Scott claim the governor's office in 2010. "This is a serious strategist and tactician," said Curt Anderson, who was former presidential candidate Bobby Jindal's chief strategist. "This is not a guy who wastes his time going on cable TV and running his mouth. Trump hiring Ken McKay is a bad thing for the Ted Cruz campaign, I can assure you of that." Hopefully for Trump, Anderson's declaration turns out to be true. On Sunday evening, strategists for Cruz and Kasich announced an alliance meant to put a hamper on Trump's momentum in three states: Oregon, New Mexico and Indiana. Trump was unamused, referring to the alliance as "a horrible act of desperation from two campaigns who have horribly failed." @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A police chief in Murfreesboro, Tenn., issued an apology over an April incident in which his officers arrested 10 elementary school students during an investigation of an alleged bullying case. "I am so saddened, and I'm so sorry this incident happened, because I truly think it could have been avoided," Murfreesboro Police Chief Karl Durr told the Tennessean newspaper in an interview published Sunday. The apology comes after angry parents demanded action during a community meeting after police arrested 10 students, aged 6 to 11, at Hobgood Elementary School and other locations April 15. The incident gained national attention and sparked criticism at a time when police-community relations and the role of law enforcement in schools throughout the country were under heavy scrutiny. The arrests caught the attention of human rights group Southern Poverty Law Center, which announced it would launch an investigation. "These arrests are appalling," said Rhonda Brownstein, Southern Poverty Law Center's legal director, at the time. "The Southern Poverty Law Center is deeply concerned and is investigating the incident. "Based on what has been reported, this appears to be yet another example of the over-policing of schoolchildren," she continued. "It is simply not OK to arrest and handcuff such young children. This outrageous reaction from law enforcement has no place in our society." Police acted after they and school officials became aware of a video of an off-campus fight between school children. In his apology, Durr noted that the department will review a policy that says police offers should consider whether or not to handcuff under the the age of 12. It is also reviewing the incident to determine whether there were any policy violations, whether additional training is needed for the police and whether there was any misconduct. "I want to believe what happened here was an anomaly, because of the good work that I see," Durr said. "Errors were made, and now we are going to correct them moving forward and fix them so they are not repeated. However, he was quick to note that there was at least one child involved in the case who is also involved in a larger criminal investigation, so their actions deserve at least some merit. "Remember there was a victim here too, so if my officers didn't do their job that day, and we ignored the victim, what would this conversation be today?" Durr said. "That we failed to do our job." Following the arrests, some children were accused of participating in the fight while others were accused of standing by and watching it unfold instead of breaking it up, causing them to be charged with "criminal responsibility for conduct of another." There are no reports of any plans to dismiss the charges. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. J ust how affordable is the capitals affordable housing? For some 30 years, housing associations have been earning a reputation as the major supplier of affordable new homes for Londoners, with the largest 15 known as G15 building 10,000 a year. It is a tough job. Land is so expensive in the capital that it can be hard to deliver a new-build flat within the budget of an average working Londoner cue the Governments Help to Buy schemes that enable first-timers to stretch their savings a bit further. But even as they claw their way into their first flat, sometimes nasty surprises await in the form of service charges and running costs that can appear disproportionately high. In London, affordable has been broadened to include 450,000 starter homes that are way beyond the average Londoners 34,320 wage. Shared ownership is a popular option, where households part buy, part rent a property. This enables the buying costs to be proportionally scaled down to match the percentage of the home bought. For example with a deposit of 9,900, you can buy a 30 per cent share that would be 78,000 in a studio in Mocha Court, Bow through East Thames housing association (0300 303 7333). As the share price is under 125,000 there is no stamp duty to pay. For transactions completed from this month onwards, shared ownership is even easier thanks to the Government relaxing the eligibility rules. Gone is the priority that was given to key workers and those who have lived in the borough previously, along with the bedroom restriction. The maximum household income allowed has also been raised to 90,000 in the capital. All this is set to open up shared ownership to another 175,000 Londoners. Driving the supply of shared-ownership homes are the housing associations, charitable organisations with a social mission to provide affordable homes for ordinary Londoners. The largest 15 already house one in 10 Londoners and manage 40,000 properties. But its hard to believe that shared-ownership homes coming to market at the moment priced up to 650,000 for a one-bedroom flat at Catalyst Housings Portobello Square for example have been built with ordinary Londoners in mind. Up to 650,000: for one-bedroom shared-ownership flats at Portobello Square on the Notting Hill border, through Catalyst Housing Then there is the service charge issue. The lack of government regulation means the costs and standards of services can vary dramatically. And is it reasonable that shared owners pay 100 per cent of the annual management fee despite also paying rent? Similarly, is it reasonable that the major shareholder, particularly a charity, should benefit from the lions share of the propertys appreciation without paying its share of the annual upkeep? At L&Gs development in Chobham Manor near Walthamstow, youll be paying almost 3,000 a year for your 25 per cent stake in a one-bedroom flat. Such high service charges on a small stake can make a meaningful difference on passing the affordability criteria for a mortgage. They also make it harder for the buyer to save and increase their share of their home. Portobello Square: one-bedroom shared-ownership flats for up to 650,000 for "ordinary Londoners"? First-timers, it seems, can pay a high premium for a shared-ownership stake in a new-build development. Instead of gaining their freedom from renting, many find they have to share their home to cover the costs of the mortgage, the rental portion, plus the service charge. The Department for Communities and Local Government says service charge costs must be reasonable. A spokesman said: Shared ownership is extremely popular and is an effective way of helping people into home ownership, which is why we are extending it to many more people. Shared ownership is designed to work for both the homebuyer and landlords, and protections for leaseholders make clear that service charge costs must be reasonable. H ouse prices in the East of England have risen by an average of 11 per cent to 332,000 in the past year, making it the fastest rising region in England. The South-East comes a close second, with average price growth of 9.5 per cent to 408,000. Meanwhile, prices in London have slowed to less than nine per cent, but asking prices in the capital are still staggeringly higher than the rest of the UK and now average 646,000. The average cost of buying a home in every region (April 2016) 1 /13 The average cost of buying a home in every region (April 2016) East Average property price April 2016: 331,780 Annual change: 10.8% Monthly change: 1.5% Source: The Rightmove House Price Index, released 18 April 2016 Rex The South-East Average property price April 2016: 407,686 Annual change: 9.4% Monthly change: 2% Rex London Average property price April 2016: 646,200 Annual change: 8.7% Monthly change: 0.3% Rex East Midlands Average property price April 2016: 196,665 Annual change: 6.4% Monthly change: 3.6% Rex South West Average property price April 2016: 294, 835 Annual change: 5.9% Monthly change: 0.9% Rex West Midlands Average property price April 2016: 205,597 Annual change: 4.7% Monthly change: 0.7% Rex The North-West Average property price April 2016: 179,873 Annual change: 3.7% Monthly change: 1.4% Rex The North-East Average property price April 2016: 151,459 Annual change: 3.5% Monthly change: 2% Rex Yorkshire and The Humber Average property price April 2016: 174,585 Annual change: 2.5% Monthly change: 0.4% Rex Wales Average property price April 2016: 178,975 Annual change: 1.2% Monthly change: 2.8% Rex East of England region Commuter areas within an hour of London have seen the biggest price growth in the East, rising significantly above the region's average. Watford tops the list, with prices rising more than 20 per cent to almost 435,000, according to the latest Rightmove House Price Index. Located towards the end of the Metropolitan line - by far the most in-demand of all Tube lines, thanks to its huge reach from central London into the capitals greenbelt - Watford has had a fair number of new-build homes in recent years. The area was also recently listed in seventh position on eMoov's National Hotspots Index, which maps the most popular areas in the UK for homebuyers. Due north of Watford, Luton is the second-fastest growing area in the East, rising by just over 18 per cent to a comparatively more affordable 250,000. Similar growth has been seen in Harlow and Waltham Cross, both of which offer direct commutes to Liverpool Street in under half an hour. But prices are over 100,000 higher in Waltham Cross, exceeding 393,000, and if Crossrail 2 goes ahead as planned prices will become even steeper as the town will be directly linked to Euston, Tottenham Court Road and Victoria by 2033. South-East region Rochester in Kent has experienced a mini-boom since the launch of a 26 million railway terminal this year, with prices rising 20 per cent to 259,000. The station is a key part of major regeneration and expansion plans for the town made famous by Charles Dickens, who lived nearby, and takes commuters directly into the major London terminals of Victoria, King's Cross and Charing Cross. Prices in Slough have risen 17 per cent in the last year thanks to the Crossrail effect. One of the last stops on the western section of the high-speed rail network that's set to link east and west London by the end of 2018, prices there have shot up to 357,000. The waterside towns of Gillingham and Gravesend are already on a high-speed line to London, offering 45- and 30-minute journeys to St Pancras. Prices in both areas have risen just over 16 per cent, averaging 240,000 in GIllingham and 270,000 in Gravesend. While the average price of property is much less in the regions of the South-East and East of England, those looking for better value there are seeing it being eaten away by rising prices," says Rightmove director and housing market analyst, Miles Shipside. "One of the reasons behind faster rising prices in these two regions, compared to London, is that there is less property coming to market than at this time a year ago. "With high demand from both local buyers and those looking to escape Londons higher cost of housing, a drop in fresh supply of properties coming to market is forcing prices up at a faster rate. London Overall, the London property market is slowing but, as always, there are huge differences at borough level. Generally, the most affordable boroughs are rising the fastest, with six of the capital's 10 fastest-growing boroughs having the lowest average house prices: Barking and Dagenham and Havering in the east, Redbridge and Waltham Forest in the north-east, Bexley in the south-east, and Sutton in the south. "It's a sign of a readjusting market," says Shipside. "Fourteen boroughs have seen new seller asking prices fall, with eighteen rising. The net effect is the second lowest monthly rise at this time of year in the last seven years." O ne of Londons most fascinating historic houses is in jeopardy, say campaigners who fear a building as significant to the war effort as Bletchley Park is set to become a gated housing scheme. The secret history of Trent Park, in Cockfosters, north London, has only recently emerged. During the Second World War, the Grade II-listed house, once owned by Tory MP Sir Philip Sassoon (1888-1939), was requisitioned by the War Office and used to spy on high-ranking German officers including, it is thought, Hitlers Nazi party deputy Rudolf Hess, who was arrested in Scotland in 1941. A group of about 100 secret listeners, mostly German refugees, spied on Nazi officers detained at Trent Park using early bugging technology. As well as picking up vital military intelligence, these interpreters, many of whom were Jewish, overheard some of the first, harrowing accounts of the Holocaust. Revealed: London's top property news stories 1 /40 Revealed: London's top property news stories Southwark council moves to save historic arches A London council is stepping in to save its historic railway arches, after a rush of applications to convert them into homes. Read more > Scroll right for more of London's top property news stories... Alamy Stock Photo Canning Town revealed as the most affordable property hotspot along the new 24-hour Night Tube route New research reveals the 10 most affordable stops to buy along the newest branch of Londons weekend Night Tube network... Read more Daniel Lynch London's property hotspots for "second steppers" New research reveals the capitals top locations for first-time owners trading up in the suburbs. Here's where to start your search for good-value homes with more space... Read more New-look 2016 Monopoly board for London's first-time buyers Barking and Bexley replace Old Kent Road and Whitechapel as the capital's cheapest property hotspots. Discover the average cost of buying in every London borough... Read more Barratt London Top 30 fastest-rising hotspots for first-time buyers from Peckham to Walthamstow South-east London postcodes are a favourite with the capital's first-timers, but discover which areas are proving to be the best investment for newbie buyers... Read more Bob Comics_Flickr City of London set to ban cars and trucks at Bank Junction The junction outside the Bank of England could become a bus and bike-only zone as early as next spring in an effort to reduce regular traffic accidents. Read more 100 days after Brexit: how the UK's vote to leave the EU has impacted the property market We ask UK property experts how Brexit has effected the housing market and what the future holds... Read more > Scroll right for more of London's top property news stories... Shutterstock London borough of Redbridge is home to the capital's most satisfied residents The north-east London borough containing Ilford, Woodford and Wanstead has the best levels of life satisfaction in the capital, according to the latest data from the Office of National Statistics. So, what makes it such a good place to live? We find out... Read more Daniel Lynch The Optic Cloak at Greenwich Peninsula This gigantic energy tower in south-east London, called the Optic Cloak, is set to warm up 15,000 new homes... Read more Marc Wilmot_Greenwich Peninsula North Kensington house prices tipped to soar as council pledges to plug W10 into the Elizabeth line A new train station in North Kensington has become more likely after Kensington & Chelsea council pledged to foot the nine-figure bill to link the area to the Crossrail network. Read more Alamy Stock Photo Post-Brexit sales "better than usual": 35m of London property sells in a single day at auction Guide prices were busted at a fiercely contested property auction where sellers were more nervous than the buyers... Read more The 'world's largest smog vacuum cleaner' turns polluted city air into jewellery Winner of the 2016 Airbnb London Design Innovation medal, Daan Roosegaarde has launched his acclaimed Smog Free Tower in Beijing - and London could be next... Read more Derrick Wang Locals vow to fight demolition of Fulham Gasworks Residents are preparing to fight plans for 1,300 new homes in tower blocks of up to 27-storeys high on the site of Londons last surviving Victorian gasworks in Fulham. . Read more Post-Brexit UK property prices The pace of growth has slowed, but property prices are still rising following the Brexit vote. See how your region compares... Read more PA Quietway cycle routes: Enfield to Greenwich London's first Quietway, the cycle route from Waterloo to Greenwich, is already up and running, with six more due next year. We reveal the traffic-free enclaves along the routes that are still some of the capitals best-kept secrets... Read more Seven of the best Hertfordshire villages with 40-minute commutes to London Some of England's loveliest villages are found in family-friendly Hertfordshire, the low-profile home county just north of the capital that offers quick commutes to the centre. Take a tour of our pick of the best... Read more Alamy Quietway cycle routes: Clapham Common to Walthamstow Discover the homes along TfLs peaceful new bike routes linking the suburbs to the centre through back streets and parks and along riverbanks and canal paths... Read more Jonathan Bewley House prices in east London borough of Newham rise by more than 20 per cent in a year New figures reveal that while the pace of growth is slowing, property prices are still rising across the capital as demand continues to soar. Read more Rex Grammar school expansion plans: homes near England's top 30 state schools command premiums of up to 630k Parents face paying an average of 53k extra to live near England's top 30 state schools - and grammar schools dominate the top 10, says new report. Read more London's Zone 5 homes hotspots Thinking of moving? These are the areas you need to know about... Read more Graham Hussey Tottenham Hale masterplan row Local residents complain they will lose their views if plans for the regeneration of the the River Lee Navigation waterfront, including apartment blocks up to 21 storeys tall, go ahead.... Read more Notting Hill's skinniest home for sale for 1.25m Inside west London's 'life-size doll's house' - measuring just seven feet wide... Read more Seven of the best Kent villages less than 60 minutes from the capital - with good schools, shops and pubs Idyllic Kent villages with pubs, shops and good schools are great commuter options and only an hour - or less - from London. Read more The Tube line extensions and Crossrail homes hotspots you need to know about Transport-led regeneration is the single most important factor boosting the value of homes. These are the new routes you need to know about... Read more London's new walk-to-work homes near emerging business hubs - and mainline train stations As more creative companies and start-ups move out of central London's traditional business areas, neighbourhoods with new commercial hubs are being created with walk-to-work homes... Read more The Olympic legacy? More than 100 small start up firms in Vittoria Wharf, Hackney Wick, are being forced to move into new premises following a green light to bulldoze the area to make way for a new bridge over the River Lee Navigation. Read more Alamy Three-year forecast predicts the house price changes in your region House price growth has fallen in recent months, but is expected to start rising again by 2018, according to the latest three-year housing forecast by Countrywide... Read more Shutterstock Night Tube: Tottenham Hale revealed as the most affordable property hotspot New research reveals the 10 most affordable stops to buy along London's Night Tube network as addresses along the Central and Victoria lines benefit from 24-hour connections... Read more Rents fall for the first time in eight years as homes to let flood the market While rents are falling for the first time since the financial crash of 2008, rental prices across the capital are still far too high in relation to salaries. Read more The university areas that get top marks for return on investment For parents considering buying a property for the three-year stint, a new study of the capitals top 12 universities reveals which present the best deals for buyers compared with renting. Read more Alamy Last year, the house and 50 acres of parkland were sold for an estimated 30 million to developer Berkeley. The housing group says it is in talks over the buildings future. Campaigners want a museum opened in the house and parkland left open to the public. Built in the late 18th century, Trent Parks most glamorous owner was Philip Sassoon, who inherited it in 1912 at the age of 23 from his father, Sir Edward Sassoon. A renowned social host, Philips weekend parties were attended by everyone from Charlie Chaplin, to Lawrence of Arabia, George Bernard Shaw and the future King Edward VIII, as well as Winston Churchill. Murals by the artist Rex Whistler still adorn some rooms. Locals are now anxious that the buildings heritage could be lost to luxury housing. The significance of the history of Trent Park has only very recently been revealed, explained Jason Charalambous, founder of the Save Trent Park campaign. Berkeley has indicated that it intends to convert the mansion into flats, and is talking about having a cafe and a small exhibition space. We feel that this site is as important as Bletchley Park [the former HQ of wartime code breakers, near Milton Keynes] and deserves something a lot more substantial. We are asking them to give up the basement and ground floor for a museum. This is our last chance to make a point and try and appeal to Berkeleys goodwill. Mr Charalambous cited the example of Bentley Priory, the former Battle of Britain Fighter Command HQ in Stanmore, north-west London, where developer City & Country gave the top floor of the building to the Battle of Britain Trust. Its museum is now open to the public four days a week. So it can be done, said Mr Charalambous. As well as a museum, campaigners want to ensure that the parkland around the Trent Park mansion remains open to the public. At present the site, within the 500-acre Trent Country Park, is not enclosed. Walkers and runners use it freely. We do not want this to become a gated community, said Mr Charalambous. Apart from anything else, the work of the secret listeners of Trent Park was so secret that many of them took their work to the grave. We think they deserve some recognition. A Berkeley spokesman said: Berkeley appreciates the importance of this site to the London Borough of Enfield and the local community. We are committed to finding a long-term solution for the protection of the mansion house, including the important landscaped heritage. At this early stage we are deep in public consultation and pre-application discussions with the council about issues that include maintaining public access to its grounds, and the possibility of including access to the mansion, to ensure the sites history is not lost, but is preserved for future generations. Trent Park mansion was built for Sir Richard Jebb, a physician to the royal household. After the war the house was incorporated into what eventually became Middlesex University, which quit the site in 2012. Berkeley has hired Adam Architecture, one of Britains leading traditional practices, to work on plans for the house and a planning application is expected in the autumn. According to a global report by World Tourism Organization, about 3 million people travel to exotic destinations across the globe while engaging in sex tourism. Unfortunately, this constantly growing phenomenon is mostly felt in regions that also top the charts as leading tourist destinations. East Africa for instance, has in many occasions been endorsed as one of the most preferred tourist destinations in Africa, thanks to its zesty sceneries, wildlife and beaches. With such popularity, the eastern region also tops the chart as a flourishing sex tourism destination. Regrettably, the fundamental concept of leisure travel is sometimes wrongly perceived by a number of people whose travel objective is to engage in sexual activities with the 'hosts'. It can either be voluntary, where the parties involved are aware and willing to engage, or - and in most cases - exploitative. The complexity of this topic has sidelined it from being spoken about, a factor that has greatly contributed to the clandestine nature of sex tourism. Efforts to curb this culture especially along the coastal areas have proved futile, with several factors being attributed to the failure. Let's face it; sex tourism mostly takes place among people who are willing to pay for the service and those willing to trade their bodies for the cash. With thousands of jobless youth driven by poverty to make easy money, we should not expect this trend to change, unless the unemployment giant is killed. Poor are the young girls and boys who fall victims to greedy and devious individuals and organized criminals who trade them for sex. These children are usually between the ages of 13 and 18 years. East African beach towns of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar are vastly popular as leading destinations in sex tourism, notably dominated by the Italian market. According to UNICEF, the local population makes the highest percentage of participators at 38%, followed by the Italians at 18%. ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) further shows that 60% of these tourists who travel every year to exotic destinations with the aim of engaging in sexual activities with children are occasional tourists. It's no doubt that children remain the most affected by this illegal trade. National as well as international laws have therefore been put in place to protect the children, including the UNCRC, which states that children and young people have a right to protection from all kinds of abuse, including commercial sexual exploitation. However, challenges such as lack of proper law enforcement and the covert nature of the business continue to frustrate efforts to end this trend. Yet, among other measures, recent developments in online hotel booking systems may just be the elucidation to ending this craze. Take Africa's leading online hotel booking portal, Jovago.com, for instance. While the company has all possible details of its listed hotels, it also ensures to capture the most important details of clients who book through them. With such data, it is possible to know which tourist is in which particular hotel for purposes of security. If by any chance that tourist was to engage in any illegal business in the particular country, then reaching him/her for investigations is a sure bet. With several instances of fraud cases among tourists, most online booking companies also have fraud departments working towards curbing potential charlatans; the information collected here can be used by organizations working against sex tourism and exploitation to identify and even track down perpetrators. Hopefully, with concerted efforts from concerned stakeholders, sex tourism in East Africa will once be an obsolete topic. Elimination of poverty and job creation among other contributors ought to be urgently addressed, failure to which more children will be lost to sex trade, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases will continue to rise and the picture of the region's tourism industry in general shall continue to be tainted amidst all the projected growth. Josephine Wawira Global PR Assistant - Jovago Jumia Travel Hospitality Net today Sign up to our free daily newsletter, Dubai, UAE -- Rotana, one of the leading hotel management companies in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Eastern Europe, outlined its plans for the future during its participation in the ongoing Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2016, the Middle East's largest travel and tourism event. Signaling a continuation of the fast-paced expansion of the last decade that has helped establish the company as the dominant player in the region's hospitality scene, Rotana announced that it will open 18 new hotels in 2016-2017, covering major markets in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. The move will see 4,590 4,354 keys added to the company's existing inventory by 2017, helping Rotana grow its portfolio to 75 operating hotels and 19,935 keys. New Rotana properties set to open in the next two years include five hotels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), four in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and two each in Iraq and Turkey. Rotana will also open properties in Jordan, Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in addition to completing the extension work on one of the company's iconic properties in the UAE The Cove Rotana Resort in Ras Al Khaimah. "Rotana is embarking on the next chapter of its growth story," said Omer Kaddouri, President and CEO of Rotana. "Our robust development pipeline for the next two years, which includes a number of properties in markets outside the GCC, brings us closer towards achieving our goal to expand globally." The scheduled opening dates for upcoming Rotana properties in 2016 and 2017 are as follows: Amman Rotana, Jordan Q2 2016 Vazo Residences by Rotana, Istanbul, Turkey Q2 2016 Kin Plaza Arjaan by Rotana, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo Q2 2016 Centro Shaheen, Jeddah, KSA Q3 2016 Centro Waha, Riyadh, KSA Q4 2016 Centro Olaya, Riyadh, KSA Q1 2017 The Cove Rotana Resort (Extension), Ras Al Khaimah, UAE Q2 2017 Centro Corniche, Al Khobar, KSA Q2 2017 Erbil Arjaan by Rotana, Kurdistan, Iraq Q2 2017 Sundus Rotana, Muscat, Oman Q2 2017 Slemani Rotana, Kurdistan, Iraq Q3 2017 Centro Salama, Jeddah, KSA Q3 2017 Beach Arjaan by Rotana, Abu Dhabi, UAE Q3 2017 Creek Rotana and Creek Arjaan by Rotana, Dubai, UAE Q3 2017 Saadiyat Rotana Resort, Abu Dhabi, UAE Q3 2017 Rayhaan Imam Reza, Mashhad, Iran Q3 2017 Capital Centre Rotana, Abu Dhabi UAE Q4 2017 Centro Istanbul, Turkey Q4 2017 Rotana's impressive expansion plans for 2016 witnessed the inauguration of a number of properties in the first few months of the year including Rosh Rayhaan by Rotana, Riyadh, KSA; Dalga Residences by Rotana, Turkey; Downtown Rotana, Bahrain; and City Centre Rotana, Qatar and Centro Capital Doha, adding a combined 1,236 keys to the group's existing portfolio. Rotana is located at Stand #HC0720 at ATM 2015, which runs until 28 April 2016. About Rotana Rotana currently manages a portfolio of over 100 properties throughout the Middle East, Africa and Turkey, with an aggressive expansion plan in place. Rotana has chosen to acknowledge how precious time is by making all time spent in their range of hotels 'Treasured Time'. This means Rotana has pledged to understand and meet the individual needs of all guests. In so doing, Rotana has evolved its product brands to include, Rotana Hotels & Resorts, Centro Hotels by Rotana, Rayhaan Hotels & Resorts by Rotana, Arjaan Hotel Apartments by Rotana and The Residences by Rotana. Treasured Time. The Rotana promise to you. Further information on any Rotana property, its brands or reservations can be obtained by visiting rotana.com or by contacting one of the regional sales offices. Farah Ibrahim TRACCS +97150 9448389 Rotana New Delhi Luxury Hotels Group (LHG), a World Hotel Marketing company, today announced a tie up with the renowned Ambassador Group of Hotels for its GDS Services. This partnership will help the Ambassador Group to amplify its identity with the most comprehensive suite of distribution tools in the industry, by generating awareness, increasing access and enabling ease of booking. The Ambassador Group of Hotels is known for refined luxury and personalised experiences. For the globe-trotting business traveller, The Ambassador Hotel is a landmark that effortlessly addresses every business need. For the discerning leisure traveller, it's a passport to India's array of unique experiences. Whatever the purpose of the trip, individual preferences are recognised and indulged as standard, leaving guests savouring every moment of their stay. All of the four or five star properties are individual in style, sophisticated yet exuding an avant-garde, authentic charm with original art sourced from home-grown artists. By contrast, the hotels benefit from 24/7 connectivity and futuristic business facilities. The Ambassador Hotel, Mumbai is synonymous with the Queen's necklace and offers a choice of accommodation to its esteemed guests. Hotel Ambassador Pallava Chennai offers old world charm with high ceilings and antique wooden furniture. Ambassador Ajanta, Aurangabad effortlessly combines the timeless magic of Ajanta and Ellora with today's modern conveniences. Mr. Pramod Kulkarni, VP Ambassador Group MIS, IT, Revenue Mgmt. & Distribution said, "The Ambassador Group of Hotels is one of the best-known hotel groups in India. We are in the process of Brand standardization and expansion, and so were looking for a new way to expand our international reach and penetrate new markets when we found Luxury Hotels Group. We're excited at the prospect of growing our business and brand exposure through working with LHG in the months to come." Mr. Amarpal Chandok, LHG Director of Business Development Asia, said: "We're delighted to partner with such a well-known group and, in so doing, increase our presence in the Indian market. The properties of the group make it a great addition to our portfolio of highly individual hotels". About Luxury Hotels Group Luxury Hotels Group is a collection of the finest hotels, outstanding boutique properties and luxurious residences in the world"s most popular destinations and capitals, personally selected with the luxury traveller in mind. Each and every property in Luxury Hotels Group is selected for luxurious accommodation, world class facilities and outstanding service. With strategically located offices in London, Dubai and New Delhi, Luxury Hotels Group provides all the member hotels with unique benefits. www.luxuryhotelsgroup.com Clara Gutierrez PR & Marketing +44 20 3540 9970 Luxury Hotels Group It looks like you've reached a page that doesnt exist (anymore). Please use the navigation or search above to find content on Hospitality Net. Go back to home Rendering of Element Toronto Airport Hotel Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) today announced it has reached an agreement with Eastons Group of Hotels to open the second Element Hotel in the Greater Toronto Area and renovate Four Points by Sheraton Toronto Airport. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) today announced it has reached an agreement with Eastons Group of Hotels to open the second Element Hotel in the Greater Toronto Area and renovate Four Points by Sheraton Toronto Airport. The eight-story Element Toronto Airport will open in summer 2018 adjacent to the seven-story Four Points Toronto Airport, which will remain open throughout the 5 million CAD renovation. We are delighted to expand our portfolio in Toronto in partnership with Eastons Group of Hotels, said Allison Reid, Senior Vice President of North American Development for Starwood. "Element Toronto Airport will offer a bright, energizing environment, great design and everything guests need for smart, sustainable living, while the freshly renovated Four Points will appeal to todays modern travelers with its emphasis on approachable design and stylish comfort. The recent acquisition of Four Points Toronto Airport and upcoming opening of Element Toronto Airport represent the second and third Starwood hotels in Eastons Group of Hotels portfolio, joining The Westin Bristol Place Toronto Airport, which is under renovation now. Starwoods Four Points and Element brands are both highly regarded by global travellers and will be excellent additions to our portfolio of world-class hotels in Canada, said Dr. Steve Gupta, President and CEO of Eastons Group of Hotels. Toronto is an important gateway market and renovation of the Four Points, paired with a new Element hotel, will offer travellers two more compelling choices within close proximity to both the airport and downtown. The Four Points Toronto Airport is a beautiful hotel with a great offering, and the new Element hotel will be the perfect complement, said Reetu Gupta, Chief Operating Officer of Gupta Group/Eastons Group. Element offers spacious living for travellers on the go, a majority of hotel business at the airport, and Starwood has done a fantastic job building this brand, as a lifestyle hotel with the warmth of home. Both Element Toronto Airport and Four Points Toronto Airport will act as a strong anchor on the western strip of the airport. The newly constructed Element Toronto Airport will offer 144 light-filled rooms with a fluid design of modular furniture, fully equipped kitchens, the signature Heavenly Bed and spa-inspired bathrooms. A recognized industry leader in the eco-space, Element offers travelers a fresh interpretation of the traditional hotel experience with natural light, modern design, healthy options and eco-minded sensibilities. Amenities will include fast and free WiFi, complimentary bikes to borrow, the healthy Rise breakfast and the Relax evening wine reception. Four Points Toronto Airport will complete a comprehensive renovation by December 2017 to include a top-to-bottom transformation all 204 guestrooms, business center, bar, restaurant and pre-function meeting rooms. The project will also result in upgrades to the porte cochere and all public areas, including the hotels 10,000 square feet of meeting space. Four Points Toronto Airport will be directly connected to the newly constructed Element Hotel and will share a common lobby, indoor pool, fitness facility, bar lounge, restaurant and meeting rooms. Ideally located across from Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ), Terminal 3 and Monorail station, Four Points Toronto Airport is close to major highways and the International Centre, Hershey Centre, Toronto Congress Centre, Woodbine Racetrack, Woodbine Shopping Centre and downtown Toronto. Starwood Opens Dual-Branded Aloft and Element Hotel Development in Boston On track to more than double its North America footprint over the next three years, Element will open another 22 hotels across the U.S. and Canada by 2018 including debuts in Philadelphia, Charleston and Nashville. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) today announced it will significantly expand its Element Hotels portfolio in North America due to soaring demand for the stylish, sustainable brand. On track to more than double its North America footprint over the next three years, Element will open another 22 hotels across the U.S. and Canada by 2018 including debuts in Philadelphia, Charleston and Nashville. Element Hotels is experiencing unprecedented growth momentum throughout North America, as well as in a number of key global markets, due to the widespread appeal of the brands distinct lifestyle positioning, said Brian McGuinness, Global Brand Leader, Specialty Select Brands for Starwood. Sustainability is no longer optional; its become a requirement among a growing number of travelers worldwide, and Element is the perfect choice with its clean, modern design and eco-conscious programming. Over the past 12 months, Element has opened new hotels in Boston, Miami, Fargo, Bozeman, Basalt, and Vancouver. The brand will pick up even more momentum in North America by entering numerous new markets by the end of 2018, including Chandler, Ariz.; San Antonio, Texas; Moline, Ill.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Bentonville, Ark.; and Huntsville, Ala. The brand will also triple its portfolio in Texas from two hotels to eight hotels by the end of 2018. Demand is also on the rise for dual-branded hotel developments featuring Starwoods Aloft and Element brands in key metropolitan markets. Across North America, Starwood will open Aloft and Element hotel projects in Syracuse, N.Y. (Aloft 2016, Element 2018); Austin, Texas (2017); Dallas, Texas (2017); Redmond, Wash. (2017); and Charleston, S.C. (2018). Element is seeing tremendous success as conditions for new hotel development continue to improve and owners and developers embrace the versatile brands emphasis on smart, sustainable living, said Allison Reid, Senior Vice President of North America Development, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. The innovative Element brand has consistently outperformed its competitive set by offering an entirely fresh perspective on reimagined lodging, and we expect it will continue to grow rapidly in both urban and suburban markets throughout North America and beyond. New Element hotels slated to open by the end of 2018 include: Element Calgary Airport (Alberta, Canada) September 2016 Offering 142 rooms and more than 2,300 square feet of meeting space, Element Calgary Airport is a convenient shuttle ride away from Calgary International Airport (YYC) and within close proximity of the citys downtown. Guests will enjoy Calgary Tower views and easy access to top attractions, including the Glenbow Museum, the Flames Scotiabank Saddledome, the Calgary Zoo and the Calgary Stampede. (Alberta, Canada) September 2016 Offering 142 rooms and more than 2,300 square feet of meeting space, Element Calgary Airport is a convenient shuttle ride away from Calgary International Airport (YYC) and within close proximity of the citys downtown. Guests will enjoy Calgary Tower views and easy access to top attractions, including the Glenbow Museum, the Flames Scotiabank Saddledome, the Calgary Zoo and the Calgary Stampede. Element Chandler Fashion Center (Chandler, Ariz.) January 2017 Element Chandler will be situated next to the Chandler Fashion Center, one of the largest malls in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. The brands first hotel to open in Arizona, Element Chandler will feature 107 rooms and 600 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Easily accessible from both Santan Freeway and Loop 101 Price Freeway, the hotel is 10 minutes from Wild Horse Pass, 20 minutes from Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), and less than 30 minutes from downtown Phoenix and Arizona State University. (Chandler, Ariz.) January 2017 Element Chandler will be situated next to the Chandler Fashion Center, one of the largest malls in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. The brands first hotel to open in Arizona, Element Chandler will feature 107 rooms and 600 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Easily accessible from both Santan Freeway and Loop 101 Price Freeway, the hotel is 10 minutes from Wild Horse Pass, 20 minutes from Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), and less than 30 minutes from downtown Phoenix and Arizona State University. Element Dallas Love Field (Dallas, Texas) February 2017 Element Dallas Love Field will anchor a new upscale mixed-use development just one mile from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL) and the Dallas Medical District. Part of a dual-branded hotel complex, the 91-room Element Dallas Love Field will share facilities with Aloft Dallas Love Field, including 6,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor swimming pool and a state-of-the-art fitness center. The hotel boasts a prime location with West Love, a 37-acre mixed-use development close to downtown Dallas, the Dallas Medical District, the Design District, the shops and restaurants at Dallas Market Center and AT&T Stadium all nearby (Dallas, Texas) February 2017 Element Dallas Love Field will anchor a new upscale mixed-use development just one mile from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL) and the Dallas Medical District. Part of a dual-branded hotel complex, the 91-room Element Dallas Love Field will share facilities with Aloft Dallas Love Field, including 6,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor swimming pool and a state-of-the-art fitness center. The hotel boasts a prime location with West Love, a 37-acre mixed-use development close to downtown Dallas, the Dallas Medical District, the Design District, the shops and restaurants at Dallas Market Center and AT&T Stadium all nearby Element Huntsville (Huntsville, Ala.) March 2017 Element Huntsville will join The Westin Huntsville just west of downtown and easily accessible from Interstate 565. The 150-room Element will be a key component of Huntsville's Bridge Street Town Centre, a mixed-use outdoor lifestyle center with more than 70 upscale shops and full-service restaurants. Close to the University of Alabama (Huntsville) and Redstone Arsenal Military Base, the hotel is also convenient to several corporate offices including Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Raytheon Company. Element Huntsville will offer 800 square feet of meeting space and share amenities with the Westin, including a pool, fitness center and parking. (Huntsville, Ala.) March 2017 Element Huntsville will join The Westin Huntsville just west of downtown and easily accessible from Interstate 565. The 150-room Element will be a key component of Huntsville's Bridge Street Town Centre, a mixed-use outdoor lifestyle center with more than 70 upscale shops and full-service restaurants. Close to the University of Alabama (Huntsville) and Redstone Arsenal Military Base, the hotel is also convenient to several corporate offices including Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Raytheon Company. Element Huntsville will offer 800 square feet of meeting space and share amenities with the Westin, including a pool, fitness center and parking. Element Moline (Moline, Ill.) April 2017 Element Moline will transform the historic ORourke Building as part of Molines ongoing efforts to revitalize and reinvigorate its riverfront and downtown. The building will include 5,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and cafe space. Element Moline will offer 90 rooms, 900 square feet of meeting space and proximity to the headquarters of Deere & Company, the U.S. Department of Defense, Rock Island Arsenal, Alcoa, United Healthcare, Kraft Foods and top area attractions such as the iWireless Center and John Deere Pavilion. (Moline, Ill.) April 2017 Element Moline will transform the historic ORourke Building as part of Molines ongoing efforts to revitalize and reinvigorate its riverfront and downtown. The building will include 5,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and cafe space. Element Moline will offer 90 rooms, 900 square feet of meeting space and proximity to the headquarters of Deere & Company, the U.S. Department of Defense, Rock Island Arsenal, Alcoa, United Healthcare, Kraft Foods and top area attractions such as the iWireless Center and John Deere Pavilion. Element Redmond (Redmond, Wash.) May 2017 The 124-room Element Redmond will open along with the 150-room Aloft Redmond just outside the campus for Microsoft Corporations world headquarters. The Aloft and Element hotel development will be located within Esterra Park, a campus-style, master-planned development with 1.2 million square feet of commercial office space, 1,400 residential units and a Link light-rail station slated to open in 2023. Easily accessible from the I-5 Freeway, the hotels are close to both Redmonds shopping district and downtown Bellevue. Aloft Redmond and Element Redmond will face a common courtyard and each feature separate branded lobbies. Shared facilities will include 6,500 square feet of state-of-the-art meeting space, an outdoor pool, a fitness facility and parking. (Redmond, Wash.) May 2017 The 124-room Element Redmond will open along with the 150-room Aloft Redmond just outside the campus for Microsoft Corporations world headquarters. The Aloft and Element hotel development will be located within Esterra Park, a campus-style, master-planned development with 1.2 million square feet of commercial office space, 1,400 residential units and a Link light-rail station slated to open in 2023. Easily accessible from the I-5 Freeway, the hotels are close to both Redmonds shopping district and downtown Bellevue. Aloft Redmond and Element Redmond will face a common courtyard and each feature separate branded lobbies. Shared facilities will include 6,500 square feet of state-of-the-art meeting space, an outdoor pool, a fitness facility and parking. Element Austin Downtown (Austin, Texas) August 2017 The dual-branded Aloft and Element Austin Downtown hotel development will include a restaurant and bar with outdoor dining along historic Congress Avenue. The 270-room Aloft and 144-room Element will be walking distance to the live music venues, restaurants and shops in the citys renowned 6 th Street Entertainment District. Also nearby are the Warehouse District, the 2 nd Street District, the Austin Convention Center, the University of Texas Austin campus and the Texas State Capitol Building. The hotels will share amenities including a beautiful street-level terrace overlooking Congress Avenue, an oversized 24-hour fitness center and approximately 3,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, ideal for both business meetings and social gatherings. (Austin, Texas) August 2017 The dual-branded Aloft and Element Austin Downtown hotel development will include a restaurant and bar with outdoor dining along historic Congress Avenue. The 270-room Aloft and 144-room Element will be walking distance to the live music venues, restaurants and shops in the citys renowned 6 Street Entertainment District. Also nearby are the Warehouse District, the 2 Street District, the Austin Convention Center, the University of Texas Austin campus and the Texas State Capitol Building. The hotels will share amenities including a beautiful street-level terrace overlooking Congress Avenue, an oversized 24-hour fitness center and approximately 3,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, ideal for both business meetings and social gatherings. Element Palmdale (Palmdale, Calif.) October 2017 Element Palmdale will be just five minutes from downtown Palmdale and close to attractions such as Blackbird Airpark Museum and Air Force Flight Test Historical Museum. The largest city in Antelope Valley, Palmdale is approximately one hour from Los Angeles, Burbank and Pasadena. The 123-room Element will offer more than 800 square feet of flexible meeting space, a 24-hour fitness center and all the brands signature amenities. (Palmdale, Calif.) October 2017 Element Palmdale will be just five minutes from downtown Palmdale and close to attractions such as Blackbird Airpark Museum and Air Force Flight Test Historical Museum. The largest city in Antelope Valley, Palmdale is approximately one hour from Los Angeles, Burbank and Pasadena. The 123-room Element will offer more than 800 square feet of flexible meeting space, a 24-hour fitness center and all the brands signature amenities. Element Fort Lauderdale Downtown (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) December 2017 The 150-room Element Fort Lauderdale Downtown will anchor a new upscale lifestyle center at the heart of the citys central business district. It will be part of a dual-hotel development along with the 209-room Fort Lauderdale Downtown, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel. The hotels will share more than 12,000 square feet of meeting space and other amenities and will be part of a mixed-use complex with 14,000 square feet of street-level retail space. (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) December 2017 The 150-room Element Fort Lauderdale Downtown will anchor a new upscale lifestyle center at the heart of the citys central business district. It will be part of a dual-hotel development along with the 209-room Fort Lauderdale Downtown, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel. The hotels will share more than 12,000 square feet of meeting space and other amenities and will be part of a mixed-use complex with 14,000 square feet of street-level retail space. Element Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pa.) January 2018 The first-ever W and Element dual-branded hotel development, W Philadelphia and Element Philadelphia will occupy a 51-story skyscraper directly across from Philadelphia City Hall. The 460-room Element Philadelphia will feature a 1,400 square foot breakfast and lounge area, a fitness center and 431 square feet of branded meeting space. Walking distance from both Suburban Station and the Broad Street entrance to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the hotel is also close to top city attractions such as the Avenue of the Arts, Liberty Bell, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the galleries, restaurants and boutiques along Walnut Street, Chestnut Street and Rittenhouse Row. (Philadelphia, Pa.) January 2018 The first-ever W and Element dual-branded hotel development, W Philadelphia and Element Philadelphia will occupy a 51-story skyscraper directly across from Philadelphia City Hall. The 460-room Element Philadelphia will feature a 1,400 square foot breakfast and lounge area, a fitness center and 431 square feet of branded meeting space. Walking distance from both Suburban Station and the Broad Street entrance to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the hotel is also close to top city attractions such as the Avenue of the Arts, Liberty Bell, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the galleries, restaurants and boutiques along Walnut Street, Chestnut Street and Rittenhouse Row. Element Nashville West End (Nashville, Tenn.) January 2018 Element Nashville West End is slated to open in 2018 in a prime location at oneC1TY, just minutes from Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Centennial Park, HCA, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the nightclubs and entertainment venues downtown and on Music Row. Located at the entry to oneC1TY Nashville off the 28 th / 31 st Avenue Connector just 15 minutes from Nashville International Airport (BNA), the hotel will feature 169 rooms, 560 square feet of meeting space and all the brands signature amenities and services. (Nashville, Tenn.) January 2018 Element Nashville West End is slated to open in 2018 in a prime location at oneC1TY, just minutes from Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Centennial Park, HCA, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the nightclubs and entertainment venues downtown and on Music Row. Located at the entry to oneC1TY Nashville off the 28 / 31 Avenue Connector just 15 minutes from Nashville International Airport (BNA), the hotel will feature 169 rooms, 560 square feet of meeting space and all the brands signature amenities and services. Element San Antonio Airport (San Antonio, Texas) March 2018 Element San Antonio Airport will be located at the intersection of Highway 281 and Wurzbach Parkway, just one mile from San Antonio International Airport (SAT). The hotel will feature 123 rooms, 838 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Nearby attractions include the historic Alamo, San Antonio Zoo, and the shops and restaurants along the downtown Riverwalk. (San Antonio, Texas) March 2018 Element San Antonio Airport will be located at the intersection of Highway 281 and Wurzbach Parkway, just one mile from San Antonio International Airport (SAT). The hotel will feature 123 rooms, 838 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. Nearby attractions include the historic Alamo, San Antonio Zoo, and the shops and restaurants along the downtown Riverwalk. Element Katy (Katy, Texas) March 2018 Ideally located within the Houston energy corridor, Element Katy will feature 135 guest rooms, 2,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. The new Element is part of the new Grand Crossing development, a mixed-use complex that will include residential units, offices, restaurants and shops, as well as parks, two ponds and a network of walking trails. The hotel will offer convenient access to the offices of numerous corporations, Katy Mills Mall and the LaCenterra at Cinco Ranch development. (Katy, Texas) March 2018 Ideally located within the Houston energy corridor, Element Katy will feature 135 guest rooms, 2,500 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor pool and a fitness center. The new Element is part of the new Grand Crossing development, a mixed-use complex that will include residential units, offices, restaurants and shops, as well as parks, two ponds and a network of walking trails. The hotel will offer convenient access to the offices of numerous corporations, Katy Mills Mall and the LaCenterra at Cinco Ranch development. Element Syracuse Inner Harbor (Syracuse, N.Y.) April 2018 Part of an Aloft and Element hotel development, Element Syracuse Inner Harbor will offer a convenient location just a short walk to Destiny USA Center, a major shopping and entertainment destination. Guests will enjoy easy access to nearby attractions including Armory Square, a historic and refurbished area of the city containing shops and restaurants; the Everson Museum of Art; the Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology; and Washington Square Park. Featuring 123 stylish, sustainable rooms and suites and 470 square feet of meeting space, the hotel will be just over one mile from downtown Syracuse, approximately two miles from both Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University. (Syracuse, N.Y.) April 2018 Part of an Aloft and Element hotel development, Element Syracuse Inner Harbor will offer a convenient location just a short walk to Destiny USA Center, a major shopping and entertainment destination. Guests will enjoy easy access to nearby attractions including Armory Square, a historic and refurbished area of the city containing shops and restaurants; the Everson Museum of Art; the Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology; and Washington Square Park. Featuring 123 stylish, sustainable rooms and suites and 470 square feet of meeting space, the hotel will be just over one mile from downtown Syracuse, approximately two miles from both Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University. Element Charleston Historic Downtown - (Charleston, S.C.) May 2018 Element Charleston Historic Downtown will open at 600 Meeting Street within the citys newest lifestyle center as part of an Aloft and Element hotel development. The 86-room Aloft and 88-room Element will share an expansive rooftop deck and pool area, a 24-hour fitness center and 2,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. The new lifestyle center will also include 40,000 square feet of premium office space and a rooftop restaurant and bar with sweeping views of the Cooper River and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Guests will be within walking distance of the citys historic center, the open-air Charleston City Market, the Charleston Museum, and the boutiques, galleries and restaurants on King Street. (Charleston, S.C.) May 2018 Element Charleston Historic Downtown will open at 600 Meeting Street within the citys newest lifestyle center as part of an Aloft and Element hotel development. The 86-room Aloft and 88-room Element will share an expansive rooftop deck and pool area, a 24-hour fitness center and 2,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. The new lifestyle center will also include 40,000 square feet of premium office space and a rooftop restaurant and bar with sweeping views of the Cooper River and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Guests will be within walking distance of the citys historic center, the open-air Charleston City Market, the Charleston Museum, and the boutiques, galleries and restaurants on King Street. Element Dallas East (Dallas, Texas) July 2018 Element Dallas East will transform a seven-story medical office building located at the corner of Gaston Avenue and Hall Street, just across from the Baylor University Medical Center campus. A short drive from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL), the hotel is close to the shops and restaurants in Uptown Dallas, the Design District, Oak Lawn, Victory Park and Dallas Convention Center. The 151-room Element will offer 3,754 square-feet of meeting space, a state-of-the-art 24-hour fitness center and an outdoor pool. (Dallas, Texas) July 2018 Element Dallas East will transform a seven-story medical office building located at the corner of Gaston Avenue and Hall Street, just across from the Baylor University Medical Center campus. A short drive from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL), the hotel is close to the shops and restaurants in Uptown Dallas, the Design District, Oak Lawn, Victory Park and Dallas Convention Center. The 151-room Element will offer 3,754 square-feet of meeting space, a state-of-the-art 24-hour fitness center and an outdoor pool. Element Spring Valley (Spring Valley, N.Y.) September 2018 Element Spring Valley will boast a prime location in the Spring Valley Marketplace. Easily accessible from I-87, I-287 and the Garden State Parkway, the new Element will feature 87 rooms, 500 square feet of meeting space and all the brands signature services and amenities. Nearby attractions include the Palisades Mall, the Shops at Nanuet, the campuses of several colleges and universities, and numerous businesses, including Pfizer Corporation. As the first major hotel brand to mandate that all properties pursue sustainable certifications, Element is recognized as an industry leader in the eco-space and offers travelers a fresh, completely reimagined hotel experience. Element Hotels feature natural light, modern design, healthy options and eco-minded sensibilities. Guests can fuel their day with the healthy RISE breakfast and wind down with the RELAX evening wine reception both complimentary. Spacious studios and one-bedroom suites feature a fluid design of modular furniture, flat-screen LED televisions ranging from 40 to 65 inches, large desks with open shelving, and custom-designed closets. Rooms also include fully equipped kitchens and the signature Heavenly Bed, while spa-inspired bathrooms feature an invigorating rain shower and dual-flush toilet. Staying on the move is easy with complimentary bikes to borrow and a state-of-the-art 24-hour fitness center. Fast and free WiFi is available throughout every hotel. Additionally, the Element brand continues to fuel growth worldwide. Following openings in Amsterdam, London and Jiangsu, China, Element is set to debut in London and Tanzania in 2017, and open two more hotels in China, three in the Middle East and two more in Canada by the end of 2018. Hotel customers witness double digit revenue growth YoY eRevMax, the leading hotel technology provider, announced today that it witnessed around 11% growth in hotel booking revenue generated in 2015. Hoteliers continue to attract increased online bookings thereby generating over USD 1.9 billion in booking revenue through eRevMax platforms. The company published these figures based on revenue generated by properties that currently use eRevMax reservation delivery services through its RateTiger, RTConnect and LIVE OS solutions. eRevMax processed a cumulative of 5 million new reservations in 2015, equating to an average of USD 380 per booking. As per reports, average reservation revenue generated through eRevMax solutions was over USD 300,000 per property, with the highest revenue for a particular property being a staggering USD 30 million. These positive revenue figures further underline the importance of using a professional grade distribution solution to achieve growth targets. We continuously strive to ensure our customers gain from our principle of Save Time Make Money and the figures reflect our success in assisting hotels maximize online revenues. We have been proactively integrating new channels and technology partners to our Ecosystem to provide hotels an even more extensive direct connectivity for a wider market reach. I believe these figures are a testimony to the joint success of eRevMax, its partners and its clients, said Udai Singh Solanki, Chief Technology Officer at eRevMax. eRevMax is continuously developing its Channel Ecosystem to offer quality certified connections to support complex revenue generation strategies. The company is also actively integrating new partners to LIVE OS its single sign-on platform to help hotels access multiple applications and service providers for business process improvement. Meet Team eRevMax at Arabian Travel Market in Dubai from 25 28 April 2016. Email us on marketing@erevmax.com to book a meeting today! About eRevMax: eRevMax is a travel technology company that helps hotels to maximise online revenue opportunities through real-time distribution, market intelligence and connectivity solutions. The company provides specifically tailored solutions within its core product brands RateTiger, RTConnect and LIVE OS. RateTiger product suite offers the industrys leading ChannelManager for online distribution, Shopper for rate benchmarking and BookingForce to help drive direct bookings from the hotels brand.com. RTConnect provides seamless 2-way XML integration of channel management functionality with the hotels central systems. LIVE OS offers hotels a single sign-on platform to access multiple applications, while offering technology partners a chance to get in front of hotels allowing greater distribution of promotional opportunities. eRevMax is working closely with over 200 certified channel and technology partners as well as 9000 hotels worldwide helping them increase revenue opportunities and streamline business processes. For more details, please visit http://www.erevmax.com or contact us on marketing@erevmax.com College Hiring Outlook Highest in Nearly 10 Years 67 percent of employers say they plan to hire recent college graduates this year, up from last year - 37 percent of these employers plan to offer graduates higher pay than last year This years crop of college graduates will find welcoming conditions as they enter the entry-level job market. According to a new survey from CareerBuilder, 67 percent of employers say they plan to hire recent college graduates this year, up from 65 percent last year and the highest outlook since 2007. More than a third (37 percent) plan to offer recent college graduates higher pay than last year, and 27 percent of employers hiring recent college graduates this year will pay a starting salary of $50,000 or more. The national survey was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder between February 10 and March 17, 2016, and included a representative sample of 2,186 hiring managers and human resource professionals in the private sector across industries and company sizes. In addition to an improving economy, we are beginning to see a rising number of retirements, which is creating more room for advancement and creating opportunities for entry-level candidates, said Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer for CareerBuilder. But just because there are vacancies doesnt mean college students are always ready to fill them. While prospects appear better, some employers are concerned that new college grads may not be ready for the real world. Twenty-four percent do not feel academic institutions are adequately preparing students for roles needed within their organizations, an increase from 21 percent last year. When asked where academic institutions fall short, these employers cited the following concerns: Too much emphasis on book learning instead of real-world learning: 47 percent I need workers with a blend of technical skills and those skills gained from liberal arts: 39 percent Entry-level roles within my organization are more complex today: 25 percent Not enough focus on internships: 13 percent Technology is changing too quickly for an academic environment to keep up: 13 percent Not enough students are graduating with the degrees my company needs: 11 percent When asked to name which skills they think recent college graduates lack for the workplace, most of these employers cited interpersonal or people (52 percent) or problem-solving skills (48 percent). Other skills these employers stated include: Leadership: 42 percent Teamwork: 39 percent Written communication: 37 percent Oral communication: 37 percent Creative thinking: 35 percent Project management: 27 percent Research and analysis: 17 percent Math: 15 percent Computer and technical: 14 percent College Majors That Will Get You a Job Demand for students with business and technical majors continues to be high among employers with employers stating the following majors are the most in-demand at their firms: Business 35 percent Computer and Information Sciences 23 percent Engineering 18 percent Math and Statistics 15 percent Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences 14 percent Communications Technologies 11 percent Engineering Technologies 11 percent Communication and Journalism 8 percent Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies and Humanities 7 percent Science Technologies 7 percent Social Sciences 6 percent Biological and Biomedical Sciences 6 percent Architecture and Planning 6 percent Education 5 percent Information technology (27 percent) and customer service jobs (26 percent) top the list of position types for which employers hiring recent college grads are recruiting. Opportunities also abound in finance/accounting (19 percent), business development (19 percent) and sales (17 percent). What the Average Grad Makes Right Out of College When it comes to pay, more than a third of employers who plan to hire recent college graduates this year (37 percent) will offer higher starting salaries than they did last year. Fifty-three percent expect no change in salary offers, and 11 percent expect a decrease in starting salaries. More than half of these employers (52 percent) say they will make offers to students before they graduate. Expected starting salaries for recent graduates break down as follows: Under $30,000: 25 percent $30,000 to less than $40,000: 28 percent $40,000 to less than $50,000: 20 percent $50,000 and higher: 27 percent These numbers are subject to change: The majority of employers (67 percent) say they are willing to negotiate salary offers when extending a job offer to a recent college graduate. The New Graduates Guide to Job Searching If you want to land a full-time gig so you won't have to move back in with mom and dad, try following these tips for a successful first-time job search: Check out your school's career services office: Career Services offices typically are little used by students, except as a place to meet recruiters for interviews. But they have much more to offer, including research materials, advice on job training and connections to local companies. Join a companys talent network: Talent networks keep you automatically informed of new positions opening up that may be a fit for your skills and interests. Make social a priority: Follow companies you like on social media and engage with them. Consider starting a blog that is related to your career interests. While on social channels, make sure you clean up your own digital dirt. Nothing is truly private on the Web, and it would be a shame to miss out on a job opportunity because of some embarrassing photos from years ago. Also make sure your profile is relevant. Think through the eyes of a recruiter and keep your employment history and education updated. Join professional associations: Look for local chapters of professional associations dedicated to the occupations and areas in which you majored or completed studies. Not only are professional associations a great networking opportunity, they may also have an exclusive job posting board or a directory of member companies you can access. Most associations also offer student discounts or discounts for the unemployed. Stay connected with alumni: Find your alma maters local alumni association and join it. Use your alumni network to gain information or access to hiring managers in departments of your target companies to give you the widest reach. Keep your eye on job boards: Job boards have opportunities for all experience levels, including recent grads, and if youre serious about landing a good job, you need to dedicate time to the search. Make a list of the locations and companies where you'd like to work. Then expand your search to include other related job titles in those companies and locations. CareerBuilder recently created two features Application View Notification and Resume View Notification to give job seekers registered on CareerBuilder.com more transparency into the job search process. With Application View Notification, you can check application views by logging on to their account and viewing their Competition Report. You will also receive an email whenever an employer views your application, so you know in real-time when companies are taking notice of your materials. With Resume View Notification, when you navigate to your homepage you can see the number of times your resumes has been viewed, the frequency in which your resumes has come up in company searches, and the amount of jobs youve applied to and saved. Attend job-hunting events: Even if you do not see any specific employers that excite you in an upcoming career fair on campus, attend it anyway to practice your elevator speech and gain confidence in speaking with recruiters. A career fair may also lend itself to developing additional networking contacts. Survey Methodology This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder among 2,186 hiring and human resource managers ages 18 and over (employed full-time, not self-employed, non-government) between February 10 and March 17, 2016 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset, based on their responses to certain questions). With a pure probability sample of 2,186, one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 2.10 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies. About CareerBuilder As the global leader in human capital solutions, CareerBuilder specializes in cutting-edge HR software as a service to help companies with every step of the recruitment process from acquire to hire. CareerBuilder works with top employers across industries, providing job distribution, sourcing, workflow, CRM, data and analytics in one pre-hire platform. It also operates leading job sites around the world. Owned by TEGNA Inc. (NYSE:TGNA), Tribune Media (NYSE:TRCO) and The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com. Dont Sweat the Hotel Robots...Yet While this recent introduction of robots in hotels may feel like a 'Whoa, The Future is Here' moment, hotels have actually been toying with robots, seriously and not just as a cool gimmick, for about a decade. Last month, Hilton Hotels, in partnership with IBM, introduced Connie, the first Watson-enabled robot concierge for the hospitality industry. Named for the founder of Hilton Hotels, Conrad Hilton, Connie can tell guests where to eat, what to do nearby, and what they need to know about the hotels amenities and services. Connie uses both a combination of Watson APIs and information gleaned from WayBlazer to deliver its picks. And the more guests interact with Connie, the more the robot will learn and thus adjust its recommendations. Currently, Connie is only available at the Hilton McLean in Virginia. But Hilton isnt the only one testing robots in their hotels. Aloft Hotels unveiled their Botler robot in August 2014. Created by Savioke, a company that specializes in building robots for hotels, Botlr can drop off toiletries or room service for guests. More impressively, Botlr is able to roam the hallways of the hotel all by itself. The Crowne Plaza hotel in San Jose, Calif., also rolled out their own bot last fallDash, which looks very similar to Botlr, and is similarly self-sufficient. For example, using Wi-Fi, Dash can call up the hotel elevator on its own. Yet while this recent introduction of robots in hotels may feel like a Whoa, The Future is Here moment, hotels have actually been toying with robots, seriously and not just as a cool gimmick, for about a decade. Back in 2006, the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel used Hitachis humanoid robots that looked a bit similar to Saviokes current robot fleet. Five years ago, when the Yotel Times Square opened a buzzworthy feature was their Bell-bota large robotic arm that picked up guests suitcases and stored them in lockers before check-in and after check-out. Clearly, hotels are interested in incorporating robots into their operations, but as you can tell, its slow going. More importantly, given that the hospitality industry is founded on human interaction and personalization, there may not even be all that much room for robots in the hotel industry. With so much of our daily lives being automated or programmed, a hotel is a place to seek out and relish that human connection. And besides, wouldnt you rather trust a concierge whos actually been to the restaurant youve inquired about over taking the word of a robot who is just reading back some online review? That being said, there are a few other ways in which robots could be useful within the hotel industry. A concierge robot like Hiltons Connie would be a great addition to select-service hotels that often dont have a concierge, as well as hotels that dont have concierge on staff 24 hours a day. Also, since room service is often a loss-making venture for hotels, having robots deliver simple items like coffee or snacks any time of day is a very attractive option. Additionally, a lot of hotel tasks, often unseen to guests, are highly repetitive, for example, refilling housekeeping stock cabinets or taking coffee to meeting rooms and conference centers. If a robot can support your housekeeping team to be more effective, then perhaps more hotels should and will seek out robots. And then the future really will be here. How do you feel about robots in hotels? Are they the future of hospitality or are they still just a gimmick? Tell us! ALICE is a hotel operations system for all workflow and communication. ALICE enables hotels by providing a single platform to connect concierge, front desk, maintenance and housekeeping, while also giving guests an entirely new way to engage with their hotel through a mobile application and SMS. ALICE will be exhibiting this year at HITEC, June 20-23, 2016. The Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association (CHTA) has released a Resource Guide to support the destination's local efforts to create a level playing field through the taxation and regulation of the sector and its engagement in local public and private sector tourism development efforts. The region's leading umbrella tourism private sector organization is counseling the Caribbean's 32 National Hotel and Tourism Associations (NHTAs) and governments to work together to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the rapid rise of the online vacation home rental industry and other sharing economy businesses being fueled by hosting platform companies like Airbnb and Uber. The Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association (CHTA) has released a Resource Guide to support the destination's local efforts to create a level playing field through the taxation and regulation of the sector and its engagement in local public and private sector tourism development efforts. The Caribbean has seen explosive growth in the short-term vacation home rental business. Taking advantage of new technology platforms, many residential owners throughout the world are sharing in tourism revenues by providing accommodations through marketplaces or host platforms such as Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway which have emerged as the industry's top leaders. Airbnb, in particular, recorded more than 25,000 listings in the Caribbean as of February 2016 and is projecting significant growth this year. Destinations such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Cancun, Martinique and Barbados feature the most listings on Airbnb with continued growth projected throughout the entire region. St. Lucia expects a 17% year-over-year increase in stays in 2016. Aruba saw the number of visitors using non-traditional accommodations (private homes, apartments, villas, condominiums) in 2015 jump from 24% of visitors to 33%. "As many governments throughout the world have experienced, the sharing economy made possible by these hosting platforms is happening whether or not we choose to embrace it and it presents new opportunities for the industry as well," said CHTA President Karolin Troubetzkoy. "This leaves us with two options: we can allow it to develop as an untaxed and under-regulated market and lose out on tremendous opportunities or we can bring all the players to the table to work out solutions to the benefit of all concerned parties," added Troubetzkoy. "CHTA has endeavored to take a positive, constructive and balanced approach to the Guide, welcoming this rapidly developing accommodations sector but also calling for a fair play arrangement regarding taxation and some measure of standards beyond those applicable to residences. CHTA is not calling for there to be the same detailed and sometimes onerous regulatory requirements for hotels, but for a level of regulation beyond those which simply apply to residences. These are commercial enterprises regardless as to how one looks at it and the welfare of the guest and health, safety and reputation of the host property, the hosting platform, and the destination must be considered," according to Troubetzkoy. The Guide provides the region's public and private sector tourism stakeholders with a summary of the key issues surrounding the sharing economy, its impact on the tourism sector globally as well as regionally, and the opportunities presented by this emerging accommodations sector. It offers solutions and new approaches for the Caribbean's NHTAs and governments to consider when regulating and regularizing this emerging industry. And it sets the stage for engaging the emerging accommodations sector in organized public and private sector efforts to protect and grow the tourism industry. The proliferation of Airbnb and other such hosting platforms is also beginning to effect airlift capacity to some destinations. In some cases, increased airline load factors have reduced the number of seats available for traditional hotel guests or have driven up the cost of air tickets. "Therefore, it is important that we account for this growing accommodations sector in our research, product development, airlift development, and marketing efforts in order to plan accordingly," noted Troubetzkoy. Increasingly, governments throughout the world are working in partnership with local tourism industry stakeholders and hosting platform companies such as Airbnb, taking a proactive approach to addressing challenges and concerns. With the support of companies like Airbnb, destinations are adopting new measures to address the taxation and regulation of home vacation stays. Underscoring the untapped potential for Caribbean jurisdictions experiencing budgetary challenges, a 2016 Airbnb study estimates that the 50 largest cities in the U.S. would have collected an additional $200 million in occupancy taxes in 2015 if taxation measures and supporting collection and enforcement protocols were in place. At the same time, concerns over the safety and well-being of both travelers and their non-traditional hosts are also prevalent. Traditional hotel and taxi businesses operate with strict property and insurance liability requirements and must meet stringent safety, cleanliness and operational standards, which are kept at a voluntary minimum for most home rental operators "By embracing the sharing economy, we are able to hold non-traditional accommodation and service providers to a higher degree of responsibility than that which is typically expected for strictly residential use. This will help protect the reputation of a destination and the Caribbean brand as a whole," said Troubetzkoy. CHTA is supporting local efforts to bring together public and private sector stakeholders to review their existing laws and regulations pertaining to taxes, health and safety requirements and other standards, incorporating the necessary changes for the sharing economy. A twenty-seven year old Jamaican dancehall by the name of Popcaan has been making waves recently, not only in Jamaica, but around the globe. The up-and-comer got his start when he was still just a teenager after Vybz Kartel began to put him on, and since then hes become somewhat of a household name, working alongside the likes of Young Thug, Drake, Pusha T, and even being sampled by Kanye West. In 2013, Popcaan recorded a music video in Toronto shot by OVO Sounds Niko, and he and his crew can be heard speaking in patois throughout the course of Drakes most recent full-length project If Youre Reading This Its Too Late. Controlla, which is supposedly going to be on Views From The 6, has boosted his stock even higher, and leaves him poised to be a global phenomenon. Lets take a look at ten of his essential cuts. Everything Nice Popcaan has crossover appeal because he has a crossover style. Everything Nice sounds like much of what youd hear on pop/rap radio in America, and it fits right in. The lyrics are positive and uplifting, and the Jamaican flow adds just the right spice to the minimalistic tropical-meets-trap beat. Dreams This ones a little bit of a throwback. Dreams features a piano-driven beat that you could almost hear Adele or Rihanna singing on, but Popcaan flows on it nicely. With 14+ million views on YouTube, theres obviously a bunch of people out there who agree. Hustle featuring Pusha T Invite King Push on the track and see if it doesnt pop. The dancehall steeze has an epic cool when Popcaan connects with the G.O.O.D. Music president for Hustle. Snoop Lion Lighters Up featuring Mavado & Popcaan Say what you will about Snoop Doggs reggae phase as Snoop Lion; he crushed tracks like this in a legitimate way. With our subject and Mavado along for the ride, Lighters Up stands as a stand-out cut on the 2013 record. Only Man She Want With a straight-forward modern dancehall style, Only Man She Want showcases Popcaans champion Jamaican sound. Its a certified pop single thatll still set a party off a good five years later. Jamie xx I Know Theres Gonna Be (Good Times) featuring Young Thug & Popcaan This song probably did more for Popcaans popularity than any of them. Jamie xx crafted the song of the summer last year, inviting two different MCs with two different styles to flow on the tropical beat. It was inescapable, and still goes off. Where We Come From Popcaan pours one out for his old homie Scumpy on Where We Come From. As he describes his upbringing and the village he grew up in, you get a glimpse of what it might have been like to grow up in a poor Jamaica. Real thugs never forget the dump land or where mi come from. Way Up As his style has become refined, Popcaan has entered the finest stage of his career thus far. His proper debut Where We Come From is chalk-full of great tracks, including this one Way Up. Those four-wheelers look fun too though Love Yuh Bad Sometimes you just have to put a fly love song out there, which is exactly what happened with Love Yuh Bad. Popcaan flows about loving his girl, and rolls around in bed with her inside what appears to be a sweet pad in the middle of a breathtaking jungle. Rup Rup (Bad Inna Real Life) It cant be all love songs, though, as Popcaan reminds his listeners that hes a bad boy too. Rup Rup (Bad Inna Real Life) sees the Unruly boss with a thick crew, rapping in the land of Jamaica. The television event of the year kicked off last night. Game of Thrones Season 6 premiered on SkyAtlantic. It's the highest streamed show ever with a buzz circulating it like none other before. GRR Martin's Game of Thrones saga has captured the masses with its intricate plots of deceit, incest, exploitation and dragons. Season 6 began last night with fans taking to Twitter to air their delight. Already we're tapping our feet in anticipation for Episode 2 to reveal itself. Season 6 is by far the most enthralling as it is the first to surpass the storyline of the books and producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss promising that this Season is the best yet with the most epic battle scene to date. Ugh, why is it only Monday? Game of Thrones Episode 2 will debut this Sunday, May 1. After a three-year hiatus driven by the rapid release of their first two albums, The Shoos get ready to showcase their richest album yet, next month in Dublin. Producing an album can be an exhausting, albeit rewarding, job; after releasing their first two albums in two years, The Shoos stood back to take stock of where they were at and then allowed themselves a little time... For album number three, they put themselves under pressure to produce radio worthy music. Bassist Steve Maher explains that, We were itching to get back out there, but we really were focused on nailing it. We stopped ourselves from rushing the album until it was right. This decision made all the difference. Their time away has reinvigorated their The Shoos have created an album to be rightly proud of, while their belief in and commitment to their sound will set them apart as they crusade through their next stage as a band. Advertisement Needless to say, their upcoming album party will be a night not to be missed. The Shoos' album celebration party is set for May 26th at The Workman's Club and tickets are available now. The new album, The Shoos is out now. The June Bank Holiday festival bill is looking seriously tasty The Strypes, Ryan Sheridan, Hemitage Green and the Jerry Fish Electric Sideshow are among the headline turns at thus years Leixlip Festival, which takes place in the grounds of the Court Yard Hotel over the Junk Bank Holiday. Joining them are hotly-tipped local duo Picture This, Otherkin, Interskalactic, Scoops, Million Little Gods, Smash Hits and The Harleys. Theres also a chance to grace to the Main Stage courtesy of the Battle of the Bands competition kicking off in the Court Yards Arthurs venue on May 19. Find out more at [link]courtyard.ie[/link] Dilution is one of the most common problems among penny stock companies and Trans-Pacific Aerospace Company Inc (OTCMKTS:TPAC, TPAC message board) has definitely suffered from it. In fact, TPAC might be one of the worst offenders. Several amendments to the articles of incorporation were made in a matter of a few short months and the number of authorized shares was lifted from 150 million all the way to 4.5 billion. At the same time, the printing press was working overtime. The O/S count grew from under 200 million in March 2014 to nearly 500 million in March 2015 which represents 314% in dilution in a matter of twelve months. That's pretty bad, but it's nothing compared to what happened over the following months. According to the company profile at the OTC Markets, there were more than 1.3 billion shares issued and outstanding on April 23 and about 545 million of them represented the float. Yesterday, however, investors traded more than 620 million shares in a matter of just six and a half hours which could suggest that some more stock has seen the light of day since then. We wrote about TPAC in March and if you check out our article, you'll notice that one of the main reasons for the truly catastrophic dilution is called convertible debt. Don't know what convertible debt is? Apparently, you're not the only one. Bill McKay, TPAC's CEO, wrote a post on the company's website in an attempt to explain how it all works. We reckon that he did a decent job, but he did fail to mention one thing how all the toxic notes affect the stock performance. The people who have been invested in TPAC for long enough don't need such an explanation. They already saw the value of their stock drop from a 52-week high of just under $0.04 per share about a year ago to the 52-week low of $0.0001 logged on May 18. Bill McKay apparently realized that the convertible debt is putting quite a lot of pressure on the ticker and he decided to act. Yesterday, he announced the results of his efforts. He said that one of the convertible notes held by KBM Worldwide was repaid on May 28 and he also said that the flood of conversions will cease.Later, he tweeted a few pictures of bearings that are supposedly manufactured by TPAC and assured the shareholders that some more solid press releases will come out in the near future. Even that, however, wasn't enough to push the ticker in the right direction. TPAC did experience a volume spike and it did register an intraday high of $0.0006 for the first time in over two months, but it eventually settled down to a close of $0.0004 exactly the same as the price at the end of last week. So, investors don't appear to be entirely convinced and you might be wondering why. The dismal financial report for the quarter ended January 31 does raise the question of how TPAC managed to find the money to pay off the convertible debt and even manufacture bearings. The bigger problem, however, probably lies with the fact that trusting Mr. McKay might be a bit difficult for some people. Take this press release he issued at the end of March 2014 as an example. In it, he said that the company has registered the first sales of its spherical bearings. A few months later, he issued a second PR which, allegedly, validated the claims made in the first one and announced another purchase order from an NYSE-listed company with a $5.5 billion market cap. Good news, you have to agree and we're pretty sure that some people bought in because of it. Sadly, they were left bitterly disappointed when they found out that the announced purchase orders are missing from TPAC's SEC filings. According to the reports, the company hasn't registered any revenues since inception. Make sure you bear this in mind while you're waiting for Mr. McKay's next solid press release. The Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau is asking a federal judge to stop a rival comic convention from using the phrase "Space City" for its three-day festival scheduled for NRG Center over Memorial Day weekend. The convention bureau filed a request Friday for a temporary restraining order to prevent Space City Comic Con from continuing to use the phrase the bureau trademarked 12 years ago to promote the city. The bureau owns 50 percent of another comic convention, Comicpalooza. That show is scheduled for the George R. Brown Convention Center in mid-June. U.S. District Judge Nancy F. Atlas heard the request at 3 p.m. Monday, but did not issue a ruling. The dispute has been brewing for months but reached the courthouse earlier this year when the bureau sued Space City Comic Con along with its owner George Comits over alleged trademark infringement. The bureau is seeking profits from previous shows in which Comits used "Space City" as part of its name. A.J. Mistretta, a spokesman for the convention and visitors bureau, said the bureau is "vigorously defending" its trademark and that its request for a temporary restraining order is the next step in that legal process. In November, Houston voters headed to the polls to decide whether the fourth-largest city in the country would join hundreds of others in adopting a non-discrimination ordinance. Then-Mayor Annise Parker knew the ordinance wouldnt pass without a fight, but after a decision from the state Supreme Court, the matter ended up on the ballot sooner than expected. Still, she hoped Houstons equal rights ordinance, with employment and housing protections based on 15 different categories, would have broad enough appeal to pass. Instead, it was defeated by a margin of two to one. Theres a reason why so many cities have these local non-discrimination ordinances, Parker said in an interview, and that is because they make sense and people support them. So what happened with the voters in Houston? Its a question she and others asked after the defeat, and its one whose answer will prove instructive should proponents of the measure try again. POLLING A month before the vote showed likely voters slightly favoring the ordinance but with a large percentage roughly 18 percent unsure. After the vote, it became clear that the ordinance did particularly poorly among black voters, struggling in majority black council districts, even with the president and executive director of the local NAACP chapter speaking out in favor of HERO. Parker also said older voters tended to oppose the ordinance, despite an AARP endorsement. But according to results from the Kinder Institutes 2016 Houston Area Survey, 73 percent of Houston residents say its very important for the city to pass a local equal rights ordinance. Another 16 percent said it was somewhat important. The survey was conducted in spring 2016, just months after the ordinance failed. The Kinder Institute's own survey, conducted in the spring of 2016 after the ordinance was defeated, shows strong support for an equal rights ordinance among black survey respondents living in Houston. Sixty-six percent of them said passing a local equal rights ordinance was "very important." Another 22 percent said it was "somewhat important." White respondents were less likely to think it was important, with only 65 percent saying it was "very important" and 10 percent saying it was "somewhat important." About 82 percent of Hispanic respondents felt a local ordinance was "very important." So what, exactly went wrong for the ordinances supporters? Translating that support to votes proved to be quite a hurdle. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who was voted into office by many of the same voters who rejected HERO, does not believe the HERO vote is an accurate reflection of Houston, according to a statement from his communications director, Janice Evans. Still, she said, he has no immediate plans to reintroduce it, citing pressing city finance needs as his top priority. Even though Parker is taking a break from Houston politics as she leads a study group at Harvard University, the HERO vote is still a lingering frustration. She said the city has practical needs for a non-discrimination ordinance: it allows residents to address discrimination claims, and the law can impact whether a business or event will consider coming to the city. Theres symbolic importance too, she said. Proponents of the ordinance began asking Parker if shed support their cause even before she got elected. And I said, Yes, when the time is right, said Parker. After she was elected for her final term in office, she decided, the time was right. Unlike many other cities, which added protections for gay and transgender individuals to existing equal rights ordinances, Houston had the opportunity to write the law from scratch, something Parker thought would prove an advantage when she introduced the bill in April 2014. Instead, the wording quickly drew criticism. What ultimately passed in city council in May with a vote of 11 to 6 was a modified version of that ordinance that dropped a section specifying that transgender individuals could use the restroom that aligned most closely with their gender identities. Still, the city council vote was a victory for Parker and supporters who cheered the decision. But the fight was far from over. A group of pastors began a petition to put the law on the ballot. After some back and forth from the city, the petition was rejected in August because, according to the city attorney, some 2,000 names had not been properly gathered. A day later, the pastors sued the city. In preparation for that lawsuit, an attorney with the city subpoenaed the sermons of pastors suspected to be talking politics from the pulpit, a violation of churches tax-exempt status. But when the broad scope of the subpoenas generated more controversy Senator Ted Cruz called it a grotesque abuse of power Parker ultimately withdrew them in October. By the time the state Supreme Court ruled in late July of the following year that the ordinance would either have to be repealed by the city council or put on the November ballot, the ordinance had generated a lot of heat. Some of it, Parker said, was personal. We are home to some of the largest mega-churches in America, she said, adding that as the first openly gay mayor of Houston, shes faced opposition from a really virulent group of homophobes throughout her tenure. Theyve been stirring that pot for a long time, she said. The equal rights ordinance was confirmation of their worst fears. They were like, Heres proof. We told you she had this secret gay agenda. But it also intersected with a national conversation. Marie D. De Jesus/Staff BEFORE HOUSTON'S city council voted on the ordinance, FOX news host Mike Huckabee called on his fans to show your support for your own Biblical beliefs and protest the legislation. Then, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that gay marriage was protected as a constitutional right in June 2015, Parker said Houstons equal rights ordinance suddenly became the focus of a nation of evangelicals fired up by the ruling. Even still, she thought it would pass in November even if it would be an uphill battle. We were caught off guard, said Parker of the state Supreme Courts ruling. But thats no excuse for losing it. The ordinance had support from the NAACP, AARP, the local League of United Latin American Citizens and other groups. Supporters envisioned the bill as a way for a whole range of people to have access to local recourse if they were discriminated against. They knew it would be a tough sell to older voters. We thought it wouldnt be about [just] the gay or transgender community, said Parker. We thought we would be able to have a civil conversation about all these other protections and that people would vote in their best interest. BY THE time Richard Carlbom of Minnesota-based political consultants United Strategies came to help a coalition of organizations with the HERO campaign, the election was just 10 weeks away. The strategist had worked on marriage equality issues in other states, including in the South. He knew the ordinance faced opposition but he also felt voters could be educated on its benefits. When people heard about the idea of the ordinance, they loved it, he said in an interview with the Urban Edge. But he and his fellow HERO supporters underestimated the appeal of the counter-narrative, which played on fears about men accessing womens bathrooms, despite the fact that the language about restroom access had been dropped from the ordinance. A television ad from opponents laid out the rhetorical stakes when it showed a faceless man open the door of a bathroom stall a young girl had just entered, ominous music playing in the background as words flashed across the screen about registered sex offenders having access to womens bathrooms. When you looked at the impact of the oppositions message, Carlbom said, it was pretty devastating. But opponents of the ordinance said they were just warning people of a real possibility. All we did is identify a very scary reality, it wasnt a scare tactic, Jared Woodfill, the anti-HERO campaign spokesman told the Houston Chronicle. If anything is scary about this ordinance, its the truth, said Woodfill, a lead organizer of the campaign against HERO. Woodfill did not respond to emails and calls for this article. THE OPPOSITION'S strategy worked. According to a poll of likely voters developed by Rice University professor Bob Stein for the University of Houston Hobby Center for Public Policys Survey Research Center, members of the most undecided group, African-American women, were likely to oppose the ordinance when treated with messaging that mentioned the ordinance would allow men who dress and identify as women to use a womans restrooms. But the poll, conducted about a month before the vote, also found that those same black women would move towards support for the ordinance when told that repealing it could have consequences, such as moving the 2017 Super Bowl out of Houston. Question wording here makes all the difference because of the context of the campaign, Stein said. The Kinder Institutes own survey, conducted in the spring of 2016 after the ordinance was defeated, shows strong support for an equal rights ordinance among black survey respondents living in Houston. Seventy-four percent of them said passing a local equal rights ordinance was very important. Another 12 percent said it was somewhat important. White respondents were less likely to think it was important, with only 52 percent saying it was very important and 20 percent saying it was somewhat important. About 77 percent of Hispanic respondents felt a local ordinance was very important. The vote itself was about a bathroom ordinance, said Klineberg, not an equal rights or anti-discrimination ordinance, and its a reminder of how much it matters how these propositions get framed in the political process. So even though the language protecting access to restrooms was dropped and legal experts agreed that no one who committed a crime in a bathroom would be able to use HERO as protection, opponents were still able to touch on peoples fears. DOES THAT mean another effort, with new messaging, might prove more successful for the ordinance? Perhaps. I dont think that vote is reflective of the open, welcome, tolerant nature of the city of Houston, said Parker. She said Turner, her successor, would have to work the politics of the issue should he decide to reintroduce the ordinance. What I hope he doesnt do, she said, is decide we need a non-discrimination ordinance that doesnt include the transgender community. Why would you pass an ordinance that leaves out a group that is currently targeted for discrimination more than any other? Leah Binkovitz (@leahbink), formerly of the Houston Chronicle, is now a staff writer for Rice University's Kinder Institute. This story first appeared in the institute's Urban Edge blog. Check out more Gray Matters. It has this secret gay agenda. Rollins Follow Rollins Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today Sixty days does not seem like a long time for the legislature to meet. Yet there were days when debates dragged on for hours on seemingly inconsequential issues and then days where the pace of voting was swift and sure. This year there were 24 filibusters compared to only 14 last year. In this short session, 446 bills were introduced; and 664 bills were introduced in 2015, for a total of 1110 bills. Of these, 210 bills were passed into law this year along with 243 bills from last year. With all the filibusters, only those bills with priority designations were heard in the last three or four weeks of the session. 107 bills were designated as priorities and eventually 78 of those priority bills were passed by the Unicameral. Eleven senators are term-limited out of office this year. Senators Bloomfield, Campbell, Coash, Cook, Gloor, Haar, Hadley, McCoy, Mello, Schilz and Sullivan have served their two-term limit. Five of these senators are chairpersons of a committee and one is the Speaker. They leave with a great deal of knowledge on issues and a passion to work hard for the citizens of this state. They will be missed. April 20 was the 60th and final day of this session. Vetoes made by the governor were taken up that day. Three appropriation bills had line item vetoes (the bills passed but only after the governor made selective cuts in these spending bills). The governor vetoed several bills, but LB 947, allowing immigrants with lawful presence in the United States to apply for professional licenses, received two hours of debate before senators overrode the gubernatorial veto with 31 ayes, 13 nays, and 5 present and not voting. The governor made closing statements to the Legislature. Senators indefinitely postponed (killed) all bills not enacted this session according to the rules, so those issues will need to be introduced again in the future to be acted upon. Other motions were made regarding directives to the Clerk of the Legislature for the final postings of the Legislative Journal -- and with that a final motion was made to adjourn sine die, which formally ended the session. The lights in the chamber were turned off, desks cleared, and senators headed home. The interim months of 2016 begin the work of researching potential legislation, working on interim studies and constituent issues. I would like to make the constituents of District 30 aware of opportunities available to youth and adults alike. The Unicameral Youth Legislature is an opportunity for high school students to attend a four-day camp, June 5-8. Held at the State Capitol, student senators will sponsor bills, conduct committee hearings, debate legislation and discover the unique process of the nations only unicameral. Senators staff take an active role in the camp and work as advisers to the student senators. More information can be found at: www.NebraskaLegislature.gov/uyl or call (402) 471-2788. For the adults in the district, the governor is always looking for good people to fill vacancies on various boards and commission. To see positions available, follow this link: www.governor.nebraska.gov/board-comm-req. Applications can be filled out online. Please continue to contact me at any time throughout the interim with any issues that concern you: rbaker@leg.ne.gov or 402-471-2620. Nostalgia aint what it used to be. Once upon a time, I considered longing for a long- lost past a relatively innocuous exercise. I dont really go for the iconic schmaltz of Norman Rockwell paintings, but I never thought that idealizing days of yore could be a dangerous activity. But that was before Donald J. Trump launched a presidential campaign on the promise of making America great again. On the surface, the real estate moguls pledge of renewing national greatness doesnt seem so bad. After all, like any politician, he seems to be simply appealing to national pride and ambition. Couldnt that just get our collective competitive juices flowing and produce more gross national excellence? Well, no, actually. Making a comeback or triumphing over ones hardships requires more than nostalgia. Sometimes it requires the ability to visualize literally what a better future would look like. In a brilliant 2014 essay on beauty and justice, Harvard art historian Sarah Lewis explores the power of images to propel people forward. She cites the example of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who decided to seek his freedom from slavery after spending too many Sundays feeling taunted by the gentle, unhindered movement of the sailboats on Chesapeake Bay. Douglass would later argue that those most capable of inspiring change poets, prophets, and reformers are those who can conjure images that capture the contrast between what is and what could be. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is," he said, and endeavor to remove the contradiction. By contrast, the image of the future Donald Trump is offering is not a reflection of what is, but rather of what may or may not have been. He hearkens back to a past in which Americans or at least some of them enjoyed unchallenged economic and cultural dominance. While it isnt particularly clear what era hes nostalgic for, Making America Great Again is less about achieving a shiny new vision as it is about restoring a gauzy old one. He is propelling us backwards. The late Russian-born novelist and playwright Svetlana Boym made a distinction between two types of nostalgia, reflective and restorative. While the former tends to be wistful and dreamy (think of Reagans Morning in America imagery), the latter, which lies at the core of many modern national and religious revival movements, is deadly serious. Restorative nostalgia has two essential plot lines, the first being the return to a hallowed past and the second being the conspiracies that explain why that past was lost. As such, these nostalgic movements come to be more about the search for scapegoats than they are about recapturing any sort of tradition. Theyre particularly attractive to groups who feel victimized by change in the modern world. Of course, Trumps politics of nostalgia certainly has its cast of villains, including Mexicans, Muslims, China, and Japan. His rhetoric of restoration is clearly more focused on dealing with enemies both within and outside our borders than it is on inspiring or building the intrinsic capacity of the people whose greatness he says he hopes to reclaim. Such aggrieved nostalgia may feel novel in a U.S. presidential race, particularly given the collective pride in our unwavering focus on the future. Yet it is all too common around the world. It underlies Islamist movements anger towards the West, Vladimir Putins project to restore Russia to its rightful place in the world, and the more virulent strains of Chinese nationalism. In places like the Balkans, a victimized sense of nostalgia is practically a birthright. Hence one of the paradoxes of the Trump phenomenon is that in seeking to Make America Great Again by invoking a litany of wrongs committed against us, he sure is making America more like the rest of the world. The most extreme form of restorative nationalist nostalgia could be seen in Adolf Hitlers Germany. While anti-Semitism had existed for centuries, Hitler employed what UCLA historian Saul Friedlander has called redemptive anti-Semitism, a national salvation myth that held that Germanys prominence could only be regained through the removal of Jews. Since Hitler blamed Jews not only for Germanys defeat in World War I but for the subsequent collapse of the monarchy, he argued that their expulsion which later led to genocide was necessary to make Germany great again. Im not implying that Trump intends to commit mass murder. But the rhetorical mechanism he employs is essentially the same. Far from being a quaint stroll down memory lane, the politics of nostalgia is a recipe for resentment, and potentially, revenge. Its also a perfect way to blame others for your lot in life. Gregory Rodriguez is the founder and publisher of Zocalo Public Square and the author of the Wanderlust column. This essay first appeared there. Check out more Gray Matters. It's like spending too many Sundays feeling taunted by the gentle, unhindered movement of the sailboats on Chesapeake Bay. Blood collection centers in Houston will be among the first in the nation to test donated blood for the Zika virus as part of a clinical trial of a new screening test. Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, the primary supplier of blood components to more than 170 hospital and health care facilities in 26 counties along the Texas Gulf Coast, will begin testing blood donations for the virus on May 23. Donors will be asked to sign a consent to have their blood tested. Those who do not consent will be deferred from donating. With no way of screening donations for Zika, blood collection centers throughout the U.S. implemented a deferral policy in February. They asked donors who travel to regions with active Zika outbreaks to refrain from donating for 28 days. The policy also asked women who have had sexual contact with a man who has had a Zika virus infection or has traveled to an affected area, not to donate blood for at least four weeks after their last sexual contact. Gulf Coast Regional will keep its deferral policy in place even after they begin testing donated blood. "The blood center is trying to be proactive regarding the Zika virus," Dr. Susan Rossmann, Gulf Coast Regional's chief medical officer, said. Blood collections at the Gulf Coast centers have dropped about 3 percent since the deferral policy was implemented in February, but that has not resulted in any blood shortages. Zika is primarily passed from person to person by mosquito bite, but public health officials have documented cases of sexual transmission as well. Researchers in Brazil also have documented cases of transmission through blood transfusions. So far, there have been no confirmed cases of Zika infection in the U.S. that were not acquired in other countries or through sexual contact with those infected abroad. Blood testing could provide an early warning system for local transmission, given that an estimated 80 percent of those infected with the virus will not have any symptoms. Rossmann said it was unlikely the center's testing would pick up many Zika infections unless the virus begins circulating locally. "We wouldn't expect to get huge numbers with our current deferrals," she said. "If the virus is spread locally by mosquitoeswhich it is not, but if we ever get to that pointtravel deferrals will not be sufficient to protect the blood supply. In that case, the test will be very helpful." If any blood tests positive for Zika, the center will pull the donation out of circulation and notify the donor. The donor then will be asked to participate in a follow-up study that will help determine the accuracy of the screening test. "We think it will work well, but we really don't know," Rossmann said. The test was developed by Roche Molecular Systems and is undergoing evaluation under an Investigational New Drug Application protocol approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The test is already being used to screen blood in Puerto Rico, which is in the midst of an active Zika outbreak and had to halt blood collections until the test was in place. Roche officials indicated in March that initial testing in the U.S. would focus on southern locations where the risk of Zika is greatest. A Roche spokesman said there were no other collection centers in Texas participating in the trial. Gulf Coast has participated in other clinical trials with Roche, and uses similar technology to screen donated blood for HIV, human papillomavirus, hepatitis C and West Nile Virus. Rossmann said Roche officials had reached out to Gulf Coast Regional asking them to participate in the trial. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 James Nielsen/Staff Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Show More Show Less Early voting begins Monday to fill the state representative seat vacated when Sylvester Turner became Houston's mayor at the beginning of the year. Democrats Jarvis D. Johnson, a former City Council member, and Rickey "Raykey" Tezino, an educator, will square off in the May 7 special election for House District 139. The controversial purchase of a former Conn's building by Houston Community College officials has led to a new clinical apprenticeship program for HCC students. Under a 10-year lease agreement signed by Houston Methodist on Thursday, up to 100 HCC students will be awarded apprenticeships at clinics across the city, including a new one that will open in the former Conn's building at HCC's West Loop campus. Methodist will rent the space at a reduced rate as part of the deal. "It's huge for us," HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado, who has insisted the controversial deal would pay off eventually, said Thursday. HCC bought the building for $8.5 million in January 2015. The price tag was $3.2 million higher than the original value assigned by the same appraiser just months before the purchase. The higher value reflected a planned five-year lease of the building to Tesla Motors that never materialized. As the months ticked by, no leases came together, and Trustee Dave Wilson last August filed a complaint with the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Wilson alleged, in part, that HCC officials got the second appraisal because the first didn't meet the owners' asking price. Investigators in the district attorney's office found no evidence of a crime. Maldonado said the college talked to multiple potential tenants over the past year but didn't sign leases because they didn't have anything to offer students like the apprenticeship program. HCC officials have said since they purchased the former Conn's store that - even though it won't be used by HCC for a decade - it was necessary to complete the West Loop campus, which officials envision over time will take on a more traditional college atmosphere. Officials originally intended to build new classrooms on the first floor of a new parking garage on the campus, but they now plan to build those classrooms in the Conn's building once they are needed. "This lease has both short-term and strategic importance for HCC," Maldonado said. "Having a tenant that would benefit students and be a value-add for learning was a priority for us." Under the lease agreement, Methodist will pay HCC $22 per square foot to rent the 25,000-square-foot building for the first five years. That price will increase to $23 per square foot the second five years. Methodist will pay for only 21,000-square feet of space, however, as HCC is discounting the rental price in exchange for the apprentice program. Wilson remained skeptical, pointing in part to the reduced rate Methodist will pay. The lease payments will fall short of the projections used to calculate the purchase price, Wilson said. By his calculations, HCC will make only $3.9 million renting the building over the next decade. As for the apprenticeship program, Wilson said he'll believe it when he sees it. Wilson, who is frequently the lone "no" vote on the administration's pitches to the board, drew criticism from his colleagues after filing his complaint. Zeph Capo, who was board chair when the college bought the Conn's building, said at the time that Wilson was interested only in "getting his face on TV." The agreement with Methodist is a "win-win," Adriana Tamez, HCC's current board chair, said. "The lease agreement represents another example of HCC's commitment to do its part to support and develop programs, as well as partnerships, with local businesses," Tamez said. Mayor Sylvester Turner, working to close a $160 million budget deficit, has proposed scrapping payments that scores of Houston neighborhoods served by private trash haulers receive to help offset the cost of their waste contracts. The idea when the program started in the 1970s was that residents should not have to pay property taxes for city trash services they were not receiving - particularly because they were already paying for waste pickup in their homeowner association dues. The city also came out ahead because the $6 monthly per-house subsidy was cheaper than the cost of the city serving each home itself, now estimated at $18 per home per month. In scraping together a balanced budget for the fiscal year that starts in July, however, Turner felt the program was expendable. In many cases, the subsidies go to residents who have chosen to pay for more extensive services than those the city provides, such as having the trash picked up more frequently than once a week, or having workers walk up a resident's driveway to retrieve the trash rather than the homeowner rolling a bin to the curb. Cutting these "sponsorship" payments to the 48,000 homes participating would save the city $3.5 million. "When I drilled down in every department and every line item and I saw that line item sticking out, my question was, 'Is this one that people can give up without hurting them and the core services, things that are essential to the city?' " Turner said. "I decided this was something the city at this particular point in time was not in a position to continue to sponsor." City Council will begin hearings on Turner's proposed budget Monday, leading up to a final vote that could come as early as May 25. In the past, mayors who sought to roll back the trash payments were rebuffed by council, and at least one neighborhood sued the city when its application to participate was denied. Councilman Dave Martin, whose District E contains 32 neighborhoods with sponsorship agreements, said he is concerned the move will wind up costing more if residents cancel their contracts and force the city to serve them. "They're going after the consumers for the money instead of making the proper budget cuts within the city departments," Martin said. "Cut the budget an additional $3.5 million and leave everything alone. I can find a $3 million budget reduction underneath the pillows in some of the departments." 'Taxes for nothing' Solid Waste Management Department leaders anticipate some neighborhoods will cancel their contracts but expect the change still will result in a net savings for the city. Trailwood Village board member Tricia Bagley repeated a common criticism among Kingwood residents, who feel the city forcibly annexed them in the 1990s to leech tax revenue out of an affluent area and provide few services in return. Without the trash subsidies, she said, her neighborhood will be "paying taxes for nothing." "I was shocked they were considering that. It's just a city thing that they tax us and then we don't see any results on it, and now they're not going to reimburse us on this?" Bagley said. "Some people will say, 'Oh well, rather than raise our assessment, let's just use the city.' And then some people may be up in arms because they're very accustomed to having backdoor trash pickup." At the $216 estimated cost of providing city waste services per home annually, Houston would need fewer than 16,000 homes to move from private waste contracts to city service to secure a net savings. That figure does not account for the cost of trash containers the city may need to purchase to begin serving a new neighborhood. "If they end up saying it's that big of a difference, that they will give up their contracts and will turn to the city, then yeah, OK, more than likely I'll remove it," Turner said. "I'm not trying to make their situation bad, I'm simply trying to balance a budget that's $160 million short, and I've asked people to engage in shared sacrifice." The mayor also suggested, wearing a slight grin, that reporters examine the subdivisions now receiving trash subsidies. The three City Council districts home to 83 percent of the city's sponsorship agreements, records show, also are the three districts with the highest median household incomes in the city: District G on the west side, District E in Kingwood and Clear Lake, and District C, which covers much of the western half of the Inner Loop. An extra $6 per month Martin acknowledged that he and many of his neighbors receiving private trash service in District E can cover a $6-per-month increase in their civic association dues. "If you're used to getting your trash picked up twice a week and you're used to backdoor service, most people are probably going to say, 'Keep my six bucks,' " Martin said. "They're mostly the people that have the means to pay an extra $6 a month." Yorkshire Civic Association president Jack Smart echoed that. Residents in his 157-home neighborhood at Memorial and Kirkwood pay $17.52 a month for trash service after the city reimbursement, he said, and likely accept paying $23.52 a month if the subsidy ends, too. Yorkshire residents get twice-weekly pickup from their back doors, Smart said, and have more flexibility on when and how heavy trash is picked up than the city provides. "Sylvester Turner is a pretty savvy guy, in my opinion. He may be counting on the fact that a lot of the wealthier subdivisions don't want to put up with the level of service the city provides," Smart said. "Most of the people here would rather continue with private pickup even if we have to pay an extra $6 a month." Asking private universities to spend more of their massive endowments for operating expenses - as some in Congress might be tempted to do - is shortsighted and could be "financially dangerous" to some of the nation's most prestigious colleges, Rice University President David Leebron said Monday. Congressional lawmakers in recent weeks have raised questions over why some of the nation's wealthiest colleges, including Rice, continue to increase tuition despite having billions of dollars set aside. Rice's endowment has grown rapidly, ballooning to more than $5.5 billion from $4.8 billion in only three years. Despite that, Rice officials last month announced they would raise tuition by more than $1,600 per year in the fall. The congressional inquiry is one example of the way U.S. lawmakers have sought to crack down on the increasing cost of college. In some states, legislators have considered dipping into colleges' investment funds. In Connecticut, for example, lawmakers have proposed taxing Yale's endowment, the second-largest in the nation. In Texas, lawmakers have turned their eyes mostly toward public universities, heavily scrutinizing recent tuition hikes and threatening to take away the schools' ability to set their own tuition prices. Leebron said pointing to endowments as a reason not to raise tuition highlights a misunderstanding of how universities operate. That Rice is raising tuition is "essentially an irrelevancy," he said in an interview. "Yes, we have $5.5 billion - we could spend it on any number of things tomorrow. That's not the question," Leebron said. "If people would like to see our education institutions run as badly as some of our government institutions, then these proposals make perfect sense. If, on the other hand, they'd like to see institutions run in a financially responsible way they need to be run in the way Rice's endowment is run." Boosting financial aid Rice spends about 4.5 to 5 percent of its endowment annually, which covers about 40 percent of the university's operating expenses, Leebron wrote in a letter to members of Congress. The Houston Chronicle on Monday obtained a copy of the letter. The fund allows students to attend Rice who otherwise couldn't afford the tuition. Roughly half of the money Rice officials spend from the school's rich endowment each year went to financial aid. Many of the nation's most prestigious private colleges also spend a good chunk of their endowments on financial aid programs, said Karin Johns, director of tax policy at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Most Ivy League schools have financial aid policies that cover costs for students whose families earn less than $65,000 a year, Johns said. At Rice, the bar for students to attend tuition-free is $80,000 of annual family income. "You can't accuse the colleges of not doing anything," Johns said. Rice's endowment has also kept the college financially sound during tough economic times, Leebron wrote. During the recession in 2008, for instance, Rice leaned heavily on the endowment, which shrank by some $1 billion. The amount that Rice has spent from the endowment has increased every year over the past decade, to $249 million last year from $174 million in 2006. The college has actually spent more from its endowment over the past four years than it has brought in through donations. The endowment has grown because of returns on the school's investments. In 2015, for example, Rice collected just $50 million in gifts but spent nearly $200 million more than that from the endowment to help run the school. Higher operating costs Rice officials are spending more from the endowment for the same reason they're raising tuition: Running the college gets more expensive every year, Leebron said. Faculty and staff expect pay increases, and improving the academic programs at the college costs a lot ofmoney, he said. Rice has added programs like a freshmen writing program and a summer school session for students from low-income families to help prepare them for life at Rice. Both are new, expensive programs, Leebron said. Rice's fiscal year operating expenses have increased by nearly 80 percent during the past decade, from $350 million in 2005 to $626 million in 2015. There are limited options for Congress to control how colleges use their endowments, but one would be to rework tax incentives to encourage donors to give schools money that can be used immediately on things like financial aid. U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Conroe Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and is questioning endowments, said in a statement that the information gathered through the inquiry "will guide our efforts to reform our broken tax code and help ensure our policy decisions serve the best interests of students and families." Leebron warned that much could be at stake. America is a global leader in higher education, but China, India and other countries are investing heavily in their universities to try and catch up. "In so many aspects of American life, we have mortgaged the future for the benefit of the present," Leebron wrote to federal lawmakers. "We must not do that to our institutions of higher education." Conservative political activist Charles Koch suggested in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that Democrat Hillary Clinton would be a better president than the Republican contenders, although he stopped short of saying he would support the former secretary of state if she ends up representing her party in a general election. The billionaire, who with brother David has been active in Republican Party politics, criticized the tone of the GOP primary campaign, citing it as the reason the brothers have not contributed to any campaigns, including efforts to derail Republican front-runner Donald Trump. In the interview with White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, which aired on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," Charles Koch said Bill Clinton had done a better job than George W. Bush in controlling government growth while president. "So is it possible another Clinton could be better than another Republican?" Karl asked. "It's possible," Koch responded. "You couldn't see yourself supporting Hillary Clinton, could you?" Karl pressed. Koch responded: "Well, I - that - her - we would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way. But on some of the Republican candidates we would - before we could support them - we'd have to believe their actions will be quite different than the rhetoric we've heard so far." Koch said he has not and probably will not back any Republican in the waning weeks of the primary campaign because of the divisive rhetoric. "We said, 'Here are the issues: You've got to be like Ronald Reagan and compete on making the country better rather than tearing down your opponents,' " he said. "And right off the bat, they didn't do it. More of these personal attacks and pitting one person against the other, that's the message you're sending the country. That's the way you should - you're role models, and you're terrible role models." He slammed Trump's call for a ban on Muslims entering the country as "antithetical to our approach, but what was worse was this 'We'll have them all register' (notion). That's reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I mean that's monstrous, as I said at the time." Koch was referring to comments Trump made, then backed away from, in the fall suggesting that he was open to the idea of a database to track Muslims in the United States. He also had harsh criticism for Sen. Ted Cruz's threat to "carpet-bomb" the Islamic State militant group. "Well, that's got to be hyperbole, but I mean that a candidate, whether they believe it or not, would think that appeals to the American people - this is frightening." Koch said he and his brother, who in the past have spent millions backing conservative Republican candidates and causes, have stayed out of the primary fight. He suggested that he was moving away from that kind of heavy spending in national politics because the return on his investments "has been disappointing. Asked whether he would sit out the presidential election, Koch said: "Well, we'll see. I mean, when we get a nominee, then we'll explore that. And we don't want arm-waving. We want to know specifics." HANNOVER, Germany - President Barack Obama said Sunday that he was confident the United States and the European Union would succeed in negotiating a new trans-Atlantic trade deal by the end of the year, saying the benefits of such an agreement were "indisputable." Obama said images of plants moving overseas and jobs lost created a narrative about trade agreements that "drives, understandably, a lot of suspicion" in places like the United States and Germany. But, he added, well-designed trade deals can have greater benefits. "It is indisputable that it has made our economy stronger," he said. "It has made sure that our businesses are the most competitive in the world." Obama's comments came as he stood next to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany during a news conference in Hannover as they prepared to preside over the opening here of the world's largest industrial trade fair. The president's visit to Germany was intended to bolster negotiators seeking to wrap up a trans-Atlantic trade agreement between the United States and the EU, an accord that Merkel supports but that is highly unpopular in her country. More Information Obama dismisses N. Korean proposal A day after North Korea's foreign minister said his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea, President Barack Obama said Sunday that Washington isn't taking the proposal seriously and Pyongyang would "have to do better than that." North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong also defended his country's right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that Pyongyang won't be cowed by international sanctions. And for those waiting for the North's regime to collapse, he had this to say: Don't hold your breath. Obama dismissed North Korea's latest overture at a news conference Sunday in Hannover, Germany. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities," Obama said. "What we've said consistently ... is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then we'll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. " Associated Press Bloomberg News See More Collapse Merkel is among Obama's closest and most trusted counterparts, and the president is eager to support her during difficult political times. Merkel has struggled in recent months to confront a surge of migrants and a weakening economy. When it comes to the U.S., Germans often veer between admiration and scorn. Rarely was that more clear than in the contrasting ways that two groups prepared to greet Obama here this weekend. Germany's export-driven businesses showed off their wares in eager anticipation of the trade fair's opening on Sunday and the first visit to this city by a sitting U.S. president. Obama is set to help open the fair. Obama kindled goodwill with an unusually glowing appraisal of Merkel, telling Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild, that he was proud to call her a friend. In particular, he praised her "real political and moral leadership" in welcoming more than 1 million migrants last year. None of that impressed the tens of thousands of protesters who gathered in Hannover's Opera Square on Saturday. Their goal, as proclaimed in hundreds of banners and chants, was to topple the trade deal, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Germany depends on exports for its wealth and on the United States for its security. Yet many Germans do not see the free trade agreement as a good thing. The Texas Democratic Party filed a complaint Monday with the Federal Election Commission alleging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign broke the law by soliciting donations for a supportive super PAC. The complaint alleges that prominent Cruz campaign supporter Keet Lewis suggested attendees at a campaign fundraiser contribute the maximum amount to the campaign and then start donating to the super PAC, "a blatant violation" of rules prohibiting coordination between a campaign a super PAC. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller's office withheld public records that suggest he obtained a medical procedure known as "The Jesus Shot" on a taxpayer-funded trip to Oklahoma, the Houston Chronicle has learned. In response to a February public records request, Miller's office had said that no email messages about the trip existed, even though it had more than a dozen of them, a spokeswoman acknowledged Friday. The emails disprove Miller's initial account of the trip and show that he tried to set up work meetings for that day only after scheduling an unspecified "appointment" in Kingfisher - a small town in north central Oklahoma that is the only place where it is possible to obtain "The Jesus Shot," which is billed as able to take away all pain for life. Friday's disclosure marked the second time Miller's office has withheld public records about the Oklahoma trip. Last November, it did not include any information about the trip in its response to a request for documents on all of Miller's travel. A subsequent request specifically about the Oklahoma trip led the office to produce budget records, but they did not include those released Friday. Texas Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Lucy Nashed called both omissions inadvertent, noting the agency only has two public records staffers and received nearly 1,000 requests for documents last year. "TDA thoroughly reviews each public information request that is received and works to provide a timely and complete response of any records we maintain," Nashed said in a statement. "Transparency is our highest priority, and we are constantly reviewing our processes to ensure we continue to provide public information as required by law and expected by the taxpayers we serve." The state lawmaker charged with overseeing the department's budget called the withheld emails "very troubling." "Inadvertent? At this point, what should we believe?" said Rep. Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, who serves on the House Government Transparency & Operation Committee in addition to chairing the appropriations subcommittee that deals with agriculture issues. "The Open Records Act exists for a reason. We are the stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, and we should all, as elected officials, be accountable, transparent and honest in dealing with an open government." Government watchdog Tom "Smitty" Smith, the longtime director of Public Citizen Texas, said it is common for politicians trying to hide information to not fully disclose records and then, if caught, claim it was an accident. Smith called for a separate investigation into the violations of the Texas Public Information Act. "There should be discipline for someone," Smith said. "We don't yet know who." Nashed declined to say whether the agency would discipline anyone in its records division. Miller already has agreed to reimburse the agriculture department for the trip. The Texas Department of Public Safety also has been asked by a liberal advocacy group to investigate the February 2015 trip. On Friday, a department spokesman said the group's complaint was "still under review." The emails shed new light on the trip, which the Chronicle revealed last month. Miller's office had said at the time of the trip that he had been invited to tour the Oklahoma National Stockyards and meet with Oklahoma lawmakers, as well as the state's top agriculture official. Interviews with the stockyards, lawmakers and the agriculture official's office showed that Miller had not been invited, had not toured the stockyards, had not met the agriculture official and had only an impromptu conversation with lawmakers. Instead, two sources said that Miller had told them that he had undergone a medical procedure on the trip. Miller acknowledged that he was a patient of the Kingfisher doctor and convicted felon who administers "The Jesus Shot," but he would not say whether he had gotten the injection on that trip. The newly released correspondence show that Miller's aides emailed the office of Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture Jim Reese to request a meeting for the day of the trip, saying he "just wanted to meet Reese and get acquainted." When Reese's office suggested they meet at 1 p.m., one Miller aide wrote to another: "No, 1pm can't work. ... He has a appt in Kingfisher at 1." On Friday, Nashed said she "did not have any information" about the appointment. Eventually, Reese's office agreed to a morning meeting. It never took place, however. Miller never showed up. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller used a combination of taxpayer money and campaign funds to fly to Mississippi last year to compete in a rodeo for prize money, according to newly obtained records. Miller spent nearly $2,000 in state and campaign cash on the three-day trip to Jackson, Miss., in February 2015, in the middle of last year's legislative session, records show. He used an agriculture department credit card for the airplane flights and a campaign account card for a hotel room and a rental car. Weeks later, he wrote a check from his campaign account to reimburse the state for the flights, according to department records. During the trip, Miller spent two days competing in calf-roping events at the horse show at the Dixie National Rodeo, according to the Mississippi Quarter Horse Association. He won $880. Miller did not have any scheduled meetings or events other than the horse show, according to his calendar. "It was a personal trip so he could compete in a rodeo," Texas Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said. State law prohibits officeholders from using state money or campaign funds for travel that is primarily personal in nature. Miller said the trip did not violate the law. The agriculture commissioner acknowledged that he decided to go to Mississippi so he could compete in the horse show but said that after making that plan, he tried to set up a work meeting. He said he paid for the airplane flights with state money because he thought the meeting would happen but acknowledged it never actually was scheduled. Controversial spending It was still a justifiable campaign expense, Miller said, because while at the horse show he spoke with the Mississippi agriculture commissioner and several rodeo participants and vendors who had donated to his campaign. "This trip was totally legitimate," Miller said. "The state was paid back because the meeting didn't happen. And, according to Ethics Commission rules, meeting with donors and advisers is a campaign expense, and I did that." Miller emphasized that he used his own money to transport his horses to the rodeo, as well as for the horse-show entry fee. Ethics experts said the trip would be problematic if Miller benefited personally from state money or campaign donations. Ross Fischer, a former Texas Ethics Commission chairman, pointed to a 1996 commission ruling that politicians cannot use even campaign money "if the primary purpose of the trip is personal." Buck Wood, a former state elections official, said "the fact that he ran into some people at the rodeo does not change the fact that the purpose of the trip was to compete in a rodeo." The revelations about the trip to Mississippi come two weeks after the Houston Chronicle reported that Miller may have used state money to fly to Oklahoma for an injection called "The Jesus Shot." For that trip, which took place in early February 2015 - two weeks before the Dixie National Rodeo - Miller said he had been invited to meet with several Oklahoma officials. Records and interviews showed he only talked briefly with some Oklahoma lawmakers, however, and that he had planned the trip around an "appointment" in Kingfisher, Okla., a small town home to a felon who invented "The Jesus Shot" and claims that it takes away pain for life. Miller has acknowledged getting "The Jesus Shot," in part to help with pain owing to years on the rodeo circuit. In response to questions about that trip, Miller repaid the state. It is unclear if he used campaign funds or his own money. The travel-related issues follow other questions about Miller's spending. The first-term Republican, a former lobbyist and representative, campaigned as a small-government conservative but has drawn criticism from lawmakers for imposing steep fee increases on farmers, ranchers and grocery stores. The Chronicle has reported that Miller handed out more bonuses to aides in his first nine months in office than his predecessor gave in his first two and a half years. Miller also hired nine friends and campaign workers to new high-paying jobs without giving the public a chance to apply, as required by law, among other issues. 'I pretty much stayed there' The Republican lawmaker in charge of overseeing the Texas Department of Agriculture's budget expressed concern at the latest revelations. "You can look at the individual instances of behavior over the last 12 months and think that each one of those isn't a very good thing," said Rep. Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that deals with agriculture issues. "Collectively, we're figuring out, it's a really bad thing." Gonzales said he was worried that Miller's headline-making actions would distract from the work of promoting Texas agriculture. "We need our producers and our customers to continue to have confidence in the Texas Department of Agriculture," he said. "That's the big picture." Miller said he decided to compete in the horse show before taking office in January 2015. The meeting that he tried to set up, he said, was with the Catfish Institute. The vice president of the Jackson-based nonprofit, which promotes American farm-raised catfish, said he was not aware of any discussions with Miller about a meeting. The trip took place five weeks after Miller took office. He left Austin at 1 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 16, 2015, a couple of hours after appearing at an appropriations subcommittee meeting to request more money for his agency, records show. The horse show began the next morning. On that first day, Miller placed first in the amateur division for breakaway roping and second in traditional calf roping, according to the Mississippi Quarter Horse Association. The next day, he notched another win in the junior division of traditional roping and placed in other events. Miller left for Texas at noon the following day. The commissioner said he did not have any meetings outside of the rodeo. "I pretty much stayed there," he said. "That's my people, right there." Incomplete records The agriculture commissioner said he talked with a lot of people but would only identify one: Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith, whom he called his mentor. Repeated telephone calls, emails and letters to Hyde-Smith's office over the past two weeks were not returned. Overall, the flights originally paid for by the state cost $1,021. Miller cut checks to reimburse the state on March 11 and March 31, 2015, records show. The records, like the records about the Oklahoma trip, were not among those provided in response to a request last year for documents on all of Miller's travel. Only a subsequent request specifically about the Jackson trip led his office to produce the records. Miller's campaign-finance disclosure forms also do not record all of the Mississippi-related spending. The forms include $396 for a hotel room and $397 for a rental car but do not mention the campaign's payment to the state for the flights. Todd Smith, the top consultant for Miller's campaign, said the omission was inadvertent. AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton allowed a top aide to remain on the payroll for more than a month after he resigned to work for a Ted Cruz super PAC, with an option to keep getting paid into June so he could keep his state health insurance while he battled cancer, officials confirmed Friday. Amid growing questions over whether the deal was legal, officials on Friday said Charles "Chip" Roy, Paxton's former first assistant attorney general, officially would be removed from the state payroll effective April 7 - just over a week ago - when all but an hour and a half of his accrued vacation and leave time ran out. Texas laws prohibit state agencies from using taxpayer funds to pay employees who are not working or to "finance or otherwise support the candidacy of a person" for a state or federal office. Roy resigned March 9 and signed on the next day as executive director of Trusted Leadership PAC, a super PAC supporting Cruz's GOP presidential campaign. Paxton aides at first said Roy still was on the payroll more than a month after resigning because he was on "emergency leave" through June 10, an arrangement that could have earned him as much as $48,680 in salary. Paxton spokeswoman Cynthia Meyer said Roy's case was allowed under another section of state law allowing emergency leave to be approved by an agency head if the worker "has shown good cause for taking emergency leave" for a reason other than family death. On Friday, Roy in a statement said that he had an arrangement with the agency to stay on the payroll to use his remaining vacation and leave time, with an option to stay on leave into June, so he could continue his state health coverage: "The terms of my resignation included from the (Office of Attorney General) an option for leave beyond my earned vacation and holiday time. The primary benefit to me would have been health care coverage in light of being in the five-year window after Stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma. My plan has been to go off payroll at OAG using only my earned vacation and holiday time unless it were absolutely necessary to stay on pending the uncertainty of medical tests and subsequent employment. Yesterday I was blessed to receive an all-clear from my oncologist and my complete departure from the OAG is effective at the time of the expiration of only earned vacation and holiday time." Agency officials said Paxton would have had to have approved the deal, which first was reported by the Dallas Morning News. Meyer said Roy's termination date was changed Friday to be effective April 7. State records show he was paid a full month's salary of $16,220 on April 1. Officials offered few details on continued payments to Allison Castle, Paxton's former communications director who left the agency March 10. Like Roy, she remains on the state payroll and was paid a full month's salary of $12,825 on April 1, according to state records. Meyer said Castle was "on leave" but did not elaborate. Castle, a former press secretary to former Gov. Rick Perry, could not be reached for comment. Friday's move - in effect, backdating Roy's exit from the state payroll - did little to silence critics of the embattled Paxton, who already is facing state criminal charges and a fraud lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over his involvement in investment sales while he was a member of the Texas House. "This latest situation is clearly illegal or insensitive or ignorant, and the question is, why did Ken Paxton let it happen?" said Tom "Smitty" Smith, Texas director of Public Citizen, a government and ethics watchdog group. "He's supposed to be enforcing the law, but he's clearly bending every rule to benefit him and his friends. Paxton needs to quit." Other good-government advocacy groups were similarly adamant, questioning whether leaving Roy on the payroll constituted a de facto campaign contribution to Cruz' campaign by Paxton. "This is beyond cronyism. It's criminalism," said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit that has filed ethics complaints against elected officials, including Perry, an action that resulted in his indictment on abuse-of-office charges. Those charges were dismissed earlier this year. Roy worked as Cruz's chief of staff and as a senior adviser before joining the attorney general's office in early 2015 as Paxton's top aide. Roy also was the ghost writer behind Perry's book,"Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington." McDonald, Smith and Buck Wood, a longtime Austin ethics lawyer, said paying former employees for accrued leave time is allowed, but paying them beyond that is not allowed. And because Roy went to work for a campaign immediately after leaving Paxton's office, he never should have been kept on the payroll or put on "emergency leave" since there clearly was no emergency, they said. "If they wanted to keep him available for a transition, they should have put him on an independent contract," Wood said. "If they wanted to pay him for his leave, they should have done that, especially since he was going to work for a campaign. If they wanted to let him keep his state health insurance, he needed to be working, which he clearly wasn't. "He was left on the payroll and that should never have happened," Wood continued. "You can't leave someone on the payroll who's not working. That's fraud." On Friday, amid the controversy, Paxton publicly endorsed Cruz, whose support as a tea party-champion U.S. senator was crucial to Paxton winning the GOP primary for attorney general in 2014. AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton may have some history on his side, but as of this week the numbers appear to be against him. Paxton, who is trying to become the latest in a long line of Texas officials to beat prominent allegations, unwittingly entered treacherous waters Monday when the federal Securities and Exchange Commission announced it had sued him for allegedly committing securities fraud, the same charge he is facing in a state district court. Over the past two years, the SEC has won 95.9 percent of the cases not related to insider trading that it has taken to a federal courtroom, according to a new study from Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance. "If we were in Vegas making book, the odds would be that the attorney general is going to lose," said Joseph Grundfest, a senior faculty member at the center and a former SEC commissioner. Part of the reason for those odds is that the SEC does not make formal accusations until giving defendants a chance to argue in writing and in person why a case should not be filed - a process Paxton almost certainly exhausted before the commission moved forward, experts said. The attorney general's challenge is heightened by the fact that two of his co-defendants already have agreed to large financial settlements. Paxton's lawyers, who repeatedly have declared their client's innocence, said Tuesday they were confident about their chances with the SEC. One of them, Bill Mateja, a Dallas-based former federal prosecutor with 20 years of experience, disputed the accuracy and significance of the 95.9 percent figure. "The percentages don't matter to us," Mateja said. "What matters to us is the facts. We look forward to presenting those facts, to presenting our case in court and to, at the end of the day, being vindicated." Unlike the pending indictment in the state criminal case, which is set to go before an appellate court next month, the federal civil lawsuit could not result in jail time for Paxton. It could, however, end with the cash-strapped attorney general being forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it could be a precursor to federal criminal charges. Both cases allege that before becoming attorney general, Paxton recruited investors for a Collin County technology startup without disclosing to them that he was not investing in the company himself and, in fact, was being paid to promote it. Criminal charges from feds? The company, Servergy, Inc., founded in 2009, claimed to have created a cost-efficient computer server. Paxton was approached in 2011 by the firm's then-CEO, William Mapp, who offered him a 10 percent commission for recruiting investors, according to the federal complaint filed Monday in an East Texas federal court. Quickly, the complaint alleges, Paxton, then a state lawmaker, persuaded five friends to invest a total of $840,000 in the company. The next week, he allegedly received a stock certificate for 100,000 shares in the company; shares of the firm later were sold for $2 apiece. The criminal indictment, which includes two counts of first-degree securities fraud - each carrying a possible punishment of five to 99 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 - was handed up by a Collin County grand jury in July, sparking months of scrutiny for the first-term Republican. Although it has taken place more quietly, the SEC investigation has been going on for at least that long. Its existence first was reported by the Associated Press in early last July. Paul Coggins, a former federal prosecutor who now leads the white-collar criminal defense practice for the Dallas-based Locke Lord law firm, said the SEC process dictates that the agency long ago had to notify Paxton of its intent to file a lawsuit and offer him an opportunity to submit a brief and to argue in person that nothing should be filed. The federal complaint filed Monday quotes Paxton defending himself, statements that may have been taken from a brief or from testimony. During the SEC's investigative process, two of Paxton's co-defendants agreed to settle their cases by paying a combined $266,000, according to the federal government. Those settlements, by Servergy and former firm official Caleb White, were signed in mid-March, court records show. White, who was accused of the same crime as Paxton but received one-fifth of the shares in the company, paid the SEC $66,000, suggesting Paxton could be on the hook for at least that much. That could be a problem for Paxton, who already is spending heavily on a five-person defense team and faces legal barriers to raising money through donations. In cases that were not settled, a 2015 analysis by the Wall Street Journal found, the SEC won 69 percent of cases litigated in federal courts from October 2010 through March 2015. Grundfest, the Stanford professor, said the SEC's win rate has improved recently. He also pointed out that the newspaper's analysis included insider trading cases, which are much harder for the commission to win. In insider trading cases, the agency loses about half the time. In cases unrelated to insider trading, the SEC almost always wins, the professor said. 'Further resolve to fight' A separate complication is that the federal civil case could take place at the same time as the state criminal case, increasing the pressure - and costs - for Paxton. Some evidence uncovered in the federal probe could make its way into the state case because the SEC can share information with federal and state prosecutors, according to Lawrence Finder, a former federal prosecutor. Another prominent Texas lawyer, Tony Buzbee, who represented former Gov. Rick Perry in his recently dismissed abuse-of-power case, played down the impact of both cases taking place simultaneously. "I would expect that the federal filing will give him further resolve to fight the state charges," Buzbee said in an email. "I certainly don't see that there are any facts or resources in the federal civil proceeding that the team of fine lawyers from both sides won't already be able to access, so the federal filing, which can only seek monetary penalties, is a distraction, albeit a bothersome one." Perry beat the charges against him related to a funding veto threat, joining a list of victorious former officials that includes then-state Treasurer Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, and then-Attorney General Jim Mattox, a Democrat. All of those cases took place in the state court system, however, which generally is seen as being more kind to Texas officials. Paxton's criminal case will take place in the state system, but the SEC lawsuit will be heard in federal court. Let's fix it Regarding "High-water rescues abound as area struggles to recover" (Page A1, Wednesday), there have been tons of opinions and conversation out there already. Here is my take on it: Houston floods. Period. End of Story. Everyone involved must draw a line in the sand. Begin working together to address the causes of these problems, create a plan and begin! There's no room or time for blame. Let's try honesty and integrity. We are the fourth largest city in the country. We have the oil and gas industry. We have a world famous medical center. We have NASA. It isn't rocket science folks. Houston floods. Period. End of Story. It seems to me that in the year 1900 Galveston was hit with the worst natural disaster in history to date, and the engineers realized that it could happen again. They made a plan, they started, continued moving forward and completed the raising of the island. And how about this - they did it without the aid of computers, models, imaging and whatever else can be used for this today. How about one "clearinghouse" of sorts for the city that enables any citizen to call or write-in with ideas on how to make this problem disappear? And how to deal with it when and if it happens again. It is time to stop throwing blame, work together, provide opportunities for those with ideas and solutions and create a plan! And fix this problem. Period. End of Story. Debbie Gersh, Houston Patient care Regarding "Nursing Homes," letter (Page A13, Thursday), Texas state law requires that all nurse aides working in licensed nursing facilities be certified! All personnel in nursing facilities are required to undergo a criminal background check as well as a "pass" on the Department of Aging and Disability Services employee misconduct registry. The five-star rating is only one measure of a nursing home's quality of care. Some nursing facilities work with fewer income streams than others, yet still provide a high standard of care. Granted, some facilities are prettier than others; however, pretty decor does not take care of the residents. Are there bad apples? Of course, as there are in every industry, business or profession. However, in quality nursing homes marginal caregivers are weeded out. The majority work very hard to provide comfort and quality care for our older adults. Even though Registered Nurses in long-term care are more scarce, well-trained and quality Licensed Vocational Nurses do a stellar job supervising resident care. Cindy Jackson, Houston Drainage tax Regarding "Fierce storm spawns floods, forces daring rescues" (Page A1, Tuesday), here we go again, another flooding event less than a year from the last one over Memorial Day 2015. This brings to mind the following question: What happened to all the drainage tax money supposed to be spent on helping mitigate some of the drainage issues Houston has and continues to experience? It would be helpful to the residents of Houston and the surrounding areas, if local governments would provide in the most transparent manner possible a full audited accounting of what happened to millions raised since the tax's inception. Mark Abendshein, Houston The following are excerpts of reports generated by the Texas County Sheriffs Department: A deputy was dispatched to the Mineral Springs access on the Big Piney River at about 11:50 p.m. April 24 regarding a report of a man who was lost while floating. The man was found about a mile from the access and was taken back to his truck. A man called at about 4 p.m. April 24 to report people trespassing at a river crossing on Stillman Drive. An investigating officer made contact with the people and informed them they needed to leave. Multiple officers assisted Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers before noon on April 24 with a turkey checkpoint at Highways 17 and 32. A man called at about 1:30 p.m. April 23 to report a dog chained up at a residence on Stone Ridge Road at Mountain Grove that had no food, water or shelter. An investigating officer observed that the dog had food, water and shelter. A 69-year-old woman came to the TCSD office on April 23 to report that a decorative ceramic bench valued at $200 had been stolen from a plot at the Friendship Cemetery on Friendship Drive at Raymondville. The woman said she had no idea who might have swiped the bench. A deputy was dispatched at about 6:40 p.m. April 20 to assisted Cabool police with a search for a runaway child on Highway 181. Officers were unable to locate the child. A 39-year-old Elk Creek man came to the TCSD office on April 22 to report that his father had swiped his camper trailer. An investigating officer went to the fathers property, and was unable to make contact with him but also didnt observe the camper at the location. The officer later the same day spoke to the father, and he stated he didnt have the trailer and that he thought another man had repossessed it from his son. A Solo woman called April 13 to report seven cows had been stolen from her Big Creek Road property. An investigating officer located them near the spot they were missing from. On April 20 at about 8:10 p.m., a deputy responded to a report of young children left unattended at a residence on Highway 32 at Licking. Following an investigation, the officer determined a 25-year-old woman had left home to get something to eat and left her three kids two age 4 and one age 3 at home alone. The woman told the officer she had asked a man and a woman to watch the children for her, and both had declined so she left anyway. The officer reported that living conditions in the house were also very unsanitary, and there were objects like knives and hammers within easy reach of the children. The kids were taken into custody by state division of family services representatives. Texas County Jail admissions April 18 Steven L. McCarter house for Dent County Dylan S. Blankenship house for Dent County Larry D. Breeding house for Dent County April 19 Donny L. Crisel Michigan attorney general hold Nathan D. Eberhardt burglary Casey J. Martin possession of controlled substance Kristie D. Gorman fraudulently obtaining controlled substance April 20 Nathan L. Smith DWI, possession of marijuana April 21 Angela D. Wofford 3-day commitment Michael L. Roberts stealing Cody L. Worley failure to appear stealing Ronald J. Settles house for Dent County Gayle C. Anderson house for Dent County Melissa L. Young house for Dent County April 22 Kurtis E. Austin Mississippi County hold Ken L. Polm statutory sodomy, child molestation April 23 Robert Lee Jr. parole violation Director of Agriculture Richard Fordyce announced Monday the state will not establish a new beef checkoff. About 75 percent opposed it. The news comes after the director approved a petition to conduct a referendum of Missouri cattle producers, at the request of the Missouri Beef Industry Council and pursuant to state statute, to establish a $1 per head state beef checkoff assessment on Dec. 23, 2015. On April 4, ballots were mailed to the 8,480 Missouri beef producers who registered during the registration period. Of those, 6,568 valid ballots were returned to the Missouri Department of Agriculture postmarked no later than April 15. The tally: 1,663 producers (25.33 percent) voted for the checkoff and 4,903 producers (74.67 percent) voted against it. Department staff counted the ballots and Williams Keepers, LLC, a CPA firm in Columbia, reviewed the tabulation of ballots for third-party verification. Cattle producers were required to register to vote and were able to do so online or by visiting their county USDA-FSA office. Statement from ag organizations: We are disappointed the proposed Missouri $1 beef checkoff was not approved, because it provided additional resources for Missouri cattle producers to voluntarily work together to improve their industry. Concerns with declining beef prices and the misinformation about beef disseminated by radical animal rights groups will not go away, and we will continue to look for ways to promote Missouri beef and help educate consumers. We appreciate the Missouri Department of Agriculture continuing to conduct referendums in a transparent and professional manner. Missouri Cattlemens Association Missouri Farm Bureau Federation Missouri Dairy Association Missouri Dairy Industry Alliance Authorities say a Houston man faces several charges after threatening an officer. Nicholas M. Jones, 24, of 18100 Highway B at Houston, was issued citations for third-degree assault, failure to obey a law enforcement officer and third-degree assault of a law officer after an incident at his residence at about 7:30 p.m. April 21. A deputy was dispatched to the home after a woman called to report Jones had pulled her hair and punched her. The woman told the officer he had left on foot in the direction of Raymondville. The officer located Jones and placed him under arrest and handcuffed him. On the way to the Texas County Jail, Jones allegedly became angry after being told he couldnt make a call from his cell phone, and told the officer he was going to blow his head off with a shotgun and would get out of the restraints and make the deputy wreck the patrol vehicle. He also reportedly attempted to head-butt the deputy twice. Jones was ultimately booked into jail. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Who would have thought that an Internet of Things would be so important for the Human Resources department? And yet here we are. 10 billion devices give us 24x7 access to anybody and anything. Changing the way we live and work while being only in first gear. While humans are still in the center of all these machines, its time for HR to up the ante and prepare the workforce for these new waves of technology, says Patrick Willer in his article Internet of Things Or People? An interesting read! As we approach the halfway point of 2016, there are some great trends we are witnessing. Reinventing performance reviews, improving employee engagement, focusing more on people, an organizations most important asset, the changing mode of recruitment platform and the list goes on. Lisa Milanis article Modern HR Trends 2016 takes you through it. HR departments are generating more data than ever before but at the same time they often struggle to turn their data into valuable insights. Bernard Marr in his article, Key People Analytics: How to turn HR data into insights identifies some of the most important analytics managers can use to better understand the people-related side of their business. Read his article to know his list. Is HR planning in startups easy? What can be the possible HR errors in a startup? According to Robert Siegel, Professor at Stanford GSB and VC at XSeed Capital, startups ignore HR at their peril. The single largest i... Equal Pay Day - A day of awareness about the pay gap that exists between men and women, Equal Pay Day symbolizes how far into the next year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous calendar year. According to a recent CareerBuilder.com survey of 223 HR managers, men are nearly three times as like as women to earn six-figure salaries and nearly twice as likely to earn $50,000 or more. These are staggering numbers, especially when you take into account that women at these same companies were almost twice as likely to report earning less than $35,000. Based on the slow rate at which the gender wage gap is closing each year, the Institute for Womens Policy Research has projected that women wont receive equal pay until 2059. According to recently published survey results, equal pay in the workplace is the gender issue both men and women most want to change in the next five years, and both genders are optimistic that it will become a reality by 2020. Considering that if full gender equality is attained, $4.3 trillion could also be added to the U.S. economy in 2025 (according to an April 2016 McKinsey Global Institute report), it is not a surprise that the White House recently announced a proposal that would require companies with 100 employees or more to report how much they pay their employees broken down by race, gender and ethnicity. In the past, HR leaders have been woefully underserved in their ability to get in depth insights in... bombardier.com As Bombardier pushes for a federal bailout, a new hope has emerged in the form of Iranian cash, newly freed from international economic sanctions. Iranian media reported over the weekend that the Quebec-based civil transport company had signed a memorandum of understanding to be part of a new startup airline in Iran's Qeshm Free Trade Zone. Bloomberg News reported the airline is only in talks about joining Iranian and Chinese investors in a startup airline called Fly Qeshm. Advertisement Bombardier poured cold water on the reports Monday, saying they are inaccurate. But the company confirmed it is in talks to sell aircraft in Iran. "We build, market and sell aircraft and trains," Marianella de la Barrera told Reuters. She said Bombardier was advancing in discussions with Iranian officials, and that Bombardier execs are visiting more often, but didnt give specifics about the orders the company is eyeing. Bombardier estimates the country will need some 300 new planes over the next decade, as it upgrades its fleets following years of international sanctions, Bloomberg reported. Advertisement Bombardiers signature CSeries jet has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and problematic test flights. The airline has failed to win over many new buyers as it faces stiff competition from Boeing and Airbus, the worlds two largest civilian aircraft makers. The company announced 1,000 layoffs earlier this year. The Quebec government set up a $1-billion bailout program for Bombardier last year. Politicians in the province are pushing the federal government to pony up another $1 billion, though no final decision has been announced. Canada dropped economic sanctions against Iran earlier this year, as part of an agreement meant to keep the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has scored a ringing endorsement from party members despite a disappointing election result six months ago. The party announced Monday that May received 93.6 per cent support in a recent leadership review. The Green Party constitution stipulates that a review must be held within six months of a federal vote and a leader needs at least 60 per cent support to stay on. Advertisement May, who was easily re-elected last October in the British Columbia riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, has served as Green leader since 2006. She made history in 2011 when she became the first Green to be elected to the House of Commons. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May speaks to supporters on election night at the Victoria Conference Centre in Victoria, B.C., on October 19, 2015. (Photo: Chad Hipolito/CP) "I'm humbled to receive a strong mandate from our engaged membership to continue in my role as Leader," May said in a press release. Advertisement "I will continue to pursue critical issues that so important to our members: from climate action to restoring legitimacy in the environmental review process, from ending subsidies for fossil fuels to becoming a world leader in the 21st century, renewable energy economy." May added that the Green Party will continue to be "on the front lines of driving meaningful change." The review was conducted online and was open to all party members more than 20,000 for 30 days. The only Green who won last fall May was the lone Green candidate elected last fall, despite stronger fundraising than ever before. Her party's share of the popular vote fell to 3.4 per cent from 3.9 per cent four years earlier. Financial reports reveal that May spent almost $230,000 to win her riding, more than any other federal party leader. May told reporters after the election that her party was hurt by strategic voting and the cancellation of an English-language debate hosted by the broadcast consortium. Though May participated in the first election debate hosted by Maclean's and a French-language debate, she was excluded from three other events. Advertisement Critical of Mulcair's debate strategy In an interview with The Huffington Post Canada near the end of the campaign, May conceded that not having the chance to participate in a nationally televised English language debate would likely cost her votes. She noted that Greens captured 6.8 per cent of the popular vote in 2008 because she was able to make her case during debates. May said at the time that NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair let former prime minister Stephen Harper "off the hook" by refusing to participate in any debate that did not include the Conservative leader. She called it a "huge blow" for Canadians who were making up their minds and a "tragic mistake." Earlier this month, 52 per cent of NDP delegates at that party's convention voted in favour of a leadership race. With earlier files, and a file from The Canadian Press ALSO ON HUFFPOST: In Photos: Canada Election 2015 See Gallery Also on HuffPost U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a clear statement when he brought his adorable granddaughter to sign the Paris climate agreement on Earth Day. The message? We need to protect our childrens futures. Kerry signed the agreement on behalf of the U.S. last week at the UN headquarters in New York City. According to The Guardian, representatives from more than 170 countries also signed the agreement, which aims to slow the rise of greenhouse gases and global warming. Advertisement Kerrys granddaughter, Isabelle Dobbs-Higginson, sat on his lap as he signed the historic document. Naturally, she stole the assemblys attention with her undeniable cuteness. Following the signing, Kerry also planted a kiss on the wee two-year-old before taking his leave from the stage, resulting in another aw-worthy moment. Advertisement Dobbs-Higginson is the only child of the U.S. Secretary of States eldest daughter Alexandra Kerry and husband Julian Dobbs-Higginson. According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, she was also one of 197 children at the Paris climate summit to represent the nations who signed the agreement. We are in a race against time, Ki-moon said during the opening ceremony. I urge all countries to join the agreement at the national level. Today we are signing a new covenant for the future. He later added: Paris will shape the lives of all future generations in a profound way it is their future that is at stake. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also signed the Paris document last week on behalf of Canada. In regards to the agreement, he said: Climate change will test our intelligence, our passion and our will. But we are equal to that challenge. Also on HuffPost Countries Facing Greatest Climate Change Risks See Gallery Alexandra Thompson via Getty Images a row of Canadian flags outside Canada House in Trafalgar Square, London When the newly minted Liberal government was sworn in at Rideau Hall nearly six months ago, attention was focused primarily on the caliber and gender equity make up of the new cabinet. Interestingly enough, little attention was paid to what would become a significant aspect of the new government's agenda -- its commitment to innovation. More cynical commentators in Ottawa dismissed the newly minted Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister of Science portfolios as a simple rebrand of pre-existing cabinet posts. In some ways, that was an understandable reaction. After all the new Liberal government was widely criticized by opposition parties for being heavy on style and light on substance. Advertisement Many said Minister Bains was simply taking over many of the roles and responsibilities that had long resided at the former Department of Industry. Observers and pundits surmised that by taking the decades old Industry Minister portfolio, and renaming it Innovation, Science and Economic Development, the government was simply trying to broadcast an image of a new economy that was not based on more pipelines and factories. The announcement of a new Minister of Science was likewise dismissed for similar reasons. Following Budget 2016, it is clear that when it comes to the innovation agenda, the government's intentions are substantive. If Act One of the new government has been all about infrastructure investments, Act Two is clearly going to be about the innovation agenda. Ministers Bains, Duncan and Chagger will be spearheading the country's first comprehensive innovation strategy. The recent Liberal budget earmarked close to $2 billion for college and university infrastructure as well as an additional $800 million focused on various tech clusters. While this funding is laudable, it does not really signify a truly different approach to innovation in this country. After all, previous governments have dedicated funds towards innovation and have seen great success in this area. Agriculture's work on GMOs or Health Canada's work on mapping the human genome are prime examples. That work will continue to happen under current government. However, the challenge in the past has always been that the various funding and program buckets have been siloed across government. The Liberals are changing that. This new one-window approach will make it easier for organizations to navigate the system and access the information and funding they need. The government believes that this approach can help expand the pre-existing innovation sector in Canada and subsequently grow jobs and investment. Advertisement This innovation strategy will also play a major role in Canada's multilateral and bilateral relations. Until now, Canada has been one of only a few G7 countries without a specific innovation strategy in place. Many other western countries not only have innovation strategies, but are regularly updating them on an annual basis. By coordinating these efforts, the government hopes that it will be better positioned to take on serious global issues impacting Canada and our allies in areas like climate change, the arctic and cancer research. Further, it could afford us an opportunity to invest in areas where we would be true pioneers, like quantum computing, as opposed to competing in areas that are already dominated by foreign countries. The government believes that their innovation agenda goes beyond simply increasing funding for specific initiatives. They want to be focused on structural change towards simplification and clarity on the government of Canada's innovation agenda. Liberals believe that this approach is similar to the one they took with the Canada Child Benefit. In that particular case they attempted to take several pre-existing child benefit programs and created a singular, simpler, and in their opinion, more effective benefit. They intend to take that same approach with their innovation strategy. This is their plan to creatively destruct in order to construct something that works better for Canadian entrepreneurs and businesses. It is too early to tell whether or not the Prime Minister will be successful in this innovation experiment. It is not without its challenges. As has been widely reported, each ministerial mandate letter includes a requirement that the minister be committed to evidence-based policy. History shows that political considerations, particularly in areas such as climate change, often take primacy over scientific evidence. At some point over the next four years, it is very likely that the government's commitment to evidence-based decision making and the innovation agenda will be tested. Investments made in this area may not produce the results that the government hopes for. It has been said that the art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence. In many ways this new government approach to science and research was inevitable. That said, even if this new experiment is unsuccessful, it has the potential to bring Canada to the forefront of an increasingly competitive global sector -- one that is critical to our country's continued growth. Advertisement Many people will actually spend more time researching their next smartphone than their legal representative. To some extent, this is understandable. Although information relating to consumer goods and services is readily available online, it is much more difficult to find reliable information relating to professional services. This is due to the fact that a client typically will not have the legal training necessary to determine whether their lawyer is a skilled practitioner. As a result, they tend to assess their lawyer's legal abilities based on the outcome of their case. For example, if the outcome is positive, a client will tend to believe that his or her lawyer was a skilled practitioner. Advertisement On the other hand, if the outcome is negative, the client will tend to believe that his or her lawyer was incompetent. Unfortunately, a successful outcome may occur in spite of the lawyer's skill level, rather than because of it. Similarly, a negative outcome may occur due to the weakness of the underlying case, rather than the lawyer's abilities. Because it is so difficult for non-lawyers to assess a lawyer's professional abilities, traditional consumer ratings are unreliable. So what's the best strategy for finding a skilled lawyer? Strategies That Don't Work Before sharing my recommended strategy for finding a lawyer, I would like to briefly mention some strategies that don't work (at least not very well): "This Lawyer has the Biggest Ad" This is typically not true. In fact, in many cases, the opposite is true. The reason is simple -- successful lawyers obtain most of their business through word-of-mouth referrals. As a result, they generally don't need to purchase consumer advertising. Advertisement That said, in certain practice areas (for example, plaintiff-side personal injury law), lawyers must advertise extensively. Those lawyers market their professional services directly to individuals who typically don't use lawyers. Consumer advertising is sometimes the only way to reach this type of client. In summary, the presence (or absence) of extensive consumer advertising does not indicate competence one way or the other. "This Lawyer Was Quoted In The Media" You cannot rely on the fact that a lawyer has been quoted in the media to ensure that you have chosen a skilled lawyer. The reality is that the media is often no better at assessing a lawyer's skills than the average consumer. As a result, lawyers who have poor reputations within the legal community are frequently quoted in the media. This may demonstrate that they are excellent marketers but it does not necessarily prove that they are skilled lawyers. "This Lawyer Has A High Rating On Yelp (Or Some Other Consumer Rating Site)" As mentioned above, websites that rate lawyers based on consumer feedback are inherently unreliable. This is because it is too difficult for consumers to accurately assess the skill level of their lawyer, even after the case is finished. Advertisement "My Friend Recommended This Lawyer" Unless your friend is also a lawyer working in the same area of practice, you may not wish to rely on his or her recommendation. Even lawyers themselves sometimes have trouble identifying skilled lawyers practicing in a different area of law or in a different jurisdiction. "A Lawyer Referral Service Recommended This Lawyer" Most lawyer referral services are based on paid participation. When a referral service recommends a lawyer for a specific type of case, this does not mean that he or she is best lawyer in that field of law. It simply means that the lawyer has paid to participate and that their name was at the top of the roster when you called. Many referral services also require their lawyers to offer a free consultation as a condition of participation. Since most experienced lawyers do not need to give away their time for free, these referral services tend to be used by less experienced lawyers who are still trying to develop their practices. The above comments apply equally to privately-run lawyer referral services and those operated by Law Societies and State Bars. The Insider's Strategy So what is the best way to find a skilled lawyer? The most reliable way to determine if a lawyer is the best in his or her field is to seek the opinion of one or more lawyers who also practice in the same field. This is actually much easier than it sounds. Advertisement There are several legitimate peer-ranked directories that will only list lawyers who have been recognized by their colleagues as being the best in their field. In Canada, one of the most established peer-ranked directories is the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory. However, there are other legitimate legal directories that also list lawyers based on peer recognition, including Who's Who Legal and Best Lawyers. Although Martindale Hubbell will include any lawyer in its directory, it also provides lawyer ratings based on peer recognition. It is more common for U.S. lawyers to be ranked in Martindale Hubbell, although many Canadian lawyers have also participated in the peer review process in order to be rated in Martindale Hubbell. Of course, being listed in one of the above peer-ranked directories is not conclusive proof of a particular lawyer's legal expertise. Similarly, the absence of a particular lawyer's name from one or more of these directories does not necessarily mean that he or she lacks the required skills. However, if a lawyer appears in one (preferably more than one) of these above peer-ranked directories, it at least demonstrates that lawyers who work in the same area of practice consider him or her to be a top practitioner. While no strategy is foolproof, by referring to these peer-ranked directories, consumers can increase their chances of finding a lawyer who will represent them in a competent and skillful manner. castillodominici via Getty Images The first time I let organized religion know exactly how I felt about it was when I was baptized. Sure, I was only a couple months old, but, not to be indelicate, I shat on the altar. My mother still has the photos in an old album somewhere. It was the ultimate in foreshadowing, punctuating my eventual disdain for religion and its place in the world. Unholy shit, if you will. I was raised Catholic, which for me meant being baptized, receiving first communion, experiencing the mental torture of confession and the strange, cult-like ceremony known as confirmation. Catholicism demands loyalty, and receiving these so-called sacraments are supposed to cement your faith. For me, it became the lubrication down a slippery slope known as atheism. This slippery slope was a welcomed one, resulting in a belief system that includes innate human goodness and rationalism. Advertisement I'm cut from the Christopher Hitchens cloth of non-belief, meaning not only do I not believe in god, but the very idea that one might exist honestly repulses me. I would prefer there was no omnipotent being spying on me, gleefully plotting punishments for arbitrary sins like swearing, or inexplicably not ridding the world of disease and atrocities. This fantastical notion of an all-knowing creator is made worse by its mortal representatives here on Earth. My former sect of Christianity is one of the worst culprits of unadulterated evil the world has ever known, the Catholic fingerprints having been found on everything from genocide to pedophilia. It is within this context that I find myself traversing an entirely new kind of dilemma; how difficult will it be for my partner and I to raise two children who will be taught that religions are merely myths and not the salvation they are promoted as being? Will my son get in trouble at school for spilling the beans to his classmates that god probably doesn't exist, shattering the moral identities of little Johnny and Suzie? I want people to not have a problem with my children not believing in god, and that's where I expect to have the most problems. In our house, Santa Claus will be more real than Jesus, as the truth bomb of Santa being a lie will be framed as a right of passage in childhood, while Jesus will be explained as the very first fictional zombie. But all kidding aside, there is still a lot of prejudice against the non-believer. Being godless is still widely seen as lacking a moral compass. I've experienced first-hand discrimination for being an atheist, and while I pull no punches criticizing organized religions, unless you are an extremist or an individual trying to muscle your beliefs down my throat, I really don't have a problem if you believe in god. In turn, I want people to not have a problem with my children not believing in god, and that's where I expect to have the most problems. In Canada, believing in god is a prerequisite for becoming a Scout or attending certain publicly funded schools, meaning if a Catholic high school is rated the best in Toronto, administrators will insist my child has a parent who is Catholic. In other words, my son won't be allowed to attend, even if that Catholic school is rated better than the pubic school around the corner. One thing I am looking forward to is raising children who never have to experience the phenomenon known as Jesus Fear -- the ingrained anxiety of the consequences of sin, especially as it pertains to the supposed afterlife. Advertisement Even after absolving myself from eternal hellfire by telling an old man in a wooden closet all my worst offences, I still walked away riddled with anxiety. This was partly due to the experience itself, and partly because in the back of my mind I always wondered if I had left anything out, and if Jesus was judging me and planning my soul's barbecue when I died. If I ever found out an adult made my child go through any of these psychologically damaging experiences, my response, ironically, would be biblical. Even worse, like the lyrics from an old church hymn, maybe He was going to "call my name." It took years after becoming a non-believer to rid myself of Jesus Fear, which crystallizes the damaging impact religion can have on its followers. If I ever found out an adult made my child go through any of these psychologically damaging experiences, my response, ironically, would be biblical. Finally, there's my extended family to consider. My son, Caspar, is named after one of my favourite human beings, my uncle. My uncle has been more of a father to me than my own dad, and ever since my father passed away two years ago, he has been there for me even more. He's also steadfastly Christian. Advertisement In a way, my uncle provides me with the reminder that atheism should not be a synonym for asshole, meaning I do not have to feel inclined to antagonize believers by mocking their beliefs. I mean, I feel fine writing pieces like this one, but I don't have to ruin Christmas by scoffing at the baby Jesus in the nativity scene under the tree. People keep telling me I need to allow my kids to make their own decisions about religion. I disagree. I find that kind of equivalency to be as false as the prophets who represent the superstitions that stop people from thinking about science, or human rights, or rationalism. And while I know people like my uncle are out there -- people who believe in god but are still intelligent and decent -- my children, if they are called to a "higher purpose," should be invited by god him/herself, rather than have me present god as a viable option. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Chris Ryan via Getty Images Female office worker holding papers while colleagues meet in background Now that the end of the school year is just about here, students are heading online in droves to hunt for jobs and summer internships. In Canada, there are more Google searches for summer jobs in April than any other time of year, and globally, LinkedIn sees more students active on the platform than any other time of the year. For those of you that haven't yet found a role, there's no need to panic. Here are my five top tips to help those looking to jump start their career. Advertisement 1. Nurture your network: Don't leave it until after graduation to start growing your professional network; start connecting with family, friends and contacts from internships and other work experiences now. As 80 per cent of job openings are never advertised, tapping into your network can help increase your odds of finding your dream opportunity. 2. Search for relevant positions with LinkedIn Student Jobs: Know what you're looking for, but not how to find it? LinkedIn's Student Jobs tool connects you with student internships and jobs for graduates on LinkedIn, and allows students to filter by industry, location, company and more. 3. Complete your profile: Hone your profile, making sure to avoid generic buzzwords to help you stand out from the crowd. The more complete it is, the more appealing it will be to others, so make sure you fill out each section to boost your chances of being 'found' by recruiters and potential employers. Remember, a great profile doesn't just state what you've done; it should show who you are. Start with a strong opening summary statement, then complete the profile sections designed just for students, such as courses (for anything related to your desired industry), volunteer experience and causes (to help round you out), projects, languages, certifications, organizations and more. Advertisement 4. A picture tells a thousand words: LinkedIn isn't Facebook. Upload a high-quality photo (your profile will be 14 times more likely to be viewed) of you alone, professionally dressed. You don't need a professional photographer to take a professional headshot; your smartphone can do the trick. LinkedIn has created a guide on taking the perfect work selfie. Consider uploading PDFs, photos or documents to your profile to create an online portfolio that showcases your best projects. 5. Connect with your university alumni: Reach out to alumni who are already working in your dream job or field, and use their career paths to help you map your own. Become a member of your university's alumni group on LinkedIn; engage productively and professionally in group discussions by commenting on an article someone has posted or starting a discussion of your own. Introduce yourself and be upfront about your goals. Often, you'll be surprised by how willing people are to give you the inside scoop on the graduate job market. Bonus tip: Want to really stand out? Publishing a post on LinkedIn is a great way to demonstrate how you can communicate ideas and opinions. Share your thoughts on issues or trends in your field or share a personal anecdote (suitable for a professional audience!). A short but well-articulated post can help show potential employers who you are and how you think. Taking the time to do some online research, strengthen your profile and create (and maintain) a robust network doesn't require a significant time investment and can pay dividends for your career in the long term. While as a student or recent graduate you might not have a wealth of relevant professional experience, cultivating a strong online brand which showcases your passion and where you want to go in your career can help you make a lasting impression on recruiters and prospective employers. Advertisement Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Amy Anthony/AP Brown University senior Maahika Srinivasan, center, of New Delhi, India, stands with senior Jeanette Sternberg Lamb, right, of Asheville, N.C., Wednesday, March 11, 2015, on the campus in Providence, R.I., where they organized a march to protest how the college handled recent sexual assault allegations. (AP Photo/Amy Anthony) In a few short months, many young Canadians will be starting university or college. They will be excitedly pouring over glossy school brochures and booking their campus tours. In preparation, they will probably have lots of questions. Things like where to find the quietest study spots, where to buy the best latte and what kind of meal plan to get. Though these are valuable questions for first time students, given recent events, there's one question that should be immediately asked by each and every incoming post-secondary student: do you have a stand-alone sexual assault and harassment policy? If so, can I read it? Advertisement This is a question that depressingly many schools will have difficulty answering. Despite it being 2016, many universities and colleges in Canada do not have an official, stand-alone policy to address incidents of sexual violence on their campuses. Many schools simply slot their sexual assault and harassment policies into a broad student code of conduct.Out of 100 Canadian post-secondary institutions, only 12 have stand-alone policies. These numbers are simply unacceptable. Sexual violence and harassment on campuses have reached an epidemic level. It is a real and pressing issue for both female and male students, and post-secondary institutions have a duty to take action and ensure that their students are safe. North American research suggests that 15 to 25 percent of university aged women will experience a form of sexual assault in their academic career. At Canadian universities, four out of five female undergraduate students surveyed reported having been the victims of dating violence and, of that number, 29 percent reported experiencing sexual assault. Advertisement These stats are alarming, but we don't need stats to tell us that we have reached a crisis point. All we need to do is turn on the news or read the paper. In the past several months alone, there has been a steady stream of distressing stories about instances of sexual violence and harassment on Canadian campuses. At Brock University, it was recently revealed that a faculty member had allegedly sexually harassed one of his students. Last month at the University of British Columbia, a student was allegedly attacked and sexually assaulted while walking through campus. In February, a University of Victoria student was arrested after four victims came forward saying they had been sexually assaulted. Several weeks ago, police arrested a man in connection with a series of sexual assault allegations at McMaster University. Advertisement Cases like these have highlighted the severity of the problem of sexual violence and harassment on Canadian campuses. They have also exposed the truth that many campuses are woefully unequipped. Many schools lack the basic policies, protocols and tools to prevent and adequately address sexual violence and harassment, as well as properly support victims. In fact, many schools adopt a policy of 'silence', forcing victims of traumatic sexual assault and harassment to keep their mouths shut. Brock University came under fire after it was revealed that the school had told the victim not to speak about an internal investigation that had determined her professor had sexually harassed her. Students at the University of Victoria have alleged that their school is encouraging a "culture of silence" when it comes to sexual assault victims speaking out. The University of Victoria is one of the campuses that does not currently have a stand-alone policy to deal with sexual assault. Assault victims at Brandon University have alleged they were required to sign an agreement stipulating that they could not speak about their assault to anyone except for counsellors. The consequences of failing to abide by this agreement allegedly involve expulsion. Advertisement Several weeks ago, Brandon University stated that they would do away with these silencing agreements. This is a good first step. However, Brandon University has continued to come under fire after they did not produce minutes or meeting agendas for the university's sexual violence task force that allegedly convened last fall. They have also been accused of plagiarizing parts of their task force report on sexual violence. There are some post-secondary institutions that have taken positive steps to improve upon, or in some cases implement, stand-alone sexual assault and harassment policies. However, the fact remains that most post-secondary institutions have more robust policies to deal with plagiarism than they have to deal with sexual assault and violence. It is time to take a stand against sexual violence and harassment on Canadian campuses. No more excuses -- every post-secondary institution from coast-to-coast should have a strong stand-alone sexual violence and harassment policy. Alexandralaw1977 via Getty Images CARNE ASADA I don't know what it is about the warmer weather but it just makes me want to have taco parties all the time! I think there's something about the corn tortillas and the lime...makes me think of sunny days on vacation. Advertisement The awesome thing about this recipe is that it can be used all year round. I absolutely LOVE slow cookers. They are so easy and cut out so many steps in the cooking process, yet produce the most flavorful dishes and perfectly tender meat. They're great in the summer because unlike heating up the oven, they won't leave you sweating in your apartment. In the winter, they're perfect for stews, soups and other comfort food dishes, to really allow all of the flavors to simmer and set in. There really is nothing better than coming home to a house smelling like someone's been slaving over the stove all day, especially when you've been out having a good time! Another bonus, because of the low and slow (heat and cook time) cooking method, more nutrients are retained. Lower temperatures preserve the more delicate nutrients and keeping the cooking liquid or water in the dish also prevents the loss of nutrients through evaporation or by dumping the cooking liquid after as you would with steaming or boiling. Ok, enough about my obsession with slow cookers, let's get to the good stuff. This recipes was inspired by our trip to South America last year. As our wedding is fast approaching (just 3 months away!! I can't believe it!) I find myself reminiscing about this amazing trip, where we got engaged Carne asada is everywhere there and I couldn't get enough of it. I was determined to find a recipe to recreate the delicious blend of flavors. It took a bit of trial and error but I think I finally perfected it. Advertisement This recipe is perfect for a quick weeknight meal (let it simmer away, ready for you after a long day at work) or for a dinner party with friends. I like to set out a bunch of different salsas and toppings to make it a fun "make-your-own" event. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do! I'd love to see how you enjoy yours and what kinds of toppings you come up with! Share your creations with me on Facebook or Instagram and tag Lindsay Jang,RD or @lindsayjangrd with the hasttag #inthekitchenwithLJ. Enjoy! Slow Cooker Carne Asada Tacos Serves 4 Ingredients - 2 lbs flank steak Rub - 1 tsp chili powder - 1/2 tsp cumin - 1/4 tsp onion powder - 1/4 tsp garlic powder - pinch (1/8 tsp) cayenne pepper - 1/2 tsp coarse salt - 1/4 tsp freshly-cracked black pepper Paste - 1/2 medium yellow onion - 3 cloves garlic, minced - 1/2 jalapeno, seeded (keep seeds if you want a little extra spice!) - 1 packed cup cilantro - 1 Tbsp olive oil To cook - 1/2 medium yellow onion - 2 Roma tomatoes - Juice of 1 lime - 1 red bell pepper, diced To Serve - Corn Tortillas - Optional Toppings: salsa, guacamole, pickled or fresh vegetables, hot sauce or other desired toppings Directions 1. In a medium bowl, combine all rub ingredients. Stir with a fork to combine well. Add steak and rub both sides, pressing the mixture into the meat. If you have time, marinate overnight in the fridge, not necessary if pressed for time. 2. In a small food processor, add all paste ingredients and pulse until a thick paste is formed. It's ok if there are still chunks of the ingredients visible. Rub both sides of the steak with this paste and place meat in the slow cooker. Advertisement 3. Top with remaining onion, tomatoes, lime juice and bell pepper. Cook for 4-6 hours on high or 8 hours on low. Suggest serving with corn tortillas, salsa, guacamole, pickled vegetables or other desired toppings. Enjoy! Need help with weekly meal prep and planing? Check out my 3-2-1 Method Program for all the tools you need for successful meal prep. For more recipes and kitchen inspiration, check out www.lindsayjang.com or find Lindsay on Instagram here or Facebook. nechaev-kon via Getty Images Macro photo of Mosquito on Brown Background Earlier this month, as I travelled through the West African nation of Liberia, I considered what it would take to permanently defeat the malaria epidemic, one of the world's deadliest diseases. Malaria is a tricky opponent: nearly half of the world's population is at risk, and it's spread by the unassuming but ubiquitous mosquito. Malaria causes fever and death if left untreated, and kills approximately half a million people each year. In Africa, it's the leading cause of death for children under five. Despite these grim figures, there is a lot to celebrate when it comes to malaria prevention. According to the World Health Organization, new cases of malaria around the world have decreased by 37% in the past 15 years and death from malaria has decreased by 65% among young children. Advertisement Sainata from Burkina Faso sits under her mosquito net. (Photo: Plan International/Nyani Quarmyne) On World Malaria Day, it's worth exploring how we can build on these successes. This year, the World Health Organization is calling on the global community to "end malaria for good" by lowering the global malaria burden over the next 15 years, and reducing malaria death rates by at least 90%. We still have a long way to go, but the end of the malaria epidemic may finally be in sight, and could even be achieved within our lifetime. Mosquitoes, the most common vessels for malaria, are tough to spot, and even tougher to eliminate, so preventive measures like bed nets remain one of the most effective means of avoiding malaria. However, bed nets can only be effective when they make their way into the homes of people who understand how and why to use them. Community health workers are the key to effective bed net distribution and usage, and as progress over the past 15 years demonstrates, their contributions are making a vital difference. Health workers are the catalysts of Plan International Canada's programs and a huge factor in the success of our malaria prevention programs in countries like Liberia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and many more. I've seen firsthand the immense skill of health workers as they visit homes and communities in rural West Africa. They show families how to set up the nets in their homes, and they engage the community in discussions about how to prevent and treat the disease, building trust and support along the way. They know that their work can mean the difference between life and death for the people they're speaking with on a day-to-day basis. Advertisement A mother in Mali erects a net above her bed. (Photo: Plan International) When they visit communities to distribute bed nets, community health workers are provided with training on how to use and distribute bed nets. It's then up to them to translate those instructions into the languages, stories or cultural touch points that will make the most sense to local community members and to ensure the goals of the bed net distribution are met. In Guinea, for example, community health workers translate health information into dozens of local languages. They also spend time explaining the need for nets and motivating people with stories. Sometimes health workers refer to prominent locals who use mosquito nets, inspiring others to do the same. During one of my visits to Liberia, I asked a community health worker how she manages to convince people in her community to use nets. She told me that during her regular house-to-house visits she tells a story about a well-known person in the community who got malaria, and then had to walk more than five kilometers to a clinic just to get anti-malaria medication. She asked them, "Imagine if you get sick like that? Would you want walk all that distance?" These are big questions in regions of the world where people don't have access to health clinics nearby. A girl in Togo carries bed nets provided by Plan International. (Photo: Plan International) In Canada, we tend to take our transportation and healthcare systems for granted. In West Africa, Plan International's partners mobilize tens of thousands of people to distribute mosquito nets by foot and even by canoes in communities not accessible by roads. Community health workers carry bales of nets on their heads and walk several kilometers to distribute them. They may also transport the nets by bicycle, by donkey, and other methods to make sure that the bed nets get to where they need to go. Fundamentally, their job is to go door-to-door and build relationships with their fellow community members, because it's not enough to simply hand out nets. Advertisement Over the years, Plan International has worked with local partners and community health workers to distribute more than 36 million bed nets -- life-saving nets that protect 55 million people. Plan International Canada Celebrated Ambassador Rick Mercer with students from Macville Public School, one of this year's Spread the Net Student Challenge winners. (Photo: Plan International Canada) Participants in Plan International Canada's annual Spread the Net Student Challenge have been an enthusiastic part of this success. With encouragement from co-founder Rick Mercer, youth from more than 750 schools across Canada have raised nearly $1.5 million for malaria prevention over the past nine years, funding enough nets to protect 9.6 million people from malaria. This World Malaria Day, let's celebrate our successes both domestically and globally, but also recognize what we stand to achieve. Let's use the momentum of our recent accomplishments to motivate us as we move into what could very well be the final years of the malaria epidemic. We'll go door to door, village to village and country to country to rid the world of this deadly disease. Together, we'll end the malaria epidemic by 2030. Advertisement Adam Graham is a Senior Program Manager with Plan International Canada and a community health advocate. Imagine having the set of the original Star Trek series as your own private playground as an eight- or nine-year-old. Chris Doohan, son of the late James Doohan -- better known as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, chief engineer on the Starship Enterprise -- doesn't have to imagine it. He lived it back in the 1960s.w Advertisement Chris was in Toronto for the introduction of a new series of Canada Post stamps marking the 50th anniversary of the pioneering sci-fi series -- and honouring crew members with Canadian connections, including his dad. Vancouver-born James Doohan is joined by Quebec-born William Shatner as part of the stamp series. "My father would often bring my brother and I along with him to the set when the show was shooting," Chris recalled, between bites of a margherita pizza at Toronto's trendy Capocaccia Cafe. "He would park us in the shuttle craft and tell us to stay put." Of course "staying put" is a difficult assignment for seven year-old twin boys...and one day they couldn't resist leaving the confines of the shuttle...and going where no child had gone before. As it happened, the day they chose coincided with the shooting of "The Trouble With Tribbles", one of the series' stranger -- and enduringly popular -- episodes. Tribbles, for those unfamiliar with the species, were small, spherical and cute -- and could reproduce at a prodigious rate. Not an ideal species to have on board a spacecraft with a limited supply of food and oxygen. Advertisement Chris and his brother, Montgomery, crept around the set, keeping away from the active shooting, until they came to three tall cabinets with doors just out of reach. "We were curious to know what was INSIDE," Chris recalls. "So my brother got on my shoulders and slid the cabinet open. Instantly, more than 200 tribbles came tumbling out, nearly burying us. Not only did it scare us, but we knew we would be in big trouble if Dad -- or anyone else -- found out. So we rushed back to the shuttle. Five minutes later Dad appeared... and praised us for being so well-behaved!" Thirty years later Chris mustered up the courage to tell his dad the real story. "And he got mad at me," Chris said with a bemused shake of the head. "It was like it had just happened yesterday!" Vancouver-born James Doohan is joined by Quebec-born William Shatner as part of the stamp series. I asked Chris Doohan if he ever saw any evidence of Shatner's self-proclaimed prowess as a lady's man. Advertisement "Funny you should mention that. My dad loved to tell the story of how Shatner was incessantly flirting with a member of the production crew. After days and weeks of this, she finally turned to him and said, 'Bill, give it up. If I was to pick anyone, it would be Jim,' pointing to my dad." James Doohan was more than just an actor and a Star Trek crew member -- he was a real-life war hero and was also central to shaping elements of the series itself. In the Second World War he was a pilot and took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy (and was hit by six rounds). In the early stages of Star Trek's development, it was Doohan who suggested that the engineer character be Scottish (in part because he reasoned that Scots were good engineers; in part because he knew he could carry off a good Scottish brogue). He also is credited with helping to develop fictional Klingon and Vulcan phrases. I asked Chris if I could conduct the rest of the interview in Klingon -- for our Klingon readers. He responded with three Klingon words that he assured me were not fit for a family publication. While tens of thousands of individuals (including my own spouse) say they were inspired by his father to go into engineering, Chris admits his teen dream was to be a rock star. After achieving modest success with a band called "Mudflaps" (and acting in several films and follow-on projects as part of the Star Trek franchise), he has happily settled into a career as a registered vascular technician. Advertisement He says he felt no particular pressure to follow in his father's footsteps, nor any of the angst exhibited by some children of celebrities. He says he benefitted from his stardom in terms of meeting people like Leonard Nimoy -- his favourite character, also featured as part of the stamp series. "And I also get to do things like visit Toronto, a city I haven't set foot in since I was two, more than 50 years ago," he says. And how does he like the Toronto of today? "I love it. Beautiful architecture -- and I really enjoyed walking around at night, the city was so alive." And not a tribble to be seen. (Robert Waite is Chair of Canada Post's Stamp Advisory Committee, an unpaid, voluntary position) Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Rene Johnston via Getty Images TORONTO, ON - JANUARY 26: Eric Hoskins delivers his pitch to the Leadership of the Ontario Liberals. The Liberal Leadership convention continues Saturday at the at the old Maple Leaf Gardens. Rene Johnston/ Toronto Star (Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images) On Friday April 22, 2016, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins proved that for the Ontario Liberal party, playing politics is far more important than providing good governance. In a 20-minute speech, he alleged that the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) wasn't negotiating, and further, singled out what he felt were high-billing specialists (in particular ophthalmologists and radiologists) for, what he felt, were "uncontrolled and unpredictable billings." Advertisement In a flurry of catchy, colourful graphs, he outlined how, in his opinion, all of these high-billing physicians took money away from the home care, nursing care, palliative care and, well, just about anything else. Attacking physicians will only create more uncertainty and more instability in the health care system. Predictably, the negative reaction in the physician community has been swift, with an unprecedented number of negative comments being made among members of Concerned Ontario Doctors (COD). The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) immediately accused Hoskins of mischaracterizing the facts. Certainly attacking physicians in such a public manner will not in any way heal the relationship between the Hoskins and the OMA. In fact, it probably has gone a long way towards entrenching the dispute and worsening the divide, which will only create more uncertainty and more instability in the health care system. Advertisement As I had mentioned in a previous column, the reason for attacking doctors is a desperate political gamble, one that Hoskins and the Liberals seem to have doubled down on with this latest speech. Is it not curious that the speech comes three days after revelations that WE, the taxpayers, have to foot the $100-million dollar bill to send leukemia patients to Buffalo for stem cell transplants, because the health care system is in such disarray? Is it not curious that his speech came the day before the Concerned Ontario Doctors group planned a rally to support a properly funded health care system? It is it not curious that the speech comes after weeks of revelatory examples of just how badly the health care system is deteriorating, including: Faced with such bad news stories, and more to come, the Liberals conveniently reverted to the age-old political trick of identifying an adversary and demonizing them in public. Your mom can't get a personal support care worker to see her at home? Must be because of ophthalmologists that "make" over a million dollars a year fixing cataracts (conveniently exclude that overhead for ophthalmologists is up to 75 per cent of billings). Nurses being laid off at the hospitals? Damn those radiologists for reading all your diagnostic test reports! Waiting too long for hip replacement surgery? If only those doctors didn't have "uncontrolled and unpredictable" billings! Hoskins bitterly complained that the Physicians Services Budget overspent by $745 million in the past four years. Well, you know what? At least that money went to help the people of Ontario. Advertisement Hoskins knows very well that the only way a physician can bill OHIP is to provide care to a patient. That $745 million went to provide retinal surgery to a patient so they wouldn't go blind; to a person having a heart attack and needed life-saving treatment; to a child with recurrent ear infections who needed tubes so they wouldn't be on antibiotics all the time; to a patient who was terminally ill so that they could have the palliative care they deserve; and so on. Can we really say that the more than $1-billion wasted on eHealth helped the people of Ontario like the $745 million overage on patient services? Or the money wasted on Orange? Don't even get me started about the money wasted on gas plants. Rather than get to work on meaningful transformation, [Hoskins] has elected to play politics instead. However, this desperate gamble seems to have failed completely. The front page of the Toronto Star the next day had the heartbreaking story of Laura Hillier instead. Not only that, but it appears even more people showed up at the Rally for Health Care that the COD had on April 23, 2016 as a result of the attack. This story again made the front page of the Star, as opposed to the lingering aftereffects of Hoskins' attack on physicians. I was at the rally and my personal observation was that there were a lot of passionate, dedicated people (both physicians and others) who would all be willing to contribute to improving the health care system, if only their voices were heard and acknowledged. Advertisement I was personally stunned by how many people honked their horns in support of us as we marched (and here I thought we would get hassled for tying up traffic in Toronto's downtown core!). I guess the sight of doctors picketing in lab coats was enough to inspire many others. I felt overwhelmed by the support and grateful to the organizers for sticking with the vision of the rally. Eric Hoskins has taken the position that the health care needs a "system transformation." I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. However, rather than get to work on meaningful transformation, he has elected to play politics instead. The result will be a continuance of uncertainty and compromised health care for all Ontarians. The turnout and support at the rally shows that the public recognizes this, and that his tactics have failed completely. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: ASSOCIATED PRESS In this Feb. 27, 2012 photo, a root vegetable casserole sits on display, in Concord, N.H. Get your Passover Seder off to a healthy start with a flavorful root vegetable casserole. We seasoned it with citrus and herbs and added a crumb topping. In keeping with the kosher for Passover rules, we used crushed matzo in place of the more traditional breadcrumb topping that goes with casseroles. (AP Photo/Matthew Mead) A yearly trip to New York City provides clues as to what is going on in food trends. Stuff that starts here tends to spread across the continent over the year. Here are the big ideas I saw in 2016: Advertisement Multipurpose Spaces It's no longer good enough to do one thing well; you have to hit all the right notes on many levels to be a success in the restaurant biz. City Winery started as a private make your own wine venue and has grown into a 300 seat concert hall, unique event space, and authentic dining experience. Aside from serving and bottling their own wine right from red grape clusters they serve food to compliment. The Barrel Room is the all day restaurant has wines on tap from their own private blends that come right up the pipe from oak barrels below. The concert hall offers better bar snacks than any music venue I've been in ranging from "cheese tour platters" to Dukkah Spice Crusted Ahi Tuna and back to burgers and flatbreads. As for the housemade wines this isn't your basement bottled juice brew. I tried a dry Riesling that had a surprising little effervescence which vintner, Ben, chuckled at. It seems that an "imperfect" fermentation may have naturally doubled itself leaving a pleasingly vague sparkle. This is how authenticity plays out. Hey man, it's real and happening now plus there is a band warming up next door. Advertisement Super Secret Private Anything Once you have done the Times Square crazy gawk fest and Century21 designer discount shopping you want to dig a little deeper into history and the insider's New York. Google "secrets of New York" and you will find a variety of insider tips from long forgotten statues to abandoned subway stations and tenement tours. Here's my insider secret: The Chatwal Hotel on west 44th is a 3 minute walk from the mayhem of Times Square and offers an upscale, art deco respite in food, drink and spa. The Lambs Club hosts exceptional Jazz and Bossa Nova Brunches in the historic fireplaced and red leathered room where only thespian private members could enter a century ago. Now it is your little inside space. And if you truly want the private, shhhh, nobody knows I am here spa experience, The Red Door Spa is just downstairs. With only two private rooms offering steam showers with more nozzles of spray than you can handle and a pool, hot tub designed for few, you will feel like you own Manhattan when you leave. Go with a friend for top of the line facial and massage and you will have the place to yourselves. Order a couple of drinks from the club upstairs and hide out on a rainy day to recover from "New York Feet". High/Low Dining You can have either super cheap food or exquisite meals but New York is a place of extremes so you can rarely have both. Either you line up at a food truck for tasty, salty, fragrant biryani or five buck lunch at Chick-Fil-A. Or, dine down in the East Village at a gourmet burger and dog spot like DBGB where house made hot dogs or burgers will run you$20 with a side of cool. Famous Chef, Daniel Boulud has created a hip casual spot of housemade dogs, burgs and sausage. The night I went, there was hooting and hollering going on at the bar every 20 minutes or so as some regular walked in a la "Norm!" from Cheers. Here, they pour your beer for tasting a la expensive wine approval. Hmmm. Advertisement Kosher is the new organic It's no secret that New York holds its share of Jewish People and the ultra observant want to eat out too. City Winery has a line of kosher wines that are not boiled (a practice that is required to be classified as kosher unless the wine is made by Jews) and restaurants everywhere are seeking a mashgiash's certification. For the rest of us, Kosher rules won't necessarily translate into better or healthier food by non-Jewish standards but animal welfare might. Kosher law demands that an animal be slaughtered with a sharp knife quickly and humanely to reduce stress and trauma for the animal. Then the organs must be examined for abnormalities which could mean that your steak came from an animal free from illness and so perhaps healthier to consume. Besides, with mixed-faith mingle becoming easier, maybe understanding and acceptance will better our world. Kumbayah. Vegan is Mainstream If a menu doesn't have a vegan option, it won't be very popular with the millennial set. That doesn't mean that more are going whole hog on the no animal bandwagon but more are taking the option as a clean eating style on occasion. Take a week off meat, cheese, eggs, dairy, honey and anything else that involves a beast and see how you feel is the new normal. Adding interesting new but ancient ingredients like Koji and Turmeric takes the anti inflammatory health fun even further. Vincent Kessler / Reuters In February I gave birth to my second child, a little girl. I'm grateful to my constituents for their patience, as I've had to reduce the pace of my work a bit as a result. Nine weeks on, last week I made my first trip back into the parliament for the Strasbourg 'plenary', when all the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) sit together for key votes. Although new mum MEPs are allowed to absent themselves from Strasbourg for a few months, this comes at the price of reducing your political group's firepower. Other MEPs are not allowed to 'sub in' for you in Strasbourg (you can have substitutes for the committee votes, which generally take place in Brussels). Perhaps because there is no formal 'government' and 'opposition' in the Strasbourg parliament, it does not have a system like Westminster's 'twinning', where MPs from opposite sides can strike a deal to both stay away from a vote. So, because we had a number of important votes taking place this month, and I'm still breastfeeding, I had to take the little one with me. Advertisement As ever, getting to Strasbourg was not particularly easy, although the baby coped better than I did with a taxi, bus, and two plane rides before we finally arrived in the Parliament. (I am still hoping that someday we'll get rid of the waste and faff of the parliament sitting in Strasbourg once a month). Most of my colleagues seemed to be pretty relaxed about having a baby around, which is just as well given apparently two other members of the Socialist group are also due to give birth this year. I was a bit nervous though about how she would cope with a meeting we had organised with the EU's Economic Commissioner on protecting small-scale British cider producers. It had taken a long time to organise and was important the meeting went well. Thankfully, both the Commissioner and the British Campaign for Real Ale were very relaxed about her joining us. We kept her away from the sample of real cider though! Voting in the plenary itself was a bit of a challenge, particularly on the last day when she had an attack of wind and was fairly grumpy. Each voting session can include over a hundred votes, with different positions potentially taken by both your political group (for me, the Socialists), your delegation (for me, UK Labour), and of course your own conscience! Add in the fact that the chair may not speak your own first language, plus a dollop of sleep deprivation, and the potential for confusion is clear. In the end we managed to get through the session without too many problems. Unbeknownst to me, a Reuters photographer chose that moment to take a few snaps of us which were picked up by the Spanish and German press. I'm grateful they avoided the moments when her wind got the better of her! When I speak to people who have been homeless about their experience of seeking help from their local council, they often describe feelings of utter frustration and despair. Too many people are not being served by the current legal framework which requires councils to offer accommodation to homeless households, but only in limited circumstances. Take Julie (not her real name) who ended up in custody with a black eye and other injuries caused by domestic violence at the hands of her partner. She also had a number of health issues, including Hepatitis C, epilepsy and was on a methadone script. There was no way Julie wanted to return to her partner's home, which was being used as a crack house, and where she was at risk of violence. St Mungo's helped Julie to put her case to her local council and highlighted her medical issues that made her even more vulnerable. The council refused to look at her case prior to her release and in the end they turned her down for emergency temporary accommodation on the basis that she could not be considered homeless. Advertisement Julie had never reported her partner's violence to the police and in the absence of an official record of the domestic violence, the council said it was safe for Julie to return to her partner's house. Julie had no choice but to go back to her violent partner. She relapsed, reoffended to support her drug use and returned to custody. Julie's story is all too common. In 2014/15, 40 per cent of people sleeping rough in London for the first time, who were helped by No Second Night Out, had sought help with their homelessness from their council in the previous 12 months. At the moment, if someone doesn't fit into the 'priority need' categories that determine who receives help with housing, they are unlikely to receive any effective help from their council to stop them sleeping rough. Instead, people are forced onto the street and have to wait to be found by an outreach worker who can help them into an emergency hub or other temporary accommodation, or sometimes straight into private rented housing. This is an absurd situation, and not only is it inefficient, it's downright dangerous. St Mungo's has been calling for improvements to the homelessness legislation through its Stop the Scandal campaign. Our recent investigation into rough sleeping and mental health found evidence that the current legislation is also seriously failing people who end up stuck sleeping rough because of their mental health problems. Advertisement This week a panel of experts, convened by Crisis, have published their proposal for improving the existing legislation. The changes would put a new prevention duty on local authorities to help anyone threatened with homelessness to stay in suitable accommodation. Help could come in the form of landlord mediation, support with benefit claims or managing debts, and should be provided at the earliest possible opportunity. There would also be a duty on local authorities to provide emergency interim accommodation for those who have nowhere safe to stay, regardless of priority need criteria. It's a sensible, detailed proposal, which builds on lessons from Wales where similar changes have already been introduced and maintains existing protections for homeless families and vulnerable individuals. On Thursday 23rd June the people of Britain will vote on our membership of the European Union, an issue that will shape the future of our country more so than an any other issue. It has never been more important to make sure that you're registered to vote. I won't tell you how to vote but I will present the arguments to support staying in the European Union. I am of the opinion that the benefits far outweigh any perceived negatives. The European Union has for years enshrined many rights that millions of workers take for granted on a daily basis. The right to annual paid leave, equal pay for agency staff, flexible working for part time staff have been endorsed by Brussels and are part of EU law. I'm not for one second saying the EU is perfect in every aspect but these rights could be easily threatened. Many out campaigners say we will create our own laws that protect these things but Prime Minister David Cameron began the EU re-negotiation by trying to exempt us from EU Employment Law. And that's the guy who is trying to keep us in the EU. When out campaigners claim that we will protect our own laws seriously look at the people who are calling for "Brexit" because they are a serious threat to the rights of millions of people. Advertisement Now I'm not going to pretend to be an economist or have a full understanding of the complexities of our trading agreements but it seems to me that we are putting are perfectly well established trading relationships under threat if we vote to leave. As a country we currently benefit from free trade with the other 27 member states of the EU. As a member of the EU we are part of a 500 million strong market that does business with China, America and India. The EU significantly increases trade and investment into Britain, it is an illusion to suggest that our membership decreases trade with other countries around the world. The EU remains the UK's biggest trading partner and currently 54% of our trade is conducted with other EU states. It makes sense for us to be a member of the EU which means we don't have to pay trading tariffs that countries outside the bloc have to pay. If we leave we will then have to re-negotiate our ability to trade with the EU as we do now and still have to sign up to EU regulation. Leaving the EU would be an utterly pointless exercise. Let us not forget that President Obama recently said it would take 10 years for us to establish a new trading relationship with the United States. And if we pull away from the EU we will lose out on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which is expected to bring in 100 billion to the UK over 10 years. The Brexit campaigners are completely happy for us to lose out on billions of investment and put huge numbers of jobs at risk. Brexit campaigners such as Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Iain Duncan Smith have suggested we could emulate that Iceland model, the Norwegian model or the Canadian model. It appears that none of the out campaign are on the same page. Using Iceland as the example, Iceland currently have a free trade agreement with China that many have suggested is something we could emulate. It seems foolish to compare the UK which is a country of 65 million people to a country of 323,000 people. The free trade agreement Iceland has with China was designed to open up the $61 million fishing markets that Iceland has. It is not a blue print for a wider trade agreement and we should not attempt to emulate a trading agreement which is only worth a few million when our economy generates billions. Advertisement As a gay man I think it is prudent for me to touch on what an impact leaving the EU could have the rights of LGBT people. The European Union has been essential in ensuring our rights are covered and protected. Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights prohibits discrimination against citizens on the grounds of sexual orientation. If we leave the EU gay people in the UK face the risk of our rights being trampled on by right wing Tory MPs and the United Kingdom Independence Party. Boris Johnson recently argued that gay people should vote for "Brexit" because our rights are under threat throughout wider parts of the EU but in reality EU law has been protecting our rights for far longer than Johnson has been a proponent of gay rights. UKIP currently have only one MP but the wider party's soul purpose is our exit from the European Union and its members have gone as far as to blame us for flooding and think that people should be able to deny us services based on their beliefs. These people are a serious threat to the fundamental rights we now take for granted. As a lover of this country and a true patriot I would hate to see the damage an out vote could do. Scotland are disproportionately more pro-Europe than voters in England. A divorce from the European could be just the push that the Scottish National Party need to force another Independence Referendum that would lead to the break up of our great Union that has stood for hundreds of years. The Remain campaign according to YouGov has a 26 point lead in the Referendum debate which is huge. April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month and here at Bowel Cancer UK we are using the month to raise awareness of the importance of bowel cancer screening. Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and the second biggest cancer killer. Every 30 minutes someone dies from the disease. However bowel cancer is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early and that's where screening comes in. Taking part in bowel cancer screening is the best way to get diagnosed early. Nearly everyone diagnosed at the earliest stage will survive bowel cancer yet this drops significantly as the disease develops. Advertisement Screening can detect bowel cancer at an early stage in people with no symptoms, when it is easier to treat. Sometimes it can prevent bowel cancer from even developing in the first place by picking up non-cancerous growths (polyps) which could become cancerous in the future. We hear from patients frequently about how pleased they are that they decided to take the screening test when it popped through their letterbox and how it saved their life. People like John who told us: "If I hadn't taken the test I would not have known that I had a cancer inside me, getting bigger every day, until the symptoms became visible. If it had got to that stage the medical treatment might have been more daunting and my survival chances would have been lower." Or Joy who said: "I consider myself very lucky. Completing the screening test was the best decision I have ever made. There is no doubt in my mind that if I hadn't, I would not be alive today." We have the chance to save even more lives like John and Joy's by introducing a new simpler, more accurate and cost effective test to the screening programmes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) recommended in January that the Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) should be adopted by the three nations screening programmes, replacing the current guaiac Faecal Occult Blood Test (gFOBT). FIT is already used in population screening around the world including Italy, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Spain and Japan. The new test would come at a welcome time as uptake rates for screening are shockingly low with huge variations across the UK. In many areas of England for example, they fall well short of the 58 per cent average, in some cases it is as low as 33 per cent. FIT, which can detect hidden traces of blood within stool samples - important because bowel tumours and the precursors polyps can bleed - has been shown to increase screening uptake by around 10%, including in previous non responders. This is primarily because only one sample is required, compared to gFOBT's three and the collection process is also more straight forward. Importantly economic modelling has also proven that FIT is cost effective. With around a 15% higher mortality rate from bowel cancer in the UK than in some other parts of Europe, this is a test that provides us with an opportunity to not only save lives but to save money too - vital in our cash strapped NHS - so why are we waiting? Scotland has already committed to introducing FIT in their screening programme and it should go live in 2017, leaving England, Wales and Northern Ireland lagging behind. Whilst we wait for a decision, lives are being lost. We therefore call on the Government and the new Assemblies to approve the recommendation as a matter of urgency. Only then will we be on our way to stopping bowel cancer. For good. Munching down fish and chips while enjoying a pint of Broadside is a must-do when visiting Southwold. Even if your face is more battered by the wind than your cod is by the fryer; and even if you're soggier from the rain than your chips are from the vinegar. In fact it all tends to add to the whole experience. Away from the facade of Westminster, the EU Referendum seems the last thing associated to visiting the east coast. However, sat on the bench looking out to sea, wolfing down aforementioned fish and chips I was all too aware that short of getting on a plane, Europe could not actually be any more in my face than at this moment. Adnams export their products all over the world. You can visit Cologne and toss the Kolsch to one side, you can go to Brussels and hand the Witbier back to the barman for a taste of Southwold Bitter. Advertisement Despite pushing out 30 million pints of beer a year, Adnams is a small, independent company whose geographical and environmental footprint is miniscule - the Sole Bay brewery is roughly the size of a village hall. They rely on Free Trade deals with Europe to be able to effectively sell their products overseas. And this is the same for many other companies. No, the referendum is not about Adnams brewery's profit margin, but it is about each individual man and woman that work hard to get the hoppy goodness flowing. The reality of a British exit is at risk of being undermined by misinformation. This referendum is not about Boris Johnson's hair, and most certainly not about Ian Duncan Smith. It comes down to real communities - real jobs - real exports. The Prime Minister has previously warned the alcohol industry could face a severe hangover if voters back Brexit. George Osborne has warned that it would cost each household over 4,000 in a "self-inflicted wound" if we left. He said that by 2030, the economy could shrink by 6%. Advertisement Adnams boss Andy Wood told the International Business Times that leaving Europe would be a shame, and it was not time to "pull up the drawbridge". He is met with support from other independent breweries. Never the ones to shy away from the limelight, Scottish brewers Brewdog - who while campaigning for LGBT rights, sent a case of their 'not for gays' 'protest' beer to Vladmir Putin - have also publically supported staying in the EU. This kind of support is more or less unanimous - 36 of the UK's largest companies have all backed EU membership. The stress on more or less is important here. As the Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, John Longworth pledged his support for the leave campaign, before swiftly stepping down. The UK's membership as part of the single market allows goods, capital and people to move freely between member states. This also gives UK businesses access to 500 million potential customers instead of the 60 million the UK could provide. It would be foolish to suggest that the EU is perfect. Leaving the EU would mean not being involved with the controversial and undemocratic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a deal which is being discussed behind closed doors which will in effect mean multinational corporations can dictate and influence the policies of elected, democratic governments. Leaving the EU would help to distance the UK from TTIP, but most Tories still want to see it implemented in here, EU membership or not. UKIP's Small Business Spokesperson, Margot Parker said: "Fewer than one in ten British businesses trade with the EU, yet 100% of them must comply with thousands of EU laws on employment, waste management, environmental regulations, product registration, health and safety, etc. This burden is destroying small businesses and helping destroy our economy." Advertisement Sure, the EU needs reform, and small companies who do not export to the EU shouldn't be forced to comply with EU laws. But we are much more influential and better off remaining in than leaving. There are many criticisms of the EU, Yanis Varoufakis says he wants to give the EU a "bloody nose" but he recognises that it cannot be reformed from the outside. The EU is not perfect, the only way to change it is to remain part of it. It would be detrimental to everyone's interests to leave the EU and end up in a situation similar to Norway. In order to access the market, Norway has to pay into the EU. Yet as a non-member it has no say whatsoever. Speaking at Princeton University, Nick Clegg said: "Those campaigning for us to leave the European Union like to evoke a sentimental, nostalgic vision of Britannia, proud and independent, ruling the waves once again. But the truth is leaving cannot return us to a halcyon age - if such an age ever existed - and may even mean sacrificing the United Kingdom itself." Brexit would weaken the UK's position in the world. This would undoubtedly spell out another Scottish referendum where we will probably not be so fortunate this time. Clegg carried on to say: Advertisement "If we choose to remain, we will be voting for Britain's continued leadership position in world affairs; for continued influence in Washington as much as in Brussels or Berlin; and for our reputation as a proud, outward-looking, internationalist power" Emmanuel Macron, the French Economy Minister told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme: Photo: Malaria Consortium/Tine Frank Malaria has been a persistent blight for thousands of years. Spread by mosquitos, the oldest surviving records of the disease appear in ancient Chinese medical texts dating back to 2,700 BC. Since that time, efforts to tame it have been equally tireless. The fight against malaria has required constant reinvention. Over the last 15 years, we have made huge inroads to combat the disease using tried and tested tools such as mosquito nets and artemisinin-based combination therapies, but also by testing out new approaches to strengthening healthcare. Advertisement At Malaria Consortium, we test out novel approaches to malaria control and bring innovation to all our projects. Here are five promising approaches we are currently working on: 1.Insecticide treated clothing. This method involves the application of insecticides and repellents on locally-made clothing for protection against mosquito bites. The insecticide - typically permethrin - has little to no odour, colour or greasiness and acts quickly in repelling and killing mosquitoes. There are a number of ways to treat clothing, like using affordable home spraying or dipping kits. Factory-treated clothing is an alternative that provides longer-lasting protection but is more costly. Our recent UK aid-funded study in Myanmar focused on rubber tappers, who work at night when malaria carrying mosquitoes are most active. This is the first time that key risk groups were involved in a social acceptance study of treated clothing in a rural area with malaria transmission. Previously, treated clothing had been mainly used by military, wildlife, wetland and park workers and outdoor recreational markets. We asked the rubber tappers to try out the treated clothing and they scored it highly for effectiveness, appearance, ease of use, durability, texture, colour and ease of cleaning. 2.Mobile phone applications. Much of our work revolves around training and supporting community health workers (CHWs) providing health services in hard-to-reach areas of Africa. Despite the success of these programmes, it is their very remoteness that leads to additional challenges such as drug stock-outs, lack of support and supervision, and challenges in diagnosing symptoms which can get in the way of CHWs' abilities to provide effective services. Our inSCALE project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has helped to address these challenges by providing CHWs in parts of Mozambique with smartphones that come pre-installed with an application called CommCare. This app guides CHWs through the diagnosis process and enables rapid data submission on patients seen as well as drug stock levels to district and national health officials. It also provides performance-related feedback and a closed user group that allows free calls among CHWs and their supervisors. Advertisement Photo: Malaria Consortium/Ruth Ayisi 3.Community dialogues. Providing healthcare services to remote communities is only half the battle. Residents must also be aware of these services, be willing to use them and to understand the value in adopting healthy practices. That's why we have helped to set up 'community dialogues' in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia with funding from the World Health Organization - to provide a platform for communities to discuss health issues, identify solutions and plan communal action. These dialogues are led by volunteers selected by the communities themselves and they have proven to be very successful in creating demand for community health services, getting those who participate to adopt healthy initiatives. 4.Cross-border surveillance. The movement of workers across borders is believed to be a big contributor to the spread of the drug-resistant strain of malaria that has emerged in Southeast Asia. As a result, we are working in the region to help limit its spread by setting up border checkpoints to screen migrant workers for malaria. If tests come back positive for traces of the malaria parasite, the patient is treated on the spot. These initiatives, supported by the Global Fund and UK aid, are not only important for identifying and mapping cases of drug resistant malaria, but also in providing treatment and information for groups who are often beyond the reach of health services. Advertisement Photo: Malaria Consortium Let's fast-forward to 2030... malaria deaths are down 90%, 10million lives have been saved, 3billion cases of malaria have been averted, and $4trillion has pumped back into economies; we are on track to be THE generation to end malaria. It's true that back in 2000, this would have been a pipe dream. But now, thanks to a phenomenal global malaria campaign this projection for 2030 seems more and more likely to become a reality. Just over 15 years ago malaria, a disease that costs less than 1 to treat, was the leading cause of death of children in Sub-Saharan Africa - accounting for 22% of deaths in under 5 year olds. As a father I struggle to comprehend the number of parents that have been denied the opportunity to see their child grow up. Advertisement Now on this World Malaria Day we are working amidst a vastly different malaria landscape - one in which malaria deaths have been cut by an astronomical 60% and more than 6million lives saved since 2000. UK leadership has been pivotal to this success to date. I can't imagine that back on World Malaria Day 2000 any organisation would have contemplated holding an event in parliament with the theme 'Ending Malaria'. Back then the malaria campaign was light years away from the concept of ending malaria for good. Yet that is where I will be today, hosting an event in parliament marking the huge number of lives saved, and bearing testament to the mission-critical role of UK commitment and innovation in the malaria fight. So what's behind this success? It's a combination of front-line attack; improved access to mosquito nets, tests and lifesaving treatment, and determined R&D. The latter particularly in the UK where scientists are developing cutting edge technologies and treatments to tackle resistance, find new treatments and other tactics to beat this disease. We can be so proud of UK leadership in the malaria fight - we have scientists, businesses, parliamentarians, the British public and philanthropists coming together to tackle this ancient killer, saving lives now and creating a safer, healthier world for us all. Advertisement The global malaria campaign has clear and concrete plans for how we will get the job done. Now what we need are the resources to get us there and end malaria for good. And I'm not the only one who believes a malaria free world is possible. Earlier this year UK Chancellor George Osborne and Bill Gates teamed up to pledge their support to ending this destructive disease. Two world leaders coming together to share this message - the next stretch is tough. It's going to take hard work and commitment, but it's achievable, and we cannot let up now. Another critical partner helping to make malaria no more is The Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria which distributes over half of international funding for fighting malaria. This truly 21st Century partnership of the public and private sector has made the malaria campaign so much more efficient, and has delivered success on a massive scale - 548million mosquito nets distributed, 17million lives saved. With full funding in this year's critical replenishment, a further eight million lives will be saved, and up to 300million infections and new cases of HIV, TB and malaria averted, laying the groundwork for potential economic gains of up to $290billion in the years ahead. We can be proud that the UK is expected to make a critical contribution during such an important year. But it will take more than political will to end this disease; the whole spectrum of society needs to be involved including business. That's why this World Malaria Day I'm thrilled that Fever-Tree are supporting our work to end malaria. The natural premium mixer brand are raising money with special collars on a limited number of bottles of their award winning tonic waters; 10p from every bottle sold will be donated to our work to save lives from malaria. And to put the cherry on the cake, they are also hosting a Pop-Up G&T Bar for one day only on Wednesday 27 April in London at Broadgate's Finsbury Avenue Square by Liverpool Street Station - all money donated to Malaria No More UK. We hope to see you there! The need to end malaria for good is as important as ever when half of the world's population is at risk and a child dies from this preventable disease every two minutes. How can we let up when life-saving treatment for each of those children costs less than a cup of coffee? Together we can #EndMalaria. A few weeks ago a woman was jailed for killing her husband, whom she was also accused of bullying. The facts of the case are a textbook definition of domestic violence and abuse. The prosecution accused Sharon Edwards of behaving in an abusive and domineering way towards David Edwards and being resentful of his past life, his family and working life. The abuse started early on in their relationship and David seemed to be unable to walk away from it. This sort of violence and abuse is more commonly suffered by women and has long been a feminist issue. But how can feminist thinking engage with the issue when the roles are reversed? Advertisement The numbers of women who commit domestic abuse may be on the rise. The number of women convicted fof domestic violence in the year to April 2015, rose by 30% from 3,735 to 4,866. These are startling figures but it is problematic, nevertheless, to see how parts of the movement for male victims use anti-feminist strategies to further their cause. These strategies are utilised in various ways and, as a specific example, the website 'DVmen' claims that DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) is a tactic used by women who carry out the abuse to indulge in victim blaming. A note on the website states that: "Women can be particularly adept at this and can often convincingly portray themselves as victims to the police and courts, sometimes using tears to help in the manipulation." Quite often female victims are even blamed for the violence inflicted on them by men. In January this year a Spanish Archbishop told his congregation that domestic abuse occurs because "women do not obey men". The suffering caused to women is justified by their behaviour in this way. The patriarchy thrives on perpetuating the power imbalance between men and women and victim blaming is an example of how this imbalance is maintained. Advertisement Feminists fought hard to have male violence against women recognised in the political sphere. Since the 1970s, female victims have been given some help in the way of housing, access to justice and policing. A lot of this success can be attributed to two major breakthroughs. The first was the recognition that male-perpetrated violence was not caused by 'evil men' who had specific characteristics that marked them out and that 'ordinary men' who were able to function in society were capable of this too; the second was the recognition that any abuse committed in the home was not a private domestic matter but a public one. These two realisations mean that domestic violence is seen as being a crime that the state would investigate and which was carried out by people who were not necessarily dysfunctional figures. In a similar vein, rather than employ anti-feminist tactics, it would be salient for the movement to concentrate on the myth of male essentialism in order to shatter the illusion that 'real men' don't suffer in the home. Male essentialism is a serious barrier to tackling the problem of male victim domestic violence. According to a report in the Telegraph newspaper men "under report their experiences due to a culture of masculine expectations". Men have either been disbelieved or shamed for 'allowing' themselves to be abused because the inability to defend themselves is seen as falling short of the 'macho' image. Men have also been blamed for not being able to 'keep the wife under control'. The patriarchal expectancy of the man being the king of his home and doing as he pleases lets men down. The chairman of a charity providing support to male victims of domestic violence, Mankind UK, has been reported as saying that domestic abuse is a crime against an individual and is not a crime against a gender. This is a line of reasoning similar to calls for a world where everybody is treated equally but, while there are a construct of differences between us all, there can be no path to equality if these are not recognised. The problems to do with male- and female-inflicted violence are stacked with theories of essentialism and myths that must be demolished. Advertisement The Foreign and Commonwealth Office warns against all travel to Afghanistan, describing it as unpredictable, affected by conflict and extremely volatile. Earlier this month, I had to be in Kabul because of BAAG business and also because my parents live there. I had to arrange a hefty travel insurance, at an inflated price because of the FCO's travel advice. The overall message the FCO sends is strikingly clear: avoid Afghanistan. And that is exactly what many Afghans are doing, fleeing their country in unprecedented numbers. A combination of insecurity and a severely depressed economy has meant that civilians deaths are routine, jobs are scarce and internal displacement is widespread. As a sad example, the Taliban attacks in the heart of Kabul this week killed at least 64 and wounded 347 mostly civilians. Advertisement It should be no surprise that Afghans make up the second largest group of people trying to reach Europe to claim asylum: 213,000 Afghans arrived there last year. Additionally, internally displaced people are increasing, as many Afghans from provinces ridden with conflict and unemployment are forced to abandon their homes. But many others, living in areas that are relatively safe, choose to stay. Choice is the crucial word here. On a recent trip to Mazar-e-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, I was surprised to find how the city had developed since my last visit in 2009. The scars of war were hardly visible among the new shopping centres, townships and the long asphalted roads. Though, an obvious exception was the burnt down Attorney General's office that came under Taliban attack last year. Nonetheless, a sense of stability cocooned the city that was absent in most parts of the country, a sense that reassured people into staying. Consistent international support could provide the same to other regions in Afghanistan. If there is an improved level of stability in the country, more Afghans will return and remain as they did in the years between 2002 and 2010. They would have no need or desire to undertake the perilous journey to Europe, risking their lives. Advertisement The majority of international spending and investment in Afghanistan had been military spending. Civilian aid is insignificant in comparison. A 2011 study by the Global Humanitarian Assistance shows that civilian aid during 2002-09 was only 9.3 per cent of the overall international assistance, whereas military aid was 84.8 per cent. But as most international troops withdrew in 2014, military spending ground to a halt. And the Afghan economy, dependent on such spending, is left decimated. Rescuing the Afghan economy is important. When jobs are scarce and incomes pitifully low, people's life choices are massively reduced. If a family's survival is at risk, hideous decisions may eventually have to be faced, such as leaving the country or engaging in criminal or terrorist activities. According to Afghanistan's Central Statistics Organisation, the unemployment rate in Afghanistan has spiked to about 40 per cent. This doesn't include those 'lucky' enough to be in severely underpaid jobs. European donors are considering decreasing aid to use part of that money to support refugees arriving in their own countries. The result of this could be disastrous, as the root causes forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes would remain ignored. Without support, the security and economic situations will continue to decline. Aid must fund projects that are based on the needs of Afghans and are delivered efficiently to them. The Afghan government has led many successful national projects with the assistance of donors. Examples include the National Solidarity Programme and the Basic Health Services Package. Aid has also tackled humanitarian issues such as conflict-induced displacement, natural disasters and acute food shortages. All these efforts have saved lives and created some stability in various regions. Advertisement Sufficient aid to Afghanistan can create jobs, improve livelihoods and decrease poverty, thus creating some stability in an increasingly insecure region. In the long run, the Afghan government and private sector will need to serve Afghans. The government has embarked on a plan of 'realising self-reliance'. But given the current poor security, governance and infrastructure, it will likely take decades before the country can fully meet its people's needs. The undeniable truth remains that Afghanistan will need long term and steady international assistance. Of all the headlines coming out of America so far this year, the one that excited me most was President Barack Obama's bold call for the world to end malaria. While it may get lost in the noise of the presidential election and other pressing issues at home and abroad, I firmly believe the fight against malaria is one of the most important endeavours of our time. As the world currently grapples with the spread of Zika--another mosquito-borne disease--and braces for new epidemics that can spread ever more rapidly across the globe and pose a threat to us all, we are closing in on one of the world's oldest and deadliest diseases. In the past 15 years, the staggering and unprecedented progress made against malaria is a powerful demonstration of what we can do when we come together--across continents and party lines--to confront a global health and human crisis. Americans may not be aware of it, but President Obama has more than doubled funding for malaria during his time in office, building on the legacy of President George W. Bush. Year after year, Congress has made malaria a priority, approving or exceeding budget requests. Advertisement In that same time frame, the United Kingdom has also increased its malaria funding. It tripled funding between 2010 and 2015 and has sustained this commitment, having just announced in January continued investment of at least 500 million a year for the next five years. The leadership of the United States and the United Kingdom, together with strong commitments from malaria-endemic countries, has played a key role in saving more than 6.2 million lives since 2000. This "special relationship" has been at the heart of our progress to date and will continue to be vital to ending this disease. Together, we have beaten back a disease that once killed more than 1 million children a year. And for the first time in history, we have a roadmap for ending malaria within a generation. But we cannot let up. Malaria still threatens nearly half the world's population and kills 438,000 people every year--mostly children in Africa. This disease, like the mosquitoes that carry it, is wily and stubborn. History has shown us that malaria will come roaring back when we look away. Fortunately, battling malaria enjoys cross-party support here in the United Kingdom, just as it does in America. As U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice recently said, "Beating malaria is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do for our common security." Similarly, Justine Greening, Britain's secretary of state for international development, said that a healthy, prosperous world is in Britain's interest: "In responding to the needs of the poorest, we address our own too...What benefits them, also benefits us." Like the United States, we consider anti-malaria efforts one of the best buys in global health. It is a powerful example of aid money spent wisely. The disease is preventable and treatable. Known interventions--sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor residual spraying, rapid diagnosis and treatment--all make a difference. The connection between investment and impact is tangible: A 2,000 percent increase in global malaria funding between 2000 and 2015 led to a 60 percent reduction in the rate of deaths during that same time period. Advertisement Continued leadership by the United States, particularly through its funding of the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria--the largest source of funding for malaria control--is critical to bring on other donors and bolster support from leaders in malaria-endemic countries. Knowing we need to stay a step ahead of this disease, the United States and the United Kingdom have also been leaders in research and development of new tools, including better diagnostic tests and medicines, vaccines, surveillance, and more effective ways of eliminating mosquitoes. We have built strong public-private partnerships, including the recent collaboration between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the British government to create the 1 billion Ross Fund. Named after Sir Ronald Ross, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his discovery that mosquitoes transmit malaria, the fund will include support for research and development of new malaria drugs, diagnostics and insecticides. Ending malaria will have a tremendous ripple effect across the globe. Malaria takes the greatest toll on children and pregnant women, mostly in Africa. When we cut malaria cases and deaths, we unlock human potential and drive economic development. Malaria affects education, worker productivity and health costs. Investing in malaria improves the capacity of health systems and reduces inequity. Ending malaria will prove what we can do when we put politics aside and come together to tackle a deadly disease. While living in Tanzania for more than a decade, I had malaria myself several times and witnessed the terrible burden this disease imposes on families, communities and economies. I agree with President Obama that it is a "moral outrage" that "many children are just one mosquito bite away from death." The world feels increasingly unpredictable. None of us was prepared for the rapid spread of Ebola or Zika, and another epidemic is surely waiting around the corner. All the more reason for us to seize this unique moment to end the deadliest disease humanity has ever known. Advertisement Jeremy Lefroy is a British Conservative Party politician who has been a member of Parliament since 2010. He is chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases and a trustee at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. When I call the Greens' Mayoral candidate, Sian Berry, she's on the train to meet Britain's Chief Rabbi. It's a sign of the extremely varied - and hectic - nature of the campaign to become London's next leader. I've managed to grab ten minutes out of her packed schedule to discuss what could turn out to be a crucial moment in the campaign. The night before we talk, the London Federation of Green Parties - the main decision-making gathering of the capital's Greens - had gathered to debate and vote on whether to back a '2nd preference' for London Mayor - a feature of the capital's Supplementary Vote system that allows a first and second choice on the ballot. First, some context. 2nd preferences have been decisive in all of London's Mayoral elections in the past. The Green endorsement, then, can be a maker-or-breaker - handing it to Ken Livingstone when he won in 2000. Advertisement On Monday night, it was a breaker, it seems. The 50 or so Greens there unanimously voted not to endorse anyone for their second preference - to the surprise of many, they refused to back Labour's Sadiq Khan. It's the first election since 2004 that they've decided not to offer their implicit support to another candidate. The reasons stem from the fact that this is 'a very different election' to previous ones, says Sian. "We had a long-standing working relationship with Ken [Livingstone]" - unlike Sadiq Khan. Unlike previous elections however, this time the Greens laid down four demands, calling on Khan and Goldsmith to support an end to road building, airport expansion and enforced council estate demolitions, and to reduce London's inequality. The response from the Labour and Tory camps? "Neither of the candidates wanted to meet with us to talk about them." In fact, Berry tells me that "Sadiq specifically turned it down, Zac just didn't arrange." She mentions that Sadiq camp told the Greens he "didn't want to seek the 2nd preference recommendation." It seems like a mark of arrogance. And perhaps it's justified - he's over 10 points ahead of Goldsmith. But that's in the final round, after 2nd preferences. When outlining why the Greens didn't back a candidate anyway - meeting or no meeting - I don't detect a hint of spite. "On the policy asks, you've got some real red lines there - Sadiq's [pro-expansion] position on Gatwick for one, and Zac has been appalling on the Silvertown Tunnel [i.e. in support]. Those are things that either of them could easily have given way on." Advertisement But there are clearly differences between Goldsmith and Khan. The latter's in support of building more council housing, promoting the London Living Wage, freezing fares and dealing with air pollution all tie in with Green asks. Does Sian's party not risk handing Goldsmith the Mayoralty on a plate? She responds that supporters "can make up their own minds. We just didn't make a positive recommendation - there was no way we could do that." There must be differences between the two lead candidates though? Again, the answer isn't too flattering for Khan: "It's actually really hard to tell them apart. He visited the City and said he's going to be a mayor for big business - that's not what you expect from someone who says he going to be a mayor for all Londoners." That's not the whole story, however. There was a vote on whether to support an anti-Goldsmith vote - i.e. to condemn his campaign, which some have suggested has focused on Khan's religion as a Muslim. It fell by about 4-1. In the minority however, was Sian Berry. Yet Sian is confident, despite losing the vote, Green supporters will note the 'negative and personal' campaign that the Conservative candidate has run so far. "I hope that our party members would notice that themselves without us having to tell them." And perhaps the whole 'recommendation' set-up will become a thing of the past. If so, it bodes badly for future - most-likely Labour - candidates. Berry is certainly no fan: "This whole idea that we should instruct our voters who to vote for anyway is a bit wrong - they can think for themselves what kind of campaigns the others are running." Advertisement It doesn't seem to have shifted how Sian is voting. I ask her if she'll be casting a 2nd preference: "I will yes, but that's between me and the ballot box." From her vote to condemn the Goldsmith campaign, one can read between the lines. But the fact that Khan can't take for granted indirect Green support in the London Mayoral election suggests there remains a deep scepticism to Labour in the Green Party - despite the rise of Corbyn. The Greens are treading a fine line in not treating a Khan win as a given - "whoever's Mayor we're going to have to work with them. We're going to have to talk" - particularly if they hold the balance of power on the Assembly. Either way, Berry is confident the Greens can shake up the result on May 5th. And not just confident, ebullient: "I think we stand a very good chance of increasing our number of Assembly members [from the current two]. And with two weeks to go and a bit of momentum building, I don't see why we shouldn't win the Mayoralty as well." Does this all mark a new era in the Greens' approach to the capital? Berry - who's radical policies and popularity make her potential party leadership contender - certainly offers something different. And though she may not make the Mayoralty, her 1st place position on the proportional London-wide list almost guarantees that she'll be a progressive thorn in the side - or ally - to whoever wins on May 5th. Advertisement Official backing or not, the Greens could yet swing it. And who knows - perhaps it will be Sian's 2nd preference that proves to be the decisive vote. Random underlinings, ill-advised hashtags, activists posing as voters - this booklet has it all. The booklet to which I'm referring is, of course, the Mayor of London's official guide to his potential successors - a booklet where all the candidates who could be bothered to cough up 10K set out their manifestos. From the boring to the barking, it's all in there...and I'm here to talk you through it. If you want to read along in real-time, you can download it here. Advertisement In the interests of non-partiality, we'll go through the candidates in booklet order, which means we means we start with Sophie Walker of the Women's Equality Party. She has some admirable ideas about ending violence against women and closing the pay gap and other things which seem the tiniest bit out of the mayoral jurisidiction. I'd love to see the pay gap closed but it might be a tad unrealistic to unpick centuries of inequality in one mayoral term. Still, good on her. I hope she does well. Next up is Lee Harris of CISTA - the Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol party. It probably is, but as London mayoral agendas go, this one's a bit one-note. He seems like a nice old geezer and could certainly sort you out with a Che Guevara shopping bag but I need my Mayor to say a bit more on housing than just "he has some views and some people will agree with them". Advertisement Onto our first big name - Zac Goldsmith. There's not much I could say about the Tory poster boy that hasn't already been said. If he gets in, we're pretty much guaranteed Boris the Second and I'm not sure we have much use for Boris the First. But one thing that strikes me about the prose in the booklet - the paragraph that boasts about his massive majority in the last General Election and how "he successfully stood up and delivered for his constituents". Now, I know we all interpret these situations differently but to me, the last General Election doesn't prove that "When Zac makes a promise he will stand up for you and deliver it" (yes, they did use the same hackneyed phrase twice in a paragraph) - it proves that he'll stand for a job, get it and then straight away start looking for a better job. He was elected as MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston on 7th May 2015 and by 9th June 2015, he was confirming that he was hoping to trigger a by-election way before the five-year term was up. That's the kind of commitment we'd love to see here from our mayor. Now to the BNP. And this is where it gets interesting. Almost half of their manifesto is taken up with explaining that they're not Islamaphobic, because "Islamaphobia is..an irrational fear" and they're totally like justified in being scared of all Muslims. Nice technicality, folks. Then there's a twisting of the Archbishop of Canterbury's words that I suspect would make even the holy man himself cuss. Their words are "the Archbishop of Canterbury publicly labelled it outrageous to describe people who are worried about the impact of migration as racist" If you made it to the end of the sentence, congratulate yourself, given it was more complex than a sample question in a KS1 SATS test. But let's unpick it a little. Yes, I'm giving them more than a paragraph. Because they're worth it. For a far more balanced view of that Archbishop quote, have a look at this BBC article which gives the context and actual words of the quote. These were: Advertisement "There is a tendency to say 'those people are racist', which is just outrageous, absolutely outrageous. Fear is a valid emotion at a time of such colossal crisis. This is one of the greatest movements of people in human history. Just enormous. And to be anxious about that is very reasonable." Which I think is a pretty balanced thing to say, especially as he was calling for the UK to take in more migrants, not less. Obviously, the BNP are most concerned with labelling themselves not-racist (or Islamaphobic) and have neglected to edit out the bits of their manifesto which betray them as really being quite bigoted at heart. Like putting "refugees" in inverted commas. I'll just let that speak for itself. That's not the best bit though. The best bit is the claim that "People like you voting BNP". I didn't realise that people liked or disliked my voting choices but there you go, they like it when I vote BNP. Just like these other random voters that they've picked off the street to telling us why they, the ordinary voters of Britain, will be voting BNP in this mayoral election. Thank you Christine Freeman, Rvd Robert West and Mike Jones. Hang on, though. Something's not right here. Could it be that these "people like you" are actually all BNP activists and not random voters at all? It couldn't be. It certainly wouldn't be so transparent that a simple Google search would reveal all...but I am nothing if not a Googler and here goes. Say a big congrats to Christine Freeman, winner of the "BNP Activist" Award: Advertisement Of course, "BNP Activist of the Year" is a hotly contested award and Christine must have wrestled it out of the grip of the former title-holder, Mike Jones. Yes, the man featured in the booklet as "London Cabbie" is the BNP's Activist of the Year 2014 and the London Regional Organiser for the party. In so many ways though, he's just a regular man on the street. What of that Reverend though, who joins the Archbishop in implying that the BNP has the blessing of God? Well, he's never, to my knowledge, won Activist of the Year but he is described as a BNP activist on his Wikipedia Page, and also as someone not affiliated with any recognised church other than the one he started. He also holds the post of Religious Adviser to the BNP. That's three out of three BNP voters "like you" that are actually BNP activists. Next! After all that excitement, it's quite soothing to read Caroline Pidgeon's pitch for the Liberal Democrat vote. I have no problems with anything she's saying - her policies seem sensible and her credentials are sound, given she's actually served on the London Assembly for the last two mayoral terms. But who came up with the hashtag #CarolineCan? It's just begging to be abused. Caroline can....do what? Juggle? Eat three Weetabix for breakfast? Stop eating Pringles once she's popped? Those are just the polite ones I've thought of but I'm sure I'm not the only one tempted into mischief by such an ambiguous hashtag. Advertisement And then we're right back on the right, with Britain First's attempt to break off Facebook and into the real world of politics. I mentioned the KS1 SATS earlier and here's a man who clearly failed the SPaG test: No Paul, underline the adverbs. "Increase" is a verb, isn't it? We went through this. It does make me wonder if he always talks like this, emphasizing random parts of speech all the time: "No mother I won't HAVE a cup of tea. I just had one IN Starbucks." Although replace Starbucks with some kind of British coffee chain that sells British coffee to British people, creating British jobs. The random underlinings quite detract from the rest of the content, which sees Paul boasting about how he's personally tackled hate preachers and forced the authorities to clamp down on Islamic extremism. Sure you have, love. I kinda suspect that Islamic extremism would have been on the Met's agenda even without your involvement, but that's OK. You have your moment. Also, Paul pledges to get Britain out of the EU, so if the June referendum goes his way, you can be sure he'll be taking personal credit. Advertisement Let's move on to George Galloway. Not much to pick apart when it comes to his views because he doesn't really view this booklet as a place to share them. He's already done that and spends four lines listing the places he's shared his views - "on television, on the radio, in parliament, on the streets - even the US Senate". He later tells us the topics he's shared his views on - Britain leaving the EU, women's rights, war and peace - but again fails to tell us what his opinions on those topics might be. Thanks George, that's 10K well spent. It would be unfair of me to rip into UKIP just for being UKIP...after all, we've had a lot of right-wing bashing already and there's nothing much that'll surprise you on their page. I did note one peculiar policy though - scrapping council translation services. Obviously, it's a blatant way to get at the immigrants who have already entered the country but it does smack of just trying to spite them for no good reason. If, as UKIP maintain, we are being flooded by immigrants surely we need more translation services, not less? Setting aside the fact that it's a legal requirement in some situations and not really the Mayor of London's decision in most situations, it just seems really impractical. So, UKIP, do you suggest we just ignore these immigrants when they come to the Job Centre or a hospital, talking in a language we don't understand? Just by sticking our fingers in our ears and saying "I can't hear you"? Or are you suggesting that we only hire public sector employees that are already multilingual so that they can easily communicate with a number of immigrant communities in their mother tongue? Now, that's a good idea. I'd back that one, Peter Whittle! (And just for Paul Golding's info, if we do vote to leave the EU, Whittle will be fighting you for the credit. After all "A vote for UKIP is a vote to leave the EU". So, express your EU-feelings in the mayoral elections and then you don't need to bother with that big referendum in June) Advertisement So....Sadiq Khan. This is another one that I want to back but the manifesto is making it hard for me to do so. What are your actual plans, Sadiq? Your page is just full of vague statements like "Keeping Londoners safe", "Bringing back real community policing" and "Taking real action" without saying how you're going to do anything of those things. You have soundbites aplenty and so many mayoral profiles that you could rival David Bowie for reinvention. In thirty years' time, I'm sure we'll look back at Sadiq Khan's phases as "Family Man", "Council Estate Boy", "British Muslim" and "Bus Driver's Son", as well as being his "own man" but what is he actually planning to do if he gets in? It's looking increasingly likely that he will, but this voter would sure like to know exactly what we're signing up to. The only solid policies I can see are the transport ones, and those I agree with...so what else have you got? All of which leads slightly anticlimatically to Sian Berry of the Green Party. Even I am struggling to find anything wrong with her policies - they are disappointingly sane and her credentials, like Caroline Pidgeon's, are pretty solid. So I have nothing bad to say about her page. Maybe I've just made my decision then... Advertisement I remember when Wolfgang Tillmans first appeared on the photo scene. It was the 90's. I would be walking around East London and recognising his locations, but also there was something else; the way he lived and the people he shared lives with, touched my photo homing instinct. Then there was Rankin, who edged into my consciousness, like everyone else's, with bravado and sex, throwing gloss into the mind's eye, after years of grunge. I wondered how the experience of his models compared to my own, after I once had the chance to model for him. Something to tell the grandkids about. Opposingly, Jemima Stehli and Sam Taylor Johnson met my feminist inclinations. Sometimes the reason an image resonates never becomes clear, and you keep reconnecting with it, like a dream that you are trying to understand. Then there are images that draw us in, over and above aesthetics. I wondered how the new generation of photographers, those with a timely political agenda, make a place for themselves at the visual pulpit? Advertisement Campbell Addy, a recent Central St Martins graduate, uses fashion photography to give us an insight into his London life. Photo Campbell Addy Urban Outfitters He uses his camera as a tool to politicize his personal experience of living in Britain. His work celebrates fashion and the cultures that fuel it. Mix that with humour and confident styling from his collaborator PC Williams, Associate Lecturer at CSM and stylist for the likes of Nike and Sony Music, Addy is ripe to move into publishing. May 10th sees the launch of his new arts, culture and fashion magazine, created to educate about issues surrounding people of colour. Nii Journal. Advertisement Photo Campbell Addy Nii Journal I asked Campbell why he is taking on the role of educating his readers on issues identity. Tell me about your intentions for the journal, and about why you have taken the leap into publishing. I intend for Nii to be a platform of exploration for people like me. I'd like to say I'm am eclectic mix of everything and everyone I've ever come across and I think Niijournal reflects that. Subvert the stereotypical views of certain people and create new representations for us all. Print isn't dead, you just need to create something worth purchasing. What was your experience pre CSM, as a consumer of fashion magazines, and what inspired you intellectually and visually in the arts? I love art galleries, every summer from a very young age I would travel up to London either alone or with school to visit exhibitions. Alongside galleries, films truly inspired me. It gave a glimpse into the outside world. You shoot in Ghana, London and New York, how differently do you approach working in these places, if at all? Advertisement Working in Ghana was very different than New York and of course my hometown of London. In Ghana, I had to try and speak in the mother tongue, which immediately built up walls with unknowing locals. I had to change my entire approach, most times I would stay in an area for an entire day to meet the people, gain trust and see what was going on in area before capturing it. Africa has been photographed in many ways. I wanted my images to show the beauty of Ghana, so approaching it in a more delicate manner was imperative. Working in New York and London is very similar in terms of how you go about it, however I felt a sense of fearlessness in New York as no one knows who I am, so I had the confidence to reach out to publications such as Hello Mr. You hooked up with Annie Lebovitz, how did that come about? I met Annie Leibovitz in London via Central Saint Martins. She was showing her exhibition WOMEN: New Portraits, and a select few of us were lucky enough to meet and speak with her. Did she offer any advice? Yes, the one piece of advice that I've been thinking about is to look at my body of work. She stressed how important it is to see your work as a whole. Regarding content, we are in politically inspired times. Do you think we are becoming desensitized to these messages, because there is such a flux in conversation? Advertisement No, I think it's the opposite. We need more, the more people that see it, the more people that are educated on issues that are affecting mankind. I regularly hear talk of empowerment motives from fashion brands. Who do you think has an authentic voice in fashion, brands that are really making a difference? At this present time the brands that stands out to me would be Charles Jeffrey and Telfar. In publishing, I have always been a great fan of Arena Homme Plus. I like that they're pushing boundaries and still keeping the sense of creativity. How have you found working commercially, in terms of creative freedom? I've been very lucky as the commercial work I've been hired for have mostly been on my terms. When I was asked to shoot the Urban Outfitters campaign, they explicitly said that they want it to just like some shoots I have been creating. Costs for print publishing will be a challenge, can you tell us a bit about funding? The hardest thing has been funding. I've been saving for the better part of a year, working on the most obscure paid shoots and taking part time jobs to raise funds. Besides funding, the personal challenges are hard, as is life, so there's been many times I've questioned whether I should do this but I'm reminded by my friends that as long as I believe in it, then that's all that matters. Advertisement No one in Rwanda spoke of the genocide of 1994. That was the first thing I noticed. President Paul Kagame has been the head of state since the genocide, and he has been instrumental in ushering in change. He's taken big steps to challenge ethnic division, transforming the country into one nation of Rwandans. Although far from perfect, there is no feeling of tension in the country - at least none that was noticeable. Rwanda may have endured one of the worst human atrocities since the Second World War, but there is a real sense of social recovery in process. The overriding picture from wherever you go is one of poverty, with communities outside the main population centres living with no electricity, or any meaningful utilities. 40% of the population survives on as little as 39p per day. But that is changing. Advertisement Rwanda is largely rural, and there has been a major intervention from the Rwandan Government to establish a Crop Intensification Programme and a holistic approach to increasing food productivity involving the reorganisation of land use and fertiliser application, among other solutions. Now the people of Rwanda have the means to feed themselves, and make a living from the land they live on. There are also schemes in place for Rwandans to save some of the money they earn, almost like a basic version of the credit unions we have in Scotland. These schemes also provide loans which people can apply for after they have been in the "credit union" for a certain period of time and have built up some savings. These loans go towards upgrading their basic business needs. One woman I met, who had a soya bean processing business, had recently invested in a kitchen blender in order to speed up her processing. It might seem basic, but it was a revolution in her business. Women have played an integral role in Rwandan society. With over 60% of Parliamentarians being women as well as being the vast majority of savers in the 'credit union' system nationally, women in Rwanda have been the pillar in stabilising and enabling growth within the country. One of the companies I visited, TradeMark East Africa, is in construction and is building the country's Border Posts. At the Taveta-Holili development, two thirds of unskilled labourers were women. It is clear that the country is making great strides in equality. The feeling of optimism in Rwanda is tangible. This is a country with a past they will never forget, however, the feeling to move forward is evident. And it means men, women and children - a united Rwanda - is beginning to reap the benefits from realising their potential. Advertisement Student media is being censored by the tight leash of the student union around its neck, and the eyes of university management cautiously watching over. Many top universities have had strong student media that hold their university and union to account for decades, but the lack of freedom to do this is becoming more apparent in particular newspapers. At Warwick, the student's union (SU) had attempted to ban an anti-ISIS speaker, and at LSE, a free speech society was in the news for being 'shut down'. These restrictions of freedom of speech are a danger to the open environment that makes university education in the UK of such high quality. These networks of control stem further than this though. Student media tends to struggle at some universities without support from their union, so at many universities, the thousands of weekly papers printed would be far tougher to produce without the direct help from the SU. This dependence drives these 'independent' student newspapers into the control of their SU. Advertisement However, yesterday motion 314 was put forward to be voted on by the NUS. Motion 314 gives student media freedom to cover union officer elections without the interference of their union. Currently at some universities, such as the University of Bath, the union has to look over what is printed, and this can discourage writers from being honest, and give unions the power to veto articles they dislike. Tommy Parker is the media officer at Bath pushed this motion into action, he told me; 'I have proposed this motion so media can actually provide accurate and more comprehensive coverage during officer elections. We asked to conduct coverage of officer elections, to talk about candidates' manifesto points and their feasibility. This is up to the Returning Officer which is NUS, but they said no.' Thankfully motion 314 passed yesterday; freeing the student media I was part of to fairly cover the elections that are so important to students. However, with each step forward, the NUS takes more back. If they can't prevent student media covering their elected officials, they have decided to take their issue with social media instead - banning the use of Yik Yak. This is abhorrent and vastly damaging to not only freedom of speech at university, but also the democracy these student unions are trying to create. Advertisement Source: Bill Kerr/Flickr Student's have had enough of 'safe spaces'. Our candidates and students needs the real challenge of what students actually think. We need the challenge of the real world, where people aren't nice, because people aren't censored. The coddling of ideas at universities breeds nothing but incompetence and falsely assumed arrogance. The biggest shame is that these attempts will turn out to be fairly futile at preventing the tidal wave of judgement students receive online. We now live in an era of constant international communications and access to our lives through the internet. Why, of all places, would a place of free thinking and learning be the place to prevent incoming transmissions, debate and thought? Let's meet Naisah, a young mother who is seven months' pregnant. In recent days, she and several others have become 'boat people' following the demolition of their homes by bulldozers sent by Jakarta's Governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama; known colloquially as Ahok. With no solution being proposed by the government, their lives are now teetering, just like the boat on which they live; drifting aimlessly without direction. Forced evictions have become a common reality for the residents of Indonesia's capital city. According to the 2015 report published by the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, approximately 3200 people were subjected to forced evictions between 2007 and 2012; the highest number since the founding of the city. In addition, it was reported that, in 2015 alone, about 3433 families and 433 businesses were forced to uproot themselves from the lands they have occupied for many decades. It is important to note that these cases are not only happening under the current government. Previous governors, such as Sutiyoso, were also diligent in ejecting residents from their homes without offering any alternative. It is estimated that around 10,000 people in Jakarta saw their homes reduced to rubble during the nine-year tenure of this former military figure. Advertisement What is worse is that it is not only Jakarta that has a dark history of forced evictions. Many other regions in the country have similar policies. The government of Makassar, for instance, evicted fishermen in Laguna Beach in 2004. In 2009, Surabaya's municipality also carried out a similar policy towards the inhabitants of Stren Kali Jagir, resulting in the expulsion of 380 households. If all cases of forced evictions are recorded, the figure will obviously be higher. But unfortunately, not all stories receive media attention, given the vastness of the country and the frequency of evictions. The perpetrator, in this case the government, often argues that evictions are carried out in the 'public interest,' to avoid flooding or to create more green spaces. Thus, they argue, expelling people from the houses they have lived in for many years is for the benefit of society in general. However, this reason seems unfair. If evictions are executed in order to prevent flooding that often hits the city of Jakarta, why is it that only residential homes, mainly poor ones, are being evicted? Apartments, hotels, shopping malls, and luxurious residential places that are clearly built in water catchment areas tend to be omitted. It is noteworthy that more than 3000 hectares of green open spaces in Jakarta have been converted into commercial and residential elite neighborhoods. Hence, it is evident that the government is demonstrating its hypocrisy by citing 'public interest' as the grounds of its actions; in reality, many vacant lands have been transformed into hotels, shopping districts and elite residential complex. Apparently, the Jakarta government has collaborated with the private sector in getting rid of the poor by opening a wide door for the latter to control as much as land as possible. This is to the extent that hundreds of hectares of unrecorded government land worth trillions of rupiah have passed secretly into the hands of private parties. The major implication of this is the gap in the amount of land ownership among the poor and the private sector. PRP Indonesia even reported that private sector controls 80 to 90 percent of lands in Jakarta. Advertisement Undeniably, forced evictions violate many legal rules; whether legislations made by the Indonesian government or international laws. The 1945 Constitution of Republic of Indonesia states that every person has the right to a prosperous life, both physically and mentally. Law Number 4 of 1992 on Housing and Settlement also states that each citizen has the full right to occupy, enjoy and own habitable houses. Moreover, the United Nations states categorically that forced evictions are illegal and violate basic human rights. It is also written in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that everyone is entitled to adequate rights of living, including health, clothing and shelter. Meanwhile, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) asserts that the State should refrain from forcibly evicting residents, let alone leaving them stranded. Unfortunately, forced evictions are often marred by violence involving both police and military force. This is, of course, a form of violation of the main task of these security services; that is, to safeguard and protect citizens. Worst of all, the government often does not provide any alternative after forcibly displacing people from their homes. Simultaneously, the solutions provided are still proportionate; for example, the relocation to government flats, which takes a long time, the uninhabitable quality of the flats, and the value of compensation that often does not correspond to the losses incurred. The separation of residents from their neighborhoods also has negative implications for their socio-economic conditions. These people no longer have a strong, united community. The source of livelihood also vanishes because poor residential areas are often situated close to their workplaces; such as the sea for fishermen and markets for traders. Finally, the education of displaced children is affected as it is difficult to find new schools. The situation faced by parents of these children is completely erratic; moving around without a stable place to live, has the potential to result in their children dropping out school. It is more than evident now that forced evictions will leave not only deep trauma, but also have serious implications for everyone. These individuals are in need of serious, genuine and, more importantly, humane efforts by both local and central governments to end their ongoing misery. It is difficult to see when all of this will end, but one thing must be made clear: if we let this phenomenon continue, all of us will eventually have to pay the heavy price. Advertisement As this article is published, Nasiah, along with many others, are still drifting in the boat house. They have no idea for how long they should stay there. What is certain is that they have now lost not only the places they usually call home, but also long-held memories and the future to which they have been looking forward. It should be mental health week, every week. Why just a few awareness weeks scattered here and there, like throw cushions? If we want to stop the stigma we might have to think about it longer than seven days. On an individual level, things have progressed, I'm happy to report. People are being more open about mental illness. Certainly in the theatres where I perform "Frazzled," you can tell the climate has changed because in second half of the show, when the audience do the talking, I have to turn out the lights to shut everyone up. They're not just being brave, they're almost proud to say aloud (probably for the first time) that they find life hard and that the answer to, "How are you?" might not be "Fine". Others aren't just stressed, they've actually got a mental disorder and they too just proudly stand up and - without fear of being decimated - say things like, "Hi my names Jenny. I've had bi-polar for ten years and right now I'm on a high so someone hold me down." Then someone else might stand up and say, "Hi Jenny, I'm Robert, I've got OCD, I can help you clean your house." If that's not freedom of speech I don't know what is? Advertisement Individuals are breaking the stigma by breaking their silence but what's happening politically remains a mystery. Here's where I'm confused, I know during mental health week, just a few months ago, Paul Farmer CEO of Mind made a statement that the 600 million pounds per year pledged by the government to support mental health, wasn't enough. During that week, every news channel was filled with reports about the need for parity between physical and mental illness and that more funds are needed to cover mental health in the NHS, David Cameron was televised saying he agreed there had to be changes in the allocation of funds. However, as soon as mental health week finished, the reports finished. The next day a fresh crisis was smeared across our screens and because we have the attention span of a nit, no one said a thing. Maybe the media think that if they stay on one topic too long, people will stop watching and grow despondent. If you keep the panic fresh with something else terrifying to think about then you've got everyone glued to the box. They know we need more and more hits of hysteria because they know how addicted we are and they know that they can provide us with the fix. So, just a few hours after the dust settles from a 7.9 earthquake, they switch our focus to a new virus on the loose. And if they run out of murder victims they can always show us the latest from Syria; that will get you panicking pretty quickly. As terrible as the world is, if we keep our attention off the button of de-stigmatization, we'll never get anywhere and those in this country who are suffering from a mental emergency won't get any help. I've heard too many stories about someone not finding a hospital, even on the verge of suicide. If they had a heart attack they'd be in a bed in hours. If we don't hear about an improvement with mental health support soon, I'm going to suggest we take to the streets and march to Downing Street because I'm getting sick of these promises followed by nothing. We can't just be mad - we have to get mad. That's my new slogan. Don't just be mad, get mad! What do you think? Print that on a t-shirt and run it up the flagpole. Advertisement Ruby is touring the UK with her new show #Frazzled - find out where you can see her on this follow up to her sell out Sane New World show. You can also buy Ruby's best selling latest book, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled, in all good bookshops and online. Cuba's world of music and audiovisual production is beginning to open up with concert performances and documentary and feature film production growing, reinforcing the need for creative professionals to find new ways in promoting and strengthening their work. Building on events such as Haban-Arte, the Havana Biennale, which promotes innovative and experimental work from local artists, Cuba recognizes the importance of its creative industries and has ensured that the public has better access to cultural goods and services such as film, music art, theatre and cinema. In 2015, the biennale showcased dance, music, film and literature with events hitting the streets of Havana - in squares, parks and urban spaces, as well as in the usual venues, including the Wifredo Lam Centre of Contemporary Art. The capital's design Biennale taking place in April will also give new talent in this field the chance to show their creations to different audiences. Advertisement As a Party to the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which calls upon countries to introduce policies that support creativity, in particular cultural and creative industries, Cuba is now looking to expand on cultural policies to keep up with economic and social changes taking place in the country. It is against this background that the UNESCO Havana Office and Cuban authorities organized on 9-12 February 2016, a workshop to help assess achievements and challenges encountered, and prepare its quadrennial periodic report on the implementation of the Convention. This latest workshop, organized with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) within the framework of the project 'Enhancing Fundamental Freedoms through the Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions,' was led by UNESCO international experts Octavio Kulesz and Alfonso Castellanos Ribot, and follows on from an initial multi-sectoral consultation with government agencies and civil society organizations held in Havana on 1-4 December 2015. At the core of supporting these changes is the establishment of a national team, comprised of representatives from the Ministries of Culture, the national Institute of Statistics and civil society representing, artists, musicians, filmmakers and producers. The national team, gathered for the workshop, was able to discuss new policies and measures to support cultural access, creativity, cultural industries, as well as data collection. "Our involvement in the project allows us to enhance the strategic collaboration between the civil society and the State," Lisver Santiesteban, Executive Secretary of Fundacion del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, an NGO supporting cinema and audiovisual industries in Latin America. Advertisement The team identified policies to be included in the periodic report including the special tax treatment for artists, the financing of artistic projects, the marketing of cultural products on-line and the policy of access to artistic education through decentralization. The drafting group also had the opportunity to discuss challenges such as dealing with the issue of low salaries for creative professionals, updating old infrastructure and better regulations for the private sector to be more involved. Taking part in the workshop, Naylet Montes, from ARTEX - an organization falling under Cuba's Ministry of Culture - highlighted the wide range of activities being undertaken by ARTEX to support the trading of Cuban cultural goods and services abroad. She stressed the importance of promoting the sale of Cuban music and books on the international scene, no matter how difficult this task may be. ''The workshops on the 2005 Convention are having a very positive impact inside the Culture Ministry. The Vice-ministry called representatives from all the sectors inside the ministry for a 1-day conference on the topic in April. This provides a meaningful platform with culture experts to go in-depth on the Convention , which for sure will be very useful for them in discussions on modeling cultural policies and how to make them work better with the changes taking place in the creative industries in Cuba,'' Leire Fernandez, International Consultant, UNESCO Havana said. Follow us on Twitter: #supportcreativity As strike action by junior doctors continues, the government is apparently in quandary over whether it is 'imposing' or 'introducing' the new contract. Whichever they choose, the contract will currently apply only to new junior doctors: the current Medical undergraduates. Yet their voice has been peculiarly neglected in the debate. I requested statements from two undergraduates, both of whom requested anonymity, on the new contract for junior doctors, what it will mean for them and what it will mean for the NHS. A View from Nottingham University As an undergraduate, what impression do you get of junior doctors' experiences, and how does that affect you as you prepare to become one yourself? As a medical student at Nottingham, I've spent the last half a year logging on to Facebook and seeing a new paragraph shared by a friend consisting of an overworked junior doctor's experiences and frustration at the injustice of the new terms. My friends regularly share petitions attacking Hunt's mismanagement of the NHS and many have attended protests in the city centre, so it was surprising to see how few people responded when asked about the contract directly last week in our group chat. Perhaps we're tiring of what looks like an fruitless, unending struggle. One did respond, however, and expressed her frustration at the fact that we'll bear the brunt of any changes, being relatively voiceless as cushy students yet destined to enter the workplace long after the debate over the contract has ended. As she pointed out, after 4 more years of medical school, "it'll be too soon for any changes by a new government to affect us". Advertisement Another problem is the complexity of the NHS. We are of course also rather busy trying to learn just how the body works without considering the myriad aspects of the NHS in any spare time. The only time staff did mention it was when an out-going lecturer noted that, though lecturers were not supposed to politically influence students, he was leaving anyway and felt it right to encourage us to go to the local demonstration. What impact will the threat to impose the new contract have on you and your colleagues as you move into that stage of the training? I've spoken to international students, who make up a significant portion of our year, and some are considering applying to train overseas. When putting a student through medical school costs 250,000 (far more than the fees suggest), there is a clear risk of both a brain drain and a financial drain being triggered by graduates leaving to work in other countries, not to mention the problems that exacerbated understaffing will bring to the NHS. Our politicians talk of making the NHS leaner as if ignorant of our ranking near Slovenia in terms of healthcare spending per capita (The US and Switzerland spend roughly double per person, incidentally). There really isn't much left to cut. For every overspending middle-manager used as an example of bloat, there are many examples of where the money should be redirected, rather than cut off completely. Advertisement What impact will it have on NHS services if there is a bottleneck in the number of junior doctors due to an exodus overseas? I personally believe there is a lot to say for the idea that the government is trying to carry out a stealthy privatisation of the NHS. If the first stage involved the involvement of non-profits and external providers, the second seems to concern the discrediting of privatisation's opponents. Doctors are generally ranked highly among the professions people trust the most. Throughout the last few months, the public has rallied behind doctors' protests on the streets and through social media. The current government, in comparison, was elected with a 37% share of the popular vote. It, in contrast to the BMA, has very little to lose in engaging with a bitter war over this contract. As months go by without resolution, they know public support for doctors will fade. The media will start publishing articles about particularly unpleasant deaths on hospital wards, linking it to ongoing strikes and portraying doctors as ideological extremists. It is far easier to link deaths to strike action than make the case that not striking and accepting the terms would lead to overworked and incapable doctors causing far more fatalities. Whether or not you believe in privatisation, this is undoubtedly a deceitful and destructive path by which to advance it. People's lives depend on their ability to trust doctors, and any attempt to tinker with that for short-term gain must be fought. Perhaps the greatest problem is that our first real experience of the Department of Health will cause a generation of doctors who distrust their employer, as a friend of mine observed. Advertisement A View from University College London What is your view on the new contract? Do the undergraduates at UCL talk about it frequently? I've never liked his politics, but I've always thought Boris Johnson had a high level of native wit and no little intelligence. His attacks on Barack Obama's intervention in the Euro Referendum debate seem to suggest both have "gone south". This seems to be having been a building crescendo over the past week. The US position is "paradoxical". "Boris Rage at "Ridiculous, Weird Obama" blasted the Mail on Sunday on its front page. It is "hypocritical" says Johnson because the President wants the UK to give up sovereignty, something inconceivable in the US, and, because of his part-Kenyan heritage, Obama has a historic dislike of the British empire - a remark which caused outrage (though more for it's arguable racism than it's stupidity). All things considered "for the US it is do as I say not do as I do" For a clever man, Johnson seems to have lost the plot - irrespective of how/if you intend to vote on 23 June. Advertisement Put simply, Boris has his history wrong. Yes, it is hard to imagine the US "giving up sovereignty" but this is the wrong standpoint. US states (50 of them) have already done what Johnson says the US would not. They formed the USA. They fought an exceptionally bloody (and in Europe, rather overshadowed) civil war to test the boundary between state and supra-state powers. It is still a big issue - look at the apparent contradiction between the US constitution and discrimination against the transgender community in North Carolina. Look how hard it is to move on health care or gun control. But there is an overarching structure that each state has ceded power to. Goodness, the USA even has a common currency. With justification therefore, Obama can offer a view on the UK/EU relationship from a nation that has eaten the pie, worn the t-shirt, and still arguing about the self-same issues. And of course, Britain likes Barack. Most of know what a big deal a black President is given the level of racism still in the US. He has huge credibility and charisma. And although countries naturally don't like others poking their noses into their business, he is entitled to a view: "They are voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do; I figured you might want to hear from the president of the United States what I think the United States is going to do" Advertisement Last week the international community marked the second anniversary of the terrible abduction of 276 Nigerian girls from their school in Chibok. Despite the efforts of the Nigerian armed forces, supported by international partners, including the UK, 219 girls are still missing. For the girls' families, their continued disappearance is a source of great pain and sorrow, as I saw first-hand when I met members of the Bring Back our Girls group in Nigeria in February. Last week's sombre anniversary gave me cause to remember that meeting and to reflect on wider questions about women and violent extremism. For a long time, women and girls were simply seen as the victims of extremism. They were the raped, the enslaved, the grieving widows and mothers. Policy makers saw women's rights as something distinct from security, to be dealt with as a separate issue. That has now changed. Yes, women and girls are often the victims of extremism. But we now understand that their experience, and their role, can extend much further, because they are not a homogenous group. They can also be enablers, sympathisers or perpetrators of extremism - as we have seen in Daesh's brutal female police force, the Al Khanssaa Brigade. Most importantly for those of us working to prevent extremism, we have also realised that they can do that too: they can be agents of change, both within the family and in the wider community. Advertisement The meaning of Boko Haram "Western education is forbidden", gives the clearest possible signal of their intentions. But it also speaks loudly of their fears. They recognise that education - particularly of girls - poses a real risk to their warped ambitions, because it gives girls the ability to think independently and to know that they have a voice. Of course, the issue is complex - well-educated young men and women also fall prey to extremism, including in the UK. But fear of empowerment through education is why Boko Haram doesn't want girls to go to school. It is also why the UK, the UN and others have placed the empowerment and protection of women and girls at the heart of our counter extremism strategies. Women and girls play a vital role in all successful societies. A country cannot expect to fulfil its potential if half the population is excluded. In the same way, we cannot expect our counter-extremism strategies to work if they are based on a purely security and military response, and do not harness the power of women as agents of change. We need women and girls all over the world to play their part in protecting their communities against extremism. I am proud of the United Kingdom's work in this area. We are taking a truly cross-government approach. In our High Level Review on Women, Peace and Security in October 2015, we committed to ensuring that our overseas work includes activity delivered by and targeted specifically at women and girls, not only as victims - for example through our Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative - but also as influencers and perpetrators. We will do so in partnership with the newly established Commonwealth Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Unit and the Hedayah Center of Excellence on CVE in Abu Dhabi, and through sharing with overseas partners our domestic experience of promoting female voices in strategic communications campaigns. We also support the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) to help women in seven countries in the Middle East and Africa to tackle the drivers and consequences of extremism in their communities. Advertisement The rights and wellbeing of women and girls is at the heart of the UK's development work. It is a strong focus of our work in Nigeria, with a particular emphasis on the poorest regions in the North, which are also those most affected by Boko Haram. The UK is also supporting the Government of Nigeria's Safe Schools Initiative, which aims to restore safe access to learning for children affected by conflict. On my visit in February, I saw how UK projects are providing education for girls and young women, helping them to achieve their potential and giving them the skills they need to set up their own businesses. On a new first class stamp is a picture of Sir Nicholas Winton. After a huge public campaign, the man who rescued hundreds of Jewish child refugees in the Kindertransport has rightly been honoured by the Royal Mail. And rightly too we are all proud of what Britain did to help child refugees with cross party support in Parliament generations ago. But will today's Parliamentary vote on child refugees be a similar source of pride for future generations? Or will they look back with shame on the reluctance of the British Government to act? Some 95,000 children and teenagers in Europe as part of the refugee crisis are alone with no one to look after them. Lord Alf Dubs' amendment - which had overwhelming cross party support in the House of Lords - asks Britain to take just 3,000 of those children, so we do our bit to help. Advertisement Because urgent help is needed. Thousands are sleeping rough because children's homes are full and child protection services are overwhelmed. They face huge risk from cold, sickness, abuse, exploitation, violence and rape. According to Unicef and Save the Children there are 2,000 children alone in Northern Greece, but less than 500 places in shelters. In Italy they found girls being exploited by older men, while half the boys already had sexually transmitted diseases. And in Calais I met 11 and 12-year-olds suffering from scabies and bronchitis, sleeping in tents with adult men. These kids should be safe, cared for and in school. One of the Syrian teenagers I met told me the thing he wanted most was to learn - he hadn't been in a classroom for four years. Many of them have family elsewhere in Europe who could look after them. Citizens UK and Help Refugees have found 150 children and teenagers in Calais who have relatives here in Britain. Appalling failures in both the French and British system mean they are stuck in the mud of Northern France instead. Advertisement So it is shameful that the British government is still refusing to help child refugees in Europe. Under pressure in January from all our campaigns ministers have agreed to help child refugees in camps in the Middle East (And they re-announced the same thing under pressure again last week.) That help is welcome. But it does nothing to solve the plight of those suffering trafficking and exploitation in Europe right now. Nor is it good enough to say that these children are all someone else's problem. Italy and Greece are overwhelmed. A shocking 10,000 child refugees have vanished in Europe - many of them undoubtedly into the arms of trafficking gangs. All European countries should do more - for example it is a disgrace how little child protection France has put in place to tackle the problems in Calais. But how can we ask other countries to do more if we are refusing to do anything ourselves. Nor can ministers hide behind the claim that if Britain helps then more will come. The fact is tens of thousands of children and teenagers are already in Europe and they have often come searching for relatives. Moreover the idea that we should abandon thousands of children to the streets and a life of trauma and abuse in order to deter others is simply immoral. I hope today that MPs of all parties join the call to stop the government turning its back. When the Kindertransport was passed in Parliament, MPs of all parties supported Britain's leadership in helping child refugees. Advertisement Alf Dubs himself is a child of the Kindertransport - saved by Sir Nicholas Winton from the Nazis. Now he is asking us to save another generation of child refugees. Other Kindertransport survivors have spoken out too. Like Rabbi Harry Jacobi - who came on one of the last boats out of Amsterdam. And Sir Erich Reich. All of them joining with the Board of Deputies, the Church of England and the House of Lords, Save the Children, the Refugee Council, Citizens UK, Jewish Council for Racial Equality, local government, community groups to urge MPs to do the right thing today. When Sir Nicholas Winton's stamp was launched, Theresa May called him "a hero of the 20th Century." Yet she is refusing to support the child refugees of the 21st Century. Let us not look back in 20 years or more and be ashamed of the vote in Parliament today - let all MPs join together and vote for Lord Dubs' amendment now. David Gray / Reuters A war veteran walks in front of the Cenotaph during the annual dawn service commemoration on ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) Day in central Sydney, Australia, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY Australians made their way to dawn services across the nation on Monday to pay their respects to Australian servicemen and women, while also marking the 101st anniversary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli. Great turnout for the #AnzacDay2016 Dawn Service in Canberra this morning #yourADFpic.twitter.com/sjKau6jtEt VADM Ray Griggs (@VCDF_Australia) April 24, 2016 Advertisement In Canberra, crowds of about 55,000 filled Anzac Parade with War Memorial director Brendan Nelson addressing the crowd, emphasising that the values of the Anzacs were ingrained in Australian culture now more than ever. An estimated 55,000 visitors gathered this morning at the Australian War Memorial for the 2016 Anzac Day Dawn Service. A photo posted by Australian War Memorial (@awmemorial) on Apr 24, 2016 at 2:00pm PDT 102,700 Australians are named on the roll of honour. Like us each had only one life, one life to serve others and our nation. They chose us, he said. No Australians have worked harder nor given more to shape our values and our beliefs. Young Australians and New Zealanders gave their all at Gallipoli and forged in bloody sacrifice the bond within which our two nations now live. Advertisement They have given us a greater belief in ourselves and a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian. Iconic image of our diggers and my fav. The 1st Field Co. Engineers staging in Egypt before Gallipoli. #AnzacDaypic.twitter.com/hy263Ix3PU Michael Usher (@michaelusher) April 24, 2016 An Australian soldier plays The Last Post. In Sydney, the Premier of New South Wales, Mike Baird, encouraged NSW residents to attend Anzac Day services across the state, despite the arrest of a teenager overnight on terrorism-related charges. Advertisement Anzac Day dawn service: Words are projected onto a building in Martin Place. Images of diggers projected onto building behind the Martin Place Cenotaph at Dawn Service #AnzacDay2016@2GBNewspic.twitter.com/ud1J0gwjzU Laura Parr (@LauraKParr) April 24, 2016 The pipes and drums are already playing Waltzing Matilda this morning at Martin Place #AnzacDay2016#AnzacABCpic.twitter.com/lpNVberway Raveen Hunjan (@RaveenHunjan) April 24, 2016 My strong encouragement is if you are intending to go, go, he said after the dawn service at Martin Place on Monday. This is a day where we should be out there commemorating such a proud day of our history. And even if you are not thinking of going, really try to go to a ceremony, because it is such an important part of who we are. Advertisement NSW Premier Mike Baird, left, and Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione at the Anzac Day Dawn Service at Martin Place. Thousands gathered in Martin Place, where speakers recalled the campaigns by Australian troops in WWI, and particularly the move to the Western Front in 1916. A wreath is laid in Martin Place at the dawn service Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attended a dawn service at North Bondi RSL club in Sydney before travelling to Canberra for the Anzac Day National Ceremony. ANZAC Day 2016. A swelling crowd awaits the dawn at North Bondi #lestweforget A photo posted by Malcolm Turnbull (@turnbullmalcolm) on Apr 24, 2016 at 12:46pm PDT Advertisement Incredible amount of people showed up for the dawn service to show their respects at #nthbondirsl #respect #lestweforget pic @turnbullmalcolm A photo posted by The Bucket List (@thebucketlistbondi) on Apr 24, 2016 at 2:11pm PDT In Brisbane, Anzac square was overflowing with a 25,000 strong crowd that had already gathered in silence before the service. Queensland Governor Paul de Jorsey urged the crowd to show sensitivity to modern-day soldiers carrying the psychological scars of service. Today we pay particular tribute to our dedicated and professional defence personnel, 2,200 currently overseas supporting Australias interests, he said. We must not forget veterans whose war wounds are not readily visible. On the Gold Coast, thousands also flocked to the popular beachfront service at Currumbin. Albert Battery present volley fire of remembrance at Currumbin Anzac service. @abcgoldcoastpic.twitter.com/mX67tOrI8O Tom Forbes (@tomforbesGC) April 24, 2016 Advertisement Mounted Light Horsemen on Currumbin Beach post Anzac Dawn Service. @abcgoldcoastpic.twitter.com/680xcQ95oU Tom Forbes (@tomforbesGC) April 24, 2016 At Melbournes Shrine of Remembrance, about 70,000 gathered with thousands of people walking solemnly through the city and along St Kilda Road before the services 5.40 am start time. Large services were also underway in Tasmania at Hobarts Cenotaph and at Kingston Beach to the south of the city. Advertisement Thousands also gathered in Adelaide and across South Australia to pay their respects, with the chairman of South Australias Anzac Day committee, Ian Smith, saying that on the 101st anniversary of the Gallipoli landings it was important to reflect on the tragedy of war, rather than military glory. War veterans and relatives display their medals. Fairfax Media/Supplied Doctors and medical professionals have slammed the Australian Government's handling of asylum seekers' medical care, which they believe led to the death of Hamid Khazaei in a Brisbane hospital in 2014. In a Four Corners expose on Monday night, medical professionals directly involved in the treatment of the 24-year-old Iranian -- who had become ill with an infection after cutting his leg on Manus Island -- said that their medical advice to transfer Khazaei was repeatedly delayed, ignored or not received for hours at a time. This resulted in a 30 hour delay before he was flown out of Manus -- a delay which in all likelihood cost him his life. Advertisement Hamid Khazaei was admitted to the Manus Island hospital with a fever and headaches on Saturday 23 August 2014. Without an interpreter, Khazaei was diagnosed with a throat infection and treated with the limited antibiotics available. Former IHMS Mental Health Services Director, Stephen Brooker, who has worked at the clinic during eight visits to Manus Island, said that the facilities at the Manus Island hospital were very basic. "It wasn't an emergency setting. It was a basic triage area, where you could hold and monitor people but not for long periods of time [...] It was a pretty hot environment." After Khazaei's condition worsened and abscesses were discovered on his leg and groin, an urgent request to transfer him to Port Moresby was issued at 9:30am on Monday. This was approved by IHMS -- the body in charge of medical care on Manus -- within an hour and a half, but the Department of Immigration didn't approve the transfer until the following morning. Advertisement "That was the decision that sealed his fate," Australian Medical Assosication President Professor Brian Owler told Four Corners. "If he had have been transferred to Port Moresby, he would still be alive today. There was a flight leaving at 5:30pm that [Monday] afternoon with a doctor on that flight. Why not take that flight?" "You can question the motives and whether or not he should've been an asylum seeker in the first place. Those are separate issues. But as a human being in that sort of circumstance, why do we accept a lower level of healthcare for that person? "Why do we accept that his death may have been inevitable? It wasn't. He could have been saved and he could've been treated properly, but he wasn't." Further recommendations made on Tuesday by Dr Stewart Condon -- who was organising the evacuation -- that the patient be transferred directly to Australia were also overlooked. Advertisement By the time Hamid Khazaei was eventually transferred to a Brisbane hospital at 10pm on Wednesday 27 August 2014, he had suffered three heart attacks and was critically ill with advanced septicaemia. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced brain dead shortly afterwards. Speaking out about the affair for the first time on Four Corners, Dr Condon said that the mismanagement of Hamid Khazaei's situation began his disillusionment with the system. He was one of the senior coordinating doctors for ISOS at the time, which remains in charge of the medical treatment of asylum seekers on Manus via a privately owned subsidiary, IHMS. "I saw a company that in some places was doing the best they could, and in other ways that they were just, ah... How to put it nicely? I think they were more interested in the business imperative," he told Four Corners. Advertisement Former Senior coordinating doctor at International SOS, Dr Steward Condon, was in charged of the evacuation of Hamid Khazaei from Manus Island. He says his order to evacuate Khazaei directly to Australia instead of Papua New Guinea was ignored by the Department of Immigration, until it was too late. "What we have seen is progressively doctors' opinions being shut out," said Professor Brian Owler. "Then we had the Border Force Act, which many doctors working within the system saw as being a method of intimidation." The Border Force Act was introduced by the Abbott Government and came into affect on 1 July 2015.Under the legislation, doctors, nurses and aid workers who reveal conditions and medical care on Nauru and Manus Island detention centres face up to two years' imprisonment. Professor David Isaacs, a paediatrician who visited Nauru in December 2014 and who also featured on the Four Corners program, has written to the Turnbull Government challenging it to prosecute him for speaking out or to repeal the legislation. He has also previously likened the detention centres to concentration camps and said that the asylum seekers undergo "torture-like conditions". Why havent I been prosecuted?" he asked on Four Corners. "My feeling is that this legislation isnt actually about imprisoning doctors. Its about silencing doctors. Advertisement Then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison spoke at a press conference on 5 September 2014, when Khazaei was still on life support in a Brisbane hospital. He defended the medical treatment of Khazaei, labelling it "outstanding". Our focus and care has been on this young man from the moment he presented to medical officers at Manus Island and on focusing on the interests and engaging with the family," he said. Khazaei's life support was switched off that night with the permission of his mother and brother in Iran, who requested that his organs be donated. Scott Morrison subsequently ordered a review into Hamid Khazaei's treatment by the Immigration Department. The report hasn't been released, but Four Corners reported that it criticised numerous aspects of Khazaei's medical treatment -- including the initial incorrect diagnosis and the failure to give him oxygen before transferring him to Port Moresby -- but does not criticise the Department of Immigration's role in the delays in his transfer to Australia. Advertisement Khazaei's autopsy report was released in December last year. It found that the infection was the result of a rare bacteria, chromobacterium violaceum, which Khazaei was genetically predisposed to contract. However, one of the doctors who took part in the inquiry following Khazaei's death, Dr Josh Davis, said that this had little baring on how he should have been treated. "If he had a golden staph infection and was getting worse and worse, he would be exactly the same," Dr Davis said. "He would have had the same symptoms, he would have required the same treatment. Dr Stewart Condon no longer works for ISOS. He says he left at least in part because he saw a system where the advice of doctors was overridden by bureaucrats. Michael Ludwig is an Associate Professor of Health Education at Hofstra University. On April 22, 2106 he sent this letter to edTPA expressing his frustration with the entire process. Student names have been deleted. Dear edTPA, Where do I begin? With the fact that I have over 30 years' experience in health education that includes work as a teacher at the middle school, high school, and higher education levels? With the fact that I have three degrees (BS, MS, PhD) in health education but apparently I can't be trusted to judge whether or not someone is prepared to lead a health education classroom? With the fact that the art and craft of teaching has been reduced to a series of bureaucratic measurements done by someone who has never met the aspiring teacher? With the fact that while I was intensely skeptical of edTPA from the start, I worked diligently to "get up to speed" and revised our curriculum and program to meet the demands of edTPA despite the fact that the vast majority of our master's degree students are already certified and do not have to submit a portfolio? With the fact that the way New York State rolled out edTPA is now viewed as a textbook case of how NOT to do it? With the fact that a high stakes decision such as teacher licensing is decided by a Pearson employee who has never met and will never meet the candidates submitting their edTPA portfolio? With the fact that my 2 years of work with health education teacher candidates no longer has any bearing on whether or not they are able to get licensed to teach in New York State? With the fact that despite the cooperating teachers' beliefs at my students' field work placements that my students were progressing appropriately and were on track to become master teachers counts for nothing? With the fact that edTPA scorers are not required to have experience as classroom teachers? With the fact that edTPA scorers are paid a paltry $75 to decide whether or not a candidate is allowed to realize a dream? With the fact that despite all my misgivings, I registered to become a health education scorer for Pearson's edTPA so as to better be able to provide support to my health education students? As I'm certain you will not address all the previous questions (which are posed rhetorically), I will attempt to provide some context for this note by answering this last question. I am currently employed by Pearson to become a health education edTPA scorer. I have not completed my training and have come to realize even more than I first believed, that the entire edTPA process is a fraud that I will no longer participate in. However, humor me and let me provide some background: I scored the first health education practice portfolio and was told during the subsequent webinar that I was the best scorer they had worked with to date. I was told that I hit the majority of the rubrics with the score that was expected and the few that I didn't get exactly were adjacent. As the demands of the semester increased, I never got around to scoring and submitting the second practice portfolio. One of the demands I was facing was to support a candidate during her student teaching. I supported my current candidate as she designed, implemented, and evaluated three consecutive lessons on stress management for her edTPA portfolio where we both used the "Thinking Behind the Rubrics" as our guide and were confident that no rubric was below a three and that most of them should have earned a four or five. I followed edTPA's guidelines for appropriate candidate support but frankly I'm not sure I could have written a better series of lessons. However, my informal assessment of the portfolio was deemed VERY wrong. I say that because yesterday edTPA sent the score report back to my student (she shared it with me) and found 14 of the 15 rubrics were scored a two, with one rubric (#6) scored a three? Now, like any good researcher, I understand the role bias could play in my reading of my student's portfolio. However, these scores were so divergent from where I believed they should be that I have to believe that the portfolio was given only a cursory read at best. Or, there had to be some issue with the scorer. The notion that there is no recourse and that the scoring system lacks any degree of transparency is ludicrous. A person should have to defend and support his/her assessment. Reading the comments of the edTPA score report told me that whoever that person is, he/she either didn't understand the writing or he/she didn't bother to read carefully. Not that it's germane to this issue but this candidate has at least three peer-reviewed publications in journals. The fact that this process costs $300 is a heavy burden for many aspiring educators. Further, the fact that edTPA charges an additional $100 for a rescore in unconscionable. My student submitted her portfolio on March 22, 2016 and was one of the first to submit from Hofstra University. I feel one source of scorer error could be due to this early submission. I insist that edTPA re-examine the submission by a fully trained and vetted veteran scorer of health education portfolios at no charge to her. I have concerns about the process: If a person has their portfolio rescored, is the scorer told that it is a "rescore"? If so, they would have to know that the rescore was the result of not passing on the initial scoring which would clearly bias the scorer. I must admit I have no faith in the edTPA system. The system crushed a promising young woman who worked tirelessly to follow the edTPA handbook. Not only that, and more importantly, this prospective teacher was ultimately most interested in teaching her students the functional knowledge and health-related skills so as facilitate and improve their health and wellbeing. I could go on but others have done an excellent job questioning the usefulness of edTPA. I would imagine you are familiar with these critiques and have dismissed them. I believe they are largely accurate and spot on. Sincerely, Michael J. Ludwig, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Health Education Hofstra University Fifteen years ago, a Louisiana jury convicted 22-year-old McKinley "Mac" Phipps--then a rising star on the famed hip hop label, No Limit Records--of manslaughter in the shooting death of a young concertgoer. He was sentenced to thirty years of hard labor for a crime that, to this day, he insists he did not commit. The state's case was flimsy 15 years ago, but over the last couple of years, outside investigation has revealed evidence of grave police and prosecutorial misconduct, making Mac Phipps's continued incarceration unfathomable to any rational person. And yet, thanks to a criminal justice system that has become so broken that it tolerates--and even seems to wink at--flagrant abuses of power, he is still behind bars. Advertisement Before the charges, life was promising for Phipps, a rapper who, thanks to talent and hard work, quickly rose to national prominence. His fame, however, appeared to make him a target in the eyes of law enforcement. Despite the fact that another man confessed to the crime--and that the government did not have forensic evidence connecting Phipps to the shooting--the prosecutor went after Phipps anyway, relying on a series of eyewitnesses who testified that he was the shooter. That testimony has since unraveled. Prosecution witnesses have now come forward to insist that they were threatened and coerced into testifying falsely against Phipps. Still others have come forward and said that police and prosecutors ignored their statements that Phipps was definitely not the shooter. Reportedly, the prosecution also failed to disclose these witnesses to the defense despite a legal obligation to do so. Coercing false testimony. Ignoring or suppressing contradictory evidence. Failing to disclose evidence helpful to the defense. Each, by themselves, are egregious forms of prosecutorial misconduct. But the disturbing tactics did not stop with witnesses. Compounding the situation in Phipps's case was the prosecutor's blatant attempts to attack Phipps's character during trial by using his lyrics to exploit well-worn stereotypes of the hyper-violent black man. Advertisement Phipps's prosecutor followed advice commonly given to trial attorneys: tell a story that fits with jurors' understanding of the world. In this case, that meant the prosecutor - using Phipps's professional identity as a rapper - painted a picture for the all-white jury of Phipps as a violent gangster who must have committed the crime. Beginning with his opening statement and continuing in his closing argument, the prosecutor used Phipps's rap persona and lyrics - remixed for special effect - to carefully construct a story of Phipps's guilt. Rap artists adopt monikers, create entertaining personas, and work hard to foster and maintain their images, even if they run counter to their actual personality. In this case, the prosecutor repeatedly referred to Phipps's moniker - Mac the Camouflage Assassin - to suggest Phipps was a violent killer. What the jury never learned was the innocent - if not juvenile - explanation for the name. Phipps was dubbed The Camouflage Assassin during high school because he really liked kung fu flicks and he moved his hands like he was wielding a sword. The prosecutor left that part out. Like the rapper he was trying to convict, the prosecutor engaged in lyrical remix, only in this case, it was for nefarious purposes. During opening and closing statements, he used Mac's lyrics to present a deceptively simple equation, one that would result in a conviction. "This defendant who did this is the same defendant whose message is, 'Murder murder, kill, kill, you f**k with me you get a bullet in your brain,'" said the prosecutor. "You don't have to be a genius to figure out that one plus one equals two." Clearly the prosecutor's narrative resonated with at least one member of the jury, the foreman no less: "I don't listen to that s**t, but the music might have been the problem. The rap got his mind all messed up. He was living a life that he thought he was a gangsta. He was making it big time with the gold chains and all that s**t that went with it. To shoot somebody in a public place on the dance floor, you gotta think you're a bad son of a b***h." Perhaps the impact of the lyrics would have been different had the prosecutor told the jury that that the lyric he was quoting was never actually written by Phipps. In fact, the prosecutor spliced together lyrics from two different songs Phipps wrote and then, making matters worse, deceptively altered them to make Phipps sound as dangerous as possible. Advertisement And yet, even after hearing the prosecutor's mangled version of the lyrics, two jurors still weren't convinced and voted against conviction. But unfortunately for Phipps, Louisiana--America's incarceration capital--is one of only two states that allow juries to convict with a nonunanimous verdict. (Interestingly, in Louisiana this traces back to a Jim Crow era law intended to funnel more emancipated black bodies into the state's privatized convict-leasing system.) Sure enough, he was convicted, 10-2. Setting aside Louisiana's very special place in our nation's criminal justice system, Phipps's case strikingly demonstrates an all too common scenario of prosecutorial overzealousness, even misconduct, nationwide. Change some witness testimony. Ignore, omit, and hide other witnesses. Tell a good story that relies on remakes of classic racialized stereotypes. Engage in character assassination. For Phipps, the result was a conviction and thirty year sentence, just as he began to see all of the possibilities his life had in store for him. Today he faces the prospect of an additional fifteen years of incarceration, despite all the new evidence and information suggesting he was convicted wrongfully. He cannot be paroled because he will not confess to a crime he says he did not commit. And based on the record and information available at the time, courts have denied his appeals. Phipps's attorneys can file a petition for a new trial but resolution of that matter could take years and would likely be unsuccessful. At this point, he has almost no relief available to him in the courts because the criminal justice system prefers finality and certainty of verdicts. It's too bad if those verdicts were unjust. Glimmers of hope remain. Based on the newly available information, Phipps's attorneys asked the District Attorney last year and again this year to review the case. Unsuccessful the first time, it remains to be seen what will happen with the second request. Phipps's other current hope is that Louisiana's governor will grant clemency. (A petition in support of his clemency application was recently posted here.) Until then, he must wait, like so many others. Advertisement Phipps's case is not an outlier in any respect. Federal and state prosecutors nationwide use rap lyrics and rap videos in criminal trials to convict defendants. As we have noted before, it's a practice that is alarming because of its scope, its effectiveness, and its obvious dependence on racial stereotypes and biases. What's more, across America, men and women who were unfairly convicted languish in jails and prisons. Those cases and stories rarely receive any attention from the legal system, the media, and the public. Fortunately for Phipps, the media has taken note and well-known artists have publicly offered him their support. Hopefully, these efforts to free Phipps will draw attention to the needs of others. For his sake, for the sake of other inmates, and for all our sakes, the public must demand that prosecutors focus on serving justice, not just filling prison cells. Hillary Clinton, left, speaks while Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., listens during the CNN Democratic Presidential Primary Debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Thursday, April 14, 2016 in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Dear Hillary and Bernie, Is there any reason we voters should care which of you is better at lacerating the other when what we need to know is how well you will be able to fight our real opponents after the convention and after the election? What sense does it make for you two to argue over your respective policy programs when, unless you can get the Republican obstructionists out of the way, your arguments will prove to have been just about which of your agendas the Republicans will block? Advertisement If you're serious about getting any of your proposals enacted, shouldn't you be looking down the road at the obvious roadblock that's in the way, and taking steps now to remove them? You've spoken, Hillary, about your being good at reaching across the aisle--as if that means you'll be able to move us forward. Do you really think that you can reach across that aisle with any more openness to finding common ground than President Obama displayed for years, hoping to work together with Republicans to get things done? That got him nowhere, because they were interested not in getting things done but in making him fail. Do you have any reason for thinking your "reaching across the aisle" would go any better? And you, Bernie, have done a great service in calling attention to some important truths about the rigging of our economy and of our politics by the corrupting influence of Big Money. But why aren't you educating the American public about how it is the Republican Party that has been systematically blocking all efforts to level the playing field? And while you've made a big point of stressing that the overturning of Citizens United is your major litmus test for any Supreme Court appointee, why aren't you educating the American public about how that widely despised Supreme Court decision was the product of a five-justice majority, all of whom were appointed by the Republicans? Advertisement Given that you've got every political incentive to wrest control of Congress away from the Republicans, why aren't you campaigning in a way that gives you the best chance of accomplishing that? My fear is that the answer may be that you are both afflicted with the weakness that has beset the leadership of the Democratic Party for years, manifested in an ongoing failure to confront the Republican Party as the situation warrants. Failure in the 90s to denounce and stand up against the right-wing attempt to destroy the Clinton presidency. Failure during the W presidency to fight even to censure, let alone impeach, a president who committed half the impeachable offenses (I would estimate) perpetrated by over two centuries of American presidents. Failure during the Obama presidency to return fire with an intensity and determination that even remotely matched that of the Republicans with their continuous assaults on this Democratic president. Advertisement It should not be difficult now -- after all the Republicans have done -- to go after them effectively. It should not be difficult to demonstrate to the American electorate that, if they want the nation to move forward, they've got to take power away from this Republican Party, which has deliberately chosen to hobble the people's government rather than get anything accomplished. It should not be difficult to demonstrate that this Republican Party continuously fails what might be called "the founders' test." That test would consist of asking: When our founders drew up the Constitution, would they have regarded the way the Republicans have been conducting themselves in our constitutional system as an acceptable example of what they had in mind? This Republican Party would fail that founders' test again and again. In particular, there's no way that the founders would have regarded "If the president is for it, we had to be against it" LINK as passing that test. A nation disabled and adrift in the face of serious challenges is hardly what they had in mind. The people are angry with "Congress." But it is only the Republicans in Congress that are refusing to do the people's business. Show people where the real problem is, and harness their justifiable anger to propel your candidacy, and the candidacies of Democrats seeking to take the Republicans' seats from them. Advertisement You have every political incentive to go after the Republicans to drain their support away. You have every political incentive to demonstrate to Democratic primary voters that you are a leader who can defeat this "outlier" of a political party that's operated like a wrecking ball on our political system. Can we at last have a Democratic leader who has a real appetite for the battle that so urgently needs to be fought?* *Footnote: We Democrats do have one important leader who has taken on the Republicans in an eloquent, powerful, and appropriate way. That's Senator Elizabeth Warren. In March, Senator Warren excoriated the Republican behavior in refusing to do their constitutional duties to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, and connected this disgraceful conduct with their other illegitimate forms of political conduct and with the ugly extremism on display in the Republican presidential contest. This past week she demolished Ted Cruz after Senator Cruz sent out a smarmy message about all the sacrifices he is making to run for president. And her demolition was framed in a way that highlighted all the right-wing policy positions through which Cruz (and other Republicans) sacrifice other Americans who are struggling to make their lives work. Advertisement What Elizabeth Warren is doing is what we need for the Democratic standard-bearer to be doing -- using the truth about this grotesque Republican Party to discredit it in the eyes of everyone not too far gone into a right-wing-induced trance to see it. Monday 25th April, 2016 marks one year since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. A second major earthquake followed on 12th May, 2015. Across the country people still talk about the disaster that left 2.8 million people displaced, including families who live outside the impacted regions. Nepal remains troubled by the ongoing struggle to rebuild and lack of visible progress. In the six months after the first earthquake, Empower Generation distributed 10,995 solar lights, mobile chargers and home systems across fifteen districts through our women-led network. With our supporters' generous donations, and work in partnership with organizations like Kopernik, disaster-relief campaigns like Rebuild With Sun, and many more generous global contributors, we achieved an impact far beyond what we imagined. However, as with many natural disasters like those in Haiti and Aceh, the immediate international support only goes so far and in many cases disappears as swiftly as it arrives. Nepal was pledged $4 billion from foreign countries and international agencies and, since the earthquake there have been no reports publicly on how much of that aid has transferred to Nepal and been spent. The only reliable relief spending from the government we've seen (according to an article by BBC News) is money offered to victims for clothes and corrugated iron ($250 USD) and compensation for the loss of family members ($400). In districts of Nepal like Nuwakot, where 24 year old solar CEO Manju Paudel of Manju Solar Enterprise lives, most people are still living in temporary shelters and crumbled homes. Advertisement Few schools and homes in Manju's community have been rebuilt and very little aid has been received. The four month blockade at the Nepal-India border late in 2015 has been blamed for the relief inefficiency, though it seems silly to offer excuses while while millions remain homeless. Manju's three-story home was completely destroyed in the earthquake, leaving her and her extended family, sleeping among their cows and goats in an open area amongst the rubble. Losing her home meant losing storage for rice, grain, and corn harvested before the earthquake. Unable to provide storage meant the family's food supply for the months ahead rotted. The one year anniversary is an especially scary time for Manju, "We are fearful what would happen and how we would survive if another earthquake with the same impact hits again," she says. "People all around us lost homes built with their hard earned money. It is very sad to see everyone struggling and living in tents this long after the earthquake." Empower Generation co-founder and Country Director, Sita Adhikari says the aftershocks still felt today are a constant reminder of the big one. "Both physically and psychologically we are still insecure, people are living in temporary settlements and have not received a sustainable solution, only a bit of immediate relief," Adhikari says. Advertisement For many people in and outside Nepal, as the devastation turned to rebuilding it was seen as an opportunity to form a more resilient Nepal, stronger than it was before the earthquake, with everyone prepared for the future no matter their social status or location. Unfortunately, this larger opportunity now seems lost except by the local NGOs and community-based organizations doing their best to make a difference. In remote communities, where some of the poorest in Nepal live, Empower Generation has provided a positive impact by expanding our women-led distribution network. To distribute solar in Taklung, Gorkha (near the epicenter of the earthquake), our team walked eleven hours after the road became completely inaccessible for a truck. To ensure a lasting impact in this remote community, this year Empower Generation, funded by Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and with the support of our local partner, the Association for Dalit Women Advancement of Nepal is starting two women-led solar enterprises and training 30 Dalit (untouchable caste) women to work as solar sales agents. Back in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu the ordeal of the first earthquake which toppled buildings and took lives is an ongoing trauma for Empower Generation's Financial Officer, Sitaram Paudel. He admits he is still scared when he thinks of the earthquake and, while it's been a year, he is reminded of the weeks spent struggling, sleeping outside on the ground with his seven-month-old daughter. Sitaram estimates only 30% of those affected in Nepal have recovered from the quake and the continuing rumors of another major earthquake creates constant panic. Kabita Subedi, a Program Coordinator who makes frequent field visits for Empower Generation, regularly spends time with victims of the earthquake. She says Nepal was beautiful earlier, but now all she sees are people full of sorrow and children suffering because their parents passed away or they are homeless. The reality is many people in Nepal still have a dark future. Nepal was already one of the most energy poor countries in the world and last year's devastating earthquake set back its development by decades. We know people are living in tents still, and girls and women are suffering, and we know there are areas where no schools have been rebuilt and there's little hope of that. This sobering time of reflection only reaffirms Empower Generation's commitment to bringing energy access to remote communities and empowering women to become business leaders in Nepal. Image: Uranium. Stock Photo. Pixabay.com Arrests of Armenians who have crossed into neighboring Georgia to try to sell nuclear materials have increased the past two years, with the latest coming just two weeks ago. Nuclear non-proliferation experts in the United States and elsewhere are alarmed about smuggling attempts in other countries in the former Soviet Union as well, including Russia, Ukraine and Moldova. The arrests of most of the Armenians have been in sting operations in Georgia, where undercover officers posed as buyers from Islamic extremist groups. Advertisement The reason the arrests have been made in Georgia is that Armenia is a landlocked country, but Georgia has Black Sea ports that could be used to smuggle nuclear material to the Middle East or anywhere else. Many inside and outside the former Soviet Union feel revulsion toward would-be nuclear-materials sellers. That's because intelligence officials say ISIS and other terrorist groups are trying to obtain material to build a dirty bomb they could explode in Europe or the United States. Most people find despicable the notion that someone would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians on the line to make money. Advertisement But some ne'er-do-wells across the former Soviet Union are willing to do so with no moral compunction. Armenians have been particularly active in nuclear-materials smuggling efforts in the region. The first Armenian to be caught, according to news reports, tried to sneak highly enriched uranium capable of making a bomb into Georgia twice -- in 2003 and 2010. The United States, which has been a driver of efforts to keep nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union from falling into the hands of rogue states or terrorists, gave Georgia $50 million a few years ago to help thwart smugglers. Part of the money was used to install radiation detectors at Georgian border crossings, and that proved to be the undoing of Armenian smuggler Garik Dadayan the first time. When a detector went off as he tried to enter Georgia, Georgian police pounced. He was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, but served only a few months before being released. Advertisement The question of why the original sentence was so light, and why he was freed so quickly after being confined, has never been answered satisfactorily. The suspicion is that bribes were at play. The light sentence apparently emboldened Dadayan to try again. In 2010, he was arrested in another smuggling effort, this time in cahoots with two other Armenians. Dadayan supplied 18 grams of nuclear materials to Hrant Ohanyan and Sumbat Tonoyan, who smuggled it into Georgia aboard a train. The two foiled the radiation detectors by placing it in a cigarette box lined with lead. Georgian and Armenian intelligence were aware of the plot, however. Georgian authorities arrested Ohanyan and Tonoyan in a sting operation. Then Armenian authorities nabbed Dadayan. Ohanyan and Tonoyan pleaded guilty in a Georgian court to trying to sell the material to a man in the country's capital of Tbilisi whom they believed was an Islamic extremist. The would-be buyer was actually an undercover officer. Both suspects were desperate to improve their lives. Although the 59-year-old Ohanyan was a scientist at the Yerevan Institute of Physics, he had a meager income. The 63-year-old Tonoyan's gambling addiction had led to his losing a successful dairy business. Advertisement Ohanyan received a 13-year sentence and Tonoyan 14. News media did not report Dadayan's sentence. There was a lull in Armenian arrests between 2010 and the late summer of 2014. But eight Armenians have been arrested since, heightening the concern of those trying to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear-bomb-capable material. In August of 2014, Georgian authorities arrested two Armenians trying to smuggle Cesium 137 into Georgia. In January of 2016, they arrested three Armenians, also for trying to sneak Cesium 137 across the border. The latest arrests of Armenian smugglers came in mid-April of this year. Georgia charged three Armenians and three Georgians with trying to sell the Uranium 238 that was found in the home of one of the Georgians. Four of the six suspects were pensioners in their mid-70s, Georgian authorities said. The implication was they needed more money to live on. Advertisement The question of where all of the Armenians who have been arrested since 2003 obtained nuclear materials has yet to be answered. As far as the world knows, Armenia possesses no nuclear weapons. It has a nuclear power plant at Metsamor, but there is no evidence the materials that Georgian authorities seized came from there. There is evidence -- although no "smoking gun" -- that some seized materials came from Novosibirsk in Siberian Russia, authorities have said. The question about the Armenian smuggling attempts that overrides all the others, of course, is whether they will continue, or even accelerate. Given Armenia's distinction as one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union, unfortunately you can probably bet on it. Advertisement The federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (1990), as well as state statutes, provide protection for qualified individuals from employment discrimination based upon "disability." Courts have reached differing conclusions concerning the legal status of obesity. This comment provides a brief overview of two recent contradictory judicial decisions without discussing medical research, food marketing, and lifestyle issues. The ADA defines "disability" as "(A) a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual; (B) a record of such an impairment; or (C) being regarded as having such an impairment ..." (42 USC Sec. 12102) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has enacted a variety of regulations, and numerous judicial decisions address the question of "disability." Advertisement A.The following recent 2016 federal Court of Appeals decision determined that obesity is not a protected disability: BNSF Railroad refused to hire an individual as a machinist, considered by BNSF to be a safety sensitive position, because his body mass index (BMI) was above 40. In brief summary, the Court concluded that an individual's weight is a physical impairment "only if it falls outside the normal range and it occurs as the result of a physiological disorder." (Morris v. BNSF Railway Co., Eighth Circuit, 2016). Consequently, BNSF had not discriminated based upon a physical impairment. The Morris Court noted a similar decision had been reached by the Sixth Circuit in 2006, the Second Circuit in 1997, The Kentucky Supreme Court in 2015, the District of Columbia Court in 2008, and several federal District Courts. The prospective employee, Morris, argued unsuccessfully that with the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 Congress intended a broad definition be applied to "disability." Additionally, the Sixth Circuit BNSF decision concluded that an employer could make employment decisions based upon "its assessment that although no physical impairment currently exists, there is an unacceptable risk of a future physical impairment." Advertisement B.A 2015 divided Montana Supreme Court decision (4:3) concluded that obesity might constitute a "physical or mental impairment" under Montana state law "if the individual's weight was outside of normal range and affects one or more body systems." The Montana Supreme Court was asked the interpretative question by a Montana federal District Court ("certified question"). The certified question procedure exists when a federal court is applying state law and is uncertain concerning the correct interpretation of state law. Federal courts apply state law when citizens of different states decide to litigate in federal court and the amount in dispute exceeds $75,000 (dollar amount set by Congress in 1996). An example would be a traffic accident, and there is no applicable federal law ("diversity of citizenship" federal court jurisdiction). This case also, like the prior case, involved a BNFS refusal to hire (BNSF Railway Co. v Feit, Montana Supreme Court, 2015). The federal court asked the Montana Supreme Court to determine if obesity is a "physical or mental impairment" under Montana State law. The Montana statute and regulations parallel federal law and the Montana Supreme Court reviewed federal standards. The dissenting Montana Justices emphasized that the majority of courts considering whether or not obesity qualified as a disability determined that the weight must both be outside the normal range and also be the result of a physiological disorder. My observation is that the overall legal trend appears to be that obesity alone does not constitute a disability. However, a number of courts have not considered this question. Consequently, one must research the judicial decisions of a particular jurisdiction. Without tarry, Congress should pass pending legislation (S. 2040) to authorize 9/11 victims or their families to sue Saudi Arabia for alleged complicity in the international terrorist abominations. It would be nauseating for President Barack Obama to veto the legislation as he has pledged. A nation that would subordinate justice to courting a religiously bigoted and misogynist tyranny is a nation that has lost its way. At present, nations listed by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism can be sued civilly for damages by private plaintiffs for terrorist crimes in which the state sponsor was complicit. Iran and Sudan, for instance, have been held liable for billions of dollars in damages under congressionally enacted exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity. This civil liability exposure has not caused any diplomatic ruptures. Iran recently approved the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that restricts its nuclear ambitions despite the staggering judgment awards against it issued by United States courts in favor of American victims of Iranian terrorism. Nations negotiate out of fear, not love. Advertisement S. 2040 -- the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act -- builds on the state sponsor of terrorism exception to foreign sovereign immunity that has operated for more than two decades without wreaking havoc in United States foreign policy. It would authorize private damages suits by Americans against any foreign nation for complicity in international terrorism that causes death or injury in the United States. Plaintiffs would be shouldered with the burden of proving foreign state complicity with judicially vetted reliable evidence. A newspaper article or Google search will not suffice. Civilization is a battle between justice and arbitrary power. The purpose of law is to assist justice, not its enemies. By that standard, S.2040 is long overdue. Any Member of Congress who votes against the bill is a moral wretch who should be ousted from office. The legislation is necessary to enable 9/11 victims or their families to seek damages from Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 horrors it seemingly aided. In December 2002, the Joint Congressional Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, chaired by then- Rep. Porter Goss (Florida Republican) and then-Sen. Bob Graham (Florida Republican) issued a final report. A 28-page chapter was excised and classified allegedly to protect intelligence sources and methods. According to the Joint Congressional Inquiry, the redacted pages detail "specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11th hijackers while they were in the United States." A wealth of informed opinion suggests that the 28 pages establish a nexus between the Saudi royal family and the 9/11 perpetrators. Advertisement On August 1, 2003, 46 Senators sent a letter to then-President Bush urging declassification. The signatories included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, incumbent Secretary of State John Kerry and incumbent Vice President Joe Biden. Among other things, the letter elaborated: "Saudi Arabia's banks and charities have been used to funnel money to Al-Qaeda; its madrassah schools spew hateful anti-American rhetoric to would-be suicide bombers across the Middle East; and fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis. Given these facts, protecting the Saudi regime by eliminating any public penalty for the support given to terrorists from within its borders would be a mistake." Saudi Arabia equals or betters the instruction of ISIS in beheadings for non-violent crimes prosecuted without due process; in the subjugation of women; in religious fanaticism; and, in war crimes against civilians in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is a cause of terrorism, not a cure. Yet the United States has sold the tyrannical kingdom approximately $100 billion in military arms or equipment since 2010 in blind imitation of our military sales to the Shah of Iran before his overthrow. Opponents of S.2040 worry that it might provoke other nations to reciprocally expose the United States to civil liability in their courts for crimes against humanity such as torture or extrajudicial killings. But the United States should be legally accountable in such cases as long as judgments are rendered consistent with due process. Sovereign immunity is a moral obscenity based on the tyrannical concept that "the king can do no wrong." Not only is the king chronically wrong, but commits wrongs on an industrial scale far beyond the means of ordinary mortals. The need for law is at its zenith when the sovereign is implicated in wrongdoing. A resounding congressional override of President Obama's veto of S.2040 would mark one of the finest hours in the annals of justice. The challenges to civilization seem to grow more urgent by the day--from climate change to racism, to terrorism and income inequality. Solutions are difficult to come by. To address these complex issues successfully, society as a whole must understand their causes and consequences. This is where social science and humanities scholarship can play a significant role. In April, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program awarded $6.6 million to seed the work of a diverse group of 33 scholars from public and private universities across the country. The winners were selected by distinguished panel of jurors based on the originality and potential impact of their proposals. Each fellow will receive $200,000 to pursue scholarly research. The goal of the fellows program, supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York, is to invest in innovative work in the social sciences and humanities that will provide new perspectives on the critical issues of our day. "We reviewed proposals from the nation's preeminent scholars and thinkers, as well as from the next generation of promising thinkers and writers," says Susan Hockfield, president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who chaired the panel of 16 jurors. "This year's fellows represent a remarkable range of institutions and organizations, and all share a determination to bring new insights to their fields of study. Advertisement "The large number of truly outstanding proposals makes the jury's task difficult," she adds, "but it also renews our confidence that social science and humanistic perspectives will--and must--contribute to designing solutions to today's most complex challenges." The proposals illustrate a broad range of subject matter, each with the potential to change policies, laws and social norms. Among the winning proposals: How a person becomes "better prepared" to kill another human being. Through a study of gun clubs and gun schools in Texas and Massachusetts, Harel Shapira, an ethnographer at the University of Texas at Austin, examines the cultural, economic, and political trends that make firearms a justifiable necessity for many Americans. The goal is to provide insights into the growing phenomenon of Americans carrying firearms for self-defense. "These schools offer us a window into a world in which this uneasy relationship between democracy and violence materializes in practice," says Shapira. Moving beyond existing research on gun ownership, Shapira examines gun schools as a "key site in contemporary America where ideas about danger and violence are inculcated and disseminated, and where citizens train their minds and bodies to kill." Advertisement Archiving hundreds of cold-case murders. Margaret Burnham, a law professor at Northeastern University and the first female, African American judge in Massachusetts, is completing an archive of 400 unsolved murder cases from the South, dating from 1930 to 1970, thought to have been racially motivated. In addition to providing a sense of closure for the families and communities, the archival process "creates collective and shared memories of a consequential past," according to Burnham. And it helps "to foster reconciliation and to transform individual memories of traumatic experiences into official history. Sound evidence of historic injustice that stimulates public discourses of repair can shape and frame academic research in multiple fields." The nexus between the economy and climate change. Yale University economist William Nordhaus examines the dynamic between the climate change "tipping point" of no return and a model that predicts the danger to the earth's environment based on a country's economic growth and CO2 emissions. Nordhaus's work "focuses on what is arguably the world's most important challenge- understanding and responding to climate change," said Tamor Szabo Gendler, Yale's Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who nominated Nordhaus for the fellowship. He added that Nordhaus is well known for combining economics, earth science, and mathematical modeling to measure the impact of climate change. "Why African Nations Fail and How to Fix It." Landry Signe of the University of Alaska in Anchorage will conduct a comparative analysis of 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, investigating their politics, economies, governance, development, and peace processes, as well the role of international actors on the continent. Signe, who was born in Cameroon, will develop a comprehensive statistical database spanning more than a half-century and use it to examine why certain African nations succeed while others fail. His conclusions will shed light on areas ranging from economic growth and the alleviation of poverty, to the development and nurturing of democracy. Adapting the Muslim culture of refugees to a new European reality. John Bowen of Washington University in St. Louis will study how Muslim immigrants who have settled in European countries are adapting their religious and cultural traditions and practices to their new situations. Carrying out what he calls "practical convergences" involves finding a delicate balance that allows Muslim immigrants to adopt "compromises without abandoning doctrinal positions," he says. Given the recent influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, his work is particularly timely. Other research topics being pursued by the 2016 fellows include economic and demographic shifts in rural America; the potential of abolishing and replacing the prison system; reforms to the judge-selection process; a new vision of a post-imperial Middle East and its implications for democracy and world order; an in-depth look at refugee and asylum issues in Europe and the U.S. to determine effective and humane immigration integration and management; the changing nature of war and what "winning" looks like today; and the examination of alternatives to the United Nations and how to make it more creative and effective. Advertisement Throughout its more than 100-year history, the Corporation has supported many individual scholars and their research. In the 1930s, Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma had a significant impact on race relations and was influential in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Corporation funded the early works of major scholars such as Robert Caro, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Power Broker. Between 2000 and 2009, the Corporation supported the Carnegie Scholars program, which awarded 168 fellowships to scholars across a broad range of disciplines, including 117 scholars with expertise on the challenges facing Islam and the Muslim world. Many of these scholars are now among the top experts in their fields. The new cohort of 33 Carnegie Fellows follows in this tradition. The anticipated result of each fellowship is the publication of a book or major study. Learn more about the 2016 fellowship class at Carnegie.org Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign stop, Sunday, April 24, 2016, at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) On Sunday, April 24, billionaire Charles Koch -- by some estimates the ninth-wealthiest person in the world -- gave an interview to ABC News. It was, I must confess my grudging respect, brilliant political theater. Koch struck a high-minded pose where Donald Trump was concerned. He was profoundly disillusioned with Trump's many personal attacks on opponents and on the press. He found Trump's proposal to create a national registry for Muslims "monstrous" and "reminiscent of Nazi Germany." Nor was Koch finished. He agreed that the "system is rigged" in favor of the wealthy. He conceded that the tax code subsidized the rich. He even acknowledged that his business has been the recipient of "corporate welfare." To the barricades! Charles Koch has joined the new left! Maybe he has been reading Thomas Piketty. Advertisement Koch still had more to say. The topic arose: Who was the more disappointing president, the interviewer asked, George W. Bush or Barack Obama? Koch did not want to make the comparison. He preferred comparing George W. Bush to Bill Clinton. Bush was "a fine person who tried to do the right thing," Koch suggested, but he was in over his head. His invasion of Iraq was ill-advised. And the size of government increased substantially on his watch. No, Koch suggested, the better comparison was George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. There was much, Koch said, that he found appealing in Clinton's presidency. Especially in the area of government regulation and federal spending, Bill Clinton was good for business. When asked about Hillary Clinton, Koch said it was "possible that another Clinton would be better than another Republican" although he insisted that Hillary Clinton would have to govern differently from her "rhetoric." Why this interview, and why now? There are at least four possible answers to that question. I shall move from the most to the least cynical. First, most cynically, Koch might wish to damage Hillary Clinton's standing with Democratic voters. The Democratic primary, after all, is still ongoing, and Bernie Sanders is still polling well nationally. He is not likely to win the Democratic nomination, but a string of late primary victories would leave Clinton in a weakened position. Huff Post Pollster shows Hillary Clinton with a single-digit lead over Sanders in the California primary. Imagine the havoc if Sanders prevailed. Surely, Charles Koch has pondered the possibilities. Second, he may wish to gain some standing on the Democratic side of the aisle. Koch is a shrewd man and surely he has considered the possibility that the Republican Party may be in the process of consigning itself to the wilderness. If that is the case, if the Republican Party is marginalizing itself, if it will be out of power for a number of years, then one must play ball with the winning team. He may well have concluded that he has no chance of attaining his policy objectives with a Republican Party that could spend years on the sidelines and so he is sounding out opportunities on the other side. Advertisement Third, he may genuinely fear the coming turmoil in the Republican Party. Certainly, he gave voice to this concern in his interview. Donald Trump has pandered to the most dangerous passions in America -- fear, foreboding, racism, xenophobia. He has taken a hostile view of the world. He speaks and acts like a bully, He has no patience for constitutional restraint. World leaders are rightly alarmed. As are many others. Charles Koch may quite rightly worry about a Trump ascendancy and what it means for the future of the Republican Party. If Trump succeeds, if he recreates the Republican Party in his image and likeness, there will be an exodus from that Party. Charles Koch may simply be the cutting edge of a coming wave of departures. Or, he may simply be hedging his bets. Fourth and finally, Charles Koch may see Hillary Clinton as someone he might be able to do business with. And so he has decided to send a visible and public signal through his interview. He stated in the interview that he has so far refrained from giving money to the leading presidential candidates. And, he added, he might not. And, furthermore, he indicated that he thinks highly of Hillary's husband Bill and his policies towards business. Thus, Koch volunteered some things that might or might not gain him some access in a future Clinton administration. In the end, Charles Koch, whatever his protestations, is like most high-end contributors. He wants public policies consistent with his interests. He wants access. So you open the dialogue with a favorable television interview. So, what does this interview mean for Hillary Clinton? If the Republican Party truly is heading for a crack-up this summer over Donald Trump, Charles Koch will not be alone among prominent Republicans in opening up a dialogue with Hillary Clinton. Indeed, in February, Robert Kagan, a neoconservative publicist of George W. Bush's war on Iraq endorsed Hillary Clinton. How Clinton handles such endorsements, or even the occasional kind word from Charles Koch, is important. She already has a problem with perceptions. After all, she earned millions of dollars in speaking fees from strategically-situated business groups and has refused to release the transcripts of those talks. Her vote on the Iraq war in 2003 was a true and monumental misjudgment. Still, she will likely be the Democratic nominee. (And I should add that if she is the nominee, I am likely to vote for her myself). What is crucial right now is that Clinton must maintain distance between herself and the Charles Kochs and Robert Kagans of the world. Their policy prescriptions have been proven wrong for America. The political winds, furthermore, are moving in a different, more refreshing direction. Progressivism is catching fire and and it is not likely to be extinguished anytime soon. This is the reason behind Bernie Sanders' improbable success. A critical mass of the American public knows that unrestrained capitalism has failed, just as they understand that Middle Eastern militarism has been a mistake. Hillary Clinton should avoid associating herself with figures like Charles Koch or Robert Kagan. She should accordingly be very suspicious of Charles Koch's blandishments. President Obama is winding up his lecture tour of Europe during which he is telling Europeans to get with his program of unbridled globalization and forget about any connection it might have to their economic woes and worries about mass immigration. It was a vivid demonstration of Obama's take on a political conflict that spans both the US and Europe. The fight is between the globalizers, of which Obama has emerged as a key spokesman, and nationalists, represented by a host of right-wing parties and populist politicians with whom Obama has no truck. Obama and the globalists believe in the primacy of multinational agreements refereed by international organizations and rules which, once in place, are beyond democratic review by national governments. On his two European stops, Obama went out of his way to campaign for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a mega cross-border deal he wants to work out with the European Union. Details of the negotiations are secret so to be kept out of the public eye--and debate. Advertisement Nationalists, on the other hand, long for a revival of state sovereignty and control they consider crushed by complex multinational agreements and liberalized world trade. For nationalist Europeans, the chief bogeyman is the European Union, whose opaque supranational commission and plush bureaucracy set the rules of the economic game for Europe, especially in the Euro currency zone. German domination of policy is a factor in fueling Euro-nationalist passions. It turns out EU rules pretty much match Germany's policy preferences for stable currency and depressed wages to make economies more export-competitive. And so the battle was on. In London, Obama lectured Brits on their need to both stay in the EU and embrace the TTIP. He went so far as to threaten Britain with second-class status in the eyes of future American policy-makers if they pull out. Obama said the country, America's staunchest ally, would be put a the "end of the queue" (which translated into Chicago English means 'end of the line') of future trade deals. That's because, you know, the State Department would be just too busy to write up a separate pact with the UK. This was odd reasoning considering that the US has worked out piecemeal trade treaties with 13 countries, none of whom have gross GDPs as large as Britain's. Most are in fact dwarfed by comparison. Why is there enough time to work out free trade with Peru and Costa Rica, not enough time for the UK? As might have been expected, British nationalists struck back. The anti-EU bloc, which includes prominent members of Cameron's own party, told Obama to bug off. Boris Johnson, the Tory London mayor, said that Obama, as half-Kenyan, dislikes the Brits for their imperialist past. Advertisement Soon after in Hannover, Germany, Obama promoted both free trade and openness to immigration. The latter was because Obama considers German Chancellor Angela Merkel to be on the "right side of history" by welcoming massive numbers of Syrian and other refugees last year. (The Right-Side-Of-History is the location for stuff Obama favors: for instance, his Middle East policies; health care reform; his battle against terrorism; promotion of gay rights; and also Harry Reid, the Nevada Senator, for some reason). So if you're European and uneasy about floundering EU economic policies and the arrival of more than a million migrants last year, unrestrained by either vetting or border controls, you're a retrograde nativist and consigned to Obama's equivalent of Dante's sixth ring of hell. That's the one for heretics. European nationalist protestors were not accepting demonization. On the very day in Hannover that Obama told Europeans they needed to embrace the proposed TTIP, around 30,000 Germans protested against it in the same town. Several hundred miles south, Austria put a far-right, anti-immigration politician in line to be president, pending a run-off election in May. Germany is ringed by burgeoning nationalist movements. And of course, German citizens gave unusual support to a Donald Trump-like anti-immigration party in regional elections this year. Given Obama's tariff-free export of advice, you would think that, unlike in Europe, there's a US consensus on economic globalization and immigration policies. Not so. Obama avoided mentioning his own administration's minimal refugee policy, perhaps to officially keep himself on history's right side. Last September, Obama announced that the US would admit only 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next 12 months. So far, less than a thousand have been let in. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, is currently against the yet-unratified Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which is similar to the TTIP but for Asia. Although it should be noted that in the future, Clinton might well be for it. When she was Secretary of State, she called the TPP the "gold standard" of trade agreements. Anyway, Hillary is all-in for more immigration and tight vetting for refugees. Advertisement Trump, the Republican frontrunner, calls global trade agreements "stupid" because he thinks they siphon good-paying jobs from the US. He wants to build a wall to keep Hispanic migrants out, in case anyone was unclear about where he stands. He wants Muslim immigration stopped for at least a while. It's telling that Obama is not meeting face to face with any Eastern European leaders, many of whom are ardent nationalists who oppose both unbridled immigration and Germany's economic tutelage. He is sticking to globalists Cameron, Merkel, France's President Francois Hollande and Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. That's because they agree with him and also want Obama to bolster their cases for skeptical home audiences. New York's primary election changed everything for both the Democratic and Republican nomination contests. First, it reinvigorated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign by putting a barricade up to thwart the swelling tsunami-like wave of momentum that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was building after a series of back-to-back victories. Secondly, her triumph served as a testament to the notion that Clinton's umbrella coalition of support comprised of women, African Americans, Latinos and older voters-- all of whom make up the vast majority of the Democratic Party-- was alive, well and thriving. Advertisement It also hit the reset button on the media narrative that not only is Clinton the prohibitive favorite, but given her delegate count, she's just shy of becoming the Democratic Party's official nominee in waiting. For the Republican hometown hero, Donald Trump, the Empire State constructed what amounted to a skyscraper-sized roadblock to halt any gains Senator Ted Cruz had made following his commanding victory in Wisconsin. Trump's New York win was so resounding that it changed the entire Washington, D.C. echo chamber narrative. Instead of the endless talk of the near certainty that Republicans would have a contested convention, Trump's blowout performance forced a new media storyline centered around the idea that it's becoming conceivable that Trump could theoretically reach the prized 1,237 delegate number to become the Party's nominee. There's one more nugget of information that New York's election results illuminated but which has hardly received the attention it deserves. It's the vindication of the Democratic Party's establishment and the utter demise of the Republican Party's establishment. Advertisement What do I mean by that? Well, let's start with an examination of the Democratic race. Sanders' insurgent crusade was founded on a platform of railing against the Washington establishment. According to his campaign, Sanders defines this establishment as Clinton and the institutional players and leaders that make up the Democratic Party, including Party elites, elected officials, heavy-hitter donors and organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. It's a message that Sanders used to create a movement that has inspired young people, independents and disenfranchised working-class folks into the electoral process. To a large degree, it's worked. He's won a slew of states, racked up about 1,191 delegates, raised more money online than almost any candidate in history, forced his rival to talk about issues like income inequality, and he has prevented a widely anticipated early coronation to the Democratic Party nomination for Clinton. Even though he's accomplished so much, Sanders and his anti-establishment message have failed to make inroads with or galvanize support from key demographics that represent the backbone of the Democratic Party. Clinton, on the other hand, has built up a cadre of support from them, most significantly among women and minorities. That's why in roughly every major big state that's voted, from New York to Florida, Ohio to Nevada, Illinois and others, Clinton has crushed her opposition. Why? It's primarily because these states comprise voters that make up the Democratic Party's base, and overwhelmingly, these voters have brushed off Sanders' criticism of Clinton, siding with her over him. As a result, to date, Clinton's received 1,941 delegates -- a sizable 750 more than Sanders and a mere 442 shy of hitting the omnipotent 2,383 threshold required to secure the Party's nomination. Advertisement All of this provides us with hard evidence of the fact that Democrats are somewhat satisfied with their establishment. Part of this could be attributed to the fact that Democratic voters perceive their Party's ultimate establishment figure to be the head of the Democratic Party -- President Barack Obama -- who enjoys tremendous favorable ratings among Democrats. And, with Clinton's successful effort to ride the Obama coattails throughout this primary competition, she's benefited directly and indirectly from being dubbed by Sanders as the Democratic Party's establishment standard bearer. The race for the Republican Party's nomination illustrates the polar opposite of what we're seeing on the Democratic side. The sheer creation and mushrooming of Donald Trump, first as an outsider candidate, then as a frontrunner to now the leader in the delegate battle for the nomination, all are the product of Republican voters being fed up with their Party's establishment. Trump's brash, unorthodox and outspoken behavior is a vivid reflection of the resentment and anger that Republican voters have with their Washington leaders and institutions. And, it makes sense. After years of electoral victories in Congress built upon vows to dismantle Obamacare, cut funding of Planned Parenthood, slash the EPA and scores of other promises that have been broken, Republican voters want an overhaul of their leadership. That's precisely what led to the birth and the increasing success of Donald Trump in 2016. By embracing Trump, Republican voters have passed up a bevy of establishment candidates, from Senator Marco Rubio to Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Scott Walker and others. Their support of Trump as their delegate frontrunner and possible nominee would be the equivalence on the Democratic side of Clinton and Sanders switching places. In the Republican race, it translates to a flat out rejection of the Republican Party's establishment. Advertisement Public pensions are wildly underfunded in many political jurisdictions across this country. The pension crisis in Illinois is perhaps the most dramatic: Illinois municipal bonds are treated as "junk" by the markets for good reason. How and indeed whether Illinois successfully undertakes pension reform and puts its financial house in order is important for Illinois, but also for the other States and localities with underfunded pension obligations, because Illinois is, in a sense, the canary in the coal mine. And one issue that has already been key in Illinois - and will be elsewhere - is whether the state courts support or defeat statutory efforts at pension reform. So far, the Illinois courts are a model of what courts elsewhere should not do. In 1892, the modern "public trust" doctrine was born when the United States Supreme Court in Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois held that the public trust doctrine - a doctrine that holds that the government has a duty to future electorates and future generations and thus cannot alienate key public resources - prohibited the Illinois legislature from selling three million acres of Lake Michigan lakebed and shoreline to a railroad company. The United States Supreme Court essentially undid an imprudent and almost certainly corrupt legislative giveaway of complete and exclusive control of what since has become the very heart of the Chicago metropolitan area. Fast forward one hundred and twenty plus years, and consider, by contrast, the Illinois Supreme Court's recent decisions regarding public pension reform, which invalidate State and City of Chicago efforts to modestly lessen the staggering pension crisis they face. In 1970, Illinois adopted a new state constitution that contains a provision stating that public pensions cannot be diminished. Reading this provision in a highly literal, absolutist manner, the Illinois Supreme Court seemed to hold that any modifications to pension terms and benefits for past or current employees were therefore prohibited by the Illinois constitution. Quite possibly, the result is going to be that, because of an imprudent choice of wording made in 1970, wording that opened up the possibility that pension liabilities would come to consume state and localities' budgets, already-inadequate state services for the most vulnerable people in Illinois, disabled and poor kids, will be cut. And already understaffed public agencies of all sorts will continue to freeze hiring or be forced to cut payrolls. The state's financial ability to pay for education, disability services, health care and the like is, of course, very different from a tangible public resource like Lake Michigan, but that financial ability also could be considered part of the public trust - part of what one poorly-thought-out act of lawmaking in 1970 should not be allowed to undermine almost a half century later. Advertisement It might be argued that the Illinois Supreme Court had to defer to what the State Constitution says because the State Constitution is the final word in the law, above everything else (except the federal Constitution). But if a group of land developers today somehow got together the political power to push through a state constitutional amendment to sell Lake Michigan, or if a group of libertarian activists pushed through an amendment that could be read as prohibiting any property tax increases no matter the public need for more money, one would hope that the Illinois Supreme Court would at least view those amendments with suspicion. Faced with such amendments, one would hope that the Illinois Supreme Court would try to interpret them in the way that made them as consistent as possible with the idea of a public trust. Likewise, in the pension context, the Illinois Court could and should have recognized that public trust concerns should guide its interpretation. In this case of the 1970 pension provision, the wording was open-ended enough that the Illinois Supreme Court could have defensibly interpreted the provision to allow the very modest pension reforms embodied in recent state legislation. "Diminish" can be understood in a variety of ways. The Court could have and should have been guided by public trust concerns in coming to a constitutional interpretation that would have both protected overwhelmingly the interests of past and current public employees and helped ensure that Illinois would meet its obligations to all its current citizens. Advertisement It is possible that, in the wake of the Illinois Supreme Court's decision, there will be a new constitutional amendment to undo the 1970 provision. Or perhaps the State Legislature will enact new taxes large enough to cover at least some of the unfunded pension liabilities. But that will take time, and in the meantime, there are localities in Illinois simply not paying their bills to private agencies that provide critical services, and there are individuals and families at risk of losing services they desperately need. As the New York Times recently reported, Chicago State, a local college that serves predominantly African-American students from low-income households, may soon close for lack of State funds. If the Illinois Supreme Court had heeded the wisdom of the United States Supreme Court's 1892 decision in Illinois Central Railroad, Illinois would already be on the path to ensuring that its citizens today receive and will receive the services that, by all rights, they should be able to expect. At first glance, the connection between improving public safety and ensuring a person leaving jail or prison has fair access to housing may not seem obvious. But a safer society for all of us is exactly what the Obama Administration is creating when it sends strong messages to public and private landlords that denying housing solely on the basis of a person having been incarcerated is discriminatory under the federal Fair Housing Act. What perhaps is even less self-evident is why the housing-public safety nexus is gaining such bipartisan traction; yet the answer here also springs from the recognition there are safer, smarter ways of addressing a person's reentry into the community. The reality is this: The moment a person fresh from prison or jail steps off the bus in any town, a daunting challenge confronts them - where to find a place to sleep. Many face this trauma alone as family members may have died, moved away, or withdrawn the welcome mat. They have no money or prospects for a job. Then there are the public-perception obstacles they face, namely Not in My Backyard "NIMBY-ism" and a wide-spread unwillingness to rent to them. As a result, a large percentage of newly-released prisoners end up in homeless shelters. Alarmingly, anywhere from 30-50% caught in shelters are from jails or prisons. Advertisement Another fact we cannot ignore is a disproportionate amount of these individuals are impoverished African-American or Latino-American men - individuals who should be protected under the Fair Housing Act but who before now were disregarded and invisible because of their past incarceration. In too many instances young African-American and Latino-American men have been denied opportunities as a direct result of biases, greatly contributing to their likelihood of incarceration. Continuing to discriminate by denying post-release housing only exacerbates the fallout from a system that appears weighted against them. The Fortune Society, a group serving those leaving jails and prisons, filed a lawsuit making such an argument and pointing out that discrimination against those who have been in criminal justice facilities directly counters the intent and spirit of the Fair Housing Act because it disproportionately affects African-American and Latino-American men. As an alternative to homelessness and shelters, CSH has for years promoted many models of supportive housing (affordable units linked to services) helping people protected by the Fair Housing Act, including those who have served their time. Advertisement Frequent User of Systems Engagement (FUSE) reentry supportive housing is for individuals with chronic medical or behavioral health challenges leaving jails or prisons. The idea behind FUSE is simple: Give the person exiting a criminal justice facility a real "second chance" to move forward and become self-sufficient by bolstering their stability and access to the medical, mental health, job training and maybe substance use help they need. Because if we don't, we're likely dooming them to a second sentence of a life in poverty, increasing their risks of homelessness and recidivism and jeopardizing the public safety of everyone. Because FUSE is an early intervention that follows through on services, participants demonstrate fewer jail days and shelter stays, and there are genuine public cost savings. FUSE is making its mark across the country. The Connecticut Collaborative on Re-Entry Program (CCR), for example, is a FUSE supportive housing initiative that uses data-driven targeting to identify and serve a set of individuals in Connecticut that repeatedly cycle in and out of the homeless services and correction systems. A few years ago, Mecklenburg County Community Support Services (CSS) leadership was researching effective jail diversion models that would reduce recidivism and save public dollars, and discovered CSH's FUSE model. The county has received national recognition for its MeckFUSE effort. In order for programs like FUSE to grow, governments, Public Housing Authorities, private landlords and providers must recognize denying housing to someone based on something that may have occurred 20 years ago unduly perpetuates a punishment that should end along with the sentence. Advertisement This isn't a problem for just one state or community. Nationwide, nearly 700,000 people a year are being released from jails and prisons. That means potentially tens of thousands more crowding into our homeless shelters annually if we don't choose better ways to ensure successful reentries. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station No. 3 in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on April 23, 2016. KCNA/via REUTERS. ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. EDITORIAL USE ONLY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THIS IMAGE. SOUTH KOREA OUT. Great powers usually have client states. Although a sign of influence, the latter often are more trouble than they are worth. North Korea increasingly appears that way for Beijing. The Chinese-North Korean relationship was oft said to be like lips and teeth, forged in blood during the Korean War. That's true. But even then the relationship was fraught with tension. Pyongyang never gave due credit to Beijing, whose military intervention retrieved an otherwise lost war. And Kim Il-sung purged the pro-China faction of the Korean Workers Party on his way to absolute power. Advertisement However, today those look like the "good ole' days." There is little doubt that the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea has lost Chinese public opinion. People who pay attention to their government's small ally are almost uniformly hostile. Weibo users are particularly vicious in their comments about the monarchical Communist hybrid and its mercurial leader, Kim Jong-un. Academics and analysts outside of government also show little love for China's one ally, which only takes and never gives. Criticism flows freely in private; some urge tougher sanctions and a few even hint they would welcome U.S. military action. Such disaffection has made it into the media. Top officials no longer attempt to disguise their frustration with the North's behavior. President Xi Jinping has yet to meet Kim. In contrast, the former has hosted South Korean President Park Geun-hye, even giving her a place of honor at last year's military parade. Beijing has responded to the North's nuclear and missile tests with anger and support for tighter sanctions. The Kim regime has returned ill-disguised contempt. Emissaries from the People's Republic of China came and went as North Korean leader failed to make even a pretense of listening. The DPRK continued to conduct additional nuclear and missile tests. Advertisement So Se Pyong, Pyongyang's ambassador to the UN in Geneva and the UN's Conference on Disarmament, predictably denounced the U.S. and South Korea in an interview earlier this month. When asked if the North felt pressure from the PRC after President Xi called for dialogue over the Korean "predicament," So responded: "Whether they are going to do anything, we don't care. We are going on our own way." And his government is "not having dialogue and discussions on that." While even great powers cannot always control their international dependents, few accept being publicly humiliated. Even though China provides the North with the bulk of the latter's energy and food, Beijing's counsel is treated with no more respect than casual statements from the U.S. This after the execution of the PRC's principal interlocutor in Pyongyang, Kim's uncle, Jang Song-thaek. China has lost credibility internationally along with good will in Seoul and Washington. Thus, it is in Beijing's interest to end its business as usual treatment of North Korea. However, the U.S. and its allies, most obviously the Republic of Korea and Japan, should make it easier for China to effectively join America's anti-Pyongyang coalition. The PRC is reluctant to impose the kinds of penalties supported by Washington for good reasons based on its own interests. Historical ties are attenuated, but still matter. China does not want millions of refugees running north or violent conflict bursting out to the south. Beijing would lose if reunification turned its buffer into an advanced base for U.S. containment policy. The PRC wants to preserve economic preferences which have been dearly bought. Beijing abhors instability, a likely outcome of greatly ratcheting up pressure on Pyongyang. Telling the PRC's leaders that their concerns are unimportant and should be sacrificed for what Washington has determined to be the greater good is not likely to be helpful. Nationalistic leaders attempting to restore China's international role certainly do not want to be seen doing America's bidding. Advertisement The U.S. needs a different strategy. Along with its friends in the region, Washington should offer to share any humanitarian burden, protect Chinese economic interests, acquiesce to Beijing's direct involvement in a messy transition, and pledge to withdraw American forces from a reunified peninsula. That is, the U.S. must help moderate the uncertainty faced and minimize the geopolitical disadvantage suffered by the PRC. Moreover, Washington should offer to negotiate with the North without preconditions, and address issues other than nuclear weapons, such as replacing the 63-year-old armistice with a peace treaty. Winning North Korean acceptance is less important than satisfying Beijing that the U.S. is giving the DPRK a chance to accept. Despite everything, Chinese officials still publicly blame America for driving Pyongyang to develop nukes. If Beijing can win Western assurances on the issues of greatest importance, it should act. The primary reason would be to advance the PRC's interest. The current situation is anything but stable. Kim appears to be serious about pursuing both nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Moreover, his plans for economic development might undermine the political order that he has attempted to cement with blood, having executed hundreds of officials since taking over in December 2011. If Kim is ever tempted to act on his many threats against the U.S., South Korea, or Japan, he might trigger the war that no one wants. Even limited military action might spark a retaliatory spiral. And if full-scale war erupted, Beijing could not expect America to stop short of the Yalu. The overwhelming sentiment would be to eliminate the "problem" of North Korea forever. Acting responsibly in Korea also would demonstrate China's maturity and readiness for global leadership. Taking action would help repair the damage done Beijing's reputation by its ham-handed maneuvers over disputed territorial claims in the Asia-Pacific. Everyone in the region would breathe more freely if the North Korean regime was transformed for the better, whatever the details. Advertisement Early in my career, I was galvanized by a disease that ravaged my country and many others around the world: malaria. My personal experiences with malaria in the field as a young public health officer twenty-seven years ago had a profound effect on my trajectory. Soon after joining the ministry of health in Ethiopia, I was called upon as part of team to respond to a malaria outbreak. My team was dispatched to a village in south-western Ethiopia, where I not only observed the malaria epidemic's shocking effects on adults and children, but also experienced it first-hand. I contracted malaria while working in the field. That was the impetus for me to pursue a doctorate in community health. As a young academic, I investigated the patterns of malaria's spread and the potential measures we could employ to control it. Last year, nearly 214 million cases of malaria occurred globally, leading to 438,000 deaths. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa -- and the majority in children under five. Nearly half of the world's population -- roughly 3.2 billion people -- are currently at risk for the disease. Advertisement The monetary impacts of malaria from the household to the global level are significant. Malaria tends to strike during harvest season, rendering families too sick and too weak to perform the work necessary to earn a living. Malaria-stricken families spend an average of over a quarter of their income on malaria treatment. In Africa alone, the economic impact of malaria is estimated to be US$12 billion every year. During my period as Minister of Health of Ethiopia from 2005 to 2012, we designed a comprehensive malaria control strategy with ambitious targets, and made a robust government commitment to the effort. The tenets of our comprehensive approach included vector control, early diagnosis, prompt treatment and surveillance, and rapid management of malaria epidemics when and where they occurred. In addition, we undertook the monumental task of distributing 22 million long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets over a two-year period. In doing so, we protected 50 million people at risk, increased bed net coverage from 6 to nearly 70 percent, and reduced malaria deaths by more than 75 percent. We broke the cycle of Ethiopia's epidemics -- which previously occurred every 5-6 years and sometimes as often as every 24 months -- and achieved the Millennium Development Goal for malaria. Ethiopia transitioned from the objective of preventing and controlling malaria to the realistic goal of malaria elimination. The knowledge we gained about our successful approach to malaria within Ethiopia was instrumental in my later chair positions on The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. So much has changed since I first joined the struggle against malaria. In the past 15 years alone, malaria mortality has fallen by 60 percent globally -- resulting in an estimated 6.2 million averted deaths. We now have a chance to eliminate the disease and render it powerless, much like polio and smallpox. But on this World Malaria Day, we are reminded that our extraordinary advances are fragile and that the fight must continue. Malaria still kills more than 400,000 people annually and drains hundreds of millions of dollars from developing country economies. There are 100 countries where malaria is endemic, and many more where success is tenuous. Advertisement Defeating malaria is absolutely critical to ending poverty, improving the health of millions and enabling future generations to reach their full potential. What can we do to reach this goal? We must continue to expand partnerships across borders to secure the financial and technical resources we need to make and sustain progress. Efforts should focus on disease prevention and control, including early detection, diagnosis and treatment. We must prioritize vector control by distributing insecticide treated bed nets and spraying to control larvae and the adult mosquito population. Community-based programs remain essential to ensuring that communities are empowered to be actively engaged in the prevention and control of malaria. Responsive health systems with universal primary healthcare at the centre will enable more effective preventative measures against malaria. And finally, investments in the development of next-generation drugs, diagnostics and vaccines will help us to accelerate our gains and mitigate the rising threat of insecticide resistance. ROME, ITALY - 2016/02/13: A signpost against the current government in Egypt during demonstration for Giulio Regeni in Rome. The piazza Santi Apostoli demonstrate to demand justice for the death of Giulio Regeni and other victims of the Al Sisi government in Egypt. (Photo by Andrea Ronchini/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) COPENHAGEN -- Exactly five years since the Arab upheavals, Western policy in the Middle East has come full circle. On Jan. 25 this year, the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University PhD researcher from Italy, disappeared near Tahrir Square in Cairo. About a week later, he was found dead on a sidewalk on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital, his body bearing the unmistakable signs of torture. Advertisement Regeni's death immediately prompted suspicions that Egypt's mighty security apparatus was implicated in the killing. That would make Regeni one of the few foreigners to join a growing list of almost 2,000 Egyptians subject to "enforced disappearances" since General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2014. The ensuing standoff between Italy, until then a friendly Western government, and an increasingly authoritarian Arab regime has dramatically brought to the fore the inadequacy of the policy repertoire at the West's disposal. 'My promise to the Regeni family, as a father: we'll find who killed Giulio.' For Italians, those words were followed only by deception and delays. Ever since the murder, the Italian government has been pressing Cairo for collaboration in the investigation. Sisi personally offered cooperation to solve the case: "My promise to the Regeni family, as a father: we'll find who killed Giulio." But for Italians, those words were followed only by deception and delays. At a meeting in Rome in early April, Egyptian investigators refused to share the phone records of suspects, citing privacy concerns. That was apparently too much for the Italian government, which recalled its ambassador to Egypt and warned of unspecified consequences "proportional" to the situation, which might include declaring Egypt an unsafe destination for tourists. Advertisement Sisi at the al-Qubaa palace in Cairo on April 17. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images) That's one of the keywords of this sad story: a "proportional" response presupposes an incrementalism and a predictability that these five years have utterly disproved. The Arab uprisings had started as a euphoric, often violent, domino effect of popular revolts fueled by resentment and outrage. With the possible exception of Tunisia, indignation turned into disillusion and finally stagnation. A half decade on, the Middle East and North Africa have reverted to some of the conditions that preceded the revolutions. And so has European policy, which is still marked by the kind of gradual engagement -- or, as in this case, withdrawal thereof -- something known in Euro-jargon as the "more-for-more" principle. Anyone wishing that gradualism will be replaced by a quantum leap in European policy will typically encounter calls for the creation of a Marshall Plan for the Mediterranean. Instead, the Middle East has received a plethora of transactional measures addressing some of the pressing urgencies of today. The latest of those is a migration "compact" that the Italian government proposed in early April, in advance of a foreseen surge of immigrant arrivals by sea. The proposal plans to reallocate already earmarked funds and to issue joint so-called Eurobonds to fund infrastructure projects in countries of migrant origins, mostly in Africa. More controversially, the plan proposes to replicate the controversial EU-Turkey deal signed last month -- where Europe returns refugees to Turkey in exchange for money -- with war-torn Libya problematically cast in Ankara's role. Western policy in the Middle East has come full circle. It is doubtful whether the compact will see the light of day. Germany already flatly rejected the idea of issuing Eurobonds to Africa. But precisely against such background, the attention being raised by Regeni's brutal murder is hugely important. Not only does it shine a light on the abuses of Sisi's increasingly authoritarian regime -- it also makes it apparent that the West has no better options in the region than it had five years ago, whether it is to accompany change or to protect some of its basic values. At a time when terror has returned to strike at the heart of the Europe, it is understandable for Europe to covet stability. Less defensible is that authoritarian stagnation is used to lubricate business interests that, in Egypt's case, range from gas contracts with Italy to the provision of two warships from France. Advertisement Protestors shout anti-government slogans in front of Parliament headquarters in Cairo on March 27. (REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh) But when it comes to a strategic vision for the region, the best way to honor Regeni's memory is to actually remember what he was doing in Egypt. The late doctoral student was researching Egyptian labor unions, a movement that in Tunisia was so instrumental to democratic transition that it won the 2015 Nobel Peace prize as part of the so-called Tunisian quartet. The circumstances in Egypt have been different and increasingly prohibitive. And yet, as Regeni wrote in his last article, "independent trade unions are refusing to give up." That may well read as the epitaph to his untimely death, as well as to the kind of imaginative leap that the West's Middle East policy has failed to perform. Earlier on WorldPost: Joint blog: Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO ADG and Vice Chair of Gavi, with Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO ADG , Health Systems and Innovation Suspense and high stakes It's no secret that vaccines are considered one of the greatest global health achievements. Every year they avert an estimated 2 to 3 million deaths. During the last two centuries, vaccines have eradicated smallpox, reduced global child mortality rates, and prevented countless birth defects and lifelong disabilities, such as paralysis from polio. Advertisement But, the success story of vaccination is not yet finished. There's still a book waiting to be written that's guaranteed to keep all of us, not just global health experts, up at night. Fortunately, many of the chapters full of suspense, high stakes and perseverance are being written right now. Fast-tracking vaccine development - Ebola In the past two years, vaccination research and development has kept the world on its toes. During the height of the Ebola epidemic, the urgency of saving lives accelerated research and development efforts. By bringing together the best minds in vaccinology, clinical trials for a number of candidate Ebola vaccines rapidly got underway. WHO was directly involved in trials of the VSV-EBOV (Merck, Sharp & Dohme) vaccine, one of the most promising Ebola vaccines being used in trials today. Preliminary results of the trial in Guinea indicate that the vaccine might be very effective. The vaccine is also being used to contain "flare-ups" of small numbers of new cases which are ongoing. The trials using the VSV-EBOV vaccine have been conducted as "ring vaccination", used in the past for smallpox vaccination. Through ring vaccination, the primary and secondary contacts of each person infected with Ebola are vaccinated, to form a protective ring of immunity, and to prevent further spread of the virus. Advertisement It is hoped that sufficient data from clinical trials will enable Ebola vaccines to be licensed in the near future. This will make vaccination in a future outbreak much easier. Preparing for outbreaks - Zika In fast-tracking the Ebola vaccine WHO learned some lessons and developed the R&D Blueprint for Action to Prevent Epidemics, which ensures that targeted research and development can quickly bring medical technologies, including vaccines, to people during epidemics. The Blueprint aims to reduce the time between the declaration of an international public health emergency and the availability of effective tests, vaccines and medicines that can be used to save lives and avert crisis. We're already seeing this plan in action in the Zika response. With the Zika virus now linked to microcephaly in babies and other neurological disorders, more than 60 companies and research institutions are already working on a number of products, including 18 vaccines targeted for women of childbearing age. While no vaccine has yet been tested on humans, the swiftness of the response provides hope. High hopes for dengue and malaria vaccines Perseverance in vaccine development is also starting to pay off in other areas. During the last 60 years, the incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold. An estimated 390 million infections occur every year, with a quarter of people infected showing symptoms. At present the main method of preventing disease transmission is by controlling the Aedes mosquito, the same mosquitoes that transmits Zika. Advertisement However, the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization recently recommended that Dengvaxia (CDY-TDV), a vaccine for dengue, be considered for use in geographic settings with high endemicity. Additional vaccines candidates are already in various stages of development. Because both multi-drug resistance and insecticide resistance are huge issues in eliminating malaria, new tools are needed to protect the 3.2 billion people at risk of the disease. The first malaria vaccine, RTS,S, is a step forward. In 2015, SAGE advised WHO and partners to pilot implementation of RTS,S, which was developed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a network of African research centres. The vaccine is set to be piloted in children aged 5-9 months in 3 to 5 sub-Saharan African countries in the coming months. Research and development efforts must continue It's clear that new vaccines can be breakthroughs for global public health. Now, we need to ensure these breakthroughs become the norm. In order to keep pace with new threats, investment in research and development must continue with the same intensity that we have seen in recent months. Advertisement The new 2030 sustainable development agenda is calling on governments to support research and development for new vaccines so that diseases like dengue, Ebola, malaria and Zika can become diseases of the past--ones we only read about in a future best-selling book about long-gone diseases. As we mark World Immunization Week 2016, let's continue to write the history of vaccination, celebrate the research and development successes, and work to ensure people of all ages receive the vaccines they need to help them stay healthy throughout their lives. Looking for a noodle dish loaded with spicy flavor and easy to prepare on a weeknight? Singapore Street Noodles is a sure bet. I had the pleasure of living in Singapore as well as traveling there many times on business. I fell head over heels in love with the food. When I was living there, Singapore was divided equally between Chinese, Indian and Malaysian cultures all of which blended into a rich and exciting food culture. Despite all of the noodle dishes I grew to love, Singapore street noodles was NOT one of them! There were many noodle dishes that became my regulars. Wed have them for breakfast in spicy broths, as well as lunch or at the local hawker centers (food courts) for dinner where Id go nightly with my work colleagues. Before I returned to the U.S., Singaporean and American friends would ask me what food I was craving most from home. Honestly there werent any since there were a number of larger American chains in Singapore. What I would miss greatly was the local ethnic cuisine, much of which was not available outside Singapore. Advertisement The reason I had not become smitten with Singapore Street Noodles is that it is not a Singaporean recipe! It makes them no less delicious but places them in the ranks of foods like French fries which originate in Belgium, not France. I traveled down several rabbit holes looking for the basis of what is known as Singapore Street Noodles, and my conclusion is that its a dish originating in Hong Kong. Though similar to two particular true Singaporean noodle recipes, this recipe has taken on characteristics of its own. For instance, the addition of the curry. I read a very long conversation thread online started by someone wishing to have traditional Singaporean Street Noodles on an upcoming trip to Singapore. The locals were chiming in about the noodle dish and how they never serve such a dish with curry in it. I think, as with many favorite foods, versions of Singapore Street Noodles have transformed over time. Some versions have shrimp and chicken, some shrimp and pork; some only one of those meats. Some have curry. Some are spicy. They all use rice noodles (which are naturally gluten-free) and stir fry as the means to combine the flavors in the dish. I too have created my own version, staying true to the basics of what we know as Singapore Street Noodles in the U.S., adding some of what I love about similar noodle recipes from Singapore. Its a spicy combination of chicken, lean pork, shrimp with a bit bacon for a flavor similar to Chinese barbecue pork. There are sultry spices and some crunch too. The recipe makes a very large batch however vermicelli rice noodles tend to be less filling allowing the diner to eat more to make a meal! What a delicious fate. Advertisement One quick tip about stir fry cooking: have all of your ingredients prepared beforehand and at the ready. Its a fast cooking process allowing everything to retain a great texture, color and flavor. There is no time however to prepare anything during the cooking time. Get the Singapore Street Noodles recipe! -- Toni is well-known for her adventurous spirit and approachable recipes on . She brings her gluten expertise to Food Fanatic, sharing recipes that are . After Slovakia, the next stop on my European trip is Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It is a place I have visited many times in recent years, in large part because I saw Romania as being a significant strategic part of coming events. I had expected Russia to at least attempt to return to great power status and to do that, it had to try to develop a degree of control over the borderlands it had dominated for most of the last three centuries. There are two bands of buffer countries that were indispensable to Russia in defeating Napoleon and Hitler. The first band was Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic countries. The second band was Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Russian troops went as far west as central Germany. Whatever minor thoughts NATO had of attacking Russia were annihilated by the sheer space that had to be traversed. The fall of the Soviet Union pushed Russia back to its own borders, which were pretty much its borders in the 18th century. During the 1990s, there was a fantasy that Russia could simply accept these borders. However, the chaos of the 1990s taught the Russians that while they had been poor in the Soviet Union, they were also powerful and respected. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they were poorer and treated with contempt. They had little incentive to continue as they were and it seemed to me inevitable that they would attempt to recover at least part of their buffers, regardless of the buffer states' status as independent nations. The Baltics were lost to Russia, as they were part of NATO and the risks were too high. But Ukraine was key to the Russian position, partly because of its size, and partly because it was here that the Russians crushed the Germans. Inevitably, the Russians would try to make certain that they regained a degree of control over Ukraine. This was where the United States would involve itself. It had fought World War I, World War II and the Cold War to keep any potential hegemon from dominating all of Europe and using its resources to challenge the United States. The United States previously responded to rising powers by forming alliances, containment and only as a last resort by open warfare. As Russia increased its westward pressure, the United States made tentative moves to block it. Two countries were key to this strategy - Poland and Romania. Poland was in many ways more well-defined strategically than Romania. Romania had been governed by an increasingly erratic dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. To get a sense of him, bear in mind that he called himself "the genius of the Carpathians." This requires no further discussion of him. But unlike Poland, disposing of him was bloody and disposing of his security apparatus was even bloodier. Also unlike Poland, Romania emerged from communism damaged and unsure of itself. However, if Ukraine was to become a contested region, then Romania was an essential country because of its geography. It has a substantial border with Ukraine. Poland blocks Russia in the north, Romania in the south. The problem was that the U.S. didn't recognize a significant shift in Russian strategy and was focused on ballistic missile defense rather than defense against the not yet existent power of Russia. Romania was focused on the European Union and balancing between Europe and Russia, and didn't see an overwhelming need for the United States. It was a marriage that seemed to have no point. The ties have matured as the perceived Russian threat has increased following the events in Ukraine. What had been a minor courtship has evolved into a strategic alignment. The most important part of that alignment, apart from borders with Ukraine, is the Black Sea. The Black Sea has become critical in the competition between the West and Russia, and Romania provides a port, Constanta, which could be used as a base. If you look at a map, you realize that the other link in this new containment is Turkey. On the surface, Turkey ought to be deeply involved in this process, ever since it shot down a Russian plane in November. Indeed, the Turks have held recent talks with Poland and Romania, clearly discussing the Russians. Romania needs to collaborate with Turkey over Black Sea issues, and with the United States as well, but the U.S.-Turkish relationship creates complexity for Romania. Still, the degree to which U.S.-Romanian relations have evolved in the past few years is remarkable. As with most American strategic partnerships, this one will evolve to include varieties of investments and economic relationships. In many ways, Romania stills suffers from its communist past. The government dominates economic life, and with that, almost inevitably, comes corruption. Governments whose officials have little control over wealth have little corruption. Why bribe the powerless? When the reverse is true, corruption can rise. The Romanians are now involved in a massive anti-corruption campaign, but in my view, that can't work until there is a realignment of the economy and the state. The Romanians will do things their way. The U.S. relationship is not built on mutual admiration of the other, but on geography. If the U.S. is going to deal with Russia, it needs to deal with any country that borders both Ukraine and the Black Sea, and that happens to be Romania. In coming here I realized two things: the centrality of Romania to American interests and the fact that most Americans are not even clear where Romania is, much less that it has become a critical ally. Reality creates policies. Policies don't create reality. So in the end, it doesn't matter that the Romanians are focused on the EU and that Americans are not at all focused on Romania. The reality of Russia defines this relationship. When I was 14 years old, I was lured away from home by a man I met at a New Jersey shopping mall. This man told me that I was pretty enough to be a model and that I was too mature for high school. It was the summer after my eighth grade middle school graduation, and I feared high school. I was afraid of getting beat up in the hallways, and I was afraid of losing my friends. This man pretended to be my friend, a romantic interest even. He said he could help me find a glamorous job in Los Angeles, California. Within hours of running away, however, this man forced and coerced me into prostitution in Atlantic City, NJ. It didn't take long for law enforcement to spot me - I was a young girl on Pacific Avenue wearing a red dress and oversized high heel shoes. Unfortunately, I wasn't immediately seen as a victim of a crime. I was seen as a criminal, a juvenile delinquent, and I was arrested for prostitution. The most painful part of this experience wasn't what happened to me in Atlantic City, it was the way I was treated after Atlantic City - by law enforcement and even hospital staff. Today, I'm passionate about sharing my story and working with front-line professionals. By understanding my mindset and needs as a young victim of sex trafficking, professionals will be better equipped to recognize and respond to this victim population. Advertisement Recently, I joined Dignity Health as Patient Care Services Program Director, overseeing a program to identify and effectively respond to victims of human trafficking in the healthcare setting. As one of the largest healthcare systems in the nation, and the largest hospital provider in California, Dignity Health is positioned to affect the lives of many, including patients who are vulnerable to human trafficking. A 2014 study found that nearly 88% of sex trafficking survivors reported having contact with the healthcare system while being exploited. The study reveals how medical providers are "woefully unprepared" to identify and respond to victims. At Dignity Health, we aim to change that, and we started with education, implementation of internal protocols, and identification of community resources that can assist trafficked persons. In order to be successful, any program of this design must ensure staff are educated on what human trafficking is and isn't. There are many myths and misconceptions associated with this crime. Unless all staff are well informed, victims can and will be missed in the healthcare setting. At Dignity Health, with support from the Dignity Health Foundation, we created a series of educational modules, the first of which dispels 10 myths often associated with human trafficking. Following are a few summarized examples: Myth: Human trafficking only happens overseas. Truth: Every country is affected by human trafficking, including the United States. The United States passed federal legislation to outlaw two common forms of human trafficking: sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Human trafficking is defined as forcing or coercing a person to perform commercial sex or labor/services. Labor trafficking includes situations of debt bondage, forced labor, and involuntary child labor. A commercial sex act is defined as any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person (e.g. money, drugs, survival needs). Under federal law, anyone under age 18 who is induced to perform commercial sex is a victim of human trafficking - no force or coercion is required. Advertisement Myth: Only foreign nationals are trafficked in the United States. Truth: U.S. citizens are also at risk of human trafficking victimization within the United States. In 2015, there were over 5,500 cases reported, and least 1,660 of these cases involved victims who were U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Myth: Human trafficking and human smuggling are the same crime. Truth: Human trafficking is NOT the same crime as human smuggling. Human trafficking is a violation of someone's human rights. Human smuggling is a violation of a country's immigration laws. A person can consent to being smuggled into the country; however, if that person is forced or coerced into commercial sex or labor, then he/she may be a victim of human trafficking. Myth: Everyone involved in prostitution is doing so by choice. Truth: Oftentimes adults are choosing to perform commercial sex work (e.g. prostitution, stripping, pornography) due to a lack of options as opposed to an actual choice. We must refrain from passing judgement onto commercial sex workers and we must offer compassion and resources to any patient in need of help. Many survivors of sex trafficking reported feeling so isolated and stigmatized by society that they felt unable to reach out for help. Myth: Victims of human trafficking will reach out for help. Truth: Oftentimes victims of sex trafficking, especially youth, do not self-identify as victims. Due to prior abuse, victims may not realize they are being manipulated or exploited. Sex traffickers often target abused/vulnerable youth. Victims of sex or labor trafficking may blame themselves, may fear authorities, or may fear retaliation by traffickers. Foreign national victims may not speak English and may not know their rights in America. Myth: All traffickers are stereotypical "pimps". Truth: When we hear the term pimp, we often think of the stereotypical pimp with the flashy hat and clothes. Although these pimps exist, they are no longer the norm. Anyone can be a trafficker, including family members, friends, and neighbors. One mother sold her 7- and 14-year-old daughters for sex at truck stops in Nebraska. "Pimping" has become so normalized and even glamorized in the media that many young men and boys, especially gang members, want to become pimps. Gangs consider it easier to sell a person for sex than to sell drugs or guns. Drugs and guns can be sold only once. A person, however, can be sold for sex over and over again. Advertisement Myth: Human trafficking refers only to sex trafficking. Truth: Labor trafficking often does not get as much attention in the media as sex trafficking; however, labor trafficking in the United States is real. Labor trafficking has been identified in industries like agriculture, hospitality, domestic work (e.g. live-in maid), and traveling sales crews. Victims may be charged a fee that's impossible to pay off (i.e. debt bondage). Victims may be forced to work 12+ hours per day, 7 days per week. Victims may not be allowed to leave the work premises and may be forced to sleep on the floor or in a makeshift bed in the back of the business. Victims of domestic servitude may be forced to sleep in the home. Victims working in traveling sales crews may be forced to sleep in a van. At Dignity Health, our core mission is to deliver compassionate, high quality, and affordable health services, to serve and advocate for those who are poor and disenfranchised, and to partner with others in the community to improve the quality of life. In order to bolster this mission and generate compassion for victims, we include survivor stories in our education whenever possible. A survivor can help professionals see the humanity in those who are too often stigmatized by society (e.g. commercial sex workers, undocumented immigrants, homeless and runaway youth). Basic education for healthcare staff should include red flags in the healthcare setting and the role(s) of front-line staff in established protocols. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline should also be included as a 24-hour resource to report suspicious activity, inquire about local resources, and seek support for a victim. The hotline number is 1-888-373-7888. If your healthcare facility implements a similar program, please continue to engage staff with ongoing education, survivor speakers, and awareness efforts in the facility. Despite all the hype, the El Nino of the Century (OK, it's still fairly early in the century) was a total bust here in San Diego. In spite of predictions last fall that the next diluvian phase was upon us, we got one third less rainfall than normal. Can we sue for breach of forecast? When I first moved to San Diego four decades ago from Denver, I was puzzled that people would invite me out for coffee "if it's not raining." Did restaurants and coffee shops in sunny places like San Diego close in inclement weather? Efforts to get to the bottom of this were initially unsuccessful until it was finally explained to me why Southern Californians don't go out in showery conditions: It's wet. San Diegans do not do wet. We're used to dry. Sometimes really dry. As the joke goes, our four seasons are fire, earthquake, landslide, and drought. Having such a cooperative climate does make the locals really testy when precipitation should interfere with one's tee (or tea) time. It was a totally new concept to one who had lived in the Northeast, the Midwest, on the equator, and in Sweden, all locales with no lack of rain. Advertisement But all that changed with the current drought, now in Year 5. We're on water rationing, allowed to water only before 10 a.m. and after 6 p.m. on one's two allotted irrigation days. Dare to water at a non-designated time and you risk the wrath of the Water Police. And yup, we really have them. Now, of course, the prospect of rain is cause for celebration. The El Nino was going to end the drought! It always looked so optimistic. Huge storms came down from the Pacific Northwest, inflicted watery mayhem on the entire West Coast then took a sudden U-ey at L.A. and headed out to Colorado. It was profoundly annoying. San Diego has been stood up by more storms this year than anyone could count. But none of this kept the ever-optimistic local TV station's Storm Watch team, lathered into a frenzy at the possibility of a 10th of an inch of rain, from dutifully standing on the beach in their yellow slickers breathlessly predicting imminent doom while the waves in the background lapped gently on the sand. But, they swear, the rain really is coming! And it could be catastrophic! They just look so earnest and hopeful, you wanted it to rain for no other reason than it would make them happy. And for once, right. Running out of things to say on the beach, where the storm winds had not so much ruffled a strand on the newscaster's perfectly coiffed head, the news cast would cut to live camera crews driving around Kearny Mesa, where a zoom to the windshield revealed exactly three drops--proof that yes, it really is (sort of) raining! Cut to green blobs on the TV studio's Doppler Radar screen which proved once and for all, that... that... somebody somewhere is getting some rain! Just not us. Advertisement When it last rained in March, I felt a definite sadness knowing that San Diego's much-hyped El Nino season was over and we probably wouldn't see serious precipitation until October--if then. Our alleged average 9.5 inch yearly rainfall was a mere 6.87 inches, well short of the mark. Here's what can happen to your teeth and gums if you've missed routine dental checkups during COVID and what you can do about it. When I was President of Tanzania, I remember visiting a district where 70 percent of the children were absent from school. They told me the problem was malaria. I sent my minister of health to investigate, and he confirmed it was true: a majority of children were missing school and falling behind because they had malaria. That was a wake-up call for all of us. To fight malaria in that district and across the country, we focused on three key interventions: indoor residual spraying, bed nets treated with insecticide and effective therapies. With help and partnership from countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, we were able to significantly reduce malaria in Tanzania. Advertisement What worked in that district worked throughout Tanzania and across Africa, which bears about 90 percent of the global burden of malaria. Strong leadership and partnerships have led to a stunning decline in malaria cases and deaths. Since 2000, malaria mortality rates have fallen by 66 percent on the continent overall and by 71 percent among African children under 5. It was hard to imagine a decade ago, but elimination on the continent is now within reach. The African Leaders Malaria Alliance is a coalition of 49 heads of state who have committed to fighting malaria together, using quarterly scorecards to track progress and address challenges in their countries. In July, the African Union is set to endorse a roadmap for elimination by 2030. Eliminating malaria on the African continent is no longer an impossible dream. It will take strong and focused leadership, but I believe we can be the generation that makes history and frees Africa from malaria once and for all. Jakaya Kikwete is the former president of the United Republic of Tanzania. Donald Trump is going to be more presidential, folks. He is going to be a more disciplined, dignified candidate -- a real mensch. He's going to be a nicer candidate too... well, as long as you're not a captured war veteran, a disabled reporter, a Mexican, a Muslim, a punch-worthy protestor, a Trump University student, a "lyin" senator, a "little" senator, the "that face' female candidate, a bathroom-breaking female candidate, a combative, menstruating female debate moderator, the wife of his opponent, his "I would date her" daughter, his baby doesn't have breasts yet other daughter, or a criminal who's had an abortion. In other words, he's going to be a kinder, gentler candidate if you're not a Latino. Or a politician. Or physically imperfect. Or a reporter. Or a woman. Advertisement There's no taking that nastiness and misogyny back. That's like telling your wife you've had an affair and want a divorce on Saturday night, and expecting everything to be hunky dory on Sunday morning when you wake up and realize you might actually love her. After Trump kept his victory speech to a record eight minutes and respectfully called his opponent "Senator Cruz" the night of the New York primary, reports of his transformation were greatly exaggerated. Even if you buy into campaign strategist Paul Manafort's explanation that the Donald who's been so grotesquely on display is only a man playing a part, you only had to watch his rally in Waterbury, CT four days later to be reminded that that man can't help himself. Restraint be damned. He was back at it, calling Cruz "lyin Ted," gesticulating wildly, and mocking the decorum that he perceives as presidential. Here's the thing: Donald Trump is a compulsive, megalomaniacal, narcissist who cannot be tamed. There's no hairspray for that. A few weeks with Manafort, however experienced he is in grooming Reagan, Bush and Dole, will not do it. I don't know that there's a psychotherapist in New York who can do it. Although I'm sure there a few who would relish the challenge. Advertisement As we mark the 400th anniversary of the death of that great psychoanalyst, William Shakespeare, I'm reminded of this: "One may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Those of us who live in New York and its environs have seen the ego and the misogyny up close for years under that self-satisfied smile. The parade of wives and girlfriends, the erection of one Trump tower after another - with no regard for the landscape or the wishes of the tenants of New York City -- the uneducated speech of the man educated at Wharton, the NY Post and Daily News headlines of one after another personal and professional scandal of theatrical proportions. The Trump who's been on the campaign trail for many months is the Trump who has been a resident of New York for way too many years. The Trump you see is the Trump you'll get, the Trump that an alarming number of Americans want. With an ambitious yet aspirational goal to keep global temperatures within 1.5 degree rise by 2100, a global shift to renewable energies is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement. Yet, undertaking such a monumental shift requires a combination of both public and private resources. This can be a challenge, especially for developing countries that may be deemed 'risky' by investors. However, these challenges are not insurmountable. Efforts can and should be taken to address perceived risks and to leverage both public and private resources. Seizing the 'Energy Revolution' The climate case for investing in renewables is well known. Both the Paris Agreement and the SDGs note the capacity for renewable energies to limit carbon emissions and tackle climate change. Increasingly clear, however, is the economic boost that renewables can offer to developing countries, especially those who currently lack access to affordable and clean energy. Local economic development, green jobs, innovation, and a shift away from fossil fuels imports are all on offer, and many countries are reaping the rewards of massive shifts towards renewable energies. And this trend is only expected to grow. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) recently announced that capacity to generate renewable energy increased by 152 gigawatts (GW) or 8.3 percent during 2015, the highest annual growth rate on record. They also noted that the bulk of this was in developing countries. Latin America and the Caribbean grew at a rate of 14.5 percent, while Asia grew at a rate of 12.4 percent. This is compared to 5.2 percent and 6.3 percent in Europe and North America respectively. Advertisement A great deal of these advances can be attributed to innovation, increased political will, and rapidly declining technology costs. Yet, while many countries and regions are reaping the rewards of such a monumental shift, many developing countries are being left behind. The same report notes, for instance, that Africa grew by 6.3 percent, not an insignificant amount, but below potential. Aside from missing the economic benefits of sustainable energy, limited investment also restricts energy access and holds back progress to eradicate poverty or achieve SDGs. Supporting developing countries to overcome barriers to investment and finance is a priority in the post-Paris context. Addressing this gap requires a targeted approach that helps countries create an environment conducive to investment. This means enhancing capacities of developing countries while effectively addressing the risk-concerns of private sector investors. De-Risking Investments in Sustainable Energy With technology costs having fallen, it's increasingly clear that high financing costs are a key factor holding back investment in sustainable energy in developing countries. These current high financing costs reflect a range of technical, regulatory, financial and institutional barriers and their associated investment risks. While challenging, these barriers are not insurmountable and measures can be taken by governments - and supported by donors and UN agencies - to facilitate efforts towards that end. For instance, policymakers seeking to promote renewable energy can assemble combinations of public measures to systematically address these underlying risks. UNDP's research in this area, captured in its innovative "De-risking Renewable Energy Investment" (DREI) methodology, identifies three core types of public measures: policy derisking instruments, such as well-designed power market regulations, which reduce risk by removing the underlying barriers that create risk; financial derisking instruments, such as loan guarantees offered by development banks, which transfer risk from private to public sector; and financial incentives, such as direct subsidies for sustainable energy, which compensate investors for risk. Advertisement A key challenge for policymakers is how to identify the most cost-effective combination of public measures to implement. Most public measures typically come at a cost - to the tax payer, to industry or to consumers. Limited public funds need to be spent wisely. Moreover, a huge variety of possible public measures exist, and it can be difficult for policymakers to sort through the many options. UNDP's DREI methodology seeks to assist in this regard by quantitatively modelling investment risks and the public measures to address them. It has already been tested in pilot case studies in Kenya, Mongolia, Panama, and South Africa, and is now also being applied by governments in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Nigeria and Tunisia. Early results are demonstrating, in practice, how risks can be reduced, financing costs lowered, and private sector investment in affordable sustainable energy catalyzed by undertaking such an approach. In Tunisia, for example, UNDP, with financing from the Global Environment Facility, is supporting the Government to implement de-risking measures that are predicted to leverage EUR 935 million in private sector investment, and to significantly lower the cost of solar power for consumers, from EUR 9.9 to EUR 7.7 cents per kWh. This is expected to be key to Tunisia's objective of achieving 30 percent of its power generation from renewables by 2030, a core part of Tunisia's INDC under the Paris Agreement. An Ongoing Dialogue on How to Best Leverage Private Sector Investment UNDP's experience has shown that the opportunity to derisk investments holds particular promise to transform sustainable energy markets in developing countries. Nonetheless, a number of nuanced questions remain. One such question is how to balance policy and financial derisking measures, which reduce risk, and the subsidies, which increase financial returns. UNDP's modelling clearly shows that, all things being equal, derisking is more cost-effective than providing subsidies, and therefore derisking should be prioritized. However, derisking measures can take time to implement. Can it therefore be justified to offer subsidies to achieve immediate investment? And if a generous subsidy scheme is put in place, does this now create a risk of policy reversal? These and other questions come with complex trade-offs and are not straight-forward to answer. What is important is to have as transparent a policymaking process as possible, supported by rigorous and systematic methodologies, and where key inputs and findings are made explicit, to be debated and enriched in discussion. Advertisement All that said, it is clear that the opportunities are there; the technology exists and is ever more affordable, political will continues to grow, and resources - both public and private - are increasingly earmarked for sustainable energy. The long-term path to zero-carbon is clear, our challenge now is to find the best means to get everyone on that path and to ensure shared prosperity. "If you are fearful, arm yourself." That was Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader's advice to Ohio residents in the wake of a series of "execution"-style killings that left eight members of a family dead at four different homes in Southern Ohio last week. Attorney General Mike DeWine described the shootings as "a sophisticated operation" amidst news reports that marijuana "grow operations" were found at three of the four homes, although it's not known whether the murders were linked to the drug activities. The shooting was the 23rd mass shooting (three victims or more as defined by federal law) so far this year. Sheriff Reader's advice may warm the cold heart of the National Rifle Association and its financial partners in the gun industry which claim that guns are used up to 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Yet the truth is that guns are rarely used to stop crimes or kill criminals. According to the latest federal data available, as detailed in Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use, a report issued last week by my organization, the Violence Policy Center, private citizens use guns to harm themselves or others far more often than to kill in self-defense. Advertisement The study analyzes data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program's Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) and cites survey data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The study finds that in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, there were only 211 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the SHR. That year, there were 7,838 reported criminal firearm homicides. Using these numbers, in 2013, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 37 criminal homicides. This ratio does not even take into account the tens of thousands of lives needlessly lost in gun suicides and unintentional shootings that year. The study also finds only a tiny fraction of the intended victims of violent crime or property crime employ guns for self-defense. According to the federal government's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), over the three-year period from 2012 to 2014, less than one percent of victims of attempted or completed violent crimes used a firearm, and only 0.2 percent of victims of attempted or completed property crimes used a firearm: For violent crime, the NCVS estimates that there were 18,328,600 victims of attempted or completed violent crime. During this same three-year period, only 163,600 of the self-protective behaviors involved a firearm -- or 0.9 percent. For property crime, the NCVS estimates that there were 51,685,500 victims of attempted or completed property crime. During this same three-year period, only 99,900 of the self-protective behaviors involved a firearm -- or 0.2 percent. For each of these categories, it is not known what type of firearm was used, whether it was fired or not, or whether the use of a gun would even be a legal response. In addition, the numbers may also include off-duty law enforcement officers. In comparison, data from the Department of Justice shows that an average of 232,400 guns were stolen each year from U.S. households. Journalism today is in a state of continual change. Digital technologies are transforming our field at a dizzying pace. The very definition of journalist has grown to include citizens, who often are the first to break news. But as our profession reinvents itself, our mission as journalists has stood the test of time. Journalists are our witnesses to history. They are on scene to explain what's taking place so that we are all better informed. They cast light on officials and hold them accountable to their citizens. The best journalists dare to tell the stories that would otherwise remain in the shadows. They give voice to the voiceless, playing a critical role in exposing human rights abuses. I'm delighted that the International Center for Journalists is able to honor New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi for doing just that. The power of compelling storytelling will take center stage in Yerevan, Armenia, as Callimachi receives our Integrity in Journalism Award. This weekend members of the international humanitarian community - Nobel Laureates, politicians, activists, business leaders, celebrities and journalists - have come together to celebrate great acts of human courage with the Aurora Prize and to recognize the journalists who bring those stories to light with our award. Advertisement Callimachi has relentlessly reported on some of the most atrocious human rights violations. She has investigated sex slavery in her story, ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape. She covered the Islamic insurgency in Mali for the Associated Press, uncovering a trove of documents that revealed Al-Qaeda's inner workings. She also went to the Malian desert to dig up bodies of the missing and chronicled her six months there. We often overlook the role brave journalists like Callimachi play in uncovering violence, injustice and human suffering. They do this work at great personal risk. As never before, they are targeted by nefarious groups, from ISIS in the Middle East to drug lords in Latin America. Our hope is that their reports will rouse the public conscience and catalyze change. There is still immense work to do. A community of international investigative reporters just unearthed a trove of information in the Panama Papers, leading to stories of corruption at the highest levels of government. At the same time, our world remains mired in conflict. Gender violence is rampant. Millions are displaced and stateless. We need to find ways to protect the storytellers both physically and digitally so that they can report on the difficult stories involving untold victims. Without their coverage, we run the risk that abuses remain hidden. As we know from past genocides, we cannot stand on the sidelines at a time when we have more digital resources and platforms than ever before to communicate what's happening and to engage audiences and catalyze societal change. Advertisement We need more Rukmini Callimachis, who tell rich and reliable stories from the dark corners of the earth. It's a proud moment when we can honor her. Medical check of orangutan. Photo courtesty of Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP) The adolescent orangutan was on his way to becoming the illegal pet of a police lieutenant in Jakarta in 2004 when a team from the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP) and the Ministry of Forestry's Conservation Department in Aceh (BKSDA Aceh) intervened and confiscated the five-year-old male ape. They called him Leuser, in honor of where he came from -- the Leuser Ecosystem. The Leuser Ecosystem Indonesia's Leuser Ecosystem, on the northern end of the island of Sumatra, is a 10,000 square mile (2.6 million hectare) biodiversity hotspot that encompasses a variety of terrain from mountains and tropical rainforest to lowland forest and peat swamps. It is often referred to as "the last place on earth" because it is the only remaining habitat shared by critically endangered Sumatran elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and orangutans. Even so, palm oil barons, illegal loggers and mining companies want to develop it. That further threatens Sumatran orangutans, whose populations are declining rapidly due to habitat loss. A recent study estimated the population at roughly 14,600 in 2015, and warned that numbers will likely plummet by 14 to 33 percent over the next 15 years. Advertisement Land Clearing and Its Victims Clearing the land for oil palm plantations hurts orangutans, who not only lose their homes and food but come into increasing contact -- and conflict -- with farmers and villagers. When a palm oil company goes in, it fells the timber and then sets fire to whatever remains to make way for oil palm seedlings -- planted in long marching rows. This slash and burn technique is seen as a quick way to clear land for new plantations --yet it creates many interconnected problems. A lot of the cleared land is peat forest that burns like a roaring barbecue. And even when fires above ground die, fires underground can continue for months and spread to new, unintended, places. The fires not only destroy massive amounts of former forest, but also release huge amounts of greenhouse gases. In late 2015 alone, Indonesia's record fires -- triggered by a combination of bad land use management and one of the strongest El Nino's in history -- burned through tens of thousands of hectares, which resulted in haze, respiratory infections in up to 500,000 people and emissions of 1.4 billion tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases, more than Japan's annual release. Orangutan rehabilitation While it's illegal to capture, kill, or keep an orangutan as a pet in Indonesia, prosecution is rare and orangutans often meet these fates. Advertisement Leuser, the adolescent orangutan, was one of the "lucky" ones confiscated by authorities and brought to a rescue facility. Leuser was first brought to SOCP's quarantine center near Medan, where all new arrivals spend 30 days in quarantine for medical exams, treatment and to ensure they carry no illnesses that could infect others. Leuser the blind orangutan. Photo courtesy of Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme. Once rescued orangutans are healthy again, they are typically transferred to one of two locations, Jambi or Jantho, for release back to the wild. By design, both locations are outside the Leuser Ecosystem, which is home to roughly 85 percent of the world's remaining wild Sumatran orangutans. That concentration is of concern to scientists, because a single disease outbreak could wipe out the entire population. That's why SOCP releases its rescued orangutans at Jambi and Jantho, which is not only prime habitat but it has the additional benefit of acting as an "insurance policy" by building two populations separate from the Leuser Ecosystem. SOCP hopes to release around 25 to 30 orangutans each year until there are at least 350 at each location. That's the number, SOCP director Ian Singleton says, that can ensure a viable and sustainable community of more than 250 surviving, thriving and even more importantly, breeding orangutans. Leuser's Release After his quarantine, Leuser was transferred to Jambi in June 2004 but in November 2006, SOCP received a call saying that villagers had captured an orangutan on a plantation, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) from the park boundary. A team moved in and quickly recognized the orangutan. It was Leuser. Advertisement He was in bad shape. He had a 40 centimeter (nearly 16 inch) cut down his right leg and his body was riddled with air rifle pellets -- 62 of them concentrated around his head and genitals. Both his eyes had been shot. The team took Leuser back to the quarantine center. Veterinarians could only safely remove 14 of the 62 pellets. He was left totally blind. Xray of pellets in Leuser the orangutan's skull. Photo courtesy of Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme. Three villagers were prosecuted for shooting Leuser and received 6-month jail terms. They claimed they wanted to capture the animal and sell it to an orangutan project, yet evidence suggested they shot Leuser just for fun. While he's made a full recovery except for his blindness, he must remain at the SOCP's center because he can't ever return to the wild. However, Leuser's story is still unfolding. With the recent release of his son into the forest, his progeny will be a key link for the survival of his species. Advertisement I was just the keynote speaker at the Martinsburg Chocolate Fest & Book Faire in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. I talked about my 2013 book, The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption in Coal Country. Since the villain in my book, Don Blankenship, the former head of Massey Energy, has just been sentenced to a year in prison, I felt a certain vindication. I told in stark terms how Blankenship and the coal industry in general have decimated the mountain state. These aren't things that are talked about openly in coal country, and I could see an anxious look in some of those who had come to the dinner. When I finished, there was generous applause, but no questions. Afterwards, several people came up to me and said it was all so painfully true that they had nothing to ask. I went down to West Virginia 45 years ago and worked in a coal mine. When I'd walk out with my buddies after the shift and saw the line of cars full of coal that we had mined, I felt good. I knew indisputably I had done something of value. Without coal there would have been no industrial civilization, and the world would be a different place. Advertisement Billions of dollars of coal have been clawed out of the Appalachian hills, but little of this has stayed in the hands of those who mined this fortune. You may argue that this is little more than the natural inequality of life, but was it in the bargain that the hills would be denuded, the mountains leveled, young people decimated by drugs, and the southern half of the state emptied out, a sad repository of those too sick or old to get out? Driving on those winding mountain roads now it's like being in the frontier regions of Pakistan, a place where nobody of good sense would even go. The coal barons and the lawyers who did their bidding got the rules changed so the coal companies have not had to establish separate funds to reclaim the land after the end of their operations. Now that so many of the major companies are in bankruptcy, it's unlikely the land will be reclaimed unless the federal government spends the billions and billions of dollars. So in all likelihood a decimated, depopulated region will be the living legacy of the wildly irresponsible coal industry. The coal industry and their Republican allies have conned the people of the state into believing that there is a war on coal. These self-styled "Friends of Coal" blame President Obama and the Democrats for regulations that suffocate the industry. They never talk how after over a hundred years, the easy seams have all been mined out and Appalachian coal must compete with cheap natural gas and cheaper western coal. Blankenship was the loudest spokesmen for the industry and its "war on coal" malarkey before the former CEO of Massey Industry was convicted after the death of 29 miners in one of the Massey mines. His most prominent successor in speaking this fraudulent line is Jim Justice, an anti-union coal operator with a long list of safety violations in his operations. Justice is running for governor. Advertisement One of the other candidates is Booth Goodwin, the former US Attorney who brought Blankenship to justice. Putting a coal baron in prison is something that no one had ever done in coal country, but with diligence and principal Goodwin succeeded. From what he's been saying, he may well be the leader West Virginia needs, a principled politician prepared to look straight forward at a future where the economy is no longer dominated by coal. In one of the more bizarre acts, the United Mine Workers led by Cecil Roberts has endorsed Justice for governor. At this point the UMW is largely an organization of retirees and disabled, and Roberts just may be the worst union leader in half a century. The endorsement is just another step for the UMW down the road to total irrelevancy. At the dinner, I also talked about Justice Brent Benjamin of the West Virginia Supreme Court. In The Price of Justice, I told how Blankenship's company drove a small coal company into bankruptcy. When the owner won a $50 million civil suit verdict against Massey Energy, Blankenship vowed he would not pay a cent. He spent $3 million electing Benjamin as the swing vote on the court. The new justice refused to recuse himself and was a key vote in the court turning back the $50 million judgment. The case finally reached the United States Supreme Court, where in an historic opinion, the court ruled 5-4 that Benjamin had to recuse himself. The case is notorious and has brought national shame on the West Virginia Supreme Court, but Benjamin is running for reelection this spring. US President Barack Obama delivers a speech following a US-Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in Riyadh, on April 21, 2016.Despite concerns about Iran's behaviour, neither the US nor Gulf states wish for conflict with the Shiite nation, Obama said. 'None of our nations have an interest in conflict with Iran,' he said at the close of a meeting in the Saudi capital with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. / AFP / Jim Watson (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images) Obama Benefits Iran by Visiting Saudi Arabia "Reassuring" Saudi Arabia and other gulf nations about Iran's increasing presence was on the top of Obama's agenda visiting Saudi Arabia. This is not the first time that President Obama is attempting to reassure Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region about Iran's behavior. In order to sell his nuclear deal to Middle Eastern countries, Obama attempted to make every country in the region believe that the nuclear deal is not going to endanger the security, stability, and national interests of gulf nations. His efforts were convincing as several countries including Saudi Arabia were happy about Obama's assurances. Advertisement Aside from the rhetoric, it is crucial to point out this time the Barack Obama's administration is also going to tilt towards Iran behind closed doors, as it has done since the nuclear negotiations were initiated several years ago. Deja Vu : Collections of Words to Preserve His Interests The previous reassurances to sell his nuclear deal were a collections of words rather than actions, as Iran's aggressive, interventionist, militaristic and provocative policies and actions have currently reached an unprecedented level while, in every case, Obama's administration has been lenient towards the Islamic Republic, sometimes justified Iran's actions, or minimized and underestimated Iran's militaristic behaviors and destabilizing threats. The current promises are also deja vu. With his visit, Obama is attempting to preserve his nuclear deal with Iran, keep his alliance with Saudi Arabia while removing the possibility of gulf nations taking collective action against Iran. This is not a balancing act between Iran and other nations as the mainstream media contend, but it is a clear tilt towards Tehran. In the last few months, every action from Iran- which breached United Nations Security Council resolutions (such as the launching of ballistic missiles), violated the international norms (such as the burning of Saudi embassy), or imperiled the security of the region (such as showing off about the delivery S-300, sending more arms to the Houthis, financing and training more Shiite militias to fight in the region, publicly supporting Bashar Al Assad, and employing Hezbollah to exacerbate sectarian conflicts)- were all either ignored by the Obama's administration with no comments from the White House, or justified by the White House arguing that Iranian leaders were taking actions to address those issues. Advertisement But on the other hand, the White House has been very quick and forceful in condemning and criticizing other countries in the region for taking the matters into their own hands and confronting Iran or its proxies; the Shiite militias. How will Iran Benefit Geopolitically, Strategically and Economically? Obama's visit is not only going to fail to reduce Iran's growing militaristic influence in the region, but it will benefit Iran by giving the Iranian leaders more room to maneuver in the region. First of all, Iranian leaders are cognizant that Obama's visit is going to soothe other countries' concerns about Iran's regional hegemonic ambitions, it will minimize the perception of Iran's aggressive and interventionist behavior, and it will eliminate the possibility of gulf nations coalescing to confront Iran's threat independent of the US. It follows that those who have the final say in Iran's foreign policy- the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei and senior officials of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)- will continue to build their military empire, reach their ideological objectives, and pursue their agenda for superiority and regional pre-eminence, all while they have less concerns of any regional reaction due to "Obama's reassurance". Secondly, Iranian leaders are cognizant of the fact that they have confined the Obama administration with the nuclear deal. Advertisement Iran's growing Presence Need to be Counterbalanced Without the US An Iranian diplomat once told me that President Obama is trying "to have the date and the donkey", a Persian proverb, which means that Obama is attempting " to have the cake and eat it too"; or, to have both Iran and Saudi Arabia. But he argued that, at the end of the day, Obama will choose Iran because he is dedicated to preserving his legacy, the nuclear pact. In order to preserve the nuclear deal, President Obama will continue with his appeasement policies towards the Islamic Republic, ignore their aggression and interventions in the region, give them more carrots so they do not pull out of the nuclear deal, as well as minimize and brush-off the IRGC's threat. In other words, from the perspective of Iranian leaders, Obama's visit is absolutely beneficial for Iran's interests because this visit will be nothing but a collection of words and it will alleviate the concerns of the nations in the region about the IRGC's belligerent actions. In reality, the Islamic republic will find it much easier to ratchet up its militaristic agenda. We should also remember that over the last three decades, regardless of US rhetoric, or military threats, Khamenei and the IRGC did not abandon their ideological objectives, as well as their pursuit for superiority and regional pre-eminence. In fact, if we look at the latest developments in Iran ahead of Obama's visit, the Islamic Republic is not only not restraining its provocative behavior in the region, but is also showing off its military power, deploying more hard power, and more forcefully drawing red lines for other countries in regards with Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and Yemen. Even President Rouhani, the so-called moderate, has credited Iran's economic, technological and scientific advancements after the nuclear deal to the IRGC's increasing influence in the region. Rouhani pointed out that "Had it not been for the mighty army, it would have been impossible to achieve this". In closing, Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia will benefit Iran geopolitically, strategically and economically. Iran is aware that Obama's cosmetic "reassurances" to other countries in the region- that everything is going to be fine- will grant the IRGC and Khamenei more room to maneuver, increase their influence in the region and let them pursue their hegemonic ambitions. This is due to the notion that Obama's reassurances will prevent other countries in the region from taking serious and collective action against Iran (which is Iran's major concern), while Obama's reassurances is releasing Iran to do what it desires without any fear of regional or global repercussions. Advertisement Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. BALTIMORE, MD - JUNE 09: A mural memorializing Baltimore resident Freddie 'Pepper' Gray is painted on the wall near the place where he was tackled and arrested by police at the Gilmor Homes housing project June 9, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. In the wake of protests, demonstrations and riots triggered by the April 19 death of Gray, officials said the city experienced 43 murders last month, its deadliest May since 1970. People who live in Gray's neighborhood say one of the reasons for the spike in shootings is because police have dramatically increased response time, creating an atmosphere of lawlessness in some of Baltimore's most crime-affected areas. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) It's mid-afternoon on Monday, April 18, 2016 in West Baltimore. At the busy intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and W. North Avenue, the atmosphere seems normal. MTA buses are packed with people making their daily commute and the street corners are filled with hustlers selling everything from "loose ones" (individual cigarettes) to jumbo lump crabmeat. Nearly one year ago, this intersection served as the epicenter for the unrest that pervaded the city following the death of Freddie Gray. The CVS Pharmacy that was looted and set on fire has been torn-down and rebuilt. The glass doors and windows of the ACE Cash Express that were shattered have been replaced. The ingraining image of the Baltimore police car being stomped on and broken into has undergone a facelift: two new squad cars now reside in its place. These renovations are an aesthetic change from the post-apocalyptic landscape that plagued this area for the better part of 2015. But underneath the surface of reconstruction looms a feeling of disarray. Advertisement Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr., was a 25-year-old black American man who grew up in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester in West Baltimore. Born a twin to parents Freddie Gray, Sr., and Gloria Darden, Freddie was raised in a broken home infested with lead paint. Throughout his late teens into adulthood, he would often find himself on the wrong side of the law. Having been arrested on drug charges on different occasions, his final arrest came on April 12, 2015. According to a police report, after an officer made eye contact with Freddie Gray he took off running. After detaining Gray, Baltimore police claimed that he was arrested for possessing an illegal knife. Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby denounced the claim. What was even more confusing--and what became the center of national attention--was how Freddie Gray sustained a spinal cord injury that ultimately led to his death on April 19, exactly one week after his April 12 arrest. What is clear, though, is that after being placed into the paddy wagon, Gray was not strapped into a seatbelt. A violation of department policy. Many believed that officers took Gray on a "rough ride." Worst fears were realized when the state medical examiner's office ruled Freddie Gray's death a homicide in June. The initial protests that ensued after Freddie Gray's death were, for the most part, peaceful. But on April 27, 2015, the day that the Gray family laid his body to rest, the energy in the city shifted completely. Advertisement I remember that day as if it were yesterday. Everything seemed to happen so fast. One minute, I got word of a purge flyer--calling for high school students to meet at Mondawmin Mall-- making its rounds on Facebook. Not too long after, loud, aggressive chatter coming from the mall's subway station traveled down in echoes, approximately six blocks to my front porch. As the melee made its way down to Pennsylvania Avenue, the sound of the spinning rotor blades on police and news choppers alike grew louder and louder. It was an out-of-body experience: witnessing the area of Baltimore I've known as hearth and home for 28 years, go to wrack and ruin in less than two hours. While some people saw an opportunity to loot, there were others who had just reached their breaking point of social injustice. Years of police misconduct, broken educational systems and high unemployment rates had finally come to a head. Enough was enough. In his 1967 speech, "The Other America," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed: "A riot is the language of the unheard." Were people finally listening now? In the months following the unrest, homicides and shootings increased while arrests plummeted. The year ended with 344 homicides, the highest per capita rate in the city's history. The majority of the victims were young black men. Has anything changed ? The Baltimore Sun reports that as of March 26, 2016, homicides were up more than 10 percent compared to the same time last year. The publication also reported an increase in employment for the month of March. How many minority applicants are getting hired, though, is left to be said. The forthcoming multibillion-dollar Port Covington redevelopment project looks to add more jobs to the city also. As Baltimore improves on its socioeconomic development, justice for Freddie Gray remains in limbo. While his family was awarded a $6.4 million-dollar civil settlement, all six officers charged in Gray's death have yet to be found guilty. In the criminal trial of William Porter, the first officer charged, the judge declared a mistrial after the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on any of the four charges against him. Whether or not Porter will face a retrial is unknown at this point, but a judge recently granted a motion to compel Porter's testimony at two other trials. The trial of the second officer charged, Edward Nero, is scheduled for May 10. Advertisement The mayoral primaries are being held nearly a year to the day of the city's unrest. A year after incumbent mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake faced heavy criticism from Baltimoreans for her lethargic approach to the uprising. Blake has chosen not to seek reelection. In the face of last spring's tragic events, this may be the biggest mayoral election the city has ever had. The struggle for justice and equality seems to be a never-ending one. Just last week, video of a Baltimore City police officer using excessive force on a young black man who refused entry into his home without a search warrant went viral. But the struggle extends far beyond Baltimore. It travels to Florida with Trayvon Martin, Chicago with Laquan McDonald, Cleveland with Tamir Rice, Ferguson with Michael Brown, New York with Eric Garner, makes a pit stop in Hollywood at the Walk Of Fame, and reaches its final destination at eternity--in the book of martyrs. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 21: (L-R) Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Ted Cruz (R-TX) Mike Lee (R-UT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) listen to testimony during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, July 21, 2015 in Washington, DC. The committee heard testimony from family members who have had loved ones killed by illegal immigrants. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) A widespread sentiment among more extreme conservatives -- including a surprising number of prominent Republican candidates, former candidates, office holders, and former office holders -- is that the 17th Amendment should be repealed. That Amendment, ratified in 1913, changed the way of selecting United States senators. It empowered a state's voters and took the power of selection away from legislatures. Those advocating repeal no doubt are a minority among Republicans, but they are significant, and are more numerous than one might imagine. They include, among others, Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Ted Cruz of Texas (who said that before the 17th Amendment, politicians were less likely to break into your home and steal your television--literally true, of course, because televisions before 1914 were somewhat scarce). Many others are on the list, such as former governors Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and Rick Perry of Texas; judicial ideologues including U. S. Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, and the late conservative icon Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Advertisement Meetings of political scientists often feature panels on "federalism." These are likely to consist largely (almost entirely, in fact) of bright young ideologues who -- fervently, and oh so earnestly -- take it for granted that the 17th Amendment dealt such a deathblow that federalism no longer exists. A number of hardcore ideological scholars and journalists back the effort as well. One of those journalists (not scholars) is the one who appears to be the Washington Post's "Columnist in Charge of Silly Ideas," George Will. Will has written that with legislative choice, America thrived, and the Senate had the "Great Triumvirate," Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. He says that under direct election, by contrast, voters elected the ineffable Joseph R. McCarthy. Ignoring whether the arch racist, advocate of slavery as a "positive good," and secessionist Calhoun was better than the red-baiting McCarthy, a closer look demonstrates that the old system also chose Senator Simon Cameron, who is famed for the supposed comment that "an honest politician is the one who when bought, stays bought," while the current system brought to the Senate such outstanding figures as William Fulbright, Lyndon Johnson, Edward Kennedy, and (if you will) Richard Russell. Advertisement The able leader Henry Cabot Lodge was chosen under both systems, as was the foul-mouthed racist demagogue, Pitchfork Ben Tillman. Both systems have sent terrible people to the Senate, and excellent ones. The conservative Ralph Rossum, a capable scholar, studied the issue in his impressive 2001 work, Federalism: the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment. He argues that federalism has declined, but is less successful in demonstrating that the 17th Amendment was the cause. A quick look at the argument of the "repealers" that the 17th Amendment took from the states the power to choose senators reveals that it did no such thing. A state is more than its legislature. Voters, choosing senators by state, express the state's will at least as fully as legislatures did. Every state still has two senators, maintaining equality of states in the Senate. Legislatures never had the ability to control the votes of U.S. senators, and always failed in the rare instances in which they attempted it. Nor did they have the power to instruct senators or to recall senators who violated their "orders." As a matter of fact, the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected state control in favor of "per capita" voting by senators, and it has never been extraordinary for a state's two senators to cast different votes. The founders knew that majorities in legislatures would shift, that they might differ between houses, and that a state's senators would often vote differently from one another. There is no less incentive now for a senator to vote "in the interests of the state" than there ever was. Thus, the argument from federalism is bogus. Advertisement It should also be noted, that it was state legislatures that had chosen every senator who voted to propose the 17th Amendment. It was also state legislatures themselves who voted to ratify it. In fact legislatures in 41 of the 48 states decided to ratify the Amendment, far more than the required three-fourths of the total. What, then, is the real motivation behind the demand for repeal, when its likelihood of passage is so remote? There certainly is no outcry from the people of the United States demanding a measure that would strip them of their votes for their senators. In all probability, the fundamental motivation that masks itself as an effort to restore a vanished federal system is actually a covert grab for power. Consider two things: first, conservatives tend to believe, probably correctly, that large voter turnouts are detrimental to their interests; second, it is possible to gerrymander a state to create districts that defeat majorities, but it is impossible to gerrymander a whole state. Thus, if there were no 17th Amendment, conservatives believe that they might be able to control the selection of U.S. senators even against majority preference. Long-term demographic trends are opposed to them and their ideology, so they desperately try anything they can think of to retain minority power. On September 01, 2014, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post officially introduced Peter Cunningham's Education Post to the world. Below is an excerpt from Layton's article: Into the fray steps Education Post, a nonprofit group that plans to launch Tuesday with the aim of encouraging a more "respectful" and fact-based national discussion about the challenges of public education, and possible solutions. Peter Cunningham, the former communications guru for U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is leading the organization, which is backed with initial grants totaling $12 million from the Broad Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Walton Family Foundation and an anonymous donor. Layton identifies Ed Post as a nonprofit. So does Ed Post, as noted on its "about" page: We are a non-partisan communications organization dedicated to building support for student-focused improvements in public education from preschool to high school graduation. Thus, it seems logical that one might locate the nonprofit, Ed Post, when using a nonprofit search engine. Not so. There is no nonprofit registered under the name Education Post. Furthermore, the Ed Post website offers no indication that Education Post is associated with any otherwise-named nonprofit. This sure makes it difficult for the public to examine the financial situation of this "nonprofit," including possible identity of that anonymous donor. If Education Post were a legitimate nonprofit established by fall 2014, then by spring 2016, it should have at least one 990 tax form on file. And so it does, but not under the name Education Post. Advertisement In order to locate the Ed Post-related nonprofit, I used the Broad Foundation's 2014 990 tax form. I knew from Layton's article that Broad financed Ed Post in 2014. No Ed Post was listed among Broad's 2014 grants, so I began to search Broad's 2014 grants to organizations in Chicago. (The Ed Post website has a Chicago address.) The first search result on the Broad 2014 tax form yielded a $1,000,000 grant to the nonprofit, Results in Education (RIE) Foundation. The memo for the contribution was, "Support startup of Education Post" (page 39). Bingo. RIEF (as it is abbreviated on its own tax form) received its nonprofit status in September 2014. It has one 990 tax form on file, for May 19, 2014 to December 31, 2014. That form was officially filed on November 25, 2015. Under "name of foundation," RIEF's 2014 990 has "Results in Education Foundation (aka Education Post)." However, RIEF's EIN (employee identification number) is filed under "Results in Education Foundation," not "Education Post." Peter Cunningham is a communications guy, so he ought to have the nonprofit name, Results in Education Foundation, on the Ed Post website. Otherwise, it sure looks like his goal is to make it difficult for people to track the funding of Ed Post. Advertisement Calling Ed Post a nonprofit appears to underscore the intention to keep the public in the dark regarding Ed Post's financing. As for what is revealed on the RIEF 2014 tax form: RIEF is "in the care of" Geller and Co., New York, NY. The five highest compensated RIEF employees: Tracy Barber, messaging and program director,89,010 Michael Vaughn, communication director,74,357 Antonia Whalen, policy director,68,356 John Gordon Wright, social media director,65,507 Christopher Stewart, outreach and external affairs director,46,299 And, of course, there is Peter Cunningham, president,190,700. Note that the above compensation was for at most approximately 7 1/2 months. As for RIEF board members (aside from Cunningham): The address provided for Cunningham and the rest of the board is "C/O RIEF, 1360 N. Milwaukee, Unit 3, Chicago, IL 60622" -- the same address provided at the bottom of the Ed Post webpage without any reference to RIEF. It is only right that Emma Bloomberg should be on the RIEF board. In 2014, her father, Michael Bloomberg, donated the largest grant, $3.2 million. The second largest came from the Broad Foundation: $1.5 million. (According to the Broad 2014 tax form, the contribution was $1 million. Hmm.) The smallest came from the Walton Family Foundation: $250,000. (That's the same amount the Waltons pay for a charter startup.) Advertisement And that mystery donor? The Emerson Collective, a "limited liability company" (LLC) located in Palo Alto, California, founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, and that focuses on "education, immigration, and justice." The Emerson Collective gave RIEF $500,000 in 2014. It has also made donations to a few other nonprofits: I Am Giving Foundation, PlusOnePlusOnePlusOne, and StudentsFirst. According to the nonprofit search engine, CitizenAudit, Powell Jobs is also connected to the John and Lisa Pritzker Family Fund, Stand for Children, and Wendy Kopp's Teach for All. The Milken Institute offers this 2013 bio on Powell Jobs: Laurene Powell Jobs is founder and chair of Emerson Collective, which supports social entrepreneurs and organizations in education and immigration reform, social justice and conservation. Powell Jobs also serves as president of the board of College Track, an after-school program she founded to prepare underserved high school students for success in college. Started in East Palo Alto, Calif., College Track has expanded to serve students in Oakland, San Francisco, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Aurora, Colo. Its academic and extracurricular program aims to ensure admittance to and graduation from college. Additionally, she serves on the boards of NewSchools Venture Fund, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, Conservation International, Next Generation and Stanford University. She also serves on the chairman's advisory board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Powell Jobs holds a B.A. and a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And Teach for All offers this bio: Laurene Powell Jobs is founder and chair of Emerson Collective, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs and organizations working in the areas of education, immigration reform and social justice. Ms. Powell Jobs serves as president of the board of College Track, an after-school program she founded in 1997 to prepare underserved high school students for success in college. The program's intensive academic and extracurricular program is designed to ensure admittance to and graduation from college. More than 90 percent of College Track high school graduates go on to college, and the program's college graduation rate is more than double to that of low-income students. In addition to her work with the Emerson Collective and College Track, she serves on the boards of directors of NewSchools Venture Fund, Conservation International, and Stanford University. She also serves on the Chairman's advisory board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ms. Powell Jobs holds a BA and a BSE from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Earlier in her career, she spent several years working in investment banking and later co-founded a natural foods company in California. Why Emerson Collective's fronting $500,000 to Ed Post should have been kept a secret seems odd. But here is some 2016 news that shows just how small the world of corporate ed reform is: In March 2016, the Emerson Collective gained a new "managing partner": Arne Duncan. Last week, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he was joining the Emerson Collective as a managing partner, aiming to look for ways to help "disconnected youth," kids ages 17 to 24 years old who are not in school, not working and may have criminal records, reports the LA Times. Duncan and the Emerson Collective will "focus first on Chicago," noted this release. The Emerson Collective is a Limited Liability Company (LLC) based in based in Palo Alto and focuses on education, immigration and social justice. It is supported by Laurene Powell Jobs, who serves as the organization's president. "The immediate goal [of Duncan's work] is to provide job opportunities for young people today in Chicago and to help forge a safer, surer path from home to school to work for at-risk kids," said the release. In addition, Duncan will support the XQ Institute and the XQ Super School Project, an Emerson Collective project that proposes to reimagine high school. The program includes a grant competition open to all communities; nearly 700 applications have been submitted. The first grants are slated to be announced in the summer. Duncan is opening a Chicago office for Emerson and is already hiring. Well. If Duncan's new role is why Emerson Collective wanted anonymity in donating to a close Duncan associate, Cunningham's Ed Post, so much for that. I look forward to dissecting RIEF's 2015 tax info when it becomes available. At least now I know where to look. *** Originally posted 04-21-16 at deutsch29.wordpress.com Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who's Who In the Implosion of American Public Education. RIYAD, SAUDI ARABIA - APRIL 20: US President Barack Obama (L) meets with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at Erga Palace in Riyadh on April 20, 2016. During his two-day visit, Obama is to attend a Gulf summit. (Photo by Pool / Bandar Algaloud/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) A staple of commentary about the fraught politics of the Middle East, especially the Gulf, are the wrenching torments of the Saudi royal family as they face unprecedented challenges. The essence of their plaint is that they are fending off a host of threats not of their own making and no longer can count on the United States as a reliable protector and moral supporter. This theme has been picked up by analysts both in the region and here in the United States. The claim on our empathy is felt by many. Most often, the KSA and its empathizers have as their point of anxious departure the Iran nuclear deal which is interpreted as some sort of American abandonment of their traditional ally. Riyadh lobbied hard for a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic and was keenly disappointed by that landmark accord. President Obama's visit to Riyadh was designed to alleviate these strains and to reinvigorate the supposed alliance. Apparently, he may follow up with a proposal for some sort of security understanding between NATO and the GCC. Advertisement There is a contrapuntal theme -- but struck so sotto voce as to be almost inaudible. That is the line that conveys an antithetical conception of the problem and the challenge in apposition to the Saudi-centric narrative which dominates the diplomatic and intellectual discourse. With a measure of detachment, it becomes starkly clear that the conventional approach only makes sense from a parochial Saudi vantage point; indeed, that of the new leadership of the semi-senile King Salman and the ruthless, power hungry Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed who have pursued a series of reckless policies since taking power. They went out of their way to demonstrate their anger at Obama by refraining from welcoming him on arrival at the airport in violation of all protocol. The House of Saud's overriding preoccupation is their parlous legitimacy as rulers of Arabia. It is the pivot of everything they do. They are keenly aware that it hinges on their acknowledged status as custodians of the Holy Sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina - which they seized by force in the 1920s without even a semblance of consultation. Hence, the crucial alliance with the leaders of the Wahhabi movement. It is their blessing that endows the royal family with a semblance of authority. A number of propositions follow. They cannot afford to be outflanked at the fundamentalist end of the Sunni Islamic continuum. Therefore, their aggressive promotion of an ultra-orthodox creed. Therefore, their strenuous efforts to coopt the proliferating jihadist movement that they themselves have encouraged. Therefore, the compulsion to present themselves as protector of the faithful against heretics (Shia) and all enemies of Islam. Therefore, their staunch opposition to the democratic spirit of the Arab Spring. Therefore, their antipathy toward Iran whose own brand of Islamism threatens to foment unrest among Saudi Arabia's large Shi'ite minority. Therefore, the goal of having the United States serve all of these ends by providing unqualified military backing re. Iran, Assad's secular regime, and the Houthis in Yemen. Therefore, there resentment at Washington's bringing to power in Iraq a Shi'ite dominated government. Therefore, their demand that the U.S. not cooperate with Shi'ite militias in the campaign against ISIL. Therefore, the ancillary goal of ensuring that the American's cease their proselytization in the name of democracy in the Islamic world. Therefore, the aim of modelling the Saudi-American relationship on the Israeli model. The current ruling Sudari branch of the royal family is more aggressive in pushing this strategy than were their predecessors while bent on establishing a Sudari line of succession. That claim gains strength if the Salmans can deliver on their ambitious agenda. Advertisement Why does it serve United States' interests to adopt the Saudi line that Iran is an implacably hostile force that sows instability throughout the Middle East and with whom any form of normalization is dangerous? Why does it serve our interests to act in a manner that strongly suggests that we have chosen the Sunni side in Islam's sectarian confrontation? Why does it serve our interests to participate in the bloody Saudi-led assault on Yemen which has led to a vast strengthening of the al-Qaeda branch which Washington long has judged to be the most menacing? Why do we tolerate the Saudi-led forces fighting side-by-side with al-Qaeda units? Why should we assiduously avoid even raising the issue of Saudi and friends' backing of ISIL and their promotion of al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Shem in Syria -- against the backdrop of aggressive projection of their anti-Western wahhabist creed across the Islamic world? What should we give priority to removing Assad when his downfall will bring to power violent Salafist groups of the most extreme kind whom the KSA now see as shock troops in their war against Iranian led Shi'ism? Other than narrow Saudi interests, the other stakeholder who sees advantage in the existing strategy is Israel -- with whom the KAS now is in tacit alliance. Each demands obeisance from the United States despite their high degree of dependence on the American super-power. Washington, in turns, accords them deference and appeasement. By any reasonable objective standard, that is illogical. Yet, there are no answers given to the questions asked above. They are not posed in political circles, they are ignored by the media, and the commentariat only rarely raises a timid hand. The Obama administration restricts itself to making ad hominum declarations on individual issues that confuse more than they explain. If there is a coherent justification for what we are doing, and not doing, it is well-nigh time that we heard it. Preferably, before the President digs us an even deeper hole in Riyadh. Instead, there is every indication that such a course reversal has been neither presented nor debated - much less accepted within the Obama administration. That is a sad commentary on this administration's intellectual sclerosis and the President's callowness. Always lacking the gumption to stand up to Netanyahu and the Israelis, he (and his successor) now must contend with a partnership that adds Saudi gold to the flow of influence in Washington. Advertisement Three of San Francisco Ballet's most popular principal dancers are retiring after this season, and I'm going to miss all of them--Gennadi Nedvigin (with the company since 1997), Joan Boada (1999), and Pascal Molat (2002)--though both Nedvigin and Boada will dance in this season's last program, the late John Cranko's gorgeous story ballet Onegin. All three have that indefinable oomph, call it charisma or some special spark.... If you're familiar with them, you can tell right away when each is dancing, no matter the costume or the lighting. So to all three wonderful dancers: Thanks so much for the memories! You might fear that losing three of eleven male principal dancers would weaken the company lineup--but only if you hadn't been to a performance lately. This is a company with tremendous depth, even in the corps de ballet. That was apparent most recently at a weekend matinee that featured several corps members and soloists dancing parts performed at other times by principal dancers. Program 6 consisted of three well-chosen short dances: "Prism," choreographed by SF Ballet artistic director Helgi Tomasson to music by Beethoven, featuring pianist Roy Bogas with the SF Ballet Orchestra under Martin West; "Seven Sonatas," by Alexei Ratmansky to music by Scarlatti, featuring pianist Mungunchimeg Buriad: and "Rush," by another younger choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon, to music by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. Advertisement The first dance in particular showcased several corps members. All of the young dancers were technically proficient and engaging. None looked amateurish or ill at ease or seemed to be concentrating on remembering or performing the steps. And yet, each was the embodiment of innocence over worldliness, if I can put it that way, lacking the sheen of life experience that principal dancers also bring to their work. In the second movement of "Prism," a romantic pas de deux danced by corps members WanTing Zhao and Henry Sidford, that innocence added to its pleasures; in manner, Sidford looked like a teen or very young man with his first love. Zhao appeared a bit more mature, as if she understood the impact she was having on the young man. It was charming, really, and quite different in mood than if this part of the ballet had been performed by older dancers. And then, in the third movement, came something completely unexpected: Corps member Francisco Mungamba hit the stage by himself, and you immediately murmured, Whoa. With the support of the rest of the "Prism" cast, his confidence and charisma came across like a trumpet blast soaring above the orchestra--a powerful moment that left the audience cheering. Helgi Tomasson has brought to SF Ballet terrific dancers from all over the world, from Cuba (Boada) to France (Molat) to Russia (Nedvigin) to Estonia, Armenia, China, Brazil, Australia.... So that's one reason not to worry about the future of this stellar company, not that you would. Another is dancers like Mungamba, for one, who, like Zhao and Sidford and many other corps de ballet members, received training at the SF Ballet School. While Onegin is the last ballet to be performed this season, the annual School Showcase takes place in late May. That should be a good place to see, perhaps, the next Boada, Molat, or Nedvigin. Advertisement Can't wait for next season. April 30-May 8, Onegin, San Francisco Ballet, War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., S.F.; May 25-27, Student Showcase, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 701 Mission St., S.F., 415.865.2000, sfballet.org. The immigration is a great challenge for Europe, a challenge we are aware of in Gdansk, too. Currently we are looking for our own model of integrating immigrants into our society. Engaging residents into discussing the issue and sharing best practices with our partners from other countries are an important part of our work. A few days ago Gdansk was visited by EUROCITIES experts on immigration, which was an excellent opportunity to exchange experience. Ramon Sanahuja i Velez and Anja Van den Durpel - EUROCITIES experts visiting Gdansk. Photo: J. Pinkas For sure Flemish Ghent, represented by Anja Van den Durpel, and Catalonian Barcelona, represented by Ramon Sanahuja i Velez, are the cities that can share with others their experience on integrating immigrants. A few decades ago both cities had quite similar social structure like Gdansk today, with the case of Ghent being especially interesting from our point of view. The city was mostly homogenous and had no real model of integrating immigrants, when they started to arrive in 60s. Working out a strategy for integration began maybe too late, after the local governments noticed problems, like poor knowledge of local language or culture. As Mrs. Van den Durpel said, at the beginning, immigrants were considered mostly as a support for local labor market and not many bothered to integrate them into society. Therefore, their children, born already in Belgium, have inherited some problems their parents had had. Advertisement Today there are not too many foreigners living in Gdansk and, unlike in Western Europe, they mostly come from the former USSR countries. It is possible the numbers will grow in the future, for what we want to be well prepared, regarding the complexity of the issues. I know that many residents of Gdansk are afraid of the unknown, but I also know that our economy will be steadily developing and our labor market, with an unemployment rate below 5%, will be attracting people from the abroad. For example, Gdansk ICT industry has already been in great need for IT professionals and I know that a few talented IT specialists from Ukraine have already moved to Gdansk. Integrating immigrants can be done in a good or a bad way, and we prefer to choose the first option. The real challenge is to predict the trend and be ready for it - to engage residents, NGOs, institutions, schools to make the process of integrating immigrants beneficial both for them and for Gdansk. To avoid problems before they appear, rather than seek for solutions of them. No less important is a sincere, open dialogue with this group of residents, who may feel afraid of immigration. At a youth town hall in London, England on Saturday, April 23, 2016, President Obama said that activists -- specifically Black Lives Matter activists -- need to be willing to compromise. He also claimed that the tone of some activism can turn people off to its message. "You have a responsibility to prepare an agenda that is achievable," Obama told the crowd. But achievable by whom, and in whose eyes? People wonder why I'm no fan of this POTUS. Where would the Marriage Equality movement be in this country if we in the struggle to achieve marriage equality in all 50 states "learned to compromise"? Some may recall the amicus curiae brief Obama's DOJ filed in Windsor v. United States, which advocated for a ruling in favor of Edie Windsor but limiting the scope to that particular plaintiff -- a breadcrumb, if you will. Advertisement That brief further argued that each state should make up its own mind on the issue of marriage equality. Indeed, had the Supreme Court followed that line of thought, we'd be battling it out in the states for the next fifty or so years -- or more -- a piecemeal approach, to be certain. Anyone who has studied progressive social justice movements knows that "compromise" is a way for the power elite and the establishment to maintain their power and to prevent real reform from reshaping the power structure. It's a means for those in power to remain in power, giving people just barely enough to keep them from launching a full-on revolt. Real change, real reform, real progress, on the other hand (you know, that thing that Bernie Sanders is fighting for in calling for a political revolution), requires unyielding and unrelenting demand. In fact, that's what happened with the marriage equality movement. Grassroots activists responded to the establishment's offering, through Obama, with a demand for full marriage equality in all 50 states -- and they won! Advertisement These grassroots leaders brought people together, and together they stood up to demand full federal equality for marriage. I was there for those struggles. I saw how Gay, Inc. jumped on board only after the winning decision was handed down in Edie Windsor's case. I saw how HRC rushed to pass out their branded merchandise at the rally held at the renowned Stonewall Inn just after the announcement was made, and not beforehand. We truly owe our victory in marriage equality to these grassroots leaders and the efforts they undertook. Perhaps an acknowledgement in a footnote somewhere to Gay, Inc. for jumping on board the full marriage equality train once they saw it steamrolling into Victory Station is due but I digress, if ever so slightly... As Bernie Sanders reminds us in many of his speeches, the only time real change has taken place is when people are brought together, rise up, and demand it. Advertisement Compromise is what Bernie Sanders' opponent (and the political establishment) wants us to do. If we compromise, they'll throw us a breadcrumb every decade or so. And if we wait a few centuries, we might just be thrown enough breadcrumbs to garner an entire mouthful of bread. Bernie Sanders is bringing people together to rise up against this system, the status quo, the establishment, and to effect real change in our nation and world. He doesn't fight for glory, ego, honor, or any of those intangibles. And he certainly doesn't fight for the political and economic establishment or wealthy campaign donors. Rather, he fights for US. There was one bit of advice Obama gave during his appearance that I can agree with, "I think it is so important for all the young people here to seek out people who don't agree with you." He rightfully pointed out that those who only spend time in the company of others who agree with them become even further entrenched in their positions (a practice in which many supporters of Bernie Sanders's opponent engage -- e.g., many friends I have known for years chose to block me on Facebook rather than engage in respectful dialogue or debate). We must be willing to hold discussions with those on the other side of our issues. We should listen to their views and try to see things from their perspective. And perhaps doing so will alter not the end result but the road that leads us there. There are anywhere from one to three steps to the process of change, depending on how effective one is: the first is to demand, and if demands aren't met then the second step is to negotiate. The third step takes place only if one cannot achieve one's goals through the first two, and that is to compromise. Advertisement Taking advice from a president who incorporates compromise at the beginning of the process--even before negotiating or demanding -- results in half-assed so-called accomplishments such as the Affordable Care Act healthcare quagmire we now have, instead of a Medicare-for-all universal healthcare single-payer system. So no, Mr. President, we will not yield, we will not waver, and we will falter. Fuck that compromise bullshit feeding us breadcrumbs to placate us approach, especially as has been proven time and time again that we can have the whole loaf (and ladies can have their whole damned dollar, as well). And fuck that whole working within the system crap. The system is corrupt and rigged; there is no working within such systems, especially when implementing real change. President Obama must have forgotten his 2008 self, when the Democratic Party called for real change at his behest. Jared Rice, a member of the New Rochelle City Council, says it best: The word compromise should not be used as a one-size-fits-all solution to all of today's issues. While there are times that we may need to compromise, there are certain instances of having an injustice so great that compromise can not be an option. Give us the real change our nation -- and our world -- needs, NOW! Support Bernie Sanders and the political revolution he is leading for us, to make OUR lives better. It doesn't have to be the way things are now, and we can -- and will -- create a better future for us all. Advertisement There is a tendency by some not to romanticize Israel. For them the country is like others, albeit with far greater security challenges. Israel, they say, is a country with roads, cities, towns, and town squares, like any other. This is not true for me, for whom Israel is the most romantic country in the world. Its every stone flowers with meaning, its every road posing trip on the stage of destiny. Some nations are built on a dream. Israel is the dream itself. Arriving as a visitor you awake fully to bountiful beauty. And it never grows old. Visiting for the fiftieth time is like visiting for the first. And in truth there are no visitors. Arrive in Israel and you are instantly family. My daughter and son-in-law were pushing a stroller in the sand two days ago. In a minute for young men jumped to their feet to help carry the children. Israel is a family. Advertisement My son serves in the IDF. Seeing in his uniform at the airport was staggering. For 2000 years the Jews have been slaughtered. They were given no choice but to die. They did so with valor knowing that the only act of defiance available to them was to die proudly as Jews. Then, in April of 1943 at Passover Mordechai Anielewicz summoned his ragtag group of 700 Warsaw ghetto fighters. Armed with nothing but a few pistols and Molotov cocktails, he informed them their choice was not between life and death. They would certainly fail in their fight against the Nazi Germans, the most powerful army in Europe. Like so many Jews before them they had no choice but to die. But, he told them, unlike generations before them they had a choice as to how they would die. They would either fall as free men who had fought for their liberty or they would die at the hands of the SS in the crematoria. They died as some of the bravest Jews who had ever lived. Anielewicz remains till this day the father of all modern Jewish resistance. But a short five years later the Jews had finally pushed the limits of choice to their logical conclusion: not whether to die as free men but rather to live as free men and women. They could, in their ancient homeland, fight back in 1948 against five invading Arab armies promising a renewed genocide and establish a democratic nation, free of the Arab tyranny that surrounded them. Advertisement Writers before me point out that perhaps the most sinister contribution of the Nazis to history was the musselmen, the living dead, the men and women of the concentration camps haunting the barbed wire enclosures with hollowed-out eyes, bereft of any human spirit, reduced simply to the search for rotten bread. The Nazis had succeeded among those kept alive from the gas chambers for work not only in enslaving a once-free people but in making them living corpses in whom the divine spark had been all-but-extinguished. That is how the American, British, and Russian liberators found them, a collection of emaciated bags of bones barely capable of begging even for soup. Not long ago I asked Elie Wiesel, the living face of the six million, about the searing honesty he expressed toward the end of his holocaust classic, Night, when he revealed that his father, consumed with fever, asked him in the death camp barracks for water. Wiesel, emaciated, starving, infirm, and famished, had hoped that after spending weeks taking care of his typhoid-ravished father he would finally be liberated from his care. When his father begged him for water in the middle of the night, Wiesel, freezing and barely holding on to life himself, could not summon the energy to even respond. In the morning the pleas had ceased. Wiesel's father had expired. Wiesel was free at last. "How did you write those haunting words," I asked. "I wrote them because if I was not honest in the book there was no point in writing it." But not only would Elie Wiesel become reanimated, he would become the greatest chronicler of the greatest crime in human history, thereby lending dignity and eternity to the six million martyrs, among whom were 1.5 million children. In the process, he would become a great Jewish light unto the nations, winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. But the point remains the same. The Nazis had reduced even a soul that bright to the necessities of simply staying alive. The Nazis has sought to transform human beings into animals. The difference between an animal and a human is that an animal can focus on nothing save survival. Lacking dreams, absent of vistas and horizons, the animal has no conception of maximizing its potential. The Nazis sought to reduce the Jews to beasts, bereft of human ambition, striving, and feeling. Advertisement Yet just a few short years later the Jews did not just aspire, they dreamed the ultimate dream, to return their ancient homeland and reconstitute themselves as a nation prepared to fight for independence, identity, dignity, and human rights. That dream courses through the arteries of all that Israel. To miss it is to overlook Israel's magic. It's to be blind to the defiant nature of Israelis. Israel is not Sparta, committed as that ancient city-state was to victory for its own sake. Israel fights simply to defend life and because Jews deserve better that simply being granted the choice as to how to die. In Israel everything lives. From the beautiful spring flowers that are now in bloom, to the settler communities surrounded by danger but who live fearlessly, to young men and women like my son and daughter who serve in the military without any bravado or militaristic inclinations save to defend the innocent civilian population from attack. Am Yisrael Chai. Israel is alive. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach whom The Washington Post calls "the most famous rabbi in America" is the founder of The World Values Network and is the international best-selling author of 30 books, including his forthcoming, "The Israel Warriors Handbook." Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. Media cycles often deliver the gravest of news, especially when it comes to public health. Recent global outbreaks of Zika and Ebola have captured the public's attention, and for good reason given the severity of these diseases. But on this World Malaria Day, I would like to disrupt the news cycles with a bit of optimism. Why you may ask? Because global efforts to defeat malaria--one of the most relentless global health emergencies of our time--are working. In fact, the fight against malaria over the past 15 years represents one of the greatest success stories in the history of public health. Since 2000, malaria interventions have reduced the rate of global malaria deaths by nearly 60 percent, saving 6.2 million lives and averting 663 million infections. In Africa, where the vast majority of malaria deaths occur, we've reduced the mortality from malaria by more than 70 percent. Half the world's nations are now malaria-free, and we are well on the path to achieving what we once thought inconceivable: ending the malaria epidemic and eradicating the disease for good. This is not a hypothetical--we can end the epidemic within the next 15-20 years. How do we get there? Certainly not by chance. The last 15 years have shown us that only when we double down on efforts and move collectively toward clear, time-bound goals can we prevail over this age-old scourge. It is this formula that has catalyzed our progress to date and will be instrumental in propelling us forward. Advertisement Last September, Bill Gates and I authored a publication outlining a path toward malaria eradication within a generation. Our analysis shows that ending malaria has the potential to save an estimated 11 million lives and unlock an estimated $2 trillion in economic benefits. This is more than a numbers game--it means healthy children living past their fifth birthdays and growing into talented young people who will drive innovation and burgeoning economies. Momentum to see us to the finish line is building: The U.K. government, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, recently made a 3 billion commitment over the next five years to fight malaria. This is in addition to a 1 billion commitment to the Ross Fund, named in honor of the British Nobel laureate who first discovered the mosquito's role in malaria transmission. President Obama, in his final State of the Union address, called on the world to end malaria and has requested of Congress a $200 million increase to the federal budget to assist these efforts. And for the first time, leaders in affected nations of Africa and Asia have established their own timelines for malaria elimination. This regional leadership will steer the path forward, and I am so grateful to the champions leading this, such as former President of Tanzania, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete. On this World Malaria Day, I stand reinvigorated by the opportunity at hand. The end of malaria is within our grasp. Now it is our collective obligation to meet the call. I am confident that working together we will soon see the day when we no longer need to break the news cycles with the threat of malaria. Advertisement Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld makes a point during a briefing atthe Pentagon April 3, 2002. Rumsfeld denied broadcast reportssuggesting the U.S. military might pressure captured senior al Qaedaleader Abu Zubaydah with threats of turning him over to another countryto be tortured. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueKL/SV The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah The allegations against the man were serious indeed. * Donald Rumsfeld said he was if not the number two, very close to the number two person in al-Qaeda. * The Central Intelligence Agency informed Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee that he served as Usama Bin Ladens senior lieutenant. In that capacity, he has managed a network of training camps... He also acted as al-Qaedas coordinator of external contacts and foreign communications. Advertisement * CIA Director Michael Hayden would tell the press in 2008 that 25% of all the information his agency had gathered about al-Qaeda from human sources originated with one other detainee and him. * George W. Bush would use his case to justify the CIAs enhanced interrogation program, claiming that he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained and that he helped smuggle al-Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan so they would not be captured by U.S. military forces. None of it was true. And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah -- with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials -- is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror. So who was this infamous figure, and where is he now? His name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, but he is better known by his Arabic nickname, Abu Zubaydah. And as far as we know, he is still in solitary detention in Guantanamo. Advertisement A Saudi national, in the 1980s Zubaydah helped run the Khaldan camp, a mujahedeen training facility set up in Afghanistan with CIA help during the Soviet occupation of that country. In other words, Zubaydah was then an American ally in the fight against the Soviets, one of President Ronald Reagans freedom fighters. (But then again, so in effect was Osama bin Laden.) Zubaydahs later fate in the hands of the CIA was of a far grimmer nature. He had the dubious luck to be the subject of a number of CIA firsts: the first post-9/11 prisoner to be waterboarded; the first to be experimented on by psychologists working as CIA contractors; one of the first of the Agencys ghost prisoners (detainees hidden from the world, including the International Committee of the Red Cross which, under the Geneva Conventions, must be allowed access to every prisoner of war); and one of the first prisoners to be cited in a memo written by Jay Bybee for the Bush administration on what the CIA could legally do to a detainee without supposedly violating U.S. federal laws against torture. Zubaydahs story is -- or at least should be -- the iconic tale of the illegal extremes to which the Bush administration and the CIA went in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. And yet former officials, from CIA head Michael Hayden to Vice President Dick Cheney to George W. Bush himself, have presented it as a glowing example of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to extract desperately needed information from the evildoers of that time. Zubaydah was an early experiment in post-9/11 CIA practices and heres the remarkable thing (though it has yet to become part of the mainstream media accounts of his case): it was all a big lie. Zubaydah wasnt involved with al-Qaeda; he was the ringleader of nothing; he never took part in planning for the 9/11 attacks. He was brutally mistreated and, in another kind of world, would be exhibit one in the war crimes trials of Americas top leaders and its major intelligence agency. Yet notorious as he once was, hes been forgotten by all but his lawyers and a few tenacious reporters. He shouldnt have been. He was the test case for the kind of torture that Donald Trump now wants the U.S. government to bring back, presumably because it worked so well the first time. With Republican presidential hopefuls promising future war crimes, its worth reconsidering his case and thinking about how to prevent it from happening again. After all, its only because no one has been held to account for the years of Bush administration torture practices that Trump and others feel free to promise even more and yuger war crimes in the future. Advertisement Experiments in Torture In August 2002, a group of FBI agents, CIA agents, and Pakistani forces captured Zubaydah (along with about 50 other men) in Faisalabad, Pakistan. In the process, he was severely injured -- shot in the thigh, testicle, and stomach. He might well have died, had the CIA not flown in an American surgeon to patch him up. The Agencys interest in his health was, however, anything but humanitarian. Its officials wanted to interrogate him and, even after he had recovered sufficiently to be questioned, his captors occasionally withheld pain medication as a means of torture. When he lost his left eye under mysterious circumstances while in CIA custody, the agencys concern again was not for his health. The December 2014 torture report produced by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (despite CIA opposition that included hacking into the committees computers) described the situation this way: with his left eye gone, [i]n October 2002, DETENTION SITE GREEN [now known to be Thailand] recommended that the vision in his right eye be tested, noting that '[w]e have a lot riding upon his ability to see, read, and write.' DETENTION SITE GREEN stressed that this request is driven by our intelligence needs [not] humanitarian concern for AZ. The CIA then set to work interrogating Zubaydah with the help of two contractors, the psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell. Zubaydah would be the first human subject on whom those two, who were former instructors at the Air Forces SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training center, could test their theories about using torture to induce what they called learned helplessness, meant to reduce a suspects resistance to interrogation. Their price? Only $81 million. CIA records show that, using a plan drawn up by Jessen and Mitchell, Abu Zubaydahs interrogators would waterboard him an almost unimaginable 83 times in the course of a single month; that is, they would strap him to a wooden board, place a cloth over his entire face, and gradually pour water through the cloth until he began to drown. At one point during this endlessly repeated ordeal, the Senate committee reported that Zubaydah became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth. Each of those 83 uses of what was called the watering cycle consisted of four steps: 1) demands for information interspersed with the application of the water just short of blocking his airway 2) escalation of the amount of water applied until it blocked his airway and he started to have involuntary spasms 3) raising the water-board to clear subjects airway 4) lowering of the water-board and return to demands for information. Advertisement The CIA videotaped Zubaydah undergoing each of these cycles, only to destroy those tapes in 2005 when news of their existence surfaced and the embarrassment (and possible future culpability) of the Agency seemed increasingly to be at stake. CIA Director Michael Hayden would later assure CNN that the tapes had been destroyed only because they no longer had intelligence value and they posed a security risk. Whose security was at risk if the tapes became public? Most likely, that of the Agencys operatives and contractors who were breaking multiple national and international laws against torture, along with the high CIA and Bush administration officials who had directly approved their actions. In addition to the waterboarding, the Senate torture report indicates that Zubaydah endured excruciating stress positions (which cause terrible pain without leaving a mark); sleep deprivation (for up to 180 hours, which generally induces hallucinations or psychosis); unrelenting exposure to loud noises (another psychosis-inducer); walling (the Agencys term for repeatedly slamming the shoulder blades into a flexible, false wall, though Zubaydah told the International Committee of the Red Cross that when this was first done to him, he was slammed directly against a hard concrete wall); and confinement for hours in a box so cramped that he could not stand up inside it. All of these methods of torture had been given explicit approval in a memo written to the CIAs head lawyer, John Rizzo, by Jay Bybee, who was then serving in the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel. In that memo Bybee approved the use of 10 different techniques on Zubaydah. It seems likely that, while the CIA was torturing Zubaydah at Jessens and Mitchells direction for whatever information he might have, it was also using him to test the effectiveness of waterboarding as a torture technique. If so, the agency and its contractors violated not only international law, but the U.S. War Crimes Act, which expressly forbids experimenting on prisoners. What might lead us to think that Zubaydahs treatment was, in part, an experiment? In a May 30, 2005, memo sent to Rizzo, Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, discussed the CIAs record keeping. There was, Bradbury commented, method to the CIAs brutality. Careful records are kept of each interrogation, he wrote. This procedure, he continued, allows for ongoing evaluation of the efficacy of each technique and its potential for any unintended or inappropriate results. In other words, with the support of the Bush Justice Department, the CIA was keeping careful records of an experimental procedure designed to evaluate how well waterboarding worked. Advertisement This was Abu Zubaydahs impression as well. I was told during this period that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, Zubaydah would later tell the International Committee of the Red Cross, so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people. In addition to the videotaping, the CIAs Office of Medical Services required a meticulous written record of every waterboarding session. The details to be recorded were spelled out clearly: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment. Again, these were clearly meant to be the records of an experimental procedure, focusing as they did on how much water was effective; whether a seal was achieved (so no air could enter the victims lungs); whether the naso- or oropharynx (that is, the nose and throat) were so full of water the victim could not breathe; and just how much the subject vomited up. It was with Zubaydah that the CIA also began its post-9/11 practice of hiding detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross by transferring them to its black sites, the secret prisons it was setting up in countries with complacent or complicit regimes around the world. Such unacknowledged detainees came to be known as ghost prisoners, because they had no official existence. As the Senate torture report noted, In part to avoid declaring Abu Zubaydah to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which would be required if he were detained at a U.S. military base, the CIA decided to seek authorization to clandestinely detain Abu Zubaydah at a facility in Country _______ [now known to have been Thailand]. Advertisement Tortured and Circular Reasoning As British investigative journalist Andy Worthington reported in 2009, the Bush administration used Abu Zubaydahs interrogation results to help justify the greatest crime of that administration, the unprovoked, illegal invasion of Iraq. Officials leaked to the media that he had confessed to knowing about a secret agreement involving Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (who later led al-Qaeda in Iraq), and Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein to work together to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Of course, it was all lies. Zubaydah couldnt have known about such an arrangement, first because it was, as Worthington says, absurd, and second, because Zubaydah was not a member of al-Qaeda at all. In fact, the evidence that Zubaydah had anything to do with al-Qaeda was beyond circumstantial -- it was entirely circular. The administrations reasoning went something like this: Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant, ran the Khaldan camp in Afghanistan; therefore, Khaldan was an al-Qaeda camp; if Khaldan was an al Qaeda camp, then Zubaydah must have been a senior al Qaeda official. They then used their enhanced techniques to drag what they wanted to hear out of a man whose life bore no relation to the tortured lies he evidently finally told his captors. Not surprisingly, no aspect of the administrations formula proved accurate. It was true that, for several years, the Bush administration routinely referred to Khaldan as an al-Qaeda training camp, but the CIA was well aware that this wasnt so. The Senate Intelligence Committees torture report, for instance, made this crystal clear, quoting an August 16, 2006, CIA Intelligence Assessment, Countering Misconceptions About Training Camps in Afghanistan, 1990-2001 this way: Khaldan Not Affiliated With Al-Qa'ida. A common misperception in outside articles is that Khaldan camp was run by al-Qa'ida. Pre-11 September 2001 reporting miscast Abu Zubaydah as a 'senior al-Qa'ida lieutenant,' which led to the inference that the Khaldan camp he was administering was tied to Usama bin Laden." Advertisement Not only was Zubaydah not a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant, he had, according to the report, been turned down for membership in al-Qaeda as early as 1993 and the CIA knew it by at least 2006, if not far sooner. Nevertheless, the month after it privately clarified the nature of the Khaldan camp and Zubaydahs lack of al-Qaeda connections, President Bush used the story of Zubaydahs capture and interrogation in a speech to the nation justifying the CIAs enhanced interrogation program. He then claimed that Zubaydah had helped smuggle Al Qaida leaders out of Afghanistan. In the same speech, Bush told the nation, Our intelligence community believes [Zubaydah] had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained (a reference presumably to Khaldan). Perhaps the CIA should have been looking instead at some of the people who actually trained the hijackers -- the operators of flight schools in the United States, where, according to a September 23, 2001 Washington Post story, the FBI already knew terrorists were learning to fly 747s. In June 2007, the Bush administration doubled down on its claim that Zubaydah was involved with 9/11. At a hearing before the congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger, discussing why the Guantanamo prison needed to remain open, explained that it serves a very important purpose, to hold and detain individuals who are extremely dangerous... [like] Abu Zubaydah, people who have been planners of 9/11. Charges Withdrawn In September 2009, the U.S. government quietly withdrew its many allegations against Abu Zubaydah. His attorneys had filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf; that is, a petition to excercise the constitutional right of anyone in government custody to know on what charges they are being held. In that context, they were asking the government to supply certain documents to help substantiate their claim that his continued detention in Guantanamo was illegal. The new Obama administration replied with a 109-page brief filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, which is legally designated to hear the habeas cases of Guantanamo detainees. The bulk of that brief came down to a government argument that was curious indeed, given the years of bragging about Zubaydahs central role in al-Qaedas activities. It claimed that there was no reason to turn over any exculpatory documents demonstrating that he was not a member of al-Qaeda, or that he had no involvement in 9/11 or any other terrorist activity -- because the government was no longer claiming that any of those things were true. Advertisement The governments lawyers went on to claim, bizarrely enough, that the Bush administration had never contended that [Zubaydah] had any personal involvement in planning or executing... the attacks of September 11, 2001. They added that the Government also has not contended in this proceeding that, at the time of his capture, [Zubaydah] had knowledge of any specific impending terrorist operations -- an especially curious claim, since the prevention of such future attacks was how the CIA justified its torture of Zubaydah in the first place. Far from believing that he was if not the number two, very close to the number two person in al-Qaeda, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had once claimed, the Government has not contended in this proceeding that [Zubaydah] was a member of al-Qaida or otherwise formally identified with al-Qaida. And so, the case against the man who was waterboarded 83 times and contributed supposedly crucial information to the CIA on al-Qaeda plotting was oh-so-quietly withdrawn without either fuss or media attention. Exhibit one was now exhibit none. Seven years after the initial filing of Zubaydahs habeas petition, the DC District Court has yet to rule on it. Given the courts average 751-day turnaround time on such petitions, this is an extraordinary length of time. Here, justice delayed is truly justice denied. Perhaps we should not be surprised, however. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, CIA headquarters assured those who were interrogating Zubaydah that he would never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released. In fact, all major players are in concurrence, stated the agency, that he should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life. And so far, thats exactly whats happened. Advertisement The capture, torture, and propaganda use of Abu Zubaydah is the perfect example of the U.S. governments unique combination of willful law-breaking, ass-covering memo-writing, and what some Salvadorans I once worked with called strategic incompetence. The fact that no one -- not George Bush or Dick Cheney, not Jessen or Mitchell, nor multiple directors of the CIA -- has been held accountable means that, unless we are very lucky, we will see more of the same in the future. In this June 30, 2014 photo cans of Coca-Cola soda pop are shown in the refrigerator inside of Chile Lindo in San Francisco. San Francisco and Berkeley are aiming to become the first U.S. cities to pass per-ounce taxes on sugary drinks. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Small differences can illuminate huge gaps. So it is with the conflicting positions on proposals to tax soda. Liberal Hillary says yes; Progressive Bernie says no. The soda tax is a Mike Bloomberg initiative beloved of many public health advocates. Put a $4 dollars tax on a twelve pack of soda and you raise big money and discourage mass overconsumption of sugar, with less diabetes and obesity. It's the tobacco model, where big tax increases probably reduced cigarette consumption. Hillary likes it. Advertisement So what's the problem? Bernie says it's a regressive tax that hits the poor disproportionately. "A regressive tax on soda ... will significantly increase taxes on low-income and middle-class Americans. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it should be the people on top who see an increase in their taxes, not low-income and working people." Neither is playing nice about the dispute. The Hillary Camp: "I'm disappointed Sen. Sanders would ignore the interests of thousands of low-income -- predominately minority children -- and side with greedy beverage corporations who have spent millions in advertising for decades to target low income minority communities." Bam. The Bernie Camp: "I am very surprised that Secretary Clinton would support this regressive tax after pledging not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000," This proposal clearly violates her pledge. A tax on soda and juice drinks would disproportionately increase taxes on low-income families in Philadelphia." Re-Bam. Who's right? They're both right. It will reduce obesity and raise needed revenue. It is a regressive tax which, like all sales taxes, impacts the poor disproportionately. This is not a new dispute. Many initiatives dear to the heart of leftish constituencies are based on the same tax theory. Some Enviros love a carbon tax to reduce pollution or congestion pricing to reduce auto use. Health advocates loved the tobacco tax as it reduced smoking. Transit advocates love a gasoline tax to fund roads and bridges. They're all regressive sales taxes enacted in the name of some other greater good. None of the advocacy groups supporting these taxes has taken on the economic argument. Instead they adopt a version of what we've gotten in the soda debate: "Why are you supporting Big Soda/Big Auto/Big Oil/Big Tobacco?." Advertisement It's actually more important than slogans. Hillary, why should we increase regressive taxes even for a laudable purpose? Bernie, we need the money and why shouldn't we make it harder for poor folks to hurt themselves? What we learn about Hillary and Bernie is instructive. The heart of Bernie's message is economic equity. There's a principled reason to stop the habitual tax burden on working people. The heart of Hillary's message is a coalition of important interest groups and important issues that need practical responses from government. There was a truly silly dogfight last week between the Clinton and Sanders camps on who was the worse offender when it came to possibly raising taxes on the middle class. Clinton had supported Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney's proposed three cents an ounce tax on sugary drinks to pay for universal pre-kindergarten. Sanders countered that this was a tax increase on working people. He said: "Frankly, I am very surprised that Secretary Clinton would support this regressive tax after pledging not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. This proposal clearly violates her pledge. A tax on soda and juice drinks would disproportionately increase taxes on low-income families in Philadelphia." Sanders, as it happens, has proposed a number of tax increases that would hit working families, including higher payroll taxes to finance his proposed Medicare for All program. My American Prospect colleague Paul Starr has calculated that all of Sanders' tax hikes would add up to about $1.5 trillion a year. That's about eight percent of GDP. Advertisement Most of these proposed taxes would hit the wealthy, but some would bite the working middle class. And as Starr observes, some of the proposed tax levels on the wealthy are so high that they are implausible economically, such as a top capital gains rate of 64.2 percent. Behind this latest Clinton-Sanders squabble are several momentous policy questions. *How badly under-funded are social needs in the United States? *Can increased public outlays be financed mainly by raising taxes on corporations and the very wealthy? *To the extent that some taxes are raised on the middle class, can they be offset by benefits? *And how can a program of increased public outlays supported by higher taxes be made to work politically? For starters, Sanders proposal to increase the public share of GDP by something like eight percentage points is not crazy. Total public spending in the US is about 37 percent of GDP. Raise that by 8 points and it would be 45 percent, still well below the level of the most advanced nations of Europe. Advertisement Much of that increase would simply be the result of shifting money that is now inefficiently spent on private health insurance premiums and converting that outlay to far more efficient universal health insurance. If we also want to modernize our decaying infrastructure, reverse climate change, reduce the reliance on debt to finance higher education, and add services that other nations take for granted like universal child care, then spending 8 percent more of GDP socially is not a crazy goal. Can we get that money mainly by taxing the rich? We can surely get most of it. In the period after World War II, the top marginal income tax rate on individuals was in excess of 90 percent. The effective corporate tax rate was a lot higher than it is today. And the economy of that era boomed. Sanders and Clinton have criticized each other for raising some taxes on the non-rich, but this criticism is misplaced. There are taxes that are good and necessary policy, even they fall partly on the middle class. Examples are payroll taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare, taxes on tobacco that deter tobacco consumption and taxes on carbon. The issue is not whether taxes should ever be levied on the non-rich. Rather, the question is offsets and benefits. Advertisement High taxes on sugary drinks and on tobacco make sense to deter unhealthy consumption. If they fall heavily on the working class, that impact can be offset with other benefits -- such as broader health and pre-k coverage. Higher payroll taxes to finance universal health insurance make sense, because the result over time will be lower costs and a more efficient system. Carbon taxes can be offset with tax credits for the non-rich. That said, not everything in Sanders' program makes good sense as tax policy. But the idea of a big and long overdue increase in public outlay deserves mainstream consideration. And the details of how to finance it deserve thoughtful debate. However, after more than two decades of often joining in the government-bashing, the Democrats will need to play catch-up. Sometimes, it was hard to distinguish the anti-government rhetoric of Hillary Clinton's husband from that of Ronald Reagan. (It was Bill Clinton, not Reagan, who declared, "The era of big government is over." For more than two decades, the right has been playing a cynical game of starving the or privatizing the public sector; then, when citizens are dismayed at the low quality of public services, the right can crow that government doesn't work. Advertisement The right's well-heeled supporters win both ways. They don't use tax-supported services anyway, and they reap the benefits of tax cuts when government is starved. Democrats, whether led by Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, will need to reverse this psychology. They will need to invest some political capital in the proposition that we need more public services, not fewer; and that the era that began with Reagan, of proposing to solve every economic ill with a tax cut is what's over. Sanders and Clinton should stop bashing each other as big taxers. That only nourishes the rightwing line about liberals. The debate about how to pay for a more effective government is an important one. There is real work to be done. -- Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. NEW HAVEN, CT - APRIL 23: Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks on during a roundtable discussion with community members at Orangeside on Temple on April 23, 2016 in New Haven, Connecticut. Hillary Clinton met with local residents to discuss her plans to raise the minimum wage and fight for equal pay for women and paid leave for working families as she campaigns in Connecticut ahead of Tuesday's presidential primary. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Hillary Clinton's heated defense of the money she has raised from Wall Street and other interests won't cut it. Her protests contradict the basic case that virtually all Democrats and reformers have made for getting big money out of politics. It is vital that voters not be misled by them. Normally, liberal politicians defend setting up Super PACs, and collecting large sums from big donors because while they pledge to curb the influence of the rich and corporations in our politics if elected, they can't "unilaterally disarm." Clinton repeats this argument, but it has less force against Bernie Sanders who not only has made the corrosive effect of big money contributions central to his campaign, but has demonstrated that it is possible to be competitive without setting up Super PACs and without asking billionaires and millionaires for money. By funding his campaign with small donations raised on line, Sanders has not only walked his talk, he's stripped away the easy defense of "they all do it." Advertisement In response, Clinton has put forth additional, but troublesome arguments. She dismisses Sanders' indictment of her funding ties as an unjustified attack on her character. She demands evidence of a specific vote or act that was done in return for a contribution. And she invokes the Obama defense: President Obama collected big bucks from Wall Street and yet went on to pass the most extensive banking reforms since the Great Depression. Not Character, Common Sense Few Democrats doubt that big money corrupts our politics. This economy does not work for working people because the rules have been rigged to favor the few. They are rigged by politicians and officials who too often are more responsive to their donors than to the voters that put them in office. This argument is not controversial. Academic research confirms it. Politicians in both parties bemoan the hours they spend each day soliciting rich donors or schmoozing with lobbyists at unceasing fundraisers. Virtually all Democrats argue that we have to curb big money in politics. They're united in calling for overturning Citizens United and the other Supreme Court decisions that have opened the floodgates to unlimited, often secret corporate money in our politics. When Sanders questions Clinton about her funding from Wall Street, her speeches to big banks and other interests that brought her millions personally, and her array of Super Pacs, she charges Sanders with making "false character attacks." But the influence of campaign contributions isn't about character, it is about association, gratitude and access. Advertisement No Democrat doubts President Obama's character. Yet, he wrote in the Audacity of Hope about the "money chase:" As a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met, in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality and frequent hardship of the other 99% of the population - that is the people I'd entered public life to serve. This isn't about character. The "money chase" forces politicians, including Secretary Clinton, to spend immense time soliciting for deep pocket donations. Her contributors get access, earn gratitude and get a hearing for whatever case they want to make. Politicians learn what subjects to avoid, and begin to echo views are widely shared among the donor class. Sanders indicts Clinton's fundraising not because he believes she is particularly corrupt, but because he knows she is human. Not Bribery, World View In the debates, moderators and Secretary Clinton have repeatedly demanded that Sanders provide an example of a specific quid pro quo: show where she voted or acted in return for a contribution. This would be bribery, and very hard to prove even with subpoena power. Sanders's defenders often point to her flip to vote against the bankruptcy bill after getting thousands in contributions from the banking lobby, as suggested by Elizabeth Warren. Clinton argues that the bill was amended to include things she liked. We're left to draw our own conclusions. But this is simply not the point. Secretary Clinton, like most Democrats, supports overturning Citizens United. She even says this would be a litmus test for any potential Supreme Court nominee. But Citizens United affirms that bribery - a quid pro quo exchange of a vote for a contribution - -is illegal. What makes Citizens United offensive is that it limits corruption to that very narrow category, and declares money outside of that limit protected speech. It ridiculously ignores the far greater corrupting effects of big money on our politics and our politicians. That is why Democrats and reformers rail against it. Advertisement And this isn't simply about secret donations. Justice Kennedy, writing for the conservative majority, assumes that Congress will pass disclosure laws, and that publication will suffice for the democracy. Reformers, including Secretary Clinton, call for overturning Citizens United and related cases not because of secret money, but because they are stripping away any restrictions on big donations by corporations and the rich. All assume that this is offensive to and corrupting of our democracy. Obama: More Indictment Than Defense In response to Sanders, Secretary Clinton repairs frequently to her Obama Defense: "Make no mistake about it, this is not just an attack on me, it's an attack on President Obama. President Obama had a Super PAC when he ran. President Obama took tens of millions of dollars from contributors. And President Obama was not at all influenced when he made the decision to pass and sign Dodd-Frank, the toughest regulations on Wall Street in many a year. But Obama's administration is, in fact, a testament to the corrosive power of money. What the FBI termed "an epidemic of fraud" by the big banks and others was central to the Wall Street wilding that blew up the economy and led to the Great Recession. Yet the big banks were bailed out, while millions of homeowners were left to sink. Americans lost jobs, homes, and incomes, but the bankers kept their jobs and their ill-gotten fortunes, and no major banker went to jail. Sadly, the banks have ended bigger and more concentrated than before, and are till, as the Federal Reserve just announced, too big to fail. This wasn't because the bankers were innocent. The Justice Department has collected literally hundreds of billions of fines from the big banks for a range of fraudulent and criminal activities. The banks were fined, but no major banker was held accountable. Apparently banks somehow commit crimes without bankers being involved. Advertisement Why is that? As Elizabeth Warren has stated, personnel is policy. President Obama staffed his administration at its highest levels with former bankers and corporate lawyers. The Attorney General and the head of the criminal division came from and returned to a corporate law firm representing many of the bankers that should have been prosecuted. Not surprisingly, they worried publicly that prosecuting the banks might endanger the recovery. Citibank received the largest bailout from the federal government. It would have gone belly up without it. It misled investors about the billions in toxic mortgage bonds it held. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission called on the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against its leaders, including Robert Rubin, Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, and one of Obama's major patrons. The referral was not pursued. Why didn't the SEC bring civil charges and demand criminal prosecution of bankers who brought the world economy down in an "epidemic of fraud?" Perhaps one reason is that the head of enforcement at the SEC, Robert Khuzami, was general counsel of the Americas for Deutsche Bank from 2004-2009, a bank at the center of the fraud. This isn't about character, bribery (quid pro quos) or secrecy. Money oils the revolving door that insures that Wall Street and other interests are well represented in any administration. The corrupting influence of big money is that is provides access to politicians, and influences their world view. In the course of repeating her defense to the editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Secretary Clinton noted that: People have been supporting me over my political life since 1999... [T]here have been many [instances] where people have said, "would I look into this." I always say I will look into something, but I always tell people there is no guarantee...that you are going to like my answer." Advertisement Exactly. The big donors have access to express their concerns, to make their case. The server at McDonalds doesn't get a personal audience with the candidate to explain why a $15.00 minimum wage and a union are so vital. An inner city mother can't get an audience to explain why closing down the local school is so devastating. Middle income parents, hit with rising co-pays and drug costs, can't get a meeting to argue for moving to Medicare for All. Pay to play isn't simply alliteration; it is central to how the rules get rigged. The "money chase" slowly, imperceptibly influences the worldview of politicians. It influences who they think is important, what views they think are reputable. Donors become confidants who recommend the "right" people for high office. No one has described the effects better than President Obama. Again, in The Audacity of Hope, he wrote about a politician headed into his or her next big election, when no longer a fresh face: The path of least resistance -- of fund-raisers organized by the special interests, the corporate PACs and the top lobbying shops -- starts to look awfully tempting, and if the opinions of these insiders don't quite jibe with those you once held, you learn to rationalize the changes as a matter of realism, of compromise, of learning the ropes. The problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought. (emphasis added) Sanders Should Keep Pressing This Case The Clinton campaign has unleashed a flood of criticism of Sanders for being too negative. They call on him to stop talking about her Wall Street contributions and lecture fees. In fact, Sanders has been the most restrained of opponents. Just wait for one week of the Trump campaign's assault in comparison. Advertisement Sanders indicts big money in politics not out of personal enmity, but because he understands how it is undermining our democracy. Lord John Alderice is a Northern Ireland politician, who served as speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998-2004, and leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland from 1987-1998. He played a significant role as a negotiator in the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement and became one of the youngest life peers ever upon his election to the House of Lords in 1996. He currently chairs the Liberal Democratic Party caucus in the House of Lords, while also serving as a senior research fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford and remaining actively involved in conflict resolution initiatives in the Middle East. Lord Alderice agreed to share his thoughts with me on his experiences as a Northern Ireland peace negotiator, after his speech at the St. Antony's International Review launch in March 2016. The transcript of that interview is below: First of all, I would like to ask you for your thoughts on the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Specifically, what made it special and why did it succeed, where the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement had failed? Advertisement Lord Alderice: The 1985 agreement was conducted between the British and Irish governments. It was an important step because it bolstered inter-governmental cooperation, while reaffirming Northern Ireland's status as part of Britain. But it also antagonized a lot of people because of the way it was brought about. It was also a bit deceitful. The British government kept reassuring the Unionists it had no real intention to forge an agreement, while it was negotiating all along. The Irish government was telling the SDLP, the main nationalist party, that there was going to be an agreement and it would involve the SDLP in discussions. That did not happen. Dialogue between Northern Ireland and Ireland; and between different political factions was at a stand-still even after the agreement, when I began working with then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on conflict resolution. I became leader of the Alliance Party after this agreement in 1987, because it was the only political party that included both Protestants and Catholics. The Belfast Agreement involved everyone. There were no nasty surprises, despite the long period of implementation. Crucially, Belfast concluded with a referendum involving Northern Ireland and the Republic. Getting people involved every step of the way is crucial; it didn't happen in 1985 but happened in 1998. One of your most notable diplomatic achievements was convincing policymakers skeptical of negotiating with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to include them in the peace talks. How did you manage to get the IRA included in the process? Advertisement Lord Alderice: There was a lot of opposition and at the start, I was not sure including the IRA would be successful. John Hume, the main nationalist leader had already engaged with the IRA to try to persuade the IRA to have a cessation of violence. My position, personally and politically, was to engage with the IRA as soon as there was a cessation. And as soon as there was a cessation, I got involved. To be honest, I did not ask for the permission of my party to do it. I thought that the best thing to do was to show leadership and go do it. If I was unsuccessful; that would be the end of me and the effort. But if I was successful, it would be hard to argue against it. So I got involved as did John Hume, despite serious personal and political risks. In 2001, there was a crisis surrounding the decommissioning of weapons by the IRA that was so serious that some analysts thought the Belfast order would break down and conflict would return. Did you ever feel that the peace agreement was going to break down? And second, did you ever consider asking for UN peacekeepers to assist Northern Ireland in defusing the crisis? Lord Alderice: First of all, there was external involvement, especially from the European Union and the United States. External involvement was helpful, because it occurred at a time in which great statesmen defined their success on the ability to resolve conflicts rather than prosecute wars, and public optimism surrounding the European Union implored EU leaders to push for peace. I do not think bringing the UN would have solved the problem. Typically, the UN is brought in when everything is in a disastrous state. I was concerned at that stage that the peace could have broken down and there are points even more recently when I feared a return to conflict. There has never been a point in which I felt it was impossible for us to regress, but is it likely? It is not likely now as the emotional drivers for bitterness, anger and hurt are no longer there in the same way. It is perfectly possible for people of any community, gender or orientation to get to the most senior positions in the police, politics, academic life, economic life and so on. Political and economic representation inequality fuelled many of the grievances behind the Northern Ireland conflict, like in other sectarian environments such as Apartheid South Africa. Therefore, how important was the devolution of parliament to the establishment of peace in Northern Ireland? And how has peace persisted despite continued economic inequalities? Advertisement Lord Alderice: First of all, Northern Ireland was very different from South Africa. There were many people in the Protestant community who were poor and a significant number of Catholics who were middle class. As time went on, that trend has continued. Today, some of the most discontented people are working class Protestants. The sense of disrespect, humiliation and unfair treatment, was even more important in driving the conflict than inequality. That problem still continues, but as reforms have been made and historical legacies have been confronted, the situation has improved. Economic development also strengthens the process. But if we had exclusively focused on economic development and did not address the other issues, the problem would never have been resolved. It is important to emphasize that there are many regions of the world poorer than ours that did not have this kind of violence and terrorism. The terrorism problem got worse again at a time when Northern Ireland's economy was performing well and Catholics were able to enter the third level of education paid for by the state. Devolution was absolutely critical as there is no other way to get people to feel a sense of joint investment in Northern Ireland and its future. Catholics and Protestants needed to work together jointly as elected representatives of their community. Doing things from on high and at a distance does not bring communities together. Finally, I would like to ask you about the current situation in Northern Ireland. While there has been sustained peace since the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the process of integrating Catholic and Protestant communities is still far from complete, as the existence of peace lines demonstrates. What do you think needs to be done to solve this problem? Lord Alderice: As long as you still have people on both sides worried about what people on the other side are going to do to them, they do not want the wall taken down. So what you have to do is find ways to diminish the sense of threat and anxiety on each side. That's why many years after signing a peace agreement, there is still anxiety about criminality. Much of the concern relates to the activities of former paramilitaries. There is no sense of community agreement and sharing. That's what we are working on at the moment. As we speak, some of the walls are being taken down but we cannot complete the process without the agreement of people on both sides. Progress will come. The process is taking longer than hoped, but many tangible steps towards progress have been made. Advertisement Climbing the Great Wall for Friendship According to proclamations of both President Obama and Chinese President Xi, 2016 has been declared the China-US Tourism Year. In 2015 just over two million American tourists visited China, and by offering favorable visa policies and promoting attractions, the Chinese are aiming to boost that number. To launch the program, in March the country hosted "1000 Americans Visiting the Great Wall." I was among the delegation that journeyed to China to take part in the ceremony. A section of the Great Wall stretches across the Jinshanling landscape northeast of Beijing Dancers with a bright yellow dragon cavorted in front of us under a clear blue sky partway up a mountain in Janshanling about a two hour bus ride northeast of Beijing. Delegates from New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Nebraska, Georgia, Florida, Nebraska, Iowa, California bought into special tours arranged to launch and commemorate the attractions and opportunities China offers to visitors from overseas. We were outfitted in white caps, tee shirts and backpacks (pink for the women; blue for the men) and were brought by bus to this section of the Great Wall that is about 200 miles from where it initiates in Shanhaiguan on the Yellow Sea before running 5500 miles west to Gansu. Dragon dancers greeted the climbers Women were issued hats and "official" pink tee shirts Disembarking from the buses we walked past dancers and vendors charging $5 for hiking poles to complement the hardy footwear that had been recommended for hiking this popular six-mile stretch section of the Great Wall which includes 67 watchtowers, five passes, three beacon towers. The park entrance features a handsome two-story tourist center and attractive stone souvenir stands around a large plaza which was sun lit and bright. As we ascended past crenellated fences lining the paved stone walkways, signs advised us to be friendly to grass and leave only footprints behind. The Visitors Center overlooks a large plaza Advertisement Climbers set off toward the Wall Tasteful structures line the path Pathway signs promote ecology Partway uphill we assembled on a platform where we watched dancers perform local Mongolian folk dances until we were greeted by the Mayor of nearby Chengde who introduced over a dozen dignitaries who had assembled from various US and Chinese government agencies. Van Houston, Commercial Office of the US Embassy, had driven out from Beijing to greet the American guests and to remind the Chinese audience that in this this centennial year of the National Park Service, overseas travelers to the US can be rewarded by exploring beauties of America beyond merely visiting the major cities. Folk dancers entertained the climbers The Mayor of Chengde welcomed climbers Dignitaries encouraged China-US tourism After peppy American ice dancing gold medalist Olympians Meryl Davis and Charlie White led us in stretches, jumping jacks, and other warm up exercises, it was time to start the trek uphill. The path varied from slight slopes and low steps to stairs which required a bit of effort, but it was a pleasant walk overall. Young Chinese students in aqua tee shirts were are stationed all along the way to point out directions and give a hand on the steeper sections. Intermittently we encountered musicians and dancers in colorful costumes who were stationed along the path to play flutes and dulcimers and pose for souvenir photos. We could stop at "service stations" to be fortified with mango juice and water, cookies and layer cakes. Setting off on the uphill climb A gently sloping section of the wall Dancers were stationed to entertain the climbers Beautiful viewpoints extend from the Wall Halfway along, the Mayor passed me striding along in sensible high heel shoes and when we reached the top she was waiting there to hand out the Hero Certificates we received for completing the circuit. A"shortcut" transverse path led us back down the hill. Hero certificates rewarded the 1000 visitors Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a rally in Baltimore, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) There is little doubt that Bernie Sanders has done far better than expected when he initially declared he was running for president. But with his defeat in New York, his chances of winning the Democratic nomination and becoming the president are small at best. With these defeats, it would appear that the "revolution" he personifies has suffered a grave and insurmountable setback. While Bernie Sanders not winning the presidency will certainly be problematic for the cause, the bigger problem for the "revolution" is that it never had a chance of succeeding to begin with. This vision of millions of working class voters banding together to elect very liberal representatives and pass Sanders' vision of free college for all, single-payer healthcare, getting money out of politics, substantial tax increases on the rich, etc. was doomed to run into the institutional buzzsaw specifically designed to avoid radical change that is the U.S. Senate. Advertisement Imagine a world where Bernie Sanders somehow succeeds. He won the presidency. Millions of detached first-time voters actually show up and provide a huge down ballot wave allowing Democrats to win all of the remotely plausible Senate seats in play (New Hampshire, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Missouri, and North Carolina). This gives Democrats a 54 to 46 lead in the Senate. Let's take it a step further and say that not only do Democrats retake the Senate, but they achieve the virtually impossible and win the House as well. Alas, even if these extremely unlikely set of circumstances were to come to pass, Bernie would still be on a path leading nowhere. Perhaps if the whole Senate was up for election in 2016, like the House is, it would be possible for Bernie's millions of new voters to truly overwhelm the status quo and elect a strongly liberal majority. Unfortunately for Bernie's Revolution, this was exactly the type of thing the Founding Fathers were trying to prevent when they created the Senate. Senate elections are staggered with only a third of the Senate up for re-election at any time. This means to get a more dominate progressive majority the Revolution would need to be sustained over several cycles. But let's push on. Now that the easy part of winning the 2016 election is over, President Sanders would turn to implementing the agenda his legions of supporters pushed for. Here he runs into his first set of problems. With just 54 Democratic Senators, Bernie would be working with six less than President Obama had when they barely passed Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act, both of which Bernie wants to replace with even more liberal versions. Like Obama, Bernie would almost certainly not have any Republicans to go along with his policies, meaning any filibuster would simply render his agenda inert. The only other option to get his agenda implemented is to completely do away with the filibuster. Again this is exceptionally unlikely to happen; Senators Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester to name a few of the more moderate Democratic Senators are not going to vote to eliminate the filibuster for proposals that they are unlikely to vote for anyway. Advertisement Sanders' challenge would be two-fold going forward into 2018. Moderate Democratic Senators would need to be replaced by more liberal candidates that can still win the general election, and they would have to elect liberal Senators in states currently represented by Republicans. There is little evidence that Sanders' supporters have the numbers to elect liberal options in primaries. In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth crushed her liberal challengers, Patrick Murphy has led most of the recent polling against Alan Grayson, and it remains to be seen if Loretta Sanchez or Kamala Harris will win in California. If the new voters can't elect more liberal Senators and Representatives in this year's primaries, it would leave a President Sanders in a position where he we be unlikely to achieve much in his first two years. Given Bernie's thoughts on President Clinton's and Obama's "half-loaves" approach, it is very unlikely that he would give in to get part of what he wants. Even if he did agree to compromise to achieve some of his goals, it would likely reduce his standing in the eyes of those that view him as beyond politics as usual. Two years into his presidency, it's hard to see how Bernie would have achieved any of his revolutionary vision. That or he has "sold out" (his words, not ours) to move forward with partial reforms. Then we'd arrive at the 2018 midterms, when the president's party historical does quite poorly and Democrats have to defend a lot of seats. Indeed, Democrats would need to defend sitting Senators, or win with more liberal candidates, in MT, ND, IN, MO (to name a few) and then win six more seats. These six would need to come from NV, UT, AZ, TX, WY, NE, TN, and MS, not exactly a list of liberal leaning states. Further complicating the math is imagine you are one of the millions of formerly disillusioned or first-time voters that Bernie drew to the polls to win in 2016, are you really going to come out to the polls again after Bernie has been unable to deliver on the promises in the first two years? We think it is far more likely that those voters will go back to sitting out. Democrats will get shellacked once again in the midterms, and none of Sanders' initiatives would ever be implemented. Bernie Sanders' "revolution" is great short-term politics, that even had it been successful would have set him up for long-term failure when he was unable to deliver on his promises. In a lot other countries, a Bernie Sanders-type candidate could ride a wave of political support and remake the country in a single cycle. However, the design of America's political institutions simply doesn't allow short-term bursts of political activity to overwhelm the system. Instead, if Democrats want to continue to push the country in a more progressive direction, the Democratic Party will have to maintain a sustained focus on all elections; Senate, House, state and local, not just the presidency. It's not quite as catchy a slogan, but it actually has a chance to produce lasting results. The difficult process of transitioning to a renewable resource-based economy requires us to ask: how does political, economic and social change happen? To answer that question it's helpful to look at the changes we have seen over the past century and also ask: how did they happen? It's easy to see change: the end of legal racial segregation, women's rights, gay marriage, the growth of smartphones and the internet, cleaner air and water, the growth of the global economy, and, here in New York City, the transformation of a manufacturing and commercial city into a center of the global brain-based economy. We live in a different world than the one our parents and grandparents lived in. When you look back you find that conventional wisdom and punditry either overestimated or underestimated the difficulty of change. But you also inevitably see a long process of triumphs and failures and a sudden awareness that the world has changed and we are no longer where we used to be. When I read the predictions of some analysts examining the climate crisis I am often struck by their pessimism about our ability to address climate change. Current trend lines, the science deniers in congress, the influence of the fossil fuel industry and growing consumption in the developing world generate predictions of a future of drowned cities and massive shortages of food and water. That could happen, but I wouldn't bet on it. What is striking about those predicting doom is their present-mindedness. Projections and scenarios rarely factor in the possibility of disruptive technological change, since by definition, it is difficult to know when it will take place and what shape it will take. Nevertheless, we can count on the certainty of some form of disruptive change. Advertisement What I am betting on is the growing sense of awareness and understanding of environmental issues among the people of the world. It could be that my personal perspective is a little warped. I've seen the environmental issue move from the outer fringes to the center of our political agenda. In my case, it began over 40 years ago when I walked into a small graduate seminar in SUNY Buffalo on an obscure topic called "Environmental Politics." Only a handful of us thought this was of much importance and most of my fellow graduate students weren't even sure what it was. Today, the average college student is well aware of environmental issues and, in fact, the average fourth grader knows about it too. Mass education and social awareness are the foundations of large-scale change. The need for global sustainability policy and management is well understood by huge majorities in every country of the world. If we believe polling data, young people get it more than old people. There is a fundamental consensus on the importance and dimensions of the problem. We don't know how to move from our current non-sustainable lifestyle to a sustainable one, but most people know that we need to figure it out. In my view, broad public understanding of our crisis of global sustainability is the foundation for the large-scale, non-linear change that is starting to take place. Evidence of that change can be seen in the introduction of products like the new lower-priced Tesla electric car and in the policy pronouncements of leading public officials all over the world. We've seen large-scale change before. Young women increasingly expect equality and assume they will get it. Racism, sexism and homophobia still exist in this country, but they are not as bad as they were when I was growing up. When we see an act of overt bias, we know what it looks like and we know it is wrong--not everyone, not all of the time, but most people, most of the time. The large-scale public discussion of racial profiling and effective policing now underway was not an agenda item in Mississippi or New York City in the 1960s. The legalization of gay marriage was not up for discussion on June 28th, 1969, when the patrons of New York City's Stonewall Inn battled with the NYPD. Unequal pay for equal work was a way of life for women of my mother and wife's generation. My guess is my daughters will end up doing better. The point is that we live in a social order that few would have predicted fifty years ago. Change may be slow, but the forward motion of social progress is undeniable. Catastrophe or terror or both could halt that progress, but people are learning more about each other and their world and society is slowly changing in response. Advertisement Returning to the theme of climate change and fossil fuels, our problem is not simply climate change, it is a broader set of issues we should call environmental sustainability. Even when we decarbonize our energy we will still have toxic substances in both our food chain and ecosystems that pose a wide range of dangers. We are still reducing biodiversity and damaging ecological systems without fully understanding the impact of what we are doing. But we are learning. The paradox is that our urban, post-industrial lifestyle means that we spend less and less of our time securing the food, clothing and shelter that occupied human effort for thousands of years. That frees us to learn more about each other, our home planet and ourselves. We like and wish to retain the lifestyles we enjoy, but we know that these lifestyles are built on technologies that need to change. American consumers want to buy SUVs, but if an electric SUV were as cheap and convenient as a standard SUV, people would buy the electric one. People may be too busy to recycle, but understand why it would be a good thing to do. Once we have the base of values and understanding in place that supports preserving the planet, we need to develop public policies, infrastructure and private sector business models that move the economy toward sustainability. This is also a type of change we have seen before. American government has worked with private businesses since the founding of the republic. American land grant colleges and agricultural extension built new farming methods and technologies and taught farmers how to use them. It turned America into the world's breadbasket. Public investment in railways, roads, airports and ports ensured that goods could be efficiently transported to the market place. Government policy after World War II was designed to transform America from a nation of renters to a nation of homeowners. Government-backed mortgage insurance lowered down payments, and tax deductions for property tax and mortgage interest lowered monthly costs. The policy worked: most Americans now own their homes. We need the same sort of creative public-private partnership on renewable energy, waste management, water management and conservation. The large-scale public support for sustainability ensures that if this is done intelligently (e.g. no direct subsidies to particular companies) it can help elected officials keep their jobs while ensuring that Miami and New York City remain above sea level. Advertisement Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 4/21/16 Donald Trump joins TODAY Show for live town hall to answers voters' questions. (NYC) It is unsurprising that wherever Donald Trump goes, headlines follow. But what is particularly interesting is just how many of those headlines involve the practice of journalism and journalists themselves. Advertisement Trump so challenges the norms and conventions of politics, it has caused some to express anxiety about the "corrosion of democratic culture" as a result of the damage he leaves in his wake. Journalists, as chroniclers of the political system, are confronted with a dilemma. How should journalists cover Trump's candidacy? Can they - and should they - be objective? Objectivity is a much misunderstood concept and is too often uncritically mythologized as central to American journalistic practice. What interests me is how the pressure to be objective - and therefore disengaged from the very real impact Trump is having on the democratic process - may impede journalists' crucial role as stewards of democracy. The Cokie Roberts case In March, longtime NPR commentator Cokie Roberts received flak from journalists, including some of her NPR colleagues, for coauthoring a column that argued that Trump is Advertisement one of the least qualified candidates ever to make a serious run for the presidency. If he is nominated by a major party - let alone elected - the reputation of the United States would suffer a devastating blow around the world. Roberts was roundly chastised by her colleagues and NPR executives for failing to adhere to the objectivity norm - this despite her status as a commentator. Morning Edition host David Greene even expressed his disappointment with Roberts on the air, telling her that "objectivity is so fundamental to what we do" and asking, "can you blame people like me for being a little disappointed to hear you come out and take a personal position on something like this in a campaign?" Roberts defended her column by describing herself as someone who is nonpartisan but "interested in government working." Her argument was essentially an appeal to basic democratic values and the manner in which Trump is challenging them. In contrast - and providing a masterful illustration of the tension between journalistic and business values - CBS head Leslie Moonves recently told an audience of investors that while Trump "may not be good for America" he is "damn good for CBS...The money's rolling in." Advertisement Is your analyst my commentator? NPR's dilemma speaks to broader shifts in the media ecosystem. A study I coauthored with Elizabeth Blanks Hindman examined the responses of journalists to NPR's decision to fire analyst Juan Williams for comments he made on Fox News in 2010 about feeling "nervous" about sharing a plane with Muslims. The responses indicated much confusion about Williams' role, with some pondering what exactly it means to be an "analyst" as versus, say, a "reporter" or a "commentator." Others criticized Williams for not adhering to the objectivity norm. We found similar findings in our study of journalistic responses to the retirement of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas following controversial remarks she made that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine." The majority of responses we analyzed criticized Thomas for failing to be objective regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, when in fact her role at the time was as an opinion columnist. We see these findings as markers of broader uncertainties about 21st-century journalism. To question objectivity is to invite the larger question of what we expect of the 21st-century journalist. Is "objectivity," at least as presently understood, fit for purpose? The fact is that Cokie Roberts is not the only one to express her unease about Trump's candidacy. The Huffington Post has taken to appending an editor's note to every article about Trump informing readers that he is "a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther, and bully." Advertisement The Boston Globe attracted attention for a cover that ran on the front of its Sunday edition's Ideas section presented as an account of what life would look like under President Trump, with mass deportations and trade wars the new normal. How, then, should journalists respond to an authoritarian candidate who incites violence, fuels racial tension and fractures the social fabric by indulging the worst excesses of American bigotry? 'Journalists owe democracy their allegiance' The first defense of Roberts column is to point out that it was an opinion column written by a commentator. Roberts was, in effect, doing what she is paid to do: opine. This makes the criticism of her column all the more bizarre. However, the second and more fundamental defense is to consider at a deeper level how journalists in a liberal democracy respond to phenomena that challenge the very precepts of liberal democracy. This is a much-needed conversation, and one that has long been stifled by a narrow conception of objectivity. Too often objectivity, as it is practiced, emphasizes neutrality and balance at all costs. This can be seen, for example, in coverage of the human impact on climate change as a question still being debated when an overwhelming majority of scientists believe there is unassailable evidence that it is a fact that needs to be dealt with. Advertisement This kind of objectivity positions the journalist as a "morally disengaged" communicator possessing, as the ethicist Ted Glasser argues, neither the need nor the opportunity to develop a critical perspective from which to assess the events, the issues, and the personalities he or she is assigned to cover. In "The Limits of Objective Reporting," the philosopher Raphael Cohen-Almagor argues that subjectivity is preferable to objectivity when the media cover illiberal and anti-democratic phenomena. Cohen-Almagor argues - and I concur - that when confronted with issues that challenge the basic values of liberal democracy itself, journalists are called to set aside moral neutrality. From this perspective, journalism ought to be nonpartisan in party terms but wholly on the side of democracy, good governance and the protection of people's rights and civil liberties. Advertisement As Cohen-Almagor says, journalists live within the democratic realm and owe democracy their allegiance. Free speech and free journalism exist because democracy makes them possible. This is not so unusual an idea, and ought not be controversial. Indeed, we don't need to go that far back into journalism history to find examples of it. One of the reasons Edward R. Murrow is regarded as one of the finest American journalists is because of his opposition to the demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy, devoting an episode of "See It Now" to a methodical exposition of McCarthy's smears and deceits. Murrow recognized the threat that McCarthy (and McCarthyism) posed to the fabric of American democracy and acted with conviction. Where is today's Edward R. Murrow? Advertisement Trump is testing the boundaries of the political system. His platform and proclamations, and the manner in which he articulates them, pose such a challenge to regular order that it becomes necessary to ask if the norms of political coverage ought to be rethought. Perhaps a new journalistic vocabulary is necessary. Trump's candidacy may provide just the occasion for such a rethink. Prince performs during the 2007 National Council of La Raza ALMA Awards in Pasadena, Calif. Friday, June 1, 2007. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) The death of Prince marks the end of a brilliant music career by one of pop music's most talented and eclectic artists. A virtuoso on any number of instruments, a master arranger and producer, and a preeminent showman, Prince's music was as diverse and versatile as his elaborate outfits. But it was his pursuit of complete artistic freedom - and legal protections for that freedom - that will make up a significant portion of his legacy. His several notable confrontations with record companies, streaming services and social media users inspired other artists to both demand artistic freedom and earn their fair share of profits. Advertisement The arrival of a wunderkind In 1978, when he was 19 years old, Prince signed with Warner Bros. and released his debut album, "For You." Prince is credited with playing every instrument and singing all of the vocals on the album, which ran contrary to recording albums during the beginning of the megastar boom that would define the music of the 1980s. Albums of this period typically relied on an army of producers, arrangers, composers and musicians. Michael Jackson's album "Off the Wall" (1979), for example, credits nearly 40 session musicians and over 15 composers and arrangers. While it wasn't a major success, "For You" revealed Prince's budding genius and his desire to exert control over all elements of his work, allowing him to stay true to his artistic vision. "For You" was the first in a long line of studio albums that Prince produced with Warner Bros. After the release of two other developmental efforts, he released "1999" (1983) and "Purple Rain" (1984), which established the showman as one of the most unique, diverse and dominant pop artists of the 1980s. Contractual shackles However, by the early 1990s, the relationship between Prince and Warner Bros. began to cool. After the success of "Diamonds and Pearls" (1991), Prince signed a six-album, US$100 million contract with the record company. Advertisement But the details of the contract led to a prolonged legal and creative battle concerning ownership of Prince's entire Warner Bros. catalog. Under the contract, Warner Bros. received ownership of Prince's body of work that he had produced for the company. For his part, Prince received a sudden influx of cash to continue working on recording projects at his Paisley Park Records studio in Minnesota. As Prince grew increasingly frustrated that he had surrendered the rights to his music, the artist began to rebel by publicly appearing with "Slave" written on his cheek. He also changed his name to a symbol, which occurred after the artist declared his former artistic self dead. To meet the recording demands of the contract - which dictated that Prince needed to produce new albums under the Warner Bros. name - he opted to release prerecorded music to Warner Bros. His final release from this period, "Chaos and Disorder" (1996), is a hodgepodge of hastily written songs that serve as a tongue-in-cheek rebuke to Warner Bros., while allowing the artist to fulfill his obligations to the company. Fighting for his share Given Prince's public, prolonged dispute with Warner Bros., the damage may have seemed irreparable. However, the two sides renewed their working relationship in 2014, a move that restored Prince's ownership of his earlier Warner Bros. releases. Advertisement Prince spent the last decade of his life fighting other areas of the music industry to ensure that his creative works were protected. In 2007, Prince and Universal Music sued a mother after she posted a video of her son dancing to a Prince song on YouTube. Then, in 2014, the artist filed suit against 20 people who he claimed violated his copyright protections by either posting his songs online or by participating in file sharing services that posted his music. The complaint sought $1 million in damages from each person. Prince's lawsuits were meant more to draw attention to issues of copyright infringement than they were to ruin the finances of mothers and kids sharing files on the Internet. After those accused of violating copyright in the cases mentioned ceased their activity, Prince dropped the cases. Prince's fight to protect his creative voice has reverberated to the most remote corners of the music world. Choral arrangers - who typically pay a license fee in order to access rights that they then arrange for choral groups - are barred from using the artist's music as material. Advertisement Prince's legacy as a brilliant and extraordinarily unique musician will endure in the nearly 30 studio albums that he produced. But the artist should also be remembered for his work as an advocate for protecting the creative property of musicians and their music. Throughout his career, Prince's willingness to engage in ownership battles over creative rights played a major role in the growing wave of discontent toward the music industry, now led by Jay Z, David Byrne and Neil Young, among others. Just as "For You" displayed an artist in total control of his medium, Prince's battle to maintain control over his music throughout his career will ensure that the legacy he leaves is in the exact voice that he intended. In this photo, reviewed by the U.S. military, guards stand on either side of a line-up of Guantanamo detainees, in white, to perform a search for unauthorized items, at Guantanamo's Camp 4 detention facility, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, Tuesday, May 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) Let's take a moment to think about the ultimate strangeness of our American world. In recent months, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have offered a range of hair-raising suggestions: as president, one or the other of them might order the U.S. military and the CIA to commit acts that would include the waterboarding of terror suspects (or "a hell of a lot worse"), the killing of the relatives of terrorists, and the carpet bombing of parts of Syria. All of these would, legally speaking, be war crimes. This has caused shock among many Americans in quite established quarters who have decried the possibility of such a president, suggesting that the two of them are calling for outright illegal acts, actual "war crimes," and that the U.S. military and others would be justified in rejecting such orders. In this context, for instance, CIA Director John Brennan recently made it clear that no Agency operative under his command would ever waterboard a suspect in response to orders of such a nature from a future president. ("I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure.") Advertisement These acts, in other words, are considered beyond the pale when Donald Trump suggests them, but here's the strangeness of it all: what The Donald is only mouthing off about, a perfectly real American president (and vice president and secretary of defense, and so on) actually did. Among other things, under the euphemistic term "enhanced interrogation techniques," they ordered the CIA to use classic torture practices including waterboarding (which, in blunter times, had been known as "the water torture"). They also let the U.S. military loose to torture and abuse prisoners in their custody. They green-lighted the CIA to kidnap terror suspects (who sometimes turned out to be perfectly innocent people) off the streets of cities around the world, as well as from the backlands of the planet, and transported them to the prisons of some of the worst torture regimes or to secret detention centers ("black sites") the CIA was allowed to set up in compliant countries. In other words, a perfectly real administration ordered and oversaw perfectly real crimes. (Its top officials even reportedly had torture techniques demonstrated to them in the White House.) At the time, the CIA fulfilled its orders to a T and without complaint. A lone CIA officer spoke out publicly in opposition to such a program and was jailed for disclosing classified information to a journalist. (He would be the only CIA official to go to jail for the Agency's acts of torture.) At places like Abu Ghraib, the military similarly carried out its orders without significant complaint or resistance. The mainstream media generally adopted the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "harsh techniques" in its reporting -- no "torture" or "war crimes" for them then. And back in the post-2001 years, John Brennan, then deputy executive director of the CIA, didn't offer a peep of protest about what he surely knew was going on in his own agency. In 2014, in fact, as its director he actually defended such torture practices for producing "intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives." In addition, none of those who ordered or oversaw torture and other criminal behavior (a number of whom would sell their memoirs for millions of dollars) suffered in the slightest for the acts that were performed on their watch and at their behest. Advertisement Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was right to restore voting rights to Virginians convicted of felonies. Other governors and legislatures should follow his lead. Using his executive power on Friday, McAuliffe restored voting rights to 200,000 persons who had been convicted of felonies in Virginia. The Old Dominion has one of the nation's most restrictive felony voting laws, disenfranchising one out of every five African-American voters, according to the Sentencing Project. Advertisement There's an ugly history to the expansion of felony disenfranchisement laws, often tracing themselves to post-Civil War efforts to maintain white primacy. Virginia, for example, has prohibited persons convicted of felonies from voting since the Civil War, expanding such prohibitions in 1902 along with implementing poll taxes and literacy tests. Governor McAuliffe's staff uncovered a 1906 report quoting a Virginia Senator stating that such policies "would eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years." When I ran Washington, D.C.'s juvenile justice agency, some of the youth in our facilities were eligible to vote. They were over age 18 and "adjudicated delinquent" -- a not convicted of a felony -- so they retained their voting rights. Believing that it was our job to help them participate as full-fledged members of society, we helped them organize a mayoral debate in our youth correctional facility, with the youth moderating and asking all the questions. The young people took the process very seriously, discussing the election extensively before and afterwards, and taking a straw poll on who won the debate. Afterwards, most of the youth who were eligible to vote registered and most who registered, requested absentee ballots. More than a half dozen mayoral candidates attended the debate, including D.C.'s eventual Mayor, Adrian Fenty. Most remained in the facility interacting with the youth long after the debate ended, providing them with an understanding of incarcerated youth rarely afforded to elected officials. Advertisement When I was Commissioner of New York City probation, people under our supervision were eligible to vote -- New York is one of 19 states where that is the case. We actively encouraged them to register and vote, putting up signage throughout our offices and making voter registration materials prominently available. When voter registration deadlines approached, probation officers were instructed to remind people on their caseloads to register. Both jurisdictions were overwhelmingly Democratic, so this had nothing to do with partisan politics. Rather, we felt that civic engagement of those under our supervision was important to help them occupy their roles as fully enfranchised citizens. In turn, this helped our staff view those in their charge as individuals engaging in their civic duty, rather than merely criminals to be watched. Some have suggested that, rather than reinstating voting rights en masse, states should create mechanisms that restore rights to those convicted of felonies one at a time as they prove they are worthy to vote. Nothing in my time in government has convinced me that the government has the capacity -- or should be vested with the authority -- to determine who is vote-worthy. In 2014, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's premier research institute, issued a report on the causes and consequences of America's massive increase in incarceration over the last four decades. One of their primary recommendations was that "the conditions and consequences of punishments for crime... should not be so severe or so enduring as to violate an individual's fundamental status as a member of society." There's no public safety justification for stripping people of their right to vote. In fact, it's more likely that exercising the right to vote contributes to normalcy and law abiding behavior than the opposite. Advertisement Bakeys/ Ketto Epiphanies can occur in the strangest places. For some, its the bathtub. For Narayana Peesapaty, it was during the course of an in-flight meal. In 2005, the 50-year-old researcher who focuses on rural development, water and energy and agriculture, noticed that people around him on a flight were using khakhra, or thin wafers to scoop up rice and curry. Advertisement Narayana Peesapaty Image courtesy: Bakeys/ Ketto Peesapaty who claims to have been looking at creating opportunities in the jowar (the poor mans crop) market, saw this as the perfect opportunity to not only eradicate plastic cutlery (according to him, annually 120 billion pieces are disposed every day), but create nutritious edible cutlery that would minimise carbon footprint, and help farmers. Rice is expensive, yet people continue to cultivate it, even though it consumes a lot of power and is very water demanding. I would, during my field visits to the semi-arid areas of Andhra Pradesh, employ the hard and flat jowar roti (sorghum bread) to scoop lentil and vegetables during a meal. After this, and observing the people on the flight, I had a Eureka moment, and I decided to make an edible spoon from different flours, he told HuffPost India. In 2006, Peesapaty quit his job and funded his edible cutlery project called Bakeys by selling his house, and availing small loans, and crowd funding through an organisation named Ketto. It took him seven years of research and development to perfect his product. We had limited money, and took a lot of time to formulate different percentages of mixes for each of these shapes, heating levels, packaging issues all were challenges as we had none to look up to, and all had to be invented for the first time. Advertisement A mixture of jowar, rice, wheat mixed in hot water is used to make these hard and crunchy spoons that are available in three flavours, sweet, plain and savoury (rock salt, black pepper, cumin seed and carom seed). Other grains or millet like corn, soy, ragi, barley are also being utilised to render these spoons gluten-free, said Peesapaty. The moisture percentage is minimal (2-3%) so they dont melt for 10 minutes at least. A 10 gram spoon also comes loaded with its own nutrients: calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium, niacin, folic acid, iron and fibre. Eating these spoons with tea or coffee can be a meal on its own. In addition to soup and dessert spoons, Peesapaty along with his wife, started experimenting with chopsticks, sporks and knives, and came up with chemical-free paper for packaging. When we started Bakeys, people didnt think that this was a feasible idea, we wouldnt get orders and many people were skeptical about the spoon. They would not trust me, and laughed thinking the spoon would break, said Peesapaty. Now the only challenge I face is how do I complete the number of orders on time so that they can enjoy their spoons with their meal. Advertisement Between November 2014, and March this year, they made 6,000 -7,000 spoons manually, and have been working on a system that will manufacture close to 50,000 spoons in just eight hours. Peesapaty and his wife, who are based out of Hyderabad, only employ women to produce these spoons. My wife runs the production unit, and her priority is fitting women and people with disabilities into appropriate roles. Some jobs like machine maintenance and repairs, and night shifts are handled by men, he said. There have been times when we have not been able to pay them, but they have continued to stay with us, telling us they feel safe here, particularly the ones under 25. The duo plans to tie up directly with farmers to reduce the cost of spoon to Rs1 per product. Some so-called high-end plastic spoons cost Rs 1-2 each in wholesale market. If we get subsidies from the government for procuring the grains we need, we can lower the prices and reach out to all segments of society, said Peesapaty, also adding Bakeys plans to tinker with prick sticks, stirrers and small bowls. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - APRIL 24: Chief Justice of India TS Thakur speaks during the inauguration of the Joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts, at Vigyan Bhawan, on April 24, 2016 in New Delhi, India. During the conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he understood the Chief Justice's concern and added that going forward, he hoped that the Government and the Judiciary could work together to find solutions to these issues. Thakur, got emotional while saying that criticism of judiciary for delay is unfair. (Photo by Sushil Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) NEW DELHI -- Over the weekend, Chief Justice of India Tirath Singh Thakur implored Prime Minister Narendra Modi to double the number of judges serving in Indian courts. Speaking at a conference of chief justices and chief ministers on Sunday, Thakur made an emotional appeal to the central government to provide some respite to the serving 21,000 judges, who are handling a preposterous number of cases, while tens of thousands of people languish in jail without having been proven guilty. Advertisement Thakur is not the first chief of the Indian judiciary to sound the alarm over just how the bad the situation is for judges and inmates in the country, but it was his choked voice and coming close to tears, which made us pause to listen. Rubbing his eyes with his handkerchief, Thakur told Modi, "I beseech you to rise to the occasion and realize that it is not enough to criticize. You cannot shift the entire burden on the judiciary." Here are some shocking figures which will make you want to cry over the state of the Indian judiciary, and our treatment of accused men and women, whether they are proved guilty or not. 1) Over three crore cases are pending in Indian courts. In 2009, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India had the world's largest backlog of court cases. Advertisement In 2010, Andhra Pradesh High Court's Justice V.V. Rao said that it will take 320 years to clear the backlog. 2) As of December 2014, 64,919 are pending in the Supreme Court. At the end of 2013, there were 44.5 lakhs cases pending in High Courts and 2.6 crore cases pending in district courts. Bloomberg Businessweek estimates if that all the judges attacked their backlog without breaks for eating and sleeping, and closed 100 cases every hour, it would take more than 35 years to catch up. 3) With 10,43,398 pending cases, Allahabad High Court, which serves the India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, has the worst record. 4) As of December, 2014, Delhi High Court has 64,652 cases pending before it. In 2009, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court A.P. Shah, who retired in 2010, said that it would take the court approximately 466 years to clear the pending 2,300 criminal appeals cases alone. Advertisement 5) The current rate of disposal suggests that it could take 10 years for district courts to clear the backlog. In the district courts of at least six states, more cases are being filed than disposed off every month, which means that the pending cases will never be cleared. 6) Justice Markandey Katju, a retired Supreme Court judge, has said that judges should not have more than 300 cases pending at any one time, but judges in India have 15,000 to 30,000 pending cases. 7) At the end of 2014, there were 2.82 lakh under trial prisoners languishing in jails. Almost 68 percent of all inmates in the country's 1,387 jails are under-trials, and many of them are too poor to raise bail. In September 2014, the Supreme Court directed release of under-trial prisoners who had completed at least half their maximum prison term. 8) In 2009, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative reported that the average time spent by an under-trial in jail from the time he is brought into prison and can leave whether through plea bargaining or on bail is 266 days or just under nine months in prison. Advertisement CHRI reported that the average was up by thirty-two days or just over a month from 224 days or seven months in 2005. 9) In 1987, 7,675 judges served in the Indian judiciary, which worked out to 10 judges for every million people. The Law Commission then had recommended an increase in the number of judges to 40,000 to provide 50 judges for a million people. At the time, the corresponding figures in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia were 107, 51, 75 and 42 respectively. In 2016, India's judge-population ratio of 17 judges per million is among the lowest in the world. On an average, developing nations have 35-40 judges for a million citizens, while developed countries have 50. 10) As of April 2016, there are 4,600 vacancies in the subordinate judiciary, which is more than 23 percent of the strength, and 462 vacancies in the in the High Court, which is 44 percent of the strength. 11) As of 2013, only 5.8 percent of the total number of judges in Indias 24 courts are women. 12) While some cases have been pending for decades, BBC reported on one trial which has lasted for over a century. The Doshipura court case, which started in 1878, is a dispute between Shia Muslims and Sunnis over two acres of land in Varanasi. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also on HuffPost India: uniquely india via Getty Images Decorative lights of a wedding tent lit up at night In a move to curb the rampant incidents of child marriages in Rajasthan, the tent suppliers in the state have decided not to supply wedding canopies and other paraphernalia to any unions involving minors. Ravi Jindal, the president of the group Rajasthan Tent Dealers Kiraya Vyavsai Samiti, which has taken this progressive step told The Times of India, "From now on, when anybody comes to us to book tents and other decorations, we we will ask for the birth certificate of the boy and girl to ensure it is not a child marriage. In case a person or group of persons gives us wrong information, we will immediately inform the nearby police stations and other government officials for the required intervention." Advertisement The president of the association asked the 47,000 tent dealers across Rajasthan to stand their ground against the malpractice of child marriage. Child marriage is illegal in India under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act of 2006. In Rajasthan, the mahurat (auspicious time) before the festival of Akha Teej (or Akshay Tritiya), which falls between the last week of April and the first week of May, is considered a holy time for matrimony for minors. As a result, the demand for wedding paraphernalia is huge, said the group in a meeting on Friday. Jindal beseeched the 47,000 dealers across the state to stand their ground against the malpractice. Recently a video of a six-year-old girl and a minor boy being married off by their families in Rajasthan's Chittorgarh, as part of a mass wedding organised in the state, had caused a stir on social media. Advertisement According to UNICEF, India is home to a third of the worlds child brides. The UNICEF report states that child marriage is a violation of child rights, and has a negative impact on physical growth, health, mental and emotional development, and education opportunities. Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: ASSOCIATED PRESS India's most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, poses for photos in this undated photo at an unknown location. (AP Photo) Dawood Ibrahim, Indias most wanted criminal, is suffering from severe gangrene in his legs that has left him crippled. The doctors at Liaquat National Hospital, Karachi and the Combined Military Hospital, Karachi, where the D-Company's boss is being treated, said his legs may have to be soon amputated. The mastermind behind the deadly 1993 serial bomb blasts that shook Mumbai is now immobile. He is receiving treatment at his residence in the upscale Clifton neighbourhood of Karachi. Advertisement Doctors treating Dawood told CNN-News18 that at this stage of his disease he is unlikely to be cured fully. Loss of effective local blood supply due to high blood pressure and blood sugar has caused the disease that is accelerated when lack of oxygen due to limited or no blood supply leads to cell death. The gangrene that the international gangster suffers from is said to be life threatening. Dawood is unlikely to be moved outside of Karachi, where he gets full support and the protection of Pakistans intelligence agency ISI, for treatment. The news of his deteriorating health may hamper Indias efforts to bring the gangster to justice, especially at a time when Islamabad has been denying of his presence in Pakistan for the last two decades. Advertisement The sixty-year-old is wanted in India for financing and supporting the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai that killed 257 and left around 717 injured. One of his accomplices, Yakub Memon, was hanged to death last year. Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Nisian Hughes via Getty Images hooded monster with knife in forest coming towards camera light and fog around Two days after a university teacher was hacked to death in Bangladesh by suspected ISIS terrorists, a senior editor of the countrys first magazine on LGBT community was killed in Dhaka on Monday. Along with the editor, his friend too was killed, while another person was injured in the attack at his Dhaka residence. Advertisement The gay rights activist was in-charge of Roopbaan, a magazine that focuses on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. The editor was also a member of the US development agency USAID, the BBC reported, quoting his friends. Xulhaz Mannan (35), a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, and his friend Tanay Mojumdar were killed by unidentified killers who entered the building impersonating as courier officials, the latest in a series of brutal attacks on bloggers and intellectuals in Bangladesh. Deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten said armed assailants in guise of courier company officials entered the flat on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 7 PM and killed Mannan and his friend. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Advertisement Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city. Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Screenshot/YouTube NEW DELHI--All central government schemes may soon have 'PM' or the names of nationalist leaders prefixed to them and films highlighting the achievements of Narendra Modi dispensation shown "mandatorily" before screening of movies in every theatre. These are among a set of recommendations by the Group of Ministers set up to suggest ways for increased visibility of central government schemes and achievements in states and districts. Advertisement The internal note circulated at a meeting of the GoM chaired by Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu has also recommended creating animation clips of various achievements of the government highlighting the "difference between the past and present" in a "humorous way". It has suggested roping in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for execution. The GoM has suggested producing a film every two weeks to highlight the government's achievements which will be played out before every film in every theatre "mandatorily", for which again it has recommended taking I and B Ministry's help. However, top government sources told Times Of India that there has been no such proposals. "No such proposal is under the government's consideration," an official said. Against the backdrop of allegations that state governments often take the credit for central schemes, the GoM has recommended that the inauguration of central schemes should be done in presence of Union ministers and lawmakers so the role of Centre is highlighted. It has also recommended enhancing the authority of lawmakers by giving them constitutional authority to carry out checks on execution of the schemes and build in a system of penalties enforceable by central government whenever there is lack of efficiency in execution of a scheme. Advertisement If the recommendations are implemented, the monitoring committees in districts for the schemes will be headed by lawmakers. Currently these are headed by District Magistrates or Superintendents of Police. As per the note, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry is amending the rules to allow lawmakers to head the committees. Keen to augment its presence in the media, the GoM has recommended that every minister should give a minimum of two interviews every week to the National Broadcasters-- Doordarshan and All India Radio. Also See On HuffPost: STRDEL via Getty Images Malegaon, INDIA: Piles of discarded shoes and fallen bicycles litter a street outside a mosque in Malegaon,some 260kms north of Mumbai, 08 September 2006, after a series of bomb blasts. At least 37 people were killed and 50 others injured Friday in separate blasts in the western Indian town, officials said.The blasts occurred at Malegaon's Nurani mosque where devotees were offering Friday prayers. AFP PHOTO/Courtesy of SAKAL (Photo credit should read STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images) A special court in Mumbai on Monday dropped charges against eight Muslim men accused of the 2006 Malegaon bomb blasts that killed at least 30 people and injured more than 100. The accused- Salman Farsi, Noorulhuda Doha, Rais Ahmed, Mohammed Ali, Asif Khan, Javed Sheikh, Faroogue Ansari and Abrar Ahmed, were being investigated for four bomb explosions near Hamida Masjid in the Bade Kabarastan area of Malegaon on on September 8, 2006. Advertisement After the National Investigation Agency or NIA took over the case in 2011, these men were granted bail. By then they had already spent five years in jail. They were allegedly tortured to confess of carrying out bomb blasts by the police, news reports said. "For 80 days I was subjected to third-degree torture and then was forced to sign a false confession," 34-year-old Noor Ul Huda, one of the men discharged today told NDTV. Maharashtras anti-terror squad or ATS, had initially arrested nine men allegedly belonging to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) on charges of carrying out the blasts. Advertisement Even CBI that took over the case from ATS confirmed the role of the accused. However, in 2011, after NIA took over the case, the role of right-wing group Abhinav Bharat was established and another set of people were booked for the blasts. According to NIA investigations, Sunil Joshi who was a key conspirator in the 2008 Malegaon blast and was found murdered later, was also the conspirator of the 2006 blasts. The agency filed a charge sheet in the case against Lokesh Sharma, Dhan Singh, Manohar Singh and Rajendra Choudhary. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Hindustan Times via Getty Images MUMBAI, INDIA - APRIL 13: Bollwood actor Tiger Shroff during the promotion of film Baagi at Mehboob Studio, Bandra on April 13, 2016 in Mumbai, India. (Photo by Pramod Thakur/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) Only one film old (Heropanti, 2014), Tiger Shroff has managed to establish himself as a hardcore action movie hero. The actor does all his stunts himself, under the guidance of action directors and stunt coordinators. Proficient in parkour, Shroff's crew on his first film didnt even use cables, harness or any special-effects to get the desired results at the actor's insistence. Advertisement Now, in an interview with Bombay Times published Monday, ahead of his upcoming release Baaghi, the actor opened up about why he doesnt prefer using a body-double for action sequences. He said, It is unfair to use body doubles. If you want to use body doubles for your action scenes then you should also give them your roles, and let them be the hero. People say... 'Arre, you have to save your face,' but I also have to make some sacrifices to be a hero, right? He also added that using a body-double for action sequences and passing that off as something youve done yourself is dishonest and manipulative. I believe that if you want to do an action film then you must be completely honest to the part and train yourself for it," he said. "I don't like taking anybody else's credit. I have seen so many stuntmen and fighters whose lives aren't that glamorous or easy, but while shooting they dare to risk their lives. I want them to be noticed and get that respect. These stuntmen make us look like larger-than-life heroes." Advertisement Its true that stuntmen in Bollywood dont get half the credit, or recognition that they deserve and many times leading actors have even blatantly lied about performing a stunt on their own, when it was a body-double who risked his life for it, as was the case with Abhishek Bachchan in Mani Ratnams Raavan (2010) . Tigers statement is partly justified and it's great that he's skilled enough to pull off his own stunts, but it is debatable as to how far an actor should go to risk his life after all, a professional stunt performer is better-trained and more experienced to handle such risks, while an actor may have only a few months of practice. Also, if all the actors shun stuntmen, a number of skilled professionals stand the chance of risking the primary source through which they make a decent living. The point here is to not to come across as heroic, but to give enough recognition to the person on whose skills youll be perceived as a death-defying daredevil, while they still exist only on the fringes. Several actors whove done their own stunts have ended up with multiple injuries. Two years ago, Hrithik Roshan suffered a serious head-injury while filming for Siddharth Anands Bang Bang (2014), and had to undergo a complex surgery to fix the same. Or Shah Rukh Khan, whos had multiple surgeries on his knee and back, after getting seriously injured while performing action scenes on several of his films. John Abraham, another actor who insists on doing his own action scenes, has also found himself nursing injuries after shooting for Force 2. Predictably, Shroff's parents are paranoid about him doing his own stunts. I think my dad is more paranoid about my action scenes. He has been there, done that, and he knows what goes into it. So, he doesn't want me to go through the same grind. Luckily, he is not there on the sets, or else I would just freeze, Tiger told the paper. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Hutchinson's Salvation Army started in 1894 In 1910, under Captain George Seeds, the citadel at 114 West Sherman St. was built. A federal court decision earlier this month has cast doubt on how to best insure commercial clients against cyber risk.In an unpublished opinion, a panel of the Fourth Circuit ruled April 11 that Travelers Cos. must defend medical records company Portal Healthcare against a claim that its failure to properly secure servers led to a data breach in which hackers were given access to private records.Travelers must settle the claim under the commercial general liability policy it extended to Portal Healthcare, the three-judge panel said.The ruling echoed the verdict of a Virginia district court in August 2014.The case marks a departure from traditional understanding of cyber risk, which holds that cyber-specific policies are needed to cover data breach, rather than CGL policies. Now, some are saying small businesses that may not be able to afford cyber liability insurance do in fact have some coverage after all.This could be big news. Although a recent Advisen survey suggests 64% of businesses now have cyber-specific coverage, a number of smaller breaches often fall below policy deductibles, leaving companies on the hook for the bill.Others in the industry, however, say the supposed victory is not so clear cut. The Portal decision is likely only to apply to companies holding older CGL policies, because newer ones often contain specific exclusions related to data breaches.What you see now in most standard liability insurance policies like CGLs is that insurance companies are excluding coverage for liability that arises from a data breach, attorney Alex Purvis of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings said. Whats unique about the Portal decision is that the policy did not have that type of exclusion. It may be one of the few remaining policies without that exclusion.Furthermore, the courts decision was more nuanced than a simple finding of data breach coverage through CGL policies.Collin Hite, an insurance recovery attorney with Hirschler Fleischer, told TechNewsWorld the court only ruled on whether Travelers had to pay Portals legal costs for defense in the case.The court is not saying that Travelers has to pay the verdict or not [if Portal lost]. All its saying is Travelers must pay for the insureds defense counsel and to defend the case, Hite said. A lot of times, though, the defense of the case in the most expensive component of the lawsuit because the plaintiffs may not be able to prove any damages.While Purvis urged companies agents not to forget some of your standard liability policies in the wake of a data breach, it appears cyber insurance is still the best option for risk management. 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The Connecticut expansion is eyed to cut through Sandisfield and has become the subject of a lawsuit in which the corporation is seeking the ability to cut trees to begin construction on land the state constitution protects. The company is seeking a two-mile easement through the Otis State Forest and believes under the federal Natural Gas Act, eminent domain for the land is applicable. The company believes the federal approval for the project overrides Massachusetts' Article 97 provisions, which protects the land for conservation. Kinder Morgan has taken the case to court after the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation refused to grant those easements. The state says the Article 97 provisions in the state constitution protects the land and the only way to remove those provisions is by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. The hearing kicked off on Friday and it is unclear when a decision will be rendered. Outside of the court house, in Park Square, more than a hundred gathered to oppose Kinder Morgan's attempts. "We have people from all across the state who have come out because Kinder Morgan is trying to take through eminent domain an easement on our permanently protected Article 97 lands. So this will be our Otis State Forest land down in Sandisfield that they are trying to get an easement through. This is just the prelude of what could happen with the big Northeast Energy Direct pipeline," Jane Winn, executive director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, said. "We want them stopped now." BEAT was among a number of groups to organize the protest. Winn said there was a grassroots effort of activism to draw the crowd Friday afternoon. With signs and rally speeches, those in attendance voiced their strong opposition. "We're trying to raise awareness and let people know this is happening down in Sandisfield. They've gotten little press compared to the Northeast Energy Direct line because that impacts so many land owners," Winn said. "We also want to make sure that the judge and everybody knows this is happening and the people really care." The ultimate ruling could have an impact on the Northeast Energy Direct project, which is larger in scale and cuts through more than a dozen towns in the Berkshires. Winn said a ruling against the company on the Sandisfield spur could set the groundwork for the ultimate defeat of the larger project. "I'm hoping the judge will say no and Kinder Morgan will just give up on the Northeast Energy Direct project because there is no way they are getting that one through," Winn said. Environmentalist have long opposed both projects, citing the negative impacts of fracked gas, a lack of need, and potential health and safety impacts. Those in opposition believe the state's energy future should be based more on renewables than natural gas. A number of nuclear and coal energy plants have been shut down in New England and the company believes there is a sizable shortage of energy, a shortage these projects will assist. Proponents of the pipeline say renewable energy can't do it all and there is a need for natural gas to compliment the portfolio. Overall as a state, there has been significant opposition to the projects. Attorney General Maura Healey has publicly opposed Kinder Morgan's attempts to receive an easement for the Sandisfield land and has said more natural gas is not needed. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is also accusing Kinder Morgan of misleading federal regulators into believing a water quality assessment isn't needed. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren weighed by asking U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reject Kinder Morgan's request for a deadline extension on tree clearing because it "has not been granted the authority to seize conservation land protected by Article 97" and could disrupt critical habitats. The protestors piled into the courtroom Friday afternoon and Winn says she hopes that will make an impact on the judge. "We don't know if we are expecting a decision today or if that is down the road, but we hope he'll just say no," Winn said. Figment North Adams MCLA Advanced Performing Arts Management class with David Koren, executive director of Figment Global. Figment Project Promises Busy Day of Artmaking This Saturday Clarksburg School students are creating a giant Candy Land game for Figment. NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Sometimes it just takes a kernel of an idea to get a community imagining up all kinds of possibilities. On Saturday, one of those ideas will sprout into Figment North Adams, bringing community and arts together at Windsor Lake. From stage readings and bands, to blacklight face-painting and plastic bag weaving, to yoga and wishing maps, the 6 1/2-hour event will be part arts festival, part block party, part family fun. Figment is now an international movement that started in 2007 with a free event in New York. Its mission is to forge social and peronal interactions through participatory art. "Rule No. 1 is to get everyone involved," said Krystal Henriquez, a Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, senior who brought the festival to the Windsor Lake Recreation Commission last October. Henriquez had volunteered with the Boston event the year before and hoped to recreate that big-city experience in the state's smallest city. Once the word got out, she met with a outpouring of enthusiasm some 45 volunteers and more than 50 art projects will be on hand Saturday. "There was so much people wanted to share," she said. "I'm really happy the way that people responded." Henriquez and communications coordinator Meghan Robertson, a manager and intern coordinator at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts, obviously shared that enthusiasm as they spoke about the project at the Parlor on Friday morning. "When I saw so many people get behind it in year one, it shows what a great community that we live in, that North Adams would embrace something like that," said Robertson. "I put on festivals all over the place and we don't get that many volunteers ... it's very rare," said Peter Milesi, who is working lighting and some other things for Figment. "North Adams, with a small group of people, you can connect with everyone who matters ... we make a great little community." Robertson said she'd tagged along to an organizing meeting with some other Mass MoCA staff and was immediately hooked on the idea. The volunteer traveling the furthest is from Hong Kong and is flying in to see how a first-time Figment runs. Community sign painting at Common Folk Artists Collective. "She really just wants to have that firsthand experience," said Henriquez. "It's going to be exciting to have her here." Of the 53 applications, about a dozen were from outside the immediate area. That includes Danielle Baudrand of Keene, N.H., and her Plastic Bag Project. (Bring some bags with you to braid.) A jury team was created to vet applications and ended up accepting all submissions, although there was some tweaking that had to be done to make them fit the Figment Project. It's not about hanging a painting, said Henriquez, but how individuals can interact with the art being presented. Applicants were pushed to find ways to present their art in Figment form. The Plastic Bag Project. The festival opens at 3 p.m. and runs to 9:30; the projects are family friendly all day, but there is more of a focus on more adult activities during Figment After Dark from 7 to 9:30. Don't expect vendors to be available the festival is completely non-commercial and alcohol free. "We're encouraging people to bring a picnic ... it's a potluck sort of thing and there's grills there for cooking up hamburgs and hot dogs," Henriquez said. "It's kind of a big picnic party if people want to come and share." There will also be time to chill, or leave and come back. Some activities, particularly on the stage, are scheduled while others will be ongoing. They will be clustered somewhat according to type with plenty of green space in between and time to take in a busy day of art. The schedule should be posted early this week, along with any suggested materials to bring. Check the project's Facebook page. "North Adams needs something like this ... everyone feels comfortable no matter where you are on the art spectrum," Robertson said. "You can find something you can hold onto." Berkshires Beat: Crafters Needed, Pittsfield Hydrants Being Flushed Vendors are being sought for the popular Otis Craft Fair. Call for vendors: The Otis Library Summer Crafts and Country Fair seeks artists, craftsmen and other non-food vendors for their annual fair on Saturday, July 9, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (rain or shine). The fair is held on the lawn in front of the Otis Town Hall on Route 8 in Otis center. The popular event attracts tourists, second homeowners, Berkshire county residents and their guests. The fair features about 55 quality vendors from throughout the nNortheast. Space is available on a first come-first served basis and sells out fast. The cost is $40/space (bring your own table) before June 1 and $45 after if space remains. Send payment, email address, phone and product info to The Otis Library, 48 North Main St., Otis, MA 01253. For more info, contact the Otis Library at 413-269-0109. Flushing in Pittsfield: Pittsfields Department of Public Utilities will conduct the annual flushing of the city water system beginning Monday, April 25, and continuing over the next three weeks. Water mains throughout the city will be flushed through hydrants to remove accumulations of pipeline corrosion products. Mains will be flushed Monday through Friday each week, holidays exempted, between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. This flushing may be expected to affect the following areas: The Hubbard AvenueDalton Division Road area between Dalton Avenue and Williams Street, including Dalton Avenue between Coltsville and the Dalton town line, Williams Street between Elm Street and the Dalton town line, including Mountain Drive, and the Yankee Orchard neighborhoods; Lower Crane Avenue and Partridge Road, Cheshire Road, the Morningside Heights area and Coltsville; and South Street between the Lenox town line and South Mountain Road. Hydrants will be flushed along Dalton Avenue between Benedict Road and Coltsville, Merrill Road. East Street from Elm Street to the Housatonic River bridge on outer East Street, the Newell Street-Lakewood section, Elm Street between Newell Street and Donna Avenue, Holmes Road south to Arrowhead, and all streets between and interconnected with the above. Although flushing may cause localized discolored water and reduced service pressure conditions in and around the immediate area of flushing, appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that proper levels of treatment and disinfections are maintained in the system at all times. The Healing Power of Art: Southwestern Vermont Health Care (SVHC), in partnership with the Susan Sebastian Foundation, is seeking entries from Vermont artists for a juried exhibit of more than 100 pieces. The exhibit, called The Healing Power of Art, is scheduled for June 11 at Southern Vermont Arts Center. From it, more than 50 pieces of art will be selected to adorn patient rooms. The remaining art will be offered to the public for sale. SVHC invites Vermont artists to participate by completing an online submission of their work for consideration at svhealthcare.org/healingpower. Pieces that are soothing and optimistic and those that take the viewer into the outdoors will be most likely to be accepted for the exhibit. The submission deadline is Monday, May 23. Artists will be notified of their acceptance by May 30, 2016, at which point they will send or deliver work to the Southern Vermont Arts Center. The winners logo will be used in all promotions, advertising, correspondence, etc. to help celebrate and publicize this special Lenox 250th Anniversary. Tax Work-Off Program: Applications are now available for the City of Pittsfields Senior Tax Work-Off Program for Fiscal Year 2017. Eligible candidates must be Pittsfield residential property owners 60 years of age and older at the time of the application. Work-Off Program applications must be postmarked or received by the Assessors Office by April 30. Active municipal employees are not eligible for the Senior Citizen Tax Work-Off Program. There will be a limit of two participants per eligible property; however, the total abatement cannot exceed the maximum exemption of $1,000.00. Income eligibility shall be determined by using the locally adopted income eligibility guidelines of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 59, Section 5, clause 41C (plus an additional $5,000). The selection of participants will be based on need and shall be valid for one year. In the event that other opportunities become available, qualified volunteers not selected for this program will be placed on a waiting list in order of need. This program can be combined with other exemptions. For a married individual, yearly income cannot exceed $34,776. For a single individual, yearly income cannot exceed $29,444. All volunteer work must be completed between June 1, 2016, and November 30, 2016. An application for this program can be found on the city website. Colegrove Park Elementary School Wins Preservation Award The exterior of the Drury Academy wall was uncovered as part of the restoration. See more photos of the building here. NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Colegrove Park Elementary School is now an award-winning project. The Massachusetts Historical Commission is presenting the renovation project with its annual Preservation Award at a ceremony set for May 19 at the state archives building. In a letter informing Mayor Richard Alcombright about the award, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin wrote that "the careful restoration of the Drury Academy demonstrates a strong commitment to historic preservation that goes well beyond what is normally expected." The school reopened in January after nearly two years of renovation and reconstruction. Originally Drury Senior High School, the century-old building dates back to an earlier predecessor, Drury Academy, and incorporates a wall from that 19th-century structure. Significant efforts were made during construction to preserve or restore important elements of the building's history, including its stained-glass windows, decorative pillars, terrazzo flooring, turned moldings and the cove ceiling that had been in the former auditorium (now the gymnasium). We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector The content you are trying to view is exclusive to our subscribers. To unlock this article: Press Release: IMF Strengthens Capacity of South Asian Officials on Macro-Financial Linkages and Diagnostics Press Release No. 16/185 April 25, 2016 The International Monetary Funds (IMF) Asia and Pacific Department (APD), in cooperation with the IMF - Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI), organized a workshop on April 19-20 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for officials from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka on macro-financial linkages and diagnostics. The workshop brought together officials from central banks and ministries of finance as well as IMF mission teams and resident representatives. Topics included operational aspects of macro-financial linkages, macro-financial vulnerability diagnostics, and macro-prudential policies. The aim is to build capacity in these areas. IMF speakers included STI Director Julie Kozack, STI Deputy Director Mangal Goswami, APD Assistant Director Paul Cashin, and Asia and Pacific Division Chief Luis Breuer. IMF Alternate Executive Director, Mr. KwangHae Choi, also participated in the workshop and shared his experience. Participants highlighted a number of key takeaways, including the importance of vigilant monitoring of credit growth and of close communication between relevant government agencies on macroeconomic and financial developments. They agreed that collection and analysis of relevant data were essential to ensuring maintenance of macro-financial stability. "This workshop focused on South Asian countries and their distinctive features in a unique format which brought together IMF country teams and their official counterparts in an informal setting to consider macro-financial challenges facing all involved countries and help build relations between the IMF and its South Asian member countries", said Paul Cashin at the end of the workshop. Background The STI, founded in 1998 and located in Singapore, serves as the IMFs regional training center for the Asia-Pacific region. It provides training on macroeconomic and financial management, and related legal and statistical issues, to government officials from 37 countries. Most training takes place in two-week seminars. The STI is jointly funded by the IMF, the Government of Singapore, and the Government of Japan, who together guide the training program. The Government of Australia also provides important support to the STI. Each year more than 800 officials participate in STI events, and another 100 attend national or regional courses held elsewhere in the region. Since 1998, the STI has provided training to more than 10,000 officials. Useful links: IMF Capacity Development STI Imperial Valley News Center States with punitive justice systems have higher rates of foster care Seattle, Washington - The number of children in foster care across the country is driven not solely by child abuse and neglect, but by states varying politics and approaches to social problems, a new University of Washington study finds. States with more punitive criminal justice systems tend to remove children from their homes far more frequently than those with generous welfare programs meaning that two states with similar rates of child abuse and neglect could have very different rates of foster care entry. Those findings are the basis of a study published online April 19 that will appear in the June print edition of the American Sociological Review. Author Frank Edwards, a UW doctoral student in sociology, concludes that child welfare policies are heavily influenced by how states address social problems overall. We see across the board that politics are great predictors of policy, Edwards said. If a state prefers more punitive criminal justice and less generous welfare benefits, then its very likely that it will prefer a certain approach to child welfare as well. Edwards, who previously worked with children in foster care in Texas, undertook the study to determine whether factors beyond child abuse and neglect were driving rates of foster care in various states. While previous studies have looked at the role of incarceration and welfare programs on parents ability to care for their children, Edwards said none have statistically examined how states differing policies for addressing social issues influence child welfare systems. And those variations, Edwards found, lead to big differences in the rates of foster care between states, after controlling for population differences. For example, Edwards found that states with punitive criminal justice systems are expected to place an average of 1.5 more children per 1,000 into foster care annually than states with less punitive criminal justice systems. For the national state average of about 1.47 million children, that translates to 2,200 additional foster care entries annually. States with generous and inclusive welfare programs are expected to place 0.8 fewer children per 1,000 into foster care, compared to states with meager welfare programs. Edwards analyzed federal foster care data for 2002 to 2011 for each state to determine rates of foster care entry; he also looked at how frequently states put foster children in residential treatment centers or other restrictive settings. He then set out to measure how punitive states criminal justice systems were, using the number of death sentences, incarceration rates and numbers of police officers per capita as a benchmark. He also measured the relative generosity of states welfare systems by their level of welfare benefits, enrollment in various assistance programs and welfare workers per capita. Comparing the data for various states, Edwards found that states with more punitive criminal justice systems generally had higher rates of foster care and tended to put children in treatment centers or other restrictive environments more often. Conversely, those with more generous welfare structures had lower rates of foster care, and lower rates of restrictive confinement for children in foster care. However, states with both generous welfare benefits and large bureaucracies tended to have slightly higher rates of foster care than those with generous benefits and smaller bureaucracies, since bringing more families into contact with service providers increases the ability to identify abuse and neglect. The idea of including all these other factors is that its not just the direct effects of abuse and neglect that are involved, Edwards said. If a state has a punitive criminal justice system, or a generous system of welfare provision, that indicates a stable way that legislators and bureaucrats think about and respond to problems like crime, poverty and child abuse. These ways of understanding how to solve a particular problem get institutionalized, and play a large role in determining how a state designs and implements social policy across the board. The study notes the often contradictory nature of child protection agencies, which are tasked both with providing support and resources for struggling parents and taking action when parenting falls short of expectations. That intervention resulted in an average of 1.4 percent of U.S. children coming into contact with the foster care system annually between 2002 and 2011, Edwards found. There were a few anomalies in Edwards findings for example, some southern states had high incarceration rates and low welfare benefits but also low foster care rates, which he said could be due to less-developed child welfare infrastructures. And there were some limitations to the data. Up to 75 percent of all cases of children being placed in foster care with family members, for example, occur without taking children into state custody and therefore are not recorded in federal foster care statistics. But overall, Edwards said, the study shows that there is enormous variation in foster care rates across the country that is driven largely by states politics and policies. If we want to understand why some states are putting more kids into foster care than others, we need to look at the policy environment, he said. A state that prefers to punish people when they break the rules is also a state that might put families in situations such that abuse and neglect are more common. Its also a state that is likely to think that removing a child from the family is the only way to respond. The story of foster care is not just the story of child abuse and neglect, Edwards said. Its the story of policymaking and politics, writ large. Food Policy Leaders to Address Future of Food Durham, North Carolina - Leading food policy experts will sit down with corporate CEOs on Wednesday, April 27, at Duke University to discuss how government and business can shape solutions to complex challenges such as food safety and security, hunger and obesity. The panel discussion in Fleishman Commons at the Sanford School of Public Policy is free and open to the public. The event begins at 5 p.m. with a light reception in the lobby. Parking is available at the Science Drive or Bryan Center visitor lots. Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School and food policy expert, will moderate. Panelists include: Shenggen Fan, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute since 2009. The institute provides research-based, sustainable policy solutions to reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in 50 developing countries. Betsy Holden, senior adviser at McKinsey & Co. and former CEO of Kraft Foods. She helps clients meet marketing and operations challenges from multiline brand management to global expansion, acquisitions and cost management. Juergen Voegele, senior director of the World Bank's Agriculture Global Practice. Voegeles areas of expertise include agriculture and rural development, food security, environment and sustainable development. We need a more coordinated approach to addressing the major issues facing our food system, said Brownell. Current efforts to address hunger, obesity, food safety and the relationship of agriculture and the environment are often siloed and scattered, both domestically and internationally. The result has been the creation of world food policies that miss opportunities for collaboration and in some cases work at cross-purposes. The forum is part of a two-day planning meeting dedicated to refining plans for a World Food Policy Center at the Sanford School. Leading experts from organizations including the World Bank, World Health Organization, Council on Foreign Relations, Union of Concerned Scientists, United Nations World Food Programme, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, Cargill, Codex Alimentarius Commission, CGIAR Consortium and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations will convene to discuss priorities for the new center. The planning effort is supported by grants from The Duke Endowment and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. Ancient tectonic activity was trigger for ice ages Cambridge, Massachusetts - For hundreds of millions of years, Earths climate has remained on a fairly even keel, with some dramatic exceptions: Around 80 million years ago, the planets temperature plummeted, along with carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The Earth eventually recovered, only to swing back into the present-day ice age 50 million years ago. Now geologists at MIT have identified the likely cause of both ice ages, as well as a natural mechanism for carbon sequestration. Just prior to both periods, massive tectonic collisions took place near the Earths equator a tropical zone where rocks undergo heavy weathering due to frequent rain and other environmental conditions. This weathering involves chemical reactions that absorb a large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The dramatic drawdown of carbon dioxide cooled the atmosphere, the new study suggests, and set the planet up for two ice ages, 80 million and 50 million years ago. Everybody agrees that on geological timescales over hundreds of millions of years, tectonics control the climate, but we didnt know how to connect this, says Oliver Jagoutz, associate professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT. I think were the first ones to really link large-scale tectonic events to climate change. Jagoutz and his colleagues, EAPS Professor Leigh Royden, and Francis Macdonald of Harvard University, have published their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Putting the squeeze on The two tectonic collisions that the team studied stemmed from the same event: the slow northward migration of Gondwana, a supercontinent that spanned the Southern Hemisphere from 300 million to 180 million years ago and eventually broke up to form Antarctica, South America, Africa, India, and Australia. Around 180 million years ago, tectonic activity began to push fragments of Gondwana up toward the northern supercontinent of Eurasia, which slowly squeezed and eventually closed the Neo-Tethys Ocean, an ancient body of water lying between the supercontinents. In previous work, Jagoutz and his colleagues developed a model to simulate the tectonic shifting that occurred in and around that ocean as Gondwana fragments were crushed against Eurasia. Through analysis of ancient rocks in todays Himalayas, the team determined a sequence of events as the continents merged. They found that 90 million years ago, the northeastern edge of the African plate collided and slid under an oceanic plate in the Neo-Tethys Ocean, creating a chain of volcanoes. At 80 million years ago, as Africa continued advancing north, the oceanic plate was pushed further up and over the continent, exposing ocean rock to the atmosphere, while simultaneously terminating the volcanoes. Then, 50 million years ago, India merged with Eurasia in a second collision in which a different region of the oceanic plate was pushed up onto that continent. Both collisions took place in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), an atmospheric region hovering over the Earths equator, in which trade winds come together to generate a region of intense temperatures and rainfall. A weathering trigger For this new paper, the researchers wondered whether the tectonic collisions in this extremely tropical region may have played a part in pulling huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and triggering the ice ages. Certain types of rock, if exposed to high heat and heavy rain, undergo chemical reactions and effectively absorb carbon dioxide, a process known as silicate weathering. These rocks include basalts and ultramafic rocks, which are often found within oceanic plates. If these rocks are exposed to the atmosphere in a tropical region, they can act as very efficient carbon sinks. The team hypothesized that the two collisions, involving Africa and then India, brought basaltic and ultramafic rocks up from the oceans and onto land, creating carbon sinks 80 and 50 million years ago. Both collisions also effectively turned off carbon sources by burying volcanoes that had been emitting carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. To know whether such a sequence of events directly reduced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the researchers looked to weathering rates of different rock types, including granites, basalts, and ultramafics. These rates, which have been calculated by other researchers, describe the way rocks erode and take up carbon dioxide, given exposure to a certain amount of rainfall. They then applied these weathering rates to their models estimates of the amount of oceanic plate that was pushed up onto Africa and India, at 80 and 50 million years ago, respectively. After determining the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered by these rocks, they calculated the total amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide through time, from 100 million years ago to around 40 million years ago. The team found that carbon dioxide dipped dramatically at precisely the time the two collisions occurred. The levels of carbon dioxide also mirrored the temperature of the oceans during this interval. Jagoutz says one reason these two collisions had such an extreme effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide may have been the fact that each continent continued moving north, exposing new basaltic and ultramafic material, like a bulldozer that brings fresh rock to the surface. Interestingly, a similar process is taking place today, albeit at a smaller scale, near the island of Java. The same tectonic activity that shifted Gondwana northward more than 100 million years ago is today pushing the Australian plate north, and as a result, is piling up basaltic material on Java within the ITCZ, which Jagoutz says is a huge carbon sink. What nature shows us is, if you put a lot of these rocks in the tropics, where its hot, muggy, wet, and rains every day, and you also have the effect of removing the soil constantly by tectonics and thus exposing fresh rocks, then you have an excellent trigger for ice ages, Jagoutz says. But the question is whether that is a mechanism that works on the timescale that is relevant for us. To confidently estimate the long-term fate of fossil fuel carbon in the atmosphere, we need to fully understand the dynamics of the carbon cycle and how it operates on all time scales, says Lee Kemp, professor of geosciences at Penn State University. This study highlights an important restorative force of the carbon cycle. The repair mechanism for volcanism-induced warming is the chemical weathering of the volcanic rocks themselves a repair job that takes millions of years. Failure of Government of South Sudan and Opposition to Form TGNU Washington, DC - The United States is disappointed by the continued failure of the Government of South Sudan and by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement -SPLM/A-IO (IO) to form the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU) and implement the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan. Yesterday, the government denied landing permission to flights for the return of opposition leader Riek Machar. This interference resulted in the failure to meet the deadline in the compromise proposal put forward by the regional and international partners of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission that was agreed to by both sides. We have previously condemned obstruction by the IO, including the arbitrary demand by Riek Machar that more forces and heavy weapons than was previously agreed precede his arrival to Juba. Despite the best efforts by South Sudans neighbors, the Troika, United Nations Mission in South Sudan, China, the African Union, the European Union and, most importantly, by South Sudanese advocating for peace, leaders on both sides have blocked progress. The United States will continue to work with those who are sincerely committed to implementing the Agreement, particularly its provisions for reform of the security sector and public finances and for reconciliation and accountability. The scope of future U.S. engagement in helping South Sudan confront the country's security, economic and development challenges, however, will depend on the parties demonstrating commitment to work together to implement the Agreement. We have been working intensively with our partners, especially Ethiopia, to facilitate Riek Machars return. Given the actions by both sides to prevent or delay his return, it is now time for the parties to assume primary responsibility for facilitating the return of Riek Machar to Juba to form the TGNU and to demonstrate that they are genuinely committed to peace. Under Secretary Stengel Travel to Kuwait and United Arab Emirates Washington, DC - Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Richard Stengel, will travel to Kuwait City, Kuwait on April 24 where he will lead a meeting of the Countering-ISIL Coalition Messaging Working Group. He will also join Coalition partners to explore new initiatives aimed at developing and coordinating a global anti-Daesh messaging strategy. Under Secretary Stengel will also meet with senior Kuwaiti government officials to reinforce the continued partnership between the U.S. and Kuwait. On April 26-27 Under Secretary Stengel will travel to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates where he will visit the Sawab Center. The Under Secretary will also speak to student groups and meet with government officials to highlight the importance of education exchanges and ways to strengthen cooperation on countering violent extremism. Taylor Swift Gets Backlash For 'Fatphobia' in 'Anti-Hero' Music Video on 'Midnights' Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The day has arrived - the day where Tinie Tempah, Sadie Frost, and Dame Edna Everage all cameo in a film together. This could only be for Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie and the cameos won't stop there either; they'll be joined by approximately 57 other names from the world of celebrity. An extensive number of cameos have been confirmed to show up in the film version of the beloved BBC sitcom which will reunite Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as the hard-drinking fashionistas Edina and Patsy in a film version of the beloved BBC sitcom. These include (take a deep breath) musicians Ella Eyre, Foxes and La Roux, TV personalities Christopher Biggins, Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and models Abbey Clancy, Kate Moss and Suki Waterhouse. The 60 confirmed cameos will also include Glee actor Chris Colfer, fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, and comedian Robert Webb. Dawn French - one-half of Saunders' comedy duo French & Saunders - will appear as well as Game of Thrones actor Gwendoline Christie and DJ Nick Grimshaw. The rest of the list can be found below: Alesha Dixon Alex Jones Alexa Chung Alice Dellal Anya Hindmarch Beattie Edmondson Bip Ling Brix Smith-Start Bruno Tonioli Camilla Rutherford Chris Colfer Christopher Biggins Daisy Lowe Daniel Lismore Giles Deacon Jade Parfitt Jamie Laing Janette Tough Jerry Hall Joan Collins Jodie Harsh Jourdan Dunn Judith Chalmers Kathy Lette Kelly Hoppen Kirsty Wark La Voix Lara Stone Lily Cole Marcia Warren Mark Gatiss Miquita Oliver Nick Mohammed Orla Guerin Ozwald Boateng Pam Hogg Perez Hilton Poppy Delevingne Richard Arnold Rylan Clark Sophie Raworth Stella McCartney Suzy Menkes Wanda Ventham The first clip from the film - which started filming in October 2015 - surfaced in February with a trailer expected to drop later this week. Original cast members Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks and June Whitfield will all reprise their roles. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie follows the duo as their high life crumbles following an incident at a fashion launch party. Fleeing to the French Riviera with no money, they come up with a plan to escape so they can, once more, live the high life. The film will be released on 1 July. Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} It's official; the Scorpion King is coming for your childhood. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson confirmed via Instagram that he's been signed on to star in Sony's remake of the 1995 classic, Jumanji; following rumours he'd be jumping onboard the project with Central Intelligence co-star Kevin Hart. The star posted a picture of himself with the screenplay, alongside a dog who is presumably not his new co-star, and the caption; "It's official: love this script! Big movie news that me and my canine gal Shang are excited to share... To take great properties that are beloved worldwide like Baywatch and Rampage and have the opportunity reimagine their stories in dope new ways to a whole new generation is truly an honor." "Promise to deliver something cool and special... and not screw the whole damn thing up," Johnson continued; also confirming the news that the project will be shooting in fall, directed by Bad Teacher's Jake Kasdan, though there's no mention of Hart's name being attached to the project. Johnson's certainly been very busy revisiting classic properties of late; from Baywatch's early '90s slo-mo beach running to an adaptation of the '80s arcade game Rampage, which gave players the opportunity to take control of the huge monsters accustomed to attacking metropolitan areas, while fending off the forces of military intervention. Whether these fresh takes will be any good is yet to be seen, a high bar especially for a movie as nostalgically beloved as Jumanji; though Johnson's unerringly likeable screen presence will certainly count for something there. We'll get a preview of Johnson and Hart's potential comedic pairing when Central Intelligence hits UK cinemas 1 July. Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Fans of Irish writer Eimear McBride may well wonder how her award-winning debut novel, "A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing", could be adapted for the stage. The book is written in what Ms McBride describes as a pre-stream of consciousness; short sentences, poetic language, and a hint of ambiguity. Its about trying to write the physical experience of life, to put the gut reaction into life, explained the author in a cafe near the Manhattan-based Baryshnikov Arts Center, where the play is currently making its US premiere. Ms McBride sold the play rights to Annie Ryan under strict terms - not a word has been changed, only cut down to size. The whole storyline is therefore condensed into 85 minutes. The Girl is repeatedly abused by her uncle, her grandfather dies, her brother dies of cancer, her mother turns ever more nasty, and she ends up taking her life by drowning in a lake. As New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley said, My advice is to go with the flow or rather the fierce current of Ms Duffins performance. Youll get your bearings sooner than you think. Actress Aoife Duffin, who emerges onto the stage in the half-dark wearing pajamas, is outstanding. Her creepy smile of the Girl's uncle is haunting; the weary, religious mother makes you want to tear your hair out with frustration; and her Girl as the feisty yet traumatised rape survivor is harrowing. One would hope that Ms Duffin has a way to disconnect in her time off as her performance is so raw and intense. Although Ms McBride admitted she was sceptical about the play at first, she said she was reassured when she heard Ms Duffin read out the script. "I could tell she really understood the language," she said. Ms McBride has seen the play "many times" - it originated in the Corn Exchange in Dublin before taking on a six-week run in Edinburgh - and said it was like watching the "highlights" of the novel, and "the nuance is gone". "I miss the rest," she said. "But that isn't a criticism of the play. They [Annie and Aoife] have done a very good job." The plot - in the book and the play - may come as a surprise to viewers, just as it did to Ms McBride when she wrote the book. I didnt want to write about child abuse, Ms McBride, referring to the uncle. So I wrote: He didnt get me after all, and I closed my computer and went away and had dinner. But the next day I sat down and typed: Oh, but he did. I just knew that was what was going to happen next. The theme of sex and power is an important one throughout the book. The point is shes always making decisions, said Ms McBride. I didnt want her to be the victim. Even when terrible things are happening, [she made choices]. Eimear McBride is about to release her second novel, "The Lesser Bohemians" (Mihaela Bodlovic) At university she comes very close to being free of that trap of sexual abuse. But the illness of her brother draws her back. Thats the tragedy of the book. She never manages to escape," she said. Asked about how the theme of sex, power and control reflects on women generally, Ms McBride said: I dont think they [women] realise how much power they have. If women realised that the world would be a different place. In what way? Im nearly 40 and if I look back at myself I wish well, I wish I had started by telling more people to f*** off and that I had understood the power I had. But its not something women are reared into thinking. [If they had,] they would have more control over their lives and the choices they make. Ms McBride mentioned a court case in the 1990s, where a girl was forced to go to court to get an abortion in England as it was outlawed in Ireland. That was a huge moment for me and to learn how hard it is to be a woman - that other people have rights over your own body. In the book and play, Girls mother has been abandoned with two children and she clings onto religion. She favours the son, she thinks the Girl is a madam, swanning home from university. She tells Girl she wished it was her who was lying in the coffin instead of her son. I think she [the mother] doesnt know how to control her daughter," she said. "It also comes down to the relationship Irish women have with their daughters and their sons. Women are treated to be hardy while the men are seen as emotionally weak. After years of temp jobs in London, Ms McBride wrote the book in six months when she was 27 but it took 10 years to get it published. She spent the interim years writing her second book, "The Lesser Bohemians" out 1 September in the UK about a love story between a drama student and an actor in London in the 1990s. Does she feel pressure after the enormous success of her first novel? I do feel pressure," she said. But I remembered that I'm not writing it to get a good review. A good review is very nice, its what all writers long for, but Im writing it for it to be read in 30 years, in 100 years time. "A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing" is showing at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan until 30 April Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The revamped series of BBC's Top Gear is edging ever closer and a newly-released trailer teases a particularly thrilling set-piece involving new host Matt LeBlanc behind the wheel of an unpredictable off-road vehicle. The former Friends actor can be seen struggling to get into the Ariel Nomad, maneuvering himself about before unleashing himself upon the sun-soaked landscape. Wheel-spinning his way across the barren location, a motorbike can be seen flying over his vehicle as a cloud of dust engulfs him before deadpanning: "It's fairly dusty." Meet the new Top Gear presenters Show all 7 1 /7 Meet the new Top Gear presenters Meet the new Top Gear presenters Chris Evans Chris Evans said of his new Top Gear gang: We really do have a bit of everything for everyone. A fellow lifelong petrolhead from the other side of the pond in Matt; a fearless speed-demon in the irrepressible and effervescent Sabine; the encyclopedic, funny and wonderfully colourful character that is EJ; Chris, one of the worlds top no-nonsense car reviewers; and Rory, who simply blew me away in his audition and fully deserves his place on the team" Meet the new Top Gear presenters Matt LeBlanc LeBlanc, best known for playing Joey in Friends, set the fastest celebrity lap time in the reasonably priced car on the former Top Gear hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. He recently presented the standalone spin-off Top Gear: The Races, where he reminded fans of the most memorable moments from the past 22 series. He will be Top Gear's first non-British host. 2015 Getty Images Meet the new Top Gear presenters The Stig The Stig, clearly not wanting to be left out of todays announcement, sent the following reply via electronic communication: -.-. .... . .-- .. . --..-- / .-- . .----. .-. . / .... --- -- . .-.-.- Meet the new Top Gear presenters Sabine Schmitz Sabine Schmitz is a German racing driver who is already well known to fans of Top Gear. She grew up in her parents hotel just 300m from the legendary Nurburgring track and has spent her life surrounded by cars and racing. She became the first woman to win the prestigious Nurburgring 24 hours in 1996 and repeated the feat a year later. Sabine became known as the Worlds fastest taxi driver by driving passengers around the track in a BMW M5 and has since presented several motoring shows for German TV. She has appeared on Top Gear several times over the years, becoming a firm favourite with viewers. She still races successfully today and runs her own race team Meet the new Top Gear presenters Eddie Jordan Eddie Jordan is an Irish former racing driver, team owner and entrepreneur whom a host of drivers owe their breaks to Eddie as a champion of young talent including Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello and Eddie Irvine. Having suffered a number of major accidents whilst competing in racing himself Eddie retired to set up his Jordan team in 1980. The team went on to be champions in Formula 3 with Johnny Herbert in 1987, Formula 3000 in 1989 with Jean Alesi - and in 1990 Eddie established Jordan Grand Prix and entered Formula 1. He sold Jordan Grand Prix in January 2005 and has since developed a portfolio of business interests as well as presenting the BBC's coverage of Formula 1. He has been inducted into the Irish Motorsport Hall of Fame and in 2012 he was awarded an honorary OBE by Her Majesty The Queen in recognition of his services to charity and motor racing 2015 Getty Images Meet the new Top Gear presenters Rory Reid Rory Reid is an award-winning journalist of eighteen years specialising in cars. Rory has written and presented for the likes of CNET UK, where he launched the company's popular Car Tech channel, receiving a prestigious Association of Online Publishers (AOP) award for Best Use of Video in the process. Rory has featured in a number of car-focused television shows and had a starring role in the Gadget Geeks series on Sky 1, where he reviewed cars and consumer tech. He was also a presenter on the hugely successful Fast Furious & Funny YouTube channel. He is editor-in-chief of Recombu, specialising in producing car reviews Meet the new Top Gear presenters Chris Harris Chris Harris is probably best known for his popular YouTube channel, Chris Harris on Cars which he launched in 2014, established with the help longtime friend Neil Carey. It has already amassed over a quarter of a million subscribers and the content has been viewed over 20 million times. Chris began his career in motoring journalism at UK-based Autocar magazine, becoming their official road-test editor. This gave him the opportunity to do some racing and skidding before starting a website for fast cars the week Lehman Brothers went under in 2008, which obviously ended badly. He then looked to solve his new found indebtedness at Evo magazine and then became a member of the Pistonheads.com crew, as well as a regular feature on YouTubes DRIVE channel The Episodes star will co-host the new series alongside Chris Evans. Racing driver Sabine Schmitz, F1 pundit Eddie Jordan, motoring journalist Rory Reid and YouTuber Chris Harris are also set to feature. Despite suffering a series of roadblocks over the past few months, the BBC2 series will premiere on an unspecified date in May. The show's original presenting trio - Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May - are poised to debut a new as-of-yet untitled car series on Amazon Prime this coming Autumn. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The announcement last week that Calvin Klein Collection's creative directors would be stepping down could be the start of an industry sea-change. The clue is in the plural: Francisco Costa and Italo Zucchelli head the womens and mens lines respectively of the New York label. The departure of the designers was part of a "new global creative strategy for the company, which will unify all Calvin Klein brands under one creative vision." Quite. That approach is resonating across fashion as a whole, moving away from a period were designers were decidedly compartmentalised. It chimes with something I wrote about a few weeks ago, exploring Burberry and Gucci's announcements that they will combine their menswear and womenswear collections in a single press presentation. That was about the blurring lines between menswear and womenswear, but this indicates something more fundamental: the seductive power of a single overarching creative vision at a fashion label. It makes sense. If you don't present a single vision, how can people buy into the higher echelons via entry-level products? That is a notion being addressed, in varying way, across the board -- perhaps in reaction to the overwhelming success of the revamped Saint Laurent. Kering took a punt, surrendering control of not only one line to Slimane but the entire house's visual identity, from carrier bags to shop fits to advertising campaigns. And, of course, the clothes. In the first quarter of 2016, Saint Laurent's turnover rose 26.5 per cent - similar profits were posted throughout the tenure of Slimane, who left at the start of this month. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana's final D&G show, in September 2011. The line is now integrated into their eponymous label (Getty) I suspect those profits were helped, in no small part, by how all-encompassing Slimane's vision was for Saint Laurent. You could buy shoes, or t-shirts, or a clutch of metal pins, and feel like you were buying into his aesthetic. There were no confusing difficuion lines to water down the vision, no other designer names jumbling the credits. It belonged to Slimane alone. Other houses are streamlining their product categories accordingly: D&G was ditched a few years ago; Marc Jacobs folded "Marc by Marc Jacobs" into his mainline last year, while Burberry has done away with varied lines dubbed Brit, London and Prorsum -- it's now just plain Burberry, and it's all designed by Christopher Bailey. These stores now sport items priced both accessibly and aspirationally, to borrow industry lingo. But they're all called the same thing. Burberry, Jacobs and Saint Laurent would rankle at mingling mention of their name with labels like Tory Burch and Kate Spade, but the ethos is the same. Regardless of the amount you spend, whether you're buying a tote bag or a ball gown, you get one name and one idea. Calvin Klein boasts lines confusingly suffixed with "platinum" or "white label," as well as jeans and underwear ranges. And the catwalk-presented "Collection" lines, too. It all seems somewhat messy -- wouldn't it make more sense to have one figurehead, and one name on all the labels? Cheaper to print them all, too. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hackers who stole 56m from the Bangladesh central bank may have found a way to exploit the SWIFT global bank payment system, BAE Systems computer security experts have said. After uncovering tools it believes were linked to February's heist, one of the biggest in history, BAE Systems claims to have discovered that "sophisticated" malware was used to compromise the SWIFT system. SWIFT is used by 11,000 banks around the world, and provides a platform for them to share information about transactions. By exploiting this system, BAE Systems said the hackers managed to cover their tracks and get away with the stolen money. Using the malware, the hackers could delete money transfer details from the database, intercept incoming confirmation messages and manipulate account balances, essentially making the multi-million-pound transactions invisible to the bank and giving them more time to launder their takings. Worryingly, the hackers' toolkit is "highly configurable", according to the company, and could "feasibly be used for similar attacks in future." SWIFT appears to be aware of the issue. Speaking to Reuters, spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said a software update designed to thwart the malware would be going out today. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty She said the update would help banks "spot inconsistencies" in their databases, and added "the malware has no impact on SWIFT's network or core messaging services." Financial institutions will also get additional warnings to carefully scrutinise their security measures. Adrian Nish, Bae Systems' head of threat intelligence, told Reuters he had never seen such an elaborate scheme. "I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customise it for the environment they were operating in," he said. "I guess it was the realisation that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile." Nish's team found the malware on an online database, and are confident it was the software used in the attack because it was created close to the date of the heist, contained information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh. The Independent has contacted Bangladesh Bank for more information. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Two Swiss pilots who have just completed one of the most dangerous parts of their round-the-world flight have said they are showing the endurance of the human body. The two pilots are taking turns to fly a fully solar-powered plane around the world, in what they have said is a way of showing the importance of renewable energy. But the flight also shows how much the human body can take, they have said. The comments come after pilot Bertrand Piccard finished a flight across a large part of the Pacific Ocean. During that three-day flight he slept only 20 minutes at a time, holed up in a tiny cockpit that has no heating. During that time he had to maintain constant contact with control centre in Europe. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty "You have interviews, navigation control, communications with the control center in Monaco. You have health checks, a lot of health checks," Piccard said. "It's very active, there are a lot of things to do, but you can nevertheless enjoy it." The pilots have managed to stay awake and alert through the long, cold journeys by using self-hypnosis, Piccard said. He has used heating packs to warm his shoes and gloves, with which he also heats his ready-made meals. Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, on Saturday night following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight from Hawaii without fuel. The landing came hours after Piccard made a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators below watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings. Piccard and Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. The trans-Pacific legs were the riskiest part of the plane's travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites. "We have demonstrated it is feasible to fly many days, many nights, that the technology works" said Borschberg, 63, who piloted the plane a five-day trip from Japan to Hawaii and who kept himself alert by doing yoga poses and meditation. The project has helped to show that "as a human being you can be sufficiently sustainable to be able to fly at least five days in such a plane." The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way. The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, too. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavorable weather and a damaged wing. A month later, with better weather conditions, the plane left Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii. The plane's ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs over 5,000 pounds, about as much as a midsize truck. The plane's wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night. Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey. Solar Impulse plane takes off on historic round-the-world flight Borschberg said the plane will again take flight this week, and the next stop could be Phoenix. But that will depend on weather. The project, which is estimated to cost more than $100 million, began in 2002 to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. "I think innovation and pioneering must continue," Piccard said. "It must continue for better quality of life, for clean technologies, for renewable energy. This is where the pioneers can really express themselves and be successful." Solar-powered air travel is not yet commercially practical, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft. "Maybe it will be boring in 20 years when all the airplanes will be electric and people will say 'Oh it's routine.' But now, today, an airplane that is electric, with electric engines, that produces its own energy with the sun, it can never be boring," Piccard said. Additional reporting by Associated Press For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US military is "dropping cyberbombs" on Isis, Deputy Secretary of Defence Robert Work has said. His comments follow on from Defence Secretary Ashton Carter's announcement earlier this month that the US Cyber Command had been given its "first wartime assignment." The Cyber Command, which operates from its base near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, has generally been shrouded in secrecy since its formation in 2009. Recommended Read more US begins waging cyber warfare against Isis However, in the last few months, the Department of Defence has become more open about its cyber war against Isis. Colourfully describing the Cyber Command's operations to reporters, Work said: "We are dropping cyberbombs. We have never done that before." As CNN reports, Work added: "Just like we have an air campaign, I want to have a cyber campaign. I want to use all the space capabilities I have." According to past statements from military leaders, much of the US's cyber war against Isis is focused on disrupting the group's communications systems, which they use to spread their message, recruit new fighters and organise attacks. Cyber tactics are also being used to hamper their finances, making it more difficult for them to operate and pay their fighters. Some people in the intelligence community have warned that stepping up cyberattacks against Isis could simply drive them underground, forcing them to adopt more low-tech alternatives that may be harder for intelligence agencies to target. However, Carter has said this could be a blessing in disguise. Speaking to reporters at a February briefing, he said: "As we disrupt the Isis communications via cyber or other mothods, sometimes we do drive them to other means. But it cuts both ways. Sometimes, those other means are easier for us to listen to." "So by taking away some of the ways that they are used to operating, they're protected and that they regard as an information sanctuary, drives them to other, including older technologies." "So one way or another, it is a very effective tool." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A leading judge has said overweight workers should have the power to tackle fattist discrimination in the workplace by suing colleagues who make inappropriate comments about body size. Philip Rostant, a judge specialising in employment law, warned that larger people are paid less on average than their thinner colleagues. He said such laws would prevent prejudice against those of non-ideal weight, who he claims also find it more difficult to get jobs and are at higher risk of being sacked. In an academic paper published in the Modern Law Review, he wrote of the difficulties overweight employees face in the workplace. In the paper, co-authored with Tamara Hervey, a professor of law at Sheffield University, they wrote: People of non-ideal weight (overweight or severely underweight) are subjected to discrimination, in the workplace and elsewhere, based on attitudinal assumptions and negative inferences ... such as that they are insufficiently self-motivated to make good employees. The academic paper, called "All About that Bass? Is NonIdeal Weight Discrimination Unlawful in the UK?", adds: Being overweight, or even obese, is not in itself a prohibited ground of discrimination in UK law, or in the law of the European Union. 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. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA This situation leaves a gap in the law, which is remediable only by legislative reform. Legislation against fattism would mean the use of abusive terms or refusing to employ people because of their weight would result in the same kind of penalties as discriminating against ethnic minorities and LGBT people. The paper draws attention to the Equality Act of 2010, which outlaws discrimination against people because of age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and disability. Currently, overweight people are only protected by the act if they can prove they are disabled. Sixty-four per cent of adults in the UK are classed as being overweight or obese. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The chief executive of ESI Media, the owners of the Independent, London Evening Standard and London Live, is to leave the company. Steve Auckland, who joined the group in July 2014, will step down at the end of April. Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of ESI Media, said: ESI Media has undergone some substantial changes in the last 18 months. Steve has made an enormous contribution by steering the group through these changes and into a strong position for the future. In February, ESI Media announced plans to sell the i newspaper to Johnston Press, and to transition the Independent titles to an exclusively digital format. The move has seen the launch of a new subscription mobile and tablet App. Independent.co.uk has been the fastest growing quality newspaper site for the last two years with a monthly global audience of nearly 70 million. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} George Clooney has called on the world to do more to help those fleeing conflict and persecution, asserting that refugees are people, just like you and me. The 54-year-old Oscar-award winning actor revealed his own family's difficult plight to escape Irelands famine in the 19th century. Speaking at a humanitarian conference in Yerevan in Armenia, the American actor and director urged the public to express empathy with those escaping war-torn countries. Sudan protest lands Clooney in hot water Show all 2 1 /2 Sudan protest lands Clooney in hot water Sudan protest lands Clooney in hot water IA17-1-Clooney.jpg Reuters Sudan protest lands Clooney in hot water Ia17-3-Sudan.jpg EPA The simple truth is that all of us here tonight are the result of someones act of kindness. We all stand on the shoulders of good people who didnt look away when we were in need, Clooney said. The Clooney family fled a famine in Ireland to come to the United States where their very survival required a room, a meal, a helping hand. We call them refugees, but theyre just people, like you and me. And if you stand right in front of them and take a look deep into their eyes, you might just see an Irish farmer fleeing a famine. If we are to survive as a people, we simply cant look away. Not from the people of Syria or South Sudan or the Congo. George Clooney in Armenia During the ceremony, Clooney also urged the world to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. 1.5 million Armenian people were murdered in 1915 in what is seen as the first massacre of the 20th century. Although Turkey rejects the label of genocide and profoundly disputes the figures, arguing the death toll has been exaggerated. Recommended Read more Amal Clooney tells Syrian refugees how her family were forced to flee In his first visit to Armenia, Clooney also attended a memorial service commemorating the slaughter of the Armenian population alongside the President Serzh Sargsyan. The actor's wife, Amal Clooney, an international human rights lawyer, has spent time campaigning for the global recognition and understanding of the Armenian genocide. Clooney has previously taken part in humanitarian activism for Sudans Darfur conflict and produced documentaries about the subject. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer, is set to receive a $6 million settlement from the city. Officials on Monday announced that the city will pay the settlement in two installments, with $3 million this year and $3 million the next. Tamir Rices estate will receive $5.5 million. Samaria Rice, the boy's mother, and his sister Tajai Rice will each receive $250,000. However, neither the city or the officers will admit to any wrongdoing. Rice was shot and killed in November 2014 when two white police officers responded to reports of someone spotted with a possible gun. The person who made the call told the dispatcher that they may have seen a toy gun rather than a real one, but this information was not relayed to Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback. The officers arrived to scene and within a matter of seconds, Mr Loehmann had drawn his weapon and lethally wounded the child, who was indeed playing with a toy pistol. Tamir, who lived across the street from the recreation centre where he was shot, died the following day. Last year, prosecutors declined to bring charges against the two officers, concluding the fatal shooting a perfect storm of human error. The boys family had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and its police force, claiming that the officers had acted recklessly. A federal civil rights investigation is pending. The settlement, first reported by Cleveland.com, does not resolve all of the lingering legal issues surrounding the 12-year-old's killing. However, it was a sign that both the city and the boys family did not want to endure what could be tension-filled litigation process that could last years. Although historic in financial terms, no amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a life, attorneys for the Rice family said in a statement, according to the Washington Post. Tamir was 12 years old when he was shot and killed by police a young boy with his entire life ahead of him, full of potential and promise. In a situation such as this, there is no such thing as closure or justice. Nothing will bring Tamir back. Tamir's mother, Samaria Rice, alleged that in addition to failing to provide first aid to her son, police caused intentional infliction of emotional distress in how they treated her and her daughter after the shooting. In 2014, Cleveland also settled a lawsuit in the 2012 killings of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams for a total of $3 million. The unarmed couple was killed during a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire at the end of a 2012 car chase. No charges were brought against the officers involved in the shooting. The payment is similar to recent killings of African-Americans by police officers across country. After Eric Garner, who died after being placed in an illegal chokehold by officers in the summer of 2014, the city of New York agreed to pay his family $5.9 million just a year later. No charges were brought against the officers involved. Last September, the family of Freddie Gray received $6.4 million from the city of Baltimore after he died after being seized by officers in the spring of 2015. Six police officers have been charged over his death, one of them with manslaughter. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Beyonces latest surprise album is, to nones surprise, all the internet is talking about. After switching up the mainstream music industry in 2013 by releasing a self-titled album which nobody saw coming, shes done it again two and a half years later with Lemonade. The visual album was accompanied by an hour-long HBO documentary which as well as Bey leading the way featured a number of cameos, many from strong, influential black women. Serena Williams, Amandla Stenberg and Zendaya are some of these well-known faces but another person who features but is not as well known is the model Winnie Harlow. Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Show all 16 1 /16 Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Tina Knowles, Beyonce's mother, and her husband Richard Lawson Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Model Winnie Harlow HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin's mother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Serena Williams HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Oscar-nominated actor Quvenzhane Wallis HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Naomi Diaz of music duo Ibeyi HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Ballerina Michaela DePrince HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Lisa-Kainde Diaz of music duo Ibeyi HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Lesley McSpadden, Mike Brown's mother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Leah Chase, restaurant owner and Queen of Creole cuisine HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Jay Z HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Hattie White, Jay Z's grandmother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Chloe and Halle Bailey of singing duo Chloe x Halle HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Singer, actor, and activist Zendaya (right) HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Actor and activist Amandla Stenberg HBO Harlow has a starring role in Freedom, a politically charged song and video which is accompanied by the powerful voice of Kendrick Lamar. Set on a New Orleans plantation, Harlow holds up a picture of her grandfather, which follows on from the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Eric Garner all holding up photographs of their sons in "Resurrection". Harlow told Billboard the mysterious call to be included in the show came just a few weeks before they shot the top-secret video. Who is the model who caught the attention of Beyonce? Background Hailing from Toronto, Canada, the 21-year-old was born Chantelle Brown-Young. She developed the skin condition vitiligo, which causes white patches on the skin due to a lack of melanin, at around four years old. Unfortunately, Harlow experienced bullying over her vitiligo at school. Speaking to Cosmopolitan last year, Harlow discussed being beaten up by a group of girls who also shouted moo noises at her. Harlow left school at 16 and worked in a call centre, however, was soon spotted by a journalist who advised her to take up modelling. Modelling After modelling for several local shows in Toronto, Harlow built up an Instagram catalogue of photos and tagged model Tyra Banks in them in the hope she would see her. It worked, Banks saw her and a casting director invited her onto Banks' long-running talent show America's Next Top Model for season 21. She ended up coming sixth and scored some major modelling work as a result. Since the show, Harlow has worked with famed fashion photographers like Nick Knight, walked in New York Fashion Week and modelled for brands including Diesel and Desigual. She also caught the attention of fellow Toronto native Drake who mentioned her in his song "Know Yourself". Body positivity activism Since gaining a successful career in modelling, Harlow has used her platform to spread messages of body positivity. In 2014, she gave a TED talk where she said theres beauty in everything and told the crowd: Know for yourself what beauty is rather than looking to a magazine or even me for what beauty is. Know it in your heart and make your own mould for what beauty is. Shes also stressed that her skin condition does not define her, telling the Guardian last year: I am not my skin. I am a model with a skin condition. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Dinosaurs seem to have fled Europe for no apparent reason, according to a major new study. The research shows the huge degree of migration that happened during the Mesozoic Era - including the unexplained move out of Europe. The new study, which used network theory techniques that are usually associated with computer science, also shows the movement of the dinosaurs over huge land bridges that connected the worlds continents together after the supercontinent Pangaea split apart. Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary Such bridges would have allowed for huge migrations as dinosaurs moved between the modern continents. Changes in sea levels would temporarily reconnect the continents and see the dinosaurs move across the world and, notably, out of Europe. We presume that temporary land bridges formed due to changes in sea levels, temporarily reconnecting the continents, said Alex Dunhill, who led the study. "Such massive structures spanning, for example, from Indo-Madagascar to Australia may be hard to imagine. But over the timescales that we are talking about, which is in the order of tens of millions of years, it is perfectly feasible that plate tectonic activity gave rise to the right conditions for such land bridges to form." The findings show that the splitting of continents might have slowed migrations, dinosaurs continued to move between continents even after they moved apart. The research was put together by using the Paleobiology Database, which includes every documented and accessible dinosaur fossil ever found. To produce the plot of how the dinosaurs moved, the researchers then cross-mapped for different periods of time, showing how the same families moved between different continents. It found that much of that movement during the Early Cretaceous period, which was about 100 million years ago, moved out of Europe. Dinosaurs moved out of the continent - but others didnt come back in. "This is a curious result that has no concrete explanation, said Alex Dunhill, who led the study. |It might be a real migratory pattern or it may be an artefact of the incomplete and sporadic nature of the dinosaur fossil record." Network theory is a common way for computer scientists to map out connections between places or people online allowing for the visualisation of friends on Facebook, for instance. But the new study is the first time that it has been used on dinosaur research, as a way of exploring the complex systems of movement that saw the animals move around the planet. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} May Day is perhaps most closely associated by Britons with a three-day bank holiday weekend and an excuse not to set the alarm on 2 May. But the traditions of 1 May have their roots in pagan festivals celebrating spring and fertility, and the date has come to be linked to everything from maypole dancing to anti-capitalist sentiment. The national holiday itself is a recent invention, with the Labour government only introducing it to the calendar in 1978. So what is it, and why do we have it? How did May Day come about? Three different celebrations in late April seem to have merged to give 1 May its special significance. Gaelic May Day in Ireland and Scotland, known as Beltane, was held halfway between the spring equinox in the middle of March and the summer solstice in the middle of June. Marking the beginning of summer, Beltane was celebrated by villagers with bonfires and rituals to protect crops and cattle, along with a big feast. Beltane is still celebrated in its traditional pagan form in some parts of England including Glastonbury (Getty Images) In Germany, Finland and Sweden, meanwhile, Walpurgis Night celebrated a special saint with a feast on 1 May that included dancing and young women being kissed and was sometimes seen as a night when witches would await the arrival of spring. Another festival held by the Romans to celebrate Flora, the goddess of flowers, in late April also marked the arrival of summer. Eventually, together these celebrations became the secular festival of May Day now in existence. What happens on May Day? Maypole dancing was banned by Oliver Cromwells government in 1660 (Getty Images) May Day is synonymous with the maypole, believed to be rooted in a pagan tradition of cutting down young trees and sticking them in the ground to mark the arrival of summer and then dancing around them in rival performances between villages. The day is also associated with Morris dancing, usually by groups of men wearing different coloured clothes depending on the part of the country they dance in. Well-dressing and making flower garlands can be part of the festivities, while a May Queen and sometimes a Green Man might also make an appearance as the embodiments of spring. Why have there been riots on May Day in the past? Members of Indonesian Labour unions and labour activists march on May Day in Jakarta in 2014 The date coincides with International Workers Day, which has its roots in a labour union movement that advocated an eight-hour working day. Anti-capitalist riots have marked the date as a result, first in Ohio in 1919 when disorder during a parade of unionists, socialists, communists and anarchists was violently suppressed by police. In 2000 and 2001 there were May Day protests in London in which McDonalds, a statue of Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph were attacked and 95 people were arrested. Other protests took place around the world in 2013, 2014 and 2015 to promote workers rights. What are some of the weirder facts surrounding May Day? Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans described maypole dancing as a heathenish vanity and passed legislation against it in 1660. Merry Monarch Charles II, however, returned them to national consciousness by erecting a huge 40-metre pole on the Strand in London and remaining there for almost 50 years. In Oxford, a Latin hymn or carol is sung from the top of Magdalen College tower on May Day morning, followed by the ringing of bells to signal the start of Morris dancing in the streets. And one of the more unusual annual traditions associated with the date involves students at St Andrews rushing naked into the sea at sunrise on 1 May out of enthusiasm for the change of season. This article was originally published in April 2016 Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Prince Harry has laid a wreath during a dawn service at Wellington Arch to mark the start of Anzac Day commemorations to in the UK. Thousands of people waited in the dark before the start of proceedings, which marked 100 years since the day was first marked in London. Anzac Day has been commemorated in the capital since the first anniversary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli in 1916, when King George V attended a service at Westminster Abbey. Since then, the services have become an important moment for thousands of expatriate and visiting New Zealanders and Australians, who honour the sacrifices of their countrymen and women in all wars. Harry laid a wreath at the memorial at Hyde Park Corner, followed by the New Zealand and Australian high commissioners and other dignitaries. In pictures: First World War Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: First World War In pictures: First World War Victoria station, London 1914: A soldier saying goodbye to a loved one in the rain at Victoria station, London, as he leaves for the front In pictures: First World War Trafalgar Square, London 1914: In Trafalgar Square, London street urchins dressed as soldiers with paper hats and canes as guns stand to attention watched by a small crowd. Behind them is a notice declaring ' The Need for Fighting Men is Urgent' In pictures: First World War Marylebone Grammar School, London 1914: Two men conscripted to the British Army undergoing a medical check-up at Marylebone Grammar School, London In pictures: First World War Victoria station, London 1914: Two soldiers on the concourse at Victoria station, London, about to leave for the front line. They are carrying parcels full of food and other provisions In pictures: First World War British Army 1914: A group of new recruits in training for service in the British Army during World War I In pictures: First World War Aisne, France 1914: A lone soldier with a bicycle stands amid the remains of a German motor convoy which lines a country lane after an attack by French field guns in the battle of the Aisne in France Topical Press Agency/Getty Images In pictures: First World War Aisne River, France 1914: German sharpshooters move to a position near the front line, during the fighting near the Aisne River In pictures: First World War German naval zeppelin 1914: The L2, a German naval zeppelin during World War I In pictures: First World War France 1914: French officers dining in style in a trench near the front line In pictures: First World War Anzac Cove in the Dardanelles 1915: Troops landing at Anzac Cove in the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War Getty Images In pictures: First World War London 1915: Soldiers arriving at a station in London to travel home for Christmas In pictures: First World War German Army 1915: A wounded German soldier In pictures: First World War British Army 1915: A wounded British soldier is stretchered back to camp past a carnage-strewn trench, during the World War I In pictures: First World War Brighton Pavilion 1915: Injured Indian soldiers of the British Army at the Brighton Pavilion, converted into a military hospital In pictures: First World War Fort Vaux, France 1916: A German rifleman beside the corpse of a French soldier in a trench at Fort Vaux, France In pictures: First World War England 1916: Private F.E Henningham leaves for service in the British Army during World War I In pictures: First World War England 1916: The British soldier, Drummer Bent, wearing his Victoria Cross In pictures: First World War Somme, France 1916: Gas-masked men of the British Machine Gun Corps with a Vickers machine gun during the first battle of the Somme In pictures: First World War British Army 1916: British soldiers sitting around a lamp in their trench In pictures: First World War Austrian Army 1916: Austrian soldiers in the trenches demonstrating their gas masks In pictures: First World War German Army 1916: Three German soldiers display rats killed in their trench the previous night In pictures: First World War German Army 1916: A German officer leads his men through a cloud of phosphene gas set off by themselves for cover, as they run toward the British trenches In pictures: First World War Austria 1916: A dog finds a wounded soldier lying under a tree in Austria during World War I In pictures: First World War Royal Air Force 1916: Pilots from the Royal Air Force ready to drop bombs by hand over Germany from their aeroplane, a development as in the first stages of the war planes were thought of only as reconnaissance machines In pictures: First World War WWI aircraft 1916: A group of World War I aircraft flying in formation In pictures: First World War French and British troops 1916: French and British troops in a trench on the Western Front during World War I In pictures: First World War Cross Farm, Shackleton, Surrey 1917: Women war workers, at Cross Farm, Shackleton, Surrey In pictures: First World War American Army in London 1918: American soldiers sightseeing in London from the top of an open-decked omnibus at the end of WW I In pictures: First World War American Army 1918: A US Army cinematographer filming a US Nieuport 28 biplane taking off during the summer counter-offensive In pictures: First World War American Army 1918: An American cinematographer sets up his camera in a water-filled trench Addressing the gathered crowds, Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the UK, said: "When we reflect on Anzac Day we imagine the Gallipoli landings, what it must have been like, at dawn on the water, in sight of that rugged shoreline - and a collectively held breath, a leaden silence about to be broken. "We consider the enthusiasm, the courage, and the heroism of the Anzac troops - ordinary men fighting for God, King and empire, for their mates, for adventure, for a world without war." He added that the full meaning of Anzac Day was best encapsulated in an open letter from Australian poet Banjo Patterson to the Anzac troops in the Dardenelles in 1915. It starts: "Australia takes her pen in hand "To write a line to you, "To let you fellows understand "How proud we are of you..." Harry will later attend a parade at the Cenotaph, where he will lay a wreath on behalf of the Queen, and a service of commemoration and thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey. Later in the morning, at the wreath laying and parade service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, Harry will lay a wreath on behalf of the Queen. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The UK government has offered to take 3,000 extra lone refugee children in its existing resettlement scheme for Syrian refugees. But the offer has two caveats: it is only for refugee minors currently living outside the European Union and it is spread over five years, meaning there will be an average of 600 per year. The governments press release called it The largest resettlement programme for refugee children. But others, including the Labour peer Alf Dubs have called it a deliberate ploy to muddy the debate. The governments announcement came ahead of a vote in the House of Commons on an amendment to the Immigration Bill proposed by Dubs to let 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children who have reached the EU come to Britain. The amendment has cross-party support and may be successful in overturning the Conservatives' slim majority of 12 in the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the announcement was: A blatant attempt to buy off compassionate Tory MPs in a desperate last-ditch effort to avoid a government defeat. Fair share? Record numbers (over 90,000) of unaccompanied asylum seeking children have reached the EU in 2015 and the trend continues this year. But many are left vulnerable to exploitation and violence while living in appalling conditions in makeshift encampments across Europe. The UK share of unaccompanied asylum seeking children in the EU has significantly decreased during the refugee crisis from 36% in 2008 to 3% in 2015, as the graph below shows. In 2015, the UK received around 3,000 lone refugee children, certainly an increase from 1,945 the previous year but this is nothing like what other EU countries have experienced in 2015. According to EUROSTAT, Norway saw an increase of applications from unaccompanied minors from 940 in 2014 to 5,050 in 2015; the Netherlands went from 960 to 3,800, and Germany from 4,400 to 14,400. Sweden alone received in 2015 over 35,000 unaccompanied asylum seeking children: this is more than the whole EU in 2014 and significantly more than the 23,000 that the UK received overall between 2006 and 2015. The governments claim of having proposed the largest resettlement programme for refugee children may actually be factually untrue. Canada has resettled 25,000 refugees since December 2015, although it is unclear how many are unaccompanied children. So lets keep the generous government offer in perspective: much more must and can be done. The Labour amendment to the Immigration Bill that the government is trying to block is a positive step in the right direction: one of solidarity with fellow EU member states that recognises the crisis is now and young refugees need help urgently rather than in 2020. If successful, the Dubs amendment would increase the UK share of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the EU to around 6% still well below previous years. Britain has coped before In the mid-2000s, when there was no refugee crisis on the scale that the EU is experiencing today, the UK was receiving on average 3,000 unaccompanied minors per year, just like now. Data: Home Office/EUROSTAT But now we hear from the government that local authorities are unable to cope with current numbers. This may be true, but not because of the refugee minors per se. As emerging findings from our research project Becoming Adult show, the challenges local authorities are facing with current arrivals are far more about draconian budget cuts imposed by the UK government than about the number of unaccompanied minors, which is at a level they were able to cope with in the recent past. Nando Sigona, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity, University of Birmingham This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Theresa Mays call for Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights would be a betrayal of the post-war generation who helped create it, human rights groups have said. In a speech on the EU, the Home Secretary said that the ECHR was able to bind the hands of Parliament, by preventing the deportation of foreign criminals, and called for Britain to stay in the EU but withdraw from the Convention. The comments drew immediate criticism from human rights campaigners. Amnesty said that leaving the ECHR would strike at the very architecture of international protections, while Liberty criticised Mrs May for playing fast and loose with the legacy of Winston Churchill, who was one of the Conventions early architects. Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham, meanwhile, called the proposal a backward step that Labour would fight all the way. Rachel Logan, Amnestys legal programme director, said: Mrs Mays proposal to tear away from the European Convention on Human Rights would strike at the very architecture of international protections, and betray the British people who built the convention at the end of the Second World War. The Convention has done so much for the rights of the free press, gay people, women, people with disabilities and other ordinary people here and across Europe. Bella Sankey, policy director of Liberty, called the speech desperate. Presumably reeling from yesterdays bad headlines, the Home Secretary is today playing fast and loose with Churchills legacy to bolster her tough credentials, she said. It was only a matter of time before the ECHR got dragged into the EU referendum debate. But the Convention doesnt bind Parliament and despite Theresa Mays best efforts at mud-slinging and myth-spreading over the years the case for remaining a signatory is unequivocal. "Britain founded it, it is the most successful system for the enforcement of human rights in the history of the world, and every day it helps bring freedom, justice and the Rule of Law to 820 million people. Britain was the first country to ratify the ECHR in 1951. The terms of the convention were largely drafted by Conservative politician David Maxwell Fyfe and were inspired by the thinking and speeches of Churchill. In her speech, Mrs May said the ECHR adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals - and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russias when it comes to human rights. I can already hear certain people saying this means Im against human rights, she added. But human rights were not invented in 1950, when the Convention was drafted, or in 1998, when it was incorporated into our law through the Human Rights Act. This is Great Britain - the country of Magna Carta, Parliamentary democracy and the fairest courts in the world - and we can protect human rights ourselves in a way that doesnt jeopardise national security or bind the hands of Parliament. A true British Bill of Rights - decided by Parliament and amended by Parliament - would protect not only the rights set out in the Convention but could include traditional British rights not protected by the ECHR, such as the right to trial by jury. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Students have gone "too far" by continually oppressing free speech with university "safe space" policies, a leading human rights campaigner has said. Nearly two-thirds of UK university students said they believe the National Union of Students (NUS) is right to enforce its controversial "no plaform" policy, whereby individuals or groups with opinions deemed to be offensive can be banned from speaking on student union premises. The policy has sparked controversy, with campaigners branding it an assault on free speech. "Just because a majority of students support a policy does not make it right," human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said. "Democracy does not include the right to vote away the free speech and human rights of others." A BBC survey revealed that along with 63 per cent of UK university students being in favour of the NUS policy. More than half the number of students also thought the policy should be actively enforced against people who could be found intimidating. No-platform policies have increasingly become the subject of fraught debate over the past few months, with a host of high-profile speakers including feminist writer Germaine Greer and human rights activist Maryam Namazie asked not to appear at student events for fear that their opinions would be upsetting to some students. Appearing on the Victoria Derbyshire programme on BBC, Mr Tatchell said the current no-platforming policy held by the NUS was a dangerous threat to free speech within learning institutions. All bigots should be protested, he said. I dont think people with offensive views should be given a free pass. They should be challenged. The best way to do this is by open debate to refute their intolerance. If you censor of ban them, the ideas just get suppressed. They don't cease to exist and they cannot be effectively countered." Chief Executive for HOPE not Hate, Nick Lowles, was reportedly no-platformed by the NUS in February on the grounds that he was seen to be Islamaphobic. The anti-racism and fascism campaigner responded on social media that the NUS had officially become a joke after ultra-left lunacy stopped him from speaking at the anti-racism conference. Most recently, Kings College London revoked a speaking invitation extended to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, after he made inappropriate remarks about President Barack Obamas ancestry. Human rights attacks around the world Show all 10 1 /10 Human rights attacks around the world Human rights attacks around the world China Escalating crackdown against human rights activists including mass arrests of lawyers and a series of sweeping laws in the name of national security. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Egypt The arrest of thousands, including peaceful critics, in a ruthless crackdown in the name of national security, the prolonged detention of hundreds without charge or trial and the sentencing of hundreds of others to death. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Gambia Torture, enforced disappearances and the criminalisation of LGBTI people; and utter refusal to co-operate with the UN and regional human rights mechanisms on issues including freedom of expression, enforced disappearance and the death penalty. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Hungary Sealing off its borders to thousands of refugees in dire need; and obstructing collective regional attempts to help them. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Israel Maintaining its military blockade of Gaza and therefore collective punishment of the 1.8 million inhabitants there, as well as failing, like Palestine, to comply with a UN call to conduct credible investigations into war crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Kenya Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and discrimination against refugees in its counter-terrorism operations; and attempts to undermine the International Criminal Court and its ability to pursue justice. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Pakistan The severe human rights failings of its response to the horrific Peshawar school massacre including its relentless use of the death penalty; and its policy on international NGOs giving authorities the power to monitor them and close them down if they are considered to be against the interests of the country. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Russia Repressive use of vague national security and anti-extremism legislation and its concerted attempts to silence civil society in the country; its shameful refusal to acknowledge civilian killings in Syria and its callous moves to block Security Council action on Syria. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Saudi Arabia Brutally cracking down on those who dared to advocate reform or criticise the authorities; and committing war crimes in the bombing campaign it has led in Yemen (pictured) while obstructing the establishment of a UN-led inquiry into violations by all sides in the conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Syria Killing thousands of civilians in direct and indiscriminate attacks with barrel bombs and other weaponry and through acts of torture in detention; and enforcing lengthy sieges of civilian areas, blocking international aid from reaching starving civilians. Getty Images Referring to the increasing number of activists blocked by student unions, Mr Tatchell said during the BBC debate: The intention behind 'no platform' and 'safe space' policies is often honourable and commendable, to protect weak and vulnerable students. But the way they are being widely interpreted has gone too far. To treat a left-wing speaker[s] in this way is not left-wing politics. It is McCarthyism." NUS Vice President, Richard Brooks responded: There is a difference between no-platforming a democratic policy decided on by organisations and whats happened in a number of situations like Nick [Lowles]s is, essentially, there was a house party and you werent invited. One LSE student replied that universities arent house parties; they are institutions where you are meant to be challenged. I am a gay man with a disability but I dont need your protection." The NUS official no-platform list contains six groups including the British National Party and Al-Muhajiroun, a banned Islamic network in the UK. Individual unions and student groups can however decide on their own policies and reject people on an individual basis. Current NUS guidelines ask student unions to balance freedom of speech and freedom from harm. Read more The NUS said it was proud of the policy and the fact that the majority of students surveyed agreed showed demonstrated that the policy was necessary in standing up to racism and fascism. A spokeswoman said: In the past, students have been physically harmed and tragically even killed as a result of such organisations coming on to campuses and inciting hatred. That is why 'no platform' was introduced in the first place, to keep students safe in a very real sense. Our policy does not limit free speech, but acts to defend it by calling out violence, hate speech, bullying and harassment, which allows debate to take place without intimidation. Students' unions are champions of debate on campus, in fact a recent survey showed zero out of 50 students' unions had banned a speaker in the past year." Speaking on the debate programme, feminist writer Julie Bindel, who was banned from speaking at Manchester University in October, spoke of the negative reaction she has received as a controversial speaker on campus. There is no such thing as a safe space, said Ms Bindel. We need to talk to each other and find a way in which we can progress the argument." Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Boris Johnson was not racist to suggest Barack Obamas Kenyan heritage gave him an ancestral dislike of Britain, Iain Duncan Smith has said. The former Cabinet minister said the outgoing Mayor of London had made a correct point and that there was no way he could be described as racist. Writing in The Sun newspaper on Friday Mr Johnson suggested the US president had moved a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office as a snub to Britain. This could represent a symbol of the part-Kenyan Presidents ancestral dislike of the British empire, he wrote. But asked about the comments on BBC Radio 4s Today programme, fellow Leave campaigner Mr Duncan Smith said Mr Johnson had made a correct point. I think that theres nothing worse that demeans politics than when another politician jumps up and down and in losing an argument wants to hurl a name like racist at people. I find that absurd, he said. I think hes correct in this regard: What he said was the president of the US he simply referred to one of the reasons why he may have a particular lack of regard for the UK. I know Boris very well and in no way can you describe him as [racist]. He has fought against any kind of racism time and time again, as I have. Barack Obama visited the UK to warn against Brexit (Reuters) He was trying to illustrate the reality: he is the president of the US, this president came over to the UK and appeared to be lecturing British citizens as to what they should do in the forthcoming referendum. Both Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Johnson are campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union. During his visit to the UK last week Mr Obama warned that the UK could not immediately expect to sign a free trade deal with the US if it left the EU. He clarified Mr Johnsons retelling of the anecdote about the Winston Churchill bust, explaining that he still had a different bust of the former British prime minister at the entrance to his private office in the White House. Britain will vote in a referendum on whether to remain in the European Union on 23 June this year. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Both sides in the European referendum debate stand accused of making misleading and inaccurate claims about the pro and cons of Britains membership in an attempt to sway votes in their favour. A group of academics and an independent organisation that fact checks assertions made by politicians found that both remain and leave campaigners were guilty of passing off questionable claims as truth. And they warned that the public were being ill-served by the standard of the debate as a result of being bombarded by conflicting claims that at best were unsupported by evidence and at worse simply untrue. Among the claims Full Fact and academics from The UK in a Changing Europe examined was the statement by the leave campaign that the UK sends 350 million per week to the EU. They described this statement as wrong. They also dispute the assertion often quoted by the remain camp that Britains membership with Europe is worth 3,000 per year to every household. This, they say, is not a credible estimate. Leave claim: The unelected European Commissionruns the EU This claim, the report says, exaggerates the power of the Commission and understates the role of other institutions in debating, amending and passing EU laws. It also ignores the power and influence of the EUs member states. A Commission proposal only becomes a EU law when it attracts the support of two majorities. It needs both a majority in the Council (made up of member states), representing at least 55 per cent of EU countries and 65 per cent of the EU population, and a majority in the Parliament that is elected by voters across the EU on a proportional basis. What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Show all 5 1 /5 What's the European Parliament ever done for us? What's the European Parliament ever done for us? A cap on the amount of hours an employer can make you work The Working Time directive provides legal standards to ensure the health and safety of employees in Europe. Among the many rules are a working week of a maximum 48 hours, including overtime, a daily rest period of 11 hours in every 24, a break if a person works for six hours or more, and one day off in every seven. It also includes provisions for paid annual leave of at least four weeks every year Getty Images What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping the people of Britain to avoid smoking In 2014 MEPs passed the Tobacco Products Directive strengthening existing rules on the manufacture, production and presentation of tobacco products. This includes things like reduced branding, restrictions on products containing flavoured tobacco, health warnings on cigarette packets and provisions for e-cigarettes to ensure they are safe What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping you to make the right choices with your food Thanks to the European Parliament, UK consumers have access to more information than ever about their food and drink. This includes amount of fat, and how much of it is saturated, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and so on. It also includes portion sizes and guideline daily amount information so people can make informed choices about their diet. All facts must be clear and easy to understand What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Two year guarantees and 14-day returns policy for all products Consumers across the EU have access to a number of rights, from things which are potentially very useful, to things which used to be annoying. For example, shoppers in the UK receive a two-year guarantee on all products, and a 14-day period to change their minds and return a purchase, these things are useful www.PeopleImages.com-licence restrictions apply What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Keeping your air nice and fresh (and safe) Believe it or not, although the situation is improving, some areas of the UK have appalling air quality. A report by the Royal College of Physicians released on 23 February says 40,000 deaths are caused by outdoor air pollution in the UK every year. Air pollution is linked to a number of illnesses and conditions, from Asthma to diabetes and dementia. The report estimates the costs to British business and the health service add up to 20 billion every year Remain claim: The CBI says that all the trade, investment, jobs and lower prices that come from our economic partnership with Europe is worth 3000 per year to every household. The CBI figure of 3,000 quoted by Remain campaigners is not a credible estimate, according to the research. It is based on a selection of studies produced at different times (some date back well over a decade), using different methodologies, and designed to answer different questions. Some of the studies looked at the economic impact of EU membership to date, and some at the future impact of a vote to leave. Some were not even specific to the UK. The report says that it doesnt make much sense to add them up like this, nor to use the results to get a single estimate of the costs or benefits of EU membership Leave campaign: Britain sends 350m to Brussels each week The claim the UK sends 350 million per week to the EU is wrong the report concludes. It says this is what we would send to the EU if it wasnt for the UKs budget rebate. The rebate is an instant discount on what we would otherwise pay. In 2014, the gross figure was 18.8 billion making the accurate total 248 million per week. But this does not include any of the money that gets sent to Brussels but then comes back in forms of payments to areas such as agriculture. Boris on 'project fear' Remain claim: Anyone arguing that they need us more than we need them should consider that half our goods exports go to the EU whereas on average just 5 per cent of EU countries come to the UK. While this is factually true these statistics overstate the proportion of UK exports that go to the EU, as a lot of goods pass through ports like Rotterdam before being shipped on to their final destination outside the EU. The Office for National Statistics has concluded that its hard to put a figure on this Rotterdam effect or to establish whether its a serious problem for the trade statistics. Leave claim: Given that the EU sells far more to us than we do to them, the remaining EU member states will seek a trade agreement with the UK that seeks to maintain the same level of free exchange of goods, services and capital as is the case today. Leave campaigners are correct, the report says, in claiming that it would be in the interests of the EU, at least economically, to conclude some form of free trade deal, especially for trade in goods. But that does not mean it would happen. Historically trade deals have failed even when it has been in the interests of both sides to conclude them. In particular, there is no comparable cross-border single market for services anywhere in the world outside the EU. And since the UK runs a substantial trade surplus in services, whether there would be a free trade agreement in services is a key question. Michael Gove admitted the Vote Leave campaign he led was wrong to appeal to some some very low sentiments on immigration (Getty) Leave claim: Brexit is the only way we can control immigration. Leaving the EU would not automatically lead to a large reduction in immigration the report says. For a start if Britain wanted to continue to participate in the EU single market after leaving the EU then one obvious way to do so would be for us to join Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein as members of the European Economic Area. But free movement applies to EEA members, as it does to Switzerland, a non-EEA member with more limited single market access. In fact Norway and Switzerland both have higher immigration per head of population from the EU than does the UK, as of 2013. Remain claim: The free movement of people helps Britons study, work and retire to Europe. A total of 2.2 million Britons live in other EU countries almost as many as the number of EU citizens living here. The 2.2 million estimate is wrong the report states. While acknowledging the data is imperfect, it says the best estimate is that there are over a million British-born people living elsewhere in the EU. The 2.2 million figure comes from a 2008 estimate by the IPPR think tank, which calculated that 1.8 million UK nationals lived in other EU countries for at least a year. This rose to 2.2 million when including people who lived abroad for at least part of the year. This estimate was produced before the most recent round of census returns from those countries were available, so the researchers filled in the gaps using various assumptions. The IPPR now gives a figure in line with what other researchers say. Leave claim: Between 1993 and 2014, 64.7 per cent of UK laws can be deemed to be EU influenced. The specific 64.7 per cent number, which is taken from a report by the campaign group Business for Britain, uses some inaccurate figures. The report draws on a database of EU law to search for EU regulations passed every year between 1993 and 2014. The problem is that, as the report acknowledges, its tricky to use the database for this purpose partly because it includes corrections in the count. A better source for the number of EU regulations is the European Commission. The Business for Britain report states, for example, that in 2014 the EU passed 1,904 regulations, while Commission statistics suggest it was 1,392. That would bring the 2014 proportion of UK law with an EU connection down from about 64 per cent to about 58 per cent. The Business for Britain count also includes amendments to EU laws to reach its total. An amendment to an existing law doesnt mean that two EU laws are in force. It is either one amended law or, if the amendment simply repeals the previous one, zero. So the 64.7 per cent figure is an overestimate of total EU laws in force and an unreliable guide to the proportionate amount. Remain claim: The independent House of Commons library found that the real proportion is just 13.2 per cent of our laws. This figure is accurate however it does not account for all the influence the EU has on our legal system. In particular, it doesnt count EU regulations, which automatically have legal force in all member countries without the need for a national law. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hundreds of thousands of people living in the capital could face the possibility of being forced apart from their partners if Britain votes to leave the European Union, Sian Berry, the Green Partys candidate for Mayor of London has said. An analysis by the Office for National Statistics shows there are more than 100,000 officially recorded couples in London where one British national is in a relationship with someone of another EU nationality. With polls showing a close race in the 23 June EU referendum and the Leave campaign backing an end to free movement, many British people could find their partners losing their right to live in the UK with them. This week Michael Gove, a leading figure in the Leave campaign, laid out his vision for a post-Brexit EU. The Justice Secretary said he would like Britain to have free trade with the EU but not freedom of movement, meaning many people currently here could lose their leave to remain. Recommended Read more Sian Berry chosen as Green Party candidate for 2016 Mayor of London Non-EU nationals who want a visa to remain in the UK must earn at least 35,000 or be refused the right to settle, according to a new threshold being rolled out by the Home Office. It is likely that this rule would apply to EU nationals after Brexit. If Britain left the EU, their British partners might also lose the right to immigrate with them to their home country forcing a long-distance relationship or a break-up. The barriers would hit lovers in the capital, with its cosmopolitan and mixed-nationality population, the hardest. In total the ONS says there are 102,400 couples living in London with one EU and one UK national, out of a total of 1,771,200 couples recorded in the city in total. Even more people could be affected, however, as many young people in relationships have no need to officially register as couples. The Independent has previously asked Downing Street whether the Government would push for freedom of movement in Brexit negotiations, but was referred to the Leave campaign. Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Show all 7 1 /7 Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Sadiq Khan - Labour The MP for Tooting, Sadiq Khan says the mayoral election will be a 'referendum on the Tory housing crisis'. He has also pledged to freeze fares until 2020. Son of a bus driver, and doesn't let anyone forget it. His Conservative opponent has made claims about people who he has previously associated with - but attacks so far have failed to stick Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Zac Goldsmith - Conservative The MP for Richmond, Zac Goldsmith is a longstanding campaigner against the expansion of Heathrow airport. Despite his environment credentials - he once edited The Ecologist magazine - the Tory candidate has said he would 'rip out' Boris Johnson's cycle lanes if they don't work. A very wealthy man, his campaign has been dogged by accusations of racism against Sadiq Khan Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Sian Berry - Green Party A councillor in the London Borough of Camden, Sian Berry is campaigning on improving homes for renters, cleaning up London's air pollution, and flattening fare zones to help Londoners. She previously ran as the party's mayoral candidate in 2008. In 2012, the Green Party came in third place Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Caroline Pidgeon - Liberal Democrat A Liberal Democrat London Assembly member for eight years, Caroline Pidgeon has a strong record on the Assembly's transport committee standing up for commuters and cyclists alike. She wants to set up a 2 billion housing investment fund and make all the capital's buses zero emission Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Peter Whittle - UKIP UKIP hasn't fared so well in London in previous elections, but is hoping for a breakthrough this time. Peter Whittle has been UKIP's culture spokesperson for two years. He tends to focus on the impact of immigration on London's housing crisis Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance George Galloway - RESPECT George Galloway has made a habit of defying the odds and pulling off stunning victories when standing for Parliament. His campaign - based on the slogan 'a London for all' has so far failed to make headway in the polls - has his luck run out? Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Sophie Walker - Women's Equality Party A journalist, Sophie Walker is campaigning for the little-known Women's Equality Party. She is pledging to make 'equality and diversity the fuel that drives our nation's capital' with measures to increase women's representation in enterprise, more affordable homes and flexible childcare Ms Berry warned that leaving the EU could have emotional consequences for Londoners. For most Londoners, European citizens are intricately involved in our daily lives as friends, colleagues and very often as life partners, she said. Weve heard a lot about the economic and political arguments for the EU, but there has been far less focus in the media debate on the individual emotional consequences of withdrawal for a very large number of our citizens. These figures quantify for the first time just how many people would be thrown into uncertainty if we voted to withdraw and they suddenly had to worry about their partners leave to remain. We now know its a very significant proportion of London couples. A spokesperson for Leave.EU rubbished the claims that couples were at risk, citing a convention on international relations. Absolutely nothing will happen to couples after Brexit. Their rights are guaranteed by the Vienna Convention, just as they were when the Czech Republic separated from Slovakia. It is grossly irresponsible of the press to peddle that there is clearly some uncertainty, he said. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} MPs have voted against an attempt to compel the Government to offer sanctuary in the UK to 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees from Europe. Labour peer Lord Dubs' amendment to the Immigration bill was rejected 294 to 276, giving a majority of 18, following a Commons debate on Monday. The Government resisted defeat despite suggestions Tory rebels may defy their party and back Lord Dubs' proposal who was saved from the Nazis and brought to London on the Kindertransport programme. He led a parliamentary campaign to take in youngsters from camps near Calais and elsewhere in Europe who, he says, are hugely vulnerable to exploitation, sexual violence and disease. Ministers argued offering sanctuary to lone children who had already reached Europe may mean more youngsters could become subject to trafficking. The suggestions were dubbed as bogus by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, whose party, along with Labour and the SNP, backed the amendment. Some Conservatives also raised concerns over the Governments position, including Heidi Allen and backbencher Stephen Phillips who said exceptional times call for exceptional measures". Cries of shame erupted in the Commons following the vote and many have attacked the outcome. In a statement the Liberal Democrats said: In the past, Britain has consistently stood up for the for the best in human nature tonight the Government has dishonored that legacy. The Government have closed their eyes to those in need. Former leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, called the decision shameful over Twitter. Ms Allen said she had abstained from the vote over Twitter, calling it the hardest decision. She said she had taken that course of action because the Government committed last week to taking in 3,000 more refugees, mostly children, from the Middle East and North Africa. Immigration minister, James Brokenshire, claimed that taking in children from Europe could encourage them to put their lives at risk with people traffickers and on dangerous sea crossings. Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily. Mr Brokenshire insisted child refugees should be safe in Europe and that the Government was helping countries ensure this. He said: "It is about supporting those frontline member states, it is about supporting our other European partners, to stand by their responsibilities, because in essence Europe should be a safe space. "We're not talking about a conflict zone and therefore we judge that the best way to make a difference and to help the greatest numbers of those in need is to support the majority of refugees to enable them to stay safely in their home region, which is why I make the points that I do, in respect of the aid and assistance." The Bill will return to the Lords on Tuesday with a revised amendment that removes the reference to 3,000 refugees. Instead Lord Dubs will ask the Government to resettle a "specified number" of lone child refugees to be determined in consultation with local authorities. Tories Tania Mathias and Mr Phillips both called on the Government to take more action on child refugees. Ms Mathias said: "I believe Lord Dubs' amendment is the right thing to do tonight to give those children a safe haven." Mr Phillips said: "Those children are tonight in Calais, they're on the Greek-Macedonia border, they're at the Gare du Nord in Paris and Midi station in Brussels. They're sleeping rough in Berlin and Rome and Skopje and Vienna. "Tonight they will sleep in fear and tomorrow they will wake to the hopelessness to which their position exposes them. But we can do something." Additional reporting by Press Association Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A junior doctor announced his intention to resign from the profession live on TV out of frustration over the new contract. Trainee doctor Ben White announced on ITVs Good Morning Britain that he would be resigning in order to focus on a legal campaign against the contract which he felt had himself and his colleagues backed into a corner. He said: "I have taken the decision that I am resigning as a trainee doctor to focus on a legal campaign to fight the contract on behalf of my patients and on behalf of the NHS." When asked why he had chosen to resign, Dr White said: I really feel like weve been backed into a corner and theres not a lot of sense coming out of the Governments side of things. "We have to put patients first and we can see at the moment the understaffing and the underfunding in the NHS." Junior doctors are set to begin an all-out strike from 8am on Tuesday which will continue through Wednesday. The strike has already resulted in the cancellation of 125,000 operations and appointments. Dr White assured patients that they can still receive emergency care during the two-day planned strike if they go to a hospital, as consultants would be available to treat them. 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 On Sunday, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt refused to trial an alternative contract in exchange for cancelling the strike. Mr Hunt dismissed a letter from the shadow Health Secretary, Heidi Alexander, urging him to agree to trial the new junior doctors' contract rather than impose it across the NHS unilaterally. The letter, which was also signed by two former heath ministers including a Conservative - also said there should be an independent evaluation of the so-called "weekend effect" which sees higher mortality rates for patients admitted at weekends. A BMA source said they supported the initiative and that if the Government agreed to limited trials of a pilot of the contract, representatives would be prepared to meet them to discuss the possibility of calling off the strike on Tuesday and Wednesday. The walkout would see all junior doctors, including Accident & Emergency staff, walk out the first time such action has been taken in NHS history by doctors. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The British Medical Association has sought to clarify that people in need of emergency medical care will be treated during this weeks strike. Junior doctors will walk out between 8am and 5pm Tuesday and Wednesday. Unlike during previous strikes, they will not provide emergency care. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the stoppage was extreme and could put patient safety at risk, but BMA chair Dr Mark Porter said senior doctors would still be providing emergency cover. It is not true that emergency care is being withdrawn on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is true that junior doctors wont be providing it, but hospitals will be full of senior doctors, such as my colleagues, who will be providing it, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. Its important for the people of this country to understand that this does not mean that that cover will not be provided, it means that senior doctors will be providing that cover. Consultants and specialists have been moved off longer-term elective duties and are being re-rostered to provide A&E cover as part of contingency planning. Junior doctors strike - all you need to know Dr Porter said the BMA was happy to return to negotiations if Mr Hunt lifted the threat of unilaterally imposing the a new contract on doctors. The Government has refused to lift its threat, however and accused doctors of a political strike to bring down the Government. We havent refused to talk, weve continually requested talks, Dr Porter said. We have said repeatedly and always that we will call off the strike if the Government will call off the imposition. By contrast, the Government has said there is nothing that will get it to call off the imposition. Theres a lot of discussion amongst junior doctors and no decisions have yet been taken, which means theyre all possible but that doesnt mean theyre either likely or going to happen. Junior doctors say the new contract will incentivise unsafe shift patterns and put patient safety at risk, while the Government says it will help improve medical care at weekends. The strike explained Why are doctors striking? The Government has said it will impose a new contract on them without their agreement. Doctors say the new contract will harm patient safety by incentivising unsafe shift rosters. The Government says it will help improve care at the weekends. The new contract is cost-neutral so it is not a case of doctors asking for more or less money overall, though there may be individual winners and losers from it. Will emergency care still be available during the strike? Junior doctors will not be providing emergency care, but senior doctors have been drafted in and will be providing emergency care. Where does the strike apply? It applies across England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have devolved hearth services and are unaffected. Previous strikes have seen high turnouts and doctors leaders are expecting a similar situation this time. What about GP services? The vast majority of GP services will be unaffected. GPs are by definition senior doctors and are not on strike. Some unorthodox walk-in or health centre services may be affected: it is best to phone ahead. Do junior doctors back the strike? Junior doctors overwhelmingly back the strike. They voted by 98 per cent to 2 per cent in favour of striking, on a turnout of more than 70 per cent. Do the public support the strike? All polls suggest that the public support the junior doctors and blame the Government for the dispute. There is slightly reduced support for a strike that includes emergency care, but the public still supports doctors overall. Will there be any more strikes? There are none officially planned, but unless a conclusion can be reached more seem likely. Leaked documents suggest some in the BMA are advocating an indefinite all-out strike until the contract is withdrawn. Where are negotiations at the moment? Both sides are accusing each other of refusing to negotiate. The BMA says it will call off the strike if the Government scraps plans to impose the contract without agreement. The Government is refusing to do this and has now accused the BMA of a political strike to bring down the Government Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Junior doctors will go into Tuesdays all-out strike without the explicit backing of any of the professions royal colleges amid signs of deep concern among senior consultants that both sides in the dispute need to compromise. Hospitals across England are finalising plans for dealing with the strike that will be the first in the history of the NHS to affect emergency, paediatric and maternity services. It will run from 8am to 5pm Tuesday and Wednesday. So far, more than 125,000 appointments and operations have been cancelled. But the scale of the action and the potentially dangerous impact on patient care has split the medical profession. In statements over recent days, each of the specialist medical royal colleges have stopped short of endorsing the industrial action and have called for an end to the damaging stand-off. While most are sympathetic to the broader concerns of their younger colleagues, many are also privately critical of the hard line stance taken by the junior doctors committee of the British Medical Association. Senior people are extremely frustrated at the absolute impasse in this sorry situation, the president of one of the royal colleges told The Independent. There are a range of views but most of us think that both sides need to step back from the brink and talk. Some senior doctors are uncomfortable at the escalation of the dispute and its potential to seriously affect patient care. In a letter sent to David Cameron on Monday, the leaders of 13 royal colleges called on the Prime Minister to directly intervene and bring both parties back to the negotiating table. Tellingly, the letter did not explicitly support the action by junior doctors, while one source said there was heated debate within the colleges about the stance they should take. Junior doctors strike - all you need to know Significantly, not a single royal college head signed an open letter by consultants sent at the weekend to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The letter said the consultants would be able to cover during the strike, ensuring that juniors can take this action with the complete confidence that their patients are safe. In statements over the past few days, the royal colleges have expressed sympathy for the concerns of junior doctors many of which are not directly related to the contract but stopped short of endorsing the industrial action. The escalation of the junior doctors' action into an all-out strike, to include acute and emergency services, is extremely worrying, said Jane Dacre, president of the Royal College Physicians. All doctors are trained to act in their patients best interests. I urge all my colleagues to think carefully and to do what is in their patients best interest, for now and for the future. In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Doctor in acute medicine, Melissa Haskins, holds up a 'I ain't afraid of no Hunt' sign whilst striking with other junior doctors outside her hospital, St Thomas' Hospital in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Accident and emergency junior doctor, Jennifer Hulse, holds a homemade placard outside St Thomas' Hospital as she strikes with colleagues in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Demonstrators and Junior doctors hold placards as they protest outside the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, in Basingstoke during a strike by junior doctors Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Demonstrators and Junior doctors hold placards as they protest outside the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, in Basingstoke during a strike by junior doctors Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike A supporter displays a slogan on her bag during a junior doctors' strike outside St Thomas' Hospital in London Reuters In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike The picket line outside King's College Hospital in London PA In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike The picket line outside King's College Hospital in London, as thousands of junior doctors begun the first all-out strike in the history of the NHS after the Health Secretary said the Government would not be "blackmailed" into dropping its manifesto pledge for a seven-day health service PA In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Junior doctors and supporters take part in a strike outside the Royal United Hospital in Bath Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Doctor in acute medicine, Melissa Haskins, holds up a 'I ain't afraid of no Hunt' sign whilst striking with other junior doctors outside her hospital, St Thomas' Hospital in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Dave Prentis, UNISON general secretary visits a British Medical Association picket line at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, to show support for striking junior doctors on the second day of the union's annual health conference PA The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, whose members will be among those most affected by the strike, also failed to endorse it. We are currently asked whether we support industrial action that includes withdrawing emergency cover, the college said in a statement. The college is of the view that such action is a matter for individual members of the BMA. In hospitals in which there are too few senior doctors to provide such safety, then conscience will dictate the actions of the members of the college. Where junior doctors continue to provide such cover to ensure patient safety, this must not be regarded by the protagonists in the dispute as anything other than the actions of reasonable people in very difficult circumstances. Dr David Richmond, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: The RCOGs primary concern is to ensure patient safety and the college urges all doctors trainee or otherwise to carefully evaluate the implications of their actions and to determine their own personal criteria for industrial action before the proposed strike dates. Others were more supportive of the junior doctors but also stopped short of endorsing the strike. The President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Professor Neena Modi, said: The imposition of this ill-conceived contract has derailed the aim of delivering effective seven-day services and alienated those on whom the future of the NHS depends. Consultants will continue to support juniors who feel the current impasse leaves them no option but industrial action. Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Mr Hunt accused junior doctors of trying to veto an election pledge made to improve the NHS by creating a truly seven-day-a-week service. No trade union has the right to veto a manifesto promise voted for by the British people, he told MPs. We are proud of the NHS as one of our greatest institutions but we must turn that pride into actions and a seven-day service will help us turn the NHS into one of the highest quality healthcare systems in the world." Mr Hunt appealed to junior doctors not to withdraw emergency cover during the strike, but ruled out the Government compromising on imposing a new contract on NHS staff. He said that there were plans in place to provide safe care, particular in maternity, A&E and crisis mental health services. Privately, Government sources accused the BMA of trying to bring down the Government, saying it had radicalised a generation of junior doctors. Danny Mortimer, chief executive, NHS Employers, said there was no justification for doctors refusing to care for the sickest patients in the NHS. The contract that is now being implemented reflects agreement to the overwhelming majority of proposals made by the BMA during our talks with them between November and February, he said. Even with the outstanding issue of enhanced payment on Saturdays, we have ensured that the doctors who work them most frequently will receive increased rates of pay." Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed criticism that she is running a campaign on catchphrases taken directly from Margaret Thatcher. The First Minister of Scotland was attacked by the Scottish Labour Party for launching adverts with the slogan "Don't just hope for a better Scotland, vote for one", accompanied by a picture of her face. Similar posters were put up by the Conservatives during the party's 1979 election campaign, showing Mrs Thatcher's face accompanied by an almost identical catchphrase. "Don't just hope for a better life. Vote for one," was the wording for the Iron Lady's campaign that saw the biggest swing from Labour to Conservatives among voters since 1945. Ms Sturgeon has dismissed the accusation by Labour as "desperate" (Scottish National Party) But Ms Sturgeon said the accusation that she was copying lines from her ideological nemesis was "desperate". "If Labour are saying that is just shows beyond doubt how desperate Labour are," she said. "We're fighting a positive campaign, full of hope and optimism the future of Scotland." Alex Rowley, the Scottish Labour deputy leader and campaign director, implied that Ms Sturgeon and the SNP were moving away from their left-wing commitments. "We knew the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon had ditched the left-wing rhetoric, but we didn't expect them to start stealing Thatcher's lines. "Maybe Alex Salmond's view that Scots 'didn't mind' Margaret Thatcher's economic policy is alive and well in the SNP." The slogan during an election campaign that saw Mrs Thatcher gain thousands of seats from Labour The former leader of the SNP said back in 2008 that that Scots "didn't mind the economic side [of Lady Thatcher] so much. But we didn't like the social side at all." He was responding to criticism that the SNP had adopted a more free-market, tax-cutting agenda, as his successor continues to do from Labour now. The next Scottish election is on May 5 2016 with official campaigning underway since 24 March this year. Additional reporting from the Press Association Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Lets get the important bit out of the way first. The Home Secretary wore a boring tartan two piece and a plain white shirt. Sexism! Everyday sexism! I hear you hashtag. Just because shes a woman blah blah blah. But when Theresa May has got something to say that she wants people to hear, she tends to venture towards the more adventurous end of her sizeable wardrobe. Theres a Tory leadership contest coming, be it in the next few weeks or months or years, and todays speech, in which one of the Conservatives more dedicated EU critics spelled out in not much detail why Britain is in fact better off remaining in anti-democratic hoc to our continental neighbours is not one she hopes will be remembered very long. Wisely, she dedicated most of her keynote speech on the EU referendum to something thats got absolutely nothing to do with the EU referendum. The case for remaining a member of the European Convention on Human Rights is unclear, she said, blaming it for delaying for years the extradition of Abu Hamza, almost stopping the deportation of Abu Qatada, and telling Parliament that we could not deprive prisoners of the vote. The European Court of Human Rights, you will of course know, has nothing to do with the European Union. Britain is free to opt out of it any time it likes, though you will not find a human rights lawyer out there that thinks we should, but everyone knows a bit of generic Europe-bashing goes a long way to prepare the ground on these occasions. Still Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada were both, in the end, deported and these are numbers that shouldnt be ignored when it comes to immigration. There might be more than 300,000 coming in every year, three times Camerons no ifs no buts promise in 2010, later revised down to an aspiration, but with Messrs Hamza and Qatada gone thats two you can subtract from that number already. These are the successes Ms May is forced to cling to. Recommended Read more Backlash over Theresa May call to leave human rights convention She took four questions at the end. They were all the same. Isnt the huge number of people arriving perfectly legally every year from the European Union to work in the UK, and the pressure it puts on schools and hospitals and everything else the problem? The EU does not make it impossible to control the numbers [coming in], she said. Weve been working to bring control. Its absolutely right that people have concerns. We must bring control. Weve been doing that for immigration outside the EU and weve now got some changes that give us control to the numbers inside. Those changes, by the way, refer to a ruling in Germany in 2014 on a Romanian womans entitlement to benefit when she had no intention of looking for work. These are not the matters that will placate the ire of men and women in Thanet and Clacton and Stoke-on-Trent, who very generously get angry about immigrants on behalf of the population that actually live near them and dont object in the slightest. Naturally, there was the economic case for remaining too. We are not in 1940, she warned. We are not in 1973...We are not in 1992...We are in 2016, and when we make this important decision, we need to look ahead to the challenges we will face in the next ten, twenty, thirty years and more. A wise argument, which was only slightly undermined around 90 seconds later, when she explained that we could not possibly leave because, We export more to Ireland than we do to China, almost twice as much to Belgium as we do to India, and nearly three times as much to Sweden as we do to Brazil. If this is still the case in ten, twenty or thirty years, we really will be in trouble. Still at least this particular Tory leadership race will have been and gone by then, and momentous decisions of grave national importance might not be a proxy war for the career ambitions for a tiny number of entirely maladjusted people. Well, not these particular ones anyway. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Nicky Morgan is reportedly planning to make a dramatic U-turn over the policy to force all schools to transform into academies, amid a looming Tory rebellion in the Commons. In a significant concession to backbenchers the Education Secretary is considering allowing the best-performing councils to run their own academy chains. The original plan unveiled by the Chancellor George Osborne at his Budget speech last month intends to turn 18,600 state schools into academies within six years. Those who have not been converted must have plans in place to do so by 2022. Recommended Read more Nicky Morgan hints at plans to run for Tory leadership But there is sign of that Ms Morgan faces opposition from within her own party, one Conservative MP described the flagship education policy as f***ing poison to The Times. With a majority of just 17 in the Commons, and a rebel number of up to 40 MPs, the government will be forced to water down the policy if it is to pass through the House. It will be a considerable blow to Ms Morgan who has repeatedly insisted there will be no U-turn in the plans. The Department for Education refused to be drawn on private discussions but a spokesman added: Our education reforms are raising standards and 1.4million more children are now in good or outstanding schools. Our White Paper reforms are the next step in ensuring every child has access to an excellent education by putting control in the hands of the teachers and school leaders who know their pupils best. We want to work constructively with the sector to deliver this and ensure standards continue to rise. According to the Observer, Ms Morgan has been requested to appear before the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers before the Queens speech on 18 May. Graham Brady, chairman of the committee, told the newspaper that good academies can bring enormous benefits and it is right that we should be helping those that want to covert to do so. But I hope the white paper will be adapted to reflect the need to support and ease the process, rather than impose the change in areas where schools are already performing very well. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned the policy last week at Prime Ministers Questions, claiming the government was wasting 1.3 billion on a top-down reorganisation that wasnt in his manifesto. George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Show all 8 1 /8 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Debt forecasts up, growth forecasts down The OBRs new forecasts have downgraded growth in all of the next five years to 2020. The watchdog says the economy will only grow by 2 per cent in 2016, as opposed to the anticipated 2.4 per cent. Borrowing and productivity growth are also down with forecast borrowing in 2018-198 16 billion higher George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New tax on sugary drinks The Chancellor announced a new tax on sugary soft drinks, which is projected to raise 520 million. At least some of the money will be spent on doubling funding for school sport, the Chancellor says. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the levy George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Tax cut for higher earners paying the 40p rate The Chancellor has raised the threshold for paying the higher rate of income tax to 45,000. The higher rate is paid by roughly the richest 15 per cent, currently people earning over 42,386 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Increase in tax-free income tax threshold The tax-free allowance increase to 11,500 in April 2017 up from 10,600 now. The Chancellor previously raised the allowance from 6,475 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative manifesto pledges to put the allowance up to 12,500 by the end of the Parliament George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New devolution for counties and powers for London and Manchester The West of England, the East of England and Greater Lincolnshire will all get elected mayor-led combined authorities with new powers. The Chancellor says they are backed by 1 billion new funding. Greater Manchester will get new powers of criminal justice while London will keep its business rates giving whoever is elected Mayor a lot more spending power George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Fuel duty frozen for sixth year running The Chancellor had planned to end the fuel duty freeze he had put in place for the whole previous parliament. In the event, he has announced a freeze for another year George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance All schools to become academies As reported yesterday the Chancellor unveiled legislation to turn all schools into academies. He said all schools would either be academies or on their way to being academies by 2020, and that funding had been set aside to fund the change George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Lifetime ISA The Chancellor announced a new savings account to encourage under-40s to save for retirement for every 4 saved, the Government will top this up by 1 up to the value of 4,000 a year. Tax-free ISAs will also be increased from 15,000 to 20,000 He added: "Teachers don't want it. Parents don't want it. Governors don't want it. Head teachers don't want it. Even his own MPs and councillors don't want it. Lucy Powell, shadow Education Secretary, said: Its increasingly clear that the government does not have support for proposals to force good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes. Last month figures obtained by Labour from a parliamentary question suggested each transformation from school to academy would cost 66,000 on average. It added that councils would have to cover a further 12,300 in costs, such as legal fees, per school. In the same month leaders of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, at a local government level, demanded the Department for Education drops the controversial policy. The council leaders said, in a joint letter, that there is no evidence to suggest academies perform better than council-maintained schools. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Campaigners and politicians have criticised Home Secretary Theresa May's assertion that Britain should leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The Home Secretary announced her cautious support for Britain's continued membership of the EU but said it should exit the ECHR because she believes the court hampers efforts to extradite extremists. The comments by the potential Conservative party leader candidate have been criticised as a "betrayal of the British people" and "desperate" by UK human rights organisations. Amnesty said that leaving the ECHR would strike at the very architecture of international protections, while Liberty criticised Mrs May for playing fast and loose with the legacy of Winston Churchill - who was one of the European Convention's early architects. Theresa May makes the case for Britain to remain the European Union but leave the ECHR (PA) The ECHR, which opened in 1959, upholds the European Convention on Human Rights among individuals against the 47 European countries - not just the 28 member countries of the EU. It is not directly an EU institution - the EU has its own court, the European Court of Justice - but the ECHR's rulings often become case law for countries. The 1998 Human Rights Act helped to integrate the Convention into UK law, but now some members of the Conservative Party want to scrap that Act in favour of a "British Bill of Rights" which would prevent decisions made by UK courts being checked by anyone else. Here are some of the most significant laws the ECHR has brought to Britain: 1. Freedom of the press In 1979 the ECHR backed the Sunday Times and its right to publish details of the thalidomide scandal, in which more than 300 people were thought to be victims of birth deformities because of the poorly tested drug. Elizabeth Buckle, a Thalidomide victim, pictured in 1968, aged seven (Getty) The paper, under editor Harold Evans, fought an injunction against publishing all the way up to the ECHR after national courts did not back its attempts to bring the case to light. The ECHR overruled the courts and backed the freedom of the press to publish in the national interest. 2. Child protection After a UK court found that a stepfather had used "reasonable chastisement" when beating his stepson with a wooden cane, the ECHR overruled them and said it amounted to "inhuman or degreading treatment". The UK government announced later that it would legislate to give children better protection. 3. Homophobia The criminalisation of male homosexuality in Northern Ireland was ruled as illegal by the ECHR in 1981. This ruling set the legal precedent for the Council of Europe ultimately requiring that no EU state could criminalise male or female homosexual acts - a major protection measure for the LGBT community. Ireland legalised gay marriage via a referendum in May 2015 (EPA) A claim of religious discrimination by two Christians who did not want to deal with same-sex couples was also thrown out by the Strasbourg court in 2013, who backed the employers that had disciplined them. 4. Torture During the 1970s the British army used five "techniques" on IRA members including being forced into stress positions for hours, hooding, being subjected to noise and food and sleep deprivation. The ECHR ruled this as inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of human rights in 1978 and had the practice within the army officially ended. 5. Deportation Two cases have particularly inflamed the debate in some of the media and the Conservative Party around the European Convention of Human Rights. First, the case of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, a Kurdish asylum seeker who killed a 12-year-old girl in a driving accident and was able to plea a right to family life to remain in Britain seeking asylum. Ms May has given the case of Abu Qatada as a reason for exiiting the ECHR (Getty) The second was terror suspect Abu Qatada - Ms May's particular case study in the failings of the ECHR - whom Strasbourg blocked from being returned to Jordan because of evidence he had been tortured there. Once Jordan promised not to use evidence obtained under torture, he was removed from the UK and stood trial in that country in 2013. The ECHR also backed the deportation of five other terror suspects to the US after finding there would be no violation of human rights once they were in a "supermax" prison there. Bella Sankey, policy director for Liberty, added: "Britain founded [the Convention], it is the most successful system for the enforcement of human rights in the history of the world, and every day it helps bring freedom, justice and the rule of law to 820 million people. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Egypt's President has called on citizens to protect the state and its institutions from forces of evil ahead of planned protests across the country. The policies of Abdel-Fattah el-Sisis government have been the source of increasing discontent in recent weeks with many Egyptians especially critical of the decision to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. The transfer of sovereignty over the islands was agreed in a secret deal, and announced during a visit from King Salman earlier in April. In a televised speech on Sunday, Mr Sisi stressed the need for stability and urged Egypt to stand united. He said attempts to degrade the Arab nation wont be successful. We must protect these institutions because these mean the state. I am reiterating to the Egyptian people this is the responsibility of all of us, for us to protect this security and stability, he said. Protests are essentially banned in Egypt, with organisers required to notify police three days prior to a demonstration and provide personal details and demands. The countrys Special Forces have the right to ban or postpone such action if they feel public order is at risk. Nonetheless, Egypt has recently seen its biggest demonstrations since Mr el-Sisi took office in 2014, with thousands taking to the streets to call for his resignation and criticise his policies. In particular, the government is accused of trading the two Red Sea islands for aid and investment from Saudi Arabia. The islands Tiran and Sanafir are strategically important as they are located at the entrance of the Straits of Tiran. The straits, which lead to the Gulf of Aqaba, provide Israels only access to the Red Sea. However, officials insist the islands always belonged to Saudi Arabia but were placed under Egyptian protection in 1950 for fear they would be attacked by Israel. Planned protests called for by politicians and activists - come as the President also faces criticism over the ailing economy, a resilient insurgency by Islamic militants in Sinai and the fallout from the abduction, torture and killing of an Italian doctoral student in Cairo. The demonstrations will coincide with a national holiday commemorating the withdrawal of the last Israeli troops from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 under the Camp David peace agreement. The Strong Egypt Party, founded by Abdel Moneim Abouel Fottouh, the former leader of Muslim Brotherhood, pledged its support for the protests and urged others to join them in a statement published on their Facebook page on Sunday. The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Show all 8 1 /8 The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi1_Reuters.jpg Reuters The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi2_AFPGetty.jpg AFP/Getty The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi3_Reuters.jpg Reuters The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi4_AFPGetty.jpg AFP/Getty The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi5_AFPGetty.jpg AFP/Getty The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi6_AFPGetty.jpg AFP/Getty The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi7_AFP.jpg AFP The many faces of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi 36_al-Sisi8_AFP.jpg AFP Security troops in the country have been out in force since Friday, with armoured personnel carriers stationed at key traffic areas. Meanwhile, security agents have rounded up dozens of activists, journalists, and lawyers from their homes and cafes in downtown Cairo. Activist group Freedom for the Brave says nearly 100 people have been arrested since the latest round of detentions began last week. On Sunday, Egypts military spokesman Brigadier General Mohammed Samir said armed forces would be deployed to prevent saboteurs from taking advantage of the protests. And a statement from the government said Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar had met with officials to review preparations to confront any attempts to "break the law". Mr Abdel-Ghaffar was quoted as saying security apparatus would be ready to address any action that could disturb public security with "the utmost firmness and decisiveness," and urged citizens to ignore calls to create chaos and drive a wedge between the people and police. AP contributed to this report. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Troops, armed police and armoured cars were on the streets of Cairo following the arrests of dozens of activists and members of the media as Egypts president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi faced the most serious and sustained protests to his rule since coming to power nearly two years ago. There has been rising popular discontent over a range of issues with the President claiming his opponents were seeking to endanger national security. But the focal point of the demonstrations called for Monday was nationalistic - anger over the decision to hand over two islands on the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia, The sheer scale of the security operation which blocked off Tahrir Square, the symbolic centre of protests, the journalists and doctors union, and presence of forces in their thousands on the capitals ring roads and the city centre illustrated the wariness of the authorities at what is unfolding. Monday was also the anniversary of Sinai Liberation Day, commemorating the withdrawl of Israeli forces from the Peninsula in 1982. The military and the Interior Ministry stated that they were deploying to protect peaceful citizens who wanted to celebrate the occasion. But apart from a few dozen people waving flags on the streets of the affluent district of Mohandiseen the mood was sombre with expectation of troubles ahead. Police raids continued on Monday with three journalists detained, Khaled el-Bashy, a member of the Press Syndicates Board, confirmed. An activists group, Freedom for the Brave, said more than a hundred people were arrested last week. Egyptian police fired tear gas at protesters who held a rally calling for the 'downfall' of the regime (GETTY) Separately, the Egyptian authorities were reported to be investigating the Reuters news agency over its report that a 28-year-old Cambridge student, Giulio Regeni, whose body was found on the side of a road in Cairo with marks of torture was detained by police the night he disappeared. The agency stressed that it had based its report on six police and intelligence sources. The Egyptian government has strongly denied that its officials were involved in the death. President Sisi has been accused of selling national territory after saying that the two islands, Sanafir and Tiran, will come under Saudi sovereignty. He has sought to stress that the islands originally belonged to the Kingdom and had been put under Egyptian protection in 1950 to stop them being occupied by Israel. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Despite the protection, the Israelis captured the uninhabited islands in both 1956 and 1982, returning them voluntarily to Egypt on both occasions. President Sisis announcement came during a visit by King Salman of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom announced a multi-billion dollars aid and investment package for Egypt at a time when the country is in dire financial straits. The Saudis had been supportive of President Sisis government ever since, as the head of the armed forces, he overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi. The Brotherhood, supported at the time by Qatar, had long been regarded with loathing by the Saudis. There had been mass protests against the Muslim Brotherhood government and the commanders supporters held that he had provided leadership to a revolution. Mr Morsis followers claimed a blatant military coup had taken place. Since then more than a thousand people have been killed and an estimated 40,000 jailed. Amnesty International claimed recently that Egypt has reverted back to being a police state. During the first of the current round of protests against the Sisi government, crowds shouted people want to bring down the regime, an echo of the slogans used in the uprising which brought down Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and also used against Mohammed Morsi two years later. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Egyptian authorities are reportedly investigating news agency Reuters after it published a report claiming Italian student Giulio Regeni was detained by police on the night he disappeared before being found dead. The Egyptian government has been heavily criticised for refusing to look into claims its security services may have been involved in the PhD students death. The 28-year-old Cambridge student was found dead in a ditch by the side of the road in Cairo on 25 January with signs of extreme torture and broken bones. Activists and Italian nationals living in Egypt took part in a rally in memory of Italian student Giulio Regeni (Getty) On Friday, reports emerged that the head of Azbakiya police station, where Reuters alleged Mr Regeni was initially taken, had filed a police report against the company. It reportedly accused Reuters of publishing false news aimed at disturbing public order and spreading rumours to harm Egypts reputation. Last Thursday, Reuters reported that six anonymous police and intelligence sources said the student was detained by police and then transferred to a compound run by homeland security the day he vanished. Egypts interior ministry said the report was unfounded and that it reserves the right to take legal action against promoters of these rumours and false news. A Cairo-based Reuters journalist was also reportedly questioned by police and prosecutors, according to the Guardian. The students death and Cairos subsequent refusal to investigate has provoked outrage in Europe, with Rome withdrawing its ambassador over the affair. The US State department has urged the country to carry out an impartial investigation into his death and a spokesman said they had pressed the point in private talks with Egyptian authorities ahead of Secretary of State John Kerrys visit this week. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Spokesman John Kirby said: "We have reiterated that the details that have come to light since his death have raised questions about the circumstances of his death that we believe can only be answered through an impartial and comprehensive inquiry." The complaint against Reuters is the latest in a string of attacks on freedom of the press which have worried international observers since the military overthrew the democratically elected government in 2013. In 2013, three Al Jazeera journalists were detained and subsequently tried and convicted of reporting false news which was damaging to national security. One of the journalists, Peter Greste, was released in 2015 and immediately deported to his native Australia. His colleagues, Egyptian journalists Baher Mohammed and Mohamed Fahmy, were eventually released a few weeks later after being pardoned by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. A recent survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found Egypt had the second highest number of journalists behind bars in the world behind China. In a statement, David Crundwell, a senior vice-president at Reuters, said: We stand by the story published on 21 April, 2016 regarding the detention of an Italian student, Giulio Regeni. The story did not state who is responsible for his death, and is consistent with Reuters commitment to accurate and independent journalism. We cannot verify whether a complaint has been filed against Reuters regarding the story, as we have not received notice of any legal action. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} New York City policymakers and affordable housing advocates have criticised Airbnb after the company released a report claiming it benefited predominantly black neighbourhoods. Critics called the companys release of this information a duplicitous and disingenuous PR push, a smokescreen to obscure how Airbnb is actually ravaging black neighbourhoods in New York by taking rental units off the market which contributes to raised rents amid a significant housing crisis. Its a typical Airbnb puff-piece where they release selective data, Sarah Desmond, executive director of the Manhattan-based advocacy non-profit Housing Conservation Coordinators, told The Independent. They control all of the data. No one else has access to the raw data, they only have the summarised whitewashed version that they released. [Airbnb] obviously use the data points that make the case that they want. The report, released last week, showed a 78 per cent increase in guests renting Airbnb listings in the 30 postal codes of the five boroughs with the highest black populations over the year to 31 March 2016. Additionally, the number of hosts in the city who listed their spaces whether private room, shared space or full unit grew by 35 per cent; but in black neighbourhoods, there was a 60 per cent increase. Simply put, Airbnb is growing significantly faster in predominantly black neighbourhoods than it is across the city," the report said. Rotimi Akinnuoye, owner of a Bedford-Stuyvesant wine shop who says Airbnb guests boost his business Airbnb More listings bring more visitors, and more visitors bring their pocketbooks and tourist dollars to the communities, according to the report. At least $43m (30m) went into these 30 postal codes economies an increase of 63 per cent from 2014 to 2015, and a 68 per cent increase from the year before that. Airbnbs figures also show that 58 per cent of listings in predominantly black neighbourhoods were private rooms or shared spaces, creating a great opportunity for retirees, empty-nesters and anyone with a little extra space to make a bit of extra money". The other 42 per cent are full-unit rentals, despite New York State law that prohibits these types of rentals for less than 30 days. New York City Council member Robert Cornegy, whose district includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, attributes a boost to the brick and mortar businesses in the community to the 900 Airbnb hosts he says are in the neighbourhood. Shark infested Airbnb The predominant housing stock [in Bedford-Stuyvesant] is brownstones and limestones one to three family dwellings, Mr Cornegy said. The councilman said Airbnb provided his constituents with an additional opportunity to earn extra revenue, whether they were homeowners filling a room for a relative in college, or residents who ran bed and breakfast business in their three-to-four family brownstone. Airbnb, however, offered no data to show who offered rentals in neighbourhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn; nor did they specify who owned the businesses they said benefit from tourist dollars. When asked to elaborate on the data provided in the report, Airbnb supplied a statement from Josh Meltzer, its head of public policy for New York: [The] report is further evidence that Airbnb is positively impacting communities throughout the city. [Airbnb] really doesnt say whether or not black people are truly benefitting, said Norrinda Hayat, assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Housing & Consumer Law Clinic at University of the District of Columbia. Theyre saying: People in these neighbourhoods are benefitting were not going to say whether theyre black or not. Businesses in these neighbourhoods are benefitting were not going to say whether theyre black-owned or not. I think if that were the case, theyd say it. It would help. A segment of Bedford-Stuyvesant from the 'Faces of Airbnb' beta map Inside Airbnb Independent data analyst Murray Cox, creator of the website Inside Airbnb, which analyses raw data pulled from the platform, said he had no doubt that some residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant and other historically black neighbourhoods were benefitting. However, he said, we know those neighbourhoods are not just black neighbourhoods, theyre gentrifying neighbourhoods. Many of those neighbourhoods have a very high percentage of renters more than the city average". Bedford-Stuyvesant has undergone significant gentrification over the past 15 years. From 2000 to 2010, the white population increased by 633 per cent, according to Census data. Community activists protest the eviction of an elderly Bed-Stuy resident Michael Premo/Flickr Mr Cox said that because of the growth of the white population and rising rents, the likelihood of Airbnb actually benefitting black residents is rather low. Although no racial demographics appeared in Airbnbs report, Mr Cox developed a beta map of Airbnb listings across New York that pulled pictures from host profiles using data from 2014. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, white hosts had a significant presence on the map despite only being 10 per cent of the areas population, per 2010 Census data. The racial makeup of the Airbnb community doesnt match those underlying neighbourhoods, Mr Cox said. When youre looking at whos using Airbnb in those neighbourhoods, theres clearly a disparity away from the black population. Based on data presented in Inside Airbnb, 45.7 per cent of about 2,000 Airbnb listings in Bedford-Stuyvesant are full unit rentals, 71.1 per cent of listings are available more than 60 days out of the year, and 28.6 per cent of hosts have multiple listings increasing the likelihood of unlawful behaviour and the removal of housing stock from the rental market to use as illegal hotels". Brownstones line a block in Bed-Stuy Mike Groen/Flickr Even in their release of the data in this study, [Airbnb] cant help but admit all the illegal rentals that are posted on their website, said New York City Council member Helen K Rosenthal. Ms Rosenthal and council member Jumaane Williams, who serve on the Committee on Housing and Buildings, are working on legislation to regulate Airbnb, especially when hosts have multiple listings and rent out full units. Under legislation introduced by Ms Rosenthal in June 2015, illegal hotel operators could face fines of up to $50,000 (34,000). Airbnb called the proposed measure an attack on the middle class", saying that everyday users of the platform would face a financial burden should the law pass. Mr Williams said Airbnb relied on conflating middle-class Airbnb users with who use the platform unlawfully. They thrive on miscommunication. They thrive on mixing up illegal and legal to make it seem as though were going after people that were really not, Mr Williams said, saying that the company was "ravaging" and wreaking havoc in the communities they said they were benefitting. New Yorkers show their support for Airbnb outside 30 October City Council hearing Andrew Burton/Getty Council members Rosenthal, Williams and Cornegy want to encourage the use of the platform amongst middle-class hosts using it lawfully Airbnb is not doing themselves any favours by allegedly withholding raw data from the Housing Committee. Our council has not bought into their lies, Mr Williams said. They try to formulate very effective, I have to say campaigns based on lies to put out there. They just have a lot more money than we do, but we have the truth on our side. Airbnb said it was willing to work with the City Council to find a way to regulate and enforce these illegal hotels. Airbnb opposes illegal hotels in New York they are bad for our community and do not offer the local experience our travelers seek, said Mr Meltzer. We are eager to work with City Council to pass sensible home sharing laws that discourage illegal hotels and allow hosts to share their primary home. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Canadian hostage John Ridsdel has been killed by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines. Ridsdel, 68, was beheaded by his kidnappers just hours after their demand for ransom expired on Monday. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the killing as an act of cold-blood murder. Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death, Trudeau said in a televised address. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage. Prime Minister Trudeau issues statement on the Killing of a Canadian hostage In the Philippines https://t.co/xPypbAVFxd STEPS AFTER DARK (@StepsAfterDark) April 25, 2016 While spending his vacation in the Philippines, Ridsdel, a semi-retired mining executive, was captured along with three others by the militants in September 2015. Ridsdel's family later issued a statement saying that he loved life and lived it to the fullest with his family and friends at the center." "He was loved by all his friends and adored by his daughters, sister and extended family, the statement read, according to the CBC. Our family is devastated at the loss of our father and brother John Ridsdel whose life was cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence. Army officials found a severed head inside a plastic bag on Monday in Jolo, a capital in southern Philippines. The discovery came five hours after the deadline for ransom expired, CBS News reports. Kidnappers were demanding 300 million pesos ($6.5 million) for each of the three Canadian men held captive. Bob Rae, a close friend of Ridsdel, said that the last sixth months have been "very paintful." "I've been involved behind the scenes for the last six months," Rae told the CBC, "trying to find a solution [has] been very painful." Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Before the 1959 revolution, the tiny town of Soroa in a rainforest-covered valley in Artemisa province was one of the American mafias favourite playgrounds. They built a kitschy Hawaiian-style hotel and pool in the middle of nowhere but Fidel Castro and friends interrupted the party before work on the casino was finished, taking over the resort in the interests of the state. Since then, almost nothing has changed. But in the hills above the town, some of the forest has been hacked back to expose rich red earth, and for locals, the green coffee plant shoots emerging from the soil are a fittingly fragile metaphor for their hopes of a new beginning. One month on since US President Barack Obamas historic visit, Cuba has just held its seventh Communist Party congress. More than 1,000 party members from across the island met in Havana to discuss the islands future, with its economic roadmap at the front and centre of talks. Recommended Read more The best time to visit Cuba But despite the enthusiastic lip service about reform that President Raul Castro impressed upon Obama in March, the party congress has made it clear that Cubas revolutionary vanguard is not willing to let their socialist state make the transition to a market-style economy any time soon. This is basically setting the future of Cuba, said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, an economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh. While there were promises at the last party congress in 2011 to take measures to free up private enterprise and boost economic growth, Cubas economy is still in desperate need of a shot in the arm; according to the Communist Partys own newspaper, Granma, only one fifth of 2011s planned reforms have actually been implemented. A boom in privately-owned restaurants and legions of new tourists drinking the country dry of beer show that change is taking root in Cubas more visited areas, but in sleepier spots like Soroa the government is still in control. Of the crops farmed by the descendants of slaves and people with aboriginal Taino heritage in Artemisa province who are among Cubas poorest demographic groups up to 90 per cent will go straight to the state. Beatrice Soroa, who bears the same name as the town and of French coffee plantation owner Jean-Pierre Soroa who owned her ancestors, avoids the midday heat under an open shelter made from royal palm tree next to her one room, windowless home, constructed from the same wood. Reggaeton comes in through tinny radio speakers, powered by a nearby solar panel recently installed by the German governments development aid agency. There is a television set from the Eighties perched on a precarious-looking stool. It wasnt my idea, but it was free, and the solar panel means I have light and sometimes TV. But the next hurricane.... She nudges the bolted down panel with the toe of her green government-issue wellington boots, which are a familiar sight all over the island. Itll be gone. I did try to tell them. Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Show all 20 1 /20 Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man rides his modified bicycle past a vintage American car in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A taxi sits parked by Ancon Beach waiting for returning bathers in Trinidad Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Afrocuban carnival group "Los componedores de batea" performing in the streets of La Habana Vieja Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Pastel colours for an ice-cream place and a vintage American car in Cienfuegos after sunset Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man on the phone in a bookshop in Old Havana (Habana Vieja) selling books and displaying propaganda poster of the Cuban Revolution Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Street Musicians in Santiago De Cuba Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man works to repair his classic American car after it broke down along the Prado, a wide avenue that runs from Parque Central to the Malecon seafront highway, in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Members of the 'Ladies in White,' a group founded by the partners and relatives of jailed dissidents that regularly protests against the Cuban government, demonstrate on the streets of Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Street vegetables vendor in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba The sun setting through the palm trees and creates long shadows on the pool deck at this resort in Cuba Varadero Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba General view of a street in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A girls plays on a street in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Girls walk past graffiti art along the Paseo de Marti, the wide boulevard that runs through the heart of the historic Old Havana neighborhood in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A woman smokes her Havana cigar Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man harvests tobacco leaves for drying at a tobacco drying house on a co-op plantation in Pinar del Rio Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Men play chess on a street in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Locals take part in a gay parade in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Scene of the Memories Paraiso Azul resort in Santa Maria Key Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Beach on the Bay of Pigs, Zapata Peninsula Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Divers swimming above coral reef in Caribbean Sea Rex Even if a hurricane doesnt come along, whether these initiatives the government still has a monopoly on the fuel, fertiliser, seeds and tools needed to start cultivating crops, but will subsidise those who want to grow coffee will yield results remains to be seen. Botched Soviet-style collectivisation was a major factor in decimating Cubas economy, and the country was reliant on sugarcane exports for decades. Cuban leaders latest idea is re-energising the flagging coffee industry, since its a higher-value export crop, but Cubans themselves are limited to 57 grams of coffee a fortnight, with the rest sold mainly to Japan and the Netherlands through state agency Cubaexport. Although the government is pinning its hopes on coffee, the Cuban stuff dark roasted, smooth and sweet deserves its high price tag. It is hard to grow in this part of Cuba without enough natural shade from the islands sun, as French colonists who abandoned their Artemisa plantations in the mid-1800s realised. And since almost everything they harvest will go to the state, as Ms Soroa points out, the problem that plagues every sector of Cubas centrally-planned economy is also apparent here: no one is incentivised to work that hard. No one grows up here without knowing about the gap between what the government says and does. No one really bothers listening, she added. The detente in relations with the US is a particularly nifty bit of razzle-dazzle on the part of the Cuban government: There had been hope, before the three-day party conference began, that the islands leaders would announce that they are passing on the torch to the younger generation of reforming politicians. Instead, 84-year-old Raul Castro declared he would be staying in the post of party secretary for a second term, as would several other ageing revolutionaries currently in senior roles. The decision means Castro and his political allies will remain powerful, even after he steps down from the presidency in 2018. Castro told delegates that he wants to move slowly but surely, and that Cuba won't administer shock therapy, despite the growing popular frustration at the countrys economic performance. This is partly because the states finances are so weak the state has a monopoly on foreign trade and must therefore bear the cost of all imports, which private sector businesses demand. Even so, Cubas reforms to date have been slow compared to countries that have made the transition to market-driven economies before it, such as China and Vietnam. On Tuesday the party congress made an effort to quell the discontent by announcing that some cooperatives and small businesses will be allowed to buy wholesale from producers rather than through the government, but the move which only applies to businesses previously owned by the state is a gesture that wont satisfy those already frustrated by the government dragging its feet. State figures show that private employment is at just 23 per cent, up from 18 per cent in 2011, and there are indicators that the number of self-employed people running their own businesses is stagnating. Reported self-employment rates were down from a peak of 504,600 in May 2015 to 496,400 in January of this year. The economic problem is Cubas top priority, said Carlos Alzugaray, a Cuban diplomacy analyst based in the US. But there is a particular juncture in Cuba right now, which I call a generational transition. And we need to create the institutions that will help that new generation to govern the country effectively. While on the surface Cuba appears to be changing rapidly, meaningful effects are not yet trickling down to most of its people, or their pockets. Ms Soroa is blunt about the prospects for her town, which is starting to see tourists stop by on their way from Havana to Pinar del Rio, tobacco country. Tourists think its beautiful here, they stay with the rich cattle farmers on the other side of the valley, or the government tours take them to the old mafia hotel, she shrugs. So what? Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A former Pennsylvania senator is about to marry a man 50 years his junior, and more than two decades after his wifes death. Harris Wofford, a former member of the US Senate from 1991 to 1995, was married to lawmaker Clare Wofford for 48 years until she died when he was 70 years old. In his column for the New York Times, he explained that five years later, he met Matthew Charlton, 25, on a beach. Mr Wofford was 75 years old. As we talked, I was struck by Matthew's inquisitive and thoughtful manner and his charm. I knew he was somebody I would enjoy getting to know. We were decades apart in age with far different professional interests, yet we clicked, he said. They travelled around Europe together as close friends before becoming a couple. Mr Wofford with his late wife Clare (AP) We both felt the immediate spark, and as time went on, we realized that our bond had grown into love. Other than with Clare, I had never felt love blossom this way before. Mr Wofford, a Democrat who was special assistant for civil rights to president John F Kennedy and special adviser to Martin Luther King Jr, said it took three years to tell his three children about their relationship. They eventually welcomed Mr Charlton as a member of the family, and Mr Wofford said he was accepted warmly" by Mr Charltons parents. To some, our bond is entirely natural, to others it comes as a strange surprise, but most soon see the strength of our feelings and our devotion to each other. We have now been together for 15 years, he wrote. Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall straight, gay or in between. I dont categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness. Twice in my life, Ive felt the pull of such passionate preference, he added. At age 90, I am lucky to be in an era where the Supreme Court has strengthened what President Obama calls the dignity of marriage by recognizing that matrimony is not based on anyones sexual nature, choices or dreams. It is based on love. Mr Wofford and Mr Charlton are set to marry on 30 April. After serving four years in the Senate, he was narrowly defeated to return for a second term by Republican Rick Santorum. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The 43 Mexican students who vanished in 2014 were subjected to a night of confusion, terror and helplessness" in the events leading up to their disappearance, a panel of independent investigators said in a damning report of the Mexican governments handling of the case. The students, who were training to become teachers at a college in Ayotzinapa, disappeared on 26 September after attempting to travel to the south-western city of Iguala to attend a protest. But, according to the New York Times, which has seen a copy of the report, the panel said the events leading up to their disappearance saw them suffer a night of terror. The students had stolen five busses to use later as transport to the protests, but all vehicles were blocked by police, according to the New York Times, which has seen the . Three busses had been travelling north and two south. They were intercepted by police who, during the confrontation, opened fire, leaving some students dead and many injured. One bus-full of students that had been travelling north were taken away in several police cars, while another bus-full of the southbound students were pulled from their vehicle and removed by police. They have not been seen since. Recommended Read more Mexico cartel members arrested in hunt for 43 kidnapped students The panel of international experts, appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, accused the Mexican government of undermining their probe into the fate of the students, claiming they were repeatedly blocked in their efforts to obtain evidence from authorities. Mexico's government says that corrupt police in late 2014 handed the student teachers in Iguala over to drug-gang henchmen, who believed the trainees had been infiltrated by a rival gang. They say students were then killed and burned at a garbage dump in the south-western Mexican state of Guerrero. Families of missing Mexican students want proof of massacre But the remains of just one of the 43 students has been identified from a charred bone fragment, which was found in the Rio San Juan, a river by the town of Cocula, near Iguala where the students disappeared. The experts also said in their report there is strong evidence that Mexican police tortured some of the key suspects arrested over the students disappearance. Seventeen of the 123 suspects arrested showed signs of beatings, the report said, while some appeared to have sustained dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes. One suspect alleged he was nearly asphyxiated with a plastic bag, and medical studies showed another had been slapped on the ears so hard his eardrums broke and his ears bled. The allegations could damage the chance of convicting any of the suspects as Mexican judges are instructed to throw out confessions based on torture. Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, said the government's case was not solely based on confessions, but that authorities were investigating complaints filed by 31 people who said they had been tortured; he said six criminal cases had been opened, three involving employees of the attorney general's office. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Half a million Christian activists have signed a pledge to boycott Target over the retail chains promise to allow transgender employees and customers to use restrooms or fitting rooms consistent with their gender identity. The president of the American Family Association (AFA), Tim Wildmon, published a statement accusing Target of threatening wives and daughters, insisting that a man can simply say he feels like a woman today and enter the womens restroom. Targets policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims, Mr Wildmon wrote. And with Target publicly boasting that men can enter womens bathrooms, where do you think predators are going to go? In less than a weeks time, more than 500,000 people signed the pledge to boycott Target. Targets 19 April announcement highlighted inclusivity as a core belief of the Minneapolis-based retailer, amid a growing national debate about gender identity and the gendering of public spaces. In our stores we demonstrate our commitment to an inclusive experience in many ways, the announcement reads. Most relevant for the conversations currently underway, we welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity. Everyone deserves to feel like they belong. And youll always be accepted, respected, and welcomed at Target. Targets announcement stands in contrast to a series of laws in states like North Carolina and Mississippi (the home of the AFA) that force transgender people to use restrooms based on their biological gender, as opposed their gender identity. The laws have prompted boycotts from countless US corporations, municipal and state governments, and entertainers like Bruce Springsteen. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the AFA in its Extremist Files. The group says that it promotes traditional family values by combating the homosexual agenda. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hillary Clinton has swiftly shut down any suggestion that she would welcome an endorsement from wealthy Koch Industries CEO, Charles Koch. The man who has spent millions to bankroll Republicans and conservative causes - he plans to spend $900 million on the 2016 election alone - hinted that he might support Ms Clinton over the Republican candidates during an interview with ABC News. Ms Clinton posted a tweet to say she is not interested in receiving an endorsement from someone who denies climate change. Mr Kochs fortune is mostly based on fossil fuels, according to Think Progress, and has said he believes the world has been "warming some but that theres a big debate on that. Koch Family Foundations have also donated money to organizations that deny climate change. Recommended Read more Charles Koch hints that he might consider voting for Hillary Clinton A study carried out by Yale sociologist Justin Farrell found that funding has had an important effect on how people perceive the issue. In January, Ms Clinton said in a speech on climate change: most [Republicans] are not that ill-informed. They just have to do what the Koch brothers tell them. During the interview on Sunday, interviewer Jonathan Karl asked Mr Koch whether Ms Clinton might be a better president than current candidates on the Republican side. Its possible, he replied. Its possible. Mr Koch had previously praised Bill Clinton, saying in some ways he was a better president than George W Bush, but the increase in spending and growth of government were larger under Mr Bush than Mr Clinton. He was then asked if he would directly support Ms Clinton. But on some of the Republican candidates we would before we could support them, wed have to believe their actions will be quite different than the rhetoric weve heard so far, he said after some hesitation. Ms Clinton has already come under heavy scrutiny for having ties to Wall Street, earning $675,000 for giving speeches at Goldman Sachs, and for receiving donations from individuals associated to the fossil fuel industry. She was also paid almost $1 million for speeches from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, on whose board sits a former lobbyist for TransCanada, the company building a controversial oil pipeline. Her actions and donors prompted Greenpeace to create a petition, demanding that she sign a pledge not to accept money from the fossil fuel industry. Ms Clinton has vowed to reduce carbon emissions by 30 per cent in 2025, a lesser amount that that promised by rival Bernie Sanders. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A 20-year-old man has been arrested over allegedly tweeting a bomb threat during a Donald Trump rally. Police accuse Sean Taylor Morkys, 20, of tweeting: "Is someone going to bomb the trump rally or am I going to have to?" This message was reportedly followed by another tweet warning his friend to get his family to leave the rally so they wouldn't get hurt. Recommended Read more Donald Trump vs Republican Party voting rules The Republican front runner was speaking in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when the bomb threat was discovered by the US Secret Service. Secret Service agents then contacted the State Police's counter-terrorism office who tracked down the source of the tweets to a home in nearby Waterbury. Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY On discovering Morkys at the address, police officer determined him not to be an immediate threat. He was taken into custody and released on a $25,000 (17,299) bond and is due in court on 4 May. Both the Republican and Democratic primaries will take place on 26 April. In Colorado, Republican party delegates have claimed to receive death threats from Trump supporters after the businessman won none of the state's convention delegates. Mr Trump is still leading the party's nomination race with 46.7 per cent in the latest polls followed by Senator Ted Cruz with 28.3 per cent and Governor John Kasich with 17.5 per cent. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A senior editor of Bangledesh's first LGBT magazine has been hacked to death, police say. Julhas Mannan and another person were murdered when three people came to their apartment in the capital of Dhaka, posing as couriers and attacked them. Another person was injured in the attack in Kalabagan. The gay rights activist was an editor for Roopbaan, which focuses on issues facing the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Julhas Mannan edited LGBT magazine Roopbaan (Roopbaan/Facebook) Mr Mannan also worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and had previously worked as a US Embassy protocol officer. His friend, Tanay Majumder, was also killed in the attack. On Saturday, a university professor was hacked to death in Bangladesh, supposedly for "calling to atheism". Rezaul Karim Siddique was on his way to the Rajshahi University, where he worked as an English teacher, when he was attacked. Isis later claimed responsibility for the murder. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Earlier this month, a liberal blogger who criticised Islamism was also hacked to death by attackers wielding machetes. Nazimuddin Samad, a 18-year-old postgraduate law student, was attacked as he returned from a unviversity class. At least four atheist bloggers were murdered in 2015 for writing critically against militant Islamism. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Philippines presidential candidate who was caught on vidoe joking about the rape and murder of an Australian woman is more popular than ever, polls have shown. Mayor of Davao City Rodrigo Duterte is shown to be leading the presidential race, with 33 per cent in the latest poll conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS). This is a significant increase on a previous SWS poll, conducted before the offensive comments were made, which showed Mr Duterte with a 27-per-cent lead. Philippines senator Grace Poe is following behind Mr Duterte in the race with 24 per cent. Mr Duterte spoke at a rally in Quezon City, where he was filmed joking and making crude comments about the rape and murder of Jacquelline Hamill, who was taken hostage, raped and killed during a siege in 1989. He implied the death of Ms Hamill was "a waste" because of her beauty, and said the mayor "should have been first" to rape her. In a video uploaded to YouTube, Mr Duterte can be seen describing seeing Ms Hamills body, and saying: I looked at her face son of a b**ch- what a waste. I was so angry because she was raped, thats one thing but she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste. Mr Duterte said later that his comments were not a joke and that he had just been talking plain sense narrative. He apologised to the Filipino people, and said It is my style. It is my mouth. I said that in the heat of anger. Though polls indicate Mr Dutertes comments have not affected his chances in the presidential race, political analyst Ramon Casiple said he may lose undecided voters, especially marginalised women. This may strike at the heart of his attraction, said Mr Casiple, His portrayal of himself as the champion of the masses. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Bangladeshi professor who was murdered in an attack similar to previous secularist killings was not an atheist, according to his daughter. Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was viciously killed while on his way to work at Rajshahi University where he taught English. Isis has claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place on Saturday, accusing Mr Siddique of calling to atheism. The attack was similar to recent killings of atheist bloggers in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. His daughter, however, says her father believed in God and she is unable to explain the motive behind his death. Rizwana Hasin told the BBC: The investigators are investigating still, and we are still waiting to see the results. We still dont know what was the reason. Maybe [a] misunderstanding, maybe something else. Its still a maybe for me and its still a maybe for my family. Deputy police commissioner Nahidal Islam, said the attackers used sharp weapons to kill Professor Siddique, fleeing from the scene after the incident. His brother, Sajidul Karim Siddique, described the victim as a very quiet and simple man who was focused on studying and teaching. He also led a cultural group and edited a literary magazine. Mr Siddique is the fourth professor at Rajshahi University to have been killed in recent years, all allegedly by Islamist groups. Police believe he may have been targeted by extremists due to his involvement in cultural activities and have detained a member of an Islamist student organisation for questioning, the BBC reports. Parallels have been drawn between Mr Siddique's death and the murders of four secular bloggers who were killed with machetes last year. The four men had appeared on a list of atheist bloggers circulated by the Ansurallah Bangla Team purportedly an affiliate of al-Qaeda in 2013. Local militants claimed responsibility for their deaths. The government in Bangladesh has previously dismissed suggestions that Islamist terrorist attacks take place in the country, claiming Sunni extremists are simply not present. It has been criticised for a lack of action to address the problem. Additional reporting by Associated Press For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A paralysed death-row prisoner in Pakistan is living in conditions "worse than hell" after his stay of execution expired, his family has said. Abdul Basit, who was convicted for murder in 2009, has had three executions called off at the last minute over the past year because Pakistans prison rules do not include provisions for hanging people in wheelchairs. Under Pakistani law, a prisoner sentenced to death should be able to reach the execution point on his own feet. Campaigners say hanging a man in a wheelchair involves a substantial risk of problems - and fear it could see Basit being slowly strangled or decapitated. The 44-year-old, his family and his legal team are calling on the government to grant him clemency, despite no pardon having been granted to any death-row prisoner since a moratorium on executions was lifted in the country in 2014. Mr Basits mother, Nurat Parveen, told The Independent: My son has lived in conditions worse than hell while he was paralysed. His life itself has become a bigger punishment than death. The only hope left for him is to live enough for those who are dependent on him emotionally. She said the family was happy when the country's president initially issued the stay of execution, declaring her son unfit for execution. But she said: We are also afraid what will happen now the stay has expired? When we think about it, we find ourselves in a limbo and dont know what are they [the government] going to do with my son. I beg Mr President, Mr Prime Minister and the judiciary, please have mercy on my son. He has already suffered a lot. He is already half dead. What will they get if they execute a paralysed man, a helpless paralysed man who is already in prison for life? Basit deserves mercy. Mr Basits wife, Musarat Bibi, told The Independent: It is not only my husband who is being punished by the legal system. "It is his entire family who is suffering through this, especially my children. They haven't visited their father in years as he didn't want them to see him lying on jail floor, not able to walk. I know Basit is paralysed but in our patriarchal society a father's name, his presence mean a lot to his children. Basit's execution, will not only take away his life but it will also kill his children, his wife and his family." Mr Basit was sentenced to death in 2009, and was moved from Sahiwal jail to Faisalabads central jail a year later. However, after a few months in the facility he contracted tuberculosis meningitis. Complications with the illness - which lawyers say were a result of negligence - caused him to lose all movement in his limbs, and he was rendered incontinent. Human rights attacks around the world Show all 10 1 /10 Human rights attacks around the world Human rights attacks around the world China Escalating crackdown against human rights activists including mass arrests of lawyers and a series of sweeping laws in the name of national security. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Egypt The arrest of thousands, including peaceful critics, in a ruthless crackdown in the name of national security, the prolonged detention of hundreds without charge or trial and the sentencing of hundreds of others to death. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Gambia Torture, enforced disappearances and the criminalisation of LGBTI people; and utter refusal to co-operate with the UN and regional human rights mechanisms on issues including freedom of expression, enforced disappearance and the death penalty. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Hungary Sealing off its borders to thousands of refugees in dire need; and obstructing collective regional attempts to help them. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Israel Maintaining its military blockade of Gaza and therefore collective punishment of the 1.8 million inhabitants there, as well as failing, like Palestine, to comply with a UN call to conduct credible investigations into war crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Kenya Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and discrimination against refugees in its counter-terrorism operations; and attempts to undermine the International Criminal Court and its ability to pursue justice. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Pakistan The severe human rights failings of its response to the horrific Peshawar school massacre including its relentless use of the death penalty; and its policy on international NGOs giving authorities the power to monitor them and close them down if they are considered to be against the interests of the country. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Russia Repressive use of vague national security and anti-extremism legislation and its concerted attempts to silence civil society in the country; its shameful refusal to acknowledge civilian killings in Syria and its callous moves to block Security Council action on Syria. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Saudi Arabia Brutally cracking down on those who dared to advocate reform or criticise the authorities; and committing war crimes in the bombing campaign it has led in Yemen (pictured) while obstructing the establishment of a UN-led inquiry into violations by all sides in the conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Syria Killing thousands of civilians in direct and indiscriminate attacks with barrel bombs and other weaponry and through acts of torture in detention; and enforcing lengthy sieges of civilian areas, blocking international aid from reaching starving civilians. Getty Images Wassam Waheed, a spokesman for legal aid group Justice Project Pakistan, said Basit was in a coma for 22 days after contracting the illness, and has since spent six years on the prison floor, unable to move and reliant on others for personal hygiene. Basit has always maintained his innocence," he said. "He has endured a fate much worse than death time and time again. The danger remains that in the absence of instructions from the Federal Government, the jail authorities are likely to forward a request for a fresh warrant of execution in the coming days. "If that happens, Basit will once again have to endure being segregated and count down the hours to his death." A report by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Juan Mendez, published in February this year, urged the Government of Pakistan to refrain from carrying out death sentences and abolish the practice of executions. In sentencing Mr Basit, a person suffering from a disability, to death, has violated his right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, it said. The Pakistan Government lifted a moratorium on executions in December 2014 following a Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar which claimed the lives of 134 students and 19 adults. From the end of the suspension until February 2016, 351 people were executed in the country, and despite claims from the Government that the death penalty was intended to target terrorists, a report by Reprieve found 90 per cent of those executed had no terrorist links. The report also says Pakistan now ranks third in the world - behind only Iran and China - in terms of executions. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Poisonous sweets have killed 23 people in central Pakistan, police say. The owners and an employee of a sweet shop in Punjab province have been arrested after the deaths were linked to the sweets, which also left 54 people unwell. Sajjad Hussain bought the sweets in Layyah district on 20 April to celebrate the birth of his son the previous day, a police spokesperson told the BBC. Mr Hussain bought 4.5kg of the popular sweets, called laddoos, which killed him and 11 of his relatives. Officials suspect pesticides from a store next to the shop the sweets were bought from may have found their way into the product. Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the area told AFP: "There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated, and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safe keeping. A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture. He added that police were still waiting for the results of laboratory testing. Only five of the 77 affected remain in Nishtar hospital in Multan, with other survivors having recovered. Police have charged the sweet shop owners under food control and poisonous substances law. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Anzac Day is observed on 25 April every year and honours members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) who lost their lives in foreign conflicts. Originally inaugurated to mark the anniversary of Anzac troops entering the fray against the Ottomon Empire at Gallipoli in the First World War, the scope of this national day of remembrance has since been broadened out of respect for those killed during the Second World War and on subsequent peacekeeping missions around the globe. In addition to Australia and New Zealand, Anzac Day is also marked in the Cook Islands, Niue, the Pitcairn Islands and Tonga and by ex-pats across the world. The Gallipoli campaign in 1915 saw 8,709 Australian troops and 2,721 New Zealanders killed in the Allied attempt to recapture the peninsula and open up the Black Sea en route to claiming Constantinople and disabling a key German ally. The fight against Kemal Ataturks forces was brutal and both sides endured terrible hardships. Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Show all 16 1 /16 Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Australian infantrymen head towards the beach at Gallipoli in 1915 LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Australian 4th Battalion land at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 UIG via Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Australian troops disembark at Gallipoli in April 1915 AFP/Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Troops at Gallipoli, 1915 Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Australian Major Sam Butler holds a white flag as he leads a blindfolded Turkish officer through Anzac lines to a bunker where they will arrange a temporary truce to bury their respective dead Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures British troops advance at Gallipoli later in the campaign Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures The signal tent at the division headquarters in Gallipoli Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures New Zealand soldier W J Batt with his regiment's mascot dog at Walker's Ridge, Gallipoli in 1915 Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Soldiers in a trench on Walker's Ridge, Gallipoli in April 1915 Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Troops land from the ship 'River Clyde' at the Suvla Bay in Gallipoli, 1915 Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Troops land at Anzac cove in Gallipoli, 1915 Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Anzac forces land at Gaba Tepe, April 1915 Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Allied forces construct a landing pier at Gallipoli Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Australian medics in Cairo attend to casualties arriving from Gallipoli in 1915 PA Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Troop ship the 'River Clyde' en route to Gallipoli Getty Gallipoli campaign remembered: In pictures Then chancellor of the exchequer Winston Churchill carries a wreath down Whitehall on Anzac Day in 1927 PA Ataturk would later welcome the first Antipodeans to visit the Gallipoli battlefields and Anzac Cove where the soldiers first landed in 1934 by reciting a poem, the words of which are now inscribed on a monolith at Ari Burnu Cemetery on the beach and at memorials in Canberra and Wellington. The ultimate sacrifice made by Anzac soldiers on behalf of the Commonwealth had a profound impact on both countries and the Anzac spirit of the period is still invoked to stir national unity. To honour that tradition, commemorative services have been held on 25 April in both countries since 1916, when ex-servicemen first marched in remembrance of their late friends. These are staged at dawn in tribute to the time of day Anzac forces first launched their attack, a custom first introduced at the Sydney Cenotaph in 1927. Royal Australian Air Force cadets take part in the Anzac Day march in Sydney (EPA) Wreaths are laid, hymns read and prayers spoken. The national anthems of both countries are sung and red poppies commonly placed beside the names of the dead at war memorials. The Last Post is also sounded by a regimental bugler and lines recited from Laurence Binyons 1914 poem For the Fallen, an ode written for those killed on the Western Front at the battles of Mons and Marne: They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. These observances are followed by military parades and further services throughout the day at major cities. Another distinctive feature of the day is the Anzac biscuit, made according to a traditional recipe using oats, golden syrup and butter and served as a tangible connection to the past - the treat commonly sent by heartsick housewives to their men serving on the frontline as a hardy reminder of home. The first Anzac Day was held in 1916 (Getty) The gunfire breakfast, entailing coffee with rum, is also served after many dawn services as a similar nod to the final repast many soldiers tasted before landing at Gallipoli, never to return. Anzac Days popularity waned somewhat from the late 1960s over disillusionment about the Vietnam War and criticism of its political exploitation, but has since experienced a revival as many feel it serves as an important moment of national reflection and an opportunity to celebrate the best of Australian and New Zealand culture. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A 16-year-old has been charged with planning a terror attack on Anzac Day after allegedly trying to obtain a gun. New South Wales Police have increased security levels for the day of commemorations following the charges against the teenager. He was arrested near his west Sydney home in Auburn and accused of one count of preparing for, or planning, an act of terrorism. The teenager's case was heard in children's court, where he was denied bail. His lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, said outside court a bail application would be lodged, ABC reports. New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said: "Clearly we have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar. "Our level of security at Anzac Day is always high, we have increased it." ANZAC Day in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 ANZAC Day in pictures ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day2-ap.jpg AP ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day7-gt.jpg Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day18-gt.jpg Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day1-gt.jpg Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day4-afp.jpg AFP/Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day3-gt.jpg Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day5-afp.jpg AFP/Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day9-gt.jpg Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day8-gt_1.jpg Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day6-afp.jpg AFP/Getty Images ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day17-ap.jpg AP ANZAC Day in pictures Anzac-Day16-gt.jpg Getty Images New South Wales Premier Mike Baird said: "This is a day where we should be out, commemorating such a proud day of our history "Where we come and commemorate those many lives that have been lost defending this nation, defending our freedoms, and that is exactly what we should be doing today" The Australian Minster for Justice, Michael Keenan, called the case a "chilling and disturbing scenario". Mr Keenan said Australian security agencies had stopped six domestic terror attacks in the last 18 months. He added the government had spent $1.3 billion (695 billion) on "police, Australian Crime Commission, intelligence committee and other agencies". For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Arsonist have set fire to a building due to house child refugees in Sweden - the second time the site has been targeted in recent weeks. A local fire chief spoke of his anger following the attack on the former school in Harnosand, which has been converted into a home for young people fleeing war and persecution. The building had already suffered damage in an apparent arson attack on April 9 and was in the process of being refurbished in order to house young asylum seekers and their parents, according to The Local. Peter Hellstrom, fire and rescue unit chief in Harnosand, told the website: Its completely insane that someone is running around and lighting buildings on fire. Its sick people doing this, that is clear. The fire follows a dozens of apparent arson attacks on buildings connected to refugee housing since October 2015. In October, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said: It is very serious. It is not the Sweden we want to see. Local authorities in Umea municipality in northern Sweden announced in October that they would be keeping the locations of their refugee housing a secret after four fires occurred in one week. Ewa Klingfors, director of the councils social services told local paper Vasterbottens-Kurinen: After the past weeks fire incidents in southern Sweden I dont think its okay to expose the addresses. The risk is that thugs decide to burn down the premises here as well. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President Barack Obama has issued an impassioned plea for Europe not to doubt itself, warning that the political fragmentation across the continent would have profound negative effects around the world. Speaking ahead of a summit in Hannover with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the UK, Mr Obama said the United States needed a strong, united Europe to maintain international order. He also reiterated his plea for European NATO allies to increase their defence spending to address Islamic State and other security threats. The meeting discussed the threat posed to international security by Isis both in Syria, Iraq and most recently Libya. The leaders agreed to give full support to the new Government of National Accord in Libya which could eventually include military action to tackle the growing influence of Isis in the country. The meeting also discussed the migration crisis as well as the situation in Ukraine. Speaking before the meeting started, on the last leg of his Middle East and European tour, Mr Obama appealed for Europe to have greater self confidence in its own achievements. If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue," he said. "I've come here today to the heart of Europe to say that the United States and the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe. Obama said worries over Russia's annexation of Crimea and slow economic growth, particularly in southern Europe, had led to questions about integration on the continent and sparked destructive politics that stoked fears about immigrants and people with different religions. Inside Isis secret tunnels Show all 7 1 /7 Inside Isis secret tunnels Inside Isis secret tunnels Network of underground tunnels was discovered by Kurdish forces after they regained the town of Sinjar in Iraq Inside Isis secret tunnels A member of the Peshmerga forces inspects a tunnel used by Isis militants in the town of Sinjar, Iraq Reuters Inside Isis secret tunnels An entrance to the tunnel used by Islamic State militants is seen in the town of Sinjar, Iraq Inside Isis secret tunnels The secret tunnels allowed militants to freely move underground Inside Isis secret tunnels The tunnels appear to be wired with electricity Inside Isis secret tunnels Some of the tunnels are 30 feet deep Inside Isis secret tunnels Concerns remain that parts of the tunnels are rigged with explosives These are unsettling times and when the future is uncertain there seems to be an instinct in human nature to withdraw to the perceived comfort of our own tribe, our own sect, our own nationality: people who look like us, sound like us, he said. But in todays world more than in any time in our human history that is a false comfort. It pits people against one another because of what they look like, or how they pray or who they love. Obama said that twisted thinking can lead to oppression, segregation, internment camps and to Srebrenica. "This is a defining moment, and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe. The president said Europe generally could do more to prepare for its own defence and to fight Islamic State. He repeated his call that NATO members step up their contributions and warned of a tendency to get complacent about defence needs. "We need to stay nimble and make sure our forces are inter-operable and invest in new capabilities like cyber defence and missile defence," Obama said. "That's why every NATO member should be contributing its full share, 2 per cent of GDP, towards our common security - something that doesn't always happen and, I'll be honest, sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defence." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A German orchestra has claimed Turkey tried to make them take the word genocide out of a concert marking the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces during the First World War. Markus Rindt, the director of the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra in Dresden, east Germany, claimed Turkeys delegation to the European Union demanded the European Commission withdraw 200,000 euros (155,000) in funding for the concert which will use the term genocide in texts sung and spoken during a planned show on 30 April. Monday marks the 101th anniversary of the beginning of what Armenia calls the genocide of 1.5 million people between 1915 and 1917 by the ruling Ottoman Empire. Many international bodies, including the European Union, recognise the massacre - which saw able-bodied men being massacred and women, elderly and children being forced to march into the Syrian desert - as a genocide and many modern historians say the 1.5 million figure is roughly accurate. But Turkey has repeatedly denied claims that the killings were a systematic genocide, saying many died on both sides as a result of ethnic clashes and a deportation programme. and put the number of dead at around 300,000. It is currently illegal in Turkey to call the killings a genocide. Mr Rindt said the Commission had decided to maintain its financial support but asked the orchestra to remove the mentions of "genocide". Genocide commemorations in Yerevan, Armenia in 2012 (Getty Images) (Getty) He told Agence France Presse: It's an infringement on freedom of expression. We find all of this very questionable. The symphony was first performed last year to commemorate the centenary of the massacre and the orchestra contains both Turkish and Armenian performers. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty A Commission spokeswoman said: "Due to concerns raised regarding the wording used in the project description, the Commission temporarily withdrew it. "A new project description will be republished in the coming days." It comes after the Turkish embassy in Stockholm asked Swedish broadcaster TV4 to pull a documentary on the genocide because the film will fail to serve the principle of objectivity. In an email published on the TV4 website, Turkish embassy spokesman Arif Gulen said: "There is no historical, academic or legal consensus on how to define 'the 1915 events'. Genocide is a specific crime defined by international law. The UN 1948 Convention stipulates what genocide is and states that only a competent international court can determine whether particular events were a genocide. The channel said they would of course show show the documentary. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Queen of Jordan Rania Al Abdullah has visited refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos - before highlighting the urgent need for a sustainable long-term solution to this crisis. The monarch was visiting the islands Kara Tepe refugee camp, home to more than 950 refugees, of which at least 600 are vulnerable cases who arrived from Moira, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Following a deal between the EU and Turkey, Moira was turned into a detention centre housing asylum seekers who are awaiting news on whether they will be returned to Turkey. Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily. Queen Rania, an advocate for the IRC, met with two Syrian families and visited facilities installed by the IRC, including shower and toilet blocks, an information desk and a hygiene kiosk. Speaking during the visit, she said: This is an exceptional crisis and it requires an exceptional response. It requires a response that is collective and that is value-based, a response that is built on burden sharing not burden shifting. "Refugees are not numbers. They are human beings like you and I, except they have seen unspeakable horror and have experienced unthinkable tragedy and hardship. They risked everything, their families, their possessions just to make it to safety. We need to bring humanity and compassion back into the narrative, because this crisis is about people not borders and barriers. Its about human dignity not deals." She said the refugees she met had gone from suffering to suffering and that many had told her they would be back in their homes if they had the choice. Queen Rania emphasised the need to find legal alternatives and effective pathways to safety, and also look for more sustainable long term solutions to this crisis. She also thanked Greece for remarkable empathy and kindness towards refugees despite its own economic difficulties in recent years. IRC Country Director Panos Navrozidis, who accompanied the Queen on her trip, said: For refugees, Her Majesty Queen Ranias visit today reassures them that they are not alone. "There are many people across the world who care deeply for their plight and are working to ensure a better, safer future for them and for their families. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 2016 has already seen 181,673 refugees and migrants arrive to Europe by sea, and every day 1,663 people arrive at Lesbos alone. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} On a drizzly afternoon this month, they gathered in the tree-lined cemetery here to bid farewell to a charismatic rebel and outspoken enemy of the Islamic State. The mourners wept as they hoisted his coffin, draped in the three-star flag of Syrias opposition. They proudly recalled his valor in battles against government forces and his defiance of the religious extremists who have tried to overtake their rebellion. But the way that Zaher al-Shurqats life ended filled those at his funeral with dread. An apparent Islamic State militant followed the 36-year-old into an alley in the Turkish city of Gaziantep and fired a round into his head. He was the fourth prominent Syrian critic of the Islamic State to be assassinated in the past six months in southern Turkey, far beyond the militants stronghold in Syria. Recommended Read more US to send 250 extra troops to Syria to help in fight against Isis Were not safe here in Turkey. ISIS is watching us, said a 24-year-old former rebel who attended the funeral in Nizip, a town about 30 miles east of Gaziantep. As do many fellow Syrians who have taken refuge in the area, the man spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of the militant group, also known as ISIS and ISIL. After rising to prominence as leader of a rebel brigade and then as a television host, Shurqat eventually fled to southern Turkey for safety. But even in exile, he couldnt escape his radical Islamist foes back home. The Islamic State asserted responsibility for his killing, an attack that further demonstrates how the group can still strike beyond its center of gravity despite suffering mounting losses on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Its fighters carried out attacks that rocked Paris, Brussels and Beirut. In Turkey, the groups multiple suicide bombings over the past year have killed dozens. But the Islamic State appears to be waging a different kind of campaign against the Syrian journalists, activists and former rebels who spend their time in exile in southern Turkey working to expose the groups atrocities. Many suspect it of running a network of informants and assassins who monitor opponents and then behead them at their homes or gun them down in alleys. Over the past year, Turkish authorities have clamped down on the once-porous, 500-mile-long border with Syria in an attempt to halt the flow of militants. But concerns have grown that the group operates among the more than 2 million Syrians who have taken refuge in Turkey, as well as among Turkish citizens. They have really been trying to intimidate us in Turkey, said Hussam Eesa, 27, an activist from the Syrian monitoring group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently who recently left Turkey for Germany. In an especially gruesome killing last October, an Islamic State member shot dead two activists at their apartment in the city of Sanliurfa and then decapitated them. One of the victims, Ibrahim Abdul Qader, worked with Eesa at Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which has won accolades for taking extreme risks to document the Islamic States atrocities. Many of the groups activists have based themselves in Turkey, but the country has become so dangerous that a number of them have moved to Europe. They knew where we lived in Turkey, where we worked. They even went after my friends in Raqqa, said Eesa, who relocated to Germany because of the threats. In the seven months that he lived in Turkey, Shurqat received a steady stream of menacing phone calls and text messages, his family and friends said. Some of the threats came from Syrias government, they said, and many more came from the Islamic State. In December, a Syrian journalist and friend of Shurqat, Naji Jerf, was shot dead in downtown Gaziantep by an assailant who used a silenced pistol. Jerf had produced a documentary detailing the Islamic States systematic killing of anti-government activists in the northern city of Aleppo. The Islamic State is suspected of killing Jerf. But Shurqat refused to stop speaking out against the groups radical interpretations of Islam and attacks on moderate rebel forces, said Barry Abdullatif, an opposition activist who grew up with Shurqat in al-Bab, a town in northern Syria. To say that he was brave is an understatement. You have to be kind of crazy to do what he did, said Abdullatif, who also relocated to Turkey. Over the past two years, Shurqat hosted shows on the pro-opposition Aleppo Today television channel that regularly featured guests who accused the Islamic State of undermining the now five-year-old rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On a program that aired a few days before his slaying, Shurqat interviewed a rebel leader who described the Assad government as the biggest patron of the militant group. He cited its release of radical Islamists from its jails, among other calculated efforts to empower extremists against rebel forces. Appearing in a dinner jacket, a bespectacled Shurqat would often use the airtime to pick apart the Islamic States religious justifications for its brutality. An important weapon in his theological critiques was his degree from the University of Damascus in Islamic studies and his adherence to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that is known for espousing tolerance. ISIS feared him because he showed how their practices are not Islamic. Theyre just violent animals, said Shurqats twin brother, Anas. Shurqats dispute with the Islamic State started years before, in al-Bab, where he founded a rebel outfit during the early phases of the Syrian uprising. Initially battling with hunting rifles, his brigade drove government forces out of al-Bab and then joined other rebel groups in assaulting the nearby city of Aleppo. In late 2013, as the Islamic State militants grew in power, Shurqats fighters began battling the group. He even forced a now-famous standoff with the group over control of al-Babs main mosque, which resulted in the towns residents siding overwhelmingly with him. But the moderate rebels of al-Bab were outmatched by the Islamic States superior firepower and sheer ruthlessness. The group drove them out of the town, and Shurqat relocated to the rebel-held areas of Aleppo. There, friends and family said, he faced attempted assassinations and kidnappings, which eventually convinced him to relocate last year to Gaziantep. On April 10, Shurqat had just escorted his pregnant wife to a tram station in Gazianteps downtown when his killer struck. CCTV footage shows the killer walking up behind Shurqat, pulling out a firearm and then running off after the assassination. Shurqat is buried in a rocky grave with a cinder-block headstone in Nizip, where members of his family live. Even amid the palpable fear of the Islamic States intensified efforts to silence critics, hundreds turned out on that rainy afternoon to thank the man who refused to be cowed. Of course we are sad today, but what has happened is the will of God, said Muntasir Abu Talib, 28, Shurqats brother-in-law. And all I can do is thank God for what he did for us. Zakaria Zakaria contributed to this report. Copyright: Washington Post For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A French-Iranian citizen who left Iran in 2009 after facing espionage charges has been sentenced to six years in jail following her return to the country to visit her critically ill mother. According to an opposition website, former French embassy employee Nazak Afshar, 58, was arrested last month on arrival at Tehran airport, website Kaleme said late on Sunday. She was freed on bail from Evin prison after sentencing, it said. The Iranian judiciary has not commented on her case or made the charges against her public. Recommended Read more Iranian women call on Western tourists to violate hijab law Afshar, who had dual citizenship, was arrested and tried in 2009 on charges of spying and acting against Iran's national security. No verdict was issued and she was freed following the intervention of the French government, leaving the country the same year. The potential opening up to the West after last year's nuclear deal has alarmed Iranian hardliners, and Afshar's arrest appears to be part of a crackdown against what some officials have portrayed as Western infiltration. Several other dual-nationality citizens or expatriates have been arrested on returning to visit Iran, and a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said on Sunday that four had recently been sentenced for their connections to foreign countries. "Five people who were arrested recently for their connections outside the country were put on trial ...and four of them have received their sentences," Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency. Iran does not recognise dual nationality. Iranian conservative media reported last week that the presenter of a pro-opposition television channel was arrested as he travelled to Iran in "the disguise of visiting relatives." Sabri Hassanpour, was host of the online network "Simay-e Rahayi" (Liberation TV) in the Netherlands, and an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic. Other dual nationals Iran is holding include Iranian-Briton Kamal Foroughi, 76, who was arrested in 2011 while working in Tehran as a business consultant. Iranian-US citizens Siamak Namazi and his 80-year-old father, Baquer, are also in jail. Iran's judiciary spokesman said in January that most of the detained dual nationals were facing espionage charges. Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Kurdish rebels have warned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan they will "escalate the war" in Turkey until their rights are accepted. The leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Cemil Bayik, said the group is willing to negotiate but not surrender in the wake of growing violence between the two sides. Mr Bayik said: "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach of course the PKK will escalate the war. "We don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. "We don't want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely...The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted." A spokesman for the Turkish President responded by stating there was no chance of negotiation with the PKK "at the moment". Ilnur Cevik told the BBC the PKK is "trying to create a separate state in Turkey this is outright secession". He said: "We are going to struggle right to the bitter end to stop this. And the Turkish people are now determined public opinion polls say. They say, 'don't stop'." Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Show all 11 1 /11 Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey's two million Syrian refugees There are already over 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, but their current camps can only hold 200,000 people ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish citizens protest a new deal, also criticised by human rights activists, which will see refugees who arrived in Greece after March 20 be sent back to Turkey AP Photo/Emre Tazegu Turkey's two million Syrian refugees An estimated 80% of Syrian refugee children already in Turkey are unable to attend school BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Refugee children beg for water near the Turkey-Syria border. Turkey has been accused of illegally deporting asylum-seekers back to Syria BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees In Turkey, no-one from outside Europe is legally recognised as a refugee, meaning the 2016 deportations may not meet international legal standards for protecting vulnerable people BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A refugee child cries as she is searched by police at the Syria-Turkey border, where 16 refugees (including three children) have been shot dead in the last four months BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Many refugees are living rough on the streets of cities such as Istanbul or Ankara (pictured) ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish soldiers use water cannon on Syrian refugees BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Syrian refugees shelter from rain in the streets of Istanbul BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A derelict building housing Syrian refugees in Istanbul Carl Court/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey houses around half of all the refugees who have currently fled Syria Carl Court/Getty Images A two-year-long ceasefire between Turkey and PKK broke down last July. The PKK is reported to chave carried out numerous attacks on Turkish soil, while President Erdogan has responded by launching air strikes on rebel bases in northern Iraq. In March, 37 people were killed and at least 125 injured in a bomb attack on Ankara. The Kuristan Freedom Hawks, an offshoot of the PKK, claimed responsibility for the killings. The Turkish government has previously vowed to "liquidate" the PKK, which it considers a terrorist organisation along with the European Union and the United States For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US government appears set to release at least part of a 28-page classified chapter from a report that could point to Saudi connections to the 9/11 terror attacks. The former head of a bi-partisan committee that investigated the attacks that left more than 3,000 people dead and published its findings, said he believed the Obama administration would make a decision on the issue by June. The unreleased documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol building in Washington DC, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. Former Senator Bob Graham (right) (Getty) Mr Graham, a former Democratic senator, said a government official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained US relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally. I hope that decision is to honour the American people and make it available, Mr Graham told NBC on Sunday. The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported? Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry as well as the 9/11 Commission and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28 pages as a preliminary police report. There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating, said the the former Democratic congressman, according to the Associated Press. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government has always denied supporting the attackers, something supported by the findings of the US official report. Ironically, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner. However, the potential release of the papers comes at a time of no small tension between the US and Saudi Arabia. The Sunni kingdom believes the US has not sufficient pushed back at Iranian expansion in the Middle East, especially in Syria where it is leading the fight against Isis. President Obama speaks with King Salman at Erga Palace (AP) It is also deeply concerned about legislation passing through the US senate that would open the way for the relatives of those who died in 9/11 to use US courts to target Saudi officials, banks and charities. Yet these efforts have been largely blocked because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from such lawsuits. The Senate bill was introduced to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terror attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said President Obama had asked National Intelligence Director James Clapper to review the 28 papers for possible declassification. Inside the White House on 9/11 When thats done we'd expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information, Mr Rhodes told reporters in Riyadh last week, where Mr Obama met with King Salman and other Saudi leaders. The White House says the 28 pages did not come up during discussions. The news agency said that Mr Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. Al Thumairy was later denied entry into the United States in May 2003 after the State Department alleged that he might be involved in terrorist activity. Mr Roemer also wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers. Mr Obama was not met by King Salman when he arrived in Saudi Arabia (AP) We did not discover.Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks, said Mr Roemer, who went on to serve as the USs ambassador to India. But he added: We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. ... Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for Al-Qaeda. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. That's why we need to continue to get to the bottom of this. An Internet site pushing to get the documents released, 28pages.org, points to another document declassified in July 2015 that outlined ways in which the commission could examine possible Saudi links. That 47-page document lists several pages of individuals of interest and suggests questions that could be pursued. One name is suspected Al-Qaeda operative Ghassan al Sharbi. Al Sharbi, who was taking flight lessons in the Phoenix area before 9/11, was captured in 2002 in the same place in Pakistan as Abu Zubaydah, a top Al-Qaeda trainer who was apprehended and waterboarded dozens of times by US interrogators. The document said that after al Sharbi was captured, the FBI discovered some documents buried nearby. One was al Sharbi's pilot certificate inside an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, although it's unclear whether the license had been mailed by the embassy or if the envelope was simply being reused. A CIA inspector-general report in June 2015 said there had been no reliable information confirming Saudi government involvement with and financial support for terrorist prior to 9/11. But it said also that people in the CIAs Near East Division and Counterterrorism Center speculated that dissident sympathisers within the government may have aided Al-Qaeda. The rest of the chapter, titled Issues Related to Saudi Arabia, is blacked out. When Mr Graham was asked on Sunday how much - on a scale of one to ten - the release of the 28 pages would impact US-Saudi relations, he said: 7.838. He was subsequently asked whether that meant it would be a high level negative impact, to which Mr Graham said: Yes. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President Barack Obama plans to send as many as 250 more US troops to Syria, bringing the total American presence on the ground to 300 to help fight Islamic State militants, US officials said yesterday. The decision, which a US official said would be announced in Hanover, aims to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State and appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-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. Recommended Read more Official civilian death toll from US air strikes against Isis doubles While Obama has resisted putting US troops into Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people, he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria last year in what US officials described as a "counterterrorism" mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war. "He (Obama) intends to put in more ... forces to the tune of 250 in Syria," said one US official, adding he was unable to break down how many of those would be special operations forces and how many might be medical or intelligence support personnel. "The president has authorised a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL," said a second Obama administration official. Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Show all 10 1 /10 Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Graffiti on the ancient stones reads in Arabic Shooting without the permission of the chief is prohibited Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Damaged artefacts lay inside the museum of the historic city of Palmyra Reuters Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Syrian pro-government forces rest by Palmyra Citadel as they take control of the city from the hands of Isis Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces The UNESCO world heritage site appears surprisingly intact after its recapture from the militant group Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Many had feared the ancient city would be destroyed following its capture by Isis in May Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Smoke billows from the Palmyra Citadel as Assads forces drive the Jihadist group from the city Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Palmyra is one of the most important cultural centers of the world Unesco says Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces Pro-government forces play football in the streets following the recapture of the city Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces The extent of the destruction caused by Isis 10 month occupation of the city has yet to be fully realised Getty Palmyra recaptured by Syrian government forces Palmyra recaptured by Syrian pro-government forces The City Council of Palmyra building in ruins Reuters Obama will announce the latest deployment during his 11:25am remarks at the Hanover Messe fairgrounds, that official said. There are mounting indications the momentum in Iraq and Syria may have shifted against Islamic State. 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 from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Obama is in Hanover meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Monday, the two will be joined by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss Syria and other foreign policy issues. Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence in Syria, where government forces have stepped up bombing of rebel-held areas around the strategic city of Aleppo. But speaking at a news conference with Merkel, Obama said it would be very difficult to see how a so-called safe zone would work in Syria without a large military commitment. "The issue surrounding a safe zone in Syrian territory is not a matter of an ideological objection on my part," he said. "It's not a matter of me not wishing I could help and protect a whole bunch of people. It's a very practical issue about how do you do it?" Obama posed a number of questions about such a zone, including what country would "put a bunch of ground troops inside of Syria" after five years of civil war. REUTERS For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US is to send an additional 250 special forces troops to Syria to help in the battle against Isis - the largest expansion in ground forces since the civil war there started five years ago. Speaking in Germany, President Barack Obama said the new forces would being the number of US troops in Syria to around 300. The Associated Press said that the decision, announced at the end of a six-day foreign tour, appears to reflect growing confidence in the ability of US-backed forces to claw back territory from the Islamist fighters. Given the success, I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum, Mr Obama said in a speech at a trade fair in the northern city of Hanover, the last stop on a trip that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. Mr Obama met with the leaders of Germany, France, Italy and Britain (AP) Theyre not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive Isis back. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience, Mr Obama also urged Europe and Nato allies to do more in the fight against Isis. The group controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. Even as European countries make important contributions against [Isis], Europe, including Nato, can still do more, he said, said ahead of talks later in the day with Ms Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. In Syria and Iraq we need more nations contributing to their campaign. We need more nations contributing trainers to help build up local forces in Iraq. We need more nations to contribute economic assistance to Iraq so it can stabilise liberated areas and break the cycle of violent extremism so that Isis come back. Mr Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep or add troops to help with conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people. Last year he sent 50 US special operations forces to Syria in what US officials described as a counterterrorism mission rather than an effort to tip the scales in the war. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, briefing reporters before Obama spoke, said US forces are not being sent there on a combat mission. In Iraq, Isis 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 from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. The Pentagon announced last week that about 200 more troops would be deployed to Iraq, mainly to advise Iraqi troops fighting Isis. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Why are we talking about this now? Around 15,000 demonstrators in the Armenian capital of Yerevan held a torchlit march to a hilltop memorial complex dedicated to the 1.5 million people killed by the Ottoman Turks more than 100 years ago. Among them was George Clooney, who called on the world to recognise the mass killings as genocide during a humanitarian prize ceremony in the country. In his comemorative speech about the genocide, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan spoke of a recent flare-up of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is officialy a part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian miliatary since a separatist war ended in 1994. He pledged to protect the Armenians living there and condemned Azerbaijan for what he called plans to drive out Armenians from the region. The atrocity is marked each year on 24 April, which is regarded as the start of the massacre as it is the day in that more than 200 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and executed in 1915. Recommended Read more The US must recognise the Armenian genocide Weekend vigils, marches and demonstrations have been held in LA in commemoration of the massacres, in which tens of thousands of people marched through the area known as Little Armenia to the Turkish Consulate, calling for Turkey and America to recognise the acts as genocide. Southern California reportedly has the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia. What happened? It is estimated that 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed from April 1915 up until 1917 by Ottoman Turkish Muslims. The population of Armenians is understood to have gone from around two million to roughly 400,000 people during the massacre, which took place as the Ottoman empire was collapsing, and is widely regarded by historians as the first genocide of the 20th century. Following the killing of intellectuals, 60,000 Armenian men were conscripted to the Ottoman army, disarmed and murdered, according to the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute. Armenian women, children, and the elderly were deported en masse, deprived of food or water, and sent on death marches to the Syrian desert. Many died of disease and exhaustion or were killed en route and buried in mass graves. Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Show all 10 1 /10 Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Armenian people carry torches during a march to commemorate the mass killings of Armenians Getty Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Armenian people take part in a march in commemoration of the 101th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915 Getty Armenians mark 101 years since genocide People hold a flag during the laying of the flowers at the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan Getty Armenians mark 101 years since genocide President Serzh Sargsyan and actor George Clooney attend the laying of the flowers at the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan Getty Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Armenian clergymen, US actor George Clooney, center, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, second right front, and guests attend a ceremony at a memorial to Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks, in Yerevan AP Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian (C,R) and US actor George Clooney (C) attend a ceremony at the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan Getty Armenians mark 101 years since genocide A general view of attendees and mount Ararat during the laying of the flowers at the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan Getty Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Lebanese of Armenian descent burn an effigy of Turkish president Erdogan during a protest in front the house of Turkish Ambassador to mark the 101st anniversary of the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, near Beirut, Lebanon EPA Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Activists hold portraits of victims during a silent demonstration to commemorate the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in Istanbul Reuters Armenians mark 101 years since genocide Activists hold portraits of victims during a silent demonstration to commemorate the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in Istanbul Reuters Why is it so controversial? Turkey does not recognise the mass killings as genocide and instead contends those who died between 1915 and 1917 were victims of civil war and unrest. It also claims the number of people who were killed has been inflated. While President Obama this year referred to the killings as the first mass atrocity of the 20th Century [] when one and a half million Armenian people were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman empire, he stopped short of calling it genocide. This breaks a campaign promise he made in 2008 and has infuriated campaigners. Over 40 US states recognise the genocide however, including California, whose Governor Jerry Brown declared 24 April a state-wide Day of Remembrance of Armenian Genocide, while more than 20 countries including Canada, France and Russia do, too. Rare images of Armenian genocide survivors on show in Italy What does Turkey say? Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this year issued a message commemorating the lives of Armenians who died in 1915, but made no reference to the massacre. He instead said he welcomed the commemoration to share the grief endured by the Ottoman Armenians, as well as honour their memories. He then criticised efforts to politicize history through a bitter rhetoric of hate and enmity and strive to alienate the two neighbouring nations. What does Armenia say? Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said the country had proved to ourselves and the world that the genocidal plans of the Turks had failed, and condemned Turkeys continued policy of denial. Referencing the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, he said: We will not allow another Armenian Genocide". For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} UPDATE: Kings Think Tank issues statement saying email circulating on social media has been a misunderstanding: The Independent has contacted Margot McDonnell for comment. A student group at Kings College London (KCL) has revoked a speaking invitation it extended to Boris Johnson after he made inappropriate comments regarding Barack Obamas heritage. Kings Think Tank sent Mr Johnson an email over the remarks he made, saying Mr Obama is rightly proud and highlighting how it was formally withdrawing its invitation over his general tone of disrespect. The London mayor had been asked to take part in one of a series of debates at the university on the pros and cons regarding the EU referendum. Writing a column for The Sun newspaper last week, Mr Johnson criticised the US president for allegedly removing a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office in 2009. Mr Johnson wrote: Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan Presidents ancestral dislike of the British empire - of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender. Social media users criticised the move, with some saying Kings Think Tank no-platformed Mr Johnson. However, despite receiving the invitation from the group - as well as from various other think tanks and colleges - Mr Johnson had not yet accepted. Kings Think Tank describes itself as being the first student-led policy institute in Europe. Founded in 2010, after the student protests over tuition fees, the group has said it aims to give students a means of getting their voices heard by using the practical skills and subject knowledge acquired at KCL. Student news in pictures Show all 34 1 /34 Student news in pictures Student news in pictures South Korean policemen detain a student demonstrator during a protest against South Korean President Park Geun-Hye EPA Student news in pictures South Korean policemen detain student protestors during a protest against South Korean President Park Geun-Hye outside the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. The protesters demanded that the parliament takes steps to impeach President Park Geun-Hye EPA Student news in pictures Filipino demonstrators face off with anti-riot police during a protest near the US Embassy in Manila, Philippine EPA Student news in pictures Hundreds of protesters including Indigenous People, students and militant groups marched towards the US Embassy to protest against the presence of US military troops and condemning the violent dispersal which left at least forty people hurt including twenty police officers and three people who were run over by a police van EPA Student news in pictures A federal judge in Mexico has ordered that a once-fugitive police chief be held on charges of kidnapping in the disappearance of 43 students Student news in pictures A man holds up a photograph of a missing student with a caption reading 'We are missing 43,' during a meeting marking the 25-month anniversary of the disappearances of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero, in Mexico City. A federal judge in Mexico has ordered that a once-fugitive police chief be held on charges of kidnapping in the disappearance of 43 students AP Student news in pictures Miguel Perez, an intern student from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, puts away his cell phone before walking into the operating room at the Dr. Isaac Gonzalez MartInez Oncological Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Once they complete their general surgery training, many residents are moving to the United States in search of better wages, one of the main factors linked to the current shortage of specialists in the Island Student news in pictures Fewer EU students have applied to start university courses in the UK next autumn. There was a 9% fall in the numbers who had applied for courses, according to admissions service UCAS. PA wire Student news in pictures University students protest against President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. Masses of protesters jammed the streets of Venezuela's capital on the heels of a move by congress to open a political trial against Maduro, whose allies have blocked moves for a recall election AP Student news in pictures University students protest against President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela AP Student news in pictures Thousands, most of them high school students, march during a demonstration in Madrid, Spain, on a one day strike to protest about the country's education law that increases the number of annual exams AP Student news in pictures Students gather on the west mall to confront the Young Conservatives of Texas student organization over a controversial bake sale on The University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas. The Young Conservatives of Texas chapter at the University of Texas-Austin sparked the protest with an affirmative action bake sale. The club encouraged students to buy a cookie and talk about the disastrous policy that is affirmative action Student news in pictures Donald Parish Jr, right, confronts Electrical and Computer Engineering senior Dewayne Perry over a controversial bake sale on The University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas. The Young Conservatives of Texas chapter at the University of Texas-Austin sparked the protest with an affirmative action bake sale. The club encouraged students to buy a cookie and talk about the disastrous policy that is affirmative action AP Student news in pictures Brigham Young University announced that students who report sexual assault will no longer be investigated for possible violations of the Mormon-owned school's strict honor code that bans such things as alcohol use AP Student news in pictures Students of secondary education march to protest against the final examinations and LOMCE (The Improvement Quality Education Law) law, after a call by trade unions, in Murcia, Spain EPA Student news in pictures South African police have used stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of protesters who had marched to the parliament building to call for free university education, where the finance minister was giving a budget speech AP Student news in pictures Police break up student protests outside the parliament in Cape Town, South Africa Reuters Student news in pictures South African Policemen fire rubber bullets at student protestors in Cape Town, South Africa AP Student news in pictures A student protestor is hit by a rubber bullet in Cape Town, South Africa AP Student news in pictures An injured student is helped by colleagues during protest outside the parliament during South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's medium term budget speech in Cape Town, South Africa Reuters Student news in pictures Plaintiffs and bereaved families of elementary school students killed in the tsunami that followed a major earthquake in northeastern Japan in 2011, show banners that say 'victory in a suit filed with the Sendai District Court' in Sendai. A Japanese court ordered municipalities to pay $13.7 million dollars to families of school children who were swept away to their deaths by the 2011 tsunami Getty Student news in pictures A group of student at Ewha Womans University calls for a thorough investigation into those involved in years of engagement with state affairs backstage by Choi Soon-sil, a personal confidante of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, at the school's front gate in Seoul, South Korea EPA Student news in pictures Students raise placards during a strike action called by the student union, in Madrid against university entry exams Getty Student news in pictures Libyans throw a newly graduated student into a fountain as they celebrate during the graduation ceremony for students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Al-Arab University in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi Getty Student news in pictures Libyans celebrate as they attend the graduation ceremony for students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Al-Arab University in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi Getty Student news in pictures Libyans celebrate as they attend the graduation ceremony for students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Al-Arab University in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi Getty Student news in pictures Thousands of Thai Catholic students take part in mourning tributes and in singing the Thai Royal Anthem to honour late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at Saint Dominic School in Bangkok, Thailand EPA Student news in pictures Students of Silpakorn University paint portraits of the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the university campus in Bangkok Getty Student news in pictures A student of Silpakorn University paints a portrait of the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the university campus in Bangkok Getty Student news in pictures St Andrews University students take part in a foam fight known as Raisin Monday in the Lower College Lawn behind St Salvator's Quadrangle following the Raisin Weekend PA wire Student news in pictures St Andrews University students take part in a foam fight known as Raisin Monday in the Lower College Lawn behind St Salvator's Quadrangle following the Raisin Weekend, an annual tradition where student 'parents' inflict tasks on the unfortunate first-years they have adopted as 'children' as part of a mentoring scheme PA wire Student news in pictures Students at the Cuba's National Ballet School (ENB) in Havana, Cuba Reuters Student news in pictures Students at the Cuba's National Ballet School (ENB) take part in a practice in Havana, Cuba Reuters Student news in pictures Students at the Cuba's National Ballet School (ENB) wait in line to enter a classroom in Havana, Cuba Reuters The groups description says: Students from all disciplines are invited to come and contribute to problem-solving on a wide variety of issues such as foreign policy, energy and environment, business and finance, immigration, defense, healthcare, education, crime, and many other areas of public policy. The news has come on the same day an exclusive survey for the BBC reveals 63 per cent of students across the UK believe in banning speakers from visiting students unions. The National Union of Students (NUS) - which has a no platform policy in place - told BBC News the poll results showed students recognised it was important to stand up to racism and fascism. Brunel students walk out on Katie Hopkins The full email sent to Mr Johnson: Dear Mr Johnson, Given your inappropriate comments and inferences toward President Obamas Kenyan heritage, of which he is rightly proud, and your general tone of disrespect over the past few days in relation to the President of the United States of America, we are now formally withdrawing your invitation to speak at Kings College London. We are looking forward to providing a forum for both sides in the EU Referendum Debate to argue their point of view without fear or favour. The level of discourse over the past few days does not meet the bar we set for these events nor do we feel does it help the British people in making the most momentous decision of our lifetime. Furthermore we believe it does not reflect the true greatness of the United Kingdom, a land of tolerance, respect and fair play towards all. Mike Molloy (Director of EU Referendum Events at Kings College London) Margot MacDonnell (President of Kings College London Think Tank) Erica Arcudi (Vice President of Kings College London Think Tank) For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The new president of the National Union of Students (NUS) has said she is deeply concerned at being labelled anti-Semitic following on from her election which divided opinion last week. Writing in the Guardian, Malia Bouattia, who is the first black Muslim woman to hold the highest position in UK student politics, said that for her to take issue with Zionist politics does not mean she takes issue with being Jewish. She also said her election was an incredible landmark which should have been celebrated, and accused media coverage of overshadowing this by calling me a racist, an anti-Semite, an Islamic State sympathiser, and more. Insisting how Zionist politics are held by people from a variety of different backgrounds and faiths, she said that, personally, it will always be a political argument, adding: Zionism, religion, and ethnicity must not be seen as one and the same. Ms Bouattias comments have come after more than 300 heads of student Jewish societies and protesters issued her with an open letter this month, asking her: Why do you see a large Jewish society as a problem? The group was making reference to a 2011 article Ms Bouattia co-authored in which she referred to the University of Birmingham as being something of a Zionist outpost in British higher education. Despite issuing a letter in response of her own, allegations that she was anti-Jewish gathered pace and, in the run up to the election, resulted in her losing the support of the students unions at one of the countrys top universities, Oxford. Post-election, it emerged that students union from across the UK had begun campaigns and plans for referendums on whether they should disaffiliate from the NUS as discontentment with the national student campaigner seemed to grow. However, writing in the Guardian, Ms Bouattia insisted there is no place for anti-Semitism in the student movement and, highlighting all the causes the NUS has thrown its support behind over the years, said a lot of work has to be done, but that it must be done together. Under her leadership - from 1 July, she said: The NUS must be about opening minds, educating people, and building human connection through intelligent discussion instead of angry rhetoric. During its three-day national conference in Brighton, the NUS passed a motion to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day - something Ms Bouattia said she was proud to be a part of. Politicians, however, criticised delegates for presenting arguments against passing the motion, and Labour MP for Bassetlaw, John Mann, released a statement shortly after announcing plans to convene a rally in Parliament against racism within NUS with former presidents of the Union. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} On the day the earthquake hit Everest, our team had just trekked back to Basecamp from Camp 2, further up the mountain. We were having a late breakfast in one of the tents, planning our move back up the slope the next day. Suddenly, around noon, the ground started shaking. Fog had rolled in across the valley and visibility was poor. As soon as the ground fell still, I went outside the tent and saw a huge avalanche surging towards Basecamp, rolling away from Mt Pumori (a 7,161m peak opposite Everest). I thought nobody at Basecamp would survive. The only option was to run inside the dining tent and get down. After a couple of minutes, the roaring and the tremors stopped. I looked around. I was still alive and physically unhurt. I heard lots of people shouting Oh my God, Oh my God outside, right next to our camp. I ran towards the area buried by the avalanche. There were lots of people crying with blood on their faces, some half buried in the snow and struggling to stay alive. A group of us started pulling the victims out and bringing them to the camps. We could have done more if helicopter evacuation was possible and all communication lines hadnt been cut. Dawa on Everest Two days after the earthquake, I had the chance to talk to my family in Kathmandu. They were safe. I was worrying about them and they were worried about me. A week after the earthquake I flew to Kathmandu. People were terrified, hoping another big aftershock would not occur. Nothing happened to my house other than a few cracks, but my family wouldnt allow me to stay at home. I camped in tents again, just like on the mountain. Every day and night, small aftershocks occurred. I could hear people shouting and calling to their family members, making sure they were safe. The Nepal government tried its level best to help manage the situation. However, with limited resources it was challenging. As there was huge damage in the Gorkha and Barpak region, the governments attention was focused there. Its a huge challenge to return to where we were before the quake, however there has been significant amount of support to the people still suffering the effects. Id say the country has recovered 60-70 per cent now. However, theres still lots that needs to be done to return everything back to normal. It may take another year. The years 2014 and 2015 have been unforgettable in the history of Everest climbing. The challenge now is for Sherpas to protect their future jobs, rather than just earn a living. But the Sherpas this year, including me, are positive and excited to take the challenge up again and to return to the mountain. We are seeing more people who want to visit Nepal again, which is encouraging. These days we see lots of tourists trekking to Everest Basecamp and spending time in Thamel in Kathmandu, which is a good sign of recovery. But its still not as it was in previous years. Most of the tourists visiting at the moment are travellers who have previously visited Nepa, who love Nepal and the Nepali people. Many Nepalis rely on tourism for their income. Things havent changed, the trails are open and country is as beautiful as ever. When people ask me what they can do to support Nepal I tell them the answer is simple visit. Dawa Sherpa is a mountain guide and deputy operations manager for Intrepid Travel in Nepal and has been climbing peaks since he was 16. Hes successfully summited Everest four times. Intrepid is donating all profits from its 2015/16 Nepal trips to local projects in the country (intrepidtravel.com/nepal). Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Whales have a special day, pangolins too, and every December all things simian are celebrated, so it seems only right that penguins should be similarly lauded with World Penguin Day on 25 April. The global observance was launched four years ago when scientists at a US Antarctic research centre noticed that, without fail, Adelie penguins returned from the sea to breed on this day every year. It is now used as a means of promoting their conservation. My admiration for these aquatic, flightless birds rose exponentially during an eight-day cruise around West Antarctica. Like the other 185 passengers onboard the Ocean Endeavour, departing from Argentinas Tierra del Fuego, I wanted to be wowed by breaching whales, leopard seals bloodlust, and natures borderless paragliders, albatrosses. Yet penguins are the fabric of all wildlife-watching voyages to Antarctica. Always waddling around, they are ready to entertain when whales cant be bothered to surface and are all too often an oily lunch for predators in a sub-zero world that is as chillingly visceral as it is beautiful. Even in a landscape as remote as Antarctica, penguins are facing unprecedented impact from humans, something Id learn throughout our 1,500 nautical-mile voyage from Dr Tom Hart of Oxford University. This hitchhiking penguinologist uses Ocean Endeavour to monitor time-lapse cameras for his Penguin Lifelines project, whose goal is to understand better the threat to penguins and their fluctuating populations. The first thing to admire about these comical creatures is a tenacity to exist around the Southern Oceans frozen, wave-battered shorelines. The regions rigours were introduced to me by a hefty sea-swell as we sailed south from Cape Horn at the tip of South America during a two-day crossing down the Drake Passage to Antarctica. I lurched around our reinforced ship like a drunken sailor, lolling between my comfortable seventh-deck en-suite cabin, lectures on everything from glaciology to ornithology, the gym, and Polaris Restaurant for Austrian chef Mannfeds excellent cordon bleu cooking. Most of the worlds 17 penguin species exist in the circumpolar Antarctic Convergence Zone, where sea temperatures range from 6C-to-2C and warm sub-Antarctic and cold Antacrtic currents meet, spawning rich, penguin-favoured feeding grounds of krill (tiny crustaceans). Penguins dont like cold water but theyre not stupid. They like the food these waters bring, lectured French ornithologist, Fabrice Genevois. Halfway down the Drake Passage, it wasnt long before we spotted our first penguins prospecting for krill, skimming through the water like Wallis bouncing bombs trailed by a black-browed albatross. 'Ocean Endeavour' lands at Neko Harbour (Mark Stratton) Soon after, the Antarctic Peninsulas ice-entombed isthmus was signposted by a floating behemoth of an iceberg (imagine the White Cliffs of Dover on a world-cruise). Land duly appeared as Ocean Endeavour nosed between Brabant and Envers Islands near Neko Harbour on the 65th parallel where, on cue, a pod of humpback whales was gorging on krill. The combination of blue-hued glaciers and dusky evening light was bewitching. Planned daily trips onto land further increased my admiration for penguins. Even the pong of their fishy guano didnt deter our fleet of Zodiacs about to storm Neko Harbour, armed with 400mm lenses primed to pap any penguin that moved. Were the birds bothered? Not a bit. On snowy slopes, against the backdrop of a glacier crevassed into teetering ice-towers and wracked by rumbling avalanches, the Gentoo penguins were presumably preoccupied with survival. These knee-high birds, with a distinctive white eye-patch, are one of six Antarctic species that breed on Antarctic land. It was February, nearing summers end and time was ticking for the colonys chicks to be mature enough to face the onset of winter. Both parents made food runs while their downy greyish chicks fussed to be fed. Ive tried the regurgitated krill, its quite tasty a little salty perhaps, said Fabrice. I hoped chef Mannfred didnt agree. Elsewhere mature penguins were preening their moulting feathers. These penguins are losers, commented the ever-phlegmatic Fabrice. They have time to moult because they didnt breed or lost their chicks. Gentoo penguins on Cuverville Island (Mark Stratton) Dr Hart, meanwhile, checked a few of his land- and ice-based cameras, in place to observe the colonies in situ. He explained that his research suggested this 2,000-pair colony remains stable and reveals that Gentoo are remaining around the nesting beaches longer into winter than previously thought. But this is a late creche of chicks and quite a few wont survive the coming winter, he cautioned. Next day it was Chinstraps turn to get papped. We sailed down the magnificent Lemaire Channel, whose mountainous flanks of snow and black basalt were patterned like a Friesian cows hide. Chinstrap penguins are a little smaller than Gentoo, with porcelain-white faces framed by a delicate black line around their neck. They live beside the Gentoo on a snowbound promontory, Port Charcot, named by early 20th-century French expeditionary, Jean-Baptiste Charcot. Instead of landing, I took a kayak out for a penguin-eye perspective of their refrigerated world: an abstract gazpacho of fractured sea-ice and bobbing blue-veined bergs, ever-evolving into shapes and textures such as scalloped shells, cubes, Art Deco curves, and floating toadstools, all inextricably dissolving into seawater as clear as glass. Chinstraps barrelled past our kayaks, surfacing frequently for air. As winters ice locks the landscape shut, they will head out to sea, fishing exclusively on krill. Patrice explained they can load up on 800 grams of krill - one-seventh of their body weight - to carry back to their chicks. My admiration for their environment extended to new levels of respect that afternoon. On the ships daily menu is a Wandering Albatross and Polar Plunge. The former is a gin and Cointreau cocktail; the latter a rites-of-passage dip in the ocean. Joining some of my fellow passengers queuing to take this unnecessary excursion, I felt like a mutineer about to walk the plank into the 1.6C brine - initial breathlessness, ice-cream headache then shock followed in quick succession. The experience lasted barely a minute and ended with a Ukrainian waiter proffering a welcome shot of vodka. Wilson's storm petrel off Aitcho Island (Mark Stratton) Those same hostile waters host fearsome predators where our admirably brave penguins risk life-and-flipper every time they fish. If this is a leopard seal I want to see him shredding penguins, said Gordon, a no nonsense pipefitter from Medicine Hat, Calgary. Of course, nobody wanted to see the little chaps getting eaten, but secretly we hoped they might lure some of Antarcticas mammalian and winged predators towards our boat, keen to pick up a penguin. Orcas, for whom penguins are surely an hors doeuvre, offered only distant sightings. Yet Gordons lust for penguin gore was sated by magnificent leopard seals, so named for their spots. One of these big seals volleyballed an unlucky Gentoo into the air before devouring it. Their skin is quite tough so the leopards have a job biting through, explained Fabrice. Jostling for dessert, Antarcticas mightiest winged scavengers, giant southern petrels, arrived with powerful vulturine beaks to rip into the remaining carcass, while petite Wilsons storm petrels, nicknamed Jesus Christ birds because they seemingly walk on water, snaffled morsels of flying gristle and blubber. Meanwhile, back at the penguin rookeries, predatory skuas loitered around the chicks to pick-off the weakest. In spite of the natural violence that surrounds them, penguins biggest adversary is mankind. Returning northwards towards Tierra del Fuego after three days on the Antarctic Peninsula, Ocean Endeavour called at the scenic South Shetland Isles. We steamed into Deception Islands flooded caldera: its last eruption in 1971 artistically streaked the snowy slopes with cindery, haematite-red ash. Nearby is Antarcticas largest Chinstrap colony at Baily Head where black volcanic beaches are strewn with 50,000 pairs of Chinstraps. Its a big colony, said Tom, but numbers have fallen by 39 per cent since 1986. Leopard seal in Neko Harbour (Mark Stratton) Our onboard lectures muddied any oversimplified notions I had about anthropogenically-induced climate change. Certainly, dissolving ice-sheets are devastating for penguins. The recently reported Rome-sized Iceberg B09B grounded onto a beach in Eastern Antarctica and during four years has decimated an Adelie penguin colony that now has to detour 60 kilometres in search of krill. But such ice break-ups may not be down to humans necessarily, cautioned onboard glaciologist, Dr Colin Souness. He explained that the enormous Larsen Ice Sheet interlocking the Antarctic Peninsula has badly fragmented over recent decades, yet Eastern Antarctica has been observed to cool, hinting at the possibility of natural cycles of climate change. However, Dr Hart does see direct human activity affecting penguins. Id summarise climate change, fisheries, disease, and pollution, as penguins biggest threat, he outlined. As an educated guess Id say the relationship between climate change and krill-fishing presents the greatest challenge. When krill, he explained, is over-exploited by fishing, it impacts penguins ability to gather sufficient food to raise their young. If the ice-sheets melt away, fishing can potentially penetrate deeper into Antarctica. Among other uses, he explained how krill is used in food colouring for products such as farmed salmon and Omega 3 oils. A final disembarkation in the South Shetlands allowed us the chance to celebrate penguins one last time. Aitcho Island is fortified by Giants Causeway-like columnar basalt while humpback whales and leopard seals patrol a broad bay of black sands embedded by beached icebergs offshore. Mixed colonies of Gentoo and Chinstraps played the crowd. Tubby, downy chicks huddled together, generating a fearful din. Others chased downtrodden parents who plunged into the sea to escape their persistent offspring. I watched with admiration a brave Gentoo repeatedly chasing away a menacing skua. Life for penguins at the bottom of the world is a lot harder than Id imagined. These brave little birds deserve celebrating today. Ill certainly be raising a glass. Something chilled, of course. Travel Essentials Mark Stratton travelled with Quark Expeditions (0203 514 2712; quarkexpeditions.com) on its 11-day Antarctic Explorer voyage. Prices start at 4,100 per person and includes full-board and twice-daily Zodiac excursions. Quark offers a mandatory flight package from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia for embarkation from 540 per person. Optional activities such as kayaking and paddle-boarding extra. Iberia (iberia.com) and British Airways (ba.com) fly Heathrow to Buenos Aires. Penguin Lifelines (penguinlifelines.org) is Tom Harts programme to monitor the health of penguins. Citizen scientists are invited to participate. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Millions of British holidaymakers heading to the Mediterraneans most popular islands this summer face having to stump up for a new tourist tax - which theyll have to pay on top of the existing cost of their holidays. The levy could add another 11 a week per person to a trip to Spains Balearic islands. Further south, Malta is also about to slap an eco-tax on visitors. What will it mean for your trip? Simon Calder, travel correspondent, assess the new fees. Q Whats the idea of the Spanish tax? The government of the Balearics - the main islands of which are Majorca, Ibiza and Menorca - has published its plans to impose a Sustainable Tourism Tax to help protect the islands resources. Q How much will it add to the price of a holiday? From 1 July every holidaymaker aged 16 or above will pay the levy for every night they stay on the islands. It is expected to be collected upon arrival or departure by reception staff. The tax is on a sliding scale, from 50 cents per person per night if youre camping or staying in a hostel, to 2 for luxury hotels and upmarket apartments. After eight nights, the tax is halved. So a family of four including two children aged 16 who spend a fortnight at a four-star apartment or a five-star hotel would pay around 70 at todays exchange rate. Q Is it true that you even have to pay VAT on top? Some tour operators have told holidaymakers that the tourist tax is subject to another 10 per cent VAT, which would push that 70 up by 7 for a family of four. However, the government documents I have studied give no indication that tourists will have to pay tax on the tax. Q How can I reduce the tax? You could choose a lower grade of accommodation. Or you could go to the Balearics between November and March, when tax rates are halved. Q How can I avoid the tax? You could go somewhere else. Or you could try your luck by pleading medical grounds. The law exempts "stays made by any person for health reasons," though it is not clear what documentary proof is required. If you know a friendly doctor (or you are a friendly doctor) you could produce a note saying you really need a holiday in Mallorca, Ibiza etc for the sake of your health. Frankly, we could all argue that. Let me know how you get on. Q Is it legal to charge holidaymakers more after theyve paid for their trip? There are strict rules on surcharges imposed by a holiday firm, but they dont apply for a government-imposed tax like this. There are plenty of precedents for taxes imposed after youve paid for a holiday in full, such as in 2007 when UK Air Passenger Duty was doubled with just six weeks notice. And a host of cities in Italy have all introduced their own hotel taxes - some citing sustainability, others simply boosting the local coffers. Q Will the tax put people off going to Spain? According to Abta - the association that represents the UK travel industry - it will. Abta warns the tax will have the unintended consequence of driving tourists away from the islands. While it says the aim of safeguarding the environment of the islands is laudable, the association believes this tax is not the most sensible way to do so. In 2002 the islands introduced a similar tax, but it only stuck for a season: holidaymakers switched to lower-cost destinations such as Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia. Thats not going to happen this year. Indeed, Spain is likely to have its most successful summer ever, as a result of a reluctance of people to go to Turkey and Egypt, and the complete ban on package holidays to Turkey. Prices for flights and holidays have already increased as a result of the surge in demand. But for anyone who hasnt yet booked, its worth bearing the new tax in mind - it applies on the Balearic islands, but not in mainland resorts such as Benidorm and Marbella or the Canaries. Q Whats going on in Malta? A new environmental contribution of 0.50 per night is due to start in June. It will apply only for over-18s, and there is a cap per holiday of 5 per person - thats 4. Its been very controversial, with the hotel industry on the island furious about its potential deterrent effect - and the fact that they have to collect it on the governments behalf. Q Are these sorts of taxes likely to catch on elsewhere? They already exist. The New York City authorities add a whole raft of taxes that put quoted hotel rates up by about 15 per cent. And in Britain, everyone staying in a hotel pays VAT at 20 per cent - something the British hospitality industry is furious about. Governments, local and national, seem to like taxes that affect tourists - theyre easy to collect, and of course overseas visitors dont vote. Except with their feet. The rest of Spain, and other Mediterranean nations, will be watching closely how holidaymakers respond to the new Balearics tax. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Q We have an enforced stopover in the US en route to Latin America. We can choose between Miami or Houston. The hotel will be at our expense. As its just an overnight stay (from around 6pm to 9am next morning), which would you recommend? Geraldine Chapman, Reading A The biggest cities in Florida and Texas have much to recommend them. If there is any way to extend your stay, I urge you to do so. But assuming it is just a stop of 15 hours or so, then your requirements are likely to be drink, dinner, sleep, back to airport. And Miami airport, being only around seven miles from Downtown and 10 from Miami Beach, is much better placed than Houstons George Bush International, 23 miles away from the city centre. To maximise the benefit from a short stay, South Beach (the bottom end of the long spit that comprises Miami Beach) should be your target. For a cheap transfer, take the free MIA Mover shuttle to the Metrorail Station. From here, the Airport Flyer 150 bus runs direct to Miami Beach on the hour and half-hour, for $2.65 (1.90). The bus is scheduled to take around 40 minutes to reach South Beach. A taxi to Miami Beach is fixed at $32 (23); the driver will expect a tip of at least $5 (3.50). South Beach has dozens of hotels, but theres a premium for beachfront locations. The Hotel Astor is a couple of blocks inland, and has good rooms and free breakfast for around $229 (164) double (hotelastor.com). Trust me, thats a good rate for South Beach. Wander along the waterfront, taking in the superb art deco architecture, and treat yourself to a cocktail at the rooftop bar of the Congress Hotel. Then choose a dinner spot along Lincoln Road Mall; Pizza Rustica is a good bet for a fast feast. With the time change from the UK, youll wake early - which is just as well, since morning security lines at MIA can be long. So wolf down your breakfast then head for the airport. Every day, our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles readers questions. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} As the debates over the crisis in the NHS and the forthcoming EU referendum rage, the two seem to have become interlinked. Though Britain has been a member of the European Union for more than 40 years, those in favour of British withdrawal from Europe have begun to argue that the NHS is unravelling under the weight of immigration into the UK due to EU membership. In fact, the reasons for pressure on the NHS are much more simple. It is true that migration is increasing. Net migration into the UK was estimated at 178,000 in 2014. The NHS, as it is currently funded, cannot cope with such an increase in demand on its services unless supply is equally elastic. In other words, as the population grows, so must public spending on the health service. But that hasnt happened. What should be a relatively healthy relationship between population size and government funding is amounting to barely a casual acquaintance. Though immigration to the UK from the EU has increased, NHS funding has not. And the NHS financial black hole predicted to be 22bn by 2020/21 is the single most important reason for health systems struggling to cope. Recommended Read more Why we need a public movement to save our NHS Blaming this on tax-paying migrants is not only divisive, but it ignores the more chronic problems of an under-funded NHS. Some Brexiteers continue to argue that leaving the EU will save money, because we will stop paying into the union, and that funding can be injected into domestic public services. Yet countries such as Norway and Switzerland, who have no say in EU decision-making, must pay similar amounts to fund their cumbersome arrangements with the EU market. What about those EU free-riders, who come to the UK solely for the benefit of NHS treatment? In 2013 the Department of Health estimated the total cost of EU health tourism where people travel to the UK specifically for treatment which they are not entitled to at home at between 60m and 80m per year. This compares to the annual NHS budget of 113bn (less than 0.1 per cent), and under current agreements with the EU, the NHS can partially recoup the costs of treatment from the patients country of origin. NHS is a 'system in crisis' Whether you agree with it or not, health tourism is not to blame for the woes of the NHS. Leaving the EU would barely cause a ripple in the NHS pool of debt. Meanwhile, the NHS actually benefits from EU membership through direct financial aid. Since 2003, 450m has poured into the UK to finance a wide range of health projects. The Eurosceptic brand of pessimism will have you believe that EU migration is only detrimental to the success of the NHS. A 2015 report published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, however, found that 8,307 out of 106,638 doctors (8 per cent) working in the NHS in 2014 originally qualified in the European Economic Area, excluding the UK. The British healthcare system is facing unprecedented problems with recruitment and retention of its own domestic trainees. Low workforce morale and poor working conditions are profoundly worrying with a poll of over 4,000 young medics showing that more than 70 per cent would prefer to work as a locum, move abroad or change career under the new junior doctor contract proposals. Such uncertain conditions in the NHS indicate that in the short term the UK healthcare system will be dependent upon foreign trained healthcare professionals including those from elsewhere in the EU. 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 2012, the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize, an acknowledgement of its vital global role in protecting human rights. Its collaborative, humanitarian ambition transcends local governments and permeates through national law. Policies such as the EU Working Time Directive protect the rights of those who work in healthcare, and the EU Clinical Trials Directive is vital for the advancement of medical research in the UK. The EU is not the cause of our financially malnourished NHS, but has formed a part of many of its successes. Clamping the cord connecting the UK and the EU may be described as a quick-fix, but it is not the way to stabilise our turbulent healthcare system. Vageesh Jain is a medical student at King's College London and was the winner of the 2015 Policy Idol competition for his work on tackling Ebola Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} It goes without saying that today is not a good day to be taken seriously ill in England. A failure to compromise and a stubborn intransigence on both sides has brought us to a place where, for the first time in the NHSs history, even the most seriously ill patients will be denied comprehensive medical care. Yes, senior doctors will do their best to fill in and ensure that the strike does not lead to avoidable loss of life. But this is far from a foregone conclusion and, at best, patients taken in to hospital on Tuesday or Wednesday this week cannot expect anything other than stretched and perfunctory attention. A schism within the medical profession is also now likely, with junior doctors proceeding with an all-out strike without the explicit backing of the profession's Royal Colleges. Patients deserve better both from their Government and their doctors. Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron have been far too willing to engineer this showdown to keep alive their wider goal of increasing NHS services across seven days a week on an already stretched budget. Some in the doctors union, meanwhile, have been equally keen to take on the Tory government, rather than engaging more constructively to improve the lot of their membership. Away from the immediate battlefield, this dispute highlights the need for a fundamental re-assessment of how we fund the NHS. The public overwhelmingly wants an NHS that is better funded than it is today and where a seven-day NHS would not mean robbing Dr Peter to pay Nurse Paul. But we often dont see the link between that funding and the taxes that we pay. If we are to have an informed and honest debate about the kind of health service we want in the future and how, as a society, we are going to pay for it, then a specific and ring-fenced NHS tax is the only solution. This current crisis illustrates why it is an idea whose time has come. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Pressure to push through the controversial EU-US trade deal, TTIP, was ramped up this week as Barack Obama urged EU countries to push forwards with negotiations. Obamas statement comes in response to massive public concerns, both in Europe and the US, over the TTIP deal which seeks to ease trade between the EU and US by removing regulatory barriers. The problem is that these barriers are, in many cases, important rules protecting our rights and safety in areas such as the environment, food, privacy, public health, workers rights and, most worryingly, public services such as the NHS. TTIP proponents have long argued that the NHS will not be affected by the deal. But the fact is that the UKs healthcare services are, and always have been, on the negotiating table, having received no exclusive exemption from talks. TTIP supporters claim that TTIP will include a carve out clause similar to that in CETA, the EUs trade deal with Canada, which states that EU countries reserve the right to "adopt or maintain" measures excluding foreign companies from public health services. And a leaked TTIP document, published by the BBC in February, seems to confirm this. But legal experts have shown that in practice this clause would have little effect against privatisation. And privatisation could be further locked in by the action of so-called ISDS tribunals controversial behind-closed-door courts that allow private companies to sue governments over loss of profits. Lest we remain in any doubt over the power of ISDS to sway the direction of governments, we just have to look at cases like the tobacco giant Philip Morris, which sued the Australian government over attempts to introduce plain cigarette packaging. And to see ISDS already at work against a public health service, there is the case of Dutch health insurer, Achmea, which successfully sued the Slovak government for bringing health insurance back under public control. Achmea won 20m euros in the case and, when the Slovak government decided to defend its sovereignty and refused to pay up, the Dutch firm, incredibly, seized government assets from bank accounts in Luxembourg, an act of piracy authorised by a Luxembourg court. TTIP will include a form of ISDS so the same thing could happen to any countrys health service that accepts the deal, including the NHS here in the UK. If, we want a truly protected NHS, the only way is to negotiate a specific exemption within the text of the deal itself, something which the UK government has never sought to do. And here we come to the real agenda behind TTIP, behind ISDS, behind Obamas desperate statements and, sadly, behind a lot of the inner workings of the EU. The central agenda of TTIP is the deregulation of markets, allowing the relentless march to power of big corporations to continue unchecked. The fact that that march will trammel over public health, workers rights, environmental safety and democracy itself seems not to concern those involved. But it should concern us, the citizens who will be affected, and it should inspire us to continue to fight against TTIP wherever and however we can. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President Obamas intervention in the UK referendum, in favour of Remain, may have been audacious and controversial but the reaction of the Brexiteers was revealing. Their absurd response that he wouldnt dream of opening the US border to free movement from Mexico exposed the latent xenophobia which drives the Leave campaign. Immigration is Brexits version of Project Fear. The Vote Leave website starts by warning that over two million EU migrants are waiting to take Britain by storm. We pulled out of the last recession so fast because so many EU migrants were here to work. The Brexit appeal to an instinctive hostility to foreigners defines an ugly movement. Dr John Cameron St Andrews President Obama and Hillary Clinton are being economical with the truth about Brexit and trade pacts. Take the EU-Canada trade pact. Why would Canada object to a carbon copy trade pact with a post-Brexit UK? The two-year transition period for leaving the EU provides plenty of time to sort out the paperwork. Then there is the EU's yet to be concluded Transatlantic trade pact with America (TTIP). The UK has been very much involved in the negotiations. Notwithstanding Obama's back of the queue comment, is it in America's interest to make a meal of agreeing a more or else identical pact with the UK? Then we are told that the EU will happily sign a trade pact with America that makes no allowance for the free movement of labour. Yet such a pact with a post-Brexit UK is out of the question, unless it incorporates a free movement accord. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Yugo Kovach Winterborne Houghton, Dorset I am stunned to think that the press believe that by Obama coming to Britain and telling the British people to vote to stay in, it will convince them to vote to stay in. If anything, it will do the opposite. Obama left Britain and went on Germany, where he congratulated Chancellor Angela Merkel for taking down the European borders and allowing millions to come and live in Europe, instead of helping these poor people in their country of origin. Here is a man saying how great it is take down borders when his policy is the total opposite. In the eight years of his presidency it has become more difficult to immigrate to America and yet he is telling the British public to do the opposite. It it is an insult to British people's intelligence. David Hennessy Co Wicklow, Ireland President Obama is regrettably sitting in his ivory tower, unaware of the burdens endured by ordinary British citizens. There is a severe housing shortage in the UK and soaring homelessness rates. Food banks are on the rise, and more poor families are struggling to meet their daily needs in this age of financial austerity and benefits cuts. Patients are dying needlessly while waiting on the NHS for life-saving operations. Suicide rates and mental health issues are sky rocketing with no proper, resilient healthcare facilities and experienced staff to deal with them. An open-door policy harms the UK's interests. The current law stipulates that a European becomes eligible for housing benefit only after a three-month residency in the UK. One could only imagine what the situation would look like with the accession of other five countries to the EU. Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob London, NW2 It is abundantly clear from President Obamas visit that he is a keen, if covert, supporter of Brexit. He deftly applied reverse psychology techniques to help bring it about. David Camerons grasp of the British character is so poor that he didnt even notice. John Riseley Harrogate Obama bowls a googly, and the Leave campaign call foul. Jehangir Sarosh OBE Bushey Chief Brexit campaigner, Telegraph columnist and occasional panel show guest Boris Johnson complained recently that the Governments leaflet promoting continued EU membership was a misuse and misappropriation of public funds, promoting one perspective to the exclusion of others. While this can perhaps be seen to have been acting in the public interest, it is most certainly open to debate. Meanwhile, a brief perusal of public accounts reveals another potential misuse of public money that has hitherto been strangely under-reported: since May 2008, taxpayers money to the tune of 47,970 per annum has been frittered away to no apparent purpose other than promotion of Boris Johnson his ego, his vanity projects and his ambition. In these straitened times, there are causes far more deserving of public subsidy. Julian Self Milton Keynes First Muslim woman to lead UKs students welcomed by Jewish community Why has the new National Union of Students (NUS) President been targeted by anti-Semitism accusations, without any evidence? As a consistent opponent of all forms of racism including anti-Semitism, Malia Bouattia opposes Israel's racist, illegal occupation of Palestine and supports effective campaigns to end it. Her accusers have cited her negative comment about the University of Birmingham as a Zionist outpost, which is a political category like any other and so irrelevant to religion or anti-Semitism. Indeed, the false equation Jewish = Zionist comes from Israels supporters, not from the Palestine solidarity movement. Malia Bouattias election as the first Muslim woman to head the NUS should be celebrated for bringing together resistance to class, racial, religious, gender and neocolonial oppression. Instead, she has been subjected to attacks that mirror those made against the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader. Israel is no longer believed when denying responsibility for its crimes against Palestinians, so now its supporters resort to silencing opposition to those crimes with blanket allegations of anti-Semitism. In both the NUS and Labour Party, the right wing loses its control over an organisation and then attempts to destabilise it, regardless of the damage done. As mainly Jewish signatories, we congratulate Malia on her election. Mike Cushman, Tony Greenstein, Deborah Fink, Les Levidow, Jenny Hardacre, Eleanor Kilroy, Richard Kuper, Leah Levane, Rachel Lever, Helen Marks, Jonathan Rosenhead, Ian Saville, Amanda Sebestyen, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi A mile a day keeps the doctor away In order to get more people involved in sport we need more sport in schools on a daily basis, as now the legal requirement for all schools is just one session a week. This could be something as simple as a daily mile round the playing fields. Rosanne Bostock Oxford Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The jet fumes from Air Force One are still lingering in the air, and already Brexiteers are doing their damnedest to belittle the US President and everything he stands for. Boris Johnson reckons we should ignore Obamas thoughts on Europe because hes part-Kenyan, Dominic Raab is screaming from the rooftops the guy is a lame duck loser and Liam Fox says Obamas opinions are totally irrelevant. Whether its his African heritage or American accent Brexiteers hate, they all seem to agree on one thing: when it comes to Britain and its role in the EU, Obama should just mind his own business. This may hurt to hear, but thats exactly what hes doing and its about damn time he spoke up. For decades, Eurosceptics have pinned their entire economic case upon Westminsters alleged untapped trade potential with countries like the US. Theyve argued Brussels is totally holding the UK back, and that we could make Britains Special Relationship with America a whole lot more special by simply ditching Europe and getting into bed headfirst with our fellow Anglophiles. Surely every self-respecting British voter would want that and using the powers of telekinesis, the Vote Leave campaign inherently knew every American voter agreed with that plan, too. Well, apparently Barack Obama doesnt believe in telekinesis. Hed much rather you hear the thoughts of American voters straight from the horses mouth. And believe it or not, those opinions actually hit pretty close to home. You see, Brexiteers love to rage on about how this EU referendum is a democratic question that must be answered by the British people. OK, fine. But at the end of the day, not everyone living in Britain gets to have their say. Case in point: there are almost 200,000 Americans like me living in the UK. Thats 50,000 more people than the Conservative Party has got signed up, about five times higher than Ukip's fan base and roughly the same size as the population of Aberdeen. Yet because those UK residents were born a few thousand miles away from London, apparently nobody cares what they think. Obama: Brexit would hurt Britain's trade with US It doesnt matter that theyre paying British taxes. It doesnt matter that their kids are British. Hell, it doesnt even matter if they plan to live here forever. Theyre simply expected to smile, nod and agree with every half-baked, anti-European daydream that pops into Chris Graylings head because they arent allowed a vote. Hows that for democracy? Like it or not, Barack Obama has every right to voice his concerns about this referendum. Never mind half a trillion dollars in American investments. Never mind being the backbone of the Leave Campaigns so-called economic plan. Never mind the long-term global ramifications of a Brexit. The White House is speaking for the interests of literally tens of thousands of British residents who are being completely and utterly excluded from a meaningful debate about the future of their homes. This referendum might centre on the UK, but its tremors will be felt well beyond the borders of Little Britain. As a result, everyone able to vote on June 23rd owes it to their foreign friends and neighbours to pause for a moment and contemplate exactly what it is Barack Obama is saying about this election. It doesnt matter if you agree with him, and it doesnt matter if you care it just matters that you listen. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} It is the well-known paradox of revolutions that their leaders, having railed against the dominance of existing elites, often end up craving the kind of absolute power they once sought to overthrow. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once a revolutionary of sorts, standing for Islamist influence in mainstream politics against an establishment which regarded the Westernisation and secularisation of the country by Ataturk and his successors as inviolable facts of life. By gaining popular support for the Justice & Development Party (AKP) he founded in 2002, Erdogan was able to challenge the status quo by using the very democratic institutions the elites claimed to represent and stand for. Successive election victories led to Turkey being held up as a beacon for Islamic democracy. Yet when Erdogan was elected President in 2014, following a decade as Prime Minister, it seemed clear that he intended to expand the role of his new office, which had previously been largely ceremonial. A taste of power only whets the appetite for more, it seemed. Just as Erdogan frequently used the judiciary to stifle the influence of old elites (including the military) during his tenure as prime minister, so he increasingly sought to tackle journalists and satirists by recourse to an ever-more amenable legal system. Since he became President, more than 1,800 prosecutions have been launched against people alleged to have insulted him. In March, the Zaman daily newspaper was placed under the control of trustees following a court ruling the practical effect was to place a popular organ of dissent under the control of the state. Then, earlier this month, Erdogan demanded the prosecution in Germany of a TV presenter, Jan Bohmermann, who had allegedly defamed the Turkish President in a comedic poem. The article of the German criminal code which Erdogan and his advisers had managed to sniff out which relates to insults against representative of foreign states was so little-used that many German lawyers hadnt heard of it. Angela Merkel, who finds herself in something of a conundrum, has agreed that a prosecution can advance. The assumption is that the courts will throw the case out but the law can be a Dummkopf, so only time will tell. Having got his way in Germany, Erdogan has moved on to a new target. On Sunday, a Dutch journalist of Turkish origin, who had criticised the President in a newspaper in the Netherlands, was arrested while holidaying in western Turkey. She has been barred from leaving the country. Given the UKs reputation for libel tourism, one wonders when Erdogans tentacles will find their way here. At least Britain has a reputation for protecting satire. In 2003, the Israeli Prime Minister complained about a cartoon in The Independent by Dave Brown, which depicted him biting the head off a Palestinian child. The Press Complaints Commission rejected the complaint, noting that while the item might have caused offence it was reluctant to come to a decision that would in any way compromise the ability of newspapers to make critical or satirical comments about nations or governments through the use of cartoons. Long may that sentiment be shared by our courts and regulators, in the event that Erdogan comes calling. His position in Turkey meanwhile seems impregnable. He crushes dissent where it arises, while using internal and external security fears to bolster his popularity. Turkeys critical position both as the potential gateway to Europe for millions of refugees, and as a base for NATO forces involved in attacks against Isis, mean that the West has an interest in its stability. Indeed, the tolerance of Erdogans totalitarian behaviour by Western leaders is as depressing as his own autocratic approach. In 1998, Erdogan served a jail term for inciting religious hatred. His crime? Reading a supposedly inflammatory poem at a political rally. The boot is now firmly on the other foot, and is being heavily used as Erdogan attempts to stamp out any flickers of free expression in Turkey and beyond. As in any revolution, what goes around... Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Man the barricades, bar the door of the Department of Health, the junior doctors scalpels and syringes bared are on their way to bring down the Government! Thats more or less how one unnamed Government source summed the situation up yesterday. This weeks unprecedented emergency care strike is political, they said. The British medical Association (BMA) has radicalised a generation of junior doctors, and its goal is nothing short of toppling the Government. The hysteria of such statements is testament to how fraught this dispute has become. But on one point the source is completely wrong: if anything, it is the rank and file of junior doctors that are radicalising the BMA. Their fury has been bubbling under the surface for many years. Junior doctors have possibly one of the hardest jobs in the country. They carry on their young shoulders life and death responsibilities that most of us never even come close to. Throw into the mix long hours, unpredictable working patterns, high personal expense for examinations, and a training structure that means upping sticks across the country for your next job at a time of life when most others are trying to put down roots, and you can see how they might have hoped to be cut some slack. Instead, over the past six years, they have seen NHS funding squeezed in a way unprecedented in its history while demand from an ageing and growing population has continued unabated. Staffing shortages mean that gaps on rotas when a junior doctor turns up for a shift have become routine. Recommended Read more Why we need a public movement to save our NHS Already, before this contract dispute, they and all other NHS staff, for that matter felt like butter spread over too much bread. Then came the Conservatives seven-day NHS manifesto promise. The NHSs own plan to get through the lean times involved cutting 22bn from the budget by 2020, with only an 8bn funding boost to ease the pain. So how an expansion of much routine care to Saturdays and Sundays was going to be paid for was never clear. Junior doctors trained for years think forensically, relying on evidence were never going to be convinced by a contract that asked them to do their bit by working more weekends without the money to back it up. The BMA deserves its share of the blame for the subsequent impasse, for accepting in the first place the premise that this contract could be agreed without any additional cost. Its members know it cant, and sources close to the plans concede in private that the goal of the contract is to trim back the NHS wage bill in the long-term, by setting a precedent that weekends dont attract as much extra pay as they used to. In truth then, there is probably no single contract offer that could give junior doctors what they really want: an NHS given the money to train the tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands more doctors, nurses, carers, radiologists, physiotherapists, paramedics, porters, and others required to do their jobs properly, and actually enjoy some quality of life as well. So on one level, our anxious unnamed Government source is right. This has become political. It is about more than the terms of the contract, and is really a challenge over the Governments commitment to a properly-funded health service. That makes a solution very difficult, and brings into sharp focus the role of the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. While Mr Hunt has been the bogeyman of this dispute, he is really only the occasionally faltering frontman for a Treasury policy of austerity which appears to be reaching the limits of what it can achieve without stirring significant unrest. Consider, for instance, the backlash over the aborted attempts to cut billions more from support for the disabled, which led to Iain Duncan Smiths resignation. The difference between the two cases is that, in Whitehall circles, the Department of Health is seen to have received very special treatment from the Treasury. While funding increases have slowed down, unlike other departments it has never faced an actual cut. But Mr Hunt like anyone who knows the NHS well must realise that this is not enough. 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 He recently said that he believed health spending would have to increase as a share of the national income. For a minister already seen to have had a generous deal from the Treasury, thats quite bold. Since becoming Health Secretary, Mr Hunt has demonstrated a genuine admiration for the NHS and its staff, and one suspects that their loathing weighs heavy on him. If his oft-professed commitment to patient safety is genuine, then he must be lobbying the Chancellor very hard for more money for the NHS. If he doesnt get it, what will he do? Might it be that the only way to end this dispute is for the Health Secretary himself to do an IDS and make a stand against the people really responsible the Chancellor and the Treasury? Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The news that over 60 per cent of students support the NUS policy of no platforming speakers will no doubt be greeted by howls of disapproval from the right wing press. Spiked even has a campaign against campus censorship, complaining that no platforming is part of a politically correct agenda that is destroying universities as sites of debate and discussion. Far from being a threat to liberal democracy, however, no platforming is based on the idea that it is necessary to exclude extremist and offensive views from public discourse. Theres really nothing very new or controversial about that. The irony of the widespread objection to campus censorship is that it comes from the same right-wing places that are appalled at the election of Malia Bouattia as president of the National Union of Students. Apparently, Malia is a poisonous woman with odious supporters, whose election has led to some student unions threating to decertify from the national body. Her offense is to hold critically views towards Israel and the British governments regressive approach to Muslims. The fact that she was democratically elected has not stopped the assault and vilification of her in the press. When the NUS policy is banning the BNP and al-Mujahiroun from university campuses, there is no outcry from the right-wing press. It is only now that student movements are treading into territory that make the mainstream uncomfortable that this has become an issue. When feminist icons such as Germaine Greer are objected to because of their views about transgender people, or ethnic minority students complain about the dominance of colonial heroes such as Cecil Rhodes on campus, thats when no platforming becomes censorship. When oppressed minorities have their voices heard, the response is sadly not to listen, but rather to drown them out with accusations of political correctness gone mad. The latest furore concerns Boris Johnson being no platformed by Kings College over his comments about Obamas part-Kenyan ancestry. Not only did Johnson raise Obamas background as somehow important to his views of Brexit, but he explained how it prejudiced the president with an ancestral dislike of the British empire. It seems as though Boris has stopped dog-whistling to the right and is now engaged in a full-throated xenophobic call to leave the EU based on an embrace of Empire ideology. In many ways he morphing into our own version of Donald Trump: a right-wing, moneyed populist who gets away with saying progressively outrageous things. Lest we forget, MPs debated whether to no platform Trump on grand scale by banning his entry into the UK. By invoking the right to no platform speakers, students are embracing their democratic right to define the boundaries acceptability on university campuses just as we embrace our right as a country to choose which public figures are allowed to enter and speak here. Having a platform to air ones views is not a human right, after all; it is a privilege. We must resist the right-wing backlash to students from oppressed groups making their voices heard. Listening to these perspectives may make people uncomfortable, but it is precisely these voices that will push us to creating a more equal society. And no platforming techniques have to play a part in that. Hospital waiting lists could be slashed if the Government agreed a five-year plan paying private medics to deal with the overflow, it has been claimed. A group representing many of the country's private hospitals has called for the next health minister to sit down with them and hammer out a deal. The Private Hospitals Association (PHA) has not revealed how much it would cost the taxpayer or how much they stood to make. But it claimed they could offer "best value" for the public purse if it was properly planned. Simon Nugent, chief executive of the PHA, said a joint public and private sector approach could also speed up diagnosis as well as treatment. "If we all plan together, there is great scope for private hospitals to help the minister for health and the Health Service Executive tackle the challenges they are facing," he said. "Our members can help in the treatment of many waiting-list patients but we can only make a significant impact if we work in close partnership with the public hospitals system". The PHA said the intensive care "crisis" in particular could be relieved by the State paying for public patients to be treated in private hospitals. It estimates the intensive care waiting lists are claiming 300 lives in Ireland every year. Drinks can maker Ball said it along with British rival Rexam agreed to sell some assets to Luxembourg-based Ardagh Group for about $3.42bn (3.04bn) to meet antitrust regulations ahead of their planned merger. The companies will sell some metal beverage can assets, support locations and functions in Europe, Brazil and the United States to Ardagh Group, Ball said on Monday. Reuters had earlier reported that Ball and Rexam have begun the process of shedding assets for regulatory approval. Ardagh chairman Paul Coulson said the company was pleased to expand its packaging business. "Whilst we do not currently operate in the beverage can market, the business we are acquiring is highly complementary to our existing metal and glass businesses. The acquired business has an excellent management team and strong customer relationships." Forever 21 has just one outlet in Ireland Pre-tax losses at the only Irish store of global fashion chain Forever 21 jumped almost five fold last year to 8.39m. The figure for 2014 was 1.73m. The US chain has just one outlet in Ireland, at the Jervis Street centre in Dublin, and employs 89 people here. Losses at Forever 21 Fashion Ireland sharply increased in spite of revenues rising by 23pc from 8.466m to 10.39m in the 12 months to the end of February last, its accounts show. That equals turnover of about 200,000 a week. A large proportion of its 2015 losses related to a foreign exchange loss of 5.45m. The firm's rent for the year also increased from 3.46m to 3.66m. According to a directors' report "the company has maintained tight controls over costs while continuing its investment to establish brand awareness through marketing activities". The Irish unit's directors state that they are looking to expand market share in Ireland. The company's parent has agreed to provide continued financial support, they said. Paddy Power Betfair is looking to drop one of its media agencies as it continues its cost-cutting programme. The company, whose headquarters is in Dublin, is looking to put its entire 40m (51m) media spend for the UK and Ireland into a single entity. The newly-formed betting giant is pitting the two marketing firms that independently served both Paddy Power and Betfair prior to the merger against one another. M2M has been responsible for Paddy Power's marketing end of the business since 2009, while MediaCom has been handling Betfair's since 2015. It is understood both Paddy Power's and Betfair's branding campaigns will remain separate. In March of this year, the newly-merged business announced that Gavin Thompson, who was formerly Paddy Power's chief marketing officer (CMO), had left the company. Betfair's Jonathan Devitt assumed the role of CMO at the new company. Mr Thompson's departure wasn't the only high-profile Paddy Power figure to leave the FTSE 100 company. Paddy Power's former chief executive Andy McCue became chief operating officer of the new firm before announcing that he too would leave the company at the end of April. When asked about the pitching process, a spokesman for the company said: "This is a closed process which we wouldn't comment on at this stage." Neither M2M nor MediaCom could be reached for comment. While they are the only two companies bidding for the UK and Ireland business, it is unclear whether or not they will also compete for the firm's US and Australian business. Paddy Power Betfair has no more immediate plans for its cost-cutting programme, it is understood. Following the merger, Paddy Power Betfair employed a total of 7,200. Earlier this month, it took aim at the company's headcount. Around 300 jobs were cut at its Irish operations, while a further 350 jobs were cut in the UK. Last year, Paddy Power's revenue increased by 24pc to 1.09bn in what was a record year. The new entity's share price has fallen by 19.2pc to 84.85 (108.4) since the merger in February. Petroneft shareholder Max Korobov at the Herbert Park Hotel in Dublin for yesterdays meeting. The long-running battle over board composition between Irish oil and gas firm Petroneft and its largest shareholder Natlata Partners appears to have reached a conclusion. Natlata, which is headed up by Russian businessman Maxim Korobov, was seeking the removal of four board members but will now rescind all of the resolutions it was due to put forward at an emergency general meeting this morning. Mr Korobov has been appointed to the board as a non-executive director while Anthony Sacca and David Sturt have both been appointed as independent non-executive directors. Meanwhile, David Sanders, Gerry Fagan, and Paul Dowling have all left the board. However, Mr Dowling will remain as the firm's chief financial officer. Petroneft chairman David Golder said the company was pleased to come to a "workable compromise" with Natlata. "We feel this is the best way forward for all of the shareholders in the company. The agreement allows the company to implement our recently announced Licence 61 work programme with our partner Oil India along with a new emphasis on business development," he said. Natlata owner Mr Korobov said the company had come to an agreement that suits the best interests of the shareholder. "We look forward to working with the board to develop the business and to bringing our experience in the Russian market to grow the Company and increase shareholder value," Mr Korobov said. Today's news comes ahead of an EGM that had been postponed since last Monday. Prior to the meeting Natlata had outlined its resolutions, which included the removal of chief executive Dennis Francis and directors David Sanders, Paul Dowling, and David Golder. The new make-up of the board is as follows: G. David Golder Chairman Dennis C. Francis CEO Thomas Hickey independent non-executive Director Maxim Korobov non-executive Director Anthony Sacca - independent non-executive Director David Sturt independent non-executive Director Parents are less likely to leave substantial inheritances for their children in future, due to increased life expectancy and economic pressures, according to the Law Reform Commission It signals the end of the inheritance as we know it. Parents are less likely to leave substantial inheritances for their children in future, due to increased life expectancy and economic pressures, according to the Law Reform Commission. It said lifetime earnings are becoming "a safety net" so people can live comfortably in old age, rather than something to be passed on to children. The commission is now investigating whether changes are needed to inheritance laws due to the fact people are living longer and releasing equity in their homes to fund their healthcare. The remarks are made in a paper published today. In particular, the commission is examining whether alterations should be made to Section 117 of the Succession Act 1965, which allows children to challenge a deceased parent's will if they don't believe they got their fair share. The section has been successfully used in the past to increase a child's share in an inheritance where they believed a parent failed in their "moral duty" to provide for them. This law was introduced to stop people from being disinherited, but other countries have begun to move away from making such awards. A member of the commission, Raymond Byrne, said courts in New Zealand and Australia were moving away from the view that people were entitled to an inheritance if they have been cut out of a will. "In more recent years you are finding judges saying maybe people are no longer entitled to inherit and so they are less likely to change anything that they do see in a will," he said. He said the commission was not prejudging the issue and could not yet say what recommendations it would make. The commission says there has been major demographic and economic changes in Ireland since the law was enacted over 50 years ago. It said children now remain dependent on their parents for longer. In turn, parents are also living longer and may themselves become dependent on their own children later in life. "Lifetime earnings may become increasingly viewed as a safety net to provide for someone's later years, rather than a helping hand to give to the next generation," the paper said. It cited research by English gerontologist Professor Sarah Harper, who found that many parents will be relying on the value of their family home to fund their longer life expectancy. In the past, this would have been the main asset inherited by their children. But the paper noted Professor Harper's view that the 20th century idea of getting on the property ladder, not only to own a property but to be able to pass it on, may be quite short-lived. "The effect of this may be that in the 21st century, the older generation may consider that it does not owe much to the next generation, their children, once they are adults," the paper said. The commission's questions are now being raised over whether Section 117 should take into account such demographic changes. When completed, the review will contain recommendations on whether Section 117 should be repealed, retained or amended. It is also considering whether it should be extended to cases where a parent dies intestate. It's difficult to imagine Anderson Cooper, the star CNN newsman, ever being wracked by indecision. But for years he had been worried about what to do with his mother's stuff. For decades, Gloria Vanderbilt's boxes of love letters, mementoes and assorted ephemera, had languished in the family's many New York properties. She would not throw anything away. At times, the white-haired CNN anchor wondered if it was a type of hoarding. Cooper had been told, years ago, that there was no inheritance coming his way, that he would receive none of his mother's reported $200m fortune. But perhaps he would get something even better: Contained somewhere between the cobwebs and the yellowing piles of letters he knew there was a story waiting, one in which his own family's drama dovetailed with an era when industrialist fortunes were squandered, the Jazz era was fading, and the Golden Age of Hollywood was just beginning. The Sliver Fox, as Cooper is known, has always had a special sense of the component parts of a good yarn. Besides being the closest thing to American royalty this side of the Kennedys he is also an Emmy winning anchor who recently came out. Now middle-aged himself, he could see that his 92-year-old mother's life was replete with dramatic detail. She was a lifestyle queen before there was Martha Stewart, American royalty before the Kennedys, and she made and lost a fortune while dating some of the most famous men in history, Howard Hughes, Cary Grant and Roald Dahl among them. The very name Vanderbilt was a byword for Gatsby-esque glamour and mystery and Gloria seemed as though she were drawn from literature. Truman Capote had based Holly Golightly on her, for heaven's sake. Cooper enlisted Liz Garbus, who was nominated for an Oscar for her documentary about Nina Simone, to get involved in making a film about Gloria and his relationship with her, using much of the aforementioned 'junk' as a starting point for reminiscences. The resultant documentary, Nothing Left Unsaid, aired last weekend on HBO in the US. It was a well-crafted piece, suffused with sentimentality and humour and portrayed Vanderbilt through her son's eyes, as a glamorous emissary from a burned-out star. And yet many of those who saw it, or read the memoir that accompanies it, concluded that, despite the film's tantalising title, plenty was left unsaid. A rift that almost tore the family apart was never touched upon, and the omission raised as many questions as it answered. There can be few Americans whose blood runs as blue as Cooper. As a boy, he was once shown a statue in Manhattan, near Grand Central Station, of his great-great-great-grandfather, who amassed a shipping and railroad empire. For a while after that, he assumed that everyone's deceased ancestors were eventually rendered monumental in bronze. But Cooper's forbears were unique. The economist JK Galbraith once observed, that the Vanderbilts, like no other American dynasty before or since, "have shown the ability to make and lose money like it was going out of style". It was Cooper's mother, not the statues at Grand Central, who defined the modern Vanderbilts. On February 20, 1924, the birth of the new heiress to the fortune was covered as a news story in The New York Times. And thereafter the press never missed a moment of her childhood. They gorged themselves on every glamorous detail, and that her aunt had been the Prince of Wales's mistress before he took up with Wallis Simpson seemed only fitting. After all, what was Gloria but American royalty? 'The Poor Little Rich Girl' was another moniker that stuck with her, especially as the dramas of her early life unfolded. When she was 10 years old, there was a dramatic custody battle between her aunt Gertrude - founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York - and her mother, also Gloria, a Swiss-American socialite. Gloria's father Reginald, the principal heir to the Vanderbilt railroad fortune, a womaniser and a gambler, had died of a throat infection, which had led to internal haemorrhaging. Following his death, and fed by reports from family servants and private detectives, the wider Vanderbilt family had become convinced that Gloria senior was an alcoholic and abusing the young heiress. The custody trial that followed was sensationalised across the world and the judge in the case deplored that so young a child would be brought through "the mire of infamy." In court it was alleged that Gloria senior was, variously, "a cocktail-crazed dancing mother", who lived a "raucous lifestyle", "a devotee of sex erotica and the mistress of a German Prince (Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg)." While her aunt Gertrude sat with "ice cold reserve" Gloria senior fidgeted with her "egg-sized engagement ring." The allegations were devastating, and in the end, mother and daughter would be parted. Gloria senior's own lawyer would later describe her as "a woman destroyed." Gloria senior never took her visitation rights seriously - she passed her remaining years in a haze of parties - and the young girl was raised by an ever-changing panel of carers, including her beloved Irish nanny Dodo. It was perhaps unsurprising, then, that even as a teenager she was eager to establish her own independence. When she was 17, she went to visit her mother in California and fell under the spell of Pasquale DiCiccio, a Hollywood agent, who favoured white suits and all-night card games. Determined not to have to return to aunt Gertrude, Gloria accepted his proposal of marriage. He was violent and would give her black eyes by banging her head off the wall of the mansion they shared, she later said. On their wedding night she waited for him in bed, and eventually found him playing cards with one of the Marx brothers. While still married to DiCicco, she met Leopold Stokowski, a world-famous conductor who already had two ex-wives and once had an affair with Greta Garbo. She promptly divorced DiCiccio and married Stokowski. It was "instant," she tells her son in the new documentary. "We were married three weeks later." "Really?" Anderson asks, brow furrowed. "I didn't know that. How old were you?" "Twenty." "Wow. Did any of your friends think it was weird?" "Well . . . to have this genius . . . which he was, think I was extraordinary and wonderful, it just gave me a big lift," she answers. They had two sons together - Stan, born in 1950 and Christopher, born in 1955. And while Stokowski encouraged her artistic side - she had become a keen painter and poet - he also kept her socially isolated. Yet during their marriage she had an affair with Frank Sinatra, who offered her a part in Ocean's Eleven. During the childhood of the two boys, Gloria had what was described in the press as a breakdown. She went into therapy. In one interview she recounted taking LSD and wearing a blindfold as part of a therapy session. She would go on to divorce Stokowski and was forced to relive the most painful chapter in Vanderbilt history, as she successfully fought the composer for custody of their two young sons. For many women, two divorces at such a relatively young age - she was still only in her forties - might have daunted them. But Gloria was nothing if not a romantic. She was also still one of the most beautiful women in the world and she knew it. So did Wyatt Cooper, a magazine publisher who came from a family with no money and who offered her the one thing she had never had: stability. They married on Christmas Eve 1963 and Gloria was soon pregnant, with first Carter and then Anderson. By the mid-1970s she was also a household name with her signature fashion jeans. In some senses this was probably the crowning moment of her life; every other pair of female buttocks in the Western world bore her insignia. But it was also a time of private pain, something that is completely glossed over in the new documentary and memoir. Christopher, who was by disposition very shy, disliked his mother's newfound fame. He played in a band under an assumed name so as not to garner comparisons with others in the famous dynasty. In 1974, he fell in love with socialite April Sandmeyer, and the two were planning marriage when his father, then in his nineties and living in England, became seriously ill. Christopher and April moved to England to be closer to the elder Stokowski. When Leopold died, Christopher gained a substantial inheritance but when he returned to New York after the funeral his life took another turn for the worst: Wyatt Cooper died, leaving Gloria a widow at 50, and she soon came under the influence of a charismatic therapist called Dr Christ L Zois. She gave Zois and a lawyer friend of his, Thomas A. Andrews, power of attorney and between them they swindled her out of millions of dollars. "In her mind, the worst betrayal was by the psychiatrist, whom she trusted completely," her lawyer said. She successfully sued Andrews and Zois for $1.6m, but never saw any of it. The money was perhaps not the most significant loss from the whole episode, however. By 1978 Christopher, then an adult, cut off contact with his family, alleging interference by Zois in his - Christopher's - relationship with April Sandmeyer. Christopher was subsequently written out of family history. In Gloria's 1996 memoir, A Mother's Story, there is no mention of him (the book is dedicated to Anderson). In interviews she almost never discussed him, save for once in 2004, when she told The Telegraph: "'He cut himself off completely from all of us. He told us what he wanted to do and he's done it." Gloria felt sure another tragedy that engulfed her family would also bring it back together. In 1988 Carter jumped off the terrace at her Manhattan apartment. She looked on helpless as it happened. Anderson would later say that the grief had indeed brought the family together, but it did not, as Gloria had hoped, bring Christopher back into their lives. "'When Carter died I thought he would come back but he didn't," she said. "And we respect his wishes." With one son dead and another estranged, Gloria seemed to be entering one of the loneliest periods of her life. She did not celebrate Christmas for years. Perhaps to give herself some kind of relief she threw herself into her writing and penned a number of well-received memoirs, the most interesting of which was probably It Seemed Important At The time. In it, Gloria answered the eternally vexed question: how to cope when you go out with a young Marlon Brando and he doesn't call you the next day. The answer: get dolled up in Dior, go to a party and spend the night flirting with Gene Kelly. She also explained her philosophy with regard to love and sex: "I had flirted with the idea of becoming a nun,'' she recalled, "but once boys came into the picture, being a nun didn't seem like such a great idea. God was one thing, boys another.'' Besides, she explains, "I find sex endlessly interesting. I suppose I always will.'' She described pining for Brando and pressing her face against the glass as he left her. The glass "didn't crack, the only cracking was my pit-a-pat heart". In her old age, Gloria is perhaps best known as a socialite and Anderson's mother. Before that she was a lifestyle queen, synonymous with her famous jeans. And after that, an icon of tragedy. But her allure as an American icon is somehow bigger than any of these things. The swan was her signature symbol on the jeans, and for Truman Capote the image encapsulated Gloria the woman: "Authentic swans are almost never women that nature and the world has deprived. God gave them good bones; some lesser personage, a father, a husband, blessed them with that best of beauty emollients, a splendid bank account. It may be that the enduring swan glides upon waters of liquefied lucre, but that cannot account for the creature herself - her talent, like all talent, is composed of unpurchaseable substances." She still grieves the loss of her two sons, but Anderson remains her rock. During the making of the documentary he said he went through the jarring experience of discovering his own love life had been less eventful than his mother's. They make an odd pair. Him, icy cool, analytical, and, by his own admission, a little dull around the edges. Her, emotional, witty and always compelling. And yet at these points in their lives, they fit each other perfectly. When Gloria spent five years in an affair with a married man, it was her blue-eyed boy who told her the truth: "He's never going to leave his wife for you." And he never did. There is a sense through the whole book-and-film project that they really do lean on each other, and that neither of them would be where they are without the other. "I should have married some really rich tycoon," Vanderbilt says during a telling moment in the documentary, when asked why she never remarried. "I would have been all for that," Cooper responds. "You never expressed that!" "I expressed that all the time!" he exclaims. "You were never interested in those men because they watched sports. They were boring." "Never satisfied," she sighs. "Never satisfied," he agrees. 'The Rainbow Comes and Goes' by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt, is published by Harper, priced 20. To access the documentary 'Nothing Left Unsaid', watch it on HBO. It costs $14.99 and you can stream to any Apple device, see order.hbonow.com Instant messaging in the workplace is par for the course in many modern offices. One of the dangers of chat-based company cultures is that employees forget that they're under the watchful eye of their employer. New research shows that UK employees send around 100 private messages a day from their desk or place of work. The fact that employers can read the content of the personal and professional messages that staff send throughout the day has not stopped British workers from continuing to chat while they work. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in January that bosses can monitor their employees' emails, and make career-changing decisions based on the snooping. Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu, a Romanian engineer, appealed to the Court after he was fired for sending private messages to his fiancee on Yahoo instant messaging. It upheld the employer's decision, ruling that Barbulescu had violated the company-wide ban on private messaging during work. "It's really important for individuals to understand how their use of email and social media fits with their employer's policies," said David Evans, director of policy at BCS - the Chartered Institute for IT. "It is also important for managers to treat employees with respect, and not monitoring their employees more than is needed to manage the business risks." Nearly 70 per cent of workers in the UK admitted that they regularly send private WhatsApp, Facebook, and other instant messages during the work day, according to the research from Dice. The figure is much higher among young employees with 90pc of 16 to 24-year-olds messaging during the day. Of the 1,000 people surveyed, 40pc said they have sent messages about new job opportunities and 9pc have flirted with a colleague. While 31pc have spent time online shopping in the office. "It's clear that many people aren't aware of their workplace policies around private messaging and internet use," said Jamie Bowler, marketing director at Dice. "We'd always advise people to be careful about their communication in the workplace. Let's face it, we've all had that feeling of dread when we've sent the wrong person the wrong email." How to avoid your boss' prying eyes Before you panic about the private messages you've sent today, let alone last week, check your company's policy. Some companies don't have access to their workers' personal messages, or may only have the ability to snoop under specific circumstance. The worst case scenario is that your employer has access to all messages sent on personal devices and from personal accounts during working hours. If your employer regards this as their property, it would be wise to save your personal communications for the evenings and weekends. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Reviews of Last Night On Earth, Black Rose Days, Shot Through the Heart, Children's Children, The Steel Kiss FICTION Last Night On Earth Kevin Maher, Abacus, 17.99 Review: Anne Cunningham This riotous, bawdy and sometimes confusing novel opens with the birth of Shauna and Jays daughter. Its a home birth which goes wrong, leaving their baby with various communication difficulties. The couple eventually split up, three years later, although the reader learns of this almost immediately. Time-travelling back and forth, the story centres mostly on Jay, an Irish immigrant in London who started off on the building sites in the early 90s but by pure fluke now makes TV documentaries. Jays love for his little daughter is the glue that holds his chaotic life somewhat together. Shauna decides she needs psychotherapy to help her work out her issues, and ends up falling for her therapist, Dr Ghert. Some of the funniest passages in the book are the doctor-patient dialogues between this pair. But theres plenty of other fun, too. And tragedy. And guilt, self-loathing, addiction, family problems, the whole gamut. Theres an Irish mammy at home, to whom Jay writes letters in his head. She suffers from Alzheimers and believes Jay is the second coming of Christ. He, in turn, is wracked with guilt over not visiting her for 10 years. Just when it seems things couldnt get worse, enter The Clappers, an old flame from Jays distant past, who has sought him out to make her amends to him as part of her 12-Step programme. It appears that Jay is her Step Nine! Packed with wildly colourful if not quite believable characters, at times it reads like an early John Irving novel, had Irving been born Irish. Despair sits comfortably with farce, hopelessness with rip-roaring comedy. Mahers first book The Fields will hit the big screen sometime in the future, shooting starts in August. Dont be surprised if this, his second novel, follows suit. CRIME Video of the Day Black Rose Days Martin Malone, New Island Books, 13.95 Review: Patrick Kelleher A murder mystery novel should be exciting, tense and dramatic. Unfortunately, Black Rose Days is a turgid and dull affair that only hits its stride in the final third of the narrative, and will almost certainly test your patience. Black Rose Days follows Dan and his wife Irene on their trip to Ireland from America, where Dan has to meet his sister to sort out the sale of their mothers house. What Dan fails to tell Irene is that he also hopes to find out who murdered his first wife many years before. What follows is a jumbled mess of confusing narratives and cliched characters. Rather than allowing one protagonist to tell the story, Malone instead gives Irene, Dan and the deceased first wife, Ena, opportunities to tell their stories. Enas is the only one that is truly gripping, and she offers moments of great depth and beauty. Dans quiet and contemplative nature comes across as two-dimensional, and Irene is an aimless American stereotype who contributes little to the story. While the story is uninspiring, so too is the writing. The descriptions of both characters and events are bland. The dialogue is also stilted, especially between Dan and Irene, whose suffering marriage is the least interesting thing about the novel. Though the first 200 pages are tedious, the last 80 do come into their own, and there is a sense that Malone is finally getting to tell the story he wanted to tell. If the rest of the novel was as good as these closing pages, Black Rose Days would actually be a fairly successful mystery novel. As it stands, however, the novel is bloated and disappointing, and even occasional bursts of creativity and depth arent enough to salvage it. CRIME Shot Through The Heart Isabelle Grey Quercus, 19.99 Review: Hilary A White On an icy Christmas Day, five members of the same household are shot dead by a desperate gunman who then ends his own life. The grisly core incident of Isabelle Greys tidy and superbly paced procedural is not just another day in some vague North American crime-fiction setting. It is in a very real and mundane England. The bloodbath understandably rocks the nation and elicits strong emotions in everyone right up to government level. Grace Fisher now Detective Inspector after Greys 2014 thriller Good Girls Dont Die smoulders while trying to manage survivors, coroners and a rabid press. There is just something not right about this massacre that everyone seems to want to consign to the archives. The feeling is shared by newspaper man Ivo Sweatman and the two realign to dig deeper. Fisher needs to tread carefully as one of the victims was of law enforcement stock and elements in the force dont appreciate her inquisitiveness. All the requisite tropes for crime kicks blood, conspiracy, escalating menace, suspense are present and accounted for in Greys latest. The English TV screenwriter is understandably adept at making the whole tableau breathe with life. Fisher has personal demons and is allowed to be affected by the horror while driven by her need for justice. Sweatmans professional dismay that the crime offers no fun, no tricky leads, no chase at first glance is soon replaced by something more steely. Grey throws dark threats, slippery side-characters and a missing witness at them both with expert aim. FICTION Childrens Children Short Stories Jan Carson Liberties Press 14.99 Review: Anne Cunningham The loss of a baby in childbirth. The watchfulness of young children observing their parents hate each other. The Polish nightshift worker who brings her child to work with her every night, unable to afford child care. The bleak landscape of a 40-year-old marriage all gone wrong. Not the stuff of comedy. And indeed its not all comedy, But Jan Carson can see the comical, the absurd in almost every human situation and better still can write about it convincingly. The home ground for this delightful collection is Belfast, mostly working class. In Swept, the story of a long and tedious marriage, Bill deliberately deposits a Twix wrapper outside his own doorstep, purely to infuriate his fastidious wife. The sweeping up that ensues invokes a kind of catharsis in Bill, a man whos proud of Van Morrison, pipe bands and the shipyards. Denial turned into plain insanity is the subject of the heartbreaking Alternative Units. The similar theme of a couple losing their baby is explored in How They Were Sitting When Their Wings Fell Off. And a daughters care of her senile mother in Den and Estie Do Not Remember The Good Times is a masterful study of the frustrations involved in caring for an elderly, demanding parent. Carson is eloquent and courageous, questioning the values of the Im worth it generation, along with those of the great Catholic/Protestant divide, and she does it with inimitable flair. CRIME The Steel Kiss Jeffery Deaver, Hodder & Stoughton, 21.99 Review: Hilary A White The spectacularly named Lincoln Rhyme has had a long and flourishing career under the pen of Chicago crime lord Jeffery Deaver. Deaver first introduced his paraplegic forensic detective to us in 1997s The Bone Collector, which soon after was given a big screen outing starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie (pictured below). Nothing if not prolific, Deavers career sales run into the millions. With no sign of the peaceful life in sight, Rhyme (now retired and lecturing on forensics) and NYPD sidekick Amelia Sachs are faced with a serial killer who uses technology to butcher his victims. In a gripping and gruesome intro, Sachs trails the fiend through a shopping mall only to be waylaid when a bystander falls into the mechanics of an escalator. It is rare to have such a tangible sense of the perp from the get-go in crime fiction as Deaver robustly voices the monster throughout via the first person. Deaver is putting the motives and murderous intent out there to chill the foreground. If youve read anything else from his massive body of work, youd know that there are two things Deaver doesnt skimp on detail and word count. For this reason, those who prefer their crime thrillers lean, mean and linear may feel worn out by The Steel Kiss and its long, sprawling shape. There is at times too much obsessive padding-out of the central premise, with momentum tending to stall during exhaustive and superfluous sub-plots and incidental asides. Deavers ace remains Rhyme himself. The Black Mirror, Food Needs Labelling, People Don't, Infidelities Short Stories, Vertigo, Nobody Is Ever Missing The Black Mirror Raymond Tallis Atlantic Books 19.50 NON-FICTION Review by Patrick Kelleher A book about death may not seem like the most uplifting reading to be getting on with, especially when that book is described as fragments of an obituary for life. Despite this, however, The Black Mirror is a thing of immeasurable beauty. What becomes apparent is that this is all about living even if that does mean confronting death in the process. The Black Mirror looks at the life of Raymond Tallis, formerly professor of geriatric medicine, and brings us to his current resting place in a morgue. In between descriptions of how he lived his life, are observations on his senses, family, relationships and working life. As Tallis explains in his introduction: The unspeakable Nothing italicises at least some of the Everything that is life. Video of the Day This is perhaps closer to the premise of the book than anything else. Tallis refuses to shy away from death, and in so doing, he provides us with many answers. The result is a book that reminds us why life must be appreciated and relished. It encourages us to find meaning in the everyday occurrences the common moments of beauty that are often overlooked. Talliss latest offering is an eloquent reminder of lifes everyday joys. It is, as he says, an invitation to marvel at all those seemingly important hurries, all that activity and passivity, action and experience, from the standpoint of a stillness in which all hurry is spent. It may not sound immediately appealing, but The Black Mirror is necessary reading a beautifully written reminder of mortality that serves a greater purpose than sadness and anguish. Food Needs Labelling, People Dont Chris Ricketts Little Singing Bear Publishing 12.99 Gender Review by Deirdre Conroy Biology is not always destiny so said Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan after criticism of remarks he made about transgender last week. Chris Ricketts was assigned female at birth, but as the years passed she knew she was different from her sisters and other women. Born in Wales and educated in Dublin, Chris married and had two children. After 17 years, she made the choice to leave a difficult marriage with her two children. In essence, she was attracted to women, but as a man would be. She was not a lesbian and explains in her book how she was so repulsed by a lesbian being attracted to her female attributes that she began to overfeed herself to hide her shape. Ill-health was the inevitable result. She sought medical assistance. The first doctors she encountered offered radical surgery and hormone therapy. Many in Chriss position have chosen this route. Caitlyn Jenner is a prime example and has done much good in highlighting the issues of transgender people. But it is expensive and a life-long commitment. Up until recently, Chris had worked in secondary school education. She eventually found her path to self-acceptance through more spiritual means. Having discovered a wonderful Reiki teacher, her mind opened to alternative perceptions of her gender identity disorder. Independently published, the autobiographical detail of early family life takes up much of the book, with the child Chris searching for clues. There are many heart-rending moments and this story would re-assign many of societys identity perceptions. Infidelities Short Stories Kirsty Gunn Faber & Faber 15.95 SHORT STORY Review by Anne Cunningham Theres a strange echo of disconnection running throughout Kirsty Gunns latest volume of short stories. It could be coincidence, but given the subject matter and the calibre of the author, I suspect its deliberate. As deliberate as the Prologue, where two old lovers meet for a drink and it transpires the woman is writing a short story collection called Infidelities. The man scoffs. Nobody buys short stories. No-one thinks theres enough going on. Indeed. Its a bit self-conscious, a bit tricksy, the prologue. Creating art and commenting on your own creation from within is risky business, it forges an unsettling sense of detachment. But of course detachment is at the very essence of infidelity. Detachment is very much the stuff of the first story, where harried mother and housewife Helen discovers a Tibetan monk sitting in silent meditation on the village green. After dark that night, she follows the monk to the nearby forest, leaving her children at home with her very drunk husband, oblivious of the danger. Shes gone in search of something. A higher calling, perhaps. In Glenhead, a recently divorced mother of teenagers goes to view a house with her boyfriend, reluctant teenagers in tow. The idyllic country pile, so inviting in the real estate brochure, loses its charm as she confronts the possibility of the damage shes doing to her two ungrateful, bolshie kids. While betrayal and loss are central themes, so too are the stories we might tell ourselves, borrowing from one short storys title, simply to survive. There is much introspection in these tales, as both the betrayed and the betrayers dither and falter and question themselves endlessly. We do whatever we must, Gunn reminds us with her elegant prose, to avoid hanging ourselves from the Judas tree. Vertigo Joanna Walsh Tramp Press 10 Short story Review by Justine Carberry I have, at times, suffered from vertigo, a debilitating, spacey sensation that throws you right off balance. A bit like reading this collection of short stories by the creator of the Twitter hash-tag #readwomen, Joanna Walsh. The protagonist of these minimalist stories is a nameless woman facing moments in her life that fill her with unease, jealousy, a lurking sense of failure. She is strangely child-like, yet brutally honest, hovering over each moment, trying out words, trying to get to the core of things. What emerges is a woman, in many guises, a young mother, a daughter, a wife contemplating an affair. These fragmentary glimpses into her interior life show us someone detached and coolly observant, yet vulnerable and sensitive. She finds it difficult to connect, to belong, as reflected in her description of the titular condition. Vertigo is the sense that if I fall I will fall not toward the earth but into space. I sense no anchorage. I will pitch forward, outward and upward. The stories in this collection revolve around failure: failed marriages, unsatisfactory affairs, disappointing parties, ruined holidays, each delivered with deadpan precision in deceptively simple unembellished language. I have never read anything quite like them and did wish guiltily more than once for a bit of guidance. And the stories were too similar in style to be read one after another. Like eating chocolates, its best to savour one now, save the others for later. Deeply introspective, you need time to digest them one at a time. Nobody is Ever Missing Catherine Lacey Granta 9.95 Review by Claire Coughlan This is a novel about as the title would suggest what it means to voluntarily go missing from your own life, a difficult thing to do from the outset, with the world being the global village it now is. Elyria, a writer for a soap opera, leaves behind her comfortable existence with her husband in New York and boards a one-way flight to New Zealand to stay in the home of a poet, Werner, whom she has met just once and who has promised her a room, should she ever visit. However, along the way she must journey from the north to south of the country, hitch-hiking and sleeping in fields, forests and public parks. I found the premise for this book by Catherine Lacey (below) unlikely, and the plot seemed to have possibly boarded that plane along with Elyria. However, I may be missing the point, as the precision of the writing zings along with lines such as, . . . Harriet gave me the same tangled feeling I had while watching television shows about sharks . . . and, Im not writing a novel, I said. I dont like novels. Its for the best, Werner said. Misery begins in publishing. The disintegration of a marriage and tracing its evolution fires the motor of Nobody is Ever Missing, as it flits seamlessly between present day New Zealand and the recent past in New York. Though technically brilliant, it still felt as though there was indeed something missing. Tributes were paid to acclaimed writer Edna O'Brien at a star-studded show in the Gaiety Theatre last night. Hailed as the doyenne of Irish literature, the 85-year-old was honoured with a medley of music and musings written especially for the night. Hosted by fellow writer Joseph O'Connor, a number of special guests took to the stage to perform extracts from some of Edna's most memorable work as well as songs taken from the times she wrote about. Contributors at last night's show included Paddy Moloney, Declan O'Rourke, Eleanor McEvoy, John Sheahan and Mary Black. Also at the event was 'Fair City's Aoibhin Garrihy, Stephen Brennan and Olivia O'Leary. Co-producer John McColgan, of Riverdance fame, said that it was important to recognise "great women writers" and give Edna her due credit. "We are joined by a remarkable cast of writers, poets and performers - a fitting celebration to a prodigious talent, honouring both that woman and the work," he said. Edna said she was over-joyed with the tribute. "I am delighted and incredulous to be given this great honour, which is all the sweeter for being on home-ground and with so many gifted people giving their time and their talents to it," she said. Irvine Welsh returns with his hard man from Trainspotting (played by Robert Carlisle) and things go downhill fast. You all remember Begbie, don't you? That's right, Frank Begbie, the hard man from Trainspotting, portrayed so memorably by Robert Carlyle in Danny Boyle's filmisation. There's usually one in every teenage gang: the one everyone winds up embarrassed by and wants to disown, in this case because of his thuggish, psychopathic antics, and just plain wrongness. Well, Begbie's back, and you wouldn't recognise him. Jim Francis is now a successful artist, living the good and tranquil life in southern California with beautiful, art therapist wife Melanie, and their two young daughters Grace (5) and Eve (2). The happy couple met when she was in Edinburgh for a year, working on an exchange programme between the Scottish prison service and the California correctional system. Guess who was inside? As Welsh has said, the only future he could imagine for Begbie beyond Trainspotting was either death or prison. Under Melanie's tutelage, however, a hitherto unsuspected talent begins to flourish. He does portraits and busts of celebrities, adding 'implausibly creative mutilations'. Think wide boy/wide girl Damien Hirst/Tracey Emin style Brit Art, to understand how he might find a foothold and fit in. His new profession proves lucrative too, apparently extending to private commissions: ' - But Nicole wants a bust of Tom, with a very specific mutilation, strictly confidentialAnd Aniston's people want to know when the Angelina will be ready.' He's now strictly teetotal too, and has white omelette, spinach and green tea for breakfast (by all accounts echoing the lifestyle of his creator). This idyll is interrupted when a phone call comes from Jim/Frank's sister Elspeth in the old country, informing him of the death of his first born son, Sean. Jim has three children he hardly knows in Edinburgh, from previous relationships: Sean and his younger brother Michael, with June; and River, whose mother is Kate. He packs his bag to head back for the funeral, and when it emerges that Sean was murdered, you just know things are going to go downhill fast. Despite providing a rollickingly panoptic and page-turning view of the exile's return to Edinburgh, with a huge cast of characters, the novel is not without its flaws. Attributing Begbie's former rage and stupidity to undiagnosed dyslexia seems both patronising and uncharacteristically politically correct; after all, not all dyslexics develop a taste for ultra violence. There's an ongoing riff around cell phone problems, which serves to limit communication between Jim and Melanie, but doesn't seem credible to anyone remotely tech-savvy. Are there really no iPhone chargers to be had in the Scottish capital? And why does the relatively affluent Jim buy the cheapest Tesco mobile when his iPhone (in)conveniently pops out of his pocket and down a drain while he is out jogging? While Jim thankfully avoids the obvious cliche of going back on the bottle, he still has a barely controlled nasty streak. However, this is motivated less by revenge, and more because he just simply enjoys inflicting suffering, which make his sadistic outbursts seem gratuitous. But maybe that's the whole point, and I am missing it. Irvine Welsh remains a very good writer, both fictionally and otherwise. Indeed, as his op-eds around the Scottish Independence Referendum demonstrated, had he not made it as a novelist, he has a career manque as the shrewdest of socio-political commentators to fall back on. Video of the Day He has also, notwithstanding his subject matter, become a much more straightforwardly traditional storyteller than he stared out as, perhaps realising that experimental novels a la William Burroughs wouldn't butter any tatties these days. However, suffice it to say that he still will not prove very popular with the Edinburgh Tourist Office. Resurrecting characters is always fraught with pitfalls, but can also, given the passage of time in their lives, and the author's and ours, prove rewarding. Although not perfect, Begbie's return is a good yarn, well told. For his directorial debut, Don Cheadle certainly did not choose a simple project. Working from a screenplay that he co-wrote with Steven Baigelman, Cheadle stars as one of the most beloved icons of jazz, Miles Davis. And far from following traditional biopic rules, the film channels the improv spirit of jazz, or "social music" as Davis preferred to call it, and the blaxploitation movies of the era in which it is set. The official description of the film as "impressionistic" is accurate, and the overall result does leave an impression. Although it doesn't always hit its mark, it's an interesting, well-acted portrait of a moment in an icon's life. Miles Ahead opens with Davis (Cheadle) with a serious coke addiction. He's been silent for five years and is under pressure from the record company to produce a session tape. There are young competitors, doubters who think he has lost it and a journalist, Dave Brill (Ewan McGregor), who is unwilling to take no for an answer. After some initial fisticuffs, icon and hack form a swift alliance based on the journalist's ability to score cocaine. When the session tapes are stolen, together they seek the young trumpeter (Keith Stanfield) who might be able to help. Woven in between are flashbacks that recount the entire love story between Davis and Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). In delivering a piece of Davis's life, the film does give an overall impression of the man and Cheadle, with those amazingly expressive eyes, has clear affection for his subject. McGregor relishes his role as the anything-for-a-story hack and Corinealdi is good in the kind of role that is often written into the background. Anyone looking for a complete life story will be disappointed, but that's what Wikipedia is for. This is a brave and interesting piece of film. 4 Stars Aine O'Connor Louder Than Bombs Cert: 15A. Now showing From its trembling hand-held opening shots of a newborn, you have a pretty good idea what to expect from Louder Than Bombs: cool indie-arthouse stylings with some manner of deep existential plumbing beneath the screenplay's floorboards. And lo and behold, Joachim Trier's first English-language feature offers exactly this. Were that the sum total of this starry saga of a small family coming to terms with the death of a parent, it would be tolerable. However, a bit like his Danish Dogme 95 semi-namesake, Lars, the Norwegian director wants to be the centre of attention and wastes a lot of time reminding you how much of an auteur he is, even if that means letting the momentum of the whole project die on its feet. The other thing wasted is that cast. Gabriel Byrne is weather-beaten as Gene, the bereaved husband trying to watch over teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid). Conrad has taken to locking himself in his room, playing video games for hours. Jesse Eisenberg, below, returns to business as usual after the pomp of Batman V Superman, with a studied turn as older brother and first-time father Jonah. He comes home to support Gene but may not be dealing with the death of the boys' mother Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) so well himself. Between this and the mystery of her death, there is enough on the table with which to make something resonant. Trier doesn't need to shove in esoteric, trite dream sequences and abstract asides to give further weight to what is going on, but does so anyway. That many of the flashbacks feature Huppert, a powerhouse of European cinema, is one of this pretentious and clumsy film's small mercies. 2 Stars Hilary A White Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures Cert: Club. Now showing at the IFI Fortunately, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe had a fondness for beautiful penises - because watching this documentary on his life and work, I saw quite a few more than might normally be expected on a Thursday morning. Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have put together an impressive list of friends, admirers and analysts of Mapplethorpe to present a very complete overview of the man. Video of the Day The film opens with the curators who now revere his art, and footage of US Senators who sought publicity for themselves in the 90s by raising a fuss over Mapplethorpe exhibitions. As mentioned above, the penis count is high in Mapplethorpe's art - but so too is the lily count, as he also photographed flowers. One or two of his best known shots can be described as, er, penetrating, so he did attract attention. But as the doc explains, attracting attention was very much on the artist's agenda from early on. Although made up of contributions from his family, friends, subjects and lovers there is real honesty about the drive, ego and methods that led to him becoming one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. 5 Stars Aine O'Connor Friend Request Cert: 16. Now showing The trailers aren't terribly promising, and when I say that, overall, Friend Request was better than expected, it must come with the codicil that I feel relief when a horror film is low on heart-stopping and super-gory moments. I fully accept that these are not generally considered bonuses by the average horror fan. The film, a German film by director Simon Verhoeven, was shot in South Africa in English and is presented as American. It opens with a college lecturer telling his students that one of their classmates has taken their own life. Among the shocked reactions, someone asks if it is true that she filmed her own death. The story then moves back two weeks to when popular student Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) takes pity on the misfit Marina (Liesl Ahlers) and agrees to become her only online friend on a Facebook-like social network. Delighted to have made a friend, Marina exhibits some stalkerish tendencies that incite Laura's friends and her boyfriend Tyler (William Moseley) to suggest she unfriend Marina. Marina does not take this well, telling Laura she has no idea what it is like to be so eternally alone, and it is her death that is announced at the beginning of the film. But death is not the end of Marina or her anger, and revenge ensues. If Laura is to be taught a lesson about loneliness, she must lose all of her friends. The result here is a fairly good idea, well enough delivered, but rather predictable. The dread this could engender is not too strong and although there is some gore, it is not horribly horror-ific and is probably best suited to teen horror newbies. Genre aficionados might find it rather tame. 2 Stars Aine O'Connor Cooper (r) and Luke (l) of The Big Breakfast on 98FM 98FM DJs Steven Cooper and Luke O'Faolain have revealed why they don't play Nicky Byrne's Eurovision song. 2fm boss Dan Healy recently claimed that independent Irish radio stations were refusing to play 'Sunlight' because Nicky works at RTE's 2fm. Nicky Byrne is representing Ireland and some local and national radio stations will not play his song because he works for 2fm," Healy told the Herald last month. "Ive been told that. Ive spoken to Nicky about it." However, O'Faolain told the Irish Daily Star that Nicky's job at 2fm has nothing to do with it. "I don't think it suits our show because it is quite new," he said. "Every song you hear you'll know - so it's not like you're tuning into something that's unfamiliar because the last thing you want is someone switching off. "It's just not for our show." Expand Close Nicky Byrne will perform Irelands 2016 Eurovision entry, which was co-written by Wayne Hector, who has worked with Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Nicky Byrne will perform Irelands 2016 Eurovision entry, which was co-written by Wayne Hector, who has worked with Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj O'Faolain also pointed out that fellow 98FM presenter Dara Quilty had interviewed Nicky about Eurovision. Cooper, meanwhile, said that Universal Music did not send him the song and that he does not choose the music for the show. "It's something completely separate," he said, before adding that he had never played Dustin the Turkey's Eurovision song Irelande Douze Pointe back in 2008. Video of the Day Several 2fm stars have spoken out about the reported 'boycott' with Chris Greene and Ciara King slamming it as "petty and very childish" and Lottie Ryan adding, "It's our Eurovision song and we should be supporting him." Vogue Williams, the ex-wife of Nicky's former Westlife band mate BrianMcFadden said, "What p***ed me off this week is that nobody is playing Nicky's song on Eurovision. I think that is so s****y. It's our Irish Eurovision song and nobody is playing it." Cooper and O'Faolain have taken over from Ray Foley and JP Gilbourne after their departure from the station in December. The Big Breakfast with Cooper and Luke airs 6-10am weekday mornings on 98FM. A casual listener to last Tuesday's Today programme on BBC Radio Four could have been forgiven for thinking that Hillary Clinton was on course to lose the Democratic primary in New York later that same day. The report, by Nick Bryant, opened with a nine - yes, nine-year-old - supporter of socialist rival Bernie Sanders chanting the Vermont junior Senator's slogan 'Feel The Bern' at a rally in a state that, Bryant pronounced with hammy significance, is "supposed to be (Hillary's) political home". It continued with a string of voters fiercely critical of Clinton for her apparent failure to be "progressive" enough, all summed up by one man in the words: "Hillary is even further right than Bill." Bryant then headed to Chappaqua, where the Clintons have a home, to attend a "local tavern" where there were even more detractors declaring her to be "for Wall Street" and "not authentic". Only one voice was heard in support of Clinton, and that was a woman in a "ridiculously trendy" nightclub that apparently looked like "a scene from Sex and the City". The subtext here wasn't even subtle. Hours later, the results were in and Clinton had secured a 58pc share of the vote, taking all five boroughs of the city, including Brooklyn, Sanders's old stomping ground, as well as securing nearly 68pc of the vote in Westchester county, to which Bryant had trekked all the way in search of dissent. As for the "noticeable ... lack of support from women" that Bryant detected, Hillary won a decisive 63pc of their votes. It was another example of the easy ride that left-leaning candidates outside the political mainstream are getting right now on air, as if the very word "independent" grants them immunity from any charge of political opportunism. That goes for the Dail as much as the White House. Hillary would be getting the same dismissive treatment in Irish media if there wasn't still a sentimental attachment to her. Right-leaning mavericks are, of course, simply dismissed as nutters. Tuesday's Morning Ireland ran a report by Caitriona Perry which also featured the testimony of ordinary voters, this time being asked their views on the Republican frontrunner. "New York city people know Donald Trump and they're not going to vote for him" went the consensus. In fact, Trump won four of the five boroughs in the city, with an even higher percentage of the vote in a three-way fight than Clinton won against a single opponent. Morning Ireland's verdict next day: "Donald Trump has won Hillary Clinton triumphed." You have to laugh. Sunday's Documentary On One asked if Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen was a British spy. It concluded that she might have been, but only to help fight the Nazis during the war, and local people in Cork at the time didn't care because they were so fond of her. This was another engrossing, well-crafted work by Leanne O' Donnell that deserves to be widely heard. 'If you could finish it.you could rest" says Opener effortfully in Beckett's radio play Cascando. But finish what? A piece of writing? Is Voice, the person he is addressing, a writer in difficulty, or a human being in wider emotional agony? Is he, Opener, the manifestation of Voice's deeper soul, the urger on to achieve the relief of oblivion? PanPan, in the person of director Gavin Quinn, seem to incline to the latter in their performance adaptation of the work written in French in 1961, and first performed in English in 1964 on Radio Three. Quinn has limited each audience at the Beckett Centre in Trinity to 30 people, who don black robes (Moroccon jubbas), shed their shoes, and process through blacked-out passages reminiscent of a cloister in hell, hearing the text through individual headphones, pausing occasionally when silently barred by our invisible leader, as Woburn, the character in the black hat conjured up by Voice, stumbles, pauses, is impeded by shale and wind. Woburn hides by day, but makes his way through the landscape as evening falls, falling himself, aware of hills on one side, the sea on the other. "There is a choice." In the light of day, reflecting on the production, Woburn seems pitiable yet mysterious, as he makes his way to the moment when Voice admits, whether to him or the world "At last.we're there" before Woburn floats out to sea and we are bereft of a presence that we did not know was comforting. But in the confines of the enforced cloistral meditation of the performance space, occasional flashes of light only emphasising the isolation and de-humanisation, we are bereft. Not floating towards escape; and without purpose, anchored in nothingness: we have been abandoned. But our journey must continue. And our decision must be, Gavin Quinn seems to have decided to tell us, whether to finish and therefore rest, . or what? An infinity of nothingness? It seems impossible that in stripping back even further Beckett's restless search to move beyond language, a production of Cascando can actually add to its bleak fulfilment. But Quinn, along with Andrew Bennett and Daniel Reardon as Opener and Voice has achieved in this profoundly disturbing theatrical experience of physical disorientation. Designed and lit by Aedin Cosgrove, the sound is by Jimmy Eadie. * * * * * Tina's idea of fun isn't very nice: serving up a shit sandwich to a man who has offended her. And she doesn't mean a badly made sandwich. But then life hasn't been nice to Tina: introduced to heroin by her first boyfriend, she's having mixed success in staying off it, and no success at all in staying off the booze. As a result, her 16-year-old son lives with her mother, not with her, and she's miserably aware of her own maternal failings. Sean P. Summers' new play Tina's Idea of Fun takes us into his preferred territory: the ironically comic side of darkness in inner-city life. It's a toxic mix where employment is more or less unknown from generation to generation, and privilege is represented by finding a new scam to feed drug and alcohol habits. And it begins early, as Tina is miserably aware as she tries pathetically to keep young son Aaron out of the kind of mischief which will plunge him into a future like her own past. Add in her aggressively malevolent best friend Edel, as well as young Aaron's dopey best mate Bundy, who has even less sense than his buddy, and well-meaning older neighbour Paddy, who lives on knee-jerks. This being 2011, and the eve of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Ireland, Paddy's current knee-jerk is republican: his feelings are stirred to the quick at the thought of a "party for the Windsors." There's a protest brewing, with Paddy at its enthusiastic centre, so Tina organises a post-protest party, where the inevitable mayhem ensues. The play is both very funny and full of despair: hope is a very frail flower in this environment. But Summers does need to develop motivation a bit more thoroughly: it's not entirely clear what's underneath most of the aggressive attitudes on display. Conall Morrison's Peacock production gives the play its full frenetic force, and there are good central performances from Hilda Fay as Tina, and Andrew Connolly as Paddy. But Scott Graham's Aaron and Josh Carey's Bundy both fail utterly to convince as 16-year-olds, and in addition look and sound interchangeable although the author's purpose is to make them a foil for each other. The cast is completed by Keith Hanna, Ruth Hegarty and Sarah Morris. Video of the Day Sarah Bacon is the designer, Kevin McFadden is responsible for lighting, and sound is by Ben Delaney. From left: Blessing Dada, Leah Smyth, Josh Gallagher, Francice Mougoue and Ella Ward at the Fingal 1916 commemorative day at Swords Castle. Photo: Frank McGrath Vintage cars, historic bikes, replica cannons and horses towing old bread vans filled the streets as the people of north county Dublin paid tribute the men and women of 1916. Fingal and the surrounding areas played a vital role during the Rising 100 years ago. Descendants of those who fought in the Rising took part in a cycle retracing their relatives' steps before commemorations got under way. Rothaiocht na mBan, a group of female cyclists in period dress, came through Swords on High Nelly bikes before a special parade in the town. Joanne Moody, from Volunteer Ireland, was one of those to take to a High Nelly yesterday. "We took the exact route Mna na hEireann took in 1916 from Brackenstown through Swords," she said. Rita Hogan from Trim, Co Meath, said she did the cycle to commemorate Cumman na mBan and was sympathetic of their efforts. "It was either this or a horse or donkey but they are very heavy and very uncomfortable." Much of the rebel activity in North Dublin on Easter weekend 1916 revolved around the Fifth Battalion of the Irish Volunteers (Fingal Brigade). Fingal's commemorative day paid tribute to the battalion with a variety of family-orientated events in Swords. A state ceremony saw a flag raised in the town as the Proclamation was read out. A wreath was also laid in memory of those who died during the Rising. The bodies of the executed had arrived at Arbour Hill still warm and dripping with blood before being hurriedly buried into an open common grave. Silence fell upon the little military church as Archbishop Diarmuid Martins words hung in the air. Graphic, yes, but also deeply and searingly tragic. The century fell away and we suddenly seemed to see their remains before our eyes heroic, indeed but also sorrowfully and tangibly real; their deaths had occurred in our name, leaving an eternal legacy of gratitude. And the concrete foundations of a Nation. The First Lady, Sabina Higgins, appeared to wipe two tears from her eyes as she sat in the church for the ceremony, contemplating the depths of this very human sacrifice. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Soldiers in formation. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire Archbishop Eamon Martin performs a blessing. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire Grace Drysdale (4) from Craughwell, Co Galway, listens as the events are recalled. Photo: Fergal Phillips President Michael D Higgins lays a wreath at the 1916 Easter Rising centenary commemoration ceremony at Arbour Hill. Photo: Fergal Phillips Former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave. Photo: Fergal Phillips / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Soldiers in formation. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire A hundred years to the very day had passed since that first blow was struck. A log from Dublin Fire Brigade showed the urgency that had begun to build from lunchtime of that fateful Easter Monday which had fallen late that year. At 12.39, an ambulance was called to Dame Street; a minute later, another to Benburb Street; just one minute again and another was summonsed to Kildare Street 11 ambulances were called in the first hour as the emergency escalated. At Arbour Hill yesterday, politicians, relatives, Defence Forces, the Judiciary and the Diplomatic Corps had gathered once again to commemorate 1916, all of the military flourishes immaculately honed. But while, yes, this was indeed another 1916 ceremony and another wreath-laying, it felt very different in tone to many of the events in 2016. It was more special, more emotional, said many relatives afterwards. The event also finally offered photographers an opportunity to capture Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin crossing paths on the 58th day since the election as they shook hands and appeared to share a guarded joke. But it all looked too forced to be real. Bishop of Armagh Eamon Martin, in welcoming the guests, said that the commemorations have drawn us to reflect on what it is to remember. Remembering also helped us to discern the kind of people, society and nation that we want to hand on to our children and grandchildren, he said. The links to the past at the event came in all forms, emotionally, and more prosaically. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin showed some humble pieces of silverware to the congregation the chalice and paten used at the wedding in Kilmainham between Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gifford just seven hours before Plunketts execution, and a vessel used to bring holy communion to the leaders in jail. The priests had been deeply touched for the rest of their lives by their encounter with the leaders, Archbishop Martin said, revealing how Pearse had stretched out his hand to one priest saying: Oh Father, the loss of life, the destruction, but please God it will not be in vain. And the archbishop called on all Irish people never to betray the ideals of 1916 and to challenge the darkness of poverty and exclusion, of hatred and violence, of self-centredness and apathy. There was a minutes silence after President Michael D Higgins laid the wreath and stood in reflection at the graveside. Former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, who attends Arbour Hill every year, said he has been enjoying all the Centenary commemorations, having also been at the GPO. Recalling the 50th anniversary events in 1966, he said this was done on a much bigger scale, with better planning. Among the relatives in attendance was Con Colbert from Raheny in Dublin, whose uncle and namesake was among the 1916 leaders executed and buried at Arbour Hill, without a coffin and covered with quicklime. He had been a quiet man, by family accounts. Gentle but determined, said Con, who was at the GPO for the State commemorations. But the event at Arbour Hill topped them all, he added. It was very special, said Michael McGinley, whose father Hugh fought in 1916. A DAD-OF-TWO was arrested after he got into a drunken street brawl while out celebrating Father's Day, a court heard. Darren O'Brien (40) had to be restrained by gardai when they found him fighting with another man outside a pub. He had denied public order offences, claiming the other man started the fight and he was defending himself when officers arrived to break it up. Judge Ann Ryan found O'Brien guilty and fined him 200 at Dublin District Court. O'Brien, a community worker, of Whitebrook Park, Tallaght, was convicted of using threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour to cause a breach of the peace as well as public intoxication. Gda Stephen Gillespie told the court he was called to the incident outside the Metro Bar at Old Blessington Road, Tallaght, last June 22 at 1.25am. He saw a group of men standing in the middle of the road, two of whom were fighting. The accused was being restrained by another man and a pub worker. The part of the road they were standing in was a bus lane and the accused was highly intoxicated. Altercation The court heard gardai had to pepper-spray the second man who was involved. An officer accepted that although the other man was stockier and it "didn't look like a fair fight", the accused "was well able to stand up for himself". O'Brien said he had been drinking with friends to celebrate Father's Day. One friend had an altercation with two other men and all four were put outside by staff. O'Brien said he was walking away when a man grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around and swung at him twice. He grabbed hold of the man and they both went to the ground. The man hit him, he hit him back and the gardai came along and pulled them apart. O'Brien's lawyer argued that the other man had been "much more violent", had started the row and his client had no choice but to react. The judge said the evidence of the gardai was that he was being restrained when they arrived and he still resisted. A 46-year-old Dublin man has gone on trial, charged with murdering his stepson by gutting him, after the deceased had interfered with his bicycle to annoy him. David Mahon is charged with murdering father of one Dean Fitzpatrick on 26th May, 2013. The 23-year-old was stabbed in the abdomen at Mr Mahons home, Burnell Square, Northern Cross, Malahide in Dublin. Dressed in a navy suit, Mr Mahon stood to be arraigned before the Central Criminal Court this morning and pleaded not guilty. A jury was then sworn in. Remy Farrell SC opened the case for the prosecution, explaining that David Mahon was the partner, now husband of the deceased mans mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick. He said that she also had a daughter, Amy Fitzpatrick, from a previous relationship. Mr Mahon, Ms Fitzpatrick and the two children moved to Spain in 2004, where the family had business interests. Expand Close Dean Fitzpatrick Picture; GERRY MOONEY. 1/6/13 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dean Fitzpatrick Picture; GERRY MOONEY. 1/6/13 Tragically, Amy Fitzpatrick went missing in 2008, said Mr Farrell, explaining that she had never been found. Shortly afterwards, Dean, who had turned 18, returned to Ireland. Mr Farrell said that Mr Mahon and Ms Fitzpatrick had been much in the limelight since Amy went missing regarding her disappearance. He said that by 2013, Mr Fitzpatrick was in a relationship and had a two-year-old child. He had mental health difficulties and also had a difficult relationship with Mr Mahon. Mr Farrell said that both men were members of the Northwood Gym in Santry and that Mr Mahons bicycle was interfered with outside the gym on May 24th that year. CCTV footage suggested that it was the deceased who had done so, taking a part off it. The jury was told that Mr Mahon was annoyed and sought to have his stepson barred from the gym. He also spent much of the following day trying to contact the deceased. Witnesses would say he was not in a good mood and had been drinking heavily. The barrister said that Mr Mahon was in his apartment with two friends that night and phoned Mr Fitzpatrick to come over. The deceased arrived and there was a confrontation. Ultimately, he admitted doing it (interfering with the bicycle) to annoy him, said Mr Farrell. Both were agitated. One of Mr Mahons friends told the deceased to leave and he brought him outside. Mr Mahon then told the other friend hed be back in a minute. Its what happened when he walked out the door thats the issue, said the barrister. David Mahon arrived back in and had a carving knife, he said. The prosecution case is that David Mahon stabbed Dean Fitzpatrick in the abdomen. The jury heard that Mr Fitzpatrick ran off, collapsed nearby and was tended to by strangers. He died the following day. Mr Farrell said that Mr Mahon tried to flee the scene. However, he told his friend and another witness what he had done and eventually went to the gardai. He suggested itd been an accident, that he had taken the knife off Dean Fitzpatrick and that Mr Fitzpatrick had walked onto it, impaling himself, he said. At one point he muses that Dean Fitzpatrick was suicidal. Mr Farrell told the jurors that they would have great difficulty in reconciling that account with his injuries. There was a piece of intestine protruding, he said. In common terms, he had been gutted. The trial continues before Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan and a jury of six women and six men. Its expected to last a week. A judge has refused to allow a man withdraw his guilty plea to the murder of a "mentally challenged" 63-year-old man who was beaten to death. Kenneth Cummins (28) of Ringsend Park in Dublin had denied murdering Thomas Horan (63) at Cambridge Court, Ringsend on January 6, 2014. A post-mortem examination showed that the deceased had head, neck and chest injuries consistent with a severe beating. Mr Cummins and his sister Sabrina Cummins went on trial last year but, several weeks in to the trial, Kenneth Cummins changed his plea to guilty. His sister was handed down a life sentence for the murder of Thomas Horan a week later, by which time her brother was applying to vacate his guilty plea. At the time prosecution counsel Mr Remy Farrell SC said this application was "breath taking" and no more than "a stroke" by Mr Cummins. On March 16 Kenneth Cummin's barrister, Pauline Walley SC, told Mr Justice Hunt that it was a legal issue as to whether the plea should have been taken on the afternoon of November 11 or put off to the next morning. She noted that the judge was already charging the jury when her client had changed his plea and that his legal team had informed him that a manslaughter verdict was a possibility. However, contrary to legal advice, Mr Cummins had said that he wanted to get it over with and get out of here. She said that Mr Cummins had been complaining of panic attacks, stress and a lack of medical attention at the time and that this was known to the court. Today Mr Justice Hunt told the court he got "averted from finishing the reasons in this case" but he was refusing the application. "I will give detailed reasons on the next occasion," said the judge. Mr Justice Tony Hunt remanded Mr Cummins in custody until he is sentenced on May 12. A man accused of killing his partner's son will stand trial today for murder. David Mahon (44) of Ongar Village, Clonsilla is charged with murdering 23-year-old Dean Fitzpatrick on May 26th, 2013 at Northern Cross on Dublin's Malahide Road. Lawyers for Mr Mahon failed in an application at the Central Criminal Court to adjourn his trial for murder so that he could have a hip replacement. The judge said that he would have needed a sworn affidavit from Mr Mahon's consultant surgeon regarding the 'urgency' of the operation before he could have considered adjourning the trial. Expand Close Dean Fitzpatrick Picture; GERRY MOONEY. 1/6/13 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dean Fitzpatrick Picture; GERRY MOONEY. 1/6/13 The trial is expected to last two weeks, the court heard. Zabrina Collins was ordered by a judge today to pay 5,000 damages for a vitriolic and personalised attack on the character of a Co Mayo man who opposes the beliefs and teachings of the Church of Scientology of which she is a leading member. Judge James ODonohoe in the Circuit Civil Court said that allegations by her against Peter Griffiths of criminal activity, hate mongering and links to gay pornographic movies of teenage boys were largely untrue and grossly defamatory. He stated that references in an e-mail from Collins to a Dublin headmaster, describing Griffiths as not being a fit person to engage with impressionable students, was particularly distasteful but had not gone far enough to brand him a paedophile either directly or by innuendo. Judge ODonohoe had heard that Collins had sent the email to the principal of St Davids CBS, Artane, Dublin, in May 2013 after she discovered a YouTube recording of a talk on cults by Mr Griffiths to a class of teenage boys at the school. She had claimed his talk had centred on Scientology, which counts actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its members, and accused him of openly and viciously slandering the church. She had also accused him of being an avid hate campaigner against Scientologists and of hate mongering against the church. In the email she included a picture of Griffiths that he had allowed to be taken of himself with his genitals covered only with a Guy Fawkes mask which Griffiths told the court had been in support of Prince Harry following a nude photo scandal by the third in line to the British throne in a Las Vegas Hotel in August 2012. Judge ODonohoe told Seamus OTuathail SC, counsel for Griffiths, of Cual Gara, Teeling Street, Ballina, that Ms Collins had sought to prove the truth of each and every allegation against his client despite the fact there had not been a specific pleading of such in the defence that had been personally drawn up by Collins. Mr OTuathail, who appeared with barrister John Smith and solicitor Cormac O Ceallaigh, had told the court Mr Griffiths was seeking 50,000 damages against Ms Collins. The judge said today, in a reserved judgment, that the claim of qualified privilege regarding Ms Collinss remarks could not extend to protect such a vile attack on Mr Griffiths good name. There had been a good deal of history and animus between the parties which had accounted for the tone of the email which he described as malicious in the extreme. He said publication of the defamatory remarks had not been extensive and had been directed to the school principal. Mr Griffiths almost immediately uploaded the material to the internet which had a much wider audience, thereby moderating the level of damages due to him. Judge ODonohoe also gave judgment in a second case in which Collins, a chiropractor, of The Boulevard, Mount Eustace, Tyrelstown, Dublin 15, and Scientologist Michael ODonell, a marketing consultant of Cherrywood Lawn, Clondalkin, Dublin, sued Griffiths and also embalmer John McGhee, of Armstrong Grove, Clara, Co Offaly, for assault and battery. The judge said Mr McGhee had followed Ms Collins and Mr ODonnell in Dublin as they distributed leaflets against drug taking. From a video he had seen it was very clear to him that Mr McGhee had certainly been guilty of assault. His harassing of her and the grabbing by him of leaflets constituted battery. Judge ODonohoe told barrister Frank Beatty, counsel for Ms Collins, that his client could be heard letting out a shrill shriek on the video which indicated to the court that she was apprehensive of a battering from Mr McGhee who did not turn up in court today to hear the judgment. The judge awarded Ms Collins and Mr ODonnell a total of 3,500 against McGhee for assault and battery. Mr Griffiths, he said, had played a lesser role by videoing the assault but had consorted with Mr McGhee and for harassment and assault he awarded Collins and ODonnell 2,000 damages against Griffiths. Mr Beatty and Mr OTuathail agreed that the question of costs could be dealt with by the court at a later date. Ms Collins is a daughter of publican Frank Shortt, who was falsely accused by corrupt gardai of allowing drug dealing in the nightclub he owned in Donegal. In 2007, the Supreme Court more than doubled, to 4.6 million, damages awarded by the High Court to Mr short who was wrongly convicted in 1995 of allowing the sale of drugs at his Point Inn premises in Quigleys Point, Inishowen, Co Donegal. Mr Shortt was imprisoned for three years before being cleared. The tragic details over what led to the mystery deaths of a fraudster grandmother and her Co Limerick beekeeper lover are to be disclosed later today at their joint inquest in West Limerick. Gardai believe Tyrone-born con woman Julia Holmes, and her innocent Limerick partner Thomas Ruttle, died after inhaling fumes from a charcoal barbecue which was placed next to them in a sealed bedroom in Mr Ruttle's house. The couple's badly decomposed bodies were discovered by members of the Harty Traveller gang, from Askeaton, who broke into the Ruttle family home in Boolaglass on May 18th, 2015. Members of the gang have been summonsed as witnesses to give evidence at today's inquest, gardai revealed. The gang were charged with burglary last October and bound to the peace for 12 months. Suicide notes apparently left by Ms Holmes and Mr Ruttle included directions that the notes be read out at their inquest. Gardai have revealed how the bedroom in which Mr Ruttle and Ms Holmes bodies' were discovered, had been sealed from the inside. A burnt out charcoal BBQ was also found in the room. Ms Holmes, a serial fraudster, and the subject of an international police hunt across several countries, was found lying next to Mr Ruttle in bed. A shotgun found in the bedroom led Gardai to believe Ms Holmes (63) and Mr Ruttle (56), had been shot, however this was ruled out in post martens. Liquid in glass containers found beside the bodies is thought to have contained poison or heavy amounts of medication. "There was a charcoal barbecue in the room. When those coals are lit they produce carbon monoxide, and the room was completely sealed," a Garda source revealed. "Charcoal-burning suicide" is a known method of taking one's own life by inhaling high concentrated levels of carbon monoxide from burning charcoal in an enclosed area. Ms Holmes, who served a prison sentence in Texas for a $500,000 property fraud, was wanted by police services across the world. She was allegedly involved in major property frauds in the North, the US, and Australia. Ms Holmes, who had several aliases, had been due to be buried in a pauper's grave, as none of her family had claimed her remains. She was cremated at the final hour in Cork after a member of the Ruttle family stepped in to organise the private ceremony. A mystery person has since claimed her ashes. Mr Ruttle, who knew nothing of his partner's criminal background, was buried in his family plot in Rathkeale Cemetery. Ms Holmes had written up debts of 70,000 owed to builders in West Limerick after she employed them to redecorate Mr Ruttle's farmhouse. Gardai at Dublin airport have been told "don't visibly carry firearms" because it might alarm the public. Independent.ie has learned that just over a month after terrorists set off two bombs at Brussels airport and another at a metro station in the city our own police force has been warned not to panic Irish jet-setters. Senior sources explained that a verbal order was given to officers working at Dublin airport not to carry visible firearms in recent days. Furthermore gardai were ordered not to wear so-called Raid jackets when on duty at the airport. A senior source revealed: In the aftermath of Brussels there were concerns raised about security at Dublin airport. However gardai working at the airport, including officers in the Garda National Immigration Bureau, were given an order in the last number of days not to visibly carry weapons or wear their Raid jackets. The reason given for this was that it might alarm the public. Now, if an armed person causes a disturbance at the airport, officers are expected to tackle them with pepper spray. Expand Close Dublin Airport / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dublin Airport Read More Thirty-two people were killed in the three bomb attacks at Brussels airport and Maelbeek metro station and many more were injured on March 22. The bombings, carried out by ISIS terrorists, caused major international concern and led to calls for increased armed policing at Dublin Airport. Reports had suggested that armed gardai were to take up an overt armed presence at the airport and Dublin Port for the first time. It had been claimed that a new garda Regional Support Unit for the capital was to be created and tasked, among other things, with providing a visible armed presence at both facilities. It is unclear where this current plan stands but for the moment officers have been warned not to carry the Heckler & Koch MP7. A spokesman for An Garda Siochana said: "The policing of Dublin Airport is provided out both overtly and covertly commensurate with the current threat level." Delegates at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) will this week discuss a motion from the Donegal Division which asks if it is "realistic" for An Garda Siochana to "maintain the concept" of continuing to be an unarmed force. Read More While similar motions regarding the arming of the force have been discussed and rejected by the GRA, garda representatives say that "attitudes are changing" amongst the rank and file. "The murders of Adrian Donohoe and Tony Golden, as well as a general increase in violent attacks on gardai means that attitudes are changing," said one GRA delegate. Ahead of their annual conference in Killarney this evening, the president of the Garda Representative Association has spoken about the anger and disillusion felt by its members. Speaking on RTE Radio Ones Morning Ireland, Dermot OBrien said that the issue of pay is top of the agenda for tonights meeting. He noted that it has consumed the last two conferences, and called for the restoration of pay which has been cut by 25pc since 2009. The GRA represents over 10,000 Gardai, and Mr OBrien described the members as angered and disillusioned. They feel betrayed by the government, and by Garda management, he said. He added that the perfect storm is gathering for Gardai and other members of the public service who feel it is time to repay that faith, and to restore and reward us. Mr OBrien also discussed the issue of arming the police force, which is set to be debated at the GRA conference. When asked whether having an unarmed force is realistic in a time of increasingly violent crime, he said: Were the envy of the policing world, the fact that we are unarmed. Expand Close Garda Representative Association president Dermot O'Brien Photo: Courtpix / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Garda Representative Association president Dermot O'Brien Photo: Courtpix Read More However, he went on to say that as society is becoming a lot more dangerous, Gardai should be armed with an intermediate form of force. We have a retractable baton, known as an asp, and pepper spray, then the next jump from that is straight to a gun. We have nothing in between that members could use to defend themselves, he said. He mentioned tasers and bean-bag guns as examples of intermediate forms that could be introduced. The respect for the Gardai seems to be gone at this moment in time, he added. Mr OBrien described the dangerous aspects of police work as part and parcel of the job, referring to the recent shooting at the Regency hotel and the deaths of Adrian Donohoe and Tony Golden. These incidents can happen any day. We are the only members of public service who go into work and have to put on a stab-proof vest and a utility belt which carries handcuffs, a retractable baton and pepper spray, he said. No other public servant feels that vulnerable when they go to work on a daily basis, but thats what we face. A teenager whose brother had lobbied for her hospital transfer for a life-saving operation has died just days after her 19th birthday. Breda Kevane from Tralee in Co Kerry suffered from spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and was in need of an urgent operation on her airways that wasn't available at her local hospital. Breda was in an induced coma in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Kerry University Hospital when her brother Paddy began a determined campaign to highlight her plight. In an interview in March, Paddy told George Hook that if Breda didn't get a transfer to Cork University Hospital, she would die within a number of days. "If she stays in Kerry for another two or three days, the most likely outcome is that she'll die," Paddy said. At the time of the campaign, the HSE said that it would be inappropriate to comment on individual cases, but they had contacted the two hospitals involved to get an update on their overall ICU situation. Paddy's heartfelt plea of #BedForBreda worked, and secured a bed for his sister in Cork University Hospital at the end of March. She had spent over two weeks in an induced coma, but awoke and was "conscious and aware" on April 6, providing hope for her family. However, despite a successful transfer, it is understood the teenager succumbed to her illnesses early on Sunday morning in the arms of her brother and surrounded by her parents Kevin and Agnes. Tributes for the tragic young woman came in yesterday from Mr Hook, who was shocked by the news. "Just received news that Breda Kevane died this morning. Her plight moved me and it's sad that we could not do more," he said. Family friend Ann Doherty also posted a heartfelt message online in memory of the teenager. "Special angels prayers to my dear friend Agnes Kevane whose darling daughter Breda got her angel wings today - fly high darling safe in the arms of Jesus," she said. Tralee Councillor Sam Locke told the Irish Independent that his thoughts were with the family "after a very difficult period for them all". "It's very sad news," Mr Locke said. "They had a very hard battle and my sympathies lie with the family," he added. A mother whose daughter has been on an urgent speech and language waiting list for more than 17 months said she doesn't know if her daughter will be able to start school in September. Mum of five Niav McEvoy from Mullawnfin, Gorey, Co Wexford said that in November 2014 her four-year-old daughter Heather was diagnosed with severe speech delay and put on an urgent speech and language waiting list in Gorey. However 17 months on and little Heather hasn't been seen, in fact she is still only number 12 on the list. 'I was talking to the office last week', said Niav 'and Heather is now number 12 on the list which means there are 11 children ahead of her. We don't know how long it will be before she moves to the top of the list. She's been 17 months waiting so far and that's the urgent waiting list. 'It's so frustrating. No child should be left waiting that long for early intervention.' Niav said that some of the problem with the long waiting list stems from overlapping maternity leave by two of the therapists. 'Obviously people are entitled to their maternity leave and I've no problem with that. My problem is that these women weren't replaced. That's the issue. Not people taking leave. 'I've a friend who is a speech therapist in Dublin and she also assessed Heather and gave me advice on how to work with her on her speech but she needs proper therapy. I've no issue doing work at home with Heather but I'm not a trained speech and language therapist. 'I could be doing something wrong and not know it.' Niav said Heather has been diagnosed with Phonological Disorder which is fairly common in children but said that she urgently needs therapy to correct the problem. 'Kids need therapy to get beyond the speech delay and the problem can be sorted but if you don't do anything they might not be able to get beyond the problem.' Niav said that she and husband Darren also investigated the possibility of getting a private speech and language appointment for Heather but were told that there isn't a private therapist working in the Gorey district. After this Niav, desperate to raise the plight not only of Heather but the long waiting lists, wrote an open letter to Minister for Health Leo Varadkar. She said she felt she had no other option. In the letter she said she was 'a typical mother who will do anything and everything for her children. A mother who refuses to remain silent on an issue that doesn't just impact on my child but impacts thousands of children the length and breadth of our country. 'Heather is yet another statistic within our health service. My daughter does not deserve to be on an urgent waiting list for 17 months. No child does. My daughter deserves to be heard. She deserves to receive the services she so desperately needs. So does every other child in this country awaiting speech and language therapy. 'It baffles me that our country can pay pensions to serving politicians, how we can squander billions on a useless utility company (don't get me started on THAT one), how we can send billions in foreign aid overseas, how we can welcome thousands of refugees to our land but we cannot afford to provide additional speech and language therapists? We cannot afford to provide such essential services as speech and language to our children. Our children who have been diagnosed with a severe speech delay. Our children who are on an urgent waiting list for over 17 months.' Niav went on to say: 'it is no secret that the health services need serious and urgent reform. I ask you, no I beg you, to do something about the serious shortage of speech and language therapists so that waiting lists can be eliminated, not reduced, eliminated. 'Surely you can understand that if a young child is diagnosed with a severe speech delay, placing said child on a waiting list that will continue for over a year and a half will be detrimental to that child and his/her development? 'Our children need you to step up to the plate and do the job you are charged with doing; to be the minister you claim to be. Our children need you to hear them.' Niav said that she had contacted a number of politicians about the problem but said she was told that until a Government is formed nothing can be done. However she said this isn't good enough. 'If everyone sits back and does nothing, nothing gets done.' Heather is due to start in Riverchapel National School this September but Niav said the couple don't know if she will be able to go because of her speech delay. 'We don't know how things will go and if she'll be able to start school in September. 'We are hoping that her speech will be good enough and she will be able to go but without therapy before then I don't know. We are working towards her starting in September but realistically we don't know.' Niav said she has no idea when Heather will get an appointment with a speech therapist. 'I honestly don't know. We are hoping before the summer but we just don't know. She's already 17 months on an urgent list and there are still eleven children ahead of her.' Nestled into a country road in Kingsland, County Roscommon, a research grade observatory boasting two large telescopes is masked by a traditional country cottage. Eamon Ansbro set up his observatory in the mid 1990s at a time when locals began reporting strange lights and flying objects in the skies. The nearby town of Boyle has a history of UFO activity. The late Betty Meyler set up the UFO society of Ireland in the sleepy rural town, where the night skies are black and totally free from light pollution. Several UFO sightings have been reported in the area, most famously the crash landing of a supposed flying saucer in 1996 that drew parallels with the infamous Roswell incident. Eamons house-cum-research facility sits just under a mile away from Kingsland National School where I was a pupil in the late 1990s . I remember the other kids talking about the man who looks for aliens. Strangely, Ansbros house fits fits well within the friendly - albeit slightly insular - community. Its large telescopes are hidden inside corrugated iron sheds, a row of smaller cameras pointing skyward on the roof of the cottage are the only sign of abnormality. While it is true that Ansbro has dedicated much of his professional life to a field that many of his neighbours and scientific peers would deem crazy, it is clear upon meeting him that he is far from the tin-foil-hat-wearing loon that springs to mind when one thinks of a 'ufoligist'. He could by described by some as an eccentric, but he is also articulate, calm and confident in his work. He is also keen to distance himself from other local ufologists, who - despite having his utmost respect - do not follow a scientific approach in their quest for first contact with an intelligent extra terrestrial species. Ansbro is not interested in second hand accounts of sightings or indeed any degree of speculation, he is on a quest for definitive proof of extra terrestrial life. His ultimate goal is first contact. FIRST CONTACT Ansbro is by no means the first man to begin the search for extra terrestrial life. the search for extra terrestrial intelligence agency (SETI) are a well funded society of scientists who work to the same ends as Ansbro. The difference between them lies in their method. SETI function on the premise that the intelligent civilisations are likely using methods of communication that are extremely advanced, but function in a similar manner to our own i.e. using radio waves, sound waves or radiation. This is a belief that is totally at odds with Ansbros who believes that we need to look beyond the laws of physics and science as we know them. When something or somebody is emphatically dismissed by mainstream science - warning bells start to go off. However, in this case its different. Its different because mainstream science - in this case SETI - havent found anything yet. Perhaps then there is method to Ansbros madness. these civilisations are operating at a completely different level, on completely different systems he explains. I think that there is a sort of telephone directory that we arent in, our Solar System is on the outermost arm of the galaxy, I suspect that there are many clusters of civilisations nearer to the centre. SCALAR TECHNOLOGY Contacting civilisations at the centre of the galaxy requires faster than light communications, something that we cannot achieve within the confines of electromagnetism - the theories on which all our systems of communication and travel are based. Ansbro believes the secret lies in scalar waves a type of electromagnetic wave that works outside of the laws of physics as we know it. He believes that despite the difficulty of his task, he thinks he is close to a breakthrough. "I'm confident that we will achieve first contact" he says. "I think I know how they're doing it now"." If Ansbro is successful in his mission, he will take his place alongside Einstein, Newton, and Hawking in the history books. Until then his telescopes will remain trained on the skies over Co. Roscommon. Rank and file gardai are concerned that the concept of an unarmed force is unsustainable in the face of rising violent crime and international terrorism. They fear that cutbacks have left them increasingly vulnerable in the face of armed and organised criminals Delegates at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) will discuss a motion from the Donegal Division which asks if it is "realistic" for An Garda Siochana to "maintain the concept" of continuing to be an unarmed force. While similar motions regarding the arming of the force have been discussed and rejected by the GRA, garda representatives say that "attitudes are changing" amongst the rank and file. "The murders of Adrian Donohoe and Tony Golden, as well as a general increase in violent attacks on gardai means that attitudes are changing," said one GRA delegate. Back-up "We no longer have the level of back-up that we require because of resource cuts, so how are our members expected to protect themselves when confronted by armed criminals when they are out patrolling on their own?" The conference, which begins tomorrow in Killarney, will also highlight the "chronic lack" of 24-hour armed garda cover in most parts of the country and the fact that there are not enough frontline officers to provide an adequate service. A joint motion from three garda divisions calls on the Justice Minister and the Commissioner to "immediately address" the shortages. "The fact is that our work has become more dangerous because of how unpredictable and violent society has become and it is unacceptable that we have a chronic lack of armed units," said Cavan / Monaghan Division representative James Morrisroe, who is running for the position of GRA president. "In the border areas there is a huge need for armed units because of the number of armed criminal gangs operating on both sides. In Cavan /Monaghan our numbers have dropped by 22pc and we cannot provide the public with the service it is entitled to. "We have become a reactive police force as opposed to a proactive one," he added. The rejection last week by rank and file members of a new working time agreement - which had been recommended by the GRA's central executive committee - is likely to dominate the agenda as part of an overall demand for the restoration of lost pay and conditions. The new agreement, which sought to replace the current duty rostering system, was rejected by 68.8pc of members. The GRA had negotiated the proposed changes with Garda HQ and the Department of Justice over several months. It was put to a vote of rank and file gardai after the GRA central executive committee formally endorsed the deal by 23 votes to eight. Outgoing GRA President Dermot O'Brien said that the central executive would take the result on board as the association look at the next steps in the campaign for better pay. The rejection of the roster changes has been seen as an expression of anger towards the Government among the rank and file over cuts to resources. Described by the Garda Inspectorate as "not fit for purpose", the current rosters involve gardai working six 10-hour days followed by a recovery day and three rest days. The roster changes necessitated dividing the already depleted four-unit system into five, with the result that every garda shift in the country is now seriously under-strength. The lack of continuous training for rank and file officers will also be discussed at the conference. There will be a call on the Commissioner to direct senior management to provide continuous professional development training every 12 months. Jac Holmes, Joe Akerman and Joshua Molloy from Ballylynan, Co Laois, take a selfie in Erbil after their release from jail in a Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq. Photo: Joe Akerman/PA The Irishman released from an Iraqi prison after crossing the border illegally from Syria will probably never go back to the Middle East, his relieved father has said. Joshua Molloy (24) made headlines when he was picked up more than 10 days ago coming back into Iraq after months spent fighting Isil alongside a Syriac Christian group allied to the Kurdish YPG. Yesterday his parents Declan and Anne Marie, from Ballylinan, Co Laois, finally got word that their son had been freed. "He's in a hotel in Erbil [the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan] and is planning a route home," Declan Molloy told the Irish Independent. "He will probably visit some friends in Central Europe on his way home, but we hope to have him here soon where we will give him space, fatten him up a bit and let him recharge his batteries. "It is one big sigh of relief for all of us, we are overwhelmed, very relieved and worn out." Mr Molloy said he was looking forward to having a cold beer with Joshua and letting him tell his story at his own pace. Expand Close Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan Joshua travelled to the Middle East in April 2015 to fight against Isis with the forces allied to the Kurds. He is a former British soldier, and his parents were anxious to express that he is not a soldier or a freedom fighter, but a man with compassion and an interest in world affairs. Action According to military sources, Joshua served with the Royal Irish Regiment based in England until February last year when he completed his four-year tour of duty. He served with the regiment during a six-month tour of Afghanistan in the Helmand Province in 2011-2012. The regiment saw "intense" action against the Taliban. Sources also say that while serving with the Kurdish forces in Syria, Joshua was part of a force that was almost overwhelmed by Isis forces and ran out of ammunition. Their lives were saved when a US Air Force jet dropped a bomb on the Isis forces advancing on his position. Joshua joined the Kurdish fighters along with two other British soldiers, one a former member of the Parachute Regiment. He was held along with British citizens Joe Akerman, also a former soldier, and Jac Holmes, an IT worker. It is understood that a condition of the release of the three men is that they are banned from re-entering the country for two years. The anxious wait by Joshua's family came to an end late on Saturday night when acting Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan phoned the family to give them the good news of their son's release. Mr Molloy said he was able to speak to his son via Facebook yesterday morning. "I'm not sure what his exact plans are but it is one big sigh of relief that he is free and it will be another big sigh when his plane eventually touches down in a European airport," he added. Mr Flanagan said: "I welcome Joshua's release and I am pleased that he is on his way home to join his family." The heartbroken widow of a taxi driver murdered by dissident republicans has written an emotional message about how her husband's death has brought both communities together. Joanne McGibbon's letter also included a fervent wish that Catholic and Protestant children in north Belfast will have a brighter future to look forward to. The brave mother-of-four personally delivered her letter to Methodist minister Rev Colin Duncan at the Woodvale Manse on Saturday - just 48 hours after her husband Michael's funeral. And, in a moving show of strength and kindness, Mrs McGibbon asked the cleric to pass on her gratitude to the local Protestant community for their support during the dark days following his brutal murder. "I just hope one day that this hatred and evil will be gone and we can all live happy with each other, the way it should be," she wrote. "Thank you all so much again. It is so lovely to see the two communities agreeing with each other for a change. It would be nice if our children could have a brighter future." Joanne is understood to have been appreciative of the gesture by the Orange Order to suspend its nightly protest at Twaddell Avenue on Thursday - the day Michael was laid to rest after Requiem Mass in Holy Cross Church. Mr McGibbon passed away in hospital on April 16, surrounded by his family, after he was shot in the legs in Ardoyne by the so-called New IRA. One of the gunmen's bullets struck the young father on the thigh, severing a major artery and causing him to bleed to death in an alleyway as Joanne, a nurse, cradled him in her arms. The 33-year-old had gone to meet his killers at Butler Place after refusing to come to the door when two paramilitaries visited his house in Ardoyne 24 hours earlier. His shocking murder robbed Joanne of a husband and their children - daughters Seanna (17), six-year-old Michaela and Corry-Leigh (4), and their nine-year-old son Shea - of a father. "To all our neighbours 'on the other side', in Woodvale, Glencairn, Twaddell (Twinbrook LOL) etc etc", the hand-written card began. "I just want to thank you all for the cards and support you have shown to my husband Michael and my family during this difficult time. I have lots of friends who are Protestants and other religions and they all mean a lot to me. It just shows we are all human and feel the same way. "I have nursed people from all religions/cultures and cared for them all equally." Mr McGibbon, who was working for Five Star taxis, was targeted after unfounded allegations were made about him making inappropriate comments to a young female passenger. He left his job with Glenard cabs on Ardoyne Avenue as a result and had assumed a new job as a driver with the Antrim Road company when he was killed. Five Star also employs prominent dissident Damien 'Dee' Fennell, who was arrested last weekend in connection with Mr McGibbon's murder before later being freed without charge. Despite the unproven claims about the former chef being at least a year old, they were still being cited as the reason for his murder. Signing off "Love, Joanne McGibbon xo", the widow entrusted the card to Rev Duncan, who then passed on its contents and sentiment to local parishioners. DUP North Belfast Assembly candidate William Humphrey said the community had been touched by how Mrs McGibbon had dealt with her tragic loss. "As someone born and raised in the Woodvale, I am not surprised to read that people from the Greater Shankill community have been of support to Joanne and her family," he said. "The cancellation of the Orange Institution's Twaddell protest was a manifestation of that. "I, like many others, have been moved and impressed with how Joanne has conducted herself. Her quiet dignity and decorum is an example to us all and is in stark contrast to the evil people who murdered her dear husband." President Michael D Higgins has criticised the austerity programmes placed on EU states as "asking the impossible" of ordinary working Europeans. Speaking to the Irish Independent after addressing the Irish League of Credit Unions annual conference in Limerick at the weekend, Mr Higgins also said banks could learn from the credit union ethos of "providing credit with dignity to the most vulnerable". Highlighting the austerity measures "imposed" on Greece, Mr Higgins said: "You can't have such an imposition on a people, as would take them 200 years to come out of the darkness." He described the austerity measures imposed on Ireland and other EU members states as "like the idea in the old days ... how you never knew how much you owed the shopkeeper, because (the debt) was at the back of the long book". "There are times in global economics, and times in global credit systems, when you have to realise what you're asking is impossible," said Mr Higgins. He added Europe should see the people as its "principle consideration" when looking at austerity policies. Fine Gael is poised to surrender to Fianna Fail's demands to suspend water charges for a limited period, in a move that could finally see Enda Kenny return as Taoiseach. Mr Kenny is set to agree to a suspension of charges for all Irish Water customers, pending the framing of a new charging regime which includes waivers and generous free allowances. But while it will pave the way to power, the decision to suspend charges will be highly sensitive politically. It is sure to spark a backlash from the 950,000 households that have already paid their bills. Central to the agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail will be the establishment of a new commission which will examine the re-introduction of charges, once the suspension process kicks in. But there remains significant differences between the two parties, with Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin seeking a three-year suspension of charges in return for a written agreement to support a Fine Gael-led minority government for the same period. Mr Kenny and Mr Martin spoke on a number of occasions over the telephone yesterday and met briefly at the Arbour Hill commemoration. The issue of the suspension of charges was discussed at a meeting on Saturday, during which Mr Kenny is believed to have expressed a willingness to concede, as long as the charges are reinstated following the work of the commission. Their negotiating teams are on standby to resume talks today after the issue of water charges caused the negotiations to stall last Friday. But tensions are running high in both camps, with a number of Fianna Fail figures yesterday urging Mr Martin to consider a snap election. There is a strongly held view among Fianna Fail TDs that an election would put Fine Gael on the back foot, because they would be unable to replace Enda Kenny as leader for several weeks. One senior Fianna Fail figure close to Mr Martin yesterday said the issue had reached its "most precarious state" and the prospect of an election over water is now 60:40 in favour. Throughout yesterday, senior Fianna Fail figures warned Fine Gael that they will not alter their stance on charges. But Fine Gael ministers accused Fianna Fail of being unwilling to compromise fairly on the issue. Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said it was "imperative" both parties found a device to defuse the row if an early election was to be avoided. He said water charges were an issue in the February election, but other issues like housing, homelessness, health and mental health were a higher priority for voters. Mr Flanagan said: "61pc of people paid their water charges. What do we say to them? "Conceding to these Fianna Fail demands would not keep faith with those who obeyed the law and it would raise doubt about the principle of paying for water. "Both parties approached this issue from very different perspectives. But hard stances now will not help us achieve the desired outcome of these talks, which must be a government." He said abolishing Irish Water would squander 110m in taxpayers' money already spent on its establishment. Meanwhile, speaking at a 1916 commemoration event in New York, acting Environment Minister Alan Kelly said abolishing Irish Water now would be "political, economic and environmental sabotage". But speaking on RTE's 'This Week' programme, Fianna Fail TD Marc MacSharry said the election result meant there was "no mandate" for water charges. Asked by the Irish Independent about the feeling towards Mr Kenny, Mr MacSharry replied: "The leadership of Fine Gael is a matter for them but personally my view is if people in Fine Gael feel he's the only barrier to respecting the will of the people and the Dail on Irish Water, he should be replaced." Nora Gormley at a family wedding. The photo is believed to have been taken some time in the 1960's. Photo: Eileen Gormley Eileen Gormley (62) and her sister Bridget (54) are trying to locate the mother they haven't seen in 50 years. The women and their late sister Rosaleen were sent to Banada industrial school in Tubbercurry, Sligo when they were just children. Their mother, Nora Agnes Gormley (or Gormanley as it reads on her birth certificate), was born in Cloonfeightrin on the Mayo/Sligo border in 1934. She gave birth to two daughters in the 1950s while living at home with her parents in Chaffpool outside Tubbercurry. Eileen and her younger sister, who had special needs, lived with her mother Nora and her grandparents in Chaffpool. Her grandmother died in 1960. The following January of 1961, Nora gave birth to Bridie, her third and youngest daughter. The girls, who didn't know their father, were taken to Banada Primary and Secondary school run by a religious order and lost trace of her mother. "Once our grandmother wasn't there to take care of us, the three of us were put into an industrial school. She was the backbone of the family and without her there was a lot of chaos," Eileen said when speaking to the Anton Savage Show on Today FM. "There was nobody else to really care for us. There was a lot of pressure on the family. They lived in poverty. "I went [to the industrial school] when I was six and a half. There were a lot of kids there. When I went there I developed many illnesses like measles, mumps and jaundice. "I was sick quite a bit but I got good care. Everybody has their own experience in a place like that so I can only say for myself. It was tough. The food wasn't great you know, things like that. While living in the industrial school, the girls were visited by members of their family on occasion, including their mother but the visits soon stopped. "Some relatives visited. They were brought up to the front parlour and we were brought to meet them. I heard from relations that she came to visit us when we got there but after a while it stopped," said Eileen. Leaving school Eileen was determined to reconnect with her birth mother but those plans were put on the backburner when she landed a job with a local family. "I had determination in my brain that I must find this woman. I was 15. I was young and full of life. "One day I was taking the kids from the family for a walk when this lady on a bicycle approached me. She said 'Are you Eileen Gormley?', I said I was and then she told me that my mother was looking for me. Eileen said she was shocked to find that she was living in the same area as her mother. "I didn't know where I was from. I didn't even know I was from Tubercurry. I just remember being brought up to the school in a car by a nun," she said. She was shaken by the information but, much to her regret now, didn't follow it up. At 15 you just don't know what to do. I was scared so I just left but that was the last we heard about her," she said. Eileen said she regrets not speaking to anyone about it at the time, especially the family she worked for as they may have been able to help. "It's a pity I didn't ask but in those days you just didn't talk about these things," she explained. Her sister Bridget began looking for their mother in the 90's, shortly after their sister Rosaleen passed away in institutional care. Eileen, who has spent 20 years living in Africa, joined in the search in 2014. The two women also enlisted the help of Padraic Grennan from Finders International - a genealogy organisation that helps people trace their family. Speaking to the Anton Savage Show, Padraic said that the extensive search has moved outside of Ireland. "We have to consider that Eileen's mum may have moved abroad," he said. "She had siblings in London and aunts in Chicago and Illinois. We're waiting on a worldwide search on birth, marriage and death certificates that match her name. "Hopefully something here today might help someone trigger a memory that will generate a lead for us," he added. The family have just one photo of Nora taken at a wedding some time in the 1960s. Through the grainy image it's clear she was small in stature with dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Their mother, if she's still alive, will turn 82 on May 28 and the women want to connect with her while they still have time. "In those days things were different, people left... but I want to reach her before it's too late," said Eileen. Trip of a lifetime: Owen Suskind, subject of the documentary Life, Animated, during a childhood trip to Disney World (courtesy of Ron Suskind) In November 1993, when he was two-years-old, something mysterious happened to Owen Suskind. His parents, Ron and Cornelia, have been trying to make sense of it for more than two decades. One day, he was like any normal toddler; Ron has a videotape to prove it. In the tape, Ron and his son are enacting a scene from Disney's Peter Pan. Owen, a big fan of Disney cartoons, has a toy sword. He pretends to kill Ron. His father, then a 33-year-old national affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal, falls over. "A month later,"' Ron Suskind writes in Life, Animated, his book about Owen, "the boy vanished." Suskind and his wife, Cornelia, have watched the tape over and over again. The way Suskind describes it is heartbreaking. "It's a last sighting of him," he says. But Owen was not kidnapped or taken in a physical sense. As we discover in Suskind's book - now an acclaimed film by the director Roger Ross Williams - it was his mind that seemed to disappear. Talking to me on the phone from his home in Washington DC, Suskind takes me back to 1993. "Something's wrong," he says. "He's not looking at you. He seems unhappy. He's crying a lot. He was never a big cryer. And then we find, a few weeks after that, he's losing speech. "About two months along, he has lost the usual two-and-half-year-old vocabulary of 200 words. He's down to a single word: 'juice'. And he's walking around like someone with their eyes shut. He's losing motor function." The Suskinds were terrified. "We're like, what's happening? Kids don't grow backwards." But very occasionally, they do. Owen had "regressive autism", a condition in which the symptoms of autism present themselves when the child is a toddler. This happens to about a quarter of people with autism. For a while - somewhere between 15 and 30 months - they are doing what most toddlers do: learning to interact, reading facial expressions and processing language. And then something changes. "The cruelty of regressive autism," Suskind tells me, "is that the child feels to be present, chatting away, at one-and-a-half, or two. And then they vanish." We still don't know what causes autism, or the exact mechanism that drives it. The term is derived from the Greek word for "self", because autism appears to be a retreat into the self. About one in 100 people in Ireland have the condition. For Ron and Cornelia, the next three years were difficult. They had another son, Walt, a couple of years older than Owen. Walt was "neurotypical" - a normal kid. Meanwhile, Owen was still locked in. He was finding it very hard to communicate. That's the crucial problem with autism: communication. As Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes, writes, "autistic people struggle to make sense of social signals in real time." The Suskinds tried to treat Owen in various ways. They sent him to "the largest and best school for kids with disabilities in the area." Ron describes a day in 1994 in which Cordelia "drove Owen to school, picked him up at midday, and drove him to intense speech and language therapy and then occupational therapy. None of it seems to be doing much good." Between the ages of three and six, Owen would wave his hands around and talk what appeared to be nonsense. Then he'd go up to his bedroom, where he would watch Disney films for hundreds of hours. He would rewind the tape and repeat watching scenes. Then one day, at the age of six, Owen was watching The Little Mermaid. He grabbed the remote to replay a scene. In the scene Ursula sings the lines: "It won't cost much/Just your voice!" The song is about a character who loses their voice. Owen pressed rewind again. Then he said: "juicervoice!" His family realised he was trying to say something. He was using the Disney film to communicate it. Owen kept saying the word: "Juicervoice! Juicervoice!" Maybe it wasn't his thoughts that had gone missing, but just his ability to communicate them. Just his voice. Ron and Cordelia talked to a speech therapist who suggested it might not be proper communication - maybe it was echolalia - when someone hears a word and repeats it. This is what babies do. It's also common for people with autism. But had there been something more? Owen had been concentrating on a particular scene. He'd rewound the tape. Another day, Owen had been watching Beauty and the Beast. Again, he'd been saying something over and over - a line from the film - "bootylyzwitten". The actual words from the cartoon were: "beauty lies within". The real breakthrough came a few weeks later on Walt's ninth birthday, when Owen said, "Walter doesn't want to grow up, like Mowgli or Peter Pan." Later that day, Suskind went up to Owen's bedroom. He spotted a puppet of Iago, the parrot from the Disney cartoon Aladdin. Then Suskind had an idea that would change his life, and Owen's life, and possibly the lives of countless people on the autism spectrum. He put his hand into the puppet and began talking to his son in Iago's voice. He said: "How does it feel to be you?" Owen said, "I'm not happy. I don't have friends. I don't understand what people say." In the film, we see Owen and Ron many years later. Owen is now in his early 20s. But they reenact the scene. As they do, a penny drops. We see an essential truth about autism - it's not that the thoughts are missing, it's the communication. So you have to find a creative way to communicate - Owen's was using Disney cartoons. Today, he's grown up and he can talk. Maybe he's not like a regular person, but what, in any case, is a regular person? Suskind and others are beginning to think about that process. They are calling it Affinity therapy. Lots of people on the autistic spectrum develop affinities. It might be with games, or books, or, in the case of Owen Suskind, Disney cartoons. And these people can be reached through their affinities. Suskind says, "People say, oh that kid, the kid who memorised all the Disney movies. I've heard about him. He's one in a million! I think we're going to find, as the years pass, he's one of a million. One of many millions in the discard pile." For Ron Suskind, the last 20 years have been hard. But now Owen has friends. A girlfriend. He'll never have a regular life, but he has a good life. "Who decides?" asks Suskind. "Who decides what the meaningful life is? Every time I say that, I well up with emotion." 'Life, Animated' will be released in Ireland later in the year A couple's determination to leave nothing to chance is one of the reasons why their eight-year-old daughter is alive today. It's a tale that may prompt others to take action before it's too late. That is certainly what Liam Corr and his partner Liga, who are both in their 40s, hope will happen. Their story begins in Rush, Co Dublin where Liam used to raise plants to sell to vegetable growers. There, he fell in love with agri-worker Liga Plata, who comes from Latvia. In mid-2007, they were delighted when their daughter Nikola was born. Liam says Nikola had no health problems, apart from the usual childhood ailments. However, late in 2013, he and Liga began to notice a "strange shine" in the six-year-old's right eye. It was only an occasional thing at first, but as Christmas came and went, the shine became more obvious. "At times, you'd see a sort of half-moon," explains Liga. So on January 6, 2014, they took her to Specsavers in Swords, where she had a thorough examination. "Pictures were taken of the eye and then she was seen by optician Sean Douglas, who said the images showed a cloud forming," explains Liam. "He urged us to go to A&E. We landed up at Temple Street [Children's University Hospital]. The doctor there said she'd never seen anything like it and told us to come back in two days." When they returned, Nikola was examined by Professor Michael O'Keefe, who specialises in paediatric eye surgery. He immediately ordered an MRI scan. "The staff had to inject a dye into her vein before they put Nikola in the scanning drum," says Liga. "They were very reassuring, so she was really calm throughout the whole procedure. Later she had further eye tests under anaesthetic." Soon a diagnosis of unilateral retinoblastoma was confirmed. This is a rare condition, mainly affecting young children, that causes a malignant tumour to form in the retina. If left untreated, the cancer may spread to the other eye, and to other parts of the body, including the brain and the spine. Nikola also had vitreous "seedings" - minuscule fragments of tumour in the eye. "We were warned that the tumour had to be dealt with quickly," explains Liam. "Otherwise it could mean a call to the church, instead of the hospital." An initial assessment of Nikola's situation pointed to the removal of the affected eye. Liam and Liga were stunned. They did not want that eye removed. Who could say that the same thing wouldn't happen to the other one? "I pleaded for an alternative solution," says Liam. "My very real fear was that she'd be blind for the rest of her life." Given that only a handful of cases of retinoblastoma occur in Ireland each year, experience in dealing with the condition is somewhat limited. So Prof O'Keefe suggested contacting centres of excellence for this type of cancer in Canada and Switzerland. He emailed them Nikola's medical records and summoned Liam and Liga as soon as he got a response. Just four days after they first walked through the doors of Temple Street Hospital, they learned that the top experts in Canada agreed the only solution was to remove the eye, while the Swiss doctors thought they might be able to save it. "We were completely downcast when we heard the Canadian response," says Liam, "and we rejoiced when we heard the verdict from Switzerland." The next few days were characterised by a frenzy of form-filling, phone calls and acute anxiety. Liam sent off the paperwork for the HSE's treatment abroad scheme. When he contacted them by phone, he says he was told that applications generally take 15 to 20 days. So he explained that Nikola couldn't afford to wait that long. Thankfully, a few days later, the HSE application was approved. "I sat in the car and cried and cried," admits Liam. Within days, they had arrived at the Jules Gonin Hospital in Lausanne, where Nikola was examined by Professor Francis Munier. "She was categorised as group E, the last stage," explains Liga. "After that, they would have had no option but to remove the eye. We were told that if we'd waited one more week, it would have been too late to save the eye, and it could have spread, as this is an aggressive form of cancer." The following morning, another examination was done under anaesthetic; Nikola's first chemotherapy was also administered directly into the eye during that procedure. After a few hours in recovery, she was able to go back to the hotel, wearing a plastic protective shield. There were two prongs to Nikola's treatment: intra-arterial and intravitreal. In the first instance, (intra-arterial) a tiny tube was inserted into an artery in her thigh and then coaxed up through the body, before entering the ophthalmic artery. The chemo was then delivered to the tumour. In the second instance, (intravitreal) medication was injected directly into the eye to eliminate the "seedings". After their second visit to Switzerland, Liam decided to close his plant-growing business, so he could concentrate on supporting Nikola in her recovery. He now drives a lorry for a relative. The family made a total of 24 visits to Switzerland. Nikola has now been cancer-free for two years. Liam and Liga are eternally grateful to Prof O'Keefe for sending them to his colleague in Switzerland so speedily. "We met people from all over the world who have children whose lives have been saved by Prof Munier," explains Liam. "He has huge experience in treating kids like Nikola. This disease presents differently in every single child, and requires very specialised treatment. And he gives that to them. The only way I can describe Prof Munier is God's right hand." Liam and Liga are also immensely grateful to Sister Bernie Lanigan who so ably assisted Prof O'Keefe in his work. "She did so much for us," says Liam. He also thanks Sean Douglas for putting them on high alert, and to St Catherine's National School staff in Rush, who took such great care of their very special daughter. "If she so much as sneezed, they called us," says Liga. "And even though she missed three months of school, they helped her catch up." With that, Nikola smiles sweetly before resuming the important business of eating her delicious chocolate croissant. Specsavers says eye examinations are an "important health check". To find your local Specsavers store (the chain has 50 nationwide) or to make an appointment, see specsavers.ie Those planning modular housing schemes might do well to check out some of the smart international design solutions. At New Islington in Manchester, for example, 'regeneration company' Urban Splash teamed up with architects shedkm to produce hoUSe, modular terraced houses of one- to five-bedrooms built over two or three storeys with bespoke interiors. Constructed off site, the houses are highly energy efficient and come in at under 100 per sq ft, significantly lower than the cost per foot of most UK city centre flats. All 43 of the first launch sold out prior to launch at prices from 200,000 (254,000) to 350,000 (444,500). Ian Killick, director at shedkm, said: 'We believe that it is a game-changer to tackle the current housing shortage this country is facing' Photo: Jack Hobhouse/Urban Splash The announcement by Environment Minister Alan Kelly last autumn of the construction of 500 modular homes or rapid social housing units for the capital got a warm welcome. What has transpired, though, is nothing short of bizarre. The current social housing waiting list stands at 45,000 in Dublin. And the announcement was aimed at addressing the supply shortage in the short term - with the first batch intended for completion by December 2015. The estimated cost of construction, according to Mr Kelly at the time, was in the region of 100,000 per unit, in comparison to 190,000 for a traditional new build. So far, so good. Then a few weeks ago came the announcement that the first batch had been delivered and was hailed a success. I beg to differ. There has been only one significant benefit in carrying out this process. The Government has been able to provide 22 social homes at Poppintree, Ballymun in Dublin about six months more quickly than if it had had to proceed through the normal planning and design process. At what price though? What has been undertaken makes no economic sense whatsoever. It appears the final agreed tender price by the local planning authority was 243,000 per unit. Remember, the above figure of 243,000 does not include site costs or levies. Each unit extends to 91sqm, which works out at 2,660 per square metre (psm). And note that the same developer is selling a newly built four-bedroomed detached family residence extending to 200sqm at Farlough Manor, Dungannon, Co Tyrone for 249,000 (195,000) - a build that works out at approximately 1,000 (787) psm, if we allow an estimated 40,000 for site costs. This includes site costs and builder's profit. What does that tell us about the level of construction costs that exist in the Republic? Currently, up to 35pc of the cost of a house goes back to the Government in various forms. All the modular homes, which are partially constructed off-site, have a life span of 60 years. If we compare two similarly-sized properties side by side, one modular and one a traditional new build, the traditional home will increase in value in line with property values, while the modular home will depreciate year after year. In 60 years' time, a traditional home which, if it increases in value by an average of 5pc per annum on a value of 300,000 today, will be worth in the region of 6m. But the modular home will have no value, beyond the 1.2m that the site is worth (if we estimate that to be 20pc of the total value of the property). The potential loss to the exchequer equates to 1.8m per property - surely not in the taxpayer's best interest? Virtual sales for property? As technology continues to accelerate at a frightening pace with the arrival of fin tech, pharma tech and, of course, property tech industries, we are being introduced to new applications every day. Another likely arrival to the Irish property tech scene is a concept which is proving very popular across the water in the US. It is a new method of selling for property vendors and first into the market is an online company called opendoor.com. It works as simply as this - the vendor enters their property address on the website and within hours opendoor.com reverts with an offer. Not a valuation, an actual offer from Opendoor, who subsequently sell the property on. Nor is the offer subject to finance, instead it is subject to a physical inspection (as you'd expect). The offer is arrived at by means of an algorithm which has been created by opendoor.com and takes into account all the possible variables. If the sale proceeds, it can close within a week, if required. What's the catch? The only downside I can deduce is that the vendor may end up paying a 2pc-3pc premium for the service and this is where opendoor.com's margin/premium lies. I can see there being a niche market for this in Ireland, for example, where a vendor needs to sell quickly in order to be able to provide funds to close on another sale. Or where a family are selling a home and proceeds are being divided a number of ways, so the extra costs incurred per beneficiary using this method would be outweighed by the speed of disposal. It could provide certainty and it could provide it quickly. Sunny days down on the farm They may sound like science fiction, but solar farms, where landowners erect thousands of solar panels on their land to generate electricity, have arrived in the Irish energy sector, bringing additional income and free electricity. Could this be a profitable revenue stream for farmers hit by poor milk and grain prices? They're commonplace on the Continent. Amerenco, an Irish company, has announced that it intends to construct 35 such farms throughout Ireland over the next three years. It has already secured planning permission for two farms, one in Waterford and one in Cork. The farms can be built in just four weeks and allow the land to be used for grazing or tillage as 90pc of the sunlight can still reach the soil. Each farm would have approximately 35,000 solar panels and could provide electricity for 1,000 homes. What's the downside? Well, they're not very visually appealing. But with the demands that are now placed on governments by the EU in relation to the provision of green energy, we may see farmers earning more from harvesting energy than tillage. New homes at Savills It's hardly news that there's a shortage of new homes. According to David Browne, director of new homes at Savills, currently there is a requirement for 12,000 new homes in the capital. The supply in 2015 stood at 2,000, well short of this figure. However, there are positive signs in the market. "We have seen a significant uplift in product," says David, "which is either ready to come to the market this spring or being prepared for launch in the autumn. The majority of new homes we sold last year were traditional houses and we expect a similar trend this year." Figures released last week by the CSO highlighted the fact that planning permissions in the last quarter of 2015 were up 95pc on the same quarter of 2014. Finally, it would seem that the lag in supply created by the downturn is being eroded and that estimates that demand may satisfy supply by 2017/18 may be accurate. And to prepare for the increase in supply, Savills are beefing up their new homes department with three new appointments. Stephanie Patterson re-joins Savills after a five-year stint in the UK; Lyndsey Boland, who joined the organisation in 2012, has recently moved from the lettings department; and Linda Forsyth has also been promoted to head of operations within the division. Green shoots at last? Her positive parents feature prominently in the loves of the fashion illustrator's life. The person My parents. They are very positive people who gave us a great childhood, and always encouraged us to do what we loved The memory Sitting on the front lawn with my older brother, when I was about four, as he was trying to persuade me to eat grass; and watching a space shuttle launch during a family holiday in Florida The moment of the day Mornings - I am told I am quite good-humoured when I wake up, and I love breakfast The pet hate Drivers who do not indicate at roundabouts; and people taking photographs non-stop when they are out socialising - it ruins the moment The song Billie Jean, by Michael Jackson. I remember watching the video when I was a child, and being so blown away by him that I rang my best friend and told her to turn on the TV The movie This year, Room; child actor Jacob Tremblay was incredible. Also, The Big Short, which is about the 2007-2008 financial crisis, for the funny, guest-cameo economic explanations The hero Nurses, carers, people working in the medical profession and the Civil Defence, especially the volunteers The beauty product Almond oil and rosa mosqueta oil - I prefer natural oils to face creams The book Open, the Andre Agassi biography. I love reading about people's lives, especially their public and private facade. For fiction, I love The House Of The Spirits by Isabel Allende The outfit Coats; my whole wardrobe consists of jackets. I have no clothes! The accessory A large, hand-made, silver-and-bronze-wire wrap ring that I bought at Portobello Market in London. I lost it for about six months, and I was so happy when I found it in a jacket pocket The gadget My iPhone, especially the Maps app for driving, as I have a terrible sense of direction The friend I have a great group of friends, both old and new, home and abroad. I am very lucky to have them The holiday A trip to Peru and Brazil a few years ago, climbing Machu Picchu with a group of my London friends. Also, Marrakech, in Morocco, for the amazing medina and the gorgeous food The piece of advice "Keep a cool head, a dry foot and the odd look back" - my father's favourite saying from his own father The drink Irish coffee; and fresh orange juice The hotel The Belmond Copacabana Palace, Rio De Janeiro. A stunning art deco hotel right on the beach The bar Phil Carroll's in Clonmel, Co Tipperary; and in Dublin, the Stag's Head and Kehoe's The hobby Pottering around markets, collecting books and the like. I also like long walks up the mountain or by the ocean, followed by Irish coffees The part of my body The mole on my neck The celebrity Barbara Hulanicki, founder of Biba. I met her at a book signing years ago in London, and she's a really vibrant lady who has had such a varied, interesting career The virtue I'm a free spirit The vice Impatience; and chocolate The smell Fresh linen The taste My mum's brown bread recipe, hot with butter; and the pate in the Tannery Restaurant in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. I also love the salmon ravioli at La Risata in Kuala Lumpur. My friends lived there for a few years, and La Risata is a small, local restaurant, but their pasta is the best that I have ever tasted See janeryan.com See Jane at house 2016 - Ireland's first ever high-end interiors event taking place in Dublin's RDS, May 20 to 22, showcasing world-class interiors, art and design. Buy your tickets now at house-event.ie/tickets and avail of the reduced online price Premium Billy Keane Opinion Even a dash to the Croke Park toilet wasnt enough to get rid of space invader who gave me Covid I did the time, but there was no crime. Banged up I was, under house arrest after two red bars showed up on the Covid test. Im not too bad, thanks for asking. I have it down on a man who was nearly close enough to kiss me at the All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Galway. Premium John Downing Opinion Pension reforms are dicey territory but grand plan by minister Heather Humphreys just might win through Pension system changes all across the western world have a great propensity to infuriate those most feared by politicians: the grey brigade. And when the oldies take to the streets, they usually play for keeps. Premium Mary Kenny Opinion A male contraceptive jab is on the way, but will it truly equalise reproductive control? It looks as though a male contraceptive vaccine will be available within the next year, according to Dr Amanda Wilson at De Montfort University in Leicester. The jab is called Risug, and it could obviate the demand for vasectomies which is falling anyway. The vaccine, which has completed its final trials, would be reversible, so it is not as radical as vasectomy. I have seen almost endless letters on this page since the last election, most of them a variation on the theme of 'stop wasting time and form a government or else call a new election'. It seems to have especially upset many of your correspondents that the people of Ireland elected so many Independents, as they lay some of the blame for the current impasse on this fact. Presumably, your correspondents voted for one of the main parties rather than Independents, or they wouldn't have as much to complain about. I would therefore like to remind them that whether they like it or not, the widely varied results of the last election reflect precisely the expressed will of the electorate; not some hidden assumption of support for specifically either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail to form a government. Equally significantly, those calling for a new general election should realise first that such a call would be very bad for democracy here. The large number of Independents were elected because voters wished to be represented by them instead of the traditional two-party system that dominates political life. This year proved to be a real turning point. These Independents do not have the financial resources of the larger parties and most likely have spent whatever they have to get elected in February. In the normal course of events, they would have five years to build resources to fight the next round: this will not be the case should an election be called within the next few weeks or months. The main parties and their supporters must be aware of this and how it would be to their advantage. If the next election provides a more stable, 'traditional' result, it won't necessarily be because that's the wish of any 'chastened' electorate but because Independents will not be able to put themselves forward in such large numbers. It will, in short, be a return to 'business as usual' and a bad day for democracy. Nick Folley, Carrigaline, Co Cork Vote the Troika back in With a new election looming and the standard of candidates on offer, would it be possible to have the Troika put on the ballot papers? I, for one, would vote for them. Aidan Hampson, Artane, Dublin FG grassroots deserve better Any hope of a stable government has been lost with the recent rejection by the Labour Party leadership of a minority rainbow government and the outright refusal of Fianna Fail to contemplate a grand coalition with Fine Gael. Those who advocate in favour of the Danish model of minority governance, like the leader of Fianna Fail, are merely making a virtue out of their political necessity - the high priests of Ballymagash now want to lead us to the promised land of Borgen. Notwithstanding the absurd positions of their party rivals, the Fine Gael leadership remain ever willing to stand in the 'bearna baol' and attempt to cobble together a single page understanding with Fianna Fail and a Programme for Government with whatever combination of Independents will sign up for a minimum of support for three Budgets. It is hard to see how the electorate will ever thank Fine Gael for forming a weak government with such unlikely partners. Even the compromises mooted for Irish Water should be a bridge too far for the canvassers and public representatives who endured the often obnoxious behaviour of some of those most fervently opposed to water charges. As is par for this course, the absolute loyalty of Fine Gael's grassroots and local authority representatives is assumed by a party leadership who stand collectively responsible for the devastating defeats suffered during the local and general elections. Knowing that they should be exposed to the wrath of the membership if the party returns to opposition, they are like the desperate man at a ballroom who asks every single woman for a dance before the night is over as he cannot face leaving alone. This process of government-formation is fast becoming the political equivalent of death by a thousand cuts for Fine Gael. The party's grassroots deserve much better. Another general election would be difficult but not dishonourable but a party establishment that puts itself first deserves to be disestablished at the earliest possible opportunity. PJ O'Meara, Co Tipperary Addressing suicide crisis In the Irish Independent on Wednesday, March 26, 2016, I suggested that the next government needs to set up a ministry which includes the word 'suicide' in the title. This week, Fr Paddy Byrne from Portlaoise attended another funeral for a life that ended tragically, the seventh or eighth in recent days. We have a suicide crisis in Ireland, with an estimated figure of 459 suicide deaths for 2014. It needs our immediate attention. As a society, we need to accept there is a real problem here that won't go away by hoping it will be better tomorrow. In 2008, when we had a financial crisis, we recognised it for what it was and took the appropriate action. The Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parties are currently discussing water, rural Ireland, homelessness and other important areas. Please include suicide in your discussions. Your children will thank you. Damien Carroll, Kingswood, Dublin 24 Am I incapable of voting? Last year, I graduated from the University of Limerick and this is the first time I have questioned whether I went to the right university or not. Is there something I am lacking as a graduate of UL that makes the graduates of TCD and the NUI-affiliated colleges more capable of voting in the Seanad university panel than I am? What puts these graduates, who have the right to vote on the university panel, on a platform above the others? What logic, reason or rhyme was used to make the division - to draw the line in the sand and leave it there? In 1979, the Irish people voted in a referendum to extend the graduate voting system to more colleges. They voted in favour by just over 92pc. Now, 37 years later, all I can do is talk about the Seanad election. The university panels are a symbol of what is wrong with our political system. While they might elect Senators that are thought-provoking, passionate and excellent legislators - by the very nature of the panel that they are elected to, they promote elitism and academic snobbery. I look forward to the next Seanad election, where once again I won't have a vote; and once again nobody will be able to tell me why. Marian O'Donnell, Cahir, Co Tipperary Amanda Byram enjoys the crystal-clear waters of the Laccadive Sea. Photo: Instagram Amanda Byram enjoys her honeymoon in the Maldives. Photo: Instagram Amanda Byram is making us forget about the dreary weather as she shares photos of her dreamy honeymoon in the Maldives. The TV presenter wed her TV producer boyfriend Julian Okines in an intimate ceremony in London's Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel over the weekend, attended by guests including Laura Whitmore and Yvonne Connolly. Expand Close Amanda Byram enjoys the crystal-clear waters of the Laccadive Sea. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Amanda Byram enjoys the crystal-clear waters of the Laccadive Sea. Photo: Instagram The newlywed took to Instagram to share photos of her romantic getaway in the luxurious One & Only Reethi Rah resort in the Maldives. The tranquil, high-end resort is located on a secluded island in the Laccadive Sea where the couple can enjoy activities such as snorkeling, scuba diving, spa treatments, five-star food and breathtaking sunsets. The brilliant staff @ooreethirah #warm #welcomes #love #heaven #honeymoon #andrelax A photo posted by Amanda Byram (@amandabyram) on Apr 12, 2016 at 8:58am PDT The Castleknock beauty is clearly enjoying her time in the popular resort and shared her love for the staff on Instagram, describing them as "brilliant". The 42-year-old fitness fanatic also shared a photo of her posing in a bikini, showing off her enviable body as she took in the postcard-perfect view, as well as the personalised 'his-and-hers' travel tags that the couple received as a wedding gift from Yvonne Connolly and her partner John Conroy. Luxury yacht-taxi, as you do!! First stop The One and Only Reethi Rah @ooreethirah #maldives #honeymoon #andrelax #heaven #bliss #love A photo posted by Amanda Byram (@amandabyram) on Apr 12, 2016 at 6:29am PDT Amanda's husband also took to Instagram to share a photo of his beautiful new wife as she relaxed on a hammock, calling her his "best friend". The couple have been dating for close to two years. They made their first public appearance together at the Pride of Ireland awards after a year of dating. Private sunset cruise organised for us by the superb staff @ooreethirah #hubby #honeymoon #heaven #sunsets #love A photo posted by Amanda Byram (@amandabyram) on Apr 13, 2016 at 11:37pm PDT Speaking about their relationship last year Amanda said; You always hope that youre going to meet someone who will be your partner in crime. The broadcaster is clearly besotted saying; He is absolutely brilliant. His background is psychology degree-slash-model. So his mind is pretty brilliant. And he's hot!" Pippa O'Connor Ormond in 2016: These days, you're more likely to see Pippa hosting fashion shows instead of walking in them. She's one of Ireland's most popular bloggers and is a fashion tour de force. Pippa O'Connor was "showered with love" over the weekend after having a baby shower. The top model (31) was joined by her closest family and friends in celebrity hang-out House, on Leeson Street, last Saturday as she counted down the days to baby number two. Her sister, Susannah, organised everything for her, with customised menus, balloons and baby-themed treats for everyone. Guests included TV presenter Brian Dowling and his hubby Arthur Gourounlian, who had flown over from Britain for the party in the VIP haunt. Expand Close Pippa O'Connor's baby shower at House / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pippa O'Connor's baby shower at House Also there were glamour girls like Avril Kelly-Carter and Sara Kavanagh and some of Pippa's closest family members. Her guests were treated to canapes, pastries and sandwiches with a selection of pink cocktails and mocktails. Speaking about the day, social media star Pippa said that it was "so lovely" to have all her loved ones together for the shower. "I was delighted to have everyone gathered for the afternoon. Some friends from London came over especially, so it was really special," she said. "I'm only three weeks from D-Day now. I don't know where the time has gone. Expand Close Pippa O'Connor's baby shower at House / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pippa O'Connor's baby shower at House "Everything was just so beautiful. Talk about feeling lucky and loved." Video of the Day Read More She wrote on her blog, Pippa.ie, that she chose a red floral dress from Asos maternity for her fun-filled day. She and husband Brian, who marked son Ollie's third birthday recently, have opted to keep the sex of their second baby under wraps as they count down the days until her due date. Expand Close Pippa O'Connor's baby shower at House / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pippa O'Connor's baby shower at House This is a busy time for the hard-working star, who has also unveiled the cover of her debut book, entitled, Pippa: Simple Tips to Live Beautifully. Photographed by Lilli Forberg, she said she was "so excited" about her other imminent release and said that it felt "surreal" to finally unveil the cover. Pippa reveals all her top tips on looking and living well in the book. It will be released on October 6 by Penguin. "It was definitely one of the hardest things I've ever undertaken, but now that it's finished I'm feeling so proud and so relieved," she said on Pippa.ie. "I cannot believe it's finished after all those months of writing and working on it." Pippa is following in the footsteps of other models-turned- bloggers, such as Rosanna Davison and Roz Purcell, who have had huge success in the literary world with their healthy recipes. Expand Close Pippa O'Connor / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pippa O'Connor The Kildare-born model has created a huge social media following thanks to regular blog posts on her website, as well as her fashion factories, which run all over Ireland. Prince Alexander Erik Hubertus Bertil's portrait as taken by his mother Princess Sofia Prince Carl Philip of Sweden is seen with his new wife Princess Sofia of Sweden after their marriage ceremony at The Royal Palace on June 13, 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images) Prince Carl Philip of Sweden and Sofia Hellqvist arrive to board the SS Stockholm boat before the pre-wedding dinner the night before their royal wedding on June 12, 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images) Picture taken on August 26, 2015 shows Sweden's Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia in Karlstad, Sweden. Sweden's Prince Carl Philip and his wife Princess Sofia, a former reality show starlet, are expecting their first child in April Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia arrive at formal gathering at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts on February 19, 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images) Prince Carl Phillip and Princess Sofia of Sweden attend the Swedish Sports Gala at the Ericsson Globe on January 25, 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images) Princess Sofia of Sweden and Nobel Prize in Physics, Professor Takaaki Kajita arrive at the Nobel Prize Banquet 2015 at City Hall on December 10, 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) Prince Carl and Princess Sofia of Sweden and (inset) is a picture of Prince Alexander Erik Hubertus Bertil Princess Sofia of Sweden is following in the footsteps of her British counterpart Kate Middleton by photographing her son's first portrait. The former model (31) wed Prince Carl Philip (36) in 2015 after five years together and the couple welcomed their first child together - a son named Prince Erik Hubertus Bertil last Tuesday. And rather than hiring a professional photographer for his first official portrait, Sofia (nee Hellqvist) chosen to shoot the images herself and release them. The little Prince looks peaceful in a bassinet, wearing a white cotton onesie and is draped by a cable knit wool blanket. He was born on April 19 at Danderyds Hospital in Stockholm at 6:25 p.m, weighing at 7lbs 9oz. Expand Close Prince Alexander Erik Hubertus Bertil's portrait as taken by his mother Princess Sofia / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Prince Alexander Erik Hubertus Bertil's portrait as taken by his mother Princess Sofia Prince Carl held a press conference to confirm the birth hours after and he said he "couldn't stop" crying during his son's birth. Read More "Yes, actually. Of course. Couldn't stop," he told PEOPLE magazine. "For me and my wife, this is obviously a great day with a lot of emotion. Words cannot describe." Expand Close Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia arrive at formal gathering at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts on February 19, 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia arrive at formal gathering at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts on February 19, 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images) At a cabinet meeting last week, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden announced his grandson's title is the Duke of Sodermanland. He released a statement with his wife Queen Silvia congratulating the young couple on their new arrival . Video of the Day "We are extremely happy for Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia, and are delighted to have become grandparents again," the statement read. "We hope the new parents enjoy a time of peace and quiet together with their son." Prince William and Kate Middleton's Royal India Tour Day Two: The Duchess, pictured with husband Prince William, donned an Emilia Wickstead cream dress, nude Mulberry clutch and matching 'Calice' heels by Rupert Sanderson. Kiss me Kate: Prince William kisses his new wife in front of the world's media in 2011. Photo Getty images Sarah Burton, creative director of Alexander McQueen, pictured at a personal shopping event in New York And finally, on April 29, 2011, Kate Middleton became the Duchess of Cambridge and the next chapter of her style story began. Alexander McQueen is defending itself against claims of copying designs by an English bridal designer for Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding gown. British bridal designer Christine Kendall is suing the fashion house for an alleged breach of copyright after a claim was filed at the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in London, according to a report in The Sunday Times. The Hertfordshire based designer claims the Duchess of Cambridges wedding gown was based on her sketches which were unfairly taken and copied by the globally successful fashion house. However, a spokesman for McQueen said the house views the lawsuit as "ridiculous". Expand Close Kate Middleton with Prince William at their 2011 wedding / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Kate Middleton with Prince William at their 2011 wedding Christine Kendall first approached us, at Alexander McQueen, almost four years ago, when we were clear with her that any suggestion Sarah Burtons design of the royal wedding dress was copied from her designs was nonsense," a spokesperson for McQueen told website WWD. Sarah Burton never saw any of Ms. Kendalls designs or sketches and did not know of Ms. Kendall before Ms. Kendall got in touch with us some 13 months after the wedding. We do not know why Ms. Kendall has raised this again, but there are no ifs, buts or maybes here: This claim is ridiculous," added the spokesperson. Read More The long sleeved lace dress, was designed by creative director Sarah Burton and handmade in the McQueen studio in London. Its final design was kept secret until Catherine appeared at Westminster Abbey in 2011. Expand Close Sarah Burton, creative director of Alexander McQueen, pictured at a personal shopping event in New York / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sarah Burton, creative director of Alexander McQueen, pictured at a personal shopping event in New York At the time, Sarah shared her delight at the once in a lifetime commission: It came completely out of the blue, it was very exciting, and I felt very privileged. In 2012, she was awarded an OBE, or The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire honour, for services to the fashion industry at Buckingham Palace. Video of the Day Each fortnight, we catch up with one of our favourite bloggers, models and Instagram stars to talk all things beauty and style. This week it's artist and blogger Hazel Farrell, who is signed to the hip Irish modelling agency Not Another Agency. Make-up I started wearing makeup early in my teenage years. I used to wear graphic turquoise liner in school to counterbalance my bright pink hair. I taught myself how to do it. Expand Close Photo: Hazel Farrell / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Photo: Hazel Farrell Then in 2013 I did the Callanberry 10-week make-up course. I learned a lot about perfecting basic techniques with a big focus on the skin. Ive been a face painter for the last six years and that has undoubtedly benefited my brush skills. My favourite beauty look and the one that works for me is natural skin with strong emphasis on the eyes or lips. My must-have daytime products are Dr. Paw Paw balm (I go through so much of this, I use it for lips, eyebrows, dry skin, cuticles...), Maybelline Collosal Waterproof mascara, a spoolie to tame my brows and NYX concealer. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram For nighttime looks, I refresh my face with fix spray. Im using Ingots Make-up Fixer at the moment. Then I retouch my concealer, powder, contour and blush. I love the Sleek Face Form kit, its so handy to carry around and has a compact mirror. Video of the Day Ill usually highlight with my all time favourite Mac Mineralize Skin Finish in Soft and Gentle. Then Ill choose between lips or eyes. When in doubt I go for a strong cat eye using Inglots Gel Liner in 77. Expand Close Photo: Hazel Farrell / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Photo: Hazel Farrell When it comes to fragrance I love to use a mix of Ylang Ylang and Patchouli oil. I also love Tom Ford Black Orchid. Skincare I cleanse with either Bioderma Miceller water or Kinvara Cleansing oil. Then I rinse my face with water. I cant go without splashing water on my face. I follow up with Raw Coconut Oil on my face and body. Then I'll use Sukin Antioxidant Eye Serum. Next it's moisturiser and I use the Nourishing Moisturiser by SkinFood New Zealand. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram While thats soaking into my skin I apply Dr. PawPaw balm onto my lips, brush my eyebrows and curl my lashes. Then I apply Reform Sunscreen SPF 30 on my face, neck and hands. At night, I use Bioderma Micellar Water and cotton pads to remove my make-up. For any stubborn mascara I will go in with a q-tip and Micellar. Then I follow with my usual skincare routine. I usually do a face mask once a week. At the moment Im using Green Angels Clay Seaweed mask. I also exfoliate with the Green Angels Seaweed and Apricot scrub. Then I'll do a facial massage for about 20 minutes using coconut oil. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram I use lymphatic drainage and tapping techniques that I learned from make-up legend Lisa Eldridge. I totally recommend watching her Facial Massage Routine on YouTube if you havent seen it. I don't really treat myself to any beauty treatments like facials. I wouldn't say no but it's usually something that I like to do myself. Hair I don't use too many products. I like L'Oreal Elvivie Colour Protect Shampoo and Conditioner. Sometimes I'll use my Toni&Guy Prep Heat Protection Mist if I'm drying or straightening my hair. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram I like to let my hair dry naturally and leave it to its own device. My hair has a natural wave to it which kind of looks cool with the short bob. I have a very short fringe so I usually need to blow dry that straight. If I really want to show off my cut Ill go for the poker straight look with the GHD. I might experiment more with styling my hair this year, I might even play around with a wig or two to keep it interesting. Style My favourite shops are Nine Crows and Dolls Kill. I love charity shops. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram My best purchase was a black velvet GAP fleece lined jacket with a fleece collar. It was just 6 in a St Vincent de Paul shop. I live in this jacket. Expand Close Photo: Hazel Farrell / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Photo: Hazel Farrell My go-to daytime look is usually high-waisted mom jeans, ankle boots and a vintage blouse. If I'm carrying it into nighttime I might add heels or change into a skirt... but I usually like to keep it casual. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram When I'm getting ready for a night out I get in the mood with a bit of incense and a 90's r'n'b mix. My style icons are Gwen Stefani, Elsa Shiaparelli and 70's Cher. Out and about I live in Dublin and my favourite spot for coffee is Coffee Angel on Dawson Street or The Fumbally. For drinks I love 'old man', traditional Irish pubs. I also love Cassidy's on D'Olier Street and Anseo on Camden Street. Expand Close Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell. Photo: Instagram On weekends I enjoy visiting my friends or taking roadtrips around Ireland. My favourite spot is Strand Hill in Sligo. I also love visiting Galway City to see my gorgeous friends. For holidays abroad, I adore Scotland. I really want to live there. Expand Close Hazel Farrell in Galway. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hazel Farrell in Galway. Photo: Instagram When it comes to unwinding, I'll either meditate or watch something funny. I'm currently addicted to h3h3 Productions on Youtube. I meditate everyday and I've studied the Law of Attraction for six years. So in my spare time I like to practice creative visualisation and positive thinking. Good vibes! Robbie Fox and Amanda Brunker at the launch of Amanda Brunker's second novel 'Champagne Babes' at Renards Nightclub in 2009 It's the end of an era. Renards, Irelands first VIP nightclub, is officially gone. As of today, it has been demolished. It's the end of an absolutely fabulous champagne swilling era. A nation might not cry, but a legion of former patrons will. And I cant help but feel misty about the nightclub I spent my youth in - fell out of and where I met some of the most fascinating (and dysfunctional) people you'll ever come across. I was too young to have witnessed Renards when it first opened back in the '80s as The Pink Elephant. A time when U2 partied beside Spandau Ballet, Def Leopard, The Boomtown Rats and The Pogues. Expand Close Amanda Brunker at Renards with Katy French / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Amanda Brunker at Renards with Katy French But I became a regular in the early '90s after winning Miss Ireland and I became a hostess there in 1999, which gave me plenty of inspiration for my first novel Champagne Kisses. Owner Robbie Fox was the reason for its success. Everyone loved him because he was great at getting a party going and extremely discreet when others were not being so. He always said when he wrote his memoirs it would be filled with empty pages as he would sell off each of the stories to the guilty parties before it was published. Indeed, there are many stories that I will never share myself, including which couples youd ignore having sex in the toilets, but not all tales are too bold to be told. So here are my Renards Awards. Expand Close Robbie Fox and Amanda Brunker at the launch of Amanda Brunker's second novel 'Champagne Babes' at Renards Nightclub in 2009 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Robbie Fox and Amanda Brunker at the launch of Amanda Brunker's second novel 'Champagne Babes' at Renards Nightclub in 2009 Worst Garda Raid: After the 1999 MTV Awards. With the VIP section packed with celebrities, at least five Gardai stormed up the stairs in fluorescent jackets and demanded the place be emptied. With photographers camped outside, I quickly managed to escort Bono, Tom Jones, Mick Hucknall, Colin Farrell and the Jackass star Johnny Knoxville (who were all at one table) out the back door. It ruined a night of legend. Most Cheeky Regular: Without a doubt Eamon Dunphy. He was the only customer who was actually allowed arrive in with his own booze. Hed always come with a bottle of fizz in his hand but would proceed to buy more. He was also a great tipper. Video of the Day While I have many more personal awards, I think they are too litigious and ungracious to print. That said, I still laugh when I remember rapper Snoop Dogg and his massive bodyguards keeping owner Robbie out of his own VIP area. But I will miss seeing the likes of Colin Farrell, The Corrs, U2, Liam Neeson, Mick Jagger and Chris Evans bouncing through the door, all happy and excited to mingle. And not forgetting some of the clubs best fans who are no longer with us. Gerry Ryan, Katy French and Tony Fenton thank you all for the memories. Expand Close Amanda Brunker at Renards with Baz Ashmawy and Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Amanda Brunker at Renards with Baz Ashmawy and Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) greets supporters at a campaign event at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Terre Haute, Indiana April 24, 2016 U.S. Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Governor John Kasich speaks at a media event during the Republican National Committee Spring Meeting at the Diplomat Resort in Hollywood, Florida, April 20, 2016 Donald Trump's Republican rivals have announced shock plans to co-ordinate primary strategies in upcoming states to deprive the front-runner of the delegates he needs to win the party nomination. In an extraordinary move, Ted Cruz and John Kasich issued near-simultaneous statements outlining an agreement that may be unprecedented in modern American politics. The Kasich campaign will give Mr Cruz "a clear path in Indiana". In return, the Cruz campaign will "clear the path" for Mr Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. "Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," Mr Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement explaining the new plans. Expand Close U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) greets supporters at a campaign event at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Terre Haute, Indiana April 24, 2016 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) greets supporters at a campaign event at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Terre Haute, Indiana April 24, 2016 "Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation." Mr Kasich's chief strategist John Weaver added: "Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee." The arrangement marks a sharp reversal for Mr Cruz's team, which aggressively opposed the idea of a co-ordinated anti-Trump effort as recently as late last week. Yet it underscores a bleak reality for the billionaire businessman's Republican foes - time is running out to stop him. The announcement came less than 48 hours before voting begins across five north-eastern states where New Yorker Mr Trump is poised to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead. He campaigned on Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Speaking to several thousand people in an aircraft hangar in Hagerstown, Maryland, Mr Trump stressed repeatedly that he expected to win the 1,237 delegates needed in the first round of voting to stave off a contested convention. "I only care about the first. We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth," he said. Even before the plan was announced, Mr Cruz all but abandoned the north-eastern states in favour of Indiana, which holds its primary on May 3. Both Mr Cruz and Kasich had cast the state as a critical turning point. Under the terms of the new agreement, however, Mr Kasich will allow Mr Cruz take on Mr Trump without interference. As recently as three days ago Mr Kasich's campaign announced investments in Indiana, including the opening of two offices and the creation of a campaign leadership team. And he had planned to campaign there on Tuesday, with a town hall and gathering in Indianapolis to watch the results of the primaries. Those events have now been cancelled. As Mr Kasich backs out of Indiana, Mr Cruz promised to not compete in primary contests in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. "We will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the north east politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well," Mr Weaver said. Like Mr Cruz's campaign, Mr Kasich's encouraged allied super PACs - political action committees - and other outside groups to "honour the commitments". Mr Trump did not immediately respond to the agreement. He has repeatedly condemned the Republican presidential nominating system as "rigged". There was far less drama on the Democratic side as underdog Bernie Sanders rallied thousands of voters in two New England states, seeking momentum even as he offered mixed signals on how hard he would push his differences with front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator largely steered clear of Mrs Clinton at a Rhode Island park, but hours later ramped up his critique before more than 14,000 supporters in New Haven, Connecticut. Mr Sanders reiterated his call for Mrs Clinton to release transcripts of lucrative Wall Street speeches she delivered after leaving the State Department in early 2013. "This campaign, unlike Secretary Clinton's, has not raised 15 million (dollars) from Wall Street and millions more from other special interests," he said as the crowd booed at the mention of Mrs Clinton's name. "This candidate has not given speeches behind closed doors on Wall Street for 225,000 dollars a speech." Mrs Clinton eyed victories in four or five of Tuesday's contests, which would all but cripple Mr Sanders' White House bid. The former US secretary of state went to two Philadelphia church services attended largely by African-Americans ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania, Tuesday's top delegate prize. She declined to attack her Democratic rival by name in the morning appearance and a subsequent stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, focusing on the GOP candidates. Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz downplayed tensions between Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton, whose rivalry has become increasingly nasty in recent weeks. "Regardless of the intensity of what's played out here ... we are going to be unified," she declared. Bangladeshi students protest after blogger Nazimuddin Samad was hacked to death in Dhaka earlier this month (AP) The bodies of two gay rights activists who were hacked to death are brought down from an apartment in Dhaka on April 25, 2016. Photo: AFP/Getty Images Two men, including a gay rights activist who worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), have been stabbed to death in Bangladesh's capital. Police said they believe radical Islamists were responsible for the attack in Dhaka, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The victims were identified as USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a US Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, Tanay Majumder. Mr Mannan was also an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan. The US ambassador condemned the murder, just weeks after the US government and numerous rights groups called on the government of the Muslim-majority country to better protect its citizens and secure free speech. "I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka," US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat said in a statement. "Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the US Embassy. He was a dear friend." At least five young men took part in the killing and chanted "Allahu Akbar," or "Allah is Great" as they left the scene, according to a man who told local broadcaster Somoy TV that he had witnessed the attack. Bangladesh's government has blamed radical Islamists in the country, although Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the murders, including the killing of university professor Rezaul Karim Siddique in a north-western city on Saturday. Government officials dismissed the claim, insisting that the extremist group has no presence in the South Asian country. Bangladesh has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks on foreigners, religious minorities and secular bloggers, raising fears that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in the country, despite its traditions of secularism and tolerance. The US government has said it is considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers facing imminent danger in Bangladesh. "We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," Ms Bernicat said in her statement. Monday's planned demonstrations would be the second wave of protests this month Egyptian riot police have stifled plans for mass demonstrations against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's rule. Police used tear gas to disperse flash protests by hundreds in what turned into a day of cat-and-mouse games across parts of Cairo. Police took over Cairo locations designated by organisers as gathering points, checking IDs and turning potential protesters away under the threat of arrest. At least 100 protesters had been arrested by nightfall, mostly in the Dokki district in Cairo's twin city of Giza, according to activists and rights lawyers. A total of 11 journalists were arrested during the course of the day and all but one were released hours later, according to reports. "We have been running back and forth. Every time we gather in one place, they attack us," said one female protester. "The minute we started gathering they attacked us and we fled," said another protester from the impoverished and densely populated Cairo district of Nahya. Determined to prevent the protests, police took up positions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 uprising, and deployed on the city's ring road and at a suburban square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013. The sheer number of policemen on the streets and fear of arrest prevented protesters from gathering, often forcing them to trickle out from designated gathering points to assemble elsewhere. The arrests followed the detention in recent days of scores of activists in pre-dawn raids as authorities sought to derail plans for the demonstrations. Rights groups say as many as 100 have been arrested since late last week, with some picked up by police just hours before the protests were due to start. The most serious violence took place at a residential square in Dokki, where some 500 protesters led by prominent activists gathered. Masked policemen in armoured vehicles and wearing riot gear arrived 10 minutes later and fired tear gas. Elsewhere in Dokki, dozens of riot and special forces policemen laid siege to the headquarters of the Karama, or Dignity, party founded by opposition leader Hamdeen Sabahi, the only candidate who ran against Mr el-Sissi in the 2014 presidential election and who filed a lawsuit against Mr el-Sissi for surrendering the islands. "We denounce the violations of our constitutional rights of peaceful assembly. We are holding a sit-in here until they withdraw, and we demand the release of all those who were captured today and in previous days," senior party member Masoum Marzouk told the Associated Press. "If they raid these offices it would be a big mistake, but they are capable of anything these days. We are a city under occupation by the army and police." The central issue of the protests was Egypt's recent decision to surrender to Saudi Arabia control of two strategic Red Sea islands in a surprise deal. Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba off the coast of Sinai belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo's protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them. The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multi-billion-dollar package of aid and investment to Egypt, fueling charges that the islands were sold off. Already, the issue of the islands has sparked the largest protests since Mr el-Sissi assumed power in June 2014, when on April 15 some 2,000 protesters gathered in Cairo to demonstrate against el-Sissi for giving up the islands, calling on him to step down. Mr el-Sissi has dismissed the controversy and insists Egypt has not surrendered an "inch" of its territory. Turkish authorities yesterday released a Turkish-Dutch journalist from police custody but barred her from leaving Turkey as they continue to investigate tweets she posted about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ebru Umar, a columnist for 'Metro' newspaper, was detained for questioning on Saturday night at her home in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi, on the orders of a prosecutor for social media postings deemed to be "insulting to state leaders", Turkey's state-run news agency reported. The journalist had tweeted in Dutch on Saturday that police were at her door and that she was being taken to a police station in Kusadasi. Anadolu Agency said she was released following questioning by prosecutors but has been barred from leaving the country. In a short video posted on the 'Metro' website, Umar said she was woken up by two police officers knocking on her door who told her to go with them because of two tweets. "I was treated well, I can't put it any other way," she said. "I had a good evening with a 55-year-old man discussing politics and the situation in Turkey." Restriction She said she "is not altogether free. I am not allowed to leave the country". She said a lawyer was trying to get the travel restriction lifted because she wants to return to the Netherlands. Turkish authorities have launched close to 2,000 lawsuits against people accused of insulting Erdogan since he came to office in 2014, including for social media postings. Umar was detained as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and top EU officials were in Turkey to bolster a deal to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. The EU leaders have been accused of not speaking out against Turkey's crackdown on freedom of expression because of the country's role in stopping the refugee influx. Merkel has come under criticism for her decision earlier this month to grant Turkey's request to let German prosecutors and courts decide whether a German comedian insulted Erdogan. US President Barack Obama has launched a fresh intervention in the Brexit battle, warning the UK would have to wait up to a decade for a trade deal with America if it quits the EU. Unbowed by a furious backlash from the Leave camp against his "interference" in British affairs during his visit to London, Mr Obama reinforced his stark statement that the UK would be at "the back of the queue" for a beneficial economic arrangement if it breaks away from Brussels. "My simple point is that it's hard to negotiate trade deals. It takes a long time, and the point is that the UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU. "We wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market, but rather it could be five years from now, 10 years from now, before we were able to actually get something done," Mr Obama told the BBC. Denying that he was a "lame duck" president as prominent Leave figures had alleged, Mr Obama delivered a direct slap-down to the Brexit camp who had claimed the UK could cut a speedy deal with the US. "The point I was simply making was that for those who suggested that, you know, if we could just not be entangled with the Europeans, our special relationship is going to mean that we can just cut the line and just get a quick deal with the United States, and it will be a lot more efficient, and that's not how we think about it. "I don't think that's how the next administration will think about it, because our preference would be to work with this large bloc of countries," Mr Obama said. The president made it clear he believed it would be damaging for the UK to quit the EU. "If I am a business person or a worker in Britain, and I'm looking at the fact that I already have access seamlessly with a massive market, one of the wealthiest markets in the world, that accounts for 44pc of my exports, the idea that I'm going to be in a better position to export and trade by being outside of that market and not being in the room setting the rules and standards by which trade takes place, I think is erroneous," Mr Obama said. The president also warned that the security of the West could be weakened by a British withdrawal which took it out of communications between Brussels and Washington. "I think we will together be less effective if we're not in those forums, than we are currently, where we've got this great ally who engages in unmatched co-operation, with us in the room negotiating. "You know, things as simple as making sure that passenger lists are shared, it took a lot of years for us to be able to negotiate that with the European Parliament and EU, and our strongest advocate for getting that done was the UK. "What we do believe is that the United Kingdom will have less influence in Europe and as a consequence, less influence globally, and since we rely heavily on the UK as a partner globally on a whole range of issues, we'd like you to have more influence. We'd like you to be at the table, helping to influence other countries who may not oftentimes see things as clearly from our perspective as our British partners do." Meanwhile, Mr Obama rowed back from criticism that Prime Minister David Cameron became "distracted" after the military action in Libya as the country slipped into turmoil. "Well, I think that we were all distracted. That portion of my comments got attention here. What maybe got less attention was my statement that one of my regrets is not fully anticipating the degree of concentration of focus that would be required after the campaign to make sure that Gaddafi wasn't killing his own people in Libya." An unidentified co worker of USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan cries as she returns from the crime scene in Dhaka, Bangladesh (AP) Two men, including a gay rights activist who worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), have been stabbed to death in Bangladesh's capital. Police said they believe radical Islamists were responsible for the attack in Dhaka, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The victims were identified as USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a US Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, Tanay Majumder. Mr Mannan was also an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan. The US ambassador condemned the murder, just weeks after the US government and numerous rights groups called on the government of the Muslim-majority country to better protect its citizens and secure free speech. "I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka," US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat said in a statement. "Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the US Embassy. He was a dear friend." At least five young men took part in the killing and chanted "Allahu Akbar," or "Allah is Great" as they left the scene, according to a man who told local broadcaster Somoy TV that he had witnessed the attack. Bangladesh's government has blamed radical Islamists in the country, although Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the murders, including the killing of university professor Rezaul Karim Siddique in a north-western city on Saturday. Government officials dismissed the claim, insisting that the extremist group has no presence in the South Asian country. Bangladesh has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks on foreigners, religious minorities and secular bloggers, raising fears that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in the country, despite its traditions of secularism and tolerance. The US government has said it is considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers facing imminent danger in Bangladesh. "We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," Ms Bernicat said in her statement. A 12-year-old Palestinian girl who confessed to planning a stabbing attack in a West Bank settlement has been freed after more than two months in an Israeli prison. Israeli Prison Service spokesman Assaf Librati said Dima al-Wawi was sent her home to her village near Hebron in the West Bank. She is believed to be the youngest female Palestinian ever imprisoned. Her case put Israel's military justice system in the spotlight. It came amid seven months of near-daily Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. According to court documents, the girl was caught with a knife as she approached an Israeli settlement in February. She later pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter in a plea bargain and was sentenced to four months in prison. She was freed early after an appeal. Police secure the scene as locals watch after two rockets hit the Turkish town of Kilis near the Syrian border. Photo: Reuters/Umit Bektas Rockets pounded the Turkish town of Kilis near the Syrian border yesterday, killing one person and injuring 26, a day after the government promised to protect the area from repeated attacks by Islamic State militants. Two rockets struck houses in a poor neighbourhood near the town centre. Sixteen people were injured and Turkish soldiers near the border returned fire into Syria, security sources said. Later in the day, one person was killed and 10 more injured when two more rockets crashed into a mosque. The mosque was 100 metres from the governor's office, where Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan was holding talks at the time. "I am calling for our citizens to be calm," Akdogan told a news conference in Kilis. "All measures will be taken in this regard. Unfortunately there is no authority across our border." Akdogan said measures would be announced after a cabinet meeting today. Police later used water cannon to disperse residents who were protesting what they said was the government's lack of action over the attacks. Nightmares "My son wakes up with nightmares . . . We aren't safe here. We are afraid to stay in our houses," said Ayse, a 46-year-old woman. Lying just across the border from an area of Syria controlled by Islamic State, Kilis has been peppered by rocket fire in recent weeks. On Friday two people were killed in an attack on the town, home to around 110,000 Syrian refugees. Visiting the nearby city of Gaziantep on Saturday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu promised that all necessary measures would be taken to prevent more rocket fire. He was accompanied by EU Council President Donald Tusk as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel who had been expected to visit Kilis last weekend but the location and timing of the visit were changed. Merkel said on Saturday she favoured establishing "safe zones" to shelter refugees in Syria. At a news conference with US President Barack Obama yesterday, she said these could be agreed areas where civilians could feel free from bombardment, rather than zones protected by foreign forces. Kilis residents said they were frustrated by what they called the government's inability to protect them. "I want the governor to resign," 26-year-old Murat said. "We aren't even able to sleep." Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has condemned the "cold-blooded murder" of a Canadian by terrorists in the Philippines who were holding him hostage. Mr Trudeau confirmed that the victim was John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta. He was 68 years old. Mr Ridsdel was one of four tourists - including Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman - that were kidnapped last September by Abu Sayyaf militants from a marina on southern Samal Island. The militants had threatened to kill one of the three male hostages if a large ransom was not paid by 3pm Monday local time (0800 GMT). Mr Trudeau says his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this "heinous act". Two men on a motorcycle left Mr Ridsdel's head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief supt Junpikar Sitin said. Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming Abu Sayyaf militants, who have been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. "This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate," Mr Amin said. Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees as the Abu Sayyaf's deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said. The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos (4.5m) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands. The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month. "Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue," the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III. About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said. In militant videos posted online, Mr Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. US president Barack Obama speaks in front of the European Union Flag at the Hanover Messe Trade Fair in Germany (AP) US president Barack Obama has urged European allies to match his decision to send 250 more American troops to Syria as he stressed the need to keep up "momentum" in the campaign against Islamic State (IS) extremists. Mr Obama's announcement of the deployment capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, and reflected a deepening of US military engagement, despite the outgoing president's professed reluctance to dive further into another conflict in the Middle East. Mr Obama said he wanted the US to share the increasing security burden. He discussed the IS fight with Prime Minster David Cameron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande and Italian prime minster Matteo Renzi. The American leader formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation - a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Hanover, Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and to emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War". "Make no mistake," Mr Obama said. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is: your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defence of our way of life." The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the US-led fight in Syria and neighbouring Iraq. A lthough the coalition includes some 66 nations, the US has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own. The US president recently stung leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders". He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to Nato: "I'll be honest: sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defence." On stops in Riyadh, London and Hanover this week, Mr Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, as well as training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from IS control, but are still vulnerable. Mr Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies. He made the pitch again in Hanover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany. "These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them," Mr Obama said. The new deployment brings the number of US military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operations troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel. Mr Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions. He did say: "As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces." Mr Obama's troop announcement was called "a good step" by Salem Al Meslet, spokesman of the High Negotiations Committee, the main Syrian opposition group. Senator John McCain said it was "a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient". Mr Obama's call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-IS campaign. As well as arguing that Britain should remain in the EU, he mounted a forceful defence of his host in Germany, chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria. "Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now," Mr Obama said. "We have to uphold our values, not just when it's easy but when it's hard." The migrant crisis was a central focus as Mr Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Mrs Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya. "With the Nato mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration," Mrs Merkel said. A senior US official said America was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce. Mr Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said he saw Europe facing a "defining moment". He urged the continent's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women. "If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way," Mr Obama said. By Kirk Brown and Madeline Buckley Former NewSpring Church youth pastor Davey Blackburn returned to Anderson on Sunday to talk about how he has coped since his pregnant wife was slain nearly six months ago at their home in Indianapolis. Sitting at a table in front of more than 2,000 people in NewSprings cavernous auditorium, Senior Pastor Perry Noble asked Blackburn if has forgiven the three men charged in Amanda Blackburns fatal shooting. Early on I recognized that forgiveness is not a feeling because I can tell you right now that if I am waiting to feel like forgiving the people who killed my wife thats never going to happen, Blackburn said. What I had to realize is that forgiveness is a decision that I had to wake up and make every single morning. It is a daily decision. If I live with bitterness and unforgiveness in my heart, it is a cancer that is killing nobody else except for me. So, it will eat me up inside if I just hold bitterness to these guys. Blackburn said he hopes to share the Gospel with the three suspects: Larry Taylor, Jalen Watson and Diano Gordon. How much of a kick in the nuts would it be for Satan? said Blackburn, prompting thunderous applause and cheers. Blackburn started going to NewSpring during his freshman year at Southern Wesleyan University in Central. He joined the staff at South Carolinas largest church in 2008 and served as a youth pastor at NewSprings Greenville campus. With financial support from NewSpring, he and his wife moved to Indianapolis in 2012 to start the Resonate Church. When Blackburn arrived at the couples home after going to the gym on the morning of Nov. 10, he found his 28-year-old wife lying on the floor, gravely injured. His first thought was that something went horrifically wrong with her pregnancy. When I found her still breathing, I thought, This is bad, but if we can get her to the hospital, she is going to be OK, Blackburn said. Blackburn didnt know someone had been in the Indianapolis home where their 1-year-old son, Weston, was still in his crib. He didnt know in that moment that his wife had been shot three times. Amanda Blackburn, who was three months pregnant, died in the hospital 24 hours later. The couples former home the 2800 block of Sunnyfield Court is now quiet. There is a for-sale sign in its front yard. The only indication of the horrific violence that took place are posters in some windows that proclaim, Thank you IMPD! in a reference to Indianapolis police. About two weeks after Amanda Blackburns death, detectives arrested the three men in connection with her shooting death. They face pending charges of murder, robbery and a slew of other felonies. Court documents allege that Taylor shot Amanda Blackburn after breaking into her home during a spree of burglaries and violence with his two co-defendants. Recently, Blackburn returned to the home where his wife was killed, he wrote in a blog post. He wrote that he reluctantly walked back into the room where he found her. The morning I returned, I put worship music in my earbuds, laid down in the spot I found her, wept, prayed and worshipped, he wrote. Blackburn and his young son now live with friends, he wrote in his blog. A question he gets all the time: How is Weston doing? How is Weston going to grow up without his mom? Every time this thought came to my mind it was a like a dagger was being driven deeper into my stomach, Blackburn wrote. But he wrote that his son is doing OK. He attributes that to a network of support from family and friends, and Westons age. At 15 months when his mother died, Blackburn wrote Weston was not old enough to absorb the tragedy. On Sunday, Blackburn appeared with Noble at four separate NewSpring services after accompanying him and a group from NewSpring on a recent trip to Israel. Sundays services were broadcast to the churchs 16 campuses around South Carolina, as well as Resonate Church in Indianapolis. Speaking at a morning service, Blackburn recalled his future wife shot milkshake out of her nose while laughing on one of their first dates. And that was the moment that I said Im going to marry her, he said. Blackburn said his wife truly loved Jesus more than anything else and it radiated from her. In the months since her death, Blackburn said, he has been consoled to hear from people across the nation who have told him that his wifes death has fortified their faith. He said his wife would also find those accounts to be uplifting. She would give up her life to see someone meet Jesus, he said. Blackburn said his own faith has helped ease his grief because he realizes, Everything that God gives us in life is everything that we would ask for if we knew everything God knows. Those who attended the services in Anderson spoke of the emotional resonance of Blackburns story. There was no dry eye in the room today, said Darien Rencher, a senior at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson. When I see pain, I want to react like Davey reacted. The message that NewSpring volunteer Bill Nickas took away was that God uses tragedy and turns it into triumph. Follow Kirk Brown on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM Elections in Anderson County: How to vote early and what to know What to know about the 2022 general election and voting in South Carolina, which has passed new legislation to create a period for early voting. SHARE BELTON At the end of a Sunday afternoon ceremony marking the opening of the War Stories exhibition at the Belton Area Museum, veterans in the audience were asked if they had any of their own stories to share. Rev. Jeremiah Palmer, the pastor at New Broadmouth Baptist Church in Honea Path, ambled on stage in the historic Belton Depot and recounted his experiences as a Marine in the Vietnam War. Palmer recalled being shot twice during a bloody battle that claimed the lives of many others in his unit. He said the first helicopter that came to pick up wounded soldiers was unable to land because of too much enemy fire. He later learned that the helicopter crashed. After darkness fell hours later, another helicopter arrived. Palmer said he was able to crawl aboard as the helicopter took off. Sundays ceremony also featured a video in which late Belton businessman Stan Marshall told a class of students about the role he played in the rescue of John F. Kennedy during World War II. Marshall died in 2013. In the video, Marshall said Kennedy was believed to have perished after his PT boat collided with a Japanese destroyer near the Solomon Islands in 1943. Several days later, Marshall said, some island natives gave him a coconut that Kennedy had used to scrawl a plea for help. Kennedy and 10 other surviving crew members from his boat were rescued a short time later. Marshall said in the video that Kennedy later retrieved the coconut from him. Kennedy had the coconut encased in wood and plastic and used it as a paperweight on his desk in the Oval Office after being elected president. The War Stories exhibition includes artifacts spanning the nations military history, including a Revolutionary War gun wrench, bullet mold and canteen, a rifle from the Spanish-American War and Confederate States of America bonds. Other items include a Red Cross quilt from 1917, the battle flag from the USS West Virginia, which was bombed in Pearl Harbor during World War II, and a front page from the Independent Mail marking the start of the first Iraq War in 1991. A World War II Jeep and tractor also were on display for Sundays opening ceremony, which about 50 people attended. The War Stories exhibition will continue through June 11. Follow Kirk Brown on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM CONCORD- Ernie Gross, 86, held a piece of bread in his hand as he spoke to the audience at Concord High School. He told them a piece of bread like that one was his lifeline when he was imprisoned in Dachau, one of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany during the Holocaust. At the young age of 15, Gross family was deported by the Hungarian government to the Seilish ghetto for three weeks and then to Auschwitz. He lost several family members to the gas chambers and was then imprisoned in Dachau as a laborer until the end of the war. Gross shared his story with his friend and liberator, Don Greenbaum, at the high school during an event sponsored by the schools International Travel Club. Gross and Greenbaum are featured in the documentary, The Liberators: Why We Fought. The documentary depicts the experiences of men who survived Dachau and American soldiers who liberated the camp on April 29, 1945. Those who attended the event called In Their Own Words: Remembering the Holocaust were shown the documentary and had the chance to ask questions. Many members of the club are traveling to Germany this summer as part of a World War II tour and were eager to meet people who survived it. There were 140 people killed by ISIS and the entire world mourned, Greenbaum told the audience. But 71 years ago, six million Jews disappeared and nobody cared. Thats why Ernie and I talk about it. We hope our message gets across. Don Greenbaum Greenbaum, 91, served in World War II as a forward observer, operating on the front lines. He said when America entered the war, he was a real rah rah kid and couldnt wait to join the Army and serve his country. But what he saw in 1945 when his troop arrived at Dachau has never left him. The fighting units on the ground had no information on the true nature of a concentration camp. To this day, 71 years later, the odor is still there, Greenbaum said of the crematorium where the Jews bodies were burned. Every liberator will tell you the odor stays with you. Greenbaum earned a Purple Heart in Germany on Nov. 9, 1944 after receiving an injury in battle. When he was released from an Army hospital, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Under the command of General George Pattons Third Army, he and troops in his divisions were among the first Americans to liberate Dachau. But that was not when he met Gross. That didnt come until 60 years later when Greenbaums wife Shelley decided to write an article about her husbands experiences in a local newspaper for Veterans Day. She called it A Soldiers Redemption. My husband had a friend in the Army that was killed. When he came out of the Army, he never had the courage to call this boys family. He felt that if he called the parents, it would bring up bad memories for them, Shelley said. I wrote an article about that. There was a line in the article about being a liberator of the camp. While Greenbaum was able to meet nephews of his friend who died and make his peace, Gross had been looking for someone to thank for saving his life. He found the article about Greenbaum and set up a time to meet him. Shelley said the two have been inseparable ever since, traveling and telling their stories. I have a chance to tell my story and talk about a guy who was 85 pounds when he was liberated at Dachau, Greenbaum said. Ernie and I hope by telling our stories, we will educate people so it will never happen again. Ernie Gross Gross said his childhood wasnt that great and he was not a happy child. He felt he was born in the wrong time and place. As a young child, there were eight beds in his home and nine people, so Gross said he was the leftover and slept with a different sibling every night. But none of that compared to what happened after April 15, 1944. Gross told the audience that was the day he and his family were taken away to the ghetto before being transported to Auschwitz. I was the last day of Passover, and I went to bed hungry. My mother asked us who wanted to get up early and help her make bread. My brothers didnt volunteer so it was me again, Gross said. The bread was already in the oven that morning when there was a knock on the door. It was two Hungarian police. The family was told to leave all jewelry and money on the table and to be at the synagogue in an hour or they would be shot. They were told to leave the door unlocked when they left the house. After spending three days in the synagogue, the trains arrived to take them to the Seilish ghetto. They put three or four families in one house in the ghetto. And then after three weeks, more trains came, Gross said. Those trains were bound for Auschwitz, where Gross learned about the gas chambers and crematorium. It was also the last time he saw his parents. My father was holding on to my younger brother and my mother was holding on to my younger sister, Gross said. They were sent to the left when the trains arrived. That was the last time I saw them. Luckily, a prisoner guard pulled Gross aside and told him to tell the Germans he was 17. He told me to say I was 17 or you will go with your parents to the left. Then he pointed and said You see the smoke? Thats going to be your parents. Gross said. So I told them I was 17 even though I was 15 at the time. Gross and two of his brothers were sent to the right and turned into laborers at Dachau. Then his fight to survive through starvation and fatigue began. Upon arrival at Dachau prisoners were given a cup which was used for coffee in the morning and a little bit of soup in the evening and one piece of bread to be divided between eight people. The way we divided it, we took eight pieces of paper and whichever one you picked, is the piece you have, Gross said. I learned that in order to survive you had to be selfish. Gross said some prisoners ate their piece of bread all at once and some divided it equally for three meals. But he kept his piece in his pocket and ate crumbs throughout the day, while being forced to work for the German army. He sometimes traded cigarette buds to smokers for a piece of bread. It comes to the point where you are not producing enough work because you are so weak and hungry, and when that happens you went to camp seven. There they dont feed you anymore, Gross said. And thats what happened when the Germans felt the war was coming to an end. Gross and others were sent to camp seven to be exterminated. We were getting close enough to see the crematorium. We were tired, hungry and couldnt wait for it to be over, Gross said. Then I saw the guard throw down his weapon. On the day that Gross would have been killed, the camp was liberated. Two of his brothers and one sister also survived and they each relocated to different areas of the world. Gross moved to the United States. A story that needs to be shared Gross and Greenbaum smiled at each other after the presentation as students asked for their autographs and pictures. The two consider each other brothers and Gross says Greenbaum reminds him of a brother he lost in the Holocaust. It took me 60 years to find Don, we became friends immediately, Gross said. He is like my brother David. David was almost five years older than me and Don is almost five years older, which has made us closer. In the documentary, the two of them and a group of other liberators and survivors traveled to Germany to the Dachau memorial that is now a tourist attraction. There they met with students and told them to continue sharing the story with the world. I saw on 20/20 where someone was saying the Holocaust was a hoax, Greenbaum said. That is when I decided to start sharing my story. So nobody will forget. But Gross tells his story for an entirely different reason that came from his wife Bella, who was also a survivor. We never spoke about it. She knew I was a survivor and I knew she was, but we didnt talk about it. I dont even know what camp she was in, Gross said. Bella died of lung cancer five years ago and Gross began telling his story of survival. I realized I was married for 19-and-a-half years and I dont know anything about my wife, Gross said. So from then on, whoever wants to hear me, Im willing to tell my story. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will meet industry association on Monday to discuss the proposal of strategic partnership agreements, reports a business daily. will meet industry association on Monday to discuss the proposal of strategic partnership agreements, reports a business daily. A number of defence associations, besides 5 members each from industry bodies CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM and PHD Chambers of Commerce & Industry will attend the meeting, says the newspaper. Under strategic partnership agreements, private sector defence manufacturers will be able to work with the Government on developing technology for critical projects, according to the daily. However, the defence industry has opposed the proposal of strategic partnerships since it believes this will work in favour of only a few established companies, reports the paper. The proposal has also not found favour with the three chiefs of the Armed Forces, who have raised concerns over awarding of contracts to only a few large companies in critical areas of defence. Hurdle rates--commonly the rate of return that the fund manager must beat before collecting incentive fees--are being sought by 92% of the institutions surveyed by Cerulli Associates, the global analytics firm. "Even more troubling for alternative managers is the fact most institutions (60.5%) want the obstacle to harvesting incentive fees to be an absolute number. Only 31.6% of our respondents accept a 'Libor-plus' metric," notes David Walker, Cerulli's European institutional research director. Almost half (47.6%) of the institutions surveyed by Cerulli deem hurdles of 7% to 8% to be appropriate, which Walker says will be challenging for some managers. "Putting it in context, the US$ 2.9 trillion (2.6 trillion) hedge fund industry fell short of this in four of the past five years," says Walker. Nearly 29% of institutions would like the obstacle to be set at 10% to 12%. "Given the returns that Europe's institutional investors tell Cerulli they expect from four alternative asset classes, a hurdle of 10% to 12% may be better suited to private equity. Cerulli believes that managers should manage institutions' expectations about prospective returns, which should inform the thinking about appropriate hurdle rates," says Walker. "The interests of managers and their clients should certainly be aligned, but the expectations on each side should be realistic." Walker believes that an absolute hurdle rate of 4% to 6%--being sought by 19% of institutions Cerulli surveyed--might be more realistic for some other alternative classes, in the current climate. Commenting on the research conducted for Cerulli's recently published inaugural European Alternative Products and Strategies 2016 report, Justina Deveikyte, a senior analyst at Cerulli, notes that poor returns have left Europe's institutions in a very strong position when it comes to negotiating investment terms. "Even mid-sized institutions, that were previously destined to 'take what managers offered them', have won a newfound clout. Compounding the situation is the growing influence of consultants and the emergence of club deals between institutions hunting for yield," says Deveikyte. Cerulli believes that alternative managers willing and big enough to recalibrate fees for their strategies will have a significant edge in competing for institutional clients. Other Findings: The overwhelming majority of European institutions want alternative fund managers to commit to hurdle rates--in some cases set at unrealistic levels given average investment returns--according to the latest issue of The Cerulli Edge - International Institutional Edition.Hurdle rates--commonly the rate of return that the fund manager must beat before collecting incentive fees--are being sought by 92% of the institutions surveyed by Cerulli Associates, the global analytics firm."Even more troubling for alternative managers is the fact most institutions (60.5%) want the obstacle to harvesting incentive fees to be an absolute number. Only 31.6% of our respondents accept a 'Libor-plus' metric," notes David Walker, Cerulli's European institutional research director.Almost half (47.6%) of the institutions surveyed by Cerulli deem hurdles of 7% to 8% to be appropriate, which Walker says will be challenging for some managers. "Putting it in context, the US$ 2.9 trillion (2.6 trillion) hedge fund industry fell short of this in four of the past five years," says Walker.Nearly 29% of institutions would like the obstacle to be set at 10% to 12%."Given the returns that Europe's institutional investors tell Cerulli they expect from four alternative asset classes, a hurdle of 10% to 12% may be better suited to private equity. Cerulli believes that managers should manage institutions' expectations about prospective returns, which should inform the thinking about appropriate hurdle rates," says Walker."The interests of managers and their clients should certainly be aligned, but the expectations on each side should be realistic."Walker believes that an absolute hurdle rate of 4% to 6%--being sought by 19% of institutions Cerulli surveyed--might be more realistic for some other alternative classes, in the current climate.Commenting on the research conducted for Cerulli's recently published inaugural European Alternative Products and Strategies 2016 report, Justina Deveikyte, a senior analyst at Cerulli, notes that poor returns have left Europe's institutions in a very strong position when it comes to negotiating investment terms."Even mid-sized institutions, that were previously destined to 'take what managers offered them', have won a newfound clout. Compounding the situation is the growing influence of consultants and the emergence of club deals between institutions hunting for yield," says Deveikyte.Cerulli believes that alternative managers willing and big enough to recalibrate fees for their strategies will have a significant edge in competing for institutional clients. Regulators in some major Asian markets are upping the ante on asset management fees by pressuring institutions to look into whether managers earn their keep, pointing to the growing number of RFPs that are increasing the weight of the price competitive component. The complexity and unfamiliarity of the esoteric strategies that institutions in Holland are having to turn to in the hunt for yield is playing into the hands of asset managers in a country that has a well-earned reputation for applying pressure for lower fees and greater transparency. Many insurers in Asia are placing a premium on a manager's investment philosophy and process when deciding on the issuing of discretionary mandates to third parties; and in China, Taiwan, and Korea the sharing of information is also a key consideration. Moody's reportedly said that Public sector banks (PSBs) will not be able to raise funds from the markets and government will have to provide capital support to them in the near term. "Given the weak solvency position of many PSBs, we expect the remedial measures will require substantial external capital, " Moody's reportedly said. Moody's currently rates 11 PSBs, including State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Canara Bank and IDBI. Moody's said that PSBs are facing balance sheet problems because of mounting bad loans. Govt is planning to invest Rs.6,000 crore during this fiscal year to revive and develop 75 regional airports, according to reports. The civil aviation ministry will soon send a formal proposal to the finance ministry, report says. The project will be implemented by the Airports Authority of India, as per a report. In his budget announcement in February, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the central government would partner with states to develop some of these airports to improve regional connectivity. Wonder Cement Ltd., a part of RK Marble Group and one of Indias fastest growing cement company, announces the appointment of Jagdish Chandra Toshniwal as its Managing Director. Toshniwal takes over the reins from D.P. Somani who was with the company for over 7 years and was instrumental in setting up the entire plant and its expansion in the shortest amount of time.Toshniwal joined Wonder Cement in 2015 as Executive Director and under his leadership the company has been able to expand its footprint in Rajasthan and neighboring markets. Toshniwal has been instrumental in setting up a strong foot hold for Wonder Cements in markets like Ahmedabad, Indore and Northern regions. In line with the companys strategy and objective of becoming a national player in the shortest time, Toshniwal will now focus on creating a national footprint and generating a larger customer base in the domestic market.A recognized leader, in his new role as Managing Director, Toshniwal is tasked with accelerating the growth journey and building a futuristic organization. Toshniwal will lead the organization retaining its endowing culture for young leaders to nurture and grow.. said, I was delighted since the time Toshniwal came as the Executive Director as under his leadership the company has witnessed commendable success and also gauged a phenomenal market share in short span of time. This announcement reflects the companys vision of long term growth journey. I am confident that we will achieve new heights under the leadership of Toshniwal.said, It is an honour now to be promoted as the Managing Director of a young company that has militated the states cement segment within four years of operations. I look forward to explore various business strategies and diversify our reach at the time of the year when infrastructure development and growth is the subject of concern.Toshniwal, a veteran in the cement industry, started his career in the cement industry as a fresher from BITS Pilani, four decades ago. Toshniwals, first assignment was with Udaipur Cement in 1975. Toshniwal scaled newer heights and was entrusted with leadership positions in Ambuja Cement where he spent a major part of his career spanning close to 18 years. He was the Business Head of the Northern Region at Ambuja Cement in Delhi, during the real estate boom of the state. As a business head, he was responsible for commercial, operational and environmental sustenance. As Nepal marks one year of the killer earthquake on 25 April, the health sector partners today reviewed lessons learnt from the event and recommended strengthening and expanding emergency preparedness and response capacities beyond the national capital, and testing them periodically, to prepare better for future emergencies.We must learn from the Nepal earthquake, just as we did from the Indian Ocean tsunami. Applying lessons learnt from such events can help strengthen our efforts for preventing emergencies from becoming disasters, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia, said.Dr Khetrapal Singh was addressing a twoday Lessons Learnt Conference: Health Sector Response to Nepal Earthquake 2015, organised by the Ministry of Health, Nepal, and WHO, here on 20-21 April. Priority lessons identified in the meeting would be consolidated into a road map for further action.The health sector response to the Nepal earthquake was rapid, well-coordinated among the health partners, and tailored to the needs of the affected population. While acknowledging what was done right, we must also identify areas where we could have done better and explain the reasons behind these, the Regional Director said.Among the key lessons learnt highlighted at the conference were the need for extending emergency preparedness and response measures beyond the national capital, to the districts. As over 80% of health facilities in the affected districts were either damaged or destroyed in the earthquake last year, the injured had to be rushed to hospitals in Kathmandu, which remained functional as they had been retrofitted, their staff trained in mass casualty management and they had emergency plans in place that were immediately activated.The preparations that were done in Kathmandu hospitals helped saved many lives. Similar preparations need to be put in place at all other levels too, so that in the event of an emergency, everyone throughout the health system is prepared and knows what to do. As health facilities are being reconstructed, there is an opportunity to build better, and put more risk reduction measures in place Dr Khetrapal Singh said.Stronger policies will be needed for ensuring that disaster risk reduction measures are implemented and emergency preparedness and response capacities are built at all levels, with all cadres of health staff trained.Robust emergency response plans should be in place at all levels and should be tested periodically for their effectiveness. These plans should be all encompassing from ensuring resilient and safe hospitals, to training health staff and effectively engaging communities, to minimise the health impact of any emergency. Prevent Unauthorized Transactions in your demat / trading account Update your Mobile Number/ email Id with your stock broker / Depository Participant. 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The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others. has acquired crude oil from Iran and is looking to strike long-term fixed quantity deal, according to reports. Report says that the company is looking at ramping up purchases to the earlier levels of about 5 million tonnes a year. The scrip opened at Rs. 1042.7 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 1044.9 and Rs. 1012.75 respectively. So far 9518286(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 336594.09 crore. The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 10 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 1089.5 on 15-Jan-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 819 on 24-Aug-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 1070 and Rs. 1030.5 respectively. The promoters holding in the company stood at 45.15 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 32.38 % and 19.5 % respectively. The stock is currently trading above its 50 DMA. Re-established relationship with Iran, sourced crude oil post lifting of sanctions, the company reportedly said in an investor presentation. In recent times, government has been accused of trying to kill its cash cow, i.e. the telecom sector. Call drop compensation, high reserve prices for auctions, etc. have been some of the decisions, which have generated a lot of bad blood between the government and operators. But every now and then, government also takes a step or two, which are more or less to help the operators.The latest decision by government is expected to be a net positive for the operators and is to liberalize the spectrum, which was allocated without auctions to telecom operators in past. A liberalized spectrum allows operators to use any technology to deliver mobile services like 2G, 3G or 4G. Apart from that, it also allows them to introduce new technologies in future and trade it with other operators for its efficient use.Experts feel that this will help improve service quality provided by operators to some extent. Though impact of this will be felt after few months, this is still expected to address one of the key concerns of the regulator, i.e. service quality.At the start, the price of spectrum liberalization will be set in line with the most recent reserve price recommended by TRAI. This will be the provisional price and any balance, will have to be paid by the operator after the market price is derived from past auctions. In case of non-availability of auction-determined prices (which is the case in many circles), the comparable price to be charged for liberalization will be decided by the government after completion of future auctions.The telecom sector has been under severe stress for last few years due to multiple reasons. But with such pro-business measures, it seems that government does give some weightage to operator welfare too. But its still too early to pass a judgment on the positive impact of this move. As expectations build up for the passage of the goods and services tax (GST) bill in the second part of the Budget session of Parliament, the Congress appears to be in mood to play spoiler again.While the government is very keen to push the bill in the remaining period of the budget session, the Congress party has clarified its stand that the party will not support the proposed legislation in its present form, sticking firmly to its demand for three changes.The Constitutional amendment bill for wholesome changes in the tax rules needs to be passed with a two-thirds majority of those present and voting in both Houses of Parliament separately and must win approval from half the state assemblies.The arithmetic in the Upper House shows that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won't be able to get the 122nd Constitution Amendment Bill passed without the support from the opposition Congress party even after August, by when 30 per cent of the seats will be filled with new members.The BJP insists that it will keep trying to convince the opposition so as to ensure passage of the legislation in second part of the Budget session beginning April 25.The Congress has essentially caveated its support to the Bill by reiterating its three demands. Some analysts say the NDA may go along and find common ground, except for one of the three conditions, which is an 18 per cent cap on the tax rate.The Modi government is keen on pushing ahead with its plans for landmark tax reform measures despite the political opposition it has been facing. The GST is estimated to affect between 2 to 2.5 million excise and service tax payers and result in dramatic changes in the Indian tax system.The GST legislation can be a big positive for companies focused on the domestic economy. Manufacturing-linked sectors like capital goods, auto, auto components, infrastructure, cement and various consumption-linked sectors like FMCG, white goods makers, electronic hardware, software, telecom manufacturing and mining will benefit from a positive outcome on the GST legislation, which will lead to a new indirect tax regime in the country by doing away with multiple taxation at various levels.The rollout of the GST regime was scheduled for April 1 this year. The legislation has already been passed by Lok Sabha. But then it got stuck in the Upper House of Parliament, which is the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling party does not have a majority. The House referred the bill for scrutiny by a select committee of Rajya Sabha, whose report was to tabled during the monsoon session last year. A team of biologists and wildlife photographers in North East has discovered a new primate species in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district. Ranjan Kumar Das The White Cheeked Macaque, hitherto unknown in India, was first spotted by the team last year, during a bird watching trip. However it took nearly an year for the scientific community to acknowledge that it was a new species different from the Raesus Macaque, Arunachal Macaque, Tibetan macaque and Assamese macaque normally found in the region. The discovery was made by a team of ornithologist and associate professor of geography of Tinsukia College Ranjan Kumar Das, who was the first in the team to photograph the White Cheeked Macaque during the trip in Anjaw, bordering Tibet region of China. "I am excited to be a part of this discovery and to contribute to the understanding of the species through my photography work," Das said. Udayan Borthakur Others felt that the new discovery could help in promoting wildlife conservation in the region. "Finding of this new macaque species enhances the prospect of biodiversity conservation in the region and gives thrust on more field studies, research and conservation initiatives, wildlife photographer Udayan Borthakur said. US Apocalypse in Mosul in the Guise of Bombing ISIS By Felicity Arbuthnot Compassion has been replaced by their missiles of choice. - Continue ========= Video: Inside Tel Avivs Death To The Arabs Rally By Dan Cohen and David Sheen Thousands converged on Tel Aviv's city hall on 19 April 2016 to register their support for an Israeli soldier who was filmed executing a Palestinian youth . - Continue ========= Guess Who's Funding Anti-Russian Protests in Armenia? By Tony Cartalucci None other than the well-known friends of peace and prosperity around the world, the National Endowment for Democracy . - Continue ========= Brazil: Dilma Dont Let Go! Open Letter to President Dilma Rousseff By Peter Koenig Dont let the corrupt neoliberal right wing with the help no, at the instigation of Washington steal your countr. - Continue ========= Trump Vows To Seek Better Relations With Russia If Elected Video "Common sense says this cycle -- this horrible cycle of hostility -- must end, and ideally it will end soon," Trump said - Continue ========= How the CIA Writes History By Jefferson Morley The CIA isnt protecting national security. It is covering its proverbial rear end. - Continue ========= Fruit of the Poisonous Tree By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano Who will keep us safe from those who have sworn to uphold the Constitution yet defy it? - Continue ========= Hillary: Wall Streets Golden Girl By Pepe Escobar The Clinton machine-Goldman Sachs dangerous liaisons stretch back to the early go-go 1990s . - Continue ========= Airstrikes, shelling kill at least 60 in Syria's Aleppo city : About 200 civilians have been killed in the past week in Syria, nearly half of them around Aleppo. There has also been shelling in Damascus, along with a car bombing Syria: Air strike on hospital in Aleppo kills at least 20 people including doctors and children : At least 20 people, including two doctors and three children, were killed when a series of air strikes hit a hospital and nearby buildings in the rebel-held part of Syria's contested city of Aleppo overnight. Russia denies blame for airstrikes on Aleppo hospital : "According to our information, on the evening of April 27, for the first time after a long break, there was a plane over Aleppo that belonged to one of the so-called anti-ISIS coalition countries," it said in a statement. Syria : 150 US soldiers invade Kurdish region : State news agency citing officials calls entry of 150 troops in the Rmeilan airfield area an 'act of aggression'. Jazeera Operations forces kill 21 ISIS members west of Ramadi, 203 IEDs dismantled: On Thursday, Jazeera and Badiya Operations Command in Anbar Province announced killing 21 ISIS members and dismantling more than 200 explosive devices during the liberation operation of al-Doulab area west of Ramadi, 11 civilians injured by ISIS shelling in Anbar Province : A bomb exploded, at noon today, targeting a bus while passing in Hurriya District northwest of Baghdad, killing the driver and wounding five others, as well as causing material damage to the bus. Woman and child killed in Iraq as US adopts Israeli knocker bombs and leaflet drops - The method was used outside of Mosul in a recent operation, yet a woman and a child were killed upon re-entering a building shortly after it was targeted by a hellfire missile. - Dunford Acknowledges US Troops in Iraq Conduct Combat Operations : While the White House maintains that U.S. troops supporting the fight against Islamic State militants are not in a combat role, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged Thursday that troops are fighting and dying in combat operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Iraq shuts down Al Jazeera Baghdad bureau : Network "shocked" by action and vows to continue coverage of events in the country. Airstrikes kill four, injure two in southern Yemen : On Sunday, Yemeni army forces, backed by Saudi-led coalition planes, launched an offensive against al-Qaeda in Hadhramaut. Rights concerns put EU-Turkey deal in peril as MPs brawl in Ankara: Suspension of Turkish parliament halts passage of laws needed to win European support for visa-free travel for Turks US to give Israel 'largest military aid package in history ': The White House is reportedly planning to accept Israeli demands for increased military aid, following pressure by the US Senate . Israel has been pressuring the White House to enlarge the annual aid package from $3.1 billion to between $4-4.5 billion. 83% of senators call for boosting exorbitant U.S. aid to Israe l; Israel already gets $3 billion per year, 53 percent of U.S. foreign military financing, but 83 senators want more U.S. Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact: Find out how much money your representative has taken from pro\-Israel PACs: U.S. Ruling Over Compensation for 83 Beirut Bombing Riles Iran : Anger is building among even Irans staunchest defenders of the historic nuclear agreement with the United States, after a recent decision by the American Supreme Court allowing relatives of victims of a 1983 bombing to sue Tehran for $2 billion in compensation from frozen Iranian funds. 'Up to 16 Egyptians' feared killed in clashes with smugglers in Libya: "Preliminary information points to between 12 and 16 Egyptian illegal migrants having been killed in clashes with smuggler gangs," the foreign ministry said in a statement. After bombing Libya into chaos, NATO plans blockade to bar refugees from Europe, with U.S. help : Rights experts say NATO is likely violating international law and Western leaders' justifications are deceptive 6 militants killed, 60 arrested in Afghan commandos night raid in Kunduz : Afghan army night raidsAt least 6 militants were killed during a night raid conducted by the Afghan commandos in northern Kunduz province of Afghanistan. Pentagon disciplines 16 for deadly attack on Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan : One officer was suspended from command and ordered out of Afghanistan. The other 15 were given lesser punishments: Six were sent to counseling, seven were issued letters of reprimand, and two were ordered to retraining courses. Pakistan Was Aware Of US Operation That Killed Osama Bin Laden : US Journalist: Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan's detention for years and was killed after the country struck a deal with the US, a top American journalist has claimed citing new evidence and disputed Islamabad's assertion that it was not aware of the raid that killed the al Qaeda terrorist. Ukraine: Four civilians killed in army shelling, say rebels : The rebel group said at least six homes and a hospital were also damaged in the village as a result of army strikes overnight. Worlds fastest jet MiG-31 intercepts US spy plane near Russias Far East : It got to within 15 meters of a US surveillance plane, which was flying in international airspace near the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Ernst & Young: Russia Tied with USA at 31st Place in Corruption, Ukraine in 2nd : According to the study, the highest rates of corruption in business are 90% in Brasil, 88% in the Ukraine and 86% in Thailand. Lowest corruption rates are in Finland (0 %) and Sweden (4%). French Assembly adopts resolution calling to end anti-Russian sanctions imposed by EU : French MPs have voted in favor of a resolution to lift the EU-imposed sanctions initially slapped on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine and the reunification with Crimea. The document is non-binding. Tear gas, clashes, vehicles set on fire : Anti-labor reform protests rock France: Tear gas, clashes, vehicles set on fire: The sickening campaign to silence Corbyn and the Left by exploiting victims of the Holocaust : Op-Ed - It is time to speak out against the concerted and, loosely, coordinated effort to silence Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and critics of Israel, by smearing them as anti-semites. Hybrid war hyenas tearing Brazil apart - Pepe Escobar : Op-Ed: The gloomy and repulsive night when the female president of the 7th largest economy in the world was the prey of choice fed to a lynch mob of hyenas in a drab, provincial Circus Maximus will forever live in infamy. Brazil: home of favela resident fighting eviction over Olympics razed: One of the doughtiest campaigners against the Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro watched as her home was bulldozed on Tuesday, sparking small protests in her neighbourhood and the city centre. Five days in the favela: 'I know what it feels like to rob because of hunger' : Evangelical preacher and radio DJ Pastor Nininho found redemption from a life of crime in favela Mare. Traffic to Wikipedia terrorism entries plunged after Snowden revelations, study finds : Internet traffic to Wikipedia pages summarizing knowledge about terror groups and their tools plunged nearly 30 percent after revelations of widespread Web monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency Bernie Sanders Says US 'Kill List' Legal, Backs Troops in Syria : "I think what the president is talking about is having American troops training Muslim troops, helping to supply the military equipment they need, and I do support that effort." Baltimore police shoot 13yo who had replica gun : After chasing the boy for about 150 yards and seeing he did not drop what they thought was a weapon, one of the officers giving chase discharged his firearm and struck the boy, Obama is First President Ever to Not See Single Year of 3% GDP Growth : According to Louis Woodhill, if the economy continues to perform below 2.67% GDP growth rate this year, President Barack Obama will leave office with the fourth worst economic record in US history. The Strange Death of Hugo Chavez An Interview with Eva Golinger By Mike Whitney Hugo Chavez defied the most powerful interests, and he refused to bow down.I believe there is a very strong possibility that President Chavez was assassinated. Eva Golinger April 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Counterpunch "- MW Do you think that Hugo Chavez was murdered and, if so, who do you think might have been involved? Eva Golinger I believe there is a very strong possibility that President Chavez was assassinated. There were notorious and documented assassination attempts against him throughout his presidency. Most notable was the April 11, 2002 coup detat, during which he was kidnapped and set to be assassinated had it not been for the unprecedented uprising of the Venezuelan people and loyal military forces that rescued him and returned him to power within 48 hours. I was able to find irrefutable evidence using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that the CIA and other US agencies were behind that coup and supported, financially, militarily and politically, those involved. Later on, there were other attempts against Chavez and his government, such as in 2004 when dozens of Colombian paramilitary forces were captured on a farm outside of Caracas that was owned by an anti-Chavez activist, Robert Alonso, just days before they were going to attack the presidential palace and kill Chavez. There was another, lesser-known plot against Chavez discovered in New York City during his visit to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2006. According to information provided by his security services, during standard security reconnaissance of an event where Chavez would address the US public at a local, renowned university, high levels of radiation were detected in the chair where he would have sat. The radiation was discovered by a Geiger detector, which is a handheld radiation detection device the presidential security used to ensure the President wasnt in danger of exposure to harmful rays. In this case, the chair was removed and subsequent tests showed it was emanating unusual amounts of radiation that could have resulted in significant harm to Chavez had it gone undiscovered. According to accounts by the presidential security at the event, an individual from the US who had been involved in the logistical support for the event and had provided the chair was shown to be acting with US intelligent agents. There were numerous other attempts on his life that were thwarted by the Venezuelan intelligence agencies and particularly the counterintelligence unit of the Presidential Guard that was charged with discovering and impeding such threats. One other well known attempt was in July 2010 when Francisco Chavez Abarca (no relation), a criminal working with Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, responsible for bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976 and killing all 73 passengers on board, was detained entering Venezuela and later confessed he had been sent to assassinate Chavez. Just five months earlier, in February 2010, when President Chavez was at an event near the Colombian border, his security forces discovered a sniper set up just over a quarter of a mile away from his location, who was subsequently neutralized. While these accounts may sound like fiction, they are amply documented and very real. Hugo Chavez defied the most powerful interests, and he refused to bow down. As head of state of the nation without the largest oil reserves on the planet, and as someone who openly and directly challenged US and Western domination, Chavez was considered an enemy of Washington and its allies. So, who could have been involved in Chavezs assassination, if he was assassinated? Certainly its no far stretch to imagine the US government involved in a political assassination of an enemy it clearly and openly wanted out of the picture. In 2006, the US government formed a special Mission Manager for Venezuela and Cuba under the Directorate of National Intelligence. This elite intelligence unit was charged with expanding covert operations against Chavez and led clandestine missions out of an intelligence fusion center (CIA-DEA-DIA) in Colombia. Some of the pieces that have been coming together include the discovery of several close aides to Chavez who had private, unobstructed access to him over prolonged periods, who fled the country after his death and are collaborating with the US government. If he were assassinated by some kind of exposure to high levels of radiation, or otherwise inoculated or infected by a cancer-causing virus, it would have been done by someone with close access to him, whom he trusted. MW Who is Leamsy Salazar and how is he connected to the US Intelligence Agencies? Eva Golinger Leamsy Salazar was one of Chavezs closest aides for nearly seven years. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Venezuelan Navy and became known to Chavez after he waved the Venezuelan flag from the roof of the presidential guards barracks at the presidential palace during the 2002 coup, as the rescue of Chavez was underway. He became a symbol of the loyal armed forces that helped defeat the coup and Chavez rewarded him by bringing him on as one of his assistants. Salazar was both a bodyguard and an aide to Chavez, who would bring him coffee and meals, stand by his side, travel with him around the world and protect him during public events. I knew him and interacted with him many times. He was one of the familiar faces protecting Chavez for many years. He was a key member of Chavezs elite inner security circle, with private access to Chavez and privileged and highly confidential knowledge of Chavezs comings and goings, daily routine, schedule and dealings. After Chavez passed away in March 2013, because of his extended service and loyalty, Leamsy was transferred to the security detail of Diosdado Cabello, who was then president of Venezuelas National Assembly and considered one of the most powerful political and military figures in the country. Cabello was one of Chavezs closest allies. It should be noted that Leamsy remained with Chavez throughout most of his illness up to his death and had privileged access to him that few had, even from his security team. Shockingly, in December 2014, news reports revealed that Leamsy had secretly been flown to the US from Spain, where he was allegedly on vacation with his family. The plane that flew him was said to be from the DEA. He was placed in witness protection and news reports have stated he is providing information to the US government about Venezuelan officials involved in a high level ring of drug trafficking. Opposition-owned media in Venezuela claim he gave details accusing Diosdado Cabello of being a drug-kingpin, but none of that information has been independently verified, nor have any court records or allegations been released, if they exist. Another explanation for his going into the witness protection program in the US could include his involvement in the assassination of Chavez, possibly done as part of a CIA black op, or maybe even done under the auspices of CIA but carried out by corrupt elements within the Venezuelan government. Before the Panama Papers were released, I had accidentally discovered and was investigating a dangerous corrupt, high level individual within the government, who Chavez had previously dismissed, but who returned after his death and was placed in an even more influential, powerful position. This individual also appears to be collaborating with the US government. People like that, who let greed obscure their conscience, and who are involved in lucrative criminal activity, could have also played a role in his death. For example, the Panama Papers exposed another former Chavez aide, Army Captain Adrian Velasquez, who was in charge of security for Chavezs son Hugo. Captain Velasquezs wife, a former Navy Officer, Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen, was Chavezs nurse for several years and had private, unsupervised access to him. Furthermore, Claudia administered medicines, shots and other health and food-related materials to Chavez over a period of years. Just one month before his deadly illness was discovered in 2011, Chavez named Claudia as Treasurer of Venezuela, placing her in charge of the countrys money. Its still unclear as to why she was named to this important position, considering she had previously been his nurse and had no similar experience. She was dismissed from the position right after Chavez passed away. Both Captain Velasquez and Claudia appeared in the Panama Papers as owning a shell company with millions of dollars. They also own property in an elite area in the Dominican Republic, Punta Cana, where properties cost in the millions, and they have resided there since at least June 2015. The documents show that right after Chavez passed away and Nicolas Maduro was elected president in April 2013, Captain Velasquez opened an off-shore company on April 18, 2013 through the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonesca, called Bleckner Associates Limited. A Swiss financial investment firm, V3 Capital Partners LLC, affirmed they manage the funds of Captain Velasquez, which number in the millions. Its impossible for an Army Captain to have earned that amount of money through legitimate means. Neither him nor his wife, Claudia, have returned to Venezuela since 2015. Captain Velasquez was especially close with Leamsy Salazar. MW Can you explain the suspicious circumstances under which Salazar was flown out of Spain to the safety of the United States on a plane belonging to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)? Doesnt that strike you as a bit strange? At the very least, this suggests that Salazar was acting as an agent for a country that is openly hostile towards Venezuela? That makes him either a collaborator or a traitor. Do you agree? Eva Golinger Of course it was highly suspicious that Salazar was flown out of Spain, where he was allegedly on vacation with his family, and taken to the United States on a DEA plane. There is no question that he was collaborating with the US government and betrayed his country. What remains to be seen is what his exact role was. Did he administer the murderous poison to Chavez, or was it one of his partners, such as Captain Velasquez or the nurse/treasurer Claudia? While this all may sound very conspiracy theory-ish, these are facts that can be verified independently. It is also true, according to declassified secret US documents, that the US Army was developing an injectable radiation weapon to use for political assassinations of select enemies as far back as 1948. The Church Commission hearings into the Kennedy Assassination also uncovered the existence of an assassination weapon developed by CIA to induce heart attacks and soft-tissue cancers. Chavez died of an aggressive soft-tissue cancer. By the time it was detected it was too late. There is other information out there documenting the development of a cancer virus that was going to be weaponized and allegedly used to kill Fidel Castro in the 1960s. I know most of that seems like science fiction, but do your research and see what really exists. I dont believe everything I read either. As a lawyer and investigative journalist, I need hard evidence, and multiple, verifiable sources. Even if we just go on the official US Army document from 1948, its a fact that the US government was in the process of a developing a radiation weapon for political assassinations. More than 60 years later we can only imagine what technological capacities exist. MW Can you explain why the DEA was involved in this operation and not the CIA as many would expect? Eva Golinger I think CIA was involved. They work together on high-profile political cases, and they were operating out of the Intelligence Fusion Center in Colombia together. Why it was DEA and not CIA that brought Leamsy Salazar to the US has not yet been revealed, but I dont think that means the CIA wasnt involved in the whole operation. MW On a personal note, Hugo Chavez was a giant among men and a real hero. Would you please tell us what his loss has meant to you personally and how his death has impacted the people of Venezuela? Eva Golinger The loss of Hugo Chavez has been crushing. He was my friend and I spent nearly ten years as his advisor. The void he has left is impossible to replace. Despite his human flaws, he had a huge heart and genuinely dedicated himself to build a better country for his people, and a better world for humanity. He cared deeply about all people, but especially the poor, neglected and marginalized. There is a picture taken of Chavez by a bystander, when he had been at an event in the center of Caracas and was walking through a large plaza that had been cleared by security. All of a sudden, he saw a young man, disheveled and seemingly on drugs, barely able to keep himself upright, wearing ragged clothes. To the horror of his security guards, Chavez went over to him and lovingly put his arm around him and offered him a cup of coffee. He didnt judge the poor guy or reprimand him, or show disgust. He treated him like a fellow human being who deserved to be seen with dignity. He stayed there with him for a while, just telling stories and chatting like old friends. When he had to go, he told one of his guards to offer the man whatever help he needed. There were no cameras there, no TV, no public. It wasnt a publicity stunt. It was genuine, sincere care and concern for a fellow human in need. Despite being president and a powerful head of state, Chavez always saw himself as an equal to all people. His unexpected death has had a tragic toll on Venezuela. Sadly, those he left in charge have been unable to manage the country through this difficult times. A combination of corruption and external sabotage by opposition forces (with foreign support) has crippled the economy. Mismanagement has been widespread and destructive. US agencies and their allies in Venezuela have seized the opportunity to further destabilize and destroy all remaining remnants of chavismo. Now they are trying to tarnish and erase Chavezs legacy, but I believe this is an impossible task. Even if the current government doesnt survive the vicious attacks against it, Chavezs memory in the millions of people he impacted and improved the lives of, will weather the storm. Chavismo has become an ideology founded on principles of social justice and human dignity. But do people miss him terribly? Yes. Eva Golinger is winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named La Novia de Venezuela by President Hugo Chavez, is an Attorney and Writer from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela (2006 Olive Branch Press), Bush vs. Chavez: Washingtons War on Venezuela (2007, Monthly Review Press) Since 2003, Eva has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about US Government efforts to undermine progressive movements in Latin America. Not in Our Name! How Neoconservatives and Liberal Hawks Use Lies to Sell Wars By Derek Royden Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. -George Orwell April 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " NationofChange "- In the lead up to the first Gulf War in 1991, the world was shocked by congressional testimony from a young woman named Nayirah, who said she was in a Kuwait Hospital when Iraqi troops arrived. She broke down describing the looting she said followed, claiming the soldiers had killed premature newborns by taking them out of their incubators and leaving them on the cold floor. There was just one problem with this testimony that wasnt discovered until later: it wasnt true. The tearful story was given by the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US, who later admitted she hadnt been at the hospital at all. The spectacle was planned by PR firm Hill and Knowlton, who earned over $10 million to sell the citizens of the US and allied countries on a campaign to liberate the despotic (but oil rich) monarchy. Further connecting these efforts to the first Bushs White House, the firm was run by the Presidents former chief of staff from his years as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. The Iraqi people, already living in a police state controlled by Saddam Husseins Baath Party, were then denied vital medicines under international sanctions and routinely bombed by Bushs successor, Bill Clinton, who seemed to use bombs overseas to distract the public from his (often self inflicted) problems on the domestic front. The second Iraq War came with fears of a mushroom cloud over a major American city. Stories of yellowcake from Niger and aluminum tubes led many to believe that Saddam Husseins government was working to develop nukes. Then there were the reports about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that have needed to be debunked time and again in the years since as supporters of the war routinely try to re-write history. These stories, coming so soon after the atrocities of 9-11, convinced many in the west to support a war against one of the most ardently secular leaders in the Middle East in the name of combating religious extremism. It is a pattern that has been repeated in the secular states of Libya and Syria. The neoconservatives, who defined themselves as liberals mugged by reality, drove the march to war both in the Bush Administration and in the op-ed pages of the western press. Many commentators pushed a kind of reverse domino theory in regards to the intervention in Iraq. Forget that the original version, in which a communist takeover in Vietnam would inevitably lead to a Soviet Southeast Asia was an ideological delusion given credence by the fact that the experts promoting war in the region had very little local knowledge. With a hubris similar to their predecessors, the neocons and their liberal interventionist fellow travelers assured the public that a liberated Iraq would bring democracy and a free market utopia to the entire region. It should also be remembered that a major part of the post invasion plan for a democratic Iraq was to basically privatize the countrys entire economy after a massive bombing campaign that devastated its already deteriorated infrastructure. There had been some limited success with this kind of shock therapy in Chile after Pinochet took over, when the Chicago Boys led by economist Milton Friedman descended on the country, but even this is debatable and has proven illusory over time. In regards to the yellowcake, there was an interesting twist to the story. In 2008 the US government revealed that it had secretly shipped 550 metric tons of the material from the country. Many of the same voices who had gotten it wrong on WMDs and Iraqs non-existent nuclear program touted the discovery of this yellowcake years later as their redemption. Finally there was concrete proof that theyd been right all along about Saddams nuclear plans. The truth, however, was that the UN had cataloged and stored the newly discovered material after the first Gulf War as part of the inspections regime that most of these critics had said was ineffective when they were selling the war. Adding to the irony, the marines who found the yellowcake broke the UN seals on the containers. Luckily, it was so low grade that they and civilians in the area werent harmed in the process. At the end of the Bush II administration, with a few notable exceptions, the neoconservatives were out of government. Rather than having to find new careers due to their lies, failed predictions and lapses of judgement they were welcomed into think tanks like the Brookings Institution and found perches on newspaper editorial pages and in magazines like the Weekly Standard where they have continued to call for war in the Middle East and confrontations with other world powers, including nuclear armed Russia and China. Most of them opine that Obama is simply not militaristic enough, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The neocons were replaced by their ideological cousins, the liberal interventionists, whose standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, became Secretary of State. When calling for a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011, the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, claimed that Gaddafi was encouraging his army to engage in mass rapes, even giving them viagra for this purpose. There was also talk of foreign mercenaries being brought in from sub-Saharan Africa. Many people were targeted by various militias as a result of these stories, including Libyans with dark skin and perfectly innocent foreign born oil workers. There were also loud cries about a potential genocide in Libyas second largest city Benghazi, then held by rebels. This idea was circulated far and wide, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There were no mass killings, let alone genocide in other rebel held towns taken on the armys march to the eastern city but western commentators, using their mind reading abilities, insisted that they knew the Libyan leaders intentions. They also laughed off Gaddafis assertion that at least some of the rebels were extremists linked to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, a claim that was later shown to be all too true. Before the dust had even cleared, Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman who is now the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa, wrote an article calling on American progressives to embrace humanitarian intervention after the success of the no-fly zone, Today, we have the ability to conduct missions from the air that historically would have required ground troops. And we possess admittedly imperfect but highly improved ability to limit collateral damage, including civilian casualties this means fewer bombs can accomplish the same objectives, with early estimates suggesting that the Libyan air campaign required one-third the number of sorties as earlier air wars. Although this rosy view of using bombs to achieve humanitarian ends is sickening, I am not trying to make the argument that Gaddafi was somehow a good man or leader but the consequences of his removal have surely been worse for ordinary Libyans than his continued rule would have been. Daesh had no presence in the country prior to his ouster, now they control his hometown of Sirte. Rather than acknowledging the mistakes that were made and in some cases outright lies that were told, the laptop warriors once again declared mission accomplished and went back to their keyboards to call for yet another war, this time in nearby Syria, a disaster that just keeps giving. It isnt just in the US where public intellectuals and government officials work hard to sell interventions overseas, especially in the Middle East and Africa. The government of the UK was stymied twice by parliament in calling first for war in Syria and later for a role in coalition airstrikes so theyve come up with a novel tactic to inject themselves into the unfolding chaos in Libya. Dont bother with a parliamentary vote at all, just call it a training instead of a combat mission. This, despite the fact that, as explained by an unnamed senior Tory in the UK Telegraph, foreign troops could be seen as an invading force and attacked by one of the numerous militias running roughshod there. Perhaps there are some who hope for this outcome as it might create the conditions for yet another full scale intervention in the country. Here in Canada the progressive left breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper, who committed Canadian troops to the bombing of Libya, Iraq and Syria, was defeated in the last election but it appears that we celebrated too soon. While the general tone of our new Liberal government is much better than Harpers, one of its first acts was to approve a $15 billion dollar arms sale to the monarchist tyranny of Saudi Arabia who have taken a leaf from the western playbook by intervening first in Bahrain during the Arab Spring and then going to war in Yemen, where they and their Gulf state allies have been repeatedly accused of war crimes. Regardless of who leads us, the arms industry, paired with warmongering politicians and their media enablers are always trying to shape the conversation around war and peace in favor of the former. Whether its a no fly zone in Syria or a confrontation over what amounts to a bunch of rocks in the South China Sea, we must be ready to stand up against militarism and demand that diplomacy be the first rather than the last resort for dealing with the worlds conflicts. Copyright 2015 - NationofChange Meet the Corporate PR Firm Hired to Sell a Murderous Foreign Regime to the American Public Ketchum was hired to improve the Honduran governments image, which is stained by human rights violations. By Sarah Lazare April 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " AlterNet "- Hillary Clinton is not the only person doing P.R. to legitimize the government of Honduras that rose to power in the wake of the U.S.-backed 2009 coup, overseeing a dramatic escalation in violence against Indigenous, human rights and environmental defenders. The powerful U.S.-based P.R. firm Ketchumwhich is owned by Omnicomwas paid $421,333 last June for a one-year contract with the Honduran government that continues into the present. One of the largest such agencies in the world, the firm is headquartered in New York and claims to operate in 70 countries on six continents. It describes itself as a global communications firm that loves to do break through work for clients and boasts: were just crazy enough to believe you can actually change the world. The company is representing the government of Honduras in the midst of an escalating human rights crisis defined by a spate of assassinations of Indigenous environmental activists, including the renowned social movement leader Berta Caceres. Today, Honduras is one of the most dangerous places on earth for environmental defenders, with activists reporting that death squads are making a comeback. Human rights and environmental groups from around the world are calling on Secretary of State John Kerry to halt military aid to the Honduran government until an investigation into Caceres murder is fully carried out. Meanwhile, new reporting from the New York Times shines light on police leaders' unchecked power to order assassinations. Given this reality, it is no surprise that the Honduran government has hired a U.S.-headquartered P.R. firm. As Carol Schachet of the social movement organization Grassroots International put it in an interview with AlterNet, The government of Honduras is not wanting to change its behavior. They want to change their image. Deal Struck in Midst of Public Theft Scandal The contract went into effect on June 16 of 2015 when thousands were taking to the streets of Honduras to demand that President Juan Orlando Hernandez step down over allegations that his right-wing National Party stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the countrys social security systemthe Honduran institute of social security (with the Spanish initials IHSS). Hernandez had risen to power in a questionable 2013 election, hailing from the same National Party as his predecessor Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who became president in the aftermath of the coup in a sham 2009 vote. Notably, one of the signatories to the Ketchum contract is Hilda Hernandez, sister of the president and minister of communications, who was directly implicated in the IHSS scandal, as she was one of three officials at the time in charge of funding for the National Party. Leaked documents indicate that the Party unlawfully embezzled funds from IHSS to their own coffers. When a corruption scandal erupted in neighboring Guatemala, mass protests that some called the Guatemalan Spring forced the ouster of the countrys School of the Americas-trained President Otto Perez Molina. Yet, Hernandez politically survived his government's scandal and maintains his seat to the present day, despite the devastation that ordinary Hondurans were forced to endure. A comment to the Guardian in June by Pedro Amador, an English teacher, captures public outrage at the time. My father paid into IHSS all his working life but since he got cancer two years ago, they did nothing apart from give us prescriptions, said Amador. We had to buy every medicine he needed and my elderly mother and sister basically nursed him at home as there were no staff to attend to him. He died from negligence, because all the money was stolen. The Obama administration, meanwhile, has repeatedly thrown its backing behind Hernandez. Focus on Influencing U.S. Media While little is known about the specifics of the P.R. deal, it is clear that Ketchum and the government of Honduras have maintained a heavy focus on influencing U.S. media. One document, signed in January by Nicole Mann, senior vice president and director of public and corporate affairs for Ketchum, cites advice and counsel relating to communications activities, develop communications materials and facilitate relations with media organizations to create visibility. And a separate document states that, between June and November of 2015, Ketchum "conducted survey and in-depth interview research on perceptions of Honduras in the United States" and "conducted influencer outreach with Washington, D.C.-based think tanks regarding events with Honduran government officials." Curiously, the file also mentions that Ketchum pitched media interviews on behalf of Honduran government officials to various U.S. outlets" and proactively and reactively engaged with U.S. media regarding coverage of Honduras." Who are these media outlets, and how is Ketchum influencing them? When AlterNet sought comment from Ketchum, the companys spokesperson Jennifer Vargas simply replied, We can confirm that we work with the Government of Honduras to provide ongoing strategic counsel, media relations, third party outreach, research and monitoring in order to support the country's economic development and trade relations. We do not discuss the terms of our client contracts. Dan Beeton, international communications director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told AlterNet that this message is cause for further concern. "The current Honduran government's economic priorities do not seem to put the Honduran people first. Rather, they focus on extractive development projects and ventures like the dams that Berta Caceres died fighting, and that are often opposed by local communities, he said. The Honduran government is pushing many more such projects under the 'Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity for the Northern Triangle,' which the Obama administration supports." A History of Questionable Tactics While Ketchum is providing little information about its paid activities, its past dealings are a good indication of the tactics it can be expected to employ. Ketchum runs two front groups for the agrichemical industry, US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance and GMO Answers, the latter of which was bankrolled by the Council for Biotechnology Information, which includes BASF, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto Company and Syngenta. New York Times journalist Eric Lipton revealed last year that Ketchum previously enlisted academics in GMO propaganda efforts as part of a GMO lobbying war, including by drafting expert content for them. The P.R. firm has levied numerous other questionable tactics, including the recent targeting a 14-year-old Canadian GMO labeling activist, as well as the prominent blogger known as Food Babe. There is evidence that the company committed espionage against food and environmental organizations as far back as 2000. And reporter Charles Campbell wrote in 1991 that Ketchum had devised a Crisis Management Plan which laid out suggestions for Clorox just in case Greenpeace, the environmental action group, should launch a major campaign against the company's household bleach. The firm is famously secretive, even though it has represented some of the most powerful corporations and states in the world, including a 9-year deal with the Russian government that ended last year. One of the things that goes unnoticed about corporate power are the structures that make the exercise of corporate power possible, Gary Ruskin, co-director of the watchdog organization U.S. Right to Know, told AlterNet. Here we have a U.S. P.R. firm playing a key part in efforts to promote chemicals, GMOs and the chemical industries. And now they are doing everything they can to launder and rehabilitate the image of the government of Honduras amid atrocious violations. Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare. American Democracy is Rigged The Republican and Democratic parties are functioning like two identical but competing Orwellian Ministries of Truth. By Hamid Dabashi April 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Al Jazeera " - In the United States presidential elections, there are two towering political parties - the Democratic and the Republican - that during the course of their "primary" elections get to choose who will be their respective candidates in the course of a national election. Although any US citizen can join these two parties - or any other political party - millions of eligible voters have not, and consider themselves "independent". These independent voters get to vote in the general elections like anyone else, but by the time we get to that general election in November, the two dominant political parties have already elected their nominee, and, therefore, US citizens at large have to vote for one of these preselected nominees if they want their vote to have a role in who their next president will be. This entirely undemocratic, arcane, draconian, and ipso facto rigged aspect of the US electoral system came to a crucial dead-end during the New York primaries of the Democratic and Republican parties on April 19, when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won their respective primaries. Decisive setback In many significant ways, the presidential primaries in New York were a turning point in the unfolding saga of Bernie Sanders' bid for the US presidency. His crushing defeat by the former state secretary marks a decisive setback that may, in fact, end his candidacy and usher his massively popular campaign into a new phase, with or without the prospect of US presidency. So crucial was this victory for Clinton that soon after this primary, the New York Times - which now openly, unabashedly, and against any norm of journalistic decency or professionalism acts as the official organ of Clinton's campaign - was so confident of her victory that it began to speculate about who her running mate might be. These primaries were not like any other; New York is the financial, commercial, cultural, and intellectual capital of the US. What happens in New York (and a few other major cosmopolitan epicenters like Chicago and San Francisco) is, in many ways, the barometer of the nation at large. Some 20 million people live in the state of New York, of which about 8.4 million live just in New York City. This population figure places New York City above many European democracies, such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Now, consider the fact that according to reports, "only 19.7 percent of eligible New Yorkers cast a ballot, the second-lowest voter turnout among primary states after Louisiana, according to elections expert Michael McDonald". This is not to mention the fact that even those who were registered Democrats and could not vote: "The Kings County Board of Elections purged 126,000 registered Democrats from the voting rolls in Brooklyn, prompting an outcry from Mayor Bill de Blasio and an audit from Comptroller Scott Stringer." Whatever the cause of this "purge" (fraud or mishap), this is not the main calamity of the electoral process in the US. The issue is the fact that less than 20 percent of eligible voters in a statewide election get to choose who the next presidential candidates in the US national elections would be. This low number is not any indication of an apathetic low voter turnout, but, in fact, is the evidence of massive voter suppression that, in the racist parlance of the white supremacists, is kept exclusive for what they call "Third World Banana Republics". Now, the question is very simple: What is the difference between the way the Democratic Party functions in New York and many other states and the Communist Party of North Korea, the bete noire of the liberation theologians singing Hallelujah for "American democracy"? Since when can a political party (with an obvious political agenda to promote for its own endurance) violate the inalienable right of citizenship in a republic? Some more equal than others The principle reason for this voter suppression is what they call in the US "closed primaries". What is a closed primary? New York is among many other states that conduct what is called "closed primaries"; namely, they only allow voters who are registered members of a particular political party to vote in that party's primary. It is not, therefore, accidental that much to the chagrin of Sanders and his massive supporters among independents, "Clinton has won every state so far that's held a closed primary". If, as a citizen, you followed the debates closely and came to the conclusion that Sanders is the candidate of your choice and not Clinton, you would not be allowed to vote for him unless months ago (long before you were familiar with Sanders or his ideas), you had applied to the Democratic Party and become a member. It must be a rudimentary fact of any claim to democracy that if you are a citizen of a republic, you must be able to vote in any phase of any presidential (or any other) election simply by virtue of being a citizen. But in this crucial phase of the US presidential primaries, these citizens are not allowed to vote unless and until they are card-carrying members of the political party conducting that primary. "All animals are equal," indeed, as we learned from George Orwell's Animal Farm, "but some animals are more equal than others". As a result of this blatantly undemocratic practice, if you are an independent-minded person, follow the news and watch the debates before you decide which candidate you prefer and want to vote for in the Democratic primaries in New York, you might as well be a woman trying to drive in Saudi Arabia: You could not. False claim to democracy The Democratic Party, therefore, rules over this false claim to democracy the same way the Guardian Council of octogenarian Super Mullahs rules over the Islamic Republic. In other words, the free and fair formation of political parties that is supposed to be the finest fruit of a democracy has paradoxically degenerated into the most powerful impediment to democracy. The question is: What is the result of these undemocratic "closed primaries"? These "closed primaries" are the bottlenecks of a closed political culture, preventing the possibility of any liberating breakthrough into a foreclosed political system. At the heart of this imperial republic that effectively rules the world with its military might (not with any moral courage or political legitimacy), we have an electoral process that systematically bars any critical judgment of its own citizens to disrupt its mindless militarism. American citizens are as much trapped inside this corrupt system as people around the globe are at the mercy of its fighter jets and drone attacks. These two parties, Republican and Democratic, are today functioning like two identical but competing Orwellian Ministries of Truth - systematically, consistently, unabashedly disallowing any critical thinking or nonviolent democratic action to enter and disrupt the always-already rigged election. Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University . 2015 Al-Jazeera English World War III Has Begun By Paul Craig Roberts April 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - The Third World War is currently being fought. How long before it moves into its hot stage? Washington is currently conducting economic and propaganda warfare against four members of the five bloc group of countries known as BRICSBrazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Brazil and South Africa are being destabilized with fabricated political scandals. Both countries are rife with Washington-financed politicians and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Washington concocts a scandal, sends its political agents into action demanding action against the government and its NGOs into the streets in protests. Washington tried this against China with the orchestrated Hong Kong student protest. Washington hoped that the protest would spread into China, but the scheme failed. Washington tried this against Russia with the orchestrated protests against Putins reelection and failed again. To destablilze Russia, Washington needs a firmer hold inside Russia. In order to gain a firmer hold, Washington worked with the New York mega-banks and the Saudis to drive down the oil price from over $100 per barrel to $30. This has put pressure on Russian finances and the ruble. In response to Russias budgetary needs, Washingtons allies inside Russia are pushing President Putin to privatize important Russian economic sectors in order to raise foreign capital to cover the budget deficit and support the ruble. If Putin gives in, important Russian assets will move from Russian control to Washingtons control. In my opinion, those who are pushing privatization are either traitors or completely stupid. Whichever it is, they are a danger to Russias independence. Eric Draitser provides some details of Washingtons assault on Russia: http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-western-banks-governments-launch-full-spectrum-assault-russia-part/215761/ of Washingtons attack on South Africa: http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-empires-destabilizing-hand-reaches-south-africa/215126/ and of Washingtons attack on Brazil: http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-empire-strikes-back-brazil/214943/ For my column on Washingtons attack on Latin American independence, see: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/22/washington-launches-its-attack-against-brics-paul-craig-roberts/ As I have often pointed out, the neoconservatives have been driven insane by their arrogance and hubris. In their pursuit of American hegemony over the world, they have cast aside all caution in their determination to destabilize Russia and China. By implementing neoliberal economic policies urged on them by their economists trained in the Western neoliberal tradition, the Russian and Chinese governments are setting themselves up for Washington. By swallowing the globalism line, using the US dollar, participating in the Western payments system, opening themselves to destabilization by foreign capital inflows and outflows, hosting American banks, and permitting foreign ownership, the Russian and Chinese governments have made themselves ripe for destabilization. If Russia and China do not disengage from the Western system and exile their neoliberal economists, they will have to go to war in order to defend their sovereignty. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . A teenager identified only as Sunday, has allegedly killed his parents landlady, identified only as Mama Moses. He reported himself to the police in Abuja after committing the crime. The incident happened at Tudun-Fulani, in the Bwari area of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, during the weekend, where the suspect resided with his patents. Sunday, 18, was also accused of killing the landladys daughter and her three grandchildren, the Punch gathered. Sunday was said to have locked the deceased in their apartment after they had slept in the night, sprayed the house with petrol and set it ablaze. He watched as the fire gutted the building and when he was sure that the victims were trapped, he reportedly headed for the Bwari Police Division. According to reports, prior to the incident, Sunday had an unsettled disagreement with the landlady and her family members and he had reportedly threatened to deal with them. Also, there had been an alleged mutual relationship between the landladys daughter and Sunday, which broke recently. Confirming the incident, the FCT Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Anjuguri Manzah, said the commissioner of police, FCT, had directed that the suspect be transferred to the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department for further investigation. The PPRO added that Sunday would be charged to court upon the completion of the investigation. The inferno reportedly lasted for hours before residents were able to put it out. Five persons were burnt to death in the incident; it was unfortunate. The CP has directed that the suspect should be transferred to the homicide section of CIID. Investigation is still ongoing and the suspect will be charged to court after the investigation. Charred remains of the five victims have been removed from the razed apartment and deposited in a morgue, the PPRO added. Meanwhile, Sundays mother had fled from the community. Source:Dailypost The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has dismissed the clearance of the chairman, Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Justice Danladi Umar, over an alleged N10million bribe. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, last Wednesday reiterated its position that there was no concrete evidence of corruption that could provide grounds for the prosecution of Justice Umar, saying the allegations against the CCT chair were suspicious and insufficient. Reacting to the EFCCs clearance of Mr. Umar at the weekend in Abuja, the Senate presidents lawyer, Prince Ajibola Oluyede, said that the anti-graft agency lacked the power to override the recommendation made in 2014 by the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) for the CCT chairmans prosecution. Oluyede said it was only the AGF that possessed the power, under the law, to reverse a decision to prosecute, arguing that Sarakis application urging Umar to disqualify himself from the trial was still before the tribunal. The defence counsel insisted that there was no time the EFCC cleared Umar, and that even where such clearance existed, it was a confirmation of his clients position that the CCT under Umar, cannot ensure fairness in his trial. It would be recalled that Oluyede and the CCT chairman engaged in a heated exchange last week following the formers insistence that Justice Umar disqualify himself from further hearing of Sarakis trial over alleged false and anticipatory assets declaration, due to likelihood of bias. Mr. Oluyede, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, faulted media reports that the motion he filed for Justice Umar to disqualify himself had been thrown out by the tribunal, noting that since the prosecution was yet to respond to it and it had not been heard, the tribunal cannot decide on it. He also faulted reports that he was thrown out of the tribunals sitting venue, saying he was at the proceeding until it was adjourned, vowing to argue the motion before the tribunal once it was ripe for hearing. We are not saying he (Umar) is guilty. We are saying he is tainted and that he cannot act independently while the EFCC that is investigating him and had indicted him is now prosecuting our client before him. That is why we asked him to excuse himself from the trial. He did so before in the case involving former FCT Minister, Jeremiah Useni, where he excused himself from the hearing on the ground that he had close relationship with Useni. We are asking him to do so again now because of the facts that we have presented, Oluyede said. Two-term Governor of Yobe State now senator representing Yobe East, Bukar Abba Ibrahim, has revealed that almost all former governors, who are now serving senators, with the exception of himself, have one case or the other with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, or Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT. The senator was speaking against the backdrop of Senate President Bukola Sarakis trial at the CCT. Senator Ibrahim, who described the Senate presidents trial for alleged false and anticipatory declaration of assets as unfortunate, blamed the development on local politics from Kwara State, where Mr. Saraki was a governor for eight years. The Saraki saga is an unfortunate thing, he said in an interview with newsmen in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital yesterday. The saga is a saga; it will still continue. The court will definitely make its pronouncement. Whatever the court decides, we will obey. The worst that could happen is to go to the Supreme Court where everything ends. But I can assure you that 99 percent of senators are behind Saraki for the simple reason that we are all human beings, and we do make mistakes, he added. According to the senator, When you are a governor for eight years, there is no way you can account for every kobo. So, if anybody wants to investigate you thoroughly, he will find a fault here and there. It may not necessarily be falsehood, or that you intended in a way to harm the economy, or intended to be a financial crime as being speculated. The Chairman, Senate Committee on Ecology and Climate Change, who concurred with the speculation that the trial is politically-motivated, absolved President Muhammadu Buhari of blame. It looks like a local political motivation from Kwara. Definitely President Muhammadu Buhari has no hand, and definitely the federal government of Nigeria did not initiate it. It was local politics in Ilorin. People made complaints; they gave the details of what they thought Saraki had and he didnt declare, that was how EFCC came in and started investigating, Senator Ibrahim said. Responding to a question if former governors in the Senate, who are a powerful bloc in the upper legislative chamber are in solidarity with Saraki, the former Yobe governor answered in the affirmative and gave his reasons. Of course yes! You know that there are so many other former governors who are in the same shoes with Saraki; whose trials have been initiated, but they were not publicised like that of Saraki, because he is the Senate president. Almost every former governor in the Senate with the exception of Bukar Abba Ibrahim, has one case or the other with the EFCC or CCT. While calling for the strengthening of institutions in the fight against corruption, Mr. Ibrahim, whose wife is a member of the Federal cabinet, said Its not easy to fight corruption especially when it comes to individuals; that is why those of us do believe that corruption can best be dealt with through institutions. Lets strengthen our institutions, stop giving and taking bribes. Institutional fight of corruption is the best fight we can have as a nation. It has begun, and it will continue for a very long time. Culled The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State has accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of complicity in the fuel supply crisis in the state. In a statement by the partys Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun, the APC said it was in possession of incontrovertible evidence that the governor is contributing to the scarcity of fuel in the state to sabotage President Muhammadu Buharis administration. Records have revealed that 10 trailers of fuel for Ekiti State on Fayoses request were diverted mostly to stations outside the state, Olatunbosun said. The Secretary to the State Government, Dr. Mrs Dupe Alade, had earlier written for same allocation but her letter to NNPC was stepped down when Fayose used his office to request for the allocation of fuel to 10 filling stations, many of which do not exist in Ekiti State. The governors letter was addressed to the Area Manager at Mosimi and minuted to Ore and was processed by the Ore office of NNPC. The trailers were loaded on Wednesday and Thursday the 20th and 21st of April but the real fuel companies and vendors were prevented from loading until the 10 trailers demanded by the governor left the depot but were diverted to other stations outside Ekiti State, he explained, adding that the governor had allegedly been mentioned in several cases of fuel racketeering. Olatunbosun challenged the governor to deny ever writing to the NNPC for fuel allocation. There is need for the security agencies and the Minister for Petroleum to investigate the governors activities at the NNPC offices both in Ore and Mosimi and the roles of NUPENG officials in this wicked unleashing of pains on Ekiti people by unpatriotic act to sabotage the Federal Government, he concluded. National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Alhaji Maimala Buni, has said the support Nigerians are giving President Muhammadu Buhari in his quest for a realistic budget reflect the peoples faith in the administration. Buni, who spoke in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital on Sunday, said Nigerians understood the desire of government to have a workable document, which implementation would improve their lives. It is evident that there is trust in government now and, Nigerias image has greatly improved before the international community, with an increased interest by foreign investors to invest in the country. Every country is looking forward to doing business with Nigeria because we now have a President, who is transparent, committed, incorruptible and trusted by Nigerians and the international community, he said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). The party scribe said Nigerians belief in the APC government was further demonstrated by the large turnout of voters in the Saturday by-election in Yobe, which was won by the APCs Abdullahi Kukuwa. Buni noted that The large turnout in yesterdays election and APCs victory at the polls has consolidated the peoples faith in the party and President Buhari to improve their lives. In spite of the hardships suffered by the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), they came out massively to elect APC because of their strong faith in the party and the leadership. He also hailed the president for supporting the security forces in the fight against insurgency. Mr. Buni added that the security situation in the Northeast had improved significantly. Former Military President, retired Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida has publicly acknowledged that he is ill, but not incapacitated as widely reported in a section of the media last week. The former president was reportedly incapacitated and said to be unable to walk by himself, leading to speculations that IBB, as he is fondly called by admirers, is bedridden. But the gap-toothed general, in a parley with select journalists on Sunday afternoon at his Minna, hilltop Mansion, the Niger State capital, said he is not bothered by rumors of his ill-health or reported death. He said: It is true I have minimised my appearance at public functions because of my ill health, but not to the level of incapacitation as being widely circulated in some media. Mr. Babangida continued: The rumour does not shock me; neither does it bother me because I know I must go and meet God, my creator. There is nothing really to worry about, my religion has told me. As a Muslim, I strongly believe everybody will die, everybody will die and everybody has to die. It could be now or in hundred years time or two days to come but it doesnt matter. Everybody must die You can see me attending to people, after which we all go in for our lunch and have our prayers before I retire for my siesta. I am not incapacitated. Nobody is above sickness or death because nobody is above what God has destined. Everybody will fall sick or will die or either of their relations must die. The 74-year-old self-styled evil genius, who ruled the country between 1985 and 1993, added that the future of the country is bright and the dreams of Nigerians to actualize their independence was worthwhile. I still believe very strongly in this country, which is further demonstrated by the people of this great nation because they are a very industrious people, hardworking. That gives me the hope for Nigeria, Gen. Babangida said. He also revealed that the wound sustained in his right leg as a result of the piercing of a bullet during the Civil War, has been with him for quite some time. When I was the President of the country, I had to travel to Germany where the sickness was diagnosed as Radiculopathy, which has troubled me since and as such relapses, Babangida added. A successful Chinese businessman known for his beloved White Rabbit Creamy candy has been killed by tumbling rocks pushed by a monkey. According to Scoop, Weng Mao, the former chairman of Shanghai food company Guan Sheng Yuan Co. Ltd., was pronounced dead after succumbing to head injuries from a falling rock pushed by a macaque monkey on Tuesday. Weng is famous for his company which produces the White Rabbit milk candy brand introduced in the 1940s. According to the South China Morning Post, Weng, 67, was visiting a nature park on Yuntai Mountain in Henan, China for a photoshoot with the Shanghai Yelv Travel agency. Macaques are a second-class protected animal species in China that live freely in the nature park. After the accident, Mao was brought to the Xiuwu County Peoples Hospital where he later died. An employee at Zhou Yi travel agency informed reporters that the accident was unintentional. The park is currently closed for an investigation. The family of Azibaola Robert, the cousin to former President Goodluck Jonathan, has told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to charge him to court or release him unconditionally. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the family made the demand at a news conference in Lagos on Sunday. Mr. Robert, the Managing Director of One Plus Holdings Ltd., was arrested by the EFCC on March 23 for allegedly receiving $40 million from the Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA, for a pipeline contract. Speaking on behalf of the family, Faith Robert condemned the continued detention of his elder brother by the EFCC after an Abuja High Court had granted him bail on April 7. He said the remand order by an Abuja Magistrates Court, which EFCC relied upon to detain Mr. Robert, had expired on April 19. According to him, it is therefore, improper for the anti-graft agency to approach another Magistrates Court in Lagos for another remand order when the Abuja High Court has granted bail to the accused. The same High Court served a production warrant on EFCC on April 12 after meeting its bail conditions. It is important to note that EFCC, an organisation created by an Act of Parliament, has continued to treat the order from a High Court of competent jurisdiction with contempt, he said. Mr. Robert urged the EFCC to charge his brother to court, allow him enjoy the bail granted him by the Abuja High Court or free him unconditionally. (NAN) The Federal Government has generated over N2 trillion through the Treasury Single Account (TSA) since the commencement of the policy on Sept. 15, 2015. Minister of Information Lai Mohammed made the disclosure at a Town Hall meeting held on Monday in Lagos. The policy is meant to consolidate all inflows from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) by way of deposit into commercial banks, traceable into a single account at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This administration has decided to plug all financial loopholes through the Treasury Single Account (TSA), into which over N2 trillion has accrued so far. Funds that ordinarily would have gone into private pockets are now finding their way into the public treasury, to be used for the benefit of all. Also, about 36,000 ghost workers have been discovered and weeded out, saving the government millions of naira, the minister said. According to him, the budget has recorded a first, with the capital expenditure being increased to 30 percent. Beyond that, there are six social intervention areas that will directly touch the lives of millions of citizens and lift them out of poverty. Mohammed noted that 500,000 graduates would be employed and trained as teachers while 370,000 non-graduates (artisans, technicians) would be trained and employed, while one million people (farmers, market women, etc.) would be granted loans to set up small businesses. He also noted that there would be Conditional Cash Transfer to the most vulnerable people; school feeding targeting 4.5 million school children; as well as Bursaries/Scholarships for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students. He urged all Nigerians to rise and be part of the war against corruption. All of us must be part of the war. It is not Buharis war. It is not APCs war. It is Nigerias war of survival and defeat will only sentence all of us and our generations yet unborn into perpetual penury. Our nations economy or whatever is left of it, poses a great challenge. For one, we have lost a sizable chunk of our earnings to the massive crash in the price of oil. Think about this, if you lose 70 per cent of your monthly salary, your life can never be the same again, Mohammed said. Ekiti government has declared three days of mourning following the death of six doctors in a road mishap, describing the accident as the lowest point in the history of the state. The doctors had an accident on Sunday afternoon a few kilometres to Kaduna on their way to Sokoto for a free medical mission organised by the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). Those killed in the mishap are Dr. Aladesanmi of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ido-Ekiti; Ojo Taiwo of the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH); NMA secretary, Akinyele Lexy; Dr. Ogunseye of the Health Management Board (HMB); EKSUTH Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) president, Dr. Olajide and Adeniyi James of the FMC. The driver, Mr Ajibola, also died. Ayodele Fayose, the state governor, described the deaths as a monumental loss not only to the people of Ekiti state but to Nigerians. The state will mourn the victims on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, during which all flags are to be flown at half-mast. Ekiti has lost some of the best trees in its forest of medicine. I am deeply sad. This is one loss too many, he said in a press statement. Death of seven prominent indigenes of a state in one day and at the same period is a burden too heavy to bear and it is my prayer that God, who is the only giver and taker of live will give Ekiti people the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss. It is my prayer that tragic incident like this will not be witnessed in Ekiti State again and that God in His infinite mercies will console the families of the deceased. On behalf of my family, Government and people of Ekiti State, I express our heartfelt condolence for the loss of these promising sons of Ekiti and wish their families, friends and professional colleagues the continued support and guidance of the Almighty God. Source:BreakingTimes The immediate past Governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, Monday said he would vie for the Presidency on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019. Lamido made this known to newsmen in his village Bamaina in Birnin-Kudu Local Government Area of the State. He, however, said a partys ticket was not given to anybody on the platter of gold, adding that a candidate must earn it. If my party finds me worthy of the partys presidential ticket to serve Nigeria, I will thank God and oblige. Although there are issues in the party that we are all working to resolve, we hope to have success soon and come out united. As Im talking to you now, we are working silently to resolve our differences and bring back to our fold those that left the party for APC, he said. The ex-governor held that the internal crisis rocking the PDP was the reason for its defeat in 2015 general elections. He, however, said that the PDP had the capacity to rule the country again but the members must work hard to achieve that. Mr. Lamido also denied any rift between him and his successor, Gov. Muhammad Badaru of APC. He stated that both of them had mutual respect for each other and he had no differences with him other than political ideologies. (NAN) The Imo State Government yesterday faulted the report by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) that it diverted the bailout funds collected from the Federal Government for the payment of workers salary arrears. The government said the bailout fund was judiciously applied for the purpose it was meant. The ICPC, in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday by its spokesperson, Edet Ufot, accused Imo, Zamfara, Benue and Enugu States of diverting the FGs bailout funds, which were meant for workers salaries, to other use The ICPC produced the report, which investigated 23 states, under its Prevention mandate. But a statement by the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Rochas Okorocha, Mr. Sam Onwuemeodo on Sunday, said: The commission did not, however, disclose how it arrived at that conclusion but only stated that some transfers were made into certain accounts not related to salaries and emoluments including, N2 billion paid into a Government Account; N2 billion paid into an Imo State Project Account and N2 billion transferred into a Microfinance Bank. The statement added: The ICPC was right that such funds were paid into the mentioned accounts and we had expected the commission to go further to tell the public what such funds paid into those accounts were used for. The commission became stingy with facts at that point. Again, before the bailout fund, were there no existing accounts the government was using to pay salaries? While giving out the bailout funds, was there any specified account that was given that the salaries must be paid from? These are questions that needed to be answered since the commission never claimed that the money was paid into private accounts or that the ones paid into the governments accounts were used for other reasons except paying salaries. From the mentioned governments account, personnel of Imo Security Network, Imo Community Watch, Youth Must Work Teachers, Community Government Councils and Imo Civil Guards were paid their arrears last December. We stand to be contradicted on this claim. From the referenced Microfinance Bank Account, Imo State University, Imo Polytechnic, Imo College of Nursing and Health Sciences Staff, and so on, collected their salaries, also in arrears last December. We also want the ICPC to prove us wrong on this claim. In the case of Imo State Project Account, the truth is that the government was drawing money from the account to ensure full payment of workers salaries when the financial fortunes of the state began to dwindle, like most other states. So, when the bailout fund finally came, the government had no option than to pay back the fund it had borrowed from that account. And the truth of the matter became glaring when Labour in the state decided to be collecting 70 per cent of the total income of the state at the end of every month for salaries and pensions, leaving only 30 per cent for government, for capital projects; since January, they have not been able to pay workers full salary. Last December, the state government paid all arrears of workers salaries, including workers of corporations, agencies and health outfits the government had issues to settle with and also paid pensions, which were not part of the bailout fund. We want to be faulted on all these claims. When the national leadership of NLC led a protest in the state, it was not on the issue of salary but over the suspension of certain workers of corporations and agencies who remained unproductive over the years. And it was the 70 per cent to 30 per cent revenue sharing formula between the government and Labour that ended the misunderstanding, and the affected personnel were recalled. As we write, the payment of the February salary has begun. Which means the state is only owing the workers the March salary, since April has not ended. Let us be proved wrong in all these. Imo State has a bloated workforce and the highest number of pensioners. Yet, it is only owing the workers the March salary since the payment for February has begun. So, in what way did the state divert or misapply the bailout fund? The Imo State Government has unbridled regard and respect for agencies like ICPC because of the great service they have been rendering to this nation. Otherwise, we would have concluded that something was wrong somewhere. To say the least, the Imo State Government applied the bailout fund judiciously for the purpose it was meant: the payment of salaries. We did that and also paid pensions, which were not part of the bailout fund. We stand to be contradicted. That is why the issue of salary arrears does not exist in the state at the moment. Iraqs military has warned civilians against returning to Ramadi after dozens were killed by mines apparently planted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in the citys streets and buildings. Iraqi forces reclaimed Ramadi from ISIL fighters in December and tens of thousands of residents have moved back to Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, in the past two months. Most of them have returned from camps east of the city where they took refuge prior to the armys advance late last year. A spokesperson for the Anbar governors office, which is overseeing much of the effort to restore Ramadi, confirmed the military had issued the directive because it felt the need to stop the return to ensure that the areas are safe. He said it was not clear when people would be allowed to return to Ramadi and declined to comment on what would happen to the residents who had already moved back. However, Ramadis mayor said he expected the freeze to last for a day or two while authorities investigated whether the city was properly cleared of explosives. Official statistics indicate that 49 people have been killed and 79 others wounded in Ramadi since the start of February, but the UN has said those figures are almost certainly an underestimation. Demining is seen as a critical first step in returning civilians to Ramadi, which a UN team said last month suffers from destruction worse than anywhere else in Iraq after months of fighting that saw ISIL bomb attacks and devastating US-led coalition air strikes. More than 3.4 million Iraqis across the country have been displaced by violence, according to UN statistics, most of them from the minority Sunni Arab community. Aljazeera. The Lagos state command operatives from Dopemu division has arrested a man named Akanbi Lawal for chaining his son Yusuf Lawal aged 35years for two months. When he was discovered, Yusufs hands were already decaying due to the injury sustained as a result of the chaining. When interrogated, Mr. Lawal said the shameful and disgraceful attitude of his son made him chain him down at home for two months. Yusuf had earlier been declared missing until his friend Tayo Olukoju discovered him in the room where he was hidden by his father. The Lagos state Police public relations officer Sp Dolapo Badmos said the victim has been taken to General hospital where hes receiving treatment. She stated further that the father will be prosecuted in law Court. Source: Linda ikejis blog As Nigerians bemoan the perceived indifference of the Federal Government to the frequent deadly attacks allegedly being perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen across many states, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has disclosed that government is working silently towards finding a lasting solution to the problem. Mr. Mohammed made this known on Sunday during a special prayer for the stability of the nation by an Islamic group, Saadatul Abadiyyah Organisation of Nigeria. He was also honoured as the Grand Patron of the group at the event held in Abeokuta, the Ogun State Capital. The Minister said President Muhammadu Buhari has also set up a panel of inquiry into the recent attacks while the effects of the silent efforts would soon be felt by Nigerians. The President did speak immediately these things happened, to the extent of setting up a panel of enquiry. But the government is going to do more than that. These communal clashes are very delicate issues, very emotional and what the government is doing is working very silently to ensure that people who used to live together before without any conflict will go back to that. In few weeks from now, we will begin to see the result of that, he said. Mr. Mohammed also assured that the plan by the Federal Government to generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity by 2019 is on course and achievable. He, however, said the activities of violent agitators have not been helpful towards finding a lasting solution to the constant power outages. The Minister, who revealed that about five gas pipelines have been completed, also stated that Nigeria has the capacity to generate enough power for its citizenry. He appealed to Nigerians to be patriotic and desist from attacking critical assets and installations, adding that as soon as gas platforms are repaired, the country will have the capacity to distribute as much as 5,000 megawatts. It is very feasible, you see, we actually have the capacity to generate, we dont have any problems at all. Actually by February 2nd this year, we were able to generate and transmit 5, 074 megawatts of power. But we are in this situation today mainly because of the attacks on the export lines. What we have now is that we have the capacity to generate but we dont have enough gas. And as soon as these platforms are repaired, we will be able to generate and transmit more than 5, 000 megawatts, even at 10, 000 megawatts at 2019, its quite feasible. There are about five other pipeline projects that have been completed now and that is Ajimosho, there is Omotosho, theres one in Sapele and the combined capacity of the four projects is well over 2, 300. But because of lack of gas, we are generating less than 5000 megawatts, he explained. The Minister restated the governments plea that Nigerians be patient during the current economic crisis in the country. My message to Nigerians is that we feel keenly their pains, we empathize with them and we are doing everything to ensure the pain is remedied, Mr. Mohammed assured. The member representing Ogo-Oluwa/Surulere federal constituency in Oyo State, Dokun Odebunmi, on Sunday made a case for Senator Ali Modu Sheriff to continue in office as national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Rep. Odebunmi said Sheriff possessed the qualities to change the fortunes of the party if given substantive appointment. According to the lawmaker, the PDP chair, who is expected to step down on May 21 during the national convention of the party in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, has within his short stay in office as acting chairman, demonstrated an ability to unite party members. I was at the meeting where it was unanimously agreed that our party chairman should come from the northern part of the country so as to balance up with the south where we have many PDP governors and other elected public office holders, Odebunmi told journalists in Ogbomoso yesterday. Mr. Odebunmi, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values, said the PDP needed a mature leader. In order to have a disciplined and organised party that can win election in the next political dispensation and subsequent elections, there must be a level playing ground for all and sundry in the party. We must reposition ourselves and embrace a transparent system of electing our leaders during the congress at all levels, he said. The lawmaker also confirmed moves to woo former Governor Rashidi Ladoja back into the party, saying he would be an asset to the PDP. With the spotlight on the Nigerian military in the ongoing war against insurgency in the North-east, the Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) Zone 6, Tunde Ogunsakin, yesterday decried the non-recognition of the efforts of the Nigeria Police Force in the war. According to Ogunsakin, many policemen have exhibited gallantry fighting alongside the military in the counter-insurgency operations but they have not been given the recognition they deserve. Zone 6 comprises police commands in Borno, Yobe and Bauchi States. The AIG, who spoke with newsmen in Abuja yesterday, said many policemen had lost their lives fighting alongside the military, but their sacrifices had largely gone unnoticed. Maybe we have not been coming out fully to speak about how much we have done, but that is not to say we have not done much in terms of gallantry and sacrifice. The police did the fighting as much as the military, he stated. Last month, I presented a lot of cheques to the families of those who lost their lives and even those that are alive and have done so well, we will make recommendations for them to be promoted too, Ogunsakin added. The top police boss noted that the police had performed brilliantly and gallantly too, and policemen who accompanied the military to the theatres of war did excellently well in areas where they were deployed. For all the period that this war has been fought, we always have police officers being attached to the military, we have scores of policemen being attached to the military in all the theatres of war, he stressed. While acknowledging that the military is at the forefront of the war, Ogunsakin added that the police had taken over check points, security in churches, mosques and market places in Maiduguri and environs where the army was holding forte at the height of the insurgency. Mr. Ogunsakin, however, said the police force was facing challenges in the area of training its personnel on their role during peace time in the North-east, especially now that Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, are beginning to relocate to their communities. What we are facing is how to train the men in keeping the peace now that we have won the war. We are trying to put our men on alert, that the role played during the insurgency is different now at peace time, he said. He argued that policemen have a critical role to play in resettling the IDPs or risk creating another problem for the future, pointing out the possible dangers of the social and economic problem of not adequately settling the IDPs. If you go to the IDP camps more than 60 percent are women and children, and most of them cannot trace their parents, you have to be careful that these people are settled comfortably and you dont turn them to miscreants or in future they would be a source of trouble for the country, Ogunsakin advised. President Muhammadu Buhari has appealed to Nigerians to bear with him over the difficulties in the country, saying Nigerians were seeing the darkest days before the dawn. In a strategic move to assuage the pains of Nigerians, the President ordered the release of 10,000 tons of grains from the national strategic grains reserves. According to the Presidency, a total of N9 trillion was lost by the Federal Government to the Boko Haram insurgency. The loss, it said, worsened the economy. The presidency also noted that the crippling fuel situation was due in part to a N600 billion debt owed fuel importers by the previous administration. It said it was working on ensuring that newly-licensed refineries commenced operations in 2018. The Boko Haram insurgency, corruption and the lack of planning by the past administrations and one that should not be blamed on the Change Agenda of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, a statement by presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said. The Presidency firmly rejects the insinuations that poverty and lack are products of the Change mantra. This should be dismissed as an erroneous and misplaced opposition criticism. The President understands the pain and the cries of the citizens of this country and he is spending sleepless nights over how he can make life better for everyone. Contrary to assertions by a faction of the opposition Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, the Presidents energy and focus are on changing the lives of Nigerians, with a view to making it better than he met it. Change is a process. Change does not happen overnight. Change can be inconvenient. Change sometimes comes with pain. Over the past year, the government has been working night and day to deliver on its promise of change to Nigerians, and the painful process is still ongoing. This is work in progress. As life gradually returns to normal in much of the country and the northeast in particular, agriculture will resume and traders from neighbouring African countries will once again feel safe to do business with us. It is estimated, for instance, that three Northeast states of Nigeria alone have so far lost about three trillion Naira (Nine billion US Dollars) to the Boko Haram insurgency. The previous administration at the center said Federal Government losses amounted to about USD18 billion. It would have been a miracle for our countrys economy not to feel the effects of this. And, in addition to the thousands of lives lost to the insurgency, thousands have also lost their means of livelihood. The northeast region of Nigeria is a mostly agrarian society, which means Nigeria has lost billions of naira in agricultural produce. Many communities, which have had their yearly planting and harvesting cycle disrupted by Boko Haram attacks or occupation are still yet to return to their farms. In many of these communities, there have not been planting and consequent harvest for between two to five years. At the time this government came to power, about 600 billion naira was owed to fuel marketers in subsidy payments. Strategic fuel reserves were depleted and local refineries not functioning. One of the Presidents first steps was to pay off the marketers, leaving an outstanding of about N150 billion which is captured in the 2016 budget. The Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries are being brought back to life. Shortly, Nigeria will resume refining its own fuel rather than depending on imports. As part of the permanent solution of recurring cycle of petroleum products shortages, government is working on a plan to ensure that some of the newly-licensed independent refineries start coming on stream from 2018. Government is also turning its attention to the sabotage of the oil and gas infrastructure that has taken so much away from the generation and distribution of electricity. These are just some aspects of the change that Nigerians voted for, a change that is happening and which will soon be felt by Nigerians in every nook and cranny of our country. Nigerians are a people renowned for our inner strength and our ability to triumph. These are just the darkest days before the dawn. The change Nigerians voted has indeed begun, Shehu said. A jabbing pain in his shoulder and thigh roused Obada from his sleep at 3am. In the half-light, the 15-year-old could make out eight masked men surrounding his bed, their rifles pointed at him. I felt terrified, he said of the experience of being arrested in February from his home in the village of al-Araqa, near Jenin in the northern West Bank. Obada is one of more than 100 Palestinian children who, in recent months, have found themselves dragged from bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, according to childrens right groups. Testimonies like Obadas feature in a new report, No Way to Treat a Child, compiled by Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), a group monitoring Israeli violations of Palestinian childrens rights. The 440 children currently in military detention are the highest total since the Israeli army started issuing figures in 2008 and more than double the number detained this time last year. The rights group says that, despite promises two years ago from the Israeli army to phase out night raids following international condemnation, in practice, they are used as routinely as ever. During his arrest, Obada said he was hit with a rifle butt, blindfolded and his hands tied with a plastic cord that cut into his flesh. The soldiers dragged me out of the house without allowing me to say goodbye to my family and without telling me why and where they were taking me, he said. Over the next fortnight, according to Obada, he was repeatedly beaten. Indignities included being locked overnight in a small toilet cubicle and assaulted with a taser when he protested. Five rockets have hit the Turkish province of Kilis near the Syrian border, killing one person and injuring 26, in the latest attack launched from a Syrian area controlled by the Islamic State of iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), officials said. Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, who visited the southern province on Sunday, said two of the projectiles landed in the morning, slightly injuring six Syrian refugees and 10 Turkish nationals. Three more hit Kilis in late afternoon, killing one person and wounding 10 others. Akdogan said 45 rocket rounds have been fired at Kilis since January 18 and killed 16 people, including Sundays fatality. At least 62 people have been wounded since then. The Turkish military systematically responds by firing back at targets in Syria, in line with its rules of engagement, and Akdogan said Turkish artillery immediately retaliated to the rocket fire after the latest attack. Their [the armys] intervention is continuing I am calling for our citizens to be calm, Akdogan said in televised comments.. All measures will be taken in this regard. Unfortunately there is no authority across our border. Akdogan said measures would be announced after a cabinet meeting on Monday. Police used water cannon to disperse residents who were protesting what they said was the governments lack of action after the attacks, Turkeys Dogan new agency reported. A Catholic Church in Cape Coast, Ghana, has banned its female members from wearing provocative dresses to the church. The church posted these photos of approved and unapproved dresses in its premises. What do think about the dresses? Are the provocative ones really provocative? Source/Photo credit: Joy News The Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose has declared three days of mourning in the state starting from Tuesday for the six Nigerian Medical Association, NMA officials,who perished in a road accident on Sunday. The Public Relations Officer of the Lagos State Chapter of the NMA, Peter Ogunnubi, told Premium Times that the affected executives began their journey from Ekiti with Sokoto as their destination, but never made it. Mr. Ogunnubi, who could not hold back his emotions over the unfortunate incident, said Six of them are already dead. It was learnt that the medical doctors were traveling to Sokoto State for the Annual General Meeting of the NMA. The association is yet to disclose the identities of the executives at the time of publishing this report. Details later It has now been confirmed that the six NMA officials, who were heading to Sokoto from Ekiti State yesterday, died a few kilometers to Kaduna when the 13-seater passenger bus they were traveling in, had an accident. The Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, who declared three days of mourning in the state starting from Tuesday, described the death of the six medical doctors and one driver as the lowest ebb in the history of the state and a monumental loss not only to the People of Ekiti State, but to Nigerians. He gave the identities of the victims as Dr Aladesanmi of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ido-Ekiti; Dr Ojo Taiwo of the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH); NMA Secretary, Dr Akinyele Lexy; Dr Ogunseye of the Health Management Board (HMB); EKSUTH Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) President, Dr Olajide, Dr Adeniyi James of the FMC and a driver, Mr Ajibola. Governor Fayose, who urged families, friends and professional colleagues of the deceased, especially members of the NMA to take solace in God who giveth and taketh when it pleases Him, said It is my prayer that tragic incident like this will not be witnessed in Ekiti State again and that God in His infinite mercies will console the families of the deceased. On behalf of my family, Government and people of Ekiti State, I express our heartfelt condolence for the loss of these promising sons of Ekiti and wish their families, friends and professional colleagues the continued support and guidance of the Almighty God, the governor said in a release issued by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka. A former Senior Special Assistant to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, has warned that many Yoruba politicians in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, may reconsider their membership of the party if Senator Ali Modu Sheriff is elected as the partys chairman. The PDP is scheduled to hold its national convention on May 21 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where a new national chairman and other members of the national working committee of the party would emerge. Ahead of the convention, the PDP has been plunged into another round of internal crisis as Mr. Sheriff, who is its substantive chairman, insists on contesting for the position, in spite of the existing zoning arrangement. Based on the current arrangement, the South is supposed to produce the national chairman at the end of the tenure of the current NWC while the North has been zoned the presidential ticket for 2019. Going by the arrangement, the South-west is set to produce the national chairman of PDP for the first time, as the remaining geo-political zones, including the South-south and South-east, have at various times, occupied the exalted office either in acting or substantial capacity. But Mr. Sheriff, a former senator and two-term governor of Borno State, is said to have met, and still meeting political stakeholders in the party in a desperate bid to gain their support as opposition mounts against his candidacy. However, Okupe insists zoning of the PDP national chairman position to the North is injurious to the interest of the South-west. He said the party has ignored the virtues of justice and equity, warning that the continued marginalisation of South-west might result in mass defection. The former presidential spokesman also reflected on the zoning controversy, chiding some South-west chieftains, who he described as charlatans, for collaborating with top party leaders to deny the zone of its rightful place in the party. In a statement titled: PDP and the burden of justice and equity, Mr. Okupe alleged that the seed of misrepresentation was sowed by a group of political clowns and court jesters led by the Senator representing Ogun East, Prince Buruji Kashamu, who claimed to be the leader of PDP in South-west. He noted that the South-west PDP elders, led by the former National Deputy Chairman, Chief Olabode George, have condemned the traitors during their recent summit in Lagos. He said the South-west PDP has the intention of bidding for the position during the May 21 national convention. Okupe said: I want to state categorically, without any fear of equivocation, that we, the Yoruba from the Southwest, desire and demand the post of the national chairman at the next convention of the party. The following are the past chairmen: Chief Solomon Lar, Chief Gemade, Audu ogbe, Prince Ogbolafor, Dr Nwodo, Alhadji Baraje, Dr Haliru Bello (Acting), Alhaji Bamangar Tukur, Alhaji Adamu Muazu, Prince Secondus (Acting) and Sen Sheriff. In the last 18 years, there have been 11 chairmen from five geo-political zones. Only the Yoruba from the South-west have been precluded from this exalted office. In the interest of fairness, equity and justice, it is most compelling that the Yoruba of the Southwest zone must be allowed to contest for this post at this coming National convention. Okupe warned that any attempt to deny the South-west the position could spell doom. He said: Any attempt to do anything to the contrary, no matter the reason advanced cannot be acceptable. Failure for a Yoruba man to emerge as the national chairman can only mean two things: that there is a pervasive and concealed hatred for the Southwest in the PDP, or the PDP has very little or no regard for Yoruba interest as shown by the obvious cheating of the Southwest from the position of the House of Representatives Speaker in 2011, which was neither rectified nor compensated for the whole of four years. The sad implication of the above is that, regrettably, many of us from the south-west may have to reconsider our membership of this great party we have helped to nurture and supported through thick and thin; a party we have loved almost more than our very existence, and the party we have served with all our natural endowment, in victory and defeat. A teen suspect was gunned down by police after his involvement in a high school prom shooting on Saturday night. He showed up with a rifle and opened fire on students of Antigo High School leaving the celebration in Wisconsin, injuring two. Antigo Police Department have identified him as Jakob Wagner a former student at the high school who graduated last year. A woman claiming to be his neighbour, Hannah LeVeqe, reacted to the news on Facebook: She said, He lived a couple houses away from me. I have known Jakob for a long time and when I knew him, he was a very sweet boy. He could have been battling a personal battle that none of us may understand.. Now I am not rooting for him, Im just saying we are all battling something no one else knows about and we make irrational decisions. I am sending prayers to all of the families involved and all of the people involved.A supposed friend of his named Sierra Violetta also reacted to the news on social media and said, I am sad to hear about this. I didnt know Jakob very well, but we talked a bit not too long ago. He was just telling me how he bought a new rifle, I didnt know he was going to do this. This just breaks my heart. Rest in Peace. The teenage gunman who was shot by an officer in the parking lot, was taken into custody and transported to the hospital where he passed away. An 18-year-old man, identified simply as Sunday, is currently in the police custody in Abuja after he allegedly killed his parents landlady, identified only as Mama Moses. The suspect was also accused of killing the landladys daughter and her three grandchildren. It was gathered that the suspect, who lived with his parents in the landladys residence at Tudun-Fulani, in the Bwari area of the Federal Capital Territory, reported himself to the police after committing the crime. PUNCH Metro gathered that Sunday locked the deceased in their apartment after they had slept in the night, sprayed the house with petrol and set it ablaze afterwards. It was said that Sunday watched as the fire raged on and when he was sure that the victims were trapped, he headed for the Bwari Police Division. The inferno reportedly lasted for hours before residents were able to put it out. Charred remains of the five victims were eventually removed from the razed apartment and deposited in a morgue by the police. Our correspondent gathered that Sundays mother had fled from the community. Prior to the incident, which happened on Thursday, April 14, our correspondent learnt that there was a disagreement between the suspect and the landladys family members. He reportedly threatened to deal with them. It was learnt that there was a relationship between the landladys daughter and Sunday, which broke recently. The boy was said to have kept the family at arms length following the collapse of the relationship. A police source told our correspondent that he and his colleagues were shocked when the suspect came to the station to report the matter. He said, Last Thursday, after the family members had gone to bed, the suspect locked their apartments door from outside, drenched the building with fuel and set the house ablaze. By the time the police got there, they had been burnt beyond recognition. Enugu State Police Command has arrested a 35-year-old woman identified as Nneka Ifeoze for allegedly torturing her 9-year-old house help with hot pressing iron. The young girl is currently battling with severe pains and injuries. The statement below A 35 year old woman who gave her name as one Nneka Ifeoze from Nkwere in Imo state but residing at No 3 Ava Okocha street of mount in Enugu South LGA of Enugu south have been nabbed by the operatives of the State police command for allegedly using a hot pressing Iron on the househelp which caused her injury on her body. It was however gathered that the victim identified as Oluebube Orji also from Nkwere in Imo state and 9 yrs old is said to have gone into the black book of the madam on 24/4/16 at about 8pm when the madam allegedly came back to discover that her two year old boy who is under the care of Oluebube as house help was allegedly assaulted and also that Oluebube ate the food of the 2 year old boy. Putting the two together,suspect became angry and headed for her plugged pressing iron,unplugged it and used it on Oluebube Orji which left her with series of injury on her body. Meanwhile,victim have been rushed to a nearby hospital for medical attentions. Source: Linda Ikejis blog When the software audit request came from Adobe two years ago, Margaret Smith (not her real name) thought it was business as usual. As a governance risk and compliance specialist for a Fortune 500 company, she was used to getting audited several times each year. Usually these things start out friendly, she says. We get a request for an audit, and theres some negotiation involved. They want do an on-site audit or request specific employee IDs, and we say no. But this time they came out swinging. Within two weeks they were threatening to bring in the lawyers. [ To build or to buy IT applications? InfoWorld sheds light on this eternal questions. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ] Smiths firm, a maker of consumer goods, had licensed at least 55 different Adobe products in offices around the globe. Now the software maker was accusing her firm of using far more software than it had a right to. The stakes were high. Adobe could have levied penalties on top of outstanding license fees, charged her firm for the cost of the audit, and asked for retroactive payments from a certain date. But Margaret was no pushover. She worked for a huge organization that managed more than 4,000 software products and had a pretty good handle on how compliant they were. It turns out there was a conflict between language in the license agreement the company signed and supporting documents Adobe considered part of that agreement. In the end, they settled. The consumer goods maker agreed to additional controls for how it deployed software, and Adobe dropped the matter (and, not surprisingly, declined to comment for this story). But it could have gotten ugly. And its emblematic of how aggressive major software publishers have become. That audit was a key factor in her company's decision to implement a software asset management solution from Snow Software, says Smith. "It was the perfect example to support my theory that the first step in gaining compliance is understanding what youre working with." When it comes to software audits, the code of omerta prevails. If you buy it, they will come Its not a question of whether your organizations software licenses will get audited. Its only a question of when, how often, and how painful the audits will be. The shakedown is such a sure thing that nearly every customer we contacted asked us to keep their names out of this story, lest it make their employers a target for future audits. Audits are on the rise, and theyre getting more expensive. According to Gartner, 68 percent of enterprises get at least one audit request each year, a number that has climbed steadily each year since 2009. The most frequent requests come from the usual suspects: Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, IBM, and SAP. A survey by Flexera, a software asset management vendor, reports that 44 percent of enterprises have had to pay true up costs of $100,000 or more, and 20 percent have paid in excess of $1 million -- percentages that have more than doubled over the past year. IDC's Amy Konary estimates that up to 25 percent of an organizations software budget will be spent dealing with license complexity alone. There are two aspects to this, and both are hard to pin down, says Konary, vice president responsible for leading IDC's SaaS, Business Models, and Mobile Enterprise Applications programs. The first is overbuying. How much extra software are you purchasing to mitigate the risks of being out of compliance? The second is underbuying. You get audited, you find you've used more software than anticipated, and you end up spending more in the true-up. Its difficult to rightsize your software environment due to the complexity of licensing. More than a quarter of all software installed in large U.S. and U.K. enterprises is shelfware, with a collective cost exceeding $7 billion, according to research by 1E, a software lifecycle automation company. Add to that the hidden costs of business interruption for audits that can last 18 months, and the final price tag can be enormous. In short, enterprises are leaving a lot of money on the table -- and software publishers are more than happy to scoop up as much of it as they can. Audits are sales tools Technically, a software audit is a way to prove you've installed only software you've paid for, or for a publisher to prove you've installed or used too much. But the audit process often ends by the customer signing a check -- either to pay for software that was over- or misinstalled, or to strike a new deal for a longer-term commitment There is going to be a sale at the end of an audit," says Peter Turpin, vice president at Snow Software. "Auditing is a way of collecting money for the software a customer has installed. Therefore you need to pay for it. But major publishers also use the threat of an audit as a way to close new deals, says Craig Guarente, co-founder of Palisade Compliance, which helps enterprises manage Oracle licensing issues. For more than 15 years, Guarente was a global VP of contracts and business practices for Oracle. He says that for many years Oracles sales team had a "Glengarry Glen Ross"-inspired mantra called ABC: audit-bargain-close. You audit someone, find some issues, put some fear into their hearts, and throw a big number up there, he says. Then you close a deal on something else they want you to buy. Except these days I'm calling it audit bargain cloud -- throw in a cloud deal, and suddenly all your audit issues go away." Oracle in particular has been called out for aggressive software licensing practices. An October 2014 survey of Oracle customers by the Campaign for Clear Licensing concluded that customer relationships with Oracle "are hostile and filled with deep-rooted mistrust." In October 2015, the candy company Mars Inc. filed suit against Oracle, accusing the company of "out-of-scope" licensing enforcement based on "false premises." The suit was dropped last December; terms of the settlement were not announced. In an interview with U.K. tech news site V3 last February, Specsavers global CIO Phil Pavitt decried Oracle's "gun-to-the-head methodology" for software licensing. (Oracle declined requests for comment.) Oracle is certainly not alone in using audits as a negotiating tool. Customers contacted for this story confirmed similar pressure exerted by other publishers. Over the long run, though, this aggressive approach merely breeds animosity, says IDC's Konary. If a sales rep is using audits as a way to push sales, that usually means you have a bad sales rep, she says. Still, the pressure to make quarterly quotas can push them to be more aggressive. Sales managers dont like software audits because they can wreck their relationships with customers," she says. "But many also have sales quotas and a certain dollar amount they need to hit. Theres a bit of a misalignment. Clouds on the horizon As more enterprises move toward software as a service, it should theoretically simplify how software is licensed and managed. But in the short term the opposite is true; operating in a hybrid cloud and on-premise environment makes everything more complex. For example, it's all too easy for IT to spin up new services in the cloud as needed, without considering the licensing implications, says Ed Rossi, vice president of product management for Flexera. "When you introduce the cloud, you also introduce a lot of complexity," he says. "As clients take advantage of that, they put themselves in a position of using more software than they're entitled to. I think we're seeing an incremental increase in audits for that reason." Merely moving to the cloud will sometimes trigger an audit, says Konary. "If you take on-premise software and move it to a cloud environment in your own data center, you are very likely to have licensing issues," says Konary. "It's such a dynamic environment, it becomes much more difficult to track what you're actually using and stick to your license requirements." Using public cloud services poses less of a licensing challenge, she adds. Unless users are sharing passwords, it's relatively straightforward to measure who's using what. Another reason that increased reliance on the cloud has been accompanied by a rise in audits: Companies that have made billions from on-premise software are trying to wring as much revenue out of them as possible while they still can, says Robin Purohit, Group President of BMC's Enterprise Solutions Organization. "We see audits from the big enterprise companies on the rise," says Purohit. "These are the ones most vulnerable to the transition to software as a service. Their license growth is at risk, so they're looking to maintain revenue from the customers they have as they build up their cloud and SAAS portfolio." Their tools, their rules Many vendors will offer to help you figure out your license compliance issues. Don't do it, advises Palisade's Guarente. That can turn into what I call a stealth audit, he says. The vendor offers to help the customer figure out his compliance issues, but its really an audit in disguise. He says one client was spending nearly $40,000 a year on Oracle maintenance and support contracts and asked them to help him figure out how to reduce his spend. They happily agreed. A few months later he got a compliance bill for more than $1 million. That's when Palisades was brought in. Oftentimes, vendors require customers to use specific tools to track their usage, but they don't always do a good job of informing them about it, notes attorney Rob Scott, principal of Scott & Scott, LLP, a firm that specializes in resolving software audit disputes. One of the biggest horror stories we see surround IBM and its virtualization rules, says Scott. According to IBM, you can only deploy their virtual server software if you also deploy their proprietary discovery tool, which most customers only learn about the first time they are audited. IBM then comes in and says these virtual servers are licensed for subcapacity, but because you didnt deploy our discovery tool you owe us for full capacity, adds Scott. "Ive seen that issue account for hundreds of millions of dollars of true-up fees for our client base alone," says Scott. "It sounds esoteric, but its happening all over the world." When contacted, an IBM spokesperson confirmed that the company does require clients to use a free monitoring tool to track "subcapacity licensing." In an email, she wrote: Our software contracts are very clear on the requirements to take advantage of subcapacity licensing; this has been a part of all such contracts for more than a decade. In addition, we proactively reach out to our clients to ensure that they are familiar with the sub-capacity licensing opportunities and protocols. Shelf where? An audit may also reveal that you're paying for software you don't use. But don't expect software publishers to tell you that. "I dont hear a lot about vendors coming to customers and saying, Hey, you spent too much money with us," admits Konary. On the other hand, she adds, most vendors wont initiate an audit unless theyre fairly confident the customer will need to true up. Konary says enterprises could be buying the wrong types of licenses for their users -- such as a developer's license when a less expensive self-serve license would do. "You may have much more expensive tiers than you need. Do you have the option to downgrade that? A lot of this shelfware discovery has to be initiated by the customer. While implementing software asset management tools can help, enterprises will also need to modify their processes around compliance and train people how to deal with the complexity, she adds. In most cases, software publishers want to remain partners in good standing with their enterprise customers. But they also want to make as much money as possible. And that can strain partnerships to the breaking point. It's really important to remember that publishers have a right to be paid for the software their customers are consuming," says Snow's Turpin. "Your best defense is a good offense. Equip yourself with the right management tools so that if you are out of compliance, you'll know about it and can do something on your own terms." Five years ago, I wrote a column about how the fax machine refuses to die. Five years is a long time in terms of technology, but only a short time in terms of fax machines. Depending on how you define the point of origin of the first method of distributing images or photographs over an electrical wire, the fax machine may date back to 1843. There was a telefax service in operation between Paris and Lyon, France, in 1865. Transmission of images over wireless radio networks was routinely conducted throughout the early 20th century. The modern facsimile machine as we know it was introduced in the United States in 1964. Of all of the computing or digital technologies commercially available in 1964, you probably wont find any of them in a Staples today -- except the fax machine. We dont use dot-matrix printers anymore or CRT monitors or televisions. Weve largely migrated from landlines to cellphones, and even our landlines are digital in most places these days. The technologies from that era are all museum pieces now, with the glaring exception of this ancient document transmission system that continues on like a zombie, devouring forests of paper and screaming 14,400bps modem tones. This was brought back into stark contrast to me the other day when I was forced to spend hours on the phone with several health care companies to clear up a problem related to a garbled fax transmission of a prescription renewal. Its 2016. I can stream live television from one side of the Earth to the other in HD. I can use my watch to make phone calls, display a boarding pass on a plane, and start my car from anywhere. I have no fewer than a dozen different means to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers located virtually anywhere on the planet -- or even in orbit. Yet were still highly dependent on the ancient ritual of taking rough scans of paper, making an analog telephone call, connecting with a remote modem at speeds that might fall to 9,600bps or lower, and transmitting an image of that paper, one line at a time, to a printer on the other side. Its madness. Weve managed to eradicate cigarettes from every workplace in the U.S. between 1964 and today, but were still heavily addicted to our fax machines. There are a few reasons for this. The first is the law of lowest common denominator. Fax machines are so ubiquitous that if you need to send a document to someone at another company, theyll undoubtedly have a fax machine if all else fails. Second, people still believe that they need to physically sign documents that have been sent to them digitally, then redigitize them. This is what leads to people printing out 12 pages of a PDF, signing the last page, then faxing the whole thing somewhere. The one thing that fax machines have in their favor is that they provide direct communication. If a document is faxed from one place to another, it can be accompanied by an immediate receipt stating that it was received. Further, the progress of the transmission can be directly monitored. Lastly, the security of the transmission itself has at least the appearance of being solid, because its a direct connection. This is the main reason why health care providers maintain the use of fax machines to transmit sensitive information. Of course, it would be far better for all involved if, rather than printing out Word documents and faxing them, we sent them by email. Why dont we? Why do so many businesses continue to rely on fax instead? After all, email should be more secure, more reliable, and vastly better than fax machines for transmission of even the most sensitive information. At least, theres no technical reason that its not. We can provide end-to-end encryption for email transmission and reception, we can provide return receipts, and though its generally been frowned upon, we can even send large attachments via email. The sad fact is that email never became the secure way to transmit sensitive materials that it should be. Thats on us -- after all this time, we never got email right. The current state of email is akin to a potholed tarmac, glistening in some places, worn down to the gravel in others, and littered with flyers and pamphlets hawking all kinds of crap. When you send an email, you must trust that the server on the other side is properly configured and secure. You must also hope that its spam filters are tuned properly, or that youre an approved sender in its whitelist. You have to hope that if the recipient is having service issues, there are adequate secondary servers in place. If theyre using a large email provider, youd better hope that you arent on an errant blacklist that causes your message to be silently discarded. And good luck to you if someone else has used your ISP or mail relay as a spam or malware vector in the past, and your relay has been blacklisted as a result. Thats the reality of email today, and its an ugly, scabrous place. Given that perspective, its not hard to understand why some companies continue to rely on fax machines. From their point of view, reliable and secure document transmission technology remains in the 1960s. If were ever to rid ourselves of the fax, we either have to fix email, or we have to develop standards that are not subject to the vagaries that have corrupted email, but can be used by any provider to communicate within and without their own network. One way or another, we need to re-create the fax system for the modern world, because the fax system of 1964 is far beyond obsolete -- it's shameful. Microsoft has given users of its OneDrive cloud storage service a 90-day notice that their free allowance will be scaled back from 15GB to 5GB in late July, according to emails and reports from customers. The 67 percent reduction in free storage space will take effect July 27. On the same day, Microsoft will also eliminate the 15GB free "Camera Roll" bonus it once gave to anyone who asked. The result: Users who formerly had 30GB of free storage will have just 5GB. [ Control your storage requirements by eliminating data redundancy. InfoWorld lays it all out in our Deep Dive Report on Data Deduplication. | Keep up with the latest approaches to managing information overload and compliance in InfoWorld's Enterprise Data Explosion Digital Spotlight. ] Those reductions were announced in early November, when Microsoft said it was retreating from its prior promise of unlimited storage for the consumer-grade Office 365 subscriptions, the $70 Personal and the $100 Home plans. Office 365 subscribers will instead have 1TB of storage space for each user. (Office 365 Home allows up to five users; Personal only one.) The shrinking free allotments were also announced in November. At the time, Microsoft said it would enforce the new limits "in early 2016." OneDrive users who asked Microsoft before Jan. 31 to let them keep their 15GB free storage allowance and 15GB 'Camera Roll' bonus received this email recently, confirming the retention of the larger space allowance. In December, however, Microsoft apologized for the clumsy way it had handled the announcement and said then-current users had until the end of January to request that their 15GB Camera Roll bonus and the additional 10GB of standard storage be retained. Microsoft has honored those requests. As part of the storage space cuts, Microsoft eliminated two paid plans that had offered 100GB for $2 per month and 200GB for $4 a month. Instead, it now offers only a 50GB plan for $2 per month. When it broke the bad news to OneDrive users last year, Microsoft said it would give them a 90-day notice before it made the files read-only in accounts that exceeded the 5GB limit. Those users will be able to view and download their files, but will not be able to add new files to the cloud space. Other restrictions were to follow, including a locked account after nine months and possible file deletion after one year. OneDrive users railed against the decision last year, and the news of the July deadline got their hackles up again. "What's the reason for moving from the 15GB to the 5GB as I was very happy with the service until this announcement was made," wrote Deirdre Donohoe in a message posted to the OneDrive support forum. "Does this mean we will have to pay for a service that was once free?" Although Microsoft said the reductions had been triggered by abuse -- in November the company said, "A small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings" -- the decrease of the free allowance could be a financial gain for the company. According to Computerworld's calculations, if Microsoft convinced just 10 percent of the OneDrive estimated free user base to switch to the lowest-priced paid option, it would record almost $1.1 billion in new revenue annually. Other OneDrive users portrayed Microsoft's changes as bait and switch. "A year ago Windows 10 comes out with OneDrive integrated. The size of free storage was what made it a useful tool to try out and to use," said someone identified as Sid Cheeseburger last week on the support forum. "Had you started with a 5GB limit I'd have known it wasn't for me. A year on and I have just received an email telling me of intended product changes reducing this storage. I feel like I've been lured in, hooked and now had my service snatched away unless I pay. Am I the only one left wondering whether that was Microsoft's intention all along?" Sid said he wouldn't be purchasing additional storage and complained that he had to make new plans. "So once again I'm having my time wasted having to unwind system changes as a result of a Microsoft change of product policy -- after a year," he griped. In December, Microsoft changed the storage allowances for OneDrive for Business, the cloud-based service available to corporate users whose employers subscribed to Office 365. Rather than unlimited storage for all subscribers, Microsoft said it would scale back space to 1TB for all but workers on the more expensive E3, E4 -- since discontinued -- and E5 plans. More information about the changes to OneDrive can be found in an FAQ that goes into detail about how the company will handle accounts that exceed the new 5GB allotment. This story, "Microsoft gives OneDrive users until July to shrink their storage" was originally published by Computerworld . I spent the weekend working with the latest Windows 10 beta, build 14328.rs1_release.160418-1609. If you're in the Insider Program and on the Fast track, you probably installed the latest version over the weekend. Microsoft can be unpredictable, but all indications are the rollout has finished. With the Anniversary Update (previously known as Redstone 1) widely expected to be released in July, Microsoft's getting down to the wire when it comes to introducing new features. And going by what we've seen in the last beta build and this current one, the features are arriving fast and furious. Remarkably, even with all of the new features, this build is quite stable. I've seen some reports of installation difficulties (driver problems still reign supreme) and a few complaints about Edge crashing on right-clicks and odd Edge rendering problems. Windows Feedback seems to trigger a false positive with Malwarebytes, and a handful of testers are having debilitating problems. I had problems with wake-from-sleep. But these are likely teething pains. By and large, the build's doing well -- a remarkable achievement, considering how many new features are on offer. You can read the official list of new features on Gabe Aul's Windows Experience blog. Aul emphasizes Windows Ink (separate discussion here), the newly reformatted Start menu, improvements to Tablet mode (primarily to bring back some features in Windows 8.1), many new Cortana features, a much-needed reworking of the Action (Notification) Center, a few new capabilities in the Taskbar, reformatting and beefing up the Settings app, Lock Screen improvements, a Universal Skype app, and a whole lot of "other." The one feature everyone is talking about? You guessed it: the new Start menu -- or Start "experience," for those who are politically correct. Unless you're addicted to your pen or insist on using Tablet mode, the Start menu will likely capture your attention, too. Reaction to Microsoft's major changes to the layout of the Start menu ranges from enthusiastic endorsement to threats of mutiny. Start, after all, is the universal anchor that binds all keyboard-toting Windows users ... at the wrists and ankles. As you can see, the live tiles part on the right remains largely unchanged. The left side, though, has undergone major changes. It likely will change again before the Anniversary Update arrives. For those of you who were hoping Microsoft might restore Windows 7-style customizability to the Start, uh, experience, you're out of luck. There's no way to add menu items, no way to customize your shortcuts, no Explorer-based Erector Set for constructing hives of cascading commands. Start10 and Classic Shell fans aren't going to see new competition. Those of you hoping to gain some control over the massive All Apps alphabetized list -- a legacy of Windows 8 -- won't be very happy with the new Start either. That said, I've used the new Start extensively and think it's better than the one in the original Windows 10 and the nearly identical one in the Fall Update, build 1511. That may be damning with faint praise, but it's a step in the right direction. The Windows 10 Start menu right now has a single column on the left, populated by a link to user info at the top, a Most Used list, an optional spot for Microsoft advertising, and four immutable entries: File Explorer, Settings, Power, and All Apps. The new Start experience adds a mini column with a hamburger tile at the top and four immutable icons: User info, File Explorer (with a weird new icon), Settings, and Power. The new second column contains Most used, the old advertising slot, and the massive undifferentiated All Apps list. You see All Apps, all the time. Click on the hamburger icon and you see text to go along with the four icons: the user name, File Explorer, Settings, and Power. The menu itself can be dragged to resize, but it won't go all the way to the top of the screen -- just like the current Start menu. Opinions on the new experience range all over the place, but it bears noting that the All Apps list remains as monumentally unstructured as ever. Microsoft pioneered the use of folders to group together programs on the desktop in Windows 2.0. On the working (left) side of Start, we aren't yet back to that level of control. You'll note that the File Explorer icon no longer appears in the Taskbar -- a design decision I expect to be summarily voted down in beta feedback. Speaking of the Taskbar, in a multimonitor setup the clock now appears on all monitors. When you click on the time, you see today's events as logged in your Outlook Calendar. It's not quite as cool as Google Now cards, but it's a start. The Notification area, er, Action Center also has a few new tricks. The New Notifications icon now sits to the right of the time. Individual apps can show "hero" images, which were first introduced in the Win10 Mobile beta build 14322. If you click on the Wi-Fi tile at the bottom of the Action Center, you go to the Network fly-out, which is probably where you want to be. And you can control all of your playback devices from the Sound tile. If you have a pen with a driver that's Win10 compliant, Windows Ink is worth a gander. (Surface Pro and Surface Book users can run to the head of the line.) The Windows Ink Workspace turns your pen into a viable input method and navigation tool. A new pen toolbar makes it easy to switch ink color and width, erase, and perform simple pen calisthenics, including a new "ruler" that makes it easy to draw straight lines. Apps haven't caught up to the new pen shenanigans yet -- OneNote, Edge, and Photos are the only major not-built-for-pen apps that fully support pen functionality -- but the writing's on the wall. Pen and voice are well on the way to becoming fully supported input mechanisms. It won't be long before you can put your finger and your mouse away. I keep expecting a deluge of new features in Edge, but there's nothing of interest in this build. If you want to see something funny, use Edge to run a video on YouTube. Do you get a notification in the upper-left corner that "YouTube works better with Chrome. Yes, get Chrome now"? Seems that YouTube (owned by Google) has a slightly jaundiced view of the new kid on the block. Cortana is growing wings and oozing Halo-esque synthetic intelligence into more nooks and crannies of Windows. Cortana responds to voice commands even when your screen is locked. She (forgive my anthropomorphism) can put photos inside reminders and show photo-encumbered notifications in the Action Center. She'll search your OneDrive files. She even sets herself up -- you don't need to enable her any more. Creepy, isn't it? The flip side of the story: It's very hard to turn off Cortana. If you ask Cortana how to turn off Cortana, you get a nonsensical response that refers to icons no longer present. The Settings icon inside Cortana includes options for responding to "Hey Cortana," scanning email for flight and appointment information, and keeping app and setting history. There are also ancillary Web-based tools to clear Web search histories, as has always been the case with Cortana. But in this build I can't find a way to turn her off. (Turning her off in build 1511 is easy -- click on the left of the Cortana search bar, choose the Notebook icon, then Settings.) If you have build 14328 Pro or Enterprise, you can use the Group Policy editor to turn off Web searches (Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search), and thus keep Cortana from collecting your Web search history. In build 14328 Home, I don't see any such options. If you know a better way, please hit me in the comments here or on the AskWoody site. There are lots of small improvements. The Lock Screen, by default, doesn't show your email address. (Doh!) There are volume controls on the Lock Screen. (Doh squared.) You can switch desktops by swiping with four fingers (if your touchpad driver is sufficiently sentient). The Settings app has a potful of new settings. It remains to be seen if the new Universal Skype app will work any better than the old Skype app. You can control multiple playback devices (think speakers vs. headphones) from the Taskbar. As for the bigger picture, Microsoft is making considerable improvements to the 10 hurdles to Windows 10 adoption I talked about in February. Unfortunately, we don't yet have the ability to easily control patches -- although there are jury-rigged workarounds that work. Security and nonsecurity patches are still jumbled together. There's no privacy on-off switch -- in fact, Cortana's getting much worse. OneDrive, Edge, and Skype are all in RSN mode. And we still have no idea if Win10 upgrades will be free after July 29. All in all, Windows 10 looks a whole lot more interesting now than it did a year ago. We'll know in a few months, but perhaps the tide has truly turned. The U.S. government believes the Internet of things (IoT) has enormous economic potential across all industries. Its machine-to-machine technologies can reduce automobile-related injuries, usher in an era of precise weather forecasting and automate all types of processes. But what impact will IoT have on jobs? Will it create more than it destroys? And what happens to all the data devices generate? [ Get the scoop on the Internet of things at its most fundamental level and find out where it's headed, in InfoWorld's downloadable PDF and ePub. | Pick up the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ] With those kinds of issues at stake, the U.S. Department of Commerce is now seeking public comment on the "benefits, challenges and potential roles for the government in fostering the advancement of the Internet of Things." There are 28 questions, and multiple sub-parts to some questions. It's a long list. The Commerce Department began accepting comments Friday, opening a comment period that lasts until 5 p.m. ET on May 23. The government plans to make the responses -- likely to run into the thousands -- public, resulting in the nation's single largest knowledge dump about the future of technology and where Americans think it should go. The focus on IoT is deceptively broad. Any IoT discussion will likely bring in all its related technologies processes: Robotics, automation on every level, widespread use of artificial intelligence tools, and the collection of incalculable amounts of data about every aspect of life. In sum, the government wants to know how the IoT will impact life, job, security and privacy. Many of the questions are broad, such as: Are the challenges and opportunities arising from IoT similar to those that governments and societies have previously addressed with existing technologies, or are they different, and if so, how? What are the most significant new opportunities and/or benefits created by IoT, be they technological, policy, or economic? And what technological issues may hinder the development of IoT, if any? The government's goal is to map out its policy role, including research, economic development, standards and security and privacy. The U.S. can influence standards, set rules on security and the privacy of data and influence the market through its purchasing power. "It would be good to have a clear policy on IoT from one of the biggest buying centers in the world," said Alfonso Velosa, an analyst at Gartner. Data ownership is another problem waiting to be solved. For instance, a carmaker sells vehicles to a car rental firm. The connected vehicles today can send information back to the auto maker, which may use it for vehicle maintenance. But that data is valuable for competitive and monetary reasons. This is data a car maker could sell to another party, perhaps an insurer. Should it be allowed to? "Right now we don't have any rules about how that data is managed," said Velosa. The government can also help set standards and rules governing security at the device, communications and cloud level. Some of the security rules the government needs to set are obvious, particularly around the ability devices to spy on people, said Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester. But the government needs to think about security and privacy rules now because they "are hard to undo later," said Gillett. Joshua New, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, a Washington-based research group, said there are already bipartisan efforts in Congress to try to develop a national IoT plan. Indeed, in January, Reps. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), launched the Congressional Caucus on the Internet of Things. It has two broad goals: to educate lawmakers about IoT and develop a policy role. In the Senate, lawmakers have their own bill, the DIGIT Act (Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things), which would create a national working group to develop IoT policy recommendations. There is a lot the government can do, said New. For instance, it can bring together cities, public transit agencies and tech firms and help broker agreements on deploying IoT-based technologies. This government involvement could create markets for vendors, encouraging research and investment, he said. The government will take the public comment data and issue a "green paper," which is the name for a tentative government report, not an official statement of policy. (That will come in a subsequent "white paper.") While this is a big project to undertake in the remaining months of Obama administration, considering the bipartisan IoT activities in Congress and widespread interest in the area, "this issue is here to stay," said New. This story, "Feds seek public input on the future of IoT" was originally published by Computerworld . Researchers at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Computer Science recently unveiled Futhark, an open source functional programming language designed for creating code that runs on GPUs, for use in machine learning and other high-performance applications. Futhark is meant to be more convenient to use than standard C/C++ frameworks for programming GPUs. It can automatically generate both C and Python code to be integrated with existing apps. [ Get the most out of collaborative programming with InfoWorld's 20 essential pointers for Git and GitHub. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] Most GPU programming involves using frameworks like OpenCL or CUDA, both of which use variations of C or C++ to generate code that runs on the GPU. Futhark can generate C code, but is its own language, more similar to Haskell or Standard ML than C. (Futhark is itself written in Haskell.) Futhark's creators claim that the expressiveness of the language makes it easier to describe complex operations that use parallelism. This includes the ability to support nested parallelizations (parallel operations inside other parallel operations). Futhark can do this "despite the complexities of efficiently mapping to the flat parallelism supported by hardware, as a great many programs depend on this feature," say the language's creators. Preliminary benchmarks pitting Futhark GPU programs against other GPU libraries showed mixed but promising results. For a maximum segment sum test, Futhark was nearly twice as fast as a competing open source project. In other cases, it matched or was only slightly slower than the competition. Futhark's developers attributed this to the newness of the language and its unrefined approach to allocating and reusing memory. The current Futhark toolchain can generate code capable of running on either the CPU or GPU, with a variety of targets. For the former, it generates C code compiled by the GCC; for the latter, it generates C code that uses the OpenCL platform. Thus, the same code run on whatever hardware is available to support it, in much the same manner GPU-accelerated apps like the MapD database can fall back to using the CPU if needed. Python users who want a speed boost can generate code with Futhark wrapped automatically in a Python module. The GPU code runs via PyOpenCL, which is a library for interfacing with GPUs. There are examples of this, such as a Futhark-driven GPU implementation of Conway's Game of Life. Because Futhark is still fundamentally a research project, it is not yet as polished or complete as other languages. The documentation is incomplete, but both docs and language are open source on GitHub. Wheat (ZW) Gives Up Half of Aug-Sep Bounce Tradable Patterns - 3 minutes ago Wheat (ZWZ22) is looking wobbly to start the week, remaining vulnerable to a deeper consolidation this week towards descending wedge support (on the 4hr chart). Odds are moderately high for a lower... ZWZ22 : 847-6 (-0.35%) WEAT : 8.68 (-0.34%) Lean Hogs Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:11PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 89.150, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 93.025. Feeder Cattle Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:10PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 178.550, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 183.550 and 188.250. Live Cattle Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:09PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 151.775, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 156.475. Soybean Oil Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:08PM CDT The downtrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading below resistance level 73.75, which will be followed by reaching support level 68.16 and if it keeps on moving down below that level,... Soybean Meal Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:07PM CDT The downtrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading below resistance level 419.1, which will be followed by reaching support level 398.8. Soybean Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:06PM CDT An downtrend will start as soon, as the market drops below support level 1356, which will be followed by moving down to support level 1315.6. Corn Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:05PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 680, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 698.6 and if it keeps on moving up above that level, we may... Wheat Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:04PM CDT The downtrend may be expected to continue in case the market drops below support level 832.6, which will be followed by reaching support level 791.2. A source of frustration among many funders is that the education space is rife with uncoordinated, duplicative efforts that don't get the desired results. One solution is for funders to pool their investments through umbrella efforts that can better align multiple programs and projects, aiming for collective impact in reaching educational goals, including improved standardized test scores, higher graduation rates, and greater college readiness. We've written about collective impact before, looking at the work of Say Yes to Education in New York State which is currently being evaluated by scholars at Teachers College at Columbia University with support from the Wallace Foundation. We've also written about the funders pushing collective impact to improve K-12 through the Cradle to Career Accelerator Fund, launched last year with support from several funders, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Related: The logic of collective impact also informs other funder efforts in K-12, including a multi-funder coalition known as Minnesota Comeback. Earlier this month, Minnesota Comeback made headlines in Minneapolis media when it announced $2.7 million in grants to support higher-quality education in Minneapolis schools, including district, charter, and independent schools. The grants include nearly $575,000 for the Minneapolis Residency Program to diversify the city's teacher work force, and $475,000 to benefit two high-performing charter schools, Prodeo Academy and Hiawatha Academies. Another grant, worth $1 million, will fund improved parent engagement. The Achievement Network will receive $250,000 from Minnesota Comeback to improve leadership training for teachers and school leaders in district, charter, and independent schools. So, what is Minnesota Comeback? The organization is an umbrella group of more than two dozen local and regional funders interested in improving education in Minneapolis. Some of these funders include the Cargill, Bush, Joyce, General Mills, Minneapolis, and McKnight foundations. At least one prominent national funder, the Walton Family Foundation, is part of the Minnesota Comeback coalition. Minnesota Comeback's stated goal is to create an additional 30,000 high-quality seats in Minneapolis schools for students from low-income backgrounds. This goal has raised a few eyebrows in Minneapolis, raising questions about how those high-quality seats will be created and speculation that Minnesota Comeback will pull resources away from the city's public school system in favor of charter schools. The involvement of Walton, the nation's most prominent and best bankrolled charter school funder, adds fuel to this speculation. Minnesota Comeback's executive director, Al Fan, denies that this is the organization's intent and has emphasized that educational success in Minneapolis will require collaboration among traditional public schools, charters, and independent schools. Fan is a former General Mills executive who previously served as founder and executive director of Charter School Partners. Minnesota Comeback is actually a rebranding of a group that began three years earlier. That group, the Education Transformation Initiative (ETI), began as a coalition of educators, funders and community members to reduce the achievement gap in Minneapolis. After extensive research and brainstorming, ETI decided to create a new organization for implementing its ideas. That led to the creation of Minnesota Comeback as a community rallying cry. Fan told the MinnPost website that funders have grown frustrated with fragmented education work and are looking to Minnesota Comeback to coordinate their investments. He works with the 28 funders and a 12-member board of directors to ensure the work is focused on the vision of creating those additional high-quality seats. The K-12 funding landscape is vast. While big-name players like Gates and Walton grab most of the headlines, there are dozens of other funders, ranging from national to local foundations. In this crowded environment, fragmentation and even duplication of effort is almost inevitable without greater coordination through umbrella groups such as Minnesota Comeback. This is a key area where funders can play a constructive role in getting people to work together assuming they themselves are capable of collaboration. See more articles by L.S. Hall. Update 10/3/17 Amys Attic is hosting its annual craft festival on Oct. 14 at its Harker Heights property. This year, the company is collaborating with the Central Texas Special Forces Association (CTSFA), Chapter 77, to raise $2,000 for Habitat for Humanity, according to the source. The free event, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., will feature food, crafts, childrens activities and a costume contest, and raffles for gift baskets. CTSFA is a nonprofit veteran-service organization with more than 9,000 active members belonging to 85 chapters in the United States as well as eight other countries around the world. The Texas chapter sponsors an annual fundraising raffle, donating 100 percent of the money raised to local service charities. Habitat for Humanity was chosen as this years recipient after CTSFA was granted 8 acres of land in Nolanville, Texas, on which it plans to build housing for disabled veterans in need. Not only were we looking for a credible, community-oriented association like CTSFA to team up with, we also wanted to find a receiving organization that has excelled in giving back to our community, and Habitat for Humanity is just that, said Chandra Howard, Amys Attic senior manager and event chairwoman. Amys Attic Self Storage is partnering with Ashley Furniture HomeStore of Killeen-Fort Hood, Texas, to host a craft festival and fundraiser on Oct. 15 at its Harker Heights property. Proceeds from vendor fees and raffle-ticket sales will benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Central Texas. Organizers hope to raise $2,000, according to a press release. The free event, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 800 Prospector Trail will feature more than 55 artists and vendors as well as food. Freddys Frozen Custard & Steakburgers will provide free frozen custard. Childrens activities will include inflatables and a costume contest in which prizes will be given for best costume. Attendees can also purchase raffle tickets to win one of several prizes such as a recliner from Ashley, a grill or a $50 Visa gift card. We see this crafts festival as one more way to draw attention and much needed resources to benefit the kids, said Ronnie Skinner, who owns Ashley HomeStores of Killeen-Fort Hood with wife, Sandra. The couple are also board members of the Boys & Girls Club of Central Texas. We have personally witnessed Amys Attics drive and energy to support local programs, and [were] excited to team up with this group of professionals. Its an honor to team up with Ashley and the Skinner family, said Bob Vamvas, director of operations for Amys Attic. With our digital-marketing campaign, strategically located stores, involvement in local chambers, and now with Ashley HomeStore, we know this will be a successful campaign benefitting a great organization! Amys Attic Self Storage, which operates six facilities in Texas, hosted a craft festival last Saturday at its Harker Heights property to benefit Furniture for Families Inc., a nonprofit that provides furniture to those in need. Event organizers hoped to raise at least $2,000 in booth fees from its 50 vendors as well as raffle tickets. In addition to craft sales, the event included food, free demonstrations, and raffles from vendors who sold baked goods, candles, clothing and jewelry. Childrens activities included a bounce house and the opportunity to take a free photo with a Minion cartoon character from the Despicable Me movie series. About 400 people were expected to attend the event, which the storage operator hosts each spring and fall. A different nonprofit is chosen as the proceeds recipient of each event, and the emphasis is placed on a charity that provides most of its contributions to those in need, said Bethany Burkholder, event coordinator and marketing manager of Amys Attic. Amys Attic is wonderful to do this for us, and the money we make today will help pay for some of our operating expenses, said Woody Hall, executive director for Furniture for Families. Founded in 2004, Amys Attic operates facilities in Belton, Copperas Cove, Harker Heights, Killeen and Temple, Texas. It supports several organizations including the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, the Rainbow Room, an emergency-resource center, and Operation Phantom Support, which provides assistance to military families. Founded in 2011, Furniture for Families collects gently used furniture and provides it free of charge to families, veterans and victims of natural disasters. Its work in Eastern Europe largely done, the development bank focuses on CIS, North Africa and Greece with one third of its projects consisting of low-carbon initiatives, says policy head Alain Pilloux. As it celebrates its 25th anniversary, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development might look like a victim of its own success. The London-based institution opened its doors in April 1991 with the aim of jump-starting post-Communist Europes fledgling private sector, providing cover for wary private investors and earning a profit just like a commercial bank. More than 100 billion ($112 billion) worth of loans and equity injections later, the EBRDs sixth president, Suma Chakrabarti, and his staff could declare mission accomplished over much of their original territory. Private capital has long since become comfortable investing in the Visegrad states the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia and investors need little hand-holding to push farther east and south if they smell profit. But no one at the EBRDs City of London headquarters is planning to hang up his or her spreadsheet just yet, says Alain Pilloux, vice president in charge of policy and a fixture of EBRD management from the start. The bank is carving new horizons for itself, both geographically and thematically. Territorially, the bank shifted emphasis after 2000 from the erstwhile Eastern Bloc to the states of the former Soviet Union, then seized on successive Mediterranean Rim crises to start operations in North Africa, Cyprus and Greece. Russia remains the EBRDs top client, with a current 5.2 billion ($5.9 billion) of loans and equity investments, but the bank froze new investment there in 2014 as part of the European Union and U.S. sanctions on Moscow for its intervention in Ukraine. Asked when business with Russia might resume, Pilloux says simply, There is no answer to this question. Kiev has been the biggest beneficiary of the EBRDs Russian boycott. The bank has poured 2.2 billion into Ukraine over the past two years, raising its portfolio there to 5 billion. Some 300 million went into a landmark transaction with state gas monopoly Naftogaz last winter. The EBRD fronted the cash for emergency fuel purchases in exchange for a huge corporate governance program that is changing that company deeply, Pilloux says. Naftogaz promised to appoint its first independent board of directors instead of being run directly by the Energy Ministry, and to overhaul its audit practices. Thematically, the EBRD has taken on a new mission of greening its part of the world. One third of the banks new projects are aimed at transitions to a low-carbon economy, says Pilloux, who expects that figure to reach 40 percent by 2020. This initiative also spreads the banks geographical reach: Marquee green investments include the first wind-energy farm in Kazakhstan and a light-rail system for the Turkish city of Izmir. In a year of fraught politics in some of its big donor countries, the EBRD will see an election campaign of its own. Chakrabartis four-year term expires in July; the U.K government, which he served for decades in senior government posts, is recommending him for a second term. Outgoing Polish central bank governor Marek Belka has put his hat in the ring as a challenger, if somewhat reluctantly. I wish to reassure those who are concerned about my future that the chances [of winning] are really very minimal, he said in March. A Belka presidency would be highly symbolic: He would be the first person from Central and Eastern Europe to run the EBRD. The bank has already appointed Sergei Guriev, a Russian critic of President Vladimir Putin now in self-imposed exile at the Sciences Po university in Paris, to take over as chief economist this summer. Nurturing a post-Communist generation qualified to take over the bank that helped it ranks as one more seminal EBRD achievement. Read more: CEE States Spur EU Economy but Roil Its Politics With financial market risk narratives calibrated to announcements in the days ahead by the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan, investors start the week pondering the sustainability of the rebound in risk-asset values over recent months. A pullback in oil-futures markets contributed to a mild selloff in European equities in early trading today. Regardless of todays pullback, for now, a high ratio of earnings beats as the first quarter reporting cycle continues to play out and signs of increasing raw material demand in China suggest that the glass-half-full narrative will continue to find favor among investors. Cruz, Kasich join forces to block Trump. Yesterday the campaign staffs for Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich announced that the two presidential candidates had reached an accord to coordinate races in upcoming primary contests in an effort to thwart real estate tycoon Donald Trump. A terse response from Trump labeled the move as desperate. Trump is expected to do well in a set of primaries this week in large, industrial northeastern states. Ball to sell can factories. On Monday, Broomfield, Colorado-based Ball Corp. announced an agreement to sell a portion of its global beverage can and bottle manufacturing operations to Dublin-based Ardagh Group in a deal valued at more than $3.4 billion. The move follows Balls acquisition of European rival Rexam, a transaction which required a divestiture of some assets to meet European Union antitrust hurdles. German business sentiment slumps. Confidence among Germanys corporate leaders waned in April, according to data released today by the Ifo Institute. The headline expectations index rose to 100.4 versus a prior 100 reading but fell short of consensus economists forecasts. Meanwhile, the institutes current conditions and business-climate benchmark slid lower from March levels. Bank of Japan takes huge Nikkei stake. Data compiled by Bloomberg indicates that the Bank of Japans asset-purchase facility has purchased exchange-traded funds in such quantity that the central bank now holds more than half of the units outstanding for some exchange-traded products. As a top shareholder in the vast majority of Nikkei 225 benchmark equities, the unprecedented equity stake has raised concerns among some analysts about valuation and liquidity distortions. Publishing firm bid. On Monday McLean, Virginia-based newspaper giant Gannett Co. announced an offer to acquire Chicago-based Tribune Publishing Co. for roughly $400 million including debt. The deal would merge USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune among others into a single portfolio of newspapers. Tribune has not publicly responded to the $12.25 per share offer, a 63 percent premium to Tribunes share price last Friday. This content is from: Culture People investing in ESG funds want their money to have an impact. They just dont have a way to ask for that information, says Jason Saul of the Center for Impact Sciences. Uber has agreed to pay up to $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit which resolves a major challenge to its business model by allowing the ridesharing service to keep its California and Massachusetts drivers as independent contractors. The lawsuit had claimed that Uber drivers are employees and thus entitled to reimbursement of expenses. The case against Uber had been closely watched in Silicon Valley, as other companies in the on-demand tech economy share Ubers reliance on independent contractors. The class action had been scheduled for a trial in San Francisco federal court in June. We realize that some will be disappointed not to see this case go to trial, said Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney for drivers. However, Liss-Riordan said the plaintiff drivers faced significant risks of losing if the case moved forward, particularly because a federal appeals court had recently agreed to review an order allowing Uber drivers to sue as a group. Nothing about the settlement prevents a future court, or U.S. labor authorities, from deeming Uber drivers as employees, she said in a statement. Out of the $100 million proposed payment, $84 million is guaranteed to drivers. Uber could also pay an additional $16 million, but only if the companys valuation grows by 150 percent above its December 2015 financing round within a year after any initial public offering. Uber was valued at $62.5 billion in that December funding round. Uber agreed to some changes in its business practices, including the institution of a policy for deactivation of drivers, chief executive Travis Kalanick said in a blog post about the settlement. Some drivers had long complained that Uber arbitrarily terminated users from its platform. Uber is pleased that the deal recognizes that drivers should remain as independent contractors, not employees, Kalanick said in the post. The company also agreed to help create a drivers association in both states. Liss-Riordan said that while such groups are not officially a union, they can act like a union in bringing grievances to managements attention. The settlement is similar to a separate agreement announced with Lyft drivers earlier this year, though the Uber agreement is much larger given that Uber has many more drivers. Over 450,000 U.S. drivers currently use the app each month, Kalanick said in the blog post. The Uber deal must be approved by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco. (Reporting by Levine; Additional reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Michael Perry and Muralikumar Anantharaman) Related: Topics Lawsuits USA Personal Auto Contractors Experts are cautioning both insurance buyers and sellers not to overreact to the recent federal court decision finding data breach defense coverage under a commercial general liability (CGL) policy. Experts are cautioning both insurance buyers and sellers not to overreact to the recent federal court decision finding data breach defense coverage under a commercial general liability (CGL) policy. Buyers would be mistaken to think the ruling means that they do not need a cyber policy if they have a CGL policy and insurers might want to think twice before narrowing their general liability language to guard against cyber claims when the marketplace is clamoring for broader coverage. The April 12 decision in Travelers Indemnity vs. Portal Healthcare Solutions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit presented a particular set of facts that may not apply to other carriers CGL policies or to other insureds situations. Travelers had argued that its 2012 and 2013 CGL policies did not require it to defend its insured, Portal Healthcare Solutions, which was being sued over a data breach by patients of a New York hospital that had hired it to secure its data. Defining Publication The 2012 and 2013 policies under Coverage Part B Personal and Advertising Injury obligated Travelers to pay if Portal became legally obligated to pay damages because of an advertising or website injury arising from the electronic publication of material that gives unreasonable publicity to a persons private life or discloses information about a persons private life. The insurer had argued that there was no personal injury or publication as defined by the policies because release of the records was not intentional and they were not viewed by a third party. But the court said an unintentional publication is still publication. The court also said the definition of publication does not hinge on third party access. In a recent interview with Insurance Journal, Stephanie Snyder, senior vice president for Aon Risk Solutions, said that the Travelers ruling turned on defining publication in a digital age and was not all that surprising. The private healthcare information was viewed as being published. When information is published it really does fall under a CGL advertising injury personal injury type of coverage and it really comes down to the definition of what is published information, said Snyder. Whereas some CGL policies might have an explicit exclusion for this type of injury, this Travelers policy did not, she noted. Snyder said the other noteworthy aspect of the decision is that it only said defense costs would be covered. So youre not talking about any of the expense costs, she said, citing public relations, notification, credit monitoring and computer forensics costs that might be picked up by a cyber policy. None of those are taken into account by this particular ruling. She said she was not necessarily surprised by the ruling. Weve seen other litigation going back where everyones trying to force coverage into a CGL in the case where they dont buy a cyber policy, she said. But where we are starting to see cyber policies become more the norm, I think these types of cases will fall by the wayside. Taking Notice Christopher Keegan, cyber and technology risk practice leader with broker Beecher Carlson, agrees that whether there is coverage comes down to the particular set of facts. However, when youve got a word like publishing in the policy, if you can find some element of publishing there, then the courts are going to pick it up and interpret it in a way thats going to help the insured. Thats a good thing, I think, he said. He said a case like this makes people take notice of an issue and forces underwriters to consider if they are covering things in a CGL, for instance, that they did not intend to cover. It highlights it for us and brings it to our attention in a way thats like, OK, we know this exists. What are we going to do about it?' he told Insurance Journal. He said cases like this are likely to arise where insureds have not bought a cyber policy and seek to leverage whatever policies they do have to find coverage. Theyre trying to take advantage of less-clear wording in those policies. Once you get lawyers involved in the process, thats what happens, he said. In these cases, he said, the businesses are really inviting litigation because they are going to get some pushback from underwriters who had no intention of covering what they claim. Keegan suggests that this is when the broker has to advise his clients: Do you really want that situation? Or in the midst of a breach wouldnt you rather have an insurer thats going to be saying, Hey, were standing behind you. Were going to provide some of the services that are provided under the cyber policy, and have the underwriters be on your side rather than litigating those issues? Keegan suggested that even this case is not yet finished because it will take some time for this to work its way through the legal system and states before everyone can understand exactly what its application is. Beyond Data Breach Linda Kornfeld, an insurance recovery lawyer at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Freidman in Los Angeles, put a different spin on the case, claiming it goes beyond its data breach context. This a positive decision for policyholders in not just the data breach context, but also with respect to other claims involving privacy issues, such as blast fax and zip code cases, she said in a statement. Kornfeld said the decision is in line with other cases where courts have broadly interpreted the publication language, finding that the undefined term is ambiguous and should be interpreted in the policyholders favor. She said that while there was no evidence that anyone actually accessed personal information in this case, the potential to do so existed had someone run the right Google search. According to the court, that possibility, even if it never became a reality, was enough to trigger the defense duty, Kornfeld said. Marketplace Pressure While buyers need to understand what is covered and what isnt, insurers do as well. Keegan believes the case offers a lesson for insurers to make sure that they understand what the exposures are and how to explain them for their own benefit. That process is evolving. ISO has developed exclusions carriers can use to say, We want to take this risk or, We dont want to take this risk. But theres a long way to go, he said, adding that many insurers are only now looking at cyber exposures and aggregations. Its not that easy, he said. Youve got to anticipate all of the things that are going to happen. While underwriters may want to be more precise in explaining what is covered and not covered under certain policies, perhaps even insert a full exclusion in a general liability policy, carriers have other factors to weigh, including the competitive marketplace with attentive brokers and customers. Keegan said carriers and brokers are competing with one another for clients and at some point a carrier that is pulling back on a wholesale basis is going to lose business to its competitors. For example, putting in a full exclusion could leave a hole that even a cyber policy wont fill. You can imagine what insureds are going to think about when someone says, Were removing coverage for you and were not giving you an option to actually fill the gap,' he said. He said brokers and others in the marketplace want to push for broader coverage and where theres some interpretation involved in policies. Keeping coverage open to certain risks is advantageous to sellers and their buyer clients. Calling All Policies Its not only general liability policies that are being challenged by cyber. Any number of different policies cover cyber risk in some way, shape, or form. As a result of that, were finding situations where two or three policies may respond to a particular situation, said Keegan. For Joshua Gold, an insurance recovery attorney with Anderson Kill in New York who specializes in cyber, Keegans point is the main takeaway from the Travelers ruling: Policyholders need to look to all of their policies for coverage, not just to general liability or even just to cyber. The case is an important reminder that non-cyber-specific insurance policies may provide vital insurance protection for cyber-related claims, he said. He also said the ruling offers hope that defense costs for cyber claims will be found in general liability policies and contends that could be significant. Theres always an issue with these type of claims that you are going to attract a class action lawsuit so just getting the defense component of that can be hugely valuable, he said. This can be a big deal. Gold agrees that the Travelers ruling is noteworthy for what it says constitutes publication of data in a breach of privacy. The court found that publication occurs upon disclosure of the medical data, does not need to be intended, and does not require proof that any actual third-party saw the data. Its a good development for policyholders but I would not put all of my eggs in that basket, he said, stressing that most businesses need multiple policies and need to understand all of their exclusions. Buyers should know before a claim where their coverage for cyber is, he said and this requires looking at all policies. Gold said his firm has secured coverage for businesses for claims under various traditional policies including property, crime, general liability, business owners, errors and omissions, and directors and officers. As for how insurers may react to the Travelers ruling, Gold agrees with Keegan that the marketplace will have its say although reactions will vary. My guess is that underwriters will all do their own thing on this, Gold said. While some will be completely spooked by the Travelers decision and narrow their offering, other underwriters will realize its a competitive marketplace and they might be able to offer a broker and client something better. So like everything its always hard to generalize but I am quite sure there will be very different reactions, he said. Cyber Gaps While most businesses should buy a cyber policy, they should not assume then that they are completely covered if they do, Gold said. A lot of cyber policies have tons and tons of exclusions and can be confusing so I dont think you can just rely n the cyber policy either, he said. Los Angeles policyholder attorney Kornfeld wonders how long traditional policies may be of help in cyber situations. As a policyholder, I would not rely upon this ruling as a substitute to purchasing cyber coverage because the industry is working hard, through exclusions and other language, to push data breach and cyber risks away from the traditional coverages, such as GL policies like that at issue in this decision, and toward cyber specific coverages, she wrote. Richard Caplan, with the national law firm LeClairRyans Atlanta office, echoed the caution that cyber policies themselves are not a panacea. He said a lot can hinge on the meaning of certain key words and phrases in a policy. Some who buy cyber insurance assume it covers all first-party costs in the event of an incident like investigation, notification and credit monitoring. But it only covers third party claims or lawsuits. If your cyber coverage only kicks in when a third party makes a claim, then practically speaking you may not have any coverage at all, he warns. For now, perhaps the most important thing to do is make sure you do not fall into the category of someone who thinks they are covered when they are not. Evolving Coverage In recent testimony on Capitol Hill before a House homeland security subcommittee, Adam Hamm, North Dakota insurance commissioner, cautioned lawmakers and the public about cyber coverage. Speaking on behalf of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) prior to the Travelers ruling, Hamm said many businesses probably do not realize that most standard commercial lines policies do not cover many cyber risks and thus they need a special cybersecurity policy. But they need to know that cyber policies differ and the market is far from being standardized, he said. Commercial insurance policies are contracts between two or more parties, subject to a certain amount of customization, so if youve seen one cybersecurity policy, youve seen exactly one cybersecurity policy, Hamm said. All these nuances mean securing a cybersecurity policy is not as simple as pulling something off the shelf and walking to the cash register. Insurers writing this coverage are justifiably interested in the risk management techniques applied by the policyholder to protect its network and its assets. The more an insurer knows about a businesss operations, structures, risks, history of cyber attacks, and security culture, the better it will be able to design a product that meets the clients need and satisfies regulators, Hamm said. Topics Carriers Cyber Agencies Claims Underwriting This post is part of a series sponsored by CoreLogic. The Importance of Accuracy and Granularity when Navigating the World of Big Data When we think about data, all we have to do is look around to see its power at work. Data is everywhere, and it is so seamlessly integrated into every aspect of our lives that we often forget how dependent we are on it and what it does for us, rarely taking the time to consider our lives without it. Just think about all the notifications you receive from your technologyfrom calendar reminders you have set months, or years, in advance to notifications from your social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.). The reality is that we live and breathe dataincluding data related to location. Datas ubiquitous nature makes understanding and using it essential to many of our daily activities. For example, are you picking up a friend for dinner? Where do they live? How long will it take to get there? What is the best route to your restaurant? These are all answered with the mapping application on our smart devices. Without the location data that powers mapping applications, how many of us would be literally lost? With location, location, location being the cardinal rule of real estate, it is strange to think that its often one of the most overlooked elements when considering a property. In the real estate industry, numerous data points exist to provide information on property details. Specific data attributes for properties such as address, owner, structure, assessment and valuation, just to name a few, create an illusion of providing the whole story about a property when, in actuality, it is only part of the story. Only one of these attributes is directly related to the first rule of real estate (location, location, location), and that is the address. For many, an address is considered to be a precise location, an unequivocal defined point on the earth. Yet, an address is distinguished as a way to catalogue and identify a particular geographic whereabouts, and is actually not representative of the location itself. Instead, an address represents a particular property/building, on a particular street, in a particular city, in a particular state. Yet in isolation, it provides very few location details without consulting some other source of information for validation, such as a map. Therefore, we rely on more granular mapping data as a guide to interpret the catalogue of data that the address provides, because close enough just isnt good enough. Granularity is important when considering any form of mapping data. For example, it is highly unlikely that a single page map of the United States would be of much value in helping you navigate from your house to the airport in your city. It would, however, be helpful, in understanding the relationship between California and Florida, i.e., the overall state-to-state proximity. In turn, the more precision necessary, the more granular your data needs to be. When identifying address locations, the most granular information available is found in those datasets that represent geospatial information for the particular parcel of land or structure either via boundary data or geographic point data representing a specific latitude and longitude. Many companies have a business imperative that requires they create and maintain granular and complete location-based spatial datasets to enable and empower their businesses decisions. Parcel data is at the base of many of these decisions for a variety of different industries and provides important foundational elements for Geographic Information Systems (GIS). For companies and organizations that must plan across multiple parcels and geographies, granular GIS data can improve accuracy while streamlining a variety of the processes required. In many instances, these businesses have a wealth of data options available to them. But, not all data is created equal, and users should carefully consider data quality when making any important decisions that are informed by the data source. The term big data gets thrown around a lot these days and there is no shortage of ways to use such data elements for all manner of analysis. All data sources are subject to quality concerns, and this is especially true of location-based information. Creating high quality data that is Complete, Current and Connected is never as easy as it seems, and anyone looking to produce their own datasets will quickly discover the job is probably larger than they planned it to be. Those seeking to leverage existing data need to consider carefully the data quality and accuracy to ensure the decisions they make from this data are appropriate and accurate. Navigating the world of big data, and particularly big location data, requires close attention to quality and accuracy, otherwise location, location, location may end up as lost, left-out and looking for more. Click here for more information on Location Information Solutions from CoreLogic. About CoreLogicCoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX) is a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider. The companys combined data from public, contributory and proprietary sources includes over 4.5 billion records spanning more than 50 years, providing detailed coverage of property, mortgages and other encumbrances, consumer credit, tenancy, location, hazard risk and related performance information. The markets CoreLogic serves include real estate and mortgage finance, insurance, capital markets, and the public sector. CoreLogic delivers value to clients through unique data, analytics, workflow technology, advisory and managed services. Clients rely on CoreLogic to help identify and manage growth opportunities, improve performance and mitigate risk. Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., CoreLogic operates in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.corelogic.com. Topics Property UnitedHealth Group Inc. will drop out of government-organized health insurance markets in at least 16 states as the U.S. industry leader tries to stem losses from participating in Obamacare, the healthcare overhaul that has brought coverage to millions of people. UnitedHealth hasnt listed the markets its leaving, and confirmations of the companys withdrawals have been trickling in from regulators in the 34 states where the company sold plans for this year. The insurer wont sell individual ACA plans for 2017 in states including Texas, North Carolina and Maryland. UnitedHealth also is withdrawing from some related state insurance markets for small businesses. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hemsley said Tuesday that the company will end up selling Obamacare plans in only a handful of states next year. The exchange market is proving to be smaller and riskier than UnitedHealth expected, meaning we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis, he told investors. UnitedHealths reported state departure are Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Tennessee, Colorado, Maryland, North Carolin,a Texas, Connecticut, Michigan, Oklahoma and Washington. Its going to take a while for these markets to settle out and stabilize, said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown Universitys Center on Health Insurance Reforms. Some carriers are going to see this as an opportunity and potentially go after business in these areas. So far, New York and Nevada have confirmed that UnitedHealth plans to remain on their ACA exchanges next year. The company has also filed plans to participate in Virginia for 2017. Wisconsin said it hasnt received an exit notice from UnitedHealth, and that it doesnt comment on insurers business plans. A representative of Covered California said plan participation is confidential until its announced later this year. In the states where UnitedHealth stops offering ACA plans for next year, people who are currently enrolled with the insurer will have to choose a new health plan during open enrollment. Their current coverage isnt affected. Volatile Markets The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas signature domestic policy achievement, is projected to cover about 12 million people this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, providing tax subsidies that help many afford private insurance. The program has proven volatile for health insurers selling coverage in the new markets, known as exchanges, with some reporting losses. Insuring customers in ACA exchanges has turned out to be more costly than expected. That may be because sicker people are choosing to buy coverage, or because people buying plans deferred treatment for their medical needs until they got covered. Insurers also have said some people are buying insurance, using lots of care, and then dropping their coverage mid-year. ACA Losses UnitedHealth, which had about 795,000 ACA customers as of March 31, warned in November that it was posting losses on ACA policies. In December, the company said it should have stayed out of the individual exchange market longer. The exchanges are a small part of the companys total medical membership of 47.7 million people. Yet the insurer said Tuesday that it expects to lose about $650 million on ACA plans this year. Hemsley spoke on a conference call after the companys release of first-quarter results, which topped analysts profit estimates, thanks in part to UnitedHealths consulting, technology and services unit, Optum. The stock gained 2.1 percent to $130.50 at the New York close. The impact of UnitedHealths decision to leave the ACA markets will vary by state. In North Carolina, a quarter of consumers will see the number of available Obamacare insurers drop to one for next year, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many of the rest will have just two carriers to pick from. The Kaiser analysis of UnitedHealths plans doesnt include actions by other insurers. Cigna Corp. is planning to enter a few new markets for next year, Matthew Asensio, a company spokesman, said by e-mail. The insurer offered plans on seven state exchanges for this year. No Statewide Coverage In Washington state, UnitedHealth was a relatively small player in the individual market, with less than 2 percent of enrollment, according to Pam MacEwan, CEO of the states health insurance marketplace. Yet the companys exit from the small business exchange would leave that market without a carrier that offers coverage across the state, MacEwan said in a memo to board members of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. A UnitedHealth unit called Harken Health will continue to sell in Georgia, mainly in the Atlanta area. Harken also offers plans in the Chicago area. Katherine Hempstead, who studies health insurance at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said Harken is a sign that UnitedHealth is still trying to figure out a better approach to the new markets created by the ACA. Theyre not totally giving up on the individual market, she said. The one piece of really good news is that they did not pull the plug on Harken. Maybe what United is really doing is reinventing itself. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Carriers Washington A 1981 Ferrari GTSI that has been missing for 21 years has been recovered, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). The car, reported stolen in 1987 from Newport Beach, Calif. while on consignment at a dealership, was recovered at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach earlier this month. The original owner was paid about $37,000 for the insurance theft claim in 1987 for the vehicle, one of 1,743 of that model made in 1981, NICB said The original owner has been contacted, according to the theft bureau. After it was stolen, the vehicle identification number (VIN) was later switched to the VIN of a 1982 Ferrari that had already been exported to Norway in 2005. When the vehicle arrived at the port, it was headed from Texas to Poland. Working with Customs and Border Protection, the California Highway Patrol and Ferrari representatives, NICB said it was able to determine the true identity of the car and to recover the original theft report filed with Newport Beach Police in 1987. NICB records showed only 12 stolen red Ferraris still unrecovered at this time. The NICB is supported by property/casualty insurance companies and self-insured organizations. News and Video Source: NICB Topics Auto Fraud Pennsylvania regulators fined Uber $11.4 million on April 21 a record for the utility commission for operating for six months in 2014 without the required approval. The company said it would appeal. The Public Utility Commission, which also regulates buses and taxis, voted 3-2 for a penalty that was considerably lower than the $50 million fine recommended by a pair of administrative law judges in November. Commissioners who voted for it justified the lower amount because they said the ride-hailing company has modified its practices to comply with state rules and has not generated many consumer complaints while operating under emergency and experimental authority. San Francisco-based Uber Technologies, Inc. drew criticism from the judges last year for continuing to operate a month after being issued a cease-and-desist order and for what were described as obstructive actions during the investigation. Commissioners John Coleman and Gladys Brown said the companys actions warranted punishment. It must be recognized that Uber has deliberately engaged in the most unprecedented series of willful violations of commission orders and regulations in the history of this agency, they said in proposing the smaller fine. A record number of proven violations should be expected to result in a record setting fine. The two commissioners who voted no said the fine was excessive compared to the commissions past actions. Its previous record fine was $1.8 million over an electric generation suppliers handling of a guaranteed savings plan for customers. Uber spokesman Jason Post said the company was shocked by the fine amount, adding Ubers actions did not harm anyone and the commission subsequently approved the same operations. Other cases with large fines, said commissioner Pamela Witmer, involved incidents of serious bodily injury, fatalities, significant property damage and/or patterns of unsafe business practices that jeopardized public safety. She called for a more measured and reasonable outcome. Commissioner Robert Powelson, the other no vote, said he would have preferred a $2.5 million fine. When Uber launched its operations in Pennsylvania, they were operating in a legally gray area, Powelson said. The commission should take this into account. The two judges wrote in November that Uber had argued it was providing needed alternatives, it used a broker license held by a subsidiary and there was no proof that harm occurred. Uber was fined more than $7 million in January for failing to provide sufficient information to California regulators. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Pennsylvania Guy Carpenter & Co. has promoted Peter Stubbings as CEO of the firms Bermuda operations, with immediate effect. In addition, Richard Keegan will join the Bermuda team as senior vice president in May. Previously chairman of the Bermuda office, in his new role Stubbings will be responsible for both the Retrocession and International Reinsurance Treaty practices, as well as overseeing new business development and the wholesaling of the firms U.S. business into the Bermuda market. He will continue to report to Kevin Fisher, CEO of Global Specialties. Peter has over 34 years of experience across the reinsurance market and since taking up the role of chairman has secured his position as a key figure within the Bermuda market, said Fisher. Fisher added that Keegan will work closely with the Retrocession team as well as supporting the wholesaling of U.S. business. Keegan joins Guy Carpenter from Aon Benfield in Bermuda, where he was a property retrocession Broker, and will report to Stubbings. Tim Gardner, CEO of U.S. Operations at Guy Carpenter, said: We are delighted that Richard will be joining the Bermuda team. Working directly with Kevin and Peter, he will play an integral part in the ongoing development of both our retrocession and US wholesale activities in the Bermuda market. Source: Guy Carpenter Topics USA Britain, Europes biggest financial center, votes on June 23 on whether to leave the European Union. The countrys banking and fund management industries are among those that could lose most from a so-called Brexit, many analysts have said, though much depends on the trading terms Britain would be able to negotiate with the EU. The following details the potential changes that could affect different parts of the industry. Rules. Nearly all of Britains financial services rules are derived from EU law. Though Britain has gone further than the EU in some cases, such as tougher capital requirements and restrictions on banker pay, a new rule framework would have to be devised within two years of Brexit. Passporting. Financial firms like insurers, banks, asset managers, payment services providers who are authorized in Britain have passport rights to conduct their business in all EU countries, either remotely from Britain or from a branch in another member state. If Britain were to join the European Economic Area (EEA) comprised of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein financial companies would continue to have passporting rights to conduct business in all EU countries but would have no say over the formulation of EU rules. If Britain did not join the EEA, UK firms wanting to operate in the EU would have an equivalence test to prove to Brussels that their home rules are as strict as those in the EU. British firms seeking to offer financial services to retail customers in the EU are also likely to need a locally capitalized subsidiary in the EU, which would be more expensive than running a branch. Political implications.Open-ended negotiations over equivalency are prone to political horse-trading and it took several years for the EU to accept the equivalence of U.S. rules on derivatives clearing. A British departure from the EU could alter the political balance within the bloc by removing a major pro-market member, possibly tilting it towards less sector-friendly rules. Banks.Among the most costly Brexit factors for banks would be the loss of the passporting facility, necessitating creation of European subsidiaries rather than merely operating additional branches. Funds.Much of the UKs 5.5 trillion pound ($7.9 trillion) mutual funds sector is run almost entirely under EU rules known as UCITS. Unless Britain joins the EEA, lawyers say there is potential for substantial disruption as funds could lose their UCITS designation, seen as a gold standard globally. Trading, clearing, reporting.Pan-EU share trading platforms, such as Bats Chi-X and Turquoise, along with clearing houses including LCH.Clearnet, CME Clearing Europe and ICE Clear Europe, are also authorized in Britain under EU rules providing a passport to serve customers across the bloc. Leaving the EU and not being part of the EEA could affect their cross-border business and EU-based customers might be unable to use trading platforms and clearing houses authorized by UK regulators until they have gained approval from Brussels. Ratings agencies.Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are authorized by EU markets watchdog ESMA. There are eight CRAs in Britain authorized by ESMA, but the larger ones would be able to operate via subsidiaries already established in some EU states. Repositories. Derivatives transactions in the EU must be reported to a repository and four of the six authorized in the bloc are based in London. To continue serving customers in the EU, the London-based repositories would have to show regulation equivalency. Derivatives, repos, stock lending.A large chunk of the worlds $550 trillion derivatives market is traded using contracts that come under UK law, even if both sides of the trade are based elsewhere. Courts in EU countries have agreed to recognize UK law for resolving disputes, but this could change if Britain left the bloc. Hundreds of thousands of contracts could be affected. Repurchase agreements (repos) and stock lending could face similar disruption. Benchmarks. If the UK left the EU and did not join the EEA, any benchmark administered in Britain, such as Libor, could only be used by EU banks after equivalency approval. Data protection.If Britain joined the EEA there would be little change in terms of the use of personal data. Outside the EEA and EU, Britain would have to show that its standards of protection meet EU rules to allow data transfers between the UK and the EU. Without this, it would be disruptive to banks that regularly transfer personal data across borders. Insurance.UK insurers and reinsurers benefit from passporting under the EUs Solvency II rules, but this would be lost if Britain left the EU and did not join the EEA and firms could have to open offices in the EU. Failing banks.Under new EU rules, regulators are required to recognize each others actions in dealing with a failing bank, such as debt writedowns. If Britain were to leave the EU, there would be no legal guarantee that an EU state would cooperate with any UK regulatory action. ($1 = 0.6994 pounds) (Editing by David Goodman) Related: Topics Europe The city of Bellevue, Neb., the Metropolitan Utilities District, a plumbing contractor and its insurance company disagree about whos to blame for a ruptured water line that flooded about 12 homes in February. The Omaha World-Herald reported that Gearhart Plumbing, a Bellevue contractor, hit a water line while working to fix a collapsed sewer line, causing water, dirt and sewage to flow into the homes basements. Bellevue City Attorney Patrick Sullivan said the city is disappointed that the contractors insurance company refuses to pay the homeowners claims. Sullivan said these situations arent all that unusual, and normally one of the parties involved takes responsibility. Within days, adjusters come in, insurance company pays it, and were down the road to the next project, Sullivan said. This is a battle between parties, and neither one will admit an error. Gearhart Plumbings attorney says the water line was hit because the Metropolitan Utilities District didnt mark it properly as requested. The utilities district disagrees that its the source of the problem. A district spokeswoman says the district marked rear of property, as was requested by the contractor. According to the city, the requests were to locate lines in the backyards of several homes, but not for Main Street, where the water line was located. Columbia Insurance Group, Gearharts insurance company, has refused to pay homeowners claims, saying that the district had an obligation to mark all lines in the vicinity. A representative of the insurance company didnt respond to requests for comment. At least a couple of the affected residents received compensation from their individual insurance companies, but most discovered that their policies didnt cover the damage. Sullivan said city officials are sympathetic to the homeowners but dont have immediate plans to pay for damage. Councilman Steve Carmichael and other City Council members have said they wanted the city to help the residents, but Bellevues legal team and administration stopped the plan. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Carriers Flood Contractors Homeowners Nebraska The state of South Dakota is working on new online flood mapping tools for the Big Sioux River Basin. The Google maps-style program should allow cities, counties, developers and emergency managers to test the flooding potential of increased flows in the basins various waterways. The project is expected to be completed within three years. State officials say the push to create a more accurate model arose out of a failure to predict the path of a massive flood pulse in June of 2014. That resulted in the closure of a section of Interstate 29 and a railroad line to protect against flooding that didnt overtake either transportation route, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported. We knew there was going to be a lot of runoff if additional rains happened, South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources spokesman Tim Cowman said of the days leading up to the mid-June rains. Thats exactly what did happen. The anticipated flooding of Interstate 29 between Vermillion and Sioux City didnt happen, though. The models used to predict it didnt account for the dispersing effect the Missouri River Basin would have on the surging waters as they moved south. The decision by the Corps of Engineers to reduce releases from Gavins Point Dam by more than two-thirds helped, too, Cowman said. The South Dakota Legislature set aside $750,000 this year to pay a contractor to create the model. Once its complete, it will offer users the ability to highlight streams, move buttons with their cursor to increase flows on those streams, and to see what flooding is anticipated. With our model, well be able to move those buttons and say `what if this happened, what if that happened, Cowman said. Jay Gilbertson, director of the East Dakota Water Development District, said he hopes cities and developers in particular pay attention to the information gathered through the modeling project. Dams can do only so much to protect homes, he said. The dams are there to control floods, not prevent them, Gilbertson said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Flood U.S. health and safety officials issued new guidelines on Friday to help protect workers from exposure to Zika, a mosquito-borne and sexually-transmitted virus that causes the birth defect microcephaly and other neurological disorders. The new rules, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, urge employers of outdoor workers to inform them of the risks of exposure to Zika through mosquito bites and to train them on how to protect themselves. Specifically, employers are asked to provide insect repellents and encourage their use, and to urge workers to wear clothing that protects their hands, arms, legs and other exposed areas. It also urges employers to consider providing workers with hats with mosquito netting to protect the face and neck. The guidelines also call on employers to remove standing water from work sites to reduce mosquito breeding grounds. They also ask employers to consider reassigning female workers who are pregnant or may become pregnant and male workers whose partner is pregnant or may become pregnant to indoor jobs to reduce their risk of mosquito bites. [graphiq id=eQbQnB8RdRz title=Reported Zika Virus Cases in the United States width=600 height=566 url=https://w.graphiq.com/w/eQbQnB8RdRz link=http://conditions.healthgrove.com/l/1368/Zika-Virus-Disease link_text=Reported Zika Virus Cases in the United States | HealthGrove ] The guidelines encourage the workers themselves to wear insect repellant and protective clothing and to empty standing water on job sites. For healthcare workers, the guidelines call for the use of standard infection control precautions to prevent exposure to Zika from infected blood. For mosquito control workers, the guidelines urge them to follow the same precautions as for other outdoor jobs, and to use extra protective clothing when entering areas with dense mosquito populations. They also should follow standard precautions while handling insecticides. Finally, for business travelers, the two agencies urge employers to allow flexibility in required travel to areas with active Zika transmission. In particular, it recommends delaying travel for pregnant women or those who may become pregnant or male workers with pregnant partners or partners who may become pregnant. Upon returning to the United States, travelers from an areas with Zika transmission should protect against mosquito bites for three weeks to prevent passing Zika to mosquitoes that could spread the virus. U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, which causes temporary paralysis in adults. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by David Gregorio) Related: Topics USA Specialty insurance firm Ryan Specialty Group (RSG) has formed a specialty marine underwriting business and tapped two executives who were formerly with American International Group (AIG) to lead it. The newly-formed specialty marine underwriting manager is named Safe Waters and will focus initially in the U.S. and Latin America on yacht and cargo. Jorge Pecci, who most recently was AIG Marine Regional Executive for the Americas, has joined the company as president and CEO of Safe Waters. Pecci is responsible for growing the business. Ray Stahl, most recently senior vice president, Global Recreational Marine Practice for AIG, is also joining Safe Waters as senior vice president to head the yacht practice. Safe Waters will initially have locations in Florida and New Jersey. The company said it will have future announcements regarding Latin American operations. Miles Wuller, chief operating officer of RSG Underwriting Managers (RSGUM), said that Pecci, in addition to spearheading the development of the marine unit, will call upon his deep relationships in Latin and South America to further expand the units geographic presence. Pecci most recently began his career in insurance with AIG in 1993, working in a variety of marine managerial positions. Prior to beginning at AIG in 2007, Stahl was senior vice president, Recreational Marine for ACE. Chicago-based Ryan Specialty Group includes a wholesale brokerage, specialized underwriting companies and specialty services for agents, brokers and insurers. Topics Excess Surplus New Markets The employer of a tractor-trailer driver blamed for a fiery interstate crash that killed five Georgia nursing students has agreed to settle wrongful death lawsuits for large sums, with at least one victims family receiving $14 million, attorneys in the case said April 20. The settlements were announced just before the April 22 anniversary of the crash last year. A tractor-trailer traveling on Interstate 16 slammed into stop-and-go traffic that had backed up because of an unrelated wreck. The big truck smashed two vehicles in which nursing students from Georgia Southern University were commuting to work at a Savannah hospital. After civil lawsuits were filed in the crash, legal depositions revealed that Total Transportation of Mississippi hired the trucks driver, John Wayne Johnson of Shreveport, Louisiana, even after he had disclosed being fired by a previous employer for falling asleep at the wheel. Johnson acknowledged under oath the deadly I-16 crash was his fault, but insisted he was awake. We got those answers and the defendants had to pay a substantial amount that should represent a very painful lesson, said Robert Cheeley, an attorney for the families of three of the young women Amber DeLoach of Savannah, Emily Clark of Powder Springs and Caitlyn Baggett of Millen. Cheeley and David Dial, an attorney for Total Transportation and affiliated companies that were also parties to the settlements, both declined to discuss any dollar amounts. But attorney Render Freeman, who represents the mother of crash victim McKay Pittman of Alpharetta, told The Associated Press the Pittman family alone would receive $14 million. Its an extraordinary amount of money, Freeman said. But these were extraordinary young women. Dial said Total Transportation was still working to reach a settlement with the parents of the fifth student killed, Morgan Bass of Leesburg. All of the women who died were between 20 and 21 years old. Total Transportation certainly continues to express great remorse for what happened, Dial said. When attorneys in the case questioned Johnson on Dec. 17, the truck driver said he takes responsibility for causing the wreck, though he struggled to explain why he failed to notice a long line of snarled traffic in time to avoid the collision. Thats something Ive been battling with since that time, and I have yet to come up with a best explanation on that, Johnson said, according to a transcript of his deposition. Johnson insisted he was awake when the Georgia crash happened just before 6 a.m. He said the cruise-control on his truck was set at 68 mph and other vehicles had been passing him before the collision. Im going down, driving, and I see traffic ahead of me, and the next thing I know Im on that traffic, and its done, Johnson said. He said his truck was equipped with a collision warning system that was supposed to beep if he got too close to other vehicles, but he never heard it. Johnson also told lawyers he doesnt recall crashing into the two vehicles carrying the nursing students, just hitting the back of a tanker truck that had been idling in front of them. Johnson walked away from the crash uninjured. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Auto Georgia Trucking The first major product of General Motors Co.s $500 million investment in Lyft Inc. was a short-term car-rental program. Last month, the companies began leasing Chevrolets in Chicago for up to eight weeks as part of the Express Drive program, allowing drivers who dont own cars to make some extra cash by picking up and dropping off passengers. As GM and Lyft prepare to expand the offering to at least three other U.S. cities soon, California regulators are mulling whether to block it from some of the countrys biggest car-booking markets. The transportation regulator in Lyfts home state delayed a decision Thursday on a proposal that would set the minimum length of a lease for ride-hailing workers to four months. Regulators are concerned that short-term leases enable Uber and Lyfts fleet to act as taxi drivers without being subject to the same, longstanding rules. California wants to ensure the lines between ride-hailing and commercial drivers are clear and not give the technology upstarts an unfair advantage, said Evan Rawley, a business professor at Columbia University. What that is trying to do is make Uber and Lyft more like a car service, like a taxi, Rawley said. Theyre basically just trying to eliminate loopholes that allow Uber and Lyft to have an unfair advantage. Uber Technologies Inc. said its auto financing program, called Xchange, would be unaffected by the rule. It already requires at least a four-month commitment from applicants. However, Ubers short-term rental program with Enterprise Holdings Inc., which allows drivers to borrow a car for $210 a week, would be affected. While Uber said its not opposed to the overall proposal, the company sent an e-mail to drivers in California urging them to contact regulators and voice their opposition to limits on leasing. These rules are not in drivers best interests, Uber wrote in the e-mail. While Californias transportation regulator postponed a decision on rentals, it approved several new ride-hailing rules on Thursday. It will now require company logos be placed on the back of a vehicle, as well as the front; criminal background checks for drivers using services that primarily transport unaccompanied children; and more detailed disclosures about how fares are split in the newer carpooling services. It also approved a provision that serves as a setback for Lyft. Ride-hailing drivers will have to get annual car inspections by a certified mechanic. While Uber already requires these inspections, smaller rival Lyft currently doesnt ask drivers to get certified inspections until theyve been working for a year or have at least 50,000 miles on their odometer. Lyft opposed the rules. Ride-sharing has proven to be a flexible but reliable way for people to make ends meet. The proposed rules will hurt casual drivers who want to earn extra income but cant afford to own a car, Chelsea Wilson, a Lyft spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail before the vote. Eliminating the option for short-term leases will also have the unintended consequence of pushing people into lengthy, expensive contracts. GM testified before California regulators in opposition to the proposed rules. The automaker said it believes that rented vehicles should be included in the definition of a personal vehicle and is requesting the eligibility language be amended, Laura Toole, a GM spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail. When Lyft and GM introduced Express Drive leases, the companies said they would soon roll out the service in Boston, Washington, and Baltimore, with the hope of eventually going national. The program lets drivers working actively on Lyfts system return a rental whenever they want without financial penalty. Participants pay GM a share of their Lyft income and a per-mile fee for personal trips. The California Public Utilities Commission voted 4-1 to approve the new rules. The delay on a leasing decision adds another item to the backlog, along with fingerprint background checks for all drivers, which the ride-hailing companies also oppose. We are very happy that the commission endorsed forward-thinking products like uberPOOL and listened to Californians advocating for programs to allow more drivers to earn money on their own time, Laura Zapata, an Uber spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail. The CPUC is a state agency led by five commissioners who regulate privately owned passenger transportation companies, along with natural-gas, electric, and telecommunications firms. California, the most populous U.S. state and a policy-making trendsetter, was the first to adopt changes later embraced by other states, including clean-air standards, legalization of medical marijuana, and paid family leave. Before Thursday, the last set of ride-hailing rules were written three years ago. The commission hopes the next round will come more quickly. We anticipate doing this fairly expeditiously, Catherine Sandoval, a CPUC commissioner, said at the hearing. With David Welch and Olivia Zaleski Ridesharing: Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics California Auto A man who worked as an Uber driver is charged in the sexual assault of a 16-year-old passenger in Hawaii. Uber deactivated the driver, who was charged with two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of attempted sex assault. The 24-year-old man is being held on $150,000 bond. Police say the man dropped the girls friends off on April 16 and then took her elsewhere, where she says he sexually assaulted her. Its unclear whether he has an attorney. Hawaii News Now reported that minors are prohibited from using the ride-hailing service and drivers must pass background checks. Uber spokeswoman Taylor Patterson said in a statement that the company is investigating what happened. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Personal Auto By Joanna Yang Halabi advises clients on US domestic and international tax issues related to, for example, M&A, investment funds, securities offerings, financial products and bankruptcy. Several years of working at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and then Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has given Halabi broad experience of cross-border tax matters such as non-recognition treatment of intragroup transactions, FATCA compliance and maintenance of federal exemptions. Pearl Cohen is an international law and patent firm with offices in Boston, Haifa, Herzliya, New York, Tel Aviv and London. E arrivata lufficialita, dopo una giornata di voci rincorrenti: per il triennio 2018-2021 sara lemittente Sky a godere dei diritti televisivi per trasmettere, in esclusiva assoluta, le partite non solo delle prossime edizioni dellEuropa League ma anche quelle della massima competizione continentale, la Champions. Un pacchetto da favola per il quale la tv satellitare di Rupert Murdoch avrebbe messo sul piatto unofferta giudicata piu congrua di quella presentata dalla concorrente Mediaset. A dare lannuncio dellaffare concluso e stata la stessa Sky che, in un comunicato, ha spiegato che il nuovo format sviluppato dalla UEFA ci consentira di portare ai nostri abbonati un prodotto rivoluzionario per il calcio europeo in Italia. Per la prima volta la UEFA Champions League e la UEFA Europa League saranno insieme in unesclusiva offerta integrata, che permettera agli appassionati di seguire fino a 7 squadre italiane, mai cosi tante prima dora, impegnate nelle sfide con i migliori club europei. Sky: Rafforzata leadership Anche il livello tecnico dellofferta sara altissimo ed e ancora lemittente a rivelare i dettagli: Continueremo a fare innovazione, trasmettendo le partite piu importanti anche in 4K HDR. Questofferta senza precedenti rafforza la posizione di Sky come leader della programmazione sportiva in Italia ed e anche un altro passo importante di sostegno al calcio italiano. Insomma, per i prossimi tre anni, sara unegemonia totale quella della satellitare sul calcio europeo, avendo mantenuto il pacchetto Europa League (gia sua esclusiva) e affiancandola a quello ancor piu appetibile della Champions League ad appannaggio Mediaset dal 2015 al 2018. Sfida Serie A Ora la sfida fra i due colossi delle trasmissioni sportive si spostera sui diritti televisivi della prossima Serie A, per la quale si e ancora in attesa di un nuovo bando che, come annunciato dal commissario della Lega, Carlo Tavecchio, avra le stesse caratteristiche del precedente, andato pero a vuoto: solo una delle offerte presentate per i cinque pacchetti, infatti, superava la soglia minima richiesta dalla base dasta. Niente di fatto, quindi, anche in virtu della stessa Mediaset che, in sostanza, ha disertato il bando (giudicato inaccettabile) non presentando alcuna offerta. La battaglia, anche in questo caso, sara sulle esclusive: del resto, dopo essersi vista scivolare via una componente importante come la Champions, sulla Serie A Mediaset dara sicuramente battaglia. Circa 25 mila e 800 minori non accompagnati o separati hanno raggiunto lItalia via mare nel 2016. Un dato piu che doppio rispetto a quello del 2015, quando i minorenni soli a raggiungere le nostre sono stati 12.360. Numeri impressionanti, diffusi dallUnicef con una nota, la quale precisa che questi bambini rappresentano il 91% di tutti i 28.200 che hanno raggiunto lItalia lo scorso anno come rifugiati o migranti. Allarme Questi dati indicano una preoccupante crescita del numero di bambini estremamente vulnerabili che rischiano le loro vite per arrivare in Europa, ha dichiarato Lucio Melandri, Unicef Senior Emergency Manager. I sistemi attuali non sono sufficienti per proteggere questi bambini che si ritrovano da soli in un ambiente assolutamente sconosciuto. Sono bambini in fuga ed e necessaria una risposta coordinata a livello europeo per tenerli al sicuro. La maggior parte di questi minorenni non accompagnati o separati, arrivati lo scorso anno, provengono da 4 Paesi: Eritrea, Egitto, Gambia e Nigeria. I rischi Rispetto agli scorsi anni tra i nuovi arrivi ci sono anche tanti minorenni con meno di 15 anni e molte ragazze. Queste ultime in particolare sono esposte a rischio di sfruttamento sessuale e abuso, compresa la prostituzione ad opera di reti criminali. La rotta del Mediterraneo centrale dal nord Africa allItalia e unica per la proporzione incredibilmente alta di minorenni non accompagnati o separati tra i rifugiati e i migranti, mentre solo il 17% dei bambini rifugiati e migranti arrivati in Grecia via mare nel 2016 risultavano non accompagnati o da un familiare adulto o da qualcuno che se ne prendeva cura. La presenza di un numero cosi alto di bambini non accompagnati o separati lungo la rotta del Mediterraneo centrale non ha precedenti ha continuato Melandri -. E chiaro che abbiamo un serio problema e che continuera a crescere. Oltre ad affrontare i fattori che costringono i bambini ad intraprendere viaggi da soli, abbandonando le loro case, e necessario sviluppare un sistema organico di protezione e monitoraggio per proteggerli. Arriva la legge Sul tema e intervenuta la vicepresidente della commissione Infanzia, Sandra Zampa (Pd), in vista della Giornata internazionale del migrante, assicurando che lItalia sara il primo Paese in Europa a dotarsi di una legge organica e lungimirante sui minori stranieri non accompagnati. Un punto di arrivo importante che potra fare da apripista e da stimolo per tutto il resto dellEuropa affinche, come oggi sollecita anche lUnicef, ci si doti finalmente di una normativa europea, per dare una risposta coordinata a livello europeo e proteggere questi bambini che si ritrovano da soli in ambienti assolutamente sconosciuti . La legge, ha ricordato Zampa, e gia approvata alla Camera e ora stia al Senato. Questo provvedimento, ha sottolineato, e di certo la cosa giusta da fare per celebrare in modo dignitoso e sentito la Giornata internazionale del migrante. E la risposta concreta a un mondo lacerato da guerre e violenze che, come Papa Francesco ci ha ricordato, espone proprio i piu giovani al rischio di vita, di poverta estrema, di sofferenze di ogni genere. La scelta del Papa Lesponente Pd si e detta commossa dal fatto che Papa Francesco abbia dedicato la giornata internazionale del migrante ai minori non accompagnati. Migranti minorenni, vulnerabili e senza voce. What Is the EURO STOXX 50 Index? The EURO STOXX 50 Index is a market capitalization-weighted stock index of 50 large, blue-chip European companies operating within eurozone nations. Components are selected from the EURO STOXX Index, which includes large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks in the eurozone. Key Takeaways The EURO STOXX 50 index is a blue-chip index designed to represent the 50 largest companies in the eurozone. The index holds stocks from nine eurozone countries: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain. The EURO STOXX 50 is managed and licensed by STOXX Limited, which is owned by Deutsche Borse AG. Understanding the EURO STOXX 50 Index The EURO STOXX 50 Index is managed and licensed by STOXX Limited which provides indexes representing equity market investments all over the world. The EURO STOXX 50 Index includes the eurozone's 50 largest companies by market cap. STOXX Limited is owned by Deutsche Borse AG. It has been managing and licensing indexes since 1998. The EURO STOXX 50 Index was among the first STOXX indexes launched in 1998. The company has broadened its offerings substantially since its launch which focused on European stock indexes. It now offers indexes representing nearly every country and region of the world. Asset classes include equity, fixed income, and currency. It also offers indexes by sector, factor, strategy, and theme. ASML Holding NV, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Linde plc are the biggest holdings in the EURO STOXX 50 as of Oct. 30, 2020, representing nearly 16% of the index. EURO STOXX 50 Composition and Methodology The EURO STOXX 50 Index includes the largest 50 stocks in the eurozone automatically chosen from the EURO STOXX Index by market capitalization. For inclusion in the EURO STOXX Index, companies must be a eurozone member country. The EURO STOXX Index includes companies of all market capitalization levels from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain. The EURO STOXX 50 Index typically represents approximately 60% of the EURO STOXX Index. The EURO STOXX 50 Index is reviewed annually in September for any index component changes. As of October 30, 2020, the top ten components in the EURO STOXX 50 Index included the following: ASML Holding NV LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Linde plc SAP SE Sanofi SA Siemens AG Total SE L'Oreal SA Unilever NV Allianz SE There are EURO STOXX 50 sub-indexes for the following individual countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Each sub-index includes EURO STOXX 50 stocks from that particular country. EURO STOXX 50 Index Funds The EURO STOXX 50 Index is a leading market index for investors seeking to follow the eurozone's largest equity stock investments. Nearly all of the passive index funds in the investment market that track the EURO STOXX 50 Index are exchange-traded funds (ETFs). One of the largest and most popular for investors is the SPDR EURO STOXX 50 ETF (FEZ). The SPDR EURO STOXX 50 ETF has $1.87 billion in assets under management, as of Nov. 24, 2020. The ETF has been available to investors since October 2002. FEZ trades at $40.46 with an expense ratio of 0.29%. As of Oct. 31, 2020, FEZ had one-year, three-year, and five-year market value returns of -12.47%, -4.45%, and 1.10%, respectively. Other funds available for investors seeking to track the EURO STOXX 50 Index include the iShares EURO STOXX 50 UCITS ETF and the Xtrackers EURO STOXX 50 UCITS ETF. Billionaires play an outsized role in shaping the global economy, politics, and philanthropy. Forbes puts the number of billionaires in the world at 2,668 in 2022. The wealthiest among them belong to an even more exclusive club and wield still more power. Many of these billionaires are founders of technology giants, with much of their wealth still invested in the companies they started. They can, however, still borrow against that wealth to avoid selling stock, deferring (or eliminating for heirs) taxes on unrealized capital gains in the process. Multi-billionaires can also take advantage of a panoply of tax deductions to offset reported income, leaving some on this list paying no income tax in recent years. With so much of their wealth in publicly traded stocks, the net worth of the richest can fluctuate with market valuations. For example, Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Tesla (TSLA) and the richest person in the world, saw his net worth surge in 2021 thanks to the increase in the share price of Tesla Tesla shares rose nearly 50% in 2021. He currently owns 16% of the company. His net worth as of September 2022 was $241 billion. In contrast, Meta Platforms (META) founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg fell out of the top 10 in February 2022, when the company's share price plunged after a disappointing earnings report. Zuckerberg's net worth was reported to be $59.7 billion in September 2022. Below are the 10 wealthiest people on the planet as of the same date, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. All figures are current as of Oct. 4, 2022, unless otherwise stated. Key Takeaways Elon Musk, the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $241 billion. Behind Musk is the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, with an estimated net worth of $151 billion. Billionaires with the largest increases in their wealth in 2021 included Musk, LVMH Chair and CEO Bernard Arnault, and Google co-founder Larry Page. Six of the top 10 billionaires made their fortunes in technology, with Arnault, Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, Adani Group founder Gautam Adani, and Reliance Industry's Mukesh Ambani being the exceptions. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg dropped off the top 10 list in February 2022. 1. Elon Musk Age: 51 51 Residence: Texas Texas Co-founder and CEO: Tesla Tesla Net Worth: $228 billion $228 billion Tesla Ownership Stake: 15% ($99.3 billion) 15% ($99.3 billion) Other Assets: Space Exploration Technologies ($46.9 billion private asset), The Boring Company ($3.33 billion private asset), Twitter ($3.8 billion public asset), $17.8 billion in cash Elon Musk was born in South Africa and attended a university in Canada before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's degrees in physics and economics. Two days after enrolling in a graduate physics program at Stanford University, Musk deferred attendance to launch Zip2, one of the earliest online navigation services. He reinvested a portion of the proceeds from this startup to create X.com, the online payment system that was sold to eBay (EBAY) and ultimately became PayPal Holdings (PYPL). In 2004, Musk became a major funder of Tesla Motors (now Tesla), which led to his current position as CEO of the electric vehicle company. In addition to its line of electric automobiles, Tesla produces energy storage devices, automobile accessories, and, through its acquisition of SolarCity in 2016, solar power systems. Musk is also CEO and chief engineer of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a developer of space launch rockets. In 2020, Tesla shares soared 740% to propel Musk up the wealth rankings. In December 2020, Tesla joined the S&P 500, becoming the largest company added. In January 2021, Musk became the richest person in the worlda title he's held since then. Image courtesy Getty Images/Saul Martinez. In a Nov. 6, 2021 tweet, Musk asked his Twitter (TWTR) audience whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, framing the issue as a response to criticism of unrealized capital gains as a means of avoiding taxes. He proceeded to sell shares worth $16.4 billion over the remainder of 2021. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, cited a media report that Musk paid no income tax for 2018 to argue for the adoption of a wealth tax. "And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year," Musk responded on Twitter. Thanks to the surge in Tesla shares in 2021 and private transactions boosting the reported valuation of SpaceX, Musk's lead in the global wealth rankings has continued to grow. His net worth hit a high of $340 billion in November 2021. In April 2022, Musk began a campaign to take Twitter private, which culminated in a $44 billion buyout. Musk planned to fund the deal with $21 billion of his own capital. In the run-up to the buyout announcement, Musk sold 9.6 million shares of Tesla, valued at roughly $8.5 billion. In July 2022, Musk decided to back out of the Twitter buyout. Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk to force the buyout to go through. Musk countersued the company but then reversed course and, in October 2022, declared he was willing to buy Twitter after all. 2. Jeff Bezos Age: 58 58 Residence: Washington Washington Founder and Executive Chair: Amazon (AMZN) Amazon (AMZN) Net Worth: $144 billion $144 billion Amazon Ownership Stake: 10% ($121 billion) 10% ($121 billion) Other Assets: Blue Origin ($9.15 billion private asset), The Washington Post ($250 million private asset), and $14.1 billion in cash In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in a garage in Seattle, shortly after he resigned from the hedge fund giant D.E. Shaw. He had originally pitched the idea of an online bookstore to his former boss David E. Shaw, who wasnt interested. Though Amazon originally started out selling books, it has since morphed into a one-stop shop for everything under the sun and is expected to overtake Walmart as the worlds largest retailer by 2024. Amazon's pattern of constant diversification is evident in some of its unexpected expansions, which include acquiring Whole Foods in 2017 and entering the pharmacy business the same year. Bezos owned as much as 16% of Amazon in 2019 before transferring 4% to his former wife MacKenzie Scott as part of their divorce proceedings. In 2020, Amazons share price jumped 76% on the heightened demand for online shopping amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO of the e-commerce giant, becoming its executive chair. Image courtesy Getty Images/Alex Wong. Bezos originally took Amazon public in 1997 and went on to become the first man since Bill Gates in 1999 to achieve a net worth of more than $100 billion. Bezos other projects include aerospace company Blue Origin, The Washington Post (which he purchased in 2013), and the 10,000-year clockalso known as the Long Now. On July 20, 2021, Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen completed Blue Origin's first successful crewed flight, reaching an altitude of more than 66 miles before landing safely. Bezos' wealth peaked at $211 billion in the same month. 3. Bernard Arnault Age: 73 73 Residence: Paris Paris CEO and Chair: LVMH (LVMUY) LVMH (LVMUY) Net Worth: $141 billion $141 billion Christian Dior Ownership Stake: 97.5% ($111 billion total) 97.5% ($111 billion total) Other Assets: Moelis & Company equity ($21.3 billion public asset), Hermes equity (undisclosed stake), and $8.9 billion in cash French national Bernard Arnault is the chair and CEO of LVMH, the worlds largest luxury goods company. LVMH brands include Louis Vuitton, Hennessey, Marc Jacobs, and Sephora. Most of Arnault's wealth comes from his massive stake in Christian Dior SE, the holding company that controls 41.2% of LVMH. His shares in Christian Dior SE, plus an additional 6.2% in LVMH, are held through his family-owned holding company, Groupe Familial Arnault. An engineer by training, Arnault first showed his business acumen while working for his fathers construction firm, Ferret-Savinel, taking charge of the company in 1971. He converted Ferret-Savinel to a real estate company named Ferinel Inc. in 1979. Image courtesy Getty/Christophe Morin. Arnault remained Ferinel's chair for another six years, until he acquired and reorganized luxury goods maker Financiere Agache in 1984, eventually selling all its holdings other than Christian Dior and Le Bon Marche. He was invited to invest in LVMH in 1987 and became the majority shareholder, chair of the board, and CEO of the company two years later. 4. Gautam Adani Age: 60 60 Residence: Gurgaon, India Gurgaon, India Founder and Chair: Adani Group Adani Group Net Worth: $125 billion $125 billion Adani Enterprises, Power. and Transmissions Ownership Stakes: 75% each ($72.4 billion) 75% each ($72.4 billion) Other Assets: 65% of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone ($12.2 billion public asset), 61% of Adani Green Energy ($24.5 billion public asset), 37% of Adani Total Gas ($16.2 billion public asset) Gautam Adani, the founder of Adani Group, surpassed Mukesh Ambani in March 2022 as the richest person in Asia. Adani, via his ownership of Adani Group, owns major stakes in six key Indian companies, including a 75% stake in Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, and Adani Transmissions, as well as a 65% stake in Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone, 61% stake in Adani Green Energy, and 37% stake in Adani Total Gas. The combined market capitalization of companies owned by the Adani Group is $238.4 billion (as of Sept. 6, 2022). Adani entered the power generation market in 2009 with Adani Power. Adani created Adani Enterprises in 1988 to import and export commodities. In 1994, his company was granted approval to develop a harbor facility at Mundra Port, which is now the largest private port in India. Adani dropped out of college and previously worked in the diamond trade. Now, Adani has the largest port operator, closely-held thermal coal producer, and coal trader in India. In 2020, he purchased a 74% stake in Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, India's second-busiest airport. The billionaire was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1997. Adani was also in Mumbais Taj hotel during the 2008 terrorist attack. 5. Bill Gates Age: 66 66 Residence: Washington Washington Co-founder: Microsoft (MSFT) Microsoft (MSFT) Net Worth: $111 billion $111 billion Microsoft Ownership Stake: 1.3% ($25.6 billion) 1.3% ($25.6 billion) Other Assets: Cascade Investment LLC ($51.8 billion public assets), $52.4 billion in cash While attending Harvard University in 1975, Bill Gates went to work alongside his childhood friend Paul Allen to develop new software for the original microcomputers. Following this projects success, Gates dropped out of Harvard during his junior year and founded Microsoft with Allen. The largest software company in the world, Microsoft also produces a line of personal computers, provides email services through its Exchange server, and sells video game systems and associated game devices. It has recently invested heavily in cloud services. Gates shifted from the company's CEO to the role of board chair in 2008. He joined Berkshire Hathaways board in 2004. He stepped down from both boards on March 13, 2020. Bill Gates has much of his net worth in Cascade Investment LLC. Cascade is a privately-held investment vehicle that owns a variety of stocks including Canadian National Railway (CNR), Deere (DE), and Republic Services (RSG), as well as private investments in real estate and energy. Image courtesy Getty Images/Jack Taylor. In 2000, Gates' two philanthropic organizationsthe William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundationmerged to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, still co-chaired by Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates. Through the foundation, they have spent billions to fight polio and malaria. The foundation pledged $50 million in 2014 to help fight Ebola. As of 2021, the foundation had spent more than $1.9 billion to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2010, alongside Warren Buffett, Bill Gates launched the Giving Pledge, a campaign encouraging the wealthy to commit to donating most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Bill and Melinda French Gates divorced on Aug. 2, 2021. With the divorce, roughly $5 billion in equities was transferred to French Gates. Bill Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the U.S. with over 268,000 acres. 6. Warren Buffett Age: 92 92 Residence: Nebraska Nebraska CEO: Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) Net Worth: $98.2 billion $98.2 billion Berkshire Hathaway Ownership Stake: 16% ($97.1 billion) 16% ($97.1 billion) Other Assets: $1.03 billion in cash The most famous living value investor, Warren Buffett filed his first tax return in 1944 at age 14, declaring earnings from his boyhood paper route. He first bought shares in a textile company called Berkshire Hathaway in 1962, becoming the majority shareholder by 1965. Buffett expanded the company's holdings to insurance and other investments in 1967. Berkshire Hathaway is now a $705 billion-dollar market cap company, with a single share of stock (Class A shares) trading at more than $439,000 as of Aug. 5, 2022. Widely known as the Oracle of Omaha, Buffett is a buy-and-hold investor who built his fortune by acquiring undervalued companies. More recently, Berkshire Hathaway has invested in large, well-known companies. Its portfolio of wholly owned subsidiaries includes interests in insurance, energy distribution, and railroads as well as consumer products. Buffett is a notable Bitcoin skeptic. Image courtesy Getty Images/Alex Wong. Buffett has dedicated much of his wealth to philanthropy. Between 2006 and 2020, he gave away $41 billionmostly to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and his childrens charities. Buffett launched the Giving Pledge alongside Bill Gates in 2010. Now 92 years old, Buffett still serves as CEO, but in 2021 he hinted that his successor might be Gregory Abel, head of Berkshires non-insurance operations. 7. Larry Page Age: 49 49 Residence: California California Co-founder and Board Member: Alphabet (GOOG) Alphabet (GOOG) Net Worth: $93.6 billion $93.6 billion Alphabet Ownership Stake: 6% ($79.5 billion total) 6% ($79.5 billion total) Other Assets: $14.1 billion in cash Like several of the tech billionaires on this list, Larry Page embarked on his path to fame and fortune in a college dorm room. While attending Stanford University in 1995, Page and his friend Sergey Brin came up with the idea of improving internet data extraction. The duo devised a new search engine technology they dubbed Backrub after its ability to assess links to a page. From there, Page and Brin went on to found Google in 1998, with Page serving as CEO of the company until 2001, and again between 2011 and 2019. Google is the world's dominant internet search engine, accounting for more than 92% of global search requests. In 2006, the company purchased YouTube, the top platform for user-submitted videos. After acquiring Android in 2005, Google released the Android mobile phone operating system in 2008. Google reorganized in 2015, becoming a subsidiary of Alphabet, a holding company. Image courtesy Getty Images/Justin Sullivan. Page was among early investors in Planetary Resources, a space exploration and asteroid-mining company. Established in 2009, the company was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018 amid funding problems. He has also shown an interest in flying car companies, investing in both Kitty Hawk and Opener. Shares of Google soared almost 50% in 2021, moving Page and Brin up the billionaire list. Page's net worth went from just below $52 billion in March 2020 to the current $98.7 billion. 8. Sergey Brin Age: 49 49 Residence: California California Co-founder and Board Member: Alphabet (GOOG) Alphabet (GOOG) Net Worth: $89.6 billion $89.6 billion Alphabet Ownership Stake: 6% ($75.4 billion total) 6% ($75.4 billion total) Other Assets: $14.2 billion in cash Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, Russia, moving to the U.S. with his family when he was six in 1979. After co-founding Google with Larry Page in 1998, Brin became Google's president of technology when Eric Schmidt took over as CEO in 2001. He held the same post at the Alphabet holding company after it was established in 2015, stepping down in 2019 when Sundar Pichai took over as CEO. In addition to its dominant internet search engine, Google offers a suite of online tools and services known as Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and more. Google also offers a variety of electronic devices, including Pixel smartphones, computers, and tablets, Nest smart home devices, and Stadia gaming platform. Image courtesy Getty Images/Tim Mosenfelder. Brin spent much of 2019 focusing on X, Alphabets research laboratory responsible for innovative technologies like Waymo self-driving cars and Google Glass smart glasses. He has donated millions of dollars to Parkinsons disease research, partnering with The Michael J. Fox Foundation. 9. Steve Ballmer Age: 66 66 Residence: Washington Washington Owner: Los Angeles Clippers Los Angeles Clippers Net Worth: $88.4 billion $88.4 billion Microsoft Ownership Stake: 4% ($79.4 billion total) 4% ($79.4 billion total) Other Assets: Los Angeles Clippers ($3.16 billion private asset), $5.8 billion in cash Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 after Bill Gates convinced him to drop out of Stanford University's MBA program. He was Microsoft's 30th employee. Ballmer went on to succeed Gates as Microsoft CEO in 2000. He held the position until stepping down in 2014. Ballmer oversaw Microsoft's 2011 purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion. Ballmer owns an estimated 4% of Microsoft, making him the software giant's largest individual shareholder. In 2014, shortly after stepping down as Microsoft CEO, Ballmer purchased the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team for $2 billion. Image courtesy Getty Images/Steven Ferdman. Ballmer lived in the same dorm and on the same floor as Bill Gates while the two attended Harvard University. The brotherly relationship between the two became strained when Ballmer started pushing the tech company into hardware, such as the Surface tablet and the Windows mobile phone, during his tenure as CEO. 10. Mukesh Ambani Age: 65 65 Residence: Mumbai, India Mumbai, India Owner: Reliance Industries Reliance Industries Net Worth: $83.7 billion $83.7 billion Reliance Ownership Stake: 42% ($84.2 billion total) 42% ($84.2 billion total) Other Assets: $410 million in real estate Mukesh Ambani is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, the world's largest oil refiner and one of the world's most valuable companies. The conglomerate was founded by Ambani's father, Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966 as a textiles company and is now one of the leading segments of India's economy. Reliance's operations include oil and gas, petrochemicals, refining, retail, and media. About half of Ambani's wealth is derived from his stake in Reliance, which amounts to 42% of the public company. He owns Antilia, a real estate complex in Mumbai that's worth $410 million. Ambani also owns the Mumbai Indians, a professional cricket team. In 2016, Ambani launched a 4G phone network across India, netting more than 420 million subscribers, and is planning to launch 5G services. The Bottom Line If you want to get a little closer to making the richest billionaires rankings, you might need to become a technological innovator or luxury retail mastermind. Or you could keep it simple and focus on value investing. It also wouldnt hurt to have been born to wealth. However, the greatest fortunes on this list started as good ideas that people with creativity, drive, and connections used to build some of the world's largest companies. What Are Tax Havens? Most governments make their money through taxation, whether that's at the local, state, or federal level. This is the process of charging individuals and corporations levies on their incomes to fund certain government projects and plans, such as infrastructure, education, public pension programs, and health care among others. But there are some countries that don't fall into this category. These nations are called tax havens. The term tax haven commonly refers to a jurisdiction that imposes little or no income tax and provides a stable political and economic environment. These locales may be offshore, which means they are located outside of an entity's home country. That's because these places may not require you to be a resident or citizen to be present to take advantage of their tax policies. Despite what their name may imply, tax havens are not completely tax-free. In fact, these countries make up the money from other sources. Keep reading to learn more about how these governments earn revenue by charging other types of taxes. Key Takeaways A tax haven is a politically and economically stable environment that provides individuals and corporations low or no tax liability. Customs and import duties are a big driver for government revenue, imposing fees on goods imported into tax haven countries at high rates. Although many tax havens may not charge corporate taxes, they do require corporate registration and renewal fees. Tax haven governments commonly charge travelers departure taxes whenever they leave these countries. Increased transparency and tax reform may be changing how people view tax havens. 1. Customs and Import Duties Low-income tax jurisdictions normally supplement lost government revenues by imposing tariffs. These are taxes that are imposed on various goods imported into the country. These fees are referred to as customs and import duties. These duties are indirect taxes. In some cases, the lack of income tax revenue leads to higher tariffs. This often means a higher cost of living because higher fees are applied to the price of items before they are sold locally. The Cayman Islands is one of the world's most famous tax havens. It is home to roughly 100,000 companies even though it only has a population of about 65,000. Individuals pay no capital gains taxes while corporations and hedge funds are free from taxes on income and profit gains. But expect to pay anywhere between 22% and 27% in import duties on most goods. For instance, a 2016 BBC documentary on the Cayman Islands showed viewers that the islands high import duties caused a pack of fish sticks to retail for as much as 8.50. Bermuda, which is also considered another tax haven, charges duties on goods based on their total value. The rate is commonly pegged at 22.25% although it may be as low as 5% to 15% for most food items. The government charges people 25% if they arrive in the country with personal goods by sea or air. 2. Corporate Registration and Renewal Fees Tax havens aren't just attractive to individuals, but they're also a good place for companies to set up shop. Most offshore financial centers impose no corporate tax. But their governments still benefit from having thousands of companies registered in their jurisdiction. Tax haven governments typically impose a registration fee on all newly incorporated business entities like companies and partnerships. Companies are also required to pay a renewal fee each year to still be recognized as an operating company. The cost to register a company in the BVI ranges between $8,100 for an International Business Company and about $17,200 for a resident company, as of Jun. 22, 2022. Governments also charge additional fees on individual companies registered in the BVI to continue operating on an annual basis. These renewal fees depend on the type of corporate business activity. For example, banks, mutual funds, and other companies in the financial services business usually need to pay for an annual license to operate in that industry. All of these fees add up to create a strong source of recurring revenue for tax haven governments. To demonstrate how the strength of this revenue stream, it's estimated that the government of the British Virgin Islands collected over $200 million in corporate fees on an annual basis as of 2016. 3. Departure Taxes Quite a few tax havens have a very vibrant travel and tourism industry, welcoming hundreds of thousandseven millionsof visitors each year. This high level of tourism creates an extra revenue source for some of these countries in the form of departure taxes. A departure tax is a fee that is levied when a person leaves a country. This fee may also be called an airport tax, which is collected from anyone who arrives or passes through a specific airport. The money collected is used by the government for construction, improvements, maintenance, and the general administration of airports. Barbados is often considered a tax haven because it has a low tax environment, especially when it comes to offshore companies on the Caribbean island. Travelers should note that anyone over the age of two is required to pay about $28 in departure taxes when they leave the country. An additional $70 is required for people flying outside the Caribbean while individuals are charged $35 if they fly within the region. These fees are normally added to airline tickets as an additional levy. There are 15 countries that don't impose general income taxes on corporations, including Anguilla, Guernsey, Jersey, and the Turks and Caicos. Tax Reform, Tax Havens, and Transparency Comprehensive tax reform is a very heated issue and is the cause of much debate. Companies and top income earners often complain about being burdened by very high-income tax rates and extremely tedious tax compliance requirements, especially those in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia. This is one of the reasons why many corporations look to tax havens. This allows them to avoid paying taxes in their home country. Tax systems in countries like the United States have traditionally forced many wealthy individuals, their families, and companies to use offshore financial centers to minimize or even eliminate their total income and capital gains tax liabilities. These centers commonly have strict bank and corporate secrecy laws. But things are changing. For instance, the U.S. shifted from being one of the countries with the highest corporate tax rates to the middle of the pack. This is due to the tax reform that was put in place in 2017. In fact, it doesn't even rank in the top 20. Because of their lack of transparency requirements, tax havens aren't required to report account holder information to other governments. As such, they're often a great place for people to stash their money without paying taxes in their home countries. This is commonly seen as a form of tax abuse. Some countries, though, are making changes to the way they operate. For example, Switzerland's government made changes to its reporting system, saying it would agree to increased financial transparency for foreign investors in some respects as of 2021. The Bottom Line Income taxes are a major source of government revenue for most countries. But there are a handful of countries, known as tax havens, that impose very low or no income taxes on their citizens and domiciled companies. Some of the ways that their governments make up for the loss of potential income tax revenue include collecting annual license fees from incorporated entities and levying a customs duty on the majority of imports brought into the country. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the single standard indicator used across the globe to indicate the health of a nation's economy: one single number that represents the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific period. Gross domestic product may be easy to define but it is complex to calculate, and different countries employ different methods. This article discusses how India calculates its GDP. Key Takeaways India's Central Statistic Office calculates the nation's gross domestic product (GDP). India's GDP is calculated with two different methods, one based on economic activity (at factor cost), and the second on expenditure (at market prices). The factor cost method assesses the performance of eight different industries. The expenditure-based method indicates how different areas of the economy are performing, such as trade, investments, and personal consumption. India's Data Collection Process The Central Statistics Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation is responsible for macroeconomic data gathering and statistical record keeping. Its processes involve conducting an annual survey of industries and compilation of various indexes such as the Industrial Production Index (IPI) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The Central Statistics Office coordinates with various federal and state government agencies and departments to collect and compile the data required to calculate the GDP and other statistics. For example, data points specific to manufacturing, crop yields, or commoditieswhich are used for the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and CPI calculationsare gathered and calibrated by the Price Monitoring Cell in the Department of Consumer Affairs under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. Similarly, production-related data used for calculating IPI is sourced from the Industrial Statistics Unit of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. $6,700 India's per capita real GDP figure, which puts it 160th in the world. All the required data points are collected and aggregated at the Central Statistics Office and used to arrive at GDP numbers. India's GDP Calculation Process The GDP in India is calculated using two different methods, leading to different figures that are nonetheless close in range. The first method is based on economic activity (at factor cost), and the second is based on expenditure (at market prices). Further calculations are made to arrive at nominal GDP (using the current market price) and real GDP (inflation-adjusted). Among the four released numbers, the GDP at factor cost is the most commonly followed figure and reported in the media. The Factor Cost Figure The factor cost figure is calculated by collecting data for the net change in value for each sector during a particular time period. The following eight industry sectors are considered in this cost: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing Mining and quarrying Manufacturing Electricity, gas, water supply, and other utility services Construction Trade, hotels, transport, communication, and broadcasting Financial, real estate, and professional services Public administration, defense, and other services Here is an edited sample report showing an overall GDP change of 6.9%, with a similar percentage change across different industry sectors. For example, mining and quarrying declined by 2.9%, while financing, insurance, real estate, and business services saw a rise of 10.5%. Using these numbers, it is easy to see the current state of the economy and its different subsectors. Investors can make informed business and investment decisions and the government can implement policies accordingly. The Expenditure Figure The expenditure (at market prices) method involves summing the domestic expenditure on final goods and services across various streams during a particular time period. It includes consideration of expenses towards household consumption, net investments (i.e., capital formation), government costs, and net trade (exports minus imports). The GDP numbers from the two methods may not match precisely, but they are close. The expenditure approach offers good insight into which parts contribute most to the Indian economy. For example, domestic household consumption, which forms 59.05% of the economy, is the reason why India remains unaffected to a good extent by economic slowdowns in other parts of the world. Any economy with a high concentration on exports will be more susceptible to the effects of global recessions. Timelines for India's GDP Each quarters data are released with a lag of two months from the last working day of the quarter. Annual GDP data is released on May 31, with a lag of two months. (The financial year in India follows an April-to-March schedule.) The first figures released are quarterly estimates. As more and more accurate data sets become available, the calculated figures are revised to final numbers. No one knows precisely why India's fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31. Most likely, it's a holdover from the centuries of British rule (the U.K. also follows an April-to-March schedule). As it happens, April 1 marks Chaitra Sukhladi, the beginning of the Hindu New Year, so the date already has a special meaning for many Indians. India is expected to be the world's fastest-growing economy in 2022. Less romantically, many crops are harvested in February and March. Agriculture remains a significant component of the Indian economy. Starting the new year in April allows time to estimate the income from crop yields. What Was India's GDP in 2020? India's GDP in 2020 was $2.66 trillion. This was a decrease from $2.87 trillion in 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, India's GDP is predicted to be $2.95 trillion and $3.25 trillion in 2022. What Are India's Largest Industries? Traditionally, India's largest industries have been iron and steel, textiles, jute, sugar, cement, and paper. Recently, other industries have also started to take hold of India's economy. These are petrochemicals, automobiles, information technology, and banking and insurance. Where Does India Derive Most of Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) From? The largest contributor to India's GDP is the services sector, which accounted for 49.3% of GDP in 2020. The next largest contributor was the industrial sector (23.2%) and then the agriculture sector (18.3%). The Bottom Line India calculates GDP in two different ways. Both methods have advantages for the end-user, depending upon their needs. To assess the performance of different industry sectors, the factor cost GDP details are useful. Expenditure-based GDP calculations indicate how different areas of the economy are performing; whether the trade is improving, or whether investments are on the decline. Key Takeaways Adjusted EPS was $3.76 vs. the $3.32 analysts expected. Revenue were slightly higher than analyst expectations. Same-store sales growth was higher than analysts estimated. Digital sales rose sharply amid pandemic. What Happened Chipotle reported adjusted EPS that beat analysts' expectations for Q3 2020. Revenue narrowly beat expectations. Adjusted EPS decreased while revenue increased compared to the same quarter a year ago. Same-store sales growth exceeded analysts' expectations, but still marked a deceleration from the year-ago quarter. Digital sales continued their meteoric rise amid the COVID-19 pandemic. About 10 of Chipotle's restaurants remain temporarily closed due to the pandemic. The company's shares fell in after-hours trading. (Below is Investopedia's original earnings preview, published October 19, 2020) What to Look For Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.'s (CMG) digital transformation -- more digital transactions, delivery, and drive thru -- in recent years is being tested amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Store closures and other social-distancing measures led to falling revenue in Q2 for the restaurant chain, which specializes in fast-casual Mexican food. But the bright spot is that digital sales have been booming. Investors will be watching to see how Chipotle is weathering the crisis when it reports earnings on October 21, 2020 for Q3 FY 2020. Analysts expect revenue growth to rebound sharply as adjusted earnings per share (EPS) decline at a dramatically slower pace compared to Q2, when earnings plummeted. Chipotle's same-store sales growth also will be scrutinized by investors. The metric is used to gauge the chain's ability to generate increases in revenue at established restaurants as opposed to newer ones that have just opened. Analysts expect same-store sales to rise 7.3% year over year (YOY) after falling in Q2. Despite falling revenue and plunging adjusted EPS in Q2, Chipotle's stock has soared, outpacing the broader market. The stock dove further than the rest of the market during the pandemic-induced crash that began in the latter half of February, but has since staged a major rebound. Chipotle shares have provided a total return of 62.7% over the past 12 months, far above the S&P 500's total return of 16.5%, as of October 16, 2020. Source: TradingView. Beating analysts' expectations for adjusted earnings per share wasn't enough to keep Chipotle's stock from initially falling after issuing its Q2 FY 2020 earnings report. Adjusted EPS plunged 89.9% amid rising costs and revenue that fell 4.9% compared to the same quarter a year ago. It marked the company's largest earnings decline in at least four years and the first revenue decline since Q3 FY 2016, when Chipotle's sales were suffering from an E. coli food poisoning scandal linked to its restaurants in several states. The promising sign, though, was that digital sales grew 216.3% in Q2, accounting for 60.7% of total sales for the quarter. That was up from 18.2% of total sales in Q2 FY 2019. However, the increase in digital orders also led to higher delivery costs, stemming partly from free or discounted delivery throughout the quarter to help stimulate orders amid the pandemic. Chipotle's shares rebounded from the initial drop after releasing the report and since have risen to new highs. Analysts expect results to improve in Q3 FY 2020 compared to Q2. Revenue is expected to rise 13.1% YOY as costs weigh heavily on earnings. Adjusted EPS will decline an estimated 12.9% YOY. For the full year, analysts forecast FY 2020 annual revenue growth of 7.0% as adjusted EPS falls 23.5%. Top News - Investor Idea Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase. Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea 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. Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea 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. Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore. Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire Joshua Molloy, a 24-year-old Irishman from Co Laois who was arrested in Iraq for fighting against the Islamic State (ISIS), has been freed. He reportedly traveled to the Middle East in April of last year to fight with a Kurdish group, but was recently arrested by Iraqi authorities while attempting to make his way back home, the Irish Times reports. Molloy had served in the British army for four years before deciding to leave for Syria to help stem the rise of ISIS. He was arrested in Iraq along with two British companions earlier this month on grounds of entering the country illegally. Molloy and fellow ex-British soldiers Joe Akerman (37), and Jac Holmes (23, from Dorset) reportedly had been fighting with YPG, a Kurdish group that is attempting to resist the advances of ISIS. Efforts to secure the release of the men were led by the British Foreign Office. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London was not able to confirm to the Irish Times if the two British citizens had also been freed. Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said in a tweet on Sunday: I welcome the release of Irish citizen Joshua Molloy in Iraq. I thank all who helped & I wish him a safe journey home to join his family. I welcome the release of Irish citizen Joshua Molloy in Iraq. I thank all who helped & I wish him a safe journey home to join his family. Charlie Flanagan (@CharlieFlanagan) April 24, 2016 Joshua Molloys father, Declan, said he found out his son would be freed last night after a telephone call with Flanagan on Saturday night. We are all delighted here. We are jumping with joy to know that he is out, said Declan Molloy, who has repeatedly insisted that his son traveled to Syria for humanitarian reasons. You know that Christmas morning feeling? Its a bit like that, when you find your most sought-after present under the tree, the dream present. Thats how we feel. He said he talked to his son this morning via Facebook and reported that he was fine but felt that he would probably need some time alone after his ordeal. Molloy was released from prison on Sunday morning, but it is not known when he will return to Ireland. The 796 infants and children buried in an unmarked mass grave in the septic tank behind St. Marys Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway made headlines around the world after their shocking story broke in May 2014. But this is not the first time the Home and the Home babies, as locals call them, have been in the news. Following early reports on the research of Tuam historian Catherine Corless, who brought the story to light, Liam Hogan, a Limerick-based historian and librarian, began uncovering a trail of damning news clips dating from before the Homes founding in 1925 to after its closure in 1961. The articles show that the Home was very much a matter of both public and governmental knowledge. And the way in which they discuss the Homes occupants (or inmates as they are more often referred to) makes clear the totally normalized disdain with which all the illegitimate children and fallen women were held. The Tuam Childrens Home, it turns out, is a scandal that emerged from an even earlier scandal The Glenamaddy Childrens Home, less than 20 miles away. A June 1, 1924, article from the Connacht Tribune speaks of the dire conditions at the Glenamaddy Home, a former workhouse that began housing orphans and unwed mothers in 1921, under the supervision of the Bon Secours nuns. Tragedy in its most poignant form lies concealed beneath the childish gurgles of these tiny toddlers, the article reads. There are 130 in the house. These include 87 children from infants in arms to little boys and girls of nine, and 26 mothers. "Children of Misfortune" (21st June 1924) - an article on the "The Home" at Glenamaddy, Co. Galway #CTribune 1/2 pic.twitter.com/YuKptln2eH Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 The writer praises the wonderful, motherly nuns, who know every child by name for the marvels they have achieved given the homes poor conditions, which include gloomy rooms, walls reek with damp in winter and a total lack of any permanent bathing facilities. Blame for these conditions is placed upon local authorities for their failure to do anything beyond sending inspectors to take note of the issues. There are certain features about the childrens home in Glenamaddy that need not be touched upon, it continues. Sufficient has been said to show that it is vital for the interests of child welfare in the country that certain classes of entrants should be kept apart and be afforded the opportunity of separate treatment. The infant mortality rate, it notes, is higher than it should be. A few of the older children died from whooping cough, but the death rate amongst the infants has been higher than it ought to have been because of the difficulties of rearing motherless babies. Ultimately, the article commends a plan to transfer the Homes occupants to the site of another former workhouse in Tuam, which originally opened in 1846 to house the Famine poor. The hope is that a place might be found for one of the most noble, charitable and important works in the social life and welfare of County Galway. "Children of Misfortune" (21st June 1924) - an article on the "The Home" at Glenamaddy, Co. Galway #CTribune 2/2 pic.twitter.com/AycrcLMxej Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 Included in the article is a photo of some of the children at Glenamaddy. The incongruously cheery caption reads A delightful snapshot of children at play in the fields surrounding Glenamaddy Childrens Home. Note the little tot peeping out at the Tribune man with the camera. A photo of some of the children at "the Home" in 1924 (Connaught Tribune, 21st June 1924) pic.twitter.com/foGFqAKJ8m Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 At a 1925 Galway County Council meeting, it was agreed that the Tuam workhouse site would be a suitable new location for the Childrens Home. The people of Tuam had previously opposed the idea, preferring that the site be put to industrial use instead, but this opposition was withdrawn. "..the Tuam Workhouse was now vacant, [...] it would be well suited for a Children's Home.." (1925) pic.twitter.com/67coSnwMYg Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 Because paying patients in the Galway county hospital objected to being cared for in the same ward as unmarried mothers, in 1927 the Board of Health directed that a maternity ward be added on to the Home so that they could be fully segregated. Pressure from the "paying customer" to have segregated maternity wards for unmarried mothers (#CT, 17/07/1926) pic.twitter.com/wtvlq6iSjv Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 28, 2014 An account of the County Galway Hospital and Dispensaries Committee, published five days later, reports that eleven unmarried mothers had been admitted to the hospital in the past month. That is a terrible condition of affairs, it quotes the chairman as saying. We thought it was bad when we used to have three or four in the month. We appear to have reached a great depth of evil. "..we appear to have reached a great depth of evil.." (Connaught Tribune, 17/12/1927) pic.twitter.com/9ZKtGxiulG Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 28, 2014 The Homes future was in jeopardy as early as 1928, when the County Galway Homes and Home Assistance Committee considered terminating its contract with the Bon Secours nuns, believing the rate of 10s a week for the maintenance of each child to be too high. "The only thing is we don't want to put any further burthen on the ratepayers.." (Connacht Tribune, 1928) #Tuam pic.twitter.com/fprLzmz8LG Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 An Irish Times account of the contract debate from September 12, 1928, states that at the time there were 118 children, of which 96 were illegitimate, and 30 unmarried mothers in the home. In the same article, a letter from the Board of Health recommends that unmarried mothers who are second offenders should be committed to a Magdalen asylum of similar institution for a term of years. "We believe that second offenders [should be] committed to a Magdalen Asylum" (Irish Times, 12th Sept 1928) #Tuam 2/2 pic.twitter.com/w13MVE10w6 Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) June 1, 2014 The maternity ward was eventually added to the Tuam Home in 1929. Must read. A "special" Maternity Ward for unmarried mothers was added to the Children's Home in Tuam (1929) @Tupp_Ed pic.twitter.com/Kg2aM7PNWB Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 28, 2014 Two years later, 18-year-old Mary Ellen Garvey, one of the expectant mothers living at the Tuam Home, wrote in a letter to her mother, Please God, I wont be here for ever [sic], and if I am all right I am young enough yet and I will hold my head up yet, with the help of God. There are more than me here. I am not the first, and I wont be the last. A letter sent from Mary Ellen Garvey (18) currently living in the Children's Home, #Tuam, to her mother.. (1931) pic.twitter.com/9h7YSmwAQh Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 29, 2014 Local people living near the Home signed a petition in 1937 calling for the removal of the cesspool at the back of the Childrens Home, Tuam. . . . The petitioners letter stated that the smell from the cesspool was intolerable and highly dangerous to the health of a large number of residents and their families. Call for "the removal of the cesspool at the back of the Children's Home" "smell intolerable" (CT, 23/01/1937) #Tuam pic.twitter.com/rL4h4iU7As Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) June 3, 2014 In 1949, inspectors from the Galway County Council found everything in the home in good order and congratulated the Bon Secour sisters on the excellent condition of their Institution. "They found everything in the Home in very good order.." (Tuam Herald, 25/06/1949) pic.twitter.com/qSt31OOfey Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 Just one year later, in 1950, the Tuam Herald reported that a committee from the County Council visited the Home and recommended that necessary improvements be carried out. An Irish Independent article from November 27, 1954 notes that six children from the Tuam home had been adopted by American families in the previous year and a half, and that the Home Assistance Department of the Galway County Council was screening fourteen further applications. The story also notes that Full inquiries are made before an adoption is permitted and information is obtained through Church and State channels. Reports must be furnished regularly to the Council to show that the religious duties of the child are being attended to, that he or she is attending school, and that the circumstances of the couple who adopted the child have not altered. A 1959 article announcing that the Home would receive a 130-child extension recalls that, at one point, people in Galway would give toys to the children in the Home at Christmas but that this commendable practice ceased. "..at one time people in Galway had given toys at Christmas time to the children at Tuam Home." (CTribune, 5/12/1959) pic.twitter.com/dMJ6wEDU6C Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 31, 2014 The extension was never built, but was instead applied to the Heraldours Nursing Home, also in Tuam, the following year. But a 90,000 extension was built at the Bon Secours Nursing Home in #Tuam the following year (12th March 1960) pic.twitter.com/CxFz5iMRk8 Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 31, 2014 Will the Childrens Home be closed? asks a headline in the Tuam Hearald on August 27, 1960. At a Council Meeting the week prior, the Department of Health had proposed that the home be shut down. By 1961, the Homes fate was sealed, with the announcement that it would be closed in the near future. The article below notes that the occupants would be transferred to similar centers at Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath; St. Patricks, Cabra, [Co Dublin] and Shanross Abbey, Roscrea, [Co Tipperary] all now recognized as Magdalene institutions. The article seems especially concerned with the loss local businesses will feel after the Home closes, the supply of food, clothing and other necessities [having] been a valuable trade. "..the supply of food, clothing and other necessaries has been a valuable trade for local business houses.." (1961) pic.twitter.com/LawjVMib5p Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 A report from a special council meeting about the Homes closing assures that The unsatisfactory conditions in the Home are due to unsuitable buildings, shortage of trained staff and other factors. There was no reflection intended on the work of any member of the staff. "The unsatisfactory conditions [..] are due to unsuitable buildings, shortage of trained staff & other factors" ('61) pic.twitter.com/2M9s56Jswl Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 27, 2014 In 1962, there was an attempt to move all of the records from the Tuam Childrens Home to the County Council building in Galway. The move was blocked at least temporarily by the Tuam Town Commissioners. (Connaught Tribune, December 8, 1962). @brianmlucey this was the only mention I could find of the Children's Home records. (CTribune, 8/12/1962) #Tuam pic.twitter.com/Qb7ke7LThw Limerick1914 (@Limerick1914) May 31, 2014 The above is just a fraction of the clippings Liam Hogan has uncovered. To see more, read the Storify compilation, or visit the @Limerick1914 Twitter page. * Originally published in 2014. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, speaking after his partys annual convention told RTE's "The Week in Politics" program that his party was willing to talk to Fine Gael and Fianna Fail about forming a coalition government with either of them, but if there was agreement on a common program but it would have to be approved by a special conference of Sinn Fein. "If in the course of all of that, although it would be very, very challenging, we came up with a program for government which did the business as far as we were concerned, our leadership would consider that and, yes, if we thought that was an advance ... of course we would have to consider bringing it back to an ardfheis," the Sinn Fein leader said Earlier in his leadership address he had slammed Fianna Fail. The Fianna Fail party has come under attack from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for its performance since the Irish general election held two months ago. Speaking at the Sinn Fein ardfheis (annual conference, pronounced 'ardesh') in Dublin at the weekend Adams recalled that Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin had stated that he would not keep Enda Kenny in office as head of a Fine Gael-led government. But Adams pointed out that Fianna Fail was currently in talks with Fine Gael about the terms under which a minority government led by Kenny could take power, while Fianna Fail remained in opposition. If an agreement can be reached, Fianna Fail will abstain in the parliamentary vote for Taoiseach or head of government, thereby allowing the Fine Gael leader to be elected, provided he can get the support of a sufficient number of independent TDs. The Sinn Fein leader recalled that, during the election, Martin had delivered "nasty little soundbites" in which he claimed that Sinn Fein was unfit for government. Adams said that putting Fine Gael back into power was not in the national interest. He went on: "Fianna Fail voters did not vote to give Fine Gael another term. And Micheal Martin knows full well that Enda Kenny will not resolve the homelessness crisis, the health crisis or the crisis in living which many families are enduring. "He knows the Fine Gael leadership has little interest in Irish unity. But he would prefer to put them back as part of his effort to counter the growth of Sinn Fein." Highlighting the controversial issue of water charges, introduced by the outgoing government for homes using the public water supply, Adams pointed out that the Fianna Fail manifesto pledged to abolish the charges as well as Irish Water, the company that manages the scheme. "So, Micheal, water charges must go and Irish Water must go," the Sinn Fein leader said. The Fianna Fail-Fine Gael talks are set to resume today [Monday] amid reports that parties are preparing for another general election in the near future if the negotiations collapse. Water charges are said to be the key issue in the talks. Adams also criticized TDs who were elected to Dail Eireann as independents and have since been involved in talks about supporting a government led by either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. He said: "There were other citizens who thought they were voting for an alternative when they voted independent. Some of these TDs now stand with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. How independent is that?" The Sinn leader said his party would campaign for a repeal of the eighth amendment to the southern constitution which critics and activists say is unduly restrictive of abortion. Looking ahead to the next month's elections to the Stormont Assembly in the North, Adams pointed out that they were taking place on the anniversary of the death of republican hunger-striker Bobby Sands on May 5th, 1981. He said: "Remember last September, Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin called for the suspension or the adjournment of the political institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. But Sinn Fein and others refused to accept this. We successfully negotiated the Fresh Start Agreement. "And I want to commend the huge commitment and leadership of my friend and comrade Martin McGuinness in building the peace. Sinn Fein have stood against the British Tory austerity policies. "We have stopped the introduction of water charges [in the north]. We have guaranteed free hospital care, free GP care and free prescriptions. However, this is not enough. "Marriage equality is still banned in the north. And we are committed to changing that." Commenting on the June 23rd referendum on UK membership of the European Union, he reiterated his party's opposition to a British exit generally known as "Brexit" which has given rise to reports that border controls may be re-established between the two parts of the island of Ireland. "While Sinn Fein believes in a different European Union a social EU based on citizens rights and equality we will be campaigning for a strong vote against Brexit. "The imposition of border controls and economic barriers are not in the interests of the people of this island. Our clear goal is to break them down and end partition." On the issue of a United Ireland, Adams called for an end to "partitionist thinking" by policy-makers in the south and the news media, and he continued: "Now of course, from a republican and democratic perspective the British government has no right to be in any part of Ireland. "But from a unionist perspective all has changed, changed utterly from the days of a one-party state where nationalists were excluded from power; denied equality in housing, employment and voting rights; and where expressions of Irish national identity were criminalized. "Now there's a peaceful and democratic route to Irish unity," the Sinn Fein leader said. The auditorium in the Convention Centre on Dublin's docks was filled to capacity for the speech and journalists had difficulty gaining access to it. The weekend on which the ardfheis took place was exactly 100 years since the Easter Rising of 1916. The same auditorium, which holds about 2,500 people, was used for a concert staged in honor of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit to Ireland in 2011. Adams was re-elected as party president at the weekend, an office he has held since 1983. Despite growing speculation that Adams will step down, this is considered unlikely to happen in the near future. The general tone of the ardfheis was low-key and, although Sinn Fein's rise from 14 to 23 Dail seats in the general election was less than polls had indicated beforehand, there was a mood of cautious optimism among delegates that the party will play a key opposition role in the coming parliamentary session. British Ambassador to Ireland, Dominick Chilcott, was among the attendance for the ardfheis speech by Gerry Adams. ARE YOU A TOP COMPANY? What it Really Means to be a Top Company! To be a Top Company in Irish Construction Industry Magazines Top Companies listing means far more than just a rank and position in an ordered catalogue of names. To us, it means that your efforts to be the best you can be and to excel in your industry and sector have been effective and have paid dividends. To us, it means that your determination and commitment to develop and instil a positive work culture and environment have brought your business due success plus satisfaction. We see it as you being a supportive and inclusive place in which to work that strives to bring the best out of everyone across every level of the organisation. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Barack Obama has announced the deployment of an extra 250 US special operations forces to Syria to assist troops trying to dislodge Islamic State extremists from the war-torn country. The US president, hailing recent gains against the group, said the added troops would help "to keep up this momentum" against IS. The move will significantly broaden the American presence in Syria, bringing the number of personnel to roughly 300, up from about 50 special operations forces currently there. Mr Obama revealed his decision a week after Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced that more than 200 US troops will soon be headed to Iraq, where local forces are also battling Islamic State militants who control areas of that country. He said the newest insertion of US forces will not be in combat roles. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces," Mr Obama said during a speech in Hanover, Germany, that capped a week-long trip that also took him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. IS was a focus of his private talks with his counterparts in all three stops. Mr Obama said that in a meeting later with the leaders of Britain, Germany, France and Italy, he would ask those nations to step up their contribution to the air campaign and to the training of local forces. He also said he would be seeking more economic aid to rebuild parts of Iraq the US-led coalition has recaptured from IS. "Europe and Nato can still do more," he said. "We need to do everything in our power to stop them." Mr Obama discussed his troop decision briefly during a broader speech on US-European relations and the importance to the world of continued European unity. He urged Europe's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, which he said creates wedges among populations, and other issues including education for young people and equal pay for equal work for women. "If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way," Mr Obama said, decrying an "us-versus-them" mentality that breeds animosity toward immigrants, Muslims and others. Alluding to American presidential candidate Donald Trump, he said loud voices get attention when it comes to demonising minorities. He added: "This is a defining moment and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe. "If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue." The president's appeal for Europe to stick together came days after he made a forceful argument while in London against Britain exiting the European Union. Mr Obama also said he wants good relations with Russia, but said the global community must keep up sanctions on the country until it fully implements its commitments under a Ukraine deal struck in Minsk. With the continued fall-out resulting from the terrorist attacks last November still impacting on travel to the French capital, some hotels have experienced their lowest occupancy rates in 25 years, forcing many to cut their room rates in an effort to stem the shortfall. A survey by Synhorcat, the French hotel and restaurant operators union, reported sales in the citys cafes and bars down 44% in the weeks after the attacks, with hotels recording a 57% drop in business. Research by hospitality research firm MKG Group found the sector showing a gradual recovery through the early months of 2016, but still off by 11% compared to 2015. We estimate the revenue shortfall for the French hotel industry at 270 million, of which 146m was for Paris alone, said Vanguelis Panayotis, director of development at MKG. France is the most-visited country in the world, with Paris hosting well over 32 million tourists last year, worth 21 billion to the economy. Numbers of American and Japanese visitors have been notably down so far in 2016, a situation exacerbated by Donald Trumps statement that Europe is a dangerous place right now. As the holiday season approaches its pivotal point, the French tourist authority has joined forces with state railway operator, SNCF, and the Accor hotel group to extend the #ParisWeLoveYou promotion begun in the aftermath of the November 13 attacks. SNCF is offering over 220,000 discounted tickets on its TGV trains, while Accor is providing up to 30% discounts on all-inclusive stays in 100,000 rooms. SNCF chairman Guillaume Pepy said: This initiative led by SNCF with AccorHotels, and the Greater Paris authorities is unprecedented in terms of its format as well as its momentum. Valerie Pecresse, Greater Paris Regional Council president, echoed the sentiment: Greater Paris authorities are working side by side with the tourism industry to reinvigorate this vital sector, which has been struggling since the attacks. Fears of another terrorist attack during the upcoming the Euro 2016 tournament continue to garner media comment across France, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls insisting that security precautions at the stadiums will be sufficient. With eight million fans expected to arrive in France for the tournament, which runs from June 10 to July 10, Mr Valls said: France is a great, modern country which is capable of assuring the security of its citizens in the face of the terrorist menace. Designated fan zones in each of the ten host cities will accommodate various national support groups in large zones ranging from 20,000 to 100,000. The strongest answer to terrorists, in addition to the deployment of all intelligence and security measures, is life, Mr Valls said. Security in fans zones will be guaranteed with the same measures and methods as in stadiums. Irish fans made 250,000 ticket applications for Euro 2016, with the first match against Sweden on June 13. Despite increasing concerns around extremist attacks, the number of international tourists rose by 4.4% worldwide in 2015 to reach a record 1.18 billion. Last years results were influenced by exchange rates, oil prices and natural and man-made crises in many parts of the world, said Taleb Rifai, head of the UN World Tourism Organisation. Referencing extremist attacks, he said: We are facing a global threat, and cannot anymore say this is the problem of Egypt or France or Tunisia or Turkey or Thailand or Indonesia. Pointing out that 2015 was the sixth consecutive year of above-average growth in global tourism since the 2009 economic crisis, he added: The role of tourism is still underestimated and the integration of travel and tourism into national emergency structures and procedures often happens only after a major incident has taken place. A 2015 study by Moodys Investors Service showed that terrorist attacks significantly weaken economic activity, with long-lasting effects on the economy. The report, Terrorisms Negative Impact on Economic Activity and Government Borrowing Costs, measured the effect of terrorism on a countrys economic and investment growth, government expenditure and cost of borrowing. In 2013, for example, the ten countries most affected by terrorism took an immediate and significant hit to growth, dampening GDP between 0.5 and 0.8 percentage points, said Merxe Tudela, a Moodys vice president. Even worse is that the negative impact continues for years after the attack, taking up to five years for the effects to peter out. The report found that investment growth is also affected. It is possible to recall rather more innocent times when the pay of our business elite was not positioned way up in the stratosphere and when shareholders did not feel like pawns in a great financial game of chess. Twenty years ago, the annual general meeting at an Irish plc was usually a sleepy enough affair, mainly populated by gentlemen in grey suits and a scattering of retired people. After the usual formalities had been dealt with, shareholders would form an orderly, fawning queue to meet with the chairman and CEO and touch their hems, basking in the presence of greatness. There would be occasional complaints about the quality of the biscuits and the hotel coffee. At the Waterford Crystal AGM, a female shareholder once wondered out loud why those present were not being presented with gifts of crystal. A few hardy dissidents would jump up to raise points of order. At any hint of rebellion, the Chair could call on great battalions of proxy votes. Such days seem far away. Since 2008, in particular, chairpersons have endured heckling, a chorus of boos, and even dousing by egg. Company directors have been on the defensive as never before. Corporate governance experts warn that experienced managers are increasingly reluctant to accept directorships, concerned that they may be placing their heads on a chopping block. Following recent events, such caution appears justified. Last week, Ornua (the former Irish Dairy Board) unveiled its latest set of figures. A rise of almost one fifth in annual earnings to just under 60m. Enough to justify the payment of 9m in fees over two years to its nine senior executives? No, say farmer groups who point to a 40% drop in milk prices that have left many farmers struggling. The controversy coincides with the election of a new Irish Farmers Association (IFA) president, Joe Healy, almost six months after controversy erupted over the huge salaries paid to that organisations top brass, and former CEO, Pat Smith, in particular. Transparency is sought all round and it has been in short supply at Aryzta (the former IAWS) where CEO Owen Killian, a couple of years back pulled in a 5.5m pay package. The groups turnover is almost 3.5bn, but the share price dropped in half. It is slightly up on its March low, but the group is facing calls to be much more forthcoming in its relations with the investment community. Irish shareholders generally feel put upon, not least the hordes of the faithful in the exploration sector. Yet Irish executive salaries are modest compared with top pay-outs across the Anglo-American corporate world. Take Martin Sorrell, who built up WPP, the worlds largest advertising and marketing services group. Mr Sorrell recently collected the second largest package to be ever granted to a CEO of a FTSE 100 Company, one of $63m. He has defended the payment, pointing to growth in WPPs market capitalisation of 10bn and a doubling in its share price over the past four years. He sees himself, with some justice, as more global entrepreneur than corporate manager. Having become a key figure in the advertising firm, Saatchi & Saatchi, which helped mastermind Margaret Thatchers 1979 election victory, Mr Sorrell branched out as a venture capitalist, acquiring an obscure manufacturer of shopping baskets, Wire & Plastics Products before transforming it into the huge global services business of today. Whatever you say about Mr Sorrell, and some less than kind things have been said about him, he is an extraordinary capitalist if perhaps, not the most charming of humans. You could justify his exercises in personal wealth amassment on the basis that he has created huge value for his shareholders. But what about Bart Becht who, a few years back, was paid 92m in his capacity as CEO of Reckitt Benckiser. Then there is Philippe Daumas of Viacom who netted $84.5m in 2010. Sly Bailey, boss of Trinity Mirror, earned 14m over a ten-year period when the companys share price plummeted by 90%. Between 1998 and 2010, the median total remuneration of London FTSE 100 bosses jumped from 1m to 4.8m. Since 1990, CEO compensation has risen by 8.5% a year compared with corporate profits growth of just under 3%. Bosses salaries have clearly parted company with reality. So, who is to blame? Globalisation has certainly brought bumper profits to large groups able to capitalise on open borders and lax tax arrangements, but as the figures above suggest this does not tell the whole story. Economic liberalisation has been accompanied by the development of new informal cartels consisting of highly connected people who operate lucrative networks. The political reaction in the form of large votes for populists like Donald Trump is there for all to see, but shareholders too have begun to respond at AGMs. Close to home, Smurfit Kappa felt the force of shareholder annoyance in the early Noughties. In Britain, in 2012, we witnessed the so-called shareholder spring, with pay packages being rejected at companies including insurer Aviva and exploration group, Cairn Energy. Fund managers have begun to respond on behalf of their beneficiaries, but such efforts have been foiled by the arrival of large numbers of overseas investors based in regions such as the Gulf who display far less interest in corporate governance. Earlier this month, however, rebellion resurfaced when 60% of the shareholders rejected the generous pay package awarded to CEO, Bob Dudley, at a time when the BP share price has been in the wars. Reforms in the area of plc executive pay were introduced by the then UK Business Secretary, Vince Cable, two years ago. Many have questioned the effectiveness of these reforms, but they could be put to the test at a number of upcoming AGMs in the weeks ahead. Such activities will be watched closely on this side of the Irish Sea, not least because of the close ties between the Dublin and London stock markets, and because of the message that is sent in terms of shareholder rights and social society. William Shakespeare, who died 400 years ago this weekend, once wondered out loud about the rotten state of the Kingdom of Denmark. Well, the rot sure has spread much more widely since then. Danish shipping giant Maersk the worlds largest container carrier began its first ever connection between northern European ports and Cuba last Friday, promising the fastest freight transit times between Europe and the Cuban port of Mariel. The service will link the ports of Bremerhaven in Germany, Rotterdam, Tilbury in the UK and Cork to Mariel and onto Panama. In the past month, Maersk has acted on rising demand from Irish-based customers by starting a new direct service between Dublin and Algeciras in Spain. The Cuba development will not only be a boon for Port of Cork but will also act as a significant development for Irish exporters, providing a new opportunity to directly target the Latin American market. In the past few years the containerised market in Cuba has been growing at between 10% and 15% per annum; main drivers being infrastructure investments and modernisation projects, including the terminal at Mariel and the creation of the Special Economic Zone of Mariel. Maersk one of the first movers since the removal of economic sanctions is confident the new service will support the development of the Special Economic Zone, which is set to be the main engine of growth for the country. Earlier this month, the MV Northern Dedication docked in Port of Corks deepwater berth at Ringaskiddy, becoming the largest container ship ever to arrive in any Irish port. This forms a weekly scheduled call from Central America to Cork and sees the delivery to Ireland of 75 containers of fresh fruit, mainly comprising Fyffes bananas. There are very little restrictions at Ringaskiddy Deepwater Berth, so when it comes to handling a vessel of this size, the port is more than capable. In the future, we would hope to see more of these size vessels calling, as our port expands to meet the needs of our own customers and the needs of the global shipping community, said Port of Cork commercial manager, Captain Michael McCarthy on the back of the Fyffes delivery. Recent data from the Irish Maritime Development Office showed that total volumes of container traffic moving through Irish ports grew by 7% last year, with all major traffic modes delivering substantial growth. Bulk traffic grew by 7% to reach 29.8m tonnes, with Cork, Greenore, Shannon Foynes, Waterford and Wicklow recording above average growth rates. Load on-load off (LoLo) traffic which predominantly moves through Dublin, Cork, and Waterford grew by 8% with each port recording significant volume gains. Total output of wheat, including durum, will drop 3.4% to 154.9 million metric tons this year, according to the average estimate of the views which were expressed by 11 leading industry analysts who were surveyed by Bloomberg. Respondents to the survey expect smaller crops in France, Germany, and the UK, after favourable weather last year boosted plant yields. There will probably be slightly less good yields everywhere, said Alexandre Boy, an analyst at Paris-based farm adviser Agritel. Still, if we look at the main producers in Europe, there are no problems anywhere, so if things continue to be perfect, production could be higher. A smaller crop may bring some relief to prices that are trading near the lowest since 2010 in Paris following bumper harvests. The United Nations Foodand Agriculture Organisation earlier this month reduced its outlook for global production by 10 million tons because of declining potential for crops in Russia and Ukraine. The FAO sees world output at 712.7 million tons, about 3% smaller than the prior years harvest. The EUs production of soft wheat may fall to 145.8 million tons, according to the Bloomberg survey. That would be down from European Commissions estimate for last years harvest at a record of more than 151 million tons. Analysts in the survey expect the EUs durum crop to total 8.7 million tons for 2016. Farmers in France may harvest 41.1 million tons of wheat, down 3.9% from last year, the survey found. Milling wheat futures tumbled 18% in the past year on Euronext in Paris as last years record French harvest added to a worldwide grain glut. The survey also offered the following estimates: n Frances soft-wheat harvest seen falling 3.9% to 39.4 million tons, while the countrys durum production will increase 5.2% to 1.9 million tons. n German wheat output expected to slip 1.8% to 26 million tons. n UK wheat harvest predicted to decline 5.8% to 15.3 million tons. Meanwhile, European agriculture markets are poised to see further consolidation as grain prices that have fallen in the past three years continue to decline, according to German commodities trader BayWa. Farms in central Europe are still too small to be profitable and smaller grain traders might find it hard to survive, said BayWa chief executive, Klaus Lutz. He said: Were not really out of the woods with price development for farmers and traders. Hedge funds are really still bearish and also future prices dont show us interesting potential for the next few months. BayWa expects grain sales volumes to rise to 40 million metric tons this fiscal year from 35 million to 36 million a year earlier, Mr Lutz said. Bloomberg Monday The Irish Republican Brotherhood had Irish Volunteers senior officer Bulmer Hobson detained over the weekend, fearing he might warn British authorities about a Rising he opposed in the present circumstances. After deciding the day before, on Easter Sunday, to proceed with the Rising despite Eoin MacNeills countermanding order, those planning the rebellion had Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army members assemble at Liberty Hall and other places in Dublin city. Eoin MacNeill 12pm: Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Fianna Eireann and Cumann na mBan and other groups began to occupy buildings around Dublin, The Rising had begun. Volunteers parade in front of Tom Clarke and James Connolly in a scene from 1966 RTE drama Insurrection. At the GPO on Sackville St (now OConnell St), Citizen Army commandant James Connolly was in charge of the Army of the Irish Republic. Other sites occupied included: Four Courts area of north inner city (Edward Daly); Jacobs Biscuit Factory in south inner city (Thomas MacDonagh); Bolands Mill on south-east of city (Eamon de Valera); South Dublin Union (Eamonn Ceannt); St Stephens Green in south inner city (Michael Mallin, Citizen Army). 12.17pm A magazine fort in the Phoenix Park, north-west of the city, was attacked. 12.45pm Patrick Pearse stood outside the GPO and read aloud the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, to mostly confused and disinterested onlookers. The 1916 Proclamation readout at the GPO by Captain Peter Kelleher during the recent centenary commemorations. 1.15pm Forces inside the GPO killed four lancers, members of the 6th Reserve Cavalry sent to the scene, on Sackville Street. The Volunteers began to erect barricades and secure bridges around the city. 1.20pm The Irish Citizen Army tried to gain access to Dublin Castle, administrative centre of the British authorities in Ireland, but failed. Citizen Army leader Sean Connolly shot dead unarmed policeman James OBrien and the troops instead took over City Hall next to the castle. Soon after, Connolly was hit by enemy fire and killed. Late afternoon Looting had already begun in the city centre, as military reinforcements from the Curragh in Co Kildare had arrived into Dublin. 8pm While British forces had already begun attacking City Hall in Dublin, Cork Brigade commanders Tomas MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney arrived back to Cork city. After standing down more than 1,000 Volunteers the day before in the belief that the Rising was cancelled, they heard of a message from Pearse that had arrived earlier on Monday: We start at noon today. P. H. Pearse. By this time, with Volunteers back in their respective company areas, local military and police were already surrounding Volunteers Hall in city centre after learning of Rising. started in Dublin. Not only is this causing undue stress, fear, and anxiety for them, it is also putting their health at risk, said Mr Connolly, a Waterford-based pharmacist. At the close of the IPUs annual conference in Dublin yesterday, members urged the Department of Health, the HSE, manufacturers, wholesalers and regulators to agree on a plan to tackle the supply problem. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin yesterday predicted a deal for a minority government could be agreed early this week, despite both sides refusing to compromise on water charges. Fine Gael sources though, are pessimistic, and suggested talks might go through to next week. Tomorrow will mark 60 days since the general election. Fine Gaels national executive met on Saturday in Portlaoise, where preparations for a second election were briefly discussed. However, reports that Fine Gael are openly being put on a war footing have angered Fianna Fail figures, who also dismissed Green Party claims that they are holding the country to ransom over water. Clare TD Timmy Dooley told the Irish Examiner: Fine Gael are trying to frighten the horses. Its unhelpful. We dont want an election, no more than any other party does. But neither are we afraid of facing the people on our principles and stances. Negotiations stalled after Fine Gael refused on Friday to agree to Fianna Fails demands for a five-year freeze on water bills. Talks broke off and Mr Martin and acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny have since held a number of conversations over the weekend, the latest by phone last night. However, earlier yesterday Mr Martin signalled that a compromise may be just days away. The situation has to be resolved fairly soon. There will be further engagement. We will see what comes from that, but the positions are very clear. We would hope that we can bring about a resolution early next week, he said at 1916 celebrations in Arbour Hill. Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan told RTE an outside group could mediate between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. Mr Flanagan reiterated Fine Gaels position that the principle of paying for [water] charges must remain. However, Fianna Fail wants charges frozen for five years or for the Dail and a special commission to examine the entire system. The commission would include experts from abroad, water conservationists, and economists. Its findings would be referred to an Oireachtas committee. Such a model would allow Fianna Fail to claim it fulfilled election promises to end charges. A commission could also suggest charges be reintroduced once certain infrastructure is in place and therefore back Fine Gaels position that water is paid for. The main problem is that neither side will agree on the issue of whether charges should be suspended. Mr Flanagan said 110m had been collected in charges and it was against EU rules to stop the levy. This is complex, not easy, but we can move towards a compromise. But scrapping charges is not the answer. Newly elected Fianna Fail TD Marc McSharry, though, warned that time is getting short. He reiterated there was no mandate in the Dail for water charges, given the majority of TDs wanted to scrap or freeze bills. The Sligo TD also left a veiled threat about what Fianna Fail might do when and if a cross-party Dail vote is moved on water charges. If there isnt compromise on this, the reality is it will have to be left to the will of Dail Eireann, he said. Its clear what will happen then. We wont be voting against our own policy. It is expected that frontline gardai will adopt a more militant stance on recouping the cuts when the Garda Representative Associations (GRA) annual conference gets under way in Killarney tonight . They will press for the end to discrimination against new entrants, who after October 1, 2013, came in on wages that were 10% lower than their colleagues. They were also denied a rent allowance worth more than 4,000 a year, which their colleagues retained. Seasoned gardai say it is inherently unfair that new colleagues have to endure the same everyday risks as they do but get a lot less recompense. They will also demand that a special allowance be paid to gardai working in cities because they are more expensive to live in and that these allowances be based on figures supplied by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The conference will also hear a call for the Minister for Justice and Garda Commissioner to address the chronic lack of armed 24-hour cover in some areas and and whether it is realistic to maintain a mainly unarmed police force in an era of increasingly violent crime and increased threat of international terrorism. Commissioner Noirin OSullivan also will face calls to examine staffing levels in rural areas, which members say are not adequate. In a number of cases gardai have found themselves on their own responding to incidents which could put them at serious personal risk. In light of the increasing number of violent attacks on gardai, a motion is being put forward on this insisting that no member go to a call-out unaccompanied, and that garda management adhere to the Health and Safety at Work Act of 2006 and 2010. The GRA is also concerned about lack of proper ongoing professional development training and wants it provided to all members of the force every 12 months. They are also looking for all frontline police to get driver training and for the introduction of better overtime payments. Delegates will also call on Ms OSullivan to carry out a risk assessment on the entire fleet of garda vehicles to see if they are fit for purpose. The GRAs fractious relationship in recent years with watchdog GSOC will also come up for debate at the two-day conference. One motion seeks to have GRA bosses obtain all personal data on members held by GSOC and ascertain if retaining and storing such information is in breech of the Data Protection Act. It is expected the GRA will also seek to make GSOC inform members under investigation of the progress of it on a bi-monthly basis and conclude each investigation in a timely manner. Delegates are also expected to urge the Commissioner to immediately set up promotion competitions to fill vacancies which exist in some specialist sections of the force. The level of GRA militancy will be gauged when frontline gardai debate a motion that the association pursues whatever action necessary should the government choose to discriminate or punish them for rejecting the terms of the Lansdowne Road Agreement. The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) annual conference warned they will risk breaking the law by considering strike action, seriously escalating their dispute. The actions include AGSI members marching to the Dail in uniform, picketing the offices of Government ministers and TDs, and possibly taking strike action. Editorial: 10 His partys ambitions are to grow and be the largest in opposition, to take in the disillusioned voters who abandoned Labour and to wait in the long grass for a chance in government. Fianna Fails intention to prop up a Fine Gael minority government is Sinn Feins opportunity. Mr Adams told his audience at Dublins Convention Centre that Mr Martin would prefer to put them [Fine Gael] back in government as part of his effort to counter the growth of Sinn Fein. This is of course a genuine fear of Fianna Fails: That their adversary in opposition will now take full advantage of a deal struck with Enda Kenny and Fine Gael. The centre in Dublins docklands, while only half full throughout most of the day, was a particularly contrasting location for Sinn Feins ard fheis compared to the surrounds of Derry last year. A more corporate setting, it would certainly reflect the partys hopes of attracting more middle class voters. It was also a suitable location, close to the 1916 commemorations at the GPO on OConnell Street. Some members naturally are also more likely to be focused on the Norths assembly elections next month and did not travel down for the special conference marking 100 years since the Rising. It is also worth remembering that Sinn Fein had originally moved its conference to this weekend after it was forced to change its plans when the general election was announced. Having boosted its TD numbers by two-thirds to 23, the party is now well equipped to attack Enda Kenny and his administration if he manages to cobble together the proposed minority government. Delegates also showed no signs of abandoning their loyalty to Mr Adams. If Sinn Fein increases its support again in the assembly elections on May 5, the next long-term focus will be the local and European elections here. In contrast to other conferences for Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Labour, Sinn Fein has strong support among younger members. Nonetheless, there are still difficulties for Sinn Fein in the years ahead. Mr Adams faltered several times on financial issues during the election campaign. Furthermore, his republican past haunts him and he is rarely now not dragged into controversies arising in the North. The 67-year-old has outlasted many leaders from other parties, but his time as president may be nearing an end. The leadership, likely to be contested in the years ahead, could fall to Mary Lou McDonald or Pearse Doherty and the party will require a new direction, fresh vision, and above all, unity. Increasing its numbers even more may require Sinn Fein to move to the middle ground to win further votes. How and when it does this may be crucial. Arguably, the party may not tweak its tax, health or spending proposals to appeal to more middle-class voters, but its new TDs want to abandon the partys dark past. The party also stands accused of shouting from the sidelines as efforts continue to form a government. Never before have Sinn Fein leaders been so keen to see Fianna Fail and Fine Gael join forces. And why? Such a move would allow Mr Adamss party to finally become the largest in opposition, a position which inevitably would see them enter government at some stage. Gardai believe Tyrone- born Julia Holmes, and her innocent partner Thomas Ruttle, died after inhaling fumes from a charcoal barbecue which was placed next to them in a bedroom sealed from the inside in Mr Ruttles house in Boolaglass. Their badly decomposed bodies were discovered on May 18, 2015, by members of the Harty Traveller gang, from Askeaton, who broke into the Ruttle family home. Figures from the Department of Social Protection show that between the start of 2014 and the end of March this year, there have been 24,253 people on the JobBridge scheme. Of those, while 13,100 completed the course, 11,193 dropped out early for a variety of reasons. In some parts of the country the drop-out rate has, at times, been higher than the completion rate. For example in Dublin in 2014, 1,993 people finished early, compared to 1,742 who completed the course in full. It is a similar story in Cork this year, with 109 people so far dropping out in 2016 compared to 96 completions. A variety of reasons are given for why people decide not to finish the course. The almost 5,000 people who left over the 27 month period examined because they had either got a job with another company or with their host company will be welcomed. However, the 1,458 who left because the placement was not suitable and the 732 who opted to return to job searching instead will be cause for concern as will the 284 who cited cost factors for their decision. The department admitted that for 1,000 of those who left, there was no further information available as to why. Social Protection Minister Joan Burton pointed out, in a parliamentary question response to Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy, that since the scheme began in 2011, a total of 46,537 people started an internship, of which 15,211 progressed into employment immediately on completing the internship. Joan Burton Independent research indicates that 60% of jobseekers who participated in JobBridge progressed into paid employment within five months of completing an internship, she said. JobBridge was launched due to the collapse in the economy and the resultant sharp increase in unemployment. It was aimed at breaking the cycle whereby people could not get a job without experience, but could not get experience without a job. The scheme has been dogged with controversy at times over the last four years, not least last week when this newspaper revealed that the Department of Social Protection had reversed its decision to ban all firms where it was alleged that interns had been assaulted and bullied, had their safety compromised or were forced to work unfair hours. A total of 86 companies had received some form of ban from the scheme since it began in 2011, but no businesses had received suspensions from JobBridge since a November decision to lift the existing suspensions. In 2013, Impact trade union, which represents thousands of special needs assistants, said it had encountered at least 100 cases where potential SNA posts had been filled through the JobBridge scheme. Over the weekend, the IMPACT trade union called for JobBridge to be dissolved following its widespread misuse in the health service and elsewhere. The union has called for the scheme to be replaced with targeted programmes aimed at unemployed early school leavers, graduates, and the long-term unemployed. Mr Adams said any deal for government would have to reflect his partys demands and, if then backed by the leadership, would have to be brought before members at an ard fheis. His comments come as government formation talks hit a new roadblock in recent days and as Sinn Fein also hosted their annual ard fheis in Dublins convention centre. Mr Adams used his speech at the centre on Saturday night to accuse Fianna Fail of reneging on their election promises and of trying to put acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny back into power. During an attack on the minority government being put together, Mr Adams also had criticism of Independents. Highlighting the 100-year anniversary of the Rising, Mr Adams claimed that a real Republic would not tolerate the housing and homeless crisis or the scandals in hospitals. The Louth TD claimed that his party had been willing to talk to Fine Gael and Fianna Fail after the election but that the two had refused this offer. Targeting Fianna Fails election promises, Mr Adams claimed Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin was trying to put Enda Kenny back into government, contrary to election pledges. Thats not in the national interest. Fianna Fail voters did not vote to give Fine Gael another term. Fianna Fails pledge to end water charges had also been forgotten, noted Mr Adams. You promised in your manifesto to abolish Irish Water and to scrap water charges. Fianna Fail maintain they only pledged to end or freeze charges for five years. Mr Adams also targeted Independent TDs, whose support Mr Kenny needs to form a government. Earlier in the conference, deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald launched an attack on Fianna Fail, calling the party Sinn Fein lite as she accused Mr Martin of borrowing our policies. But Mr Adams surprisingly admitted yesterday that Sinn Fein could be open to discussing government formation options with Fianna Fail, among others. Speaking to RTEs Aine Lawlor on The Week in Politics yesterday, he said: Our door is open to everyone, including Fianna Fail, to talk. Bear in mind an Ard Fheis would take the decision on the outworking on all of that. Would we talk to them? Yes, of course If in the course of all of that, although it would be very challenging, we came up with a programme for government which did the business as far as we are concerned, our leadership would consider that and, yes, if we thought that was an advance and would help to deal with these issuesof course we would have to consider bringing it back to an Ard Fheis. His comments could trigger a fresh round of government talks if Sinn Fein are willing to engage. But it is widely thought Mr Adams and his party want to grow in opposition. Furthermore, both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have ruled out working with them in power. The Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner said applicants from those two countries, most of whom had previously been resident in the UK, accounted for half of all new cases during 2015 as the number of applications rose to their highest level since 2008. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald expressed concern last year about the trend of young men on student visas in the UK travelling to Ireland to prolong their stay within the EU. Pakistanis accounted for 41% of all asylum seekers in 2015 and Bangladeshis almost 9%. The other main countries of original of applicants were Albania, Nigeria and India. Frances Fitzgerald In its latest annual report, the ORAC said it received applications from 3,276 asylum seekers in 2015 compared to 1,448 the previous year an increase of 126%. Males accounted for four out of five of all cases. It was also revealed that a number of refugees were considered for exclusion from the asylum process last year because of suspected links to serious crimes such as crimes against humanity or war crimes. The number of refugee status cases fully processed by the ORAC rose by 46% last year to 1,552. The organisation also finalised 1,480 files relating to subsidiary protection. However, the commissioner, David Costello, said the extent of the workload meant there were still 2,582 cases awaiting completion at the end of last year. The rise in number of new applicants pushed the average waiting time for a substantive interview with asylum seekers to over 30 weeks. Over 2,900 sets of fingerprints were sent to the EUs asylum fingerprint database for examination. Tests showed 231 refugees had already sought asylum in other EU member states. A new more streamlined process for dealing with applications for asylum is set to come into operation this year following the publication of the International Protection Bill in December which will result in decisions relating to refugee status and subsidiary protection taken at the same time. The number of family reunification applications also increased by 63% last year from 167 to 272, while 33 applications for refugee status were received from unaccompanied minors. Mr Costello welcomed a significant reduction in the number of legal challenges to their decisions, which he attributed to the quality processes and training. The commissioner said last year was also very challenging for his office for dealing with the Dublin III Regulation the EUs system for determining the member state responsible for the examination of an individuals asylum application. Over 2,900 sets of fingerprints were sent to the EUs asylum fingerprint database for examination. Tests showed 231 refugees had already sought asylum in other EU member states. Mr Costello said his office anticipated processing some 2,500 asylum seekers being relocated to Ireland from Greece and Italy as a result of the refugee crisis. Separately, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal said the number of hearings before it in 2015 more than doubled with the tribunal sitting on 799 cases last year up from 367 in 2014. It also issued rulings in 640 appeals up 151%, while there are 1,675 cases awaiting a decision. Fianna Fail, though, want the future of the water services system assessed by a special commission and say they would not pre-empt its findings by agreeing to reintroduce charges. These are positions being examined by both sides as talks are scheduled to resume today in an effort to break the deadlock which saw government formation negotiations again break up on Friday over water charges. Acting taoiseach Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin maintained contact over the weekend and also spoke by phone yesterday, in a bid to put the talks back on track. Fine Gael sources yesterday revealed that, while Fianna Fails full five-year suspension of charges is not acceptable, a shorter period may be once there is also a clear deal to reintroduce a charging system. Such a pact may end the stalemate, but would also require Fianna Fail to agree to when charges could be reintroduced. A senior Fine Gael source said: We can live with suspension for one or two years, but we need absolute agreement for a charging system then. Theyre not willing to do that. Its all very well to freeze them, the dilemma is what to do next and how it comes back in. Pressed by RTEs This Week yesterday on whether Fine Gael would agree to a shorter period than five years to suspend charges, acting jobs minister Richard Bruton also said: There are solutions that can be found if there is room for compromise on both sides. If its a situation where its an all or nothing, of course theres middle ground that can be negotiated across the charging regime. Both sides are considering proposals for a special commission to examine the future of water charges. The commission could include water conservationists, economists, and foreign experts and would report to an Oireachtas Committee. Talks today will look at how a commission would examine funding models and water services in general. While Fianna Fail sources say this would allow time for water services infrastructure to be completed, such as the meter installation programme, the party say no agreement could be made on reintroducing charges as this would pre-empt the commissions recommendations. While Mr Martin said his party hoped to bring about a resolution early next week, both sides last night played down the likelihood of a Dail vote for Taoiseach being held this week. But amid warnings of another general election looming, Gerry Adams said Sinn Fein were open to government formation negotiations. Environment minister Alan Kelly said last night scrapping Irish Water would be the most ridiculous decision and economic and environmental sabotage. ANYONE who was around in the 1960s will remember vividly the impact of Sean O Riadas Mise Eire, the music he composed especially for George Morrisons film of the same name. When the score was released on record, sales exploded, but uniquely, not just among the cogniscenti, the first-nighters, but right through the ranks from elderly patriots to university students. Everybody loved it, everybody could hum the tunes, it was heard as often at teenage parties as in select concerts. Those haunting melodies were as familiar if not more so than the national anthem. Which makes it superbly appropriate that in 2016, the Mise Eire suite has been chosen as the first piece of the opening gala concert in the Cork International Choral Festival on Wednesday. Accompanied by that original film, it will bring back many memories for the older among us, and perhaps introduce the masters music to a whole new generation as well as the thousands of visitors from other lands. In its power and emotion, it ranks right up there with pieces like Sibelius Finlandia or Karelia, both banned by Russia as being far too fiery and unsettling to allow the captive nation to hear. It seemed the ideal opportunity to feature this iconic and hugely important piece of music by an Irish composer who revolutionized our awareness and perception of Irish music in a classical sense, says festival director, John Fitzpatrick. And yes, we were very pleased to be able to incorporate the original film into the performance. To see that grainy black-and-white footage again, accompanied by the power of the CSM Symphony Orchestra, will be an experience few will forget. The original recording brought O Riada national acclaim and allowed him to start a series of programmes on Irish radio called Our Musical Heritage, as well as founding Ceoltoiri Chualann where the traditional music he loved so well was for the first time heard in full orchestral style by Irish listeners. O Riadas son, Peadar, who has followed in those musical footsteps remembers quite well the composing of the legendary work. Hed go mad at the noise we were all making around the house, and wed be packed off to the grandparents in Cork so he could get on with writing the score in peace, recalls Peadar. He reveals a moving family story. The first showing of that film was actually at the 1959 Cork Film Festival. He got tickets for his parents, but they were afraid to go down, unsure whether or not their son had stuck his neck out too far. They were sitting above in the house in Glasheen, just wondering and waiting, and then Gran couldnt stand it any more. She got her hat, stick and gloves and caught the No 11 bus to Pana where it was being shown at the Savoy. As she got off the bus, she heard the Echo boys whistling the main theme. When she heard that, she just got the next bus home, walked in, and said The boys done well. That tale records something incredible. Victorian producers of huge London shows would pray to hear the Cockney errand boys whistling a new tune from one of their musicals. It meant that they were on to a winner. Something simple enough to remember, easy enough to whistle. Peadar O Riada: fond memories. Simple enough to remember yet incredibly powerful. Remember those opening chords of Beethovens 5th, utilised by Churchill in WWII as the V for Victory sign? Well, Mise Eire opens with four simple notes as well, used to devastating effect. It takes genius to create something like that. Incidentally, O Riada the Younger once had the experience of conducting his fathers score with a full orchestra, and admits that it gave him a tremendous rush of energy and feeling. It wasnt an intellectual exercise for him, it was an emotional one. Clever motifs and mechanisms, intellectual prowess, all that sort of stuff it doesnt do it for me, and it didnt do it for him. I hear it in my head, and down it goes and thats it. If somebody wants me to write a tune for them, I sit down and do it there and then. My father was the same. It came from inside his head, not a pile of paper. In such a year of commemorations, the audience at Cork City Hall on Wednesday will no doubt feel the power of the music that poured from O Riadas head, and his heart. Cork International Choral Festivals Opening Gala concert on Wednesday is A Celebration of Irish Heritage. It features the Fleischmann Choir and Cork School of Music Symphony Orchestra, conductor Conor Palliser. As well as Mise Eire, the programme will feature Gerald Finzis Intimations of Immortality, with soloist Robin Tritschler, and Fleischmanns Cornucopia for French horn and orchestra with soloist Cormac O hAodain. The pre-concert recital features the Band of the 1st Southern Brigade. CORK CHORAL FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS Chamber Choir Ireland at St Fin Barres, Fri Apr 29: Under conductor Paul Hillier, the Festivals choir-in-residence will perform a full programme including the premieres of a newly- commissioned piece from composer Stephen McNeff, and the winning composition from the 2016 Sean O Riada Competition for Irish composers, Amanda Feery, pictuerd. Fringe Concerts: Oh so many delectable events from which to choose! Choirs at Christchurch, an organ recital at St Fin Barres; White Raven at St James Church and the Gallarus Oratory; the absolute must-be-there Shandon Sunrise, at 6am on May Day; and The Clerks Choral of St Marys Collegiate Church, Youghal, singing The Office Of Compline in plainsong also at Shandon, later the same day. You could run all over the city and countryside from one to another. Closing Gala, Sun May 1: Bookending the other end of the festival, this is where the visiting international choirs display their musical and ethnic backgrounds in a a joyful and colourful celebration of song usually with a few surprises! Always a wonderful end to a wonderful event. WHEN I began working on the biography of Joseph Plunkett, I felt as though I had known him all my life the humorous, scholarly, gregarious, shy, mystical, practical grand-uncle whom I could have known but didnt. A foreign army stole him and shot him for his desire for democracy, equality and liberty. I hoped I would find something of the Joe my grandmother, his sister, spoke about, particularly at family dinnertime, with such affection. And, indeed, I found him a thinker, a worker, a young man (only 28 when he was shot) of great contrasts. Joseph Plunkett had glandular tuberculosis from early childhood. It attacked him frequently throughout his life and he would have to remain in bed until he recovered but, in spite of this, he lived a life far larger than could have been expected. The fact that he recorded so much of it in diaries, notebooks, speculations on life and, of course, poetry was a gift to me as his biographer and I found I really enjoyed his company. The combination of the extensive accounts in my grandmother, Geraldine Plunkett Dillons and Joseph Plunketts papers create a very rich sense of their time. He was always known as Plunkett or Joe and was close to his siblings, three brothers and three sisters. They, in turn, spoke of him, not sentimentally, but with real love and affection. He liked women, having a young mans longing for all that the company of women could bring. He conversed, flirted and fell in love with all the pain and passion of his age. Two sisters and two brothers were also involved in the Rising in different ways, and his brothers Jack and George were in the GPO with him. They were also sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to hard labour. In fact, the familys commitment to independence meant that eight of the nine Plunketts were jailed or shot for their politics between 1916 and 1923. It is clear from Plunketts writings that such considerations as the type of government to espouse, the benefits of socialism (a dirty word at the time) and universal religious freedom were carefully weighed. In his own diaries, he disappears when his illness overcomes him but his sister Geraldine gives accounts of what he went through, how hard it was for him and how books in great numbers rescued him when he was well enough to read. This makes him a most unlikely candidate as primary military strategist for the 1916 Rising but, in fact, most of the strategy used was of his devising. His reading included books on logistics, tactics and new military ideas such as taking over buildings which could not be overlooked, drawing your opposing forces to you, using radio to transmit word of the event to the world and using every possible device for secrecy. Very many things went wrong, of course, and they have been comprehensively discussed, but many of the areas of action succeeded so well that the English army officers believed there were thousands of Irish Volunteers in places, where there were hundreds or less. The appeal of Plunketts plans strongly influenced James Connollys decision to take part in the Rising. The marriage of Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford in Kilmainham Gaol the night before he was executed became an international story almost overnight, and has remained so ever since. Described as romantic and recounted over and over again, it became perhaps the best-known story of the Rising. This was undoubtedly difficult for the other participants who had also suffered for the cause and put so much of themselves into what seemed at the time to be a failed enterprise. I find it hard to see their wedding as romantic; for the engaged couple, only together for a few months, it must have been painful and sordid in the extreme. They were not permitted to touch each other or to speak to each other. They were surrounded by men with guns in the half dark and their witnesses were two soldiers they didnt know. They were parted as soon as it was finished. Grace was given a place to rest in a nearby house and brought back to see Plunkett before he went to his death at dawn. They had 10 minutes in his cell which was full of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Nothing was private and they hardly knew what to say to each other. There were none of the love phrases which had filled their letters. No other member of his family was allowed to visit Joe before his death. Joseph Plunkett, the youngest signatory to the Proclamation of Independence, had no wish to die, but he was already dying of tuberculosis when he went out to be shot on May 4, 1916. He ended a life of extraordinary courage with extraordinary calm. Honor O Brolchain is a grand-niece of Joseph Plunkett and author of 16 Lives: Joseph Plunkett in the OBrien Press biography series about the executed men of 1916 Joseph Plunketts grand-niece Honor O Brolchain looks back on the life of the youngest Rebel leader to be executed From a house of death to a shining beacon of hope Vesnova Childrens Institute stands today as a monument to the work of an Irish charity and its army of volunteers. Where once children were left to die, the facility has, thanks to Chernobyl Children International (CCI) and its countless Irish volunteers, been transformed into a flagship for the care of the most vulnerable children in Belarus. The conditions there today stand in stark contrast to the heartbreaking scenes the first CCI volunteers encountered when they discovered Vesnova. Chief executive Adi Roche said that, in the early days of their work in Belarus, they heard rumours and stories about an institution for abandoned children. Close to the town of Glusk, some 200km south-east of the rapidly growing Belarussian capital, Minsk, it was effectively forgotten. CCI volunteers inquired locally, followed dirt roads to find it, and braced for what they might find inside. But nothing could have prepared them. Located in a field at the end of a dead-end road on the edge of bleak, featureless collective farm, it presented a nightmare scenario to those first international visitors through its doors. Adi Roche says: We didnt arrive as knights in shining armour, we didnt claim to have all the answers. We did little things, by little things, we overcame every obstacle, and there were many. Pic: Clare Keogh It was a house of death, says Ms Roche. We were assaulted by the sense of death and decay. We couldnt tell boys from girls. It was viewed as a holding place where the children were kept until they went an adult institution, or to the graveyard. The first images from inside Vesnova shocked the world, and revealed the scale of the humanitarian disaster post Chernobyl. Ordinary Belarussians were already struggling with grinding poverty. When the reactor exploded a few hundred kilometres south in northern Ukraine, the radioactive fallout and the subsequent mass exodus of people fleeing the contamination put an enormous strain on Belaruss already creaking, and in some places non-existent health system. Vesnova became a dumping ground for children with severe physical disabilities and deformities, some attributed to radioactive fall-out, for those with severe mental disabilities, and for those tragic cases with a combination of both. Families who just couldnt cope felt their best chance was to place the children in institutions. Inside Vesnova, most children were left to fend for themselves, many spending up to 18 hours a day in cots or beds. Many were left lying for hours in their own waste. Untrained and demoralised staff didnt care. Nobody cared. They were all trying to cope too. Almost all the children displayed the classic symptoms of a chronic lack of stimulation constant rocking back and forth. Younger children who were not yet toilet-trained were left in groups to sit for hours on potties their waste swilling about the feet on the floor. Because they were in a squatting position for hours on end, some of the younger girls suffered prolapsed uteruses. The first volunteers still remember the stench. And the burials. Last month, Ms Roche brought a civic delegation from Cork, led by Lord Mayor Cllr Chris OLeary, to visit Vesnova. He was accompanied by city council chief executive Ann Doherty and the Irish ambassador to Lithuania and Belarus, David Noonan. Standing in the hall just inside Vesnovas front door, Ms Roche recalls the dark, difficult early days there. None of us ever wanted to make decisions about life and death saying this child can live but that child will have to die, she says. Nobody should ever have to make those kinds of decisions theyre not choices actually. But there were times when our medics had to make those kinds of decisions, because we could only work on those that there was still hope for, because some were too far gone, others had just given up. And little by little, in a tandem approach, we saved as many as we could and tried to build the place we have today. Ms Roche praises the countless Irish volunteer builders, painters, electricians, and tilers, as well as those who just wanted to help, who responded to their appeals for help. She touches the wall of a corridor which leads to the institutions 10 units. I love touching these walls and admiring those ceilings, and lights and windows, things that would never do anything for me at home, she says. But all of this work the tiles we are standing on were put down by a husband and wife tiling couple from Ireland everything here was done by the Irish. We did it below the radar, we didnt make any great announcements. Wed come with maybe 30 or 40 volunteers, wed set up a kitchen, the food would be brought over by truck, and bit by bit, the builders and the medical teams worked side-by-side, saving the children, and on the other hand, giving them basic dignity, a toilet, showers, classrooms, a sensory room. Everything these children so deserved. Although Vesnova is state-run, CCIs influence is everywhere. Of the facilitys 200 staff, 22, including five medical nurses, are directly employed by CCI. Some of the older residents make beautiful handcrafted wooden furniture including ingenious foldable stools and tables. Pic: Clare Keogh Today, the facility is home to 173 children, aged from 4 to 18. Those who can smile do. They crave physical contact and reach out for hugs. Some cling on so tight, its hard to put them back down. Ms Roche knows them all by name. And they her. They are our sons and daughters, she says. It is a hard place to work in. You are in the middle of nowhere. When the volunteers come here, they are here 24 hours a day. There is nothing luxurious about the conditions. On the first night, the civic delegation eat pasta cooked in a large pot on a table in the volunteer nurses room the same room where the volunteers sleep. Their suitcases are stacked on the beds. A small fridge near the sink is stocked with breads, meats, cheeses, yoghurts, and juice things that can be transformed easily and without fuss into a quick meal. Atop the fridge are a few home comforts teabags, some soft drinks, snacks, a little bit of chocolate. Everybody mucks in. There are no airs and graces. Volunteers give up their time, they raise their own money for their air fares, and they do it several times over the year, says Ms Roche. Pic: Clare Keogh CCI organises such placements for one week in every month. Our volunteers will say that being here can be very lonely. There is no TV and when you finish at 8pm, you have long dark nights to think of what you went through during the day. Especially when you lose a child, every time we come out we wonder will there be another vacant bed to be filled by another child. The next morning, the delegation tours the units where children are grouped according to their age or medical need. Its breakfast time in the high-dependency unit, redeveloped with the help of volunteers from Limerick. Mr OLeary, Ms Doherty, and Mr Noonan help feed the children some get bottles with high-nutrition feed, some get porridge. When we first arrived, says Ms Roche, the kids were fed lying down. Some had lost the ability to swallow and lots died from asphyxiation. Most are now fed in custom-made wheelchairs built in, or donated from Ireland. The delegation also helps with the bathing, done once a week as there just arent enough staff members to do it more regularly. Marsha, who has cerebral palsy and micro encephalitis, or small-brain syndrome, is 8. Nicknamed Thumbelina by some, or Polly Pocket by others, she knows whats going on, and has a twinkle in her eyes. Each child has potential and each child surprises us all the time, says Ms Roche. Victor, 16, who has a severe spinal deformity and his brother, Vasa, 15, who also has scoliosis, lie on their sides in separate beds, their breathing laboured. They are both non-verbal. We learn that their mother died the week before. Two volunteers move Vasa from his bed to lie next to his brother. We let them lie with each other for a time every day in the hope their genetic bond will help, says Ms Roche. Upstairs in another unit we meet blonde-haired Vika, 22. She was kept in a shed and fed alongside dogs for the first 10 years of her life. When she was brought to Vesnova, she walked on all fours. Vika still displays lots of animal behaviour, but thanks to intensive rehabilitation over the years, those displays are becoming increasingly rare. Vadim, 16, who has severe autism, is also showing signs of progress. He makes eye contact from time to time. Conditions in Vesnova are still basic, but the children now have dignity and expert medical care. Strait jackets are no longer used to restrain them. The signs of Irish generosity are everywhere the children wear clothes from Dunnes Stores, county GAA jerseys from their host families, and play with toys, games, and teddy bears youd find on the shelves of any Irish toy shop. We love these children, they are so special, says Ms Roche. When we came here first, I remember the director saying why would we want to put in physio programmes or a sensory room. And we said its to help the children develop to their maximum potential. We made decisions that it was by example we led. We didnt arrive as knights in shining armour, we didnt claim to have all the answers. We did little things, by little things, we overcame every obstacle, and there were many. One of CCIs main breakthroughs in recent years was pioneering programmes designed to end the culture of institutionalisation and to provide for the older children, who, once they turn 18, face transfer to adult asylums, where conditions are described as prison-like. We leave the main building to meet two young men whose stories, more so than any of the others, have had the biggest impact on Ms Roche. One of the children in Vesnova orphanage, which has improved immeasurably from its days as a house of death, when CCI first came to Chernobyl. Pic: Clare Keogh Tears flow as Sasha, 24, who arrived in Vesnova aged 14, and his close friend, also Sasha, 24, tell how their lives have been transformed. Speaking in English, Sasha recalls as his 18th birthday approached, it dawned on him that they could be transferred to an adult asylum. I dont know what we are going to do, he says. I sit with Sasha and we think together, what will happen to us if we go to this institution? We get nothing. Casting his eyes towards Ms Roche, he says: I write to my Irish mammy to ask about help. We dont want to go, we want to stay here forever. Then mammy said to me: Sasha, well help you, well build you a house. In 2009, CCI pioneered the historic Independent Living Programme, which had been unheard of in Belarus. Irish builders developed six new homes on the Vesnova campus for young men like the two Sashas, and followed it in 2011 with another unit for 12 of the older girls. Carers stay with them. Were very, very happy to live here, Sasha says. But four years ago, their homes burned down after a lighting strike during a ferocious storm. Sasha said they were worried for their future again. Ms Roche said the news couldnt have come at a worse time, as donations to CCI had plummeted due to the recession. But mammy and Fergal [a carpenter from Cork] came again and they solved everything. They built another house and now we live here and we love it, says Sasha. Nearby, CCI has refurbished and equipped a former outhouse into a life skills training workshop. Inside, some of the older residents make beautiful handcrafted wooden furniture including ingenious foldable stools and tables which wouldnt be out of place on sale in Ikea. CCI employs a teacher to oversee the work, in the hope that the skills the residents learn will equip them in the long term to avail of employment opportunities in their local communities. There are hundreds of such orphanages and institutions in the Chernobyl regions where thousands of children live lonely forgotten lives. Ms Roche says she has had to learn to focus on what can be achieved and on who can be helped, as opposed to who cant. Otherwise, its just overwhelming, she says. As well as transforming Vesnova, CCI is also working with the Belarussian authorities on the maintenance and refurbishment of other centres, including the Soltanovka Adult Mental Asylum, the Kharkiv Centre of Cardiac Surgery, as well as building community daycare centres across Belarus, to bring their model of care and self-help into the impoverished rural communities. Each centre provides support and services to as many as 67,000 people per centre. We just live in the now, and every moment we spend with the children is precious, says Ms Roche. Its breath by breath, heart by heart, and thats what keeps us going. Some of the older residents make beautiful handcrafted wooden furniture including ingenious foldable stools and tables. Pic: Clare Keogh Moments before we leave the orphanage, its director, Viacheslav Klimovich, arrives, and almost by accident, bumps in to the delegation. There are smiles and handshakes. Ms Roche engages full diplomatic mode and thanks him for his co-operation over the years. He in turn thanks CCI and the Irish volunteers for their efforts over the years. But its an awkward meeting. Despite the immense progress over the years, it is a symbol of challenges from elements of official Belarus still facing the CCI. As we leave, Ms Roche says: The buildings are the easiest things to change the culture is hardest thing to change. Pictures: Clare Keogh READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1) READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 3) CASE STUDY: "IF WE WERE IN THAT SITUATION, WED WANT HELP" Volunteers are the lifeblood of Chernobyl Children International, Eoin English met them at the Vesnova Orphanage in Belarus THEY give up their holidays and raise their own air fares to spend a week in Vesnova orphanage helping some of the most vulnerable children in the world. They are the volunteer lifeblood of the Chernobyl Children International charity (CCI), at the very heart of its work. Trina Gilchriest, from Dublin, was among several volunteers in Vesnova when the Irish delegation visited in February. Trina Gilchriest from Dublin at Vesnova Orphanage, Chernobyl. Pic: Clare Keogh She was inspired to help after seeing a documentary on RTE about the effects the nuclear disaster had on the children. She emailed CCIs head office offering whatever help she could, and soon found herself taking a lead role in fundraising and organising CCIs rest and recuperation holidays in Ireland for Belarusian children. Within a few years, she visited Belarus and saw for herself how Irish fundraising and volunteering had helped. We had been down around Gomel and that region. We were down in Zhytkavichy area, very sad stories there as well, she says. Theres an awful lot of alcoholism and kids being neglected. Then, there are kids with absolutely loving parents who just cant manage on what they have. So, they are very sad stories. We had gone from that very sad situation and then gone on to see a Home of Hope that had been sponsored by the Clonmel outreach group. To walk in there and see the kids, theyre so settled, theyre so happy, smiling, laughing, really settled. When you think of our kids here in Ireland they take things for granted now. Whereas over here, if you give them a little tube of bubbles, its the best thing in the world. Its fantastic to see the appreciation that they have for things and the excitement they got out of them. You see the little faces and you say, there has to be something that we can do. I dont think Ill ever lose that link with the project. I cant imagine leaving it all behind now. It could very easily be us. It could be us at any point. You then say: Oh God, if we were in that situation ourselves, wouldnt we want somebody to help us? Wouldnt we want someone to reach out and say Look, we can do whatever we can do. She was in Vesnova with her sister, Sine, a radiographer in Dublins Mater Hospital, on her fourth visit to the orphanage. Sine Gilchriest from Dublin is a volunteer at Vesnova Orphanage, Chernobyl.. Pic: Clare Keogh Susan Farrell, a yoga teacher and reflexologist, from Swords was on her second stint in the orphanage, while Deirdre Doyle, a massage therapist and reflexologist also from Swords, was experienceing her first visit to Vesnova. Susan Farrell from Dublin, a volunteer at Vesnova Orphanage. Pic: Clare Keogh She spent some time delivering reflexology and massage to 17-year-old Vlad, who has cerebral palsy, in the orphanages sensory room. Deirdre Doyle from Dublin, a volunteer at Vesnova Orphanage. Pic: Clare Keogh Sharon Lynch, a mother of three from Canovee in Co Cork, was on her 16th visit to Vesnova since 2007. Another member of a CCI outreach group, she took up the first offer to visit to see for herself the work on the ground, and to report back to volunteers in Ireland. I enjoyed it and felt I got a lot out of it, she says. It was on that first visit that she met Nastya, who was just seven. She has cerebral palsy. I felt I had to bring her back for rest and recuperation. We brought her to Ireland the following year, and shes been coming twice a year since, at Easter and Christmas. Shes part of our family now, she says. Sharon Lynch helps wash a child at Vesnova Orphanage, Chernobyl. Pic: Clare Keogh Her children, Dean, 17, Elliot, 14, and Graham, nine, treat her as their sister. Shes my Belarusian daughter now. My youngest was only a baby when she first came, so he knows her all her life as his sister, says Sharon. Although the nuclear accident happened 30 years ago, Sharon says the childrens needs are ongoing. When they turn 18, they are sent from Vesnova to an adult mental asylum, and we have no access there, and they dont leave there, she says. And as Nastya nears 18, her future becomes more uncertain. Efforts are starting now to keep her in Vesnova into her early 20s. CCI is also exploring the possibility of placing her in one of their foster care or independent living programmes. We just need people to keep supporting us. We just have to keep it up, Sharon says. READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1) READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 3) VISITS POLITICAL DIMENSION IN FOCUS - Eoin English Pic: Clare Keogh There was a strong diplomatic and political element to Adi Roches historic civic delegation visit to Belarus in February, ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The presence of the Lord Mayor of Cork and the Irish Ambassador to Lithuania and Belarus at two key meetings with mayors of strategic towns should help reduce the bureaucracy as the Chernobyl Children International (CCI) charity embarks on a series of ambitious projects and seeks to expand the reach of its various community outreach programmes. Ms Roche and the delegates first met the mayor of Glusk, Vladimir Tsasrikov, just a short drive from the Vesnova orphanage. Mr Tsasrikov thanked CCI and the Irish volunteers for coming with open hearts to help the vulnerable children of his region. He said he looked forward to continuing the cooperation and deepening the links as the charity continues its work. Later in the week, the delegation met with the mayor of Gomel, Piotr Kirichenko, the second city of Belarus. The meeting was attended by his senior officials from key departments, including social protection and education, and economic development and international relations. Gomel was established in the 12th century, was occupied by the Nazis for two years during the Second World War, and was effectively destroyed by 1945, its population collapsing from 150,000 to just 15,000 by the time its citizens were liberated by the Soviet army. It was rebuilt after the war and economic recovery came slowly. But the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident had a huge impact on the city. It was a catastrophe, Mr Kirichenko says. Tens of thousands of people fled from northern Ukraine, close to the nuclear plant, over the border to Belarus, with most converging on Gomel, the nearest large city. Geography, rather than its ability to respond, made it the epicentre for the states attempted medical response to the accident. The pressures on the system had a far-reaching impact on the city and wider region pressures which are still being felt today. Mr Kirichenko said the accident stopped development not just in the city, but in the wider Gomel region, roughly the same size as Munster. Pic: Clare Keogh It took us a number of years before we could get on our feet again and start development again. Our population in the last decade has recovered. Today it stands at about 530,000, he says. Given its second-city status, Mr Kirichenko points to its similarities with Cork. Both have major film and dance festivals and he invites an Irish dance troop to visit, before reaching out the hand of friendship and suggesting a twinning link. He points to the wall of his office which displays crests from Gomels sister towns and cities 24 in total from across the Ukraine, France, Scotland, Bulgaria, and Azerbaijan. Mr OLeary pledges to examine the potential for a memorandum of understanding the first step in the process. I would like to see us forge stronger cultural ties, to build on CCIs work over the years, he says. The relationship is already there through thousands of Irish families who have hosted Belarusian children over the years for recuperation visits. Thats the open door we can build from there. And A formal memorandum would cement those links. The ambassador, David Noonan, says the strength of that person-to-person relationship can only help build strong formal relationships at city level. Ms Roche then uses the opportunity to impress upon the mayor the need for his administrations continuing support for CCIs work in the region. Tragedy brought us together, but the love of your children and country all sustain us, she says. We have over the years brought 25,000 Belarussian children to Ireland. They are the best ambassadors for your country, and they have warmed the hearts of our nation. She asks for his support as the charity embarks on plans to built a palliative care unit in Gomel modelled on a similar unit it has developed in Minsk. We would like to replicate it in Gomel. We can provide the funding, equipment and medical support but we cant do it without your administrations support. He agrees to help in whatever way he can, before handshakes and officials photographs. Only time will tell if he meant it. READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1) READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 3) Whaaaaaaat? Him too? Already? The cull of 2016 began in late 2015 with Lemmy, and has been fairly relentless in its scything down of those we adored, and of those whom we were quite fond. Lemmy, Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood, and now Prince. Seriously. Prince and Bowie both dead. As someone plaintively howled on Twitter, 2016, stop killing my childhood! Meanwhile, it will have come to your attention that Cliff Richard, Donald Trump, Mick Jagger, Rolf Harris and Queen Elizabeth II remain resolutely alive. As does Shane MacGowan, off somewhere mixing himself another brake fluid martini. So, is the curse of 2016 entirely random, or does it only target those whose music meant absolutely everything to us in our fragile youth, and still does today? Why are the Rolling Stones still touring, but Bowie and Prince no longer breathing? As ever, an academic is on hand to assist with the seemingly unanswerable. Theadora Kenny, a professor of psychology and music at Sydney University, has analysed the deaths of 12,000 musicians spanning seven decades between 1950 and 2014. Her findings reveal that the famed 27 Club is not really a club at all, because its membership is too low. Janis, Jimi, Kurt and Amy, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones thats not a club, its a tea party. No, the most lethal age for a musician is 56. Thats when the death rate peaks, and one which Prince outlived by a year. Professor Kenny discovered that a musicians lifespan can be upto 25 years shorter than that of the average American; a lot of musicians really do die before they get old. They really do die young and stay pretty. Helpfully, the research examines causes of death, which is divided into five categories accident, suicide, homicide, heart-related and cancer. Blues musicians tend to mostly die of heart problems (28%) so achingly reflected in their broken hearted music while heavy metallers are the most fatally accident prone (36%). Accident is not defined it could be anything from electrocuting yourself with a guitar lead to crashing the tour bus to indulging in overpure refreshments. Punks also tend towards deadly accidents (30%), and are also suicide prone (11%), but not as suicidal as metallers (19%); presumably the clue, death metal, is in the name. And a whopping 51% of rappers die by being murdered. Folk and jazz musicians mostly die of cancer (32% and 30%), but weirdly, rock musicians stay within the statistical norms of each death category. So it really is random, unless youre a rapper. Meanwhile, goodbye Prince. FFS. A client told me last week, at the end of a consultation, that I was like a rat up a drainpipe. He was in such good humour, it clearly wasnt meant as an insult but, having never before encountered it as a compliment, I was sufficiently taken aback to let him leave the building without getting him to elucidate what rats do up drainpipes and why I reminded him of one. Not asking him then and there was a mistake, because its not the kind of thing you can retrospectively ring a client to clarify. The man in my life, who hails from rural Ireland, nodded appreciatively when I queried this with him. His eyes misting over as he looked into the middle distance of reminiscence, he said yes, that youd often get a rat up a drainpipe and youd have to hammer the drainpipe in order to make it disgorge the rat, after which you would hammer the rat. This confused me even more, for two reasons. 1) It related not at all to the client and me. 2) I couldnt figure out why you would hammer a drainpipe to get a rat out of it. The great outdoors is full of rats. You dont want them coming indoors. So if they decide to regard a drainpipe as modular housing, why not let them at it? In fact, now that Im protecting the rights of rats, what is it about them that provokes such a primeval hate and revulsion in the entire human race? They are highly intelligent, endlessly resilient, brilliantly resourceful, extremely adaptive and quite attractive animals, if youre prepared to overlook the incontinence. Yet I find when I tell people that the cats bring gifts of dead rats to me in the old building wherein I live, the people in whom I confide go all green in the face and look at the cats as if they were the anti-Christ. It seems to be much worse for the cats to bring in a rat, as opposed to them bringing in a mouse or a bird, although this makes no objective sense. As a gift, a rat is a biggie, from a cats point of view, requiring much greater investment of time and effort than a mouse, so should be valued much more than presents of other wildlife. Maybe Im hard, but a dead rat, to me, is just a disposal issue. Its the live ones that bother me, and they have been bothering all of us a lot, recently. In the Evening Echo last week, we learned of an elderly man in Midleton who was traumatised by one of them. There he was, this elderly gent, minding his own business, seated decorously on the toilet, when he was bitten on the arse by a rat who, we assume, was swimming in the bowl of the WC. Now, theres something that would get your attention if you were drifting off in the warmth of the bathroom. In the unfortunate mans case, it didnt just get his attention, it forced him to get immediate medical attention. You can imagine the dispatcher springing to attention when they got the call, because, as reasons for summoning the ambulance, reporting a nibbled posterior definitely beats, My hearing aid fell down the sink and My mother fell up the stairs. Councillor Noel Collins wants Cork County Council to investigate the possibility of flushing rat poison through the sewer system, which should worry any dog or cat owner whose animals normally lap, when thirsty, from the recently flushed loo. Councillor Collins blames the rat infestation on recent flooding and has advised homeowners to keep their toilet seats down when not in use, although how precisely keeping the rats in the dark while theyre doing the breast stroke around the toilet bowl would improve things isnt clear. Seems to me all youd get, when you next raised the loo-lid, is a bunch of ratty rats blinking like people coming out of a cinema. Cllr. Noel Collins In addition to all of this, Mr Collins, a man who leaves no toilet seat unturned, has added that the locals need to watch their posteriors. This, too, must be acknowledged as well-intentioned advice from a public representative flushed with a sense of his responsibility to serve his constituency. It would, however, be quite difficult to do in a thorough way without using mirrors, and it might be better to keep an eye on the toilet bowl rather than on ones own back view if the toilet bowl is where the rodents are congregating. Its not just Midleton thats receiving rat attention. Theyre making unwanted guest appearances everywhere. And its not the rats fault. In Midleton, its because floods have swept them into places no decent rat would be found dead. Or alive, which most of them are. In south Dublin, its because Luas construction has invaded their territory and driven them into neighbouring houses, but again, its not their fault, not their choice. Rats normally eschew intimacy with humans. Live and let live is their posture, generally, but if someone runs a mechanical digger through your natural home, what are you going to do but be incontinent in their home out of spite? The people in the houses being taken over by the rats in south Dublin are bothered by two things, the first of which is the sheer number of them. One man claims to have trapped 20 of them, which is not a mean boast. Numbers is one problem. Size is another. Remember the old song that went: There were rats, rats, big as bloody cats, in the quarter masters store? Well, the south Dublin rats are never spoken of in feline terms. Instead, these rats are variously described as the size of rabbits or dogs. This indicates a disgraceful inattention to and disrespect of the rodents involved, because a Chihuahua and an Irish wolfhound are both dogs, but a Chihuahua is a perfect size for a rat, whereas an Irish wolfhound-sized rat belongs in a horror movie, so when they say rats the size of dogs we need precision. Are we talking Springer Spaniel or Dachshund? Golden Retriever or Rottweiler? Rats arent just coming into houses, biting behinds in bathrooms and growing into dog-sized threats, theyre also turning up in and getting video recorded in fast food joints. Go on YouTube and you will find one rat after another running around the warming trays in KFC and any number of other fast food outlets, usually at night when the restaurants are deserted and the rat can have free rein, or perhaps free whisker. Now, this is really serious. Even the most fastidious home-maker cannot match the hygiene standards of any of the major fast-food chains, so if theyre infested with rats, the rest of us better stock up on Warfarin. Or domesticate them and keep them as pets. Clooney joined the president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in the solemn ceremony a day after the actor called for the events of 1915 to be recognised internationally as genocide. Armenians say the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5m of its people, beginning on April 24, 1915. Modern-day Turkey strongly disputes claims that the events were a genocide, and the figures stated. Clooney, who is visiting Armenia for the first time, later handed out a 900,000 award as part of the Aurora Prize humanitarian event held to recognise those who put themselves at risk to save the lives of others. During the 20-minute ceremony Clooney took part in a procession with Armenian politicians and military, before laying a flower at the memorial and soberly standing alongside Sargsyan. Flanked by two security guards, Clooney, dressed in a dark suit and black tie, wore the Armenian remembrance brooch a purple forget-me-not flower on his jacket. During his visit to the countrys capital, the Oscar-winning actor called for the events of 1915 to be recognised internationally as genocide. He said: When someone is trying to annihilate a whole human race, culture, people, thats genocide, there can be no other version of it. Just a handful of countries officially recognise the Armenian genocide, including France and Russia. At the time Britain condemned the actions of the Ottoman Empire, but has never officially recognised the event as a genocide. On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators demanding recognition from Turkey and the international community marched to the memorial in Yerevan. A small crowd was seen burning Turkish and Azerbaijani flags. Armenia has a fraught relationship with Azerbaijan over the conflicted Nagorno-Karabakh region, where around 75 soldiers were killed earlier this month after an outbreak of fighting. Clooney also spoke out about how he combats the suffocation caused by his fame to focus the attention on those who couldnt get any cameras on them. He said he felt lucky to be born in the US and not born as a young woman who was taken by Boko Haram. A New Jersey woman convicted of killing her newborn daughter by setting her on fire last year was sentenced on Friday to 30 years in state prison, prosecutors said. Hyphernkemberly Dorvilier, 23, of Pemberton Township, a Philadelphia suburb, must serve at least 25-and-a-half years before she is eligible for parole, Burlington County prosecutor Robert Bernardi said. Dorvilier pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter on February 29 in the babys death in Mount Holly, New Jersey, in January. People gathered at the remains of a historic tower in Nepals capital Kathmandu that collapsed in the devastating earthquake. Minor protests were also held, with demonstrators angry at the slow rate of reconstruction in the wake of the magnitude-7.8 quake that ravaged vast areas of the country. Prime minister Khadga Prasad Oli laid a wreath at the ruins of the Dharahara tower in the heart of Kathmandu. The iconic structure collapsed in the April 25 2015, quake, killing 132 people. In all, 8,856 people died in the disaster. Participating in the memorial ceremonies were people who lost loved ones in the quake, and others who simply came to pray for those killed. I lost a friend who was working at the top of the tower on that day. I hope he and others are in a good place, said Ram Shrestha,pointing at the remains of the tower. He said that he had just stepped out a few minutes before the earthquake struck to go shopping. Madhav Newpane, who runs a shop near the tower, witnessed its collapse. He returned yesterday with a bouquet of flowers and candles. There were many people killed here on that day. I will never be able to forget that day, Mr Newpane said. About 100 protesters scuffled with riot police outside the prime ministers office, demonstrating against the slow reconstruction of the homes. More than 600,000 homes were destroyed and around 185,000 damaged in the quake. Government, where is reconstruction. Open the gates of the government, the protesters chanted as they tried to force their way through a police barricade. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said an estimated 4m people are still living in sub-standard temporary shelters in conditions that pose a threat to their health and wellbeing. Only 661 families have received the first instalment of a 200,000-rupee (1,673) government grant, getting 50,000 rupees so far. Nepal has made almost no progress in rebuilding from the quake despite foreign donors pledging more than $4bn (3.5bn) in aid during a donors conference last year. The government, in disarray for nearly a decade, has not regrouped enough to be a strong force for reconstruction. Out of the $4.1bn pledged, Nepal has so far received just $1.28bn. The delay in getting the money has been blamed on the government taking months to set up the National Reconstruction Authority, which was done only in December. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong also defended his countrys right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that Pyongyang wont be cowed by international sanctions. And for those waiting for the Norths regime to collapse, he had this to say: Dont hold your breath. Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests, he said. Obama dismissed North Koreas latest overture at a news conference yesterday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover, Germany. We dont take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to test these kinds of activities, Obama said. What weve said consistently ... is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, then well be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. But thats not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviours. Theyre going to have to do better than that. Obama also said that until North Korea does better, as he put it, the US will continue to emphasise our work with the Republic of Korea and Japan and our missile defence mechanisms to ensure that were keeping the American people safe and were keeping our allies safe. Ris comments came just hours after North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in its latest show of defiance as this years US-South Korea exercises wind down. He referred to the launch in the context of current tensions caused by the military exercises. The escalation of this military exercise level has reached its top level. And I think its not bad as the other side is going for the climax why not us, too, to that level as well? The US State Department said that in response to Saturdays launch, it was limiting the travel of Ri and his delegation to UN functions in New York, where they are attending a UN meeting on sustainable development. The US noted launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. Ri held firm to Pyongyangs longstanding position that the US drove his country to develop nuclear weapons as an act of self-defence. At the same time, he suggested that suspending the military exercises with Seoul could open the door to talks and reduced tensions. If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the entire world as well, he said, speaking in Korean through an interpreter. It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise. Dwain Downing also is seeking $250 in attorney fees for the time spent drafting a letter sent to Benji Arslanovski, who operates Our Place Restaurant in the Fort Worth suburb of Mansfield. Mr Downing says the soup was listed on the menu as part of a Saturday special. He says the restaurant offered no discount or substitution when it ran out. The lawyer argued the menu amounts to a contract with the customer and Arslanovski violated the terms of the contract. But the restaurateur says the menu makes clear the soup comes with a meal while supplies last. Feline returns Wales: A missing cat has finally returned home six years after vanishing. Chloe, a tabby and white cat, went missing in 2010 after jumping from a pet carrier when her owner Rebecca Lee took her to the vet in Caerphilly, south Wales. After living as a stray and being cared for by an elderly woman just over a mile away from her owners home, Chloe was eventually handed into Cats Protections Bridgend Adoption Centre, when her new owner was no longer able to take her of her. A routine scan of her microchip meant she could finally be reunited with her owner. Mrs Lee, who had believed Chloe had died in a road accident, said she was overjoyed to be able to have her back at her home in Caerphilly. She said: It was a real shock but lovely news to hear that Chloe had been found and was alive and well after so many years. Chloe had jumped from the pet carrier in the car park and we never saw her again. I put up posters and placed adverts and shortly after got a call to say a cat matching her description had been found dead by the roadside. I was devastated but came to terms with her death. Unbeknown to me at the time, it seems she had wandered as a stray before eventually finding an elderly lady who had taken her in. Bag lady Thailand: Flaunting ones wealth is a popular hobby among Thailands well-to-do, but one actress may find it as costly as a few high-fashion handbags. Pechaya Wattanamontri posted photos of herself on Instagram with nine boxed Hermes handbags that she bought abroad. A video also circulated of her purchasing one of the luxury bags, which cost upwards of 2,000 (2,566) apiece. It was not long before people raised a few awkward questions, such as whether she paid the 30% customs duty on them and whether celebrities get special treatment. The Customs Department chief told reporters the actress had been contacted to clarify the matter, and the photos were deleted from Instagram. Shelling out US: A six-year-old boys love of sea turtles prompted him to skip his birthday gifts and ask instead for money he could donate to rescue efforts for the animals. Jasper Rose, of Watertown in Massachusetts, raised $550 for the New England Aquariums sea turtle rescue programme, and presented the donation to the aquariums president and chief executive Nigella Hillgarth. An aquarium spokeswoman said Jasper is a frequent visitor with his family, and knows all the names and stories of the sea turtles that live there. He has also written and illustrated a 10-page book about a sea turtles adventure. Burma Extreme Weather Kills 13, Destroys Hundreds of Pagodas Gale-force winds destroyed homes, religious buildings and livestock in northern Burma, as storms are expected to continue throughout the week. RANGOON Gale-force winds and hailstorms have killed more than 10 people and destroyed homes, religious buildings and livestock in northern Burma since Friday. The affected areas were in Mandalay, Sagaing and Magwe divisions, as well as Shan and Arakan states, claiming the lives of 13 people and injuring dozens. Storms damaged more than 15,000 homes and killed hundreds of cattle, local media reported on Monday. According to a report on Saturday from the office of Burmas military commander-in-chief, a 30-minute-long gale-force wind toppled more than 800 pagodas in the Kakku Pagoda compound about 30 miles outside of Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. The pagoda complex boasts a cluster of more than 2,400 religious structures, believed to be many centuries old. Kakku has been closed to visitors as the damage is assessed. According to reports in the Global New Light of Myanmar on Monday, heavy rains, thunderstorms and strong winds are expected to continue throughout the week in northern Burma. The weather patterns, the state-run media outlet explained, are caused by the cumulus clouds created by atmospheric instability of cool winds originating in India and Bangladesh meeting high temperatures in Burma. Burma N.Korea Claims Successful Test of Submarine-Fired Missile North Korea says it successfully test-fired a missile from a submarine and warns of its growing ability to attack enemies with a dagger of destruction. SEOUL, South Korea North Korea said Sunday that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a dagger of destruction. South Korea couldnt immediately confirm the claim of success in what marks Pyongyangs latest effort to expand its military might in face of pressure by its neighbors and Washington. Hours before the announcement, South Korean military officials said the North fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast. The Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectile traveled about 30 kilometers (19 miles) Saturday evening. Thats much shorter than the typical distance of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which can fly at least 300 kilometers (186 miles). A successful test from a submarine would be a worrying development because mastering the ability to fire missiles from submerged vessels would make it harder for outsiders to detect what North Korea is doing before it launches, giving it the potential to surprise its enemies. While South Korean experts say its unlikely that North Korea currently possesses an operational submarine that can fire multiple missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on such technology. In a typical example of overblown rhetoric, the Norths Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong-un observed from a test facility as the ballistic missile surged from a submarine and spewed out a massive stream of flames as it soared into the sky. It said the missile met all technical thresholds. The KCNA report said that after the test Kim declared that the North now has another strong nuclear strike method and also the ability to stick a dagger of destruction into the heads of its enemies, South Korea and the United States, at any time. The KCNA report didnt say when or where the recent test-firing took place. South Korean officials said the launch on Saturday took place near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems. The North last test-launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Dec. 25, but that test was seen as failure, the Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The North first claimed of a successful submarine-launched missile test in May last year. US Strategic Command, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, said its systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan. A statement from Strategic Command added that the missile launch did not pose a threat to North America. US military forces remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security, it said. The US State Department said that in response to Saturdays launch, it was limiting the travel of North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his delegation to UN functions in New York, where they are attending a UN meeting on sustainable development. The United States noted launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further destabilize the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and international obligations, said State Department spokesman John Kirby. The UN Security Council issued a press statement that strongly condemned the firing of the submarine-launched ballistic missile, saying it constitutes yet another serious violation of council resolutions. The Security Council members reiterated that North Korea should refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, including to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program. North Korea has recently sent a barrage of missiles and artillery shells into the sea amid ongoing annual military drills between the United States and South Korea. Pyongyang says the drills are a preparation for an invasion of the North. The firings also come as the North expresses anger about toughened international sanctions over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. North Koreas belligerence may also be linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement leader Kim Jong-uns grip on power. Promoting military accomplishments could be an attempt to overshadow a lack of economic achievements ahead of the Workers Party congress, the first since 1980. Burma Shwe Mann Questions Legality of USDP Ousting In a statement posted to social media, the former USDP chairman asks party members and authorities to look into the circumstances of his dismissal. RANGOON Three days after he was sacked along with others from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), former chairman Shwe Mann has requested that party members review whether the dismissal was in accordance with the law. He posted a statement on his Facebook page on Monday confirming that he had received a letter outlining his official expulsion from the military-backed party on Friday. Shwe Mann also admitted that he had learned 16 other party members had reportedly met the same fate; many of those dismissed are serving on the Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission, over which he presides. Founded in early February after the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD) took up a majority seats in Parliament, the 23-member legislative oversight commission is tasked with supporting parliamentary committees as they amend existing laws and draft new bills. In the statement, Shwe Mann said that regardless of his party membership, he would keep working for peoples security, prosperity and the countrys development. Though this is an intra-party issue, I assume it may somehow be concerned with the interests of the country and the citizens, he said. I think people, including USDP members and relevant authorities, need to look over whether the action by some USDP top members towards me and the commission members is in accordance with the existing laws and rules. At the time of reporting, it was not yet clear who in the commission had been sacked as the USDP had not released a statement on the issue. Speaking to The Irrawaddy over the weekend, Tint Zaw, a USDP executive committee member said that in addition to Shwe Mann, the NLD governments Religious Affairs Minister Aung Ko was among the 17 who were sacked. We have allowed those persons to resign from the party as they have violated the partys charter. It was the decision of the central executive committee, said Tint Zaw, before adding that since the dismissal concerned internal affairs of the party, they wanted to handle it quietly. The ousting was carried out almost immediately after Burmas ex-president Thein Sein resumed his duty as the chairman of the USDP, following a short stint within the Buddhist monkhood. He stepped down from the presidency on March 31. Shwe Mann, Aung Ko and other senior USDP members were purged from the party leadership by Thein Sein last year during a midnight raid at the organizations headquarters in Naypyidaw. Since then, both Shwe Mann and Aung Ko had remained regular USDP members. The Irrawaddy reporter Htet Naing Zaw contributed to this article from Naypyidaw. How the NLD Can Fulfill Its Promise of Peace Burmas new government has a chance to end decades of ethnic conflict, but a new approach to the peace process may be in order. Burmas new government has declared that finding a solution to the countrys decades-long civil war is one of its top priorities. That is clearly in line with the policies of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which stated when the party was formed in September 1988, [t]he forty-year history of [ethnic] relations has been a chapter of misfortune verging on the tragic the development of the country has suffered greatly since 40 percent of the national budget has to be devoted to defence requirements for these reasons we must seek a lasting solution to the problems of the ethnic minorities it is the aim of the League to secure the highest degree of autonomy consonant with the inherent rights of the minorities and the well-being of the Union as a whole. But in order to achieve peace, it is also obvious that the new government must find a novel approach to this issue. In late 2012, Thein Sein, the previous president, set up an organization called the Myanmar Peace Center and, with massive financial support from the international community, embarked on an ambitious program of talks with Burmas many ethnic armed organizations (EAO). But the problem was that the Myanmar Peace Center put the cart before the horse by asking the EAOs to sign a nationwide ceasefire agreement first and hold political talks later. In practice, that meant that groups which agreed to a ceasefire with the government army would be rewarded with lucrative business opportunities. And then, perhaps, some political talks would be held. Not surprisingly, that policy turned out to be a complete failure. There were few takers, and, as a face-saving gesture in the 11th hour before the end of its term, the Thein Sein government invited some EAOs to Naypyidaw where a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement was signed on Oct. 15 last yearhardly by coincidence less than a month before the election. It was said that eight EAOs had signed the agreement, but five of the signatories had no armed forces, and onethe Democratic Karen Benevolent Armyhad been a government-allied militia since it broke away from the Karen National Union (KNU) in December 1994. That means only two of the signatories were actually engaged in armed struggle against the government: the KNU and the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS). None of the other main EAOs in the country signed the October agreement: the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the National Democratic Alliance Army (eastern Shan State), and the Shan State Army (whose name the RCSS has taken, causing confusion among the Shans as well as outsiders). Those groups together account for more than four-fifths of all ethnic combatants in the country. Since then, the agreement has caused divisions between the groups that signed it and those that didnt. The RCSS, evidently with the approval of the Tatmadaw, Burmas military, moved at least 2,000 soldiers from its bases along the Thai border to northern Shan State, where they are engaged in battles with the ethnic Palaung TNLA. The TNLAs allies, the UWSA, the KIA, the Shan State Army and the MNDAA, have vowed to fight the RCSS unless it ceases attacks on the Palaungs. The KNU has not split officially, but divisions run deep within the organization over the controversial accord with the government. On Nov. 5, less than three weeks after the conference in Naypyidaw, two prominent Karen leaders made a surprise appearance at a meeting of EAOs at Panghsang, the UWSA headquarters. However, they came as representatives of the Karen National Defense Organization, the KNUs village militia forces, so as not to prompt an open rift within the Karen movement. This divide-and-rule policy, coupled with bribes to leaders of the EAOs to sign a ceasefire agreement, can hardly be the way forward. The best that could be done with the Oct. 15 agreement would be to file it away and let it die the death it deserves. On the other hand, the EAOs that did not sign it have failed to come up with a viable alternative to the now stalled peace process. They have also been reactive rather than proactive, and are now doing little more than waiting for the new government to invite them to talks. Cynics would argue that some of the EAO leaders may also be waiting to hear what lucrative deals the new government may offer them, and if those would be even better than the business deals awarded the KNU, the RSCC and others. But it should not be too difficult to come up with a comprehensive roadmap for peace, even though the situation in Burma today has been made even muddier by the presence of a host of foreign carpetbaggers. Styling themselves as peacemakers, they have shown that they have little or no understanding of Burmas ethnic problemsand that their main interest is to cash in on the peace bonanza that the flow of foreign funds has resulted in, not to alleviate the sufferings of the people in the frontier areas. A simple way forward could look like this: As a first step, the government should announce a nationwide ceasefire. Nothing has to be signed at this stage, but some on-the-ground monitoring would be required. Then the government should invite leaders of the EAOs, representatives of civil society groups and religious organizations for talks about the way forward. Step three would be to study federal models that would provide lasting solutions to the ethnic conflicts and thereby strengthen the Union. A continuation of the civil war will only be detrimental to national unity, as has been the case been for decades. Then, a federal model should be agreed upon in line with the aspirations of the non-Bamar peoplesand the promises of the NLDs 1988 manifesto of the highest degree of autonomy consonant with the inherent rights of the minorities and the well-being of the Union as a whole. As a fifth and final step, a political agreement should be signed, the EAOs could be dissolved and turned into local police forces or whatever they, civil society and the government think would be the best solution. Such an accord could be considered a successor to the historic 1947 Panglong Agreement, at which Aung San Suu Kyis father, Gen. Aung San, worked with leaders from ethnic groups to decide how the Union of Burma would be constituted. But as was with the first Panglong Agreement, these new terms should be signed only after a consensus has been reached on what kind of political structure Burma should have. This may not be easy, but solving decades-long conflicts never is. At the very least, it would be more constructive than the policies of the previous government and its supporters in the international donor community. The main task has to be to bring one of the worlds longest-lasting ethnic wars to an end, not to benefit from it financially in terms of funding for various, largely meaningless peace projects. After decades of misfortune verging on the tragic, as the NLD stated in 1988, the people of Burma, regardless of nationality, deserve nothing less than to live in peace and harmony with each other. Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Burma. Interview All USDP Members Are Responsible for Our Loss in 2015 Tint Zaw, a Union Solidarity and Development Party senior member, discusses a recent USDP purge, his partys plans and Thein Seins role in its future. The formerly ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is in the news again this week with former President Thein Sein making a dramatic return to the party leadership by purging more than a dozen senior members including Shwe Mann, who once served as party chairman before relations between the two men soured. Following the ouster of 17 members of the partys upper echelon on Friday, The Irrawaddy spoke with Tint Zaw, a USDP central executive committee member, in Naypyidaw to discuss the purge, his partys plans and Thein Seins role in its future. What has the USDP been doing in the aftermath of the 2015 election? What activities has the party been engaged in since then? Our party has been in existence since 2003; we were an association then. We transformed the association into a party in 2010. As a party, we have functional branches at division, district and township levels, and we have the largest membership in Myanmar at present. We have concrete objectives, policies and principles and we are working according to them. What is significant is that we are now transforming ourselves into a peoples party. And we are planning to make sure leaders of the party at the different levels, from village to central levels, are those who have good names with local people. We are now actively engaged in [public support] mobilization activities to reorganize the party with qualified and capable people who can lead the party and who people want. According to the partys charter, a conference is to be held once every five years. As we are a political party, one of our objectives is, of course, to contest and win the multi-party democracy general election. Only when we win the election will we be able to serve the interests of people more effectively and engage in nation-building endeavors. We are planning to hold the party conference to reorganize the party according to the reviews and recommendations we have made following the 2015 general election. We are now holding meetings at the village/ward level. Then, well hold meetings at township level, and then district and division levels. So, we expect to hold the central-level conference in August. The former President [Thein Sein] has taken back the USDP reins. What will his future role in the party be? Yes, he is back at the party. He comes to the party office now. He has even held a meeting with the central executive committee of the party. He is also devising policies. He is now giving close leadership. He is the incumbent chairman of the party. The USDP has purged U Shwe Mann and 16 other senior members. Can you explain the reasoning behind their dismissals? For a political party to exist, the partys rules are of importance. A partys rules are enforced in line with its charter and we reward and punish party members in line with the partys charter. The party headquarters has systematically formed relevant affairs committees [such as on youth or international relations], and we have also formed a party rules enforcement committee, party functions assessment committee and so on. Those committees monitor party members and check whether they violate the partys charter. We have allowed those persons to resign from the party as they have violated the partys charter. It was the decision of the central executive committee. But then, it came under the spotlight as they are popular among the people. It is the internal affairs of the party and we therefore wanted to handle it quietly. The USDP won the 2010 election but suffered humiliating losses in the 2012 by-election and 2015 general election? What do you think is the reason for that? In fact, people want change. We won the 2010 multi-party election [boycotted by the National League for Democracy] and the USDP was able to form the government, and we made up the majority in Parliament. As the leading and ruling party, our party engaged with the people. As the party gets along with the military and is backed the military, it took the lead role in all the four estates of the country and served the interests of the people. But, Im afraid it did not meet the aspirations and wishes of people. So, people wondered whether another organization would be able to do more for them, particularly regarding human rights, public health, education and social welfare. Im afraid [the USDP track record] did not meet their expectations in those sectors. Our [former] military government and [successor] USDP government have engaged in works in the interests of the people. We have built highways, factories and airports. Everyone has borne witness. [There are] infrastructural developments almost everywhere. But for individual citizens, there are people who are not satisfied with the condition of schools their children are attending and who do not have access to potable water and electricity in their villages. Though we were able to bring development to our country, we could not meet the wishes of individual citizens. So people wanted change. We saw the warning sign in the 2012 by-electionthat we did not meet the wishes of people. But then, we failed to make proper preparations and we lost the 2015 election as a result. Taking a lesson from this, we have to think about what we are going to do for 2020 [the year of Burmas next general election]. Here, I would like to stress that we want the country to develop. We uphold our three main national causes. It is not that we will try to achieve our goals alone and do not want somebody else to do it. If our goals can be reached and if the interests of the people can be served, we can accept anyone who does it and we are willing to cooperate. So, does the party plan to undertake reforms in light of the 2015 election outcome? In fact, all [party members] are responsible for the partys loss in 2015. From central executive committee to ward/village level, all are responsible for it as they failed to satisfy the wishes of people. Everyone takes that responsibility. As I have said, we are in the process of reorganizing the party with qualified, capable and respected people who can lead the party and who are backed by the people. And we are also strengthening the partys policies. What business interests does the party hold? How is the partys financial situation? We had the idea of transforming the USDA into a political party since we formed it as a social organization. We had laid down the objectives of serving the interests of people and turning ourselves into a political force together with the military, which is the defense force of the country. Our leaders predicted that other political parties would find fault with the partys possessions, so we have made sure most of our businesses are in line with financial laws and regulations of the State, and we also make sure we do not take concessions because other political parties use our financial position and businesses as a reason to attack us. But after we transformed into a political party, we ceased doing business except farming and livestock breeding, the business of the countrys majority, because we were afraid that people would have negative opinions of us if we continued to do these businesses. Final question: How much do you think the USDP, as an opposition party, will be able to serve as a check on the NLD government? Our goal is to bring about development for the country and the people, at least the same level of development with neighboring counties, especially in the sectors of education, health, human rights and infrastructure. We need to build peace, create job opportunities and address the unemployment. We tried to address those problems while we were the government and in Parliament. And we are willing to cooperate with any party if it serves the interests of the country and the people. And we will point out, as a political party, if they make mistakes. Even the people who have fought for various reasons [in the past] are now talking around the table. Well respond constructively to the big [NLD] party, which people have voted for clearly. Our goal is that which is in the interests of the country and the people. Monday, April 25th, 2016 (9:35 am) - Score 1,210 As expected Cityfibre has today confirmed that the two cities of Leeds and Bradford in Yorkshire (England) have become the latest to benefit from their ultrafast Gigabit capable fibre optic (FTTP) broadband and Ethernet data network, which can connect local public sector and business sites. The news is by no means a surprise because the operator already mentioned it as part of a new partnership deal with two business ISPs, which was announced earlier this month (here). At the time Cityfibre stated that Exa Networks had committed 250 new connections in Bradford, while Diva Telecom have offered an initial commitment of 100 connections and most would be in Leeds. The new network reflects the commercialisation of nearly 200km of pure fibre optic infrastructure in the cities and becomes part of the operators on-going plan to deploy their ultrafast fibre optic network services into as many as 50 UK cities by 2020, thanks in no small part to the recent acquisition of KCOMs UK network assets (here). Apparently theres also more to come, with Cityfibre noting that they have extensive fibre networks across the region that it will be launching in the coming months. Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: As thirst for greater internet speeds continues to grow in all sectors, its fantastic to be able to offer cities the world-class digital infrastructure they need to meet the demand. As Gigabit Cities, Leeds and Bradford will be on the digital front foot, able to compete and succeed in a digital world. We have already invested over 70m in next generation digital infrastructure across the North, and now businesses in Leeds and Bradford will be able to capitalise on this to build better-connected, more innovative, companies. David Cawthray, City of Bradford Metropolitan Council, added: This announcement is great news for Bradford. Reliable, ultrafast gigabit speed connectivity is crucial for businesses across the city to compete on the national and international stage. The CityFibre network will support the growth of Bradfords thriving entrepreneurial business community as well as other bandwidth hungry organisations allowing them to transform the way they operate. As a Gigabit City, Bradford will be able to set itself alongside the most digitally advanced locations in Europe, allowing the council to further our digital agenda quicker than ever before. We are delighted to see CityFibre continue its investment in Yorkshire. Its worth pointing out that Cityfibre arent the only Gigabit game in town for Leeds, with Hyperoptic also rolling out their service in the city (here) and unlike Cityfibre they are also catering for residential apartments as well as businesses. Naturally other operators, such as BT and Virgin Media, can also deploy Leased Lines with similar speeds, but theyre usually more expensive. Otherwise local businesses can find out more and register their interest at cityfibre.com/yorkshire . Monday, April 25th, 2016 (8:08 am) - Score 1,210 Mobile operator EE appears to have been influenced by new parent BT and plans to improve customer support by bringing it back to the United Kingdom and hiring 600 new staff. On top of that theyll increase their 4G landmass network coverage from 60% of the UK to 95% (99.8% population coverage). The onshoring move to answer 100% of service calls in the UK and Ireland (using Ireland is still a sort of outsourcing) is perhaps unsurprising given that EEs parent (BT) last year pledged to answer more than 80% of its customers calls in the United Kingdom by the end of 2016 (here); EEs target is to achieve their goal by the same date. On top of that the move to create 600 new roles across the UK and Ireland is also being seen as part of a wider effort to improve the operators sometimes flaky customer support scores (example). The first 100 roles will be created in Merthyr, North Tyneside, Plymouth and Ireland by the end of June 2016. EE may have a decent mobile network, but good support is the missing ingredient. Indeed EE claims that theyve already boosted customer satisfaction and cut complaints by 50% through an onshoring programme thats seen more than 1,400 jobs created in the UK and Ireland since 2014. We too have seen complaint volumes fall, albeit only fairly recently and that followed a peak, but its still too soon to confirm if this trend will continue. Marc Allera, EEs CEO, said: Were bringing 100% of our EE customer service calls back to the UK and Ireland. Weve already seen a major boost in customer satisfaction by creating 1,400 new service jobs here since 2014. Now were creating 600 additional jobs to handle all EE customer service calls in the UK and Ireland by the end of this year, providing the best possible experience for our customers. However the really big news, so far as were concerned, is EEs commitment to eradicate notspots by extending the landmass (geographic) coverage of their superfast 4G (LTE / LTE Advanced) mobile network from 60% of United Kingdom today to 95% by 2020. In addition, this commitment to landmass coverage will also help to boost their current 4G population coverage from 95% today to 99.8% by 2020. Apparently all of this will require EE to build more than 750 new sites, which is a notoriously slow, difficult and very expensive process. EE further states that the new sites will only be possible with policy reform, which is a way of telling the Government and regulators to get on with the business of updating the Electronic Communications Code (ECC) in order to make it both easier and cheaper to deploy new infrastructure. But private rural land owners may have a different opinion (here). EE also talks about encouraging financial incentives to invest, which could be a reference to the hike in spectrum licence fees (example). Marc Allera, EEs CEO, said: For the average smartphone user, not-spots arent tolerated and 2G doesnt deliver what they need. Customers want 4G speeds everywhere they go, and mobile operators are too used to saying no to new coverage. Today, Im saying yes, with an ambition to go further than any operator has ever gone, and with the ultimate aim of covering the whole UK with 4G. Admittedly some aspects of EEs new coverage commitment arent that much of a surprise, not least because all of the major Mobile Network Operators (EE, Vodafone, Three UK and O2) have already agreed to a 5bn investment that will deliver basic mobile (voice and text) landmass coverage of 90% (85% for mobile broadband / data) by 2017 (here). On top of that theyre also all working towards a 4G population coverage target of 98% by the end of 2017, although EE are expected to achieve that by the end of 2016 due to their earlier head start on 4G deployments. However those last little bits of coverage, which often include a lot of wide open rural areas and small sparse communities, are always the most economically and technically challenging to serve. The costs for reaching the last bits can be aggressively disproportionate and so its very good indeed to see EE making such a strong commitment. Another important aspect to note is that at present 4G remains a data (mobile broadband) centric network, although EE are now rolling out Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE or 4G Calling), which does exactly what it says on the tin. 4G Calling is already live in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Leeds and Newcastle, and will be switched on across the rest of the network by July 2017. One other thing that todays announcement does is to throw down the gauntlet to their rivals, which may or may not feel encouraged to keep up with EE. However we suspect that most will want to see the outcome of the Governments ECC revisions before committing to further expansion and theyll also have to remain mindful about spending big on 4G, particularly when 5G is slowly appearing on the horizon. Side Note: EE has also today announced the start of their 4G roll-out on the remote Shetland Islands in Scotland (its just gone live in Lerwick and EE expects complete coverage across all of the islands by summer 2017) and the five inhabited Isles of Scilly that reside off the South West coast of England (apparently the coverage should already reach almost everybody). Study Pinpoints IT Securitys Top Data Security Concerns Hospitals are scary places. Besides the obvious health implications, highly valuable data is flowing between patient and health care professionals, between those professionals, to and from insurance companies and even between machines. The scary part is that it appears to be haphazardly protected. Ars Technica looks at the disturbing trend of ransomware attacks on health care facilities. The approach audacious hackers encrypting vital databases and only providing the decryption key after a random is paid seems to be getting worse. MedStar lost some systems in its Baltimore hospitals and a new strain of ransomware code apparently aimed at hospitals has been detected by Cisco Talos Research. Things are not going well elsewhere, either: March has not been a good month for hospital IT. Last week, staff at Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Kentucky paid a ransom to restore the hospitals systems, reportedly of $17,000though sources familiar with the episode say the hospital paid much more. And in California, two hospitals operated by Prime Healthcare Management, Inc. were forced to shut down systems. The Prime ransomware attack also caused disruptions of service at several other hospitals and at affiliate care providers as shared systems were taken offline. Ransomware, as frightening as it is, is only part of the overall set of security problems facing health care. Another is that providers devices are not secure. Beckers Health IT & CIO Review reported on a collection of statistics provided by Skycure, a security firm. Among them was the fact that 80 percent of physicians use mobile devices in their daily practices. Of these, only 56 percent present minimal or low risk. The rest are non-marginally insecure: 41 percent are associated with medium risk and 2 percent with high risk. Earlier this year, Kaspersky highlighted researcher Sergey Lozhkins presentation at its Security Analyst Summit, in which he described how he hacked an unnamed hospital. His penetration testing proved that the center held in one respect: Lozhkin was not able to get into the system remotely. But he visited and found that the Wi-Fi at the hospital was open and he could simply do what he wanted. The report is quite sobering. The good news is that the right people are paying attention. On January 15, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration released draft guidance for medical device manufacturers related to cyber security. It includes an acknowledgement up front that no silver bullet exists: While manufacturers can incorporate controls in the design of a product to help prevent these risks, it is essential that manufacturers also consider improvements during maintenance of devices, as the evolving nature of cyber threats means risks may arise throughout a devices entire lifecycle. The back and forth between crackers and those on the other side will go on forever. The willingness of crackers to attack hospitals is disappointing and frightening. It is, however, a fact of life with which the industry must aggressively deal on a daily basis. Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk. Google's translator app is arguably better compared to Microsoft's Android translator app. However, things are changing, as the Redmond tech behemoth has upgraded its translator app for Android devices enabling it to translate texts in photographs. Android users can now use images taken with their device camera or photographs taken earlier and just need to tell the app to translate them. Hence if one is traveling by road, but is not able to understand the signs in foreign languages, they need not worry any longer. Microsoft's Android translator app will tell them what the signs denote! Previously, it was possible to translate any text by typing it into the app, but now Microsoft has made things simpler. In order to upgrade its Android translator app, Microsoft has included two new features in the software. Now, Microsoft Translator for Android can translate text in saved images, besides offering an option which helps the user to translate texts anywhere on their phone, PC Mag reported. In fact, the inline translation feature of the app is available as an option along with cut, copy, and paste when one highlights text. Moreover, Microsoft Android Translator update also pushes up the downloadable languages for offline use to 43. The image translation facility was offered by Microsoft's iOS app since February. In addition, the facility was also available on Windows Phone app since 2010. According to Microsoft, the latest upgrade for its translator app for Android devices will not call for users to type text or say the foreign languages phrases any longer. A blog post by the Redmond tech titan says that henceforth users will be able to translate pictures right away from their phone. The translation will appear in the form of an overlay above the existing text, Yahoo reported. All said and done, all translation features in apps are dissimilar. The Google's Translator app works with only live images taken with the device's camera and compares the appearance of the translated text with the source of the font. Conversely, to use the Microsoft Androids Translator users need to take a picture by overlaying the translated text over the image using a default font. Apple announced that all new third-party Watch apps for the App Store should run without the help of an iPhone. The publication Engadget reports that Apple will not approve non-native apps for the App Store starting June 1. The high-tech giant rules that all new third-party Watch apps should run without an iPhone nearby. Apple mandates in a blog post that all applications submitted for App Store approval after June 1 have to be native apps running watchOS 2 or later versions. This is good news for users of Apple wearable tech during a workout or run where carrying an iPhone is not so convenient. Market experts believe that measure will result in third-party developers designing higher quality applications for the Apple Watch, according to the same publication. The new native apps running watchOS 2 will be pushed to make full use of the device and its capabilities. iPhone and Apple Watch will soon be going their separate ways, after the June 1 deadline given by Apple to third-party developers of Apple Watch apps. CNET reports that the watchOS 2 was unveiled by Apple in October. The upgraded operating system added more Wi-Fi support that already made it possible to issue voice commands, make calls and run apps without the need for an iPhone nearby. The new rule imposed by Apple means that starting in June new App Store apps will have to run newer operating systems that provide more Wi-Fi support. This way, users of the Apple Watch will enjoy a better and faster app experience on the Apple Watch. Last month, with watchOS 2.2, the high-tech giant released some incremental updates. Tech analysts expect that Apple could also unveil new improvements and features to the watchOS at its WWDC developers conference, scheduled to start on June 13. It is also possible that sometime this year Apple will launch a second generation of its Apple Watch. The first generation of the Apple Watch began shipping on April 24 last year, so the new watchOS 2 requirement comes as the gadget celebrates its first birthday. AMD's world-class GPUs, x86 licensing strategy and Zen chips could be keys for the company's revival as the strong competitor to Intel it once was. According to Info World, things just got more dynamic in the x86 server market since AMD announced its plans to license its top-of-the-line server processor to a Chinese joint venture. The newly formed company is called Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd. (THATI) and it is a joint venture between a consortium of public and private Chinese companies and AMD. The new AMD initiative is creating a brand-new rival for Intel. AMD will provide all the technology required for THATIC to build a server chip, including the controllers, interconnects and CPUs. This way, THATIC will be able to develop variants of the x86 chips for more types of servers. According to the same publication, Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research, said that licensing the chip technology to other companies is rare in the industry, even in case of a joint venture. But because AMD is much smaller company than Intel, it could easily expand the installed base of its technology by using a licensing strategy. McGregor explained that in the process of licensing AMD will also generate revenue. AMD may also license its x86 chip architecture and system-on-chip technology as well. The company is aiming to become again competitive with Intel. The deal with the Chinese joint venture company is a sign that AMD seeks to monetize its large portfolio of intellectual property, according to the president and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, Patrick Moorhead. Moorhead said in an email that he expects more similar deals in areas AMD can't reach with their resources or platforms. Similar arrangements are expected also with AMD GPU technology. At present, Intel dominates the PC and server markets and hasn't licensed its chip technology yet. According to PC World, the rivalry between Intel and AMD peaked during the first decade of the 2000s. Today AMD is barely a threat to Intel, but as early as next year the competitive landscape could start changing. Nasa is planning to design super-efficient power for its future missions headed to Mars. As part of this initiative, the state space agency invested $67 million in projects to develop solar electric spacecraft engines. Engadget reports that Nasa is aiming to develop more solar electric propulsion because this type of engines supply thrust for a very long time. For instance, Nasa's Dawn spaceship already uses a solar electric propulsion engine. Now, the American space agency is looking to improve the solar electric propulsion super-efficient tech. Nasa just invested $67 million in a 3-year contract with the private company Aerojet Rocketdyne with the purpose to design an advanced solar electric propulsion system. The new technology could be up to 10 times more efficient and deliver twice as much thrust than chemical engines. According to Mail Online, Nasa is asking for proposal from private companies to design propulsion systems and living quarters. As the space agency is increasingly looking to Mars, is becoming essential to find best ways for the astronauts to survive the journey. Nasa is working on its Orion spaceship as part of the NextSTEP-2 project. The Orion spacecraft is undergoing tests to prepare for a maiden voyage in the year 2018. Before heading back to Earth, the Orion spaceship will launch on a test flight, going as far as thousands of miles beyond the moon. It is estimated that the trip to Mars will take anywhere from 150 to 300 days, so astronauts will need a relatively comfortable and safe space to live during their deep space missions. The space crew will need enough shielding to protect them from the high levels of radiation and room to stretch their legs. Private space ventures as Bigelow Aerospace and Space X give NASA the opportunity to open up space exploration to collaborations. The business drive of the private sector can only benefit from joint ventures using the experience of state agencies. Jason Crusan, director of Nasa's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Division, declared that Nasa is embracing public-private partnerships to expand opportunities and capabilities in space. The state space agency has an industry forum scheduled for Monday, April 25 and it continue to accept applications from non-profit organizations, universities and U.S. companies until June 15. Earth Day is being celebrated on a global scale and in different ways. The world celebrates and commemorates Earth Day and with that celebration, it collides with the business world. Many organizers have set plans on ways and means to celebrate Earth Day. A post from CBC revealed, "Although Earth Day was officially on April 22, celebrations across the Lower Mainland are taking place on Saturday and Sunday, with events ranging from demonstration marches to just parties with a cause, it promises a fun time to be one with the planet, and organizers of Surrey's Party for the Planet say their event on the plaza at City Hall is the largest Earth Day celebration in B.C." Other areas where Earth Day and the business world collide are in North Vancouver. Maple Ridge's Earth Day celebrations will turn Memorial Peace Park even greener on Saturday and the event gets going with a parade winding through the park starting at 10 a.m. PT, with multiple music stages, food trucks, crafts for kids and art installations placed throughout the event, according to the same post. Meanwhile, while other regions celebrated with fun things, and loaded with things to buy and things to eat, the Los Angeles Daily News conveyed of how the region celebrated Earth Day. According to the report, the locals are cleaning the streets and taking out the trash to showcase their support to make the world better and clean. To prove the latter, Sibert, formally known as a refuse collection truck operator for the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation said, "It's great to celebrate Earth Day and trash. And how we've reduced the amount going into our landfills. We're there to keep the city and its streets clean." As the world celebrates Earth Day utilizing various means and methods, it is apparent that in some areas, the world of business and trade collided with it and though the celebration for Earth Day might vary, the mere idea of celebrating the event has led to unity and of one mind. The Federal Aviation Administration has recently ordered changes on certain Boeing engines installed on a number of 787 Dreamliners due to icing or freezing issues which could cause such engines to stop working while in flight. This FAA directive was issued as a response of the agency to an accident that happened on January 29 on a 787 Dreamliner when it was flying at approximately 20,000 feet. The accident happened on a Japan Airlines airplane when one its engine suddenly stopped and which couldn't be restarted. It was flying from Vancouver, B.C. carrying 166 people en route to the Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan. The plane was still about 90 miles from its destination when the engine stopped working. "Ice shed from the fan blades ... causing the blades to rub against the fan case, resulting in engine vibration," said Rick Kennedy, GE Aviation spokesman in an interview with CNN. That condition forced the engine to completely shut off. Fortunately, the pilot was able to land the plane safely with its other engine. "Susceptibility to heavy fan blade rubs, if not corrected, could result in engine damage and a possible in-flight non-restartable power loss of one or both engines," said an FAA document. All air carriers will be affected by this FAA directive just as long as they have 787 Dreamliners in their fleet. Currently, there are about 176 Dreamliners being flown by 29 airline companies across the globe. This is about 44 percent of the world's air fleet. Boeing's most advanced plane today is the Dreamliner being made largely of super strong light-weight carbon-fiber reinforced plastic instead of the usual aluminum. That makes this airplane model very expensive. And yet, according to the FAA document: "The potential for common cause failure of both engines in flight is an urgent safety issue." Therefore, in some cases, some of these planes need to be grounded, although the agency said they are coordinating their efforts with the airline companies to minimize disruptions in their operations. Those affected and victimized by the malware program SpyEye finally attained vindication. It has been affirmed that the SpyEye Malware crew is now facing jail time and consumer awareness has heighten and leveled up as well. According to a report from Modern Readers, "The men behind the malware program SpyEye have just been sentenced to a combined 24 months and six months in jail, for creating and distributing the harmful software that stole hundreds of millions of dollars from several companies." Aleksandr "Gribodemon" Andreevich Panin from Russia and Hamza "Bx1" Bendelladj from Algeria, both 27, made up the two-man crew behind SpyEye, a banking Trojan designed to steal money from companies in the financial space and the malware crew was sentenced this week in an Atlanta federal court by Judge Amy Totenberg, according to the same post. In terms of the damages rendered by SpyEye, it instigated attacks from the year 2010 to 2012. The sophistication of the malware has crippled various companies and impeded their overall operations as well. Moreover, Bendelladj transmitted over one million spam emails containing strains of SpyEye and related malware to computers in the United States, yielding hundreds of thousands of infected computers," said the U.S. Justice Department, further explaining the Algerian's involvement in the case. Lawsuits and legal issues are everywhere, it could range to issues from copyright infringement while other companies sue other companies, such as the case of Hewlette-Packard being sued by Oracle, reports Jobs & Hire. As SpyEye got the legal discipline owing to their acts, consumers and companies alike can finally ease on the threat that SpeEye has caused since the SpyEye Malware crew has receive the verdict and is facing jail time. Donald Trump has slammed the U.S. election system. The presidential candidate described the arrangement as "all rigged." The Christian Science Monitor reported that the real estate magnate has continued to blast Republican insiders. On Friday, the Republican presidential aspirant shared his thoughts on the U.S. election system at a Delaware rally. "The system is all rigged," Trump said. "That's why we have to win big. That's why on Tuesday, everyone has to go out and vote. We have to win big because the system is rigged." The publication noted that the real estate magnate's "foot-stomping" has become his rally's cry to increase turnout and strengthen his appeal to voters. His argument is described as a "convenient scapegoat." "The fighters have a great expression," Trump stated on Friday. "When you have a champ that goes into a big territory but it's unfriendly; it's home of the other fighter." "But the good ones go, 'No, no, I'm not worried.' Because if I knock him out there's nothing the judges can do. Right? What we have to do is knock them out with the volume of our votes." Trump's campaign aide Paul Manafort clarified that the presidential candidate is only criticizing the U.S. election system. Apparently, the system is "rigged in all 50 states" and "don't take into account modern presidential campaigns." "That's where things are getting confused," Manafort said. "He's saying we've got to change rules so the next time, when people vote, their vote counts." According to Business Insider, Donald Trump scorned candidates who fight each other ruthlessly for six months but shower the ultimate victor with praises in the end. He added that Americans will not be hearing anything like that from him. "The one who loses says, 'I just want to congratulate my opponent," Trump said in a rally on Sunday in Maryland. "He is a brilliant man, he'll be a great governor or president or whatever.'" "I'm not sure you're ever going to see me there. I don't think I'm going to lose, but if I do, I don't think you're ever going to see me again, folks." An airplane whose only power is provided by the sun's rays was recently able to complete a very dangerous and risky 3-day flight over the Pacific Ocean in its overall goal of encircling the planet. The pilot, Bertrand Piccard, finally landed his Solar Impulse 2 in San Francisco, California, particularly in the Silicon Valley, at exactly 11:45 p.m., Saturday, April 23. This is after a grueling 62-hour non-stop solo flight from Hawaii, without using a single drop of conventional fuel. Impulse 2 taxied into a big tent that was built on Moffett Airfield where the pilot was greeted by the team that took charge of the project. "You know there was a moment in the night, I was watching the reflection of the moon on the ocean and I was thinking 'I'm completely alone in this tiny cockpit and I feel completely confident,'" said Piccard at a news conference after his landing. "And I was really thankful to life for bringing me this experience. It's maybe this is one of the most fantastic experiences of life I've had," he added. His solar airplane has a wingspan of a Boeing 747, but weighs only as light as an ordinary SUV. It has flown over the Golden Gate Bridge before touching down in Silicon Valley. This was a great achievement to the project team considering the many obstacles they have to overcome in this pioneering solar airplane circumnavigation of the world. I'm very happy that everything works extremely well and the airplane is functioning as it should," said Andre Borschberg, Piccard's business partner and the second pilot told CNN through a phone interview from California, before the successful landing. "It's a demonstration that the tech is reliable," he enthused. Piccard landed the Impulse 2 a few hours after he executed a fly-by-over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators witness the wide but narrow airplane with extended wings from below. "I crossed the bridge. I am officially in America," boasted Piccard as he enjoyed the spectacular views of San Francisco Bay. Forever 21 has made remarkable accomplishments over the past 30 years. The retail company's goal is to become an 8 billion dollar business by 2017. With less than a year to reach that mark, Forver 21 recently opened its second store in Boston at 449 Washington Street, in Downtown Crossing. Forever 21 hopes to achieve 600 stores by 2017 and Downtown Crossing is just one of the many stores they are launching. According to the Examiner, the family-owned business occupied a 19,000 square foot three level area that carries Forever 21 Contemporary, Forever 21 Men, Forever 21 Plus, active, basics, cosmetics, denim, and footwear. It recently hosted its grand opening on Apr. 23, 2016 and treated guests to promotional gift certificates, artisanal donuts and a live performance by Trio Bahari. The Boston Magazine noted that Forever 21 has had seven successful years in Downtown Crossing and the second store opening marks their 510th store. But that isn't the only thing the company is celebrating. If you're looking for a career on retail and fashion, Forever 21 invites professionals that are keen on working in a fast paced environment to join their Open Interviews. Applicants will have the opportunity to meet with the managers and talk about career opportunities with the retail company. Here are the following Forver 21 Store locataions where fashion-savvy applicants can check out : - Polaris Fashion Place @ Columbus, OH, 04/22/2016 - 04/23/2016 - Coastland Center Mall @ Naples, FL 04/06/2016 - 04/27/2016 - Lincoln Road Mall @ Miami, FL 04/11/2016 - 04/25/2016 - Pembroke Lakes Mall @ Pembroke Pines, FL 04/20/2016 - 04/27/2016 - Haywood Mall @ Greenville, SC 04/16/2016 - 04/23/2016 - Tucson Mall @ Tucson, AZ 04/28/2016 - 04/29/2016 - Outlets of Mississippi @ Pearl, MS 04/27/2016 - 04/28/2016 - South Towne Center @ Sandy, UT 05/21/2016 - 05/21/2016 - South Coast Plaza @Costa Mesa, CA 04/20/2016 - 04/27/2016 - Pearlridge Shopping Center @ Aiea, HI 03/31/2016 - 03/31/2017 - Ala Moana Mall @ Honolulu, HI 03/31/2016 - 03/31/2017 - Kingsway Mall @ Edmonton, AB 03/31/2016 - 03/31/2017 - South Coast Plaza @ Costa Mesa, CA 04/19/2016 - 04/27/2016 - Chandler Fashion Center @ Chandler, AZ 04/22/2016 - 06/03/2016 Packers defense has no margin for error because rest of team is awful Certainly the Green Bay defense had lapses at inopportune times, but the loss at Washington can't be placed on Joe Barry's unit. SHARE By of the A longtime Milwaukee Public Schools principal who quietly resigned in March, has agreed to plead guilty to sexually assaulting a young relative a decade ago, his attorney confirmed Monday. Wendell Smith, 55, was charged April 12 with causing mental harm to a child and fourth degree sexual assault. The complaint alleges Smith repeatedly fondled the child over the course of a year beginning when she was 10. Smith agreed at the time of charging to plead guilty, in what is known in prosecutorial parlance as a "negotiated issuance." Failure to do so could result in harsher charges, based on additional information obtained by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office but excluded from the criminal complaint. Smith had served as principal at Longfellow Elementary School on Milwaukee's south side since 2006, before which he had been a bilingual teacher in the district. He was placed on sick leave in March and then resigned March 25. But he had not been at the school since December, according to the district. The victim reported the abuse to authorities in January. District spokesman Tony Tagliavia stressed Monday that the allegations did not involve a Longfellow student and did not appear to have occurred at the school. SHARE By of the Job growth in southeastern Wisconsin over the next 35 years will depend on communities in the seven-county region competing directly with other metropolitan areas in the United States for workers, regional planners say. For the first time since the post-World War II baby boom generation filled available jobs, and an equal number of women joined men in the labor force, the regions communities need to play a greater role in attracting workers of all ages for their local employers, according to the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission in Waukesha. If the region does not compete strongly to attract needed workers, economic growth cannot be expected to occur, the commission says in its draft Vision 2050 plan. Key to winning that competition: vastly improved public transit and compact development. The draft plan projects 229,000 additional jobs and 369,000 more residents in the seven-county southeast region by 2050. But those levels of job and population growth will occur only if a significant number of the workers move here from outside the region, SEWRPC Executive Director Ken Yunker said. And keeping some employers here could depend on attracting workers for them. There will be greater competition between communities as employers move to regions where the labor force wants to be, Yunker said. Long hours on freeways battling rush-hour traffic is not an issue here, so that is one transportation factor in the regions favor. We compete well with the level of congestion on our roadways, Yunker said. Thats a positive. But mass transit is a negative, according to the draft plan. One in 10 households in the region does not have access to a car, so limited bus services provide their only access to jobs, health care, education and even grocery stores, the report says. Minority residents depend on bus service far more than whites, and young people often look to public transit for their choice of where to live. Other than Milwaukee, only five out of 39 metropolitan areas with more than 1.5 million residents in the U.S. Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis and San Antonio do not have light rail, bus rapid transit, or commuter rail, the draft plan says. The commissions draft development plan includes numerous recommendations to local and state governments for shaping land use and transportation improvements through the year 2050. If embraced by communities, the draft plan would yield a compact development pattern that will preserve our natural and agricultural resources and make the Region competitive by supporting active lifestyles, high-quality public transit, and a variety of housing options, according to a summary report on the commissions website. Among the recommendations: Focus urban development in areas that can be efficiently served by municipal water, sewer and other services. Preserve the most productive agricultural land. Protect primary environmental corridors that encompass the best remaining natural resources: water bodies, wetlands, woodlands and other open spaces. Encourage more compact development within communities. Examples are high-density housing and commercial growth close to transit, and residential neighborhoods within walking distance of parks, schools and businesses. Allow a mix of affordable housing, including multifamily residences and single-family homes on small lots. With less distance between housing, municipal services can be provided at less public cost than extending pipes and pavement to sprawling, large-lot subdivisions. Improve and expand public transit, both local bus services as well as the addition of bus rapid transit, expansion of streetcar routes, and the extension of commuter rail beyond the Milwaukee to Chicago corridor. The City of Milwaukee expects to begin construction this year of a 2.5-mile downtown streetcar route and lakefront loop. Milwaukee County is studying possible bus rapid transit service between downtown Milwaukee and the Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa. The public is invited to comment on the recommendations at any of seven workshops scheduled across the region in the next two weeks. Written comments will be accepted through May 6 by sending an email to vision2050@sewrpc.org or posting a letter to the Waukesha-based commission. All comments will be considered as the commission completes work later this year on a final recommended regional plan. Vision 2050 public meetings Racine: 5 to 7 p.m. Monday in Racine Building at Gateway Technical College, 1001 S. Main St. Kenosha: 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday in Madrigano Center at Gateway Technical College, 3520 30th Ave. Cedarburg: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Ozaukee County Pavilion, W67-N890 Washington Ave. West Bend: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Washington County Public Agency Center, 333 E. Washington St. Elkhorn: 5 to 7 p.m. May 3 in Elkhorn Campus - South Building of Gateway Technical College, 400 county Highway H. Pewaukee: 5 to 7 p.m. May 4 in Richard T. Anderson Center at Waukesha County Technical College, 800 Main St. Milwaukee: 5 to 7 p.m. May 5 in first floor Meeusen Confluence Gallery at Global Water Center, 247 W. Freshwater Way, east of S. 2nd St. SHARE Dennis Gall turned to law after his alternative paper folded. Family photo By of the Students of Milwaukees counterculture, as well as silver-haired hipsters of a certain age, will remember Kaleidoscope, a biweekly alternative paper that, as it neared its final days in the early 1970s, was bought by Dennis Gall. The price he paid to take over the publication: $1. At that price, it was a bad deal, Gall told Milwaukee Sentinel columnist Bill Janz in 1977. Gall, Janz reported, not only produced much of Kaleidoscopes content, but he also hawked the paper on the corner of N. Plankinton and W. Wisconsin avenues. It was on that corner that Gall was nabbed by Milwaukee police and cited for barking, that is, for loud public advertisements after 5 p.m. But Gall who was 71 when he died Saturday of complications from pneumonia at Columbia St. Marys Hospital in Milwaukee would not be muzzled. He was a bred-to-the-bone barker who had no trouble raising his voice for the people and issues he believed in. He was dedicated to social justice, said Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Barry Slagle, a longtime friend and colleague. He was passionate. Passion is a characteristic that comes up again and again when people talk about Galls life. Passion and intelligence. He was brilliant, said his daughter, Lenore Burger. Absolutely brilliant. In 1972, after Kaleidoscope had folded, in an essay that appeared in The Milwaukee Journal under the headline A hippie dream turns sour, Gall bemoaned the mental laziness and creeping anti-intellectualism invading the youth culture. In the long run, if the dream of the so-called hippie movement (representing love, peace and human dignity) is not to become a nightmare of ignorance and oppression, then the movement had better spend as much time developing intelligent and sensitive human beings as it spends creating Pavlovian political animals. Gall spent a few years as a private detective, then returned to school. In 1986, at age 41, he graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law. He started out as a prosecutor but spent most of his legal career in the state public defenders office. He was the best attorney Ive ever practiced with or against, said Slagle, a former public defender. He didnt care if someone was guilty or not. He wanted to make sure they had a fair trial and made sure they had their day in court. His interest was justice. Besides Burger, Gall is survived by his daughter, Grace Gall. A memorial service is being planned. Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks on during a Get Out the Vote rally at World Cafe Live at the Queen in Wilmington, Del. Credit: Justin Sullivan SHARE By The presidential primaries are a long way from over, but they've already produced an unhappy paradox: Both parties appear headed toward nominating the two most unpopular candidates in the country. Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, has accomplished an unprecedented feat: More than two-thirds of voters say they can't stand him. In the same unpopularity contest, Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is runner-up: more than half the voters don't like her. Ted Cruz, who still has a shot at the GOP nomination, is almost as unpopular as Clinton. In every major poll conducted since February, all three leading candidates are "underwater": more voters view them unfavorably than favorably. The negative numbers are driven mostly by partisan animosity. Republicans are divided over Trump, and Democrats are divided over Clinton but voters in each party are united in disliking the other sides' front-runners by roughly 90% in each case. When the Pew Research Center asked voters how good a president each candidate would make, the results were striking: 67% of Democrats said they thought Trump would make a "terrible" president. Almost as many Republicans, 58%, said they thought Clinton would be terrible in the White House. "We've never seen numbers like this before," Carroll Doherty, Pew's chief political pollster, told me. And that has troubling implications for the next president, no matter who he or she turns out to be. After an election, presidents must bridge the partisan divide to get much done. But no need to wait for inauguration day 2017. We already know how this is going to turn out: We're pre-polarized. It's easy to forget, but in 2009, Obama arrived at the White House with a massive 68% positive rating in the Gallup Poll, including 41% of Republicans. Eight years earlier, the newly elected George W. Bush enjoyed a 63% positive rating, including 37% of Democrats. The honeymoon didn't last, but the numbers meant that these presidents at least had the benefit of the doubt from most independent voters and a significant minority in the other party. They both had a base of popular support from which to negotiate with Congress. But that's unlikely to happen this time. With the next president already held in record low esteem, both parties will be tempted to follow the strategy example set by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell during Obama's presidency: constant confrontation, instead of bipartisanship, to heighten the chance of gaining ground in the next election. Most voters still tell pollsters they want Congress and the president to work together and get something done, of course. But that sentiment never seems to be powerful enough to overcome partisan distaste for the other side. Political scientists call this "affective polarization" meaning the two sides just dislike each other more. Whatever you call it, it produces the central political frustration of our time: political parties that see little reason to cooperate, and plenty of reasons to fight. Is anyone pushing back? Last week, a bipartisan group called "No Labels" unveiled a hopeful centrist program: a glossy catalog of sensible policy ideas, complete with poll numbers to show that each has wide public support. Among the proposals: Allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower prices, which gets 82% support. Passing a "no budget, no pay" law to withhold Congress' paychecks if a federal budget isn't passed, which gets 81% support. Increased funding for child care and early education; 79% support. The group has assembled a centrist "problem solver" caucus in Congress, with almost 80 members drawn equally from both the parties. The group has a practical side, too. It's raising money to protect centrist members of Congress from being knocked out of office in primary elections. It's a worthy effort. But the hill they are climbing looks steeper than ever because in the presidential campaign each side is already demonizing the other. That will make it even more difficult for the next president to bring the two parties together after January 2017. Doyle McManus is a columnist for The Los Angeles Times. Email doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com Twitter: @DoyleMcManus U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman as a state senator in 2013: Grothman acknowledged on election night what others have long suspected. Credit: Mark Hoffman SHARE By As offered in the April 17 Journal Sentinel by columnist Christian Schneider, Republicans are trumpeting that since Wisconsin had an election in April and people went to the polls in high numbers, no one was disenfranchised under the state's restrictive voter ID law ("The voter ID debate is now over," Crossroads). But it turns out this claim is as credible as Donald Trump predicting he would win Wisconsin's primary. A recent filing in a lawsuit brought by One Wisconsin Institute and other voter rights advocates exposed serious flaws at the Department of Motor Vehicles in providing Wisconsinites with the ID that voters must now produce to cast their ballot at the polls. Despite the inability of Wisconsin Republicans to provide, in court and under oath, even one instance of the in-person voter fraud they claim is so rampant, they passed one of the nation's most restrictive and disenfranchising voter ID laws. Added to the unseemliness is the admission of the co-author of the voter ID bill and Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman on the April election night that voter ID would help Republicans win Wisconsin's Electoral College votes for the first time in over 30 years. As part of the voter ID law adopted by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled Legislature, individuals are ostensibly able to request a free identification card from the DMV under certain circumstances. But, instead, bureaucratic delays and improper denials are preventing legal voters from obtaining the ID they need to vote. An internal DMV analysis found an error rate of 27% under the "extraordinary proof" petition process to permit voters to obtain exemptions for having to pay for birth certificates or other government records needed to obtain voter ID, meaning more than one in four petitions were mishandled between March and August of 2015. And the problem is expected to get worse. Here are just some examples cited in the institute's lawsuit of how the DMV process is broken, resulting in eligible individuals being denied IDs, and therefore their right to vote, including: Refusing to provide an ID to a woman who had lost the use of her hands and couldn't sign an application. The woman brought her daughter with her to sign the application and even provided her daughter with power of attorney giving her permission to sign, but the DMV did not allow it. Denying the petitions of eligible voters because of minor discrepancies in the spelling of their names or uncertainties about their exact dates of birth even though DMV acknowledges it has no doubts these disenfranchised voters are U.S. citizens. Turning away a senior citizen who had been born in a concentration camp in Germany, and his German birth certificate had been lost in a fire. That citizen was ultimately granted an ID, but only after extraordinary effort on his behalf to comply with absurd demands by the DMV. When the DMV erroneously denies someone an ID or incompetence and bureaucratic delays result in a person giving up in anger or frustration, our state is denying a legal voter his or her right to vote. That is unacceptable. To be clear: The real fraud in Wisconsin elections is partisan politicians such as Walker and Grothman manipulating the laws for political gain. Scot Ross is the executive director of One Wisconsin Institute. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) won the Freedom of Information Councils No Friend of Open Government (Nopee) Award for his efforts last year to limit government transparency and public access. He did not attend the awards ceremony to claim his prize. Credit: Rick Wood What came through loud and clear at the Wisconsin Watchdog Awards dinner last week was that the true winner in last year's fights over open government issues was you. Well-deserved awards were given, including the 2016 Distinguished Wisconsin Watchdog Award to attorney Robert Dreps, who has spent his career fighting for the public's right to know. But as Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, noted Thursday night, a sharp and loud and overwhelming public reaction was the critical element in turning back efforts to deny or limit access to public records. Lueders called that "terrific," (he actually held up a sign that said "terrific") and who can disagree? The first occurred on the July 4 weekend, when Republican legislators on the Joint Finance Committee (with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos pulling the strings) inserted into the state budget measures that would have gutted the state's open records law. Once that became public, thousands of citizens from across the state and the political spectrum responded with angry phone calls, emails and other communications. Within 48 hours, the changes were dead. The second was when the state Public Records Board made changes to policy on so-called transitory records that were immediately jumped on by the Walker administration to hide certain communications requested by the Wisconsin State Journal. When that came to light, citizens sent nearly 1,900 emails and letters criticizing the action. In January, the board revoked the changes. Although efforts to shut out the public are expected to continue (especially as long as Vos remains in office), the public's reaction to such efforts is a testament to how much open government matters to Wisconsin citizens. You're the true winners. Here are the rest of the winners of the council's "Opee" awards: Political Openness Award ("Popee"): Brad Schimel. Wisconsin's Republican attorney general offered strong public opposition to the Legislature's attack on the open records law, helped affirm the value of open government at a summit he organized and opened a new Office of Open Government. Media Openness Award ("Mopee"): George Stanley and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. When state lawmakers launched their sneak attack on the state's open records law, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its editor shifted into high gear, including a front-page editorial that helped force legislative leaders to back down, followed by aggressive reporting to uncover who was responsible for this proposal. Citizen Openness Award ("Copee"): Sheila Plotkin.This McFarland resident undertook a huge open records project when she battled with lawmakers to release the input they received from citizens on several critical issues. Open Records Scoop of the Year: ('Scoopee'): Greg Neumann, WKOW-TV. Top honors go to this Madison television reporter for exposing how Walker administration officials and others usedpersonalemailaccounts to conduct official business, contrary to public assurances. "Whistleblower of the Year ('Whoopee'): Molly Regan. This former state employee quit her job when her concerns about questionable practices at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. were not, she believed, taken seriously. And she did not stay quiet about it. "No Friend of Openness ('Nopee'): Robin Vos. As Lueders noted, "Plenty of people deserve blame over the midsummer attack on open records. But Vos was the main architect and subsequently sought a bill to exempt the Legislature from the records law. Vos also authored a bill amendment to end the long-standing requirement that significant donors to political campaigns reveal where they work, bringing darkness where once there was light. He was the worst of the worst in an abnormally bad year." Vos did not attend the dinner to claim his award. Ernst-Ulrich Franzen is the Journal Sentinel's associate editorial page editor. Email: efranzen@jrn.com; Twitter: @efranzen1 By of the Madison Gov. Scott Walker signed bills Monday addressing so-called zombie homes, limiting local governments' ability to issue photo IDs and making all fourth drunken driving offenses felonies. Milwaukee officials had urged Walker to veto Assembly Bill 720, a measure on housing that they argue will strip the city of its ability to force financial institutions to quickly sell abandoned, foreclosed properties. Nevertheless, the governor signed the Republican-backed bill, essentially countering a 2015 unanimous state Supreme Court decision that strengthened Milwaukee's hand in dealing with the so-called zombie homes. In that case, justices said that when a court declares a foreclosed property to be abandoned, the lender must offer it for sale. Foreclosed properties are auctioned off at sheriff's sales and lenders often buy the properties themselves. Under the bill signed Monday, the lender would have one year to decide what to do with the property. At the end of that period, the lender could sell the property or opt to walk away from it, leaving it in the original owner's hands even if that person is long gone. "When there are losses, I don't want those losses transferred to this city, and this city's taxpayers," Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Monday. "That's the problem that we are dealing with right here." The suit that led to the Supreme Court decision was brought by Legal Action on behalf of Shirley Carson, an elderly Milwaukee woman who had mistakenly assumed she lost her home after a foreclosure action, only to later learn she still owned the home and was responsible for the taxes and all the other costs linked to homeownership. Barrett spoke to reporters at a Monday news conference held on W. Concordia Ave., at the site where Carson's house once stood. He said that particular "zombie" home, which has since been demolished, cost the City of Milwaukee and its taxpayers thousands of dollars, and he added that the foreclosure crisis overall had cost Milwaukee about $35 million in the last few years. Barrett estimated that the city has some 300 zombie properties. "The city was not a party to this whatsoever, yet we are the ones that bear the cost at the end of the day. That's wrong. And unfortunately we have a governor and a Legislature who's going to side with an out-of-state bank over the legitimate interests of the taxpayers of this city," Barrett said. "This is an example where they're not protecting the taxpayers of this city." By law, a homeowner keeps title to the property until a foreclosure action is complete and the home is sold at a sheriff's sale. But many homeowners like Carson assume they lost title when the foreclosure action begins, and they abandon their property. Under the Supreme Court's ruling, a lender had to sell an abandoned foreclosed property after a five-week "redemption" period, during which the homeowner had an opportunity to pay the mortgage. Either way, the property would not remain in limbo for long. However, the Wisconsin Bankers Association argued that the court did not set a hard time limit for action. It's rationale was that the Supreme Court did not say specifically how quickly a foreclosed property must be sold, except that the sale must be done in a "reasonable" time frame after the five-week redemption period had elapsed. The trade group backed the new law, saying it would establish a clear line for when a lender must act. But April Hartman, the Legal Action attorney who successfully argued the Carson case, said that by allowing lenders to release the mortgage and walk away from the property, the new law essentially allows abandoned homes to remain in the zombie state. For a commercial property, the law allows a lender to choose to do nothing, leaving the property in limbo, Milwaukee officials warn. Supporters of the new law say it will help address the zombie homes problem. Kail Decker, a Milwaukee assistant city attorney, disagrees. "For them to make that statement is simply wrong," he said. Arthur Beamon, Carson's longtime neighbor who purchased the now-vacant lot, said he was relieved when they demolished the home. Beamon, who's lived at his home for 48 years, said the property had become a nuisance. "They had coons, squirrels, cats and everything else in there. I'm glad they tore it down. We'd come home at night from church, and four to five coons would run down the driveway," Beamon said. "You couldn't sleep at night with the cats they'd be mating all night long." Photo IDs. Local governments will face restrictions on issuing photo identification cards under Senate Bill 533, blocking a proposal in Milwaukee County to provide local IDs to people such as the homeless and immigrants in the country illegally. Republicans pursued the measure because they said they were concerned people might try to use such IDs to vote or obtain food stamps. Under the state's voter ID law, only certain types of IDs can be used, such as driver's licenses, state ID cards and passports. People who don't have IDs for voting can get free ones from the Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles. Critics have argued that program is not expansive enough because people who don't have birth certificates still face obstacles to getting IDs. Under the new law on local IDs, towns and counties can issue IDs only in narrow circumstances, such as for buses. Cities and villages have more leeway to issue IDs, but they cannot be used to obtain public benefits and must include a label that says, "Not authorized for voting purposes." Drunken driving. Until now, fourth offenses were counted as felonies only if they were committed within five years of the previous offense. Under Senate Bill 455, all fourth offenses will be felonies carrying up to six years in prison. "Our hope is this will prevent any number of deaths in the state of Wisconsin," Walker said Monday at a ceremony in the state Capitol. Gov. Scott Walker signed right-to-work legislation in March that drew heavy protest from labor unions. Credit: Journal Sentinel files SHARE By of the Madison A Dane County judge declined Monday to put on hold his ruling that found unconstitutional a Wisconsin law barring unions and businesses from reaching labor deals requiring workers to pay union fees. Attention now turns to the Court of Appeals as judges there consider whether to restore the measure advocates call the state's right-to-work law. GOP Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the Legislature last year approved the law, becoming the 25th state to bar labor contracts that require workers to pay union fees. Since then, West Virginia has passed a similar law, bringing the number of right-to-work states to 26. Supporters argue no one should be forced to pay union fees if they don't want to belong to a labor group. Unions contend such contracts should be allowed because federal law requires them to represent all employees in a work unit meaning that they all benefit from the protections and higher wages unions provide. Unions sued soon after the law was passed, and this month Dane County Circuit Judge C. William Foust ruled the law violated the state constitution because it took something of value from unions without compensating them. Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel asked Foust to stay his ruling while he pursues an appeal. Foust declined to do that Monday, standing by his original ruling. "The decision perhaps boils down to something as simple as there is no free lunch, there is no right to be a free rider," Foust said. "It's not about a right to work. And it's not about a right to join or not join a union. It's about whether or not a nonmember has an obligation to pay for the services they receive or whether an entity can be required to provide services at no charge to someone." After the hearing, Schimel issued a statement saying he would ask the District 3 Court of Appeals in Wausau to stay Foust's ruling while it considers whether the right-to-work law is constitutional. If successful, that would put the law back in place for the time being. The case is expected to ultimately be decided by the state Supreme Court, which is controlled 5-2 by conservatives. Reddit Email 0 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | President Obama is announcing Monday morning in Hanover, Germany, that he will send another 250 US troops, likely mostly special operations, into Syria, bringing the total to 300. The 50 troops already there are embedded with the YPG or Peoples Defense Units of the leftist Democratic Union Party in Syrias Kurdish region of Rojava. They in turn are allied with local Sunni Arab tribal levies in a struggle against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). The Kurdish forces in the SDF far vastly outnumber the Arab ones, which is a political problem. Obama and his Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, want the joint Kurdish/ Arab forces, which they support with arms and money and which they have dubbed the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to take al-Raqqa in eastern Syria, which is the capital of Daesh and the seat of its self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. That Obama is focusing on this Kurdish-Arab coalition is a further slap in the face to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who are backing hard line far-right Salafi groups like the Freemen of Syria in the Aleppo area, who have been attacked by the Arab/Kurdish SDF, which is to their left. As for the US embeds, were talking about the countrys northeast theater, the yellow part in this tweeted map: Montage data was used to help create this map of Syria's front lines. Learn how here. https://t.co/z8DTWrjh0i pic.twitter.com/Sjfl48kuhW Jigsaw (@JigsawTeam) April 21, 2016 The Arab press is pointing out that the further US troops are targeting Daesh and are not intended to be used to help overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In general, the YPG has been willing to ally with the al-Assad garrisons against Daesh, though this past weekend there were YPG/ Syrian Army clashes in the Kurdish city of Qamishli in the northeast. The Arab coalition in the northeast consists of only a few thousand troops, whereas the total for the SDF is some 50,000. My guess is that the Arabs comprise about ten percent. (There are also Christian militias Assyrian and Armenian in the SDF coalition, and more than one unit of the old Free Syrian Army.) In the past few months, new small Arab units have joined the SDF, including Division 19, the Eagles of the Desert, and a unit from the city of al-Shadadi, which the SDF liberated from Daesh in mid-February. If a largely lefist Kurdish force goes down and crushes a Sunni Arab city like al-Raqqa, that step might produce further ethnic tension and be seen as illegitimate. So the Self Defense Forces need a bigger Sunni Arab contingent fighting alongside the YPG. Likewise, frankly the YPGs top priority is not going south to fight Daesh in al-Raqqa but going due west to capture all the territory possible for the Kurdish federal province, Rojava, that it can. CNN reported over the weekend that the extra 250 troops are for embedding with the Arabs in the SDF, and with getting the Arab fighters in SDF up to speed (so likely some will be trainers rather than spec ops advisers). By increasing the strenght of the Arab contingent within the SDF, Obama appears to be readying the locals for an al-Raqqa campaignt that is intended to rub out the so-called caliphate. - Related video: CNN: President Obama to send more special ops to Syria When the oligarchs speak, take it with a grain of salt. Or a wheelbarrel full. We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way, says billionaire industrialist and far-right ideologue But in an interview on ABCs This Week which aired Sunday morning, billionaire industrialist and philanthropist of the far-right Charles Koch says given the performance of former president Bill Clinton and her own record, he thinks its possible that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be better at fulfilling his libertarian and pro-business agenda than any of the Republicans currently in the running. Asked by journalist Jonathan Karl if he could actually see himself supporting Clinton in a hypothetical general election against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich Koch smiled, but didnt say no. We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way, Koch responded. The clip from the interview, first posted online Saturday evening, created a healthy round of headlines overnight. Though Charles Kochwho along with his brother David Koch controls a network of right-wing think tanks, advovacy groups, and Super PACs with hundreds of millions of dollars from their massive private fortunehas previously expressed his displeasure with this years Republican primary, his latest comments remain a curious admission. Last month, the Clinton campaign and her surrogates came under fire in progressive circles after suggesting Bernie Sanders was somehow aligned with portions of the Koch Brothers anti-immigrant agenda ahead of Floridas primary. Later, following a debate just prior to the Michigan primary, pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record suggested Sanders opposition to the Export-Import Bank was in sync with the positions of the Koch Brothers. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License Via Commondreams.org - Related video added by Juan Cole: John Iadarola: Charles Koch: Its Possible Clinton is Preferable to a Republican for President Reddit Email 0 Shares By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com) | Intro: Rebecca Gordon catches the nightmarish quality of those [Bush] years, now largely buried, in the grim case of a single mistreated human being. It should make Americans shudder. She has also just published a new book, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes, that couldnt be more relevant. Its a must-read for a country conveniently without a memory. Tom Engelhardt | The allegations against the man were serious indeed. * Donald Rumsfeld said he was if not the number two, very close to the number two person in al-Qaeda. * The Central Intelligence Agency informed Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee that he served as Usama Bin Ladens senior lieutenant. In that capacity, he has managed a network of training camps He also acted as al-Qaedas coordinator of external contacts and foreign communications. * CIA Director Michael Hayden would tell the press in 2008 that 25% of all the information his agency had gathered about al-Qaeda from human sources originated with one other detainee and him. * George W. Bush would use his case to justify the CIAs enhanced interrogation program, claiming that he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained and that he helped smuggle al-Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan so they would not be captured by U.S. military forces. None of it was true. And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror. So who was this infamous figure, and where is he now? His name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, but he is better known by his Arabic nickname, Abu Zubaydah. And as far as we know, he is still in solitary detention in Guantanamo. A Saudi national, in the 1980s Zubaydah helped run the Khaldan camp, a mujahedeen training facility set up in Afghanistan with CIA help during the Soviet occupation of that country. In other words, Zubaydah was then an American ally in the fight against the Soviets, one of President Ronald Reagans freedom fighters. (But then again, so in effect was Osama bin Laden.) Zubaydahs later fate in the hands of the CIA was of a far grimmer nature. He had the dubious luck to be the subject of a number of CIA firsts: the first post-9/11 prisoner to be waterboarded; the first to be experimented on by psychologists working as CIA contractors; one of the first of the Agencys ghost prisoners (detainees hidden from the world, including the International Committee of the Red Cross which, under the Geneva Conventions, must be allowed access to every prisoner of war); and one of the first prisoners to be cited in a memo written by Jay Bybee for the Bush administration on what the CIA could legally do to a detainee without supposedly violating U.S. federal laws against torture. Zubaydahs story is or at least should be the iconic tale of the illegal extremes to which the Bush administration and the CIA went in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. And yet former officials, from CIA head Michael Hayden to Vice President Dick Cheney to George W. Bush himself, have presented it as a glowing example of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to extract desperately needed information from the evildoers of that time. Zubaydah was an early experiment in post-9/11 CIA practices and heres the remarkable thing (though it has yet to become part of the mainstream media accounts of his case): it was all a big lie. Zubaydah wasnt involved with al-Qaeda; he was the ringleader of nothing; he never took part in planning for the 9/11 attacks. He was brutally mistreated and, in another kind of world, would be exhibit one in the war crimes trials of Americas top leaders and its major intelligence agency. Yet notorious as he once was, hes been forgotten by all but his lawyers and a few tenacious reporters. He shouldnt have been. He was the test case for the kind of torture that Donald Trump now wants the U.S. government to bring back, presumably because it worked so well the first time. With Republican presidential hopefuls promising future war crimes, its worth reconsidering his case and thinking about how to prevent it from happening again. After all, its only because no one has been held to account for the years of Bush administration torture practices that Trump and others feel free to promise even more and yuger war crimes in the future. Experiments in Torture In August 2002, a group of FBI agents, CIA agents, and Pakistani forces captured Zubaydah (along with about 50 other men) in Faisalabad, Pakistan. In the process, he was severely injured shot in the thigh, testicle, and stomach. He might well have died, had the CIA not flown in an American surgeon to patch him up. The Agencys interest in his health was, however, anything but humanitarian. Its officials wanted to interrogate him and, even after he had recovered sufficiently to be questioned, his captors occasionally withheld pain medication as a means of torture. When he lost his left eye under mysterious circumstances while in CIA custody, the agencys concern again was not for his health. The December 2014 torture report produced by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (despite CIA opposition that included hacking into the committees computers) described the situation this way: with his left eye gone, [i]n October 2002, DETENTION SITE GREEN [now known to be Thailand] recommended that the vision in his right eye be tested, noting that [w]e have a lot riding upon his ability to see, read, and write. DETENTION SITE GREEN stressed that this request is driven by our intelligence needs [not] humanitarian concern for AZ. The CIA then set to work interrogating Zubaydah with the help of two contractors, the psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell. Zubaydah would be the first human subject on whom those two, who were former instructors at the Air Forces SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training center, could test their theories about using torture to induce what they called learned helplessness, meant to reduce a suspects resistance to interrogation. Their price? Only $81 million. CIA records show that, using a plan drawn up by Jessen and Mitchell, Abu Zubaydahs interrogators would waterboard him an almost unimaginable 83 times in the course of a single month; that is, they would strap him to a wooden board, place a cloth over his entire face, and gradually pour water through the cloth until he began to drown. At one point during this endlessly repeated ordeal, the Senate committee reported that Zubaydah became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth. Each of those 83 uses of what was called the watering cycle consisted of four steps: 1) demands for information interspersed with the application of the water just short of blocking his airway 2) escalation of the amount of water applied until it blocked his airway and he started to have involuntary spasms 3) raising the water-board to clear subjects airway 4) lowering of the water-board and return to demands for information. The CIA videotaped Zubaydah undergoing each of these cycles, only to destroy those tapes in 2005 when news of their existence surfaced and the embarrassment (and possible future culpability) of the Agency seemed increasingly to be at stake. CIA Director Michael Hayden would later assure CNN that the tapes had been destroyed only because they no longer had intelligence value and they posed a security risk. Whose security was at risk if the tapes became public? Most likely, that of the Agencys operatives and contractors who were breaking multiple national and international laws against torture, along with the high CIA and Bush administration officials who had directly approved their actions. In addition to the waterboarding, the Senate torture report indicates that Zubaydah endured excruciating stress positions (which cause terrible pain without leaving a mark); sleep deprivation (for up to 180 hours, which generally induces hallucinations or psychosis); unrelenting exposure to loud noises (another psychosis-inducer); walling (the Agencys term for repeatedly slamming the shoulder blades into a flexible, false wall, though Zubaydah told the International Committee of the Red Cross that when this was first done to him, he was slammed directly against a hard concrete wall); and confinement for hours in a box so cramped that he could not stand up inside it. All of these methods of torture had been given explicit approval in a memo written to the CIAs head lawyer, John Rizzo, by Jay Bybee, who was then serving in the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel. In that memo Bybee approved the use of 10 different techniques on Zubaydah. It seems likely that, while the CIA was torturing Zubaydah at Jessens and Mitchells direction for whatever information he might have, it was also using him to test the effectiveness of waterboarding as a torture technique. If so, the agency and its contractors violated not only international law, but the U.S. War Crimes Act, which expressly forbids experimenting on prisoners. What might lead us to think that Zubaydahs treatment was, in part, an experiment? In a May 30, 2005, memo sent to Rizzo, Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, discussed the CIAs record keeping. There was, Bradbury commented, method to the CIAs brutality. Careful records are kept of each interrogation, he wrote. This procedure, he continued, allows for ongoing evaluation of the efficacy of each technique and its potential for any unintended or inappropriate results. In other words, with the support of the Bush Justice Department, the CIA was keeping careful records of an experimental procedure designed to evaluate how well waterboarding worked. This was Abu Zubaydahs impression as well. I was told during this period that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, Zubaydah would later tell the International Committee of the Red Cross, so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people. In addition to the videotaping, the CIAs Office of Medical Services required a meticulous written record of every waterboarding session. The details to be recorded were spelled out clearly: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment. Again, these were clearly meant to be the records of an experimental procedure, focusing as they did on how much water was effective; whether a seal was achieved (so no air could enter the victims lungs); whether the naso- or oropharynx (that is, the nose and throat) were so full of water the victim could not breathe; and just how much the subject vomited up. It was with Zubaydah that the CIA also began its post-9/11 practice of hiding detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross by transferring them to its black sites, the secret prisons it was setting up in countries with complacent or complicit regimes around the world. Such unacknowledged detainees came to be known as ghost prisoners, because they had no official existence. As the Senate torture report noted, In part to avoid declaring Abu Zubaydah to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which would be required if he were detained at a U.S. military base, the CIA decided to seek authorization to clandestinely detain Abu Zubaydah at a facility in Country _______ [now known to have been Thailand]. Tortured and Circular Reasoning As British investigative journalist Andy Worthington reported in 2009, the Bush administration used Abu Zubaydahs interrogation results to help justify the greatest crime of that administration, the unprovoked, illegal invasion of Iraq. Officials leaked to the media that he had confessed to knowing about a secret agreement involving Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (who later led al-Qaeda in Iraq), and Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein to work together to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Of course, it was all lies. Zubaydah couldnt have known about such an arrangement, first because it was, as Worthington says, absurd, and second, because Zubaydah was not a member of al-Qaeda at all. In fact, the evidence that Zubaydah had anything to do with al-Qaeda was beyond circumstantial it was entirely circular. The administrations reasoning went something like this: Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant, ran the Khaldan camp in Afghanistan; therefore, Khaldan was an al-Qaeda camp; if Khaldan was an al Qaeda camp, then Zubaydah must have been a senior al Qaeda official. They then used their enhanced techniques to drag what they wanted to hear out of a man whose life bore no relation to the tortured lies he evidently finally told his captors. Not surprisingly, no aspect of the administrations formula proved accurate. It was true that, for several years, the Bush administration routinely referred to Khaldan as an al-Qaeda training camp, but the CIA was well aware that this wasnt so. The Senate Intelligence Committees torture report, for instance, made this crystal clear, quoting an August 16, 2006, CIA Intelligence Assessment, Countering Misconceptions About Training Camps in Afghanistan, 1990-2001 this way: Khaldan Not Affiliated With Al-Qaida. A common misperception in outside articles is that Khaldan camp was run by al-Qaida. Pre-11 September 2001 reporting miscast Abu Zubaydah as a senior al-Qaida lieutenant, which led to the inference that the Khaldan camp he was administering was tied to Usama bin Laden. Not only was Zubaydah not a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant, he had, according to the report, been turned down for membership in al-Qaeda as early as 1993 and the CIA knew it by at least 2006, if not far sooner. Nevertheless, the month after it privately clarified the nature of the Khaldan camp and Zubaydahs lack of al-Qaeda connections, President Bush used the story of Zubaydahs capture and interrogation in a speech to the nation justifying the CIAs enhanced interrogation program. He then claimed that Zubaydah had helped smuggle Al Qaida leaders out of Afghanistan. In the same speech, Bush told the nation, Our intelligence community believes [Zubaydah] had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained (a reference presumably to Khaldan). Perhaps the CIA should have been looking instead at some of the people who actually trained the hijackers the operators of flight schools in the United States, where, according to a September 23, 2001 Washington Post story, the FBI already knew terrorists were learning to fly 747s. In June 2007, the Bush administration doubled down on its claim that Zubaydah was involved with 9/11. At a hearing before the congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger, discussing why the Guantanamo prison needed to remain open, explained that it serves a very important purpose, to hold and detain individuals who are extremely dangerous [like] Abu Zubaydah, people who have been planners of 9/11. Charges Withdrawn In September 2009, the U.S. government quietly withdrew its many allegations against Abu Zubaydah. His attorneys had filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf; that is, a petition to excercise the constitutional right of anyone in government custody to know on what charges they are being held. In that context, they were asking the government to supply certain documents to help substantiate their claim that his continued detention in Guantanamo was illegal. The new Obama administration replied with a 109-page brief filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, which is legally designated to hear the habeas cases of Guantanamo detainees. The bulk of that brief came down to a government argument that was curious indeed, given the years of bragging about Zubaydahs central role in al-Qaedas activities. It claimed that there was no reason to turn over any exculpatory documents demonstrating that he was not a member of al-Qaeda, or that he had no involvement in 9/11 or any other terrorist activity because the government was no longer claiming that any of those things were true. The governments lawyers went on to claim, bizarrely enough, that the Bush administration had never contended that [Zubaydah] had any personal involvement in planning or executing the attacks of September 11, 2001. They added that the Government also has not contended in this proceeding that, at the time of his capture, [Zubaydah] had knowledge of any specific impending terrorist operations an especially curious claim, since the prevention of such future attacks was how the CIA justified its torture of Zubaydah in the first place. Far from believing that he was if not the number two, very close to the number two person in al-Qaeda, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had once claimed, the Government has not contended in this proceeding that [Zubaydah] was a member of al-Qaida or otherwise formally identified with al-Qaida. And so, the case against the man who was waterboarded 83 times and contributed supposedly crucial information to the CIA on al-Qaeda plotting was oh-so-quietly withdrawn without either fuss or media attention. Exhibit one was now exhibit none. Seven years after the initial filing of Zubaydahs habeas petition, the DC District Court has yet to rule on it. Given the courts average 751-day turnaround time on such petitions, this is an extraordinary length of time. Here, justice delayed is truly justice denied. Perhaps we should not be surprised, however. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, CIA headquarters assured those who were interrogating Zubaydah that he would never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released. In fact, all major players are in concurrence, stated the agency, that he should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life. And so far, thats exactly whats happened. The capture, torture, and propaganda use of Abu Zubaydah is the perfect example of the U.S. governments unique combination of willful law-breaking, ass-covering memo-writing, and what some Salvadorans I once worked with called strategic incompetence. The fact that no one not George Bush or Dick Cheney, not Jessen or Mitchell, nor multiple directors of the CIA has been held accountable means that, unless we are very lucky, we will see more of the same in the future. Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books, April 2016). Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Copyright 2016 Rebecca Gordon Via Tomdispatch.com Related video added by Juan Cole: Vice News from last year: Ex-CIA Officer John Kiriakou: The Government Turned Me Into a Dissident VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Revelo Resources Corp. ("Revelo" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:RVL) is pleased to announce that it has defined a shear-zone hosted gold target that is related to a major splay of the Atacama Fault Zone, at its wholly-owned Morsas project (the "project") in northern Chile. The shear-zone system extends over at least 6 kilometers, and possibly over as much as 12 kilometers, within the Revelo property boundary. The Morsas property is located within the Coastal Belt of northern Chile, and lies along trend from the Candelaria copper-gold-iron mine (Lundin Mining) to the northeast, and the Los Colorados iron mine and Boqueron Chanar iron deposit (both CAP) to the southwest. Key aspects of the shear-zone hosted gold target include: Several narrow (~1m - 2m), sub-parallel, steeply dipping, ductile shear zones related to a major splay of the Atacama Fault Zone, exposed in a series of small, historic workings for gold over a strike length of approximately 2 km, with historic exploration pits over a further 4 km, and geophysical evidence for a further 6 km of extension (12 km in total). Rock-chip grab samples from sporadic outcrops within individual shear structures range from zero to 10.9 g/t Au in areas covered by Revelo's property along the main shear zone identified to date, and up to 18.25 g/t Au elsewhere on the property. The mineralized structures, of which there are several, follow a northeast - southwest trend, in agreement with regional structures. Tim Beale, President and CEO of Revelo, said: "Revelo's initial exploration of the Morsas property was focused on IOCG (iron-oxide-copper-gold) type deposits, given the property's location along trend from major IOCG deposits such as Candelaria, Los Colorados and Boqueron Chanar, and some indications of IOCG-style mineralisation do occur on the property. However, our reconnaissance of the property has determined that the most obvious current target is the shear-zone hosted gold system along a major splay of the Atacama Fault Zone. This is an exciting, relatively under-explored target type in Chile, but is attractive for its relative simplicity, highly anomalous gold grades, and its potential continuity with depth and along strike. Revelo is fulfilling its role as a prospect generator, and is continuing to explore the large Morsas project area, in order to determine if other targets of interest occur. A partner will be sought to continue with detailed exploration and drilling of the main shear-zone target." Please visit the Morsas project page on Revelo's website (http://www.reveloresources.com/projects/morsas) for further information, project fact sheet (http://www.reveloresources.com/content/448/Morsas_2016-04.pdf), and project presentation (http://www.reveloresources.com/content/448/RVL_PresentationMorsas_2016-04web.pdf). ABOUT THE MORSAS PROJECT Morsas lies along the Coastal Belt Cordillera, which is host to a variety of IOCG-style (Fe-Cu-Au), manto, porphyry and precious metals mines, deposits and occurrences, and is centred about 55 km southwest of the mining town of Copiapo, and 45 km southwest of the giant Candelaria Cu-Au-Fe mine (Lundin Mining), and along trend from the Los Colorados and Boqueron Chanar iron-ore deposits (both CAP). Numerous small, historic workings for gold and other metals occur within and around the Revelo property, and a series of historic workings for gold are aligned along a major splay of the Atacama Fault Zone. The project area is at low altitudes (250m to 750m), has subdued topography, and is easily accessed, being located close to the Pan-American Highway about one hour's drive from Copiapo, or 1.5 hours from Vallenar, depending on which portion of the property is to be accessed. Morsas consists of approximately 33,000 Ha of 100% owned tenement comprising exploration concessions, divided into several property blocks collectively covering a series of areas along 75 km of the prospective trend, all of which were acquired from BLC SpA, a 49%-owned Chilean subsidiary of Altius Minerals ("BLC" - see news release dated July 6, 2015). BLC is the beneficial owner of a 2% NSR royalty from commercial production of precious metals and a 1% NSR royalty from commercial production of base metals from Morsas. Revelo has the right to purchase one-half of the royalties for CDN$5 million, at any time up to a period of five years following the commencement of commercial production of mineral products from the project. The Coastal Cordillera is characterized by extensive arc-parallel shear zones and brittle faults, dominated by the Atacama Fault Zone in northern Chile. Such structures were active during Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous arc magmatism, controlled basin development, and had a strong controlling influence on the distribution of IOCG and other ore deposits. IOCG mineralization styles include veins, hydrothermal breccias, replacement mantos, and calcic skarns, with the larger deposits generally exhibiting several of these in combination. Crucially, in the Morsas area, important splays of the Atacama Fault Zone are characterised by ductile shearing, portions of which are mineralised with gold as evidenced by numerous, small, aligned, historic workings. Much of the project area is obscured by shallow, post-mineral gravel and colluvial cover, but is punctuated by small hills and outcrops, as well as mineral workings, giving evidence to the underlying geology. WORK COMPLETED TO DATE Reconnaissance geological mapping of the Morsas project area by Revelo geologists has delineated a series of ductile shear zones (dynamic schists), with steeply dipping or sub-vertical foliations, minor quartz veining and quartz boudins, minor iron oxides after pyrite and with individual structures typically 1m to 2m wide where seen in outcrop. The shear-zone structures are associated with a major splay of the Atacama Fault Zone. Old, small-scale workings at the southwest end of the zone of interest within the overall Revelo property boundary, but covered by small, historic old mining claims, indicate that shearing occurs over about 2 km, with small, historic exploration pits exposing shears through shallow cover (1m - 2m) suggesting extensions over a further 4 km to the northeast (6 km in total). The preliminary geological mapping suggests several, sub-parallel structures arranged in en-echelon fashion within the regional Atacama Fault splay. The overall width of the prospective fault zone, from geological mapping and regional geophysics, may be up to 500 m. The anomalous shear zone delineated at Morsas coincides with strong, linear magnetic features derived from regional airborne magnetics data acquired from the Chilean geological survey. These features likely reflect the regional Atacama Fault Zone splay and possibly specific shear-zone structures within it. The regional magnetics suggests that the prospective zone could extend for a further 6 km to the northeast - or 12 km in total - within the Revelo property boundary. Initial reconnaissance-style rock-chip sampling by Revelo (16 samples) and by BLC (105 samples) from accessible outcrops within the Revelo property boundary has shown highly anomalous gold values in the following ranges: Revelo sampling: Below detection to 18.25 g/t Au Average - 2.02 g/t Au BLC Sampling: Below detection to 10.9 g/t Au Average - 1.07 g/t Au Most other elements from a multi-elemental analysis yielded generally low values, with sporadic anomalies in a variety of elements. Revelo's rock samples were analyzed at ALS Chemex Chemical laboratories for fire-assay gold (AA24) and for multi-elements following four acid digestion and ICP-AES protocol (ME-ICP61). BLC's rock sample analyses were split between two laboratories, ACME and ALS Chemex, for fire-assay gold (FA430, G6, G6Gr and AA23 respectively) and multi-elements following four acid digestion and ICP-AES protocols (MA300 and ME-ICP61 respectively). Further work, including more detailed sampling of old workings, soil profiles and trenching across the principal fault zone, possibly combined with geophysical profiling, is recommended prior to drill testing. ABOUT REVELO Revelo is a prospect generator that has consolidated an outstanding portfolio of 21, wholly-owned projects prospective for copper, gold and silver located along proven mineral belts in one of the world's top mining jurisdictions - Chile. Multiple targets are ready for drill testing within the portfolio, and two projects are subject to option and joint venture agreements with subsidiaries of Newmont Mining (Montezuma Project) and Austral Gold (San Guillermo Project). In addition, Revelo is developing a nascent royalty portfolio and retains a 2% royalty interest in the Victoria Project, an important copper-gold-silver exploration project in northern Chile. Revelo has a goal of building a sustainable exploration business focused on securing prospective land along the prolific mineral belts of northern Chile, and by implementing effective exploration and capital management strategies to grow, advance and de-risk its portfolio to provide shareholders with multiple opportunities for exploration success. Revelo is actively looking for partners to advance other projects within its portfolio. Revelo is a Canadian company and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX VENTURE:RVL). For more information please visit Revelo's website at www.reveloresources.com. Dr. Demetrius Pohl, Ph.D., Certified Professional Geoscientist (CPG), an independent consultant, is the Company's Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosures for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators, and has approved the written disclosure of the technical information contained in this news release. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Timothy J. Beale, President & CEO Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events or developments that Revelo expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "indicate" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Revelo believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Highlights: Newly interpreted Lower VMS Horizon is largely untested to the south and at depth; The first four holes drilled into this prospective new VMS horizon during the winter program intersected significant copper mineralization accompanied by intense black chlorite alteration; and Private placement announced to raise up to $1,000,000 to facilitate continued exploration activities. Callinex Mines Inc. (the "Company" or "Callinex") (TSX VENTURE:CNX)(OTCQX:CLLXF) is pleased to announce results from an additional five drill holes completed during the winter drilling campaign at its 100%-owned Pine Bay Project located near Flin Flon, Manitoba. Four of the five drill holes intercepted significant copper mineralization, notably PBM-009 which intersected 10.6m of 1.4% Cu at 50.8m down hole, including a higher grade interval of 3.6m of 2.0% Cu. Drill hole PBM-009 has appreciably expanded the known mineralization related to the historic Baker Patton VMS deposit. This hole, which was collared into the edge of a large gravity anomaly, intersected 39.45m of continuous mineralization ranging from semi-massive to massive sulphides which is significantly more than was reported in historic drilling. The gravity anomaly is also locally semi-coincident with surface and borehole electromagnetic geophysical anomalies. There appears to be only a few, widely scattered drill holes located down-dip and/or down-plunge from the near-surface copper zone intersected in hole PBM-009, additional drilling is considered a high-priority. All four holes that intersected copper mineralization were drilled through the newly interpreted Lower Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide ("VMS") Horizon that occurs parallel to and roughly 200 meters below the west-facing and steeply overturned Upper VMS Horizon (See Figure 1). The Upper VMS Horizon is associated with the Pine Bay and Cabin deposits while the Lower VMS Horizon is associated with the Baker Patton and Pine Bay East zones. Recent and historic drilling indicates that copper mineralization most often occurs at approximate 500m intervals along both horizons and that these spacings have yet to be systematically tested along strike. The first two holes of the 2016 drilling campaign, PBM-006 and PBM-007, tested the deep southern expression of the Upper VMS Horizon, immediately adjacent to and below the Pine Bay VMS deposit. Additionally, each drill hole intersected copper mineralization associated with the Lower VMS horizon, particularly hole PBM-007 that intersected 1.45m of 1.77% Cu including 0.3m of 3.56% Cu and 0.92 g/t Au. The intersections in PBM-007 are located approximately 500m west-southwest along strike from hole PBM-008, which was previously reported to have intersected 3.3m of 3.2% Cu (See news release dated March 7, 2016). Lastly, drill hole PBM-010 tested an area northeast along strike from the PBM-009 massive sulphide zones and the Cabin deposit. It encountered four separate copper intersections down to an approximate hole depth of 370m. The intervals, which are interpreted as stringer-type mineralization, were spatially associated with semi-massive sulphides, primarily pyrite, and frequently narrow black chlorite veins. Callinex has reported results from six of twelve holes completed during the winter drilling campaign and anticipates releasing results from the final six holes shortly. Private Placement Callinex intends to raise up to $1,000,000 through a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") in order to facilitate exploration activities and for general corporate purposes. The Offering will issue up to 2,500,000 flow-through shares at a price per share of $0.30 for gross proceeds of $750,000. The Offering will also issue up to 833,333 non-flow through units at a price per unit (a "Unit") of $0.30 for gross proceeds of $250,000. Each non-flow through Unit will consist of one (1) non-flow through common share and one-half of one share purchase warrant (each whole warrant a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one non-flow through common share at a price of $0.45 for a period of two years from the date of issue. The Company will have the right to accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants if, at any time, the volume weighted average price exceeds $0.60 over any 15 day trading period. In the event of acceleration, the expiry date will be accelerated to a date that is 20 days after the Company issues a news release announcing that it has elected to exercise this acceleration right. Callinex may pay a finder's fee equal to 7% of gross proceeds. Assay Results Hole (1)-(7) From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Cu (%) Zn (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) PBM-006 600.47 600.79 0.32 0.63 1.02 0.15 6.39 and 714.38 714.77 0.39 1.51 0.03 0.02 2.30 PBM-007 296.80 298.25 1.45 1.77 0.02 0.47 3.75 including 296.80 297.10 0.30 3.56 0.02 0.92 8.50 PBM-009 21.55 22.25 0.70 2.21 0.01 0.27 3.93 50.80 61.40 10.60 1.43 0.01 0.14 4.02 including 54.30 57.90 3.60 2.04 0.01 0.06 4.48 PBM-010 184.75 185.25 0.50 2.23 0.01 0.05 4.54 and 201.35 201.68 0.33 1.23 0.01 0.31 6.03 and 350.56 351.05 0.49 1.74 0.02 0.11 6.32 and 368.75 368.95 0.20 1.44 0.03 0.11 6.66 Notes(1)(2)(3(4)(5)(6)(7): Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-007 is -68 and 280 Az. The 680m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 332016m East and 6071433m North. The collar of the hole is 295m above sea level. Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-009 is -65 and 300 Az. The 611m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 332681m East and 6071729m North. The collar of the hole is 323m above sea level. Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-010 is -60 and 280 Az. The 467m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 333051m East and 6071980m North. The collar of the hole is 315m above sea level. Dip and azimuth for hole PBM-011 is -70 and 280 Az. The 125m deep diamond drill hole is located at the following Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) within UTM Zone 14N: 332531m East and 6071600m North. The collar of the hole is 325m above sea level Drill hole PBM-011 was abandoned due to higher than expected flattening and well before its intended target. No samples were collected nor assayed. Numbers may not add due to rounding. True widths are not currently known. QA/QC Individual samples were labeled, placed in plastic sample bags, and sealed. Groups of samples were then placed in security sealed bags and shipped directly to SGS Canada Inc in Vancouver, B.C. for analysis. Samples were crushed to 75% passing 2mm and pulverized to 85% passing 75 microns in order produce a 250g split. All copper, zinc and silver assays were determined by Aqua Regia digestion with a combination of ICP-MS and ICP-AES finish, with overlimits (>100 ppm Ag, >10,000 ppm Zn, and >10,000 ppm Cu) completed by fire assay with gravimetric finish (Ag) or Aqua Regia digestion with ICP-AES finish (copper and zinc). All samples were analyzed for gold by Fire Assay of a 30 gram charge by AAS, or if over 10.0 g/t were re-assayed and completed with a gravimetric finish. QA/QC included the insertion and continual monitoring of numerous standards and blanks into the sample stream at a frequency of 1 per 10 samples, and the collection of duplicate samples at random intervals within each batch at a frequency of 1 per 10 samples. SGS Canada Inc carried out some or all of following methods to obtain the assay results for Callinex: G_LOG02 Pre-preparation processing, G_WGH79 Weighing and reporting, G_PRP89 Weigh, dry, crush, split, pulverize, G_SCRQC QC for crush and pulverize stages, G_CRU22 Crush >3kg, G_DRY11 Dry samples, GE_FAA313 @Au, FAS, AAS, 30g-5ml (Final mode), GE-IC14A Aqua Regia digestion/ICP-AES finish, GE_IMS14B Aqua Regia digestion/ICP-MS package, GE_IMS14 Aqua Regia digestion, GO_FAG303 30g, Fire assay, gravimetric finish (Au)(Final Mode), GO_FAG313 30g, Fire assay, gravimetric finish (Ag)(Final Mode) and G0_ICP13B Ore Grade, Aqua Regia digest/ICP-AES. Ag >10ppm was analyzed by ICP. The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by James Pickell, P.Geo, a Consultant to the Company, and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Figure 1: Plan Map of Reported Drill Holes and Interpreted VMS Horizons: http://www.callinex.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PineBay-VMS-Deposit.jpg About The Pine Bay Project The Pine Bay Project is located 16km east of HudBay's 777 Mine and processing facilities near Flin Flon, MB. The project area spans 6,000 sq. ha. and covers a significant portion of the Baker Patton Felsic Complex, one of the largest and most highly altered packages of felsic volcanic rocks within the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt. Historic exploration activities have outlined four mineral deposits, three of which are located within a mineral lease that has advanced permitting status and includes the right to conduct mining activities. The Pine Bay deposit, the largest of the four historic deposits, has a 212m vertical shaft with significant underground workings from previous exploration activities. The project has two distinct areas with VMS mineralization, the northern Pine Bay area and the southern Sourdough area. These areas are each related to historic deposits and occur along an approximate 10km NE-SW VMS trend near the top of the Baker Patton Felsic Complex. The Sourdough area is immediately adjacent to HudBay's past-producing Centennial Mine. Callinex has recently intersected new VMS zones in both the Pine Bay and Sourdough areas. During the 1990s, majors including Placer Dome Inc. and Inmet Mining Corporation conducted limited exploration programs in the Pine Bay area to define a large VMS deposit at depth. A review of historic work has confirmed that several proposed drill holes and targets outlined by Placer Dome there were never completed. The property position was recently consolidated for the first time combining several large claim blocks previously operated by companies including Placer Dome, Inmet, Newmont, HudBay and Cameco. Previous to Callinex' modern geophysical and geological exploration programs, very limited work was conducted between 1996 and 2014. Callinex has digitally compiled more than 1,000 mostly shallow drill holes and has completed large airborne and ground geophysical surveys to identify and evaluate the most prospective drill targets. Pine Bay Historic Resources(1)(2) (3) Deposit Tons Cu Eq% (2) Cu % Zn % Au g/t Ag g/t Pine Bay 1,113,200 2.76 2.76 N/A N/A N/A Sourdough 291,150 2.98 1.46 1.71 1.03 29.8 Cabin 125,000 2.18 0.84 4.02 N/A N/A Baker Patton 95,000 3.66 0.80 5.28 0.83 56.0 Total 1,624,350 2.81 2.26 0.92 0.24 8.9 Notes: (1) Values have been converted from the imperial to metric system (2) Historical resource estimates include (a) a Cerro-Mining-Guggenheim Joint Venture report titled "Feasibility Study for 550 ton per day mine & mill", prepared by Wright Engineers Limited in 1971, reported a "geological ore reserve" 1,113,200 tons at 2.76% Cu at the Pine Bay deposit, (b) a Keys report in 1963 reported a historical resource estimate of 291,150 tons at 1.46% Cu at the Sourdough deposit, (c) a Pine Bay Mines report in 1976 reported a historical resource estimate of 125,000 tons at 0.84% Cu at the Cabin deposit and (d) a Macmillan report in 1968 reported a historical resource estimate of 95,000 tons at 0.80% Cu at the Baker Patton deposit. The historical "geological ore reserve" and resource estimates cited above is mentioned for historical purposes only and uses terminology not compliant with current reporting standards. The reliability of these historical estimates is unknown but considered relevant by the Company as it represents a significant target for future exploration work by the Company. The assumptions, parameters and methods used to calculate this historical resource estimate are not known to the Company. The qualified person has not made any attempt to re-classify the estimates accordingly to current NI 43-101 standards of disclosure or the CIM definitions. In order for these resources to be current, the Company will be required to conduct additional drilling on the Pine Bay Property. The Company is not treating this estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves as defined in NI 43-101. Although the Historical resource estimate was also designated as "ore" it cannot be compared to mineral reserves as it is not supported by at least a current pre-feasibility study. (3) Copper equivalent grades are based on metal prices of: copper US$3.00/lb, zinc $1.00/lb, gold US$1200 per oz, silver US$20 per oz. Metal recoveries of 100% are applied in the copper equivalent calculation. The copper equivalent calculation is as follows; Cu Eq = Cu grade + ((Zn grade%/100*2000 x Zn price) + (Au grade/32.15 x Au price) + (Ag grade/32.15 x Ag price)/Cu price/20). About Callinex Mines Inc. Callinex Mines Inc., a Canadian mineral exploration company, is focused on discovering the next copper-zinc rich VMS mine within Manitoba's prolific Flin Flon mining district. The Company's flagship project is the Pine Bay Project which hosts significant historic VMS deposits that are within close proximity to a processing facility. The Flin Flon district has yielded more than 145 million tonnes of production from 32 mines. 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. Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future expenditures. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the ability to complete contemplated work programs and the timing and amount of expenditures. Callinex does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement. TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Cordoba Minerals Corp. (TSX VENTURE:CDB) (Cordoba or the Company) is pleased to announce that the Company has received the three-dimensional (3D) inversion results from the phase one Typhoon Induced Polarization (IP) geophysical survey conducted by Cordoba's joint venture partner, High Power Exploration (HPX), at the San Matias copper-gold project in Colombia. The recently completed Typhoon IP survey covered the Montiel porphyry discovery, where previous drilling intersected 101 metres of 1.0% copper and 0.65 g/t gold, and the northern part of the Alacran skarn discovery where recent drilling intersected 111 metres of 1.01% copper and 0.38 g/t gold. Results demonstrate a strong correlation between the thick drill intercepts of copper-gold mineralization and the sulphide chargeability targets identified by Typhoon. The survey only covered 7.5 square kilometres of a 200-square-kilometre prospective area for copper-gold mineralization (Figure 1). Mario Stifano, President and CEO of Cordoba, commented: "The initial Typhoon IP results are extremely encouraging as they indicate multiple large and potentially significant sulphide chargeability targets, highlighting the potential for the San Matias Project to host a tier one, district-scale copper-gold porphyry system. We plan to rapidly expand the Typhoon survey to the north and south of the currently surveyed areas as the significant mineralized trends and targets remain open. Porphyry exploration is a long and complex process, but we have the ideal partner in HPX." "The chargeability targets identified by Typhoon at the San Matias Project are among the most compelling that we have seen in surveys conducted by HPX on three continents," said Eric Finlayson, President of HPX. "The size of the chargeability anomalies and their location within the richly-endowed Mid Cauca Belt are strong indicators of the copper-gold porphyry potential of this area." Cordoba and HPX are jointly finalizing plans for the next phase of the exploration program at the San Matias Project. Plans include an expansion of the Typhoon survey to the north and south of the currently surveyed areas; follow-on drilling at the Alacran discovery and at high priority targets defined by the initial Typhoon survey; and further detailed airborne magnetic surveys. The 3D chargeability model generated by inverting the Typhoon IP survey data predicts the expected electrical properties of the rocks. In this area, zones of high chargeability typically correlate with the occurrence of disseminated sulfide minerals. The chargeable areas are outlined in Figure 2 at about 200 metres depth. Integration of these results with magnetic modelling and analysis of the substantial mapping, geochemical, and structural databases has led to a new set of targets for testing in upcoming drilling programs. Alacran Copper-Gold System The Alacran copper-gold discovery is approximately two kilometres southwest of the Company's Montiel porphyry copper-gold discovery where recent drilling intersected 101 metres of 1.0% copper and 0.65 g/t gold, and two kilometres northwest of the Costa Azul porphyry copper-gold discovery where recent drilling intersected 87 metres of 0.62% copper and 0.51 g/t gold. The copper-gold mineralization at Alacran is associated with stratabound replacement of a marine volcano-sedimentary sequence in the core of a faulted antiformal fold structure. Recent drilling at Alacran intersected 111 metres of 1.01% copper and 0.38 g/t gold (see Cordoba's April 11, 2016 news release for details of recent drill results). The Typhoon IP survey covered only the northern extension of the 1.3-kilometre mineralized trend at Alacran. The deposit comprises moderately to steeply-dipping stratigraphy that is mineralized as a series of sub-parallel replacement-style (or skarn) zones and associated disseminations. The copper-gold mineralization is composed of multiple overprinting hydrothermal events with the main mineralizing phase comprised of chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite and pyrite that appears to overprint a large-scale early magnetite metasomatic event. About San Matias Project The newly discovered San Matias Copper-Gold Project comprises a 20,000-hectare land package on the inferred northern extension of the richly endowed Mid Cauca Copper-Gold Belt in Colombia. The project contains several known areas of porphyry copper-gold mineralization, copper-gold skarn mineralization and vein-hosted, gold-copper mineralization. Porphyry mineralization at the San Matias Project incorporates high-grade zones of copper-gold mineralization hosted by diorite porphyries containing secondary biotite alteration and various orientations of sheeted and stockwork quartz-magnetite veins with chalcopyrite and bornite. The copper-gold skarn mineralization at Alacran appears to be stratabound within a marine volcano-sedimentary sequence. District-scale alteration and the abundance of mineralized showings at San Matias show early-stage exploration similarities to other Tier One copper-gold porphyry districts along the Andean Porphyry Copper Belt. About Typhoon Typhoon is a proprietary IP and electromagnetic induction (EM) survey transmitter that provides an unprecedented combination of clean signal and high power to provide more accurate mapping of the electrical properties of the earth. It has been applied in surveys on projects in three continents to identify prospective mineralized targets. The phase one Typhoon 3D DC-IP survey covered 7.5 square kilometres of the San Matias project area, including the key target areas at Montiel East, Montiel West and the northern section of Alacran. In total, 681-line kilometres of high-quality DC resistivity and IP data were acquired across the survey area during a 43-day survey campaign involving SJ Geophysics from Vancouver. 3D conductivity and chargeability models were generated from the data by Vancouver-based Computational Geosciences Inc. The results were integrated with the existing geological information, helicopter- and ground-based magnetometer surveys and 3D-magnetic models to generate new drill targets. The results show some of the strongest chargeability anomalies ever mapped with a Typhoon IP survey, at depths ranging from 50 metres to 500 metres. Technical Information The technical information in this release has been reviewed, verified and compiled by Christian J. Grainger, PhD, a Qualified Person for the purpose of NI 43-101. Dr. Grainger is a geologist with over 15 years in the minerals mining, consulting, exploration and research industries. Dr. Grainger is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG) and Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM). All samples have been prepared and assayed at ALS laboratory in Medellin, Colombia with gold assays being carried out as 50-gram Fire-Assays with AAS finish and all trace elements and base-metals being assayed using four Acid Digest with ICP-MS finish. The copper equivalent values have been calculated using a US$1,250 per ounce gold price and US$2.25 per pound copper price. The company utilizes an industry-standard QA/QC program. HQ and NQ diamond drill-core is sawn in half with one-half shipped to a sample preparation lab. The remainder of the core is stored in a secured storage facility for future assay verification. Blanks, duplicates and certified reference standards are inserted into the sample stream to monitor laboratory performance and a portion of the samples are periodically checked for assayed result quality. Joint Venture Agreement The San Matias Project is a joint venture between Cordoba and HPX, a private mineral exploration company founded by mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland. HPX has entered Phase One of the Joint Venture Agreement whereby HPX can earn a 25% interest in the San Matias Project by spending C$6 million. In Phase Two of the Agreement, HPX can earn a 51% interest in the San Matias Project by spending an additional C$10.5 million and can earn up to a 65% interest in the project by carrying it to feasibility. About High Power Exploration HPX is a privately owned, metals-focused exploration company deploying proprietary in-house geophysical technologies to rapidly evaluate buried geophysical targets. The HPX technology cluster comprises geological and geophysical systems for targeting, modelling, survey optimization, acquisition, processing and interpretation. HPX has a highly experienced board and management team led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert Friedland and co-chaired by Ian Cockerill, a former Chief Executive Officer of Gold Fields Ltd. HPX has control over approximately 32.4 million common shares, representing approximately 37.3% of the issued and outstanding common shares of Cordoba. VANCOUVER, April 24, 2016 /CNW/ - Nevsun Resources Ltd. ("Nevsun") (TSX: NSU) (NYSE MKT: NSU) and Reservoir Minerals Inc. ("Reservoir") (TSX Venture: RMC) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine their respective companies. The combination creates a diversified mid-tier base metals company with a cash producing operating asset in Bisha, a high grade open pit copper-zinc mine, and 100% ownership in the upper zone of the Timok Copper Project in Serbia ("Upper Zone"), a high grade copper and gold development project. The combined company will be well funded with Nevsun's existing strong balance sheet and operating cash flow and positioned to deliver value via Nevsun's highly successful development team. Under the terms of the arrangement agreement announced today, Nevsun has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding common shares, and restricted share units of Reservoir on the basis of two (2) common shares and $0.001 in cash for each Reservoir common share pursuant to a Plan of Arrangement under the British Columbia Business Corporations Act for a total value of approximately US$365 million. Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on April 22, 2016, the consideration represents a premium of 35% to Reservoir's 20-day volume weighted average price (VWAP). The transaction will allow both Reservoir and Nevsun shareholders to participate in the ongoing cash flow generation of the Bisha mine, the growth potential of the Timok Copper Project, and significant exploration potential at both Bisha and Timok. Upon completion of the arrangement, current Nevsun shareholders will own approximately 67% of the combined company and current Reservoir shareholders will own the remaining 33%. Concurrently, the two companies have also entered into a funding transaction comprised of a private placement for 19.99% of Reservoir's outstanding common shares and a loan transaction. Nevsun has subscribed for 12,174,928 common shares of Reservoir at a price of C$9.40 per share, for a total subscription price of CAD$114,444,323 (US$90,296,571), increasing Reservoir's total shares outstanding to 60,905,093, and provided an unsecured cash loan of US$44,703,429 to Reservoir. The combined funding transaction provides US$135,000,000 in financing to enable Global Reservoir Mineral (BVI) Inc. ("Global Reservoir"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Reservoir to exercise its right of first offer ("ROFO") in respect of its joint venture with Freeport International Holdings (BVI) Inc. ("Freeport") in the Timok Copper Project. Upon Global Reservoir closing the exercise of the ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% interest in the Upper Zone and a 60.4% interest in the lower zone of the Timok Copper Project ("Lower Zone") under two joint venture agreements with Freeport and will become the operator of the project. Freeport may increase its ownership in the Lower Zone to 54% under the terms of the original Timok JV agreement, with Global Reservoir holding the remaining 46%. Upon completion of the combination, Global Reservoir will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the combined company. "This transaction diversifies Nevsun's asset base, putting our cash balance to work in a strategic and high return investment that will deliver significant value to our shareholders," said Mr. Cliff Davis, Nevsun's President and Chief Executive Officer. "The Upper Zone, with its high grade copper-gold resource and nearby infrastructure in a mining friendly jurisdiction, adds significant growth to Nevsun. With ongoing cash flow generation from our Bisha mine, we have the financial strength and proven technical ability to move the Timok project forward in a timely manner. We look forward to working with all stakeholders and Timok's highly capable partner in bringing the project into production." "This is an excellent outcome for Reservoir and its shareholders, delivering premium value, and most importantly will expedite the development of the Timok Copper-Gold Project to the benefit of all stakeholders," said Dr. Simon Ingram, Reservoir's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Reservoir's Board of Directors determined that this transaction is the best funding alternative for our shareholders to fund the Timok ROFO. Nevsun is a proven mine developer with the technical experience and strong balance sheet to enable Timok development. Reservoir shareholders retain exposure to the development potential of Timok and also gain exposure to the operating Bisha mine's cash flow and additional exploration potential. The combined company will be in a strong position to efficiently advance the Timok project to production." Benefits to Reservoir Shareholders Expedited Development of Timok . The Timok Project will be expedited to production for the benefit of all stakeholders. . The Timok Project will be expedited to production for the benefit of all stakeholders. Premium value . Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on April 22, 2016 , the consideration represents a premium of 124% over the trading price of Reservoir shares on March 2, 2016 , the day prior to receiving notification of the ROFO and a 35% premium to the 20 day VWAP. . Based on the closing price of Nevsun common shares on , the consideration represents a premium of 124% over the trading price of Reservoir shares on , the day prior to receiving notification of the ROFO and a 35% premium to the 20 day VWAP. Increases long-term exposure in Timok . Through Nevsun's funding of Global Reservoir's ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% stake and operatorship of the Upper Zone. . Through Nevsun's funding of Global Reservoir's ROFO, Global Reservoir will have a 100% stake and operatorship of the Upper Zone. Strong balance sheet and cash generation to fund Timok's growth potential . The transaction offers shareholders exposure to cash generated from the Bisha mine, a high grade mine which generated US$120 million of operating cash flow in 2015, and pro-forma US$300 million in cash to fund development. . The transaction offers shareholders exposure to cash generated from the Bisha mine, a high grade mine which generated of operating cash flow in 2015, and pro-forma in cash to fund development. Strong operating team to advance the Timok project . Nevsun's management team has demonstrated the ability to develop and bring a mining project into production on time and under budget. Nevsun has invested over US$430 million in a three-phase development of the Bisha mine, all on-time and under budget. . Nevsun's management team has demonstrated the ability to develop and bring a mining project into production on time and under budget. Nevsun has invested over in a three-phase development of the Bisha mine, all on-time and under budget. Increased capital market profile. Nevsun's shares are liquid with a strong institutional shareholder base. Completion of the arrangement should result in further increases in trading liquidity and a broader depth of major institutional shareholders. Benefits to Nevsun Shareholders On strategy for diversification . The transaction delivers on the company's stated goal to diversify geographically through a strategic transaction. . The transaction delivers on the company's stated goal to diversify geographically through a strategic transaction. Attractive deployment of capital . The transaction puts Nevsun's cash balance and ongoing cash flow generation capacity to use in an attractive development project with a high projected return. . The transaction puts Nevsun's cash balance and ongoing cash flow generation capacity to use in an attractive development project with a high projected return. High quality asset . The Upper Zone, a high grade copper-gold development project, is in a historic mining jurisdiction with excellent local and regional infrastructure. . The Upper Zone, a high grade copper-gold development project, is in a historic mining jurisdiction with excellent local and regional infrastructure. Increased growth potential. The Upper Zone significantly increases Nevsun's growth profile. In addition, the Lower Zone, a joint venture with Freeport , represents further upside in the potential large-tonnage porphyry style mineralization. The Upper Zone significantly increases Nevsun's growth profile. In addition, the Lower Zone, a joint venture with , represents further upside in the potential large-tonnage porphyry style mineralization. Strategic partner. The combined company forms a strategic long-term partnership with Freeport , a leading copper and gold producer. About the Timok Project Joint Venture The Timok project represents four exploration permits in the highly prospective Timok Magmatic Complex in eastern Serbia, near the world class Bor and Majdenpek mines. The Timok project centres on the Cukaru Peki deposit, which includes the Upper Zone (characterized by massive and semi-massive sulphide mineralization) and the Lower Zone (characterized by porphyry-style mineralization). Refer to Reservoir's April 19, 2016 news release announcing the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Timok JV Project and Cukaru Peki deposit. The Timok project is a joint venture with Freeport governed by a joint venture shareholders agreement. Freeport is currently the Timok Project operator and is fully funding the project. Following exercise of the ROFO, Global Reservoir will be appointed the operator until completion of the combination and until the occurrence of certain events, will advance the development of both the Upper Zone and the Lower Zone in accordance with approved budgets and work programs. Global Reservoir will have the sole right to propose budgets and work programs relating to the Upper Zone and for certain agreed Lower Zone work, and Freeport will have the sole right to propose budgets and work programs relating to the Lower Zone, subject to specified exceptions. Until the delivery of a feasibility study, Global Reservoir will fund 100% of the Upper Zone development costs, as well as US$20 million of agreed Lower Zone work. Global Reservoir and Freeport will fund 28% and 72% of all other Lower Zone development costs, respectively. Additional Transaction Details The directors and management of both Nevsun and Reservoir have entered into agreements pursuant to which they have committed to vote their respective common shares, in favour of the arrangement. In addition, Nevsun, following completion of its subscription for Reservoir common shares will own 19.99% of Reservoir's outstanding common shares. Major shareholders of Nevsun have expressed support for the transaction. The arrangement has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Reservoir and Nevsun. The Boards of both Nevsun and Reservoir have received fairness opinions from independent financial advisors, and recommend their respective shareholders vote in favour of the arrangement. The implementation of the arrangement is subject to certain customary closing conditions, including the approval of two-thirds of the votes cast by Reservoir's common shareholders and option holders at a special meeting, approval by a majority of votes cast by Nevsun shareholders at a special meeting, approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange and court approval. Completion of the arrangement is also conditional on the successful exercise by Global Reservoir of its ROFO in respect of the original Timok joint venture agreement. Post closing, the Nevsun Board will include two directors from Reservoir. The arrangement is expected to close late in the second quarter of 2016. The terms and conditions of the arrangement will be disclosed in a further detail in an information circular to be mailed to Reservoir shareholders in advance of the special meeting of Reservoir common shareholders to approve the arrangement. A copy of the arrangement agreement, the information circular and related documents will be filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities and will be available under Reservoir's profile at www.sedar.com. Advisors Scotia Capital Inc. is acting as financial advisor to Nevsun and has provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Nevsun that the arrangement is fair from a financial point of view to Nevsun shareholders. Stikeman Elliott LLP is acting as legal advisor to Nevsun and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is advising Nevsun with respect to U.S. securities matters. Canaccord Genuity and Natural Resources Global Capital Partners are acting as financial advisor to Reservoir and Canaccord Genuity has provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Reservoir that the arrangement is fair from a financial point of view to Reservoir shareholders. Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP is acting as legal advisor to Reservoir. Conference Call Nevsun and Reservoir will hold an investment community conference call and webcast April 25, 2016 at 6:00 a.m. Vancouver / 9:00 a.m. Toronto, New York / 2:00 p.m. London. Conference call details are as follows: North America: 1 888-231-8191 / 1 866-865-3087 / 1 647 427-7450 UK: 0800 051-7107 (toll free) Other International: +1 647 427-7450 Conference ID: 99383803 To Access Webcast: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1181319&s=1&k=44AC7C99A26A06D9D46D8A84DDC37B5B Please call/log-in 10 to 15 minutes before the conference call starts. A presentation accompanying the conference call will be available from the Nevsun (www.nevsun.com) and Reservoir (www.reservoirminerals.com) websites. The conference call will be available for replay until June 30, 2016, by calling 1 855-859-2056 / +1 778-371-8506 and entering passcode 99383803. About Nevsun Resources Ltd. Nevsun Resources Ltd. is the 60% owner of the high grade Bisha Mine in Eritrea. Bisha has over 9 years of reserve life, generating revenue from both copper and zinc concentrates containing gold and silver by-products. Nevsun has a strong balance sheet with over US$400 million in cash, no debt and pays a peer leading quarterly dividend. Nevsun is well positioned to grow shareholder value through exploration at Bisha and acquisition of additional mining assets. About Reservoir Minerals Inc. Reservoir Minerals Inc. is an international mineral exploration and development company run by an experienced technical and management team, with a portfolio of precious and base metal exploration properties in Europe and Africa. The Company operates an exploration partnership business model to leverage its expertise through to discovery. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and/or forward-looking information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimated," "potential," "possible" and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions or results "will," "may," "could" or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are statements concerning the Nevsun's and Reservoir's current beliefs, plans and expectations about the future including but not limited to the arrangement and related transactions, Nevsun's commercial production, Bisha's future production of copper and related cash flows, and development of the Timok project and related costs. These statements are by their very nature inherently uncertain. The actual achievements of the combined company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation, the risks that: (i) the conditions to completion of the arrangement will not be satisfied, including approval by Reservoir's and Nevsun's shareholders, court approval and successful exercise by Reservoir of the ROFO; (ii) an event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the arrangement agreement will occur; (iii) the retention of employees and other personnel will be adversely affected by uncertainty surrounding the arrangement; (iv) the companies will be unable to successfully integrate their operations following completion of the arrangement; (v) any of the assumptions in the historical resource estimates turn out to be incorrect, incomplete, or flawed in any respect; (vi) the methodologies and models used to prepare the resource and reserve estimates either underestimate or overestimate the resources or reserves due to hidden or unknown conditions, (vii) exploration activities or the mine operations are disrupted or suspended due to acts of god, internal conflicts in the country of Eritrea or Serbia, unforeseen government actions or other events; (viii) operations will be disrupted due to equipment or power failures, uncertainties in the copper minerology, metallurgical recoveries or concentrate grades, or other or other events; (ix) Nevsun is subjected to any hostile takeover or other unsolicited attempts to acquire control of Nevsun; or * are associated with the speculative nature of exploration activities, periodic interruptions to exploration, failure of drilling, processing and mining equipment, the interpretation of drill results and the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, changes to exploration and project plans and parameters and other risks are more fully described in the Nevsun's Annual Information Form for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, which is incorporated herein by reference. Nevsun's and Reservoir's forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, expectations and opinions of management on the date the statements are made, and neither Nevsun nor Reservoir assume any obligation to update such forward-looking statements in the future, except as required by law. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on Nevsun's or Reservoir's forward-looking statements and the forward-looking information presented here. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements and Nevsun's business can be found in Nevsun's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015, which is available on the Company's website (www.nevsun.com), filed under Nevsun's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on EDGAR (www.sec.gov) under cover of Form 40-F. Further information concerning risks and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements related to Reservoir and its business can be found in Reservoir's Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended November 30, 2015, which is available on the Company's website (www.reservoirminerals.com) and filed under Reservoir's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). Neither TSX Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Additional Information This announcement is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to buy nor the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. Nevsun expects that the securities to be offered in the arrangement will be issued in a transaction exempt from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") pursuant to Section 3(a)(10) of the U.S. Securities Act. SOURCE Nevsun Resources Ltd VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Skeena Resources Limited (TSX VENTURE: SKE) ("Skeena" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an initial, independent National Instrument 43-101 Mineral Resource estimate for its 100 percent-owned Spectrum gold-copper project in the Golden Triangle of northwestern BC. In addition, the Company is pleased to report on the commencement of additional metallurgical test work and exploration plans for the upcoming 2016 field season at Spectrum. Within a conceptual open pit and at a 0.50 g/t gold equivalent ("AuEq") NSR cut-off (Tables 1 and 2 below), the Central Zone of the Spectrum deposit hosts an Indicated Mineral Resource of 8.95 million tonnes grading 1.04 g/t Au, 6.58 g/t Ag and 0.11% Cu and containing 290,000 ounces of gold, 1.82 million ounces of silver and 20.835 million pounds of copper. At the same cut-off, the deposit hosts an additional 22.63 million tonnes in the Inferred category, with average grades of 1.03 g/t Au, 3.85 g/t Ag and 0.11% Cu and containing 750,000 ounces gold, 2.8 million ounces silver and 54.889 million pounds copper. Drilling to date shows that the Central Zone extends from surface to 400 m below surface and that it has lateral dimensions of approximately 1100 m (north-south) and 380 m (east-west). It remains open to the west, south, north and to depth. Mineralization comprises high-grade gold-bearing quartz-carbonate-sulphide veinlet stockworks cutting a broad zone of porphyry gold-copper mineralization. Table 1: Indicated Mineral Resource Within Conceptual Pit at Various Cut-Off Grades AuEq NSR Tonnes Average Grades Contained Metal Cut-Off (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Au (oz) Ag (oz) Cu (lb) 0.25 26,610,000 0.56 3.40 0.10 480,000 2,910,000 58,675,000 0.30 21,010,000 0.64 3.88 0.10 430,000 2,620,000 46,327,000 0.50 8,590,000 1.04 6.58 0.11 290,000 1,820,000 20,835,000 0.70 4,610,000 1.39 8.82 0.11 210,000 1,310,000 11,182,000 Table 2: Inferred Mineral Resource Within Conceptual Pit at Various Cut-off Grades AuEq NSR Tonnes Average Grades Contained Metal Cut-Off (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Au (oz) Ag (oz) Cu (lb) 0.25 61,660,000 0.61 2.42 0.11 1,200,000 4,800,000 149,556,000 0.30 56,460,000 0.64 2.52 0.11 1,160,000 4,570,000 136,944,000 0.50 22,630,000 1.03 3.85 0.11 750,000 2,800,000 54,889,000 0.70 9,270,000 1.64 5.93 0.09 490,00 1,770,000 18,396,000 Gold equivalence was calculated using the following equations and inputs: AuEq = [average gold grade (g/t) * plant recovery * (100% - transit concentrate losses) * gold payable rate] + [average copper grade (%) * (unit revenue copper/unit revenue gold)] + [average silver grade (g/t) * (unit revenue silver/unit revenue gold)] Unit Revenue gold = (1/31.1035) * plant recovery * (100% - transit concentrate losses) * gold payable rate * unit gold price Unit Revenue silver = (1/31.1035) * plant recovery * (100% - transit concentrate losses) * silver payable rate * unit silver price Unit Revenue copper = 2204.6 * 0.01 * plant recovery * (100% - transit concentrate losses) * copper payable rate * unit copper price Assumed plant recoveries = 70% for gold, 75% for copper and 50% for silver Assumed refinery payable rates = 95% for gold, 96.5% for copper and 90% for silver Transit losses = 0.1% of metal content in concentrate Assumed metal prices = US$1,200/oz for gold, US$2.10/lb for copper and US$14.50/oz for silver Assumed average exchange rate of US$1.0 = C$1.333. Mr. Walter Coles, Jr, President and CEO of Skeena commented: "This is an important milestone for our Company. In the 20 months we have held the Spectrum property we have made significant progress in defining a substantial Mineral Resource. Exploration activity has shown the deposit to be much larger than previously thought; potential exists to further expand the resource base to the north, south and west, as well as to depth. As the known deposit has grown the grades have reduced, but this could be a function of drilling density (future infill drilling is planned). With average grades greater than 1.0 g/t Au, plus silver and copper credits, we believe Spectrum has potential development synergies with the Donnelly copper-gold deposits on our adjacent GJ property." Skeena's Chairman, Mr. Ron Netolitzky, added: "The Spectrum resource should be considered preliminary as it is still open to expansion to the west, north and south where porphyry gold-copper mineralization was recognized late in the 2015 field season. In addition, copper and silver assays are lacking for many historic holes. We consider it somewhat premature to be issuing a resource estimate when the deposit has not been fully drilled off. The focus for this season's work program will be to further expand the gold-copper resource with wide-spaced drilling, and to begin to define resources on other high-priority gold and gold-copper targets at Spectrum that have had little or no drilling to date." 2016 Work Program The Mineral Resource estimate presented herein is considered preliminary because the porphyry gold-copper style mineralization is open to the west along its known 1.1 kilometre length, as well as to the north and south. Evidence for continuity of the mineralization to the south is provided by several widely-spaced and well-documented historic holes that report good gold and copper grades. Evidence that the mineralization extends to the west is provided by four well-defined and strong, multi-element soil geochemical anomalies (predominantly gold and copper). A drill program has been laid out to define the limits of the deposit in each of the directions outlined. The entire target zone will also be investigated in 2016 by an Induced Polarization geophysical survey, as soon as field conditions permit. Drilling of the porphyry-style gold-copper mineralization will be wider spaced and less detailed than previous drilling directed at the narrow, high-grade gold zones. However, definition drilling along the margins of the Central Zone and future in-fill drilling is still expected to capture more of the high-grade structures. The $4.0 million work program proposed for the 2016 field season involves an initial four to six week ground investigation program, overlapping with and followed by a six to eight week drill program totaling 8,000 to 10,000 metres. The program is expected to run from late May or early June through October, 2016. Significant effort will be made to trench and drill outlying targets away from the Central Zone. To date only 19 holes (3,644 metres) out of a total of 165 holes (31,965 metres) on the property have been drilled outside the Central zone. Several targets, that are ready for drilling, require only limited refinement through prospecting, detailed mapping, IP geophysics and trenching. Mineral Resource Reporting The Central Zone Mineral Resource estimate reported in this release has an effective date of December 02, 2015. It was completed by Mr. Gary H. Giroux, M.A.Sc., P.Eng. of Giroux Consultants Ltd. of Vancouver B.C., Canada, an Independent Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). The estimate was prepared in accordance with Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves adopted by the CIM Council, as amended. The methods used to estimate the Mineral Resource are summarized below. Further details of the procedures will be available in a NI 43-101 Technical Report, to be co-authored by Jacques R. Stacey, M.Sc. P.Geol., an Independent Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, which will be filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) within 45 days of this release. Estimation Methods Skeena geologists, using a series of cross-sections and level plans, produced a geologic three-dimensional solid model to constrain the resource estimate on the Central Zone. A total of twelve mineralized geologic domains were modeled and a total of 145 diamond drill holes (28,321 metres), with 16,445 assays, were used to define the model. High-grade outliers for gold, silver and copper were capped within each of the geologic domains. Assay sample lengths ranged from 0.10 m to 24 m, with a mean of 1.75 and a median of 2.0 m. A composite length of 2.5 m was chosen to best match the median value and, at the same time, to ensure that it was an even multiple of the 5 m block height employed (blocks with dimensions of 10 m north-south, 5 m east-west and 5 m in the vertical dimension was superimposed over the mineralized solids). Uniform downhole composites were formed to honour the domain boundaries. Variography was used to model the grade continuity and to determine the search ellipse orientations and dimensions for interpolation. Gold, silver and copper grades were interpolated into blocks by Ordinary Kriging (OK) for all mineralized domains except Au10N and Au10S_M. For the domains AU10N and AU10S_M a combination of Ordinary Kriging and Indicator Kriging (IK) was used since high grade structures were present but were not abundant enough to model as discrete, continuous mineralized zones. A total of 566 specific gravity determinations were made in the field by Skeena staff using the Archimedes method. In addition, 373 specific gravity measurements were taken at ActLabs using the ASTM D854 methodology. A specific gravity was then assigned to each block based on Domain, thereby to convert volumes to tonnes. The blocks were classified as Indicated or Inferred, based on grade continuity as measured by semi-variograms. Validation of the model was completed by comparison of the block model and drill hole grades by visual inspections in section and plan across the deposit. Pit Optimization Variables Conceptual pits were optimized using Maptek Vulcan software by QP Scott Britton, C.Eng., based on: an overall average pit slope angle of 45; a direct mining cost of C$1.25/t mined; an incremental mining cost of C$0.05/t mined; other on-site costs totalling C$8.05/t milled; the same metal recovery rates, metal prices and exchange rate as stated above for calculating gold grade equivalence; an average moisture content of 8% for the anticipated bulk concentrate; a transport and insurance cost of US$100/wmt; a concentrate treatment charge of US$65/dmt; and refinery charges of US$5.0/oz gold, US$0.35/oz silver and US$0.06/ lb copper. At this stage of the property's development, no detailed economic or mining studies have been completed. In the Qualified Person's (Giroux) judgement and experience the Mineral Resource stated herein has reasonable prospects of economic extraction. Metallurgical Studies Previous metallurgical studies have indicated positive recoveries for gold using a variety of methods (see news releases of May 14 and July 20, 2015). Additional metallurgical work is underway at the Saskatchewan Research Council, under the direction of Michael Yakimchuk, P.Eng. The objective of the on-going program is to advance our understanding of suitable processing options and methods, as well as the achievable recoveries for gold, silver and copper. Historical Resource Estimates Several historical Mineral Resource estimates were previously completed for the Spectrum deposit, based on drilling to the end of 1992. The historical estimates are now superseded by the current estimate reported herein. The methods used to complete the historical estimates are summarized in the August 5, 2014 Independent 43-101 Technical Report entitled "Evaluation and Technical Report on the Spectrum Gold Property" by Jacques R. Stacey, M.Sc., P.Geol. and Robin Chisholm, B.Sc., which is available on both www.sedar.com and the Company's website (www.skeenaresources.com). A QP has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current Mineral Resources. Skeena is not treating the historical estimates as current Mineral Resources. Cautionary Notes Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral Resource estimates do not account for mineability, selectivity, mining loss and dilution. The Mineral Resource estimate stated herein includes Inferred material, which is normally considered too geologically speculative to have economic considerations applied, thereby to enable them to be categorized as Mineral Reserves. There is also no certainty that Inferred material will be converted to either the Indicated or Measured categories of Mineral Resources, through further drilling. Similarly, there is no certainty that Mineral Resources will convert to Mineral Reserves, once economic considerations are applied. Quality Assurance and Quality Control Drilling by Skeena in 2014 and 2015 was conducted under the supervision of Jacques Stacey, M.Sc., P.Geol., and Colin Russell, P.Geo. A rigorous chain-of-custody and QA/QC program, the latter including the insertion of certified standard reference materials, duplicates and blanks, was applied to the NQ-diameter, split half-core samples. Sample preparation and analyses were completed at the Kamloops, BC, facility of Activation Laboratories Ltd. (2015 program) and the Vancouver, BC, laboratory of Bureau Veritas (2014 program). Gold grades were determined by either 50 gram fire assay applied to 800 gram splits, or by 800 gram screened metallic analysis if visible gold was observed or expected. Other elements were determined by an ICP (inductively coupled plasma) analysis following aqua regia digestion. In 2015, a four-acid digestion was employed for silver if values exceeded 100 g/t and for copper if values exceeded one per cent. In 2014 and 2015, Skeena re-sampled selected intervals of historical core from programs completed by Cominco Ltd. (1989) and Columbia Gold Mines Ltd. ("CGM") (1990-1992). Although most of the high-grade intervals had been removed by previous operators, the remaining half- or whole-cores were found to be in good condition; recognizable labels were also present. The intervals of interest could, therefore, be sampled with confidence. A total of 367 samples representing 454.9 m of historic core was re-sampled by Skeena and analyzed at Actlabs in Kamloops, BC, using the protocols described above. Although there is a significant scatter in the derived data, on average, gold and copper values are comparable to those reported by previous operators. This indicates that the historical assays can be used with a reasonable degree of confidence. Details relating to the Cominco analytical methods (1989 drill holes) are limited, but the analyses were completed at the Cominco Exploration and Research Laboratory in Vancouver, BC. The CGM (1990-1992) assays were completed at Min-En Laboratories in Vancouver, BC. Gold was analyzed by Atomic Absorption ("AA") following aqua regia digestion of five gram samples; samples reporting values greater than 1.0 g/t Au were re-analyzed by either 30 g fire assay or, in some cases, by metallic screen assay. Copper, silver, zinc and/or lead values were determined by AA following aqua regia digestion. Internal laboratory QA/QC was completed by Mine-En. Sampling and analytical information for drilling completed from 1973 to 1980 is limited, and no information is available concerning the applied QA/QC protocols. In the QP's opinion (Stacey), the historical analytical work was completed by reputable companies and laboratories, and it conformed to industry standards of the time. Many of the historic holes were not analyzed for copper or silver, which elements are considered by the Company to be under-reported in the current Mineral Resource. This data gap will be progressively filled, going forward, by means of re-assay where possible, hole twinning and additional drilling, as appropriate. Responsible Exploration Skeena Resources Limited takes its environmental, health and safety, and social responsibilities very seriously. We are committed to working closely with First Nations, neighbouring communities, and stakeholders, to achieve the responsible development of our projects, and to make a positive difference in the places we work. Skeena continues to engage with the Tahltan Central Government, local communities, stakeholders and land users. Extensive archaeological investigations have been completed for the Project area and environmental baseline studies are ongoing. The Company will be holding community meetings to highlight the activity and opportunities that will be coming up through the 2016 season. Skeena is committed to generating benefits in regional communities through local hire and procurement. The technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Michael S. Cathro, P.Geo., Skeena's Vice-President of Operations and a Qualified Person as defined by Canada's National Instrument 43-101. About Skeena Skeena Resources Limited is a junior Canadian mining exploration company involved in the acquisition, exploration and development of prospective base and precious metal properties throughout British Columbia. The Company's primary activities at present are the evaluation of the high-grade Spectrum gold project and adjacent bulk-tonnage GJ copper-gold project, located in the prolific Golden Triangle of northwestern BC. The Company recently optioned the Snip mine from Barrick Gold Corp., which is also located in the Golden Triangle. Skeena's management includes a highly experienced team of mine-finders, including Ron Netolitzky, Chairman, who was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2015. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF SKEENA RESOURCES LIMITED Walt Coles Jr., President & CEO Cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements Certain statements made and information contained herein may constitute "forward looking information" and "forward looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including, among other things, information with respect to this presentation. These statements and information are based on facts currently available to the Company and there is no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements and information may be identified by such terms as "anticipates", "believes", "targets", "estimates", "plans", "expects", "may", "will", "could" or "would". Forward-looking statements and information contained herein are based on certain factors and assumptions regarding, among other things, the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, the realization of resource and reserve estimates, metal prices, taxation, the estimation, timing and amount of future exploration and development, capital and operating costs, the availability of financing, the receipt of regulatory approvals, environmental risks, title disputes and other matters. While the Company considers its assumptions to be reasonable as of the date hereof, forward-looking statements and information are not guarantees of future performance and readers should not place undue importance on such statements as actual events and results may differ materially from those described herein. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or information except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. A panel of experts released on Sunday its second and last report [text in Spanish, PDF] on its inquiry into the 43 undergraduate students from a teachers college in Ayotzinapa who went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico in 2014, stating that the Mexican government has hampered the investigation. Consisting of Latin American lawyers and human rights activists, the panel of experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [official website] found the following: some of the suspects had been tortured by government security forces; the integrity of evidence had been compromised in the case; new evidence showed a greater role by federal security forces in the 2014 events; a lack of investigation into high-level officials; a lack of investigation into phone records from that night; and sclerotic bureaucracy [NYT report] throughout the justice system. The experts brought together the events leading up to the disappearances of the students through witness testimony and ballistic tests; they concluded [NYT report] that the join action [of the attackers and officials] shows a coordinated modus operandi []. The experts have denounced the Mexican government for failing to fully cooperate with the investigation and taking steps to discredit [Guardian report] the group. The experts had been invited by the Mexican government to examine the case and the formers mandate is due to expire next week. It will not be extended, according to Mexican authorities. The disappearance of the 43 students has drawn widespread condemnation of the criminal justice system in Mexico. In January, three men were [JURIST report] arrested for their possible connection to the disappearance as part of the governments story. In November Mexicos own National Human Rights Commission criticized [JURIST report] the Mexican Attorney Generals Office and other government offices involved in the investigation for failing to comply with its recommendations. In October Human Rights Watch reported [JURIST report] that there was evidence of unlawful police killing in the country. Also in October, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez Gonzalez released [JURIST report] a 54,000 page file detailing the Mexican governments investigation. NEWSLETTER Sign up Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Just Drinks Daily News The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Just Drinks Weekly News A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday. Just Drinks Magazine The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter President Barack Obama on the UK future in the EU: This is a decision for the people of the United Kingdom to make. Im not coming here to fix any votes. Im not casting a vote myself. Im offering my opinion. And in democracies, everybody should want more information, not less. And you shouldnt be afraid to hear an argument being made. Thats not a threat. That should enhance the debate. Particularly because my understanding is that some of the folks on the other side have been ascribing to the United States certain actions well take if the UK does leave the EU. So they say, for example, that, well, well just cut our own trade deals with the United States. So theyre voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do. I figured you might want to hear it from the President of the United States what I think the United States is going to do. (Laughter.) And on that matter, for example, I think its fair to say that maybe some point down the line, there might be a UK-U.S. trade agreement, but its not going to happen anytime soon, because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done, and the UK is going to be in the back of the queue not because we dont have a special relationship, but because, given the heavy lift on any trade agreement, us having access to a big market with a lot of countries rather than trying to do piecemeal trade agreements is hugely inefficient. Now, to the subject at hand, obviously the United States is in a different hemisphere, different circumstances, has different sets of relationships with its neighbors than the UK does. But I can tell you this. If, right now, Ive got access to a massive market where I sell 44 percent of my exports, and now Im thinking about leaving the organization that gives me access to that market and that is responsible for millions of jobs in my country and responsible for an enormous amount of commerce and upon which a lot of businesses depend, thats not something Id probably do. And what Im trying to describe is a broader principle, which is, in our own ways I mean, we dont have a common market in the Americas but in all sorts of ways, the United States constrains itself in order to bind everyone under a common set of norms and rules that makes everybody more prosperous. Thats what we built after World War II. The United States and the UK designed a set of institutions whether it was the United Nations, or the Bretton Woods structure, IMF, World Bank, NATO, across the board. Now, that, to some degree, constrained our freedom to operate. It meant that occasionally we had to deal with some bureaucracy. It meant that on occasion we have to persuade other countries, and we dont get 100 percent of what we want in each case. But we knew that by doing so, everybody was going to be better off partly because the norms and rules that were put in place were reflective of what we believe. If there were more free markets around the world, and an orderly financial system, we knew we could operate in that environment. If we had collective defense treaties through NATO, we understood that we could formalize an architecture that would deter aggression, rather than us having, piecemeal, to put together alliances to defeat aggression after it already started. And that principle is whats at stake here. And the last point Ill make on this until I get the next question, I suspect (laughter) is that, as David said, this magnifies the power of the UK. It doesnt diminish it. On just about every issue, what happens in Europe is going to have an impact here. And what happens in Europe is going to have an impact in the United States. We just discussed, for example, the refugee and the migration crisis. And Ive told my team which is sitting right here, so theyll vouch for me that we consider it a major national security issue that you have uncontrolled migration into Europe not because these folks are coming to the United States, but because if it destabilizes Europe, our largest trading bloc trading partner its going to be bad for our economy. If you start seeing divisions in Europe, that weakens NATO. That will have an impact on our collective security. Now, if, in fact, I want somebody whos smart and common sense, and tough, and is thinking, as I do, in the conversations about how migration is going to be handled, somebody who also has a sense of compassion, and recognizes that immigration can enhance, when done properly, the assets of a country, and not just diminish them, I want David Cameron in the conversation. Just as I want him in the conversation when were having discussions about information-sharing and counterterrorism activity. Precisely because I have confidence in the UK, and I know that if were not working effectively with Paris or Brussels, then those attacks are going to migrate to the United States and to London, I want one of my strongest partners in that conversation. So it enhances the special relationship. It doesnt diminish it. Full transcript GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) Authorities say one person has been killed and two people have been treated at a hospital after a fire at a plumbing company building in Grand Island. Grand Island Fire Chief Cory Schmidt says firetrucks were dispatched after several people reported hearing explosions around 10:45 p.m. Sunday. An estimated 40 firefighters battled the flames, and crews were still on the scene Monday morning to handle hot spots at the Winfrey Plumbing and Heating building and a nearby building where the fire had spread. Fire Department shift commander Ed Carlin told station NTV that one body was recovered and that the two people injured were taken to a Grand Island hospital. Schmidt says the state fire marshal's office has been called to help determine what caused the explosions and fire. Tracy Overstreet, World-Herald News Service GRAND ISLAND -- Authorities say two people have been hospitalized after a fire at Winfrey Plumbing and Heating at 808 W. North Front. in Grand Island, according to the Associated Press. Its a defensive fire, said Grand Island Fire Chief Cory Schmidt. There was significant damage when we arrived on scene." The call came in around 10:45 p.m. after explosions were reportedly heard, the chief said. All four fire stations responded. The ladder truck was used to shower water down on the building. Ambulances were standing by. Fire Department shift commander Ed Carlin says the two injured were taken to St. Francis hospital in Grand Island, according to the Associated Press. Maricela Luevano lives at 904 W. North Front just across the street from where the fire broke out. We went to bed about 10 p.m. and then it sounded like cherry bombs exploding like the Fourth of July, Luevano said. There was one, two, three, four. We thought it would stop and were almost falling asleep and then heard a huge bomb it literally threw us out of bed it was that strong. Luevano raced to the window to see huge flames and fire at Winfrey Plumbing and called 911. She said the initial flames were as tall as the tree in her yard, at least 20 feet, and the thick black smoke wafted high and billowed over the nearby Peavey grain elevators height. From her porch on the north side of the street, Luevano said it appeared that the fire started in the first two garages along the east side of the business and then spread to the west. The family scurried to move their three vehicles, gather up three kids and pets. There was another explosion and you could feel the heat, Luevano said. We were in shock. Firefighters coordinated with police to contact neighboring property owners. Some buildings were vacated. Many people began to gather in the streets to watch the blaze, but for some the smoke had a stinging effect. Grand Island Rural Fire Department was called in to staff Grand Islands four city stations. The Alda Volunteer Fire Department was put on alert that additional hands might be needed. Schmidt said it was not immediately known what caused the fire. He expected the Nebraska State Fire Marshals Office would be called in to investigate the scene. Luevano said neighbors in the next couple of blocks were out watching the blaze. A family member on Sixth Street called to check on Luevanos family and said he heard the explosion at his house. We did not expect this being right in front of it, Luevano said. GRAND ISLAND -- The state fire marshals office and the Nebraska State Patrol are handling the investigation of Sunday nights fire at Winfrey Plumbing and Heating, which claimed a life and injured two others. Those two organizations are conducting the investigation because of the fatality and the scope and the size of the fire, Grand Island police Capt. Dean Elliott said. Grand Island Fire Chief Cory Schmidt said one person was killed in the fire. "We did transport two patients last night with non-life-threatening injuries, and we did find one deceased person early this morning," the chief said today. Schmidt said the body was in "rough shape" and no identification has yet been made. He had no initial information as to whether the deceased was a male or female, only that the body had been found in the building. The two injured people were believed to have been inside the building before the fire started but were able to get out, Schmidt said, although that remains under investigation. Schmidt said there was an apartment on the east side of the business structure, but the body was not found in that apartment area. Deputy Hall County Attorney Gail VerMaas said the fire victim may not be identified until Tuesday. An autopsy will be conducted, and forensic and dental examinations will be done. VerMaas would not confirm if the deceased was a male. In response The Kilkenny People article last week. Family cries foul on false George Clooney story in South Kilkenny local film-maker, Gabriel Murray who recently completed his documentary George Clooneys Irish Roots has responded and Noreen Burke Hayes who contacted the paper about the Clooney saga and Enclann, the Trinity College based family roots service have given their reaction to Mr Murrays assertions. In response The Kilkenny People article last week. Family cries foul on false George Clooney story in South Kilkenny local film-maker, Gabriel Murray who recently completed his documentary George Clooneys Irish Roots has responded and Noreen Burke Hayes who contacted the paper about the Clooney saga and Enclann, the Trinity College based family roots service have given their reaction to Mr Murrays assertions. Mr Murray stated he discovered on September 20, 2011 the birth cert of George Clooneys ancestor which led to the location of the family home in Knockeen ,Tullahought, Co Kilkenny. Response from Noreen Burke Hayes (NBH) and Enclann - In 2005 an American genealogist traced George Clooneys family back to an immigrant ancestor who appears in the 1860 U.S. Census. This immigrant ancestor was Nicholas Clooney born in 1829 in Kilkenny. It was widely published on the ancestry website, and on www.famous roots.com amongst other sites. From 2005 when the story was first published online many Irish genealogists including Mary Flood of Rothe House and local families knew that the baptismal record of Nicholas Clooney in 1829 in the Windgap registers, was George Clooneys ancestor. Mr Murray stated that Noreen Bourke Hayes has contributed to last weeks article originally agreed to take part in the documentary. But when Olympia Films and their historians requested her to prove her claim that she was a cousin of George Clooney via the Mary Walsh link (that she cited in the article last week,) she could provide any documented evidence, such as birth and marriage certs etc. that she was in fact related. NBH/Enclann Response - Noreen Burke Hayes withdrew from the documentary first and foremost because she was not happy with the research. Noreen Bourke Hayess link to the Clooney family is through her great-grandmother Mary Bourke (nee Walsh) baptised Feby. 1835, a niece of Michael Clooney and Margaret Walsh of Windgap. On 2nd Sept. 1858 Mary Walsh married Richard Burke (Windgap RC registers). Mr Murray stated that further to this Ms Bourke Hayes made a claim that her family owned the George Clooney ancestral home. On examination of this claim the historians consulted Griffiths Valuation and it clearly states that Plot 3 on the 1847 map was where Andrew Clooney lived .(Georges ancestor). NBH/Enclann Response - By comparing Griffiths Valuation with the manuscript Cancelled Books in the Valuation Office in Abbey Street, Dublin., its clear that the Bourke/ Burke family home in Knockeen is the same one previously occupied by the Clooneys. Mr Murray stated that the current owner of this house is in fact Peter Purcell not the Bourke Hayes family in Knockeen. The Bourke Hayes own the house next door but there is no historical documents of the Clooneys ever living there. NBH/Enclann Response -There are historical documents to show the Clooneys lived in the Burke Hayes house. A list of documents as stated hereunder that can be examined to prove this: Landed Estate Court Rentals online at www.findmypast.ie; Griffiths Valuation available online www.irishorigins.net and it is also possible to compare the evidence of these two sources with the Manuscript copies of the Cancelled Books, in the Valuation Office in Abbey Street. Mr Murray states. Andrew Clooney lived in Peter Purcell house) there after the famine but due to the Gregory clause, Nicholas and his brother Thomas were evicted because their annual valuation was worth less than four pounds a year. NBH/Enclann Response - Nicholas Clooney was baptised in 1829, and younger brother Thomas Clooney was baptised in 1831. During the Famine years, both Nicholas and Thomas would have been minors, and wouldnt have been legally able to take out leases on property. In 1850, the year in which Griffiths Valuation for Kilkenny was published, Nicholas Clooney would have been 21 years and Thomas Clooney would have been 19 years. So even by 1850, they were simply too young to have displaced or taken over the holdings of their parents generation. Also, if we look at Griffiths Valuation we can see that this older generation of Clooneys are still living in Knickeen townland in 1850. Mr Murray states Enclann have recently tried to get involved in this project, but have been unable to access the material on the Clooneys as Olympia Films own the copyright research . Enclann have been involved only one month ,Olympia Films have been researching for one year extensively. Olympia Films can also confirm that Enclann has interviewed none of the direct Clooney relatives or consulted the various parish records and met with the local priest that hold these records. The American genealogist that was involved in the research in 2005 failed to link the Windgap Clooneys with Tullahought. NBH/Enclann Response -Fiona Fitzsimons from Enclann stated I would like to make quite clear that neither I or anyone else from Enclann has ever tried to get involved in any documentary made by Gabriel Murray. Similarly I have never heard the name of Olympia Films before reading this article Mr Murray stated that during the course of the research the link with the Laois Clooneys was made with the Kilkenny, Dunamaggin and the Tullahought Clooneys. Olympia Films can only suggest to Ms Bourke Hayes and Enclann that they watch Gabriel Murrays new documentary George Clooneys Irish Roots and study the fifteen hundred files of information before they start making un academic and in- accurate claims. NBH/Enclann Response - Enclann is a Trinity College Dublin campus company, that developed out of the School of History at the University. We stand over the research we completed on the Clooney family of Windgap Co. Kilkenny, and are confident in our findings that: The Clooney family were never evicted from Knickeen Townland during the Famine. The land records clearly show that the extended family remain on the land into the 1850s. The Clooney family of Windgap and the Clooney family of Abbeyleix have separate origins, and are not related. There may have been a Sarah Clooney of Abbeyleix, who may have worked in a carpet factory in Abbeyleix that may have made carpets for the Titanic. However if so, she was not a blood relation of the Clooneys of Windgap. We can cite all sources used during research and/or direct people to the documentary evidence. Also, on 2nd August Helen Moss from Enclann met the parish priest Fr. Nicholas Flavin and viewed the Windgap/ Dunamaggin parish registers. I would also like to point out that not many records survive that are relevant to the Clooney family of Windgap between the 1820s and 1860. I would be absolutely astonished if there were 1,500 files of information. Mr Murray states George Clooneys agent has been in contact with Gabriel with a series of e mails. Response from NBH and Enclann - What does this have to do with the veracity of Gabriel Murray/ Olympia Films research? Gabriel Murrays gives his final quote on the matter: Olympia Films operate in a democratic fashion ,we make conclusions on detailed academic research. It seems clear that the article printed last week was issued by the Bourke Hayes family and Enclann who have no access to the full academic research. Neither have they requested over a period of twelve months access to this extensive material Fiona Fitzsimons of Enclann stated, It would never have occurred to me to request access, because I wasnt aware of it Mr Murray said the documentary is dedicated to the late Walter Walsh (Doctor of History;Maywood University; Local History Programme.St Kierans College ) who took part in the documentary. His extensive knowledge on the Land War and the Clooney clan in South Kilkenny helped Olympia Films resolve the mystery of the origins of George Clooneys Irish Roots. May he rest in peace. George Clooneys Irish Roots will be released worldwide in Oct . NBH/Enclann Response - Walter Walsh was an inspirational person and much loved and with his passing we have lost a true gentleman and font of knowledge. The Land War was a campaign of agrarian protest commencing in 1879 and continuing throughout the 1880s and again referring back to the evidence of Griffiths Valuation and the Landed Estate Court Rentals, the extended Clooney family remained in the townland of Knockeen into the mid 1850s The Smithwicks Kilkenny Roots Festival has built its reputation on bringing performers to Ireland before anyone else has noticed them. In the past acts such as Ryan Adams, Calexico, Ray LaMontagne and Alabama Shakes have all made their Irish festival debuts in Kilkenny before going on to huge acclaim around the world. This year a new clutch of acts arrive in Kilkenny that will be unknown to all but the most discerning music fans, but are very likely to make a big impression in the coming years. The Delta Saints are a case in point. The Nashville based band has been around for a few years, but arrive in Kilkenny with a new record deal and a new album to promote. We've tried for years to get into Ireland and the UK, but have only played mainland Europe up until his year, said the bands bass player, David Supica, on the phone from Nashville. Flights overseas are never cheap and we haven't been able to make Ireland due to financial reasons in the past. But luckily, our time has come and we get to enjoy our Irish debut in a few short weeks. Nashville to Kilkenny for two nights and then straight back home seems like a tough schedule, but it doesnt seem to bother the Delta Saints. Honestly, it's pretty ideal! says David. Our typical US tour schedule can involve some insane drives (sometimes 10 and 12 hours) in our van which we're driving ourselves. I'd much rather just sit on an airplane for 8 hours and arrive at our beautiful destination after a few beers and a couple of hours sleep. Obviously the jet lag is never fun, but it's worth it to finally get to Ireland. We've been looking forward to this day for quite some time. The typical Kilkenny Roots Festival programme ranges from the quiet, introspective solo artists through to louder, rocking bands, particularly for the late night shows. Were definitely the latter. We've grown a lot as a band over the years. Our first EP would be considered extremely rootsy, but since then our sound has gotten a bit more experimental and a much more electric. We're proud of our roots in blues music, but have been trying to push the bounds of the genre in recent years. Trying to describe their style is not so easy. They have drawn comparisons to bands as diverse as Led Zeppelin and African band, Tinariwen. We're all very dedicated to constant evolution and change. If two albums sound the same, then what's the point of releasing a new album? It's really quite a balancing act. To put out new material that will both please fans of our older music, but push them to new musical territory. Sometimes we're more successful than others, but we're always trying to bring our old fans with us into our newer sound. If you listen to Pray On (our oldest release) and Bones (our newest) back to back, we want you to hear the same band but in a completely new light. Despite the strains of constant touring and the financial pressures of the current music business, the band have managed to keep going and have now signed a deal with the prestigious Loud and Proud label (which has been home to Lynyrd Skynyrd, KISS, Robert Plant and Lenny Kravitz) in the USA. We were lucky to find a home at L&P. Releasing music independently is rewarding but ridiculously hard work. With how demanding our tour schedule is, it's nice to be able to hand over the reins to a competent company and just focusing on writing music and touring. We've been hard at work demoing some new songs (that we may debut in Kilkenny!) and looking toward recording a new album. The Delta Saints will arrive in Kilkenny next weekend for two shows and will be back home in Nashville at the same time as the festival concludes. Their first show is at Kytelers at 9pm on Saturday April 30 and they finish up in The Set Theatre on Sunday May 1 at 11pm. Tickets for all shows through the festival website, www.kilkennyroots.com, or from Rollercoaster Records, Tel 0567763669. SHARE By Christopher Dunagan OLYMPIA ? Fishing for smelt, a popular pastime among some people, could be restricted to protect smelt populations and possibly even increase the food supply for birds, fish and marine mammals, officials say. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking comments on two options. One would reduce commercial and sport fishing for smelt. The second would close commercial smelt fishing altogether. Smelt are small, silvery fish that spawn on certain beaches throughout Puget Sound. Each fall, a large number of the fish are taken at Ross Point along Beach Drive west of Port Orchard. Total numbers of the fish have never been measured, and the cost of doing so would be prohibitive, said Craig Burley, manager of WDFW's fish management division. What is known, Burley said, is that the total amount of fishing has gone up in recent years, creating potential threats to the population, especially in heavily fished areas. "Given their importance in the food web of Puget Sound, we want to look at the current regulations and see whether we should provide more restrictive rules to reduce harvest," Burley said. Current state regulations allow commercial harvests for five days, from 8 a.m. Sunday to 8 a.m. Friday during seasonal openings. Recreational fishers can take smelt with jig gear at any time, while dip nets may be used during a five-day period from 8 a.m. Friday to 8 a.m. Wednesday. Hood Canal, which gets a fair number of smelt, remains closed to most kinds of fishing, including smelt fishing, because of its low-oxygen problems. The first option for revising the rules is to reduce commercial fishing from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. on days when fishing is allowed. Sunday would be dropped as a fishing day, leaving an opening from Monday through Thursday. That option also would eliminate dip nets and purse seines as allowable methods of commercial fishing, Burley said, noting that those methods have not been used for at least 10 years. On the recreational side, jig gear still could be used at any time, but one day would be dropped for dip nets, allowing harvest from Friday through Tuesday, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. That first option is designed to reduce the total smelt harvest to levels similar to those of the 1990s. Without better information, the hope is that those harvest levels can be sustainable, at least until more information is available. Another option would be to eliminate commercial fishing for smelt, while recreational fishers could harvest the same as under the first option ? from Friday through Tuesday, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. That second option, Burley said, is designed to increase the number of smelt available for marine species ? including species considered at risk of extinction. Like herring, smelt feed all kinds of fish, including salmon, as well as birds and marine mammals. Cutting back on night fishing under either proposal would allow for more of the adult smelt to survive until they can spawn, which typically takes place on the upper beach during high tide. So far, WDFW has not proposed requiring recreational fishers to weigh or count their catch, although commercial catch records go back to at least 1970. Officials know that the total commercial catch during the 1970s averaged about 67,000 pounds per year. Over the past 10 years, that average has gone up to nearly 100,000 pounds per year. Nobody can be sure that the current level of fishing won't cause the smelt population to suddenly crash. Smelt remain among the few fish species that can be taken recreationally without a fishing license. So far, the agency has not proposed requiring a license to catch smelt. For those interested, WDFW staff will discuss the options during a public meeting at 6 p.m. March 21 at the department's Mill Creek office, 16018 Mill Creek Blvd. Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will take testimony on the plan during its April meeting in Olympia. The commission could take action as early as June. SHARE By Andrew Binion of the Kitsap Sun PORT ORCHARD ? A 21-year-old man charged Tuesday with second-degree murder is suspected of mortally injuring his 4-month-old daughter by shaking her after he smoked meth. Hector Francisco Saavedra Ruiz, who is listed in court documents as a resident of Kingston, is being held in the Kitsap County Jail on $1 million bail. On Wednesday night, Saavedra is alleged to have argued with the mother of the baby girl about taking her to the Puerto Vallarta restaurant in Kingston, where he worked, to show her to co-workers. The child's mother told investigators she and Saavedra were no longer in a relationship but that she regularly drove from Olympia to Kingston so that he could see his daughter. The two smoked meth while the girl slept in another room, according to court documents. Despite the initial objections of the mother, Kayla Desrochers, Saavedra left with the girl. When he returned to his apartment on the 26000 block of Central Avenue Northeast about an hour later, shortly after midnight, the child was not breathing. A witness said Saavedra ran upstairs and yelled for help. CPR was performed on the child. The child was taken to Harrison Medical Center in Silverdale, then Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma. She died Friday. Desrochers changed her story when speaking to investigators and doctors, according to documents. Later she said she was attempting to protect Saavedra. Saavedra was arrested Monday. He declined to speak with investigators. At Saavedra's hearing Tuesday, Desrochers told District Court Judge Stephen Holman that she was afraid Saavedra would flee to Mexico if he were released from jail. During the hearing, Saavedra sat with his arms folded and wiped his eyes. He answered questions through an interpreter. Following the hearing, Desrochers said she was cooperating with investigators. "She was a beautiful and smart little girl," Desrochers said of Natalie. The doctor who treated the baby at Mary Bridge told investigators he didn't know what caused the injuries but said they were recent and nonaccidental trauma. An eye doctor who examined the child said injuries were "possibly consistent with shaken baby," documents said. Desrochers told investigators that last week she left the baby with Saavedra and later noticed three finger marks on the child's back. An autopsy found that the finger marks corresponded to a fractured rib, the documents said. The autopsy also found other injuries, including bruising, as well as a perforated colon caused by blunt force trauma, according to reports. The second-degree murder charge indicates prosecutors believe Saavedra committed second-degree assault of a child and caused the death of Natalie. Saavedra's next court hearing is Aug. 5. Martha & Mary, which marks its 125th anniversary this year, has cared for the young and old in Poulsbo. In a January intergenerational program, Tom Davis, 69, sings with preschooler. SHARE Martha & Mary in Poulsbo Martha & Mary activities coordinator Betsy Esparza plays and sings music to the residents in a 2011 music therapy class. POULSBO In 1887 a young Lutheran pastor disembarked a ship in the raw frontier town of Poulsbo. Ingebrit Tollefson had arrived from Minneapolis with a mission. His first task was to help grow a congregation that would foster a living Christianity among the Norwegian immigrants settled along the shores of what was then called Dogfish Bay. His second task: To create a childrens home that would care for orphans and the needy offspring of pioneer families scraping out a living on the edge of the wilderness. The home, founded in 1891, was called Martha & Mary. Generations of Poulsbo children would spend their formative years on the 40-acre Martha & Mary farm, as the town put down roots around it. A century-and-a-quarter later, the social services organization that sprung from the childrens home remains a vital fixture in North Kitsap. The story of this region is bound up with Martha & Mary, author Robert Nichols said during a recent presentation to the Poulsbo Historical Society. Everything grew up together with it. Nichols, a Martha & Mary trustee and retired professor, has detailed the early years of that shared history in a book called Rev. Ingebrit Tollefson and Martha & Mary Childrens Home 1891-1912. The release of the book coincides with the 125th anniversary of the nonprofit agency, which now operates a nursing home, senior living communities and an early learning program among other services. A gala celebration is scheduled for April 30. Martha & Mary CEO Chad Solvie said the organization owes much of its longevity to the work of its early supporters, who put in place a foundation of caring. The anniversary, he said, speaks to how the values of Martha & Mary evolved and continued to meet the changing needs of the community. EARLY YEARS Even as it laid the foundation for a lasting legacy, Martha & Mary wasnt always on stable footing. Nichols book chronicles controversies that shook the fledgling organization before the turn of the 20th century. One damaging scandal centered around allegations of sexual abuse by the manager of the home, which surfaced in 1894. Cautious investigation by church leaders led to the managers quiet departure, but news of the incident caught fire in the Seattle press. Poulsbos Lutheran congregation and the childrens home were thrown into disarray. Something had to be done to rescue the rescue the Home and the mission, Nichols wrote. Salvation arrived in the form of the Deaconesses, a group of Lutheran women dedicated to caring for vulnerable residents of Norwegian immigrant communities. The Deaconesses took over management of Martha & Mary in 1897, bringing professionalism and order to the organization. Under their watch, children at the home adhered to a regimented routine of farm work, school and religious study. They really learned to be Americans, Nichols said. Each May 30, thousands of visitors from around Puget Sound descended on Martha & Mary for a celebration of Norwegian heritage. The visitors picnicked, listened to the children sing hymns and pledged donations to the home. By 1909 the Deaconesses also were tending to older residents at the Ebenezer Old Folks Home, as part of an expanded Lutheran mission. In following decades, support for orphanages waned while the government pushed for expanded foster care. Martha & Mary childrens home faded away in the 1940s, but the homes early organizers had left an imprint on the organization and the town. Poulsbo City Councilman Ed Stern credits Martha & Mary and Ingebrit Tollefson with cementing Poulsbos Norwegian identity. Scandinavian immigrants settled in many Washington communities, Stern noted. It was Poulsbos childrens home, vibrant Lutheran congregations and festivals that set it apart as a Norwegian haven in the Northwest. The fact that were Little Norway, the fact that it stuck in Poulsbo, is due to Martha & Mary and that first Lutheran minister, Stern said. It was Martha & Mary, and everything else is derivative. AN EVOLVING ORGANIZATION Ingebrit Tollefson might be astounded by the breadth of Martha & Marys work today. Records show the organization served about 800 people in its first 58 years of existence, CEO Chad Solvie said. This year, it will serve about 3,000. The nonprofit ranks as Kitsaps third largest private employer, with about 650 employees. Another 350 volunteers help keep its programs humming. Many longtime residents of North Kitsap know someone who has been employed by Martha & Mary or been cared for there. Hildur Gleason recalls serving as a caregiver in the nursing home in the 1960s. On her first night, Gleason sat at the bedside of a dying resident and comforted her as she passed. The experience helped propel Gleason toward a long career in social work. That was the inception of it, working at Martha & Mary, she said. Poulsbo resident Karen Archer said her mother moved into the Martha & Mary nursing home during the final weeks of her life. Archers husband stayed there for a few days after a knee replacement. And Archer herself spent 20 days in the nursing home recovering from a traumatic brain injury. Staff at Martha & Mary treated her family with kindness throughout, she said. Its wonderful its there for the people who need it, Archer said. No matter how extensive its connections in the community, Solvie said Martha & Mary still faces a host of challenges. Sweeping regulatory changes in health care and early childhood education make the organizations work far more complex than in earlier eras. One hundred and twenty-five years after its founding, Martha & Mary is still adapting to a changing frontier. Its really a milestone moment for the organization not just to celebrate looking back, but to carve out our path looking forward, Solvie said. If you go What: Martha & Mary hosts a 125th anniversary gala and book release party When: April 30 Where: Kiana Lodge in Suquamish Info: Go to www.marthaandmary.org or call 360-626-7879

Uber driver Dawne Kieser is reflected in the rearview mirror as she maneuvers her Kia on Tuesday through the streets of downtown Bremerton. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN

By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun BREMERTON Dawne Kiesers new part-time job could take her anywhere from Bainbridge Island to Olalla for a fare. The Bremerton resident is among the first drivers in Kitsap County for Uber, the popular ride-sourcing company, in which users can hail a vehicle with the touch of a smartphone. The growing service, along with others like it, is taking root in West Sound for the first time. Lyft, a competitor, also covers most of Kitsap. Different services are advertising to hire more drivers like Kieser, who saw one from Uber on Facebook. Her afternoons are spent on call or more accurately online. When her iPhone beeps, she gets in her car and heads to her fares, which mostly have been people in their 20s serving in the military. When I pick people up, theyre like, Oh my gosh, Im so glad youre here, she said, adding theyre eager to see more frequent service. She drives her own car and must pay to get it to and from fares. But in the midst of the transport, shes paid similar to how a taxi driver would be, with Uber taking 20 percent off that for providing the service. Drivers must go through criminal background checks and have their vehicles inspected. Steve Guitierrez, shop manager at Midas Silverdale, estimates theyre currently conducting about a dozen such inspections a month, another sign of their convergence on Kitsap. After launching in 2010 in San Francisco, Uber has spread to at least 300 cities worldwide, according to the companys website. Rather than calling a cab, its users find a car on their mobile device, even watching it as it approaches and seeing a picture of the driver. In Washington, lawmakers this past legislative session eyed regulating the multibillion-dollar company, and smaller ones like it. Lawmakers passed into law minimum requirements for insurance the company must have. It remains unclear what requirements local governments in Kitsap County will have for businesses like Uber, and others like it. Cities like Bremerton require a business license to operate, but so far, none has reported receiving an application from the companies. Dorothy Gilson, of First Choice Taxi, said shed like to see such ride-sourcing services compete on a level playing field with taxis. Unlike Gilson and other cabdrivers, Uber drivers do not need state for hire cab licenses nor commercial car insurance (Uber itself picks up that bill). As such, shes watched as cabdrivers are turned down when Uber fares sometimes come in much lower. Its not fair to us, Gilson said. Two cities in Kitsap Bremerton and Port Orchard regulate taxis. Whether the company is subject to those regulations indeed whether they are defined as taxis is an open question. Bremertons taxicab ordinance, passed in 2014, requires drivers to go through criminal background checks and for their vehicles to be inspected by the police department. It also defines taxis as transportation network company vehicles, or ones in which consumers use technology via the Internet or other means. They must conspicuously post that they are cabs as well and display a sticker next to their rear license plate. Bremerton City Attorney Roger Lubovich, who researched the Legislatures new law Tuesday, said he believed at first blush the city can in fact regulate companies like Uber, and at very least the company should retain a city business license. The question is: Do we want to? he said of regulating the drivers. Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent or the City Council could take up the issue but neither has so far. Uber and its competitors seem destined to grow bigger, as more drivers are hired here. Where kiwis spend their free time This summary enraged two men in Auckland. So much so that they set up easylifestyle.co.nz to encourage NZers to work to their strengths with less housework like laundry and ironing and more charitable giving. Lets look through some of the interesting insights: When I see this graph I think: We spend too much time on mass media We waste a large proportion of our life on housework We dont spend enough time on religion, reflection and charity And the majority of people in this country dont spend time with children. Averages can be very misleading. But, they can also be a useful guide. All in all we are pretty even. This must have been widely different to 100 years ago. But, it is still fair to say that females are doing a bit more at home like ironing & laundry and men are still doing more paid work. Overall there is little difference between males and females. Females spend a little more time at home with others while males spend more time out of home (probably at work). And we both spend around 54% of our lives with family. Of little surprise though the more we earn the more we neglect our family. We go to work and work too much. On top of this we feel like we should socialise with work mates more. Then we rush home and do household chores and finally try and have some quality time with the partner and kids. Education has little impact on our family time. PHDs or scraping through with Cs either way family is family and its a big part of our life. This is interesting. Work little or a lot to not be alone. However, if you work a part time job you are destined to join introverts anonymous. Compared to Auckland University Pyschology survey I tried asking Dr. Chris Sibley the Lead researcher for the NZAVS Department of Psychology at Auckland Uni for permission to publish this. But, I couldnt get in touch. So given google made it public Ill share it. New Zealanders worked on average 24-25 hours per week. They did, on average between 10-11 hours of housework and cooking per week, and spent roughly 13-14 hours looking after children. New Zealanders commuted an average of 5 hours per week In terms of leisure time, New Zealanders spent an average of 11 hours watching television, films and videos, between 1-2 hours playing computer games, and between 4-5 hours exercising. New Zealanders, on average also spent between 1-2 hours per week performing charitable activities. In summary what will you change? What are the things you want more of in your life? Whats stopping you? If you dont have enough family time, reduce your work hours (whether homework or paid work). If you want someone else to do your laundry and ironing in Auckland head to http://easylifestyle.co.nz/ If you want an easy way of boosting your charity time easy lifestyle is a social business that supports clean drinking water for Africa and poverty alleviation in New Zealand with every order. Check out the stats: StatsNZ Author Daniel Howell Founder of easylifestyle.co.nz a social entrepreneur who believes in people over profit. He is passionate about seeing kiwis work in their strengths and make the world a better place for everyone around them. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Tim Phillips Show We update Tim's show notes each day at 8 a.m. Mountain time. 5:55 a.m. BOB FOWLER/NEWS SENTINEL The Oak Ridge Board of Zoning Appeals has approved the location of a distillery called Secret City Spirits in this former thrift store next to the United Grocery Outlet off Oak Ridge Turnpike in west Oak Ridge. SHARE By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel OAK RIDGE One product will likely be named "Ground Zero Vodka." Another alcoholic beverage planned to be produced in Oak Ridge, in what's likely the first legal distillery of its type in the city, may carry the moniker "Revolution Rum." Since the bourbon planned by two brothers and two partners has to age in barrels for years, the name for that spirit to be crafted by their company, Secret City Spirits, hasn't been determined yet. The Oak Ridge Board of Zoning Appeals recently granted a special exception to allow the distillery in a former thrift store next the United Grocery Outlet, located off Oak Ridge Turnpike near Louisiana Avenue. "It's been a lifelong dream of ours to have a distillery," said Nathan Edmonds. He and his brother Eric, both Roane County residents, along with partners Tom Price of Knoxville and Mike Schrage of Chattanooga, are in talks to lease the 3,000 square-foot space. No booze would be sold in the front of the building, "but we hope to get there," Nathan Edmonds said of the startup's long-term plans. He said it will take about 130 days to get expected federal approval to operate the distillery, and he's forecasting that Secret City Spirits will be "up and running in four or five months." He said an architect is now designing storage facilities for their raw materials and finished products. Edmonds said he and his partners have a 53-gallon "very automated" still now in storage, along with a 13-gallon still. Another 53-gallon still, with a stainless-steel top and copper column, is being ordered from Mile Hi Distilling in Denver, he said. Running full blast, that trio of stills could produce about 39 gallons of spirits a day, he said. "The operations that we are proposing will not have any negative effects on the community, such as excessive noise, dust, or harsh smells," he wrote as part of his application to the board of zoning appeals. Schrage is a graphics artist, and will designs the labels for the bottles, Edmonds said. The plan is to have a distributor deliver the products to package stores locally and in Louisiana, where the distributor also operates. SHARE A CARD FOR MOM Attend a Mother's Day card-printing session at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, May 1. Printing will be done on a portable printing press from Southwestern Community College under the direction of Nantahala School for the Arts Department Chair Jeff Marley, who is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian. The program is free. Info: 423-884-6246. MEDITATION WORKSHOP Learn to meditate at a workshop from 2 to -3 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike. The workshop is free and open to public. It will be led by Michael Wright, the author of "800 Stepping Stones to Complete Relaxation." Info: mikewright102348@gmail.com or 865-851-9535. FRIDAY HIKE Join the Great Smoky Hiking & Adventure Group on Friday, April 29, for a 12-mile hike to The Hangover, a rock formation and one of the most striking geographical features in Slickrock Wilderness. Park at the Unicoi Crest Parking Area just a quarter mile past Beech Gap on the TN-NC state line on the Cherohala Skyway. The hike is rated strenuous and includes some climbing. Meet at the entrance to Indian Boundary Campground on the skyway at 8:45 a.m. You must be pre registered with JD Schlandt; email trailhard@gmail.com BOOK TALK Chris Woodhull and the Rev. Christopher Battle of Tabernacle Baptist Church will discuss "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates at noon Wednesday, May 4, in the East Tennessee History Center auditorium, 601 S. Gay St. It's one of the Knox County Public Library's Books Sandwiched In programs. "Between the World and Me" is a letter that Coates writes to his adolescent son about how to be black in America. Coates tells his son, "This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it." He offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. In addition to his pastoral work, Battle has served as Director of Minority Resources at the Cincinnati Bible College and Seminary. He currently serves as the Moderator of the Knoxville Baptist District Association and as Vice President of the Knoxville Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. Woodhull has over 20 years of inner-city experience and was the founder of TRIBE ONE, an at-risk urban youth ministry. He also served on the Knoxville City Council for eight years and is currently the director of creative development for the SoulCare Project in Chattanooga. Like us at www.facebook.com/knoxvillefamily and www.facebook.com/knoxvilledotcom Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero says she's looking forward to helping to select the presidential nominee of the Democratic National Convention in July, where she's going as a delegate for former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Tennessee Democratic Executive Committee has selected Rogero and the mayors of Tennessee's three other largest cities as Clinton delegates in a category for public elected officials. "I went four years ago as mayor but was not credentialed to vote," Rogero said Friday. "I was invited to apply for delegate slots for mayors and elected officials. I didn't want to apply at the local level because we have so many local volunteers (who applied)." Clinton is regarded as way ahead of rival Bernie Sanders, particularly with "super delegates" factored in, so Sanders' supporters now have targeted those delegates to see whether they be can be persuaded to vote for the Vermont senator. Super delegates are usually members of the Democratic National Committee and other state and federal elected officials who are allowed to endorse their picks, regardless of how their home state votes. Bill Owen, a former state senator from Knoxville who is a DNC member and super delegate for Clinton, said Friday that he has been contacted by Sanders supporters from throughout the country to change his thinking. This is what he tells them: "Hillary Clinton carried my county, my congressional district, my city and my state. She got the most votes, so I'm voting for Hillary Clinton." Rogero said she is not keeping up with the internal politics of the convention. "I've been too busy, with the budget, with day-to-day work", she said. She also said she is not a delegate looking for a future job in a Clinton administration something Victor Ashe, a political columnist and former Republican mayor, has speculated on. "Victor apparently wants me out of here. Week after week he proclaims I am looking for a job. Victor has never talked to me," she said. Former Knox County Commissioner Mark Harmon was elected an at-large delegate for Sanders at the state Democratic Executive Committee meeting. CELEBRATION: Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, will be a special guest of the Oak Ridge League for its 70th birthday party Friday at Calhoun's Event Center in Oak Ridge, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Wanda Sobieski, Knoxville attorney and suffragette history authority, will be the guest speaker. Transportation Security Administration personnel seized a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson from a passenger's carry-on bag at McGhee Tyson Airport on Monday. (TSA) SHARE By News Sentinel Staff KNOXVILLE Authorities confiscated a loaded pistol in a carry-on bag Monday morning, marking the third firearm seized from a passenger at McGhee Tyson Airport this year, according to the Transportation Security Administration. The loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson was discovered about 10 a.m. by TSA personnel, who alerted airport police and cited the passenger on a state charge, according to a TSA news release. The passenger was not identified. Firearms may be transported in checked baggage, provided they are declared to the airline and placed, unloaded, in a proper carrying case, according to the TSA. TSA personnel seized 18 firearms at McGhee Tyson in 2015. Nationwide, a record 73 firearms were discovered at TSA checkpoints during the week of April 15-21. More details as they develop online and in Tuesday's News Sentinel. SHARE Bailey Sizemore By News Sentinel staff KNOXVILLE A Tennessee Department of Correction probation and parole officer was arrested Thursday night in Knoxville on a charge of driving while under the influence after she was involved in a car accident. Bailey Sizemore, 26, was booked into a Knox County jail and released on bond. She is scheduled to appear in court on May 2. She is currently on restrictive duty pending the outcome of the investigation, TDOC spokesman Robert Reburn said. According to court documents, Sizemore was driving a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe on Thursday at 11:22 p.m. when she struck another vehicle that was slowing down on the ramp from Interstate 75 South to Interstate 640 West. When Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers arrived at the scene, Sizemore had slurred speech and a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage about her breath and person, according to documents. Sizemore agreed to field sobriety tests, including a Breathalyzer, which showed she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.192, according to documents. Troopers said she was intoxicated to the point that she posed a danger to herself and others. SHARE Bailey Sizemore By News Sentinel Staff KNOXVILLE A Tennessee Department of Correction probation and parole officer was arrested Thursday night in Knoxville on a charge of driving while under the influence after she was involved in a car accident. Bailey Sizemore, 26, was booked into a Knox County jail and released on bond. She is scheduled to appear in court on May 2. She is currently on restrictive duty pending the outcome of the investigation, TDOC spokesman Robert Reburn said. According to court documents, Sizemore was driving a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe on Thursday at 11:22 p.m. when she struck another vehicle that was slowing down on the ramp from Interstate 75 South to Interstate 640 West. When Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers arrived at the scene, Sizemore had "slurred speech and a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage about her breath and person," according to documents. Sizemore agreed to field sobriety tests, including a Breathalyzer, which showed she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.192, according to documents. Troopers said she was intoxicated to the point that she "posed a danger to herself and others." SHARE By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel OAK RIDGE Two municipalities with above-average percentages of well-heeled residents with stock and bond investments Farragut and Oak Ridge are being particularly hard-hit by the Legislature's move to reduce the Hall Income Tax. That tax on stock dividends, bond interest on out-of-state bonds and capital gains derived from mutual funds, is dropping from 6 percent to 5 percent in the upcoming fiscal year unless that legislation is vetoed by Gov. Bill Haslam. As passed, the legislation calls for the tax to drop a percentage point annually until it's phased out in 2022. Three-eighths of the tax revenue goes to the local government of the city or county where the taxpayer lives. In 2015, a good year for stock market returns, Oak Ridge received about $708,000, while the town of Farragut's revenue was $926,774. That revenue stream can vary substantially depending on stock market returns. The tax generated only $427,423 in 2014 for Farragut, a municipality that doesn't have a property tax. Over the past five years, Farragut has averaged $536,000 a year in Hall Income Tax revenue. That represents nearly 6 percent of the town's total revenue for the current budget year. In Oak Ridge, the tax cutback "will make a major impact on how we prepare budgets," Oak Ridge City Manager Mark Watson said. City Council, in its annual legislative wish list, has repeatedly gone on record emphasizing the importance of the Hall Income Tax to the city's coffers. The estimated hit of about $119,000 in the upcoming fiscal year from the Hall Income Tax reduction is the equivalent of 1.25 cents more on Oak Ridge's property tax rate. City Council in December huddled with local lawmakers to lobby for retention of the Hall Income Tax as they reviewed the council's latest legislative agenda. Watson said then that on average, about $600,000 is derived annually from that levy. He estimated city merchants would have to make an additional $42 million a year in sales to offset the loss of the entire Hall Tax. "We think it's bad policy to be eliminating the Hall Income Tax when cities have very few alternatives in terms of recouping or generating new revenue streams," Oak Ridge Mayor Warren Gooch said Monday. Farragut officials are still assessing the impact of the legislation, but a town-financed special census that was wrapped up in February should help alleviate the revenue reduction, town spokeswoman Chelsey Riemann said. The census showed the town's population jumped from 20,676 residents in 2010 to 22,674 in the latest head count. With Farragut receiving $115 per person annually in state-shared tax revenue, that translates into nearly $230,000 more a year for the town. "It's too soon to tell what long-term impacts this (the Hall tax cuts) will have on the town's budget," Town Administrator David Smoak said, "but it's logical to think that generating additional sales tax revenues will become even more important in the future." The Hall tax generated $171,319 in the latest fiscal year for Anderson County and $112,456 for Clinton. In Knoxville, city and county officials said last week they had no immediate plans to raise local taxes with a reduction in the Hall tax rate. "We are not looking to replace any loss by requesting a property tax increase," said Bill Lyons, deputy to Mayor Madeline Rogero and her chief policy officer. In the last decade, Knoxville has received between $2.53 million and $12.56 million in Hall tax revenue. Last year the city received $8.44 million. Knox County receives between $2 million and $3 million in revenue from the tax, and faces a roughly $400,000 to $500,000 reduction, said spokesman Michael Grider last week. The funding goes into the general fund, and the county expects to be able to absorb the cut without any local tax increases, he said. Natalie Erb SHARE By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel CLINTON In its first major decision since it was created, the Anderson County Finance Committee in a 4-3 vote appointed a certified public accountant as county budget director, edging out the interim director. Natalie Erb, a Norris resident who currently works as finance director for the United Way of Anderson County, will begin her new duties May 18 and will be paid $79,338. The finance committee was set up after the County Commission voted 13-2 in January to switch its financial management method going from a 1957 law that gave the county mayor major fiscal powers to the County Financial Management System of 1981. In the change, the seven-member finance committee takes over many of the mayor's financial oversight duties. Mayor Terry Frank strongly opposed the change, saying the prior system was effective and efficient. After she vetoed the commission vote to change financial management methods, commissioners voted 16-0 to override. The previous budget director, Chris Phillips, and Pamela Cotham, the county's former purchasing agent, cited the change as a major factor in their decisions to resign and take other jobs. Voting for Erb in last week's meeting were County Commissioners Phil Warfield, Steve Mead and committee chairman Myron Iwanski, along with Road Superintendent Gary Long. Voting for Connie Aytes, the county's interim budget director, were Mayor Frank, Anderson County Schools Director Larry Foster and Commissioner Tim Isbel. Aytes, formerly the assistant budget director, had been appointed by Frank to the interim role. Aytes on Monday said she intends to remain with the county as deputy finance director, a new post created in the transition, which becomes official July 1. Her pay will be $65,000. "It was a tough choice," Iwanski said of the committee's vote on finance director. "We had some very good candidates." He said Erb will at first be involved in drafting a plan for the transition to the new system. Erb said she hasn't worked for a government before. "I'm excited to work with the county and to serve the county," she said. The committee's next major decision is to name a new purchasing agent. The county received 61 applications, Anderson County Human Resources Director Russell Bearden said. Iwanski said plans are to interview seven finalists early in May. SHARE By News Sentinel Staff Chancellor honors students, faculty The annual Chancellor's Honors Banquet celebrated University of Tennessee faculty and students on April 19 and is the largest recognition event of the year. The several faculty members won awards: Professor of Physics Soren Sorensen was named the Macebearer, the highest faculty honor. Geoff Greene, professor of experimental neutron physics won the Alexander Prize for superior teaching and distinguished scholarship. Associate Professor of History Charles Sanft received the Jefferson Prize for excellence in research and creative activity. Lee Han, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, won the L.R. Hesler Award. Seven students received the Torchbearer award, the highest honor for a student. It is based on academics, leadership and service. Winners were UT Student Trustee Jalen Blue as well as Cayce Davis, Madison Kahl, Willie Kemp, Bradford Reszel, Sahba Seddighi and Wayne Taylor. Kahl and Seddighi are Knoxville natives. UT to offer new minor in public policy analytics A new undergraduate minor in public policy analytics will be offered at UT starting this fall. The minor is focused on using statistical tools and data analysis and is open to all undergraduate students who are not graduating earlier than spring 2018. The minor supports careers in public finance, international development, social justice, foreign policy and cyber security, according to UT. SHARE Organizers say the Southern Tequila and Taco Cinco Fest, set for Friday at the Gander Mountain store in Turkey Creek, is expected to be the largest annual tequila and taco festival in the country. Some of the biggest tequila brands such as Patron, Casa Noble and 1800 will showcase their products, and attendees will enjoy hand-crafted margaritas, cocktails and craft beers. Local Mexican restaurants will be there to serve their signature tacos and side dishes. General admission tickets purchased in advance cost $35 and include six tokens to sample tequila and other cocktails and two tokens for food items. Proceeds from the event will benefit Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide free healthcare to those in need. "Many people live in fear of sickness and injury simply because they have little or no access to basic medical care," organizers said in a news release. "RAM responds to this need by providing free, quality dental, vision and medical care to those who cannot afford it." In 2014, RAM served 27,523 people and provided $9,172,876 worth of health care. John Volpe, the general manager of participating restaurant Abuelo's, said the festival will be an exciting annual event for tequila lovers that will benefit the community as a whole. "RAM does so much for so many, and this is just a small way we can give back," Volpe said. Advance tickets for the event can be purchased online at www.southerntequilafest.com. Thirty VIP tickets are available, which grant purchasers early admission to enjoy a private tequila testing for $125. Tickets for designated drivers are $10. SHARE By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel WASHINGTON The White House said Monday it is launching a new $100 million grant program to expand worker training as the administration works to make good on President Barack Obama's offer of two years of tuition-free community college. The grants will be administered by the Department of Labor and will be used to expand partnerships between community colleges and job-training providers and employers. The goal is to make sure that workers are equipped with the skills they will need to pursue careers in high-demand jobs such as technology, manufacturing and health care. Grant recipients must offer free tuition for unemployed, underemployed and low-income workers to enter skilled occupations and industries. Employers who partner with the colleges must offer work-based learning through registered apprenticeship, paid-work experience and paid internships. "These programs work," said Vice President Joe Biden, who announced the grants Monday during a speech at the Community College of Philadelphia. The school has modeled a free community college program after tuition-free program the administration proposed last year. Biden said the $100,000 in grants will enable community colleges to work with local companies or industries to find out what jobs skills they need. The schools then will design a program that prepares students for those jobs. The grants will enable students to attend the programs tuition-free, which will mean they can use Pell grants and other student financial aid to pay for books, school supplies, child care or other living expenses. "This is not rocket science," Biden said, arguing the grants will help build and grow the economy while "changing people's lives." The grants are the latest push by the Obama administration to put a college degree within reach for anyone who wants it. Obama kicked off the campaign last year when he traveled to Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville and proposed that as many as 9 million students should have access to two years of tuition-free community college. He also pitched the proposal during his State of the Union address a couple of weeks later. Obama's plan, called America's College Promise, was patterned after Gov. Bill Haslam's Tennessee Promise scholarship program and is projected to cost $60 billion over the next 10 years. Since Obama's announcement, 27 new free community college programs have launched in states, communities and community colleges. Collectively, the programs have added more than $70 million in new public and private investments to serve nearly 40,000 students at community colleges, the White House said. In the GOP-controlled Congress, however, the program has generated little enthusiasm. U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate committee over education issues, has said the way to offer free community college is not through a federal program, but with a state-by-state approach. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, praised the Obama administration's new push to train workers for high-skilled jobs. "In Tennessee, we achieved this through state lottery funds, over $3 billion of which have been distributed to achieving students to assist in paying for college and have done so much for education in the state," he said. Cohen supports Obama's free community college initiative but has been critical of Tennessee's statewide plan because its source of funding comes at the expense of the Hope lottery scholarship, which he championed as a state senator. SHARE By Tom Humphrey of the Knoxville News Sentinel NASHVILLE A state House push to reverse last year's cuts in aid to disabled military veterans died on the final day of the legislative session last week in the face of Senate opposition, leading to approval of a more modest improvement in the program and multiple promises to seek full restoration of the cuts next year. "In the sausage-making process we're engaged in here, something is better than nothing," said Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, in urging colleagues to vote for the final version of the bill on Friday. They ultimately did after some convoluted proceedings. The final vote was 58-18, though at one point House members actually voted in favor of continuing the fight, even though that could have meant prolonging the 2016 session. The House on Thursday had voted 81-3 to fully restore the 2015 reductions, a move requiring $7 million in state funding that was not included in the $34.9 billion state budget approved a week earlier. The new state budget includes just $976,000 in new funding for the program, which provides state subsidies for the local property taxes paid by the disabled and low-income senior citizens. The program currently provides for the state to reimburse property tax payments for 100 percent disabled military veterans on the first $100,000 value of their home, if the veteran's household income does not exceed $60,000 per year. Before the 2015 reduction, the first $175,000 in value was covered and there was no income limitation. Ragan said about 16,000 Tennesseans qualify as 100 percent disabled veterans. For seniors and disabled people who are not military veterans, the reimbursement currently covers the first $23,000 in property value. It was $25,000 before the 2015 cut, which was supported by Gov. Bill Haslam's administration with backing of the state comptroller's office. They contended the program was growing too costly and restrictions needed to be imposed as a matter of fiscal responsibility. Last week's activity centered around SB1796, one of seven bills filed this year to bolster the program in one way or the other. The bill was sponsored by Ragan in the House and Sen. Doug Overbey, R-Maryville, in the Senate. The House move to fully restore the program was somewhat unusual in that it was initially proposed by House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, with most Republicans including Ragan, observing that the money was roughly 1 percent of the present $600 million state budget surplus joining after impassioned speeches in support of veterans disabled in the service of their country. The Fitzhugh plan called for using the $976,000 available in the budget to cover costs of the program in the first months of the state's fiscal year, which begins on July 1, with a declared commitment for the Legislature to promptly add the remaining money necessary when the 2017 session begins in January. But senators rejected the idea. Overbey said the action would leave the state budget "$7 million in the hole" and legislators should stick with the plan as provided in the budget already adopted. "Legally, this is a much more responsible approach," Overbey said. The standoff led to appointment of a House-Senate conference committee that met on Friday morning and basically voted to abandon the House proposal with Rep. Karen Camper, D-Memphis, dissenting. She filed a "minority report" that backed the House plan, arguing that there was no attempt at compromise and rejection of the "majority report" would lead to more discussion. Under House rules, Camper's proposal came up for debate first. House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada promptly moved to table, or kill, the proposal. Casada's motion was soundly rejected on the first vote with only 34 representatives backing him while 44 voted no and the rest refused to vote one way or another. Casada then called a 30-minute recess to allow for a meeting of the House Republican Caucus. When members emerged from that session, he moved again to kill Camper's minority report. On second try, the motion prevailed 51-27 again, with several Republicans refusing to vote one way or the other. The final version basically the Senate version authorized in Haslam's budget was then approved on the 58-18 vote. The final Senate vote was 28-1. Under the final version, the $976,000 will go toward repealing the $60,000 income limit for disabled veterans for those veterans applying for the program for the first time. That will help, for example, some veterans of wars in Afghanistan and Iran, Ragan said, as well as Vietnam veterans recently found to be suffering the effects of "Agent Orange." The final version also increases from $23,000 to $23,500 the property value covered by subsidies to other disabled people and senior citizens. Several legislators made speeches endorsing Ragan's declaration that "something is better than nothing," including Rep. Eddie Smith, R-Knoxville. "I could not go home empty-handed to our veterans," he said. Smith and others including Overbey in the Senate vowed they would work diligently to see that last year's cuts are fully eliminated next year. partisan plays Two Democrat-sponsored bills, seemingly scuttled by Republicans in partisan gamesmanship, were revived and approved during the last days of the session. One was a measure sponsored by House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart of Nashville that would allow indigent people convicted of driving with a suspended license to pay their court costs and fines through community service rather than cash, subject to local approval. On a motion of House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada of Franklin, the measure (SB2149) was amended on the House floor to instead increase penalties for people convicted of driving while under the influence of methamphetamine when a child is in the vehicle and then sent back to committee. The move was in retaliation for Stewart and other Democrats forcing floor votes on amendments that Republicans felt inappropriate. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," said Casada. But the GOP leader relented last week and, with his approval, the amendment adopted earlier was removed and the bill passed 92-0 in its original form. It goes now to the governor. Since Casada's move, Democrats filed noticeably few floor amendments in the House. An exception came when Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, filed amendments that would require legislative approval of any privatization moves by the governor to a bill having nothing directly to do with that subject. Clemmons' amendments were quickly voted down by the GOP majority. Casada promptly retaliated by filing an amendment to the next Democrat-sponsored bill that came up, HB1960 by Rep. Karen Camper, D-Memphis, though saying he "hated" to do so while repeating his line about "what's good for the goose is good for the gander." Camper's bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris in the Senate sets up a "task force" to study the state's juvenile justice system. Republicans voted, on Casada's motion, to send the bill back to committee and oblivion, given that the session was about to end and committees were closed. Some Republicans actually voted against his amendment it was approved 50-35 and Rep. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, called it "ugly." Later, after conferring with Democrats and Republican colleagues, Casada backed off that proposal, too. The amendment was reconsidered and dropped. The bill was then approved unanimously and sent on to the governor. capitol guns The bill that prompted Clemmons' amendments (HB1365) is an offshoot of a controversy earlier this year over whether handgun permit holders would be allowed to bring their weapons into the Legislative Plaza. Guns are currently prohibited in the legislative workplace, though allowed in most other locations statewide for permit holders. Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey moved earlier to reverse that prohibition, with initial approval of House Speaker Beth Harwell. But Gov. Bill Haslam objected, noting that the Tennessee Capitol building where his offices are located is connected to the Legislative Plaza by a walkway with no security controls in place. Harwell agreed with the governor's concerns and the Ramsey proposal was dropped. The bill, as amended at the urging of House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, declares that each branch of state government will control rules governing buildings where a majority of employees therein are employed by that branch. In other words, the General Assembly will control buildings where legislators and their employees work; the Supreme Court will control buildings where judges and judicial system employees work; and the governor, representing the executive branch, controls the others. The bill, passed by lopsided margins in both chambers, will have no immediate impact. But plans call for the Legislature to move sometime in 2017 an exact date has not been set to the Cordell Hull building, now under renovation and located across a side street from the Capitol building. When that happens, the bill's enactment will mean the Legislature through the speakers of the House and Senate will control rules in the lawmakers' new workplace since there's no direct connection between the Cordell Hull building and the Capitol building. The speakers can then authorize handgun permit holders in the building without the governor's involvement. The James K. Polk Home and Museum is located at 301 W. 7th St. in downtown Columbia and is open for tours daily. (Courtesy of jameskpolk.com) By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel WASHINGTON Old Hickory might have been last week's biggest loser, but things are looking up for James K. Polk. On the same day the U.S. Treasury announced Andrew Jackson's image would be removed from the front of the $20 bill, Congress moved a step closer toward declaring Polk's Tennessee home a national treasure. A bill that passed the U.S. Senate last Wednesday contains a provision directing the Interior Secretary to study the feasibility of preserving the 11th president's home in Columbia, just southwest of Nashville, as part of the national park system. The two-story brick structure, built in 1816 by Polk's father while the future president was attending the University of North Carolina, is where Polk returned after graduation and where he began his legal and political career. The house contains more than 1,300 objects and original items from Polk's years in Tennessee and Washington, including furniture, White House artifacts and political memorabilia. Getting the house added to the national park system not only would make sense from a historical perspective, said U.S. Sen Lamar Alexander, a Maryville Republican. It also would bring Polk's legacy full circle. His last act as president was to sign the legislation that created the Interior Department, the agency that includes the National Park Service. "Tennessee is full of history, and the presidency of James K. Polk is one of our state's great contributions to our nation's history," Alexander said. "Wouldn't it be more appropriate for the presidential home of the president who created the Department of Interior, the home of the National Park Service, to be managed by the National Park Service? I sure think so." Alexander has been working for years to get the home Polk's only surviving residence, other than the White House, which he occupied during his term from 1845-1849 added to the national park system. Last week, he got an amendment to preserve the home as a national park site added to a broad-based energy bill that passed the Senate on a vote of 85-12. The legislation now goes to the U.S. House. If the measure clears the House and becomes law, the National Park Service would begin a study of the Polk home and evaluate the suitability and feasibility of designating it as a unit of the national park system. Once that's completed, the Park Service then would recommend to Congress whether the home should actually be included in the park system. If the recommendation is positive, Congress then would have to pass legislation designating the home as a national park system site. Alexander, who chairs the Senate committee that handles education issues, argues adding the home to the national park system would be a good way to teach students about Polk's accomplishments while in office and maybe boost high school seniors' lagging history test scores in the process. "I cannot think of a better way to encourage the study of U.S. history and what it means to be an American than to make sure that our presidential homes are properly cared for," he said. Right now, the Polk site officially known as the President James K. Polk Home and Museum is owned by the state but is managed by members of a nonprofit association founded by a great-great niece of his wife, Sarah. "We're one of the few sites that still has that direct tie to the family," said John Holtzapple, the home's director. Besides the Polk home, the site also includes an exhibition facility and adjacent home where two of Polk's sisters lived with their families. The association maintains the properties with a $300,000 budget that comes primarily from money raised by its members. The state contributes a small percentage of the budget about 11 percent last year but the site receives no federal funding. "We're doing OK in a balance-the-budget type of way, but we know there's so much more we could do in terms of educational outreach and trying to reach a national audience," Holtzapple said. "That is sort of what prompted folks to see if we could get some federal support in addition to the generous support we get from the nonprofit organization." Holtzapple said he understands getting the home included in the park system is a long process with no guarantees. "We don't know what's down the road," he said. "But we're excited about it." SHARE State Rep. Bryan Terry By Scott Broden, USA TODAY NETWORK, The Daily News Journal MURFREESBORO State Rep. Bryan Terry shared his concerns about the recent arrests of children at Hobgood Elementary School after an off-campus bullying altercation. "I believe that the community, and beyond, see this matter as a breach of trust," the Republican lawmaker from Murfreesboro said in a recent email to respond to a question from The Daily News Journal. Terry said he spoke about what happened with new Murfreesboro Police Chief Karl Durr and the Rev. James McCarroll, pastor at a First Baptist Church on East Castle Street. A community meeting took place at the church to allow parents to express their grievances to Durr, City Manager Rob Lyons and other Murfreesboro officials about the arrests. Continue reading at The Daily News Journal, a News Sentinel partner. SHARE Andrew Jackson, our nation's seventh president, has become just one more casualty of political correctness. Jackson's image is being removed from the $20 bill, despite being a former president. He is being eradicated, supposedly because he was a slave owner, as were many other affluent property owners at the time. But in today's accepted social values, his actions and beliefs are now horrendous. Isn't it surreal how some things can be perceived so differently over time? I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. And just like the Confederate flag and Nativity scenes, such icons are no longer acceptable in our newly created and liberally-influenced society. So who is replacing Jackson on the $20 bill? Ronald Reagan? FDR? Walt Disney? All great Americans. No, it is Harriet Tubman. Who? Yes, Tubman, unknown to 99.9 percent of the American people, will be replacing our seventh president of the United States and a Tennessean as well. I'm not sure why there even is a need to do this in the first place, but is this really the best that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and his advisors can agree upon? Notwithstanding her reputation as an abolitionist in the 1800s, when she helped 300 slaves escape to freedom, Tubman better exemplifies the reason for the Google search engine to be invented. But we're talking two birds with one stone here, people. For the first time in the history of the Republic, the image of an African American and a woman will be on U.S. currency. What could be more efficient than that? It's nothing more than legacy embellishment in the 11th hour. And you can take that to the bank. Dennis Roney, Loudon 12:26 p.m. April 25, 2016 Eddie Mannis receives Community Leadership Award at FBI headquarters Eddie Mannis receives the Directors Community Leadership Award from FBI Director James Comey during a ceremony at FBI Headquarters on April 15, 2016. Image courtesy of FBI. A Knoxville businessman has received an outstanding award for his extraordinary contributions to the community. Eddie Mannis, president of Prestige Cleaners and Tuxedo, was recognized on April 15, 2016 at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Manis was among 56 individuals and organizations all leaders within their communities recognized by Director James Comey for their extraordinary contributions to their communities. Comey called the day one of the very best days in the FBIs year. Each recipient received the Directors Community Leadership Award, presented every year since 1990 by FBI field offices around the country to publicly honor those who have gone above and beyond the call to service by tirelessly working to make their own cities and towns a better and safer place for their fellow residents. The 2015 award recipients come from all backgrounds, all professions, and all parts of the country, and the issues they focus on vary greatly. But according to Comey, They are united by a single thingan effort to do good. Comey explained why the FBI publicly recognizes community leaders in this annual ceremony. First, he said, we want to thank them, because theyre doing the same things were doing, which is trying to make life better for the American people. And secondly, added Comey, we want to show the world what America looks like...and that this is what we do in communities all over the country. He also hopes that the honorees inspire others, especially young people, to follow in their footsteps. Mannis was recognized for his community service in spearheading the HonorAir Knoxville. As a business owner, Mannis believes that successful companies should give back to the communities in which they have been successful. Mannis supports many community organizations, but no community program is more important to him than HonorAir Knoxville. He not only spearheads the organization, operation, and fundraising efforts, his company also bears the cost of all administrative support for the program. Mannis ensures that every dollar donated is applied directly to the cost of the flights and that the fund raising goals are met. The 20th flight departed and returned on Wednesday, April 13, 2016 from the McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, Tennessee. HonorAir Knoxville was established by Mannis in 2007. It is an organization dedicated to honoring the World War II Veterans of East Tennessee and the sacrifices they made to ensure our countrys freedoms by flying each veteran free of charge to Washington D.C. to see the World War II Memorial built in their honor. Mannis initiated the program in Knoxville to honor his father, who was a veteran of the Korean War, and his uncle and stepfather, who both were World War II veterans. According to Mannis, the program would not be possible without the support of the community, businesses, and individuals that have volunteered and or made financial contributions. All World War II, Korean, and Vietnam veterans, regardless of physical limitations, are also eligible to participate. The one-day trip, which is provided at no cost to the veterans, includes the following: - Roundtrip airfare via a chartered American Airlines plane; - Meals and snacks; - Chartered bus tour of the World War II Memorial, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Marine, Navy, Air Force, Vietnam, and Korean War Memorials; and - Commemorative items, including a hat, book, and DVD with highlights of the trip. Published April 25, 2016 11:34 a.m. April 25, 2016 Free legal clinics offered in East Tennessee The Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division will host 16 free legal advice clinics and legal education events throughout East Tennessee. Attendees will get information on a variety of topics including: debt collection, bankruptcy, landlord-tenant disputes, wills and divorce. List of events in East Tennessee: Sevierville, April 28 - Courthouse Donuts Madison (Nashville), May 2 - Madison Branch Public Library Rogersville, May 3 - Hawkins County Justice Center Knoxville, May 7 - First Baptist Church, Knoxville Clinic information, including contacts for each clinic, is available online: www.tba.org/programs/access-to-justice-week. This Statewide Legal Clinic Initiative is the focus of TBA YLD President Rachel Moses, a lawyer in the Cookeville office of the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. Moses has made pro bono service a key component of her platform for the year. Published April 25, 2016 TVA and Silicon Ranch partner on large-scale solar farm at NSA Mid-South MILLINGTON, TN Tennessee Valley Authority has awarded Nashville-based renewable energy provider Silicon Ranch Corporation a long-term power-purchase agreement for a 53 megawatt solar project at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, Tennessee. The solar array will be the largest in the state and will provide power to TVA customers at cost-competitive rates for the next twenty years. TVA is committed to providing renewable energy in a way that best serves our local power company customers and the more than nine million people of the Tennessee Valley, said Van Wardlaw, TVA Executive Vice President of External Relations. This solar project supports our commitment to a diversified and cleaner energy portfolio, which includes energy efficiency and competitively priced renewable energy, Wardlaw added. The project will occupy over 400 acres and feature a single-axis tracking system to allow an estimated 580,000 panels to follow the sun across its daily arc. To support the facility, Silicon Ranch acquired 330 acres from the Millington Industrial Development Board and signed a real-estate lease with the Department of the Navy for another 72 acres of base land at NSA Mid-South. The capacity generated on the Navys property will contribute to the DONs One Gigawatt initiative to enhance energy security and resiliency. The project includes electrical infrastructure upgrades to provide additional benefit to NSA Mid-South. Approximately $100 million will be invested to construct the facility, and Silicon Ranch will own and operate it during the life of the agreement. Silicon Ranch President and Chief Executive Officer Matt Kisber said, Silicon Ranch is honored to partner with the Department of the Navy, TVA, MLGW and the MIDB to deliver cost-effective, clean energy to support NSA Mid-South. We remain focused on the economic, environmental and community benefits this project brings to TVAs ratepayers, to the city of Millington and surrounding communities, and to the thousands of Tennesseans associated with the NSA Mid-South facility. The Millington Industrial Development Board is celebrating the solar project as a victory for the entire region. MIDB Board Chair Carey Parham stated, NSA Mid-South provides an annual economic impact of over $330 million to this area. We are grateful to TVA and to Silicon Ranch for bringing a clean renewable energy source to Millington. It not only supports this critical naval base, but it also sends a strong signal to the business community that Millington is a great place to locate their operations and that the MIDB is innovative and creative in working on important economic development projects. Published April 24, 2016 By Choi Sung-jin Politicians and bureaucrats are stepping up efforts to realign the troubled shipping and shipbuilding industries. Missing in this process is a discussion to create a consultative body to work out ways to share social and economic burdens in the fairest and most acceptable ways to all, by reflecting the voices of the various parties involved. Labor experts say Korea should not repeat the past practices of getting out of a crisis mainly through cutting staff, and instead should let workers, particularly unorganized, non-regular laborers, participate in social discussion. This is especially important because the current labor policy, including jobless allowances and vocational training, has failed to absorb the impact of industrial restructuring, they say. Most restructuring reforms have been made by forcing workers to bear the bulk of responsibility for industrial and corporate crises. Most recently, Doosan Infracore, a heavy-duty equipment maker, came under fire for sacking 1,532 workers on four separate occasions, even including those who joined a few years ago. At Hyundai Heavy Industries, the nation's largest shipbuilder, in-house subcontracting workers will be hit hardest by upcoming restructuring. There were 135,411 subcontracting workers as of June last year, 65.5 percent of the 206,647 workers at the 12 largest domestic shipyards in the nation. "The total scale of employment has not decreased amid the industry's slump that started in 2009 because workers at smaller shipyards could move to the big three shipbuilders as in-house subcontracting workers," Korean Metal Workers' Union researcher Park Chong-shik told the Kyunghyang Shinmun. "Many of the tens of thousands of in-house subcontracting workers who have increased in number at offshore plants in the past five years will likely lose their jobs if international oil prices remain low." The job cuts at Hyundai Heavy have been under way since the latter half of last year, but these subcontracting workers have no say at the negotiating table. A branch of the union that represents subcontracting workers at Hyundai Heavy, asked the original contractor to have collective bargaining two weeks ago, but the company refused, saying it was not their employer. "Labor leaders should seek ways to reflect the voices of people working at subcontractors of large companies, both within and without, on the social dialogue body to be formed later," said Professor Lee Byeong-hun of Chung-Ang University. Other experts, noting that Korea's loose social safety network could not help workers sacrificed because of massive restructuring, are calling for an industrial restructuring fund to be set up. "The government will have to consider providing jobs for newly unemployed people by conducting public projects using such a fund," said Korea Labor Institute senior fellow Bae Kyu-shik. Among other points of contention are the scope and conditions of the restructuring. It is necessary to maintain the work force to a certain extent if the ongoing slump is not structural but cyclical, industry experts say. "One reason the Japanese shipbuilding industry collapsed was its premature relocation of manpower to other industries, regarding shipbuilding as a declining sector," said researcher Park. "Now the Japanese shipbuilders cannot grow further because there is a shortage of workers." On the other hand, German shipyards maintained their manpower during the 2008 global financial crisis by curtailing work hours and making the most of work hour account system, which helped them cope with the resurge in demand later, he said. Some want the opposition party to take the initiative in restructuring instead of waiting for the government measures. "After all, the whole process requires an enormous amount of money and it will be meaningless for the regional and industrial dialogue bodies to try to handle this matter," said Professor Kim Sang-jo of the Hansung University. "Now that the government and its party cannot take the lead in the wake of their election defeats, opposition parties need to provide a blueprint and lead the discussion." By Lee Hyo-sik Kwon Oh-Joon POSCO Chairman Executives at POSCO and its affiliates have been busy studying English in preparation for a proficiency test in June, according to company officials Monday. Those who fail the test will not face dismissal or any other severe consequences. But the test results could serve as a barometer in the future when they are under review for promotion, as POSCO Chairman Kwon Oh-Joon, who earned his master's and Ph.D. in the United States, has stressed the importance of being able to communicate in English in the increasingly globalized business world. "In addition to regular work, I am quite busy these days studying English ahead of the POSCO English Communication Test (PECT) in June," said an executive at one of POSCO's subsidiaries. "In 2015, only executives at POSCO were subject to the test. But this year, those at five major company affiliates will also have to take the PECT. I am under a lot of stress." The five are POSCO Daewoo, POSCO Engineering & Construction, POSCO Energy, POSCO Chemtech and POSCO ICT. PECT is an edited version of the Business Language Test Service (BULATS), developed by University of Cambridge. The exam consists of four parts: reading, listening, writing and speaking. BULATS is widely used by global companies to test English proficiency of employees and job applicants. Chairman Kwon, who received his master's and Ph.D. in metal engineering from the University of Pittsburg, is fluent in English and has been emphasizing the importance of English proficiency, as Korea's largest steelmaker expands its reach across the globe. "Among others, speaking is the most difficult for me. All POSCO executives have to undergo an interview with a native English speaker," the executive said. "The test scores do not matter much but good performers will definitely be in a better position for promotion. I want to excel in the PECT." Besides executives, all POSCO employees are required to take the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) when they are evaluated for promotion. "With POSCO increasingly becoming a global organization, the company encourages employees to brush off their English skills," a POSCO spokeswoman said. "Our test is all about speaking because we would like workers to be able to communicate in English well. Those with higher scores receive additional points in personnel evaluation." Hanjin Newport Corp. CEO Jung Se-hwa, right, touches his forehead at an emergency meeting regarding the restructuring of the shipping industry held at the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries in Sejong City, Monday. / Yonhap Company files for creditor-led debt restructuring program By Yoon Ja-young Hanjin Shipping filed for a creditor-led debt restructuring program, Monday, submitting a self-rescue plan. The creditors, however, demanded that the troubled shipping company come up with more detailed measures to cut its debt and ship rental costs, bank officials said. Hanjin Shipping said it filed with its main creditor, the Korea Development Bank (KDB), for the restructuring program. Hit by falling freight rates amid the global economic slump and high ship charter costs, the nation's leading container carrier has been sitting on snowballing debt. "We received a self-rescue plan from Hanjin Shipping, but we demanded that it come up with a better plan as it lacked details regarding ship rental fee negotiations," a KDB official said. "On top of a drastic self-rescue plan, the company must persuade foreign ship owners to cut their exorbitant charter fees as this holds the key to survival for the company." The self-rescue plan includes a written pledge by Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho to give up managerial control over the shipping company. Youn Yuh-jung, left, and Kim Go-eun speak at a press meeting for "Canola," May 19. / Yonhap By Yun Suh-young A number of recently released or soon-to-be-released Korean films are receiving love calls from China. A Chinese remake of "Time Renegades" which was released on April 13 has already begun filming, while the upcoming film "My New Sassy Girl" which will be released on May 5 will also be remade into a Chinese film. Another film to be added to the "China-remake" category is the upcoming film "Canola" featuring Youn Yuh-jung and Kim Go-eun to be released May 19. The film is the story of an old woman and her granddaughter who reunite 12 years after the granddaughter's disappearance and focuses on how the two slowly adjust to living together. Grandmother Gyechoon (Youn Yuh-jung) is a haenyeo (female diver) native to Jeju Island who has only one blood relative left, her granddaughter Hae-ji (Kim Go-eun). The two start a rollercoaster living arrangement after reuniting. However, when Hae-ji leaves to participate in an art competition in Seoul, she mysteriously disappears. "The remake copyright for this film has already been sold to China," said director Chang during a press conference for "Canola" held April 19 in Seoul. Poster for "Canola" "I think the reason why so much Korean content is being sold to China is because of the similarity in sentiments shared by Asians, especially between Chinese and Koreans." The film is universally identifiable because "it's about mothers and grandmothers" according to Chang. "My mother, who passed away, was very old compared to most mothers of people my age. So I felt like I was living with a grandmother instead of a mother. I was teased by my classmates at school because my mother was old. I felt really guilty as a son," said Chang. "I wanted to make a film dedicated to my mother before I became too old. I wanted to tell a story of our mothers and grandmothers in a sincere way." Veteran actress Youn Yuh-jung, 68, who stars as the grandmother in the film, called the sentiments reflected in the movie universal. "Everyone has a grandmother. The emotions portrayed in the movie are universally relatable," she said. "Parents try to discipline their children, but grandparents are not as strict. They are more tolerant of their grandchildren and give them unconditional love which is why children who grow up with their grandparents tend to be spoiled. I think the theme would be widely recognized in any country." Youn added that she wanted to dedicate her performance in the movie to her grandmother who passed away when she was a child. "My grandmother passed away when I was 10 years old. I wasn't a good granddaughter. So I wanted this film to pay homage to her," said Youn. "Commercial films these days are too provocative. This one might be too ordinary, but it's a heartwarming film to enjoy with your family." Kim Go-eun, 26, who stars as Hae-ji, currently lives with her grandmother which was why she could relate to the screenplay as strongly as she did. "I've been living with my grandmother since I was 20. At first I didn't want her to interfere with my life. I didn't want her attention and I expressed that in a twisted way," Kim said. "Knowing that this story was about a grandmother, my heart ached even before reading the screenplay when I was offered the role. When I read the script, I cried my eyes out and immediately called director Chang and told him I would do it. I felt a lot of empathy for Hae-ji." Kim said that she also dedicated her performance in the film to her grandmother. "I've done films that were probably uncomfortable for my grandma to watch. But this film will be a gift to her." Youn and Kim made a good match, according to director Chang. "They worked in perfect harmony. I almost had nothing to do," he said. The Korean title of the film "Gyechoon Halmang" means grandmother Gyechoon in the Jeju dialect. Gyechoon refers to March in the lunar calendar. The filming also began in March last year and ended this spring. Director Chang said he especially focused on color. "I tried to emphasize the color of Jeju in this film the black of the basalt, the blue of the ocean and the orange of the canola flowers and tangerines. Orange is magnified in this film and I think it matches with the sentiment of the movie," said Chang. Choi Min-ho, a member of boy band SHINee, makes his first big screen debut in this film while Kim Hee-won, whose work in films consists of mostly evil characters, plays the good guy this time. By Park Jin-hai Chung Myung-whun Chung Myung-whun, former music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO), will return to conduct the SPO in an opening performance for the Lotte Concert Hall in August. "The opening performance will feature Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Maestro Chung will be on the podium on Aug. 18 and 19," said an official from the Lotte Concert Hall. This is the first classical concert hall to open in Seoul since the Seoul Arts Center (SAC) was built 28 years ago. The new concert hall is located in Lotte World Tower in Jamsil, southeastern Seoul. "Lotte has made all the decisions on the conductor, orchestra and performance pieces. In light of its symbolic significance as Seoul's second large-scale classic concert hall, Chung has accepted its offer," an SPO official said. Lotte had booked Chung as director for the opening concert three years ago. However, he abruptly resigned as music director, ending his 10-year tenure with the SPO last December, following infighting over the removal of the SPO's former CEO Park Hyun-jung. Lotte decided that it should have representative Korean musicians for its opening performance and requested Chung to conduct for the SPO as initially agreed. The SPO will perform a newly commissioned piece by Chin Un-suk. However, the performance doesn't mean his reinstatement to the orchestra. Former SPO CEO Park stepped down from her post last December, after 17 SPO members claimed she had physically and verbally harassed them, demanding her immediate resignation. Park sued Chung claiming that Chung was behind the petition for her removal. Chung defended the 17 employees, ten of whom were booked on charges of false accusations. After a three-month investigation, police cleared Park of sexual harassment in March, citing inconsistencies in the testimonies against her. Currently, the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office is investigating the defamation case. Chung and Park have filed suits in civil court as well. Park is seeking damages from Chung for allegedly spreading false rumors about her, while Chung's wife surnamed Koo filed a compensation suit against the police for defamation. An annual royal culture festival is scheduled to open this week to let Koreans and overseas tourists enjoy the essence of the time-honored culture of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), organizers said Monday. The 2nd Royal Culture Festival will run until May 8 under the slogan "Today We Meet the Palace," the Culture Heritage Administration said. Events like concerts, cooking classes and performances by musical groups from overseas will take place at the country's most prominent historic places in Seoul: Gyeongbok Palace, Changdeok Palace, Changgyeong Palace, Deoksu Palace and Jongmyo Shrine. The opening ceremony will take place at the Heungnyemun Gate of Gyeongbok Palace, ushering in the 10-day festival that allows visitors a peep into the lifestyle of centuries ago. The opening event will be followed by more entertaining activities at the palace. From Saturday, visitors can cook and taste the traditional Joseon foods and stay overnight with family at the palace. Musical performances and "1892, King's Party," the recreation of a royal party (May 5-7), will add sparkle to the festival. A session to introduce cultural ceremonies from Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam will also slated to happen April 30-May 7. At Changgyeong Palace on May 5, "1750, Time Travel, The Day," a play in which ordinary people are part of cast, will be shown. On May 8, a session where visitors can learn Korean traditional medicine will take place at Changdeok Palace. At Changgyeong Palace, a theatrical play about an interesting episode that happened during the reign of King Jeongjo, the 22nd monarch of the dynasty, will be performed from May 6-8. Other fun activities include a night visit to Changdeok Palace (May 2-4) and a concert at Deoksu Palace (May 5-7). More detailed information is available at www.royalculturefestival.org. "This year, we've pumped up the number of activities that people can actually join and experience," Kim Dae-hyeon at the Heritage Promotion Bureau of the government agency said. (Yonhap) Park Ju-min, a lawmaker-elect of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), talks with civic activists in Seoul on March 28. / Courtesy of Park Ju-min's Office By Kim Hyo-jin Over two years have passed since the sinking of the Sewol ferry that left 304 dead or missing, but many questions surrounding the tragic incident remain unanswered. Victims' families claim the investigation made by an independent fact-finding committee has made little progress due to a lack of cooperation by the government and the ruling Saenuri Party. The committee is scheduled to be dissolved in June under a special law, and the families and their lawyers are demanding that the duration of the probe be extended. But the ruling camp has largely been negative about their demands, citing possible political conflicts over the investigation. However, the situation has changed following the ruling party's defeat in the April 13 general election. The main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) secured 123 of 300 parliamentary seats that were up for grabs. Of its 123 lawmakers-elect, one is the lawyer of the bereaved family of Sewol victim Park Ju-min. The political newcomer clinched a victory in Eunpyeong A district, northwestern Seoul, just three months after he entered politics. Park vowed to revise the Sewol law to extend the operation of the special committee. "It's still not going to be easy but I'm pinning my hopes on the Saenuri Party to change its stance and cooperate," Park said in an interview with The Korea Times. Park, who has been representing the victims' families for the last two years, drew much attention when he joined the MPK in January. Some wondered why he opted for the main opposition party when his far-leftist political orientation would click better with more radical minority opposition parties. "I had a specific goal when entering politics. To make it happen quickly, I had to sound out the possibility and realistic conditions," Park said. "And I thought it'd be right to join a party with greater potential." Park had raised pertinent questions as to whether the government and the ruling party have the willingness to explore the accident, since the committee's activity crippled by lack of their cooperation. The last thing he wants was the probe fading further while the Saenuri Party retains power in the upcoming Assembly. Park also needed to extend the committee's operation period, especially as the sunken ferry will have been salvaged by this coming July. "The Sewol bill was not made on the premise that the ferry will be salvaged. The bill should be revised in a way to give the committee the right to probe the ship itself as well as clarify its operation period." Underlining these are only things the victims' families want to put in a revision bill, Park said, "I just hope that no groundless rumors spread anymore like they want more compensation or seek to give the victims the title of honorary death. Please stop back-biting them." Ongoing questions The 17-member committee was launched early last year, tasked with pinpointing and punishing those responsible for the nation's worst maritime disaster, in which only 172 of 476 passengers were rescued. The primary culprits such as Captain Lee Joon-seok and the sailors who abandoned their passengers while escaping, and the Korea Coast Guard which failed to carry out a swift rescue have been prosecuted. The committee expanded the investigation to the Korean Register of Shipping which is responsible for ship inspections, the ferry's operator Cheonghaejin Marine Co., high-ranking officials at the Korea Coast Guard and the Presidential office. Its decision to track President Park Geun-hye's whereabouts on the very day was faced with a strong backlash by Saenuri Party-designated committee members. They boycotted the meeting and hearings, accusing the committee of politicizing the issue. Saenuri pushed ahead with a bill to cut the committee's budget to one-third of the amount it originally requested. Later, the Saenuri-linked members were found to have followed the government's guidelines. A news organization discovered guidelines from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries made for the ruling party-appointed members last November. It said if the committee attempts to investigate Cheong Wa Dae, they should step down en masse and hold a press conference in protest, which they did accordingly. Criticizing the governing bloc for stonewalling, Park argued that the remit of the probe should be expanded to the President. An overhaul of the government's emergency response system is inevitable, he said. "Former President Bush was also under investigation in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was not to interrogate him for causing the tragedy but to check if the leader was notified in a timely manner and made appropriate orders in the urgent situation," he said. Park added the problem of skipping the basic procedure has been detected in the nation's continued failing response to further disasters. "In the case of a state of emergency, the President is supposed to step up and mobilize resources efficiently but that's not what happened," he said. "You will know how dysfunctional the system still remains in the case of the MERS whose first breakout was reported to Park three hours later and another delayed report when soldiers were injured by the mine blast in the demilitarized zone." Before sinking, the recklessly remodeled 6,825-ton ferry listed to one side for a number of hours after it made a sharp turn off the southwest coast. The passengers were ordered to stay still, and as soon as the Coast guard arrived, the captain, sailors and engineers escaped first. The authorities didn't mobilize enough rescue resources when there were 476 passengers trapped in the capsized ferry. With many unsolved questions lingering, further suspicions were raised over the connection between the ferry operator Cheonghaejin Marine Co. and the National Intelligence Service. The documents found in the ferry and left by the company employees indicate that the ferry was under close inspection by the spy agency and a deceased employee on board was found to have made a call to NIS agents after the ferry started listing. The special committee decided to look further into that link. Asked about the meaning of such investigation, Park said it could tell to which extent a governmental body is responsible for the tragedy. "If the suspicions on their links turned true, it should be held accountable for mismanaging the ferry, overlooking habitual overloading of cargo," he said. "Also, it needs to explain why it failed to act on mobilizing rescuers right after receiving the report by Cheonghaejin Marine Co." Life as lawyer Park used to be called a "lawyer on the streets." He stayed beside the bereaved families of the Sewol victims who have been staging a sit-in at Gwanghwamun and near the Presidential office over the past two years. Colleagues at his law firm supported him financially with donations. Park was already a notable public interest lawyer before taking the Sewol case on the request of the families' former legal advisors. He also advocated for residents opposing the government's construction of a naval base in Gangjeong Village on Jeju Island, and those protesting the construction of transmission towers by the state-run electronic firm in the southeastern city of Miryang. The experienced civic lawyer laid out his legislative plans with much enthusiasm. "Working as a lawyer over the past 11 years, I realized there are many practical systems and laws to be introduced in our society." He cited a procedural law for national projects that guarantees the authorities' pre-consultation with residents as one example. "It could've eased conflicts if the residents were informed and given the chance to express their opinions. But it was not the case for Miryang and Gangjeong," he said. "One day, villagers could be just told to move out of where they live. Can you believe it still happens in 2016?" He added he will seek to introduce a procedural law concerning the government's signing of treaties, and a law that guarantees the right to record meetings of government bodies and make them public upon citizens' request. "I'm so ready to take it whatever it takes. I will hire extra aides even if I have to support them with my own money," he said. The onetime passionate student activist, who was determined to stay an activist after graduation, changed his mind to become a lawyer one day. "I was waiting to meet a ward head with the poor who were to be kicked out of their shantytown due to development. It was heavily snowing that day and we waited for hours outside the administrative building but to no avail," he said. "Looking at little kids who came along with me shivering, I wondered if they would snub us if I had power, if I was a lawyer." He came back to civic society as a lawyer after passing the bar exam. "I haven't turned down the offers when people asked me. I did it because I liked it," he said. "I'm most happy when I can help others rather than earning money." Park said he wants to become a lawmaker who can bridge the gap between people and the legislative. "I hope to become a politician who can reflect people's voices into politics," he said. "Politics estranged from the public will then change and could function properly." A former opposition leader has kept a steady lead in a poll for 15 straight weeks over his potential rivals for South Korea's presidential race next year, a new poll showed Monday. Moon Jae-in, a former leader of the main opposition Minjoo Party received 27 percent, up 2.3 percentage points from a week earlier, according to the poll released by local pollster Realmeter. Moon's party received a big boost from the parliamentary elections earlier this month, in which it secured 123 out of 300 seats up for grabs. The party has become the single largest party in the new parliament. Moon was defeated by President Park Geun-hye in the 2012 election. Park's single five-year term ends in early 2018, and by law, she cannot seek re-election. Moon is trailed by Ahn Cheol-soo, a co-leader of the minor opposition People's Party, with 18.4 percent; former Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in third with 9.6 percent and Kim Moo-sung, former head of the ruling Saenuri Party, with 7.8 percent. Meanwhile, the president's job approval rating edged down 0.1 percentage point to 31.4 percent, the poll showed. It also found that those who disapproved of Park's job performance came to 63.5 percent, up 1.2 percentage points from the previous week. Park's ruling Saenuri Party suffered a crushing defeat in the parliamentary elections by winning 122 out of the 300 seats. (Yonhap) By Kim Da-hee An Egyptian man has been sentenced to 20 years' jail after pleading guilty to murdering his Korean wife, Incheon District Court said Friday. The man, 39, whose name was not revealed, strangled his wife at their apartment in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province on Nov, 17. He then dumped her body in a blast furnace at a nearby aluminum foundry the next day, the court was told. On the day of the murder, the wife, 47, had visited the man with divorce papers. "The crime of the accused was extremely serious and must be condemned because the accused tried to conceal his murder," the court said. The couple, who married 12 years ago, quarreled about money, including the cost of a round trip between Egypt and Korea every year, the court heard. By Jun Ji-hye North Korea will increase efforts to extend the range of its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) to more than 2,000 kilometers in order to be capable of striking targets in the United States, experts said Monday. The military regime is believed to have begun constructing a 3,000-ton submarine that could be equipped with at least three SLBMs, they said. Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile from a 2,000-ton Sinpo-class submarine, Saturday. It claimed that it successfully launched the missile underwater, igniting its engine above the water's surface and letting it fly. The Ministry of National Defense said the test means that the Kim Jong-un regime has made progress in acquiring the technologies necessary to launch a missile from underwater. Such technologies include "cold launch" technology firing a missile out of the water to put it on a trajectory for hitting a designated target. But the ministry added that the North failed to prove that the projectile's ballistic trajectory can follow a parabolic path, citing the fact that the missile was only airborne for approximately 30 kilometers, well short of the minimum SLBM range of 300 kilometers. Experts say it is unclear why the missile's flight was so short this time the regime might have used a small quantity of solid fuel, or the missile could have developed problems while gaining speed during its flight. But Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, told reporters that the latest test still demonstrates that the North has made considerable progress in SLBM development. "It can be said that the countdown to the completion of the SLBM development has begun," he said, adding that "Poor conditions of the North's 2,000-ton submarines may delay the development." Experts view a depth of at least 50 meters to be "normal" for launching a ballistic missile from a submarine, citing tests of other countries. But a 2,000-ton submarine cannot launch a missile from that depth due to its limited underwater capabilities. The depth of Saturday's launch was presumed to be far less, at 10-15 meters. Submarines navigating at such a depth can be easily detected, experts say. Plus, only one SLBM can be loaded in a 2,000-ton submarine as its interior space is narrow. Experts say a submarine loading one SLBM is strategically meaningless, and at least three missiles need to be loaded. Based on this analysis, experts expect the isolated regime to build 3,000-ton submarines and keep testing the SLBMs to extend their range. In the meantime, the U.N. Security Council condemned the North's SLBM test, Sunday, saying such a move contributes to Pyongyang's capabilities to deliver nuclear weapons. "The members of the Security Council strongly condemned the firing of a SLBM by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," the council said in a press statement, adding that the launch is "yet another serious violation" of U.N. Council resolutions. "The members of the Security Council emphasized that the DPRK's development and testing of new ballistic missile capabilities, even if launches are failures, is clearly prohibited by these resolutions," the council said. The council also expressed concerns that "such ballistic missile activities contribute to the DPRK's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems, and increase tension in the region and beyond," urging U.N. members to carry out sanctions on Pyongyang. The entrance of Sindang-dong Tteokbokki Town located in eastern Seoul / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government This is the fourth in a series of articles featuring Seoul City-designated Future Heritages, modern-day assets that have not been designated as state cultural properties but have enough value to be handed down to future generations. ED. By Kim Ji-soo Tteokbokki at the restaurant opened by Ma Bok-rim, who created the Sindang-dong-style rice cake dish mixing black bean sauce with red chili pepper paste / Korea Times photo by Kim Ji-soo Tteokbokki, or stir-fried spicy rice cake, is a ubiquitous snack in Korea. In particular, Sindang-dong style tteokbokki evokes memories of when this reporter in secondary-school uniform used to take the bus to the eastern Seoul neighborhood to sample the snack. The stores were small and always humid because of the dish containing the rice cakes, noodles, fish cakes and vegetables cooked on burners at the table. Steamy, more stew-like and a bit exotic at that time, it was a big hit. Now, the street where 10 such stores still survive has been designated as a Future Heritage by Seoul City. The taste of the Sindang-dong-style tteokbokki is strangely familiar to the Korean palate and good enough to make people come back after years and even decades. This form of the snack is attributed to Ma Bok-rim, who happened to mix black bean sauce with red chili pepper paste. Her restaurant that opened in 1953 is still there at the entrance of the street. Similar restaurants opened in earnest in the 1980s. The queen of the snack passed away in 2011 but is now succeeded by her children and their spouses. Place one skinny rice cake and wrap it around some noodles and chew, and the taste is a wonderful combination of sugar, red chili pepper paste and black bean sauce. The Sindang-dong style itself differs from the better-known spicy chili pepper-based one. But then again, the tteokbokki comes in variations ranging from the "royal court" style in soybean sauce and beef to even tteokbokki in carbonara sauce. The other shops next to Ma Bok-rim's offer more varying dishes such as tteokbokki in black bean sauce and with seafood. Several restaurants offer other menus such as pig's feet or rice. Some stores also have DJ booths. Park Chan-young, 53, owner of I Love Sindangdong, said he introduced the DJ and live music feature about 16 years ago to entice younger consumers and also to update the restaurant to the era. "It was a huge success," Park said. He said in the street's heyday, Sunday sales at one large store could post as high as 20 million won, which he stressed is not the case anymore. I Love Sindangdong has seven "shareholders" who merged their smaller stores to survive in 2005. Kim Young-shin, who has run Joojeom Tteokbokki for 29 years, said she is proud of her restaurant. "The business is not like what it used to be," she said. "Up until 2010, the business was good. I've raised my two children." But even in around 3 p.m., after-lunch hours, people kept straggling in, either by themselves or in groups. The price of the menu begins from 6,000 won for one person, and goes up to 11,000 won for two through for five at 24,000 won. The stores are mostly open around the clock, taking turns each month to close at night. For all the history and memories that Koreans have of this beloved snack, this alley near Dongdaemun Market is desolate. Amid the craze for redevelopment, one could not but wonder whether these shops will someday revamp to have a whole new decor and interior. City officials said that the designation of Future Heritage is to promote a sense of pride for the residents and business owners and encourage self-preservation but that the street and its inhabitants are not inhibited from redeveloping. Park believes that the stores could upgrade while the same time retaining their traditional allure with the steamy, almost soupy tteokbokki. "If our facilities are too dilapidated, the business might not be sustainable. But the street will remain for sure," Park said. As for Kim, "I hope to be at it for a long time," she said. "It is my retirement plan." U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday rejected North Korea's offer to halt nuclear tests if the United States suspends joint military exercises with South Korea, saying he doesn't take the proposal seriously and will continue to take steps to defend the Asian ally. Pyongyang's Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong made the proposal in a media interview on Saturday, renewing the North's long-running claims that the country was compelled to develop nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls U.S. nuclear threats and hostile policy toward Pyongyang. "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities," Obama said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to a White House transcript. Obama also said that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. will be prepared to "enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region." "But that's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that," Obama said. "Until they do, we're going to continue to emphasize our work with the Republic of Korea and Japan, and our missile defense mechanisms, to assure that we're keeping the American people safe and we're keeping our allies safe." The communist nation made the same proposal in the past, but the U.S. rejected it as an "implicit threat," stressing that the North is banned from nuclear tests under U.N. resolutions and that joint military exercises with South Korea are purely defensive. The latest offer came amid growing concern that the North could carry out yet another nuclear test soon, just a few months after its fourth nuclear blast in January, in the runup to next month's Workers' Party Congress that would be convened for the first time in 36 years. On Saturday, the North test-fired what was believed to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), but the launch was assessed as a failure as it flew for only about 30 kilometers. Still, Pyongyang claimed Sunday that the test was successful. Referring apparently to the SLBM test, Obama said that the U.S. is "analyzing and assessing with precision the activities that North Korea engaged in over the last several days." "What is clear is that North Korea continues to engage in continuous, provocative behavior; that they have been actively pursuing a nuclear program, an ability to launch nuclear weapons," Obama said. "Although more often than not they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time they engage in these tests. And we take it very seriously." Obama said that it is because of the North's provocative behavior that the U.S. has mobilized the international community to isolate the country, to "crank up the sanctions that impose a cost on Kim Jong-un and Pyongyang." The U.S. has also sought cooperation with China to increase pressure on the North, Obama said. "And although it is not where we would completely like it to be, I will say that we've seen the Chinese be more alarmed and take more seriously what North Korea is doing, and they have been willing to be more forward-leaning in exacting a price on North Korea's destructive behavior," he said. (Yonhap) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has redesignated North Korea as a "country of particular concern" (CPC) for suppressing religious freedom, government records showed Sunday. North Korea was one of the 10 countries designated as CPCs under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The other nine countries were Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Kerry made the designations in a government notice issued Wednesday. "For the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the existing ongoing restrictions to which the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is subject" to trade restrictions provided in the Trade Act of 1974 with regard to its human rights violations, the notice said. The North has been on the religious freedom CPC list since 2001 and was last designated as a CPC in July last year. In an annual religious freedom report issued in October, the State Department said that the North tolerates no religious freedom and continues to deal harshly with those involved in "almost any religious practices." "The constitution guarantees freedom of religion for its citizens and the country is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. However, religious freedom does not exist in practice," the 2014 International Religious Freedom Report said. The report also cited the U.N. Commission of Inquiry's report on the North's human rights situation as saying that there was an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of religion and the North's leadership should be brought to the International Criminal Court for human rights abuses. It also said that the North's policy toward religion has been to maintain "an appearance of tolerance for international audiences, while suppressing internally all non-state-sanctioned religious activities." (Yonhap) North Korea called on its military to show strong allegiance to leader Kim Jong-un as the country celebrated the 84th anniversary of the Korean People's Army (KPA) creation on Monday. The Rodong Sinmun, the North's main newspaper, said in its commentary that the country should establish the one-man leadership more firmly as it celebrates the key anniversary of its armed forces. "There will be no enemy forces that can stand against the KPA, as our military is equipped with outstanding tactics and striking means and capable of staging nuclear attacks," the newspaper said. The anniversary came amid growing speculation that North Korea may carry out another nuclear test or launch a medium or long-range missile ahead of the ruling party's key congress slated for early May. The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) plans to hold the first congress in more than three decades in early May where the North will likely affirm the leader's tighter grip on power. North Korea is pushing its people to work harder under the so-called "70-day campaign of loyalty," so as to highlight the country's accomplishments ahead of the party event. Pyongyang has boosted its bellicose rhetoric against Seoul and Washington since early March in an apparent show of defiance against stronger U.N. sanctions against the North. On Saturday, the North fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile in waters off its northeast coast, drawing international condemnation. Last month, it test-fired what looked like an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile, though this launch ended in complete failure. North Korea warned Sunday that if Seoul and Washington continue to stage what it calls nuclear provocations to hurt its leadership, the country's army will "launch a preemptive strike of severest punishment in the sky, land, seas and underwater." (Yonhap) By Yi Whan-woo North Korea is squeezing even more out of its overseas "slave workers" in preparation for its seventh Congress of the Workers' Party scheduled in May, according to sources. Seoul-based online newspaper Daily NK cited these sources in a report Monday that the repressive state seized six-months of wages intended for 200 workers from their employer in Dandong, China. The employer, a fish factory, made an early payment of the worker's salaries $500 a month in line with demands from Pyongyang officials, but the workers have not received a single penny. In a separate incident, two North Korean construction laborers in Qatar went to Qatari police for help after "earning zero for the past two years," South Korean government officials and sources in the Middle East were quoted as saying by the Chosun Ilbo, Monday. In Kuwait, 100 North Korean workers protested before their superintendents from Pyongyang's intelligence agencies on March 19 after they were asked to make extra money by mid-April due to delays in receiving their salaries. "It is seen that cash-strapped Pyongyang is pocketing the wages of their workers abroad as much as possible to raise money for the seventh Congress of the Workers' Party." a source said. The rare congressional meeting will take place for the first time in 1980. The Kim Jong-un regime is expected to propagandize Kim's leadership nationwide on an unprecedented scale since he succeeded his late father Kim Jong-il in December 2011. "In the case of 200 North Korean laborers in Dandong, they used to receive $150 out of $500 and turn in the remaining $350 to their superintendents," said a different source. "However, they recently have not received any of their salaries and a number of them are begging to return to their impoverished regime." Other sources said that the 200 workers at the Chinese fish factory are forced to work 13 hours a day, up from 12 hours so that the military regime can accumulate extra cash. It was established that the two workers in Qatar sneaked out from their workplaces and sought help from the Qatari authorities after learning that they were being sacked and returned home. "They purportedly worked over two years under scorching weather but earned nothing because North Korean authorities took all of their income," a government official said on condition of anonymity. Kim Young-hwan, a researcher at Seoul-based Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, said the protest of laborers in Kuwait reflects the serious nature of Pyongyang's further exploitation of its workforce in foreign countries. "It was unthinkable for ordinary North Korean citizens to complain before intelligence officials in the past, and you can see that the workers are extremely upset by their own government's demand concerning the use of money." Up to 60,000 North Koreans are forcibly sent to work in an estimated 50 countries, including Russia, Poland, Mongolia, the United Arab Emirates and Angola, according to the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul. North Korea has pocketed up to $300 million annually from its overseas laborers to prop up its tyrannical regime while pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile programs banned by the United Nations. Fujimoto Kenji /Yonhap By Lee Jin-a Fujimoto Kenji, a former Japanese chef who served North Korea's former president Kim Jong-il, visited Pyongyang for a week recently, according to Japanese news media. "Fujimoto arrived in Pyongyang on April 12 and took a flight to Beijing airport on Saturday afternoon," NHK said. "The chef did not disclose the reason for his visit to North Korea, but there is a possibility that he was invited for the Kim Il-sung's birthday event on April 15." Fujimoto served the Kim family for 13 years until he fled for his life back to Japan in 2001. He visited North Korea again more than 10 years later, when Kim Jong-un took power. The chef told CNN in 2012 that the young leader gave him a free pass to visit North Korea whenever he wanted. Marshoud Al-Marshoud, a perfume developer in the Kuwait City-based fragrance company Atyab Al-Marshoud, on April 19 / Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung Use of perfumes in the region has cultural roots By Kang Hyun-kyung KUWAIT CITY Scents invoke certain memories and some people use fragrances because they want to present themselves through them. In the Middle East, however, wearing a fragrance is considered a polite gesture and those who anoint themselves with perfumes are considered religiously committed. For these reasons, fragrance has been an integral part of the Middle Eastern way of life for centuries. Their extensive use of fragrances is evident in the traditional market Souq Mubarekia in the Kuwaiti capital, where perfumes, along with food and clothing, are the most traded items. In Kuwait, unlike in Europe, fragrances have a short lifecycle, that is, no one perfume dominates the market for more than a year. "In Europe, if certain perfume brands become popular, they stay in vogue for at least five years," said Marshoud Al-Marshoud, a perfume developer in the Kuwait City-based fragrance company Atyab Al-Marshoud. "But in Kuwait, consumers' preferences are changing much faster than those of Europeans," he said in an April 19 interview at the company store in the Avenue Mall in Kuwait City. Bhakoor, scented wood chips from thousand-year-old trees, is a key ingredient of perfume and incense. / Korea Times He said the herding phenomenon is behind the fast-changing preferences of Kuwaiti consumers. "If certain products become popular, it's because Kuwaiti consumers are crazy about them. But they can also suddenly switch their attentions to another product," he said. "It's easier to produce perfumes appealing to consumers here, but it's challenging to entice them to stay with the same product for years." Al-Marshoud is the grandson of the late Sulaiman Al-Marshoud, who founded Atyab Al-Marshoud, a family business and the first fragrance company established in the Gulf region in 1925. The elder Al-Marshoud traveled extensively to India and Southeast Asia to search for "bhakoor," scented wood chips from thousand-year-old trees and a key ingredient of fragrance and incense. Middle Easterners burn bhakoor in incense burners to perfume their homes and clothing. The elder Al-Marshoud sold bhakoor and pure oils extracted from plants and flowers to consumers, and taught his son how to blend oils to make fragrances. Authentic perfumes are made from 80 percent alcohol and 20 percent plant oils. Some established perfume houses use chemicals instead of pure oils, and Al-Marshoud said the resulting products are not real perfumes and their scents evaporate quickly. In the traditional market Souq Mubarekia in the Kuwaiti capital, perfumes, along with food and clothing, are the most traded items. / Korea Times He says pure oils and effective oil blending are the two key elements of the quality and scent of perfumes, noting that his company uses only pure oils to produce real perfumes that have long-lasting scent. After the death of his grandfather, his father, with the help of his uncles, continued the family business. The oldest and largest homegrown perfume maker in Kuwait has 15 stores at home and two branches in Dubai and Qatar. Kuwaitis are loyal to the homegrown perfumes. "Over 80 percent of Kuwaitis use homegrown perfumes. They are loyal consumers," Al-Marshoud said. "Smelling good is considered a virtue here in Kuwait, and for some reason people opt for homegrown brands maybe because they feel that wearing them is appropriate when they pray or go to mosque." Al-Marshoud said the high perfume consumption in Kuwait helped his father's business thrive. "It's good that Kuwaitis love fragrances. There are no Kuwaitis who hate perfumes they consume perfumes a lot," he said. Middle Easterners are heavy users of perfumes. According to the 2014 Euromonitor report, fragrances account for nearly 20 percent of the Middle East and North Africa's beauty market, where annual retail sales reach $5 billion. Another report by market research company Chalhoub Group found that fragrances and cosmetics are two of the fastest-growing markets in the Middle East, consumption of which increases by 12 percent annually, one of the highest in the world. Fragrances are much more than fresheners in the Middle East. Kuwaiti historian Farhan Abdullah Ahmed Al-Farhan at the Kuwait National Library said Middle Easterners have used perfumes and burnt incense since the beginning of history. "People here burn scented woods to kill germs and bacteria at home. Old Middle Easterners bought certain flowers from Mediterranean countries, extracted the oils from them and used those oils as fragrances," he said. Besides being used for disinfecting purposes, Al-Farhan said fragrances have religious importance in the Middle East. "Since the time of the Prophet Mohammed, people in the region have used perfumes extensively. They sprinkle perfumes on themselves before they go to the mosque to pray," he said. "Grooms and brides wear perfumes during their wedding ceremonies. People buy perfumes as gifts for their guests as a gesture of hospitality." Omar Al-Sanea, an official from Kuwait's Ministry of Information, said he is a typical Kuwaiti who loves perfumes. He said he always has five to seven different types of perfumes, mostly European brands, and uses one of them for an entire week. "When I was a child, I was taught by my parents to use perfumes daily because a good scent is considered a gesture of politeness in our culture," he said. "You are supposed to have a good, clean scent all the time. In Islamic culture, we believe cleanliness is very important, and that's why we always wash our hands before we pray." He said his favorite brand is Davidoff's Leather Blend. "It has a distinct smell. It has strong European notes, which people smell immediately after application. But these notes fade as time goes by, leaving the base note, which is very much Middle Eastern and long lasting." Over the centuries, Middle Easterners came to develop their own way of blending and applying perfumes. Al-Sanea said he blends his perfumes with oil for a long-lasting scent. "The smell is still there even after I wash my hands several times," he said. Coffee beans are also widely used in perfume stores in Kuwait to help consumers reset or cleanse their sense of smell. After being exposed to several different types of scents, people tend to suffer from olfactory fatigue and are unable to distinguish one odor from another. Perfume sellers recommend that their customers smell the coffee beans to alleviate olfactory fatigue which will enable them to sample other perfumes. Al-Marshoud said European fragrances are light, whereas Middle Eastern fragrances are heavy because of the ingredients. "What we are seeing now is that the global brands are shifting to Middle Eastern ingredients," he said. He encouraged consumers to take a close look at the ingredients. "I know some young people consider brands rather than ingredients. Some fragrances don't use pure oils. They are not perfumes," he said. Due to the popularity of perfumes in Kuwait, consumers enjoy a wide selection of products from both homegrown and imported brands. Najeeb, a seller of homegrown fragrances in Souq Mubarekia, said his store sells over 100 different perfumes. He said homegrown perfumes are popular among Kuwaitis because of their Middle Eastern scents and reasonable prices. The average price of homegrown perfume is lower than those imported mostly from Europe. One of Najeeb's best sellers, for example, costs only 5 Kuwaiti dinar (less than $20) per 50 ml. By Kim So-hyun Around 14,000 South Koreans, many wearing masks, marched through downtown Seoul on Dec. 5, against conservative President Park Geun-hye, who had previously compared masked protesters to terrorist group, the Islamic State (IS), after clashes with police broke out at a rally the month before. "Given that the extremists of IS hide their faces, we should ban demonstrators from wearing masks in the future," Park is reported to have said at a Cabinet meeting. Any citizen or journalist claiming such a ridiculous assertion would be laughed out of town. Any link between IS and the decades-long tradition of Korean protestors wearing masking is preposterous, and the notion of banning masks harks to a darker era of Korea. The international press quickly responded to Park's excessive comparison. Alastair Gale of the Wall Street Journal said, "For many outsiders, worries about free expression in South Korea seem almost frivolous when compared with the dictatorial political system in North Korea." However, a partisan article in the Chosun Ilbo defended Park's argument by citing developed countries which legislated laws that banned protesters from wearing masks, ignoring Korean traditions. The article stated that the U.S, Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria and put emphasis on how much those countries care about human rights. It was simply suggesting "wearing masks is banned in developed countries, therefore Korea should also enact the law in order to protect people." But I cannot support this assertion for two reasons. First, the U.S and Germany passed such legislation because they had suffered from extremely violent demonstrations resulting in casualties. The U.S federal government responded to unlawful demonstrations by the KKK, and Germany suffered radical behavior by neo-Nazis and hooligans. In comparison with the KKK, it is certain that Korean protesters cannot be regarded as aggressive. And under no circumstances can we compare anything with Nazis. If President Park keeps her stance and enforces the law, it would be a clear sign that she regards protesters as terrorists. The purpose of the march clearly shows that Park has fallen into self-contradiction. The march protested labor conditions and threats to political and personal freedoms under Park's administration. Park is trying to uncover so-called "terrorist elements" by banning people from wearing mask which infringes on people's freedom and makes it easier to crack down on protesters. Police had used unreasonable force to break up a protest, using tear gas and water cannons mixed with capsaicin and putting lives at risk in November. For Korean protesters, masks are meant to show a message against certain government actions and give a sense of belonging to an activist movement. Masks serve as more of a tool to avoid police tracking and unfavorable treatment after identification by police surveillance. Many Koreans see President Park as a reincarnation of her father, Park Chung-hee, a former dictator, for better or for worse, but in a different time and at a different stage of development. As an elected President, Park's reaction to masked protesters is contrary to the spirit of democracy in South Korea. Her leadership shows the immaturity of democracy here. The writer is a student at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies majoring in English. Write to kish328@naver.com. By Jorgen Randers If the citizens of Seoul want to do their fair share of the global effort to avoid dangerous climate change, they must reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by some 30 percent before 2030. This is fully possible and will not cost very much. But it will require action by Seoul and its citizens. Either in the form of individual emission cuts at the family level, or through collective cuts arising from initiatives policy change and programs at the level of the city government. I believe the latter is much better. Collective action is quicker, simpler and much more convenient for citizens. Luckily the city of Seoul has made the same choice: The city has decided to make Seoul a leader in climate action, and is only limited by the willingness of the population to support progressive legislation and pay slightly higher prices for electricity, heat and fuel. The alternative approach to climate gas reduction voluntary action by individual citizens is also possible. But it requires much more time, effort and initiative from each citizen. He or she will have to consider the emissions from their daily lifestyle and find the least inconvenient way to reduce emissions specific to them. It means for each citizen to consider his or her use of air conditioning, lighting, heating, car travel, airplanes and red meat, and how their waste is disposed. And then, to find good ways to reduce the associated emissions, either by using less, or by shifting to more climate friendly solutions. For example by insulating their apartment, installing a solar panel, shifting to a more fuel-efficient car or to collective transport, to reduce the hours of air travel, and replace some of their consumption of beef and lamb with chicken and fish, and finally recycle their garbage with care. I repeat that it is fully possible to cut the family's emissions by 30 percent in this manner. But it requires thinking and initiative, in addition to the extra expenditure. And then there is the unpleasant suspicion following the individualistic solution that other Seoulites might not do their fair share the feeling that there is no point in your personal sacrifice, because other families choose not to do their part. In fact this mechanism is what keeps most rich world individuals from doing their fair share. They could easily have done what is needed, but decided not to because they suspect that many others will choose not to do the same. It is much simpler to cut the emissions of Seoul by 30 percent by collective action. All this takes is action by the city government in four areas: more energy-efficient buildings, more renewable energy (from wind and sun), more buses and trains run on biogas or electricity, and climate-friendly handling of the city's effluent and garbage. Luckily, this is how Seoul has in fact organized its approach to climate gas reductions over the last five years, with impressive results. In these four areas much can be achieved quickly through legislation. Legislation can reduce the use of energy-inefficient buildings, cars, trucks and buses. And legislation can direct investments in the direction of climate-friendly power plants, public transport systems and emission free waste handling plants. But such legislation typically leads to higher costs in the short term, and this reduces the speed at which progressive politicians can reduce the emissions of Seoul. The costs would have to be paid by the citizens, either in the form of taxes or fees, or in the form of more expensive power, heat and transport fuels. Low-carbon solutions are typically more expensive than the traditional solutions. And they are likely to remain so (with one very important exception: solar electricity is becoming cheaper than fossil and nuclear electricity). But the costs are not overwhelming. Estimates from other countries indicate that the cost of becoming climate-friendly is around 1 percent of GDP. In other words, Seoul could continue its global leadership if 1 percent of its output was allocated to this purpose. This amounts to $250 per citizen, per year, which would largely be spent on paying for new solar and wind capacity, and for investments in more energy efficient buildings and climate-friendly cars. This tax increase will be unpopular, but it will lead to a steep increase in the number of green jobs. Such taxes will not lead to a decline in GDP or employment. They will simply lead to a shift of capital and labor from dirty to clean sectors to a greening of the economic structure of Korea. It will slow consumption growth and give the citizens a better climate in return. Korea already has the technology for this. The country already knows how to produce electricity, heat, and transport fuels without using coal, oil or gas. It already knows how to build buildings that have a pleasant indoor climate and are well lit without using coal, oil and gas. Korea already knows how to build cars, buses and trucks that emit much less CO2 per kilometer driven. It can all be done, and today. The main reason why it does not happen at great speed is because the government does not have the funds necessary to buy or subsidize climate-friendly solutions that are more expensive than the current (dirty, climate intensive) ones. Consumers tend to choose the cheapest alternative, and businesses lose if they try to provide a solution which is more costly than tha of their competitors. Luckily, the city of Seoul is already well on its way. It has already shown the way towards a cut of 30 % by 2030, which is the same as cutting emissions by 2 % per year. The prime examples is the "one less nuclear plant" program which in two years cut the energy use of Seoul by 2 million tons of oil equivalents. This is amounts to a cut of near 4 % of Seoul's total emissions (130 MtCO2e/yr) in two years or near 2 % per year. But this achievement must be continued, not only in this election period, but for decades. This is best done, as I see it, through a tax-financed city program, which will only come about if there is support among a majority of Seoul's voters for progressive programs in the climate area. Including programs that are slightly more costly to the citizens than doing nothing. The main challenge is to generate this majority. Jorgen Randers is a Norwegian professor of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School. He is a co-author of the seminal 1972 report "Limits to Growth," which highlighted the devastating impacts of economic and population growth on the Earth. In dealing with debt-ridden Hanjin Shipping, one important precedent should be set to prevent moral hazards by the owners/top managers and their families. That precedent is about making the chaebol owner, Cho Yang-ho in this case, who has run the shipping company since 2013, proportionally accountable for the company's failure. The worry is that Cho may walk away without paying his dues in the middle of a rush for the wholesale restructuring of steel, petrochemical and shipbuilding industries, as well as the shipping industry. The bad example regards the Kumho Asiana Group workout that ended up giving the Asiana Airlines-led group, streamlined, back to its owner Park Sam-koo. Right now, Hanjin has just asked for a mild form of a debt "workout" program that puts the creditors in charge but rules out the possibility that he coughs up his own personal assets. Cho has ruled that out. The firm could eventually be put in receivership possibly leading to liquidation. All told, Chairman Cho should be put under scrutiny on three accounts. First, although he claims with a degree of validity that his efforts to sustain the firm have foundered due to the global slump and accompanying industry-wide restructuring, he owes an explanation about how the debt has soared many times to 6.4 trillion won or $5.6 billion in the short space of three years under his watch. If Chairman Cho is merely the majority shareholder, he may get away with the claim that he has done all he should by losing his shares. But he has made all the key decisions as the financial ailment hit the firm so it is natural for his role to be examined to determine how he should be made accountable. As Hanjin funded its efforts to revive the shipping firm, it has sold commercial paper with higher returns for the past couple of years. These IOUs could turn into worthless scraps of paper in a repetition of what happened in the Tongyang Securities debacle. Whether these investors were lured into buying this paper illegally should also be checked. Last but not least, Cho mobilized the other subsidiaries including Korean Air to smooth a cash flow for the ailing subsidiary with a prop of 1 trillion won collected group-wide, adversely affecting the bottom line. This was a management decision gone sour but still needs a look by the authorities as to whether or not it was a sound, acceptable decision. This is the least that should be done for shareholders of these firms. Selling-off the shipping unit's shares worth 2.7 billion won by its former chairman just before the creditors-led workout was requested does not set well with public opinion. Although the group claims that the sale was planned well in advance, it is strongly suspected that they had gained access to inside information after the share price nose-dived, with ordinary shareholders taking the blow. Lastly, the latest round of restructuring could prove to be painful with lots of people losing their jobs and investors losing their money but if the fair rule of proportional accountability is established this time, it could be looked at as an important landmark in Korea Inc.'s growth into adulthood. Parties should refrain from playing politics Calls to restructure non-competitive industries, such as shipbuilding and shipping, which are in trouble because of oversupply and weakened competiveness, are gaining momentum. The calls come on the heels of the ruling and opposition parties' agreement on the need for corporate restructuring. The ruling Saenuri Party proposed establishing a consultative body among leaders of the main parties and government officials. The main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) promised to cooperate if the government presented a proper blueprint. Ahn Cheol-soo, co-chairman of the splinter People's Party, underscored the need for a complete industrial overhaul. On Friday, President Park Geun-hye reiterated an urgent need to retool non-viable companies, saying, ''A person could die if he or she foregoes surgery out of fear.'' Key ministers also met Sunday to discuss the direction of restructuring and follow-up unemployment measures. Companies in trouble have begun restructuring voluntarily, realizing that this cannot be delayed any longer. Hanjin Shipping filed for a creditor-led restructuring Friday, while Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, two of the country's top three shipbuilders, are reportedly planning large-scale layoffs. What is most urgent is to restructure Hanjin and Hyundai Merchant Marine, which has already been in a creditor-led retooling scheme. More recently, there has been talk about merging the two shipping companies an idea that might be reasonable, considering the reasons for their management woes, such as overlapping routes and paying expensive fees to ship owners. Restructuring is easier said than done because stakeholders can easily differ on the details. Given that sharing the burden is inevitable, restructuring could go smoothly if the parties agree on reasonable principles and the right directions. If not, too many cooks spoil the broth. To be sure, the future of Korea Inc. as well as restructuring will depend heavily on how this problem is tackled. The major sticking point is layoffs. If large companies curtail operations and trim workers, their smaller partners also suffer enormous fallout. An estimate shows that at least 20,000 people will be laid off in restructuring of the shipbuilding industry alone. In fact, the MPK hinted at focusing on layoffs in future negotiations with the government, saying that restructuring would be meaningless unless it went with relief measures for the jobless. It might be natural for politicians to take note of voters' unemployment woes. But if the politicians act too excessively, restructuring will go nowhere. We vividly remember that the delayed restructuring of Kia Motors was partly blamed for the currency crisis in the late 1990s. Restructuring will soon spread to steel, construction and other troubled industries. Against this backdrop, government-led efforts will end in failure if subsidizing the corporate sector is politicized. This is why the ruling and opposition parties should hurry to agree on the principles of structural reform but refrain from applying political logic to the restructuring. The principles must include holding business owners accountable for management failures and offering state aid selectively to companies that agree to share the pain. By Lee Min-hyung Microsoft is facing a tough challenge in its machine learning business, failing to draw as much attention as its counterparts, including Google and IBM. This comes as machine learning, a kind of artificial intelligence (AI), has become a buzzword after the recent go matches between the Google-developed AI system AlphaGo and human go champion Lee Se-dol. IBM, which is also dubbed an AI forerunner with its supercomputer Watson, has been regarded as a strong player in machine learning, due to its firm foothold in healthcare and finance. The world's dominant mainframe computer manufacturer recently said Watson started learning the Korean language in its bid to boost its presence in wider sectors in Korea including the banking system, insurance and other IT-related finance fields. Microsoft is making belated efforts to draw the spotlight away from Google and IBM, but has failed to present any significant sensation in the Korean market. Last week, Microsoft Korea hosted a seminar to introduce its machine learning strategy with Azure Machine Learning for its local clients. The company said that its Azure system has allowed not just conglomerates, but small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to better manage their manufacturing systems. The local subsidiary of the U.S.-based software giant remains firm about its machine learning drive, saying it doesn't plan to hype its business-to-business (B2B) AI initiative to gain more attention from the public. "We are focusing on helping our clients generate more profits by using our Azure machine learning system," said a Microsoft Korea official. "It is true that AlphaGo or Watson helped raise more awareness of machine learning. But at the moment, we have no plans to hold or introduce any eye-catching events targeting the general public." The official added that the company won't proceed with active marketing gimmicks, though the company has a relatively lower profile than its machine learning rivals. Chinese handset maker plans to unveil own APUs By Kim Yoo-chul Xiaomi, one of China's rising smartphone titans, plans to steal the limelight not in smartphones but in the mobile application processor (APU) chip business by developing its own APUs for use in budget smartphones. "Xiaomi plans to release its in-house Rifle-dubbed mobile APUs at a company event, which has been set to take place May," an official at Xiaomi's component partner said, Monday. The Xiaomi APUs will be manufactured using a standard core license technology from ARM, a British-based intellectual property firm, the official added. Unlike memory chips, which are being used to read and write data inside computing devices, APU chips are important as they are considered the "brain" powering computing devices, making them more profitable than conventional memory chips. Further specifications about the upcoming Xiaomi APUs will be revealed later in an official announcement, the official said. Such moves by the rising Chinese smartphone producer come as the smartphone industry landscape evolves, refocusing on budget handsets but with improved hardware and software. This means, according to stock market analysts covering the mobile industry, that demand for affordable APUs will further rise and remain solid over the coming years. But simultaneously, the release of Xiaomi APUs could pose a threat to Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics, as they are counting on the growing APU market in China, the world's single biggest smartphone market. "As a new order has prevailed in the smartphone market, Xiaomi plans to take on Qualcomm and Samsung in mobile processor chips. Xiaomi's attempts to diversify its revenue channels beyond handsets will burden Qualcomm, greatly, and I think the situation will be different for Samsung," said a local fund manager who invested "millions of dollars" in Samsung Group's technology affiliates. The Xiaomi APUs are expected to be added to its smartphone, tablet and TV lineup as part of its strategy to cut the firm's reliance on Qualcomm, Samsung and Taiwan's MediaTek. Xiaomi's plan to join the APU industry added the number of smartphone manufacturers running their own APUs to five out of the "top six" smartphone leaders. Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest smartphone firm in market share in the first quarter of this year, has been fabricating its Exynos-branded APUs, followed by Apple with its A-series. The world's no.3 phone producer Huawei Technologies operates its Kirin-branded APUs and the world's no.6 LG Electronics also plans to unveil its own APUs. The officials said Qualcomm's recent agreement to cut the amount of royalties that it annually collects from Chinese handset manufacturers further motivated Xiaomi to accelerate their efforts to cut costs in APU sourcing with its own processor chips. Qualcomm sells more smartphone chips than any other manufacturer, but earns the majority of its profits from patent royalties paid by handset makers that use its chips. Beijing has imposed heavy restrictions on the San Diego-based mobile chipset titan. "It's tough to cut Qualcomm reliance, immediately, given Qualcomm's longtime leadership in the processor chip market," the official said. "However, Qualcomm's leadership in processors will be challenged especially in the budget handset business, resulting in Qualcomm feeling more pressure to cut its royalty rates to keep its licensing business running." Naver CEO Kim Sang-hun speaks during a press conference in Yeoksam-dong, southern Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of Naver By Yoon Sung-won Naver said Monday it will expand its platform business to help small businesses and content creators seeking sustainability and global expansion. The company said it has begun a project called "Flower" through which it will integrate its support for small businesses and content creators that it had been providing separately. "Most domestic small businesses and content creators are using Naver's platform," Naver CEO Kim Sang-hun said during a meeting with reporters in Seoul, Monday. "We believe that Naver's role is to help them achieve greater success." Kim stressed that the combined successes of smaller businesses will revitalize the Korean economy. "We will work to bring back the vitality of our economy with the fountain effect of numerous successes by small businesses, not with the trickle-down effect of a large conglomerate," he said. As the nation's largest web portal, Naver attracts more than 26 million visitors who enter over 300 million search queries and stream 18 million videos every day. As a business and content platform, it has 1.6 million local businesses, more than 400 professional webcomic authors, 150 web novel writers, 10,000 illustrators and 3,300 indie musicians. By providing more support for small businesses, the company said it aims to attract more than 10,000 new small businesses to its platform every year and is optimistic that over 1,500 of them will earn more than 100 million won each in annual sales. For small businesses, Naver said it will help them deal with complicated processes in the early stages, aiming at vitalizing startups. To this end, the company said it will encourage startups to share their business knowhow, provide proxy services for payment, delivery and other technological issues and boost their business exposure through advertising on the web portal. For content creators, it will help them work in a sustainable environment and ultimately encourage them to go global as a way to motivate their creativity. To do so, Naver will expand the application of its illustration content platform "Grafolio" to include not only illustrations but also photography, design, art and background music. It will also hold original content contest exhibitions to discover talented artists doing webcomics, illustrations and novels. More importantly, the company said it will diversify the income structure of content creators by helping them connect with investors through crowdfunding and by connecting them to digital content marketplaces. Once the content creators prove successful here, the company pledged to help them make it on the global stage through marketing support. "Though we are investing in our business, we believe it is not enough," Kim said. "Supporting small businesses and content creators will be a part of our efforts for balance and for society. These efforts will be the basis of our businesses that we will run from now on." Samsung SDI models promote the company's electric vehicle batteries during the Auto China 2016 expo in Beijing, Monday. / Courtesy of Samsung SDI By Yoon Sung-won Samsung SDI said Monday it has showcased diverse electric vehicle (EV) batteries at the ongoing Auto China 2016 in Beijing. The battery manufacturing affiliate of Samsung Group said it will boost its presence in the world's single largest EV market. "China is the hub for world's largest EV market," Samsung SDI CEO Cho Nam-seong said in a statement. "Samsung SDI will take a leading role in the advancement of China's EV market by providing tailor-made batteries to our client carmakers and establishing a local one-stop manufacturing system in China." Auto China 2016 is the third international motor show held in the country since 2014. According to the market research division of HSBC, about 330,000 EVs were sold in China last year, up over 240 percent from the previous year. China's share of global EV sales reached 47 percent last year, up from 2014's 27 percent. Samsung SDI said it has exhibited diverse high-tech batteries including rapid-charge cells, standardized modules and cylindrical cells. The company said the new products it has showcased have anti-overcharge systems, advanced insulation structure and anti-overheating temperature control technology. Samsung SDI said its quick charge batteries do not suffer capacity degradation even after repeated rapid charges. In particular, the company said it has reduced the defect rate in small-sized batteries for IT devices by improving the manufacturing process and quality control using the Manufacturing Execution System that it established by benchmarking Samsung Electronics' semiconductor production technology. KT Corp., South Korea's second-largest mobile carrier, has simultaneously broadcast a K-pop concert in real-time at home and overseas on its IPTV service, a move to secure a new source of profit with the rise of K-pop, the company revealed Monday. KT's latest live broadcast of K-pop concerts was on Friday, when it aired its first exclusive live concert of the K-pop girl group Stellar on its IPTV operation, Olleh TV. The real-time broadcast was made available in several Asian countries, including South Korea, China, Taiwan and Indonesia, via submarine cable, in partnership with Cantonese information technology giant Pacific Century CyberWorks. PCCW is the largest information and communication group and the holding company of HKT Group Holdings Limited. The service flaunted a considerably short time of latency, allowing only three to five seconds of time difference between the actual concert and the live broadcast. No recording problems were reported during the two-hour concert. The Stellar concert wasn't the first K-pop concert to be simultaneously aired on Olleh TV and offshore. In December 2015, the company broadcast the real-time concert of K-pop boy band BTOB, raking in multiple tens of millions of won in profit. In addition to the overseas live broadcasts, KT is preparing a 360-degree virtual reality service for overseas viewers. The VR service will present three hit songs of Stellar: "Vibrato," "Sting" and "Marionette," to Olleh TV customers as soon as the South Korean mobile carrier completes editing procedures. KT plans to continue providing K-pop concerts on a real-time basis simultaneously here and overseas, calling the service a way to differentiate its service from those of its rivals. The mobile operator has attempted to bring several K-pop managements and foreign tech firms to the negotiation table. "Recently, China's Tencent bought the rights to broadcast K-pop idol concerts in China for 500 million won (US$434,782) and earned 5 billion won in profit," a market observer said, pointing to the emergence of "a whole new market." (Yonhap) Hong Kong fans of Sandara Park need not be jealous -- they should see their favorite idol very soon. Dara revealed she is heading to the special administrative region next week after spending the past few days in Malaysia and Singapore. The Hong Kong visit is presumably part of her ongoing promotion blitz across Asia for the YG cosmetic brand Moonshot for which Dara is an ambassador. "Bye Singapore and see you next week Blackjack Hong Kong!!!" said Dara in an Instagram post on April 24, addressing fans of her group 2NE1, which will be continuing on as a trio with the announced departure of youngest member Minzy. Since April 21, the baby-faced beauty has been appearing in mall events to help promote the Moonshot brand exclusively sold in Sephora stores in Malaysia and Singapore. A video posted by Sandara Park (@daraxxi) on Apr 22, 2016 at 9:47am PDT Videos showed her waving and smiling to fans in a packed mall appearance event in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, as well as handing out cosmetic products at public event in Singapore. She also spoke in interviews and dazzled starstruck fans with her flawless skin as expected of a face of a beauty brand. She also gave a shot out to local fans that trooped to the events in both countries. "Thank you so much for your love & support. Til next time..." she said in another Instagram post. --- Mickey is a writer and digital content creator based in Manila. He is a co-founder of ZAVI App. He has also been bitten by the K-Pop fashion bug - follow him on Instagram @mickjami. The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more There was a memorial gathering for Garry Shandling last night at the Wilshire Ebell, attended by 900 or so friends, among them Sara Silverman, Judd Apatow, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Tom Petty, Sen. Al Franken and Conan O'Brien. Amy Wallace, the LA writer who wrote that great personal piece about her friendship with Shandling after he died last month at age 66, was there too and posted about it for GQ. Sample: Over and over, Shandling was described as a selfless teacher. Apatow, who organized the evening with a financial assist from HBO (which put Sanders on the air), credited the writer-director Adam McKay with observing that despite Shandling's zeitgeist-shaping career, which laid the groundwork for people like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, people were always asking him why he hadn't done another show. (Someone recited a joke he'd written about this: "When I die, God will probably say to me, 'Do you have a show on the air now?'") "He'd reinvented comedy on TV two times, and yet we're always going, 'When's the next time?'" Apatow said, looking out into an audience filled with peoplemany of them not famous in the leastwho Shandling had encouraged and showered with feedback, especially during the last third of his life. "What Adam was saying was in a lot of ways, we all became his third show." The memorial had begun with Jeffrey Tambor, who played sidekick Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show, and Penny Johnson, who played Larry's assistant Beverly Barnes, meeting onstage as if in character. Tambor worried, Hank-like, about whether he would get to speak before or after Shandling's funnier friends and about who was going to inherit Shandling's Emmy (which he won for a Sanders episode). Johnson was reassuring, much like Beverly would have been, and the bit got laughsespecially when Tambor joked that he had Brad Grey waiting outside in his car (and Johnson made it clear the studio chief wasn't welcome). But then, artifice gave way to reality as Tambor broke down. Hugging Johnson, he sobbed of Shandling, "He was irreplaceable." PRESS RELEASE Chinese Train Reconnects French City of Lyon with Mythical Silk Road PARIS, April 23, 2016 (Nouvelle Solidarite)In March 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping, during his visit to France, insisted on visiting Lyon, to see the the Franco-Chinese Institute, founded in 1921. Being the only Chinese university outside the mainland, it is here that some of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, such as Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping started their political activities. Before Xi, other Chinese leaders went to Lyon: Deng Xiaoping in 1975, Jiang Zemin in 1999 and Hu Jintao in 2001. Lyon, already a major trading city in the 16th century, and is again becoming a key hub for the New Silk Road. On April 21, the first Chinese cargo train arrived in Lyon from Wuhan, a 11,300 km trip from Wuhan, nicknamed the "Chinese Chicago," as a transport hub. The train traversed Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus, before arriving in Duisburg, Germany, Europes largest inland port. From there, the train went to Lyon to deliver 41 containers. The operation was closely planned and coordinated among Wuhan Asia-Europe Logistics (WAE); the French National Railway Company (SNCF); and Trans-Eurasia Logistics (TEL) GmbH, a joint venture between Germanys Deutsche Bahn and Russian Railways (RZD). For the Chinese, Lyon "is a key partner in industry and technology." Already 80 Chinese companies and over 30,000 Chinese live and work in the Lyon area. In Wuhan, 100 French firms have production sites; also in Wuhan, the French built a highly protected P4 laboratory to study deadly viruses, a copy of the renowned P4 lab in Lyon. Respecting the train, the French chemical firm Solvay used the convoy to import silica, used to produce tires. Also imported are LED lamps, electronics and Decathlon brand textiles. It will return to Wuhan filled with French wine, cosmetics and food products. Of course, rail cargo transport is twice as fast as by ship and 80% cheaper than by plane. But this is just the beginning. "One-third of all French investment in China is in Wuhan. We hope that this rail link connecting both countries will promote trade exchanges," said a statement from the Mayors Office in Lyon. "This is an existential event in our relations," said Alain Galliano the vice-president the Metropole de Lyon, i.e., greater Lyon, who came to welcome the train, saying, "This is the symbolic reopening of the mythical Silk Road." French Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade, issued a statement, "France Should Not Miss the New Silk Road Train," expressing his support and satisfaction. For him, the trains arrival should be the symbol of an overall economic shift away from financial speculation and back to investments in the real economy which allows humanity to blossom and prosper. PRESS RELEASE Former Sen. Bob Graham: Obama Must Declassify 28 Pages, But How About the 80,000 Documents Respecting Sarasota, Florida? April 24, 2016 (EIRNS)As the firestorm around the 28 pages has raised his authority, former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) took to NBCs "Meet the Press" today to say that the 28 pages must indeed be declassified, but that the U.S. must also focus on the Sarasota, Florida cover-upwhich the LaRouche movement has documented involves the FBI, including Director Robert Muellerand on the growing schism between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Graham told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is: Did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?" Graham reviewed that its implausible that people who couldnt speak English, had never been to the United States before, etc. could carry out the operation without support. "And I think all the evidence points to Saudi Arabia. We know that Saudi Arabia started al-Qaeda." When host Todd pressed, "When you say Saudi Arabia, are you saying the government ... or wealthy individuals?" Graham threw the question back at the host, "This is a very murky line. Saudi Arabia has made it murky by its own legal action." Whenever a U.S. citizen sues a Saudi bank or charity, the Saudi government immediately invokes sovereign immunity, although such institutions are not officially part of the Saudi government. When asked if release of the 28 pages will have a "high level of negative impact" for the Saudis, Graham simply answered, yes. Graham escalated, saying that he hopes the President will do more than declassify the 28 pages: "There are 80,000 documents in a federal courtroom in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, relative to an investigation that took place on a relationship between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19, and two of his henchmen and a prominent Saudi family living in Sarasota." Graham explained that the Saudis are "training the next generation of young terrorists." He outlined a new direction in conclusion: PRESS RELEASE Former New York City Police Commissioner Kerek: Release of 28 Pages Could Topple House of Saud April 24, 2016 (EIRNS)Reflecting the intensified global focus over the 28 pages, Bernie Kerik, who served as New York City Police Commissioner during the time that the 9/11 attack occurred, told "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman April 22 that some members of the 9/11 Commission "strongly believe that theres information in those 28 pages that would give some evidence that Saudi Arabia... [was] culpable." If thats the case, Kerik said, "its just not about the families of the victims of 9/11.... This could have worldwide ramifications and legal issues, lawsuits, countries that would go after Saudi Arabia," he said. "I think theres a good chance that it could topple the House of Saud." Of course it could, Lyndon LaRouche commented today. Kerik continued that Saudi Arabias threat to sell off $750 billion in U.S. Treasuries if the 28 pages were declassified, is "nothing but economic terrorism, because they believe that thats going to cripple our country. We shouldnt cower to it," he said. "I think the American people deserve it," he said. "They need to know, and whoever was responsible should be held accountable." Since Obama is fixated on putting together a phony legacy, Kerek added ironically, "what if [Obama] declassifies [the 28 pages] and the House of Saud really crumbles to some extent? What a legacy he would have." At the same time, Bill Maher, who runs the widely viewed national TV political talk show "Real Time With Bill Maher," stressed April 22 that the United States under Bush attacked the wrong country after 9/11. "Especially ... if we know that it was the Saudis who attacked us, wow, that makes the Iraq war look even worse. Lots of people have always said, We attacked the wrong country. But now its pretty out there. We definitely attacked the wrong country, and there was an actual right country." That "right country" should be the British-Saudi monarchy. The threat to free speech in the nation of Bangladesh was highlighted by two recent slayings of journalists there, the latest in a long line of murders targeting secular writers in the South Asian country. Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of Roopbaan, Bangladeshs only LGBT magazine, and a U.S. Embassy worker, was hacked to death Monday in a Dhaka apartment, the Dhaka Tribune reports. U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Marcia Bernicat has urged the government in the strongest terms to apprehend the assailants. Mannans friend Tanay Mojumdar was also killed in the attack, which was allegedly conducted by five or six young men disguised as couriers. According to the report, Mannans mother and a domestic aide were present at the time of the attack. A security guard who went to investigate when he heard shouting was also injured. Advertisement The attack on Mannan took place two days after the killing of Rezaul Karim Siddique, an English professor at Rajshahi University, who was slain by machete-wielding assailants on his way to work. These are only the latest in a recent string of killings of writers and journalists in Bangladesh. In a searing editorial Monday, the Dhaka Tribune called on authorities to work harder to arrest and prosecute the killers, who frequently attack in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. Not only has the government failed to stop such killings or bring the perpetrators to justice, it has appeased their supporters by pointing fingers at victims and feeding the mind-set that people need to watch what they say and write, or suffer the consequences, the newspaper wrote, lamenting the closing down of free speech. In New Dehli, expatriate Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen explained, Atheist bloggers are not around, all left the country, or hiding. So Islamists [are] killing secular progressive people. The terrorist group Islamic State claimed it was responsible for Siddiques slaying, and in a statement accused the literary magazine editor of calling to atheism. The Bangladeshi government denied this, saying that Islamic State has no presence in Bangladesh. It is clear that free speech in Bangladesh is in peril. The murders of Mannan and Siddique follow several other killings of writers and bloggers who have been accused of atheism by militant Islamic groups. Earlier this month, law student Nazimuddin Samad was killed in Dhaka; the 28-year-old often criticized religious extremists online. And four other bloggers known for their secular views have been hacked to death in Bangladesh from 2013 to 2015. The Dhaka Tribune criticizes the government for not protecting secular writers and intellectuals from terrorist violence. What matters is that such fanatics are targeting individuals in Bangladesh to be slaughtered in public in cold blood. And they are acting with impunity, the editors wrote. The government must catch the killers and fulfill its duty to protect all citizens. Bangladesh is a constituional republic, but it has been criticized for having a state religion, Islam, and laws that have been used to crack down on citizens with dissenting viewpoints. Amnesty International has taken notice of the recent killings in the country. The situation in Bangladesh is becoming increasingly dangerous for those brave enough to speak their own minds. The latest heinous criminal attacks are a deliberate assault against freedom of expression in the country, said Abbas Faiz, the organizations Bangladesh researcher. Given the horrific pattern of violence, we have reason to believe many other lives are now at risk, Faiz added. The cycle of violence and impunity must stop here. The right to freedom of expression, of all people, must be respected, protected and fulfilled. PEN America has called for the U.S. State Department to assist writers at risk in Bangladesh. For more than a year, Bangladesh has been ravaged by a spate of bloody attacks on bloggers and other writers who espouse secular viewpoints, Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of Free Expression Programs, said after the death of Samad earlier this month. We urge the Bangladeshi police and other authorities to do everything in their power to investigate and prosecute this vicious attack on free speech and thought, and halt this terrible pattern of murders. We also reiterate our demand for the United States and other countries that are able to provide refuge to shelter those writers who are still at grave risk before more lives are lost. This killing is a cruel illustration of the costs of inaction. No arrests have been made yet in the murder of Mannan, the LGBT magazine editor. His slaying was condemned by Marcia Bernicat, the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh. I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi, she said, according to the Guardian. We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders. President Obama challenged European nations on Monday to resist the forces that would divide their increasingly fragile union, calling their cooperation with one another and the U.S. essential to combating a new wave of economic and security trials. Speaking in Germany on the final day of a three-nation international trip, Obama revived a theme he first expounded on when he visited this country as a candidate eight years ago and spoke of a more collaborative approach to the worlds challenges that would rely on strong European partners. His vision has helped navigate the global economic collapse, forge an international climate agreement and launch a diplomatic approach toward curbing Irans nuclear ambitions, Obama said. None of those things could have happened if I, if the United States, did not have a partnership with a strong and united Europe, he argued. Advertisement But in the wake of the recent attacks on European capitals by Islamic State, the continued instability of the Middle East that resulted in a refugee crisis that has hit Europe hardest and continued economic insecurity for many, Obama acknowledged a tendency to withdraw that was increasingly common on both sides of the Atlantic. Such detachment could only offer false comfort, Obama warned. This is a defining moment. And what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe, Obama said. If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress thats been made over the last several decades, then we cant expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue. Obamas attempt to buck up his international allies underscores the degree to which his foreign policy orthodoxy has been tested near the end of his presidency. In his speech in Berlin eight years ago, he held up the citys 20th century history as a case study for the virtue of multilateral action that he intended to pursue as president. People of the world, look at Berlin, he said, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> In that speech he made two goals on which he can claim progress: working to ensure Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions and to come together to save this planet. But a review of the speech eight years later also points to his shortcomings. He summoned the world to commit anew to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda and rebuild Afghanistan, fight religious extremism and expand trade, challenges that still remain. Aides said that in writing the Hanover address, they intended to draw a direct line from his 2008 speech to today, arguing that the nature of current challenges only further call for a multilateral approach. Its a dangerous world, and so there are always going to be challenges, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters, mentioning terrorism, migration and Russias continued disruptive behavior. But the approaches that worked in the last seven years are the approaches that need to be applied to those issues. On Monday, Obama announced the U.S. would send another 250 military personnel to Syria to assist in fighting against Islamic State, days after a similar announcement with regard to Iraq. Obama said Europe, too, would need to bear its share of the burden. After his speech, Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi for a fresh assessment of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State, the war in Syria and the refugee crisis that it has spurred. Over his two days in Germany, in particular, Obama has praised Merkels handling of the refugee crisis repeatedly, partly in an effort to help buttress her domestic political standing. Little new emerged from the meeting before Obama sped to Air Force One to return to Washington, after a six-day journey that began in Saudi Arabia. Tonight, Im going to sleep in my own bed, Obama was heard telling his counterparts as the meeting began. To watch Obama over the week since was to see a president all too aware of his waning days in office, at times nostalgic, at times wistful about the course hes taken. Speaking to young Londoners this weekend, he reflected on what he said were his proudest accomplishments expanding the health safety net while staving off a global collapse chief among them while insisting it was far too early to identify what his legacy was. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Mondays speech appeared to be directed more at those fellow European leaders from whom Obama seeks continued cooperation, and historians Obama will ultimately rely on for validation of his legacy, than at a U.S. audience. His morning address to an audience of several hundred on the grounds of a major international trade show came in the middle of the night back in the U.S. Beyond connections to his 2008 Berlin address, aides noted that Obamas itinerary on this trip mirrored the first major foreign trip of his presidency, which included a meeting with Queen Elizabeth in London, as this trip did, and his first NATO summit in Germany. Obama looked ahead to the next NATO summit this summer in Poland, where, he said, he will insist that all of us need to meet our responsibilities, united, together. As todays diffuse threats evolve, our alliance has to evolve, he said. We have to both make sure that NATO carries out its traditional mission, but also to meet the threats of NATOs southern flank. As the line showed, there were some messages for Americans in the speech, too. His foreign policy view stands as a contrast with leading Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who has argued the U.S. is overextended abroad, paying too high a price in the search for global stability at a time when Americans face steep challenges of their own. We reject the notion of America pulling back, Rhodes said. Our point has always been that focusing American strength through multilateral action both reduces the burden on the United States and leads to more effective and sustainable outcomes. Twitter: @mikememoli ALSO: President Obama and German leader Angela Merkel share a deep bond, aides say The presidential election has Obama explaining it to concerned foreign leaders At U.N., 175 nations sign landmark accord on global warming. We are in a race against time UPDATES: 10:16 a.m.: This story was updated with Obamas meeting with European leaders. 6:33 a.m.: This story was updated with comments from Obamas speech. This story was originally published at 3 a.m. The last time Apple Inc. announced a quarterly sales decline, Steve Jobs was celebrating the laptop going mainstream. Thirteen years later, falling interest in the iPhone is expected to bring Apples first year-over-year revenue drop since then when it reports earnings Tuesday. Estimates say Apple generated $2 in earnings per share and $52 billion in revenue during the first quarter, which would mark a 10% decline from a year earlier, according to a survey of 47 analysts by research firm FactSet. Apple has become so big delivering the largest profits ever among the worlds publicly traded companies that the huge revenue bumps of recent years have become difficult to replicate. Those spikes were largely attributed to the runaway success of the iPhone, which accounts for about two-thirds of Apples sales and profit. Advertisement The company says there are still people out there who want and can afford new $700 iPhones. But its outlook has been met with an outpouring of skepticism. For instance, Deutsche Bank analyst Sherri Scribner is concerned that Apple wont be able to get price-conscious buyers in India and China to take up the iPhone fast enough to make up for the slowing number of Americans and Western Europeans buying new iPhones. A month ago, Apple began selling the iPhone SE for as low as $400 to widen its potential customer base. But the device, smaller than last years new iPhone but still robust feature-wise, remains out of the price range for many. More than 70% of smartphones sold in China cost less than $300. In India, 80% are below $150. Neither statistic augurs well for Apple, whose smartphones sell at a huge premium. Analysts on average expect Apple to sell 217 million iPhones in the 12-month period that ends Sept. 30. That would mark a 6% decline from last year in line with the 7% drop predicted across the smartphone industry in 2016. Annual smartphone sales growth has never before dipped into the single digits, research firm Gartner said. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook forecast in January an iPhone sales decline for the quarter, though he refused to offer predictions for the rest of the year. Some experts are now worried that Cook will say Tuesday that sales for the April-through-June quarter will be more underwhelming than expected. The evidence includes reports that Apples suppliers have stuck to reduced production cycles, suggesting that theres no big sales uptick in sight. This overall market is slowing, Ryan Reith, IDCs mobility research director, said of smartphones. Apple has had ridiculous growth where they have outpaced the market and that has to change at some point. Apples top rival among smartphone brands fared relatively better in the first quarter than it did. Samsung Electronics Co. previewed first-quarter earnings last week, saying they would top those of last year by about 10%, with revenue likely to rise about 4%. But Samsung is coming off a bad year. Production miscues and unpopular design changes undercut sales of the Galaxy S6, which debuted during last years second quarter. By contrast, the Galaxy S7 went on sale in mid-March, pulling the initial sales rush into the companys first-quarter results. The concerns about Apple are already affecting its stock. Shares endured a 3% hit last week, but investors are mostly holding on even though the company hasnt outlined when and how it can return to robust growth. With valuation currently reflecting long-term growth challenges we view shares as fairly valued and maintain our hold, Scribner told clients last week. Investors who continued to back Apple after the last quarterly sales dip 1% in April 2003 did well. Shares surged from less than $2 to more than $100 by 2014, giving Apple the crown of the worlds most valuable company by market capitalization. The earnings announcement, originally scheduled for Monday, moved to Tuesday so that Apple employees could attend a memorial service for Bill Campbell. The former Apple marketing executive and board member died a week ago at 75. paresh.dave@latimes.com Donald Trump has agreed to appear on Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kellys prime time broadcast special on May 17. It will be Kellys first sit down with the front runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination since the real estate billionaire clashed with her at the first GOP primary debate. It has been nearly a year since she interviewed Trump, who has been a frequent guest on other Fox News Channel programs. Its not that Kelly hasnt tried. But Trump declared war on FNCs prime time star after the Republican primary debate on Aug. 6. During that event, Kelly pressed Trump on his history of making derogatory comments about women. Advertisement The candidate responded angrily in interviews he gave afterward and attacked Kelly on Twitter with harsh remarks about her journalistic abilities. While he has continued to appear on other Fox News programs, he skipped The Kelly File and the second GOP debate that aired on the channel before the Iowa caucuses. He did appear at a third Fox News debate, with Kelly as one of the moderators, held March 3 in Detroit. In a statement, Fox News said Kellys interview will explore how events unfolded with Trump after the August debate as one of the most prominent voices covering the 2016 presidential campaign of the frontrunner. She will also examine Trumps successful campaign for the White House to date and his role in one of the most historic presidential runs in modern times. " Trumps campaign has vowed the candidate will behave in a more presidential manner as he gets closer to clinching the nomination. Behaving respectfully in a one-on-one interview with an anchor he deemed as his nemesis would certainly help on that front. Kelly met with the candidate at his office in Trump Tower in Manhattan on April 13 to personally request the interview. Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, who is trying to keep Kelly from leaving his channel after her contract expires in 2017, reached out to Trump on her behalf as well. Kelly, who anchors The Kelly File weeknights on Fox News, has become a breakout star on the cable news channel. The prime time special on Foxs broadcasting network is aimed at widening her exposure beyond the FNC audience. Twitter: @SteveBattaglio ALSO Donald Trump calls Cruz-Kasich deal corrupt Anaheim City Council to consider resolution denouncing Donald Trump After wasting millions of dollars, California GOP donors close their checkbooks to presidential candidates Key federal regulators have signaled support for Charter Communications $71-billion-plus acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, subject to several conditions aimed at spurring competition among Internet service providers and increasing the number of homes with broadband Internet connections. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday that he would vote in favor of the deal, which is expected to dramatically reshape the pay-TV and Internet-service market in the U.S. In addition, Charter would become the largest Internet and cable TV provider in Southern California, with more than 2 million customer homes. The U.S. Justice Department, which separately reviewed the transaction to make sure that it did not violate antitrust laws, also said it would allow the deal to move forward. Justice Department officials proposed a settlement with Charter that would restrict the Stamford, Conn., cable company from trying to thwart the ability of online video distributors, such as Hulu or Netflix, to obtain video content from TV programmers. Advertisement Historically, Charters core business has been providing bundles of TV channels. That model faces pressure from online streaming services that are attracting millions of customers with their low-cost subscriptions. But providing Internet service has increasingly become a more lucrative line for Charter and other cable companies. Federal regulators tailored several of the conditions to address Charters rising Internet clout requiring Charter to expand broadband service in areas with spotty service, for instance, and to sign up poor families who cannot afford Internet service. Charter would be required to provide low-cost Internet service to at least 525,000 low-income homes. Charter also would have to provide 1 million new Internet connections in areas where other high-speed operators deliver service in an effort to encourage more competition. Some critics said the deal, which accelerates the consolidation of media, still has problems. Theres nothing about this massive merger that serves the public interest, Craig Aaron, president of the nonprofit group Free Press, said in a statement. Theres nothing about it that helps make the market for cable-TV and Internet services more affordable and competitive for Americans. Four other FCC commissioners now must sign off. Their approval could come as early as this week. The FCC, in conjunction with the Justice Department, tailored several conditions to focus on eliminating barriers to video streaming. For example, Charter would not be permitted to charge usage-based prices or impose data caps on its customers. The FCC also would prohibit Charter from charging interconnection fees, including to online video providers such as Netflix, which deliver large volumes of Internet traffic to broadband customers. Wheeler said the conditions would last seven years, although Charter could apply to have them relaxed after five years. The Justice Departments proposed settlement did not address the lack of distribution for the Los Angeles Dodgers channel, SportsNet LA, or whether the government would require Charter to increase the availability of the channel in Southern California. The union of Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks would create the second-largest cable TV company and Internet service provider, and the third-largest pay TV provider, in the nation, with more than 23 million customers in 41 states. Only Comcast Corp. will have more cable customers. The conditions that will be imposed ensure Charters current consumer-friendly and pro-broadband businesses practices will be maintained by new Charter, Charter said in a statement. Charter has structured a cash-and-stock deal, currently valued at about $60 billion, to buy Time Warner Cable. Acquiring the privately held Bright House will cost an additional $11 billion. When the deal is completed, Charter will have roughly $60 billion in debt on its books, including about $21 billion in existing Time Warner Cable debt. In addition to Los Angeles and San Diego, the company will become the leading cable provider in New York; Dallas; Tampa, Fla.; Indianapolis; Detroit; and Bakersfield. George Slover, senior policy counsel for the nonprofit Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine, said that while the proposed conditions were promising, he still worries about how Charter will use its clout. Since Day One, weve been very skeptical of this deal and the power it could give one company to become a cable and broadband giant, Slover said. History has shown us how powerful companies look for every angle to avoid or weaken the conditions imposed on their mergers, so the government is going to have to back up these tough conditions with tough enforcement. Aaron, of Free Press, noted that Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Rob Marcus, who has been in the job a little more than two years, will walk away with a $100-million golden parachute according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Charter still must secure the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission. That vote scheduled for May 12 will mark the final stop in Charters long journey to secure approvals from various state regulators for the merger that it unveiled 11 months ago. This month, a judge in San Francisco reviewing the matter for the PUC recommended approval of the deal. However, he attached several conditions designed to expand the number of families who receive high-speed Internet service in their homes. Pay-TV operators are bulking up to better withstand shifting consumer behavior. Last summer, AT&T acquired DirecTV, based in El Segundo, in a $49-billion merger that catapulted the phone giant into becoming the nations largest pay-TV provider, with 26 million customers. Frontier Communications completed its $10.5-billion purchase of Verizons wire line, broadband Internet and FiOS TV businesses in California, Texas and Florida and took over Verizons operations on April 1. That has led to many consumer complaints about dropped service and other problems. The Charter-Time Warner Cable-Bright House deal was announced about four weeks after Comcast Corp.'s ambitious bid for Time Warner Cable collapsed under government scrutiny. Federal regulators signaled that they would block the Comcast-Time Warner Cable combination because they did not want one company to control so many broadband Internet connections. Charter will dramatically expand its geographic service area and has said it will achieve $800 million in synergies annually from the deal. Los Angeles is viewed as an important market, which Charter will look to dominate by consolidating its operations with the much larger Time Warner Cable. meg.james@latimes.com Twitter: @MegJamesLAT On Saturday, Beyonce's "Lemonade" aired on HBO, followed by the release of her new album of the same name. The film kicked off with the words "You can taste the dishonesty / Its all over your breath as you pass it off so cavalier" and continued with what appears to be a breakup-to-makeup journey through her life with Jay Z in recent years. The hot quote: "He better call Becky with the good hair," the kicker on the track "Sorry," about an apology from an unfaithful lover. As speculation about Becky's identity went viral, fashion designer Rachel Roy posted a smiling picture of herself Instagram, saying, "Good hair dont care, but we will take good lighting, for selfies, or self truths, always. Live in the light #nodramaqueens." Oh no she didn't? Oh yes, she did. REVIEW: Fierce Beyonce puts Jay Z on notice, turns bitterness into 'Lemonade' After poking the Beyhive with the Instagram post, she retreated a bit Sunday, tweeting that bullying of any kind shouldn't be tolerated. Roy's Instagram is now private, and her Facebook page is peppered with rude comments from Beyonce fans. https://twitter.com/Rachel_Roy/status/724279585613963265 A source told Page Six that Roy "loves the press" and may have intentionally inserted herself into the drama, but on Monday morning the fashionista dropped out of an event in New York City set for that night, citing a "personal emergency." Rachel Roy photographed at home in March 2016. (Jay J. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) (Test) So who is Rachel Roy, whom many now believe to be Queen B's "Becky"? The basics: Roy, 42, is a fashion designer, stylist and author with a clothing line sold at Macy's. She's of Indian and Dutch descent, was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist in California, went to Columbia Union College in Maryland and then moved to New York City. Roy was married to Damon "Dame" Dash and as of last year had sole custody of their two daughters and a restraining order against the girls' father. Ava and Tallulah were born in 1999 and 2008, respectively. How is she tied to Bey and Jay Z? After college, Roy interned at Rocawear, the clothing company created in 1999 by Dash and Shawn "Jay Z" Carter. She would climb through the ranks at the company to become creative director of the women's and children's divisions. In the '90s, the two men and Kareem "Biggs" Burke had founded Roc-A-Fella Records as a label distributed by Def Jam Recordings. In 2004, the three sold their 50% stake in Roc-A-Fella to Def Jam, which then owned the label outright. Jay became president and chief exec of Def Jam and Dame and Biggs were booted. Rachel and Dame got married around the time Jay Z and his former partners split up; the couple then divorced in 2009. Roy attended the 2012 Met Gala with Solange Knowles, Beyonce's sister. How is she connected to the notorious elevator fight? Solange reportedly yelled at Rachel at a 2014 Met Gala after-party at the Standard hotel, home of the infamous elevator where, later that night, a blowout between Solange and Jay Z was caught on security video. That'd be the fight where Solange lashed out physically at her brother-in-law while sister looked on. Beyonce stepped between the two only after her sister, restrained by a bodyguard, attempted to kick her husband. Reports surfaced that Solange's confrontation with Roy prompted her elevator brawl with Jay Z. Rachel Roy films a promo in West Hollywood in 2011. (Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) (Test) "As a result of the public release of the elevator security footage from Monday, May 5th, there has been a great deal of speculation about what triggered the unfortunate incident," Jay, Bey and Solange said in a statement at the time. "But the most important thing is that our family has worked through it. "Jay and Solange each assume their share of responsibility for what has occurred. They both acknowledge their role in this private matter that has played out in the public. They both have apologized to each other and we have moved forward as a united family." No mention of Roy in that statement, of course. The spat at the after-party was revealed while the world was obsessing over the elevator video. What's the Kardashian angle? Because there's always a Kardashian angle: Rachel and Kim are good friends, and Kris Jenner has contributed on Roy's website. Kanye West was an early artist with Roc-A-Fella, and Roy was a guest at Kimye's wedding. So, what are the rumors? In a nutshell: She allegedly had an affair with Jay Z. She's allegedly the reason the Knowles-Carters threw down in 2014. By mid-2014, rumors that Jay and Bey were getting divorced were swirling, on top of the notion that their marriage has been a sort of business arrangement. Roy's allegedly Beyonce's "Becky with the good hair" who cheated with her man. And for now, you probably can't follow her on Instagram. ALSO: Fierce Beyonce puts Jay Z on final notice, then turns bitterness into 'Lemonade' Beyonce shakes things up again with the release of her album 'Lemonade' on Tidal Photos: Beyonce on the Met Gala red carpet, 2008-2015 Rachel Roy redesigns her life with a new plus-size fashion line and book Julie Plec, the queen of CW with series such as The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, has a whole new kind of villain at the center of a series: a virus. Containment, Plecs third series with the network, is based on the Belgian series Cordon. The CW version of the outbreak-themed drama is set in Atlanta and chronicles an epidemic that has overtaken a city, with its citizens under quarantine. The 13-episode series, which premiered last week, is being billed as a limited series, but could return if successful. It airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Advertisement ------------ For the record, 6:45 p.m. April 25: An earlier version of this post said that the series would air Mondays. It will air Tuesdays. ------------ Show Tracker spoke to Plec about venturing outside the supernatural to focus on real-life horror and adapting the series for a U.S. audience. You were obsessed with the Belgian series, right? What had you hooked? Oh, yeah. Its wonderful. Ten episodes. And what they did is they shot them all at once like one big, long movie. So they were able to shut down a complete section of the city to do their quarantine scenes and put shipping containers all over the city. It was so amazing what they were able to do. Its a terrific series. It had all the great things about television that I love. Great inherent suspense and tension. It had really well-realized and fascinating personal and romantic relationships. It had my favorite subject matter: virus, contagion, and fear of the end of the world. And it delivered on everything. The mystery delivered on itself, the relationships delivered, the story had a nice fluidity. It was just a really exceptionally well-executed series. What are the challenges in not letting your affinity for the series sideline you as you adapt it for the U.S.? I had to approach it with a very clear point of view of what I was trying to achieve because I had enjoyed the series so much, I wanted to expand on it and I wanted to go deeper in some ways. And obviously the translation of Antwerp to Atlanta was going to involve some shifts, just sociologically speaking. But I knew I didnt want to do a straight trade. Thats not how I want to write. I dont want to just take somebodys material and Americanize it. I wanted to honor the show and celebrate the show as much as I possibly could and take all the great stuff that they had done without just re-creating it word for word. And, so, it was fun. When writers [Matt] Corman and [Chris] Ord sat down in the first week of putting the series together, we laid out the tent poles of what we knew we wanted to accomplish from the Belgian series. We basically filled in all the blanks in between. It was sort of like having a great road map for the series, but still having all the room for discovery. Is there some freedom in that the show doesnt really have a following over here and so there is less nitpicking on how close an adaptation it is? Yeah, I feel like the show didnt have a global audience. It was very well-received in its own country. And I do know that it aired in the U.K. Im not sure how big the international audience was. Its not even available in the United StatesI searched for it. So, the good news is, the American audience has really no context for it at all. And I think thats a big decision for a writer. What was that show Fox did? Gracepoint? Yeah. I had never watched Broadchurch, but the one thing I remember reading by the critics is why did they bother because I guess they made the series shot-for-shot. Im sure a lot of people would love that. Its just not a job I would want to do. The pressure would be terrible. And, also, it limits your creativity. And this is quite the departure, creatively, for you. Here we have a virus serving as the monster-like figure. Yeah, thats how I pitch it when I talk about it. It wasnt a difficult shift at all because having done so much work over the years dealing with the tension of the monster hiding behind the bed, this was exactly the same kind of show. Its just that he monster is a virus. I loved it because I didnt need to come up with any witch spells to either create an obstacle or a solution. The freedom from witchy shenanigans is the greatest, most beautiful, spiritually open and wonderful freedom in the world. The viewers get a flashback early on. Talk about how long before we catch up to that and how was it like in the writers room deciding how you would reach that point? Thats a good story because in the Belgian version, that story doesnt exist. And whats interesting about the way I looked at that experience in watching that series was Scene 1 was a refugee being snuck into the country and us seeing that they were sick and then the series unfolded from there. But you didnt see how it was all going to go down. You had no idea. You were watching every step of the way. So the first draft of the pilot that I wrote opened exactly the same way. But what I did was I took the main title sequence from the Belgian show which had shown those really graphic, horrific images and gave you a sense of Oh, things arent going to go well. I was going to do the same thing: open with this mystery of who is this sick person are they a terrorist? is this bio-terrorism? And then use the title sequence to say this gets really bad. And it was the studio, when they read the script, who said they didnt feel the title sequence was packing the right amount of punch. Can you find a way to set up that tension from the top of the show? And thats how I addressed the note, by actually creating it in a flash-forward, which was great in a lot of ways because it really grabs you right off the top and tells you even as youre meeting these nice, sweet people, this is all going to go to for them very quickly. But it also, stylistically, the exact opposite of the approach of the Belgian series. I remember the executive producer of the Belgian show being a little surprised that we would ruin the pay-off. And I said that what we like sometimes in American television is to know where were going because the journey of how we got there gets so much more context along the way. And so we catch up midpoint? Yeah, theres 13 episodes and Episode 9 catches us up to that sequence. Do you see this as a limited series? How long, in your view, can a show like this last before things get unwieldy? This show is a little bit of a strategy hybridI just made that up. Whereas Ryan Murphy set out with American Horror Story as a clear, seasonal anthology where every year is a new situation, this is moreand I have no idea if its going to workof lets take this story as far as we can take it, as long as we can take it. And when its over, lets solve the problem and end the story and if we still have life left in the story then lets start a new problem. The reason I call it a hybrid is because there are shows like American Horror Story that [have] something new each season, and then there are shows that are deeply serialized that go on and on forever, with no sense of when they are going to end. And this, to me, is like a cross between what 24 does and what Lost did, which is being able to go on for a while, and what American Horror Story does. When this is over, when the story can no longer sustain itself, we can start a new problem. And Im kind of excited about that, but I have no idea if its going to work. Ive got, in my head, five seasons of opportunity and in those five seasons this quarantine ends and a new one begins. So, well see. It does work well as an event. I definitely would like to make more because I think there is more of the story to tell. And I think the concept works well as a franchise concept. Vampire Diaries and The Original are these seasoned shows. How did it feel to work on something new again? Its so fun. I had a lot of fun on thisto the point where it was almost easy. Because Ive been deeply embedded in the world of witchy shenanigans, which comes with its own levels of creative anxiety. I have been deeply embedded in 22-episode seasons, which is incredibly difficult both from a narrative point-of-view and also just the stamina and creative firepower and the will to live. Then to come into a show, which is 13 episodes and seven-day shootssuper fastand no dense supernatural mythology to facilitate and also a really rock solid foundation of story ideas because the original series is so good that I had confidence going in because I knew it would work. Whether people watch it or not is a whole different story. But I thought that the Belgian series worked so efficiently that I just knew it would work. I didnt have any doubts. So much of burn-out in television, and fear, is the concern that you cant be confident about whether its going to work or not so you spend so much time second-guessing yourself that it makes the job even harder. I never second-guessed myself on Containment. I tweet about TV (and other things) here: @villarrealy In his campaigns to win elected office in Los Angeles, Carmen Trutanich billed himself as a fearless crime fighter. To drive home the point, he talked frequently about a murder conviction he won as a young prosecutor against a South L.A. gang member who was sentenced to death for a 1982 killing. Trutanich, who served four years as city attorney, told of how he hadnt wavered in his face-off with Barry Williams, whom he called one of the most notorious and violent gang leaders in Los Angeles. Advertisement But as Trutanich was giving stump speeches, lawyers for Williams were telling a federal judge a very different story about the candidate and the murder case. Serious misconduct by Trutanich, they alleged, had deprived Williams of a fair trial. Im sure as hell not going to my grave and meeting my maker having hid information in a death penalty case. Never happened. Never happened. No. Not me. Carmen Trutanich In a recent sharply worded ruling, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter agreed, concluding that Trutanich had broken two cardinal rules for criminal prosecutors by withholding the identity of a witness and failing to correct false testimony by his key witness. Trutanichs failure at trial, the judge wrote, was deeply troubling. After several years of litigation, Carter threw out Williams murder conviction and death sentence, finding that Trutanichs conduct, along with other errors at trial, significantly undermined the integrity of the guilty verdict. In his ruling, Carter also took a swipe at justices on the California Supreme Court for refusing to review Williams case when it came to them more than 15 years ago and giving similar short shrift to most death penalty reviews. Trutanich, who now works in a private law firm, has staunchly denied misleading the jury or withholding information from Williams attorneys when he prosecuted Williams in 1985 as a member of the hard-core gang unit in the LA County district attorneys office. Im sure as hell not going to my grave and meeting my maker having hid information in a death penalty case, he said in an interview. Never happened. Never happened. No. Not me. The order from Carter is a rare one, joining just a handful of death penalty convictions in California that have been overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977. In that time, more than 850 people have been sentenced to death row. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Mark Silverstein, who represented Williams in the 1990s in the bid to overturn the conviction in state courts, recalled being stunned when he discovered documents that Carter cited as proof of prosecutorial wrongdoing. The outcome of the case may very well have been different, if not for Trutanichs actions, Silverstein said. Williams, 54, is not expected to walk free any time soon, if ever. In a separate trial, Trutanich convicted Williams of murder in another fatal shooting, resulting in a sentence of 34 years to life. Unless the conviction in that case is also reversed, a state parole board and then the governor would need to decide whether to grant Williams parole. A spokeswoman for California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris said the office was reviewing Carters ruling and had not yet decided whether to appeal. L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, meanwhile, could choose to retry Williams, although winning a new conviction would be difficult with most of the witnesses and investigators dead. Carters decision late last month centers on the killing of Jerome Dunn, who was gunned down on a rainy night in March 1982 on a street in South Los Angeles by someone in a passing van. Patricia Lewis, who was a passenger in a car driving nearby, was the only eyewitness to testify. At the trial, Lewis identified Williams as the vans driver and said she saw him, not others in the van, fire at Dunn, Carter wrote. But Lewis lied on the stand about the identity of the person who was driving her, according to a detailed review of the case Carter included in his ruling. Evidence indicated Lewis gave a fake name to protect the driver, Arlean McKay, who was afraid of getting involved, Carter wrote. In faulting Trutanich, Carter pointed to handwritten notes by the prosecutor that Silverstein found in the investigative file compiled by detectives and prosecutors at the time of the slaying. In the notes, Trutanich wrote both McKays name and the fake name Lewis made up, according to Carters ruling. In one note, Trutanich wrote the two names next to each other and put them in quotation marks which the judge said indicated Trutanich knew there were doubts about the womans actual identity. Trutanich acknowledged that he wrote the notes but insisted he never learned the real identity of the woman who drove Lewis. McKays name had surfaced during the investigation, and Trutanich said it was provided to the defense. SIGN UP for the free Essential Politics newsletter >> Im telling you, everything I had, they got. I didnt try to keep anything secret from them, Trutanich said at a hearing in the case last year. But the judge said in his ruling that he reviewed the documents Trutanich turned over to the defense at trial, and they did not include the handwritten notes or any other information indicating McKay drove Lewis. The more egregious error, however, was that Trutanich did not speak up during the trial when Lewis used the fake name, Jean Rivers, the judge wrote. Taken together, Carter ruled, the missteps kept the defense in the dark about the drivers identity and denied them the chance to find her to determine whether her account differed from what Lewis said she saw. Had jurors known that she had lied about who was driving, it might have given less credibility to the rest of her testimony, the judge ruled. McKay died a few years after Williams trial. Lewis could not be reached for comment. In throwing out the murder conviction, Carter also ruled that an informant had improperly elicited information from Williams and should not have been allowed to testify at the trial and that a second informant who testified was not credible. Trutanich denied in an interview with The Times that he had invoked Williams case in his election campaigns, which included his successful 2009 run for city attorney and his failed bid to become district attorney in 2012. Campaign materials from the two races, however, show otherwise. In a brochure he created for the city attorney race, Trutanich noted he had won a conviction and death verdict against Williams. And in a television spot, the narrator says, It was Trutanich who got the conviction of Barry Glenn Williams and, if elected, would work to make sure gang members serve real time. An online ad made for his district attorney race showed Trutanich driving along the street where the killing occurred and talking at length about the case. He described Lewis as a church-going lady and praised her willingness to testify despite having her house shot up before the trial. I can tell you that this case is really built and was won on Carmen Trutanichs tenacity, a former district attorneys investigator and close aide to Trutanich says in the video. He gave it 24/7, so there was no time off for him. Trutanich lost his bid for reelection as city attorney in 2013. In his ruling, Carter saved some of his harshest criticism for the state Supreme Court, which rejected Williams petition for help in 2000 without a substantial review of the case. The move, Carter wrote, was inexplicable. Under California law, Trutanich is required to notify the State Bar, which administers attorney discipline, of Carters ruling. A 2010 study by the California Innocence Project found that the State Bar rarely disciplined prosecutors in such cases. Joe Holmes, a retired L.A. County sheriffs investigator who worked on the case, defended Trutanich, recalling him as a good prosecutor who wouldnt intentionally deceive or mislead. Williams, he added, was a notoriously violent gang member suspected of being involved in more than a dozen slayings. Silverstein, Williams former attorney, thought differently. A prosecutor hid evidence, and it took 30 years to correct it, he said. Theres something wrong with that. joel.rubin@latimes.com Twitter: @joelrubin ALSO Controversial English-only crusader sets his sights on Californias Senate race How Californias U.S. Senate ballot could cause problems for the June 7 primary Long Beach program prepares young autistic adults for jobs and self-sufficiency Authorities captured a bear cub that was found roaming through a Duarte neighborhood on Sunday afternoon, and after a brief evaluation, the cub was returned to the wild. The cub was first seen about 3 p.m., wandering by homes in the vicinity of Royal Oaks Drive and Cotter Avenue, said Lt. Ernest Bille of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. The intersection is also near the Duarte bike path, a 1.6-mile trail popular among cyclists and runners. The cub then climbed up and down a tree and was hunkering down behind homes while state Department of Fish and Wildlife staff sought to capture the animal, Bille said. Advertisement By 4:45 p.m., the bear had been tranquilized, and staff from the Fish and Wildlife agency determined the animal was a healthy female weighing between 100 to 125 pounds, said Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the agency. Officials estimated the cub was between 18 to 30 months old, and capable of living independently in the wild, Hughan said. Over the nearly two hours that the cub spent roving around the neighborhood, it was spotted walking along a retaining wall and crawling through yards and gardens. While the bear was on the prowl, sheriffs officials warned residents to stay inside and avoid contact with the animal. For breaking news in California, follow @MattHjourno. ALSO Steve Julian dies at 57; host of NPRs Morning Edition on KPCC Police shine helicopter spotlight to avert train crash in nick of time Widows of Marine pilots win battle to vindicate husbands 16 years after air crash A former UC Berkeley law school dean who was disciplined for violating the universitys sexual harassment policies has lashed out at a new review of his behavior, calling it an unjust attack on his legal and academic rights. Sujit Choudhry, who resigned as dean last month but remains on the faculty, has asked the disciplinary committee of Berkeleys Academic Senate to drop the second review, according to documents released by his attorneys Monday. Depending on the findings, Choudhrys tenure and continued employment at Berkeley could be in jeopardy. In a university investigation last year, Choudhry admitted he repeatedly hugged, touched and gave kisses on the cheek to his former executive assistant from September 2014 to March 2015. Then-Provost Claude Steele, in consultation with Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and others, privately ordered the law school dean to take a 10% pay cut, undergo behavioral training and apologize to the assistant, Tyann Sorrell. Advertisement But University of California President Janet Napolitano intervened in the case after it came to light in a civil lawsuit filed by Sorrell last month. In a March 11 letter to Dirks, Napolitano ordered that disciplinary proceedings be launched in the Academic Senate. Choudhry blasted Napolitanos actions in a grievance filed with the faculty disciplinary committee Friday. He said her public condemnation destroyed his professional reputation. He also charged that her decision to order a second review was in violation of the universitys own disciplinary procedures. Choudhry has declined requests for an interview. But his attorneys said Choudhry was made a scapegoat to deflect public criticism that UC officials have repeatedly mishandled sexual misconduct claims over the years. The second disciplinary process initiated at President Napolitanos command sends an ominous message that the retention of ones position as an administrator or tenured faculty member is subject to the court of public opinion, not the policies and protections guaranteed to every faculty member of this institution, Choudhry wrote. UC officials referred requests for comment to Berkeley. Dan Mogulof, a Berkeley spokesman, said the universitys policy allowed administrators and faculty to take separate disciplinary actions against those who violate its code of conduct. There is no duplicative process, Mogulof said in a statement. The administrations steps have complied with university policy and reflect the seriousness of the conduct described in the investigative report issued by the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination. Choudhry argued otherwise. He said Berkeley policies state that if an accused faculty member accepts a settlement offer, a hearing by the faculty discipline committee shall not be necessary. He said he cooperated with the initial university investigation and accepted sanctions with the understanding that the case would be closed. He said Steele and other officials never stated or even suggested that a second disciplinary process would be launched. Had he known of that possibility, Choudhry said, he would not have agreed to the initial sanctions. Instead, he said, he would have considered other options that are now lost to him, including an appeal of the findings. President Napolitanos conduct in my case should serve as a warning to all University of California faculty and staff whose careers and livelihood are considered secondary to the leaderships need to deflect public criticism and respond to public controversy, he wrote. For more education news, follow me @TeresaWatanabe A massive dead whale has washed ashore at Trestles, a popular surfing destination near the Orange County-San Diego County line, and triggered safety concerns that its carcass could attract sharks. Swimmers and surfers were asked to stay away from Lower Trestles, a surfing destination at San Onofre State Beach, as the gray whale decomposes, said Capt. Todd Mansur, a lead naturalist at Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching. Meanwhile, state lifeguards planned to use boats to move the whale carcass from the shoreline at high tide, he said. The carcass will be guided into the ocean and hauled at least 10 miles away from shore. Advertisement Mansur, a Gray Whale Foundation board member, first spotted the roughly 40-foot whale offshore Friday afternoon. A dead whale is drawing huge crowds to a San Clemente beach and tons of interest on social media. The 50,000-pound whale reemerged Sunday morning when it washed up on the beach. The whale appeared to be decomposing very rapidly, he said. By Monday, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries was headed to the beach to perform a necropsy on the bloated whale, officials said. This whale is floating like a balloon, Mansur said. Mansur examined the adult male, which was lying left side up, and believes he died of natural causes. There were no visible lacerations, and no indications the whale had been struck by a ship. It was a clean-looking whale, he said. This whale was so fresh that the sharks hadnt found it yet. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Mansur said some beachgoers have reported seeing sharks in the water, but the sightings have not been confirmed. And as if one whale werent enough, the carcass of a second gray whale was also seen floating off T-Street Beach near San Clemente Pier, Mansur said. Unlike the first whale, the second carcass appeared to be fully decomposed. All that remained of the whale was its skin, he said. Mansur said it was extremely unusual to see two dead whales this time of year. Mansur, a certified marine naturalist, said he typically sees one dead whale per year. Although these two sightings were rare, Mansur believes the deaths were a coincidence. We know and expect to get dead animals, he said. Its just nature. State lifeguards also planned to move the mass of flesh away from the shore before high winds sweep over the ocean water. Up to 37 mph winds were expected along the coast Monday. Gale-force winds could hamper efforts to remove the carcass, Mansur said. Burying the whales in the sandy beach is not an option, he said. A buried carcass decomposes and releases oil, and attracts sharks from several miles away, he said. A buried whale carcass takes years to decompose. The sight of a decomposing whale drew professional surfer Kelly Slater to the beach Sunday. Im sure that #BeachedWhale oil should keep the crowds to a minimum coming into summer! Sketchy, Slater wrote on Instagram. Great white sightings sure seemed to coincide with the burying of a whale 15+ years back by Trails. Surfer Kalani Robb shot a short video showing a small crowd of beachgoers gazing at the beached whale. Guess I wont be surfing lowers right now #deadwhale, he wrote on Instagram. For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter. ALSO Couple tried to call 911 twice after dog mauled newborn baby Coroner postpones ruling in cause of death of wrestling star Chyna Body found floating in Echo Park Lake over the weekend A Los Angeles County sheriffs deputy was acquitted Monday on a final charge of assaulting an inmate at the Compton courthouse, closing a trial in which he was convicted of simple assault against inmates but cleared of more serious charges, authorities said. Jurors finished deliberations by finding Jermaine Jackson, 38, not guilty of one count of assault by a public officer after prosecutors alleged he pummeled inmate Cesar Campana in 2009, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorneys office. Jurors last week convicted Jackson of one other misdemeanor count of simple assault involving the 2009 incident with Campana and two counts of misdemeanor assault in connection with a 2010 confrontation with another inmate, Derek Griscavage. The jury acquitted Jackson of attacking a third inmate. Advertisement Sentencing will take place June 6, said Robison, who added that Jackson was released on his own recognizance. Each misdemeanor count carries a maximum of six months in jail. The deputy was charged with attacking the inmates during three incidents at the Compton courthouse lockup and the Twin Towers correctional facility in downtown Los Angeles from 2009 to 2011. Jurors acquitted him Friday of three counts each of assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury, a felony, assault by a public officer and filing a false report. Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Marie Wise said during opening statements in the case that Jackson ruled the Twin Towers facility with an iron fist. Although the charges against him mirror much of the jail abuse scandal that plagued the Sheriffs Department for years, Wise said Jacksons conduct was overlooked because it happened before a federal investigation made the abuse claims common knowledge. The charges against Jackson stemmed from an internal Sheriffs Department investigation, but they came amid the FBI inquiry into rampant misconduct by deputies within the jail system. This month, a federal jury convicted former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka on conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, and in February former Sheriff Lee Baca admitted to lying to federal investigators. Jurors, however, were instructed to disregard the larger jail scandal when weighing the charges against Jackson, Wise said after the trial finished Monday. She said jurors told her they were frustrated with the way the Sheriffs Department handled its review of Jacksons alleged use of force. The deputys supervisors found his use of force justified in several of the incidents before a department criminal investigation resulted in charges. I think ultimately they elected to convict on the lesser charges because they felt that the uses of force were not malicious, but perhaps, excessive, she said. Vicki Podberesky, an attorney representing Jackson, said the larger jail scandal probably influenced jurors decision to convict her client on the lesser misdemeanor charges. Its a difficult time for a sheriffs deputy to defend himself or herself on misconduct charges within the jail, Podberesky said. She said she plans to file motions to dismiss the misdemeanor convictions. Jackson has been on leave without pay from the Sheriffs Department since he was charged, but will probably face termination based on the misdemeanor convictions, she said. The agency has 30 days to render a final decision on his status with the department, said Capt. Christopher Reed, a Sheriffs Department spokesman. ------------ FOR THE RECORD 3:45 p.m.: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Christopher Reed as a sergeant with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. He holds the rank of captain. ------------ The criminal case against Jackson dates from New Years Eve 2009, when Campana was housed in the Compton courthouse lockup. Wise said Jackson yanked the inmate by his shirt and slammed him against the ground before repeatedly punching him and then kicking him in the head. A juror gasped when Wise projected an image of Campanas swollen forehead bearing a red X-like figure. The pattern, Wise said, matched the shoelaces on Jacksons boot. The second incident involving Jackson happened inside Twin Towers jail on Christmas Day 2010, after an unwarranted search quickly escalated into violence, the prosecutor alleged. Wise said Jackson and other deputies made up a lie to cover their tracks. On their reports, the deputies wrote that an inmate, Griscavage, had been searched because he was passing contraband. That wasnt true, Wise said, adding that Jackson punched Griscavage in the temple so hard that he passed out. Two other Twin Towers employees Jayson Ellis and Karin Cring were also charged in the Christmas Day incident. Prosecutors said Ellis, 28, a custody assistant, assaulted Griscavage, and Cring, 33, a deputy who is no longer with the department, lied on a report in false support of Jackson. Prosecutors said the jail staff concocted a story that Griscavage had passed contraband to justify the unwarranted search, which ultimately led to the assault. Because Cring agreed to testify on behalf of the prosecution and against Jackson, Wise told jurors that the district attorneys office agreed to reduce her charge to a misdemeanor. Ellis pleaded guilty last year to one count of assault. Jackson, who was also charged with assaulting inmate Jonathan Murray in 2011, was convicted of simple assault in the beatings of Campana and Griscavage. He was acquitted on all charges connected to Murrays incident. Podberesky said that if the department wants to repair problems inside the county jail system, the agency should revise its policies rather than building criminal cases against individual deputies. Im not saying that there arent bad deputy sheriffs and there arent problems, but it gets very difficult to separate out a deputy who is acting in policy, who has been commended by the department for what hes done, who is told by every single supervisor and three commanders that his actions are within policy and they are the right actions to take, she said. To now convict him of anything is wrong. Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in Southern California. Costa Mesa police have arrested a teenager on suspicion of setting seven small fires over the weekend, authorities said. From Saturday night to Sunday evening, Costa Mesa firefighters doused flames at various locations, including a car dealership, a car wash and offices for the Coastline Community College District. Police did not release the 13-year-olds identity, saying only that he was a Costa Mesa resident and had been placed in juvenile hall after being arrested near the scene of one fire. Advertisement The rash of suspected arsons started about 11 p.m. Saturday, when firefighters doused a Dumpster fire in a shopping center at 1500 Adams Ave., police said. Immediately after that, fire crews headed to the Honda dealership at 2888 Harbor Blvd., where a small tree and some debris had been set ablaze, police said. Later that night, crews doused another fire at the Metro Car Wash at 2950 Harbor Blvd., where part of the buildings exterior burned, police said. Then about 11:30 a.m. Sunday, firefighters rushed to a business at 1520 Ponderosa St. to find a parked motor home burning, according to authorities. No one was inside the motor home and the small blaze was quickly extinguished. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Firefighters then headed to the Costa Mesa Square shopping center at 3030 Harbor Blvd., where some landscaping had been set aflame. But, police said, by the time responders arrived, a passerby had thrown water on the blaze. Next, crews responded to debris on fire near a homes fence at 2925 Redwood Ave., according to authorities. They quickly put out the flames. The home was not damaged, police said. Finally, firefighters doused a large tree and some landscaping that had been set aflame at the Coast Community College District headquarters at 1370 Adams Ave., police said. Soon after the last fire was extinguished, arson investigators and police arrested the 13-year-old about a block away. Police declined to release additional details because the investigation is continuing. No injuries were reported in any of the blazes, according to the Fire Department. An estimate of the total amount of damage wasnt immediately available. ALSO Couple tried to call 911 twice after dog mauled newborn baby Body found floating in Echo Park Lake over the weekend Decomposing whale carcass threatens to draw sharks to popular O.C. surfing area Robert Durst is asking a federal judge to recommend a Los Angeles-area prison when hes sentenced on the weapons charge thats kept him in Louisiana pending his trial on a California murder charge. Sentencing is scheduled Wednesday for the 72-year-old real estate heir, arrested last year in New Orleans. A Monday court filing by Dursts lawyers says Durst is ill, and that Californias Terminal Island prison has the sort of medical facilities he needs. And, they note, its near Los Angeles, where Durst faces trial in the 2000 death of his friend Susan Berman. Advertisement Durst pleaded guilty to the weapons charge in February, accepting an 85-month prison sentence. Judge Kurt Englehardt said he would decide whether to accept that agreement after reading a pre-sentencing report that has not been made public. ALSO Couple tried to call 911 twice after dog mauled newborn baby L.A. County sheriffs deputy acquitted of final charge in jail assault case Decomposing whale carcass threatens to draw sharks to popular O.C. surfing area The Anaheim City Council is set to vote at its Tuesday meeting on a resolution condemning GOP presidential candidate Donald Trumps divisive rhetoric. The motion was requested by Councilwoman Kris Murray this month and notes that Anaheim, the largest municipality in Orange County, is a city of kindness. Advertisement Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked people of many races, religions and creeds, according to the resolution, which calls for rejecting Trumps statements as contrary to the state and U.S. Constitutions and not being reflective of the City of Anaheims guiding principles. A pro-Trump group, We the People Rising, will hold a demonstration before the meeting, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at Anaheim City Hall. The group is also encouraging people to speak out against the measure during public comment. If Anaheim supports the resolution, it would not be the only city to denounce the billionaire business mogul. West Hollywood Mayor Lindsey Horvath told The Times that Trump is not welcome in her city. Mayors from cities including Philadelphia and St. Petersburg have also denounced the Republican frontrunner. Follow @byjsong on Twitter ALSO West Hollywood Mayor to Trump: Stay out Donald Trump is about to blow up the California primary. Heres how Live coverage from the campaign trail Its the type of legal case that usually gets tossed out once the government claims national security is at stake. But something surprising happened in a federal courtroom here last week a judge ruled that a potentially embarrassing lawsuit against the CIA could go forward. And even more surprising, the U.S. Justice Department agreed to go along. This isnt to suggest the federal government is throwing in the towel in the suit filed by three alleged torture victims against two CIA psychologists. The government will continue to fight. But its approach to the case is different from similar suits in the past, and the shift can be traced in part to a landmark report on the CIA in 2014. Advertisement The report, partially released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, exposed the dark depths of the U.S. rendition and torture programs overseas, including waterboarding, beatings, mind-bending experiments and rectal feedings intended to provoke reluctant detainees to talk. Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged Americans not to let such history be forgotten and grievous past mistakes to be repeated. History, for example, like Suleiman Abdullahs. He is the lead plaintiff suing the psychologists. The suit alleges that Abdullah, a Tanzanian fisherman abducted in 2003 by the CIA in Somalia, was beaten, hung by his arms, chained in stress positions for days, starved, deprived of sleep, and stuffed in a small box from time to time. In 2008, he was released and given a document stating he posed no threat to the United States, the suit alleges. The American Civil Liberties Union thinks he may have been sold to the U.S. by a Somali warlord under a bounty system. Another plaintiff is Mohammed Ahmed Ben Soud, a Libyan citizen. The suit alleges he too was abducted in 2003 and tortured in Afghanistan at two so-called black sites. In 2005, the CIA rendered him to Libya, where he was held until 2011, after the overthrow of the regime of Moammar Kadafi. Both he and Abdullah still suffer painful ailments from their imprisonment, their attorneys say. Gul Rahmans story was similar, except that he died in the CIAs custody from hypothermia, according to court papers. His family says it has never been officially notified of his death, nor has his body been returned. The two living plaintiffs and Rahmans family are suing James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two former U.S. Air Force psychologists who contracted with the CIA to develop and oversee the agencys detention, rendition and interrogation operations. The pair had previously been in charge of survival training at Fairchild Air Force Base, near Spokane, then later formed Mitchell, Jessen & Associates as a consulting firm. The lawsuit, filed for the plaintiffs by the ACLU, seeks compensatory damages of more than $75,000, plus punitive damages and attorneys fees. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> According to the Senate intelligence panel report, Mitchell was a believer in learned helplessness, a psychological stage at which individuals are thought to become passive and depressed in reaction to stressful or uncontrollable events. He theorized that inducing such a state could encourage a detainee to cooperate and provide information, the report states. From there, the duo developed the list of enhanced interrogation techniques and personally conducted interrogations of some of the CIAs most significant detainees using those techniques. The contractors also evaluated whether the detainees psychological state allowed for continued use of the techniques, even for some detainees they themselves were interrogating or had interrogated. Among those Mitchell is reported to have used the techniques on was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Senate report says he was waterboarded 183 times in one month. The two psychologists have made few public statements, but Mitchell did tell the Guardian in 2014 that Im just a guy who got asked to do something for his country by people at the highest level of government, and I did the best that I could. Mitchell and Jessen claim they cant be sued because they were government employees, and that the CIA is ultimately responsible for the work they did. The federal judges ruling, for now, sets that argument aside. U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush issued his decision Friday after hearing two hours of arguments on whether to dismiss the torture lawsuit. Quackenbush also ordered all sides to complete a plan for sharing secret documents, if necessary. That set the stage for the second surprise of the day the defendants and government agreeing to go along. I think Im optimistic we can reach an agreement on how to handle sensitive documents, Justice Department attorney Andrew Warden told Quackenbush during the hearing. We have been working proactively on a discovery plan. Quackenbush said the U.S. can renew its dismissal motion in the future, and theres still that matter of an actual trial. But, for a limited victory, it was historic. Rather than use national security to block the way, Warden indicated, the U.S was willing to work with the plaintiffs, whose claims are not likely provable without secret documents as evidence. Quackenbushs subsequent ruling marked the first time a civil lawsuit filed by victims of enhanced interrogation has been allowed to continue. Every previous lawsuit has been shut down before this stage, said ACLU attorney Dror Ladin, who will meet with government and defendants attorneys to devise a discovery and evidence-sharing process within 30 days. Discovery might not sound very exciting, said ACLU spokesman Josh Bell, but its actually hugely important and significant that the government is willing to even talk about it given that the government wouldnt allow any kind of official acknowledgment of the torture program for so long. The torture plaintiffs argue that Mitchell and Jessen got rich with an experimental program that harmed the victims and others using tactics that had little chance of succeeding. Experts say torture victims, when they do talk, will say anything and not necessarily the truth. As the Senate torture report noted, the CIA itself determined from its own experience with coercive interrogations that such techniques do not produce intelligence, will probably result in false answers, and had historically proven to be ineffective. Yet these conclusions were ignored. During the Mohammed interrogation, for example, a CIA deputy chief reported waterboarding has proven ineffective, but it continued anyway. Eventually, Mohammed began to talk. And though the CIA claimed he gave up crucial information, the Senate report found much of it to have been fabricated, unfounded or not supported by internal CIA records. Among the documents Quackenbush said he hoped to see as the case progressed was the contract signed by Mitchell and Jessen with the CIA, from which their company earned $81 million. That will help him decide, the judge said, how much of a role the two men played not only in the development but the operation of the torture program. Whether torture was inflicted on the plaintiffs didnt seem to be at question Friday. Documents and testimony should settle that, Quackenbush indicated. Like my friend [Justice] Potter Stewart once famously said about pornography, the judge observed, he might not be able to define torture, but hed know it when he saw it. Said the plaintiffs attorney Ladin, I think we all know it when we see it when prisoners are hung by their arms for days. Anderson is a special correspondent. ALSO Californians donations to 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls havent paid off Border Patrol sees increase in number of migrants being detained at Mexico border Obama has long focused on his legacy. Now he will step directly into the debate over it. Ted Cruz and John Kasich couldnt count on voters to stop Donald Trumps march to the Republican presidential nomination. So they took it on themselves to forge a highly unusual alliance that already shows signs of backfiring. Within hours of announcing a nonaggression pact, ceding different states to each other, Texas Sen. Cruz and Ohio Gov. Kasich were differing Monday over its terms, and Trump was seizing on the collaboration to suggest whats wrong with Washington. If you collude in business or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail, Trump roared at a campaign stop in Rhode Island on the eve of five Eastern primaries. But in politics, because its a rigged system, because its a corrupt enterprise, in politics youre allowed to collude. Advertisement Undeterred, a Republican familiar with discussions between the two camps said they might look to extend the agreement to California and its climactic primary on June 7, depending how it worked in Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico. Most of Californias 172 delegates will be awarded on a winner-take-all basis in each of the states 53 congressional districts, making any sort of coordination between Cruz and Kasich, who lag far behind Trump in election victories and pledged delegates, a more difficult feat. The alliance, announced Sunday night, was another surprising development in a campaign full of twists. At a time when the party establishment typically rallies around its presidential front-runner, many GOP stalwarts remain determined to stop Trump short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the partys nomination; Cruz and Kasich are counting on a deadlock enabling them to emerge as the alternative to Trump at the Republican National Convention in July. It is far from clear the effort will succeed. Similar attempts against the New York real estate developer have repeatedly foundered. Katie Packer, who heads a political action committee, Our Principles PAC, that has spent millions trying to thwart Trump, was delighted with his rivals noncompete agreement. The best antidote to Trump is one strong alternative, rather than two of them splitting the vote, Packer said. In some places that is Cruz; in others its Kasich. But some and not just Trump saw the move as playing to the worst suspicions of disgusted voters. Its a terrible message, said John Brabender, a GOP strategist who managed Rick Santorums upstart 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney and has stayed neutral in this years party contest. People look at that and its like, Were no longer running with a message of a vision for the future. Were running as an obstructionist candidate. But if the move had a strong whiff of desperation, Cruz and Kasich were clearly willing to ignore the scent. A win in Indiana, where polls give Trump a small lead, combined with a commanding performance in California probably would ensure he is the partys White House nominee and, according to polls, the most unpopular general-election candidate in modern times. Im more concerned about Hillary Clinton crushing Donald Trump in a general election and sweeping Democrats to control of the U.S. Congress than a backlash over candidate collusion, said John Weaver, Kasichs chief strategist. I think its important we get to a multi-ballot convention so we can put together a ticket that can beat her. Under terms of the noncompete agreement, Kasich promised to give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana, which offers 57 delegates on May 3, while Cruz vowed to stand aside for Kasich in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. The two states have a total of 52 delegates at stake, making the accord a near-even swap. But the deal was quickly mired in confusion. Speaking in Indiana, Cruz described the accord in practical terms. That is a decision, an allocation of resources, that makes a lot of sense, he said. But at a Pennsylvania stop, Kasich insisted he was not surrendering his Indiana supporters to Cruz. Ive never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me, Kasich told reporters at a diner near the Philadelphia airport. But Im not over there campaigning and spending resources. Outside groups contributed to the confusion. Kellyanne Conway, a spokeswoman for a political action committee supporting Cruz, said it would continue airing an Indiana TV spot attacking Kasich, as we attempt to win every possible vote for Sen. Cruz. However, the group, Trusted Leadership PAC, planned to shelve its advertising plans for Oregon and New Mexico, Conway said. The deal between rivals came as Trump was poised to sweep the primaries Tuesday in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island after his landslide home-state win last week in New York. Not surprising, some Trump backers were outraged at the Cruz and Kasich compact. Its an insult. Its going against everything people want, said Angelina Burger, 46, a surgical technician and one of thousands who lined up early outside a Trump rally Monday in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester. The Republican establishment is willing to disrupt their party even more just to prevent Trump from getting in. Others merely shrugged off the tag-team effort. Craig Lacedra, who showed up for Trumps Rhode Island rally in a red Make America Great Again baseball cap, two Trump 2016 buttons and a Boston Red Sox bomber jacket, called the alliance wrong and unethical but ultimately irrelevant. I think hes going to have enough delegates to take it on the first ballot, said the 47-year-old from Revere, Mass., who voted for Trump in his states primary and is volunteering in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Hes just the man for this time and its like a perfect storm for him to become president of the United States. mark.barabak@latimes.com Twitter: @markzbarabak seema.mehta@latimes.com Twitter: @LATSeema Barabak reported from San Francisco and Mehta from Warwick, R.I. Times staff writers Cathleen Decker in Philadelphia, Michael Finnegan in Los Angeles, Kate Linthicum in West Chester and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report. ALSO Donald Trump agrees to an interview with Fox News Channels Megyn Kelly New poll of millennial voters shows clear shift toward Democrats, away from Trump How Californias U.S. Senate ballot could cause problems for the June 7 primary The working-class communities in the 47th Assembly district are some of the most economically disadvantaged in Southern California. The largest city in this district, San Bernardino, is still reeling from bankruptcy, with an unemployment rate of 7.2%, compared with 5.4% statewide. The districts residents are suffering too from some of the worst air pollution in the nation, a result of geography the 47th backs up against the mountains where the dirty air collects and the industrial history of a region built by railroads and Kaiser Steel. The big political forces battling over the Assembly seat dont seem to care about the districts unique needs, however. They want someone who will reliably side with them on their issues, regardless of how they might affect his or her constituents. The amount of money dropped on this race so far is astonishing, given the two top candidates in the June 7 primary are Democrats who will likely face each other again in the November general election. About $2.3 million has been reported in campaign donations and independent expenditures, almost all of that supporting the reelection of incumbent Cheryl Brown (D-San Bernardino), an increasingly rare business-friendly Democrat facing a strong challenge from another Democrat, workers compensation attorney Eloise Gomez Reyes. Advertisement An astonishing amount of money has been dropped on this race given the two candidates are democrats who will likely face each other again in the November general election. Nearly half of that money has come from Chevron, which has spent $1 million to promote Browns re-election independently though there are no oil refineries in her district. The Keeping Californians Working, Dentists, Housing Providers, Energy and Insurance Agents independent expenditure committee has also received large contributions from the California Apartment Association ($250,000) and the California Dental Association ($500,000). The committee has paid for at least two campaign mailers on behalf of Brown. Thats a lot of money even in California, where it typically takes about $1 million to win even a low-key legislative race. But dont feel sorry for Reyes. Though with only about $160,000 in contributions reported so far, she also has big political guns on her side. They include the United Food and Commercial Workers, which contributes heavily to legislative races and policy fights, and the Sierra Club. Both organizations have been using their considerable resources to help Reyes beat Brown. Rallies have been held to call out Browns anti-environmental votes and financial support from oil companies. Why are some of the states biggest special interests so invested in one little legislative seat out of 120? Heres a hint: Brown was one of the so-called moderate Democrats who last year stalled a landmark global warming bill, SB 350. At issue was a proposed requirement that fossil-fuel use be cut 50% by 2030. The oil lobby dropped millions of dollars fighting that provision, which was eventually stripped out thanks to Assembly members like Brown. She defended her position by saying she worried that the cost of fuel would have a disproportionate affect on her constituents, many of whom cant afford fuel-efficient vehicles and live in communities without reliable public transportation. However pure Browns intentions might have been, her message has been eclipsed by the facts that shes received many thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the oil industry in the past, and that Chevron is willing to spend $1 million to make sure she gets re-elected. Its lamentable that big-monied interests overwhelm local ones, but its become increasingly common since the Supreme Court tossed the reins on independent spending by corporations and unions. So where does this leave voters? Is Brown looking out for their interests, or her own? Or is she a true independent, targeted by the progressive Democratic establishment still mad about her vote on SB 350 and other party-line bills? Will Reyes be more than a shill for labor and environmental interests in Sacramento? If she wins this race, she will know first hand what bucking your party can get you. It will be hard work for voters to know whats in their best interests when the vast majority of the messages they are hearing dont come from the candidates, but from corporations and organizations with their own agenda. Good luck to them all. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook As President Obama and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon prepare to leave office in the coming months, there are increasing calls for these world leaders to back a new Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative. Some are planning an international summit; others call for a renewed focused on mediated peace talks. A number of policymakers and peace process experts also have proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would set parameters for a final agreement. While Israel welcomes the good intentions of our friends, the truth is such initiatives are not enough. The modern history of Israeli-Arab peacemaking has taught us that only direct negotiations between the two sides can actually achieve results. Advertisement The best-known international gathering on Israeli-Arab peace was the 1991 Madrid conference. It was an impressive event, co-sponsored by the U.S. and Russia, that brought together representatives from Israel, Syria and Lebanon as well as a joint Palestinian-Jordan delegation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has extended himself further than any previous Israeli leader in his pursuit of direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. And yet little progress got made. The conference kicked off what was to be almost 20 years of unproductive on-again, off-again negotiations with the Syrians. Meanwhile, the Palestinian track that began in Madrid was short-lived and similarly made no progress toward peace. (It was separately that the controversial 1994 Oslo accords creating the Palestinian Authority were hammered out directly by representatives of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.) The U.N. has been similarly unsuccessful in brokering peace. The most well-known Security Council action on the Arab-Israeli conflict is Resolution 242 from 1967. It called for ending the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors by a withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories in return for every state in the region to be able to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force. Following Resolution 242, however, the Palestinian representatives never acknowledged the legitimacy of the nation of Israel. No serious U.N.-sponsored peace talks were ever initiated as a result of this resolution. Third-party mediation also has been tried. Envoys including Swedish diplomat Gunnar Jarring and Americans William P. Rogers, Dennis Ross and George Mitchell gave it their best shot. They all suggested new strategies for moving forward, and many had good intentions, but none brought about a peace deal. So what does work? Direct talks. Israels enduring peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan were the result of representatives or even the leaders personally coming together to negotiate without preconditions. Our collective memories may glorify the 1978 Camp David summit and the 1994 treaty-signing ceremony at the White House, but those events were the culmination of countless hours of direct negotiations. The peace deal with Egypt began in 1977 with secret talks between Israels minister of foreign affairs, Moshe Dayan, and Egypts deputy prime minister, Hassan Tuhami, followed by detailed negotiations between Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Anwar Sadat. In the case of Jordan, peace was finally reached in 1994 when King Hussein had the courage to sit down with Prime Minister Rabin and negotiate directly the tough issues that had kept our nations at war for 47 years. Since his reelection in 2009, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has extended himself further than any previous Israeli leader in his pursuit of direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. He enacted a controversial construction freeze in Judea and Samaria and released dozens of convicted murderers, all in the hope of convincing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate with him. Abbas, however, continually tosses out new preconditions to agreeing merely to talk. He has met face to face with Netanyahu for only six hours since 2009. While Abbas recently hinted in a TV interview that he would be willing to meet the prime minister, he has spent the intervening weeks pushing forward a Security Council resolution to condemn us and jetting around Europe to garner support for international initiatives. All the while, his Palestinian Authority continues to pay stipends to the family members of terrorists and to incite further violence against Israel on its official TV channels. These are not the actions of someone who is serious about peace. Our peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, which have weathered years of upheaval in the Middle East, have proved that bitter enemies can settle their differences if they sit down to talk. Direct negotiations cannot be replaced by international conferences, presidential speeches, or even U.N. Security Council resolutions. Peace will come only when the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state as a legitimate partner for direct negotiations to resolve this conflict. Danny Danon is Israels ambassador to the United Nations. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Despite Bernie Sanders repeated accusations, theres no real evidence that Hillary Clinton has been corrupted by large campaign contributions. But thats not to say donors havent influenced her thinking and priorities. Lodged in the gap between Sanders attacks and Clintons rejoinders lies the truth about big money in politics. Anyone who has heard two minutes of a Sanders stump speech knows he rails against a corrupt campaign finance system that benefits the rich and powerful, and boasts of the support he gets from millions of individuals making small donations. Sanders and his supporters call Clintons fundraising obscene. Using fuzzy math (such as counting all the donations bundled by lobbyists who have had oil companies as clients), the Sanders campaign asserted that Clinton took millions in donations from the fossil fuel industry. Advertisement More recently, the Sanders campaigns lawyer issued a letter suggesting, without evidentiary support, that Clinton or her supporters were breaking the law when they solicited six-figure donations in a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee and state political parties. In fact, while that fundraising strategy might be troublesome, it does not appear to violate any of the many porous rules set by Congress, the Federal Election Commission, or the Supreme Court. Nor is there any evidence, despite the belief of some ardent Sanders supporters, that Clinton has somehow been bribed to do the bidding of big donors. Still, Clinton struggles to explain why, when she opposes the influence of big money on politics, that no one should worry about her super PAC money and massive donations. During a New Hampshire debate she said you will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation that I ever received. I bet Clinton actually believes this statement. But it glosses over the more subtle way money influences politics. Clinton still struggles to explain why, when she opposes the influence of big money on politics, that no one should worry about her super PAC money and massive donations. The unending money chase demanded by our privately financed system of campaigns skews how candidates spend their time and what views they hear. When you spend hours every day interacting with those wealthy enough to make four-, five-, six- and even seven-figure donations, you cant but help to have your priorities influenced by their concerns. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who has spent hours a day on the phone asking for donations, spoke at a Yale conference a few years ago about how this soul-crushing amount of fundraising skews priorities. I talked a lot more about carried interest inside of that call room than I did in the supermarket, Murphy said, referring to a controversy about how little tax wealthy hedge fund managers and others pay on certain investment income. A 2013 study found that the wealthy are much more likely than the rest of us to report having personal contact with a senator or representative. And it turns out that the 1% have very distinct views on public policy. The same study reported that the very wealthy are much less likely than the general public to support policies such as raising the minimum wage, providing substantive unemployment benefits, or expanding public health insurance programs. Money has influence even before it is donated. A senator taking a position in favor of Internet gaming, for example, has to ask whether that stance will cause casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to unleash millions against him. Likewise, every senator from New York, including Clinton from 2001 to 2009, knows that staking out positions against Wall Street can close wallets or send money streaming to their opponents. This is a deeply troubling campaign finance system, one which is slipping dangerously toward plutocracy. But it doesnt take a bribe for money to matter, a lot. Richard L. Hasen is a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine and the author of the book Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook In the latest effort to upend Republican front-runner Donald Trumps bid for the presidential nomination, the campaigns of rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced Sunday night that they would join for a divide-and-conquer strategy in three states as they scramble to seize remaining delegates in a rapidly dwindling primary season. Kasich will halt campaigning in Indiana, allowing Cruz to focus on the 57 delegates up for grabs in the states May 3 primary. Cruz will forgo Oregon later in May and and New Mexico in June. Those two states have a total of 52 delegates at stake. The strategy underscores the unprecedented nature of the Republican presidential race, with GOP stalwarts refusing to line up behind the front-runner and instead embarking on an effort to stop Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs for the nomination. Advertisement Though the campaigns did not say they were coordinating, the language in their announcements was practically identical and the statements were released within minutes of each other. The prospect of Trump as the GOP nominee would doom Republicans both in this falls general election and the partys long-term prospects, warned Jeff Roe, Cruzs campaign manager. Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Track the delegate race | Sign up for the newsletter Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by [Hillary] Clinton or [Bernie] Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation, Roe said in the statement. Kasichs goal is to have no candidate win the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the nomination, leading to an open nominating contest at the Republican National Convention in July in Cleveland, said John Weaver, his top strategist. Donald Trump doesnt have the support of a majority of Republicans not even close, but he currently does have almost half the delegates because hes benefited from the existing primary system, Weaver said. The move marks a notable shift for Cruz, who has derided Kasich as a spoiler who was helping Trumps chances of winning the GOP nomination. A vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump, Cruz said in late March in Utah. I dont know if John Kasich is perhaps campaigning to be Donald Trumps vice president, but he has been eliminated mathematically from having any chance of being the nominee. Both statements were aimed at super PACs supporting Kasich and Cruz, as well as groups formed with the express aim of stopping Trump from winning the nomination. Weaver even urged outside groups to honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns. An official with a leading anti-Trump group, #NeverTrump, hailed the plans. Weve seen from victories in places like Ohio and Wisconsin that when #NeverTrump forces unite behind the one alternative thats better suited to that state that we can beat Trump decisively, senior advisor Rory Cooper said. Were happy to see the Kasich and Cruz campaigns strategically using their resources to deny Donald Trump delegates where they are in the strongest position to do so. Trump immediately dismissed the effort, though, tweeting that Cruz and Kasich were desperately colluding. Cruz and Kasich believe they can win the GOP nomination if no candidate reaches a majority of delegates on the first ballot at the convention and they can secure votes on subsequent ballots when fewer delegates votes are bound to their states popular votes. Their campaigns said they plan to compete vigorously in the remaining contests, though California, the biggest prize left, offers another opportunity for their strategy of detente. The vast majority of the states 172 delegates are awarded by congressional district, not statewide popular vote. Though Trump leads in early polls, Cruz shows strength in the Central Valley and Kasich has potential to pick up delegates in the Bay Area. They have a stronger chance of keeping delegates from Trump if both campaign in the state but cede some districts to each other. But for Cruz or Kasich to nab the nomination, either must vanquish Trump. Talk has long swirled on the campaign trail about the men forming a temporary alliance to allow each to compete where he is strongest and to avoid diluting the anti-Trump vote. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the partys 2012 nominee, suggested such a tactical agreement in a March speech excoriating Trump as unfit for the presidency. I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state, Romney said. Rubio, the Florida senator, and his campaign suggested such an effort for the March 15 contests, which offered a bounty of delegates in several populous states. Rubio urged his supporters to back Kasich in the Ohio primary and Kasichs and Cruzs backers to vote for him in the Florida primary. Kasichs campaign did not return the sentiment; Kasich won Ohio, and Rubio lost Florida and dropped out of the race. Twitter: @LATseema Join the conversation on Facebook >> MORE POLITICAL COVERAGE Californias next senator could be a Latina. Will her past mistakes get in the way? The most influential person on the coastal commission may be this lobbyist Clinton announces California leadership team Republicans long have worried about how to survive as conservative GOP voters die off and are replaced by more liberal younger Americans. A new national poll of millennial voters suggests that the 2016 presidential race has only hastened the shift they have feared. The preference of voters younger than 30 for a Democrat over a Republican as the November victor nearly doubled in the last year as the presidential campaign grew in prominence, according to the survey by Harvards Institute of Politics. Advertisement TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >> Currently 61% prefer a Democrat in the White House, and 33% favor a Republican, the poll found. In a similar survey released last spring, the gap between the two parties was only 15 percentage points. Republican front-runner Donald Trump was far and away the least popular candidate among those polled. Overall, only 17% of millennials had a favorable view of him, and 6 in 10 said they had a very unfavorable view of him. Just under a quarter had a favorable view of the other two Republican candidates, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Among Republicans, Trump was seen negatively by 57%. Only 1 in 3 Republicans felt the same way about Cruz or Kasich. Not surprising, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton swamped Trump among likely voters in a presidential matchup, 61% to 25%, despite her significant negative ratings. Trump was losing to her in part because of a significant drop-off among young Republicans and those who had previously sided with the partys politicians. Of those who voted for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 general election, only 60% favored Trump, and 13% supported Clinton. A much higher proportion of President Obamas 2012 voters 82% sided with Clinton, and only 5% planned to switch to the Republican. In another measurement, young GOP voters said by a margin of 82 points that they wanted a Republican in the White House. But when asked specifically about Trump, there was a much smaller 44-point divide between those wanting him in the White House as opposed to Clinton. We see a good number of young Republicans telling us essentially that theres no place to go, said John Della Volpe, director of polling for the Harvard Public Opinion Project. Clintons continued difficulty in attracting young voters was evident in the poll. More than half 53% had a negative view of Clinton even as they favored Democrats generically. Only 37% had a favorable view of her, the poll found. According to exit polls, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has consistently beaten Clinton this year among voters younger than 30, sometimes 4 to 1. She has succeeded largely by building her advantage among older voters, who are more likely to cast ballots. Sanders was the only candidate with a net favorable impression. Fifty-four percent had a favorable view of him, compared with 31% who did not. The poll did not measure the Democratic primary race. Although the poll found broad disdain for the GOP candidates, it also revealed problems for establishment Democrats, if they hadnt grasped that from this years tumultuous primary season. By 48% to 16%, young voters said politics today was not up to meeting the challenges facing the country. By 54% to 11%, they said elected officials do not have the same priorities as they do. Six in 10 said elected officials are motivated by selfishness. Only 15% said the country was headed in the right direction, a drop of 8 points from one year ago. When presented with a list of issues, it was clear why Sanders has caught millennials fancy. Just under half said that healthcare was a right a signature line for Sanders and that it should be paid for by the government if necessary. Only 21% disagreed. As with healthcare, support for more government spending to reduce poverty and for measures to curb climate change even if they cost jobs also grew over the last year. Della Volpe said that ideological chord is what Sanders has struck in many young voters. Presidential campaigns and other historic moments at times force young people to think about politics in a very different way, he said. Its tangible in an election year. Clintons standing reflected a certain amount of ambivalence on the part of younger voters, particularly women. When her competition was Trump, she fared well. In the general election matchup, women sided with her by a 42-point margin, 57% to 15%. Male voters, by contrast, backed her by a much smaller margin of 18 points. Clinton also had huge support among young African American and Latino voters when Trump was the alternative. But when Clinton was competing with Sanders, the gender gap changed. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Asked which of the five candidates would improve womens lives more, 32% of men said Clinton, and 21% said Sanders. Women, however, gave the edge to Sanders, at 30%, over Clinton, at 26%. When it came to whether they had a negative or positive view of the candidates, women were slightly more positive about Clinton than men were. They also saw Sanders more favorably than men did. Men and women also had different views when it came to whether women face a glass ceiling that blocks their advancement. Men were split, with 50% saying women faced barriers and 48% saying they did not. Among women, 68% said there was a glass ceiling, and only 30% disagreed. After she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton bowed out by expressing pride in putting cracks in a glass ceiling. This year, in her second run, she regularly alludes to a new promise to shatter it. The poll surveyed 3,183 Americans ages 18 to 29 from March 18 to April 3. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. Twitter: @cathleendecker ALSO: After New York, Clinton and Sanders temper their vitriol. But there are signs it wont last Why young voters are flocking to Sanders and older ones to Clinton Strong Sanders and Trump runs reflect and inspire upheaval in Democratic and Republican parties As Tuesdays quintuple primaries near, the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns appear to be moving in tandem for the first time. Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are targeting each other with an eye to Novembers general election and are mostly ignoring their party challengers. Behind them, their rivals are still aiming at the front-runners in a desperate effort to gain ground before the primary season spirals further out of their control. Polls suggest that voters in Pennsylvania, the biggest of the Tuesday primaries, are lining up behind Clinton and Trump much as voters in New York did last week in big numbers. Advertisement Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich have given no sign they intend to leave the race before the final primaries in June. But losses in Pennsylvania and the four other Tuesday primaries would be another major blow to the underdog candidates, both in momentum lost and in the delegates each needs to rebound. They are struggling to get a narrative that trumps the notion that the other two are inevitable, said longtime Pennsylvania pollster G. Terry Madonna, whose surveys for Franklin and Marshall College have Clinton and Trump holding double-digit leads in Pennsylvania. The contest here has been an echo of the national race. Clinton, who has ties to the state dating to childhood, has campaigned as if she was running for mayor with an excruciatingly local pitch. Sanders, with his more nationalized message, has reveled in the giant, college-area rallies that have dominated his campaign everywhere. Hillary Clinton visits Triumph Baptist Church in Philadelphia on April 21. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, center, and Pastor James S. Hall Jr. are seated behind her. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press) Among the Republicans, Trump is pitching himself in a campaign ad meant to reassure voters hes presidential material. His competitors are casting this state as they did the last one as the place to waylay the nomination of a businessman-entertainer who they say would sully GOP chances in the fall from the presidential level on down. Pennsylvania has a platform to speak to the country, Cruz said Friday in Scranton. What path do we want the party to go down? After an intense focus on New York before its primary last Tuesday, the race has fractured geographically as candidates careened through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. But the themes have remained constant in all five states. For the front-runners, moving toward the general election carries some risk, so neither Clinton nor Trump has completely abandoned comparisons with their challengers. Yet Clintons more assertive criticisms of Sanders turned in recent days into a bland mention of his past vote to give immunity to gun makers and sellers from lawsuits stemming from the misuse of their guns. That issue has salience given a crime wave in Philadelphia, home to a large proportion of the states Democratic voters. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Last weekend in Philadelphia, you had 12 shootings, she reminded female voters Friday in Jenkintown, about 10 miles north. A police officer was shot, a 4-year-old girl killed. Clintons advertising has emphasized a November message of job creation, a tax credit for manufacturing and the importance of the industries of the future. In appearances she has accented her ties to Pennsylvania, where her father was born and where she spent childhood vacations with her grandparents. She also won the 2008 presidential primary here, defeating Barack Obama by more than 9 percentage points. In Dunmore on Friday night, she told supporters that she had dined in nearby Scranton and met people who knew her cousins and uncles. I had one man say, Didnt we sled down Court Street one winter? Clinton recounted. Couldve been. I was there. If her criticism of Sanders has grown more muted, her critique of Trump has become more pointed. He actually says wages are too high in America, she said in Dunmore. I mean, honestly, I dont know who he talks to. He ought to get out of those towers and actually come down and talk with people. Like Clinton, Trump has presented himself as a familiar figure and one who can best improve the regions economy. Who knows Pennsylvania better than Donald Trump? I went to school here and its a great state, the graduate of the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton business school told supporters in Harrisburg. In his advertising, Trump promises to create jobs, cut middle-class taxes, strengthen Social Security, expand the military, stop illegal immigration and knock out Islamic State the playbook of every Republican candidate. Washington is broken. The truth is too many politicians are totally controlled by special interests and lobbyists, he says in one ad. Thats going to change quickly. But that calmly recited message is cast aside at his campaign rallies in favor of dubbing Clinton Crooked Hillary. Is there anyone more crooked than this woman? he asked in Harrisburg. Citing an earlier tiff between Sanders and Clinton, he said she was not qualified to be president. You look at her judgment ... then you have all the mistakes that Hillary made as secretary of State, he said. A total disaster. Not even talking about Benghazi. Just big horrible mistakes. Cruz has nearly begged voters to deny Trump the delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination. In Scranton on Friday, the senator from Texas contended that all across this country Republicans were uniting behind him for a convention fight. Republicans recognize that Donald Trump is not the best candidate to go head-to-head with Hillary Clinton, that if Donald Trump is our nominee, Hillary wins and she wins by double digits, said Cruz, who is a distant second behind Trump in delegates. He predicted that a Trump nomination would result in a Walter Mondale-level bloodbath for Republicans, a nod to the 1984 blowout in which the Democratic nominee won only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Cruz and Kasich, the Ohio governor and the third GOP candidate, argue they would be far stronger than Trump in the fall election. But neither has made a dent in Trumps lead in Pennsylvania. Kasich has suffered from a lack of visibility that has made it difficult for him to claim kinship based on his upbringing in McKees Rocks, Pa. A Monmouth University poll of likely Republican voters found that more than 4 in 10 didnt know Kasich was born in the state, and only 3% said his birthplace made them more prone to support him. Sanders recent rallies have telegraphed perhaps unintentionally uncertainty about his plans. Democratic leaders have begun pressuring Sanders to ease criticism of Clinton, arguing he could weaken her in the general election. In his first event after his humbling New York loss, the senator from Vermont didnt deliver his usual criticisms of her speeches to Wall Street firms and her campaign fundraising. But at his next stop, he was back to the usual critiques, and he is critical again in an ad. The truth is you cant fight a corrupt system by taking its money, Sanders says in the ad. So far, that message hasnt cut into Clintons strength any more than the Republican challengers criticisms of Trump have turned voters against him. The challengers all have been in the uncomfortable position of citing national polls about the front-runners weaknesses but not the state surveys that show them ahead. Unless there are upsets Tuesday, the races may diverge again. Clinton and Sanders are popular among Democrats, and that could heighten pressure on them not to reignite a fractious fight. Yet among Republicans, even Trump victories Tuesday would not erase continuing distaste for him within his party. In Pennsylvania, 3 in 10 Republican voters in the Franklin and Marshall poll said they held strongly unfavorable views of him. The Republican race thus seems destined to be vitriolic as long as there are primaries left to contest. cathleen.decker@latimes.com Twitter: @cathleendecker ALSO How Californias U.S. Senate ballot could cause problems for the June 7 primary Cruz and Kasich team up to stop Trump, saying theyll each sit out future primaries New poll of millennial voters shows clear shift toward Democrats, away from Trump Cruz, Kasich divvy up three states in effort to thwart Trump Wow. Cruz camp says to stop Trump they are backing down in OR & NM to clear path for Kasich as they focus on IN, asks allies to follow suit Seema (@LATSeema) April 25, 2016 And this is totally coordinated. Team Kasich announces they are pulling out of IN to focus on OR & NM. Fascinating. Seema (@LATSeema) April 25, 2016 In an effort to stop GOP front-runner Donald Trumps bid for the nomination, the campaigns of Republican rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced Sunday night that they would adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy in three nominating contests. Kasich will halt campaigning in Indiana, allowing Cruz to focus on the 57 delegates up for grabs in the states May 3 primary. Cruz will forgo Oregon, which votes May 17, and New Mexico, which votes June 7. Those two states have a total of 52 delegates at stake. The strategy underscores the unprecedented nature of the Republican presidential race, with GOP stalwarts refusing to line up behind the front-runner and instead embarking on an effort to stop Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs for the nomination. Though the campaigns did not say they were coordinating, the language in their announcements was practically identical and they were released within minutes of one another. Jeff Roe, Cruzs campaign manager, called the prospect of Trump as the GOP nominee a sure disaster for Republicans both in this falls general election and the partys long-term prospects. Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by [Hillary] Clinton or [Bernie] Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation, he said in the statement. Kasichs goal is to have no candidate win the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the nomination, leading to an open nominating contest at the Republican National Committees convention in July in Cleveland, said John Weaver, his top strategist. Donald Trump doesnt have the support of a majority of Republicans not even close, but he currently does have almost half the delegates because hes benefited from the existing primary system, Weaver said. Both statements were aimed at superPACs supporting Kasich and Cruz, as well as groups that were formed with the express aim of stopping Trump from winning the nomination. Weaver even urged outside groups to honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns. An official with a leading anti-Trump group, #NeverTrump, hailed the plans. Weve seen from victories in places like Ohio and Wisconsin that when #NeverTrump forces unite behind the one alternative thats better suited to that state that we can beat Trump decisively, said senior advisor Rory Cooper. Were happy to see the Kasich and Cruz campaigns strategically using their resources to deny Donald Trump delegates where they are in the strongest position to do so. Trump immediately dismissed the effort, though: Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016 Read More Donald Trump calls Cruz-Kasich deal corrupt Donald Trump portrayed rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich as weak, pathetic and corrupt on Monday as he denounced their state-by-state deal to try to block him from capturing the Republican presidential nomination. If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail, Trump told supporters at a rally here on the eve of five East Coast primaries. But in politics, because its a rigged system, because its a corrupt enterprise, in politics youre allowed to collude. On Sunday night, Kasich promised to give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana, while Cruz vowed to clear the way for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. But Kasich, the governor of Ohio, muddled the terms of his deal with the Texas senator when he said Monday that he still hoped voters in Indianas May 3 primary would back him. Ive never told them not to vote for me; they ought to vote for me, Kasich said at a diner near the Philadelphia airport. But Im not over there campaigning and spending resources. We have limited resources. A Republican familiar with discussions between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns said the two sides would also talk about a potential deal for Californias June 7 primary, the biggest contest of the race. The person agreed to discuss strategy only if granted anonymity. Most of Californias 172 delegates will be awarded winner-take-all in each of the states 53 congressional districts, complicating talks on how Cruz and Kasich might join forces to stop Trump. Its far from clear that the attempt to consolidate the anti-Trump vote will succeed. Similar efforts against the New York real estate developer by Mitt Romney and other Republican officials have foundered in previous contests. Read More If elections officials could send just one message to Californias 17.2 million registered voters about the U.S. Senate primary in June, it would probably be this: Read the instructions carefully. Its not necessarily intuitive on how to properly mark this ballot, said Kammi Foote, registrar of voters for Inyo County. And a mistake could keep a ballot from counting. On primary day, the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer will feature 34 candidates. Only four of those candidates have received appreciable support in public polling so far, and five will appear at the first Senate debate Monday night. Advertisement But the full field is larger than any single roster of statewide contenders since the colossal list of 135 candidates who ran in the 2003 special election that recalled then-Gov. Gray Davis. (To make the ballot, candidates must pay about $3,500 or collect 10,000 signatures.) The glut of candidates presents serious challenges in designing a ballot that makes sense to voters while also adhering to California election laws. In some ways, the Senate election is so far beyond the capacity of the system that its requiring a unique set of solutions. Youre not just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, youre trying to fit a skyscraper in a round hole, said Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley. In most races, with a handful of candidates, names appear in a single column on one page of the voting booklet, a clear sign to voters that they should only pick one. But with 34 candidates, the geography of ballot templates tends to favor listing the names in two, side-by-side columns, on facing pages of the voting booklet. Thats where the trouble lies for the Senate race, as voters could mistake the two columns as two distinct races and choose one name from each list. That would result in an overvote, a ballot cast for two or more candidates, which is thus disqualified. The two-column layout gained notoriety in the 2000 presidential race with the so-called butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County, Fla. Already, some have similar fears about what could happen in California. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> In early April, a team of ballot design experts joined elections officials in Santa Cruz County to test a variety of side-by-side options for arranging the Senate candidates names. In trial runs, they found that no matter how they tinkered with the format, more than one-third of the mock ballots were marked with an overvote. Thats devastatingly high, said Whitney Quesenbery of the Center for Civic Design, a New Jersey-based educational organization that set up the test. Some counties have been able to fit all 34 names in a single column on the June ballot, making clear that those candidates are competing against one another. California holds a top-two primary that sends only the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, to the Nov. 8 general election ballot. The single-column design pushes the Senate race to the second page of the ballot, leaving only presidential candidates on the first page. For voters unaffiliated with a political party and voting on an independent ballot, and therefore not allowed to vote in the Democratic or Republican presidential primary, the first page would be blank. Some worry that those voters could mistakenly fail to turn the page to see the rest of the ballot. Other counties will try to make the two-column layout work. I dont think anybody spent as much time looking at it as we are now, said John Tuteur, Napa Countys registrar of voters. In 2012, the county found that a two-column layout for a single race resulted in at least a tenfold increase in mistaken overvotes. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> This time, Napas ballot will have two columns but a single set of instructions that stretches across the entire layout that reads: There are 34 candidates for U.S. Senator. You can only choose 1. Because counties use a variety of voting machines manufactured by private vendors, there is no universal fix. Los Angeles Countys electronic voting machines will require two entire pages of Senate candidates. The first page will include a large red warning icon with instructions to vote for only one candidate. How counties will pay for additional costs related to the supersized Senate ballot remains to be seen. Legislators meet next week to consider an additional $16.2 million in special funds for the June election, an effort launched earlier this month by Secretary of State Alex Padilla. In Napa County, Tuteur estimated the long list of Senate candidates -- which, by law, must be randomized on each ballot -- will mean some 90,000 test ballots need to be printed for a county with fewer than 69,000 registered voters. Theres an additional cost to us, he said. The only real solution may be a voter education blitz to match the size of the field of Senate candidates. Elections officials plan to intensify their efforts when sample ballots are mailed out, beginning this week. Several county registrars said they would ask poll workers, too, to offer extra guidance on election day. Quesenbery, who has worked on designing ballots for elections in several states, said the voters most at risk of error are those who are the most reliable -- those who assume they know what to do without taking the time to follow the new instructions. The problem is, theres so much habit about how you vote, she said. Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast ALSO California voters still undecided on U.S. Senate race Elections officials warn of surge for June 7 primary Are you an independent voter? You arent if you checked this box Updates on California politics Ron Unz has a knack for wading into controversy. In the 1990s he fathered the English-only campaign for Californias public schools. This year, Unz launched a racially charged crusade to upend Harvard Universitys admission and tuition policies. Now, Unzs last-minute entry into Californias U.S. Senate race in March has sent a midwattage jolt through what has been a largely lifeless campaign. His bid has not threatened front-running Democrat state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, but could cause discomfort to the field of candidates. Just three weeks after the Silicon Valley multimillionaire jumped into the race, an April 9 Field Poll put Unz in third place -- far behind Harris and Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez and a mere 1% ahead of GOP rival Tom Del Beccaro -- among Californians expected to vote in the June primary. That performance was enough to earn him an invitation to the first Senate debate on Monday at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Advertisement With electoral pandemonium consuming the Republican presidential race -- churned up by Donald Trumps campaign that is now on its way to the California primary -- an unorthodox candidate such as Unz may have an outside chance to catch on, said Lori Cox Han, a political scientist at Chapman University in Orange. If someone like Ron Unz, with a conservative message, can tap into some of the voter angst that certainly the Trump campaign has been able to tap into, then I think its possible for him to gain traction, she said. Unz, who made millions as a business software developer, said his odds to be elected Californias next U.S. senator are slim, a fate faced by any Republican running for statewide office in this West Coast Democratic stronghold. But he said he believes he has a shot at finishing in second place in June. Under Californias jungle primary system, that would be enough to knock off Sanchez and advance to the November ballot. In California, the first- and second-place finishers in the primary, regardless of party, face off in the general election. To do so, Unz needs to outduel GOP rivals Del Beccaro and George Duf Sundheim, both former chairmen of the California Republican Party, and find a way to get Republicans and right-leaning independents to coalesce behind him. Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said he believes Unzs entry into the Senate race could splinter the Republican vote and provide an opening for Sanchez to squeak out a second-place finish in June. The presence of a third active Republican candidate makes it much more likely that the runoff for the general election will be between two Democrats, Schnur said. Given Unzs eclectic political views, its difficult to predict how voters will perceive him. Although Unz championed Proposition 227, the 1998 initiative to limit bilingual education, he also is unapologetically pro-immigration and criticizes those who demonize immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. In 2014, Unz also led a short-lived initiative campaign to raise the minimum wage in California to $12 an hour, and in 1994 he mounted an unsuccessful challenge against Gov. Pete Wilson in the Republican primary. Unz also currently supports Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, saying he disagrees with the self-described democratic socialist on many issues but supports his opposition to Wall Street. Unz donated $2,000 to the Sanders campaign. Theres certainly no way to pigeonhole him in terms of what kind of Republican he is, said Jon Fleischman, publisher of the conservative news site Flash Report. In some areas he is a conservative Republican. In some areas hes a libertarian. And in some ways hes a liberal. Though he has ample personal wealth, Unz said he will probably limit the amount he spends on the Senate campaign to $100,000 and also limit individual donations to $99. That wont help his efforts to reintroduce himself to California voters. Unz, 54, readily admits that, despite his forays into politics many years ago, his name recognition has mostly vanished. Fleischman worked for Unz on the successful Proposition 227 campaign, which altered California schools by mostly ending bilingual education and mainstreaming Spanish-speaking students, and said its an issue that Unz still holds dear. One of the primary reasons Unz jumped into the Senate race was because the Democratically-controlled state Legislature placed a measure on the November ballot to repeal the remaining provisions of the bilingual initiative and promote the teaching of two languages in dual-immersion classes. Unz said that the measure is an insult to California voters and that Proposition 227 already allows students to enroll in dual-immersion classes if their parents sign an annual waiver. If Latino families want their children taught English, and refuse to sign the waiver, I think their rights should be protected, Unz said. The California Senate race isnt the only campaign Unz has disrupted. At Harvard University, his alma mater, his insurgent bid for the Harvard Board of Overseers turned the normally staid selection process into a roiling controversy. Joined by Ralph Nader and other candidates, Unz is pushing to make Harvard tuition-free for undergraduates and is demanding the university reveal how it uses race in its admissions process. Unz argues that Harvards endowment, which he pegs at $38 billion, provides more than enough investment income to eliminate the need for tuition. Doing so, he argues, will force other Ivy League schools to follow suit, and also pressure public universities to reduce tuition. But its Unzs views on race-based admissions policies that have caused the most controversy. In 2012, Unz published a lengthy essay, The Myth of American Meritocracy, accusing Harvard and other Ivy League schools of favoring Jewish students over more academically qualified Asian American and non-Jewish white students. He said the massive apparent bias could be attributed to top administrators at those schools who are Jewish. The Anti-Defamation League said that essay has been seized upon by anti-Semites such as David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader. The organization also has criticized a website published by Unz, the Unz Review, labeling it a safe haven for writers perceived as anti-Israel, anti-immigrant and sympathetic to white supremacist views. I havent seen Ron Unz write anything anti-Semitic himself, but he really gives a platform to anti-Semites, said Marilyn Mayo, a research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League. Mayo and opponents of Unzs Free Harvard/Fair Harvard campaign have also criticized him for using his foundations to provide financial support for some of these controversial writers and researchers. That includes a $600,000 grant he gave to University of Utah professor Gregory Cochran, who has embraced a theory that homosexuality may be caused by a gay germ. Unz calls these allegations preposterous. He said he has long supported thought-provoking alternative writers, both on the left and the right, to provide views that readers wont find in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times or other mainstream publications. Just because I read an article by somebody or publish someone on a website or give them money, that doesnt mean I support everything they say, Unz said. Unz said he disagrees with Cochran on a lot of stuff, including his claim about homosexuality. He said he provided Cochran with a $600,000 grant, however, because of his groundbreaking research in evolutionary biology. He dismissed the allegations of anti-Semitism by noting that he is Jewish. Unz, who was educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford universities, is a prolific writer and has published a collection of his articles in a 665-page book. He said that because he spends so much time writing and on other ventures, he devotes only a few hours a week to his website, mostly posting articles that have already been published. To be honest, I dont even read most of the articles I publish, and I certainly dont edit them, Unz said. Im busy. phil.willon@latimes.com Follow @philwillon on Twitter for the latest news on California politics. Also: California voters still undecided on U.S. Senate pick as race is eclipsed by presidential showdown California now has highest minimum wage in the country (Just dont tell New York) Donald Trump is about to blow up the California primary. Heres how Californians will finally see a little action in the states sleepy U.S. Senate race when the top five candidates descend on Stockton tonight for the first of two televised debates before the June 7 primary election. The 90-minute political scrum starts at 6 p.m. and will be held at the University of the Pacific. You can watch a livestream here. In Los Angeles, KCOP-TV Channel 13 will air the debate starting at 8 p.m. The two Democrats on stage will be state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Santa Ana, who are first and second, respectively, in all recent polls. The three Republicans will be Tom Del Beccaro and George Duf Sundheim two former chairmen of the California Republican Party and Silicon Valley software developer Ron Unz. We'll be covering the debate live. Here are a few things to watch for: Sanchez in the hot seat U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) speaks during a news conference at the California Democratic convention in Anaheim on Sunday. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times) Harris is the solid front-runner, but Sanchez is in second place and is far ahead of the Republican pack, according to the most recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. Tonight, Harris and the three Republicans will do their best to knock her off that perch. So expect Sanchez to take fire from all sides, and to return it in kind. For Harris, the reason is simple: Sanchez poses the greatest threat. Under the rules of Californias jungle primary, the two candidates who receive the most votes in June advance to the November general election, even if they belong to the same political party. Harris would much rather face a Republican in November. Why? Because the last time a Republican won a Senate race in California was 1988, and a GOP candidate hasnt been elected to any statewide office since 2006. With the Democrats holding a 15% edge in voter registration in California, that trend is not expected to change anytime soon. If Sanchez makes it to the November election, itll be Democrat versus Democrat. That makes the race a lot more complicated. The congresswoman believes that if she wins strong support among Latino and moderate voters in November, shell be Californias next senator. Harris likely will attack from the left to cleave Sanchez away from the Democratic base. She may focus on Sanchezs 2005 vote in favor of legislation that shielded the gun industry from liability for the criminal or negligent acts of gun owners. Harris also may label the congresswoman's 2012 vote in favor of the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan as an attack on Social Security. Sanchez has said that she has a stellar record on fiscal responsibility and on gun control, receiving an "F" rating from the National Rifle Assn. Del Beccaro, Sundheim and Unz all believe that they can be the Republican who gives the GOP the best hope for victory in November, but to get to the promised land one of them has to get by Sanchez. Expect them to attempt to sully any appeal Sanchez may have with moderates, including going after the congresswoman for her vote in favor of President Obamas nuclear deal with Iran. A new study finds that conservatives are more likely to die sooner than liberals, but little difference in the mortality rates of Democrats and Republicans. (Anthony Robert La Penna / For the Los Angeles Times) Will the real conservative please stand up? For a Republican to crack into the top two in the June primary, Del Beccaro, Sundheim or Unz must first rise above their GOP rivals and capture the hearts and votes of the Republican base. Thats a tall order. None of them are well known or well funded. Barring a cataclysmic gaffe by Harris or Sanchez, a good performance in the debate wont be enough to move the needle since not many Californians will be watching, said Republican consultant Mike Madrid. But a good showing could help with fundraising. That's essential if a candidate hopes to gets the message out to California Republicans that he is the true conservative in the race, Madrid said. From the outset of his campaign, Del Beccaro has attempted to establish himself as the conservative standard-bearer, and he is expected to keep on that path Monday night. Del Beccaro, a Contra Costa County business attorney, calls for scrapping the federal tax code and replacing it with a flat tax. He says the science on global warming is unsettled, and he describes himself as "pro-life" regarding abortion. Sundheim has campaigned as a fiscal conservative, but one who is willing to diverge from party orthodoxy on many core issues important to Californias left-leaning electorate and Del Beccaro or Unz may use that to question Sundheims conservative bona fides. The Palo Alto attorney supports abortion rights and a "pathway to legal status" for some immigrants living here illegally. Sundheim hews toward the right on foreign affairs, however, and has been highly critical of President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Unz will be the biggest wild card, and may get skewered from the left and the right for his eclectic political history. The Palo Alto multimillionaire championed a 1998 initiative to end bilingual education in California. In 2014, he launched a short-lived campaign to increase the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour. He also adamantly opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For all three Republicans, the poll numbers look bleak. In an April Field poll, the three top GOP candidates registered in the single digits among likely primary voters: Unz with 5%, Del Beccaro with 4% and Sundheim with 2%. In comparison, Harris nabbed support from 27% of those voters, and Sanchez had 14%. But there is hope for the Republicans. More than a third of those polled remained undecided. And because California may decide New York billionaire Donald Trump's fate as the possible GOP presidential nominee, a surge in Republican voter turnout is expected in states June 7 primary. That bounty may be enough lift one of the Republican Senate candidates to a top-two finish in the primary. Will we see caution from Harris or gaffes from Sanchez? In her lawsuits, California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris alleges that Ventura County-based Cars 4 Causes and Los Angeles County-based Peoples Choice Charities illegally profited from charitable car donations. (David Butow / Special to the Los Angeles Times) Harris has run an exceptionally disciplined some critics would say overly cautious Senate campaign. She has had good reason to. Harris leads by wide margins in the polls and in fundraising, and she overwhelmingly captured the California Democratic Partys endorsement this year. She is the only candidate in the Senate campaign to emerge victorious in a statewide race narrowly winning her first campaign for attorney general in 2010 and then breezing to reelection in 2014. On the campaign trail, Harris rarely strays from her well-honed message. She has emphasized her successful effort as attorney general in going after the big banks behind the mortgage crisis and her refusal to defend Proposition 8, the statewide ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage and was later nullified. She has vowed to protect and restore the fundamental rights of all Americans. Californians are about to see if she keeps her cool in tonights debate when Sanchez and the others go after her. The congresswoman has survived in the toxic, partisan atmosphere of Washington for two decades ample time sharpen her debating skills. Harris may be asked about the criticism she has faced from civil rights advocates for not doing more to hold law enforcement officers accountable for fatal police shootings. Harris, who has strong support from police unions, has opposed legislation that would require her office to independently investigate those shootings. The greatest peril facing Sanchez will be her tendency to talk off the cuff a down-to-earth manner that ingratiates her to voters, but that also comes with the occasional, wince-provoking political gaffe. Shortly after launching her Senate campaign last spring, Sanchez was caught on video imitating a Native American war cry and was forced to apologize. The incident still sticks in the minds of some loyal Democratic voters. The congresswoman cannot afford to make another misstep. phil.willon@latimes.com Follow @philwillon on Twitter for the latest news on California politics ALSO: Live coverage of the debate California voters still undecided on U.S. Senate pick as race is eclipsed by presidential showdown Kamala Harris' support for Planned Parenthood draws fire after raid on anti-abortion activist Don't expect populist rhetoric in low-key California Senate race How these top celebrities became accidental members of this ultraconservative political party Female politicians are losing ground in California Im Christina Bellantoni, welcoming you to your week with todays Essential Politics. With the presidential race dominating California politics, there has been little attention paid to the high-profile Senate race, with 32% of voters still undecided on who should replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer in our last USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. That could change tonight, as the top five candidates finally meet on a debate stage and Californias race for the U.S. Senate comes to life with less than two months until the June 7 primary. A VERY LONG LIST Advertisement California voters this weekend started receiving official voter information guides 31 pages in Los Angeles County and might have noticed an especially long list of candidates seeking the nomination for Senate. Among them: a woman running as a Democrat named President Cristina Grappo, who tells voters her core values drive America, and a no party preference candidate from San Francisco whose only statement in the guide is 01100101" a protest of the campaign finance system and the per-word charge. Speaking as an engineer, my Candidate Statement was 01100101. In computer programming, the binary code 01100101 translates to the letter e, as in e-voting, Jason Hanania explained on his website. John Myers reports that the 34 candidates who are seeking the Senate seat arent just complicating things for voters studying the race. Elections officials are worried that such a long list poses a ballot design challenge that could create enough confusion to toss out some votes. GOING HER OWN WAY HAS WORKED SO FAR Phil Willon and Noah Bierman introduce readers to Senate candidate Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, holding second place in the polls and hoping to advance to the general election. Sanchez first splashed onto the national political scene in 1996 when she defeated arch-conservative Rep. Robert B-1 Bob Dornan, and she has served in Congress ever since. A few wince-provoking gaffes hampered her bid, but past rivals say it would be folly to discount her. The congresswoman opened up about being raised by Mexican immigrants and her Republican roots. Our fall profile of Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris is here. Well be covering tonights debate live on our Essential Politics news feed. THE CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGN Donald Trump is ramping up his efforts in the Golden State ahead of his speech to the California Republican Party convention Friday. The campaign is calling 1 million voters who are registered with no party preference with a message from Trump himself urging them to re-register as Republicans so they can vote for him on June 7 in the closed GOP primary. Listen to Trumps robocall. Though its unclear how it will play out in California, Ohio Gov. John Kasichs and Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs campaigns announced that they would join for a divide-and-conquer strategy in three states -- Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico -- in an effort to stop Trump. On Friday, word came that Kasich is planning a town hall in San Francisco at the end of the week ahead of his speech to the convention. Meanwhile, several high-profile GOP donors in California are saying enough is enough: Theyre not making any more donations in the presidential race, at least for the moment. I think were taking a deep breath and trying to figure it all out. Its gotten to be quite a tangle, said Silicon Valley venture capitalist William H. Draper III. He gave $102,700 to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bushs presidential run, and he wasnt alone. The vast majority of the $55 million the states GOP contributors have spent has been in support of candidates who have dropped out, according to a Times analysis of financial disclosure documents. Hillary Clintons campaign announced the three people who will lead her California efforts ahead of the June 7 primary: state director Buffy Wicks, political director Peggy Moore and communications director Hilda Marella Delgado. Get the latest on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics. ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY MEMBERS WEIGH IN A marketing professional, a UC Berkeley student, a lawyer and a retired forklift driver. These are the readers who have reached out to us about our project on confused independents signing up for the American Independent Party to say they made the same mistake. How entirely misleading, writes one reader from Oceanside. Its like Kelloggs renaming Sugar Frosted Flakes, Worlds Healthiest Cereal. We told you already about celebrities like Kaley Cuoco of The Big Bang Theory and Aaron Eckhart of The Dark Knight fame also being mistaken members of the American Independent Party. Then we found Rainbow Rain Beau Harmony Mars, yogi to the stars, who told The Times, I feel misled. I feel that it should be more clear when you say independent -- it should be in bold letters very clearly, what does the party support. SQUABBLING OVER GUNS State Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leon and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom are engaged in a war of words over an issue they both believe in: gun control. The two top California Democrats had a frosty exchange last week after De Leon sent Newsom a letter urging him to drop to his effort to put a gun control initiative on the ballot this November, Patrick McGreevy reports, detailing a terse set of letters the men sent one another. JERRY BROWNS LEGACY PROJECTS George Skelton writes in his Monday column that lawmakers are stepping up to challenge Gov. Jerry Brown as he goes full steam ahead on his two biggest legacy projects, high-speed rail and the construction of water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Anxiety over the economic and environmental viability of the projects is weighing on the minds of legislators and the public, but Brown has yet to show willingness to hear out those concerns, Skelton writes. THE STATES POWERFUL CLIMATE CHANGE AGENCY NOW HAS MORE VOICES Low-income communities often are disproportionately affected by pollution, and two new members of the California Air Resources Board are aiming to get the influential state climate change and anti-pollution agency to pay more attention to those neighborhoods, Liam Dillon reports. The new board members are the first legislative appointees to the board -- the other 12 come from Brown -- and its the latest effort by the Legislature to wield more power over the agency. CONGRESSMAN OF JAPANESE DESCENT URGES OBAMA TO SEE HIROSHIMA A 2002 trip to visit relatives in Hiroshima, Japan, made the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 real to Rep. Mark Takano, and hes encouraging President Obama to make a similar visit to the site when he visits Japan in May. Takano (D-Riverside) spoke with Sarah Wire about his trip, and why he thinks Obama should be the first sitting American president to visit the city. PODCAST: STRONG POLL POSITION FOR TAXES A new statewide poll shows 62% of likely voters support extending current income tax rates on Californias high-income earners. And in this weeks California Politics Podcast, Myers leads a discussion of how unusual it is for voters to be so willing to support taxes. A reminder that you can subscribe for the weekly podcast either on Soundcloud or iTunes. TODAYS ESSENTIALS -- Heres the latest Bernie Sanders superdelegate strategy. -- The same day Uber settled a big lawsuit over the status of their workers and allowed them to remain independent contractors, a California assemblywoman hit the pause button on her effort to give Uber and other gig economy workers the ability to collectively bargain for their pay and benefits. -- The leaders of the states Legislative Womens Caucus called on Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) to take a leave of absence after domestic violence allegations. Hernandez told The Times the allegations are false and hes not going anywhere. -- A federal judge has ruled that a nonprofit backed by conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch does not have to reveal its donors to Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in a case that pitted state law governing charities against 1st Amendment rights. -- Meet Susan McCabe, a super lobbyist with influence over the Coastal Commission. -- A former Carson city employee is suing the mayor for sexual harassment. -- U.S. Rep. Mike Honda and former ESPN analyst Curt Schilling got into a social media back-and-forth after Schilling was fired for reposting a meme widely interpreted as anti-transgender on his Facebook page. Hondas 9-year-old granddaughter is transgender. -- What do you think of Trump? Readers can weigh in with our quick survey. 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. Gov. Jerry Browns two very pricey legacy projects took hits in the Legislature last week. They were light jabs, and he didnt even flinch. But the fact that some fellow Democrats had the temerity to challenge the popular governor was a sign of growing legislative and public skepticism about these highly controversial pet projects. One legislative committee advanced a bill that would force the Brown administration to be more open and candid about the $64-billion, zigzagging bullet train. Advertisement Another panel approved a bill that would require a public vote before the state could gouge two mammoth, $15.5-billion water tunnels under the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. In a separate water action that was not necessarily a slap at Brown but could cause him pain a third committee cleared a bill that would compel counties to move more aggressively to control the draining of aquifers, especially by thirsty nut orchards. Brown may very well step in and squash these bills like bugs before they can really annoy him. He almost certainly would veto the train and tunnel bills if they reached him. And hed probably try to avoid the groundwater legislation because it would drive corporate agriculture nuts. But if legislators did summon the courage to pass these measures and Brown vetoed them, it would highlight his hypocrisy. Heres a governor who voters grade highly for fiscal prudence on most budget matters. But hes spending wildly many say recklessly on a squirrelly high-speed rail system. He likes to wear the cloak of environmentalism, especially on global warming. But hes willing to muck up the West Coasts largest estuary and tighten the valve on its fresh water without consulting the public. This is the governor, remember, who insisted on seeking the voters approval for a huge tax increase. That was a crowd-pleaser as he ran for election in 2010. Ordinarily, a governor would push a bill through the Legislature. Similarly, Brown is seeking a public vote in November on a proposal to make criminal sentencing more flexible. But he seems afraid of asking voters permission to build the states most-expensive-ever water project, even if it undoubtedly would jack up their water bills. And he certainly does not want to risk querying Californians again about the bullet train, the nations biggest infrastructure project. Voters narrowly authorized the project in 2008, approving $9.9 billion in initial bonds. Sponsors promised the line would stretch from San Francisco and Sacramento through Los Angeles to San Diego. But San Diego and Sacramento have been axed. The total cost has doubled. Theres no private investment. The feds gave $3 billion, but Congress swears thats it. Last week, the Democratic-controlled Assembly Transportation Committee unanimously approved a Republican bill to require more legislative oversight. The bill, AB 2847, includes recommendations by the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office. It would force the High-Speed Rail Authority to provide detailed information about costs, planning and the construction timetable for each section of the line. And it would require the agency to spell out how each segment would be paid for. Pretty commonsense stuff, youd think. Like any successful business would require of itself. In my judgment, says the bills author, Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno), theyve sort of been just making it up as they go along. The last straw, the assemblyman says, is when directions were reversed for the initial line. The agency abandoned plans to begin the train in Burbank and run it into the San Joaquin Valley. Instead, it switched to a San Jose startup. Tracks would end in a farm field near Shafter, 20 miles north of Bakersfield. Its not good enough to say were going to build this no matter what has to be done, Patterson says. That cannot be the operating principle on a multibillion-dollar project. The bill requiring a statewide vote on the delta tunnels squeaked out of the Assembly water committee with barely enough support. Northern lawmakers particularly backed the measure. Theyre worried about the tunnels siphoning off fresh Sacramento River water before it reaches the delta, decimating young salmon and drawing in seawater. And the tunnel construction would chew up prime farmland. Brown and tunnel advocates southern San Joaquin Valley agriculture, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, labor unions argue the ambitious project would make delta water deliveries more reliable. But they insist it wouldnt actually drain more delta water. So theres a contradiction. Funding also is dicey on this project. They never talk about what other alternatives there are, says Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), author of the bill, AB 1713. Im pushing this to have a continuing conversation. The aquifer bill would impose a moratorium on new well drilling in water basins that are critically over-drafted. Land has been sinking, damaging roads and canals in some parts of the San Joaquin Valley. Weve reached the point where business as usual has to stop, says Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis), author of the bill, AB 1317, which was approved by the Senate water committee. Investors have been planting orchards such as almonds in places never before farmed, she says. Thats all well and good if theres water. There isnt in many places. The corporate growers are drilling deeper into plunging aquifers. And thats leaving some small towns high and dry. Brown doesnt like to hear any of this stuff. So some Democrats are trying to shout. george.skelton@latimes.com Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter ALSO You could vote on controversial delta water tunnels plan in 2018 Lawmakers want to put Gov. Jerry Browns delta tunnels plan before voters Brown defends delta tunnels as he rolls out tweaks to water plan Updates from Sacramento Mame and Charlie Hooper think of themselves as globe-trotters: They love exploring the world. And one of their favorite ways of seeing the world is cruising the rivers and coastal waters of the United States. Theres nothing better than slowly cruising up an American river, Mame said when I caught up with her at the couples home outside Atlanta. The ride is smooth, the scenery is often exquisite and you see all these charming towns with wonderful histories. Theres one more thing: With all this fear of being blown up somewhere overseas, Charlie and I made a decision to spend our money in the U.S., she said. Advertisement Safety concerns may be one of the reasons U.S. river cruising is booming, but its not the only one. River tripping, whether in the U.S. or abroad, has surged in the last decade, pushing the demand to an all-time high, according to industry figures compiled by Cruise Lines International Assn. The organizations members account for nearly 200 river cruise ships, many based in Europe. But the Hoopers, who have been on 10 river cruises in the last few years, prefer the U.S. You dont have to go to Europe to have a great river experience, said Charles A. Robertson, president and chief executive of American Cruise Lines. The rivers in the U.S. are phenomenal. Robertson may be biased, but he makes another point that mirrors what the Hoopers said. A lot of people feel more comfortable in the United States, Robertson said. They dont want to have to fly overseas or worry about terrorism. American Cruise Lines boats (dont call them ships, Robertson said) carry 200 or fewer guests, and most have private verandas. Just open your sliding glass door and watch the scenery go by, he said. The company, which has nine boats and three more under construction, also runs trips along the U.S. coast, in Maine, Washingtons Puget Sound and the East Coasts Chesapeake Bay. Larger cruise ships also have increased their coastal voyages in the last few years. Lines such as Carnival, Princess, NCL and Celebrity have added coastal itineraries. Princess, for instance, has a seven-day Wine Country trip that offers wine tasting excursions in Santa Barbara and San Francisco. Because American river cruises usually are on smaller vessels, they can offer a more intimate view of the destination and the surrounding countryside. Its a unique way to explore the country, often visiting both well-known cities and towns, as well as some of the more hidden gems that the country has to offer, said Colleen McDaniel, managing editor of CruiseCritic.com. While the onboard experience is definitely more laid-back than on bigger ocean-going vessels, U.S. river lines are doing a fantastic job of building itineraries and onboard experiences that are as unique as the destinations in which they visit. Themed cruises tap into the history and features of the region, McDaniel said, and include options such as tracing Lewis and Clarks expedition in the Pacific Northwest, exploring local craft beer or the wine scene in Oregon and Washington, and music cruises centered on the Nashville country and blues scene in Tennessee. Many people associate river cruising with the Mississippi; that popular route weaves its way through 1.2 million square miles and 10 states, usually divided into upper and lower Mississippi. Passengers experience the jazz of New Orleans, the French-inspired beauty of Natchez, Miss., the Gateway Arch of St. Louis and more. But there are other waterways to explore in the U.S. too, including: The Columbia and Snake rivers, which border Oregon and Washington. The trip explores the Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah Falls, Mt. St. Helens and Pendleton, Ore. The East Coast Intracoastal Waterway, a protected network of bays, rivers and canals. River trips visit Savannah and Jekyll Island in Georgia, and Charleston and Beaufort in South Carolina. Puget Sound and San Juan Islands, where the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges meet the sea. Cruisers on this Pacific Northwest voyage visit Washington and British Columbia, usually stopping at Seattle, Anacortes, Friday Harbor and Port Townsend in Washington and Victoria in Canada. Mame and Charlie Hooper will leave on their 10th American Cruise Lines trip a Puget Sound cruise this spring. I cant wait, Mame said. People say the scenery is fantastic. :: Cruise tip: Bring a small power strip to keep electronic devices humming Many cruise cabins have only a couple of outlets, so if you cant live without your electronic devices, take a small power strip. Will you need an adapter? Not on ships that cater to Americans, which are equipped with 110 AC current, but you should check with the cruise line if youre traveling internationally. travel@latimes.com Afghan President Ashraf Ghani pulled the plug Monday on his failing effort to start peace talks with the Taliban. The talks have been a centerpiece of his foreign policy since he took office more than 18 months ago. In a pointed speech before parliament, he issued his most direct challenge yet to Pakistan to battle the insurgents who he said originate from its territory. He called on Pakistan to act as a responsible government and launch military operations against the Taliban and its allies, who are widely believed to be based in Pakistans tribal belt. If Pakistan didnt do so, he said, Afghanistan was willing to bring the issue to the United Nations Security Council. We do not expect Pakistan to deliver the Taliban for negotiations, Ghani said, adding that Pakistan should instead keep promises it has made to carry out military operations against insurgents on its soil. Advertisement Ghani also referred to the Taliban as terrorists for the first time, a term he had previously been criticized for avoiding. Now, rather than holding peace talks, Ghani said, Afghan security forces would take on the Taliban and other armed opposition groups directly. The Taliban seemed to take note, rebuking the president on social media. The slaves ruling Kabul... are not the leaders of the nation but lackeys imposed on the nation by Kerry, an account affiliated with the group tweeted after the speech, referring to U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry. Ghanis remarks came nearly a week after a truck bombing killed 64 people and wounded more than 347 others in Kabul, one of the deadliest attacks in the Afghan capital in years. An initial investigation by Afghan intelligence attributed the attack to the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied group based in Pakistan. Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, chief executive of Afghanistans unity government, had previously spoken out against Pakistan, particularly following a truck bombing in August that wounded nearly 400 people. But in the ensuing months, both leaders tempered their stance against Islamabad after Pakistan joined Afghanistan, China and the United States in a four-nation effort to start peace talks with the Taliban. Hoping to persuade Pakistan to bring Taliban leaders to the negotiating table to help end a conflict now in its 15th year, Ghani opened the door for Afghan military cadets to train in Pakistan, and he announced an intelligence-sharing agreement between the two countries. The moves sparked fervent criticism from opposition politicians and many Afghans who blame Pakistan for turning a blind eye to or directly supporting militant groups in Afghanistan. That effort faltered when the main Taliban leadership showed little inclination to negotiate and continued offensives that have challenged the governments control over parts of northern and southern Afghanistan. Ghani said Afghan security forces were engaged in 15 military operations, across seven of the nations 34 provinces, meant to suppress the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other allied groups. He also told lawmakers that he would nominate a new defense minister and intelligence chief within days. The acting defense minister, Massoom Stanekzai, has been serving in that role for more than a year. The former intelligence chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, resigned in December after he reportedly opposed Ghanis approach to Pakistan. Ghani said he would no longer offer amnesty to insurgents -- an apparent reference to the policy of former President Hamid Karzai, who some experts said freed thousands of captured militants who claimed to have renounced violence. One attacker responsible for the Kabul truck bombing last week had reportedly been freed by Karzais administration. Latifi is a special correspondent. Join the conversation on Facebook >> ALSO How peace talks have an economic effect on ordinary Syrians Obama plans to send 250 more U.S. military personnel into Syria One year after devastating Nepal earthquake, reconstruction has barely begun Within days of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that nearly wiped this hilltop hamlet off the map, Raj Kumar Sahi began building a shed to shelter his family, salvaging twisted metal sheets and splintered strips of wood from the rubble of their four-room home. A year later, the shed has taken on an air of permanence. A satellite dish crowns the tin roof and electrical cables snake through the panels that serve as walls. The dirt entryway is neatly swept. Above the door hangs a withered garland, a remnant of a festival several months ago. The house still lies in a heap of stone and bricks, a constant reminder that the family like nearly all of Nepals quake victims has not received funds the government promised for reconstruction. Advertisement I knew it would be slow, so we built the shed right away, Sahi said. But I didnt think we would be here for a year. And the way things are going, I cannot say how many more months or years it will be like this. Despite a worldwide outpouring of grief and assistance that followed last years April 25 earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people and damaged or destroyed 1 million homes, Nepals recovery has barely gotten off the ground. The government agency charged with overseeing the biggest humanitarian operation in the Himalayan nations history has been stymied by political infighting and mired in bureaucratic delays. Work commenced only in January. Little of the $4.1 billion pledged at an international donor conference in June has been spent, triggering frustration among diplomats in the United States and other countries, some of which have signaled they might shave their contributions. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Reconstruction officials said last week that they were still finalizing damage assessments in 11 of the hardest-hit districts, the first step toward releasing $2,000 grants for families to rebuild their homes. Across 8,000 quake-ravaged square miles, which include some of Asias most majestic and forbidding terrain, victims are facing the prospect of enduring a second consecutive summer monsoon in flimsy sheds, flood-prone and inviting to mosquitoes. Raj Kumar Sahi outside his temporary home in Paslang, Nepal. (Shashank Bengali / Los Angeles Times) Sadly, its quite simple: Reconstruction hasnt begun, said Chandan Sapkota, an independent analyst who until last year served as an economist for the Asian Development Bank in Nepal. The kind of urgency you saw in the months after the quake has been lost. The government is stuck in the process. The current environment is confusion at the planning level and uncertainty at the village level. In Paslang, a village of about 300 people just 12 miles from the quakes epicenter in north-central Nepal, 50 of 56 homes were flattened and two people killed, including a 1-month-old boy. When a Times reporter visited Paslang five days after the quake, residents were picking through the debris and had just received the first truckloads of blue tarpaulin sheets, medical kits and other emergency supplies from local and international relief groups. The village, overlooking terraced fields that tumble down to a forested valley, seems little changed since then. The blue tarps that sheltered people in the temblors immediate aftermath have been replaced by tin-and-timber shacks. The piles of stone and mud debris have yet to be cleared. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> A few stray possessions poke out from the detritus of the Sahi home a cotton jacket, a mosquito net, a mangled umbrella but most of the familys belongings remain trapped underneath. Sahi, a bank security guard in the capital, Katmandu, had to borrow money to build the shack that would house his wife and two daughters, a bamboo shelter for their two cattle and a chicken coop. The only space they had was the small plot next to their house where they grew maize and vegetables. With no sign that the government would quickly release reconstruction money, Sahi and his family made the agonizing decision to cover the plot in dirt so they could build atop it choosing shelter over a reliable source of food and income. That was disheartening, said Sahi, a slender man with deep creases around his eyes. But we did not have a choice. At every step they have faced delays and setbacks. An initial $150 government grant for temporary shelter took months to arrive, and Sahis mother, whose house next door was also destroyed, was declared ineligible because she did not hold a deed to the land. Sahi used his grant to build her a shelter. A second payment of $100 to help quake victims prepare for the winter did not reach them until last month. During the cold season, as the hillsides grew barren and temperatures hovered near freezing, the wind whipped through the tin walls as they slept. Sahis wife, Madhu, took ill and the family depleted its savings to pay for her medical care in Gorkha, the district headquarters a few miles away. She said she has lost count of the number of officials and engineers who have visited the village to survey the damage. A lot of people come, ask questions, take pictures and write down information, she said. But we havent received anything. Nepals government, fractious and often dysfunctional even in good times, responded to the quake by pushing through a long-delayed constitution that turned out to be extremely divisive. Protests paralyzed the government while India, which was unhappy with the new constitution, imposed a five-month, de facto blockade that deprived Nepal of its main fuel source and drove up the cost of construction materials. Parties squabbled over control of the newly formed Nepal Reconstruction Authority, which was not formally authorized until eight months after the quake. Even before it launched, its well-regarded chief executive was replaced by a compromise choice. Since then, analysts say, it has struggled to recruit staff because bureaucrats are reluctant to join an agency that is seen as highly politicized and saddled with a mammoth task. Housed in a low-slung, prefab building in a government complex in Katmandu, the agencys offices were nearly deserted on a recent morning. A young clerk sat at a desk, updating her Facebook page. The only sounds were the whirring of ceiling fans and the booming voice of spokesman Ram Thapaliya, who was defending the agency to a succession of foreign journalists. In the last three to four months we have done a lot, Thapaliya said, listing the guidelines it had approved for distributing the cash grants and rules published for building quake-resistant structures. But those moves only created more confusion. Quake survivors who began rebuilding months ago were told they wouldnt receive grants if their houses did not conform to the new rules. Thapaliya said about $650 million of the pledged foreign assistance is ready to be disbursed, but analysts say donors are raising questions about whether the government can spend the full $4.1 billion within five years, the lifespan of the agency. Theres great disappointment among the international community about the response to the quake, said Tim Johnston, Asia director for the International Crisis Group. All governments around the world are cutting budgets savagely, and it would be naive to think that Nepals slow response wont make it harder to get the money that has been pledged for reconstruction disbursed. Last month, several villages were cleared to receive the first of the $2,000 grants, which are to be distributed in three installments. Paslang was not on the list. Many villagers believe that politicians are directing aid money to their constituent areas first. Sahi noted that the surrounding district of Gorkha gave rise to Prithvi Narayan Shah, the 18th century ruler who united several kingdoms into what eventually became Nepal. These days, he said, Paslang and surrounding communities are forgotten by the political elites in Katmandu. We had historical importance to Nepal, he said. But today there is no one in this village who has access to the powerful. ALSO No more peace talks with Taliban, Afghanistans president says How Japan came to rank worse than Tanzania on press freedom Islamist militants suspected in slaying of professor in Bangladesh Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a man recovered Monday night in the southern Philippines was of one of two Canadians taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September. Trudeau identified the victim as John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta, and said his government would work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act. Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdels head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, said Jolo police Supt. Junpikar Sitin. Advertisement Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of three men two Canadians and a Norwegian they kidnapped in September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday. Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming the militant group, which has been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate, Amin said by telephone. Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees, also including a Filipina who was kidnapped with them, as the Abu Sayyafs deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said. The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos ($6.5 million) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands. The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue, the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III. About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said. In militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant positioned a long knife on Ridsdels neck. Two black flags hung in the backdrop of lush foliage. The abductions highlight the long-running security problems hounding the southern Philippines, a region with bountiful resources that also suffers from poverty, lawlessness and decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies. Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nations south. It has been weakened by more than a decade of Philippine offensives but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization. ALSO Editor of a Bangladesh LGBT magazine and his friend are stabbed to death No more peace talks with Taliban, Afghanistans president says Murder of acclaimed activist has U.S. questioning massive Central American aid package Veteran chef Yutaka Sasaki has a plan to remove the fear of eating one of the most poisonous fish on the planet: He wants to feed it to the emperor. The blowfish, known here as fugu, carries a deadly neurotoxin with no known antidote. An average-sized fugu is chock-full of the poison tetrodotoxin -- in its blood, liver and even its sex organs, Sasaki says. But he scoffs at the centuries-old ban on the Japanese monarch eating the delicacy, sought after by many Japanese as daring cuisine. Advertisement The prince and other royalty have eaten fugu, so why not the emperor? he says. It would set a good example. After all, he argues, its only deadly in the wrong hands. Someone who tries to prepare meals they know nothing about is stupid, says Sasaki, 61. If youre a chef and you dont know this fish, you shouldnt even touch it. Chefs such as Sasaki are campaigning to change fugus notorious image as Russian roulette on a plate. When prepared by a licensed chef, they say, the meal is as safe as biting into a Big Mac. In 30 years, Sasaki says, no one has become sick eating his fugu. He has taught countless other chefs, including his son, who works alongside him in the familys Tokyo restaurant, Tairyo, or good catch. Japanese are the largest consumers of fugu, eating 10,000 tons a year. An elegant multicourse meal of it can cost a diner $450. Sasaki shakes his head over connoisseurs being attracted to fugu not for its flavor (described as a taste given by heaven) but for its off-the-chart concentration of lethal toxins. But for as many Japanese who are attracted by the danger, Sasaki says, there are more who fear the fish. Those are the new customers he wants to attract. The chefs English-language business card lampoons the image that eating blowfish is the gastronomic equivalent of bungee jumping with a frayed cord. Try mysterious blow fish taste, it tempts. One hundred percent guarantee to you stay alive. But there are problems with that pitch: Some fugu gourmets dont last long enough to order dessert. Over the last dozen years, Japan has had hundreds of cases of poison by fugu, as many as 34 of them fatal, Japanese health officials say. Early this year, six men in northern Japan were poisoned when they ate grilled blowfish testicles prepared by an unlicensed chef, now under investigation by police. The men survived. Lax oversight is another obstacle. Although there are tens of thousands of Japanese fugu chefs -- 80,000 in the Osaka area alone -- the industry has no centralized regulation, so its difficult to know how many are licensed, says Kiichi Kitahama, a well-known chef and owner of a fugu museum in Osaka. In addition, only 19 of Japans 47 prefectures require chefs to pass an exam to obtain a fugu license, and those tests vary in their demands. In Tokyo, a chef must serve a three-year apprenticeship and pass a stringent test that involves gutting a fugu under the scrutiny of health officials. Fugu guts are so poisonous that they must be kept under lock and key and disposed of like some sort of restaurant radioactive waste. Theres much more work to make fugu legitimate, Kitahama says. Thats why I am still working at age 81. Kitahama is known as the godfather of fugu research. In 1913, his father opened the Osaka fugu restaurant where Kitahama started working as a chef at 16 -- and remains to this day. In the 1950s, he became alarmed by the high death and injury rate associated with the fish -- 400 killed and 31,056 sickened in one year alone, Kitahama says. In 1975, when a famous Kabuki actor died after eating a blowfish liver, Kitahama began to study the fish in earnest. He collected preserved specimens, skeletons, photos, slides and paintings that are now on display in his museum. His research inspired chefs such as Sasaki, who remembers that friends who first took him to a restaurant that served fugu wouldnt allow him to sample it. They said the fugu experience was too dangerous, he says. So they fed me only vegetables, not the fish. He is a touch arrogant about his craft: I am a chef and I have a license, his tone implies. Do you want to eat this or not? Working cautiously, more surgeon than chef, he demonstrates how to prepare the still-wriggling delicacy in the tiny kitchen of his restaurant Watch this, he says, applying pressure that causes the struggling fish to puff up into a prickly ball. After delivering a mallet blow to the head, Sasaki begins slicing into flesh, removing the still-beating heart. Hes happy to show customers his technique for an extra $100. Im an entertainer, not a regular chef, he says. I have to make my work a performance to show people this fish in my hands is safe to eat. But he continues to battle stereotypes, like the one that says a diners lips turn numb with a good piece of fugu. Thats a lie, he says. If youre eating fugu and your lips turn numb, youre well on your way to being dead. john.glionna@latimes.com Feisty and stubborn, Bertha Caceres rallied her neighbors against large hydroelectric dam projects that hurt the land in her native Honduras. She routinely clashed with local authorities and delivered firebrand speeches. She also won international acclaim as a determined indigenous activist in a country where that profession alone could be a death sentence. Early on March 3, it was. Caceres was at home in the town of La Esperanza (Hope) when masked men broke in and shot her to death. They also shot her colleague Gustavo Castro and left him for dead. Advertisement They were not the first, nor the last, such targets. Two weeks later, an associate of Caceres, Nelson Garcia, was killed. As many as 100 indigenous activists have been slain in recent years in Honduras. The killing of Caceres and allegations that Honduran authorities have bungled the investigation have created a dilemma for the Obama administration. The White House supports Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez even as some U.S. officials suspect state or state-supported assassins killed the activist. All of us in this work, who are voices for justice, are in danger, Bertha Zuniga Caceres, 25, said in an interview during a recent trip to Washington, where she lobbied for help in the investigation into her mothers death. We have no faith in the police, in the military, in any Honduran institution. The administration has sent a retired detective and a Justice Department prosecutor to assist Honduran authorities. But numerous irregularities in the collection of evidence, preservation of the crime scene, autopsy and other procedures have been reported. As part of the political fallout, a $750-million package of U.S. aid designated for northern Central America the largest such aid plan for the region in more than a decade may also be in jeopardy. Numerous members of Congress have signed letters to Secretary of State John F. Kerry to protest the Caceres killing and to demand an independent investigation. The strongest letter, signed by nearly 60 lawmakers, demanded some aid be suspended pending a review of the case. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> We are profoundly saddened and angered by the brutal assassination of ... Caceres, and appalled by our governments continuous assistance to Honduran security forces, so widely documented to be corrupt and dangerous, they wrote. We strongly believe that the U.S. government should immediately stop all assistance to Honduran security forces, including training and equipment, given the implication of the Honduran military and police in extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions, torture and other violations of human rights. Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala must meet conditions on human rights, migration and other governance issues before the U.S. aid money is released, and were on track before Caceres was killed, according to State Department officials. Some of the money goes to training police forces. A senior administration official who works on Central American issues said a single case, such as Caceres, would not determine a shift in U.S. policy because the White House was concentrating on a broader approach to the region. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing internal deliberations, said U.S. dealings with Hernandez had overall been positive although Honduras remains problematic. Days before the killing, Hernandez was feted in Washington as he claimed success in reducing violence in his country. The administration has portrayed Hernandez as a credible partner in tackling the regions myriad troubles, including the flood of undocumented families to the U.S. border, rampant violence and drug-trafficking. That kind of assessment infuriates many in Congress and in the activist community. They are skeptical Hernandez will allow a credible investigation into the Caceres slaying or ease the governments repression of people it doesnt like. The U.S. approach is overlooking egregious abuses, they argue. Hernandez won praise from the State Department when he asked the United Nations to assist in the investigation. Critics, including the Caceres family, want the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intervene because it has more experience in slaying cases. Commission members held heated closed-door discussions with Honduran officials in recent days, a participant told The Times. On Friday, the commission announced it had asked Honduras to give a special group of experts access to the case in the country. We expressed our profound indignation and consternation to the Hondurans, said the commissions liaison for Honduras, Francisco Eguiguren. The commission had repeatedly demanded protection for Caceres in the months before she was killed, saying she was in grave danger. She had often predicted more than 30 times by one count that she would fall victim to the conflicts that engulfed her and her Lenca people. Her most recent cause was a major dam project, sponsored by the Honduran government with Chinese financing, that the Lencas said would ruin their ancestral waterways. Many in Washington see the Caceres case as a potential watershed for how Washington deals with Honduras going forward. Honduras would not let Caceres colleague Castro, who survived the attack, leave the country for a month after the shooting. A Mexican national, he took refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital, until he could go home. Castro told reporters in Mexico City that Honduran security forces had tampered with the crime scene. Under Honduran law, families of homicide victims may have a consultant attend autopsies and are to be kept apprised of the investigation. Zuniga, Caceres daughter, said that didnt happen in her mothers case. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), influential in matters involving Latin America, has followed the case closely. A 20-year-old law named for him would revoke U.S. aid to security forces implicated in human rights abuses. During his third speech on Caceres in just two weeks, Leahy propped a jumbo photograph of her on an easel beside him on the Senate floor. Why are the worlds most vulnerable people so often the victims of such abuse and violence? Leahy asked. I put greed at the top of the list. The government of Honduras and the company building the dam were complicit in condoning and encouraging the lawlessness that Ms. Caceres and her community faced every day, he said. ALSO Argentina pays off holdout bondholders, elevating hopes for economy Brazils fatal bike-path collapse raises questions about Olympic readiness Raised in the U.S. without legal status, he attains the American dream in Mexico On 24 April the independent inter-disciplinary group of experts (GIEI) sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to Mexico to help with the investigation into the case of the abduction and presumed murder of 43 trainee teachers from the town of Iguala, Guerrero state, in September 2014, released its final report in which it once again denounced some significant failings in the investigations being conducted by the Mexican authorities and complained about official attempts to block its work. End of preview - This article contains approximately 532 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options On 24 April Deputy Sergio Massa, the leader of the dissident Frente Renovador (FR) faction of the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists), struck a key deal with representatives of the ruling Cambiemos coalition in Argentinas federal lower chamber of congress over jobs.Massa is serving notice of his intent to capitalise on the FRs strong position in the lower chamber of congress to advance his own political agenda. Cambiemos needs the support of the FR to block an anti-dismissal bill that the political opposition is trying to push through congress in response to the streamlining of the state by the government led by President Mauricio Macri, which has led to thousands of public sector dismissals. Massa has agreed to grant the government the FRs support in this in exchange for its backing for his partys job creation proposals. Cambiemos deputies have agreed to Massas demands in principle and the details should now be thrashed out. End of preview - This article contains approximately 377 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options According to a survey in Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo, published on 25 April, only 39 federal senators are at present in favour of President Dilma Rousseffs impeachment. End of preview - This article contains approximately 338 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options A Pew Research study finds a steady of influx of young Hispanics being born in the U.S. sparked a surge in English proficiency among Latinos over the last decade plus. Researchers gleamed much of their information from analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data, which found as recently as two years ago 88 percent of Latinos between the ages of five to 17 insisted they only speak English at home or speak it "very well," an uptick of 15 percent from the start of the new millennium. More Hispanics Now Born in U.S. In addition, a 76 percent share of Latinos between the ages of 18 to 33 also insisted they speak English "very well," an increase of 17 percent over the same time frame. Researchers found at the root of all the changing dynamics was a change in demographics. More specifically, data shows more Hispanics are now born in the U.S. than the number of those still arriving here as immigrants. In 2014, 65 percent of all Latinos here were U.S. born, compared to just 60 percent in 2000. That change has resulted in more young Hispanics growing up in households were only English is spoken (37 percent to 30 percent) over that 14-year period beginning in 2000. At the same time, researchers also found many Latinos are somehow managing to hold on to their roots, with nearly 37 million of them still speaking Spanish at home, paving the way for the language to be the most spoken non-English language in the U.S. Latinos Still Value Ability to Speak Spanish Data also shows Latinos maintain they still value the ability to communicate using Spanish, with 95 percent insisting that future generations of U.S. Latinos continue to speak the language. Overall, however, nearly three in four Latinos, or 71 percent, insist speaking Spanish is not required to be considered Latino. Three federal agents were shot and a hotel that was also later engulfed by flames Saturday night, April 23, as authorities went in search of a suspect wanted on a pair of robbery related charges. Topeka authorities have identified the suspect as 28-year-old Orlando J. Collins, who was being sought by officers from the FBI's Kansas City office. Reports are once the officers reached Collins' door, they were greeted by gunfire from inside the room that left two deputies U.S. marshals and an FBI agent hit. Each of them is expected to survive. Gunfire May Have Started Blaze Investigators also now suspect that all the rapid gunfire may have ignited the blaze. "A fire was ignited from within the room," FBI sources indicated, adding that the fire quickly grew to engulf the entire building. Ultimately, the blaze burned for hours and could be seen from miles away soaring high into the night air. Later, authorities also found a yet to be identified body in the room where Collins was residing and where all the ruckus commenced. The hotel was quickly evacuated and no others injuries have been reported. Having been placed on Kansas' most-wanted list, Collins was considered armed and dangerous and a federal arrest warrant had been sworn out charging him with two counts of interference with commerce by means of robbery. Initially, neighbors in the area thought on the gunfire they heard were firecrackers being set off near the motel. "We were wondering what exactly it was," Christian Brull told reporters. "There was a couple of shots going on." Lindsay Haight and Emerson King were also in the vicinity and couldn't help but hear all the drama. "Fully automatic weapon, for sure, it sounded like," King said. Investigation Ongoing The ATF and fire marshal are now overseeing the fire investigation, while the Topeka Police Department, Kansas Highway Patrol and the Shawnee County Sheriff's Officer were all assisting the FBI in the ongoing criminal probe. Lin-Manuel Miranda is using his talent to bring awareness about Puerto Rico and the island's massive debt crisis, and he is offering U.S. members of Congress tickets to his smash Broadway hit "Hamilton" for their assistance. Appearing on a recent episode of HBO's "Last Week's Tonight" with host John Oliver, Miranda rapped, "Along with suicidal tax incentive declarations, 'Yeah, we'll pay your bonds first, close the hospital, f--- the patients/This is an island, 100 miles across/The hurricane is coming and we're running up a loss." Puerto Rico's Debt Tops $70 Billion Indeed, the $70 billion in public debt Puerto Rico now finds itself on the hook for, leading to spiraling poverty rates and school closures, is no laughing matter. And no one knows that more than the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Hamilton" creator. He recently went before Congress to make a teary-eyed plea for leaders to enact legislation that would move toward a solution. "If I can help in any way, if I can get more eyeballs to this crisis, it's a fixable problem," he told the panel. Miranda Insists Statehood Debate Can Wait So dire is the situation, Miranda told Oliver the "great debate" about statehood can wait until another day. Later, he made a personal plea to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. "Paul Ryan, I'll come sing 'Hamilton' at your house," he said. "I'll do-si-do with Pelosi, I'll wear my 'Hamilton' blouse. Your citizens are suffering, stop the bleeding, stop the loss. Help Puerto Rico, it's just 100 miles across." The 36-year-old Miranda and fellow Latina Gina Rodriguez ("Jane The Virgin") recently joined Pope Francis on Time Magazine's 2016 "Most Influential People" list. In announcing the honor, famed director J.J. Abrams described his "Hamilton" performance as "one of the best" productions you'll ever see. He later adds the work has cemented Miranda's status as "one of the most miraculous creative minds of our time." Three out of four Latinos will cast ballots for a presidential candidate supporting deportation relief programs, according to an America's Voice and Latino Decisions poll released last week. Asked what their most important issue was ahead of November's general election, 41 percent of the 2,200 registered voters surveyed said immigration reform and deportations were at the top of their list, followed by the economy (24 percent) and education reform (16 percent). "While Latinos care about all issues, our community remains deeply and personally affected by the issue of immigration," said Voto Latino CEO Maria Teresa Kumar in a press statement. "How each party chooses to tackle the issue of immigration will directly influence who Latino votes will back." Over 60 percent don't personally know any young people who applied for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and just as many aren't aware of friends or families facing deportation, yet an overwhelming number -- 72 percent -- are leaning towards Democratic candidates solely because of their pro-immigration stance. Kumar acknowledged that DACA and the accompanying Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program aren't permanent fixes for the country's immigration dilemma. In order to sustain positive change this election cycle, Kumar said, "Latino voters, including the 1.6 million voters with a DACA/DAPA-eligible family member, must show up." DAPA, DACA Battle Resonates With Voters On April 18, U.S. Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments DAPA/DACA case, a case stemming from President Obama's 2014 executive order allowing undocumented parents work permits and children deportation protection if they meet certain requirements. Texas initiated the 26-state lawsuit challenging the programs' constitutionality. Republican lawmakers argue that DAPA and DACA could hurt states financially, if they don't violate existing laws. Pro-immigration advocates, many who gathered outside the Capitol last Monday, believe this is common-sense legislation that would unite families and allow a pathway to residency to some 11 million undocumented individuals already living in the U.S. The president's deferred action proposals, along with conservative lawmakers' rebuttals, directly led 75 percent of respondents to say they are now "more likely" to vote Democrat; 74 percent they are "less likely" to vote Republican. Despite Obama's modest approval rating, 73 percent of Latinos still approve of the job he's doing. Republican Candidates Hold Unfavorable Views Latinos were split on which Democratic candidate they view more favorably, Party front-runner Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Thirty-seven percent saw Clinton as "very favorable," compared to 29 percent for Sanders. Conversely, 32 percent thought Sanders is "somewhat favorable" to Clinton's 25 percent; an equal 61 percent saw both as "total favorable." GOP candidates weren't seen in the same light. An overwhelming 87 percent have a "total unfavorable" view of said Republican delegate leader Donald Trump. If the general election narrowed to Trump and Clinton, 76 percent would vote for the former Secretary of State. Based on Trump views - those calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, along with plans to enhance the border wall at Mexico's expense - prompted 71 percent of participants to say he is the most anti-immigration candidate running. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz earned just as much opprobrium. His plan to deport every undocumented immigrant through self-deportation drew 74 percent to say they are "less likely" to vote for him. Fifty-five percent said his negative view on immigration, which may include enhanced surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods, made their decision easier. "In a campaign that at times has been fueled by hateful rhetoric against Latinos and immigrants, these findings illustrate what we've known all along- family unity is at the heart of the Latino community just as it is at the heart of our American values," Kumar said. She added, "Come Nov. 8, Latinos will head to the polls and will vote based on who will fight for our community and take a stand against hate, not on party politics." On Wednesday, Singapore had a major condemnation regarding the widespread calls in making the fights for drug less punitive. The country argued that the 'soft approach' would lead only to a flood of narcotics in the island. According to Reuters, using a major meeting at United Nations, Singapore blasted calls regarding their way of handling drugs in the state. Singapore is well known for punishing drug-related offenses at a grave status and penalties. However, European delegates railed their idea against executing people for drug infarctions. Singapore Minister for Home Affairs and Law, KKasiviswanathan Shanmugam said "We believe that drugs will destroy our society. With 200 million people traveling through our borders every year, and given Singaporeans' purchasing power, a soft approach will mean our country will be washed over with drugs." Yahoo reported that Shanmugan was addressing the special three-day session of the 193-nation General Assembly called by countries of Columbia, Guatemala and Mexico to have a thorough discussion on the case for fighting illegal drugs. Notably, the Latin American countries have failed to eradicate the war on drugs. This also indicates as the first review of the issue since 1998. It was argued by Latin American countries and European delegates that Singapore with China, Thailand, Iran and Russia are the strongest opponents of the trend toward decriminalizing illegal substances like marijuana. Asia One published that Danish Health Minister Sophie Lohde blasted the idea of executing people for drug offenses and complained a declaration regarding capital punishment for such cases. She said "The government of Denmark deeply regrets that the outcome document does not address the abolition of the death penalty for drug-related crimes." Her statement proved to be supported by European delegates. Shanmugan has keenly defended Singapore's tough approach to drug war, saying it elicited far better results. He also disputed the claims of futile and harsh drug policies. He added that in 1990s, Singapore had arrested more than 6,000 drug users per year and this had dropped to a significant 3,000 annually. The activities that contributed to Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons have been the cause of concern for the United Nations Security Council. The Council has condemned North Korea's latest submarine-launched ballistic test. Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, was the one who oversaw the said recent activity and coined it as a success. As reported by ABC News, North Korea's state-run news agency, KCNA, reaffirmed that the test confirmed and reinforced the reliability of the North Korean style underwater launching system. KCNA also said that the test perfectly met the methodical specifications for carrying out underwater attack operations. Kim reaffirmed that Pyongyang is now capable of hitting the heads of the South Korean puppet forces and the US imperialist anytime he wants. The Security Council has been expressing their determination on making significant measures to closely monitor the situation. Pyongyang's recent submarine-launched ballistic missile test has been its latest demonstration of its military force which includes the launch of a long-range rocket in February as per Reuters. According to The Wall Street Journal, North Korea's launch using a ballistic missile technology is a very clear violation of a number of U.N Security Council resolutions. John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said they are calling North Korea to refrain from actions that will further destabilize the region. He added that the country must instead focus on taking tangible steps to fulfilling its commitment and international obligations. China was displeased with the tension on the Korean peninsula following North Korea's actions. The members of the Security Council have advised imposing harsh punishments on North Korea which include starving it of money, following its daring activity. The council has also called on various states to implement its sanctions on North Korea. The council has been constantly emphasizing that North Korea's development and testing of its new ballistic missile capabilities regardless if it's a success or not is a clear violation of the council's regulations. UK Home Secretary Theresa May on Thursday announced the proposal of a new law on anti money laundering. The new measures is targeting MPs and public officials which were suspected of corruption. In the light of Panama Papers leak, the new proposal will grant a new power to the civil courts to impose what she called as "unexplained wealth orders." Under the new law, those with unexplained wealth will have to to declare the source of their funds. BBC reported the new proposal is a subject to a six-week consultation period being launched in the House of Commons. "Britain's world-leading financial system is at risk of being undermined by money-laundering, illicit finance and the funding of terrorism," Mrs. May said in a statement. "The laundering of proceeds of crime through UK institutions is not only a financial crime, it fuels political instability around the world, supports terrorists and extremism and poses a direct and immediate threat to our domestic security and our overseas interests." Furthermore, she said, as quoted by Reuters, "We will not tolerate this type of activity in our financial institutions ... we will act vigorously against the criminals and terrorists responsible, to protect the security and prosperity of our citizens, and safeguard the integrity of Britain's financial economy." In the new proposed law, the government suggested an extra measures to improve reporting of suspicious activity. The law also introduced a new offence of illicit enrichment for public officials who had a significant and unexplained increase in wealth. The new law also give authority to banks, lawyers and accountants to take special measures when dealing with company suspected of money laundering. Anti corruption group Transparency International (TI) welcomed the proposed law. Last November the group reported that every year billion pounds of dirty cash was entering Britain every year, therefore a new measures need to be taken. As RT reported, Transparency International also warned that bold rhetoric needs to be backed up by bold action. Earlier this month, TI UK published an analysis report which had raised some concern about the role of Britain in the muddy world of global corruption. Executive Director at Transparency International UK Robert Barrington admitted the policies have some excellent ideas. Nevertheless, he wanted to see how the government put that policies into action. "The powers that are envisaged could make a real difference and, while it is important they are properly debated in parliament to allay any concerns over civil liberties, it is equally important that they are not watered down by self-interested lobbying during the consultation process," he said. UK Home Secretary Theresa May on Thursday proposed of new law to prevent money laundering. The new law will be a subject to a six-week consultation, and the new measures and will require public officials who were suspected of corruption will have to declare their wealth. U.S. President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 250 additional military personnel to Syria in a bid to extend cooperation abetting Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Different administration sources have confirmed the approval on Sunday which is expected to get formally announced on Monday during the U.S. President's farewell address at Hanover Messe fairgrounds in Germany. In December, President Obama has admitted for the first time in public that a small contingent of 50 or so elite commandos has begun working inside Syria helping the local forces combating ISIS. The planned announcement is believed to be a part of his administration's intensified efforts in fighting the extremist group, reports CBS News. Deployment of additional personnel to Syria has been decided following announcement for sending another 217 military personnel to Iraq. The U.S. forces has been training and advising their Iraqi counterparts. Ashton Carter, the U.S. Defense Secretary, has announced recently that they have been identifying more ways to accelerate the campaign against IS, reports USA Today. Brazil said that it has banished $125 million in 2015 that has been channelled to overseas banks through corrupt businessmen, politicians, and other government officials. According to the report released by the asset recapture department of the Justice Ministry, the recovered amount was eight times more than the $14.9 million repatriated between 2005 and 2014. The data also showed that huge amount had been diverted from Petrobras, the state-run oil firm in Brazil. In connection with an inquiry, called as Operation Car Wash, several politicians and directors have been arrested on doubts of overpricing deal with Petrobras. A portion of the diverted fund had been utilized to pay election campaigns and bribes, BBC NEWS quoted authorities. The deal is likely to have cost the oil company $2 billion. The report said that out of the fund recovered in 2015, $95 million was associated with the Car Wash inquiry. Ricardo Saadi, department director, noted that the agreement signed with Switzerland made it easy for the officials to recover the fund diverted to foreign banks through corruption networks. The authorities expect the amount to increase in 2016. The Federal Police hope that the corporations and people associated with this inquiry were involved in foreign drug trading, corrupting government money, and other related fraud activities. In 2008, Hermes Magnus, owner of Dunel Industria Comercio, made the first charges. The investigation then led to four criminal teams and their bosses, including Alberto Youssef, a black market trader. The police then found Youssef's link with the oil company, whereby firms that won deals on Refinaria do Nordeste bribed him, as reported by newstalk. Youssef's inquiry widened the investigation process and discovered that a group of firms assembled to give an illusion of competition inside the market, but fixed the prices themselves and distributed the contracts among themselves. Youssef named three major political teams that were involved in the corruption issue, the ruling Worker's Party, the Progressive Party and the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. Meanwhile, the bottom most house of the National Congress on Sunday opted to prosecute Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil. The Federal Police of Brazil is inquiring the Car Wash case, the biggest money laundering case in the history of the country. The EBC noted that the amount could increase to more than R$40 billion. According to WORLD POLITICS JOURNAL, the lower house voted by 367 to 137 for the accusation motion. The accusation process will move to the upper house and if the senate approves the lower house intention then Ms. Rousseff will be thrown out of her duties. The senate has nearly 180 days to come to a plan whether to eliminate her from office permanently. The Petrobras corruption scandal has added to the economic crisis surrounding the Brazilian political scenario. The government is looking forward to arriving at a favourable decision with regard to the corruption crisis. Missouri lawmakers have passed a budget which allows the United States money to spend millions to bar Planned Parenthood from accessing the federal government's funds. The Legislature officially barred a large amount of $8.3 million in federal Medicaid funding. The state was set to be distributed for family planning, sexually transmitted disease testing and pelvic examinations at county health departments, health care facilities, and Planned Parenthood itself. The legislators replaced the barred funds with money from Missouri's general revenues. Their decision resulted to an unchanged total amount of $10.8 million. They stipulated that none of the money could go to organizations that provide abortions as Planned Parenthood does, The News and Observer has learned. According to the letter for the Medicaid directors, the federal government has ruled that their money cannot fund non-emergency abortions, however, states are prohibited from barring Medicaid money from abortion providers and their services like vaccinations and cancer screenings, OA Online reports. Senator Kurt Schaefer, the chairman appropriations committee of the Columbian Republican stated, "Medicaid patients can still go to county health departments, rural health clinics, and federally qualified health centers. If someone wants to go to Planned Parenthood, they're free to do that. Taxpayers in Missouri just aren't going to pay for it anymore", as quoted by The Chicago Tribune. The budget for fiscal year that starts on July 1 devotes nearly $11 million to services such as family planning and pelvic examinations for women with low salaries on Medicaid. Most of the money would normally come from the federal government, which says, states must allow women to use it at Planned Parenthood. When the Missouri lawmakers initially proposed blocking Medicaid payments from Planned Parenthood last March, budget staffers estimated less than $400,000 in Medicaid payments go to Missouri's 13 Planned Parenthood clinics for procedures and drug medications. Planned Parenthood serves more than 50,000 patients per annum in Missouri, and about 7,000 of them are on Medicaid. Family Planning is the easiest public funding stream for lawmakers to target because it has one of the biggest budget. The slaying of three deaf women in Haiti sparks outrage over the apparent vulnerability of its marginalized disabled citizens. The nation remains shocked and shamed over the brutal killings of Jesula Gelin, Vanessa Previl and Monique Vincent in Cabaret, Haiti on March 19, 2016. Gelin, Previl and Vincent worked as street vendors and lived in the coastal village of Leveque, according to Yahoo! News. Leveque is a community established by U.S. religious organizations after families were displaced by the 2010 earthquake. Homes are reserved for deaf people and their families. The three women were stocking up on supplies in Port-au-Prince and were known to be hard working women who prayed together and belonged in a small network of deaf artisans. They were abducted as they headed home on foot late at night due to a bridge collapse that prevented them from taking public transportation. Their bodies were found in a ditch the next morning. According to ABC News, they were beaten, stabbed, burned and had their tongues cut out. The barbaric killings prompted rare public protests from advocacy groups in the country. Mickelson Jean, leader of a Haitian deaf association, said, "These murders are an act of absolute barbarism and we must have justice." The slayings highlight a massive flaw in the Haitian justice system where discrimination against the disabled remains rampant. Michel Pean, a blind activist and Haiti's first secretary of state for the integration of disabled people, expressed his outrage over the recent violence against the handicapped. He said, "This case is very important. The disabled have made advances in Haiti, but there's still far, far too much stigma and impunity." Violence against handicapped members of society - specifically the deaf and blind - are results of several issues. According to Seattle Times, superstition plays a major part in stigma and discrimination. Some believe that the disabled are cursed or are werewolf-type creatures called "lougawou". Gelin's husband, Micheler Castor, believes that his wife and her friends were murdered for their tongues. It was believed that chances of winning at the lottery were greatly increased should the player carry body parts from fresh corpses. Police held three members of a family suspected of killing the three deaf women. Two women and a man are in custody while two men considered main suspects are currently being pursued. The individual was booked for carrying a loaded firearm, discharging a firearm in a negligent manner and an outstanding warrant. LBPD Public Information Officer James Richardson tells LBREPORT.com that officers were dispatched at about 8:32 a.m. to a call of shooting victim in the 2400 block of Spaulding St...and arrived to find a man (adult) with a gunshot wound. The victim was transported to a hospital; his injuries are described as non-life-threatening ; no one is currently in custody and LBPD's investigation is ongoing. A 25-year-old man is accused of repeatedly exposing himself to an Allentown high school student, and stalking other girls, as they walked home from school. Alex Ramos, of the 1400 block of Hamilton Street, exposed himself several times from his car to the same 18-year-old William Allen student as she was walking home, city police said. The young woman first reported it to police on April 4, but said it happened several times previously. Ramos was arrested Friday night and charged with indecent assault, as well as three counts each of stalking and harassment. He was free after posting 10 percent of $10,000 bail on Monday, records show. The first girl reported Ramos followed her in a green Hyundai and exposed himself, police said. The girl picked Ramos out of a photo lineup and identified his car, according to police. A second accuser, who is 15, reported on Thursday that Ramos kept circling her in his car, staring at her, and eventually followed her home, police said. Ramos allegedly parked in front of the girl's house, but left when her mother came outside. Ramos is accused of following a third girl, also 15, near 17th and Union streets when she was walking home from school. All three victims identified Ramos' car as the vehicle that followed them, police said. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The Morning Call The Morning Call headquarters is in Allentown. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) Gannett Co. made headlines of its own Monday after announcing an $815 million offer to buy Tribune Publishing, which owns The Morning Call in Allentown. Gannett, which owns USA Today and a host of smaller publications around the country, announced the deal would also include $390 million of the publishing company's debt. Gannett CEO Robert Dickey made public on Monday a letter to Tribune CEO Justin Dearborn, after Tribune refused to negotiate a takeover, according to USA Today, which broke the story. "What we're hoping for is to sit down with Tribune's board and work out a transaction," Dickey told the paper. A call to David Erdman, The Morning Call's editor who then also became its publisher last month, was referred to Dana Meyer, director of corporate communications for Tribune Publishing. Tribune Publishing, which also owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, was spun off from the Tribune Co. in 2014. In February, the Call placed its office building at Sixth and Linden streets in Allentown up for sale. You can see a list of Gannett's "brands" here. Earlier this month, federal regulators signed off on Gannett's $280-million deal to buy the Journal Media Group, according to the Associated Press. The deal included 15 newspapers, including the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Prosecutors Monday argued unsuccessfully to revoke bail for a driver who allegedly had twice the legal limit for alcohol in his blood and was speeding when he struck a vehicle head-on in Williams Township. Daniel Braeunig is shown during his February arraignment before District Judge Daniel Corpora. He appeared Monday before the judge for his preliminary hearing on charges of DUI and homicide by vehicle. (Pamela Sroka | lehighvalleylive.com) Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Joseph Lupackino asked District Judge Daniel Corpora to consider revoking bail for Daniel Braeunig, 36, of the first block of Raubsville Road, during Braeunig's preliminary hearing. Braeunig has been free after posting 10 percent of $250,000 bail. Braeunig is facing charges of vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol, DUI (highest rate) and various traffic violations in the Dec. 28 crash along Route 611 that killed Dallas Poff, a 23-year-old father of two young children from Easton. The crash occurred in the 600 block of Route 611 when Braeunig allegedly lost control on a right curve and crashed into a 2004 Nissan Altima driven by Poff. Braeunig crossed into the oncoming lane and hit Poff head-on, police said. Poff was pronounced dead at the scene. Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek said Poff died from multiple blunt force trauma and initially deemed the death accidental. Jennifer Poff, Dallas' widow, and other friends and family members sat in the courtroom, often shedding tears. Several wore blue shirts with Dallas' photograph on them and the words, "Fly High Sweet Angel." Braeunig, dressed in a white button-down shirt and tan pants, showed no emotion and didn't speak during the hearing. Lupackino referenced a domestic fight Braeunig had with his girlfriend Saturday evening, which led to Braeunig facing a summary harassment charge. Braeunig allegedly grabbed the 31-year-old woman around the neck and threw her to the ground repeatedly while yelling at her, according to state police in Belfast. Lupackino then asked Corpora to consider revoking bail. Defense attorney Bob Sletvold, representing Braeunig, told the judge Braeunig disputes the harassment charge. Sletvold also said Braeunig has two small children that need to be cared for. Sletvold said following a formal arraignment scheduled Thursday in a separate DUI case in Wilson Borough, Braeunig is headed to a rehabilitation program. Lupackino said Braeunig could return to Northampton County Prison and seek rehabilitation. "He's been responsible, he's showed up for every court date," Sletvold told the judge. "Northampton County Prison is not supposed to be a holding center for people awaiting transport to rehab. It's a summary offense, your honor." Corpora then allowed Braeunig to remain free on bail. After hearing testimony from two Pennsylvania State Police troopers at the Belfast barracks, Corpora also determined there was enough evidence to send all the charges to Northampton County Court. A formal arraignment has been scheduled for June 23 in county court. 'He was intoxicated' Pennsylvania State Police troopers Dennis Simms Jr. and Seth Kelly told the court in testimony Braeunig displayed signs of being intoxicated following the crash. Simms said he arrived at the scene to find numerous mini bottles of alcohol in and around Braeunig's vehicle. Braeunig told Simms he drank three beers earlier in the day and was headed to Wawa in Easton. Sletvold asked Simms if he knew if the bottles still had liquid residue remaining in them or the bottles were dried up, meaning the bottles could have been drunk days before the crash. Simms said he couldn't recall. He then told the court Braeunig had obvious signs of intoxication, such as being belligerent toward EMS workers en route to St. Luke's Hospital for treatment. Sletvold argued Braeunig also was in a great deal of pain on the way to the trauma unit. "In my experience, I believe he was intoxicated," Simms said. Kelly testified to Braeunig's blood being drawn at 5:30 p.m., more than an hour after the 4:22 p.m. crash, registering a blood-alcohol content of 0.16. Penalties begin for most drivers at 0.08. Mechanical investigation likely A police analysis of Braeunig's 2008 Toyota Tundra revealed he was driving 78.3 mph in a 40 mph zone at the time of the crash, court records say. Following the hearing, Sletvold told a reporter he plans to conduct a mechanical investigation into the air bags being deployed at the time of impact. He said it's his understanding some investigators determine speed based on air bags and when the devices are deployed. "There are so many recalls on air bags," Sletvold said. "What effect that's going to have, I can't tell you now." Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Rolando Soto was sitting in a car Thursday night on Ferry Street, not far from Seventh Street in Easton, when he saw the man. "At first I thought it was just a nice guy walking a dog," Soto, 18, of Easton, said Monday morning. But then Soto realized the puppy "was flat on the ground and he was dragging" the animal. Every now and again, the man would use the leash to "whip the dog forward (causing it) to fly forward," Soto said. The man also kicked the dog, Soto said. The man didn't notice Soto in the dark car about 10 p.m., Soto said. "He was just busy trying to ruin the dog's life, I guess," Soto said. Soto shot a short video of the man -- his orange shirt standing out in a few frames -- but the dog isn't visible. "The dog was whining the whole time," Soto said. "After he went across the street and he was pulling it. He went and slapped it while it was on the ground, for no reason. The dog can't walk. Why don't you just pick it up? "... What if a parent was dragging a kid along the street like that? I don't understand how people can be like this." The dog turned out to be a 7-week-old female, likely a pit bull or pit bull mix, police said. She was too tired to keep walking, police said. Soto was wary about approaching the man. Soto said he figured if the man could treat a dog so poorly, he could be armed. Although there were other people on the street, "they just watched him dragging that poor dog by. I figured if no one else was doing anything, I'm going to do something. That's wrong." So Soto called police. He said the responding officer passed the man before stopping to talk with Soto. After the brief exchange of information, the officer went looking for the dog, Soto said. But Soto didn't feel comfortable, so he joined the search. Rolando Soto says he called police when a saw a dog allegedly being abused. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) "I drove through all the blocks, then turned to one alleyway," the Easton Area High School graduate said. "He was sitting on a porch. I went down the alleyway. I called cops again and let them know the address." Soto waited another 10 minutes. "I felt so bad the puppy would have to stay with the guy," he said. Soto had a dog a few years ago -- a miniature Australian shepherd named Shadow. "He was mostly black, with some white spots. He had no tail. He was like the smartest dog. But he's gone." That dog ran off while a relative had it out for a walk, Soto said. So he wanted to do something to help on Thursday. "Yeah, the guy could have literally gone into any house," Soto said. "Fortunately he hung outside on a porch. I saw that as an opportunity to catch him." But failing to see an officer, Soto headed home and fell asleep. An officer witnessed the dog being abused and cited Alexis Torres, 32, of the first block of South Locust Street, about 10:40 p.m. with animal cruelty, police Chief Carl Scalzo said. Torres is the same man Sabo saw, Scalzo said. When Soto awoke he had three messages from friends about the man's arrest and the rescue of the dog. While police have his information, no one so far has contacted Soto about testifying in the man's court case, he said. Torres faces a summary trial in District Judge Antonia Grifo's Downtown court. The summons was being mailed Monday and Torres has 10 days to respond, a clerk said. A court date can be set once the response comes back, the clerk said. Fees at the moment are $155, paperwork says. The maximum punishment for a summary offense of animal cruelty includes a $750 fine, restitution, 90 days in jail and/or 90 days staying away from animals, a Pennsylvania SPCA spokeswoman said. The arresting officer in court papers said he "respectfully request(s) the animal be forfeited." The city will fight for custody of the dog once the judicial process concludes, Scalzo said Friday. Then it will try to find the dog a home. Numerous people have already shown interest in adoption, including several of Soto's friends. The dog is in police custody -- the city has a kennel -- and is doing well after being treated for injuries that included abrasions and lacerations to its paws and legs, ground down nails and an abrasion on her abdomen, Scalzo said Monday morning. Soto said he's not scared Torres will come after him. "Why would you hurt someone if you just finished hurting a dog?" Soto said. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The 69-year-old Easton man with Alzheimer's who had been missing since Sunday afternoon was found and reunited with his family, city police report. Luiz Ruiz. Luiz Ruiz, of the 1400 block of Butler Street, who also has diabetes, was reported missing about 4 p.m. Sunday. He had recently moved in with family in Easton, police said. Police late Sunday night put out a description of him and the car he was driving. Ruiz was not harmed, police said. He was found in Philadelphia, police said. "The Easton Police Department would like to thank the public in their help in looking for this male," the news release said. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A house was engulfed in flames just before 9:30 Monday morning in Salisbury Township. No one was inside 1784 Elinor St. when the fire began, township fire marshal and police Sgt. Donald Sabo said. Pets were still being accounted for at 10:30 a.m. A police officer arrived at the home within a minute of the 9:25 a.m. first call, Sabo said. No one was hurt fighting the fire. Neighbors reported hearing explosions before they could see flames. Sabo said propane was the likely source of the blasts. Two vehicles also burned, he said. The response went to three alarms, with at least five fire departments battling the fire, Sabo said. There were several small brush fires, as well, on the heavily wooded lot, Sabo said. Neighbors' homes were not damaged, but there was some property damage near one home, Sabo said. Flames were knocked down by 10 a.m. and the fire was declared out just after 10:30 a.m. Firefighters were battling hot spots for the last 30 minutes, Sabo said. Questions about the home's structural integrity caused firefighters to remain outside, Sabo said. Most of the damage was to the rear of the house. The roof was destroyed. The house has a brick front and siding on the other three sides. The fire remains under investigation, Sabo said. The location is not far from Fountain Hill. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. In a ceremony earlier today Suzanne Fletcher was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Suzanne is known nationally amongst Liberal Democrats for her tireless campaigns in support of refugees and asylum seekers, and in particular for setting up Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary (LD4SOS). Amazed, humbled to win Lifetime Achievement Award #ALDELeaDeR2016.wonderful to be amongst so many wonderful Liberals doing good work in Eu LD4SOS (@LD4SOS) April 25, 2016 Suzanne was a councillor in Stockton on Tees for 30 years until she stood down in 2011. During that time she served as Lib Dem group leader for 23 years, and also as Mayor. In 1995 she was awarded an MBE for political and public services. Back in January Alistair Carmichael wrote a post for LDV: Suzanne Fletcher reminds us how one person can make a difference for vulnerable people. He was talking about her red doors campaign and said: I want to take this opportunity to congratulate her and all the Liberal Democrat campaigners who work day in and day out with dogged determination to fight for change and improvement to our local communities up and down the country, often with little reward. On this occasion all that work has paid off and as a result the most vulnerable in our society will hopefully be able to get on with their lives in a little more peace. There will be many other issues and this should serve as a reminder that one person can make a difference and by working together we can ensure that issues can breakthrough into the heart of power. At the event today in Brussels ALDE presented Local and Regional Politicians Awards in seven categories. Another British Lib Dem was amongst the finalists Cllr Ray Georgeson, Chair of Otley Town Council, was shortlisted in the Best Elections campaign category. Update Catherine Bearder MEP, who nominated Suzanne for her award, says: If the question relates to section 94 of the Telecommunications Act, then I am afraid I can neither confirm nor deny any issues in relation to the utilisation or otherwise of section 94 (James Brokenshire, 18.3.2014) As an MP, Julian Huppert spent considerable time pushing for information about the astonishingly broad power of clause 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984, a clause which enables the Government to require telecommunications providers to cooperate with them in very broad terms. He tried to find out how often these extra ordinary powers were used and who, if anyone, was checking they were being used appropriate. He got nowhere. As a result of litigation brought by Privacy International, the staggering use of this power has been exposed. Hupperts suspicions were on track GCHQ and MI5 have used section 94 to collect our data in bulk. They have been using these powers for 19 years in total secret, without even the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament having any knowledge of the use of Bulk Communications Data, or that section 94(1) was being (ab)used. The Intelligence Agencies Response to litigation admits: (a) GCHQ has acquired Bulk Communications Data by means of a number of section 94 directions. Two such directions were made in the period 1998 1999, both of which were cancelled in 2001. All other such directions have been made since 2001. (b) The Security Service has acquired Bulk Communications Data by means of a number of section 94 directions. The earliest of these directions was made in 2005. The Intelligence Agencies assert that the use of the power in this way was plainly within the contemplation of Parliament. However, as pointed out by Huppert, the provision was So well tucked away (in the miscellaneous provisions) [of the 1984 Act] that it was never even debated in Parliament. The Intelligence Agencies continue to rely on section 94(1) and directions given by the Secretary of State to the current day. These directions are general, surrounded by secrecy, not time bound and not reviewed independently. We do not know how many section 94 directions have been made, how many have been cancelled, what data is stored, what it is used for and if the data is ever deleted. Safeguards and oversight are distinctly lacking. David Anderson QC, in A Question of Trust, states: 6.17 s94 is very broad in nature and imposes no limit on the kinds of direction that may be given. There is nothing in the public domain concerning the use of that power and the exercise of the s94 power is not subject to any oversight or external supervision. Conclusion For the past year the Intelligence Agencies have been congratulated on coming clean. These recent revelations show that there is potential that many activities and legal regimes remain in the shadows. Far from congratulating them we need them to reveal what else theyve not been telling us. For more on the section 94 read Privacy Internationals blog. All documents disclosed in Privacy Internationals litigation can be found here. * Millie Graham Wood is a legal officer at Privacy International. There is a strong chance that the Remain camp will win the EU Referendum. I say that because, through campaigning on the streets for Britain Stronger In Europe in the most Eurosceptic town in the South West, there has definitely been a shift in public attitude from a generally hostile view of the EU to the realisation of the potential damage to the UK a Leave vote would bring. I am not saying that we are home and dry; a week is a long time in politics and there are several more weeks to go in the run-up to the vote, but this campaign is one Remain could easily lose rather than one the Brexit side could easily win. With that said, the referendum is only the beginning in a new chapter on the debate over Britains relationship with the European Union, and we will make a fatal error in thinking that this vote will finally slay the dragon of anti-EU sentiment. In fact, the closeness of the vote we are more likely about the see the rebirth of a more wide-ranging UKIP party along the lines of the SNP after the Scottish referendum; rebranding itself as a Eurosceptic Libertarian Party to draw together those involved in the Vote Leave, Leave.EU and Grassroots Out campaigns. While the Conservative Party will restructure itself after June and Labour will feel the fight is won, we need to continue to act as the counterweight to UKIPs successor and the only way we can do that is to offer a viable alternative to their message. We need to address the concerns many floating voters have when it comes to the EU, such as increasing the EUs democratic accountability, reducing its bureaucracy and in creating a unified European response to the refugee crisis. The Remain campaigns have often stated that we should Lead in Europe rather than Leave it. Through campaigning for Reform we can keep the initiative with the Remain camp, with the Liberal Democrats are the fore, and even begin to turn the tide of Euroscepticism in the UK. However, if we go back to business as usual we risk losing that initiative and in doing so, the future EU referendum that would inevitably come. * Ian Thomas is the pseudonym for a party member. His identity is known to the Lib Dem Voice editorial team. LifeStyle The best LifeStyle shows are right here, from Australia and around the world. Catch up with the experts on home design and interiors, food and cooking, the property market, and get fresh ideas with the savviest of renovators. Whether you need inspiration for cooking up a storm, to refresh a tired room, or tips to sell your property, Foxtel LifeStyle will always something new for you to watch. Enjoy your favourite experts like Andrew Winter and Neale Whitaker, or Deb Hutton and Jamie Oliver live or On Demand. Get Foxtel A GROUP set up in opposition to a proposed new footbridge in the city is to hold a public meeting this Monday at the Strand Hotel. The Footbridge Folly Action Group is also calling on stakeholders including councillors and Failte Ireland to attend the meeting kick off 8pm and have their say. Limerick City and County Council has secured funding from Failte Ireland, and an anonymous backer for the bridge which will run from Merchants Quay behind the Potato Market. It has an estimated cost of 18m. But the plans have proven unpopular with three former mayors among the high-profile figures speak-ing out against it. However, this week, the current Mayor Liam Galvin said he would not close the door on the bridge. With the local authority to lodge an application for the project shortly, councillors are to be shown further details of the plan in May. Even before theyve told the council their plans, this bridge is already cost-ing millions said Dr Catherine Swift, spokesperson for the group. If the council painted its own properties in Nicholas Street, that would cost only a few hundred euro and it would indicate that they are serious about developing a positive image. She added the group which includes members of An Taisce, the Curraghgour Boat Club, and the St Marys Mens Shed Project are not anti-tourism. There are many ideas out there about ways to contribute in a cost-effective manner but at the moment, nobody is listening to the ideas of Limericks citizens. We should be encouraging events and maybe pop-up displays in and around the castle, including on Nicholas Street, Merchants Quay, the park by Arthurs Quay and Thomond Bridge to create footfall in the area, Dr Swift said. Mayor Galvin said he had not formed a final opinion on the bridge. Unfortunately, he added, he will not be able to attend the Footbridge Folly action group meeting, due to a prior commitment. But he added: Id be very interested to hear their views. What needs to happen is the lobby group should go and meet with the executive of the council responsible for this development. Some of their issues are quite trivial issues which can be sorted. A RESIDENT of a Limerick centre for asylum seekers missing a bus because it went too early sparked an assault, heard Kilmallock Court. Ousmane Bah, of Mount Trenchard, Foynes, was found guilty of assaulting the manager of the west Limerick direct provision centre, Andreas Gronskis, on September 5, 2014. Garda Elaine Freemantle travelled to Tralee to interview Bah following a complaint and asked him what happened on the date. I was in my room. The bus was supposed to come at 4pm. I went to the toilet at 3.58pm and told a person to tell the bus driver to wait for me. The bus pulled out at 3.59pm. I shouted at him but the driver didnt stop. Then the bus came back and drove away again. At 4.06pm I told Andrew [Mr Gronskis] I was not happy and I wanted to speak to the driver. He said the driver does not want to speak to me. He said, If you make it hard for me, I will make it hard for you and said he was going to do a general search. He saw two girls in my room, no problem one was my girlfriend and her friend. We went downstairs and he hit me in the cheek. He tried to hit me again and followed me out the door. I was trying to defend myself, said Bah. He denied spitting in Mr Gronskis face. I was close to him but I didnt spit. He hit me first, I was not drunk. He came to get the girls out to provoke me because I asked him for my right to get the bus, said Bah, who was found to have swelling on his cheek. Garda Freemantle said Mr Gronskis admitted slapping Bah and this was dealt with by way of an adult caution. CCTV footage of the incident was shown to Judge Marian OLeary Erin OHagan BL, who was defending Bah, said her client was also punched in the ribs and was manhandled at ferocious speed outside. Mr Gronskis received an adult caution for the entirety of the incident? asked Ms OHagan. Yes, said Garda Freemantle. Mr Gronskis said on the day he was in Foynes to pick up some items and returned at 4.05pm. He [Bah] came to me saying he needed a bus into town as it went too early. I said it was his responsibility. He said, The drink is too important. I went up to check his room and there were two women. He knows he is not allowed to have third parties in his room. I told them to go to the common area or leave. They didnt want to stay in the premises. He was very aggressive, abusing me with a big amount of words. He spat at me. My automatic reaction was to slap him. It was always open handed, never a closed fist. He was hitting me mostly into the face. I was trying to get him out of the building so it didnt escalate, said Mr Gronskis. The manager said he had a cut lip, eyebrow and bleeding from his nose and a cut on his head. Ms OHagan put it to him that Bah allowed the search of his room and the women left. Yes, said Mr Gronskis. The barrister asked if he contacted the bus driver. He didnt let me. He was arguing the whole time, said Mr Gronskis. A security guard, Gerard Hayes said he was there when Bahs room was searched and saw alcohol and two women. This is not allowed. He was verbally abusing Andrew. He spat in his face and Andrew slapped him. Bah was punching him. Andrew was trying to remove him, said Mr Hayes. The last person to take the stand was Bah. Asked if he would prefer to swear on the Quran instead of the Bible, he replied: I can swear on anything you bring. I didnt tell him I was having a party. I told him I wanted to go to Foynes to get drink. He said general search. The bus went before its time. It is the bus drivers fault. He [Andrew] wanted to ignore my rights. I asked can he call the bus and he said no. I did tell him to f*** off and a bit of spit might have come out, I dont know. He hit me. He took my girls out and refused to call the bus. It was like I didnt exist, said Bah, who admitted he tried to hit Mr Gronskis, but said he missed him. Sergeant Michelle Leahy asked Bah whose responsibility it was to get the bus. I was there bang on time. It went before, said Bah. Sgt Leahy said Bah told Mr Gronskis to f** off, punched him and pushed him through the door. He punched me, said Bah. Ms OHagan said her client had been living in Mount Trenchard since 2005 and had no previous incidents there. He was not intoxicated, he was not having a party. When the manager asked the two ladies to vacate the premises they did. He asked him to ring the bus driver after he went early. The manager did not do this causing my client to become irate. He did tell the manager to f*** off; Mr Gronskis proceeded to punch him and it turned into a scuffle, said Ms OHagan. Judge OLeary said she had listened to the evidence, watched the CCTV and found the State had proven their case. Bah has 51 previous convictions including assault, public order, handling stolen property and robbery. She sentenced Bah to five months imprisonment, suspended for two years. Apr 25, 2016, 8 AM This colored pencil rendition of a pair of snow geese by Stacy Shen, 16, of Fremont, Calif., was crowned winner of the national junior duck stamp art contest. Below is a press release from the Sam Houston Duck Company: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that artwork of a pair of snow geese was selected to appear on the 2016-2017 Federal Junior Duck Stamp. The design for the new stamp, painted by Stacy Shen, 16, of Fremont, Calif., was chosen by a panel of judges at the national Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest, held at J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Sanibel, Fla. The colored pencil entry, which won the California State Junior Duck Stamp Contest, was judged the winner among best-of-show entries from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This year, 27,192 entries were submitted to the 52 state and territory Junior Duck Stamp contests. Proceeds from sales of the $5 Junior Duck Stamp support environmental education. I congratulate our winning artist and all the talented young people who participate in the Junior Duck Stamp Conservation and Design Program each year, said Service Director Dan Ashe. As urbanization accelerates, many Americans, including many young people, find it increasingly difficult to experience nature. The Junior Duck Stamp Program remains one of the Service's hallmark efforts to engage youth and foster a lifelong connection with the outdoors. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Sarah Clayton, 18, of Sidney, Ohio, took second place with an oil painting depicting a pair of ring-necked ducks. Third place went to Chase Mascaro, 16, of Slidell, La., for his rendition of a pair of hooded mergansers. The 2016 Federal Junior Duck Stamp Conservation Message Contest winner was 18-year-old Cassidy Fulton of Valley City, N.D., who wrote: Our Environment, Our Responsibility, Our Future. The Junior Duck Stamp Contest winner receives $1,000. The second place winner receives $500, the third-place winner receives $200 and the Conservation Message winner receives $200. The winners were selected by a panel of five judges. The First Day of Sale Ceremony for the 2016-2017 Federal and Junior duck stamps will be held June 24, 2016, at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Springfield, Mo. It is free and open to the public. Both the Federal and Junior duck stamp artists will be available to sign stamps, and the U.S. Postal Service will have a special cancellation for collectors. The Federal Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest is the culmination of a year-long Junior Duck Stamp conservation program used by educators across the nation. The program's Educators Guide and Youth Guide provide 10 lesson plans with exercises and activities focusing on conservation science, our changing natural world, and fun. Supplemental guides focus on homeschools and informal education settings such as nature centers, national wildlife refuges and after-school programs. The curriculum guides are available here. Related Articles: Apr 29, 2021, 11 PM Bison are featured on the forever stamp for Yellowstone National Park. The design was revealed April 25 after Postal Service officials released one stamp design per day over a three-week period. By Michael Baadke Two bison in the early morning sun at Yellowstone National Park are shown on the 16th and final stamp design revealed in the United States Postal Services upcoming National Parks set. The Postal Service has been revealing a different single image from the set each day over the past three weeks. The full pane of 16, which will be issued June 2 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, will be revealed later this week. Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 by legislation signed by President Ulysses S. Grant. The park covers almost 3,500 square miles, primarily in Wyoming, but extending into Idaho and Montana as well. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter The park includes an active volcano, a lake with surface area of 131.7 square miles, 67 species of mammals, 285 species of birds, 466 miles of roads, and 1,000 miles of back country trails. More than 3 million visitors enjoy the park each year. One of the most famous sights in the park is the Old Faithful geyser, which erupts about 17 times a day. The geyser was pictured on the previous stamps celebrating Yellowstone National Park: the 5 blue of 1934 (Scott 744 and 760), and the 8 National Parks Centennial stamp of 1972 (1453). The 1972 stamp set commemorates the founding of Yellowstone 100 years earlier. The image on the new stamp was captured by photographer Art Wolfe of Seattle, Wash., who described it as perfectly backlit bison standing on a small rise in Yellowstones Lamar Valley. The stamp set will be issued June 2 during World Stamp Show-NY 2016 at the Javits Center in New York City. The other 15 designs revealed by the Postal Service honor Acadia National Park, Arches National Park, Assateague Island National Seashore, Bandelier National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Everglades National Park, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Grand Canyon National Park, Gulf Islands National Seashore, Haleakala National Park, Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, Mount Rainier National Park, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Even some of the tech aboard the USS Enterprise isn't so far-fetched. Think the automatic sliding doors or the wireless earpiece worn by communications officer Nyota Uhura. WASHINGTON William Shatner knows a thing or two about sci-fi tech. The 85-year-old actor is best known for his portrayal of the fictional Captain James Kirk, the courageous and willful leader of the starship Enterprise from the original "Star Trek" TV series. The show, which debuted in 1966, exposed audiences to spaceships, intergalactic space travel and a bevy of high-tech, futuristic gadgets. Now, nearly 50 years after the show came on the air, some "Star Trek" technologies exist in real life everything from automatic doors to cell phones. But, even though humans aren't zooming to distant worlds at warp speed, or using a "transporter" to teleport between two locations, Shatner says some of the series' most out-of-this-world tech may not always be so out of reach. "It's not that far-fetched," Shatner told an audience on April 22 here at the Smithsonian magazine's fourth annual "Future Is Here" festival. [Science Fact of Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts] Fact from fiction There are several examples of how real-life inventions took cues from "Star Trek." For instance, the communicator that Captain Kirk uses to talk to his crew is essentially a crude version of today's cellphones; the USS Enterprise's communications officer, Nyota Uhura, uses a futuristic-looking earpiece that today would fit right in with contemporary Bluetooth-enabled options; and the automatic sliding doors seen on the starship Enterprise must have seemed revolutionary at the time, but are now so ubiquitous most people likely take them for granted. The design of the starship's command center, or bridge, was even studied by real-life researchers, Shatner said. "The Navy did come in and look at some of the ergonomics of the bridge, and apparently copied it," he said. "A captain of a vessel not too long ago [said] some of the bridge stuff on his ship was designed after what our designers had [done]." Yet, with other concepts from the show faster-than-light travel, teleportation and time travel the gulf between science and science fiction seems to be as wide today as it was 50 years ago. Conceptually, teleporting a human being from one room to another is thought to be impossible, but on an atomic scale, researchers have made significant strides in the bizarre world of quantum teleportation. "Although a lot of the concepts in science fiction are absurd to our Newtonian minds, anything is possible because of the new language of quantum physics," Shatner said. Quantum physics describes the strange set of rules that govern the behavior of subatomic particles, including why particles can exist in more than one place at the same time. Quantum teleportation relies on so-called "quantum entanglement," in which particles can interact and become linked so that an action performed on one instantaneously influences the other, even if they are far apart. Quantum teleportation experiments do not dabble with matter, but rather they aim to beam photons (particles of light that have no mass) between two locations. (In other words, these experiments aren't teleporting humans anywhere, but the findings are valuable for advances in quantum computing.) In 2015, physicists set a new distance record in quantum teleportation, beaming photons 63 miles (102 kilometers) across fiber optics, or four times farther than had been previously demonstrated. Now what? "So, where does that leave us?" Shatner said. "Can you transport all the molecules in a human being? Apparently, it's impossible. Can you transport a replica of that person? [It's] possible, but the amount of computer energy and space is overwhelming. There's so much that we imagine in science fiction that is so delightful to think about." Time travel is similarly a mystery, though Shatner said people are likely familiar with the sci-fi narrative that involves characters traveling through a wormhole "where time and space is curved," creating a shortcut between two locations in space or time. But, wormholes are hypothetical features, and so far, they have not been proven to exist. [The 7 Silliest Time Travel Concepts in Science Fiction] And though faster-than-light travel has been popularized in both the "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" franchises, Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, which is 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) in a vacuum. Still, Shatner said it's fun to mull over these concepts, and science fiction should always serve as a way to stoke people's imaginations. And from his perspective (at least when it comes to Hollywood), the future is an exciting place. "Transporting is where it's at," he joked. Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Some men simply don't like the way they look without their shirt on. But one man in Germany who went to doctors with concerns about his appearance had a more unusual reason for wanting to avoid being seen bare chested, a new case report suggests. The 60-year-old man went to see a surgeon because he was dissatisfied with the gnarled and bulging appearance of his chest more than 50 years after he had part of his esophagus the tube that connects the back of the throat to the stomach removed. Back when he was just a 7-year-old boy, a portion of the man's esophagus was burned after he ingested an alkali substance, resulting in a completely narrowed section of this important passageway, according to the surgeons at the University of Freiburg in Germany, who published a report on the man's case Wednesday (April 20) in The New England Journal of Medicine. He probably swallowed a type of substance called a caustic lye, such as bleach, which can eat away at the lining of the esophagus, said Dr. David Hackam, a surgeon-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, who was not involved in the man's case. Back in the day, when this man underwent the original operation to bypass this damaged area, removing a part of the esophagus was considered a pretty aggressive surgery, Hackam said. The procedure would have involved removing the middle part of the esophagus and leaving the upper part behind, he said. [11 Surprising Facts about the Digestive System] Then, surgeons would have taken a part of the man's intestine and moved it up into the neck region, using it to create a pouch and attaching it to the remaining part of the upper esophagus, Hackam said. Next, the doctors would have hooked up the lower end of the esophagus to the small intestine, he said. By doing the procedure this way, the surgeons are basically rearranging the plumbing and making a pipe, Hackam told Live Science. Over time which, in this man's case, meant more than five decades the section of the intestine that was placed into the man's neck grew, swelled and became twisted, Hackam explained. By age 60, the man's bare chest revealed the twists and turns of his remodeled esophagus and intestine, clearly visible under the surface of his skin. Reconstructed esophagus This photograph is a very unusual, graphic and revealing look at his restructured intestine, Hackam said. "Doctors don't see this every day," he added. [16 Oddest Medical Cases] "It's an interesting picture, and a good warning to doctors not to do this particular operation this way any longer," Hackam said. Nowadays, physicians generally use other treatments for a burned esophagus, such as using medicines that can help heal the lining, he said. Even in cases requiring surgery, the kind of operation this man had as a young boy is not done much anymore. These days, surgeons are more likely to perform what's known as a "gastric pull-up" instead, Hackam said. A gastric pull-up involves bringing up the stomach from the abdomen into the chest area, and attaching it to the remaining portion of the esophagus, Hackam said. But because the stomach is brought into the chest near the heart, it is a very difficult and very risky operation, he said. The case report revealed that the man had cosmetic concerns about his previous surgery and didn't like its appearance. But the report also said that a test showed that he had no problems with swallowing. The man was found to have a hernia, an area in which his small intestine was bulging through a weak spot in his abdominal wall, according to the case report. After his surgeon explained the risks and benefits of repairing the hernia, the man decided not to go through with this operation, the report said. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. The G6 Alliance has confirmed that its new service linking central and northern Asia to the US east coast will employ post-panamax vessels to take advantage of the canals new locks. The G6, which comprises APL, Hapag-Lloyd, HMM, MOL, NYK, and OOCL, will launch anew its new NYX service later this year, although it did not give a date for the launch. It will have to be after June 26, however, when the Panama Canals expanded locks are official opened. The Panama Canal Authority announced this week that it was taking reservations for transits from July 27, with the first granted to Nippon Yusen Kaishas 78,874 cu m liquefied petroleum gas carrier Linden Pride. The new service via Panama will deploy neo-panamax ships of around 10,000 teu, a spokesperson from alliance member APL told Lloyds List. The new service will call at Qingdao, Ningbo, Shanghai, Busan, Manzanillo, New York, Norfolk, Savannah, Manzanillo, Busan and Qingdao. As Lloyds List reported Thursday, the service is part of a shake-up of the G6s transpacific services. The announcement comes in the week that the alliance discovered it is to lose another member next year, when OOCL joins the proposed Ocean Alliance with CMA CGM, Evergreen and Cosco Container Line. APL will also leave the alliance when its sale to CMA CGM is completed. First published on www.lloydslist.com 'Unscrupulous developers are buying back their assets at knockdown prices from NAMA, it has been claimed. Cllr Mae Sexton said the practice was prevalent not just in Dublin but in counties like Longford and further afield. Speaking at last week's county council meeting, the Independent councillor said the issue had been brought to her attention after a local constituent had unsuccessfully tried to purchase a premises in Longford. What is happening is that some people are going into NAMA and are getting a third party to purchase back their property at a phenomenally low rate, she insisted. Cllr Sexton said the only way to establish greater transparency in the workings of NAMA was by compelling the State agency to release a list of all properties currently under its watch across Co Longford. And she warned that unless local authorities and government took a stronger hand over its dealings, the nation was staring at yet another controversy. These unscrupulous people are making a laugh of people who have agreed to cuts in services and are paying additional taxes with great difficulty. Yet, you have these unscrupulous people out there who are trying to pull a fast one, she added. Fine Gael Cllr Micheal Carrigy said NAMA was obliged to disclose what properties it retained on its loan books as the agency was set up to achieve the best possible results for the taxpayer. Fianna Fail's Seamus Butler said serious question marks remained on how NAMA was originally established. They hide under this cloak of commercial sensitivity, he stressed. But I think when the story of the Irish recession is told, NAMA will be the shining example of an atrocious situation. What's worse is here we are in the year 2016 celebrating the (Irish) Republic, but this is not the way a Republic should behave. A local nurse has received a prestigious national award for raising awareness of issues facing student nurses and low morale in the sector. Cliodhna Beirne - a native of Lanesboro - is in her final year of Nursing at Dublin City University (DCU) and earlier this month she was awarded the Student Union Award for her outstanding contribution to the community. Cliodhna, who is the daughter of Ann and Pat is currently completing an internship at James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown. The Lanesboro woman established the first ever Nurse Appreciation Day at DCU. The Appreciation for Nurses Day came about because I noticed there was low morale among my colleagues, Cliodhna added. Student nurses begin their internships on a starting salary of 6.49 and people were quite down about that. Also in hospitals there are such staff shortages now that many of my colleagues began to feel stressed out, so I decided to do something about that. Student nurses also carry out 45 weeks of unpaid placement during their training. The Longford woman made contact with her student union reps - Kim Sweeney and Ivan Hynes - and together they established the appreciation day. It was a hugely successful event, with funds raised on the day for Temple Street Childrens Hospital. The college was a hive of activity and Donal Walshs mother from the Live Life Foundation delivered the keynote speech at the event. Cliodhna also spoke about the concerns both she and her colleagues had about the possibility of emigrating with their skills upon completion of their training, because of the lack of suitable positions available in Ireland. During training we miss out on a lot of college life as well because we are on placement for some of the time and then back at college for further periods, the past pupil of Mercy Secondary School, Ballymahon continued. Very often we find ourselves not being able to join clubs or societies because of that, so with that in mind I decided to organise a Ball which was also a huge success; it was brilliant. Then just before the General Election, it was announced that student nurses would get a pay rise, so that boosted morale a little as well. The industry is under so much pressure now because of bed shortages and staff cuts, so its admirable to see how well nurses cope every day under those pressures. As for Cliodhna, her future remains bright. She has embarked on her training at the hospital in Blanchardstown for the last four years and is confident of a staff position upon completion of her nursing degree. It is a lovely place to work, she added. Everyone is so good to one another and I am really looking forward to working there. Nature & Weather, Local News, Home & Garden, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: April 25 2016 Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced $57 million in Weatherization Assistance Program funds that will help cut utility costs for approximately 8,600 low-income families and seniors across the state. Albany, NY - April 22, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced $57 million in Weatherization Assistance Program funds that will help cut utility costs for approximately 8,600 low-income families and seniors across the state. The funds will be released to a statewide network of non-profit organizations to conduct energy-efficiency work including but not limited to air sealing, insulation, upgrading heating systems, and diagnostic testing to identify hazards such as carbon monoxide and mold to ensure air quality. The Weatherization Assistance Program has helped thousands of low-income households across the state make their homes safer and their utility bills more affordable, Governor Cuomo said. This funding will build on this success by helping more New Yorkers save money on energy costs while creating cleaner and more sustainable communities in every corner of the state. The announcement was made by New York State Homes and Community Renewal at a residential home in Endicott, New York, that had recently been weatherized. James S. Rubin, Commissioner of New York State Homes and Community Renewal said, Low-income households spend more than 10 percent of household income, on average, for heating and other energy expenditures. Adding insulation, sealing air leaks, and tuning heating systems are measures that pay for themselves in energy savings. A relatively modest investment in weatherization funds can mean a world of difference to a family struggling with energy costs or a senior on a fixed income. The WAP is administered by HCR with funds from the U.S. Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services. Services are available in every county of the state through a statewide network of local providers. Priority is given to households with children, seniors, persons with disabilities, and those receiving Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program funds. The program assists all types of housing including single-family homes, multi-family buildings, and manufactured homes. Since the start of the program in 1977, more than 688,000 dwellings have been assisted. A recent national evaluation of the WAP commissioned by DOE found that the program is extremely effective in cold climates like New Yorks. Work in multi-family buildings is especially cost-effective with WAP investments saving in excess of 20 percent compared to pre-weatherization energy use. A total of $1.3 million of the $57 million will go toward providing the network of subgrantees with training and technical assistance. Training in weatherization techniques such as energy auditing and repairing heating systems ensures that program funds are used effectively and work is done safely. Each year the Weatherization Program supports hundreds of good, green jobs, and our state-of-the-art training facilities help ensure that workers keep up with rapidly evolving technologies. Congressman Charles B. Rangel said, The high costs of utilities can often break the budget of low income families in New York City. I applaud Governor Cuomo for increasing millions in funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program to help thousands of people in our community. Small upgrades in heating, air sealing and insulation not only can put hundreds of dollars back in their pockets, but also helps the environment and creates green jobs. This $57 million grant will go far in creating happier and more sustainable homes across our state. Congressman Eliot Engel said, Weatherization programs are among the most valuable investments we can make. This funding will help reduce our nations energy consumption and put New Yorkers to work, while simultaneously lowering families heating and cooling costs. No family should be forced to choose between paying an energy bill and putting food on the table. Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey said, In the coldest months of winter, energy bills can break a familys budget. Federal funds for weatherization and energy-cutting measures will help protect the pocketbooks of New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet. Ill keep up the fight in Washington and continue working with Governor Cuomo to help improve the economic security and quality of life for New York families. Congressman Jose E. Serrano said, This important federal investment will promote hundreds of green jobs and help low-income families lower their utility costs. By helping individual homes and apartment buildings become energy efficient, this investment will allow thousands all across New York and in the Bronx live in a healthier environment and help them save thousands of dollars in energy costs in the long term. Three grantees in the Bronx will receive this funding, which they use to help weatherize apartment buildings, and provide the training and technical assistance to perform weatherization work safely and effectively. Since it was started in the 1970s, this program has been very effective and now even more families will be able to benefit thanks to this funding. Congressman Paul Tonko said, Protection from the elements is a critical during every season. Unfortunately for too many of our neighbors, they live in homes that cost too much to heat during the winter or cool during the summer, forcing them to make tough budgetary decisions between paying enormous energy bills or living in harsh conditions. I am thankful New York State operates a leading weatherization program to help those in our communities who need the most assistance in making their homes more energy efficient. I thank the Governor for his work to this end, and I look forward to working with his office on a national level to ensure we help even more people to weather the storm of high energy bills. 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 In late March, AQAP held a large rally in Mukalla to protest American airstrikes. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has entered the southern Yemeni port city of Mukalla, which has been a major hub of operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) since early April 2015. Airstrikes helped pave the way for ground forces from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Yemeni government to enter Mukalla in the past 24 hours. Citing Yemeni officials and local residents, Reuters reports that 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops have taken control of the port and airport and are setting up checkpoints throughout Mukalla, which is the capital of Yemens Hadramout province. Some of the reports coming out of Mukalla are highly questionable. For example, Saudi Arabias official press agency claims that the operation resulted in its first hours in the killing of more than 800 elements of Al Qaeda and a number of their leaders and that the rest of them fled. However, it is unlikely that AQAP lost 800 fighters in the battle. The Yemen Post reports that the casualty figure is far lower, totaling less than 100 jihadists. Indeed, the Saudis claim was immediately met with skepticism in the press. AQAP was apparently expecting the assault and began to withdraw its forces from parts of Mukalla well in advance. Reuters cites local residents as saying that AQAP had negotiated with local clerics and tribesmen to exit quietly towards the neighbouring province of Shabwa. Still, AQAPs retreat from Mukalla, which is estimated to have 500,000 residents, is a blow to the group. The city is a key part of AQAPs plan to build an Islamic emirate in southern Yemen. AQAP has earned lucrative revenues via taxes on goods entering through the citys port and by looting local banks, according to Reuters. Files recovered from Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Mali show that al Qaeda has long discussed how to best accomplish this goal. AQAP controlled significant ground in Yemen throughout 2011 and into 2012, but was ultimately forced to retreat in the face of Yemeni forces, which were backed by the US. The group simply melted away and began laying the groundwork for its comeback in 2015. Two letters written by Nasir al Wuhayshi, the deceased leader of AQAP, are especially informative. The Associated Press first reported on the communications, which were recovered in Mali. Wuhayshi addressed the missives to AQIM emirs, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and recounted AQAPs experiences in governing territory in Yemen in 2011 and 2012. [See LWJ report, Wuhayshi imparted lessons of AQAP operations in Yemen to AQIM.] As soon as we took control of the areas, we were advised by [Al Qaedas] General Command here not to declare the establishment of an Islamic principality, or state for a number of reasons, Wuhayshi wrote on Aug. 6, 2012, referring to the advice he received from al Qaedas management team. Wuhayshi enumerated the reasons why al Qaedas general command didnt want AQAP to declare its control over an Islamic emirate. We wouldnt be able to treat people on the basis of a state since we would not be able to provide for all their needs, mainly because our state is vulnerable, the AQAP head explained to Droukdel. Second: Fear of failure, in the event that the world conspires against us. If this were to happen, people may start to despair and believe that jihad is fruitless. Due to these reasons and others, we deemed that their [al Qaedas general command] advice was wise and decided not to declare a state, Wuhayshi concluded. He also noted that our bothers in Somalia, meaning Shabaab (al Qaedas branch in East Africa), had decided not to declare a state despite the fact that they control most of the areas of the country. Even though AQAP did not declare an Islamic emirate in southern Yemen during Wuhayshis reign, it was clearly working to establish one. Wuhayshi explained his group was gradually implementing sharia law in a manner that would be understood by the people. Because the Yemeni people had not lived under a truly Islamic government in some time, Wuhayshi reasoned, they needed to be reintroduced to al Qaeda-style sharia law. Wuhayshi also explained that the jihadists needed to build popular support. Try to win them over through the conveniences of life and by taking care of their daily needs like food, electricity and water, Wuhayshi wrote to Droukdel on May 21, 2012. Providing these necessities will have a great effect on people, and will make them sympathize with us and feel that their fate is tied to ours. This is what weve observed during our short experience. AQAP followed this same strategy throughout 2015 and the first three and a half months of 2016. The group did not declare an Islamic emirate in southern Yemen, despite controlling a large area of contiguous territory. AQAP did begin to implement sharia law, but avoided graphic images of the punishments being meted out according to its draconian code. And AQAP set up social media accounts to advertise its provision of basic government services, such as repairing roads, running electrical lines, and ensuring a steady supply of water. Wuhayshis advice in 2012 also provides clues as to how AQAP will respond in the wake of its withdrawal this time. Wuhayshi believed that AQAPs position was far better as a result of its territorial gains, even if the jihadists were ultimately forced to pull back. The parties that led the fight against AQAP on the ground turned against each other, which gave us a rare opportunity for guerrilla warfare and liquidations. We embarked on that [a guerrilla warfare campaign] as soon as we withdrew, Wuhayshi wrote. He noted the importance of holding onto the groups previous bases in the mountains, forests and deserts, so that the jihadists could live to fight another day. AQAP will likely wage an insurgency against the Arab forces that have entered Mukalla. The jihadists are already striking coalition positions elsewhere in response to the new offensive. The Saudi-led coalitions campaign in Mukalla marks a change in strategy. Since early 2015, AQAP has taken advantage of the coalitions focus on Shiite Houthi rebels and grabbed territory along Yemens southern coast. In general, the Arab alliance did not target AQAP, which allowed the group to reclaim the ground it previously lost. The Arab alliance has switched gears in recent days and so AQAP will now as well, just as Wuhayshi advised nearly four years ago. 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. Islamic State leader Abdiqadir Mumin shown in a video promoting the Commander Sheikh Abu Numan training camp. The Islamic State touted a small training camp and announced its first attack in Somalia as part of the its push establish a presence in the country. Islamic State followers in Somalia have been ruthlessly pursued by Shabaab, al Qaedas official branch in East Africa, thwarting their attempt to gain traction in Somalia. The Islamic State released a video on April 14 of the Commander Sheikh Abu Numan training camp, which is likely located in the Puntland region in northwestern Somalia. The video, which was produced by the Islamic States Al Furat Media, featured former Shabaab commander Abdiqadir Mumin, who is known to be based in Puntland. The video depicted just over a dozen fighters training in the camp, which is named after Bashir Abu Numan, a former commander who was killed by Shabaabs Amniyat the rival groups internal security and intelligence branch after he defected to the Islamic State in late 2015. The Commander Sheikh Abu Numan camp does not appear to be a permanent facility. The fighters were shown undertaking physical and weapons exercises before listening to a speech from Abdiqadir Mumin, who likely holds a senior leadership position within the Islamic States fledgling branch in Somalia. Mumin blessed the camp as the first camp of the Caliphate in Somalia before he and the fighters shown in the video renew their pledge of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Mumin originally defected to the Islamic State late last year with just 20 of the 300 jihadists based in the Galgala hills of Puntland. The other jihadists are said to have remained loyal to Shabaab. [See LWJ report, Shabaabs leadership fights Islamic States attempted expansion in East Africa.] In addition to promoting its camp, the Islamic State claimed its first attack inside Somalia. In a statement released on social media accounts today, the Islamic State claimed it detonated an IED against a a Military Vehicle of the African Crusader Forces in Mogadishu, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. The Islamic State has struggled to gain a foothold in Somalia despite a concerted effort to woo Shabaab fighters into its ranks. Shabaabs Amniyat has been tasked with hunting down and killing any members who seek to or have defected to the Islamic State. Last December, the Amniyat gunned down Mohammed Makkawi Ibrahim, a veteran jihadist who was responsible for killing a diplomat for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and his driver in Khartoum, Sudan in January 2008. [See LWJ report, American jihadist reportedly flees al Qaedas crackdown in Somalia.] Screenshots from the video: Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal. Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Luton is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Bedfordshire. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 258,000. Luton is home to Championship team Luton Town Football Club, London Luton Airport and The University of Bedfordshire. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. For all the latest news from Luton sign up to our newsletter here. Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > The Brussels Ultimatum by Sanjal Shastri The attacks in Brussels and in Paris earlier have jolted Europe. There has been another ultimatum from the IS warning that there would be more such attacks in other cities of Europe as well, for example, Rome and London. Europe seems to have become one of the primary targets of terrorism and from the recent threat it appears that this phenomenon would continue and expand further. Most of the countries in Europe and analysts are trying to find the reasons behind this European expansion. There have already been adequate explanations looking into the emer-gence of the IS and its new focus on Europe. But is this explanation sufficient to explain the growing radicalism within Europe, which is considered well developed, moderate, democratic and secular? Are there larger questions beyond simplifi-cations? While it is easy to blame the recent attacks on the IS, there are also some disturbing questions beyond the problem in Syria and Iraq. For example, consider the following: What explains the large number of Belgian, Swedish, Danish and French nationals fighting for the IS? Why is it that some of the highest rates of radicalisation are amongst first and second generation immigrants? Despite being known for their free and liberal values, why is there a sharp increase in radicalisation in Europe? The EUs role in the ongoing war against the IS is the most commonly sighted reason for Europe to become a target. This explains why the first of the two deadly attacks took place in Paris. Along with the US the French are also one of the leading contributors to the war against the ISIS. Brussels was targeted, as Belgium is also a significant contributor to the war. Additionally, Brussels is home to the EU and NATO. Therefore, it was an ideal target. Is participating in the war against the ISIS the sole reason why Europe has become a target? While the international community has focused on defeating the IS in Syria and Iraq, the attacks in Paris and Belgium were led by individuals originating from the North African countries (Algeria and Morocco). These individuals were also the first or second-generation migrants who were born and bought up in Europe. Hence, there must be a much deeper reason why the IS ideology is becoming attractive to the youth across Europe. The answer to this question lies in various social and economic challenges the Muslim communities across Europe face. BELGIUM is quickly emerging as Europes biggest challenge in fighting terrorism. Of all the European nations, Belgium has seen the largest number of people going to fight for the IS. Individuals living in Belgium carried out the attacks in Paris last year. A member of Belgiums counter-terror task force, Alain Grignard, mentioned that the fight was not against Radicalised Islam but rather against Islamised radicals. The IS extremist ideology is not what is pulling these youth towards violence. Rather, there has previously been a violent tendency amongst these youth and the rise of the IS and its extremist ideology is providing a religious justification to these violent means. The nexus between radicalisation and the propensity towards violence is closely linked to the economic and social factors. The Molenbeek neighborhood in Brussels is where a majority of the radicalised youth come from. While abject poverty is not an issue, there is a visible income disparity between these communities and the traditional Belgian population. This disparity plays out in access to education and employ-ment. These economic and social challenges lead to disillusionment amongst the members of the community, and this then makes violence and radical thoughts very attractive. The impact of these economic and social factors is evident in the fact that a majority of the radicalised youth were not religiously oriented. Radicalisation in many cases did not take place in religious centres but rather in social spaces. The challenge is that the lack of opportunities and economic hardships pushed these youth to become violent extremists. Similar economic factors also play out in France. The first and second-generation migrant youth face a crisis of identity. While legally they may be citizens of a European country, socially they face the challenge of identity. Within Europe, they are viewed as Moroccan migrants or Algerian migrants. In their home countries they are viewed as French, Belgian, Dutch or German. Many of the youth, therefore, are searching for an identity. While they are viewed as outsiders in Europe, they are also viewed as outsiders in their countries of origin. The IS ideology is suddenly providing these youth with an ideology they can identify with. Hence travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight for the IS becomes an attractive prospect as they will be glorified as fighters for the IS and not viewed as outsiders. EUROPE over the past few years has seen an increase in support for the Right-wing and a growing Islamophobia. In France the rise of Front National, in UK the emergence of the UKIP and similar groups in Germany and Belgium have added to the tensions between religious groups. Right-wing parties have been openly hostile to migrant groups. They have also recommended strict measures to control the spread of radicalisation. The presence of the Right-wing has made several minority comm-unities fall prey to xenophobic violence. This has ultimately led to the souring of relations between various religious and ethnic groups. It has also led to Muslims being looked at with suspicion. In order to fight extremism, laws like making Muslim immigrants take language tests and banning of hijabs in public have been adopted. In the light of the growing Islamo-phobia, rise of the Right-wing and these laws, there is a growing feeling of victimisation amongst the Muslims. While the rise of the Right-wing, Islamophobia and restrictive laws are a natural reaction to the growing levels of radicalisation, they are part of a vicious cycle. These very factors make radical Islamic ideology more attractive. Ultimately the open borders amongst EU member-countries plays an important role. It enables terror groups to operate freely between countries. It is not a surprise that the open border between France and Belgium allowed extremists in Belgium to travel freely to France. The challenge of extremism is something that all European nations are facing. After France and Belgium, the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have seen a significant number of citizens travelling to Iraq and Syria. A recent study of the IS radicalisation programme showed that they are sending back foreign fighters to their home countries to carry out attacks like the recent ones in Brussels and Paris. Fighters from European nations find it relatively easy to return to their respective countries, as there is no restriction on movement of people across EU borders. A radicalised French national can travel between the EU states without any hassle. Therefore the open border is not only enabling terror cells to operate between countries, it is also making it that much easier for radical fighters to return home. The challenges posed by this are significant. Radicals in France or Belgium can pose a significant threat across Europe. The events in Brussels and Paris are a matter of concern to countries across Europe. Several European countries, including Germany, France, UK and Belgium, are on the IS hit-list. While the IS claims that these attacks are a revenge for participating in the international coalition against them, there are much deeper social, economic and political issues that contribute to Europes problem of terrorism. The economic plight of communities, the crisis of identity and the growing Islamophobia are contributing to the rise in radicalisation. Europes open borders mean that radical elements can move freely across international borders, putting the security of the entire continent at risk. The recent attacks in Brussels did not come as a surprise to many. Today, cities across Europe are tightening their security apparatus. While defeating the IS might solve a part of the problem, the need of the hour is to address the various social, economic and political challenges that is making the radical ideology attractive. Sanjal Shastri is a Researcher, International Strategic and Security Studies Programme, National Institute of Advance Studies (NIAS), Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore. Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Democratic Disorder in India For many of us from North-East India, it is a shocking phenomenon that while eight States of the region are represented by only 25 members in the Lok Sabha, Uttar Pradesh alone is done so by 80 members. It is not realised usually that this arrangement leads to a North Indian hegemony automatically. The political party winning a majority of the seats in UP and may-be some more seats in a few other States easily forms the Union Government. This is exactly what the BJP has managed to do in the last general elections (2014). By winning just around 31 per cent of the votes polled, mainly in the Northern States, it is ruling over almost 70 per cent population dwelling in the littoral and North-East Indian States. This is due to a colonial legacy when States were basically formed on the principle of the population logic and administrative efficacy. This principle continues to this day. While Arunachal Pradesh, the largest State of the North-East, is represented by two seats, a tiny State like Delhi has seven representatives in the Lok Sabha. Manipur is represented by two seats and Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim face the ignominy of having one seat each in a House of 545 Members. In one of the books on the North-East, recently published by the CRRID (a renowned research institute that facilitated the accord between Rajiv Gandhi and the AGP leaders) and edited by Prof S.S. Gill, it has been mentioned that the tribes of that region are adequately represented in the Lok Sabha with 25 seats. This is factually incorrect as Assam itself with 12.4 per cent tribes has 14 seats, Manipur has one non-tribal seat in the Valley and Tripura with 70 per cent non-tribals has no tribesman to represent. Even if there were 25 seats, the representation in the House would be nominal. Many argue with me whether I give precedence to territory over people and I have to respond to them by reminding that the territories they refer to are not empty spaces as they are inhabited by peoples residing for thousands of years and enjoying territorial rights not only over their habitats but also over the commons inherited from their forefathers. They are privileged with cultural rights over them as well. The commons are not plundered for resources but possessed by them as stewards not only for their self-interest but for the sake of entire mankind. Mount Kanchen Djonga is not only a supreme deity for the Lepchas of Sikkim and Darjeeling but mountaineers from all over the world do not tread a foot on the top pinnacle out of respect to the Lepcha ethos. Likewise Lake Khezuperi located in West Sikkim is considered extremely holy by the Bhutia-Lepcha peoples. The sacred forests of Demozong surrounding the lake become a natural watershed and are managed through a native sense. The area has been declared as a World Heritage Site some years ago. The population logic thus denies their very existence and heritage. This is linked to the colonial concept of terra nullius leading to outright conquest. This is precisely what happened when the Manipur State tried to take over the hill territories on the issue of population but the indigenous peoples responded by declaring their chiefs to be the legal owners of the land and not as custodians and defeated the State when the High Court was moved in 1962. Also, it must be realised that not long back in history, a tribal person from Arunachal Pradesh did not share the common identity with that of a Malayali from Kerala or a Tamilian from Tamilnadu. Imposing the legacy of the population logic shared by other parts during British rule onto others is unjust and inhuman. It is the arbitrary formation of the Union of India a historical accidentthat has brought them together. Such a situation has been taken advantage of and a North Indian hegemony has been established unscrupulously without the consent of the peopleneither from the South nor from the North-East. In fact, even the people from the North did not willingly form a part of the decisionthe Constitution was not produced by an elected body. There should have been a referendum held, covering the entire country, on the kind of governance they desire at the beginning of the formation of the Republic under the supervision of the interim Governor-General. Many scholars, including Subrata Mitra from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, mistakenly argue that the States in India were constituted on the linguistic principle. Only a few States like Tamilnadu, Gujarat and Odisha may have this antecedence but the majority of the others do not. Most of the States of the North-East are multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural and were formed due to political exigencies. Several States of North India, like Bihar, UP, MP, Haryana, HP, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, share Hindi as the official language though the different regional dialects of various communities inhabiting them are un-compreh-ended by others. Seemaandhra and Telengana States were dissected even though they share Telugu as the common lingua franca. Some States like Manipur and Sikkim even witnessed forced merger as did the Dangs district of Gujarat, inhabited by 93 per cent indigenous peoplesthe land under the tutelage of nine Rajas and 15 Bhaubandhs (a kin-based confede-ration of States) was appropriated by the state in 1962 without any formal treaty of accession. Till that time, the revenue generated for local peoples collected by the State Government used to be handed over to the ruling constellation on the Durbar day. In India though the population logic has been the main factor of the Constitution-formation, that has not always been the case. In the small island of Lakshwadeep, inhabited by a tiny population of Mappillasa Muslim matrilineal communitya parliamentary constituency has been formed, respecting their hereditary association with the territory. In the Andaman Islands, a Lok Sabha constituency is available in-spite of the population, taking into consideration the administrative exigencies and retaining territorial control over a property inherited from the British. FOR the moment, I see only a confederation of States to be the best bet for the future stability of India. This will result in political-economic interdependence instead of a dubious game-plan of the Niti Ayog blackmailing the States to submission. It needs to be realised that there exist many forms of informal anarchic confede-rations based on history, culture and politico-ethnic traditions within the existing State structures which had evolved artificially during the British rule. We, for example, have seen the confederation of seven Meitei exogamous principalities of the Valley in Manipur which hugely affects the local governance. Nagas have constellations like Tenemia, comprising the tribal areas of Angami, Chakhesang and Sumi. Uttar Pradesh has the notional principalities of Awadh, Bundelkhand, Harit Pradesh and Purbanchal. In West Bengal we have the notional Kamtapur and Gorkhaland in Uttar Banga, Gour Bangla and Rarh Bhumi in the south-west. In Maharashtra we have the provinces of Vidarbha, Khandesh, Paschim Maharashtra and Konkan. All the political parties of the State draw out their electoral strategies and Ministry formations largely based on these localities. In the case of Andhra Pradesh, the notional folk provinces of Telengana and Seemandhra finally got statutorily bifurcated into separate States. To compare the federal structures of India with the United States of America is simply criminal. The entire USA has been founded on the legacy of genocidebutchering the Red Indians like bison and ethnocidedebasing the Black Americans. None of the constituent states of the USA was formed with any rhyme and or reasonneither on the principle of geography nor on the population logic. They were formed artificially and arbitrarily. Ironically, many of the states along with physical terrain and human beings without their knowledge or consent were purchased by the federal government from the colonial states like Spain and France. Even Russia was complicit in this when it sold Alaska wholesale, the beasts and humans together, for a price to the USA. The story of Hawai was nothing but an absolute conquest. The Independence Day celebrated by that nation is nothing but a cruel joke. Ambedkars inclination towards the American presidential form of governance and federal state structure grossly misread the ground realities. The USA comprises history-less peoples, many of whom are descendants of jail birds from European colonisers involved in loot and plunder on reaching the shores of the New World. India is a multi-ethnic pluralistic state with a civilisational background. It can boast of luminaries like Ashoka, Akbar, Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru. I do not, of course, discount the contributions to humanism made by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. We need not be unnecessarily be worried too much about the suggested confederation of States and the political stability of India. You will possibly be startled by the fact I gathered from a text authored by a Naga gentleman that at the time of the Chinese invasion in 1962, Phizo, the militant Naga supremo, offered the services of 50,000 Naga militia to combat the Chinese along with the Indian troops. The author does not mention any further, but we are aware of the fact that Phizo had for some time worked for the Indian National Army founded by Subhash Bose to fight the British. Even during the Kargil war, a young Tangkhul officer of the Indian Army sacrificed his life to save the lives of his Indian subordinates. His body was received at Ukhrul (bastion of the NSCN-IM) with extreme decor and respect. At Kargil itself many of the Muslim tribesmen, who had migrated to Gilgit in Pakistan, are now found flocking back to their native villages. Many are caught up at the border as they do not carry the Indian passport. With a confederation arrangement even the Kashmir imbroglio could be easily resolved. After all, Hari Singh had Muslim soldiers too in his retinue. As of now, the largest political domain of the State comprising Ladakh and Kargil is under the ambit of the Autonomous Hills District Council. Srinagar Valley is just a minuscule part of Kashmir. The PDP-BJP alliance virtually resembles a political confederation. If an India-Pakistan-Bangladesh confederation becomes a reality, as suggested by many intellectuals and the polity (a matter that was pronounced to me by my father, late Prof. B.K. Roy Burman, several years before his demise), which was even articulated in the media by a BJP spokesperson some time back, the future of the region and the subcontinent will brighten up. After all, Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, viewed the nation-state as an anathema for the human race and spoke about the formation of a minimal state. Perhaps the confederation of multi-ethnic States in India will be an answer to his framework. We are also reminded of the perception of Gandhi that self-denial too is empowerment. Ashoka adopted the principle of renunciation through Buddhism to establish a mighty empire that embraced more than half of Asia. The fame of the moral order in India attracted scholars and humanists from different corners of the world. Fa Hien and Huentsang were some of them in the ancient past and a scholar as profound as J.B.S. Haldane embraced Indian citizenship not very long ago. To conclude, I am compelled to place the brazen fact that the resource-less BIMARU States of North India hegemonise the country on the basis of a parliamentary democracy formed on an anachronistic population logic. It siphons off resources from the hinterland States. The large automobile industries, based in Haryana, import the needed steel and other accessories from mostly the tribal areas of Jharkhand and adjoining States. The Mathura refinery survives on the crude supplied to it through pipelines drawn from the seacoast. The refinery in Barauni in Bihar still draws crude from oilfields located in distant Assam. The petrol price in Delhi happens to be the cheapest among all the Metros. How long will the democratic disorder prevail in India is anybodys guess. Article 258 that encourages States to assert decentralisation, as recommended by the Sarkaria Commission, stands emasculated within the present political dispensation. At this hour of crisis, I pin great hopes on Thuiangaleng Muivah, the supreme leader of the Nagas, who has shown keen interest in a federal formation with India. Mamata Banerjee, the TMC leader and CM of West Bengal, has importantly succeeded in ethicising the entire State vis-a-vis the roguish overtures of the Central Government and created a common front of Bengali Hindu and Muslim in view of the coming Assembly elections. She is expected to sweep the polls. Petty Hindu-Muslim skirmishes in Malda prompted by the BJP will unlikely make a difference. Similar drives are anticipated in the near future in many of the southern littoral States. In Kerala, the Gods own land, there already exists a confederation of three districts predominated largely by Hindus, Muslims and Christians in each of them respectively. The hero warriors of Karnataka, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, are still revered in the South. Tamil Nadu defiantly sticks to the Tamil language keeping Hindi at bay. The author belongs to the Faculty of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Nationalism and National Movement by P.C. Jain The Indian national movement has had a unique feature of being internationalistic. Its nationalism was not conservative, aggressively chauvinistic but inspired by humanitarianism. There was consciousness of what was happening in different parts of the world. This unique feature distinguished it from other national movements of the countries of Asia, Africa and South America. The national struggle was spearheaded by the Indian National Congress which also consisted of parties and groups having different views. For a very long time they were the part of the Congress and when they parted company from it, they unflinchingly supported Indians struggle for independence. The national leaders invariably talked of independence of all the colonial countries of Asia and Africa. They considered Indias independence as part of the independence of other enslaved countries. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, in his presidential address to the thirtythird session of the Congress held in Delhi in 1918, spoke of the hopes inspired by the Fourteen Points of President Wilson. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a leading radical nationalist, in a letter addressed to Clemenceau, the President of the Peace Conference at Versailles, asserted: India is self-contained, harbours no design upon the integrity of other states and has no ambition outside. With her vast area, enormous resources and prodigious population, she may well aspire to be a leading power in Asia. She could, therefore, be a powerful steward of the League of Nations in the East for maintaining the peace of the world.1 Leaders of the extremist groups of the Congress were ardent internationalists and enlightened humanitarians. They were extreme nationalists but their nationalism was not narrow, aggressive or chauvinistic. Bal Ganga-dhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh, Lajpat Rai and B.C. Pal were the chief representatives of this group. To them, nationalism was only an intermediary step towards the ideal of the unity of mankind. To quote Aurobindo Ghosh, as the individual lives by the life of other individuals so does the nation by the life of other nations, by accepting from them material for its own mental, economic and physical life They were unequivocal in their condemnation of imperialism and aggressive nationalism which was considered to be an offshoot of the former. They regarded imperialism of the West as an example of the collective selfishness, aberration of human reason and the deformation of the truth. Their nationalism was not an antithesis of internationalism but a necessary step towards the attainment of the ideal of universal brotherhood and it ceased to be true nationalism if it ignored this fact. Memorable are the words of B.C. Pal who wrote in his forceful style: Patriotism is good, excellent, divine only when it furthers the ends of universal humanity. Nationality divorced from humanity is a source of weakness and evil and not the strength and good. Europeans talk of humanity, but their humanity is not humanity, but whitemanity and what is needed of you and me is not to ask for brownanimity but to ask for humanity which includes within itself white, brown, black and yellow, all the races of the world.2 Some international events of historical importance also exercised tremendous influence on the Indian national movement and helped in giving an international orientation to it. The Nagpur Congress in 1920 sent a message of sympathy to the Irish people in their struggle for independence and paid its homage to the sacred memory of the great Irish patriot, Mac Swiney. The profoundest and most far-reaching impact that any world event ever had, specially on the young generation, was the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. It stirred up the soul of India, awakened new national forces and threw them into the Indian imbroglio while opening up new vistas and perspectives creating a new international outlook, understanding and alignment. From the year 1921 began a new phase in the development of Indias international outlook and consciousness. The Indian National Congress, in its session held in Delhi in 1921, clearly defined its outlook on nationalist Indias relations with her immediate neighbours. It opposed the policy pursued by the alien Government of India in this sphere by passing a resolution to that effect. One of the clauses of this resolution informed the neighbouring and other non-Indian states that (1) the present government of India in no way represents Indian opinion and that their policy has been traditionally guided by considerations more of India in subjection than of protecting her borders; (2) that India as a self-governing country can have nothing to fear from the neighbouring states or any state, as her people have no design upon any of them and hence no intention of establishing any trade relations hostile to or not desired by the people of such states, and that the people of India regard most of the treaties entered into with the Imperial Government by neighbouring states as mainly designed by the former to perpetuate the exploitation of India by the Imperial Power and would, therefore, urge the states having no ill-will against the people of India and having no desire to injure her interest to refrain from entering into any treaty with the Imperial Power. (Resolution No. VI)3 EQUALLY significant in this direction was the presidential address of C.R. Das to the thirty-seventh session of the Congress held in Gaya in 1922. For the first time an Indian nationalist leader projected the idea of an Asiatic Federation or a Union of Asian States before Indian consciousness. He significantly declared: Even more important than this is partici-pation of India in the great Asiatic Federation which I see in the course of formation. I have hardly any doubt that the Pan-Islamic Move-ment which was started on a somewhat narrow basis has given way or is about to give way to the great Federation of all Asiatic people. It is Union of the oppressed nationalists of Asia. Is India to remain outside this Union? I admit that our freedom must be won by ourselves but such a bond of friendship and love, of sympathy and cooperation between India and the rest of Asia, nay, between India and all the liberty-loving people of the world is destined to bring about world peace. World peace to my mind means the freedom of every nationality and I go further and say that no nation on the face of the earth can be really free when other nations are in bondage.4 From this point onwards the national movements started taking increasing interest in the trials and tribulations, sufferings and struggles of other people and was exulted at their victory or pained when they were vanquished. Kamal Pasha was acclaimed for the progressive struggle of the people of Turkey. In the Congress session of 1927 held at Madras, it pledged its support to the people of China in their fight for emancipation and lodged its strong protest against the use of Indian forces to further Britains imperialist designs in China. The people of Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Iraq were greeted and acclaimed in their struggle. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru attended the inauragal session of the Second World Congress of the League against Imperialism in February 1927. Anti-imperialism and active sympathy with the oppressed peoples were not confined to Asia but covered the remotest corner of the world. The naked aggression of Ethiopia by Italy was strongly opposed. When the forces of reaction launched an attack to throttle and slaughter Republican Spain, the Congress went on record in support of the progressive forces of democracy and republicanism engaged in their life and death struggle. Pandit Nehru, at great risk, visited war-torn Spain to convey personally Indias sympathies. The Japanese invasion of China was denounced and the boycott of Japanese goods, as a mark of sympathy and solidaritary with the Chinese people, was sponsored. In a historical resolution of August 1942, the Congress affirmed the freedom of India must be the symbol of and prelude to the freedom of other Asiatic nations under foreign domination, Burma, Malaya, Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, Iran, Iraq must also attain their complete freedom. When the independence was still in the offing, an unofficial Asian Relations Conference was convened in New Delhi in March 1947 to discuss common economic, political and cultural problems. The brutal aggression by Dutch imperialism on the nascent Indonesian Republic in December 1948 caused indignation and an uproar of protest in all Asian countries and this was one of the main subjects of discussion in Asian Relations Conference. Mahatma Gandhi wrote: for me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. imperialism has no place in my scheme of life and a patriot is so much the less a patriot if he is lukewarm humanitarian5 Rabindranath Tagore was not against one nation in particular but against the general idea of all nations. He called nationalism a great menace.6 He had also written: India has never had a real sense of nationalism even though from childhood I had been taught that idolating of the nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity. I believe I have outgrown that teaching and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.7 For Tagore, the nation is an amoral rather than immoral category, which will never heed the voice of truth and goodness.6 Dr S. Radhakrishnan, a great scholar, philoso-pher and past President of India, has written that from the Upanishads down to Tagore and Gandhi, Hindu has acknowledged the truth bears vestures of many colours and speaks in strange tongues.....bearing in this great truth Hinduism developed an attitude of compre-hensive charity instead of fanatic faith in an flexible creed.8 In almost similar vein the architect of modern, scientific and secular India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has written: The nationalist ideal is deep and strong it is not a thing of the past with no future significance but other ideals more based on the ineluctable facts of today, have arisen, the international ideal and the proletarian ideal and there must be some kind of fusion between these various ideals if we are to have a world equilibrium and a lessening of conflict. Nevertheless, India for all her intense nationalistic fervor has gone further than many nations to her acceptance of real internationalism and the coordination and even to some extent the subordination of the independent nation state to the World Organisation9 REFERENCES 1. Iqbal Singh, Indias Foreign Policy. 2. B.C. Pal, Swadeshi and Swaraj, p. 222. 3. Ibid. 4. Congress Presidential addresses (From 1911 to 1934), p. 580. 5. Mahatma Gandhi, India of My Dreams, p. 21. 6. Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, p. 73. 7. Ibid., pp 7071. 8. The Hindu View of Life, pp. 36-37. 9. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 45. The author is an Associate Professor (retired), Department of Political Science, Bundelkhand College, Jhansi (UP) Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Who is the Traitor? by Binoy Viswam The history of fascism is written in black. The Reichstag arson is an inseparable chapter in that black history. Reichstag was the German Parliament House. On February 27, 1933 it was set on fire. This incident was pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. The responsi-bility for the arson was promptly tagged on the Communist Party by Adolf Hitler and his accomplices. George Dimitrov, the leader of the world communist movement, was made the culprit in the case along with his close comrades. The arson was later proved to be a conspiracy hatched by Hitler and his henchmen with an agenda of hunting the Communist Party and preventing its growing influence. History will remember the Leipzig trial where Dimitrov courageously and convincingly exposed the fascist plot behind the Parliament House arson. Hitlers Prime Minister Goring practically stood helpless in the court without any defence when their plans were nakedly exposed! This episode told the world that the fascists would go to any extent, will undertake all sorts of crimes in order to meet their ugly political ends. Still they were able to score a victory in the elections that took place in March 1933. Their vote-share went up to 44 per cent from 33 per cent earlier. The fascist onslaught followed thereafter continued to haunt the world till May 9, 1945, the day in which the Red Army unfurled the Red Flag over the Reichstag. During that period in India, the RSS was eagerly trying to strengthen their support base. The success story of Hitler in Germany enthused them. Their source of inspiration was Hitlers philosophy of so-called national socialism in which Aryan hegemony, wedded to finance capital, worked as the foundation. They were fully in praise of Hitler who declared Jews, Christians and Communists the internal enemies of Germany. Following his footsteps, Golwalkar in his Bunch of Thoughts listed the internal enemies of India. They were Muslims (Chapter 19), Christians (Chapter 20), Communists (Chapter 21). At the zenith of his admiration for Hitlerite Germany, Golwalkar wrote: Look up to Germany, it is the place where national pride has attained the maximum glory. Germany proved to the rest of the world that different cultures cannot live together under one roof. Hindustan could learn many lessons from Germany. Needless to say that the Sangh Parivar draws its energy from the lessons of Hitler and fascism. With the ascent of Narendra Modi they are trying to re-read and implement the words and deeds of Hitler. It is nothing but those lessons that led the RSS/AVBP, when they fabricated baseless allegations against Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU Students Union President and leader of the AISF. When they implicated that innocent, brave and unflinching young revolutionary in a case of sedition, they themselves showed that they excel in that art. When they call Kanhaiya and the lakhs and lakhs of Indians, who rally around his cause, as anti-national, we can feel that Goebels has been reborn in India. In their attempt to drag Kanhaiya into the sedition case, the RSS/AVBP has cooked up a story that he shouted anti-Indian slogan at a function organised for Afzal Guru. They had no hesitation to repeat that blatant lie more than a hundred times. In order to support their fortress of falsehood they even brought in the name of the chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba as their witness! Later the person concerned himself clarified that it was not his tweeter account and he had never tweeted such a message. Still, the Home Minister of the country, who propagated the RSS lie, did not show the courtesy to extend an apology to the nation and the JNU community. That is the so-called nationalist culture of the Sangh Parivar! Let it be categorically stated once again that neither Kanhaiya nor the JNUSU had anything to do with the February 9, 2016 gathering. It was organised by a certain fringe group in the campus. When a clash broke out with the ABVP and the organisers, Kanhaiya was called in as the Union President in order to pacify the groups. Kanhaiya, who is accepted as a true leader in the campus, entered the scene as a messenger of peace. It is certain clippings of those moments that they propagated to justify their anti-Left campaign. In those clippings, Kanhaiya never uttered a single word that may be construed as anti-Indian. He is from such a background where patriotism is in his blood. KANHAIYA hails from a poor family in a village of Begusarai district of Bihar. His village Bahat is called the Leningrad of Bihar where many battles were fought for the emancipation of the downtrodden. His grandfather and father were all part of such struggles. He was brought up in that fighting spirit from early childhood. Such a patriotic young revolutionary from a real working class background can never even imagine about raising a slogan against the unity of the country. Kanhaiyas father is ill and bedridden. His mother looks after the family with her meagre wage of Rs 3000 per month. Kanhaiyas elder brother is a wage labourer working in Assam and the younger one is a student. Of course, they are poor, but those Sangh Parivar goons who come from families of landlords and traders should know one fact: that the patriotism of the poor is unshakable. Their loyalty to the motherland is part of their class-consciousness. They need no certificate from anybody to prove their unquestionable love for India. No amount of riches can shake the Communists patriotic fervour which goes hand in hand with his/her internationalism. If such a Communist is charged as a traitor, then the sun has to rise in the west! Nothing more, nothing less!! Look, the Sangh Parivar talks about video clippings. Have they not seen the clippings presented by Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi CM, at a press conference? In it can be seen the same faces uttering anti-India slogans participating in ABVP jathas! These are the lessons that they learned from Hitler. The country has seen this ugly face of Indian Hilerities in many parts of the country earlier too. They know how to call a dog a mad dog in order to hunt it. It is not the Left way of doing politics. Let the ABVP and their elderly masters know this simple truth. Under the Modi rule, education in the country is facing multifarious challenges. The communal Right-wing intervention shakes the autonomy of the universities and the content and purpose of education. The university administration in various places are on their knees before the RSS offspringthe ABVP. In Hyderabad Central University, it is the false petition drafted by the ABVP that led to the state-sponsored murder of Rohith Vemula, which they call a suicide. The petition of the ABVP went through the hands of Central Ministers Bangaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani, both of whom arm-twisted the authorities that led to the actions which ended in the killing of Rohith. And those communal Right-wing elements now are on their move to kill him again even after his death, by propagating all sorts of falsehoods. The same was the case with the Chennai IIT, Pune FTII, Allahabad University and elsewhere. Everywhere, the inquisitive creative nature of education is under attack. They dont allow free discourses to take place in the campus. The democratic right to differ and dissent is something alien to them. In fact they are afraid of such basic characters of a university. Hence they declare war against the JNU-like institutions. Whoever is not in tune with their nefarious world outlook, is termed anti-national by the Parivar. Their henchmen are watching everyone. They want to inculcate fear among everybody. Who has authorised the RSS/ABVP with the power to call anyone anti-national? Wherefrom they got the right to attack anyone and anything that they dont like? Kanhaiya Kumar is a responsible member of the AISF, which has valiantly fought for freedom, progress, secularism and socialism. Its cadres were martyred for the cause of the motherland many a time. But where was the ABVP during such days of turmoil? They did not come to such struggles even as simple spectators. The colonial masters gave the RSS their good service entry for their non-participation in the freedom struggle! One could only laugh when such great nationalists call Kanhaiya and his friends traitors! It is with which yardstick they brand the Left, democratic, secular forces anti-national? Those elements of the Parivar, who learned nationalism from the school of Hitler and imperialism, cant understand the patriotism which Kanhaiya and crores of his friends are committed to. It is taller than Mount Everest and deeper than the Pacific Ocean! That is why we feel ashamed when they call Kanhaiya, the patriotic revolutionary of the Bhagat Singh mould, a traitor. It is Section 124A of the IPC that deals with sedition. None who would have read it at least once can implicate Kanhaiya with the charge of sedition. The framed charge will not stand the test of the court; that is why the fascist hooligans of the Sangh Parivar made the legal system and the courts yet another target of their attack. They didnt spare the highest forum of justice in the countrythe Supreme Court. The happe-nings in the Patiala House Court premises on February 15 and 16, 2016 reveal the real face of these forces. With the national flag in their hands they were in a frenzy to attack everyone upsetting the court and its proceedings. Yet they call themselves the true sons of Bharat Mata! Shouting Jai for the Bharat Mata what they did on those two days will be remembered as a deep wound in the heart of Mother India. Yet, great people such as Ministers and MPs glorify those deeds. They cry, shutdown JNU and call it the breeding ground of terrorists. Sorry for them, as they fail to understand the glory of the great seat of wisdom that has produced brilliance in every sector. Let them go through the statement issued by the intellectuals from all over the world in support of JNU. JNU needs to be further strengthened, for the sake of India and for its wide intellectual contribution to the world. They want to kill it because that great campus is reluctant to endorse their ideas that are hypothecated to Chathurvarnaya and fascism. JNU represents the real spirit of emerging India. And Kanhaiya Kumar represents all that is best in the JNU tradition of the past and its vibrant quest for change in the present. If the RSS/ABVP try to unleash an unfounded hooligan attack on JNU and Kanhaiya in the name of Bharat Mata, no one who knows the meaning of motherhood would allow them to go unquestioned. The path of the RSS is the path of the storm-troopers. It owes its allegiance to Hitlers Germany. JNU and Kanhaiya stand for India. India will win. The author, a former Minister of Forests and Housing in the erstwhile LDF Government in Kerala, is a member of the National Executive of the CPI. Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Systematically Dismantling the Academic Credibility of our Institutions Associate Professor Shreya Bhattacharji is the latest target of the Sangh Parivar. She was suspended from the Central University of Jharkhand by the Vice-Chancellor, Nand Kumar Yadav, for having invited retired Professor M.N. Panini of the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University to a CUJ event as the guest of honour. Panini has been accused of being a mentor of the students from JNU who face sedition charges. The fact is that Panini is now a Distinguished Professor at the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Business Innovations, MYRA School of Business in Karnataka and was not associated with the recent events at JNU. A CUJ order describes Panini as a person of disputed integrity. The University authorities panicked when the Governor cancelled her programme in which she was to share the dais with Panini. Now the VC is giving the excuse of threats he received to disrupt Paninis lecture for having cancelled the invitation to him. Just as charges against JNU students remain unproved, now false charges have been levelled against Panini and Bhattacharji. As an academic Panini concerns himself with the question of rising inequalities with the process of economic growth. Bhattarcharji was the Dean of the Schools of Languages and Education in addition to being the Dean of Students Welfare at CUJ. Quite clearly she was an outstanding academic as well as an able administrator. The VC may think that the image of the University was tarnished and reputation of the VC was put at stake but the reality is that the VC has damaged the reputation of not one but two serious academics vitiating the academic atmosphere of his campus as well as the country by bowing to the political pressures of the Sangh Parivar. Professor Binda Paranjape was prevented from becoming the Head of the History Department at Banaras Hindu University, as it was her turn going by the rules, when Aruna Sinha was made the Head for the third time against the provisions of the BHU Act. Corruption charges have been proved against Sinha in the past and the amount recovered from her. The reason for her appointment was to pave the way for new recruitments of people associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Aruna Sinhas two research students have been appointed as Assistant Professors, one of whom, Brijesh, was accused of harassment by girl students of the Mahila Mahavidyalaya inside BHU where he used to teach earlier. Two other new recruitments as Assistant Professors have indulged in plagiarism. Ashok Kumars Ph.D dissertation is completely plagiarised while an article of Satyapal is also plagiarised. Gyan Prakash Mishra has been appointed as an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication without a Ph.D in this field. His degree is in Hindi. Moreover he doesnt have a teaching experience of eight years which is required for the post. He is known for his proximity to the former HRD Minister, Murali Manohar Joshi. The VC, Girish Chandra Tripathi, who is overseeing all these irregularities at BHU, doesnt himself have an academic record to boast of. People dont remember when he taught last at Allahabad University, where he held a faculty position in the Economics Department, or did any research. A similar controversial appointment was that of Gajendra Singh Chauhan as the Chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India, that has been opposed by the campus community. Chauhan has not distinguished himself in any field of cinema which makes him eminent enough to hold the post of head of an institution. Amit Sengupta, a distinguished journalist and Senior Faculty at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, had to resign as he was transferred to faraway Dhenkanal district of Odisha. He was targeted for having supported student protests at FTII, Hyderabad Central University and JNU. Two Professors, K.Y. Ratnam and Tathagata Sengupta, were among the 27 arrested from the Hyderabad Central University campus after protests against the return of the VC, Appa Rao Podile, against whom and Central Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, an FIR has been filed for abetment to Rohith Vemulas suicide and under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Ratnam is the Head of Ambedkarite Studies Department and Sengupta is a Professor of Mathematics. The retired Professor Chaman Lals lecture on Bhagat Singh at Delhi University was disrupted by the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists on March 18. The Professors attempt to engage the protestors in dialogue failed. Chaman Lal has authored a book Understanding Bhagat Singh. A Ph.D from Cambridge University and Faculty Member at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bela Bhatia, has been working as a researcher in Chhattisgarh since 2007. She is now the target of the Sangh Parivar as she has helped several tribal women file FIRs against security personnel for gang-rape and grievous sexual assaults. FROM the above list of events we can see that during the BJP rule, while competent academics are being hounded out or harassed at institutions governed by the Central Government, the Sangh Parivar is destroying the academic atmosphere of campuses by filling positions by persons of doubtful capabilities or character whose only claim to fame is their association with the RSS. This will have the overall effect of lowering the academic standards of our already mediocre institutions when compared internationally. An RSS-associated BHU Professor of Political Science, Kaushal Kishore Mishra, was arrested for instigating an attack on Aam Aadmi Party leader Somnath Bharti during the campaign for the last general elections in Varanasi. While such people openly indulge in political activities, hold RSS shakhas on campuses, indulge in violent actions, they are now targeting people believing in ideologies different from theirs, accusing them of politicising the campuses. Our academic campuses face the most serious threat at the moment from the Sangh Parivar which is out to ruin them in its bid to take control of them. In the process the free atmosphere of campuses, critical for rational enquiry, is being stifled. It does not bother the RSS that Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has decided not to attend the Indian Science Congress, which he described as a circus, ever again as he objected to politics and religious ideology being mixed with science. Noted social activist and Magsaysay awardee Dr Sandeep Pandey was recently sacked this year from the IIT-BHU where he was a Visiting Professor on the charge of being a Naxalite engaging in anti-national activities. He was elected along with Prof Keshav Jadhav the Vice-President of the Socialist Party (India) at its founding conference at Hyderabad on May 28-29, 2011. ACCESS-SMC through the lens 25 April 2016 Have you ever wondered what a campaign to deliver over 15 million SMC treatments to over 3 million children, across 7 countries looks like? The videos below will give you a glimpse into what it is like to roll out such a large scale project, aiming to save the lives of over 6 million children. During several visits to ACCESS-SMC teams in Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria, we captured what this project means to families and communities. Talking to doctors and local government representatives we were able to understand what the contribution of the ACCESS-SMC project means for the strengthening of local health systems, while feedback from National Malaria Control Programs allowed us to understand the breath of oxygen that SMC can be for developing nations in the Sahel. To watch the films, please see below... FILM 1: Bringing Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention to the Sahel The impact of malaria is devastating in the Sahel and children under five are the most vulnerable to its effects. This video introduces the ACCESS-SMC project, illustrating the different stages of roll out and implementation. The people interviewed for this film discuss the successes to date of the project and highlight the remaining challenges, such as the need to further scale up and develop a dispersible formulation of the SMC drugs. FILM 2: Protecting those most at risk of malaria in the Sahel In this film, we hear from those who benefit from the ACCESS-SMC project. Zakariya explains what it is like to suffer from malaria while Salamatu, mother of 8, talks to us about the relief she feels now that she knows that her children are protected from malaria this rainy season. FILM 3: Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention: A promising investment for the Sahel Malaria is devastating for families and nations alike. Not only does it affect child development, it hinders economic development and acts as an enormous strain to the countries' health system. This film highlights that, when the burden of malaria is lifted, affected countries are given the chance to prosper. FILM 4: Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention: Relieving the burden of malaria in the Sahel In this video we hear from community volunteers and health workers who explain the impact of malaria on the community. Mother of 3 year old Umma, Shefahatu explains what happens when the ACCESS-SMC community health workers come to her house to administer the SMC drugs and talks about what this project means for the community. Related projects India must put quality control at the centre of its policies on IP filing if it doesnt want to deal with a mess of its own making later Copenhagen-based Propulsion Dynamics and Hamburg-based ECKS MARINE have signed an agreement to work together on the German maritime market with the goal of improving energy efficiency related to hull and propeller condition with Propulsion Dynamics CASPER Service. Torsten Ecks, owner and founder of ECKS MARINE sees many synergies in combining the sales and marketing of the CASPER reports with other products of ECKS MARINEs customers. The benefit and ROI that CASPER delivers is obvious, Ecks said, and our mission is now to bring this into the heads of the tonnage owners and operators in Germany. Daniel Kane, Vice President of Propulsion Dynamics proudly looks back to the year 2003 and the since then over 3,000 ship-years experience of over 10,000 CASPER Reports made, delivering the unbiased analysis when acted upon will improve performance in the range of +/-5 percent within 2 years. According to Kane ,Big Data is only half of the answer in improving ship performance, the total answer is in a Grey Box approach with in-depth hydrodynamic analysis combined with human intelligence applied to this big data. Further, there needs to be a policy tailored to the shipowner / charterer on how to utilize the CASPER data in day to day ship management, otherwise big data is just that big data. Propulsion Dynamics became the first company to offer outsourcing of Hull and Propeller Performance Analysis as a turnkey service utilizing manually or automatic collected VPMS data. The CASPER Service has made hull performance a common technical topic and continues to pioneer through hydrodynamic analysis of performance data from multitudes of monitoring systems, a rating system for hull and propeller condition and consultative development of technical policies improving fleet performance. On Saturday, April 23, General Dynamics NASSCO hosted a christening ceremony for the second Jones Act ECO Class tanker for American Petroleum Tankers (APT) under construction at the company's shipyard in San Diego. U.S. Representative Scott Peters spoke at the ceremony, and the ships sponsor, Trang Cormack, christened the ship with the traditional break of a champagne bottle alongside the ship. The ECO Class tanker, the Magnolia State, is the second of a five-tanker contract between NASSCO and APT, which calls for the design and construction of five 50,000 deadweight ton, LNG-conversion-ready product carriers with a 330,000 barrel cargo capacity. The 610-foot-long tankers are equipped with a new ECO design which will provide a very significant improvement in fuel efficiency. Upon delivery, the Magnolia State will join the ranks as one of the most fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly tankers in the world. The revolutionary ECO Class provides our customers with an alternative option for transporting product that is cost-effective and friendly to the environment, said Fred Harris, president of General Dynamics NASSCO. Like the Magnolia State, each ship designed and constructed at NASSCO is built with pride and ownership. Our shipbuilders know theyre not just building a product tanker theyre building a vessel that helps fuel our economy. We look forward to taking delivery of our second ECO Class tanker from NASSCO. This is another example of American Petroleum Tankers commitment to building our fleet and servicing our customers. And we thank NASSCO for their continued support which paved the way for this important milestone to be achieved, said Robert Kurz, vice president of Kinder Morgan Terminals and president of American Petroleum Tankers, a Kinder Morgan, Inc. subsidiary. In December 2014, Representative Peters signaled the start of construction of the Magnolia State. In June 2015, California State Assemblywoman and former Speaker Toni Atkins, laid the keel. San Diegos shipbuilding industry currently supports as many as 14,000 local jobs, said U.S. Representative Scott Peters. Part of this is due to the Navys rebalance to the Pacific, but its also due to significant private contracts such as this one. The Magnolia State created good jobs for San Diegans and will provide a safe, more efficient, and cleaner way transport fuel across the ocean. It was an honor to be present at the start of is construction, and its an honor to see her off. The Magnolia State, along with others in the ECO Class, are the first in the Jones Act fleet to obtain a PMA+ Notation, representing compliance with one of the highest standards of human factors in engineering design. The PMA+ notation is created to facilitate safe access to vessel structure and spaces in ways that are rooted in the fundamentals of human ergonomics. The ships were designed by DSEC, a subsidiary of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) of Busan, South Korea. According to the builder, the design incorporates improved fuel efficiency concepts through several features, including a G-series MAN ME slow-speed main engine and an optimized hull form. The tankers will also have dual-fuel-capable auxiliary engines and the ability to accommodate future installation of an LNG fuel-gas system. Sun, sand and Caribbean joi de vivre Hapag-Lloyd Cruises Europa 2 will visit the island of Cuba in the Greater Antilles for the first time on two cruises in October and November 2016. Maiden ports of call are special moments on cruises with Hapag-Lloyd Cruises ships and never fail to be a highlight for both the passengers and crew. For the first time, several visits to Cuba, the largest of the Antilles, are featured on Europa 2 itineraries in autumn 2016. The island, known as a nation for its Caribbean way of life and white sandy beaches, is also famous for its striking colonial style and the hospitality of its inhabitants. Guests can discover the real Cuba on a city tour of Santiago de Cuba, at a salsa course for beginners in Cienfuegos, or at a visit to El Floridita, which was Hemingways favorite bar. Locals can be found in live music bars such as Casa de la Musica, while a visit to a classic Cuban location is also on the excursion program: the Variete Tropicana. In addition, the other cruise destinations - including the Caribbean islands of St. Lucia, St. Martin, the British Virgin Islands, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay in Jamaica, as well as Aruba and Curacao - will offer guests a host of memorable experiences. A cable-car ride through the tropical jungle in Marigot Bay, a ride in a semi-submarine in Gustavia and a kayak tour on the Great River on Aruba are just some of the high points. Europa 2 cruise for 12 days from La Guaria to Havana, October 24 - November 6, 2016, via Mayreau/Grenadines, Marigot Bay/St. Lucia, Gustavia/St. Barthelemy, Marigot/St. Martin, Jost Van Dyke, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos and Isla de la Juventud. Last week, the Panama Canal participated as a part of the Panamanian delegation 69th Session of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) meeting that took place in London. During this five-day meeting, participants discussed the energy efficiency of the international shipping industry and the development of a fuel consumption data collection system. The Panamanian delegation shared a statement at the meeting highlighting the importance of the Panama Canal route helping in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by vessels using the waterway. This makes the Canal an important component of an efficient maritime industry, committed to reducing the effects of climate change, a key part of the Canals Green Route strategy. The Panama Canal Expansion will allow greater capacity vessels to transit, which will require fewer cargo movements, therefore reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Once inaugurated on June 26, 2016, the Expanded Canal will reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 160 million tons in the first 10 years of operation, contributing greatly to international global warming reduction efforts. The Panama Canal will implement a module of CO2 emissions offered to the maritime industry. This module will calculate and report the CO2 emissions of global trade routes, helping organizations and shippers identify the cost variables and environmental factors of each route. The implementation of this module, among other initiatives, further positions the Panama Canal as an environmentally sustainable Green Route. The Panamanian delegations statements will be included in the MEPCs final report. Kongsberg Maritimes ECDIS training portfolio has expanded with the introduction of an online E-Learning course for familiarisation training on its K-Bridge and K-Nav ECDIS products. Developed in compliance with STCW and ISM, the new course offers more choice for users of KONGSBERG ECDIS by providing training that can be conducted remotely and in the customers or individual students own timeframe. Created in collaboration with the Maritime University of Szczecin, the new E-Learning course is delivered primarily through video lectures that explain in detail all functionality of KONGSBERGs integrated and standalone ECDIS products. To ensure Navigation Officers receive a high quality training experience that will support safer and more efficient operation of their vessels, the E-Learning course is based on the equivalent two-day course curriculum offered at KONGSBERG training facilities worldwide. The course covers all operations that will enable the Navigation Officer to navigate using ECDIS in a safe way, including: Basic operations, navigation tools and functions, setting of safety parameters, Sensor inputs and alarm handling, Route planning, validation and monitoring, charts management and chart installation and updates. E-Learning is just one of the ways that we can support customers in their training requirements, but by transferring our type specific ECDIS course to an online and remote setting, ship owners, operators and maritime training organizations can further optimize their training costs and improve staffing logistics by reducing the amount of travel required, said Kim Finseth, Product Adviser, Navigation Training, Kongsberg Maritime. As a major provider of ECDIS products for fleets worldwide, KONGSBERG offers an extensive ECDIS training portfolio to support its customers and their crews. In addition to Train-the-Trainer course, which enable customers to conduct their own ECDIS training, with testing and certification managed by KONGSBERG, courses include: ECDIS IMO Model Course 1.27 (five-day classroom course, approved by Norwegian Maritime Authority, yields two certificates both ECDIS IMO Model Course 1.27 and K-Bridge / K-Nav ECDIS Familiarization); K-Bridge / K-Nav Operator Course incl. ECDIS Familiarization (four-day course); and K-Bridge / K-Nav ECDIS Familiarization Course (two-day course). DP World has been awarded a 25-year concession by the Cypriot government for the exclusive rights to operate Limassol port, the Dubai-based ports operator said on Monday. Separately, it said that P&O Maritime Cyprus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DP World, had been awarded a 15-year concession for exclusive provision of a range of port marine services, including tugs and pilotage at the port. DP World said the concessions were granted in partnership with Cypriot company GAP Vassilopoulos Public, with the Dubai-based company owning 75 percent of the venture. The start of the concessions is envisaged for Jan. 29 next year, the statement added. (Reporting by Tom Arnold) The medical relief charity Medecins sans Frontieres has relaunched rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea, accusing European governments of failing to act to save migrants in peril at sea, it said on Monday. MSF halted its maritime rescue programme in January, saying it hoped European Union member states would take up the task of search and rescue of migrants and refugees attempting the crossing from north Africa to Europe. But with rising numbers of people trying to navigate the "deadly stretch of water" between Libya and Italy as the weather warms, migrants were in danger of drowning, MSF said. "The absence of a global solution to the current refugee crisis, and the European states' policies of deterrence, as well their refusal to provide alternatives to the deadly sea crossing, continue to kill thousands," said Joanne Liu, president of MSF International in a statement. EU governments agreed on Thursday to speed the formation of a common European border and coastguard that could be in service by this summer to control migrants arriving from the Middle East and Africa. The voyage by boat from Libya is far longer and associated with much higher death rates than between Turkey and Greece, though Libya's lack of functioning government and lawlessness make it easy for people traffickers to operate with impunity. More than 1,200 people have died so far this year trying to reach Europe by sea, more than half of them on the central Mediterranean route, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Monday. Last year the IOM said 3,771 people died while trying to reach Europe by sea, making the year the deadliest on record for those seeking sanctuary from conflict and poverty. MSF said its ship Dignity 1, with a capacity to take 400 people, was involved in its first operation on Saturday, transferring 308 people to Italy, of whom 23 were children. The charity said most of the people on board were Eritrean. MSF teams have the skills and equipment to provide lifesaving emergency care as well as to treat common ailments including dehydration, fuel burns, hypothermia and skin diseases, the charity said. MSF previously halted its sea rescue operations in January, with its head of migration operations saying that search and rescue was not the charity's primary function. It said its three ships rescued more than 20,000 people in over 120 search and rescue operations during eight months at sea in 2015. (Reporting By Tom Esslemont, Editing by Ros Russell; Credit: Thomson Reuters Foundation) The U.S. military carried out freedom of navigation operations against 13 countries last year, including several against China for what it views as excessive claims to maritime and airspace jurisdiction, the Pentagon said in an annual report on Monday. The Defense Department carried out multiple freedom of navigation operations against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam, the two-page report said. In operations targeting Chinese claims, the Pentagon challenged Chinese jurisdiction in the airspace above its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone as well as restrictions it has attempted to impose on aircraft flying through an Air Defense Identification Zone off the Chinese coast. Beijing has been extremely sensitive about U.S. ship voyages and aircraft flights challenging maritime claims in the South China Sea, where Beijing has been conducting island reclamation activity. (Reporting by David Alexander) Canadian non-resource exports should post healthy gains this year, the country's trade financing agency said on Monday, a development the central bank is counting on to help revive an economy hobbled by weak global energy prices. Export Development Canada predicted the consumer goods, automotive and aerospace sectors would post double-digit growth in 2016 on the back of a robust U.S. economy. Industrial machinery exports should advance by 7 percent, it said. Overall exports are seen rising a modest 2 percent this year, held back by a 14-percent drop in the value of energy shipments. Canada is a major energy exporter and has been hit hard by slumping crude oil prices. Peter Hall, the EDC's chief economist, said while commodities are struggling, consumers' need for homes, furnishings and transportation are rising again. "Non-resource exports are critical at the moment," Hall said. The Bank of Canada is relying on non-energy exports to help make up for the damage done by low oil prices and rebalance the economy. The central bank said last week it could take more than three years for the country to recover. EDC forecast aircraft and parts exports would increase by 13 percent, in part due to Bombardier Inc's new CSeries passenger jet entering into service, as well as increased demand for flight simulators and services from CAE Inc. The agency says motor vehicles and parts exports should rise by 10 percent as U.S. shoppers replaced older models, while consumer goods should advance by 14 percent. EDC said the weaker Canadian dollar helped firms selling goods to the United States, which takes around 75 percent of all Canadian exports. The currency hit a 12-year low in January, but recovered to touch a nine-month high last week. On Monday, the loonie sat at C$1.27 to the U.S dollar, or 78.74 U.S. cents. The Bank of Canada said in an April 13 forecast that the economy faced downside risks, including a stronger currency that could drag on non-commodity exports. "Most businesses I speak to are telling me they were planning for (dollar) parity, so we are still well below that," said Hall, adding that the threats to his forecast included turbulence in global stock markets and currencies. EDC expects the energy industry to stage a partial recovery in 2017, when exports from the sector are forecast to increase by 18 percent. It sees overall exports up 6 percent in 2017. (Reporting by David Ljunggren, editing by G Crosse) Oman International Container Terminal (OICT) received the first call of the Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), the worlds second largest container shipper with over 2.7m twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per year, Lana vessel at the Port of Sohar. Officials from Sohar Port and Freezone, as well as executives from Oman International Container Terminal (OICT), part of Hong Kongs Hutchison Group, were quayside to greet MSC Lana. This latest addition highlights once again that Sohar is establishing itself as the preferred gateway to the Gulf for many major international operators, the port and freezone said in a statement. MSC Lana is one of the older vessels in MSCs fleet. Built in 1999, the container ship has a capacity of 1,830-TEU, but officials at Sohar Port & Freezone expect MSC to begin calling with larger tonnage in the near future. Thanks to its prime location outside the Strait of Hormuz and its excellent hinterland connections to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as its proximity to Iran, Sohar Port has become one of the worlds fastest growing port and free zone developments with investments totalling US$25bn. The vessel is a regional service of the Mediterranean Shipping Company and arrived at the Oman International Container Terminal quay in the morning. It can carry 3660 TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit) and has a length of 218 metres. Founded in 1970 in Geneva, Switzerland, MSC operates 200 direct and combined services weekly, calling at approximately 335 ports. MSC has 480 offices in 150 countries and employs more than 25,000 staff. Kannad Marine has issued a recall of all SAFELINK EPIRBs due to a possible defect that could result in the beacon not operating in emergency situations, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a marine safety alert. Those who own or use a SAFELINK EPIRB automatic or manual model as included in the attached SAFELINK Recall Safety Notice you should NOT use it as a primary Search and Rescue beacon onboard your vessel. Kannad recommends that all owners of SAFELINK EPIRBs register their ownership, location and contact details via the dedicated website: http://www.safelinkepirbsupport.co.uk . The website will first ask you to enter your SAFELINK EPIRBs CSN number which is located on the EPIRBs label. Once the CSN is entered an additional webpage will open where more detailed owner information is entered to arrange provision of a replacement EPIRB. The Coast Guard recommends that all owners and users of the Kannad SAFELINK EPIRBs seek replacement devices as soon as possible and Notg to use it as a primary Search and Rescue beacon onboard your vessel The Great Lakes Towing Company announces the addition of Nikita Skeeter, a maritime professional with over 25 years of experience in shipbuilding and production management, as General Manager of Great Lakes Shipyard. Skeeters management experience includes multiple, simultaneous shipyard projects with budgets up to $1 billion, as well as responsibilities for more than 400 maritime professionals and production tradesmen including: Design, engineering, welding and pipefitting, electrical, painting, carpentry and more. The breadth of Skeeters management experience ranges from design to development, commercial to government vessels, diesel to LNG and LPG, domestic to foreign cargo vessels, and special projects such as offshore structures and jackup drilling rigs. Prior to joining Great Lakes Shipyard, Skeeter spent seven years working at shipyards in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and previously worked for Newport News Shipbuilding and NORSHIPCO (Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corporation), a subsidiary of BAE Systems Ship Repair. Skeeter holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Florida International University and a Master of Science in Electromechanical Engineering Technology from University of Miami. The addition of Skeeter takes place as the Shipyard continues work on the construction of the new 3,400 H.P. tugboat for Regimen de Pensiones y Jubilaciones del Personal de la Empresa Portuaria Quetzal, Guatemala, Central America (Regimen). Plans are also in place to proceed with construction of a second tug for NYPAs Niagara Power Plant operation in Buffalo, New York, as well as five new Damen Stan Tugs 1907 ICE for The Towing Companys harbor towing operations. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is leading a maritime security table-top exercise in Mombasa, Kenya (April 21-22) as part of the Organizations continuing work to implement the Djibouti Code of Conduct. National officials from key ministries and departments are taking part in a range of evolving scenarios involving both routine business and during an incident, which aim to promote an integrated, whole-of-government approach to maritime security measures and maritime law enforcement. This includes supporting Kenyas national capacity to perform coastguard functions through inter-agency cooperation and development of maritime strategies and contingency plans. The workshop is the fifth maritime security exercise of this kind to be held in the Western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden region this year, having completed similar exercises in Djibouti, Maldives, Mozambique and the Seychelles. It was launched by Kenyas Principle Secretary for Shipping and Maritime Affairs, Mrs. Nancy Karigithu. IMO is being represented by Kiruja Micheni and a team of consultants. U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Crisis Response Central Command (SPMAGTF-CR-CC) are currently deployed to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility serving as a crisis response force in the region. Additionally, SPMAGTF-CR-CC Marines and Sailors offer support for Task Force Al Asad (TFAA) and Task Force Al Taqaddum (TFTQ), both in Iraq, while they advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) during Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), which focuses on defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Being able to provide the vital crisis response components is a group effort throughout the SPMAGTF. The aviation combat element (ACE) and ground combat element (GCE) make up a large majority of the force. The ACE provides the area of operation (AO) with around the clock air support delivering troops and supplies to TFTQ and TFAA and various other locations while also taking part in coalition airstrikes all in support of OIR. The ACE consist of Marines and Sailors from Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352 (VMGR-352), Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 268 (VMM-268), Marine Wing Support Squadron 372 (MWSS -372) and Marine Attack Squadron 223 (VMA-223). During the six month deployment the various squadrons logged countless hours of flight time conducting coalition airstrikes and assisting in the transportation of personnel and supplies which was an essential piece of the SPMAGTF-CR-CC mission. The GCE provided the security force for various locations around the AO. It consisted of Marines and Sailors with 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment which conducted base security operations and provided various host nation forces with various levels of training to increase interoperability and promote stability in the region. The Marines stood posts around the AO totaling more than 309,200 hours to ensure base security; they also conducted 75 patrols and treated more than 300 Iraqi casualties for wounds and injuries. The Marines were able to conduct 46 live fire and non-live fire exercises with host nation partners during the deployment in order to build basic combat skills and military tactics for the host nation forces. Because of the Marines efforts I believe that we have made this a better place now than what it was six months ago and thats not just because of the GCE but the entire SPMAGTF, said Lt. Col. Dave Hart, the GCE commander. Its been a great opportunity and I cannot be more proud of the 1/7 Marines and Sailors on what theyve accomplished. The discipline they showed in the conditions that they served in and how dynamic and dangerous it is in the region was exemplary. The various units that make up the SPMAGTF have come together in order to provide a force of readiness that is able to respond to any crisis that may arise thanks to the efforts of every Marine and Sailor. With SPMAGTF-CR-CC 16.1 slated to return home in the coming months, the next rotation of Marines and Sailors will hit the ground running to keep the SPMAGTFs mission of increasing interoperability throughout the region. Im blessed to have the team that we have, our leaders have done a great job across every element within the SPMAGTF, from the NCO (noncommissioned officer) level on up, said Col. William McCollough, the SPMAGTF-CR-CC 16.1 commanding officer. We arrived in theater with the intention to make a positive difference and I truly believe that we have accomplished that task. Seventy-eight enlisted Marines and 15 officers with the Marine Military Police Basic Course and the new Marine Military Police Officer Basic Course participated in the Law Enforcement Professional Exercise at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, April 12-14, 2016. The exercise is a three-day training evolution made to test the expeditionary environment skills that the Marines have learned and practiced during their 70-day course. They are taking what they learned for the past 13 weeks and putting it into practice, said Capt. Daniel Burton, the Military Police Officer Basic Course officer in-charge. Theyre going on foot patrols, conducting tactical site exploitation, and collecting evidence. Marines are taught in a classroom environment or through practical application during the 13 weeks of training prior to the exercise, but they dont have many chances to see what it looks like in action. You can teach something in a classroom environment and hope that they grasp the concept of it but its not until you come out here and actually exercise it that they truly understand the importance or difficulty of it, said Burton. According to Burton, having the ability to go out and practice the skills they are learning in an integrated environment is a great opportunity for officers to learn how to lead enlisted Marines. At The Basic School you learn how to be an officer but dont necessarily interact or lead enlisted Marines on a regular basis; the first time most officers will do that is when they go to the fleet, said 2nd. Lt. Mark Crum, a student at the Military Police Officer School. Integrated training also allows for enlisted Marines to get the chance to learn how to work alongside officers, which they havent done in their careers until now. I really like the interaction we get with the officers, said Pfc. Lucas Johnson, a student at the Military Police School. I feel like junior Marines are intimidated by officers, but this shows us that we can talk and ask them questions. The exercise tests the mental and physical limitations of Marines looking to earn the title of military policeman or military police officer. Whether its by countless patrols up and down the hills of Missouri or the test of trying to remember every step in tactical site exploitation. The most challenging part of this exercise is changing the mindset from the garrison side of our job, to now the more expeditionary mindset of coming to the field, said Staff Sgt. David Spurling, the lead instructor for team D, Military Police Instructor Company. After the Marines have proven the skills they have learned from this exercise, they will graduate the course and go on to their assigned stations. Marines and MV-22 Ospreys with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit ended operations today in support of Joint Task Force Chinzei, led by the Japanese Self-Defense Force. United States Forces, Japan, announced today the end of direct U.S. airlift support to Government of Japan earthquake relief efforts in the Kumamoto, Japan, area. The need for rapid airlift of supplies by U.S. MV-22s diminished as the recovery progressed and repairs were made to the areas infrastructure. U.S. Forces, Japan, will continue to work closely with the Government of Japan to respond to any emerging needs during the coordinated transition and retrograde of U.S. military capabilities. This announcement concludes five days of support operations by 31st MEU beginning with the arrival of the first MEU aircraft on Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, April 17, 2016 and the first mission April 18, 2016. Over the course of their missions, eight MV-22 Ospreys from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 265 (Reinforced), 31st MEU transported a total of 82,700 pounds of relief supplies for distribution to earthquake victims. The 31st MEU provides a forward-deployed, flexible sea-based force capable of conducting amphibious operations, crisis response and limited contingency operations in the Asia-Pacific area. The 31st MEU is the only continually forward-deployed MEU and remains the Marine Corps force-in-readiness in the Asia-Pacific region. Media queries concerning the 31st MEUs participation in the recovery efforts may be directed to Capt. Jennifer Giles, 31st MEU Public Affairs Officer at jennifer.giles@usmc.mil. Why Leftist Greeks have more reasons than Liberals to favour Entrepreneurship and Support Entrepreneurs Petros Diplas writes: Recently I read it and said There goes another myth." "It is an indisputable fact that Leftism and Entrepreneurship in Greece are incompatible concepts." Everybody blames the Greek Left - and I insist on Greek to be against entrepreneurship. But for 20, if not 30 years, during the decades of the 50s, 60s and even the 70s, Greek Leftists, oppressed by the winners of the civil war, managed to survive only through entrepreneurship, only through creating enterprises. I know that it sounds strange but this is the sheer truth. In Greece, entrepreneurship and especially its healthiest and most capable part of it, competitive entrepreneurship, was in the hands of the Greek Leftists for decades and not in the control of the Right Wing Party who represented crony capitalism for a long time. In Greece, competitive entrepreneurship, i.e entrepreneurship without the help of the government and the public sector, was Leftist. In the decades of the 50s, 60s and 70s, Leftists, in order to survive, had only two options: Either migrate or become self-employed (well, three options if we also consider being a monk at Mount Athos). The rest was prohibited. Greek Leftists and State were associated as water with fire. For 30 years in Greece, Statism and Leftism, public sector and the Left, state employees and the Leftists were opposite directions. Unable to become civil servants, they turned to the private sector but jobs were scarce and generally Leftist employees were not welcomed. Many fled and emigrated. But most found refuge and assistance in the friendly entrepreneurship which did not care about political beliefs, since entrepreneurship neither looks nor wants to look at colour, gender or political beliefs. Competitive entrepreneurship is meritocratic but crony entrepreneurship is mediocratic and it is exactly the latter which has been developing in Greece in the past 45 years, which together with statism and bureaucracy bankrupted the country. For nearly 30 years Greek Leftist entrepreneurship grew and flourished. Thousands of Leftists were saved and protected through entrepreneurship. Many became small and medium competitive entrepreneurs and some even evolved into big ones. As we said, the reason for such a competitive evolution was the hostility of state governments and public services against Leftist entrepreneurs. This made them really competitive. Leftist entrepreneurship flourished surrounded by adverse public services, unfriendly banks and a hostile state, without any kind of help, thus becoming competitive. They succeeded against all difficulties. It was competitiveness to the fullest. The other entrepreneurs of the Right wing, the cronies, grew only through the support of the governments and the state. It is amazing to see the similarities of the Greek Diaspora to the then Greek Leftists. Thousands of Greeks who fled to all corners of the Earth, survived and were helped by entrepreneurship just as the many post-civil war Leftists of Greece. Entrepreneurship stood by the Greek Diaspora and Greek Leftists alike. One might even say that the Leftist Greek businessmen of the 50s, 60s and even the 70s were more competitive than the Diaspora entrepreneurs, for the simple reason that (Greek) expatriates did not face hostile public services, hostile states and unfriendly business environments, unlike the adverse conditions which Greek Leftists had to face at home. Thus Entrepreneurship not only rescued and preserved but also strengthened the Greek Left. Basically today, the Left Greek SYRIZA government should erect a monument to the Unknown Leftist Greek Entrepreneur: to the Competitive Leftist Greek Entrepreneur. I always remember with great emotion my late friend and fellow Kefalonian from Kourouklata, Daniel Papadatos who had spent many years in prison and exile, who did not speak a word of English but had managed to be the dealer of the long-established English mattress firm 'Sleepeezee', who told me: "When I came out of prison, the only option I had was either to go abroad, become a monk at Mount Athos or be an entrepreneur..." During the 80s I was helping him as an interpreter on his frequent visits to England for his mattresses orders, when one day the 'Sleepeezee' sales manager asked me in confidence: But really, is Daniel who is such a good businessman, a communist as he always tells me? " I replied: "But the vast majority of entrepreneurs in Greece belong to the Left wing because after the civil war in Greece, entrepreneurship was the only thing permitted to the Communists. Daniel and I had discussed many times why in the 80s the Greek Left swayed away from its familiar and friendly domains of entrepreneurship and private sector, and began to embrace the public sector. I intensely reminisced these discussions back in October 2004 when the Left Communist government of Vietnam declared October the 13th as Entrepreneur's Day, a national holiday which is observed every year. (This year 'The Day of the Entrepreneur' will be celebrated for the 12th time!) When I heard about it, I sighed: "Poor Daniel, I wish you were alive to see what the Greek Left abandoned, was continued by the Vietnamese". And the Vietnamese Leftistss were not saved and strengthened by Entrepreneurship for 3 decades as in Greece. By Petros Diplas Economist Copyright 2016 Petros Diplas - 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. In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used. This Policy contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal data. 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We recommend that you check this Privacy Policy occasionally to ensure you remain happy with it. We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email. Third party websites We link our website directly to other sites. This Privacy Policy does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit via links on our website. Updating information You can check the personal data we hold about you, and ask us to update it where necessary, by emailing us at webmaster@marxist.com Contact We are not required by law to have a Data Protection Officer however we have a Data Protection Manager. Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com We publish here a document written by the British Marxists of Socialist Appeal. The document analyses the explosive economic and political situation developing in Britain. In this first part, we look at the decline of British capitalism and the radicalisation taking place in society due to years of austerity. "The contradictions undermining British society will inevitably intensify. We do not intend to predict the exact tempo of this process, but it will be measurable in terms of years, or in terms of five years at the most, certainly not in decades. This general prospect requires us to ask above all the question: will a Communist Party be built in Britain in time with the strength and the links with the masses to be able to draw out at the right moment all the necessary practical conclusions from the sharpening crisis? It is in this question that Great Britain's fate is today contained." - Trotsky, Where is Britain Going? The crisis which began in 2008 represents a turning point. With the profound break in the situation, internationally and in Britain, the pace of events has greatly accelerated. A thorough grasp of perspectives is therefore essential for all comrades, without which, in the words of Trotsky, we would be doomed to wander in the dark. Of course, Marxist perspectives are not a blueprint, but an analysis of the underlying processes unfolding in society. They represent an important guide to action, and serve to orientate the tendency in the stormy period that opens up. They must be sharpened and reworked as events unfold. They should be read in conjunction with our documents on world perspectives, without which it is not possible to understand developments in Britain or elsewhere. Marx explained that the key to the development of history and of society generally is the development of the productive forces: industry, technique and science. When a society is no longer able to develop the productive forces, it enters into crisis and opens up an epoch of social revolution. That is the current situation facing us on a world scale. It is a confirmation of historical materialism. We have entered the most disturbed period in history. Crises political, economic, social, diplomatic, moral, etc. - are endemic at all levels. This is a reflection of the exhaustion of the capitalist system, which can no longer develop the productive forces in any meaningful way. The capitalist system has reached its limits, as in the 1930s, when world growth was temporarily reinvigorated only following a catastrophic world war. Now as then, important sectors of the economy simply stagnate and decay. Even the bourgeois economists describe it as zombie capitalism, half alive and half dead, kept alive by historically low interest rates. The route of escape used by capitalism in the 1930s is closed because a new world war (which would presumably be nuclear) is inconceivable. In 2008, the implosion of the world economy was averted by an enormous programme of Keynesian spending (led by China), but today growth in the Chinese economy is slowing and the level of global debt is astronomical. The system has entered a protracted period of terminal decline, which has far reaching consequences. As Trotsky explained in The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crises of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and suffering upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. This describes accurately the main features of the capitalist system at the present time. The objective prerequisites for proletarian revolution have not only ripened, explained Trotsky, they have begun to get somewhat rotten. It is the subjective factor that is lagging behind. There is no real recovery anywhere, over seven years since the slump. Where there has been growth, it has been anaemic and fragile. The system has simply staggered from one crisis to another. The world economy is mired in secular stagnation, as the bourgeois economists like to call it. The epoch of reforms has ended. The epoch of counter-reforms and savage austerity has begun. No country is immune from this process. It determines the fate of all governments that operate on a capitalist basis, openly bourgeois or reformist. In the coming year or so, capitalism is likely to experience a new world slump that could lead to a new world Depression as in the 1930s. This will exacerbate everything, plunging countries into deeper crisis and provoking revolutionary upheavals everywhere. Over the next decade, with the deepening crisis of capitalism, there will be a whole series of decisive showdowns, including in Britain. This is the very nature of the epoch. If we are going to fully appreciate the epoch that lies before us, we should arm ourselves by reading Trotskys Where is Britain Going? and his extensive writings on Britain in the 1930s, which are very relevant today and remain a treasure-trove for Marxists. They are vital weapons in the preparation of the cadres. THE DECLINE OF BRITAIN On top of the worsening crisis of world capitalism, which has become a permanent crisis, is the special crisis of British capitalism. This special crisis reflects the complete bankruptcy of the British ruling class in failing to invest and develop industry, preferring instead to engage in speculation and other such ventures. They were seeking to make money from money, without the trouble of producing things, as Marx had explained long ago. The British bourgeoisie have presided over an ignominious decline in British capitalism, again reflected in a steep decline in its industrial base. For decades, this process of decline has gone on, but it greatly intensified under Thatcher. As a result, the former workshop of the world has become a second-rate power, a shadow of its former self. Hand in hand with the decline in industry went the rise of finance capital. As manufacturing shrank, the service sector swelled to colossal proportions. Banking and insurance became increasingly powerful, especially following the deregulation of the finance sector in 1986. Financial and banking regulations were put on the bonfire. The financial services went from strength to strength, until it became the dominant force behind British capitalism as well as its Achilles heel. The British economy has taken on the characteristics very much of a rentier economy, as the French had been for most of the 19th century and early 20th century, but such a system was imposed not upon a peasantry, as in France, but on a strong industrial working class. The crisis of British capitalism meant that one industry after another went to the wall. This deindustrialisation would have serious consequences for British workers in terms of employment and living standards. In 1979, manufacturing industry accounted for almost 30% of national income and employed nearly 7 million workers. Today, it has been reduced to 10% of national income and employs around 2.5 million workers. Over the last 30 years, it has shrunk by two-thirds in size, the greatest deindustrialisation of any major capitalist power. The brunt of this decline has occurred in Scotland, Wales and the north of England, where much of this manufacturing took place, creating a stark divide between northern and southern England. At the same time services, banking and finance have mushroomed. Since the 2008 slump, the service sector has grown by 11%, but manufacturing has declined by 6,5%. Today, financial services account for 15% of GDP, which has doubled in the last 15 years. The City of London has been transformed to a world casino in finance and insurance, a magnet for hot money, international money laundering and speculation. British banks have grown to become the biggest in the world. Their loans and investments are equal to more than 5 times Britains annual GDP. Proportionally, British banks are 6 times bigger than US banks. London is the centre now of world finance and world usury. 41% of all financial transactions are carried out through London. It has 70% share of trade in global bonds and 47% share in trade in derivatives. This amounts to a daily turnover of $1.4tn. London too has become the home of the super-rich, buying up property and forcing up house prices. It has become a billionaires playground. They build luxury swimming pools in the basements and dig down to construct several floors below street level. Many of these properties are simply held as unoccupied investments for bourgeois landlords, compounding an already-drastic housing crisis. At present, there are an estimated 218,000 empty properties in Britain, nearly all of them privately-owned. They stand as testament to the irrationality of a system that builds for no purpose other than profit. This, along with galling developments such as poor doors in London tower blocks have provoked widespread outrage from large sections of the masses, providing us with fertile ground for propaganda and agitation. Rather than stability, such a financial and banking edifice dominating the economy has dynamite built into its foundations, creating shocks and profound instability. British banks are dependent not on British customers, but on raising their money from the international bond market and foreign banks. Financial wizardry has mushroomed internationally, feeding on historically low interest rates. In 2008, derivatives, namely fictitious capital, had grown to $500 trillion, 10 times the size of the world economy. Crisis prone financial markets, in the form of unregulated shadow banking, will spill over into Britain, creating financial havoc. Such crises will strike London hard, given its global position. With global financial power comes global financial crisis. This has been one of the reasons why British capitalism was the hardest hit of the G7 powers in the last world slump. The British economy has suffered a decline of more than 7% in GDP since 2008, which is worse than in the years of the Great Depression. In the autumn of 2008, British banks were facing total collapse, threatening to drag the whole economy down with them, only to be bailed out by the New Labour government using taxpayers money. Financial services are parasitic by their nature. They do not produce surplus value, but simply siphon sit from the productive economy. An economy based simply on services is dependent on others and is extremely vulnerable as a result. The strategists of capital had given up on the idea that Britain could compete industrially. They were incapable of restoring the power of British industry on the world stage. With the defeats inflicted on the working class in the 1980s, the ruling class turned decisively towards developing the service sector and financial services. Todays talk by Osborne, the Tory chancellor, of the march of the makers is so much hot air at a time when the steel industry is on the point of collapse. The parlous position of the steel industry, the bedrock of any industrial economy, is a real reflection of the state of British capitalism. In fact, the whole of the manufacturing sector is smaller than it was before the 2008 slump by about 7%. Construction also continues to contract. The result of this demise for the working class has been the creation of a low wage, low skill economy, based upon sweated labour, and largely reliant upon services for employment. As a consequence of this drastic shift, the current account deficit has reached 100bn a year, considered crisis levels in normal times. This deficit is the difference between all of Britains income and all she spends in terms of international trade. The British government has only managed to disguise this deficit by the flow of international finance into Britain, regarded as a safe haven for financial speculation. As long as these flows can be maintained, they serve to paper over the gaping cracks that exist. British manufacturing, although reduced in size, is not "leaner and fitter" as the Tories claim. Its competitiveness lags far behind that of its international competitors. Labour productivity in the US was 31% higher than in the UK in 2013, measured in output per hour worked. In Germany it was 28% higher, in France it was 27% higher and even in Italy it was 9% higher. This is due to much lower investment or lower capital stock per worker in Britain, as well as lower skills levels, and lower expenditure on research and development. In 2010 for instance, total R&D expenditure grew (in real terms) in Germany (3.7%), Japan (1.4%), Italy (1.3%) and France (1.2%), but in the United Kingdom it declined by around 3%. The consequence of this decline of British capitalism has meant a serious decline in the position of British workers, who have become the subject of brutal exploitation, both in the private and public sector. British workers work longer hours than their counter parts in any of the EU-15 countries, have the worst employment protection, get the lowest number of holidays, and get the lowest benefits for the first year of unemployment. Workers in Britain are regarded as the most flexible labour force in Europe, a fact trumpeted by the employers. There are more agency workers in Britain than the rest of the EU combined, reflecting the savage attacks on the British working class. British capitalists are relying increasingly on cheap labour, which is not able to effectively compete with advanced technology and productive industry, like the German economy. This is where the short-sightedness of the British ruling class has brought us. They abandoned their past role of developing the productive economy and have become get-rich-quick merchants. The sucking in of international finance into the City of London has served to push up the value of the pound, thereby pushing up export prices and undermining dearer British exports. This means the British economy is being built on a financial faultline and is vulnerable to all kinds of shocks. The next world slump will shatter this feeble foundation and plunge the working class into a further nightmare. ASSAULT ON THE WORKING CLASS The working class has been under the hammer for more than 30 years, following the defeats of the 1980s and more recently. However, this brutal assault has intensified since the slump of 2008. Working life has become harder, more difficult and stressful. The regime in the workplaces has become increasingly repressive, as the squeeze on the working class intensifies. The capitalists have used their whip hand to tear up terms and conditions across the board. There is growing resentment in the workplaces, but there are also growing fears of what the future holds. Insecurity has rocketed as workers are threatened with redundancies and job cuts. Work in Britain has become increasingly casualised. Before the war, dock workers were lined up every morning while the gaffer chose those who could work that day. Now people on zero-hour contracts simply receive text messages to tell them when they can work. Many workers, especially the youth, are reliant on several jobs to make ends meet. Minimum wages have become the maximum in most work places. The 40-hour week is long gone, says Karyn Twaronite at Ernst & Young. The number of people working more than 48 hours per week had risen by 15% since 2010 to nearly 3.5 million. In London, some 100,000 are said to be on zero-hour contracts, and three-quarters of a million nationally, soaring by a fifth in the last year. This relentless attack has resulted in a two-tier workforce, where there is a margin of security amongst older established workers, but for the young workers there is nothing but insecurity, not knowing from one day to the next how much they will get. Jobs for life are a thing of the past. Stable work has been replaced with short-term contracts and self-employment, with all the insecurity that goes with it. Since 2008, only 1 in 40 jobs created were full-time jobs, a startling figure. This means no sick pay, no holiday pay, no maternity pay, nothing. The Tories say this shows an increase in entrepreneurship, but in fact it shows how desperate things have become. The poorest fifth of British households are among the most economically deprived in Western Europe and suffer levels of poverty on a par with those in the former eastern bloc, according to researchers, states the Financial Times. The High Pay Centre, an independent UK think-tank, has published analysis of OECD data showing life is much worse here than it is for the poorest fifth in virtually every other north-west European country According to Eurostat, the EUs statistical agency, gross domestic product per person is lower in west Wales than in Poland. Similarly, GDP per head in Tees Valley and Durham is lower than in the Czech Republic. (17/6/14) For many, the slog of work has become an enduring nightmare. In the public sector, workers have been on the defensive for years. In the private sector, 14.4 million people work for SMEs (workplaces of less than 250 employees) which are predominately non-unionised and where bosses rule dictatorially with little regard to legal workers rights. The vast majority of such workers have no union and no immediate prospect of joining a union. The extent to which these workers have been hit in terms of pay, stress, instability, bullying, harassment and unsafe conditions is very high. This is also the case for other non-unionised workers, agency workers and those on casual contracts. Even the public sector, which has much stronger unions and where workers are generally in better off positions, has been on the defensive for years. There has never been so much resentment in work. Pent-up anger, frustration and bitterness are at record levels. Such is the fear that millions of workers go to work when they are sick and unfit for work. Stress has resulted in a 40% rise in mental health problems in the past 12 months. This is a brutal time and workers are drawing their own conclusions from this state of affairs. If only I could get a steady job that paid decent wages, has become a dream for many. If only I could get a decent place to live on reasonable rent, is an ambition that now seems impossible. The housing crisis has reached levels not seen since the 1930s. In London, a majority of people pay over 60% of their income on rent. Obtaining a secure council tenancy has become nearly impossible. Millions are on the waiting list, whilst no new homes are built. Skyrocketing house prices, a symptom of the decay of British industry, mean that access to home ownership is now the preserve of the wealthy and their children. As such, millions of young people are forced to live longer with their parents, or to rent overcrowded and poor quality homes in the private sector. Many, especially the youth, look to the future with dread. This overall pressure is not simply bearing down on manual workers, but is widespread amongst the so-called white collar professions. The recent example of the strike ballots of 40,000 junior doctors, who voted by 98% to go on strike, on a 75% turnout, the first time in over 40 years, is a clear symptom of the growing ferment. The deeper you go down into the working class the more explosive is the mood. This is especially the case amongst the most oppressed layers, which no longer see any prospects of change in front of them. Already this generation has a lower standard of living than their parents and the situation is quickly deteriorating. As a consequence, Britain has never been so polarised. A massive gulf exists been the super-rich and the mass of society, which is struggling to make ends meet. The super-rich are bringing in foreign workers as domestics. According to Kevin Hyland, the new anti-slavery commissioner, about 17,000 domestic servants are being brought into the country each year, and some are suffering a shockingly terrible existence. According to Human Rights Watch, some employers called them abusive names such as animal or dog, or threatened to harm them. They work from 7am until 10pm or midnight and generally live in box cupboards and annexes. The employers are continuing to turn the screw. As the Tory minister Hunt explained, the British workers now need to work as hard as their Chinese counterparts. This is simply a race to the bottom, which is preparing an almighty explosion. There are limits to everything and in Britain they are being reached. TRADE UNIONS This mood of discontent is however being held back by the trade union leaders, who are terrified of unleashing a real struggle or making any real effort to recruit and organise the mass of non-unionised workers. They have become increasingly divorced from the real mood in society and are acting as a massive brake at the present time. Rather than organise a fight-back, they sow despondency. Under pressure they organised the mass demonstration against the government in 2011 of up to a million workers, followed by the big strike over the threat to pensions in November of that year. This showed the potential for a struggle. But since then they have called sporadic protests, without any real intent, but in order to blow off steam. The public sector pay freeze was imposed without serious opposition, despite enormous potential. When UNITE was faced with a serious challenge in the Grangemouth petro-chemical plant and refinery, they capitulated. They threw away a golden opportunity to launch a struggle against the employers offensive. Of course, weakness invites aggression. In a vindictive fashion, the government started to get rid of the Check Off system, beginning with the civil service. The union leaders were divided over the issue, which only served to isolate the PCS union that faced the brunt of the attack. Now the government feels confident enough to extend their attacks. However, the threat of industrial action by junior doctors, who have become radicalised in the face of government attacks forced the government to backtrack temporarily. Rather than turning public opinion against the junior doctors, opinion has rallied behind them. The possibility of picket lines outside hospitals, after their retreat on tax credits, has forced the Tories onto the back foot. A determined stand could force the government into a wholesale retreat. As with tax credits, they can make tactical retreats, but will step up their attacks in other areas. This dispute of junior doctors is very symptomatic. This layer has not seen industrial action since 1972. They are a young, fresh workforce who, under attack, were quick to respond. The fact that we have a former comrade in the leadership has played an important role in the dispute, which again underlines the importance of the subjective factor. The action or threat of action is a sign of things to come as the scale of the cuts become evident. The seething anger that exists will eventually find its expression in the trade unions, as more workers turn to them in defence of their terms and conditions. This can bring about a renewal in the unions with a new more radical leadership emerging at a local and national level. Explosions are inevitable in the next period as the employers tighten the screws. Local authority workers can be a flashpoint given the severity of the cuts. So could the growing layers of extremely casualised workers, often not organised by the trade unions. These workers do not see the unions as a credible force because the trade union leadership has taken no interest in organising them, or cannot even conceive of defending workers who do not have rights enshrined in bourgeois law. To a large extent the trade union leadership have succeeded since the crisis in dampening interest in the trade unions as a point of reference for discontent. However, a movement of such casualised layers would not be fighting to defend their terms and conditions, but to improve them. Given the atomised conditions of casualised work, any offensive movement would very soon have to acquire a political character against casualised labour in general. This too could give an impulse to the radicalisation of the traditional trade union movement. While a layer of older workers attempt to keep their heads down, looking towards retirement, there is no such escape for the majority of workers. In the coming period, the severity of the cuts will provoke a massive reaction. There can be a social explosion if they push things too far. The trade union leaders will be forced to put themselves at the head of a movement in order to keep it under control. However, they are sitting on a live tiger that is becoming increasingly restless. If they do not express this mood, they will be replaced by those who will. The Tory government is trying to prepare for this eventuality by rushing onto the statute books new anti-trade union legislation. The new barriers imposed on the right to strike, by increasing the legal threshold in strike ballots, will not stop what is coming. Such laws will be brushed aside when the workers move. Already amongst the junior doctors, the steelworkers, tube workers and others, the turnouts and votes for action have been extremely high, far in excess of the government thresholds. Rather than hold things back, they can radicalise the situation even further as resentment reaches boiling point. We are told that the fall in living standards, the worst for more than 100 years, has now ended. According to the government, living standards are going up with the fall in prices. This is government propaganda and a complete sham for the vast majority of workers, who are faced with increased rents, council tax and transport costs. Many workers and their families are shelling out up to half their income on rent. In the south east of England, up to 13% of income goes on transport costs. This situation affects the youth especially hard. Research has shown that one in five Britons fall below the poverty line once housing costs are taken into account. In London, it is one in four. There has been no let-up in the squeeze, with one million people reliant on food banks. Up to a third of food bank users had their benefit payments sanctioned (reduced or stopped), pushing families into crisis and debt. In this explosive situation, the industrial front can be radically transformed. Any revival in the economy, however brief, can also give an impetus to the industrial struggle, as workers fight to recover lost ground. Whatever happens, the working class will go through a profound political radicalisation in the face of increasing attacks from employers and government. THE TORY GOVERNMENT The Tory government came to power with only 24% support of the electorate. It has a very small majority and is prone to parliamentary upsets, as we saw in the case of the tax credits. This makes it a very weak government for the bourgeois, especially with the huge challenges ahead. Despite the governments propaganda, British capitalism is still in a parlous state. Growth in the past period has come not from investment or exports, but from consumer spending. This means the economy is resting on a very weak foundation. Consumer spending is not backed up by rising wages but from increased borrowing. Credit card spending has reached a ten-year high, as debt on credit cards rises to 62.7bn. Total UK debt has risen to 1.5tn, or 80.5% of GDP, compared to 69% of GDP in 2010/11, the first year of Osbornes chancellorship. Osborne has plans to cut 20bn in public spending over the parliament to achieve a budget surplus by 2019/20. Already his plans are off course, as October and November 2015 showed the worse public finances for six years. This means even more cuts will be necessary. Now with increased spending on defence and security, more money will need to be found elsewhere. Osbornes recent Winter Statement was a complete farce. The subservient Office of Budgetary Responsibility, a puppet of the Treasury, produced for him a rabbit out of a hat, when it miraculously forecast increasing growth and rising tax revenues, none of which will be realised in the coming world slump. The public finances will be devastated and they will be forced to extend austerity indefinitely. This allowed Osborne to soft-peddle on cuts to tax credits, but the same people will be hit when Universal Credit is introduced. Despite all the fudges, the reality is that austerity is here to stay, as the Institute of Fiscal Studies explained. Local government will face the brunt as local services are butchered and libraries, youth clubs, and social facilities are all closed down. According to IFS figures, local government, after these announced cuts, would see a reduction of 79% of its income! Transport cut by 70%. The recent flooding has become particularly extreme and yet routine largely due to national and local government cuts - national flood prevention spending has been cut by 1/5 since 2010 and at the local level it is even more extreme. This has not gone unnoticed by workers; more crises like these will swamp the government each year. Other areas face brutal cuts. As the deluge of cuts emerges, they will make this government the most unpopular government in history, undermining the Tories and shattering their electoral prospects. This will have decisive repercussions. The crisis of British capitalism inevitably finds its expression most graphically within the Tory party. In the distant past the British ruling class used to plan their future in terms of continents and centuries, such was their confidence and power, but now they are unable to see further than tomorrow. They have become extremely empirical. Their political representatives have suffered the same degeneration, becoming short-term political opportunists rather than advancing the long-term interests of the bourgeoisie. The Conservative Party was considered the most successful bourgeois party in Europe, but they have caught the European disease and become prone to splits and squabbles. Their outlook was epitomised in the views of Margaret Thatcher, the shopkeepers daughter, to whom they all look with glowing admiration. As the crisis deepens, long gone are the days of One Nation Toryism. The leadership is more reflective of the increasingly rightward moving Tory rank and file. They are English nationalists, reactionary elements, who look down on the lesser breeds. They detest Europe and dream of the return of the Empire, but that is long gone. They are irritated by immigrants and foreigners who have bought up much of British industry. They are worshipers of Margaret Thatcher, the epitome of reaction. But as a consequence of Thatcherism, the Conservative party lost its support in the north, especially in cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. These are now, together with most of the north, no go areas for the Tories. In Liverpool, which in the past had returned a number of Tories, the party has only 100 members in a city of 466,000. In Scotland, they have been reduced to a sect. Over the years, they have become in the main a southern English party, primarily of the shires and Home Counties. Osbornes attempts to remedy this with talk of a northern powerhouse are just that, talk. With no money to invest into the north, this weak attempt to pander to northern voters is sure to prove to be nothing more than hot air, and will fail to win the Tories any support. Cameron attempted to reinvent the party, but the situation has forced him to retreat from this and pander to its rank and file. This led him to the dangerous position of English votes for English laws, which simply whipped up English nationalism and further antagonised the Scots and Welsh, potentially undermining the union further. The Financial Times, the mouthpiece of the more astute sections of the ruling class, came out firmly in opposition to this move, fearing the consequences. Europe, once again, threatens to split the party. The creation of UKIP was a forewarning of this, a precursor of how things are likely to develop. The issue of Europe has polarised the Tory party for more than 30 years. In fact, Tory splits over Europe contributed to bringing down the last two Conservative prime ministers Thatcher and John Major. Cameron could easily meet the same fate. The wounds run deep, stated the Financial Times, recalling Majors denunciation of his cabinet colleagues as bastards. Cameron, who once urged his party to stop banging on about Europe in an attempt to introduce some sanity, is now faced with a seething revolt within its ranks. From a minority on the far right of the party, the eurosceptics have become a big majority, not only in the backward ignorant middle class ranks, but in the parliamentary party. The pro-Europeans, once dominant, have become a dwindling force, constantly on the retreat, and feeling increasingly isolated. Cameron thought he could defuse the situation, especially with the rise of UKIP, by promising an in-out referendum on EU membership. He was prepared to gamble with Britains future for the sake of short-term political gain. But this has opened up a Pandoras Box, raising all kinds of contradictions and dangers. The issue has now come back to haunt him, preparing the way for a bloody civil war within the party. Now some senior Tories see it as a noose, commented the Financial Times. While Cameron supports continued EU membership, he is being continually attacked and pressurised from the right. They will never be satisfied, whatever the result of the negotiations, unless Britain decides to leave Europe. Such opposition came close to undermining the last coalition. In the last parliament, nearly 100 Tory MPs, a third of the party, signed a letter calling on Cameron to secure a national parliamentary veto over current and future EU laws. Even Hague, a Eurosceptic, was attacked as a turncoat, for not being eurosceptic enough. The Eurozone crisis has simply added to the fury of the eurosceptics, who regard the issue as a test of true loyalty. The more time that goes on, the more sceptical the party gets about Europe, stated David Davis, a senior Tory MP. Rather than cooling things down, as Cameron thought, the referendum has served to heat things up further. Bankers attending last years Tory conference were startled by the pervasive mood of rabid Euroscepticism prevalent in the party. Cameron has outlined the issues on which he wants change in Europe. Despite most of these being generally innocuous, European leaders have baulked on refusing state benefits at workers from other European states for 4 years. They see this as contrary to one of the fundamental principles of the Union: the free movement of labour. However, Cameron cannot concede on this. He has therefore threatened that if he does not get concessions he will campaign for Brexit. But he is playing with fire with these threats, which will come back to haunt him if things unravel. The prospect of Mr Cameron leading Britain into a referendum campaign at the head of a warring party, halfway through his second term, and in the face of a blizzard of hostile coverage from the UKs eurosceptic media, has focused minds in the business community and most notably in the powerful financial services sector, states the Financial Times. However, the financiers are divided. The big banks are in favour of Europe, while the hedge fund managers are more eurosceptic. The big monopolies are also in favour, especially industry, as over 40% of its exports go to Europe. If Britain should leave the EU, British exports would face high tariffs. The benefits of a free-trade zone would be lost. British capitalism would it be out in the cold, not only economically, but would drastically weaken its political prestige and its value to the United States, as Obama mentioned. Ironically, while British capitalisms interests and fate are now tied to Europe, the Tory party is utterly split over the issue. How the referendum, possibly set for the summer or autumn of 2016, will turn out is uncertain. At the time of writing, polls suggest a majority are against staying in the EU. This could change as the campaign heats up. The likelihood of a vote to leave the EU is greatly increased by the immense instability and crisis of the EU itself, which is in terminal decline. Another breakout of the debt crisis, a terrorist attack, a further influx of refugees, or the success of the far right in another EU country would make a vote to leave much more likely. Whatever happens, it looks like being a narrow outcome. The narrower the result the more this will fuel resentment. Given the volatility, it is possible that there will be a majority to leave the EU. This will be a shattering blow to Cameron, whose authority would be in tatters; he could be forced to resign. This, in turn, could force the SNP to come out forcibly for a new referendum on independence for Scotland. The way the mood is developing there, the most likely result would be Scottish independence. On a capitalist basis that would not solve anything but would open up a new stage in Scotland and in the rest of Britain, which would be further isolated on the world stage, diminished in stature and power It would be shattering blow to the interests and prestige of British capitalism, opening up a stormy perspective. If Cameron attempts to campaign for Britain to vote to stay in EU, which is his plan, there will be much talk of betrayal in the Tory Party. Europe may be Camerons biggest and final political fight. I cant see how he can get through a referendum campaign without the party splitting and without a leadership challenge, said a confidant of the prime minister. Mats Persson, of the right-wing think tank Open Europe, says: The party is going to split, theres no doubt about it. The splitting of the Tory Party, which is entirely on the cards, will have far-reaching consequences for developments in Britain. A vote to stay in, especially if it is narrow, will enrage the Tory eurosceptics and could provoke a split. A vote to leave would push out the pro-European wing. Whatever happens is likely to produce similar outcomes. In other words, the Conservative Party, in its present form, is unlikely to last. The prospect that this Tory government could remain intact until 2020 and then go on to win a second victory is highly unlikely given the economic crisis. There is a bitter mood developing even now. The government could well collapse before then given the situation. Even now we saw the anguish of a young woman on Question Time recently who broke down with emotion when challenging the governments threat to cut tax credits. Amazingly she had voted Tory, but saw very quickly how they betrayed her. Shame on you! Shame on you! she shouted. This experience will be multiplied a million fold across the country in the years to come. THE CORBYN REVOLUTION The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader with 60% of the vote has transformed the political landscape in Britain. The fact that some 400,000 registered to vote shows that there are certain revolutionary features to the situation. The left-reformist Michael Meacher described the Corbyn phenomenon as the biggest non-revolutionary uprising of the social order. This situation is clearly far from normal. The dynamic in Britain has completely changed. There has been a seismic shift in the consciousness over the past period. Corbyn supporters represent a longing for an alternative that has an appeal far beyond the Left of the Labour Party, was a significant conclusion of a YouGov poll. Even the vote over the bombing of Syria, which in military terms would normally be considered a minor incident, became another catalyst for millions. It reflects a qualitative change in the situation, which is serving to expose the whole capitalist edifice. Each attack on Corbyn brings into question the state, the monarchy, the general staff, nuclear weapons, and the media. Not surprisingly, the whole process has sent shockwaves through the right wing, as well as the British establishment. The ruling class has become very alarmed at developments. The previous slow pace of events that characterised the last thirty years has been shattered. A new turbulent period has opened up in Britain, more characteristic of the inter-war period. As Marx once explained, there are times in which 20 years passes as though it were only days, but there are other times where 20 years of events seem to be incorporated into one day. For us, the slow days are over. Events are moving very quickly. These last months have been a roller coaster of events, one following quickly upon another. This transformation in Britain resulted from the build-up of anger and frustration in society, which had been accumulating over the previous decades. The problem was this mood never found an expression, especially in the mass organisations, which were lagging lamentably behind. The Labour Party certainly did not reflect this mood. It was largely moribund. The mood of discontent and anger did nevertheless find expression in the historic movement in Scotland over the Referendum. This provided a lightning rod for all the pent-up frustration and anger north of the border. Not only was there an unprecedented turnout of 85%, the biggest turnout of any vote in British history, but the vote for independence was only defeated by 55% to 45%. The referendum had turned into a referendum on austerity, the Tory Coalition government, the Establishment, and the gulf between rich and poor. The Labour Party had jumped into bed with the hated Tories and Liberals in defending the status quo. This produced a massive reaction and a transformation of the situation. As we said, it was pregnant with revolutionary implications. Huge layers were becoming politicised. In the May general election, the SNP swept the board by winning 56 seats out of 59. The once dominant Labour Party, under the leadership of the Blairites, lost all its seats bar one. It was a humiliating defeat. It was a sign of what is to come, where sharp and sudden changes are on the order of the day. All that was needed in the rest of Britain was a point of reference. In our 2015 perspectives document, given the grip of the right wing in the Labour Party at all levels we raised the theoretical possibility of a PODEMOS or Five Star type situation. However, we did not claim this to be an inevitability. We also said, Given the depth of the crisis all kinds of peculiar developments are possible, about which it is pointless to speculate. But there are important differences between Spain and Italy and Britain. We must not draw mechanical and premature analogies but follow the situation concretely as it unfolds, preparing ourselves for any eventuality. (British Perspectives 2015, paragraph 50) We also underlined the point that, Despite all the cowardice and stupidity of the Labour leaders, it would be a mistake to think that the Labour Party is finished as the sects imagine. Labour has big reserves of support in society. Moreover, there is no alternative. All the attempts of the sects to create a political alternative to Labour have failed miserably. (British Perspectives 2015, paragraph 134) This assessment was absolutely correct. In a short space of time necessity revealed itself through accident. Had Corybn not appeared on the ballot paper due to the Blairites disastrous miscalculation, the LP would have carried on drifting to the right and a PODEMOS or Five Star type movement would have very much been on the cards. The necessity was that eventually a mass political movement would happen, but it was by accident that it occurred through the LP. The accidental appearance of Corbyn on the ballot for Labour leader, which nobody could predict, provided the spark that ignited this Corbyn Revolution, as it has been described. Overnight, taking advantage of a massive blunder by the right wing to allow supporters to join the ballot, tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands signed up to take part. They transformed the situation and breathed new life into the Labour Party. The whole situation became electric, as Corbyns anti-austerity message hit home. The Blairite candidates were left with their mouths open as support for Corbyn, supposedly the joke candidate, escalated. Thousands were drawn to Corbyns meetings all over the country. Supporters streamed into the Labour Party. At one point, more than 610,000 had registered to vote, tripling the pre-May level of membership. 50,000 were soon stripped of their vote or blocked by the Labour bureaucracy, in a desperate attempt to stem Corbyns growing support. Finally, when the result was announced, the right wing was shattered. Liz Kendal, the Blairite darling, had scraped only 4.5% of the vote. The other challengers picked up 19% and 17% respectively. When the officials informed Corbyn he had won, they looked as if they were attending a funeral. Then events began to move quickly. Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt immediately set up a new anti-Corbyn grouping, ironically called Labour for the Common Good. Right wing MPs, like Simon Danczuk, announced plans to stage a coup on day one. Others called for an assassin to come forward. But they were forced to ditch these plans temporarily. Very quickly the Blairites realised, given Corbyns huge mandate, they had to bide their time. This was easier said than done. They were chafing at the bit, overcome by rage and indignation. How dare the membership! War was soon declared. At every opportunity the Right struck out at Corbyn. While the membership voted for Corbyn, the Parliamentary Labour Party had overwhelmingly rejected him. Out of more than 230 Labour MPs, only 15 or so genuinely support Corbyn. He is completely isolated in this den of thieves. Many refused to stand for the new shadow cabinet. In order to keep the peace, Corbyn invited right-wingers to join his team. A layer did so, acting as a Fifth Column within the cabinet. Others joined the newly found shadow, shadow cabinet, which was dominated by the Blairites and acts as their real leadership. Corbyn was forced to fight back or be driven out. It was going to be a life or death struggle. He appointed John McDonnell as shadow chancellor, dubbed alarmingly (but incorrectly) as a borderline Trotskyite by the Financial Times, and regarded by far as the most provocative appointment by Corbyn. The existence of a left reformist leader of the Labour Party and a Left Labour shadow chancellor is something not seen since the early 1930s. For the right wing this fact was completely intolerable, an affront to everything they stand for. However, McDonnell is now regarded by sections of the right wing as a restraining force on Corbyn, as demonstrated by his insistence on a free vote over the question of the bombing of Syria. There is developing pressure from the ranks against the Blairite saboteurs. Reflecting this pressure, Paul Kenny of the GMB made the barbed comment: If they are going to be constantly sniping then the best thing they can do is leave the party. At every meeting of the PLP the knives are out for Corbyn. After one particularly horrid meeting, described as fractious by one attendee, feelings were running so high that another said: I felt physically sick after the meeting. I dont know how much of this I can take. A senior figure described the atmosphere as horrible as Corbyn was continually heckled and barracked. The Financial Times described it as a bitter meeting. This has become a regular feature. The ruling class are truly alarmed. They were aghast at how quickly their agents lost control of the Labour Party: Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece are scrappy young parties that define themselves against the mainstream, states a worried editorial in the Financial Times. Labour, by contrast, is more than a century old. It has provided five prime ministers since the Second World War. The sudden transformation of an established party is more shocking than the eruption of a new one Folly upon folly has brought a grand political party to this predicament, from which it is not certain to recover. (Financial Times, 15/8/15) Every effort is being made to retrieve the situation. The establishments spleen is evident in the avalanche of hostility day-in, day-out in the mass media against Corbyn, pictured as a threat to national security and the British way of life. Since Corbyn was elected, the right wing has been waging an all-out war to remove him. The hint that such right wing MPs were out of touch and should face reselection was met by a storm, especially within the PLP. Frank Field, the Labour MP from Birkenhead, openly advocated rebellion. He advocated that any Labour MP deselected should immediately call a by-election and stand against the party, of course with the full backing of the Tory press. This is nothing more than blackmail and open sabotage. Of course, despite this betrayal, he faced no discipline, while Corbyn supporters, like Andrew Fisher, were suspended and attacked for so-called misdemeanours. Of course, this is no surprise. The Labour apparatus are firmly in the camp of the right wing. The machine was constructed and built under Kinnock and Blair as part of the New Labour project. Many Labour organisers have spent a lifetime in fighting the front organisations of the hard left, as well as the Greens, commented the Financial Times. Such officials will need to be thoroughly purged to bring the apparatus into line. The right wing is engaged in a civil war, with no holds barred. They cause the maximum damage at every opportunity. Behind them stands the ruling class, who are determined to restore the Labour Party into safe hands, i.e. the camp of capitalism. This is no secondary matter. Ever since the ruling class decided to incorporate the Labour Party, starting with its leaders, it has been a useful tool in holding the working class in check and played a vital role in maintaining the capitalist system. The Labour leaders would play the role of the 2nd XI, to use a cricketing analogy. When the 1st XI, namely the Tories, were experiencing a sticky wicket in government, the ruling class would call on the 2nd XI to come in to clear up the mess, alienating their working class supporters in the process, and then be cast aside and replaced by the Tories. Such a political arrangement provided British capitalism with certain stability. As Lenin explained, without the support of the Labour and trade union leaders, capitalism would not last six weeks. The bourgeoisie rested on these leaders to do their bidding. Behind the right wing stand the forces of big business and the state. While they have powerful means at their disposal, the ground has been pulled away from beneath them as hundreds of thousands of new members have poured into the Labour Party. This has transformed the situation entirely. Seeing the danger from the right wing, Corbyn and his supporters have begun to organise in the rank and file with the establishment of Momentum. This is an act of self-defence. Only by mobilising these new layers in and around the party can Corbyn survive the right wing onslaught. Humiliation is heaped on humiliation as Corbyn faces the weekly hostile meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party. It is like being thrown into the lions den. The right wing has shown no mercy. Every time Corbyn tries to appease them with this or that concession, they simply see it as a sign of weakness and continue their vicious attacks. They will never give up until he is removed. Their careers depend upon it. If it means destroying the Labour Party in the process, then so be it. Their motto is rule or ruin. When Cameron made his statement to Parliament about the Paris bombings and Syria, Corbyn replied for the Opposition. However, the Financial Times reported that MPs from both sides of the Commons were talking over the Labour leader by the end of his speech. What happened next was even worse. A series of Labour MPs pointedly spoke in support of the prime ministers approach to national security, undermining Mr Corbyn. The content and tone of the prime ministers statement spoke not just for the government but for the country, stated Labour MP, Mike Gapes. Labours front bench gradually emptied as he [Corbyn] made his statement, leaving Corbyn almost alone. One Labour MP said, He looked like a broken man. The sharp divide over the bombing of Syria increased the bitterness. The three right wing MPs who openly called for Corbyns resignation over the issue were only expressing what the others think. The Blairites made it abundantly clear that they would rebel against Corbyn and vote for the governments military action in Syria. Corbyn, who was put under intense pressure and threatened with a mass resignation of the shadow cabinet, mistakenly relented on a free vote in parliament. This gave them the chance they were looking for, hoping to humiliate Corbyn in the process. Cameron in turn was desperate for a quick vote. Public opinion was divided over the bombing and could swing against. A campaign was waged to win over as many Labour MPs as possible. However, such was the disgust in the ranks of the Labour Party of what was going on that huge pressure was exerted on the Labour MPs. In a shrewd move, Corbyn appealed to the membership via email. Out of 110,000 email replies from party members about their opinion, 70% to 80% were against bombing. Momentum and Stop the War joined in to exert pressure on the Blairites and those in the middle ground, the Marsh, fearful of de-selection. The Blairites showed their true colours, with 11 of the shadow cabinet and 66 Labour MPs in total joining with the Tories to vote for the bombing of Syria. They represent the hardliners, those who will lead the future split in the Labour Party. This stirred up massive opposition within the party. Corbyn had warned that there was no hiding place for those Tory-suppoting MPs, while Clive Lewis said Labour MPs voting with the Tories would face consequences. Even Len McCluskey, who had been dithering, came out strongly against the traitors. However, Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, played the role of Judas, betraying Corbyn and the Labour Party. No wonder he received applause and a standing ovation from the Blairites and the Tory benches. Benn was then touted by the right wing as a replacement in the wings for Corbyn as Labour leader. Frank Field, another renegade, suggested there be two leaders, one for the country and one for MPs. In reality, this revealed the truth that there are two Labour Parties, which will inevitably split at a certain stage. The pressure on MPs did the trick in forcing 150 Labour MPs and a majority of the shadow cabinet to back Corbyn, many of whom were prepared to back military action. But this success led to a massive stink in the press about intimidation and violence against Labour MPs. The filth poured out continually by the media has no recent parallels except possibly for the media in Venezuela and Spain, which daily slandered Chavez and PODEMOS respectively. Clearly the ruling class was trying to isolate and undermine Corbyn, but to their misfortune, Corbyns position was further strengthened by the by-election result in Oldham, where Labours share of the vote went up, despite sabotage from the right wing. Scandalously, right wing Labour MPs were spreading rumours about hostility to Corbyn on the doorsteps and predicting disaster on polling day, which they were desperately hoping for. But the result in the end was a triumph for Corbyn. Clearly, given this situation, the demand for accountability and de-selection is very popular amongst the new party members. Of course, the Blairites have complained bitterly they are being targeted and bullied, which has been highlighted in the capitalist media. This has served to increase the temperature in the partys bitter internal civil war. Tom Watson threatened those protesting against Stella Creasy in Walthamstow with expulsion from the party, but was then forced to retract this threat. These events graphically show the gulf between the Blairites and the membership. They reveal the hatred and contempt the majority of Labour MPs have for Corbyn and McDonnell. These creatures have more in common with the class enemy the Tory benches. They are completely divorced from the new rank and file. The fawning reference of Mike Gapes, right wing Labour MP, towards Camerons speech that he was speaking on behalf of the Country, reveals how these right wing creatures will put Country before Party when the chips are down. Of course, by Country they mean big business and the establishment, to which they bend the knee. It would not take much for a large bulk of the Labour benches to cross the floor to the other side. It should be noted that the trade union leaders are playing a dirty role, as always, behind the scenes. After all, they were not originally in favour of a Corbyn leadership, but were instead backing Andy Burnham. In the June anti-austerity demonstration, when Serwotka was urging people to sign up to vote for Corbyn, McCluskey refused to endorse him. It was only under pressure from the UNITE executive, which in turn was under pressure from below, that McCluskey came out for Corbyn. The same was true of Prentis in UNISON. Both, while offering support, are making snide comments in the press about Corbyn and are intriguing with Tom Watson, the deputy leader, as their real mouthpiece and stalking-horse. McCluskey didnt want Corbyn to appoint McDonnell as shadow chancellor, but wanted Burnham instead. He then said Corbyn needed to raise his game and stop making inappropriate comments after the events in Paris. He could no longer just say the first thing that comes into his head, said McCluskey. At the same time, McCluskey was shamefully prepared to do a deal with the Tories over the anti-trade union laws. Now under pressure he has come to Corbyns defence. The trade union leaders swing all over the place under pressure, and constantly seek to do deals. 18 months ago, in July 2014, McCluskey was calling for a reshuffle in Labours front bench where the right-winger Alan Johnson should be brought back! He [Miliband] should have a reshuffle, said McCluskey. Id bring Alan Johnson back into the cabinet in a role where he could play a big part. (FT, 21/7/14) As Trotsky correctly said, the trade union leaders are the most conservative force in society. Even the most left have little confidence in the working class and end up normally supporting the right, as they did in 1926. The right wing does not only dominate the Parliamentary Labour Party. It has reserves in the host of right-wing Labour councillors and the right-wing cliques that control party structures at a local level. These local careerists have become willing agents of the central government, doing its dirty work at local level. They impose savage cuts, despite the disaster this means for the working class. These creatures were responsible for the rise in the past of the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool, Bermondsey, Leeds and elsewhere. From reforms they passed to counter-reforms but these cliques will be challenged in this period. The only real alternative is a coordinated militant stand against the Tory government, which would mean breaking the law on the lines of Poplar, East London in 1921. This would mean a mass campaign involving the trade unions, but the trade union leaders would be terrified of such a prospect. Where is this struggle between Corbyn and the right wing likely to end up? Even the Blairites, despite their initial plans, realise that it will take a considerable time to get rid of Corbyn, at least several years by their own estimates. Some hope that poor results in the elections next May will discredit him. But this is wishful thinking. The Oldham result, instead of undermining him, gave Corbyn a boost. But whatever the results, Corbyn has big support in the rank and file, which will not be whittled away. In fact, a recent poll of party members gave him 66% support, 6% more than when he was first elected. Even if he were forced out, which is extremely unlikely, either he or another left would win a new election, given the balance of forces in the party. There are moves to ensure that rather than be forced to get 35 nominations to get on a leadership ballot, the sitting leader, namely Corbyn, would automatically be on the ballot. This would mean he would win a new election, if the right wing managed to force a contest. On the other side, the right wing are taking legal advice on how to exclude him from the ballot. However, nothing will be decided by legal niceties, only the class balance of forces within the party, which are overwhelmingly in favour of Corbyn. It cant go on, said one senior MP. But hows it going to end?The Financial Times comments: Mr Corbyn is sustained by the knowledge that 250,000 ordinary Party members and supporters backed him, creating a dangerous gap between the Parliamentary Labour Party and Labours grass roots. If MPs mount a coup the Party membership could still re-elect Mr Corbyn and his allies are seeking to clarify the rules to ensure that he would automatically end up back on the ballot sheet. Even Mr Corbyns critics admit it could take several years. As another Blairite explained: the party has been taken over. Its going to take two years of electoral defeats and a lot of hard thinking and organisation before this can start to be reversed. (The Guardian, 31 August 2015) Were going to have to let this whole thing play out. That could take a couple of years and in that time there could be a serious reputational change. But most of us are prepared to wait, said one senior shadow cabinet member. The right wing need to bide their time, hoping the tide will turn. They hope the right wing grip in many local parties will help them. These young idealists wet behind the ears when they come into the CLP, they will feel a bucket of cold water in the atmosphere that awaits them, said one right-winger. There cant be a coup now, said another right-winger. We would have blood on our hands. But they cant wait too long. They only have four years before the next general election if they intend to replace him. This is their dilemma. But on the present basis, Corbyn will still be Labour leader by the general election. They cannot reconcile themselves to this. As right-winger Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, put it, Although, as someone who would like to see another Labour government, it is horrifying at the same time. This is not unique. There are many Blairite MPs who view a Corbyn Labour government as horrifying. A split is inevitable. THE CIVIL WAR IN THE LABOUR PARTY Within the Labour Party, relations between the right and left will get increasingly bitter as right wing MPs are threatened locally with reselection. Already many MPs are fearful of the Momentum organisation, which they see as a machine for de-selection, no matter what Corbyn or Momentum says. It is ironic that Momentum and its leaders have come out strongly against de-selection, which should be a democratic right of party members. But this cuts no ice. It would take only one de-selection to set off a chain reaction. The capitalist press will become even more hysterical in its attacks on the Left. It would be similar to the ferocious campaign around the attempt to de-select Reg Prentice, Labour MP for Newham NE in the mid-1970s. This became a cause celebre and opened up the witch-hunt against the Left. Eventually, Prentice resigned and joined the Tory Party, ending up in the Thatcher government. The whole episode polarised the situation. It will do so again as the civil war in the party reaches fever pitch. History is repeating itself but on a higher level. The ruling class has again lost overall control of the Labour Party, as in the 1970s. But this time it is even more serious. At a certain point, they will come to the conclusion that Corbyn cannot be removed, despite all their efforts. The tide is flowing against them. The right wing is increasingly isolated. The ruling class will therefore be left with a stark choice: either allow Corbyn to lead the Left-moving Labour Party to victory in the next general election, with all the dangers that poses, or move to split the Labour Party as they did in 1931 and 1982. It is not a new tactic for them, but it comes with certain dangers. Ian Gilmore, who was a leading Tory politician and strategist, wrote a book in 1977, which assessed the threat posed for the bourgeoisie. It is only since 1970 that the Labour Party has become a threat to the constitution, writes Gilmore. Extremists have penetrated it at every level, and swung it violently to the Left And of course the situation became far worse soon afterwards From 1974 onwards Mr Prentice and other MPs were under threat from their constituencies from various local Soviets and Commissars It had adopted in 1973 an unprecedentedly extremist programme, which threatened the mixed [capitalist] economy and the rule of law The next Labour Government, led perhaps by Mr Wedgwood Benn, would very likely complete the process. British freedoms would be obliterated; they could not survive in a fully Socialist economy. The constitution would become an irrelevance, to be disregarded at will before being formally buried and the British people would enjoy an Eastern-European standard of life. The most important inference to be drawn from this is that the two-party system in this country is crumbling and will continue to crumble unless or until Labour reverts to being a moderate democratic party operating within the British political tradition. The bourgeoisie took this sound advice to heart. To block the extremist Labour Party, it decided to rest on the right wing within the Parliamentary Labour Party to carry through a split. This it did in 1982 with the Gang of Four and the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). This succeeded in splitting the Labour vote and handed victory to Thatcher. They then rested on the soft left in the Labour Party, starting with Neil Kinnock, to push the party to the right. This process was completed under Tony Blair, which got rid of Clause 4 and purged the Left within the party. The Labour Party had once again become a moderate party under New Labour, firmly back under the control of the ruling class and its agents. Everything went well for them until the election of Jeremy Corbyn turned everything upside down. This development, which they never anticipated, upset the political apple cart. Once again, the ruling class lost control of the Labour Party. Their agents the Blairites had made a terrible blunder and opened up the party to supporters, on the assumption they would loyally support the right wing. But they completely miscalculated and fell victim to their own hubris and propaganda, as they were completely detached from the real mood in society. Those right-wingers who had nominated Corbyn to widen the debate now saw themselves as morons. The masses were far to the left of the existing ranks of the party. For them, this influx of new members the Corbynistas meant that the party has been taken over by extremists as in the 1970s. What frightens them is not simply Jeremy Corbyn himself but above all the radicalised layers standing behind him, which are anti-austerity and anti-capitalist. The right wing is waging a losing battle as moderate members desert the party and left wingers continue to join. It was said, in one week alone, at the time of the vote on Syria, that some 15,000 people had left the party, while the supporters of Corbyn still continued to pour in. Let us recall that on a single day when Corbyns victory was announced 15,000 new members joined the party. If a Labour government were to come to power led by Corbyn, it would, under crisis conditions, be subject to enormous pressure from below. While there is much talk of the unelectability of Corbyn, the serious bourgeois understand that such an outcome cannot be discounted at all. The result in Oldham, despite all the right wing briefings by MPs that Corbyn had lost the white working class vote, confirmed the fact that Corbyn is electable. As the Tory government proceeds with its vicious austerity, support for the anti-austerity Labour Party will surely develop. The bourgeoisie would not want to risk a Left Labour government at this time. With a deep crisis, they want a strong government that would represent their class interests. A Labour government coming to power on an anti-austerity programme would be too much to swallow. It would be anathema to them. Of course, they could blackmail Corbyn, as the capitalists blackmailed Tsipras into capitulation. After all, inherent in reformism is compromise and betrayal, as Trotsky explained. By why take the risk when there could be a safer route? Once again, the idea of splitting the Labour Party would become part of their calculations. That could serve to keep Labour out of power as in 1983, when the SDP split the Labour vote. But, unlike in 1983, the ruling class could go further and champion the idea of a National Government as in 1931. That would be a way of creating a more stable government composed of elements from all the main parties. How likely would a repeat of the 1931 betrayal be? Clearly, it would be a very simple matter for the ruling class to split the Labour Party. The Parliamentary Labour Party is completely dominated by the right wing. Rather than a handful of right wingers leaving, as in 1931 or 1983, the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party could cross the floor to form a National Government as easily as switching carriages on a train. By this time, the Tory Party could also be in the process of splitting, poisoned by the referendum over Europe. A Tory split would see the creation of a new extremely right wing party, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, and pro-monarchy. This would absorb the remnants of UKIP, to become a royalist-Bonapartist party, on the extreme right of British politics. Such a development would not be a fascist party as in the past, but would be more like Le Pens party in France. There is no social basis for a fascist party. The paraphernalia of classical 1930s fascism has been discredited and reaction and fascism would need to take on a different form in order to gain any significant resonance. British reaction will be based on Tory/Royalist Bonapartism, which will have links to the state. It would be well financed from big business. Its aim, of course, would be some form of totalitarianism. Clearly, any attempt to use such a reactionary movement against the working class, given the present class balance of forces, would mean civil war. That is why the bourgeois would not be keen to go down this road. They would only do so if there was absolutely no other way out. The working class is a hundred times stronger than before the war. The professional layers have been drawn towards the proletariat. The students, who before the war were used to break strikes and were a basis for reaction, have overwhelmingly swung over to the left. The social base for reaction in Britain is very slim. Therefore, the ruling class would repeatedly hesitate as they could not be certain that they would win. However, if things became completely intolerable they would out of sheer desperation move to crush the working class. But that is the music of the future. There is no question of Bonapartist reaction today or in the near future, despite the hysteria of the sects at every real or imaginary turn to the right. The moderate, pro-European Tories would likely fuse with a Blairite split from the Labour Party, which would also absorb what was left of the Liberal Democrats, crushed by the class polarisation. Some elements of the Liberal Democrats may end up joining the Labour Party. The Tory government will have exhausted itself, wracked by splits and divisions. It would be too weak to stagger on in face of deepening crisis. That would be another sound reason to go for a National Government. Under these circumstances, the Labour Party, with the right wing being spewed out, would move dramatically to the left. Corbyn would preside over a radicalised left-reformist or even centrist party, with the support of the unions. It would have similar consequences as in 1931-32, where the ILP shifted to centrism following the MacDonald betrayal. But rather than the ILP, it would be the Labour Party. This move to split the Labour Party would need to come before the planned general election in 2020, possibly within the next 2 or 3 years, if the ruling class is to derail a Corbyn victory. There is a threat that the government will not last that long. NATIONAL GOVERNMENT In Britain, the fracturing of the political parties is not a new phenomenon and tends to take place in times of crisis. We have already seen support for the two main parties dwindle from 98% in 1950 to around 65% today. This was the case in the 1920s in the run up to 1931. Sharp divisions had opened up in the Labour Party as the right wing, led by MacDonald, Thomas and Snowden, battled with the Left wing. Mosley had split away to form his New Party, a precursor to the British Union of Fascists. The Liberals were fragmenting into Simonites, Samuelites, and the Lloyd George family. The Tories had been fighting over the Baldwin leadership and the Free Trade Crusaders. These splits and disagreements reinforced the opinion that some new political arrangement was needed, writes Colin Bell, author of National Government 1931. There was a crisis, all three parties were divided among themselves, and all authoritative observers held that it was essential that the country rallied round and accept a swingeing bout of public parsimony. A similar process will take place now. Splits and fissures are on the order of the day in all parties. In 1931, this fracturing led to a ferocious campaign in the press, headed by the Times, to bring about a National Government. For them, patriotism demanded the coming together of the best minds of Britain, which would entail some temporary suspension of certain customs, rights, liberties, in the interests of Strong Leadership, which all decent people would crave. This campaign by the bourgeois press ended in a split in the Labour Government, and the betrayal by MacDonald, who went over to form the National Government in August 1931. In the October general election, the parties that made up the National Government won a landslide victory by denouncing the Labour policy as Bolshevism run riot. The Labour Party held on to only 46 seats, while Lloyd George (who kept out of the National Coalition) managed to hold a mere 4 seats. The bourgeoisie got their strong government, made up of National Tories, Labour and Liberals, which proceeded to balance the books by a programme of savage cuts and austerity. This austerity was to produce riots in Birkenhead and a naval mutiny in Invergordon. This acute situation produced a further split in the Labour Party with the break away of the ILP in 1932, with its tens of thousands of members, reflecting a further radicalisation of the situation. The ILP became a centrist party, meaning revolutionary in words, but reformist in deeds, a product of the pre-revolutionary crisis in society. The situation in Britain, explained Trotsky, can likewise be termed, with a certain degree of justification, pre-revolutionary, provided it is strictly agreed that a period covering several years of partial ebbs and flows can elapse between the pre-revolutionary and immediately revolutionary situation. The process was cut across by the centrism of the ILP leaders and the treacherous role of the Stalinists. History does not repeat itself in the exact same way, but tends to do so on a higher level. There are of course differences, but there are also definite parallels. As we have already seen on the Continent, especially in Greece and Italy, as the crisis deepened, the bourgeois reverted to technocratic and national governments. To prevent a Left Labour Party on an anti-austerity programme assuming power, the British ruling class also is likely to resort to extraordinary measures. Splitting the Labour Party, with the right wing walking out, would be an easy option, despite the dangers, and serve its purposes very well. The establishment of some kind of Grand Coalition or National Government would, as in 1931, gain a big majority. It also would have the mandate to resolve the crisis. The National Government would carry through draconian attacks on the working class, as the crisis continued. But more and more, it would lose ground and prepare the way for a Left Labour Government, in 2025 or even earlier. There will be no stable governments, which will tend to follow one upon another in a quick succession. This Left government would be, to use Trotskys phrase, a British Kerenskiade, a government of deep crisis, where a serious struggle for influence would open up between the forces of reformism and those of revolution. However, this would not be as short-lived as the Kerensky government in Russia, which was due to the existence of the Bolshevik Party. It would be a far more protracted affair. The Left government would meet the open resistance of the ruling class, the fierce resistance of the House of Lords, the monarchy, City of London and the entire mass media. Without a perspective of socialist revolution, it would be put to the test and tend to buckle under the pressure of the ruling class. Attempted half measures would not satisfy the masses. Such a Left government would experience the worst of all worlds. However events work out in practice, there will be an enormous polarisation to the right and to the left in British society. There will be colossal instability. We cannot even rule out a Left wing split in the party, as with the ILP in 1932. Certainly, in such a scenario, this radicalised situation would provide the forces of Marxism with enormous possibilities, which, if they worked properly, could be on the verge of becoming a mass force. As Ted Grant explained: Under such conditions a strong Left Reformist or even Centrist current, with a mass base, would be formed within the LP; a current similar to that which developed in the LP during the second Labour Government [1929-31], when they moved away from reformism. Had there been a Marxist wing, or even a strong fraction working within this milieu, the basis could have been laid for the development of the revolutionary party. Trotsky worked out the classical conditions for entrism: Pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situation. Ferment in Social Democracy. Development of a Left Wing The possibility of the rapid crystallisation of the revolutionary tendency. These will come into existence in such a period. In addition, the ruling class will be seriously preparing for civil war under these conditions. However, given the enormous strength of the working class, they would hesitate a thousand times before taking to this road. Behind the scenes, nevertheless, they would be preparing to put an end to democracy, democratic rights, and suppress the Labour movement. This is not only a perspective, but a warning to the working class. Ian Gilmore, who certainly was no crank, but an important member of the British establishment, justified a military coup in certain circumstances: Conservatives do not worship democracy. For them, majority rule is a device individuals do not always act in their own interest, as Halifax and many others have pointed out; still less do groups Similarly, majorities do not always see where their best interests lie and then act upon their understanding. For Conservatives, therefore, democracy is a means to an end not an end in itself And if it is leading to an end that is undesirable or inconsistent with itself, then there is a theoretical case for ending it. (Gilmore, Inside Right, p.211) He continues, If our free institutions are overthrown or totally perverted, the Left not the Right, will be responsible There is no danger of a right wing coup. Only if the constitution had already been destroyed by the Left, might the Right react and the Left find itself overthrown in its turn by a counter-coup from the Right. (ibid, p.212) In other words, if capitalism were under threat, even in an election, a coup would be completely justified. The general staff has a long history of political interference, especially in times of crisis. According to custom, they are supposed to be above politics, but this is a sham. This is demonstrated by the recent military threat, featured in the press, to a Corbyn government. Leading figures were involved in the plot, promoted by Cecil King, the newspaper baron, in 1968 to overthrow Wilson as PM and bring in Lord Earl Mountbatten to head a government of National Unity. In 1974, there was open talk of a coup involving the military. Brigadier General Kitson was promoting the idea of the army being used not externally but internally. Army manoeuvres took place at Heathrow Airport against terrorism without the knowledge of the government. These activities, given the strength of the working class, were curtailed and considered too premature and too risky by the strategists of capital. The fact that even now an unnamed general was extensively reported to have threatened a military coup if Corbyn attempted to abolish Trident and undermine Britains defence reflects the real thinking of sections of the high command. In addition, the head of the British armed forces questioned Corbyns suitability of being a prime minister given his unilateralist views, and was backed by Maria Eagle, the right-wing shadow defence secretary. It is no accident that Prince Charles has also been intervening politically, writing to ministers on all sorts of questions. The government has been forced to release some of his selected correspondence, which is only a glimpse at what he has been up to. This interference will grow as the polarisation increases. The monarchy will play a reactionary role and act as a rallying point for Bonapartist forces, as was the case before the war, where they openly admired the fascist dictatorships. Plots and conspiracies will multiply in this polarised atmosphere. The security agencies, MI5 and MI6 will also be involved. The gentlemens Clubs in Chelsea and Kensington, frequented by members of the ruling class, the top judges, military chiefs, high ranking civil servants and Tory politicians, will be full of intrigues and plans to Save the Country from the extremists and Trotskyites. WHERE IS SCOTLAND HEADING? Scotland has been on a different trajectory to the rest of Britain. The political earthquake of the September Referendum in 2014 represented a fundamental turning-point in Scotland. This had been prepared by years of Tory governments and right wing betrayals. The fact that the SNP could win an outright majority at Holyrood in 2011 under a system of proportional representation, which was introduced to usher in an era of coalition/minority administrations, was symptomatic of the changes taking place. In Westminster elections, Labour was still completely dominant in Scotland. The Tories had long ago been confined to the margins, especially after the experience of Thatcher and the hated Poll Tax. After years of Blairism, which meant a continuation of Toryism for many, Labours support in Scotland was being systematically undermined. The Referendum, where Labour jumped into bed with the Tories in opposing independence, was the last straw. As the SNP shifted to the left, Labour was shifting to the right, ending up with the Blairite Jim Murphy as leader in December 2014. This was the crossing of the Rubicon. In the 2015 general election, Labour got its comeuppance and lost 40 of its 41 seats. The SNP won an unprecedented landslide, scooping up 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland. The Referendum had transformed the political situation. It was not simply about independence, but about austerity, the British establishment and the Tory Party. The result reflected an anti-establishment and even anti-capitalist mood in society. The working class heartlands of Glasgow and Dundee voted for independence. Many people who had not voted before, especially the most oppressed layers, chose independence. The youth voted for independence in large numbers. Those who rejected the status quo voted for independence. In the vote, independence was rejected 45% to 55%, much closer than previous predictions. Since the general election, support for independence has hovered around the 50% mark, increasing on the September 2014 figure. Given a Tory government at Westminster and the SNP pushing an anti-austerity line, the support for independence will increase. The fundamental reason for this is the betrayals of the Labour leaders. It is likely there will be a second referendum in the next period. Pressure will build for it, especially if the SNP achieve another landslide in the Holyrood election in May 2016 and the Tory government becomes increasingly unpopular, as will be the case. In addition, if Britain votes to leave the EU and Scotland votes against, a new Referendum will be unstoppable. Under these circumstances, the Scots are very likely to vote for independence. This might be delayed if the EU referendum is won, but is nevertheless on the cards. Will the Corbyn victory be able to reverse Labours decline? This is certainly not a short-term perspective, but will take a number of years depending on the fate of the Labour Party and the right wing. The Scottish delegations negative reaction to the FBUs reaffiliation to the Labour Party is symptomatic. In Scotland, there is a deep distrust of Labour, even under a Corbyn leadership. While the Labour Party is split over austerity, Trident, and the bombing of Syria, the SNP is united in its opposition. The Labour Party in Scotland has shown some signs of partially moving to the left in its policy, given the events of the recent period. For example, at its conference there was a 70% support to scrap Trident. But the problem for Labour is that people are so disillusioned with the party that this change is too little and too late. It has not increased support for Labour in Scotland to any real degree. Such moves at the top have not resulted in any increase in membership as we have seen in England and Wales. An article in the Financial Times showed that whilst the LP membership in London increased by 40,000 since the General Election, but the party in Scotland only increased only 4,000. It is also important to recognize that a significant layer of these new recruits in Scotland will have come from the more conservative layers who opposed the YES Campaign. Labour is currently polled to get 19% in the Holyrood election, same as the Tories, whilst the SNP is on around 60%. Again, Corbyn, it must be said, has a wrong position on the national question. Rather than understanding the pro-independence sentiments of the working class, he follows the line of the Scottish Labour Left who tend to express a crude anti-nationalism. They make no distinction between the nationalism of the bourgeois and the nationalism of the oppressed, which has a different class content. Corbyn does not even offer Home Rule for Scotland, which would at least be a step forward on the past position. In the future, a split and radicalisation in the British Labour Party may open up possibilities also in Scotland; but for the moment, the most radicalised layers of society are not looking to Labour in Scotland, which is indelibly tainted by past betrayals, but towards the camp of left nationalism. It is from this environment that the cadres of Marxism will be built in Scotland in the coming period. The YES movement on the left of the SNP has seen an ebb. The big waves of support RIC and SSP saw after the referendum have dissipated partly due to the natural ebb in the movement in general and partly due to the leaderships inability to hold together a healthy organisation which can absorb class conscious YES voters, many whom have been lost to the SNP, the Green Party or to political inactivity for now. While the SNP can ride high for quite a while, the party itself is based on a class contradiction. The working class base of the party, which now constitutes the big majority, will increasingly collide with the bourgeois elements in the leadership. The SNP will begin to be pulled in different directions as the slump hits Scotland hard. The party would tend to split on class lines. Signs of this have already been seen. At the SNP 2015 conference a motion was carried that argued for a more radical policy on land reform, despite opposition from the leadership. There was also a lot of debate with motions being passed at branch level against NATO and for an increased living wage. These small signs are the embryo of future splits which would almost certainly come to the surface in and independent Scotland and possibly before. A layer of the rank and file would become very open to Marxist ideas, the ideas of John MacLean and James Connolly, namely a Scottish Workers Republic in a Socialist Federation of these islands, as a stepping-stone to a Socialist Europe and a World Federation of Socialist States. On this basis, a sizable revolutionary party in Scotland could be constructed, linking up with the Marxists throughout Britain and internationally. However, the precondition for this development is the building of a strong Marxist tendency in Scotland. Spiros Hatiras who became president of Holyoke Hospital in September 2013 Spiros Hatiras, who became president of Holyoke Medical Center in September 2013. (Jim Russell) HOLYOKE -- Holyoke Medical Center has again earned an "A" rating from The Leapfrog Group, ranking them among the safest hospitals in the United States. The Leapfrog Group is a national patient safety watchdog assigning Hospital Safety Scores of A, B, C, D and F letter grades to hospitals nationwide, according to a news release from the hospital. Spiros Hatiras, president and chief executive officer of Holyoke Medical Center and Valley Health Systems Inc. said: "This A rating acknowledges on a national stage the hard work of HMC's physicians, nurses and each and every member of our staff for their commitment to safety and patient centered care." Developed under the guidance of Leapfrog's Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign A, B, C, D and F grades to more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals twice per year. It is calculated by top patient safety experts, peer-reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. For the first time, the Hospital Safety Score includes five measures of patient-reported experience with the hospital as well as two of the most common infections, C.diff and MRSA. -2fc55c0e0259e16c.jpg SIP Cafe at 8 Crafts Ave. in downtown Northampton will close for good Saturday, owners say. (Laura Newberry) NORTHAMPTON -- SIP Cafe at 8 Crafts Ave. in downtown Northampton will close Saturday, according to its managers. Kim Allen, who runs the coffee shop and restaurant with her husband, Pete, confirmed Monday that the popular business is shutting its doors. "We've done everything we can and the space isn't enough to support our family," Allen, who has a 4-year-old son, said. Allen explained that the decision wasn't spurred by high rents, as some have inquired. The business' high labor costs have made it difficult to make a living, she told MassLive, even though the cafe sales have gone up 40 percent over the past two years. Kim and Peter Allen, owners of SIP Cafe in Northampton. "Even if it were a different concept, like sit-down lunch ... the kitchen is so small," Allen said. "We're limited in that way." The cafe, which opened in 2011, has nine employees. The Chicopee couple aren't leaving the restaurant business altogether. Allen said they may be taking over an established cafe in Western Massachusetts, although it's not official just yet. SIP is known for its pressed and specialty coffee drinks, sandwiches and baked goods made in-house. The cafe also hosts monthly "after hours" dinners with prix fixe farm-to-table menus. SIP's last dinner was held Friday. Allen said the closing is sad for her and "tough to swallow." "The people here -- our staff, customers, the people in town -- are really what make it," Allen said. "It's the most amazing thing to meet all those people and learn about their lives." She said she will look back fondly on the college students who brought their parents, visiting from out of town, to the cafe. "You don't bring your parents to a place that sucks," Allen said, later adding, "We will miss being here greatly." The Allens will host an open house event Saturday as a final "thank you" to customers. Pete Allen will cook up whatever is left in the kitchen, Kim Allen said. Editor's note: An earlier version of this article indicated that Kim and Pete Allen own SIP Cafe. While they are represented as owners and intended to buy the business by Dec. 2015, the business is still owned by Michele Curry. Curry opened SIP in 2011. station pic.jpg (The Republican) WGGB/WSHM, Springfield's home to ABC, FOX and CBS programming, began notifying its viewers on Monday that Charter Communications may drop abc40, CBS 3 Springfield and FOX6 from its lineup after Saturday. By law, cable companies must negotiate with television stations before dropping a television station's signal. If Charter fails to reach an agreement, WGGB/WSHM's programming, including local news, will be unavailable on Charter systems after Saturday. WGGB/WSHM will still be available over-the-air and from all other cable and satellite companies serving Springfield, including DirecTV, Dish Network or AT&T U-verse. WGGB/WSHM claimed Charter has been too busy closing mergers worth more than $60 billion to concern themselves with WGGB/WSHM's viewers in Springfield. "Charter should focus on keeping WGGB/WSHM in its lineup while it works on its mergers," said WGGB/WSHM Vice President and General Manager, Klarn DePalma. WGGB/WSHM and its owner, Meredith Corporation, will continue to focus on reaching a fair deal with Charter, DePalma added. A spokesman for Charter said the cable company has a long-standing policy of not discussing carriage agreements in the press. Western Mass News is the television partner of The Republican and MassLive. 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 Sara Guaglione , April 25, 2016 Newsweek today appointed Ken Li as managing editor. Li, who most recently served as founding editor of Re/code, will replace outgoing managing editor Kira Bindrim, who is headed to Quartz to become editor of its talent lab after three years at Newsweek. Li will be based out of IBT Medias headquarters in New York City (IBT owns Newsweek) and will report directly to Jim Impoco, editor in chief of Newsweek. Li told Publishers Daily that his top priorities as managing editor will be preserving and growing the fantastic investigative, in-depth and high-quality analysis that the brand, under Jim Impoco, has created. As managing editor, Lis responsibilities include handling day-to-day operations for the site and production of the weekly print and digital magazine. He will work closely with Impoco to guide Newsweeks editorial direction, manage the team of reporters and editors and coordinate with sales, marketing and technology teams at IBT Media. advertisement advertisement We're going into a really important election season and want to keep pushing Newsweeks growth and momentum by putting the best digital minds at the forefront of our news operation, Impoco stated. Li told PD that because he has spent his career covering the intersection of technology and media businesses at Re/code, he is excited to have [the Newsweek] team pursue stories in a sector that is driving the global economy and our culture. I'm eager to work in print again, but also believe that there's a huge opportunity in digital, Li added. Prior to Re/code, Li also worked as a reporter and editor at Reuters, the Financial Times, The Industry Standard and the New York Daily News. Newsweek announced several other internal moves and promotions today: Kevin Dolak has been named national editor and will oversee the publication's 2016 elections coverage; Margarita Noriega has been named executive editor of digital; and Iva Dixit has been promoted to social media editor. A gene known as OSMR plays a key role in driving the growth of glioblastoma tumors, according to a new study led by a McGill University researcher and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Glioblastoma is the most aggressive type of brain tumor in adults. Unfortunately, there are no effective treatments for the disease. On average, patients succumb just 16 months after diagnosis. "To develop better treatments, we need to gain a better understanding of what is really going on inside these tumors," says lead author Arezu Jahani-Asl, Assistant Professor of Medicine at McGill and neuroscientist at the Jewish General Hospital's Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research in Montreal. A missing piece of the puzzle Researchers had known for some time that a mutant variation of another gene, known as EGFRvIII, produces a major tumor-forming protein in glioblastoma. But treatments aimed at disabling EGFRvIII in these patients have been disappointingly ineffective. Some piece of the molecular puzzle must have been missing. So Jahani-Asl went hunting for it in tissue samples from glioblastoma patients as she was pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratories of Azad Bonni at Harvard Medical School and Washington University School of Medicine and Michael Rudnicki at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa. The researchers discovered that the OSMR gene was very active in glioblastoma cells. What's more, by using existing cancer genetic and clinical databases they found that the more active this gene was, the shorter the patient's life span. The research team then studied human brain tumor stem cells taken from glioblastoma patients. These cells are normally able to proliferate and form new tumors when injected into laboratory mice. To the researchers' surprise, however, they found that when they knock down the gene for OSMR in glioblastoma cells and inject these cells in mouse, they lose their ability to form tumors. "It means that this protein is a key piece of the puzzle," says Rudnicki, senior co-corresponding author of the study. The researchers concluded that these two genes, OSMR and EGFRvIII, conspire to promote tumor growth by making what's known as a "feed forward" mechanism: when OSMR produces its protein, that signals EGFRvIII to rev up and produce its tumor-forming protein. So disable OSMR and you disable EGFRvIII. Potential target for treatments "The discovery has important clinical implications," says Bonni, senior co-corresponding author. "It provides a new therapeutic avenue for treating this devastating disease, though developing any effective therapy targeting human patients could be years of work." Jahani-Asl is now developing antibodies and small molecules designed to inhibit the OSMR protein or its interaction with EGFRvIII - a step toward the ultimate goal of finding ways to treat these tumors. "If we find that they can reverse tumor formation in rodent models," she says, "we will be equipped to adapt those techniques for testing in patients." Areas in the U.S. with the highest drug-overdose death rates are not always places with high drug trafficking, according to a new University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis published in the journal Preventive Medicine. Drug-overdose mortality rates have increased an average of 6.7 percent per year since 1979 but held relatively steady in most U.S. border counties, indicating that drugs appear to pass through these counties without affecting the death rates of their residents. "Our research reveals several potential new drug overdose problem regions that warrant careful attention as they may not correspond to areas covered by federal resources to combat drug trafficking," said lead author Jeanine Buchanich, Ph.D., deputy director of Pitt Public Health's Center for Occupational Biostatistics and Epidemiology. "Western Pennsylvania is one such area that is not considered to have high drug trafficking, but yet has one of the fastest growing drug overdose rates nationwide." Using the Mortality and Population Data System, a unique repository and retrieval system for detailed death data from the National Center for Health Statistics, housed at Pitt Public Health, Dr. Buchanich and her team examined overdose deaths in the U.S. from 1979 to 2014. The team started with 1979 because changes in reporting cause of death make it impossible to make comparisons with previous years. 2014 is the most recent year for which data are available. The counties with the largest increases in overdose death rates were clustered in southern Michigan; eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania; eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and much of southeastern New York; and coastal New England. Counties in the Midwest, California and Texas have seen little to no increase in overdose death rates. The mortality data was cross-referenced with counties in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which was created by Congress in 1988 to provide 31 high drug-trafficking areas of the U.S. with coordinated law enforcement resources dedicated to reducing trafficking and production. High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas with high overdose death rates were mostly concentrated in Appalachia and the Southwest U.S., whereas such areas with lower death rates were near the borders in California, Texas and southern Florida. "While resources are justifiably being targeted to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, they must also be allocated to counties outside those areas with rapidly increasing and currently high drug overdose rates," said Dr. Buchanich, also a research assistant professor in Pitt Public Health's Department of Biostatistics. Pitt Public Health's Mortality and Population Data System also unveiled several demographic insights that could be used to guide prevention and drug intervention efforts, including that: Since 1979, death rates increased for all age groups, with the smallest rate of growth in those older than 65 and the largest in 45 to 54 year olds. In 1979, overdose deaths occurred most frequently among 25 to 34 year olds and blacks; in 2014, rates were highest among 45 to 54 year olds and whites. Mortality rates were slightly higher in urban counties than rural counties. Deaths due to overdose in women began increasing in the mid-1990s and increased dramatically in 2002; for men, the rates began climbing in the mid-1980s with a more rapid increase also beginning in 2002. Dr. Buchanich will continue to build on her drug overdose research with funding from the Pitt Public Health opioid pilot grant program. These one-year pilot grant projects explore different areas of the opioid overdose epidemic with the goal of providing research-based information to guide public health interventions. Areas in the U.S. with the highest drug-overdose death rates are not always places with high drug trafficking, according to a new University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis published in the journal Preventive Medicine. Drug-overdose mortality rates have increased an average of 6.7 percent per year since 1979 but held relatively steady in most U.S. border counties, indicating that drugs appear to pass through these counties without affecting the death rates of their residents. "Our research reveals several potential new drug overdose problem regions that warrant careful attention as they may not correspond to areas covered by federal resources to combat drug trafficking," said lead author Jeanine Buchanich, Ph.D., deputy director of Pitt Public Health's Center for Occupational Biostatistics and Epidemiology. "Western Pennsylvania is one such area that is not considered to have high drug trafficking, but yet has one of the fastest growing drug overdose rates nationwide." Using the Mortality and Population Data System, a unique repository and retrieval system for detailed death data from the National Center for Health Statistics, housed at Pitt Public Health, Dr. Buchanich and her team examined overdose deaths in the U.S. from 1979 to 2014. The team started with 1979 because changes in reporting cause of death make it impossible to make comparisons with previous years. 2014 is the most recent year for which data are available. The counties with the largest increases in overdose death rates were clustered in southern Michigan; eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania; eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and much of southeastern New York; and coastal New England. Counties in the Midwest, California and Texas have seen little to no increase in overdose death rates. The mortality data was cross-referenced with counties in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which was created by Congress in 1988 to provide 31 high drug-trafficking areas of the U.S. with coordinated law enforcement resources dedicated to reducing trafficking and production. High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas with high overdose death rates were mostly concentrated in Appalachia and the Southwest U.S., whereas such areas with lower death rates were near the borders in California, Texas and southern Florida. "While resources are justifiably being targeted to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, they must also be allocated to counties outside those areas with rapidly increasing and currently high drug overdose rates," said Dr. Buchanich, also a research assistant professor in Pitt Public Health's Department of Biostatistics. Pitt Public Health's Mortality and Population Data System also unveiled several demographic insights that could be used to guide prevention and drug intervention efforts, including that: Advertisement Some countries currently deploy an approach of rapid intervention and response. However, even if the speed of policing increases, this tactic is not enough to prevent counterfeiting and protect the public, said Spink, who's also an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine.Working with enforcement agencies in Nigeria, Spink and his team studied protocols for crime scene investigation and forensic science. What they learned is applicable to countries around the world that have experienced cases of fraud. Some examples provided by the World Health Organization include: In Niger in 1995, 50,000 were given fake meningitis vaccines, resulting in 2,500 meningitis related deaths. In 1995, nearly 90 children in Haiti and 30 infants in India died due to consuming cough syrup tainted with a toxic chemical found in antifreeze. In 2001, 38 percent of anti-malarial drugs in pharmacies in southeast Asia do not contain any active ingredients.One key step to stopping instances such as these is to define the factors necessary for a crime to occur. This strategy could allow enforcement agencies to anticipate the conditions that create counterfeiting or fraud opportunities. An additional tool is the application of the crime triangle theory. For fraud to work, there has to be a victim, a criminal and a crime opportunity due to the absence of capable criminal enforcement. The space within the sides is the magnitude of the crime opportunity."It is important to understand the different types of counterfeits, counterfeiters and counterfeiting organizations before selecting effective countermeasures," said Spink, whose team included MSU's College of Human Medicine's Dr. Douglas Moyer and Dr. Michael Rip. "The goal is to reduce the size of the triangle; increasing the understanding of how and why fraudsters circumvent laws, audits and certifications helps achieve that goal."In the Nigerian case study, Spink found that the country's efforts had been successful. Between 2000 and 2004, Nigeria reduced counterfeit medicines in its pharmaceuticals market from over 65 percent to 16 percent. Nigeria's effort to fight this criminal activity remains strong, however, the nation is still at risk because counterfeit and substandard medicines still are widely distributed. It's an arms war between enforcement and fraudsters."Let's be clear, though, launching or refinement in countermeasures or detection processes will be met with fraudsters' own countermeasures," he said. "An anti-counterfeit strategy should be dynamic and not be perceived as leading to ultimately fixing something. Preventing counterfeiting is more akin to managing a chronic disease such as diabetes rather than the one-time fix of an acute incident such as a broken leg."Along with applying criminal theory to thwart the problem, Spink and his team also studied the effect of some practical measures. They showed that field product authentication efforts, regulating the supply chain, consumer awareness initiatives and more can be effective tools in fighting medicinal fraud. This research builds on MSU's College of Human Medicine's Public Health Department's Graduate Certificate in Counterfeit Medicines.Source: Eurekalert Advertisement Every year around 300-500 million cases of malaria are reported globally and more than 1 million people die annually; a majority of them are young children. According to 2015 statistics, around 214 million cases are diagnosed globally and 438,000 malaria deaths were reported. From this, about 90% of deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa region (majority of them were children under the age five). In India, in 2014, 1.1 million cases of malaria were detected of which, 0.72 million cases were of the deadly P. Falciparum . 561 deaths were reported due to malaria and many went unreported. . 561 deaths were reported due to malaria and many went unreported. Malaria is dangerous for pregnant women as the parasite can pass into the mother's womb and infect the fetus as well. Although malaria can be a deadly illness, malaria deaths can usually be prevented. Program phasing owing to the varying endemicity in the country Classification of States/UTs based on API (Annual Parasite Incidence. API = (confirmed cases during 1 year/population under surveillance) x 1000) as primary criterion District as the unit of planning and implementation Focus on high endemicity areas Special strategy for Plasmodium vivax elimination Eliminate the mosquito-borne disease from all low and moderate endemic states/UTs (26) by 2022 Reduce incidence of malaria to less than 1/1000 population in all States/UTs and the districts and malaria elimination in 31 states/UTs by 2024 Interrupt indigenous malaria transmission in all States/ UTs (Category 3) by 2027 Prevent re-establishment of local malaria transmission in areas where it is already eliminated and to achieve a malaria-free status of the country by 2030 Take appropriate anti-malarial medicines. The choice of anti-malarial drugs will be based on your past medical history, age and other current medications. Avert mosquito bites by sleeping under insecticide-treated or simple mosquito nets. Always be covered to avoid mosquito bites - wear socks, long pants, long-sleeved shirts and blouses. Spray mosquito repellents and apply repellent lotions on exposed skin. Ensure doors and windows are shut tight and screened with gauze or mesh to prevent mosquitoes from entering. Pregnant women and small children must avoid traveling to malaria-endemic areas. It is necessary to check with your family doctor or a travel clinic for anti-malarial medicines for the country you are traveling to. Malaria treatment is challenging as malaria parasites have grown increasingly drug-resistant. P Melmane, S Shetty, D Gulati. A study of drug resistance in malaria. JIACM 2014; 15(1): 9-12 Promoting Rational Use of Drugs and Correct Case Management in Basic Health Services Published by UNICEF's Programme Division in cooperation with the World Health Organization. Press Information Bureau Government of India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 11-February-2016 15:47 IST Fact sheet: The RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate (MosquirixTM). GSK, July 2015 http://www.worldmalariaday.org/about/key-facts Strong partnerships and funds have resulted in the progress against malaria in the past 15 years. In India, tremendous success has been achieved under the Millennium Development Goals. Malaria cases and deaths have gone down by 60% in India as well in other parts of the world. The idea now is to sustain this reduction and move towards complete elimination of malaria, just like smallpox or polio.India had 1,102,205 confirmed malaria cases in 2014 as against 8,81,730 in 2013 despite efforts at war footing. The reported deaths have gone down from 754 in 2011 to 561 in 2014.Malaria is caused by a type of microscopic parasite known as Plasmodium that is transmitted by a specific species of mosquitoes. Four Plasmodium species cause malaria in humans. These includeThe Plasmodium parasite is spread by the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito. Malaria symptoms include fever along with chills and sweating, severe fatigue, vomiting and headaches. The most common antimalarial drugs include artemisinin combination therapy, chloroquine , quinine sulfate, hydroxychloroquine, mefloquine The Health Minister launched the National Framework for Malaria Elimination (NFME) 2016-2030, which outlines India's strategy to eliminate malaria by 2030. This program defines key strategic approaches such as:By the end of this year, all states will have the Malaria Elimination Planning Framework implemented. By the end of 2017, all states should have cut down the API to under 1 per 1000 population. It is expected that by 2020, 15 states that are under the Category 1 of the malaria elimination program will have zero cases and malaria deaths. India is to achieve an API>1 at state as well as district level by the end of 2017.Under clinical trials, over 20 subunit vaccine constructs are currently being evaluated or are already in the advanced preclinical development phase. One of them is:is the foremost vaccine candidate against the deadlyparasite. A Phase III trial began in May 2009 with enrollment in 2011 of 15,460 children in the 7 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The final results were published last year in April.For prevention of malaria, following steps should be taken:Source: Medindia Please complete this form and we'll send you a personalised information that is requested You may use this for your own reference or forward it to your friends. Please use the information prudently. If you are not a medical doctor please remember to consult your healthcare provider as this information is not a substitute for professional advice. Introduction Political cartoons can currently be found in only a few independent media outlets, such as Polit.ru and Svoboda.org, and in some pro-Kremlin websites and newspapers, such as RIA Novosti,[1] Sputnik International,[2] and Sharzh I Pero. The main motif in cartoons on pro-Kremlin websites is the latent Russia-U.S. political-military conflict, and NATO as a U.S. tool for military expansion eastward. The government-owned news agency RIA Novosti and its international branch Sputnik International publish cartoons by Russian cartoonist Vitaly Podvitsky,[3] who became well-known to the public in 2014 after he released a series of pro-Kremlin cartoons on the annexation of Crimea.[4] The pro-Kremlin free-of-charge magazine Sharzh I Pero ("Caricature and Pen") features cartoons by members of the Russian and Moscow Union of Artists. The publication, defined as the Russian answer to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo"[5] was launched in 2015 by a group of pro-Kremlin activists from the Russian veterans' Combat Brotherhood, which belongs to Russia's Anti-Maidan movement.[6] Following are political cartoons expressing opposition to the U.S.'s Russia policy, that were published by RIA Novosti, Sputnik International, and Sharzh I Pero:[7] The U.S. Is Enforcing Its Policy, Luring Other Countries Into A Trap Vitaly Podvitsky, Sputniknews.com, February 29, 2016. The cartoon above shows the U.S. pressuring NATO countries and preventing them from acting on their own. The NATO official is holding a booklet with the Danish flag on its cover. On March 2015, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Mikhail Vanin said that Danish warships may become targets for Russian nuclear missiles if Denmark decided to join the NATO missile defense shield.[8] Vitaly Podvitsky, Sputniknews.com, March 9, 2016. This cartoon shows the NATO official holding a jar of bullet-shaped "NATO vitamins" and telling Europe: "It's for your own wellbeing!" Meanwhile, the U.S. is force-feeding a frumpy Europe tied to a chair with the vitamins - as it conceals its ulterior motive: deploying the Patriot missile system in Europe. On gun: "NATO"; on grip: "U.S." Sharzhipero.ru, April 4, 2016. NATO generals in the six-shooter's chambers discuss problems but are merely tools for the U.S. The cartoon was published on April 4, 2016, NATO's anniversary and the day of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's visit to the U.S. "Information wars go like... Just trust us, it's all for your own 'good.' Sharzhipero.ru, undated In a cartoon modeled after the long-running Western "Love Is..." comic strip, which is also popular in Russia, a girl representing Ukraine, in dress with yellow and blue trim, and another representing Georgia, in white with crosses, stand at a crossroads and have to choose to go towards Russia or the European Union. The U.S. - a child representing U.S. President Barack Obama - offers sweets to lure the two countries onto a tightrope to join the West and abandon Russia, saying that it's for their own good. Behind his back, however, Obama holds the Patriot missile system. Ukraine appears hypnotized by the U.S., whereas Georgia follows Ukraine but looks longingly at Russia. The U.S., by promoting the "color revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine, and Euromaidan,[9] is, according to the cartoon, taking them to certain death and destruction by fire. The U.S. Cannot Keep Up With Russia's Military Technology, And Is Acting Unreasonably Vitaly Podvitsky, Ria.ru, March 3, 2016. The cartoon above shows American engineers amazed at the sheer size of future Russian aircraft, next to a nearly defunct F-35 fighter jet. On March 2, 2016, Russian Aerospace Forces commander Viktor Bondarev said that Russia's sixth-generation fighter is being developed in both manned and unmanned versions.[10] Vitaly Podvitsky, Ria.ru, March 3, 2016. According to this cartoon, military officials from the Pentagon can't catch up to the Russian aircraft because they focus mostly on paperwork. The U.S Wants Only War Vitaly Podvitsky, Ria.ru. March 17, 2016. The U.S. plans to take over the entire world, but its military officials have no idea how to achieve this. This cartoon was published the day after Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley voiced "grave concerns" at a March 16 House Armed Services Committee regarding his forces' readiness if they found themselves at war with Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea.[11] "Information war is... when 'barbaric' Russia refuses to preach the values of the 'civilized' West." Sharzhipero.ru, undated. An "Information war is..." cartoon shows the U.S. bombing civilians while claiming that it is for a good cause, as Russia shields them. The U.S. Loves To Demonize Russia On "Pentagon TV": "The second before the invasion, Episode 125." Vitaly Podvitsky, Ria.ru. March 18, 2016. The above cartoon shows the Pentagon frightening Americans by constantly reiterating to them that Russia is going to attack the U.S. This cartoon was published the day after U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, at a March 17, 2016 U.S. Senate hearing devoted to the U.S. military budget, called Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and terrorism the five evolving strategic challenges driving the U.S. Department of Defense's planning and budgeting.[12] "Information war is... when you are told that Russia is an aggressor striving to revive the USSR, the Cold War, and the 'Evil Empire' era." Russia: "Seriously?" Sharzhipero.ru, undated. The angelic U.S. imagines Russia as an evil aggressor from the Soviet era - but Russia disagrees. * Elena Voinova is a researcher at MEMRI. Endnotes: After nearly six years of intense fighting in Syria, the regime army forces are severely depleted, due to the heavy losses they have suffered and also due to increasing draft dodging.[1] The regime has taken several measures to address this problem. In addition to bringing in forces from outside the country, especially from Iraq and Lebanon, it has formed popular paramilitary groups, whose task is to defend the areas under regime control. This allows the regime to rotate army forces to the frontlines without abandoning the rear, while also maintaining the loyalty of the residents. Those who enlist to these paramilitary groups are promised a salary, exemption from compulsory military service, and to be stationed close to home. Militia members wear uniforms and undergo basic training in the use of light arms and in military defense tactics. According to reports, most of the militias are subordinate to the Syrian army, especially to the Republican Guard under the command of Maher Al-Assad, the bother of president Bashar Al-Assad. The number of enlistees in these forces is unclear. According to regime sources, the response rate is high. However, opposition sources claim the opposite, and mention as evidence that regime officials have threatened to level sanctions on residents who fail to join the popular militias and even to fire state workers who do not "volunteer" to the units that have been established for them. Iran plays a substantial and active role in establishing these groups, which are modeled on the Iranian Basij militia. This was clearly indicated by IRGC official Hossein Hamadani, who said that "one result of [Iran's] presence [in Syria]... was the establishment of a type of Basij known as the 'National Defense.'" Syrian oppositionist websites and anti-Syrian regime media specifically point to the role played by IRGC Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in the establishment of these groups and in guiding them. The following is a review of the various groups that have been formed. "National Defense" Forces Since the onset of the Syria crisis in March 2011, the regime has made more prominent use of armed citizen supporters such as the Shabiha,[2] as well as the Popular Committees that were established as the protests escalated through 2011, in order to suppress them. The employment of armed civilians is presumably meant to distance the army from controversy and counter international and local criticism of the army's involvement in oppressing the citizenry. In January 2012, after the struggle between the regime and its opponents escalated into an armed one, and in light of the need for a more organized paramilitary group following criticism that the Shabiha was out of control and arbitrarily targeted citizens, the National Defense force was established.[3] The force, which is deployed countrywide, and especially in cities, comprises mainly Popular Committees members, as well as members and supporters of the Ba'ath party.[4] It was gradually joined by many other pro-regime citizens, who received basic training with light weapons. Emblem of the National Defense Forces (Facebook.com/National.Defence.Forces.NDF) Testimony by an Iranian regime official indicates that these forces were established with Iranian help on the model of the Iranian Basij militia. In an IRGC conference on July 8, 2015, IRGC official Hossein Hamadani said: "When the Syrian crisis broke out, some of Iran's sons arrived in Syria to provide conceptual assistance. One result of that presence... was the establishment of a type of Basij known as the 'National Defense.' The establishment of the National Defense was like an angel of salvation for the Syrian people... The National Defense in Syria has some 100,000 members and has managed to liberate many territories with the assistance of the Syrian army."[5] Reports in recent months indicate that the regime intends to disband this militia, likely due to recurrent citizen complaints against it.[6] Qadesh Forces "The National Security and Popular Support Forces" (Arabic acronym 'Qadesh')[7] were established in early 2014 and operate mostly in northwest and northeast Syria. The organization is subordinate to the Republican Guard - a highly skilled unit completely loyal to the regime and led by Bashar Al-Assad's brother Maher. The Iranian Arabic-Language TV channel Al-'Alam, which is close to the Assad regime, reported that the organization includes local army reservists who were not called up for active military duty. The members wear uniforms and train in guerilla warfare, explosives and IED detection, sharpshooting, and use of light and medium weapons.[8] Qadesh Forces emblem (Zamanalwsl.net, June 19, 2014) Establishing Local Militias In the first half of 2015, in light of the advance of Kurdish forces in northwest Syria and following defeats suffered by the regime in the Idlib area near the coast, Tadmur in the east, and elsewhere in the south, the regime began establishing local militias to defend their areas. As mentioned, there have been increasing complaints about the behavior of the National Defense Forces, including by regime opponents, but it is still unclear whether these local militias will replace the National Defense Forces or work alongside them. Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi Forces in Deir Al-Zor In March 2015, regime forces in Deir Al-Zor called on residents to volunteer for a new popular organization - Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi ("The Popular Mobilization Force") - that would fight ISIS. The group is named after Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi - a coalition of Iraqi militias, largely Shi'ite, supported by Iran. According to one report, the call for volunteers was aimed at Sunni residents of regime-controlled neighborhoods in the city, as well as pro-regime tribesmen. Another report indicated that the organization is headed by Iranian IRGC commanders and Hizbullah members.[9] It was also reported that the organization is subordinate to the Syrian Republican Guard.[10] The regime's call for volunteers stated that the purpose of the organization was to assist the army in the Deir Al-Zor area, to open the road to the city that ISIS is blocking, to eliminate ISIS, and to remove the siege on the regime forces and its allies in Deir Al-Zor city.[11] The rate of response to the call for volunteers was apparently disappointing. A Syrian oppositionist website reported that some two months later, Major General Muhammad Khaddour, commander of the Syrian army's Eastern District, told residents of regime-controlled areas: "Your sons are all sitting in cafes while soldiers and Popular Committees members are fighting on the frontlines." Khaddour threatened that, unless 1,500 locals volunteered for Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi within 15 days, he would take to the streets himself and take all the young men to the battlefront. He also warned that electricity to Deir Al-Zor would not be renewed as long as the road to the city, which is held by ISIS, was not reopened, and that the homes of residents who leave the city to avoid joining the fighting would be appropriated for the benefit of soldiers.[12] Liwaa' Dir' Al-Sahel (The Coastal Shield Brigade) In late May 2015, as Jaysh Al-Fattah Idlib marched on the coastal area, the Coastal Shield Brigade was established, under the command of the Syrian Republican Guard, to defend the 'Alawi regime's coastal stronghold. A statement posted on pro-regime social media pages called residents of the coast to contact the Republican Guard offices in the city of Qardaha in order to volunteer for the brigade, and were promised a monthly salary of 140,000 Syrian lira (some $140). It also promised that if draft dodgers volunteered, their legal status would be settled (i.e. they would be pardoned). The London-based Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that IRGC Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani had helped to establish this organization and define its role.[13] Announcement of the establishment of The Coastal Shield Brigade (Facebook.com/Syrian.RG.ARMOR, May 29, 2015) Coastal Shield Brigade shields (Facebook.com/Syrian.RG.ARMOR, May 31, 2015) A Syrian oppositionist website reported that the organization has two training camps and that volunteers undergo three months of intensive training.[14] In an attempt to combat the phenomenon of draft dodging and to encourage volunteering, the organization's Facebook page posted a message that read: "Every young man sitting in cafes and clubs, every young man dodging [military] service and hiding out at home - [know that] there are women whose femininity seeks your masculinity."[15] In contrast to reports on opposition and anti-regime websites that volunteer rates for this organization was low, the brigade's Facebook page reported on June 18, 2015 that 10,000 people from the Latakia area had volunteered up to that point, and that thanks to the large number of volunteers, "the Coastal Shield Brigade [is now] officially [deployed] on the coastal fronts." On June 25, the page stated that recruiting for the organization would soon close.[16] Volunteers for the Coastal Shield Brigade (Facebook.com/Syrian.RG.ARMOR, June 18, 2015) Liwaa' Dir' Al-Jazeera Al-Suriyya (The Syrian Al-Jazeera Shield Brigade) In late June 2015, the establishment of The Syrian Al-Jazeera Shield Brigade was announced. The Syrian Al-Jazeera region includes the Al-Raqqa, Deir Al-Zor, and Al-Hasakah governorates in eastern and northeastern Syria. According to reports, the decision to establish the brigade was made after Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi and Syrian National Security Bureau head 'Ali Mamlouk visited Arab tribes in the region.[17] According to its founding statement,[18] the brigade is tasked with assisting the Arab tribesmen The brigade is tasked with assisting the Arab tribesmen who feel that they are trapped between the rock of ISIS, which is trying to take over Al-Hasakah, and the hard place of the Kurdish forces that are fighting ISIS, and who are reportedly also carrying out ethnic cleansing of local Arabs as they advance. The Syrian Al-Jazeera Shield Brigade emblem (Facebook.com, June 20, 2015) Much like the Coastal Shield Brigade, this organization is also subordinate to the Republican Guard.[19] According to a July 2, 2015 post on the brigade's Facebook page, which has over 3,500 likes, it fights alongside the Syrian army in Al-Hasakah City. On July 8, 2015, it issued a call to city residents to come to the military leadership headquarters in the city in order to volunteer for the brigade.[20] Rijal Dir' Al-Watan Fi Al-Suwayda (The "Men Of The Homeland Shield Force" In Al-Suwayda) The paramilitary model was also implemented in the Al-Suwayda governorate in southeast Syria, which has a Druze majority, after Jabhat Al-Nusra advanced on this area from the south and ISIS from the east in May 2015. Following claims and reports, which were denied by regime loyalists, that regime forces had withdrawn from the region and abandoned its residents to their fate, the Men of the Homeland Shield Force was established in Al-Suwayda with the support of some leading Druze clerics, chief among them Sheikh Yousef Jarboa. The Men of the Homeland Shield Force in Al-Suwayda logos (Images: the organization's Facebook page) The organization is headed by Brigadier General Nayef Al-'Aqil and Colonel Mamdouh Malak, former officials in the Syrian regime's special forces. According to Al-'Aqil, this organization "is not just supporting the Syrian Arab army, but is a main factor [working] hand in hand with the Syrian Arab army in defending the homeland."[21] The organization's leaders tour villages in the area to encourage residents to volunteer and promise to settle the legal status of Syrian army draft dodgers if they join their ranks.[22] Al-'Aqil touring the governorate (Facebook.com, June 9, 2015) The organization's Facebook page defines it as "an organized civil popular force meant to organize and unify the unregulated weapons in the governorate and to train and prepare the people to defend the mountain [the Druze Mountains] and vital installations against any external attack."[23] It added: "We must know that our duty is to defend our land with all our might, and not simply leave [this task] to the Syrian Arab army... This is our homeland and this is our army. We will either get wiped out while standing idly by, or tell a new tale, similar to that which our fathers and grandfathers told about [the Druze revolt against French] colonialism..."[24] The women of the governorate were called to encourage their sons and husbands to fight.[25] It appears that the organization was originally meant to be named Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi, but due to resident objections in light of the association with the Iraqi organization of the same name, the name was changed.[26] Al-'Aqil and Malak touring the village of 'Orman in the Al-Suwayda governorate (Facebook.com, June 25, 2015) The Volunteer Brigades In addition to establishing paramilitary groups, in December 2015 the regime began establishing Volunteer Brigades comprising state workers and citizens. These brigades are subordinate to the army, as is indicated by the announcement of their establishment, which was issued by the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces. The announcement states: "Together against terrorism. In response to the demands of thousands of citizens who wish to bear arms alongside the Syrian Arab army in order to eliminate terrorism, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces hereby announces the establishment of the Volunteer Brigades, in order to enable citizens to fulfill their sacred duty to defend the homeland." The announcement listed those eligible to join the brigades and the incentives they would receive: 1. Any Syrian citizen over 18 who is not required to join the army by law. 2. Citizens who were called up for reserve duty but whom circumstances prevented from joining their units, and whose legal status has been settled. 3. State workers, provided they obtain a permit from the relevant minister. 4. State workers who join the brigades will receive a 50% increase in salary. 5. Citizens who are not state workers will receive a salary of 20,000 Syrian lira. Those participating in combat missions will receive an additional 10,000 lira. 6. Volunteers will serve in their governorates or near their homes.[27] Volunteer Brigades poster: "Syria is everyone's homeland, and the responsibility to defend it is on us all. My brother citizen, [join] the Volunteer Brigades: hand in hand with the Syrian army to defeat terrorism" (Facebook.com/homs.governorate.council, January 21, 2016) "A vigilant eye on the homeland - be one of the heroes and join the Volunteer Brigades" (Facebook.com/homs.governorate.council, January 16, 2016) Volunteer Brigades recruits undergo military training that includes operating various weapons and drilling defensive and offensive tactics "in order to be true fighters alongside the Syrian army."[28] Members wear military uniforms and are subject to the same conditions as soldiers.[29] As mentioned, many state workers were forced to join these so-called volunteer units. Volunteer Brigades have been established throughout Syria. On January 11, 2016, a ceremony was held for the first graduating class of the Volunteer Brigades of Rif Dimashq. The official Syrian news agency (SANA) reported that the group had been established "in order to meet the desire of citizens to bear arms alongside the Syrian Arab army in order to eliminate takfiri terrorism and fulfill their sacred duty to defend the homeland."[30] The local brigade in Latakia and Baniyas is known as the 145th Brigade. Latakia governor Ibrahim Khudr Al-Salem said: "All Syrians are fighters, each according to his job. The new brigade in Latakia was established following the many swift achievements by the Syrian army and after clearing many villages and areas [of terrorists]. There is a need to provide a framework for citizens who wish to remain in their villages and become elements that take part in defending security, after having undergone [Ba'ath party] military and organizational courses, as well as intensive behavioral courses."[31] According to the governor, as of February 2, 2016, some 1,200 people, including 135 women, had volunteered for the brigade.[32] * N. Mozes is a research fellow at MEMRI. Endnotes: The latest round of talks on confidence-building measures (CBMs) between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia took place in Skopje on 25 April 2016, based on the agreement reached by the two Foreign Ministers on 24 June 2015, in Skopje. The talks were carried out in a friendly and constructive atmosphere. Topics touched upon included cooperation between the two Ministries, the bilateral dialogue on issues related to connectivity/energy, migration, cooperation within the framework of the IPA II and TAIEX Programmes, economy, health, culture, public administration, education and civil protection. The meeting saw the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Ohrids St. Paul the Apostle University and the University of Piraeus. It was decided that the next round of talks on the CBMs will take place in Athens, in June 2016. In response to postings on webpages regarding the issuing of entry visas, including photographs of a large number of applicants outside one of the private Visa Application Centres operating in Moscow, we clarify the following: For months now, the Foreign Ministry has been implementing a systematic plan aimed at bolstering our Consular Missions (in Russia, Turkey, China, Ukraine, Iran and other countries) ahead of the adoption by all of the Schengen Area member states of an upgraded and more secure system for providing visas. Central to the Foreign Ministrys planning were our three Consular Missions in Russia (Consulates General in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novorossiysk), as increased tourist movement from Russia is expected this year. Our Consulate General in Moscow, in particular, has already been bolstered with 8 trained Foreign Ministry personnel, in addition to those already serving there, while a further 15 personnel from the Citizen Protection Ministry will be seconded to Moscow in the first half of May, to be followed by another 15 staff by the end of May. Moreover, provision has been made for 55 seasonal positions to be filled through local hiring (i.e., 2/3 of the total 84 seasonal personnel to be hired at all of the countrys Consular Missions abroad). The first 10 of these will be hired in the coming days, while hirings in this specific category will continue at the pace deemed necessary by our Consular Mission itself, which has been instructed to carry out ongoing assessment of the situation. Whats more, since mid-April the work stations for issuing visas have increased from 32 to 47, and the visa center has been extended to include two floors, while the procurement and installation of an additional 30 work stations by early June is already under way. Whereas 20 Visa Application Centres went into operation in December 2015, there are now 28 Centres operating throughout Russia, and there are plans to further increase the number of Centres. Finally, the necessary technological and support equipment (data transmission lines, visitor counters, etc.) has been upgraded, while improvement of visa issuing software is continuing and will allow for a drastic reduction in the time required to process each application. Through these actions and any others deemed necessary as the tourist season approaches, the Foreign Ministry is supporting the Consular Missions in a timely and effective manner, enabling them to better serve tourists wishing to visit our country and to benefit the national economy. The goal is for our Consular Missions to continue to issue visas within the time limit provided for by law; i.e., 10 days. In no case has this time limit been exceeded, while an effort is naturally being made to issue visas in as short a time as possible. The Moscow Consulate General has asked travel agencies to ensure the timely submission of applications by travelers, while, to the Consulate Generals knowledge, not a single group flight or individual fare has been cancelled due to a delay in visa issuing. The photographs of large numbers of prospective tourists outside of a Visa Application Centre concern a unique case where one of the two private Visa Application Centres in Moscow that our Consular Authority collaborates with accepted applicants without appointments, contrary to the established practice. On the very day of the incident in question, our Consular Authority instructed that this practice not be repeated and that the two Visa Application Centres operate exclusively by appointment so as to better serve applicants. In the interest of providing as complete a picture as possible, we note that, until recently, only one Visa Application Centre collaborating with the Greek Consulate General was operating in Moscow. A second Centre has already entered into operation, along with a further 7 Visa Application Centres throughout Russia, so that more visas can be issued and in order to support the increased tourism flows expected from Russia to Greece this year. Emblazoned on Tanya Goben Allestad's newest prosthetic leg is the fireweed, hand-painted there by her mother. It's something she considers a fitting personal symbol since the seed of the colorful and resilient wildflower can withstand wildfires, often making it the first thing to bloom after fire scorches an area. The resiliency she shares with the fireweed is something that makes Allestad a fitting guest speaker at the May 6 kick-off dinner for the Montana Women's Run, held the day after the kick-off, and a message she hopes to share with the thousands of women who plan to run in the race. "We all have our struggles," she said. "Just get up and walk. You can walk through life and look at the positive side of things. You can take those struggles and hardships that are handed to you and make something out of them." Allestad had her left foot and part of her leg, partway up her shin, amputated at Billings Clinic in 2012 after dealing for years with a foot injury that dislocated three bones and tore ligaments. The injury didn't heal and eventually deformed her foot and caused several toes to die, leaving her in constant, debilitating pain even after several surgeries and requiring the use of crutches for several years. But today the Bozeman-area woman is active in everything she loved before her injury, from nature photography to hiking, and with the help of a prosthetic leg is even able to jump and play volleyball. And she's since taken part in the Women's Run, held each spring in Billings, ever since, finishing it on crutches the first year and progressing to running and walking it in 2015. "It's been important to me in so many ways," Allestad said. "I couldnt walk a block without just being in so much pain. Just to be able to walk is such a gift. Its all these little things in our life that we take for granted. Ive been given this gift of being able to look at the little things and not take it for granted." She said she decided to go with the amputation one day when her niece and nephew were visiting. They wanted to go to the park just a block away and decided to walk, but Allestad couldn't make it that far and had to drive. Now, the surgeon who performed her operation, Dr. Giselle Tan; and the company that provided her prosthetic, Treasure State Orthotic and Prosthetic, connect her with other people facing amputation to help them prepare before and transition after the surgery. Renee Coppock chairs the Montana Women's Run Board of Directors and said that Allestad is exactly the right kind of person to share her story to kick off the event. "She was someone who didn't give up through all of the adversity that she suffered, and she still wanted to be active," Coppock said. "She recognized the benefit of it in her life. She's someone that can connect with this entire audience." And that entire audience could top 9,000 women. Coppock said that is the number of women organizers hope to register for this year's run after 2015 saw a record 8,953 participate. It has become a well-known run, drawing women from across the region and of all ages, from infants to centenarians. That's something organizers say adds greatly to its appeal. "They come because over the years theyve learned that anybody can do the Womens Run," Coppock said. "Eighty percent of the participants walk it. They come, they meet family members and friends. Sometimes its a once-a-year gathering for a group. It holds some emotional attachment and good feelings." This year, that's exactly what Allestad will be doing. She recently became close friends with a woman near her age who had a leg amputated about eight months ago. Allestad has been helping her through the process and, along with members of her church and a few other women who've had amputations who've banded together under the team name of the Limping Ladies, plan to finish the run together. "My goal is just to be there for my friend and support her and just walk alongside her," Allestad said. "Ive been there for her whole journey. Its really just a powerful thing that she can walk. Shes been in pain for so long." When they add their numbers to the other women in the run, the spirit of togetherness is something she described as inspiring. "Its just so neat to have all these women that come together, thousands of us," she said. "Its quite an event. Its so powerful." Authorities were still trying Sunday to find out who targeted the seven adults and teenage boy and why. Their bodies were found Friday at four different homes near Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus. Kayla Hay said she got to know one of the victims, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden, when they both worked as nurse's aides at a nursing home. Hay said she was shocked and saddened when she heard Rhoden was among those killed. "I've never heard her say anything about being frightened or concerned about anything bad happening," said Hay, who described Rhoden as outgoing and friendly. "She was always in a good mood and was very bright, both in her personality and her intelligence," Hay said. All of the victims were members of the Rhoden family. The others were identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. It appeared some of the family members were killed as they slept, including Hanna Rhoden, who was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The baby was 4- or 5-days old, authorities said. The newborn, Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby, and one other small child were not hurt. Authorities said none of the injuries appeared self-inflicted. A search for the killer or killers continued Sunday, and investigators said they had interviewed more than 30 people. Robin Waddell, who owns the Big Bear Lake Family Resort just south of Piketon, said Christopher Rhoden often did work for him as a carpenter and helped out with his excavation business. He said Rhoden was a nice guy whose kids sometimes visited him while he was working. "It's a large family," Waddell said. "There's a lot of them and they've been in this community for generations. So this is affecting a lot of people." Kendra Jordan, 20, said she often worked nights at a nursing home with Hanna Rhoden and described her as outgoing, funny and always smiling. "If you were having a bad day, she'd be the first one to come up to you to question you about what was going on," Jordan said. "She was amazing." Todd Beekman, who owns an outdoors shop a few miles from the crime scenes, said at least one customer came in to stock up on ammunition after hearing about the shootings. But Beekman and others hanging out there midday Saturday said they weren't concerned for their own safety because it's an area where residents know and look out for each other. "The word spread pretty fast, as it does in any rural area," Beekman said. "Everybody's kind of their own brother's keeper down here." Phil Fulton, the pastor of Union Hill Church up the road from where some of the victims were found, described the Rhoden family as close-knit and hardworking. He said they were previously part of his congregation, though not recently. He said a crisis resource team was at the church to work with the family. "They're not doing well with this situation at all," Fulton said. "A tragic situation like this ..." The exact timing of the shootings remains unclear. Authorities got the first 911 call shortly before 8 a.m. Friday; the second came several hours later from another location. Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway. The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away, said the investigation's leader, Benjamin Suver of the state Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Authorities refused to discuss many details of the crime, including the search operations. Officials said a Cincinnati-area businessman put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. The zoo held a groundbreaking ceremony Sunday for a new viewing area for its current group of African wild dogs, the Battle Creek Enquirer reported. The family of Andrew Zanetti, who died in a 2010 accident at age 26, donated a significant portion of the exhibit's $400,000 cost. "I wanted something to memorialize Andrew," Zanetti's father, Frankie, said at the zoo Sunday. "I wanted something to keep giving." Frankie Zanetti's company will provide tiles for a mosaic depicting animals in an African national park for the outside of the viewing area. Binder Park Zoo also held a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday for a new lion exhibit. Yasmin Pirbhai, 11, of Kalamazoo raised $30,000 for the exhibit through a door-to-door campaign, matched donations from her parents and her mother's employer, Merrill Lynch, and picking up sponsors for her climb on Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. "I want to help show those people lions because they're amazing creatures that everyone should be able to see," Pirbhai said. "Especially kids who don't know yet how amazing creatures they are until they see them." She said she frequently visits Tanzania, where her father grew up and her grandmother still lives, and has seen lions in the wild from a very young age. The two exhibits will share a plaza in the zoo's Wild Africa area and will be connected by a chute that allows the animals to experience changing territory. The wild dog exhibit could open by the end of summer and the lion exhibit is expected to open sometime next year. A team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln flew an unmanned aircraft over the prairie at the Homestead National Monument of America on Friday, dropping ping pong-like balls filled with a chemical mixture to ignite brush-clearing grass fires. Local and federal officials are interested in the technology because it could help clear overgrown vegetation in rugged, hard-to-reach terrain, said Michael Johnson, a spokesman for the National Park Service. The balls are filled with a chemical powder, potassium permanganate, before they're loaded into the drone. During flight, the aircraft pierces the ball with a needle and injects it with another chemical, glycol, before releasing it. The mixture ignites one to two minutes later. The technology is already used by helicopters to start controlled burns, but researchers note that the drone is cheaper and more portable. "You could afford one of these on the back of your fire truck, whereas you probably can't afford to have a full-sized helicopter parked at your fire station," said Carrick Detweiler, a member of the Nebraska research team. The drone, which is about two feet wide with six rotors is programmed to drop the balls in a preset pattern to control how the fire spreads. On Friday, the unmanned aircraft rose out of the grass and hummed toward the horizon through a smoky haze. Minutes later, it released the balls one at a time, sparking a series of small fires that quickly grew and merged into one. Researchers hope the technology eventually could be used to set controlled fires in hard-to-reach places that would clear out brush and small trees and make it more difficult for wildfires to sweep through an area. The drone is the fourth prototype created by the university's Nebraska Intelligent Mobile Unmanned Systems Laboratory. It carries up to 13 balls and drops them from roughly 65 feet in the air, and carries a little more than one pound of cargo. Depending on the software used, the drones developed so far have cost between $6,000 and $8,000 apiece, said Jim Higgins, an engineering graduate student who has helped with the project. Universities in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Switzerland are exploring similar technology. Higgins said researchers have had to work out some kinks. In earlier tests, the balls exploded. Another time, one caught fire before it was released from the drone. Another limiting factor is the wind. The lightweight drone could not be used in high winds, which sometimes stoke wildfires. Sebastian Elbaum, a computer science and engineering professor, said firefighters also could eventually use drones to find hotspots and gather other key information about wildfires. "It's very, very exciting stuff," Elbaum said. "Today, firefighters have maybe a shovel, maybe their gloves and their helmets. Imagine them having this in their backpack, pulling it out and telling it, 'Hey, go scout out there. Check whether it's hot. Check whether it's safe." The project began two years ago as a new way to prevent wildfires in Nebraska and other Plains and western states. During a severe drought in 2012, Nebraska saw 1,570 wildfires that burned a total of 786 square miles an expanse nearly seven times the size of Omaha. The combined costs of ground-level firefighting, aerial suppression and assistance from other states cost Nebraska more than $11 million that year. Researchers will use Friday's test to examine how fire crews might use drones in the future, said Brittany Duncan, an assistant computer science professor and member of the Nebraska team. "We want to know how we could display information to firefighters better," she said. Officials in Washington and Brussels are trying to clinch key parts of the deal before the end of the year, after which a new U.S. president and election campaigns in major European countries could complicate negotiations. Proponents of the agreement known as the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP argue that lowering tariffs and harmonizing rules would give a much-needed boost to businesses at a time of global economic uncertainty. Or as Obama put it when the talks launched three years ago: "New growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic." But this rosy view of TTIP hasn't caught the public's imagination, particularly in Germany. More than 100,000 people protested in Berlin in November against the proposed pact. On Saturday, police estimated some 35,000 marched against it in Hannover, carrying placards with slogans such as "Yes We Can Stop TTIP!" Organizers put the turnout at 90,000. Trade unions, nationalists and green groups have lobbied hard against the deal, claiming that it will drive down wages, erode consumer protection and environmental standards. The discussions, due to resume on Monday in New York, have come under criticism for the secretive manner in which they've been conducted. National lawmakers are only allowed to view draft documents in special reading rooms and are forbidden from talking about the documents with experts, the media or their constituents. Proposals to create dispute settlement tribunals have also stoked fears. EU trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom envisages special investment courts that would rule in disputes between governments and companies that feel they face undue legal hurdles to their business. Critics say such courts could place the interests of corporations above those of democratically elected governments, citing a recent case where tobacco giant Philip Morris sued Uruguay over a law requiring graphic warnings on cigarette packages. Alfred de Zayas, an American law professor and U.N. human rights expert, argues that such courts are unnecessary in countries that abide by the rule of law, such as the United States or the EU's 28 nations. Backers of the special courts say they would prevent cases from being heard by American jurors who don't understand the complexities of international trade law, and ensure that U.S. companies don't face discrimination in European countries with high rates of corruption. Juergen Hardt, a German lawmaker and the government's coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, believes some of those leading the fight against TTIP "have other motivations" beyond trade. "They also want to incite anti-American feelings," he said. The EU's executive branch is trying to promote the benefits of a deal. On its website, it suggests that TTIP will boost demand for European delicacies like cheese, hams, wine, olive oil, spirits, and chocolate. "High tariffs at U.S. customs up to 30 percent make some of these hard for Americans to afford and difficult for European farmers and firms to export," it says. TTIP's backers hope images of Obama in Europe where his popularity remains high will counter those of tens of thousands protesting the deal. "One of the main misunderstandings is that we'd be doing the Americans a big favor," said Hardt. "As an export nation, where more jobs depend on export than in any other country, Germany has the greatest interest in free trade. So I think the Americans would be doing us more of a favor agreeing to such a pact than the other way around." In her weekly video message Saturday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said everything has been done to improve the transparency of the negotiations within reason. And she stated anew that European standards won't be eroded. "We are not falling behind our standards, but securing those we have in Europe today on the environment and consumer protection," she said. Yet time may be running out for a deal. A spokesman for Germany's Economy Ministry told The Associated Press that no draft proposals have been exchanged about numerous areas of negotiation. The two sides are also divided about the issue of tariff reductions and the opening up of the markets for services and procurement. "In order to achieve negotiating success this year, it will be crucial to make significant progress by the summer on technical questions, so that the final negotiations are restricted to a few, politically sensitive areas," said Andreas Audretsch, the ministry spokesman. By the Midland Daily News How much trust do you have in the media to report news fairly and accurately? According to recent poll results, a small minority have a favorable response to that question, and more than 40 percent said they have zero confidence. In that study, sponsored by the Media Insight Project, just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, while 41 percent have no confidence at all. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they have some confidence in those running the news business. The study also noted that 85 percent said it was extremely or very important that the press be accurate and get the facts right. Two percent said that accuracy isnt important. The poll surveyed 2,014 adults and was conducted Feb. 18 to March 21 by the Media Insight Project, a partnership of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute. The media, as clearly indicated by these poll results, have a lot of work to do in order to earn public trust. It is discouraging to see so little trust in the media by the public, but at the same time it also is understandable, Midland Daily News Editor Jack Telfer said of the poll results. We certainly have to do a better job, especially at the national level where it seems like every story is reported from an analytical perspective, rather than just presenting the facts and letting the public decide the merits of the issue. I hope at the local level, here in Midland County and the surrounding areas, that the trust factor is higher, in part because all of us at the Daily News live and work in this region, and therefore know the communities we are covering and the importance of accuracy to our readers. At the national level, the studys findings are getting noticed by newspaper editors. The most important thing that news organizations can do is be accurate, and while we know that is a high value, this study reinforces that, Margaret Sullivan, public editor of The New York Times, said in an Associated Press article. Sullivan added that having reader trust is both good journalism and good business. For news organizations that want to be taken seriously, there is real opportunity here and real help, she said. Why so little trust in the media? Heres what the study discovered in questions to those polled: Sixty-nine percent of the respondents said that they trust the news less because they found stories that were one-sided or biased, while 65 percent said they lost trust in the news because of incorrect facts. In sum, news reporting outlets have their work cut out in order to improve public trust. The top two areas to work on have been noted: 1. Accuracy; 2. Fairness. To avoid an airstrike, the Russians could be told where the additional 250 U.S. Special Operations troops President Obama has ordered into Syria will be based, Pentagon officials said Monday. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the location in rebel-held northeastern Syria was not being disclosed publicly in a precautionary move, but he noted that Moscow was given the coordinates last year when the initial group of 50 U.S. advisers and trainers went into the area. "In the past, we have identified, we did identify, a specific geographic area where we asked the Russians not to strike," Cook said. "We're not talking publicly with you all about where they're going," Cook told Pentagon reporters, and he declined to discuss current communications with the Russians, but "we're taking every step we can to preserve the safety of our personnel and limit the risk they face." The 250 additional troops, who will go in with medical and logistics support, will be "in harm's way" but "the idea is that they will not be engaged in direct combat," Cook said. He also would not rule out that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would order more U.S. troops into Syria and Iraq to speed the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. "We're not taking anything off the table," Cook said. Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Obama's latest troop deployment was another example of what he has labeled "grudging incrementalism." "The deployment of 250 additional U.S. military forces to Syria is a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient. Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria," McCain said in a statement. Before leaving Germany Monday on the last stop of an overseas trip that also took him the Saudi Arabia and Britain, Obama said that the initial 50 U.S. advisers sent into Syria had made progress with local Kuridsh and Arab forces in taking back territory from ISIS. "Given the success, I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel to keep up this momentum," Obama said. Last week, Carter announced that 217 additional advisers and trainers were being sent to Iraq to "accelerate" the campaign to retake the ISIS stronghold of Mosul. In a CBS-TV interview earlier this month, Obama essentially conceded that the plan to retake Mosul, and the self-proclaimed ISIS capital of Raqaa in northeastern Syria, would likely not happen before he leaves office, but he said that conditions for the fall of Mosul and Raqaa would be set by the end of the year. Over the weekend, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) now had ISIS fighters in a "headlock" despite the stall in the Mosul offensive and infighting among anti-ISIS militias in Iraq. "The momentum has swung" against ISIS, and "my experience tells me once you've got somebody in a headlock, you don't let them go," Dunford told reporters traveling with him in the Mideast. "It's important that we keep pressure on them -- we keep pushing and pushing -- at whatever the pace is the Iraqis can sustain," Dunford said, but "It is their fight, it is their momentum." The ISF had initial successes in the push north up the Tigris River valley past the oil refinery town of Baiji, but the offensive has sputtered to a halt near Makhmour, about 60 miles southeast of Mosul, where Marines from the 26th Expeditionary Unit have set up a fire base for four 155mm howitzers. In a phone briefing to the Pentagon last Friday, Air Force Col. Pat Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said that ISIS fighters had set up layered defenses to stop the ISF from advancing north of Makhmour. Dunford rattled off a list of problems that the ISF must still overcome: "They know about the ammunition problems. They know about the shortfalls in training; they know about the manning levels and the leadership gaps; they know about maintenance and spare parts; they know they have to figure out how to sustain the fight from a logistics standpoint." "They know this," Dunford said "But, they also now know that a problem is a problem and that they can be solved if they work together and work with us and work with the coalition." Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Retired Military Officials Are Finding High-Paying Jobs With the Saudi Government and Can Make up up to 7-Figure Salaries Working for Other Foreign Governments Retired U.S. military personnel cannot receive consulting fees or jobs from foreign governments without expressed approval... U.S. manned and unmanned airstrikes killed at least 20 civilians and wounded 11 while hitting nine "legitimate" ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria between September last year and February this year, U.S. Central Command estimated Friday. The latest count brought the number of civilians killed since the air war began in August 2014 to 41, with the total number of wounded estimated at 28, according to CentCom. The U.S. military was also looking into another 25 allegations of airstrikes that caused civilian casualties that have been "deemed to be credible," said Air Force Col. Pat Ryder, a CentCom spokesman. "We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes and express our deepest sympathies to the victims' families and those affected," Ryder said in a phone briefing to the Pentagon from CentCom headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Ryder did not have a breakdown on how many of the nine airstrikes that hit civilians were carried out by drones, but said that the aircraft used were a "mix" of manned and unmanned warplanes. Six of the nine strikes were in Iraq and the other three were in Syria. Ryder said the casualties occurred despite the U.S. conducting "the most precise air campaign in the history of warfare. We assess the risk before every strike," Ryder said, and "we take all feasible measures to reduce non-combatant casualties." In the deadliest strike between September and February, at least eight civilians were killed "during a strike on a mortar fire position used by enemy fighters" Oct. 5 near Al Huwayjah in central Iraq, CentCom said. Ryder said that airstrikes were made more difficult by ISIS fighters hiding in the civilian population. The CentCom report said that in a strike on an ISIS checkpoint in Ramadi in Anbar province on Dec. 12, at least five civilians were believed to have been killed after they "unexpectedly moved into the target location after weapons were already in flight." Ryder said of the civilian casualties that "it's important to put this in perspective" considering that the U.S. has carried out nearly 12,000 airstrikes since August 2014 and flown more than 91,000 sorties. "There is no such thing as an intentional civilian casualty," Ryder said. "We are attempting to avoid civilian casualties, but in these cases, unfortunately, we assess that it was likely that civilians had died." "In this type of armed conflict, particularly with an enemy who hides among the civilian population, there are going to be, unfortunately, civilian casualties at times," Ryder said. Earlier last week, Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad announced that the rules of engagement were being changed to allow lower-level commanders to authorize airstrikes when there were concerns that civilians might be in the area. Previously, a four-star commander at CentCom headquarters in Tampa had to approve such a strike, but Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for CJTF-OIR, said that Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the CJTF commander, could now authorize a risky strike and it was possible that others in MacFarland's chain of command might also have that authority in certain circumstances. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com. Teaching has never been an 8 to 4 gig for Karen Ziegler. It wasn't when she started in the Billings Catholic School system in 1978, and it isn't now, as principal at Orchard Elementary, a neighborhood school in one of the poorest sections of Billings. Its not a job. Its a profession, Ziegler said. If people see it as a job, theyre never going to survive. Helping teachers not just survive, but thrive, has been her mission as an elementary school principal for more than 20 years. Ziegler will retire at the end of the school year and will be replaced by the school's assistant principal, Jeremy Carlson. She was a teacher at Meadowlark Elementary when her principal encouraged her to go into administration. I saw what some of my principals had done, she said. I wanted the opportunity to do that with teachers. She worked to build a culture of professional development, first at Poly Drive, then at Central Heights and Washington, and finally at Orchard. But she also reached out to parents. Karen came in and said, you are part of the school; we want parents to know we want volunteers here, said Jill Ackerman, whose daughter attended Central Heights while Ziegler was principal there. Ackerman, whose family was new to Billings at the time, started volunteering in the school office. She hasnt stopped, serving as a sidekick for Ziegler at each school. Karen sits down and talks to (parents) and just makes them feel comfortable, she said. Thats an important quality at a school like Orchard. In a lot of the Title schools, a lot of the parents didnt have a good experience in school, Ziegler said, referring to the Title 1 designation that earmarks federal money for schools with a high proportion of students from low-income families. If parents know, even if youre just listening to their side, that builds trust, Ziegler said. You kind of learn to walk in their shoes too and look at it from their point of view. Ziegler arrived at the school two years ago amid tumultuous times. A group of parents, including Orchards PTA president, demanded the ouster of the schools current principal, Julia Mattson. A group of teachers also requested transfers from Orchard. Other parents stood by Mattson. We were getting lots of concerns about Orchard School, particularly from parents and staff, said Kathy Olson, an executive director of school leadership for SD2. Mattson ended up leaving School District 2 mid-year. Olson said that Ziegler volunteered to step in for the next school year. Shes a great person for challenges, Olson said. Karen can be firm with the children when she needs to be, but they also know they can talk to her about anything, Ackerman said. That not to say Ziegler walked in and instituted an immediate overhaul. Every school Ive been in, they all have their own personalities, she said. You look at the community youre in, you look at some needs, you build on their strengths, then you starting building (new) things in You kind of seek out the people who are always hungry for more knowledge. As soon as you get some of those people on board, it becomes contagious. Shes overseen the implementation of SD2s first school clinic, a model the district hopes to expand, and emphasized a responsive classroom, which focuses on positive feedback while still holding kids accountable. Teachers help set a classrooms tone by modeling behaviors down to how you push in your chair and build a classroom culture from the ground up. Orchard also expanded extra-curriculur activities like after-school clubs. The younger we start them, the better, Ziegler said. Dont wait for middle and high school. In retirement, Ziegler will help look after her grandchildren and expects to stay involved in education in some way, she said. Im just going to see what doors open. Volkswagen Chattanooga (Courtesy image) DETROIT, MI - Volkswagen AG said Monday it plans to appeal in federal court a decision by the National Labor Relations Board that says about 160 skilled trades workers at a Tennessee plant can join the UAW. The Chattanooga plant, which employs about 1,350 workers, adopted a policy in November 2014 for recognizing labor groups. VW told the Associated Press that the company is appealing the NLRB's decision because the group did not evaluate the company's argument that labor decisions should be made by the entire plant's workforce. Earlier this month, the NLRB upheld a December vote by the 160 skilled trades workers at the Chattanoog plant to join the UAW, and the board declined to review VW's challenge of the vote. "We are disappointed that the NLRB declined to fully evaluate this important question," VW said in an emailed statement to the AP. "Therefore, Volkswagen will take the necessary steps to have this issue reviewed by a federal court of appeal." The UAW responded to VW's decision with a statement saying the German automaker is violating U.S. federal law, and said it sees forcing the matter into appeals court as a "stall tactic." The UAW said it rejects VW's claim that by only representing the 160 skilled trades workers it splinters the plant's workforce. The union pointed to Italy, Russian and Spain as examples of countries where multiple unions represent portions of workforces. "At a time when Volkswagen already has run afoul of the federal and state governments in the emissions-cheating scandal, we're disappointed that the company now is choosing to thumb its nose at the federal government over U.S. labor law," UAW secretary-treasurer Gary Casteel said in a statement. "At the end of the day, the employees are the ones being cheated by Volkswagen's actions." GRAND HAVEN, MI -- The Ottawa County Planning and Performance Improvement Department announced on Monday, April 25, it will get a $25,000 grant from the Consumers Energy Foundation to help build the 3.8-mile Spoonville Trail. The grant will fund part of Phase I of the Spoonville Trail scheduled for completion in September. The trail that will connect to the newly dedicated Sgt. Henry E. Plant Pathway on the recently constructed M-231 Bridge over the Grand River, according to county officials. When completed, the Spoonville Trail will connect to the 28-mile-long Grand River Greenway Trail, which runs along the south side of the Grand River, and the 20-mile-long North Bank Trail on the north side of the river. Spoonville was once a small village located south of Nunica in Crockery Township. In the early 1800's, the area featured a rail crossing, logging village, and sawmill - all owned by a man named John Spoon. Cost for Phase I construction will be about $1 million. The primary funding sources for Phase I is a grant from the Michigan Department of Transportation's (MDOT) Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) and Ottawa County. "Ottawa County has been fortunate to receive incredible support from a broad group of agencies, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and individuals," said Planning Commission Chair Greg DeJong in a news release. "Our promise to care for the communities we serve includes providing recreational and other opportunities for Michigan families," said David Mengebier, president of the Consumers Energy Foundation. "We are pleased to work with Ottawa County on this project, which will connect two major regional pathways and provide access to spectacular views of the Grand River." Construction on Phase II of the Spoonville Trail is expected to begin in summer 2017. This two-mile section in Crockery Township will extend from Leonard Road north to Nunica. The cost for Phase II is estimated at $2.1 million. "I am grateful that we can add the Consumers Energy Foundation to our growing list of partners," DeJong said. "With their support, Phase I is fully funded. However, we are still seeking donations in order to complete Phase II." RELATED: M-231 bike trail dedicated to Civil War hero, Medal of Honor recipient Jim Harger covers business for Mlive Media Group. Email him at jharger@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook or Google+. ALLEGAN, MI -- Perrigo Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joseph C. Papa has left the company to lead another pharmaceutical industry business. John T. Hendrickson, who has been Perrigo's president since late last year, has been named chief executive officer. And Laurie Brlas has been named chairman of the store brand drug maker's board of directors. Directors of Perrigo, which has been headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, since 2013, but maintains its administrative headquarters in Allegan, announced those changes Monday morning. Papa has been named chairman and CEO of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and is expected to join that company in early May. Its board of directors made that announcement Monday morning. Papa, who will also join Valeant's board of directors, will succeed J. Michael Pearson, who will leave top posts at the company as Papa arrives. Papa is a 35-year veteran of the pharmaceutical, healthcare services and specialty pharmaceutical industries. He joined Perrigo in late 2006 after working as chairman and CEO of the Pharmaceutical and Technologies Services segment of Cardinal Health Inc. He was named CEO of Perrigo that same year and was appointed its chairman in 2007. He was in the news for much of last year as he successfully led Perrigo in fending off a hostile takeover attempt by Mylan NV. During his tenure, he is credited with spearheading the company's growth as a global leader in the healthcare industry and growing its net sales to more than $5 billion. Valeant Pharmaceuticals is a multinational specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, makes and markets pharmaceutical products primarily in the areas of dermatology, gastrointestinal disorder, eye health, neurology and infectious disease. Among its widely known products are: toenail fungus treatment Jublia; acne treatments Solodyn and Ziana; and dermatitis treatment Elidel. In a press release, new Perrigo Chairman Brlas praised the elevation of Hendrickson to Perriogo's top day-to-day leadership role, saying the promotion was "aligned with our succession planning process." "John is an exceptional leader who is passionate about our mission, committed to our core values, and with his breadth of experience, is uniquely qualified to successfully lead Perrigo into the future," Brlas said. "He has made exceptional contributions to the business during his 27-year tenure, including leading our U.S. Consumer Healthcare business, and we are confident that he has the industry expertise and the operational track record to continue to drive growth." Hendrickson is credited with leading Perrigo's global operations and has been responsibile for almost 70 percent of its worldwide employee base. He joined the company in 1989 and was named president in October 2015. From 2006 until then he was executive vice president of Global Operations & Supply Chain and before that served in various other management and operational leadership roles at Perrigo. He has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Hope College, a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Notre Dame. With the April 24 resignation of Papa, Perrigo's board decided to separate the roles of CEO and chairman of the board and, with that, elected independent director Laurie Brlas to the role of chairman. Brlas has been a director of Perrigo since August of 2003. She has served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Newmont Mining Corp. since September of 2013 and previously was executive vice president and president of global operations for Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., the largest producer of iron ore pellets in North America. In its press release, Perrigo's management stated it expects 2016 adjusted earnings per diluted share between $8.20 and $8.60 as compared to $7.59 in 2015 MLive writer Al Jones may be contacted at ajones5@mlive.com. Follow me on Twitter at ajones5_al. WYOMING - An annual celebration of the Bengali New Year has been moved to Wyoming with activities planned for May 7. The event celebrates Poila Baishakh, the first day of the Bengali calendar, in India and Bangladesh. Sponsored by the Bangladeshi Community of West Michigan and the Western Michigan Bengali Cultural Association, this year's event, Bengali New Year 1423, is planned from noon to 4 p.m. at the Wyoming Junior High School, 2125 Wrenwood St. SW. This year marks the first time the celebration is being held in Wyoming after taking place in Ada in previous years. Last year's event was held at Keystone Community Church, 655 Spaulding Ave. SE in Ada. The event features authentic Bengali food and cultural traditions with music, dancing and other performances. This year's guest speaker is Bing Goei, director of the Michigan Office for New Americans and co-president of the West Michigan Asian American Association. Goei, who is the president of Eastern Floral, is active in the community through organizations such as the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Florist Association, Institute for Healing Racism, Grand Rapids Community Relations Commission chairperson and Asian Center Board Advisory Council Leadership West Michigan. Goei also started the program International Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence at the Goei Center in Grand Rapids. The program offers low-cost space to area entrepreneurs who are young, a minority or women. The event kicks off with lunch from noon to 2 p.m. followed by a cultural program from 2 to 4 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and includes a raffle ticket. An additional raffle ticket can be purchased for $2 or three tickets for $5. Tickets for children under 12 are $8. Children under 4 are free. For more information on the event, call 914-0670. Observatory_052516_RJS_01.jpg This bumpy stretch of Observatory Street through the University of Michigan campus will see repairs this year. (Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News) ANN ARBOR, MI -- The city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan are partnering on $1.9 million worth of repairs to a bumpy stretch of Observatory Street that runs through the campus area. Starting in May, improvements are coming to Observatory between Ann Street and Geddes Avenue. Not only is the street in need of repaving, but the existing water main is in poor condition and undersized, city officials said. The City Council unanimously approved a $1.3 million contract last week with Bailey Excavating Inc. for upcoming work. To reduce traffic impacts, the construction will be divided into two major phases, with about half of Observatory Street under construction at any given time. The first phase will extend from Ann Street to just north of Washington Heights, and the second from Washington Heights to Geddes. The total project cost is estimated at $1.9 million. Funding sources include $600,000 from the city's water fund, $800,000 from the city's street resurfacing capital budget and $500,000 from U-M. Council members said they appreciate that the university is contributing funds, since it's under no obligation to do so. Council Member Kirk Westphal, D-2nd Ward, asked about the potential for future partnerships between the city and university on street projects in the campus area, with U-M contributing funding. "In this case, we did contact the university and discussed with them and they are contributing to the Observatory Street project, so that's much appreciated," said City Engineer Nick Hutchinson. "In terms of bigger-picture conversations with the university, we are sharing with them a list of streets that we are going to be doing in the future, and our estimates for when we're going to be doing them, and talking to them about potential contributions for those," Hutchinson said. "They're not required to, so it's a little bit of a one-sided discussion sometimes -- it's at their option -- but they do realize the benefit in general, especially in very heavy campus areas like Observatory, of helping move those projects along." Westphal said he's thrilled those conversations are happening and every little bit helps. Council Member Jane Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, echoed those remarks, saying it's nice to see. The Observatory Street project includes replacing the existing 6-inch water main with new 16-inch ductile iron water main, and replacing storm sewer structures, aggregate base, street resurfacing, replacement of sidewalk ramps and concrete curb and gutter, drive approaches and related work. The intersection of Observatory and East Medical Center Drive also will be reconfigured. Five bids for the work were received last month. The low bid from Bailey Excavating is about 3 percent lower than the engineer's estimate. Construction is scheduled to begin in May and finish in August. The city, contractor and university plan to coordinate during construction. To reduce traffic impacts, the construction will be divided into two major phases, with about half of Observatory Street under construction at any given time. The first phase will extend from Ann Street to just north of Washington Heights, and the second from Washington Heights to Geddes. Separate detour routes will be set up for each phase. Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com. ANN ARBOR, MI -- Stand-up comedian Lewis Black is bringing his trademark angry and thought-provoking styling back to Ann Arbor this fall. Comedian Lewis Black will play a show in Ann Arbor at the Michigan Theater on Sept. 16, 2016. "The Emperor's New Clothes the Naked Truth Tour" rolls through Ann Arbor on Sept. 16 for a show beginning at 8 p.m. at The Michigan Theater. Black will play a show in East Lansing the following night as well. Tickets are $69.50 but the final price is $84.50 after a convenience fee and processing fee are added. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday April 29, at 10 a.m. however, presales for Michigan Theater members and Lewis Black fan club members begin earlier in the week. Black last performed in Ann Arbor in October 2013 and he previously played a show in February 2011. His last visit to Michigan was in October for a show in Saginaw. He's recorded nine stand-up comedy specials and has won two Grammy Awards for his comedic works. Black has authored three books and has appeared in several major motion pictures. He's also a frequent contributor to Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Matt Durr is a reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at mattdurr@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter. YPSILANTI, MI - Eastern Michigan University celebrated the graduation of 2,242 students entering a new chapter in their lives on Sunday with its 2016 commencement ceremonies. The ceremonies, held in the university's Convocation Center, recognized 1,694 undergraduates, 528 graduate students and 20 doctoral students. State Rep. David E. Rutledge (D-Superior Township) was the commencement speaker for both ceremonies. He received an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree during the morning ceremony. Here is a breakdown of the graduates earning degrees and their colleges: * 117 graduates from the College of Arts & Sciences * 150 graduates from the College of Education * 119 graduates from the College of Health and Human Services * 94 graduates from the College of Business * 47 graduates from the College of Technology Number of undergraduates and their colleges: * 727 from the College of Arts & Sciences * 346 graduates from the College of Health and Human Services * 238 graduates from the College of Education * 228 from the College of Business * 203 from the College of Technology * 52 from the Individualized Studies program through Academic Affairs BAY CITY, MI -- A year and a half after robbing a Bay County credit union, a 32-year-old man already imprisoned for a similar crime has pleaded guilty. Shackled and wearing a Michigan Department of Corrections jumpsuit, Daniel S. Collazo appeared in Bay County Circuit Judge Harry P. Gill's courtroom on Monday, April 25. Flanked by two corrections officers, Collazo appeared sullen as he answered the judge's yes-or-no questions. The defendant pleaded guilty to one count of armed robbery stemming from the Aug. 8, 2014, holdup of the United Financial Credit Union at 4710 S. Garfield Road in Williams Township. "I walked into the bank and instructed the teller to give me money and she did, or he did," Collazo said, adding he did so by using a note. Gill asked him if he displayed or implied he had a weapon. "I believe I did," Collazo said. "I believe the note said, 'I have a gun.'" In exchange for his plea, Bay County Assistant Prosecutor Bernard Coppolino agreed to dismiss a charge of bank robbery and not to seek an enhanced sentence. The charge to which Collazo pleaded is punishable by up to life imprisonment. In a Cobbs hearing held in March, Gill said Collazo's minimum sentence won't exceed 51 months. A Cobbs hearing sees a judge outline the likely sentence should a defendant be convicted. A similar robbery occurred Aug. 26, 2014, at the Chemical Bank branch at 230 N. Main St. in Freeland, the town Collazo calls home. In that incident, Collazo passed a note to a teller stating he had a gun and demanding money, according to police. Police investigating both robberies arrested Collazo at his home on July 6, 2014. Collazo on Oct. 19, 2015, appeared before Saginaw County Circuit Judge Janet M. Boes and pleaded guilty to bank robbery. In exchange, the prosecution dismissed a count of armed robbery. Boes on Nov. 24, 2015, sentenced Collazo to 22 months to 15 years in prison. She gave him credit for 141 days already served. Collazo is currently incarcerated at the Central Michigan Correctional Facility in St. Louis. Judge Gill is to sentence Collazo at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, June 6. BISMARCK, N.D. Outdoors artist Terry Redlin has died in South Dakota after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 78. Redlin died Sunday night in a care center in the Watertown area due to "complications from a nine-year struggle with dementia," Redlin Art Center Executive Director Julie Ranum told The Associated Press. When Redlin retired from painting in 2007, his son, Charles Redlin, said his father suffered from exposure to a chemical found in paint. Redlinsold more than a half million prints. The Redlin Art Center in Watertown, S.D., opened in 1997. From 1990 to 1999, through a poll of 500 national galleries, U.S. Art Magazine named Redlin "America's Most Popular Artist." "We have welcomed millions of people throughout the art center, which is his gift back to his hometown," said Julie Ranum, the center's executive director. "We know that his art has touched millions. It's a terrible loss, but he has shared a great gift with all of us by leaving this incredible collection of art." Redlin is known for his paintings of wildlife and outdoors scenes. His depictions of ducks, deer and rustic cabins decorate everything from coffee mugs to jigsaw puzzles. The Redlin Art Center museum features more than 150 of his original oil paintings, as well as many prints, sketches and childhood drawings. Redlin also was known for his conservation work. Over 17 years, his art donations to Ducks Unlimited raised more than $28 million for wetlands projects. The Terry Redlin Environmental Center opened in Watertown in 2010, with exhibits on native ecosystems, wetlands and the prairie. Redlin earned a degree from the St. Paul School of Associated Arts and worked 25 years in the commercial art business before becoming a wildlife artist. He got his break in 1977, when one of his paintings appeared on the cover of The Farmer magazine. In 1981 and 1985, he won the Minnesota Duck Stamp competition, and also won the 1982 Minnesota Trout Stamp contest. He's been honored by Ducks Unlimited as its national artist of the year and by the Minnesota Waterfowl Association as a conservationist of the year. The National Association of Limited Edition Dealers has three times presented him with its Lithograph of the Year award. An elementary school in Sioux Falls was even named for him. Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Monday requested that flags in South Dakota be flown at half-staff on the day of Redlin's funeral, which was not immediately scheduled. "Terry Redlin was an iconic South Dakota artist," he said. "For many South Dakotans, Terry's work brought to life our fondest memories of our state's outdoor heritage and rural roots. He has left a legacy in Watertown and throughout the nation, and Linda and I extend our deepest sympathies to the Redlin family." HELENA Administrators with the U.S. Small Business Administration like to say the agency doesnt fund sinners, saints or landlords casinos, nonprofits or real estate developers but will consider loan guarantees to help out just about anyone else. Thats good news for most businesses in Montana, where small agriculture, construction, retail and other companies account for more than two-thirds of the states workforce. Agency officials said such businesses combined to secure more than $1 billion in SBA loan guarantees over the past few years, helping them to create, by some estimates, more than 7,000 jobs. All that growth has also been a boon for the Treasure States more than three dozen local economic development organizations nonprofits that look to create jobs by passing along loans, grants and other financial assistance doled out by state and federal agencies. Representatives with many of those agencies joined dozens of business owners and elected officials in Butte this week for a biannual conference that featured a keynote speech from Betsy Markey, the Denver-based chief administrator overseeing the SBA region that includes Montana. Markey, speaking during an interview Wednesday, said spirits at the conference were high, as economic development professionals turn their attention to helping companies with job and technology training efforts which many put on the backburner during the Great Recession. The hurdles still faced by those businesses an aging population, shrinking workforce and lackluster wage growth are by now pretty familiar. So are the solutions, said SBA District Director Wayne Gardella. Gardellas prescription for what ails the states economy features heavy doses of SBA-backed financial capital, but also plenty of free or low-cost contracting advice and business counseling the agencys two other areas of expertise. Gardella, a former banker who has headed up the SBAs Helena office since 2013, said hes helped more than a few entrepreneurs buy equipment, draw up their first business plan or talk their way into a bank loan. His eight-person office also helps businesses get on the General Services Administration schedule, a kind of Sears catalog where federal agencies go to pick out local contractors. But Gardella said sometimes, the best thing he can do for the community is talk a prospective business owner out of setting up shop. A lot of the work is best practices, Gardella explained. We probably talk 60 or 70 percent of people out of going into business, because theyre just not ready. We dont create one single job doing that, but maybe we save the guys house and his marriage. Sharon Franjevic, who does marketing and promotional work for the SBA, said despite the gobs of financing and consulting, not all prospective business owners know about the agencys services. Markey, herself a former small business owner, applauded Franjevics efforts, adding she's seen firsthand what the agency can do. Small businesses dont have the resources, like the big companies do, to find out what those big (federal) contracts are, Markey said. When my husband and I first started out, I wanted to get us on GSAs (contracting) schedule. ... SBA helped out on that, helped us figure out how to do it. It was nice to have that, because youve got small businesses, and exporters as well, that want to take their business to the next level. Those kind of services are important. Myanmar traders are allowed to export catfish and other siluriformes to the United States for an 18-month period, as the Food and Drug Administration transfers regulatory control of the industry to the Department of Agricultures Food Safety and Inspection Service. During this time, FSIS will carry out a new inspection program and will reach out to all exporters to ensure they understand the new requirements Since the 18-month transition period began on March 1, local exporters have been busy with preparations, said U Soe Tun, vice chair of the Myanmar Shrimp Association. Exporters are responsible for the quality of their product, he said, adding that the US is keen to see how many tonnes of catfish will be exported from Myanmar. The FSIS has already announced the names of 13 Myanmar companies which are qualified to export siluriformes, he said. During the transition period, the FSIS will inspect selected shipments of imported catfish and their products. Inspection regulations aim at protecting local fish farmers in the US, said U Han Tun, executive director of Myanmar Fisheries Federation. Myanmar has been allowed to export fish products to the US since a number of economic sanctions against the country were lifted during former president U Thein Seins term. U Han Tun said Myanmars fisheries export industry to the US has not yet been developed, unlike in neighbouring Vietnam, China, Bangladesh and India which all export siluriformes and their products to America. Myanmars fishery products are mainly exported to the United Kingdom, European Union, the Middle East and Canada. When the 18-month transition period ends in September 2017, if Myanmar wants to continue exporting catfish to the US, it must submit adequate documentation showing that its own inspection system is up to an adequate standard. Chan Mya Htwe, translation by Zar Zar Soe Three developers will build 15,000 low-cost housing units on a large plot of government land in Yangons Dagon Seikkan township, as the new administration turns its attention to meeting a growing housing shortage in the commercial capital. Capital Development, a subsidiary of Capital Diamond Star Group, will lead construction of the project on 183 acres of government land, said managing director U Tin Maung Win. We will build the project with two other developers Sae Paing Development and Bagan Business Group, he said. Yangon Region Government called a closed tender in April 2015 to build affordable housing on the plot at the corner of Mya Nandar and Shwe Li roads, he said. Twelve companies applied, including well-known developers such as Shwe Taung, Htoo Construction, Crown Advanced Construction and FCGC, part of the IGE Group. Capital Development won the tender and will give the government K3 billion and 3000 units in return. As lead developer we will draw up the plans and negotiate with our two partners. We will also invite other interested developers to join us, said U Tin Maung Win. Capital Development is also building a mixed-use project on a 12.8-acre site in Yangon called Capital City, and has built jetties and flyovers. It took officials nine months to choose a tender winner, including intensive discussions over whether to divide the project between developers or award it to a single company, said U Tin Maung Win. Once the government has secured a water supply for the project, work will begin, and is expected to take six years, he said. We have tested the quality of the water, and found it to be bad. We cannot build housing if it will have bad-quality water, and if we pay to treat the water it will push up the price of apartments, he said. We want to supply our residents with quality water, which Yangon Region government has said it can provide by 2018. Vietnamese telco Viettel, aiming to be licensed as part of a joint venture that should become Myanmars fourth mobile operator, says its partnership with a local consortium and a government-owned company could invest US$1.5 billion and would rely at first on 3G technology. The Hanoi-based and military-controlled company has been selected as the most likely foreign partner for the joint venture, which will include Myanmar National Telecom Holding Public Limited, consisting of 11 local companies, and state-owned Star High Public Company Limited. This strong foundation ideally positions us to cater to the untapped telecom market potential in Myanmar, Viettels deputy general director Le Dang Dung said in a statement in Vietnamese quoted by Reuters. The companys networks will rely on 3G technology, with 4G services on the way pending the availability of spectrum. The move straight to 3G services differentiates Viettel from two of its competitors state-owned Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and Norways Telenor which offer both 2G and 3G coverage. Ooredoo of Qatar went 3G-only starting from its launch in August of 2014. Viettels strategy also reflects the huge data demand in the Myanmar market. The sectors mobile operators say a majority of their users are on smartphones, with Ooredoo reporting in March a five-factor uptick in data usage since its launch. Meanwhile Telenor estimated at the end of last year more than 60 percent of its base used smart devices, compared with 80-90pc on MPTs network. Competition already thick on the ground may only get more intense once the fourth operator makes its debut. In a market where Telenor and Ooredoo are winning market share, the new entrant [will be] expected to offer generous usage quotas and freebies voice, SMS, data and even content to win and retain the users mind and wallet share, Avinash Sachdeva, a Frost and Sullivan senior industry analyst for ICT, wrote last month. [It] missed the exponential growth period when the mobile market opened up for the new operators. They need to act smart and play catch-up, and its going to be quite daunting. The deal has yet to be sewn up, however. The telecoms regulator, the Post and Telecommunications Department (PTD), has not received an official application for the licence as joint venture talks are continuing. However Mr Sachdeva thinks chances are good the companies will link up. There is a high possibility of the successful JV being established through the final negotiations, as the entire process went through the two different stages of evaluations and all the associated entities would have done their business assessments after exploring all the pros and cons, he said. There's no escaping fried cashew nuts with chicken in this part of the world wherever you can grow cashews, you can eat them with chicken. While Phar Khant on Yaw Min Gyi Street is still the best cashew chicken in Yangon, a recent visit to the Siam Rice Thai Cookery School in northern Thailand showed me that theres more than one way to fry a cashew. During a half-day session, our chef/professor Aun showed us how to pound a curry paste, flash-fry drunken noodles and properly cut a chilli (hint dont touch your eyes). But the skill Ill be using most? His recipe for cashew chicken, known in Thai as kai pat med ma maung hem ma phan. The use of oyster sauce, paired with soy sauce, gave a subtle flavour that I never knew I needed. Pay special attention to the 1 tsp of sugar a little sweet goes a long way in such a savoury dish. Auns Chicken Cashew 50g sliced chicken breast 50g fried cashew nuts 1 sliced baby corn Half a large onion 1 tbsp garlic 1-2 red dried chillis 1-2 stalks spring onion 1 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tsp sugar 2 tbsp cooking oil 0.5 tbsp soy sauce 10g wood mushrooms 2 tbsp water 0.5 tsp black soy sauce Mince the garlic and dice the large onion. Slice the baby corn into chunks. Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat, until slight bubbles form. Add chicken, garlic and chilli. Stir until they are mostly cooked in the oils. Add in all the vegetables and cashews, as well as the water. You will get some sizzle. Add oyster sauce, soy sauce, black soy sauce and the sugar. Mix the entire mixture thoroughly. After about 10 seconds, add the spring onion and turn off the heat. Serve with white steamed rice. Note: Add more chillis if you want more heat Thais like to throw in at least 10, according to Aun. Former President U Thein Sein has strengthened his grip on the Union Solidarity and Development Party, expelling 17 senior members just days after |resuming duties as party chair. Former Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann is believed to have been among those kicked out of the party, but The Myanmar Times was unable to confirm this yesterday. U Zaw Myint Pe, a former party executive committee member and U Shwe Mann ally who was among those expelled, said he was upset at the unacceptable decision. U Thein Sein thinks he owns the party. He is monopolising the party and forming factions. This is not good for the country, he said, adding that he received a letter informing of the decision yesterday morning. U Zaw Myint Pe said those fired included all USDP members on the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Legal Affairs and Special Cases Investigation Commission, headed by Thura U Shwe Mann, and two cabinet members Thura U Aung Ko and U Thein Swe from the party. He said the decision was taken at a central executive committee meeting held on April 22, shortly after U Thein Sein had resumed leadership of the party. Senior USDP official U Tint Zaw was quoted as confirming in local media on April 23 that 17 members had been dismissed. However, he and other senior officials from U Thein Seins faction refused to comment yesterday. The purge is the latest development in the very public power struggle between the former president and U Shwe Mann, who served as acting leader of the USDP for most of U Thein Seins tenure. The Speaker led the party because the constitution bans the president, vice presidents and other members of cabinet from engaging in party activities during their term in office. However, in August 2015 U Shwe Mann and his allies were expelled from the party leadership after U Thein Sein dispatched police to party headquarters during a USDP summit. Tensions had risen due to U Shwe Manns refusal to allow U Thein Seins political allies, including recently retired military officers, to contest seats of their choosing in last years election under the USDP banner. U Saw Hla Tun, a party member also on Thura U Shwe Manns commission, said he had not yet received a letter of dismissal from the USDP. I cant say anything yet as the letter hasnt arrived. I dont know if I am in the list. It wouldnt be good to speculate if I am on it as the issue is sensitive, he said. But U Zaw Myint Pe yesterday promised a response to the purge. We will talk about what has happened. We wont act with force but we will act fairly, doing what we need to do, he said. He criticised the way U Thein Sein had used the police force to regain control of the party last August. That was not appropriate. Everyone knows it. It shouldnt have happened, he said. He suggested that U Shwe Mann would hold a press conference in the coming days to explain his response to the partys decision. Translation by Kyawt Darly Lin Myanmar's peace process appears to be on auto-pilot. As fighters on both sides of decades-long civil war wait for the new government to announce its policy initiatives, the machinery and personnel of official institutions that no longer exist are continuing to arrange negotiations with ethnic armed groups, although to what end is not clear. In the meantime the Tatmadaw is reported to be stepping up offensives in Rakhine State, while conflicts in northern Shan State have largely subsided, with locals benefiting from the lull to get on with the important tea harvest. Nine ethnic armed groups that did not sign the nationwide ceasefire deal with the former government held four days of talks in Chiang Mai last week. Included on the agenda were preparations for negotiations with Daw Aung San Suu Kyis government, although no date or process have been established. However it was reported that various former peace process luminaries including former government chief negotiator U Aung Min, his former Tatmadaw colleague U Khin Zaw Oo and U Hla Maung Shwe of the defunct Myanmar Peace Center have brokered talks to be held in early May with three ethnic armed groups that the former government shut out of the ceasefire negotiations. Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) spokesperson Mai Aik Kyaw told The Myanmar Times that Naing Han Thar, a senior official of the United Nationalities Federal Council, an alliance of groups outside the ceasefire, informed the TNLA of the planned talks with U Aung Mins recently established Peace Foundation. He also said the Tatmadaw had pulled back from recent advances in northern Shan State, while the TNLA had ordered its own fighters to back off in order to let the tea harvest go ahead this month. Government spokesperson U Zaw Htay told The Myanmar Times yesterday that the new government would reveal its plans for the peace process in the very near future. Western governments are waiting for the governments announcement to start allocating tens of millions of dollars lined up in aid. Funding over the past two years was concentrated on the ceasefire negotiations which failed to end entrenched conflicts. U Zaw Htay said Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had already stated that she intended to use all available peace process mechanisms and would consult with the armed groups left outside the ceasefire pact signed by a minority of ethnic organisations last October. U Zaw Htay said he did not know in what capacity U Khin Zaw Oo, a former lieutenant general, was acting in his contacts in Chiang Mai, although it was possible that he was representing the Tatmadaw. A Western analyst suggested that U Aung Min was pursuing contacts with the TNLA, the Arakan Army and the Kokang-based ethnic Chinese Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army in an attempt to establish the credentials of his new foundation, which was handed assets from the dissolved Myanmar Peace Center under a decree by former president U Thein Sein. The Arakan Army, a Buddhist armed group fighting for what it calls self-determination in Rakhine state, has stepped up its offensives in recent months, triggering a tough response from the Tatmadaw which has vowed to eliminate the group. U Maung Aung Kyaw Myint, committee member of the Rakhine Refugee Help Group, said yesterday that fighting had resulted in 400 displaced people in Rathedaung township and 300 in Buthidaung. MISSOULA The door still isnt open to the future Milltown State Park riverfront, but the key is in hand. The commissioners gave us the official go-ahead to pursue acquisition of that International Paper parcel, Milltown park manager Mike Kustudia said. Its not done yet, but we have their blessing to get it. That parcel holds the best road leading to the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers, where the state has planned for 10 years to put a park after Milltown Dam was removed. The dam came down in 2008, and the polluted former reservoir was declared clean in 2012, but the road access question lingered. International Paper owns the 16 acres between Tamarack Road and the parks western edge. The company had offered to donate the land to the state. But part of its property was an industrial dumpsite, and state officials were wary about accepting liability for what might be in it. The solution was to chop the property in two, with the state accepting 10 acres with the road and river frontage while International Paper kept six acres. On Thursday, the State Parks Commission members formally accepted the idea. Kustudia said while the legal details get wrangled in Helena, he will put final touches on bid packages for the park development. Those could be released later this spring or early summer. The master plan for Milltown State Park calls for picnic areas, an interpretative display of the old dam and Native American legacy, a walk-in boat ramp and parking lot. About $6 million in state and federal funds is available to build and maintain it. Most of the money came from a settlement between the state and federal governments and mining companies responsible for about 3 million tons of toxic sediment that subsided behind the old dam. Construction might start late this summer or fall, Kustudia said. He also oversees work on a walking trail passing under five bridges between the Black Bridge picnic area and the confluence, and just finished putting together 1.5 miles of trail from the damsite overlook to the Clark Fork River floodplain on the south side of the confluence. This year, river users can determine their own risk tolerance when floating the river junction. For the previous four years, the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks had temporarily closed the mouth of the Blackfoot River to floaters because high spring runoff flows made getting around two Interstate 90 bridge piers dangerous. Kustudia said after several years of public education about the hazard, the department decided to let people decide for themselves when to attempt the passage. Walking access to the Clark Fork River shoreline above the confluence is also unregulated this year. FWP had closed the upper riverbanks for several years to allow new vegetation plantings to get established in the re-engineered floodplain. Myanmar remains one of the most repressive media environments in the world, according to a new report. The 2016 World Press Freedom Index, prepared by international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, ranked Myanmar 143 out of 180 countries included in the assessment. The overall score for the country worsened last year, despite ongoing political changes. The ranking is based on several factors, including media pluralism, independence, legislative framework and transparency. The report claimed that this reflected the limits of the reforms and measures taken to improve media freedom and safety under the previous administration. It said that government entities seemed to have opted for closely monitored freedom instead of the drastic censorship that was in effect until recently. Censorship in Myanmar was officially lifted in August 2012 but Myanmar-language state media continue to censor themselves and avoid any criticism of the government or the armed forces, according to the report. The report also cited the tension between Muslims and Buddhists, religious conflict has displaced more tens of thousands since 2012, as a highly sensitive subject in Myanmar. Executive director of the Myanmar Journalism Institute U Thiha Saw said the media landscape had improved over recent years but that several laws still inhibited the freedom of journalists. U Thiha Saw said some journalists are still very scared about elements of the countrys criminal code and other laws, like the State Secrets Act and the Electronic Transactions Law, which were used in the past to imprison journalists. Such laws also help create an environment of self-censorship among journalists, he said. But U Thiha Saw said that that last weeks release of five media workers from the weekly Unity journal, imprisoned for writing a story about an alleged chemical weapons factory in central Myanmar, showed that changes were coming. We still have a long way to go ... but there are positive signs, he said. Reporters Without Borders secretary general Christophe Deloire stressed that good journalism around the world must be defended against media content that is made to order or sponsored by vested interests. Guaranteeing the publics right to independent and reliable news and information is essential if human kinds problems, both local and global, are to be solved, Mr Deloire said. The 2016 edition of the index found that media freedom had worsened significantly or stagnated across most of the Asia-Pacific region. The decline affected eastern Asias democracies, previously regarded as regional models, the report said. China, placed 176, and North Korea, on place 179, were the lowest-ranked countries in the region for media freedom. To read the full report, click here. Myanmar joined 174 other countries in signing the landmark Paris climate change accord at United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 22. The ceremony was billed as the largest ever one-day signing of an international agreement. The Paris deal aims to limit global warming well below two Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) through cuts to carbon emissions. The agreement will come into effect after 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions have ratified the document. Minister for Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation U Ohn Win was unequivocal in his support, insisting climate change is a front-and-centre issue for the new government. Climate change is the most threatening global challenge to sustainable development, he said in a statement. Myanmar is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the adverse effects of climate change such as cyclones, severe droughts and floods. He said the Myanmar will face acute loss of life and properties if climate change continues unabated. This is supported by several studies. According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2015, published by German Watch, Myanmar is the second-most-affected country by climate events in the world. Like representatives from several other developing countries, U Ohn Win said richer nations should assist poorer ones make the transition to a low-carbon economy. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders present that the event was historic. The era of consumption without consequences is over today you are signing a new covenant with the future, he said. The Paris Agreement aims to begin in 2020. China and the US, two of the worlds biggest polluters, have signaled they will ratify this year. The new governments foreign policy is to be unveiled today when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi briefs scores of ambassadors and senior diplomats on Myanmars future direction. Among the many assembled dignitaries in Nay Pyi Taw will be Scot Marciel, the newly appointed US ambassador, who will be as eager as any to discern whether Myanmars first civilian-led government in more than 50 years will make a significant change of course from that set by U Thein Sein and his military backers. According to a government official, invitations have been sent to 93 foreign missions and international agencies. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has also created the role for herself as state counsellor, will doubtless put her own stamp on foreign policy, unlike her predecessor as foreign minister, U Wunna Maung Lwin, a former colonel and ambassador who was largely a cipher for the military establishment. One diplomat said he saw todays gathering as an inaugural reaching-out by the new government to the international community as a whole, rather than the start of a process of regular briefings. We dont have much of an idea of what is coming, the diplomat added. Power outages struck across the country over the weekend after a spate of unusual weather in Mandalay Region damaged a transmission line. The temporary outage, while not unusual for this time of year, stirred a fervour on Facebook as social media users anxious for a more transparent government response let the National League for Democracy know that expectations are not being met. According to the Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation, the blackouts were due to problems along the main Belin-Shwesayan transmission line. In an announcement posted to Facebook yesterday clarifying an initial post on April 22, YESC blamed the massive hailstones hitting Mandalay for the damage. But social media users commenting on the official explanation and testy after the outages hit during a heat wave accused the government of falling short of its obligations to inform the public. The Ministry of Electricity and Energy should hold an urgent press briefing to explain the power cuts. People will understand if it is explained. Otherwise, we are left in the dark when we are told only that there has been a system breakdown, said Ko Thein Htike Soe in his comment. Ko Tin Maung Win, another commenter, said the frequency of the recent outages, hitting some places five times a day, had been particularly trying. People become less and less patient when the weather is too hot, he said. The outage, and the days of official silence, clearly touched a nerve. Within hours, YESCs post was shared more than 1000 times, garnering over 500 comments. Myanmar remains one of the least-powered countries in Southeast Asia. Just over 30 percent of the population has access to electricity, leaving 6.8 million households across the country in need of electricity, according to official figures from the Ministry of Electric Power, which was merged with the Ministry of Energy last month. The governments pledge to provide universal access by 2030 requires vast infrastructure investment combined with smart policymaking. Meanwhile, the countrys energy requirements are growing fast. Current electricity consumption is 2700MW, much lower than the 27,000MW used in neighbouring Thailand. Myanmars Energy Master Plan targets installed capacity of 4531MW by 2020, 8121MW by 2025 and 14,524MW by 2030, which will require an investment between US$30 billion and $40 billion over the next 15 to 20 years. Government figures suggest Myanmar has several untapped power sources including 108,000MW of hydroelectric power, along with an estimated 711 million metric tonnes of coal reserves, 365.1 terawatt hours (TWh) per year of wind power and 51,973TWh per year of solar power. It also has 459 million barrels per day of proven oil reserves and 11.8 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves. Yet in the absence of comprehensive laws, policies, and environmental and social protection standards, many potential power projects have become controversial. Even the price of electricity - K35 per KWh for household use and K75 per KWh for industry users - is contentious. This is lower than the average electricity production cost of K93.67 per KWh according to the MOEP, and is costing the government billions of kyat a year in subsidies. Something has to give in order for the government to achieve its target of 100pc electrification by 2030. Yet targets are being missed, said U Htain Lwin, permanent secretary at the MOEP. We didnt meet the target in the last five years because we failed to implement large-scale hydropower projects due to public opposition. The same is true of coal-fired plants as well, he said. It will be very difficult to meet the target if we cannot continue these large-scale projects in the next five years. Our electricity generation may stop but demand will not. U Pe Zin Tun, a permanent secretary for the former Ministry of Energy, has been appointed minister of the newly merged ministries of electric power and energy. The portfolio is considered especially sensitive, as it will have to tackle large-scale and currently suspended Chinese-backed projects. The appointment of U Pe Zin Tun, a former military officer and employee at state-run Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, received lukewarm responses, which have only become enflamed by the recent blackouts. Hello Minister for Electricity and Enrgy, we want to know why electricity is cut out so often everywhere. We want an explaination about that, said Facebook user Than Naing U. I am writing this post while the power is out. "I'm not the right person to speak about it. Thats invariably the answer youll get from a National League for Democracy lawmaker if you ask them about party policy. Youll then be advised to direct your question to senior party officials. Theres a good reason for this. Since they were selected as party candidates back in July and August, all MPs from the NLD, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, have been banned from speaking to the media. That media ban was initially expected to last until they had been approved as candidates by the Union Election Commission. However, it was extended through to the election, with journalists instead told to direct their questions to half a dozen spokespeople. But then when they were sworn in as parliamentarians, NLD representatives received a warning not to share party information without permission from the NLD leadership. These restrictions are known among the partys MPs as than mani, or the iron rules. To get around the rule, some MPs give answers that they say reflect their personal views, and not that of the partys policy. They are allowed to give interviews if they, rather than the party, are the focus for example, in the case of a profile article. But most are understandably hesitant to discuss any issue with the media, for fear of saying something that offends the party leadership. That is not where the iron rules end. MPs were recently told that they needed to seek permission from party headquarters before attending events organised by civil society groups. In late March, an NLD parliamentarian was forced to cancel plans to attend a farmers forum in Monywa, Sagaing Region, as a result of the edict. All party MPs are required to live at the Nay Pyi Taw City Development Committee guesthouse when parliament is in session, even if they already have a house in Nay Pyi Taw. They must also attend all training programs, which occasionally require them to sit exams. Restrictions have also been imposed on their parliamentary activities. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has told all MPs to submit questions and proposals to an eight-member NLD vetting committee before formally submitting them to parliament. The party doesnt want our proposals to cause any confrontation with the military. Thats why in some cases we have to discuss with the partys committee whether we are allowed [to submit them], said U Jone Seng Mai, a lower house MP from Kachin State. There may be some justification for this oversight. In late February, a proposal from Daw Khin San Hlaing a member of the party vetting committee to increase scrutiny over business deals approved by the outgoing government drew a fierce response from U Thein Seins administration. During the debate, military MPs also stood up in unison to protest comments by an NLD representative about the Letpadaung copper mine, in which a military-owned company, Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, is a major investor. But the rules are more restrictive than those employed by the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which controlled the parliament from 2011 to 2016. During this period, USDP parliamentarians could submit constituency-related questions directly to parliament, with only those concerning government policy vetted in advance. A number of NLD representatives told The Myanmar Times that the rules have left them in a dilemma when constituents demand action on particular issues. One example is the drug eradication campaign led by Kachin vigilante group Pat Ja San. In February, the government blocked Pat Ja San members from travelling to remote areas of Waingmaw township to clear poppy fields. The group appealed for NLD support, and local representative U Lagan Zal Jone submitted an urgent proposal to parliament. However, the vetting process meant that it took several days for the proposal to appear in the chamber. The reason for the delay is that the party took time to check whether the proposal should be sent to parliament, as the group is not an official organisation like other civil society organisations that have been set up with permission from the government, said U Jone Seng Mai. But we must follow partys rules and regulations because we are party members, he added. When the crunch comes, MPs are for now at least observing party policy rather than responding to the demands of their constituents. In one case, residents in Chin State complained over the decision to appoint Thura U Aung Ko a former member of the military regime and senior USDP official as minister for religion and culture. The complaint was submitted through lower house MP U San Khin, who represents Kanpetlet township Thura U Aung Kos old constituency. I sent a letter and explained to the [NLD] central executive committee about the complaint, but they didnt take any action, said U San Khin. In recent days Thura U Aung Ko has come in for additional criticism due to comments he made to the media in which he appeared to suggest Muslims and Hindus are associate rather than full citizens. However, the party leadership has not made any move to censure him, at least publicly. While MPs are given little room to move at present, they said they do not want to criticise the party or policies put in place by its leaders. They expressed optimism that the rules would be relaxed now U Htin Kyaws government has received power from U Thein Seins administration, although as of this week there was no sign that had occurred. The resumption of parliament on May 2 is likely to provide a clearer indication. I hope the situation is temporary, U San Khin said. The party will look out for the needs of the people because the people elected the partys representatives. Senior party officials say they will soon roll back the restrictions. Daw Khin San Hlaing insisted the party would not adopt a centralised system permanently, and MPs would be able to speak openly to media after the transfer of power. Actually we dont want to make restrictions but most MPs have no parliamentary experience so we formed a committee to check their questions and proposals, and to give suggestions to ensure they are perfect, she said. Some have criticised us for this, she said. But these are not the so-called iron rules. April 6, 2016: a neologism enters the already-overcrowded field of political vocabulary as a military member of parliament, Brigadier General Maung Maung, accuses the majority National League for Democracy of democratic bullying. If we use only the dictionary definition of bullying then perhaps the generals outburst might make sense. The online version of the Oxford Dictionary states that bullying is to use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants. Leaving aside the question of whether it is logically plausible, or even physically possible, for an unarmed organisation to intimidate an organisation armed with automatic weapons, artillery, tanks, combat aircraft and frigates, an argument could be made that the NLD used its superior parliamentary strength to force the military to accept something contrary to its wishes thus giving the barest fig leaf of logic to cover the militarys statement. Should we, then, go along with this, and agree that the NLDs actions amount to bullying the military? I think not. And I believe the vast majority of Myanmar people, and indeed anyone unbiased and blessed with even a modicum of common sense, would quite emphatically disagree as well. Any democratic parliament is, by definition, the embodiment of citizen sovereignty. And for better or worse, the majority in parliament decides what the will of the people is, or isnt. While it is possible for a democratic majority to abuse its mandate and ride roughshod over the minority, the only possible democratic avenue for redress lies in the very power which gave the mandate in the first place the people themselves. Remove the people from this equation, and you have a dictatorship no matter how its packaged or presented. If the representatives of the people who have gained a mandate through free and fair elections misbehave, bully, or become incompetent and venal, then it is not the task of anyone other than the people themselves to reprimand or even remove those representatives. Should anyone argue but this or that is an exceptional case, needing exceptional measures I would like to point out the infamous statement of the Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt: Sovereign is he who defines the state of exception. This cynical and ruthless statement expresses the stark political truth: In a true democracy there can be no exceptions to popular sovereignty, and anyone who states that this or that situation is an exception cedes sovereignty to the power which defines what that exception is. If we accept that the elected majority has a democratic right to override an elected minority, then we should also logically conclude that the elected majority has even more right to override an unelected minority! Viewed in this light, the generals statement loses its fig leaf of logic and liberalism, and now stands revealed for what it really is the cry of a bully who has long been used to getting his own way, and now is enraged that those formerly weaker than him refuse to be intimidated any more. A bully the NLD may or may not be. But democratically elected it most certainly is, and if I have to choose between democratic and non-democratic bullying, Ill take the former every time. One of the things I love about Thingyan is that we can all get involved. It doesnt matter who you are rich or poor, old or young, local or foreign everyone is united as one soggy mess. Of course, the holiday does not last for long. The end of Thingyan signals that Myanmar is, once again, getting busy. For farmers, that means fields must be prepared and crops planted. Students will steel themselves for more classes and exams. Businesses need to get their stock in order, hopeful of a bumper year to come. For everyone, there is more work to do. But the people with the heaviest workload this year are Myanmars politicians. Elected to legislatures the length and breadth of the country, they now need to deliver on their promises of more inclusive and efficient government. Democracy, so long a rallying cry for the disenchanted, needs to become a system of carefully allocated resources and socially attuned intervention. The flaws of democratic governance are evident enough. One of the risks, especially after so much national grief, is that big personalities crowd out the ordinary, grinding business of political and economic reform. Too much attention to personalities can lead to misjudgements about what really counts. It is easy to get caught up in the endless jockeying for position. The advantage, for those involved, is that it is a never-ending story. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi still appears to revel in this highly personalised political drama. Of course, it offers particular advantages for Myanmars most popular leader and most famous face. Her image is the National League for Democracys greatest asset and everyone else in the party necessarily falls under her shadow. Over the past few months, millions of words were spilled speculating on the people who would take key positions in the new government. Such discussions about NLD appointments to top jobs continually return to her personal preferences. The selection of U Htin Kyaw as president reinforces this pattern. Yes, knowing about the personalities is important, but that should not distract from what is really at stake: institutions, systems, ideas, and cultures. If Myanmar is going to succeed in the next phase of its democratic transition, then far more emphasis will need to be put on the development of those more abstract concerns. For its part, the NLD is yet to establish an institutionalised, ideas-driven culture that will support its success in government. Myanmars most successful political institution, the military, appears to understand what is required. The names of the top generals change and their subordinates cycle through different positions, but the Tatmadaw has managed to regenerate time and time again. The militarys long-term dominance does not happen by accident, and it is a mistake to assume that a single person is responsible for the durability of military power. Perhaps the starkest example of this military mindset is the 2008 constitution. We should not forget that the constitutions supreme purpose is to mitigate threats to the armys institutional role. Pro-democracy agitation was one of those threats. In less than a decade it has been almost entirely removed from the equation. The military, as the dominant political institution, is what remains. So, how might the NLD want to respond this year? First, it needs to quickly adjust to todays conditions. It is not a coincidence that Myanmars democrats took power at precisely this moment in history. As the rest of the world embraced the opportunities of globalised, digitised futures, Myanmar was left in the slow lane. Six years ago, on the eve of the transformation, this was apparent to everyone, including to those who were running the military dictatorship. Compared to the rest of Southeast Asia, Myanmar had fallen well off the global pace. Its parlous condition was not sustainable, partly because the difference in standards of living between Myanmar and its neighbours ensured a constant flow of outward migration. But now, the pace of change inside Myanmar is unrelenting. Look around. It is pulse-racing, bruising, unsettling and unfinished. On almost every street in the country, you find signs that the old ways are being crushed and dismantled. What is rising in their stead will take time to build and then to settle. The new normal is fast-paced change with unpredictable consequences. For a society that became too accustomed to waiting and watching as the rest of the world took giant leaps, there is a palpable sense that this year Myanmars time has come. With new technologies, the ordinary limits to rapid economic, social and cultural change may need to be revised. But for this to work in the long-term, the NLDs politics will need to be de-personalised and new systems put in place that will not require small groups of heroes to make things happen. 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. [April 25, 2016] Two More Law Enforcement Agencies Choose Utility's Rocket IoT to Equip Police Vehicles With Smart In-Car Recording Technology ATLANTA, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Utility, Inc. announced today that the Baldwin County Sheriff's Department in Alabama and the Cameron Parish Sheriff's Department in Louisiana have officially chosen to equip their patrol cars with Utility's Rocket IoT smart, in-vehicle video recording technology. In addition to creating a 1,500 foot Wi-Fi hotspot around the vehicle, Rocket IoT is the first and only product available that integrates video recording features with advanced communication capabilities in one cost-effective system. The Baldwin County Sheriff's Office will equip its entire fleet of 78 patrol cars with Rocket IoT; the Cameron Parish Sheriff's Office will be deploying 35 Rocket IoT systems. "Rocket IoT raises the standard for video collection and the way in which police departments throughout the country access evidence by integrating in-car video, reliable connectivity and GPS access," said Robert McKeeman, CEO of Utility. "In the 21st century, there is no reason for police departments to be using outdated hardware that serves just one purpose. The Baldwin County Sheriff's Office and the Cameron Parish Sheriff's Office deploying our devices is a testament to our team's dedication to providing law enforcement agencies state-of-the-art technology that helps improve operational efficiency and productivity. We look forward to working closely with them as they equip their vehicles with our Rocket IoT technology." Rocket IoT utilizes its unique communication capabilities to activate specific recording triggers that automatically initiate video recording. These triggers are set by the Department's individual recording policiesincluding light bar sensors in concert with door opening, rapid motion, GeoFence entry, etc. and can be updated at any time via BodyWorn's video management system, AVaiL Web. Central Dispatch can create GeoFences and action zones using the system's GPS and automatically initiate video recording on every Rocket IoT camera within the selected area. By deploying Rocket IoT, the Baldwin County heriff's Office and the Cameron Parish Sheriff's Office have access to BodyWorn's industry-leading automated video redaction software, Smart Redaction. This standard feature of the AVaiL Web video management system is provided at no additional cost. Smart Redaction automatically identifies and redacts faces, body parts and other identifiable objects in a video based on the department's privacy policies to quickly and cost-effectively make video available to the public, ready to be displayed in court trials, and to fulfill any Freedom of Information requests. The Rocket IoT seamlessly integrates with Utility's BodyWorn body camera devices, unifying the full Evidence Ecosystem. Police departments can record, view and manage video from multiple in-vehicle and body camera sources on one platform. Both Rocket IoT and BodyWorn automatically upload video to a secure Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)-compliant Amazon-based storage cloud. "This unified system eliminates the complexities and costs that arise from using multiple platforms to record and manage video from the same incident," said McKeeman. "These two forward thinking departments have taken an important step to having one integrated video management system, with a simple migration path to deploy body cameras at a much lower price point. Baldwin County and Cameron Parish will have complete situational awareness of all video related to an incident." BodyWorn and Rocket IoT are key parts of Utility's suite of products that enhance a law enforcement agency's ability to manage the Evidence Ecosystem by automating processes. Utility's design goal is to never ask police officers to manually do what the technology can do for them automatically. Police officers should not be distracted by technology, and should focus on their personal safety while serving the public. The Rocket IoT also provides a smart, on-board vehicle diagnostics interface to provide vehicle performance, maintenance, and trouble code status. The Zigbee wireless interface provides the capability to capture and report an inventory of assets in and around the vehicle. For more information about Generation 2 smart police recording technology, visit http://www.bodyworn.com. About BodyWorn BodyWorn uses smart technology, incorporating real-time communications for the best situational awareness possible during the most critical times. Unlike other body cameras, BodyWorn has automatic recording triggers based on policies, officer down reporting and alerting, live video streaming, and secure automatic wireless offload to cloud storage. BodyWorn video, audio and metadata can be accessed through its cloud-based digital evidence management solution, AVaiL Web. BodyWorn's features continuously evolve to meet the demands of the industry and match the specific policies set by each individual law enforcement agency including the automated redaction application, Smart Redaction, for releasing video to the public. BodyWorn is one part of the smart technology solution product suite offered by Utility that focuses on providing mission critical mobile intelligence. All of Utility's recording solutions, including Rocket IoT in-car video system, leverage Amazon Web Services cloud storage. About Utility Utility is a venture-capital funded company headquartered in Decatur, Georgia (Metro Atlanta) founded in 2001. The company provides Mission Critical Communications and Real-Time Situational Awareness, through their Rocket IoT vehicle video routers, and BodyWorn video systems for Police, Fire, EMS, Electric and Gas Utility, and Public Transit customers across the United States. Utility offers a unified operating platform for safely locating, tracking and supporting all aspects of mobile field operations. Also, its cloud-based digital evidence-management solution, AVaiL Web, delivers real-time access to virtually any mobile asset, and provides a cost-effective, enterprise-wide view of the location and status of remote field operations. Utility owns US patents 6,831,556; 7,768,548; 8,781,475; 9,246,898; and 9,282,495 and has numerous patents pending with the US Patent Office, the Canadian Patent Office, and the European Union Patent Office. For more information, visit http://www.utility.com and http://www.bodyworn.com. Contact: Jake Mendlinger Office: 516-829-8374 / Cell: 516-639-3373 Email: [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359423 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/two-more-law-enforcement-agencies-choose-utilitys-rocket-iot-to-equip-police-vehicles-with-smart-in-car-recording-technology-300256754.html SOURCE Utility, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] SHERIDAN, Wyo. Officials from the Wyoming Attorney General's Office are holding a conference call Monday with officials in Montana to discuss a solution to an ongoing conflict over water rights along the Tongue River. The talks were scheduled after the U.S. Supreme Court approved a recommendation by a special master finding Wyoming liable for taking Montana water in 2004 and 2006. The amount of water involved is relatively small, but Montana wants guidelines that Wyoming must follow in the future when Montana calls for water to be released under provisions of the Yellowstone River Compact. Montana said there were violations in other years, but the court found Wyoming was only at fault in two drought years. Now the two sides must agree what issues are at stake, how those issues will be resolved and how long it will take. Barton Thompson, the special master appointed to the case, said the agreement will probably have limits and Montana won't get all it wants. "They're asking for those things," Brown said at a presentation for state officials Thursday. "I don't think they're going to get them." Montana has already asked Wyoming to respond to its requests for water within five days and Wyoming has complied. Brown said the agreement for response time is only a verbal agreement. Brown also expects Montana to ask for money for damages from crop losses. So far, Wyoming has only agreed to pay about $36,000 for the water it took for those two years. If the two sides cannot reach an agreement and the case goes to trial, the dispute could continue into next year. Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. 25.04.2016 LISTEN The health care team is a group of health care providers who work together for the benefit of the patient and is composed of Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, cleaners etc. The Centre of the team is the patient and his family. Among all these players, each individuals role is critical towards achieving the goals of healthcare service. The team leader of the healthcare team is the Medical Doctor or Physician in other terms. However, this is a team that is marred with a lot of frictions emanating from ill distribution of privileges as the bourgeoisie of the team at times turns a blind eye to challenges faced by team members and goes on to enhance it s influence within the oligarchy of team structure forgetting the plight of the group it is leading. In as much as these team members may not be equal there is need for policy modification to allow individuals at the bottom of the class to rise up the hierarchy and provide leadership in many positions that may deem fit for their qualification. It has been noted that without a symbiotic relationship within our system there emanates a lot of conditions that can make us sick, hence, a functionalist approach is needed to harmonise the performance of the healthcare team. Recently, discussion about health care has reached a fever pitch, between changes in policy, adjustments to scope of practice and a multitude of other medical issues. As health care providers, it is our duty to provide the highest level of medical care to all patients to safeguard their health. We are the catalysts for change and we need to recognize practices and beliefs that are potentially harmful to those weve vowed to protect. Some argue nurses and physicians are equally qualified and should be allowed to practice within the same capacity. That is unequivocally false. Rather than draw battle lines between the two disciplines, we should harness the differences and find a way to work cooperatively in the best interest of patients. The physician-led care team approach to medicine is the most logical and safe choice. However, this does not mean neglecting the achievements of nurses and other health care team members from rising within the hierarchy. We say this because most Nurses are either converting to become Medical Doctors in order to get the piece of cake at the tip of leadership hierarchy at the expense of their immeasurable contribution to the healthcare team. In addition, Nurses are also converting or majoring to human resource management, accounts, economics e.t.c. Other healthcare care professionals like pharmacist, clinical officers, lab technicians, and physiotherapist have also joined the trend in order to attain the highest privileged benefits of being a Medical Doctor as way of running away from the tail of least motivated members of the health care team. Elmassian,K. 2016 observes that arguments about the appropriateness and benefits of the physician-led care model occur daily in the specialty of anesthesiology. Nurse anesthetists would like to practice anesthesia care without the guidance and supervision of a physician anesthesiologist, citing comparable education and training to that of medical or osteopathic doctors. Nevertheless, there is no substitute for the rigorous and thorough education of medical school. After four years of undergraduate training, physician anesthesiologists complete four years of medical school and four years of post-doctoral internship and residency. Many nurses only have two to three years of post-graduate training. Physician anesthesiologists have 10,000 to 14,000 hours of clinical training, compared to the 1,000 to 2,500 hours completed by nurse anesthetists. (Elmassian,K. 2016) The education and training of nurse anesthetists and physician anesthesiologists are not comparable.. Physician anesthesiologists evaluate and supervise the medical care of patients before, during and after surgery. While nurses provide routine support, physicians advanced training can make the difference between life and death when critical medical decisions need to be made and seconds count to ensure optimal patient outcomes. The fact remains: There are substantive differences between physician and non-physician members of an Anesthesia Care Team. These differences have a direct impact on the safety of the patient. Weve heard countless stories from our physician anesthesiologist colleagues illustrating the moments where advanced training made a critical difference. Many diagnose underlying and seemingly unrelated health conditions during pre-surgical screenings that, left undetected, would have proved fatal to the patient during their scheduled procedure. Likewise, routine procedures can become decidedly complex, and emergency intervention beyond the scope of non-physician experience and training is imperative to save the life of the patient. Nonetheless, non-physician health care professionals play an important role on the care team. When their skills are combined with appropriate physician supervision, patients can receive the safest, highest-quality care available. After all, we cant forget why weve dedicated our lives to health care: to keep our patients as safe as possible. Providing care below the gold standard is irresponsible and, frankly, unacceptable. If you are to allow us to explain further, health care is being overrun. Government induced regulation and documentation are creating mental gridlock. The dictates of our forms and procedures are tying up those with the physical and intellectual know how to care for patients. For instance, Why cant you get an appointment with your doctor? Why are diagnoses being missed? Why is the quality of health care declining rapidly? Stop querying big data and start looking at the hunched backs and sore shoulders of the people who are inputting that data. We are turning our physicians, nurses and healthcare team members into scribes, field workers, and secretaries. Those who create the most value,who took the most time and money to train, are being overloaded with menial and level inappropriate tasks. This is because it has now become common after attainment of specialised training some healthcare members may be subjected to practice at a lower level without any promotion because positions are frozen or do not exist at all. As in the case of Nurses, they are too afraid to speak up in their organizations and be vocal. They are busy asking themselves questions like; is it really worth staying in a job that beats us up, burns us out, and ruins our health? As healthcare team members at the tail of motivation cower in the corner all the time, we might as well dig ourselves a shallow grave and tip over in it right now, next to Florence or founder of our profession. Nurses do remember that apathy and fear are as good as death, and in the case of health care, might just be the equivalent thereof. Consequently, when Nurses speak about better pay it does not mean they are claiming to be better than everyone but they represent a fraction of women designed jobs that receives meagre monetary motivation. Physicians parting away with better pay also represent the masochism that male dominated jobs have continued to receive highly remunerated motivation. To sum up, the health care team is not just losing out its members through economic migration but there is profession migration too. The union members and councils needs to step up their efforts of uplifting their professionals unlike concentrating on collecting had earned subscription they collect from them. There is need to regulate standards in all circles that are misplacing the level of contribution for our professionals in all angles or else other advancing professionals will sniff at our lagging. Physicians need also to attract respect to their tag unlike advancing fear tremors in the people they are designed to lead. Viva health care team members and remember the patient is the reason we exist. By Jones H Munangandu Motivational Speaker and Health Practictioner Lecturer Lusaka Institute of Applied Sciences (LIAS) Skype; jones.muna Mobile; +260966565670- whatsapp; 0979362526 Nairobi (AFP) - Burundi's environment minister was shot dead in the capital Bujumbura early Sunday, police said, the first assassination of its kind since the country was plunged into political turmoil in 2015. Emmanuel Niyonkuru, 54, the country's water, environment and planning minister, was killed shortly after midnight, according to a tweet sent by police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye. The murder, the first of a serving government minister since Burundi sank into turmoil over President Pierre Nkurunziza's controversial bid for a third term in 2015, comes after months of relative calm. "Minister of water and environment killed by a criminal with a gun on his way home to Rohero, around 00:45," Nkurikiye wrote four hours after the incident. He added that a woman had been arrested following the "assassination". Also on Twitter, Nkurunziza offered his condolences "to the family and all Burundians" vowing the crime would be punished. At least 500 people have been killed and 300,000 have fled the country since unrest began in April 2015. Former President Jerry John Rawlings 25.04.2016 LISTEN I have said this before and hereby reiterate the same, that during the twenty protracted years that he imperiously lorded it over Ghanaians, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings greatest achievement was to whip up Anlo-Ewe tribal sentiments against the countrys ethnic Akan majority populace. One would have thought that all the socioeconomic problems confronting people in the Volta Region, particularly Anlo-Ewes in the southern part of the region, had been caused by Akans, especially Asantes. The legendary success of women traders in the Asante regional capital would preoccupy the envy-driven Rawlings-led junta of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). I was a Kumasi-resident student then attending St. Peters Secondary School (aka PERSCO) at Okwawu-Nkwatia, a legendary old Akyem settlement, I learned quite recently. That PERSCO at the time was easily the best high school in Ghana, may well have had a quite remarkable lot to do with this critical ancient Akyem presence. Of course, I had no way of knowing this at the time; this very wholesome knowledge would come to yours truly much, much later. And then not very long ago, yours truly also learned that the principal Okwawu commercial city of Nkawkaw, and perhaps its most significant city as well, was actually half-Akyem. He had always been of the erroneous impression that the northeastern boundary of Okyeman, properly speaking Akyem-Abuakwa, ended somewhere around Enyiresi (Little England) and Jejeti (Gyegyeti). That it was a bona fide Okwawu denizen, from Okwawu-Bomeng, who apprized me of this morally exhilarating fact, made this newly-acquired sliver of knowledge all the more therapeutic, authentic and ineffably refreshing. Of course, the Mawuli boys had also established a quite remarkable presence at PERSCO, but it was undoubtedly the Akyem boys who were often credited with genius aptitude in the mathematical sciences. For the most part, and my part as well, I should say with pride-laced modesty, that there was absolutely no Akyem disappointment in the liberal arts, especially in such subjects English, Literature, History and Geography. And then, alas, June 4, 1979 struck and Chairman Rawlings went on the air and, and in his faux-Scottish accent, told us what we had known for quite some time then, that there was too much corruption among the ranks of the countrys outgoing military leadership which he and his AFRC Abongo Boys intended to clean up in no time. Even in those days of our early and late teens, most of us PERSCOVITES or PERSCOBAS, did not need to be apprized of the rank socioeconomic and cultural rot. Indeed, shortly prior to his 1978 removal from power in a palace coup, led by his comically mustachioed pop-eyed arch-lieutenant, Gen. F. W. K. Akuffo, Gen. I. K. Acheampong had hosted a National Week of Prayer and Repentance. The Atwima-Trabuom native clearly knew what was wrong with the nation; he simply did not know how to put the brakes on it. Mr. Akwasi Acheampong would horribly pay for his part of this rank postcolonial rot. He would pay the ultimate price. He would pay with his life. Acheampong would be callously torn from his placid and increasingly obscure existence and be savagely executed by firing squad like a common criminal. I would continue to experience nightmares over this barbaric episode until after the day that I paid a visit to Opanyin Kutu at Atwima-Trabuom and later to Mrs. Faustina Acheampong at Kumasis South-Suntreso Estates, in the company of my cousin Chenard Kwame Sintim-Aboagye. For twenty years, Chairman Rawlings smugly presided over the globally infamous sea erosion of his own maternal hometown of Keta-Sogakope, the best and most famous poem about which had been written and published by an Akan man of Fante descent by the name of Mr. (Henry Osborne) Kwesi Brew, and not by the rambunctious Ewe-born agitprop point man of the Trokosi Revolution, Professor Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor, as some grizzled Ghanaian journalist with rabid animus for my late father recently had the temerity to write on Wikipedia. I had committed the capital crime of having scandalously claimed the critic, a quite renowned columnist and sometime editor of one of Ghanas state-owned dailies, as a second-cousin to the oldman. At any rate, what is significant to note here is the need for the Akufo-Addo Presidential Campaign Team to systematically and meticulously document all the development projects undertaken in the Volta Region during the 8 golden years that the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) held the fort, as it were, and then neatly draw the balance sheet against 20 years of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings. And since it was President John Dramani Mahama (aka The Northern Hope) who most recently raised Cain about Volta underdevelopment, neatly mark out 8 years of Mills-Mahama stewardship and ask the Anlo-Ewes of Trokosiland actually I had wanted to writer Togbui Sri IIs land, which would have unnecessarily detracted from the rhythm of this write-up whether it had really been worth their votes. And on the latter note, it may be worth reminding the Ganja Boy of his imperative need to fully appreciate the fact that Anlo-Ewes can eloquently speak for themselves, plead their own sacred nationalist cause (See Keta Sea Defense: Rawlings Propaganda, Kufuors Amnesia Baako MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/10/16). *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs Counsellor Lutterodt 25.04.2016 LISTEN Dear Counsellor Lutterodt, I write to inform you of receipt of your highly publicised and well circulated excerpts, both in writing and videos. I must say you should, just like the rest of us in this generation, be very thankful to social media for the extent to which one's message can travel; even farther than a journey to the moon. Ordinarily, I would not have written you this letter.This is because of the possible fear of people seeing my sense of objectivity tainted because of the social milieu from which I am writing this letter.However, just when this thought came to mind then, it also occurred to me I also have a responsibility as once a student of sociology to add to the pool of contributions directed at the betterment of our society. For this reason, I write. Mr Lutterodt, i see the title counsellor prefixing your name. To some, this title is self- acclaimed. Whatever it is, I do not want to delve into whether it is true or otherwise.I would not want to strip you of your title so I call you counsellor Lutterodt.As a counsellor, your title commands authority which has a lot of influence in our society including its people. Counsellor Lutterodt, many are the things said by you that have come to me, but for the avoidance of doubt, in this my letter I have chosen to comment on this, "When a National Service Person guy proposes to marry a woman, that lady should report him to the nearest Police Station". Let me be quick to inform you that I am a National Service Person serving my nation diligently like the rest of my colleague National Service Personnel. Counsellor Lutterodt, to the above pronouncement attributed to you, I would like to put a rhetorical question to you. 'Why must the lady report to the Police?'.The last time I checked our marital laws, there is nowhere it is illegal for a National Service Person to propose to a lady which warrants his arrest. So Mr Counsellor, why this counsel to our ladies? I have observed your consistent admonition to men to be hardworking and stop the lazy attitudes or tendencies that have the potency to render them irresponsible fathers in the home. That, I unreservedly agree with you. That nevertheless, I regret at the same time, your consistent counselling of our ladies to look for 'Already-Made-Man' to marry at all cost; thereby encouraging laziness and the spirit of lack of support from women to men in their marriage relationship.For avoidance of doubt, in one of your pronouncements, you blatantly put it which supports what I am saying, 'Women should never contribute to the upkeep of the house. If the chop money is not enough to buy salt, cook without salt'. Clearly, it is in your usual consistency that you see a National Service Person like myself, unfit to propose to marry a lady because he is not an Already-Made -Man.Your continuous disregard to caution but rather your straightjacket approach gives some of us the cause to worry about the kind of counselling you are giving to our ladies.That, a tertiary education graduate cannot propose to marry a lady? Proposing to marry a lady is not the marriage ceremony or marriage. People have proposed while in school, planned and worked towards that and it has worked for them.So why can't a National Service Person who has even finished school also propose to a lady that both will be willing to plan and work towards the realization of their marriage? Of course! he should. Let me paraphrase a profound statement one of our Political Science Lecturers, Dr Evans Aggrey Darkoh at University of Ghana said to us in our first lecture of level 100. Permit me to put it in quotation."If you have not taken people you have met and/or have in your life serious, please do for those here in the university.Most of these 'big' people we look up to in all things in our country once met in the university; the university is a potential place for anything" Among other things, he added that the University is a 'big market', a popular cliche.There are real life stories in our society of people who started from the tertiary, during National Service, after National Service and they have successfully made it which prove this.Indeed after tertiary education is too far a journey for a lady to be dilly-dallying all in anticipation of Mr Already-Made. Counsellor Lutterodt, is it not expedient we start cautioning our ladies at a point when a lot of ladies have waited for Mr Already-Made and rubbished proposals of people like your mention of National Service Personnel seen as unready but later got disappointed because their wait is taking forever? Some have visited and continue to visit charlatan pastors who take advantage of their gullibility and do all kinds of things with/at them.Then they find out later with regret why they didn't start with the people they rejected their proposals who are now successful.For how long should our ladies suffer HAD I KNOWN because they were following some counselling like yours? Of course, they don't deserve this! Counsellor Lutterodt, I wish to conclude my letter here. In concluding, I would kindly request of you to be magnanimous in your counselling, a virtue worth adopting. Again, some of your controvertible counselling particularly for ladies which will succeed in continuously making them victims of HAD I KNOWN should be discouraged. Our ladies have suffered far too long for deciding to wait for Mr Already-Made, who, either took forever to come or came and was a disappointment. Let us save our ladies from this at all cost business whose consequential effect on our society is not funny any more.Yes! Counsellor Lutterodt, it is no more funny! Thank you. It's me William Latsey National Service Person Accra. [email protected] 25.04.2016 LISTEN Scandinavia, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg are much disciplined countries while Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, Greece, Slovenia and Rumania are not. The disciplined countries are the richest countries in Europe, while the un-disciplined countries are poor. Russia being the biggest country in the world with all asked for natural resources is the eight richest nation in this world, far behind Germany in position four being smaller in size and not blessed by GOD with mineral resources, is based on the factor that Russians were never, and are still today not, disciplined people. Innovations, the competitive edge in todays global village, in Business as well as Societies (only a successful society attracts all the business and money available) are not ordered by Bosses or Presidents, but are the product of Individuals. Ideas for Innovations are a GOD given Spirit transcended into Human Soul and subsequently acted on. Discipline is the foundation of self-motivation as no mind that is not disciplined and structured will make a useable product or service out of an Idea given in a blitz second. Discipline is the essence needed for an Inventor to carry through endless test of his idea, supports his self-motivation to make it finally to the breakthrough stage. No Invention comes to the Human mind as a ready-made product, it takes hard work (the same principles apply to the development of societies at large). Charles Goodyear was a simple man from humble background, married with children. The Civil War in USA was fast approaching when his mind was telling him that rubber boots will be in great demand by the army as well as tires for the bicycles used in the olden days by soldiers. He borrowed money from Investors to realize his dream and over time make himself rich. Rubber was his target but not stable in its natural form. Many experiments failed to make the white, flexible natural rubber stable. Whatever he tried, he did not succeed. Running out of money, he had to flee from his Investors and when one of his children fell deadly sick, he was not able to pay for the much needed medication. Subsequently the child died. He was fortunate that his wife never complained but always stood by his side. After years with no end in sight, one night his pot with hot melted rubber fell down into the ashes of the fire that he used. Charcoal fell into the hot rubber and he had no other option but to mix it and let it dry as usual. The next morning on the dry line he discovered the rubber was stable, something known today as vulcanization. Without Charles Goodyear we would not be able to drive cars! Rubber trees are not planted in USA, but in Africa, South America and Asia. How does it come that not at the source of the product Rubber Car Tires and Rubber Boots were invented something normally logical to happen and not thousands of kilometers away? The Rubber producing countries have no people that are disciplined! Switzerland is regarded as the worlds Number one producer of the best chocolate in the word even not growing any cocoa bean at all. Why does it come that no Cocoa Bean producing country is producing good chocolate? Discipline is the key factor. Swiss people are extremely disciplined a characteristic helping them to stay always focused on the consumer needs and developing trends in this industry matching it with the highest production standards. CPC Cocoa Processing Company Limited in Tema, Ghana, will never have the chance to be competitive as discipline is not in the Blackmans blood. Tiger States like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and alike have become so successful due to their many Military Dictatorships disciplining people. Singapore, being a Socialist Dictatorship, has created over night the miracle from a destroyed small island threatened by the Indonesians and separated from Malaysia to be a strong Nation with highly educated and motivated people that are constantly disciplined by laws and working punishment in case of any rules and law violation. Nineteen years ago Malaysia came to Ghana to learn the Oil Palm business as Ghana knows it best. Down the line, as today, Ghana is buying Palm Oil from Malaysia; the Master and Teacher has become the Student and Servant to make a foreign country richdoes GOD like that to see? Was Ghana really made to go down that path? When Whites with patience and passion for Africa are accepted as the highest Servants by Blacks in their countries in private Enterprises as well as Government Assignments, Africa once again stands the chance to stand out in the shining Glory of GOD to be the Star in this world. Author: Dipl.-Pol. Karl-Heinz Heerde, Sakumono Estate, Block D10, Aprt. 9, Tema West, Ghana, phone +233(0)265078287, [email protected] , 24.04.2016 RIVERTON, Wyo. The state will decide a controversial land purchase next week that would expand a prison farm. The Ranger reported about 100 people spoke against the Honor Farm expansion plan, which would purchase 108 acres of land in an area farmed by families. Concerns included possible decreased property values, privacy and harassment from inmates who work the farm. Wyoming Department of Corrections director Bob Lampert said the land northeast of the main farm is the best available to meet needs. The farm's productive land decreased 40 percent after the state sold 302 acres determined to be best suited for commercial development. Warden Mike Pacheco said neighbors' safety is the priority. State Lands and Investment Board director Bridget Hill plans to make a recommendation Monday. The state's decision is expected Tuesday. President John Mahama and Nana Addo 25.04.2016 LISTEN The president Mr Mahama is quoted as saying that Nana Akuffo Addo and the NPP wasted a year of his incumbency with their challenge of the election results. This portrayal of the presidents ring-fenced manner of assessment is at variance with the facts. There was no delay in handing Mr Mahama the mandate as president. The time-line was was followed to the letter by Dr Afari Gyan in spite of all concerns. How then did a petition which was mounted while Mr Mahama was supposed to be working as the president of the nation, impact on his incumbency? He was not in court and he did not have to give any evidence. Mr Mahama was not handed the presidency after the petition; he was the president. This fabrication, placing blame on the Nana Akuffo Addo and the NPP is therefore the latest lame attempt to explain the failures and lapses of the Mahama administration. The world is witnessing a nation beset with levels of skulduggery the likes of which has never been experienced before. The course that the nation is being taken, shows a trajectory of plots and sinister machinations which may destabilise the nation... ...And the NPP is crucially being set up to take the blame. The NDC government of President Mahama, has procured debts to the tune of $30 billion [thirty billion dollars] which is reported as having disappeared in a black hole. Vast sums comprising of pensions, wages and grants are also stated as having been taken and diverted to unknown whereabouts. These claims and the governments handling of the economy has led to the sickening levels of corruption, extreme austerity, rampant crime, lawlessness and increasing hardship. The prognosis of a country being progressively destroyed. The hard fact that all Ghanaians will have to grasp is that; the financial providers from whom President Mahama acquired this $30 billion dollars, will not just walk away and make it a bad debt. Some will ensure and may act to ensure that they maintain a debilitating stranglehold as a result of this indebtedness. Mahamas government have therefore placed the nation on a dangerous and precarious slope that provides a pretext to destabilise or cause undue interference in the national affairs of the Republic. And the NPP is being set-up by trickery and deceit to take the blame. If the NPP fails the nation in chasing the loot of the $30 billion loan, there is a very real possibility that some elements may create a situation, to ensure that they get the value of the $30 billion, in whatever currency that they deem fit. That may include aiding or facilitating scenarios that ensure that they get their end off the bargain. There are also elements whom in an effort not to be accountable, may also resort to destabilising actions if the NDC loses the forthcoming elections. Historically, nations have paid very high prices, both in human and material cost. Mahama and his administration have taken a begging bowl to the east and the west and dealt with all sorts of entities in getting to the $30 billion. The nation in amazement and consternation, observes reports of obscene and jaw-dropping sums flow into the accounts of individuals and associates of the government through inflated costs, kick-backs and blatant looting. These wanton acts of skulduggery are allowed to go on by some lenders as a means of getting into the exploit of the nation. It will only become an issue if their returns are threatened or likely to be threatened. For placing the country into this level of indebtedness, some influential financial providers may facilitate or secure high profile engagements for the president on the global stage. They may facilitate or secure audiences with world leaders, facilitate or offer fringe and nebulous appointments, and for placing the country into this level of indebtedness, facilitate or bestow awards of no meritorious consequence. In return they will demand compliance of the sort that erodes the rights of the Republic as a sovereign nation. Why is the nation still poor and dependent on donations, when it is brimming with resources which should have facilitated a respectable existence for its people. What use is the recognition of Mahama on the world stage, if the average citizen cannot properly feed himself or their child? If citizens cannot access or afford basic health care, basic utilities or amenities? What use is the recognition of Mahama on the world stage for workers whose salaries are in arrears and those whose pensions have been mismanaged after they have toiled to ensure a dignified existence in old age? What exactly is the value of any award or recognition that Mahama gets for facilitating or creating such a toxic environment? Becoming prominent for placing the country into this level of indebtedness and hardship is nothing to be proud of or emulate and any such recognition by anyone must be for a reason that is not obvious to the people. There are no signs of the vast resources that people like former president Jerry Rawlings of the same NDC party of the president, fought to keep for future generations. These have all been squandered, wasted and replaced with a $30 billion loan and still counting. What a shame. The problem for most is the fear that in spite of their best efforts, the NDC government of President Mahama will still manage to win the forth-coming election, even if no single voter gives them their vote, enabling them to continue, on this damaging trajectory. With the NDC machinery spewing rhetoric of subversion and unfounded opposition machinations and involvement towards an impending terrorist activity, some are becoming really anxious. The question is: Why would the NPP which is enjoying rousing support and seen largely to win a fair election decide to plan or support insurgency or terrorism? The information placed in the public domain by its opponents paints a sinister and a dangerous impend, of which the NPP has no reason to have a hand in. If anyone is planning any adverse activity, the NPP is obviously not involved. The people must therefore be educated on how to recognise these acts and how the citizens through their civic responsibilities can counter, frustrate or reduce these threats. There should be a real drive to ensure that the looting ends at the next election without fail and thieves and felons are made to account for their actions, also without fail. There must be no latitude for any person, group or party anywhere to execute any criminal activity aimed at destabilising the country to enable them further their nefarious activities on the people. This nation will not fail. 25.04.2016 LISTEN There is this Yoruba proverb about the same bulala used to entice the first wife is waiting for the second wife. It is unbelievable that we can easily forget the hard lessons of Structural Adjustment Program in the Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. Again, we finds ourselves in the position where Buhari was overthrown in 1984. Number One Vagabond that melted the Country down has resurrected the ugly politics of Devaluation disguised as sound economics. Structural Adjustment Program was debated during Shagari to Buharis first regime in Office. The consensus then was that Nigeria would not take World Bank or International Monetary Fund loans. It was an open debate on both sides. When that Son of Ba-Shiwere IBB overthrew Buhari, he promised not to take odious loans but would implement some reforms necessary to reach the same goal of fiscal responsibility. We believed him. He took us to the cleaners! Maradona dribbled and fooled us. Most of the people that had worked hard and saved it all, lived the lives of middleclass, could afford simple pleasures without being a millionaire when naira worth naira, lost everything after SAP. This type of armed robber was different. He did not break into houses, snatched our belongings and forced everybody unto the ground. What IBB did by stealth-moves turned our money into sand-sand. Who say money no be sand-sand? People could not build or complete their houses again. The last cars we bought, got so old, we could not afford repairs. We used to go to Central Bank to pay foreign business loans, school loans and fee with adequate proof. Some of us that had gotten 6,000.00 naira car loans. It good money. By the time this writer got out, he had about $9,000.00. It could have been better spent. After paying some student loan, some outstanding credit card loan, bought presents and on the way back at Amsterdam got a brand new tiny Suzuki Alto for less than $3,000.00. The only car in town! Salary was about four hundred naira a month. By the time they took out car loan and housing, still had some respectable money in the pocket for the family. Boy! Nigerians were mad when Umaru Dikko told people to stop complaining. After all, he saw people in America eating from the dustbins on the street, something that could never happen in Nigeria. We just had enough of them and decided NPN was going to be voted out. Got to go. We could not take it anymore. During the election, we were out on the line early waiting to throw out the bunch of son-of-ba gone that danced while we saw the Country smothering. NPN won anyway, in some areas our votes were not even counted, in others on site numbers were ignored and fake numbers declared at the center. Therefore whoever thought Nigerians preferred military government because Buhari regime was welcomed on the street need some psychiatric evaluation at Yaba left. We were overwhelmed, a devil could have had his way at that point and time. The military took advantage of the situation and of our desperation. Before the military, we heard respectable folks warning Shagari that Nigeria was going into a free fall. By the time IBB introduced SAP, big honest business men with foreign loans liquidated their businesses and those that built estates lost them to creditors. How were the mighty fallen. Naira became useless. Nobody in his right mind could predict Ibori, Tinubu or Saraki of today. Devaluation is no more about economics, it is political. When you see insects disappearing and grasses dying, we must wonder why. It does not have to be human, you do not have to be an environmental activist. When poor folks suffer, think far, you may be the next on the line. Like most Africans, suffering Nigerians sometimes mix politics with ethnic sentiments. We know that at the end of the day, politicians only care about themselves and their families not us. We thought President Jonathan was our Godsend messiah. The man is well educated and cool headed until we saw his other side. Most of the Country could not be wrong and we voted for him North and South, East and West. When President YarAdua became incapacitated, activists and fair-minded people rose up and asked for the crowning of Ebele. It was not surprising that that despite threat and prediction of doom day, he defeated Buhari like OBJ, even in the North. Our Country have been fair by making sure that no matter where you come from, either North or South, you can become the President of this Country. For a long time Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba dominated the political landscape at the expense of minorities. Jonathan dissolved that notion. Ijaw do not have more numbers than other minorities like Edo but Nigerians in fairness and in compensation for the exploit of their resources saw it fit to elevate one of them to presidency. It has never been a blank check for anyone. If Ebele did not create a vacuum, a hundred Tinubu or Buhari would never have stood a chance. People forget that even in Lagos as other places throughout the Country, the election was close, not a landslide that elected Ebele as President. The stars lined up for Buhari this time, not because we love him more than Ebele; but because Ebele took us for granted the same way Shagari, Akinloye, Diko, Ekwueme and Akinjide did. When you drive Nigerians up the wall, we may not melt into the wall as usual. We would vote for a devil as long as we believed he would fight corruption. When people Buhari jailed under his authoritarian regime and Operation War Against Indiscipline came out to say they did not care. Saving Nigeria from the hands of kleptomaniacs was more important than their individual suffering under Buhari/Idiagbon, you knew they were desperate for a savior; even a devil. Devaluation is no more an economic argument or discussion, it has gone political. Anyone that went through Structural Adjustment Program for which World Bank and IMF apologized, cannot be taken seriously if they say they are for constant devaluation of naira. What do we gain since Babangida started the slippery slope downwards? Nairobi (AFP) - A Tutsi general and security advisor to Burundi's vice-president was killed in an attack by heavily armed men on Monday, along with his wife and daughter, a security source said. General Athanase Kararuza was dropping his daughter off at school when they were attacked by unidentified men, the high-ranking security source said. The Burundian presidency's spokesman confirmed the report. President John Dramani Mahama 25.04.2016 LISTEN If you want to succeed in leadership, appoint very decent and loyal persons to work with, this is exactly what President John Mahama did for appointing H.E. Ltd Col. Umar Sanda Ahamed as Ghana's Ambassador to Egypt. Due to his hardwork and the Care he has for Ghanaians living in Cairo, they praised the president for sending such a cherished father to them as an Ambassador. Like previous Ambassadors who course a vacuum of mistrust and confusion between the Ghanaian community in Cairo and the Embassy staff because of numbers of time the Ambassador promises and failed attitudes. He will once a time pub up in the community general meeting and making so many promises and also saying his door are opened to all Ghanaians but you go to the Embassy with your problem only to be turned away without even listening to your problem and If wishes to meet your Ambassador too he will be nowhere to found as he always with his Egyptian friends and relatives hmmmm!!!!. Now we thank God that all those challenges we used to face at the Embassy has come to pass and now there's cordial relationship between the Ghanaian community in Cairo and the Embassy staff due to the good leadership H.E Umar Sanda has brought to the Embassy in Cairo. He has not only shown a valuable representative of H.E the President JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA but he has also become the father for all Ghanaians in Egypt, because in Cairo's history we have never had an Ambassador who has Ghanaians in heart going rounds to their doors to interact with them as we've seen today. He is a man who doesn't talk much but doing a lot of good work by promoting Ghana's economics through the number of investors he sent to Ghana. LONG LIVE H.E UMAR SANDA AHAMED LONG LIVE EMBASSY IN CAIRO, LONG LIVE GHANAIAN COMMUNITY IN CAIRO. File Photo 25.04.2016 LISTEN In seismology, it is said that, The longer it has been since the last major earthquake, the closer it is to the next one. So anytime an earthquake occurs anywhere in the world, it is a reminder to any other earthquake prone part of the world that it could be next. In recent weeks, there has been a reminder, a kind of wake-up call, from Japan and Ecuador to all areas of the world that are subject to earthquakes, no matter how infrequent. A former Director of the Geological Survey of Ghana used to say that, As Geoscientists, we tend to talk to ourselves. That is very true because to most outsiders what we have to say as Geoscientists is either gobbledegook or apocalyptic. How do you for instance, explain to a non-geoscientist that Panthalassa could have anything to do with oil discovery in Ghana or anywhere else for that matter? In 1939, the total population of Accra was 77,000. In the earthquake of 22nd June 1939, twenty-two people died in Accra alone. That is only 0.028 percent of the total population of the time. However, if the figure is then extrapolated to the present population level of two million or thereabouts; the apocalyptic scenarios begin to emerge. Earthquakes do not kill, it is the structures that human beings construct, often with no thought of its possible consequences on the environment (especially in the developing countries), that kill. Thus if a Magnitude 8.5 earthquake happens in the Sahara Desert, it may be recorded in some parts of the world by the Worldwide Seismometer Network, but it will be no big news anywhere else because there is very little human habitation and virtually no interference with the natural environment over in the Sahara Desert. On Saturday, 16th April, Kumamoto, Japan, was struck by a Magnitude 7.0 earthquake. That earthquake was preceded by a Magnitude 6.2 foreshock. The two earthquakes killed 48 people and about 3,000 others were injured. Severe damage occurred in Kumamoto and Oita Prefectures, with numerous structures collapsing and or catching fire. More than 44,000 people have been evacuated from their homes due to the disaster. On the same day, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Ecuador in South America. The epicentre of the Ecuadoran earthquake was in a sparsely populated part of the country. Yet so far, 587 people have been confirmed dead and the number could rise because over 157 people are still unaccounted for. Another 8,300 have been injured and over 4,000 houses were destroyed by the earthquake, resulting in over 28,000 people living in shelters. In terms of seismology, there are close similarities between the two earthquakes. The main Japanese shock was of Magnitude 7.0, while the Ecuadoran one was Magnitude 7.8. They were both shallow, 10 kilometres depth for the Japanese earthquake and 19.2 in the case of Ecuadoran case. Generally, shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage to civil structures than deeper earthquakes because of the strong surface waves they generate. The Ecuadoran earthquake was slightly larger but also relatively deeper than the Japanese one. Yet it caused a lot more damage to the built environment and also more fatalities. The reason for the large difference in the level of casualties and extent of damage is that Japan almost certainly has better building and earthquake damage mitigation and prevention procedures than Ecuador. As was shown on television screens around the world, Japanese emergency agencies were at the scene of the worst hit areas with sophisticated equipment, earth movers, sniffer dogs and infra-red detectors within minutes of the end of the shaking. In Ecuador, rescuers dug with bare hands, as hand-held megaphones were being used in the effort to attract the attention of potential survivors! Being prone to more frequent damaging earthquakes, Ecuador probably has a working national building code. The last time we checked at a national conference, there was a plethora of building design standards in use in Ghana, depending on where individual Civil Engineers had trained. The attempt to unify and develop a useable national building code did not come to anything. That was about fifteen years ago. I have been away from the scene for more than a decade, but from reports of buildings collapsing out of the blue in various parts of the country, I will be surprised if that programme to develop an enforceable national building code ever came to fruition, and if so whether there is any enforcement of the code. Disaster management Some of the disaster management procedures in Ghana today sometimes make the heart bleed. I was on holiday in Ghana a few years ago when the Melcom Supermarket collapsed without so much as a storm. The saddest part of the incident was the ridiculously childish attempt at managing the disaster. The ABC of disaster management requires that the site of the incident be cordoned off, to enable the emergency services to try and rescue the injured and dying. In the Melcom case, all we kept hearing on the radio as we drove from Tema to Accra was, Oh, spectators have besieged the place to the extent that the security agents cannot have access to the injured. As at that point, very senior government, Fire Service and National Disaster Management officials had visited the scene, and some were actually still at the location being photographed for whatever purpose, but it did not occur to anyone to draw a cordon around the collapsed structure, to enable the rescue effort to proceed with seriousness. A similar thing happened after the Accra floods of June 2015, as was shown television screens around the world. Here was a potential crime scene where one would have expected crime officers to move in immediately to prevent forensic evidence from being destroyed. Instead, radio and television reporters and members of the general public were moving freely among the dead, some actually touching the bodies. Eventually, the dead were loaded en masse into open tipper trucks, without so much as polythene bags to cover their bodies, some of them completely naked! How very sad. Earlier this year, there was a rumpus about fire-fighting and ladders. Some time ago, there was disaster management exercise at the Tema Oil Refinery which included a simulated rescue from one of the higher floors of the main five (?) storey administrative building of the refinery. At that time, the tallest ladder that the Ghana Fire Service could deploy only went up to four floors. From what the Chief Fire Officer reported in the incident referred to above, it did not seem like the Ghana Fire Service has any taller ladders today. Yet sky scrapers, by African standards, are springing up all over Accra, without helipads or helicopters or even ladders for any pretence of fire-fighting. The past as a key to the present In the first week of the Ecuadoran earthquake alone there were 700 aftershocks, some of them quite strong. Earthquakes in Ghana are generally followed by long periods of aftershocks. The 1939 earthquake was followed by thirteen months of aftershocks, as many as five or six a day, some as large as Magnitude 4.5. The relatively small Magnitude 4.9 earthquake of 6th March 1997 was followed by twenty-two aftershocks over four weeks. Should a major earthquake occur in southern Ghana tomorrow, how will companies and institutions that occupy high rise buildings cope with having to evacuate three or four times in a working day as a result of aftershocks? I saw the beginnings of the Airport City in Accra, and I cringe each time I have to walk anywhere within that vicinity. Fortunately, these days as soon as I land in Accra, I can vanish to the security and comfort of the Holy Village. In seismological terms, Ghana is currently experiencing seismic space and time gaps. In terms of the space gap, the area between Axim in the Western Region and Nyanyanu in the Central Region has not experienced any earthquake for more than four hundred years, while the area encompassing the Nyanyanu-Ho-Akwapim Range triangle has been quiet for close to ten years past its normal return period. All the geological processes that led to major Ghanaian earthquakes in the past are still going on today. And as surely as night follows day, it will happen again. Maybe this is the time we as Geoscientists should begin to talk not only to ourselves, but to society at large. Stay blessed The Hague (AFP) - The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said Monday she was opening a "preliminary examination" into the situation in Burundi, which has been engulfed in a violent political crisis since early last year. "Since April 2015, I have closely followed the situation in Burundi and repeatedly called upon all involved to refrain from violence, warning that those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable," prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement. 25.04.2016 LISTEN Elections in Ghana Ghana, the first country south of the Sahara to gain independence in 1957 has since 1992 been conducting elections which has earned her several praises from the international community for its democratic credentials. The November 2016 election is yet again another great opportunity for the tiny West African nation to demonstrate its level of maturity in the democratization process. If conducted successfully, the 2016 election will further deepen Ghanas democratic credentials and send a signal to the international community that peaceful elections can indeed be possible in Africa. I was excited when I met a retired United States Ambassador recently at a program for retired diplomats who asked me of my country of origin and as soon as I mentioned Ghana, he remarked, Ghana is one of the success stories on the African continent. We have a good name out there and should jealously guard it. In the impending presidential and parliamentary elections, various political parties in the country are preparing feverishly to wrestle power from the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) party. Some of these contenders include the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Peoples National Convention (PNC), the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) and the Convention Peoples Party (CPP). The various flagbearers have been traveling across the length and breadth of the country to solicit votes from the electorates. Preparations towards the 2016 elections in principle began immediately results of the last elections were announced and winners declared. Political parties started evaluating and reviewing their previous campaign messages, policies, programs, stratagems etc. in order to appreciate their performance and to make for better performance in the next elections. Stages of Campaigns As stated, the first stage of campaigning towards 2016 in Ghana began after the 2012 election results were declared which pronounced the NDC as winners. The NPP, CPP, PNC and others reevaluated themselves to find out why they lost the elections to the NDC and to prepare for 2016 elections. In the 2012 election, the NPP attributed their defeat to vote rigging by the ruling NDC. They contested the election results at the Supreme Court and for almost eight months, the country came to a standstill. Nonetheless, the NDC were declared winners. Similarly, the NPP many believe lost the election in 2008 due to complacency and arrogance on the part of the campaign team. Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, one of the numerous party bigwigs who failed in a flag-bearer race of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) at the time attributed the partys Election 2008 defeat to complacency stating we lost an election that in our complaisance we deemed was easier to win than to lose. A leading member of the NPP, Dr. Arthur Kennedy in his book, chasing the Elephant into the Bush: The politics of complacency espoused reasons for the NPPs defeat to include extravagance, arrogance, tribalism (Akan verses Akyem) factor within the party among others which has created a lot of controversy in the media and among political analysts. The other political parties, the CPP and PNC obtained minimal percentages in the last elections and did not come close to winning. They lack the numbers needed to win any election in Ghana and it might take them years to mobilize themselves into formidable political groups capable of winning any election. The second stage towards 2016 election is organizing party congresses to reaffirm the commitment of members to the parties as well as elect leaders to prepare them to become a winning party. The NPP was the first to organize a congress to elect a flag-bearer. Three presidential candidates in the persons of Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, Francis Addai Nimoh and Nana Akuffo Addo contested for the single slot to represent their party which was won by Nana Akuffo Addo, who was flagbearer in both 2008 and 2012 elections. This was followed by parliamentary primaries across the country which was successfully done and now battle ready to lock horns with the other political parties especially the governing NDC in the impending election. The NPP has also maintained Dr. Muhamoud Bawumia, an astute economist and former Deputy Governor at the Central Bank as running mate. The NPP are still however embroiled with internal strife and factionalism born from its last congress and the suspensions of its party Chairman, Paul Afoko, General Secretary, Kwabena Agyepong and first Deputy Chairman, Sammy Crabbe for supposedly violating the constitution of the party. The ruling NDC on the other hand conducted their presidential primaries with the sitting president, John Mahama going unopposed. The only person who tried contesting the president, George Boateng was disqualified for not meeting the standards of the partys registration. The NDC has also completed their parliamentary primaries across the country. On the part of the CPP and PNC, internal strife seems to have set in the initial stages of preparations towards 2016. Hassan Ayariga who was the presidential candidate for the PNC in the last election fell out with the party after losing to Dr. Edward Mahama in the primaries, and has since formed his own party known as African Peoples Congress (APC). Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, a former general secretary of the CPP shocked Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to win the only slot to contest the presidential election on the ticket of the party. The PPP is led by Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, who many believe is a good presidential material in the wrong party. The final stage of preparation will be ushered by the Electoral Commission (EC) when they announce the final list of contesting parties and persons and lift the ban on official campaigns. The parties will then begin serious cress crossing of the country to solicit votes from the electorate. The NPP have called for a new voters register because they believe the current register is not clean but the EC has rejected the claim and said the current register is the best since Ghana returned to multiparty democracy in 1992 and has called on all stakeholders to help clean the register to remove all ghost names from it. President Mahama is currently moving from one region to the other commissioning projects and telling Ghanaians what his government has been able to achieve since 2012, which the NDC has dubbed Accounting to the People. Nonetheless, the opposition NPP has accused the president of abuse of incumbency and that the president is only campaigning towards the 2016 election. Activities of political parties towards election 2016 The NDC believe they have achieved over 80% of their campaign promises and are confident that Ghanaians will renew their mandate come November, 2016. The founder of the NDC, ex-president Rawlings who is a grassroots man fell out with the party after campaigning vigorously for them in the 2008 election. Jerry Rawlings has accused his own government of massive corruption and that they have neglected the very people at the grassroots who voted the party into power. It remains uncertain in political circles whether the ex-president will change his mind and campaign for president Mahama in the 2016 election since he did not join the team in 2012 and yet the NDC won. Others have argued that the National Democratic Congress (NDC), as a party, does not need former President Jerry John Rawlings to survive any given election. Those who follow this line of argument say the party has grown from an individual-centered one, into a whole political institution, and for that matter, no individual could lay claim to its fortunes. The ex-president, his supporters say, is a man of charisma, one who moves crowd and the peoples man and is still relevant to the NDC. The opposition NPP which is the only party capable of giving the ruling NDC a run for their money in the 2016 election is doing all it can to wrestle power from the NDC. There is however disunity amongst the rank and file of the party. That explains why Dr. Charles Wereko- Brobbey said he weeps for Ghana because the 2016 election will be between chaos and incompetence, chaos on the part of the opposition NPP and incompetence on the part of the ruling NDC. Prior to the 2008 election, the NPP laughed at the NDC for their door to door campaign style. After realizing the potency of this strategy, the NPP has also adopted same but has rebranded it, listening ear tour, and thank you tour, among others. In their own case, the flagbearer of the party, Nana Akuffo Addo has been moving round the whole country interacting with people to vote the NPP back to power. According to him, the NDC does not have what it takes to move Ghana from being a third world nation into a first world nation. One thing Nana Addo will never be forgotten about was his infamous statement to some NPP members in Kofuridua, the Eastern Regional capital which many have condemned. Nana Addo told a gathering of the NPP members that, one must understand that this party (NPP) was formed by courageous people. Our leaders who formed this party that has now become the biggest political movement in Ghana were not cowards. So we need to be courageous because all die be die. All die be die. That was one of the reasons for their defeat in the last election. The other political parties apart from the NDC and NPP so far seem to be making little progress as far as the 2016 elections are concerned. They do not seem to have the leadership commitment to galvanize themselves into a united front capable of becoming an alternative to the ruling NDC and the opposition NPP which have been alternating power since 1992. As typical of Ghanaian and African elections in general, 2016 promises to be exciting judging from the euphoria that greets people every electioneering year. Apart from the usual sweet talks on political platforms, politicians would suddenly turn to be nice towards everyone. They attend every funeral they hear of and make their presence felt. Ghanaians particularly like funerals and use such occasions to wish their love and departed ones their last respect. Politicians often use such moments to show how caring they are to the people and sometimes support the bereaved families financially. Even though Ghana has conducted successful elections since 1992, many Ghanaians are still entertaining fears due to the stakes of this election. This is also as a result of the tension that has characterized previous elections in Ghana. There is also a growing culture of insults and the use of intemperate language by politicians who use the media to castigate political opponents. This is further sending shivers down the spines of many people who fear there is likely to be the shed of blood in Ghana in 2016 as being witnessed in certain parts of Africa including, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Egypt, Libya, Ivory Coast, Liberia etc. The General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Pastor Mensah Otabil has in the past remarked that I think we have become a very pessimistic society and we underestimate ourselves adding that, we have failed to accept our own maturity, our own growth, our systems are getting better and better, the people are becoming more discerning, the politicians are coming to terms with the reality that power is transient that they can be voted in and out of power. According to him, we have done well over the years and we shouldnt devalue what we have done. We should be grateful for the lessons weve learnt and we shouldnt become panicky, I think elections have become normal in our national lifeI think there is nothing to panic about. I think were going to have a very smooth process and we will be fine. The 2016 election generally will be about bread and butter issues and not which party can insult the most. It will be about employment generation, infrastructural development and which party can lead Ghana out of poverty to a higher income status. The NDC touts itself for eliminating schools under trees, increase in capitation grant, introduction of science and mathematics scholarships to students, introduction of free school uniforms, and massive infrastructural development across the country, among others. These achievements they believe are unprecedented in Ghanas history and believe Ghanaians will renew their mandate to continue with their good works. The NPP on the other hand, have learnt lessons from their defeats in 2008 and 2012 and have put in stringent measures not to repeat the mistakes of yesteryears. The NPP saw power slipped from their hands to the NDC by a small margin that has been described as the closet election contests in the history of Africa in both elections. The NPP presidential candidate, Nana Akuffo Addo promised in the last election campaign to introduce free education from the primary to the senior high levels in order to give the Ghanaian child a future of hope and prosperity since education is the surest way of becoming successful in life. He believes the NDC lacks the vision to move Ghana out of poverty and is traveling wide and near to convince Ghanaians to buy his vision and vote him into power come 2016. Nana Addo knows clearly well that the 2016 election will probably be his last shot at the presidency. A lost will mean that he would have been over 76 years in 2020 to contest on his partys ticket and that will end his political dream of ever becoming a president of Ghana. This means Nana Addo must work hard to win in 2016. Conclusion It is the hope of every Ghanaian that the 2016 election will be peaceful without skirmishes and Ghana will come of the election as a winner and show to the world that the African is capable of managing her own affairs. It is good the president of Ghana has assured the whole world that he will do everything possible to give Ghana peaceful election. Some Ghanaians are calling on the international community as usual to come and observe how Ghana will cement their democratic credentials in 2016. The security service must prepare adequately and act professionally during and after the election. When this is done, Ghana will be peaceful before, during and after the 2016 election. Francis Xavier D. Tuokuu is a PhD Student in Environmental Studies. You can reach him via ( [email protected] ), 73 High Street, New Hampshire, United States of America. There has been some success in the fight against malaria since the turn of the millennium not least thanks to Switzerland's activities in this field. Nevertheless, more than 400,000 people still die from the disease every year, mostly children under five. At the event to mark World Malaria Day on 25 April 2016, SDC Director General Manuel Sager therefore appealed to all partners involved to continue the fight against malaria with the same shared determination. Only in this way can the goal of the international community be achieved to reduce the incidence of this deadly disease by 90% by 2030, he said. World Malaria Day is being celebrated today in Bern with a variety of events attended by representatives of government and politics, academia, business and the World Health Organization (WHO). The event has been organised by the Swiss Malaria Group, which was set up by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in 2007. The Swiss Malaria Group is a network of research institutions, public organisations, private companies and civil society organisations that share the objective of advancing Switzerland's commitment to fight malaria. "We have already made some progress," noted Mr Sager at the event and went on to say: "Nevertheless, a lot remains to be done if we are to achieve WHO's ambitious goal of reducing malaria cases by 90% by 2030." A child dies every two minutes According to WHO, some 438,000 people die of malaria worldwide every year, 70% of whom are children under five. Almost half the world's population is threatened by the disease, which on average claims a child's life every two minutes. These numbers, however, have to be seen in light of the successes that have been achieved in the last 15 years. Since the turn of the millennium the mortality rate has almost halved worldwide, which according to estimates translates into more than 6.2 million lives saved. Today, two out of three children under five in sub-Saharan Africa sleep under an insecticide-treated mosquito net, and access to high-quality medicines has also been considerably improved. Switzerland has made a substantial contribution to this positive development with its innovative engagement based on partnership. For instance, the public-private partnership Medicines for Malaria Venture, which was co-launched by the SDC and is based in Geneva, has brought six new anti-malaria drugs onto the market in the last 15 years. Over 300 million treatments of the child-friendly drug Coartem Dispersible, which was developed in partnership with Novartis, have been delivered to 50 countries on an entirely non-profit basis. In Tanzania, the national mosquito net programme, which is supported by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and the SDC, has supplied families with some 50 million nets, saving the lives of more than 60,000 children per year. Successes provide examples of effective development cooperation Manuel Sager sees these successes as "an example of how effective Swiss development cooperation is if all partners from all sectors concerned work together". For this reason the SDC will continue to work as a bridge-builder to enable Switzerland to put its strengths and experience to effective use in the fight against malaria. This commitment is in line with the SDC's overarching strategy on healthcare promotion, which is described in the Federal Council Dispatch on Switzerland's International Cooperation 2017-20, and is based on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations. "International development and health go hand in hand," emphasises Manuel Sager. "Good health is vital for the development of every individual, for nations and the world as a whole. Health is a human right. Health is crucial to combating poverty. Health contributes to economic development and global security." 25.04.2016 LISTEN Democracy still remains the best means of governance the world over, despite the mystery of the glass ceiling, placed on the ECRA (ECOWAS Citizens Right Advocates) by the GBC (Ghana Broadcasting Corporation). While watching GTV, GTV Govern and GTV 24 programs, one will have the impression that the institution is truly committed to the ideals of democracy but all efforts by the ECRA to join debates on "Governance in ECOWAS" proved to be a different experience. The above notwithstanding, democracy is the most effective means of popularising any challenge of cultural transformation. This remain the case because most of the cultural complications that make transformational change a challenge, are enshrined in myths and taboos, forbidden onto members of the public for open discussion. This then explain the myths and taboos, around why most rational Ghanaians and institutions, are economic with the truth on certain national and ECOWAS based topics. Democracy is the only system of government that comes with an inbuilt mechanism by which citizens are free to discuss the cultural myths, hampering their cultural transformations. The popular participation allow for the expression of diverse opinions that are fundamental to democracy. The role of the media is very vital and the particular role of the state owned media, include the duty of accommodating all divergent democratic views. Most of us fail to appreciate that the ECOWAS project is about the cultural transformation of 15 sovereign member states, with a combined population of about 300 million people. Each of these 15 member states of ECOWAS is a conglomeration of cultural complications, worsen by underdevelopment and modern global challenges, desperately yearning for cultural transformation. In fact, the kingdoms in place before the formation of each of the ECOWAS member states, have all their indigenous cultural characteristics today in active conditions, fiercely resisting any form of transformation. Almost all modifications that are threats to the sovereignties of these indigenous kingdoms but necessary to make the modernised nation a better modern day culturally competitive force, are being resisted. Furthermore, the resultant modern states formed out of the indigenous kingdoms that are being use for the formation of the super regional culture, are each culturally re-oriented into the Francophone, Anglophone and Portuguese cultures. The ECOWAS complication is extra ordinary but not unprecedented as a cultural transformational challenge, beyond democratic solution. Democracy in most instance has proven to provide solution to the kind of cultural transformation the ECOWAS project is faced with. The USA (United States of America) and most recently the EU (European Union), are good examples of how democracy is able to make the impossibilities associated with cultural transformations, possible. The question we are faced with is, why are responsible for transformation of the ECOWAS sluggish about exhausting all the applicable democratic options before her, when the obvious is the case? Why is the "mystery of the glass ceiling being the case, when we make available ourselves (ECRA-Ghana) to have serious TV discussion on the ECOWAS challenges? Why is the GBC shutting the door in our face? Kofi Ali Abdul-Yekin Chairman ECRA (ECOWAS Citizens Right Advocates) [email protected] +233579096749 After the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russia has steadily shown interest in many spheres, ranging from political consultations through business and economic cooperation to culture with African countries. Of a special focus, Russia attaches significance to deepening trade and investment cooperation with Africa. It is encouraging that more Russian companies, being aware of the prospects that are opening in the large market of the continent, are working actively in such fields as nuclear energy, hydrocarbon and metallurgy industries. Russia also pursues a pragmatic policy aimed at enhancing multidimensional ties with the countries of the continent on the bilateral and multilateral basis. In this exclusive interview, Professor Irina Abramova, newly-appointed Director of the Institute for African Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke recently to Kester Kenn Klomegah, an independent research writer on Russia-African affairs, about some aspects of Russia-African relations, economic cooperation, cultural dimensions and some future prospects. Interview excerpts: Q:In the first place, how would you describe Russia's position towards Africa? And the position towards Africa from the Kremlin? The events that occurred relating to the military conflict in Ukraine, the introduction of economic sanctions and countersanctions, deteriorating conditions in the energy market, show that the restructuring of the Russian economy is a strategic task of ensuring national security. The transition to the active import substitution should encourage the rapid development of high-tech industries, as well as the modernization of the industry that, in the end, will provide a transition from raw material orientation of the Russian economy to more innovative ways of development. The task of Russian researchers is to offer theoretically rationale, innovative solutions for the RF to overcome the crisis, which could give significant positive results in the short term. Africa could be one of such effective and breakthrough solutions. It is a compact, comprehensible and relevant to our capabilities possible object of economic expansion in a number of sectors, for products which are closed for western markets, as well as a promising supplier of agricultural and commodities which are necessary for the Russian consumers. One of the results of rethinking of foreign policy priorities of Russia on the basis of President Vladimir Putin's initiative was, in particular, a definite shift in Russian foreign policy in the direction of the axis of the East. Nothing new has been revealed regarding the Ukrainian crisis. It served as a new impetus for further development of mutually beneficial cooperation outside of the Euro-Atlantic partners. At the same time, due to the attempts by Western countries to isolate Russia, the growing list of promising new economic partners becomes particularly important and Russian foreign policy rotates the vector, not only to the East but also to the South, in the direction of the African continent. For Africans, Russia still appears as the most likely ally in defending its interests in the world arena as a natural counterweight to the hegemonic aspirations of one or a group of world powers. Q:As a Director of the Institute for African Studies, what would you say about the development of the current relations between Russia and Africa? In the eyes of the Russian political establishment and business community, Africa is still viewed as a continent of poverty, endless wars and epidemics, stuck in the pre-industrial stage of development, and surviving only thanks to international aid. Meanwhile, there is a different Africa Africa with rapid economic growth (5% or more per year for the last twenty years), dynamic formation of democratic management systems, modern structures and institutions of a market economy, a major player in the market of natural and human resources, a key source of growth in global demands, profitable spheres of investment operations. In recent years, Russia's relations with Africa is a new trend. It is deepening and becomes a more active political dialogue, activated economic, humanitarian and cultural cooperation. This is facilitated by negotiations at the highest level. Relations develop with leading regional associations, including the African Union. We regularly take part as guests and active participants in the discussions, including on the sidelines of international summits and conferences, and in many African capitals. Relations with African countries and regional associations in the field of security and counter-terrorism. Building mutually beneficial cooperation remains one of the main priorities of Russia. The foreign trade turnover with the countries of sub-Saharan Africa for the period from January to December 2015 was estimated at US$ 3.3 billion. A lot or a little? If we compare with the European Union - US$ 340 billion, China - about US$ 200 billion, well, somewhere close to the United States - US$ 14 billion. Expected by the end of last year, the decline of this indicator compared to 2014 year due to the general financial and economic instability in the world and the limited resources investing in large and expensive projects, the fall in world prices of most commodities. If we consider our foreign trade it is less than 1%. At the same time Russian business holds a leading position in the exploration, mining (bauxite, gold, and copper, and cobalt, and diamonds, and many more). In the future, we see the participation of domestic companies in a number of African countries, such as Egypt, South Africa, in nuclear power projects. Constant interest in the African market is maintained and major Russian oil and gas operators. An important area of work in this regard is the improvement of the legal framework of our relations with the African states. On the agenda of an agreement with the African partners on economic and trade cooperation in order to avoid double taxation and protection of intellectual property. All these questions are, of course, of great importance for the representatives of our business because they provide a solid foundation for future cooperation. Yet, it must be noted that a number of Russian companies' results of the development of the African market does not unfortunately correspond to any of our export opportunities or resources of the vast continent, which has huge reserves. As before, we cannot deny the insufficient knowledge of the Russian business structures specificity of Africa, its requirements, and other parameters. On the other hand, Africans are poorly informed about the possibilities of Russian partnership. Interest in quality enhancing economic ties, including a line of private enterprise, of course, there is a tendency of growth. To do this, first of all, to establish an effective exchange of information in the investment potential of the business, to focus efforts on expanding partnerships, increasing the return on existing cooperation mechanisms and implementation of the most complete and effective projects. In recent decades, marked by a noticeable re-activation of the whole complex of relations between Russia and Africa. At all levels, the attention to this continent in our country increases. It is important that in the process contacts between people expand. More and more of our fellow citizens visit African states, familiarize with their ancient history and culture. Q:Do you think Russia should transfer its technology to economic sectors such as agriculture, health and manufacturing in Africa? Russian technology can be quite successfully promoted in Africa, especially today in the context of the weakening of the Russian currency, which makes exports advantages of the Russian Federation. It's not just about these industries, which you mentioned, but also the exploration, transportation, infrastructure, energy, in particular, the construction of nuclear power plants. Q:In your view, have Russian authorities supported strongly Russian companies to invest in Africa? Are Russian financial institutions interested in viable corporate projects in Africa? State support, including investment insurance, is offered mostly to large companies. Meanwhile, the most important task - the support of the middle, including regional, business, and those willing to work on the continent, is more flexible and mobile. This support at the state level is still lacking. As for the Russian small business, it cannot compete with the Chinese and Africans. Q:What challenges are there for Russia returning to Africa now? Does it face any competition from other foreign players in Africa? Russia-African relations have a significant and growing resource which is promoting Russia towards achieving national priorities. This includes expanding cooperation with Africa in the international arena in terms of coincidence or closeness of positions on the formation of a new international order, another key international problem, which increases the possibility of consolidating Russia's position as an independent and influential center of world politics. The presence in the African markets favorable conditions for the implementation of the continuing competitive advantage (for example price) of Russian industrial goods, engineering products, products of the defense-industrial complex, the expansion of opportunities for the implementation of Russian innovative technologies, scientific and technological, educational, health and other services can contribute successful implementation to the import of Russian politics. At the same time, the development of Russia-African economic and trade cooperation is an effective tool for solving the problems of the Russian industry to ensure scarce and financially the least expensive types of mineral raw material reserves of many species of which Africa is a monopoly in favor of the world level. Russia may be involved in the implementation of projects aimed at achieving energy security in Africa with the use of atomic energy. It has extensive experience in the construction of nuclear power plants, modern technology with exhaust of the post Fukushima generation of safety systems. And finally, in a Russian counter sanctions condition, trade with Africa today is an important source of new demand generated due to changes in the structure of the Russian consumer market. Africa is, indeed, an important and promising partner for Russian business. But, it is a highly competitive market and there are already too many foreign players. Q:Tell us about some efforts, such as the creation of African Business Initiative, have become so important this time? Would you encourage such private initiatives? The Institute for African Studies is one of the founders of the initiative. It is a direct challenge - to move from declarations to deeds by bringing together government, diplomatic, scientific, economic and financial resources in order to promote Russian business on the continent. All previous initiatives have not led to the desired results because it didnot have a complex character. Q:Why Russia's soft power is softer compared to Soviet days? Can media play any role here? During the Soviet era, Africa was among our political and economic priorities. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, Russia has largely reoriented to western states. Currently, the Russian Federation does not have a comparable economic potential of the USSR to promote its influence in Africa. However, with existing resources, it is possible to succeed in this business, if you focus on the right directions and actively develop cultural ties with African countries, to provide scholarships to African students, to promote the Russian language and to carry out humanitarian projects. A great contribution to the improvement of Russia's authority in Africa has made the development of Russian scientists against Ebola vaccine. RF also actively supports all initiatives of African States to establish a more fair world order. In the past few months, as a result of the successful operation in Syria the Russian Federation sharply increased its prestige in Africa. The media should more actively inform Russians about the prospects for the development of the African continent, its history and culture. Unfortunately, the Russian man in the street does not know much about Africa. For Africans, so far Russia is associated with the Soviet Union, the majority of Africans still have very warm feelings towards Russia. But in general, and the Russian Federation in Africa, and Africa in the Russian Federation are very poorly represented in the media. Q:In this case, what else should be done about investment and business to "catch up" with other foreign players such as China, India, Europe and United States that are very active on the continent? I think and will strongly suggest that Russia should take the lead in preserving the balance of interests on the African continent in the system"Russia is a country of the West - the new players (China, India, Brazil)" and to seek cooperation on the full range of African issues, taking into account the national interests of each party. Q:And finally what should be done to encourage African presence both in terms of economic and culture in the Russian Federation? In this direction, what are your expert recommendations? It is necessary to organize business forum Russia-Africa, which should be held at least one time per year (that is yearly), as well as the organization of African cultural festivals, the festival of African cinema in Russia, art exhibitions and concerts of popular African artists. Creation of a special transmission of Russian television, entirely dedicated to Africa. And all these can be organized in close cooperation with the African diplomatic corps. Increase the number of scholarships to Russian universities for Africans. Active work with the African Diaspora in the Russian Federation. LANDER, Wyo. Wyoming energy producers are used to encountering opposition to planned developments. Less common are disagreements among the state's largest energy industries. A pair of Wyoming coal companies are objecting to a Houston oil firm's plans to drill 1,500 wells in the Powder River Basin. EOG Resources had submitted the proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for an environmental review in 2013. But Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy, two of the country's largest coal companies, raised concerns over the proposal during an initial comment stage meant to define the limits of the BLM's study, saying the area identified by EOG overlaps mining leases in the region. Cloud Peak's objections were particularly pointed. EOG's project overlaps areas where the Gillette-mining firm has applied for and, in some instances, acquired leases, Cloud Peak wrote in public comments submitted to the BLM. "The project's location would likely negatively impact Antelope Mine's ability to advance the mining operation and to efficiently and properly recover federal coal resources and reclaim those coal lands as existing planning documents such as the Buffalo (Resource Management Plan) mandate," the company said, referring to the BLM's plan for guiding development in the area. How EOG intends to respond to those concerns was not immediately clear. A company spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. A Cloud Peak spokesman referred a reporter to the written remarks. BLM officials, for their part, said whichever company acquired federal leases first would get legal precedent. "However, we rarely have any issues like that. Generally the industry people work it out," said Brady Owens, a spokesman for the bureau's High Plains District. The dispute comes at a time when energy development in the Powder River Basin has waned substantially. Coal output in the region is down by more than a third through the first three months of 2016, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, as producers curtail shipments in the face of weak market conditions. Cloud Peak is somewhat unique in that it is the sole company still actively pursuing new leases. Arch Coal and Peabody dropped plans for new leases in a bid to conserve cash. Peabody nevertheless raised doubts over EOG's plans, noting in its comments to the BLM that the proposal included areas designated for potential coal production. "The BLM needs to identify the overlap issues between the various leases and permits, identify whether the overlaps can be avoided, and if not identify strategies they will use to manage possible conflicts," Peabody wrote. Oil development in the area has been similarly slow, though companies have continued to permit new projects at a rapid rate. Only one oil rig was active in the Powder River Basin during the week of April 22, according to Baker Hughes. Exploration and production firms have submitted 490 permits to drill to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission thus far in April, as firms jockey for prime drilling positions in anticipation of an eventual rise in crude prices. That is down from the 572 applications submitted the same month last year, but more than the 417 applications filed in April of 2014. Federal environmental reviews, a separate process from drilling permit applications, are lengthy endeavors. The BLM released a final environmental review of the Continental Divide-Creston project, which encompasses plans for nearly 9,000 natural gas wells in southwestern Wyoming, after almost a decade last week. Widespread development of new wells there is not expected at present because of low natural gas prices. In EOG's case, the BLM will now use the initial public comments to inform a draft study. Public comment will be accepted on that draft before a final edition is completed. Presidential Staffer Kojo Adu Asare said the NPP is confused about the concept of abuse of incumbency. According to him, claims by the NPP that President Mahamas accounting to the people tour constitutes abuse of incumbency are unwarranted and hypocritical. The former Adenta MP questioned the motive of the NPP for their constant criticisms of the presidents tour: I think the NPP and their surrogates are confused about this whole idea of incumbency abuse, for me incumbency abuse is when you use your authority to deprive people of their fundamental rights, it has nothing to do with going round the region and accounting to the very people who have given you the mandate to do a job for them what you have used the resources they have given you for. Rather, abuse of incumbency was when the NPP decided to strip former president Rawlings of all his diplomatic courtesies because of his criticism of the Kufour government, so please the NPP must come again. Mr Adu Asare was contributing to a discussion on the ongoing tour of the president dubbed accounting to the people tour which has already taken him to three regions namely. the Eastern, Western and most recently Volta. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has accused President John Mahama of abuse of incumbency citing the Presidents tour as a campaign. Spokespersons of the party have argued that President Mahamas use of campaign words like this is what we want to do when you give us power, makes his tours a campaign and nothing else. They also contend that the use of state funds and time to campaign amounts to the abuse of incumbency. They want the President to come clean and admit this and not hide under the guise of working for the state. They also say that accounting is about incomes and expenditure or the negatives and the positives of what you have done with your budget. But so far, the president is only commissioning all of the positives and talking about non-existent projects, things that haven't happened and that would happen. President Mahama has personally rejected the assertion saying he is yet to campaign and when the time comes his critics will know. Officials of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) have also parried the incumbency abuse flak. Speaking onKokrokoo program on Peace fm hosted by Kwame SefaKayi, the former Adenta MP said the NPPs accusation should be disregarded and treated with the contempt it deserves. I think that because the NPP does not have a message they are seeking to play political mischief with anything and everything the president is doing. For me the president is doing the right thing and so he should be left alone He added that the President is carrying out his duties as president as the Constitution demands of him and rather it shows he is a man of his words and a man of integrity which is scarce in the body politic of Ghana today. He said Ghanaians gave President Mahama the mandate to serve and there is nothing wrong with him accounting to the people and telling them with evidence what he did with the mandate. 25.04.2016 LISTEN How do we measure the performance of Non-Governmental Organisations? While some believe that an NGO can achieve most by managing and measuring their own performance, others have the view that the long term social change for people living in poverty is a better indicator of performance. 'Value For Money' (VFM) is one of the popular performance tools that NGOs use in assessing performance, and this is a blend of these two schools of thought. Value For Money is a term used to assess whether or not an organisation has obtained the maximum benefit from the goods and services it acquires and provides, with the resources available to it. Some of the elements used in the assessment of VFM may be subjective, difficult to measure, intangible and widely misunderstood. According to the University of Cambridge (2010), VFM not only measures the cost of goods and services, but it also takes account of the mix of quality, cost, resource use, fitness for purpose, timeliness, and convenience to judge whether or not, together, they constitute good value. The above definition shows the continual challenge NGOs face in ensuring a better measure of performance. Components of Value For Money The main components of VFM are the three Es: Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness. Economy refers to the acquisition of the appropriate quality and quantity costs of inputs and resources of an intervention, at the appropriate time. It means doing things at the least cost. Efficiency refers to how much you get out of an intervention in relation to what you put in. It is about maximising an output from a given input, or minimising input for an output. It means doing things right. Effectiveness refers to how far a programme achieves its intended outcomes or objectives, using qualitative and quantitative assessments of change. It means doing the right things. Examples Using the case of a typical NGO programme work in education, with an objective of working to enhance access to education, the 3 Es can be applied in some of the following interventions: The first component, Economy would reflect in the cost of training offered, cost of constructing classrooms, etc. A useful measure would be determining the unit cost per child in getting access to classroom space, or the cost per child per academic year. Another indicator could be the cost to enable a child complete the Basic Education. This would consist of the cost of two years in kindergarten, six years in primary school, and three years in junior high. The second component, Efficiency can be evident through the selection of a central location that will be convenient for majority of the community members. In a typical rural community setting where children from a cluster of communities attend a particular school, the location can be crucial in determining the number of children who would attend school. There is a greater possibility that more children from all these communities would attend if the location is central, giving equal opportunity. Effectiveness can be enhanced by ensuring that the school has qualified teachers and the required teaching and learning materials. This would ensure that a large number of children complete school with good grades that would qualify them for further education or to take up meaningful roles in society. The NGO would therefore carefully evaluate these three components before investing funds in a particular location. The more explicit, transparent and specific an NGO is in providing evidence, the stronger the Value For Money case will be. Other Considerations in measuring VFM Mission and values Value For Money should be in line with the mission and values of an organisation. This should be about delivering activities and programmes that are of importance to the people the organisation. Therefore, perspectives of stakeholders and beneficiaries are key to judging if resources have been used as effectively and efficiently as possible in delivering change. Participatory To deliver VFM, the beneficiaries should also be involved in the planning and implementation of the interventions, identifying and choosing outcomes which are of importance to them, as well as identifying where savings can be made. Right systems in place A key set of methods for achieving VFM are those associated with good management practices. If an organisation has an effective procurement policy, good financial systems, and has a functioning monitoring and evaluation system, it would be efficient and effective. Without these policies and procedures, an NGO will find it difficult to make informed decisions about how best to use resources, and deliver results. Intra/Inter firm comparisons Intra or Inter firm comparison can be within a single agency, or between peer organisations. Methods for determining VFM from interventions aimed at engaging isolated communities will be different from ones that reach out to the general population. Service delivery may cost more in remote rural areas than in urban centres. In addition, VFM comparisons are easier to make between interventions where the output is standardised such as the construction of bore holes, than ones with complex outcomes such as providing capacity building. Hence, while recognising the context specific nature of interventions, there is a need for organisations to be able to better articulate the reasons for differences in cost per person reached by different NGOs (and even within the same NGOs) for similar interventions. Project evaluation The methods and approaches used to evaluate VFM are varied and include models such as the Cost Benefit Analysis or Social Return on Investment Studies. It requires data on results that can stand up to scrutiny and analysis. These can be used to demonstrate VFM to an external technical audience in a very transparent way. While a programme with a strong service delivery component may lend itself to economic modelling as a means of demonstrating VFM, an advocacy and campaigning programme may be better suited to a strong evaluation that explores the relationship between results and costs and makes a judgement on whether the intervention was Value For Money. Conclusion The current political and global economic environment has made it increasingly important for NGOs to describe and demonstrate VFM to donors. This is reflected in the increased demands from donors that NGOs applying for funds should provide detailed information on costs and benefits and to assess proposed activities in a more focused and rigorous way. Faced with increasing scepticism about aid and its impact and the acute fiscal constraints in many traditional donor countries, it is becoming more important that NGOs produce more innovative ways in meeting the accountability requirements to the relevant stakeholders. John Kwasi Adjei Internal Auditor, Finance and Accounts Department ActionAid Ghana 25.04.2016 LISTEN No matter what the cause, no matter what the reason, the torture of the sixteen years old boy at the hands of the Corporals is an act of shameless abuse of authority that must be dealt with in the strongest terms possible. It is a disgrace of international proportions that has generated a public outcry owing to the severe body harm and trauma which thereby caused the hospitalization of the boy. Public authority should not be used to settle personal scores and where this is done it must attract the severest possible sanction to stop impunity and set an example to other public officers not to do the same especially where such actions disgrace the sanctity and image of the military and country. This is a total disgrace. It is even more cruel and inhuman that this can be done to a person who it is purported to serve one of the Corporals. This is not how to find out about a missing item; this is sheer, savagery, inhumanity and callous disregard for humanity. Even known criminals are treated well than what was meted out to the Juvenal who continues in his harrowing experience. How can these Non-commissioned officers, allow a situation where an individual is subjected to such humiliation because of personal differences which then spill to affect the professions image. The Corporals finds themselves in a quandary on how to assuage impart of their actions? The fact that the Corporals suspect theft does not justify the manner the boy was treated. There is no license in public office for settling of scores and justice in a manner that impacts negatively on the militarys image. It does not matter if the boy stole the phone, or if indeed their suspicion was justified it does grant them the license or take it upon themselves to deny the boy proper investigating and sanctioning if proven to have committed the offense, the situation could have been better handled, and need not have come to the attention of media as is the case now. This is a domestic matter that should have been resolved with the family, failure of which the Corporals should have used all possible legal means to retrieve from the boy and his family the controversial phone rather than subject the boy and his family through the harrowing occurrence. Ordinarily in such situation the purported theft should have been reported to Military Police at the Garrison or Unit; for the purposes of saving them from such humiliation and yet at of their own volition decide to subject a Juvenal to this indignity. This is utterly reprehensible and goes to show that some officers/ORs in service have no clue about professional etiquette, let alone human relations. There are enough punitive measures in the Military to take care of or assuage the recurring of such infraction or violation. It should be noted that a person subject to service law commits an offense - if he does an act which is cruel or indecent and his doing so is disgraceful constitute a disgraceful conduct of a cruel or indecent kind. Such persons are falls offensive to service Code of Conduct and should dealt with accordingly. There is a disquiet that needs attention spring out from the media. There is the need for the Media to be professional when reporting issues that has negative statement with regards to the Security Institutions. Words like military, police, or BNI brutalities do no one any good. Most often the establishment is bastardized making everyone of the institution an evil person. The qualities of persons found within the security outfit are far better in ethics than found in the civil. Much horrendous incidents and events involving other segments of society begs the situation, even among the media fraternity; therefore harping infractions or violations to portray security institution as inhuman need their attention. It hurts when a faceless security chap is caught in a bad situation the whole institution is drawn into the fracas. We all need to act responsibly. The bad-mouthing doesnt help anyone. To my former colleagues the public is watching to see what action will be taken over this despicable, irrational and totally unacceptable conduct by the Corporals. WO1 Nana Akwah RSM Med Mor Regt 1992-97 [email protected] HARARE, Zimbabwe, 25 April 2016, -/African Media Agency (AMA)/- Strong, successful, self-sufficient nations are generally characterised as those that build institutions and practices that allow a people to govern themselves in peaceful and prosperous ways. Effective leadership is critical to this success, as is strategy, vision, partnership and people. Within a few decades Africa will be home to a quarter of the world's population. In order for the continent to deliver on its ambitious but pragmatic socioeconomic development agenda, Agenda 2063, robust systems, financing mechanisms and policies are needed. The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) established a quarter of a century ago, has a long term strategy to build human, institutional and 'soft' capacities to contribute actively to the continent's structural transformation agenda. Since its inception, ACBF has invested over $1 billion, building institutions in 45 countries and supporting Regional Economic Communities, continental organisations and over 41 Policy Units and Think Tanks. With its emphasis on training and educating economists, financial and development experts, its emphasis has always been to equip Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning, Central Banks, Offices of Statistics with the skills and capabilities to develop sound macroeconomic management and financial control mechanisms. The Foundation has more recently turned its attention to private sector and civil society capacity building, with an emphasis on women empowering organisations. Professor Emmanuel Nnadozie, Executive Secretary of the ACBF believes that sustainable development can only be achieved through building skills, knowledge and capabilities of African individuals and institutions, and ensuring that capacity in an integral part of pan-African policies. Such skills need to be retained and harmonised for utilisation on the continent. Speaking ahead of the 3rd Capacity Development Forum (CDF) to be held in ACBF's host country, Zimbabwe from 3-5 May, Nnadozie said that about 500 delegates were expected in Harare to discuss how to 'Develop Capacity for Africa's Economic and Social Transformation'. "Delegates gathering in Harare as part of our 25th Anniversary will address several important issues, with a view to moving the debate from dialogue to action. This forum will look at how Africa can innovate, emulate, replicate in order to transforms itself and make a significant impact in building the critical skills that we need. Ministers of Finance and Planning, multilateral agencies, funding partners, academics and representatives from ACBF-supported institutions will consider the capacity dimensions on Agenda 2063 and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a particular emphasis on the role of governments, development partners, civil society, private sector, training institutions and the media in supporting the development of capacity for Africa's economic and social transformation". Zimbabwe's Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Hon. Patrick Chinamasa, will co-convene the Forum. Invited speakers include H.E. Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa and H.E. Erastus Mwencha, the Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission. There will be several thematic side events, including a session on the role of science, innovation and technology in Africa's social and economic transformation. This is organised by the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), based in Tanzania. The African Development Bank will host a parallel event on the role of Development Banks in Africa's social and economic transformation, while HESPI, the Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute will hold an event on the role of Think Tanks in Africa's sustainable and inclusive social and economic development. The Uganda-based Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa will examine how African governments can develop capacity for effective tobacco control. Other side events include two case studies - one from Zimbabwe, looking at evidence-based planning for social and economic transformation and another from Uganda, on the role of Parliaments in implementing Africa's transformation agenda. Continuing on the transformation theme, Professor Nnadozie went on to highlight how some of the world's fastest growing economies have achieved their success through strategic investments in human, institutional and organizational capacities. "The top performing emerging economies, including Brazil, China, United Arab Emirates, India and Malaysia have all implemented long-term economic transformation agendas, supported by the development and implementation of effective socio-economic policies. Many African economies such as Ethiopia, Cote d'Ivoire and Rwanda are also experiencing rapid growth. What sets them apart is the focus on building sustainable capacity for effective development and their commitment both to effective policy formulation and policy implementation". He concluded: "25 years is a strategic milestone for us. We have held two previous Capacity Development Forums - in Mali and Mozambique. This third Forum presents us with an opportunity to reposition ourselves as the continental leaders in spearheading a new Capacity Development Platform for coordinating capacity building on the continent. We need an Africa that is capable of achieving its own development and it is time to stop talking the talk and start walking the talk - we should no longer be talking about what needs to be done, but how exactly we are going to do it". Kumasi Polytechnic students have locked all entrances to the school while they are demonstrating and preventing academic activities in protest against the current SRC executives. The students have accused the schools Students Representative Council (SRC) of misappropriation of funds meant for a just ended SRC week celebration. Clad in red outfits and holding placards and chanting songs, the students demanded that the SRC executives come out and explain to them how the funds were used. "They have wasted our monies which were meant for the SRC week this year. They said they would bring some artists and organise some activities but we did not see all the activities budgeted for, a student told Joy News. Luv FM's Erastus Asare Donkor reports that the angry students rejected pleas by school authorities to unlock the entrance of the school. Rector of the Polytechnic, Professor Nsowah Nuamah expressed surprise at a student demonstration to demand accountability from their own. He says the demonstration was unnecessary as audit units of the polytechnic structures are available to address allegations of embezzlement leveled against current SRC executives. "You only have to report this to management and management will take over from there, no need to demonstrate," he stated. Professor Nsowah Nuamah Professor Nsowah Nuamah said the management of the school invited the police to calm down tempers and to get the students to open the entrances. United Nations Special Rapporteur Dainius Puras will visit Algeria from 27 April to 10 May 2016 to assess how far the right to health has been realised in the country. I look forward to learning how Algeria endeavours to implement the right to health, including the measures the country has taken to date and the challenges it faces, Mr. Puras said. His visit will be the first visit to Algeria by an independent expert charged by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor the implementation of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. During the visit, the Special Rapporteur will examine achievements and challenges related to the enjoyment of the right to health, including the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health services, goods and facilities. Mr. Puras will also assess factors that affect the right to health in the country, including poverty and social exclusion. I will be particularly interested in addressing specific issues during this visit, especially within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the expert said. Among these issues are: access to primary healthcare; sexual and reproductive health; mental health; violence against women and girls; HIV/AIDS; and drug and substance use. The Special Rapporteur will examine the situation of key populations and groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers, migrants, and persons with disabilities, as well as women, young people and children. The UN Special Rapporteur will share his preliminary conclusions on the visit with the media at a press conference on 10 May 2016 at 10:00, at the UN House, 41 Rue Mohamed Khoudi- El Biar, Algiers. President John Dramani Mahama 25.04.2016 LISTEN Before I settled on the caption of this article, I toyed with two other possibilities, namely, Telling the Truth is No Academic Disgrace, Dr. Apaak, and Amoako-Baah Told It Like It Is. Indeed, when he made the statement attributed to him, Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah was more specific than the reporter from Classfmonline.com whose report sought to cast the same for widespread public consumption. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) political scientist had stated that Id bet [that] more than 60-percent of key government positions in this country are filled by northerners (See Amoako-Baah Is A Disgrace to Academia Apaak Modernghana.com 4/11/16). What is significant to note here is the fact that campaigning for the presidency in 2012, then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama publicly and shamelessly cast himself as the only authentic hope for the catching-up development of the so-called Three Northern Regions. His authority for making such a civically biased and politically invidious statement was indisputably and unabashedly based on the fact that the campaigner himself had been born Up-North. If anybody in Ghana, intellectual or non-intellectual, gave the clearly erroneous impression that the northern-half of the country was mono-linguistically and ethnically composed, that personality was definitely none other than President John Dramani Mahama, and not Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah. And so one is totally at a loss as to why Dr. Clement Apaak, the northern-born so-called presidential staffer, would so virulently accuse Dr. Amoako-Baah of deviously seeking to characterize the entire northern geopolitical sphere as an area that was wholly constituted by a single ethnic group. I have pointed out the fact that until Election 2016 drew dangerously and uncomfortably nigh, President Mahama had surrounded himself almost exclusively with Ghanaians of northern descent, among them Drs. Raymond Atuguba and Apaak, of course; Mr. Mahama Ayariga and one of the Jinapor brothers, and a platoon of Anlo-Ewe loyalists. Looking at the profile of his cabinet appointees in the pre-Debrah era, one would have had a hard time imagining the fact that Akans, at approximately 50-percent of the entire population of the country (the figure could actually be higher, depending on how any census taker reckoned the same), constituted the single largest ethnic group in Ghana. Well, it is true that in failing to back up his assertion with facts and figures, Dr. Amoako-Baah did what most academicians who are very much concerned about their credibility and social reputation would not do, by leaving himself facilely open to the sort of attack launched by Dr. Apaak. But it is equally egregious that in seeking to set the records straight, and Dr. Amoako-Baah aright, as it were, Dr. Apaak does not provide his audience with the sort of facts and figures that would have effectively, even if not permanently, silenced this ardent and most vocal critic of the Mahama government. Instead, we have Dr. Apaak desperately thrashing about and vacuously rehashing what most reasonably well-educated Ghanaians have always known which is the fact that Northern Ghana is composed of a multiplicity of ethnic and linguistic polities. Indeed, he may not readily have the fact and figures to back up his observations and statements, but it is only the most unconscionable and morally reckless cynic who would seriously dispute the fact that virtually all the presidents of Ghanas Fourth Republic have packed the most powerful and significant positions in their cabinet with kith and kin, the way Dr. Amoako-Baah put it. I have personally had occasion to write and publish an article criticizing then-President John Agyekum-Kufuor for appointing his younger brother, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, as his Defense Minister and gotten hurricanely run out of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) by a group that I labeled as the Edweso/Ejisu Faction of NPP-USA. What I had actually said was that it would have been more politically savvy if President Kufuor had appointed his physician brother Ghanas Health Minister, with the portfolio of Defense Minister logically going to Maj-Gen Hamidu, who had previously served as President Kufuors National Security Advisor. Now lets get to the brass-tacks: There is absolutely nothing either disgraceful or unacademic about Dr. Amoako-Baahs merely echoing what President Mahama has been preaching to Ghanaian voters, particularly those of northern ethnic descent, all along which is that all the people of northern Ghana are inviolably homogeneous, even when the facts of history and practical reality point to a wholly different narrative. Dr. Apaak may do himself and the rest of us great good by explaining precisely why Mr. Mahama, his magnanimous paymaster, rabidly attacked Nana Akufo-Addo in the heat of the 2012 presidential-election campaign, when the New Patriotic Partys candidate promised to upgrade the dismal and insufferable living conditions of female head porters, or kayayei, with the provision of clean and affordable housing facilities. You see, those who live in straw-huts had better desist from playing with match sticks. *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs 25.04.2016 LISTEN By D.I. Laary, GNA Accra, April, GNA - The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has introduced a fully-packed-Language Monitoring-Instrument to check abusive speech, as political actors intensify their campaign activities to canvass votes - eight months into the November Polls. The tools, endorsed by a wide range of stakeholders, would serve as a guide for observers to track about 70 radio networks across, the 10 regions, against allowing political actors to use their platforms as conduit to perpetrate hatred and animosity. Mr Sulemana Braimah, the Executive Director of MFWA, told the participants that the 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections ought to be contested on ideas and issues devoid of insults and the instigation of violence in order to address the concerns undermining national progress. The monitors recruited would apply the communication guide to pinpoint individuals and radio stations that encouraged the use of abusive language so that the offenders would be named and shamed in an effort to nib the practice in the bud, he said. The Director reminded media practitioners and journalists of their powerful role in consolidating democracy and enhancing economic development through education and information. They should, therefore, not succumb to pressure from self-seeking politicians to disturb the national peace. Professor Kofi Agyekum, Dean of the School Performing Arts, University of Ghana, also highlighted the importance of Language as a double-edge tool that could be used to make peace or foment conflict and create instability. He, consequently, urged the media to assert their critical role in society and ensure that this year's elections became peaceful by focusing on decent language in broadcasting. They should direct communicators to address issues of national concerns without recourse to the use of unsavoury language that inflamed passions, he advised. The monitoring would be done over a nine-month period -from April to December- during which records would be taken on the times of broadcasting of programmes, the stations, their ownership and the location of radio station. The names of hosts, guests or presenters, political party and main subjects of the discussions as well as the attribution, sources of news and programme content would be penned down. The instrument also assesses language and expressions used, including insult, hate speech against a particular ethnic group or religion, prejudice, bigotry, inflammatory expressions, incitement, curses or ethnic slurs and stereotyping. Politicians making unsubstantiated allegations, using gender specific insults and divisive expressions would also be closely watched. The Foundation would also monitor types of stories, embellishment or enhancement used, programme handling by host, focus on news programmes or discussions and event broadcasting. Agents of political parties, the media, Peace Council, National Commission for Civic Education, Electoral Commission, National Media Commission, Ghana Journalists Association and Civil Society groups validated the instrument at a meeting facilitated by MFWA. It is under the theme, 'Promoting Decent Language and Issue-based Campaigning for Peaceful Elections in Ghana, 2016'. The Open Society Initiative for West Africa and Star Ghana are funding the scheme. GNA A family is devastated over the loss of many family members and friends. At least 25 people have died in six days after eating cake which police suspect was mixed with pesticides. About 54 people were sickened after eating the sweets in Punjab, Pakistan. Umar Hayat, 58, hosted the party for friends and family in Karor Lal Esan, in celebration of the birth of his grandson. After eating mini cakes that were purchased from a bakery, many people got sick. Police said that 10 people died the same day of the party and 15 more have passed away since. Police official Munir Ahmed confirmed that the dead includes the newborn baby's father and seven uncles. Hayat lost all of his eight sons, some daughters and grandchildren all within 6 days. The death toll from the consumption of the sweets has now risen to 25, and 52 people are still being treated at various hospitals, Ahmed said. Police arrested three people, the two owners of the bakery, who are brothers, and a worker. Police said that the pesticide store near the bakery was being renovated, and the owner of that store asked the bakery owners to hold some pesticides in the bakery for safe keeping. A worker may have accidentally used a small packet of pesticides in the cake, police said. The remains of the mini cakes will be sent to a laboratory for testing. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif announced that the next of kin of those killed will receive 500,000 Pakistani rupees ($4,772) in aid. Bujumbura (Burundi) (AFP) - Burundi has suffered a year of bloody crisis, born of President Pierre Nkurunziza's divisive bid for a third term, which he secured last July. The opposition maintains that Nkurunziza's move was unconstitutional and violated a peace deal that ended a 1993-2006 civil war. More than 500 people have been killed in the violence and more than 270,000 have become refugees since the crisis erupted, according to the UN. - Demonstrations start - April 25, 2015: Nkurunziza declared candidate for a third term in office by his ruling CNDD-FDD party. The following day thousands of protesters demonstrate in several parts of the capital, the start of six weeks of almost daily demonstrations in Bujumbura that are clamped down on by police. - Failed coup - May 13: A top Burundian general, Godefroid Niyombare, announces the overthrow of Nkurunziza, hours after the president flew to neighbouring Tanzania for talks with regional leaders on ending the crisis. May 15: Coup leaders announce they will surrender, before being arrested by loyalist forces. Nkurunziza returns to the presidential palace in the capital. - Defections - June 28: Parliament head Pie Ntavyohanyuma says he has fled to Belgium denouncing the president's "illegal" third term bid. He joins a long list of opposition leaders, journalists, members of civil society, and even disillusioned members of the ruling party who have chosen exile. - Nkurunziza re-elected - July 21: Nkurunziza is re-elected as expected in an election boycotted by the opposition. - Targetted attacks - August 2: General Adolphe Nshimirimana, widely seen as the central African nation's de facto internal security chief and considered the regime's number two, is killed in a rocket attack. An AFP journalist at the scene of his death in the capital is detained by government forces and beaten. On August 3, human rights activist Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa, who had publicly opposed Nkurunziza's bid for a third term, is wounded by gunfire. On August 15, Colonel Jean Bikomagu, the former head of Burundi's army during a 13-year civil war, is assassinated. December 11: At least 87 people are killed in coordinated attacks by unidentified gunmen on three military sites that trigger a fierce riposte from the security forces. - Risk of genocide - December 17: The African Union says it will not allow genocide to take place in Burundi, as the UN orders a probe into widespread abuses and warns of looming civil war. A day later, former president Pierre Buyoya warns of the "risk of genocide". - UN police - April 2, 2016: The UN Security Council unanimously backs a resolution that lays the groundwork for deploying UN police officers in Burundi. In mid-April UN chief Ban Ki-moon proposes three options for a new UN police mission there, ranging from a full force of 3,000 officers to a quick dispatch of 20 to 50. In late January, the African Union had shelved plans to send a peacekeeping force to Burundi, amid reticence by several African heads of state and opposition figures in the country. - Torture - April 18: UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein voices alarm at a sharp increase in the use of torture and ill-treatment, with at least 345 cases recorded so far this year. "Perpetrators of torture and ill-treatment have so far enjoyed total impunity," he warns. - ICC probe - April 25: Tutsi general and security advisor Athanase Kararuza is killed by heavily-armed men. The International Criminal Court says it is opening an investigation into the violence. Two suspected robbers who snatched a woman's handbag and attempted to escape with it on a motorbike have been knocked down by a taxi driver. The two - Mumuni Abubakari and Albert Laryea - were said to have snatched the bag of a 45-year old woman on Monday around the DVLA office at 37 in Accra around 7:20am. The taxi driver [name withheld] who witnessed the incident, quickly drove on top speed towards the two persons who were on an unregistered motorbike and hit knocked them down, the Police has told Onua FM. This is the second time a taxi driver has crashed suspected armed robbers on a motorbike in Accra. Three suspected robbers who shot and attempted to rob a worker of the Koala Shopping Mall on January 9 at about 8:00am were crashed a taxi driver. He has since received various rewards including a car and a house. Giving account of Monday's incident, Acting Commander of the National Highway Patrol, DSP Isaac Asetum, said the driver knocked down the motorbike after one of the robbers scaled a wall, unknowingly into a Police barracks at 37 in an attempt to escape. One of the robbers, Mumuni Abubakar, sustained injuries while the other was not hurt, he said, noting that the two have since been arrested and investigation into the case has started. Four ladys hand bags were retrieved from the two upon their arrest, he said, adding We are currently looking through the hand bags for ID cards that will help us identify the owners, DSP Asetum told Onua FM. He lauded the effort by the taxi driver saying, We applaud the driver for his bravery and we recommend other drivers to emulate the example set by these two taxi drivers, DSP Asetum said. The 45-year old victim told Onua FM the robbers beat me up hitting my cheeks severally. Now I feel severe pains in my jaw area. Rome (AFP) - NATO is ten weeks away from launching a naval mission off Libya as part of a controversial US-backed plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe, officials said Monday. The advanced state of preparations for the operation was revealed by Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti as leaders of the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy met in Germany. Their talks were due to touch on the migrant crisis and instability and Islamist infiltration in Libya. Modelled on an existing NATO operation in waters between Turkey and Greece, the Libya mission is set to be approved by NATO leaders at a Warsaw summit on July 7, Pinotti said in an interview with Italian daily La Stampa. The plan forms part of a broader Italian strategy to stop migrants using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe by flying those with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. The plans have been slammed by refugee and rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what the Catholic leader sees as an arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. - US on board - But it became clear Monday that the strategy has already secured US President Barack Obama's approval. "The United States would be supportive of a NATO mission in the central Mediterranean," a senior US official told reporters. Germany has indicated it will support a naval mission to stop more weapons flooding into Libya, but wants it under EU rather than NATO command, officials said. Britain is likely to be uncomfortable with that in the run-up to its June referendum on EU membership. More than 350,000 migrants have reached Italy on boats from Libya since the start of 2014. Aid organisations say over half have a legitimate claim to refuge from persecution or conflict. But this year's influx has been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa, a region the European Union considers safe for people to be returned to. Under Italy's proposals, an existing NATO mission, Operation Active Endeavour, would be "recalibrated" into one overseeing the Libyan coast. NATO's operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey is the first of its kind for an alliance still seeking to define its role in the post-Cold War world. An operation off Libya would be more complicated given the presence in some coastal regions of Libya of Islamic State fighters. The NATO presence could act as a deterrent to traffickers putting to sea with their human cargoes. - 'Appalling conditions' - But it is thought unlikely they would seek to turn boats back on the model Australia has adopted in recent years. "It is worth remembering that Libya is not party to the Geneva convention and that conditions in its detention centres are appalling," said Libya expert Mattia Toaldo. "I don't think NATO will turn boats back but I do think Italy will start flying people home direct from Sicily." Pinotti said she would be seeking support for this "difficult" option in Hanover. "This is the road to follow, combined with respect for human rights and support for countries of origin to handle the repatriated," she said. Any repatriations depend on readmission agreements being concluded with individual countries. African leaders showed little enthusiasm for that at a summit with their EU counterparts in Malta last year but Brussels' vast aid budget means it has plenty of leverage if needed. Libya's fledgling national unity government last week offered to enter into a Turkey-style deal with Italy to take back migrants, but such an accord is seen as a distant prospect because of the rights and safety issues. Italy is preparing to lead a UN-backed peacekeeping force into Libya, if and when the new government is deemed to have obtained sufficient authority to ask for international help in stabilising the country. The 6,000-strong force will be charged primarily with training up Libyan security forces but will be able to call on US warplanes and drones based in Italy for its protection if required. Two exhibitors at the just ended 7th Oil, Gas and Power Summit held in Accra, took home a 4G LTE data package each after winning the busy 4G Draw. They are, Ms Lordina Ofori of GIL Automations and Mr Badari Narayana, Manager of Group Menergy. The draw was held as part of the closing ceremony of the two-day summit. Exhibitors and patrons of the summit were required to deposit their business cards in a bowl provided at the busy stand to be part of the draw. Busy, which recently launched its 4G LTE mobile service was named the official 4G Wifi sponsor for the summit. Chief Executive Officer of Busy, Mr Praveen Sadalage, said Busy remained poised to leverage every opportunity to delight both organisations and individuals with its wireless routers and MiFis at different data bundle prices. Busy used the summit to showcase its Business Ultra, a product that guarantees unlimited Internet access solutions for mid to large businesses. Business Ultra is the ideal solution for businesses with multiple users of bandwidth-heavy applications such as video streaming, video chatting and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) downloading, he stated. Mr. Sadalage revealed further that currently, Busys 4G data services extends from Kasoa to Prampram in the Greater Accra Region and to Ayi Mensa, near Aburi. The Oil, Gas & Power Summit and Exhibition is viewed by industry players as the only event committed to driving Ghanas oil, gas and power potential forward. It is the official meeting of the Government, decision makers of the oil, gas and power sector of Ghana and where energy policies are discussed and developed. The event has a strong local as well as international attendance for strategic networking and partnerships. It is the most reputable oil, gas and power event in Ghana bringing together the Government, international and regional experts, key decision makers, contractors and service providers under one roof. 25.04.2016 LISTEN From Edmond Gyebi, Tamale Christopher Bama THE FAMILY of Christopher Bama, the 16 year old boy who was brutally tortured by five soldiers from the Tamale Airborne Force has hinted of dragging the Military High Command and the suspected soldiers to Court, for unjustifiably abusing the human rights of the little boy. According to Mr. Kofi Konlan, an Uncle of Christopher, a private lawyer in Accra has been engaged by the family to critically examine the case and advise them accordingly. Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Konlan said that the family was highly alarmed by the degree of pain, injuries and torture inflicted on poor Christopher by the five soldiers. Mr. Kofi Konlan, who is also the Administrator at the Nsawam Government Hospital, said that Christopher Bama at the moment could not be said to be a normal human being, since his condition continues to deteriorate by the day. According to him, the only joy the family have at the moment was the fact that a scan result from Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to confirm a suspected kidney problem had proven negative. Luckily enough, one of the scans the doctors asked us to do at Korle Bu has come as good news because the scan indicated that Christopher's kidney is still intact, even though the doctors were suspecting a damage of the kidney, due to a frequent discharge of some fluid. Mr. Konlan said that though Christopher was responding to treatment, he could categorically say that: His condition is not the best. Christopher is still very weak. He cannot walk on his own unless you support him. There is no strength in him but we are still praying for speedy recovery for him. He commended the nurses and doctors at the Nsawam Government Hospital for the way they were professionally managing Christopher. Mr. Kofi Konlan said that nothing could change the family's decision to take the culprits and the Military High Command to court for human rights abuse. Meanwhile, the Senior Brother and Senior Sister of Christopher (the assault victim), Richard Bama and Patience Bama, told The Chronicle that their major challenge in catering for the victim was about how to get money for his medical expenses. They told The Chronicle that the main culprit, Corporal Atuahene, had for some time now not been footing Christopher's medical bills as promised initially and that the Military High Command was also silent. Last week, however the Public Relations Officer of the 6 Garrison, Flying Officer Elizabeth F. Salifu and the Commanding Officer (CO) of the Tamale Airborne Force, Lt. Col. Joseph Malik Punamane said that Corporal Atuahene as at last week Wednesday had spent over GHC2,300 on the boy, a claim the family has fiercely refuted. The Chronicle gathered that the victim (Christopher Bama) was kept in the house by the family for close to four days, while looking for money, after the Doctors at Nsawam Government Hospital had directed that the patient be sent to Korle Bu for the kidney scan. It would be recalled that, the 16 year old boy, Christopher Bama, was accused of stealing a TECNO mobile phone belonging to a soldier, Corporal Sampson Atuahene of the Tamale Airborne Force. Corporal Atuahene and his four other soldier friends, including one Collins Agyei Boamah were said to have handcuffed and hanged the boy on top of a mango tree. With his legs not touching the ground, the 16 year old boy, believed to be a long-standing errand boy for Corporal Sampson Atuahene, was beaten till he allegedly fell unconscious, and yet the soldiers would not show any mercy. To further force the boy to produce the missing phone he claimed he never took, the two soldiers, according to an eyewitness, melted plastic materials (polythene bags) and dropped them on Christopher's naked body until he regained consciousness. According to Patience Bama, a Senior Sister of Christopher Bama, the boy went to the military quarters at Shishegu near Nyohini to fetch water with someone's motorbike. . Later, the soldiers called him to come back to the quarters, where they accused him of stealing the mobile phone and brutally assaulted him. Christopher could not pass urine, and was, therefore, given a foley catheter to aid his urination. Before his transfer to Nsawam Government Hospital, the victim according to the Chief Executive Officer of God Cares Community Hospital in Tamale, Dr. Richard Opoku the patient (victim) had started behaving abnormally and was persistently vomiting, which, he said, was a sign of intracranial injury (head injury). His condition, according to Doctor Opoku, was not getting better as further medical examination revealed that he had started discharging some fluid in the abdomen, and that they could not readily determine whether it was blood or peritoneal fluid. Meanwhile, the Northern Regional Police Command has told The Chronicle that there was no way the case would be swept under the carpet. According to the Northern Regional Crime Offer, ASP John Anane, the police investigations were still ongoing but were waiting patiently for the certified medical report from the Nsawam Government Hospital where Christopher is receiving treatment to determine the specific charges to be pressed on the suspected soldiers. The Chronicle's investigations are still ongoing, and we shall bring the detailed report on the actual date Christopher's lawyer would determine for the legal suit to commence, and other development on the condition of Christopher Bama. Rome (AFP) - The United States on Monday offered its backing for a NATO naval operation off Libya in support of a controversial Italian plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe. "Barack Obama said he was willing to commit NATO assets to block the traffic in human beings and the people smugglers that we refer to as modern slavers," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told reporters after meeting the US President and the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in Hanover, Germany. The talks touched on the migrant crisis and instability and Islamist infiltration in Libya, from where 350,000 people have travelled by sea to Italy since the start of 2014. Italian defence minister Roberta Pinotti had earlier revealed that preparations for a naval blockade were already advanced, with approval expected when NATO leaders meet on July 7 in Warsaw. US officials confirmed that Washington is fully on board. The naval action envisaged is part of a broader Italian strategy to stop people using Libya as a launchpad for reaching Europe. This will involve flying migrants with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centres to reintegrate them. Those plans have been slammed by refugee and rights groups and the EU has also come under fire from Pope Francis for what the Catholic leader sees as an arbitrary distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. - Germany seeks EU command - Germany has said it supports naval action to combat trafficking of weapons as well as people, but wants it under EU rather than NATO command. "Through the NATO mission in the Aegean Sea, the US has shown its willingness to take part in combating illegal immigration here," Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Hanover. "The USA is fully engaged and ready, in connection with the migration route from Libya to Italy, to share responsibility if necessary. "However, we now have a European mission, EUNAVFOR, also called Sophia, which is working quite well." Aid organisations say over half the boat people arriving in Italy have a clear-cut right to refuge from persecution or conflict and many more deserve proper examination of their asylum applications. But this year's influx has been overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa, a region the European Union considers safe for people to be returned to. Under Italy's proposals, an existing NATO mission, Operation Active Endeavour, would be "recalibrated" into one overseeing the Libyan coast. NATO's operation to stop migrant boats reaching the Greek islands from Turkey is the first of its kind for the alliance. An operation off Libya would be more complicated given the presence in some coastal regions of Libya of Islamic State fighters. The NATO presence could act as a deterrent to traffickers putting to sea with their human cargoes. - 'Appalling conditions' - But it is currently unlikely they would seek to turn boats back on the model Australia has adopted in recent years. "It is worth remembering that Libya is not party to the Geneva convention and that conditions in its detention centres are appalling," said Libya expert Mattia Toaldo. "I don't think NATO will turn boats back but I do think Italy will start flying people home direct from Sicily." Any repatriations depend on readmission agreements being concluded with individual countries. African leaders showed little enthusiasm for that at a summit with their EU counterparts in Malta last year but Brussels' vast aid budget means it has plenty of leverage if needed. Libya's fledgling administration, known as the government of national accord (GNA), last week offered to enter into a Turkey-style deal with Italy to take back migrants. Such an accord had been seen as a distant prospect because of the rights and safety issues but Renzi said Monday he did not see why it could not happen. Italy is preparing to lead a UN-backed peacekeeping force into Libya if and when the GNA has consolidated power sufficiently to be able to ask for outside help without facing a domestic rebellion. The force, expected to involve 6,000 troops, will be charged primarily with training up Libyan security forces but will also be able to call on US warplanes and drones based in Italy for protection if required. 25.04.2016 LISTEN The Nigerian Guardian newspaper, on Thursday, April 21, 2016, published a story headlined, Fulanis invade farms, shoot guard Buhari orders military deployment. According to the story, about 18 persons, suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, stormed some farms in the Lagun Village of the Lagelu Local Council in Oyo State, Nigeria, and shot the chief security guard, one Jimmy Aido. The story continued that the suspected Fulani herdsmen also robbed the residents of the farms and carted away an undisclosed amount of money in the process. The gunmen were said to have first invaded Ardis Farms, a large section of the area that belongs to the former Secretary to the Oyo State Governor, Ayodel Adigun, and ransacked it, before moving to other settlements in the neighbouring villages of Adedokun and Alapata, both in the Lagelu local government area. An eyewitness account had it that the invaders, armed with sophisticated weapons, had earlier robbed unsuspecting motorists along the Iwo-Ibadan Road for some hours, before attacking the farms along the axis. They raided each farm and carted away heavy sums of money and foodstuffs, the story narrated. Displeased with the way things were going, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the deployment of the military to states currently battling to contain conflicts between farmers and Fulani herdsmen. The deployment, according to a spokesman for the President, Garba Shehu, was part of measures to end the scourge that had claimed several lives and affected farming activities in the affected states. Already, the Guards Brigade of the Nigeria Army has plunged into action, deploying soldiers to bring the situation under control. So far, the soldiers have arrested 92 Fulani herdsmen in Abuja. The suspected herdsmen were said to have told the soldiers that they were on a mission to recover their stolen cows. The military troops recovered one pump action gun, 19 cartridge dane guns, 118 cartridge ammo, 28 cutlasses, 3 jack knives, 14 sticks, 7 torch lights, certificate of occupancy, assorted charms and hard drugs. From the ongoing, it is abundantly clear that President Muhammadu Buhari is not taking the issue of the Fulani herdsmen lightly, and is determined to reduce it to the barest minimum, if not eradicate it. It is against this backdrop that The Chronicle is urging President John Dramani Mahama to take a cue from his Nigerian counterpart to deal with the Fulani herdsmen saga once and for all. The issue of the Fulani herdsmen has been a thorny matter affecting both countries, but, the bold manner in which the Nigerian leader is tackling the menace goes to demonstrate his willingness to free farmers in the oil rich country. Even though a joint team of police and military personnel, in what is known as 'Operation Cowleg' some months ago, stormed Agogo, where the Fulani herdsmen are wrecking havoc on the people, to evict them, The Chronicle is inclined to believe that their effort is simply not enough. Another issue that is bothering Ghanaians is the fact that since the fight between the Fulani herdsmen and Agogo farmers kick-started several months ago, only a hand full of the nomads have been arrested, unlike in Nigeria, where in less than a month 92 have been picked up. We reiterate our call on Mr. John Dramani Mahama to emulate the example of his Nigerian counterpart, commission the military into action, and evict the nomads from the country to pave the way for our farmers to have their peace of mind to produce food to feed Ghanaians. Accra (AFP) - Security has been beefed up in Accra and Lome following a leaked intelligence report that indicated Islamist militants were likely to launch their next attacks in Ghana and Togo. In Ghana's capital, there has been an increased visible police presence in public places such as malls and beaches, while officers in plain clothes are also patrolling. Upmarket hotels such as the five-star Kempinski, Moevenpick and La Palm Royal Beach have likewise introduced measures such as thorough searches of vehicles and extra security guards. Nearly 200 kilometres (125 miles) east in Lome, guests at places such as the Sarakawa hotel and the Ibis are subject to checks while the government has urged the use of surveillance cameras. The precautions have been put in place after a leaked report from Ghana's National Security Council Secretariat warned of a possible attack similar to those recently in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. The alert said Ghana and Togo were "the next targets" and called for greater vigilance at borders and screening for visitors from "high risk" countries. For the attack on the Grand-Bassam resort in Ivory Coast in March, heavily armed gunmen entered from Mali in a Niger-registered 4x4 and hid their weapons in the petrol tank. Nineteen people were killed. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility, as well for a similar strike in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou, in January that left 30 dead. - Cooperation - Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama on April 15 said no country in West Africa was immune from attack and called for the public to be alert. Police said "adequate measures" have since been put in place "to forestall any terrorist attacks or disturbances". "All the requisite operational strategies, including intelligence gathering and tactical deployment of personnel have been unfolded to nip any breach of the peace in the bud," it added. "In view of this, the police is seeking the co-operation of the general public in the fight against the scourge of terrorism and other violent crimes." As such, people in both countries are having to get used to more frequent vehicle checks, bag and body searches as well as identity checks. "Those in charge of private security guard companies should know we're working together," Togo's security minister Colonel Yark Damehame has said. "These are our orders," said one police officer at the main entrance of the Sarakawa hotel on Lome's waterfront. "We're searching all the vehicles that enter the hotel." - Climate of fear - Upmarket hotels and venues popular with Westerners and the wealthy have increasingly become targets for Islamist groups since the Mumbai attacks in November 2008. Then, 10 gunmen stormed three luxury hotels, a popular tourist restaurant, a Jewish cultural centre, and a railway station in India's commercial capital, killing 166 in a siege that lasted nearly three days. In 2013, Shebab fighters attacked the Westgate mall in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. At least 67 were killed. The Grand-Bassam attack was similar to one on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia, in June last year that killed 38; AQIM also killed 20 at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali. At the West Hills Mall in Accra, senior high school student Matilda Nimako said she was now apprehensive about coming to the venue. "I just want to quickly grab food here and leave," she told AFP. "If it wasn't for all this terror thing I would have eaten here. "Even my friend said I should wait for her but I won't wait here. I will cross over to the other side of the street to wait." Some businesses, too, say the climate of fear is affecting trade. "I think the news about the terror attacks is not helping us," said Kwame Anim, who runs a small cosmetics stall inside the Accra Mall. Anim said he had seen his takings plummet since the report. "People are just afraid to come to the mall," he said. 25.04.2016 LISTEN (A GNA feature by Alexander Nyarko Yeboah) Accra, April 25, GNA - Karl Marx once said that 'Religion is the opium of the masses.' The German Communist Political Philosopher and Economist in a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843), observed that "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people". By this assertion, Marx intended to set the premise on which the issue of wrong influence of religion could be addressed. A careful analysis of the statement is a clear attestation to the situation we seem to face in the world today. Firstly, Marx observed that religion is the only means by which the oppressed could sigh. This is because religion offers the individual some hope that the bad situation would turn around. Then again he believed that the world is heartless and therefore religion, with its moral and spiritual tempo, gives a heart to an otherwise unreasonable world. Then he indicated that the conditions mankind faces in life are so bad that they could only be compared to soullessness. It is this soullessness of the conditions of the world that has exalted religion such that it has indeed become an opium that drowses the senses of man such that one cannot think straight but allows himself or herself to be easily influenced by doctrines that do not seem to be reasonable. This is why throughout history there have been many instances in which some so called preachers have risen to lead many people astray. Even though from the distance one can clearly see the mischief and error in their submissions, it is rather ironical that the people who follow such religious leaders see nothing wrong even if it leads to the ultimate destruction of their lives. Mention can be made of Rev. Jim Jones, who supervised the suicide of over 900 members of his Peoples Temple at Jones Town in Guyana in the 1970s. Even when his wrong deeds came to light and he left the United States of America, most of the members followed him to Guyana where his activities worsened. After enslaving them for years he finally locked them up under armed guards and forced them to drink a mixture of cyanide. In the end it was only three people who survived having pretended to be dead without drinking. Mention can also be made of Vladeci Sobreni Picano, a Brazilian Evangelical Pastor who was arrested for performing oral sex on his members. He claimed that the Holy Spirit had blessed him with sperms that are Sacred Milk. And so one's problems would be solved if one sucks his pennies and gets portions of the sperms into ones stomach. And it is shocking that tens of people followed him without question and indeed sucked this 'divine milk'. There was, also, Pastor Lesego Daniel of the Rabboni Centre Ministries, Pretoria, South Africa who claimed that he could turn petrol into pineapple juice. His congregants were therefore forced to drink with the pretext that they had enough faith. According to reports in September 2014, he forced his members to chew grass. Then comes Pastor Penuel Mnguni of the End Times Disciples Ministries in South Africa who feeds his congregants with live rats and snakes for deliverance. He also stomps on them and strips them naked as part of his healing method. There is, again, this Tanzanian pastor who preaches by riding on the backs of some of his congregants because, according to him, he cannot preach the word of God standing on the ground. The list could go on and on. So it is not shocking that in Ghana, one Bishop Daniel Obinim, Founder of the Godsway International Ministry claims he can change into all kinds of animals, steal money from banks for his congregants, take their passports from embassies, and so on. This comes after he had confessed to sleeping with his junior pastor's wife a night before the blessing of her marriage with the pastor. Among other things, this Ghanaian preacher is seen in video clips stepping on the stomach of a pregnant woman, lying on female congregants, etc. But why does he still command such a large following; why have not people seen through his operations to see the error in his dealings? Perhaps it is for such situations that Karl Marx made that extraordinary remark. It is simple, that religion seems to have blinded us such that we fail to see the obvious. The Rt. Rev. Samuel Noi Mensah, President of the Full Gospel Church International and a key member of the leadership of Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC) makes the situation more compelling. He insists that 'the African is very religious and the Ghanaian, notoriously religious.' In an interview with the GNA over the issue, the Rt. Rev. said that the African seems to have attached so much fetishism to religion such that he always wants to see a physical representation of his belief. That may be why they are easily swayed by magicians and tricksters who parade themselves as men of God. But where does the Government come in, and when can the state intervene to curb the escalation of such fraudulent activities? The Constitution of Ghana clearly provides the Ghanaian with freedom of religion and association such that any attempt to restrict those freedoms, amounts to a breach of the law. So we may have to look on while such misrepresentation of the scripture goes on. I believe that in an attempt to revise the Ghanaian constitution, it would not be wrong to legislate that churches with anti-social characters and questionable doctrines be banned from our society, not to talk about having the power to revoke the right of certain pastors to operate if they clearly go wrong. In the wisdom of reality it would be better to curtail some amount of religious freedom in order to restore sanity to those who seem to be getting out of hand. GNA 26.04.2016 LISTEN ACCRA, Ghana Cyber-security & Forensic Scientist Albert Antwi-Boasiako believes cyber security is a collective business that runs from individual to government. In his view, Ghana must develop a cyber-security culture that will enable implementation of specific cyber-security legislation and measures. Speaking to E.K.Bensah Jr on the Africa in Focus Show, which commenced a series of discussions on Ghana and Africas response to law enforcement and cyber-security, Antwi-Boasiako, who was speaking to Bensah from the France/Geneva border, explained that he was in Geneva to make presentations to UNCTAD during the UNCTAD e-commerce week. Albert Antwi-Boasiako is the Founder and Principal Consultant of the Accra-based E-Crime Bureau. He has spent the past five years dedicating his life to forensic investigation and cyber-crime. In his view, the cyber-phenomenon is a new phenomenon. He believes that, if even the EU and the West are not fully-prepared to tackle it, how much more a country like Ghana, where agencies are likely to be handicapped to fight it. It is a given that, the financial sector will not have the capacity, and that it would need specialist skills to address and engage specific issues, too. Definition of Cyber-Crime The E-Crime Bureau founder explained that, cyber-crime is any criminal activity, which is committed using cyber-space or an electronic medium. He maintains in every jurisdiction, it is the Criminal Code that identifies specific criminal offences. What is cyber-crime in Ghana may not necessarily constitute a crime elsewhere. In principle, though, Cyber-crime refers to specific criminal activities, especially offences that constitute criminality. That said there are two angles to the definition: there is a difference between cyber-criminality and cyber-facilitated crime. Cyber-criminality usually involves criminal activity involving IT infrastructure. This includes when someone hacks into a protected network, such as Denial-Of-Service attack on a computer system. Conversely, cyber-facilitated crime involves traditional criminal activities such as fraud; terrorism; blackmail; threats that are facilitated through an electronic medium. Situational Analysis of Cyber-security in Ghana Antwi-Boasiako believes its erroneous as professionals to be asking whether Ghana is serious about Cyber-security; rather, it is important to examine the situational analysis, with a focus on the following elements. First: cyber-security awareness, which needs to be looked through a certain matrix that includes the national; the individual; and at the corporate level. At these levels, if one were to look at the manner in which each handles electronic data, he would say that Ghana is not ready at all. In his view, Ghanas cyber-security awareness is far below the minimum threshold. Secondly, Ghana needs to look at standardization of ICT products. For example, mobile money sector is on the increase. We need as a country to be asking whether we have mechanisms to test the system before it is deployed. In this area, Antwi-Boasiako believes Ghana would also be marked low, as much more can be done. Third, there is the issue of cyber-legislation, or what he calls Cyber-hygiene. These are issues he says are currently being discussed at the UN level. Antwi-Boasiako explains that, Ghana is one of the few countries with data protection. Ghana has an Electronic Transactions Act (2008); and Anti-Money Laundering legislation. However, he adds, these legislations are not themselves cyber-crime legislation. There is a Computer Misuse Act, but none in Ghana. Nigeria, he continues, has a Cyber-Security Bill (2015), and Ghanas Evidence Act was passed in 1960 long before personal computers. For the Forensic Expert, handling electronic evidence needs an unambiguous law to deal with it. The laws passed recently have their own challenges. The big issue is that the legislation needs to be reviewed to be in line with contemporary trends, where e-evidence becomes part of criminal proceedings. Ghanaians, for example, use smart phones, which mean evidence is in the electronic domain. Ghana, he avers, needs to empower law enforcement so that we get to the stage where we can use electronic evidence to convict people for murder; narcotics; human trafficking; fraud; tax evasion; and terrorism. For Antwi-Boasiako, the cyber-environment has become the centre of gravity around current criminalities. Still on Ghana, he explains how Ghana is working on a National Cyber-Security Policy with the Ministry of Communications. However, it is still in Parliament. It ought to be the fundamental document that will guide all institutions in the country. Another positive development for Ghana is the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), which he describes as a cyber-NADMO, or a cyber response to Ghanas National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO). For example, if there is a cyber-attack on Ghanas e-sovereignty, CERT would help resolve the problem. Even then, it plays a preventative role by monitoring Ghanas cyber-space to ensure such attacks do not happen in the first place. State of Cyber-security at the ECOWAS/AU level As far as the regional space is concerned, Mr.Antwi-Boasiako believes there is no good news on ECOWAS. The E-Crime Founder laments how in Geneva he asked a senior ECOWAS representative hoe far the region had gone on its Cyber-security work. To which the official lamented how it had stalled because of lack of funding. In 2011, Antwi-Boasiako maintains, the regional bloc signed up to a Directive against Cyber-Crime. He equally-laments how, while it is good to fight cyber-crime at the UN level, if ECOWAS can come together, it would be useful. For example, you could have someone living in Nigeria, and committing cyber-crime in Ghana, but being able to be tried in Ghana for prosecution if frameworks were implemented. At the African Union level, the continental organisation has a Convention on Cyber-Crime. When one is in Europe, avers Antwi-Boasiako, one hears a lot about the so-called Budapest Convention on Cyber-Crime. According to him, it was announced the week of the interview that Senegal would be signing that international treaty, and Ghana is also to sign soon. Antwi-Boasiako worries that African Member States seem to be more receptive to the Budapest Convention than their own regional and continental initiatives, which suggests a lot more needs to be done at these two levels. He believes that, while it is good to have conventions like these, Africas institutions need to benefit from it. Other international initiatives on Cyber-Security include the Council of Europe, which will help build capacity of selected West African delegates from ECOWAS countries 9-11 May in Senegal. At the UNCTAD level, the institution is helping ECOWAS member States harmonize their Cyber-laws, and help them get the countries legislation in line. Apart from initiatives by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime; and the US Justice Department, INTERPOL itself is also holding expert groupings and training programmes. In Antwi-Boasiakos view, ECOWAS needs to act with some urgency on building its capacity on Cyber-Security. Pressed to explain why it has taken so long to implement strategies at the regional level, Antwi-Boasiako explained how it was important to put things into perspective: cyber-crime, in his view, borders on security and national security. Consequently, national security may not necessarily involve sharing intelligence openly with Nigerian counterparts. There are other dimensions including, the necessity of telcos coming on board, as well as the rest of the private sector. He deduced that, ECOWAS may probably not have promoted private sector in Cyber-security, but without a shadow of a doubt, we need more engagement so that you can bring all fragmented working groups into one pool so that resources, expertise, and advisory services will be available. He believes this will facilitate intelligence-sharing as well. The Way Forward on Cyber-Security in Ghana In conclusion, it cannot be over-emphasized how much of a collective business Cyber-security remains. It is a multi-stakeholder eco-system that includes telcos; Internet Service Providers (ISPs); and even developers of systems. According to Antwi-Boasiako, each one has a responsibility to assume. To this end, it is important Ghana pays attention to developing a Cyber-security culture, and equally-appreciates issues of Cyber-security that will eventually lead to specific actions. Our e-commerce sector is growing. We need to develop and build capacity to help detect and track the cashless environment, including anti-money laundering systems. Finally, Ghana needs to invest in technology and policies in Cyber-security as the human factor remains the weakest link in Cyber-crime cases. By incorporating these recommendations into Ghanas policy, we would, Antwi-Boasiako believes, be able to make a serious case in fighting cyber-crime. ENDs The Africa in Focus Show is hosted by Emmanuel.K.Bensah Jr from 14h05 to 15h00 every Wednesday on RADIO XYZ93.1FM. Since May 2014, it has been offering compelling, cutting-edge content that seeks to demystify, educate, and unpack ECOWAS, AU, & South-South Cooperation around Africas integration. You can download all podcasts from www.africainfocusradioshow.org . Follow the conversation on twitter on @africainfocus14, using #africainfocus. Contact Emmanuel on 0233.311.789/0268.687.653 This is Up and Down, where we give a brief thumbs up and thumbs down on issues from the past week. Up Trenton Zainhofsky has made a difference at 14. Hes a Boy Scout and as part of his efforts to become an Eagle Scout he spearheaded construction of an Adirondack shelter at Cross Ranch State Park. He rounded up a group of Boy Scouts and over two weekends he supervised the boys as they built the shelter. The three-sided lean-to structure sits in the backcountry, a haven for hikers looking to rest or spend some time having a picnic. Its a project that should last a long time and bring joy to a lot of people. Down Its bad when someone damages a piece of history and its especially bad when someone damages a piece of religious history. Thats what happened near Pisek. Vandals invaded St. John Nepomucene Catholic Church, built in 1892, and used two fire extinguishers to coat elaborate stained-glass windows, ornate statues and a virtually priceless 124-year-old oil painting with a thin layer of powder residue. As a final insult they climbed into the choir loft to ring the church bells before running away. They didnt break anything in the church, but they did shatter a 124-year-old tradition of leaving the church unlocked for the faithful. Now the parish locks the church, opening it when someone is there to protect it. You cant place a price on that kind of damage. Up The Bank of North Dakota continues to perform at a high level. The bank reported record net income for the 12th consecutive year last week. It makes you wonder why we are the only state that owns a bank. For 2015, the bank reported about $130.7 million in net income, topping the $111 million reported in 2014, according to Eric Hardmeyer, bank president. Total bank assets for 2015 totaled about $7.41 billion, up slightly from the $7.22 billion reported in 2014. And 2016 is off on the right foot "We're on course for another record-setting year. They continue to look good (the numbers)," Hardmeyer told the Industrial Commission. Net income for the first quarter of 2016 was $37.5 million, compared to $34.5 million in the first quarter of 2015. Down The loss of six bald eagles on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation should concern everyone. While the majestic creatures are no longer listed as endangered they are protected by the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Violations can result in a $100,000 fine and one year's imprisonment. The six eagles were found in the same general area and its possible the protected birds died from eating poisoned prairie dogs. Some poisons are allowed, but the dead prairie dogs need to be removed. When using the poison it needs to be injected into the burrows, not scattered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the South Dakota U.S. Attorney's office are involved in the investigation. Hopefully the cause of the deaths can be determined and steps taken to prevent future occurrences. Up Brian Backes, 57, provides an unusual service. He takes photos of grave sites and places them along with some information online at Find A Grave. He has contributed 53,000 pictures and added 37,000 graveside names to the website. Most are from cemeteries in central North Dakota. He says he gets email from around the world thanking him. Hes earned the thanks. People can reach the link at www.findagrave.com. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. business Rajya Sabha ethics committee may terminate Mallya's membership Mallya has been given a week's time to respond either in person or through his lawyer, says Karan Singh, chairman of the Rajya Sabha ethics committee. business Here's how Vijay Mallya can be deported "Communication, of course, will have to be made from India to the British government. for the Indian government agencies cannot act in Britain directly," says Sanjay Suri, reporter at CNBC-TV18. current-affairs-trends Mallya's extradition not easy;banks should've taken his offer The liquor baron cannot move to any other place now and if a red corner notice is issued then he will be stranded in London, says MP and Senior Advocate Majeed Memon. you are here: business Reliance Q4 net at Rs 7320 cr, GRMs at $10.80/bbl Reliance Industries has posted standalone net profit at Rs 7320 crore in the January-March quarter. During the quarter, gross refining margins (GRMs) stood at USD 10.80 per barrel. business Bull's Eye: Buy IFCI, Coal India, Arvind; sell DLF, TVS Motor Jay Thakkar of Sharekhan is of the view that one mau sell TVS Motor with a target of Rs 319. FARGO -- John Mrozla, a city rental inspector, had to chuckle at the audacity of the squatter at the tan bi-level in a Fargo neighborhood. From what the inspector has gathered, 320 22nd St. S. seems to have been home to one Steve Archer, 52, for the past several years, ever since the bank foreclosed on the owner, who disappeared. Based on what neighbors said, Archer may even have rented the place out to others, Mrozla said. The city turned off the water three years ago, but someone turned it back on. Xcel Energy shut off the power a few months ago, but a long extension cord across the backyard suggested someone stole power from the neighbor. It's a dangerous situation. "They did a lot of illegal wiring when we looked inside," Mrozla said. "It was a lot of electrical violations that could've caused a fire. And then we also saw propane tanks in there. They're using propane to heat. Those canisters aren't even supposed to be inside of a building." No one answered at any of the three apartments in the house when The Forum visited last week. Several neighbors said Archer has lived there for more than five years, but none would go on the record. Two neighbors said they were less concerned about him and more about sketchy characters who frequent the house. But despite all this, evicting the squatter isn't easy for city inspectors, Mrozla said. The water thief On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, kids were riding bikes and scooters up and down 22nd Street South while their parents watched. From the street, they could see the orange condemnation sign on the door of No. 320 that said "This Structure Is Unsafe and Its Occupancy Has Been Prohibited by the Code Official." Yet someone still lives there. When visited, there were battery-powered lights on in the hallway and a dog was barking from inside apartment No. 3. In the driveway was a black pickup that neighbors said belongs to Archer. A baby stroller and child's toy hinted at a previous tenant. Inspectors were called in early March after a neighbor worried the house was still inhabited two to three weeks after workers physically removed the service line and electric meters. When Mrozla visited, he said he noticed a series of long extension cords stretching from the house's dryer vent to a secluded spot by the back fence where it was coiled up. A doormat laid on the fence, apparently to make it easier to climb, and there were footprints leading to an outlet at the neighbor's house. The neighbor was, predictably, outraged when she learned about it, Mrozla said. The water department may have also been victimized. Troy Hall, the department head, said his records show the water was turned off in December 2012. It was back on a month later and had to be turned off again in February. After Mrozla's visit, the city found the water was on and whoever turned it on seems to have found a way to bypass the water meter. The water valve used by city workers is 7 to 8 feet underground, but Hall said he could imagine a determined water thief could devise a rough tool to open it. He said the department has since put a lock on the valve access panel. For neighbors, the main concern has been the people who have visited or moved into the house. Police records show they've been dispatched there five times in the last three years, once because of suspected narcotics and twice to arrest wanted persons. In mid-April, police arrested an acquaintance of Archer at the house on suspicion of dealing meth. The acquaintance, Michael B. Froslie, 42, had 9 grams of methamphetamine and $1,600 in cash, court documents allege. Archer himself was convicted of making or dealing meth in 2005, but more recent run-ins with the law have been less serious, involving shoplifting or driving without a license. Rules of eviction After police arrested Froslie, Mrozla said the arresting officer, Troy Hanson, wondered how the city could allow someone to live in the house when the orange sign clearly says it's dangerous and illegal. "We don't have a mechanism to evict them; only the property owner does," Mrozla said. If the owner doesn't agree, then the city has to file suit and wait for the court to decide, he said, even if the building is dangerous. City tax records show the house belongs to Shane Richeson. Neighbors said Archer had been a tenant for years. They were mystified when Richeson moved away some five years ago. Mrozla said the city was finally able to track down Richeson's mother in Minot and was told the mortgage company, Caliber Home Loans of Irving, Texas, took over three years ago. The city had trouble getting a live person on the line until recently, he said. Though squatting in foreclosed homes has been in the news around the country, it is uncommon here, according to police departments in Fargo and Moorhead. Moorhead Lt. Tory Jacobson said the city is concerned about squatting, enough to recruit neighborhood volunteers to check on abandoned homes. Deputy Chief Joseph Anderson in Fargo said he's not surprised that it happens, because the city is getting bigger and big-city problems are emerging. He said he knows residents want the squatters out, but the city has to be able to do it legally. It's been a month and a half since a neighbor alerted the city about the squatting, and Mrozla said he believes a resolution will come soon. "We think something's going to happen pretty quick now in terms of getting someone from the mortgage company over there." April 25, 2016 Syria - Russia Rejects Kerry's New Attempts To Shield The Terrorists The U.S. admits that the upcoming Aleppo offensive by the Syrian government and its allies is designed to hit al-Qaeda and associated terrorist forces and not primarily the "moderate" unicorns the U.S. propaganda blushes about. But the openly U.S. supported forces will also be hit as they are very much integrated with al-Qaeda. The U.S. has for long considered al-Qaeda a secret ally in its attempt to destroy the Syrian state. The French magazine L'Orient Le Jour sees the U.S. relation with al-Qaeda in Syria as part of the attrition strategy the U.S. is waging against Syria (and Russia). Secretary of State Kerry tried to convince the Russian that al-Qaeda should not be attacked during the cessation of hostilities. But the Russian's did not agree. Al Qaeda is a UN recognized international terrorist organization which, under UNSC resolutions, must be fought. The U.S. only succeeded in downgrading the permanent ceasefire the Russians had preferred to into a temporary cessation hostilities. It thought to use the time to rearm and to regroup its proxy forces. But then thing went wrong. An offensive along the Turkish border to push away the Islamic State and to seal the border between the Islamic State and Turkey failed. Al-Qaeda convinced other groups, including directly U.S. supported CIA assets, to prematurely attack Syrian government forces south of Aleppo on Tal el-Eis. The attack mad only little progress before it was stopped. Now al-Qaeda and the U.S. proxies are heavily targeting the government held western arts of Aleppo city: Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlrai 13h13 hours ago #Aleppo observed the most violent day in d history of d war in #Syria causing 21 killed & 95 wounded. Every single street was hit by rebels+ Since the announcement of the cease-fire, over 492 killed & wounded were registered in the only 2 hospitals in regime held area in #Aleppo. Rebels hell bombs fell on all streets w/o exception while a group of rebels were trying 2infiltrate d city in West #Aleppo, trapped n sewage This continued today Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlrai 2h2 hours ago 17 killed and 92 wounded in #Aleppo regime controlled area today following rebels Hell cannon bombing. #Syria. These attacks on the population are designed to bait the Syrian government forces into an immediate all-out attack into the al-Qaeda held parts of Aleppo city. I doubt that they will fall for it. The response for now will be more intense bombing in preparation for a well thought out attack later on. Kerry recently again tried to convince the Russian government of partitioning Syria into "zones of interest". This would shield terrorist forces form further Syrian and Russian attacks: Weve even proposed drawing a line, an absolute line, and saying, You dont go over there, we dont go over here, and anything in between is fair game. And they are considering that, and I think we will get there in the next week or so. The rather harsh public response to that Kerry nonsense came in today: MFA Russia @mfa_russia #Lavrov: Splitting Syria into zones of influence is a simplistic idea; the main objective must be to route terrorism @mod_russia @RussiaUN #Lavrov: US has not fulfilled its promise made two months ago to move good opposition forces away from the terrorist front lines in Syria #Lavrov: The US State Dept. may shy away from cooperation with Russia, but there is no place for shyness in the fight against terrorism #Lavrov: The UNSC declared Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist group. Those who want to distance themselves from this group should do so physically Translation: Get your proxies out of the way or they will get hurt badly. The U.S. "plan B" of splitting Syria into statelets has been rejected by the Syrian government and its allies. The Syrian government and its allies are convinced that they can beat al-Qaeda and its various associates on the battle field. They are preparing a large attack against al-Qaeda and anyone nearby. There is little the U.S. can do to help the designated terrorists of al-Nusra in west Syria. But it continues its attempts to split Syria by inserting more of its special forces into north east Syria. These and their Kurdish proxy fighters have the task to take as much of eastern Syria from the Islamic State and others as possible before the Syrian government forces can do so. The thinking is that any captured town will be an asset in future negotiations. It will be interesting to see how the Syrian government and its allies will counter that move. Posted by b on April 25, 2016 at 18:09 UTC | Permalink Comments STANTON The power of old bones spoke earlier this month, when a $10 million construction project came to a five-day halt so the bones could be examined for archaeological importance. The bones were uncovered when asphalt was peeled off the Mercer County Courthouse parking lot in Stanton to make way for a bigger building. Turns out they are a mix of bison bones and some bird bones, which might seem frivolous, except that the parking lot covers an Hidatsa village occupied over hundreds of years. This is Stanton, after all, the epicenter of a string of earth lodge villages up and down the confluence of the Knife and Missouri rivers. Bones here mean something. Only one earth lodge depression from the Hidatsa Amahami village once a lively place with at least 30 lodges and hundreds of Hidatsa living there is preserved on the north courthouse lawn. Now, its thought there might be one more, or at least evidence in the ground. An archaeological team, led by Melinda McCarthy, a cultural resource specialist, is taking a deeper look at the parking lot. The county also will pay to have every bucket-load of dirt inspected for possible artifacts. We did budget for this. We knew about the village and possible artifacts, said commission chairman Bill Tveit. The county has set aside $116,000 for the work. The Amahami village was burned out by a Sioux war party in 1834, and its fragile remains didnt have much chance when the town was founded just 50 years later. An old 1909 survey map still shows the depressions on the northeast side of Stanton, but many were destroyed by gravel mining in the 30s and impacted again when streets were laid down and the new courthouse was built in the 70s. An overlay of that old survey map, the gravel pit perimeter and the existing courthouse outline shows that one more of the village earth lodges could have survived and been simply asphalted over. McCarthy and her crew opened a small area there over the weekend and the news she brought to the county commission Wednesday wasnt good, at least in terms of history. McCarthy said the small excavation revealed more disturbance than expected, possibly because the gravel pit was larger than previously thought. Well start with the next two units, and, by then, we should be in the middle of the (possible earth lodge) feature, she told the commission. If we find it, no ground disturbance will happen without us. On the other hand, she said, if the team continues to uncover gravel mine activity, itll go much faster. If any artifacts are found, the state and tribal historic preservation offices will be involved in their disposition. The work at the courthouse is part of a State Historic Preservation Office mitigation plan. Fern Swenson, historic preservation officer, and Paul Picha, chief archaeologist for the State Historical Society of North Dakota, say the states interest is in preserving anything thats uncovered and adding to the knowledge of the location. Because of all the disturbance, theres a perception that nothing can remain. But we know some earth lodge village deposits are very deep, Swenson said. This will be the last chance to have a look for this earth lodge; the new courthouse will cover most of where it once was. Travis Fuechtmann, a ContegrityGroup construction manager, said all the previous disturbance including an old underground fuel tank and various utility lines presented kind of a conundrum for dealing with the history and archaeology at the site. What to do with the unknown? We are finding ways to work together, he said. Meantime, all eyes are on McCarthys precisely measured work, in which every teaspoon of dirt is sifted and examined. She should know fairly soon if the earth lodge can still be detected. In the meantime, excavators are carefully tip-toeing around her team, staying well clear for now. Fuechtmann said early spring weather compensates for the idle week and completion of the courthouse by fall of 2017 is well in hand. If April showers truly bring May flowers, we might want to get some vases ready. Bismarck received record rainfall Sunday and was well on the way to breaking another record by mid-afternoon Monday, said Rick Krolak, a meteorology technician at the National Weather Service. The 1.58 inches that fell on Bismarck on Sunday broke a 1953 record of 1 inch. Another .74 inches had fallen Monday by 3 p.m., and Krolak said continued rainfall was likely to break the daily record of .78. Bismarck was one of the harder hit parts of the state in the storm that began over the weekend, but it wasnt the wettest spot. Grassy Butte received 2.89 inches through Monday morning, Plaza had 2.6 and Killdeer got 2.57. The storm has helped make this April about three times as wet as April is on average. Bismarck had received 3.05 inches through Monday, compared to the normal through April 25 of .98 inches. And there is plenty more precipitation on the way. Krolak said the Bismarck area could get another inch through Thursday night. Areas to the south are expected to get a little more, and the storm will taper off to the northeast. That next round of moisture will come mostly in the form of rain, but some areas could see some wet snow. The best chance of snow will be in the southwest part of the state, but Krolak said it wouldnt be impossible to see a few flakes in Bismarck. Temperatures will remain in the 40s, with lows in the 30s, Krolak said. Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive. To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research. Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. Defying economists predictions of an overall decline, Canadian GDP remained flat in February despite significant weakness from long-struggling sectors dragging down the economy. Technically, the economy actually expanded by 0.025 per cent, analyst Lucas Kawa wrote in a breakdown piece for Business in Canada. The number was certainly better than the projected 0.1 per cent (and at an earlier point, even pegged at 0.2 per cent) slowdown, mostly due to a strong showing from the retail sector. Continued cold weather meant utilities also provided a boost, while mining, oil and gas extraction retraced some of the previous months gains, Kawa said. [These] results support that the Bank of Canadas general diagnosis that the oil shock will have a front-loaded negative impact on the Canadian economy, he added. Canadas economywhich has suffered repeated impacts from the global oil shockisnt out of the woods yet, though, as the energy, manufacturing, and wholesale segments would are expected to continue being problematic throughout the year. Demand for oil field services companies has fallen off a cliff, and theyve lost a ton of pricing power, Kawa warned. Affordability has long been one of Vancouvers nagging issues, with the cost of an average detached home in the city recently breaching the $2.2-million mark. And while a gamut of reasons have been blamed for these prices, an industry analyst pointed at Canadas immigration rules as a main driver for the housing sectors seemingly non-stop growth. In an analysis for the Toronto Sun, best-selling author Candice Malcolm argued that the record-high prices and sales in Vancouverwhich has been recently recognized by The Economist as the least affordable city in North Americahave been spurred by the influx of wealthy foreign investors that keep purchasing properties left and right without occupying these spaces. The problem, in part, can be blamed on Canadas immigration rules particularly the Immigration Investor Program. Under [this] program, wealthy immigrants could hand over $800,000 to the federal government in exchange for permanent residency, Malcolm explained in her article. Five years later, the government would return the money with no strings attached, Malcolm wrote. Thats it. If you had $800,000, or could access it through loans and mortgages, you could get a Canadian passport. The analysis cited a 2014 report that provided figures on the long-term results of the now defunct program, which Malcolm deemed a failure. After 10 years of staying in Canada, beneficiaries of the investor program had only $15,800 as taxable salary, with one-third of the immigrant investors not filing tax returns because they supposedly had zero income. By contrast, the average immigrant who came through the skilled worker program earned $46,800 annually and paid $10,900 in income taxes, Malcolm said. Far from being a boon to our economy and creating jobs, these so-called investors are actually a drain on our social system. Malcolm called for the implementation of stricter requirements on foreign nationals to avoid a repeat of the previous investor programs failure. If Canada wants to attract wealthy investors, we should require them to invest here, not just snap up Canadian homes, collect welfare, and drive up real estate prices for the rest of us, she concluded. Members of the Three Affiliated Tribes are asking the Tribal Business Council for an audit to see how the tribes money has been spent. But the tribal chairman says the council has distributed pamphlets and conducted outreach meetings explaining the tribes budget. Chairman Mark Fox also said an audit of the tribes fiscal year 2015 budget is underway and should be completed in the next two months. Doreen Lyons of New Town on March 18 posted a petition on change.org asking for an independent audit of the tribes spending. The petition had garnered nearly 1,500 signatures by Friday, and it will be available for signing until April 18. Lyons also posted on Facebook the text of an email she said she sent tribal council members and other tribal officials as a request for an audit. Lyons said in her letter that the Tribal Constitution says expenditures from tribal funds shall be matters of public record at all times. Fox said he will take the petition under consideration, as he would any other request from tribal members. Fox said he understands the frustration tribal members feel, because the tribal council has not always operated in a transparent fashion. He said transparency was a big part of his campaign for chairman, and he feels he has been doing a lot to live up to those promises. Tribal members have had the ability to learn about the budget through pamphlets distributed at 10 outreach meetings on and off the reservation, he said. Fox wanted to post the pamphlets on the tribal website but was voted down by the other six members of the council, who did not want non-tribal members and other entities to have access to the information. The Three Affiliated Tribes have profited from oil development on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Though the reservation was once believed to make up about a third of North Dakotas oil production, the state Department of Mineral Resources in December corrected those earlier reports and clarified that about 17 percent of the states oil production comes from Fort Berthold. Still, millions of dollars monthly has poured into the tribal coffers. Lyons said she and other tribal members have grown suspicious about where the money has gone. They feel disbursements of money have been sporadic, and they dont trust the amount given to members whose oil leases and royalties are controlled by the tribe. Lyons said services on the reservation havent improved substantially, and tribal members needs arent being met. We have nothing to show for it, she said about the oil money. Fox countered that members have plenty to show for the oil boom and more is being done now under depressed oil prices than when prices were sky high. From 2008 to 2014, each member received $1,500 in disbursements, and since 2014, each member has received an additional $5,000, Fox said. He said the tribe is providing insurance for all tribal members and also has spent money on infrastructure improvements like roads, schools and a new energy building. Lyons and others suspect a substantial amount of money has been spent by the Tribal Business Council in sponsoring events and in traveling. The Three Affiliated Tribes and 4 Bears Casino and Lodge are listed as sponsors of the 2015 Indian National Finals Rodeo on the rodeo website. A posting on the Denver March Powwow Facebook page indicates that Three Affiliated Tribes enrolled members could get into the March 2016 powwow free because the tribe was a sponsor. Fox said money has been spent on sponsoring events, but he added that the events sponsored all have Three Affiliated Tribes members affiliated with them. The rodeos, powwows and other activities are cultural events that typically also involve seminars and youth activities that benefit tribal members. We are providing help to those cultural events, he said. However, he said the amount given to such events has decreased in recent years, and he also sometimes questions whether the amounts provided are appropriate. As chairman, he has no veto power but votes alongside the other six council members. Lyons group wants an audit to be conducted by a person unrelated to the tribe or anyone involved with it. We want to see what happened to our money, Lyons said. We have to do this as tribal members, because if we dont, no one else is going to do it for us. Fox hopes tribal members can take a look at the information they have put out about the budget and provide constructive ideas for him to take back to the tribal council. A new budget should be approved soon, and he plans to hold more outreach meetings to tell tribal members about it. All I can say right now is be a little more patient, he said. We have a daughter, who was born extremely premature at 26 weeks she weighed under 2 pounds at birth and spent 104 day in the NICU. We were blessed with her a few days before her first birthday as a foster/adoptive placement with the intention to adopt. We spent the first year traveling to Odessa three times a week for therapies. When that therapy center was looking at closing due to changes in health care we were forced to look at our options. At that point, we luckily found MCRC. I was shocked to learn that they take no money from insurance nor do they expect parents to pay for services. It took a few months but after being on the waiting list we were able to slowly transfer all her services to MCRC. Over the course of our three years at the center we have received speech therapy, feeding therapy, hippotherapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy and training in sensory integration. She is also currently in the dance program at MCRC. After experiencing firsthand, the impact that MCRC has on children and their families, I was looking for ways to get involved and give back. I could never repay them for the difference they have made in our baby girl but felt like the least I can do is use my experience and gifts to serve this amazing center. What is the greatest asset you contribute to the nonprofit boards you serve on? First, as a parent I have a unique perspective and story to share with the community, in an attempt to educate and engage future supporters. Second, I have a long history of working in the nonprofit sector as events and community coordinator and public relations and development. Having a profound understanding of the nonprofit world made me even more grateful for the level of care and treatment MCRC is able to provide each child who needs its services through the communitys financial backing. And thus, I was motivated to do my part to make sure the center is operational for many years to come. What unexpected lesson have you learned through your volunteer experiences? I was stunned to learn that a surprising number of people who have grown up in the West Texas area are not aware of the amazing work being done for children in our community all at no cost to the families. How long has Midland been your home, and why have you stayed? We have been in Midland since 2008. Though we came here for a job, both my husband and I believe we were sent to Midland for a greater purpose that is the gift of our baby girl. Ultimately she is the reason we are here and the reason we stay. We have grown to love this community and even started a business here, Patriot Pest Management. We have no plans to leave; this is our home. Kinder Morgan, the nations largest natural gas pipeline operator in the U.S., kicked off the first quarter earnings season by scaling back its expectations for 2016. The Houston company said it expected its 2016 adjusted, pretax earnings to be about 3 percent less than the $7.5 billion it had previously budgeted. The forecast for distributable cash flow, an industry-standard metric that approximates how much cash the company has available to pay out or reinvest, sank by about 4 percent below previous annual forecast of $4.7 billion. Net income was $314 million for the quarter, down 25 percent from $419 million in the same period last year. In addition, the company cut its backlog of projects expected to be built in the next five years from $18.2 billion to $14.1 billion. Kinder Morgan cut out the Northeast Energy Direct Market project due to insufficient interest from customers and nixed the Palmetto Pipeline after it was blocked by regulators. In a statement announcing the results, Kinder Morgan CEO Steve Kean said fewer projects and less spending would help the company focus on strengthening its financial footing. We continue to focus on high-grading our growth project backlog to allocate capital to the highest return opportunities by reducing spend, improving returns and selectively joint venturing projects where appropriate, Kean said. Kinder Morgans first-quarter 2016 distributable cash flow, an industry-standard metric that approximates how much cash the company has available to pay out or reinvest, rose to $1.272 billion from $1.24 billion in the same period last year. In January, executives said they expected to see about $1.2 billion in distributable cash flow. Net income was $314 million for the quarter, compared to $419 million in the same period last year. Much of that cash will stay within Kinder Morgans business, thanks to a 75 percent dividend cut the company the company instituted in December. Before the cut, Kinder Morgan had paid out almost all of the cash its businesses generated and borrowed to fund expenses such as new pipelines. But low oil prices have roiled credit and equity markets, and by late 2015 lenders and stock traders wanted a higher premium for opening their check books. The dividend cut allowed the company to bypass those markets and fund growth with its own cash. Executives said that self-funding growth was a better long-term move than using cash to pay a dividend. In the first quarter alone, the company said it will have $954 million in cash after paying out its 12.5 cent quarterly dividend. We do not need to access the capital markets to fund growth projects in 2016, said Richard D. Kinder, executive chairman and former CEO. This cash flow in excess of our dividends insulates us from challenging capital markets and significantly enhances our credit profile. A delay in releasing Halliburton Co.'s first-quarter earnings has raised analysts' doubts over the prospects for a takeover of rival Baker Hughes Inc. The release of a full earnings report is postponed to May 3 from April 25, Houston-based Halliburton said in statement released after the close of regular trading Friday. Halliburton cited the upcoming deadline to complete the Baker Hughes deal by the end of this month for the delay. The delay is a signal that one or both of the companies may terminate the merger once it expires April 30, Brad Handler, an analyst at Jefferies, wrote Sunday in a note to investors. The company announced the Baker Hughes takeover in November 2014 in a deal now worth about $25 billion in a bid to better compete against industry leader Schlumberger. The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to stop the merger on concern it will harm competition. The unexpected delay in the first quarter earnings release suggests the deal may be called off, Robin Shoemaker, an analyst at KeyBanc, wrote Sunday in a note. The world's largest hydraulic fracturing services provider annonced preliminary first-quarter results Friday that included a $2.1 billion restructuring charge and eliminated 6,000 more jobs in the quarter to reduce costs. Halliburton reported an operating loss of $39 million in North America, its largest region, on revenue of $1.8 billion, according to the statement. Shares fell 0.9 percent to $40.48 at 10:36 a.m. Monday in New York. The overall results reported were "pretty close" to expectations, Rob Desai, an analyst at Edward Jones in St. Louis, said Friday in a phone interview. Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield services provider, reported a loss of $10 million, before taxes, in North America when it reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday. "It does probably show that they're trying to work on this deal really hard for the April 30 deadline, and they just don't need any distractions right now," Luke Lemoine, an analyst at Capital One Southcoast in New Orleans, said Friday in a phone interview. Education awards season is off and running, and one of the first organizations to honor Midlands best and brightest is Exchange Club of Midland with its annual awards luncheon. The Exchange Club recognized 11 seniors from Midland High, Lee High and Early College High School at Midland College at the clubs 35th annual awards luncheon program Monday at the Petroleum Club. Recipients were Midland High seniors Meagan McQuien for English, Maxwell Gaddy for foreign language, Uzair Waheed for math, Cassidy Hale for science and Jack Youngblood for social studies; Lee High seniors Leah Dumas for English, Giselle Martinez for foreign language, Foster Kemp for math, Taylor Warren for science and Miranda Martinez for social studies. Early College High School senior JaCobey Gonzales was recognized for academic excellence. Other events honoring MISDs top performers include school awards programs this week and the Midland ISD Education Foundations Silver Stars program on May 15. Midland ISD Superintendent Ryder Warren told those who packed the Wildcatters Room that this group represented the epitome of Midland -- the hard-working and innovative men and women who built Midland, such as the members of the Exchange Club. The local club was chartered in April 1952 and is affiliated with the National Exchange Club of America. The Exchange Club, according to a statement, supports youth activities, prevention of child abuse and community service. Warren also said the students being honored should give hope to older Midlanders, who worry about who will take care of us. The event included letters from past Exchange Club award recipients, including one who called the award a true testament of how hard you have worked. Among the colleges and universities the honorees plan to attend are Midland College, the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Texas State University, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University. The outstanding students and their parents are: Midland High English: Meagan McQuien (Mr. and Mrs. Britton McQuien). Foreign language: Maxwell Gaddy (Mr. and Mrs. Chris Gaddy) Math: Uzair Waheed (Abdul Waheed and Zubeda Khanum) Science: Cassidy Hale (Mr. and Mrs. Casey Hale) Social studies: Jack Youngblood (Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Youngblood) Lee High English: Leah Dumas (Mr. and Mrs. James Dumas) Foreign language: Giselle Martinez (Mr. and Mrs. Alejandro Martinez) Math: Foster Kemp (Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Kemp) Science: Taylor Warren (Mr. and Mrs. Ryder Warren) Social studies: Miranda Martinez (Mr. and Mrs. Nick Martinez) Early College High School at Midland College JaCobey Gonzales (Mr. and Mrs. Albert Gonzales) Everyone's entitled to a little nip and tuck procedure every now and then. After all - your body, your business. But, for Lil' Kim, fans have nothing nice to say about whatever it is she has done to her face as of recently, that has left her looking unrecognizable; light, bright and damn near white. The former Junior M.A.F.I.A. member took to Instagram on Sunday, April 24, to share some selfies with her 1.2 million followers. The collage of self photos show what should strike loyal fans and followers as a regular depiction of the La Bella Mafia rapper. But, instead it showed a woman with what resembles a long blonde lace front, and a complexion that looks like it could've been covered with the wrong shade of pressed powder makeup and needs serious dosage of melanin. Miami Heat!!! A photo posted by Lil' Kim (@lilkimthequeenbee) on Apr 24, 2016 at 3:11pm PDT The Instagram photo sparked a reaction from fans that was anything but positive toward the rapper, according to Page Six. "Who is that," was one of the questions posed by a follower. The concerned comments and those of her fans who were totally caught off guard by the new look continued to roll in under the photo that Kim captioned, "Miami Heat." yasminaimee@yourgypsyprincess omg lil Kim is white terrez_ @gorgeous_libra this sh*t really breaks my heart luvbyshells @finnarrian girlllll I had to double take...with??? I saw something earlier and didn't even think twice...I just trippled look so sad ugh @milli_bebe28@olycaz look at this msanababy @ms_blvcx just ruined herself smh poentaloenta @ciseryne ughhh I tried to ignore it... I just hope she is happy with it and yeah I am not even gonna get into it man. I just can't #anotheronebitesthedust tamarainatlI want the old LiL Kim back. We dont know this person and her music dont even match this face she got on..uh uh Kim's look has drastically changed over the years so the new set of photos is really nothing new for the Brooklyn native. Her ever changing facial features and even her body parts are always under scrutiny in the media, and has even caused the rapper herself to accuse her "haters" of photoshopping her image on Twitter, according to Us Magazine. Hopefully, whatever look Lil' Kim is trying to accomplish, she will find it soon. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. In an attempt to intimidate his nephew, Aemond threatened to take out Lucerys' eye and later went after the young prince on dragon's back. The situation escalated to a bad one when Lucerys' dragon Arrax blew fire on Aemond's dragon Vhagar. Someone should sue the President for ... During the drought that struck the United States from 1934 to 1937, the soil became so badly eroded that static electricity built up on the farmlands of the Great Plains, pulling dust into the sky like a magnet. Massive clouds of dust rose up to 10,000 feet and, powered by high-altitude winds, was pushed as far east as New York City. When the black blizzard hit Washington, D.C. in May 1934, Hugh Hammond Bennett the father of soil conservation was testifying before a congressional committee about the effects of soil erosion. Bennetts testimony lead Congress to unanimously pass legislation declaring soil and water conservation a national policy and priority. But fixing soil erosion was not something the government could do on its own. As the National Association of Conservation Districts explains, Because nearly three-fourths of the continental United States is privately owned, Congress realized that only active, voluntary support from landowners would guarantee the success of conservation work on private land. In 1937, President Roosevelt wrote the governors of all the states recommending legislation that would allow local landowners to form soil conservation districts. By 1946, over 1,600 soil conservation districts had already formed in 48 states. Those lead to the formation of National Association of Soil Conservation Districts (NASCD). A decade later, the NASCD began a national program to encourage Americans to focus on stewardship. Since then Stewardship Week has been officially celebrated every year from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in May. As the NASCD notes, its one of the worlds largest conservation-related observances. And as John Murdock at First Things explains, this observance on the the soil has Christian roots: From the Latin rogare (to ask), Rogation Days were established by Pope Gregory the Great to Christianize a long-standing Roman appeasement rite. In 1955, modern soil conservationists from all backgrounds then piggy-backed on the Christian observance, leading to the bulletin that my great grandmother Annie found worth saving two years later. After Vatican II, though, the practice apparently fell out of favor among Catholics in this Texas farming community, and in most others too. Anglicans, who had a strong Rogation Days tradition that dated back centuries also de-emphasized the observance in their 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Nevertheless, Soil and Water Conservation Week or Stewardship Week continues, now tethered to the original Roman calendar observance on April 25thknown to liturgical Christians still in the know as the Major Rogationrather than the more variable Minor Rogations, the three days before Ascension Thursday, highlighted in 1957. To their credit, the National Association of Soil Conservation Districts has not severed the weeks religious roots nor given the occasion a neo-pagan polish. In fact, the NASCD provides some surprisingly Christ-centered materials suitable for Christian congregations of all stripes that still wish to observe the occasion. And it is an occasion worth observing. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Stewardship Week reminds us that in the mean time we are called to care for the ground from which we came. Read more . . . A fixture of Plainview agribusiness for almost 90 years is shutting down. Harvest Queen Mill and Elevator will close as part of an announcement Wednesday that agribusiness conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland Co. is cutting 1,000 jobs. The announcement likely is not a surprise to the employees of Harvest Queen Mill, who reportedly were notified earlier this week that their facility will close. Rumors about the closure apparently began last month. Jessie McKinney, a media relations representative with ADM, confirmed in a statement to the Herald on Wednesday afternoon that Plainview's ADM operation, located at 1208 N. Columbia St., will cease operations. In that e-mailed statement, McKinney said, "ADM has notified employees at its Plainview, Texas, sorghum milling facility that the company is closing the location due to declining market conditions. "Some of the 24 employees will have the opportunity to transfer to other ADM facilities," McKinney continued. "We have not yet determined the exact number of transfers we'll be able to offer. ADM will provide a severance package, including outplacement services, to affected employees." Another ADM media relations representative, David Winetrap, said in a brief telephone conversation Wednesday that the closure of the Plainview facility is not necessarily related to ADM's workforce reduction announcement. Winetrap said he did not have information concerning ADM's timetable for shuttering the Plainview facility. Plainview plant manager Ken Bailey was not immediately available for comment. The 1,000 lost jobs represent about 3 percent of ADM's total workforce, with the majority of the positions being salaried staff. According to a January 2010 Herald article, Harvest Queen Mill was built in 1926 to mill wheat. The Plainview facility was converted in the 1970s to produce industrial starch. ADM acquired the facility in 1985. The industrial starch produced at the facility is used in the production of wallboard. At that time the plant, which also was certified to produce food-grade products, had 29 employees. According to the Associated Press, Wednesday's job-reduction announcement came from CEO Patricia Woertz, who said the move will reduce ADM's corporate staff by about 15 percent. Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland reported $2.03 billion in profits for the last fiscal year alone, but a volatile global market for crops has made for unpredictable revenue. Corn and soybean prices have seesawed violently this year, hitting near-record levels only to plunge again in a matter of months. Such swings can quickly wipe out profits, so ADM is looking to cut as much overhead costs as it can. Woertz said the job cuts will help the company be more competitive in the modern food industry. ADM expects to save about $100 million in annual expenses from the cuts, along with other cost-cutting measures. The job cuts will cost between $50 million and $75 million during the third quarter of the company's current fiscal year. ADM said it first will offer employees a chance to voluntarily retire early if they are at least 57 years old and meet other requirements. Employees have until the end of January to take the retirement package. After that, ADM will cut the remaining number of jobs needed to meet the 1,000 mark. ADM employs 30,000 people worldwide. The company operates everything from shipping barges to ethanol plants and big factories where corn is turned into a rainbow of engineered food ingredients. The company can be both helped and hurt by big swings in crop prices. On the one hand, it can make more money by selling grain overseas. But when corn prices shot up early this summer, it meant ADM had to pay a lot more for its raw ingredients, which cut the profit margin in its corn processing division. The reasons behind big price swings for corn and soybeans vary. One of the biggest is the historically low level of grain reserves. The U.S. ethanol industry consumes about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop, and global livestock producers are consuming more soybeans and corn to feed newly wealthy customers in Asia. Farmers have had a hard time meeting the demand. When reserves get low, global traders get jittery and bid up prices quickly. (The Associated Press contributed to this article.) To comment: dmcdonough@hearstnp.com 806.296.1350 It is a truly organized, purposeful and committed man who recognizes the best time to retire, to turn in his car keys and to admit it when living alone independently finally is no longer possible. One such person was the colorful J.M. (Densey) Denson. An insurance agent for almost a half century, he sold his business in 1969, ready to assume what amounted to volunteer full-time service at Mineral Wells First Baptist Church, where he was a member for 61 years, a deacon for 55 and a Sunday school teacher for a half-century. He did even more, including serving as interim choir director. What he enjoyed most, though, was visitation. When someone executes admirable planning that worked well for 103 years and is remembered fondly in conversations 33 years after his death, a look back at the life is warranted. One day as dusk neared, he was shocked upon returning to his car after a hospital visit. In fact, he was ready to call the police. The 97-year-old seemed certain that someone had stolen his steering wheel, dash board, clutch, brake -- everything. Returning to the church to report on visitation, he breathlessly told his pastor, Rev. Bobby Moore, about the incident. Luckily, I discovered I had gotten in the back seat, he admitted. He loved the old 1972 Plymouth. He said it rattled and wheezed, but the noises werent a bother. In fact, he knew the car was running only because he could feel the vibration. At age 101, he made simultaneous decisions others might soon have needed to make for him. He gave up his car keys and took up residence in a care center. This meant he could no longer drive to make in-person visits, nor could he deliver gifts of homemade fig and pear preserves, cakes, pies or candies. He could, however, sing Happy Birthday by phone to celebrants. So thats what he did. After all, hed taken careful notes during his 62-year marriage, so he knew when he was no longer able to maintain a household and turn out preserves, desserts and such. He died the day following his 103rd birthday. It says much when Densey stories continue to be shared in Mineral Wells, where he and Ruth lived for 46 years. He was a great example of an others-centered, committed Christian and people person. Eschewing titles of retired or inactive, he welcomed the title emeritus deacon. He was front-and-center of many of the churchs historical moments. He was deacon chairman the year ground was broken for the education building, and as the oldest living deacon, broke ground for the current sanctuary. They had a big whoop-ti-doo for his 100th birthday, and for once, he listened while others sang Happy Birthday. Quick of mind and storyteller extraordinaire, he claimed that by age 100, hed learned what he needed, been where he pleased and done what he wanted. He made an understandable admission, then, though: Trouble is, I cant remember any of it. Denson keenly remembered his first plane ride, however, taken at age 89. Denson remembered helping to lead music in numerous revivals, including late greats Dr. George W. Truett, longtime pastor of Dallas First Baptist Church; J.B. Gambrell, editor of the Baptist Standard and R.C. Buckner, founder of Buckner Baptist Benevolences. Quoting scriptures readily, he often cited the words of Jesus: He that would be great among you, let him be servant of all. His favorite motto was inspired by a familiar quotation from the pen of Stephen Grellet, a French Quaker: I shall pass through this world but once. If therefore, there is any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again. Someone passed this along. Age asks, Now what? Life answers: The next thing. J.M. Denson, a lifelong Rotarian, had many next things, and he took care of most of them. With his gifts and smiles, he also had a storehouse of funny stories. He said he had no enemies, claiming he outlived all of them. On J.M. Densons dying day, thats really all he really needed to do. Dr. Don Newbury is a speaker in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Send inquiries/comments to newbury@speakerdoc.com. MERIDEN Holding a small, blue glass in the palm of his hand, Marco Veranda explained the science behind tasting and extracting flavors from extra virgin olive oil. You heat it with your hand so the flavors come out, said Veranda, director of operations for Enotre, an extra virgin olive oil company in Calabria, Italy. Then you smell it. You can understand a lot of things. He explained the spicy taste you get in the back of your mouth and the smells of grass and fruit in the oil. Veranda was at the Augusta Curtis Cultural Center Thursday night for an event called The Italian Connection, hosted by Kashia Cave, founder of My City Kitchen, a nonprofit that teaches youth how to cook healthy foods. Cave met Pietro Pollizzi, president of Enotre, a few years ago while studying in Italy. I was able to go to Italy last November and see firsthand how olive oil was produced, said Cave, who talked about her three days in the field working to harvest the olives. Because of our connection they decided it would be a great opportunity. To launch their product through My City Kitchen. Part of the proceeds from sales will go to My City Kitchen. It is the first time the olive oil is available in U.S. During the event, Veranda talked about making olive oil. Workers use sticks to hit the trees so the olives fall into a net. From there, olives are put into baskets and brought for processing. After the 50th time you do that, youre kind of dead, said Veranda, laughing. The event was a fundraiser for the non-profit and a way for the community to taste olive oil from Italy. Appetizers such as shrimp cocktail, bruschetta, and pasta were served using the oil. At the end of the appetizer table, two bowls were filled with the Enotre olive oil for dipping bread. It has a little bit of a kick to it, said Linda Ferrer-Colon of Wallingford, who was tasting the olive oil for the first time with a piece of bread. I feel like theres an olive oil etiquette and we need to adapt. You have cigar aficionados and your wine tasters, and this is the next thing. Across the room, Alaine Morin of Prospect was also having a taste. She was impressed after hearing My City Kitchen would be carrying the olive oil to be distributed in the community. I think its really good. This one has flavor, she said. The partnership will help My City Kitchen because Cave is looking for a new home for the non-profit after closing its doors over the summer. The nonprofit had operated out of the lower level of an office building at 384 Pratt St. There is hope for us to get a new building, said Cave. Veranda said the partnership between My City Kitchen and Enotre was made because both organizations focus on hard work and clever study. He and Pollizzi are excited to be able to start the relationship and be involved in Meriden. We know something about hard work, said Veranda. We couldnt find a better match for this. fduffany@record-journal.com 203-317-2212 Twitter: @FollowingFarrah The only thing happening this weekend in the Alamo City was Fiesta, Fiesta and more Fiesta. From NIOSA and King William Fair to the Battle of Flowers and Fiesta Flambeau, the last weekend of Fiesta has traditionally been a whirlwind of activity. 20 of 53 Edmund Tijerina 21 of 53 22 of 53 Show More Show Less 23 of 53 Kin Man Hui /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 24 of 53 25 of 53 Julie Cohen /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 26 of 53 Show More Show Less 27 of 53 28 of 53 Hopdoddy Burger Bar/Facebook Show More Show Less 29 of 53 Edmund Tijerina /S.A. 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When the restaurant and craft beer bar opens, it will feature 130 tap handles that include 44 regional craft beer offerings from 25 Texas breweries. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Crime fell in Texas' five largest cities during 2015 but some cities are seeing spikes in violent crime and murder, according to a report released last week. RELATED: 30 safest cities, towns in Texas, according to the FBI The Brennan Center for Justice's analysis of crime in 2015 found that overall crime rates per every 100,000 residents in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio fell from 2014. Austin saw the largest across-the-board drop in crime among the five cities with a 33.1 percent drop in its murder rate, a 9.8 percent decrease in its overall crime rate and an 8.6 drop in its violent crime rate. More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday RELATED: The most violent cities in Texas Dallas and San Antonio, on the other hand, were the only two major Texas cities with surges in violent crime last year with increases of 4.1 percent and 11.8 percent, respectively. According to the report, Houston had the largest increase in murder rates among major Texas cities: 23.1 percent. RELATED: How many murders do Texas law enforcement agencies clear? Dallas and Fort Worth also experienced higher murder rates in 2015, seeing spikes of 7.7 percent and 7 percent, respectively. Scroll through the slideshow to see how crime looks in five major Texas cities. jfechter@mySA.com Twitter: @JFreports This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Chef and restaurateur Johnny Hernandez will cook a special dinner at the White House for Cinco de Mayo, the Express-News has learned. The details are still being worked out, and Hernandez is expected to finalize his menu later today. Its a one of the highest accomplishments of my career, he said. Im very excited to share the authenticity of Mexican cuisine with the White House and to bring the culture of San Antonio to a whole new place. Hernandez is the first San Antonio chef to serve as a guest chef at the White House. He joins a roster of guest chefs that includes Rick Bayless of Chicago, who cooked for a 2010 state dinner with the then-president of Mexico; and Maricel Presilla, a Cuban-born chef based in New Jersey and authority on Latin American cuisines, who cooked for President Obamas Fiesta Latina in 2009. More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday Other celebrity chefs who have cooked at the White House include Top Chef Masters winner Marcus Samuelsson, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Emeril Lagasse, Guy Fieri of the Food Network, and Masaharu Morimoto, famed for his run as an Iron Chef. Hernandez wont be the first San Antonio chef to cook for Obama. Chef and restaurateur Jason Dady catered an Austin fundraiser 2014 that the president attended. And in 2010, Diana Barrios Trevino cooked puffy tacos for the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House. In addition, Don Strange Catering catered the Congressional Barbecue in 1990 and the Diplomatic Corps dinner at the White House that same year. The company also catered a dinner for President Obama two years ago at a private home in the Dominion. etijerina@express-news.net @etij SAN ANTONIO Police say two men were wounded Monday morning in an accidental shooting on the West Side. San Antonio Police Department officers were sent out to a residence in the 1400 block of Delgado Street around 12:07 a.m. for a shooting. SAN ANTONIO Two young men were taken into custody Monday morning following an apparent attempted robbery on the Northwest Side. San Antonio Police Department Sgt. James Lint said a construction crew working at an apartment complex located in the 4900 block of Woodstone Drive were approached by two men in their late teens or early 20s around 9:30 a.m. CBS reports that federal regulators may require Takata to recall an additional 85 million airbag inflators in connection with a potentially fatal airbag defect. NHTSA: Takata must prove airbags are safe According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the inflator defect can cause airbags to rupture and explode upon deployment, resulting in serious injury or even death. Approximately 85 million Takata airbag inflators will have to be recalled if Takata fails to prove to regulators that the products are safe. The resulting expansion would be in addition to the 28.8 million inflators that have already been recalled. If the recall is ordered, it would cost Takata billions of dollars. Defective airbags linked to 11 deaths So far, 11 deaths have been linked to the defective Takata airbag inflators, with 10 of those deaths occurring in the United States. The most recent victim who died due to a Takata airbag rupture was 17-year-old Huma Hanif of Houston, Texas. Bryan Thomas, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration previously confirmed that [Hanif's] death was tied to a rupture of the Takata airbag inflator. Reports indicate Hanif was struck in the throat by a piece of metal shrapnel that was ejected from a faulty airbag inflator, causing the teenager to bleed to death. Investigators claim that if not for the defective airbag, the girl may have walked away from the accident without any serious injuries. The impact was described as moderate, and Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls described the initial crash as the kind of accident police and EMS respond to every day. Investigators also determined that Hanif was not speeding at the time of the incident. Contact an experienced auto recall attorney Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys are leaders in the area of product liability litigation. Our Defective Drug and Products Division has extensive knowledge and resources in order to represent our clients efficiently and aggressively. We represent a multitude of people who are battling against manufacturers of defective vehicles and auto parts. Your choice does matter. If you or a loved one has suffered serious injuries because of a recalled vehicle or defective auto part, call Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys immediately. We represent clients/victims all over the country. We are available 24/7, nights and weekends. Editors Note: This content is made possible by Thomas J. Henry. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. A Texas teen who killed four people in a 2013 drunk-driving crash was sentenced April 13, 2016 in an adult court to four consecutive 180-day terms in jail for a suspected parole violation. The teen was placed on 10 years probation in 2013 after the defense argued he suffered from affluenza and was so spoiled from wealth that he could not tell right from wrong. About the new sentence Ethan Couch, 19, was previously held in Tarrant County since January following his deportation from Mexico where he and his mother fled. County Judge Wayne Salvant sentenced Couch in his first appearance. Prosecutors could only give him the maximum allowed due to the terms set when his case was transferred out of juvenile court into an adult court. You are not getting out of jail today, Judge Salvant told Couch. Another hearing will take place in two weeks for the judge to go over the sentence he gave. Due to his age of 16 at the time of arrest, the judge issued a gag order to keep his juvenile records sealed and confidential. According to Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson, Couchs whole demeanor has changed from cocky to compliant since he has been in custody. Couch remains in solitary confinement for his own safety. Details of Couchs initial trial A psychologist testified in 2013 that Couch was very spoiled by his financially well-off parents and that he could not tell right from wrong. The term affluenza was applied to the teen after the psychologists description of affliction. Critics were outraged when Couch was sentenced to only 10 months of probation, claiming the affluenza defense as well as his familys wealth kept the families who lost loved ones from receiving justice. Mexican authorities took Couch and his mother into custody after they fled from the United States into Mexico. The move to Mexico came after a social media video showed Couch at a party with alcohol, violating his probation. Couchs mother is facing up to 10 years in prison for helping her son escape to Mexico. She is currently released on bail awaiting trial. Contact an experienced auto recall attorney Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys are leaders in the area of product liability litigation. Our Defective Drug and Products Division has extensive knowledge and resources in order to represent our clients efficiently and aggressively. We represent a multitude of people who are battling against manufacturers of defective vehicles and auto parts. Your choice does matter. If you or a loved one has suffered serious injuries because of a recalled vehicle or defective auto part, call Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys immediately. We represent clients/victims all over the country. We are available 24/7, nights and weekends. Editors Note: This content is made possible by Thomas J. Henry. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. Posted on 04/25/2016, 9:00 am, by Farmscape.Ca A Market Analyst with KG Market Analysis and Consulting says a recent reversal in declining Canadian pork consumption is extremely positive for Canadas pork industry. Over the past 2 to 3 decades the volumes of pork eaten by Canadian consumers has declined. Kevin Grier, a Market Analyst with KG Market Analysis and Consulting, says the fact that Canadians have demanded less pork over the past 20 to 30 years is one of the reasons the Canadian pork industry has become smaller. The negative side is that weve seen declines in consumption over the years. The flip side though is in the last 5 or 6 years that weve eaten less but, overall, theres been some stability in terms of our consumption and in 2015 Canadians ate more pork and not only did we eat more pork in 2015 but we ate more pork at higher price levels and thats the definition of increasing demand. It hasnt been often that Ive been able to be positive about demand but I have been positive about demand in the last couple of years and I expect I will continue to be positive about domestic demand in the coming years. Canadians export more pork than we consume. We export 60 percent of our production so the domestic market comprises 40 percent. Were quite unique in that regard. We export more than we consume. Nevertheless, the domestic market is our highest price market. Its in many respects our most lucrative and important market. Theres no other single market that can come close to it. Japan and the United States are also important but nothing compared to our own so the fact that weve got positive news to talk about domestically is very very good news. Like I say declining demand in Canada is part of the reason why we have a smaller pork industry in Canada. So the fact that its improving is an argument for an expanding pork industry in Canada. ~ Kevin Grier KG Market Analysis and Consulting Grier says, in terms of the Canadian pork industrys role internationally and its ability to compete, the outlook is positive and its going to continue to be positive from a global perspective. By Silvia Merler, former Economic Analyst in DG Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission (ECFIN) and an affiliate fellow at Bruegel. Cross-posted from Bruegel. In Greek mythology, Atlas the Titan was condemned by Zeus to eternally hold the weight of the sky on his shoulders. A mythological struggle that has recently made the news, thanks to the creation of a new Italian bank fund named after the titan, and facing the equally tough duty of sustaining the weakest pillars of the Italian banking system. Several issues remain with the new fund which deserve discussion. First, the fund may avoid the need for bank resolution in the short term, but increases systemic risk in the longer term. Second, the role of the state is dubious and should be spelled out for reasons that go well beyond state aid considerations. Third, the extent to which this is also an initiative to preserve the Italian ownership of Italian banks is unclear. The Issue Italys bank bailout fund was announced on 11 April, before Italian banks Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca undertake important capital increases. The fund is expected to raise 4-6 billion euros, and act as a backstop to shore up confidence in the Italian banking sector. In practice, its mission is to ensure the success of capital raising requested by the supervisory authority for banks that face market difficulties, by acting as a subscriber of last resort. It also aims to buy mezzanine and junior tranches of securitized non-performing loans (NPLs). Out of the 360 billion euros of Italian NPLs, the more serious bad debt (sofferenze) accounts for 14% of total loans on average (about 200 billion euros), with a coverage ratio of 59.8% (see table 1). Assuming a price of 20 cents on the euro (in line with the cases of previous resolution), banks would be covered for 79% of the nominal value of their impaired assets, while the remaining 21% would face a net loss of 42 billion euros on bad debts (or 2.6% of Italian GDP). In perspective, its a much smaller amount than what other countries have pledged in support of their banking system, and had this happened years ago, the state could have covered it. But today the picture is different. NPLs in Italian banks Systemic re-shuffling The systemic implications of the funds structure and role have been downplayed in the debate. After the two episodes of bank resolution conducted last year (discussed here and here), there is one fact that could not be clearer: in a country where about a third of bank bonds is held by the household sector, even a limited bail-in can have painful consequences for peoples lives. A leaked draft of the Atlas project suggests that the initiative stems from fears of the systemic implications if Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca failed to raise enough capital. If this were to happen, the document warns on page 2, there would likely be bank runs due to depositors worrying about bail-in, increases in the cost of funding, losses on direct and indirect bank exposures, losses on households investment portfolios including bank debt, and negative effects for the real economy. Salvatore Rossi, Director General of the Bank of Italy, recently stated that Atlas will reduce systemic risk, by avoiding fears of a domino effect due to the difficulties of individual banks. However, the structure of the fund would suggest otherwise. The fund will be mostly financed by Italian banks and privately held institutions. Recent reports suggest that the two largest Italian banks, Intesa and Unicredit, will contribute 1 billion euros each, one additional billion will come from other banks, 500 million from banking foundations, 500 million from the publicly controlled Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, and the rest from Italian insurance companies. By acting as a shareholder of last resort for those banks that are too weak to raise capital on the market, the fund effectively prevents bank resolution (and its consequences) in the short run. But it does so by piling up risk onto the balance sheets of a banking system that is already very interconnected, and that at present retains areas of weakness. Its hard to see how this would reduce the risk of a domino effect in the long term. Scepticism is reflected in the assessments of Fitch and S&P, which both point out that the fund increases the exposure of stronger banks to weaker banks, with negative prospects for the stronger banks creditworthiness. Concerning confidence which the fund is expected to increase by acting as a buyer of last resort the effect is at best dubious. Ideally, a backstop should be reassuring enough for it never to be used, but considering the sense of urgency surrounding Atlas, this is unlikely to be the case. In fact, recent news reports suggest that investor demand for shares issued by Banco di Vicenza is poor, and that the total unsold portion could total no less than 1 billion euros. Atlas will cover the gap, but should a capital raise that succeeds only thanks to the unconditional commitment of a buyer of last resort be considered a successful capital raise? And is it reasonable to expect that increasing exposures of stronger banks to weaker banks will enhance confidence in the health of the Italian banking system as a whole? Whats made in Italy, stays in Italy The extent to which this fund is aimed at preventing foreign takeovers of Italian banks is unclear. On March 29 US private equity fund Apollo offered to buy a majority stake in Italian bank Carige as well as the banks 3.5 billion euros of NPLs, and media reports suggest the bid was also viewed favourably by the ECB. A recent Repubblica article suggested that the objective of the bank fund is also to prevent the arrival of foreign funds, able to put on the table enough resources to buy NPLs and recapitalise the banks acquiring control, as Apollo is trying to do with Carige. Similar interest was expressed by US fund Fortress for Banca Popolare di Vicenza, but the idea was abandoned earlier this month. Italian finance minister Padoan speaking in Washington at the Peterson Institute of International Economics on April 14 dismissed this as gossip, arguing that the fund is not aimed at preventing foreign entry, but to prevent the dismissal of Italian banks assets at fire sale prices. As always, the key question is what the market price for these assets is. The fund may not have the explicit objective of limiting foreign entry, but if the fire sale prices at which foreign investors are willing to invest reflect actual market value, than by buying at higher prices the fund keeps out foreign investors and subsidizes the banks shedding those assets. Perhaps more importantly, it achieves this by buying assets at a higher cost than they are worth, and funding this mostly within the rest of the Italian banking system. The argument in favour of this is that if the NPL scheme succeeds and growth picks up, then the value of these assets will recover enough to make the operation profitable, so the fund buys banks the precious time they need for their assets to become appealing to foreigners at a higher price. The obvious counterargument is that the Italian banking sector has spent the last 5 years trying to buy this time, with the result that it now has to set up Atlas to avoid resolving those banks that should have recovered but did not. The experience of this delayed clean-up would suggest that more time is not always enough, and that this is a risky bet. An important test for Atlas will be whether foreign investors will eventually invest in it. Unclear nature While there have been reports that the fund is government-inspired, the Italian government has stressed its private nature (see minister Padoan here, the government website here). This is key to prevent the funds operations from being classified as state aid by the European Commission, but it also matters in relation to the structure of the recently approved state guarantees scheme for NPLs, known as GACS in Italian. The GACS scheme foresees a state guarantee on the less risky senior tranches of securitized NPLs, but before the guarantee can be activated, 50% of the less senior tranches need to be placed with private investors. The market appeal of these riskier tranches is low, or rather the market price could be very different from the value at which the NPLs are accounted for on banks balance sheets, which would translate into impairments and consume capital. So the guarantee scheme for Italian NPLs runs the obvious risk of stillbirth unless Italian banks pool their funds together into a private fund and buy a significant part of the junior products themselves, which is precisely what Atlas will do. Yet, if this is supposed to be a fully private initiative, it is not clear why it should include a 500 million euro contribution from the Italian National Promotional bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which is a joint-stock company under public control. The role of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) should be clearly spelled out. The rationale for transparency goes well beyond state aid considerations. A first reason is that the fund will buy unsold shares from those banks that have been asked to raise capital by the supervisor: the involvement of a publicly controlled institution as a buyer of last resort could cast doubts on the strength and impact of supervisory action. Take the example of Banca Popolare di Vicenza, which is raising capital for the third time in three years. Normally, if a supervisor requests that a bank raises capital and the bank fails to do so the bank is put into resolution. In the Italian case, if Banco Popolare di Vicenza fails to raise capital later this month, the fund (in which CDP participates) will step in to ensure that the resolution threat is removed regardless from the market outcome. In this scenario, the strength of supervisory action is reduced. Moreover, avoiding a bank resolution will also prevent the change in governance structure that the resolution authority can demand from a bank. Considering that the previous cash calls of Banca di Vicenza are now under investigation, after an ECB inspection revealed that the bank had loaned money to customers to buy the shares and that in some cases managers allegedly signed letters guaranteeing the bank would return or repurchase the shares, a change in governance appears to be highly warranted. A second reason is that the fund will become shareholder of relatively weaker banks in the system and buy relatively riskier NPLs tranches. The rationale for involving into such operation the CDP, which manages a large share of Italian savings, should be transparently discussed. Conclusion The Atlas fund has a heavy task, although probably not as heavy as that of its mythological namesake. In the short run, it might be what most commentators have described: an imperfect but needed second-best way to avoid bail-in and resolution, matching repeated calls from the Bank of Italy for a revision of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) framework after Italy negotiated and approved it. However, by acting as a bank shareholder of last resort the fund increases systemic risk in the longer term, weakening the stronger banks and involving a publicly controlled institution whose main source of funding is postal savings into a rather risky venture. While its unclear whether the aim is to keep foreign capital out of the Italian banking system, what ultimately matters is how this initiative will affect (or avoid affecting) the quality of bank governance, a key issue for the future resilience of the system. Regardless of whether we think that keeping weak banks alive at all costs is a good idea, the idea of such a shareholder of last resort appears at odds with the aim of making progress towards a solid European Banking Union. Yves here. Weve been of the view that the US fracking industry is one of the major targets of the Saudi keep pumping oil strategy. And since US shale gas players are still pumping in bankruptcy, it will take more pain to lead to a sustained reduction in activity. One key objective not mentioned here is presumably to undermine the case for building LNG transport facilities. By Rakesh Upadhyay, a writer for US-based Divergente LLC consulting firm. Originally published at OilPrice Saudi Arabia single-handedly scuttled the Doha meeting, knowing all along that Iran would not participate, with a valid reason. The Russians and others agreed to proceed without Iran, planning to include them at a later date. So if everything was known beforehand, why did the Saudis pour cold water on the aspirations of the remaining members, risking its alienation from Russia and the OPEC community? Was it simply Saudi enmity toward Iran? Not exactly. Upon closer scrutiny, we can find the Saudi masterstroke behind Doha. It is well known that Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on oil revenues, and that those revenues are on the brink of collapse. They have sought financial aid from various international agencies to support their dwindling economy. But the trick here is to determine exactly how desperate the Saudis are. Certainly not as desperate as other countries. Angola has recently sought support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Venezuelas struggles started well before crude prices dropped to 12-year lows and is fighting to avoid a disaster. Azerbaijan has also approached the IMF and the World Bank for help. Nigeria is also seeking the World Banks support. Without external support, Iraq will find it difficult to continue its war against the Islamic State (ISIS). Lower oil prices continue to make matters worse, and Iraqi Kurdistan has taken advantage of the situation and works towards independence and beefing up its unilateral export plans. Ecuador is the worst hit, and now the devastating earthquake has crippled the nation. It will need help from the IMF, the World Bank and a few other lenders to reconstruct. After a 3.5 percent contraction in 2015, Russias gross domestic product will take a further 1.5 percent hit in 2016, as projected by the Central Bank. Kazakhstan is faring no better. Its growth shrunk to 1.2 percent in 2015 from an impressive 6 percent in 2013 and is expected to slow down further to 0.1 percent in 2016. Most of the participating nations are financially ruined. They have to undertake drastic measures to reduce their dependence on oil. Disaster is imminent. The Saudis are definitely not immune, even if on the surface disaster isnt obvious. Saudi Arabia is burning through its reserves at a record pace, but at the same time, it can sustain low prices for the next three to four years. Not only that, it can increase its production by another 2 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), if more funds are required. But why the drastic action on the eve of the meeting disregarding the plight of the participating member nations? Though the real reason for the about face is known only in the secretive halls of the royal palace, consider this: Saudi Arabia has held the mantle as the world leader in oil for decades, and has largely enjoyed veto power on all things concerning oil. However, since 2014, it has waged a losing battle against the U.S. shale oil drillers, who are phenomenally more resilient than anyone expected. The first signs of the shale producer vulnerability are now, however, becoming visible, with oil production in the U.S. dropping below 9 million barrels a daythe lowest in 18 months. If oil prices continue to remain below $40 per barrel, a few more shale oil producers will fall by the wayside. But if crude prices rise above $50 per barrel, the shale producers have made their intentions clear, that they will be back in business. If Saudi Arabia had accepted the deal, oil prices would have jumped to $50/b, giving the shale oil industry a new lease on life. Shale producers would have started pumping at a frantic pace, increasing the glut and pushing oil prices back down. This whole exercise would permanently dent Saudi Arabias reputation as the leading oil player. The baton would have passed to the shale oil drillersan event that the Saudis simply cannot allow. With Irans return post-sanctions, Saudi Arabias leadership in OPEC is under threat. By scuttling the meeting, Saudi Arabia has asserted its supremacy and reminded the OPEC nations just how much power the Saudis still wield. The Saudis have ascertained their importance in the new cartel as well. They have not let Russia assume sole leadership, they have ensured that they remain at the centre of any decision making in the new cartel. By voicing their objection to the meeting, Saudi Arabia has attempted to win back the leadership baton from American shale producers. It has shown the OPEC members that it still is the leader, thereby blocking Iran from challenging it, and finally, it has maintained its importance in the new bigger cartel, demanding an equal say in the scheme of things alongside Russia. The Doha washout was the Saudi masterstroke to regain its importance. However, with many OPEC nations on the edge of collapse, the next OPEC meeting will confirm if the Saudi move was indeed a masterstroke, or if it was just a short-lived power grab. By David Dayen, author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Streets Great Foreclosure Fraud, releasing May 17. Ive written before at this august site about how Ubers business model is to arbitrage state and federal law and replace a monopoly with a different monopoly. They obviously placed a high value on the arbitrage. How high? About $100 million: Uber has survived a major threat to its business model, settling two legal suits brought by drivers who sought to be classified as employees instead of independent contractors. The ride-hailing firm will pay up to $100 million to the 385,000 drivers, but their employment status will not change. The class actions were brought in California and Massachusetts. Uber, which is valued at up to $70 billion, is on the hook for a $84 million initial payment, and another $16 million if it goes public. Im not seeing much of a reason for Uber to ever go public, so I should amend to say the arbitrage was worth $84 million. And while a judge has to sign off on the settlement, with both sides in agreement on the resolution I cant see that being a big hurdle. This concerned two big employee misclassification lawsuits, which if successful would have turned Uber into just another car service. Now that Uber settled, they dont have to worry about providing workers comp or expenses or overtime or the employer half of Social Security taxes or any other benefit given to a worker on staff. In other words, they got off cheap. As Michael Hiltzik points out, this highlights a big problem with class action lawsuits, namely that theyre nearly impossible to get through the courts in this day and age, and even if they do, once the legal team gets their cut they provide nothing of value to the actual litigants: The key question left unanswered by the settlement announcement is whether the drivers are receiving enough in return for what theyre giving up. As is often the case with class settlements, the big headline number obscures how little trickles down to the plaintiffs. In this deal, drivers with the most time and mileage recorded with Uber are in line to receive one-time payments up to about $8,000. (Though the typical driver will receive far less from a settlement that averages out to $218 per driver.) Nothing fundamental in the balance of income and expenses will change as a result of the dealdrivers will still be on the hook for gas, insurance and wear-and-tear on their vehicles, and Uber will retain the right to set fares and extract fees and commissions of more than 20%. There are a few more benefits for drivers in the deal. Uber cannot deactivate drivers at will; they now must show cause and give drivers a chance to shape up before dismissal. Not accepting enough rides cannot be a cause. Drivers associations can be established to work with management on driver concerns, but this could undermine the efforts underway for drivers to unionize. Finally, drivers can solicit tips from their passengers for the first time. But this WSJ piece gets at a couple reasons why thats not going to work. The entire appeal of Uber was that it was seamless: you summon a car on the app and the payment is executed there, without having to fish around in your pocket or purse for cash. Riders thought the fare included tips and itll be hard to change that behavior. Plus, Uber wont put a tip tool on the app, meaning drivers will be reduced to begging their clients for cash only, which plenty of people just dont carry anymore. Yes, rider ratings would be at stake for non-tippers, but so will driver ratings for those that demand tips. I guess Lyft allows tips and most people do it, so its not impossible. But I also dont think its a huge step forward for drivers when theyre not getting a single benefit afforded an employee. The class action was an imperfect opportunity to help workers, but outside of a small cash payout the drivers really didnt get much, and Uber kept its model virtually intact. However, in an almost cosmic bit of justice, among the other legal actions, union drives, and National Labor Relations Board investigation is a gem of a lawsuit that actually relies on Ubers boasting that their drivers are independent contractors. The case asserts that Ubers drivers including its CEO, Travis Kalanick, who has driven a few times are engaging in price-fixing collusion. Allison Frankel laid it out earlier this month: Uber argued that its simply not plausible to claim hundreds of thousands of drivers assented to a price-fixing conspiracy. (Uber does not disclose an actual number of drivers.) According to the company, the most plausible explanation is that each driver made an independent decision to sign up with Uber, not that these strangers conspired with each other and with Uber to inflate charges for customers. In the companys depiction, it has increased competition by offering customers an alternative to taxis, car services, mass transit and even walking [] But the plaintiffs said Uber cant enjoy the benefits of its disruptive business model without suffering the consequences. Because Uber drivers arent traditional employees, but independent contractors who assented to Ubers anticompetitive terms, they are plausibly co-conspirators under the U.S. Supreme Courts 1939 ruling in Interstate Circuit v. U.S., according to the plaintiffs. And by insisting that it is not a taxi company or car service, they argued, Uber cannot claim it competes with those businesses. According to the plaintiffs, the relevant market for antitrust claims against Uber is mobile app-generated ride-share services and Uber controls 80 percent of that market. Hahahaha. Live by the independent contractor loophole, die by the independent contractor loophole, I guess. And at the root, does Uber create a monopolized market for its services that controls prices, including when those prices surge? Arent these allegedly independent contractors who could otherwise undercut each other on price operating under a fixed scheme? I think its worth some fact-finding. None other than Jed Rakoff is the presiding judge in this case, and he allowed this case to go forward a few weeks ago, setting a trial date of November 1. While the misclassification case would have just made Uber unprofitable, this price-fixing case would effectively shut Uber down completely. It would be so poetic for Uber to wiggle its way out of every threat to treat its workers like employees, only to see that be the very thing that causes their downfall. Rare Earth atoms see the light (Nanowerk News) Tiny units of matter and chemistry that they are, atoms constitute the entire universe. Some rare atoms can store quantum information, an important phenomenon for scientists in their ongoing quest for a quantum Internet. New research from UC Santa Barbara scientists and their Dutch colleagues exploits a system that has the potential to transfer optical quantum information to a locally stored solid-state quantum format, a requirement of quantum communication. The team's findings appear in the journal Nature Photonics ("Multidimensional Purcell effect in an ytterbium-doped ring resonator"). "Our research aims at creating a quantum analog of current fiber optic technology in which light is used to transfer classical information -- bits with values zero or one -- between computers," said author Dirk Bouwmeester, a professor in UCSB's Department of Physics. "The rare earth atoms we're studying can store the superpositions of zero and one used in quantum computation. In addition, the light by which we communicate with these atoms can also store quantum information." Atoms are each composed of a nucleus typically surrounded by inner shells full of electrons and often have a partially filled outer electron shell. The optical and chemical properties of the atoms are mainly determined by the electrons in the outer shell. Rare earth atoms such as erbium and ytterbium have the opposite composition: a partially filled inner shell surrounded by filled outer shells. This special configuration is what enables these atoms to store quantum information. However, the unique composition of rare earth atoms leads to electronic transitions so well shielded from the surrounding atoms that optical interactions are extremely weak. Even when implanted in a host material, these atoms maintain those shielded transitions, which in principle can be addressed optically in order to store and retrieve quantum information. Bouwmeester collaborated with John Bowers, a professor in UCSB's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and investigators at Leiden University in the Netherlands to strengthen these weak interactions by implanting ytterbium into ultra-high-quality optical storage rings on a silicon chip. "The presence of the high-quality optical ring resonator -- even if no light is injected -- changes the fundamental optical properties of the embedded atoms, which leads to an order of magnitude increase in optical interaction strength with the ytterbium," Bouwmeester said. "This increase, known as the Purcell effect, has an intricate dependence on the geometry of the optical light confinement." The team's findings indicate that new samples currently under development at UCSB can enable optical communication to a single ytterbium atom inside optical circuits on a silicon chip, a phenomenon of significant interest for quantum information storage. The experiments also explore the way in which the Purcell effect enhances optical interaction with an ensemble of a few hundred rare earth atoms. The grouping itself has interesting collective properties that can also be explored for the storage of quantum information. Key is an effect called a photon echo, the result of two distinct light pulses, the first of which causes atoms in ytterbium to become partially excited. "The first light pulse creates a set of atoms we 'talk' to in a specific state and we call that state 'in phase' because all the atoms are created at the same time by this optical pulse," Bouwmeester explained. "However, the individual atoms have slightly different frequencies because of residual coupling to neighboring atoms, which affects their time evolution and causes decoherence in the system." Decoherence is the inability to keep track of how the system evolves in all its details. "The trick is that the second light pulse changes the state of the system so that it evolves backwards, causing the atoms to return to the initial phase," he continued. "This makes everything coherent and causes the atoms to collectively emit the light they absorbed from the first pulse." The strength of the photon echo contains important information about the fundamental properties of the ytterbium in the host material. "By analyzing the strength of these photon echoes, we are learning about the fundamental interactions of ytterbium with its surroundings," Bouwmeester said. "Now we're working on strengthening the Purcell effect by making the storage rings we use smaller and smaller." Unexpected discovery leads to a better battery (Nanowerk News) An unexpected discovery has led to a rechargeable battery that's as inexpensive as conventional car batteries, but has a much higher energy density. The new battery could become a cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative for storing renewable energy and supporting the power grid. A team based at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory identified this energy storage gem after realizing the new battery works in a different way than they had assumed. A recent study in the journal Nature Energy describes the battery ("Reversible aqueous zinc/manganese oxide energy storage from conversion reactions"). PNNLs improved aqueous zinc-manganese oxide battery offers a cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative for storing renewable energy and supporting the power grid. Why It Matters "The idea of a rechargeable zinc-manganese battery isn't new; researchers have been studying them as an inexpensive, safe alternative to lithium-ion batteries since the late 1990s," said PNNL Laboratory Fellow Jun Liu, the paper's corresponding author. "But these batteries usually stop working after just a few charges. Our research suggests these failures could have occurred because we failed to control chemical equilibrium in rechargeable zinc-manganese energy storage systems." Methods After years of focusing on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, researchers are used to thinking about the back-and-forth shuttle of lithium ions. Lithium-ion batteries store and release energy through a process called intercalation, which involves lithium ions entering and exiting microscopic spaces in between the atoms of a battery's two electrodes. This concept is so engrained in energy storage research that when PNNL scientists, collaborating with the University of Washington, started considering a low-cost, safe alternative to lithium-ion batteries -- a rechargeable zinc-manganese oxide battery -- they assumed zinc would similarly move in and out of that battery's electrodes. After a battery of tests, the team was surprised to realize their device was undergoing an entirely different process. Instead of simply moving the zinc ions around, their zinc-manganese oxide battery was undergoing a reversible chemical reaction that converted its active materials into entirely new ones. Attractive alternative Liu and his colleagues started investigating rechargeable zinc-manganese batteries because they are attractive on paper. They can be as inexpensive as the lead-acid batteries because they use abundant, inexpensive materials (zinc and manganese). And the battery's energy density can exceed lead-acid batteries. The PNNL scientists hoped they could produce a better-performing battery by digging deeper into the inner workings of the zinc-manganese oxide battery. So they built their own battery with a negative zinc electrode, a positive manganese dioxide electrode and a water-based electrolyte in between the two. They put small, button-sized test batteries through the wringer, repeatedly charging and discharging them. As others had found before them, their test battery quickly lost its ability to store energy after just a few charging cycles. But why? Detailed investigation To find out, they first performed a detailed chemical and structural analysis of the electrolyte and electrode materials. They were surprised to not find evidence of zinc interacting with manganese oxide during the battery's charge and discharge processes, as they had initially expected would happen. The unexpected finding led them to wonder if the battery didn't undergo a simple intercalation process as they had previously thought. Perhaps the zinc-manganese battery is less like a lithium-ion battery and more like the traditional lead-acid battery, which also relies on chemical conversion reactions. To dig deeper, they examined the electrodes with several advanced instruments with a variety of scientific techniques, including transmission electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and X-ray diffraction. The instruments used were located at both PNNL and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a DOE Office of Science user facility located at PNNL. Combining these techniques revealed manganese oxide was reversibly reacting with protons from the water-based electrolyte, which created a new material, zinc hydroxyl sulfate. Typically, zinc-manganese oxide batteries significantly lose storage capacity after just a few cycles. This happens because manganese from the battery's positive electrode begins to sluff off, making the battery's active material inaccessible for energy storage. But after some manganese dissolves into the electrolyte, the battery gradually stabilizes and the storage capacity levels out, though at a much lower level. A simple fix The team used the new knowledge to prevent this manganese sluff-off. Knowing the battery underwent chemical conversions, they determined the rate of manganese dissolution could be slowed down by increasing the electrolyte's initial manganese concentration. So they added manganese ions to the electrolyte in a new test battery and put the revised battery through another round of tests. This time around, the test battery was able to reach a storage capacity of 285 milliAmpere-hours per gram of manganese oxide over 5,000 cycles, while retaining 92 percent of its initial storage capacity. "This research shows equilibrium needs to be controlled during a chemical conversion reaction to improve zinc-manganese oxide battery performance," Liu said. "As a result, zinc-manganese oxide batteries could be a more viable solution for large-scale energy storage than the lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries used to support the grid today." What's Next? SHARE Thanks to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, 200,000 convicted felons in the state of Virginia may now register to vote. Writes The Washington Post, "The change applies to all felons who have completed their sentences and been released from supervised probation or parole. The Democratic governor's decision particularly affects black residents of Virginia: 1 in 4 African-Americans in the state has been permanently banned from voting because of laws restricting the rights of those with convictions." McAuliffe's executive order also allows felons, including rapists and murderers, to run for public office, serve on a jury and become a notary public. I can just visualize the campaign slogan now: "Vote for me. I've already done time." Republicans are outraged, of course. Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell said: "The singular purpose of Terry McAuliffe's governorship is to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States. This office has always been a stepping-stone to a job in Hillary Clinton's cabinet." It's an accusation McAuliffe vehemently denies. Hillary Clinton tweeted, "Proud of my friend @GovernorVA for continuing to break down barriers to voting. H." After many years as a Republican, or red state, Virginia more recently has become a swing state and important to Democrats for winning the presidency. Just as former slaves in Virginia and elsewhere were loyal to Republicans for many years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, it is likely that many of these felons will become reliable Democratic voters. Maybe Democrats will next figure out a way to hand illegal immigrants crossing our southern border the right to vote. McAuliffe, a prolific fundraiser for the Clintons, appears to be as loyal to them as a family's faithful golden retriever. He has raised millions for them and for the Democratic National Committee. For a good account of McAuliffe's fundraising antics and other financial dealings, visit the website counterpunch.org. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "In 38 states and the District of Columbia, most ex-felons automatically gain the right to vote upon the completion of their sentence." In liberal Maine and Vermont, convicted felons may cast their ballots while in prison and are never disenfranchised. Most states require ex-convicts to apply to have their voting rights restored. Many factors go into the decision, including the nature of the crime. It is not always automatic. In his book "The Virginia Constitution," John J. Dinan writes: "Virginia's felon disenfranchisement provision ... has been challenged in several cases, but sustained in each instance." In 1982, Virginia voters rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed convicted felons to vote. As recently as 2004, notes Dinan, a constitutional amendment to automatically restore felons' voting rights after the completion of their sentences "was considered by the General Assembly, but failed to achieve a majority in either the House or Senate." Societies going back to Greek and Roman times have disenfranchised convicted criminals, because they regarded such actions as part of their punishment. There was also a sense that not allowing convicted felons to vote might, when combined with other forms of punishment, serve as a deterrent to crime. Republicans have long accused Democrats of election shenanigans. e.g., Mickey Mouse's name showing up on registration lists, voters giving nonexistent addresses, some voting more than once. And let's not forget what I call the "cemetery vote," or the ultimate absentee ballot, where the dead get to "vote." In an interview following McAuliffe's announcement, Speaker Howell suggested legal action might be taken. There isn't much time between now and November and the Republican majority legislature is not even in session. Legal action would be difficult. If Clinton wins the presidency and the votes of Virginia felons prove decisive, cheating and voter cynicism will plunge to new depths. Most people probably think politics can't get any dirtier. McAuliffe's action shows they are wrong. SHARE WASHINGTON In the days following the 2001 terrorist attack on America, plenty of things were done that probably should not have been. One of these was called "rendition," the act of kidnapping suspected terrorists and those thought to be connected with them from foreign cities, spiriting them to a secret location and subjecting them to interrogation that often included torture. The practice was carried out by the CIA despite the fact that it violated every tenant of this nation's founding charter and was morally and legally reprehensible. In the beginning, it generally found a sympathetic audience among millions of Americans clearly in shock from the tragedy of 9/11. "Whatever it takes" became the mantra of the people and their government. As things cooled down, however, more opposition developed here and abroad, and even our allies became alarmed. So much so that the agents involved in carrying out the actual events and even those at the fringes of this policy became vulnerable to prosecution from nations where the action took place. One of these Italy has gone as far as to indict and convict in absentia 26 Americans who its courts say were involved in the 2003 rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, a cleric in Milan. None of the convicted were expected to suffer any real prison time or other consequences because they were in the United States before the trials took place and some have been pardoned. But it now seems that one CIA employee who appears to have had little or nothing to do with the kidnapping is facing the possibility of four years in an Italian jail. Her crime, she told The Washington Post, was to have served as an interpreter a year before the kidnapping between U.S, and Italian intelligence strategists about the possibility of rendition. She said Abu Omar wasn't even mentioned. A year later when he was a victim of rendition, she was chaperoning her son's high school ski trip. Sabrina De Sousa left the agency and moved to Portugal to be near relatives, knowing the risk. She was arrested at the Lisbon airport and is now facing the probability of extradition to Italy while so far her own government is stonewalling her pleas for intervention. Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, it seems, never answered her pleas. Let's get one thing straight: Rendition was the policy of the highest levels of the American government, from the White House to Congress to the director of the CIA none of whom face any responsibility for their actions. Those who actually carry out these assignments at the operational level are left holding the bag if things go wrong. Even those whose participation is less than tangential are unprotected. Under those circumstances, it is a wonder that anyone would accept such an assignment one that carries a disavowal by those who dreamed up the entire mess. The De Sousa matter has become a concern for the cloak-and-dagger manipulators. Morale of undercover CIA operatives is endangered by the government's refusal so far to provide immunity and other protections for her. As I have said, what person wants to toil under those conditions? Failing to extend diplomatic cover for those you have enlisted is inexcusable. Good faith and patriotism is a two-way street. Italy is an ally, a member of NATO. The Italian government, which obviously had knowledge and participation through its own intelligence operations, has an obligation to advise its courts of this. But justice in a country where the Mafia is still a major factor doesn't seem to be all that important. The Washington Post was told by the prosecutor in the case that the Italian court doesn't need a smoking gun to convict. Swell. In other words, if they just think she is guilty, complete lack of evidence makes no difference. And what about Abu Omar? He was interrogated, tortured and ultimately released. Meanwhile, a 60-year-old American woman who apparently had nothing to do with his kidnapping is likely to be incarcerated because she wanted to be near relatives. SHARE Walter Lasek Jr., 23, brushes his teeth after finishing dinner in his Naples Park home on Monday, April 18, 2016. Lasek lives at home with his mother Debby Kays and stepfather Terry. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Debby Kays and her autistic son Walter Lasek Jr., 23, eat bananas from their community garden near their Naples Park home on Monday, April 18, 2016. Kays, along with her husband Terry, is working to build a co-housing community in Naples for people with Autism and their families, through their non-profit organization Adonis Autism. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Walter Lasek Jr., 23, center, spends time with his family and neighbors in their community garden near their Naples Park home on Monday, April 18, 2016. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Walter Lasek Jr., 23, shares his orange slices with Max Cyr, 4, of Naples during Nathaniel's Hope Buddy Break at Naples Seventh-day Adventist Church on Friday, April 22, 2016. Buddy Break is a program that gives caregivers of people with special needs some time off. "I really appreciate Buddy Break," Lasek's mother Debby Kays says. "I wish I had this when Walter was younger." (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Related Photos Family with autistic son hopes to build co-housing community in Naples By Liz Freeman of the Naples Daily News Terry and Debby Kays recognize they face hurdles to develop a housing community that offers an extended family atmosphere for people with disabilities. Theres the barrier of costly land in Collier County. Theres making the concept appealing to enough families. Theres potential objections from neighbors. The Kays, who operate the local nonprofit advocacy group, Adonis Autism, nonetheless are steadfast in their focus. They want to develop what they call cohousing, where families live side by side in a community they run with a shared mission of caring for loved ones with autism or other disabilities. The concept is for safe, affordable and financially sustainable long-term housing. The planned name is Osprey Village, and the Kays are searching for families to join them. What we need to do is support these families, Terry Kays said. The couple knows firsthand the predicament of families with a child or adult child with a disability. Debby Kays has a son, Walter, 23, who has autism. He is living with them at home again in North Naples after an unsuccessful try at a local group home. He works off and on at a McDonalds restaurant. There is the assumption that people with autism cant do things, and thats not true, she said. We want to help them find their self motivation. The idea of Osprey Village is similar to senior communities with supportive services, Terry Kays said. Cohousing is self-organized and a self-financed group of families that come together to develop a supportive community, he said. It is family driven. Osprey Village doesnt have to restricted to families with a special needs family member, Debby Kays said. There could be typical families who are looking for a supportive environment. It also could work for multigenerational families, she said. One in 68 children in Collier County is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which is a similar number compared to other communities and comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tara Tallaksen, an autism navigator for Golisano Childrens Hospital of Southwest Florida. She is based in Collier at Golisanos outpatient clinic in North Naples. When she works with the children with autism, parents talk about their concerns when their children become adults. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities has group homes for people who qualify but in many cases the adult children remain at home, she said. Its a crisis, Tallaksen said. Its everywhere. Its not just Collier. Adonis Autism, which organizes educational workshops and offers networking for families, began plans for the housing community in 2013. There are about 130 family-run housing communities around the country similar to the Osprey Village concept but none in Southwest Florida or the region, Terry Kays said. One broke ground in Gainesville, he said. The communities can be designed in many different ways but an overriding principle is that families decide the structure. It does seem like a pie in the sky idea but it does work, Kays said. It has been done hundreds of times. He envisions the cost for each family at roughly $200,000 to $250,000 but much of that depends on the cost of land. A minimum of seven acres is needed but 10 acres is more ideal. A key layout feature is a cluster of single family homes, town homes or a combination with a pedestrian corridor for safety. The Kays have enlisted a local architect firm run by Brandt and Michaela Henning, called Hlevel. We are interested in cohousing alternatives, Brandt Henning said. Cohousing truly is residents that design it. Henning put some concepts on paper for Osprey Village with town houses and a community center for families to consider the possibilities. The community center or common house is for shared activities, classrooms and other services. The common house would offer respite to families by sharing tasks, according to a brochure for the community. A lot of parents are single parents and have to work, Debby Kays said. When parents die, their autistic or disabled family member can transition to a group home staffed by independent contractors with the state Medicaid waiver program, according to the plan. At the same time, the group home would have the watchful eye of the families in the community. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities operates the Medicaid Waiver program which provides supportive services for people after they become adults at age 22 if they meet qualifications, agency spokeswoman Melanie Etters said. The group homes licensed by the agency are for individuals with severe autism or other developmental disabilities, she said. There are six group homes in Collier and three are at capacity; three homes have 11 vacant beds, she said. In Lee County, there are 69 licensed homes and 32 are at capacity, and 37 homes have a total of 57 vacant beds. When the Kays and Adonis Autism started working on Osprey Village, they had 10 families interested but some have since moved away. Now six families are interested, Debby Kays said. We need 20, she said. That is our goal. The Foundation for the Developmentally Disabled in Collier County is aware of the Osprey Village plan and will meet with the Kays shortly to get more details, Karen Govern, executive director of the foundation, said. I definitely admire what they are trying to do, Govern said. Anything that can be done to help families with an autistic child or with a developmental disability, I think is wonderful. Besides the few group homes in Collier licensed by the state, there arent housing alternatives for people with special needs, she said. Theres nothing, Govern said. We advocate for housing solutions for individuals with developmental disabilities. The Osprey Village concept is one solution among a need for several solutions, Govern said. To learn more about Adonis Autism, see www.adonisautism.org. SHARE Victor Dotres. By Arek Sarkissian of the Naples Daily News TALLAHASSEE A Collier County elementary school teacher who is running for a state House seat was suspended briefly in 2011 for talking online to a student and failing to report it to his superiors, school records show. The online conversation Victor Dotres carried out with a middle school student in November 2011 was not sexual in nature. Dotres said the student reached out to him because she was being cyberbullied. "I should have handled it differently, but if a kid asked for help I didn't know the protocol," Dotres said in an interview. "I thought what I had done was right at the time." The Collier County School District suspended Dotres for three days over the incident, and the Florida Department of Education placed him on probation for two years. Dotres was an art teacher at Immokalee Middle School when the incident surfaced and he has since transferred to Estates Elementary School. He teaches technology and his subject areas include cyberbullying. "If I had done anything wrong, would I be teaching kids about cyberbullying?" Dotres said. The incident that led to Dotres' suspension began when a student contacted him on Facebook. He then texted the student and called her on a cellphone that same night, according to Collier County School District records. Dotres at first denied the conversation with the student to district officials but he later admitted to it, records show. Dotres said he was put in a tough position. "What do you do when a student reaches out for help?" he said. "I did what I thought was best and I learned my lesson." Dotres will run as a Republican against incumbent Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, in the Aug. 30 primary. Trujillo was first elected to the seat in 2010 and has $124,000 toward his campaign, campaign records show. The Department of State has no record of cash raised by Dotres, who said he plans to hit the trail when school ends in June for summer break. "That's when it's on," he said. House district 105, which Dotres wants to represent, stretches from Broward and Miami-Dade counties to Collier County at U.S. 41. Most of the voters in the district live in Miami-Dade and Broward, which Dotres said is where he grew up. "Once June hits and school is out, I'll be out there as much as possible," Dotres said. "If I'm not out there, my family will be out there for me." Dotres is no stranger to political campaigns. He dropped out of the Lee County Supervisor of Elections race earlier this year to run for Trujillo's House seat. He ran unsuccessfully in 2012 for the Lee County School Board against Jeanne S. Dozier. He lost his bid in 2014 for an open seat on the Lee Memorial Hospital board of directors. He also previously ran for a House seat now occupied by Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero. Contact Daily News reporter arek.sarkissian@naplesnews.com or 850-559-7620. FILE - In this Dec. 2, 2015, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Prince William County fair grounds in Manassas, Va. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File) By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau BEAVER, Pa. A retired middle school principal was so moved by Donald Trump that he switched his Democratic Party registration so he can vote for him in Tuesdays Republican presidential primary. So did the daughter of a steelworker, who twice voted for President Barack Obama but says she is over the Democrats political correctness. And a husband-wife team of Trump volunteers shes a laid-off airport worker, hes a laid-off truck driver were Democrats for 30 years, until recently. We always voted Democrat, said Laurie McGinnis, as her husband, Ricky, hung a Trump banner outside their South Greensburg home. But not any more. Some of these newly minted Pennsylvania Republicans are formalizing a process that began with Ronald Reagans election in 1980, when conservative-leaning Democrats began shifting away from the party in the faded industrial state. Others moved abruptly, inspired by Trump and fed up with a party they say no longer speaks their language. Together the result is one of the most sizable shifts of partisan allegiance ever in Pennsylvania: 61,500 Democrats have become Republicans so far this year, part of a 145,000 jump in Republican registrations since the fall 2015 election, according to state figures analyzed by both parties. Its more new Republicans than in the previous four years combined. The onslaught has helped make Trump the favorite heading into Tuesdays primary, helping put Pennsylvania, which voted for Obama twice, in play in the November presidential election. Other states with primaries Tuesday are Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island. The party-switching has been going on in an evolutionary way for two decades. This just propelled it faster, said G. Terry Madonna, a professor at Franklin and Marshall University in Lancaster, Pa. Many of them are Reagan Democrats white, working-class, blue-collar, incomes of $35,000 to $40,000 or less, high school educations or less. They feel frustrated, they feel left behind, Madonna said. They feel Trump is sticking it to the man. East of urban Pittsburgh, at Trump headquarters in Monroeville, volunteer Tricia Cunningham said half the people who walk through the door are party switchers. So many supporters have come in to pick up lawn signs or volunteer that the office has had to open a second floor, and signs are limited to just one per person, Cunningham said. Even her mother, a lifelong Democrat now living in a nearby nursing home, made the change, she said. I look in the mirror and I say, What the hell are you doing? Rox Sarrao, the former principal, said with a laugh. He voted for Obama in 2008 and had kept his party affiliation so he could back Democrats in local elections even though he was once a Republican. He went to the county courthouse last month to switch to the GOP. He now drives 40 miles daily to volunteer at the Trump office. In some ways, its no great political mystery what has happened in Pennsylvania, where the remains of the long-gone steel industry rust the landscape and coal country fights for its life. The mostly white electorate here comes from an earlier iteration of the American melting pot Eastern Europeans, Italians, Irish who have little resemblance to the newer Democratic coalition of young people, minorities and urban white-collar professionals. Many families have stayed here for generations, as the nations economy and demographic trends have moved on. We voted Democrat for 59 years, said Eleanor Kanick, a retired postmaster, with her husband Stanley, a welder, in Avonmore. Our parents were Democrats, too. I said theyre going to turn over in their graves. Tom Balya, a former Democratic County Commissioner in Westmoreland who hosts a local radio show, said callers often voice fears about shifting socioeconomic conditions that have left them struggling to keep up. Its going take a generation for Democrats to recoup their losses, he said. They see this world changing around them, he said. Its a generational thing. Youre not going to get people over 50 to change their beliefs. Its not going to change quickly. But others see a deeper disconnect in a Democratic Party that has put its emphasis on attracting moneyed metropolitan voters and fast-growing minority groups while taking its core blue-collar electorate for granted, a theory spelled out by author Thomas Frank in his new book, Listen, Liberal. Democrats downplay the shift as notable but insignificant. When matched with 89,000 new Democrats registered since fall, the overall boost was 56,000 new Republicans in a state with more than 8 million voters. Democrats still hold a more than 900,000-voter advantage over the Republicans in Pennsylvania. It fits nicely with the narrative that Trumps going to bring out this whole cadre of voters and bring in states like Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt that havent been in play for a while, said Democratic Party spokesman Preston Maddock. Ill believe it when I see it. At the same time, Republican officials are not necessarily doing back flips over the registration surge. They are very much aware that enthusiasm is more a vote for Trump than an affirmation of the their party. The states closed primary system forces voters to choose parties or sit out Tuesdays contests. The Republicans know knows its hold on these voters is tenuous. Both parties have lost track of how to reach out to middle-class voters, said Michael T. Korns, Republican Party chairman in Westmoreland County, the next county over from Trumps headquarters. I dont think anyone has been talking directly to voters in Westmoreland County. What weve been getting for a long time is basically ignored. Laurie McGinnis, 49, and her husband, Ricky, 57, who grew up in the area and met as school bus drivers, were watching the first Republican debate last summer when they began thinking about switching. 2016 Tribune Co. SHARE Tara Norman, Naples Bad policy I read with great concern an article in the Naples Daily News regarding the possibility that the superintendent merely in a phone conversation with the district legal counsel would be able to settle lawsuits under $40,000. The Collier School Board, like the County Commission and other elected bodies, were put in place to scrutinize, monitor and oversee the administrative people charged with the day-to-day operations within their respective jurisdictions. Apart from the potential of this policy at least being contrary to the spirit of Chapter 286 Florida Statutes (Sunshine Law), it is also distressing that those who we elect to stand in our stead and operate our educational system feel that addressing these settlements in the public, as a collegial body, is too bothersome and time-consuming. Better the School Board should look into the excessive time consumed by the mind-numbing presentations by their staffs which, even to the casual observer, cloud rather than clarify the issues, and seem designed to turn our elected officials into an audience rather than allowing them to be analytical decision-makers. The board should not adopt this policy. It is a slippery slope that enhances the power of those who are immune from the consequences of the ballot box. The City of Naples Airport Authority joined Gov. Scott in declaring April 2016 as Aviation Appreciation Month in Florida. Showing support and commonality with the governors proclamation, the Authority signed a similar proclamation at the board meeting. On behalf of the Naples Airport Authority, it is my honor to celebrate April 2016 as Aviation Appreciation Month, said Donna M. Messer, chair. We are proud to operate a high-quality airport that serves the greater Naples community through customer-focused and efficient aviation operations. The airport has undertaken extensive efforts over the years to be a good neighbor and environmental steward, actively promoting and incorporating sustainability standards, conservation of resources and socially responsible programs. As a significant regional economic driver, the airport is committed to supporting aviation to serve and enhance the community. With 20 commercial service and 108 general aviation and community airports, including Naples Municipal Airport, Florida ranks second in the nation for aerospace and aviation establishments. Aviation plays a critical role in the lives of Florida citizens, as well as in the operation of Floridas business, agriculture and tourism industries. Through significant investments in its airports, the state has experienced a record number of tourists, with more than half of Florida visitors arriving by air each year. More than 9 million visitors and business travelers use Floridas general aviation and community airports each year. Naples Municipal Airport welcomed the return of scheduled airline service on Feb. 27 when Elite Airways began flights to Newark, New Jersey, and Portland, Maine. The airport is home to flight schools, air charter operators, car rental agencies and corporate aviation and nonaviation businesses, as well as fire/rescue services, mosquito control, the Collier County Sheriffs Aviation Unit and other community services. During the 2014-15 fiscal year, the airport accommodated 99,569 takeoffs and landings. All funds used for the airports operation, maintenance and improvements are generated from activities at the airport or from federal and state grants; the airport receives no property tax dollars. The Florida Department of Transportation values the airports annual economic impact to the community at $283.5 million. For more information or to subscribe for email updates about the airport, visit www.FlyNaples.com. The Heights Foundation is expanding their culinary training and job placement program. The 14 week program, currently in place at The Heights Center will expand to include the Grace Church campuses in Cape Coral and Fort Myers in May. It was created to address the issue of unemployment and underemployment. The food service industry training is designed to develop job-specific technical skills as well as providing support services and experiences to address barriers to success including learning challenges, minimal academic skills, limited English Proficiency, financial literacy, transportation and scheduling concerns. The primary goal is to build skills competencies to help adults obtain and keep employment, be effective in the workforce, and ultimately, obtain financial self-sufficiency, said Deb Mathinos, Director of Lifelong Learning at The Heights Center. The Heights Centers culinary arts job training program began last January. To date 63 individuals have completed the 14-week programs and 95% are currently employed. The three locations across Lee County at varying times maximizes the number of economically disadvantaged individuals who can participate. Additionally, training at one site will be devoted to a program specifically designed for individuals who experience learning challenges and need an appropriately modified programmatic approach. This site will be operated as a component of Grace Churchs Exceptional Entrepreneurs Program. Training classes are currently underway at the Heights Center and will begin at the Grace Church Central (Fort Myers) and Cape Coral campuses in May. Individuals interested in participating in the culinary training program can contact Deb Mathinos at 239- 482-7706 or Debra@heightsfoundation.org. The program is made possible by a grant from the Southwest Florida Community Foundation as a part of the Community Foundations 2015/16 Community Impact Grants. ALLURE, the new, luxury, riverfront condominium tower to be developed in the charming Historic Fort Myers River District, recently hosted an exclusive Meet-and-Greet event for Greek artist Apostol. The special reception was a collaboration between the Aldo Castillo Gallery and Dwayne Bergmann Interiors and was hosted at the beautiful ALLURE sales gallery, designed by Bergmann and featuring works by Apostol, courtesy of the Aldo Castillo Gallery. In addition to meeting Apostol, guests enjoyed refreshments and toured the beautiful sales gallery, which features beautifully-designed vignettes of a kitchen, living room and dining room. The model showcases the enviable features of the luxury residences including porcelain flooring, natural gas, five-burner cooktop, double oven, quartz countertops and floor-to-ceiling windows, affording residents breathtaking views of the expansive, glistening, Caloosahatchee River. Designed as a beautiful urban enclave, ALLURE will house 292 luxury condominium residences in two, 32-story towers. The sales gallery is located on the first floor of the Fort Myers City Pier building at 1300 Hendry Street. To learn more about ALLURE, call 239- 500-JAXI (5294) or visit the sales gallery. Online at www.allureluxurycondominiums.com. Apostolos Nikolakopoulos, who signs his work simply "Apostol, is a well-established artist from Greece. Apostol's works are in private collections in homes from around the world, including a recent purchase by Madonna. Working with the ancient lost-wax casting process, Apostol, creates molds for bronze sculptures that range from less than two feet to over twelve feet in height in his Athens foundry. His bronze castings, using the lost-wax process are enhanced with variations of glass, aluminum and silver. He is known for perfecting the technique of large bronze casting, adding then glass and also inserting the crystal pieces into the crevices of his sculptures creating a vibrant refraction between the metal and glass. Apostol's art is contemporary, unconventional and filled with meaning and purpose beyond the aesthetic result that just pleases the eye. Each piece is an original creation. When asked about the source of his creativity, Apostol says: "The best ideas come to me when I am not intentionally thinking about what my next work will look like. Apostol is represented in the United States by the Aldo Castillo Gallery. The Aldo Castillo Gallery, established in Chicago in 1993 and is one of the leading art galleries on the international art scene. In 2011 the gallery relocated from Chicago to the Miromar Design Center in Southwest Florida pioneering modern and contemporary art for private collectors, museum collections and design professionals. With curatorial experience spanning more than 30 years, Aldo Castillo is recognized as a leading authority of modern and contemporary art. For more information visit www.aldocastillogallery.com Inspired and stimulated by art, nature and the visual curiosities of both the everyday and the extraordinary, Dwayne Bergmann has been expressing his artistic side in home design for the past decade, breathing new life into outdated spaces. The firm works with design/build clients across Southwest Florida and is being sought out as a passionate option and problem solver in finding creative solutions to improve and impact ones quality of life and work. For more information, call 239-344-7455 or www.DwayneBergmann.com. Key players in 2022-23 Silly Season Can you hear it? Just listen. That is the sound of the NASCAR rumor mill starting up, and there are plenty of questions to answer for 2023. 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. When abused and neglected animals are seized by law enforcement, the very animals the state legislature wanted to protect when it passed anti-cruelty laws are often held hostage by drawn-out court proceedings. Photo by Kendra Stanley-Mills/AP Images for The HSUS 1.7K shares EDITORS NOTE: GOOD NEWS! The HSUS and the New York Blood Center have announced an agreement to provide long-term sanctuary for the Liberian chimpanzees. READ THE UPDATE In The Humane Economy, I look at the question of animal protection partly through an economic lens. I argue that the vast majority of dollars devoted to animal protection go to cleaning up the messes made by others people who use animals for profit, but then abandon or discard them when they no longer consider them useful or valuable. Think of the homeless animals cared for by shelters. The former exotic pets taken in by big cat and bear sanctuaries when theres no other place for them to go. The chimp sanctuaries and the parrot rescues that have to care for animals who will live for decades, long after labs or exotic animal dealers have discarded them. I wrote last week about the New York Blood Center abandoning chimps in Liberia, and now The HSUS is picking up the tab for caring for these animals. This is our curse in the animal protection movement: cleaning up after callous people who exploit animals and leave them to rot. The cost to our cause is in the billions. And thats precisely why we should have policies so that it is the people who exploit animals that pay the freight not overtaxed, overburdened animal protection advocates and organizations. Each year, The HSUS works with law enforcement on hundreds of animal cruelty and fighting cases, and we understand firsthand the heartbreaking cruelty endured by dogs, cats, horses, and other animals who depend on human care. We work with local agencies and organizations to help rescue thousands of abused and neglected animals and, since 2007, weve helped pass dozens of state laws to combat cruelty, including laws to make dogfighting and egregious animal cruelty felony offenses in all 50 states. But theres often an obstacle to enforcing state cruelty and fighting laws the cost of caring for animals while the criminal case is prosecuted. When abused and neglected animals are seized by law enforcement, the very animals the state legislature wanted to protect when it passed anti-cruelty laws are often held hostage by drawn-out court proceedings. The rescued animals must sometimes remain in a shelter environment for months or years while prosecutors try to make cruelty charges stick in the courts. This long wait to find a new home is not only hard on the animals, but it is also needlessly expensive for taxpayers and animal agencies and organizations. Tomorrow, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is expected to take a big step to help abused animals in the state when he signs the State Taxpayer Animal Relief Act, SB 356. The legislation establishes a legal process so that anyone who has had his or her animals lawfully seized due to cruelty may be required to pay for the animals care while the cruelty case is prosecuted. If the defendant refuses to pay, he or she will have to forfeit the animals who can then be placed in a new home. It is a law that will serve well for animals, shelters, and taxpayers in Georgia. Across the country, a patchwork of state laws inconsistently address the cost of caring for animals from cruelty cases. Sixteen states have sensible laws to help with a timely disposition of seized animals. About the same number have no such law. The rest have cost of care laws that simply arent effective. The HSUS is working to help ensure every state can take advantage of these smart laws that enable local governments to do the job of cruelty enforcement while saving animals and money. Good cost of animal care laws shift the financial burden of caring for animals from town governments, animal shelters, and taxpayers to the animals owners. We believe it is unfair for local shelters and counties to have to pay the significant cost of caring for abused and neglected animals, when it is the owner who is legally responsible for their care. In Georgia, there was a great coalition of groups coming together for the STAR Act including the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, Association of County Commissioners of Georgia, the Georgia Municipal Association, the Georgia Sheriffs Association, and the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police. There were also shelters from across the state that supported the legislation and could attest to the extreme cost of combating large cruelty and fighting cases. We are especially grateful to Senators Jesse Stone, Michael Williams, and John Albers, and Representatives Rich Golick and Jimmy Pruett. Weve seen similar legislation passed in Washington state earlier this year, and a very effective cost of animal care bill is now on the Alaska governors desk. Cost of animal care laws are a smart solution to the often significant cost of caring for abused and neglected animals. States have good reason to adopt such laws and we look forward to seeing fast change on this issue in coming years. Doing so will help us build a more humane economy, free of the externalized societal costs of animal cruelty. NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow praised Romanias long-standing contributions to Allied security, during the first day of his visit to Bucharest on Monday (25 April 2016). He commended Romania for its participation in NATO-led missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, its contributions to Black Sea security and its commitment to raise defence spending to 2% of GDP. Ambassador Vershbow held bilateral talks with President Klaus Werner Iohannis, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Lazar Comanescu, and with the Minister of National Defence, Mr. Mihnea Motoc. In his bilateral meetings, Ambassador Vershbow discussed priorities for this years NATO Summit in Warsaw, as well as NATOs response to the biggest security challenges in a generation. Ambassador Vershbow also thanked Romania for hosting important NATO assets, including the Multinational Division South East, a NATO Force Integration Unit in Bucharest, and an important part of NATO's missile defence system in Deveselu. On 26 April, the Deputy Secretary General will deliver a speech at the National Library of Romania. A sign of things to come? (NaturalNews) According to a heartbreaking report by, an elderly man was threatened with a knife last month by a man and a woman in a home invasion the pair were looking to steal food.71-year-old Luis Rosales answered the door of his New Jersey apartment in the afternoon and was confronted by a man and woman who were armed with an eight-inch kitchen knife. The pair forced themselves inside, threatening Rosales with death if he made too much noise.The suspects used pepper spray to affect Rosales' vision before ransacking his apartment and raiding his fridge, telling Rosales that they were hungry. They also took his wallet.The report shows that a combination of "the economy and lack of social civility" has started to reach a level where US citizens are now robbing food from other people, as reported by. This might only be the beginning the economy is on the verge of collapse; unemployment continues to be a major problem; and wage growth is stagnant.It is thought that 45 million Americans are now relying upon food stamps , and civil uprising caused by the removal of government-issued food stamps is considered to be a huge threat to society as we know it. And it's not just the US economy that's suffering the world economy is also in complete crisis According to the, more than 1 million people in the US may soon lose their government food stamp benefits if they fail to meet work requirements. In a government move that could stimulate the economy by encouraging employment while saving taxpayer money, there will soon be a three-month limit on food stamp benefits for unemployed adults aged 1849 who are not classified as disabled or raising minors; critics, however, claim the move could increase crime and hunger The recent home invasion by the suspects searching for food reinforces the idea that hunger and food insecurity are on the rise. According to statistics by Feeding America, as reported by the, 48.1 million Americans are currently living in a food-insecure household. Food banks gave away 4 billion pounds of food last year, and on the basis of the cutoffs being implemented soon, social service and food banks are preparing for a massive influx of hungry people.reports that the US is on the verge of the "greatest food crisis in history," explaining that certain types of food are already becoming more difficult to find and that the price of certain foods, for example meat, has shot up. The cost of eating has increased at a time when the economy is in collapse and this will mean an increased risk of riots and civil unrest as well as an increase in the number of hungry Americans.Crime rates will increase as well, as seen by the recent home invasion, meaning that there could be some very dark times ahead if the economy does not improve. As there could be tough times ahead, it's important that you prepare to become self-reliant now. Learn more by signing up for the Self Reliance Summit 'Highly dangerous drug' 'Conspiracy' Hillary the racketeer? (NaturalNews) The more Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton try to portray themselves as aloof from the nasty business of politics, the more we learn that they are hip-deep in precisely the kind of shenanigans and chicanery that have driven tens of millions of voters to outsider presidential contenders this election cycle.According to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia , Margaret Hamburg, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration , is accused of using the agency to operate a huge conspiracy of racketeering and fraud so that she could generate millions of Big Pharma profits for a hedge fund involving her husband.The suit alleges that while acting as the commissioner of the FDA, Hamburg was engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to approve a very dangerous drug that was known to cause severe and even deadly side effects , as it would financially benefit her husband's hedge fund, which at the time held large positions in the drug's maker, Johnson & Johnson."Defendants, each and every one of them, operated a criminal conspiracy at least between the years 2009 to 2015 to fraudulently suppress warnings about the devastating effects of Levaquin," the complaint noted."This Amended Complaint sets forth allegations that involve a conspiracy by Defendants, each and every one of them, to reap large financial returns by failing to disclose to Plaintiffs and the public at large the full extent of the devastating, life-threatening, and deadly effects of a highly dangerous pharmaceutical drug named Levaquin," says the suit, whose plaintiffs allege that more than 5,000 people died as a result of Hamburg's conspiracy and cover-up at the agency she ran.The suit opens with this summary:The plaintiffs Terry Aston of Baltimore; John Fratti of Hummelstown, Pa.; Linda Martin of Phoenix, Az.; David Melvin of Chatsworth, Ill.; and Jennifer Wilcox of Oroville, Calif. are represented by attorney Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, a legal watchdog group,reported. They all claim to have suffered a range of side-effects from the drug, including muscle twitching, abdominal pain, kidney and liver damage, hair loss, depression, psychosis, and hearing and vision problems, among a host of other issues, as a result of taking Levaquin.What the suit further alleges is that Hamburg was appointed to her position by President Obama after giving "gratuities" and political contributions to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the political action group she co-founded with her ex-president husband, the Clinton Family Foundation:Remember, too, that though Hillary Clinton has publicly struck out at the pharmaceutical companies, her campaign has received the most donations from Big Pharma , as well as tens of millions from big financial houses and petrochemical firms.noted that the plaintiffs are seeking $870 million in punitive and other damages, as well as a jury trial.The suit names as defendants Robert L. Mercer and Renaissance founder James H. Simons; Brown's colleagues during Hamburg's tenure; and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and well as Hamburg herself. Searching for answers Transverse myelitis "We were bullied into vaccinating" (NaturalNews) Desperate to share her story, a Texas mother is speaking out about the traumatic injuries her young daughter sustained after being injected at six months old with a total of eight vaccine doses.About a month after infant Cerenity received the DTaP/Hib/IPV (5-in-1 combo), hepatitis B, pneumococcal Prevnar 13, and the oral Rotavirus vaccine, she suffered several major injuries and grew increasingly unwell.Prior to the six month vaccination mark, Cerenity was a healthy baby with normal physical and cognitive development. But after receiving the eight vaccine doses , she became fussy and lethargic, according to her mother July Garza. A month later, the child's health took a sharp turn for the worse.Cerenity suddenly became unresponsive, both mentally and physically. She could not hold her head up right or move her arms, and appeared to display symptoms of a stroke. The child was rushed to the emergency room at Memorial Hermann Greater Heights Hospital in Houston, Texas, where she received a CT scan and an MRI.The doctor admittedly had no answers for the Garza family and sent them home, referring them to a pediatrician. Distraught and frightened, they reluctantly complied."I was so scared to even put her down," wrote Mrs. Garza in a heart wrenching narrative published on VacTruth . "We were sent home with her paralyzed," but we just didn't know it yet, she added.By the next morning, Cerenity was unable to sit and appeared paralyzed in several parts of her body, prompting her family to skip the pediatrician visit and rush straight to Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in downtown Houston where the child was placed in the Intensive Care Unit.The medical team there quickly pointed the finger at the Garzas before calling Child Protective Services and accusing them of shaking their baby . The accusers eventually backed down from the accusations and apologized before vindicating the family of any misconduct.But before breathing a sigh of relief, the Garzas were told their daughter may never walk or even crawl again. Just a month after meeting the six-month vaccine mark, Cerenity was in the ICU on a breathing machine."I couldn't deal. It was awful. They had her in the ICU for 8 days and treated her with steroids. ... She had bleeding in her brain , ended up paralyzed and was diagnosed with transverse myelitis spinal cord disease," said Mrs. Garza.Transverse myelitis is a neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord and can be caused by some vaccinations (including chickenpox and rabies), according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Cerenity survived but continued suffering from chronic injuries and pain. She had trouble walking, numbness in her feet, headaches and constant back pain. Her mother says she would have episodes where she appeared "stuck for 30 to 45 minutes."The Garzas were shuffled from doctor to doctor, visiting medical facilities in Laredo, San Antonio and Houston. Last year, Cerenity was diagnosed with Chiari malformation, a disorder causing brain tissue to extend into the spinal canal.The cause of Chiari malformation is poorly understood, but experts theorize that it's a result of structural defects in the brain and spinal cord. However, it can also occur later in life due to spinal injury, "exposure to harmful substances, or infection," according to the NIH The Garzas were happy to have a diagnosis but faced another challenge: a constant and aggressive push for more vaccines. Despite Cerenity's unstable condition, several doctors pressured the family to complete the child's vaccine schedule.The Garza's resisted. Who will be responsible if our daughter gets sicker? Cerenity's father asked worriedly. I don't want to lose my baby, he added. The doctor refused to answer, stating simply "Sorry, it's our policy."The family gave in when Cerenity's access to care was threatened. The doctor promised to ease their concerns by giving the child two to three vaccines at a time. Cerenity's health worsened after the second round of immunizations, received in October 2015.Five months later Mrs. Garza learned that the doctor lied to them and against their knowledge injected Cerenity again with a 5-in-1 combo vaccine, DTaP-Hep B-IPV, and a Hib vaccine."I had no idea they gave her 6 vaccine doses until recently. I was angry and shocked!" said Mrs. Garza."I felt bullied and didn't know my rights," she went on to say.Despite being deterred by doctors, the Garzas filed and won a vaccine exemption for their daughter, who is now three years old.Cerenity can walk but still has numerous health complications including chronic headaches, irritability, severely damaged vision, speech impediments, difficulty communicating and behavioral problems.Every morning, she wakes up with pain and cries, says Mrs. Garza, adding that they were forced to place Cerenity back into diapers because of bowel movement problems."I want my baby's story heard so that others won't make the same mistake I did. I wish I could go back in time and had never allowed her to get those shots. I feel as I took her chance of a normal life."To learn more about the Garza's story, click here It was a year ago when a devastating earthquake hit Nepal. Thousands of families were displaced, thousands injured, and thousands died as well. A year later, records show that most survivors still live in relocation sites despite billions of dollars in aid and relief given to the country for assistance. Are grief and devastation the only things that have remained in the region? In 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit near the country of Nepal, destroying millions of houses, roads, infrastructures, villages and killing approximately 9,000 people and leaving 22,000 injured. Reuters said that in the capital, Kathmandu, Prime Minister K.P. Oli placed a wreath in a collapsed building, signifying a day of mourning to remember the victims of the earthquake. The monks at a nearby UNESCO world heritage site led the prayers for the victims while the families, still bearing heavy grief, prayed with them. One family member, remembering her late father said in an interview with Reuters, "I came to mourn my father who died here last year. I prayed for eternal peace for the soul." But are mourning the only thing there one year after the Nepal earthquake After the devastating event, millions, even billions of help poured in. Reuters said a total of $1.4 billion pledges remain unspent and thousands of families still live in temporary shelters because they have no means to rebuild their homes and their lives. This led to protesters to demand the government to continue rebuilding what has been promised to them with the aid of foreign relief. The government replied by saying they will arrange for the housing development before the rainy days come this June. Meanwhile, according to The Himalayan Times about 85 scientists also met to mark the first anniversary of the Nepal earthquake. The event was organized by the The National Seismological Centre under the Department of Mines and Geology. Renowned Geologist Prof. Jean-Philippe Avouac joined the recently concluded gathering to present his paper about the Nepal earthquake. The meeting was instigated to discuss and study what transpired during the event, lessons and leanings from the earthquake until the rescue and rehabilitation phase. They said this workshop will help Nepal to build a "safer community and sustainable development". Although reports say that a lot of the victims are yet to receive help from the government, there are those who are lucky enough to receive a new beginning after the quake. In a report by CNN, they met Maya Gurung, a 10-year old survivor of the Nepal earthquake. She is now an amputee but a professional hiker, Jwalant Gurung chanced upon her during the relief operations and gave her a second chance at life. He decided to convince Maya's parents to let him help their child by bringing her to the capital. Today, Maya can now walk with the help of prosthetic leg and is attending school with children half her age. Although help for most victims are yet to come, some survivors are continuously receiving help. Thanks to the good hearts of people like Jwalant, despite slow rehabilitation efforts a year after the earthquake, people like Maya are receiving help and getting another chance at life. There's a rise in cancer cases, according to studies. Now, various groups link this with the consumption of refined sugar or high-fructose ingredients such as corn syrup. In an article by Mercola, it is said the rise in the number of cancer cases is linked to obesity and the overconsumption of refined sugars or fructose found in everyday food. They cited a study conducted by the Credit Suisse Research Institute in 2013 which suggested that 40 percent of US healthcare expenditure is "for diseases directly related to the overconsumption of sugar." Science Daily recently published a study from the University of California, the study says that the consumption of fructose can alter the brain and can cause diseases. Fructose can be found in our day to day food. It is an inexpensive sweetener and sugar alternative made from corn starch. It is a common ingredient in sweetened drinks, corn syrup, honey and in a wide array of desserts. Based on the study conducted by the University of California, they found that fructose has the capacity to alter genes in the human brain. When it does, it leads to different diseases and conditions, from cardiovascular diseases to Alzheimer's. Other studies even suggest a link to a variety of cancers: colon, rectal, ovarian, and breast cancer. According to a report by NBC News, consumption of fructose in sugar can increase the growth of cancer cells, especially in breast cancer patients. They published the findings of Cancer Research and quoted Lorenzo Cohen of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who said, "A lot of patients are told it doesn't matter what you eat after you are diagnosed with cancer. This preliminary animal research suggests that it does matter." The study highly advised cancer patients to stay away from fructose as it might have properties that nurture cancer cells. They also found out that "fructose affects a metabolic process called 12-LOX. It helps cells metastasize or spread." It is however undeniable that fructose is found in most sweets and food. It is even found in naturally sweet food. Experts argue however, that the intake of too much fructose, especially in its refined form, poses more risks to a person's health. WHO said a person should not get more than five percent of calories from sugar every day, for both natural and refined sugars including fructose. Although it is proven that fructose might affect the brain and the health of an individual, researchers from the University of California also found a healthier alternative to fight the fructose effect on the brain genes. In the same report by Science Daily mentioned above, they said the UCLA researchers said that omega-3 fatty acid known as docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, seems to have the capacity to reverse the harmful effect of fructose to the body. "DHA changes not just one or two genes; it seems to push the entire gene pattern back to normal, which is remarkable," said Xia Yang, a senior author of the study and a UCLA assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology. The brain naturally produces DHA in our brain cells, but not enough to protect us from diseases. The experts said that although DHA can reverse the effect of fructose, it has to be further studied and analyzed. In the meantime, eating less fructose and refined sugar is the better option if you want to stay away from various forms of diseases including cancer. Is this the end for robots in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants? In 2015, several restaurants in China replaced normal human employees, opting for futuristic robots, in the hope that these robots would attract the curiosity of customers, improve efficiency of services and reduce operation costs. In December, a restaurant serving Japanese ramen made by robots made its debut in downtown Shanghai, joining the smart tech trend in service across China. In a video, Techinsider demonstrated how the robot chefs, Koya and Kona, make perfect noodles in only 90 seconds. Asked why the restaurant opted for robochefs, Zhou, manager of the Moli Robot Restaurant, told the Global Times that employing the robots is actually cost-effective. "Normally, one robot can work three to five years, so they are definitely much cheaper than employing waiters and waitresses," he said. Moreover, unlike humans, robots do not get ill. Therefore they do not take days off, maximizing their services for the whole year. While this shows a big saving compared to hiring a human employee, it looks like robots aren't ready to replace us just yet. According to the Worker's Daily, out of three Guangzhou restaurants that used robots to serve customers, two have closed and the third has fired its robot waiters. Heweilai, a Chinese restaurant in the southern Chinese city, introduced robots last year. In fact, The Verge reported that it invested in several robot waitstaff units worth $7,000 each for three of its restaurants. Unfortunately they have discovered that these robots are "incompetent," pushing them to shut down two of their restaurants and replace the robots with traditional waitstaff in their third restaurant. "The owner had hoped to get more customers in the door, but quickly realized even $7,000 top-of-the-line robot workers are dumber and less competent than popular culture would have you believe," Grubstreet.com reports. So why did the robots suddently become the downfall of the business? As translated by The Verge, Workers' Daily wrote in an article that there was a human waiter who complained, "Robots were unable to pour hot water, carry soup, or take orders from restaurant patrons, and on top of that, often broke down." In addition to not being able to function properly and attend to their tasks, the robots were also prone to repair and maintenance, making them more expensive to keep. In an article by China Daily, Zhang Yun, a vice president at the Guangdong University of Technology, said robots may be useful to the manufacturing industry, but the technology definitely needs further development in the service sector. Despite businesses shutting down because of robot waiter inefficiency, "Taste and Aroma," a Chinese restaurant in Guiyang, capital of China's Guizhou province, debuted their robot waiters this week. Mirror said there are a total of five robots in the restaurant costing around 4,500 each. "They follow set tracks, bringing food directly to your table, while dodging stray children and diners heading out of their seats," the article reads. Baboons are known to co-exist with humans in Cape Town. But over the years, they have become more and more aggressive when foraging for food. There are reports that they are resorting to harmful behavior against humans, in order to get more food. Because of these behaviors, authorities have been forced to limit their harmful activities by creating a device to isolate the baboons from the humans. And others construe this as the end of man and baboon's harmonic co-existence. It looks like after years of co-existing, the relationship between men and baboons are about to hit a halt in Cape Town, South Africa. According to a recent article by the National Geographic, they said that they are no longer getting along. Baboons feed on fruits, root crops, honey, insects and scorpions. They also look for food along beach shores. But for years, they have also become accustomed to taking food from humans. It's an easier alternative to scouting for food. National Geographic said they have become opportunists. They thrive by scavenging for food near houses, waste baskets, shops and through people themselves. "Baboons are extremely opportunistic and have learned that residential houses neighboring the protected area are an easy foraging source." Johan van der Merwe, Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Environmental and Spatial Planning, said in an interview with a local station. Because of this, they now exhibit harmful behavior and animosity towards humans in possession of food. In this video produced by an Australian organization, they capture how baboons behave when it comes to men and food. One person even said that "they are literally criminals on four legs". To answer the problem, the local government has activated a virtual fence in Gordon's Bay. It is part of the baboon management strategy by the government. News24 said that after the fence was installed earlier this year, there are no more troops of baboons entering the town. But there is no actual fence structure. Johan further described the "virtual fence," saying that once troops of baboons enter the protected zone in an attempt to enter the urban areas, speakers emit noises mimicking predators such as lions, urging the baboons to retreat. News24 further added, "The virtual fence then became a virtual boundary zone in the minds of the baboon troop and ultimately resulted in the animals staying out of the town." Van der Merwe said that they are convinced with the success of the fence. Although he assured the public that even without access to urban areas, the baboons still have an ample amount of areas to look for food. However, the fence has also created a divide between men and baboons. Will they cease to co-exist? If the baboon behavior towards humans will not improve, the virtual divide between them and humans will continue to exist. Conservationists should think of a way to provide ample food for baboons so that their wild instinct may be tamed. But as animals, it is not an assurance that if food is provided, they will start to behave. For now, the virtual fence will continue creating a gap between men and baboons, and for them to live peacefully, men and baboons will have to exist in separate territories divided by distance. On Friday, more than 170 countries gathered at the United Nations to show their support for the deal to fight climate change signed at the UN climate summit in Paris last December. During which, economists and scientists warned that the treaty's goal of keeping temperatures below 1.5-2C may already be slipping beyond reach, The Guardian reports. As agreed upon by the representatives who attended the UN summit in Paris, each country is set to create their own Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), which lays out frameworks that would trim down global greenhouse gas emissions and deliberately slow down the effects of climate change by 2030, focusing on reaching a bottom-up agreement. During which, they also agreed that 2C is the danger limit for global warming, thus countries should "pursue efforts" to limit warming to 1.5C, above pre-industrial levels. However, according to UN's own data, estimated warming as of 2015 for the period 2020-2030 is still at 2.7, which is far from the target. "The average annual emission reductions for the period between 2030 and 2050 for least-cost scenarios that start in 2030 from emission levels consistent with the INDCs and bring back emissions to 2C scenarios are estimated at 3.3 (2.7-3.9) per cent. This is around double the rate compared with the least-cost scenarios that assume enhanced mitigation action by 2010 or 2020, which require annual emission reductions of only 1.6 (0.7-2.0) per cent in the same period," the report said. In a press release, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted that March 2016 was the most abnormally warm month on record for the world. It is also the eleventh consecutive month in a row that the earth has recorded its warmest respective month on record. "The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for March 2016 was the highest for this month in the 1880-2016 record, at 1.22C (2.20F) above the 20th century average of 12.7C (54.9F). This surpassed the previous record set in 2015 by 0.32C / (0.58F), and marks the highest monthly temperature departure among all 1,635 months on record, surpassing the previous all-time record set just last month by 0.01C (0.02F)," the press release said. Climate change is usually gauged over years, but even scientists find the unprecedented temperatures alarming. This is a reminder of how dangerously close we now are to permanently hitting perilous territory. A number of experts have also argued that world leaders have failed to recognise the massive challenge of seeking to phase out fossil fuels and running the entire world economy using clean energy by 2050, notes Antigua media. Data from the New Climate Economy Report 2014 indicted that fossil fuel use will continue to grow, and so will its impact on the economy and the environment. "There is no imminent 'peak' that will slow this trend; the world is not 'running out' of fossil fuels," the report reads. There are other challenges that are attached to the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Initially, it is not a legally binding instrument in its entirety; meaning, the parties won't suffer direct consequences if they fail to execute their obligations. Therefore, the developed countries may not provide adequate funding to employ alleviation and adaptation activities for guaranteeing climate-resilient development. As a result, developing countries would find it difficult to chase domestic mitigation and adaptation activities to deal with the unfavorable impacts of climate change. Unless developing countries can cope with the economic loss brought on by natural hazards often driven by climate change, sustainable development goals cannot be achieved. How much the agreement reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and through that reduces warming, will depend on whether countries meet their targets for curbing emissions and deploying renewable energy and whether they ramp up their ambition in the years ahead, notes Grist's Ben Adler. He also pointed out major loopholes on the INDC such as the above mentioned and even if they are met, they will not put the world on a path to less than 2C of warming. The President of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday called on the international community to take on the action on the new UN sustainable development agenda as we are on race against time. In his own words, "The choice is yours." Just like humans, cats use body language to communicate. Ever wonder why your feline friend is always stretching? According to PETA, your cat sends messages by stretching. However, the act of stretching may be interpreted differently depending on the situation. Stretching to show affection Cat Behavior Associates says stretching is a vulnerable posture for cats. This kind of behavior shows a cat feels comfortable with you. "For a cat to leave his limbs and tail totally exposed means he feels very secure near you," the article reads. Most of the time, this kind of stretch is exhibited whenever the cat is greeting his owner. The "belly-up" position means there is total trust towards the person he is interacting with. Stretching to drive away predators or attack when needed Stretching is also a fundamental tactic for defending themselves from their possible predators and for hunting their prey. Stretching elongates the muscle fibers to their fullest extent, says Waysofcats.com. This preserves and enhances their ability to attack if needed. In addition, their ability to remain immobile for hours prepares their body to explode into action anytime. So, yes, just when you think all cats are lazy, think again. According to PETA, "Such stretches mean, 'I'm so in control here, I can relax.' The show of teeth that accompanies yawning can mean, 'See these? Pretty big, eh! So don't try to take advantage.'" Stretching to relax As mentioned, cats can remain immobile for hours. In fact, cats commonly sleep between 12 and 16 hours a day - more than most mammals and up to twice as much as humans, Huffington Post reports. Therefore, just like humans, cats need to stimulate blood circulation in their body as soon as they get out of their stationary state. Andrew Cuff, a postdoctoral researcher of anatomy at the Royal Veterinary College in London told Live Science that cats stretch simply because "it feels good and increases blood flow." Other behaviors that feline owners should be aware of include cheek rubbing that indicates friendliness, purring as a sign of distraught or happiness, upright tail flicks which indicate excitement and wagging tails as a sign of indecisiveness. Make sure to learn what causes dry skin on cats and what measure you can take to control it. A San Mateo County Sheriff's deputy patrol car crashed into a light blue Toyota in front of an auto body shop on Monday morning in San Carlos. About 9:30 a.m., the sheriff's department tweeted out a picture of the scene, saying that southbound El Camino Real, from Olive Street to Arroyo Avenue was closed during the investigation of the pursuit crash. Who was being chased and why was not immediately disclosed. The sheriff's Twitter account said that there were only minor injuries involved. An employee of Super Massage was found dead at work on Sunday evening, Pittsburg police said, after what appears to be an armed robbery. Capt. Ron Raman said officers were called out to the massage salon at 156 Atlantic Avenue about 8:20 p.m. The shop is in a strip mall next to a Mexican shop and photo studio. When they arrived, they found an employee inside of the business suffering from at least one gunshot wound. He was pronounced deceased on scene. Raman said the suspect entered the shop demanding money and got into a physical fight with some of the employees. At some point, the suspect took out a gun and shot the employee, Raman said. The suspect fled the scene and is still outstanding. Newspaper publisher Gannett said Monday that it wants to buy rival Tribune Publishing for more than $388 million, in a deal that would give the owner of USA Today control of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers. But Gannett said Monday that Tribune has refused to begin "constructive discussions" about a deal since it first offered to buy the company earlier this month. Tribune confirmed Monday that it received the unsolicited offer and said it "will respond to Gannett as quickly as feasible." Gannett, based in McLean, Virginia, has been working to expand its reach around the U.S. Earlier this month, it closed a deal to buy the Journal Media Group, adding 15 newspapers to its portfolio, including the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Buying Tribune would give Gannett 11 more newspapers, including the Orlando Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant. The offer comes after a shakeup at Tribune. Last month, the Chicago-based company announced a reorganization that named each of its newspapers' editors as dual editors-in-chief and publishers. In February, Tribune named Justin Dearborn as its new CEO, replacing Jack Griffin less than two years after he joined the business. The changes came months after Tribune received a more than $44 million cash infusion from a firm controlled by Chicago investor Michael Ferro. Gannett said Monday that CEO Robert Dickey talked about a possible deal with both Ferro and Dearborn. Gannett said it offered $12.25 in cash for each Tribune share, a 63 percent premium to Tribune's Friday closing price of $7.52. Gannett valued the total deal at about $815 million, which includes about $390 million of debt. Shares of Tribune Publishing Co. rose nearly 56 percent before the stock market open Monday. Shares of Gannett Co. were unchanged. A Chicago police officer was shot and another officer was injured while chasing an armed suspect in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood Monday afternoon, authorities said. The officer was shot in the shoulder during a foot pursuit of an armed man just before 4:30 p.m. near the 2300 block of South Trumbull Avenue. A second officer suffered a minor cut to his hand, according to Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson. Johnson said both officers were on routine patrol when they saw three people who appeared to be doing something suspicious. As they approached the group, one man fled the scene. At some point during the foot chase, an officer was shot. The suspect was hit with a Taser by that officer's partner and taken into custody, Johnson said. The officer shot did not suffer life-threatening injuries and is expected to be released as soon as Monday evening. "This is an example of officers being proactive, doing what we want them to do, the right way, and this happens to them," Johnson said. "But again, that just illustrates that we have too many guns out here on the streets of Chicago." The other two suspects fled the scene and remain at large. This marks the fifth time this year that a Chicago police officer has been shot in the line of duty. That's up from zero at this time last year. One of eight Ohio family members killed in a "pre-planned execution" may have been the target of a Facebook threat, according to a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office. "I can confirm that the attorney general said he was aware of the Facebook threat," Jill Del Greco said Monday. She declined to specify which family member may have been targeted or by whom. Seven adults and one teenager, all members of the Rhoden family, were found shot in the head Friday at four crime scenes in the rural community of Piketon. The victims were identified Saturday as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. Three young children including Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby and Hannah Rhoden's 4-day-old were unharmed. "To think of the scene of this baby this 4-day-old baby being with its mom in bed and someone comes in and executes the mother with the baby right by the mother's side is just, to me, beyond comprehension," said Attorney General Mike DeWine. When asked why the children's lives may have been spared, Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said, "My only guess, and I would be completely speculating, but they're not witnesses." Autopsies were completed Monday, with authorities still scrambling to figure out who pulled the trigger and why. Surviving members of the Rhoden family have been offered police protection and told to arm themselves. "There ultimately is a threat because there is someone who's done this and they're still at large," said Reader. "And I would consider them armed and dangerous." Investigators have been tight-lipped about details of the crime, but a police report documenting one of the scenes where two people were found dead says no forced entry was made, indicating the gunman may have known the family. Authorities also said they found marijuana grow operations at three of the crime scenes but didn't say if the killings were drug-related. "Well, I think we can speculate what the motive was. You talk about revenge, you can talk about drug-related, but frankly, we just don't know," said DeWine. "We're not ruling anything in; we're not ruling anything out." Marijuana seizures are common in Pike County, where authorities said a 2012 seizure may have been linked to a Mexican drug cartel. Some 20,000 pounds of marijuana plants were found on a single property in nearby Latham in 2010, according to data from the attorney general's office. "You know, there's a lot of things have been covered up right here in Pike County," said Leonard Manley, the father of victim Dana Rhoden, in an interview Monday. He declined to reveal whether his daughter ever feared for her safety or if he knew who might be responsible. Manley did say, however, his daughter's dogs were wary of strangers so "they must have been there all the time." Ted Cruz has gone all out in Indiana, even though John Kasichs campaign said last week it locked down the support of a majority of the states delegates, NBC News reported. Cruz said Sunday that only two candidates have a plausible path whatsoever to winning the Republican nomination me and Donald Trump. The Texas senator is making an 11-day tour of Indiana, and the campaign has budgeted what officials called a "significant" amount of money. The strategy mirrors the operation the Cruz campaign set up in Wisconsin, where Cruz ultimately won big on April 5. The campaign has even established "Camp Cruz," where volunteers can live for free just outside of Indianapolis. Indiana's primary will be held on May 3 a week after the primary Tuesday in Pennsylvania, where Trump has a strong lead in the polls. Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders headed to Hartford on Monday for his second campaign stop in Connecticut ahead of Tuesday's primary election. "Looks to me like Hartford is ready for a political revolution," Sanders said after taking the podium amid cheers from the crowd. "When I talk about a political revolution, it's not a complicated process. It means that we need to involve millions of people in the political process at the grassroots level." Speaking from Mortensen Riverfront Plaza, Sanders discussed what he called a "rigged economy," increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, rethinking the war on drugs and phasing out fracking. He also encouraged people to get out and vote. "Today in America, when we talk about a rigged economy, we are talking about the top one-tenth of 1 percent ... now owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent," Sanders said. "We're talking about the 20 wealthiest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, half of our population." "What we are going to do together is create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent," he added. "If you work 40 hours per week, you should not be living in poverty." Sanders took some time to discuss "disastrous" trade policies that he said encourage manufacturing overseas rather than in the United States. "Since 2001, we have lost almost 60,000 factories in America," Sanders said. "The message and the word, if I'm elected president, will go out to corporate America, 'You know what? You're going to start investing in Connecticut, Vermont and America, not just in China or Mexico.' We are going to start creating decent paying jobs in this country." Sanders also addressed drug arrests and the "so-called war on drugs." "Over the last 30 years, millions of Americans have received criminal records because of possession of marijuana," Sanders said, drawing boos from the crowd. "If you have a police record, a criminal record, and walk in and try and get a job, it has an impact. It's not a good thing." Sanders said he's introduced legislation that would mean marijuana would no longer be considered a Schedule 1 drug, the most dangerous class. The Vermont senator told the crowd something needs to be done about what he called the epidemic of opiate and heroin addiction and called for a revolution in mental health treatment and used the topic to take a shot at Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat. "I do not understand. I don't want to get too involved in local government here in Connecticut, but I understand that your governor has been cutting mental health treatment," Sanders said. "Now, what I believe is we have to revolutionize mental health treatment in this country." Sanders also discussed college tuition debt and making public colleges and universities free low interest rates for college refinancing. We should be rewarding people for getting an education, not punishing them, Sanders said. On Sunday night, Sanders took the stage at a rally before a crowd of about 10,000 people on the New Haven Green and discussed his platform there as well. Speaking to NBC Connecticut's Matt Austin before Sunday night's rally, Sanders said Connecticut is an important state for him and he thinks he could have a shot. "Connecticut is important, it has a lot of delegates, I want to win as many as possible," he said. "I believe if there is a large voter turnout on Tuesday we stand a good chance to win. If voter turnout is low, we probably won't win." According to a recent Quinnipiac Poll, Sanders trails fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton among likely voters in Tuesday's presidential primary. An Oxford, Connecticut, animal control officer accused of stealing a dog and forging documents to get free veterinary care for two of her dogs has been arrested, police said. State police have charged Cori Wlasuk, 44, of Southbury, with third-degree larceny and second-degree forgery. She allegedly failed to impound two dogs she took home from the pound for the required period of time and had the state pay for a dog's care. Police started investigating Wlasuk after a resident complained at a town hall on Dec. 17, saying the animal control officer had stolen her 7-and-a-half-week-old purebred black female Newfoundland and Wlasuk stole a purebred female brown Newfoundland in 2014, according to state police. Police began investigating and determined that someone turned the Newfoundland puppy in to the shelter and Wlasuk took her home, rather than impounding her for the mandatory seven days, police said. She used a friends name to adopt the puppy, according to police, and used the same name on a voucher so the state paid to spay the dog. Wlasuk is also accused of keeping the dog at the shelter so the town would pay the puppys veterinary bills. Wlasuk was not immediately available for comment. She denied the allegations when they were first raised in December, according to the Republican-American. Oxford First Selectman George Temple said Wlasuk has been suspended without pay and her future with animal control will be discussed during the next board of selectman meeting, which is set to take place on May 1. Police also investigated the allegations in the 2014 case and said Wlasuk failed to impound a female purebred Newfoundland then as well, and instead brought the dog home. Wlasuk allegedly told the dogs owner that she wanted to buy the Newfoundland, paid cash and directed the dogs owner to sign an owner surrender form. Police said the form turned the dog over to the town even though the dog was at Wlasuks home. Wlasuk is accused of misusing the states voucher system in that case as well and getting the state to pay for spaying and the town to pay vet bills. Wlasuk turned herself in to police on Sunday and was charged with two counts of third-degree larceny and five counts of second-degree forgery, police said. Bond was set at $5,000. Wlasuk was released and is due in court on May 5. A seventh-grade student from Canton has died after being hit by a falling tree on Sunday, according to school officials. School officials said in an email that Allison Doyle, a student at Canton Middle School, died suddenly after a tragic accident. Officials responded to Old Mill Drive after receiving a 911 call at 5:48 p.m. that a tree had fallen and injured a child. Canton Middle School Principal Pamela Hamad and teachers described Allison as "a sweet young woman who was a wonderful and true friend. She was extremely hard working and always did her best in the classroom, on the field hockey team, and in band," Superintendent Kevin D. Case said in an email. Counselors are available at Canton Middle School and at each of the Canton public schools on Monday and will continue to provide support to students and staff, Case said. He said Allison is survived by her parents, Michael and Angeline, her brother, Tyler, a ninth-grader, and her sister, Bella, a third-grader. "I know you will join me in expressing our deepest condolences to the Doyle family and will keep them in your thoughts and prayers during this most difficult time," Case said in a statement. The middle school track meet scheduled for this afternoon has been canceled. In the event that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton becomes President Hillary Clinton, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy may or may not have a role in her administration. During an exclusive interview with NBC Connecticut on Sunday, the former First Lady, U.S. Senator and chief diplomat was asked whether she has considered the second-term governor for either her vice president list or for another spot in her cabinet and she said its too early to make any comments on who may comprise her administration. Oh my gosh, I don't want to talk about what could be a position in the future Clinton said. That's totally hypothetical but you know clearly I appreciate what he's trying to do and wish him well here in Connecticut. Malloy and the Clintons have been political allies since his run for governor in 2010 when he received the endorsement of both former President Bill Clinton and Hillary. The former president campaigned for the governor during his reelection bid in 2014. Malloy returned the favor to Hillary Clinton as one of her earliest endorsements for president. Malloys name has been mentioned by Democratic sources as a possible Transportation Secretary and Attorney General candidate. On Meet the Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday, a list of possible vice presidential candidates was discussed that included former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Virginia U.S. Senator Tim Kaine and Sen. Sherrod Brown from Ohio. The other name that has been discussed in Democratic circles is Julian Castro, a former member of Congress from San Antonio who currently serves as President Barack Obamas Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In her only interview with Connecticut media on Monday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton told NBC Connecticut about her recent rhetoric about guns and how the Sandy Hook tragedy has been a focal point of her campaign. Clinton, who held a campaign rally at the University of Bridgeport over the weekend, said she hasnt politicized the tragedy, even with a campaign ad featuring the daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung who was killed that day. "I think we have a real problem with guns in America. Thirty-three thousand people per year are killed by guns and politics, our government, our democracy, is supposed to be about solving problems," Clinton said backstage. "We need universal background checks. We need to end the universal immunity that has been given to the gunmakers themselves. We have to do more on mental health. We have to do more on education about the dangers of guns, so I think it's an appropriate and necessary topic to be discussing in this campaign." That final comment was a nod to the lawsuit that families of Sandy Hook victims filed against the manufacturer and seller of the weapons used in the December 2012 massacre. A judge recently ruled the suit could move forward. Clinton spoke several days ago during a campaign stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about how, as a child, she would spend time at a family cabin on Lake Winola. She said thats where she learned to use a gun. NBC Connecticut political reporter Max Reiss asked Clinton if shes used a weapon recently. "Well, not recently; I did go hunting when I lived in Arkansas. I haven't really had much chance to do it," she said. "I've done skeet shooting, but I wanted to make the point that I am not against responsible people having guns." Clinton went on to say she believes in the Second Amendment and policies that can be good for both lawful gun owners and public safety. "There is no contradiction between having safe gun policies that save lives and respecting Second Amendment rights," Clinton said. On the issue of possible Supreme Court nominees, Clinton said some decisions by the high court have been "gifts to the gun lobby" and she would want a justice who could work to change those constitutional interpretations. Additionally, Clinton said overturning Citizens United, the case that established that corporations could give unlimited sums to political campaign, would be a priority. "I would certainly look for people who understood that Citizens United was one of the worst decisions the court has ever made," she said. Connecticuts economy has struggled since the 2008 recession and wage growth has remained essentially flat. Mentioning some of Connecticuts largest cities, Clinton said her economic policies could provide some growth. "I want to zero in [on] those places like Bridgeport and Waterbury that need those extra boosts and I will have those economics and jobs policy to do that. I will have an infrastructure policy and advanced manufacturing policy, a clean renewable energy policy, a small business policy and I want to do everything I can, working with the people in communities like Bridgeport and Waterbury to get back in the economic hunt to be able to provide more jobs that are going to provide good livings," she said. The former secretary of state knows she will have to win over supporters of challenger Bernie Sanders, as well as independents, in the event she becomes the Democratic nominee. Clinton hopes her connections to the state as a student at Yale will play into voters decisions. "I went to law school with Sen. [Richard] Blumenthal, so I've obviously known him for a very long time. Many other people in politics, in business and academia, and all kinds of civic groups so I do want people to know that I've spent a lot of time in Connecticut, driving around, seeing this beautiful state, and I want to be a partner to move the country forward," she said. Clinton said her supporters in 2008 were polled as saying nearly half would not support then-Sen. Barack Obama in a general election but eventaully did. Clinton hopes voters not only turn out for her Tuesday, but also that those who dont vote for her examine how their values may line up with hers. "I think the vast majority of my opponent's supporters are going to look at who the two nominees are and I'm very confident that we will have their support and we will work hard for it because I want people who don't support me now, not just people supporting my opponent in a Democratic primary but Republicans and Independents to really take a look at my record," Clinton said. Four people were arrested and six people were issued citations when officers busted house parties in Willimantic over the weekend and police are warning Eastern Connecticut State University students that officers will be cracking down on house parties during Spring Weekend. Police said they responded to house parties on Mansfield Avenue and Walnut Street and they received two separate complaints on Bolivia Street. Two residents of Bolivia Street and two residents of Walnut Street were charged with breach of peace. All four were processed and released on written promises to appear in Danielson Superior Court on May 3. Five people who were at the party on Mansfield Avenue were charged with creating a public disturbance and one was charged with possession of marijuana, according to police. Spring Weekend at Eastern Connecticut State University begins on Thursday and police are warning residents that house parties that grow out of control will not be tolerated and arrests will be made. Willimantic Police want students to enjoy the upcoming Spring Weekend, but we want them to do it safely and responsibility, Lt. Alex Coriaty said in a statement. Police said spring weekend celebrations historically have been respectful and for the most part go without major incident. In the last couple of years, the house parties have been dwindling because of city police and ECSU staff meeting with off-campus students during their first week back at school each fall semester. Polls for the presidential primary open at 6 a.m. on Tuesday and a hotline has been set up to help voters. Anyone who encounters a problem at the polls should call 866-SEEC-INFO hotline or email mailto:elections@ct.gov. The hotline and email address will be monitored between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Tuesday. "We need to hear from you if something is not working as it should. Please let us know if you encounter any problems. Your vote must be counted. There is no acceptable margin for error on Election Day. None. We are grateful to the State Election Enforcement Commission for working with us on this valuable service," Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said in an email. "We count on the public as much as we do election workers to report problems," Michael J. Brandi, executive director and general counsel of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, said in a statement. "Anyone with knowledge of election fraud or voting rights abuses is encouraged to call to report suspected violations. We will have the phones fully staffed to answer questions, advise on complaint procedures and, if appropriate, request the assistance of state criminal or federal law enforcement authorities." Voters who use the hotline can report concerns anonymously, but are asked to provide the town and polling place where the problem is occurring and provide as many details as possible. The Secretary of the State's office and the State Election Enforcement Commission will also hold two separate conference calls during the day on Tuesday to share information about potential problems or complaints at the polls and coordinate the appropriate response. Voters should go to myvote.ct.gov to confirm that they are registered to vote, locate their polling places and check what type of identification to bring with them to the polls. Actor George Clooney presented a $1.1 million award on the 101st anniversary of a massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks to a Burundi woman who offered sanctuary to thousands of orphans in the middle of a civil war there. The killing of more than 200 Armenian intellectuals on April 24, 1915 is regarded as the start of the massacre that is widely viewed by historians as the first genocide of the 20th century in which they estimate 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered. Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, vehemently rejects that the deaths constitute genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. Clooney presented the first Aurora Prize, an award recognizing an individual's work to advance humanitarian causes, to Marguerite Barankitse, who saved thousands of lives and cared for orphans and refugees amid the Burundi civil war. Armenian philanthropists selected her for the award. Clooney has been a prominent voice in favor of countries recognizing the killings as genocide, which the U.S. hasn't done. Before he presented the award, Clooney reminded the audience that Adolf Hitler once reportedly said: "Who remembers Armenia?" Clooney said: "The whole world." "By recognizing Marguerite Barankitse's courage, commitment and sacrifice, I am hopeful that she can also inspire each one of us to think about what we can do to stand up on behalf of those whose rights are abused and are in most need of our solidarity or support," Clooney said. President Barack Obama declined on Friday to refer to the 1915 massacre as genocide, breaking a key campaign promise as his presidency nears an end. Obama called the massacre the first mass atrocity of the 20th century and a tragedy that mustn't be repeated. Clooney, along with Armenian leaders and international dignitaries, earlier on Sunday attended a service at a hilltop memorial in the capital, Yerevan, led by Armenian church leader Catholicos Karekin II to commemorate the massacre victims. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a message commemorating Armenians who died in 1915, without making any reference to the massacre. In a statement that was read during a ceremony at an Armenian church in Istanbul, Erdogan said he welcomed the commemoration "to share the grief endured by the Ottoman Armenians, as well as to honor their memories." Erdogan criticized efforts "to politicize history through a bitter rhetoric of hate and enmity and strive to alienate the two neighboring nations." In a commemorative speech, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on Sunday mentioned a recent flare-up of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is officially a part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a separatist war ended in 1994. He lashed out at Azerbaijan for what he described as plans to drive all Armenians away from the region and pledged to protect Armenians living there. Fighting earlier this month marked the worst violence since 1994 and both sides on Sunday reported the shelling of their positions by enemy fire. Both sides on Sunday reported attacks on their positions. Azerbaijan's defense ministry said it destroyed an Armenian tank, a claim that Karabakh separatists denied. Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Aida Sultanova in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, contributed to this report. Marijuana growing operations were discovered at some of the crime scenes where officials said eight family members were killed in a "pre-planned execution," raising more questions as authorities scrambled to find a suspect or suspects in the slayings in a rural southern Ohio community. The killings at four homes near the small community of Piketon on Friday was "a sophisticated operation," Attorney General Mike DeWine said at a news conference Sunday. Seven adults and one teenage boy were found shot in the head; three young children were not harmed. "This was a pre-planned execution of eight individuals," DeWine said. Authorities remained tight-lipped Sunday about details of the investigation, any suspects or motives for the crime. They said they found marijuana operations at three of the crime scenes, but didn't say if the deaths were linked to pot. Autopsies were expected to be completed Monday. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said it was clear the family was targeted, and he's told the victims' relatives to arm themselves. Reader said he didn't believe safety was an issue for others, but he said "If you are fearful, arm yourself." Investigators have interviewed between 50 and 60 people in hopes of finding leads, and a team of 38 people is combing wooded areas around the shooting scenes to ensure no evidence was missed, authorities said. "This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened," said Reader, noting most victims were targeted while they were sleeping. The victims were identified Saturday as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden. Hanna Rhoden was in bed with her newborn baby nearby, authorities said. The infant was 4- or 5-days old. The newborn, Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby, and one other small child were not hurt. DeWine said the state's crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint, and five search warrants have been executed. Since the slayings, authorities have refused to discuss many details of the crime, a potential motive, weapons, or the search for the assailant or assailants. "We don't know whether it was one or more people involved in this," DeWine said. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, who've set up a number for people to call as police seek information about the crimes. A Cincinnati-area businessman also put up a $25,000 reward for details leading to the capture and conviction of the killer or killers. Robin Waddell, who owns the Big Bear Lake Family Resort just south of Piketon, said Christopher Rhoden often did work for him as a carpenter and helped out with his excavation business. He said Rhoden was a nice guy whose kids sometimes visited him while he was working. "It's a large family," Waddell said. "There's a lot of them and they've been in this community for generations. So this is affecting a lot of people." Maggie Owens, a cook at the town's Riverside Restaurant, said she's counts herself among those who feel they're on eggshells. "I know a lot of people are just scared," Owens, 39, said in a phone interview on Sunday. "You don't hear about stuff like that around here." She said her son was friends with the younger Christopher Rhoden. She described Dana Rhoden as a woman with "a heart of gold" who gave her clothes and money when her home burned down last year. The exact timing of the shootings remains unclear. Authorities got the first 911 call shortly before 8 a.m. Friday; the second came several hours later from another location. Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway. The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away. Todd Beekman, who owns an outdoors shop a few miles from the crime scenes, said at least one customer came in to stock up on ammunition after hearing about the shootings. But Beekman and others hanging out there midday Saturday said they weren't concerned for their own safety because it's an area where residents know and look out for each other. "The word spread pretty fast, as it does in any rural area," Beekman said. "Everybody's kind of their own brother's keeper down here." 2016 presidential candidates.jpg Presidential candidates John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are vying for the Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are fighting for the Democratic nomination. (AP photos) Good Monday Morning, Fellow Seekers. A scant 24 hours before the polls open, Republican Donald Trump holds a strong lead over his Republican challengers, while Democrat Hillary Clinton holds just an 8-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Trump leads Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas 49-26 percent, according to a CBS News Battleground tracking poll released Sunday. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who claims roots in western Pennsylvania, finishes third at 22 percent. Clinton leads Sanders 53-41 percent in the CBS poll. The results mirror a Public Policy poll released Monday, which showed Clinton leading Sanders 51-41 percent; Trump led Cruz 51-25, with 22 percent for Kasich. Trump holds a 59-36 percent favorability rating in the new Public Policy poll. Cruz was upside down at 35-51 percent, the poll found. The polls of likely voters present two, very different results among the party frontrunners as they vie for a delegate-rich state that both hope will help them sew up their respective party nominations. Trump held a 40-26 percent lead over Cruz in a Franklin & Marshall poll of likely voters released last Thursday. Kasich took 24 percent support. In that same poll, Clinton led Sanders by a commanding 58-31 over Sanders among likely voters. On Sunday, Cruz and Kasich announced what was described as a "strategic partnership" to try to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination. According to published reports, Cruz will focus on Indiana, where he's expected to win the Hoosier State's May 3 primary. Kasich will cede the state in exchange for a win in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7. "The announcement is a major development in what has been a bitter fight for the anti-Trump vote," Cleveland.com reported. "GOP establishment leaders worry about Trump's bluster, his xenophobic comments and his all-around unorthodox brand of politics." Both Trump and Clinton are campaigning in Philadelphia today. Trump makes stops in West Chester at 4 p.m. and Wilkes-Barre at 7 p.m Clinton starts her day with a stop at Westmoreland County Community College, 145 Pavilion Lane in Youngwood near Pittsburgh, at 2 p.m. (doors open at noon). Register here. Clinton and Sanders hold back-to-back MSNBC town halls (sold out) at the National Constitution Center. Clinton holds a rally at City Hall in Philadelphia at 7:15 p.m. Sanders will be in Pittsburgh Monday for a free rally at 2:30 p.m. in the Fitzgerald Field House at the University of Pittsburgh. Doors open at 11 a.m. and you can register here on the Bernie Sanders web site. He then heads to Philadelphia for his MSNBC Town Hall. A woman from Wales cannot name her baby daughter Cyanide, a British court ruled Thursday. The woman, whose name cannot be published for legal reasons, has infant twins and wants to name her son Preacher and her daughter Cyanide, saying the poison is a "lovely, pretty name" with positive associations because it helped kill Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Local officials objected, and a family court judge ruled against the mother in September, saying she was not acting to secure her children's welfare. She challenged the ruling, saying it was her right to choose her children's names. But three Court of Appeal judges upheld the earlier decision in a judgment published Thursday. One of the justices, Eleanor King, said it was "one of those rare cases" in which judges should intervene. "It is hard to see how ... the twin girl could regard being named after this deadly poison as other than a complete rejection of her by her birth mother," she said. The woman has a history of drug abuse and mental health problems, and her children have been placed in foster care. A 14-year-old boy was rushed to Denton Regional Medical Center Sunday night after he slipped beneath the waters of Lake Lewisville. The boy was fishing with family and friends from an island just offshore at Willow Park Grove in Lake Dallas. The group made it out to the island in waist-deep water, according to Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife Game Warden Stormy McCuistion. When they returned, they got off track and found themselves in water above their heads. The boy went under the water and relatives unsuccessfully tried to rescue him, according to McCuistion. The Lewisville Fire Department dive team arrive on scene first and used a sonar to find the boy. "He was under water for almost exacly 42 minutes and the water temperature is about 69 degrees right now, so they started CPR as soon as they recovered him and they were doing CPR all the way to the hospital," McCuistion said. McCuistion told NBC 5 the boy did not know how to swim. Dallas police are seeing a dramatic drop in violent crime this month. Dallas police officials say new crime-fighting strategies and new help from other law enforcement agencies are paying off this spring. So far there have been three homicides in April, compared to 20 in March. In early March, DPD created a new 170-member task force to fight violent crime. Several police associations said a consequence of that was hampering detectives' abilities to follow-up on cases and investigate. The chief says he's committed to putting violent offenders in jail. The strategy for the last two months has been increased patrols in tiny-geographic-perimeters where statistics showed disproportionate violence. The Violent Crime Task Force has spent weeks at a time saturating one neighborhood, trying to make arrests and locate wanted felony suspects, as well as seizing drugs, guns and stolen property. "Our deployment strategy is reducing violent crime in this city," said Dallas Police Chief David Brown. Brown said the task force is focusing on drug houses and drug dealers and tracking down domestic abusers. "Much of our violent crime our aggravated assaults and our murders have been driven by domestic violence. So getting those warrants served expeditiously has paid off," Brown said. Brown said at the beginning of the year, there were more than 800 domestic violence warrants. Now, that number is down to "around 500." There are also about 1,000 warrants for drug cases. Violent crime in April is down 10 percent. The district attorney's office is also stepping up outreach to crime victims in Dallas County. District Attorney Susan Hawk is meeting with the Oak Lawn community at the Cathedral of Hope Monday at 6 p.m. Many residents in that community are still angry there have been no arrests in any of the 14 or more violent attacks in recent months, dating back to last autumn. Earlier this month, the Texas Department of Public Safety sent more than a dozen state troopers to help Dallas police fight its violent crime spike. Brown said those troopers are serving warrants and helping identify gang members trying to learn more about the structure of gang organizations around the city, county, and state. "Right now [DPS] dedicated 10 to 20 to help us out with the warrants. And that's significant," Brown said. "Those are resources we didn't have to spare before." It's unclear how long the 10 to 20 troopers will be assigned to work with Dallas police, but the chief hopes they'll stick around for at least another month. "We want to make sure we do what we have to before the summer starts. June, July, August are always tough months. So we're trying to do as much as we can in May," he said, warning of a traditional summer crime spike, when school is out, and temperatures and people's aggression can boil over. The Gang Unit has played a key role in the success of the Violent Crime Task Force. New statistics revealed Monday by the Dallas Police Department show that the Gang Unit has assisted with 52 arrests through March 31 (86 total in 2015), led 216 traffic stops through March 31 (419 in all of 2015) and filed 10 warrants through March 31 (12 in all of 2015). Dozens of people who live near Texas Motor Speedway claim thunderous noise shook their homes late Saturday night. Something Wonderful, an electronic dance music festival, attracted thousands. The event ended at 1 a.m. Sunday. "Boom, boom, boom, all night. Our walls were pounding all night long," said Velma Buchanan, a Justin resident. "We thought it was a party or some cars outside in our neighborhood." Buchanan lives six miles away from Texas Motor Speedway. She and her neighbors complained about the noise on TMS' Facebook page. "There were neighbors who also got toilet paper on their homes. There were neighbors who experienced streakers outside," Buchanan said. "The had to make sure their children were inside and the doors were locked." A TMS official told NBC 5 he was "not aware" of neighbors' complaints and directed questions to a music festival spokesperson. Calls and messages were not returned on Sunday evening. "The festival was supposed to be in the race track, but in the end it was in the parking lot for some reason," said Ezequiel Mendoza. Mendoza attended Something Wonderful with friends. "There's people who will get out of hand, but there's always going to be that in any crowd." Neighbors, including Buchanan, said TMS did not warn residents about the excess noise the concert would cause. "We're hoping TMS and the City of Fort Worth both take responsibility and are held accountable," Buchanan said. "Both should issue a public apology. We want to make sure this never comes to our neighborhood ever again." According to its website, Something Wonderful made its "sophomore appearance in Dallas-Fort Worth." A Houston woman has been charged in the death of her 5-month-old daughter who allegedly was bounced off a bed and onto a floor. Harris County jail records show 22-year-old Tradezsha Bibbs was being held without bond Monday on a charge of capital murder of a person under age 6. KPRC-TV reported that Bibbs initially told investigators that Brielle Robinson on April 14 fell from a car seat onto some concrete. Investigators said Bibbs dropped the crying girl onto a bed, causing the baby to bounce to the floor. Police say Bibbs is also accused of beating the infant. Authorities said Bibbs called 911 when Brielle stopped breathing. An autopsy found the baby died of blunt-force trauma. No attorney was listed to speak for Bibbs. Two people were taken into custody early Monday morning by Mesquite police after leading officers on a chase into Dallas. Mesquite police said an officer spotted multiple people sitting inside a parked 2001 black Chevrolet Tahoe, one of whom was wearing a mask over his face. When the driver saw the officer, he sped out of the parking lot. The officer tried to get the driver to pull over, but he refused and led the officer into Dallas. The driver stopped near Lemmon Avenue and Peak Street and three people jumped from the vehicle and ran on foot. Two of those who were inside the vehicle were taken into custody -- the driver escaped. "It is very likely that the suspects were planning to do a robbery in the parking lot," police said. Police have not released the names of the two taken into custody, citing the ongoing investigation. Sometimes viewers call NBC5 Responds for help and sometimes they call to help other viewers, as a North Texas woman did with information that could save you a lot of heartache. Stacey Everett said the scary phone calls started about a month ago, promising to foreclose on her home. But she knew better and emailed NBC 5 Responds to make sure others know better too. Everett played one of the calls for us, which said, "I am calling in regards to your mortgage property which is under default list." That's the actual wording of the call, and it's a heads up that the call's a fake. Several other calls came, some recorded, some from a live person. "I've been getting a gentleman calling me saying that I owe for my escrow and he wanted me to pay it and that they were going to foreclose on me," she said. The callers know her address and lender and they ask for more information and money. But Everett knows for a fact she doesn't owe a thing. In fact, she said her Bank of America branch told her she overpaid on her escrow to the tune of $137. Everett said the people calling her became upset when she told them she didn't owe any money. "He kept saying, 'Yes, ma'am, you do. You're going to be foreclosed on,'" she said. "I said, 'Go ahead and file.'" Everett reached out to NBC5 Responds because she was worried others might fall for it. "I just don't want it to happen to anybody else," she said. This is a scheme that can happen with all banks, not just Bank of America. Crooks can tailor it to you because it's easy to look up your address and lender information. So here's what to watch out for: Bank of America said they'd never call and ask for personal information. The foreclosure process doesn't happen over the phone. If you receive one of these calls, hang up and call your lender with a number you have on your mortgage statement. Here is more information Bank of America sent us. Inquires are most likely false if they include: Requests for personal information: Bank of America will never ask you to reply with any personal information such as your Social Security number, ATM or PIN. Urgent appeals: We will never claim your account may be closed if you fail to confirm, verify or authenticate your personal information. Messages about system and security updates: We will never claim the need to confirm important information due to system upgrades. Offers that sound too good to be true: We will never ask you to provide your account number or put up money so you can receive money. The company suggests you report problems to abuse@bankofamerica.com. A jury of seven women and five men was sworn in Monday in the trial of two men accused of stalking a drug cartel attorney before his murder in Southlake three years ago. The case, in federal court in Fort Worth, is expected to shed light on how cartels and their hit squads operate inside the United States. Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda, 59, and his cousin, 60-year-old Jose Luis Cepeda-Cortez, are charged with surveilling Juan Guerrero-Chapa by placing remote cameras in his Southlake neighborhood and a GPS tracking device on his car. NBC 5 News The two, dressed in suits and ties, quietly watched the jury selection process. Many of the jurors said they had heard of the crime but most, if not all, said they also could keep an open mind. Jurors were chosen from a panel of 60 citizens. The judge said another 40 were "on ice" in another room, but they were never brought into the courtroom. The 43-year-old Guerrero was shot while getting into his Range Rover at Southlake Town Square May 22, 2013, after shopping with his wife. He was shot once in the chest and nine times in the back, according to his autopsy. Guerrero's wife is expected to be one of the first prosecution witnesses. News that Guerrero was living quietly in Southlake in a $1.2 million mansion with his wife and children came as a surprise to local residents and even the city police, but federal agents knew he was there. He was a U.S. government informant. Defense attorneys also said he was the "de facto" head of the Gulf Cartel. Guerrero's killing sparked a major investigation by the FBI and other agencies. Prosecutors turned over six terabytes of files to defense attorneys. The two defendants are not accused of killing Guerrero. Three other men also were indicted in the case but their names are blacked out in public court documents. They have not been arrested and are believed to be in Mexico. Two men accused of stalking a drug cartel attorney before he was killed in Southlake Town Square in 2013 are set to go on trial Monday. Another man arrested for stalking the victim, 32-year-old Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano, has pleaded guilty in the case and his expected to testify against the other two his father and fathers cousin. The father and son came to North Texas from Mexico to find and follow Guerrero, used multiple cars and disposable cell phones, and even rented an apartment in Grapevine, prosecutors said. They were involved in the murders of 12 other people in Mexico, prosecutors said. The cousin was living in Edinburg, Texas. All three are Mexican citizens. Guerrero was the personal attorney for former Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas. Defense attorneys said Guerrero effectively took over the cartel after Cardenas arrest. They also accuse Guerrero of ordering murders and kidnappings. Cardenas, an inmate at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, has been named as a defense witness. Cardenas was sentenced in 2010 to 25 years in prison after agreeing to forfeit $50 million and cooperate with U.S. investigators. Guerrero played a key role in helping Cardenas come up with the money and provided detailed information on cartel activities, The Dallas Morning News reported. The men arrested for stalking Guerrero told investigators a cartel operative ordered Guerreros murder to avenge the death of his father years earlier, the newspaper said, citing confidential law enforcement records. He has not been arrested. The trial is expected to last at least three weeks. Defense attorneys have suggested they want to bring out Guerreros bad acts while living in Southlake to show that many people may have had a motive to kill him. But U.S. District Judge Terry Means has warned defense lawyers that he will not allow them to put the victim on trial. As Hurricane Carla closed in on the Texas coast in 1961, an 8-year-old boy in Houston studied the storm. The boy grew up to be NBC 5 Chief Meteorologist David Finfrock, who spent more than 40 years forecasting and tracking storms on television. "This was way before the days of the internet," said Finfrock. "We're talking the early 60's. For the latest weather information, I would tune into the radio news station to listen to the latest coordinates coming in. Then I would pull out my hurricane tracking chart and put the latitude and longitude and track the motion of the storm and where it was headed." Hurricane Carla destroyed homes and businesses along the Texas gulf coast. But it launched a career for Finfrock. "After that, I bought a weather station, set it up in the backyard. And each day before school, when I got home from school and before bedtime, I'd go out and jot down the temperature and humidity and pressure." "As a kid I knew I was really interested in the Earth Sciences," said Finfrock. "My father was a geologist. I knew early on - geology, geography, oceanography, meteorology - I wanted to study the Earth." While Finfrock embraced the power of mother nature, he loathed public speaking. "I was a little kid, introverted, very shy," remembered Finfrock. "The only time I ever skipped school in all of my 12 years was when we were supposed to give an oral presentation and I got sick to my stomach. I was deathly afraid of getting up in front of people." Finfrock attended the only college in Texas that awarded undergraduate degrees in meteorology, Texas A&M University in College Station. While he excelled at the complex mathematics and physics classes, he was forced to face his fears. "I petitioned my college counselor to let me take another semester of Russian [language class] instead of public speaking!," said Finfrock. "And he said 'no, if you want to graduate, you've got to take speech'. I took it and I made an 'A'. I was amazed. I found out that I could do it." Post-college, Finfrock planned to work for the National Weather Service or go into research. Working in television was the furthest thing from his mind as he approached graduation. But a forecaster in Fort Worth was searching for a new meteorologist and came across Finfrock's transcripts. "All I knew was the people I watched growing up in Houston so I had no idea who Harold Taft was when one day out of the blue I got a phone call inviting me to come interview for the position," said Finfrock. "When I got that phone from Harold inviting me to interview, I did make one concession. I shaved off my beard that I had grown in Alaska. I left the mustache and it's still there til this day." Legendary WBAP/KXAS-TV chief meteorologist Harold Taft was the first to produce weather maps on television. Finfrock's audition for Taft went awry when rose from the news desk to walk over to the weather maps. "I didn't gauge very carefully how far it was to the drop off on the back of the anchor desk and the chair goes toppling over," said Finfrock. "I fortunately scrambled to my feet. I didn't go over with it but you hear this huge crash on the table behind me. Came back, sat down and figured I better get back to A&M and really apply myself for the graduate degree, this is going to be the shortest TV career in history." "I kept going and he [Taft] said if I can do that on my job interview, I could probably handle anything that would come up in live television," said Finfrock. Photo Donald J. Trump added another reinforcement to his delegate-wrangling operation on Monday with the hiring of Ken McKay, the former campaign manager for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, to help lead his effort to secure the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. McKay is the latest longtime political insider to join Mr. Trumps campaign as he makes a final push to win the 1,237 delegates needed to become the nominee. He recently hired Paul Manafort to be his convention manager, and Rick Wiley , who was Gov. Scott Walkers campaign manager, as an adviser. He will support our delegate operations team and bolster our ground-game efforts, Mr. Trump said of Mr. McKay in a statement. He brings tremendous experience to the job, and I know he is up to the task of working with my team. The new hire comes as Mr. Trumps two remaining rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, have teamed up in an effort to make it harder for the Manhattan businessman to win the remaining states. Mr. McKay was previously chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, serving until he resigned in 2010 after it emerged that the national party spent thousands of dollars at a California sex club. He went on to serve as political director for the Republican Governors Association and was also an adviser to the presidential campaign of Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. I am very honored to have the opportunity to work with Mr. Trump and such a resilient campaign, Mr. McKay said. There is no question that he is the presumptive nominee, and will unify our party to take back the White House in November. Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook , Twitter and the First Draft newsletter . More Posts More than four years after being convicted of groping a 20-year-old woman in San Diego, a priest is behind a Catholic pulpit again. Father Jose Alexis Davila had been at St. Judes Shrine of the West in Southcrest only two months when he was arrested in 2012. He was later reinstated at St. Judes but left by the end of the year. "Without excusing or justifying his behavior, I think he can now safely and appropriately return to ministry, Paul S. Coakley, the Archbishop of Oklahoma City where Davila now works, said. Some actions such as the sexual abuse of a child are so grievous that the perpetrator must be permanently removed from ministry. This was not one of those actions. Joelle Casteix, with Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), has followed Davila's case since the original sexual assault charges against him. If he knew about Davilas background and still allowed him to be a priest, that is reckless endangerment, and it should definitely be held accountable, Casteix said. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City welcomed Davila to the fold in December. I dont think being a leader means that you are free from the possibility of making mistakes or sins, Michael Chapman of the archdiocese said. Archbishop Coakley said Davilas job came after a full investigation, including a background check, probationary period and lengthy interviews with leaders from where Davila has served. Still, Davila's background was news to many church members in Oklahoma City. Janet Bullard said she may be looking for a new congregation now. It's hurtful this kind of stuff," Bullard said. "It puts a stain on the church. Most of these people are good decent people, and these scandals really hurt a lot of people and really ran a lot of people out of the church. Casteix said shes calling on the archbishop to remove Davila from the pulpit for good. Davila pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in 2012 and was sentenced to three years probation. Deputies asked curious picture-snapping residents to go indoors after a bear cub led authorities on a "pursuit" through Duarte Sunday. The bear was first spotted at 3 p.m. in the 800 block of Buena Vista before it moved to the 1400 block of Royal Oaks Drive. Deputies scoured the area to find the cub in the residential area before discovering it in someone's backyard. Wildlife officials prepared a tranquilizer for the animal at 4:25 p.m. as the bear scurried up a tree, eluding officers. The cub ran across lanes and at times teetered on top of walls as officers tried to corral the animal. Curious residents tried to grab cellphone images of the cub before deputies advised they go inside of their homes. A mother bear had not been seen in the area. The bear was tranquilized, captured and removed via truck bed by 4:40 p.m. A massive whale carcass is drawing attention after it washed ashore at one of Southern California's most legendary surf spots, and now whale watchers say they expect a second carcass will wash up in the area soon. The carcass appeared along Lower Trestles on Sunday, a popular break at San Onofre State Beach south of San Clemente, according to Donna Kalez, general manager of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching. Two carcasses, estimated to be about 40-feet long, were recently spotted in the area, and a boat captain expects the second carcass will wash up in the next several days. The whale appears to have died of natural causes, as it had no visible signs of entanglements or abrasions. The discovery has attracted a wave of curious onlookers that flocked to the beach to snap photos of the dead animal. "I've never seen anything like it before," one beachgoer said. Officials said a necropsy will be performed to determine a cause of death. State lifeguards will likely wait until high tide to take the marine mammal into the ocean. A boat captain for the whale watching company said he recommends surfers stay away from the waters, as sharks are known to eat whale carcasses. A man shot and wounded his wife before fatally shooting himself at a home in Sylmar Monday morning, officials said. Just before 7 a.m., officers responded to reports of shots fired at a mobile home community in the 15400 block of Cobalt Street, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. When police arrived, they found a man and a woman with gunshot wounds. The woman was transported to the hospital where she's listed in stable condition.The man was pronounced dead at the scene from a self-inflicted wound, police said. Joy Jacobs. a friend of the family who lives next door, said the couple had lived together for a decade and got married last November. According to Jacobs, the couple had a tumultuous relationship with loud fights and threats of violence. "On Friday, we spoke and she said he was suicidal," said Jacobs. "She said she was getting messages from him that he was going to commit suicide... and she didn't know what to do." Neighbors said the couple's two young daughters were at the home during the shooting but were unharmed. The man's name was withheld, pending notification of his relatives. Laurent Halasz, an accomplished restaurateur, greets each of his culinary students with a warm smile and genuine enthusiasm. His students are at-risk youth from Boyle Heights, who were with Laurent at his West Hollywood restaurant for a cooking class. On the surface, it's an unlikely pairing but dig deeper, and it's a recipe for success. "I think the fact he came and opened his arms to the Boyle Heights community, even though he didn't know us, I thought that was very generous and courageous of him," said Erick, a student. Laurent, who grew up in the South of France, is the founder of FIG & OLIVE restaurant, which has seven locations around the country, including West Hollywood. With his growing success, he had a desire to give back and start the Farm & Kitchen Foundation. Sharing his passion for food allows him to connect with young people and to inspire them to pursue their own dreams. "What I tell them is there is only one way: work, work, work and of course, continue their studies," Laurent said. Laurent teams up with the LAPD's Hollenbeck division, which runs the largest Police Activities League, a program designed to steer kids in a positive direction. "I think it really gives them a sense of, 'all I got to do is go get it,'" said Donald Levier of the LAPD. "And it's right at their fingertips." Every year, 15 students are invited to participate in Laurent's program, where he and his staff expose them to the culinary industry. "It's no secret our kids come from a tough neighborhood, so to get them out of that environment and get them out of their bubble, out of their shells, out of their comfort zone, it really opens their eyes," Levier said. For some students, it can be intimidating if they've never ventured beyond their Boyle Heights neighborhood. "They're a little taken aback, they're scared. We've had children on the first time say they don't belong in that restaurant," said Officer Glenda Brooks of the Hollenbeck Police Activities League. Laurent quickly discovered food is a great equalizer. "I think food opened the heart and the mind," he said. The program is about much more than the cooking classes over the next nine months, the students will also take seminars in job readiness, life skills and leadership. Laurent says spending time with the students creates a sense of family, as does sitting down together and eating the meal they learned to prepare in class. "Not a lot of people have this opportunity, and him opening the doors to teenagers from our community is pretty amazing," said Angie Avila, a student. "For that, I'm thankful." Learn more about Farm & Kitchen Foundation here. The driver of a stolen car led police in a pursuit through the San Fernando Valley area Sunday before surrendering in front of a police station. The driver was later identified by the Los Angeles Police Department as Kenneth Martinez, 45, of Chatsworth. The stolen car chase began at 4:15 p.m. in Tarzana, the LAPD's West Valley Station said. Martinez, accused of being behind the wheel, was reported in the Northridge area going northbound at Roscoe Boulevard and Etiwanda Avenue by 5 p.m., blowing through stop signs and at times driving on the wrong side of the road. At one point, he was seen digging around near the car's floorboards and dropped something out of the car window. An officer rammed the car to get him to stop, but he continued on. He eventually gave up and pulled in front of LAPD's Devonshire police station. He was taken into custody. LAPD's West Valley Station later said that he was booked on suspicion of stealing the car. Police were requesting that felony evading be added as a charge. Martinez has prior arrests for the same crimes: stolen vehicle and felony evading, LAPD said. Martinez was to remain in jail until his next court hearing. Authorities say a St. Petersburg man has been jailed on charges that he killed a man in front of the victim's children outside a barber shop. The Tampa Bay Times reported Sunday that Hopeton Johnson was charged with murder in the death of Dontavion Lamar Fleming. Fleming was shot April 11 in front of the barber shop where he and his four sons had just gotten haircuts. The paper reported that Fleming's 11-year-old son heard his father tell someone in a car "don't shoot me in front of my kids,'' and then watched as he fell. St. Petersburg police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez says more arrests may follow in the case. Pinellas County jail records show Johnson was in jail. They did not indicate whether he had an attorney. A North Miami man grabbed his father's testicles and bit him during a fight at their home, police said. Thomas Ceroux, 29, was arrested Saturday on an aggravated battery charge, police said. He appeared in court Monday where he was ordered held on $12,500 bond. It's unknown if he's hired an attorney. According to an arrest report, Ceroux's father confronted him over loud noises coming from his room. Ceroux became irate and grabbed his dad by the testicles then bit him in his right thigh, causing a large break in the skin and bleeding, the report said. Ceroux was ordered to stay away from his father if he posts bond. A 4-year-old boy was killed Sunday when he was hit by a car on a residential street in New Jersey. The boy was playing outside with other family members at about 3:30 p.m. in front of their home on North 7th Street in Paterson, family said. The driver of the car that hit the boy, a 69-year-old woman, was returning home from church when the accident occurred, Paterson police said. She said she didn't see the boy, the family said. He was taken to Saint Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where he died, the family said. Additional information wasn't available. Nine ducklings following their mother on a walk fell down a New Jersey storm drain Monday morning and had to be rescued by police officers, authorities said. The family of ducks were crossing West Moore Street on Route 46 in Hackettstown at about 10:45 a.m. when nine of the ducklings tumbled down a storm drain in the street, police said. Hackettstown police responded to the scene and worked with the Department of Public Works to free the ducklings, police said. They were reunited with their mother, but soon after one of the ducklings fell into another storm drain and had to be rescued again. Hackettstown police said all of the ducks appeared unharmed after the multiple rescue operations. Fire destroyed three large houses in Brooklyn Sunday evening, leaving as many a nine families homeless, FDNY officials said. The fast-spreading fire burned parts of three other buildings in the cluster of structures on Arlington Avenue in the Cypress Hills neighborhood. Roughly 250 firefighters attacked the 5-alarm blaze, which began at about 6:20 p.m., possibly in a garage attached to one of the houses. The three destroyed houses are adjacent to the 1906 Presbyterian Church of the Crossroads, which also was damaged. Four firefighters sustained minor injuries. One other person was treated from minor smoke inhalation. The Red Cross was at the scene to help the displaced families. FDNY investigators were attempting to determine what ignited the fire. Police on Long Island are looking for a gunman who made his way inside an apartment and shot at a couple inside the bedroom. The couple survived the violent break-in, which happened just before 11 p.m. Saturday in an apartment complex in the hamlet of Bay Shore, said Suffolk County police. Detectives are searching for a suspect and a motive for the shooting. The victims, 28-year-old Jerome Ruddock and 20-year-old Mia Anderson, were treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, police said. A man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2013 death of a transgender woman will spend 12 years in prison. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. says James Dixon was sentenced Tuesday in the death of 21-year-old Islan Nettles. Prosecutors had recommended a 17-year sentence. The victim was one of three transgender women who encountered a group of about seven young men on a Harlem street on Aug. 17, 2013. Dixon flirted with Nettles before realizing she was transgender. Then he punched her in the face; she fell and her head hit the pavement. He hit her some more before running away. She died five days later A New Jersey man with a mental illness was arrested for allegedly assaulting a priest in a Newark church, police said. The 33-year-old suspect, of East Orange, allegedly entered St. Mary's Parish on Martin Luther King Boulevard Monday morning and slugged the Rev. Edwin Leahy in the face. Other priests and parishioners chased after the suspect as he ran off and spotted him approaching Broad and Market streets, the Newark Department of Public Safety said in a statement. The group flagged down two police officers, who arrested the suspect. Leahy said that he wasn't badly injured in the attack and said he was more worried about the attacker, who authorities said had failed to take medications. "They don't have anybody to make sure they've taken medication so you wind up with people off medication," he said. "All kinds of things happen." Another priest, the Rev. Philip Waters, said he saw the attack just inside the church's doorway. He said he could tell that the attacker wasn't mentally sound. "I could see he wasn't right," he said. "You don't even need a medical degree to see that." The attacker was charged with assault and held on an outstanding warrant without bail, police said. A man followed a woman into the elevator of her Lower East Side apartment building and tried to rape her inside, police said. The woman was followed into the elevator by the suspect in her building near Stanton Street and Pitt Street at about 3:20 p.m. Saturday, authorities said. When the elevator reached her floor, the suspect groped her and pushed her against the wall while fondling her, police said. He then followed her to her apartment, but ran away when a man answered the door. No arrest have been made, police said. Police ask anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) An understudy made his Metropolitan Opera debut over the weekend all while wearing jeans and sneakers. Tenor Francesco Anile surprised theatergoers at New York City's Lincoln Center during a staging of Othello after the performer in the title role was unable to continue singing in the final acts. The change was so sudden that Anile was unable to change clothes, taking the stage in garb more befitting a modern New Yorker than a 16th century Venetian general. "People were a bit surprised, but it was a big surprise for me," he said. Anile said he was texting with friends in the green room when Aleksanders Antonenkos voice went out during the fourth act just before the climactic finish of the Shakespearean adaptation. [NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More A stage director ran into the green room, gave Anile a black cape and told him, "Francesco, come. We need you to sing." Anile said he didn't have time to get into costume, so he went out onto the stage wearing his street clothes and cape. He belted out the final minutes on the side of the stage as Antonenko walked the part and lip-synched. The audience was so moved by Aniles odd debut that they gave him a standing ovation. "(It was) strange, but I am very happy," Anile said, noting that news of the debut made it back to his home town in Italy. Hibla Gerzmava, the Russian soprano playing Othellos wife Desdemona, said the sudden change took her for as much of a loop as it did Anile and the audience. But she applauded him for being able to step in. "For Francesco, I say Bravissimo because its difficult for him, she said. The first African American woman to serve as mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, died Sunday at the age of 44 after being hospitalized with "respiratory issues," according to the township. Mayor Lizette Parker died at Holy Name Medical Center, the township said. Her mother, Dolores Phillips, said Parker's death was sudden and unexpected. The illness prevented her attendance at township meetings in recent weeks. "The Teaneck Township Council, township manager, and employees would like to express their deepest and most sincere condolences to the Parker family," the township's website said. "Mayor Parker was a strong leader, public advocate, and a consummate professional, who was greatly respected by her colleagues and the community. Her love, presences and sincerity will be sorely missed in township government and in the community." Parker had served on the council since 2006. Her colleagues appointed her mayor in July 2014. Parker had been active in the Bergen County branch of the NAACP, Bergen County chapter of Mocha Moms, National Association of Negro Business and Professional Womens Club and the National Coalition of One Hundred Black Women Bergen/Passaic chapter. She is survived by her husband, Tony, a daughter and her mother. Deputy Mayor Elie Katz has been named Parker's replacement. An NYPD officer who was injured in a blaze sparked by a teen who set a mattress on fire in 2014 testified in the 16-year-old's murder trial Monday, describing her final moments with her partner who succumbed to smoke while trying to get people out of the burning building. Rosa Rodriguez testified in the murder trial for Marcell Dockery, who allegedly confessed to setting a mattress on fire at a Coney Island apartment building on April 6, 2014. A resulting blaze killed Rodriguez's partner, Dennis Guerra, and left her barely able to talk. During the trial Monday, she spoke in whispers as she described grabbing Guerra's shoulders as they looked for an exit. Rodriguez and Guerra were both overcome by the smoke after they took an elevator to the 13th floor of the building on Surf Avenue to help residents get out. "Can't breathe! Can't breathe!" Guerra's voice was heard in his call to dispatch. His family sobbed as they listened to the recordings during the trial. Guerra was pronounced dead shortly after the blaze; Rodriguez was in a coma for 44 days and had permanent voice and lung damage. Dockery allegedly admitted to police that he lit the mattress on fire because he was bored and was charged with murder. "He killed a heroic police officer, he disabled another heroic police officer," said PBA President Pat Lynch, who was at the trial. "And it broke the hearts of those family members and those police officers sitting in that courtroom." His attorney, Jesse Young, has said that Dockery was coerced into giving oral and written confessions. Young said it will be up to Dockery to decide if he wants to take the stand during the trial. Listen to the audio and video played in Dockery's trial above A neurology resident with Miami's Jackson Health System has been fired after a controversial video involving an Uber driver went viral in January. The hospital announced in a statement Friday it was "moving forward with the termination of Dr. Anjali Ramkissoon," and said she is entitled to an appeal process. Dr. Ramkissoon, who was a fourth-year resident, had initially been placed on leave and removed from all clinical duties while an internal investigation was launched. The incident started when Ramkissoon got into an Uber vehicle without a reservation and refused to get out. The driver, Igor Belic, said she wasn't his customer, but Ramkissoon demanded a ride. A video posted to YouTube shows the confrontation between Ramkissoon and Belic in Brickell. It shows Ramkissson trying to knee the driver as Belic asks witnesses to call 911 while holding her wrists to restrain her. **Warning: The video below contains graphic language and content** Ramkissoon is seen in the video hitting and kicking the driver, and throwing items, including a pair of scissors and a cellphone, out of his car. After several minutes, she eventually stops and walks away. Ultimately, Belic decided not to press charges. In an interview with "Good Morning America" after the incident, Ramkissoon called the incident the "biggest mistake of her life" and said there is "absolutely no excuse" for her actions. Ramkisson admitted to GMA that she had been drinking that evening and said she was having a bad day after her father was admitted to the hospital and then her boyfriend of two years broke up with her. "There is absolutely no excuse for my actions. I am ashamed. I am so sorry. I've hurt so many people with this," she told GMA. President Barack Obama on Monday announced the deployment to Syria of an additional 250 U.S. special operations forces to assist local troops who are trying to dislodge Islamic State extremists, significantly broadening the American presence in the war-torn country. The move will bring the number of personnel to roughly 300, up from about 50 special operations forces currently in Syria. Obama revealed his decision a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that more than 200 U.S. troops soon will be headed to Iraq, where local forces are also battling Islamic State militants who control areas of that country. He said the newest insertion of U.S. forces will not be in combat roles. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces," Obama said during a speech in Hannover, Germany, that capped a weeklong trip that also took him to Saudi Arabia and Great Britain. IS was a focus of his private talks with his counterparts in all three stops. Senior U.S. officials have been touting the success of the forces in Syria, including their ability to generate critical intelligence that gives the U.S.-led coalition against IS a better view of happenings on the ground, such as efforts to target insurgents. Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said the initial 50-person team in Syria has been effective at helping the local forces. "We want to accelerate that progress," through the commitment of additional forces, Rhodes said. Obama said that U.S.- European collaboration must extend to the threat posed by the Islamic State. And as he announced the U.S.'s deeper involvement, he urged this continent to step up, too. Obama said that in a meeting later with the leaders of Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy, he would ask those nations to step up their contribution to the air campaign and to the training of local forces. He said he would be seeking more economic aid to rebuild parts of Iraq the U.S.-led coalition has recaptured from IS. "Europe and NATO can still do more," he said. "We need to do everything in our power to stop them." Obama discussed his troop decision briefly during a broader speech on U.S.-European relations and the importance to the world of continued European unity. Obama urged Europe's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, which he said creates wedges among populations, and other issues including education for young people and equal pay for equal work for women. "If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way," Obama said, decrying an "us-versus-them" mentality that breeds animosity toward immigrants, Muslims and others. "This is a defining moment and what happens on this continent has consequences for people around the globe," Obama said. "If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that's been made over the last several decades, then we can't expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue." The president's appeal for Europe to stick together came days after he made a forceful argument while in London against Great Britain exiting the European Union, a 28-nation alliance. The possibility of Britain leaving the EU in a June referendum, along with the regional terrorist threat and tensions over the Syria refugee crisis, has raised questions about the strength of European unity. President Barack Obama has decided to send up to 250 military personnel to Syria to help local forces fighting the Islamic State group. That's the word from a senior administration official who says Obama would announce his decision during a speech Monday in Germany at the close of a weeklong foreign trip. Countering the Islamic State group was a focus of Obama's talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and Germany. The move would significantly increase the U.S. presence in a country beset by civil war. About 50 U.S. special operations forces are already operating in Syria. It was unknown how many of the 250 additional personnel will be special forces. The administration official was not authorized to publicly discuss Obama's decision before his announcement. Obama's decision was first reported Sunday by The Wall Street Journal. Classes at a Delaware high school resumed Monday after a 16-year-old student was killed in a fight at the school last week. Wilmington City Councilwoman Sherry Dorsey Walker told The News Journal that Monday marks the first day of regular classes at Howard High School of Technology since Thursday, when Amy Joyner-Francis died after a fight in one of the school's restrooms. She said grief counselors will be available for students. Students returned to school Friday for a shortened day for similar counseling. Wilmington police said the sophomore was involved in a fight with several female students. Police have not disclosed a possible motive and no charges have been filed in the case. A community town hall is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at Stubbs Elementary School, which is adjacent to the high school along 12th Street. A memorial will be held Sunday for a 16-year-old girl who died following a fight with other girls at a Wilmington, Delaware high school. Loved ones of Amy Joyner-Francis are invited to offer condolences to her family on Sunday, May 1 between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. at St. Paul UAME Church on 3114 N. Market Street in Wilmington. Family members say there will be no viewing during the event and all other services will be private. Howard High School of Technology, where Joyner-Francis attended, is also holding two meetings for parents in the wake of her death. Howard High School of Technology principal Stanley Spoor notified parents of the meetings in a recorded phone message Sunday. The school is breaking up the meetings by grade, with meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. They will be for parents only, Spoor said. The school has been inundated with calls from concerned parents after Joyner-Francis died following a fistfight in the girl's restroom Thursday morning. Police are investigating the fight and death and would not comment on Monday about whether they plan to file charges. NBC10/Family Photo Joyner-Francis complained of head and chest pain after the fight in the school's first-floor women's room. She lost consciousness, police said, before EMS arrived. A school resource officer performed CPR until medics got there. Joyner-Francis was flown to a nearby hospital where she died. Students held several vigils for their friend and classmate who they described as a peacemaker and caring person. A small memorial service was held outside school Monday morning by students as they arrived for class. School officials have yet to decide when they would hold a school-wide memorial service for Joyner-Francis, Spoor said. Those closest to 16-year-old Amy Joyner-Francis gathered at a growing memorial in her memory outside her Wilmington, Delaware high school Friday night to mourn her death. NBC10s Drew Smith was there. A 2-year-old girl died early Monday morning after she was found injured inside a Bucks County home. Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler told NBC10 Athena Wolfe suffered blunt force injuries at a home on the 1400 block of Sweetbriar Drive in Falls Township, Pennsylvania Sunday afternoon. Wolfe was taken to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia where she died from her injuries at 6:57 a.m. Monday. Investigators have not yet determined a cause of death though they say it was suspicious. Officials say Wolfes mother and her mothers boyfriend both live at the home where she was injured. An autopsy on the young girl is scheduled for Tuesday. Police continue to investigate. A Temple University student is set to walk in her graduation a year after she was critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. Rachel Halls mother posted on Facebook Sunday that she would meet her goal of walking in Temple Universitys graduation on May 5. Rachel has been working extremely hard in therapy and at home, and has been very determined to overcome her injuries, her mother wrote. I have seen strength and determination and a positive outlook in my daughter that I am very proud of. Rachel has made goals for herself throughout her recovery and has achieved them in a timely manner. Hall, a 23-year-old Temple lacrosse player, was riding her bicycle near Temples campus back on April 29, 2015 when she was struck by a 2012 Mitsubishi Gallant. The driver, later identified as 19-year-old Rashan Roberts, fled the scene. He was later arrested and sentenced to 11 to 23 months in prison after pleading guilty to the hit-and-run. Police say he only had his learners permit at the time of the crash. Hall was listed in critical condition following the accident. She has since made major progress in her recovery however. If you were to see Rachel in critical condition a year ago, you would never expect her to be in the condition she is now, she is truly a miracle, Halls mother wrote. Rachel still continues with therapy 5 days a week. Halls mother said her daughter isnt finished working towards achieving her goals. One of her future goals is to be accepted back into the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Academy, and a career in helping victims of human trafficking, her mother wrote. Since her injury, family and friends donated thousands of dollars towards Halls continued recovery and rehab. Halls mother thanked those who donated and supported her and her family as well as the doctors who have helped her daughter along the way. She also encouraged loved ones to congratulate her daughter on her tremendous accomplishment. A Florida man trying to reach Bermuda, Haiti, Cuba and Puerto Rico in a giant inflatable bubble was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard over the weekend. Coast Guard Petty Officer Mark Barney said long-distance runner Reza Baluchi was picked up Sunday off Florida and his "hydropod" was being towed to shore. Baluchi agreed to be voluntarily rescued. The Coast Guard tweeted Sunday that Baluchis voyage had ended after he violated a USCG order not to embark on his seagoing journey. The contraption, years in the making, includes 36 buoyancy balls on each side, a life jacket with a water filter, a GPS tracking device and even shark repellent. Baluchi set out from Pompano Beach on Saturday, despite receiving an April 15 letter from the Coast Guard warning him not to depart, according to Barney. The Coast Guard said it had reviewed Baluchi's plan and determined it to be unsafe. The first leg alone was about 1,033 miles. Baluchi, however, was undeterred. "Mind is power. It's 85 percent your mind. Anything you can do," he said before leaving Florida. He tried to make a similar journey in 2014 and had to be rescued about 70 nautical miles east of St. Augustine. Baluchi an endurance athlete who has biked through six continents and run the perimeter of the United States has said his eventual goal is to run through every country in the world and raise money for children in need. Family members held a food sale Monday to raise money for the funeral of an eight-year-old boy who drowned in a community pool over the weekend. The drowning happened during a party at a pool at the Del Rio Apartments on Fenton Parkway near Rio San Diego Drive in San Diego's Mission Valley neighborhood, San Diego Police (SDPD) confirmed to NBC 7 San Diego. The boy's cousin identified him as Brandon Reynoso. "All we know is that he was in the pool, and he never got out," said Kimberly Merin. She said the family held a food sale to raise money and has also set up a GoFundMe for additional costs. Reports indicate the 8-year-old was found face down in the pool around 8 p.m. The pool is three and a half feet deep. Several kids said they saw something at the bottom of the pool, but didn't realize it was a person. SDPD's Child Abuse Unit is investigating. After the boy was removed from the pool Saturday, emergency crews performed CPR on the child in an attempt to revive him. Leen Alghamadi witnessed the tragedy. "It made me feel very scared and like I should be more aware of people around me," she said. A sign on the pool's gate reads "Pool Closed. Sorry for the Inconvenience." Managers at the complex would not confirm if the sign was because of the drowning. "It's horrible," resident Kathy Cosenza said, thinking of her own grandchild. "That's why it's like 24/7, your eyes on the child...because something could happen like that." Irvine Company owns the property, but they told NBC 7 out of respect for the family, they're not talking about any future precautions or what exactly happened Saturday night. Award-winning BBQ is now available in Rancho Bernardo. Phils BBQ opened their newest location Monday at 17051 West Bernardo Drive, which is just off Interstate 15. While this is the fourth free-standing restaurant for the local chain, it is the first location developed with sustainability in mind. The most obvious example of sustainability at the new location is the large water tower, which is used for water reclamation. By storing and re-purposing the water, the restaurant can save gallons of water and reuse it to flush toilets and hydrate the drought resistant landscaping. The 7,720-square-foot site practices sustainability in other ways by using LED lighting, 100 percent energy star compliant appliances and dual glazed windows. Even with all of this change, Phils fanatics should not worry. The restaurant will still have features customers enjoy such as the BBQ focused menu, a full bar and giant televisions. Beyond this, the opening of the Rancho Bernardo location will bring 75 new jobs to the area and serve a population which did not previously have their own Phil's BBQ branch. For more information, click here. A grandmother said the justice system is failing her and her granddaughter after the two were struck while legally crossing the street in a crosswalk in Bowie, Maryland, in 2015. Dynesti Maraj, 2, was killed in the accident, and Lazina Alie, the grandmother, was injured when the two were struck while they were in the crosswalk at Maryland Route 197 and Old Chapel Road. The Prince Georges County States Attorneys office says the driver wasnt under the influence, wasnt texting, talking on his phone or speeding and stayed on the scene, which means they could only face misdemeanor charges. Alie and her family were expecting a criminal manslaughter charge for the driver, but John Erzen, a spokesperson for the Prince George's County State's Attorney's Office, said the law dictates what charges could be filed. There was nothing we could show that this was anything more than just a tragic accident by the driver of the vehicle, Erzen said. Those two lead charges, the failure to stop or yield, they do carry a max sentence of 60 days in jail and a $500 fine for each offense. Alie is unsatisfied with the outcome. I sustained multiple broken bones, contusions. Needless to say, the mental anguish we continue to undergo, she said. Strike someone, kill someone while on a pedestrian crosswalk, and you pay pennies. If you are not texting, if you are not speeding or if youve not consumed alcohol, its OK to kill someone in a crosswalk. Alie is working to get support for Dynestis Bill, a proposal shes crafted to change Marylands pedestrian laws. She wants the law to specify that cars coming from any direction must stop if someone is in the crosswalk. Once the cross light signed is pushed, all traffic, regardless of direction, come to a complete stop, Alie said. The states attorneys office may be interested in reviewing her idea. Certainly, if legislation is presented, well do what we do with a lot of that legislation, which is take a look at it and see if its something we can get behind, Erzen said. We should be aware. We should pay attention, Alie said. We cant simple say we didnt see them and its an accident. Accidents happen, but sometimes, we can stop things from happening. An online petition has been created to present to a legislative sponsor in hopes of getting a bill written and passed. Tuesday is primary election day in Maryland, and residents can cast their votes for president, U.S. Senate and several local races. Here's what you need to know before you head to the polls, plus a rundown of some top races, in case your mind still is not made up: When and Where to Vote The polls will be open until 8 p.m. Anyone in line by 8 p.m. will be able to vote, the State Board of Elections says on its website. To see where your polling site is located, check your voting districts and see a sample ballot, check the Board of Elections website. Some first-time voters will be asked to show identification before they can cast their ballots. A government-issued photo ID or a copy of a current bill with your name and address will be accepted, the election board's website says. Higher than usual turnout is expected. Races to Watch President: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each hold big leads against their party rivals in the race for the presidency in Maryland, poll results released earlier this month show. Clinton, the former secretary of state, holds a 22-point lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to the NBC4/Marist Maryland Poll conducted April 5-9. Among the Republican primary electorate polled, Trump holds a 12-point lead against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. U.S. Senate: Rep. Donna Edwards and Rep. Chris Van Hollen top the packed race to replace Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D), who is retiring after five terms. Edwards is giving up her 4th Congressional District seat, representing parts of Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties, to make the leap to the Senate. Van Hollen is giving up his 8th Congressional District seat, representing Carroll and Frederick counties, plus parts of Montgomery County. The candidates are similar in political outlook, News4's Tom Sherwood said in his Sherwood's Notebook column. Edwards has cast herself as an outsider who will contribute to the diversity of the Senate, and Van Hollen is viewed as the establishment candidate, Sherwood wrote. See the websites for Edwards and Van Hollen for more information on their campaigns. Van Hollen has a six-point edge over Edwards, results of the NBC4/Marist Maryland Poll conducted April 5-9 show. Van Hollen commanded 44 percent of likely Democratic primary voters reached in the poll. Edwards won 38 percent of likely voters. Eighteen percent of voters were undecided in the poll, for which data on likely Democratic primary voters had a 3.5 percentage point margin of error. Voters for Van Hollen skew white, male and older than 45, the polle results show. The majority of African-American likely Democratic primary voters polled said they would support Edwards. The front-runners also have to deal with Democratic challenges from more than a half-dozen other candidates: Freddie Donald Dickson Jr., Ralph Jaffe, Teresa C. Scaldaferri, Charles U. Smith, Violet Staley, Blaine Taylor, Ed Tinus and Lih Young. A long list of Republican candidates will also try to win the Senate seat: Chris Chaffee, Sean P. Connor, Richard J. Douglas, John R. Graziani, Greg Holmes, Joseph David Hooe, Chrys Kefalas, Mark McNicholas, Lynn Richardson, Anthony Seda, Richard Shawver, Kathy Szeliga, Dave Wallace and Garry Thomas Yarrington. 4th Congressional District: The race for Edwards' open seat to represent parts of Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties drew six candidates, including two Prince George's County Democrats with strong name recognition: former lieutenant governor Anthony G. Brown and former state's attorney Glenn Ivey. Brown, who was elected to lieutenant governor on a ticket with Martin O'Malley in 2006, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2014, suffering a defeat to now-Gov. Larry Hogan. He previously served two four-year terms in the House of Delegates and is currently a colonel in the Army Reserve, according to his campaign page. Ivey, who served as a state's attorney for Prince George's County from 2002 to 2010, ran for election to the District 4 House seat in 2012 but dropped out before the filing date due to insufficient funding. Ivey does not believe he will have trouble raising enough money for a competitive race this time around, The Washington Post reported. Warren Christopher, Matthew Fogg, Joseline Pena-Melnyk and Terence Strait also are vying for the seat in the heavily Democratic district. Christopher is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and former chief of staff at the Department of the Interior, according to his campaign page. Fogg was formerly with the U.S. Marshals Service, retiring as deputy marshal with a distinguished career, according to his campaign page. Pena-Melnyk is the current state delegate representing a district consisting of Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties. She won the endorsement of The Washington Post editorial board for her "energy, grit and determination." Pena-Melnyk worked as a lawyer representing abused and neglected children, according to her campaign page. Strait received a master's degree in psychology and served in the U.S. Army, according to his campaign site. Robert "Bro" Broadus, Rob Buck, George McDermott and David Therrien are running for the Republican nomination. 6th Congressional District: Eight Republican candidates, one Democratic candidate and one Green Party candidate are vying to challenge incumbent Democrat John Delaney for the District 6 seat. The 6th District, which spans from Potomac and Gaithersburg to Garrett County in western Maryland, was redrawn -- gerrymandered, according to critics -- in 2011 to boost chances of electing a Democrat. About half of the district's registered voters live in Montgomery County, Bethesda Magazine reported. Delaney was elected in 2012 and narrowly beat Republican Dan Bongino in his second run, according to Ballotpedia. Prior to serving in the House, Delaney was an entrepreneur, according to his campaign site. Puca was a candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2010. He was a business owner and CEO before he became a mortgage loan officer, according to his campaign site. Two Republican candidates are being called standouts because of their expensive campaigns. Amie Hoeber has indicated a willingness to pump substantial personal funds into the contest, increasing pressure on opponents to intensify their fundraising and spending. Her focus is on national security and environmental cleanup programs, according to her campaign page. Conservative State Del. David Vogt, a veteran Marine and the 2010 Marine of the Year, also is running for the seat. As delegate, Vogt has fought to cut taxes, balance the budget and uphold the Second Amendment. His campaign has been endorsed by more than 30 conservative leaders from Maryland, according to his campaign page. Terry Baker, Scott Cheng, Robin Ficker, Frank Howard, Christopher Mason and Harold Painter also are running for the Republican nomination for this House seat. Green Party candidate George Gluck is seeking the nomination as well. 8th Congressional District: District 8 is becoming one of the most expensive primary contests for a House seat in the nation. The 8th Congressional District is fairly Democratic, and although there is a wealth of candidates, it appears to be a three-way race. Kathleen Matthews worked as a reporter for WJLA before she became an executive for Marriott International. Some of Matthews' opponents have questioned campaign donations from guests of husband Chris Matthews' MSNBC talk show "Hardball," The Washington Post reported. The Maryland Senate's majority whip, Jamie Raskin, is a constitutional law professor at American University and has played key roles in legalizing same-sex marriage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to his campaign page. David Trone is the founder of Total Wine & More with a story of success after he worked on his father's farm. The Montgomery County businessman personally put more than $12 million into the contest. That's the most anyone has ever self-funded a House campaign. His knowledge in politics from his business makes him an able candidate, according to his campaign page. David M. Anderson, Kumar P. Barve, Dan Bolling, Ana Sol Gutierrez, William Jawando and Joel Rubin also are on the ballot on the Democratic side. On the Republican side, Dan Cox, Jeffrey W. Jones, Liz Matory, Aryeh Shudofsky and Shelly Skolnick are running. Police have identified the 21-year-old man found dead in Centreville, Virginia, Sunday night. Fairfax County police said a family member found Hosung Lee unconscious at a home in the 5600 block of Gresham Lane. Police said Lee had trauma to his upper body and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are investigating the case as a "suspicious death." Homicide detectives collected evidence inside and around the townhome and a car was towed from the scene. There is no threat to the public, police said. A neighbor said Lee was a student at George Mason University and lived with his sister and parents. What to Know Lizeth Yadira Lopez of Alexandria was reported missing to Alexandria police April 19. Her car was found the next day at her job on Pond Run Drive in Woodbridge, Virginia. Lopez is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 118 pounds. Police say she has black hair, brown eyes and a tattoo on her left shoulder. Prince William County Police are searching for a 36-year-old woman who has been missing for more than a week. Lizeth Yadira Lopez of Alexandria was reported missing to Alexandria police April 19. Her car was found the next day at her job on Pond Run Drive in Woodbridge, Virginia. Prince William County police say she was in the area of Pond Run Drive until about 10 p.m. April 17. Lopez is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 118 pounds. Police say she has black hair, brown eyes and a tattoo on her left shoulder. No clothing description was provided. Anyone with information about Lopez's whereabouts is asked to call police at 703-792-6500. The Shaw neighborhood's oldest barber shop has a brand new look. Gregg's Barber Shop has been at 1909 7th Street NW since 1913. Volunteers spruced up the place with a new paint job and a new floor covering over the weekend. The project was for Keep Shaw Beautiful Day, which is held every year on the Saturday closest to Earth Day. Gregg's Barber Shop Manager Frank Love, 81, has been cutting hair at the shop since 1961 and says it has a lot of history. "We had James Brown's band and band members come in and get their hair cut when they come into town and we had quite a few celebrities come around. So, it's been a nice run for me," Love said. Shaw-based construction contracting company, CMT Design Build, donated the labor for the new floor covering, while volunteers from Howard University and the neighborhood painted the interior of the shop. The paint and floor covering was funded by the Department of Small and Local Business Developments DC Main Streets program. The five chair shop still charges old school prices, with haircuts for just $14. Greegg's Barber Shop will reopen on Tuesday morning. Leaders of a successful initiative to legalize marijuana in the District of Columbia will be meeting with White House officials to argue that marijuana shouldn't be classified as a dangerous drug. Adam Eidinger and Nikolas Schiller will argue during the meeting on Monday that the Obama administration should remove pot from a list of dangerous substances that includes heroin and cocaine. The designation prevents any federal spending on the use of pot for medicinal purposes. Eidinger and other activists recently participated in a protest in which they smoked joints in front of the White House. Possession of up to 2 ounces of marijuana for personal use is legal in the District of Columbia thanks to a ballot initiative pushed by Eidinger and Schiller. It was approved by two-thirds of city voters. The majority of Ted Cruzs delegates in Maine were picked for the Republican National convention over the weekend, NBC News reported. That means at least 19 of the 23 delegates Maine will send to the convention in July will be Cruz supporters, benefiting the Texas senator if the selection process goes to multiple ballots. Cruz grabbed 12 pledged delegates in March, winning Maines caucus. Donald Trump secured nine, while John Kasich won two. Trump and his supporters have called the delegate process rigged, because it doesnt reflect the will of voters. They argue the nine delegates hes won should remain loyal to him on every round of voting. The Republican National Committee says the presidential nominee is chosen by the delegates not the voters. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas hasnt said a lot about public schools on the GOP presidential campaign trail, but Cruzs handful of K-12 policy positions are pretty clear. And one of them is a revival of a promise made by one of his political role models, President Ronald Reagan, over 35 years ago. During his campaign for the presidency in 1980, Reagan vowed to end the U.S. Department of Education. However, his own appointee to the position, Terrel Bell, went from supporting a downgrade for the Education Department to being one of its more ardent defenders . And the departments 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, a report claiming there was a rising tide of mediocrity in Americas schools, helped raise the departments profile at one of its more endangered moments. Reagan reiterated in 1984 that he was targeting the department for elimination, but was ultimately unsuccessful. That hasnt stopped Cruz from pledging that he would abolish the department, but not before saying he would order it to abolish the Common Core State Standards. Joy Pullmann, an education research fellow at the Heartland Institute, acknowledged thats not something the president, nor the Education Department, can do. (She supports Cruz personally, although the Heartland Institute is not endorsing any candidate.) And she told me getting rid of the department is a long shotafter all, its a very complicated political proposition . But she told me that its still worth trying, and Cruz would be the most likely candidate to try to get it done. I found them the most trustworthy folks on education issues, Pullmann said about working with Cruzs education staffers in Congress. But Sandy Kress, a former assistant to President George W. Bush who helped create the No Child Left Behind Act, is much less impressed with what Cruz has put out there so far on K-12. Hes disdainful of the idea Cruz has supported in the Senate to let states shrug off federal accountability, saying that amounts to Uncle Sam just dumping money onto states with no oversight. Its pretty sad to see where Republican thinking on this has devolved, particularly at the national level, Kress said, who also said the K-12 rhetoric from all the candidates has been pathetic. Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . A 30-year-old Boston man is facing 12 charges after leading police on a lengthy motor vehicle chase on Sunday night. Antonio Pina Rodrigues is charged with two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, two counts of unlawful possession of ammunition, two counts of unlawful possession of a large capacity feeding device, improper storage of a large capacity firearm, carrying a loaded firearm, possession of a stolen firearm, refusal to stop for a police officer, operating to endanger and assault by means of a dangerous weapon (car). He was also cited for multiple traffic violations. The chase began when Boston Police attempted to make a motor vehicle stop in the area of Bowdoin and Quincy streets in the city's Dorchester neighborhood around 8:30 p.m. Sunday. Officers were aware of a shooting incident that had occurred two days earlier in the same area and were on the lookout for a black Nissan Quest with a particular license plate that was observed fleeing the scene. An officer saw a vehicle with that license plate and attemtped to stop it. The vehicle sped up and led officers on a lengthy pursuit in which the suspect nearly struck several police cruisers, cars and nearby pedestrians. The vehicle was ultimately blocked by another stopped car, and the two occupants of the vehicle got out and fled on foot. Officers were able to pursue and apprehend the operator - later identified as Rodrigues - after a violent struggle. The passenger got away. Police recovered two guns that were discarded in the flight path of the vehicle - a 9mm Glock 17 and a 9mm Walther P99AS - both loaded with high capacity magazines. The Walther firearm had been reported stolen, police said. A New Hampshire firefighter accused of setting a massive brush fire faced a judge Monday afternoon. Bail for David Plante, 31, of Stoddard was set at $100,000 and a not guilty plea was entered for a felony charge of arson in Keene. Additional charges are expected in the ongoing investigation. He was arrested on Friday. Plante, who was a member of the Stoddard Fire Department, is accused of setting a brush fire last Thursday that burned nearly 200 acres and prompted the evacuation of 17 homes. Despite flames reaching nearly 12 feet in height, no one was injured. It's unclear if Plante has an attorney. Authorities responded overnight to a two-alarm fire in a trash compactor in a Boston apartment building. Residents of the 27-story building at 770 Boylston St. were evacuated based on smoke conditions. Once the meters indicated air quality within normal limits, residents were able to return to their units. No one suffered any injuries. Firefighters say there was several feet of trash built up in a garage trash chute that ignited. The building contains 243 apartments. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump expressed his support for New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, whose four-game "Deflategate" suspension was reinstated by a federal appeals court on Monday. "Leave Tom Brady alone! Hes a great guy. Leave Tom Brady alone," Trump shouted at a campaing event at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Warwick, Rhode Island. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Brady for his connection to deflated footballs used in the AFC Championship Game in January 2015. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman nullified Brady's suspension in September, a week before the season begun. The NFL then appealed the decision. Trump has praised Brady, whom he considers a close friend, numerous times while on the campaign trail. Brady told The Associated Press in October that Trump has "been a long-time friend of mine, so we played a lot of golf over the years. He's invited me many times to some of his great golf resorts. We've had a lot of fun together. We'll see what turns out with him as a politician, but he's certainly a great friend. Nobody supports their friends like Tom Brady or Donald Trump." Brady also told a Boston radio show in December he supports Trump but did not endorse him for president. "He's a good friend of mine... I support all my friends," Brady said, adding that he kept the "Make America Great Again" hat Trump gave him in his locker. Trump on Monday also rallied against a deal reached by rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich to divvy up a series of upcoming contests to maximize their chances of halting Trump's march to the GOP nomination. "It's collusion," Trump said of the deal, speaking at the Rhode Island rally, ahead of the state's primary on Tuesday. "If you collude in business or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude," he added. But Trump said he's actually OK with the decision because it demonstrates his rivals' weakness. "It shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are," he said. Kasich held a town hall event Saturday at Bryant University in Smithfield. Campaign managers for Cruz have said he isn't expected to hold any events in Rhode Island. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton campaigned Saturday at Central Falls High School, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders held an outdoor rally at Roger Williams Park in Providence on Sunday. Three firefighters were injured in an early morning blaze on 35 Scenic Dr., according to the Derry, New Hampshire, Fire Department. The duplex became engufled in flames around 1:50 a.m. Fortunately, the firefighters' injuries aren't serious and everyone made it out of the building safely. The building was completely destroyed. No word yet as to what caused the fire. Authorities in New Hampshire have named a suspect they're looking for in connection with an home break-in last week. Derry police say they're looking for 29-year-old John Gebo, who is believed to be homeless but staying in the Greater Manchester area. Gebo was identified as the the man caught in surveillance images from inside a burglarized Mitchell Avenue home based on tips, police say. One of the house's residents came home with her small children to discover a man inside of her house. She immediately fled the residence with her children and called police, and the suspect ran in the opposite direction. Gebo is described as about 5-foot 8-inches, about 260 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes. He may also have facial hair. Anyone with information on Gebo's whereabouts is asked to contact Derry police at 603-432-6111. Police are investigating after a bicyclist was injured in a collision with a motor vehicle in Burlington, Vermont, over the weekend. Authorities responded to Shelburne Ave. on Sunday, where they found 58-year-old Sam Norris of Burlington lying unresponsive on the green belt near the southbound lanes. A physician with the UVM Medical Center who did not witness the accident but was nearby when the crash occurred was assisting Norris at the time. The operator of the vehicle involved, Jacob Barewicz of Burlington, was also at the scene. Norris suffered injuries to his head, neck and body. He is expected to recover. A preliminary investigation has shown that Norris was riding in the road legally. Police officials do not believe speed, drugs or alcohol were factors in the crash. Police are asking for the public's help with finding a Massachusetts teen. Truro police say 17-year-old Bryson Alexander was last seen April 3 at a Shaw's Supermarket in Orleans. He was possibly wearing a green wool military style jacked, cargo pants, work boots and a Russian-style fur hat. The teen might also be carrying an accordion in a brown case. He's described as 6 foot tall, weighing about 176 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information is asked to contact Truro police at 508-487-8730. A woman in Nashua, New Hampshire, was assaulted by another woman in a car with an infant inside. According to the police department, officers responded to a local hospital Friday afternoon for reports of an assault. An adult female told officers she was inside a vehicle when Deave Nichols, age 19, of 2 Fieldstone Driver, Derry, New Hampshire, began punching her in the head repeatedly. The victim and Nichols were involved in a domestic relationship. At one point during the assault, Nichols armed herself with a knife, threatened the victim, and caused a minor injury to her leg, all while an infant was inside the vehicle. The infant was not injured and the victim's injuries were non-life threatening. Police charged Nichols with Second Degree Assault-Domestic Violence, a Class B Felony; Second Degree Assault, a Class B Felony; Criminal Threatening-Domestic Violence, a Class B Felony; Criminal Threatening, a Class B Felony; six counts of Domestic Violence, a Class A Misdemeanor, six counts of Simple Assault, a Class A Misdemeanor, and Endangering Welfare of Child or Incompetent, a Class A Misdemeanor. Nichols is being held at the Hillsborough County Department of Corrections on $15,000 cash or surety bail, pending her arraignment on April 25. Voters in five states will weigh in on the presidential race this week: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island all hold primaries Tuesday. Four of the five remaining candidates have been criss-crossing those states rallying supporters. The final New England stop this weekend was made by Bernie Sanders in New Haven, Connecticut. The Democratic candidate stood before roughly 10,000 supporters on the New Haven Green just after 7 p.m. The Vermont senator touched upon several issues including making higher education more affordable and mental health treatment. A new national poll shows a disconnect between how well parents think their children are performing academically in school and how students score on tests nationally. Learning Heroes, an organization that helps parents navigate the school system, released Thursday a poll, called Parents 2016: Hearts and Minds of Public School Parents in an Uncertain World, to determine parents concerns about their childrens education. More than 1,300 parents of children in kindergarten through 8th grade participated in the survey in January. About 90 percent of parents reported that they think their children are performing at or above grade level in reading and math. But results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, were far lower. For example, about 36 percent of 4th graders scored at or proficient in reading and 40 percent scored at or above proficient in math in 2015. (Find out what NAEP is all about in this Education Week primer .) We felt like that disparity was pretty shocking, said Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes. Parents really dont have the true picture of where their child is. Other key findings include: About three-fourths of parents believe it is important that their children get a college education. That includes 90 percent of Hispanic parents and 83 percent of African-American parents. About 38 percent of all participating parents worry that their children wont be prepared for college. Paying for education was ranked as a top concern of parents overall. More than half53 percentof parents are concerned about their ability to afford college. About 63 percent of parents say they communicate with their childrens teacher at least once or twice a month. Along with the poll, Learning Heroes put together a Readiness Roadmap to help parents find answers and solutions to their concerns. The poll was produced in conjunction with Learning Heroes partners, including Common Sense Media, GreatSchools, National Counci of La Raza, National Parent Teacher Association, National Urban League, and Univision. The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation gave financial support for the poll. (Education Weeks coverage of trends in K-12 innovation and efforts to put these new ideas and approaches into practice in schools, districts, and classrooms is supported in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York at www.carnegie.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.) See what parents reported in another poll: Black, Latino Parents Say Expectations for Poor Children Too Low in Public Schools Contact Sarah Tully at stully@epe.org . Follow @ParentAndPublic for the latest news on schools and parental involvement. Dont miss another K-12 Parents and the Public post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox. Thank you Noah for sharing your story. As a nation, we need to better support students with incarcerated parents. pic.twitter.com/d3PH0578ym -- John King (@JohnKingatED) April 25, 2016 Washington Schools need better resources and guidance to help youth with incarcerated parents feel supported and to help them navigate changing family dynamics when their parents are released, a roundtable of students, parents, and re-entry professionals told U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. on Monday. And youth who are themselves incarcerated need help to readjust to the real world and catch up academically after they finish their sentences, the panel said. The discussion was held as the U.S. Department of Education announced $5.7 million in new grants targeted at assistance for students who have been involved in the criminal justice system and a new toolkit with resources for guidance educators to help support formerly incarcerated youth and adults and their families. Recent bipartisan discussions about criminal justice reform have largely focused on issues like reducing mandatory minimum sentences for certain offenses, but the challenge of addressing the impacts of incarceration is much broader than that, King told participants in the discussion, which was held at Benjamin Banneker High School in the District of Columbia. Where we are as a country isnt a truthful reflection of who we are ... We are better than folks struggling through the family separation, reunification, re-entry process without support, King said. Yes, we need sentencing reform, but sentencing reform is only a slice of the challenges we face. The re-entry grants announced Monday will build on existing youth re-entry efforts, supporting programs that focus on on career and technical education and collaborative approaches to improving education, employment, and other outcomes. The toolkit addresses five critical components of an effective re-entry system: program infrastructure, strategic partnerships, education services, transition processes, and sustainability, the education department said. Children of incarcerated parents are at greater risk of health and behavior issues in school, among other challenges, the agency said in a news release. Research shows that more than 5 million children have had at least one parent in prison at one point in their lives. The prevalence of incarceration, particularly in low-income communities of color, has negative consequences for both those incarcerated and their families. In addition, children of incarcerated parents face more economic and residential instability than their counterparts. The resources are one of several steps the Obama administration has taken to address the intersection of education and incarceration. In 2014, the Education and Justice departments released civil rights guidance on incarcerated youth . The administration also created a second chance Pell pilot program to fund the education of prisoners, and it has released several previous rounds of grants to fund re-entry efforts. Among the biggest challenges identified by the discussions participants: shifting familiy dynamics when a parent goes to or returns from prison, a lack of employment options, and an inability for incarcerated parents to take an active role in their childrens upbringing and education. Banneker High School Principal Anita Berger recalled a conversation she had with an incarcerated mother. She said it was so disheartening when she heard parents trying to discipline their children from a bank of phones, she said. Parents try to parent their children from a phone call, but they cant. Schools can help address those challenges by providing students access to tools like videoconferencing to improve communication with parents and by taking steps to ensure that incarcerated parents with internet access have can tap into resources like online gradebooks, Berger said. Lashonia Thompson-El, who participated in the discussion, went to prison when she was 19, leaving two young children behind. When she was released, her children were 21 and 23. For my daughter, the most difficult and most traumatic impact of my absence was the stigma she had to face in her school and even in her family, Thompson-El said. Students on the panel agreed that schools can take a more active role in helping students by addressing that stigma head-on and by creating welcoming spaces where students who are struggling feel comfortable sharing and discussing their experiences. Not only is the adult incarcerated, but the child is also mentally incarcerated, said Derrell Frazier, whose father was incarcerated from the time Frazier was 2 to the time he was 15. Diane Wallace Booker, the executive director of the U.S. Dream Academy, which serves children of incarcerated parents, said the new resources are a good first step, adding that teachers and educators need help identifying and address the multi-pronged effects of incarceration. Sometimes I think we assume that teachers should just figure this out, and it really requires some really knowledgable and sensitive training and support, she said. Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox. Brocade announced today the availability of its virtual network function (VNF) Manager. The product is a commercial version of OpenStack Tacker, an OpenStack lead project designed to make it easier to deploy and operate virtual network services. The initiative is compatible with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Framework. For those not familiar with NFV, the technology allows organizations to run network services as virtual functions instead of requiring a single appliance per function. NFV has many cost benefits, as it reduces the overall hardware that needs to be purchased and managed. More important, it gives network services the same level of agility as virtual servers and storage. Infrastructure agility is a core requirement of becoming a digital company, and NFV enables that at the network level. ZK Research, 2015 Brocades announcement of VNF Manager may not seem like an overly sexy announcement, but it is an important one for both service providers and enterprises. Historically, the topic of NFV has been primarily linked to network operators for use cases such as service chaining and on-demand service creation, but NFV is now something enterprises are looking at. In 2015, ZK Research conducted a survey asking businesses where they are in terms of enterprise NFV. Sixty-one percent were somewhere between the researching phase and deployment. The other 39 percent said they had no plans. But the industry is early in the technology cycle, so I certainly expect to see more organizations embrace NFV as it matures. ZK Research, 2015 As NFV plans move from the testing phase into large-scale deployment, a product like Brocades VNF Manager becomes extremely important for the long-term manageability of the network services. To understand the potential problem, think back to the early days of server virtualization. Initially, the technology was used to consolidate severs. Instead of having 10 workloads on 10 servers, each using 5 percent of the overall capacity, run them all on one server and push the utilization of the single server to 50 percent. However, over time, server virtualization became increasingly popular for use cases other than consolidation. Application developers, Q/A departments and other groups started using virtualization as a faster way to deploy a server instead of having to physically procure hardware. For the infrastructure team, the self-service model seemed ideal because the groups that needed servers could just provision their own without having to order, deploy and connect a physical box. Over time, though, the expansion of virtual servers caused an unforeseen problem. So many virtual machines were being created that no one really knew how many virtual servers had been deployed, who owned them or even if they were still being used. I recall a conversation with a CTO from a mid-size bank who told me he had twice as many virtual servers in his company than he had physical servers prior to the deployment of VMware. The explosion of virtual servers was known as virtual machine sprawl and was a significant problem for years until VMware developed the tools necessary to manage large-scale virtual server environments. Avoiding NFV sprawl Without a tool such as Brocades VNF Manager, network operations teams risk running into NFV sprawl as virtual network services proliferate across the company. The server industry had to go through significant pain before the management tools were developed, so its good to see Brocade being proactive about NFV management to prevent its customers from going through similar pain. Also, VNF Manager is bringing NFV together with software-defined networking (SDN). Customers can use VFN Manager to instantiate the virtual network functions and load them with an initial configuration. The VNFs can then be mounted and managed using Brocades SDN controller through its southbound interfaces. This enables the lifecycle of VFNs to be orchestrated and be aligned with SDN initiatives. VNF Manager is offered as a free download from the Brocade website. The download is a full-featured version that comes with a 60-day license, as well as 60 days of free technical assistance center (TAC) support to help customers get the product up and running. After the 60 days, customers will need to purchase either a one- or three-year license. Brocade offers different bundles for operation teams versus developers, as well as professional services and in-person training sessions to help ensure its customers are successful with the product. If youre one of the 61 percent of organizations considering NFV, my recommendation is to be aggressive with the technology, as there are tremendous cost and operational benefits. Just make sure you have the proper management tools in place before deploying it. Peter Waterhouse, Senior Strategist, CA Technologies Although vendor-written, this contributed piece does not promote a product or service and has been edited and approved by Network World editors. How many times have you witnessed a sub-optimal IT practice that everyone else thinks is ok, then over time accepted the behavior as being just fine and dandy? Regardless of whether you lead a startup or work in an established business, we all have a tendency to accept dodgy behaviors. Even if outsiders see them as wrong, our IT teams are so accustomed to using them (without any adverse consequences) that theyre quickly established as normal and accepted. Studies into whats commonly referred to as the normalization of deviance have been conducted in areas such healthcare to aerospace, with evidence showing that many serious errors and disasters occur because established standards have been bypassed and bad practices normalized. While examining this phenomena is critical in the context of safety, its equally applicable in how we develop, secure and operate software applications. With the boundaries blurred between the digital and physical world, any adverse behavior leading to security and reliability issues could have dire consequences for customers. And when software becomes infused into long lasting products (from light bulbs to limousines) its not so easy to exit markets. As businesses look to software innovation for growth, time-to-market and quality become essential differentiators. Unfortunately both can be compromised if pre-existing change aversion or newer speed at all cost mandates lead to a normalization of deviance. More critically, if a head-in-the-sand IT culture persists, systemic business failures may eventuate think massive security breaches or major application outages. The DevOps movement, with its focus on collaboration across development and other IT functions, is now regarded as the best way of establishing the culture and environment needed to support fast and reliable software deliver. So maybe the secret to helping IT identify and eliminate poor practices is to take the benefits of DevOps and then guidance from other fields that are fighting normalization of deviance. In healthcare, for example, studies illustrate seven factors that lead to a normalization of deviance, all of which are IT relevant: The rules are stupid and inefficient in healthcare, accidents occur when practitioners disable equipment warning systems because alarms are seen as distracting. This happens in IT all the time, like in operations where staff will filter out noise and alerts they regard as irrelevant. It also surfaces when testing is skipped because of manual processing and set-up delays. Knowledge is imperfect and uneven employees might not know a rule exists, or they might be taught a practice not realizing that its sub-optimal. In IT this persists because many new employees feel uncomfortable asking for help, or when the application of new technologies distort logical thinking. The work itself, along with new technology, can disrupt work behaviors to support goals of more continuous software delivery, organizations areintroducing many new technologies and methods - like Microservices and containers. New work practices and learning demands may lead staff to poorly implement technology or use it to perform functions it was never designed for. Were breaking rules for the good of the business staff may bypass rules and good practice when theyre incentivized on faster delivery times or delivering new functional software enhancements. For example, repeatedly procuring additional (but unnecessary) hardware to rush through an update, rather than addressing the root-cause of performance problems. The rules dont apply to ustrust us autonomous agile teams are beneficial, but empowering them to select their own one-off tools or to bypass compliance policies can compromise program objectives or lead to security breaches. Unfortunately in todays fast-paced digital business, talented professionals often feel completely justified in playing the trust card. Employees are afraid to speak up violations become normal when employees stay silent. How many times has poor software code, costly projects (and bad managers) been tolerated because people are afraid to speak up? Even in IT organizations that have a strong blameless culture, people will stay quiet for fear of appearing mean. Leaders withhold or dilute findings on application problems whether you work in healthcare or IT, no-one wants to look bad to managers. Rather than present ugly news, many will distort the truth; presenting diluted or misleading information up the command chain. In IT this behavior is easily normalized, especially if teams get away with reporting technical vanity metrics over business outcomes. No sudden cultural reawakening in IT or liberal sprinkling of collaboration fairy - dust will eliminate ingrained bad practices, but DevOps and Lean thinking can help identify warning signals. This starts with leaders visualizing the flow of value delivered by software applications, pinpointing all the bottlenecks and constraints impeding delivery. Analogous to pathway stepping stones, these are all the value interrupts which, when lifted, reveal all the process and technology issues causing good people to do the wrong things. Immediate candidates are software release and testing processes, but dont restrict analysis to the development side of the software factory. Every stone, be that enterprise architecture, stakeholder engagement, vendor management, operations or customer support can hide ugly behaviors that over time can become normalized. Of course, identification is just the start. Next comes the hard part, with leaders using evidence to impress how behaviors impact current performance and business outcomes. This might involve using new tools, but this again courts disaster when advanced technologies becomes a vehicle to automate bad processes. As with anything involving people, the organizational and psychological barriers encouraging staff to break rules or for their colleagues to remain silent is where most attention should be focused. Hackers behind the Bangladesh bank heist created malware to compromise the SWIFT financial system. Security researchers said the malware allowed attackers to modify a database logging the banks activity over the SWIFT network, to delete records of outgoing transfer orders and to intercept incoming transfer confirmation messages, and to manipulate both account balance logs and a printer used to make hard copies of the transfer orders. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions. SWIFT software is supposed to securely send and receive information about financial transactions; the messaging platform is reportedly used by 11,000 banks worldwide. SWIFT admitted to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software Alliance Access, which is not used by all 11,000 banks. The malware that manipulated the SWIFTs Alliance Access was discovered by researchers from BAE Systems. BAEs head of threat intelligence, Adrian Nish, told Reuters it was the most elaborate scheme from criminal hackers that he has ever seen. I can't think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in. I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile, he said. The potential payoff was supposed to be around $1 billion ($951 million), but the hackers were discovered after stealing $81 million routed to accounts in the Philippines. They might have pulled off the entire cyber heist, except Deutsche Bank got suspicious after noticing a typo in an order to transfer cash from Bangladeshs account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to other banks; the hackers misspelled foundation as fandation. The massive cyber heist from February was originally blamed on the fact that Bangladesh Bank had no firewall and used second-hand $10 switches. The SWIFT system was connected to bank workstations, so the attackers only needed to infect a PC with malware for it to spread to the SWIFT system. A software update will be released today to thwart the malware, according to SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha Deteran, but the malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services. The software update will assist customers in enhancing their security and help spot inconsistencies in their local database records. BAE released an advisory with technical indicators, including the IP address of the server in Egypt used by the attackers to monitor Bangladeshs SWIFT system, as well as details about the evtdiag.exe malware that helped the hackers hide their tracks by altering information in the SWIFT database. BAE told Reuters the malware was customized specifically to attack the Bangladesh Bank, but the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again. According to the BAE Threat Research blog, the malware contains sophisticated functionality and is part of a wider attack toolkit; the tools are highly configurable and given the correct access could feasibly be used for similar attacks in the future. By changing only two bytes of data, the attackers gained control over the banks SWIFT system and database. The researchers identified evtdiag.exe on an online malware repository, but they have not analyzed the infected servers. The malware registers itself as a service and operates within an environment running SWIFTs Alliance software suite, powered by an Oracle Database, they wrote. The tool was custom made for this job and shows a significant level of knowledge of SWIFT Alliance Access software, as well as good malware coding skills. The researchers go into detail about how the malware monitors SWIFT Financial Application (FIN) messages, monitors logins and manipulates balances as well as the printer. This attacker put significant effort into deleting evidence of their activities, subverting normal business processes to remain undetected and hampering the response from the victim, they said. Although many pieces of the puzzle are still missing, such as how the attackers sent the fraudulent transfers, how the malware was implanted and who was behind this, BAE warned, all financial institutions who run SWIFT Alliance Access and similar systems should be seriously reviewing their security now to make sure they too are not exposed. Can I Get Arrested at Home? You may feel safe at home, but it's not actually an arrest-free zone. The basis for an arrest is probable cause, and police can have probable cause to arrest a person pretty much anywhere, depending on the activities observed or whether they have a warrant, and other factors. The question then is not the location of an arrest but the basis for it. Let's examine probable cause and consider how you could get busted at home. Probable Cause The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution governs probable cause. It provides as follows: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." This paragraph protects people from overzealous authorities but it doesn't require that every arrest be supported by a warrant. An officer may have probable cause for an arrest based on observed suspicious behaviors, witness and informant information, or even circumstantial evidence that a crime has occurred. The probable cause determination can be challenged in court by the defense later, after the defendant is charged, and a judge may find that there was insufficient cause for an arrest. Evidence acquired without probable cause is inadmissible. Police make decisions based on what is happening in the streets, but a judge may see things differently from the distance of a courtroom and in the context of the law. Not all arrests are legal but if you're arrested illegally, your defense attorney will have to raise, argue, and prove this point. Arrest at Home An officer can arrest you at home with a warrant. Even this can be challenged in court and you may later file a motion suppressing it and any evidence arising from your illegal arrest if you show there was not probable cause for the warrant's issuance. But you can also be arrested at home if you are causing a disturbance and not responsive to requests to quiet down and seem to be involved in criminal behavior. If the sounds emitting from your house indicate a crime might be taking place, you are not really more safe from arrest at home than elsewhere. The beauty of your home is that it shields you from observation, and you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as you don't bother anybody. But if your activities arouse suspicions in others and reasonably so, and this is conveyed to the police, who agree, you can certainly get busted at home. Accused? If you have been arrested and charged with a crime, in your home or anywhere else, talk to a lawyer today. Don't delay. Many criminal defense attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to assess your case. Related Resources: Magistrates express disgust A MAN spat full in the face of a former friend following a disagreement over a mobile phone. Newbury magistrates expressed shock and disgust at the behaviour of 43-year-old Peter Alan Mobey. Helen Waite, prosecuting on Thursday last week, said his victim, Martin Doyle, had bought a mobile telephone from Mr Mobeys wife. She said: It was supposed to be a Christmas present for his wife, who is Thai. However, there was a fault with the phone and Mr Doyle tried to return it and get his money back. It was eventually sorted out but left some ill-feeling between the parties. One day the aggrieved was playing pool with friends when the defendant came in to the Red House pub, went straight up to Mr Doyle and spat in his face. Mr Mobey, of Gaywood Drive, Newbury, admitted assaulting Mr Doyle in the Red House pub in Hampton Road, Newbury, on February 7. His has previous convictions from many years ago and a more recent caution for common assault in 2014, magistrates were told. Phil Kouvaritakis, defending, said his clients wife works for a phone company and had sold the mobile to Mr Doyle as a favour. When Mr Doyle discovered it had no Thai language facility he began making calls to Mr Mobey and his wife that were so persistent, they verged on harassment, said Mr Kouvaritakis. He added: Mr Doyle wanted his money and he wanted it right away. Mrs Mobey gave him a refund but they felt threatened by Mr Doyle. Clearly he should have known better but he did spit on Mr Doyle. Presiding magistrate Elizabeth Harrison expressed the benchs disgust at the actions of Mr Mobey, an electrician. He was fined 170 and ordered to pay 85 costs plus a 20 victim surcharge. In addition Mr Mobey was ordered to pay Mr Doyle 75 compensation for the spitting assault. Virginia Governor Orders Felon Voting Rights Restored Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed an order restoring voting rights to over 200,000 felons in that state. The order applies to both violent and non-violent felons and extends to the right to vote, to sit on a jury, to serve in elected office or to become a notary, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Republican critics are not happy. The rights restoration move is seen by critics as highly political, an effort on McAuliffe's part to boost Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in November, as Virginia is a swing state. Let's examine. An Unprecedented Move In most but not all states, convicted felons lose the right to vote for varying amounts of time. Each state decides the extent of disenfranchisement and the process for restoring rights. Virginia is one of ten states that do not automatically restore rights after completion of a felony sentence and reportedly one of the four most stringent states with respect to its application process for civil rights restoration. Although the governor's move today was called "unprecedented" by local media, there is apparently a legal basis for it in Virginia law. The Richmond-Times Dispatch reports that it accessed a confidential research draft of the order signed by McAuliffe today, which stated, "Under the Constitution of Virginia, the governor has the authority to 'remove political disabilities consequent upon conviction' for 'felonies."' Republican Critics Governor McAuliffe's announcement that he would restore civil rights to more than 200,000 people was met with dismay by some Virginians. The state's speaker of the House William J. Howell, a Republican, said in a statement, "The singular purpose of Terry McAuliffe's governorship is to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States. This office has always been a stepping stone to a job in Hillary Clinton's Cabinet." There was also criticism about his order's failure to distinguish between violent and non-violent felons. John Whitbeck, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said in a statement, "Mercy requires that we as Virginians be a commonwealth of second chances. But there are limits." "Governor McAuliffe could easily have excluded those who have committed heinous acts of violence from this order," Whitbeck continued, "yet he chose not to. His decision to issue a blanket restoration, without regard to the nature of the crimes committed doesn't speak of mercy. Rather, it speaks of political opportunism." Rolling Restoration Although his colleagues don't sound very happy about it, McAuliffe is not done yet. The estimated 206,000 people whose rights will be restored with today's order are just the beginning. The Virginia governor is also expected to issue periodic orders restoring rights to people who have completed the terms of their incarceration and probation after today. Accused? If you have been accused of crime, speak to a criminal defense attorney today. Don't delay. Many lawyers consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to assess your case. Related Resources: Roppongi Hills is a very hoity-toity shopping area in Tokyo. You have to buy tickets to get into the mall! But a seven minute walk from the Roppongi subway station you will find the brand new Snoopy Museum. Now, it may be called the "Snoopy" Museum, and from the outside it looks like the Snoopy Museum in fact it's really a "Peanuts" Museum. If your response to that is "Good grief," then please hit the back button and all of Boing Boing awaits you. But, if you're like me and you've been reading "Peanuts" your whole life, this is a sublime pleasure and I look forward to visiting in October. The museum has just opened on April 23, and its English language website says that tickets sell for a measly 1,800 yen ($16.50) if you buy them in advance, which I would since the Japanese are very well organized and obsessive about this kind of stuff: Visitors will have the opportunity to view unique original cartoons from the collection of the Charles M. Schulz Museum. This will include large-scale works created by Mr. Schulz himself, featuring popular characters like Snoopy and Woodstock. Every six months, the Snoopy Museum will introduce new exhibitions curated by the Charles M. Schulz Museum. These will include early comics that were drawn before Peanuts, such as his Li'l Folks cartoons, animation art, Vince Guaraldi's jazz music from animated Peanuts cartoons, and rare vintage Peanuts memorabilia. In addition, unpublished sketches and artwork will be displayed in a section highlighting an unknown side of Schulz sure to surprise and delight even his most loyal of fans. Their opening exhibit is "My Favorite Peanuts," 60 original Peanuts cartoon selected by Charles Schultz's widow Jean. It runs from April 23, 2016 (Sat) to September 25 (Sun). Love the art, but don't we all love the museum shop even more? I'm drooling over the merchandise in The Snoopy Museum's shop "Brown's Store." Where, "It is also a place to find exclusive Peanuts merchandise made EXCLUSIVELY for the Snoopy Museum ." From Museum guide books, to stationery, sundries, apparel, and confectionary items, you will find a variety of exclusive Peanuts and Snoopy products at BROWN'S STORE. Together with a range of originally designed products, you can find unique items inspired by artwork on view at the Museum, and special collaboration items with popular third party brands. Visitors will also find a classic Snoopy plush doll that resembles Snoopy in his earliest days, when he was still walking on four legs, and cute finger puppets featuring the whole Peanuts Gang. This stuff is just too good so start saving your pennies. Yeah, and there's more (it's Japan, and nothing is complete until it's perfect). You must visit "Cafe Blanket": You can also expect to find a nice relaxing cafe atmosphere at the Snoopy Museum. The name "Cafe Blanket" derives from Linus' security blanket. There is a large blue table at the center of the cafe, symbolizing Linus' famous blanket. Cafe Blanket is presented by the "Peanuts Cafe", a popular cafe in Tokyo situated along the Meguro River. Cafe Blanket serves delicious food and beverages with a West Coast twist. The nice thing about Cafe Blanket is its warm and comfortable ambience. It provides a relaxing and pleasant experience, and will surely be a favorite destination for visitors. As Linus often opined, "Sucking your thumb without a blanket is like eating a cone without ice cream!" And where I can get SNOOPY PANCAKES! The details (because it's Japan and everything is all planned out): The Snoopy Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. seven days a week. Advance Tickets In order to ensure you have a great visit, the Snoopy Museum recommends purchasing tickets in advance. Admission is divided into five time slots per day and there is a limit to the number of visitors that can be admitted per time slot. (You are required to enter the museum within your admission time slot, but there is no time limit for your stay) 1) From 10:00 to 11:30 2) From 12:00 to 1:30 3) From 2:00 to 3:30 4) From 4:00 to 5:30 5) From 6:00 to 7:30 Tickets can be purchased at all Lawson stores, or through the Lawson ticket website, and picked up at all Lawson stores. Two month priors, reserved tickets will go on sale on the 20th of each month. On-Site Same Day Tickets On-site same day tickets will be available for purchase if there are openings, and only as they become available. As tickets are likely to be sold out, it is recommended that you purchase tickets in advance. Adults : 2,000 ($18) Before I let you go with visions of Woodstock dancing in your head, I must inform you that if they say the tickets are going to sell out in advance, they're not kidding. So, the moment you reach Japan, find a "Lawson," which is a convenience store kind of like 7/11 or WaWa. There is one on almost every other block in Tokyonot joking (and if you're looking for a good snack to eat in the morning, the Japanese standard pancake sandwich is a must). So, you must purchase your tickets in advance at a Lawson's or on Lawson's website. Don't ask me how to do the website thingmaybe someone will figure it out in the "Comments" section. But, to give you a head start, this is what a Lawson store looks like. Snoopy Museum Tokyo Roppongi 5-6-20, Minato-ku, Tokyo Museum Website Original Sources: Kotaku, Rocket News, Time Out Tokyo Richard Kaufman is the Editor of Genii, The Conjurors' Magazine: www.geniimagazine.com and lives in Washington, DC. Jeremy Buckingham, a Green Party MP, took a dingy out on Queensland's Condamine River, about 220km west of Brisbane, and set the river on fire with a barbeque lighter. The river is filled with methane from fracking, which the national government insists is safe. Origin Energy, which operates wells in the region, said it was monitoring the bubbling. "We're aware of concerns regarding bubbling of the Condamine River, in particular, recent videos demonstrating that this naturally occurring gas is flammable when ignited," the company said in a statement to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "We understand that this can be worrying, however, the seeps pose no risk to the environment, or to public safety, providing people show common sense and act responsibly around them." Australian politician sets river on fire to protest fracking [AFP] (via Naked Capitalism) Lax enforcement from the SEC has allowed the biggest companies in America 90 percent of the companies in the S&P 500, led by the faltering energy sector to ignore the "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles" (GAAP) in presenting their financial information to investors, manufacturing nonexistent profits in quarters where they suffer punishing losses. The result: in 2015, a year in which a representative group of companies saw net their income decline by 6%, they declared gains of 11%. 30 of those companies mostly in the energy sector turned actual losses into profits on their statements. There are rules against this kind of "pro-forma" reproting, but the SEC has stopped enforcing them. Creativity abounds in today's freewheeling accounting world. And the study found that almost 10 percent of the companies in the S.&P. 500 that used made-up figures took out expenses that fell into a category known as "other." These include expenses for a data breach (Home Depot), dividends on preferred stock (Frontier Communications) and severance (H&R Block). But these are actual costs, notes Jack T. Ciesielski, publisher of The Analyst's Accounting Observer. "Selectively ignoring facts can lead to investor carelessness in evaluating a company's performance and lead to sloppy investment decisions," he wrote. More important, he added, when investors ignore costs related to acquisitions or stock-based compensation, they are "giving managers a free pass on their effectiveness in managing all shareholder resources." Fantasy Math Is Helping Companies Spin Losses Into Profits [Gretchen Morgenson/NYT] (via Naked Capitalism) fraud,finance,business,accounting,ripoff,roll 2D10 Professional word taster James Harbeck shows you how to identify different languages by identifying the unique characters they use. R, r: This is the classic distinctive Czech letter. It stands for a sound so difficult to learn, even Czech kids take years to get it right. Another character that only Czech has is U/u. (Does that have a familiar ring? Don't conf it with a see below.) , : If you see this letter (as in odz, and standing for a sound like "w"), you are very likely looking at Polish. For further confirmation, look for Z/z. (Polish also has many other accented characters, including z not the same as z but some other languages have these, too). Neither can beat him, but Ted Cruz and John Kasich are teaming up against Donald Trump in a last-ditch effort to prevent him winning the Republican presidential nomination. The two candidates, at opposite spectrums of the Republican spectrum, still agree on enough things (e.g. that Donald Trump is bad for America) to put aside their differences and announce the collaboration. The deal will involve Kasich supporting Cruz in Indiana while Cruz supports Kazich in Oregon and New Mexico and perhaps other states where one or the other candidate is too weak to challenge Trump. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead," wrote Cruz's campaign manager, Jeff Roe. John Weaver, from Kasich's camp, said that they were giving Cruz "a clear path in Indiana." "In turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Gov. Kasich is performing well," Weaver wrote. Trump hit Twitter almost immediately to denounce the deal as "DESPERATE!" and "sad!" collusion. Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016 Lyin' Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016 And, in a press release: "This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail!" The Republican convention begins July 18 in Cleveland. If Trump fails to pick up 1,237 or more delegates by then, it's likely that voting will proceed to a second round, where many will be free to defect to another candidate. Trump has said that he hopes it doesn't involve violence if he is denied the nomination. We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. While our brains may be at capacity in terms of storage, our noggin space looks void compared to the digital organization throughout the electronics we work on. Finding a safe home for all those files is challenging READ THE REST 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. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Mostly cloudy. High 77F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph.. Tonight Cloudy with occasional showers late at night. Low around 60F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Piaggio is marking the 70th anniversary of the iconic Vespa scooter with a special commemorative series of models, including the nippy Vespa Primavera, the sporty GTS (in 125cc and 300cc versions) and the timeless PX. Events are also lined up to celebrate Vespa's milestone, including this year's Vespa World Day in the South of France (Also read: 70 Years of Vespa: All the Vespas Produced, Ever ).The special-edition 70th-anniversary scooters mainly stand out for their exclusive colour finishes and Vespa Settantesimo "70" logo on the passenger seat leather and on the glovebox.The commemorative models will be available from May 2016, in Azzuro 70 blue or in grey, priced from 4,099 for the Vespa PX 125 to 5,799 for the GTS 300 ABS.Vespa has even designed a new brown leather bag that matches the seat. This can be fixed to the rear chrome-plated luggage rack in all the special-edition models.Among events organised to celebrate Vespa's anniversary year, The Vespa Club of Pontedera is holding an International Meeting , April 23-25, bringing riders and enthusiasts to the scooter's Italian hometown. As well as tours, exhibitions, handling contests and more, visitors can take a guided tour of the Piaggio factory or brush up on the history of the iconic Italian two-wheeler at the Piaggio Museum.Another key date in the diary of festivities is this year's " Vespa World Days ," held June 2 to 5, 2016, in Saint-Tropez in the South of France. This annual meeting brings together Vespa owners' clubs from around the world for a program of events including tours and scooter runs. There'll even be a "concours d'elegance" - a 1950s and 1960s themed Vespa pageant held on the town's famous harbour.More than 18 million Vespa scooters have been sold worldwide over the last 70 years, with some 150 versions and variants of the original 1946 model. Beijing: Volkswagen AG is optimistic that its positive sales trend from the two previous quarters will continue in China, the world's biggest auto market, its China chief Jochem Heizmann said on Sunday. Volkswagen also plans to invest 4 billion euros ($4.49 billion) with its joint venture partners in China this year, and is prepared for any recalls in China on any diesel-related issues, Heizmann told reporters ahead of the Beijing auto show, which begins on Monday. Volkswagen has been struggling with the so-called dieselgate scandal since it was discovered last year that the German automaker modified its cars to cheat on emissions tests. The company has been in talks with regulators globally on how to make amends, although in China the issue only affected roughly 2,000 cars. Fallout from the scandal contributed to Volkswagen narrowly losing its crown as the top foreign automaker in China to General Motors Co in 2015, according to data from the China Automobile Makers Association. Volkswagen's China sales fell 3.4 per cent last year to 3.5 million units. Indias premier B-school for strategic marketing and communication, MICA, has decided to join hands with Self Employed Women's Association (Sewa), a trade union for poor, self-employed women workers, for the capacity building of the Master Trainers of Sewa. Master trainers are the women from the grassroots who have earned expertise in their various roles at Sewa. MICA will impart education to the women of Sewa in the domains the college is known for; namely branding, marketing, new media, and soft skills in professional and strategic communication.The first meeting towards this collaboration was recently held where Dr Preeti Shroff, dean of MICA and others met with Reema Nanavaty, chairperson - Sewa Trade Facilitation Centre and several Sewa representatives from different districts of Gujarat. The Sewa team shared many insights with regards to the required skill-sets and domain-knowledge for them in order to compete with organised private market players when it comes to the value chain management of the products made by them.Mica has identified areas in which it will help approximately 20,00,000 women who belong to the Sewa movement across India. While the first training will be imparted to the master trainers, it is these women who will then disseminate the learning to the grassroots members. The overall MICA Master Trainer Programme for Sewa will focus on Enterprise Development for Value Chain Development and Scaling-up Sewas existing food, textiles, culture, and education enterprises.MICA will also help with the technology required for grassroots dissemination. This is, in a sense, giving away to the society in a way a premier school knows best and we urge other varsities to follow their example. Kolkata: Thrilled at the detection of the elusive gravitational waves a century after Albert Einstein's prediction and the first observation of collision of two black holes at the Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), two young US-based Indian researchers working on the project say the waves act as a sixth sense for humans to comprehend the universe. In fact, these "ripples in the curvature of space and time" will provide information on the cosmos that wouldn't have been possible by peering through any kind of telescope, say Karan P. Jani and Nancy Aggarwal, who are elated at the prospect of India getting a third LIGO (observatory) and being at the forefront of new-age astrophysics. Last month, India and the US signed an agreement for a new LIGO project in India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Washington. The agreement was signed between India's Department of Atomic Energy and the US' National Science Foundation (NSF). The prime minister also met Indian student scientists, including Aggarwal and Jani, associated with the LIGO project. "Gravitational waves are a completely new way of seeing the universe. It's like humans can now perceive the sixth sense beyond the five, to comprehend the universe," Jani, a fourth year PhD researcher in astrophysics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told IANS via email. The gravitational waves were detected on September 14, 2015, by both of the twin LIGO detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The LIGO Observatories are funded by the NSF and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed. Jani and Aggarwal explained the detectors led to "direct observation of existence of black holes as also a direct observation of mergers of two black holes into a bigger black hole." "The energy released during collision was 50 times more than all the stars in the universe combined at that instance," added Jani, whose work involves simulating black holes on supercomputers and searching for massive black hole collisions in LIGO data. The breakthrough was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors. The LSC currently includes over 1,000 members from 90 institutes and 16 countries. India is the third highest right now in terms of membership. At the heart of the mammoth hunting game to catch the unicorn are tools called interferometers which work by merging two or more sources of light to create an interference pattern that can be measured and analyzed. "It is a four km light interferometer... in fact LIGO is the most precise measurement ever done. This means a lot of technology research has to be done to make LIGO," Aggarwal, a fourth year Ph D student at MIT LIGO Lab, told IANS via email. Aggarwal is studying quantum mechanics to improve the precision of gravitational wave detectors and is glad that the starting of the LIGO India project opens up a new opportunity for her to work in her native country. "A lot of technological developments that were made for LIGO have found independent applications in science as well as industry and LIGO India will create a lot of opportunities for Indian scientists and engineers and improve the general scientific and technological environment," Aggarwal emphasised. They hope to "share the discovery with a larger audience", a request put in by Modi during their meeting. "During our meeting, the prime minister said he would like the LIGO scientists to make frequent India trips to popularize the science in colleges in India. We also talked about physics outreach in India for school children, the importance of hands-on demos and the importance of learning material in languages other than English," Aggarwal informed. "Also, due to the participation, the travelling of Indian scientists abroad and international scientists to India will definitely strengthen the international relations for India," she said. New Delhi: Just a day after India withdrew the visa issued to Uyghur dissident Dolkun Isa after China claimed that he was a "terrorist", New Delhi has banned import of milk and milk products, certain mobile phones and a few other items from its northern neighbour after finding them sub-standard or for not following security codes. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Lok Sabha that India had banned import of milk and milk products from China as their quality was unacceptable. The minister told the Lok Sabha that some mobile phones, which do not carry International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number or other security features, and some steel products have also been banned from importing from China. "Complete ban of import from any country is not possible now due to WTO rules even if we have problems diplomatically, territorially or militarily," she said. She said India's trade deficit with China stood at $48.68 billion during 2015-16 (April-February) and the total bilateral trade was $65.16 billion during the period. "Increasing trade deficit with China can be attributed primarily to the fact that Chinese exports to India rely strongly on manufactured items to meet the demand of fast expanding sectors like telecom and power, while India's exports to China are characterised by primarily and intermediate products," she said. The ban comes after India first issued and then withdrew visa to Isa. The Uyghur leader had been given a tourist visa to attend a conference organised by a US-based organisation in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, in Himachal Pradesh. The conference from April 28 to May 1 will discuss democratic transformation in China. Soon after Isa was granted visa by India, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said he is a terrorist and must be brought to justice. China does not recognise the Tibetan government-in-exile and has been very critical of India's stand on Dalai Lama. Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik origin Muslims, was on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different part of the country. China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a militant Islamist group, for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country. (With Inputs From PTI) New Delhi: The Supreme Court collegium will respond next week to government on the revised memorandum of procedure, a document to guide appointment of judges to the apex court and the high courts, Chief Justice of India TS Thakur said on Sunday. He said the document, prepared by the government to enhance transparency in judicial appointments, will be sent back to the Centre next week with the comments of the SC collegium. Thakur said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who headed the Group of Ministers to draft the memorandum, had spoken with him on whether the collegium was ready with its response. On whether the judiciary was 'okay' with the text of the memorandum, Justice Thakur said the core of the document, based on a Supreme Court judgment, will remain "unaltered" that the collegium will make a recommendation. "Things like the number of judgments a candidate has delivered are contributory in nature," he said, adding that judiciary is ready for the new document. "We have no problems". The collegium consists of CJI and four senior judges of the apex court. If the draft is ratified, it would be put in public domain by the Department of Justice in the Law Ministry. If changes are suggested, then the Law Ministry would have to redraft it. The NDA government wants both the Centre and state governments to have their say in recommending candidates for appointment to the higher judiciary. While delivering its verdict on ways to make the collegium system more transparent, the apex court had asked the government to rework the MoP in consultation with the states and high courts. The CJI said the collegium has now cleared all proposals sent to it in six weeks. While 145 judges were either elevated as permanent judges in the high courts or were appointed as additional judges, 169 proposals were still pending with the government, he said. He wondered why the government was delaying the appointment of judges when there was a huge backlog of cases. Responding to a question on the delay in clearing names, Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda said verification by the Intelligence Bureau takes time. The CJI was of the view that IB should be asked to submit its report in a fixed timeframe. "The Director, IB should depute more men. The government is very resourceful. In fact there is no system to track the recommendations made by the collegium. We should have a system to know where the recommendation is. We don't know whether a secretary is sitting on it or it is with the PMO or Law Ministry," he said. He said most of the appointments were not fresh in nature. Additional judges have been made permanent judges in most cases. Which means that no fresh appointments were made against vacancies. "How much time does it require when there is an avalanche of cases," he had said while referring to delays in appointing judges. The CJI said 50% of the recommendations made by the high courts were rejected by the collegium as "we have raised the bar". Referring to suggestions, including that from the Prime Minister, that judiciary should cut down on its vacations, he said, "we don't go to Manali. Judges of constitutional benches write their order...When one side is ready, the other is not. Ask the Bar if they are ready," he said. : Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, who is in the country along with Prince William, opted for a creation by Indian designer Anita Dongre for her day outing.The Royal chose to wear a long printed tunic with Mughal details on her maiden visit to India."The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton looks elegant in a Mughal inspired tunic by Anita Dongre Royal Visit India," tweeted Dongre along with Middleton's image in her creation.Middleton teamed her tunic with beige velvet wedges teamed with black wayfarers and completed her look by keeping her tresses open.Middleton, who arrived in India in a red printed Alexander McQueen ensemble on Sunday along with Prince William, looked dapper in a dark blue suit paired with a white shirt and black shoes.The Royal couple's maiden visit to India will be part of a fundraiser which is expected to be attended by celebrated names like Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Rishi Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.The royal duo will travel on April 14 to the neighbouring Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and return on April 16 for a visit to the Taj Mahal, a Unesco World Heritage monument, in Agra at the conclusion of their two-nation tour.The Mumbai gala is being held collectively by three charity organisations -- Magic Bus, Doorstep, and India's Childline -- to generate funds to support vulnerable children across India. Megastar SRK becoming ordinary fan,dwarf etc is as big a same blunder as what Kamal Hasan did to lose his stardom to Rajnikant(Salman Khan) Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 Kamal was as big a superstar as Rajnikant till he started doing dwarf,fat,tall etc nd as a fan I hope SRK doesn't listen to wrong advisers Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 SRK must learn from mistakes of kamal and not listen to near n dear ones who are stopping him from becoming a Mega Rajnikant. Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 Rajnikant is Rajnikant bcos he always himself and Kamal always trying to be someone else..I hope SRK will remain like himself like Salman Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 Kamal Hasan could have been a btr Rajnikant if he din't keep bcmng some1 else..so SRK should learn from Kamal's mistakes and just be Salman Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 I call SRK as Megastar becos he neither has muscles of Salman nor workmanship of Aamir but yet he is taller than both by being just himself Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 Grt actrs r dime a dozen in NSD, Stage etc whereas Stars like SRK come blessed by God/Allah/Buddha etc,which is what SRK is not realising Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 Clint Eastwood super star for30 yrs bng himself n then is critics Hero .i don't believe in God but as fan I pray to Allah SRK realises truth Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) April 23, 2016 Maverick filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma lashed out at superstar Shah Rukh Khan saying that he might lose his star status to Salman Khan just like Kamal Haasan did to Rajinikanth.He also questioned SRK's movie selection process saying that he "should learn from Kamal's mistakes and just be Salman".In a series of tweets, the 'Satya' filmmaker took digs at Shah Rukh's recent decision to turn into an obsessed fan in 'Fan' and also upcoming Aanand L. Rai's project in which he will be seen as a dwarf. He also hinted at Kamal's 'Appu Raja'.He shared: "Megastar SRK becoming ordinary fan, dwarf etc is as big a same blunder as what Kamal Haasan did to lose his stardom to Rajinikanth (Salman Khan). Kamal was as big a superstar as Rajinikanth till he started doing dwarf, fat, tall etc and as a fan I hope SRK doesn't listen to wrong advisers."The filmmaker, who is awaiting the release of his Kannada directorial debut 'Killing Veerappan', based on the shooting down of the forest brigand, added: "SRK must learn from mistakes of Kamal and not listen to near and dear ones who are stopping him from becoming a Mega Rajinikanth."I call SRK as megastar because neither (he) has muscles of Salman nor workmanship of Aamir (Khan) but yet he is taller than both by being just himself. Rajinikanth is Rajinikanth because he always himself and Kamal always trying to be someone else. I hope SRK will remain like himself like Salman. Kamal could have been a better Rajinikanth if he didn't keep becoming someone else ... so SRK should learn from Kamal's mistakes and just be Salman".The 'Aag' director also shared that "great actors" are available in abundance, but being a star comes as a blessing.He shared: "Great actors are dime a dozen in NSD, stage etc whereas stars like SRK come blessed by God/Allah/Buddha etc, which is what SRK is not realising. Clint Eastwood super star for 30 years being himself and then is critics Hero. I don't believe in God but as fan I pray to Allah SRK realises truth". Los Angeles: Rocker Bruce Springsteen kicked off his Brooklyn concert with a cover of Prince's 'Purple Rain.' Flooded in purple lights, Springsteen, 66, belted out the lyrics along with the Barclay's Center crowd on Saturday, reported Variety. Prince, 57, was found dead on Thursday at his Paisley Park home in Minnesota. Prince was a phenomenal musical talent and general human 'specimen'. Born in 1958 in Minnesota, he has 39 Studio Albums to his name including 4 in the last year and a half. 1984s Purple Rain is consistently referred to as one of the best albums ever and earned him both an Oscar and a Grammy. Chances are that if you are a casual listener, thats the song youve heard at the very least. His performance of Purple Rain at the 2007 Super Bowl show is what music folklore is made of. A young girl in the office here has been left totally perplexed with all the hoo-has about Prince over the last few days. She had never heard any of his music and that in turn leaves me totally perplexed. However, when I sit and think about it, I am not surprised. The post 1995 generation has been bombarded with a frighteningly mediocre expression of Pop. The boy band brand of auto-tune music, regardless of how much teenagers have enjoyed it, destroyed the ability to look at Pop as anything but candy-floss crap. Prince had fallen victim to this as did Michael Jackson (admittedly less grungy than Prince), so did Madonna, Simon and Garfunkel, Dusty Springfield (Dusty who!?) and the list goes on. His lyrics ranged from sex to politics and one of the most hallowed rumours about him is that he actually played all 27 instruments for his debut album For You. Running little circles around masters like Steve Wynwood and Tom Petty is quite a sight and testament to his skills. One could write endlessly about his musical prowess and how musicians struggle to understand and study the harmonies, melodies and chord progressions that Prince pulled off so effortlessly but words dont do him justice. Its one those facets that you cant see but have to hear to understand. I could make an essential Prince listening playlist or The Definitive Prince playlist and they would fall drastically short of being to explain anything about his music. Every track has something different and something new to notice. The only way to create a Prince playlist is to first listen to his ENTIRE catalogue a few times over and then figure out what you like most. There honestly isnt one track that is better than the other because youre going to run into a Prince fan at some point who will convince you of why youre wrong. So dont bother. Just listen to all of it. Start to end. Unknown to many, much of the mainstream attitude and acceptance (I admit not as much as it should be) that has slowly crept into society over gender and the alternate expression of gender has been influenced by Prince. Prince manipulated the parameters and the set ideas for what was acceptable and what wasnt quite masterfully. He re-defined, especially within his own community, what masculinity was and what it could be and what it meant. It led a whole generation to re-assess how they looked at themselves and contributed massively to the gender discussion. So why is Prince considered a role model? I dare say this under the current political and social environment we are breeding- it's because he broke the rules. All the rules. Rules are for those being herded by the gutless narrow minded society we have grown into and its heartening that Prince recognised that back in the day and pushed it as much as he can. The number of non Prince fans that have, in the last few days, said they know of Prince simply because the first time they saw him they couldnt stop looking at him and then listening to him is staggering. Thats how you stand out. Think about it like this, when you talk about boy bands or to some extent even rappers (dont hate meI said to SOME extent, didnt I!?) you can club them together. When you talk about pop stars or pop music, its always Pop stars and Prince. For Prince there was no status quo. When you wake up and decide that a status-quo doesnt apply to, thats when you can really come into your own. Many of us think we have managed that, occasionally myself included, but then we turn and look at Prince and appreciate that there is a lot more effort that goes into being that fearless than any of us can fathom. Thats what there is to learn from him and his life. Just be. He hated the internet to barring bits and you cant actually find any of his original videos, his albums on streaming services or even buy digital copies of his albums. You have to go out and buy physical copies. It is inconvenient but it helps you realise that live under the illusion that one cant leave a mark these days without the internet. I maintain that it is impossible to become a full blown Prince fan after his death but exploring and over-listening to his entire catalogue is still absolutely essential. Since creating a Prince playlist is a fruitless exercise, here are a few of my favourite covers of Prince songs or the songs that Prince wrote for other artists. Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U Chris Cornell- Nothing Compares 2 U Foo Fighters- Have It All Alicia Keys - How Come You Don't Call Me Tom Jones - Kiss 6. The affidavit controversy is only to divert attention from the real issue in the Ishrat Jahan case. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 25, 2016 7. Real issue is whether there was fake encounter & whether FOUR people already in custody were KILLED in that FAKE ENCOUNTER. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 25, 2016 8. Coming to the affidavits, the Home Minister does not sign affidavits. It is signed by an Under Secretary. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 25, 2016 9. Although I have no recollection of seeing the first affidavit, let us presume that I did. Then came the report of Magistrate SP Tamang. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 25, 2016 10. This report caused an uproar & there was demand mainly from Gujarat that Government of India... (Contd) P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 25, 2016 11. (Contd) should clarify or dispel misinterpretation being placed on the First affidavit. This is why a Second, short affidavit was filed! P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 25, 2016 Former Union home minister P Chidambaram has come down heavily on the Centre over the Ishrat Jahan case and said the affidavit controversy is only to divert attention from the real issue."The affidavit controversy is only to divert attention from the real issue in the Ishrat Jahan case. The real issue is whether there was fake encounter and whether four people already in custody were killed in that fake encounter," Chidambaram said in a tweet on Monday."Coming to the affidavits, the Home Minister does not sign affidavits. It is signed by an Under Secretary. Although I have no recollection of seeing the first affidavit, let us presume that I did. Then came the report of Magistrate SP Tamang. This report caused an uproar and there was demand mainly from Gujarat that Government of India should clarify or dispel misinterpretation being placed on the first affidavit. This is why a second, short affidavit was filed," he added in a series of tweets.The first affidavit in the case was filed on the basis of inputs from Maharashtra and Gujarat Police besides the Intelligence Bureau where it was said that 19-year-old Ishrat was a Lashkar-e-Toiba activist but it was ignored in the second affidavit, Home Ministry officials said.The second affidavit, claimed to have been drafted by the Chidambaram, said there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Ishrat was a terrorist, the officials said.Former home secretary GK Pillai had claimed that as Home Minister, Chidambaram had recalled the file a month after the original affidavit, which described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives, was filed in the court.Subsequently, Chidambaram had said Pillai is equally responsible for the change in affidavit.Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.The Gujarat Police had then said those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and had come to Gujarat to kill the then chief minister Narendra Modi.(With additional information from PTI) Union Minister Najma Heptulla backed her Cabinet colleague Giriraj Singh and has called for population control in India. The Union Minister has said that the number of children per family must be restricted to two. "I have been a votary of small family with two children for long. But I have three children myself, and I am also a culprit," she said. "Had there been two-child limit back then, I too would have stuck to it," Heptulla said when asked about Singh's comment. "After the Emergency, the family planning issue with two-child limit took a backseat and no one wants to talk about it," Heptulla said. The population explosion has eaten into resources and the infrastructure and damaged the country's environment. People need land, air and water, she said. A few days ago, at a cultural event at Bagaha in West Champaran, Giriraj Singh had said that "there should be such a law in the country that same number of children should be allowed for families across religions, whether Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian. Only then will our daughters be safe". Defending the remark later, he had said the number of Hindus was declining and therefore a uniform population norm was needed. (With additional information from PTI) Forty nine constituencies in West Bengal will cast their votes in the fourth phase of Assembly elections in the state. A total of 1.08 crore voters will exercise their franchise in about 12,500 polling stations from 7 AM to 6 PM across 49 seats in North 24 Parganas, Bidhannagar and Howrah district. Voters will have 345 candidates, including a number of Trinamool ministers like Amit Mitra, Purnendu Basu, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Bratya Basu, Jyotipriyo Mullick and Aroop Roy to choose from. Out of them, only 40 candidates are women. Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here. New York: Do you feel embarrassed at your foul-smelling body odour? Hold on as skin care products company Nivea Men has developed a smartphone app called "NOSE" that quickly senses and tells you about the body odour so you can avoid meeting your girlfriend. "Basically, men usually have no idea when they smell awful. The other part of the problem is that our nose is so used to our own body odour that we cannot smell our own sweat," adweek.com tech website cited Nivea Men's explanation. NOSE, developed with the support of creative connectivity agency Happiness FCB, works in conjunction with special sensors on a custom phone cover, to determine if you smell okay, bad, or have a body odour emergency on your hands, the report said. The beta-version of NOSE was just demonstrated in Belgium recently and it would be further tested throughout the year. The app would then be launched during the next phase on Apple's iOS and Android platforms. A consumer version would be released later. Xiaomi teases the upcoming Mi Max. Xiaomi has announced that it will launch the Mi Max and MIUI 8 at an event on May 10 in Beijing. While the company has not given any details about the Mi Max device, we presume it to be a phablet. As the name suggests, the device will mark the beginning of a new Xiaomi series.There is very little that we know right now about the device, but speculations are rife that the Max will come with a humongous 6.4-inch display, 16 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera.Also, according to a teaser image posted on the MIUI forum, the Max would easily fit in the pocket of your jeans.MIUI 8, on the other hand, is Xiaomi's next-gen Android-based operating system. The company is yet to announce as to what all features will be part of MIUI 8, but it has given a sneak peek into MIUI 8's new notification shade.Besides the Mi Max and MIUI 8, Xiaomi has other announcements also lined up for the event. "This 2016 Mi Product launch will feature Mi Max, MIUI 8 and other exciting announcements! Happening on 10 May, we're inviting Mi fans all over the world to be a part of this!," says Xiaomi in a post The company says it will select 8 lucky Mi fans from all over the world who will be flown to China to attend the event. New Delhi: India has withdrawn the visa issued to prominent Uyghur dissident, Dolkun Isa. New Delhi's decision to give visa to Isa to visit Dharamsala was seen as a snub to Beijing after it blocked India's bid at the United Nations (UN) to get Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist. While the Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed that Isa's visa has been withdrawn, immigration sources added that the decision was not taken under Chinese pressure. Isa, too, confirmed that his visa had been withdrawn. "I express my disappointment on Indian authorities cancelling my visa to attend the annual Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference taking place in Dharamsala," he said. Sources claimed that there is a Red Corner Notice by the Interpol against Isa which was not detected at the time of grant of e-visa to him. But soon after the Red Corner Notice was found, Isa's visa was withdrawn on April 23. The Uyghur leader had been given a tourist visa to attend a conference organised by a US-based organisation in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, in Himachal Pradesh. The conference from April 28 to May 1 will discuss democratic transformation in China. Soon after Isa was granted visa by India, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said he is a terrorist and must be brought to justice. China does not recognise the Tibetan government-in-exile and has been very critical of India's stand on Dalai Lama. Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik origin Muslims, was on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different part of the country. China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a militant Islamist group, for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country. Brussels: The Maelbeek metro station where 16 people, including an Indian techie, were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber last month re-opened on Monday with Belgians describing it as a symbol of "our determination to fight terrorism." A bomb was detonated on board a train pulling out of Maelbeek station, close to the European institutions, in the morning rush hour on March 22. The attack followed suicide bombs at Brussels airport which also killed 16 people. The reopening of the station early on Monday brought the Belgian capital's underground network back up to full capacity. "We will overcome this too. You get emotional when you come here. You feel it inside. Our government will overcome terrorism," Paul Nemitz, Director, Fundamental Rights and Union Citizeship, European Comission, said at the station. He said his office was just 300 metres from the station. "We will overcome this (terrorism). Life goes on. There is a little fear. We are worried over security but the reopening of the metro station just over a month after the attacks is a symbol of the people's resilience," Tem, a daily metro commuter, said. "There is fear that if this does not happen here it will happen elsewhere. But the reopening of the station is certainly a symbol of our determination to fight terrorism," another commuter, Anne Sam den Brent said. Brussels Metro spokeswoman An Van Hamme was quoted by the media as saying that there was no structural damage but "there were a few works that had to be done". Families of the victims were allowed special access to the station on Saturday to mourn the victims, before the official reopening to commuters. Commuters can also leave messages on a tribute wall in the main station entrance. A commemorative art work will eventually replace the tribute wall. The Brussels public transport authority (Stib) said that military and police officers would be present to "ensure the security of the entire network". Security remains high across the underground network, which was hit during the March 22 peak morning travel period. The blast came after suicide bombers had earlier struck Brussels' Zaventem airport departure lounge in the attacks claimed by Islamic State. 28-year-old Indian techie Raghavendran Ganeshan, who went missing after the terror strikes, died in the attack on the metro station. An Infosys employee from Bengaluru, Ganeshan was in a metro train when the metro station was rocked by the explosion. In March 2015, Roanoke Fire-EMS firefighter Joe Austin attended the funeral of co-worker Michael Todd Harris with a secret in tow. Harris, who had been battling throat cancer, was the fourth firefighter in the department to die after being diagnosed with cancer since 2009. His funeral came barely a month after Austins doctor told him he had prostate cancer. I didnt tell anybody at first, but inside Im freaking out because Im at my friends funeral for cancer, and I know Ive got cancer that Im going to have to get taken care of, he said. In recent years, numerous studies have suggested an increased rate of cancer among firefighters. But in 2010, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health began a broader study examining cancer diagnoses and deaths among 29,993 firefighters who worked in Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia between 1950 and 2009. The findings suggested firefighters are at a higher risk for cancers that affect respiratory, digestive and urinary functions than the general population. It also found firefighters were twice as likely to suffer from mesothelioma, most likely from exposure to asbestos. Twenty years ago, you might not hear of a lot people getting cancer, Austin said. But one year it was one friend of mine, another year it was another friend of mine. Then it was me. The studies, and the losses suffered at stations nationwide, have prompted policies that change many aspects of how departments fight fires, including how employees use an iconic part of their profession their turnout gear. While the layered suits keep firefighters safe from extreme heat, they dont offer protection from the harmful toxins released when building materials and household objects burn. Those carcinogens linger, both at the scene of a fire and on a firefighters gear, long after the blaze has been extinguished, Roanoke Fire-EMS Battalion Chief Matt Dewhirst said. Think of whats in your home. Its not wood and cotton, its plastic, Dewhirst said. Plastic has petroleum, which has carcinogens. Over the last year, Roanoke Fire-EMS has started requiring firefighters to wash exposed turnout gear after every 24-hour shift. The suits are washed in industrial-sized machines, called extractors. The city already had one extractor but recently bought and installed two more for $12,000 each. Each machine can wash three suits at a time, though the outer and inner layers have to be cleaned separately. Eventually, Dewhirst said, the department hopes to purchase an extra set of turnout gear for each of its 250 firefighters so they can change immediately after an exposure. Since each set of gear costs about $2,500, the department may need to secure additional funding before that purchase can be made. Currently, if a firefighter works a fire today they would have to wear the contaminated gear until the following morning when they are relieved, Dewhirst said. After theyre washed, the suits are hung on a specialized dryer. Though the dryers can be purchased for around $9,000, employees built their own for about $1,000 apiece. Each can handle six turnout suits at a time. It takes about three hours for a suit to dry completely. The same machines and policies have been adopted at Salem Fire & EMS and at Roanoke County Fire and Rescue. Salem Chief John Prillaman said the city bought an extractor and dryer for a combined $15,500 in 2014. Roanoke County Deputy Chief Travis Griffith said the county has extractors at two of its stations. The ones at the Fort Lewis station were purchased more than 10 years ago; two more were purchased for the North County station around 2009 or 2010 at a cost of $15,000 and $16,000, he said. A cultural shift Though washing gear between shifts is a new routine for city employees, Dewhirst said it also signifies a cultural shift. When he started at the department in 1998, he said he might go half a year without cleaning his suit. For years, fire department history and culture saw it as sort of a badge of honor, he said. The dirtier that they were when they got back, the harder they worked, the better firefighter they were. Now, with the knowledge that exposure to soot-filled suits can lead to long-term illness, many departments are trying to shift that perception. In many cases, that hasnt been difficult. When Salem bought its equipment, Prillaman said it was largely in response to requests from employees. I think the peer pressure is to have the clean gear and theyre laughing at the guy with the dirty gear, he said. Ken Brown, second vice president with the Virginia State Firefighters Association, agreed that changing how employees envision a competent firefighter is a challenge. He also said many departments, especially volunteer stations, may have to re-examine practices that have been adopted for convenience. Theres a lot of volunteers that respond from their homes in their private vehicles and they keep their gear in their vehicle, Brown said. A lot of them just have it in the back of their truck, and so every day theyre in their truck, theyre exposed as well. Brown said no data exist showing how many departments in Virginia have adopted measures to reduce cancer risks. Volunteer stations and departments in more rural areas may especially struggle to secure the money to buy extractors and other equipment. Departments that cant secure funding from their local government may be able to apply for a federal grant, such as those available through the Federal Emergency Management Agencys Assistance to Firefighters Grant program, Brown said. Regional departments have also adopted other measures to counter cancer risks. All stations in Roanoke and Salem have been outfitted with diesel exhaust extractors that pull harmful gases from the trucks out of the bay. The extractors are necessary because many stations were built with sleeping quarters above the garage, Dewhirst said. Roanoke County Fire and Rescue has requested about $525,000 in the countys 10-year capital improvement plan to install similar equipment in all of its stations, Griffith said. Roanoke Valley firefighters are also trained now to ventilate structures more thoroughly, and to wear breathing apparatus until harmful chemicals especially hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide have dissipated, Prillaman said. Since that may take hours, even fire investigators might wear breathing apparatus while working a scene well after a fire has been extinguished. In the past, firefighters often thought nothing of taking off their hoods and breathing gear prematurely at a scene. Wed be at a structure fire and three days later Id blow my nose and it would be black, Prillaman said. Recognizing the increased cancer risks in firefighting has also become a focus at the regional academy, which trains all firefighters in Salem, Roanoke and Roanoke County. Trainees can no longer wear their gear inside the training center, Griffith said. They have a dirty entrance where they can rinse their gear off and store it, he said. No gear is allowed into any other areas of the building. This helps to prevent cross contamination into the areas that are frequented regularly by people and groups using the training center. And Roanoke firefighters are no longer allowed to wear their turnout gear in living areas or in areas where food is eaten. Roanoke Countys department is discussing whether it should adopt a similar policy, Griffith said. Roanoke Fire-EMS created a 10-minute video that includes interviews with local firefighters who have been diagnosed with cancer, as well as family members of those who died from cancer. The video has been requested by agencies in other states, Dewhirst said. Its become an effective way to impress on employees the increased risks they may face, he said. We can put a face to every cancer, whether its the brain cancer that Chris Brown had or the lymphoma [Billy] Obenchain had or the throat cancer Todd Harris had, Dewhirst said. Multiple organizations, including the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, have conducted studies during the past 10 years indicating that firefighters suffer from an increased risk of cancer. An American Military University article coauthored by faculty member Merritt Kearns and Roanoke Fire-EMS Battalion Chief Matt Dewhirst compiled information from several studies and found that firefighters are: 2.02 times more likely to suffer from testicular cancer 1.53 times more likely to suffer from multiple myeloma 1.51 times more likely to suffer from Non-Hodgkins lymphoma 1.39 times more likely to suffer from skin cancer 1.28 times more likely to suffer from prostate cancer 1.31 times more likely to suffer from malignant melanoma 1.31 times more likely to suffer from brain cancer 1.21 times more likely to suffer from colon cancer 1.14 times more likely to suffer from leukemia A preliminary study from the San Francisco Fire Department, which has a higher number of female firefighters than most stations, indicates that women in the profession may suffer from a higher rate of breast cancer, Dewhirst said. This month, the Johnson Health Center in Lynchburg became the first federally qualified health center to be named an Employer of Choice. The designation which is only given to four or five companies annually means workers, employees and contractors choose to work for that employer when presented with other choices of employment because of draws like job stability and satisfaction and workplace culture. A lot of people want to be employers of choice, but few actually obtain that designation, said Joyce L. Gioia, of Employer of Choice International, Inc., which considers companies all over the world for the award. A number of hospitals and health care systems are employers of choice, including Sentara. The Johnson Health Center is a nonprofit that provides health care to patients in Lynchburg and the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell. It has clinics in Bedford, Amherst and Lynchburg as well as two dental clinics and a pharmacy. It accepts all forms of insurance, including Medicaid, and serves patients who are under-insured or uninsured by providing them service on a sliding-fee scale. The award means the company has a high level of performance, a level of workforce stability and continuity that preserves its knowledge base, high employee satisfaction and a strong bottom line, according to Gioia. At any given time, 400 companies are in the process of seeking the designation from the organization, she said, adding companies typically make several attempts before actually winning the distinction. The Johnson Health Center probably has a better culture than most, and most of them have more resources than the Johnson Health Center, according to Gioia. Johnson Health Center began applying for the award for the first time in August 2014 and only learned the results this month. Theres a lot that went into this, said Gary Campbell, CEO of Johnson Health Center. The process included an in-depth survey of all employees and an evaluation of the companys culture, leadership, customer care, growth and opportunity, meaningful work, compensation and benefits, employee loyalty and performance results. In the case of Johnson Health Center, 82 percent of employees responded to the surveys, which Gioia said is significant. It was the best culture that we have ever looked at, Gioia said. They scored the highest on our survey in terms of some of the questions that we asked. Nicolette Coleman, registered nurse care manager for Johnson Health Center, said the questions essentially asked employees if they were happy working at the health center. I answered yes to pretty much everything, said Coleman, a military veteran who has worked at the center for seven years come September. She started with the company as a licensed practical nurse but said the work inspired her to pursue her Registered Nurse license, which made her more marketable. She originally had planned to leave the area. As she watched the center grow, add staff and develop health teams specifically to care holistically for patients, she decided to stay. We all work together. There is no bickering; its not like a catty office, she said. The providers are very approachable and helpful and give you a lot of insight. The communication we all approach each other respectfully. The award doesnt mean things are perfect, though. Coleman said communication always can be improved, and the center could use some more space. The downtown clinic has outgrown its physical space, even as the demand for health care services continues to increase, Coleman said. I chose to stay at the Johnson Health Center because we are a very caring group of people. To work here is an awesome experience, she said. PETROTRIN BLANKS PARLIAMENT It is understood officials of the State-owned company have refused to answer specific questions relating to a controversial decision taken earlier this year to drop a lawsuit against its former board and its former executive chairman Malcolm A. Jones, a current member of the Cabinets Standing Committee on Energy. In blanking queries from the Parliament Committee, Petrotrin has cited legal advice. Small, the chairman of the Joint Select Committee on State Enterprises, is this morning due to issue a warning to Petrotrin, as well as all State enterprises, telling them that they cannot avoid the scrutiny of the Parliaments committee system by using the tack of citing commissioned legal advice. They have complied with some of our requests for information, Small yesterday told Newsday. But they did not submit complete information. Its unbelievable. If you started a matter in court and then withdrew that suit there is nothing that should prevent you from providing the information. Something obviously feels wrong here. WHY ARE YOU HEDGING ? The Senator continued, I can understand if you say the matter is still going on and is therefore sub judice, but the matter has been withdrawn. We asked for the complete information. Why are you hedging? It is starting to get a little ridiculous. Something does not add up. Somebody is trying to hide. Small said he will be making a statement on this matter today when the Committee holds a public hearing from 10 am at the J Hamilton Maurice Room at the Parliaments offices on Wrightson Road, Port of Spain. Said Small, I will be making a statement for all entities scheduled to come before this committee including NCG, Udecott and so on so that everyone understands we are not tolerating this. The committee is concerned. Small said the Constitution establishes the Parliaments oversight committees and therefore these committees should be taken seriously. The Parliament is not a private individual, the Independent Senator said. This Committee is set up by the Constitution and the Standing Orders. That is the highest law of the country. We can request any document or paper. There is no limitation. The Standing Orders does not say the Committee can request the information the company decides to send. If they want to challenge the Standing Orders then they are free to do so in court. But if you have information you supply it to the Committee. The chairman said even commercially sensitive information may be disclosed to a Parliament Committee, citing past sessions when companies were allowed to give evidence in camera after justification for such a course of action was shown. TSTT fully complied with requests, Small said. And they submitted certain commercially sensitive information. They were fully compliant with all the requests. There is a way to treat that kind of scenario where material many be commercially or legally sensitive. The Independent Senator said he was of the view that State companies may be blanking committees because they have been allowed to get away with such conduct in the past. MANY HAVE GOTTEN AWAY What I think is happening, is some entities have been able to get away with stuff like that for a long time and for the first time somebody is pushing back saying: guys, lets be reasonable here, the chairman said. It is possible to have a private session. What I have an issue with is a State entity trying to prescribe what they can submit and paying a private attorney to get an opinion to do so. In March, the Office of the Prime Minister said the decision to drop the multi-million dollar lawsuit against the former Petrotrin board was taken by the current Board of the Company, which was appointed by the Cabinet. The lawsuit related to the failed World GTL (gas-to-liquids) project, which has stacked up losses of about $3.3 billion. Legal action was initiated under the Peoples Partnership administration. At the Parliament Committee in March, Petrotrins current chairman Professor Andrew Jupiter said he was absent from the meeting at which a decision to discontinue the lawsuit was taken. He confirmed he served on the Board during the time when developments in relation to the World GTL project took place. However, Jupiter said he was appointed after an agreement for the project had already been entered into. He declined to respond to questions from the media Sharon Morris-Cummings, Petrotrin General Counsel, at the same hearing in March, said, The decision was taken by the Board after it received legal advice in the matter...The matter was handled by the Attorney Generals office and then new advice came to the attention of the Board and a decision was made thereafter. She said the advice came from, the counsel who were involved in the matter. While it has blanked some queries, Petrotrin is understood to have supplied information in relation to its loss-making $3.2 billion ultra low sulfur diesel plant, another project begun under Jones tenure. Central pastor and foreign used car dealer arrested for fraud Police were alerted to the scam after at least 20 people reported to the Fraud Squad that they had paid the two men for vehicles but never got them. Police are urging persons who have been defrauded and have not yet reported the matter to come forward and give statements. The 49-year-old pastor who is from a church in Longdenville, Chaguanas was arrested at his Cunupia home on Saturday night by Fraud Squad officers. His 26-year-old alleged accomplice was arrested two days ago. Police say the younger man had secured the services of an attorney from Chaguanas telling her he had two hundred foreign used cars on the Port of Port-of-Spain to sell and that he needed her to do agreements for the prospective buyers. The female attorney, who was also questioned by police, said she had completed at least 20. Investigations by Fraud Squad officers revealed that there were no cars on the port belonging to the man. The young man and the pastor, who told police he is also a real estate agent, are also being questioned by police into the purchase of a property using a fraudulent cheque. Charges against the two are expected to be laid over the next few days following which they will both appear before a Port-of-Spain magistrate. Richards: Focus more on special needs students Richards recalled that as a young boy, his brother frequently mispronounced words, a problem for which he was repeatedly chastised, even by their father. My brother struggled because he was dyslexic, he said while delivering the keynote address at a one-day symposium on Rights and Activism in the wake of the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies. Richards said following his brothers diagnosis, he went on to excel in high school and university where he graduated with honours. He said his brother is now a successful engineer. The senator raised the issue of his brothers early struggles with dyslexia as he reflected on statistics which show that 40 percent of students are under performing at the level of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SE A) examination. Disabilities are seen as being only physical but with the 40 percent under performance rate, have we been identifying persons with special needs? he asked. The veteran broadcaster noted that for too long the focus has been on the top performing students in the SE A. Every year, the Minister of Education goes to visit the top performers but what about those who are falling through the system. Where is the focus on them? he asked, adding that there were entire schools performing below par. Those students are not being afforded an appropriate opportunity. That is their right. Richards elicited chuckles from the audience when he said the common refrain around exam time was My child is doing well, how is your child doing? Lamenting the treatment often meted out to persons with a range of disabilities, the independent senator said governments have done little to ease their frustrations as well as that of their families, especially in the area of education. He argued that the education system should have a built-in capacity to address all concerns of students with disabilities. Right now, it is a policy decision, optional in some instances, he said. Richards said while advocacy has drawn greater awareness to the plight of persons with disabilities, there must be concrete changes in the law to support families Pres wants tech / voc classes in prison Carmona discussed the idea with Sir John Armitt, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and Chairman of City and Guilds, London, during a meeting on Friday at the Office of the President, St Anns. The mid-morning meeting also included top members of ICE, City and Guilds. According to the Office of the President, Carmona explained that the programme for prisoners in Remand Yard should be designed in such a way that if and when the prisoner is out on bail, he or she could continue the programme outside. On another point, Sir John, who is in Trinidad and Tobago on an official visit, indicated that there is a need in the corporate world to further train their employees in vocational and technological skills that are available via City and Guilds, the Office stated. President Carmona recalled that in earlier times children of the oil industry had the opportunity to be trained in skills provided by City and Guilds resulting in many having stellar careers. He noted that TT needs now, more than before, to make its young people aware of the training opportunities under City and Guilds. HE said this could be achieved via public campaigns Painful recovery for Las Cuevas cliff survivor Asked how she was doing, Antonio told Newsday yesterday, she was experiencing a lot of pain, but added, I should be fine. Just taking things one day at a time. Antonio, 40, who was airlifted out of Trinidad on April 12, could not be treated at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital for the complex fractures to her pelvic, sacrum and foot. On arrival in Toronto, she had a ten-hour surgery on her pelvis and sacrum that were broken in several places. This was followed by a five-hour surgery on her right foot, which was also broken. However, on arrival, it was found that the injuries had already begun to heal in the wrong places. On Tuesday, with some help, she sat in bed for a few seconds, and on Wednesday she was placed in a wheelchair and taken outside to the hospitals car park. Her friend, Aubrey Clarke, who held an online fund-raiser to hire an air-ambulance to transport Antonio back to Toronto after she was not covered by travel insurance posted on Elissas gofundme page yesterday that, Some days are worst than others in terms of how much pain Elissa is feeling. It was great to see her sit up in the wheelchair, he said, but it was also heart-wrenching to see her enduring intense pains during therapy. On March 28, Elissa, who was vacationing in Trinidad with relatives went with them to Las Cuevas Bay for a picnic during the late afternoon/ evening hours. However, they found a spot on a cliff looking over the bay and decided to stay there to escape stinging sand flies. They lit a fire and when the fire started dying, Antonio went foraging for brambles and leaves to rekindle it when in the dark she stepped off the cliff and tumbled down. Learmond recovering after heart surgery Learmond suffered a heart attack more than a month ago, and doctors later discovered he was suffering from high blood pressure and clogged arteries. Caribbean Heart Care (Medcorp Ltd) Trinidad had taken up the actors cause after the local theatre community began raising funds for his surgery. Although Newsday was unable to reach Learmond yesterday, administrator and managing director of Caribbean Heart Care (Medcorp Ltd) Trinidad at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EW MSC), Mt Hope, Dr Kamal Rampersad, said Learmonds surgery was uneventful. He is stable and recovering, we had no problems. I am 99 per cent sure, I cant be 100 per cent but he will be all right, Rampersad said. The doctor said Learmond would remain warded at the EW MSC for the next five or six days before he would be allowed to go home. When asked about his outlook, Rampersad said it was excellent. Absolutely, he said. Learmonds surgery took three hours and was performed by the team of Caribbean Heart Care, led by Professor Giovanni Teodori. The surgery was done free of charge by Caribbean Heart Care, and the bill was covered by the Ministry of Health. San Francisco Was Going to Spend $1.7M on Single-Toilet Public Restroom in case you missed it advertisement Poor Reviews Don't Slow Black Adam box office advertisement Believe It or Not, Some World Leaders Lasted Just Minutes in case you missed it Missing Michigan Family Seen at UP Gas Station updated advertisement 'Centurion Livers' May Shift Thinking on Donors in case you missed it advertisement Charges Dropped Against Man Paralyzed in Police Van UPDATED Alarming Discovery at Mo. School 'Takes Your Breath From You' IN CASE YOU MISSED IT advertisement Mom Rescues Herself, Her Kids With Pocket Dial IN CASE YOU MISSED IT advertisement A Penniless Baroness Sits in a Hospital Bed in NYC longform advertisement This Gone Girl Cruise Was Weirder Than You Could Imagine longform (Newser) The week of April 15-21 was a record-breaking one for the TSA, though not a record it likely wanted to break. During that one-week span, the federal agency found 73 guns stashed in carry-on bags at airports nationwide, breaking the previous weekly record of 68 set just last October, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports. Of those firearms, 68 were loaded, and 27 had a round in the chamber. Guns can be brought on flights, but they have to be declared in checked luggage only, unloaded, and secured in a locked container, per TSA rules. "Unfortunately, these sorts of occurrences are all too frequent, which is why we talk about these finds," a TSA rep says in a blog post, which features pictures of some of the confiscated items, as well as a list of what items were found at which airports. Also discovered: two replica military rounds at Tucson's airport. The TSA notes that even if a passenger has "no ill intent" in packing the gun in the carry-on, he or she can receive a citation, be arrested, and/or have to pay a fine as steep as $11,000. And despite applause that may come the TSA screeners' way for a job well done, they'd rather not find these weapons at all. "Each time we find a dangerous item, the line is slowed down" and the passenger is at risk of the repercussions, the post explains. Oddly, despite findings like this, the TSA has been trying to do away with screenings at smaller regional airports to save money, sometimes screening passengers after they land at larger airports to make connecting flightsa process called "reverse screening," per Politico. The agency is now restaffing some of those smaller airports with screeners after Congress got wind of the plan and some members denounced it as dangerous. (Read more TSA stories.) Back in February, Samsung at the Mobile World Congress at Barcelona released their new flagship smartphones the S7 and the S7 Edge. Now, there will be a new additional to their color choices for their flagships with the new "Pink gold" color to their markets. The other colors are Black onyx, Gold platinum, White Pearl and Silver titanium. There would be absolutely no changes to their form factors as well as specifications. In their blog post, Samsung said that the Pink Gold colour variants of the Galaxy S7 handsets will debut in its home turf South Korea on Wednesday, and will soon be reaching other markets as well. "Pink Gold was chosen as it, like the other colors available for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, is a natural colour that provides a sense of comfort. These hues glitter and shimmer as if illuminated from inside their glass surfaces," Samsung said in their post. Both the phones were available in the markets in March 2016 and immediately pounced on the smartphone market and now Samsung dominates the market shares of smartphone sales beating Cupertino technology giants Apple Inc. However, for Apple, their marketing shares are restricted to only about two couples of phones but for Samsung, they keep releasing phones for every budget segment so that shouldn't really make sense. Both the S7 and the S7 edge weigh about the same as each other with the S7 edge weighing about five grams more than its smaller brother. These phones are the only IP68certified phones as of yet and all are glass both front and back. With fingerprint sensors for both the phones, you can now pay from your phones directly provided your country of residence supports android pay or any other form of NFC payments. Shining with their AMOLED displays both the phones provide a crisp and beautiful looks in a quad-HD display peaking its display density to 577PPI. The first plane to use clean and renewable energy has done it. It was airborne for 62 hours over the Pacific Ocean, and finally, the Solar Impulse 2, the experimental aircraft, has crossed the most challenging part of its long journey, from Hawaii to San Francisco. It got down at Mountain View, Calif., on Saturday. It had left for its journey last year in Dubai, with stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii. Its battery system suddenly got affected with heat damage when it took off from Japan. Hence, it got grounded for months even as the crew repaired the damage. The aircraft took off once again with one of its pilots, Bertrand Piccard, who alternates with Andre Borschberg. The riskiest journey was the Hawaii-to-San Francisco leg due to the absence of lack of emergency landing areas. If it meets trouble, Piccard would have been forced to parachute from it. Still, the plane finished its triumphant crossing. "The Pacific is done, my friend. I love it, but it's done. It's great to be in California, the land of pioneers. Innovation and pioneering must continue. The clean tech revolution has to keep moving forward," Piccard said. Piccard, a doctor, recalled that it was one of the "most amazing" experiences in his life. "I bet that in 10 years, electric airplanes will be transporting up to 50 people. This will happen. This is not science fiction. It is real," he said. This most ambitious project is estimated to cost upward of $100 million, but this journey is considered to be an ambitious step forward for technological innovation. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked Sunday to recall a few of her fondest moments with President Obama in the last seven years, she shot back a curt and unsentimental answer. Grimacing, she replied: "I am not in a position to take stock now," she snapped, as she felt that there was too much important work to catch up with. Merkel has become his closest ally as well as his "political and ideological soul mate" on a few issues such as Syria, terrorism and containing Russian aggression in Ukraine. It is said that Obama disdains "what he regards as needy, showboating allies." Chancellor Merkel is neither of these. "She has a really good sense of humor that she doesn't show all the time at press conferences," Obama said. "She's a little more - she's much more serious in front of all of you." This did bring a brief flash of a smile on Merkel's face, which had all the reporters in the room flashing their cameras quickly. Having dropped into Germany for the Hanover Messe, a major trade and technology show that is marketing American companies and products, President Obama and Chancellor Merkel presided over its opening ceremony. Right now Europe is facing tough issues related to terrorism, an ailing economy and a migrant crisis. German chancellor's strong advocacy for migrants entering Europe has got her into hot waters. "Perhaps because she once lived behind a wall herself, Angela understands the aspirations of those who've been denied their freedom and who seek a better life," Obama said of Merkel, who grew up in the communist east. Obama said that he was sympathetic for Syrians caught in their country's civil war. "We all care deeply about the tragic humanitarian crisis inside of Syria. I live with this every day," he said. But he said he opposes a safe zone administered by the United States that might lead to fewer migrants, because securing such an area would require thousands of troops and come with too many difficult questions. "How do you do it? And who is going to put a bunch of ground troops inside of Syria?" Obama asked. "How do you let people in? And who do you let in and who do you let out? And how is it monitored?" Merkel added that the western nations had to talk about working through the peace negotiations with Russia, Iran and Assad's regime so that they could help Syria. "We have to send a message to them," she said. After talking about a number of economic and political issues, Obama closed with a strong defense of Merkel's wisdom, especially on the refugees. "She is on the right side of history on this," Obama said, his voice rising. "I am very proud of her for that, and I am proud of the German people for that." This time, Merkel flashed her "poker face", and again the cameras flashed it all over the world Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574. Hanover: US President Barack Obama will today announce plans to send up to 250 more military personnel to Syria, according to a senior administration official, intensifying US assistance to rebels as a ceasefire falters. Obama tomorrow will announce that he has authorized up to 250 additional forces deploying to Syria, the source said, adding that the president would confirm the deployment in a speech in the northern city of Hanover. US troops in Syria are mandated to advise and assist Syrian rebel and anti-Islamic State forces. Barack Obama is currently in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The pair will be joined today by leaders from Britain, France and Italy, a meeting called at Obamas request and which looks set to focus on the fight against the Islamic State group. The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL, said the official. Barack Obama is set to announce the decision at the Hanover trade fair before the meeting with European leaders. Yesterday Obama pressed for parties to the Syrian conflict to return the negotiating table and reinstate a faltering internationally-brokered ceasefire. I spoke to (Russian) President Vladimir Putin early last week to try to make sure that we could reinstate the cessation of hostilities, Obama told a news conference in Germany. That was the clearest indication yet that the White House believes the increasingly troubled ceasefire has disintegrated as regime and rebel bombardments claimed 26 lives yesterday. The White House has argued that the ceasefire, while imperfect, is worth pursuing and is the only way out of the brutal five-year war. But its stance is bringing Washington and its allies into ever more conflict with rebel groups on the ground, which continue to be on the receiving end of regime attacks. Pressure on Barack Obama is increasing in the United States, which in is the throes of a fiercely fought presidential election race, and from European allies who want to halt a massive influx of refugees. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Dehradun: The Uttarakhand High Court will on Monday resume the hearing on nine rebel Congress MLAs petition challenging their disqualification by the state Assembly Speaker. The nine legislators will present their contention before the single bench of Justice U C Dhyani, which had on Saturday recorded the arguments of counsel Kapil Sibal appearing for Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal. The Speaker had on March 27 disqualified the nine, including former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, who spearheaded the rebellion against Chief Minister Harish Rawat, under the anti-defection law. This had led to a political instability in the state and imposition of Presidents rule. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Greater Noida: Uttar Pradesh Police sub-inspector Akhtar Khan has been shot dead during a raid at Nai Abadi area of Dadri in Greater Noida. On Monday, 40-year-old Akhtar Khan woke up with a motive to arrest a criminal named Furkan. But, in an attempt to nab the culprit he lost his life during counter fire. The suspect who shot at inspector was also found dead after some time. Cautiously, heavy police force has been deployed in the area to ensure safety of residents. The police team was conducting a raid at Nai Abadi area to arrest a cirminal Fukran who was wanted in many cases of armed robberies. Khan was leading the team. He was the first to enter in the house of the suspect. As he stepped inside the house, one of the suspects started firing. He got shot in the neck and died at the spot, said Anurag Singh, deputy superintendent of police, Dadri. Akhtar Khan had joined police force as a constable in 1998 and had worked hard to earn the post of sub-inspector via internal examinations. Multiple teams are deployed to arrest the suspects who had shot Khan. His family was informed about the incident, Singh said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mumbai: In the ongoing war between Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut, the actress lawyer today claimed that the emails leaked to media, allegedly by the actor, are not reliable and the Krrish star filed a police complaint after a delay of seven month despite having prior knowledge that the email account of Queen star was hacked. A number of emails, allegedly written to Roshan from Kanganas side, were leaked to a newspaper which appear to show that the affair was one-sided. The lawyer said Kanganas sister, Rangoli had informed Hrithik Roshan that the actress account was hacked and she had even suggested that they should file a joint complaint. He (Hrithik) then allegedly stoped communication with my client or her sister and instead surprisingly starts receiving a lot of one-sided emails from my client at a time when my clients emails were hacked. He not only has full knowledge of the same but accused of hacking her emails, Kanganas lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui said in a statement. (Also read. Hrithik Roshan-Kangana Ranaut controversy: Fake email ID of actor traced to America) The lawyer also accused Roshan of diligently storing and maintaining these unverified and fabricated emails for future use as is seen now. It has also been observed that he willfully fails to authenticate the genuineness of any of these emails which he received from a hacked account. Rizwan Siddiqui claimed when the actor collected sufficient unverified emails with him, he then filed an informal complaint with the police without informing Kangana or her sister. He claimed Hrithik abandoned his complaint with police for 14 months before taking it up again this year in February while sending a defamation notice to Kangana for calling him a silly ex. 29-year-old Kangana is set to record her statement in the fake imposter case, filed by Hrithik, on April 30 but her lawyer said the actor did not wait for it and instead started showing media these unverified and fabricated emails to prove that Kangana was mentally not stable. (Also read. Kangana Ranaut approaches Mumbai Police Commissioner seeking Hrithik Roshan's arrest) When his name, image and reputation was at stake and he was accused of hacking my clients emails and also of being in a relationship with my client, besides there being a charge on him that he has also sent a lot of stuff in the last 6 months to my client and that therefore there cannot be any imposter, Siddiqui claimed, adding why did not the actor bother to clear his name immediately. What started as a complaint against an alleged imposter by Hrithik Roshan has turned into an ugly public and legal battle between the two stars, with both coming up with allegations and counter-allegations against each other every other day. The 42-year-old Krrish star and Kangana Ranaut have slapped legal notices on each other for defamation. Hrithik Roshan, who was the first to send the legal notice to Kangana Ranaut, has demanded that she apologise in a press conference publicly and clear the air about their alleged affair which he firmly refutes. Kangana Ranaut had replied by sending a counter-notice to the actor and alleging him of slut-shaming her by circulating private mails and photos. (Also read. Hrithik Roshan to approach cyber-crime cell again to find imposter talking to Kangana Ranaut) Kangana lawyer: Why didnt Hrithik filed a complaint against mails in May 2014? Mumbai, Apr 24 (PTI) In the ongoing war between Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut, the actress lawyer today claimed that the emails leaked to media, allegedly by the actor, are not reliable and the Krrish star filed a police complaint after a delay of seven month despite having prior knowledge that the email account of Queen star was hacked. A number of emails, allegedly written to Roshan from Kanganas side, were leaked to a newspaper which appear to show that the affair was one-sided. The lawyer said Kanganas sister, Rangoli had informed Hrithik that the actress account was hacked and she had even suggested that they should file a joint complaint. He (Hrithik) then allegedly stoped communication with my client or her sister and instead surprisingly starts receiving a lot of one-sided emails from my client at a time when my clients emails were hacked. He not only has full knowledge of the same but accused of hacking her emails, Kanganas lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui said in a statement. The lawyer also accused Roshan of diligently storing and maintaining these unverified and fabricated emails for future use as is seen now. It has also been observed that he willfully fails to authenticate the genuineness of any of these emails which he received from a hacked account. Sidduqui claimed when the actor collected sufficient unverified emails with him, he then filed an informal complaint with the police without informing Kangana or her sister. He claimed Hrithik abandoned his complaint with police for 14 months before taking it up again this year in February while sending a defamation notice to Kangana for calling him a silly ex. 29-year-old Kangana is set to record her statement in the fake imposter case, filed by Hrithik, on April 30 but her lawyer said the actor did not wait for it and instead started showing media these unverified and fabricated emails to prove that Kangana was mentally not stable. When his name, image and reputation was at stake and he was accused of hacking my clients emails and also of being in a relationship with my client, besides there being a charge on him that he has also sent a lot of stuff in the last 6 months to my client and that therefore there cannot be any imposter, Siddiqui claimed, adding why did not the actor bother to clear his name immediately. What started as a complaint against an alleged imposter by Hrithik has turned into an ugly public and legal battle between the two stars, with both coming up with allegations and counter-allegations against each other every other day. The 42-year-old Krrish star and Kangana have slapped legal notices on each other for defamation. Hrithik, who was the first to send the legal notice to Kangana, has demanded that she apologise in a press conference publicly and clear the air about their alleged affair which he firmly refutes. Kangana had replied by sending a counter-notice to the actor and alleging him of slut-shaming her by circulating private mails and photos. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: India has cancelled the visa given to a leading Chinese dissident to participate in a conference in Dharamsala, apparently after China objected to it. We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa, a Home Ministry spokesperson today said without elaborating further. Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who lives in Germany, had been invited for the conference being organised by US-based Initiatives for China. Reacting to the Indian move, Isa said, On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation. He said he did not know what exactly was the reason for it. May be because of Chinese pressure put on the Indian government. But, I do not know...I did not get any explanation from the Indian side, he said. Indias decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking Indias bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. Chinas unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: India has banned import of milk and milk products, certain mobile phones and a few other items from China after finding them sub-standard or not following security codes. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Lok Sabha that India banned import of milk and milk products from China as their quality was unacceptable. Sitharaman said some mobile phones, which do not carry International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number or other security features, and some steel products have also been banned from importing from China. Complete ban of import from any country is not possible now due to WTO rules even if we have problems diplomatically, territorially or militarily, she said. The Minister said Indias trade deficit with China stood at USD 48.68 billion during 2015-16 (April-February) and the total bilateral trade was USD 65.16 billion during the period. Increasing trade deficit with China can be attributed primarily to the fact that Chinese exports to India rely strongly on manufactured items to meet the demand of fast expanding sectors like telecom and power, while Indias exports to China are characterised by primarily and intermediate products, she said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ankara: Turkey has killed almost 900 alleged members of the Islamic State (IS) group since January through artillery fire and air raids, the state-run Anatolia news agency said today, citing military sources. The country, a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS, has killed 492 terrorists since January 9 in air raids, while another 370 were killed in artillery strikes which also destroyed arms depots, the agency said. These figures could not be independently verified. Turkey, which has been hit by attacks blamed on jihadists, including two deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul that targeted foreign tourists, began to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria last summer. Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group in Syria. Turkey began its air strikes following a suicide bombing in July last year blamed on IS extremists, which killed 34 people in the border town of Suruc. In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border from Syria, prompting the army to respond to each strike with howitzer fire. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Istanbul: The Kurdish rebel PKK movement is ready to step up its fight against Turkey in response to Ankaras crackdown, its leader said. Since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) last year, Turkish government forces have been waging a blistering military campaign against the group in the southeast of the country. PKK leader Cemil Bayik said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was escalating this war. The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approachof course the PKK will escalate the war, he told BBC in an interview. Erdogan said this month that 355 members of the security forces had been killed in fighting as well as over 5,000 PKK membersalthough this could not be independently verified. The PKK has been blamed for a string of attacks in Turkey in recent months, while two bombings in Ankara this year were claimed by a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical splinter group of the rebel movement. The rebels are accused of trying to create a separate Kurdish state within Turkey, but Bayik denied it. We dont want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. We dont want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds innate rights are accepted, he said. The PKK was ready to escalate the conflict not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well, he added. Erdogan wants the Kurds to surrender. If they dont surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly - he doesnt hide it, Bayik said. The PKK launched a bloody insurgency against the Turkish government in 1984 seeking independence, beginning a decades-long fight for greater autonomy and rights for Kurds which has left 40,000 dead. It later watered down its demands to seek instead more autonomy with cultural and language rights. Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan called a truce in March 2013, but tensions over the Syrian conflict kickstarted the violence last year. Erdogan has proposed stripping Turkish citizenship from supporters of Kurdish rebels and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is trying to alter Turkeys constitution, to allow prosecutions of pro-Kurdish lawmakers accused of terrorist propaganda. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Kabul: Afghanistans president has called on Pakistan to battle the Taliban rather than try to bring them into peace talks. Ashraf Ghani made the remarks during an address to parliament today, a week after a Taliban assault on the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 64 people and wounded another 340. Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the Taliban. The Taliban leadership is widely believed to be based in Pakistani tribal regions along the border. Ghani said there are no good or bad terrorists, they are just terrorists, and that Pakistan must understand that and act against them. Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States have been trying to revive peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban in recent months, but have made little progress. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A Mumbai Court has acquitted all eight accused of 2006 Malegaon bomb blast case. A bench of Justice VV Patil gave the verdict on the plea of nine accused, out of which 1 is dead, six are out on bail and two are convicted. The court questioned the locus standi of Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) in the case. The accused, Salman Farsi, Noorulhuda Doha, Rais Ahmed, Mohammed Ali, Asif Khan, Javed Sheikh, Faroogue Ansari and Abrar Ahmed, were being investigated for four bomb explosions on September 8, 2006. The blasts have killed 37 people and injured more than 100. The explosions took place near Hamida Masjid in the Bade Kabarastan area of Malegaon. The men have already spent five years in jail before being granted bail in 2011. In 2011, the National Investigation Agency took over the case. They have alleged that they were tortured into making confessions by the police. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday said that its better to dance and earn bread than to beg in the streets and adopt unacceptable means to earn money. The court made the remarks while hearing a petition against the dance bars. The petition had claimed that the dance inside these bars isnt the cultural dance but obscenity. However, the court asserted that the subjective morality cant be judged in this matter. Also, the court said that its 2016 and dance is an acceptable practice. The remarks came a week after the apex court had pulled up the Maharashtra government for not providing liscence to dance bars despite its order in favour of the same. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The internal probe committee set up by the Jawahar Lal Nehru University to probe into the infamous JNU Row has submitted its report. The committee has rusticated student leader Umar Khalid for one semester, Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15 and Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters. As per decision, Bhattacharya has been barred from pursuing any course in JNU for next 5 years from July 23. The committee has also imposed a Rs 10,000 fine on Kanhaiya Kumar for violating disciplinary norms. The student union leaders were arrested on sedition charges over the Feb 09 event sympathising with Afzal Guru. They were later released from the Tihar Jail on interim bail for 6 months in sedition case. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former studentsBanojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadiwhile hostel facilities have been withdrawn for Ashutosh Kumar for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21. A high-level committee constituted by the university to probe the February 9 event found ABVP member Saurabh Sharma, who had objected to the event, guilty of blocking traffic on the day of the event and penalised him with Rs 20,000. Surprisingly, Aishwarya Adhikari, whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been imposed the same penalty. Apart from Kanhaiya, the eight suspended students included Khalid, Bhattacharya, Ashutosh, Rama Naga, Anant Kumar, Shweta Raj and Aishwarya Adhikari. They were suspended on February 12 for their alleged involvement in organising an event to protest the hanging of the Parliament attack convict on his third death anniversary. With PTI Inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Chinese smartphone major Lenovo, in a surprise movement announced to slash the prices of Vibe S1 phone. Now, the device will be available at a price of Rs 12,999, exclusively available only on Amazon India website. The Lenovo Vibe S1, was launched last year at a price of Rs 15,999 which was one of the premium handsets by Lenovo. The new handset has a 5-inch screen with FullHD and runs on Android 5 aka Lollipop. The new Lenovo Vibe S1 uses a MediaTek MT6752 processor and with 3GB RAM. I has a metal frame and a curved glass on the back. It offers 32GB storage with 13 megapixel back camera and with dual front ones. An 8-megapixel camera clicks regular photos while the 2-megapixel camera captures the 3D depth information. New Delhi : Parliament today passed a bill to amend a 91-year-old law to exclude Sahajdharis from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies, fulfilling a long-pending demand of the community ahead of assembly elections in Punjab next year. The Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was passed by the Lok Sabha more than a month after Rajya Sabha approved it. Replying to a debate on the bill, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the demand for not giving voting rights to Sahejdari Sikhs was made by Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee members and office bearers. The SGPC office bearers and members have often demanded that those who are not Sikhs should not be given voting rights (in the election to select elect the members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act). The SPGC General Assembly of 2001 also passed a resolution regarding this. The High Court has said that a competent legislature needs to pass the bill. Even the Rajya Sabha has passed the bill unanimously, Singh said. The definition of Sehajdhari Sikh has no religious sanction as far as the fundamental tenets of the religion are concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwara Act, 1925 under certain circumstances prevailing then. The Bill proposes to remove the exception given to Sahajdharis in 1944 to vote in elections to select members of the Board and the Committees constituted under the Act. The Union Cabinet had recently approved a proposal of the Home Ministry to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, with effect from October 8, 2003. The amendment was also carried out by a Home Ministry notification dated October 8, 2003. However, the notification was quashed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on December 20, 2011, leaving it to the appropriate and competent legislature to decide as to whether or not to amend the Act to that effect. Participating in the discussion, Ravneet Singh Bittoo (Cong) said in view of the amendments brought in the legislation, the Sikh Gurudwaras Act should be renamed as Badal Gurudwara Act. You are trying to divide families through conspiracy.. You are doing wrong with 70 lakh Sikhs who had voting rights in SGPC for 60 years...You are dividing the already minority community of Punjab into sub-minority community, Bitto said. He said it will not be proper to amend the Act as there were several cases pending in Courts. As the Congress member criticised the provisions of the Bill alleging that the hefty funds of the SGPC were being misused to organise election rallies of the Akali Dal government, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) members shot back, asking him not to play politics. Prem Singh Chandumajra (SAD) said there will be no divide within the community with the passage of the bill and alleged that those trying to stop the amendment to the Act as they were themselves involved in illegal activities in gurudwaras. Supporting the Bill, BJPs Meenakshi Lekhi said those who did not follow the basic tenets of Sikhism cannot be a part to choose the management that controls Gurudwaras. Maintaining that the SAD government in Punjab was using religion for political gains, Bhagwant Mann (AAP) said their seats (in Punjab) are diminishing and so they are trying to misuse it. Intervening in the discussion, Union Minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal said the bill dealt with an issue which does not affect any community other than the Sikhs. Non-Sikhs are not in a position to decide who can vote. It is the Sikh community which can decide. Do not play politics and make a mockery, she said, adding only two per cent of the national population were Sikhs who have sacrificed lives for freedom struggle. Santokh Singh Chaudhary (Cong) charged the Akalis with encouraging separatism and terrorism. Assembly elections in Punjab are scheduled early next year. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mumbai: The Bombay High Court today granted anticipatory bail to producer Rahul Raj Singh, accused of abetting the suicide of actress Pratyusha Banerjee, after observing that prima facie there is no evidence to show that the accused instigated or intended the suicide. From the statements of witnesses, it is clearly seen that harassment and disputes were there between the applicant accused (Rahul) and the victim (Pratyusha). But prima facie, there is nothing on record to show abetment, Justice Mridula Bhatkar said. The court was hearing the application filed by Rahul seeking pre-arrest bail after the sessions court rejected his plea. The high court, while granting his application, directed Rahul to appear before the Bangur Nagar police, which is probing the case, thrice a week for two weeks. For an offence to be made out under section 306 of IPC (abetment to suicide) there should be instigation, intentional aid or an intent that the person should commit suicide. It is necessary to show whether the accused had mens rea (intention), the court said. It added that harassment or disputes can be a reason for a person to not like another person and take steps to end his or her life. For that person, the behaviour of the other person may be the cause of his or her death. However, for an offence of abetment to be proved, there should be evidence to show instigation, provocation and intention, the court said. Justice Bhatkar further said that how a person will react to the situation is unpredictable and sensitivity differs from one person to another. Under such circumstances, unless the intention of the person held responsible for the suicide is brought on record prima facie, it cannot be said that it is abetment, the judge said. The court in its chamber during the day heard the last telephonic conversation between Rahul and Pratyusha recorded on April 1 an hour before the actress committed suicide. Throughout the conversation, the applicant accused is asking the victim (Pratyusha) not to take any drastic steps and assured her that he would return home immediately. After perusing all the facts of the case, this court is prima facie of the view that the police can investigate the case without any custodial interrogation of the accused, the court said. Special Public Prosecutor Nilesh Pawaskar, while seeking Rahuls custody, told the court that the police, after an initial probe, were looking into if murder charges were applicable in the case. We are confused and still seeing if section 302 of IPC is applicable. The probe has revealed that the accused is a drug addict. We want to see if he is also a peddler and had administered drugs to the victim. Several other girls have approached the police saying that they had been duped in the past by Rahul, Pawaskar said. The prosecutor also told the court that the police was also probing if Pratyusha was forced by Rahul to abort her pregnancy. The court, however, said the police does not require the custody of the accused to invoke section 302 in the case. Why is the police complicating the case? Right now, the offence registered against the accused is under section 306 for abetment. Show me the evidence for this section. Show me mens rea (intention), instigation and facilitation, Justice Bhatkar said. Rahuls lawyer Abaad Ponda argued that Rahul and Pratyusha were happy with each other and had even partied together the night before Pratyusha committed suicide. On April 1, Rahul had gone out in the afternoon to bring lunch when Pratyusha called him. Rahul berated her for drinking in the day time and told her that he would return soon, he said. Ponda added that the post-mortem report also suggests that Pratyusha committed suicide and that it was not murder. Washington: Unique and unexpected behaviour of water molecules that is unmatched by any known gas, liquid or solid states has been discovered by scientists, including one of Indian-origin. A new tunnelling state of water molecules confined in hexagonal ultra-small channels - 5 angstrom across - of the mineral beryl has been described by the researchers at the US Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). An angstrom is 1/10-billionth of a metre, and individual atoms are typically about one angstrom in diameter. The discovery, made possible with experiments at ORNLs Spallation Neutron Source and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, demonstrates features of water under ultra confinement in rocks, soil and cell walls, which scientists predict will be of interest across many disciplines. At low temperatures, this tunnelling water exhibits quantum motion through the separating potential walls, which is forbidden in the classical world, said lead author Alexander Kolesnikov of ORNLs Chemical and Engineering Materials Division. This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are delocalised and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time. Its one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience, said Kolesnikov. The existence of the tunnelling state of water shown in the study should help scientists better describe the thermodynamic properties and behaviour of water in highly confined environments such as water diffusion and transport in the channels of cell membranes, in carbon nanotubes and along grain boundaries and at mineral interfaces in a host of geological environments. While previous studies have observed tunnelling of atomic hydrogen in other systems, the discovery that water exhibits such tunnelling behaviour is unprecedented. The neutron scattering and computational chemistry experiments showed that, in the tunnelling state, the water molecules are delocalised around a ring so the water molecule assumes an unusual double top-like shape. First principle simulations made by Narayani Choudhury of Lake Washington Institute of Technology and University of Washington-Bothell showed that the tunnelling behaviour is coupled to the vibrational dynamics of the beryl structure. The average kinetic energy of the water protons directly obtained from the neutron experiment is a measure of their motion at almost absolute zero temperature and is about 30 per cent less than it is in bulk liquid or solid water, Kolesnikov said. This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes, said Kolesnikov. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: In a sudden move, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet today during which the issues dogging the bilateral ties including the Pathankot terror strike will be discussed. Primarily, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will be here on a day-long visit to attend the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process. An announcement to this effect was made in Islamabad. On the sidelines of the meet, Chaudhry will hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar to review the status of bilateral ties and Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue (CBD), which is stagnant. According to sources,the focus of the talks would be on the investigation into the Pathankot terror strike and a possible visit by NIA team to Pakistan in this connection. This will be first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year. The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. The meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basits recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side, which maintained that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed. Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan, it added. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Taking forward the Look East policy of the government, President Pranab Mukherjee will embark on a six-day trip to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and New Zealand this week, his first state visit to the two countries. Terming the visit as Act East, a natural extension of the governments Look East policy, the Presidents Press Secretary Venu Rajamony told reporters it would play a significant role in strengthening Indias economic relations with Pacific nations like PNG. The visit is likely to give a push to Indian pharmaceutical companies to set up businesses in the pacific nation after the local government withdrew a ban in January this year. The PNG is looking towards India for enhanced cooperation in the health sector and capacity building in Information Technology, Joint Secretary (South) in External Affairs Ministry Jaideep Majumdar said. PNG, which is the largest Pacafic Island nation, both in terms of population and area, has large natural resources of oil, gas and minerals. The dicussions regarding cooperation in these areas will be taken forward after the conclusion of Presidents visit, he said. During the second conference of Pacific nations held in India last year, New Delhi had offered radars for coastal surveillance and patrolling craft for maritime security to the PNG, he said. President Mukherjee will be arriving in PNG on April 28 after which he will witness signing of agreements in the fields of health, economic cooperation and Information Technology besides addressing the students and business community. The President will be accompanied by Minister of State for Agriculture Sanjeev Baliyan and a three-member delegation of MPs. About the Presidents visit to New Zealand, which starts from April 30, he said India traditionally shared close relations with that country. The Indian diaspora of 1,75,000 helps to further cement our ties, he said. The two sides will look at prospects for cooperation in agriculture, dairy, food processing, education and skill development as well as high technology. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had visited India in 2011 and its Governor General in 2008, 2009 and 2011. The last high-level visit from India was by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : The Sabarimala temple management today told the Supreme Court that the ban on entry of females aged between 10 and 50 years was because they cannot maintain purity for 41 days on account of menstruation, prompting the judges to ask how periods could be linked to purity. Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine in Kerala, also claimed the ban was not discrimininatory and based on reasonable classification. There is no gender discrimination. There is a reasonable classification by which certain class of women are excluded, senior advocate K K Venugopal, representing the Devaswom Board, told a three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra. What is the fulcrum of this classification, the bench asked referring to the bar on entry of women of a particular age group. Venugopal said girls and women in the age group are excluded as they cannot maintain purity for a period of 41 days due to the mensuration. Do you to mean to say that mensuration is associated with with purity of women? You are making distinction based on purity... Now the question is whether the Constitutional principles allow this? the bench, also comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, said. At the outset, Venugopal said women and men both are allowed entry into the temple and hence, there is no case of gender discrimination and females of a particular age group are not allowed due to the centuries-old custom. There are as many as eight Lord Ayappa temples in Delhi and NCR region and women are allowed inside, he said, adding that the Sabarimala temple is different. Women are allowed inside in Sabarimala also, but they cannot climb eighteen sacred steps on the hill unless they maintain 41 days of purity, he said, adding that the High Court verdict, favouring the practice, is a judgment in rem (continuity) and the apex court should not re-examine it by entertaining a PIL. The arguments remained inconclusive and would resume on May 2. The court is hearing a PIL, filed by Indian Young Lawyers Association seeking entry of women into the Sabarimala temple, located on a hilltop in the Western Ghats of Keralas Pathanamthitta District. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Hanover (Germany): President Barack Obama today said the US would send up to 250 more special forces and other military personnel to Syria to help rebels fight Islamic State group jihadists. Obama was in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, and both later met the British, French and Italian leaders to discuss the battle against IS in its self-declared caliphate across northern Syria and Iraq. In a speech in the German city of Hanover, Obama hailed NATO partners progress so far in pushing back IS, which he called the most urgent threat to our nations. A small number of American special operations forces are already on the ground in Syria and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas, he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group. So, given the success, I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum. The US forces will not lead the fight on the ground but provide training and advice to local forces against IS. These terrorists will learn the same lessons that others before them have, which is: your hatred is no match for our nations, united in defence of our way of life, said Obama. Syrian opposition group the High Negotiations Committee said boosting the US military presence to about 300 would be a good step and help rid our country of this scourge. But Syria will not be free of terrorism until we see the end of the Assad regimes reign of terror, added HNC spokesman Salem Al Meslet. While most world powers agree that ISwhich has boasted of beheadings and other battlefield atrocities as well as terror attacks in Paris and Brusselsmust be defeated, they have backed different sides in Syrias complex civil war. Western powers have offered some support to moderate rebels, while Russia has sent troops and fighter jets to back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Aiming to end the bloodshed, all sides eight weeks ago agreed a ceasefire, but it has been frayed by escalating violence around Aleppo, with dozens killed by government air strikes and rebel rockets. Obama yesterday pressed for all parties to return to the negotiating table and reinstate the internationally-brokered ceasefirethe clearest indication yet that the White House believes the truce has all but disintegrated. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, put some blame for the lack of progress on the US side. We came to an agreement with the Americans for them to use their influence on these good opposition groups and to get them to leave, so that no one would hinder the destruction of terrorist groups, Lavrov said. But despite these promises made by the US, nothing has been done in the two months since. A Western diplomat in Geneva told AFP that the truce deal is in poor shape, the result very largely of Assad regime attacks on Syria civilians, towns and marketplaces, as well as on the moderate armed opposition. But the diplomat said all parties to the International Syria Support Group which agreed the truce are committed to maintaining it, and no member believes the cessation (of violence) to be over. Ground troops a mistake - Syrias conflict, which began in March 2011 with widespread anti-Assad protests, has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has killed 270,000 people. Obama has come under criticism for his handling of Syrias war, with opponents saying he could have done more to stem the bloodshed. But the US presidentwho came to power vowing to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistanhas stood firm in his opposition to plunging the United States into another ground war in the Islamic world. In an interview with the BBC, Obama said that it would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain, or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime. Pressure on Obama to end the bloodshed is increasing in the United States, which in is the throes of a fiercely fought presidential election race, and from European allies who want to halt the massive influx of refugees. Many of his critics have called for a safe zone to be established, but Obama has rejected the idea. As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country, Obama said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : India will host a major conference tomorrow aimed at bringing peace and stability to war-ravaged Afghanistan and speeding up its reconstruction with a focus on boosting investment and enhancing connectivity to the country. The Heart of Asia (HoA) conference, to be attended by officials of a number of countries including Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, is likely to deliberate on a host of issues such a combating challenge of extremism and terrorism. The key elements of HoA process have been to devise a sustained, incremental approach to implementation of the confidence building measures (CBM) in Afghanistan and the officials are set to deliberate on them during the conference. Energy, infrastructure and investment deals to shore up economic growth of Afghanistan may figure in the talks. In HoA process, India has been demanding dismantling safe havens and sanctuaries of terror in the region besides pressing for deeper engagement of various stakeholders for Afghanistans stability and security. India is against mainstreaming of armed groups without adhering to the red lines. It has also been seeking action on combating the twin scourges of extremism and separatism besides emphasising on disrupting financial and other kinds of support to terrorism. India has also been favouring enhancing connectivity of Afghanistan with regional markets. The first foreign ministers-level meeting of the HoA process was held under the aegis of the Istanbul Conference in November, 2011. It presented a new vision of cooperation and confidence building for the region with Afghanistan at its centre by bringing together Afghanistan and its surrounding region. The conference had agreed that the Istanbul Process on Regional Security and Cooperation for a secure and stable Afghanistan is a non-binding process. India is actively participating in all the six CBMs under this mechanism including counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, disaster management, education and regional infrastructure. The Istanbul process has been consistent with Indias vision of achieving lasting stability and prosperity for Afghanistan, anchored in a regional environment that is stable, economically integrated and conducive to shared prosperity. The second ministerial conference was held in 2012 in Kabul while the third in 2013 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The fourth conference took place in Beijing and the fifth conference was held in Islamabad in December last year which was attended by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. India hosted the senior officials Meeting of the Istanbul process in January 17, 2014 in New Delhi. India is set to host the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the HoA Process in the last quarter of 2016. The 14 participating countries in HoA process are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and UAE. The supporting countries include Australia, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Iraq, Japan, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK the US and the EU. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Islamabad: Pakistan is expected to ask India to revive the stalled peace process in the ice-breaking meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in New Delhi, sources said today. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will travel to New Delhi today to attend the Heart of Asia regional conference, Foreign Office (FO) said. Diplomatic sources said Chaudhry will meet his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the conference. The two diplomats will discuss various issues. Pakistan will also seek revival of peace process as was agreed in December, they said. This will be first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had an informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year. Pakistani sources said no major breakthrough was expected in the meeting to be held under the shadow of the Pathankot attack and the arrest of an alleged Indian spy in the country. FO said Pakistani delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other countries. It, however, did not mention anything about Chaudhry's meeting with Jaishankar. Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process, which was established in 2011 as a platform to discuss regional issues including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, the Foreign Office statement said. Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. The conference had adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled Emphasising Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In a setting etched into the history of the American Revolution, Bernie Sanders brought his upset-minded political revolution to Connecticut on Sunday night on the turf of Hillary Clinton. An estimated crowd of 14,000 people flooded the landmark New Haven Green to soak up the income-equality message of the Democratic socialist senator from Vermont. A few blocks away is Yale Law School, the alma mater of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The carnival-like gathering on the former revolutionary militia grounds marked the debut of Sanders in Connecticut, which holds its presidential primaries Tuesday. We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent, Sanders said, the sun setting behind the yuge crowd. In a state with a streak for liberal underdogs, Sanders is trying to deny the Clinton machine its first victory in a contested Democratic primary. This campaign, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, is a campaign of the people, for the people and by the people, Sanders said. We are doing something very unusual in contemporary American politics we are telling the truth. The voice of the idiosyncratic 74-year-old echoed through the downtown of the states second-largest city and lefty stronghold as the sun set behind the green. Sanders railed on Clintons campaign warchest and said his rival has reaped six-figure paycheck from giving speeches to banks and other special interest groups. This campaign is listening to ordinary Americans, not just wealthy campaign contributors, Sanders said. We dont want a super PAC. We dont need their money. Clintons campaign, which held Bridgeport rally and Stamford fundraiser Sunday, declined to comment. Sanders supporters, many of them young, reveled in the moment. Its kind of crazy, said Nicholas Sarg, 21, of Ansonia. Its really refreshing to hear someone say what America is going through. Even though he is not old enough to vote, Ryan Gulick, 16, of Fairfield, made his dad drive him to New Haven. Ryan, who has volunteered making phone calls for Sanders, said the European model espoused by Sanders of guaranteed health care hooked him. The word socialist isnt as scary, Gulick said. Countries like England and France have all the stuff we dont have. Sanders was introduced by former REM frontman Michael Stipe. There is true revolution at hand, Stipe said. Sal Liccione, a member of the Westport Democratic Town Committee and a Sanders supporter, made a point of being at the rally. Ive met Bernie, Liccione said. I think his view to turn the country around is great. I think many of us are being pushed away from the party. Bernie is bringing young people in. Nina Sherwood, of Stamford, a Sanders campaign organizer, was busy Sunday working the streets for her candidate instead of attending the rally. We are canvassing and phone banking, Sherwood said. I think we have a great shot with Connecticut. With the calls and doors we are knocking on, people are enthusiastic. Sherwood said the open rally on the New Haven Green is perfect for Sanders. People need to hear what he has to say, Sherwood said. People will show up with friends and fall in love with him because he is so genuine. It resonates with people. Sidharth Oberoi was a dream tutor -- a 17-year-old entering his junior year at the University of Utah and teaching math on the side. We had a good response from parents, he says, but he didnt love his employers curriculum, and there was no way to track what students were learning. Then a competitor, a local tutoring company called Zane Prep, started courting Oberoi -- and after six months, the whiz tutor finally said OK. At Zane, Oberoi developed a curriculum that combined Western teaching styles with whats called Singapore math, a visual and intuitive learning system used in many countries whose students rank high in science and math. But when they tested the model, something seemed missing. So Oberoi suggested they include STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education -- but in creative, unexpected ways. Today, Oberoi is 23 and president of Zaniac, an after-school program for kindergarten through grade eight, with 10 locations across the country and another 15 targeted to open this year. Dont kids learn all this stuff in school? Not really. Were going to see a shortage of three million workers qualified for STEM jobs in the next generation. No one is doing any real engineering or tech before they hit high school or college. Kids use tech as consumers, but they are not learning how it works or how to program it. Most people are not exposed to any real engineering until they declare a major in it. One of our executives didnt have any hands-on engineering until he was a sophomore in college. We hope to fill that void. So what courses do you teach at Zaniac? We offer six-week courses that meet for 90 minutes, one day per week. Theres the math course I developed, but we also have computer programming classes, where kids learn to code and eventually write games in Python, and classes where they can create apps and design websites using HTML5 and CSS3; use the video game Minecraft to learn about physics or architectural design; use LEGOs to learn robotics and environmental science and use toys called LittleBits to explore circuits and hardware development. There are also classes on fashion design, aerospace engineering, 3-D printing, typing, chess and even game modding. Youve complained about transparency at other programs. How do you track growth? First, all students in our math classes take assessment tests to place them; after that, in the first five minutes of every class, theyre tested on the previous weeks info. Improvement is plotted on a graph. In our other classes, progress isnt as measurable, but we try to instill in the kids what we call 21st-century skills. We teach problem solving, collaboration and self-direction, how to put their heads down and complete a project. You can have a million-dollar idea, but its worth zero unless you can formulate it, enhance it and present it to others. There are a lot of STEM programs out there. What makes Zaniac special? Most after-school programs happen at school or at another temporary space. We have a retail presence, 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. Just like adults,kids need a productive place to work away from home and away from school. This is a vibrant place to hang out and take a class or finish homework, or be inspired. Also, its the breadth of our offerings versus our competitors. We understand that tech is constantly changing. Minecraft is one of our best-selling courses, but its probably a fad and will be going away. We make sure we sustain ourselves with something new. Every year we reach out to students that we havent engaged previously with new courses. Related: This Tutor Used a Blend of Teaching Styles to Reach Kids Worldwide Meet the Man Who's Bringing Automated Fast Food to the Masses This Lego Franchise Snaps Together a Winning Retail Formula Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Ken Tuccio is the voice of "Welcome To Connecticut," a podcast he started from his home office in Norwalk in 2014. Since then, he has been named one of Connecticut Magazine's 40 Under 40, and has hosted events around the area. On April 23, Tuccio hosted the Blind Beer Awards at the Blind Rhino in South Norwalk. Twelve Connecticut breweries brought their best IPA to the event. The beer tasting event eliminated bias by not telling allowing Connecticut beer drinkers where each beer was from. Participants then voted for what they like best based solely on the beer. LUGANO, Switzerland and PICKERING, Canada, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - Helsinn, the Swiss Group focused on building quality cancer care products and Purdue Pharma Canada today announce that they have signed an exclusive agreement for the distribution and licensing of Akynzeo, the oral fixed combination of netupitant and palonosetron developed for the prevention of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). Under the terms of the agreement, Helsinn retains clinical development activities and the manufacturing and supply of Akynzeo. Purdue Pharma Canada will have exclusive rights to registration, marketing, promotion, distribution and sales of Akynzeo in Canada. Akynzeo is already approved in the US, the EU, Switzerland, Israel, and Australia. Akynzeo has been recommended by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) antiemetic guidelines, both in Highly Emetogenic Chemotherapy (HEC) and Moderately Emetogenic Chemotherapy (MEC). The American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) validated Akynzeo as an additional therapy that will facilitate the application of standard of care for patients receiving HEC regimens by preventing nausea and vomiting in both the acute and delayed phases of emesis. In addition, Akynzeo is included in the MASCC/ESMO Guidelines for patients receiving HEC and carboplatin based chemotherapy. Riccardo Braglia, Helsinn Group Vice Chairman and CEO, commented: "We are delighted to be working with Purdue Pharma Canada to make Akynzeo available in Canada, subject to regulatory approval. Helsinn seeks to improve the lives of people with cancer everywhere, by making the highest quality products available where they are needed. Akynzeo has been well received by a number of respected cancer organizations who have recommended its use as part of standard of care regimens for the treatment of CINV." Dr. Craig Landau, President and CEO, Purdue Pharma Canada added: "Subject to product approval by Health Canada, this agreement will enable us to provide Canadians with an important and novel treatment in oncology supportive care which can mitigate the distressing side effects of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting" said Dr. Craig Landau, President and CEO of Purdue Pharma Canada. "Further, this agreement supports Purdue Pharma Canada's goal to diversify our existing portfolio in cancer supportive care, an obvious adjacency to our existing analgesic business, further strengthening our growth plans in Canada." About the Helsinn Group Helsinn is a privately owned cancer supportive care pharmaceutical group with an extensive portfolio of marketed products and a broad development pipeline. Since 1976, Helsinn has been improving the everyday lives of patients, guided by core family values of respect, integrity and quality, through a unique integrated licensing business model working with long standing partners in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and nutritional supplement products. Helsinn is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with operating subsidiaries in Ireland and the US, a representative office in China, as well as a product presence in about 90 countries globally. In 2016, our 40th anniversary year, you can meet representatives from Helsinn at: ASCO Annual Meeting ( Chicago , USA , 3-7 June) , , 3-7 June) MASCC Annual Meeting ( Adelaide, Australia , 23-25 June) , 23-25 June) ChemOutsourcing Conference ( Parsippany, New Jersey , 19-21 September) , 19-21 September) CPhI Worldwide ( Barcelona, Spain , 4-6 October) , 4-6 October) ESMO Congress ( Copenhagen, Denmark , 7-11 October) , 7-11 October) BioEurope (Koln, Germany , 4-6 November) For more information, please visit www.helsinn.com About Purdue Pharma Canada Purdue Pharma Canada is a research-based pharmaceutical company with its headquarters, R&D operations, and manufacturing located in Pickering, Ontario. The company is a leader in the research and development of medicines for the treatment of pain and central nervous system disorders (ADHD) and a growing pipeline of prescription and over the counter products. Privately held, Purdue Pharma Canada is independently associated with the worldwide Purdue/Napp/Mundipharma network of companies. In 2016, our 60th anniversary year, you can meet representatives from Purdue Pharma Canada at: BIO ( San Francisco , USA , 6-9 June) , , 6-9 June) BioEurope (Koln, Germany , 4-6 November) For more information, please visit our website www.purdue.ca SOURCE Purdue Pharma Image with caption: "Helsinn Group (CNW Group/Purdue Pharma)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160425_C8468_PHOTO_EN_673652.jpg Image with caption: "Purdue Pharma (CNW Group/Purdue Pharma)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160425_C8468_PHOTO_EN_673654.jpg For further information: Helsinn Group: Paola Bonvicini, Head of Communication & Press Office, Lugano, Switzerland, Tel: +41 (0) 91 985 21 21, [email protected]; For media / external inquiries: Consilium Strategic Communications, Mary-Jane Elliott / Jessica Hodgson / Matthew Neal / Laura Thornton, London, UK, Tel: +44 (0)203 709 5700, [email protected]; Purdue Pharma Canada: Aimee Sulliman, Director of Communications, Pickering, Ontario CANADA, Tel: 1 (905) 420-4423, Email: [email protected] TORONTO, April 22, 2016 /CNW/ - (TSX: KFS, NYSE: KFS) Kingsway Financial Services Inc. ("Kingsway" or the "Company") today announced its operating results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016. All amounts are in U.S. dollars unless indicated otherwise. Management Comments Larry G. Swets, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Kingsway entered 2016 seeking new growth opportunities as a result of a considerably improved financial position. After the successful execution of a number of initiatives in 2015 that strengthened our balance sheet, we approved a share buy-back plan and continue to pursue expansion opportunities where we can leverage our expertise and track record. We are focused on managing our insurance operations properly while taking advantage of the float provided by this business to invest in many of our new opportunities. In addition to our recent announcement of the acquisition of Argo Management Group and the formation of 1347 Warranty Holdings, we are progressing on other initiatives that will provide a platform for strategic investments and expect to update shareholders on these matters in the coming months." Operating Results The Company reported net loss attributable to common shareholders of $1.5 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2016, compared to net income attributable to common shareholders of $2.1 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2015. Following are highlights of Kingsway's first quarter 2016 results. Operating (loss) income reflects the Company's core operating activities, including its reportable segments, passive investment portfolio, merchant banking activities and corporate operating expenses. Operating loss was $2.8 million for the first quarter of 2016 compared to operating income of $3.7 million for the first quarter of 2015. Insurance Underwriting segment operating loss was $0.2 million for the first quarter of 2016 compared to operating income of $0.3 million for the first quarter of 2015. Insurance Services segment operating loss was $0.2 million for the first quarter of 2016 compared to $0.2 million for the first quarter of 2015. Net investment loss of $0.1 million was reported in the first quarter of 2016 compared to net investment income of $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2015. Net realized losses of $0.2 million were reported in the first quarter of 2016 compared to net realized losses of zero in the first quarter of 2015. Other operating income and expense was a net expense of $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to a net income of $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2015. for the first quarter of 2016 compared to operating income of for the first quarter of 2015. Adjusted operating loss was $0.8 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to income of $7.3 million in the first quarter of 2015. in the first quarter of 2016 compared to income of in the first quarter of 2015. Book value decreased to $2.14 per share at March 31, 2016 from $2.22 per share at December 31, 2015 . The Company also carries a valuation allowance, in the amount of $14.43 per share at March 31, 2016 , against the deferred tax asset, primarily related to its loss carryforwards. Appointment of Director Kingsway also announced today that its Board of Directors has appointed John T. Fitzgerald as a Director. Mr. Fitzgerald joined Kingsway as Executive Vice President following Kingsway's acquisition of Argo Management Group, a private equity investment partnership co-founded by Mr. Fitzgerald in 2002. Prior to co-founding Argo Management Group, he was managing director of Adirondack Capital, LLC, a financial futures and derivatives trading firm, and he was a seat-owner on the Chicago Board of Trade. Mr. Fitzgerald was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance in 2001 from DePaul University with highest honor, Beta Gamma Sigma. He is a 2002 MBA graduate of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, with concentrations in Finance, Accounting and Management Strategy. Mr. Fitzgerald will serve until the election of directors at the Company's upcoming Annual General Meeting, at which time he will stand for re-election. About the Company Kingsway is a holding company functioning as a merchant bank with a focus on long-term value-creation. The Company owns or controls stakes in several insurance industry assets and utilizes its subsidiaries, 1347 Advisors LLC and 1347 Capital LLC, to pursue opportunities acting as an advisor, an investor and a financier. The common shares of Kingsway are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "KFS." Consolidated Statements of Operations (in thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three months ended March 31, 2016 2015 Revenues: Net premiums earned $ 29,427 $ 29,030 Service fee and commission income 5,322 5,398 Net investment (loss) income (72) 1,313 Net realized losses (171) Other-than-temporary impairment loss (10) Other income 2,374 8,357 Total revenues 36,880 44,088 Operating expenses: Loss and loss adjustment expenses 23,497 21,953 Commissions and premium taxes 5,598 5,747 Cost of services sold 773 663 General and administrative expenses 9,551 11,576 Amortization of intangible assets 295 317 Contingent consideration expense 144 Total operating expenses 39,714 40,400 Operating (loss) income (2,834) 3,688 Other (revenues) expenses, net: Interest expense 1,093 1,391 Foreign exchange losses, net 1 392 Gain on change in fair value of debt (2,528) (261) Equity in net loss of investee 69 136 Total other (revenues) expenses, net (1,365) 1,658 (Loss) income from continuing operations before income tax expense (1,469) 2,030 Income tax expense 26 22 (Loss) income from continuing operations (1,495) 2,008 Income from discontinued operations, net of taxes 1,426 Net (loss) income (1,495) 3,434 Less: net (loss) income attributable to noncontrolling interests in consolidated subsidiaries (39) 1,224 Less: dividends on preferred stock 82 81 Net (loss) income attributable to common shareholders $ (1,538) $ 2,129 (Loss) earnings per share - continuing operations: Basic: $ (0.08) $ 0.04 Diluted: $ (0.08) $ 0.03 Earnings per share - discontinued operations: Basic: $ $ 0.07 Diluted: $ $ 0.07 (Loss) earnings per share net (loss) income attributable to common shareholders: Basic: $ (0.08) $ 0.11 Diluted: $ (0.08) $ 0.10 Weighted average shares outstanding (in '000s): Basic: 19,710 19,710 Diluted: 19,710 21,149 Consolidated Balance Sheets (in thousands, except per share data) March 31, 2016 December 31, 2015 (unaudited) Assets Investments: Fixed maturities, at fair value (amortized cost of $61,589 and $55,606, respectively) $ 62,012 $ 55,559 Equity investments, at fair value (cost of $26,185 and $26,428, respectively) 26,303 27,559 Limited liability investments 20,240 20,141 Other investments, at cost which approximates fair value 4,060 4,077 Short-term investments, at cost which approximates fair value 935 400 Total investments 113,550 107,736 Cash and cash equivalents 40,984 51,701 Investment in investee 1,702 1,772 Accrued investment income 506 594 Premiums receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $165 and $165, respectively 32,670 27,090 Service fee receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $283 and $276, respectively 765 911 Other receivables, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $806 and $806, respectively 3,452 3,789 Reinsurance recoverable 1,176 1,422 Prepaid reinsurance premiums 134 7 Deferred acquisition costs, net 13,440 12,143 Income taxes recoverable 60 61 Property and equipment, net of accumulated depreciation of $12,667 and $12,537, respectively 5,458 5,577 Goodwill 10,078 10,078 Intangible assets, net of accumulated amortization of $6,304 and $6,009, respectively 14,441 14,736 Other assets 3,128 3,405 Total Assets $ 241,544 $ 241,022 Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity Liabilities: Unpaid loss and loss adjustment expenses: Property and casualty $ 52,870 $ 55,471 Vehicle service agreements 2,975 2,975 Total unpaid loss and loss adjustment expenses 55,845 58,446 Unearned premiums 41,555 35,234 Reinsurance payable 272 145 Subordinated debt, at fair value 37,370 39,898 Deferred income tax liability 2,946 2,924 Deferred service fees 34,771 34,319 Accrued expenses and other liabilities 20,227 19,959 Total Liabilities 192,986 190,925 Class A preferred stock, no par value; unlimited number authorized; 262,876 and 262,876 issued and outstanding at March 31, 2016 and December 31, 2015, respectively; redemption amount of $6,572 6,402 6,394 Shareholders' Equity: Common stock, no par value; unlimited number authorized; 19,709,706 and 19,709,706 issued and outstanding at March 31, 2016 and December 31, 2015, respectively Additional paid-in capital 341,847 341,646 Accumulated deficit (310,547) (308,995) Accumulated other comprehensive income 9,143 9,300 Shareholders' equity attributable to common shareholders 40,443 41,951 Noncontrolling interests in consolidated subsidiaries 1,713 1,752 Total Shareholders' Equity 42,156 43,703 Total Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity $ 241,544 $ 241,022 Non-U.S. GAAP Financial Measures Segment Operating (Loss) Income Segment operating (loss) income represents one measure of the pretax profitability of Kingsway's segments and is derived by subtracting direct segment expenses from direct segment revenues. Please refer to the section entitled "Non-U.S. GAAP Financial Measures" in the Management's Discussion and Analysis section of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 for a detailed description of this non-U.S. GAAP measure. Adjusted Operating (Loss) Income Adjusted operating (loss) income represents another measure used by the Company to assess the profitability of the Company's segments, its passive investment portfolio and its merchant banking activities. Adjusted operating (loss) income is comprised of segment operating (loss) income as well as net investment (loss) income, net realized losses, other-than-temporary impairment loss, equity in net loss of investee and net revenues of 1347 Advisors. A reconciliation of segment operating (loss) income and adjusted operating (loss) income to net (loss) income for the quarters ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 is presented below: (in thousands) Three months ended March 31, 2016 2015 Segment operating (loss) income $ (395) $ 136 Net investment (loss) income (72) 1,313 Net realized losses (171) Other-than-temporary impairment loss (10) Equity in net loss from investee (69) (136) Revenues of 1347 Advisors, net of related outside professional and advisory expenses (64) 5,994 Adjusted operating (loss) income (771) 7,297 Corporate operating expenses and other (1) (1,837) (3,284) Amortization of intangible assets (295) (317) Contingent consideration expense (144) Interest expense (1,093) (1,391) Foreign exchange losses, net (1) (392) Gain on change in fair value of debt 2,528 261 (Loss) income from continuing operations before income tax expense (1,469) 2,030 Income tax expense (26) (22) (Loss) income from continuing operations (1,495) 2,008 Income from discontinued operations, net of taxes 1,426 Net (loss) income $ (1,495) $ 3,434 (1) Corporate operating expenses and other includes corporate operating expenses, stock-based compensation expense and non-cash expenses related to the consolidation of KLROC Trust. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that are not historical facts, and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected and projected. Words such as "expects", "believes", "anticipates", "intends", "estimates", "seeks" and variations and similar words and expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance, but reflect Kingsway management's current beliefs, based on information currently available. A number of factors could cause actual events, performance or results to differ materially from the events, performance and results discussed in the forward-looking statements. For information identifying important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements, please refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the Company's 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K. Except as expressly required by applicable securities law, the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additional Information Additional information about Kingsway, including a copy of its 2015 Annual Report and filings on Forms 10-Q and 8-K, can be accessed on the Canadian Securities Administrators' website at www.sedar.com, on the EDGAR section of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov or through the Company's website at www.kingsway-financial.com. For a current review of the Company and a discussion of its plan to create and sustain long-term shareholder value, management invites you to review its Annual Letter to Shareholders, which may be accessed at the Company's website or directly at http://bit.ly/kfs2014. SOURCE Kingsway Financial Services Inc. The Human Touch Awards celebrate 10 years of honouring exceptional patient care TORONTO, April 22, 2016 /CNW/ - Yesterday, eight inspiring healthcare professionals and volunteers were honoured by Cancer Care Ontario and the Ontario Renal Network at the 10th annual Human Touch Awards for going the extra mile to touch the lives of patients living with cancer and kidney disease. This year's recipients are compassionate, tireless and resourceful in seeing to the needs of patients and their families. From helping patients with immigration issues receive the care they need, to creating a hair-loss photobook to ease the fear and anxiety of people at the beginning of their cancer treatments, these healthcare professionals and volunteers are role models for providing extraordinary care. This year's Human Touch Awards recipients are: Michael Bennett , a social worker in Windsor whose efforts to fulfil his patients' final wishes (including swimming with dolphins and reuniting with estranged family members) are a testament to the compassion and dedication he brings to work each day. , a social worker in whose efforts to fulfil his patients' final wishes (including swimming with dolphins and reuniting with estranged family members) are a testament to the compassion and dedication he brings to work each day. Kelly Brockington , a registered nurse in Scarborough whose leadership in providing mental health services has helped hundreds of patients find relief from the fear, anxiety and depression that often accompany a diagnosis of cancer. , a registered nurse in whose leadership in providing mental health services has helped hundreds of patients find relief from the fear, anxiety and depression that often accompany a diagnosis of cancer. Gary Buchanan , the backbone of a volunteer program in Peterborough whose passion and enthusiasm inspires others, particularly local youth, to find ways to improve the lives of people with chronic kidney disease. , the backbone of a volunteer program in whose passion and enthusiasm inspires others, particularly local youth, to find ways to improve the lives of people with chronic kidney disease. Anthony Conti , a registered nurse in Sudbury who pulls out all the stops to get people in remote areas of the province the care they need, when and where they need it. , a registered nurse in who pulls out all the stops to get people in remote areas of the province the care they need, when and where they need it. Holly Freill , a dietitian from Thunder Bay who gets to know her patients on a personal level in order to create unique meal plans that address complex issues such as access to safe and nutritious food, and even organizes "kidney-friendly" holiday food hampers for patients. , a dietitian from who gets to know her patients on a personal level in order to create unique meal plans that address complex issues such as access to safe and nutritious food, and even organizes "kidney-friendly" holiday food hampers for patients. Michelle Hladunewich , a nephrologist in Toronto and tireless advocate, confidant, and friend who offers more than expertise to her patients, many of whom are women with kidney disease hoping to become pregnant. , a nephrologist in and tireless advocate, confidant, and friend who offers more than expertise to her patients, many of whom are women with kidney disease hoping to become pregnant. Paula Pigeon , a volunteer in Sault Ste. Marie who uses her own experience as a breast cancer survivor to create resources such as a hair-loss journal, patient video and survivor calendar to ease the stress and anxiety of people with cancer. , a volunteer in who uses her own experience as a breast cancer survivor to create resources such as a hair-loss journal, patient video and survivor calendar to ease the stress and anxiety of people with cancer. Glenda Towne , a diet technician in Toronto who recognizes the significant impact food has on physical and emotional well-being and strives to improve patients' lives one meal at a time. Over 70 awards have been given out since the inception of the Human Touch Awards in 2007. The Human Touch Awards were created to highlight the importance of providing emotional support to people with cancer and kidney disease, in addition to the medical treatment they already receive. The Awards also showcase the incredible work taking place across the province each day by committed, dedicated and compassionate healthcare professionals and volunteers. CCO acknowledges the generous support of the Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario Division, the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Ontario branch and the RBC Foundation, sponsors of the 10th annual Human Touch Awards. The partnerships between CCO, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, and other organizations, health professionals, front-line care providers and volunteers make up Ontario's cancer and kidney care programs that are essential to providing and maintaining high-quality healthcare in the province. For more information on the Human Touch Awards, including high-resolution images and a complete listing of 2016 award recipients, visit www.cancercare.on.ca/humantouch or www.renalnetwork.on.ca/humantouch. QUOTES "Each year we are inspired by those who lead by example with their compassion and dedication in caring for those in Ontario's cancer and kidney disease programs. This year's recipients demonstrate the importance of the human touch in all our work to improve the patient and family experience." - Michael Sherar, President and CEO of CCO "Ensuring patients get the care they need, whether through treatment or compassionate support, is essential to putting patients first. This year's Human Touch Awards recipients display an inspiring commitment to providing high-quality care to improve the health of Ontarians." - Eric Hoskins, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care "It is a great honour to once again sponsor the Human Touch Awards. At the Canadian Cancer Society, we know a cancer diagnosis can be devastating for patients and their families, so it is important to recognize the individuals who go the extra mile to provide comfort and help ease the suffering of those in need." - Rowena Pinto, Vice President, Public Affairs & Strategic Initiatives, Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario Division "Kidney disease is life-changing and undergoing dialysis treatments takes its toll on a patient, both physically and emotionally. It is important that we recognize the passionate professionals and volunteers who add the human touch to kidney care in Ontario." - Jim O'Brien, Executive Director, The Kidney Foundation of Canada, Ontario Branch "Healthcare professionals and volunteers are the lifeblood of Ontario's cancer and kidney care programs. We are honoured to play a part in recognizing them for the incredible care they provide to their patients. Congratulations to this year's recipients!" - Donna O'Reilly, Regional Vice President, Commercial Financial Services, RBC About CCO: An agency of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, CCO is the Ontario government's principal advisor on cancer and chronic kidney disease care, as well as access to care for key health services. It is guided by a mission that together we will improve the performance of our health systems in Ontario by driving quality, accountability, innovation and value. CCO uses its infrastructure, assets and models to improve the province's health systems for cancer and chronic kidney disease. It also directs and oversees healthcare funds for hospitals and other cancer and chronic kidney disease care providers, enabling them to deliver high-quality, timely services and improved access to care. Version francaise disponible. SOURCE Cancer Care Ontario Image with caption: "The 10th annual Human Touch Awards took place on April 21, 2016, honouring exceptional patient care across Ontarios cancer and kidney care systems. (CNW Group/Cancer Care Ontario)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160422_C6092_PHOTO_EN_672539.jpg For further information: CCO, Phone: 1.855.460.2646, Email: [email protected] OTTAWA, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - UNHCR welcomes Morneau Shepell's renewed commitment to provide secondary education to refugee girls in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. Morneau Shepell, UNHCR's largest corporate donor in Canada, announced today a contribution in the amount of CAD $1.375 million over a five-year period, in support of The Morneau Shepell Secondary School for Girls, in Kakuma Refugee Camp. "We welcome Morneau Shepell's long-term commitment in support of refugee girls' education. The renewed funding will help to ensure that the quality of education services will remain uninterrupted for girls already enrolled and will open up new spaces for other students," said Furio De Angelis, UNHCR Representative in Canada. "I am grateful to be in the Morneau Shepell School," said Zahira, a Sudanese refugee student at the school. "When I compare myself with other students in other schools, I count myself lucky in life." Within the framework of the renewed partnership, the announced contribution will be directed towards the operating costs of The Morneau Shepell Secondary School for Girls, starting in 2016 until 2020, inclusive. The funding will also allow for a gradual increase in enrollment at the school from 250 girls in 2015 to 360 girls in 2017 onwards. "Adolescent girls represent little more than 10 per cent of the entire refugee youth enrolled in high school in Kakuma," said Alan Torrie, President and CEO, Morneau Shepell. "Since its opening in 2014, Morneau Shepell Secondary School is helping to change this trend, as the school grows to its goal of 360 girls by 2017. I am proud to say that Morneau Shepell and its employees across the organization have been raising funds in order to provide education for these young women and we look forward to seeing continued progress at the school." Thanks to a series of fundraising initiatives, including the employee payroll donations, Morneau Shepell and UNHCR first entered into a unique multiyear partnership in 2012 that led to the construction of The Morneau Shepell Secondary School for Girls. In 2014, the School officially opened its doors and now responds to approximately 28 per cent of the total female student population's needs in Kakuma Camp. The School currently employs 13 teaching staff members, including 3 refugee teachers. More information on the Morneau Shepell/UNHCR partnership can be found on our website, www.unhcr.org or www.unhcr.ca Backgrounders: UNHCR's primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. In its efforts to achieve this objective, the Office strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, and to return home voluntarily. By assisting refugees to return to their own country or to settle permanently in another country, UNHCR also seeks lasting solutions to their plight. Ensuring the provision of education is a core component of UNHCR's international protection and durable solutions mandate. Refugees value education and place it high on their priorities. Quality education that builds relevant skills and knowledge enables refugees to live healthy, productive lives and builds skills of self-reliance. www.unhcr.ca @unhcr.ca Morneau Shepell Morneau Shepell is the only human resources consulting and technology company that takes an integrative approach to employee assistance, health, benefits and retirement needs. The Company is the leading provider of employee and family assistance programs, as well as the largest administrator of retirement and benefits plans and the largest provider of integrated absence management solutions in Canada. Through health and productivity, administrative, and retirement solutions, Morneau Shepell helps clients reduce costs, increase employee productivity and improve their competitive position. Established in 1966, Morneau Shepell serves approximately 20,000 clients, ranging from small businesses to some of the largest corporations and associations in North America. With almost 4,000 employees in offices across North America, Morneau Shepell provides services to organizations across Canada, in the United States, and around the globe. Morneau Shepell is a publicly-traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: MSI). For more information, visit morneaushepell.com . @Morneau_Shepell SOURCE United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Image with caption: "Morneau Shepell Form II students pose for a photo after receiving letters from students in Canada. (CNW Group/United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160425_C3727_PHOTO_EN_673959.jpg For further information: UNHCR Canada, Gisele Nyembwe, Tel: 613-232-0909 ext. 225, [email protected]; Morneau Shepell, Nathan Gibson, Tel: 416-390-2641, [email protected] Medical cannabis to be produced at re-purposed Aylmer tobacco plant - with a focus on the Long Term Care Industry TORONTO, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - WeedMD Rx Inc., ("WeedMD" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that Health Canada has officially licenced the company to cultivate medical cannabis for patients across Canada. The approval is in accordance with the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR), a set of regulations enacted by parliament in July 2013 concerning the production, distribution and use of medical cannabis in Canada and also pursuant to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act of Canada. The license will allow the Company to immediately begin cultivation of medical marihuana in its fully expandable 25,000 square foot facility located at the former Imperial Tobacco plant in Aylmer, Ontario. "The next phase is to establish a WeedMD standard in producing and selling the highest quality cannabis and also providing unparalleled customer service to all of our future patients," states Bruce Dawson-Scully, CEO of WeedMD. "In particular, we look forward to working with seniors in long-term care, palliative care, and respite care. Seniors are the fastest-growing population to use medical cannabis for treatment in Canada, the benefits of which include reduction in muscle stiffness and muscle spasms, relief of chronic pain, improved sleep quality and increases in weight when recommended and monitored by physicians." Studies have also shown that medical cannabis can reduce the need for prescription medications, many of which have unwelcome side-effects, contraindications and carry the potential for addiction. WeedMD is following the progress of studies regarding the use of cannabis in place of anti-psychotic drugs very closely, and is extremely interested in the efficacy of these studies as it relates to seniors. WeedMD has successfully remodelled the former food grade tobacco factory in Aylmer and it now boasts state-of-the-art environmental control systems, lighting and security with a bio-composter in place for waste destruction. With 4 acres of adjoining property available for future expansion, plans are already afoot to gradually expand the existing 25,000 sq. ft. production facility to more than 100,000 sq. ft. "We are excited about creating many jobs for the community here in Aylmer," says John Withington, WeedMD's Senior Person in Charge, "and it's a great feeling to know we're transforming a facility that once contributed to the decline of our nation's health into one that will ultimately provide relief from illness." Health Canada estimates that Canada's burgeoning legal marihuana supply industry could reach $1.3 billion in sales by 2024, and WeedMD aims to be a significant part of the industry. "Our team is committed and will continue to execute," states Dawson-Scully, "our license was secured after a single inspection and we plan to have cannabis plants growing onsite within the next 3 weeks. We will be building our business with a talented team of scientists, cultivators and management. As always, our guiding mantra is Quality, Security, and Safety." About WeedMD Rx Inc.: WeedMD is a licensed producer of medical cannabis pursuant to the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations ("MMPR") and operates a 25,000 square foot, scalable, production facility in Aylmer, Ontario. The Company is focused on producing small-batch, high-grade, condition-specific cannabis products for patients throughout Canada. WeedMD is dedicated to educating healthcare practitioners, providing consistent access and education for high quality medication, and furthering public understanding of how cannabis is used for medical purposes. SOURCE WeedMD Rx. Inc. Image with caption: "WeedMD Rx. Inc. (CNW Group/WeedMD Rx. Inc.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160425_C4847_PHOTO_EN_673828.jpg For further information: WeedMD, Bruce Dawson-Scully, CEO, Tel: 519-765-2440 ext. 201, Mobile: 416-666-4600, Email: [email protected], To learn more, visit us at www.weedmd.com; For media inquiries, contact: Hudes Communications International, Nelson Hudes, CEO, Tel: 905-660-9155, Mobile: 416-271-5557, Email: [email protected] It's possible that the page is temporarily unavailable, has been moved, renamed, or no longer exists. Here are some suggestions to find what you are looking for: George Uboh, the man who accused Ibrahim Lamorde, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of diverting proc... George Uboh, the man who accused Ibrahim Lamorde, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of diverting proceeds of recovered assets, has been jailed.He was on Monday convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment by S E Aladetoyinbo, justice of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) high court, Abuja.Uboh was convicted for his role in converting the property of the defunct Police Equipment Foundation to his own use.He was arraigned by the EFCC on a three-count charge bordering on criminal breach of trust involving the sale of PEF vehicles. He abused his position as former head of security and communication department, PEF, and converted the property of the foundation to his personal use.The charge reads: That you, George Uboh, sometime in 2007 in Abuja, the judicial division of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory, being a servant in the employment of the Police Equipment Foundation, and in such capacity entrusted with certain property, to wit: six units of operational vehicles, did commit criminal breach of trust by selling one Toyota Hilux pick-up van through one Egbon Blessing, and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 314 of the penal code.That you, George Uboh, sometime in 2007 in Abuja, the judicial division of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory, being a servant in the employment of the Police Equipment Foundation, and in such capacity entrusted with certain property, to wit: six units of operational vehicles, did commit criminal breach of trust by selling one Toyota Hilux pick-up vans to Muha Motors, and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 314 of the penal code.That you, George Uboh, sometime in 2007 in Abuja, the judicial division of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory, being a servant in the employment of the Police Equipment Foundation, and in such capacity entrusted with certain property, to wit: six units of operational vehicles, did commit criminal breach of trust by selling two units of Toyota Hilux pick-up vans, and therefore committed an offence punishable under Section 314 of the penal code.He had pleaded not guilty, thus setting the stage for full trial during which the prosecution called several witnesses to prove its case.Uboh claimed that the former national coordinator, PEF, Kenny Martins, gave him some PEF vehicles to offset the debt owed him by the foundation.However, during cross-examination, he admitted that he did not have any evidence of transfer of ownership of the vehicles from PEF.I know the vehicles belong to PEF. But it was to offset the debt owed me. The Hilux pickup vans are four and not five, Uboh had said.However, Aladetoyinbo gave Uboh an option of N4m fine. Africas longest-serving leader, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, was set to extend his 36-year hold on power Sunday as the tiny oil-ric... Africas longest-serving leader, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, was set to extend his 36-year hold on power Sunday as the tiny oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea went to the polls. Initially scheduled to be held in November, the vote was brought forward following a presidential decree, with no reason offered for the change.Obiang, now 73, has ruled the west African country with an iron fist since 1979 when he ousted his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema, who had ruled the country since independence from Spain in 1968, in a coup and had him shot by firing squad. The president voted late morning in the race which pits him against six other candidates, but with Obiang almost certain to win, the main opposition parties have boycotted the poll. In the last election in 2009, he was returned to office with a sweeping 95.37 percent of votes and was confident of victory once again.I cant tell you the percentage, but we are going to win, he told reporters. It is the continuation of what Equatorial Guinea is today. That is to say our country is a benchmark in democratic terms its an example. Obiangs regime has frequently come under fire from human rights groups for suppressing dissident voices and the media, as well as for widespread corruption. Equatorial Guinea has become sub-Saharan Africas third biggest oil producer in recent years, with oil revenues accounting for more than 70 percent of national income.But the wealth has not trickled down. While per capita national income stands at over $10,000, more than half the population lives on less than two dollars a day. The incumbent is running as head of a coalition of 10 parties that includes the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea. His adversaries in Sundays vote, which ended at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT), are mainly newcomers and figures with very little political weight. Results are not expected until Thursday. Fraud The Democratic Opposition Front (FOD) coalition of dissident groups called on March 23 for a boycott of the vote, saying it would be rigged. Andres Essono Ondo, whose Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) group is part of the FOD, said numerous irregularities surrounded the poll, which he said would ensure that President Obiang wins with a big score as a result of fraud. The CPDS, the only opposition party represented in parliament, said it will not recognise the president elected in the poll. The opposition condemned the lack of an independent electoral commission as well as the regimes grip on the media. Another FOD member, Guillermo Nguema Ela, branded the election anti-constitutional.Obiang and his government do not respect either the constitution or the law, Ela said in March. Obiang has called himself the candidate of the people. Whoever does not vote for me is rejecting peace and opting for disorder, he said at a rally in the capital Malabo when he launched his campaign. Many say that they are tired of seeing me, its been 36 years already. True, but Ive dedicated my life to this country, he said. The PFA Awards after-party on Sunday night had a special guest in attendance - Barcelona's Neymar.The Barcelona star joined in the celebrations at Libertine nightclub in Oxford Circus alongside other celebrities including One Direction member Niall Horan.It is not believed Neymar was at the PFA Awards ceremony but the Brazilian was seen leaving the popular nightclub in the early hours. Wolfsburg have terminated Nicklas Bendtner's contract.The Danish international has not played for club or country since February 6 and was banned from first-team training in March after a string of disciplinary problems, including oversleeping and being late.Wolfsburg sporting director Klaus Allofs branded the former Arsenal striker a "menace" to the club and he has now seen his three-year contract terminated less than two years after joining on a free transfer.A statement read: "Striker Nicklas Bendtner is no longer a VfL Wolfsburg player. The contract with the 28-year-old Dane, which had been valid until June 2017, has been terminated with immediate effect."Bendtner had not trained with the team for quite some time and was recently exempted from participation." The deadline for President Muhammadu Buhari to assent Nigeria's 2016 budget sent to him from the National Assembly has expired. The deadline for President Muhammadu Buhari to assent Nigeria's 2016 budget sent to him from the National Assembly has expired.The 2016 budget was presented to him on March 23rd, 2016 and the law stipulates that it be assented within 30 days after its presentation to the president.Buhari had refused to assent the budget noting that several critical projects were left out of the bill by the legislature. The Presidency had for weeks been putting pressures on the National Assembly to rewrite the 2016 budget and include the projects.Legislators are of the opinion that the budget with the President cannot be rewritten under the law. They've also dismissed calls for a supplementary budget, saying the only option open to the President was to sign what was passed to him and forward an amendment bill on the 2016 appropriation bill to take care of his interests. The Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide, has demanded that a DNA test be conducted on the baby of Ese Oruru whenever it is born to ascertain who ... The Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide, has demanded that a DNA test be conducted on the baby of Ese Oruru whenever it is born to ascertain who the real father is.According to reports, Mr. Udengs Eradiri, IYC President made the call when the parents of Ese and executive members of the Urhobo Progress Union paid a visit to the IYC national headquarters in Yenagoa on Saturday.Eradiri alleged that that Orurus case was one out of the numerous incidents that had been going on and called on parents to be more vigilant and security conscious around their children.He said, There is a syndicate involved in trafficking of teenage girls for underage marriage. We, therefore, insist that a DNA paternity test should be conducted on Orurus baby whenever it is delivered to know who the real father is. We are worried that Yunusa who is still owing Orurus mother could afford to hire up to 10 lawyers including a Senior Advocate of Nigeria to defend him. We should also defend our people and ensure they get justice.In his comments, Chairman, UPU, Bayelsa State, Chief Kingsley Akpaka, noted that the IYC, the media and other groups worked tirelessly in forcing the relevant authorities to free the minor from Kano.He said, We are here to say thank you and appreciate the efforts by leadership of Ijaw Youths in the struggle to free our daughter since August 2015. We appreciate the media and other groups and persons that played their different roles. We further appeal for IYCs support as the case is in progress.We need the support of all the stakeholders in the Niger Delta because we have noticed that the Kano State Government, Sharia Council and Kano Emirate are interested in the case and they send legal representatives each hearing day.In view of this, the Urhobo Progress Union will ensure that the rights of Ese Oruru are well represented and we have enlisted the services of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria to strengthen the prosecution team. A former lawmaker in the Kogi State House of Assembly, from Ogori/Magongo Mr. Gabriel Daudu was Monday sentenced to two years in p... A former lawmaker in the Kogi State House of Assembly, from Ogori/Magongo Mr. Gabriel Daudu was Monday sentenced to two years in prison by a Federal High Court sitting in Lokoja for money laundering.Justice Inyang Ekwo, found him guilty on 77 out of the 208 counts pressed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).The charges brought against him by the EFCC bordered on conspiracy, advanced fee fraud and money laundering involving about N1.4 billion.But while Daudu was convicted on 77 counts and sentenced to two years on each count to run concurrently, Justice Ekwo, however, discharged and acquitted Albert Soje Adesina, a retired Army major, who served as majority leader of the Kogi State house of assembly between 2007 and 2011 on the one-count charged brought against him.Daudua trial started before Justice Adamu Bello of the Federal High Court Abuja before it was later transferred to the Lokoja division of the Federal High Court before Justice Ekwo, where Daudu and Adesina were re-arraigned twice on amended charges.The prosecution counsel, Mr. Wahab Shittu, presented 13 witnesses and tendered 47 exhibits to prove the charges against Daudu.Though Daudu, through his lawyer, Mr. O.J. Onoja (SAN), called seven witnesses in a bid to prove his innocence, the court however found him guilty as Justice Ekwo held that the prosecution proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.Daudu, who served as the caretaker chairman of the Ogori/Mangogo Local Government Area of Kogi State between January and July 2008, had been standing trial since April, 2010 alongside a former Commissioner for Agriculture in Kogi State, Albert Adesina. Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday held a closed door meeting with former Senate President, Ken Nnamani and former Speaker... Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday held a closed door meeting with former Senate President, Ken Nnamani and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bello Masari.Speaking after the meeting, Nnamani, said what he suggested to President Buhari stands to reason and a good way out of the Budget impasse.The issue on budget, well budget is an area where we practice what we call co-management between the National Assembly and the executive branch of government, both of them co-manage the economy through the budget its a peculiar area, both of them will have to cooperate and collaborate for a proper budget to be passed and once it is passed, it becomes law.So as it stands today the situation is such that the National Assembly has to do what is called introspection, how did we get to where we are now, the year is running out and we are still talking about 2016 budget, where is the fault from?Wherever it is coming from, both the executive branch and the legislature must find a quick solution to it. It does nobody good to drag it any longer, remember it is an area of co-management, it is not left to the executive alone, it is not left to the National Assembly alone, there has to be collaboration.I think he stands to reason, what I suggested is being studied, I think it is appropriate. He addedYou know I am now am executive and I signed budget for Kastina state and before I did that I made sure I knew what I am signing for. So take it as I said. He said when quizzed whether he'd advice Buhari to sign the budget. The Igbo-Intelligentsia Forum, a professional and advocacy Igbo group, has written an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari. The Igbo-Intelligentsia Forum, a professional and advocacy Igbo group, has written an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari.Read full letter below:OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT.DSS, IPOB, AND FULANI HERDSMEN.FROM IGBO INTELLIGENTSIAPresident Muhammadu Buhari GCFRPresident and Commander in Chief of theFederal Republic of NigeriaAso Rock Villa, AbujaHis Excellency,We are concerned citizens of Nigeria. Our attention has been drawn to a recent news statement by the Department of State Services (DSS) as widely published by a section of the media alleging the discovery by the DSS of a mass grave in Abia State.The statement further claimed the discovery of decomposing bodies of five Fulani men in a shallow grave who were allegedly killed and buried by elements affiliated to IPOB.We are alarmed by these allegations, as we do not condone violence of any sort by or against any person or group of persons. Our history as Igbo shows that we have lived peacefully with people of different ethnicities for generations.Your Excellency will recall that an on the spot assessment by the governments of Abia and Imo states exposed the shameful propaganda of the DSS as it became obvious that the five bodies found in a shallow grave in a bush in Uturu town were actually kidnap victims and that the unfortunate incident has no ethnic coloration whatsoever.It is nevertheless important to properly situate this news statement as issued by the DSS in the light of contemporary events in Nigeria hence part of our immediate concern is the motive behind the DSS news statement:The DSS failed to show evidence of the alleged killing/massacre and the exact picture and location of the alleged grave.No mention was made of any forensics conducted on the said bodies to determine the cause and time of death or the true identities of the victims.There was no mention of a coroners inquest on the said killings.There was no mention of any investigation by the police who are constitutionally obliged to investigate and prosecute as appropriateThere was no mention of arrest of any suspects.The basic rudiments of a criminal investigation were not observed.It is on record that Nigeria in recent time has been a theatre of killings and beheadings by Fulani Herdsmen. For instance; Fulani Herdsmen were reported to have fought and massacred over 500 Idoma citizens in an effort to convert their ancestral farmlands as cattle grazing field.We do not know of any arrests by the DSS or prosecution by the authorities of these notorious insurgents, now ranked as the 4th most deadly terrorist organization in the world.It is common knowledge that the Fulani Herdsmen bear arms especially the infamous AK47 assault rifles. They move about freely in a country that does not permit the bearing of such arms by private citizens.Now let it be known that Igbos are peace loving people and they do not have a history of violence targeted against other ethnic nationalities, religion or culture.The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have repeatedly stated that they do not bear arms and that their agitations for self-determination is based on their conscientious objection to membership of the Nigerian State.The DSS news statement is tendentious. It is un-nerving for those serving in our security services to turn around and stoke a conflagration with capacity to cause ethnic massacre of a segment of the country namely, the Igbo nation.We therefore demand unequivocally as follows. ..1. That the President of Nigeria should set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to determine the truth of the news statement by the DSS and to investigate the spread of Fulani Herdsmens Clashes with agrarian communities in different parts of Nigeria.2. To sanction the National Security Adviser and the Director General of the DSS, and other officers of their department that contrived the news statement.3. To direct the DSS to publish a public apology to the Igbos for the heist targeted against them.4. To immediately disarm all unauthorized bearing of arms in Nigeria by ethnic militias including the Fulani Herdsmen whom the Inspector General of Police claimed are foreigners.Our position is same as that of the Tiv, Igala, Igbira koto and Igbira Okene, Bassa, Agatu, Igede, Yoruba, Nupe, Hausa, Tangale, Taruk, Birom. Angas, Afor, Doma, Gbagi, Bini, Izon, Uhrobo, Efik, Annang, Ibibbio, Kanuri, Kaje, Bokkos, Ishan, Afemai, Itsekri. Jukun, Kataf, Chiboki, Mada, Obi, Gwandara, Idoma, Kanuri, Bachama etc. and others who inhabit the Sahel savannah and the rain Forrest regions of Nigeria.We urge the members of the Miyetti Allah to see agriculture as a business that demands considerable investment and responsibility.We recommend that investors in cattle breeding take a page from the poultry industry by acquiring ranches as Your Excellency did in Daura.The government must not allow the business interests of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), a trade association with membership in the civil service, politics and other Fulani investors clash against and undermine national security & corporate well-being of Nigeria.We condemn the push by members of the Miyetti Allah at the National Assembly to appropriate lands from various communities to aid and profit its members at the expense of national security.We trust that Your Excellency as a Patron of Miyetti Allah will encourage members of the association & other investors in cattle breeding and husbandry to take more responsibility in their private business in which them as investors own 100% of the profits.We thank your Excellency for your timeHon. Joe IkunnaCoordinatorDr. Katch OnonujuSecretary, Committee on Publicity.IGBO INTELLIGENTSIA FORUM Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to immediately sack Rotimi Amaechi and Babatunde Fashola as Federal Ministers by The Co... Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to immediately sack Rotimi Amaechi and Babatunde Fashola as Federal Ministers by The Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP).According to a statement by its Secretary General, Willy Ezugwu, proven technocrats should be appointed into the Federal Government, if Buhari really desires to succeed in attracting foreign investment into the country.For President Muhammadu Buhari to succeed in his change agenda, all former governors in his cabinet must be sacked to create room for technocrats to run his government if he must succeed.Some former governors serving in this government not only left their respective states with empty treasury but also in heavy debts such that it took the Presidents bailout fund for salary arrears of states workers to be paid.It will amount to effort in futility for the President to be labouring to attract investors as they will not entrust their hard-earned resources to well-known bad managers.This is the reason the Buhari government, which will be one year next month, yet has nothing to show for it except hardship and more hardship across the country despite the change mantra, It said. Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Political Matters, Senator Babafemi Ojudu has revealed that under previous administration... Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Political Matters, Senator Babafemi Ojudu has revealed that under previous administrations, a chief or politician who pays a visit to the Aso Rock Presidential Villa is handed $100,000 or $50,000 when leaving.Ojudu made the claim while speaking with reporters. He said, ''In the past, somebody would come to Aso Rock, a chief or a politician. And they package $100,000, $50,000 for him. The man gets back to his hotel room, dashes his driver $500, dashes his PA $1,000, his girl friend $200. This has stopped. Such money must go into productive services, medical services, infrastructure etc.Lets do something that is enduring for our people. All these stop gap measures, going as subsidies, were going to stop them. Lets make our refineries work. Dont let us make millionaires of a few and poor people of millions.These are the kinds of problems were having now. In the process of change, all these things are bound to happen. This is one year, but again, this new government never envisaged things will be this difficult.When we were campaigning, oil was still $112 per barrel. Nobody could have thought it would just crash and become $33 per barrel. Were now on $40 per barrel. Nobody envisaged that our foreign reserve could go as low as $28 billion. We were importing food. We were importing medication, we were paying school fees of millions of Nigerians abroad. What the government is doing now is: lets take subsidy away from these individuals that are getting it. Lets take money off bringing in food, lets grow what were going to feed on. This is going to take some time; its not something that is going be done overnight. Nigerians will have to be patient. I can understand. People call me every day that, they cant pay school fees, they cant pay house rent. But again, if we want Nigeria to grow, if we want sustainable development, we cannot but breakaway from the past. It is this breaking away from the past, that is causing the pain were going through as a nation.What people are saying is just like saying bring back corruption. They dont know what corruption has done to this country. You vote about a billion naira for a hospital, and N800 million is taken away by corruption, and you have only N200 million left. So, there wont be medication, there wont be ambulances etc you can imagine how many people die due to such act. They stash such money outside the country. They buy houses in America, buy private jets etc.Do you know the havoc that corruption has done to this country over the years? That is why we now have half-baked graduates. Do you know what corruption has done to our infrastructure over the years? Look at the Abuja-Lokoja Road. What you have now is not the original design. Look at how much has been voted for that road, and several other roads across the country. How long are we going to continue with that kind of situation? We have a president that is sympathetic, who is not going to build a new house, who is not going to buy a house in London, or Dubai; but who has dedicated his life towards solving our problems. The damage of so many years is not going to be corrected in just 10 or 11 months.We also have to understand that people who are victims of the fight against corruption are trying to fight back. The Escravos that supplies gas has been damaged. Pipelines are being burst all over the place. We need to continue to appeal to our people to realise that this damage youre doing, youre doing it not to Buhari, not to Osinbajo, youre doing it to yourself. In his avowed commitment to clear the fuel queues, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the Nige... In his avowed commitment to clear the fuel queues, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu says the Port Harcourt Refining Company now produces five (5) million liters of Premium Motor Spirit otherwise known as petrol and the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company also produces two (2) million liters of petrol per day.The minister made this statement while re-commissioning the Bonny-Port Harcourt Refinery crude pipeline that has just been rehabilitated after being out of use for so many years due to incessant pipeline vandalism.According to a statement by Malam Garba Deen Muhammad, NNPCs Public Affairs GM, Kachikwu stated that Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company is also scheduled to start production any moment from now adding that the coming on stream of the three refineries will go a long way to ensure sufficient supply and distribution of petrol across the country.He stated that the NNPC under his watch has been able to recover the two critical crude supply pipelines which were Escravos to Warri and Bonny to Port Harcourt crude supply pipelines stressing that they are critical to the downstream sector of the industry.Port Harcourt is back in production, Warri is back in production, Kaduna as at today is receiving crude and will soon be back in production. Lagos is easing off now from fuel scarcity and Abuja is doing the same thing and once Kaduna begins production, the North will see a lot of improvement.He added that for the first time in many years, the three refineries are going to be working and it will help in a great deal with the issue of fuel supply and distribution across the country.He noted that the commercial governance model system was being introduced into the refineries so as to keep them in business and to enable them compete favourably in the hydrocarbon value chain.What we have done is to find a very creative way of bringing investors who will come in, work with our team here who have the skills, reactivate and upgrade facilities in these refineries, the minister disclosed.According to him, the investors will also help us to provide technical support and they will be paid through the flow out of refined products over a period of time which is why we have also changed the refining model such that refineries pay for their crude so it goes into federation account.He explained that whatever they produce is theirs and they sell to one huge customer which will be both Nigerian Petroleum Marketing Company (NPMC) and the marketers themselves and that enables them to keep the refineries going after the upgrade so that the problem we have in the past of not repairing the refineries will not reoccur.Dr. Kachikwu noted that the misgivings going round that we are trying to hand over refineries is not true saying that the President was very clear from day one, that at this point in time he was not ready for that, so that is not the model we are pursuing now.According to him, we are not inviting foreign partners to take over the refineries, we do not have the funds, even now that they are working, they are probably working at about 60 per cent or below capacity so you need to upgrade these refineries and get them to a level where they will operate at 90 per cent capacity or more.It requires money and total investment for that is in excess of about $700 million and we dont have it, the minister stated.He said that even at full capacity of the refineries, the country would still import petroleum products to augment the supply of petroleum products.The minister said that going forward by 2019 when the co-location refineries become operational, the country will stop importation of petroleum products and become a net exporter.The Minister reassured that he remains focused at finding solutions to the many problems confronting the petroleum sector adding that gradually the problems were being solved through innovative ways.He called on Nigerians to own and protect the petroleum crude and products pipelines across their communities stressing that the Federal Government cannot do it alone without their cooperation.He commended the security agencies for their efforts at safeguarding the pipelines and urged Nigerians to also protect the pipelines since they are national assets.Speaking earlier, the Managing Director of the PHRC, Dr. Bafred Enjugu assured the Minister that the refineries will deliver on their new mandate of being commercial noting that the hard days of petroleum product scarcity are over for good.On his part, the Team lead of the Escarvos-Warri and Bonny-Port Harcourt pipeline Task Force, Engr. Rabiu Suleiman stated that the team came up with robust strategies for security and community engagement which according to him if sustained will keep all the refineries working without coming down.It would be recalled that the 46 km Escravos-Warri crude pipeline and the Bonny-Port Harcourt refinery crude pipelines were rendered inactive for many years by pipeline vandals and the refineries resorted to marine crude transport to the refineries. The Federal Government on Sunday said it is working silently towards finding a lasting solution to the incessant attacks allegedly being... The Federal Government on Sunday said it is working silently towards finding a lasting solution to the incessant attacks allegedly being perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen across many states.The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, disclosed this during a special prayer for the stability of the nation by an Islamic group, Saadatul Abadiyyah Organisation of Nigeria. Mr. Mohammed was also honoured as the Grand Patron of the group at the event held in Abeokuta, the Ogun State Capital.The Minister said President Muhammadu Buhari has also set up a panel of inquiry into the recent attacks while the effects of the silent efforts would soon be felt by Nigerians.The President did speak immediately these things happened, to the extent of setting up a panel of inquiry. But the government is going to do more than that.Clashes by Fulani herdsmen and farmers from their host communities have been reported in several states including Benue, Plateau, and Taraba. President Muhammadu Buhari has been criticised for his handling of the crises which have caused the death of hundreds of people. Update: The road has been reopened, police said around 8:20 p.m. PARAMUS - Traffic on the southbound side of Route 17 has been shut down after an accident, according to police. Paramus police responded to the crash near the intersection of A&S Drive just after 2:30 p.m., but said the entire road had been closed in one direction four hours later. Details on the accident remained scarce. Police said detours had been put into place, but it remained unclear when the road might reopen. Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find SADDLE RIVER - A federal appeals court has ruled a New Jersey couple can't sue to keep a stolen 7.35-carat diamond, even though it was given as a gift from mother to daughter, the couple's attorney confirmed on Monday. The pear-shaped diamond was stolen in 2003 and made its way through various sellers before ending up purchased for $175,000 by Saddle River resident Frank Walsh, according to previous reports. In 2012, Walsh's wife gave the diamond as a gift to their daughter, Suzanne, and son-in-law Steven Zaretsky. When the Zaretskys tried to have the diamond insured, a jeweler discovered the gem had been stolen in 2003 by celebrity stylist Derek Khan, according to reports. Khan borrowed the diamond for a fashion shoot and pawned the gem instead of returning it, according to court documents. According to reports, original owner, the William Goldberg Diamond Corp., called police and later reported the theft to the Gemological Institute of America, which maintains a database of stolen jewelry. In 2014, a federal judge sided with the Zaretskys, ruling that they were the stone's rightful owners, despite the diamond having been previously stolen. But last week a three-judge panel serving on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan decided the lower court erred because Khan was a stylist and not a merchant under New York's commercial code. Therefore, he could not legally sell the diamond and the Zaretskys could not legally hold title to it, the judges ruled in a 32-page decision. The judges determined that only a person who "deals in goods of that kind" can be considered a merchant -- not Kahn. The terms of the consignment agreement denied Khan the authority to sell the diamond, the judges decided. "Obviously the court had a different opinion than (the lower court judge)," William Strasser, who represents the Zaretskys, told NJ Advance Media on Monday. Strasser said he plans to appeal the decision on behalf of the Zaretskys. The attorney questioned how the diamond could have passed through other jewelers without being detected as stolen before it ended up in his clients' possession. Khan, who made his name by borrowing high-end jewelry in exchange for it being worn by celebrities, was eventually arrested and charged with stealing $1.5 million in jewelry. He spent two years in prison and is now working as a jeweler and personal shopper in Dubai, according to various news reports. Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook. PARAMUS -- A Waldwick man was in critical condition Monday, a day after crashing an SUV into a utility pole on Route 17 southbound, police said. A 2002 Toyota Land Cruiser was traveling southbound at about 2:10 p.m. Sunday when it struck the center divider, crossed four lanes of traffic, rolled over and crashed into a utility pole, Paramus Police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg said. The SUV was left wrapped around the pole. Witnesses said the the driver, Andrew Ishak, 28, was having trouble staying in his lane, Ehrenberg said. Paramus nj 17 at Midland ave one car wrapped around sign Posted by Chad Seligman on Sunday, April 24, 2016 Ishak was trapped in the Toyota after the crash. The Paramus Rescue Squad and Fire Department used the Jaws of Life hydraulic rescue tool to free him from the wreck. He was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center. Ishak was the only person in the Toyota, Ehrenberg said. Ishak was also the driver in another crash on Route 17 south in July. Paramus Police officers pulled him out of a burning Nissan. He was not charged in the crash. Police are still investigating the Sunday crash. Charges may come after the investigation, Ehrenberg said. Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. MOUNT HOLLY -- The Riverside man charged with killing a 35-year-old woman during a party at his residence Saturday night was allegedly angry about the crowd at his home and was brandishing a weapon before the fatal shot was fired, according to a Burlington County prosecutor. Darren Winningham, 42, of Riverside Township, allegedly shot a woman to death during a party Saturday, April 23, 2016. (Photo provided) Darren Winningham, 42, made his first appearance in court Monday afternoon before Judge Christopher Garrenger via closed-circuit television from the Burlington County Jail, where Winningham remains incarcerated following his arrest Saturday night. During the appearance, Assistant Prosecutor Michael Angermeier went over Winningham's criminal history and the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of Nikita Cross on Saturday night. Angermeier said Winningham's criminal record dates back to 1996, when he was convicted of third-degree aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and first-degree robbery and sentenced to four years in prison. Winningham was also charged with multiple misdemeanor offenses in the past 15 years, including battery, resisting arrest and harassment. Winningham is currently charged with first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a weapon in the death of Cross on Saturday night. "The strength of the state's case is very strong," said Angermeier. He said police were called to Winningham's home on Hooker Street at 10:48 p.m., when authorities found a crowd of 15 to 20 people gathered in the street and Cross inside the home, already dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest. Witnesses told police that people had gathered at Winningham's home for a party for Winningham's aunt, but that Winningham grew angry and began brandishing a handgun. While Winningham was holding the gun out to his side, witnesses said he fired one shot that struck Cross in the chest before the the gun was wrestled away from him. Angermeier said Winningham told police at the scene, after he had been read his Miranda Rights, that there were too many people in his house. He also asked police if someone had died. Winningham then became upset, telling police he knew he was going to jail for the rest of his life and that someone had to be held responsible for the death. He allegedly told police he was "willing to take his weight." The judge granted the Angermeier's request to keep bail at $500,000 cash or bond with no 10 percent option. Winningham only spoke twice during the court appearance, saying "Yes, sir" to the judge to first confirm his identity and later confirm he understands he has the right to request a reconsideration of bail through an attorney. Michelle Caffrey may be reached at mcaffrey@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ShellyCaffrey. Find NJ.com on Facebook. A parishioner was fatally wounded during services at a suburban Philadelphia church on Sunday, officials said. Robert Braxton, 27, was shot by a fellow member of the Keystone Fellowship Church in Montgomery Township, Pa., according to a spokeswoman for the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office. The identity of the man who fired the deadly shot has not yet been released. Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele told reporters on Sunday that investigators needed to "determine whether the shooting was justified under the law." Steele told Philly.com that the shooter was licensed to carry a concealed weapon and had fired at least one shot at the victim. The church posted on its Facebook page on Sunday: "We at Keystone are saddened to confirm that a shooting took place at our Montgomeryville campus this morning. One man was shot and another is being questioned by police; no one else was hurt." The district attorney's office said on Monday afternoon that they are still investigating the incident. The church plans to hold a vigil on Monday night at its Skippack campus. "As a church family, we are shocked and heartbroken over what took place, and our congregation is in prayer for everyone involved," the church wrote in a statement posted on social media. Erin O'Neill may be reached at eoneill@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LedgerErin. Find NJ.com on Facebook. 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. Ifs, Ands, Or Shaking Butts At Jazz Fest toggle caption Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR On the surface, they couldn't be more different. A gender-bending rap trio making bass-heavy, repetitive music with little emphasis on lyrics and all attention to sexualized danceability. A Latin jazz band led by a harpist with a Honduran violinist and several Garifuna hand percussionists. But on day two of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, they both featured serious booty shaking. The Bounce Extravaganza, featuring Sissy Nobby, Big Freedia and Katey Red, got off to a late start due to miscommunication about a near-cancellation due to weather. But the three openly queer stars of New Orleans' distinct rap subgenre got off a few tremendously booming, thumping songs in a limited set: Freedia controlling, Sissy shaking, Katey hyping. And, befitting of bounce music, they brought along a dancer to exhibit the genre's core move. It looks something like this: Later in the day, on the Lagniappe stage, New Orleans harpist Patrice Fisher put together an attractive multicultural mashup. toggle caption Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR Interested as she is in much of the music of Latin America, a trip to Honduras brought her in contact with a star violinist in Angel Rios, and a number of drummers from an indigenous Garifuna community. She wrested them all together, with other musicians too, for her Jazz Fest set. With this ensemble, Fisher's technique is not the main draw in the way that Edmar Castaneda virtuosically plays Latin jazz on the harp. It doesn't have to be, with four percussionists (one who sings and chants), star soloists and a full, pulsating band. They are many; they are rhythmic. And on one song, the ensemble was joined by a dancer whose name I didn't catch. After some vigorous posterior strutting, Rios leapt up to join her. toggle caption Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR Two different sonic worlds and social communities to match. But both like to move below the waist -- something the rest of us can all relate to as well. The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Individual Heat Enlarge this image toggle caption Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra won a Grammy Award this year for Best Large Ensemble Recording. Perhaps that's why the WWOZ Jazz Tent was packed to overflowing late on Sunday at the Jazz and Heritage Festival. Then again, front man Irvin Mayfield is a popular guy here in New Orleans. Full of charisma and energy -- I refer you to this concert from New Year's Eve -- he's a jazz club impresario, leader of multiple bands and an official cultural ambassador for the city. That, and he's also a wildly talented trumpeter, full-toned with plenty of technique. He's hardly the focal point of the show, however; he writes, organizes, conducts and oversees, meaning that his solo time is relatively limited. He leaves the heavy lifting to his star soloists. More photos and thoughts, after the jump. Enlarge this image toggle caption Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR Patrick Jarenwattananon/NPR Ed Alexander is a Chicago transplant, a tenor saxophonist as furiously torrid as they come; he handles a good deal of blowing for the group. Trombonist Ron Westray stood up for "Somebody Forgot To Turn The Faucet Off," blowing whirlwinds around the tune's central repetitive figure. There were features for saxophonists Derek Douget and Aaron Fletcher, and an appealing turn for vocalist Johnaye Kendrick, a recent Monk Institute graduate. Finally, Evan Christopher is a clarinetist based in New Orleans, and if you're a professional clarinetist in New Orleans, you're probably well-skilled when it comes to early jazz. Christopher's bag also extends further -- "It's a Creole Thing" was essentially his solo feature, and he romped through it. Credit Mayfield for writing original compositions where arrangements of warhorses would probably have sufficed. Alternately parade, funk, pre-war swing, Latin and modern jazz, his band's rhythms reflect the multicolored approach to groove in this city. It very much feels like a summation of New Orleans music at large, translated to 13-piece jazz orchestra. His ensemble passages don't have much dramatic arc -- they're mostly built around simple riffs, harmonies, forms and interplay -- but with soloists like his, Mayfield doesn't have to do much more than that. (It's an approach more Basie than Ellington, led by a man more Ellington than Basie.) Sometimes individual brilliance leaves you coldly stunned -- or worse, unimpressed. But it was warm on Sunday, and the band was hotter: every single feature dug hard, and won wild, enthusiastic applause. Make Music With Your (Wait For It) Shoes Footwear has come a long way since the primitive days of just being used to, you know, cover your feet. Sure, it can make you run faster and jump higher, measure your distance and heart rate, even make phone calls. Shoes can now make music. As this video shows, you can now transform shoes into musical instruments. It's part of a new Japanese Nike ad campaign to show off how flexible and twisty (and, therefore, comfortable?) the new Nike's Free Run+ running shoes are. To do so, Nike invited the help of a pair of inventive Japanese sound artists (including Daito Manabe, an innovator in alternative musical interfaces) to convert the shoes into DIY interactive musical instruments that can cue and manipulate samples and sounds. In the process, they've unveiled perhaps the first line of "footware." With a little ingenuity, and a boatload of accelerometer sensors (the things that make you able to shake your iPhone) and software (in this case Ableton Live), they discovered that they can plug the shoes into a computer and mixers. They can then create beats and trigger other sounds by flexing and bending and banging the shoes -- not totally unlike how any MIDI-controlled interface or DJ turntable works. The difference is, in the right hands, the shoes seem to display a lot of potential for subtle motion to tweak the sounds just right. It's fascinating to watch as it unfolds live. Unfortunately, as the closing disclaimer notes, these sweet kicks won't come music-ready for the general consumer any time soon. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to continue duct-taping my vintage Discman to my worn-out sneakers. For the programmers, gearheads and electronic-music geeks out there who are interested in how they rigged everything up, check out the blog Create Digital Music, which spoke to Manabe about the process and all those nitty-gritty technical details. John Milton Hay served as ambassador to the United Kingdom and then Secretary of State during the administrations of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Earlier in his career, the Salem, Indiana native became then-President Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and was with Lincoln when the president was shot at Ford's Theatre. A former bookkeeper at Burns Funeral Home plans to plead guilty to federal charges alleging she embezzled more than $342,000 from the business between 2008 and 2013, court records show. Donna Dickson, 62, of Portage, was charged Friday with mail fraud, according to U.S. District Court records. A plea agreement filed the same day said Dickson already has paid the funeral home about $127,216 in restitution and agreed to pay another $200,000 with money from her financial accounts. Dickson also must pay another $15,000 in restitution to Burns Funeral Home's insurance provider, court records said. In exchange for her plea, the U.S. attorney's office agreed to recommend a sentence at the minimum end of the guideline range. PORTAGE A Portage man was arrested Saturday morning after police said he stood in his front yard and pointed a rifle. Troy Roman, 22, of the 5100 block of Independence Avenue, was charged with pointing a firearm and criminal recklessness. Police were called to the area of Blake Road and Independence Avenue just before 11 a.m. after a man complained Roman was standing in his yard pointing a rifle. When police arrived, Roman and a woman were inside the home, but came out on police orders. Roman told police he had been in a confrontation with an unidentified man with a handgun at a nearby gas station. Roman told police when he came home he got his rifle because the man followed him. He denied pointing the gun anywhere, saying he maintained it on high shoulder. He said he did so for his own protection. Police checked with employees at the gas station, who confirmed the confrontation, but told police Roman also pulled a knife during the argument. Charges of possession of paraphernalia and possession of marijuana against Roman and the woman were forwarded to the Porter County Prosecutors office after police allegedly found marijuana and a smoking device in the home. Roman was transported to Porter County Jail. The woman was not taken into custody. UNION TOWNSHIP Two 17-year-old boys have been arrested in connection with a 14-year-old boy being shot in the back of the leg Friday with a BB gun as he walked home in the Salt Creek Commons. Police believe there may also be a connection with this incident and a school bus window being shot out Friday in the same subdivision. The arrests occurred after a vehicle tied to the student shooting was located with the help of the subdivision's Facebook page, according to county police. Police made contact with the juveniles who were in the car at the time of the shooting. After seeing a container of BBs of the floor of the vehicle, officers searched inside and found a BB gun, BBs, and bottles and cans of alcohol. A juvenile from Union Township was arrested on misdemeanor counts of battery, possession of alcohol and consumption of alcohol after he registered a 0.05 percent blood alcohol content, police said. Also charged was a Valparaiso boy on a misdemeanor charge of possessing alcohol. A school bus driver also reported Friday that someone shot out a window in her bus at 3:40 p.m. Friday as she was dropping off elementary school students in the area of Raven Road, police said. No one was injured and she moved the 10 or 15 students to the front of the bus before finishing her route, police sad. She later told police an older black Pontiac Grand Prix had been following the bus before the shooting and that the car drove off after the shooting. The vehicle fit the same description as the one involved in the student shooting, said police, who are investigating. VALPARAISO Police are investigating a 14-year-old boy in connection with bomb threats that resulted in the local Wal-Mart store evacuating its building twice Sunday night. The first call came in at 9:10 p.m. and the male claimed there was a bomb inside one of the store's bathrooms, according to police. The store contacted police and opted to evacuate the building to allow for a search. Nothing was found and the store reopened, police said. A second threat was called in an hour after the first and the store was again evacuated, police said. Another search took place and nothing was found. Police were able to track the call to the boy in Hebron. The case remains under investigation. LAKE STATION City officials have regularly discussed a need to clean up portions of Lake Station, and many residents have answered a call to assist with those efforts. Lake Station hosted a program Saturday to remove trash and debris creating eyesores in several locations in the community. City leaders and residents donated their time to participate in the event. A group that consisted of several members from the Defenders Faith Center visited a site on Central Avenue east of Ripley Street. Once they arrived at the location, it was clear why that spot was among locations the city wanted to address. Many items have been dumped in the property, including tires, broken car parts, yard furniture and wheel covers. Prior to heading to the site, the group gathered at the city's Public Works facility and walked to the wooded lot. On their way to the location, many stopped in residential yards to pick up trash. Dewey Lemley, Lake Station's superintendent of Public Services, said the wooded lot wouldn't be the only location volunteers would address Saturday. Lemley said locations on Old Hobart Road, U.S. 6 and another site on Central Avenue would be visited so trash could be removed. If we hit all those, we'll be happy, Mayor Christopher Anderson said. Anderson said Saturday's cleanup program was the first one hosted by the city since he was sworn in as mayor. He said he was pleased with the turnout of volunteers, and he wants Lake Station to host similar events on a regular basis. INDIANAPOLIS | Several Region lawmakers will participate Saturday in a town hall-style meeting to discuss their work during the recently concluded legislative session and to answer constituent questions. The Indiana Black Legislative Caucus is the sponsor of the event that begins at noon at the Indiana University Northwest Savannah Center, 3400 Broadway, in Gary. "The sessions give us the opportunity to learn what Hoosiers think needs to be improved in Indiana," said state Sen. Lonnie Randolph, D-East Chicago, the IBLC chairman. "Our constituents' input is invaluable as we work to shape the course of the next legislative session." In the wake of yesterday's incident in which an autistic boy wandered away from a Saturday school program and was later rescued by police Senator Charles Schumer is highlighting the need for better protection of students with autism. Speaking today, Schumer expressed relief that earlier this month, a Senate judiciary committee passed the Kevin and Avonte's Law of 2016. The law was partially-named after Avonte Oquendo, the autistic 14-year-old who left his Long Island City school in the middle of the day in 2013 and was found dead three months later. The legislation allows students with autism to wear bracelets that can be used to track them down in the event that they go missing. "If everyone who had autism had one of these bracelets, or the device sewn into their clothes, when they wandered we could find them right away and prevent the kind of death that occurred with Avonte Oquendo," Schumer said. Schumer says the tracking devices would not be a requirement for students with autism. The FDNY says repair work with a torch caused the massive fire in Brooklyn that left several families homeless. #FDNY Fire Marshals: Cause of 4/24 6th alarm at 270 Arlington Ave #Brooklyn was caused by repair work involving a torch on a garage roof FDNY (@FDNY) April 25, 2016 Flames broke out around 6:30 p.m. Sunday on Arlington Avenue near Linwood Street in Cypress Hills. Fire officials say the fire started in a garage and quickly spread to six other homes and a church. "It was the intensity of the fire and the spread and how close the buildings are, and also, with the construction, the construction of wood, and they have a lot of voids where fire can travel quickly. So it was a handful," said Deputy Chief Stephen Moro of the FDNY. Firefighters got the flames under control around 2:30 a.m. Monday. There was a partial collapse inside the building where the fire started. Two people were hurt, one of them seriously. Seven firefighters were treated for minor injuries. The Red Cross is currently assisting displaced residents. Mayor Bill de Blasio is fighting back after the state Board of Elections accused his team of violating campaign finance laws two years ago. On Saturday, a source told NY1 the board found that the mayor's team circumvented donation limits for State Senate campaigns by funneling money through county political committees, which have much higher limits. The board also suggested that those actions may have been criminal. The mayor's camp says it acted well within the limits of state law. Now his campaign lawyer, Lawrence Laufer, has sent a harshly-worded letter to the board's chief enforcement counsel. It says in part, "Beyond the legal and regulatory issues implicated by your offices memorandum being improperly leaked to the press, your memorandum reflects either a shocking lack of understanding or a complete disregard of the most fundamental aspects of the states election laws." Laufer also says he has filed a Freedom of Information request to see if the board's memo was leaked illegally. The letter was also sent to the Manhattan district attorney's office. NY1 has reached out to the state Board of Elections and the Manhattan DA for comment. A man is facing charges after police say he attacked several elderly people. Cops say a tip from their Crimestoppers hotline led them to capture 66-year-old Clarence Jones in Park Slope at around 11:30 a.m. Monday . Investigators say Jones is responsible for eight attacks in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens between January and March 26. In each case, he allegedly followed the victims into their homes. He's charged with robbery, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon. In the latest incident, police say Jones pistol-whipped an 83-year old woman at her Ocean Parkway apartment building. She suffered a broken nose. He's also accused of choking a 91-year-old woman in her Park Slope building, before robbing her and a neighbor. Officials and family members of the victims say they are relieved he's off the streets. "It's good that they caught him before he did something much worse," said Marc van Schendel, the son of one victim. "Because it seemed like, I mean to be that violent with somebody who's 83, I mean, really to hit them in the face with a gun and then knock 'em down." "We've been searching for him hard, the fugitive Investigation Division has been scouring the city," said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. Police say are investigating if Jones is connected to a similar incident in the Bronx in 2014. That two problems of such wildly disproportionate importance are treated with the same level of gravity is what makes Veep funny, but also astute. Anyone whos ever worked on Capitol Hill or in the Oval Office would probably tell you that serving officials at the highest level of government sometimes feels like herding hormonal adolescents. Selinas pimple a blemish that would have made Angela Chase from My So-Called Life stay home sick for a full week speaks to that, as does her post-speech comment about the electorates inability to elect a clear-cut winner: I forgot to thank the voters for making our country look like a high school Spanish club. Given the bedlam that swirls around Selina and her staff, that remark feels like a pot calling a kettle black. Its also insulting to voters and, frankly, most high school Spanish clubs. While the West Wings nondream team continues to obsess over zits, Fitbits and the proper pronunciation of Nevada, there are hints that three once or currently sidelined people could have a big influence on what happens on Veep going forward. One of them is Richard, who reveals that he has a doctorate in the extremely specific subject of recount procedures in the Western states, making him an expert on how to handle Nevada seriously, is it Nev-AH-da or Nev-A-da? that instantly earns him a promotion to recount specialist and a supervisory role over a thoroughly flummoxed Jonah. Thats right: Richard is rising up despite the fact that, just last season, he couldnt figure out how to play Eye of the Tiger during a campaign event. Its nice to see him demonstrating some intelligence and winning the presidents respect, but it also feels like its a matter of time before Richard messes up in a big way at the worst possible moment, since Im pretty sure he holds a doctorate in that as well. Then theres the running mate. In an obvious attempt to get back at Tom for bounding onstage during that election night rally last season, Selina appoints him as economic czar against his will, giving him a huge, unsolvable problem that will only reflect poorly on him. But she should know by now that Tom has an amazing ability to deflect poor reflections, a skill that could haunt Selina if Congress winds up deciding the election and chooses to make Tom president instead. (As established last season, that could actually happen.) And finally theres Catherine, the perpetually neglected and underestimated first daughter whos making a documentary about this momentous event in presidential history that neither Selina nor anyone else is taking seriously. In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman: Big mistake. Huge. Chris Addison, who directed this episode, brilliantly hides Catherine around corners and behind columns where she captures private conversations that will undoubtedly come back to bite her moms administration. Yet instead of asking what she plans to do with her footage, all the president can say to her daughter is: Why is that your hair? With Mr. Mandel at the helm, Veep continues to do something its a master of: playing comedy Jenga by putting pieces carefully into place that, eventually, collapse in magnificent fashion. (One could also refer to this practice as building a house of cards, but you know what? Lets not go there.) The big collapse/payoff of this episode comes during the symposium on race, a public relations disaster that finds Selina attempting to discuss racial issues with an all-white panel. When Mikes Fitbit stair-climbing causes him to set off emergency alarms, prompting police to point a gun at the one black woman (Sue) entering the symposium, its the worst possible thing that could happen at an event focused on racial harmony. But its the best possible thing that could happen on Veep. The election may be deadlocked, but already, Season 5 looks like a winner. Laurie Anderson remembers her husband, Lou Reed, and her rat terrier, Lolabelle, in Heart of a Dog. Turn: Washingtons Spies deals with the treason of Benedict Arnold and eventually brings on Alexander Hamilton. And a French detective races through her job in towering heels in Witnesses. Whats on TV HEART OF A DOG (2015) 9 p.m. on HBO. This is my dream body, Laurie Anderson says, the one I use to walk around in my dreams. And at the beginning of this meditation on love and loss, she dreams of giving birth to her rat terrier, Lolabelle. That dog is just one of the beloved beings wrapped into this experimental documentary awash in rain and traveling from the valleys of Lower Manhattan to the mountains of Northern California that touches on the deaths of her mother; the artist Gordon Matta-Clark; her husband, Lou Reed; and yes, Lolabelle. Every love story is a ghost story, she says, quoting David Foster Wallace, now gone as well. Heart of a Dog is about telling and remembering and forgetting, and how we put together the fragments that make up our lives, Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times. At times, she added, it feels as if Ms. Anderson, too, were haunting her movie even as, with every image and word, she fills it with life. (Image: Lolabelle) MIKE & MOLLY 8 p.m. on CBS. Mike brings a stray home for a weekend, but Molly isnt feeling puppy love. (Image: Billy Gardell) THE GOOD THIEF (2003) 8:10 p.m. on Starz Cinema. Nick Nolte plays Bob, a majestic ruin of a gambler and heroin addict who is pulled into a Monte Carlo casino heist by some art-swindler thugs in Neil Jordans ultimate caper, a variation on Bob le Flambeur, Jean-Pierre Melvilles 1956 film noir. (Check that one out on Amazon and iTunes.) Nutsa Kukhianidze is the beautiful Russian teenager who trails Bob; Tcheky Karyo is the detective friend he has to stay a heartbeat ahead of. Writing in The Times, Elvis Mitchell called it a work of brazen ebullience. Snapchat executives say they set up the app this way because this is what their tens of millions of younger users want; its how they live. That makes sense, given the way their generation exists online, interfacing with a constant stream of bits and bytes. They cant possibly have enough bandwidth to process all the incoming information and still dwell on what already was, can they? (O.K., probably, but stick with me as I play this through; it leads somewhere). The older generations are getting there, too, as daily adult media consumption has expanded beyond television, radio and newspapers to include all the innovations I mentioned above: email, websites, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, Instagram, Periscope and now Snapchat. It was into this media hurricane that the presidential campaign caravan drove this year, and many of its cars were blown off the road. Experienced strategists and their candidates, who could always work through their election plans methodically promoting their candidacies one foot in front of the other, adjusting here and there for the unexpected suddenly found that they couldnt operate the way they always did. Marco Rubios campaign marched into the election season ready to fight the usual news-cycle-by-news-cycle skirmishes. It was surprised to learn that, lo and behold, There was no news cycle everything was one big fire hose, Alex Conant, a senior Rubio strategist, told me. News was constantly breaking and at the end of the day hardly anything mattered. Things would happen; 24 hours later, everyone was talking about something else. Then there was Jeb Bush, expecting to press ahead by presenting what he saw as leading-edge policy proposals that would set off a prolonged back-and-forth. When Mr. Bush rolled out a fairly sweeping plan to upend the college loan system, the poor guy thought this was going to become a big thing. Jeb would say to me in the car, This is radical stuff, Tim Miller, a senior aide in the Bush campaign, told me. It drew only modest coverage and was quickly buried by the latest bit from Donald Trump. Which brings me to the good news for presidential candidates. In this hit refresh political culture, damaging news does not have to stick around for long, either. The next development, good or bad, replaces it almost immediately. This is arguably the best time in modern history to have a scandal. (Note to ethically compromised pols: If you have an embarrassing piece of video that is bound to get out, give it exclusively to Snapchat, then destroy it.) At the very least, it is the best time to be Mr. Trump. The Treasurys schedule of financing this week includes Mondays auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.24 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.37 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.19 percent. The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: MONDAY Florida, $241.70 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. TUESDAY Collier County, Fla., Water and Sewer District, $50.5 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. Horry County, S.C., School District, $125 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Regional Transportation Authority, Ill., $150 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. Somewhere along the way, a schools selectiveness measured in large part by its acceptance rate became synonymous with its worth. Acceptance rates are prominently featured in the profiles of schools that appear in various reference books and surveys, including the raptly monitored one by U.S. News & World Report, whose annual rankings of American colleges factor in those rates slightly. Colleges know that many prospective applicants equate a lower acceptance rate with a more coveted, special and brag-worthy experience, and these colleges endeavor to bring their rates down by ratcheting up the number of young people who apply. They bang the drums like never before. From the organization that administers the SAT, they buy the names of students who have scored above a certain mark and are at least remotely plausible, persuadable applicants, then they send those students pamphlets and literature that grow glossier and more alluring that leafy quadrangle! those gleaming microscopes! by the year. The college admissions office is no longer a mere screening committee. Its a ruthlessly efficient purveyor of Ivory Tower porn. Colleges really go overboard, Ted ONeill, the dean of admissions at the University of Chicago for several decades until 2009, told me, explaining that a surfeit of applications became a way to promote your college, and the admissions office became, in effect, a public-relations arm of the university. Bruce Poch, a former dean of admissions at Pomona College, said that to an extent unheard-of decades ago, emissaries from colleges will fan out across the country, extolling the magic of their schools and exhorting students to come aboard even as those very exhortations lengthen the odds against any one student getting in. The emissaries are ginning up desire in order to frustrate it, instilling hope only to quash it. In other words, their come-on is successful if it sows more failure. And those come-ons can be as breathless as any telemarketers pitch. An email that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute sent unbidden to one high school senior invited him to apply with Candidates Choice status! (The boldface letters and the exclamation point are Rensselaers, not mine.) Exclusively for select students, the Candidates Choice Application is unique to Rensselaer, and is available online now, the email said, after telling its recipient that a talented student like you deserves a college experience that is committed to developing the great minds of tomorrow. The marketing is unbelievable, just unbelievable, marveled Kay Rothman, the director of college counseling at the NYC Lab School, in Manhattan. There are places like Tulane that will send everyone a V.I.P. application. She told me that she routinely has to disabuse impressionable students of the notion that theyve won some prized lottery or been given some inside track. Times Insider is hosting an online book club with the Times columnist Frank Bruni and youre invited. Join the discussion on Tuesday, May 3, at noon Eastern. Image Frank Bruni Credit... Soo-Jeong Kang Anxious about college decisions? Anxious about your childs college decisions? The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, the author of the best-selling Where You Go Is Not Who Youll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, offers comfort and a promise. Mr. Bruni argues that the intensified fixation on exclusive colleges has changed the way we think about and experience college. From a distance, at a glance, Docs case could seem a success. In most any other war, most any other context, the bullet that blew out the right side of his face would have taken with it his life. Instead, Doc took his place in the long, scarred line of living exhibits showing how the American military was rushing gravely wounded troops from the battlefield and treating them with skills and confidence no American fighting force had known before. In 2007, he was back in the States, still in uniform, helping to train new corpsmen for the combat lifesaving skills they would need in Afghanistan and Iraq. All the while doctors kept working on his face. Those who knew Doc well understood that his recovery did not proceed as far as he hoped, and that the neat stories of maimed but rebounding veterans, a feel-good genre of the period, did not quite apply to him. Doc had dodged death to face a cascade of problems: chronic pain, migraines, PTSD, insomnia. His rebuilt jaw did not line up with his teeth. He retained enough of his tongue that he was able to compensate for speech, but the altered shape of his oral cavity and the damage to his tongue made eating difficult. Sometimes he had to chew food on one side of his mouth, then manipulate it toward his throat with his left index finger. By 2008 his brief marriage had ended. Within a few years he racked up 32 operations. He was jumpy, brooding and self-conscious. To manage pain and sleeplessness, and the loneliness, he took to drinking, sometimes to a restless stupor. When he was medically discharged from the Navy in 2012, he was stripped of a sense of purpose and belonging. When I visited him that spring, he began drinking before we ate lunch. New physical problems presented themselves, in forms only a person who has suffered a devastating wound to the mouth can know bits of teeth loosened and dropped out, later followed by a chunk of bone and a screw. Doc gained weight, added tattoos and grew a beard, which partly hid the fact that his jaw, his teeth and his mouth were getting worse. By last year he had dialed back his drinking, was in a new relationship and had become a father. But still he struggled to move forward, and his confidence in the Department of Veterans Affairs plummeted. As his dental pain became unbearable, he called for appointments. The V.A. offered him tooth extractions, he and his mother said, after a wait of several months. Tooth extractions were never going to be enough. Doc sensed that his government-funded facial reconstruction had crested, and now was failing. He had no plan. Last year he was 31, tormented by pain and backsliding. We were at a point where there was not much more they could do, he said. One night he pulled out an offending tooth with the pliers on his Leatherman tool. Two nights later he removed another. When his mother, Gail Kirby, understood what he had done, she pleaded with him, asking what he wanted, what someone might do to help. He said, Mama, I want my face, she said. He had been lean and handsome before. His mother had an idea. It was a long shot. In 2007, Doc attended a benefit dinner honoring veterans at the Waldorf Astoria. It was hosted by the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, a private organization that provides college scholarships to the children of Marines and federal law-enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. He was the guest of Jack Doyle, an investment portfolio manager and foundation donor whose brother-in-law, Dennis M. Edwards, was killed in the terrorist attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center. There Doc met a pair of brothers a doctor and a dentist who said that if he ever needed care, they would help. The dentist was a former Marine. Doc had mentioned the meeting to his mother, but in the ensuing years he thought little of their pledge. He forgot their names. I just thought, That was nice of them to say, he said. As the Irish fiddles began to play on Sunday afternoon, Fiona Kells strapped on her dancing shoes at a festival in Battery Park in Manhattan celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the Easter Rising, a rebellion that started Ireland on its path to independence. The celebration highlighted the inspiration those revolutionaries found in American principles of liberty and their connection to the Irish diaspora like Fiona and her family in America. Of her own accord, the 9-year-old girl stepped in front of the crowd. She tossed her red hair and began to jig with passion. I feel like I sort of belong here, she said after the applause died down. Sundays event began at the edge of the Hudson River, as dignitaries from Ireland and America spoke of the connection between the two countries before a crowd dotted with flame-colored hair and Kelly green outfits. Pipers played as flowers were laid before an Irish flag, flown at half-staff, in honor of the members of the insurrection during Easter Week in 1916 who were killed in their attempt to free Ireland from British rule and declare an independent nation. ALBANY In a strongly worded response to a New York State Board of Elections report alleging illegal fund-raising activities by a team of people with close ties to Mayor Bill de Blasio, a lawyer for several of the implicated parties has accused the board of a shocking lack of understanding or a complete disregard of the most fundamental aspects of the states election laws. The letter, drafted by Laurence D. Laufer, a longtime campaign finance lawyer who also represents the mayors re-election campaign, came two days after accounts in the news media of a January report from Risa S. Sugarman, the boards chief enforcement counsel. The report, which was confidential, found willful and flagrant violations of election law by a group of political operatives known as Team de Blasio, which was formed in 2014 to try to retake the State Senate for Democrats, who are in the minority in Albanys upper chamber. According to Ms. Sugarmans account, Team de Blasio tried to evade contribution limits by channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars through county and state campaign committees, which then disbursed money to three ultimately unsuccessful Senate campaigns. Such committees can receive larger donations up to $102,300 than individual candidates, who are limited to $11,000 per donor during a general election for the State Senate. The report was reviewed by the boards four commissioners and forwarded to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, prompting a criminal investigation that is being conducted with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who have been accompanying Mr. Vances investigators as they serve subpoenas and conduct interviews. In a major executive order, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia on Friday restored voting rights to more than 200,000 people who have completed their sentences for felony convictions. Virginia was one of four states, along with Iowa, Kentucky and Florida, that placed a lifetime bar on voting for anyone convicted of a felony. All other states except Maine and Vermont impose lesser restrictions on voting by people with felony convictions. To people who have served their time and finished parole, Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement: I want you back in society. I want you feeling good about yourself. I want you voting, getting a job, paying taxes. It is the largest restoration of voting rights by a governor, ever. Felon disenfranchisement laws, which currently block nearly six million Americans from voting, were enacted during the Reconstruction era in a racist effort to make it harder for newly freed African-Americans to vote a reality Mr. McAuliffe acknowledged on Friday. Theres no question that weve had a horrible history in voting rights as relates to African-Americans we should remedy it, he said. In Virginia, one in five blacks have until now been unable to vote because of a felony conviction. Mr. McAuliffes historic act, which he took in the face of opposition by the states Republican-led General Assembly, is all the more notable against the backdrop of persistent attempts by conservative lawmakers and officials around the country to make voting harder or impossible for minority voters, who tend to vote Democratic. (A similar executive order issued last year by Steven Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, was quickly reversed by his successor, Matt Bevin, a Republican.) ITS been a rough few months for Google in Europe. Not only has the European Union hit the company with a second antitrust investigation, but in a move that has received less press, but could have wider consequences French regulators have pushed it to restrict search results all over the world to comply with their right to be forgotten privacy laws. Thats a problem for a company whose business model is built on search. But it may be an even bigger problem for Internet users. If a European government can control what people all over the world get to see on the Internet, why cant every other country do the same? The back-and-forth between Europe and Google is the latest fallout from a 2014 ruling from Europes highest court that gave people broad rights to make search engines remove search results about themselves, including links to news articles and other information. People with connections to Europe can file requests with Google to have certain links removed from search results. Google responded by taking search results out of its European versions: Visitors to google.fr or google.de wouldnt see the banned results, but they were still there on google.com. Still, Europeans could navigate to the companys non-European versions. In March French regulators fined the company and said these steps were not enough. To the Editor: Re: Roger Cohen (Bernies Israel Heresy, April 19): While I do not support all of Mr. Nethanyahus policies, I share his deep conviction that we must face the intentions of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas to eventually wipe Israel off the map, which they repeatedly proclaim to be their ultimate goal. When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon voluntarily retreated from Israeli-held territories in the south of the country, Hamas moved in and hurled missiles at the civilian population. (When still a U.S. senator, Barack Obama referred to this on a visit to the south of the country in 2008). I moved from Germany to Palestine with my family in 1933 at age 10, and I have lived there ever since. Perhaps it was Mr. Cohens and Mr. Sanderss good fortunes that their families immigrated to the United States. They do not seem to share our concerns as to the safety of our grandchildren. Despite the current upheavals in the Middle East, we should not rest but continue to achieve some understanding with the other side toward a permanent peace plan. At the urging of Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia, world leaders met at the United Nations in a special session last week to discuss saner ways to fight the drug trade. They did not get very far toward a shift in approach. Nonetheless, there was a consensus that investing in health care, addiction treatment and alternatives to incarceration would do more to end the drug trade than relying primarily on prohibition and criminalization. A war that has been fought for more than 40 years has not been won, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia said in an interview. When you do something for 40 years and it doesnt work, you need to change it. Mr. Santos and the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala argue that the war on drugs, which has been largely directed under terms set by the United States, has had devastating effects on their countries, which are hubs of the cocaine, marijuana and heroin trade. When two elephants fight, the grass always suffers the most, President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala said, referring to the drug cartels and American law enforcement agencies. Since 2014, the three governments and like-minded allies have sought to lay the groundwork for changes to the current approach, which is grounded in three international drug accords adopted between the early 1960s and 1988. Those treaties, which required that signatories outlaw the trade and possession of controlled substances including marijuana were conceived at a time when international leaders saw law enforcement as the most effective way to curb drug production and consumption. I RECENTLY attended a conference in honor of Ivo Babuska, a professor at the University of Texas, with whom I have written several mathematical papers. There were toasts with a crowd-pleasing (if prudently priced) malbec and puns riffing on singular value decomposition that elicited much mirth. After all, it was also Ivos 90th-birthday party. Ivo remains passionately immersed in research, despite the dearly held popular belief that mathematicians are over the hill at 40. Partly, this cliche stems from the stories about Mathematician Early Death Syndrome (MEDS): Galois shot in a duel at 20, Ramanujan felled by illness at 32. Turing waited until almost 42, but made his tragedy more striking by committing suicide. Clearly, Ivo has survived this fate, by eschewing duels (a hurried exit from Czechoslovakia with his family the week after the Russians invaded in 1968 may have helped), sleeping early (a timer plunges all the rooms of his house into darkness at 10 p.m.) and eating right (who knew dumplings and tongue which Mrs. Babuska once served me were so healthy?). To the Editor: Re Georgetown Confronts Its Role in Nations Slave Trade (front page, April 17): Some Georgetown University professors, students and alumni are asking the university to compensate the descendants of slaves the university sold in 1838 to avoid bankruptcy. Rather than singling out the blood relatives of those particular victims, Georgetown should recognize that the institution of slavery affected and continues to affect the entire African-American community. Georgetown should instead set aside funds to reduce the tuition of all African-American students whose forebears were enslaved. GEORGE SOROS New York The writer is the founder of the Open Society Foundations. To the Editor: How despicable. Georgetown University owned, then sold its black slaves for the equivalent of about $3.3 million in todays dollars. Present-day students deserve praise for pressing Georgetown to remove from buildings the names of two Jesuit presidents who oversaw the sale. To the Editor: Re Race Escalates for Latest Class of Nuclear Arms (front page, April 17): The danger of a new nuclear arms race is amplified by the dangerous delusion that smaller weapons are somehow more usable. Recent studies have shown that even a very limited nuclear war involving less than 0.5 percent of the worlds nuclear arsenals would cause catastrophic worldwide climate disruption and a global nuclear famine that could put up to two billion people at risk. There have been at least five episodes since 1979 when either Moscow or Washington prepared to launch nuclear war in the mistaken belief that it was already under attack by the other side. We dodged those bullets because of great good luck, not because mutually assured destruction worked. Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity; we will be free of this threat only when we eliminate them not modernize them and not miniaturize them, but totally eliminate them. To the Editor: As a Dutchman I must note that Roger Cohens assertion in The Islamic State of Molenbeek (April 12) that Dutch susceptibility to propaganda leads to voting against the trade agreement with Ukraine is bonkers. The referendum was never about Ukraine: The initiators even said in an interview that they wanted to strain Dutch relations with the European Union. This was their first opportunity. Their successful social-media campaign and Euroskeptic sentiment not Russia sealed the deal. Moreover, Mr. Cohen fails to point out that a number of individuals in the Muslim community feel isolated from society. His call for moderate Muslims to do more does not help. They should not be called upon because of their faith; they should be called upon because they are European citizens. All inhabitants of Europe should do more to acknowledge the existence of a pluralist society. Lack of such an acknowledgment creates xenophobia and polarization. It is not surprising that the anti-Islamic Pegida demonstrations were held in Dresden, even though there are few Muslims in that city. The same applies to Hungary, where the prime minister is adopting anti-Islam rhetoric, although there are few Muslims in his country. All Europeans, Muslim or otherwise, should aspire to create a culture that is inclusive and where young people growing up in less-privileged areas feel that their home country is a European one, making them less prone to the lure of fanatics to exchange their Western homeland for the Islamic State. INTERNATIONAL An article on April 12 about a study of handwriting on pottery dating to 600 B.C. that was found in Arad, Israel and could shed light on a long debate over when the main texts of the Bible were composed misidentified the alphabet used in the handwritten texts. It was paleo-Hebrew, not Aramaic. Because of an editing error, a picture caption on Feb. 28 with an article about proposed legislation in Italy that would lower the penalties for counterfeiting in the commercial olive oil business referred incorrectly to the bottles of olive oil shown at the Colli Etruschi cooperative in Blera. They were awaiting labeling, not filling. Editors were alerted to the error immediately but failed to follow through on a correction. (The Italian Parliament approved the measure on March 1.) An article on Feb. 27 about the sentencing of a Protestant pastor in China to a long prison term on corruption charges part of a campaign in Zhejiang Province meant to limit the influence of Christian churches and groups referred incorrectly to interactions between Zhang Kai, a Christian lawyer who has helped defend churches in Zhejiang, and Gu Yuese, leader of the Zhejiang Christian Council, which opposes the provinces practice of removing crosses from churches. The two did not discuss the possibility of suing local officials last year over the cross removals. While the error was promptly corrected online, editors failed to follow through on this print correction. NEW YORK The About New York column on Wednesday, about the long history of corruption in New York City misstated, in some copies, the name of a Manhattan hotel where a wholesaler testified in the 1920s that he had to pay $2,000 to a bagman in order to secure the return of 56 cans of cream that had been seized. It is the Hotel Pennsylvania, not the Pennsylvania Hotel. Sometimes, the simplest things are the hardest to get right thats the belief of the swimwear designer Tuyen Nguyen, who spent nearly a year working on the fit, fabrication and cut of her line of fuss-free swimsuits before she launched her label, called Her, in 2014. We were constantly calling models in to refit, to try out new fabrics, to ask what they thought, says Nguyen, 28, who founded the brand with her partner in life and work, Michael Lim, after being unable to find an appropriate suit to pack for a trip the couple took to Hong Kong. I wanted something for a city hotel, something that wasnt fussy, she says. I couldnt find anything that I was happy to pay for there was only the very expensive or the cheaply made. So Nguyen conceived of a line of minimal swimwear made from high-quality materials at a reasonable price point. Above all, she says, it had to be easy to wear. With swim, youre pretty much wearing nothing in public, she says. We all have different body shapes so its about finding out what parts of the body can be accentuated, what can be covered up or should come in a different silhouette so that women of all types can feel comfortable. To that end, Nguyen made sure to fit her designs on a variety of women, calling in models with different body types and even enlisting the help of her mother and two sisters. Wed get them to try the suits on and then ask them all sorts of different questions: Does this make you feel comfortable? Do you like the feel of this? says Nguyen. She also sought out premium fabrics, eventually settling on a quick-dry, UV 50 performance material from Italy that helps suck you in as well as a recycled Lycra thats sustainable with no loss of quality. SAN FRANCISCO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks co-founder and chief executive, is clear about his vision for his company: He wants to triple the size of his social network, which now has 1.6 billion members. But to reach that new audience, he has to find a way to change telecommunications networks to make connecting to the Internet more affordable, since many of those would-be Facebook users live in developing countries. That could be bad news for the companies that make equipment for those networks, whether they are Silicon Valley giants like Cisco Systems or little widget makers that produce the parts to tie different pieces of the network together. There is definitely going to be some pressure, some consolidation for many tech equipment suppliers, said Akshay Sharma, research director at the technology advisory firm Gartner. If youre in hardware, youre going to reduce head count from thousands to maybe 10 people, a hundred at most. Officials said unfiltered water was still not safe to drink, and the long-term effects of drinking the tainted water for more than a year remain a worry, particularly for parents of small children. The only city worker charged so far in the Flint crisis is Michael Glasgow, the citys laboratory and water quality supervisor, who is accused of tampering with evidence lead testing reports and willfully neglecting his duty. The arrest of Mr. Glasgow, 40, came as a surprise to some, largely because he had cooperated with authorities, and had personally sought water samples last year from a home that was reporting high levels of lead. Mr. Glasgow also had voiced early concerns about switching the citys drinking water away from Detroits water system to a new source in 2014, the event that set off the crisis that left residents drinking odd-smelling, foul-looking, lead-tainted water for months. Robert Harrison, a lawyer for Mr. Glasgow, said he could not comment on the specific charges, but described his client as an honest, decent person who had spent years working for the city of Flint and had worked his way up from the bottom. Criminal charges against Mike are difficult to understand, given what Mike did in this case, Mr. Harrison said. Not only was Mike strongly and publicly opposed to the transfer of the water system away from the Detroit system, but Mike voluntarily met with, and spoke with, numerous investigators from the attorney generals office and the Genesee prosecutors office on several occasions. In an email Mr. Glasgow sent to state regulators a little more than a week before Flint was to switch from its water supply to a new source, the Flint River, he expressed doubts about the monitoring of water safety and the training of workers at the Flint water plant. Not only are they supporting Clinton, but they have been extremely critical of Bernie Sanders, Mr. Longabaugh said. That doesnt seem like the right way to go if we want to have a convention that is evenhanded. Luis Miranda, a spokesman for the Democratic National Convention, said the party was committed to an open, inclusive and representative process to draft the platform. Both of our campaigns will be represented on the drafting committee, Mr. Miranda said. Some fissures within the Democratic family may be inevitable. For eight years, Mr. Obamas presidency has muted ideological disagreement within the party. His moral authority as the countrys first black commander in chief, his popularity with grass-roots Democratic voters and his political battles with Congress have worked to squelch the kind of ideological battles that have divided the Republican Party. But the Democrats liberal wing, including lawmakers like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, has become more restive in Mr. Obamas second term. Liberal groups have pressured the president on recent appointments to the Treasury Department and his deportation policies. At the same time, a younger generation of activists is challenging presidential candidates in both parties on issues of criminal justice, police violence and the rights of undocumented immigrants. A boldly populist, people-oriented type of platform is massively appealing to those who have come of age during the financial meltdown and the period afterward, said Kurt Walters, the campaign director at Rootstrikers, a group that favors limiting the influence of big donors in politics. The party is relatively unified on raising the minimum wage to $15, and Mrs. Clinton recently voiced qualified support. But there is a risk, some Democrats said, that Mr. Sanders an independent who is not actually a member of the party would push the party to embrace positions that could later hurt Mrs. Clinton and other Democratic candidates. His style has evoked polarizing political figures like Barry Goldwater, George Wallace and Edward I. Koch, but as the presidential campaign moves through Pennsylvania, Donald J. Trump is reviving memories of someone who stirred local passions like few others: Frank L. Rizzo of Philadelphia. A former police officer who was nicknamed Big Bambino, Mr. Rizzo rose to power during the citys crime-ridden 1960s and 70s, cracking down on lawlessness with a legendary bellicosity. After becoming police commissioner, he rounded up homosexuals late at night, forced the Black Panthers to strip down in the streets and once appeared with a nightstick stuffed in the cummerbund of his tuxedo. As mayor, he threatened to break the heads of criminals and boasted that his Police Department was strong enough to invade Cuba. While Mr. Trump has yet to wield such power, his tone as a candidate has been seen as similarly provocative, stoking a comparable zeal among supporters. And Mr. Trump, given his comments on immigrants and Muslims, has stirred similar unease over what he might do in office. On those issues and others, like the opioid crisis, Democrats are actually helping him, even if some are not happy about it. Last week, Mr. McConnell pushed through a bill to fight abuse of painkillers and heroin, adding to his growing list of bipartisan achievements. Given the Senate rules, under which 60 votes are needed to break filibusters, Mr. McConnell cannot win adoption of anything unless Democrats refrain from his strategy when he was in the minority, which was to block virtually everything. Democrats complain that Mr. McConnell is passing versions of some of the same bills that he blocked when Democrats were in control. Still, Democrats are going along, helping Mr. McConnell create a new sense of productivity in the Senate. But they are also betting that Republicans refusal to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court will cement an image in voters minds of Republicans as the party of no. Some Democrats say they would never want to share a reputation for obstruction. Others say Democrats are almost genetically incapable of refusing to deal, while a less kind analysis might say they cannot maintain the discipline in their ranks necessary to stop Mr. McConnells initiatives. Whatever the motivation, in this hotly contested election year, Democrats are making a risky wager that it is better to share some credit for legislative progress, an approach that could undermine their mantra on the campaign trail that Senate Republicans, by refusing to consider the nominee for the court vacancy, are not doing their jobs. The arrangement is a striking departure for Mr. Cruz, who has in the past rebuffed calls from some Republican leaders including members of the Kasich campaign and Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee to divvy up states in an effort to complicate Mr. Trumps path. The move also signals a major shift in tone from the Cruz campaign toward Mr. Kasich, whom Cruz aides have long cast as a spoiler in the race. Mr. Cruz has openly questioned whether Mr. Kasich was auditioning to be Mr. Trumps vice president. But Indiana, which votes on May 3, is seen as critical to Mr. Cruzs chances of keeping Mr. Trump safely beneath the delegate count required for the nomination. In a signal of Indianas importance, Mr. Cruz has held several events in the state in recent days, giving relatively little attention to the five states that vote on Tuesday, when he is expected to lose more delegates to Mr. Trump. Mr. Kasichs team had hoped to coordinate in this manner much sooner. Last month, at a debate in Miami, Mr. Weaver broached the possibility with Mr. Roe of splitting the remaining states in an effort to minimize Mr. Trumps delegate haul. Mr. Cruzs team rejected the overture, in part because it would have meant ceding the spotlight in high-profile contests, such as New York, in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states. Mr. Weaver and Mr. Roe reached the accord this time and the two candidates did not discuss it, according to an adviser to Mr. Kasich. The founder of an orphanage in Burundi who defied death threats and witnessed unspeakable violence as she saved thousands of children from ethnic slaughters in the 1990s is the winner of a new prize created in memory of the Armenian genocide a century ago. The winner, Marguerite Barankitse, was one of four finalists considered for the prize, which was announced on Sunday at a ceremony in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. No one can stop love, Ms. Barankitse said in accepting the award from George Clooney, the activist actor, who was a co-chairman of the selection committee. Not armies, not hate, not persecution, not famine, nothing. Vartan Gregorian, a prominent American philanthropist and scholar of Armenian descent, had helped lead deliberations over the choice of a winner since March, when the finalists were chosen from nearly 200 submissions. MEXICO CITY Since November 2014, the Mexican authorities, eager to close a dark chapter in the nations history, have insisted that 43 students from Ayotzinapa who disappeared two months earlier in the city of Iguala were killed by a drug gang that incinerated their bodies in a garbage dump and disposed of the ashes in a river. But on Sunday, in the latest blow to the integrity of the governments case, an international panel of experts who began examining the disappearances a year ago asserted that five suspects whose testimony underpinned the governments conclusions gave confessions under torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. Forced confessions are not admissible in Mexican courts. The findings not only undermined the governments case but also further eroded the credibility of the nations criminal justice system. The system has been widely criticized for its handling of a matter that has come to represent the failures and corruption of the Mexican state. The Ayotzinapa case has put the country at a crossroads, from which it has yet to emerge, and for that it needs a strengthening of the rule of law and of the defense, the guarantee and respect for human rights, Alejandro Valencia, a Colombian lawyer and a member of the five-person panel, said at a news conference here on Sunday. BANGKOK Banharn Silpa-archa, a former prime minister of Thailand whose scandal-ridden tenure preceded the countrys economic collapse in the 1990s, died here on Saturday. He was 83. His death was announced by Siriraj Hospital, where he had been admitted after an asthma attack. Mr. Banharn, a regional power broker and a master of money politics, enriched his home province, Suphanburi, as a political patron. But his 16-month tenure as prime minister, in 1995 and 1996, was marked by allegations of corruption and economic mismanagement. Thailands bubble economy of reckless and unchecked lending grew on his watch and burst one year later, touching off the Asian financial crisis. Throughout, Mr. Banharn remained a quintessential provincial overlord. He was elected 11 times to Parliament and gained the nickname Banharnburi for his home province. DULONG, China The narrow valley is one of the most remote and pristine in China. Monkeys, Asian black bears and the rare goatlike takin roam through rain-soaked forests above a river the color of jade. In spring, hillsides are splashed with pink rhododendron blossoms. Until two years ago, snowfall on a mountain pass blocked vehicle access for many months each year. Now, in this sliver of land on the eastern rim of the Himalayas, the government is building new roads, expanding telecommunications and encouraging commercial ventures to alleviate poverty. Li Yingchun, who used to hike five days over a snowcapped mountain range from a village here to attend a boarding school, said a new paved road that runs through a seven-kilometer tunnel slicing into the mountains had made life easier. But he worries about the impact on both the environment and society from the explosion of activity. Already, a state-owned enterprise has built at least two hydropower stations along the Dulong River. Hotels are springing up. BERLIN A right-wing candidate emerged as the clear front-runner in the first round of the presidential election in Austria on Sunday, dealing a stinging blow to the countrys two mainstream parties, which failed to garner enough votes to make it into a runoff next month. Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigration Freedom Party emerged as the clear leader, taking 35 percent of the votes cast on Sunday, according to preliminary tallies. Although official results will not be announced until Monday, after absentee ballots are counted, Mr. Hofer, 45, seemed poised to face an independent candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Greens, in the runoff on May 22. Mr. Van der Bellen, 72, who was born in Austria to immigrant parents, received 21 percent of the vote on Sunday. Another independent candidate, Irmgard Griss, 69, a former judge, received 19 percent. BELGRADE, Serbia The pro-European party that has led Serbia since 2012 appeared headed for a big victory in a snap election on Sunday, even as right-wing nationalists made gains. In the election, Serbias third in four years, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucics Serbian Progressive Party had secured 49 percent of the vote with 82 percent of the ballots counted, according to preliminary results released by the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, an independent monitoring organization, the Serbian state broadcaster reported. Mr. Vucics coalition partner, the Socialist Party of Serbia, was projected to win 11 percent of the vote, according to the initial results. A pro-Russian party led by Vojislav Seselj, who was acquitted at The Hague last month of war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, was receiving 8 percent of the vote, enough to secure representation in Parliament. Four other parties or coalitions of parties also appeared to win enough votes to gain seats in Parliament. HALHOUL, West Bank The Israeli prison service on Sunday released the youngest known Palestinian inmate, a 12-year-old girl who had tried to stab a security guard at a Jewish settlement. The girl, Dima al-Wawi, was freed six weeks before her scheduled release, said Assaf Librati, an Israeli prison service spokesman. Mr. Librati told the Israeli news media earlier that the release was because of her age. Dima was given a heros welcome Sunday in Halhoul, her hometown. Large banners welcoming her were draped in front of her home, music blared from loudspeakers, and drivers in a convoy honked. While eagerly eating her first ice cream cone in months, Dima said she intended to kill the security guard on Feb. 9 but was quickly apprehended. She said she had hoped that she would be killed. AL MUKALLA, Yemen Yemeni troops in armored vehicles and backed by airstrikes advanced toward this city of 500,000 people on Sunday, intending to capture it from militants with Al Qaeda who had controlled the major stronghold for more than a year. Thousands of Qaeda fighters were said to be in the city and appeared ready for the battle against the attacking force, which was backed by the United Arab Emirates. In mosques, the militants asked residents to support them as they confronted the invaders, and they placed gas tankers in roads to use as defensive booby traps. But in the end, hardly a shot was fired. By nightfall, the Qaeda militants had withdrawn from Al Mukalla in an apparently tactical retreat, residents said. The loss of the city was a blow to the ambitions of Al Qaedas Yemeni branch, which is widely considered the militant groups most dangerous worldwide affiliate, with a particular focus on blowing up commercial airliners. Over the last year, Al Qaeda had used Al Mukalla as a base as the militants stormed through southern Yemen, capitalizing on the power vacuum caused by the countrys 14-month civil war and seizing territory, weapons and money. Two wooden chairs are just about the only props. Dotted lines formed by tiny white lights suggest a tunnel. Otherwise the stage for Barrie Koskys new production of Verdis Macbeth, which runs through May 7 at the Zurich Opera House, is shrouded in darkness. Though he is also listed as set designer, Klaus Grunbergs lighting is what matters. Mr. Kosky, the artistic director of Berlins Komische Oper and one of todays most insightful and imaginative opera directors, puts the focus here squarely on the Macbeths: The lighting often lets us see only them. The witches are heard but not seen; instead there is a group of men and women in the shadows, perhaps figments of the central couples imaginations. The angst, guilt and capacity for evil of this scheming duo are laid bare as rarely before. And fortunately, in the baritone Markus Bruck and the soprano Tatiana Serjan, Mr. Kosky has performers capable of exploring the characters psyches. Despite Lady Macbeths three wonderful arias, the plot is here more about Macbeth, present in both the first and final scenes. Initially seen covered by a mass of dead birds, he goes on to seem to survive his own death and experience the (unseen) victory celebration of Macduff and Malcolm that concludes the opera. (Both that scene, from Verdis 1865 revision, and the aria for Macbeth that ended the 1847 original are included.) Mr. Koskys stark achievement, however, comes at a price, since so much of the operas scenic variety (and its basic action) is dispensed with. Fortunately, he allowed the chorus to be onstage its only time for the Scottish refugee scene, allowing Verdis point to be made about the devastation Macbeth has caused his subjects. WASHINGTON Three years ago, a Thai student who had helped finance his American education by selling imported textbooks won a major Supreme Court victory, persuading the justices that it is lawful to buy copyrighted books abroad and resell them in the United States. The ruling, which clarified an ambiguous phrase in the Copyright Act, applied to all manner of products, including books, records, art and software. The student, Supap Kirtsaeng, returned to the Supreme Court on Monday, seeking more than $2 million in legal fees from John Wiley & Sons, the publisher that had sued him. The usual rule in American civil litigation is that each side pays its own lawyers regardless of who wins. But the Copyright Act allows judges to award a reasonable attorneys fee to the prevailing party. Federal appeals courts apply different standards in deciding when fee awards in copyright cases are warranted. The judge in Mr. Kirtsaengs case, in New York, awarded him nothing, relying on a decision from the federal appeals court there that focused on whether the losing sides position had been objectively reasonable. LONDON Ball Corporation said on Monday that it and Rexam had agreed to sell a variety of assets in Brazil, Europe and the United States to the packaging company Ardagh Group for $3.42 billion to satisfy regulatory concerns about Balls takeover of Rexam, a British maker of aluminum cans. Ball, based in Broomfield, Colo., agreed in February 2015 to acquire Rexam in a deal that would combine two of the worlds largest makers of cans for drinks, and it has been trying to win regulatory approval for the deal. The transaction would value Rexam at 4.4 billion pounds, or about $6.3 billion. Under the divestiture agreement, Ardagh, based in Luxembourg, would acquire eight Rexam plants in the United States; 10 Ball plants and two Rexam plants in Europe; and two Ball plants in Brazil. It would also acquire innovation and support functions in Brazil, Britain, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. The divested assets had revenue of about $3 billion in 2015, Ball said. Ardagh operates 89 glass and metal manufacturing production facilities in 21 countries. It had 19,000 employees and posted revenue of 5.2 billion euros, or about $5.8 billion, in 2015. It was a pursuit that apparently could not wait. Days after Gannett completed its acquisition of Journal Media Group this month, adding 15 daily newspapers to its repertoire, the company started preparing a bid for Tribune Publishing. Gannett hired advisers and submitted a letter to Tribune Publishings management team with an offer of $12.25 a share. Briefly, the two sides had considered a grace period of several weeks so that Tribune Publishing could consult with its advisers about the offer, according to people briefed on the proposal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private negotiations. Ultimately, Gannett was unwilling to wait, and took its bid, which represented a 63 percent premium to Fridays closing price, straight to Tribunes shareholders. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process. The recent upheaval at Tribune Publishing is the latest the company has faced. Soon after the real estate tycoon Sam Zell bought the companys predecessor, Tribune Company, for $8.2 billion in 2007, it filed for bankruptcy, with $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion. The culture at the company had turned poisonous, and Tribune Tower, once a symbol of a great media company, became a place where executives used sexual innuendo and profane invective. In August 2014, Tribune Publishing was spun off from Tribune Company, now called Tribune Media, and saddled with about $350 million in debt. Since then, its stock has tumbled as its newspapers, like many print publications, have struggled to offset the decline in print with digital growth. In the last year, The Los Angeles Times has become a flash point for disagreement between the company and its California newspapers. Austin Beutner, The Timess publisher, was ousted last fall after only a year in the position. In a further sign of discontent between Tribune Publishing and its California newspapers in addition to The Los Angeles Times, the company also owns The San Diego Union-Tribune the two entities have sparred over financial projections. A potential savior for Tribune emerged in the form of Michael Ferro, a Chicago entrepreneur, who in early February acquired a stake worth $44 million at the time in the company through his Merrick Ventures. Less than three weeks later, Jack Griffin was replaced as chief executive by Justin C. Dearborn, a close associate of Mr. Ferros and the former chief executive of Merge Healthcare. Soon after, Tribune Publishing announced it was combining the role of editor and publisher across its newspapers, a decision that raised questions about editorial independence. Some also wondered whether editors had the business acumen to manage their newspapers. The great newspaper roll-up has commenced. The $815 million unsolicited offer by the Gannett Company to buy the Tribune Publishing Company does not just make financial sense for the buyer. It would also allow the targets shareholders to escape flatlining revenue at a headline-grabbing 63 percent premium to its current market value. Gannett has been on a buying spree since it was broken off from its American local broadcast division, now known as Tenga, last June. It snapped up the owner of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, for example, for about $300 million this month. The company disclosed on Monday that it approached Tribune, the publisher of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, about a deal on April 12. Gannetts chief executive, Bob Dickey, said that so far he had been disappointed by the response. Its understandable that Tribune Publishing, led by Justin C. Dearborn, might initially be shy of new owners yet again. The company, based in Chicago, has never fully recovered from the disastrous $13 billion sale to the real estate mogul Sam Zell almost a decade ago. Tribune Publishing took on so much debt that the company went bankrupt a year later and did not emerge until 2012. The company has also just undergone yet another management change, instigated after Michael Ferro became its largest shareholder in February. But Tribune Publishings outlook is not rosy. Its own plans to buy rivals were squelched recently after trustbusters signaled they would fight its attempt to grab the publisher of The Orange County Register. And revenue is likely to decline in each of the next three years, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. LONDON Groupe Fnac said on Monday that it had increased its stake in its takeover target Darty and made a final, sweetened offer as a bidding war continued for the French electronics and appliance retailer. Fnac and Conforama, the French household goods retail unit of Steinhoff International Holdings, have been entwined in frantic battle for Darty, with each offering a series of escalating bids last week. Throughout the course of the day on Monday, Fnac made several announcements that it had increased its holdings of Darty. In its latest announcement, Fnac said that it owned 18.93 percent of Dartys shares and was now willing to pay 914 million pounds, or about $1.3 billion, in cash for the retailer, or 170 pence per share. Fnac said that it owned or had agreements in place for investors to support its offer, equivalent to 41.05 percent of Dartys shares. The offer, which included an option for Darty investors to accept Fnac shares instead of cash, trumped Conforamas prior highest bid of 160 pence a share, or about 860 million, in cash. LONDON Philips, the Dutch electronics giant, said on Monday that it was more likely that the company would pursue an initial public offering, rather than a private sale, of its lighting business. Philips first announced plans in 2014 to spin off the lighting business as part of a reshaping of the company to focus on health care and technology. Since then, the company has pursued a dual-track effort to separate the lighting division through either a public offering or a private sale. As part of its first-quarter results on Monday, Philips said that improving markets had increased the possibility of its pursuing a public listing for the business. With equity markets sentiment improving compared to the first couple of months of the year, an I.P.O. increasingly appears a more likely outcome, subject to further market developments and other relevant circumstances, Philips said in a news release. However, the company has not yet concluded on all proposals in the private sale process and continues to assess the attractiveness of this route compared to the I.P.O. The Environmental Protection Agency could impose penalties of as much as $18 billion for the use of the defeat devices. The Justice Department has also been looking at possible civil violations of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, known as Firrea, for possible fraud by the company affecting banks that purchased securities packaging loans to buyers of its cars. The amount of any penalty under that provision could be the profits on the transactions, which could exceed a billion dollars. The Federal Trade Commission sued Volkswagen over its advertisements promoting the environmental benefits of its diesel engines, another front that could produce significant penalties. Add in the investigations by the states into whether their own consumer protection laws were broken, and the total amount on the civil side is likely to exceed the criminal fine Volkswagen has to pay. A rule of thumb in securities fraud settlements is that the penalty should match the harm caused to the victims, in this case the owners of cars with the defeat device along with any environmental damage. Using that approach would indicate that the fines and civil penalties could total about $8 billion, although if the company can convince the Justice Department that it has been cooperative then that figure may drop. How the money will be divided among the various agencies is not of much interest to Volkswagen, as long as the payment makes the investigations disappear. That would leave roughly $2 billion available for the company to pay penalties to regulators in Europe and other parts of the world in which cars equipped with its diesel engines were sold. Add it all up, and Volkswagens $18 billion kitty should cover most of the costs it faces from the emissions scandal, with the chance to save a billion or two if it can show it was cooperative with the investigations. Of course, this assumes there are not any new revelations about using defeat devices or other environmental issues with its vehicles. That will not be the end of the cheating story for Volkswagen, however, because there is also the issue of whether individuals will be accused of wrongdoing. In a statement issued on Friday, Volkswagen said it would not provide an interim update on the status of the internal investigation because doing so would present unacceptable risks for Volkswagen and, therefore, cannot take place now. Although the law firm retained to lead the review, Jones Day, has conducted over 450 interviews and looked at millions of documents, there are still additional employees to speak with. HONG KONG Coal-fired power plants have propelled much of Chinas economic rise for decades, helping make the nation the worlds biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Even with economic growth slackening, and other energy sources taking hold, new coal plants have been added. Now Beijing is trying to slow things down. In guidelines released on Monday, China halted plans for new coal-fired power stations in many parts of the country, and construction of some approved plants will be postponed until at least 2018. The announcement, by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration, means that about 200 planned coal-fired power generators those seeking approval and those approved but not yet under construction may not be completed, said Lauri Myllyvirta, who analyzes Chinas energy production for Greenpeace. To the Editor: Re Amid the War Zone of an Ethnic Conflict, a Cosmopolitan Oasis Flourishes (Stepanakert Journal, April 19), about Nagorno-Karabakh: Your description of the areas ethnically cleansed of all non-Armenians as an oasis would cause moral outrage in similar cases. Internally displaced persons are still awaiting return to their homes. The plight of hundreds of thousands of displaced Azerbaijanis and the cultural significance of Karabakh for Azerbaijans culture found no place in your article. Your article uses the Armenian diasporas involvement in Karabakh apparently to differentiate the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict from similar territorial conflicts in the post-Soviet era. Perhaps a closer look at Armenias own de facto loss of state sovereignty, as well as its economic and demographic decline, would be in order. To the Editor: Re G.O.P. Rivals to Coordinate Against Trump and Sanders Seeks to Shape Party After Primary (front page, April 25): As time grows short, the Cruz and Kasich campaigns have come around to combining strategies to keep Donald Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed for nomination on the first ballot at the Republican Convention. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has relegated the balance of his campaign to moving the Democratic Party further to the left at the Democratic Convention. Alls fair in politics, but does the politics of these closing days reflect what is best for the country? Mr. Trump could very well use the Cruz-Kasich strategy, which was reported weakening on Monday, to his advantage. He would be well advised to go for it all and call for the voters to make a clear choice before the convention. To do otherwise will likely saddle the party with a candidate without broad support and the general election with a carnival-mirror focus on the issues. The Sanders campaign has moved the debate to the left, but going forward, Hillary Clinton cannot be Bernie Sanders. She must craft her own campaign and try to hold on to the left by drawing sharp contrasts with the campaign likely to emerge from the Republican Party. The Grauers gorilla, the worlds largest primate, has been a source of continual worry for conservationists for more than two decades. Longstanding conflict in the deep jungles of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo left experts with no choice but to guess at how that gorilla subspecies may be faring. Now, with tensions abating somewhat, researchers finally have an updated gorilla head count one that confirms their fears. According to findings compiled by an international team of conservationists, Grauers gorilla populations have plummeted 77 percent over the last 20 years, with fewer than 3,800 of the animals remaining. We suspected that the Grauers gorilla had declined because of all the insecurity in the region, but no one had an idea of how much theyd declined by, said Andrew Plumptre, director of the Wildlife Conservation Societys Albertine Rift Program in Central and Eastern Africa. It turns out that the rate of collapse pushes this subspecies to the verge of extinction. Grauers gorillas named after Rudolf Grauer, an Austrian explorer and zoologist who first recognized the apes as a separate subspecies resemble their close relative, the mountain gorilla, save for their longer limbs and shorter hair. Although Grauers and mountain gorilla populations were once connected, years of isolation have left them genetically distinct enough to warrant separate designations as eastern gorilla subspecies. Were full up, said the maitre d. But I have the prime minister, said the aide. Thats as may be. But were still full up. The street that connects Carruths Grotto with Roganos is called Ingram Street. It runs the length of an area of central Glasgow called the Merchant City. There are more famous streets in the world, more famous streets in Glasgow even, but Ingram Street marries the old and the new in a way that makes it a glittering example of what a road should look like in the new global village. Its confidently Glaswegian and instinctually international. In recent years, the street has become a meeting place of ornate style and fashion swagger, lifting itself out of a few decades of dowdiness to become Glasgows answer to the Boulevard Raspail. Ingram Street was originally called Back Cow Lane and became known as a place of banks, tearooms and illicit debating houses. The street was named for Archibald Ingram, one of Glasgows notorious tobacco lords, who had commercial interests in Virginia, Maryland and the West Indies. If you scrape the gilt off a fashionable street, you dont only see grime, you see origins and arguments, as well as a continuing story. Ingram Street first appears on the 1807 Flemings Map of the City of Glasgow and Suburbs, and, even in my youth, when the street was down on its luck, you had only to lift up your eyes to see the design, the columns and the rows of windows that shone with light from another time. One evening recently, on a return visit to the city, I decided to walk the length of Ingram Street. The boys and girls were out in force, seeking complicated cocktails and the kind of lighting effects you used only to see in Glasgow in nearby George Square in the weeks running up to Christmas. Facing onto Ingram Street at its western end is the Gallery of Modern Art, housed in the old Stirling Library. The Gallery opened in 1996, but it is somehow typical of Glasgow in that the wild and wonderful artworks contained inside are forced to compete with an icon of local humor outside: Carlo Marochettis 1844 equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, which stands in front of the gallery, the dukes head famously adorned with a traffic cone. No boutique in Paris can compete with the best on Ingram Street, not for size, sheer scale or for generously baroque interiors, where stone and light make little cathedral halls, in which the rails of clothes appear almost meditative. I walked into the Jigsaw building and was immediately struck by the lamps fountains of light and windows that would not have disgraced a Pugin church. The ironwork alone was worth the visit. As early Glasgow darkness began to encroach on the lighted space, and as dont go chasing waterfalls wafted up to a copper dome, I bought a black T-shirt and felt it must be a classic, to have lived here. It is perhaps difficult, in the post-Lehman Brothers world, to imagine that banks were once palaces of hope, but the Jigsaw building once housed the Glasgow Savings Bank, for 100 years (from 1870) the largest trustee savings bank in Great Britain, regarded as a vehicle for local endeavor. BERLIN The trans-Atlantic debate over digital privacy rights versus the surveillance needs of intelligence agencies was put under a spotlight on Monday, as President Obama called for continued access by law enforcement officials to thwart terrorism, while some European privacy advocates urged greater restraint. I want to say this to young people who value their privacy and spend a lot of time on their phones: The threat of terrorism is real, Mr. Obama said, speaking at a trade show in Hanover, Germany. Ive worked to reform our surveillance programs to ensure that theyre consistent with the rule of law and upholding our values, like privacy and, by the way, we include the privacy of people outside of the United States, he added. Q. Is it true that QuickTime for Windows may lead to a PC virus? If so, can I get rid of QuickTime? A. After noting that new versions of Windows since 2009 have included support for the key media formats, Apple retired the Windows version of QuickTime 7 multimedia software this year. QuickTime for Apples OS X operating system is still supported. With Apple no longer providing security updates to fix holes in its Windows QuickTime code, computers running the software could be at risk. The security software company Trend Micro issued a warning this month describing two critical vulnerabilities in QuickTime for Windows and advised users to uninstall Apples abandoned program immediately. The Homeland Security Department posted a warning based on Trend Micros findings and also recommends that PC owners remove QuickTime from their systems. Odds are that many users may not even notice that the software is gone once it is removed, but some programs for Windows still rely on QuickTimes ability to handle certain audio and video formats. Adobe is one company that posted a warning to users of its photo- and video-editing programs that removing QuickTime would cause problems with using those applications; Adobe says it is working to improve the situation. If you rely on a program that may use QuickTime, check with the company that makes it for updates and solutions. You can remove the QuickTime software from your Windows system with the usual methods for uninstalling programs. For example, from the Start Menus Programs or Apps list, open the QuickTime folder and choose Uninstall QuickTime; you can also use the Search box to look for Uninstall QuickTime. And you can pry the program off your PC with Microsofts built-in tools in the Settings or Control Panel for removing programs in Windows 7 and Windows 10. But interviews with parents of three of the children, and remarks from the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, which is investigating the episode, raised questions about the conduct of the police and their handling of juvenile students. Other high-profile cases have recently occurred at schools in Texas and in South Carolina. It is wholly unacceptable to haul children away from school in handcuffs for a charge that does not actually exist, Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the A.C.L.U. in Tennessee, said in an email. The growing trend of criminalizing students particularly students of color within our educational system must stop. The A.C.L.U. said the charge of criminal responsibility for the conduct of another could be used only when there was an accompanying criminal charge that a person is accused of facilitating. The A.C.L.U. said it was aware of at least 10 children who were arrested in the Murfreesboro case. Zacchaeus and LaVonia Crawford, who identified themselves as the parents of three of them, said in interviews that a day before the arrests, a police officer went to their home and asked whether they knew anything about the boy who was pushed and hit in the video, and showed them a screen shot. During the visit, they said, the officer also asked for their childrens names. They came across some evidence that he might have been harmed, Ms. Crawford said. My being a mother, I tried to tell her, as well as my children tried, to identify the boy. She said she and her children provided their own names, told the officer where they thought the boy lived, and the officer left. The next day, the Crawfords were told by the principal and a police officer that their 10-year-old daughter had been arrested and was being taken to the county juvenile center. The officer said that a warrant had been signed and that their 9-year-old son was also named on it. When the parents arrived at the center, taking their son, they discovered that their 11-year-old daughter was there, as well. She had been taken out of class and handcuffed, Mr. Crawford said. RALEIGH, N.C. The North Carolina General Assembly, already buffeted by weeks of bitter debate over a law about gay and transgender rights, faced competing demonstrations and new pressure as lawmakers opened their annual session here on Monday. The immediate fate of the law, which limits bathroom access for transgender people in public buildings and broadly forbids discrimination claims in state courts, was not in question, after Republican leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers said they anticipated leaving the measure intact. Yet supporters and critics alike used the General Assemblys return as a rallying point about a law that set off an economic backlash and shoved the state into a rollicking national debate. We are using the tools available to us in democracy petitions, lobbying, public protests, civil disobedience to say this law is wrong at its core, and it must be immediately repealed, said the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, the executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality. During public gatherings across the state government complex, supporters of the law, which many people refer to as House Bill 2, outnumbered critics. At one rally, after church buses ferried supporters from places like Thomasville and Rural Hall, thousands of people, many of them in lawn chairs, heard speaker after speaker praise the measure. WASHINGTON The billionaire environmentalist Thomas F. Steyer and his political advocacy group, NextGen Climate, will spend at least $25 million on a get-out-the-vote campaign targeting young voters this year in seven mostly battleground states, the group announced on Monday. Mr. Steyer, the single biggest political donor of the 2014 midterm election cycle, said the campaign would target at least 203 college and university campuses. He called it the largest youth voter outreach program ever undertaken by a candidate or political campaign. Mr. Steyer spent $74 million in the 2014 midterm elections, including $67 million for NextGen Climate to reward candidates who embraced climate change as a major issue. That year, Democrats were clobbered, losing control of the Senate and falling deeper into the minority in the House. Of the seven candidates for Senate or governor NextGen Climate spent money on, three won. Undeterred, Mr. Steyer said on Monday that the $25 million dedicated to voter outreach was a floor, not a ceiling. His group expects to press other efforts focused on electing climate-friendly lawmakers. Intercut footage of Cudell rec center park, footage of Tamir throwing snowballs and Samaria Title: After Tamir, Pain Lingers SAMARIA RICE - 00:01:51 It was just a normal Saturday for us. Every Saturday my children would go to Cudell for the availability of the wi-fi and the gym and the game room. The snow was just beginning to fall so they would also play outside. They were happy that the snow was here, because would be throwing snowballs already. ITS BEEN FIVE MONTHS SINCE A ROOKIE POLICE OFFICER IN CLEVELAND FATALLY SHOT 12-YEAR-OLD TAMIR RICE. AS THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES, THE BOYS FAMILY AND FRIENDS STRUGGLE TO MAKE SENSE OF THEIR LOSS. SAMARIA - Im just normal...a single mom from the inner city of Cleveland trying to make a way out. Now Im out here fighting for justice for my son. Video clip of Devin and Tamir playing in park DEVIN MIMS - I was very close to him. He felt like a little brother to me. 00:06:51 We would swing on the swings, play tag with other friends, run around and just make funny videos. 00:07:03 MIMS - 00:08:42 He was goofy whenever I was around. Things that we always did in the summertime was chase squirrels. And mess with his sister. Devin Mims leaves home, walks toward Cudell park SAMARIA - But the little boy Devin across the street, he usually would knock // knock on the door and asked the kids was they ready to go to the rec. MIMS - 00:19:44 The plan was to meet up at the park. // 00:20:07 And I had the toy gun. Then later on that day when we met up, I gave it to him. MIMS - A while back, it got damaged and wouldnt shoot BBs anymore, so I removed the tip, the safety tip, so it would shoot again. 911 CALLER 1 - Theres a guy in here with a pistol. You know, its probably fake. But hes like pointing it at everybody. Samaria Rice picks up Tajai from school. Walter Madison driving; SAMARIA - Tamir and Tajai were fairly tall, so people could mistake them at any time. But they were still kids. It doesnt matter. // Theyre kids that play with coloring books and Legos. WHEN THE TIMES VISITED THE RICE FAMILY IN EARLY MARCH, THEY HAD MOVED OUT OF THEIR HOME, LOCATED JUST A BLOCK FROM THE PARK WHERE THE SHOOTING HAPPENED. SAMARIA - Yeah, we dont want to see that neighborhood like that, for real. Not right now. // A lot of memories. I just was ready to try to start healing a little bit. TAMIRS MOTHER, SAMARIA, AND HIS OLDER SISTER TAJAI WERE STAYING IN AN EMERGENCY SHELTER. Eating at Stake and Shake... Samaria, We aint got nowhere to chill, yall, unless you want to go to the library. THE FAMILY WAS HOMELESS, Walter Madison driving, this here is police headquarters... SO THEIR LAWYER WALTER MADISON DROVE US TO THE QUIETEST PLACE WE COULD THINK OF. Walking to Cleveland public library, Jefferson Branch; Walter holds up a book about Cleveland disasters; conversation btwn Samaria and Walter SAMARIA - Is Tamir in that book? It says disasters. The traffic true tales of disaster...oh, tragic...of destruction... I asked Tajai to go get a book. Tajai struggles with reading... SAMARIA (on camera) - 40:57:13 I talked with Tamir about having toy guns. And I told him there wont be any in my house b/c people can get the wrong idea. So, I never bought him toy guns, not toy guns, bb guns, water guns, nothing. // Maybe because ... my mom, and what I seen and what my mom put me through and stuff. // My mom went to prison in 89. What did she go to prison for? SAMARIA - Manslaughter. She ended up shooting a guy and he died. I was a witness in her trial at the age of 11 years old. So you can imagine what my life has been like. // I made a bad decision in 2012, which made my record not so good. I caught a drug trafficking case. // Im not sure what I was thinking. SAMARIA - My main thing was to make sure they stayed kids for as long as possible. Cudell rec center surveillance footage 911 CALLER 2 - By the youth center, is a black male sitting on the swings.... SAMARIA - I just know thats one place they could never get in trouble. I cant believe the police brought the trouble over there though... 911 CALLER (contd) - He keeps pulling a gun out of his pants and pointing it at people. SAMARIA - When you see that video how they sped up so fast, you would think a child would run. My child wasnt running. He was scared. He was scared, like, whats going on? Surveillance footage of police shooting OFFICER FRANK GARMBACK (police audio) - Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20. Black revolver. Black handgun. Send EMS this way, and a roadblock Surveillance footage of officer tackling Tajai in the snow TAJAI RICE - They were like, ah, thats your brother. So, I ran. I came up. Two police officers tackled me, threw me on the ground, handcuffed me and put me in the car, the same car that shot him. ...I kept on saying, you shot him, my brother is dead. WS Devin Mims MIMS - I was feeling destroyed. How could this happen. Hes only 12 years old. It feels as if Im the one to blame. But mostly, its the officers fault. Because he just shot him. Downtown Cleveland, police HQ IN MARCH, THE CITY OF CLEVELAND STATED IN A LEGAL DEFENSE TO THE FAMILYS LAWSUIT THAT 12-YEAR-OLD TAMIR WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OWN DEATH. Mayor publicly apologizes for insensitive language in the defense MAYOR FRANK G. JACKSON (file footage) - We are apologizing today to the City of Cleveland and to the family... THE PHRASING CAUSED A PUBLIC OUTCRY, AND THE CITY QUICKLY ADJUSTED ITS DEFENSE. MAYOR FRANK G. JACKSON (contd) - ...For our poor use of words and our insensitivity... THE NEW LANGUAGE ALSO CASTS BLAME ON DEVIN MIMS, TAMIRS 16-YEAR-OLD FRIEND, WHO GAVE HIM THE TOY GUN WITH ITS ORANGE SAFETY TIP REMOVED. Tajai and Samaria moving into house IN EARLY APRIL, SAMARIA AND TAJAI RICE MOVED INTO A NEW HOME - STILL IN WEST CLEVELAND BUT FARTHER AT LEAST FROM THE PARK AND THE PAINFUL MEMORIES. Samaria shows Tamirs pants, SAMARIA - These are Tamirs pants. I had just bought him these. Yeah, my son was a big boy, but thats okay. SAMARIA - Me and Tajai did these masks in the shelter with our grief counselor. Samaria flips masks, And the inside... SAMARIA - I dont know why its so hard for me to show emotion, but my son never had a chance, and Im still waiting on answers for why and what happened. Five months later and ... its shock. Its shock. (i was not sure she said shock, sounds like shot... not sure that matters? Samaria Rice on porch with baby granddaughter - END IT An 18-year-old man fired a high-powered rifle at students as they were leaving a small-town high school prom in northern Wisconsin late Saturday, injuring two young people, before he was shot and killed by a police officer, the authorities said. The police identified the suspect on Sunday as Jakob Wagner, a graduate of Antigo High School. Officials said they believe Mr. Wagner acted alone. It was unclear whether the two shooting victims were targeted. One of them, a female student, was treated at a hospital and released, the police said. The other, a male, was doing well on Monday after undergoing surgery for his injuries, according to a statement released by his family, who asked to remain anonymous. The burst of gun violence during a teenage rite of passage has shaken Antigo, a community of about 8,000 people northwest of Green Bay, where residents say everyone knows everyone. Tensions between Nuer and highlander Ethiopians in the Gambela region have been relatively low, but that changed this month when a highlander, a contracted driver for a nonprofit group, was accused of a hit-and-run that killed two children in a predominantly Nuer refugee camp near the town of Gambela. Fury over the deaths incited a surge of retaliatory violence, in which Nuer killed about 10 highlanders around the camp. Several highlanders who saw the bodies at a hospital said the killings were gruesome, and in recent days hundreds of them have joined with sympathetic members of the Anuak ethnic group, who say they are indigenous to Gambela, to demonstrate against Nuer, whom they consider intruders. In South Sudan, a civil war that began in December 2013 has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than two million. More than 220,000 South Sudanese refugees and other asylum seekers, the vast majority of them Nuer, have spilled into crowded camps in the Gambela region of Ethiopia since then, tilting the demographic balance in an area where antagonisms between the Nuer and Anuak groups have long simmered. At least one Nuer has been killed in the last few days and one wounded, according to Gatluak Tut Khot, the regional president of Gambela. Nuer in the area said the death toll was as high as 15. BEIJING China is moving closer this week to a new law that would strictly control thousands of foreign nongovernmental organizations in the country, state-run news agencies reported on Monday. Officials are expected to give rapid approval to what may be the final draft of the law, the reports said. Foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations denounced two earlier drafts, saying their wording implied that the Chinese government viewed such groups as potential criminal organizations. Critics said the proposed restrictions would lead to groups curtailing important work in China, such as legal assistance and programs promoting the rule of law. The White House issued a statement in September saying there were concerns that the law would further narrow space for civil society in China. American officials urged the Chinese government to drop or make drastic revisions to the legislation, as well as to other sweeping draft security laws that would limit or hobble foreign operations in China, including businesses. DHAKA, Bangladesh A Bangladeshi gay rights activist and his friend were hacked to death Monday in what the police believe is the latest in a series of targeted killings by Islamist militants. The activist, Julhas Mannan, had attracted the attention of extremist groups by helping to organize a march for gay and transgender youths that had been scheduled for the Bengali New Year on April 14. The Rainbow Rally, as it was called, drew threats of violence and police canceled the march, saying the event would offend religious sentiments. Mr. Mannan, who also edited Bangladeshs only gay and transgender magazine, Roopbaan, had received very vicious, murderous threats from anonymous people who opposed the rally, said Sara Hossain, a friend. The last few days were very frightening, she said. Mr. Mannan had been working for the United States Agency for International Development, and had served as a protocol officer to two United States ambassadors, the police said. A 16-year-old boy has been arrested in Australia on suspicion of plotting to carry out an attack during the countrys veterans commemorations on Monday, the police said. The boy, whose name was not disclosed by the authorities, was arrested on Sunday in Auburn, a Sydney suburb, after he was said to have tried to obtain a firearm, according to Australian news reports. He was charged with planning a terrorist act, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. The boys lawyer said he would contest the charge and apply for bail in a hearing on Tuesday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. The Australian justice minister, Michael Keenan, said in a written statement that the plot was a truly chilling and disturbing scenario and a sad reflection of the current terror threat landscape in Australia. LONDON As Britain engages in fierce debates centered on national identity, it is also confronting challenges to traditional norms of political discourse, with issues of race and religion surfacing more overtly and provocatively. The looming referendum on whether to leave the European Union, the place of Muslims in British society at a time when Islamic terrorists have carried out attacks in Europe, the broader question of the island nations openness to immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all have recently provoked heated commentary about discrimination and tolerance. Like most European countries, many of which are facing growing populist movements on the far right, Britain has always grappled with a strain of racial and religious bias. But the political calendar and global events have combined to push the topic to center stage. President Obama, during his three-day visit here that ended on Sunday, was the focus of an extraordinary squabble that centered on his Kenyan father and attitudes toward British imperialism. MADRID Belgium famously sealed a dubious notoriety five years ago when it spent 589 days without an elected government. While Spain is not quite Belgium yet, it is getting there. Spain has started its fifth month without a government, but it is very likely to spend six months or more in political limbo, many analysts now predict, as the Spaniards give the Flemings and Walloons a run for their money in the political discord category. One word that seems to come up a lot these days when discussing politics is circo (or circus). After an election in December produced no clear winner, scattering votes among the four main parties, those parties have failed to negotiate a governing coalition. As the politicians squabble incessantly, about the only consensus is that the country has entered uncharted waters. Mariano Rajoy, the former prime minister, is clinging to his office as acting prime minister after turning down an offer from the king to form a government. His government ministers refuse to recognize the Parliament that resulted from the election or even deal with its lawmakers. The new Parliament has taken the government to court for not recognizing its legitimacy, while not recognizing the legitimacy of Mr. Rajoy, either. The Easter Rising lasted only five days. Yet the 1916 uprising by Irish rebels garnered more than 50 articles in The New York Times, which kept the story on its front page for more than two weeks. The intense coverage of the rebellion that began 100 years ago this week reflected an important moment not just for Ireland, but for Irish America and The Times itself, historians say. The rebels attempt to throw off several hundred years of British rule failed, leaving more than 400 people dead and parts of Dublin in ruins, but it also helped inspire a broader movement that led to independence in 1922. The revolt broke out in the middle of World War I, a conflict that imposed profound practical difficulties on reporters, said Robert Schmuhl, a professor at the University of Notre Dame. HANOVER, Germany The United States will significantly increase the number of military personnel, including Special Forces, in Syria to fight the Islamic State, President Obama said on Monday as he concluded a six-day trip to the Middle East, Britain and Germany. Mr. Obama, whose comments came in a speech in which he pressed for European unity, said that he would add 250 military personnel to the 50 already on the ground in the hopes of cementing what he said was progress in pushing back the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from territory that it had held. Theyre not going to be leading the fight on the ground, Mr. Obama said, confirming a recent report in The New York Times, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces. In the 49-minute speech, Mr. Obama urged Europeans to remain united in the face of growing economic and security threats, saying that the dangers of inequality, terrorism, prejudice and injustice would drag down the United States and Europe if countries on both sides of the Atlantic do not continue to work together. KRAKOW, Poland The front page of Polands leading newspaper featured on Monday an open letter from three former presidents warning that the new right-wing governments actions were threatening the countrys democracy. Lech Walesa, the 1983 Nobel peace laureate whose Solidarity movement led Polands emergence from Communism, was joined by Aleksander Kwasniewski, president from 1995 to 2005, and Bronislaw Komorowski, president from 2010 until last year, in calling on Polish citizens to defend democracy in their letter, published by Gazeta Wyborcza. The three former presidents and seven opposition politicians and activists also warned the leaders of the ruling Law and Justice party that those guilty of violating the Constitution shall bear responsibility. The right-wing Law and Justice party has been embroiled in controversy almost from the moment it took power in October after a decisive win in parliamentary elections that ended eight years of rule by the center-right Civic Platform. Much of the criticism has come over the new governments moves to weaken Polands constitutional court, which have earned rebukes from European leaders as the country is preparing to host the annual summit meeting of leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in July. The European Parliament voted this month on a resolution that accused Polands government of undermining the countrys democracy, passing the issue along to the European Council for further action. BAGHDAD Iraqi forces, backed by American airstrikes and advised by American officers, have been making strides in Anbar Province, slowly taking back territory from the Islamic State. But in Falluja, a city in Sunni-dominated Anbar that has been in the hands of the Islamic State longer than any other in Iraq or Syria, civilians are starving as the Iraqi Army and militias lay siege to the city. And elsewhere in the province, Shiite militias supported by Iran are carrying out kidnappings and murders and restricting the movement of Sunni Arab civilians, according to American and Iraqi officials. For seasoned observers of the American military involvement in Iraq going back more than 25 years to the start of the Persian Gulf war it is all part of a depressingly familiar pattern: battlefield gains that do not bring stability in their wake. Unfortunately, as has been a trademark of American involvement with Iraq at least since 2003 (and arguably since 1991), military success is not being matched with the commensurate political-economic efforts that will ultimately determine whether battlefield successes are translated into lasting achievements, Kenneth M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a longtime Iraq analyst, wrote recently in an online column. At a new seasonal store in SoHo, you can embellish your own ice cream pop, dipped in your choice of chocolate, then top it with any three of 20 ingredients like chopped nuts, rose petals, mint chips and sea salt, and finish it with another drizzle of chocolate. Magnum Ice Cream has been rolling out custom-dipping shops around the world, but this is the first in the United States. Unilever, which owns Magnum, is the worlds largest ice cream company, owning brands like Ben & Jerrys, Fudgsicle and Klondike. Last year in the United States alone, it sold more than 100 million prepackaged Magnum ice cream bars on a stick. The ice cream is made with milk with no added hormones, and the chocolate is Barry Callebaut from Belgium: Custom ice cream bar, $7, at Magnum New York until mid-August, 134 Prince Street (Wooster Street), 646-395-7463, facebook.com/magnum. For my money, the most powerful chapter of all is the story of two Syrian women, best friends since childhood, one an Alawite and the other a Sunni. Their story begins with the two of them clinging to each other as Syria slides into civil war. But over time, the fear and anger that engulf their country swallow them too. Although neither ever takes any action against the other, they end up ferocious enemies, both rewriting the history of their friendship to justify their new hatred. It is an archetypal tale of how the fall of the state tears communities apart, reducing them to warring identity groups in ways that few ever consciously desired to happen. This is a fundamental truth lost to most Americans watching the immolation of the Middle East from a seemingly safe distance. We console ourselves that their wars are the product of ancient hatreds or badly drawn borders. Worths book dispels those mirages. In the Middle East, as in countless other civil wars, the savagery is driven by mere anarchy. Worths characters, like so many people in the region today, fear constantly for their lives and those of their families. They hear rumors of evil men killing any who are not like them who are the others, whether that be Sunni or Shia in Iraq, Sunni or Alawite in Syria, Cyrenaican or Tripolitanian in Libya, or some other difference. They band together with those like themselves for safety, and then lash out in what they perceive to be justified acts of self-defense. Killings beget revenge killings, and the most vicious see in the violence an opportunity for gaining power that can be achieved only by further killing. How many of the men and women who are the heroes of Worths tales can possibly stand in the face of such purposeless slaughter? Though set amid chaos, Worths stories interweave effortlessly, each providing a counterpoint to the others but softly and gently, without beating the reader over the head. This subtlety is critical in allowing him to capture the complexities of the region. Thus, the two women whose friendship is torn apart by the Syrian maelstrom stand in contrast to the two Tunisian power brokers, brought together in hope of preventing the same devastation from engulfing their own country. These friendships provide a clean backdrop to better highlight the differences: the powerful versus the powerless, the centrifugal versus the centripetal, trying to stem the tide versus riding it. In turn, the relative success of Ghannouchi is contrasted with the utter failure of Beltagy. The disillusionment with revolution of Worths Libyan mirrors the disillusionment with jihad of his Kuwaiti. They mingle in the readers mind like the music of a well-rehearsed orchestra, creating a score greater than the sum of its parts. All great works of fiction are works of great philosophy, pondering the fundamentals of humanity. Few volumes of nonfiction ever achieve this, but Worths does, touching essential truths about the human condition. The Middle East he sketches for the reader is a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all. His subjects must struggle as best they can against the impersonal forces of the collective will and of circumstances far beyond their control. The writing in A Rage for Order is so beautiful and the storytelling so easy that you wont realize how much you are learning as you read. But there is no escaping the import of the stories. No way to read this marvelous book and not understand far more than you did before about this troubled region and the people struggling to find their way back to quiet lives. As elected officials, we pledge to protect and honor the constitutional principles of California and our great nation. We are morally obliged to those we represent to denounce words and actions that undermine our vital guiding beliefs. Sadly, this moral obligation is being put to the test this presidential election year. On Tuesday, April 26, the Anaheim City Council will take action on a resolution I authored to reject and condemn the divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump. I called for this resolution to stand up for the tens of thousands of Anaheim residents who have been the target of Trumps campaign trail attacks. They include women, Latinos, Muslims, veterans, immigrants, refugees and many others. I respect and defend Trumps right to freely discuss any issue. My resolution has no bearing on his ability, or that of his supporters, to campaign in Anaheim. To the contrary, a robust debate is welcome leading up to the November elections. But as part of that debate, I, as an elected official, and Anaheim, as a modern, diverse city, have the obligation to address statements that run counter to our values of inclusiveness and kindness. This resolution is an opportunity for the city to take a principled stand against the actions by Donald Trump directed at many of the people we were elected to serve. We cannot tacitly support, through silence, Trumps statements, including: When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending the best. Theyre people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. Anaheim is the 10th-largest city in California and the most populous in Orange County. Our city is made up of a fabric of neighborhoods that give it strength. More than half of our residents are Hispanic. Anaheim also is home to one of the largest Arab-American populations, with significant numbers of refugees and immigrants. And, each year, we welcome more than 20 million visitors from around the world. Our country faces real issues concerning immigration and terrorism. We must support informed and well-intended discussion of these issues by our presidential candidates. But when they stray from that toward divisiveness and derision, we must speak out. The Constitution provides for justice, equality, liberty and the general welfare of our nations people. It explicitly protects freedom of speech, religion, peaceful assembly and an open press. All of these principles have been denigrated by Trump in his campaign. It is important for all candidates to know that this kind of rhetoric and appeals to the basest of human instincts is a direct challenge to the values of our great state. The actions of any presidential candidate must be held to the highest standard. Hateful speech can never be excused as straight talk. We can, and must, as individuals and elected officials, demand more from anyone seeking to serve as president and commander in chief. President Abraham Lincoln eloquently said, Understanding the spirit of our institutions is to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. Whether with Trump or any other candidate, Americas fundamental principles require civil discourse, understanding of diverse views and moving forward with decisions benefiting our nation as a whole. No less is acceptable for our next president and those who aspire to our nations highest office. Kris Murray in an Anaheim councilwoman. The seals and sea lions started barking when they saw the folks with blue Mickey Mouse ears walk up to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, but they werent tourists lost on the way to Disneyland. They were the Million Dollar Dazzle crew from the Disneyland Resort there to surprise the center with a grant of $60,000. On hand to receive the surprise donation was Daniela Moore, the director of development. Last year, we rescued 584 mammals, the most weve ever rescued in a year, she said. This year were all ready at capacity. She said the center normally rescues 200 to 300 mammals a year. The increase in rescues has had an impact on the centers finances, executive director Keith Matassa said. The grant would directly support the centers rescue efforts, he added. It will buy fish, medication, and everything the animals need to get them out of here and returned to the ocean healthy and happy, he said. The donation came as part of the Disneyland Resorts Million Dollar Dazzle campaign, in honor of Disneylands 60th anniversary last year. It was announced by Michael Colglazier on the parks birthday, July 17, 2015, as a way of giving back to the community. Colglazier said the program would focus on community nonprofits based in Orange County, and would be given in $60,000 increments at least once a month until more than $1 million is given away. This was the eleventh $60,000 grant given out to an Orange County nonprofit since the program started on the parks 60th birthday, July 17, 2015. The first group to receive an award was the Girl Scouts of Orange County. Others include: The Segerstrom Center for the Performing Art Kristies Foundation The ACT Anaheim Initiative, through the Orange County Community Foundation The Community Action Partnership of Orange County The Literacy Project Foundation The Project Hope Alliance Habitat for Humanity Family Support Network Providence Speech and Hearing Centers Contact the writer: meades@ocregister.com If you think its a challenge to find an affordable house in Orange County, consider the headache its become to find an empty warehouse or factory. Industrial real estate in Orange County is practically sold out. According to commercial real estate broker JLL, just 1.5 percent of local industrial properties were empty in the first quarter. Thats down from 1.7 percent in 2015 and 5.6 percent during the recessionary ugliness of 2009 and 2010. Only Los Angeles had a lower vacancy rate nationwide at the start of 2016. Yes, there is 3 million square feet of vacant space in Orange County out of an inventory of 215 million and that may sound like a lot but whats available is broken up across roughly two dozen spots countywide. Thats about two-thirds fewer options than five years ago. Equally challenging for any space hunter is price. JLL says local industrial rents have jumped 34 percent since 2011 and now run double the national average. Orange County industrial landlords are asking for rents just 6 percent below the pre-recession peak of 2008. The shortage means bringing a manufacturer or distributor of any major scale to Orange County is practically impossible. Keeping the existing ones here is challenging. Many people are asking, Do we need to be here? says Louis Tomaselli, JLLs senior managing director in Orange County. People have to look at other markets. The impact of the space shortage means fewer local jobs at warehouses and factories, even as the economic rebound nudged bosses in many industries into hiring mode, state jobs stats show. Last year, Orange County had 81,000 workers in the wholesale-trade industries, businesses that are heavy users of industrial properties. Yes, thats up 3,200 workers, or 4.1 percent, in five years since the recession ended. But that fresh hiring at wholesalers is nowhere near as fast as the 14 percent growth in jobs at all private employers in the county since 2010. Orange County also looks sluggish in wholesaler hiring in a statewide prism. A growing California economy has ballooned demand for goods of all sorts, making wholesale trade a hot job market across the state 77,000 jobs were added in wholesaling in five years, or a 12 percent bump. Another industrial job category warehousing and storage is actually a shrinking business in Orange County, with 1,000 jobs lost (17 percent) in five years. Compare that with 39 percent growth (26,300 jobs) seen in this job niche statewide since 2010. The only slice of industrial real estate where Orange County sees significant job growth is at its factories. Manufacturing employment is up 6,400 jobs, or 4.4 percent, in five years to 157,000 workers. Statewide, manufacturers have been growing staffs by 3.9 percent, or 48,000 workers, since 2010. But its unlikely to see any groundswell of public support for significant development of industrial space in Orange County. Getting any of the limited raw real estate ready for development here is already challenging and will become only a tougher chore in the future. And thats created a curious pecking order for land use. Residential projects are high-profit opportunities, and developers still get approval from local planning authorities in many cities. Retail projects rarely face many regulatory objections, as the added sales tax revenue soothes municipal authorities growth anxieties. Office space is often seen as an attractive addition to a community. But a new factory or a warehouse in Orange County? Not so fast. In fact, many old industrial properties have been converted to other uses often residential making the industrial space shortage even worse. We just cant switch everything over to residential, JLLs Tomaselli says. We need to build buildings to house jobs, too. The shortage means companies looking for industrial space in Orange County are getting creative, he says. Some tenants are renewing their leases early with a bit of sticker shock at new, higher rents because they know there are no alternatives, Tomaselli says. Others are keeping local operations but growing elsewhere, with significant cost savings. Industrial space is roughly one-third cheaper in the Inland Empire than in Orange County. Move to a market like Phoenix, and the rent can be cut by half. Note: Leaving Orange County makes sense as long as added shipping costs dont outweigh the rent savings. Remember, Orange County is close to major ports and is also a huge retail market for many merchants. Lucy Dunn, president of the Orange County Business Council, doesnt see any grand civic push to create more warehouses or factories in Orange County. Its tough enough to get extra housing built in Orange County these days, no less developing far less popular industrial projects. Dunn, who never wants to lose any local businesses, admits that places with cheaper land like the Inland Empire become a viable option. Our residents seem to have other priorities, Dunn says of the lack of ample warehouses and factory space in Orange County. This may just be something where we need to look at a Southland solution. Its always sad when Orange Countys high costs force businesses or their employees to make tough decisions. But the harsh reality is the county cannot be all things to all people. Contact the writer: jlansner@ocregister.com Re: Obamas disasters [Letters, April 18]: Harald Martin listed classic Fox News sound bites, followed by exaggerated or untrue comments, in his support of Thomas Sowell. How about Benghazi is a particularly annoying example. After 32 congressional hearings, in spite of zero findings of any wrongdoing or stand-down orders, some people still choose to believe that valiant people died because of (the presidents) inaction. Sowell is a well-respected economist and journalist, a senior fellow at Stanfords prestigious Hoover Institute, but I, too, was surprised to see his nonspecific comment concerning the presidents seven years of disaster after disaster. Ironically, each disaster mentioned by Mr. Martin Obamacare, Eric Holder and Benghazi has a link to Southern Orange County Congressman Darrell Issa. As former head of the House Oversight Committee, he chaired dozens of hearings and was known for his arrogance, suppression of defense witnesses and obvious politicking. He was criticized from both sides of the aisle and a true disaster for his party. Issa may well be the person that the GOP holds responsible for Hillary Clintons election. Roger Iles Rancho Santa Margarita A progressive resistance to change Re: Misguided attack on tenure sidetracked [Opinion, April 21]: Just a question, do the letter and commentary writers who protect the current education system ever offer up reasons other than we dont have enough money? Thats all I ever see. Its never about the current process needing reform, or a bloated administration structure, or misguided priorities or anything else. Its kind of like that with all government-centric services. Its never about how they go about their business, its always we lack funds. We have it figured out; its just not properly resourced. And any ideas to change the status quo, like charter schools or merit pay, are dismissed as counterproductive. For a group that likes to label themselves progressive they sure do resist change. Bud Carbonaro Lake Forest DULONG, China The narrow valley is one of the most remote and pristine in China. Monkeys, Asian black bears and the rare goatlike takin roam through rain-soaked forests above a river the color of jade. In spring, hillsides are splashed with pink rhododendron blossoms. Until two years ago, snowfall on a mountain pass blocked vehicle access for many months each year. Now, in this sliver of land on the eastern rim of the Himalayas, the government is building new roads, expanding telecommunications and encouraging commercial ventures to alleviate poverty. Li Yingchun, who used to hike five days over a snowcapped mountain range from a village here to attend a boarding school, said a new paved road that runs through a 7-kilometer tunnel slicing into the mountains had made life easier. But he worries about the effect on both the environment and society from the explosion of activity. Already, a state-owned enterprise has built at least two hydropower stations along the Dulong River. Hotels are springing up. Where there is a road, there are cars, said Li, 29, an ecologist who earned a masters degree at a provincial university. There is too much human activity. Opened in 2014, the serpentine road has sheer drops, dizzying turns and rubble from rockslides. It has also cut travel time to the county seat now a mere three hours rather than a full days rough drive along a 15-year-old dirt road, which was impassable in winter. The changes that have transformed so many parts of China are unfolding at warp speed in the Dulong River Valley. It is home to almost all of the countrys 7,000 ethnic Dulong, or Drung, one of the smallest of the 56 official national ethnic groups. The lifeline of this northwest corner of Yunnan province is the Dulong River, which begins on the Tibetan plateau and flows through this valley into Myanmar, where it merges into the Irrawaddy. In Yunnan, the river runs 56 miles. The Gaoligong mountain range has kept the Dulong valley secluded, separating it from the wider valley of the Nu River, where a mosaic of ethnic groups live. The ramparts of the Gaoligong challenged World War II pilots who flew over the Hump, transporting military goods from Indian bases used by the United States and its allies to Chinese forces battling the Japanese. Planes crashed in the region the remnants of one are in a museum to the south. Those peaks no longer cut off this valley, where the Dulong have lived for centuries in hillside villages. It is not just the new road and tunnel that now connect residents here to the outside world. China Mobile has set up 4G cellular data service across much of the valley, and is not shy about advertising this on billboards. One sign on the approach from the mountains to the main administrative village, Kongdang, says, Take a photo of the beautiful scenery, transmit it to the world. By the words are images of the jade river and of a local woman with intricate indigo tattoos on her face, once a common sight here. The buildings in Kongdang are concrete blocks, and many were built or renovated a few years ago. They are painted orange and have a silhouette of a horned cows head, a Dulong totem. A cow statue sits at the town entrance. The changes have been tremendous, said Yang Yi, an ethnic Han man living in the Nu Valley who has been driving a passenger minivan between the two valleys for a decade. Transportation, clothes, daily life it has all been transformed, he said. If you came here a decade ago, you would recognize the Dulong from their colorful clothes. Around three to five years ago, they began wearing modern clothes. Even President Xi Jinping noted the changes. In January 2015, Xi met with seven representatives of the Dulong in Kunming, the provincial capital, and spoke of getting rid of poverty and building a moderately well-off society, according to an official news report. The valley is still quiet, except for occasional bursts of construction. One paved road runs north from Dulong Town toward the Tibetan border, ending near Yang Lis hometown. Another goes to the border with Myanmar and no farther. In the last village is a red church; some Dulong are Christians, though most are animists. There is no frontier checkpoint. Along a dirt trail into Myanmar, the border is demarcated by nothing more than a small stone. With no paved roads leading out of the nearby villages in Myanmars Kachin state, ethnic Dulong there walk into this valley to sell herbs and vegetables. It is tourism that provincial and county officials want to sell to the outside world. Word of the valleys beauty is trickling out, and international agencies have recognized the Gaoligong Mountains National Nature Reserve as a crucial biosphere. The new road has made visiting easier, even if the nearest airport is a long days drive away. One recent afternoon, three ethnic Han backpackers from central China sat in the last village by the Myanmar border. People from outside the valley, many from other Yunnan towns, have come to work in restaurants and other service businesses that are counting on a tourist boom. In the village of Pukawang, just south of the government town, a group of tourists from Shanghai drove up to a boutique riverside hotel, Green Cottage, opened in October by a Beijing entrepreneur a poverty alleviation project supported by local officials. On a slope behind the hotel is the old village. The few remaining residents there sit in wooden homes with fire pits, sometimes drinking homemade corn whiskey. The hotel occupies half the new village. The village homes and hotel villas were all designed and built together around 2012. Officials gave families in Pukawang two new homes, one to live in and one to rent to the hotel company for use as guest villas. To each family, the hotel pays 5,000 renminbi per year ($800). The hotel charges guests $25-$75 per night for each of the 13 villas. Living here is much better than where we were before, Kong Mingqing, 21, said as he stood by the porch of his new family home behind the hotel. Few ethnic Dulong have lived outside the valley, but Kong is an exception. He left to study vehicle maintenance in Hunan province, he said, but returned in 2013 because of financial problems. When I came back, it had already been transformed, he said. I dont think too much about the changes coming. Of course, there will be changes. In Pukawang, the hotel has tried to employ villagers part of the official plan to help raise local incomes but has found that hard to do, said a manager, Yang Yubiao, an ethnic Bai from the Dali area. The villagers said they were tired of the work, he said. They left after two to three days. Three of the hotels nine employees are ethnic Dulong from elsewhere in the valley, and the rest are outsiders, Yang said. Has the poverty alleviation plan succeeded? he asked. Weve raised the awareness of the Dulong people here how to communicate with outsiders, how to make money, how to live a better life. But Yang also said he had heard that a couple of women in Pukawang had committed suicide a few years ago by drinking pesticide. He has a theory: This was a primitive society, he said. Now the leap is happening too fast. Some of them cannot adapt. LONDON President Obama will announce the addition of 250 Special Operations troops to the American advisory force in Syria, U.S. officials said Sunday, the administrations latest move seeking to intensify pressure on the Islamic State. A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss measures that have not yet been announced, said that Obama will make his decision public on Monday, during remarks at a technology fair in Germany. The president has authorized a series of steps to increase support for our partners in the region, including Iraqi security forces as well as local Syrian forces who are taking the fight to ISIL, the official said. ISIL is another name for the Islamic State, the militant group that controls a wide swath of both countries. The extra forces, who will be placed in areas of Syria that are removed from conflict and will travel in and out of the country, will bring the number of U.S. advisers there to about 300. A U.S. defense official said the decision is aimed in part at helping to grow the ranks of Arab fighters in a network of rebel groups, now dominated by Kurdish fighters, that the United States is backing as it battles the Islamic State. The additional U.S. forces will advise those troops as they seek to isolate Raqqa, the militants de facto capital in Syria. Weve had success and obviously want to . . . sustain it, build on it and potentially garner more success, the official said. Obamas intention to make the announcement Monday was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The decision to increase the number of Special Operations forces in Iraq and Syria was made earlier this month. It was determined that Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter would announce an additional 200 troops during a visit to Baghdad and that the Syria announcement would wait for Obamas arrival in Germany, where he is holding talks with the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Italy. As part of the Iraq announcement Carter made last week, Obama also has authorized U.S. commanders there to use Apache attack helicopters and deploy American advisers with lower-level Iraqi units, to assist local troops in a future offensive to reclaim the city of Mosul. U.S. officials think those measures will enhance the effectiveness of Iraqi troops, but they also will expose U.S. forces to greater risk. The increase is part of an overall acceleration in the fight against the Islamic State. Despite a string of what the administration has described as successes including territory reclaimed from the militants in Iraq and Syria and the severing of supply and communication lines between Islamic State forces in the two countries some aspects of the conflict have gone more slowly, or unsuccessfully, than anticipated. While Iraqi military forces, backed by U.S. air power and other enhancements, retook the city of Ramadi early this year, plans to move toward Mosul, in northern Iraq, have dragged as the Baghdad government contends with economic and political difficulties, and the melding of Iraqs Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish military forces into a unified offensive force has proved problematic. The Iraqi military also continues to struggle with issues of morale, leadership and logistics. In an interview last week with CBS News, Obama said he believed preparations for the Mosul offensive what the military calls shaping operations to surround and weaken Islamic State forces there should be finished this year and allow the eventual retaking of the city. The plan to move toward Raqqa follows last years successful northern Syria offensive that was led primarily by Kurdish forces, aided by U.S. airstrikes, with some support from a group of Sunni opposition fighters the United States has been struggling to support. Raqqa, farther to the south, is a Sunni city that Kurdish forces are not eager to move toward, and where they would not be welcome. A promising, partial cease-fire in the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has seriously frayed in recent weeks, sparking renewed fighting in the northwest region near the Turkish border and complicating administration plans to begin air operations in aid of an opposition attempt to stop an Islamic State advance in that area. Speaking to reporters late last week after a visit to Iraq, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Obama had not at that point made a decision to send the additional troops to Syria. But he said the president had promised to consider granting more resources as plans came together for advancing Syrian forces campaign against the Islamic State. Its linked to our partners on the ground, in supporting our partners on the ground and their continued operations, he said. The death penalty is an issue that a lot of people struggle with, often because it lands at the intersection of religion and political ideology. Its an easy call for me, because I think of capital punishment as the only truly moral resolution to some of the most heinous and immoral acts. When someone is murdered, not only is that one life snuffed out prematurely, but the lives of their friends, family and loved ones are changed forever. In many cases, the event is so traumatic that those close to the victim never fully recover. When the bad guy or gal is executed, at least the family is given some closure. If the killer is allowed to live, every time they file an appeal, the victims family is forced to relive the murder again. If theyre eligible for parole, the nightmare gets replayed annually. For some family members, fighting for justice becomes a full-time job. Thats exactly what happened to Debra Tate, whose sister Sharon Tate was murdered, along with six others, by the Manson Family in the summer of 1969. After the deaths of her mother and sister, Debra has taken on the responsibility of making sure that all of the Manson Family killers stay behind bars. Its a nonstop struggle, thanks to the extreme leftward tilt of the California Parole Board. Earlier this month, after a five-hour hearing in Chino, a parole board panel recommended that Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten be released from prison. She had previously been denied parole 19 times. Van Houten was convicted of participating in the 1969 murders of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. Van Houten was sentenced to death in 1971, but was spared when the Supreme Court overturned the states death penalty a year later. Not long after that, her first conviction was also overturned because her lawyer died before the trial was completed. Van Houten was retried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1978. But in a one-party state like California, life doesnt always mean life. It means we will keep you locked up until the state is broke, and parole board members are too young to remember the brutality of your crimes. So, I think its time we took a trip down memory lane. On the night of the murders, Van Houten was joined by Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles Tex Watson at the LaBiancas Los Feliz home in Los Angeles. According to prosecutors, Van Houten and Krenwinkel held down Rosemary LaBianca and forced her to watch Watson stab her husband to death. Watson then started stabbing Rosemary, who was frantically pleading for her life. Thats when he handed the knife to Van Houten, who testified to stabbing Rosemary 14 times. In her 1971 trial, Van Houten chillingly said, And I took one of the knives, and Patricia had a knife, and we started stabbing and cutting up the lady. In a 1994 interview with CNNs Larry King, Van Houten expanded on her role in the murders: I went in, and Mrs. LaBianca was laying on the floor, and I stabbed her in the lower back, around 16 times. And now the state of California wants this monster living among us. In an interview with ABC News Good Morning America, Debra Tate said the parole board bought a bill of goods, [Mansons followers] are still sociopathic individuals capable of great brutality. The heinous crimes that were committed in the past, in 1969, will repeat themselves again. Im quite sure. Tate is right. And thankfully this panel wont have the last word. The next step is an administrative review, and, if the decision stands, Gov. Jerry Brown could veto their decision. Hopefully we can count on Jerry Brown to save us from the Mansons, his own parole board and the foes of incarceration who are only too willing to force crime victims to fight for justice and relive the worst moments of their lives. 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. LONDON The United States has opened a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing the militarys 6-year-old Cyber Command for the first time to mount computer-network attacks that are now being used alongside more traditional weapons. The effort reflects President Barack Obamas desire to bring many of the secret U.S. cyberweapons that had been aimed elsewhere, notably at Iran, into the fight against the Islamic State which has proved effective in using modern communications and encryption to recruit and carry out operations. The National Security Agency, which specializes in electronic surveillance, has for years listened intensely to the militants of the Islamic State, and those reports are often part of the presidents daily intelligence briefing. But the NSAs military counterpart, Cyber Command, was focused largely on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea where cyberattacks on the United States most frequently originate and had run virtually no operations against what has become the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world. A review of what should be done to confront the Islamic State is on Obamas agenda Monday, when he is scheduled to attend a conference in Hanover, Germany, with the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany. A benefit of the administrations exceedingly rare public discussion of the campaign, officials said, is to rattle the Islamic States commanders, who have begun to realize that sophisticated hacking efforts are manipulating their data. Potential recruits might also be deterred if they come to worry about the security of their communications with the militant group. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is among those who have publicly discussed the new mission, but only in broad terms, and this month the deputy secretary of defense, Robert O. Work, was more colorful in describing the effort. We are dropping cyberbombs, Work said. We have never done that before. HANNOVER, Germany Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up momentum in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own. Obamas announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the presidents professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden. Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi. The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continents history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the ruins of the Second World War. Make no mistake, Obama said. These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life. The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own. The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as free riders. He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: Ill be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense. On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies. He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany. These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them, Obama said. The new deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel. Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions. He did say, As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces. Obamas troop announcement was called a good step by Salem Al Meslet, spokesman of the High Negotiations Committee, the main Syrian opposition group. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said it was a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient. Obamas call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign. Amid what he described as unsettling times, Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation block. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria. Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now, Obama said. We have to uphold our values, not just when its easy but when its hard. The migrant crisis was a central focus as Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya. With the NATO mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration, Merkel said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce. Obama, in the CBS interview, said he told European leaders that the migration problem was putting a strain on European politics, advancing far-right nationalism and encouraging the breakup of European unity. He added that the situation in some cases is being exploited by somebody like Mr. Putin, the Russian leader. Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said in his speech he saw Europe facing a defining moment. He urged the continents leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women. If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way, Obama said. On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London, headed for New York. Aboard were Syracuse University students returning home for Christmas after a semester in London, business executives, musicians, teenagers, families and many others. Less than an hour into the flight, a bomb exploded, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew. On the ground in the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, 11 people were killed as the broken plane crashed down in pieces. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 ushered in a new era of terrorism. It was an eye-opener for us, how vulnerable we were as a nation, and how easy it was to just put a bomb aboard, said Ted Reina of La Palma. His daughter Jocelyn Reina was 26 and had been a Pan Am stewardess for 11 months when she was killed on Flight 103. The story of the families left behind by the attack is the subject of Since: The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. It screens Tuesday as part of the Newport Beach Film Festival. Reina will participate in a discussion after the screening. Reina and other victims family members turned their grief into action, pushing for laws to strengthen airline security. It shows you what ordinary Americans and ordinary citizens, what they can accomplish when theyre thrown into a disaster like this, said Phil Furey, the films writer and director. But thats just part of the story Furey tells in Since. The documentary also covers the other layers of the complex story, including how unprepared Pan Am was to deal with the affected families, as well as the release from prison of the one man convicted of the bombing, just as a major deal between oil company BP and Libya was signed. PURSUING HER DREAM Ted Reina said his daughter first mentioned wanting to be an airline stewardess when she was 10 years old. When Jocelyn was a young woman, she also had dreams of being an actress and made a couple of commercials for Fuji film that were shown in Japan. She said, When I get on an airplane, I have a captive audience, even though its the safety instruction!, Reina recalled. She knew French and would go see foreign films in Hollywood to practice it, which worked in her favor to get her a job at Pan Am. Jocelyn was a fan of Shakespeare and Renaissance fairs and loved living in London, where she shared an apartment with other Pan Am stewardesses, as female flight attendants were called then. Youd walk into a room of people, and youd remember her, Reina said. Reina was at work Dec. 21, 1988, when his boss at the phone company asked him if hed heard about the Pan Am crash. They turned on a radio. The story was all over the news. Reina called his daughters home in London, where a roommate told him yes, his daughter was on Flight 103. It still hurts, without a doubt, Reina said last week in his kitchen in La Palma. When you lose a child, its so out of order. After the bombing, Reina and his wife, Betty, who died in 2012, met other victims families as they traveled to Scotland. Soon, families were organizing to effect change. We all had the same pain, the loss of a loved one, whether it was a husband, a son or wife or daughter, Reina said. Advocating for changes in airline security gave Reina a place to focus his grief and anger. We knew nothing about passing laws, he said. Together, the families lobbied Congress to strengthen airline security. The result was the Aviation Security Improvement Act of 1990. We didnt want anyone else to suffer like we did, Reina said. A SHARED GRIEF Furey focused on three families in Since. Although Reina isnt in the film, his experience is reflected in it as part of the families left behind. Furey began work on the film in 2005. He started with Suse Lowenstein, a sculptor in Montauk on Long Island in New York. Her 21-year-old son Alexander Lowenstein was a Flight 103 victim. She had made 75 large sculptures of herself and other women who lost family on the flight, capturing the moments they learned about their loved ones deaths. Eventually, Furey realized there was a larger story to tell, about the families grief, their treatment by Pan Am and the U.S. government, and their activism using the media to get out their message once they organized. Initially, Furey thought Since would focus on the past. But about halfway through filming, the story had a new development. Libya had formally accepted responsibility for the bombing and compensated the victims families. In 2009, Scotland released the only person convicted of the bombing, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, from prison on compassionate grounds (he had prostate cancer). He was sent home to Libya to die. Critics said the release was driven by politics and a business deal that British company BP had pushed for the release to secure oil contracts with Libya under Moammar Gadhafi. I filmed the families watching him being released, Furey said. The U.S. and British governments didnt intervene in Scotlands decision, he said, and families felt let down. The film ends up being a much larger statement about oil and what we are willing to overlook as a society when it comes to oil. Its also about how the victims are, in a way, frozen in time, he said. It gives you a larger picture into what is terrorism, what is ruined in this one moment. Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com The parent company of SOL Cocina in Newport Beach has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Sol Kitchen, an organic juice bar in Denver. Rich Howland, managing partner for Scottsdale-based Baja Management, said he reached out to the juice bars owners before they opened to discuss possible confusion in the marketplace over the names, he said. Cocina is the Spanish word for kitchen, while sol translates to sun. SOL, which opened in Newport Beach in 2009, is planning to open a restaurant in late July in the Cherry Creek area of Denver. Howland said the owners of the Denver juice bar and cafe asked him how much money SOL Cocina was willing to pay them to change the name. That eventually led to the lawsuit, which was filed about two weeks ago, Howland said. Please know that our goal is obviously not to challenge every SOL restaurant but rather protect ourselves in the immediate markets that we are opening restaurants, Howland said. SOL Cocina is known for its Mexican cuisine and cocktails. It also operates locations in Scottsdale and Playa Vista. The company also operates a taco bar called Solita in Huntington Beach and Valencia. Juice bar owner Leia Mayer said her businesss official name is Sol Kitchen Coffee Juice Tea. Mayer said she never received information from state or federal officials indicating the Sol Kitchen name was in conflict with another business. Her juice bar, which recently opened amid the conflict, sells coffee, tea, cold-pressed juices, and small-bite vegan and vegetarian foods. The allegations of infringement and or copying from Sol Mexican Cocina; a Tequila Bar and Mexican Food restaurant came as a complete shock, she wrote to the Register. It also seems insulting to the Denver populace, she added, that they would be accused of not being able to tell the difference between a raw juice bar and tequila bar! Howland said Mayer has until May to respond to the filing. Contact the writer: nluna@ocregister.com CHICAGO The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy whose fatal shooting by the Cleveland police in 2014 prompted national outrage, is set to receive $6 million from the city in a settlement announced Monday in federal court records. The settlement, which would be the latest in a series of seven-figure payouts by major U.S. cities to the families of African Americans who died at the hands of officers, spares Cleveland the possibility of a federal civil rights trial that could have brought new attention to Tamirs death and to the citys troubled police force. It also allows the city to avoid the possibility of an even larger judgment. Cleveland officials said the settlement is the citys largest ever in a police-related lawsuit, though under the terms of the agreement, the city does not admit wrongdoing. The $6 million figure is in line with settlements in the deaths of Eric Garner in New York and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Lawyers for the Rice family had been meeting with Cleveland officials to discuss a settlement since early last month. The agreement must still be approved by a probate court. For the Rice family, which had called for criminal charges against the rookie officer who opened fire almost immediately after encountering Tamir on Nov. 22, 2014, the settlement means an end to civil proceedings. But it does nothing to change the decision by a Cuyahoga County grand jury last year to not indict the officer, Timothy Loehmann. Lawyers for Tamirs estate said Monday that no amount of money can adequately compensate the boys relatives for their grief. In a situation like this, theres no such thing as closure or justice, the lawyers, Jonathan S. Abady and Earl S. Ward, said. Nothing will bring Tamir back. His unnecessary and premature death leaves a gaping hole for those who knew and loved him that can never be filled. Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson said Monday that the situation was not easy for me personally or the city in general, but that the settlement protected the rights of the city and its taxpayers. A 12-year-old child lost his life, and that should not have happened in the city of Cleveland, he said. Tamir had been carrying a real-looking pellet gun near a recreation center when someone called 911 to report him. The caller cautioned that Tamir was probably a juvenile and that the weapon was probably fake, but those qualifications were not relayed to the responding officers, who were told only of a report of a male with a weapon. Moments later, as grainy video footage showed, a squad car drove over a curb and through snow-dotted grass before sliding to a halt within feet of Tamir. Loehmann, who said later that he had feared for his life and had seen Tamir reaching for his waistband, stepped out of the cruiser and quickly shot the boy. Tamirs shooting, which happened two days before a grand jury in Missouri declined to charge the Ferguson officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, 18, also occurred amid a wave of new attention on use of force by the police and set off protests in Cleveland. HANNOVER, Germany President Barack Obama said Sunday that he was confident the United States and the European Union would succeed in negotiating a new trans-Atlantic trade deal by the end of the year, saying the benefits of such an agreement were indisputable. Obama said images of plants moving overseas and jobs lost created a narrative about trade agreements that drives, understandably, a lot of suspicion in places such as the United States and Germany. But, he added, well-designed trade deals can have greater benefits. It is indisputable that it has made our economy stronger, he said. It has made sure that our businesses are the most competitive in the world. Obamas comments came as he stood next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a news conference in Hannover as they prepared to preside over the opening here of the worlds largest industrial trade fair. The presidents visit to Germany was intended to bolster negotiators seeking to wrap up a trans-Atlantic trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union, an accord that Merkel supports but that is highly unpopular in her country. The chancellor greeted the president at Schloss Herrenhausen, the former summer residence of the Royal House of Hannover. They stood in front of a line of German troops in gray overcoats and green berets as the national anthems for the U.S. and Germany played before they returned inside for a private meeting. Obama said he hoped the trade negotiations could be completed before he leaves office. Once negotiations are finished, he said, people will be able to see exactly why this will be good for our two countries. Undeterred by the scandal caused by Volkswagens deceit about emissions from its diesel vehicles in the U.S., Germanys export-driven businesses showed off their wares in eager anticipation of the fairs opening Sunday. Nine Pacific Crest Trail backpackers sat outside Whitewater Trail House on a recent morning waiting to be shuttled on the next leg of their journey. Just two weeks into what could be a six-month adventure, hikers with trail names such as the Beast, Forget-Me-Not and Special Delivery were determined to walk from Mexico to Canada on as much of the trail as they could. But last summers Lake fire left a 15.5-mile section of trail closed to the north in the San Bernardino National Forest one of two sections of the trail now closed in that forest following wildfires. The nine long-distance thru-hikers, who are attempting to backpack the 2,650-mile national scenic trail from one end to another, shuttled by van to Big Bear Lake or nearby Onyx Summit on Highway 38, where the trail reopens. They didnt want to risk rumored $2,500 fines or their safety to travel through the closure, bus six hours to Big Bear or pound pavement on an alternate route. I know some other people who are what we call purists want to hike every inch of the trail, said Robert Bobcat Donnellan, 38, of Asheville, N.C., sitting at a picnic table outside the Whitewater home where he was staying April 13. I personally dont care. I didnt come out here to road walk. That afternoon in Idyllwild, a 34-mile hike south, Bruce Man in Black Cornish of San Diego planned to research an alternate hiking route to bypass the closed section while waiting for friends. At 59, he retired early from a job as an eighth-grade science teacher to hike the entire route after dreaming about the trip for 20 years. The philosophy of this trail is, Hike your own hike, he said, standing outside an ultralight tent in Mount San Jacinto State Parks forest campground in Idyllwild. If people want to hitch ahead, thats cool. Its just not for me. Soon none of that may be necessary. U.S. Forest Service staff and San Gorgonio Wilderness Association trail volunteers are working to reopen that section in May, 11 months after the 49-square-mile blaze torched much of the San Gorgonio Wilderness and areas to the east containing the trail. While many hikers understand trail changes and closures are part of the experience, some are asking whether that section will open soon enough. Yet south in Idyllwild, others are asking why about 14.8 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail approaching the mountain town from about Cedar Springs Trail north to Little Tahquitz Valley Trail and eight miles of access trails remain closed three years after the 27,531-acre Mountain fire burned in the San Jacinto Mountains. Other trails also remained closed in both areas, including South Fork, Aspen Grove and Lost Creek in the Lake fire area, and Fobes, Spitler Peak and Willow Creek in the Mountain fire area. Tahquitz Valley Trail and Cedar Springs Trail northeast of the Pacific Crest Trail are open in the Mountain fire area. This years long-distance thru-hikers, already trekking north from Mexico, are hitchhiking or taking shuttles, buses or alternate routes with some still going through both closed burn areas. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail through these sections peaks from mid-April until the end of May. By Monday, 200 hikers had stopped by the Whitewater Trail House 100 yards off the trail to pick up packages, shower or camp overnight. At least 600 were expected by months end, and that many in May. About 255 hikers signed in at Mount San Jacinto State Park campground last year, but about 400 probably went through. Between March 1 and Thursday, 140 hikers registered, state park aide Tom Inocencio said. On April 14, San Gorgonio Wilderness trail crews, led by San Bernardino National Forest trail specialist Jeannette Granger and San Gorgonio Wilderness Association Trail Project Manager Bob Williams of Riverside, began removing potential trail hazards in the closed Lake fire section of the Pacific Crest Trail. Others have been logging and clearing unburned portions. Although 15.5 miles of the Pacific trail are closed there, only about 3.8 miles burned on both sides of Mission Springs trail camp, Granger said. We are hoping hoping, fingers crossed that we can repair the worst of the damage in the high-intensity burn, she said. The next day, Granger and 12 volunteers carried hand tools a mile south from Mission Springs to the most devastated part of the trail. Charred stumps at least 12 feet high and gaping 5- to 7-foot stump holes sat along the path. Farther in, the trail snaked through a skeleton forest of towering black trees, ash and rock, with a few willows sprouting green shoots. A chainsaw whined, followed by a thunking axe, as volunteers Bob Lum and Cliff Heck cut a 60-foot burned tree that lay snapped in two on the trail and a slope above. Four to five men rolled thick, heavy sections of the tree away so backpackers already traveling through despite the closure would no longer take an alternate route up a slope, risking falls and sending erosion into Mission Creek, habitat for endangered willow flycatchers. Others in yellow hard hats stabilized loose dirt slopes, rebuilt landslide-covered trail, added stepping stones across the creek to prevent erosion and silting, and filled stump holes. Walking through a burned area isnt safe, Granger said. Danger in the unstable areas can come from falling branches dubbed widow-makers, dead giant trees with weak roots that can fall and crush hikers, loose rocks, rolling debris including logs, flash floods, trailside stump holes and slippery ash. If they come through and get hurt, its on them, said Granger, adding the U.S. Forest Service is too short-staffed to enforce the closures. No one has yet been fined, Forest Service officials said. BORDEN, Ind. Declaring the Republican presidential contest at a fork in the road, Ted Cruz and John Kasich defended their extraordinary new alliance on Monday as the partys last, best chance to stop Donald Trump, even as the New York billionaire surged toward another big delegate haul. Trump, the Republican front-runner, lashed out at what he called collusion by desperate rivals, intensifying his attacks on the GOP presidential nomination system on the eve of todays round of primary elections in the Northeast. If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail, Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island. But in politics, because its a rigged system, because its a corrupt enterprise, in politics youre allowed to collude. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland hold primaries today along with Rhode Island. Cruz, a Texas senator, and Kasich, the Ohio governor, announced the terms of an unprecedented agreement late Sunday night to coordinate primary strategies in three of the 15 remaining primary states. Kasich will step back in the May 3 Indiana contest to let Cruz bid without interference for voters who dont like Trump. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in subsequent contests in Oregon and New Mexico. The arrangement does not address todays primaries, where Trump is expected to add to his already hefty delegate lead. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to keep him from amassing enough delegates to seal his nomination and avoid a contested national convention in July. Cruz insisted, We are at a fundamental fork in the road, as he campaigned in Indiana. The plan carries risks especially as Trump bashes a rigged nomination system. Some would-be Cruz supporters in Indiana agreed with Trumps criticism. Thats kind of sneaky, said Joe Conder, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer from Scottsville, who is deciding between Cruz and Trump. Its more about politics than getting things done. Since when in our democracy are election results destroyed before being counted? Thats whats happening in a labor case involving workers for Gerawan Farming of Fresno. In 2013, those workers voted to decertify representation by the United Farm Workers because the union had done nothing for more than 20 years. Shortly after, the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board ordered the ballots impounded without counting, citing charges of irregularities. On April 15, reported the Fresno Bee, the ALRB upheld an administrative law judges decision to dismiss the farm workers position and the balloting by Gerawan workers will be nullified. In his earlier ruling, Judge Mark R. Soble determined that Gerawan had violated the Agricultural Labor Relations Act by supporting and assisting in signature gathering for the decertification petition. Why couldnt they just count the votes and announce the results, then deal with any objections? The Bee reported that, on April 18, Gerawan officials rejected the charges and said they would appeal the decision to the state Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno. Its likely the case will end up with the state Supreme Court. The UFW, naturally, backed the ALRBs decision. Where has it been the past 20 years? The leader of the 5,000 Gerawan workers, Silvia Lopez, has been called the new Cesar Chavez, the UFW co-founder, who died in 1993. According to a 2012 article in the liberal Nation magazine, UFW membership dropped from 50,000 in the 1970s to 6,000 in 2012. According to UnionFacts.com, membership since has increased to 10,278. Ms. Lopez said she now wants a new election. Her attorney, Anthony Raimondo, said, Workers future should be decided by workers, not by judges, bureaucrats and politicians. Let the people vote. That seems obvious to us. The ALRB should schedule a new election, to be supervised by independent monitors. The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented achievement in the fight against climate change. A record number of countries came together, first in the French capital for the COP21* conference in November-December 2015 and then formally to sign the agreement at the UN on 22 April 2016, to ensure that future generations enjoy a stable, healthy and habitable world. The agreement sets us on a path to limit global temperature rise through reduced emissions. This reduction can only be achieved through far-reaching changes to our energy systemsomething recognised in Paris. There was a clear acknowledgement that clean energy can reduce emissions and help achieve global climate goals, while at the same time drive our economies forward. Half of the climate plans that countries put forward for COP 21 include explicit energy targets, mostly focusing on increasing renewable energy sources. This sends a clear message to stakeholders, investors, businesses, civil society, and policy makers: transition to a clean energy economy is not a fad, it is the new reality. What we have achieved so far In the European Union we are embracing the clean energy transition. An effective way of doing so is through the development of advanced and competitive green technologywe want Europe to be the world leader in this field. To work towards this goal we have set ourselves short and mid-term targets of a 20% share of renewables in our energy system by 2020, and 27% by 2030. Achieving these targets wont be easy, but we have set up the instruments and tools necessary to facilitate the shift. We have legislation establishing the overall policy for the promotion of energy from renewable sources, including specific national targets to facilitate implementation. Our efforts are bearing fruit: recent data from the European Environment Agency for 2014 demonstrate that, thanks to renewables, fossil fuel use has been reduced by an estimated 114 Mtoe (megaton oil-equivalent), comparable to the fossil fuel consumption of France. In absolute terms, Germany, Italy and Spain achieved the largest reduction in domestic fossil fuel use and avoided greenhouse gases emissions, as a result of national renewable energy deployment since 2005. All in all, around 380Mt of carbon dioxide emissions have been avoided, which is equivalent to the yearly emissions of Poland. These results come together with opportunities for investment and growth. Investments historically allocated to fossil fuels are gradually shifting towards renewables and other sources of clean energy. By 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, we expect investment in renewables to be almost three times the investment in fossil fuel power plants. This is a tremendous opportunity to position European energy companies at the head of the new global market of low carbon technologies and one which they are beginning to seize. According to the 2015 State of Renewable Energies in Europe report, the renewable energy sector generated a turnover of 143.6 billion and over one million jobs in Europe in 2014. Wind energy has been the main driver of growth and jobs, accounting for 324,000 jobs and a turnover of 48.3 billion in the same year. The way forward The Paris Agreement vindicates the targets and legislation we had in the EU, and member states have been working hard to achieve these goals. There is a long way to go, and work has begun on proposals and legislation to help in this endeavour. Our energy system is evolving fast. By 2030 half of all our electricity will be powered by renewables, and in about 35 years it will be carbon-free. That is a big step up from todays 27.5% renewables. We must prepare our electricity system, making it more flexible and market-oriented. For that reason, we are now finalising a proposal on a new electricity market design to help embed renewables at the heart of our system and way of life. We want to encourage citizens, energy co-operatives and local authorities to take ownership of the energy they produce and consume. Using renewables for our heating and cooling needs is also part of a proposal we aim to put forward this year. Unlocking this opportunity will be huge for our development in renewables, as this sector accounts for half of the energy we use in Europe. In the EU, we are in the process of reforming and strengthening our carbon market. In 2015 we proposed the reform on the emission trading system (ETS), covering around 45% of the EUs greenhouse gas emissions. This year, we are working on setting targets for the sectors not included in the previous proposal, such as housing, agriculture, waste and transport. Both initiatives will help us reach our 2030 target of a 40% cut on emissions, and will increase incentives for further deployment of renewable energy. Proposals to be set out later in 2016 will concentrate on increased regional co-operation for support schemes, and seek to ensure that the EU stays on the path towards becoming the world leader in renewables, which we aim to achieve through our targets, together with our COP 21 commitments. There is every reason for optimism: Europe and the rest of the world are going in the right direction. Global energy emissions stalled again in 2015, a major reason being the surge of renewable power around the world. This is cause for cheer but not complacencywe must redouble our efforts to allow us to meet our commitments. *COP21, also called the Paris Climate Conference, denotes the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, see www.cop21paris.org/about/cop21 EEA (2016), Renewable energy in Europe: Recent growth and knock-on effects, European Environment Agency Visit https://ec.europa.eu/energy/ Visit www.iea.org International collaboration at the OECD Forum 2016 Other OECD Forum 2016 issues OECD at COP21 OECD work on green growth and energy OECD data on renewable energy OECD work on green growth and sustainable development OECD work on environment Smil, Vaclav (2015), "Energy transitions, renewables and rational energy use: A reality check", OECD Observer, No 304, November Blundell-Wignall, Adrian (2015), "Climate change: Towards clean energy investment and supporting disclosure", OECD Observer, No 304, November OECD Observer website OECD Yearbook 2016 (This is the second AFMS article for the Military Children's Health Month series) When the Air Force cares for family membersit is ultimately taking care of the Airman, whether in garrison, on deployment, or at home. When Airmen deploy into an uncertain environment, they can count on one thing to remain certain reassurance that their families and children are taken care of by others who fully understand their mission and what they are doing, said Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Sean L. Murphy, Command Surgeon, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. For so many Airmen, the comfort of knowing their families are taken care of is a tremendous relief that allows them to successfully perform their mission. The general emphasizes that the Air Force is truly about the Air Force family. [To that end], there is nothing like an Air Force physician taking care of an Air Force family and when you really start focusing on what is important to so many families, it is their children, Gen. Murphy said. A pediatrician by training, Gen. Murphy recalled the moment during a six-week medical school rotation, when a mentor influenced the path of his medical career. You need to come over to the bright side of pediatrics, he recalled his mentor telling him. Originally considering surgery or family medicine, the general gave pediatrics a try, fell in love with pediatric medicine and completed pediatric training in 1988. Gen. Murphys first staff assignment was at the USAF Hospital, Yokota Air Base, Japan, where he served as a staff pediatrician from 1988 to 1991. It was soon after his first medical assignment commenced, that Gen. Murphy participated in a life-changing mission that left a lasting impression. The year was 1990. An infant pediatric patient was suffering from a diaphragmatic hernia a birth defect resulting in an improperly developed diaphragm, leading to underdeveloped lungs. The 4 month-old-patient had been on a ventilator his whole life and it soon became apparent that the infant would need more in-depth care. Working with the pediatric team at Yokota AB, the Air Force reassigned the childs active duty father to Keesler AFB, Miss., on a humanitarian reassignment. This would take the family back stateside closer to home and closer to their family. Gen. Murphy, along with a nurse, set up an aeromedical evacuation to move the critical pediatric patient to USAF Medical Center, Keesler AFB. Medical equipment was lined up, transport was set up and the now-retired C-141 aerovac plane was fueled and ready to go. En route to Keesler AFB however, the infant started to crash. With his blood oxygen levels rapidly falling, the patients condition was quickly deteriorating. Gen. Murphy, then Capt. Murphy, called in to Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii, to set up an emergency landing. The generals team worked with the staff at TAMC to re-stabilize the child over the next two nights. The aerovac team then geared up and resumed their mission to aerovac the pediatric patient home. When the team arrived at Keesler AFB, the baby arrived safe. While Gen. Murphy has witnessed first-hand, the evolution of Air Force medicine over his 35-year Air Force career, one thing remains clear. The vital role of the Air Force in providing critical care in the air has been a trusted component of military medical care for well over two decades. From the inception of Air Force Medicine, it was the flight doctor who conducted house calls, delivered babies and helped out families. Pediatricians typically treat patients up to the age of 21, and sometimes 23. Thirty-seven percent of total Air Force active duty personnel and 42 percent of enlisted personnel are below the age of 26. According to the general, the prevention aspect of what family and pediatric medicine bring to the Air Force is what makes family physicians and pediatricians great flight surgeons. [They] fit well into the Air Force culture and tradition. The training and experience in collaboration, supporting complex family environments and bringing families together sets up pediatricians to take on great leadership roles, said Gen. Murphy. Pediatricians have been great leaders in the Air Force because of some of the same skills they use in delivering care to families and children. These medical personnel in particular understand the importance of taking care of the whole Air Force family. Throughout his career, Gen. Murphy developed a deep appreciation for the Air Force Medical Service heritage of supporting families, within the continental U.S., and especially in overseas environments. Family medicine and pediatric care personnel provide extended family support becoming an extension of the family unit, said the general. As families move overseas, further away from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, we become all of these. From transporting infants on ventilators in the air over long distances, to applying expertise in preventive medicine to care for the total force, family health and pediatric medical personnel have played, and continue to play, a critical role in maintaining the health and wellbeing of Airmen and their families since the official inception of the Air Force Medical Service in 1949. Delivering trusted care is who and what we have been, and what we are today, said Gen. Murphy. The evolution now is to go from great, to greater. Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... Chip Maxwell loves a good philosophical talk. The Republican congressional candidate is like a gentle college professor eager to engage his students in a debate, as he argues that personal liberties are being trampled by a bloated federal government that has lost touch with the U.S. Constitution. Take Social Security and Medicare, for example. They are programs that the former radio talk-show host with strong ties to the Tea Party movement would love to see phased out. He calls Social Security an example of the federal government trampling over personal freedom, as well as an unrestricted redistribution of wealth. Hes just not sure how to get rid of the two programs. I was pitching the idea of the federal government reimbursing people, with interest, everything theyve paid into the program. Then you go and find your pension plan for your retirement (and) for your health care, Maxwell said during a recent interview. Maxwell said he scrapped his idea after talking to a few economists who pointed out that the U.S. government would have to sell trillions of dollars in bonds to pay for the buyout. But he still will look to end the programs for younger Americans, saying those activities should be left to the discretion of state and local governments, along with charitable groups. Its going to take a meeting of minds to figure out how to do this, but Im not less adamant about this that we need to disengage and get off the track were on, said Maxwell. Maxwell, 53, is one of two Republicans seeking the GOP nomination in the Omaha-based 2nd District. His opponent is retired Brigadier Gen. Don Bacon, a former commander at Offutt Air Force Base. The primary winner will face Rep. Brad Ashford, a Democrat. On paper, Maxwell should be the clear favorite in the race. Unlike Bacon, Maxwell has extensive political experience and ties within Nebraskas GOP circles. He also is a lifelong Omahan who won election to the Nebraska Legislature in 2000 and to the Douglas County Board in 2004. Bacon has never run for political office, and his local ties are limited to three stints at Offutt before his retirement in the fall of 2014. However, Bacon has proved to be a formidable opponent. He has outraised Maxwell more than 3-to-1, and he has racked up endorsements from leading Republicans around the state including U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and former Nebraska Gov. Kay Orr. Maxwell blames his struggles on the fact that he has never been well received by political insiders. He casts himself as the anti-establishment guy in the race who wants to go to Washington, D.C. to cut government spending, federal departments and secure the nations southern border. It also is apparent Maxwell faces residual anger from his controversial decision in 2014 to collect signatures to run against then-U.S. Rep. Lee Terry as an independent a decision some Republicans viewed as almost treasonous. Another problem is less obvious. Some critics suggest that Maxwell has accomplished little in his political and personal career beyond presiding over debates on talk radio. Maxwell has worked in numerous jobs over the years, sometimes staying for only a few months, but he has never forged a career path in one professional track. One of his longest jobs came in the mid-1990s, when he worked for more than four years as an editorial writer for The World-Herald. On the campaign trail, Bacon frequently takes a subtle jab at Maxwells work history. Don has a phrase he likes to use: We need someone who has accomplished something in life, Maxwell recounted. I just kind of smile and let it pass. Maxwell said his professional path may not be as straight and rigid as Bacons 30-year rise in the military. But he contends that he has the broad experience needed to serve in Congress and a long track record of fighting in the conservative trenches. Maxwell comes from a widely known Omaha family. His mother, Mary Maxwell, made a name for herself as a local comedian. He has an impressive academic record, with a masters degree from Oxford University and a law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law. One of his first jobs out of law school was with a local firm. He lasted about a year before deciding it wasnt the right fit. He then took a job at the newspaper, followed by a six- or eight-month stint in Washington, D.C. with then-U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel. He said he left that job after realizing that he wanted to return to Omaha and pursue a relationship with his future wife, Pam. Maxwell then worked for four years as a development director for Jesuit Academy, before leaving for a series of jobs with conservative organizations. Most notably, he spent nearly four years as executive director of the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research, an organization that opposes stem cell research in Nebraska. (Maxwell is deeply opposed to abortion, one of his signature issues in the Nebraska Legislature.) He also served for several years as executive director of the Omaha Alliance for the Private Sector, the organization that led the charge against city contracts with unions for police officers and firefighters. The group viewed those labor deals as too generous. His last job lasted for little over a year, when he served as a trust officer at Treynor State Bank. He left that position in the fall of 2014 after deciding to run full-time for Congress. Over the years, Maxwell has written several books, including one on his time in the Nebraska Legislature and another on the U.S. Constitution. (At one point, Maxwell promised supporters that he would run for Congress if enough of them bought his book on the Constitution.) Maxwell said hes been driven more by conservative causes than making money. I understand its an unusual resume, he said. Its an unusual path. But the range of experiences I have had in life, I think, leaves me uniquely qualified for a type of job in which you are representing a range of people, a range of ideas. He added: My path is not a conventional one, I realize that. David Nabity, one of Maxwells most prominent supporters and a former Omaha mayoral candidate, says Maxwells resume proves that hes a true conservative. Nabity noted that Maxwell was a fiscal conservative while holding elected office, fighting against both state and county tax increases. He also said Maxwells work on behalf of the private sector alliance proved crucial to getting the attention of the Omaha City Council about problems with the labor contracts. What I love about Chip is that he was willing to go deep inside City Hall and work on the research in what was happening with the labor contracts, Nabity said. He went down there, and he fought for what he thought was right. Most politicians wont do that. Nabity said Maxwells greatest strength lies in his dogged pursuit of conservative truths. Hes like an intellectual person who is very committed to things that have social impact and social causes, Nabity said. Hes not an entrepreneur type. Hes not the type who will go out and start a business. Most of his things are looking at how to better society. Its just the way hes wired. Nabity disagrees with Republicans who blame Maxwell for Lee Terrys loss to Ashford two years ago. In 2014, Terry faced a primary challenge from his right from Dan Frei. He defeated Frei but instead of being able to focus solely on his Democratic rival, he immediately faced another conservative challenger: Maxwell. Maxwell had changed his party affiliation from Republican to independent at the end of 2013. That allowed him to announce, after the primary, that he would start collecting signatures to mount an independent campaign against Terry and Ashford in the general election. Maxwell eventually dropped the bid after an outcry from some Republicans, who argued that it would weaken Terry and simply pave the way for Ashford to win. In the end, Ashford did win. Seventeen months later, there are still Republicans upset about Maxwells actions. Scott Peterson, who was the campaign manager for Dan Frei, said Maxwell should have done more to help Frei win the primary, rather than laying the groundwork for an unlikely independent campaign. In my mind, there was no chance in hell he was going to win as an independent, said Peterson, who is active in the Douglas County Republican Party and supports Bacon. Maxwell says Terry had little chance of winning in the general election, with or without a third candidate in the race. I offered the Republican Party a way to hold on to the seat, Maxwell said. As for all the support Bacon is now getting from top Republicans, Maxwell figuratively shrugs his shoulders. The endorsements, he argued, only reinforce his claim that he is the outsider in the congressional race despite being a former officeholder. When I look at this race, running for Congress, I feel like I was born for this, the range of experiences Ive had, Maxwell said. I feel like this is the thing Im supposed to do for the last chunk of my working life. Contact the writer: 402-444-1309, robynn.tysver@owh.com ******* CHIP MAXWELL Age: 53 Party: Republican Occupation: various jobs over the years; left a full-time position with Treynor State Bank in the fall of 2014 to run for Congress Public offices held: state senator, 2001-05; Douglas County board member, 2005-09 Education: bachelors degree, Boston College; masters degree, Oxford University; law degree, University of Nebraska Family: married; four children (currently in the process of adopting three more children) Faith: Catholic Karnataka to strengthen ATS and up the number of prisons When CJI Thakur broke down at the Karnataka High Court Bengaluru oi-Vicky Bengaluru, April 25: When Chief Justice of India, T S Thakur broke down on Sunday while making an emotional appeal to double the number of judges, it showed a very sensitive side to him. Justice Thakur has an emotional side to him and all those who covered his farewell speech in the Karnataka High Court in 2004 would know that very well. Justice Thakur was a judge in the Karnataka High Court between 1994 and 2004. [Chief Justice TS Thakur breaks down in tears in front of PM Modi over criticism of judiciary] After the full court reference, he was delivering his farewell address at the Advocates Association in Bengaluru. When Justice Thakur broke down remembering a ten year association with the state, it had taken many by surprise. An emotional side to the Chief Justice of India For any reporter, the court of Justice Thakur was a favourite to cover. Suave, polished and extremely tough, the manner in which he would take litigants on the wrong to task had impressed many. When the news of his transfer to the Delhi High Court had been received, it was a sad day for the Karnataka judiciary. The entire day reporters and advocates spoke about how much he would be missed. The reporters too missed him despite him heading a Bench along with Justices H L Dattu and V G Sabahit who were hearing a contempt petition against a number of media organisations. Following the full court reference, he was to address the advocates of the state. A packed advocates' association hall awaited Justice Thakur who began his speech. Calm and composed at first, he spoke about his association with Karnataka for the past ten years. As he was ending his speech, he choked up and broken down. There was not a single person in the hall who did not have tears in their eyes. OneIndia News Tamil Nadu: Check the list of special trains operating from Chennai this Diwali TN polls: Jayalalithaa, Karunanidhi to file nominations today Chennai oi-Shubham Chennai, April 25: AIADMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and DMK president and former chief minister K Karunanidhi will file their nominations for the May 16 Assembly election in Tamil Nadu. Assembly Polls 2016 Coverage Last Friday (April 22) was the first day of filing of nomination and as many as 83 candidates, including seven women, submitted their papers. Jayaylalithaa, who is eyeing a record sixth stint as the chief minister this year, is contesting from R K Nagar at Tondiarpet. She is expected to file her nomination at the Greater Chennai Corporation's zonal office by noon. The day is considered to be auspicious---a factor which plays a big role in politics in these parts. The ruling party's other candidates are likely to file their nominations on Thursday (April 28), sources said. The party has fielded a total of 227 candidates in this election. The total number of constituencies in Tamil Nadu is 234. Jayalalithaa had won from R K Nagar by a record 1.52 lakh votes in June last year to return as the CM of the southern state. Karunanidhi to file nomination from Tiruvarur Nonagenarian Karunanidhi who is campaigning at public meetings and along roadsides, will file his nomination from Tiruvarur from where he contested in 2011. The final day of filing nominations is April 29 and they will be scruitinised the following day. The last day of withdrawing nominations is May 2. Oneindia News 6/1334 Weightlifter Achinta Sheuli won Indias third gold medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022. However, it would not have been possible without his brother Alok,, who gave up his own sports career and worked as a labour to support family and Achinta's dream. Weightlifter Achinta Sheuli won Indias third gold medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022. However, it would not have been possible without his brother Alok,, who gave up his own sports career and worked as a labour to... With AQI of 259, Delhi's air on day before Diwali least polluted in 7 years Delhi LG and CM greet people on Diwali, ask people to be mindful of pollution Cancer Care campaign launched in Northeast Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Union Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr. Jitendra Singh launched in Shillong, capital of Meghalaya, the first of its kind, weeklong Cancer Care campaign in Northeast under the auspices of "North Eastern Council (NEC) - Pink Chain Cancer Conclave 2016". Health Minister of Meghalaya Mr. Alexander Laloo Hek and Secretary NEC Mr. Ram Muivah, besides Cancer Specialists and Research Scholars from social sciences and journalism were also present during the inaugural session. The campaign is being attended by Cancer specialists from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and other parts of the country, and the weeklong programmes will include public education camps, academic discussions by medical experts and visits to educational institutions. Dr. Jitendra Singh at the event: Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, this initiative has been undertaken considering the fact that North Eastern States are recording a much higher prevalence of Cancer compared to most other States of the country. He said, based on the experience of this weeklong experiment in Meghalaya, similar campaigns will also be organised in other seven States of North-Eastern Region. One of the objectives of this initiative would also be to update the medical professionals of the region on the recent advances in Cancer treatment and control, he added. Training for North East doctors: Dr. Jitendra Singh said that, beginning from January this year, an arrangement has been made with Adyar Cancer Institute, Chennai for imparting short-term six-month training in Cancer to selected Physicians and Surgeons from North-Eastern Region. The entire expenditure for this will be borne by the Ministry of DoNER and Adyar Cancer Institute, he said. #BarooahCancerInstitute Guwahati 2 start super speciality DM MCh courses #TransformingIndia #CancerCareCampaign Dr Jitendra Singh (@DrJitendraSingh) April 23, 2016 Dr. Jitendra Singh also informed that Barooah Cancer Institute in Guwahati will shortly start superspeciality DM Medical Oncology and MCh Surgical Oncology courses in Cancer, in collaboration with the Tata Memorial Institute, Mumbai and Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India. Importance of awareness about cancer: In an elaborate public awareness lecture on the subject of non-communicable diseases and Cancer, Dr. Jitendra Singh sounded a note of caution and said that the awareness and public education should be "optimum", which means that it should neither be too little nor too much, lest it should cause unwarranted alarm and apprehension in public psyche. What is important to understand is what are the early symptoms of disease which should not be left unattended and in case the symptoms appear, who is the right medical professional or medical center to be contacted, because majority of Cancers occurring today are absolutely curable, if detected at an early stage. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 12:33 [IST] Fake: Govt is not charging legal fees for installation of solar pumps Event on International Solar Alliance (ISA) at the United Nations Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State for Power, Coal & New and Renewable Energy and Ms. Segolene Royal, French Minister of Environment, Energy and the Sea, in charge of International Relations on Climate and President of COP21 co-chaired a Ministerial Side Event on International Solar Alliance (ISA) at Headquarters of the United Nations in New York. International Solar Alliance (ISA) and UN Development Programme (UNDP) have joined to promote solar energyhttps://t.co/5cnyl0l47F Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) April 24, 2016 Ministers and Representatives from over 25 countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Namibia, Uganda, Nigeria, Peru, Djibouti, Surinam, Zambia, Bolivia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Mali, India, USA and France participated in the ISA side event. In order to accelerate massive deployment of solar energy at various scales in their countries, Ministers agreed to take concerted action through targeted Programmes launched on a voluntary basis, to better harmonise and aggregate the demand for: Solar finance, so as to lower the cost of finance and facilitate the flow of more than US $ 1000 billion investment in solar assets in member countries; Mature solar technologies that are currently deployed only at small scale and need to be scaled up; Future solar technologies and capacity building, through strategic and collaborative solar R&D, to improve the efficiency and integration of solar power as well as increase the number of solar applications available. Ministers agreed on: The ministers agreed on a common buyers' market for solar finance, technology, innovation, capacity building etc., will lead to higher quality, lower costs, products better tailored to needs, collaborative innovation, technology ownership, and a more balanced dialogue with all stakeholders. Watch the launch of International Solar Alliance at United Nations https://t.co/qOGKAw6aJx Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) April 23, 2016 This the ministers felt will empower solar-rich countries, lying fully or partially between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn, which share common challenges and opportunities. #TransformingIndia : India's total solar power generation capacity touched 6,763 MW, almost doubled. pic.twitter.com/VVOXmIUlOt BJP (@BJP4India) April 23, 2016 As an initial step, Ministers agreed to start analysing and sharing the needs, objectives, and obstacles to deployment at scale along the value chain, for those applications for which they seek the benefits of collective action under the Alliance. On this basis, they will design innovative Programmes leveraging initiatives from the ground. Two programmes of ISA launched: The Two Programmes of the ISA "Affordable finance at scale"; and Programme "Scaling solar applications for agricultural use", were launched during the event. While announcing the programmes, Mr. Piyush Goyal expressed his confidence that these programmes will serve the interests of the farming communities in the prospective ISA member countries and ensure that there is sufficient flow of affordable finance for solar projects. He further stated that the ISA will provide a vibrant platform to bring together countries with rich solar potential to aggregate demand for solar energy globally, thereby reducing prices; promoting collaborative solar R&D and capacity; and facilitating the deployment of existing solar technologies at scale. Future programmes under ISA: The International Steering Committee of ISA which had met in New York on 21 April 2016 had approved the Programmes on Agriculture and Finance. Prospective member countries will begin work at the earliest and the process of implementation will be reviewed at the Founding Conference of the ISA scheduled to be held in the near future in New Delhi. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 12:04 [IST] Farakka Barrage Project continues to serve India Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Farakka Barrage is located in Murshidabad and Malda districts of West Bengal at about 300 km North of Kolkata. It is one of the largest barrage of its kind in the country having a Feeder Canal for a flow of 40000 cusec (1135 cumec) whose bed width is wider than that of Suez Canal. This barrage is important for Bangladesh also as a piece of infrastructure that is of strategic importance to the country and also it acts as a stimulator to its economy. For the state of West Bengal also it servers as lifeline for economic activities. The Feeder Canal originates in upstream at Right Bank of Farakka Barrage and outfalls into the Bhagirathi, right channel of the river Ganga at 40 km downstream of Farakka Barrage. Farakka Barrage Project gives land for BSF Headquarters: The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, gave its approval for transfer of 58.81 acres of surplus land of Farakka Barrage Project to Border Security Force under for establishment of 04-Battalion Head Quarters of BSF at Khejuriaghat in Mouza Jagannathpur. Benefits of land transfer: Farakka Barrage Project will also be benefitted by guarding of crucial Indian frontiers with Bangladesh by BSF in Malda District, which is adjoining to Farakka Barrage Project, a project of both National and International importance. Also, possibility of encroachments of FBP land and ensuing security concerns to FBP would be reduced due to presence of the BSF personnel in the area. The Farakka Barrage Project has been assigned with the execution, operation & maintenance of the following principal components of the Project and other works: A 2245 metre long Barrage across the river Ganga with rail-cum-road bridge, necessary river training works and a Head Regulator on the right side bank. A 213 metre long Barrage across the river Bhagirathi at Jangipur and Navigation Lock beside it. Feeder Canal of 40,000 cusec (1135 cumec) carrying capacity and 38.38 km long, taking off from the Head Regulator on the right bank of the Farakka Barrage. Navigation works such as locks, lock channels, shelter basins, control towers, navigation lights and other infrastructure. 33.79 Km. long Left Afflux Bund of Farakka Barrage and 16.31 Km. long Left Afflux Bund of Jangipur Barrage. Two road-cum-rail bridges and two road bridges across the Feeder Canal. A number of Regulators at different locations in both Murshidabad and Malda Districts of West Bengal. Bagmari Syphon at RD 48.0 of the Feeder Canal. Anti-erosion protection work in the extended jurisdiction of Farakka Barrage Project i.e. from Rajmahal including Diara in the upstream (40 Km from the Farakka Barrage) and upto Jalangi in the downstream (80 km from the Farakka Barrage). Background: Farakka Barrage Project Authority with headquarters at Farakka in Murshidabad district of West Bengal was set up in 1961 with the mandate to execute and thereafter operate and maintain the Farakka Barrage Project Complex comprising of Farakka Barrage, Jangipur Barrage, Feeder Canal, Navigation Lock and associated structures set up on river Ganga. The Barrage comprises of 112 nos. of Gates (108 Nos. main Gates and 4 Nos. Fish Lock Gates) and 11 Nos. Head Regulator Gates for diversion of approximately 40,000 cusec (1035 cumec) of discharge into the Feeder Canal. Main objective: The Farakka Barrage Project complex is to divert adequate quantity of Ganga waters to Bhagirathi-Hoogly river system through 38.38 km long feeder canal for preservation and maintenance of Kolkata Port by improving the regime and navigability of the Bhagirathi-Hoogly river system. The increased upland supply from Ganga at Farakka into Bhagirathi reduces salinity and ensures sweet water supply to Kolkata and surrounding areas. The rail-cum-road bridge built across the river Ganga at Farakka establishes direct road and rail communication link to the North-Eastern Region with rest of the country. The Hoogly-Bhagirathi river system, the Feeder Canal and the Navigation Lock at Farakka form part of the Haldia-Allahabad Inland Waterway (National Waterway No:1). The Feeder Canal also supplies water to 2100 MW Farakka Super Thermal Power Project (FSTPP) of NTPC Ltd. at Farakka. Major programmes undertaken: Replacement of gates and associated components Implementation of Indo-Bangladesh treaty Maintenance of feeder canal and its associated components Maintenance and protective measures of bank and bed of river Ganga Maintenance of townships Operation and maintenance of all equipment and machineries For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 10:22 [IST] US Navy tries to recover jet that fell into South China Sea Tensions soar as US destroyer sails near disputed islands in South China Sea India and Thailand's Coordinated Patrol reply to China's Expansionism Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa South China Sea witnesses high level of political tension very frequently these days. China's strategic interest in South China Sea causes these worries for China's neighbours. Completely ignoring the anxieties of the neighbours China has continued placing missiles on the disputed territory. Missiles on the disputed territory pose great risk to air operations in the South China Sea. Many South East Asia nations thus have started aligning with India with an intention to protect their strategic interests. India under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made sure that those nations who seek India's help are disappointed. India has started developing excellent maritime relations with South East Asia nations. One such nation is Thailand. INS Karmuk in Thailand: INS Karmuk, an indigenously built Missile Corvette based at the Andaman and Nicobar Command, along with a Dornier Maritime Patrol Aircraft, are participating in the 22nd Indo-Thai Coordinated Patrol (CORPAT), scheduled from 19-27 Apr 16 in the Andaman Sea. Maritime interaction with Thailand: Maritime interaction between India and Thailand has been growing steadily with frequent port visits, participation in multilateral exercises and training exchanges. Under the broad ambit of this strong maritime relationship, the two navies have been carrying out CORPATs along the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) twice a year since 2005, with the aim of keeping this vital part of the Indian Ocean Region safe and secure for commercial shipping and international trade. The role of CORPAT: The CORPAT has also strengthened understanding and interoperability between the navies and facilitated institution of measures to prevent unlawful activities at sea as well as conduct Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. The 22nd edition of the CORPAT would include participation of one warship and one Maritime Patrol Aircraft from both sides with the Closing Ceremony being held at Port Blair, Headquarters Andaman and Nicobar Command (HQANC) from 25th to 27th April. Warm relation with Thailand: India and Thailand have traditionally enjoyed a close and friendly relationship covering a wide spectrum of activities and interactions, which have strengthened over the years. The 22nd edition of CORPAT would bolster the already strong bilateral relationship between the two nations and contribute significantly to enhancing maritime security in the region. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 10:34 [IST] Jayalalithaa DA case- Plea challenging appointment of Karnataka SPP adjourned Feature oi-Vicky By Vicky The Supreme Court has adjourned a plea challenging the appointment of B V Acharya as special public prosecutor for Karnataka in the J Jayalalithaa disproportionate assets case. The plea has been adjourned by two weeks. The petitioner had challenged the appointment of Acharya on the ground that Karnataka had no locus standi to file the appeal in the Supreme Court. The matter is expected to be taken up on the day when the Supreme Court would reserve its verdict in the case. The issue of Karnataka filing an appeal has been raked up several times before. When Karnataka had decided to file the appeal in the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J Jayalalithaa and others the locus standi of the move was questioned. In fact it was stated that since the case originates from Tamil Nadu it should be that state and not Karnataka filing the appeal. Acharya however stated that only Karnataka had the right to file the appeal. The case was transferred to Karnataka by the Supreme Court. When the trial court had convicted Jayalalithaa, she had moved the Karnataka High Court in appeal. Hence Karnataka was the prosecuting state and only it had the right to file an appeal. Further the state of Karnataka had issued a notification appointing B V Acharya as the special public prosecutor in the case. He had argued the matter before the trial court and even filed written submissions in the Karnataka High Court. Hence his appointment is valid, Karnataka contends. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 14:50 [IST] Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000 Bihar's Gopalganj by-poll to see a tough fight between BJP and RJD Narendra Modi addresses Panchayats on National Panchayati Raj Day Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, addressed all Panchayats across the country, from Jamshedpur, on the occasion of National Panchayati Raj Day. 'Gramodaya Se Bharat Uday' began from Mhow, where the great Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was born: PM @narendramodi https://t.co/Iy8hu3Nre5 PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 The event also marked the culmination of the Gramoday Se Bharat Uday Abhiyan, which began on the 125th birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar, at Mhow, on April 14th. Highlights of PM's speech: Mr. Narendra Modi emphasised that facilities and services in rural areas, should be at par with the cities. Mahatma Gandhi said India lives in the villages yet why are facilities in villages not up to the mark, at par with cities: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 Prime Minister exhorted the Panchayat Representatives to use their tenure to work towards serving the people by aiming to bring about transformative change in the villages. Those serving in village should think: I have the opportunity to do something transformative during my tenure & serve my village: PM PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 In particular, he said women members can play a leadership role in areas such as toilet construction. So many women are serving in Panchayats. They can show tremendous leadership in matters affecting the villages: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 Particularly women representatives in Panchayats should ensure that there are adequate toilets in villages: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 He urged the Panchayats to pay special attention to children's education, and said if children stop attending schools, it should worry the Panchayat members. When children of a village stop attending schools, it should worry the Panchayat members: PM @narendramodi https://t.co/Iy8hu3Nre5 PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 The Prime Minister encouraged Panchayats to think beyond budgets, and focus on Jan Suvidha. Did we build roads or not, did the budget come or not...we should rise beyond these worries and look at Jan Suvidha: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 24, 2016 After the event, Prime Minister came down from the stage and met some of the Panchayat Representatives from across the country who had gathered in Jamshedpur. PM @narendramodi interacting with the people at Panchayati Raj Sammelan in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand pic.twitter.com/FDp8IhriMi PIB India (@PIB_India) April 24, 2016 PM's humanitarian gesture: PM also met the wife and daughter of one of the victims of the Patna bomb blasts, which had occurred during his rally there in 2013. Mr. Modi was the the prime ministerial candidate of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) then and he was in Patna addressing a mammoth election campaign rally. PM met the girl child, who lost her father in bomb blasts happened during his rally in Patna, at Jamshedpur. pic.twitter.com/3F361uEmqT BJP (@BJP4India) April 24, 2016 For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 10:51 [IST] Will raise our climate ambitions but not under pressure: Javadekar Now Ferraris and Lamborghinis can test in India: India gets Asias longest high speed track Shouldn't worry about 2024, instead think of 2029 polls: Javadekar's advice to Opposition Prakash Javadekar on Indias Efforts to Combat Climate Change Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa The Paris Agreement has been signed by 171 countries in New York. Speaking at the High-Level Signing ceremony at UN General Assembly, Minister of State of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar said that the ratification of IInd commitment period of Kyoto is urgent and needs to be done immediately. He urged the developed world to take enhanced targets for 2016-2020. "There cannot be 'Action Holiday", Mr. Javadekar said. The Minister reiterated that if the world follows India on taxing the production of coal, the $100 billion can easily be collected easily for funding efforts to combat climate change. Prakash Javadekar on India's efforts: Mr. Prakash Javadekar during his speech mentioned how India is working towards meeting its goal to combat climate change. He said that the government has taxed polluting vehicles and is providing subsidy for electric and hybrid vehicles. He said that the agreement highlights the benefits of 'Sustainable Lifestyle'. He pointed out that India will reduce emission intensity by 35%, build 40% capacity for power generation from non-fossil fuels, create additional carbon sink of 2.5 billion tonnes and invest in reducing vulnerability and enhancing adaptation to Climate Change. Quotes from Mr. Prakash Javadekar's speech: "On this Earth Day, we have made History. 171 countries have signed the Paris agreement. It is the triumph of collective wisdom." "The Agreement explicitly highlights the benefits of 'Sustainable Lifestyle'. We have to stop extravagant consumption. If we continue in the same way, we will require 3 planets, and we have, only 1." "This is an impetus for operationalising our vision of 'Climate Justice', enshrined in the Preamble of the Paris Agreement. Full application will ensure that developing world and poor people get justice under the current climate regime." "We have undertaken a huge Renewable energy programme of 175 GW. I am happy to announce that we have already achieved 40 GW." "Urban Public Transport which is presently 300 KM and 2 million passengers, will increase to 1300 KM and 10 million passengers in 3 years." "For afforestation we are providing $ 10 billion in next 5 years." "We are replacing energy inefficient pumps with efficient pumps, and we will give it free to our farmers." "Ratification of Paris will happen quickly. But ratification of IInd commitment period of Kyoto is urgent and needs to be done immediately. Developed world must take enhanced targets for 2016-2020. There cannot be 'Action Holiday.'" "We should cooperate Clean Actions, competitiveness concerns should not overshadow our common resolve to build a sustainable future." This is 21st century, where have we reached in name of religion: SC on hate speeches Problem of pendency of cases in India Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa That India has huge number of pending cases in the courts is not news. Chief Justice of India T. S. Thakur when got emotion in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over government's inaction in raising the number of judges, it did bring more attention to the serious issue of pendency of cases. The then Chief Justice of India H L Dattu had said in 2015 that a deadline has to be set to ensure that the trial of a case does not go beyond five years as then there were nearly three crore cases pending in Indian courts. Judges blame government for pendency: Chief Justice of India T S Thakur in an emotional tone had said in the presence of Prime Minister that it was not right to shift the entire burden on the judiciary and that he was sad that government was not increasing the number of judges from present 21,000 to 40,000 as the judges handle the avalanche of litigation. As per the Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, early this year there were four vacancies in the Supreme Court and as on 10th of November 2015 there were 426 vacancies in the HIgh Court. The total approved strength in the High Courts is 1,029. The Law Minister had also confessed that there are many vacancies in the subordinate courts too. In the subordinate courts where the total strength is 20,358 around 15,360 posts are occupied rest are vacant. The government during the 2015 conference of Chief Justices and Chief Ministers had requested all chief justices to fill up the vacancies as early as possible. Solutions offered by the government: Law Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda had in the beginning of this year said that to solve the problem of pendency of cases his government will prepare a National Litigation Policy that will bring down the number of cases involving the government. Steps taken to reduce pendency: Government has undertaken pendency reduction drives in recent years. Several High Courts have established arrears committees after government requested the chief justices and the chief ministers to establish them in 2015. Very big lok adalats are being held and cases are resolved quickly there. In the year 2015 44 lakh cases were cleared in the mega lok adalats. Apart from mega lok adalats weekly and monthly lok adalats are also being held. It was found out that obsolete and redundant laws not only create confusion but also increase pendency of cases. Government of India thus identified more than 1,700 such laws and but them before Parliament to be done away with. Thanks to the efforts of the government more than 1,200 such laws which were not in use have been removed. The government has emphasised on the e-courts project and thereby government has already computerised 13,273 courts. Government is boosting infrastructure development so that more court halls are available. At present more than 2,600 court halls are under construction. Currently around 15,500 court halls are available. The Commercial Courts Act has also been passed so that commercial disputes are resolved in time bound manner. If a case is resolved within six months time some incentives will be provided to the arbitrator. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 15:52 [IST] As per constitutional norms: Goa Speaker on merger of Cong MLAs with BJP Goa: Man arrested for recording video of girl in hostel bathroom in Panaji Babus posted in Goa don't want to stay in the state: Deputy CM India oi-PTI Panaji, Apr 25: Goa Deputy Chief Minister Francis D'Souza today criticised bureaucrats in the state saying the IAS officers posted in the coastal state frequently visit Delhi which affects the administrative work. "They (IAS officers) want the posting in Goa but they just wait for the opportunity to travel to Delhi. They don't want to stay here. It affects the administration in the state," D'Souza told PTI today. "When secretary level officer is not available, then the administrative work hampers," he said. According to D'Souza, working style of the state government needs to be changed. "There is requirement of systemic corrections. We always complaint about the system but we being in the government should work towards correcting it," the Minister added. Meanwhile, D'Souza rubbished reports of him being "upset" with Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar after the secretaries attached to his departments were purportedly reshuffled without his knowledge. "I never speak against the party or the government. My issue is systematic corrections which I always put across," the senior BJP leader, who represents the Mapusa constituency, said. "I have a right to express my personal opinion but when I say that it does not mean I am speaking against the party," D'Souza added. "I don't say that I should be taken into confidence before transferring secretaries. But I should have knowledge about the transfers," he said. PTI Karnataka to strengthen ATS and up the number of prisons Bengaluru violence: Focus on hardship and humiliation faced by garment factory workers India oi-Oneindia By Maitreyee Boruah The media continuously focused on the violence unleased on the streets of Bengaluru when recently thousands of garment factory workers of the city protested against the restrictions on provident fund withdrawals. Once the protest got over, the media conveniently forgot the real issues affecting the 8 lakh garment workers in Karnataka. Almost 85 per cent of garment factory are women. Right from low salary packages, long working hours to sexual harassment faced by these women, problems of garment factory workers are galore. On Saturday (March 23), the members of the Garment and Textile Workers Union (GATWU) hosted a press meet to tell their side of the story. While very few lauded the garment factory workers as "brave women" protesting against the Narendra Modi's government "anti-poor" decision to amend the rules governing withdrawal of Employees' Provident Fund contributions, many blamed the poor women for creating chaos and violence on the streets. [Read: Garment factory workers' protest: Violence helped to attract attention? ] Pratibha R, president, GATWU, said garment workers face a lot of problems on a daily basis. Their protest was a culmination of their pent up anger, she added. However, GATWU president clarified that they were not responsible for the violence. The police also said that violence was started by some anti-social elements to create law and order problem. [Read: Low pay package, inhuman working condition: Garment factory worker narrates her woes ] "Textile is a global industry, but they don't get the amount that they deserve," said Pratibha. Jayaram KR, executive member of the union, said the workers get meagre salaries. "Garment workers get only about Rs 7,000 a month. The sudden outburst of women workers last week was the result of fear that all the money they work for will not be given to them at all," he added. Vinay Sreenivasan, founder of the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), said that the women workers face a lot of harassment in workplace. OneIndia News Explained: Why did the ECI freeze the symbol of the Shiv Sena Not just future of Sena but democracy at stake, says Uddhav Destablising states for power not acceptable, Sena to BJP India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 25: The Shiv Sena on Monday,April 25 said it was opposed to any move by the BJP to destabilise state governments and imposition of President's Rule was "not acceptable" to the ruling ally. "We are not happy with the imposition of President's Rule," Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut said, amid the ongoing political crisis in Uttarakhand where the central government last month imposed President's Rule after invoking controversial Article 356. "We have been traditionally against the use of Article 356. Using the clause to destabilise governments in small states for power is not acceptable," Raut said. The Sena comment came after the opposition led by the Congress raised the Uttarakhand issue in parliament earlier in the day. The opposition raised "killers of democracy" slogans against the government. The Sena leader said it was "strongly against BJP's use of Article 356 of the constitution to impose President's Rule in Congress-ruled Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh". IANS The joy of our lives: Sushma Swaraj's husband warm birthday wishes for late leader Remembering Sushma Swaraj on her death anniversary: Facts about Iron Lady of India Sushma Swaraj hospitalized after severe chest pain: Reports India oi-Mukul New Delhi, April 26: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has been hospitalized. Reportedly, 64 year old Swaraj was admitted to Delhi's AIIMS on Monday evening after she complained of severe chest congestion. Minister who has a history of acute diabetes, has been put on antibiotics. According to sources at AIIMS, she was admitted to the old private ward of Pulmonary Medicine Department around 5 PM. Around 10 PM, sixty-four-year-old Swaraj was shifted to the Cardio-Neuro Centre of the hospital. A senior doctor said her condition was stable. However, the nature of her illness was not known. OneIndia News (With inputs from PTI) Fine on MPs who intentionally flout odd-even: AAP India oi-PTI New Delhi, April 25: Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai on Monday, April 25 said Parliamentarians violating the odd-even scheme "intentionally" will be challaned but those who flouted the rule by mistake while going to Parliament today will be spared. "The rules are same for all and MPs are also covered under the odd-even scheme. Those who will intentionally violate it or repeat the mistake will be issued challans," he said. Rai said the Delhi government is ensuring that the lawmakers are facilitated and do not face any problem due to the car-rationing scheme. "It is an opportunity for the Parliamentarians to set an example by obeying the scheme and show that they also follow the rules like other people," he said. The Transport department has deployed six DTC buses to ferry MPs to Parliament to attend the ongoing session as the second phase of the scheme is in force till April 30 in the city. "They have the option to either travel by DTC buses or carpool. Some MPs today traveled by bus and I hope a majority of them considers odd-even to be a good scheme and will follow it by taking buses or carpooling," Rai, who today traveled by a DTC bus to assess the implementation of the scheme, said. The minister also thanked the MPs who took special DTC buses to Parliament. The Delhi Transport Corporation is operating two 'MP Special' buses each from North Block and South Block, and one each from Akhbar Road and Ashoka Road. Rai said the number of MPs who traveled by DTC buses will be known later and subsequently, a decision will be taken regarding the number of buses. The minister also visited Parliament. "I have talked to the Lok Sabha Secretariat about spreading the information regarding the special buses," he said. He said there was no major problem of traffic congestion due to odd-even scheme which, he added, helped reduce air pollution by bringing down PM2.5. "There were four-five points where problems came up. In Nehru Place, it was the construction work of an over-bridge... while a traffic jam was witnessed on the stretch between AIIMS and Dhaulakuan after a pipe had burst. Barring these points, traffic movement is smooth all across Delhi," he said. "The reports so far have shown the impact of the odd-even scheme on PM2.5. It is natural because this time more people are following it. So if compliance is more, it is going to help the environment," he said. PTI India cancels visa of Ughyur dissident leader Dolkun Isa over red corner notice India oi-Jagriti New Delhi, Apr 25: India has cancelled visa granted to dissident Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa in view of strong protest from China and red corner notice issued against him, media reported. According to media reports, Isa was granted E-visa on April 16 which was cancelled on April 23 by Indian immigration. Isa, who lives in Germany was scheduled to visit India by month end to participate in a conference in India to discuss democratic transformation in China. The conference is being organised by the US-based 'Initiatives for China'. The Dalai Lama is also expected to attend the event. China who was unhappy over Indian move of granting visa to Isa, has contended that he is a terrorist who has an Interpol red corner alert issued against him. "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying was quoted as saying on Indian move. Visa for Ughyur separatist: Point proven to China, but can India avoid detention The granting of visa to Isa, appeared to be a message to China which recently blocked a move in the UN to ban Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad. China not only blocked the ban on the insistence of Pakistan, but even lectured India on being good neighbours. OneIndia News Kanhaiya fined, Umar to lose a session India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 25: The JNU on Monday, April 25 rusticated Umar Khalid and two other students for varying duration and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on Kanhaiya Kumar in connection with the February 9 event on the campus against Afzal Guru's hanging. Umar was rusticated for one semester, another student leader Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15 and Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters. As per decision, Bhattacharya has been barred from pursuing any course in JNU for next 5 years. JNU students union president Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with the controversial event and are out on bail. Their arrest had triggered widespread protests. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students -- Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi -- while hostel facilities have been withdrawn for Ashutosh Kumar for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21. A high-level committee constituted by the university to probe the February 9 event found ABVP member Saurabh Sharma, who had objected to the event, "guilty" of blocking traffic on the day of the event and penalised him with Rs 20,000. Surprisingly, Aishwarya Adhikari, whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been imposed the same penalty. "Based on the report of the high-level committee which arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU Security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record, the university has decided to rusticate three students," a senior university official said. "While Anirban Bhattacharya has been rusticated till 15 July, he will not be able to pursue any course or participate in any activity on campus for next five years, Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters," the official said. He said financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students including Kanhaiya who has been penalised with Rs 10,000. While Umar and Anirban were found guilty of triggering communal violence and disrupting communal harmony on campus, Mujeeb was found guilty of participating in the sloganeering. IANS Kumbh Mela: Seer threatens sadhus boycotting 2nd 'shahi-snan' India oi-PTI Ujjain (MP), Apr 25: Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) chief Narendra Giri today threatened the Madhya Pradesh BJP government that the sadhus will boycott the second 'shahi- shan'(royal bath) on May 9 and return home from the ongoing month-long Simhastha-Kumbh, if the things were not set right. "If the state government doesn't set things right by May 5, Sandhus won't take part at the 'shahi-snan' on May 9 and return home," Giri told reporters here. Giri is the head of ABAP - the governing body of 13 'akharas' of sadhus who are camping here for the Kumbh Mela. He said during the first 'shahi-snan' on April 22, which marked the opening of the Kumbh Mela, the sadhus "were not provided facilities" and "given their respect" at Ramghat (on the river Kshipra) to take the holy dip. Giri said Ramghat was reserved for sadhus to take holy dip between 5 AM to 12 noon. But, he alleged during that period the bureaucrats, including Ujjain Collector Kavindra Kiyawat along with their families were seen taking the holy dip and taking selfies. Giri claimed that the collector has apologised for the act saying that he wasn't aware of the said timings. He further said the state government had said 50 lakh to one crore people will take part in the 'shahi-snan' on April 22 but a mere 8 to 10 lakh could take the royal bath, due to "the mismanagement and disarray arrangements" on that day. The faithful are being made to walk 9 km for taking dip in (river) Kshipra as there was no transport facility for them, despite the tall claims of the government that it will run e-rickshaws for the devotees, he claimed. Giri also said inexperienced officers have been put on duty to run the show and demanded deputation of experienced officers. PTI "Kick us out if we don't do anything": How Modi's emotional appeal resembles that of Mamata TMC says Shukla's resignation not to affect party; BJP welcomes him to join saffron camp Congress would have gained had it fought Bengal polls alone: Abhijit Mukherjee Mamata Banerjee accuses PM Modi of speaking at Matua temple with an eye on West Bengal polls Mamata Banerjee, Derek land in legal soup over morphed picture India oi-Pallavi Kolkata, April 25: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and TMC spokesperson Derek O'Brien have landed up in a legal soup over the usage of morphed picture of the Home Minister Rajnath Singh by the party. The TMC, following the press conference by Derek O'Brien, posted 6 pictures and 2 videos on their website, showing Rajnath Singh sharing sweets with CPI(I)M leader Prakash Karat. Whereas, the original picture had Rajnath Singh sharing the sweets with Narendra Modi. Although the party removed the photos after controversy erupted, the damage had already been done. BJP state spokesperson Prakash Majumdar along with other leaders met with the Joint Commissioner (Crime) of Kolkata Police and lodged a complaint againt Derek O'Brien, Subrata Bakshi and Mamata Banerjee. Meanwhile, Karat filed a case against O'Brien with Mandir Marg police station. In his complaint, he said, "He (O'Brien) has used morphed picture in his press conference and it has also been put on website of Trinamool Congress and this is being widely shown on the (news) channels also. So, it is politically defamatory and got the party (CPI-M) and myself into disrepute among people. So, action should be taken." OneIndia News Partial Solar Eclipse 2022: City-wise timings, when and where to watch With AQI of 259, Delhi's air on day before Diwali least polluted in 7 years IRCTC update: 190 trains cancelled on October 24; here is the complete list Delhi LG and CM greet people on Diwali, ask people to be mindful of pollution Minor fire in children's hospital in Delhi India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, April 25: A fire broke out in the gynaecology ward on the third floor of the Kalawati Saran Children's Hospital in central Delhi on Monday, damaging an air conditioner, fire officials said. A fire official told IANS: "The fire office received information about the incident at 8.30 a.m. and four fire tenders were sent to the spot immediately." Officials suspect electrical short-circuiting in the air conditioner caused the fire. The fire was doused in 10 minutes. There were no injuries. IANS Narendra Modi's rally in Jamshedpur a flop: JMM India oi-PTI Jamshedpur, Apr 25: JMM on Sunday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modis programme in the steel city was a "flop" while a bandh called by it in the region was a historic one. The bandh called by the party in protest against the domicile policy recently announced by the state government was a historic one in mineral-rich Kolhan region comprising of East and West Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharswan district, Senior Vice-President of JMM and former Jharkhand Minister Champai Soren told a press conference here. We should now focus on quality education: Narendra Modi Describing the National Panchayati Raj day function addressed by Modi in Jamshedpur as flop in the same breath, Soren, who was accompanied by JMM MLA and party's Chief Spokesman Kunal Sarangi, claimed 80 per cent of elected panchayat representatives have boycotted the Prime Ministers program. "Modi did not announce anything new but keep repeating unfulfilled assurance in his address to panchayat representatives from across the country," he said, adding that majority of panchayat representatives from the host region did not attend. Soren said the entire state machineries were engaged in making Modis program a success for last 20 days and spent around Rs 20 crore on advertisement at a time Jharkhand was reeling under acute water crisis. The JMM threatened to intensify its agitation further alleging the Raghubar Das-led government's domicile policy was against the aspirations of the adivasis and moolvasis of the state. Sarangi alleged that some police officials ransacked his office in Baharagora in East Singhbhum district on the eve of the bandh and even beat up some of his office staff. "The district machineries have taken to oppression to make the bandh a failure but the people have responded positively," he said stating that the approach of the administration reminded of the emergency days. PTI Left ready to extend \"helping hand\" to JD(U) if it breaks up with BJP NDA ally wants celebrities not to endorse products blindly India oi-PTI New Delhi, April 25: In the backdrop of a controversy surrounding M S Dhoni, an ally of ruling NDA today suggested in Lok Sabha that celebrities should not endorse a product blindly by becoming the brand ambassador. "The problem is that we have celebrity endorsements. In our country, people just not love and admire celebrities but they worship them and perceive them as Gods and role models," said Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal. Citing protests by home-buyers against property developers in the NCR region, she said when a celebrity is endorsing a product or a brand, people's faith is strengthened. "Celebrities may not have any intent to harm anyone, but because they are promoting a brand they tend to unintentionally or intentionally dictate consumer choices. That is why I feel that they do have a moral obligation," she said. Her comments came against the backdrop of a controversy surrounding Dhoni's endorsement of a builder who is facing attack for delaying delivery of flats in Noida. Dhoni has since quit as the company's brand ambassador. Patel expressed concern that people here have been facing this problem for almost three years wherein the developers and builders are delaying the handing over of possession for three to four years and in certain cases even for longer periods. She appealed to the government to implement as soon as possible the Real Estate Act, recently passed by Parliement, to help home buyers. PTI Last day of Odd-Even today, no decision yet on extension Odd-Even to end today: No decision yet on extending scheme as AQI hovers around 500-mark Decision on Odd even scheme to be taken on Nov 18, says Kejriwal as air quality in 'severe' category Odd-Even may not be a permanent solution, how will people breathe: SC Odd-even: Few takers for MP special bus service India oi-PTI New Delhi, April 25: DTC's MP Special Bus Service, launched by the Delhi government to ferry lawmakers to Parliament, found few takers this morning. In view of the Parliament Session, Delhi Government had yesterday announced six air-conditioned special buses to ferry MPs and appealed to them to follow the odd-even scheme. The 'MP Special' buses ply from 9 AM to 11 AM and 5.30 PM to 8 PM. In the morning, BJP MPs Ranjan Bhatt and Hari Om Singh Rathore availed the 'MP Special Bus Service' to reach Parliament. However, BJP MP Paresh Rawal violated the odd-even rule by reaching the House in his even-numbered car following which he apologised to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. "Made a serious blunder by travelling in a odd number car to Parliament ... Sorry to Arvind ji n Delhiite...(sic)," Rawal tweeted. The BJP MP later tweeted a challan copy, saying he has paid a fine for violating the odd-even rule. According to government, a help desk has also been set up in Parliament premises to assist lawmakers in availing the bus service. A senior government official said that keeping security of MPs in mind, some security personnel will also be deployed in these buses. Members of Parliament have not been given exemption under the odd-even scheme, the second phase of which started on April 15 and will end on April 30. The violation of the car-rationing scheme attracts a penalty of Rs 2,000. The President, The Prime Minister, The Vice-President, union ministers, the Chief Justice of India, judges of high courts, women among others are exempted under it. PTI Permitting Ughur separatist Isa to India would have complicated matters with Interpol India oi-Vicky New Delhi, April 25: Had India not cancelled the visa granted to Dolkun Isa and he been allowed to land in India, it would have been mandatory that he was detained and extradited. Since India is a member of the Interpol it becomes necessary that anyone with a red corner alert be detained and extradited. Had India failed to do this, then it would have had a bearing on India related cases in which red corner alerts are issued. The issue would have become extremely complicated and could have led to non-cooperation from other nations, sources in the Home Ministry tell OneIndia while maintaining that it was not pressure from China that led them to change their decision. India being a member of the Interpol would have had to arrest and extradite him on his arrival. It is not pressure from China that led to the change in this decision the official also informed. Had India permitted Isa to visit the country and not arrested him, it would have had a bearing on all the cases related to the Interpol, India is part of. India cancels visa of Ughyur dissident leader Dolkun Isa over red corner notice India had permitted a group of Uyghur separatist leaders to meet with the Dalai Lama at Dharmashala much to the displeasure of China. China had contended that Dolkun Isa is a terrorist who has a Interpol red corner alert issued against him. Not Chinese pressure: After the Visa was issued, China had objected to the same. The Home Ministry had said that it was verifying the facts behind this case. However after deliberations at the highest level it was decided to withdraw the visa granted to Isa. Visa for Ughyur separatist: Point proven to China, but can India avoid detention Isa has been accused by China of bombings in the 1990s at Xinjiang and Toksu. He fled China and obtained a German citizenship. There is also a red corner alert issued against him. It was after taking all these facts into consideration that the decision was taken the officer also informed. The bigger issue for India was the Interpol. If a country is a member of the Interpol it is mandatory that the persons against whom there is a red corner alert is arrested. After the person is arrested it is also mandatory that the person is extradited to the country that he is wanted in. Dolkun Isa upset over Indian move: Know all about Ughyur dissident leader In the Isa case, he kept asking India for an assurance that he will not be detained on arrival. India was not ready to give the assurance. India had said that it would study the issue. After the deliberations it was decided to withdraw the visa. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 13:21 [IST] Regional Censor Board-KFCC conflict brewing; the root of clash is 'course' of issuing certificate India oi-Shreyas Bengaluru, Apr 25: The root of the conflict between Karnataka Regional Censor Board of Film (CBFC) Certification and Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) lies in the 'course' through which the regional censor board issued certificate to a Kannada movie, Lehya Ajji Lehya. First in the history of Kannada cine industry, the censor board has issued certificate for a movie title verified by Karnataka Dubbing Film Chamber of Commerce which came into being three months back. Never in the history of Kannada industry, certificates were issued, unless KFCC verified titles of movies. KFCC has a long history and its inception dates back to 1944. To 2016, since the establishment of KFCC, censor board has been issuing certificates for cinema titles registered in KFCC. Interestingly, the regional CBFC accepting a document of a nascent chamber of commerce decided to censor a movie. Mind you, this is first in the history of 72 years. 'A' certificate has been issued to Ajji Lehya movie by the censor board headed by the officer named Natasha D'Souza. Sa Ra Govindu, President of the KFCC says there is a government order on certifying movies by the board. [Regional Censor Board Officer Natasha faces heat over no knowledge of Kannada] A government (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) correspondence done with the KFCC dated June 6, 1990 (available with OneIndia) clearly mentioned that 'authorized correspondence' from Film Publicity Screening Committee of KFCC is necessary for the acceptance of application from producers to certify movies. A government communication addressed to secretary of the Film Publicity Screening Committee said "Kindly refer to your letter No.P. 12/VC/DSC/2936/90 dated 5-6-90 regarding Film Publicity Screening Committee. This office is in receipt of communication in this regard from the headquarters. We shall, here after, insist, on a certificate from the above committee while accepting applications for certification from producers. However, in two instance in 2014 and 2015, regional censor board has rejected to carry forward concerns of two film chambers (Bruhath Kannada Chalanachitra Mandali and Uttara Karnataka Chalanachitra Mandali). The then Regional Officer of CBFC, M Nagendra Swamy discharged this. Nagendra Swamy told this news portal that above mentioned film chambers approached censor board seeking issuance of certificate for titles verified by these chambers. "I pointing out the legal course said, not all the chambers can verify titles and approve publicity materials of movies for public viewing as government has vested powers only on KFCC for the same." Swamy contended that government came up with this decision to rest powers on KFCC to avoid Pandora's Box like situation. If there are many chambers with powers to certify movie titles, then in all possibility, each chamber would in one point of time come up with same names creating chaos in titling. The government has given powers to KFCC to approve publicity materials of movies and title verification. For a movie to be censored by the board, it is mandatory for an individual or an organisation approaching the board to provide a document showing the title of the movie has been verified by the KFCC. Nagendra Swamy added that along many other documents, title verification is a primary necessity. The present Regional Officer of CBFC, Natasha, according to Sa Ra Govindu, has not followed due course, while issuing certificate to Ajji Lehya. "Natasha has said on the basis of Bombay High Court order, the CBFC has issued clearance for the Regional Office to certify the film. But that clearance order has not shown to me despite several requests to put out before the KFCC," Sa Ra divulged. OneIndia News Seer injured in attack at Kumbh mela India oi-PTI Ujjain (MP), April 25: A seer was seriously injured in an alleged attack by unidentified persons in Datta Akhara area during the ongoing Simhastha (Kumbh) mela, police said on Monday, April 25. The seer, identified as Tapasvi Giri, was yesterday found by police with serious injuries on his neck, Additional Superintendent of Police Manish Khatri said. He was admitted in Indore's Government M Y Hospital for treatment and his condition is stable, police said. No report was filed in this connection. However, police have taken cognisance of the incident, the ASP said. Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad president Narendra Giri said the incident was the fallout of a dispute between two groups of seers, and it has now been sorted out. The Akhara Parishad president has also asked the government to improve the facilities at the Kumbh mela site before the second 'Shahi Snan' (royal bath) on May 9. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will arrive in Ujjain today at around 4 PM and hold a meeting with the concerned officials and Akhara Parishad members to sort out various issues pertaining to the month-long mela, which commenced here from April 22. PTI From hijab to Kashmir, Zawahiri was Al-Qaeda's voice for everything anti-India As Al-Qaeda scouts for new chief, Indian agencies worry about an Islamic State spillover They stay among you to kill you: Ansarul Bangla Team could be Indias biggest threat 800 Al-Qaeda fighters dead as Yemen govt forces make gains International oi-PTI Marib, Apr 25: Yemeni troops backed by Arab coalition air strikes killed more than 800 members of Al-Qaeda in an attack on a southeastern provincial capital held by the group for the past year, the coalition said today. Pro-government forces recaptured an oil terminal as well as the city of Mukalla, which was considered a jihadist stronghold, military sources said. "The operation resulted... in the death of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled," Arab coalition commanders said in a statement published by SPA, the official Saudi news agency. The operation was part of a wider offensive aimed at securing parts of the country captured by jihadist militants who have exploited a 13-month war between Gulf-backed loyalists and rebels supported by Iran. It coincides with UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait after a ceasefire entered into effect on April 11, but from which jihadists groups are excluded. "We entered the city centre (of Mukalla) and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west" towards the vast desert in Hadramawt and Shabwa provinces, a military officer told AFP by phone from the city the jihadists seized last April. Iran and Al-Qaeda, an uncomfortable relationship The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents of Mukalla, home to an estimated 200,000 people, had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw. Yemeni military sources said Emirati military vehicles were used in the operation and that troops from the Gulf country, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition, were among the forces that entered Mukalla. AFP could not immediately confirm these reports from officials in the United Arab Emirates. The Arab coalition battling rebels in Yemen since March 2015 carried out air strikes against Al-Qaeda positions in Mukalla to pave the way for the ground troops, military sources said. Troops also recaptured Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal in Shehr further east, the sources said. Earlier Sunday, military sources said pro-government forces seized Riyan airport and an army brigade headquarters Al-Qaeda had held for a year on Mukalla's outskirts. Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is regarded by Washington as the network's most dangerous branch, and has carried out deadly attacks on the West in the past. Last month, a US air strike on an Al-Qaeda training camp in Hadramawt province killed dozens of fighters in a major blow to the jihadists. A provincial official in Shabwa said jihadists also fled from the town of Azzan on Sunday which they seized in February. AFP From hijab to Kashmir, Zawahiri was Al-Qaeda's voice for everything anti-India Zawahiri dead, but terror looms large as Taliban links with Al-Qaeda intact More than 20 dead in massive explosion inside Kabul madrasa For the dark rule in Afghanistan, blame is on the US Eight Taliban militants arrested in Afghanistan International oi-IANS By Ians English Kabul, April 25: Afghan security forces arrested eight Taliban fighters in Jauzjan province on Monday, provincial police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani said. The security forces targetted Taliban hideouts in Manjagak district in the early hours of Monday and captured eight rebels, including their group commander Qari Amin, Turkistani told Xinhua news agency. The security forces did not suffer any casualty, he asserted. Meantime, Taliban outfit in an online statement confirmed the clash in Manjagak district on Sunday and claimed that seven security personnel and two militants were killed and six others, including five security personnel and a Taliban fighter, were injured during the gun battle. IANS Even if not contesting 2020 polls, Hillary Clinton will not be entirely out of scene Hillary Clinton says Julian Assange must 'answer for what he has done' Hillary Clinton's campaign slams Trump for mocking 'Indian call centre worker' International oi-PTI Washington, Apr 25: Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has slammed Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for mocking an Indian call centre worker during an election rally this week, saying it shows disrespect towards the community and is reflective of his divisive rhetoric. "Donald Trump mocking Indian workers is just typical of his disrespect that he has shown to groups across the spectrum," said John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton Campaign. [Donald Trump mocks Indian call centre but says India a great nation] "He has run a campaign of bigotry and division. I think that's quite dangerous for the country when you think about the fact that you need friends, allies. The kind of campaign he is running breeds disrespect across the globe and breeds division and danger here at home," he told reporters in Germantown, Maryland after formally launching 'Indian-Americans for Hillary', an effort by the community to rally behind the Democratic presidential front runner. Podesta was reacting to Trump's apparent use of a fake Indian accent to mock a call centre representative in India during a campaign rally in Delaware this week. The real estate tycoon said that he called up his credit card company to find out whether their customer support is based in the US or overseas. At the same time, he described India as a great place, asserting that he is not angry with Indian leaders. Hillary Clinton launches full scale attack against Donald Trump Meanwhile, an Indian-American entrepreneur also hit out at Trump, calling his comments "demeaning". "When Donald Trump fakes the accent of an Indian at the help desk, it is demeaning and demonising to me personally," said Frank Islam, a top Indian-American bundler in the Clinton campaign who has helped raised more than $100,000 for her. A resident of Maryland, Islam is part of the newly launched 'Indian-Americans for Hillary'. He also disagreed with the remarks of Republican Governor from Maine, Paul LePage, who had said that Indian workers are "worst" and "hardest" to understand. "I do not know, where he got that impression. I consider Indian-Americans very hard working and they aim high," he said. "I consider Indian-Americans to be thoughtful, constructing, hardworking and resilient. So I do not agree with him," Islam said, adding that the community played a key role in strengthening the country. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 11:06 [IST] Islamic State bomber detained in Russia for attempting attack in India was recruited through Telegram Why India should get access to Islamic State bomber detained in Russia With PFI banned, agencies probe international links and hand in ISIS recruitment Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence ISIS recruiters nude selfie invites snub for him on social media International oi-Jagriti London, Apr 25: An ISIS recruiter known for posting pro-extremist propaganda has been mocked on social media sites for posting nude selfie of him, media reported. A selfie nude of London-based alleged extremist Jazwari Saraqib showing his manhood was surfaced on the social media. Probably it was posted to impress girls which resulted into snub for him, reported the Metro.co.uk. Many have been mocking him for being... let's just say inadequate. One person posted: 'He sent the wrong ISIS fangirl nudes of his (tiny) wiener.' 'ISIS fanboy 'Jazrawi' exposed,' said an another post. ISIS has started killing own fighters: Here is why Saraquib threatened on Twitter that more Isis-inspired attacks were on the way after 14 people were killed in San Bernardino, California in December 2015. Saraquib's Twitter account has since been suspended. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 25, 2016, 10:03 [IST] One year of Nepal quake: Thousands yet to get funds to rebuild International oi-Shubham Kathmandu, April 25: A year has lapsed since a devastating earthquake left Nepal in the ruins but still several people, particularly the women, are yet to get funds to rebuild their lost property for they do not own land and neither can prove the ownership of the land where they lived, international anti-poverty organisation Oxfam informed last week. The Nepalese government needs proof of ownership to hand over the funds but several victims have either lost their documents or did not formally own the land where they resided, Oxfam added. The government started providing grants of 2,00,000 Nepalese rupees ($1,900) to the affected families who can produce proof of their ownership of land before the earthquake. "Families who are landless and who were living on unregistered land are very much uncertain about the future and support that the government had promised," Prabin Man Singh, research and policy coordinator for Oxfam who co-authored the report, said. Some 3 million people have been staying in temporary shelters with tarpaulin roofs ahead of Nepal's monsoon season, agencies like Save the Children, CARE International and others have said. Land tenure is largely undocumented in the Himalayan country and data is limited and also contradictory, the Oxfam report said. It said one government report ahead of the quake said nearly 4,80,000 families did not access to land while another report said one-third of Nepal's farmers did not own the land they tilled. As per a United Nations report, about 1.3 million of Nepalese did not own a land or enough land to raise their families. But Oxfam said that surveys conducted after the earthquake showed more than 90 per cent of the people claimed to own land before the disaster. The women of the country, however, are losing as they are considered less likely to inherit land even though the country's constitution adopted last September has given them same right to own land. Some 9,000 people were killed in the devastating quake while over 22,000 were injured. Over 9,00,000 houses were also damaged in the disaster. Donors pleged $4.1 billion for the reconstruction of the quake-ravaged country but the Nepalese government has come under a serious criticism for not quickening the reconstruction efforts. Oneindia News It's better to dance than beg on streets: SC on dance bar pleas New Delhi oi-Shubham New Delhi, April 25: The Supreme Court on Monday (April 25) said it ie better to dance than beg on the streets or earn livelihood through means that are not acceptable. The apex court made this observation while hearing a plea on the dance bars in Mumbai. It expressed its thought after petitioners opposed to dance bars argued that obscene dancing was happening inside the bars. A bench presided over by Justice Deepak Misra said " Mindset cannot be to prohibit...we are treating it as a performance of art", adding that one can not decide on "subjective morality". The apex court also said that in the year 2016, dancing is an established profession but added that if it becomes obscene, it lacks a legal sanctity. Last year, the Maharashtra government had suspended licences of several bars and hotels that included women dancing to Bollywood tunes. Later the apex court, following several appeals against the ban, asked the state to issue licences from March 15 this year on the condition that certain rules need to be adhered to. But the dance bar associations said despite the court's say, acquiring licences have become almost impossible. Nearly 140 bars and hotels in Mumbai and 1,200 in the state applied for the licences and of them, 39 in Mumbai were inspected but are yet to be given any clearance. Four were given licences but they were withdrawn later. On Monday, the Supreme Court also asked the Maharashtra Police to verify the antecedents of the bar owners and staff members within a week to allow them licences. It has also asked the state government to verify whether the conditions were also abided by. Oneindia News With AQI of 259, Delhi's air on day before Diwali least polluted in 7 years Delhi LG and CM greet people on Diwali, ask people to be mindful of pollution Indian ISIS recruiter Shafi Armar dead? New Delhi oi-Vicky New Delhi, Apr 25: The security agencies in India could heave a sigh of relief with the death of Shafi Armar. This 26 year old who is a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka was the alleged headhunter or recruiter for the ISIS in India. He is said to have been killed in an airstrike in Syria. Intelligence Bureau officials tell OneIndia that they have received information regarding his death. We are confirming the same, the officer informed. The death of Shafi comes a year after his brother Sultan Armar, the emir of the Ansar-ut-Tawhid was killed in Syria. Known as the Armar brothers, they founded the AuT with an intention of recruiting Indians into the ISIS. After the death of Sultan, it was Shafi who was running the outfit. The death of the Armar brothers The Armar brothers hail from Bhatkal in Karnataka. Both were initially part of the Indian Mujahideen, but broke away as they did not want to work under the control of the ISI. They felt that the ISIS provided a better agenda and hence joined the outfit. IB officials say that it appears he was killed in an air strike in Syria. He was part of the Hind camp of the ISIS in Syria. In fact Shafi had recently been in the news after a major module of the ISIS was busted in India by the National Investigation Agency. While the outfit that Shafi ran was called as the AuT, for the Indian operations he operated under the banner of Janood al Khalifa Hind. Officials say that they are getting the information confirmed. There is still nothing on the ISIS websites or social media accounts regarding Shafi. When Sultan had died, several of his supporters had paid tributes to him. OneIndia News 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. Rumble 24 Apr 2022 Leigh and his team have a very special ceremony planned for ANZAC Day. Please watch, listen and join these amazing people on Monday.. Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country and is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. Brussels is the most densely populated and the richest region in Belgium in terms of GDP per capita. It covers 162 km2 (63 sq mi), a relatively small area compared to the two other regions, and has a population of over 1.2 million. The five times larger metropolitan area of Brussels comprises over 2.5 million people, which makes it the largest in Belgium. It is also part of a large conurbation extending towards Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Walloon Brabant, home to over 5 million people. euronews (in English) 24 Oct 2022 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business,.. Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 242 million, and has the world's second-largest Muslim population. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area, spanning 881,913 square kilometres. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman. The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and pro-Pashtun political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 19962001, before being overthrown following the United States invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 after years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country, although its government is not recognized by any country yet. The Taliban government has been criticized for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women and girls to work and education. Rumble 24 Jan 2022 This is another excerpt from a MUCH longer video. Grandma and I start out just rambling, then end up reacting to Branden Tatum.. CBS News 12 Apr 2021 Protesters took to the streets after two police officers were cleared in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Shanice.. Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, and his wife, Precious Chikwendu, have dedicated their triplets in church. The coupe dedicated their babies, Prince Ragnar, Prince Aiden and Prince Liam, to God at the Living Faith Church (Winners Chapel), Goshen on Sunday May 26th. The couple welcomed their triplets on May 25th 2018. See more photos from the dedication below. World first talking drummer, Aralola Olumuyiwa Apake popularly known as Ara, in an interview with Sahara TV recounted her seven years of slavery and torture in the hands of her former manager Otunba Wale Akinboboye. Ara who is known for playing the Yoruba drum called Gan Gan said that she wished she listened to her parent before signing her contract with the said management company of Otunba Wale. I feel and I know that if I had a Don Jazzy in my life when my career as Ara started I wouldnt be where I am today my career would have grown bigger. I was abused, I was violated I was robbed and I am trying to be nice with my words and I am trying not to cry because it is actually very emotional for me. Those seven years of my life I cant get them back even if I was to go to court and sue him it cant get those years I labored for the Ara brand I cant get them back. Mine was a really bitter story I smiled through the tears through the abuse every form of abuse you can imagine I went through it in the hands of my former manager. His name is Otunba Wale Akinboboye. He took advantage in every way, my dad God bless his soul was my first manager. I didnt go into entertainment out of hunger it was out of passion. She said [embedded content] *** The new Governor of Oyo State, Engineer Seyi Makinde has cancelled Development Levy for kids and has declared free education in public primary schools and public secondary schools. The Governor disclosed this in his Inaugural Speech as the new Governor of the Pace Setter state. Details soon Share this: